[illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen's college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume i., part a. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] editor's preface professor maspero does not need to be introduced to us. his name is well known in england and america as that of one of the chief masters of egyptian science as well as of ancient oriental history and archaeology. alike as a philologist, a historian, and an archaeologist, he occupies a foremost place in the annals of modern knowledge and research. he possesses that quick apprehension and fertility of resource without which the decipherment of ancient texts is impossible, and he also possesses a sympathy with the past and a power of realizing it which are indispensable if we would picture it aright. his intimate acquaintance with egypt and its literature, and the opportunities of discovery afforded him by his position for several years as director of the bulaq museum, give him an unique claim to speak with authority on the history of the valley of the nile. in the present work he has been prodigal of his abundant stores of learning and knowledge, and it may therefore be regarded as the most complete account of ancient egypt that has ever yet been published. in the case of babylonia and assyria he no longer, it is true, speaks at first hand. but he has thoroughly studied the latest and best authorities on the subject, and has weighed their statements with the judgment which comes from an exhaustive acquaintance with a similar department of knowledge. naturally, in progressive studies like those of egyptology and assyriology, a good many theories and conclusions must be tentative and provisional only. discovery crowds so quickly on discovery, that the truth of to-day is often apt to be modified or amplified by the truth of to-morrow. a single fresh fact may throw a wholly new and unexpected light upon the results we have already gained, and cause them to assume a somewhat changed aspect. but this is what must happen in all sciences in which there is a healthy growth, and archaeological science is no exception to the rule. the spelling of ancient egyptian proper names adopted by professor maspero will perhaps seem strange to many. but it must be remembered that all our attempts to represent the pronunciation of ancient egyptian words can be approximate only; we can never ascertain with certainty how they were actually sounded. all that can be done is to determine what pronunciation was assigned to them in the greek period, and to work backwards from this, so far as it is possible, to more remote ages. this is what professor maspero has done, and it must be no slight satisfaction to him to find that on the whole his system of transliteration is confirmed by the cuneiform tablets of tel el-amarna. the difficulties attaching to the spelling of assyrian names are different from those which beset our attempts to reproduce, even approximately, the names of ancient egypt. the cuneiform system of writing was syllabic, each character denoting a syllable, so that we know what were the vowels in a proper name as well as the consonants. moreover, the pronunciation of the consonants resembled that of the hebrew consonants, the transliteration of which has long since become conventional. when, therefore, an assyrian or babylonian name is written phonetically, its correct transliteration is not often a matter of question. but, unfortunately, the names are not always written phonetically. the cuneiform script was an inheritance from the non-semitic predecessors of the semites in babylonia, and in this script the characters represented words as well as sounds. not unfrequently the semitic assyrians continued to write a name in the old sumerian way instead of spelling it phonetically, the result being that we do not know how it was pronounced in their own language. the name of the chaldæan noab, for instance, is written with two characters which ideographically signify "the sun" or "day of life," and of the first of which the sumerian values were _ut, babar, khis, tarn,_ and _par_, while the second had the value of _zi_. were it not that the chaldæan historian bêrôssos writes the name xisuthros, we should have no clue to its semitic pronunciation. professor maspero's learning and indefatigable industry are well known to me, but i confess i was not prepared for the exhaustive acquaintance he shows with assyriological literature. nothing seems to have escaped his notice. papers and books just published, and half forgotten articles in obscure periodicals which appeared years ago, have all alike been used and quoted by him. naturally, however, there are some points on which i should be inclined to differ from the conclusions he draws, or to which he has been led by other assyriologists. without being an assyriologist himself, it was impossible for him to be acquainted with that portion of the evidence on certain disputed questions which is only to be found in still unpublished or untranslated inscriptions. there are two points which seem to me of sufficient importance to justify my expression of dissent from his views. these are the geographical situation of the land of magan, and the historical character of the annals of sargon of accad. the evidence about magan is very clear. magan is usually associated with the country of melukhkha, "the salt" desert, and in _every_ text in which its geographical position is indicated it is placed in the immediate vicinity of egypt. thus assur-bani-pal, after stating that he had "gone to the lands of magan and melukhkha," goes on to say that he "directed his road to egypt and kush," and then describes the first of his egyptian campaigns. similar testimony is borne by esar-haddon. the latter king tells us that after quitting egypt he directed his road to the land of melukhkha, a desert region in which there were no rivers, and which extended "to the city of rapikh" (the modern raphia) "at the edge of the wadi of egypt" (the present wadi el-arîsh). after this he received camels from the king of the arabs, and made his way to the land and city of magan. the tel el-amarna tablets enable us to carry the record back to the fifteenth century b.c. in certain of the tablets now as berlin (winckler and abel, and ) the phoenician governor of the pharaoh asks that help should be sent him from melukhkha and egypt: "the king should hear the words of his servant, and send ten men of the country of melukhkha and twenty men of the country of egypt to defend the city [of gebal] for the king." and again, "i have sent [to] pharaoh" (literally, "the great house") "for a garrison of men from the country of melukhkha, and... the king has just despatched a garrison [from] the country of melukhkha." at a still earlier date we have indications that melukhkha and magan denoted the same region of the world. in an old babylonian geographical list which belongs to the early days of chaldsean history, magan is described as "the country of bronze," and melukhkha as "the country of the _samdu_," or "malachite." it was this list which originally led oppert, lenormant, and myself independently to the conviction that magan was to be looked for in the sinaitic peninsula. magan included, however, the midian of scripture, and the city of magan, called makkan in semitic assyrian, is probably the makna of classical geography, now represented by the ruins of mukna. as i have always maintained the historical character of the annals of sargon of accad, long before recent discoveries led professor hilprecht and others to adopt the same view, it is as well to state why i consider them worthy of credit. in themselves the annals contain nothing improbable; indeed, what might seem the most unlikely portion of them--that which describes the extension of sargon's empire to the shores of the mediterranean--has been confirmed by the progress of research. ammi-satana, a king of the first dynasty of babylon (about b.c.), calls himself "king of the country of the amorites," and the tel el-amarna tablets have revealed to us how deep and long-lasting babylonian influence must have been throughout western asia. moreover, the vase described by professor maspero in the present work proves that the expedition of naram-sin against magan was an historical reality, and such an expedition was only possible if "the land of the amorites," the syria and palestine of later days, had been secured in the rear. but what chiefly led me to the belief that the annals are a document contemporaneous with the events narrated in them, are two facts which do not seem to have been sufficiently considered. on the one side, while the annals of sargon are given in full, those of his son naram-sin break off abruptly in the early part of his reign. i see no explanation of this, except that they were composed while naram-sin was still on the throne. on the other side, the campaigns of the two monarchs are coupled with the astrological phenomena on which the success of the campaigns was supposed to depend. we know that the babylonians were given to the practice and study of astrology from the earliest days of their history; we know also that even in the time of the later assyrian monarchy it was still customary for the general in the field to be accompanied by the _asipu_, or "prophet," the ashshâph of dan. ii. , on whose interpretation of the signs of heaven the movements of the army depended; and in the infancy of chaldæn history we should accordingly expect to find the astrological sign recorded along with the event with which it was bound up. at a subsequent period the sign and the event were separated from one another in literature, and had the annals of sargon been a later compilation, in their case also the separation would assuredly have been made. that, on the contrary, the annals have the form which they could have assumed and ought to have assumed only at the beginning of contemporaneous babylonian history, is to me a strong testimony in favour of their genuineness. it may be added that babylonian seal-cylinders have been found in cyprus, one of which is of the age of sargon of accad, its style and workmanship being the same as that of the cylinder figured in vol. iii. p. , while the other, though of later date, belonged to a person who describes himself as "the servant of the deified naram-sin." such cylinders may, of course, have been brought to the island in later times; but when we remember that a characteristic object of prehistoric cypriote art is an imitation of the seal-cylinder of chaldsea, their discovery cannot be wholly an accident. professor maspero has brought his facts up to so recent a date that there is very little to add to what he has written. since his manuscript was in type, however, a few additions have been made to our assyriological knowledge. a fresh examination of the babylonian dynastic tablet has led professor delitzsch to make some alterations in the published account of what professor maspero calls the ninth dynasty. according to professor delitzsch, the number of kings composing the dynasty is stated on the tablet to be twenty-one, and not thirty-one as was formerly read, and the number of lost lines exactly corresponds with this figure. the first of the kings reigned thirty-six years, and he had a predecessor belonging to the previous dynasty whose name has been lost. there would consequently have been two elamite usurpers instead of one. i would further draw attention to an interesting text, published by mr. strong in the _babylonian and oriental record_, which i believe to contain the name of a king who belonged to the legendary dynasties of chaldæa. this is samas-natsir, who is coupled with sargon of accad and other early monarchs in one of the lists. the legend, if i interpret it rightly, states that "elam shall be altogether given to samas-natsir;" and the same prince is further described as building nippur and dur-ilu, as king of babylon and as conqueror both of a certain baldakha and of khumba-sitir, "the king of the cedar-forest." it will be remembered that in the epic of gil-games, khumbaba also is stated to have been the lord of the "cedar-forest." but of new discoveries and facts there is a constant supply, and it is impossible for the historian to keep pace with them. even while the sheets of his work are passing through the press, the excavator, the explorer, and the decipherer are adding to our previous stores of knowledge. in egypt, mr. de morgan's unwearied energy has raised as it were out of the ground, at kom ombo, a vast and splendidly preserved temple, of whose existence we had hardly dreamed; has discovered twelfth-dynasty jewellery at dahshur of the most exquisite workmanship, and at meir and assiut has found in tombs of the sixth dynasty painted models of the trades and professions of the day, as well as fighting battalions of soldiers, which, for freshness and lifelike reality, contrast favourably with the models which come from india to-day. in babylonia, the american expedition, under mr. haines, has at niffer unearthed monuments of older date than those of sargon of accad. nor must i forget to mention the lotiform column found by mr. de morgan in a tomb of the old empire at abusir, or the interesting discovery made by mr. arthur evans of seals and other objects from the prehistoric sites of krete and other parts of the aegean, inscribed with hieroglyphic characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at one time have existed by the side of the hittite hieroglyphs, and may have had its origin in the influence exercised by egypt on the peoples of the mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty. in volumes iv., v., and vi. we find ourselves in the full light of an advanced culture. the nations of the ancient east are no longer each pursuing an isolated existence, and separately developing the seeds of civilization and culture on the banks of the euphrates and the nile. asia and africa have met in mortal combat. babylonia has carried its empire to the frontiers of egypt, and egypt itself has been held in bondage by the hyksôs strangers from asia. in return, egypt has driven back the wave of invasion to the borders of mesopotamia, has substituted an empire of its own in syria for that of the babylonians, and has forced the babylonian king to treat with its pharaoh on equal terms. in the track of war and diplomacy have come trade and commerce; western asia is covered with roads, along which the merchant and the courier travel incessantly, and the whole civilised world of the orient is knit together in a common literary culture and common commercial interests. the age of isolation has thus been succeeded by an age of intercourse, partly military and antagonistic, partly literary and peaceful. professor maspero paints for us this age of intercourse, describes its rise and character, its decline and fall. for the unity of eastern civilization was again shattered. the hittites descended from the ranges of the taurus upon the egyptian province of northern syria, and cut off the semites of the west from those of the east. the israelites poured over the jordan out of edom and moab, and took possession of canaan, while babylonia itself, for so many centuries the ruling power of the oriental world, had to make way for its upstart rival assyria. the old imperial powers were exhausted and played out, and it needed time before the new forces which were to take their place could acquire sufficient strength for their work. as usual, professor maspero has been careful to embody in his history the very latest discoveries and information. notice, it will be found, has been taken even of the _stela_ of meneptah, recently disinterred by professor pétrie, on which the name of the israelites is engraved. at elephantine, i found, a short time since, on a granite boulder, an inscription of khufuânkh--whose sarcophagus of red granite is one of the most beautiful objects in the gizeh museum--which carries back the history of the island to the age of the pyramid-builders of the fourth dynasty. the boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side of the city-wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the sixth dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood, on one of which mention is made of "this domain" of pepi ii., it would seem that the town of elephantine must have been founded between the period of the fourth dynasty and that of the sixth. manetho is therefore justified in making the fifth and sixth dynasties of elephantine origin. it is in babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have been made. at tello, m. de sarzec has found a library of more than thirty thousand tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the other, and belonging to the age of gudea (b.c. ). many more tablets of an early date have been unearthed at abu-habba (sippara) and jokha (isin) by dr. scheil, working for the turkish government. but the most important finds have been at niffer, the ancient nippur, in northern babylonia, where the american expedition has brought to a close its long work of systematic excavation. here mr. haynes has dug down to the very foundations of the great temple of el-lil, and the chief historical results of his labours have been published by professor hilprecht (in _the babylonian expedition of the university of pennsylvania_, vol. i. pl. , ). about midway between the summit and the bottom of the mound, mr. haynes laid bare a pavement constructed of huge bricks stamped with the names of sargon of akkad and his son naram-sin. he found also the ancient wall of the city, which had been built by naram-sin, . metres wide. the _débris_ of ruined buildings which lies below the pavement of sargon is as much as . metres in depth, while that above it, the topmost stratum of which brings us down to the christian era, is only metres in height. we may form some idea from this of the enormous age to which the history of babylonian culture and writing reaches back. in fact, professor hilprecht quotes with approval mr. haynes's words: "we must cease to apply the adjective 'earliest' to the time of sargon, or to any age or epoch within a thousand years of his advanced civilization." "the golden age of babylonian history seems to include the reign of sargon and of ur-gur." many of the inscriptions which belong to this remote age of human culture have been published by professor hilprecht. among them is a long inscription, in lines, engraved on multitudes of large stone vases presented to the temple of el-lil by a certain lugal-zaggisi. lugal-zaggisi was the son of ukus, the _patesi_ or high priest of the "land of the bow," as mesopotamia, with its bedawin inhabitants, was called. he not only conquered babylonia, then known as kengi, "the land of canals and reeds," but founded an empire which extended from the persian gulf to the mediterranean. this was centuries before sargon of akkad followed in his footsteps. erech became the capital of lugal-zaggisi's empire, and doubtless received at this time its sumerian title of "the city" _par excellence_. for a long while previously there had been war between babylonia and the "land of the bow," whose rulers seem to have established themselves in the city of kis. at one time we find the babylonian prince en-sag(sag)-ana capturing kis and its king; at another time it is a king of kis who makes offerings to the god of nippur, in gratitude for his victories. to this period belongs the famous "stela of the vultures" found at tello, on which is depicted the victory of e-dingir-ana-gin, the king of lagas (tello), over the semitic hordes of the land of the bow. it may be noted that the recent discoveries have shown how correct professor maspero has been in assigning the kings of lagas to a period earlier than that of sargon of akkad. professor hilprecht would place e-dingir-ana-gin after lugal-zaggisi, and see in the stela of the vultures a monument of the revenge taken by the sumerian rulers of lagas for the conquest of the country by the inhabitants of the north. but it is equally possible that it marks the successful reaction of chaldsea against the power established by lugal-zaggisi. however this may be, the dynasty of lagas (to which professor hilprecht has added a new king, en-khegal) reigned in peace for some time, and belonged to the same age as the first dynasty of ur. this was founded by a certain lugal-kigubnidudu, whose inscriptions have been found at niffer. the dynasty which arose at ur in later days (cir. b.c. ), under ur-gur and bungi, which has hitherto been known as "the first dynasty of ur," is thus dethroned from its position, and becomes the second. the succeeding dynasty, which also made ur its capital, and whose kings, ine-sin, pur-sin il, and gimil-sin, were the immediate predecessors of the first dynasty of babylon (to which kharnmurabi belonged), must henceforth be termed the third. among the latest acquisitions from tello are the seals of the _patesi_, lugal-usumgal, which finally remove all doubt as to the identity of "sargani, king of the city," with the famous sargon of akkad. the historical accuracy of sargon's annals, moreover, have been fully vindicated. not only have the american excavators found the contemporary monuments of him and his son naram-sin, but also tablets dated in the years of his campaigns against "the land of the amorites." in short, sargon of akkad, so lately spoken of as "a half-mythical" personage, has now emerged into the full glare of authentic history. that the native chronologists had sufficient material for reconstructing the past history of their country, is also now clear. the early babylonian contract-tablets are dated by events which officially distinguished the several years of a king's reign, and tablets have been discovered compiled at the close of a reign which give year by year the events which thus characterised them. one of these tablets, for example, from the excavations at niffer, begins with the words: ( ) "the year when par-sin (ii.) becomes king. ( ) the year when pur-sin the king conquers urbillum," and ends with "the year when gimil-sin becomes king of ur, and conquers the land of zabsali" in the lebanon. of special interest to the biblical student are the discoveries made by mr. pinches among some of the babylonian tablets which have recently been acquired by the british museum. four of them relate to no less a personage than kudur-laghghamar or chedor-laomer, "king of elam," as well as to eri-aku or arioch, king of larsa, and his son dur-makh-ilani; to tudghula or tidal, the son of gazza[ni], and to their war against babylon in the time of khamrnu[rabi]. in one of the texts the question is asked, "who is the son of a king's daughter who has sat on the throne of royalty? dur-makh-ilani, the son of eri-Âku, the son of the lady kur... has sat on the throne of royalty," from which it may perhaps be inferred that eri-Âku was the son of kudur-laghghamar's daughter; and in another we read, "who is kudur-laghghamar, the doer of mischief? he has gathered together the umman manda, has devastated the land of bel (babylonia), and [has marched] at their side." the umman manda were the "barbarian hordes" of the kurdish mountains, on the northern frontier of elam, and the name corresponds with that of the goyyim or "nations" in the fourteenth chapter of genesis. we here see kudur-laghghamar acting as their suzerain lord. unfortunately, all four tablets are in a shockingly broken condition, and it is therefore difficult to discover in them a continuous sense, or to determine their precise nature. they have, however, been supplemented by further discoveries made by dr. scheil at constantinople. among the tablets preserved there, he has found letters from kharnmurabi to his vassal sin-idinnam of larsa, from which we learn that sin-idinnam had been dethroned by the elamites kudur-mabug and eri-Âku, and had fled for refuge to the court of kharnmurabi at babylon. in the war which subsequently broke out between kharnmurabi and kudur-laghghamar, the king of elam (who, it would seem, exercised suzerainty over babylonia for seven years), sin-idinnam gave material assistance to the babylonian monarch, and khammurabi accordingly bestowed presents upon him as a "recompense for his valour on the day of the overthrow of kudur-laghghamar." i must also refer to a fine scarab--found in the rubbish-mounds of the ancient city of kom ombos, in upper egypt--which bears upon it the name of sutkhu-apopi. it shows us that the author of the story of the expulsion of the hyksôs, in calling the king ra-apopi, merely, like an orthodox egyptian, substituted the name of the god of heliopolis for that of the foreign deity. equally interesting are the scarabs brought to light by professor flinders pétrie, on which a hitherto unknown ya'aqob-hal or jacob-el receives the titles of a pharaoh. in volumes vii., viii., and ix., professor maspero concludes his monumental work on the history of the ancient east. the overthrow of the persian empire by the greek soldiers of alexander marks the beginning of a new era. europe at last enters upon the stage of history, and becomes the heir of the culture and civilisation of the orient. the culture which had grown up and developed on the banks of the euphrates and nile passes to the west, and there assumes new features and is inspired with a new spirit. the east perishes of age and decrepitude; its strength is outworn, its power to initiate is past. the long ages through which it had toiled to build up the fabric of civilisation are at an end; fresh races are needed to carry on the work which it had achieved. greece appears upon the scene, and behind greece looms the colossal figure of the roman empire. during the past decade, excavation has gone on apace in egypt and babylonia, and discoveries of a startling and unexpected nature have followed in the wake of excavation. ages that seemed prehistoric step suddenly forth into the daydawn of history; personages whom a sceptical criticism had consigned to the land of myth or fable are clothed once more with flesh and blood, and events which had been long forgotten demand to be recorded and described. in babylonia, for example, the excavations at niffer and tello have shown that sargon of akkad, so far from being a creature of romance, was as much a historical monarch as nebuchadrezzar himself; monuments of his reign have been discovered, and we learn from them that the empire he is said to have founded had a very real existence. contracts have been found dated in the years when he was occupied in conquering syria and palestine, and a cadastral survey that was made for the purposes of taxation mentions a canaanite who had been appointed "governor of the land of the amorites." even a postal service had already been established along the high-roads which knit the several parts of the empire together, and some of the clay seals which franked the letters are now in the museum of the louvre. at susa, m. de morgan, the late director of the service of antiquities in egypt, has been excavating below the remains of the achremenian period, among the ruins of the ancient elamite capital. here he has found numberless historical inscriptions, besides a text in hieroglyphics which may cast light on the origin of the cuneiform characters. but the most interesting of his discoveries are two babylonian monuments that were carried off by elamite conquerors from the cities of babylonia. one of them is a long inscription of about lines belonging to manistusu, one of the early babylonian kings, whose name has been met with at niffer; the other is a monument of naram-sin, the son of sargon of akkad, which it seems was brought as booty to susa by simti-silkhak, the grandfather, perhaps, of eriaku or arioch. in armenia, also, equally important inscriptions have been found by belck and lehmann. more than two hundred new ones have been added to the list of vannic texts. it has been discovered from them that the kingdom of biainas or van was founded by ispuinis and menuas, who rebuilt yan itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and destroyed. the older name of the country was kumussu, and it may be that the language spoken in it was allied to that of the hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of the hittite type has been unearthed at toprak kaleh. one of the newly-found inscriptions of sarduris iii. shows that the name of the assyrian god, hitherto read ramman or rimmon, was really pronounced hadad. it describes a war of the vannic king against assur-nirari, son of hadad-nirari (_a-da-di-ni-ra-ri_) of assyria, thus revealing not only the true form of the assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last king of the older assyrian dynasty. from another inscription, belonging to rusas ii., the son of argistis, we learn that campaigns were carried on against the hittites and the moschi in the latter years of sennacherib's reign, and therefore only just before the irruption of the kimmerians into the northern regions of western asia. the two german explorers have also discovered the site and even the ruins of muzazir, called ardinis by the people of van. they lie on the hill of shkenna, near topsanâ, on the road between kelishin and sidek. in the immediate neighbourhood the travellers succeeded in deciphering a monument of rusas i., partly in vannic, partly in assyrian, from which it appears that the vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when the news of the fall of muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by sargon, but that, on the contrary, he "marched against the mountains of assyria" and restored the fallen city itself. urzana, the king of muzazir, had fled to him for shelter, and after the departure of the assyrian army he was sent back by rusas to his ancestral domains. the whole of the district in which muzazir was situated was termed lulu, and was regarded as the southern province of ararat. in it was mount nizir, on whose summit the ark of the chaldsean noah rested, and which is therefore rightly described in the book of genesis as one of "the mountains of ararat." it was probably the rowandiz of to-day. the discoveries made by drs. belck and lehmann, however, have not been confined to vannic texts. at the sources of the tigris dr. lehmann has found two assyrian inscriptions of the assyrian king, shalmaneser il, one dated in his fifteenth and the other in his thirty-first year, and relating to his campaigns against aram of ararat. he has further found that the two inscriptions previously known to exist at the same spot, and believed to belong to tiglath-ninip and assur-nazir-pal, are really those of shalmaneser ii., and refer to the war of his seventh year. but it is from egypt that the most revolutionary revelations have come. at abydos and kom el-ahmar, opposite el-kab, monuments have been disinterred of the kings of the first and second dynasties, if not of even earlier princes; while at negada, north of thebes, m. de morgan has found a tomb which seems to have been that of menés himself. a new world of art has been opened out before us; even the hieroglyphic system of writing is as yet immature and strange. but the art is already advanced in many respects; hard stone was cut into vases and bowls, and even into statuary of considerable artistic excellence; glazed porcelain was already made, and bronze, or rather copper, was fashioned into weapons and tools. the writing material, as in babylonia, was often clay, over which seal-cylinders of a babylonian pattern were rolled. equally babylonian are the strange and composite animals engraved on some of the objects of this early age, as well as the structure of the tombs, which were built, not of stone, but of crude brick, with their external walls panelled and pilastered. professor hommel's theory, which brings egyptian civilisation from babylonia along with the ancestors of the historical egyptians, has thus been largely verified. but the historical egyptians were not the first inhabitants of the valley of the nile. not only have palaeolithic implements been found on the plateau of the desert; the relics of neolithic man have turned up in extraordinary abundance. when the historical egyptians arrived with their copper weapons and their system of writing, the land was already occupied by a pastoral people, who had attained a high level of neolithic culture. their implements of flint are the most beautiful and delicately finished that have ever been discovered; they were able to carve vases of great artistic excellence out of the hardest of stone, and their pottery was of no mean quality. long after the country had come into the possession of the historical dynasties, and had even been united into a single monarchy, their settlements continued to exist on the outskirts of the desert, and the neolithic culture that distinguished them passed only gradually away. by degrees, however, they intermingled with their conquerors from asia, and thus formed the egyptian race of a later day. but they had already made egypt what it has been throughout the historical period. under the direction of the asiatic immigrants and of the eugineering science whose first home had been in the alluvial plain of babylonia, they accomplished those great works of irrigation which confined the nile to its present channel, which cleared away the jungle and the swamp that had formerly bordered the desert, and turned them into fertile fields. theirs were the hands which carried out the plans of their more intelligent masters, and cultivated the valley when once it had been reclaimed. the egypt of history was the creation of a twofold race: the egyptians of the monuments supplied the controlling and directing power; the egyptians of the neolithic graves bestowed upon it their labour and their skill. the period treated of by professor maspero in these volumes is one for which there is an abundance of materials sucli as do not exist for the earlier portions of his history. the evidence of the monuments is supplemented by that of the hebrew and classical writers. but on this very account it is in some respects more difficult to deal with, and the conclusions arrived at by the historian are more open to question and dispute. in some cases conflicting accounts are given of an event which seem to rest on equally good authority; in other cases, there is a sudden failure of materials just where the thread of the story becomes most complicated. of this the decline and fall of the assyrian empire is a prominent example; for our knowledge of it, we have still to depend chiefly on the untrustworthy legends of the greeks. our views must be coloured more or less by our estimate of herodotos; those who, like myself, place little or no confidence in what he tells us about oriental affairs will naturally form a very different idea of the death-struggle, of assyria from that formed by writers who still see in him the father of oriental history. even where the native monuments have come to our aid, they have not unfrequently introduced difficulties and doubts where none seemed to exist before, and have made the task of the critical historian harder than ever. cyrus and his forefathers, for instance, turn out to have been kings of anzan, and not of persia, thus explaining why it is that the neo-susian language appears by the side of the persian and the babylonian as one of the three official languages of the persian empire; but we still have to learn what was the relation of anzan to persia on the one hand, and to susa on the other, and when it was that cyrus of anzan became also king of persia. in the annalistic tablet, he is called "king of persia" for the first time in the ninth year of nabonidos. similar questions arise as to the position and nationality of astyages. he is called in the inscriptions, not a mede, but a manda--a name which, as i showed many years ago, meant for the babylonian a "barbarian" of kurdistan. i have myself little doubt that the manda over whom astyages ruled were the scythians of classical tradition, who, as may be gathered from a text published by mr. strong, had occupied the ancient kingdom of ellipi. it is even possible that in the madyes of herodotos, we have a reminiscence of the manda of the cuneiform inscriptions. that the greek writers should have confounded the madâ or medes with the manda or barbarians is not surprising; we find even berossos describing one of the early dynasties of babylonia as "median" where manda, and not madâ, must plainly be meant. these and similar problems, however, will doubtless be cleared up by the progress of excavation and research. perhaps m. de morgan's excavations at susa may throw some light on them, but it is to the work of the german expedition, which has recently begun the systematic exploration of the site of babylon, that we must chiefly look for help. the babylon of nabopolassar and nebuchadrezzar rose on the ruins of nineveh, and the story of downfall of the assyrian empire must still be lying buried under its mounds. a. h. sayce. translator's preface in completing the translation of this great work, i have to thank professor maspero for kindly permitting me to appeal to him on various questions which arose while preparing the translation. his patience and courtesy have alike been unfailing in every matter submitted for his decision. i am indebted to miss bradbury for kindly supplying, in the midst of much other literary work for the egypt exploration fund, the translation of the chapter on the gods, and also of the earlier parts of some of the first chapters. she has, moreover, helped me in my own share of the work with many suggestions and hints, which her intimate connection with the late miss amelia b. edwards fully qualified her to give. as in the original there is a lack of uniformity in the transcription and accentuation of arabic names, i have ventured to alter them in several cases to the form most familiar to english readers. the spelling of the ancient egyptian words has, at professor maspero's request, been retained throughout, with the exception that the french _ou_ has been invariably represented by û, e.g. khnoumou by khnûmû. by an act of international courtesy, the director of the _imprimerie nationale_ has allowed the beautifully cut hieroglyphic and cuneiform type used in the original to be employed in the english edition, and i take advantage of this opportunity to express to him our thanks and appreciation of his graceful act. m. l. mcclure. contents chapter i.--the nile and egypt the river and its influence upon the formation of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization chapter ii.--the gods of egypt their number and their nature--the feudal gods, living and dead--the triads--temples and priests--the cosmogonies of the delta--the enneads of heliopolis and of hermopolis chapter iii.--the legendary history of egypt the divine dynasties: râ, shû, osiris, sit, horus-thot, and the invention of sciences and writing-menes, and the three first human dynasties [illustration: .jpg page one] [illustration: .jpg page two] chapter i.--the nile and egypt _the river and its influence upon the formation and character of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the land--the first political organization of the valley._ _the delta: its gradual formation, its structure, its canals--the valley of egypt--the two arms of the river--the eastern nile--the appearance of its hanks--the hills--the gorge of gehel silsileh--the cataracts: the falls of aswan--nubia--the rapids of wady halfah--the takazze--the blue nile and the white nile. the sources of the nile--the egyptian cosmography--the four pillars and the four upholding mountains--the celestial nile the source of the terrestial nile--the southern sea and the islands of spirits--the tears of isis--the rise of the nile--the green nile and the bed nile--the opening of the dykes---the fall of the nile--the river at its lowest ebb. the alluvial deposits and the effects of the inundation upon the soil of egypt--paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus; the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dôm-palms--the fauna: the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus and the crocodile; birds; fish, the fahaka. the nile god: his form and its varieties--the goddess mirit--the supposed sources of the nile at elephantine--the festivals of gebel silsileh-hymn to the nile from papyri m the british museum. the names of the nile and egypt: bomitu and qimit--antiquity of the egyptianpeople--their first horizon--the hypothesis of their asiatic origin--the probability of their african origin--the language and its semitic affinities--the race and its principal types. the primitive civilization of egypt--its survival into historic times--the women of amon--marriage--rights of women and children--houses--furniture--dress--jewels--wooden and metal arms--primitive life-fishing and hunting--the lasso and "bolas"--the domestication of animals--plants used for food--the lotus--cereals--the hoe and the plough. the conquest of the valley--dykes--basins--irrigation--the princes--the nomes--the first local principalities--late organization of the delta--character of its inhabitants--gradual division of the principalities and changes of then areas--the god of the city._ [illustration: .jpg chapter one] the nile and egypt _the river and its influence upon the formation of the country--the oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization._ * the same expression has been attributed to hecatseus of miletus. it has often been observed that this phrase seems egyptian on the face of it, and it certainly recalls such forms of expression as the following, taken from a formula frequently found on funerary "all things created by heaven, given by earth, _brought by the nile--from its mysterious sources._" nevertheless, up to the present time, the hieroglyphic texts have yielded nothing altogether corresponding to the exact terms of the greek historians-- _gift_ of the nile, or its natural _product_. a long low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this, the delta of egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is as it were the gift of the nile. the mediterranean once reached to the foot of the sandy plateau on which stand the pyramids, and formed a wide gulf where now stretches plain beyond plain of the delta. the last undulations of the arabian hills, from gebel mokattam to gebel geneffeh, were its boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow channel running between africa and asia united the mediterranean to the red sea. westward, the littoral followed closely the contour of the libyan plateau; but a long limestone spur broke away from it at about ° n., and terminated in cape abûkîr. the alluvial deposits first tilled up the depths of the bay, and then, under the influence of the currents which swept along its eastern coasts, accumulated behind that rampart of sand-hills whose remains are still to be seen near benha. thus was formed a miniature delta, whose structure pretty accurately corresponded with that of the great delta of to-day. here the nile divided into three divergent streams, roughly coinciding with the southern courses of the rosetta and damietta branches, and with the modern canal of abu meneggeh. the ceaseless accumulation of mud brought down by the river soon overpassed the first limits, and steadily encroached upon the sea until it was carried beyond the shelter furnished by cape abûkîr. thence it was gathered into the great littoral current flowing from africa to asia, and formed an incurvated coast-line ending in the headland of casios, on the syrian frontier. from that time egypt made no further increase towards the north, and her coast remains practically such as it was thousands of years ago:[*] the interior alone has suffered change, having been dried up, hardened, and gradually raised. its inhabitants thought they could measure the exact length of time in which this work of creation had been accomplished. according to the egyptians, menés, the first of their mortal kings, had found, so they said, the valley under water. the sea came in almost as far as the fayûm, and, excepting the province of thebes, the whole country was a pestilential swamp. hence, the necessary period for the physical formation of egypt would cover some centuries after menés. this is no longer considered a sufficient length of time, and some modern geologists declare that the nile must have worked at the formation of its own estuary for at least seventy-four thousand years.[**] * Élie de beaumont, "the great distinction of the nile delta lies in the almost uniform persistence of its coast-line.... the present sea-coast of egypt is little altered from that of three thousand years ago." the latest observations prove it to be sinking and shrinking near alexandria to rise in the neighbourhood of port said. ** others, as for example schweinfurth, are more moderate in their views, and think "that it must have taken about twenty thousand years for that alluvial deposit which now forms the arable soil of egypt to have attained to its present depth and fertility." this figure is certainly exaggerated, for the alluvium would gain on the shallows of the ancient gulf far more rapidly than it gains upon the depths of the mediterranean. but even though we reduce the period, we must still admit that the egyptians little suspected the true age of their country. not only did the delta long precede the coming of menés, but its plan was entirely completed before the first arrival of the egyptians. the greeks, full of the mysterious virtues which they attributed to numbers, discovered that there were seven principal branches, and seven mouths of the nile, and that, as compared with these, the rest were but false mouths. [illustration: .jpg the mouth of the nile previous to the formation of the delta.] as a matter of fact, there were only three chief outlets. the canopic branch flowed westward, and fell into the mediterranean near cape abûkîr, at the western extremity of the arc described by the coast-line. the pelusiac branch followed the length of the arabian chain, and flowed forth at the other extremity; and the sebennytic stream almost bisected the triangle contained between the canopic and pelusiac channels. two thousand years ago, these branches separated from the main river at the city of cerkasoros, nearly four miles north of the site where cairo now stands. but after the pelusiac branch had ceased to exist, the fork of the river gradually wore away the land from age to age, and is now some nine miles lower down.[*] these three great waterways are united by a network of artificial rivers and canals, and by ditches--some natural, others dug by the hand of man, but all ceaselessly shifting. they silt up, close, open again, replace each other, and ramify in innumerable branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. as the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. the libyan and arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite. and there the delta ends, and egypt proper has begun. it is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south between regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the banks of the river, made by the nile, and sustained by the nile. the whole length of the land is shut in between two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a mean distance of about twelve miles.[**] * by the end of the byzantine period, the fork of the river lay at some distance south of shetnûfi, the present shatanûf, which is the spot where it now is. the arab geographers call the head of the delta batn-el-bagaraji, the cow's belly. ampère, in his voyage en egypte et en nubie, p. , says,--"may it not be that this name, denoting the place where the most fertile part of egypt begins, is a reminiscence of the cow goddess, of isis, the symbol of fecundity, and the personification of egypt?" **de rozière estimated the mean breadth as being only a little over nine miles. during the earlier ages, the river filled all this intermediate space, and the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very summits, still bear unmistakable traces of its action. wasted, and shrunken within the deeps of its ancient bed, the stream now makes a way through its own thick deposits of mud. the bulk of its waters keeps to the east, and constitutes the true nile, the "great river" of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. a second arm flows close to the libyan desert, here and there formed into canals, elsewhere left to follow its own course. from the head of the delta to the village of demt it is called the bahr-yûsuf; beyond derût--up to gebel silsileh--it is the ibrâhimîyeh, the sohâgîyeh, the raiân. but the ancient names are unknown to us. this western nile dries up in winter throughout all its upper courses: where it continues to flow, it is by scanty accessions from the main nile. it also divides north of henassieh, and by the gorge of illahûn sends out a branch which passes beyond the hills into the basin of the fayûrn. the true nile, the eastern nile, is less a river than a sinuous lake encumbered with islets and sandbanks, and its navigable channel winds capriciously between them, flowing with a strong and steady current below the steep, black banks cut sheer through the alluvial earth. [illustration: .jpg a line of laden camels emerges from a hollow of the undulating road. ] from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in . there are light groves of the date-palm, groups of acacia trees and sycamores, square patches of barley or of wheat, fields of beans or of bersîm,[*] and here and there a long bank of sand which the least breeze raises into whirling clouds. and over all there broods a great silence, scarcely broken by the cry of birds, or the song of rowers in a passing boat. * bersîm is a kind of trefoil, the _trifolium alexandrinum_ of linnÆus. it is very common in egypt, and the only plant of the kind generally cultivated for fodder. something of human life may stir on the banks, but it is softened into poetry by distance. a half-veiled woman, bearing a bundle of herbs upon her head, is driving her goats before her. an irregular line of asses or of laden camels emerges from one hollow of the undulating road only to disappear within another. a group of peasants, crouched upon the shore, in the ancient posture of knees to chin, patiently awaits the return of the ferry-boat. [illustration: .jpg] from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in . a dainty village looks forth smiling from beneath its palm trees. near at hand it is all naked filth and ugliness: a cluster of low grey huts built of mud and laths; two or three taller houses, whitewashed; an enclosed square shaded by sycamores; a few old men, each seated peacefully at his own door; a confusion of fowls, children, goats, and sheep; half a dozen boats made fast ashore. but, as we pass on, the wretchedness all fades away; meanness of detail is lost in light, and long before it disappears at a bend of the river, the village is again clothed with gaiety and serene beauty. day by day, the landscape repeats itself. the same groups of trees alternate with the same fields, growing green or dusty in the sunlight according to the season of the year. with the same measured flow, the nile winds beneath its steep banks and about its scattered islands. [illustration: .jpg part of gebel shÊkh herÎdi. ] from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in . one village succeeds another, each alike smiling and sordid under its crown of foliage. the terraces of the libyan hills, away beyond the western nile, scarcely rise above the horizon, and lie like a white edging between the green of the plain and the blue of the sky. the arabian hills do not form one unbroken line, but a series of mountain masses with their spurs, now approaching the river, and now withdrawing to the desert at almost regular intervals. at the entrance to the valley, rise gebel mokattam and gebel el-ahmar. gebel hemûr-shemûl and gebel shêkh embârak next stretch in echelon from north to south, and are succeeded by gebel et-ter, where, according to an old legend, all the birds of the world are annually assembled.[*] * in makrizi's _description of egypt_ we read: "every year, upon a certain day, all the herons (boukîr, _ardea bubulcus_ of cuvier) assemble at this mountain. one after another, each puts his beak into a cleft of the hill until the cleft closes upon one of them. and then forthwith all the others fly away but the bird which has been caught struggles until he dies, and there his body remains until it has fallen into dust." the same tale is told by other arab writers, of which a list may be seen in etienne quatremère, _mémoires historiques et géographiques sur l'egypte et quelques contrées voisines_, vol. i. pp. - . it faintly recalls that ancient tradition of the cleft at abydos, whereby souls must pass, as human-headed birds, in order to reach the other world. [illustration: .jpg the hill of kasr es-sayyad. ] from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in . then follows gebel abûfêda, dreaded by the sailors for its sudden gusts. limestone predominates throughout, white or yellowish, broken by veins of alabaster, or of red and grey sandstones. its horizontal strata are so symmetrically laid one above another as to seem more like the walls of a town than the side of a mountain. but time has often dismantled their summits and loosened their foundations. man has broken into their façades to cut his quarries and his tombs; while the current is secretly undermining the base, wherein it has made many a breach. as soon as any margin of mud has collected between cliffs and river, halfah and wild plants take hold upon it, and date-palms grow there--whence their seed, no one knows. presently a hamlet rises at the mouth of the ravine, among clusters of trees and fields in miniature. beyond siût, the light becomes more glowing, the air drier and more vibrating, and the green of cultivation loses its brightness. the angular outline of the dom-palni mingles more and more with that of the common palm and of the heavy sycamore, and the castor-oil plant increasingly abounds. but all these changes come about so gradually that they are effected before we notice them. the plain continues to contract. at thebes it is still ten miles wide; at the gorge of gebelên it has almost disappeared, and at gebel silsileh it has completely vanished. there, it was crossed by a natural dyke of sandstone, through which the waters have with difficulty scooped for themselves a passage. from this point, egypt is nothing but the bed of the nile lying between two escarpments of naked rock. further on the cultivable land reappears, but narrowed, and changed almost beyond recognition. hills, hewn out of solid sandstone, succeed each other at distances of about two miles, low, crushed, sombre, and formless. presently a forest of palm trees, the last on that side, announces aswan and nubia. five banks of granite, ranged in lines between latitude ° and ° n., cross nubia from east to west, and from north-east to south-west, like so many ramparts thrown up between the mediterranean and the heart of africa. the nile has attacked them from behind, and made its way over them one after another in rapids which have been glorified by the name of cataracts. [illustration: .jpg entrance to the first cataract. ] view taken from the hills opposite elephantine, by insinger, in . classic writers were pleased to describe the river as hurled into the gulfs of syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood were deafened by it. even a colony of persians, sent thither by cambyses, could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek a quieter situation. the first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six and a quarter miles in length, descending from the island of philae to the port of aswan, the aspect of its approach relieved and brightened by the ever green groves of elephantine. beyond elephantine are cliffs and sandy beaches, chains of blackened "roches moutonnées" marking out the beds of the currents, and fantastic reefs, sometimes bare and sometimes veiled by long grasses and climbing plants, in which thousands of birds have made their nests. there are islets too, occasionally large enough to have once supported something of a population, such as amerade, salûg, sehêl. the granite threshold of nubia, is broken beyond sehêl, but its débris, massed m disorder against the right bank, still seem to dispute the passage of the waters, dashing turbulently and roaring as they flow along through tortuous channels, where every streamlet is broken up into small cascades, ihe channel running by the left bank is always navigable. [illustration: .jpg entrance to nubia.] during the inundation, the rocks and sandbanks of the right side are completely under water, and their presence is only betrayed by eddies. but on the river's reaching its lowest point a fall of some six feet is established, and there big boats, hugging the shore, are hauled up by means of ropes, or easily drift down with the current. [illustration: .jpg league beyond league, the hills stketch on in low ignoble outline. ] from a drawing by boudier, after a photograph by insinger, taken in . all kinds of granite are found together in this corner of africa. there are the pink and red syenites, porphyritic granite, yellow granite, grey granite, both black granite and white, and granites veined with black and veined with white. as soon as these disappear behind us, various sandstones begin to crop up, allied to the coarsest _calcaire grossier_. the hill bristle with small split blocks, with peaks half overturned, with rough and denuded mounds. league beyond league, they stretch in low ignoble outline. here and there a valley opens sharply into the desert, revealing an infinite perspective of summits and escarpments in echelon one behind another to the furthest plane of the horizon, like motionless caravans. the now confined river rushes on with a low, deep murmur, accompanied night and day by the croaking of frogs and the rhythmic creak of the sâkîeh.[*] * the sâkîeh is made of a notch-wheel fixed vertically on a horizontal axle, and is actuated by various cog-wheels set in continuous motion by oxen or asses. a long chain of earthenware vessels brings up the water either from the river itself, or from some little branch canal, and empties it into a system of troughs and reservoirs. thence, it flows forth to be distributed over all the neighbouring land. jetties of rough stone-work, made in unknown times by an unknown people, run out like breakwaters into midstream. [illustration: .jpg the entrance to the first cataract] from time to time waves of sand are borne over, and drown the narrow fields of durra and of barley. scraps of close, aromatic pasturage, acacias, date-palms, and dôm-palms, together with a few shrivelled sycamores, are scattered along both banks. the ruins of a crumbling pylon mark the site of some ancient city, and, overhanging the water, is a vertical wall of rock honeycombed with tombs. amid these relics of another age, miserable huts, scattered hamlets, a town or two surrounded with little gardens are the only evidence that there is yet life in nubia. south of wâdy halfah, the second granite bank is broken through, and the second cataract spreads its rapids over a length of four leagues: the archipelago numbers more than islets, of which some sixty have houses upon them and yield harvests to their inhabitants. the main characteristics of the first two cataracts are repeated with slight variations in the cases of the three which follow,--at hannek, at guerendid, and el-hu-mar. it is egypt still, but a joyless egypt bereft of its brightness: impoverished, disfigured, and almost desolate. [illustration: .jpg entrance to the second catakact. ] view taken from the top of the rocks of abusîr, after a photograph by insinger, in . there is the same double wall of hills, now closely confining the valley, and again withdrawing from each other as though to flee into the desert. everywhere are moving sheets of sand, steep black banks with their narrow strips of cultivation, villages which are scarcely visible on account of the lowness of their huts sycamore ceases at gebel-barkal, date-palms become fewer and finally disappear. the nile alone has not changed. and it was at philse, so it is at berber. here, however, on the right bank, leagues from the sea, is its first affluent, the takazze, which intermittently brings to it the waters of northern ethiopia. at khartum, the single channel in which the river flowed divides; and two other streams are opened up in a southerly direction, each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream. which is the true nile? is it the blue nile, which seems to come down from the distant mountains? or is it the white nile, which has traversed the immense plains of equatorial africa. the old egyptians never knew. the river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it withheld it from us until a few years ago. vainly did their victorious armies follow the nile for months together as they pursued the tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide, as full, as irresistible in its progress as ever. it was a fresh-water sea, and sea--_iaûmâ, iôma_--was the name by which they called it. the egyptians therefore never sought its source. they imagined the whole universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest diameter was from south to north, and its least from east to west. the earth, with its alternate continents and seas, formed the bottom of the box; it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with egypt in its centre. the sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, flat according to some, vaulted according to others. its earthward face was capriciously sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables, and which, extinguished or unperceived by day, were lighted, or became visible to our eyes, at night. [illustration: .jpg an attempt to represent the egyptian universe. ] section taken at hermopolis. to the left, is the bark of the sun on the celestial river. since this ceiling could not remain in mid-air without support, four columns, or rather four forked trunks of trees, similar to those which maintained the primitive house, were supposed to uphold it. but it was doubtless feared lest some tempest should overturn them, for they were superseded by four lofty peaks, rising at the four cardinal points, and connected by a continuous chain of mountains. the egyptians knew little of the northern peak: the mediterranean, the "very green," interposed between it and egypt, and prevented their coming near enough to see it. the southern peak was named apit the horn of the earth; that on the east was called bâkhû, the mountain of birth; and the western peak was known as manu, sometimes as onkhit, the region of life. [illustration: .jpg footnotes with graphics] bâkhû was not a fictitious mountain, but the highest of those distant summits seen from the nile in looking towards the red sea. in the same way, manu answered to some hill of the libyan desert, whose summit closed the horizon. when it was discovered that neither bâkhû nor manu were the limits of the world, the notion of upholding the celestial roof was not on that account given up. it was only necessary to withdraw the pillars from sight, and imagine fabulous peaks, invested with familiar names. these were not supposed to form the actual boundary of the universe; a great river--analogous to the ocean-stream of the greeks--lay between them and its utmost limits. this river circulated upon a kind of ledge projecting along the sides of the box a little below the continuous mountain chain upon which the starry heavens were sustained. on the north of the ellipse, the river was bordered by a steep and abrupt bank, which took its rise at the peak of manu on the west, and soon rose high enough to form a screen between the river and the earth. the narrow valley which it hid from view was known as da'it from remotest times. eternal night enfolded that valley in thick darkness, and filled it with dense air such as no living thing could breathe. towards the east the steep bank rapidly declined, and ceased altogether a little beyond bâkhû, while the river flowed on between low and almost level shores from east to south, and then from south to west. the sun was a disc of fire placed upon a boat. at the same equable rate, the river carried it round the ramparts of the world. erom evening until morning it disappeared within the gorges of daït; its light did not then reach us, and it was night. from morning until evening its rays, being no longer intercepted by any obstacle, were freely shed abroad from one end of the box to the other, and it was day. the nile branched off from the celestial river at its southern bend;[*] hence the south was the chief cardinal point to the egyptians, and by that they oriented themselves, placing sunrise to their left, and sunset to their right. * the classic writers themselves knew that, according to egyptian belief, the nile flowed down from heaven. the legend of the nile having its source in the ocean stream was but a greek transposition of the egyptian doctrine, which represented it as an arm of the celestial river whereon the sun sailed round the earth. before they passed beyond the defiles of gebel silsileh, they thought that the spot whence the celestial waters left the sky was situate between elephantine and philae, and that they descended in an immense waterfall whose last leaps were at syene. it may be that the tales about the first cataract told by classic writers are but a far-off echo of this tradition of a barbarous age. conquests carried into the heart of africa forced the egyptians to recognize their error, but did not weaken their faith in the supernatural origin of the river. they only placed its source further south, and surrounded it with greater marvels. they told how, by going up the stream, sailors at length reached an undetermined country, a kind of borderland between this world and the next, a "land of shades," whose inhabitants were dwarfs, monsters, or spirits. thence they passed into a sea sprinkled with mysterious islands, like those enchanted archipelagoes which portuguese and breton mariners were wont to see at times when on their voyages, and which vanished at their approach. these islands were inhabited by serpents with human voices, sometimes friendly and sometimes cruel to the shipwrecked. he who went forth from the islands could never more re-enter them: they were resolved into the waters and lost within the bosom of the waves. a modern geographer can hardly comprehend such fancies; those of greek and roman times were perfectly familiar with them. they believed that the nile communicated with the red sea near suakin, by means of the astaboras, and this was certainly the route which the egyptians of old had imagined for their navigators. the supposed communication was gradually transferred farther and farther south; and we have only to glance over certain maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to see clearly drawn what the egyptians had imagined--the centre of africa as a great lake, whence issued the congo, the zambesi, and the nile. arab merchants of the middle ages believed that a resolute man could pass from alexandria or cairo to the land of the zindjes and the indian ocean by rising from river to river.[*] * joinville has given a special chapter to the description of the sources and wonders of the nile, in which he believed as firmly as in an article of his creed. as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, wendelinus devoted part of his _admiranda nili_ to proving that the river did not rise in the earthly paradise. at gûrnah, forty years ago, rhind picked up a legend which stated that the nile flows down from the sky. [illustration: .jpg south africa and the sources of the nile, by odoakdo lopez. ] facsimile of the map published by kircher in _oedipus Ægyptiacus_, vol. i. (_iconismus ii_), p. . many of the legends relating to this subject are lost, while others have been collected and embellished with fresh features by jewish and christian theologians. the nile was said to have its source in paradise, to traverse burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall into a sea whence it made its way to egypt. sometimes it carried down from its celestial sources branches and fruits unlike any to be found on earth. the sea mentioned in all these tales is perhaps a less extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. a lake, nearly as large as the victoria nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the bahr el-abiad unites with the sobat, and with the bahr el-ghazal. alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as birket nû; but, in ages preceding our era, it must still have been vast enough to suggest to egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea, opening into the indian ocean. the mountains, whose outline was vaguely seen far to southward on the further shores, doubtless contained within them its mysterious source. there the inundation was made ready, and there it began upon a fixed day. the celestial nile had its periodic rise and fall, on which those of the earthly nile depended. every year, towards the middle of june, isis, mourning for osiris, let fall into it one of the tears which she shed over her brother, and thereupon the river swelled and descended upon earth. isis has had no devotees for centuries, and her very name is unknown to the descendants of her worshippers; but the tradition of her fertilizing tears has survived her memory. even to this day, every one in egypt, mussulman or christian, knows that a divine drop falls from heaven during the night between the th and th of june, and forthwith brings about the rise of the nile. swollen by the rains which fall in february over the region of the great lakes, the white nile rushes northward, sweeping before it the stagnant sheets of water left by the inundation of the previous year. on the left, the bahr el-ghazâl brings it the overflow of the ill-defined basin stretching between darfûr and the congo; and the sobat pours in on the right a tribute from the rivers which furrow the southern slopes of the abyssinian mountains. the first swell passes khartum by the end of april, and raises the water-level there by about a foot, then it slowly makes its way through nubia, and dies away in egypt at the beginning of june. its waters, infected by half-putrid organic matter from the equatorial swamps, are not completely freed from it even in the course of this long journey, but keep a greenish tint as far as the delta. they are said to be poisonous, and to give severe pains in the bladder to any who may drink them. i am bound to say that every june, for five years, i drank this green water from the nile itself, without taking any other precaution than the usual one of filtering it through a porous jar. neither i, nor the many people living with me, ever felt the slightest inconvenience from it. happily, this _green nile_ does not last long, but generally flows away in three or four days, and is only the forerunner of the real flood. the melting of the snows and the excessive spring rains having suddenly swollen the torrents which rise in the central plateau of abyssinia, the blue nile, into which they flow, rolls so impetuously towards the plain that, when its waters reach khartum in the middle of may, they refuse to mingle with those of the white nile, and do not lose their peculiar colour before reaching the neighbourhood of abu hamed, three hundred miles below. from that time the height of the nile increases rapidly day by day. the river, constantly reinforced by floods following one upon another from the great lakes and from abyssinia, rises in furious bounds, and would become a devastating torrent were its rage not checked by the nubian cataracts. here six basins, one above another, in which the water collects, check its course, and permit it to flow thence only as a partially filtered and moderated stream. it is signalled at syene towards the th of june, at cairo by the th to the th, and there its birth is officially celebrated during the "night of the drop." two days later it reaches the delta, just in time to save the country from drought and sterility. egypt, burnt up by the khamsin, a west wind blowing continuously for fifty days, seems nothing more than an extension of the desert. the trees are covered and choked by a layer of grey dust. about the villages, meagre and laboriously watered patches of vegetables struggle for life, while some show of green still lingers along the canals and in hollows whence all moisture has not yet evaporated. the plain lies panting in the sun--naked, dusty, and ashen--scored with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. the nile is only half its usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of the volume of water which is borne down in october. it has at first hard work to recover its former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations that the rise is scarcely noted. it is, however, continually gaining ground; here a sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled, islets are outlined where there was a continuous beach, a new stream detaches itself and gains the old shore. the first contact is disastrous to the banks; their steep sides, disintegrated and cracked by the heat, no longer offer any resistance to the current, and fall with a crash, in lengths of a hundred yards and more. [illustration: .jpg during the inundation] as the successive floods grow stronger and are more heavily charged with mud, the whole mass of water becomes turbid and changes colour. in eight or ten days it has turned from greyish blue to dark red, occasionally of so intense a colour as to look like newly shed blood. the "red nile" is not unwholesome like the "green nile," and the suspended mud to which it owes its suspicious appearance deprives the water of none of its freshness and lightness. it reaches its full height towards the th of july; but the dykes which confine it, and the barriers constructed across the mouths of canals, still prevent it from overflowing. the nile must be considered high enough to submerge the land adequately before it is set free. the ancient egyptians measured its height by cubits of twenty-one and a quarter inches. at fourteen cubits, they pronounced it an excellent nile; below thirteen, or above fifteen, it was accounted insufficient or excessive, and in either case meant famine, and perhaps pestilence at hand. to this day the natives watch its advance with the same anxious eagerness; and from the rd of july, public criers, walking the streets of cairo, announce each morning what progress it has made since evening. more or less authentic traditions assert that the prelude to the opening of the canals, in the time of the pharaohs, was the solemn casting to the waters of a young girl decked as for her bridal--the "bride of the nile." even after the arab conquest, the irruption of the river into the bosom of the land was still considered as an actual marriage; the contract was drawn up by a cadi, and witnesses confirmed its consummation with the most fantastic formalities of oriental ceremonial. it is generally between the st and th of july that it is decided to break through the dykes. when that proceeding has been solemnly accomplished in state, the flood still takes several days to fill the canals, and afterwards spreads over the low lands, advancing little by little to the very edge of the desert. egypt is then one sheet of turbid water spreading between two lines of rock and sand, flecked with green and black spots where there are towns or where the ground rises, and divided into irregular compartments by raised roads connecting the villages. in nubia the river attains its greatest height towards the end of august; at cairo and in the delta not until three weeks or a month later. for about eight days it remains stationary, and then begins to fall imperceptibly. sometimes there is a new freshet in october, and the river again increases in height. but the rise is unsustained; once more it falls as rapidly as it rose, and by december the river has completely retired to the limits of its bed. one after another, the streams which fed it fail or dwindle. the tacazze is lost among the sands before rejoining it, and the blue nile, well-nigh deprived of tributaries, is but scantily maintained by abyssinian snows. the white nile is indebted to the great lakes for the greater persistence of its waters, which feed the river as far as the mediterranean, and save the valley from utter drought in winter. but, even with this resource, the level of the water falls daily, and its volume is diminished. long-hidden sandbanks reappear, and are again linked into continuous line. islands expand by the rise of shingly beaches, which gradually reconnect them with each other and with the shore. smaller branches of the river cease to flow, and form a mere network of stagnant pools and muddy ponds, which fast dry up. the main channel itself is only intermittently navigable; after march boats run aground in it, and are forced to await the return of the inundation for their release. from the middle of april to the middle of june, egypt is only half alive, awaiting the new nile. [illustration: .jpg assiout] those ruddy and heavily charged waters, rising and retiring with almost mathematical regularity, bring and leave the spoils of the countries they have traversed: sand from nubia, whitish clay from the regions of the lakes, ferruginous mud, and the various rock-formations of abyssinia. these materials are not uniformly disseminated in the deposits; their precipitation being regulated both by their specific gravity and the velocity of the current. flattened stones and rounded pebbles are left behind at the cataract between syene and keneh, while coarser particles of sand are suspended in the undercurrents and serve to raise the bed of the river, or are carried out to sea and form the sandbanks which are slowly rising at the damietta and rosetta mouths of the nile. the mud and finer particles rise towards the surface, and are deposited upon the land after the opening of the dykes. soil which is entirely dependent on the deposit of a river, and periodically invaded by it, necessarily maintains but a scanty flora; and though it is well known that, as a general rule, a flora is rich in proportion to its distance from the poles and its approach to the equator, it is also admitted that egypt offers an exception to this rule. at the most, she has not more than a thousand species, while, with equal area, england, for instance, possesses more than fifteen hundred; and of this thousand, the greater number are not indigenous. many of them have been brought from central africa by the river: birds and winds have continued the work, and man himself has contributed his part in making it more complete. from asia he has at different times brought wheat barley the olive, the apple, the white or pink almond, and some twenty other species now acclimatized on the banks of the nile. marsh plants predominate in the delta; but the papyrus, and the three varieties of blue, white, and pink lotus which once flourished there, being no longer cultivated, have now almost entirely disappeared, and reverted to their original habitats. [illustration: .jpg entrance of the mudÎriyeh of asyÛt.] the sycamore and the date-palm, both importations from central africa, have better adapted themselves to their exile, and are now fully naturalized on egyptian soil. [illustration: .jpg forest of date palms] the sycamore grows in sand on the edge of the desert as vigorously as in the midst of a well-watered country. its roots go deep in search of water, which infiltrates as far as the gorges of the hills, and they absorb it freely, even where drought seems to reign supreme. the heavy, squat, gnarled trunk occasionally attains to colossal dimensions, without ever growing very high. its rounded masses of compact foliage are so wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the impression of several grouped together; and its shade is dense, and impenetrable to the sun. a striking contrast to the sycamore is presented by the date-palm. its round and slender stem rises uninterruptedly to a height of thirteen to sixteen yards; its head is crowned with a cluster of flexible leaves arranged in two or three tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit, that they fail to keep off the light, and cast but a slight and unrefreshing shadow. few trees have so elegant an appearance, yet few are so monotonously elegant. there are palm trees to be seen on every hand; isolated, clustered by twos and threes at the mouths of ravines and about the villages, planted in regular file along the banks of the river like rows of columns, symmetrically arranged in plantations,--these are the invariable background against which other trees are grouped, diversifying the landscape. the feathery tamarisk[*] and the nabk, the moringa, the carob, or locust tree several varieties of acacia and mimosa-the sont, the mimosa habbas, the white acacia, the acacia parnesxana--and the pomegranate tree, increase in number with the distance from the mediterranean. * the egyptian name for the tamarisk, _asari, asri_, is identical with that given to it in semitic languages, both ancient and modern. this would suggest the question whether the tamarisk did not originally come from asia. in that case it must have been brought to egypt from remote antiquity, for it figures in the pyramid texts. bricks of nile mud, and memphite and theban tombs have yielded us leaves, twigs, and even whole branches of the tamarisk. [illustration: .jpg acacias at the entrance to a garden outside ekhmÎm. ] from a drawing by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in . the dry air of the valley is marvellously suited to them, but makes the tissue of their foliage hard and fibrous, imparting an aerial aspect, and such faded tints as are unknown to their growth in other climates. the greater number of these trees do not reproduce themselves spontaneously, and tend to disappear when neglected. the acacia seyal, formerly abundant by the banks of the river, is now almost entirely confined to certain valleys of the theban desert, along with a variety of the kernelled dôm-palm, of which a poetical description has come down to us from the ancient egyptians. the common dôm-palm bifurcates at eight or ten yards from the ground; these branches are subdivided, and terminate in bunches of twenty to thirty palmate and fibrous leaves, six to eight feet long. at the beginning of this century the tree was common in upper egypt, but it is now becoming scarce, and we are within measurable distance of the time when its presence will be an exception north of the first cataract. willows are decreasing in number, and the persea, one of the sacred trees of ancient egypt, is now only to be found in gardens. none of the remaining tree species are common enough to grow in large clusters; and egypt, reduced to her lofty groves of date-palms, presents the singular spectacle of a country where there is no lack of trees, but an almost entire absence of shade. [illustration: .jpg she-ass and her foal.] if egypt is a land of imported flora, it is also a land of imported fauna, and all its animal species have been brought from neighbouring countries. some of these--as, for example, the horse and the camel--were only introduced at a comparatively recent period, two thousand to eighteen hundred years before our era; the camel still later. the animals--such as the long and short-horned oxen, together with varieties of goats and dogs--are, like the plants, generally of african origin, and the ass of egypt preserves an original purity of form and a vigour to which the european donkey has long been a stranger. the pig and the wild boar, the long-eared hare, the hedgehog, the ichneumon, the moufflon, or maned sheep, innumerable gazelles, including the egyptian gazelles, and antelopes with lyre-shaped horns, are as much west asian as african, like the carnivors of all sizes, whose prey they are--the wild cat, the wolf, the jackal, the striped and spotted hyenas, the leopard, the panther, the hunting leopard, and the lion. [illustration: .jpg the urÆus of egypt. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from pl. iii. of the reptiles- supplement to the _description de Ægypte_. on the other hand, most of the serpents, large and small, are indigenous. some are harmless, like the colubers; others are venomous, such as the soy tale, the cerastes, the haje viper, and the asp. the asp was worshipped by the egyptians under the name of uræus. it occasionally attains to a length of six and a half feet, and when approached will erect its head and inflate its throat in readiness for darting forward. the bite is fatal, like that of the cerastes; birds are literally struck down by the strength of the poison, while the great mammals, and man himself, almost invariably succumb to it after a longer or shorter death-struggle. the uræus is rarely found except in the desert or in the fields; the scorpion crawls everywhere, in desert and city alike, and if its sting is not always followed by death, it invariably causes terrible pain. probably there were once several kinds of gigantic serpent in egypt, analogous to the pythons of equatorial africa. they are still to be seen in representations of funerary scenes, but not elsewhere; for, like the elephant, the giraffe, and other animals which now only thrive far south, they had disappeared at the beginning of historic times. the hippopotamus long maintained its ground before returning to those equatorial regions whence it had been brought by the nile. common under the first dynasties, but afterwards withdrawing to the marshes of the delta, it there continued to flourish up to the thirteenth century of our era. the crocodile, which came with it, has, like it also, been compelled to beat a retreat. lord of the river throughout all ancient times, worshipped and protected in some provinces, execrated and proscribed in others, it might still be seen in the neighbourhood of cairo towards the beginning of our century. in , it no longer passed beyond the neighbourhood of gebel et-têr, nor beyond that of manfalût in thirty years later, mariette asserted that it was steadily retreating before the guns of tourists, and the disturbance which the regular passing of steamboats produced in the deep waters. to-day, no one knows of a single crocodile existing below aswan, but it continues to infest nubia, and the rocks of the first cataract: one of them is occasionally carried down by the current into egypt where it is speedily despatched by the fellâhin, or by some traveller in quest of adventure. the fertility of the soil, and the vastness of the lakes and marshes, attract many migratory birds; passerinæ and palmipedes flock thither from all parts of the mediterranean. our european swallows, our quails, our geese and wild ducks, our herons--to mention only the most familiar--come here to winter, sheltered from cold and inclement weather. [illustration: .jpg the ibis of egypt.] even the non-migratory birds are really, for the most part, strangers acclimatized by long sojourn. some of them--the turtledove, the magpie, the kingfisher, the partridge, and the sparrow-may be classed with our european species, while others betray their equatorial origin in the brightness of their colours. white and black ibises, red flamingoes, pelicans, and cormorants enliven the waters of the river, and animate the reedy swamps of the delta in infinite variety. they are to be seen ranged in long files upon the sand-banks, fishing and basking in the sun; suddenly the flock is seized with panic, rises heavily, and settles away further off. in hollows of the hills, eagle and falcon, the merlin, the bald-headed vulture, the kestrel, the golden sparrow-hawk, find inaccessible retreats, whence they descend upon the plains like so many pillaging and well-armed barons. a thousand little chattering birds come at eventide to perch in flocks upon the frail boughs of tamarisk and acacia. [illustration: .jpg the mormyrus oxyrhynchus.] many sea-fish make their way upstream to swim in fresh waters-shad, mullet, perch, and labrus--and carry their excursions far into the saïd. those species which are not mediterranean came originally, still come annually, from the heart of ethiopia with the of the nile, including two kinds of alestes, the elled turtle, the bagrus docmac, and the mormyrus. some attain to a gigantic size, the bagrus bayad and the turtle to about one yard, the latus to three and a half yards in length, while others, such as the sihlrus (catfish), are noted for their electric properties. nature seems to have made the fahâka (the globe-fish) in a fit of playfulness. it is a long fish from beyond the cataracts, and it is carried by the nile the more easily on account of the faculty it has of filling itself with air, and inflating its body at will. [illustration: .jpg ahaka] when swelled out immoderately, the fahâka overbalances, and drifts along upside down, its belly to the wind, covered with spikes so that it looks like a hedgehog. during the inundation, it floats with the current from one canal to another, and is cast by the retreating waters upon the muddy fields, where it becomes the prey of birds or of jackals, or serves as a plaything for children. [illustration: .jpg two fishermen carrying a latus. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a medûm painting. pétrie, _medûm_, pl. xii. everything is dependent upon the river:--the soil, the produce of the soil, the species of animals it bears, the birds which it feeds: and hence it was the egyptians placed the river among their gods. they personified it as a man with regular features, and a vigorous and portly body, such as befits the rich of high lineage. his breasts, fully developed like those of a woman, though less firm, hang heavily upon a wide bosom where the fat lies in folds. a narrow girdle, whose ends fall free about the thighs, supports his spacious abdomen, and his attire is completed by sandals, and a close-fitting head-dress, generally surmounted with a crown of water-plants. sometimes water springs from his breast; sometimes he presents a frog, or libation vases; or holds a bundle of the cruces ansato, as symbols of life; or bears a flat tray, full of offerings--bunches of flowers, ears of corn, heaps of fish, and geese tied together by the feet. the inscriptions call him, "hâpi, father of the gods, lord of sustenance, who maketh food to be, and covereth the two lands of egypt with his products; who giveth life, banisheth want, and filleth the granaries to overflowing." he is evolved into two personages, one being sometimes coloured red, and the other blue. the former, who wears a cluster of lotus-flowers upon his head, presides over the egypt of the south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus for his head-dress, and watches over the delta.[**] [**] wilkinson was the first who suggested that this god, when painted red was the red (that is high) nile and when painted blue, was to be identified with the low nile. this opinion has since been generally adopted; but to me it does not appear so incontrovertible as it has been considered. here, as in other cases, the difference in colour is only a means of making the distinction between two personages obvious to sight. two goddesses, corresponding to the two hâpis--mirit qimâit for upper, and mirit mîhit for lower egypt--personified the banks of the river. they are often represented as standing with outstretched arms, as though begging for the water which should make them fertile. the nile-god had his chapel in every province, and priests whose right it was to bury all bodies of men or beasts cast up by the river; for the god had claimed them, and to his servants they belonged. [illustration: .jpg the nile god. ] the nile god: drawn by faucher-gudin, after a statue in the british museum. the dedication of this statue took place about b.c. the giver was sheshonqu, high-priest of amon in thebes, afterwards king of egypt under the name of sheshhonqû ii., and he is represented as standing behind the leg of the god. [illustration: .jpg the shrine of the nile at biggeh. ] reproduced from a bas-relief in the small temple of philae, built by rajan and his successors. the window or door of this temple opened upon gen, and by comparing the drawing of the egyptian artist with the view i the end of the chamber, it is easy to recognize the original of this cliff bouette in the piled-up rocks of the island. by a mistake of the modern copyist's, his drawing faces the wrong way. several towns were dedicated to him: hâthâpi, nûit-hâpi, nilo-polis. it was told in the thebaïd how the god dwelt within a grotto, or shrine (tophit), in the island of biggeh, whence he issued at the inundation. this tradition dates from a time when the cataract was believed to be at the end of the world, and to bring down the heavenly river upon earth. two yawning gulfs (_qorîti_), at the foot of the two granite cliffs (_monîti_) between which it ran, gave access to this mysterious retreat. a bas-relief from philae represents blocks of stone piled one above another, the vulture of the south and the hawk of the north, each perched on a summit, wearing a panther skin, with both arms upheld in adoration. the statue is mutilated: the end of the nose, the beard, and part of the tray have disappeared, but are restored in the illustration. the two little birds hanging alongside the geese, together with a bunch of ears of corn, are fat quails, and the circular chamber wherein hâpi crouches concealed, clasping a libation vase in either hand. a single coil of a serpent outlines the contour of this chamber, and leaves a narrow passage between its overlapping head and tail through which the rising waters may overflow at the time appointed, bringing to egypt "all things good, and sweet, and pure," whereby gods and men are fed. towards the summer solstice, at the very moment when the sacred water from the gulfs of syene reached silsileh, the priests of the place, sometimes the reigning sovereign, or one of his sons, sacrificed a bull and geese, and then cast into the waters a sealed roll of papyrus. this was a written order to do all that might insure to egypt the benefits of a normal inundation. when pharaoh himself deigned to officiate, the memory of the event was preserved by a stela engraved upon the rocks. even in his absence, the festivals of the nile were among the most solemn and joyous of the land. according to a tradition transmitted from age to age, the prosperity or adversity of the year was dependent upon the splendour and fervour with which they were celebrated. had the faithful shown the slightest lukewarmness, the nile might have refused to obey the command and failed to spread freely over the surface of the country. peasants from a distance, each bringing his own provisions, ate their meals together for days, and lived in a state of brutal intoxication as long as this kind of fair lasted. on the great day itself, the priests came forth in procession from the sanctuary, bearing the statue of the god along the banks, to the sound of instruments and the chanting of hymns. [illustration: .jpg nile gods from the temple of seti i. at abydos bringing food to every nome of egypt. ] from a drawing by faucher-gudin, after a photograph by béato. "i.--hail to thee, hâpi!--who appearest in the land and comest--to give life to egypt;--thou who dost hide thy coming in darkness--in this very day whereon thy coming is sung,--wave, which spreadest over the orchards created by ra--to give life to all them that are athirst--who refusest to give drink unto the desert--of the overflow of the waters of heaven; as soon as thou descendest,--sibû, the earth-god, is enamoured of bread,--napri, the god of grain, presents his offering,--phtah maketh every workshop to prosper. "ii.--lord of the fish! as soon as he passeth the cataract--the birds no longer descend upon the fields;--creator of corn, maker of barley,--he prolongeth the existence of temples.--do his fingers cease from their labours, or doth he suffer?--then are all the millions of beings in misery;--doth he wane in heaven? then the gods--themselves, and all men perish. "iii.--the cattle are driven mad, and all the world--both great and small, are in torment!--but if, on the contrary, the prayers of men are heard at his rising--and (for them) he maketh himself khnûmû,--when he ariseth, then the earth shouts for joy,--then are all bellies joyful,--each back is shaken with laughter,--and every tooth grindeth. "iv.--bringing food, rich in sustenance,--creator of all good things,--lord of all seeds of life, pleasant unto his elect,--if his friendship is secured--he produceth fodder for the cattle,--and he provideth for the sacrifices of all the gods,--finer than any other is the incense which cometh from him;--he taketh possession of the two lands--and the granaries are filled, the storehouses are prosperous,--and the goods of the poor are multiplied. "v.--he is at the service of all prayers to answer them,--withholding nothing. to make boats to be that is his strength.--stones are not sculptured for him--nor statues whereon the double crown is placed;--he is unseen;--no tribute is paid unto him and no offerings are brought unto him,--he is not charmed by words of mystery;--the place of his dwelling is unknown, nor can his shrine be found by virtue of magic writings. "vi.--there is no house large enough for thee,--nor any who may penetrate within thy heart!--nevertheless, the generations of thy children rejoice in thee--for thou dost rule as a king--whose decrees are established for the whole earth,--who is manifest in presence of the people of the south and of the north,--by whom the tears are washed from every eye,--and who is lavish of his bounties. "vii.--where sorrow was, there doth break forth joy--and every heart rejoiceth. sovkû, the crocodile, the child of nit, leaps for gladness;[*]--for the nine gods who accompany thee have ordered all things,--the overflow giveth drink unto the fields--and maketh all men valiant; one man taketh to drink of the labour of another,--without charge being brought against him.[**] * the goddess nît, the heifer born from the midst of the primordial waters, had two crocodiles as her children, which are sometimes represented on the monuments as hanging from her bosom. both the part played by these animals, and the reason for connecting them with the goddess, are still imperfectly understood. ** this is an allusion to the quarrels and lawsuits resulting from the distribution of the water in years when the nile was poor or bad. if the inundation is abundant, disputes are at an end. "ix.--if thou dost enter in the midst of songs to go forth in the midst of gladness,--if they dance with joy when thou comest forth out of the unknown,--it is that thy heaviness is death and corruption.--and when thou art implored to give the water of the year,--the people of the thebai'd and of the north are seen side by side,--each man with the tools of his trade,--none tarrieth behind his neighbour;--of all those who clothed themselves, no man clotheth himself (with festive garments)--the children of thot, the god of riches, no longer adorn themselves with jewels,--nor the nine gods, but they are in the night!--as soon as thou hast answered by the rising,--each one anointeth himself with perfumes. "x.--establisher of true riches, desire of men,--here are seductive words in order that thou mayest reply;--if thou dost answer mankind by waves of the heavenly ocean,--napri, the grain-god, presents his offering,--all the gods adore (thee),--the birds no longer descend upon the hills;--though that which thy hand formeth were of gold--or in the shape of a brick of silver,--it is not lapis-lazuli that we eat,--but wheat is of more worth than precious stones. "xi.--they have begun to sing unto thee upon the harp,--they sing unto thee keeping time with their hands,--and the generations of thy children rejoice in thee, and they have filled thee with salutations of praise;--for it is the god of riches who adorneth the earth,--who maketh barks to prosper in the sight of man--who rejoiceth the heart of women with child--who loveth the increase of the flocks. "xii.--when thou art risen in the city of the prince,--then is the rich man filled--the small man (the poor) disdaineth the lotus,--all is solid and of good quality,--all herbage is for his children.--doth he forget to give food?--prosperity forsaketh the dwellings,--and earth falleth into a wasting sickness." [illustration: .jpg libyan mountains] the word nile is of uncertain origin. we have it from the greeks, and they took it from a people foreign to egypt, either from the phoenicians, the khîti, the libyans, or from people of asia minor. when the egyptians themselves did not care to treat their river as the god hâpi, they called it the sea, or the great river. they had twenty terms or more by which to designate the different phases which it assumed according to the seasons, but they would not have understood what was meant had one spoken to them of the nile. the name egypt also is part of the hellenic tradition; perhaps it was taken from the temple-name of memphis, hâikûphtah, which barbarian coast tribes of the mediterranean must long have had ringing in their ears as that of the most important and wealthiest town to be found upon the shores of their sea. the egyptians called themselves bomitû, botû, and their country qîmit, the black land. whence came they? how far off in time are we to carry back the date of their arrival? the oldest monuments hitherto known scarcely transport us further than six thousand years, yet they are of an art so fine, so well determined in its main outlines, and reveal so ingeniously combined a system of administration, government, and religion, that we infer a long past of accumulated centuries behind them. it must always be difficult to estimate exactly the length of time needful for a race as gifted as were the ancient egyptians to rise from barbarism into a high degree of culture. nevertheless, i do not think that we shall be misled in granting them forty or fifty centuries wherein to bring so complicated an achievement to a successful issue, and in placing their first appearance at eight or ten thousand years before our era. their earliest horizon was a very limited one. their gaze might wander westward over the ravine-furrowed plains of the libyan desert without reaching that fabled land of manu where the sun set every evening; but looking eastward from the valley, they could see the peak of bâkhû, which marked the limit of regions accessible to man. beyond these regions lay the beginnings of to-nûtri, the land of the gods, and the breezes passing over it were laden with its perfumes, and sometimes wafted them to mortals lost in the desert.[*] * the perfumes and the odoriferous woods of the divine land were celebrated in egypt. a traveller or hunter, crossing the desert, "could not but be vividly impressed by suddenly becoming aware, in the very midst of the desert, of the penetrating scent of the _robul (puliciaria undulata_, schwbine.), which once followed us throughout a day and two nights, in some places without our being able to distinguish whence it came; as, for instance, when we were crossing tracts of country without any traces of vegetation whatever." (golenischeff). northward, the world came to an end towards the lagoons of the delta, whose inaccessible islands were believed to be the sojourning-place of souls after death. as regards the south, precise knowledge of it scarcely went beyond the defiles of gebel sil-sileh, where the last remains of the granite threshold had perhaps not altogether disappeared. the district beyond gebel silsileh, the province of konûsit, was still a foreign and almost mythic country, directly connected with heaven by means of the cataract. long after the egyptians had broken through this restricted circle, the names of those places which had as it were marked out their frontiers, continued to be associated in their minds with the idea of the four cardinal points. bâkhû and manu were still the most frequent expressions for the extreme east and west. nekhabit and bûto, the most populous towns in the neighbourhoods of gebel silsileh and the ponds of the delta, were set over against each other to designate south and north. it was within these narrow limits that egyptian civilization struck root and ripened, as in a closed vessel. what were the people by whom it was developed, the country whence they came, the races to which they belonged, is to-day unknown. the majority would place their cradle-land in asia,[*] but cannot agree in determining the route which was followed in the emigration to africa. * the greater number of contemporary egyptologists, brugsch, ebers,--lauth, lieblein, have rallied to this opinion, in the train of e. de rougé; but the most extreme position has been taken up by hommel, the assyriologist, who is inclined to derive egyptian civilization entirely from the babylonian. after having summarily announced this thesis in his _geschichte babyloniens und assyriens_, p. , et seq., he has set it forth at length in a special treatise, _der babylonische ursprung der àgyptischen kultur_, , wherein he endeavours to prove that the heliopolitan myths, and hence the whole egyptian religion, are derived from the cults of eridû, and would make the name of the egyptian city onû, or anû, identical with that of _nûn-h, nûn_, which is borne by the chaldean. some think that the people took the shortest road across the isthmus of suez, others give them longer peregrinations and a more complicated itinerary. they would have them cross the straits of bab el-mandeb, and then the abyssinian mountains, and, spreading northward and keeping along the nile, finally settle in the egypt of to-day. a more minute examination compels us to recognize that the hypothesis of an asiatic origin, however attractive it may seem, is somewhat difficult to maintain. the bulk of the egyptian population presents the characteristics of those white races which have been found established from all antiquity on the mediterranean slope of the libyan continent; this population is of african origin, and came to egypt from the west or south-west. in the valley, perhaps, it may have met with a black race which it drove back or destroyed; and there, perhaps, too, it afterwards received an accretion of asiatic elements, introduced by way of the isthmus and the marshes of the delta. but whatever may be the origin of the ancestors of the egyptians, they were scarcely settled upon the banks of the nile before the country conquered, and assimilated them to itself, as it has never ceased to do in the case of strangers who have occupied it. at the time when their history begins for us, all the inhabitants had long formed but one people, with but one language. this language seems to be connected with the semitic tongues by many of its roots. it forms its personal pronouns, whether isolated or suffixed, in a similar way. one of the tenses of the conjugation, and that the simplest and most archaic, is formed with identical affixes. without insisting upon resemblances which are open to doubt, it may be almost affirmed that most of the grammatical processes used in semitic languages are to be found in a rudimentary condition in egyptian. one would say that the language of the people of egypt and the languages of the semitic races, having once belonged to the same group, had separated very early, at a time when the vocabulary and the grammatical system of the group had not as yet taken definite shape. subject to different influences, the two families would treat in diverse fashion the elements common to both. the semitic dialects continued to develop for centuries, while the egyptian language, although earlier cultivated, stopped short in its growth. "if it is obvious that there was an original connexion between the language of egypt and that of asia, this connexion is nevertheless sufficiently remote to leave to the egyptian race a distinct physiognomy." we recognize it in sculptured and painted portraits, as well as in thousands of mummied bodies out of subterranean tombs. the highest type of egyptian was tall and slender, with a proud and imperious air in the carriage of his head and in his whole bearing. he had wide and full shoulders, well-marked and vigorous pectoral muscles, muscular arms, a long, fine hand, slightly developed hips, and sinewy legs. the detail of the knee-joint and the muscles of the calf are strongly marked beneath the skin; the long, thin, and low-arched feet are flattened out at the extremities owing to the custom of going barefoot. the head is rather short, the face oval, the forehead somewhat retreating. the eyes are wide and fully opened, the cheekbones not too marked, the nose fairly prominent, and either straight or aquiline. the mouth is long, the lips full, and lightly ridged along their outline; the teeth small, even, well-set, and remarkably sound; the ears are set high on the head. at birth the skin is white, but darkens in proportion to its exposure to the sun. men are generally painted red in the pictures, though, as a matter of fact, there must already have been all the shades which we see among the present population^ from a most delicate, rose-tinted complexion to that of a smoke-coloured bronze. women, who were less exposed to the sun, are generally painted yellow, the tint paler in proportion as they rise in the social scale. the hair was inclined to be wavy, and even to curl into little ringlets, but without ever turning into the wool of the negro. [illustration: .jpg the noble type of egyptian. ] statue of rânofir in the gîzeh museum (vth dynasty), after a photograph by Émil brugsch-bey. [illustration: .jpg head of a tileban mummy.] the beard was scanty, thick only upon the chin. such was the highest type; the commoner was squat, dumpy, and heavy. chest and shoulders seem to be enlarged at the expense of the pelvis and the hips, to such an extent as to make the want of proportion between the upper and lower parts of the body startling and ungraceful. the skull is long, somewhat retreating, and slightly flattened on the top; the features are coarse, and as though carved in flesh by great strokes of the blocking-out chisel. small frseuated eyes, a short nose, flanked by widely distended nostrils, round cheeks, a square chin, thick, but not curling lips--this unattractive and ludicrous physiognomy, sometimes animated by an expression of cunning which recalls the shrewd face of an old french peasant, is often lighted up by gleams of gentleness and of melancholy good-nature. the external characteristics of these two principal types in the ancient monuments, in all varieties of modifications, may still be seen among the living. the profile copied from a theban mummy taken at hazard from a necropolis of the xviiith dynasty, and compared with the likeness of a modern luxor peasant, would almost pass for a family portrait. wandering bisharîn have inherited the type of face of a great noble, the contemporary of kheops; and any peasant woman of the delta may bear upon her shoulders che head of a twelfth-dynasty king. a citizen of cairo, gazing with wonder at the statues of khafra or of seti i. in the gîzeh museum, is himself, feature for feature, the very image of those ancient pharaohs, though removed from them by fifty centuries. [illustration: .jpg a fellah woman with the features of an ancient king. ] the face of the woman here given was taken separately, and was subsequently attached to the figure of an egyptian woman whom naville had photographed sitting beside a colossal head. the nose of the statue has been restored. until quite recently nothing, or all but nothing, had been discovered which could be attributed to the primitive races of egypt: even the flint weapons and implements which had been found in various places could not be ascribed to them with any degree of certainty, for the egyptians continued to use stone long after metal was known to them. they made stone arrowheads, hammers, and knives, not only in the time of the pharaohs, but under the romans, and during the whole period of the middle ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died out.[**] ** an entire collection of flint tools--axes, adzes, knives, and sickles--mostly with wooden handles, were found by prof. pétrie in the ruins of kahun, at the entrance to the fayûm: these go back to the time of the twelfth dynasty, more than three thousand years before our era. mariette had previously pointed out to the learned world the fact that a coptic _reis_, salîb of abydos, in charge of the excavations, shaved his head with a flint knife, according to the custom of his youth ( - ). i knew the man, who died at over eighty years of age in ; he was still faithful to his flint implement, while his sons and the whole population of el kharbeh were using nothing but steel razors. as his scalp was scraped nearly raw by the operation, he used to cover his head with fresh leaves to cool the inflamed skin. these objects, and the workshops where they were made, might therefore be less ancient than the greater part of the inscribed monuments. but if so far we had found no examples of any work belonging to the first ages, we met in historic times with certain customs which were out of harmony with the general civilization of the period. a comparison of these customs with analogous practices of barbarous nations threw light upon the former, completed their meaning, and showed us at the same time the successive stages through which the egyptian people had to pass before reaching their highest civilization. we knew, for example, that even as late as the cæsars, girls belonging to noble families at thebes were consecrated to the service of amon, and were thus licensed to a life of immorality, which, however, did not prevent them from making rich marriages when age obliged them to retire from office. theban women were not the only people in the world to whom such licence was granted or imposed upon them by law; wherever in a civilized country we see a similar practice, we may recognize in it an ancient custom which in the course of centuries has degenerated into a religious observance. the institution of the women of amon is a legacy from a time when the practice of polyandry obtained, and marriage did not yet exist. age and maternity relieved them from this obligation, and preserved them from those incestuous connections of which we find examples in other races. a union of father and daughter, however, was perhaps not wholly forbidden,[*] and that of brother and sister seems to have been regarded as perfectly right and natural; the words brother and sister possessing in egyptian love-songs the same significance as lover and mistress with us. * e. de rouge held that rameses ii. married at least two of his daughters, bint anati and honittui; wiedemann admits that psammetichus i. had in the same way taken to wife nitocris, who had been born to him by the theban princess shapenuapit. the achæmenidan kings did the same: artaxerxes married two of his own daughters. paternity was necessarily doubtful in a community of this kind, and hence the tie between fathers and children was slight; there being no family, in the sense in which we understand the word, except as it centred around the mother. maternal descent was, therefore, the only one openly acknowledged, and the affiliation of the child was indicated by the name of the mother alone. when the woman ceased to belong to all, and confined herself to one husband, the man reserved to himself the privilege of taking as many wives as he wished, or as he was able to keep, beginning with his own sisters. all wives did not enjoy identical rights: those born of the same parents as the man, or those of equal rank with himself, preserved their independence. if the law pronounced him the master, _nibû_, to whom they owed obedience and fidelity, they were mistresses of the house, _nîbît pirû_, as well as wives, _himitû_, and the two words of the title express their condition. each of them occupied, in fact, her own house, _pirû_, which she had from her parents or her husband, and of which she was absolute mistress, _nîbît_. she lived in it and performed in it without constraint all a woman's duties; feeding the fire, grinding the corn, occupying herself in cooking and weaving, making clothing and perfumes, nursing and teaching her children. when her husband visited her, he was a guest whom she received on an equal footing. it appears that at the outset these various wives were placed under the authority of an older woman, whom they looked on as their mother, and who defended their rights and interests against the master; but this custom gradually disappeared, and in historic times we read of it as existing only in the families of the gods. the female singers consecrated to amon and other deities, owed obedience to several superiors, of whom the principal (generally the widow of a king or high priest) was called _chief-superior of the ladies of the harem of amon_. besides these wives, there were concubines, slaves purchased or born in the house, prisoners of war, egyptians of inferior class, who were the chattels of the man and of whom he could dispose as he wished. all the children of one father were legitimate, whether their mother were a wife or merely a concubine, but they did not all enjoy the same advantages; those among them who were born of a brother or sister united in legitimate marriage, took precedence of those whose mother was a wife of inferior rank or a slave. in the family thus constituted, the woman, to all appearances, played the principal part. children recognized the parental relationship in the mother alone. the husband appears to have entered the house of his wives, rather than the wives to have entered his, and this appearance of inferiority was so marked that the greeks were deceived by it. they affirmed that the woman was supreme in egypt; the man at the time of marriage promised obedience to her and entered into a contract not to raise any objection to her commands. we had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first egyptians were semi-savages, like those still living in africa and america, having an analogous organization, and similar weapons and tools. a few lived in the desert, in the oasis of libya, or in the deep valleys of the red land--doshirit, to doshiru--between the nile and the sea; the poverty of the country fostering their native savagery. others, settled on the black land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first historical dynasty. [illustration: .jpg negro prisoners wearing the panther's skist as a loin-cloth.] their houses were like those of the fellahs of to-day, low huts of wattle daubed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun. they contained one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only aperture. those of the richer class only were large enough to make it needful to support the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees, which did duty for columns. earthen pots, turned by hand, flint knives and other implements, mats of reeds or plaited straw, two flat stones for grinding corn, a few pieces of wooden furniture, stools, and head-rests for use at night, comprised all the contents. their ordinary pottery is heavy and almost devoid of ornament, but some of the finer kinds have been moulded and baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left a quaint trellis-like impression on the surface of the clay. in many cases the vases are bicolour, the body being of a fine smooth red, polished with a stone, while the neck and base are of an intense black, the surface of which is even more shining than that of the red part. sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in white of flowers, palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with undulated or broken lines, or geometrical figures of a very simple nature. more often the ground is coloured a fine yellow, and the decoration has been traced in red lines. jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large cups, supports for amphorae, trays raised on a foot--in short, every kind of form is found in use at that remote period. the men went about nearly naked, except the nobles, who wore a panther's skin, sometimes thrown over the shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering the lower part of the body, the animal's tail touching the heels behind, as we see later in several representations of the negroes of the upper nile. they smeared their limbs with grease or oil, and they tattooed their faces and bodies, at least in part; but in later times this practice was retained by the lower classes only. on the other hand, the custom of painting the face was never given up. to complete their toilet, it was necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of kohl (antimony powder). a similar black line surrounded and prolonged the oval of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green coloured the under lid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks and lips. the hair, plaited, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease, formed an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in that of the woman. [illustration: .jpg notable wearing the large cloak over the left shoulder. ; and priest wearing the panther's skin across the breast. ] wooden statue in the gîzeh museum (ivth dynasty), drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by béchard. statue of the second prophet of amon, aa-nen, in the turin museum (xviiith dynasty). should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much skill, was substituted for it; ostrich feathers waved on the heads of warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear, distinguished the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates. when the art of weaving became common, a belt and loin-cloth of white linen replaced the leathern garment. fastened round the waist, but so low as to leave the navel uncovered, the loin-cloth frequently reached to the knee; the hinder part was frequently drawn between the legs and attached in front to the belt, thus forming a kind of drawers. tails of animals and wild beast's skin were henceforth only the insignia of authority with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies. the skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body; sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. the head of the animal, skilfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer; the paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs; the spots of the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed stars. on going out-of-doors, a large wrap was thrown over all; this covering was either smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the nubians and abyssinians of the present day envelop themselves. it could be draped in various ways; transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed shawl of the chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a mantle.[**] ** this costume, to which egyptologists have not given sufficient attention, is frequently represented on the monuments. besides the two statues reproduced above, i may cite those of uahibri and of thoth-nofir in the louvre, and the lady nofrit in the gîzeh museum. thothotpû in his tomb wears this mantle. khnumhotpû and several of his workmen are represented in it at beni-hasan, as also one of the princes of elephantine in the recently discovered tombs, besides many egyptians of all classes in the tombs of thebes (a good example is in the tomb of harmhabi). the reason why it does not figure more often is, in the first place, that the egyptian artists experienced actual difficulty in representing the folds of its drapery, although these were simple compared with the complicated arrangement of the roman toga; finally, the wall-paintings mostly portray either interior scenes, or agricultural labour, or the work of various trades, or episodes of war, or religious ceremonies, in all of which the mantle plays no part. every egyptian peasant, however, possessed his own, and it was in constant use in his daily life. in fact, it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun or from the rain, from the heat or from the cold. they never sought to transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later times with the roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around the body with studied grace. the egyptian mantle when not required was thrown aside and folded up. the material being fine and soft it occupied but a small space and was reduced to a long thin roll; the ends being then fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the body like a cavalry cloak.[*] * many draughtsmen, ignorant of what they had to represent, have made incorrect copies of the manner in which this cloak was worn; but examples of it are numerous, although until now attention has not been called to them. the following are a few instances taken at random of the way in which it was used: pepi i., fighting against the nomads of sinai, has the cloak, but with the two ends passed through the belt of his loin-cloth; at zawyet el-maiyitîn, khunas, killing birds with the boomerang from his boat, wears it, but simply thrown over the left shoulder, with the two extremities hanging free. khnumhotpû at beni-hasan, the khrihdbi, the overseers, or the peasants, all have it rolled and slung round them; the prince of el-bersheh wears it like a mantle in folds over the two shoulders. if it is objected that the material could not be reduced to such small dimensions as those represented in these drawings of what i believe to be the egyptian cloak, i way cite our cavalry capes, when rolled and slung, as an instance of what good packing will do in reducing volume. [illustration: .jpg a dignitary wrapped in his large cloak. ] statue of khiti in the gîzeh museum (xiith and xiiith dynasties), drawn by faucher-gudin. travellers, shepherds, all those whose occupations called them to the fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks; once arrived at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their provisions until they required it. the women were at first contented with a loin-cloth like that of the men; it was enlarged and lengthened till it reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in place. the feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should be a little shorter. [illustration: .jpg costume of egyptian woman, spinning. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the spinning-women at the paris exhibition of . it was restored from the paintings in the tomb of khnumhotpû at beni-hasan. both men and women loved ornaments, and covered their necks, breasts, arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets. the bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother-of-pearl, or even flint, very cleverly perforated. the necklaces were composed of strings of pierced shells,[**] interspersed with seeds and little pebbles, either sparkling or of unusual shapes.[***] subsequently imitations in terra-cotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round, pear-shaped, or cylindrical: the necklaces were terminated and a uniform distance maintained between the rows of beads, by several slips of wood, bone, ivory, porcelain, or terra-cotta, pierced with holes, through which ran the threads. ** the burying-places of abydos, especially the most ancient, have furnished us with millions of shells, pierced and threaded as necklaces; they all belong to the species of cowries used as money in africa at the present day. *** necklaces of seeds have been found in the tombs of abydos, thebes, and gebelên. of these schweinfurth has identified, among others, the _cassia absus_, "a weed of the soudan whose seeds are sold in the drug bazaar at cairo and alexandria under the name of _shishn_, as a remedy, which is in great request among the natives, for ophthalmia." for the necklaces of pebbles, cf. maspeeo, guide du visiteur, pp. , , no. . a considerable number of these pebbles, particularly those of strange shape, or presenting a curious combination of colours, must have been regarded as amulets or fetishes by their egyptian owners; analogous cases, among other peoples, have been pointed out by e. b. tylor, primitive culture, vol. ii. p. . [illustration: .jpg man wearing wig and necklaces. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a portrait of pharaoh seti i. of the xixth dynasty: the lower part of the necklace has been completed. weapons, at least among the nobility, were an indispensable part of costume. most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting: sticks, clubs, lances furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers of flint,[*] sabres and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed or rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades,--inoffensive enough to look at, but, wielded by a vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm, crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision.[**] the plain or triple curved bow was the favourite weapon for attack at a distance,[***] but in addition to this there were the sling, the javelin, and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang, we have no proof however, that the egyptians handled the boomerang[****] with the skill of the australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to bring it back to its point of departure.[v] * in several museums, notably at leyden, we find egyptian axes of stone, particularly of serpentine, both rough and polished. ** in primitive times the bone of an animal served as a club. this is proved by the shape of the object held in the hand in the sign and the hieroglyph which is the determinative in writing for all ideas of violence or brute force, comes down to us from a time when the principal weapon was the club, or a bone serving as a club. *** for the two principal shapes of the bow, see lepsius, der bogen in der hieroglypliik (zeitschrift, , pp. - ). from the earliest times the sign m£ portrays the soldier equipped with the bow and bundle of arrows; the quiver was of asiatic origin, and was not adopted until much later. in the contemporary texts of the first dynasties, the idea of weapons is conveyed by the bow, arrow, and club or axe. **** the boomerang is still used by certain tribes of the nile valley. it is portrayed in the most ancient tombs, and every museum possesses examples, varying in shape. besides the ordinary boomerang, the egyptians used one which ended in a knob, and another of semicircular shape: this latter, reproduced in miniature in cornelian or in red jasper, served as an amulet, and was placed on the mummy to furnish the deceased in the other world with a fighting or hunting weapon. v the australian boomerang is much larger than the egyptian one; it is about a yard in length, two inches in width, and three sixteenths of an inch in thickness. for the manner of handling it, and what can be done with it, see lubbock, prehistoric man, pp. , . [illustration: .jpg the boomerang and fighting bow. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in the tomb of khnumhotpû at beni-hasan. [illustration: .jpg votive axe. ] the blade is of bronze, and is attached to the wooden handle by interlacing thongs of leather (gizeh museum). drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can ascertain; but at a very early date copper and iron were known in egypt.[**] long before historic times, the majority of the weapons in wood were replaced by those of metal,--daggers, sabres, hatchets, which preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments. ** metals were introduced into egypt in very ancient times, since the class of blacksmiths is associated with the worship of horus of edfû, and appears in the account of the mythical wars of that god. the earliest tools we possess, in copper or bronze, date from the ivth dynasty: pieces of iron have been found from time to time in the masonry of the great pyramid. mons montélius has again and again contested the authenticity of these discoveries, and he thinks that iron was not known in egypt till a much later period. those wooden weapons which were retained, were used for hunting, or were only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected. the war-baton became the commander's wand of authority, and at last degenerated into the walking-stick of the rich or noble. [illustration: .jpg king holding the baton. ] bas-relief in the temple of luxor, from a photograph taken by insinger in . the club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain,[*] while the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, diorite, granite, or white stone, the favourite weapons of princes, continued to the last the most revered insignia of royalty.[**] life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure. of the ponds left in the open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less quickly during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity of fish, the possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with man.[***] * the wooden club most commonly represented is the usual insignia of a nobleman. several kinds of clubs, somewhat difficult for us moderns to distinguish, yet bearing different names, formed a part of funereal furniture. ** the crook is the sceptre of a prince, a pharaoh, or a god; the white mace has still the value apparently of a weapon in the hands of the king who brandishes it over a group of prisoners or over an ox which he is sacrificing to a divinity. most museums possess specimens of the stone heads of these maces, but until lately their use was not known. i had several placed in the boulak museum. it already possessed a model of one entirely of wood. *** cf. the description of these pools given by geoffroy- saint-hilaire in speaking of the fahaka. even at the present day the jackals come down from the mountains in the night, and regale themselves with the fish left on the ground by the gradual drying up of these ponds. [illustration: .jpg fishing in the marshes] other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many _vivaria_ in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the egyptians from early times. where the ponds failed, the neighbouring nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. standing in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found covert there. [illustration: .jpg hunting in the marshes: encountering and spearing a hippopotamus. ] tomb of ti. drawn by faucher-gudin, from dûmichen, besultate, vol. ii. pl. x. the fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted, or smoked, and kept for a rainy day. like the river, the desert had its perils and its resources. only too frequently, the lion, the leopard, the panther, and other large felidse were met with there. [illustration: .jpg hunting in the desert: bull, lion, and oryx pierced with arrows. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting by beni-hasan, lepsius, denhm., ii. . drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of ptahhotpû. the dogs on the upper level are of hyenoid type, those on the lower are abyssinian greyhounds. the nobles, like the pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. the common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog and the lithe abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. at times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be taken to the village and healed of its hurt. [illustration: .jpg catching animals with the bola. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of ptahhotpû. above are seen two porcupines, the foremost of which, emerging from his hole, has seized a grasshopper. such animals by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and formed about his dwelling a motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure and mostly for his profit, and becoming in case of necessity a ready stock of provisions.[**] ** in the same way, before the advent of europeans, the half-civilized tribes of north america used to keep about their huts whole flocks of different animals, which were tame, but not domesticated. efforts were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to procure animals without seriously injuring them, caused the egyptians to use the net for birds and the lasso and the _bola_ for quadrupeds,[*]--weapons less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. the _bola_ was made by them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap about five yards in length. the stone once thrown, the cord twisted round the legs, muzzle, or neck of the animal pursued, and by the attachment thus made the pursuer, using all his strength, was enabled to bring the beast down half strangled. the lasso has no stone attached to it, but a noose prepared beforehand, and the skill of the hunter consists in throwing it round the neck of his victim while running. they caught indifferently, without distinction of size or kind, all that chance brought within their reach. the daily chase kept up these half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats, water-bucks, stocks, and ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by hundreds on the monuments of the ancient empire.[**] * hunting with the bola is constantly represented in the paintings both of the memphite and theban periods. wilkinson has confounded it with lasso-hunting, and his mistake has been reproduced by other egyptologists. lasso-hunting is seen in lepsius, denhn., ii. , in dùmichen, _resultate_, vol. i. pl. viii., and particularly in the numerous sacrificial scenes where the king is supposed to be capturing the bull of the north or south, previous to offering it to the god. ** as the tombs of the ancient empire show us numerous flocks of gazelles, antelopes, and storks, feeding under the care of shepherds, fr. lenormant concluded that the egyptians of early times had succeeded in domesticating some species, nowadays rebels to restraint. it is my belief that the animals represented were tamed, but not domesticated, and were the result of great hunting expeditions in the desert. the facts which lenormant brought forward to support his theory may be used against him. for instance, the fawn of the gazelle nourished by its mother does not prove that it was bred in captivity; the gazelle may have been caught before calving, or just after the birth of its young. the fashion of keeping flocks of animals taken from the desert died out between the xiith and xviiith dynasties. at the time of the new empire, they had only one or two solitary animals as pets for women or children, the mummies of which were sometimes buried by the side of their mistresses. experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species from which he could draw profit, and others whose wildness made them impossible to domesticate. the subjection of the most useful kinds had not been finished when the historic period opened. [illustration: .jpg a swineherd and his pigs. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in a theban tomb of the xviiith dynasty. the ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of special herdsmen,[*] and the religious rites preserved the remembrance of the times in which the ox was so little tamed, that in order to capture while grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter, it was necessary to use the lasso.[***] * the hatred of the egyptians for the pig (herodotus, ii. ) is attributed to mythological motives. lippert thinks this antipathy did not exist in egypt in primitive times. at the outset the pig would have been the principal food of the people; then, like the dog in other regions, it must have been replaced at the table by animals of a higher order-- gazelles, sheep, goats, oxen--and would have thus fallen into contempt. to the excellent reasons given by lippert could be added others drawn from the study of the egyptian myths, to prove that the pig has often been highly esteemed. thus, isis is represented, down to late times, under the form of a sow, and a sow, whether followed or not by her young is one of the amulets placed in the tomb with the deceased, to secure for him the protection of the goddess. *** mariette, abydos (vol. i. pl. b, ). to prevent the animal from evading the lasso and escaping during the sacrifice, its right hind foot was fastened to its left horn. europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use of herbs and plants whose flavour and properties are nauseating to us: these are mostly so many legacies from a remote past; for example, castor-oil, with which the berbers rub their limbs, and with which the fellahîn of the saïd flavour their bread and vegetables, was preferred before all others by the egyptians of the pharaonic age for anointing the body and for culinary use.[*] they had begun by eating indiscriminately every kind of fruit which the country produced. many of these, when their therapeutic virtues had been learned by experience, were gradually banished as articles of food, and their use restricted to medicine; others fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices, or at funeral feasts; several varieties continue to be eaten to the present time--the acid fruits of the nabeca and of the carob tree, the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dam-palm, besides those which are pleasant to our western palates, such as the common fig and the date. the vine flourished, at least in middle and lower egypt; from time immemorial the art of making wine from it was known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half a dozen famous brands, red or white.[**] * i have often been obliged, from politeness, when dining with the native agents appointed by the european powers at port saïd, to eat salads and mayonnaise sauces flavoured with castor-oil; the taste was not so disagreeable as might be at first imagined. ** the four kinds of canonical wine, brought respectively from the north, south, east, and west of the country, formed part of the official repast and of the wine-cellar of the deceased from remote antiquity. vetches, lupins, beans, chick-peas, lentils, onions, fenugreek,[*] the bamiâ,[**] the meloukhia,[***] the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants. * all these species have been found in the tombs and identified by savants in archaeological botany--kunth, unger, schweinfurth (loret, _la flore pharaonique_, pp. , , , , nos. , , , , , ). ** the bamiâ, _hibiscus esculentus_, l., is a plant of the family of the malvaceae, having a fruit of five divisions, covered with prickly hairs, and pontaining round, white, soft seeds, slightly sweet, but astringent in taste, and very mucilaginous. it figures on the monuments of pharaonic times. *** the meloukhia, _corchorus olitorius_, l., is a plant belonging to the tilliacese, which is chopped up and cooked much the same as endive is with us, but which few europeans can eat with pleasure, owing to the mucilage it contains. theophrastus says it was celebrated for its bitterness; it was used as food, however, in the greek town of alexandria. [illustration: .jpg the egyptian lotus. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from the _description de l'egypte_, histoire naturelle, pl. . two of the species of lotus which grew in the nile, the white and the blue, have seed-vessels similar to those of the poppy: the capsules contain small grains of the size of millet-seed. the fruit of the pink lotus "grows on a different stalk from that of the flower, and springs directly from the root; it resembles a honeycomb in form," or, to take a more prosaic simile, the rose of a watering-pot. the upper part has twenty or thirty cavities, "each containing a seed as big as an olive stone, and pleasant to eat either fresh or dried." this is what the ancients called the bean of egypt. "the yearly shoots of the papyrus are also gathered. after pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut off and rejected, the part remaining being about a cubit in length. it is eaten as a delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are fastidious partake of it only after baking." twenty different kinds of grain and fruits, prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded and baked to furnish cakes or bread; these are often mentioned in the texts as cakes of nabeca, date cakes, and cakes of figs. lily loaves, made from the roots and seeds of the lotus, were the delight of the gourmand, and appear on the tables of the kings of the xixth dynasty.[*] * _tiû_, which is the most ancient word for bread, appears in early times to have been used for every kind of paste, whether made with fruits or grain; the more modern word âqû applies specially to bread made from cereals. the lily loaves are mentioned in the papyrus anastasi, no. , p. . . . bread and cakes made of cereals formed the habitual food of the people. durrah is of african origin; it is the "grain of the south" of the inscriptions. on the other hand, it is supposed that wheat and six-rowed barley came from the region of the euphrates. egypt was among the first to procure and cultivate them.[*] the soil there is so kind to man, that in many places no agricultural toil is required. * the position which wheat and barley occupy in the lists of offerings, proves the antiquity of their existence in egypt. mariette found specimens of barley in the tombs of the ancient empire at saqqarah. [illustration: .jpg the egyptian hoe. ] bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. as soon as the water of the nile retires, the ground is sown without previous preparation, and the grain, falling straight into the mud, grows as vigorously as in the best-ploughed furrows. where the earth is hard it is necessary to break it up, but the extreme simplicity of the instruments with which this was done shows what a feeble resistance it offered. for a long time the hoe sufficed. it was composed either of a large stone tied to a wooden handle, or was made of two pieces of wood of unequal length, united at one of their extremities, and held together towards the middle by a slack cord: the plough, when first invented was but a slightly enlarged hoe, drawn by oxen. the cultivation of cereals, once established on the banks of the nile, developed, from earliest times, to such a degree as to supplant all else: hunting, fishing, the rearing of cattle, occupied but a secondary place compared with agriculture, and egypt became, that which she still remains, a vast granary of wheat. the part of the valley first cultivated was from gebel silsileh to the apex of the delta.[*] * this was the tradition of all the ancients. herodotus related that, according to the egyptians, the whole of egypt, with the exception of the theban nome, was a vast swamp previous to the time of menés. aristotle adds that the red sea, the mediterranean, and the area now occupied by the delta, formed one sea. cf. pp. - of this volume, on the formation of the delta. [illustration: .jpg ploughing. ] bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. between the libyan and arabian ranges it presents a slightly convex surface, furrowed lengthways by a depression, in the bottom of which the nile is gathered and enclosed when the inundation is over. in the summer, as soon as the river had risen higher than the top of its banks, the water rushed by the force of gravity towards the lower lands, hollowing in its course long channels, some of which never completely dried up, even when the nile reached its lowest level.[*] cultivation was easy in the neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. the inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive; it flowed rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became weedy and stagnant pools.[**] * the whole description of the damage which can be done by the nile in places where the inundation is not regulated, is borrowed from linant de bellefonds, _mémoire sur les principaux travaux d'utilité publique_, p. . ** this physical configuration of the country explains the existence at a very early date of those gigantic serpents which i have already mentioned. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian saki (well) showing method of procuring water for irrigation.] in any year the portion not watered by the river was invaded by the sand: from the lush vegetation of a hot country, there was but one step to absolute aridity. at the present day an ingeniously established system of irrigation allows the agriculturist to direct and distribute the overflow according to his needs. from gebel ain to the sea, the nile and its principal branches are bordered by long dykes, which closely follow the windings of the river and furnish sufficiently stable embankments. numerous canals lead off to right and left, directed more or less obliquely towards the confines of the valley; they are divided at intervals by fresh dykes, starting at the one side from the river, and ending on the other either at the bahr yusuf or at the rising of the desert. some of these dykes protect one district only, and consist merely of a bank of earth; others command a large extent of territory, and a breach in them would entail the ruin of an entire province. these latter are sometimes like real ramparts, made of crude brick carefully cemented; a few, as at qosheish, have a core of hewn stones, which later generations have covered with masses of brickwork, and strengthened with constantly renewed buttresses of earth. they wind across the plain with many unexpected and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination, however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance or caprice. experience had taught the egyptians the art of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use against the inundation: of these they have followed carefully the sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears singular, it is to be ascribed to the natural configuration of the ground. subsidiary embankments thrown up between the principal ones, and parallel to the nile, separate the higher ground bordering the river from the low lands on the confines of the valley; they divide the larger basins into smaller divisions of varying area, in which the irrigation is regulated by means of special trenches. as long as the nile is falling, the dwellers on its banks leave their canals in free communication with it; but they dam them up towards the end of the winter, just before the return of the inundation, and do not reopen them till early in august, when the new flood is at its height. the waters then flowing in by the trenches are arrested by the nearest transverse dyke and spread over the fields. when they have stood there long enough to saturate the ground, the dyke is pierced, and they pour into the next basin until they are stopped by a second dyke, which in its turn forces them again to spread out on either side. this operation is renewed from dyke to dyke, till the valley soon becomes a series of artificial ponds, ranged one above another, and flowing one into another from grebel silsileh to the apex of the delta. in autumn, the mouth of each ditch is dammed up anew, in order to prevent the mass of water from flowing back into the stream. the transverse dykes, which have been cut in various places, are also repaired, and the basins become completely landlocked, separated by narrow causeways. in some places, the water thus imprisoned is so shallow that it is soon absorbed by the soil; in others, it is so deep, that after it has been kept in for several weeks, it is necessary to let it run off into a neighbouring depression, or straight into the river itself. [illustration: .jpg boatmen fighting on a canal communicating with the nile. ] bas-relief from the tomb of ti; drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by e. brugsch-bey. history has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggle in which the egyptians were engaged with the nile, nor of the time expended in bringing it to a successful issue. legend attributes the idea of the system and its partial working out to the god osiris: then menés, the first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of qosheish, on which depends the prosperity of the delta and middle egypt, and the fabulous mceris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to the fayûm. in reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making of cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled the valley. the kings of the historic period had only to maintain and develop certain points of what had already been done, and upper egypt is to this day chequered by the network of waterways with which its earliest inhabitants covered it. the work must have begun simultaneously at several points, without previous agreement, and, as it were, instinctively. a dyke protecting a village, a canal draining or watering some small province, demanded the efforts of but few individuals; then the dykes would join one another, the canals would be prolonged till they met others, and the work undertaken by chance would be improved, and would spread with the concurrence of an ever-increasing population. what happened at the end of last century, shows us that the system grew and was developed at the expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed. the inhabitants of each district carried out the part of the work most conducive to their own interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping it and discharging it at pleasure, without considering whether they were injuring their neighbours by depriving them of their supply or by flooding them; hence arose perpetual strife and fighting. it became imperative that the rights of the weaker should be respected, and that the system of distribution should be co-ordinated, for the country to accept a beginning at least of social organization analogous to that which it acquired later: the nile thus determined the political as well as the physical constitution of egypt. [illustration: .jpg a great egyptian lord, ti, and his wife. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dûmichen, _resultate_, vol. ii. pl. vit the country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed to be descended from the same seed (_paît_) and to belong to the same family (_pâîtû_): the chiefs of them were called _ropâîtû_, the guardians, or pastors of the family, and in later times their name became a title applicable to the nobility in general. families combined and formed groups of various importance under the authority of a head chief--_ropâîtû-hâ_. they were, in fact, hereditary lords, dispensing justice, levying taxes in kind on their subordinates, reserving to themselves the redistribution of land, leading their men to, battle, and sacrificing to the gods.[*] the territories over which they exercised authority formed small states, whose boundaries even now, in some places, can be pointed out with certainty. the principality of the terebinth[**] occupied the very heart of egypt, where the valley is widest, and the course of the nile most advantageously disposed by nature--a country well suited to be the cradle of an infant civilization. siaût (siût), the capital, is built almost at the foot of the libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which separates the river from the hills. a canal surrounds it on three sides, and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls; during the inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow causeways--shaded with mimosas--and looking like a raft of verdure aground in the current.[***] * these prerogatives were still exercised by the princes of the nomes under the middle and new empires; they only enjoyed them then by the good will of the reigning sovereign. ** the egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to this principality is _atf, iatf, iôtf_: it is only by a process of elimination that i have come to identify it with the _pistacia terebinthus_, l., which furnished the egyptians with the scented resin _snûtir_. *** boudier's drawing, reproduced on p. , and taken from a photograph by beato, gives most faithfully the aspect presented by the plain and the modern town of siout during the inundation. [illustration: .jpg nomes of middle egypt] the site is as happy as it is picturesque; not only does the town command the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at will, but from time immemorial the most frequented of the routes into central africa has terminated at its gates, bringing to it the commerce of the soudan. it held sway, at the outset, over both banks, from range to range, northward as far as deyrût, where the true bahr yusuf leaves the nile, and southward to the neighbourhood of gebel sheikh haridi. the extent and original number of the other principalities is not so easily determined. the most important, to the north of siût, were those of the hare and the oleander. the principality of the hare never reached the dimensions of that of its neighbour the terebinth, but its chief town was khmûnû, whose antiquity was so remote, that a universally accepted tradition made it the scene of the most important acts of creation.[*] that of the oleander, on the contrary, was even larger than that of the terebinth, and from hininsû, its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the fayûm and the plains of beni-suef.[**] to the south, apû on the right bank governed a district so closely shut in between a bend of the nile and two spurs of the range, that its limits have never varied much since ancient times. its inhabitants were divided in their employment between weaving and the culture of cereals. from early times they possessed the privilege of furnishing clothing to a large part of egypt, and their looms, at the present day, still make those checked or striped "melayahs" which the fellah women wear over their long blue tunics.[***] * khmûnû, the present ashmûneîn, is the hermopolis of the greeks, the town of the god thot. ** hininsû is the _heraecleopolis magna_ of the greeks, the present henassieh, called also ahnas-el-medineh. the egyptian word for the tree which gives its name to this principality, is nârît. loret has shown that this tree, _nârît_, is the oleander. *** apû was the panopolis or chemmis of the greeks, the town of the god mîn or ithyphallic khimû. its manufactures of linen are mentioned by strabo; the majority of the beautiful coptic woven fabrics and embroideries which have been brought to europe lately, come from the necropolis of the arab period at apû. beyond apû, thinis, the girgeh of the arabs, situate on both banks of the river, rivalled khmûnû in antiquity and siût in wealth: its plains still produce the richest harvests and feed the most numerous herds of sheep and oxen in the said. [illustration: .jpg nomes of upper egypt] as we approach the cataract, information becomes scarcer. qûbti and aûnû of the south, the coptos and hermonthis of the greeks, shared peaceably the plain occupied later on by thebes and its temples, and nekhabît and zobû watched over the safety of egypt. nekhabît soon lost its position as a frontier town, and that portion of nubia lying between gebel silsileh and the rapids of syene formed a kind of border province, of which nubît-ombos was the principal sanctuary and abu-elephantine the fortress: beyond this were the barbarians, and those inaccessible regions whence the nile descended upon our earth. the organization of the delta, it would appear, was more slowly brought about. it must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of equatorial africa, towards the confluence of the bahr el abiad and the bahr el ghazâl. great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with papyrus reeds, water-lilies, and enormous plants through which the arms of the nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying wastes intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation and scarcely available for pasturing cattle. the population of such districts, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved relatively ruder manners, and a more rugged and savage character, impatient of all authority. the conquest of this region began from the outer edge only. a few principalities were established at the apex of the delta in localities where the soil had earliest been won from the river. it appears that one of these divisions embraced the country south of and between the bifurcation of the nile: aûnû of the north, the heliopolis of the greeks, was its capital. in very early times the principality was divided, and formed three new states, independent of each other. those of aûnû and the haunch were opposite to each other, the first on the arabian, the latter on the libyan bank of the nile. the district of the white wall marched with that of the haunch on the north, and on the south touched the territory of the oleander. further down the river, between the more important branches, the governors of sai's and of bubastis, of athribis and of busiris, shared among themselves the primitive delta. two frontier provinces of unequal size, the arabian on the east in the wady tumilat, and the libyan on the west to the south of lake mareotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks of asiatic bedâwins and of african nomads. the marshes of the interior and the dunes of the littoral, were not conducive to the development of any great industry or civilization. they only comprised tracts of thinly populated country, like the principalities of the harpoon and of the cow, and others whose limits varied from century to century with the changing course of the river. the work of rendering the marshes salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the nile valley, was less efficacious in the delta, and proceeded more slowly. here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain: they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. the waters left their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh course for themselves across country. if the inundation were delayed, the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it last but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations was for a long time undone. the delta of one epoch rarely presented the same aspect as that of previous periods, and northern egypt never became as fully mistress of her soil as the egypt of the south. [illustration: .jpg nomes of lower egypt] these first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet too large to remain undivided. in those times of slow communication, the strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its authority did not extend over a wide radius. that part of the population of the terebinth, living sufficiently near to siût to come into the town for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the rule of the prince who governed there. on the other hand, those who lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some places of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the fields and of local manufactures. those towns which had the good fortune to become such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the prince. when they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the new state thus created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition of an epithet. the primitive territory of siût was in this way divided into three distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old emblem of the tree--the upper terebinth, with siût itself in the centre, and the lower terebinth, with kûsit to the north; the third, in the south and east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in their mountains, and called themselves the serpent mountain, whose chief town was that of the sparrow hawk. the territory of the oleander produced by its dismemberment the principality of the upper oleander, that of the lower oleander, and that of the knife. the territory of the harpoon in the delta divided itself into the western and eastern harpoon. the fission in most cases could not have been accomplished without struggles; but it did take place, and all the principalities having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however they may have striven to avoid it. this parcelling out was continued as circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of egypt, except the half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of petty states nearly equal in power and population.[*] * examples of the subdivision of ancient nomes and the creation of fresh nomes are met with long after primitive times. we find, for example, the nome of the western harpoon divided under the greeks and romans into two districts--that of the harpoon proper, of which the chief town was sonti- nofir; and that of ranûnr, with the onûphis of classical geographers for its capital. the greeks called them nomes, and we have borrowed the word from them; the natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term being "nûît," which may be translated _domain_, and the most common appellation in recent times being "hospû," which signifies _district_. the number of the nomes varied considerably in the course of centuries: the hieroglyphic monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at thirty-six, sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty. the little that we know of their history, up to the present time, explains the reason of this variation. ceaselessly quarrelled over by the princely families who possessed them, the nomes were alternately humbled and exalted by civil wars, marriages, and conquest, which caused them continually to pass into fresh hands, either entire or divided. the egyptians, whom we are accustomed to consider as a people respecting the established order of things, and conservative of ancient tradition, showed themselves as restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work of the past, as the most inconstant of our modern nations. the distance of time which separates them from us, and the almost complete absence of documents, gives them an appearance of immobility, by which we are liable to be unconsciously deceived; when the monuments still existing shall have been unearthed, their history will present the same complexity of incidents, the same agitations, the same instability, which we suspect or know to have been characteristic of most other oriental nations. one thing alone remained stable among them in the midst of so many revolutions, and which prevented them from losing their individuality and from coalescing in a common unity. this was the belief in and the worship of one particular deity. if the little capitals of the petty states whose origin is lost in a remote past--edfû and denderah, nekhabît and bûto, siûfc, thinis, khmûnû, sais, bubastis, athribis--had only possessed that importance which resulted from the presence of an ambitious petty prince, or from the wealth of their inhabitants, they would never have passed safe and sound through the long centuries of existence which they enjoyed from the opening to the close of egyptian history. fortune raised their chiefs, some even to the rank of rulers of the world, and in turn abased them: side by side with the earthly ruler, whose glory was but too often eclipsed, there was enthroned in each nome a divine ruler, a deity, a god of the domain, "nûtir nûiti," whose greatness never perished. the princely families might be exiled or become extinct, the extent of the territory might diminish or increase, the town might be doubled in size and population or fall in ruins: the god lived on through all these vicissitudes, and his presence alone preserved intact the rights of the state over which he reigned as sovereign. if any disaster befell his worshippers, his temple was the spot where the survivors of the catastrophe rallied around him, their religion preventing them from mixing with the inhabitants of neighbouring towns and from becoming lost among them. the survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is the characteristic of the egyptian fellah, and a few years of peace sufficed to repair losses which apparently were irreparable. local religion was the tie which bound together those divers elements of which each principality was composed, and as long as it remained, the nomes remained; when it vanished, they disappeared with it. [illustration: .jpg page image] [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter ii.--the gods of egypt _their number and nature--the feudal gods, living and dead--triads---- the temples and priesthood--the cosmogonies of the delta----the enneads of heliopolis and hermopolis._ _multiplicity of the egyptian gods: the commonalty of the gods, its varieties, human, animal, and intermediate between man and beast; gods of foreign origin, indigenous gods, and the contradictory forms with which they were invested in accordance with various conceptions of their nature. the star-gods--the sun-god as the eye of the shy; as a bird, as a calf, and as a man; its barks, voyages round the world, and encounters with the serpent apopi--the moon-god and its enemies--the star-gods: the haunch of the ox, the hippopotamus, the lion, the five horus-planets; sothis sirius, and sahû orion. the feudal gods and their classes: the nile-gods, the earth-gods, the sky-gods and the sun-god, the horus-gods--the equality of feudal gods and goddesses; their persons, alliances, and marriages: their children--the triads and their various developments. the nature of the gods: the double, the soul, the body, death of men and gods, and their fate after death--the necessity for preserving the body, mummification--dead gods the gods of the dead--the living gods, their temples and images--the gods of the people, trees, serpents, family fetiches--the theory of prayer and sacrifice: the servants of the temples, the property of the gods, the sacerdotal colleges. the cosmogonies of the delta: sibu and naît, osiris and isis, su and nephthys--heliopolis and its theological schools: ra, his identification with horus, his dual nature, and the conception of atûmû--the heliopolitan enneads: formation of the great ennead--thot and the hermopolitan ennead: creation by articulate words and by voice alone--diffusion of the enneads: their connection with the local triads, the god one and the god eight--the one and only gods._ [illustration: .jpg page image] the gods of egypt the incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the representations on the ancient monuments of egypt is at first glance very striking. nearly every illustration in the works of egyptologists brings before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive countenance the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. one would think that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship. [illustration: .jpg the goddess napkÎt, stapÎt. ] the goddess naprît, napît; bas-relief from the first chamber of osiris, on the east side of the great temple of denderah. drawn by faucher-gudin. on penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a limited and almost unconscious existence. they severally represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus naprît was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**] ** the word _naprît_ means _grain_, the grain of wheat. the grain-god is represented in the tomb of seti i. as a man wearing two full ears of wheat or barley upon his head. he is mentioned in the _hymn to the nile_ about the same date, and in two or three other texts of different periods. the goddess _naprît_, or _napît_, to whom reference is here made, was his duplicate; her head-dress is a sheaf of corn, as in the illustration. *** this goddess, whose name expresses and whose form personifies the brick or stone couch, the child-bed or -chair, upon which women in labour bowed themselves, is sometimes subdivided into two or four secondary divinities. she is mentioned along with shaît, _destiny_, and raninît, _suckling_. her part of fairy godmother at the cradle of the new-born child is indicated in the passage of the westcar papyrus giving a detailed account of the births of three kings of the fifth dynasty. she is represented in human form, and often wears upon her head two long palm-shoots, curling over at their ends. maskhonît appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth;[*] and raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the newly born.[*] neither raninît, the fairy godmother, nor maskhonît exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. every day of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail; by the other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences of evil fortune. no sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care. from child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more of them. bands of mysterious cynocephali haunting the eastern and the western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing moment of the day. they danced and chattered in the east for half an hour, to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the west hailed him on his entrance into night.[**] * raninît presides over the child's suckling, but she also gives him his name, and hence, his fortune. she is on the whole the nursing goddess. sometimes she is represented as a human-headed woman, or as lioness-headed, most frequently with the head of a serpent; she is also the urseus, clothed, and wearing two long plumes on her head, and a simple urous, as represented in the illustration on p. . ** this is the subject of a vignette in the _book of the dead_, ch. xvi., where the cynocephali are placed in echelon upon the slopes of the hill on the horizon, right and left of the radiant solar disk, to which they offer worship by gesticulations. it was the duty of certain genii to open gates in hades, or to keep the paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] these genii were always at their posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. their existence, generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. these being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next occasion.[***] * maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. , . *** the egyptians employed a still more forcible expression than our word "absorption" to express this idea. it was said of objects wherein these genii concealed themselves, and whence they issued in order to re-enter them immediately, that these forms _ate_ them, or that they _ate_ their own forms. [illustration: .jpg some fabulous beasts of the egyptian desert. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from champollion's copies, made from the tombs of beni-hassan. to the right is the _sha_, one of the animals of sit, and an exact image of the god with his stiff and arrow-like tail. next comes the _safir_, the griffin; and, lastly, we have the serpent-headed _saza_. scarcely visible even by glimpses, they were not easily depicted; their real forms being often unknown, these were approximately conjectured from their occupations. the character and costume of an archer, or of a spear-man, were ascribed to such as roamed through hades, to pierce the dead with arrows or with javelins. those who prowled around souls to cut their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed with knives, carvers--_donît_--or else as lacerators--_nokit_. some appeared in human form; others as animals--bulls or lions, rams or monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks; others dwelt in inanimate things, such as trees,[*] sistrums, stakes stuck in the ground;[**] and lastly, many betrayed a mixed origin in their combinations of human and animal forms. these latter would be regarded by us as monsters; to the egyptians, they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the less real, and their like might be encountered in the neighbourhood of egypt.[***] * thus, the sycamores planted on the edge of the desert were supposed to be inhabited by hâthor, nûît, selkît, nît, or some other goddess. in vignettes representing the deceased as stopping before one of these trees and receiving water and loaves of bread, the bust of the goddess generally appears from amid her sheltering foliage. but occasionally, as on the sarcophagus of petosiris, the transformation is complete, and the trunk from which the branches spread is the actual body of the god or goddess. finally, the whole body is often hidden, and only the arm of the goddess to be seen emerging from the midst of the tree, with an overflowing libation vase in her hand. ** the trunk of a tree, disbranched, and then set up in the ground, seems to me the origin of the osirian emblem called _tat_ or _didu_. the symbol was afterwards so conventionalized as to represent four columns seen in perspective, one capital overtopping another; it thus became the image of the four pillars which uphold the world. *** the belief in the real existence of fantastic animals was first noted by maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. , , , and vol. ii. p. . until then, scholars only recognized the sphinx, and other egyptian monsters, as allegorical combinations by which the priesthood claimed to give visible expression in one and the same being to physical or moral qualities belonging to several different beings. the later theory has now been adopted by wiedemann, and by most contemporary egyptologists. how could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and griffins of flesh and blood doubt that there were bull-headed and hawk-headed divinities with human busts? the existence of such paradoxical creatures was proved by much authentic testimony; more than one hunter had distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest planes of the horizon, beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was in chase; and shepherds dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they dreaded the lions, or the great felidse of the desert.[*] * at beni-hassan and in thebes many of the fantastic animals mentioned in the text, griffins, hierosphinxes, serpent- headed lions, are placed along with animals which might be encountered by local princes hunting in the desert. this nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the origin of which was known to the egyptians themselves. they knew that hâthor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very ancient times, and they called her the lady of pûanît, after the name of her native country. bîsû had followed her in course of time, and claimed his share of honours and worship along with her. he first appeared as a leopard; then he became a man clothed in a leopard's skin, but of strange countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf with high cheek-bones, and a wide and open mouth, whence hung an enormous tongue; he was at once jovial and martial, the friend of the dance and of battle.[*] * the hawk-headed monster with flower-tipped tail was called the saga. in historic times all nations subjugated by the pharaohs transferred some of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the libyan shehadidi was enthroned in the valley of the nile, in the same way as the semitic baâlû and his retinue of astartes, anitis, eeshephs, and kadshûs. these divine colonists fared like all foreigners who have sought to settle on the banks of the nile: they were promptly assimilated, wrought, moulded, and made into egyptian deities scarcely distinguishable from those of the old race. this mixed pantheon had its grades of nobles, princes, kings, and each of its members was representative of one of the elements constituting the world, or of one of the forces which regulated its government. [illustration: .jpb some fabulous beasts of the egyptian desert ] bîsû, pp. - . the tail-piece to the summary of this chapter is a figure of bîsû, drawn by faucher-gudin from an amulet in blue enamelled pottery. the sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the nile, were so many breathing and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the universe. they were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. but when the people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them, this unanimity was at an end. each principality, each nome, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. some said that the sky was the great horus, haroêris, the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. owing to a punning assonance between his name and the word _horû_, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was added that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illumine the night. the face shone also with a light of its own, the zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise, and a little after sunset. these luminous beams, radiating from a common centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. the divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament and prevented its falling into ruin. a no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, sibû, and nûît, from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be. [illustration: .jpg nÛÎt the starry one. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painted coffin of the xxith dynasty in leyden. most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god sibû as extended beneath nûît the starry one; the goddess stretched out her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. but there were also many who believed that sibû was concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate once laid the sun egg, and perhaps still laid it daily. from the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _ngagu oîrû_, the great cack-ler. other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed hâthor, of beautiful countenance. the head of the good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world. [illustration: .jpg the goose-god facing the cat-goddess, the lady of heaven. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a stella in the museum of gîzeh. this is not the goose of sibû, but the goose of amon, which was nurtured in the temple of karnak, and was called smonû. pacing it is the cat of maût, the wife of amon. amon, originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a goose. the planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the prevailing conception of the heavens. the fiery disk _atonû_, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called râ, as was also the planet itself.[*] where the sky was regarded as horus, râ formed the right eye of the divine face: when horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand. * the name of râ has been variously explained. the commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb râ, _to give, to make to be_ a person or a thing, so that râ would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things. lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its brevity, râ is a composite word (r-a, _maker--to be_)" as a matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the planet applied to the god. it means the _sun_, and nothing more. [illustration: .jpg the cow hÂthor, the lady op heaven. ] drawn by boudier, from a xxxth dynasty statue of green basalt in the gîzeh museum (maspero, _guide du visiteur_, p. , no. ). the statue was also published by mariette, _monuments divers_, pl. a-b, and in the _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. x. where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, râ was considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was born again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger to his lips as human children were conventionally represented. ** several passages from the pyramid texts prove that the _two eyes_ were very anciently considered as belonging to the face of nûît, and this conception persisted to the last days of egyptian paganism. hence, we must not be surprised if the inscriptions generally represent the god râ as coming forth from nûît under the form of a disc, or a scarabaeus, and born of her even as human children are born. he was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the east by the celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with its rays.[**] ** these are the very expressions used in the seventeenth chapter of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxv. lines - ; lepsius, _todtenbuch_, pl. ix. . , ). [illustration: .jpg the twelve stages in the life of the sun and its twelve forms throughout the day. ] the twelve forms of the sun during the twelve hours of the day, from the ceiling of the hall of the new year at edfu. drawing by faucher-gudin. nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of southern egypt. a sun-hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can be said for a sun-calf? yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted calf, a "sucking calf of pure mouth,"[**] that the egyptians were pleased to describe the sun-god when sibu, the father, was a bull, and hâthor a heifer. * the lapwing or the heron, the egyptian _bonû_, is generally the osirian bird. the persistence with which it is associated with heliopolis and the gods of that city shows that in this also we have a secondary form of râ. ** the calf is represented in ch. cix. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, pl. cxx.), where the text says (lines , ), "i know that this calf is harmakhis the sun, and that it is no other than the morning star, daily saluting râ." the expression "_sucking calf of pure mouth_" is taken word for word from a formula preserved in the pyramid texts (Ûnas, . ). but the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was likened to the life of man. the two deities presiding over the east received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of its life. it soon left them, and proceeded "under the belly of nûît," growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. but as night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man leaning upon his stick. at length he passes away beyond the horizon, plunging westward into the mouth of nûît, and traversing her body by night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he had travelled on the preceding day. a first bark, the _saktit_, awaited him at his birth, and carried him from the eastern to the southern extremity of the world. _mâzît_, the second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of manu, which is at the entrance into hades; other barks, with which we are less familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at morn.[*] sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor helm.[**] * in the formulæ of the _book of knowing that which is in hades_, the dead sun remains in the bark saktit during part of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and fifth hours that he changes into another. ** such is the bark of the sun in the other world. although carrying a complete crew of gods, yet for the most part it progresses at its own will, and without their help. the bark containing the sun alone is represented in many vignettes of the _book of the dead_, and at the head of many stelæ. sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an egyptian boat--a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern, and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. peacefully the bark glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who dwelt upon its shores. but, occasionally, apôpi, a gigantic serpent, like that which hides within the earthly nile and devours its banks, came forth from the depth of the waters and arose in the path of the god.[*] as soon as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew flew to arms, and entered upon the struggle against him with prayers and spear-thrusts. men in their cities saw the sun faint and fail, and sought to succour him in his distress; they cried aloud, they were beside themselves with excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their instruments of music, and striking with all their strength upon every metal vase or utensil in their possession, that their clamour might rise to heaven and terrify the monster. after a time of anguish, râ emerged from the darkness and again went on his way, while apôpi sank back into the abyss,[**] paralysed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound. * in upper egypt there is a widespread belief in the existence of a monstrous serpent, who dwells at the bottom of the river, and is the genius of the nile. it is he who brings about those falls of earth (_batabît_) at the decline of the inundation which often destroy the banks and eat whole fields. at such times, offerings of durrah, fowls, and dates are made to him, that his hunger may be appeased, and it is not only the natives who give themselves up to these superstitious practices. part of the grounds belonging to the karnak hotel at luxor having been carried away during the autumn of , the manager, a greek, made the customary offerings to the serpent of the nile. ** the character of apôpi and of his struggle with the sun was, from the first, excellently defined by champollion as representing the conflict of darkness with light. occasionally, but very rarely, apôpi seems to win, and his triumph over râ furnishes one explanation of a solar eclipse. a similar explanation is common to many races. in one very ancient form of the egyptian legend, the sun is represented by a wild ass running round the world along the sides of the mountains that uphold the sky, and the serpent which attacks it is called _haiû_. apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the sun-king steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws which even his will could not change. day after day he made his oblique ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west. during the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. this double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. the egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. the solar bark always kept close to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer to egypt. as the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its greatest distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the waters. it was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the next flood; and, as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence of the periodic movements of the celestial nile. the same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. at an interval of twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon--_yâûhû aûhû_--followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the world. the moon, also, appeared in many various forms--here, as a man born of nûît;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it was the left eye of horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. like râ, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the sow. but it was when at the full, about the th of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril. * he may be seen as a child, or man, bearing the lunar disk upon his head, and pressing the lunar eye to his breast. passages from the pyramid text of unas indicate the relationship subsisting between thot, sibû, and nûît, making thot the brother of isis, sit, and nephthys. in later times he was considered a son of râ. ** even as late as the græco-roman period, the temple of thot at khmûnû contained a sacred ibis, which was the incarnation of the god, and said to be immortal by the local priesthood. the temple sacristans showed it to apion the grammarian, who reports the fact, but is very sceptical in the matter. *** the texts quoted by chabas and lepsius to show that the sun is the right eye of horus also prove that his left eye is the moon. [illustration: .jpg egyptian conception of the principal constellations of the northern sky. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the ceiling of the ramesseum. on the right, the _female hippopotamus_ bearing the _crocodile_, and leaning on the _monâît_; in the middle, the _haunch_, here represented by the whole bull; to the left, _selkit_ and the _sparrow-hawk_, with the _lion_, and the _giant fighting the crocodile_. the sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it, streaming with blood and tears, into the celestial nile, where it was gradually extinguished, and lost for days; but its twin, the sun, or its guardian, the cyno-cephalus, immediately set forth to find it and to restore it to horus. no sooner was it replaced, than it slowly recovered, and renewed its radiance; when it was well--_ûzaît_--the sow again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again revived it. [illustration: .jpg the lunar bark, self-propelled, under the protection of the two eyes.] each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour, followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing pallor. it was born to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. one invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence. profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually. these eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods compelling the monster to cast up the eye before it had been destroyed. [illustration: .jpg the haunch, and the female hippopotamus. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the rectangular zodiac carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of denderah (dùmichen, _resultate_, vol. ii. pl. xxxix.). every evening the lunar bark issued out of hades by the door which râ had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. however many of them there might be, there were as many indestructibles--_akhîmû sokû_--or unchanging ones--_akhîmû Ûrdû_--whose charge it was to attend upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**] ** the _akhîmû sokû_ and the _akhîmû Ûrdû_ have been very variously defined by different egyptologists who have studied them. chabas considered them to be gods or genii of the constellations of the ecliptic, which mark the apparent course of the sun through the sky. following the indications given by dévéria, he also thought them to be the sailors of the solar bark, and perhaps the gods of the twelve hours, divided into two classes: the _akhîmû sokû_ being those who are rowing, and the _akhîmû Ûrdû_ those who are resting. but texts found and cited by brugsch show that the _akhîmû sokû_ are the planets accompanying râ in the northern sky, while the _akhîmû Ûrdû_ are his escort in the south. the nomenclature of the stars included in these two classes is furnished by monuments of widely different epochs. the two names should be translated according to the meaning of their component words: _akhîmû sokû_, those who know not destruction, the indestructibles; and _akhîmû Ûrdû_ ( _urzii_), those who know not the immobility of death, the _imperishables_. they were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them, but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain plan, and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star republics, each being independent of its neighbours. they represented the outlines of bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon the depths of night, but shining with greater brilliancy in certain important places. the seven stars which we liken to a chariot (charles's wain) suggested to the egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon.[*] * the forms of the constellations, and the number of stars composing them in the astronomy of different periods, are known from the astronomical scenes of tombs and temples. the identity of the _haunch_ with the _chariot_, or _great bear_ of modern astronomy, was discovered by lepsius and confirmed by biot. mariette pointed out that the pyramid arabs applied the name of the _haunch (er-rigl)_ to the same group of stars as that thus designated by the ancient egyptians. champollion had noted the position of the _haunch_ in the northern sky, but had not suggested any identification. the _haunch_ appertained to sît-typhon. two lesser stars connected the haunch--_maskhaît_--with thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female hippopotamus--_rirît_--erect upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily carrying upon her shoulders a monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened threateningly above her head. eighteen luminaries of varying size and splendour, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with stiffened tail, its head turned to the right, and facing the haunch.[***] * the connection of _birît_, the female hippopotamus, with the haunch is made quite clear in scenes from philae and edfû, representing isis holding back typhon by a chain, that he might do no hurt to sâhii-osiris. jollois and devilliers thought that the hippopotamus was the _great bear_. biot contested their conclusions, and while holding that the hippopotamus might at least in part present our constellation of the dragon, thought that it was probably included in the scene only as an ornament, or as an emblem. the present tendency is to identify the hippopotamus with the dragon and with certain stars not included in the constellations surrounding it. *** the lion, with its eighteen stars, is represented on the tomb of seti i.; on the ceiling of the ramesseum; and on the sarcophagus of htari. [illustration: .jpg okion, sothis, and two hokus-planets standing in their bakks. ] from the astronomic ceiling in the tomb of seti i. (lefébure, th part, pl. xxxvi.). the lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile's tail. according to biot the egyptian lion has nothing in common with the greek constellation of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of smaller stars, belonging to the greek constellation of the cup or to the continuation of the hydra, so that its head, its body, and its tail would follow the [ ] of the hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that constellation, or the [ ] of the virgin. most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they were to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the same even light. [illustration: .jpg sahu-orion. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a small bronze in the gîzeh museum, published by mariette, in the _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. . the legs are a modern restoration. others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of sight for months at a time. five at least of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully noted. sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed horus. Ùapshetatûi, our jupiter, kahiri-(saturn), sobkû-(mercury), steered their barks straight ahead like iâûhû and râ; but mars-doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. as a star bonu, the bird (yenus) had a dual personality; in the evening it was uati, the lonely star which is the first to rise, often before nightfall; in the morning it became tiûnûtiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day. sahû and sopdît, orion and sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small, so arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the fairest of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to the admiration of mortals. [illustration: .jpg orion and the cow sothis separated by the sparrow-hawk. ] scene from the rectangular zodiac of denderah, drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken with magnesium light by dûmichen. with his right hand he flourished the _crux ansata_, and turning his head towards sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as though inviting her to follow him. the goddess, standing sceptre in hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant star, answered the call of sahû with a gesture, and quietly embarked in pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. sometimes she is represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars along her back, and sirius flaming from between her horns.[*] * the identity of the cow with sothis was discovered by jollois and devilliers. it is under this animal form that sothis is represented in most of the græco-roman temples, at denderah, edfû, esneh, dêr el-medîneh. not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted forth in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the sky the mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. it was then that she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light which other legends attributed to horus himself. one, and perhaps the most ancient of the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess, represented sahû as a wild hunter. a world as vast as ours rested upon the other side of the iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into seas, and continents divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races unknown to men. sahû traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii who presided over the lamps forming his constellation. at his appearing "the stars prepared themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed forward, the bones of the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight of him," for it was no common game that he hunted, but the very gods themselves. one attendant secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are caught in the pastures, while another examined each capture to decide if it were pure and good for food. this being determined, others bound the divine victim, cut its throat, disembowelled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. sahû did not devour indifferently all that the fortune of the chase might bring him, but classified his game in accordance with his wants. he ate the great gods at his breakfast in the morning, the lesser gods at his dinner towards noon, and the small ones at his supper; the old were rendered more tender by roasting. [illustration: .jpg amon-rÂ, as mÎnÛ of coptos, and invested with his emblems. ] scene on the north wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak; drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in . the king, seti i., is presenting bouquets of leaves to amon-mînû. behind the god stands isis (of coptos), sceptre and _crux ansata_ in hand. as each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to maintain the perpetual splendour of his light. the nome gods who presided over the destinies of egyptian cities, and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of these natural categories. in vain do they present themselves under the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. osiris of the delta, khuûmû of the cataract, harshâfitû of heracleopolis, were each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining nile. wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are more especially installed and worshipped: khnûmû at the place of its entering into egypt, and again at the town of hâûrît, near the point where a great arm branches off from the eastern stream to flow towards the libyan hills and form the bahr-yûsuf: harshâfitû at the gorges of the fayûm, where the bahr-yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, osiris at mendes and at busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the true nile by the people of the land. isis of bûto denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*] * in the case of isis, as in that of osiris, we must mark the original character; and note her characteristics as goddess of the delta before she had become a multiple and contradictory personality through being confounded with other divinities. but the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky--the earth with its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fertile lands--was represented as a man: phtah at memphis, amon at thebes, mînû at coptos and at panopolis. amon seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while mînû reigned over the desert. but these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often invested amon with the most significant attributes of mînû. [illustration: .jpg anhÛri. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze of the saïte period, in my own possession. the sky-gods, like the earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women: hâthor of denderah, or nît of sais; the other composed of men identical with horus, or derived from him: anhûri-shû of sebennytos and thinis; harmerati, horus of the two eyes, at pharbaethos; har-sapdi, horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the wâdy tumilât; and finally harhûdîti at edfû. râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and resembled horus quite as much as râ. whether under the name of horus or of anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that of the sun. horus the sun, and râ, the sun-cod of heliopolis, had so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. one by one all the functions of râ had been usurped by horus, and all the designations of horus had been appropriated by râ. the sun was styled harmakhûîti, the horus of the two mountains--that is, the horus who comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning, and retires at evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or hartimâ, horus the pikeman, that horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river; or harnûbi, the golden horus, the great golden sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds to flight; and these titles were indifferently applied to each of the feudal gods who represented the sun. * from the time of champollion, harmakhûîti has been identified with the harmachis of the greeks, the great sphinx. [illustration: .jpg the hawk-headed hokus. ] a bronze of the saïte period, from the posno collection, and now in the louvre; drawn by faucher-gudin. the god is represented as upholding a libation vase with both hands, and pouring the life-giving water upon the king, standing, or prostrate, before him. in performing this ceremony, he was always assisted by another god, generally by sit, sometimes by thot or anubis. the latter were numerous. sometimes, as in the case of harkhobi, horus of khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic term of horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from the parts which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. the sky-god worshipped at thinis in upper egypt, at zarît and at sebennytos in lower egypt, was called anhuri. when he assumed the attributes of râ, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the conqueror of the sky. he was essentially combative. crowned with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**] the sun-god who at medamôfc taûd and erment had preceded amon as ruler of the theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of montû had reference to his method of fighting. he was depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.[***] * _harkhobi, harâmkhobiû_ is the horus of the marshes (_khobiû_) of the delta, the lesser horus the son of isis, who was also made into the son of osiris. ** the right reading of the name was given as far back as lepsius. the part played by the god, and the nature of the link connecting him with shû, have been explained by maspero. the greeks transcribed his name onouris, and identified him with ares. *** montû preceded amon as god of the land between kûs and gebelên, and he recovered his old position in the græco- roman period after the destruction of thebes. most egyptologists, and finally brugsch, made him into a secondary form of amon, which is contrary to what we know of the history of the province. just as onû of the south (erment) preceded thebes as the most important town in that district, so montû had been its most honoured god. heer wiedemann thinks the name related to that of amon and derived from it, with the addition of the final _tû_. each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the gods, as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but the effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his peers ruling over the adjacent nomes began. [illustration: .jpg the hoeus of hibonÛ, on the back of the gazelle.] the goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had in human law.[*] isis was entitled lady and mistress at bûto, as hâthor was at denderah, and as nit at sais, "the firstborn, when as yet there had been no birth." they enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all bowed down before them. the animal gods, whether entirely in the form of beasts, or having human bodies attached to animal heads, shared omnipotence with those in human form. horus of hibonû swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk, hâthor of denderah was a cow, bastit of bubastis was a cat or a tigress, while nekhabit of el kab was a great bald-headed vulture.[**] hermopolis worshipped the ibis and cynocephalus of thot; oxyrrhynchus the _mor-myrus_ fish;[***] and ombos and the fayûm a crocodile, under the name of sobkû,[****] sometimes with the epithet of azaï, the brigand.[v] * in attempts at reconstituting egyptian religions, no adequate weight has hitherto been given to the equality of gods and goddesses, a fact to which attention was first called by maspeeo (_Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. , et seq.). ** nekhabît, the goddess of the south, is the vulture, so often represented in scenes of war or sacrifice, who hovers over the head of the pharaohs. she is also shown as a vulture-headed woman. *** we have this on the testimony of classic writers, steabo, book xvii. p. , _de iside et csiride_, § vii., , paethey's edition, pp. , , . ^elianus, hist, anim., book x. § . **** sobhû, sovkû is the animal's name, and the exact translation of sovû would be crocodile-god. its greek transcription is [ ]. on account of the assonance of the names he was sometimes confounded with _sivû, sibû_ by the egyptians themselves, and thus obtained the titles of that god. this was especially the case at the time when sit having been proscribed, sovkû the crocodile, who was connected with sit, shared his evil reputation, and endeavoured to disguise his name or true character as much as possible. v azaï is generally considered to be the osiris of the fayûm, but he was only transformed into osiris, and that by the most daring process of assimilation. his full name defines him as _osiri azaï hi halt to-sit (osiris the brigand, who is in the fayûm)_, that is to say, as sovkû identified with osiris. [illustration: .jpg the cat-headed bast. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a green enamelled figure in my possession (saïte period). we cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. why, towards græco-roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at siût?[**] how came sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice. ** uapuaîtû, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not be confounded with anubis of the cynopolite nome of upper egypt, was originally the feudal god of siût. he guided human souls to the paradise of the oasis, and the sun upon its southern path by day, and its northern path by night. *** champollion, rosellini, lepsius, have held that the typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and wilkinson says that the egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by representing it along with other fantastic beasts. this would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual existence (cf. p. of this history). plbyte thinks that it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or oryx. the habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west. [illustration: .jpg two images] if râ was held to be a grasshopper under the old empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from central africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. most of the nile-gods, khnûmû, osiris, harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving nile and the overflowing of its waters? it is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the fayûm or of ombos. the crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. when instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. the crocodile is amphibious; and sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank. most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. families were assigned to them later.[*] * the existence of the egyptian triads was discovered and defined by champollion. these triads have long served as the basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish their systems of the egyptian religion. brugsch was the first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the ennead, in his book religion und mythologie der alten Ægypter. the process of forming local triads, as here set forth, was first pointed out by maspero (_Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. , et seq.). each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is generally called, a triad. but there were several kinds of triads. in nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom. [illustration: .jpg nit of saÏs.] thus, thot of hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of seshaît-safk-hîtâbûi and hahmâûît. tûmû divided the homage of the inhabitants of helio-polis with nebthôtpît and with iûsasît. khnûmû seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--anûkît the constrainer, who compresses the nile between its rocks at philse and at syene, and satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow.[*] where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. nît of sai's had taken for her husband osiris of mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, ari-hos-nofir.[**] * maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. , et seq. ** _arihosnofir_ means _the lion whose gaze has a beneficent fascination_. he also goes under the name of _tutu_, which seems as though it should be translated "_the bounding_,"--a mere epithet characterizing one gait of the lion-god's. hâthor of denderah had completed her household with haroêris and a younger horus, with the epithet of ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.[*] * brugsch explains the name of ahi as meaning _he who causes his waters to rise_, and recognizes this personage as being, among other things, a form of the nile. the interpretation offered by myself is borne out by the many scenes representing the child of hâthor playing upon the sistrum and the _monâît_. moreover, _ahi, ahît_ is an invariable title of the priests and priestesses whose office it is, during religious ceremonies, to strike the sistrum, and that other mystic musical instrument, the sounding whip called _monâît_. [illustration: .jpg imhotpÛ. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette encrusted with gold, in the gîzeh museum. the seat is alabaster, and of modern manufacture. a triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. triads of the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine son. two fruitful households arose from the barren union of thot with safkhîtâbûi and nahmâûît: one composed of thot, safkhîtâbûi, and harnûbi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other nahmâûît and her nursling nofirhorû entered. *** this somewhat rare triad, noted by wilkinson, is sculptured on the wall of a chamber in the tûrah quarries. [illustration: .jpg nofirtÛmÛ. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette incrusted with gold, in the gîzeh museum. the persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form triads were not all of the same class. goddesses, especially, were made to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the linguistic device to which they owe their being. from râ, amon, horus, sobkû, female ras, anions, horuses, and sobkûs were derived, by the addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names--râît, amonît, horît, sobkît.[*] in the same way, detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. imhotpû, "he who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of phtah before he became incarnate as the third member of the memphite triad.[**] in other cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock, but natives of different nomes, as in the case of isis of bûto and the mendesian osiris; of haroêris of edfu and hâthor of denderah. * maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. , , . ** imhotpû, the imouthes of the greeks, and by them identified with Æsculapius, was discovered by salt, and his name was first translated as _he who comes with offering_. the translation, _he who comes in peace_, proposed by e. de rougé, is now universally adopted. imhotpû did not take form until the time of the new empire; his great popularity at memphis and throughout egypt dates from the saïte and greek periods. in the same manner sokhît of letopolis and bastît of bubastis were appropriated as wives to phtah of memphis, nofirtûmû being represented as his son by both unions.[*] these improvised connections were generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations, and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples. the system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned unbrokenly up to the last days of egyptian polytheism, far from in any way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude. powerful lords as the new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition of submitting to its religious law. hâthor, supreme at denderah, shrank into insignificance before haroêris at edfû, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**] * originally, nofirtûmû appears to have been the son of cat or lioness-headed goddesses, bastît and sokhît, and from them he may have inherited the lion's head with which he is often represented. his name shows him to have been in the first place an incarnation of atûmû, but he was affiliated to the god phtah of memphis when that god became the husband of his mothers, and preceded imhotpû as the third personage in the oldest memphite triad. ** each year, and at a certain time, the goddess came in high state to spend a few days in the great temple of edfû, with her husband haroêris. on the other hand, haroêris when at denderah descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady hâthor. his name came first in invocations of the triad because of his position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place, hâthor was none the less the real chief of denderah and of its divine family.[*] thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess. * the part played by haroêris at denderah was so inconsiderable that the triad containing him is not to be found in the temple. "in all our four volumes of plates, the triad is not once represented, and this is the more remarkable since at thebes, at memphis, at philse, at the cataracts, at elephantine, at edfû, among all the data which one looks to find in temples, the triad is most readily distinguished by the visitor. but we must not therefore conclude that there was no triad in this case. the triad of edfû consists of hor-hut, hâthor, and hor-sam-ta-ui. the triad of denderah contains hâthor, hor-hut, and hor-sam-ta- ui. the difference is obvious. at edfû, the male principle, as represented by hor-hut, takes the first place, whereas the first person at denderah is hâthor, who represents the female principle" (mariette, _dendérah_, texte, pp. , ). [illustration: .jpg horus] drawn by faucher-gudin from a statuette in the gîzeh museum (mariette, _album du musée de boulaq_, pl. ). the son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. when isis and osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant horus, naked, or simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of hair depended from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or else sitting, nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.[*] even in triads where the son was supposed to have attained to man's estate, he held the lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the same respectful attitude towards his parents as is observed by children of human race in the presence of theirs. he took the lowest place at all solemn receptions, spoke only with his parents' permission, acted only by their command and as the agent of their will. occasionally he was vouchsafed a character of his own, and filled a definite position, as at memphis, where imhotpû was the patron of science.[**] * for representations of harpocrates, the child horus, see lanzone, _dizionario di mitologia egizia_, pis. ccxxvii., ccxxviii., and particularly pl. cccx. , where there is a scene in which the young god, represented as a sparrow-hawk, is nevertheless sucking the breast of his mother isis with his beak. ** hence he is generally represented as seated, or squatting, and attentively reading a papyrus roll, which lies open upon his knees; cf. the illustration on p. . but, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father's, and possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him. two such contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as a matter of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more than two aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees of relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family. father, inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue of being its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he was at once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother. gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and body;[*] but in egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different times and in different schools. it might be an insect--butterfly, bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird--the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane--bi, haï--whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black shadow--khaîbît--that is attached to every body, but which death sets free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight. * in one of the pyramid texts, sâhû-orion, the wild hunter, captures the gods, slaughters and disembowels them, cooks their joints, their haunches, their legs, in his burning cauldrons, and feeds on their souls as well as on their bodies. a god was not limited to a single body and a single soul; we know from several texts that râ had _seven souls and fourteen doubles_. ** mr. lepage-renouf supposes that the soul may have been considered as being a butterfly at times, as in greece. m. lefébure thinks that it must sometimes have been incarnate as a wasp--i should rather say a bee or a praying mantis. *** the simple sparrow-hawk is chiefly used to denote the soul of a god; the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the heron, or the crane is used indifferently for human or divine souls. it is from horapollo that we learn this symbolic significance of the sparrow-hawk and the pronunciation of the name of the soul as _bai_. [illustration: .jp the black shadow coming out into the sunlight. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from naville's _das thebanische todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. civ._ finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and coloured projection of the human figure, a double--_ka_--reproducing in minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom it belonged.[*] * the nature of the double has long been misapprehended by egyptologists, who had even made its name into a kind of pronominal form. that nature was publicly and almost simultaneously announced in , first by maspero, and directly afterwards by lepage-renouf. [illustration: .jpg the august souls of osiris and horus in adoration before the solar disk. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dûmichen, of a scene on the cornice of the front room of osiris on the terrace of the great temple of denderah. the soul on the left belongs to horus, that on the right to osiris, lord of amentît. each bears upon its head the group of tall feathers which is characteristic of figures of anhûri (cf. p. ). the soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed, was moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible, but endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same imperfections as ours. the gods, therefore, on the whole, were more ethereal, stronger, more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy, and to suffer than ordinary men, but they were still men. they had bones,[**] muscles, flesh, blood; they were hungry and ate, they were thirsty and drank; our passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also theirs. the _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their members, and carried with it health, vigour, and life. ** for example, the text of the _destruction of men_, and other documents, teach us that the flesh of the aged sun had become gold, and his bones silver. the blood of râ is mentioned in the _book of the dead_, as well as the blood of isis and of other divinities. they were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less, their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained. the better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being easily accomplished in the temples. the king, or any ordinary man who wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of the god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it. the statue then placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making passes, caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as in a receiver. this rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained. [illustration: .jpg the king after his coronation receiving the imposition of the sa. ] drawn by boudier from a photograph by m. gay et, taken in , of a scene in the hypostyle hall at lûxor. this illustration shows the relative positions of prince and god. anion, after having placed the pschent upon the head of the pharaoh amenôthes iii., who kneels before him, proceeds to _impose the sa_. by using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their _sa_ of life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger, while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond in the northern sky, called the "pond of the sa."[*] divine bodies, continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts. age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious metals. their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.[**] * it is thus that in the _tale of the daughter of the prince of bakhtan_ we find that one of the statues of the theban konsû supplies itself with _sa_ from another statue representing one of the most powerful forms of the god. the _pond of sa_, whither the gods go to draw the magic fluid, is mentioned in the pyramid texts. ** cf. the text of the _destruction of men_ (il. , ) referred to above, where age produces these transformations in the body of the sun. this changing of the bodies of the gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why the alchemists, who were disciples of the egyptians, often compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to hasten at will that which was the slow work of nature. this transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do away with the ravages of time. decrepitude was no less irremediable with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth, his spittle dropped upon the ground." none of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb.[*] * the idea of the inevitable death of the gods is expressed in other places as well as in a passage of the eighth chapter of the booh of the dead (naville's edition), which has not to my knowledge hitherto been noticed: "i am that osiris in the west, and osiris knoweth his day in which he shall be no more;" that is to say, the day of his death when he will cease to exist. all the gods, atûmû, horus, râ, thot, phtah, khnûmû, are represented under the forms of mummies, and this implies that they are dead. moreover, their tombs were pointed out in several places in egypt. the ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and inevitable. they thought that life, once began, might go on indefinitely: if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself? and so men did not die in egypt; they were assassinated. the murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. but often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. he was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence--illness being a struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him. as soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him no more. but had all ended for him with the moment in which he had ceased to breathe? as to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate. it quickly fell to decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton. and as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind. the soul might have a longer career and fuller fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them. every advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself; its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared. erom an early date the egyptians had endeavoured to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be ensured. it was imperative that during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odour and secure from predatory worms. they set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. the oldest burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades only. when one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.[*] * this is to be gathered from the various pyramid texts relating to the purification by water and to fumigation: the pains taken to secure material cleanliness, described in these formulas, were primarily directed towards the preservation of the bodies subjected to these processes, and further to the perfecting of the souls to which these bodies had been united. having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave, sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. the dead man was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state. the knees were sharply bent at an angle of ° with the thighs, while the latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to touch the elbows. the hands are sometimes extended in front of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the breast or neck. in some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. the deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. the dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. seeing decay could not be prevented, it was determined to accelerate the process, by taking the flesh from the bones before interment. the bodies thus treated are often incomplete; the head is missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints. the forearms and the hands were subjected to the same treatment as the head. in many cases no trace of them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered about haphazard. other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest. these precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. the human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity. it was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no connecting links. this drawback, it is true, was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. the bones were laid in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. but the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally incomplete. when they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. having taken this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the body. it had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away,[*] and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its integrity ensured that of the soul. * such was the appearance of the bodies of coptic monks of the sixth, eighth, and ninth centuries, which i found in the convent cemeteries of contra-syene, taûd, and akhmîm, right in the midst of the desert. an attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but a useless prolongation of the death-agony. it was the god anubis--the jackal lord of sepulture--who was supposed to have made this discovery. he cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers of linen. the victory the god had thus gained over corruption was, however, far from being a complete one. the bath in which the dead man was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body: the chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished. when any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. as nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the egyptians described him as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited him in the future. the art of anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever, at least for an unlimited period of time. if there were hills at hand, thither the mummied dead were still borne, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation. in districts of the delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marshes, and there a cemetery was founded. where this resource failed, the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough, hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any moisture. reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines of the visible and invisible worlds. here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which pertained to it "upon the earth:" as it had been a "double" before death, so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal life after its own fashion. it moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational desire for immortality. unceasing regret for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert existence. "o my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth? the west is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. the living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. since i came into this funereal valley i know not where nor what i am. give me to drink of running water!... let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the north, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow." by day the double remained concealed within the tomb. if it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. its organs needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."[*] want and misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. it prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground--broken meats which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse--and, should these meagre resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement.[**] * _teti_, . , . "hateful unto teti is hunger, and he eateth it not; hateful unto teti is thirst, nor hath he drunk it." we see that the egyptians made hunger and thirst into two substances or beings, to be swallowed as food is swallowed, but whose effects were poisonous unless counteracted by the immediate absorption of more satisfying sustenance. ** king teti, when distinguishing his fate from that of the common dead, stated that he had abundance of food, and hence was not reduced to so pitiful an extremity. "abhorrent unto teti is excrement, teti rejecteth urine, and teti abhorreth that which is abominable in him; abhorrent unto him is faecal matter and he eateth it not, hateful unto teti is liquid filth." (_teti_, . , _). the same doctrine is found in several places in the book of the dead_. this ravenous sceptre had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise and definite shape, naked, or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon earth, and emitting a pale light, to which it owed the name of luminous--_khû, khûû_.[*] the double did not allow its family to forget it, but used all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence. it entered their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness,[**] and would even suck their blood like the modern vampire. * the name of luminous was at first so explained as to make the light wherewith souls were clothed, into a portion of the divine light. in my opinion the idea is a less abstract one, and shows that, as among many other nations, so with the egyptians the soul was supposed to appear as a kind of pale flame, or as emitting a glow analogous to the phosphorescent halo which is seen by night about a piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish. this primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and _khû the glorious one_, one of the _mânes_, may have become one of those flattering names by which it was thought necessary to propitiate the dead; it then came to have that significance of _resplendent with light_ which is ordinarily attributed to it. ** the incantations of which the leyden papyrus published by pleyte is full are directed against _dead men or dead women_ who entered into one of the living to give him the _migraine_, and violent headaches. another leyden papyrus, briefly analyzed by ohabas, and translated by maspero, contains the complaint, or rather the formal act of requisition of a husband whom the _luminous_ of his wife returned to torment in his home, without any just cause for such conduct. one effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various provisions of which the double stood in need, and for which it visited their dwellings. funerary sacrifices and the regular cultus of the dead originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance of the manes after having secured their lasting existence by the mummification of their bodies.[*] * several chapters of the _book of the dead_ consist of directions for giving food to that part of man which survives his death, e.g. chap, cv., "_chapter for providing food for the double_" (naville's edition, pl. cxvii.), and chap, cvi., "_chapter for giving daily abundance unto the deceased, in memphis_" (naville's edition, pl. cxviii.). [illustration: .jpg sacrificing to the dead in the tomb chapel. ] stela of antûf i., prince of thebes, drawn by faucher- gudin from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. below, servants and relations are bringing the victims and cutting up the ox at the door of the tomb. in the middle is the dead man, seated under his pavilion and receiving the sacrifice: an attendant offers him drink, another brings him the haunch of an ox a third a basket and two jars; provisions fill the whole chamber. behind antûf stand two servants, the one fanning his master, and the second offering him his staff and sandals. the position of the door, which is in the lowest row of the scenes, indicates that what is represented above it takes place within the tomb. gazelles and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb chapel; the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when they began to be hungry. vessels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh water, purified with natron, or perfumed, were brought to them that they might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some neighbour too powerful to be opposed. the gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows upon men. their bodies suffered change and gradually perished until nothing was left of them. their souls, like human souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found in time. thus, the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of sepulture which gave the longest term of existence to their souls, compelled the gods to the same course. at first, they were buried in the hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those "who are upon the sand,"[*] safe from putrefaction; afterwards, when the art of embalming had been discovered, the gods received the benefit of the new invention and were mummified. * in the _book of knowing that which is in hades_, for the fourth and fifth hours of the night, we have the description of the sandy realm of sokaris and of the gods _hiriû shâîtû- senû_, who are on their sand. elsewhere in the same book we have a cynocephalus _upon its sand_, and the gods of the eighth hour are also mysterious gods who are on their sand. wherever these personages are represented in the vignettes, the egyptian artist has carefully drawn the ellipse painted in yellow and sprinkled with red, which is the conventional rendering of sand, and sandy districts. each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead god: at thinis there was the mummy and the tomb of anhuri, the mummy of osiris at mendes, the mummy of tûmû at heliopolis.[*] in some of the nomes the gods did not change their names in altering the mode of their existence: the deceased osiris remained osiris; nit and hâthor when dead were still nît and hâthor, at saïs and at denderah. but phtah of memphis became sokaris by dying; uapûaîtû, the jackal of siût, was changed into anubis;[**] and when his disk had disappeared at evening, anhûri, the sunlit sky of thinis, was khontamentît, lord of the west, until the following day. * the sepulchres of tûmû, khopri, râ, osiris, and in each of them the heap of sand hiding the body, are represented in the tomb of seti i., as also the four rams in which the souls of the god are incarnate. the tombs of the gods were known even in roman times. ** to my mind, at least, this is an obvious conclusion from the monuments of siût, in which the jackal god is called uapûaîtû, as the living god, lord of the city, and anûpû, master of embalming or of the oasis, lord of ra-qrirît, inasmuch as he is god of the dead. ra-qrirît, _the door of the stone_, was the name which the people of siût gave to their necropolis and to the infernal domain of their god. that bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted to the gods any more than to men. their bodies were nothing but inert larvae, "with unmoving heart,"[*] weak and shrivelled limbs, unable to stand upright were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed stiffened them into one rigid block. their hands and heads alone were free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh. * this is the characteristic epithet for the dead osiris, urdu mt, he whose heart is unmoving, he whose heart no longer beats, and who has therefore ceased to live. [illustration: .jpg phtah as a mummy. ] drawing by faucher-gudin of a bronze statuette of the saïte period, found in the department of hérault, at the end of a gallery in an ancient mine. their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light. all sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive, became pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb. when once men were bidden to the presence of sokaris, khontamentîfc, or even of osiris, "mortals come terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him in the face either among gods or men; for him the great are as the small. he spareth not those who love him; he beareth away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh on his way; full of fear, all creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face towards them." only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the consequences of his furious temper. the living paid him his dues in pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. he did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. when their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that these should first be offered and formally presented to himself; then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. he took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient. thus death made no change in the relative positions of the feudal god and his worshippers. the worshipper who called himself the _amakhû_ of the god during life was the subject and vassal of his mummied god even in the tomb;[*] and the god who, while living, reigned over the living, after his death continued to reign over the dead. * the word _amakhû_ is applied to an individual who has freely entered the service of king or baron, and taken him for his lord: _amakhû khir nibuf_ means _vassal of his lord_. in the same way, each chose for himself a god who became his patron, and to whom he owed _fealty_, i.e. to whom he was _amakhû_--vassal. to the god he owed the service of a good vassal--tribute, sacrifices, offerings; and to his vassal the god owed in return the service of a suzerain-- protection, food, reception into his dominions and access to his person. a man might be absolutely _nib amahkît_, master of fealty, or, relatively to a god, _amakhû khir osiri_, the vassal of osiris, _amakhû khir phtah-sokari_, the vassal of phtah-sokaris. he dwelt in the city near the prince and in the midst of his subjects: râ living in heliopolis along with the prince of heliopolis; haroêris in edfû together with the prince of edfû; nît in saïs with the prince of sais. although none of the primitive temples have come down to us, the name given to them in the language of the time, shows what they originally were. a temple was considered as the feudal mansion--hâît,--the house--_pirû, pi_,--of the god, better cared for, and more respected than the houses of men, but not otherwise differing from them. it was built on a site slightly raised above the level of the plain, so as to be safe from the inundation, and where there was no natural mound, the want was supplied by raising a rectangular platform of earth. a layer of sand spread uniformly on the sub-soil provided against settlements or infiltration, and formed a bed for the foundations of the building.[*] * this custom lasted into græco-roman times, and was part of the ritual for laying the foundations of a temple. after the king had dug out the soil on the ground where the temple was to stand, he spread over the spot sand mixed with pebbles and precious stones, and upon this he laid the first course of stone. this was first of all a single room, circumscribed, gloomy, covered in by a slightly vaulted roof, and having no opening but the doorway, which was framed by two tall masts, whence floated streamers to attract from afar the notice of worshippers; in front of its façade [*] was a court, fenced in with palisading. * no egyptian temples of the first period have come down to our time, but herr erman has very justly remarked that we have pictures of them in several of the signs denoting the word _temple_ in texts of the memphite period. [illustration: .jpg the sacred bull. ] a sculptor's model from tanis, now in the gîzeh museum, drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. the sacred marks, as given in the illustration, are copied from those of similar figures on stelæ of the serapeum. within the temple were pieces of matting, low tables of stone, wood, or metal, a few utensils for cooking the offerings, a few vessels for containing the blood, oil, wine, and water with which the god was every day regaled. as provisions for sacrifice increased, the number of chambers increased with them, and rooms for flowers, perfumes, stuffs, precious vessels, and food were grouped around the primitive abode; until that which had once constituted the whole temple became no more than its sanctuary. there the god dwelt, not only in spirit but in body,[*] and the fact that it was incumbent upon him to live in several cities did not prevent his being present in all of them at once. he could divide his double, imparting it to as many separate bodies as he pleased, and these bodies might be human or animal, natural objects or things manufactured--such as statues of stone, metal, or wood.[**] several of the gods were incarnate in rams: osiris at mendes, harshafitû at heracleopolis, khnûmû at elephantine. living rams were kept in their temples, and allowed to gratify any fancy that came into their animal brains. other gods entered into bulls: râ at heliopolis, and, subsequently, phtah at memphis, minû at thebes, and montû at hermonthis. they indicated beforehand by certain marks such beasts as they intended to animate by. their doubles, and he who had learnt to recognize these signs was at no loss to find a living god when the time came for seeking one and presenting it to the adoration of worshippers in the temple.[***] * thus at denderah, it is said that the soul of hâthor likes to leave heaven "in the form of a human-headed sparrow-hawk of lapis-lazuli, accompanied by her divine cycle, to come and unite herself to the statue." "other instances," adds mariette, "would seem to justify us in thinking that the egyptians accorded a certain kind of life to the statues and images which they made, and believed (especially in connection with tombs) that the spirit haunted images of itself." ** maspero, _Études de mythologie et l'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. p. , et seq.; _archéologie Égyptienne_, pp. , ; english edition, pp. , . this notion of actuated statues seemed so strange and so unworthy of the wisdom of the egyptians that egyptologists of the rank of m. de rougé have taken in an abstract and metaphorical sense expressions referring to the automatic movements of divine images. *** the bulls of râ and of phtah, the mnevis and the hapis, are known to us from classic writers. the bull of minû at thebes may be seen in the procession of the god as represented on monuments of ramses ii. and ramses iii. bâkhû (called bakis by the greeks), the bull of hermonthis, is somewhat rare, and mainly represented upon a few later stelæ in the gîzeh museum; it is chiefly known from the texts. the particular signs distinguishing each of these sacred animals have been determined both on the authority of ancient writers, and from examination of the figured monuments; the arrangement and outlines of some of the black markings of the hapis are clearly shown in the illustration on p. . and if the statues had not the same outward appearance of actual life as the animals, they none the less concealed beneath their rigid exteriors an intense energy of life which betrayed itself on occasion by gestures or by words. they thus indicated, in language which their servants could understand, the will of the gods, or their opinion on the events of the day; they answered questions put to them in accordance with prescribed forms, and sometimes they even foretold the future. [illustration: .jpg open-air offerings to the serpent. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken in the tomb of khopirkerîsonbû. the inscription behind the urseus states that it represents _banûît the august, lady of the double granary_. each temple held a fairly large number of statues representing so many embodiments of the local divinity and of the members of his triad. these latter shared, albeit in a lesser degree, all the honours and all the prerogatives of the master; they accepted sacrifices, answered prayers, and, if needful, they prophesied. they occupied either the sanctuary itself, or one of the halls built about the principal sanctuary, or one of the isolated chapels which belonged to them, subject to the suzerainty of the feudal god. the god has his divine court to help him in the administration of his dominions, just as a prince is aided by his ministers in the government of his realm. this state religion, so complex both in principle and in its outward manifestations, was nevertheless inadequate to express the exuberant piety of the populace. there were casual divinities in every nome whom the people did not love any the less because of their inofficial character; such as an exceptionally high palm tree in the midst of the desert, a rock of curious outline, a spring trickling drop by drop from the mountain to which hunters came to slake their thirst in the hottest hours of the day, or a great serpent believed to be immortal, which haunted a field, a grove of trees, a grotto, or a mountain ravine.[*] * it was a serpent of this kind which gave its name to the hill of shêikh harîdî, and the adjacent nome of the serpent mountain; and though the serpent has now turned mussulman, he still haunts the mountain and preserves his faculty of coming to life again every time that he is killed. the peasants of the district brought it bread, cakes, fruits, and thought that they could call down the blessing of heaven upon their fields by gorging the snake with offerings. everywhere on the confines of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand. [illustration: .jpg the peasant's offering to the sycamore. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a scene in the tomb of khopirkerîsonbû. the sacred sycamore here stands at the end of a field of corn, and would seem to extend its protection to the harvest. their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding fawn-coloured landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun even in summer. but, on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon find that they drink from water which has infiltrated from the nile, and whose existence is in nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. they stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them suspects it. egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually worshipped them,[**] making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and charitable people. ** maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. -- . they were represented as animated by spirits concealed within them, but which could manifest themselves on occasion. at such times the head or whole body of the spirit of a tree would emerge from its trunk, and when it returned to its hiding-place the trunk reabsorbed it, or _ate_ it again, according to the egyptian expression, which i have already had occasion to quote above; see p. , note . passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with a short prayer. there were several such trees in the memphite nome, and in the letopolite nome from dashûr to gîzeh, inhabited, as every one knew, by detached doubles of nûît and hâthor. these combined districts were known as the "land of the sycamore," a name afterwards extended to the city of memphis; and their sacred trees are worshipped at the present day both by mussulman and christian fellahîn.[*] * the tree at matarîeh, commonly called the _tree of the virgin_, seems to me to be the successor of a sacred tree of heliopolis in which a goddess, perhaps hâthor, was worshipped. the most famous among them all, the sycamore of the south--_nûhît rîsit_--was regarded as the living body of hâthor on earth. side by side with its human gods and prophetic statues, each nome proudly advanced one or more sacred animals, one or more magic trees. each family, and almost every individual, also possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or an object; by a dream, or by sudden intuition. they had a place in some corner of the house, or a niche in its walls; lamps were continually kept burning before them, and small daily offerings were made to them, over and above what fell to their share on solemn feast-days. in return, they became the protectors of the household, its guardians and its counsellors. appeal was made to them in every exigency of daily life, and their decisions were no less scrupulously carried out by their little circle of worshippers, than was the will of the feudal god by the inhabitants of his principality. [illustration: .jpg the sacrifice of the bull.--the officiating priest lassoing the victim. ] bas-relief from the temple of seti i. at abydos; drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. daniel héron. seti i., second king of the xixth dynasty, is throwing the lasso; his son, ramses ii., who is still the crown prince, holds the bull by the tail to prevent its escaping from the slipknot. the prince was the great high priest. the whole religion of the nome rested upon him, and originally he himself performed its ceremonies. of these, the chief was sacrifice,--that is to say, a banquet which it was his duty to prepare and lay before the god with his own hands. he went out into the fields to lasso the half-wild bull; bound it, cut its throat, skinned it, burnt part of the carcase in front of his idol and distributed the rest among his assistants, together with plenty of cakes, fruits, vegetables, and wine.[*] on the occasion, the god was present both in body and double, suffering himself to be clothed and perfumed, eating and drinking of the best that was set on the table before him, and putting aside some of the provisions for future use. this was the time to prefer requests to him, while he was gladdened and disposed to benevolence by good cheer. he was not without suspicion as to the reason why he was so feasted, but he had laid down his conditions beforehand, and if they were faithfully observed he willingly yielded to the means of seduction brought to bear upon him. moreover, he himself had arranged the ceremonial in a kind of contract formerly made with his worshippers and gradually perfected from age to age by the piety of new generations.[**] above all things, he insisted on physical cleanliness. the officiating priest must carefully wash--_ûâbû_--his face, mouth, hands, and body; and so necessary was this preliminary purification considered, that from it the professional priest derived his name of _ûîbû_, the washed, the clean.[***] * this appears from the sacrificial ritual employed in the temples up to the last days of egyptian paganism; cf., for instance, the illustration on p. , where the king is represented as lassoing the bull. that which in historic times was but an image, had originally been a reality. ** the most striking example of the divine institution of religious services is furnished by the inscription relating the history of the destruction of men in the reign of râ, where the god, as he is about to make his final ascension into heaven, substitutes animal for human sacrifices. *** the idea of physical cleanliness comes out in such variants as _ûîbû totûi_, "clean of both hands," found on stelae instead of the simple title _ûîbû_. we also know, on the evidence of ancient writers, the scrupulous daily care which egyptian priests took of their bodies. it was only as a secondary matter that the idea of moral purity entered into the conception of a priest. his costume was the archaic dress, modified according to circumstances. during certain services, or at certain points in the sacrifices, it was incumbent upon him to wear sandals, the panther-skin over his shoulder, and the thick lock of hair falling over his right ear; at other times he must gird himself with the loin-cloth having a jackal's tail, and take the shoes from off his feet before proceeding with his office, or attach a false beard to his chin. the species, hair, and age of the victim, the way in which it was to be brought and bound, the manner and details of its slaughter, the order to be followed in opening its body and cutting it up, were all minutely and unchangeably decreed. and these were but the least of the divine exactions, and those most easily satisfied. the formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained a certain number of words whose due sequence and harmonies might not suffer the slightest modification whatever, even from the god himself, under penalty of losing their efficacy.[*] * the purification ritual for officiating priests is contained in a papyrus of the berlin museum, whose analysis and table of chapters has been published by herr oscar von lemm, _das bitualbuch des ammonsdienstes_, p. , et seq. they were always recited with the same rhythm, according to a system of chaunting in which every tone had its virtue, combined with movements which confirmed the sense and worked with irresistible effect: one false note, a single discord between the succession of gestures and the utterance of the sacramental words, any hesitation, any awkwardness in the accomplishment of a rite, and the sacrifice was vain. worship as thus conceived became a legal transaction, in the course of which the god gave up his liberty in exchange for certain compensations whose kind and value were fixed by law. by a solemn deed of transfer the worshipper handed over to the legal representatives of the contracting divinity such personal or real property as seemed to him fitting payment for the favour which he asked, or suitable atonement for the wrong which he had done. if man scrupulously observed the innumerable conditions with which the transfer was surrounded, the god could not escape the obligation of fulfilling his petition;[*] but should he omit the least of them, the offering remained with the temple and went to increase the endowments in mortmain, while the god was pledged to nothing in exchange. * this obligation is evident from texts where, as in the poem of pentaûirît, a king who is in danger demands from his favourite god the equivalent in protection of the sacrifices which he has offered to that divinity, and the gifts wherewith he has enriched him. "have i not made unto thee many offerings?" says ramses ii. to amon. "i have filled thy temple with my prisoners, i have built thee a mansion for millions of years.... ah if evil is the lot of them who insult thee, good are thy purposes towards those who honour thee, o amon!" hence the officiating priest assumed a formidable responsibility as regarded his fellows: a slip of memory, the slightest accidental impurity, made him a bad priest, injurious to himself and harmful to those worshippers who had entrusted him with their interests before the gods. since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established of associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities whose sum constituted the local religion. each temple had its service of priests, independent of those belonging to neighbouring temples, whose members, bound to keep their hands always clean and their voices true, were ranked according to the degrees of a learned hierarchy. at their head was a sovereign pontiff to direct them in the exercise of their functions. in some places he was called the first prophet, or rather the first servant of the god--_hon-nûtir topi_; at thebes he was the first prophet of amon, at thinis he was the first prophet of anhûri.[*] * this title of _first prophet_ belongs to priests of the less important towns, and to secondary divinities. if we find it employed in connection with the theban worship, it is because amon was originally a provincial god, and only rose into the first rank with the rise of thebes and the great conquests of the xviiith and xixth dynasties. but generally he bore a title appropriate to the nature of the god whose servant he was. the chief priest of râ at heliopolis, and in all the cities which adopted the heliopolitan form of worship, was called _oîrû maû_, the master of visions, and he alone besides the sovereign of the nome, or of egypt, enjoyed the privilege of penetrating into the sanctuary, of "entering into heaven and there beholding the god" face to face. in the same way, the high priest of anhûri at sebennytos was entitled the wise and pure warrior--_ahûîti saû uîbu_--because his god went armed with a pike, and a soldier god required for his service a pontiff who should be a soldier like himself. these great personages did not always strictly seclude themselves within the limits of the religious domain. the gods accepted, and even sometimes solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards, orchards, slaves, and fishponds, the produce of which assured their livelihood and the support of their temples. there was no egyptian who did not cherish the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron god of his city, "for a monument to himself," and as an endowment for the priests to institute prayers and perpetual sacrifices on his behalf.[*] in course of time these accumulated gifts at length formed real sacred fiefs--_hotpû-nûtir_--analogous to the _wakfs_ of mussulman egypt.[**] they were administered by the high priest, who, if necessary, defended them by force against the greed of princes or kings. two, three, or even four classes of prophets or _heiroduli_ under his orders assisted him in performing the offices of worship, in giving religious instruction, and in the conduct of affairs. women did not hold equal rank with men in the temples of male deities; they there formed a kind of harem whence the god took his mystic spouses, his concubines, his maidservants, the female musicians and dancing women whose duty it was to divert him and to enliven his feasts. but in temples of goddesses they held the chief rank, and were called _hierodules_, or priestesses, _hierodules_ of nit, _hierodules_ of hâthor, _hierodules_ of pakhît.[***] * as regards the saïte period, we are beginning to accumulate many stelae recording gifts to a god of land or houses, made either by the king or by private individuals. ** we know from the _great harris papyrus_ to what the fortune of amon amounted at the end of the reign of ramses iii.; its details may be found in brugsch, _die Ægyptologie_, pp. - . cf. in naville, _bubastis, eighth memoir of the egyptian exploration fund_, p. , a calculation as to the quantities of precious metals belonging to one of the least of the temples of bubastis; its gold and silver were counted by thousands of pounds. *** mariette remarks that priests play but a subordinate part in the temple of hâthor. this fact, which surprised him, is adequately explained by remembering that hâthor being a goddess, women take precedence over men in a temple dedicated to her. at sais, the chief priest was a man, the tcharp-haîtû; but the persistence with which women of the highest rank, and even queens themselves, took the title of prophetess of nit from the times of the ancient empire shows that in this city the priestess of the goddess was of equal, if not superior, rank to the priest. the lower offices in the households of the gods, as in princely households, were held by a troop of servants and artisans: butchers to cut the throats of the victims, cooks and pastrycooks, confectioners, weavers, shoemakers, florists, cellarers, water-carriers and milk-carriers. in fact, it was a state within a state, and the prince took care to keep its government in his own hands, either by investing one of his children with the titles and functions of chief pontiff', or by arrogating them to himself. in that case, he provided against mistakes which would have annulled the sacrifice by associating with himself several masters of the ceremonies, who directed him in the orthodox evolutions before the god and about the victim, indicated the due order of gestures and the necessary changes of costume, and prompted him with the words of each invocation from a book or tablet which they held in their hands.[*] * the title of such a personage was _khri-habi_, the man with the roll or tablet, because of the papyrus roll, or wooden tablet containing the ritual, which he held in his hand. in addition to its rites and special hierarchy, each of the sacerdotal colleges thus constituted had a theology in accordance with the nature and attributes of its god. its fundamental dogma affirmed the unity of the nome god, his greatness, his supremacy over all the gods of egypt and of foreign lands[*]--whose existence was nevertheless admitted, and none dreamed of denying their reality or contesting their power. * in the inscriptions all local gods bear the titles of _nûtir ûâ_, only god; sûton nûtirû, sûntirû, [ greek word], king of the gods; of _nûtir âa nib pit_, the great god, lord of heaven, which show their pretensions to the sovereignty and to the position of creator of the universe. the latter also boasted of their unity, their greatness, their supremacy; but whatever they were, the god of the nome was master of them all--their prince, their ruler, their king. it was he alone who governed the world, he alone kept it in good order, he alone had created it. not that he had evoked it out of nothing; there was as yet no concept of nothingness, and even to the most subtle and refined of primitive theologians creation was only a bringing of pre-existent elements into play. [illustration: .jpg shu uplifting the sky. ] drawing by faucher-gudin of a green enamelled statuette in my possession. it was from shu that the greeks derived their representations, and perhaps their myth of atlas. the latent germs of things had always existed, but they had slept for ages and ages in the bosom of the nû, of the dark waters. in fulness of time the god of each nome drew them forth, classified them, marshalled them according to the bent of his particular nature, and made his universe out of them by methods peculiarly his own. nît of saïs, who was a weaver, had made the world of warp and woof, as the mother of a family weaves her children's linen. khnûmû, the nile-god of the cataracts, had gathered up the mud of his waters and therewith moulded his creatures upon a potter's table. in the eastern cities of the delta these procedures were not so simple. there it was admitted that in the beginning earth and sky were two lovers lost in the nû, fast locked in each other's embrace, the god lying beneath the goddess. on the day of creation a new god, shu, came forth from the primaeval waters, slipped between the two, and seizing nûît with both hands, lifted her above his head with outstretched arms.[*] * this was what the egyptians called _the upliftings of shû_. the event first took place at hermopolis, and certain legends added that in order to get high enough the god had been obliged to make use of a staircase or mound situate in this city, and which was famous throughout egypt. though the starry body of the goddess extended in space--her head being to the west and her loins to the east--her feet and hands hung down to the earth. these were the four pillars of the firmament under another form, and four gods of four adjacent principalities were in charge of them. osiris, or horus the sparrow-hawk, presided over the southern, and sit over the northern pillar; thot over that of the west, and sapdi, the author of the zodiacal light, over that of the east. they had divided the world among themselves into four regions, or rather into four "houses," bounded by those mountains which surround it, and by the diameters intersecting between the pillars. each of these houses belonged to one, and to one only; none of the other three, nor even the sun himself, might enter it, dwell there, or even pass through it without having obtained its master's permission. sibu had not been satisfied to meet the irruption of shû by mere passive resistance. he had tried to struggle, and he is drawn in the posture of a man who has just awakened out of sleep, and is half turning on his couch before getting up. one of his legs is stretched out, the other is bent and partly drawn up as in the act of rising. the lower part of the body is still unmoved, but he is raising himself with difficulty on his left elbow, while his head droops and his right arm is lifted towards the sky. his effort was suddenly arrested. rendered powerless by a stroke of the creator, sibû remained as if petrified in this position, the obvious irregularities of the earth's surface being due to the painful attitude in which he was stricken. his sides have since been clothed with verdure, generations of men and animals have succeeded each other upon his back, but without bringing any relief to his pain; he suffers evermore from the violent separation of which he was the victim when nûît was torn from him, and his complaint continues to rise to heaven night and day. [illustration: .jpg shÛ forcibly separating sibÛ and nÛÎt. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting on the mummy-case of bûtehamon in the turin museum. "shû, the great god, lord of heaven," receives the adoration of two ram-headed souls placed upon his right and left. [illustration: .jpg the didÛ of osiris. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a specimen in blue enamelled pottery, now in my possession. [illustration: b.jpg the didÛ dressed. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a figure frequently found in theban mummy-cases of xxist and xxiind dynasties (wilkinson, _manners and customs_. nd edit., vol. iii. pl. xxv., no ). the aspect of the inundated plains of the delta, of the river by which they are furrowed and fertilized, and of the desert sands by which they are threatened, had suggested to the theologians of mendes and bûto an explanation of the mystery of creation, in which the feudal divinities of these cities and of several others in their neighbourhood, osiris, sit, and isis, played the principal parts. osiris first represented the wild and fickle nile of primitive times; afterwards, as those who dwelt upon his banks learned to regulate his course, they emphasized the kindlier side of his character and soon transformed him into a benefactor of humanity, the supremely good being, Ûnnofriû, onnophris.[*] he was lord of the principality of didû, which lay along the sebennytic branch of the river between the coast marshes and the entrance to the wâdy tûmilât, but his domain had been divided; and the two nomes thus formed, namely, the ninth and sixteenth nomes of the delta in the pharaonic lists, remained faithful to him, and here he reigned without rival, at busiris as at mendes. his most famous idol-form was the didû, whether naked or clothed, the fetish, formed of four superimposed columns, which had given its name to the principality.[**] * it has long been a dogma with egyptologists that osiris came from abydos. maspero has shown that from his very titles he is obviously a native of the delta, and more especially of busiris and mendes. ** the didû has been very variously interpreted. it has been taken for a kind of nilometer, for a sculptor's or modeller's stand, or a painter's easel for an altar with four superimposed tables, or a sort of pedestal bearing four door-lintels, for a series of four columns placed one behind another, of which the capitals only are visible, one above the other, etc. the explanation given in the text is that of reuvens, who recognized the didû as a symbolic representation of the four regions of the world; and of maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. , note . according to egyptian theologians, it represented the spine of osiris, preserved as a relic in the town bearing the name of _didû, bidît_. [illustration: .jpg osiris-onnophris, whip and crook in hand. ] drawn by boudier from a statue in green basalt found at sakkarah, and now in the gîzeh museum. they ascribed life to this didû, and represented it with a somewhat grotesque face, big cheeks, thick lips, a necklace round its throat, a long flowing dress which hid the base of the columns beneath its folds, and two arms bent across the breast, the hands grasping one a whip and the other a crook, symbols of sovereign authority. this, perhaps, was the most ancient form of osiris; but they also represented him as a man, and supposed him to assume the shapes of rams and bulls,[*] or even those of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes, which disported themselves about the lakes of that district.[**] * the ram of mendes is sometimes osiris, and sometimes the soul of osiris. the ancients took it for a he-goat, and to them we are indebted for the record of its exploits. according to manetho, the worship of the sacred ram is not older than the time of king kaiekhos of the second dynasty. a ptolemaic necropolis of sacred rams was discovered by mariette at tmai el-amdid, in the ruins of thmûis, and some of their sarcophagi are now in the gîzeh museum. ** the bonû, the chief among these birds, is not the phoenix, as has so often been asserted. it is a kind of heron, either the _ardea cinerea_, which is common in egypt, or else some similar species. the goddess whom we are accustomed to regard as inseparable from him, isis the cow, or woman with cow's horns, had not always belonged to him. originally she was an independent deity, dwelling at bûto in the midst of the ponds of adhû. she had neither husband nor lover, but had spontaneously conceived and given birth to a son, whom she suckled among the reeds--a lesser horus who was called harsiîsît, horus the son of isis, to distinguish him from haroêris. at an early period she was married to her neighbour osiris, and no marriage could have been better suited to her nature. for she personified the earth--not the earth in general, like sibu, with its unequal distribution of seas and mountains, deserts and cultivated land; but the black and luxuriant plain of the delta, where races of men, plants, and animals increase and multiply in ever-succeeding generations. to whom did she owe this inexhaustible productive energy if not to her neighbour osiris, to the nile? the nile rises, overflows, lingers upon the soil; every year it is wedded to the earth, and the earth comes forth green and fruitful from its embraces. [illustration: .jpg isis, wearing the cow-horn head-dress. ] drawn by boudier from a green basalt statue in the gîzeh museum. prom a photograph by Émil brugsch-bey. the marriage of the two elements suggested that of the two divinities; osiris wedded isis and adopted the young horus. but this prolific and gentle pair were not representative of all the phenomena of nature. the eastern part of the delta borders upon the solitudes of arabia, and although it contains several rich and fertile provinces, yet most of these owe their existence to the arduous labour of the inhabitants, their fertility being dependent on the daily care of man, and on his regular distribution of the water. the moment he suspends the straggle or relaxes his watchfulness, the desert reclaims them and overwhelms them with sterility. sit was the spirit of the mountain, stone and sand, the red and arid ground as distinguished from the moist black soil of the valley. on the body of a lion or of a dog he bore a fantastic head with a slender curved snout, upright and square-cut ears; his cloven tail rose stiffly behind him, springing from his loins like a fork. he also assumed a human form, or retained the animal head only upon a man's shoulders. he was felt to be cruel and treacherous, always ready to shrivel up the harvest with his burning breath, and to smother egypt beneath a shroud of shifting sand. the contrast between this evil being and the beneficent couple, osiris and isis, was striking. nevertheless, the theologians of the delta soon assigned a common origin to these rival divinities of nile and desert, red land and black. sibû had begotten them, nûît had given birth to them one after another when the demiurge had separated her from her husband; and the days of their birth were the days of creation.[*] * according to one legend which is comparatively old in origin, the fous* children of nûît, and horus her grandson, were born one after another, each on one of the intercalary days of the year. this legend was still current in the greek period. at first each of them had kept to his own half of the world. moreover sit, who had begun by living alone, had married, in order that he might be inferior to osiris in nothing. [illustration: .jpg nephthys, as a wailing woman. and the god sÎt, fighting. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a painted wooden statuette in my possession, from a funeral couch found at akhmîm. on her head the goddess bears the hieroglyph for her name; she is kneeling at the foot of the funeral couch of osiris and weeps for the dead god. bronze statuette of the xxth dynasty, encrusted with gold, from the hoffmann collection: drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph taken by legrain in . about the time when the worship of sît was proscribed, one of the egyptian owners of this little monument had endeavoured to alter its character, and to transform it into a statuette of the god khnûmû. he took out the upright ears, replacing them with ram's horns, but made no other change. in the drawing i have had the later addition of the curved horns removed, and restored the upright ears, whose marks may still be seen upon the sides of the head-dress. as a matter of fact, his companion, nephthys, did not manifest any great activity, and was scarcely more than an artificial counterpart of the wife of osiris, a second isis who bore no children to her husband;[*] for the sterile desert brought barrenness to her as to all that it touched. * the impersonal character of nephthys, her artificial origin, and her derivation from isis, have been pointed out by maspero (_Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. - ). the very name of the goddess, which means _the lady (nibît)_ of the_ mansion (haït)_, confirms this view. [illustration: .jpg plan of the ruins of heliopolis. ] drawn by thuillier, from the _description de l'egypte_ (atlas, ant., vol. v. pl. , ). yet she had lost neither the wish nor the power to bring forth, and sought fertilization from another source. tradition had it that she had made osiris drunken, drawn him to her arms without his knowledge, and borne him a son; the child of this furtive union was the jackal anubis. thus when a higher nile overflows lands not usually covered by the inundation, and lying unproductive for lack of moisture, the soil eagerly absorbs the water, and the germs which lay concealed in the ground burst forth into life. the gradual invasion of the domain of sît by osiris marks the beginning of the strife. sit rebels against the wrong of which he is the victim, involuntary though it was; he surprises and treacherously slays his brother, drives isis into temporary banishment among her marshes, and reigns over the kingdom of osiris as well as over his own. but his triumph is short-lived. horus, having grown up, takes arms against him, defeats him in many encounters, and banishes him in his turn. the creation of the world had brought the destroying and the life-sustaining gods face to face: the history of the world is but the story of their rivalries and warfare. none of these conceptions alone sufficed to explain the whole mechanism of creation, nor the part which the various gods took in it. the priests of heliopolis appropriated them all, modified some of their details and eliminated others, added several new personages, and thus finally constructed a complete cosmogony, the elements of which were learnedly combined so as to correspond severally with the different operations by which the world had been evoked out of chaos and gradually brought to its present state. heliopolis was never directly involved in the great revolutions of political history; but no city ever originated so many mystic ideas and consequently exercised so great an influence upon the development of civilization.[*] * by its inhabitants it was accounted older than any other city of egypt. [illustration: .jpg horus, the avenger of his father, and anubis ÛapÔaÎtÛ. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by béato of a bas-relief in the temple of seti i. at abydos. the two gods are conducting king ramses ii., here identified with osiris, towards the goddess hâthor. it was a small town built on the plain not far from the nile at the apex of the delta, and surrounded by a high wall of mud bricks whose remains could still be seen at the beginning of the century, but which have now almost completely disappeared. [illustration: .jpg the sun springing from an opening lotus-flower] drawn by faucher-gudin. the open lotus-flower, with a bud on either side, stands upon the usual sign for any water- basin. here the sign represents the nû, that dark watery abyss from which the lotus sprang on the morning of creation, and whereon it is still supposed to bloom. one obelisk standing in the midst of the open plain, a few waste mounds of débris, scattered blocks, and two or three lengths of crumbling wall, alone mark the place where once the city stood. ka was worshipped there, and the greek name of heliopolis is but the translation of that which was given to it by the priests--pi-ra, city of the sun. its principal temple, the "mansion of the prince," rose from about the middle of the enclosure, and sheltered, together with the god himself, those animals in which he became incarnate: the bull mnevis, and sometimes the phoenix. according to an old legend, this wondrous bird appeared in egypt only once in five hundred years. it is born and lives in the depths of arabia, but when its father dies it covers the body with a layer of myrrh, and flies at utmost speed to the temple of helio-polis, there to bury it.[*] * the phoenix is not the _bonû_ (cf. p. , note ), but a fabulous bird derived from the golden sparrow-hawk, which was primarily a form of haroêris, and of the sun-gods in second place only. on the authority of his heliopolitan guides, herodotus tells us (ii. ) that in shape and size the phoenix resembled the eagle, and this statement alone should have sufficed to prevent any attempt at identifying it with the bonû, which is either a heron or a lapwing. [illustration: .jpg the plain and mounds of heliopolis fifty years ago. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a water-colour published by lepsius, _denkm_., i. . the view is taken from the midst of the ruins at the foot of the obelisk of usirtasen. a little stream runs in the foreground, and passes through a muddy pool; to right and left are mounds of ruins, which were then considerable, but have since been partially razed. in the distance cairo rises against the south-west. in the beginning, râ was the sun itself, whose fires appear to be lighted every morning in the east and to be extinguished at evening in the west; and to the people such he always remained. among the theologians there was considerable difference of opinion on the point. some held the disk of the sun to be the body which the god assumes when presenting himself for the adoration of his worshippers. others affirmed that it rather represented his active and radiant soul. finally, there were many who defined it as one of his forms of being--_khopriû_--one of his self-manifestations, without presuming to decide whether it was his body or his soul which he deigned to reveal to human eyes; but whether soul or body, all agreed that the sun's disk had existed in the nû before creation. but how could it have lain beneath the primordial ocean without either drying up the waters or being extinguished by them? at this stage the identification of râ with horus and his right eye served the purpose of the theologians admirably: the god needed only to have closed his eyelid in order to prevent his fires from coming in contact with the water.[*] * this is clearly implied in the expression so often used by the sacred writers of ancient egypt in reference to the appearance of the sun and his first act at the time of creation: "_thou openest the two eyes_, and earth is flooded with rays of light." he was also said to have shut up his disk within a lotus-bud, whose folded petals had safely protected it. the flower had opened on the morning of the first day, and from it the god had sprung suddenly as a child wearing the solar disk upon his head. but all theories led the theologians to distinguish two periods, and as it were two beings in the existence of supreme deity: a pre-mundane sun lying inert within the bosom of the dark waters, and our living and life-giving sun. [illustration: .jpg hakmakhÛÎti-hakmakhis, the great god. ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger of an outer wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak. harmakhis grants years and festivals to the pharaoh seti i., who kneels before him, and is presented by the lioness-headed goddess sokhît, here described as a magician--_oîrît hilcaû_. one division of the heliopolitan school retained the use of traditional terms and images in reference to these sun-gods. to the first it left the human form, and the title of râ, with the abstract sense of creator, deriving the name from the verb _râ_, which means to give. for the second it kept the form of the sparrow-hawk and the name of harma-khûîti--horus in the two horizons--which clearly denoted his function;[*] and it summed up the idea of the sun as a whole in the single name of râ-harmakhûîti, and in a single image in which the hawk-head of horus was grafted upon the human body of râ. the other divisions of the school invented new names for new conceptions. the sun existing before the world they called creator--_tûmû, atûmû_ [**]--and our earthly sun they called _khopri_--he who is. * harmakhûîti is horus, the sky of the two horizons; _i.e._ the sky of the daytime, and the night sky. when the celestial horus was confounded with râ, and became the sun (cf. p. ), he naturally also became the sun of the two horizons, the sun by day, and the sun by night. ** e. de rouge, _Études sur le rituel funéraire_, p. : "his name may be connected with two radicals. tem is a negation; it may be taken to mean _the inapproachable one, the unknown_ (as in thebes, where _aman_ means mystery). atûm is, in fact, described as 'existing alone in the abyss,' before the appearance of light. it was in this time of darkness that atûm performed the first act of creation, and this allows of our also connecting his name with the coptic tamio, _creare_. atûm was also the prototype of man (in coptic tme, _homo_), and becomes a perfect 'tûm' after his resurrection." rugsch would rather explain _tûmû_ as meaning _the perfect one, the complete_. e. de rougé's philological derivations are no longer admissible; but his explanation of the name corresponds so well with the part played by the god that i fail to see how that can be challenged. tûmû was a man crowned and clothed with the insignia of supreme power, a true king of gods, majestic and impassive as the pharaohs who succeeded each other upon the throne of egypt. the conception of khopri as a disk enclosing a scarabæus, or a man with a scarabous upon his head, or a scarabus-headed mummy, was suggested by the accidental alliteration of his name and that of khopirrû, the scarabæus. the difference between the possible forms of the god was so slight as to be eventually lost altogether. his names were grouped by twos and threes in every conceivable way, and the scarabæus of khopri took its place upon the head of râ, while the hawk headpiece was transferred from the shoulders of harmakhûîti to those of tûmû. the complex beings resulting from these combinations, râ-tûmû, atûmû-râ, râ-tûmû-khopri, râ-harmakhûîti-tûmû, tûm-harmakhûîti-khopri, never attained to any pronounced individuality. [illustration: .jpg khopri, in his bark] they were as a rule simple duplicates of the feudal god, names rather than persons, and though hardly taken for one another indiscriminately, the distinctions between them had reference to mere details of their functions and attributes. hence arose the idea of making these gods into embodiments of the main phases in the life of the sun during the day and throughout the year. râ symbolized the sun of springtime and before sunrise, harmakhûîti the summer and the morning sun, atûmû the sun of autumn and of afternoon, khopri that of winter and of night. the people of heliopolis accepted the new names and the new forms presented for their worship, but always subordinated them to their beloved râ. for them râ never ceased to be the god of the nome; while atûmû remained the god of the theologians, and was invoked by them, the people preferred râ. at thinis and at sebennytos anhûri incurred the same fate as befell râ at heliopolis. after he had been identified with the sun, the similar identification of shû inevitably followed. of old, anhûri and shû were twin gods, incarnations of sky and earth. they were soon but one god in two persons--the god anhûri-shû, of which the one half under the title of auhûri represented, like atûmû, the primordial being; and shû, the other half, became, as his name indicates, the creative sun-god who upholds (_shû_) the sky. tûrnû then, rather than râ, was placed by the heliopolitan priests at the head of their cosmogony as supreme creator and governor. several versions were current as to how he had passed from inertia into action, from the personage of tûmû into that of râ. according to the version most widely received, he had suddenly cried across the waters, "come unto me!"[*] and immediately the mysterious lotus had unfolded its petals, and râ had appeared at the edge of its open cup as a disk, a newborn child, or a disk-crowned sparrow-hawk; this was probably a refined form of a ruder and earlier tradition, according to which it was upon râ himself that the office had devolved of separating sibû from nûît, for the purpose of constructing the heavens and the earth. * it was on this account that the egyptians named the first day of the year the _day of come-unto-me!_ but it was doubtless felt that so unseemly an act of intervention was beneath the dignity even of an inferior form of the suzerain god; shû was therefore borrowed for the purpose from the kindred cult of anhûri, and at heliopolis, as at sebennytos, the office was entrusted to him of seizing the sky-goddess and raising her with outstretched arms. the violence suffered by nûît at the hands of shû led to a connexion of the osirian dogma of mendes with the solar dogma of sebennytos, and thus the tradition describing the creation of the world was completed by another, explaining its division into deserts and fertile lands. sîbû, hitherto concealed beneath the body of his wife, was now exposed to the sun; osiris and sit, isis and nephthys, were born, and, falling from the sky, their mother, on to the earth, their father, they shared the surface of the latter among themselves. thus the heliopolitan doctrine recognized three principal events in the creation of the universe: the dualization of the supreme god and the breaking forth of light, the raising of the sky and the laying bare of the earth, the birth of the nile and the allotment of the soil of egypt, all expressed as the manifestations of successive deities. of these deities, the latter ones already constituted a family of father, mother, and children, like human families. learned theologians availed themselves of this example to effect analogous relationships between the rest of the gods, combining them all into one line of descent. as atûmû-râ could have no fellow, he stood apart in the first rank, and it was decided that shû should be his son, whom he had formed out of himself alone, on the first day of creation, by the simple intensity of his own virile energy. shû, reduced to the position of divine son, had in his turn begotten sibû and nûît, the two deities which he separated. until then he had not been supposed to have any wife, and he also might have himself brought his own progeny into being; but lest a power of spontaneous generation equal to that of the demiurge should be ascribed to him, he was married, and the wife found for him was tafnûît, his twin sister, born in the same way as he was born. this goddess, invented for the occasion, was never fully alive, and remained, like nephthys, a theological entity rather than a real person. the texts describe her as the pale reflex of her husband. [illustration: .jpg the twin lions, shÛ and tafnÛÎt. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a vignette in the papyrus of ani in the british museum, published by lepage-renouf in the _proceedings of the society of biblical archæology_, vol. xi., - , pp. - . the inscription above the lion on the right reads _safu_, "yesterday;" the other, _dûaû_, "this morning." together with him she upholds the sky, and every morning receives the newborn sun as it emerges from the mountain of the east; she is a lioness when shû is a lion, a woman when he is a man, a lioness-headed woman if he is a lion-headed man; she is angry when he is angry, appeased when he is appeased; she has no sanctuary wherein he is not worshipped. in short, the pair made one being in two bodies, or, to use the egyptian expression, "one soul in its two twin bodies." hence we see that the heliopolitans proclaimed the creation to be the work of the sun-god, atûmû-râ, and of the four pairs of deities who were descended from him. it was really a learned variant of the old doctrine that the universe was composed of a sky-god, horus, supported by his four children and their four pillars: in fact, the four sons of the heliopolitan cosmogony, shû and sibû, osiris and sit, were occasionally substituted for the four older gods of the "houses" of the world. this being premised, attention must be given to the important differences between the two systems. at the outset, instead of appearing contemporaneously upon the scene, like the four children of horus, the four heliopolitan gods were deduced one from another, and succeeded each other in the order of their birth. they had not that uniform attribute of supporter, associating them always with one definite function, but each of them felt himself endowed with faculties and armed with special powers required by his condition. ultimately they took to themselves goddesses, and thus the total number of beings working in different ways at the organization of the universe was brought up to nine. hence they were called by the collective name of the ennead, the nine gods--_paûit nûtîrû_,[*]--and the god at their head was entitled _paûîti_, the god of the ennead. * the first egyptologists confounded the sign used in writing _paûît_ with the sign _kh_, and the word _khet, other_. e. de rougé was the first to determine its phonetic value: "it should be read paû, and designates a body of gods." shortly afterwards beugsch proved that "the group of gods invoked by e. de rougé must have consisted of nine "-- of an ennead. this explanation was not at first admitted either by lepsius or by mariette, who had proposed a mystic interpretation of the word in his _mémoire sur la mère d'apis_, or by e. de rougé, or by chabas. the interpretation a _nine_, an _ennead_, was not frankly adopted until later, and more especially after the discovery of the pyramid texts; to-day, it is the only meaning admitted. of course the egyptian ennead has no other connection than that of name with the enneads of the neo-platonists. when creation was completed, its continued existence was ensured by countless agencies with whose operation the persons of the ennead were not at leisure to concern themselves, but had ordained auxiliaries to preside over each of the functions essential to the regular and continued working of all things. the theologians of heliopolis selected eighteen from among the innumerable divinities of the feudal cults of egypt, and of these they formed two secondary enneads, who were regarded as the offspring of the ennead of the creation. the first of the two secondary enneads, generally known as the minor ennead, recognized as chief harsiesis, the son of osiris. harsiesis was originally an earth-god who had avenged the assassination of his father and the banishment of his mother by sit; that is, he had restored fulness to the nile and fertility to the delta. when harsiesis was incorporated into the solar religions of heliopolis, his filiation was left undisturbed as being a natural link between the two enneads, but his personality was brought into conformity with the new surroundings into which he was transplanted. he was identified with râ through the intervention of the older horus, haroêris-harmakhis, and the minor ennead, like the great ennead, began with a sun-god. this assimilation was not pushed so far as to invest the younger horus with the same powers as his fictitious ancestor: he was the sun of earth, the everyday sun, while atûmû-râ was still the sun pre-mundane and eternal. our knowledge of the eight other deities of the minor ennead is very imperfect. [illustration: .jpg the four funerary genii, khabsonÛf, tiÛmaÛtf, hapi, and amsÎt. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from wilkinson's _manners and customs_, nd edit., vol. iii. p. , pl. xlviii. we see only that these were the gods who chiefly protected the sun-god against its enemies and helped it to follow its regular course. thus harhûditi, the horus of edfû, spear in hand, pursues the hippopotami or serpents which haunt the celestial waters and menace the god. the progress of the sun-bark is controlled by the incantations of thot, while uapûaîtû, the dual jackal-god of siufc, guides, and occasionally tows it along the sky from south to north. the third ennead would seem to have included among its members anubis the jackal, and the four funerary genii, the children of horus--hapi, amsît, tiûmaûtf, kabhsonûf; it further appears as though its office was the care and defence of the dead sun, the sun by night, as the second ennead had charge of the living sun. its functions were so obscure and apparently so insignificant as compared with those exercised by the other enneads, that the theologians did not take the trouble either to represent it or to enumerate its persons. they invoked it as a whole, after the two others, in those formulas in which they called into play all the creative and preservative forces of the universe; but this was rather as a matter of conscience and from love of precision than out of any true deference. at the initial impulse of the lord of heliopolis, the three combined enneads started the world and kept it going, and gods whom they had not incorporated were either enemies to be fought with, or mere attendants. the doctrine of the heliopolitan ennead acquired an immediate and a lasting popularity. it presented such a clear scheme of creation, and one whose organization was so thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of tradition, that the various sacerdotal colleges adopted it one after another, accommodating it to the exigencies of local patriotism. each placed its own nome-god at the head of the ennead as "god of the nine," "god of the first time," creator of heaven and earth, sovereign ruler of men, and lord of all action. as there was the ennead of atûmû at heliopolis, so there was that of anhûri at thinis and at sebennytos; that of minû at coptos and at panopolis; that of haroêris at edfû; that of sobkhû at ombos; and, later, that of phtah at memphis and of amon at thebes. nomes which worshipped a goddess had no scruples whatever in ascribing to her the part played by atûmû, and in crediting her with the spontaneous maternity of shû and tafnûît. illustration: .jpg [plan of the ruins op hermopolis magna. ] plan drawn by thuillier, from the _description de l' egypte_, ant., vol. iv. pl. . nît was the source and ruler of the ennead of saïs, isis of that of bûto, and hâthor of that of denderah.[**] few of the sacerdotal colleges went beyond the substitution of their own feudal gods for atûmû. provided that the god of each nome held the rank of supreme lord, the rest mattered little, and the local theologians made no change in the order of the other agents of creation, their vanity being unhurt even by the lower offices assigned by the heliopolitan tradition to such powers as osiris, sibû, and sit, who were known and worshipped throughout the whole country. ** on the ennead of hâthor at denderah, see mariette, denderah, p. ., et seq., of the text. the fact that nît, isis, and, generally speaking, all the feudal goddesses, were the chiefs of their local enneads, is proved by the epithets applied to them, which represent them as having independent creative power by virtue of their own unaided force and energy, like the god at the head of the heliopolitan ennead. the theologians of hermopolis alone declined to borrow the new system just as it stood, and in all its parts. hermopolis had always been one of the ruling cities of middle egypt. standing alone in the midst of the land lying between the eastern and western mies, it had established upon each of the two great arms of the river a port and a custom-house, where all boats travelling either up or down stream paid toll on passing. not only the corn and natural products of the valley and of the delta, but also goods from distant parts of africa brought to siûfc by soudanese caravans, helped to fill the treasury of hermopolis. thot, the god of the city, represented as ibis or baboon, was essentially a moon-god, who measured time, counted the days, numbered the months, and recorded the years. lunar divinities, as we know, are everywhere supposed to exercise the most varied powers: they command the mysterious forces of the universe; they know the sounds, words, and gestures by which those forces are put in motion, and not content with using them for their own benefit, they also teach to their worshippers the art of employing them. [illustration: .jpg the ibis thot. ; and the cynocephalous thot. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from an enamelled pottery figure from coptos, now in my possession. neck, feet, and tail are in blue enamel, the rest is in green. the little personage represented as squatting beneath the beak is mâit, the goddess of truth, and the ally of thot. the ibis was furnished with a ring for suspending it; this has been broken off, but traces of it may still be seen at the back of the head. drawn by faucher-gudin from a green enamelled pottery figure in my possession (saïte period). thot formed no exception to this rule. he was lord of the voice, master of words and of books, possessor or inventor of those magic writings which nothing in heaven, on earth, or in hades can withstand.[***] *** cf. in the tale of satni (maspero, _contes populaires de l'ancienne egypte_, nd edit., p. ) the description of the book which thot has himself written with his own hand, and which makes its possessor the equal of the gods. "the two formulas which are written therein, if thou recitest the first thou shalt charm heaven, earth, hades, the mountains, the waters; thou shalt know the birds of the sky and the reptiles, how many soever they be; thou shalt see the fish of the deep, for a divine power will cause them to rise to the surface of the water. if thou readest the second formula, even although thou shouldest be in the tomb, thou shalt again take the form which was thine upon earth; thou shalt even see the sun rising in heaven, and his cycle of gods, and the moon in the form wherein it appeareth." he had discovered the incantations which evoke and control the gods; he had transcribed the texts and noted the melodies of these incantations; he recited them with that true intonation--_mâ khrôû_--which renders them all-powerful, and every one, whether god or man, to whom he imparted them, and whose voice he made true--_smâ khrôû_--became like himself master of the universe. he had accomplished the creation not by muscular effort to which the rest of the cosmogonical gods primarily owed their birth, but by means of formulas, or even of the voice alone, "the first time" when he awoke in the nû. in fact, the articulate word and the voice were believed to be the most potent of creative forces, not remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing, so to speak, into tangible substances; into bodies which were themselves animated by creative life and energy; into gods and goddesses who lived or who created in their turn. by a very short phrase tûmû had called forth the gods who order all things; for his "come unto me!" uttered with a loud voice upon the day of creation, had evoked the sun from within the lotus. thot had opened his lips, and the voice which proceeded from him had become an entity; sound had solidified into matter, and by a simple emission of voice the four gods who preside over the four houses of the world had come forth alive from his mouth without bodily effort on his part, and without spoken evocation. creation by the voice is almost as great a refinement of thought as the substitution of creation by the word for creation by muscular effort. in fact, sound bears the same relation to words that the whistle of a quartermaster bears to orders for the navigation of a ship transmitted by a speaking trumpet; it simplifies speech, reducing it as it were to a pure abstraction. at first it was believed that the creator had made the world with a word, then that he had made it by sound; but the further conception of his having made it by thought does not seem to have occurred to the theologians. it was narrated at hermopolis, and the legend was ultimately universally accepted, even by the heliopolitans, that the separation of nûît and sibû had taken place at a certain spot on the site of the city where sibû had ascended the mound on which the feudal temple was afterwards built, in order that he might better sustain the goddess and uphold the sky at the proper height. the conception of a creative council of five gods had so far prevailed at hermopolis that from this fact the city had received in remote antiquity the name of the "house of the five;" its temple was called the "abode of the five" down to a late period in egyptian history, and its prince, who was the hereditary high priest of thot, reckoned as the first of his official titles that of "great one of the house of the five." the four couples who had helped atûmû were identified with the four auxiliary gods of thot, and changed the council of five into a great hermopolitan ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. however artificially they had been grouped about atûmû, they had all preserved such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one with another. when the universe which they had helped to build up was finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as were expected of him. they could not have existed and carried on their work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them. on the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of hermopolis exercised but one means of action--the voice. having themselves come forth from the master's mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the world. apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods of the heliopolitan ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of life, almost destitute of reality. as these four gods worked after the manner of their master, thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along with him as so many baboons. when associated with the lord of hermopolis, the eight divinities of heliopolis assumed the character and the appearance of the four hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. they were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses, the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple nû-nûît answers to shû-tafnûît; hahû-hehît to sibû and nûîfc; kakû-kakît to osiris and isis; ninû-ninît to sit and nephthys. there was seldom any occasion to invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the eight--_khmûnû_--and it was on their account that hermopolis was named _khmûnû_, the city of the eight. ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as khomninû, the god eight. [illustration: .jpg the hermopolitan ogdoad. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a photograph by béato. cf. lepsius, denkm., iv. pl. c. in this illustration i have combined! the two extremities of a great scene at philæ, in which the _eight_, divided into two groups of four, frog- headed men, and the goddesses serpent-headed women. morning and evening do they sing; and the mysterious hymns wherewith they salute the rising and the setting sun ensure the continuity of his course. their names did not survive their metamorphoses; each pair had no longer more than a single name, the termination of each name varying according as a god or a goddess was intended:--nu and nûît, hehû and hehît, kakû and kakît, ninû and ninît, the god one and the god eight, the monad and the ogdoad. the latter had scarcely more than a theoretical existence, and was generally absorbed into the person of the former. thus the theologians of hermopolis gradually disengaged the unity of their feudal god from the multiplicity of the cosmogonie deities. [illustration: .jpg amon. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a bronze statuette found at thebes, and now in my possession. by degrees the ennead of thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part in the adoration of the king. according to a custom common towards the græco-roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like jackals' heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around egypt. as the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the heliopolitan doctrine, so they now generally adopted that of hermopolis: amon, for instance, being made to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four independent couples of the primitive ennead. in both cases the process of adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would have been that of a single name in the heliopolitan list, thus leaving the number of the ennead unaltered. but since these deities had been turned into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to be combined with the elements of some one or other of the enneads without preliminary arrangement. the two companions whom each had chosen had to be adopted also, and the single thot, or single atûmû, replaced by the three patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven. happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these adaptations. we have seen that the father and the son became one and the same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. we also know that one of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the other. sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband; sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted in the fact that he was her husband. two personages thus closely connected were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. on the one hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with the mother. hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons. [illustration: .jpg the theban ennead] this ennead consists of fourteen members--montû, duplicating atûmû; the four usual couples; then horus, the son of isis and osiris, together with his associate deities, hâthor, tanu, and anît. thanks to this subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. thus, the theban ennead of amon-maut-khonsû, shû, tafnûît, sibû, nûît, osiris, isis, sît, and nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct as the typical ennead itself. in such enneads isis is duplicated by goddesses of like nature, such as hâthor, selkît, taninît, and yet remains but one, while osiris brings in his son horus, who gathers about himself all such gods as play the part of divine son in other triads. the theologians had various methods of procedure for keeping the number of persons in an ennead at nine, no matter how many they might choose to embrace in it. supernumeraries were thrown in like the "shadows" at roman suppers, whom guests would bring without warning to their host, and whose presence made not the slightest difference either in the provision for the feast, or in the arrangements for those who had been formally invited. thus remodelled at all points, the ennead of heliopolis was readily adjustable to sacerdotal caprices, and even profited by the facilities which, the triad afforded for its natural expansion. in time the heliopolitan version of the origin of shû-tafnûît must have appeared too primitively barbarous. allowing for the licence of the egyptians during pharaonic times, the concept of the spontaneous emission whereby atûrnû had produced his twin children was characterized by a superfluity of coarseness which it was at least unnecessary to employ, since by placing the god in a triad, this double birth could be duly explained in conformity with the ordinary laws of life. the solitary atûrnû of the more ancient dogma gave place to atûrnû the husband and father. he had, indeed, two wives, iûsâsît and nebthotpît, but their individualities were so feebly marked that no one took the trouble to choose between them; each passed as the mother of shû and tafnûîfc. this system of combination, so puerile in its ingenuity, was fraught with the gravest consequences to the history of egyptian religions. shu having been transformed into the divine son of the heliopolitan triad, could henceforth be assimilated with the divine sons of all those triads which took the place of tûmû at the heads of provincial enneads. thus we find that horus the son of isis at bûto, arihosnofir the son of nit at sais, khnûmû the son of hâthor at esneh, were each in turn identified with shû the son of atûrnû, and lost their individualities in his. sooner or later this was bound to result in bringing all the triads closer together, and in their absorption into one another. through constant reiteration of the statement that the divine sons of the triads were identical with shû, as being in the second rank of the ennead, the idea arose that this was also the case in triads unconnected with enneads; in other terms, that the third person in any family of gods was everywhere and always shû under a different name. it having been finally admitted in the sacerdotal colleges that tûmû and shû, father and son, were one, all the divine sons were, therefore, identical with tûmû, the father of shû, and as each divine son was one with his parents, it inevitably followed that these parents themselves were identical with tûmû. reasoning in this way, the egyptians naturally tended towards that conception of the divine oneness to which the theory of the hermopolitan ogdoad was already leading them. in fact, they reached it, and the monuments show us that in comparatively early times the theologians were busy uniting in a single person the prerogatives which their ancestors had ascribed to many different beings. but this conception of deity towards which their ideas were converging has nothing in common with the conception of the god of our modern religions and philosophies. no god of the egyptians was ever spoken of simply as god. tûmû was the "one and only god"--_nûtir ûâû ûâîti_--at heliopolis; anhûri-shû was also the "one and only god" at sebennytos and at thinis. the unity of atûmû did not interfere with that of anhûri-shû, but each of these gods, although the "sole" deity in his own domain, ceased to be so in the domain of the other. the feudal spirit, always alert and jealous, prevented the higher dogma which was dimly apprehended in the temples from triumphing over local religions and extending over the whole land. egypt had as many "sole" deities as she had large cities, or even important temples; she never accepted the idea of the sole god, "beside whom there is none other." [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] [illustration: .jpg page image] [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii.---the legendary history of egypt _the divine dynasties: rÂ, shÛ, osieis, sÎt, hoeus--thot, and the invention of sciences and writing--menes, and the three first human dynasties._ _the egyptians claim to be the most ancient of peoples: traditions concerning the creation of man and of animals--the heliopolitan enneads the framework of the divine dynasties--râ, the first king of egypt, and his fabulous history: he allows himself to be duped and robbed by isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends into heaven. the legend of shu and sibil--the reign of osiris onnophris and of isis: they civilize egypt and the world--osiris, slain by sit, is entombed by isis and avenged by horus--the wars of typhon and of horus: peace, and the division of egypt between the two gods. the osirian embalmment; the kingdom of osiris opened to the followers of horus--the book of the dead--the journeying of the soul in search of the fields of ialû--the judgment of the soul, the negative confession--the privileges and duties of osirian souls--confusion between osirian and solar ideas as to the state of the dead: the dead in the hark of the sun--the going forth by day--the campaigns of harmakhis against sit. thot, the inventor: he reveals all sciences to men--astronomy, stellar tables; the year, its subdivisions, its defects, influence of the heavenly bodies and the days upon human destiny--magic arts; incantations, amulets---medicine: the vitalizing spirits, diagnosis, treatment--writing: ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic. the history of egypt as handed down by tradition: manetho, the royal lists, main divisions of egyptian history--the beginnings of its early history vague and uncertain: menés, and the legend of memphis--the first three human dynasties, the two thimie and the memphite--character and, origin of the legends concerning them--the famine stela--the earliest monuments: the step pyramid of saqgdrah._ [illustration: .jpg page image] the legendary history of egypt _the divine dynasties: râ, shû, osiris, sît, horus--thot, and the invention of sciences and writing--menés, and the three first human dynasties._ the building up and diffusion of the doctrine of the ennead, like the formation of the land of egypt, demanded centuries of sustained effort, centuries of which the inhabitants themselves knew neither the number nor the authentic history. when questioned as to the remote past of their race, they proclaimed themselves the most ancient of mankind, in comparison with whom all other races were but a mob of young children; and they looked upon nations which denied their pretensions with such indulgence and pity as we feel for those who doubt a well-known truth. their forefathers had appeared upon the banks of the nile even before the creator had completed his work, so eager were the gods to behold their birth. no egyptian disputed the reality of this right of the firstborn, which ennobled the whole race; but if they were asked the name of their divine father, then the harmony was broken, and each advanced the claims of a different personage.[*] phtah had modelled man with his own hands;[**] khnûmû had formed him on a potter's table.[***] * we know the words which plato puts into the mouth of an egyptian priest: "o solon, solon, you greeks are always children, and there is no old man who is a greek! you are all young in mind; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age." other nations disputed their priority--the phrygians, the medes, or rather the tribe of the magi among the medes, the ethiopians, the scythians. a cycle of legends had gathered about this subject, giving an account of the experiments instituted, by psamtik, or other sovereigns, to find out which were right, egyptians or foreigners. ** at philæ and at denderah, phtah is represented as piling upon his potter's table the plastic clay from which he is about to make a human body, and which is somewhat wrongly called the egg of the world. it is really the lump of earth from which man came forth at his creation. *** at philas, khnûmû calls himself "the potter who fashions men, the modeller of the gods." he there moulds the members of osiris, the husband of the local isis, as at erment he forms the body of harsamtaûi, or rather that of ptolemy cæsarion, the son of julius cæsar and the celebrated cleopatra, identified with harsamtaûi. râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*] sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. the mud of the nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought forth the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation, having moulded itself into a thousand living forms. then its procreative power became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. yet on the banks of the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger kinds. some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of earth.[**] * with reference to the substances which proceeded from the eye of râ, see the remarks of birch, _sur un papyrus magique du musée britannique_. by his tears (_romîtû_) horus, or his eye as identified with the sun, had given birth to all men, egyptians (_romîtû, rotû_), libyans, and asiatics, excepting only the negroes. the latter were born from another part of his body by the same means as those employed by atûmû in the creation of shû and tafnûît. ** the same story is told, but with reference to rats only, by pliny, by diodorus, by Ælianus, by macrobius, and by other greek or latin writers. even in later times, and in europe, this pretended phenomenon met with a certain degree of belief, as may be seen from the curious work of marcus fredericus wendelinus, _archipalatinus, admiranda nili_, franco-furti, mdcxxiii., cap. xxi. pp. - . in egypt all the fellahîn believe in the spontaneous generation of rats as in an article of their creed. they have spoken to me of it at thebes, at denderah, and on the plain of abydos; and major brown has lately noted the same thing in the fayûm. the variant which he heard from the lips of the notables is curious, for it professes to explain why the rats who infest the fields in countless bands during the dry season, suddenly disappear at the return of the inundation; born of the mud and putrid water of the preceding year, to mud they return, and as it were dissolve at the touch of the new waters. it was not râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. all divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, sit as well as osiris or isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once it had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as that which came from the eyes of râ. [illustration: .jpg khnÛmÛ modelling man upon a potter's table. ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. the scene is taken from bas-reliefs in the temple of luxor, where the god khnûmû is seen completing his modelling of the future king amenôthes iii. and his double, represented as two children wearing the side-lock and large necklace. the first holds his finger to his lips, while the arms of the second swing at his sides. the individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon the nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the good gods, evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of the mingling of things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere throughout the world. voluntarily or involuntarily, sit and his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. daily their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. their saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. when any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and baleful--a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of henbane. but, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity. wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers secreting wax and honey, the meat and herbs which are his food, the stuffs that clothe him, all useful things which he makes for himself, not only emanated from the solar eye of horus, but were indeed nothing more than the eye of horus under different aspects, and in his name they were presented in sacrifice. the devout generally were of opinion that the first egyptians, the sons and flock of râ, came into the world happy and perfect;[*] by degrees their descendants had fallen from that native felicity into their present state. * in the tomb of seti i, the words _flock of the sun, flock of râ_, are those by which the god horus refers to men. certain expressions used by egyptian writers are in themselves sufficient to show that the first generations of men were supposed to have lived in a state of happiness and perfection. to the egyptians _the times of râ, the times of the god_--that is to say, the centuries immediately following on the creation---were the ideal age, and no good thing had appeared upon earth since then. some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so many brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life. they knew nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by cries only, like other animals, until the day when thot taught them both speech and writing. these tales sufficed for popular edification; they provided but meagre fare for the intelligence of the learned. the latter did not confine their ambition to the possession of a few incomplete and contradictory details concerning the beginnings of humanity. they wished to know the history of its consecutive development from the very first; what manner of life had been led by their fathers; what chiefs they had obeyed and the names or adventures of those chiefs; why part of the nations had left the blessed banks of the nile and gone to settle in foreign lands; by what stages and in what length of time those who had not emigrated rose out of native barbarism into that degree of culture to which the most ancient monuments bore testimony. no efforts of imagination were needful for the satisfaction of their curiosity: the old substratum of indigenous traditions was rich enough, did they but take the trouble to work it out systematically, and to eliminate its most incongruous elements. the priests of heliopolis took this work in hand, as they had already taken in hand the same task with regard to the myths referring to the creation; and the enneads provided them with a ready-made framework. they changed the gods of the ennead into so many kings, determined with minute accuracy the lengths of their reigns, and compiled their biographies from popular tales. the duality of the feudal god supplied an admirable expedient for connecting the history of the world with that of chaos. tûmû was identified with nû, and relegated to the primordial ocean: râ was retained, and proclaimed the first king of the world. he had not established his rule without difficulty. the "children of defeat," beings hostile to order and light, engaged him in fierce battles; nor did he succeed in organizing his kingdom until he had conquered them in nocturnal combat at hermopolis, and even at heliopolis itself.[*] * the _children of defeat_, in egyptian _mosû batashû_, or _mosû batashît_, are often confounded with the followers of sit, the enemies of osiris. from the first they were distinct, and represented beings and forces hostile to the sun, with the dragon apôpi at their head. their defeat at hermopolis corresponded to the moment when shu, raising the sky above the sacred mound in that city, substituted order and light for chaos and darkness. this defeat is mentioned in chap xvii. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. . , et seq.), in which connexion e. de rougé first explained its meaning. in the same chapter of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pis. xxiv., xxv., . - ), reference is also made to the battle by night, in heliopolis, at the close of which râ appeared in the form of a cat or lion, and beheaded the great serpent. pierced with wounds, apôpi the serpent sank into the depths of ocean at the very moment when the new year began. the secondary members of the great ennead, together with the sun, formed the first dynasty, which began with the dawn of the first day, and ended at the coming of horus, the son of isis. the local schools of theology welcomed this method of writing history as readily as they had welcomed the principle of the ennead itself. some of them retained the heliopolitan demiurge, and hastened to associate him with their own; others completely eliminated him in favour of the feudal divinity,--amon at thebes, thot at hermopolis, phtah at memphis,--keeping the rest of the dynasty absolutely unchanged.[*] the gods in no way compromised their prestige by becoming incarnate and descending to earth. since they were men of finer nature, and their qualities, including that of miracle-working, were human qualities raised to the highest pitch of intensity, it was not considered derogatory to them personally to have watched over the infancy and childhood of primeval man. the raillery in which the egyptians occasionally indulged with regard to them, the good-humoured and even ridiculous _rôles_ ascribed to them in certain legends, do not prove that they were despised, or that zeal for them had cooled. the greater the respect of believers for the objects of their worship, the more easily do they tolerate the taking of such liberties, and the condescension of the members of the ennead, far from lowering them in the eyes of generations who came too late to live with them upon familiar terms, only enhanced the love and reverence in which they were held. nothing shows this better than the history of râ. his world was ours in the rough; for since shu was yet nonexistent, and nuit still reposed in the arms of sibû, earth and sky were but one.[**] * thot is the chief of the hermopolitan ennead, and the titles ascribed to him by inscriptions maintaining his supremacy show that he also was considered to have been the first king. one of the ptolemies said of himself that he came "as the majesty of thot, because he was the equal of atûmû, hence the equal of khopri, hence the equal of râ." atûmû-khopri-râ being the first earthly king, it follows that the _majesty of thot_, with whom ptolemy identifies himself, comparing himself to the three forms of the god râ, is also the first earthly king. ** this conception of the primitive egyptian world is clearly implied in the very terms employed by the author of the destruction of men. nuit does not rise to form the sky until such time as râ thinks of bringing his reign to an end; that is to say, after egypt had already been in existence for many centuries. in chap. xvii. of the book of the dead (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. . - ) it is stated that the reign of râ began in the times when the upliftings had not yet taken place; that is to say, before shu had separated nûît from sibû, and forcibly uplifted her above the body of her husband. nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable, animal, and human life. egypt was there, all complete, with her two chains of mountains, her nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and the nomes themselves. then the soil was more generous; the harvests, without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when the egyptians of pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the time of râ. * this is an ideal in accordance with the picture drawn of the fields of ialû in chap. ex. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pis. cxxi.~ cxxiii.). as with the paradise of most races, so the place of the osirian dead still possessed privileges which the earth had enjoyed during the first years succeeding the creation; that is to say, under the direct rule of râ. it is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst for happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is only known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors. râ dwelt in heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of the city, that known as the "mansion of the prince"--haït sarû,--passed for having been his palace. his court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. it contained also men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food, received the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and household affairs. it was said that the _oîrû maû_--the high priest of râ, the _hankistît_--his high priestess, and generally speaking all the servants of the temple of heliopolis, were either directly descended from members of this first household establishment of the god, or had succeeded to their offices in unbroken succession. [illustration: .jpg at the first hour of the bay the sun embarks fob his journey through egypt. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the scenes represented upon the architraves of the pronaos at edfû (rosellini, _monumenti del culto_, pl. xxxviii. no. ). in the morning he went forth with his divine train, and, amid the acclamations of the crowd, entered the bark in which he made his accustomed circuit of the world, returning to his home at the end of twelve hours after the accomplishment of his journey. he visited each province in turn, and in each he tarried for an hour, to settle all disputed matters, as the final judge of appeal. he gave audience to both small and great, he decided their quarrels and adjudged their lawsuits, he granted investiture of fiefs from the royal domains to those who had deserved them, and allotted or confirmed to every family the income needful for their maintenance. he pitied the sufferings of his people, and did his utmost to alleviate them; he taught to all comers potent formulas against reptiles and beasts of prey, charms to cast out evil spirits, and the best recipes for preventing illness. his incessant bounties left him at length with only one of his talismans: the name given to him by his father and mother at his birth, which they had revealed to him alone, and which he kept concealed within his bosom lest some sorcerer should get possession of it to use for the furtherance of his evil spells. but old age came on, and infirmities followed; the body of râ grew bent, "his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to earth and his saliva dropped upon the ground." isis, who had hitherto been a mere woman-servant in the household of the pharaoh, conceived the project of stealing his secret from him, "that she might possess the world and make herself a goddess by the name of the august god." force would have been unavailing; all enfeebled as he was by reason of his years, none was strong enough to contend successfully against him. but isis "was a woman more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the gods, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto râ nothing was unknown either in heaven or upon earth." she contrived a most ingenious stratagem. when man or god was struck down by illness, the only chance of curing him lay in knowing his real name, and thereby adjuring the evil being that tormented him. isis determined to cast a terrible malady upon râ, concealing its cause from him; then to offer her services as his nurse, and by means of his sufferings to extract from him the mysterious word indispensable to the success of the exorcism. she gathered up mud impregnated with the divine saliva, and moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the dust of the road. suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily round, the god cried out aloud, "his voice ascended into heaven and his nine called: 'what is it? what is it?' and his gods: 'what is the matter? what is the matter?' but he could make them no answer so much did his lips tremble, his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the nile seizeth upon the land which it invadeth." presently he came to himself, and succeeded in describing his sensations. "something painful hath stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand hath not wrought it, nothing that i have made knoweth it what it is, yet have i never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that may overpass it.... fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born of breaths of magic. behold! let there be brought unto me children of the gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and whose science reacheth unto heaven." they came, these children of the gods, all with their books of magic. there came isis with her sorcery, her mouth full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of pain, her words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said: "what is it? what is it, o father of the gods? may it not be that a serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children hath lifted up his head against thee? surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent incantations, and i will make him to retreat at the sight of thy rays." on learning the cause of his torment, the sun-god is terrified, and begins to lament anew: "i, then, as i went along the ways, travelling through my double land of egypt and over my mountains, that i might look upon that which i have made, i was bitten by a serpent that i saw not. fire it is not, water it is not, yet am i colder than water, i burn more than fire, all my members stream with sweat, i tremble, mine eye is not steady, no longer can i discern the sky, drops roll from my face as in the season of summer." isis proposes her remedy, and cautiously asks him his ineffable name. but he divines her trick, and tries to evade it by an enumeration of his titles. he takes the universe to witness that he is called "khopri in the morning, râ at noon, tûmû in the evening." the poison did not recede, but steadily advanced, and the great god was not eased. then isis said to râ: "thy name was not spoken in that which thou hast said. tell it to me and the poison will depart; for he liveth upon whom a charm is pronounced in his own name." the poison glowed like fire, it was strong as the burning of flame, and the majesty of râ said, "i grant thee leave that thou shouldest search within me, o mother isis! and that my name pass from my bosom into thy bosom." in truth, the all-powerful name was hidden within the body of the god, and could only be extracted thence by means of a surgical operation similar to that practised upon a corpse which is about to be mummified. isis undertook it, carried it through successfully, drove out the poison, and made herself a goddess by virtue of the name. the cunning of a mere woman had deprived râ of his last talisman. in course of time men perceived his decrepitude. they took counsel against him: "lo! his majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his flesh is of gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli." as soon as his majesty perceived that which they were saying to each other, his majesty said to those who were of his train, "call together for me my divine eye, shû, tafnûît, sibû, and nûît, the father and the mother gods who were with me when i was in the nû, with the god nû. let each bring his cycle along with him; then, when thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt take them to the great mansion that they may lend me their counsel and their consent, coming hither from the nû into this place where i have manifested myself." so the family council comes together: the ancestors of râ, and his posterity still awaiting amid the primordial waters the time of their manifestation--his children shû and tafnûît, his grandchildren sibû and nûît. they place themselves, according to etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate, with their foreheads to the ground, and thus their conference begins: "o nû, thou the eldest of the gods, from whom i took my being, and ye the ancestor-gods, behold! men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken counsel together against me! tell me what ye would do, for i have bidden you here before i slay them, that i may hear what ye would say thereto." nû, as the eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the guilty shall be brought to judgment and formally condemned. "my son râ, god greater than the god who made him, older than the gods who created him, sit thou upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine eye shall rest upon those who plot together against thee!" but râ not unreasonably fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice, they may suspect the fate that awaits them, and "flee into the desert, their hearts terrified at that which i have to say to them." the desert was even then hostile to the tutelary gods of egypt, and offered an almost inviolable asylum to their enemies. the conclave admits that the apprehensions of râ are well founded, and pronounces in favour of summary execution; the divine eye is to be the executioner. "let it go forth that it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for there is no eye more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the form of hâthor." so the eye takes the form of hâthor, suddenly falls upon men, and slays them right and left with great strokes of the knife. after some hours, râ, who would chasten but not destroy his children, commands her to cease from her carnage; but the goddess has tasted blood, and refuses to obey him. "by thy life," she replies, "when i slaughter men then is my heart right joyful!" [illustration: .jpg sokhÎt, the lioness-headed. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a bronze statuette of the saïte period in the gizeh museum (mariette, _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. ). that is why she was afterwards called sokhît the slayer, and represented under the form of a fierce lioness. nightfall stayed her course in the neighbourhood of heracleopolis; all the way from heliopolis she had trampled through blood. as soon as she had fallen asleep, râ hastily took effectual measures to prevent her from beginning her work again on the morrow. "he said: 'call on my behalf messengers agile and swift, who go like the wind.' when these messengers were straightway brought to him, the majesty of the god said: 'let them run to elephantine and bring me mandragora in plenty.'"[**] ** the mandragora of elephantine was used in the manufacture of an intoxicating and narcotic drink employed either in medicine or in magic. in a special article, brugsch has collected particulars preserved by the texts as to the uses of this plant. it was not as yet credited with the human form and the peculiar kind of life ascribed to it by western sorcerers. when they had brought him the mandragora, the majesty of this great god summoned the miller which is in heliopolis that he might bray it; and the women-servants having crushed grain for the beer, the mandragora, and also human blood, were mingled with the liquor, and thereof was made in all seven thousand jars of beer. râ himself examined this delectable drink, and finding it to possess the wished-for properties: "'it is well,' said he; 'therewith shall i save men from the goddess;' then, addressing those of his train: 'take these jars in your arms, and carry them to the place where she has slaughtered men.' râ, the king, caused dawn to break at midnight, so that this philtre might be poured down upon the earth; and the fields were flooded with it to the depth of four palms, according as it pleased the souls of his majesty." in the morning the goddess came, "that she might return to her carnage, but she found that all was flooded, and her countenance softened; when she had drunken, it was her heart that softened; she went away drunk, without further thought of men." there was some fear lest her fury might return when the fumes of drunkenness were past, and to obviate this danger râ instituted a rite, partly with the object of instructing future generations as to the chastisement which he had inflicted upon the impious, partly to console sokhît for her discomfiture. he decreed that "on new year's day there should be brewed for her as many jars of philtre as there were priestesses of the sun. that was the origin of all those jars of philtre, in number equal to that of the priestesses, which, at the feast of hâthor, all men make from that day forth." peace was re-established, but could it last long? would not men, as soon as they had recovered from their terror, betake themselves again to plotting against the god? besides, râ now felt nothing but disgust for our race. the ingratitude of his children had wounded him deeply; he foresaw ever-renewed rebellions as his feebleness became more marked, and he shrank from having to order new massacres in which mankind would perish altogether. "by my life," says he to the gods who accompanied him, "my heart is too weary for me to remain with mankind, and slay them until they are no more: annihilation is not of the gifts that i love to make." and the gods exclaim in surprise: "breathe not a word of thy weariness at a time when thou dost triumph at thy pleasure." but râ does not yield to their representations; he will leave a kingdom wherein they murmur against him, and turning towards nû he says: "my limbs are decrepit for the first time; i will not go to any place where i can be reached." it was no easy matter to find him an inaccessible retreat owing to the imperfect state in which the universe had been left by the first effort of the demiurge. nû saw no other way out of the difficulty than that of setting to work to complete the creation. ancient tradition had imagined the separation of earth and sky as an act of violence exercised by shu upon sibû and nûît. history presented facts after a less brutal fashion, and shû became a virtuous son who devoted his time and strength to upholding nûît, that he might thereby do his father a service. nûît, for her part, showed herself to be a devoted daughter whom there was no need to treat roughly in order to teach her her duty; of herself she consented to leave her husband, and place her beloved ancestor beyond reach. "the majesty of nû said: 'son shu, do as thy father râ shall say; and thou, daughter nûît, place him upon thy back and hold him suspended above the earth!' nûît said: 'and how then, my father nû?' thus spake nûît, and she did that which nû commanded her; she changed herself into a cow, and placed the majesty of râ upon her back. when those men who had not been slain came to give thanks to râ, behold! they found him no longer in his palace; but a cow stood there, and they perceived him upon the back of the cow." they found him so resolved to depart that they did not try to turn him from his purpose, but only desired to give him such a proof of their repentance as should assure them of the complete pardon of their crime. "they said unto him: 'wait until the morning, o râ! our lord, and we will strike down thine enemies who have taken counsel against thee.' so his majesty returned to his mansion, descended from the cow, went in along with them, and earth was plunged into darkness. but when there was light upon earth the next morning, the men went forth with their bows and their arrows, and began to shoot at the enemy. whereupon the majesty of this god said unto them: 'your sins are remitted unto you, for sacrifice precludes the execution of the guilty.' and this was the origin upon earth of sacrifices in which blood was shed." thus it was that when on the point of separating for ever, the god and men came to an understanding as to the terms of their future relationship. men offered to the god the life of those who had offended him. human sacrifice was in their eyes the obligatory sacrifice, the only one which could completely atone for the wrongs committed against the godhead; man alone was worthy to wash away with his blood the sins of men.[*] for this one time the god accepted the expiation just as it was offered to him; then the repugnance which he felt to killing his children overcame him, he substituted beast for man, and decided that oxen, gazelles, birds, should henceforth furnish the material for sacrifice.[**] * this legend, which seeks to explain the discontinuance of human sacrifices among the egyptians, affords direct proof of their existence in primitive times. this is confirmed by many facts. we shall see that _ûashbîti_ laid in graves were in place of the male or female slaves who were originally slaughtered at the tombs of the rich and noble that they might go to serve their masters in the next world. even in thebes, under the xixth dynasty, certain rock-cut tombs contain scenes which might lead us to believe that occasionally at least human victims were sent to doubles of distinction. during this same period, moreover, the most distinguished hostile chiefs taken in war were still put to death before the gods. in several towns, as at eilithyia and at heliopolis, or before certain gods, such as osiris or kronos-sibû, human sacrifice lasted until near roman times. but generally speaking it was very rare. almost everywhere cakes of a particular shape, and called [greek word], or else animals, had been substituted for man. ** it was asserted that the partisans of apôpi and of sît, who were the enemies of râ, osiris, and the other gods, had taken refuge in the bodies of certain animals. hence, it was really human or divine victims which were offered when beasts were slaughtered in sacrifice before the altars. this point settled, he again mounted the cow, who rose, supported on her four legs as on so many pillars; and her belly, stretched out above the earth like a ceiling, formed the sky. he busied himself with organizing the new world which he found on her back; he peopled it with many beings, chose two districts in which to establish his abode, the field of reeds--_sokhît ialû_--and the field of rest--_sokhît hotpît_--and suspended the stars which were to give light by night. all this is related with many plays upon words, intended, according to oriental custom, as explanations of the names which the legend assigned to the different regions of heaven. at sight of a plain whose situation pleased him, he cried: "the field rests in the distance!"--and that was the origin of the field of rest. he added: "there will i gather plants!"--and from this the field of reeds took its name. while he gave himself up to this philological pastime, nûît, suddenly transported to unaccustomed heights, grew frightened, and cried for help: "for pity's sake give me supports to sustain me!" this was the origin of the support-gods. they came and stationed themselves by each of her four legs, steadying these with their hands, and keeping constant watch over them. as this was not enough to reassure the good beast, "râ said, 'my son shû, place thyself beneath my daughter nûît, and keep watch on both sides over the supports, who live in the twilight; hold thou her up above thy head, and be her guardian!'" shû obeyed; nûît composed herself, and the world, now furnished with the sky which it had hitherto lacked, assumed its present symmetrical form. shû and sibû succeeded râ, but did not acquire so lasting a popularity as their great ancestor. nevertheless they had their annals, fragments of which have come down to us. their power also extended over the whole universe: "the majesty of shû was the excellent king of the sky, of the earth, of hades, of the water, of the winds, of the inundation, of the two chains of mountains, of the sea, governing with a true voice according to the precepts of his father râ-harmakhis." [illustration: .jpg cow, sustained above the earth by shÛ and the support] drawn by faucher-gudin. only "the children of the serpent apôpi, the impious ones who haunt the solitary places and the deserts," disavowed his authority. like the bedawîn of later times, they suddenly streamed in by the isthmus routes, went up into egypt under cover of night, slew and pillaged, and then hastily returned to their fastnesses with the booty which they had carried off. from sea to sea ka had fortified the eastern frontier against them. he had surrounded the principal cities with walls, embellished them with temples, and placed within them those mysterious talismans more powerful for defence than a garrison of men. thus aît-nobsû, near the mouth of the wady-tûmilât, possessed one of the rods of the sun-god, also the living uraeus of his crown whose breath consumes all that it touches, and, finally, a lock of his hair, which, being cast into the waters of a lake, was changed into a hawk-headed crocodile to tear the invader in pieces.[*] * egyptians of all periods never shrank from such marvels. one of the tales of the theban empire tells us of a piece of wax which, on being thrown into the water, changed into a living crocodile capable of devouring a man. the talismans which protected egypt against invasion are mentioned by the pseudo-callisthenes, who attributes their invention to nectanebo. arab historians often refer to them. the employment of these talismans was dangerous to those unaccustomed to use them, even to the gods themselves. scarcely was sibû enthroned as the successor of shu, who, tired of reigning, had reascended into heaven in a nine days' tempest, before he began his inspection of the eastern marches, and caused the box in which was kept the uræus of râ to be opened. "as soon as the living viper had breathed its breath against the majesty of sibû there was a great disaster--great indeed, for those who were in the train of the god perished, and his majesty himself was burned in that day. when his majesty had fled to the north of aît-nobsû, pursued by the fire of this magic urasus, behold! when he came to the fields of henna, the pain of his burn was not yet assuaged, and the gods who were behind him said unto him: 'o sire! let them take the lock of râ which is there, when thy majesty shall go to see it and its mystery, and his majesty shall be healed as soon as it shall be placed upon thee.' so the majesty of sibû caused the magic lock to be brought to piarît,--the lock for which was made that great reliquary of hard stone which is hidden in the secret place of piarît, in the district of the divine lock of the lord râ,--and behold! this fire departed from the members of the majesty of sibû. and many years afterwards, when this lock, which had thus belonged to sibû, was brought back to piarît in aît-nobsû, and cast into the great lake of piarît whose name is _aît-tostesû_, the dwelling of waves, that it might be purified, behold! this lock became a crocodile: it flew to the water and became sobkû, the divine crocodile of aît-nobsû." in this way the gods of the solar dynasty from generation to generation multiplied talismans and enriched the sanctuaries of egypt with relics. [illustration: .jpg three of the divine amulets preserved in the temple of aÎt-nobsÛ at the roman period. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by griffith. the three talismans here represented are two crowns, each in a naos, and the burning fiery uræus. were there ever duller legends and a more senile phantasy! they did not spring spontaneously from the lips of the people, but were composed at leisure by priests desirous of enhancing the antiquity of their cult, and augmenting the veneration of its adherents in order to increase its importance. each city wished it to be understood that its feudal sanctuary was founded upon the very day of creation, that its privileges had been extended or confirmed during the course of the first divine dynasty, and that these pretensions were supported by the presence of objects in its treasury which had belonged to the oldest of the king-gods. such was the origin of tales in which the personage of the beneficent pharaoh is often depicted in ridiculous fashion. did we possess all the sacred archives, we should frequently find them quoting as authentic history more than one document as artificial as the chronicle of aît-nobsû. when we come to the later members of the ennead, there is a change in the character and in the form of these tales. doubtless osiris and sît did not escape unscathed out of the hands of the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference spoiled the legend concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it. here and there in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and liveliness of imagination such as are never found in those of shû and of sibû. this arises from the fact that the functions of these gods left them strangers, or all but strangers, to the current affairs of the world. shû was the stay, sibû the material foundation of the world; and so long as the one bore the weight of the firmament without bending, and the other continued to suffer the tread of human generations upon his back, the devout took no more thought of them than they themselves took thought of the devout. the life of osiris, on the other hand, was intimately mingled with that of the egyptians, and his most trivial actions immediately reacted upon their fortunes. they followed the movements of his waters; they noted the turning-points in his struggles against drought; they registered his yearly decline, yearly compensated by his aggressive returns and his intermittent victories over typhon; his proceedings and his character were the subject of their minute study. if his waters almost invariably rose upon the appointed day and extended over the black earth of the valley, this was no mechanical function of a being to whom the consequences of his conduct are indifferent; he acted upon reflection, and in full consciousness of the service that he rendered. he knew that by spreading the inundation he prevented the triumph of the desert; he was life, he was goodness--_onnofriû_--and isis, as the partner of his labours, became like him the type of perfect goodness. but while osiris developed for the better, sit was transformed for the worse, and increased in wickedness as his brother gained in purity and moral elevation. in proportion as the person of sît grew more defined, and stood out more clearly, the evil within him contrasted more markedly with the innate goodness of osiris, and what had been at first an instinctive struggle between two beings somewhat vaguely defined--the desert and the nile, water and drought--was changed into conscious and deadly enmity. no longer the conflict of two elements, it was war between two gods; one labouring to produce abundance, while the other strove to do away with it; one being all goodness and life, while the other was evil and death incarnate. a very ancient legend narrates that the birth of osiris and his brothers took place during the five additional days at the end of the year; a subsequent legend explained how nûît and sibû had contracted marriage against the express wish of râ, and without his knowledge. when he became aware of it he fell into a violent rage, and cast a spell over the goddess to prevent her giving birth to her children in any month of any year whatever. but thot took pity upon her, and playing at draughts with the moon won from it in several games one seventy-second part of its fires, out of which he made five whole days; and as these were not included in the ordinary calendar, nûît could then bring forth her five children, one after another: osiris, haroêris, sit, isis, and nephthys. osiris was beautiful of face, but with a dull and black complexion; his height exceeded five and a half yards.[*] * as a matter of fact, osiris is often represented with black or green hands and face, as is customary for gods of the dead; it was probably this peculiarity which suggested the popular idea of his black complexion. a magic papyrus of ramesside times fixes the stature of the god at seven cubits, and a phrase in a ptolemaic inscription places it at eight cubits, six palms, three fingers. he was born at thebes, in the first of the additional days, and straightway a mysterious voice announced that the lord of all--_nibû-r-zarû_--had appeared. the good news was hailed with shouts of joy, followed by tears and lamentations when it became known with what evils he was menaced.[*] the echo reached râ in his far-off dwelling, and his heart rejoiced, notwithstanding the curse which he had laid upon nûît. he commanded the presence of his great-grandchild in xoïs, and unhesitatingly acknowledged him as the heir to his throne. osiris had married his sister isis, even, so it was said, while both of them were still within their mother's womb;[**] and when he became king he made her queen regent and the partner of all his undertakings. * one variant of the legend told that a certain pamylis of thebes having gone to draw water had heard a voice proceeding from the temple of zeus, which ordered him to proclaim aloud to the world the birth of the great king, the beneficent osiris. he had received the child from the hands of kronos, brought it up to youth, and to him the egyptians had consecrated the feast of pamylies, which resembled the phallophoros festival of the greeks. ** _de iside et osiride_, leemans' edition, § , pp. , . haroêris, the apollo of the greeks, was supposed to be the issue of a marriage consummated before the birth of his parents while they were still within the womb of their mother rhea-nûît. this was a way of connecting the personage of haroêris with the osirian myths by confounding him with the homonymous harsiêsis, the son of isis, who became the son of osiris through his mother's marriage with that god. the egyptians were as yet but half civilized; they were cannibals, and though occasionally they lived upon the fruits of the earth, they did not know how to cultivate them. osiris taught them the art of making agricultural implements--the plough and the hoe,--field labour, the rotation of crops, the harvesting of wheat and barley,[*] and vine culture. * diodoeus even ascribes to him the discovery of barley and of wheat; this is consequent upon the identification of isis with demeter by the greeks. according to the historian, leo of pella, the goddess twined herself a crown of ripe ears and placed it upon her head one day when she was sacrificing to her parents. isis weaned them from cannibalism, healed their diseases by means of medicine or of magic, united women to men in legitimate marriage, and showed them how to grind grain between two flat stones and to prepare bread for the household. she invented the loom with the help of her sister nephthys, and was the first to weave and bleach linen. there was no worship of the gods before osiris established it, appointed the offerings, regulated the order of ceremonies, and composed the texts and melodies of the liturgies. he built cities, among them thebes itself, according to some; though others declared that he was born there. as he had been the model of a just and pacific king, so did he desire to be that of a victorious conqueror of nations; and, placing the regency in the hands of isis, he went forth to war against asia, accompanied by thot the ibis and the jackal anubis. he made little or no use of force and arms, but he attacked men by gentleness and persuasion, softened them with songs in which voices were accompanied by instruments, and taught them also the arts which he had made known to the egyptians. no country escaped his beneficent action, and he did not return to the banks of the nile until he had traversed and civilized the world from one horizon to the other. sît-typhon was red-haired and white-skinned, of violent, gloomy, and jealous temper.[*] secretly he aspired to the crown, and nothing but the vigilance of isis had kept him from rebellion during the absence of his brother. the rejoicings which celebrated the king's return to memphis provided sit with his opportunity for seizing the throne. * the colour of his hair was compared with that of a red- haired ass, and on that account the ass was sacred to him. as to his violent and jealous disposition, see the opinion of diodorus siculus, book i. , and the picture drawn by synesius in his pamphlet Ægyptius. it was told how he tore his mother's bowels at birth, and made his own way into the world through her side. [illustration: .jpg the osmian triad hokus. osiris, isis. ] drawing by boudier of the gold group in the louvre museum. the drawing is made from a photograph which belonged to m. de witte, before the monument was acquired by e. de rougé in . the little square pillar of lapis-lazuli, upon which osiris squats, is wrongly set up, and the names and titles of king osorkon, the dedicator of the triad, are placed upside down. he invited osiris to a banquet along with seventy-two officers whose support he had ensured, made a wooden chest of cunning workmanship and ordered that it should be brought in to him, in the midst of the feast. as all admired its beauty, he sportively promised to present it to any one among the guests whom it should exactly fit. all of them tried it, one after another, and all unsuccessfully; but when osiris lay down within it, immediately the conspirators shut to the lid, nailed it firmly down, soldered it together with melted lead, and then threw it into the tanitic branch of the nile, which carried it to the sea. the news of the crime spread terror on all sides. the gods friendly to osiris feared the fate of their master, and hid themselves within the bodies of animals to escape the malignity of the new king. isis cut off her hair, rent her garments, and set out in search of the chest. she found it aground near the mouth of the river[*] under the shadow of a gigantic acacia, deposited it in a secluded place where no one ever came, and then took refuge in bûto, her own domain and her native city, whose marshes protected her from the designs of typhon even as in historic times they protected more than one pharaoh from the attacks of his enemies. there she gave birth to the young horus, nursed and reared him in secret among the reeds, far from the machinations of the wicked one.[**] * at this point the legend of the saïte and greek period interpolates a whole chapter, telling how the chest was carried out to sea and cast upon the phoenician coast near to byblos. the acacia, a kind of heather or broom in this case, grew up enclosing the chest within its trunk. this addition to the primitive legend must date from the xviiith to the xxth dynasties, when egypt had extensive relations with the peoples of asia. no trace of it whatever has hitherto been found upon egyptian monuments strictly so called; not even on the latest. ** the opening illustration of this chapter (p. ) is taken from a monument at phihe, and depicts isis among the reeds. the representation of the goddess as squatting upon a mat probably gave rise to the legend of the floating isle of khemmis, which hecatÆus of miletus had seen upon the lake of bûto, but whose existence was denied by herodotus notwithstanding the testimony of hecatæus. but it happened that sît, when hunting by moonlight, caught sight of the chest, opened it, and recognizing the corpse, cut it up into fourteen pieces, which he scattered abroad at random. once more isis set forth on her woeful pilgrimage. she recovered all the parts of the body excepting one only, which the oxyrhynchus had greedily devoured;[*] and with the help of her sister nephthys, her son horus, anubis, and thot, she joined together and embalmed them, and made of this collection of his remains an imperishable mummy, capable of sustaining for ever the soul of a god. on his coming of age, horus called together all that were left of the loyal egyptians and formed them into an army.[**] * this part of the legend was so thoroughly well known, that by the time of the xixth dynasty it suggested incidents in popular literature. when bitiû, the hero of _the tale of the two brothers_, mutilated himself to avoid the suspicion of adultery, he cast his bleeding member into the water, and _the oxyrhynchus devoured it_. ** towards the grecian period there was here interpolated an account of how osiris had returned from the world of the dead to arm his son and train him to fight. according to this tale he had asked horus which of all animals seemed to him most useful in time of war, and horus chose the horse rather than the lion, because the lion avails for the weak or cowardly in need of help, whereas the horse is used for the pursuit and destruction of the enemy. judging from this reply that horus was ready to dare all, osiris allowed him to enter upon the war. the mention of the horse affords sufficient proof that this episode is of comparatively late origin (cf. p. for the date at which the horse was acclimatized in egypt). his "followers"--_shosûû horû_--defeated the "accomplices of sît"--_samiu sît_--who were now driven in their turn to transform themselves into gazelles, crocodiles and serpents,--animals which were henceforth regarded as unclean and typhonian. for three days the two chiefs had fought together under the forms of men and of hippopotami, when isis, apprehensive as to the issue of the duel, determined to bring it to an end. "lo! she caused chains to descend upon them, and made them to drop upon horus. thereupon horus prayed aloud, saying: 'i am thy son horus!' then isis spake unto the fetters, saying; 'break, and unloose yourselves from my son horus!' she made other fetters to descend, and let them fall upon her brother sit. forthwith he lifted up his voice and cried out in pain, and she spake unto the fetters and said unto them: 'break!' yea, when sît prayed unto her many times, saying: 'wilt thou not have pity upon the brother of thy son's mother?' then her heart was filled with compassion, and she cried to the fetters: 'break, for he is my eldest brother!' and the fetters unloosed themselves from him, and the two foes again stood face to face like two men who will not come to terms." horus, furious at seeing his mother deprive him of his prey, turned upon her like a panther of the south. she fled before him on that day when battle was waged with sît the violent, and he cut off her head. but thot transformed her by his enchantments and made a cow's head for her, thereby identifying her with her companion, hâthor. [illustration: .jpg isis-hathor, cow-headed. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette of saïte period in the gîzeh museum (mariette, _album photographique du musée de boulaq_, pl. , no. ). the war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. according to a very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a neighbouring city, thot, lord of hermopolis parva, as the arbitrator of their quarrel. sît was the first to plead, and he maintained that horus was not the son of osiris, but a bastard, whom isis haô conceived after the death of her husband. horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy of his birth; and thot condemned sît to restore, according to some, the whole of the inheritance which he had wrongly retained,--according to others, part of it only. the gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to the arbitrator the title of _Ûapirahûhûi_: he who judges between two parties. a legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the worship of osiris had spread over all egypt, affirmed that the case had remained within the jurisdiction of sibû, who was father to the one, and grandfather to the other party. sibû, however, had pronounced the same judgment as thot, and divided the kingdom into halves--_poshûi_; sît retained the valley from the neighbourhood of memphis to the first cataract, while horus entered into possession of the delta. egypt henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the north, recognized horus, the son of isis, as its patron deity; and the other, that of the south, placed itself under the protection of sît nûbîti, the god of ombos.[*] * another form of the legend gives the th athyr as the date of the judgment, assigning egypt to horus, and to sît nubia, or _doshirît_, the red land. it must have arisen towards the age of the xviiith dynasty, at a time when their piety no longer allowed the devout to admit that the murderer of osiris could be the legitimate patron of half the country. so _the half_ belonging to sît was then placed either in nubia or in the western desert, which had, indeed, been reckoned as his domain from earliest times. the moiety of horus, added to that of sît, formed the kingdom which sibû had inherited; but his children failed to keep it together, though it was afterwards reunited under pharaohs of human race. the three gods who preceded osiris upon the throne had ceased to reign, but not to live. râ had taken refuge in heaven, disgusted with his own creatures; shû had disappeared in the midst of a tempest; and sibû had quietly retired within his palace when the time of his sojourning upon earth had been fulfilled. not that there was no death, for death, too, together with all other things and beings, had come into existence in the beginning, but while cruelly persecuting both man and beast, had for a while respected the gods. osiris was the first among them to be struck down, and hence to require funeral rites. he also was the first for whom family piety sought to provide a happy life beyond the tomb. though he was king of the living and the dead at mendes by virtue of the rights of all the feudal gods in their own principalities, his sovereignty after death exempted him no more than the meanest of his subjects from that painful torpor into which all mortals fell on breathing their last. but popular imagination could not resign itself to his remaining in that miserable state for ever. what would it have profited him to have isis the great sorceress for his wife, the wise horus for his son, two master-magicians--thot the ibis and the jackal anubis--for his servants, if their skill had not availed to ensure him a less gloomy and less lamentable after-life than that of men. anubis had long before invented the art of mummifying, and his mysterious science had secured the everlasting existence of the flesh; but at what a price! [illustration: .jpg the osirian mummy prepared and laid upon the funerary couch by the jackal anubis. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from rosellint, _monumenti civili_, pl. cxxxiv. . while anubis is stretching out his hands to lay out the mummy on its couch, the soul is hovering above its breast, and holding to its nostrils the sceptre, and the wind-filled sail which is the emblem of breath and of the new life. for the breathing, warm, fresh-coloured body, spontaneous in movement and function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. thot, isis, and horus applied themselves in the case of osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed by the more primitive embalmment. [illustration: .jpg the reception op the mummy by anubis at the door op the tomb, and the opening of the mouth. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting in the tomb of a king in the theban necropolis. they did not dispense with the manipulations instituted by anubis, but endued them with new power by means of magic. they inscribed the principal bandages with protective figures and formulas; they decorated the body with various amulets of specific efficacy for its different parts; they drew numerous scenes of earthly existence and of the life beyond the tomb upon the boards of the coffin and upon the walls of the sepulchral chamber. when the body had been made imperishable, they sought to restore one by one all the faculties of which their previous operations had deprived it. the mummy was set up at the entrance to the vault; the statue representing the living person was placed beside it, and semblance was made of opening the mouth, eyes, and ears, of loosing the arms and legs, of restoring breath to the throat and movement to the heart. the incantations by which these acts were severally accompanied were so powerful that the god spoke and ate, lived and heard, and could use his limbs as freely as though he had never been steeped in the bath of the embalmer. he might have returned to his place among men, and various legends prove that he did occasionally appear to his faithful adherents. but, as his ancestors before him, he preferred to leave their towns and withdraw into his own domain. the cemeteries of the inhabitants of busiris and of mendes were called _sokhît ialû_, the meadow of reeds, and _sokhît hotpû_, the meadow of best. they were secluded amid the marshes, in small archipelagoes of sandy islets where the dead bodies, piled together, rested in safety from the inundations. this was the first kingdom of the dead osiris, but it was soon placed elsewhere, as the nature of the surrounding districts and the geography of the adjacent countries became better known; at first perhaps on the phoenician shore beyond the sea, and then in the sky, in the milky way, between the north and the east, but nearer to the north than to the east. this kingdom was not gloomy and mournful like that of the other dead gods, sokaris or khontamentît, but was lighted by sun and moon; the heat of the day was tempered by the steady breath of the north wind, and its crops grew and throve abundantly. [illustration: .jpg osikis in hades, accompanied by isis, amentÎt, and nephthys, receives the homage of truth. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel héron, taken in in the temple of seti i. at abydos. thick walls served as fortifications against the attacks of sit and evil genii; a palace like that of the pharaohs stood in the midst of delightful gardens; and there, among his own people, osiris led a tranquil existence, enjoying in succession all the pleasures of earthly life without any of its pains. the goodness which had gained him the title of onnophris while he sojourned here below, inspired him with the desire and suggested the means of opening the gates of his paradise to the souls of his former subjects. souls did not enter into it unexamined, nor without trial. each of them had first to prove that during its earthly life it had belonged to a friend, or, as the egyptian texts have it, to a vassal of osiris--_amakhû khir osiri_--one of those who had served horus in his exile and had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the typhonian wars. [illustration: .jpg the deceased climbing the slope of the mountain of the west, ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from naville bas Ægyptische todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. cxxviii. ai. these were those followers of horus--_shosûû horû_--so often referred to in the literature of historic times.[*] * cf, p. . the _followers of horns_, i.e. those who had followed horus during the typhonian wars, are mentioned in a turin fragment of the canon of the kings, in which the author summarizes the chronology of the divine period. like the reign of râ, the time in which the followers of horus were supposed to have lived was for the egyptians of classic times the ultimate point beyond which history did not reach. horus, their master, having loaded them with favours during life, decided to extend to them after death the same privileges which he had conferred upon his father. he convoked around the corpse the gods who had worked with him at the embalmment of osiris: anubis and thot, isis and nephthys, and his four children--hâpi, qabhsonûf, amsît, and tiûmaûtf--to whom he had entrusted the charge of the heart and viscera. they all performed their functions exactly as before, repeated the same ceremonies, and recited the same formulas at the same stages of the operations, and so effectively that the dead man became a real osiris under their hands, having a true voice, and henceforth combining the name of the god with his own. [illustration: .jpg the mummy of sÛtimosÛ clasping his soul into his arms. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from guieysse-lefébure, _le papyrus de soutimès_, pl. viii. the outlines of the original have unfortunately been restored and enfeebled by the copyist. he had been sakhomka or menkaûrî; he became the osiris sakhomka, or the osiris menkaûrî, true of voice. horus and his companions then celebrated the rites consecrated to the "opening of the mouth and the eyes:" animated the statue of the deceased, and placed the mummy in the tomb, where anubis received it in his arms. recalled to life and movement, the double reassumed, one by one, all the functions of being, came and went and took part in the ceremonies of the worship which was rendered to him in his tomb. there he might be seen accepting the homage of his kindred, and clasping to his breast his soul under the form of a great human-headed bird with features the counterpart of his own. after being equipped with the formulas and amulets wherewith his prototype, osiris, had been furnished, he set forth to seek the "field of reeds." the way was long and arduous, strewn with perils to which he must have succumbed at the very first stages had he not been carefully warned beforehand and armed against them. [illustration: .jpg cynocephali drawing the net in which souls are caught. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a facsimile by dévèria (e. de rougé, _Études sur le rituel funéraire_, pl. iv. no. ). ignorant souls fished for by the cynocephali are here represented as fish; but the soul of nofirûbnû, instructed in the protective formulas, preserves its human form. a papyrus placed with the mummy in its coffin contained the needful topo-graphical directions and passwords, in order that he might neither stray nor perish by the way. the wiser egyptians copied out the principal chapters for themselves, or learned them by heart while yet in life, in order to be prepared for the life beyond. those who had not taken this precaution studied after death the copy with which they were provided; and since few egyptians could read, a priest, or relative of the deceased, preferably his son, recited the prayers in the mummy's ear, that he might learn them before he was carried away to the cemetery. if the double obeyed the prescriptions of the "book of the dead" to the letter, he reached his goal without fail.[*] on leaving the tomb he turned his back on the valley, and staff in hand climbed the hills which bounded it on the west, plunging boldly into the desert, where some bird, or even a kindly insect such as a praying mantis, a grasshopper, or a butterfly, served as his guide. soon he came to one of those sycamores which grow in the sand far away from the nile, and are regarded as magic trees by the fellahîn. out of the foliage a goddess--nûît, ïïâthor, or nît--half emerged, and offered him a dish of fruit, loaves of bread, and a jar of water. * manuscripts of this work represent about nine-tenths of the papyri hitherto discovered. they are not all equally full; complete copies are still relatively scarce, and most of those found with mummies contain nothing but extracts of varying length. the book itself was studied by champollion, who called it the _funerary ritual_; lepsius afterwards gave it the less definite name of _book of the dead_, which seems likely to prevail. it has been chiefly known from the hieroglyphic copy at turin, which lepsius traced and had lithographed in , under the title of _das todtenbuch der Ægypter_. in , e. du rougé began to publish a hieratic copy in the louvre, but since there has been a critical edition of manuscripts of the theban period most carefully collated by e. naville, _das mgyptische todtenbuch der xviii bis xx dynastie_, berlin, , vols, of plates in folio, and vol. of introduction in to. on this edition see maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. - . by accepting these gifts he became the guest of the goddess, and could never more retrace his steps[*] without special permission. beyond the sycamore were lands of terror, infested by serpents and ferocious beasts, furrowed by torrents of boiling water, intersected by ponds and marshes where gigantic monkeys cast their nets. * maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. - . it was not in egypt alone that the fact of accepting food offered by a god of the dead constituted a recognition of suzerainty, and prevented the human soul from returning to the world of the living. traces of this belief are found everywhere, in modern as in ancient times, and e. b. tylob, has collected numerous examples of the same in primitive culture, nd edit., vol. ii. pp. , , . [illustration: .jpg the deceased and his wife seated in front of the sycamore of nÛÎt and receiving the bread and water of the next world. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coloured plate in rosellini, _monumenti civili._,pl. cxxxiv. . ignorant souls, or those ill prepared for the struggle, had no easy work before them when they imprudently entered upon it. those who were not overcome by hunger and thirst at the outset were bitten by a urasus, or horned viper, hidden with evil intent below the sand, and perished in convulsions from the poison; or crocodiles seized as many of them as they could lay hold of at the fords of rivers; or cynocephali netted and devoured them indiscriminately along with the fish into which the partisans of typhon were transformed. they came safe and sound out of one peril only to fall into another, and infallibly succumbed before they were half through their journey. but, on the other hand, the double who was equipped and instructed, and armed with the true voice, confronted each foe with the phylactery and the incantation by which his enemy was held in check. as soon as he caught sight of one of them he recited the appropriate chapter from his book, he loudly proclaimed himself râ, tûmû, horus, or khopri--that god whose name and attributes were best fitted to repel the immediate danger--and flames withdrew at his voice, monsters fled or sank paralysed, the most cruel of genii drew in their claws and lowered their arms before him. he compelled crocodiles to turn away their heads; he transfixed serpents with his lance; he supplied himself at pleasure with all the provisions that he needed, and gradually ascended the mountains which surround the world, sometimes alone, and fighting his way step by step, sometimes escorted by beneficent divinities. halfway up the slope was the good cow hâfchor, the lady of the west, in meadows of tall plants where every evening she received the sun at his setting. if the dead man knew how to ask it according to the prescribed rite, she would take him upon her shoulders[*] and carry him across the accursed countries at full speed. * coffins of the xxth and xxist dynasties, with a yellow ground, often display this scene. generally the scene is found beneath the feet of the dead, at the lower end of the cartonage, and the cow is represented as carrying off at a gallop the mummy who is lying on her back. [illustration: .jpg the deceased piercing a serpent with his lance. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by naville (_das Ægyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. iii. p b). the commonest enemies of the dead were various kinds of serpents. having reached the north, he paused at the edge of an immense lake, the lake of kha, and saw in the far distance the outline of the islands of the blest. one tradition, so old as to have been almost forgotten in rames-side times, told how thot the ibis there awaited him, and bore him away on his wings;[***] another, no less ancient but of more lasting popularity, declared that a ferry-boat plied regularly between the solid earth and the shores of paradise. *** it is often mentioned in the pyramid texts, and inspired one of the most obscure chapters among them (_teti_, . - ; cf. _recueil de travaux_, vol. v. pp. , ). it seems that the ibis had to fight with sit for right of passage. the god who directed it questioned the dead, and the bark itself proceeded to examine them before they were admitted on board; for it was a magic bark. "tell me my name," cried the mast; and the travellers replied: "he who guides the great goddess on her way is thy name." "tell me my name," repeated the braces. "the spine of the jackal Ûapûaîtû is thy name." "tell me my name," proceeded the mast-head. [illustration: .jpg the good cow hÂthor carrying the dead man and his soul. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coloured facsimile published by leemans, _monuments Égyptiens du musée d' antiquités des pays-bas à leyden_, part iii. pl. xii. "the neck of amsît is thy name." "tell me my name," asked the sail. "nûît is thy name." each part of the hull and of the rigging spoke in turn and questioned the applicant regarding its name, this being generally a mystic phrase by which it was identified either with some divinity as a whole, or else with some part of his body. when the double had established his right of passage by the correctness of his answers, the bark consented to receive him and to carry him to the further shore. there he was met by the gods and goddesses of the court of osiris: by anubis, by hathor the lady of the cemetery, by nît, by the two màîts who preside over justice and truth, and by the four children of horus stiff-sheathed in their mummy wrappings. they formed as it were a guard of honour to introduce him and his winged guide into an immense hall, the ceiling of which rested on light graceful columns of painted wood. [illustration: .jpg anubis and thot weighing the heart of the deceased in the scales of truth. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pl. cxxxvi. ag of naville's _das thebanische todtenbuch_. at the further end of the hall osiris was seated in mysterious twilight within a shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender hands grasping flail and crook, the emblems of his power. [illustration: .jpg the deceased is brought before the shrine of osiris the judge by horus, the son of isis.] behind him stood isis and nephthys watching over him with uplifted hands, bare bosoms, and bodies straitly cased in linen. forty-two jurors who had died and been restored to life like their lord, and who had been chosen, one from each of those cities of egypt which recognized his authority, squatted right and left, and motionless, clothed in the wrappings of the dead, silently waited until they were addressed. the soul first advanced to the foot of the throne, carrying on its outstretched hands the image of its heart or of its eyes, agents and accomplices of its sins and virtues. it humbly "smelt the earth," then arose, and with uplifted hands recited its profession of faith. "hail unto you, ye lords of truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of truth and justice! i have come before thee, my master; i have been brought to see thy beauties. for i know thee, i know thy name, i know the names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in the hall of the two truths, living on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with their blood, in that day when account is rendered before onnophris, the true of voice. thy name which is thine is 'the god whose two twins are the ladies of the two truths;' and i, i know you, ye lords of the two truths, i bring unto you truth, i have destroyed sins for you. i have not committed iniquity against men! i have not oppressed the poor! i have not made defalcations in the necropolis! i have not laid labour upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself! i have not transgressed, i have not been weak, i have not defaulted, i have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods. i have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master! i have not starved any man, i have not made any to weep, i have not assassinated any man, i have not caused any man to be treacherously assassinated, and i have not committed treason against any! i have not in aught diminished the supplies of temples! i have not spoiled the shrewbread of the gods! i have not taken away the loaves and the wrappings of the dead! i have done no carnal act within the sacred enclosure of the temple! i have not blasphemed! i have in nought curtailed the sacred revenues! i have not pulled down the scale of the balance! i have not falsified the beam of the balance! i have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings! i have not lassoed cattle on their pastures! i have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! i have not fished in their ponds! i have not turned back the water in its season! i have not cut off a water-channel in its course! i have not put out the fire in its time! i have not defrauded the nine gods of the choice part of victims! i have not ejected the oxen of the gods! i have not turned back the god at his coming forth! i am pure! i am pure! i am pure! i am pure! pure as this great bonû of heracleopolis is pure!... there is no crime against me in this land of the double truth! since i know the names of the gods who are with thee in the hall of the double truth, save thou me from them!" he then turned towards the jury and pleaded his cause before them. they had been severally appointed for the cognizance of particular sins, and the dead man took each of them by name to witness that he was innocent of the sin which that one recorded. his plea ended, he returned to the supreme judge, and repeated, under what is sometimes a highly mystic form, the ideas which he had already advanced in the first part of his address. "hail unto you, ye gods who are in the great hall of the double truth, who have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on truth in aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it before the lord god who dwelleth in his solar disc! deliver me from the typhon who feedeth on entrails, o chiefs! in this hour of supreme judgment;--grant that the deceased may come unto you, he who hath not sinned, who hath neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed any crime, who hath not borne false witness, who hath done nought against himself, but who liveth on truth, who feedeth on truth. he hath spread joy on all sides; men speak of that which he hath done, and the gods rejoice in it. he hath reconciled the god to him by his love; he hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods, sepulchral meals unto the manes. deliver him from himself, speak not against him before the lord of the dead, for his mouth is pure, and his two hands are pure!" in the middle of the hall, however, his acts were being weighed by the assessors. like all objects belonging to the gods, the balance is magic, and the genius which animates it sometimes shows its fine and delicate little human head on the top of the upright stand which forms its body. everything about the balance recalls its superhuman origin: a cynocephalus, emblematic of thot, sits perched on the upright and watches the beam; the cords which suspend the scales are made of alternate _cruces ansato and tats_. truth squats upon one of the scales; thot, ibis-headed, places the heart on the other, and always merciful, bears upon the side of truth that judgment may be favourably inclined. he affirms that the heart is light of offence, inscribes the result of the proceeding upon a wooden tablet, and pronounces the verdict aloud. "thus saith thot, lord of divine discourse, scribe of the great ennead, to his father osiris, lord of eternity, 'behold the deceased in this hall of the double truth, his heart hath been weighed in the balance in the presence of the great genii, the lords of hades, and been found true. no trace of earthly impurity hath been found in his heart. now that he leaveth the tribunal true of voice, his heart is restored to him, as well as his eyes and the material cover of his heart, to be put back in their places each in its own time, his soul in heaven, his heart in the other world, as is the custom of the "followers of horus." henceforth let his body lie in the hands of anubis, who presideth over the tombs; let him receive offerings at the cemetery in the presence of onno-phris; let him be as one of those favourites who follow thee; let his soul abide where it will in the necropolis of his city, he whose voice is true before the great ennead.'" in this "negative confession," which the worshippers of osiris taught to their dead, all is not equally admirable. the material interests of the temple were too prominent, and the crime of killing a sacred goose or stealing a loaf from the bread offerings was considered as abominable as calumny or murder. but although it contains traces of priestly cupidity, yet how many of its precepts are untarnished in their purity by any selfish ulterior motive! in it is all our morality in germ, and with refinements of delicacy often lacking among peoples of later and more advanced civilizations. the god does not confine his favour to the prosperous and the powerful of this world; he bestows it also upon the poor. his will is that they be fed and clothed, and exempted from tasks beyond their strength; that they be not oppressed, and that unnecessary tears be spared them. if this does not amount to the love of our neighbour as our religions preach it, at least it represents the careful solicitude due from a good lord to his vassals. his pity extends to slaves; not only does he command that no one should ill-treat them himself, but he forbids that their masters should be led to ill-treat them. this profession of faith, one of the noblest bequeathed us by the old world, is of very ancient origin. it may be read in scattered fragments upon the monuments of the first dynasties, and the way in which its ideas are treated by the compilers of these inscriptions proves that it was not then regarded as new, but as a text so old and so well known that its formulas were current in all mouths, and had their prescribed places in epitaphs.[*] was it composed in mendes, the god's own home, or in heliopolis, when the theologians of that city appropriated the god of mendes and incorporated him in their ennead? in conception it certainly belongs to the osirian priesthood, but it can only have been diffused over the whole of egypt after the general adoption of the heliopolitan ennead throughout the cities. as soon as he was judged, the dead man entered into the possession of his rights as a pure soul. on high he received from the universal lord all that kings and princes here below bestowed upon their followers--rations of food,[**] and a house, gardens, and fields to be held subject to the usual conditions of tenure in egypt, i.e. taxation, military service, and the corvée. * for instance, one of the formulas found in memphite tombs states that the deceased had been the friend of his father, the beloved of his mother, sweet to those who lived with him, gracious to his brethren, loved of his servants, and that he had never sought wrongful quarrel with any man; briefly, that he spoke and did that which is right here below. ** the formula of the pyramid times is: "thy thousand of oxen, thy thousand of geese, of roast and boiled joints from the larder of the gods, of bread, and plenty of the good things presented in the hall of osiris." if the island was attacked by the partisans of sit, the osirian doubles hastened in a body to repulse them, and fought bravely in its defence. of the revenues sent to him by his kindred on certain days and by means of sacrifices, each gave tithes to the heavenly storehouses. yet this was but the least part of the burdens laid upon him by the laws of the country, which did not suffer him to become enervated by idleness, but obliged him to labour as in the days when he still dwelt in egypt. [illustration: .jpg the manes tilling the ground and reaping in the fields of ialÛ. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in the funerary papyrus of nebhopît in turin. he looked after the maintenance of canals and dykes, he tilled the ground, he sowed, he reaped, he garnered the grain for his lord and for himself. yet to those upon whom they were incumbent, these posthumous obligations, the sequel and continuation of feudal service, at length seemed too heavy, and theologians exercised their ingenuity to find means of lightening the burden. they authorized the manes to look to their servants for the discharge of all manual labour which they ought to have performed themselves. barely did a dead man, no matter how poor, arrive unaccompanied at the eternal cities; he brought with him a following proportionate to his rank and fortune upon earth. [illustration: .jpg uashbÎti. ] drawn by faucher-gudin from a painted limestone statuette from the tomb of _sonnozmû_ at thebes, dating from the end of the xxth dynasty. at first they were real doubles, those of slaves or vassals killed at the tomb, and who had departed along with the double of the master to serve him beyond the grave as they had served him here. a number of statues and images, magically endued with activity and intelligence, was afterwards substituted for this retinue of victims. originally of so large a size that only the rich or noble could afford them, they were reduced little by little to the height of a few inches. some were carved out of alabaster, granite, diorite, fine limestone, or moulded out of fine clay and delicately modelled; others had scarcely any human resemblance. they were endowed with life by means of a formula recited over them at the time of their manufacture, and afterwards traced upon their legs. all were possessed of the same faculties. when the god who called the osirians to the corvée pronounced the name of the dead man to whom the figures belonged, they arose and answered for him; hence their designation of "respondents "--_Ûashbîti_. equipped for agricultural labour, each grasping a hoe and carrying a seed-bag on his shoulder, they set out to work in their appointed places, contributing the required number of days of forced labour. [illustration: .jpg the dead man and his wife playing at draughts in the pavilion. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in no, papyrus, dublin (naville, _das mgyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. xxvii. da). the name of draughts is not altogether accurate; a description of the game may be found in falkner, _games ancient and oriental and how to play them_, pp. - . up to a certain point they thus compensated for those inequalities of condition which death itself did not efface among the vassals of osiris; for the figures were sold so cheaply that even the poorest could always afford some for themselves, or bestow a few upon their relations; and in the islands of the blest, fellah, artisan, and slave were indebted to the uashbîti for release from their old routine of labour and unending toil. while the little peasants of stone or glazed ware dutifully toiled and tilled and sowed, their masters were enjoying all the delights of the egyptian paradise in perfect idleness. they sat at ease by the water-side, inhaling the fresh north breeze, under the shadow of trees which were always green. they fished with lines among the lotus-plants; they embarked in their boats, and were towed along by their servants, or they would sometimes deign to paddle themselves slowly about the canals. [illustration: .jpg the dead man sailing in his bark along the canals of the fields of ialit. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the papyrus of nebhopît, in turin. this drawing is from part of the same scene as the illustration on p. . they went fowling among the reed-beds, or retired within their painted pavilions to read tales, to play at draughts, to return to their wives who were for ever young and beautiful.[**] ** gymnastic exercises, hunting, fishing, sailing, are all pictured in theban tombs. the game of draughts is mentioned in the title of chap. xvii. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. . ), and the women's pavilion is represented in the tomb of rakhmiri that the dead were supposed to read tales is proved from the fact that broken ostraca bearing long fragments of literary works are found in tombs; they were broken to kill them and to send on their doubles to the dead man in the next world. it was but an ameliorated earthly life, divested of all suffering under the rule and by the favour of the true-voiced onnophris. the feudal gods promptly adopted this new mode of life. [illustration: .jpg boat of a funerary fleet on its way to abydos. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by Éinil brugsch-bey. the original was found in the course of m. de morgan's excavations at mêîr, and is now at gîzeh. the dead man is sitting in the cabin, wrapped in his cloak. as far as i know, this is the only boat which has preserved its original rigging. it dates from the xith or xiith dynasty. each of their dead bodies, mummified, and afterwards reanimated in accordance with the osirian myth, became an osiris as did that of any ordinary person. some carried the assimilation so far as to absorb the god of mendes, or to be absorbed in him. at memphis phtah-sokaris became phtah-sokar-osiris, and at thinis khontamentîfc became osiris khontamentît. the sun-god lent himself to this process with comparative ease because his life is more like a man's life, and hence also more like that of osiris, which is the counterpart of a man's life. [illustration: .jpg the solar bark into which the dead man is about to enter. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a vignette in the papyrus of nebqadn, in paris. born in the morning, he ages as the day declines, and gently passes away at evening. from the time of his entering the sky to that of his leaving it, he reigns above as he reigned here below in the beginning; but when he has left the sky and sinks into hades, he becomes as one of the dead, and is, as they are, subjected to osirian embalmment. the same dangers that menace their human souls threaten his soul also; and when he has vanquished them, not in his own strength, but by the power of amulets and magical formulas, he enters into the fields of lalû, and ought to dwell there for ever under the rule of onuophris. he did nothing of the kind, however, for daily the sun was to be seen reappearing in the east twelve hours after it had sunk into the darkness of the west. was it a new orb each time, or did the same sun shine every day? in either case the result was precisely the same; the god came forth from death and re-entered into life. having identified the course of the sun-god with that of man, and râ with osiris for a first day and a first night, it was hard not to push the matter further, and identify them for all succeeding days and nights, affirming that man and osiris might, if they so wished, be born again in the morning, as râ was, and together with him. if the egyptians had found the prospect of quitting the darkness of the tomb for the bright meadows of ialû a sensible alleviation of their lot, with what joy must they have been filled by the conception which allowed them to substitute the whole realm of the sun for a little archipelago in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe. their first consideration was to obtain entrance into the divine bark, and this was the object of all the various practices and prayers, whose text, together with that which already contained the osirian formulas, ensured the unfailing protection of râ to their possessor. the soul desirous of making use of them went straight from his tomb to the very spot where the god left earth to descend into hades. this was somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of abydos, and was reached through a narrow gorge or "cleft" in the libyan range, whose "mouth" opened in front of the temple of osiris khontamentît, a little to the north-west of the city. the soul was supposed to be carried thither by a small flotilla of boats, manned by figures representing friends or priests, and laden with food, furniture, and statues. this flotilla was placed within the vault on the day of the funeral, and was set in motion by means of incantations recited over it during one of the first nights of the year, at the annual feast of the dead. the bird or insect which had previously served as guide to the soul upon its journey now took the helm to show the fleet the right way, and under this command the boats left abydos and mysteriously passed through the "cleft" into that western sea which is inaccessible to the living, there to await the daily coming of the dying sun-god. [illustration: .jpg the solar bark passing into the mountain of the west. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a very small photograph published in the catalogue of the minutoli sale. as soon as his bark appeared at the last bend of the celestial nile, the cynocephali, who guarded the entrance into night, began to dance and gesticulate upon the banks as they intoned their accustomed hymn. the gods of abydos mingled their shouts of joy with the chant of the sacred baboons, the bark lingered for a moment upon the frontiers of day, and initiated souls seized the occasion to secure their recognition and their reception on board of it.[*] once admitted, they took their share in the management of the boat, and in the battles with hostile deities; but they were not all endowed with the courage or equipment needful to withstand the perils and terrors of the voyage. many stopped short by the way in one of the regions which it traversed, either in the realm of khontamentît, or in that of sokaris, or in those islands where the good osiris welcomed them as though they had duly arrived in the ferry-boat, or upon the wing of thot. there they dwelt in colonies under the suzerainty of local gods, rich, and in need of nothing, but condemned to live in darkness, excepting for the one brief hour in which the solar bark passed through their midst, irradiating them with beams of light.[**] * this description of the embarkation and voyage of the soul is composed from indications given in one of the vignettes of chap. xvi. of the _book of the dead_ (naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxii.), combined with the text of a formula which became common from the times of the xith and xiith dynasties (maspero, _Études de mythologie et l'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. - , and _Études Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. , ). ** maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. , . the few persevered, feeling that they had courage to accompany the sun throughout, and these were indemnified for their sufferings by the most brilliant fate ever dreamed of by egyptian souls., born anew with the sun-god and appearing with him at the gates of the east, they were assimilated to him, and shared his privilege of growing old and dying, only to be ceaselessly rejuvenated and to live again with ever-renewed splendour. they disembarked where they pleased, and returned at will into the world. if now and then they felt a wish to revisit all that was left of their earthly bodies, the human-headed sparrow-hawk descended the shaft in full flight, alighted upon the funeral couch, and, with hands softly laid upon the spot where the heart had been wont to beat, gazed upwards at the impassive mask of the mummy. [illustration: .jpg the soul descending the sepulchral shaft on its way to rejoin the mummy. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from dévèria. this was but for a moment, since nothing compelled these perfect souls to be imprisoned within the tomb like the doubles of earlier times, because they feared the light. they "went forth by day," and dwelt in those places where they had lived; they walked in their gardens by their ponds of running water; they perched like so many birds on the branches of the trees which they had planted, or enjoyed the fresh air under the shade of their sycamores; they ate and drank at pleasure; they travelled by hill and dale; they embarked in the boat of râ, and disembarked without weariness, and without distaste for the same perpetual round. this conception, which was developed somewhat late, brought the egyptians back to the point from which they had started when first they began to speculate on the life to come. [illustration: .jpg the soul on the edge of the funeral couch, with its hands on the heart of the mummy. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey, reproducing the miniature sarcophagus of the scribe râ (maspero, _guide du visiteur_, pp. , , no. ). the soul, after having left the place of its incarnation to which in the beginning it clung, after having ascended into heaven and there sought congenial asylum in vain, forsook all havens which it had found above, and unhesitatingly fell back upon earth, there to lead a peaceful, free, and happy life in the full light of day, and with the whole valley of egypt for a paradise. the connection, always increasingly intimate between osiris and râ, gradually brought about a blending of the previously separate myths and beliefs concerning each. the friends and enemies of the one became the friends and enemies of the other, and from a mixture of the original conceptions of the two deities, arose new personalities, in which contradictory elements were blent together, often without true fusion. the celestial horuses one by one were identified with horus, son of isis, and their attributes were given to him, as his in the same way became theirs. apopi and the monsters--the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the wild boar--who lay in wait for râ as he sailed the heavenly ocean, became one with sît and his accomplices. sit still possessed his half of egypt, and his primitive brotherly relation to the celestial horus remained unbroken, either 'on account of their sharing one temple, as at nûbît, or because they were worshipped as one in two neighbouring nomes, as, for example, at oxyrrhynchos and at heracleopolis magna. the repulsion with which the slayer of osiris was regarded did not everywhere dissociate these two cults: certain small districts persisted in this double worship down to the latest times of paganism. it was, after all, a mark of fidelity to the oldest traditions of the race, but the bulk of the egyptians, who had forgotten these, invented reasons taken from the history of the divine dynasties to explain the fact. the judgment of thot or of sibû had not put an end to the machinations of sît: as soon as horus had left the earth, sît resumed them, and pursued them, with varying fortune, under the divine kings of the second ennead. now, in the year of harmakhis, the typhonians reopened the campaign. beaten at first near edfû, they retreated precipitately northwards, stopping to give battle wherever their partisans predominated,--at zatmîfc in the theban nome,[*] at khaîtnûtrît to the north-east of denderah, and at hibonû in the principality of the gazelle. * zatmît appears to have been situate at some distance from bayadîyéh, on the spot where the map published by the egyptian commission marks the ruins of a modern village. there was a necropolis of considerable extent there, which furnishes the luxor dealers with antiquities, many of which belong to the first theban empire. [illustration: .jpg the soul going forth into its garden by day. ] copied by faucher-gudin from the survey-drawings of the tomb of anni by boussac, member of the _mission française_ in egypt ( ). the inscription over the arbour gives the list of the various trees in the garden of anni during his lifetime. several bloody combats, which took place between oxyrrhynchos and heracleopolis magna, were the means of driving them finally out of the nile valley; they rallied for the last time in the eastern provinces of the delta, were beaten at zalû, and giving up all hope of success on land, they embarked at the head of the gulf of suez, in order to return to the nubian desert, their habitual refuge in times of distress. the sea was the special element of typhon, and upon it they believed themselves secure. horus, however, followed them, overtook them near shas-hirît, routed them, and on his return to edfu, celebrated his victory by a solemn festival. by degrees, as he made himself master of those localities which owed allegiance to sit, he took energetic measures to establish in them the authority of osiris and of the solar cycle. in all of them he built, side by side with the sanctuary of the typhonian divinities, a temple to himself, in which he was enthroned under the particular form he was obliged to assume in order to vanquish his enemies. metamorphosed into a hawk at the battle of hibonû, we next see him springing on to the back of sit under the guise of a hippopotamus; in his shrine at hibonû he is represented as a hawk perching on the back of a gazelle, emblem of the nome where the struggle took place. near to zalû he became incarnate as a human-headed lion, crowned with the triple diadem, and having feet armed with claws which cut like a knife; it was under the form, too, of a lion that he was worshipped in the temple at zalû. the correlation of sit and the celestial horus was not, therefore, for these egyptians of more recent times a primitive religious fact; it was the consequence, and so to speak the sanction, of the old hostility between the two gods. [illustration: .jpg] horus had treated his enemy in the same fashion that a victorious pharaoh treated the barbarians conquered by his arms: he had constructed a fortress to keep his foe in check, and his priests formed a sort of garrison as a precaution against the revolt of the rival priesthood and the followers of the rival deity. in this manner the battles of the gods were changed into human struggles, in which, more than once, egypt was deluged with blood. the hatred of the followers of osiris to those of typhon was perpetuated with such implacability, that the nomes which had persisted in adhering to the worship of sit, became odious to the rest of the population: the image of their master on the monuments was mutilated, their names were effaced from the geographical lists, they were assailed with insulting epithets, and to pursue and slay their sacred animals was reckoned a pious act. thus originated those skirmishes which developed into actual civil wars, and were continued down to roman times. the adherents of typhon only became more confirmed in their veneration for the accursed god; christianity alone overcame their obstinate fidelity to him.[*] * this incident in the wars of horus and sit is drawn by faucher-gudin from a bas-relief of the temple of edfû. on the right, har-hûdîti, standing up in the solar bark, pierces with his lance the head of a crocodile, a partisan of sît, lying in the water below; harmâkhis, standing behind him, is present at the execution. facing this divine pair, is the young horus, who kills a man, another partisan of sît, while isis and har-hûdîti hold his chains; behind horus, isis and thot are leading four other captives bound and ready to be sacrificed before harmâkhis. the history of the world for egypt was therefore only the history of the struggle between the adherents of osiris and the followers of sît; an interminable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of the rival parties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a decisive victory till the end of time. the divine kings of the second and third ennead devoted most of the years of their earthly reign to this end; they were portrayed under the form of the great warrior pharaohs, who, from the eighteenth to the twelfth century before our era, extended their rule from the plains of the euphrates to the marshes of ethiopia. a few peaceful sovereigns are met with here and there in this line of conquerors--a few sages or legislators, of whom the most famous was styled thot, the doubly great, ruler of hermopolis and of the hermopolitan ennead. a legend of recent origin made him the prime minister of horus, son of isis; a still more ancient tradition would identify him with the second king of the second dynasty, the immediate successor of the divine horuses, and attributes to him a reign of years. he brought to the throne that inventive spirit and that creative power which had characterized him from the time when he was only a feudal deity. astronomy, divination, magic, medicine, writing, drawing--in fine, all the arts and sciences emanated from him as from their first source. he had taught mankind the methodical observation of the heavens and of the changes that took place in them, the slow revolutions of the sun, the rapid phases of the moon, the intersecting movements of the five planets, and the shapes and limits of the constellations which each night were lit up in the sky. most of the latter either remained, or appeared to remain immovable, and seemed never to pass out of the regions accessible to the human eye. those which were situate on the extreme margin of the firmament accomplished movements there analogous to those of the planets. [illustration: .jpg one of the astronomical tables of the tomb of ramses iv. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a copy by lepsius, _denkm._, iii. , . every year at fixed times they were seen to sink one after another below the horizon, to disappear, and rising again after an eclipse of greater or less duration, to regain insensibly their original positions. the constellations were reckoned to be thirty-six in number, the thirty-six _decani_ to whom were attributed mysterious powers, and of whom sothis was queen--sothis transformed into the star of isis, when orion (sâhû), became the star of osiris. the nights are so clear and the atmosphere so transparent in egypt, that the eye can readily penetrate the depths of space, and distinctly see points of light which would be invisible in our foggy climate. the egyptians did not therefore need special instruments to ascertain the existence of a considerable number of stars which we could not see without the help of our telescopes; they could perceive with the naked eye stars of the fifth magnitude, and note them upon their catalogues.[*] it entailed, it is true, a long training and uninterrupted practice to bring their sight up to its maximum keenness; but from very early times it was a function of the priestly colleges to found and maintain schools of astronomy. the first observatories established on the banks of the nile seem to have belonged to the temples of the sun; the high priests of râ--who, to judge from their title, were alone worthy to behold the sun face to face--were actively employed from the earliest times in studying the configuration and preparing maps of the heavens. the priests of other gods were quick to follow their example: at the opening of the historic period, there was not a single temple, from one end of the valley to the other, that did not possess its official astronomers, or, as they were called, "watchers of the night."[**] * biot, however, states that stars of the third and fourth magnitude "are the smallest which can be seen with the naked eye." i believe i am right in affirming that several of the fellahîn and bedawîn attached to the "service des antiquités" can see stars which are usually classed with those of the fifth magnitude. ** _urshu_: this word is also used for the soldiers on watch during the day upon the walls of a fortress. birch believed he had discovered in the british museum a catalogue of observations made at thebes by several astronomers upon a constellation which answered to the hyades or the pleiades; it was merely a question in this text of the quantity of water supplied regularly to the astronomers of a theban temple for their domestic purposes. in the evening they went up on to the high terraces above the shrine, or on to the narrow platforms which terminated the pylons, and fixing their eyes continuously on the celestial vault above them, followed the movements of the constellations and carefully noted down the slightest phenomena which they observed. a portion of the chart of the heavens, as known to theban egypt between the eighteenth and twelfth centuries before our era, has survived to the present time; parts of it were carved by the decorators on the ceilings of temples, and especially on royal tombs. the deceased pharaohs were identified with osiris in a more intimate fashion than their subjects. they represented the god even in the most trivial details; on earth--where, after having played the part of the beneficent onnophris of primitive ages, they underwent the most complete and elaborate embalming, like osiris of the lower world; in hades--where they embarked side by side with the sun-osiris to cross the night and to be born again at daybreak; in heaven--where they shone with orion-sâhu under the guardianship of sothis, and, year by year, led the procession of the stars. the maps of the firmament recalled to them, or if necessary taught them, this part of their duties: they there saw the planets and the _decani_ sail past in their boats, and the constellations follow one another in continuous succession. the lists annexed to the charts indicated the positions occupied each month by the principal heavenly bodies--their risings, their culminations, and their settings. unfortunately, the workmen employed to execute these pictures either did not understand much about the subject in hand, or did not trouble themselves to copy the originals exactly: they omitted many passages, transposed others, and made endless mistakes, which made it impossible for us to transfer accurately to a modern map the information possessed by the ancients. in directing their eyes to the celestial sphere, thot had at the same time revealed to men the art of measuring time, and the knowledge of the future. as he was the moon-god _par excellence_, he watched with jealous care over the divine eye which had been entrusted to him by horus, and the thirty days during which he was engaged in conducting it through all the phases of its nocturnal life, were reckoned as a month. twelve of these months formed the year, a year of three hundred and sixty days, during which the earth witnessed the gradual beginning and ending of the circle of the seasons. the nile rose, spread over the fields, sank again into its channel; to the vicissitudes of the inundation succeeded the work of cultivation; the harvest followed the seedtime: these formed three distinct divisions of the year, each of nearly equal duration. thot made of them the three seasons,--that of the waters, shaît; that of vegetation, pirûît; that of the harvest, shômû--each comprising four months, numbered one to four; the st, nd, rd, and th months of shaît; the st, nd, rd, and th months of pirûît; the st, nd, rd, and th months of shômû. the twelve months completed, a new year began, whose birth was heralded by the rising of sothis in the early days of august. the first month of the egyptian year thus coincided with the eighth of ours. thot became its patron, and gave it his name, relegating each of the others to a special protecting divinity; in this manner the third month of shaît fell to hathor, and was called after her; the fourth of pirûît belonged to ranûît or ramûît, the lady of harvests, and derived from her its appellation of pharmûti. official documents always designated the months by the ordinal number attached to them in each season, but the people gave them by preference the names of their tutelary deities, and these names, transcribed into greek, and then into arabic, are still used by the christian inhabitants of egypt, side by side with the mussulman appellations. one patron for each month was, however, not deemed sufficient: each month was subdivided into three decades, over which presided as many _decani_, and the days themselves were assigned to genii appointed to protect them. a number of festivals were set apart at irregular intervals during the course of the year: festivals for the new year, festivals for the beginning of the seasons, months and decades, festivals for the dead, for the supreme gods, and for local divinities. every act of civil life was so closely allied to the religious life, that it could not be performed without a sacrifice or a festival. a festival celebrated the cutting of the dykes, another the opening of the canals, a third the reaping of the first sheaf, or the carrying of the grain; a crop gathered or stored without a festival to implore the blessing of the gods, would have been an act of sacrilege and fraught with disaster. the first year of three hundred and sixty days, regulated by the revolutions of the moon, did not long meet the needs of the egyptian people; it did not correspond with the length of the solar year, for it fell short of it by five and a quarter days, and this deficit, accumulating from twelvemonth to twelvemonth, caused such a serious difference between the calendar reckoning and the natural seasons, that it soon had to be corrected. they intercalated, therefore, after the twelfth month of each year and before the first day of the ensuing year, five epagomenal days, which they termed the "five days over and above the year."[*] * there appears to be a tendency among egyptologists now to doubt the existence, under the ancient empire, of the five epagomenal days, and as a fact they are nowhere to be found expressly mentioned; but we know that the five gods of the osirian cycle were born during the epagomenal day (cf. p. of this history), and the allusions to the osirian legend which are met with in the pyramid texts, prove that the days were added long before the time when those inscriptions were cut. as the wording of the texts often comes down from prehistoric times, it is most likely that the invention of the epagomenal days is anterior to the first thinite and memphite dynasties. the legend of osiris relates that thot created them in order to permit nûît to give birth to all her children. these days constituted, at the end of the "great year," a "little month," which considerably lessened the difference between the solar and lunar computation, but did not entirely do away with it, and the six hours and a few minutes of which the egyptians had not taken count gradually became the source of fresh perplexities. they at length amounted to a whole day, which needed to be added every four years to the regular three hundred and sixty days, a fact which was unfortunately overlooked. the difficulty, at first only slight, which this caused in public life, increased with time, and ended by disturbing the harmony between the order of the calendar and that of natural phenomena: at the end of a hundred and twenty years, the legal year had gained a whole month on the actual year, and the st of thot anticipated the heliacal rising of sothis by thirty days, instead of coinciding with it as it ought. the astronomers of the græco-roman period, after a retrospective examination of all the past history of their country, discovered a very ingenious theory for obviating this unfortunate discrepancy. if the omission of six hours annually entailed the loss of one day every four years, the time would come, after three hundred and sixty-five times four years, when the deficit would amount to an entire year, and when, in consequence, fourteen hundred and sixty whole years would exactly equal fourteen hundred and sixty-one incomplete years. the agreement of the two years, which had been disturbed by the force of circumstances, was re-established of itself after rather more than fourteen and a half centuries: the opening of the civil year became identical with the beginning of the astronomical year, and this again coincided with the heliacal rising of sirius, and therefore with the official date of the inundation. to the egyptians of pharaonic times, this simple and eminently practical method was unknown: by means of it hundreds of generations, who suffered endless troubles from the recurring difference between an uncertain and a fixed year, might have consoled themselves with the satisfaction of knowing that a day would come when one of their descendants would, for once in his life, see both years coincide with mathematical accuracy, and the seasons appear at their normal times. the egyptian year might be compared to a watch which loses a definite number of minutes daily. the owner does not take the trouble to calculate a cycle in which the total of minutes lost will bring the watch round to the correct time: he bears with the irregularity as long as his affairs do not suffer by it; but when it causes him inconvenience, he alters the hands to the right hour, and repeats this operation each time he finds it necessary, without being guided by a fixed rule. in like manner the egyptian year fell into hopeless confusion with regard to the seasons, the discrepancy continually increasing, until the difference became so great, that the king or the priests had to adjust the two by a process similar to that employed in the case of the watch. the days, moreover, had each their special virtues, which it was necessary for man to know if he wished to profit by the advantages, or to escape the perils which they possessed for him. there was not one among them that did not recall some incident of the divine wars, and had not witnessed a battle between the partisans of sit and those of osiris or râ; the victories or the disasters which they had chronicled had as it were stamped them with good or bad luck, and for that reason they remained for ever auspicious or the reverse. it was on the th of athyr that typhon had enticed his brother to come to him, and had murdered him in the middle of a banquet. every year, on this day, the tragedy that had taken place in the earthly abode of the god seemed to be repeated afresh in the heights of heaven. just as at the moment of the death of osiris, the powers of good were at their weakest, and the sovereignty of evil everywhere prevailed, so the whole of nature, abandoned to the powers of darkness, became inimical to man. whatever he undertook on that day issued in failure. if he went out to walk by the river-side, a crocodile would attack him, as the crocodile sent by sît had attacked osiris. if he set out on a journey, it was a last farewell which he bade to his family and friends: death would meet him by the way. to escape this fatality, he must shut himself up at home, and wait in inaction until the hours of danger had passed and the sun of the ensuing day had put the evil one to flight.[*] * on the th of thot no work was to be done, no oxen killed, no stranger received. on the nd no fish might be eaten, no oil lamp was to be lighted. on the rd "put no incense on the fire, nor kill big cattle, nor goats, nor ducks; eat of no goose, nor of that which has lived." on the th "do absolutely nothing on this day," and the same advice is found on the th of paophi, on the th, on the th, on the th, and more than thirty times in the remainder of the sallier calendar. on the th of mechir it is forbidden to speak aloud to any one. it was to his interest to know these adverse influences; and who would have known them all, had not thot pointed them out and marked them in his calendars? one of these, long fragments of which have come down to us, indicated briefly the character of each day, the gods who presided over it, the perils which accompanied their patronage, or the good fortune which might be expected of them. the details of it are not always intelligible to us, as we are still ignorant of many of the episodes in the life of osiris. the egyptians were acquainted with the matter from childhood, and were guided with sufficient exactitude by these indications. the hours of the night were all inauspicious; those of the day were divided into three "seasons" of four hours each, of which some were lucky, while others were invariably of ill omen. "the th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. whosoever is born on this day, will die more advanced in years than any of his family; he will attain to a greater age than his father. the th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. this is the day on which the goddess sokhîfc, mistress of the double white palace, burnt the chiefs when they raised an insurrection, came forth, and manifested themselves. offerings of bread to shû, phtah, thot: burn incense to râ, and to the gods who are his followers, to phtah, thot, hû-sû, on this day. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. the th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest on this day will be fortunate. the th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. do not join thyself to a woman in the presence of the eye of horus. beware of letting the fire go out which is in thy house. the th of tybi: _good, good, good_. whatsoever thou seest with thine eye this day, the ennead of the gods will grant to thee: the sick will recover. the th of tybi: _good, good, good_. the gods cry out for joy at noon this day. bring offerings of festal cakes and of fresh bread, which rejoice the heart of the gods and of the manes. the th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, mimical_. do not set fire to weeds on this day: it is the day on which the god sap-hôû set fire to the land of btito. the th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. do not draw nigh to any flame on this day, for râ entered the flames to strike all his enemies, and whosoever draws nigh to them on this day, it shall not be well with him during his whole life. the th of tybi: _inimical, inimical, inimical_. see that thou beholdest not a rat on this day, nor approachest any rat within thy house: it is the day wherein sokhît gave forth the decrees." in these cases a little watchfulness or exercise of memory sufficed to put a man on his guard against evil omens; but in many circumstances all the vigilance in the world would not protect him, and the fatality of the day would overtake him, without his being able to do ought to avert it. no man can at will place the day of his birth at a favourable time; he must accept it as it occurs, and yet it exercises a decisive influence on the manner of his death. according as he enters the world on the th, th, or th of paophi, he either dies of marsh fever, of love, or of drunkenness. the child of the rd perishes by the jaws of a crocodile: that of the th is bitten and dies by a serpent. on the other hand, the fortunate man whose birthday falls on the th or the th lives to an extreme old age, and passes away peacefully, respected by all. [illustration: .jpg the gods fighting foe the magician who has invoked them. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the tracing by golbnischeff, _die metternich-stele_, pi, iii. . thot, having pointed out the evil to men, gave to them at the same time the remedy. the magical arts of which he was the repository, made him virtual master of the other gods. he knew their mystic names, their secret weaknesses, the kind of peril they most feared, the ceremonies which subdued them to his will, the prayers which they could not refuse to grant under pain of misfortune or death. his wisdom, transmitted to his worshippers, assured to them the same authority which he exercised upon those in heaven, on earth, or in the nether world. the magicians instructed in his school had, like the god, control of the words and sounds which, emitted at the favourable moment with the "correct voice," would evoke the most formidable deities from beyond the confines of the universe: they could bind and loose at will osiris, sit, anubis, even thot himself; they could send them forth, and recall them, or constrain them to work and fight for them. the extent of their power exposed the magicians to terrible temptations; they were often led to use it to the detriment of others, to satisfy their spite, or to gratify their grosser appetites. many, moreover, made a gain of their knowledge, putting it at the service of the ignorant who would pay for it. when they were asked to plague or get rid of an enemy, they had a hundred different ways of suddenly surrounding him without his suspecting it: they tormented him with deceptive or terrifying dreams; they harassed him with apparitions and mysterious voices; they gave him as a prey to sicknesses, to wandering spectres, who entered into him and slowly consumed him. they constrained, even at a distance, the wills of men; they caused women to be the victims of infatuations, to forsake those they had loved, and to love those they had previously detested. in order to compose an irresistible charm, they merely required a little blood from a person, a few nail-parings, some hair, or a scrap of linen which he had worn, and which, from contact with his skin, had become impregnated with his personality. portions of these were incorporated with the wax of a doll which they modelled, and clothed to resemble their victim; thenceforward all the inflictions to which the image was subjected were experienced by the original; he was consumed with fever when his effigy was exposed to the fire, he was wounded when the figure was pierced by a knife. the pharaohs themselves had no immunity from these spells.[*] * spells were employed against ramses iii., and the evidence in the criminal charge brought against the magicians explicitly mentions the wax figures and the philters used on this occasion. these machinations were wont to be met by others of the same kind, and magic, if invoked at the right moment, was often able to annul the ills which magic had begun. it was not indeed all-powerful against fate: the man born on the th of paophi would die of a snake-bite, whatever charm he might use to protect himself. but if the day of his death were foreordained, at all events the year in which it would occur was uncertain, and it was easy for the magician to arrange that it should not take place prematurely. a formula recited opportunely, a sentence of prayer traced on a papyrus, a little statuette worn about the person, the smallest amulet blessed and consecrated, put to flight the serpents who were the instruments of fate. those curious stelae on which we see horus half naked, standing on two crocodiles and brandishing in his fists creatures which had reputed powers of fascination, were so many protecting talismans; set up at the entrance to a room or a house, they kept off the animals represented and brought the evil fate to nought. [illustration: .jpg the child horus on the crocodiles. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an alexandrian stele in the gîzeh museum. the reason for the appearance of so many different animals in this stele and in others of the same nature, has been given by maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. - ; they were all supposed to possess the evil eye and to be able to fascinate their victim before striking him. sooner or later destiny would doubtless prevail, and the moment would come when the fated serpent, eluding all precautions, would succeed in carrying out the sentence of death. at all events the man would have lived, perhaps to the verge of old age, perhaps to the years of a hundred and ten, to which the wisest of the egyptians hoped to attain, and which period no man born of mortal mother might exceed. if the arts of magic could thus suspend the law of destiny, how much more efficacious were they when combating the influences of secondary deities, the evil eye, and the spells of man? thot, who was the patron of sortilege, presided also over exorcisms, and the criminal acts which some committed in his name could have reparation made for them by others in his name. to malicious genii, genii still stronger were opposed; to harmful amulets, those which were protective; to destructive measures, vitalizing remedies; and this was not even the most troublesome part of the magicians' task. nobody, in fact, among those delivered by their intervention escaped unhurt from the trials to which, he had been subjected. the possessing spirits when they quitted their victim generally left behind them traces of their occupation, in the brain, heart, lungs, intestines--in fact, in the whole body. the illnesses to which the human race is prone, were not indeed all brought about by enchanters relentlessly persecuting their enemies, but they were all attributed to the presence of an invisible being, whether spectre or demon, who by some supernatural means had been made to enter the patient, or who, unbidden, had by malice or necessity taken up his abode within him. it was needful, after expelling the intruder, to re-establish the health of the sufferer by means of fresh remedies. the study of simples and other _materiæ medicæ_ would furnish these; thot had revealed himself to man as the first magician, he became in like manner for them the first physician and the first surgeon. egypt is naturally a very salubrious country, and the egyptians boasted that they were "the healthiest of all mortals;" but they did not neglect any precautions to maintain their health. "every month, for three successive days, they purged the system by means of emetics or clysters. the study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each physician attending to one kind of illness only. every place possessed several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head, or the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases." but the subdivision was not carried to the extent that herodotus would make us believe. it was the custom to make a distinction only between the physician trained in the priestly schools, and further instructed by daily practice and the study of books,--the bone-setter attached to the worship of sokhit who treated fractures by the intercession of the goddess,--and the exorcist who professed to cure by the sole virtue of amulets and magic phrases. the professional doctor treated all kinds of maladies, but, as with us, there were specialists for certain affections, who were consulted in preference to general practitioners. if the number of these specialists was so considerable as to attract the attention of strangers, it was because the climatic character of the country necessitated it. where ophthalmia and affections of the intestines raged violently, we necessarily find many oculists[*] as well as doctors for internal maladies. the best instructed, however, knew but little of anatomy. as with the christian physicians of the middle ages, religious scruples prevented the egyptians from cutting open or dissecting, in the cause of pure science, the dead body which was identified with that of osiris. the processes of embalming, which would have instructed them in anatomy, were not intrusted to doctors; the horror was so great with which any one was regarded who mutilated the human form, that the "paraschite," on whom devolved the duty of making the necessary incisions in the dead, became the object of universal execration: as soon as he had finished his task, the assistants assaulted him, throwing stones at him with such violence that he had to take to his heels to escape with his life.[**] * affections of the eyes occupy one-fourth of the _ebers papyrus_. ** diodorus siculus, i. . the knowledge of what went on within the body was therefore but vague. life seemed to be a little air, a breath which was conveyed by the veins from member to member. "the head contains twenty-two vessels, which draw the spirits into it and send them thence to all parts of the body. there are two vessels for the breasts, which communicate heat to the lower parts. there are two vessels for the thighs, two for the neck, two for the arms, two for the back of the head, two for the forehead, two for the eyes, two for the eyelids, two for the right ear by which enter the breaths of life, and two for the left ear which in like manner admit the breaths of death." [illustration: .jpg a dead man receiving the breath of life. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by naville, in the _Ægyptische todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. lxix. the deceased carries in this hand a sail inflated by the wind, symbolizing the air, and holds it to his nostrils that he may inhale the breaths which will fill anew his arteries, and bring life to his limbs. the "breaths" entering by the right ear, are "the good airs, the delicious airs of the north;" the sea-breeze which tempers the burning of summer and renews the strength of man, continually weakened by the heat and threatened with exhaustion. these vital spirits, entering the veins and arteries by the ear or nose, mingled with the blood, which carried them to all parts of the body; they sustained the animal, and were, so to speak, the cause of its movement. the heart, the perpetual mover--_hâîti_--collected them and redistributed them throughout the body: it was regarded as "the beginning of all the members," and whatever part of the living body the physician touched, "whether the head, the nape of the neck, the hands, the breast, the arms, the legs, his hand lit upon the heart," and he felt it beating under his fingers. under the influence of the good breaths, the vessels were inflated and worked regularly; under that of the evil, they became inflamed, were obstructed, were hardened, or gave way, and the physician had to remove the obstruction, allay the inflammation, and re-establish their vigour and elasticity. at the moment of death, the vital spirits "withdrew with the soul; the blood," deprived of air, "became coagulated, the veins and arteries emptied themselves, and the creature perished" for want of breaths. the majority of the diseases from which the ancient egyptians suffered, are those which still attack their successors; ophthalmia, affections of the stomach, abdomen, and bladder, intestinal worms, varicose veins, ulcers in the leg, the nile pimple, and finally the "divine mortal malady," the _divinus morbus_ of the latins, epilepsy. anaemia, from which at least one-fourth of the present population suffers, was not less prevalent than at present, if we may judge from the number of remedies which were used against hematuria, the principal cause of it. the fertility of the women entailed a number of infirmities or local affections which the doctors attempted to relieve, not always with success.[*] * with regard to the diseases of women, cf. _ebers papyrus_, pis. xciii., xcviii., etc. several of the recipes are devoted to the solution of a problem which appears to have greatly exercised the mind of the ancients, viz. the determination of the sex of a child before its birth. the science of those days treated externals only, and occupied itself merely with symptoms easily determined by sight or touch; it never suspected that troubles which showed themselves in two widely remote parts of the body might only be different effects of the same illness, and they classed as distinct maladies those indications which we now know to be the symptoms of one disease. they were able, however, to determine fairly well the specific characteristics of ordinary affections, and sometimes described them in a precise and graphic fashion. "the abdomen is heavy, the pit of the stomach painful, the heart burns and palpitates violently. the clothing oppresses the sick man and he can barely support it. nocturnal thirsts. his heart is sick, as that of a man who has eaten of the sycamore gum. the flesh loses its sensitiveness as that of a man seized with illness. if he seek to satisfy a want of nature he finds no relief. say to this, 'there is an accumulation of humours in the abdomen, which makes the heart sick. i will act.'" this is the beginning of gastric fever so common in egypt, and a modern physician could not better diagnose such a case; the phraseology would be less flowery, but the analysis of the symptoms would not differ from that given us by the ancient practitioner. the medicaments recommended comprise nearly everything which can in some way or other be swallowed, whether in solid, mucilaginous, or liquid form. vegetable remedies are reckoned by the score, from the most modest herb to the largest tree, such as the sycamore, palm, acacia, and cedar, of which the sawdust and shavings were supposed to possess both antiseptic and emollient properties. among the mineral substances are to be noted sea-salt, alum, nitre, sulphate of copper, and a score of different kinds of stones--among the latter the "memphite stone" was distinguished for its virtues; if applied to parts of the body which were lacerated or unhealthy, it acted as an anaesthetic and facilitated the success of surgical operations. flesh taken from the living subject, the heart, the liver, the gall, the blood--either dried or liquid--of animals, the hair and horn of stags, were all customarily used in many cases where the motive determining their preference above other _materiæ medicæ_ is unknown to us. many recipes puzzle us by their originality and by the barbaric character of the ingredients recommended: "the milk of a woman who has given birth to a boy," the dung of a lion, a tortoise's brains, an old book boiled in oil.[*] * ebers papyrus, pl. lxxviii. . --lxxix. . : "to relieve a child who is constipated.--an old book. boil it in oil, and apply half to the stomach, to provoke evacuation." it must not be forgotten that, the writings being on papyrus, the old book in question, once boiled, would have an effect analogous to that of our linseed-meal poultices. if the physician recommended taking an old one, it was for economical reasons merely; the egyptians of the middle classes would always have in their possession a number of letters, copy-books, and other worthless waste papers, of which they would gladly rid themselves in such a profitable manner. the medicaments compounded of these incongruous substances were often very complicated. it was thought that the healing power was increased by multiplying the curative elements; each ingredient acted upon a specific region of the body, and after absorption, separated itself from the rest to bring its influence to bear upon that region. the physician made use of all the means which we employ to-day to introduce remedies into the human system, whether pills or potions, poultices, or ointments, draughts or clysters. not only did he give the prescriptions, but he made them up, thus combining the art of the physician with that of the dispenser. he prescribed the ingredients, pounded them either separately or together, he macerated them in the proper way, boiled them, reduced them by heating, and filtered them through linen. fat served him as the ordinary vehicle for ointments, and pure water for potions; but he did not despise other liquids, such as wine, beer (fermented or un-fermented), vinegar, milk, olive oil, "ben" oil either crude or refined, even the urine of men and animals: the whole, sweetened with honey, was taken hot, night and morning. the use of more than one of these remedies became worldwide; the greeks borrowed them from the egyptians; we have piously accepted them from the greeks; and our contemporaries still swallow with resignation many of the abominable mixtures invented on the banks of the nile, long before the building of the pyramids. it was thot who had taught men arithmetic; thot had revealed to them the mysteries of geometry and mensuration; thot had constructed instruments and promulgated the laws of music; thot had instituted the art of drawing, and had codified its unchanging rules. he had been the inventor or patron of all that was useful or beautiful in the nile valley, and the climax of his beneficence was reached by his invention of the principles of writing, without which humanity would have been liable to forget his teaching, and to lose the advantage of his discoveries. it has been sometimes questioned whether writing, instead of having been a benefit to the egyptians, did not rather injure them. an old legend relates that when the god unfolded his discovery to king thamos, whose minister he was, the monarch immediately raised an objection to it. [illustration: .jpg th t records the years of the life of ramses. ] bas-relief of the temple of seti i. at abydos, drawn by boudier; from a photograph by beato. the god is marking with his reed-pen upon the notches of a long frond of palm, the duration in millions of years of the reign of pharaoh upon this earth, in accordance with the decree of the gods. children and young people, who had hitherto been forced to apply themselves diligently to learn and retain whatever was taught them, now that they possessed a means of storing up knowledge without trouble, would cease to apply themselves, and would neglect to exercise their memories. whether thamos was right or not, the criticism came too late: "the ingenious art of painting words and of speaking to the eyes" had once for all been acquired by the egyptians, and through them by the greater part of mankind. it was a very complex system, in which were united most of the methods fitted for giving expression to thought, namely: those which were limited to the presentment of the idea, and those which were intended to suggest sounds. [illustration: .jpg page image] at the outset the use was confined to signs intended to awaken the idea of the object in the mind of the reader by the more or less faithful picture of the object itself; for example, they depicted the sun by a centred disc, the moon by a crescent, a lion by a lion in the act of walking, a man by a small figure in a squatting attitude. as by this method it was possible to convey only a very restricted number of entirely materialistic concepts, it became necessary to have recourse to various artifices in order to make up for the shortcomings of the ideograms properly so-called. the part was put for the whole, the pupil in place of the whole eye, the head of the ox instead of the complete ox. the egyptians substituted cause for effect and effect for cause, the instrument for the work accomplished, and the disc of the sun signified the day; a smoking brazier the fire: the brush, inkpot, and palette of the scribe denoted writing or written documents. they conceived the idea of employing some object which presented an actual or supposed resemblance to the notion to be conveyed; thus, the foreparts of a lion denoted priority, supremacy, command; the wasp symbolized royalty, and a tadpole stood for hundreds of thousands. they ventured finally to use conventionalisms, as for instance when they drew the axe for a god, or the ostrich-feather for justice; the sign in these cases had only a conventional connection with the concept assigned to it. at times two or three of these symbols were associated in order to express conjointly an idea which would have been inadequately rendered by one of them alone: a five-pointed star placed under an inverted crescent moon denoted a month, a calf running before the sign for water indicated thirst. [illustration: .jpg page image] all these artifices combined furnished, however, but a very incomplete means of seizing and transmitting thought. when the writer had written out twenty or thirty of these signs and the ideas which they were supposed to embody, he had before him only the skeleton of a sentence, from which the flesh and sinews had disappeared; the tone and rhythm of the words were wanting, as were also the indications of gender, number, person, and inflection, which distinguish the different parts of speech and determine the varying relations between them. besides this, in order to understand for himself and to guess the meaning of the author, the reader was obliged to translate the symbols which he deciphered, by means of words which represented in the spoken language the pronunciation of each symbol. whenever he looked at them, they suggested to him both the idea and the word for the idea, and consequently a sound or group of sounds; when each of them had thus acquired three or four invariable associations of sound, he forgot their purely ideographic value and accustomed himself to consider them merely as notations of sound. the first experiment in phonetics was a species of rebus, where each of the signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language. the same group of articulations, _naûfir, nofir_, conveyed in egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the sign expressed at once the lute and beauty. [illustration: .jpg page image] the beetle was called khopirru, and the verb "to be" was pronounced _khopirû_: the figure of the beetle & consequently signified both the insect and the verb, and by further combining with it other signs, the articulation of each corresponding syllable was given in detail. the sieve _miaû_, the mat _pu, pi_, the mouth _ra, rû_, gave the formula _khaû-pi-rû_, which was equivalent to the sound of _khopirû_, the verb "to be:" grouped together, they denoted in writing the concept of "to be" by means of a triple rebus. in this system, each syllable of a word could be represented by one of several signs, all sounding alike. one-half of these "syllables" stood for open, the other half for closed syllables, and the use of the former soon brought about the formation of a true alphabet. the final vowel in them became detached, and left only the remaining consonant--for example, _r in rû, h in ha, n in ni, b in bû_--so that rû, ha, bû, eventually stood for r, h, n, and b only. this process in the course of time having been applied to a certain number of syllables, furnished a fairly large alphabet, in which several letters represented each of the twenty-two chief articulations, which the scribes considered sufficient for their purposes. the signs corresponding to one and the same letter were homophones or "equivalents in sound"--[ ] are homophones, just as [ ] and [ ], because each of them, in the group to which it belongs, may be indifferently used to translate to the eye the articulations m or n. one would have thought that when the egyptians had arrived thus far, they would have been led, as a matter of course, to reject the various characters which they had used each in its turn, in order to retain an alphabet only. [illustration: .jpg page image] but the true spirit of invention, of which they had given proof, abandoned them here as elsewhere: if the merit of a discovery was often their due, they were rarely able to bring their invention to perfection. they kept the ideographic and syllabic signs which they had used at the outset, and, with the residue of their successive notations, made for themselves a most complicated system, in which syllables and ideograms were mingled with letters properly so called. there is a little of everything in an egyptian phrase, sometimes even in a word; as, for instance, in [ ] maszirû, the ear, or [ ] kherôû, the voice; there are the syllables [ ] kher, the ordinary letters [ ], which complete the phonetic pronunciation, and finally the ideograms, namely, [ ], which gives the picture of the ear by the side of the written word for it, and [ ] which proves that the letters represent a term designating an action of the mouth. this medley had its advantages; it enabled the egyptians to make clear, by the picture of the object, the sense of words which letters alone might sometimes insufficiently explain. the system demanded a serious effort of memory and long years of study; indeed, many people never completely mastered it. the picturesque appearance of the sentences, in which we see representations of men, animals, furniture, weapons, and tools grouped together in successive little pictures, rendered hieroglyphic writing specially suitable for the decoration of the temples of the gods or the palaces of kings. mingled with scenes of worship, sacrifice, battle, or private life, the inscriptions frame or separate groups of personages, and occupy the vacant spaces which the sculptor or painter was at a loss to fill; hieroglyphic writing is pre-eminently a monumental script. for the ordinary purposes of life it was traced in black or red ink on fragments of limestone or pottery, or on wooden tablets covered with stucco, and specially on the fibres of papyrus. the exigencies of haste and the unskilfulness of scribes soon changed both its appearance and its elements; the characters when contracted, superimposed and united to one another with connecting strokes, preserved only the most distant resemblance to the persons or things which they had originally represented. this cursive writing, which was somewhat incorrectly termed hieratic, was used only for public or private documents, for administrative correspondence, or for the propagation of literary, scientific, and religious works. it was thus that tradition was pleased to ascribe to the gods, and among them to thot--the doubly great--the invention of all the arts and sciences which gave to egypt its glory and prosperity. it was clear, not only to the vulgar, but to the wisest of the nation, that, had their ancestors been left merely to their own resources, they would never have succeeded in raising themselves much above the level of the brutes. the idea that a discovery of importance to the country could have risen in a human brain, and, once made known, could have been spread and developed by the efforts of successive generations, appeared to them impossible to accept. they believed that every art, every trade, had remained unaltered from the outset, and if some novelty in its aspect tended to show them their error, they preferred to imagine a divine intervention, rather than be undeceived. the mystic writing, inserted as chapter sixty-four in the _book of the dead_, and which subsequently was supposed to be of decisive moment to the future life of man, was, as they knew, posterior in date to the other formulas of which this book was composed; they did not, however, regard it any the less as being of divine origin. it had been found one day, without any one knowing whence it came, traced in blue characters on a plaque of alabaster, at the foot of the statue of thot, in the sanctuary of hermopolis. a prince, hardiduf, had discovered it in his travels, and regarding it as a miraculous object, had brought it to his sovereign. this king, according to some, was hûsaphaîti of the first dynasty, but by others was believed to be the pious mykerinos. in the same way, the book on medicine, dealing with the diseases of women, was held not to be the work of a practitioner; it had revealed itself to a priest watching at night before the holy of holies in the temple of isis at coptos. "although the earth was plunged into darkness, the moon shone upon it and enveloped it with light. it was sent as a great wonder to the holiness of king kheops, the just of speech." the gods had thus exercised a direct influence upon men until they became entirely civilized, and this work of culture was apportioned among the three divine dynasties according to the strength of each. the first, which comprised the most vigorous divinities, had accomplished the more difficult task of establishing the world on a solid basis; the second had carried on the education of the egyptians; and the third had regulated, in all its minutiae, the religious constitution of the country. when there was nothing more demanding supernatural strength or intelligence to establish it, the gods returned to heaven, and were succeeded on the throne by mortal men. one tradition maintained dogmatically that the first human king whose memory it preserved, followed immediately after the last of the gods, who, in quitting the palace, had made over the crown to man as his heir, and that the change of nature had not entailed any interruption in the line of sovereigns. another tradition would not allow that the contact between the human and divine series had been so close. between the ennead and menés, it intercalated one or more lines of theban or thinite kings; but these were of so formless, shadowy, and undefined an aspect, that they were called manes, and there was attributed to them at most only a passive existence, as of persons who had always been in the condition of the dead, and had never been subjected to the trouble of passing through life. menés was the first in order of those who were actually living. from his time, the egyptians claimed to possess an uninterrupted list of the pharaohs who had ruled over the nile valley. as far back as the xviiith dynasty this list was written upon papyrus, and furnished the number of years that each prince occupied the throne, or the length of his life.[*] * the only one of these lists which we possess, the "turin royal papyrus," was bought, nearly intact, at thebes, by drovetti, about , but was accidentally injured by him in bringing home. the fragments of it were acquired, together with the rest of the collection, by the piedmontese government in , and placed in the turin museum, where champollion saw and drew attention to them in . seyffarth carefully collected and arranged them in the order in which they now are; subsequently lepsius gave a facsimile of them in , in his _auswahl der wichtigsten urhunden_, pls. i.-vi., but this did not include the verso; champollion-figeac edited in , in the _revue archéologique_, st series, vol. vi., the tracings taken by the younger champollion before seyffarth's arrangement; lastly, wilkinson published the whole in detail in . since then, the document has been the subject of continuous investigation: e. de rougé has reconstructed, in an almost conclusive manner, the pages containing the first six dynasties, and lauth, with less certainty, those which deal with the eight following dynasties. extracts from it were inscribed in the temples, or even in the tombs of private persons; and three of these abridged catalogues are still extant, two coming from the temples of seti i. and ramses ii. at abydos,[*] while the other was discovered in the tomb of a person of rank named tunari, at saqqâra.[**] they divided this interminable succession of often problematical personages into dynasties, following in this division, rules of which we are ignorant, and which varied in the course of ages. in the time of the ramessides, names in the list which subsequently under the lagides formed five groups were made to constitute one single dynasty.[***] * the first table of abydos, unfortunately incomplete, was discovered in the temple of ramses ii. by banks, in ; the copy published by caillaud and by salt served as a foundation for champollion's first investigations on the history of egypt. the original, brought to france by mimaut, was acquired by england, and is now in the british museum. the second table, which is complete, all but a few signs, was brought to light by mariette in , in the excavations at abydos, and was immediately noticed and published by dùmichen. the text of it is to be found in mariette, _la nouvelle table d'abydos (revue archéologique_, nd series, vol. xiii.), and _abydos_, vol. i. pl. . ** the table of saqqâra, discovered in , has been published by mariette, _la table de saqqâra (revue archéologique_, nd series, vol. x. p. , et seq.), and reproduced in the _monuments divers_, pl. . *** the royal canon of turin, which dates from the ramesside period, gives, indeed, the names of these early kings without a break, until the list reaches unas; at this point it sums up the number of pharaohs and the aggregate years of their reigns, thus indicating the end of a dynasty. in the intervals between the dynasties rubrics are placed, pointing out the changes which took place in the order of direct succession. the division of the same group of sovereigns into five dynasties has been preserved to us by manetho. manetho of sebennytos, who wrote a history of europe for the use of alexandrine greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division of thirty-one dynasties from menés to the macedonian conquest, and his system has prevailed--not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but because it is the only complete one which has come down to us.[*] all the families inscribed in his lists ruled in succession.[**] * the best restoration of the system of manetho is that by lepsius, _das konigsbuch der alten Ægypter_, which should be completed and corrected from the memoirs of lauth, lieblein, krall, and unger. a common fault attaches to all these memoirs, so remarkable in many respects. they regard the work of manetho, not as representing a more or less ingenious system applied to egyptian history, but as furnishing an authentic scheme of this history, in which it is necessary to enclose all the royal names which the monuments have revealed, and are still daily revealing to us. ** e. de rougé triumphantly demonstrated, in opposition to bunsen, now nearly fifty years ago, that all manetho's dynasties are successive, and the monuments discovered from year to year in egypt have confirmed his demonstration in every detail. the country was no doubt frequently broken up into a dozen or more independent states, each possessing its own kings during several generations; but the annalists had from the outset discarded these collateral lines, and recognized only one legitimate dynasty, of which the rest were but vassals. their theory of legitimacy does not always agree with actual history, and the particular line of princes which they rejected as usurpers represented at times the only family possessing true rights to the crown.[*] * it is enough to give two striking examples of this. the royal lists of the time of the ramessides suppress, at the end of the xviiith dynasty, amenôthes iv. and several of his successors, and give the following sequence--amenôthes iii., harmhabît, ramses i., without any apparent hiatus; manetho, on the contrary, replaces the kings who were omitted, and keeps approximately to the real order between horos (amenôthes iii.) and armais (harmhabît). again, the official tradition of the xxth dynasty gives, between ramses ii. and ramses iii., the sequence--mînephtah, seti il, nakht-seti; manetho, on the other hand, gives amenemes followed by thûôris, who appear to correspond to the amenmeses and siphtah of contemporary monuments, but, after mînephtah, he omits seti ii. and nakhîtou-seti, the father of ramses iii. in egypt, as elsewhere, the official chroniclers were often obliged to accommodate the past to the exigencies of the present, and to manipulate the annals to suit the reigning party; while obeying their orders the chroniclers deceived posterity, and it is only by a rare chance that we can succeed in detecting them in the act of falsification, and can re-establish the truth. [illustration: .jpg table of the kings] the system of manetho, in the state in which it has been handed down to us by epitomizers, has rendered, and continues to render, service to science; if it is not the actual history of egypt, it is a sufficiently faithful substitute to warrant our not neglecting it when we wish to understand and reconstruct the sequence of events. his dynasties furnish the necessary framework for most of the events and revolutions, of which the monuments have preserved us a record. at the outset, the centre to which the affairs of the country gravitated was in the extreme north of the valley. the principality which extended from the entrance of the fayûm to the apex of the delta, and subsequently the town of memphis itself, imposed their sovereigns upon the remaining nomes, served as an emporium for commerce and national industries, and received homage and tribute from neighbouring peoples. about the time of the vith dynasty this centre of gravity was displaced, and tended towards the interior; it was arrested for a short time at heracleo-polis (ixth and xth dynasties), and ended by fixing itself at thebes (xith dynasty). from henceforth thebes became the capital, and furnished egypt with her rulers. with the exception of the xivth xoïte dynasty, all the families occupying the throne from the xith to the xxth dynasty were theban. when the barbarian shepherds invaded africa from asia, the thebaïd became the last refuge and bulwark of egyptian nationality; its chiefs struggled for many centuries against the conquerors before they were able to deliver the rest of the valley. it was a theban dynasty, the xviiith, which inaugurated the era of foreign conquest; but after the xixth, a movement, the reverse of that which had taken place towards the end of the first period, brought back the centre of gravity, little by little, towards the north of the country. from the time of the xxist dynasty, thebes ceased to hold the position of capital: tanis, bubastis, mendes, sebennytos, and above all, sais, disputed the supremacy with each other, and political life was concentrated in the maritime provinces. those of the interior, ruined by ethiopian and assyrian invasions, lost their influence and gradually dwindled away. thebes became impoverished and depopulated; it fell into ruins, and soon was nothing more than a resort for devotees or travellers. the history of egypt is, therefore, divided into three periods, each corresponding to the suzerainty of a town or a principality:-- i.--memphite period, usually called the "ancient empire," from the ist to the xth dynasty: kings of memphite origin ruled over the whole of egypt during the greater part of this epoch. ii.--theban period, from the xith to the xxth dynasty. it is divided into two parts by the invasion of the shepherds (xvith dynasty): a. the first theban empire (middle empire), from the xith to the xivth dynasty. b. the new theban empire, from the xviith to the xxth dynasty. iii.--saïte period, from the xxist to the xxxth dynasty, divided into two unequal parts by the persian conquest: a. the first saïte period, from the xxist to the xxvith dynasty. b. the second saïte period, from the xxviiith to the xxxth dynasty. the memphites had created the monarchy. the thebans extended the rule of egypt far and wide, and made of her a conquering state: for nearly six centuries she ruled over the upper nile and over western asia. under the saïtes she retired gradually within her natural frontiers, and from having been aggressive became assailed, and suffered herself to be crushed in turn by all the nations she had once oppressed.[*] * the division into ancient, middle, and new empire, proposed by lepsius, has the disadvantage of not taking into account the influence which the removal of the seat of the dynasties exercised on the history of the country. the arrangement which i have here adopted was first put forward in the _revue critique_, , vol. i. pp. , . the monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended to unite the country under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups, each of which formed a separate kingdom. heliopolis became the chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the rich plains and the marshes of the delta. its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local religions; the ennead to which it gave conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over the neighbouring plains. it was around heliopolis that the kingdom of lower egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of heliopolitan theories--the protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from râ, and the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. the delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from one centre; the nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so complete a unity. it, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed and the lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. hermopolis contained schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the development of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt. in the south, siût disputed their supremacy, and heracleopolis stopped their road to the north. these three cities thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a lasting authority over upper egypt. each of the two kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government, which gave to it a particular character, and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct personality down to its latest days. the kingdom of upper egypt was more powerful, richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. it is to one of the latter, mini or menés of thinis, that tradition ascribes the honour of having fused the two egypts into a single empire, and of having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least of egyptian cities. it barely maintained an existence on the left bank of the nile, if not on the exact spot now occupied by girgeh, at least only a short distance from it.[*] * the site of thinis is not yet satisfactorily identified. it is neither at kom-es-sultân, as mariette thought, nor, according to the hypothesis of a. schmidt, at el-kherbeh. brugsch has proposed to fix the site at the village of tineh, near berdis, and is followed in this by dumichen. the present tendency is to identify it either with girgeh itself, or with one of the small neighbouring towns--for example, birbeh--where there are some ancient ruins; this was also the opinion of champollion and of nester l'hôte. i may mention that, in a frequently quoted passage of hellanicos, zoèga corrects the reading [greek phrase], which would once more give us the name of thinis: the mention of this town as being "situated on the river," would be a fresh reason for its identification with girgeh. [illustration: .jpg plan of the ruins of abydos, made by mariette in and .] the principality of the osirian reliquary, of which it was the metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain range to the other, and gradually extended across the desert as far as the great theban oasis. its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, anhûri, or rather two twin gods, anhûri-shû, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities and became a warlike personification of râ. anhûri-shû, like all the other solar manifestations, came to be associated with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness--a sokhît, who took for the occasion the epithet of mîhît, the northern one. some of the dead from this city are buried on the other side of the nile, near the modern village of mesheikh, at the foot of the arabian chain, whose steep cliffs here approach somewhat near the river: the principal necropolis was at some distance to the east, near the sacred town of abydos. it would appear that, at the outset, abydos was the capital of the country, for the entire nome bore the same name as the city, and had adopted for its symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed. in very early times abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political rank to thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired. the city occupied a long and narrow strip of land between the canal and the first slopes of the libyan mountains. a brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls. here, anhûri, having passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of khontamentît, the chief of that western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth. it is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what political combinations this sun of the night came to be identified with osiris of mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity; it had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books were compiled. osiris khontamentît grew rapidly in popular favour, and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims. the great oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness. it was called uîfc, the sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the "cleft," or gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed towards it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world. at the time of the new year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of khontamentît. abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose worship, practised by all egyptians, inspired them all with an equal devotion. the excavations of the last few years have brought to light some, at all events, of the oldest pharaohs known to the egyptian annalists, namely, those whom they placed in their first human dynasties; and the locality where the monuments of these princes were discovered, shows us that these writers were correct in representing thinis as playing an important part in the history of the early ages of their country. if the tomb of menés--that sovereign whom we are inclined to look upon as the first king of the official lists--lies near the village of nagadeh, not far from thebes,[*] those of his immediate successors are close to thinis, in the cemeteries of abydos.[**] they stand at the very foot of the libyan hills, near the entrance to the ravine--the "cleft"--through which the mysterious oasis was reached, and thither the souls flocked in order that they might enter by a safe way the land beyond the grave.[***] * the objects found during these excavations are now in the gîzeh museum. ** the credit of having discovered this important necropolis, and of having brought to light the earliest known monuments of the first dynasties, is entirely due to amélineau. he carried on important work there during four years, from to : unfortunately its success was impaired by the theories which he elaborated with regard to the new monuments, and by the delay in publishing an account of the objects which remained in his possession. *** for the "cleft," cf. supra, pp. , , . the mass of pottery, whole and broken, which has accumulated on this site from the offerings of centuries has obtained for it among the fellahin the name of omm-el-g-aâb--"the mother of pots." the tombs there lie in serried ranks. they present for the most part a rough model of the pyramids of the memphite period--rectangular structures of bricks without mortar rising slightly above the level of the plain. the funeral chamber occupies the centre of each, and is partly hollowed out of the soil, like a shallow well, the sides being bricked. it had a flat timber roof, covered by a layer of about three feet of sand; the floor also was of wood, and in several cases the remains of the beams of both ceiling and pavement have been brought to light. the body of the royal inmate was laid in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by its funeral furniture and by a part of the offerings. the remainder was placed in the little rooms which opened out of the principal vault, sometimes on the same level, sometimes on one higher than itself; after their contents had been laid within them, the entrance to these rooms was generally walled up. human bodies have been found inside them, probably those of slaves killed at the funeral that they might wait upon the dead in his life beyond the grave.[*] the objects placed in these chambers were mostly offerings, but besides these were coarse stelae bearing the name of a person, and dictated to "the double of his luminary."[**] some of them mention a dwarf[***] or a favourite dog of the sovereign, who accompanied his master into the tomb. tablets of ivory or bone skilfully incised furnish us with scenes representing some of the ceremonies of the deification of the king in his lifetime and the sacrifices offered at the time of his burial;[****] in rarer instances they record his exploits. * el. petrie, the royal tombs of the first dynasty, part i. p. . ** the "luminous double" or the "double of his luminary" is doubtless that luminous spectre which haunted the tombs and even the houses of the living during the night, and which i have mentioned, supra, p. . *** petrie found the skeletons of two dwarfs, probably the very two to whom the two stelae (nos. , ) in the tomb of semempses were raised. was one of these dwarfs one of the _danga_ of puanît who were sought after by the pharaohs of the memphite dynasties? **** this was the ceremony called by the egyptians "the festival of the foundation "--_habu sadu_. the offerings themselves were such as we meet with in burials of a subsequent age--bread, cakes, meat, and poultry of various sorts--indeed, everything we find mentioned in the lists inscribed in the tombs of the later dynasties, particularly the jars of wine and liquors, on the clay bungs of which are still legible the impression of the signet bearing the name of the sovereign for whose use they were sealed. besides stuffs and mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds, stools, an enormous number of vases, some in coarse pottery for common use, others in choice stone such as diorite, granite, or rock crystal very finely worked, on the fragments of all of which may be read cut in outline the names and preamble of the pharaoh to whom the object belonged. the ceremonial of the funerary offering and its significance was already fully developed at this early period; this can be gathered by the very nature of the objects buried with the deceased, by their number, quantity, and by the manner in which they were arranged. like their successors in the egypt of later times, these ancient kings expected to continue their material existence within the tomb, and they took precautions that life there should be as comfortable as circumstances should permit. access to the tomb was sometimes gained by a sloping passage or staircase; this made it possible to see if everything within was in a satisfactory condition. after the dead had been enclosed in his chamber, and five or six feet of sand had been spread over the beams which formed its roof, the position of the tomb was shown merely by a scarcely perceptible rise in the soil of the necropolis, and its site would soon have been forgotten, if its easternmost limits had not been marked by two large stelae on which were carefully engraved one of the appellations of the king--that of his double, or his horus name.[*] * for the horus name of the pharaohs, see vol. ïi., pp. - . it was on this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelæ, that the commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed on certain days fixed by the religious law. groups of private tombs were scattered around,--the resting-places of the chief officers of the sovereign, the departed pharaoh being thus surrounded in death by the same courtiers as those who had attended him during his earthly existence. the princes, whose names and titles have been revealed to us by the inscriptions on these tombs, have not by any means been all classified as yet, the prevailing custom at that period having been to designate them by their horus names, but rarely by their proper names, which latter is the only one which figures in the official lists which we possess of the egyptian kings. a few texts, more explicit than the rest, enable us to identify three of them with the usaphais, the miebis, and the semempses of manetho--the fifth, sixth, and seventh kings of the ist dynasty.[*] the fact that they are buried in the necropolis of abydos apparently justifies the opinion of the egyptian chroniclers that they were natives of thinis. is the menés who usually figures at their head[**] also a thinite prince? * the credit is due to sethe of having attributed their ordinary names to several of the kings of the ist dynasty with horus names only which were found by amélineau, and these identifications have been accepted by all egyptologists. pétrie discovered quite recently on some fragments of vases the horus names of these same princes, together with their ordinary names. the usaphais, the miebis, and the semempses of manetho are now satisfactorily identified with three of the pharaohs discovered by amélineau and by pétrie. ** in the time of seti i. and ramses ii. he heads the list of the table of abydos. under ramses ii. his statue was carried in procession, preceding all the other royal statues. finally, the "royal papyrus" of turin, written in the time of ramses i., begins the entire series of the human pharaohs with his name. several scholars believe that his ordinary name, mini, is to be read on an ivory tablet engraved for a sovereign whose horus name--ahauîti, the warlike--is known to us from several documents, and whose tomb also has been discovered, but at nagadeh. it is a great rectangular structure of bricks feet long and broad, the external walls of which were originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which score the façade of chaldæan buildings, but the nagadeh tomjb has a second brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one, and thus hides the primitive decoration of the monument. the building contains twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently constituted the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped around these, serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his provisions at will. did the king buried within indeed bear the name of menés,[*] and if such was the case, how are we to reconcile the tradition of his thinite origin with the existence of his far-off tomb in the neighbourhood of thebes? * the sign _manu_, which appears on the ivory tablet found in this tomb, has been interpreted as a king's name, and consequently inferred to be menés. this reading has been disputed on various sides, and the point remains, therefore, a contested one until further discovery. objects bearing his horus name have been found at omm-el-gaâb, and it is evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in this necropolis. if, indeed, menés was really his personal name, there is no reason against his being the menés of tradition, he whom the pharaohs of the glorious theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of their purely human ancestors. whether he was really the first king who reigned over the whole of egypt, or whether he had been preceded by other sovereigns whose monuments we may find in some site still unexplored, is a matter for conjecture. that princes had exercised authority in various parts of the country is still uncertain, but that the egyptian historians did not know them, seems to prove that they had left no written records of their names. at any rate, a menés lived who reigned at the outset of history, and doubtless before long the nile valley, when more carefully explored, will yield us monuments recording his actions and determining his date. the civilization of the egypt of his time was ruder than that with which we have hitherto been familiar on its soil, but even at that early period it was almost as complete. it had its industries and its arts, of which the cemeteries furnish us daily with the most varied examples: weaving, modelling in clay, wood-carving, the incising of ivory, gold, and the hardest stone were all carried on; the ground was cultivated with hoe and plough; tombs were built showing us the model of what the houses and palaces must have been; the country had its army, its administrators, its priests, its nobles, its writing, and its system of epigraphy differs so little from that to which we are accustomed in later ages, that we can decipher it with no great difficulty. frankly speaking, all that we know at present of the first of the pharaohs beyond the mere fact of his existence is practically _nil_, and the stories related of him by the writers of classical times are mere legends arranged to suit the fancy of the compiler. "this menés, according to the priests, surrounded memphis with dykes. for the river formerly followed the sandhills for some distance on the libyan side. menés, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges. then menés, the first who was king, having enclosed a firm space of ground with dykes, there founded that town which is still called memphis; he then made a lake round it, to the north and west, fed by the river, the city being bounded on the east by the nile."[*] * the dyke supposed to have been made by menés is evidently that of qosheîsh, which now protects the province of gîzeh, and regulates the inundation in its neighbourhood. the history of memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the tradition current in egypt at the time of herodotus. it appears, indeed, that at the outset, the site on which it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, anbû-hazû--the white wall--which was dependent on heliopolis, and in which phtah possessed a sanctuary. after the "white wall" was separated from the heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself, it assumed a certain importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the thinite. its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sovereigns of the vth and vith dynasties fixed on it for their residence; one of them, papi l, there founded for himself and for his "double" after him, a new town, which he called minnofîrû, from his tomb. minnofîrû, which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of memphis, probably signified "the good refuge," the haven of the good, the burying-place where the blessed dead came to rest beside osiris. the people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales. they were rather disposed, as a rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names: if no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any scruple in inventing one. the egyptians of the time of the ptolemies, who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a princess memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the name had become altered, thought to find in minnofîrû a "mini nofir," or "menés the good," the reputed founder of the capital of the delta. menés the good, divested of his epithet, is none other than menés, the first king, and he owes this episode in his life to a popular attempt at etymology. the legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of the city, must have originated at the time when memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government, at latest about the end of the memphite period. it must have been an old tradition in the time of the theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country. [illustration: .jpg necklace, bearing name of menes. ] drawn by faucher-gudin after prisse d'avenues. the gold medallions engraved with the name of menés are ancient, and perhaps go back to the xxth dynasty; the setting is entirely modern, with the exception of the three oblong pendants of cornelian. when once this half-mythical menés was firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story which would portray him as an ideal sovereign. he was represented as architect, warrior, and statesman; he had begun the temple of phtah, written laws and regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of hâpis, and he had conducted expeditions against the libyans. when he lost his only son in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him--the "maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were handed down from generation to generation. he did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. one day, while hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. he escaped with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to the shore of lake moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other side.[*] in gratitude he built a new town, which he called crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. other traditions show him in a less favourable light. they accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the nile.[**] * this is an episode from the legend of osiris: at phihe, in the little building of the antonines, may be seen a representation of a crocodile crossing the nile, carrying on his back the mummy of the god. the same episode is also found in the tale of onus el ujûd and of uard f'il-ikmâm, where the crocodile leads the hero to his beautiful prisoner in the island of philæ. ebers, _Ægypte_, french trans., vol. ii. pp. , , has shown how this episode in the arab story must have been inspired by the bas-relief at philæ and by the scene which it portrays: the temple is still called "kasr," and the island "geziret onus el-ujûd." ** in popular romances, this was the usual end of criminals of every kind; we shall see that another king, akhthoes the founder of the ixth dynasty, after committing horrible misdeeds, was killed, in the same way as menés, by a hippopotamus. they also related that the saïte tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of royal life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be inscribed upon a stele set up in the temple of amon at thebes. nevertheless, in the memory that egypt preserved of its first pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. he was worshipped in memphis side by side with phtah and ramses ii.; his name figured at the head of the royal lists, and his cult continued till the time of the ptolemies. his immediate successors had an actual existence, and their tombs are there in proof of it. we know where usaphais, miebis, and semempses[*] were laid to rest, besides more than a dozen other princes whose real names and whose position in the official lists are still uncertain. the order of their succession was often a matter of doubt to the egyptians themselves, but perhaps the discoveries of the next few years will enable us to clear up and settle definitely matters which were shrouded in mystery in the time of the theban pharaohs. as a fact, the forms of such of their names as have been handed down to us by later tradition, are curt and rugged, indicative of an early state of society, and harmonizing with the more primitive civilization to which they belong: ati the wrestler, teti the runner, qenqoni the crusher, are suitable rulers for a people, the first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle, and to strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight.[**] * flinders pétrie, _the 'royal tombs of the first dynasty_, vol. i. p. . ** the egyptians were accustomed to explain the meaning of the names of their kings to strangers, and the canon of eratosthenes has preserved several of their derivations, of which a certain number, as, for instance, that of menés from aùovioç, the "lasting," are tolerably correct. m. krall is, to my knowledge, the only egyptologist who has attempted to glean from the meaning of these names indications of the methods by which the national historians of egypt endeavoured to make up the lists of the earliest dynasties. some of the monuments they have left us, seem to show that their reigns were as much devoted to war as those of the later pharaohs. the king whose horus name was nârumîr, is seen on a contemporary object which has come down to us, standing before a heap of beheaded foes; the bodies are all stretched out on the ground, each with his head placed neatly between his legs: the king had overcome, apparently in some important engagement, several thousands of his enemies, and was inspecting the execution of their leaders. that the foes with whom these early kings contended were in most cases egyptian princes of the nomes, is proved by the list of city names which are inscribed on the fragments of another document of the same nature, and we gather from them that dobu (edfu), hasutonu (cynopolis), habonu (hipponon), hakau (memphis) and others were successively taken and dismantled.[*] * palette resembling the preceding one, and with it deposited in the gîzeh museum; reproduced by steindokff, and by j. de morgan. the names of the towns were enclosed within the embattled line which was used later on to designate foreign countries. the animals which surmount them represent the gods of egypt, the king's protectors; and the king himself, identified with these gods, is making a breach in the wall with a pick-axe. the names of the towns have not been satisfactorily identified: hat-kau, for instance, may not be memphis, but it appears that there is no doubt with regard to habonu. cf. sayce, the beginnings of the egyptian monarchy in the proceedings of the biblical archæological society, , vol. xx. pp, - . on this fragment king den is represented standing over a prostrate chief of the bedouin, striking him with his mace. sondi, who is classed in the iind dynasty, received a continuous worship towards the end of the iiird dynasty. but did all those whose names preceded or followed his on the lists, really exist as he did? and if they existed, to what extent do the order and the relation assigned to them agree with the actual truth? the different lists do not contain the same names in the same positions; certain pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason. where manetho inscribes kenkenes and ouenephes, the tables of the time of seti i. gave us ati and ata; manetho reckons nine kings to the iind dynasty, while they register only five.[*] * the impossibility of reconciling the names of the greek with those of the pharaonic lists has been admitted by most of the savants who have discussed the matter, viz. mariette, e. de rouge, lieblein, wiedemann; most of them explain the differences by the supposition that, in many cases, one of the lists gives the cartouche name, and the other the cartouche prenomen of the same king. the monuments, indeed, show us that egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her annalists were unable to classify: for instance, they associate with sondi a pirsenû, who is not mentioned in the annals. we must, therefore, take the record of all this opening period of history for what it is--namely, a system invented at a much later date, by means of various artifices and combinations--to be partially accepted in default of a better, but without according to it that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received. the two thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the first human king menés, furnish, like this hero himself, only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous legends in the place of history. a double-headed stork, which had appeared in the first year of teti, son of menés, had foreshadowed to egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under ouenephes, and a terrible plague under semempses, had depopulated the country: the laws had been relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and revolts had broken out. during the reign of boêthos, a gulf had opened near bubastis, and swallowed up many people, then the nile had flowed with honey for fifteen days in the time of nephercheres, and sesochris was supposed to have been a giant in stature. a few details about royal edifices were mixed up with these prodigies. teti had laid the foundation of the great palace of memphis, ouenephes had built the pyramids of ko-komè near saqqara. several of the ancient pharaohs had published books on theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had made laws which lasted down to the beginning of the christian era. one of them was called kakôû, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. they explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, hâpis of memphis, mnevis of heliopolis, and the goat of mendes. after him, binôthris had conferred the right of succession upon all the women of the blood-royal. the accession of the iiird dynasty, a memphite one according to manetho, did not at first change the miraculous character of this history. the libyans had revolted against necherophes, and the two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven, and yielded without fighting. tosorthros, the successor of necherophes, brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. he composed, as teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to be identified with the healing god imhotpu. the priests related these things seriously, and the greek writers took them down from their lips with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the wise men of egypt. what they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see, than their accounts of the gods. whether the legends dealt with deities or kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination, but in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they dealt with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the monuments. towards the middle of the third century before our era, the greek troops stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the first cataract, developed a particular veneration for isis of philæ. their devotion spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them, then to the whole population of the thebàid, and finally reached the court of the macedonian kings. the latter, carried away by force of example, gave every encouragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a common sanctuary, and united in one cult the two races over which they ruled. they pulled down the meagre building of the sa'ite period which had hitherto sufficed for the worship of isis, constructed at great cost the temple which still remains almost intact, and assigned to it considerable possessions in nubia, which, in addition to gifts from private individuals, made the goddess the richest landowner in southern egypt. khnûmû and his two wives, anûkit and satît, who, before isis, had been the undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jealousy their neighbour's prosperity: the civil wars and invasions of the centuries immediately preceding had ruined their temples, and their poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the new-comer. [illustration: .jpg satÎt presents the pharaoh amenÔthes iii. to khnÔmÛ. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the temple of khnûmû, at elephantine. this bas-relief is now destroyed. the priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before king ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had rendered and still continued to render to egypt, and above all to remind him of the generosity of the ancient pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty of the times, the recent pharaohs had been unable to follow. [illustration: .jpg anÛkit] doubtless authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support their pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to zosiri of the iiird dynasty. this sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for greatness. as early as the xiith dynasty usirtasen iii. had claimed him as "his father"--his ancestor--and had erected a statue to him; the priests knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a hearing. the inscription which they fabricated, set forth that in the eighteenth year of zosiri's reign he had sent to madîr, lord of elephantine, a message couched in these terms: "i am overcome with sorrow for the throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is afflicted and suffers greatly because the nile has not risen in my time, for the space of eight years. corn is scarce, there is a lack of herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his neighbours for help, they take pains not to go. the child weeps, the young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent." ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to deduce from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the domains and dues which they declared had been his right? the stele shows us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents, when the exigencies of they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the courtiers have no further resources; the shops formerly furnished with rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was in them has disappeared. "my spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks to call upon the saviour who was here where i am, during the centuries of the gods, upon thot-ibis, that great wise one, upon imhotpû, son of phtah of memphis. where is the place in which the nile is born? who is the god or goddess concealed there? what is his likeness?" [illustration: .jpg the step pyramid of sauara. ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by dévèria ( ); in the foreground, the tomb of ti. the lord of elephantine brought his reply in person. he described to the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who presided over it, and who alone could relieve egypt from her disastrous plight. zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted and cried aloud, "i am khnûmû who created thee!" and promised him a speedy return of a high nile and the cessation of the famine. pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown him; he forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his rights of suzerainty over the neighbouring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their incomes to the priests; the quarries could not be worked without the consent of khnûmû, and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers, and finally, all metals and precious woods shipped thence for egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. did the daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. every prodigy, every fact related by manetho, was taken from some document analogous to the supposed inscription of zosiri.[*] * the legend of the yawning gulf at bubastis must be connected with the gifts supposed to have been offered by king boêthos to the temple of that town, to repair the losses sustained by the goddess on that occasion; the legend of the pestilence and famine is traceable to some relief given by a local god, and for which semempses and Ùenephes might have shown their gratitude in the same way as zosiri. the tradition of the successive restorations of denderah accounts for the constructions attributed to teti i. and to tosorthros; finally, the prête tided discoveries of sacred books, dealt with elsewhere, show how manetho was enabled to attribute to his pharaohs the authorship of works on medicine or theology. the real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man. many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. the monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they exist in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. the few which we do possess barely go back beyond the iiird dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of shiri, priest of sondi and pirsenû; possibly the tomb of khûîthotpû at saqqâra; the great sphinx of gîzeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the wady maghâra, which represents zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of khnûmû in the greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of sinai; and finally the step-pyramid where this same pharaoh rests.[*] * the stele of sehêl has enabled us to verify the fact that the preamble [a string of titles] to the inscription of the king, buried in the step-pyramid, is identical with that of king zosiri: it was, therefore, zosiri who constructed, or arranged for the construction of this monument as his tomb. the step-pyramid of saqqâra was opened in , at the expense of the prussian general minutoli, who was the first to give a brief description of the interior, illustrated by plans and drawings. it forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly orientated, with a variation from the true north of ° ', ft. in. long from east to west, and ft. deep, with a height of ft. in. it is composed of six cubes, with sloping sides, each being about ft. less in width than the one below it; that nearest to the ground measures ft. in. in height, and the uppermost one ft. in. it was entirely constructed of limestone from the neighbouring mountains. the blocks are small, and badly cut, the stone courses being concave to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake. when breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed. the body of the pyramid is solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath. these chambers have been often enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide. the columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. until the beginning of this century, the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed pottery. three quarters of the wall surface were covered with green tiles, oblong and slightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the inner: a square projection pierced with a hole, served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods. [illustration: . jpg one of the chambers of the step-pyramid, with its wall-covering of glazed tiles. ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured sketch by sogato. m. stern attributes the decoration of glazed pottery to the xxvi '' dynasty, which opinion is shared by borchardt. the yellow and green glazed tiles hearing the cartouche of papi i., show that the egyptians of the memphite dynasties used glazed facings at that early date; we may, therefore, believe, if the tiles of the vault of zosiri are really of the saïte period, that they replaced a decoration of the same kind, which belonged to the time of its construction, and of which some fragments still exist among the tiles of more recent date. the three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the pharaoh: the hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or yellow, on a fawn-coloured ground. other kings had built temples, palaces, and towns,--as, for instance, king khâsakhimu, of whose constructions some traces exist at hieracônpolis, opposite to el-kab, or king khâsakhmui, who preceded by a few years the pharaohs of the ivth dynasty--but the monuments which they raised to be witnesses of their power or piety to future generations, have, in the course of ages, disappeared under the tramplings and before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts: the pyramid alone has survived, and the most ancient of the historic monuments of egypt is a tomb. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] end of vol. i. history of egypt, chaldÆa, syria, babylonia, and assyria by gaston maspero ( - ) an index edited by david widger project gutenberg editions contents ## volume i. ## volume ii. ## volume iii. ## volume iv. ## volume v. ## volume vi. ## volume vii. ## volume viii. ## volume ix. ## volume x. ## volume xi. ## volume xii. ## volume xiii. volumes, chapters and stories volume i. editor's preface translator's preface chapter i.�the nile and egypt chapter ii.�the gods of egypt chapter iii.�the legendary history of egypt illustrations of particular interest ( images in volume i.) mummy wrappings from tomb at thebes well providing water for irrigation sacrifice of the bull occupations of ani in the elysian fields an incident in the wars of hartheous and sit volume ii. chapter i�the political constitution of egypt chapter ii�the memphite empire chapter iii�the first theban empire list of colored and special illustrations stele in the form of a door the island and temple of phil. collosal statue of a king colored sculptures in the palace cutting and carrying the harvest the pyramid of khephren passenger vessel under sail avenue of sphinxes�karnak denderah�temple of tentyra the channel of the nile between the two fortresses of semneh and kummeh painting at the entrance of the fifth tomb volume iii. chapter i�ancient chaldÆa chapter ii�the temples and the gods of chaldÆa chapter iii�chaldÆan civilization appendix�the pharaohs of the ancient and middle empires listing of special color plates and photographs the charioteer the plenisphere wrappings of a mummy manuscript on papyrus egyptian slave merchant egyptian manuscript astronomical tablet volume iv. chapter i�the first chaldÆan empire and the hyksÔs in egypt chapter ii�syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest chapter iii�the eighteenth theban dynasty list of special illustrations in this volume collection of vases painting in tomb of the kings thebes signs, arms and instruments valley of the tomb of the kings an egyptian trading vessel: xviiith dynasty a column of troops on the march two companies on the march encounter between egyptian and asiatic chariots ramses ii. counting of the hands painting on the tomb of the kings avenue of rams and pylon at karnak thutmosis iii.,statue in the turin museum volume v. chapter i�the eighteenth theban dynasty�(continued) chapter ii�the reaction against egypt chapter iii�the close of the theban empire color plates and special illustrations a procession of negroes painted tablets in the hall of harps the simoom. sphinx and pyramids at gizeh amenothes iii. colossal head, british museum the decorated pavement of the palace profile of head of mummy (thebes tombs) columns of temple at luxor paintings of chairs the coffin and mummy of ramses ii the defeat of the peoples of the sea ramses iii. binds the chiefs of the libyans signs, arms and instruments volume vi. chapter i�the close of the theban empire�(continued) chapter ii�the rise of the assyrian empire chapter iii�the hebrews and the philistines�damascus list of color plates and special illustrations painting in the fifth tomb of the kings to the right the mummy factory paintings at the end of the hall of the fifth the tomb the lady taksûhît decorated wrappings of a mummy one of the mysterious books of amon one of the hours of the night ishtar as a warrior bringing prisoners to a conquering king a lion-hunt paintings of chairs making a bridge for the passage of the chariots a procession of philistine captives at medinet-habu king solomon and the queen of sheba the mummies of queen mÂkerÎ and her child volume vii. chapter i�the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria chapter ii�tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian chapter iii�sargon of assyria ( - b.c.) list of special images and color plates no. . enameled brick (nimrod). no. . fragment of mural painting (nimrod). temple of khaldis at muzazir sacrifice offered by shalmaneser iii. costumes found in the fifth tomb prayer at sunset tiglath-pileser iii. in his state chariot picture in the hall of the harps in the fifth tomb manuscript on papyrus in hieroglyphics the sword dance iaubÎdi of hamath being flayed alive. taking of the city of kishÎsim by the assyrians bird's eye view of sargon's palace at dur-sharrukîn volume viii. chapter i�sennacherib ( - b.c.) chapter ii�the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal chapter iii�the medes and the second chaldÆan empire list of special illustrations and color plates esneh�principal abyssinian trading village sennacherib receiving the submissions of the jews the fleet of sennacherib on the nar-marratum assyrian bas-reliefs at bavian great assyrian stele at baviaÎt. transport of a winged bull on a sledge. the column of taharqa, at karnak mural decorations from the grottoes a lion issuing from its cage the battle of tulliz khumb-nigash proclaimed king the head of thumman sent to nineveh two elamite chiefs flayed alive prayer in the desert after painting by gerome illustrated manuscript in heiroglyphics chieck beled�gizeh museum decorations on the wrappings of a mummy. the façade of the great temple of abu-simbel prisoners under torture having their tongues torn out a king putting out the eyes of a prisoner a people carried away into captivity volume ix. chapter i�the iranian conquest chapter ii�the last days of the old eastern world list of color images and special illustrations hypostyle of hall of xerxes: detail of entablature the occupations of ani in the elysian fields croesus on his pyre the two goddesses of law; ani adoring osiris; the trial of the conscience; toth and the feather of the law. amasis in adoration before the bull apis encampment de bacharis street vender of curios after the painting by gerome. funeral offerings. the tomb of darius freize of archers at suza fountain and school of the mother of little mohamad a bas-relief on a sidonian sarcophagus volume x. part a. 	 part b. 	 part c. volume xi. chapter i�egypt under the roman empire chapter ii.�the christian period in egypt chapter iii.�egypt during the muhammedan period list of color plates and special illustrations a koptic maiden fragments in wood painted temple at tentyra, enlarged by roman architects an arab girl ethiopian arabs scene in a sepuuchral chamber the slumber song painting at the entrance of the fifth tomb egyptian slave street vendors in metal ware a young egyptian wearing the royal lock an egyptian water-carrier street and mosque of mahdjiar a modern kopt volume xii. chapter i�the crusaders in egypt chapter ii.�the french in egypt chapter iii.�the rule of mehemet ali chapter iv�the british influence in egypt chapter v.�the water ways of egypt chapter vi�the decipherment of the hieroglyphs chapter vii�the development of egyptology chapter viii.�important researches in egypt list of color plates and special illustrations enamelled glass cup from arabia gate of el futuh at cairo interior of the mosque, kilawun bonaparte in egypt the prophet muhammed cairo�eskibieh quarter mosque of mehemit ali a distinguished egyptian jew slave boats on the nile hieroglyphic record of an ancient canal examples of phoenecian porcelain phoenician jewlery the great hall of abydos plans of the tombs of den-setui and others three types of sealings volume xiii. part i. egypt and mesopotamia chapter i�the discovery of prehistoric egypt chapter ii�abydos and the first three dynasties part ii. chapter iii�memphis and the pyramids chapter iv�recent excavations in western asia and the dawn of chaldÆan history part iii. chapter v�elam and babylon, the country of the sea and the kassites chapter vi�early babylonian life and customs part iv. chapter vii�temples and tombs of thebes chapter viii�the assyrian and neo-babylonian empires in the light of chapter ix�the last days of ancient egypt listing of special color plates and photographs stele of vultures	 in context 	quick image stele of victory	 in context 	quick image statue of queen teta-shera 	in context 	quick image wall painting	in context 	quick image the seven great monarchies of the ancient asian world by george rawlinson an index edited by david widger project gutenberg editions george rawlinson ( - ) chaldaea, assyria, media, babylon, persia, parthia, sassanian empire; and the history of phoenicia contents click on the ## before each title to go directly to a linked index of the detailed chapters and illustrations ## chaldaea ## assyria ## media ## babylon ## persia ## parthia ## sassanian empire and ## history of phoenicia volumes, chapters and stories chaldaea preface to five great monarchies. preface to second edition. preface to the sixth monarchy. preface to seventh monarchy. references the first monarchy. chaldaea. chapter i.	general view of the country chapter ii.	climate and productions chapter iii.	the people chapter iv.	language and writing chapter v.	arts and sciences chapter vi.	manners and customs chapter vii.	religion chapter viii. 	history and chronology list of illustrations plate . plan of mugheir ruins (after taylor) plate . ruins of warka (erech) (after loftus) plate . akkerkuf (after ker porter) . hamman (after loftus) plate . tel-ede (ditto) . palms (after oppert) plate . chaldaean reeds, from an assyrian sculpture (after layard) plate . wild sow and pigs, from koyunjik (layard) . ethiopians (after prichard) . cuneiform inscriptions (drawn by the author, from bricks in the british museum) page plate . cuneiform inscriptions (drawn by the author, from bricks in the british museum) . chaldaean tablet (after layard) . signet-cylinder (after ker porter) page plate . bowariyeh (after loftus) . mugheir temple (ditto) plate . ground-plan of ditto (ditto) . mugheir temple, restored (by the author) . terra-cotta cone, actual size (after loftus) plate . plan and wall of building patterned with cones (after loftus) . ground-plan of chambers excavated at abu-shahrein (after taylor) plate . brick vault at mugheir (ditto) . chaldaean dish-cover tombs (ditto) plate . chaldaean dish-cover tombs (ditto) . chaldaean jar-coffin (ditto) . section of drain (ditto) plate . chaldaean vases of the first period (drawn by the author from vases in the british museum) . chaldaean vases, drinking-vessels, and amphora of the second period (ditto) . chaldaean lamps of the second period (ditto) plate . seal-cylinder on metal axis (drawn and partly restored by the author) . signet-cylinder of king urukh (after ker porter) . flint knives (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) plate . stone hammer, hatchet, adze, and nail (chiefly after taylor) . chaldaean bronze spear and arrow-heads (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) plate . bronze implements (ditto) . flint implement (after taylor) . ear-rings (drawn by the author from the originals in the british museum) plate . leaden pipe and jar (ditto) . bronze bangles (ditto) plate . senkareh table of squares page plate . costumes of chaldaeans from the cylinders (after cullimore and rich) . serpent symbol (after cullimore) . flaming sword (ditto) . figure of nin. the fish-god (layard) . nin's emblem. the man bull (ditto) . fish symbols (after cullimore) . bel-mer dash (ditto) page page page plate . nergal's emblem, the ilan-lion (layard) plate . . clay images of ishtar (after cullimore and layard) . nebo (drawn by the author from a statue in the british museum) page page �table of chaldaean kings assyria the second monarchy chapter i.	description of the country chapter ii. 	climate and productions chapter iii. 	the people chapter iv.	the capital chapter v.	language and writing chapter vi. 	architecture and other arts chapter vii. 	manners and customs chapter viii. 	religion chapter ix.	chronology and history references map_top_th ( k) map_bottom_th ( k) [click on maps to enlarge] media chapter i. 	description of the country. chapter ii. 	climate and productions. chapter iii. 	character, manners and customs. chapter iv.	religion. chapter v.	language and writing. chapter vi.	chronology and history. list of illustrations map plate i. plate ii. plate iii. plate iv. plate v. plate vi. plate vii. babylon chapter i. 	extent of the empire. chapter ii. 	climate and productions. chaptee iii. 	the people. chaptee iv. 	the capital. chapter v. 	arts and sciences. chapter vi. 	manners and customs. chapter vii. 	religion. chapter viii. 	history and chronology. appendix. a. 	standard inscription of nebuchadnezzar. b. 	on the meanings of babylonian names. list of illustrations map plate vii. plate viii. plate ix. plate x. plate xi. plate xii. plate xiii. page plate xiv. plate xv. plate xvi. plate xvii. plate xviii. plate xix. plate xx. plate xxi. plate xxii. plate xxiii. plate xxiv. plate xxv. page page page page page persia chapter i. 	extent of the empire. chapter ii. 	climate and productions. chapter iii. 	character, manners and customs. chapter iv. 	language and writing. chapter v. 	architecture and other arts. chapter vi. 	religion. chapter vii. 	chronology and history. begin chapter i. parthia chapter i. chapter ii. chapter iii. chapter iv. chapter v. chapter vi. chapter vii. chapter viii. chapter ix. chapter x. chapter xi. chapter xii. chapter xiii. chapter xiv. chapter xv. chapter xvi. chapter xvii. chapter xviii. chapter xix. chapter xx. chapter xxi. chapter xxii. chapter xxiii. list of illustrations map of parthia proper map of parthia plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . plate . sassanian empire chapters i. to xiv. chapters xv. to xxviii. with maps and illustrations the seventh monarchy history of the sassanian or new persian empire. sassian_empire_th ( k) begin chapter i. history of phoenicia preface history of phoenicia chapter i�the land chapter ii�climate and productions chapter iii�the people�origin and characteristics chapter iv�the cities chapter v�the colonies chapter vi�architecture chapter vii�Æsthetic art chapter viii�industrial art and manufactures chapter ix�ships, navigation, and commerce chapter x�mining chapter xi�religion chapter xii�dress, ornaments, and social habits chapter xiii�phoenician writing, language, and literature chapter xiv�political history . phoenicia, before the establishment of the hegemony of tyre. . phoenicia under the hegemony of tyre (b.c. - ) . phoenicia during the period of its subjection to assyria (b.c. . phoenicia during its struggles with babylon and egypt (about b.c. . phoenicia under the persians (b.c. - ) . phoenicia in the time of alexander the great (b.c. - ) . phoenicia under the greeks (b.c. - ) . phoenicia under the romans (b.c. -a.d. ) footnotes peeps at many lands ancient egypt [illustration: plate . an egyptian galley.] peeps at many lands ancient egypt by rev. james baikie, f.r.a.s. author of "peeps at the heavens," "the story of the pharaohs," "the sea kings of crete," etc. with sixteen full-page illustrations, those in colour being by constance n. baikie a. & c. black, ltd. , & , soho square, london, w. * * * * * _first published october _ _reprinted january and april _ agents america the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york australasia oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. st. martin's house, bond street, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta _printed in great britain._ * * * * * contents chapter page i. a land of old renown ii. a day in thebes iii. a day in thebes (_continued_) iv. pharaoh at home v. the life of a soldier vi. child-life in ancient egypt vii. some fairy-tales of long ago viii. some fairy-tales of long ago (_continued_) ix. exploring the soudan x. a voyage of discovery xi. egyptian books xii. temples and tombs xiii. an egyptian's heaven * * * * * list of illustrations plate * . an egyptian galley, b.c. _frontispiece_ facing page . the goddess isis dandling the king . the great gate of the temple of luxor, with obelisk * . ramses ii. in his war-chariot--sardinian guardsmen on foot * . zazamankh and the lost coronet . granite statue of ramses ii. . nave of the temple at karnak * . "and the goose stood up and cackled" * . an egyptian country house . statues of king amenhotep iii. . the sphinx and the second pyramid * . a desert postman * . the bark of the moon, guarded by the divine eyes . gateway of the temple of edfu . wall-pictures in a theban tomb * . pharaoh on his throne _sketch-map of ancient egypt on page viii_ * these eight illustrations are in colour; the others are in black and white. * * * * * [illustration: sketch-map of ancient egypt.] ancient egypt chapter i "a land of old renown" if we were asked to name the most interesting country in the world, i suppose that most people would say palestine--not because there is anything so very wonderful in the land itself, but because of all the great things that have happened there, and above all because of its having been the home of our lord. but after palestine, i think that egypt would come next. for one thing, it is linked very closely to palestine by all those beautiful stories of the old testament, which tell us of joseph, the slave-boy who became viceroy of egypt; of moses, the hebrew child who became a prince of pharaoh's household; and of the wonderful exodus of the children of israel. but besides that, it is a land which has a most strange and wonderful story of its own. no other country has so long a history of great kings, and wise men, and brave soldiers; and in no other country can you see anything to compare with the great buildings, some of them most beautiful, all of them most wonderful, of which egypt has so many. we have some old and interesting buildings in this country, and people go far to see cathedrals and castles that are perhaps five or six hundred years old, or even more; but in egypt, buildings of that age are looked upon as almost new, and nobody pays very much attention to them. for the great temples and tombs of egypt were, many of them, hundreds of years old before the story of our bible, properly speaking, begins. the pyramids, for instance, those huge piles that are still the wonder of the world, were far older than any building now standing in europe, before joseph was sold to be a slave in potiphar's house. hundreds upon hundreds of years before anyone had ever heard of the greeks and the romans, there were great kings reigning in egypt, sending out their armies to conquer syria and the soudan, and their ships to explore the unknown southern seas, and wise men were writing books which we can still read. when britain was a wild, unknown island, inhabited only by savages as fierce and untaught as the south sea islanders, egypt was a great and highly civilized country, full of great cities, with noble palaces and temples, and its people were wise and learned. so in this little book i want to tell you something about this wonderful and interesting old country, and about the kind of life that people lived in it in those days of long ago, before most other lands had begun to waken up, or to have any history at all. first of all, let us try to get an idea of the land itself. it is a very remarkable thing that so many of the countries which have played a great part in the history of the world have been small countries. our own britain is not very big, though it has had a great story. palestine, which has done more than any other country to make the world what it is to-day, was called "the least of all lands." greece, whose influence comes, perhaps, next after that of palestine, is only a little hilly corner of southern europe. and egypt, too, is comparatively a small land. it looks a fair size when you see it on the map; but you have to remember that nearly all the land which is called egypt on the map is barren sandy desert, or wild rocky hill-country, where no one can live. the real egypt is just a narrow strip of land on either side of the great river nile, sometimes only a mile or two broad altogether, never more than thirty miles broad, except near the mouth of the river, where it widens out into the fan-shaped plain called the delta. someone has compared egypt to a lily with a crooked stem, and the comparison is very true. the long winding valley of the nile is the crooked stem of the lily, and the delta at the nile mouth, with its wide stretch of fertile soil, is the flower; while, just below the flower, there is a little bud--a fertile valley called the fayum. long before even egyptian history begins, there was no bloom on the lily. the nile, a far bigger river then than it is now, ran into the sea near cairo, the modern capital of egypt; and the land was nothing but the narrow valley of the river, bordered on either side by desert hills. but gradually, century by century, the nile cut its way deeper down into the land, leaving banks of soil on either side between itself and the hills, and the mud which it brought down in its waters piled up at its mouth and pressed the sea back, till, at last, the delta was formed, much as we see it now. this was long before egypt had any story of its own; but even after history begins the delta was still partly marshy land, not long reclaimed from the sea, and the real egyptians of the valley despised the people who lived there as mere marsh-dwellers. even after the delta was formed, the whole country was only about twice as large as wales, and, though there was a great number of people in it for its size, the population was only, at the most, about twice as great as that of london. an old greek historian once said, "egypt is the gift of the nile," and it is perfectly true. we have seen how the great river made the country to begin with, cutting out the narrow valley through the hills, and building up the flat plain of the delta. but the nile has not only made the country; it keeps it alive. you know that egypt has always been one of the most fertile lands in the world. almost anything will grow there, and it produces wonderful crops of corn and vegetables, and, nowadays, of cotton. it was the same in old days. when rome was the capital of the world, she used to get most of the corn to feed her hungry thousands from egypt by the famous alexandrian corn-ships; and you remember how, in the bible story, joseph's brethren came down from palestine because, though there was famine there, there was "corn in egypt." and yet egypt is a land where rain is almost unknown. sometimes there will come a heavy thunder-shower; but for month after month, year in and year out, there may be no rain at all. how can a rainless country grow anything? the secret is the nile. every year, when the rains fall in the great lake-basin of central africa, from which one branch of the great river comes, and on the abyssinian hills, where the other branch rises, the nile comes down in flood. all the lower lands are covered, and a fresh deposit of nile mud is left upon them; and, though the river does not rise to the higher grounds, the water is led into big canals, and these, again, are divided up into little ones, till it circulates through the whole land, as the blood circulates through your arteries and veins. this keeps the land fertile, and makes up for the lack of rain. apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking features. it is rather a monotonous land--a long ribbon of green running through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. but the great charm that draws people's minds to egypt, and gives the old land a never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the relics of that story which are still to be seen. in no other land can you see the real people and things of the days of long ago as you can see them in egypt. think how we should prize an actual building that had been connected with the story of king arthur, if such a thing could be found in our country, and what wonderful romance would belong to the weapons, the actual shields and helmets, swords and lances, of the knights of the round table, lancelot and tristram and galahad--if only we could find them. out there in egypt you can see buildings compared with which king arthur's camelot would be only a thing of yesterday; and you can look, not only on the weapons, but on the actual faces and forms of great kings and soldiers who lived, and fought bravely for their country, hundreds of years before saul and jonathan and david began to fight the battles of israel. you can see the pictures of how people lived in those far-away days, how their houses were built, how they traded and toiled, how they amused themselves, how they behaved in time of sorrow, how they worshipped god--all set down by themselves at the very time when they were doing these things. you can even see the games at which the children used to play, and the queer old-fashioned toys and dolls that they played with, and you can read the stories which their mothers and their nurses used to tell them. these are the things which make this old land of egypt so interesting to us all to-day; and i want to try to tell you about some of them, so that you may be able to have in your mind's eye a real picture of the life of those long past days. chapter ii a day in thebes if any foreigner were wanting to get an idea of our country, and to see how our people live, i suppose the first place that he would go to would be london, because it is the capital of the whole country, and its greatest city; and so, if we want to learn something about egypt, and how people lived there in those far-off days, we must try to get to the capital of the country, and see what is to be seen there. suppose, then, that we are no longer living in britain in the twentieth century, but that somehow or other we have got away back into the past, far beyond the days of jesus christ, beyond even the times of moses, and are living about , years before christ. we have come from tyre in a phoenician galley, laden with costly bales of cloth dyed with tyrian purple, and beautiful vessels wrought in bronze and copper, to sell in the markets of thebes, the greatest city in egypt. we have coasted along past carmel and joppa, and, after narrowly escaping being driven in a storm on the dangerous quicksand called the syrtis, we have entered one of the mouths of the nile. we have taken up an egyptian pilot at the river mouth, and he stands on a little platform at the bow of the galley, and shouts his directions to the steersmen, who work the two big rudders, one on either side of the ship's stern. the north wind is blowing strongly and driving us swiftly upstream, in spite of the current of the great river; so our weary oarsmen have shipped their oars, and we drive steadily southwards under our one big swelling sail. at first we sail along through a broad flat plain, partly cultivated, and partly covered with marsh and marsh plants. by-and-by the green plain begins to grow narrower; we are coming to the end of the delta, and entering upon the real valley of egypt. soon we pass a great city, its temples standing out clear against the deep blue sky, with their towering gateways, gay flags floating from tall flagstaves in front of them, and great obelisks pointing to the sky; and our pilot says that this is memphis, one of the oldest towns in the country, and for long its capital. not far from memphis, three great pyramid-shaped masses of stone rise up on the river-bank, looking almost like mountains; and the pilot tells us that these are the tombs of some of the great kings of long past days, and that all around them lie smaller pyramids and other tombs of kings and great men. but we are bound for a city greater even than memphis, and so we never stop, but hasten always southward. several days of steady sailing carry us past many towns that cluster near the river, past one ruined city, falling into mere heaps of stone and brick, which our pilot tells us was once the capital of a wicked king who tried to cast down all the old gods of egypt, and to set up a new god of his own; and at last we see, far ahead of us, a huge cluster of buildings on both sides of the river, which marks a city greater than we have ever seen. as we sweep up the river we see that there are really two cities. on the east bank lies the city of the living, with its strong walls and towers, its enormous temples, and an endless crowd of houses of all sorts and sizes, from the gay palaces of the nobles to the mud huts of the poor people. on the west bank lies the city of the dead. it has neither streets nor palaces, and no hum of busy life goes up from it; but it is almost more striking than its neighbour across the river. the hills and cliffs are honeycombed with long rows of black openings, the doorways of the tombs where the dead of thebes for centuries back are sleeping. out on the plain, between the cliffs and the river, temple rises after temple in seemingly endless succession. some of these temples are small and partly ruined, but some are very great and splendid; and, as the sunlight strikes upon them, it sends back flashes of gold and crimson and blue that dazzle the eyes. [illustration: plate the goddess isis dandling the king. _page _] but now our galley is drawing in towards the quay on the east side of the river, and in a few minutes the great sail comes thundering down, and, as the ship drifts slowly up to the quay, the mooring-ropes are thrown and made fast, and our long voyage is at an end. the egyptian custom-house officers come on board to examine the cargo, and collect the dues that have to be paid on it; and we watch them with interest, for they are quite different in appearance from our own hook-nosed, bearded sailors, with their thick many-coloured cloaks. these egyptians are all clean shaven; some of them wear wigs, and some have their hair cut straight across their brows, while it falls thickly behind upon their necks in a multitude of little curls, which must have taken them no small trouble to get into order. most wear nothing but a kilt of white linen; but the chief officer has a fine white cloak thrown over his shoulders; his linen kilt is stiffly starched, so that it stands out almost like a board where it folds over in front, and he wears a gilded girdle with fringed ends which hang down nearly to his knees. in his right hand he carries a long stick, which he is not slow to lay over the shoulders of his men when they do not obey his orders fast enough. after a good deal of hot argument, the amount of the tax is settled and paid, and we are free to go up into the great town. we have not gone far before we find that life in thebes can be quite exciting. a great noise is heard from one of the narrow riverside streets, and a crowd of men comes rushing up with shouts and oaths. ahead of them runs a single figure, whose writing-case, stuck in his girdle, marks him out as a scribe. he is almost at his last gasp, for he is stout and not accustomed to running; and he is evidently fleeing for his life, for the men behind him--rough, half-naked, ill-fed creatures of the working class--are chasing him with cries of anger, and a good deal of stone-throwing. bruised and bleeding, he darts up to the gate of a handsome house whose garden-wall faces the street. he gasps out a word to the porter, and is quickly passed into the garden. the gate is slammed and bolted in the faces of his pursuers, who form a ring round it, shouting and shaking their fists. in a little while the gate is cautiously unbarred, and a fine-looking man, very richly dressed, and followed by half a dozen well-armed negro guards, steps forward, and asks the workmen why they are here, making such a noise, and why they have chased and beaten his secretary. he is prince paser, who has charge of the works department of the theban government, and the workmen are masons employed on a large job in the cemetery of thebes. they all shout at once in answer to the prince's question; but by-and-by they push forward a spokesman, and he begins, rather sheepishly at first, but warming up as he goes along, to make their complaint to the great man. he and his mates, he says, have been working for weeks. they have had no wages; they have not even had the corn and oil which ought to be issued as rations to government workmen. so they have struck work, and now they have come to their lord the prince to entreat him either to give command that the rations be issued, or, if his stores are exhausted, to appeal to pharaoh. "we have been driven here by hunger and thirst; we have no clothes, we have no oil, we have no food. write to our lord the pharaoh, that he may give us something for our sustenance." when the spokesman has finished his complaint, the whole crowd volubly assents to what he has said, and sways to and fro in a very threatening manner. prince paser, however, is an old hand at dealing with such complaints. with a smiling face he promises that fifty sacks of corn shall be sent to the cemetery immediately, with oil to correspond. only the workmen must go back to their work at once, and there must be no more chasing of poor secretary amen-nachtu. otherwise, he can do nothing. the workmen grumble a little. they have been put off with promises before, and have got little good of them. but they have no leader bold enough to start a riot, and they have no weapons, and the spears and bows of the prince's nubians look dangerous. finally they turn, and disappear, grumbling, down the street from which they came; and prince paser, with a shrug of his shoulders, goes indoors again. whether the fifty sacks of corn are ever sent or not, is another matter. strikes, you see, were not unknown, even so long ago as this. chapter iii a day in thebes--_continued_ having seen the settlement of the masons' strike, we wander up into the heart of the town. the streets are generally narrow and winding, and here and there the houses actually meet overhead, so that we pass out of the blinding sunlight into a sort of dark tunnel. some of the houses are large and high; but even the largest make no display towards the street. they will be fine enough inside, with bright courts surrounded with trees, in the midst of which lies a cool pond of water, and with fine rooms decorated with gay hangings; but their outer walls are almost absolutely blank, with nothing but a heavy door breaking the dead line. we pass by some quarters where there is nothing but a crowd of mud huts, packed so closely together that there is only room for a single foot-passenger to thread his way through the narrow alleys between them. these are the workmen's quarters, and the heat and smell in them are so overpowering that one wonders how people can live in such places. by-and-by we come out into a more open space--one of the bazaars of the city--where business is in full swing. the shops are little shallow booths quite open to the front; and all the goods are spread out round the shopkeeper, who squats cross-legged in the middle of his property, ready to serve his customers, and invites the attention of the passers-by by loud explanations of the goodness and cheapness of his wares. all sorts of people are coming and going, for a theban crowd holds representatives of nearly every nation known. here are the townsfolk, men and women, out to buy supplies for their houses, or to exchange the news of the day; peasants from the villages round about, bringing in vegetables and cattle to barter for the goods which can only be got in the town; fine ladies and gentlemen, dressed elaborately in the latest court fashion, with carefully curled wigs, long pleated robes of fine transparent linen, and dainty, brightly-coloured sandals turned up at the toes. at one moment you rub shoulders with a hittite from kadesh, a conspicuous figure, with his high-peaked cap, pale complexion, and heavy, pointed boots. he looks round him curiously, as if thinking that thebes would be a splendid town to plunder. then a priest of high rank goes by, with shaven head, a panther skin slung across his shoulder over his white robe, and a roll of papyrus in his hand. a sardinian of the bodyguard swaggers along behind him, the ball and horns on his helmet flashing in the sunlight, his big sword swinging in its sheath as he walks; and a libyan bowman, with two bright feathers in his leather skull-cap, looks disdainfully at him as he shoulders his way through the crowd. all around us people are buying and selling. money, as we know it, has not yet been invented, and nearly all the trade is done by means of exchange. when it comes to be a question of how many fish have to be given for a bed, or whether a load of onions is good value for a chair, you can imagine that there has to be a good deal of argument. besides, the egyptian dearly loves bargaining for the mere excitement of the thing, and so the clatter of tongues is deafening. here and there one or two traders have advanced a little beyond the old-fashioned way of barter, and offer, instead of goods, so many rings of copper, silver, or gold wire. a peasant who has brought in a bullock to sell is offered copper "uten" (as the rings are called) for it; but he loudly protests that this is robbery, and after a long argument he screws the merchant up to "uten," with more as a luck-penny, and the bargain is clinched. even then the rings have still to be weighed that he may be sure he is not being cheated. so a big pair of balances is brought out; the "uten" are heaped into one scale, and in the other are piled weights in the shape of bulls' heads. finally, he is satisfied, and picks up his bag of rings; but the wily merchant is not done with him yet. he spreads out various tempting bargains before the eyes of the countryman, and, before the latter leaves the shop, most of the copper rings have found their way back again to the merchant's sack. a little farther on, the tyrian traders, to whom the cargo of our galley is consigned, have their shop. screens, made of woven grass, shelter it from the sun, and under their shade all sorts of gorgeous stuffs are displayed, glowing with the deep rich colours, of which the tyrians alone have the secret since the sack of knossos destroyed the trade of crete. beyond the tyrian booth, a goldsmith is busily employed in his shop. necklets and bracelets of gold and silver, beautifully inlaid with all kinds of rich colours, hang round him; and he is hard at work, with his little furnace and blowpipe, putting the last touches to the welding of a bracelet, for which a lady is patiently waiting. in one corner of the bazaar stands a house which makes no display of wares, but, nevertheless, seems to secure a constant stream of customers. workmen slink in at the door, as though half ashamed of themselves, and reappear, after a little, wiping their mouths, and not quite steady in their gait. a young man, with pale and haggard face, swaggers past and goes in, and, as he enters the door, one bystander nudges another and remarks: "pentuere is going to have a good day again; he will come to a bad end, that young man." by-and-by the door opens again, and pentuere comes out staggering. he looks vacantly round, and tries to walk away; but his legs refuse to carry him, and, after a stumble or two, he falls in a heap and lies in the road, a pitiful sight. the passers-by jeer and laugh at him as he lies helpless; but one decent-looking man points him out to his young son, and says: "see this fellow, my son, and learn not to drink beer to excess. thou dost fall and break thy limbs, and bespatter thyself with mud, like a crocodile, and no one reaches out a hand to thee. thy comrades go on drinking, and say, 'away with this fellow, who is drunk.' if anyone should seek thee on business, thou art found lying in the dust like a little child." but in spite of much wise advice, the egyptian, though generally temperate, is only too fond of making "a good day," as he calls it, at the beerhouse. even fine ladies sometimes drink too much at their great parties, and have to be carried away very sick and miserable. worst of all, the very judges of the high court have been known to take a day off during the hearing of a long case, in order to have a revel with the criminals whom they were trying; and it is not so long since two of them had their noses cut off, as a warning to the rest against such shameful conduct. sauntering onwards, we gradually get near to the sacred quarter of the town, and can see the towering gateways and obelisks of the great temples over the roofs of the houses. soon a great crowd comes towards us, and the sounds of trumpets and flutes are heard coming from the midst of it. inquiring what is the meaning of the bustle, we are told that one of the images of amen, the great god of thebes, is being carried in procession as a preliminary to an important service which is to take place in the afternoon, and at which the king is going to preside. stepping back under the doorway of a house, we watch the procession go past. after a group of musicians and singers, and a number of women who are dancing as they go, and shaking curious metal rattles, there comes a group of six men, who form the centre of the whole crowd, and on whom the eyes of all are fixed. they are tall, spare, keen-looking men, their heads clean shaven, their bodies wrapped in pure white robes of the beautiful egyptian linen. on their shoulders they carry, by means of two long poles, a model of a nile boat, in the midst of which rises a little shrine. the shrine is carefully draped round with a veil, so as to hide the god from curious eyes. but just in front of the doorway where we are standing a small stone pillar rises from the roadway, and when the bearers come to this point, the bark of the god is rested on the top of the pillar. two censer-bearers come forward, and swing their censers, wafting clouds of incense round the shrine; a priest lifts up his voice, loudly intoning a hymn of praise to the great god who creates and sustains all things; and a few of the by-standers lay before the bark offerings of flowers, fruit, and eatables of various kinds. then comes the solemn moment. amid breathless silence, the veil of the shrine is slowly drawn aside, and the faithful can see a little wooden image, about inches high, adorned with tall plumes, carefully dressed, and painted with green and black. the revelation of this little doll, to a theban crowd the most sacred object in all the world, is hailed with shouts of wonder and reverence. then the veil is drawn again, the procession passes on, and the streets are left quiet for awhile. [illustration: plate the great gate of the temple of luxor, with obelisk. _pages , _] we are reminded that, if we wish to get a meal before starting out to see pharaoh passing in procession to the temple, we had better lose no time, and so we turn our faces riverwards again, and wander down through the endless maze of streets to where our galley is moored at the quay. chapter iv pharaoh at home the time is coming on now for the king to go in state to the great temple at karnak to offer sacrifice, and as we go up to the palace to see him come forth in all his glory, let me tell you a little about him and the kind of life he leads. pharaoh, of course, is not his real name; it is not even his official title; it is just a word which is used to describe a person who is so great that people scarcely venture to call him by his proper name. just as the turks nowadays speak of the "sublime porte," when they mean the sultan and his government, so the egyptians speak of "per-o," or pharaoh, as we call it, which really signifies "great house," when they mean the king. for the king of egypt is a very great man indeed; in fact, his people look upon him, and he looks upon himself, as something more than a man. there are many gods in egypt; but the god whom the people know best, and to whom they pay the most reverence, is their king. ever since there have been kings in the country, and that is a very long time now, the reigning monarch has been looked upon as a kind of god manifest in the flesh. he calls himself "son of the sun"; in the temples you will see pictures of his childhood, where great goddesses dandle the young god upon their knees (plate ). divine honours are paid, and sacrifices offered to him; and when he dies, and goes to join his brother-gods in heaven, a great temple rises to his memory, and hosts of priests are employed in his worship. there is just one distinction made between him and the other gods. amen at thebes, ptah at memphis, and all the rest of the crowd of divinities, are called "the great gods." pharaoh takes a different title. he is called "the good god." at present "the good god" is ramses ii. of course, that is only one part of his name; for, like all the other pharaohs, he has a list of titles that would fill a page. his subjects in thebes have not seen very much of him for a long time, for there has been so much to do away in syria, that he has built another capital at tanis, which the hebrews call zoan, down between the delta and the eastern frontier, and spends most of his time there. people who have been down the river tell us great wonders about the beauty of the new town, its great temple, and the huge statue of the king, feet high, which stands before the temple gate. but thebes is still the centre of the nation's life, and now, when it is growing almost certain that there will be another war with those vile hittites in the north of syria, he has come up to the great city to take counsel with his brother-god, amen, and to make arrangements for gathering his army. the royal palace is in a constant bustle, with envoys coming and going, and counsellors and generals continually passing in and out with reports and orders. outside, the palace is not so very imposing. the egyptians built their temples to last for ever; but the palaces of their kings were meant to serve only for a short time. the new king might not care for the old king's home, and so each pharaoh builds his house according to his own taste, of light materials. it will serve his turn, and his successor may build another for himself. a high wall, with battlements, towers, and heavy gates, surrounds it; for, though pharaoh is a god, his subjects are sometimes rather difficult to keep in order. plots against the king have not been unknown in the past; and on at least one occasion, a great pharaoh of bygone days had to spring from his couch and fight single-handed for his life against a crowd of conspirators who had forced an entrance into the palace while he was enjoying his siesta. so since then pharaoh has found it better to trust in his strong walls, and in the big broadswords of his faithful sardinian guardsmen, than in any divinity that may belong to himself. within the great boundary wall lie pleasant gardens, gay with all sorts of flowers, and an artificial lake shows its gleaming water here and there through the trees and shrubs. the palace itself is all glittering white stucco on the outside. a high central door leads into a great audience hall, glowing with colour, its roof supported by painted pillars in the form of lotus-stalks; and on either side of this lie two smaller halls. behind the audience chamber are two immense dining-rooms, and behind these come the sleeping apartments of the numerous household. ramses has a multitude of wives, and a whole army of sons and daughters, and it takes no small space to house them all. the bedroom of the great king himself stands apart from the other rooms, and is surrounded by banks of flowers in full bloom. the son of the sun has had a busy day already. he has had many letters and despatches to read and consider. some of the syrian vassal-princes have sent clay tablets, covered with their curious arrow-headed writing, giving news of the advance of the hittites, and imploring the help of the egyptian army; and now the king is about to give audience, and to consider these with his great nobles and generals. at one end of the reception hall stands a low balcony, supported on gaily-painted wooden pillars which end in capitals of lotus-flowers. the front of this balcony is overlaid with gold, and richly decorated with turquoise and lapis lazuli. here the king will show himself to his subjects, accompanied by his favourite wife, queen nefertari, and some of the young princes and princesses. the folding doors of the audience chamber are thrown open, and the barons, the provincial governors, and the high officers of the army and the state throng in to do homage to their master. [illustration] in a few moments the glittering crowd is duly arranged, a door opens at the back of the balcony, and the king of the two lands, lord of the vulture and the snake, steps forth with his queen and family. in earlier times, whenever the king appeared, the assembled nobles were expected to fall on their faces and kiss the ground before him. fashion has changed, however, and now the great folks, at all events, are no longer required to "smell the earth." as pharaoh enters the balcony, the nobles bow profoundly, and raise their arms as if in prayer to "the good god." then, in silent reverence, they wait until it shall please their lord to speak. ramses sweeps his glance over the crowd, singles out the general in command of the theban troops, and puts a question to him as to the readiness of his division--the picked division of the army. the soldier steps forward with a deep bow; but it is not court manners for him to answer his lord's question directly. instead, he begins by reciting a little psalm of praise, which tells of the king's greatness, his valour and skill in war, and asserts that wherever his horses tread his enemies flee before him and perish. this little piece of flattery over, the general begins, "o king, my master," and in a few sensible words gives the information required. so the audience goes on, counsellor after counsellor coming forward at the royal command, reciting his little hymn, and then giving his opinion on such matters as his master suggests to him. at last the council is over, the king gives orders to his equerry to prepare his chariot for the procession to the temple, and, as he turns to leave the audience chamber, the assembled nobles once more bow profoundly, and raise their arms in adoration. after a short delay, the great gates of the boundary wall of the palace are opened; a company of spearmen, in quilted leather kilts and leather skull-caps, marches out, and takes position a short distance from the gateway. behind them comes a company of the sardinians of the guard, heavily armed, with bright helmets, broad round shields, quilted corselets, and long, heavy, two-edged swords. they range themselves on either side of the roadway, and stand like statues, waiting for the appearance of pharaoh. there is a whir of chariot-wheels, and the royal chariot sweeps through the gateway, and sets off at a good round pace towards the temple. the spearmen in front start at the double, and the guardsmen, in spite of their heavy equipment, keep pace with their royal master on either side. the waiting crowd bows to the dust as the sovereign passes; but pharaoh looks neither to the right hand nor to the left. he stands erect and impassive in the swaying chariot, holding the crook and whip which are the egyptian royal emblems. on his head he wears the royal war helmet, in the front of which a golden cobra rears its crest from its coils, as if to threaten the enemies of egypt. his finely-shaped, swarthy features are adorned, or disfigured, by an artificial beard, which is fastened on by a strap passing up in front of the ears. his tall slender body is covered, above his corselet, with a robe of fine white linen, a perfect wonder of pleating; and round his waist passes a girdle of gold and green enamel, whose ends cross and hang down almost to his knees, terminating in two threatening cobra heads (plate and cover picture). on either side of him run the fan-bearers, who manage, by a miracle of skill and activity, to keep their great gaily-coloured fans of perfumed ostrich feathers waving round the royal head even as they run. behind the king comes a long train of other chariots, only less splendid than that of ramses. in the first stands queen nefertari, languidly sniffing at a lotus-flower as she passes on. the others are filled by some of the princes of the blood, who are going to take part in the ceremony at the temple, chief among them the wizard prince khaemuas, the greatest magician in egypt, who has spells that can bring the dead from their graves. some in the crowd shrink from his keen eye, and mutter that the papyrus roll which he holds so close to his breast was taken from the grave of another magician prince of ancient days, and that khaemuas will know no peace till it is restored. in a few minutes the whole brilliant train has passed, dazzling the eyes with a blaze of gold and white and scarlet; and crowds of courtiers stream after their master, as fast as their feet can carry them, towards karnak. you have seen, if only for a moment, the greatest man on earth--the great oppressor of hebrew story. very mighty and very proud he is; and he does not dream that the little hebrew boy whom his daughter has adopted, and who is being trained in the priestly college at heliopolis, will one day humble all the pride of egypt, and that the very name of ramses shall be best remembered because it is linked with that of moses. chapter v the life of a soldier when you read about the egyptians in the bible, it seems as though they were nearly always fighting; and, indeed, they did a good deal of fighting in their time, as nearly every nation did in those old days. but in reality they were not a great soldier people, like their rivals the assyrians, or the babylonians. we, who have had so much to do with their descendants, the modern egyptians, and have fought both against them and with them, know that the "gippy" is not fond of soldiering in his heart. he makes a very good, patient, hardworking soldier when he has good officers; but he is not like the soudanese, who love fighting for fighting's sake. he much prefers to live quietly in his own native village, and cultivate his own bit of ground. and his forefathers, in these long-past days, were very much of the same mind. often, of course, they had to fight, when pharaoh ordered them out for a campaign in the soudan or in syria, and then they fought wonderfully well; but all the time their hearts were at home, and they were glad to get back to their farm-work and their simple pleasures. they were a peaceful, kindly, pleasant race, with little of the cruelty and fierceness that you find continually among the assyrians. [illustration: plate . ramses ii. in his war chariot: sardinian guardsmen on foot.] in fact, the old egyptian rather despised soldiering as a profession. he thought it was rather a miserable, muddled kind of a job, in which, unless you were a great officer, you got all the hard knocks and none of the honours; and i am not sure that he was far wrong. his great idea of a happy life was to get employment as a scribe, or, as we should say, a clerk, to some big man or to the government, to keep accounts and write reports. of course the people could not all be scribes; but an egyptian who had sons was never so proud as when he could get one of them into a scribe's position, even though the young man might look down upon his old father and his brothers, toiling on the land or serving in the army. a curious old book has come down to us from these ancient days, in which the writer, who had been both a soldier and a high officer under government in what we should call the diplomatic service, has told a young friend his opinion of soldiering as a profession. the young man had evidently been dazzled with the idea of being in the cavalry, or, rather, the chariotry, for the egyptian soldiers did not ride on horses like our cavalry, but drove them in chariots, in each of which there were two men--the charioteer, to drive the two horses, and the soldier, who stood beside the driver and fought with the bow, and sometimes with the lance or sword. but this wise old friend tells him that even to be in the chariotry is not by any means a pleasant job. of course it seems very nice at first. the young man gets his new equipment, and thinks all the world of himself as he goes home to show off his fine feathers. "he receives beautiful horses, and rejoices and exults, and returns with them to his town." but then comes the inspection, and if he has not everything in perfect order he has a bad time of it, for he is thrown down on the ground, and beaten with sticks till he is sore all over. but if the lot of the cavalry soldier is hard, that of the infantry-man is harder. in the barracks he is flogged for every mistake or offence. then war breaks out, and he has to march with his battalion to syria. day after day he has to tramp on foot through the wild hill-country, so different from the flat, fertile homeland that he loves. he has to carry all his heavy equipment and his rations, so that he is laden like a donkey; and often he has to drink dirty water, which makes him ill. then, when the battle comes, he gets all the danger and the wounds, while the generals get all the credit. when the war is over, he comes home riding on a donkey, a broken-down man, sick and wounded, his very clothes stolen by the rascals who should have attended on him. far better, the wise man says, to be a scribe, and to remain comfortably at home. i dare say it was all quite true, just as perhaps it would not be very far from the truth at the present time; but, in spite of it all, pharaoh had his battles to fight, and he got his soldiers all right when they were needed. the egyptian army was not generally a very big one. it was nothing like the great hosts that we hear of nowadays, or read of in some of the old histories. the armies that the pharaohs led into syria were not often much bigger than what we should call an army corps nowadays--probably about , men altogether, rarely more than , . but in that number you could find almost as many different sorts of men as in our own indian army. there would be first the native egyptian spearmen and bowmen--the spearmen with leather caps and quilted leather tunics, carrying a shield and spear, and sometimes an axe, or a dagger, or short sword--the bowmen, more lightly equipped, but probably more dangerous enemies, for the egyptian archers were almost as famous as the old english bowmen, and won many a battle for their king. then came the chariot brigade, also of native egyptians, men probably of higher rank than the foot-soldiers. the chariots were very light, and it must have been exceedingly difficult for the bowman to balance himself in the narrow car, as it bumped and clattered over rough ground. the two horses were gaily decorated, and often wore plumes on their heads. the charioteer sometimes twisted the reins round his waist, and could take a hand in the fighting if his companion was hard pressed, guiding his horses by swaying his body to one side or the other. round the pharaoh himself, as he stood in his beautiful chariot, marched the royal bodyguard. it was made up of men whom the egyptians called "sherden"--sardinians, probably, who had come over the sea to serve for hire in the army of the great king. they wore metal helmets, with a round ball on the top and horns at the sides, carried round bossed shields, and were armed with great heavy swords of much the same shape as those which the norman knights used to carry. behind the native troops and the bodyguard marched the other mercenaries--regiments of black soudanese, with wild-beast skins thrown over their ebony shoulders; and light-coloured libyans from the west, each with a couple of feathers stuck in his leather skull-cap. scouts went on ahead to scour the country, and bring to the king reports of the enemy's whereabouts. beside the royal chariot there padded along a strange, but very useful soldier--a great tame lion, which had been trained to guard his master and fight with teeth and claws against his enemies. last of all came the transport train, with the baggage carried on the backs of a long line of donkeys, and protected by a baggage-guard. the egyptians were good marchers, and even in the hot syrian sunshine, and across a rough country where roads were almost unknown, they could keep up a steady fifteen miles a day for a week on end without being fagged out. let us follow the fortunes of an egyptian soldier through one of the great battles of the nation's history. menna was one of the most skilful charioteers of the whole egyptian army--so skilful that, though he was still quite young, he was promoted to be driver of the royal war-chariot when king ramses ii. marched out from zaru, the frontier garrison town of egypt, to fight with the hittites in northern syria. during all the long march across the desert, through palestine, and over the northern mountain passes, no enemy was seen at all, and, though menna was kept busy enough attending to his horses and seeing that the chariot was in perfect order, he was in no danger. but as the army began to wind down the long valley of the orontes towards the town of kadesh, the scouts were kept out in every direction, and the whole host was anxiously on the lookout for the hittite troops. kadesh came in sight at last. far on the horizon its towers could be seen, and the sun's rays sparkled on the river and on the broad moat which surrounded the walls; but still no enemy was to be seen. the scouts came in with the report that the hittites had retreated northwards in terror, and king ramses imagined that kadesh was going to fall into his hands without a battle. his army was divided into four brigades, and he himself hurried on rather rashly with the first brigade, leaving the other three to straggle on behind him, widely separated from one another (plate ). the first brigade reached its camping-ground to the north-west of kadesh; the tired troops pitched camp; the baggage was unloaded; and the donkeys, released from their burdens, rolled on the ground in delight. just at that moment some of the egyptian scouts came in, bringing with them two arabs whom they had caught, and suspected to belong to the enemy. king ramses ordered the arabs to be soundly beaten with sticks, and the poor creatures confessed that the hittite king, with a great army, was concealed on the other side of kadesh, watching for an opportunity to attack the egyptian army. in great haste ramses, scolding his scouts the while for not keeping a better lookout, began to get his soldiers under arms again, while menna ran and yoked to the royal chariot the two noble horses which had been kept fresh for the day of battle. but before pharaoh could leap into his chariot a wild uproar broke out at the gate of the camp, and the scattered fragments of the second brigade came pouring in headlong flight into the enclosure. behind them the whole hittite chariot force, , chariots strong, each chariot with three men in it, came clattering and leaping upon the heels of the fugitives. the hittite king had waited till he saw the first brigade busy pitching camp, and then, as the second came straggling up, he had launched his chariots upon the flank of the weary soldiers, who were swept away in a moment as if by a flood. the rush of terrified men carried off the first brigade along with it in hopeless rout. ramses and menna were left with only a few picked chariots of the household troops, and the whole hittite army was coming on. but though king ramses had made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade menna lash his horses and charge the advancing hittites. menna was no coward, but when he saw the thin line of egyptian troops, and looked at the dense mass of hittite chariots, his heart almost failed him. he never thought of disobedience, but, as he stooped over his plunging horses, he panted to the king: "o mighty strength of egypt in the day of battle, we are alone in the midst of the enemy. o, save us, ramses, my good lord!" "steady, steady, my charioteer," said ramses, "i am going among them like a hawk!" in a moment the fiery horses were whirling the king and his charioteer between the files of the hittite chariots, which drew aside as if terrified at the glittering figures that dashed upon them so fearlessly. as they swept through, menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a hittite champion fell from his chariot. behind the king came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, overturned chariots, and maddened horses. still king ramses had only gained a breathing-space. the hittites far outnumbered his little force, and, though his orderlies were madly galloping to bring up the third and fourth brigades, it must be some time yet before even the nearest could come into action. besides, on the other bank of the river there hung a great cloud of , hittite spearmen, under the command of the hittite king himself. if these got time to cross the river, the egyptian position, bad enough as it was, would be hopeless. there was nothing for it but to charge again and again, and, if possible, drive back the hittite chariots on the river, so as to hinder the spearmen from crossing. so menna whipped up his horses again, and, with arrow on string, the pharaoh dashed upon his enemies once more. again they burst through the opposing ranks, scattering death on either side as they passed. now some of the fragments of the first and second brigades were beginning to rally and come back to the field, and the struggle was becoming less unequal. the egyptian quivers were nearly all empty now; but lance and sword still remained, and inch by inch the hittites were forced back upon the river. their king stood ingloriously on the opposite bank, unable to do anything. it was too late for him to try to move his spearmen across--they would only have been trampled down by the retreating chariots. at last a great shout from the rear announced the arrival of the third egyptian brigade, and, the little knot of brave men who had saved the day still leading, the army swept the broken hittites down the bank of the orontes into the river. great was the confusion and the slaughter. as the chariots struggled through the ford, the egyptian bowmen, spread out along the bank, picked off the chiefs. the two brothers of the hittite king, the chief of his bodyguard, his shield-bearer, and his chief scribe, were all killed. the king of aleppo missed the ford, and was swept down the river; but some of his soldiers dashed into the water, rescued him, and, in rough first aid, held the half-drowned leader up by the heels, to let the water drain out of him. the hittite king picked up his broken fugitives, covered them with his mass of spearmen, and moved reluctantly off the field where so splendid a chance of victory had been missed, and turned into defeat. the egyptians were too few and too weary to attempt to cross the river in pursuit, and they retired to the camp of the first brigade. then pharaoh called his captains before him. the troops stood around, leaning on their spears, ashamed of their conduct in the earlier part of the day, and wondering at the grim signs of conflict that lay on every side. king ramses called menna to him, and, handing the reins to a groom, the young charioteer came bowing before his master. pharaoh stripped from his own royal neck a collar of gold, and fastened it round the neck of his faithful squire; and, while the generals and captains hung their heads for shame, the king told them how shamefully they had left him to fight his battle alone, and how none had stood by him but the young charioteer. "as for my two horses," he said, "they shall be fed before me every day in the royal palace." [illustration: plate . zazamankh and the lost coronet.] both armies had suffered too much loss for any further strife to be possible, and a truce was agreed upon. the hittites drew off to the north, and the egyptians marched back again to egypt, well aware that they had gained little or nothing by all their efforts, but thankful that they had been saved from the total destruction which had seemed so near. a proud man was menna when he drove the royal chariot up to the bridge of zaru. as the troops passed the frontier canal the road was lined on either side with crowds of nobles, priests, and scribes, strewing flowers in the way, and bowing before the king. and after the pharaoh himself, whose bravery had saved the day, there was no one so honoured as the young squire who had stood so manfully by his master in the hour of danger. chapter vi child-life in ancient egypt how did the boys and girls live in this quaint old land so many hundreds of years ago? how were they dressed, what sort of games did they play at, what sort of lessons did they learn, and what kind of school did they go to? if you could have lived in egypt in those far-off days, you would have found many differences between your life of to-day and the life that the egyptian children led; but you would also have found that there were very many things much the same then as they are now. boys and girls were boys and girls three thousand years ago, just as they are now; and you would find that they did very much the same things, and even played very much the same games as you do to-day. when you read in your fairy-stories about a little boy or girl, you often hear that they had fairy godmothers who came to their cradles, and gave them gifts, and foretold what was going to happen to the little babies in after years. well, when little tahuti or little sen-senb was born in thebes fifteen hundred years before christ, there were fairy godmothers too, who presided over the great event; and there were others called the hathors, who foretold all that was going to happen to the little boy or girl as the years went on. the baby was kept a baby much longer in those days than our little ones are kept. the happy mother nursed the little thing carefully for three years at all events, carrying it about with her wherever she went, either on her shoulder, or astride upon her hip. if baby took ill, and the doctor was called in, the medicines that were given were not in the least like the sugar-coated pills and capsules that make medicine-taking easy nowadays. the egyptian doctor did not know a very great deal about medicine and sickness, but he made up for his ignorance by the nastiness of the doses which he gave to his patients. i don't think you would like to take pills made up of the moisture scraped from pig's ears, lizard's blood, bad meat, and decaying fat, to say nothing of still nastier things. often the doctor would look very grave, and say, "the child is not ill; he is bewitched"; and then he would sit down and write out a prescription something like this: "remedy to drive away bewitchment. take a great beetle; cut off his head and his wings, boil him, put him in oil, and lay him out. then cook his head and his wings; put them in snake-fat, boil, and let the patient drink the mixture." i think you would almost rather take the risk of being bewitched than drink a dose like that! [illustration: plate granite statue of ramses ii. _page_ note the hieroglyphics on base of statue. _pages_ , ] sometimes the doctor gave no medicines at all, but wrote a few magic words on a scrap of old paper, and tied it round the part where the pain was. i daresay it did as much good as his pills. very often the mother believed that it was not really sickness that was troubling her child, but that a ghost was coming and hurting him; so when his cries showed that the ghost was in the room, the mother would rise up, shaking all over, i daresay, and would repeat the verse that she had been taught would drive ghosts away: "comest thou to kiss this child? i suffer thee not to kiss him; comest thou to quiet him? i suffer thee not to quiet him; comest thou to harm him? i suffer thee not to harm him; comest thou to take him away? i suffer thee not to take him away." when little tahuti has got over his baby aches, and escaped the ghosts, he begins to run about and play. he and his sister are not bothered to any great extent with dressing in the mornings. they are very particular about washing, but as egypt is so hot, clothes are not needed very much, and so the little boy and girl play about with nothing at all on their little brown bodies except, perhaps, a narrow girdle, or even a single thread tied round the waist. they have their toys just like you. tahuti has got a wonderful man, who, when you pull a string, works a roller up and down upon a board, just like a baker rolling out dough, and besides he has a crocodile that moves its jaws. his sister has dolls: a fine egyptian lady and a frizzy-haired, black-faced nubian girl. sometimes they play together at ninepins, rolling the ball through a little gate. for about four years this would go on, as long as tahuti was what the egyptians called "a wise little one." then, when he was four years old, the time came when he had to become "a writer in the house of books," which is what the egyptians called a school-boy; so little tahuti set off for school, still wearing no more clothes than the thread tied round his waist, and with his black hair plaited up into a long thick lock, which hung down over his right ear. the first thing that he had to learn was how to read and write, and this was no easy task, for egyptian writing, though it is very beautiful when well done, is rather difficult to master, all the more as there were two different styles which had to be learned if a boy was going to become a man of learning. i don't suppose that you think your old copy-books of much importance when you are done with them; but the curious thing is that among all the books that have come down to us from ancient egypt, there are far more old copy-books than any others, and these books, with the teachers' corrections written on the margins, and rough sketches scratched in here and there among the writing, have proved most valuable in telling us what the egyptians learned, and what they liked to read; for a great deal of the writing consisted in the copying out of wise words of the men of former days, and sometimes of stories of old times. these old copy-books can speak to us in one way, but if they could speak in another, i daresay they would tell us of many weary hours in school, and of many floggings and tears; for the egyptian school-master believed with all his heart in the cane, and used it with great vigour and as often as he could. little tahuti used to look forward to his daily flogging, much as he did to his lunch in the middle of the day, when his careful mother regularly brought him three rolls of bread and two jugs of beer. "a boy's ears," his master used to say, "are on his back, and he hears when he is beaten." one of the former pupils at his school writing to his teacher, and recalling his school-days, says: "i was with thee since i was brought up as a child; thou didst beat my back, and thine instructions went into my ear." sometimes the boys, if they were stubborn, got punishments even worse than the cane. another boy, in a letter to his old master, says: "thou hast made me buckle to since the time that i was one of thy pupils. i spent my time in the lock-up, and was sentenced to three months, and bound in the temple." i am afraid our schoolboys would think the old egyptian teachers rather more severe than the masters with whom they have to do nowadays. lesson-time occupied about half the day, and when it came to an end the boys all ran out of the school, shouting for joy. that custom has not changed much, anyway, in all these hundreds of years. i don't think they had any home lessons to do, and so, perhaps, their school-time was not quite so bad as we might imagine from the rough punishments they used to get. when tahuti grew a little older, and had fairly mastered the rudiments of writing, his teacher set him to write out copies of different passages from the best known egyptian books, partly to keep up his hand-writing, and partly to teach him to know good egyptian and to use correct language. sometimes it was a piece of a religious book that he was set to copy, sometimes a poem, sometimes a fairy-tale. for the egyptians were very fond of fairy-tales, and later on, perhaps, we may hear some of their stories, the oldest fairy-stories in the world. but generally the piece that was chosen was one which would not only exercise the boy's hand, and teach him a good style, but would also help to teach him good manners, and fill his mind with right ideas. very often tahuti's teacher would dictate to him a passage from the wise advice which a great king of long ago left to his son, the crown prince, or from some other book of the same kind. and sometimes the exercises would be in the form of letters which the master and his pupils wrote as though they had been friends far away from one another. tahuti's letters, you may be sure, were full of wisdom and of good resolutions, and i dare say he was just about as fond of writing them as you are of writing the letters that your teacher sometimes sets as a task for you. when it came to arithmetic, tahuti was so far lucky that the number of rules he had to learn was very few. his master taught him addition and subtraction, and a very slow and clumsy form of multiplication; but he could not teach him division, for the very simple reason that he did not properly understand it himself. enough of mensuration was taught him to enable him to find out, though rather roughly, what was the size of a field, and how much corn would go into a granary of any particular size. and when he had learned these things, his elementary education was pretty well over. [illustration: plate nave of the temple at karnak. _pages_ , ] of course a great deal would depend on the profession he was going to follow. if he was going to be only a common scribe, his education would go no farther; for the work he would have to do would need no greater learning than reading, writing, and arithmetic. if he was going to be an officer in the army, he entered as a cadet in a military school which was attached to the royal stables. but if he was going to be a priest, he had to join one of the colleges which belonged to the different temples of the gods, and there, like moses, he was instructed in all the wisdom of the egyptians, and was taught all the strange ideas which they had about the gods, and the life after death, and the wonderful worlds, above and below, where the souls of men lived after they had finished their lives on earth. but, whether his schooling was carried on to what we should call a university training or not, there was one thing that tahuti was taught with the utmost care, and that was to be very respectful to those who were older than himself, never to sit down while an older person was standing in the room, and always to be very careful in his manners. chief of the older people to whom he had to show respect were his parents, and above all, his mother, for the egyptians reverenced their mothers more than anyone else in the world. here is a little scrap of advice that a wise old egyptian once left to his son: "thou shalt never forget what thy mother has done for thee. she bare thee, and nourished thee in all manner of ways. she nursed thee for three years. she brought thee up, and when thou didst enter the school, and wast instructed in the writings, she came daily to thy master with bread and beer from her house. if thou forgettest her, she might blame thee; she might lift up her hands to god, and he would hear her complaint." children nowadays might do a great deal worse than remember these wise words of the oldest book in the world. but you are not to think that the egyptian children's life was all teaching and prim behaviour. when tahuti got his holidays, he would sometimes go out with his father and mother and sister on a fishing or fowling expedition. if they were going fishing, the little papyrus skiff was launched, and the party paddled away, armed with long thin spears, which had two prongs at the point. drifting over the quiet shallow waters of the marshy lakes, they could see the fish swimming beneath them, and launch their spears at them. sometimes, if he was lucky, tahuti's father would pierce a fish with either prong of the spear, and then there was great excitement. but still more interesting was the fowling among the marshes. the spears were laid aside on this kind of expedition, and instead, tahuti and his father were armed with curved throw-sticks, shaped something like an australian boomerang. but, besides the throw-sticks, they had with them a rather unusual helper. when people go shooting nowadays, they take dogs with them to retrieve the game. well, the egyptians had different kinds of dogs, too, which they used for hunting; but when they went fowling they took with them a cat which was trained to catch the wounded birds and bring them to her master. the little skiff was paddled cautiously across the marsh, and in among the reeds where the wild ducks and other waterfowl lived, sen-senb and her mother holding on to the tall papyrus plants and pulling them aside to make room for the boat, or plucking the beautiful lotus-lilies, of which the egyptians were so fond. when the birds rose, tahuti and his father let fly their throw-sticks, and when a bird was knocked down, the cat, which had been sitting quietly in the bow of the boat, dashed forward among the reeds and secured the fluttering creature before it could escape. [illustration: plate . "and the goose stood up and cackled."] altogether, it was great fun for the brother and sister, as well as for the grown folks, and tahuti and sen-senb liked nothing so well as when the gaily-painted little skiff was launched for a day on the marshes. i think that, on the whole, they had a very bright and happy life in these old days, and that, though they had not many of the advantages that you have to-day, the boys and girls of three thousand years ago managed to enjoy themselves in their own simple way quite as well as you do now. chapter vii some fairy-tales of long ago the little brown boys and girls who lived in egypt three thousand years ago were just as fond as you are of hearing wonderful stories that begin with "once upon a time;" and i want in this chapter to tell you some of the tales that tahuti and sen-senb used to listen to in the evening when school was over and play was done--the oldest of all wonder-tales, stories that were old and had long been forgotten, ages before the sleeping beauty and jack and the beanstalk were first thought of. one day, when king khufu, the great king who built the biggest of the pyramids, had nothing else to do, he called his sons and his wise men together, and said, "is there anyone among you who can tell me the tales of the old magicians?" then the king's son, prince baufra, stood up and said, "your majesty, i can tell you of a wonder that happened in the days of your father, king seneferu. it fell on a day that the king grew weary of everything, and sought through all his palace for something to please him, but found nothing. then he said to his officers, 'bring to me the magician zazamankh.' and when the magician came, the king said to him, 'o zazamankh, i have sought through all my palace for some delight, and i have found none.' then said zazamankh, 'let thy majesty go in thy boat upon the lake of the palace, and let twenty beautiful girls be brought to row thee, and let their oars be of ebony, inlaid with gold and silver. and i myself will go with thee; and the sight of the water-birds, and the fair shores, and the green grass will cheer thy heart.' so the king and the wizard went down to the lake, and the twenty maidens rowed them about in the king's pleasure-galley. nine rowed on this side, and nine on that, and the two fairest stood by the two rudders at the stern, and set the rowing song, each for her own side. and the king's heart grew glad and light, as the boat sped hither and thither, and the oars flashed in the sunshine to the song of the rowers. "but as the boat turned, the top of the steering-oar struck the hair of one of the maidens who steered, and knocked her coronet of turquoise into the water; and she stopped her song, and all the rowers on her side stopped rowing. then his majesty said, 'why have you stopped rowing, little one?' and the maiden answered, 'it is because my jewel of turquoise has fallen into the water.' 'row on,' said the king, 'and i will give you another.' but the girl answered, 'i want my own one back, as i had it before.' so king seneferu called zazamankh to come to him, and said, 'now, zazamankh, i have done as you advised, and my heart is light; but, behold, the coronet of this little one has fallen into the water, and she has stopped singing, and spoiled the rowing of her side; and she will not have a new jewel, but wants the old one back again.' "then zazamankh the wizard stood up in the king's boat, and spoke wonderful words. and, lo! the water of one half of the lake rose up, and heaped itself upon the top of the water of the other half, so that it was twice as deep as it was before. and the king's bark rode upon the top of the piled-up waters; but beyond it the bottom of the lake lay bare, with the shells and pebbles shining in the sunlight. and there, upon a broken shell, lay the little rower's coronet. then zazamankh leaped down and picked it up, and brought it to the king. and he spake wonderful words again, and the water sank down, and covered the whole bed of the lake, as it had done at first. so his majesty spent a joyful day, and gave great rewards to the wizard zazamankh." when king khufu heard that story, he praised the men of olden times. but another of his sons, prince hordadef, stood up, and said, "o king, that is only a story of bygone days, and no one knows whether it is true or a lie; but i will show thee a magician of to-day." "who is he, hordadef?" said king khufu. and hordadef answered, "his name is dedi. he is a hundred and ten years old, and every day he eats five hundred loaves of bread, and a side of beef, and drinks a hundred jugs of beer. he knows how to fasten on a head that has been cut off. he knows how to make a lion of the desert follow him, and he knows the plan of the house of god that you have wanted to know for so long." then king khufu sent prince hordadef to bring dedi to him, and he brought dedi back in the royal boat. the king came out, and sat in the colonnade of the palace, and dedi was led before him. then said his majesty, "why have i never seen you before, dedi?" and dedi answered, "life, health, strength to your majesty! a man can only come when he is called." "is it true, dedi, that you can fasten on a head which has been cut off?" "certainly i can, your majesty." then said the king, "let a prisoner be brought from the prison, and let his head be struck off." but dedi said, "long life to your majesty; do not try it on a man. let us try a bird or an animal." so a goose was brought; its head was cut off; and the head was laid at the east side of the hall, and the body at the west. then dedi rose, and spoke wonderful words. and, behold! the body of the goose waddled to meet the head, and the head came to meet the body. they joined together before his majesty's throne, and the goose stood up and cackled (plate ). then, when dedi had joined to its body again the head that had been struck off from an ox, and the ox followed him lowing, king khufu said to him, "is it true, o dedi, that you know the plans of the house of god?" "it is true, your majesty; but it is not i who shall give them to you." "who, then?" said the king. "it is the eldest of three sons who shall be born to the lady rud-didet, wife of the priest of ra, the sun-god. and ra has promised that these three sons shall reign over this kingdom of thine." when king khufu heard that word, his heart was troubled; but dedi said, "let not your majesty's heart be troubled. thy son shall reign first, then thy son's son, and then one of these." so the king commanded that dedi should live in the house of prince hordadef; and that every day there should be given to him a thousand loaves, a hundred jugs of beer, an ox, and a hundred bunches of onions! when the three sons of rud-didet were born, ra sent four goddesses to be their godmothers. they came attired like travelling dancing-girls; and one of the gods came with them, dressed like a porter. and when they had nursed the three children awhile, rud-didet's husband said to them, "my ladies, what wages shall i give you?" so he gave them a bushel of barley, and they went away with their wages. but when they had gone a little way, isis, the chief of them, said, "why have we not done a wonder for these children?" so they stopped, and made crowns, the red crown and the white crown of egypt, and hid them in the bushel of barley, and sealed the sack, and put it in rud-didet's store-chamber, and went away again. a fortnight later, when rud-didet was going to brew the household beer, there was no barley. and her maidservant said, "there is a bushel, but it was given to the dancing-girls, and lies in the store-room, sealed with their seal." so the lady said to her maid, "go down and fetch it, and we shall give them more when they need it." the maid went down, but when she came to the store-room, lo! from within there came a sound of singing and dancing, and all such music as should be heard in a king's court. so in fear she crept back to her mistress and told her, and rud-didet went down and heard the royal music, and she told her husband when he came home at night, and their hearts were glad because their sons were to be kings. but after a time the lady rud-didet quarrelled with her maid, and gave her a beating, as ladies sometimes did in those days; and the weeping maid said to her fellow-servants, "shall she do this to me? she has borne three kings, and i will go and tell it to his majesty, king khufu." so she stole away first to her uncle, and told him of her plot; but he was angry because she wished to betray the children to king khufu, and he beat her with a scourge of flax. and as she went away by the side of the river a great crocodile came out of the water, and carried her off.... but here, alas! our story breaks off; the rest of the book is lost, and we cannot tell whether king khufu tried to kill the three royal babies or not. only we do know that the first three kings of the race which succeeded the race of khufu bore the same names as rud-didet's three babies, and were called, like all the kings of egypt after them, "sons of the sun." these, then, are absolutely the oldest fairy-stories in the world, and if they do not seem very wonderful to you, you must remember that everything has to have a beginning, and that the people who made these tales hadn't had very much practice in the art of story-telling. chapter viii some fairy-tales of long ago (_continued_) our next story belongs to a time several hundred years later, and i dare say it seemed as wonderful to the little egyptians as the story of sindbad the sailor does to you. it is called "the story of the shipwrecked sailor," and the sailor himself tells it to a noble egyptian. "i was going," he says, "to the mines of pharaoh, and we set sail in a ship of cubits long and cubits wide ( feet by feet--quite a big ship for the time). we had a crew of of the best sailors of egypt, men whose hearts were as bold as lions. they all foretold a happy voyage, but as we came near the shore a great storm blew, the sea rose in terrible waves, and our ship was fairly overwhelmed. clinging to a piece of wood, i was washed about for three days, and at last tossed up on an island; but not one was left of all my shipmates--all perished in the waves. "i lay down in the shade of some bushes, and when i had recovered a little, i looked about me for food. there was plenty on every hand--figs and grapes, berries and corn, with all manner of birds. when my hunger was satisfied, i lit a fire, and made an offering to the gods who had saved me. suddenly i heard a noise like thunder; the trees shook, and the earth quaked. looking round, i saw a great serpent approaching me. he was nearly feet long, and had a beard feet in length. his body shone in the sun like gold, and when he reared himself up from his coils before me i fell upon my face. "then the serpent began to speak: 'what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee? if thou dost not tell me quickly what has brought thee to this isle, i shall make thee vanish like a flame.' so saying, he took me up in his mouth, carried me gently to his lair, and laid me down unhurt; and again he said, 'what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee to this isle of the sea?' so i told him the story of our shipwreck, and how i alone had escaped from the fury of the waves. then said he to me: 'fear not, little one, and let not thy face be sad. if thou hast come to me, it is god who has brought thee to this isle, which is filled with all good things. and now, see: thou shalt dwell for four months in this isle, and then a ship of thine own land shall come, and thou shalt go home to thy country, and die in thine own town. as for me, i am here with my brethren and my children. there are seventy-five of us in all, besides a young girl, who came here by chance, and was burned by fire from heaven. but if thou art strong and patient, thou shalt yet embrace thy children and thy wife, and return to thy home.' "then i bowed low before him, and promised to tell of him to pharaoh, and to bring him ships full of all the treasures of egypt; but he smiled at my speech, and said, 'thou hast nothing that i need, for i am prince of the land of punt, and all its perfumes are mine. moreover, when thou departest, thou shalt never again see this isle, for it shall be changed into waves.' [illustration: plate . an egyptian country house.] "now, behold! when the time was come, as he had foretold, the ship drew near. and the good serpent said to me, 'farewell, farewell! go to thy home, little one, see again thy children, and let thy name be good in thy town; these are my wishes for thee.' so i bowed low before him, and he loaded me with precious gifts of perfume, cassia, sweet woods, ivory, baboons, and all kinds of precious things, and i embarked in the ship. and now, after a voyage of two months, we are coming to the house of pharaoh, and i shall go in before pharaoh, and offer the gifts which i have brought from this isle into egypt, and pharaoh shall thank me before the great ones of the land." our last story belongs to a later age than that of the shipwrecked sailor. about , years before christ there arose in egypt a race of mighty soldier-kings, who founded a great empire, which stretched from the soudan right through syria and mesopotamia as far as the great river euphrates. mesopotamia, or naharaina, as the egyptians called it, had been an unknown land to them before this time; but now it became to them what america was to the men of queen elizabeth's time, or the heart of africa to your grandfathers--the wonderful land of romance, where all kinds of strange things might happen. and this story of the doomed prince, which i have to tell you, belongs partly to naharaina, and, as you will see, some of our own fairy-stories have been made out of very much the same materials as are used in it. once upon a time there was a king in egypt who had no child. his heart was grieved because he had no child, and he prayed to the gods for a son; so in course of time a son was born to him, and the fates (like fairy godmothers) came to his cradle to foretell what should happen to him. and when they saw him, they said, "his doom is to die either by the crocodile, or by the serpent, or by the dog." when the king heard this, his heart was sore for his little son, and he resolved that he would put the boy where no harm could come to him; so he built for him a beautiful house away in the desert, and furnished it with all kinds of fine things, and sent the boy there, with faithful servants to guard him, and to see that he came to no hurt. so the boy grew up quietly and safely in his house in the desert. but it fell on a day that the young prince looked out from the roof of his house, and he saw a man walking across the desert, with a dog following him. so he said to the servant who was with him, "what is this that walks behind the man who is coming along the road?" "it is a dog," said the page. then the boy said, "you must bring me one like him," and the page went and told his majesty. then the king said, "get a little puppy, and take it to him, lest his heart be sad." so they brought him a little dog, and it grew up along with him. now, it happened that, when the boy had grown to be a strong young man, he grew weary of being always shut up in his fine house. therefore he sent a message to his father, saying, "why am i always to be shut up here? since i am doomed to three evil fates, let me have my desire, and let god do what is in his heart." so the king agreed, and they gave the young prince arms, and sent him away to the eastern frontier, and his dog went with him, and they said to him, "go wherever you will." so he went northward through the desert, he and his dog, until he came to the land of naharaina. [illustration: plate statues of king amenhotep iii.] now, the chief of the land of naharaina had no children, save one beautiful daughter, and for her he had built a wonderful house. it had seventy windows, and it stood on a great rock more than feet high. and the chief summoned the sons of all the chiefs of the country round about, and said to them, "the prince who can climb to my daughter's window shall have her for his wife." so all the young princes of the land camped around the house, and tried every day to climb to the window of the beautiful princess; but none of them succeeded, for the rock was very steep and high. then, one day when they were climbing as they were wont, the young prince of egypt rode by with his dog; and the princes welcomed him, bathed him, and fed his horse, and said to him, "whence comest thou, thou goodly youth?" he did not wish to tell them that he was the son of pharaoh, so he answered, "i am the son of an egyptian officer. my father married a second wife, and, when she had children, she hated me, and drove me away from my home." so they took him into their company, and he stayed with them many days. now, it fell on a day that he asked them, "why do you stay here, trying always to climb this rock?" and they told him of the beautiful princess who lived in the house on the top of the rock, and how the man who could climb to her window should marry her. therefore the young prince of egypt climbed along with them, and it came to pass that at last he climbed to the window of the princess; and when she saw him, she fell in love with him, and kissed him. then was word sent to the chief of naharaina that one of the young men had climbed to his daughter's window, and he asked which of the princes it was, and the messenger said, "it is not a prince, but the son of an egyptian officer, who has been driven away from egypt by his stepmother." then the chief of naharaina was very angry, and said, "shall i give my daughter to an egyptian fugitive? let him go back to egypt." but, when the messengers came to tell the young man to go away, the princess seized his hand, and said, "if you take him from me, i will not eat; i will not drink; i shall die in that same hour." then the chief sent men to kill the youth where he was in the house. but the princess said, "if you kill him, i shall be dead before the sun goes down. i will not live an hour if i am parted from him." so the chief was obliged to agree to the marriage; and the young prince was married to the princess, and her father gave them a house, and slaves, and fields, and all sorts of good things. but after a time the young prince said to his wife, "i am doomed to die, either by a crocodile, or by a serpent, or by a dog." and his wife answered, "why, then, do you keep this dog always with you? let him be killed." "nay," said he, "i am not going to kill my faithful dog, which i have brought up since the time that he was a puppy." so the princess feared greatly for her husband, and would never let him go out of her sight. now, it happened in course of time that the prince went back to the land of egypt; and his wife went with him, and his dog, and he dwelt in egypt. and one day, when the evening came, he grew drowsy, and fell asleep; and his wife filled a bowl with milk, and placed it by his side, and sat to watch him as he slept. then a great serpent came out of his hole to bite the youth. but his wife was watching, and she made the servants give the milk to the serpent, and he drank till he could not move. then the princess killed the serpent with blows of her dagger. so she woke her husband, and he was astonished to see the serpent lying dead, and his faithful wife said to him, "behold, god has given one of thy dooms into thy hand; he will also give the others." and the prince made sacrifice to god, and praised him. now, it fell on a day that the prince went out to walk in his estate, and his dog went with him. and as they walked, the dog ran after some game, and the prince followed the dog. they came to the river nile, and the dog went into the river, and the prince followed him. then a great crocodile rose in the river, and laid hold on the youth, and said, "i am thy doom, following after thee." ... but just here the old papyrus roll on which the story is written is torn away, and we do not know what happened to the doomed prince. i fancy that, in some way or other, his dog would save him from the crocodile, and that later, by some accident, the poor faithful dog would be the cause of his master's death. at least, it looks as if the end of the story must have been something like that; for the egyptians believed that no one could escape from the doom that was laid upon him, but had to suffer it sooner or later. perhaps, some day, one of the explorers who are searching the land of egypt for relics of the past may come on another papyrus roll with the end of the story, and then we shall find out whether the dog did kill the prince, or whether god gave all his dooms into his hand, as his wife hoped. these are some of the stories that little tahuti and sen-senb used to listen to in the long evenings when they were tired of play. perhaps they seem very simple and clumsy to you; but i have no doubt that, when they were told in those old days, the black eyes of the little egyptian boys and girls used to grow very big and round, and the wizard who could fasten on heads which had been cut off seemed a very wonderful person, and the talking serpents and crocodiles seemed very real and very dreadful. anyhow, you have heard the oldest stories in all the world--the fathers and mothers, so to speak, of all the great family of wonder-tales that have delighted and terrified children ever since. chapter ix exploring the soudan there is no more wonderful or interesting story than that which tells how bit by bit the great dark continent of africa has been explored, and made to yield up its secrets. but did you ever think what a long story it is, and how very early it begins? it is in egypt that we find the first chapters of the story; and they can still be read, written in the quaint old picture writing which the egyptians used, on the rock tombs of a place in the south of egypt, called elephantine. [illustration: plate the sphinx and the second pyramid. _page_ ] in early days the land of egypt used to end at what was called the first cataract of the nile, a place where the river came down in a series of rapids among a lot of rocky islets. the first cataract has disappeared now, for british engineers have made a great dam across the nile just at this point, and turned the whole country, for miles above the dam, into a lake. but in those days the egyptians used to believe that the nile, to which they owed so much, began at the first cataract. yet they knew of the wild country of nubia beyond and, in very early times indeed, about , years ago, they used to send exploring expeditions into that half-desert land which we have come to know as the soudan. near the first cataract there lies the island of elephantine, and when the egyptian kingdom was young the great barons who owned this island were the lords of the egyptian marches, just as the percies and the douglases were the lords of the marches in england and scotland. it was their duty to keep in order the wild nubian tribes south of the cataract, to see that they allowed the trading caravans to pass safely, and sometimes to lead these caravans through the desert themselves. a caravan was a very different thing then from the long train of camels that we think of now when we hear the name. for, though there are some very old pictures which show that, before egyptian history begins at all, the camel was known in egypt, somehow that useful animal seems to have disappeared from the land for many hundreds of years. the pharaohs and their adventurous barons never used the queer, ungainly creature that carries the desert postman in our picture (plate ), and the ivory, gold-dust, and ebony that came from the soudan had to be carried on the backs of hundreds of asses. the barons of elephantine bore the proud title of "keepers of the door of the south," and, in addition, they display, seemingly just as proudly, the title "caravan conductors." in those days it was no easy task to lead a caravan through the soudan, and bring it back safe with its precious load through all the wild and savage tribes who inhabited the land of nubia. more than one of the barons of elephantine set out with a caravan never to return, but to leave his bones, and those of his companions, to whiten among the desert sands; and one of them has told us how, hearing that his father had been killed on one of these adventurous journeys, he mustered his retainers, marched south with a train of a hundred asses, punished the tribe which had been guilty of the deed, and brought his father's body home, to be buried with all due honours. some of the records of these early journeys, the first attempts to explore the interior of africa, may still be read, carved on the walls of the tombs where the brave explorers sleep. one baron, called herkhuf, has told us of no fewer than four separate expeditions which he made into the soudan. on his first journey, as he was still young, he went in company with his father, and was away for seven months. the next time he was allowed to go alone, and brought back his caravan safely after an absence of eight months. on his third journey he went farther than before, and gathered so large a quantity of ivory and gold-dust that three hundred asses were required to bring his treasure home. so rich a caravan was a tempting prize for the wild tribes on the way; but herkhuf persuaded one of the soudanese chiefs to furnish him with a large escort, and the caravan was so strongly guarded that the other tribes did not venture to attack it, but were glad to help its leader with guides and gifts of cattle. herkhuf brought his treasures safely back to egypt, and the king was so pleased with his success that he sent a special messenger with a boat full of delicacies to refresh the weary traveller. [illustration: plate . a desert postman.] but the most successful of all his expeditions was the fourth. the king who had sent him on the other journeys had died, and was succeeded by a little boy called pepy, who was only about six years old when he came to the throne, and who reigned for more than ninety years--the longest reign in the world's history. in the second year of pepy's reign, the bold herkhuf set out again for the soudan, and this time, along with other treasures, he brought back something that his boy-king valued far more than gold or ivory. you know how, when stanley went in search of emin pasha, he discovered in the central african forests a strange race of dwarfs, living by themselves, and very shy of strangers. well, for all these thousands of years, the forefathers of these little dwarfs must have been living in the heart of the dark continent. in early days they evidently lived not so far away from egypt as when stanley found them, for, on at least one occasion, one of pharaoh's servants had been able to capture one of the little men, and bring him down as a present to his master, greatly to the delight of the king and court. herkhuf was equally fortunate. he managed to secure a dwarf from one of these pigmy tribes, and brought him back with his caravan, that he might please the young king with his quaint antics and his curious dances. when the king heard of the present which his brave servant was bringing back for him, he was wild with delight. the thought of this new toy was far more to the little eight-year-old, king though he was, than all the rest of the treasure which herkhuf had gathered; and he caused a letter to be written to the explorer, telling him of his delight, and giving him all kinds of advice as to how careful he should be that the dwarf should come to no harm on the way to court. the letter, through all its curious old phrases, is very much the kind of letter that any boy might send on hearing of some new toy that was coming to him. "my majesty," says the little eight-year-old pharaoh, "wisheth to see this pigmy more than all the tribute of punt. and if thou comest to court having this pigmy with thee sound and whole, my majesty will do for thee more than king assa did for the chancellor baurded." (this was the man who had brought back the other dwarf in earlier days.) little king pepy then gives careful directions that herkhuf is to provide proper people to see that the precious dwarf does not fall into the nile on his way down the river; and these guards are to watch behind the place where he sleeps, and look into his bed ten times each night, that they may be sure that nothing has gone wrong. the poor little dwarf must have had rather an uncomfortable time of it, one fancies, if his sleep was to be broken so often. perhaps there was more danger of killing him with kindness and care, than if they had left him more to himself; but pepy's anxiety was very like a boy. however, herkhuf evidently succeeded in bringing his dwarf safe and sound to the king's court, and no doubt the quaint little savage proved a splendid toy for the young king. one wonders what he thought of the great cities and the magnificent court of egypt, and whether his heart did not weary sometimes for the wild freedom of his lost home. herkhuf was so proud of the king's letter that he caused it to be engraved, word for word, on the walls of the tomb which he hewed out for himself at elephantine, and there to this day the words can be read which tell us how old is the story of african exploration, and how a boy was always just a boy, even though he lived five thousand years ago, and reigned over a great kingdom. chapter x a voyage of discovery about , years ago, there reigned a great queen in egypt. it was not usual for the egyptian throne to be occupied by a woman, though great respect was always shown to women in egypt, and the rank of a king's mother was considered quite as important as that of his father. but once at least in her history egypt had a great queen, whose fame deserves to be remembered, and who takes honourable rank among the great women, like queen elizabeth and queen victoria, who have ruled kingdoms. during part of her life queen hatshepsut was only joint sovereign along with her husband, and in the latter part of her reign she was joint sovereign with her half-brother or nephew, who succeeded her; but for at least twenty years she was really the sole ruler of egypt, and governed the land wisely and well. perhaps the most interesting thing that happened in her reign was the voyage of discovery which she caused to be made by some ships of her fleet. centuries before her time, when the world was young, the egyptians had made expeditions down the red sea to a land which they sometimes called punt, and sometimes "the divine land." probably it was part of the country that we now know as somaliland. but for a very long time these voyages had ceased, and people only knew by hearsay, and by the stories of ancient days, of this wonderful country that lay away by the southern sea. one day, the queen tells us, she was at prayers in the temple of the god amen at thebes, when she felt a sudden inspiration. the god was giving her a command to send an expedition to this almost forgotten land. "a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the god himself, that the ways which lead to punt should be explored, and that the roads to the ladders of incense should be trodden." in obedience to this command, the queen at once equipped a little fleet of the quaint old galleys that the egyptians then used (plate ), and sent them out, with picked crews, and a royal envoy in command, to sail down the red sea, in search of the divine land. the ships were laden with all kinds of goods to barter with the punites, and a guard of egyptian soldiers was placed on board. we do not know how long it took the little squadron to reach its destination. sea voyages in those days were slow and dangerous. but at last the ships safely reached the mouth of the elephant river in somaliland, and went up the river with the tide till they came to the village of the natives. they found that the punites lived in curious beehive-shaped houses, some of them made of wicker-work, and placed on piles, so that they had to climb into them by ladders. the men were not negroes, though some negroes lived among them; they were very much like the egyptians in appearance, wore pointed beards, and were dressed only in loincloths, while the women wore a yellow sleeveless dress, which reached halfway between the knee and ankle. nehsi, the royal envoy, landed with an officer and eight soldiers, and, to show that he came in peace, he spread out on a table some presents for the chief of the punites--five bracelets, two gold necklaces, a dagger, with belt and sheath, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of glass beads--much such a present as a european explorer might give to-day to an african chief. the natives came down in great excitement to see the strangers who had brought such treasures, and were astonished at the arrival of such a fleet. "how is it," they said, "that you have reached this country, hitherto unknown to men? have you come by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of the divine sea?" the chief, who was called parihu, came down with his wife aty, and his daughter. aty rode down on a donkey, but dismounted to see the strangers, and, indeed, the poor donkey must have been greatly relieved, for the chieftainess was an exceedingly fat lady, and her daughter, though so young, showed every intention of being as fat as her mother. after the envoy and the chief had exchanged compliments, business began. the egyptians pitched a tent in which they stored their goods for barter, and to put temptation out of the way of the natives, they drew a guard of soldiers round the tent. for several days the market remained open, and the country people brought down their treasures, till the ships were laden as deeply as was safe. the cargo was a varied and valuable one. elephants' tusks, gold, ebony, apes, greyhounds, leopard skins, all were crowded into the galleys, the apes sitting gravely on the top of the bales of goods, and looking longingly at the land which they were leaving. but the most important part of the cargo was the incense, and the incense-trees. great quantities of the gum from which the incense was made were placed on board, and also thirty-one of the incense sycamores, their roots carefully surrounded with a large ball of earth, and protected by baskets. several young chiefs of the punites accompanied the expedition back to thebes, to see what life was like in the strange new world which had been revealed to them. altogether the voyage home must have been no easy undertaking, for the ships, with their heavy cargoes, must have been very difficult to handle. the arrival of the squadron at thebes, which they must have reached by a canal connecting the nile with the red sea, was made the occasion of a great holiday festival. long lines of troops in gala attire came out to meet the brave explorers, and an escort of the royal fleet accompanied the exploring squadron up to the temple quay where the ships were to moor. then the thebans feasted their eyes on the wonderful treasures that had come from punt, wondering at the natives, the incense, the ivory, and, above all, at a giraffe which had been brought home. how the poor creature was stowed away on the little egyptian ship it is hard to see; but there he was, with his spots and his long neck, the most wonderful creature that the good folks of thebes had ever seen. the precious incense gum was stored in the temple, and the queen herself gave a bushel measure, made of a mixture of gold and silver, to measure it out with. so the voyage of discovery had ended in a great success. but queen hatshepsut's purpose was only half fulfilled as yet. in a nook of the limestone cliffs, not far from thebes, her father before her had begun to build a very wonderful temple, close beside the ruins of an older sanctuary which had stood there for hundreds of years. hatshepsut had been gradually completing his work, and the temple was now growing into a most beautiful building, very different from ordinary egyptian temples. from the desert sands in front it rose terrace above terrace, each platform bordered with rows of beautiful limestone pillars, until at last it reached the cliffs, and the most sacred chamber of it, the holy of holies, was hewn into the solid wall of rock behind. this temple the queen resolved to make into what she called a paradise for amen, the god who had told her to send out the ships. so she planted on the terraces the sacred incense-trees which had been brought from punt; and, thanks to careful tending and watering, they flourished well in their new home. and then, all along the walls of the temple, she caused her artists to carve and paint the whole story of the voyage. we do not know the names of the artists who did the work, though we know that of the architect, sen-mut, who planned the building. but, whoever they were, they must have been very skilful sculptors; for the story of the voyage is told in pictures on the walls of this wonderful temple, so that everything can be seen just as it actually happened more than three thousand years ago. you can see the ships toiling along with oar and sail towards their destination, the meeting with the natives, the palaver and the trading, the loading of the galleys, and the long procession of theban soldiers going out to meet the returning explorers. not a single detail is missed, and, thanks to the queen and her artists, we can go back over all these years, and see how sailors worked, and how people lived in savage lands in that far-off time, and realize that explorers dealt with the natives in foreign countries in those days very much as they deal with them now. when our explorers of to-day come back from their journeys, they generally tell the story of their adventures in a big book with many pictures; but no explorer ever published the account of a voyage of discovery on such a scale as did queen hatshepsut, when she carved the voyage to punt on the walls of her great temple at deir-el-bahri, and no pictures in any modern book are likely to last as long, or to tell so much as these pictures that have come to light again during the last few years, after being buried for centuries under the desert sands. [illustration: plate . the bark of the moon, guarded by the divine eyes.] queen hatshepsut has left other memorials of her greatness besides the temple with its story of her voyage. she has told us how one day she was sitting in her palace, and thinking of her creator, when the thought came into her mind to rear two great obelisks before the temple of amen at karnak. so she gave the command, and sen-mut, her clever architect, went up the nile to aswan, and quarried two huge granite blocks, and floated them down the river. cleopatra's needle, which stands on the thames embankment, is - / feet high, and it seems to us a huge stone for men to handle. our own engineers had trouble enough in bringing it to this country, and setting it up. but these two great obelisks of queen hatshepsut were - / feet high, and weighed about tons apiece. yet sen-mut had them quarried, and set up, and carved all over from base to summit in seven months from the time when the queen gave her command! one of them still stands at karnak, the tallest obelisk in the temple there; while the other great shaft has fallen, and lies broken, close to its companion. they tell us their own plain story of the wisdom and skill of those far-off days; and perhaps the great queen who thought of her creator as she sat in her palace, and longed to honour him, found that the god whom she ignorantly worshipped was indeed not far from his servant's heart. chapter xi egyptian books the egyptians were, if not quite the earliest, at least among the earliest of all the peoples of the world to find out how to put down their thoughts in writing, or in other words, to make a book; and one of their old books, full of wise advice from a father to his son, is, perhaps, the oldest book in the world. two words which we are constantly using might help to remind us of how much we owe to their cleverness. the one is "bible," and the other is "paper." when we talk of the bible, which just means "the book," we are using one of the words which the greeks used to describe the plant out of which the egyptians made the material on which they wrote; and when we talk of paper, we are using another name, the commoner name, of the same plant. for the egyptians were the first people to make paper, and they used it for many centuries before other people had learned how much handier it was than the other things which they used. yet, if you saw an egyptian book, you would think it was a very curious and clumsy thing indeed, and very different from the handy volumes which we use nowadays. when an egyptian wanted to make a book, he gathered the stems of a kind of reed called the papyrus, which grew in some parts of egypt in marshy ground. this plant grew to a height of from to feet, and had a stalk about inches thick. the outer rind was peeled off this stalk, and then the inner part of it was separated, by means of a flat needle, into thin layers. these layers were joined to one another on a table, and a thin gum was spread over them, and then another layer was laid crosswise on the top of the first. the double sheet thus made was then put into a press, squeezed together, and dried. the sheets varied, of course, in breadth according to the purpose for which they were needed. the broadest that we know of measure about inches across, but most are much narrower than that. when the egyptian had got his paper, he did not make it up into a volume with the sheets bound together at the back, as we do. he joined them end to end, adding on sheet after sheet as he wrote, and rolling up his book as he went along; so when the book was done it formed a big roll, sometimes many feet long. there is one great book in the british museum which measures feet in length. you would think it very strange and awkward to have to handle a book like that. but if the book seemed curious to you, the writing in it would seem still more curious; for the egyptian writing was certainly the quaintest, and perhaps the prettiest, that has ever been known. it is called "hieroglyphic," which means "sacred carving," and it is nothing but little pictures from beginning to end. the egyptians began by putting down a picture of the thing which was represented by the word they wanted to use, and, though by-and-by they formed a sort of alphabet to spell words with, and had, besides, signs that represented the different syllables of a word, still, these signs were all little pictures. for instance, one of their signs for _a_ was the figure of an eagle; their sign for _m_ was a lion, and for _u_ a little chicken; so that when you look at an egyptian book written in the hieroglyphic character, you see column after column of birds and beasts and creeping things, of men and women and boats, and all sorts of other things, marching across the page. when the egyptians wanted any of their writings to last for a very long time, they did not trust them to the frail papyrus rolls, but used another kind of book altogether. you have heard of "sermons in stones"? well, a great many of the egyptian books that tell us of the great deeds of the pharaohs were written on stone, carved deep and clear in the hard granite of a great obelisk, or in the limestone of a temple wall. when one of the kings came back from the wars, he generally published the account of his battles and victories by carving them on the walls of one of the great temples, or on a pillar set up in the court of a temple, and there they remain to this day for scholars to read. when the hieroglyphics were cut in stone, the lines were often filled in with pastes of different colours, so that the whole writing was a blaze of beautiful tints, and the walls looked as if they were covered with finely-coloured hangings. of course, the colours have mostly faded now; but there are still some temples and tombs where they can be seen, almost as fresh as when they were first laid on, and from these we can gather some idea of how wonderfully beautiful were these stone books of ancient egypt. the scribes and carvers knew very well how beautiful their work was, and were careful to make it look as beautiful as possible; so much so, that if they found that the grouping of figures to make up a particular word or sentence was going to be ugly or clumsy, they would even prefer to spell the word wrong, rather than spoil the appearance of their picture-writing. some of you, i dare say, spell words wrong now and again; but i fancy it isn't because you think they look prettier that way. but now let us turn back again to our papyrus roll. suppose that we have got it, clean and fresh, and that our friend the scribe is going to write upon it. how does he go about it? to begin with, he draws from his belt a long, narrow wooden case, and lays it down beside him. this is his palette; rather a different kind of palette from the one which artists use. it is a piece of wood, with one long hollow in it, and two or three shallow round ones. the long hollow holds a few pens, which are made out of thin reeds, bruised at the ends, so that their points are almost like little brushes. the shallow round hollows are for holding ink--black for most of the writing, red for special words, and perhaps one or two other colours, if the scribe is going to do a very fine piece of work. so he squats down, cross-legged, dips a reed-pen in the ink, and begins. as he writes he makes his little figures of men and beasts and birds face all in the one direction, and his readers will know that they must always read from the point towards which the characters face. now and then, when he comes to some specially important part, he draws, in gay colours, a little picture of the scene which the words describe. now, you can understand that this picture-writing was not very easy work to do when you had nothing but a bruised reed to draw all sorts of animals with. gradually the pictures grew less and less like the creatures they stood for to begin with, and at last the old hieroglyphic broke down into a kind of running hand, where a stroke or two might stand for an eagle, a lion, or a man. and very many of the egyptian books are written in this kind of broken-down hieroglyphic, which is called "hieratic," or priestly writing. but some of the finest and costliest books were still written in the beautiful old style. on their papyrus rolls the egyptians wrote all sorts of things--books of wise advice, stories like the fairy-tales which we have been hearing, legends of the gods, histories, and poems; but the book that is oftenest met with is one of their religious books. it is nearly always called the "book of the dead" now, and some people call it the egyptian bible, but neither of these names is the right one. certainly, it is not in the least like the bible, and the egyptians themselves never called it the book of the dead. they called it "the chapters of coming forth by day," and the reason they gave it that name was because they believed that if their dead friends knew all the wisdom that was written in it, they would escape all the dangers of the other world, and would be able in heaven to go in and out just as they had done upon earth, and to be happy for ever. the book is full of all kinds of magical charms against the serpents and dragons and all the other kinds of evil things that sought to destroy the dead person in the other world. the scribes used to write off copies of it by the dozen, and keep them in stock, with blank places for the names of the persons who were to use them. when anyone died, his friends went away to a scribe, and bought a roll of the book of the dead, and the scribe filled in the name of the dead person in the blank places. then the book was buried along with his mummy, so that when he met the demons and serpents on the road to heaven, he would know how to drive them away, and when he came to gates that had to be opened, or rivers that had to be crossed, he would know the right magical words to use. some of these rolls of the book of the dead are very beautifully written, and illustrated with most wonderful little coloured pictures, representing different scenes of life in the other world, and it is from these that we have learned a great deal of what the egyptians believed about the judgment after death, and heaven. but the common ones are very carelessly done. the scribes knew that the book was going to be buried at once, and that nobody was likely ever to see it again; so they did not care much whether they made mistakes or not, and often they missed out parts of the book altogether. they little thought that, thousands of years after they were dead, scholars would dig up their writings again, and read them, and see all their blunders. of course, a great deal of this book is dreadful rubbish, and anything more unlike the noble and beautiful teaching of the bible you can scarcely imagine. it has no more sense in it than the "fee! fi! foh! fum!" of our fairy-stories. here is one little chapter from it. it is called "the chapter of repulsing serpents," and the egyptians supposed that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you: "hail, thou serpent rerek! advance not hither. stand still now, and thou shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto ra (the sun-god), and thou shalt crunch the bones of a filthy cat." it sounds very silly, doesn't it? and there are many things quite as silly as this in the book. you can scarcely imagine how wise people like the egyptians could ever have believed in such drivel. but, then, side by side with this miserable stuff, you find really wonderful and noble thoughts, that surely came to these men of ancient days from god himself, telling them how every man must be judged at last for all that he has done on earth, and how only those who have done justly, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with god, will be accepted by him. chapter xii temples and tombs anyone travelling through our own land, or through any european country, to see the great buildings of long ago, would find that they were nearly all either churches or castles. there are the great cathedrals, very beautiful and wonderful; and there are the great buildings, sometimes partly palaces and partly fortresses, where kings and nobles lived in bygone days. well, if you were travelling in egypt to see its great buildings, you would find a difference. there are plenty of churches, or temples, rather, and very wonderful they are; but there are no castles or palaces left, or, at least, there are next to none. instead of palaces and castles, you would find tombs. egypt, in fact, is a land of great temples and great tombs. [illustration: plate gateway of the temple of edfu. _pages_ , ] now, one can see why the egyptians built great temples; for they were a very religious nation, and paid great honour to their gods. but why did they give so much attention to their tombs? the reason is, as you will hear more fully in another chapter, that there never was a nation which believed so firmly as did the egyptians that the life after death was far more important than life in this world. they built their houses, and even their palaces, very lightly, partly of wood and partly of clay, because they knew that they were only to live in them for a few years. but they called their tombs "eternal dwelling-places"; and they have made them so wonderfully that they have lasted long after all the other buildings of the land, except the temples, have passed away. first of all, let me try to give you an idea of what an egyptian temple must have been like in the days of its splendour. people come from all parts of the world to see even the ruins of these buildings, and they are altogether the most astonishing buildings in the world; but they are now only the skeletons of what the temples once were, and scarcely give you any more idea of their former glory and beauty than a human skeleton does of the beauty of a living man or woman. suppose, then, that we are coming up to the gates of a great egyptian temple in the days when it was still the house of a god who was worshipped by hundreds of thousands of people. as we pass out of the narrow streets of the city to which the temple belongs, we find ourselves standing upon a broad paved way, which stretches before us for hundreds of yards. on either side, this way is bordered by a row of statues, and these statues are in the form of what we call sphinxes--that is to say, they have bodies shaped like crouching lions, and on the lion-body there is set the head of a different creature. some of the sphinxes, like the great sphinx, have human heads; but those which border the temple avenues have oftener either ram or jackal heads. as we pass along the avenue, two high towers rise before us, and between them is a great gateway. in front of the gate-towers are two tall obelisks, slender, tapering shafts of red granite, like cleopatra's needle on the thames embankment. they are hewn out of single blocks of stone, carved all over with hieroglyphic figures, polished till they shine like mirrors, and their pointed tops are gilded so that they flash brilliantly in the sunlight. beside the obelisks, which may be from to feet high, there are huge statues, perhaps two, perhaps four, of the king who built the temple. these statues represent the king as sitting upon his throne, with the double crown of egypt, red and white, upon his head. they also are hewn out of single blocks of stone, and when you look at the huge figures you wonder how human hands could ever get such stones out of the quarry, sculpture them, and set them up. before one of the temples of thebes still lie the broken fragments of a statue of ramses ii. when it was whole the statue must have been about feet high, and the great block of granite must have weighed about , tons--the largest single stone that was ever handled by human beings. plate will give you some idea of what these huge statues looked like. fastened to the towers are four tall flagstaves--two on either side of the gate--and from them float gaily-coloured pennons. the walls of the towers are covered with pictures of the wars of the king. here you see him charging in his chariot upon his fleeing enemies; here, again, he is seizing a group of captives by the hair, and raising his mace or his sword to kill them; but whatever he is doing, he is always gigantic, while his foes are mere helpless human beings. all these carvings are brilliantly painted, and the whole front of the building glows with colour; it is really a kind of pictorial history of the king's reign. now we stand in front of the gate. its two leaves are made of cedar-wood brought from lebanon; but you cannot see the wood at all, for it is overlaid with plates of silver chased with beautiful designs. passing through the gateway, we find ourselves in a broad open court. all round it runs a kind of cloister, whose roof is supported upon tall pillars, their capitals carved to represent the curving leaves of the palm-tree. in the middle of the court there stands a tall pillar of stone, inscribed with the story of the great deeds of pharaoh, and his gifts to the god of the temple. it is inlaid with turquoise, malachite, and lapis-lazuli, and sparkles with precious stones. at the farther side of this court, another pair of towers and another gateway lead you into the second court. here we pass at once out of brilliant sunlight into semi-darkness; for this court is entirely roofed over, and no light enters it except from the doorway and from grated slits in the roof. look around you, and you will see the biggest single chamber that was ever built by the hands of man. down the centre run two lines of gigantic pillars which hold up the roof, and form the nave of the hall; and beyond these on either side are the aisles, whose roofs are supported by a perfect forest of smaller columns. look up to the twelve great pillars of the nave. they soar above your head, seventy feet into the air, their capitals bending outwards in the shape of open flowers. on each capital a hundred men could stand safely; and the great stone roofing beams that stretch from pillar to pillar weigh a hundred tons apiece. how were they ever brought to the place? and, still more, how were they ever swung up to that dizzy height, and laid in their places? each of the great columns is sculptured with figures and gaily painted, and the surrounding walls of the hall are all decorated in the same way. but when you look at the pictures, you find that it is no longer the wars of the king that are represented. the inside of the temple is too holy for such things. instead, you have pictures of the gods, and of the king making all kinds of offerings to them; and these pictures are repeated again and again, with endless inscriptions, telling of the great gifts which pharaoh has given to the temple. finally we pass into the holy of holies. here no light of day ever enters at all. the chamber, smaller and lower than either of the others, is in darkness except for the dim light of the lamp carried by the attendant priest. here stands the shrine, a great block of granite, hewn into a dwelling-place for the figure of the god. it is closed with cedar doors covered with gold plates, and the doors are sealed; but if we could persuade the priest to let us look within, we should see a small wooden figure something like the one that we saw carried through the streets of thebes, dressed and painted, and surrounded by offerings of meat, drink, and flowers. for this little figure all the glories that we have passed through have been created: an army of priests attends upon it day by day, dresses and paints it, spreads food before it, offers sacrifices and sings hymns in its praise. behind the sanctuary lie storehouses, which hold corn and fruits and wines enough to supply a city in time of siege. the god is a great proprietor, holding more land than any of the nobles of the country. he has a revenue almost as great as that of pharaoh himself. he has troops of his own, an army which obeys no orders but his. on the red sea he has one fleet, bringing to his temple the spices and incense of the southland; and from the nile mouths another fleet sails to bring home cedar-wood from lebanon, and costly stuffs from tyre. his priests have far more power than the greatest barons of the land, and pharaoh, mighty as he is, would think twice before offending a band of men whose hatred could shake him on his throne. such was an egyptian temple , years ago, when egypt was the greatest power in the world. but if the temples of ancient egypt are wonderful, the tombs are almost more wonderful still. very early in their history the egyptians began to show their sense of the importance of the life after death by raising huge buildings to hold the bodies of their great men. even the earliest kings, who lived before there was any history at all, had great underground chambers scooped out and furnished with all sorts of things for their use in the after-life. but it is when we come to that king khufu, who figures in the fairy-stories of zazamankh and dedi, that we begin to understand what a wonderful thing an egyptian tomb might be. not very far from cairo, the modern capital of egypt, a line of strange, pointed buildings rises against the sky on the edge of the desert. these are the pyramids, the tombs of the great kings of egypt in early days, and if we want to know what egyptian builders could do , years before christ, we must look at them. take the largest of them, the great pyramid, called the pyramid of cheops. cheops is really khufu, the king who was so much put out by dedi's prophecy about rud-didet's three babies. no such building was ever reared either before or since. it stands, even now, feet in height, and before the peak was destroyed, it was about feet higher. each of its four sides measures over feet in length, and it covers more than twelve acres of ground, the size of a pretty large field. but you will get the best idea of how tremendous a building it is when i tell you that if you used it as a quarry, you could build a town, big enough to hold all the people of aberdeen, out of the great pyramid; or if you broke up the stones of which it is built, and laid them in a line a foot broad and a foot deep, the line would reach a good deal more than halfway round the world at the equator. you would have some trouble in breaking up the stones, however; for many of the great blocks weigh from to tons apiece, and they are so beautifully fitted to one another that you could not get the edge of a sheet of paper into the joints! inside this great mountain of stone there are long passages leading to two small rooms in the centre of the pyramid; and in one of these rooms, called "the king's chamber," the body of the greatest builder the world has ever seen was laid in its stone coffin. then the passages were closed with heavy plug-blocks of stone, so that no one should ever disturb the sleep of king khufu. but, in spite of all precautions, robbers mined their way into the pyramid ages ago, plundered the coffin, and scattered to the winds the remains of the king, so that, as byron says, "not a pinch of dust remains of cheops." the other pyramids are smaller, though, if the great pyramid had not been built, the second and third would have been counted world's wonders. near the second pyramid sits the great sphinx. it is a huge statue, human-headed and lion-bodied, carved out of limestone rock. who carved it, or whose face it bears, we do not certainly know; but there the great figure crouches, as it has crouched for countless ages, keeping watch and ward over the empty tombs where the pharaohs of egypt once slept, its head towering seventy feet into the air, its vast limbs and body stretching for two hundred feet along the sand, the strangest and most wonderful monument ever hewn by the hands of man (plate ). later on in egyptian history the kings and great folk grew tired of building pyramids, and the fashion changed. instead of raising huge structures above ground, they began to hew out caverns in the rocks in which to lay their dead. round about thebes, the rocks on the western side of the nile are honeycombed with these strange houses of the departed. their walls, in many cases, are decorated with bright and cheerful pictures, showing scenes of the life which the dead man lived on earth. there he stands, or sits, placid and happy, with his wife beside him, while all around him his servants go about their usual work. they plough and hoe, sow and reap; they gather the grapes from the vines and put them into the winepress; or they bring the first-fruits of the earth to present them before their master (plate ). in other pictures you see the great man going out to his amusements, fishing, hunting, or fowling; or you are taken into the town, and see the tradesmen working, and the merchants, and townsfolk buying and selling in the bazaars. in fact, the whole of life in ancient egypt passes before your eyes as you go from chamber to chamber, and it is from these old tomb-pictures that we have learned the most of what we know of how people lived and worked in those long-past days. in one wild rocky glen, called the "valley of the kings," nearly all the later pharaohs were buried, and to-day their tombs are one of the sights of thebes. let us look at the finest of them--the tomb of sety i., the father of that ramses ii. of whom we have heard so much. entering the dark doorway in the cliff, you descend through passage after passage and hall after hall, until at last you reach the fourteenth chamber, "the gold house of osiris," feet from the entrance, where the great king was laid in his magnificent alabaster coffin. the walls and pillars of each chamber are wonderfully carved and painted. the pillars show pictures of the king making offerings to the gods, or being welcomed by them, but the pictures on the walls are very strange and weird. they represent the voyage of the sun through the realms of the under-world, and all the dangers and difficulties which the soul of the dead man has to encounter as he accompanies the sun-bark on its journey. serpents, bats, and crocodiles, spitting fire, or armed with spears, pursue the wicked. the unfortunates who fall into their power are tortured in all kinds of horrible ways; their hearts are torn out; their heads are cut off; they are boiled in caldrons, or hung head downwards over lakes of fire. gradually the soul passes through all these dangers into the brighter scenes of the fields of the blessed, where the justified sow and reap and are happy. finally, the king arrives, purified, at the end of his long journey, and is welcomed by the gods into the abode of the blessed, where he, too, dwells as a god in everlasting life. [illustration: plate wall-pictures in a theban tomb. _pages_ , ] the beautiful alabaster coffin in which the mummy of king sety was laid is now in the soane museum, london. when it was discovered, nearly a century ago, it was empty, and it was not till that some modern tomb-robbers found the body of the king, along with other royal mummies, hidden away in a deep pit among the cliffs. now it lies in the museum at cairo, and you can see the face of this great king, its fine, proud features not so very much changed, we can well believe, from what they were when he reigned , years ago. in the same museum you can look upon the faces of tahutmes iii., the greatest soldier of egypt; of ramses ii., the oppressor of the israelites; and, perhaps most interesting of all, of merenptah, the pharaoh who hardened his heart when moses pled with him to let the hebrews go, and whose picked troops were drowned in the red sea as they pursued their escaping slaves. it is very strange to think that one can see the actual features and forms on which the heroes of our bible story looked in life. the reason of such a thing is that the egyptians believed that when a man died, his soul, which passed to the life beyond, loved to return to its old home on earth, and find again the body in which it once dwelt; and even, perhaps, that the soul's existence in the other world depended in some way on the preservation of the body. so they made the bodies of their dead friends into what we call "mummies," steeping them for many days in pitch and spices till they were embalmed, and then wrapping them round in fold upon fold of fine linen. so they have endured all these hundreds of years, to be stored at last in a museum, and gazed upon by people who live in lands which were savage wildernesses when egypt was a great and mighty empire. chapter xiii an egyptian's heaven in this chapter i want to tell you a little about what the egyptians thought of heaven--what it was, where it was, how people got there after death, and what kind of a life they lived when they were there. they had some very quaint and curious ideas about the heavens themselves. they believed, for instance, that the blue sky overhead was something like a great iron plate spread over the world, and supported at the four corners, north, south, east, and west, by high mountains. the stars were like little lamps, which hung down from this plate. right round the world ran a great celestial river, and on this river the sun sailed day after day in his bark, giving light to the world. you could only see him as he passed round from the east by the south to the west, for after that the river ran behind high mountains, and the sun passed out of sight to sail through the world of darkness. behind the sun, and appearing after he had vanished, came the moon, sailing in its own bark. it was protected by two guardian eyes, which watched always over it (plate ), and it needed the protection, for every month it was attacked by a great enemy in the form of a sow. for a fortnight the moon sailed on safely, and grew fuller and rounder; but at the middle of the month, just when it was full, the sow attacked it, tore it out of its place, and flung it into the celestial river, where for another fortnight it was gradually extinguished, to be revived again at the beginning of the next month. that was the egyptians' curious way of accounting for the waxing and waning of the moon, and many of their other ideas were just as quaint as this. i do not mean to say anything of what they believed about god, for they had so many gods, and believed such strange things about them, that it would only confuse you if i tried to make you understand it all. but the most important thing in all the egyptian religion was the belief in heaven, and in the life which people lived there after their life on earth was ended. no other nation of these old times ever believed so firmly as did the egyptians that men were immortal, and did not cease to be when they died, but only began a new life, which might be either happy or miserable, according to the way in which they had lived on earth. they had a lot of different beliefs about the life after death, some of them rather confusing, and difficult to understand; but i shall tell you only the main things and the simplest things which they believed. they said, then, that very long ago, when the world was young, there was a great and good king called osiris, who reigned over egypt, and was very good to his subjects, teaching them all kinds of useful knowledge. but osiris had a wicked brother named set, who hated him, and was jealous of him. one day set invited osiris to a supper, at which he had gathered a number of his friends who were in the plot with him. when they were all feasting gaily, he produced a beautiful chest, and offered to give it to the man who fitted it. one after another they lay down in the chest, but it fitted none of them. then at last osiris lay down in it, and as soon as he was inside, his wicked brother and the other plotters fastened the lid down upon him, and threw the chest into the nile. it was carried away by the river, and at last was washed ashore, with the dead body of the good king still in it. but isis, wife of osiris, sought for her husband everywhere, and at last she found the chest with his body. while she was weeping over it the wicked set came upon her, tore his brother's body to pieces, and scattered the fragments far and wide; but the faithful isis traced them all, and buried them wherever she found them. now, isis had a son named horus, and when he grew to manhood he challenged set, fought with him, and defeated him. then the gods all assembled, and gave judgment that osiris was in the right, and set in the wrong. they raised osiris up from the dead, made him a god, and appointed him to be judge of all men after death. and then, not all at once, but gradually, the egyptians came to believe that because osiris died, and rose again from the dead, and lived for ever after death, therefore all those men who believed in osiris would live again after death, and dwell for ever with osiris. you see that in some respects the story is strangely like that of the death and resurrection of jesus christ. well, then, they supposed that, when a man died on earth, after his body was mummified and laid in its tomb, his soul went on to the gates of the palace of osiris in the other world, where was the hall of truth, in which souls were judged. the soul had to know the magic names of the gates before it could even enter the hall; but as soon as these names were spoken the gates opened, and the soul went in. within the hall there stood a great pair of scales, and beside the scales stood a god, ready to mark down the result of the judgment; while all round the hall sat forty-two terrible creatures, who had authority to punish particular sins. the soul had to make confession to these avengers of sin that he had not been guilty of the sins which they had power to punish; then, when he had made his confession, his heart was taken, and weighed in the scales against a feather, which was the egyptian sign for truth. if it was not of the right weight, the man was false, and his heart was thrown to a dreadful monster, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, which sat behind the balances, and devoured the hearts of the unjust; but if it was right, then horus, the son of osiris, took the man by the hand, and led him into the presence of osiris the judge, and he was pronounced just, and admitted to heaven. but what was heaven? well, the egyptians had several different ideas about it. one rather pretty one was that the souls which were pronounced just were taken up into the sky, and there became stars, shining down for ever upon the world. another was that they were permitted to enter the boat, in which, as i told you, the sun sails round the world day by day, and to keep company with the sun on his unending voyage. but the idea that most believed in and loved was that somewhere away in a mysterious land to the west, there lay a wonderful and beautiful country, called the field of bulrushes. there the corn grew three and a half yards high, and the ears of corn were a yard long. through the fields ran lovely canals, full of fish, and bordered with reeds and bulrushes. when the soul had passed the judgment hall, it came, by strange, hard roads, and through great dangers, to this beautiful country. and there the dead man, dead now no more, but living for ever, spent his time in endless peace and happiness, sowing and reaping, paddling in his canoe along the canals, or resting and playing draughts in the evening under the sycamore-trees. now, i suppose that all this seemed quite a happy sort of heaven to most of the common people, who had been accustomed all their days to hard work and harder fare; but by-and-by the great nobles came to think that a heaven of this sort was not quite good enough for them. they had never done any work on earth; why should they have to do any in heaven? so they thought that they would find out a way of taking their slaves with them into the other world. i fancy that at first they actually tried to take them by killing the slaves at their master's grave. when the funeral of a great man took place, some of his servants would be killed beside the tomb, so that they might go with their lord into heaven, and work for him there, as they had worked for him on earth. but the egyptians were always a gentle, kind-hearted people, and they quickly grew disgusted with the idea of such cruelty, so they found another way out of the difficulty. they got numbers of little clay figures made in the form of servants--one with a hoe on his shoulder, another with a basket in his hand, and so on. they called these little figures "answerers," and when a man was buried, they buried a lot of these clay servants along with him, so that, when he reached heaven, and was summoned to do work in the field of bulrushes, the answerers would rise up and answer for him, and take the task off his shoulders. so, along with the mummies of the dead egyptians, there is often found quite a number of these tiny figures, all ready to make heaven easy for their master when he gets there. they have sometimes a little verse written upon them, to tell the answerer what he has got to do in the other world. it runs like this: "oh, thou answerer, when i am called, and when i am asked to do any kind of work that is done in heaven, and am required at any time to cause the field to flourish, or to convey the sand from east to west, thou shalt say, 'here am i.'" it all seems rather a curious idea of heaven, does it not? and most curious of all is the idea of dodging work in the other world by carrying a bundle of china dolls to heaven with you. but, even if we think that very ridiculous, we need not forget that the egyptians had a wonderfully clear and sure grasp of the fact that it is a man's character in this world which will make him either happy or unhappy in the next, and that evil-doing, even if it escapes punishment in this life, is a thing that god will surely punish at last. remember that these men of old, wonderfully wise and strong as they were in many ways, were still the children of the time when the world was young; like children, forming many false and even ridiculous ideas about things they could not understand; like children, too, reaching out their groping hands through the darkness to a father whose love they felt, though they could not explain his ways. we need not wonder if at times they made mistakes, and went far astray. we may wonder far more at the way in which he taught them so many true and noble things and thoughts, never leaving himself without a witness even in those days of long ago. the end. printed at the complete press west norwood london [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume vi. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: .jpg page image] _the close of the theban empire--(continued)_ _ramses iii.: manners and customs--population--the predominance of amon and his high priests._ _the theban necropolis: mummies--the funeral of a rich theban: the procession of the offerings and the funerary furniture, the crossing of the nile, the tomb, the farewell to the dead, the sacrifice, the coffins, the repast of the dead, the song of the harper--the common ditch--the living inhabitants of the necropolis: draughtsmen, sculptors, painters--the bas-reliefs of the temples and the tombs, wooden statuettes, the smelting of metals, bronze--the religions of the necropolis: the immorality and want of discipline among the people: workmen s strikes._ _amon and the beliefs concerning him: his kingdom over the living and the dead, the soul�s destiny according to the teaching of amon--khonsû and his temple; the temple of amon at karnak, its revenue, its priesthood--the growing influence of the high priests of amon under the sons of ramses iii.: hamsesnaklûti, amenôthes; the violation of the royal burying-places--hrihor and the last of the ramses, smendês and the accession to power of the xxist dynasty: the division of egypt into two states--the priest-kings of amon masters of thebes under the suzerainty of the tanite pharaohs--the close of the theban empire._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter i--the close of the theban empire--(continued) _ramses iii.: manners and customs--population--the predominance of amon and his high priests._ opposite the thebes of the living, khafîtnîbûs, the thebes of the dead, had gone on increasing in a remarkably rapid manner. it continued to extend in the south-western direction from the heroic period of the xviiith dynasty onwards, and all the eminence and valleys were gradually appropriated one after the other for burying-places. at the time of which i am speaking, this region formed an actual town, or rather a chain of villages, each of which was grouped round some building constructed by one or other of the pharaohs as a funerary chapel. towards the north, opposite karnak, they clustered at drah-abu�l-neggah around pyramids of the first theban monarchs, at qurneh around the mausolæ of ramses i. and seti i., and at sheikh abd el-qurneh they lay near the amenopheum and the pamonkaniqîmît, or ramesseum built by ramses ii. towards the south they diminished in number, tombs and monuments becoming fewer and appearing at wider intervals; the migdol of ramses iii. formed an isolated suburb, that of azamît, at medinet-habu; the chapel of isis, constructed by amenôthes, son of hapû, formed a rallying-point for the huts of the hamlet of karka;* and in the far distance, in a wild gorge at the extreme limit of human habitations, the queens of the ramesside line slept their last sleep. * the village of karka or kaka was identified by brugsch with the hamlet of deîr el-medineh: the founder of the temple was none other than amenôthes, who was minister under amenôthes iii. [illustration: .jpg the theban cemeteries] each of these temples had around it its enclosing wall of dried brick, and the collection of buildings within this boundary formed the khîrû, or retreat of some one of the theban pharaohs, which, in the official language of the time, was designated the �august khîrû of millions of years.� [illustration: .jpg the necropolis of sheÎkh and el-qurneh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. a sort of fortified structure, which was built into one of the corners, served as a place of deposit for the treasure and archives, and could be used as a prison if occasion required.* * this was the hliatmû, the dungeon, frequently mentioned in the documents bearing upon the necropolis. the remaining buildings consisted of storehouses, stables, and houses for the priests and other officials. in some cases the storehouses were constructed on a regular plan which the architect had fitted in with that of the temple. their ruins at the back and sides of the ramesseum form a double row of vaults, extending from the foot of the hills to the border of the cultivated lands. stone recesses on the roof furnished shelter for the watchmen.* the outermost of the village huts stood among the nearest tombs. the population which had been gathered together there was of a peculiar character, and we can gather but a feeble idea of its nature from the surroundings of the cemeteries in our own great cities. death required, in fact, far more attendants among the ancient egyptians than with us. the first service was that of mummification, which necessitated numbers of workers for its accomplishment. some of the workshops of the embalmers have been discovered from time to time at sheikh abd el-qurneh and deîr el-baharî, but we are still in ignorance as to their arrangements, and as to the exact nature of the materials which they employed. a considerable superficial space was required, for the manipulations of the embalmers occupied usually from sixty to eighty days, and if we suppose that the average deaths at thebes amounted to fifteen or twenty in the twenty-four hours, they would have to provide at the same time for the various degrees of saturation of some twelve to fifteen hundred bodies at the least.** * the discovery of quantities of ostraca in the ruins of these chambers shows that they served partly for cellars. ** i have formed my estimate of fifteen to twenty deaths per day from the mortality of cairo during the french occupation. this is given by r. desgenettes, in the _description de l�egypte_, but only approximately, as many deaths, especially of females, must have been concealed from the authorities; i have, however, made an average from the totals, and applied the rate of mortality thus obtained to ancient thebes. the same result follows from calculations based on more recent figures, obtained before the great hygienic changes introduced into cairo by ismail pacha, i.e. from august , , to july , , and from may , , to may , , and for the two years from april , , to march , , and from april , , to march , . each of the corpses,moreover, necessitated the employment of at least half a dozen workmen to wash it, cut it open, soak it, dry it, and apply the usual bandages before placing the amulets upon the canonically prescribed places, and using the conventional prayers. [illustration: .jpg head of a theban mummy] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. there was fastened to the breast, immediately below the neck, a stone or green porcelain scarab, containing an inscription which was to be efficacious in preventing the heart, �his heart which came to him from his mother, his heart from the time he was upon the earth,� from rising up and witnessing against the dead man before the tribunal of osiris.* there were placed on his fingers gold or enamelled rings, as talismans to secure for him the true voice.** * the manipulations and prayers were prescribed in the �book of embalming.� ** the prescribed gold ring was often replaced by one of blue or green enamel. the body becomes at last little more than a skeleton, with a covering of yellow skin which accentuates the anatomical, details, but the head, on the other hand, still preserves, where the operations have been properly conducted, its natural form. the cheeks have fallen in slightly, the lips and the fleshy parts of the nose have become thinner and more drawn than during life, but the general expression of the face remains unaltered. [illustration: .jpg the manufacture and painting of the cartonnage] drawn by faucher-gudin, after rosellini. a mask of pitch was placed over the visage to preserve it, above which was adjusted first a piece of linen and then a series of bands impregnated with resin, which increased the size of the head to twofold its ordinary bulk. the trunk and limbs were bound round with a first covering of some pliable soft stuff, warm to the touch. coarsely powdered natron was scattered here and there over the body as an additional preservative. packets placed between the legs, the arms and the hips, and in the eviscerated abdomen, contained the heart, spleen, the dried brain, the hair, and the cuttings of the beard and nails. in those days the hair had a special magical virtue: by burning it while uttering certain incantations, one might acquire an almost limitless power over the person to whom it had belonged. the ernbalmers, therefore, took care to place with the mummy such portions of the hair as they had been obliged to cut off, so as to remove them out of the way of the perverse ingenuity of the sorcerers. [illustration: .jpg wrapping of the mummy, under the direction of the �man of the roll�] drawn by faucher-gudin, from rosellini. over the first covering of the mummy already alluded to, there was sometimes placed a strip of papyrus or a long piece of linen, upon which the scribe had transcribed selections--both text and pictures--from �the book of the going forth by day:� in such cases the roll containing the whole work was placed between the legs. the body was further wrapped in several bandages, then in a second piece of stuff, then in more bands, the whole being finally covered with a shroud of coarse canvas and a red linen winding-sheet, sewn together at the back, and kept in place by transverse bands disposed at intervals from head to foot. the son of the deceased and a �man of the roll� were present at this lugubrious toilet, and recited at the application of each piece a prayer, in which its object was defined and its duration secured. every egyptian was supposed to be acquainted with the formulas, from having learned them during his lifetime, by which he was to have restored to him the use of his limbs, and be protected from the dangers of the world beyond. these were repeated to the dead person, however, for greater security, during the process of embalming, and the son of the deceased, or the master of the ceremonies, took care to whisper to the mummy the most mysterious parts, which no living ear might hear with impunity. the wrappings having been completed, the deceased person became aware of his equipment, and enjoyed all the privileges of the �instructed and fortified manes.� he felt himself, both mummy and double, now ready for the tomb. egyptian funerals were not like those to which we are accustomed--mute ceremonies, in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their necessary concomitants. not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relatives and friends themselves did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief, nor from disturbing the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate expressions of their sorrow. one after another they raised their voices, and uttered some expression appropriate to the occasion: �to the west, the dwelling of osiris, to the west, thou who wast the best of men, and who always hated guile.� and the hired weepers answered in chorus: �o chief,* as thou goest to the west, the gods themselves lament.� the funeral _cortege_ started in the morning from the house of mourning, and proceeded at a slow pace to the nile, amid the clamours of the mourners. * the �chief� is one of the names of osiris, and is applied naturally to the dead person, who has become an osiris by virtue of the embalming. the route was cleared by a number of slaves and retainers. first came those who carried cakes and flowers in their hands, followed by others bearing jars full of water, bottles of liqueurs, and phials of perfumes; then came those who carried painted boxes intended for the provisions of the dead man, and for containing the ushabtiu, or �respondents.� the succeeding group bore the usual furniture required by the deceased to set up house again, coffers for linen, folding and arm chairs, state-beds, and sometimes even a caparisoned chariot with its quivers. then came a groom conducting two of his late master�s favourite horses, who, having accompanied the funeral to the tomb, were brought back to their stable. another detachment, more numerous than the others combined, now filed past, bearing the effects of the mummy; first the vessels for the libations, then the cases for the canopic jars, then the canopic jars themselves, the mask of the deceased, coloured half in gold and half in blue, arms, sceptres, military batons, necklaces, scarabs, vultures with encircling wings worn on the breast at festival-times, chains, �respondents,� and the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the emblem of the soul. many of these objects were of wood plated with gold, others of the same material simply gilt, and others of solid gold, and thus calculated to excite the cupidity of the crowd. offerings came next, then a noisy company of female weepers; then a slave, who sprinkled at every instant some milk upon the ground as if to lay the dust; then a master of the ceremonies, who, the panther skin upon his shoulder, asperged the crowd with perfumed water; and behind him comes the hearse. [illustration: .jpg the funeral of harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a coloured print in wilkinson. the cut on the following page joins this on the right. the latter, according to custom, was made in the form of a boat--representing the bark of osiris, with his ark, and two guardians, isis and nephthys--and was placed upon a sledge, which was drawn by a team of oxen and a relay of fellahîn. the sides of the ark were, as a rule, formed of movable wooden panels, decorated with pictures and inscriptions; sometimes, however, but more rarely, the panels were replaced by a covering of embroidered stuff or of soft leather. in the latter case the decoration was singularly rich, the figures and hieroglyphs being cut out with a knife, and the spaces thus left filled in with pieces of coloured leather, which gave the whole an appearance of brilliant mosaic-work.* * one of these coverings was found in the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî; it had belonged to the princess isîmkhobiû, whose mummy is now at gîzeh. [illustration: .jpg the funeral of habmhabÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured print in wilkinson. the left side of this design fits on to the right of the preceding cut. in place of a boat, a shrine of painted wood, also mounted upon a sledge, was frequently used. when the ceremony was over, this was left, together with the coffin, in the tomb.* * i found in the tomb of sonnozmû two of these sledges with the superstructure in the form of a temple. they are now in the gîzeh museum. the wife and children walked as close to the bier as possible, and were followed by the friends of the deceased, dressed in long linen garments,* each of them bearing a wand. the ox-driver, while goading his beasts, cried out to them: �to the west, ye oxen who draw the hearse, to the west! your master comes behind you!� �to the west,� the friends repeated; �the excellent man lives no longer who loved truth so dearly and hated lying!�** ** the whole of this description is taken from the pictures representing the interment of a certain harmhabî, who died at thebes in the time of thfitmosis iv. * these expressions are taken from the inscriptions on the tomb of rai [illustration: .jpg the boat carrying the mummy] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pictures in the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. this lamentation is neither remarkable for its originality nor for its depth of feeling. sorrow was expressed on such occasions in prescribed formulas of always the same import, custom soon enabling each individual to compose for himself a repertory of monotonous exclamations of condolence, of which the prayer, �to the west!� formed the basis, relieved at intervals by some fresh epithet. the nearest relatives of the deceased, however, would find some more sincere expressions of grief, and some more touching appeals with which to break in upon the commonplaces of the conventional theme. on reaching the bank of the nile the funeral cortege proceeded to embark.* * the description of this second part of the funeral arrangements is taken from the tomb of harmhabî, and especially from that of nofirhotpû. [illustration: .jpg the boats containing the female weepers and the people of the household] drawn by faucher-gudin, from paintings on the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. they blended with their inarticulate cries, and the usual protestations and formulas, an eulogy upon the deceased and his virtues, allusions to his disposition and deeds, mention of the offices and honours he had obtained, and reflections on the uncertainty of human life--the whole forming the melancholy dirge which each generation intoned over its predecessor, while waiting itself for the same office to be said over it in its turn. the bearers of offerings, friends, and slaves passed over on hired barges, whose cabins, covered externally with embroidered stuffs of several colours, or with _applique_ leather, looked like the pedestals of a monument: crammed together on the boats, they stood upright with their faces turned towards the funeral bark. the latter was supposed to represent the noshemît, the mysterious skiff of abydos, which had been used in the obsequies of osiris of yore. [illustration: .jpg the boats containing the friends and the funerary furniture] drawn by faucher-gudin, from paintings on the tomb of nofirhotpû at thebes. it was elegant, light, and slender in shape, and ornamented at bow and stern with a lotus-flower of metal, which bent back its head gracefully, as if bowed down by its own weight. a temple-shaped shrine stood in the middle of the boat, adorned with bouquets of flowers and with green palm-branches. the female members of the family of the deceased, crouched beside the shrine, poured forth lamentations, while two priestesses, representing respectively isis and nephthys, took up positions behind to protect the body. the boat containing the female mourners having taken the funeral barge in tow, the entire flotilla pushed out into the stream. this was the solemn moment of the ceremony--the moment in which the deceased, torn away from his earthly city, was about to set out upon that voyage from which there is no return. the crowds assembled on the banks of the river hailed the dead with their parting prayers: �mayest thou reach in peace the west from thebes! in peace, in peace towards abydos, mayest thou descend in peace towards abydos, towards the sea of the west!� [illustration: .jpg a corner of the theban necropolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a stele in the gîzeh museum. this crossing of the nile was of special significance in regard to the future of the soul of the deceased: it represented his pilgrimage towards abydos, to the �mouth of the cleft� which gave him access to the other world, and it was for this reason that the name of abydos is associated with that of thebes in the exclamations of the crowd. the voices of the friends replied frequently and mournfully: �to the west, to the west, the land of the justified! the place which thou lovedst weeps and is desolate!� then the female mourners took up the refrain, saying: �in peace, in peace, to the west! o honourable one, go in peace! if it please god, when the day of eternity shall shine, we shall see thee, for behold thou goest to the land which mingles all men together!� the widow then adds her note to the concert of lamentations: �o my brother, o my husband, o my beloved, rest, remain in thy place, do not depart from the terrestrial spot where thou art! alas, thou goest away to the ferry-boat in order to cross the stream! o sailors, do not hurry, leave him; you, you will return to your homes, but he, he is going away to the land of eternity! o osirian bark, why hast thou come to take away from me him who has left me!� the sailors were, of course, deaf to her appeals, and the mummy pursued its undisturbed course towards the last stage of its mysterious voyage. the majority of the tombs--those which were distributed over the plain or on the nearest spurs of the hill--were constructed on the lines of those brick-built pyramids erected on mastabas which were very common during the early theban dynasties. the relative proportions of the parts alone were modified: the mastaba, which had gradually been reduced to an insignificant base, had now recovered its original height, while the pyramid had correspondingly decreased, and was much reduced in size. the chapel was constructed within the building, and the mummy-pit was sunk to a varying depth below. the tombs ranged along the mountain-side were, on the other hand, rock-cut, and similar to those at el-bersheh and beni-hasan. [illustration: .jpg painting in the fifth tomb of the kings to the right] the heads of wealthy families or the nobility naturally did not leave to the last moment the construction of a sepulchre worthy of their rank and fortune. they prided themselves on having �finished their house which is in the funeral valley when the morning for the hiding away of their body should come.� access to these tombs was by too steep and difficult a path to allow of oxen being employed for the transport of the mummy: the friends or slaves of the deceased were, therefore, obliged to raise the sarcophagus on their shoulders and bear it as best they could to the door of the tomb. [illustration: .jpg the farewell to the mummy, and the double received by the goddess] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the paintings in the theban tombs. the mummy was then placed in an upright position on a heap of sand, with its back to the wall and facing the assistants, like the master of some new villa who, having been accompanied by his friends to see him take possession, turns for a moment on the threshold to take leave of them before entering. a sacrifice, an offering, a prayer, and a fresh outburst of grief ensued; the mourners redoubled their cries and threw themselves upon the ground, the relatives decked the mummy with flowers and pressed it to their bared bosoms, kissing it upon the breast and knees. �i am thy sister, o great one! forsake me not! is it indeed thy will that i should leave thee? if i go away, thou shalt be here alone, and is there any one who will be with thee to follow thee? o thou who lovedst to jest with me, thou art now silent, thou speakest not!� whereupon the mourners again broke out in chorus: �lamentation, lamentation! make, make, make, make lamentation without ceasing as loud as can be made. o good traveller, who takest thy way towards the land of eternity, thou hast been torn from us! o thou who hadst so many around thee, thou art now in the land which bringest isolation! thou who lovedst to stretch thy limbs in walking, art now fettered, bound, swathed! thou who hadst fine stuffs in abundance, art laid in the linen of yesterday!� calm in the midst of the tumult, the priest stood and offered the incense and libation with the accustomed words: �to thy double, osiris nofirhotpû, whose voice before the great god is true!� this was the signal of departure, and the mummy, carried by two men, disappeared within the tomb: the darkness of the other world had laid hold of it, never to let it go again. the chapel was usually divided into two chambers: one, which was of greater width than length, ran parallel to the façade; the other, which was longer than it was wide, stood at right angles with the former, exactly opposite to the entrance. the decoration of these chambers took its inspiration from the scheme which prevailed in the time of the memphite dynasties, but besides the usual scenes of agricultural labour, hunting, and sacrifice, there were introduced episodes from the public life of the deceased, and particularly the minute portrayal of the ceremonies connected with his burial. [illustration: .jpg niche in the tomb of menna] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. these pictorial biographies are always accompanied by detailed explanatory inscriptions; every individual endeavoured thus to show to the osirian judges the rank he had enjoyed here upon earth, and to obtain in the fields of lalû the place which he claimed to be his due. the stele was to be found at the far end of the second chamber; it was often let in to a niche in the form of a round-headed doorway, or else it was replaced by a group of statues, either detached or sculptured in the rock itself, representing the occupant, his wives and children, who took the place of the supporters of the double, formerly always hidden within the serdab. the ceremony of the �opening of the mouth� took place in front of the niche on the day of burial, at the moment when the deceased, having completed his terrestrial course, entered his new home and took possession of it for all eternity. the object of this ceremony was, as we know, to counteract the effects of the embalming, and to restore activity to the organs of the body whose functions had been suspended by death. the �man of the roll� and his assistants, aided by the priests, who represented the �children of horus,� once more raised the mummy into an upright position upon a heap of sand in the middle of the chapel, and celebrated in his behalf the divine mystery instituted by horus for osiris. they purified it both by ordinary and by red water, by the incense of the south and by the alum of the north, in the same manner as that in which the statues of the gods were purified at the beginning of the temple sacrifices; they then set to work to awake the deceased from his sleep: they loosened his shroud and called back the double who had escaped from the body at the moment of the death-agony, and restored to him the use of his arms and legs. as soon as the sacrificial slaughterers had despatched the bull of the south, and cut it in pieces, the priest seized the bleeding haunch, and raised it to the lips of the mask as if to invite it to eat; but the lips still remained closed, and refused to perform their office. the priest then touched them with several iron instruments hafted on wooden handles, which were supposed to possess the power of unsealing them. [illustration: a.jpg coffin-lid] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. [illustration: b.jpg coffin-lid] the �opening� once effected, the double became free, and the tomb-paintings from thenceforward ceasing to depict the mummy, represented the double only. they portrayed it �under the form which he had on this earth,� wearing the civil garb, and fulfilling his ordinary functions. the corpse was regarded as merely the larva, to be maintained in its integrity in order to ensure survival; but it could be relegated without fear to the depths of the bare and naked tomb, there to remain until the end of time, if it pleased the gods to preserve it from robbers or archaeologists. at the period of the first theban empire the coffins were rectangular wooden chests, made on the models of the limestone and granite sarcophagi, and covered with prayers taken from the various sacred writings, especially from the �book of the dead�; during the second theban empire, they were modified into an actual sheath for the body, following more or less the contour of the human figure. this external model of the deceased covered his remains, and his figure in relief served as a lid to the coffin. the head was covered with the full-dress wig, a tippet of white cambrio half veiled the bosom, the petticoat fell in folds about the limbs, the feet were shod with sandals, the arms were outstretched or were folded over the breast, and the hands clasped various objects--either the _crux ansata_, the buckle of the belt, the _tat_, or a garland of flowers. sometimes, on the contrary, the coffin was merely a conventional reproduction of the human form. the two feet and legs were joined together, and the modelling of the knee, calf, thigh, and stomach was only slightly indicated in the wood. towards the close of the xviiith dynasty it was the fashion for wealthy persons to have two coffins, one fitting inside the other, painted black or white. from the xxth dynasty onwards they were coated with a yellowish varnish, and so covered with inscriptions and mystic signs that each coffin was a tomb in miniature, and could well have done duty as such, and thus meet all the needs of the soul.* * the first to summarise the characteristics of the coffins and sarcophagi of the second theban period was mariette, but he places the use of the yellow-varnished coffins too late, viz. during the xxiind dynasty. examples of them have since been found which incontestably belong to the xxth. [illustration: .jpg the mummy factory] later still, during the xxist and xxiind dynasties, these two, or even three coffins, were enclosed in a rectangular sarcophagus of thick wood, which, surmounted by a semicircular lid, was decorated with pictures and hallowed by prayers: four sparrow-hawks, perched on the uprights at the corners, watched at the four cardinal points, and protected the body, enabling the soul at the same time to move freely within the four houses of which the world was composed. [illustration: .jpg the paraphernalia of a mummy of the xxth to the xxiind dynasties] drawn by faucher-gudin, from mariette. the workmen, after having deposited the mummy in its resting-place, piled upon the floor of the tomb the canopio jars, the caskets, the provisions, the furniture, the bed, and the stools and chairs; the usha-btiu occupied compartments in their allotted boxes, and sometimes there would be laid beside them the mummy of a favourite animal--a monkey, a dog of some rare breed, or a pet gazelle, whose coffins were shaped to their respective outlines, the better to place before the deceased the presentment of the living animal. [illustration: .jpg the funeral repast--music and dancing] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a fragment in the british museum. the scene representing the funeral repast and its accompanying dances occurs frequently in the theban tombs. a few of the principal objects were broken or damaged, in the belief that, by thus destroying them, their doubles would go forth and accompany the human double, and render him their accustomed services during the whole of his posthumous existence; a charm pronounced over them bound them indissolubly to his person, and constrained them to obey his will. this done, the priest muttered a final prayer, and the masons walled up the doorway. [illustration: .jpg the coffin of the favourite gazelle of isÎmkhobiu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. the funeral feast now took place with its customary songs and dances. the _almehs_ addressed the guests and exhorted them to make good use of the passing hour: �be happy for one day! for when you enter your tombs you will rest there eternally throughout the length of every day!� immediately after the repast the friends departed from the tomb, and the last link which connected the dead with our world was then broken. the sacred harper was called upon to raise the farewell hymn:* * the harper is often represented performing this last office. in the tomb of nofirhotpû, and in many others, the daughters or the relatives of the deceased accompany or even replace the harper; in this case they belonged to a priestly family, and fulfilled the duties of the �female singers� of amon or some other god. �o instructed mummies, ennead of the gods of the coffin, who listen to the praises of this dead man, and who daily extol the virtues of this instructed mummy, who is living eternally like a god, ruling in amentît, ye also who shall live in the memory of posterity, all ye who shall come and read these hymns inscribed, according to the rites, within the tombs, repeat: �the greatness of the under-world, what is it? the annihilation of the tomb, why is it?� it is to conform to the image of the land of eternity, the true country where there is no strife and where violence is held in abhorrence, where none attacks his neighbour, and where none among our generations who rest within it is rebellious, from the time when your race first existed, to the moment when it shall become a multitude of multitudes, all going the same way; for instead of remaining in this land of egypt, there is not one but shall leave it, and there is said to all who are here below, from the moment of their waking to life: �go, prosper safe and sound, to reach the tomb at length, a chief among the blessed, and ever mindful in thy heart of the day when thou must lie down on the funeral bed!�� the ancient song of antûf, modified in the course of centuries, was still that which expressed most forcibly the melancholy thought paramount in the minds of the friends assembled to perform the last rites. �the impassibility of the chief* is, in truth, the best of fates!� * osiris is here designated by the word �chief,� as i have already pointed out. [illustration: .jpg one of the harpers of the tomb of ramses iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken byjnsinger in . �since the times of the god bodies are created merely to pass away, and young generations take their place: râ rises in the morning, tûmû lies down to rest in the land of the evening, all males generate, the females conceive, every nose inhales the air from the morning of their birth to the day when they go to their place! be happy then for one day, o man!--may there ever be perfumes and scents for thy nostrils, garlands and lotus-flowers for thy shoulders and for the neck of thy beloved sister* who sits beside thee! let there be singing and music before thee, and, forgetting all thy sorrows, think only of pleasure until the day when thou must enter the country of marîtsakro, the silent goddess, though all the same the heart of the son who loves thee will not cease to beat! be happy for one day, o man!--i have heard related what befell our ancestors; their walls are destroyed, their place is no more, they are as those who have ceased to live from the time of the god! the walls of thy tomb are strong, thou hast planted trees at the edge of thy pond, thy soul reposes beneath them and drinks the water; follow that which seemeth good to thee as long as thou art on earth, and give bread to him who is without land, that thou mayest be well spoken of for evermore. think upon the gods who have lived long ago: their meat offerings fall in pieces as if they had been torn by a panther, their loaves are defiled with dust, their statues no longer stand upright within the temple of râ, their followers beg for alms! be happy for one day!� * marriages between brothers and sisters in egypt rendered this word �sister� the most natural appellation. those gone before thee �have had their hour of joy,� and they have put off sadness �which shortens the moments until the day when hearts are destroyed!--be mindful, therefore, of the day when thou shalt be taken to the country where all men are mingled: none has ever taken thither his goods with him, and no one can ever return from it!� the grave did not, however, mingle all men as impartially as the poet would have us believe. the poor and insignificant had merely a place in the common pit, which was situated in the centre of the assassîf,* one of the richest funerary quarters of thebes. * there is really only one complete description of a cemetery of the poor, namely, that given by a. rhind. mariette caused extensive excavations to be made by gabet and vassalli, - , in the assassif, near the spot worked by rhind, and the objects found are now in the gîzeh museum, but the accounts of the work are among his unpublished papers, vassalli assures me that he sometimes found the mummies piled one on another to the depth of sixty bodies, and even then he did not reach the lowest of the pile. the hurried excavations which i made in and , appeared to confirm these statements of rhind and vassalli. yawning trenches stood ever open there, ready to receive their prey; the rites were hurriedly performed, and the grave-diggers covered the mummies of the day�s burial with a little sand, out of which we receive them intact, sometimes isolated, sometimes in groups of twos or threes, showing that they had not even been placed in regular layers. some are wrapped only in bandages of coarse linen, and have been consigned without further covering to the soil, while others have been bound round with palm-leaves laid side by side, so as to form a sort of primitive basket. the class above the poorest people were buried in rough-hewn wooden boxes, smaller at the feet than towards the head, and devoid of any inscription or painting. many have been placed in any coffin that came to hand, with a total indifference as to suitability of size; others lie in a badly made bier, made up of the fragments of one or more older biers. none of them possessed any funerary furniture, except the tools of his trade, a thin pair of leather shoes, sandals of cardboard or plaited reeds, rings of terra-cotta or bronze, bracelets or necklets of a single row of blue beads, statuettes of divinities, mystic eyes, scarabs, and, above all, cords tied round the neck, arms, limbs, or waist, to keep off, by their mystic knots, all malign influences. the whole population of the necropolis made their living out of the dead. this was true of all ranks of society, headed by the sacerdotal colleges of the royal chapels,* and followed by the priestly bodies, to whom was entrusted the care of the tombs in the various sections, but the most influential of whom confined their attentions to the old burying-ground, �isît-mâît,� the true place.** * we find on several monuments the names of persons belonging to these sacerdotal bodies, priests of ahmosis i., priests of thûtmosis i., of thût-mosis ii., of amenôthes ii., and of seti i. ** the persons connected with the �true place� were for a long time considered as magistrates, and the �true place� as a tribunal. it was their duty to keep up the monuments of the kings, and also of private individuals, to clean the tombs, to visit the funerary chambers, to note the condition of their occupants, and, if necessary, repair the damage done by time, and to provide on certain days the offerings prescribed by custom, or by clauses in the contract drawn up between the family of the deceased and the religious authorities. the titles of these officials indicated how humble was their position in relation to the deified ancestors in whose service they were employed; they called themselves the �servants of the true place,� and their chiefs the �superiors of the servants,� but all the while they were people of considerable importance, being rich, well educated, and respected in their own quarter of the town. [illustration: .jpg paintings at the end of the hall of the fifth the tomb] they professed to have a special devotion for amenôthes i. and his mother, nofrîtari, who, after five or six centuries of continuous homage, had come to be considered as the patrons of khafîtnîbûs, but this devotion was not to the depreciation of other sovereigns. it is true that the officials were not always clear as to the identity of the royal remains of which they had the care, and they were known to have changed one of their queens or princesses into a king or some royal prince.* * thus queen ahhotpû i., whom the �servant� anhûrkhâû knew to be a woman, is transformed into a king ahhotpû in the tomb of khâbokhnît. [illustration: amenothes iii. at luxor] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. they were surrounded by a whole host of lesser functionaries--bricklayers, masons, labourers, exorcists, scribes (who wrote out pious formulae for poor people, or copied the �books of the going forth by day� for the mummies), weavers, cabinet-makers, and goldsmiths. the sculptors and the painters were grouped into guilds;* many of them spent their days in the tombs they were decorating, while others had their workshops above-ground, probably very like those of our modern monumental masons. * we gather this from the inscriptions which give us the various titles of the sculptors, draughtsmen, or workmen, but i have been unable to make out the respective positions held by these different persons. they kept at the disposal of their needy customers an assortment of ready-made statues and stelæ, votive tablets to osiris, anubis, and other theban gods and goddesses, singly or combined. the name of the deceased and the enumeration of the members of his family were left blank, and were inserted after purchase in the spaces reserved for the purpose.* * i succeeded in collecting at the boulak museum a considerable number of these unfinished statues and stelæ, coming from the workshops of the necropolis. these artisans made the greater part of their livelihood by means of these epitaphs, and the majority thought only of selling as many of them as they could; some few, however, devoted themselves to work of a higher kind. sculpture had reached a high degree of development under the thûtmoses and the ramses, and the art of depicting scenes in bas-relief had been brought to a perfection hitherto unknown. this will be easily seen by comparing the pictures in the old mastabas, such as those of ti or phtahhotpû, with the finest parts of the temples of qurneh, abydos, karnak, deîr el-baharî, or with the scenes in the tombs of seti i. and ramses ii., or those of private individuals such as hûi. the modelling is firm and refined, showing a skill in the use of the chisel and an elegance of outline which have never been surpassed: the amenôthes iii. of luxor and the khâmhâît of sheikh abd el-qurneh might serve for models in our own schools of the highest types which egyptian art could produce at its best in this particular branch. the drawing is freer than in earlier examples, the action is more natural, the composition more studied, and the perspective less wild. we feel that the artist handled his subject _con amore_. he spared no trouble in sketching out his designs and in making studies from nature, and, as papyrus was expensive, he drew rough drafts, or made notes of his impressions on the flat chips of limestone with which the workshops were strewn. [illustration: .jpg khÂmhaÎt] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. nothing at that date could rival these sketches for boldness of conception and freedom in execution, whether it were in the portrayal of the majestic gait of a king or the agility of an acrobat. of the latter we have an example in the turin museum. the girl is nude, with the exception of a tightly fitting belt about her hips, and she is throwing herself backwards with so natural a motion, that we are almost tempted to expect her to turn a somersault and fall once more into position with her heels together. [illustration: .jpg sketch of a female acrobat] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. the unfinished figures on the tomb of seti i. shows with what a steady hand the clever draughtsman could sketch out his subjects. the head from the nape of the neck round to the throat is described by a single line, and the contour of the shoulders is marked by another. the form of the body is traced by two undulating lines, while the arms and legs are respectively outlined by two others. the articles of apparel and ornaments, sketched rapidly at first, had to be gone over again by the sculptor, who worked out the smallest details. one might almost count the tresses of the hair, while the folds of the dress and the enamels of the girdle and bracelets are minutely chiselled. [illustration: bas-relief of seti i., showing corrections made by the sculptor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from photographs by insinger and daniel héron. when the draughtsman had finished his picture from the sketch which he had made, or when he had enlarged it from a smaller drawing, the master of the studio would go over it again, marking here and there in red the defective points, to which the sculptor gave his attention when working the subject out on the wall. if he happened to make a mistake in executing it, he corrected it as well as he was able by filling up with stucco or hard cement the portions to be remodelled, and by starting to work again upon the fresh surface. this cement has fallen out in some cases, and reveals to our eyes to-day the marks of the underlying chiselling. there are, for example, two profiles of seti i. on one of the bas-reliefs of the hypostyle hall at karnak, one faintly outlined, and the other standing fully out from the surface of the stone. the sense of the picturesque was making itself felt, and artists were no longer to be excused for neglecting architectural details, the configuration of the country, the drawing of rare plants, and, in fact, all those accessories which had been previously omitted altogether or merely indicated. the necessity of covering such vast surfaces as the pylons offered had accustomed them to arrange the various scenes of one and the same action in a more natural and intimate connexion than their predecessors could possibly have done. in these scenes the pharaoh naturally played the chief part, but in place of choosing for treatment merely one or other important action of the monarch calculated to exhibit his courage, the artist endeavoured to portray all the successive incidents in his campaigns, in the same manner as the early italian painters were accustomed to depict, one after the other, and on the same canvas, all the events of the same legend. the details of these gigantic compositions may sometimes appear childish to us, and we may frequently be at a loss in determining the relations of the parts, yet the whole is full of movement, and, although mutilated, gives us even yet the impression which would have been made upon us by the turmoil of a battle in those distant days. the sculptor of statues for a long time past was not a whit less skilful than the artist who executed bas-reliefs. the sculptor was doubtless often obliged to give enormous proportions to the figure of the king, to prevent his being overshadowed by the mass of buildings among which the statue was to appear; but this necessity of exaggerating the human form did not destroy in the artist that sense of proportion and that skilful handling of the chisel which are so strikingly displayed in the sitting scribe or in the princess at meîdûm; it merely trained him to mark out deftly the principal lines, and to calculate the volume and dimensions of these gigantic granite figures of some fifty to sixty-five feet high, with as great confidence and skill as he would have employed upon any statue of ordinary dimensions which might be entrusted to him. the colossal statues at abu-simbel and thebes still witness to the incomparable skill of the theban sculptors in the difficult art of imagining and executing superhuman types. the decadence of egyptian art did not begin until the time of ramses iii., but its downward progress was rapid, and the statues of the ramesside period are of little or no artistic value. the form of these figures is poor, the technique crude, and the expression of the faces mean and commonplace. they betray the hand of a mechanical workman who, while still in the possession of the instruments of his trade, can infuse no new life into the traditions of the schools, nor break away from them altogether. [illustration: .jpg the kneeling scribe at turin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie; the scribe bears upon his right shoulder, perhaps tattooed, the human image of the god amon-râ, whose animal emblem he embraces. we must look, not to the royal studios, but to the workshops connected with the necropolis, if we want to find statues of half life-size displaying intelligent workmanship, all of which we might be tempted to refer to the xviiith dynasty if the inscriptions upon them did not fix their date some two or three centuries later. an example of them may be seen at turin in the kneeling scribe embracing a ram-headed altar: the face is youthful, and has an expression at once so gentle and intelligent that we are constrained to overlook the imperfections in the bust and legs of the figure. specimens of this kind are not numerous, and their rarity is easily accounted for. the multitude of priests, soldiers, workmen, and small middle-class people who made up the bulk of the theban population had aspirations for a luxury little commensurate with their means, and the tombs of such people are, therefore, full of objects which simulate a character they do not possess, and are deceptive to the eye: such were the statuettes made of wood, substituted from economical motives instead of the limestone or sandstone statues usually provided as supporters for the �double.� [illustration: a.jpg young girl in the turing museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. [illustration: b.jpg the lady nehai] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. enamelled eyes, according to a common custom, were inserted in the sockets, but have disappeared. the funerary sculptors had acquired a perfect mastery of the kind of art needed for people of small means, and we find among the medley of commonplace objects which encumber the tomb they decorated, examples of artistic works of undoubted excellence, such as the ladies naî and tûî now in the louvre, the lady nehaî now at berlin, and the naked child at turin. the lady tûî in her lifetime had been one of the singing-women of amon. she is clad in a tight-fitting robe, which accentuates the contour of the breasts and hips without coarseness: her right arm falls gracefully alongside her body, while her left, bent across her chest, thrusts into her bosom a kind of magic whip, which was the sign of her profession. the artist was not able to avoid a certain heaviness in the treatment of her hair, and the careful execution of the whole work was not without a degree of harshness, but by dint of scraping and polishing the wood he succeeded in softening the outline, and removing from the figure every sharp point. the lady nehaî is smarter and more graceful, in her close-fitting garment and her mantle thrown over the left elbow; and the artist has given her a more alert pose and resolute air than we find in the stiff carriage of her contemporary tûî. the little girl in the turin museum is a looser work, but where could one find a better example of the lithe delicacy of the young egyptian maiden of eight or ten years old? we may see her counterpart to-day among the young nubian girls of the cataract, before they are obliged to wear clothes; there is the same thin chest, the same undeveloped hips, the same meagre thighs, and the same demeanour, at once innocent and audacious. other statuettes represent matrons, some in tight garments, and with their hair closely confined, others without any garment whatever. [illustration: a.jpg a soldier] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de mertens. [illustration: b.jpg statue in the turin museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by petrie. the turin example is that of a lady who seems proud of her large ear-rings, and brings one of them into prominence, either to show it off or to satisfy herself that the jewel becomes her: her head is square-shaped, the shoulders narrow, the chest puny, the pose of the arm stiff and awkward, but the eyes have such a joyful openness, and her smile such a self-satisfied expression, that one readily over looks the other defects of the statue. in this collection of miniature figures examples of men are not wanting, and there are instances of old soldiers, officials, guardians of temples, and priests proudly executing their office in their distinctive panther skins. three individuals in the gîzeh were contemporaries, or almost so, of the young girl of the turin museum. they are dressed in rich costumes, to which they have, doubtless, a just claim; for one of them, hori, surnamed râ, rejoiced in the favour of the pharaoh, and must therefore have exercised some court function. they seem to step forth with a measured pace and firm demeanour, the body well thrown back and the head erect, their faces displaying something of cruelty and cunning. an officer, whose retirement from service is now spent in the louvre, is dressed in a semi-civil costume, with a light wig, a closely fitting smock-frock with shirt-sleeves, and a loin-cloth tied tightly round the hips and descending halfway down the thigh, to which is applied a piece of stuff kilted lengthwise, projecting in front. a colleague of his, now in the berlin museum, still maintains possession of his official baton, and is arrayed in his striped petticoat, his bracelets and gorget of gold. a priest in the louvre holds before him, grasped by both hands, the insignia of amon-ra--a ram�s head, surmounted by the solar disk, and inserted on the top of a thick handle; another, who has been relegated to turin, appears to be placed between two long staves, each surmounted by an idol, and, to judge from his attitude, seems to have no small idea of his own beauty and importance. the egyptians were an observant people and inclined to satire, and i have a shrewd suspicion that the sculptors, in giving to such statuettes this character of childlike vanity, yielded to the temptation to be merry at the expense of their model. the smelters and engravers in metal occupied in relation to the sculptors a somewhat exalted position. bronze had for a long time been employed in funerary furniture, and _ushabtiu_ (respondents),* amulets, and images of the gods, as well as of mortals, were cast in this metal. many of these tiny figures form charming examples of enamel-work, and are distinguished not only by the gracefulness of the, modelling, but also by the brilliance of the superimposed glaze; but the majority of them were purely commercial articles, manufactured by the hundred from the same models, and possibly cast, for centuries, from the same moulds for the edification of the devout and of pilgrims. * bronze _respondents_ are somewhat rare, and most of those which are to be found among the dealers are counterfeit. the gîzeh museum possesses two examples at least of indisputable authenticity; both of these belong to the xxth dynasty. [illustration: .jpg funerary casket in the turing museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. [illustration: .jpg shrine in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. we ought not, therefore, to be surprised if they are lacking in originality; they are no more to be distinguished from each other than the hundreds of coloured statuettes which one may find on the stalls of modern dealers in religious statuary. [illustration: b.jpg the lady taksûhît] from a bronze in the museum at athens [illustration: b.jpg-text] here and there among the multitude we may light upon examples showing a marked individuality: the statuette of the lady takûshit, which now forms one of the ornaments of the museum at athens, is an instance. she stands erect, one foot in advance, her right arm hanging at her side, her left pressed against her bosom; she is arrayed in a short dress embroidered over with religious scenes, and wears upon her ankles and wrists rings of value. a wig with stiff-looking locks, regularly arranged in rows, covers her head. the details of the drapery and the ornaments are incised on the surface of the bronze, and heightened with a thread of silver. the face is evidently a portrait, and is that apparently of a woman of mature age, but the body, according to the tradition of the egyptian schools of art, is that of a young girl, lithe, firm, and elastic. the alloy contains gold, and the warm and softened lights reflected from it blend most happily and harmoniously with the white lines of the designs. the joiners occupied, after the workers in bronze, an important position in relation to the necropolis, and the greater part of the furniture which they executed for the mummies of persons of high rank was remarkable for its painting and carpentry-work. some articles of their manufacture were intended for religious use--such as those shrines, mounted upon sledges, on which the image of the god was placed, to whom prayers were made for the deceased; others served for the household needs of the mummy, and, to distinguish these, there are to be seen upon their sides religious and funereal pictures, offerings to the two deceased parents, sacrifices to a god or goddess, and incidents in the osirian life. the funerary beds consisted, like those intended for the living, of a rectangular framework, placed upon four feet of equal height, although there are rare examples in which the supports are so arranged as to give a gentle slope to the structure. the fancy which actuated the joiner in making such beds supposed that two benevolent lions had, of their own free will, stretched out their bodies to form the two sides of the couch, the muzzles constituting the pillow, while the tails were curled up under the feet of the sleeper. many of the heads given to the lions are so noble and expressive, that they will well bear comparison with the granite statues of these animals which amenôthes iii. dedicated in his temple at soleb. the other trades depended upon the proportion of their members to the rest of the community for the estimation in which they were held. the masons, stone-cutters, and common labourers furnished the most important contingent; among these ought also to be reckoned the royal servants--of whose functions we should have been at a loss to guess the importance, if contemporary documents had not made it clear--fishermen, hunters, laundresses, wood-cutters, gardeners, and water-carriers.* * the cailliaud ostracon, which contains a receipt given to some fishermen, was found near sheikh abd el-qurneh, and consequently belonged to the fishermen of the necropolis. there is a question as to the water-carriers of the khirû in the hieratic registers of turin, also as to the washers of clothes, wood-cutters, gardeners and workers in the vineyard. [illustration: .jpg the swallow-goddess from the theban necropolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. without reckoning the constant libations needed for the gods and the deceased, the workshops required a large quantity of drinking water for the men engaged in them. in every gang of workmen, even in the present day, two or three men are set apart to provide drinking-water for the rest; in some arid places, indeed, at a distance from the river, such as the valley of the kings, as many water-carriers are required as there are workmen. to the trades just mentioned must be added the low-caste crowd depending oh the burials of the rich, the acrobats, female mourners, dancers and musicians. the majority of the female corporations were distinguished by the infamous character of their manners, and prostitution among them had come to be associated with the service of the god.* * the heroine of the erotic papyrus of turin bears the title of �singing-woman of amon,� and the illustrations indicate her profession so clearly and so expressively, that no details of her sayings and doings are wanting. [illustration: .jpg the goddess mabÎtsakbo] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lanzone. there was no education for all this mass of people, and their religion was of a meagre character. they worshipped the official deities, amon, mût, isis, and hâthor, and such deceased pharaohs as amenôthes i. and nofrîtari, but they had also their own pantheon, in which animals predominated--such as the goose of amon, and his ram pa-rahaninofir, the good player on the horn, the hippopotamus, the cat, the chicken, the swallow, and especially reptiles. death was personified by a great viper, the queen of the west, known by the name marîtsakro, the friend of silence. three heads, or the single head of a woman, attached to the one body, were assigned to it. it was supposed to dwell in the mountain opposite karnak, which fact gave to it, as well as to the necropolis itself, the two epithets of khafîtnîbûs and ta-tahnît, that is, the summit.* * the abundance of the monuments of marîtsakro found at sheikh abd el-gurneh, inclines me to believe that her sanctuary was situated in the neighbourhood of the temple of uazmosû, but there was also on the top of the hill another sanctuary which would equally satisfy the name ta-tahnît. its chapel was situated at the foot of the hill of sheikh abd el-qurneh, but its sacred serpents crawled and wriggled through the necropolis, working miracles and effecting the cure of the most dangerous maladies. the faithful were accustomed to dedicate to them, in payment of their vows, stelas, or slabs of roughly hewn stone, with inscriptions which witnessed to a deep gratitude. �hearken! i, from the time of my appearance on earth, i was a �servant of the true place,� nofirâbû, a stupid ignorant person, who knew not good from evil, and i committed sin against the summit. she punished me, and i was in her hand day and night. i lay groaning on my couch like a woman in childbed, and i made supplication to the air, but it did not come to me, for i was hunted down by the summit of the west, the brave one among all the gods and all the goddesses of the city; so i would say to all the miserable sinners among the people of the necropolis: �give heed to the summit, for there is a lion in the summit, and she strikes as strikes a spell-casting lion, and she pursues him who sins against her! �i invoked then my mistress, and i felt that she flew to me like a pleasant breeze; she placed herself upon me, and this made me recognise her hand, and appeased she returned to me, and she delivered me from suffering, for she is my life, the summit of the west, when she is appeased, and she ought to be invoked!�� there were many sinners, we may believe, among that ignorant and superstitious population, but the governors of thebes did not put their confidence in the local deities alone to keep them within bounds, and to prevent their evil deeds; commissioners, with the help of a detachment of mazaîû, were an additional means of conducting them into the right way. they had, in this respect, a hard work to accomplish, for every day brought with it its contingent of crimes, which they had to follow up, and secure the punishment of the authors. nsisûamon came to inform them that the workman nakhtummaût and his companions had stolen into his house, and robbed him of three large loaves, eight cakes, and some pastry; they had also drunk a jar of beer, and poured out from pure malice the oil which they could not carry away with them. panîbi had met the wife of a comrade alone near an out-of-the-way tomb, and had taken advantage of her notwithstanding her cries; this, moreover, was not the first offence of the culprit, for several young girls had previously been victims of his brutality, and had not ventured up to this time to complain of him on account of the terror with which he inspired the neighbourhood. crimes against the dead were always common; every penniless fellow knew what quantities of gold and jewels had been entombed with the departed, and these treasures, scattered around them at only a few feet from the surface of the ground, presented to them a constant temptation to which they often succumbed. some were not disposed to have accomplices, while others associated together, and, having purchased at a serious cost the connivance of the custodians, set boldly to work on tombs both recent and ancient. not content with stealing the funerary furniture, which they disposed of to the undertakers, they stripped the mummies also, and smashed the bodies in their efforts to secure the jewels; then, putting the remains together again, they rearranged the mummies afresh so cleverly that they can no longer be distinguished by their outward appearance from the originals, and the first wrappings must be removed before the fraud can be discovered. from time to time one of these rogues would allow himself to be taken for the purpose of denouncing his comrades, and avenging himself for the injustice of which he was the victim in the division of the spoil; he was laid hold of by the mazaîû, and brought before the tribunal of justice. the lands situated on the left bank of the nile belonged partly to the king and partly to the god amon, and any infraction of the law in regard to the necropolis was almost certain to come within the jurisdiction of one or other of them. the commission appointed, therefore, to determine the damage done in any case, included in many instances the high priest or his delegates, as well as the officers of the pharaoh. the office of this commission was to examine into the state of the tombs, to interrogate the witnesses and the accused, applying the torture if necessary: when they had got at the facts, the tribunal of the notables condemned to impalement some half a dozen of the poor wretches, and caused some score of others to be whipped.* but, when two or three months had elapsed, the remembrance of the punishment began to die away, and the depredations began afresh. the low rate of wages occasioned, at fixed periods, outbursts of discontent and trouble which ended in actual disturbances. the rations allowed to each workman, and given to him at the beginning of each month, would possibly have been sufficient for himself and his family, but, owing to the usual lack of foresight in the egyptian, they were often consumed long before the time fixed, and the pinch soon began to be felt. the workmen, demoralised by their involuntary abstinence, were not slow to turn to the overseer; �we are perishing of hunger, and there are still eighteen days before the next month.� the latter was prodigal of fair speeches, but as his words were rarely accompanied by deeds, the workmen would not listen to him; they stopped work, left the workshop in turbulent crowds, ran with noisy demonstrations to some public place to hold a meeting--perhaps the nearest monument, at the gate of the temple of thûtmosis iii.,** behind the chapel of mînephtah,*** or in the court of that of seti i. * this is how i translate a fairly common expression, which means literally, �to be put on the wood.� spiegelberg sees in this only a method of administering torture. ** perhaps the chapel of uazmôsû, or possibly the free space before the temple of deîr el-baharî. *** the site of this chapel was discovered by prof. petrie in the spring of . it had previously been supposed to be a temple of amenôthes iii. their overseers followed them; the police commissioners of the locality, the mazaîû, and the scribes mingled with them and addressed themselves to some of the leaders with whom they might be acquainted. but these would not at first give them a hearing. �we will not return,� they would say to the peacemakers; �make it clear to your superiors down below there.� it must have been manifest that from their point of view their complaints were well founded, and the official, who afterwards gave an account of the affair to the authorities, was persuaded of this. �we went to hear them, and they spoke true words to us.� for the most part these strikes had no other consequence than a prolonged stoppage of work, until the distribution of rations at the beginning of the next month gave the malcontents courage to return to their tasks. attempts were made to prevent the recurrence of these troubles by changing the method and time of payments. these were reduced to an interval of fifteen days, and at length, indeed, to one of eight. the result was very much the same as before: the workman, paid more frequently, did not on that account become more prudent, and the hours of labour lost did not decrease. the individual man, if he had had nobody to consider but himself, might have put up with the hardships of his situation, but there were almost always wife and children or sisters concerned, who clamoured for bread in their hunger, and all the while the storehouses of the temples or those of the state close by were filled to overflowing with durrah, barley, and wheat.* * khonsu, for example, excites his comrades to pillage the storehouses of the gate. the temptation to break open the doors and to help themselves in the present necessity must have been keenly felt. some bold spirits among the strikers, having set out together, scaled the two or three boundary walls by which the granaries were protected, but having reached this position their hearts, failed them, and they contented themselves with sending to the chief custodian an eloquent pleader, to lay before him their very humble request: �we are come, urged by famine, urged by thirst, having no more linen, no more oil, no more fish, no more vegetables. send to pharaoh, our master, send to the king, our lord, that he may provide us with the necessaries of life.� if one of them, with less self-restraint, was so carried away as to let drop an oath, which was a capital offence, saying, �by amon! by the sovereign, whose anger is death!� if he asked to be taken before a magistrate in order that he might reiterate there his complaint, the others interceded for him, and begged that he might escape the punishment fixed by the law for blasphemy; the scribe, good fellow as he was, closed his ears to the oath, and, if it were in his power, made a beginning of satisfying their demands by drawing upon the excess of past months to such an extent as would pacify them for some days, and by paying them a supplemental wage in the name of the pharaoh. they cried out loudly: �shall there not be served out to us corn in excess of that which has been distributed to us; if not we will not stir from this spot?� at length the end of the month arrived, and they all appeared together before the magistrates, when they said: �let the scribe, khâmoîsît, who is accountable, be sent for!� he was thereupon brought before the notables of the town, and they said to him: �see to the corn which thou hast received, and give some of it to the people of the necropolis.� pmontunîboîsît was then sent for, and �rations of wheat were given to us daily.� famine was not caused only by the thriftlessness of the multitude: administrators of all ranks did not hesitate to appropriate, each one according to his position, a portion of the means entrusted to them for the maintenance of their subordinates, and the latter often received only instalments of what was due to them. the culprits often escaped from their difficulties by either laying hold of half a dozen of their brawling victims, or by yielding to them a proportion of their ill-gotten gains, before a rumour of the outbreak could reach head-quarters. it happened from time to time, however, when the complaints against them were either too serious or too frequent, that they were deprived of their functions, cited before the tribunals, and condemned. what took place at thebes was repeated with some variations in each of the other large cities. corruption, theft, and extortion had prevailed among the officials from time immemorial, and the most active kings alone were able to repress these abuses, or confine them within narrow limits; as soon as discipline became relaxed, however, they began to appear again, and we have no more convincing proof of the state of decadence into which thebes had fallen towards the middle of the xxth dynasty, than the audacity of the crimes committed in the necropolis during the reigns of the successors of ramses iii. the priesthood of amon alone displayed any vigour and enjoyed any prosperity in the general decline. after the victory of the god over the heretic kings no one dared to dispute his supremacy, and the ramessides displayed a devout humility before him and his ministers. henceforward he became united to râ in a definite manner, and his authority not only extended over the whole of the land of egypt, but over all the countries also which were brought within her influence; so that while pharaoh continued to be the greatest of kings, pharaoh�s god held a position of undivided supremacy among the deities. he was the chief of the two bnneads, the heliopolitan and the hermopolitan, and displayed for the latter a special affection; for the vague character of its eight secondary deities only served to accentuate the position of the ninth and principal divinity with whose primacy that of amon was identified. it was more easy to attribute to amon the entire work of creation when shû, sibû, osiris, and sit had been excluded--the deities whom the theologians of heliopolis had been accustomed to associate with the demiurge; and in the hymns which they sang at his solemn festivals they did not hesitate to ascribe to him all the acts which the priests of former times had assigned to the ennead collectively. �he made earth, silver, gold,--the true lapis at his good pleasure.--he brought forth the herbs for the cattle, the plants upon which men live.--he made to live the fish of the river,--the birds which hover in the air,--giving air to those which are in the egg.--he animates the insects,--he makes to live the small birds, the reptiles, and the gnats as well.--he provides food for the rat in his hole,--supports the bird upon the branch.--may he be blessed for all this, he who is alone, but with many hands.� �men spring from his two eyes,� and quickly do they lose their breath while acclaiming him--egyptians and libyans, negroes and asiatics: �hail to thee!� they all say; �praise to thee because thou dwellest amongst us!--obeisances before thee because thou createst us!�--�thou art blessed by every living thing,--thou hast worshippers in every place,--in the highest of the heavens, in all the breadth of the earth,--in the depths of the seas.--the gods bow before thy majesty,--magnifying the souls which form them,--rejoicing at meeting those who have begotten them,--they say to thee: �go in peace,--father of the fathers of all the gods,--who suspended the heaven, levelled the earth;--creator of beings, maker of things,--sovereign king, chief of the gods,--we adore thy souls, because thou hast made us,--we lavish offerings upon thee, because thou hast given us birth,--we shower benedictions upon thee, because thou dwellest among us.�� we have here the same ideas as those which predominate in the hymns addressed to atonû,* and in the prayers directed to phtah, the nile, shû, and the sun-god of heliopolis at the same period. * breasted points out the decisive influence exercised by the solar hymns of amenôthes iv. on the development of the solar ideas contained in the hymns to amon put forth or re- edited in the xxiiird dynasty. the idea of a single god, lord and maker of all things, continued to prevail more and more throughout egypt--not, indeed, among the lower classes who persisted in the worship of their genii and their animals, but among the royal family, the priests, the nobles, and people of culture. the latter believed that the sun-god had at length absorbed all the various beings who had been manifested in the feudal divinities: these, in fact, had surrendered their original characteristics in order to become forms of the sun, amon as well as the others--and the new belief displayed itself in magnifying the solar deity, but the solar deity united with the theban amon, that is, amon-râ. the omnipotence of this one god did not, however, exclude a belief in the existence of his compeers; the theologians thought all the while that the beings to whom ancient generations had accorded a complete independence in respect of their rivals were nothing more than emanations from one supreme being. if local pride forced them to apply to this single deity the designation customarily used in their city--phtah at memphis, anhûri-shû at thinis, khnûmû in the neighbourhood of the first cataract--they were quite willing to allow, at the same time, that these appellations were but various masks for one face. phtah, hâpi, khnûmû, râ,--all the gods, in fact,--were blended with each other, and formed but one deity--a unique existence, multiple in his names, and mighty according to the importance of the city in which he was worshipped. hence amon, lord of the capital and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect, and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god of egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers. he did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead as he exercised over the living; he had delegated his functions in this respect to a goddess, marîtsakro, for whom the poorer inhabitants of the left bank entertained a persistent devotion. she was a kind of isis or hospitable hathor, whose subjects in the other world adapted themselves to the nebulous and dreary existence provided for their disembodied �doubles.� the osirian and solar doctrines were afterwards blended together in this local mythology, and from the xith dynasty onwards the theban nobility had adopted, along with the ceremonies in use in the memphite period, the heliopolitan beliefs concerning the wanderings of the soul in the west, its embarkation on the solar ship, and its resting-places in the fields of ialû. the rock-tombs of the xviiith dynasty demonstrate that the thebans had then no different concept of their life beyond the world from that entertained by the inhabitants of the most ancient cities: they ascribed to that existence the same inconsistent medley of contradictory ideas, from which each one might select what pleased him best--either repose in a well-provisioned tomb, or a dwelling close to osiris in the middle of a calm and agreeable paradise, or voyages with râ around the world.* * the pyramid texts are found for the most part in the tombs of nofirû and harhôtpû; the texts of the book of the dead are met with on the theban coffins of the same period. [illustration: .jpg decorated wrappings of a mummy] the fusion of râ and amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be out of harmony with the new views. the devout servant of amon, desirous of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick darkness of, hades. to this end he endeavoured to collect the formulae which would enable him to attain to this supreme happiness, and also inform him concerning the hidden mysteries of that obscure half of the world in which the sun dwelt between daylight and daylight, teaching him also how to make friends and supporters of the benevolent genii, and how to avoid or defeat the monsters whom he would encounter. the best known of the books relating to these mysteries contained a geographical description of the future world as it was described by the theban priests towards the end of the ramesside period; it was, in fact, an itinerary in which was depicted each separate region of the underworld, with its gates, buildings, and inhabitants.* * the monumental text of this book is found sculptured on a certain number of the tombs of the theban kings. it was first translated into english by birch, then into french by dévéria, and by maspero. the account of it given by the egyptian theologians did not exhibit much inventive genius. they had started with the theory that the sun, after setting exactly west of thebes, rose again due east of the city, and they therefore placed in the dark hemisphere all the regions of the universe which lay to the north of those two points of the compass. the first stage of the sun�s journey, after disappearing below the horizon, coincided with the period of twilight; the orb travelled along the open sky, diminishing the brightness of his fires as he climbed northward, and did not actually enter the underworld till he reached abydos, close to the spot where, at the �mouth of the cleft,� the souls of the faithful awaited him. as soon as he had received them into his boat, he plunged into the tunnel which there pierces the mountains, and the cities through which he first passed between abydos and the fayûm were known as the osirian fiefs. he continued his journey through them for the space of two hours, receiving the homage of the inhabitants, and putting such of the shades on shore as were predestined by their special devotion for the osiris of abydos and his associates, horus and anubis, to establish themselves in this territory. beyond heracleopolis, he entered the domains of the memphite gods, the �land of sokaris,� and this probably was the most perilous moment of his journey. [illustration: .jpg one of the mysterious books of amon] the feudatories of phtah were gathered together in grottoes, connected by a labyrinth of narrow passages through which even the most fully initiated were scarcely able to find their way; the luminous boat, instead of venturing within these catacombs, passed above them by mysterious tracks. the crew were unable to catch a glimpse of the sovereign through whose realm they journeyed, and they in like manner were invisible to him; he could only hear the voices of the divine sailors, and he answered them from the depth of the darkness. two hours were spent in this obscure passage, after which navigation became easier as the vessel entered the nomes subject to the osirises of the delta: four consecutive hours of sailing brought the bark from the province in which the four principal bodies of the god slept to that in which his four souls kept watch, and, as it passed, it illuminated the eight circles reserved for men and kings who worshipped the god of mendes. from the tenth hour onwards it directed its course due south, and passed through the aûgàrît, the place of fire and abysmal waters to which the heliopolitans consigned the souls of the impious; then finally quitting the tunnel, it soared up in the east with the first blush of dawn. each of the ordinary dead was landed at that particular hour of the twelve, which belonged to the god of his choice or of his native town. left to dwell there they suffered no absolute torment, but languished in the darkness in a kind of painful torpor, from which condition the approach of the bark alone was able to rouse them. they hailed its daily coming with acclamations, and felt new life during the hour in which its rays fell on them, breaking out into lamentations as the bark passed away and the light disappeared with it. the souls who were devotees of the sun escaped this melancholy existence; they escorted the god, reduced though he was to a mummied corpse, on his nightly cruise, and were piloted by him safe and sound to meet the first streaks of the new day. as the boat issued from the mountain in the morning between the two trees which flanked the gate of the east, these souls had their choice of several ways of spending the day on which they were about to enter. they might join their risen god in his course through the hours of light, and assist him in combating apophis and his accomplices, plunging again at night into hades without having even for a moment quitted his side. [illustration: .jpg the entrance to a royal tomb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph, by beato, of the tomb of ramses iv. [illustration: b.jpg one of the hours of the night] they might, on the other hand, leave him and once more enter the world of the living, settling themselves where they would, but always by preference in the tombs where their bodies awaited them, and where they could enjoy the wealth which had been accumulated there: they might walk within their garden, and sit beneath the trees they had planted; they could enjoy the open air beside the pond they had dug, and breathe the gentle north breeze on its banks after the midday heat, until the time when the returning evening obliged them to repair once more to abydos, and re-embark with the god in order to pass the anxious vigils of the night under his protection. thus from the earliest period of egyptian history the life beyond the tomb was an eclectic one, made up of a series of earthly enjoyments combined together. the pharaohs had enrolled themselves instinctively among the most ardent votaries of this complex doctrine. their relationship to the sun made its adoption a duty, and its profession was originally, perhaps, one of the privileges of their position. râ invited them on board because they were his children, subsequently extending this favour to those whom they should deem worthy to be associated with them, and thus become companions of the ancient deceased kings of upper and lower egypt.* * this is apparently what we gather from the picture inserted in chapter xvii. of the �book of the dead,� where we see the kings of upper and lower egypt guiding the divine bark and the deceased with them. the idea which the egyptians thus formed of the other world, and of the life of the initiated within it, reacted gradually on their concept of the tomb and of its befitting decoration. they began to consider the entrances to the pyramid, and its internal passages and chambers, as a conventional representation of the gates, passages, and halls of hades itself; when the pyramid passed out of fashion, and they had replaced it by a tomb cut in the rock in one or other of the branches of the bab el-moluk valley, the plan of construction which they chose was an exact copy of that employed by the memphites and earlier thebans, and they hollowed out for themselves in the mountain-side a burying-place on the same lines as those formerly employed within the pyramidal structure. the relative positions of the tunnelled tombs along the valley were not determined by any order of rank or of succession to the throne; each pharaoh after ramses i. set to work on that part of the rock where the character of the stone favoured his purpose, and displayed so little respect for his predecessors, that the workmen, after having tunnelled a gallery, were often obliged to abandon it altogether, or to change the direction of their excavations so as to avoid piercing a neighbouring tomb. the architect�s design was usually a mere project which could be modified at will, and, which he did not feel bound to carry out with fidelity; the actual measurements of the tomb of ramses iv. are almost everywhere at variance with the numbers and arrangement of the working drawing of it which has been preserved to us in a papyrus. the general disposition of the royal tombs, however, is far from being complicated; we have at the entrance the rectangular door, usually surmounted by the sun, represented by a yellow disk, before which the sovereign kneels with his hands raised in the posture of adoration; this gave access to a passage sloping gently downwards, and broken here and there by a level landing and steps, leading to a first chamber of varying amplitude, at the further end of which a second passage opened which descended to one or more apartments, the last of which, contained the coffin. the oldest rock-tombs present some noteworthy exceptions to this plan, particularly those of seti i. and ramses iii.; but from the time of ramses iv., there is no difference to be remarked in them except in the degree of finish of the wall-paintings or in the length of the passages. the shortest of the latter extends some fifty-two feet into the rock, while the longest never exceeds three hundred and ninety feet. the same artifices which had been used by the pyramid-builders to defeat the designs of robbers--false mummy-pits, painted and sculptured walls built across passages, stairs concealed under a movable stone in the corner of a chamber--were also employed by the theban engineers. the decoration of the walls was suggested, as in earlier times, by the needs of the royal soul, with this difference--that the thebans set themselves to render visible to his eyes by paintings that which the memphites had been content to present to his intelligence in writing, so that the pharaoh could now see what his ancestors had been able merely to read on the walls of their tombs. where the inscribed texts in the burial-chamber of unas state that unas, incarnate in the sun, and thus representing osiris, sails over the waters on high or glides into the elysian fields, the sculptured or painted scenes in the interior of the theban catacombs display to the eye ramses occupying the place of the god in the solar bark and in the fields of laid. where the walls of unas bear only the prayers recited over the mummy for the opening of his mouth, for the restoration of the use of his limbs, for his clothing, perfuming, and nourishment, we see depicted on those of seti i. or ramses iv. the mummies of these kings and the statues of their doubles in the hands of the priests, who are portrayed in the performance of these various offices. the starry ceilings of the pyramids reproduce the aspect of the sky, but without giving the names of the stars: on the ceilings of some of the ramesside rock-tombs, on the other hand, the constellations are represented, each with its proper figure, while astronomical tables give the position of the heavenly bodies at intervals of fifteen days, so that the soul could tell at a glance into what region of the firmament the course of the bark would bring him each night. in the earlier ramesside tombs, under seti i. and ramses ii., the execution of these subjects shows evidence of a care and skill which are quite marvellous, and both figures and hieroglyphics betray the hand of accomplished artists. but in the tomb of ramses iii. the work has already begun to show signs of inferiority, and the majority of the scenes are coloured in a very summary fashion; a raw yellow predominates, and the tones of the reds and blues remind us of a child�s first efforts at painting. this decline is even more marked under the succeeding ramessides; the drawing has deteriorated, the tints have become more and more crude, and the latest paintings seem but a lamentable caricature of the earlier ones. the courtiers and all those connected with the worship of amon-râ--priests, prophets, singers, and functionaries connected with the necropolis--shared the same belief with regard to the future world as their sovereign, and they carried their faith in the sun�s power to the point of identifying themselves with him after death, and of substituting the name of râ for that of osiris; they either did not venture, however, to go further than this, or were unable to introduce into their tombs all that we find in the bab el-moluk. they confined themselves to writing briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the �book of the dead,� a copy of the �book of knowing what there is in hades,� or of some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed. hastily prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory illustrations. the representations of the gods in them are but little better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs. although amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the egyptians: the other divinities previously associated with him still held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with a more decided personality. the goddess regarded as his partner was at first represented as childless, in spite of the name of maût or mût--the mother--by which she was invoked, and amon was supposed to have adopted montû, the god of hermonthis, in order to complete his triad. montû, however, formerly the sovereign of the theban plain, and lord over amon himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine son. [illustration: .jpg khonsÛ* and temple of khonsÛ**.] * drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze statuette in the gizeh museum. ** drawn by thuillier: a is the pylon, b the court, c the hypostyle hall, e the passage isolating the sanctuary, d the sanctuary, f the opisthodomos with its usual chambers. the priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage of lesser importance, named khonsû, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. how they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with osiris and thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the xixth dynasty drew to its close. khonsû, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing montû, but finally supplanting him in the third place of the triad. from the time of sesostris onwards, theban dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with amon-râ and mût the divine mother. * it is possible that this assimilation originated in the fact that khonsû is derived from the verb �khonsû,� to navigate: khonsû would thus have been he who crossed the heavens in his bark--that is, the moon-god. [illustration: .jpg the temple of khonsÛ at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. it was now incumbent on the pharaoh to erect to this newly made favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the rank to which his votaries had exalted him. to this end, ramses iii. chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of karnak, close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.* * the proof that the temple was founded by ramses iii. is furnished by the inscriptions of the sanctuary and the surrounding chambers. its proportions are by no means perfect, the sculpture is wanting in refinement, the painting is coarse, and the masonry was so faulty, that it was found necessary in several places to cover it with a coat of stucco before the bas-reliefs could be carved on the walls; yet, in spite of all this, its general arrangement is so fine, that it may well be regarded, in preference to other more graceful or magnificent buildings, as the typical temple of the theban period. it is divided into two parts, separated from each other by a solid wall. in the centre of the smaller of these is placed the holy of holies, which opens at both ends into a passage ten feet in width, isolating it from the surrounding buildings. to the right and left of the sanctuary are dark chambers, and behind it is a hall supported by four columns, into which open seven small apartments. this formed the dwelling-place of the god and his compeers. the sanctuary communicates, by means of two doors placed in the southern wall, with a hypostyle hall of greater width than depth, divided by its pillars into a nave and two aisles. the four columns of the nave are twenty-three feet in height, and have bell-shaped capitals, while those of the aisles, two on either side, are eighteen feet high, and are crowned with lotiform capitals. [illustration: .jpg the court of the temple of khonsÛ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the roof of the nave was thus five feet higher than those of the aisles, and in the clear storey thus formed, stone gratings, similar to those in the temple of amon, admitted light to the building. the courtyard, surrounded by a fine colonnade of two rows of columns, was square, and was entered by four side posterns in addition to the open gateway at the end placed between two quadrangular towers. [illustration: .jpg the colonnade built by thÛtmosis iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. this pylon measures feet in length, and is feet inches wide, by feet high. it contains no internal chambers, but merely a narrow staircase which leads to the top of the doorway, and thence to the summit of the towers. four long angular grooves run up the façade of the towers to a height of about twenty feet from the ground, and are in the same line with a similar number of square holes which pierce the thickness of the building higher up. in these grooves were placed venetian masts, made of poles spliced together and held in their place by means of hooks and wooden stays which projected from the four holes; these masts were to carry at their tops pennons of various colours. such was the temple of khonsû, and the majority of the great theban buildings--at luxor, qurneh, and bamesseum, or medinet-uabu--were constructed on similar lines. even in their half-ruined condition there is something oppressive and uncanny in their appearance. the gods loved to shroud themselves in mystery, and, therefore, the plan of the building was so arranged as to render the transition almost imperceptible from the blinding sunlight outside to the darkness of their retreat within. in the courtyard, we are still surrounded by vast spaces to which air and light have free access. the hypostyle hall, however, is pervaded by an appropriate twilight, the sanctuary is veiled in still deeper darkness, while in the chambers beyond reigns an almost perpetual night. the effect produced by this gradation of obscurity was intensified by constructional artifices. the different parts of the building are not all on the same ground-level, the pavement rising as the sanctuary is approached, and the rise is concealed by a few steps placed at intervals. the difference of level in the temple of khonsû is not more than five feet three inches, but it is combined with a still more considerable lowering of the height of the roof. from the pylon to the wall at the further end the height decreases as we go on; the peristyle is more lofty than the hypostyle hall, this again is higher than the sanctuary and the hall of columns, and the chamber beyond it drops still further in altitude.* * this is �the law of progressive diminution of heights� of perrot-chipiez. karnak is an exception to this rule; this temple had in the course of centuries undergone so many restorations and additions, that it formed a collection of buildings rather than a single edifice. it might have been regarded, as early as the close of the theban empire, as a kind of museum, in which every century and every period of art, from the xiith dynasty downwards, had left its distinctive mark.* * a on the plan denotes the xiith dynasty temple; b is the great hypostyle hall of seti i. and ramses ii.; c the temple of ramses iii. [illustration: .jpg the temple of amon at karnak] all the resources of architecture had been brought into requisition during this period to vary, at the will of each sovereign, the arrangement and the general effect of the component parts. columns with sixteen sides stand in the vicinity of square pillars, and lotiform capitals alternate with those of the bell-shape; attempts were even made to introduce new types altogether. the architect who built at the back of the sanctuary what is now known as the colonnade of thûtmosis iii., attempted to invert the bell-shaped capital; the bell was turned downwards, and the neck attached to the plinth, while the mouth rested on the top of the shaft. this awkward arrangement did not meet with favour, for we find it nowhere repeated; other artists, however, with better taste, sought at this time to apply the flowers symbolical of upper and lower egypt to the decorations of the shafts. in front of the sanctuary of karnak two pillars are still standing which have on them in relief representations respectively of the fullblown lotus and the papyrus. a building composed of so many incongruous elements required frequent restoration--a wall which had been undermined by water needed strengthening, a pylon displaying cracks claimed attention, some unsafe colonnade, or a colossus which had been injured by the fall of a cornice, required shoring up--so that no sooner had the corvée for repairs completed their work in one part, than they had to begin again elsewhere. [illustration: .jpg the two stele-pillars at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the revenues of amon must, indeed, have been enormous to have borne the continual drain occasioned by restoration, and the resources of the god would soon have been exhausted had not foreign wars continued to furnish him during several centuries with all or more than he needed. the gods had suffered severely in the troublous times which had followed the reign of seti ii., and it required all the generosity of ramses iii. to compensate them for the losses they had sustained during the anarchy under arisû. the spoil taken from the libyans, from the peoples of the sea, and from the hittites had flowed into the sacred treasuries, while the able administration of the sovereign had done the rest, so that on the accession of ramses iv. the temples were in a more prosperous state than ever.* they held as their own property towns, nine of which were in syria and ethiopia; they possessed , slaves of both sexes, , head of cattle, , , arurse of land, vineyards and orchards, barks and sea-going vessels, kilograms of gold both in ingots and wrought, , , grammes of silver, besides quantities of copper and precious stones, and hundreds of storehouses in which they kept corn, oil, wine, honey, and preserved meats--the produce of their domains. two examples will suffice to show the extent of this latter item: the live geese reached the number of , , and the salt or smoked fish that of , .** amon claimed the giant share of this enormous total, and three-fourths of it or more were reserved for his use, namely--- , slaves, , head of cattle, , _arurse_ of cornland, vineyards and orchards, and egyptian towns. the nine foreign towns all belonged to him, and one of them contained the temple in which he was worshipped by the syrians whenever they came to pay their tribute to the king�s representatives: it was but just that his patrimony should surpass that of his compeers, since the conquering pharaohs owed their success to him, who, without the co-operation of the other feudal deities, had lavished victories upon them. * the donations of ramses iii., or rather the total of the donations made to the gods by the predecessors of that pharaoh, and confirmed and augmented by him, are enumerated at length in the _great harris papyrus_. ** an abridgement of these donations occupies seven large plates in the _great harris papyrus_. his domain was at least five times more considerable than that of râ of heliopolis, and ten times greater than that of the memphite phtah, and yet of old, in the earlier times of history, râ and phtah were reckoned the wealthiest of the egyptian gods. it is easy to understand the influence which a god thus endowed with the goods of this world exercised over men in an age when the national wars had the same consequences for the immortals as for their worshippers, and when the defeat of a people was regarded as a proof of the inferiority of its patron gods. the most victorious divinity became necessarily the wealthiest, before whom all other deities bowed, and whom they, as well as their subjects, were obliged to serve. so powerful a god as amon had but few obstacles to surmount before becoming the national deity; indeed, he was practically the foremost of the gods during the ramesside period, and was generally acknowledged as egypt�s representative by all foreign nations.* his priests shared in the prestige he enjoyed, and their influence in state affairs increased proportionately with his power. * from the xviiith dynasty, at least, the first prophet of amon had taken the precedence of the high priests of heliopolis and memphis, as is proved by the position he occupies in the egyptian hierarchy in the _hood papyrus_. the chief of their hierarchy, however, did not bear the high titles which in ancient times distinguished those of memphis and heliopolis; he was content with the humble appellation of first prophet of amon. he had for several generations been nominated by the sovereign, but he was generally chosen from the families attached hereditarily or otherwise to the temple of karnak, and must previously have passed through every grade of the priestly hierarchy. those who aspired to this honour had to graduate as �divine fathers;� this was the first step in the initiation, and one at which many were content to remain, but the more ambitious or favoured advanced by successive stages to the dignity of third, and then of second, prophet before attaining to the highest rank.* * what we know on this subject has been brought to light mainly by the inscriptions on the statue of baûkûni-khonsû at munich, published and commented on by dévéria, and by lauth. the cursus honorum of ramâ shows us that he was first third, then second prophet of amon, before being raised to the pontificate in the reign of mînephtah. the pharaohs of the xixth dynasty jealously supervised the promotions made in the theban temples, and saw that none was elected except him who was devoted to their interests--such as, for example, baûkûni-khonsû and unnofri under ramses ii. baûkûni-khonsû distinguished himself by his administrative qualities; if he did not actually make the plans for the hypostyle hall at karnak, he appears at least to have superintended its execution and decoration. he finished the great pylon, erected the obelisks and gateways, built the _bari_ or vessel of the god, and found a further field for his activity on the opposite bank of the nile, where he helped to complete both the chapel at qurneh and also the ramesseum. ramses ii. had always been able to make his authority felt by the high priests who succeeded baûkûni-khonsû, but the pharaohs who followed him did not hold the reins with such a strong hand. as early as the reigns of mînephtah and seti ii. the first prophets, raî and ramâ, claimed the right of building at karnak for their own purposes, and inscribed on the walls long inscriptions in which their own panegyrics took precedence of that of the sovereign; they even aspired to a religious hegemony, and declared themselves to be the �chief of all the prophets of the gods of the south and north.� we do not know what became of them during the usurpation of arisû, but nakhtû-ramses, son of miribastît, who filled the office during the reign of ramses iii., revived these ambitious projects as soon as the state of egypt appeared to favour them. the king, however pious he might be, was not inclined to yield up any of his authority, even though it were to the earthly delegate of the divinity whom he reverenced before all others; the sons of the pharaoh were, however, more accommodating, and nakhtû-ramses played his part so well that he succeeded in obtaining from them the reversion of the high priesthood for his son amenôthes. the priestly office, from having been elective, was by this stroke suddenly made hereditary in the family. the kings preserved, it is true, the privilege of confirming the new appointment, and the nominee was not considered properly qualified until he had received his investiture from the sovereign.* * this is proved by the maunier stele, now in the louvre; it is there related how the high priest manakh-pirrî received his investiture from the tanite king. practically the pharaohs lost the power of choosing one among the sons of the deceased pontiff; they were forced to enthrone the eldest of his survivors, and legalise his accession by their approbation, even when they would have preferred another. it was thus that a dynasty of vassal high priests came to be established at thebes side by side with the royal dynasty of the pharaohs. the new priestly dynasty was not long in making its power felt in thebes. nakhtû-ramses and amenôthes lived to a great age--from the reign of ramses iii. to that of ramses x., at the least; they witnessed the accession of nine successive pharaohs, and the unusual length of their pontificates no doubt increased the already extraordinary prestige which they enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of egypt. it seemed as if the god delighted to prolong the lives of his representatives beyond the ordinary limits, while shortening those of the temporal sovereigns. when the reigns of the pharaohs began once more to reach their normal length, the authority of amenôthes had become so firmly established that no human power could withstand it, and the later ramessides were merely a set of puppet kings who were ruled by him and his successors. not only was there a cessation of foreign expeditions, but the delta, memphis, and ethiopia were alike neglected, and the only activity displayed by these pharaohs, as far as we can gather from their monuments, was confined to the service of amon and khonsû at thebes. the lack of energy and independence in these sovereigns may not, however, be altogether attributable to their feebleness of character; it is possible that they would gladly have entered on a career of conquest had they possessed the means. it is always a perilous matter to allow the resources of a country to fall into the hands of a priesthood, and to place its military forces at the same time in the hands of the chief religious authority. the warrior pharaohs had always had at their disposal the spoils obtained from foreign nations to make up the deficit which their constant gifts to the temples were making in the treasury. the sons of ramses iii., on the other hand, had suspended all military efforts, without, however, lessening their lavish gifts to the gods, and they must, in the absence of the spoils of war, have drawn to a considerable extent upon the ordinary resources of the country; their successors therefore found the treasury impoverished, and they would have been entirely at a loss for money had they attempted to renew the campaigns or continue the architectural work of their forefathers. the priests of amon had not as yet suffered materially from this diminution of revenue, for they possessed property throughout the length and breadth of egypt, but they were obliged to restrict their expenditure, and employ the sums formerly used for the enlarging of the temples on the maintenance of their own body. meanwhile public works had been almost everywhere suspended; administrative discipline became relaxed, and disturbances, with which the police were unable to cope, were increasing in all the important towns. nothing is more indicative of the state to which egypt was reduced, under the combined influence of the priesthood and the ramessides, than the thefts and pillaging of which the theban necropolis was then the daily scene. the robbers no longer confined themselves to plundering the tombs of private persons; they attacked the royal burying-places, and their depredations were carried on for years before they were discovered. in the reign of ramses ix., an inquiry, set on foot by amenôthes, revealed the fact that the tomb of sovkûmsaûf i. and his wife, queen nûbk-hâs, had been rifled, that those of amenôthes i. and of antuf iv. had been entered by tunnelling, and that some dozen other royal tombs in the cemetery of drah abu�l neggah were threatened.* * the principal part of this inquiry constitutes the _abbott papyrus_, acquired and published by the british museum, first examined and made the subject of study by birch, translated simultaneously into french by maspero and by chabas, into german by lauth and by erman. other papyri relate to the same or similar occurrences, such as the salt and amherst papyri published by chabas, and also the liverpool papyri, of which we possess merely scattered notices in the writings of goodwin, and particularly in those of spiegelberg. the severe means taken to suppress the evil were not, however, successful; the pillagings soon began afresh, and the reigns of the last three ramessides between the robbers and the authorities, were marked by a struggle in which the latter did not always come off triumphant. [illustration: .jpg ramses ix.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. a system of repeated inspections secured the valley of biban el-moluk from marauders,* but elsewhere the measures of defence employed were unavailing, and the necropolis was given over to pillage, although both amenôthes and hrihor had used every effort to protect it. * graffiti which are evidences of these inspections have been drawn on the walls of several royal tombs by the inspectors. others have been found on several of the coffins discovered at deîr el-baharî, e.g. on those of seti i. and ramses ii.; the most ancient belong to the pontificate of hrihor, others belong to the xxist dynasty. hrihor appears to have succeeded immediately after amenôthes, and his accession to the pontificate gave his family a still more exalted position in the country. as his wife nozmit was of royal blood, he assumed titles and functions to which his father and grandfather had made no claim. he became the �royal son� of ethiopia and commander-in-chief of the national and foreign troops; he engraved his name upon the monuments he decorated, side by side with that of ramses xii.; in short, he possessed all the characteristics of a pharaoh except the crown and the royal protocol. a century scarcely had elapsed since the abdication of ramses iii., and now thebes and the whole of egypt owned two masters: one the embodiment of the ancient line, but a mere nominal king; the other the representative of amon, and the actual ruler of the country. what then happened when the last ramses who bore the kingly title was gathered to his fathers? the royal lists record the accession after his death of a new dynasty of tanitic origin, whose founder was nsbindidi or smendes; but, on the other hand, we gather from the theban monuments that the crown was seized by hrihor, who reigned over the southern provinces contemporaneously with smendes. hrihor boldly assumed as prenomen his title of �first prophet of amon,� and his authority was acknowledged by ethiopia, over which he was viceroy, as well as by the nomes forming the temporal domain of the high priests. the latter had acquired gradually, either by marriage or inheritance, fresh territory for the god, in the lands of the princes of nekhabît, kop-tos, akhmîm, and abydos, besides the domains of some half-dozen feudal houses who, from force of circumstances, had become sacerdotal families; the extinction of the direct line of ramessides now secured the high priests the possession of thebes itself, and of all the lands within the southern provinces which were the appanage of the crown. [illustration: .jpg hrihor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. they thus, in one way or another, became the exclusive masters of the southern half of the nile valley, from elephantine to siut; beyond siut also they had managed to acquire suzerainty over the town of khobît, and the territory belonging to it formed an isolated border province in the midst of the independent baronies.* * the extent of the principality of thebes under the high priests has been determined by means of the sacerdotal titles of the theban princesses. the representative of the dynasty reigning at tanis held the remainder of egypt from shit to the mediterranean--the half belonging to the memphite phtah and the helio-politan râ, as opposed to that assigned to anion. the origin of this tanite sovereign is uncertain, but it would appear that he was of more exalted rank than his rival in the south. the official chronicling of events was marked by the years of his reign, and the chief acts of the government were carried out in his name even in the thebaid.* repeated inundations had caused the ruin of part of the temple of karnak, and it was by the order and under the auspices of this prince that all the resources of the country were employed to accomplish the much-needed restoration.** * i have pointed out that the years of the reign mentioned in the inscriptions of the high priests and the kings of the sacerdotal line must be attributed to their suzerains, the kings of tanis. hrihor alone seems to have been an exception, since to him are attributed the dates inscribed in the name of the king siamon: m. daressy, however, will not admit this, and asserts that this siamon was a tanite sovereign who must not be identified with hrihor, and must be placed at least two or three generations later than the last of the ramessides. * the real name nsbindidi and the first monument of the manethonian smendes were discovered in the quarries of dababîeh, opposite gebelên. it would have been impossible for him to have exercised any authority over so rich and powerful a personage as hrihor had he not possessed rights to the crown, before which even the high priests of amon were obliged to bow, and hence it has been supposed that he was a descendant of ramses ii. the descendants of this sovereign were doubtless divided into at least two branches, one of which had just become extinct, leaving no nearer heir than hrihor, while another, of which there were many ramifications, had settled in the delta. the majority of these descendants had become mingled with the general population, and had sunk to the condition of private individuals; they had, however, carefully preserved the tradition of their origin, and added proudly to their name the qualification of royal son of ramses. they were degenerate scions of the ramessides, and had neither the features nor the energy of their ancestor. one of them, zodphta-haûfônkhi, whose mummy was found at deîr el-baharî, appears to have been tall and vigorous, but the head lacks the haughty refinement which characterizes those of seti i. and ramses ii., and the features are heavy and coarse, having a vulgar, commonplace expression. [illustration: .jpg zodphtahaufonkhi, royal son of ramses] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by insinger. it seems probable that one branch of the family, endowed with greater capability than the rest, was settled at tanis, where sesostris had, as we have seen, resided for many years; smendes was the first of this branch to ascend the throne. the remembrance of his remote ancestor, ramses il, which was still treasured up in the city he had completely rebuilt, as well as in the delta into which he had infused new life, was doubtless of no small service in securing the crown for his descendant, when, the line of the theban kings having come to an end, the tanites put in their claim to the succession. we are unable to discover if war broke out between the two competitors, or if they arrived at an agreement without a struggle; but, at all events, we may assume that, having divided egypt between them, neither of them felt himself strong enough to overcome his rival, and contented himself with the possession of half the empire, since he could not possess it in its entirety. we may fairly believe that smendes had the greater right to the throne, and, above all, the more efficient army of the two, since, had it been otherwise, hrihor would never have consented to yield him the priority. the unity of egypt was, to outward appearances, preserved, through the nominal possession by smendes of the suzerainty; but, as a matter of fact, it had ceased to exist, and the fiction of the two kingdoms had become a reality for the first time within the range of history. henceforward there were two egypts, governed by different constitutions and from widely remote centres. theban egypt was, before all things, a community recognizing a theocratic government, in which the kingly office was merged in that of the high priest. separated from asia by the length of the delta, it turned its attention, like the pharaohs of the vith and xiith dynasties, to ethiopia, and owing to its distance from the mediterranean, and from the new civilization developed on its shores, it became more and more isolated, till at length it was reduced to a purely african state. northern egypt, on the contrary, maintained contact with european and asiatic nations; it took an interest in their future, it borrowed from them to a certain extent whatever struck it as being useful or beautiful, and when the occasion presented itself, it acted in concert with mediterranean powers. there was an almost constant struggle between these two divisions of the empire, at times breaking out into an open rupture, to end as often in a temporary re-establishment of unity. at one time ethiopia would succeed in annexing egypt, and again egypt would seize some part of ethiopia; but the settlement of affairs was never final, and the conflicting elements, brought with difficulty into harmony, relapsed into their usual condition at the end of a few years. a kingdom thus divided against itself could never succeed in maintaining its authority over those provinces which, even in the heyday of its power, had proved impatient of its yoke. asia was associated henceforward in the minds of the egyptians with painful memories of thwarted ambitions, rather than as offering a field for present conquest. they were pursued by the memories of their former triumphs, and the very monuments of their cities recalled what they were anxious to forget. wherever they looked within their towns they encountered the representation of some asiatic scene; they read the names of the cities of syria on the walls of their temples; they saw depicted on them its princes and its armies, whose defeat was recorded by the inscriptions as well as the tribute which they had been forced to pay. the sense of their own weakness prevented the egyptians from passing from useless regrets to action; when, however, one or other of the pharaohs felt sufficiently secure on the throne to carry his troops far afield, he was always attracted to syria, and crossed her frontiers, often, alas! merely to encounter defeat. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] chapter ii--the rise of the assyrian empire _phoenicia and the northern nations after the death op ramses iii.--the first assyrian empire: tiglath-pilesur i.--the aramÆans and the khÂti._ _the continuance of egyptian influence over syrian civilization after the death of ramses iii.--egyptian myths in phoenicia: osiris and isis at byblos--horus, thot, and the origin of the egyptian alphabet--the tombs at arvad and the kabr-hiram; egyptian designs in phoenician glass and goldsmiths�work--commerce with egypt, the withdrawal of phoenician colonies in the Ægean sea and the achæans in cyprus; maritime expeditions in the western mediterranean._ _northern syria: the decadence of the hittites and the steady growth of the aramæan tribes--the decline of the babylonian empire under the cossæan kings, and its relations with egypt: assuruballit, bammdn-nirdri i. and the first assyrian conquests--assyria, its climate, provinces, and cities: the god assur and his ishtar--the wars against chaldæa: shalmaneser i., tulculi-ninip i., and the taking of babylon--belchadrezzar and the last of the cosssæans._ _the dynasty of pashê: nebuchadrezzar i., his disputes with elam, his defeat by assurrîshishî--the legend of the first assyrian empire, ninos and semiramis--the assyrians and their political constitution: the limmu, the king and his divine character, his hunting and his wars--the assyrian army: the infantry and chariotry, the crossing of rivers, mode of marching in the plains and in the mountain districts--camps, battles, sieges; cruelty shown to the vanquished, the destruction of towns and the removal of the inhabitants, the ephemeral character of the assyrian conquests._ _tiglath pileser i.: ms campaign against the mushhu, his conquest of kurhhi and of the regions of the zab--the petty asiatic kingdoms and their civilization: art and writing in the old hittite states--tiglath-pileser i. in nairi and in syria: his triumphal stele at sebbeneh-su--his buildings, his hunts, his conquest of babylon--merodach-nadin-akhi and the close of the pashê dynasty--assur-belkala and samsi-rammân iii.: the decline of assyria--syria without a foreign rider: the incapacity of the khdti to give unity to the country._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter ii--the rise of the assyrian empire _phoenicia and the northern nations after the death of ramses iii.--the first assyrian empire: tiglath-pileser i.--the aramoans and the khâti._ the cessation of egyptian authority over countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression which it had made upon their constitution and customs. while the nobles and citizens of thebes were adopting the imported worship of baal and astartê, and were introducing into the spoken and written language words borrowed from semitic speech, the syrians, on the other hand, were not unreceptive of the influence of their conquerors. they had applied themselves zealously to the study of egyptian arts, industry and religion, and had borrowed from these as much, at least, as they had lent to the dwellers on the nile. the ancient babylonian foundation of their civilization was not, indeed, seriously modified, but it was covered over, so to speak, with an african veneer which varied in depth according to the locality.* * most of the views put forth in this part of the chapter are based on posterior and not contemporary data. the most ancient monuments which give evidence of it show it in such a complete state that we may fairly ascribe it to some centuries earlier; that is, to the time when egypt still ruled in syria, the period of the xixth and even the xviiith dynasty. phoenicia especially assumed and retained this foreign exterior. its merchants, accustomed to establish themselves for lengthened periods in the principal trade-centres on the nile, had become imbued therein with something of the religious ideas and customs of the land, and on returning to their own country had imported these with them and propagated them in their neighbourhood. they were not content with other household utensils, furniture, and jewellery than those to which they had been accustomed on the nile, and even the phonician gods seemed to be subject to this appropriating mania, for they came to be recognised in the indigenous deities of the said and the delta. there was, at the outset, no trait in the character of baalat by which she could be assimilated to isis or hathor: she was fierce, warlike, and licentious, and wept for her lover, while the egyptian goddesses were accustomed to shed tears for their husbands only. it was this element of a common grief, however, which served to associate the phonician and egyptian goddesses, and to produce at length a strange blending of their persons and the legends concerning them; the lady of byblos ended in becoming an isis or a hathor,* and in playing the part assigned to the latter in the osirian drama. * the assimilation must have been ancient, since the egyptians of the theban dynasties already accepted baalat as the hathor of byblos. [illustration: .jpg the tree growing on the tomb of osiris] drawn by faucher-gudin, from prisse d�avennes this may have been occasioned by her city having maintained closer relationships than the southern towns with bûto and mendes, or by her priests having come to recognise a fundamental agreement between their theology and that of egypt. in any case, it was at byblos that the most marked and numerous, as well as the most ancient, examples of borrowing from the religions of the nile were to be found. the theologians of byblos imagined that the coffin of osiris, after it had been thrown into the sea by typhon, had been thrown up on the land somewhere near their city at the foot of a tamarisk, and that this tree, in its rapid growth, had gradually enfolded within its trunk the body and its case. king malkander cut it down in order to use it as a support for the roof of his palace: a marvellous perfume rising from it filled the apartments, and it was not long before the prodigy was bruited abroad. isis, who was travelling through the world in quest of her husband, heard of it, and at once realised its meaning: clad in rags and weeping, she sat down by the well whither the women of byblos were accustomed to come every morning and evening to draw water, and, being interrogated by them, refused to reply; but when the maids of queen astartê* approached in their turn, they were received by the goddess in the most amiable manner--isis deigning even to plait their hair, and to communicate to them the odour of myrrh with which she herself was impregnated. * astartê is the name taken by the queen in the phoenician version: the egyptian counterpart of the same narrative substituted for it nemanous or saôsis; that is to say, the two principal forms of hathor--the hermopolitan nahmâûît and the heliopolitan lûsasît. it would appear from the presence of these names that there must have been in egypt two versions at least of the phoenician adventures of isis--the one of hermopolitan and the other of heliopolitan origin. their mistress came to see the stranger who had thus treated her servants, took her into her service, and confided to her the care of her lately born son. isis became attached to the child, adopted it for her own, after the egyptian manner, by inserting her finger in its mouth; and having passed it through the fire during the night in order to consume away slowly anything of a perishable nature in its body, metamorphosed herself into a swallow, and flew around the miraculous pillar uttering plaintive cries. astartê came upon her once while she was bathing the child in the flame, and broke by her shrieks of fright the charm of immortality. isis was only able to reassure her by revealing her name and the object of her presence there. she opened the mysterious tree-trunk, anointed it with essences, and wrapping it in precious cloths, transmitted it to the priests of byblos, who deposited it respectfully in their temple: she put the coffin which it contained on board ship, and brought it, after many adventures, into egypt. another tradition asserts, however, that osiris never found his way back to his country: he was buried at byblos, this tradition maintained, and it was in his honour that the festivals attributed by the vulgar to the young adonis were really celebrated. a marvellous fact seemed to support this view. every year a head of papyrus, thrown into the sea at some unknown point of the delta, was carried for six days along the syrian coast, buffeted by wind and waves, and on the seventh was thrown up at byblos, where the priests received it and exhibited it solemnly to the people.* the details of these different stories are not in every case very ancient, but the first fact in them carries us back to the time when byblos had accepted the sovereignty of the theban dynasties, and was maintaining daily commercial and political relations with the inhabitants of the nile valley.** * in the later roman period it was letters announcing the resurrection of adonis-osiris that the alexandrian women cast into the sea, and these were carried by the current as far as byblos. see on this subject the commentaries of cyril of alexandra and procopius of gaza on chap, xviii. of isaiah. ** it is worthy of note that philo gives to the divinity with the egyptian name taautos the part in the ancient history of phoenicia of having edited the mystic writings put in order by sanchoniathon at a very early epoch. the city proclaimed horus to be a great god.* el-kronos allied himself with osiris as well as with adonis; isis and baalat became blended together at their first encounter, and the respective peoples made an exchange of their deities with the same light-heartedness as they displayed in trafficking with the products of their soil or their industry. * this is confirmed by one of the names inscribed on the tel el-amarna tablets as being that of a governor of byblos under amenôthes iv. this name was read rabimur, anrabimur, or ilrabimur, and finally ilurabihur: the meaning of it is, �muru is the great god,� or �horus is the great god.� muru is the name which we find in an appellation of a hittite king, maurusaru, �mauru is king.� on an aramoan cylinder in the british museum, representing a god in assyrian dress fighting with two griffins, there is the inscription �horkhu,� harmakhis. [illustration: .jpg the phoenician horus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an intaglio engraved in cesnola. the phoenician figures of horus and thot which i have reproduced were pointed out to me by my friend clermont-ganneau. after osiris, the ibis thot was the most important among the deities who had emigrated to asia. he was too closely connected with the osirian cycle to be forgotten by the phoenicians after they had adopted his companions. we are ignorant of the particular divinity with whom he was identified, or would be the more readily associated from some similarity in the pronunciation of his name: we know only that he still preserved in his new country all the power of his voice and all the subtilty of his mind. he occupied there also the position of scribe and enchanter, as he had done at thebes, memphis, thinis, and before the chief of each heliopolitan ennead. he became the usual adviser of el-kronos at byblos, as he had been of osiris and horus; he composed charms for him, and formulae which increased the warlike zeal of his partisans; he prescribed the form and insignia of the god and of his attendant deities, and came finally to be considered as the inventor of letters.* * the part of counsellor which thot played in connexion with the god of byblos was described at some length in the writings attributed to sankhoniathon. [illustration: .jpg the phoenician thot] drawn by faucher-gudin, after an intaglio engraved in m. de vogué. the epoch, indeed, in which he became a naturalised phoenician coincides approximately with a fundamental revolution in the art of writing--that in which a simple and rapid stenography was substituted for the complicated and tedious systems with which the empires of the ancient world had been content from their origin. tyre, sidon, byblos, arvad, had employed up to this period the most intricate of these systems. like most of the civilized nations of western asia, they had conducted their diplomatic and commercial correspondence in the cuneiform character impressed upon clay tablets. their kings had had recourse to a babylonian model for communicating to the amenôthes pharaohs the expression of their wishes or their loyalty; we now behold them, after an interval of four hundred years and more*--during which we have no examples of their monuments--possessed of a short and commodious script, without the encumbrance of ideograms, determinatives, polyphony and syllabic sounds, such as had fettered the egyptian and chaldæan scribes, in spite of their cleverness in dealing with them. phonetic articulations were ultimately resolved into twenty-two sounds, to each of which a special sign was attached, which collectively took the place of the hundreds or thousands of signs formerly required. * the inscription on the bronze cup dedicated to the baal of the lebanon, goes back probably to the time of hiram i., say the xth century before our era; the reasons advanced by winckler for dating it in the time of hiram ii. have not been fully accepted up to the present. by placing the introduction of the alphabet somewhere between amenôthes iv. in the xvth and hiram i. in the xth century before our era, and by taking the middle date between them, say the accession of the xxis�dynasty towards the year b.c. for its invention or adoption, we cannot go far wrong one way or the other. [illustration: .jpg one of the most ancient phoenician inscriptions] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a heliogravure. this is the cup of the baal of the lebanon. this was an alphabet, the first in point of time, but so ingenious and so pliable that the majority of ancient and modern nations have found it able to supply all their needs--greeks and europeans of the western mediterranean on the one hand, and semites of all kinds, persians and hindus on the other. [illustration: .jpg table of alphabets] it must have originated between the end of the xviiith and the beginning of the xxist dynasties, and the existence of pharaonic rule in phoenicia during this period has led more than one modern scholar to assume that it developed under egyptian influence.* * the hypothesis of an egyptian origin, suggested casually by champollion, has been ably dealt with by e. de rougé. e. de rougé derives the alphabet from the hieratic, and his identifications have been accepted by lauth, by brugsch, by p. lenormant, and by isaac taylor. halévy would take it from the egyptian hieroglyphics directly without the intervention of the hieratic. the egyptian origin, strongly contested of late, has been accepted by the majority of scholars. some affirm that it is traceable directly to the hieroglyphs, while others seek for some intermediary in the shape of a cursive script, and find this in the hieratic writing, which contains, they maintain, prototypes of all the phoenician letters. tables have been drawn up, showing at a glance the resemblances and differences which appear respectively to justify or condemn their hypothesis. perhaps the analogies would be more evident and more numerous if we were in possession of inscriptions going back nearer to the date of origin. as it is, the divergencies are sufficiently striking to lead some scholars to seek the prototype of the alphabet elsewhere--either in babylon, in asia minor, or even in crete, among those barbarous hieroglyphs which are attributed to the primitive inhabitants of the island. it is no easy matter to get at the truth amid these conflicting theories. two points only are indisputable; first, the almost unanimous agreement among writers of classical times in ascribing the first alphabet to the phoenicians; and second, the phonician origin of the greek, and afterwards of the latin alphabet which we employ to-day. to return to the religion of the phoenicians: the foreign deities were not content with obtaining a high place in the estimation of priests and people; they acquired such authority over the native gods that they persuaded them to metamorphose themselves almost completely into egyptian divinities. [illustration: .jpg rashuf on his lion] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a photograph reproduced in clermont-ganneau. one finds among the majority of them the emblems commonly used in the pharaonic temples, sceptres with heads of animals, head-dress like the pschent, the _crux ansata_, the solar disk, and the winged scarab. the lady of byblos placed the cow�s horns upon her head from the moment she became identified with hathor.* the baal of the neighbouring arvad--probably a form of bashuf--was still represented as standing upright on his lion in order to traverse the high places: but while, in the monument which has preserved the figure of the god, both lion and mountain are given according to chaldæan tradition, he himself, as the illustration shows, is dressed after the manner of egypt, in the striped and plaited loin-cloth, wears a large necklace on his neck and bracelets on his arms, and bears upon his head the white mitre with its double plume and the egyptian uraaus.** * she is represented as hathor on the stele of iéhav-melek, king of byblos, during the persian period. ** this monument, which belonged to the péretié collection, was found near amrîth, at the place called nahr-abrek. the dress and bearing are so like those of the rashuf represented on egyptian monuments, that i have no hesitation in regarding this as a representation of that god. he brandishes in one hand the weapon of the victor, and is on the point of despatching with it a lion, which he has seized by the tail with the other, after the model of the pharaonic hunters, amenôthes i. and thûtmosis iii. the lunar disk floating above his head lends to him, it is true, a phonician character, but the winged sun of heliopolis hovering above the disk leaves no doubt as to his egyptian antecedents.* * the phonician symbol represents the crescent moon holding the darkened portion in its arms, like the symbol reserved in egypt for the lunar gods. [illustration: .jpg a phoenician god in his egyptian shrine] drawn by faucher-gudin, from renan. the worship, too, offered to these metamorphosed gods was as much changed as the deities themselves; the altars assumed something of the egyptian form, and the tabernacles were turned into shrines, which were decorated at the top with a concave groove, or with a frieze made up of repetitions of the uraeus. egyptian fashions had influenced the better classes so far as to change even their mode of dealing with the dead, of which we find in not a few places clear evidence. travellers arriving in egypt at that period must have been as much astonished as the tourist of to-day by the monuments which the egyptians erected for their dead. [illustration: .jpg amenÔthes i. seizing a lion] drawn by faucher-gudin. this monument was in the louvre museum. analogous figures of gods or kings holding a lion by the tail are found on various monuments of the theban dynasties. the pyramids which met their gaze, as soon as they had reached the apex of the delta, must have far surpassed their ideas of them, no matter how frequently they may have been told about them, and they must have been at a loss to know why such a number of stones should have been brought together to cover a single corpse. at the foot of these colossal monuments, lying like a pack of hounds asleep around their master, the mastabas of the early dynasties were ranged, half buried under the sand, but still visible, and still visited on certain days by the descendants of their inhabitants, or by priests charged with the duty of keeping them up. chapels of more recent generations extended as a sort of screen before the ancient tombs, affording examples of the two archaic types combined--the mastaba more or less curtailed in its proportions, and the pyramid with a more or less acute point. the majority of these monuments are no longer in existence, and only one of them has come down to us intact--that which amenôthes iii. erected in the serapeum at memphis in honour of an apis which had died in his reign. [illustration: .jpg a phoenician mastaba at arvad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thobois, as given in renan. the cuttings made in the lower stonework appear to be traces of unfinished steps. the pyramid at the top is no longer in existence, but its remains are scattered about the foot of the monument, and furnished m. thobois with the means of reconstructing with exactness the original form. phoenicians visiting the nile valley must have carried back with them to their native country a remembrance of this kind of burying-place, and have suggested it to their architects as a model. one of the cemeteries at arvad contains a splendid specimen of this imported design.* * pietschmann thinks that the monument is not older than the greek epoch, and it must be admitted that the cornice is not such as we usually meet with in egypt in theban times; nevertheless, the very marked resemblance to the theban mastaba shows that it must have been directly connected with the egyptian type which prevailed from the xviiith to the xxth dynasties. [illustration: .jpg two of the tombs at arvad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a water-colour by thobois, reproduced in renan. it is a square tower some thirty-six feet high; the six lower courses consist of blocks, each some sixteen and a half feet long, joined to each other without mortar. the two lowest courses project so as to form a kind of pedestal for the building. the cornice at the top consists of a deep moulding, surmounted by a broad flat band, above which rises the pyramid, which attains a height of nearly thirty feet. it is impossible to deny that it is constructed on a foreign model; it is not a slavish imitation, however, but rather an adaptation upon a rational plan to the conditions of its new home. its foundations rest on nothing but a mixture of soil and sand impregnated with water, and if vaults had been constructed beneath this, as in egypt, the body placed there would soon have corrupted away, owing to the infiltration of moisture. the dead bodies were, therefore, placed within the structure above ground, in chambers corresponding to the egyptian chapel, which were superimposed the one upon the other. the first storey would furnish space for three bodies, and the second would contain twelve, for which as many niches were provided. in the same cemetery we find examples of tombs which the architect has constructed, not after an egyptian, but a chaldæan model. a round tower is here substituted for the square structure and a cupola for the pyramid, while the cornice is represented by crenellated markings. the only egyptian feature about it is the four lions, which seem to support the whole edifice upon their backs.* * the fellahîn in the neighbourhood call these two monuments the meghazîl or �distaffs.� arvad was, among phoenician cities, the nearest neighbour to the kingdoms on the euphrates, and was thus the first to experience either the brunt of an attack or the propagation of fashions and ideas from these countries. in the more southerly region, in the country about tyre, there are fewer indications of babylonian influence, and such examples of burying-places for the ruling classes as the kabr-hiram and other similar tombs correspond with the mixed mastaba of the theban period. we have the same rectangular base, but the chapel and its crowning pyramid are represented by the sarcophagus itself with its rigid cover. the work is of an unfinished character, and carelessly wrought, but there is a charming simplicity about its lines and a harmony in its proportions which betray an egyptian influence. [illustration: .jpg the kabr-hiram near tyre] drawn by boudier, from a sketch by thobois, reproduced by renan. the spirit of imitation which we find in the religion and architecture of phoenicia is no less displayed in the minor arts, such as goldsmiths�work, sculpture in ivory, engraving on gems, and glass-making. the forms, designs, and colours are all rather those of egypt than of chaldæa. the many-hued glass objects, turned out by the manufacturers of the said in millions, furnished at one time valuable cargoes for the phoenicians; they learned at length to cast and colour copies of these at home, and imitated their egyptian models so successfully that classical antiquity was often deceived by them.* * glass manufacture was carried to such a degree of perfection among the phoenicians, that many ancient authors attributed to them the invention of glass. their engravers, while still continuing to employ cones and cylinders of babylonian form, borrowed the scarab type also, and made use of it on the bezils of rings, the pendants of necklaces, and on a kind of bracelet used partly for ornament and partly as a protective amulet. the influence of the egyptian model did not extend, however, amongst the masses, and we find, therefore, no evidence of it in the case of common objects, such as those of coarse sand or glazed earthenware. egyptian scarab forms were thus confined to the rich, and the material upon which they are found is generally some costly gem, such as cut and polished agate, onyx, haematite, and lapis-lazuli. the goldsmiths did not slavishly copy the golden and silver bowls which were imported from the delta; they took their inspiration from the principles displayed in the ornamentation of these objects, but they treated the subjects after their own manner, grouping them afresh and blending them with new designs. the intrinsic value of the metal upon which these artistic conceptions had been impressed led to their destruction, and among the examples which have come down to us i know of no object which can be traced to the period of the egyptian conquest. it was theban art for the most part which furnished the phoenicians with their designs. these included the lotus, the papyrus, the cow standing in a thicket and suckling her calf, the sacred bark, and the king threatening with his uplifted arm the crowd of conquered foes who lie prostrate before him. [illustration: .jpg egyptian treatment of the cow on a phoenician bowl] drawn by faucher-gudin, after grifi. the king�s double often accompanied him on some of the original objects, impassive and armed with the banner bearing the name of horus. the phoenician artist modified this figure, which in its original form did not satisfy his ideas of human nature, by transforming it into a protective genius, who looks with approval on the exploits of his _protégé_, and gathers together the corpses of those he has slain. once these designs had become current among the goldsmiths, they continued to be supplied for a long period, without much modification, to the markets of the eastern and western worlds. indeed, it was natural that they should have taken a stereotyped form, when we consider that the phoenicians who employed them held continuous commercial relations with the country whence they had come--a country of which, too, they recognised the supremacy. egypt in the ramesside period was, as we have seen, distinguished for the highest development of every branch of industry; it had also a population which imported and exported more raw material and more manufactured products than any other. [illustration: .jpg the king and his double on a phoenician bowl] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by longpérier. the small nation which acted as a commercial intermediary between egypt and the rest of the world had in this traffic a steady source of profit, and even in providing egypt with a single article--for example, bronze, or the tin necessary for its preparation--could realise enormous profits. the people of tyre and sidon had been very careful not to alienate the good will of such rich customers, and as long as the representatives of the pharaoh held sway in syria, they had shown themselves, if not thoroughly trustworthy vassals, at least less turbulent than their neighbours of arvad and qodshû. even when the feebleness and impotence of the successors of ramses iii. relieved them from the obligation of further tribute, they displayed towards their old masters such deference that they obtained as great freedom of trade with the ports of the delta as they had enjoyed in the past. they maintained with these ports the same relations as in the days of their dependence, and their ships sailed up the river as far as memphis, and even higher, while the egyptian galleys continued to coast the littoral of syria. an official report addressed to hrihor by one of the ministers of the theban amon, indicates at one and the same time the manner in which these voyages were accomplished, and the dangers to which their crews were exposed. hrihor, who was still high priest, was in need of foreign timber to complete some work he had in hand, probably the repair of the sacred barks, and commanded the official above mentioned to proceed by sea to byblos, to king zikarbâl,* in order to purchase cedars of lebanon. * this is the name which classical tradition ascribed to the first husband of dido, the founder of carthage--sicharbas, sichaeus, acerbas. the messenger started from tanis, coasted along kharu, and put into the harbour of dor, which then belonged to the zakkala: while he was revictualling his ship, one of the sailors ran away with the cash-box. the local ruler, badilu, expressed at first his sympathy at this misfortune, and gave his help to capture the robber; then unaccountably changing his mind he threw the messenger into prison, who had accordingly to send to egypt to procure fresh funds for his liberation and the accomplishment of his mission. having arrived at byblos, nothing occurred there worthy of record. the wood having at length been cut and put on board, the ship set sail homewards. driven by contrary winds, the vessel was thrown upon the coast of alasia, where the crew were graciously received by the queen khatiba. we have evidence everywhere, it may be stated, as to the friendly disposition displayed, either with or without the promptings of interest, towards the representative of the theban pontiff. had he been ill-used, the phoenicians living on egyptian territory would have been made to suffer for it. navigators had to take additional precautions, owing to the presence of Ægean or asiatic pirates on the routes followed by the mercantile marine, which rendered their voyages dangerous and sometimes interrupted them altogether. the syrian coast-line was exposed to these marauders quite as much as the african had been during the sixty or eighty years which followed the death of ramses ii.; the seamen of the north--achæans and tyrseni, lycians and shardanians--had pillaged it on many occasions, and in the invasion which followed these attacks it experienced as little mercy as naharaim, the khâti, and the region of the amorites. the fleets which carried the philistines, the zakkala, and their allies had devastated the whole coast before they encountered the egyptian ships of ramses iii. near magadîl, to the south of carmel. arvad as well as zahi had succumbed to the violence of their attack, and if the cities of byblos, berytus, sidon, and tyre had escaped, their suburbs had been subjected to the ravages of the foe.* * see, for this invasion, vol. v. pp. - , of the present work. peace followed the double victory of the egyptians, and commerce on the mediterranean resumed once more its wonted ways, but only in those regions where the authority of the pharaoh and the fear of his vengeance were effective influences. beyond this sphere there were continual warfare, piracy, migrations of barbaric hordes, and disturbances of all kinds, among which, if a stranger ventured, it was at the almost certain risk of losing his life or liberty. the area of undisturbed seas became more and more contracted in proportion as the memory of past defeats faded away. cyprus was not comprised within it, and the Ægeans, who were restrained by the fear of egypt from venturing into any region under her survey, perpetually flocked thither in numerous bodies. the achæans, too, took up their abode on this island at an early date--about the time when some of their bands were infesting libya, and offering their help to the enemies of the pharaoh. they began their encroachments on the northern side of the island--the least rich, it is true, but the nearest to cilicia, and the easiest to hold against the attacks of their rivals. the disaster of piriu had no doubt dashed their hopes of finding a settlement in egypt: they never returned thither any more, and the current of emigration which had momentarily inclined towards the south, now set steadily towards the east, where the large island of cyprus offered an unprotected and more profitable field of adventure. we know not how far they penetrated into its forests and its interior. the natives began, at length, under their influence, to despise the customs and mode of existence with which they had been previously contented: they acquired a taste for pottery rudely decorated after the mycenean manner, for jewellery, and for the bronze swords which they had seen in the hands of the invaders. the phoenicians, in order to maintain their ground against the intruders, had to strengthen their ancient posts or found others--such as carpasia, gerynia, and lapathos on the achæan coast itself, tamassos near the copper-mines, and a new town, qart-hadashât, which is perhaps only the ancient citium under a new name.* they thus added to their earlier possessions on the island regions on its northern side, while the rest either fell gradually into the hands of hellenic adventurers, or continued in the possession of the native populations. cyprus served henceforward as an advance-post against the attacks of western nations, and the phoenicians must have been thankful for the good fortune which had made them see the wisdom of fortifying it. but what became of their possessions lying outside cyprus? they retained several of them on the southern coasts of asia minor, and rhodes remained faithful to them, as well as thasos, enabling them to overlook the two extremities of the archipelago;** but, owing to the movements of the people of the sea and the political development of the mycenean states, they had to give up the stations and harbours of refuge which they held in the other islands or on the continent. * it is mentioned in the inscription of baal of lebanon, and in the assyrian inscriptions of the vii century b.c. * this would appear to be the case, as far as rhodes is concerned, from the traditions which ascribed the final expulsion of the phoenicians to a doric invasion from argos. the somewhat legendary accounts of the state of affairs after the hellenic conquest are in the fragments of ergias and polyzelos. they still continued, however, to pay visits to these localities--sometimes in the guise of merchants and at others as raiders, according to their ancient custom. they went from port to port as of old, exposing their wares in the market-places, pillaging the farms and villages, carrying into captivity the women and children whom they could entice on board, or whom they might find defenceless on the strand; but they attempted all this with more risk than formerly, and with less success. the inhabitants of the coast were possessed of fully manned ships, similar in form to those of the philistines or the zakkala, which, at the first sight of the phoenicians, set out in pursuit of them, or, following the example set by their foe, lay in wait for them behind some headland, and retaliated upon them for their cruelty. piracy in the archipelago was practised as a matter of course, and there was no islander who did not give himself up to it when the opportunity offered, to return to his honest occupations after a successful venture. some kings seem to have risen up here and there who found this state of affairs intolerable, and endeavoured to remedy it by every means within their power: they followed on the heels of the corsairs and adventurers, whatever might be their country; they followed them up to their harbours of refuge, and became an effective police force in all parts of the sea where they were able to carry their flag. the memory of such exploits was preserved in the tradition of the cretan empire which minos had constituted, and which extended its protection over a portion of continental greece. if the phoenicians had had to deal only with the piratical expeditions of the peoples of the coast or with the jealous watchfulness of the rulers of the sea, they might have endured the evil, but they had now to put up, in addition, with rivalry in the artistic and industrial products of which they had long had the monopoly. the spread of art had at length led to the establishment of local centres of production everywhere, which bade fair to vie with those of phoenicia. on the continent and in the cyclades there were produced statuettes, intaglios, jewels, vases, weapons, and textile fabrics which rivalled those of the east, and were probably much cheaper. the merchants of tyre and sidon could still find a market, however, for manufactures requiring great technical skill or displaying superior taste--such as gold or silver bowls, engraved or decorated with figures in outline--but they had to face a serious falling off in their sales of ordinary goods. to extend their commerce they had to seek new and less critical markets, where the bales of their wares, of which the Ægean population was becoming weary, would lose none of their attractions. we do not know at what date they ventured to sail into the mysterious region of the hesperides, nor by what route they first reached it. it is possible that they passed from crete to cythera, and from this to the ionian islands and to the point of calabria, on the other side of the straits of otranto, whence they were able to make their way gradually to sicily.* * ed. meyer thinks that the extension of phoenician commerce to the western mediterranean goes back to the xviiith dynasty, or, at the latest, the xvth century before our era. without laying undue stress on this view, i am inclined to ascribe with him, until we get further knowledge, the colonisation of the west to the period immediately following the movements of the people of the sea and the diminution of phoenician trade in the grecian archipelago. exploring voyages had been made before this, but the founding of colonies was not earlier than this epoch. did the fame of their discovery, we may ask, spread so rapidly in the east as to excite there the cupidity and envy of their rivals? however this may have been, the people of the sea, after repeated checks in africa and syria, and feeling more than ever the pressure of the northern tribes encroaching on them, set out towards the west, following the route pursued by the phoenicians. the traditions current among them and collected afterwards by the greek historians give an account, mingled with many fabulous details, of the causes which led to their migrations and of the vicissitudes which they experienced in the course of them. daedalus having taken flight from crete to sicily, minos, who had followed in his steps, took possession of the greater part of the island with his eteocretes. iolaos was the leader of pelasgic bands, whom he conducted first into libya and finally to sardinia. it came also to pass that in the days of atys, son of manes, a famine broke out and raged throughout lydia: the king, unable to provide food for his people, had them numbered, and decided by lot which of the two halves of the population should expatriate themselves under the leadership of his son tyrsenos. those-who were thus fated to leave their country assembled at smyrna, constructed ships there, and having embarked on board of them what was necessary, set sail in quest of a new home. after a long and devious voyage, they at length disembarked in the country of the umbrians, where they built cities, and became a prosperous people under the name of tyrseni, being thus called after their leader tyrsenos.* * herodotus, whence all the information of other classical writers is directly or indirectly taken. most modern historians reject this tradition. i see no reason for my own part why they should do so, at least in the present state of our knowledge. the etrurians of the historical period were the result of a fusion of several different elements, and there is nothing against the view that the tursha--one of these elements--should have come from asia minor, as herodotus says. properly understood, the tradition seems well founded, and the details may have been added afterwards, either by the lydians themselves, or by the greek historians who collected the lydian traditions. the remaining portions of the nations who had taken part in the attack on egypt--of which several tribes had been planted by ramses iii. in the shephelah, from gaza to carmel--proceeded in a series of successive detachments from asia minor and the Ægean sea to the coasts of italy and of the large islands; the tursha into that region which was known afterwards as etruria, the shardana into sardinia, the zakkala into sicily, and along with the latter some pulasati, whose memory is still preserved on the northern slope of etna. fate thus brought the phonician emigrants once more into close contact with their traditional enemies, and the hostility which they experienced in their new settlements from the latter was among the influences which determined their further migration from italy proper, and from the region occupied by the ligurians between the arno and the ebro. they had already probably reached sardinia and corsica, but the majority of their ships had sailed to the southward, and having touched at malta, gozo, and the small islands between sicily and the syrtes, had followed the coast-line of africa, until at length they reached the straits of gribraltar and the southern shores of spain. no traces remain of their explorations, or of their early establishments in the western mediterranean, as the towns which they are thought--with good reason in most instances--to have founded there belong to a much later date. every permanent settlement, however, is preceded by a period of exploration and research, which may last for only a few years or be prolonged to as many centuries. i am within the mark, i think, in assuming that phonician adventurers, or possibly even the regular trading ships of tyre and sidon, had established relations with the semi-barbarous chiefs of botica as early as the xiith century before our era, that is, at the time when the power of thebes was fading away under the weak rule of the pontiffs of amon and the tanite pharaohs. the phoenicians were too much absorbed in their commercial pursuits to aspire to the inheritance which egypt was letting slip through her fingers. their numbers were not more than sufficient to supply men for their ships, and they were often obliged to have recourse to their allies or to mercenary tribes--the leleges or carians--in order to provide crews for their vessels or garrisons for their trading posts; it was impossible, therefore, for them to think of raising armies fit to conquer or keep in check the rulers on the orontes or in naharaim. they left this to the races of the interior--the amorites and hittites--and to their restless ambition. the hittite power, however, had never recovered from the terrible blow inflicted on it at the time of the asianic invasion. [illustration: .jpg azÂz--one of this tumuli on the ancient hittite plain] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. barthélémy. the confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other. at this time the entire plain between the amanus and the euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins. arabian and byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the greek or persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time. the history of syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* the khâti proper were settled to the south of the taurus in the basin of the sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others. its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the khâti. the patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the mediterranean above the plains of naharairn and beyond the orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient alasia. aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the patinu between the two lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of hamath and qobah.** * the results of the excavations at zinjirli are evidence of what historical material we may hope to find in these tumuli. see the account of the earlier results in p. von luschan, _ausgrabungen in sendschirli_, . ** the aramaeans are mentioned by tiglath-pileser i. as situated between the balikh, the euphrates, and the sajur. the valleys of the amanus and the southern slopes of the taurus included within them some half-dozen badly defined principalities--samalla on the kara-su,* gurgum** around marqasi, the qui*** and khilakku**** in the classical cilicia, and the kasku^ and kummukh^^ in a bend of the euphrates to the north and north-east of the khâti. * the country of samalla, in egyptian samalûa, extended around the tell of zinjirli, at the foot of the amanus, in the valley of marash of the arab historians. ** the name has been read gamgumu, gaugum, and connected by tom-kins with the egyptian augama, which he reads gagama, in the lists of thûtmosis iii. the aramaean inscription on the statue of king panammu shows that it must be read gurgumu, and sachau has identified this new name with that of jurjum, which was the name by which the province of the amanus, lying between baias and the lake of antioch, was known in the byzantine period; the ancient gurgum stretches further towards the north, around the town of marqasi, which tomkins and sachau have identified with marash. *** the site of the country of qui was determined by schrader; it was that part of the cilician plain which stretches from the amanus to the mountains of the kêtis, and takes in the great town of tarsus. f. lenor-mant has pointed out that this country is mentioned twice in the scriptures ( _kings_ x, and _chron_. i. ), in the time of solomon. the designation of the country, transformed into the appellation of an eponymous god, is found in the name qauîsaru, �qauî is king.� **** khilakku, the name of which is possibly the same as the egyptian khalakka, is the cilicia trachsea of classical geographers. ^ the country of kashku, which has been connected with kashkisha, which takes the place of karkisha in an egyptian text, was still a dependency of the hittites in the time of tiglath-pileser. it was in the neighbourhood of the urumu, whose capital seems to have been urum, the ourima of ptolemy, near the bend of the euphrates between sumeîsat and birejik; it extended into the commagene of classical times, on the borders of melitene and the tubal. ^^ kummukh lay on both sides of the euphrates and of the upper tigris; it became gradually restricted, until at length it was conterminous with the commagene of classical geographers. the ancient mitanni to the east of carchemish, which was so active in the time of the later amenôthes, had now ceased to exist, and there was but a vague remembrance of its farmer prowess. it had foundered probably in the great cataclysm which engulfed the hittite empire, although its name appears inscribed once more among those of the vassals of egypt on the triumphal lists of ramses iii. its chief tribes had probably migrated towards the regions which were afterwards described by the greek geographers as the home of the matieni on the halys and in the neighbourhood of lake urmiah. aramaean kingdoms, of which the greatest was that of bit-adîni,* had succeeded them, and bordered the euphrates on each side as far as the chalus and balikh respectively; the ancient harran belonged also to them, and their frontier stretched as far as hamath, and to that of the patinu on the orontes. * the province of bît-adîni was specially that part of the country which lay between the euphrates and the balikh, but it extended also to other syrian provinces between the euphrates and the aprie. it was, as we have seen, a complete breaking up of the old nationalities, and we have evidence also of a similar disintegration in the countries to the north of the taurus, in the direction of the black sea. of the mighty khâti with whom thûtmosis iii. had come into contact, there was no apparent trace: either the tribes of which they were composed had migrated towards the south, or those who had never left their native mountains had entered into new combinations and lost even the remembrance of their name. the milidu, tabal (tubal), and mushku (meshech) stretched behind each other from east to west on the confines of the tokhma-su, and still further away other cities of less importance contended for the possession of the upper saros and the middle region of the halys. these peoples, at once poor and warlike, had been attracted, like the hittites of some centuries previous, by the riches accumulated in the strongholds of syria. eevolutions must have been frequent in these regions, but our knowledge of them is more a matter of conjecture than of actual evidence. towards the year b.c. the mushku swooped down on kummukh, and made themselves its masters; then pursuing their good fortune, they took from the assyrians the two provinces, alzi and purukuzzi, which lay not far from the sources of the tigris and the balikh.* * the _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. place their invasion fifty years before the beginning of his reign. ed. meyer saw a connexion between this and the invasion of the people of the sea, which took place under ramses iii. i think that the invasion of the mushku was a purely local affair, and had nothing in common with the general catastrophe occasioned by the movement of the asiatic armies. a little later the kashku, together with some aramaeans, broke into shubarti, then subject to assyria, and took possession of a part of it. the majority of these invasions had, however, no permanent result: they never issued in the establishment of an empire like that of the khâti, capable by its homogeneity of offering a serious resistance to the march of a conqueror from the south. to sum up the condition of affairs: if a redistribution of races had brought about a change in northern syria, their want of cohesion was no less marked than in the time of the egyptian wars; the first enemy to make an attack upon the frontier of one or other of these tribes was sure of victory, and, if he persevered in his efforts, could make himself master of as much territory as he might choose. the pharaohs had succeeded in welding together their african possessions, and their part in the drama of conquest had been played long ago; but the cities of the tigris and the lower euphrates--nineveh and babylon-were ready to enter the lists as soon as they felt themselves strong enough to revive their ancient traditions of foreign conquest. the successors of agumkakrimê were not more fortunate than he had been in attempting to raise babylon once more to the foremost rank; their want of power, their discord, the insubordination and sedition that existed among their cossæan troops, and the almost periodic returns of the theban generals to the banks of the euphrates, sometimes even to those of the balikh and the khabur, all seemed to conspire to aggravate the helpless state into which babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of uruazagga. elam was pressing upon her eastern, and assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship of such of their relatives as were left widows or minors, and, when the occasion presented itself, they took possession of the throne of bel, or bestowed it on one of their creatures. assyria particularly seemed to regard babylon with a deadly hatred. the capitals of the two countries were not more than some one hundred and eighty-five miles apart, the intervening district being a flat and monotonous alluvial plain, unbroken by any feature which could serve as a natural frontier. the line of demarcation usually followed one of the many canals in the narrow strip of land between the euphrates and the tigris; it then crossed the latter, and was formed by one of the rivers draining the iranian table-land,--either the upper zab, the radanu, the turnat, or some of their ramifications in the spurs of the mountain ranges. each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and to keep it there at all hazards. this narrow area was the scene of continual war, either between the armies of the two states or those of partisans, suspended from time to time by an elaborate treaty which was supposed to settle all difficulties, but, as a matter of fact, satisfied no one, and left both parties discontented with their lot and jealous of each other. the concessions made were never of sufficient importance to enable the conqueror to crush his rival and regain for himself the ancient domain of khammurabi; his losses, on the other hand, were often considerable enough to paralyse his forces, and prevent him from extending his border in any other direction. when the egyptians seized on naharaim, assyria and babylon each adopted at the outset a different attitude towards the conquerors. assyria, which never laid any permanent claims to the seaboard provinces of the mediterranean, was not disposed to resent their occupation by egypt, and desired only to make sure of their support or their neutrality. the sovereign then ruling assyria, but of whose name we have no record, hastened to congratulate thûtmosis iii. on his victory at megiddo, and sent him presents of precious vases, slaves, lapis-lazuli, chariots and horses, all of which the egyptian conqueror regarded as so much tribute. babylon, on the other hand, did not take action so promptly as assyria; it was only towards the latter years of thûtmosis that its king, karaîndash, being hard pressed by the assyrian assurbelnishishu, at length decided to make a treaty with the intruder.* * we have no direct testimony in support of this hypothesis, but several important considerations give it probability. as no tribute from babylon is mentioned in the _annals of thûtmosis iii_., we must place the beginning of the relations between egypt and chaldæa at a later date. on the other hand, burnaburiash ii., in a letter written to amenôthes iii., cites karaîndash as the first of _his fathers,_ who had established friendly relations with _the fathers_ of the pharaoh, a fact which obliges us to place the interchange of presents before the time of amenôthes iii.: as the reigns of amenôthes ii. and of thûtmosis iv. were both short, it is probable that these relations began in the latter years of thûtmosis iii. the remoteness of egypt from the babylonian frontier no doubt relieved karaîndash from any apprehension of an actual invasion by the pharaohs; but there was the possibility of their subsidising some nearer enemy, and also of forbidding babylonish caravans to enter egyptian provinces, and thus crippling chaldæan commerce. friendly relations, when once established, soon necessitated a constant interchange of embassies and letters between the nile and the euphrates. as a matter of fact, the babylonian king could never reconcile himself to the idea that syria had passed out of his hands. while pretending to warn the pharaoh of syrian plots against him,* the babylonians were employing at the same time secret agents, to go from city to city and stir up discontent at egyptian rule, praising the while the great cosssean king and his armies, and inciting to revolt by promises of help never meant to be fulfilled. assyria, whose very existence would have been endangered by the re-establishment of a babylonian empire, never missed an opportunity of denouncing these intrigues at head-quarters: they warned the royal messengers and governors of them, and were constantly contrasting the frankness and honesty of their own dealings with the duplicity of their rival. * this was done by kurigalzu i., according to a letter addressed by his son burnaburiash to amenôthes iv. this state of affairs lasted for more than half a century, during which time both courts strove to ingratiate themselves in the favour of the pharaoh, each intriguing for the exclusion of the other, by exchanging presents with him, by congratulations on his accession, by imploring gifts of wrought or unwrought gold, and by offering him the most beautiful women of their family for his harem. the son of karaîndash, whose name still remains to be discovered, bestowed one of his daughters on the young amenôthes iii.: kallimasin, the sovereign who succeeded him, also sent successively two princesses to the same pharaoh. but the underlying bitterness and hatred would break through the veneer of polite formula and protestations when the petitioner received, as the result of his advances, objects of inconsiderable value such as a lord might distribute to his vassals, or when he was refused a princess of solar blood, or even an egyptian bride of some feudal house; at such times, however, an ironical or haughty epistle from thebes would recall him to a sense of his own inferiority. as a fact, the lot of the cossæan sovereigns does not appear to have been a happy one, in spite of the variety and pomposity of the titles which they continued to assume. they enjoyed but short lives, and we know that at least three or four of them--kallimasin, burnaburiash i., and kurigalzu i. ascended the throne in succession during the forty years that amenôthes iii. ruled over egypt and syria.* * the copy we possess of the royal canon of babylon is mutilated at this point, and the original documents are not sufficiently complete to fill the gap. about two or three names are missing after that of agumkakrimê, and the reigns must have been very short, if indeed, as i think, agumka- krimî and karaîndash were both contemporaries of the earlier pharaohs bearing the name of thûtmosis. the order of the names which have come down to us is not indisputably established. the following order appears to me to be the most probable at present:-- karaîndash. kallimasin. burnaburiash i. kurigalzu i. burnaburiash ii. karakhardash. kadashmankiiarbê i. nazibugas ii.. kurigalzu ii. nazimaruttasii. kadashmanturgu. this is, with a slight exception, the classification adopted by winckler, and that of hilprecht differs from it only in the intercalation of kudurturgu and shagaraktiburiash between burnaburiash ii. and karakhardash. perhaps the rapidity of this succession may have arisen from some internal revolution or from family disturbances. the chaldæans of the old stock reluctantly rendered obedience to these cosssean kings, and, if we may judge from the name, one at least of these ephemeral sovereigns, kallimasin, appears to have been a semite, who owed his position among the cossoan princes to some fortunate chance. a few rare inscriptions stamped on bricks, one or two letters or documents of private interest, and some minor objects from widely distant spots, have enabled us to ascertain the sites upon which these sovereigns erected buildings; karaîndash restored the temple of nana at uruk, burnaburiash and kurigalzu added to that of shamash at larsam, and kurigalzu took in hand that of sin at uru. we also possess a record of some of their acts in the fragments of a document, which a mnevite scribe of the time of assurbanipal had compiled, or rather jumbled together,* from certain babylonian chronicles dealing with the wars against assyria and elam, with public treaties, marriages, and family quarrels. we learn from this, for example, that burnaburiash i. renewed with buzurassur the conventions drawn up between karaîndash and assurbelnishishu. these friendly relations were maintained, apparently, under kurigalzu i. and assur-nadin-akhi, the son of buzurassur;** if kurigalzu built or restored the fortress, long called after him dur-kurigalzu,*** at one of the fords of the narmalka, it was probably as a precautionary measure rather than because of any immediate danger. the relations between the two powers became somewhat strained when burnaburiash ii. and assuruballît had respectively succeeded to kurigalzu and assur-nadin-akhi; **** this did not, however, lead to hostilities, and the subsequent betrothal of karakhardash, son of burnaburiash ii., to mubauîtatseruâ, daughter of assuruballît, tended to restore matters to their former condition. * this is what is generally called the �synchronous history,� the principal remains of which were discovered and published by h. rawlinson. it is a very unskilful complication, in which winckler has discovered several blunders. ** assur-nadin-akhi i. is mentioned in a tel el-amarna tablet as being the father of assuruballît. *** this is the present akerkuf, as is proved by the discovery of bricks bearing the name of kurigalzu; but perhaps what i have attributed to kurigalzu i. must be referred to the second king of that name. **** we infer this from the way in which burnaburiash speaks of the assyrians in the correspondence with amenôthes iv. the good will between the two countries became still more pronounced when kadashmankharbê succeeded his father karakhardash. the cossæan soldiery had taken umbrage at his successor and had revolted, assassinated kadashmankharbê, and proclaimed king in his stead a man of obscure origin named nazibùgash. assuruballît, without a moment�s hesitation, took the side of his new relatives; he crossed the frontier, killed nazibugash, and restored the throne to his sister�s child, kurigalzu ii., the younger. the young king, who was still a minor at his accession, appears to have met with no serious difficulties; at any rate, none were raised by his assyrian cousins, belnirârî i. and his successor budîlu.* * the _synchronous history_ erroneously places the events of the reign of rammân-nirâri in that of belnirârî. the order of succession of buzurassur, assuruballît, belnirârî, and budîlu, has been established by the bricks of kalah-shergât. towards the close of his reign, however, revolts broke out, and it was only by sustained efforts that he was able to restore order in babylon, sippara, and the country of the sea. while the king was in the midst of these difficulties, the elamites took advantage of his troubles to steal from him a portion of his territory, and their king, khurbatila, challenged him to meet his army near dur-dungi. kurigalzu accepted the challenge, gained a decisive victory, took his adversary prisoner, and released him only on receiving as ransom a province beyond the tigris; he even entered susa, and, from among other trophies of past wars, resumed possession of an agate tablet belonging to dungi, which the veteran kudurnakhunta had stolen from the temple of nipur nearly a thousand years previously. this victory was followed by the congratulations of most of his neighbours, with the exception of bammân-nirâri ii., who had succeeded budîlu in assyria, and probably felt some jealousy or uneasiness at the news. he attacked the cossæans, and overthrew them at sugagi, on the banks of the salsallât; their losses were considerable, and kurigalzu could only obtain peace by the cession to assyria of a strip of territory the entire length of the north-west frontier, from the confines of the shubari country, near the sources of the khabur, to the suburbs of babylon itself. nearly the whole of mesopotamia thus changed hands at one stroke, but babylon had still more serious losses to suffer. nazimaruttash, who attempted to wipe out the disaster sustained by his father kurigalzu, experienced two crushing defeats, one at kar-ishtar and the other near akarsallu, and the treaty which he subsequently signed was even more humiliating for his country than the preceding one. all that part of the babylonian domain which lay nearest to nineveh was ceded to the assyrians, from pilaski on the right bank of the tigris to the province of lulumê in the zagros mountains. it would appear that the cossæan tribes who had remained in their native country, took advantage of these troublous times to sever all connection with their fellow-countrymen established in the cities of the plain; for we find them henceforward carrying on a petty warfare for their own profit, and leading an entirely independent life. the descendants of gandish, deprived of territories in the north, repulsed in the east, and threatened in the south by the nations of the persian gulf, never recovered their former ascendency, and their authority slowly declined during the century which followed these events. their downfall brought about the decadence of the cities over which they had held sway; and the supremacy which babylon had exercised for a thousand years over the countries of the euphrates passed into the hands of the assyrian kings. assyria itself was but a poor and insignificant country when compared with her rival. it occupied, on each side of the middle course of the tigris, the territory lying between the th and th parallels of latitude.* * these are approximately the limits of the first assyrian empire, as given by the monuments; from the persian epoch onwards, the name was applied to the whole course of the tigris as far as the mountain district. the ancient orthography of the name is aushâr. it was bounded on the east by the hills and mountain ranges running parallel to the zagros chain--gebel guar, gebel gara, zerguizavân-dagh, and baravân-dagh, with their rounded monotonous limestone ridges, scored by watercourses and destitute of any kind of trees. on the north it was hemmed in by the spurs of the masios, and bounded on the east by an undefined line running from mount masios to the slopes of singar, and from these again to the chaldæan plain; to the south the frontier followed the configuration of the table-land and the curve of the low cliffs, which in prehistoric times had marked the limits of the persian gulf; from here the boundary was formed on the left side of the tigris by one of its tributaries, either the lower zab or the badanu. the territory thus enclosed formed a compact and healthy district: it was free from extremes of temperature arising from height or latitude, and the relative character and fertility of its soil depended on the absence or presence of rivers. the eastern part of assyria was well watered by the streams and torrents which drained the iranian plateau and the lower mountain chains which ran parallel to it. the beds of these rivers are channelled so deeply in the alluvial soil, that it is necessary to stand on the very edge of their banks to catch a sight of their silent and rapid waters; and it is only in the spring or early summer, when they are swollen by the rains and melting snow, that they spread over the adjacent country. as soon as the inundation is over, a vegetation of the intensest green springs up, and in a few days the fields and meadows are covered with a luxuriant and fragrant carpet of verdure. this brilliant growth is, however, short-lived, for the heat of the sun dries it up as quickly as it appears, and even the corn itself is in danger of being burnt up before reaching maturity. to obviate such a disaster, the assyrians had constructed a network of canals and ditches, traces of which are in many places still visible, while a host of _shadufs_ placed along their banks facilitated irrigation in the dry seasons. the provinces supplied with water in this manner enjoyed a fertility which passed into a proverb, and was well known among the ancients; they yielded crops of cereals which rivalled those of babylonia, and included among their produce wheat, barley, millet, and sesame. but few olive trees were cultivated, and the dates were of inferior quality; indeed, in the greek period, these fruits were only used for fattening pigs and domestic animals. the orchards contained the pistachio, the apple, the pomegranate, the apricot, the vine, the almond, and the fig, and, in addition to the essences common to both syria and egypt, the country produced cédrats of a delicious scent which were supposed to be an antidote to all kinds of poisons. assyria was not well wooded, except in the higher valleys, where willows and poplars bordered the rivers, and sycamores, beeches, limes, and plane trees abounded, besides several varieties of pines and oaks, including a dwarf species of the latter, from whose branches manna was obtained. [illustration: .jpg the st assyrian empire--map] this is a saccharine substance, which is deposited in small lumps, and is found in greater abundance during wet years and especially on foggy days. when fresh, it has an agreeable taste and is pleasant to eat; but as it will not keep in its natural state, the women prepare it for exportation by dissolving it in boiling water, and evaporating it to a sweetish paste, which has more or less purgative, qualities. the aspect of the country changes after crossing the tigris westward. the slopes of mount masios are everywhere furrowed with streams, which feed the khabur and its principal affluent, the kharmis;* woods become more frequent, and the valleys green and shady. * the kharmis is the mygdonios of greek geographers, the hirmâs of the arabs; the latter name may be derived from kharmis, or it may be that it merely presents a fortuitous resemblance to it. the plains extending southwards, however, contain, like those of the euphrates, beds of gypsum in the sub-soil, which render the water running through them brackish, and prevent the growth of vegetation. the effects of volcanic action are evident on the surface of these great steppes; blocks of basalt pierce through the soil, and near the embouchure of the kharmis, a cone, composed of a mass of lava, cinders, and scorial, known as the tell-kôkab, rises abruptly to a height of feet. the mountain chain of singar, which here reaches its western termination, is composed of a long ridge of soft white limestone, and seems to have been suddenly thrown up in one of the last geological upheavals which affected this part of the country: in some places it resembles a perpendicular wall, while in others it recedes in natural terraces which present the appearance of a gigantic flight of steps. the summit is often wooded, and the spurs covered with vineyards and fields, which flourish vigorously in the vicinity of streams; when these fail, however, the table-land resumes its desolate aspect, and stretches in bare and sandy undulations to the horizon, broken only where it is crossed by the thartar, the sole river in this region which is not liable to be dried up, and whose banks may be traced by the scanty line of vegetation which it nourishes. [illustration: .jpg the volcanic cone of kÔkab] drawn by boudier, from the cut in layard. in a country thus unequally favoured by nature, the towns are necessarily distributed in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. most of them are situated on the left bank of the tigris, where the fertile nature of the soil enables it to support a dense population. they were all flourishing centres of population, and were in close proximity to each other, at all events during the centuries of assyrian hegemony.* * we find, for example, in the inscription of bavian, a long enumeration of towns and villages situated almost within the suburbs of nineveh, on the banks of the khôser. three of them soon eclipsed their rivals in political and religious importance; these were kalakh and nina on the tigris, and arbaîlu, lying beyond the upper zab, in the broken plain which is a continuation eastwards of the first spurs of the zagros.* on the right bank, however, we find merely some dozen cities and towns, scattered about in places where there was a supply of water sufficient to enable the inhabitants to cultivate the soil; as, for example, assur on the banks of the tigris itself, singara near the sources of the thartar, and nazibina near those of the kharmis, at the foot of the masios. these cities were not all under the rule of one sovereign when thûtmosis iii. appeared in syria, for the egyptian monuments mention, besides the kingdom of assyria, that of singara** and araphka in the upper basin of the zab.*** * the name of arbeles is written in a form which appears to signify �the town of the four gods.� ** this kingdom of singara is mentioned in the egyptian lists of thûtmosis iii. schrader was doubtful as to its existence, but one of its kings is mentioned in a letter from the king of alasia to amenôthes iv.; according to niebuhr, the state of which singara was the capital must have been identical, at all events at one period, with the mitanni of the egyptian texts. *** the arapakha of the egyptian monuments has been identified with the arrapakhitis of the greeks. assyria, however, had already asserted her supremacy over this corner of asia, and the remaining princes, even if they were not mere vicegerents depending on her king, were not strong enough in wealth and extent of territory to hold their own against her, since she was undisputed mistress of assur, arbeles, kalakh, and nineveh, the most important cities of the plain. assur covered a considerable area, and the rectangular outline formed by the remains of its walls is still discernible on the surface of the soil. within the circuit of the city rose a mound, which the ancient builders had transformed, by the addition of masses of brickwork, into a nearly square platform, surmounted by the usual palace, temple, and ziggurat; it was enclosed within a wall of squared stone, the battlements of which remain to the present day.* the whole pile was known as the �ekharsagkurkurra,� or the �house of the terrestrial mountain,� the sanctuary in whose decoration all the ancient sovereigns had vied with one another, including samsirammân i. and irishum, who were merely vicegerents dependent upon babylon. it was dedicated to anshar, that duplicate of anu who had led the armies of heaven in the struggle with tiâmat; the name anshar, softened into aushar, and subsequently into ashshur, was first applied to the town and then to the whole country.** * ainsworth states the circumference of the principal mound of kalah-shergât to be yards, which would make it one of the most extensive ruins in the whole country. ** another name of the town in later times was palbêki, �the town of the old empire,� �the ancient capital,� or shauru. many assyriologists believe that the name ashur, anciently written aushâr, signified �the plain at the edge of the water�; and that it must have been applied to the town before being applied to the country and the god. others, on the contrary, think, with more reason, that it was the god who gave his name to the town and the country; they make a point of the very ancient play of words, which in assyria itself attributed the meaning �good god� to the word ashur. jensen was the first to state that ashur was the god anshâr of the account of the creation. the god himself was a deity of light, usually represented under the form of an armed man, wearing the tiara and having the lower half of his body concealed by a feathered disk. he was supposed to hover continually over the world, hurling fiery darts at the enemies of his people, and protecting his kingly worshippers under the shadow of his wings. their wars were his wars, and he was with them in the thick of the attack, placing himself in the front rank with the soldiery,* so that when he gained the victory, the bulk of the spoil--precious metals, gleanings of the battle-field, slaves and productive lands--fell to his share. the gods of the vanquished enemy, moreover, were, like their princes, forced to render him homage. in the person of the king he took their statues prisoners, and shut them up in his sanctuary; sometimes he would engrave his name upon their figures and send them back to their respective temples, where the sight of them would remind their worshippers of his own omnipotence.** the goddess associated with him as his wife had given her name, nina, to nineveh,*** and was, as the companion of the chaldæan bel, styled the divine lady belit; she was, in fact, a chaste and warlike ishtar, who led the armies into battle with a boldness characteristic of her father.**** * in one of the pictures, for instance, representing the assault of a town, we see a small figure of the god, hurling darts against the enemy. the inscriptions also state that the peoples �are alarmed and quit their cities _before the arms of assur, the powerful one_.� ** as, for instance, the statues of the gods taken from the arabs in the time of esarhaddon. tiglath-pileser i. had carried away twenty-five statues of gods taken from the peoples of kurkhi and kummukh, and had placed them in the temples of beltis, ishtar, anu, and rammân; he mentions other foreign divinities who had been similarly treated. *** the ideogram of the name of the goddess nina serves to write the name of the town nineveh. the name itself has been interpreted by schrader as �station, habitation,� in the semitic languages, and by fr. delitzsch �repose of the god,� an interpretation which delitzsch himself repudiated later on. it is probable that the town, which, like assur, was a chaldæan colony, derived its name from the goddess to whom it was dedicated, and whose temple existed there as early as the time of the vicegerent samsirammân. **** belit is called by tiglath-pileser i. �the great spouse beloved of assur,� but belit, �the lady,� is here merely an epithet used for ishtar: the assyrian ishtar, ishtar of assur, ishtar of nineveh, or rather--especially from the time of the sargonids--ishtar of arbeles, is almost always a fierce and warlike ishtar, the �lady of combat, who directs battles,� �whose heart incites her to the combat and the struggle.� sayce thinks that the union of ishtar and assur is of a more recent date. [illustration: .jpg ishtar as a warrior bringing prisoners to a conquering king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from squeezes brought back by m. do morgan. these two divinities formed an abstract and solitary pair, around whom neither story nor myth appears to have gathered, and who never became the centre of any complex belief. assur seems to have had no parentage assigned to him, no statue erected to him, and he was not associated with the crowd of other divinities; on the contrary, he was called their lord, their �peerless king,� and, as a proof of his supreme sovereignty over them, his name was inscribed at the head of their lists, before those of the triads constituted by the chaldæan priests--even before those of anu, bel, and ba. the city of assur, which had been the first to tender him allegiance for many years, took precedence of all the rest, in spite of the drawbacks with which it had to contend. placed at the very edge of the mesopotamian desert, it was exposed to the dry and burning winds which swept over the plains, so that by the end of the spring the heat rendered it almost intolerable as a residence. the tigris, moreover, ran behind it, thus leaving it exposed to the attacks of the babylonian armies, unprotected as it was by any natural fosse or rampart. the nature of the frontier was such as to afford it no safeguard; indeed, it had, on the contrary, to protect its frontier. nineveh, on the other hand, was entrenched behind the tigris and the zab, and was thus secure from any sudden attack. northerly and easterly winds prevailed during the summer, and the coolness of the night rendered the heat during the day more bearable. it became the custom for the kings and vicegerents to pass the most trying months of the year at nineveh, taking up their abode close to the temple of nina, the assyrian ishtar, but they did not venture to make it their habitual residence, and consequently assur remained the official capital and chief sanctuary of the empire. here its rulers concentrated their treasures, their archives, their administrative offices, and the chief staff of the army; from this town they set out on their expeditions against the cossæans of babylon or the mountaineers of the districts beyond the tigris, and it was in this temple that they dedicated to the god the tenth of the spoil on their return from a successful campaign.* * the majority of scholars now admit that the town of nina, mentioned by gudea and the vicegerents of telloh, was a quarter of, or neighbouring borough of, lagash, and had nothing in common with nineveh, in spite of hommel�s assumption to the contrary. the struggle with chaldæa, indeed, occupied the greater part of their energies, though it did not absorb all their resources, and often left them times of respite, of which they availed themselves to extend their domain to the north and east. we cannot yet tell which of the assyrian sovereigns added the nearest provinces of the upper tigris to his realm; but when the names of these districts appear-in history, they are already in a state of submission and vassalage, and their principal towns are governed by assyrian officers in the same manner as those of singara and nisibe. assuruballît, the conqueror of the cossæans, had succeeded in establishing his authority over the turbulent hordes of shubari which occupied the neighbourhood of the masios, between the khabur and the balîkh, and extended perhaps as far as the euphrates; at any rate, he was considered by posterity as the actual founder of the assyrian empire in these districts.* belnirâri had directed his efforts in another direction, and had conquered the petty kingdoms established on the slopes of the iranian table-land, around the sources of the two zabs, and those of the badanu and the turnât.** * it is called, in an inscription of his great-grandson, rammân-nirâri l, the powerful king �who reduced to servitude the forces of the vast country of shubari, and who enlarged the territory and limits �of assur. ** the inscription of rammân-nirâri i. styles him the prince �who crushes the army of the cossæans, he whose hand unnerves the enemy, and who enlarges the territory and its limits.� the cossæans mentioned in this passage are usually taken to be the cossæan kings of babylon, and not the mountain tribes. like susiana, this part of the country was divided up into parallel valleys, separated from each other by broken ridges of limestone, and watered by the tributaries of the tigris or their affluents. [illustration: .jpg a village in the mountain districts of the old assÆan kingdom] drawn by boudier, from a drawing by père durand. it was thickly strewn with walled towns and villages; the latter, perched upon the precipitous mountain summits, and surrounded by deep ravines, owed their security solely to their position, and, indeed, needed no fortification. the country abounded in woods and pastures, interspersed with cornlands; access to it was gained by one or two passes on the eastern side, which thus permitted caravans or armies to reach the districts lying between the erythræan and caspian seas. the tribes who inhabited it had been brought early under chaldæan civilization, and had adopted the cuneiform script; such of their monuments as are still extant resemble the bas-reliefs and inscriptions of assyria.* it is not always easy to determine the precise locality occupied by these various peoples; the guti were situated near the upper courses of the turnât and the badanu, in the vicinity of the kashshu;** the lulumê had settled in the neighbourhood of the batîr, to the north of the defiles of zohab;*** the namar separated the lulumê from elam, and were situated half in the plain and half in the mountain, while the arapkha occupied, both banks of the great zab. * pinches has published an inscription of a king of khani, named tukultimir, son of ilushaba, written in chaldeo-assyrian, and found in the temple of shamash at sippara, where the personage himself had dedicated it. winckler gives another inscription of a king of the guti, which is also in semitic and in cuneiform character. ** the name is written sometimes quti, at others guti, which induced pognon to believe that they were two different peoples: the territory occupied by this nation must have been originally to the east of the lesser zab, in the upper basins of the adhem and the diyaleh. oppert proposes to recognise in these guti �the ancestors of the goths, who, fifteen hundred years ago, pushed forward to the russia of the present day: we find,� (he adds), �in this passage and in others, some of which go back to the third millennium before the christian era, the earliest mention of the germanic races.� *** the people of lulumô-lullubi have been pointed out as living to the east of the lesser zab by schrader; their exact position, together with that of mount padîr-batîr in whose neighbourhood they were, has been determined by père scheil. budîlu carried his arms against these tribes, and obtained successes over the turuki and the nigimkhi, the princes of the guti and the shuti, as well as over the akhlamî and the iauri.* * the shutu or shuti, who are always found in connection with the guti, appear to have been the inhabitants of the lower mountain slopes which separate the basin of the tigris with the regions of elam, to the south of turnât. the akhlamê were neighbours of the shuti and the guti; they were settled partly in the mesopotamian plain and partly in the neighbourhood of turnât. the territory of the iauri is not known; the turuki and the nigimkhi were probably situated somewhere to the east of the great zab: in the same way that oppert connects the goths with the guti, so hommel sees in the turuki the turks of a very early date. the chiefs of the lulumê had long resisted the attacks of their neighbours, and one of them, anu-banini, had engraved on the rocks overhanging the road not far from the village of seripul, a bas-relief celebrating his own victories. he figures on it in full armour, wearing a turban on his head, and treading underfoot a fallen foe, while ishtar of arbeles leads towards him a long file of naked captives, bound ready for sacrifice. the resistance of the lulumê was, however, finally overcome by rammân-nirâri, the son of budilû; he strengthened the suzerainty gained by his predecessor over the guti, the cossæans, and the shubarti, and he employed the spoil taken from them in beautifying the temple of assur. he had occasion to spend some time in the regions of the upper tigris, warring against the shubari, and a fine bronze sabre belonging to him has been found near diarbekîr, among the ruins of the ancient amidi, where, no doubt, he had left it as an offering in one of the temples. he was succeeded by shalmânuâsharîd,* better known to us as shalmaneser i., one of the most powerful sovereigns of this heroic age of assyrian history. [illustration: .jpg the sabre of ramman-nirari] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch published in the _transactions_ of the bibl. arch. soc. his reign seems to have been one continuous war against the various races then in a state of ferment on the frontiers of his kingdom. he appears in the main to have met with success, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions.* his most formidable attacks were directed against the aramaeans** of mount masios, whose numerous tribes had advanced on one side till they had crossed the tigris, while on the other they had pushed beyond the river balîkh, and had probably reached the euphrates.*** * shalmânu-âsharîd, or shulmânu-âsharîd, signifies �the god shulmânu (shalmânu) is prince,� as pinches was the first to point out. ** some of the details of these campaigns have been preserved on the much-mutilated obelisk of assur-nazir-pal. this was a compilation taken from the annals of assyria to celebrate the important acts of the king�s ancestors. the events recorded in the third column were at first attributed to the reign of tiglath-pileser i.; fr. delitzsch was the first to recognise that they could be referred to the reign of this shalmaneser, and his opinion is now admitted by most of the assyriologists who have studied the question. *** the identity of the arami (written also armaya, arumi, arimi) with the aramoans, admitted by the earlier kammin- nikâbi assyriologists. he captured their towns one after another, razed their fortresses, smote the agricultural districts with fire and sword, and then turned upon the various peoples who had espoused their cause--the kirkhu, the euri, the kharrîn,* and the muzri, who inhabited the territory between the basins of the two great rivers;** once, indeed, he even crossed the euphrates and ventured within the country of khanigalbat, a feat which his ancestors had never even attempted.*** * the people of the country of kilkhi, or kirkhi, the kurkhi, occupied the region between the tigris at diarbekîr and the mountains overlooking the lake of urumiah. the position of the ruri is not known, but it is certain that on one side they joined the aramaeans, and that they were in the neighbourhood of tushkhân. kharrân is the harrân of the balikh, mentioned in vol. iv. pp. , of the present work. ** the name of muzri frequently occurs, and in various positions, among the countries mentioned by the assyrian conquerors; the frequency of its occurrence is easily explained if we are to regard it as a purely assyrian term used to designate the military confines or marches of the kingdom at different epochs of its history. the muzri here in question is the borderland situated in the vicinity of cilicia, probably the sophene and the gumathene of classical geographers. winckler appears to me to exaggerate their importance when he says they were spread over the whole of northern syria as early as the time of shalmaneser i. *** khanigalbat is the name of the province in which milid was placed. he was recalled by a revolt which had broken out in the scattered cities of the district of dur-kurigalzu; he crushed the rising in spite of the help which kadash-manburiash, king of babylon, had given to the rebels, and was soon successful in subduing the princes of lulumê. these were not the raids of a day�s duration, undertaken, without any regard to the future, merely from love of rapine or adventure. shalmaneser desired to bring the regions which he annexed permanently under the authority of assyria, and to this end he established military colonies in suitable places, most of which were kept up long after his death.* * more than five centuries after the time of shalmaneser i., assurnazir-pal makes mention, in his _annals_, of one of these colonies, established in the country of diarbekîr at khabzilukha (or khabzidipkha), near to the town of damdamua. he seems to have directed the internal affairs of his kingdom with the same firmness and energy which he displayed in his military expeditions. it was no light matter for the sovereign to decide on a change in the seat of government; he ran the risk of offending, not merely his subjects, but the god who presided over the destinies of the state, and neither his throne nor his life would have been safe had he failed in his attempt. shalmaneser, however, did not hesitate to make the change, once he was fully convinced of the drawbacks presented by assur as a capital. true, he beautified the city, restored its temples, and permitted it to retain all its privileges and titles; but having done so, he migrated with his court to the town of kalakh, where his descendants continued to reside for several centuries. his son tukulti-ninip made himself master of babylon, and was the first of his race who was able to claim the title of king of sumir and akkad. the cossæans were still suffering from their defeat at the hands of bammân-nirâri. four of their princes had followed nazimaruttash on the throne in rapid succession--kadashmanturgu, kadashmanburiash, who was attacked by shalmaneser, a certain isammeti whose name has been mutilated, and lastly, shagaraktiburiash: bibeiasdu, son of this latter, was in power at the moment when tukulti-ninip ascended the throne. war broke out between the two monarchs, but dragged on without any marked advantage on one side or the other, till at length the conflict was temporarily suspended by a treaty similar to others which had been signed in the course of the previous two or three centuries.* * the passage from the _synchronous history_, republished by winckler, contains the termination of the mutilated name of a babylonian king... _ashu_, which, originally left undecided by winckler, has been restored �bibeiashu� by hilprecht, in the light of monuments discovered at nipur, an emendation which has since then been accepted by winckler. winckler, on his part, has restored the passage on the assumption that the name of the king of assyria engaged against bibeiashu was tukulti-ninip; then, combining this fragment with that in the _pinches chronicle_, which deals with the taking of babylon, he argues that bibeiashu was the king dethroned by tukulti-ninip. an examination of the dates, in so far as they are at present known to us from the various documents, seems to me to render this arrangement inadmissible. the _pinches chronicle_ practically tells us that tukulti-ninip reigned over babylon for _seven years_, when the chaldæans revolted, and named rammânshumusur king. now, the babylonian canon gives us the following reigns for this epoch: bibeiashu _ years_, belnadînshumu _ year months_, kadashmankharbe _ year months_, rammânnadînshumu _ years_, rammânshumusur _ years,_ or _ years_ between the end of the reign of bibeiashu and the beginning of that of rammânshumusur, instead of the _ years_ given us by the _pinches chronicle_ for the length of the reign of tukulti- ninip at babylon. if we reckon, as the only documents known require us to do, seven years from the beginning of the reign of rammânshumusur to the date of the taking of babylon, we are forced to admit that this took place in the reign of kadashmankharbe il, and, consequently, that the passage in the _synchronous history_, in which mention is made of bibeiashu, must be interpreted as i have done in the text, by the hypothesis of a war prior to that in which babylon fell, which was followed by a treaty between this prince and the king of assyria. the peace thus concluded might have lasted longer but for an unforeseen catastrophe which placed babylon almost at the mercy of her rival. the blamites had never abandoned their efforts to press in every conceivable way their claim to the sebbeneh-su, the supremacy, which, prior to kbammurabi, had been exercised by their ancestors over the whole of mesopotamia; they swooped down on karduniash with an impetuosity like that of the assyrians, and probably with the same alternations of success and defeat. their king, kidinkhutrutash, unexpectedly attacked belnadînshumu, son of bibeiashu, appeared suddenly under the walls of nipur and forced the defences of durîlu and Étimgarka-lamma: belnadînshumu disappeared in the struggle after a reign of eighteen months. tukulti-ninip left belna-dînshumu�s successor, kadashmankharbe ii., no time to recover from this disaster; he attacked him in turn, carried babylon by main force, and put a number of the inhabitants to the sword. he looted the palace and the temples, dragged the statue of merodach from its sanctuary and carried it off into assyria, together with the badges of supreme power; then, after appointing governors of his own in the various towns, he returned to kalakh, laden with booty; he led captive with him several members of the royal family--among others, bammânshumusur, the lawful successor of bibeiashu. this first conquest of chaldæa did not, however, produce any lasting results. the fall of babylon did not necessarily involve the subjection of the whole country, and the cities of the south showed a bold front to the foreign intruder, and remained faithful to kadashmankharbe; on the death of the latter, some months after his defeat, they hailed as king a certain bammânshumnadîn, who by some means or other had made his escape from captivity. bammânshumnadîn proved himself a better man than his predecessors; when kidinkhutrutash, never dreaming, apparently, that he would meet with any serious resistance, came to claim his share of the spoil, he defeated him near ishin, drove him out of the districts recently occupied by the elamites, and so effectually retrieved his fortunes in this direction, that he was able to concentrate his whole attention on what was going on in the north. the effects of his victory soon became apparent: the nobles of akkad and karduniash declined to pay homage to their assyrian governors, and, ousting them from the offices to which they had been appointed, restored babylon to the independence which it had lost seven years previously. tukulti-ninip paid dearly for his incapacity to retain his conquests: his son assurnazirpal i. conspired with the principal officers, deposed him from the throne, and confined him in the fortified palace of kar-tukulti-ninip, which he had built not far from kalakh, where he soon after contrived his assassination. about this time rammânshumnadîn disappears, and we can only suppose that the disasters of these last years had practically annihilated the cossæan dynasty, for rammânshu-musur, who was a prisoner in assyria, was chosen as his successor. the monuments tell us nothing definite of the troubles which next befell the two kingdoms: we seem to gather, however, that assyria became the scene of civil wars, and that the sons of tukulti-ninip fought for the crown among themselves. tukultiassurbel, who gained the upper hand at the end of six years, set raminân-shumusur at liberty, probably with the view of purchasing the support of the chaldæans, but he did not succeed in restoring his country to the position it had held under shalmaneser and tukulti-ninip i. the history of assyria presents a greater number of violent contrasts and extreme vicissitudes than that of any other eastern people in the earliest times. no sooner had the assyrians arrived, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of five or six generations, at the very summit of their ambition, than some incompetent, or perhaps merely unfortunate, king appeared on the scene, and lost in a few years all the ground which had been gained at the cost of such tremendous exertions: then the subject races would rebel, the neighbouring peoples would pluck up courage and reconquer the provinces which they had surrendered, till the dismembered empire gradually shrank back to its original dimensions. as the fortunes of babylon rose, those of nineveh suffered a corresponding depression: babylon soon became so powerful that eammânshumusur was able to adopt a patronising tone in his relations with assur-nirâri i. and nabodaînâni, the descendants of tukultiassurbel, who at one time shared the throne together.* * all that we know of these two kings is contained in the copy, executed in the time of assurbanipal, of a letter addressed to them by eammânshumusur. they have been placed, at one time or another, either at the beginning of assyrian history before assurbelnishishu, or after tigiath-pileser i., about the xith or xth, or even the viiith century before our era. it has since been discovered that the rammânshumusur who wrote this letter was the successor of tukulti-ninip i. in chaldæa. this period of subjection and humiliation did not last long. belkudurusur, who appears on the throne not long after assurnirâri and his partner, resumed military operations against the cossæans, but cautiously at first; and though he fell in the decisive engagement, yet bammân-shumusur perished with him, and the two states were thus simultaneously left rulerless. milishikhu succeeded bammânshumusur, and ninipahalesharra filled the place of belkudurusur; the disastrous invasion of assyria by the chaldæans, and their subsequent retreat, at length led to an armistice, which, while it afforded evidence of the indisputable superiority of milishikhu, proved no less plainly the independence of his rival. mero-dachabaliddina i. replaced milishikhu, zamâniashu-middin followed merodachabaliddina: assurdân i., son of ninipahalesharra, broke the treaty, captured the towns of zabân, irrîa, and akarsallu, and succeeded in retaining them. the advantage thus gained was but a slight one, for these provinces lying between the two zabs had long been subject to assyria, and had been wrested from her since the days of tukulti-ninip: however, it broke the run of ill luck which seemed to have pursued her so relentlessly, and opened the way for more important victories. this was the last cossæan war; at any rate, the last of which we find any mention in history: bel-nadînshumu ii. reigned three years after zamâmashu-middin, but when he died there was no man of his family whom the priests could invite to lay hold of the hand of merodach, and his dynasty ended with him. it included thirty-six kings, and had lasted five hundred and seventy-six years and six months.* * the following is a list of some of the kings of this dynasty according to the canon discovered by pinches. [illustration: .jpg table] it had enjoyed its moments of triumph, and at one time had almost seemed destined to conquer the whole of asia; but it appears to have invariably failed just as it was on the point of reaching the goal, and it became completely exhausted by its victories at the end of every two or three generations. it had triumphed over elam, and yet elam remained a constant peril on its right. it had triumphed over assyria, yet assyria, after driving it back to the regions of the upper tigris, threatened to bar the road to the mediterranean by means of its masian colonies: were they once to succeed in this attempt, what hope would there be left to those who ruled in babylon of ever after re-establishing the traditional empire of the ancient sargon and khammurabi? the new dynasty sprang from a town in pashê, the geographical position of which is not known. it was of babylonian origin, and its members placed, at the be ginning of their protocols, formula which were intended to indicate, in the clearest possible manner, the source from which they sprang: they declared themselves to be scions of babylon, its vicegerents, and supreme masters. the names of the first two we do not know: the third, nebuchadrezzar, shows himself to have been one of the most remarkable men of all those who flourished during this troubled era. at no time, perhaps, had chaldæa been in a more abject state, or assailed by more active foes. the elamite had just succeeded in wresting from her namar, the region from whence the bulk of her chariot-horses were obtained, and this success had laid the provinces on the left bank of the tigris open to their attacks. they had even crossed the river, pillaged babylon, and carried away the statue of bel and that of a goddess named eria, the patroness of khussi: �merodach, sore angered, held himself aloof from the country of akkad;� the kings could no longer �take his hands� on their coming to the throne, and were obliged to reign without proper investiture in consequence of their failure to fulfil the rite required by religious laws.* * the _donation to shamud and shamaî_ informs us that nebuchadrezzar �took the hands of bel� as soon as he regained possession of the statue. the copy we possess of the royal canon. nebuchadrezzar i.�s place in the series has, therefore, been the subject of much controversy. several assyriologists were from the first inclined to place him in the first or second rank, some being in favour of the first, others preferring the second; dolitzsch put him into the fifth place, and winckler, without pronouncing definitely on the position to be assigned him, thought he must come in about half-way down the dynasty. hilprecht, on taking up the questions, adduced reasons for supposing him to have been the founder of the dynasty, and his conclusions have been adopted by oppert; they have been disputed by tiele, who wishes to put the king back to fourth or fifth in order, and by winckler, who places him fourth or fifth. it is difficult, however, to accept hilprecht�s hypothesis, plausible though it is, so long as assyriologists who have seen the original tablet agree in declaring that the name of the first king began with the sign of _merodach_ and not with that of _nebo_, as it ought to do, were this prince really our nebuchadrezzar. nebuchadrezzar arose �in babylon,--roaring like a lion, even as bammân roareth,--and his chosen nobles, roared like lions with him.--to merodach, lord of babylon, rose his prayer:--�how long, for me, shall there be sighing and groaning?--how long, for my land, weeping and mourning?--how long, for my countries, cries of grief and tears? till what time, o lord of babylon, wilt thou remain in hostile regions?--let thy heart be softened, and make babylon joyful,--and let thy face be turned toward eshaggil which thou lovest!�� merodach gave ear to the plaint of his servant: he answered him graciously and promised his aid. namar, united as it had been with chaldæa for centuries, did not readily become accustomed to its new masters. the greater part of the land belonged to a semitic and cossæan feudality, the heads of which, while admitting their suzerain�s right to exact military service from them, refused to acknowledge any further duty towards him. the kings of susa declined to recognise their privileges: they subjected them to a poll-tax, levied the usual imposts on their estates, and forced them to maintain at their own expense the troops quartered on them for the purpose of guaranteeing their obedience.* * shamuà and shamaî �fled in like manner towards karduniash, before the king of elam;� it would seem that rittimerodach had entered into secret negotiations with nebuchadrezzar, though this is nowhere explicitly stated in the text. several of the nobles abandoned everything rather than submit to such tyranny, and took refuge with nebuchadrezzar: others entered into secret negotiations with him, and promised to support him if he came to their help with an armed force. he took them at their word, and invaded namar without warning in the month of tamuz, while the summer was at its height, at a season in which the elamites never even dreamt he would take the field. the heat was intense, water was not to be got, and the army suffered terribly from thirst during its forced march of over a hundred miles across a parched-up country. one of the malcontents, eittimerodach, lord of bitkarziabku, joined nebuchadrezzar with all the men he could assemble, and together they penetrated as far as ulaî. the king of elam, taken by surprise, made no attempt to check their progress, but collected his vassals and awaited their attack on the banks of the river in front of susa. once �the fire of the combat had been lighted between the opposing forces, the face of the sun grew dark, the tempest broke forth, the whirlwind raged, and in this whirlwind of the struggle none of the characters could distinguish the face of his neighbour.� nebuchadrezzar, cut off from his own men, was about to surrender or be killed, when eittimerodach flew to his rescue and brought him off safely. in the end the chaldæans gained the upper hand.* * _donation to rittimerodach,_ col. i. . - . the description of the battle as given in this document is generally taken to be merely symbolical, and i have followed the current usage. but if we bear in mind that the text lays emphasis on the drought and severity of the season, we are tempted to agree with pinches and budge that its statements should be taken literally. the affair may have been begun in a cloud of dust, and have ended in a downpour of rain so heavy as to partly blind the combatants. the king was probably drawn away from his men in the confusion; it was probably then that he was in danger of being made prisoner, and that rittimerodach, suddenly coming up, delivered him from the foes who surrounded him. the elamites renounced their claims to the possession of namar, and restored the statues of the gods: nebuchadrezzar �at once laid hold of the hands of bel,� and thus legalised his accession to the throne. other expeditions against the peoples of lulurne and against the cossæans restored his supremacy in the regions of the north-east, and a campaign along the banks of the euphrates opened out the road to syria. he rewarded generously those who had accompanied him on his raid against elam. after issuing regulations intended to maintain the purity of the breed of horses for which namar was celebrated, he reinstated in their possessions shamuâ and his son shamaî, the descendants of one of the priestly families of the province, granting them in addition certain domains near upi, at the mouth of the turnât. he confirmed rittimerodach in possession of all his property, and reinvested him with all the privileges of which the king of elam had deprived him. from that time forward the domain of bitkarziabku was free of the tithe on corn, oxen, and sheep; it was no longer liable to provide horses and mares for the exchequer, or to afford free passage to troops in time of peace; the royal jurisdiction ceased on the boundary of the fief, the seignorial jurisdiction alone extended over the inhabitants and their property. chaldæan prefects ruled in namar, at khalman, and at the foot of the zagros, and nebuchadrezzar no longer found any to oppose him save the king of assyria. the long reign of assurdân in assyria does not seem to have been distinguished by any event of importance either good or bad: it is true he won several towns on the south-east from the babylonians, but then he lost several others on the north-west to the mushku,* and the loss on the one side fully balanced the advantage gained on the other. * hommel has proved, by a very simple calculation, that assurdân must have been the king in whose reign the mushku made the inroad into the basin of the upper tigris and of the balikh, which is mentioned in the _annals of tiglath- pileser i._ these _annals_ are our authority for stating that assurdân was on the throne for a long period, though the exact length of his reign is not known. his son mutakkilnusku lived in assur at peace,* but his grandson, assurîshishî, was a mighty king, conqueror of a score of countries, and the terror of all rebels: he scattered the hordes of the akhlamê and broke up their forces; then ninip, the champion of the gods, permitted him to crush the lulumê and the g-uti in their valleys and on their mountains covered with forests. he made his way up to the frontiers of elam,** and his encroachments on territories claimed by babylon stirred up the anger of the chaldæans against him; nebuchadrezzar made ready to dispute their ownership with him. * _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. mutakkilnusku himself has only left us one inscription, in which he declares that he had built a palace in the city of assyria. ** smith discovered certain fragments of annals, which he attributed to assurîshishî. the longest of these tell of a campaign against elam. lotz attributed them to tiglath- pileser i., and is supported in this by most assyriologists of the day. the earlier engagements went against the assyrians; they were driven back in disorder, but the victor lost time before one of their strongholds, and, winter coming on before he could take it, he burnt his engines of war, set fire to his camp, and returned home. next year, a rapid march carried him right under the walls of assur; then assurîshishî came to the rescue, totally routed his opponent, captured forty of his chariots, and drove him flying across the frontier. the war died out of itself, its end being marked by no treaty: each side kept its traditional position and supremacy over the tribes inhabiting the basins of the turnât and eadanu. the same names reappear in line after line of these mutilated annals, and the same definite enumerations of rebellious tribes who have been humbled or punished. these kings of the plain, both ninevite and babylonian, were continually raiding the country up and down for centuries without ever arriving at any decisive result, and a detailed account of their various campaigns would be as tedious reading as that of the ceaseless struggle between the latins and sabines which fills the opening pages of roman history. posterity soon grew weary of them, and, misled by the splendid position which assyria attained when at the zenith of its glory, set itself to fabricate splendid antecedents for the majestic empire established by the latter dynasties. the legend ran that, at the dawn of time, a chief named ninos had reduced to subjection one after the other--babylonia, media, armenia, and all the provinces between the indies and the mediterranean. he built a capital for himself on the banks of the tigris, in the form of a parallelogram, measuring a hundred and fifty stadia in length, ninety stadia in width; altogether, the walls were four hundred and eighty stadia in circumference. in addition to the assyrians who formed the bulk of the population, he attracted many foreigners to nineveh, so that in a few years it became the most flourishing town in the whole world. an inroad of the tribes of the oxus interrupted his labours; ninos repulsed the invasion, and, driving the barbarians back into bactria, laid siege to it; here, in the tent of one of his captains, he came upon semiramis, a woman whose past was shrouded in mystery. she was said to be the daughter of an ordinary mortal by a goddess, the ascalonian derketô. exposed immediately after her birth, she was found and adopted by a shepherd named simas, and later on her beauty aroused the passion of oannes, governor of syria. ninos, amazed at the courage displayed by her on more than one occasion, carried her off, made her his favourite wife, and finally met his death at her hands. no sooner did she become queen, than she founded babylon on a far more extensive scale than that of nineveh. its walls were three hundred and sixty stadia in length, with two hundred and fifty lofty towers, placed here and there on its circuit, the roadway round the top of the ramparts being wide enough for six chariots to drive abreast. she made a kind of harbour in the euphrates, threw a bridge across it, and built quays one hundred and sixty stadia in length along its course; in the midst of the town she raised a temple to bel. this great work was scarcely finished when disturbances broke out in media; these she promptly repressed, and set out on a tour of inspection through the whole of her provinces, with a view to preventing the recurrence of similar outbreaks by her presence. wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her, cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. she built ecbatana in media, semiramocarta on lake van in armenia, and tarsus in cilicia; then, having reached the confines of syria, she crossed the isthmus, and conquered egypt and ethiopia. the far-famed wealth of india recalled her from the banks of the nile to those of the euphrates, _en route_ for the remote east, but at this point her good fortune forsook her: she was defeated by king stratobates, and returned to her own dominions, never again to leave them. she had set up triumphal stelae on the boundaries of the habitable globe, in the very midst of scythia, not far from the iaxartes, where, centuries afterwards, alexander of macedon read the panegyric of herself which she had caused to be engraved there. �nature,� she writes, �gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have put me on a level with the greatest of men. i ruled over the dominion of ninos, which extends eastwards to the river hinaman, southwards to the countries of incense and myrrh, and northwards as far as the sacaa and sogdiani. before my time no assyrian had ever set eyes on the sea: i have seen four oceans to which no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. i have made rivers to flow where i would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did i render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. i raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. i opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. and, amidst all these labours, i yet found time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends.� on discovering that her son ninyas was plotting her assassination, she at once abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime, and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the goddess to us. ninos and semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty deeds, like those ascribed to ishtar and gilgames, must be placed in the same category as those other fables with which the babylonian legends strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.* * the legend of ninos and semiramis is taken from diodorus siculus, who reproduces, often word for word, the version of ctesias. [illustration: .jpg the dove-goddess] drawn by boudier, from the sketch published in longpérier. the real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination. it would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. it was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day�s respite, that rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease. in much the same way the ceaseless struggles of assyria with the chaldaeans, and with the mountain tribes of the zagros chain, were unconsciously preparing her for those lightning-like campaigns in which she afterwards overthrew all the civilized nations of the bast one after another. it was only at the cost of unparalleled exertions that she succeeded in solidly welding together the various provinces within her borders, and in kneading (so to speak) the many and diverse elements of her vast population into one compact mass, containing in itself all that was needful for its support, and able to bear the strain of war for several years at time without giving way, and rich enough in men and horses to provide the material for an effective army without excessive impoverishment of her trade or agriculture. [illustration: .jpg an assyrian] drawn by boudier, from a painted bas-relief given in layard. the race came of an old semitic strain, somewhat crude as yet, and almost entirely free from that repeated admixture of foreign elements which had marred the purity of the babylonian stock. the monuments show us a type similar in many respects to that which we find to-day on the slopes of singar, or in the valleys to the east of mossul. the figures on the monuments are tall and straight, broad-shouldered and wide in the hips, the arms well developed, the legs robust, with good substantial feet. the swell of the muscles on the naked limbs is perhaps exaggerated, but this very exaggeration of the modelling suggests the vigour of the model; it is a heavier, more rustic type than the egyptian, promising greater strength and power of resistance, and in so far an indisputable superiority in the great game of war. the head is somewhat small, the forehead low and flat, the eyebrows heavy, the eye of a bold almond shape, with heavy lids, the nose aquiline, and full at the tip, with wide nostrils terminating in a hard, well-defined curve; the lips are thick and full, the chin bony, while the face is framed by the coarse dark wavy hair and beard, which fell in curly masses over the nape of the neck and the breast. the expression of the face is rarely of an amiable and smiling type, such as we find in the statues of the theban period or in those of the memphite empire, nor, as a matter of fact, did the assyrian pride himself on the gentleness of his manners: he did not overflow with love for his fellow-man, as the egyptian made a pretence of doing; on the contrary, he was stiff-necked and proud, without pity for others or for himself, hot-tempered and quarrelsome like his cousins of chaldæa, but less turbulent and more capable of strict discipline. it mattered not whether he had come into the world in one of the wretched cabins of a fellah village, or in the palace of one of the great nobles; he was a born soldier, and his whole education tended to develop in him the first qualities of the soldier--temperance, patience, energy, and unquestioning obedience: he was enrolled in an army which was always on a war footing, commanded by the god assur, and under assur, by the king, the vicegerent and representative of the god. his life was shut in by the same network of legal restrictions which confined that of the babylonians, and all its more important events had to be recorded on tablets of clay; the wording of contracts, the formalities of marriage or adoption, the status of bond and free, the rites of the dead and funeral ceremonies, had either remained identical with those in use during the earliest years of the cities of the lower euphrates, or differed from them only in their less important details. the royal and municipal governments levied the same taxes, used the same procedure, employed the same magistrates, and the grades of their hierarchy were the same, with one exception. after the king, the highest office was filled by a soldier, the _tartan_ who saw to the recruiting of the troops, and led them in time of war, or took command of the staff-corps whenever the sovereign himself deigned to appear on the scene of action.* * we can determine the rank occupied, by the _tartanu_ at court by the positions they occupy in the lists of eponymous _limmu_: they invariably come next after the king--a fact which was noticed many years ago. the more influential of these functionaries bore, in addition to their other titles, one of a special nature, which, for the space of one year, made its holder the most conspicuous man in the country; they became _limmu_, and throughout their term of office their names appeared on all official documents. the chaldæans distinguished the various years of each reign by a reference to some event which had taken place in each; the assyrians named them after the _limmu_.* the king was the _ex-officio limmu_ for the year following that of his accession, then after him the _tartan_, then the ministers and governors of provinces and cities in an order which varied little from reign to reign. the names of the _limmu_, entered in registers and tabulated--just as, later on, were those of the greek archons and roman consuls--furnished the annalists with a rigid chronological system, under which the facts of history might be arranged with certainty.** * according to delitzsch, the term _limu,_ or _limmu_, meant at first any given period, then later more especially the year during which a magistrate filled his office; in the opinion of most other assyriologists it referred to the magistrate himself as eponymous archon. ** the first list of _limmu_ was discovered by h. rawlinson. the portions which have been preserved extend from the year to the year b.c. without a break. in the periods previous and subsequent to this we have only names scattered here and there which it has not been possible to classify: the earliest _limmu_ known at present flourished under rammân-nirâri i., and was named mukhurilâni. three different versions of the canon have como down to us. in the most important one the names of the eponymous officials are written one after another without titles or any mention of important events; in the other two, the titles of each personage, and any important occurrences which took place during his year of office, are entered after the name. the king still retained the sacerdotal attributes with which cossæan monarchs had been invested from the earliest times, but contact with the egyptians had modified the popular conception of his personality. his subjects were no longer satisfied to regard him merely as a man superior to his fellow-men; they had come to discover something of the divine nature in him, and sometimes identified him--not with assur, the master of all things, who occupied a position too high above the pale of ordinary humanity--but with one of the demi-gods of the second rank, shamash, the sun, the deity whom the pharaohs pretended to represent in flesh and blood here below. his courtiers, therefore, went as far as to call him �sun� when they addressed him, and he himself adopted this title in his inscriptions.* * nebuchadrezzar i. of babylon assumes the title of _shamash mati-shu_, the �sun of his country,� and hilprecht rightly sees in this expression a trace of egyptian influences; later on, assurnazirpal, king of assyria similarly describes himself as _shamshu kishshat nishi_, the �sun of all mankind.� tiele is of opinion that these expressions do not necessarily point to any theory of the actual incarnation of the god, as was the case in egypt, but that they may be mere rhetorical figures. formerly he had only attained this apotheosis after death, later on he was permitted to aspire to it during his lifetime. the chaldæans adopted the same attitude, and in both countries the royal authority shone with the borrowed lustre of divine omnipotence. with these exceptions life at court remained very much the same as it had been; at nineveh, as at babylon, we find harems filled with foreign princesses, who had either been carried off as hostages from the country of a defeated enemy, or amicably obtained from their parents. in time of war, the command of the troops and the dangers of the battle-field; in time of peace, a host of religious ceremonies and judicial or administrative duties, left but little leisure to the sovereign who desired to perform conscientiously all that was required of him. his chief amusement lay in the hunting of wild beasts: the majority of the princes who reigned over assyria had a better right than even amenôthes iii. himself to boast of the hundreds of lions which they had slain. they set out on these hunting expeditions with quite a small army of charioteers and infantry, and were often away several days at a time, provided urgent business did not require their presence in the palace. they started their quarry with the help of large dogs, and followed it over hill and dale till they got within bowshot: if it was but slightly wounded and turned on them, they gave it the finishing stroke with their lances without dismounting. [illustration: .jpg a lion-hunt] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. occasionally, however, they were obliged to follow their prey into places where horses could not easily penetrate; then a hand-to-hand conflict was inevitable. the lion would rise on its hind quarters and endeavour to lay its pursuer low with a stroke of its mighty paw, but only to fall pierced to the heart by his lance or sword. [illustration: .jpg lion transfixed by an arrow] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. this kind of encounter demanded great presence of mind and steadiness of hand; the assyrians were, therefore, trained to it from their youth up, and no hunter was permitted to engage in these terrible encounters without long preliminary practice. seeing the lion as they did so frequently, and at such close quarters, they came to know it quite as well as the egyptians, and their sculptors reproduce it with a realism and technical skill which have been rarely equalled in modern times. but while the theban artist generally represents it in an attitude of repose, the assyrians prefer to show it in violent action in all the various attitudes which it assumes during a struggle, either crouching as it prepares to spring, or fully extended in the act of leaping; sometimes it rears into an upright position, with arched back, gaping jaws, and claws protruded, ready to bite or strike its foe; at others it writhes under a spear-thrust, or rolls over and over in its dying agonies. in one instance, an arrow has pierced the skull of a male lion, crashing through the frontal bone a little above the left eyebrow, and protrudes obliquely to the right between his teeth: under the shock of the blow he has risen on his hind legs, with contorted spine, and beats the air with his fore paws, his head thrown back as though to free himself of the fatal shaft. not far from him the lioness lies stretched out upon its back in the rigidity of death. [illustration: .jpg paintings of chairs] the �rimu,� or urus, was, perhaps, even a more formidable animal to encounter than any of the _felido_, owing to the irresistible fury of his attack. no one would dare, except in a case of dire necessity, to meet him on foot. the loose flowing robes which the king and the nobles never put aside--not even in such perilous pastimes as these--were ill fitted for the quick movements required to avoid the attack of such an animal, and those who were unlucky enough to quit their chariot ran a terrible risk of being gored or trodden underfoot in the encounter. it was the custom, therefore, to attack the beast by arrows, and to keep it at a distance. if the animal were able to come up with its pursuer, the latter endeavoured to seize it by the horn at the moment when it lowered its head, and to drive his dagger into its neck. if the blow were adroitly given it severed the spinal cord, and the beast fell in a heap as if struck by lightning. a victory over such animals was an occasion for rejoicing, and solemn thanks were offered to assur and ishtar, the patrons of the chase, at the usual evening sacrifice. [illustration: .jpg a ubus hunt] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief in the british museum. the slain beasts, whether lion or urus, were arranged in a row before the altar, while the king, accompanied by his flabella, and umbrella-bearers, stood alongside them, holding his bow in his left hand. while the singers intoned the hymn of thanksgiving to the accompaniment of the harp, the monarch took the bowl of sacred wine, touched his lips with it, and then poured a portion of the contents on the heads of the victims. a detailed account of each hunting exploit was preserved for posterity either in inscriptions or on bas-reliefs.* * in the _annals of tiglath-pileser i._ the king counts the number of his victims: urus, male elephants, lions slain in single combat on foot, lions killed by arrows let fly from his chariot. in the _annals of assurnazirpal,_ the king boasts of having slain elephants, urus, and lions. the chase was in those days of great service to the rural population; the kings also considered it to be one of the duties attached to their office, and on a level with their obligation to make war on neighbouring nations devoted by the will of assur to defeat and destruction. [illustration: .jpg libation poured over the lions on the return from the chase] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hommel. the army charged to carry out the will of the god had not yet acquired the homogeneity and efficiency which it afterwards attained, yet it had been for some time one of the most formidable in the world, and even the egyptians themselves, in spite of their long experience in military matters, could not put into the field such a proud array of effective troops. we do not know how this army was recruited, but the bulk of it was made up of native levies, to which foreign auxiliaries were added in numbers varying with the times.* a permanent nucleus of troops was always in garrison in the capital under the �tartan,� or placed in the principal towns at the disposal of the governors.** * we have no bas-relief representing the armies of tiglath- pileser i. everything in the description which follows is taken from the monuments of assurnazirpal and shalmaneser ii., revised as far as possible by the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser; the armament of both infantry and chariotry must have been practically the same in the two periods. ** this is based on the account given in the obelisk of shalmaneser, where the king, for example, after having gathered his soldiers together at kalakh [calah], put at their head dainassur the artan, �the master of his innumerable troops.� [illustration: .jpg two assyrian archers] drawn by faucher-gudin. the contingents which came to be enrolled at these centres on the first rumour of war may have been taken from among the feudal militia, as was the custom in the nile valley, or the whole population may have had to render personal military service, each receiving while with the colours a certain daily pay. the nobles and feudal lords were accustomed to call their own people together, and either placed themselves at their head or commissioned an officer to act in their behalf.* * the assembling of foot-soldiers and chariots is often described at the beginning of each campaign; the _donation of bittimerodach_ brings before us a great feudal lord, who leads his contingent to the king of chaldæa, and anything which took place among the babylonians had its counterpart among the assyrians. sometimes the king had need of all the contingents, and then it was said he �assembled the country.� auxiliaries are mentioned, for example, in the _annals of assurnazirpal_, col. iii. . - , where the king, in his passage, rallies one after the other the troops of bît-bakhiâni, of azalli, of bît-adini, of garganish, and of the patinu. [illustration: .jpg an assyrian war-chariot charging the foe] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell. these recruits were subjected to the training necessary for their calling by exercises similar to those of the egyptians, but of a rougher sort and better adapted to the cumbrous character of their equipment. the blacksmith�s art had made such progress among the assyrians since the times of thûtmosis iii. and ramses il, that both the character and the materials of the armour were entirely changed. [illustration: a.jpg harness of the horses] drawn by faucher-gudin, from g. rawlinson. [illustration: b.jpg pikeman] while the egyptian of old entered into the contest almost naked, and without other defence than a padded cap, a light shield, and a leather apron, the assyrian of the new age set out for war almost cased in metal. the pikemen and archers of whom the infantry of the line was composed wore a copper or iron helmet, conical in form, and having cheek-pieces covering the ears; they were clad in a sort of leathern shirt covered with plates or imbricated scales of metal, which protected the body and the upper part of the arm; a quilted and padded loin-cloth came over the haunches, while close-fitting trousers, and buskins laced up in the front, completed their attire. the pikemen were armed with a lance six feet long, a cutlass or short sword passed through the girdle, and an enormous shield, sometimes round and convex, sometimes arched at the top and square at the bottom. the bowmen did not encumber themselves with a buckler, but carried, in addition to the bow and quiver, a poignard or mace. the light infantry consisted of pikemen and archers--each of whom wore a crested helmet and a round shield of wicker-work--of slingers and club-bearers, as well as of men armed with the two-bladed battle-axe. the chariots were heavier and larger than those of the egyptians. they had high, strongly made wheels with eight spokes, and the body of the vehicle rested directly on the axle; the panels were of solid wood, sometimes covered with embossed or carved metal, but frequently painted; they were further decorated sometimes with gold, silver, or ivory mountings, and with precious stones. the pole, which was long and heavy, ended in a boss of carved wood or incised metal, representing a flower, a rosette, the muzzle of a lion, or a horse�s head. it was attached to the axle under the floor of the vehicle, and as it had to bear a great strain, it was not only fixed to this point by leather thongs such as were employed in egypt, but also bound to the front of the chariot by a crossbar shaped like a spindle, and covered with embroidered stuff--an arrangement which prevented its becoming detached when driving at full speed. a pair of horses were harnessed to it, and a third was attached to them on the right side for the use of a supplementary warrior, who could take the place of his comrade in case of accident, or if he were wounded. the trappings were very simple; but sometimes there was added to these a thickly padded caparison, of which the various parts were fitted to the horse by tags so as to cover the upper part of his head, his neck, back, and breast. the usual complement of charioteers was two to each vehicle, as in egypt, but sometimes, as among the khâti, there were three--one on the left to direct the horses, a warrior, and an attendant who protected the other two with his shield; on some occasions a fourth was added as an extra assistant. the equipment of the charioteers was like that of the infantry, and consisted of a jacket with imbricated scales of metal, bow and arrows, and a lance or javelin. a standard which served as a rallying-point for the chariots in the battle was set up on the front part of each vehicle, between the driver and the warrior; it bore at the top a disk supported on the heads of two bulls, or by two complete representations of these animals, and a standing figure of assur letting fly his arrows. the chariotry formed, as in most countries of that time, the picked troops of the service, in which the princes and great lords were proud to be enrolled. upon it depended for the most part the issue of the conflict, and the position assigned to it was in the van, the king or commander-in-chief reserving to himself the privilege of conducting the charge in person. it was already, however, in a state of decadence, both as regards the number of units composing it and its methods of manoeuvring; the infantry, on the other hand, had increased in numbers, and under the guidance of abler generals tended to become the most trustworthy force in assyrian campaigns.* * tiglath-pileser is seen, for instance, setting out on a campaign in a mountainous country with only thirty chariots. notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the pharaoh�s troops were accustomed to manouvre. [illustration: .jpg crossing a river in boats and on inflated skins] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the theatre of war was not like syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into �points like daggers,� and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.** * sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against elam, owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the rain; a similar contretemps must have met assurbanipal on the banks of the ididi. ** the assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the difficulties of the country which they have to overcome. bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.* * assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as prisoners. if they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage. [illustration: .jpg making a bridge for the passage of the chariots] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of balawât. each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream. partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side. the chariots could not be carried over so easily. [illustration: .jpg the king�s chariot crossing a bridge] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. if the bed of the river was not very wide, and the current not too violent, a narrow bridge was constructed, or rather an improvised dyke of large stones and rude gabions filled with clay, over which was spread a layer of branches and earth, supplying a sufficiently broad passage for a single chariot, of which the horses were led across at walking pace.* * flying bridges, _tîturâti_, were mentioned as far back as the time of tiglath-pileser i. but when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the flotilla, swam across the river.* if the troops had to pass through a mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the lebanon on the phoenician coast.** * it was in this manner that tiglath-pileser i. crossed the euphrates on his way to the attack of carchemish. ** tiglath-pileser i. speaks on several occasions, and not without pride, of the roads that he had made for himself with bronze hatchets through the forests and over the mountains. [illustration: .jpg the assyrian infantry crossing the mountains] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of balawât. the troops advanced in narrow columns, sometimes even in single file, along these improvised roads, always on the alert lest they should be taken at a disadvantage by an enemy concealed in the thickets. in case of attack, the foot-soldiers had each to think of himself, and endeavour to give as many blows as he received; but the charioteers, encumbered by their vehicles and the horses, found it no easy matter to extricate themselves from the danger. once the chariots had entered into the forest region, the driver descended from his vehicle, and led the horses by the head, while the warrior and his assistant were not slow to follow his example, in order to give some relief to the animals by tugging at the wheels. the king alone did not dismount, more out of respect for his dignity than from indifference to the strain upon the animals; for, in spite of careful leading, he had to submit to a rough shaking from the inequalities of this rugged soil; sometimes he had too much of this, and it is related of him in his annals that he had crossed the mountains on foot like an ordinary mortal.* * the same fact is found in the accounts of every expedition, but more importance is attached to it as we approach the end of the ninevite empire, when the kings were not so well able to endure hardship. sennacherib mentions it on several occasions, with a certain amount of self-pity for the fatigue he had undergone, but with a real pride in his own endurance. a halt was made every evening, either at some village, whose inhabitants were obliged to provide food and lodging, or, in default of this, on some site which they could fortify by a hastily thrown up rampart of earth. if they were obliged to remain in any place for a length of time, a regular encircling wall was constructed, not square or rectangular like those of the egyptians, but round or oval.* * the oval inclines towards a square form, with rounded corners, on the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of shalmaneser ii. at balawât. [illustration: .jpg the king crossing a mountain in his chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell, taken in the british museum. it was made of dried brick, and provided with towers like an ancient city; indeed, many of these entrenched camps survived the occasion of their formation, and became small fortified towns or castles, whence a permanent garrison could command the neighbouring country. the interior was divided into four equal parts by two roads, intersecting each other at right angles. the royal tents, with their walls of felt or brown linen, resembled an actual palace, which could be moved from place to place; they were surrounded with less pretentious buildings reserved for the king�s household, and the stables. [illustration: .jpg an assyrian camp] drawn by boudier, from layard. the tent-poles at the angles of these habitations were plated with metal, and terminated at their upper extremities in figures of goats and other animals made of the same material. the tents of the soldiers, were conical in form, and each was maintained in its position by a forked pole placed inside. they contained the ordinary requirements of the peasant---bed and head-rest, table with legs like those of a gazelle, stools and folding-chairs; the household utensils and the provisions hung from the forks of the support. the monuments, which usually give few details of humble life, are remarkable for their complete reproductions of the daily scenes in the camp. we see on them, the soldier making his bed, grinding corn, dressing the carcase of a sheep, which he had just killed, or pouring out wine; the pot boiling on the fire is watched by the vigilant eye of a trooper or of a woman, while those not actively employed are grouped together in twos and threes, eating, drinking, and chatting. a certain number of priests and soothsayers accompanied the army, but they did not bring the statues of their gods with them, the only emblems of the divinities seen in battle being the two royal ensigns, one representing assur as lord of the territory, borne on a single bull and bending his bow, while the other depicted him standing on two bulls as king of assyria.* an altar smoked before the chariot on which these two standards were planted, and every night and morning the prince and his nobles laid offerings upon it, and recited prayers before it for the well-being of the army. military tactics had not made much progress since the time of the great egyptian invasions. the assyrian generals set out in haste from nineveh or assur in the hope of surprising their enemy, and they often succeeded in penetrating into the very heart of his country before he had time to mobilise or concentrate his forces. the work of subduing him was performed piecemeal; they devastated his fields, robbed his orchards, and, marching all through the night,** they would arrive with such suddenness before one or other of his towns, that he would have no time to organise a defence. most of their campaigns were mere forced marches across plains and mountains, without regular sieges or pitched battles. * it is possible that each of these standards corresponded to some dignity of the sovereign; the first belonged to him, inasmuch as he was _shar kishshati,_ �king of the regions,� and the other, by virtue of his office, of _shar ashshur_, �king of assyria.� ** assurnazirpal mentions several night marches, which enabled him to reach the heart of the enemy�s country. [illustration: .jpg a fortified town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the inhabitants of the town who have been taken prisoners, are leaving it with their cattle under the conduct of assyrian soldiers. should the enemy, however, seek an engagement, and the men be drawn up in line to meet him, the action would be opened by archers and light troops armed with slings, who would be followed by the chariotry and heavy infantry for close attack; a reserve of veterans would await around the commanding-general the crucial moment of the engagement, when they would charge in a body among the combatants, and decide the victory by sheer strength of arm.* * tiglath-pileser i. mentions a pitched battle against the muskhu, who numbered , men; and another against kiliteshub, king of kummukh, in his first campaign. in one of the following campaigns he overcame the people of saraush and those of maruttash, and also sugi; later on he defeated allied kings of naîri, and took from them chariots and , people of kumanu. the other wars are little more than raids, during which he encountered merely those who were incapable of offering him any resistance. the pursuit of the enemy was never carried to any considerable distance, for the men were needed to collect the spoil, despatch the wounded, and carry off the trophies of war. such of the prisoners as it was deemed useful or politic to spare were stationed in a safe place under a guard of sentries. the remainder were condemned to death as they were brought in, and their execution took place without delay; they were made to kneel down, with their backs to the soldiery, their heads bowed, and their hands resting on a flat stone or a billet of wood, in which position they were despatched with clubs. the scribes, standing before their tent doors, registered the number of heads cut off; each soldier, bringing his quota and throwing it upon the heap, gave in his name and the number of his company, and then withdrew in the hope of receiving a reward proportionate to the number of his victims.* * the details of this bringing of heads are known to us by representations of a later period. the allusions contained in the _annals of tiglath-pileser i_. show that the custom was in full force under the early assyrian conquerors. when the king happened to accompany the army, he always presided at this scene, and distributed largesse to those who had shown most bravery; in his absence he required that the heads of the enemy�s chiefs should be sent to him, in order that they might be exposed to his subjects on the gates of his capital. sieges were lengthy and arduous undertakings. in the case of towns situated on the plain, the site was usually chosen so as to be protected by canals, or an arm of a river on two or three sides, thus leaving one side only without a natural defence, which the inhabitants endeavoured to make up for by means of double or treble ramparts.* * the town of tela had three containing walls, that of shingisha had four, and that of pitura two. [illustration: .jpg the bringing of heads after a battle] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. these fortifications must have resembled those of the syrian towns; the walls were broad at the base, and, to prevent scaling, rose to a height of some thirty or forty feet: there were towers at intervals of a bowshot, from which the archers could seriously disconcert parties making attacks against any intervening points in the curtain wall; the massive gates were covered with raw hides, or were plated with metal to resist assaults by fire and axe, while, as soon as hostilities commenced, the defence was further completed by wooden scaffolding. places thus fortified, however, at times fell almost without an attempt at resistance; the inhabitants, having descended into the lowlands to rescue their crops from the assyrians, would be disbanded, and, while endeavouring to take refuge within their ramparts, would be pursued by the enemy, who would gain admittance with them in the general disorder. if the town did not fall into their hands by some stroke of good fortune, they would at once attempt, by an immediate assault, to terrify the garrison into laying down their arms.* * assurnazirpal, in this fashion, took the town of pitura in two days, in spite of its strong double ramparts. the archers and slingers led the attack by advancing in couples till they were within the prescribed distance from the walls, one of the two taking careful aim, while the other sheltered his comrade behind his round-topped shield. the king himself would sometimes alight from his chariot and let fly his arrows in the front rank of the archers, while a handful of resolute men would rush against the gates of the town and attempt either to break them down or set them alight with torches. another party, armed with stout helmets and quilted jerkins, which rendered them almost invulnerable to the shower of arrows or stones poured on them by the besieged, would attempt to undermine the walls by means of levers and pick-axes, and while thus engaged would be protected by mantelets fixed to the face of the walls, resembling in shape the shields of the archers. often bodies of men would approach the suburbs of the city and endeavour to obtain access to the ramparts from the roofs of the houses in close proximity to the walls. if, however, they could gain admittance by none of these means, and time was of no consideration, they would resign themselves to a lengthy siege, and the blockade would commence by a systematic desolation of the surrounding country, in which the villages scattered over the plain would be burnt, the vines torn up, and all trees cut down. [illustration: .jpg the king lets fly arrows at a besieged town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the assyrians waged war with a brutality which the egyptians would never have tolerated. unlike the pharaohs, their kings were not content to imprison or put to death the principal instigators of a revolt, but their wrath would fall upon the entire population. as long as a town resisted the efforts of their besieging force, all its inhabitants bearing arms who fell into their hands were subjected to the most cruel tortures; they were cut to pieces or impaled alive on stakes, which were planted in the ground just in front of the lines, so that the besieged should enjoy a full view of the sufferings of their comrades. [illustration: .jpg assyrian sappers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. even during the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody pale between the two contending armies. this horrible spectacle had at least the effect of shaking the courage of the besieged, and of hastening the end of hostilities. when at length the town yielded to the enemy, it was often razed to the ground, and salt was strewn upon its ruins, while the unfortunate inhabitants were either massacred or transplanted _en masse_ elsewhere. if the bulk of the population were spared and condemned to exile, the wealthy and noble were shown no clemency; they were thrown from, the top of the city towers, their ears and noses were cut off, their hands and feet were amputated, or they and their children were roasted over a slow fire, or flayed alive, or decapitated, and their heads piled up in a heap. [illustration: .jpg a town taken by scaling] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gate at balawât. the two soldiers who represent the assyrian army carry their shields before them; flames appear above the ramparts, showing that the conquerors have burnt the town. the victorious sovereigns appear to have taken a pride in the ingenuity with which they varied these means of torture, and dwell with complacency on the recital of their cruelties. �i constructed a pillar at the gate of the city,� is the boast of one of them; �i then flayed the chief men, and covered the post with their skins; i suspended their dead bodies from this same pillar, i impaled others on the summit of the pillar, and i ranged others on stakes around the pillar.� two or three executions of this kind usually sufficed to demoralise the enemy. the remaining inhabitants assembled: terrified by the majesty of assur, and as it were blinded by the brightness of his countenance, they sunk down at the knees of the victor and embraced his feet.* * these are the very expressions used in the assyrian texts: �the terror of my strength overthrew them, they feared the combat, and they embraced my feet;� and again: �the brightness of assur, my lord, overturned them.� this latter image is explained by the presence over the king of the winged figure of assur directing the battle. [illustration: .jpg tortures inflicted on prisoners] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the bronze gates of balawât; on the right the town is seen in flames, and on the walls on either side hangs a row of heads, one above another. the peace secured at the price of their freedom left them merely with their lives and such of their goods as could not be removed from the soil. the scribes thereupon surrounded the spoil seized by the soldiery and drew up a detailed inventory of the prisoners and their property: everything worth carrying away to assyria was promptly registered, and despatched to the capital. [illustration: .jpg a convoy of prisoners and captives after the taking of a town] drawn by faucher gudin, from layard. the contents of the royal palace led the way; it comprised the silver, gold, and copper of the vanquished prince, his caldrons, dishes and cups of brass, the women of his harem, the maidens of his household, his furniture and stuffs, horses and chariots, together with his men and women servants. the enemy�s gods, like his kings, were despoiled of their possessions, and poor and rich suffered alike. the choicest of their troops were incorporated into the assyrian regiments, and helped to fill the gaps which war had made in the ranks;* the peasantry and townsfolk were sold as slaves, or were despatched with their families to till the domains of the king in some assyrian village.* tiglath-pileser i. in this manner incorporated chariots of the kashki and the urumi into the assyrian chariotry. [illustration: .jpg convoy of prisoners bound in various ways] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of one of the gates of balawât. the monuments often depict the exodus of these unfortunate wretches. they were represented as proceeding on their way in the charge of a few foot-soldiers--each of the men carrying, without any sign of labour, a bag of provisions, while the women bear their young children on their shoulders or in their arms: herds of cows and flocks of goats and sheep follow, chariots drawn by mules bringing up the rear with the baggage. while the crowd of non-combatants were conducted in irregular columns without manacles or chains, the veteran troops and the young men capable of bearing arms were usually bound together, and sometimes were further secured by a wooden collar placed on their necks. many perished on the way from want or fatigue, but such as were fortunate enough to reach the end of the journey were rewarded with a small portion of land and a dwelling, becoming henceforward identified with the indigenous inhabitants of the country. assyrians were planted as colonists in the subjugated towns, and served to maintain there the authority of the conqueror. the condition of the latter resembled to a great extent that of the old egyptian vassals in phoenicia or southern syria. they were allowed to retain their national constitution, rites, and even their sovereigns; when, for instance, after some rebellion, one of these princes had been impaled or decapitated, his successor was always chosen from among the members of his own family, usually one of his sons, who was enthroned almost before his father had ceased to breathe. he was obliged to humiliate his own gods before assur, to pay a yearly tribute, to render succour in case of necessity to the commanders of neighbouring garrisons, to send his troops when required to swell the royal army, to give his sons or brothers as hostages, and to deliver up his own sisters and daughters, or those of his nobles, for the harem or the domestic service of the conqueror. the unfortunate prince soon resigned himself to this state of servitude; he would collect around him and reorganise his scattered subjects, restore them to their cities, rebuild their walls, replant the wasted orchards, and sow the devastated fields. a few years of relative peace and tranquillity, during which he strove to be forgotten by his conqueror, restored prosperity to his country; the population increased with extraordinary rapidity, and new generations arose who, unconscious of the disasters suffered by their predecessors, had, but one aim, that of recovering their independence. we must, however, beware of thinking that the defeat of these tribes was as crushing or their desolation as terrible as the testimony of the inscriptions would lead us to suppose. the rulers of nineveh were but too apt to relate that this or that country had been conquered and its people destroyed, when the assyrian army had remained merely a week or a fortnight within its territory, had burnt some half-dozen fortified towns, and taken two or three thousand prisoners.* * for example, tiglath-pileser i. conquers the kummukli in the first year of his reign, burning, destroying, and depopulating the towns, and massacring �the remainder of the kummukh� who had taken refuge in the mountains, after which, in his second campaign, he again pillages, burns, destroys, and depopulates the towns, and again massacres the remainder of the inhabitants hiding in the mountains. he makes the same statements with regard to most of the other countries and peoples conquered by him, but we find them reappearing with renewed vigour on the scene, soon after their supposed destruction. if we were to accept implicitly all that is recorded of the assyrian exploits in naîri or the taurus, we should be led to believe that for at least half a century the valleys of the upper tigris and middle euphrates were transformed into a desert; each time, however, that they are subsequently mentioned on the occasion of some fresh expedition, they appear once more covered with thriving cities and a vigorous population, whose generals offer an obstinate resistance to the invaders. we are, therefore, forced to admit that the majority of these expeditions must be regarded as mere raids. the population, disconcerted by a sudden attack, would take refuge in the woods or on the mountains, carrying with them their gods, whom they thus preserved from captivity, together with a portion of their treasures and cattle; but no sooner had the invader retired, than they descended once more into the plain and returned to their usual occupations. the assyrian victories thus rarely produced the decisive results which are claimed for them; they almost always left the conquered people with sufficient energy and resources to enable them to resume the conflict after a brief interval, and the supremacy which the suzerain claimed as a result of his conquests was of the most ephemeral nature. a revolt would suffice to shake it, while a victory would be almost certain to destroy it, and once more reduce the empire to the limits of assyria proper. tukultiabalesharra, familiar to us under the name of tiglath-pileser,* is the first of the great warrior-kings of assyria to stand out before us with any definite individuality. * tiglath-pileser is one of the transcriptions given in the lxx. for the hebrew version of the name: it signifies, �the child of esharra is my strength.� by �the child of esharra� the assyrians, like the chaldæans, understood the child of ninib. we find him, in the interval between two skirmishes, engaged in hunting lions or in the pursuit of other wild beasts, and we see him lavishing offerings on the gods and enriching their temples with the spoils of his victories; these, however, were not the normal occupations of this sovereign, for peace with him was merely an interlude in a reign of conflict. he led all his expeditions in person, undeterred by any consideration of fatigue or danger, and scarcely had he returned from one arduous campaign, than he proceeded to sketch the plan of that for the following year; in short, he reigned only to wage war. his father, assurîshishi, had bequeathed him not only a prosperous kingdom, but a well-organised army, which he placed in the field without delay. during the fifty years since the mushku, descending through the gorges of the taurus, had invaded the alzi and the puru-kuzzi, assyria had not only lost possession of all the countries bordering the left bank of the euphrates, but the whole of kummukh had withdrawn its allegiance from her, and had ceased to pay tribute. tiglath-pileser had ascended the throne only a few weeks ere he quitted assur, marched rapidly across eastern mesopotamia by the usual route, through singar and nisib, and climbing the chain of the kashiara, near mardîn, bore down into the very heart of kummukh, where twenty thousand mushku, under the command of five kings, resolutely awaited him. he repulsed them in the very first engagement, and pursued them hotly over hill and vale, pillaging the fields, and encircling the towns with trophies of human heads taken from the prisoners who had fallen into his hands; the survivors, to the number of six thousand, laid down their arms, and were despatched to assyria.* * the king, starting from assur, must have followed the route through sindjar, nisib, mardîn, and diarbekîr--a road used later by the romans, and still in existence at the present day. as he did not penetrate that year as far as the provinces of alzi and purukuzzi, he must have halted at the commencement of the mountain district, and have beaten the allies in the plain of kuru-tchaî, before diarbekîr, in the neighbourhood of the tigris. the kummukh contingents, however, had been separated in the rout from the mushku, and had taken refuge beyond the euphrates, near to the fortress of shirisha, where they imagined themselves in safety behind a rampart of mountains and forests. tiglath-pileser managed, by cutting a road for his foot-soldiers and chariots, to reach their retreat: he stormed the place without apparent difficulty, massacred the defenders, and then turning upon the inhabitants of kurkhi,* who were on their way to reinforce the besieged, drove their soldiers into the nâmi, whose waters carried the corpses down to the tigris. one of their princes, kilite-shub, son of kaliteshub-sarupi, had been made prisoner during the action. tiglath-pileser sent him, together with his wives, children, treasures, and gods,** to share the captivity of the mushku; then retracing his steps, he crossed over to the right bank of the tigris, and attacked the stronghold of urrakhinas which crowned the summit of panâri. * the country of the kurkhi appears to have included at this period the provinces lying between the sebbeneh-su and the mountains of djudî, probably a portion of the sophene, the anzanone and the gordyenc of classical authors. ** the vanquished must have crossed the tigris below diarbekîr and have taken refuge beyond mayafarrikîn, so that shirisha must be sought for between the silvan-dagh and the ak-dagh, in the basin of the batman-tchai, the present nâmi. the people, terror-stricken by the fate of their neighbours, seized their idols and hid themselves within the thickets like a flock of birds. their chief, shaditeshub, son of khâtusaru,* ventured from out of his hiding-place to meet the assyrian conqueror, and prostrated himself at his feet. he delivered over his sons and the males of his family as hostages, and yielded up all his possessions in gold and copper, together with a hundred and twenty slaves and cattle of all kinds; tiglath-pileser thereupon permitted him to keep his principality under the suzerainty of assyria, and such of his allies as followed his example obtained a similar concession. the king consecrated the tenth of the spoil thus received to the use of his god assur and also to rammân;** but before returning to his capital, he suddenly resolved to make an expedition into the almost impenetrable regions which separated him from lake van. * the name of this chief�s father has always been read khâtukhi: it is a form of the name khâtusaru borne by the hittite king in the time of ramses ii. ** the site of urrakhinas--read by winckler urartinas--is very uncertain: the town was situated in a territory which could belong equally well to the kummukh or to the kurkhi, and the mention of the crossing of the tigris seems to indicate that it was on the right bank of the river, probably in the mountain group of tur-abdîn. this district was, even more than at the present day, a confused labyrinth of wooded mountain ranges, through which the eastern tigris and its affluents poured their rapid waters in tortuous curves. as hitherto no army had succeeded in making its way through this territory with sufficient speed to surprise the fortified villages and scattered clans inhabiting the valleys and mountain slopes, tiglath-pileser selected from his force a small troop of light infantry and thirty chariots, with which he struck into the forests; but, on reaching the aruma, he was forced to abandon his chariotry and proceed with the foot-soldiers only. the mildîsh, terrified by his sudden appearance, fell an easy prey to the invader; the king scattered the troops hastily collected to oppose him, set fire to a few fortresses, seized the peasantry and their flocks, and demanded hostages and the usual tribute as a condition of peace.* * the mildîsh of our inscription is to be identified with the country of mount umildîsh, mentioned by sargon of assyria. in his first campaign he thus reduced the upper and eastern half of kummukh, namely, the part extending to the north of the tigris, while in the following campaign he turned his attention to the regions bounded by the euphrates and by the western spurs of the kashiari. the alzi and the purukuzzi had been disconcerted by his victories, and had yielded him their allegiance almost without a struggle. to the southward, the kashku and the urumi, who had, to the number of four thousand, migrated from among the khâti and compelled the towns of the shubarti to break their alliance with the ninevite kings, now made no attempt at resistance; they laid down their arms and yielded at discretion, giving up their goods and their hundred and twenty war-chariots, and resigning themselves to the task of colonising a distant corner of assyria. other provinces, however, were not so easily dealt with; the inhabitants entrenched themselves within their wild valleys, from whence they had to be ousted by sheer force; in the end they always had to yield, and to undertake to pay an annual tribute. the assyrian empire thus regained on this side the countries which shalmaneser i. had lost, owing to the absorption of his energies and interests in the events which were taking place in chaldæa. in his third campaign tiglath-pileser succeeded in bringing about the pacification of the border provinces which shut in the basin of the tigris to the north and east. the kurkhi did not consider themselves conquered by the check they had received at the nâmi; several of their tribes were stirring in kharia, on the highlands above the arzania, and their restlessness threatened to infect such of their neighbours as had already submitted themselves to the assyrian yoke. �my master assur commanded me to attack their proud summits, which no king has ever visited. i assembled my chariots and my foot-soldiers, and i passed between the idni and the ala, by a difficult country, across cloud-capped mountains whose peaks were as the point of a dagger, and unfavourable to the progress of my chariots; i therefore left my chariots in reserve, and i climbed these steep mountains. the community of the kurkhi assembled its numerous troops, and in order to give me battle they entrenched themselves upon the azubtagish; on the slopes of the mountain, an incommodious position, i came into conflict with them, and i vanquished them.� this lesson cost them twenty-five towns, situated at the feet of the aîa, the shuîra, the idni, the shizu, the silgu, and the arzanabiu*--all twenty-five being burnt to the ground. * the site of kharia must be sought for probably between the sources of the tigris and the batman-tchaî. the dread of a similar fate impelled the neighbouring inhabitants of adaush to beg for a truce, which was granted to them;* but the people of saraush and of ammaush, who �from all time had never known what it was to obey,� were cut to pieces, and their survivors incorporated into the empire--a like fate overtaking the isua and the daria, who inhabited khoatras.** * according to the context, the adaush ought to be between the kharia and the saraush; possibly between the batman- tchaî and the bohtân-tchaî, in the neighbourhood of mildîsh. ** as tiglath-pileser was forced to cross mount aruma in order to reach the ammaush and the saraush, these two countries, together with isua and daria, cannot be far from mildîsh; isua is, indeed, mentioned as near to anzitene in an inscription of shalmaneser ii., which obliges us to place it somewhere near the sources of the batman-tchaî. the position of muraddash and saradaush is indirectly pointed out by the mention of the lower zab and the lulumê; the name of saradaush is perhaps preserved in that of surtash, borne by the valley through which runs one of the tributaries of the lower zab. beyond this, again, on the banks of the lesser zab and the confines of lulumô, the principalities of muraddash and of saradaush refused to come to terms. tiglath-pileser broke their lines within sight of muraddash, and entered the town with the fugitives in the confusion which ensued; this took place about the fourth hour of the day. the success was so prompt and complete, that the king was inclined to attribute it to the help of rammân, and he made an offering to the temple of this god at assur of all the copper, whether wrought or in ore, which was found among the spoil of the vanquished. he was recalled almost immediately after this victory by a sedition among the kurkhi near the sources of the tigris. one of their tribes, known as the sugi, who had not as yet suffered from the invaders, had concentrated round their standards contingents from some half-dozen cities, and the united force was, to the number of six thousand, drawn up on mount khirikhâ. tiglath-pileser was again victorious, and took from them twenty-five statues of their gods, which he despatched to assyria to be distributed among the sanctuaries of belît at assur, of anu, bammân, and of ishtar. winter obliged him to suspend operations. when he again resumed them at the beginning of his third year, both the kummukh and the kurkhi were so peaceably settled that he was able to carry his expeditions without fear of danger further north, into the regions of the upper euphrates between the halys and lake van, a district then known as naîri. he marched diagonally across the plain of diarbekîr, penetrated through dense forests, climbed sixteen mountain ridges one after the other by paths hitherto considered impracticable, and finally crossed the euphrates by improvised bridges, this being, as far as we know, the first time that an assyrian monarch had ventured into the very heart of those countries which had formerly constituted the hittite empire. he found them occupied by rude and warlike tribes, who derived considerable wealth from working the mines, and possessed each their own special sanctuary, the ruins of which still appear above ground, and invite the attention of the explorer. their fortresses must have all more or less resembled that city of the pterians which flourished for so many ages just at the bend of the halys;* its site is still marked by a mound rising to some thirty feet above the plain, resembling the platforms on which the chaldæan temples were always built--a few walls of burnt brick, and within an enclosure, among the débris of rudely built houses, the ruins of some temples and palaces consisting of large irregular blocks of stone. * the remains of the palace of the city of the pterians, the present euyuk, are probably later than the reign of tiglath- pileser, and may be attributed to the xth or ixth century before our era; they, however, probably give a very fair idea of what the towns of the cappadocian region were like at the time of the first assyrian invasions. [illustration: .jpg general view of the ruins of euyuk] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: .jpg the sphinx on the right of euyuk] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. two colossal sphinxes guard the gateway of the principal edifice, and their presence proves with certainty how predominant was egyptian influence even at this considerable distance from the banks of the nile. they are not the ordinary sphinxes, with a human head surmounting the body of a lion couchant on its stone pedestal; but, like the assyrian bulls, they are standing, and, to judge from the hathorian locks which fall on each side of their countenances, they must have been intended to represent a protecting goddess rather than a male deity. a remarkable emblem is carved on the side of the upright to which their bodies are attached; it is none other than the double-headed eagle, the prototype of which is not infrequently found at telloh in lower chaldæa, among remains dating from the time of the kings and vicegerents of lagash. [illustration: .jpg two blocks covered with bas-reliefs in the euyuk palace] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the court or hall to which this gate gave access was decorated with bas-reliefs, which exhibit a glaring imitation of babylonian art; we can still see on these the king, vested in his long flowing robes, praying before an altar, while further on is a procession of dignitaries following a troop of rams led by a priest to be sacrificed; another scene represents two individuals in the attitude of worship, wearing short loin-cloths, and climbing a ladder whose upper end has an uncertain termination, while a third person applies his hands to his mouth in the performance of some mysterious ceremony; beyond these are priests and priestesses moving in solemn file as if in the measured tread of some sacred dance, while in one corner we find the figure of a woman, probably a goddess, seated, holding in one hand a flower, perhaps the full-blown lotus, and in the other a cup from which she is about to drink. the costume of all these figures is that which chaldæan fashion had imposed upon the whole of western asia, and consisted of the long heavy robe, falling from the shoulders to the feet, drawn in at the waist by a girdle; but it is to be noted that both sexes are shod with the turned-up shoes of the hittites, and that the women wear high peaked caps. [illustration: .jpg mystic scene at euyuk] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the composition of the scenes is rude, the drawing incorrect, and the general technique reminds us rather of the low reliefs of the memphite or theban sculptors than of the high projection characteristic of the artists of the lower euphrates. these slabs of sculptured stone formed a facing at the base of the now crumbling brick walls, the upper surface of which was covered with rough plastering. here and there a few inscriptions reveal the name, titles, and parentage of some once celebrated personage, and mention the god in whose honour he had achieved the work. [illustration: .jpg an asiatic goddess] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the characters in which these inscriptions are written are not, as a rule, incised in the stone, but are cut in relief upon its surface, and if some few of them may remind us of the egyptian hieroglyphs, the majority are totally unlike them, both in form and execution. a careful examination of them reveals a medley of human and animal outlines, geometrical figures, and objects of daily use, which all doubtless corresponded to some letter or syllable, but to which we have as yet no trustworthy key. this system of writing is one of a whole group of asiatic scripts, specimens of which are common in this part of the world from crete to the banks of the euphrates and orontes. it is thought that the khâti must have already adopted it before their advent to power, and that it was they who propagated it in northern syria. it did not take the place of the cuneiform syllabary for ordinary purposes of daily life owing to its clumsiness and complex character, but its use was reserved for monumental inscriptions of a royal or religious kind, where it could be suitably employed as a framework to scenes or single figures. [illustration: .jpg the asiatic inscription of kolitolu-yaÎla] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. it, however, never presented the same graceful appearance and arrangement as was exhibited in the egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy. every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high civilization. the few articles of luxury discovered, whether in furniture or utensils, were not indigenous products, but were imported for the most part from chaldæa, syria, phoenicia, and perhaps from egypt; some objects, indeed, came from the coast-towns of the Ægean, thus showing that western influence was already in contact with the traditions of the east. [illustration: .jpg double scend of offerings] drawn by paucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. it will be remarked that both altars are in the form of a female without a head, but draped in the assyrian robe. all the various races settled between the halys and the orontes were more or less imbued with this foreign civilization, and their monuments, though not nearly so numerous as those of the pharaohs and ninevite kings, bear, nevertheless, an equally striking evidence of its power. examples of it have been pointed out in a score of different places in the valleys of the taurus and on the plains of cappadocia, in bas-reliefs, steke, seals, and intaglios, several of which must be nearly contemporaneous with the first assyrian conquest. [illustration: .jpg the bas-relief of ibriz] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hogarth. one instance of it appears on the rocks at ibriz, where a king stands in a devout attitude before a jovial giant whose hands are full of grapes and wheat-ears, while in another bas-relief near frakhtîn we have a double scene of sacrifice. the rock-carving at ibriz is, perhaps, of all the relics of a forgotten world, that which impresses the spectator most favourably. the concept of the scene is peculiarly naïve; indeed, the two figures are clumsily brought together, though each of them, when examined separately, is remarkable for its style and execution. the king has a dignified bearing in spite of his large head, round eyes, and the unskilful way in which his arms are set on his body. the figure of the god is not standing firmly on both feet, but the sculptor has managed to invest him with an air of grandeur and an expression of vigour and _bonhomie,_ which reminds us of certain types of the greek hercules. tiglath-pileser was probably attracted to asia minor as much by considerations of mercantile interest as by the love of conquest or desire for spoil. it would, indeed, have been an incomparable gain for him had he been able, if not to seize the mines themselves, at least to come into such close proximity to them that he would be able to monopolise their entire output, and at the same time to lay hands on the great commercial highway to the trade centres of the west. the eastern terminus of this route lay already within his domains, namely, that which led to assur by way of amid, nisibe, singar, and the valley of the upper tigris; he was now desirous of acquiring that portion of it which wound its way from the fords of the euphrates at malatîyeh to the crossing of the halys. the changes which had just taken place in kummukh and nairi had fully aroused the numerous petty sovereigns of the neighbourhood. the bonds which kept them together had not been completely severed at the downfall of the hittite empire, and a certain sense of unity still lingered among them in spite of their continual feuds; they constituted, in fact, a sort of loose confederation, whose members never failed to help one another when they were threatened by a common enemy. as soon as the news of an assyrian invasion reached them, they at once put aside their-mutual quarrels and combined to oppose the invader with their united forces. tiglath-pileser had, therefore, scarcely crossed the euphrates before he was attacked on his right flank by twenty-three petty kings of naîri,* while sixty other chiefs from the same neighbourhood bore down upon him in front. he overcame the first detachment of the confederates, though not without a sharp struggle; he carried carnage into their ranks, �as it were the whirlwind of eammân,� and seized a hundred and twenty of the enemy�s chariots. the sixty chiefs, whose domains extended as far as the �upper sea,� ** were disconcerted by the news of the disaster, and of their own accord laid down their arms, or offered but a feeble resistance. * the text of the annals of the xth year give thirty instead of twenty-three; in the course of five or six years the numbers have already become exaggerated. ** the site of the �upper sea� has furnished material for much discussion. some believe it to be the caspian sea or the black sea, others take it to be lake van, while some think it to be the mediterranean, and more particularly the gulf of issus between syria and cilicia. at the present day several scholars have returned to the theory which makes it the black sea. tiglath-pileser presented some of them in chains to the god shamash; he extorted an oath of vassalage from them, forced them to give up their children as hostages, and laid a tax upon them _en masse_ of stallions and bulls, after which he permitted them to return to their respective towns. he had, however, singled out from among them to grace his own triumph, sini of dayana, the only chief among them who had offered him an obstinate resistance; but even he was granted his liberty after he had been carried captive to assur, and made to kneel before the gods of assyria.* * dayani, which is mentioned in the annals of shalmaneser ii., has been placed on the banks of the murad-su by schrader, and more particularly in the neighbourhood of melasgerd by sayce; delattre has shown that it was the last and most westerly of twenty-three kingdoms conquered by tiglath-pileser i., and that it was consequently enclosed between the murad-su and the euphrates proper. before returning to the capital, tiglath-pileser attacked khanigalbat, and appeared before milidia: as the town attempted no defence, he spared it, and contented himself with levying a small contribution upon its inhabitants. this expedition was rather of the nature of a reconnaissance than a conquest, but it helped to convince the king of the difficulty of establishing any permanent suzerainty over the country. the asiatic peoples were quick to bow before a sudden attack; but no sooner had the conqueror departed, than those who had sworn him eternal fealty sought only how best to break their oaths. the tribes in immediate proximity to those provinces which had been long subject to the assyrian rule, were intimidated into showing some respect for a power which existed so close to their own borders. but those further removed from the seat of government felt a certain security in their distance from it, and were tempted to revert to the state of independence they had enjoyed before the conquest; so that unless the sovereign, by a fresh campaign, promptly made them realise that their disaffection would not remain unpunished, they soon forgot their feudatory condition and the duties which it entailed. three years of merciless conflict with obstinate and warlike mountain tribes had severely tried the assyrian army, if it had not worn out the sovereign; the survivors of so many battles were in sore need of a well-merited repose, the gaps left by death had to be filled, and both infantry and chariotry needed the re-modelling of their corps. the fourth year of the king�s reign, therefore, was employed almost entirely in this work of reorganisation; we find only the record of a raid of a few weeks against the akhlamî and other nomadic aramæans situated beyond the mesopotamian steppes. the assyrians spread over the district between the frontiers of sukhi and the fords of carchemish for a whole day, killing all who resisted, sacking the villages and laying hands on slaves and cattle. the fugitives escaped over the euphrates, vainly hoping that they would be secure in the very heart of the khâti. tiglath-pileser, however, crossed the river on rafts supported on skins, and gave the provinces of mount bishri over to fire and sword:* six walled towns opened their gates to him without having ventured to strike a blow, and he quitted the country laden with spoil before the kings of the surrounding cities had had time to recover from their alarm. * the country of bishri was situated, as the _annals_ point out, in the immediate neighbourhood of carchemish. the name is preserved in that of tell basher still borne by the ruins, and a modern village on the banks of the sajur. the gebel bishri to which hommel alludes is too far to the south to correspond to the description given in the inscription of tiglath-pileser. this expedition was for tiglath-pileser merely an interlude between two more serious campaigns; and with the beginning of his fifth year he reappeared in the provinces of the upper euphrates to complete his conquest of them. he began by attacking and devastating musri, which lay close to the territory of milid. while thus occupied he was harassed by bands of kumani; he turned upon them, overcame them, and imprisoned the remainder of them in the fortress of arini, at the foot of mount aisa, where he forced them to kiss his feet. his victory over them, however, did not disconcert their neighbours. the bulk of the kumani, whose troops had scarcely suffered in the engagement, fortified themselves on mount tala, to the number of twenty thousand; the king carried the heights by assault, and hotly pursued the fugitives as far as the range of kharusa before musri, where the fortress of khunusa afforded them a retreat behind its triple walls of brick. the king, nothing daunted, broke his way through them one after another, demolished the ramparts, razed the houses, and strewed the ruins with salt; he then constructed a chapel of brick as a sort of trophy, and dedicated within it what was known as a copper thunderbolt, being an image of the missile which eammân, the god of thunder, brandished in the face of his enemies. an inscription engraved on the object recorded the destruction of khunusa, and threatened with every divine malediction the individual, whether an assyrian or a stranger, who should dare to rebuild the city. this victory terrified the kumani, and their capital, kibshuna, opened its gates to the royal troops at the first summons. tiglath-pileser completely destroyed the town, but granted the inhabitants their lives on condition of their paying tribute; he chose from among them, however, three hundred families who had shown him the most inveterate hostility, and sent them as exiles into assyria.* * the country of the kumani or kammanu is really the district of comana in cataonia, and not the comana pontica or the khammanene on the banks of the halys. delattre thinks that tiglath-pileser penetrated into this region by the jihun, and consequently seeks to identify the names of towns and mountains, e.g. mount ilamuni with jaur-dagh, the kharusa with shorsh-dagh, and the tala with the kermes-dagh; but it is difficult to believe that, if the king took this route, he would not mention the town of marqasi-marash, which lay at the very foot of the jaur-dagh, and would have stopped his passage. it is more probable that the assyrians, starting from melitene, which they had just subdued, would have followed the route which skirts the northern slope of the taurus by albistan; the scene of the conflict in this case would probably have been the mountainous district of zeitûn. with this victory the first half of his reign drew to its close; in five years tiglath-pileser had subjugated forty-two peoples and their princes within an area extending from the banks of the lower zab to the plains of the khâti, and as far as the shores of the western seas. he revisited more than once these western and northern regions in which he had gained his early triumphs. the reconnaissance which he had made around carchemish had revealed to him the great wealth of the syrian table-land, and that a second raid in that direction could be made more profitable than ten successful campaigns in naîri or upon the banks of the zab. he therefore marched his battalions thither, this time to remain for more than a few days. he made his way through the whole breadth of the country, pushed forward up the valley of the orontes, crossed the lebanon, and emerged above the coast of the mediterranean in the vicinity of arvad. [illustration: .jpg sacrifice offered before the royal stele] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. this is the first time for many centuries that an oriental sovereign had penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged to look back to the almost fabulous ages of sargon of agadê or of khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the euphrates any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of the sea of the setting sun.* *this is the name given by the assyrians to the mediterranean. tiglath-pileser embarked on its waters, made a cruise into the open, and killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do we know how he was received by the phoenician towns. he pushed on, it is thought, as far as the nahr el-kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic inscriptions which ramses had caused to be cut there three centuries previously aroused his emulation. assyrian conquerors rarely quitted the scene of their exploits without leaving behind them some permanent memorial of their presence. a sculptor having hastily smoothed the surface of a rock, cut out on it a figure of the king, to which was usually added a commemorative inscription. in front of this stele was erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate the river-deities. [illustration: .jpg portions of the sacrificial victims thrown into the water] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. one of the half-effaced assyrian stelæ adjoining those of the egyptian conqueror is attributed to tiglath-pileser.* *boscawen thinks that we may attribute to tiglath-pileser i. the oldest of the assyrian stelæ at nahr el-kelb; no positive information has as yet confirmed this hypothesis, which is in other respects very probable. it was on his return, perhaps, from this campaign that he planted colonies at pitru on the right, and at mutkînu on the left bank of the euphrates, in order to maintain a watch over carchemish, and the more important fords connecting mesopotamia with the plains of the apriê and the orontes.* * the existence of these colonies is known only from an inscription of shalmaneser ii. the news of tiglath-pileser�s expedition was not long in reaching the delta, and the egyptian monarch then reigning at tanis was thus made acquainted with the fact that there had arisen in syria a new power before which his own was not unlikely to give way. in former times such news would have led to a war between the two states, but the time had gone by when egypt was prompt to take up arms at the slightest encroachment on her asiatic provinces. her influence at this time was owing merely to her former renown, and her authority beyond the isthmus was purely traditional. the tanite pharaoh had come to accept with resignation the change in the fortunes of egypt, and he therefore contented himself with forwarding to the assyrian conqueror, by one of the syrian coasting vessels, a present of some rare wild beasts and a few crocodiles. in olden times assyria had welcomed the arrival of thûtmosis iii. on the euphrates by making him presents, which the theban monarch regarded in the light of tribute: the case was now reversed, the egyptian pharaoh taking the position formerly occupied by the assyrian monarch. tiglath-pileser graciously accepted this unexpected homage, but the turbulent condition of the northern tribes prevented his improving the occasion by an advance into phoenicia and the land of canaan. naîri occupied his attention on two separate occasions at least; on the second of these he encamped in the neighbourhood of the source of the river subnat. this stream, had for a long period issued from a deep grotto, where in ancient times a god was supposed to dwell. the conqueror was lavish in religious offerings here, and caused a bas-relief to be engraved on the entrance in remembrance of his victories. [illustration .jpg the stele at sebenneh-su] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by p. taylor, in g. rawlinson. he is here represented as standing upright, the tiara on his brow, and his right arm extended as if in the act of worship, while his left, the elbow brought up to his side, holds a club. the inscription appended to the figure tells, with an eloquence all the more effective from its brevity, how, �with the aid of assur, shamash, and eammân, the great gods, my lords, i, tiglath-pileser, king of assyria, son of assurîshishî, king of assyria, son of mutakkilnusku, king of assyria, conqueror from the great sea, the mediterranean, to the great sea of naîri, i went for the third time to naîri.� the gods who had so signally favoured the monarch received the greater part of the spoils which he had secured in his campaigns. the majority of the temples of assyria, which were founded at a time when its city was nothing more than a provincial capital owing allegiance to babylon, were either, it would appear, falling to ruins from age, or presented a sorry exterior, utterly out of keeping with the magnitude of its recent wealth. the king set to work to enlarge or restore the temples of ishtar, martu, and the ancient bel;* he then proceeded to rebuild, from the foundations to the summit, that of anu and bammân, which the vicegerent samsirammân, son of ismidagan, had constructed seven hundred and one years previously. this temple was the principal sanctuary of the city, because it was the residence of the chief of the gods, assur, under his appellation of anu.** * �bel the ancient,� or possibly �the ancient master,� appears to have been one of the names of anu, who is naturally in this connexion the same as assur. ** this was the great temple of which the ruins still exist. the soil was cleared away down to the bed-rock, upon which an enormous substructure, consisting of fifty courses of bricks, was laid, and above this were erected two lofty ziggurâts, whose tile-covered surfaces shone like the rising sun in their brightness; the completion of the whole was commemorated by a magnificent festival. the special chapel of bammân and his treasury, dating from the time of the same samsirammân who had raised the temple of anu, were also rebuilt on a more important scale.* * the british museum possesses bricks bearing the name of tiglath-pileser i., brought from this temple, as is shown by the inscription on their sides. these works were actively carried on notwithstanding the fact that war was raging on the frontier; however preoccupied he might be with warlike projects, tiglath-pileser never neglected the temples, and set to work to collect from every side materials for their completion and adornment. [illustration: .jpg transport of building materials by water] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze doors at balawât. he brought, for example, from naîri such marble and hard stone as might be needed for sculptural purposes, together with the beams of cedar and cypress required by his carpenters. the mountains of singar and of the zab furnished the royal architects with building stone for ordinary uses, and for those facing slabs of bluish gypsum on which the bas-reliefs of the king�s exploits were carved; the blocks ready squared were brought down the affluents of the tigris on rafts or in boats, and thus arrived at their destination without land transport. [illustration: .jpg rare animals brought back as trophies by the king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast in the louvre. the original is in the british museum. the kings of assyria, like the pharaohs, had always had a passion for rare trees and strange animals; as soon as they entered a country, they inquired what natural curiosities it contained, and they would send back to their own land whatever specimens of them could be procured. [illustration: .jpg monkey brought back as tribute] drawn by boudier, from the bas-relief in layard. the triumphal _cortege_ which accompanied the monarch on his return after each campaign comprised not only prisoners and spoil of a useful sort, but curiosities from all the conquered districts, as, for instance, animals of unusual form or habits, rhinoceroses and crocodiles,* and if some monkey of a rare species had been taken in the sack of a town, it also would find a place in the procession, either held in a leash or perched on the shoulders of its keeper. * a crocodile sent as a present by the king of egypt is mentioned in the _inscription of the broken obelisk_. the animal is called _namsukha_, which is the egyptian _msuhu_ with the plural article _na._ the campaigns of the monarch were thus almost always of a double nature, comprising not merely a conflict with men, but a continual pursuit of wild beasts. tiglath-pileser, �in the service of ninib, had killed four great specimens of the male urus in the desert of mitanni, near to the town of arazîki, opposite to the countries of the khâti;* he killed them with his powerful bow, his dagger of iron, his pointed lance, and he brought back their skins and horns to his city of assur. he secured ten strong male elephants, in the territory of harrân and upon the banks of the khabur, and he took four of them alive: he brought back their skins and their tusks, together with the living elephants, to his city of assur.� he killed moreover, doubtless also in the service of ninib, a hundred and twenty lions, which he attacked on foot, despatching eight hundred more with arrows from his chariot,** all within the short space of five years, and we may well ask what must have been the sum total, if the complete record for his whole reign were extant. we possess, unfortunately, no annals of the later years of this monarch; we have reason to believe that he undertook several fresh expeditions into nairi,*** and a mutilated tablet records some details of troubles with elam in the xth year of his reign. * the town of arazîki has been identified with the eragiza (eraziga) of ptolemy; the eraziga of ptolemy was on the right bank of the euphrates, while the text of tiglath- pileser appears to place arazîki on the left bank. ** the account of the hunts in the _annals_ is supplemented by the information furnished in the first column of the �broken obelisk.� the monument is of the time of assur-nazir- pal, but the first column contains an abstract from an account of an anonymous hunt, which a comparison of numbers and names leads us to attribute to tiglath-pileser i.; some assyri-ologists, however, attribute it to assur-nazir-pal. * the inscription of sebbeneh-su was erected at the time of the third expedition into naîri, and the _annals_ give only one; the other two expeditions must, therefore, be subsequent to the vth year of his reign. we gather that he attacked a whole series of strongholds, some of whose names have a cossæan ring about them, such as madkiu, sudrun, ubrukhundu, sakama, shuria, khirishtu, and andaria. his advance in this direction must have considerably provoked the chaldæans, and, indeed, it was not long before actual hostilities broke out between the two nations. the first engagement took place in the valley of the lower zab, in the province of arzukhina, without any decisive result, but in the following year fortune favoured the assyrians, for dur-kurigalzu, both sipparas, babylon, and upi opened their gates to them, while akar-sallu, the akhlamê, and the whole of sukhi as far as eapîki tendered their submission to tiglath-achuch-sawh-akhl-pileser. [illustration: .jpg merodach-nadin-akhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure in pr. lenormant. the original is in the british museum. it is one of the boundary stones which were set up in a corner of a field to mark its legal limit. merodach-nadin-akhi, who was at this time reigning in chaldæa, was like his ancestor nebuchadrezzar i., a brave and warlike sovereign: he appears at first to have given way under the blow thus dealt him, and to have acknowledged the suzerainty of his rival, who thereupon assumed the title of lord of the four houses of the world, and united under a single empire the valleys of the tigris and euphrates. but this state of things lasted for a few years only; merodach-nadin-akhi once more took courage, and, supported by the chaldæan nobility, succeeded in expelling the intruders from sumir and akkad. the assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be driven out without a struggle, but fortune turned against them; they were beaten, and the conqueror inflicted on the assyrian gods the humiliation to which they had so often subjected those of other nations. he took the statues of eammân and shala from ekallati, carried them to babylon, and triumphantly set them up within the temple of bel. there they remained in captivity for years.* tiglath-pileser did not long survive this disaster, for he died about the year b.c.,** and two of his sons succeeded him on the throne. the elder, assur-belkala,*** had neither sufficient energy nor resources to resume the offensive, and remained a passive spectator of the revolutions which distracted babylon. * we know this fact from the inscription of bavian, in which sennacherib boasts of having brought back these statues to assyria after they had been years in the possession of the enemy. i have followed the commonly received opinion, which places the defeat of tiglath-pileser after the taking of babylon; others think that it preceded the decisive victory of the assyrians. it is improbable that, if the loss of the statues preceded the decisive victory, the assyrian conquerors should have left their gods prisoners in a babylonian temple, and should not have brought them back immediately to ekallati. ** the death of tiglath-pileser must have followed quickly on the victory of babylon; the contents of the inscription of bavian permit us to fix the taking of ekallati by the chaldæans about the year - b.c. we shall not be far wrong in supposing tiglath-pileser to have reigned six or eight years after his defeat. *** i followed the usually received classification. it is, however, possible that we must reverse the order of the sovereigns. merodach-nadin-akhi had been followed by his son merodach-shapîk-zîrîm,* but this prince was soon dethroned by the people, and bammân-abaliddîn, a man of base extraction, seized the crown. * the name of the babylonian king has been variously read merodach-shapîk-zirat, merodach-shapîk-kullat, merodach- shapîk-zirmâti and merodach-shapîk-zîrîm. assur-belkala not only extended to this usurper the friendly relations he had kept up with the legitimate sovereign, but he asked for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and the rich dowry which she brought her husband no doubt contributed to the continuation of his pacific policy. he appears also to have kept possession of all the parts of mesopotamia and kammukh conquered by his father, and it is possible that he may have penetrated beyond the euphrates. his brother, samsi-rammân iii., does not appear to have left any more definite mark upon history than assur-belkala; he decorated the temples built by his predecessors, but beyond this we have no certain record of his achievements. we know nothing of the kings who followed him, their names even having been lost, but about a century and a half after tiglath-pileser, a certain assurirba seems to have crossed northern syria, and following in the footsteps of his great ancestor, to have penetrated as far as the mediterranean: on the rocks of mount amanus, facing the sea, he left a triumphal inscription in which he set forth the mighty deeds he had accomplished. this is merely a gleam out of the murky night which envelops his history, and the testimony of one of his descendants informs us that his good fortune soon forsook him: the aramaeans wrested from him the fortresses of pitru and mutkînu, which commanded both banks of the euphrates near carchemish. nor did the retrograde movement slaken after his time: assyria slowly wasted away down to the end of the xth century, and but for the simultaneous decadence of the chaldaeans, its downfall would have been complete. but neither rammân-abaliddîn nor his successor was able to take advantage of its weakness; discord and want of energy soon brought about their own ruin. the dynasty of pashê disappeared towards the middle of the xth century, and a family belonging to the �countries of the sea� took its place: it had continued for about one hundred and thirty-two years, and had produced eleven kings.* * it is no easy matter to draw up an exact list of this dynasty, and hilprecht�s attempt to do so contains more than one doubtful name. the following list is very imperfect and doubtful, but the best that our present knowledge enables us to put forward. [illustration: .jpg table of kings] what were the causes of this depression, from which babylon suffered at almost regular intervals, as though stricken with some periodic malady? the main reason soon becomes apparent if we consider the nature of the country and the material conditions of its existence. chaldæa was neither extensive enough nor sufficiently populous to afford a solid basis for the ambition of her princes. since nearly every man capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the army, the chaktean kings had no difficulty in raising, at a moment�s notice, a force which could be employed to repel an invasion, or make a sudden attack on some distant territory; it was in schemes which required prolonged and sustained effort that they felt the drawbacks of their position. in that age of hand-to-hand combats, the mortality in battle was very high, forced marches through forests and across mountains entailed a heavy loss of men, and three or four consecutive campaigns against a stubborn foe soon reduced an army to a condition of dangerous weakness. recruits might be obtained to fill the earlier vacancies in the ranks, but they soon grew fewer and fewer if time was not given for recovery after the opening victories in the struggle, and the supply eventually ceased if operations were carried on beyond a certain period. the total duration of the dynasty was, according to the royal canon, years months. peiser has shown that this is a mistake, and he proposes to correct it to years months, and this is accepted by most assyri-ologists. a reign which began brilliantly often came to an impotent conclusion, owing to the king having failed to economise his reserves; and the generations which followed, compelled to adopt a strictly defensive attitude, vegetated in a sort of anaemic condition, until the birth-rate had brought the proportion of males up to a figure sufficiently high to provide the material for a fresh army. when nebuchadrezzar made war upon assurîshishî, he was still weak from the losses he had incurred during the campaign against elam, and could not conduct his attack with the same vigour as had gained him victory on the banks of the ulaî; in the first year he only secured a few indecisive advantages, and in the second he succumbed. merodach-nadin-akhi was suffering from the reverses sustained by his predecessors when tiglath-pileser provoked him to war, and though he succeeded in giving a good account of an adversary who was himself exhausted by dearly bought successes, he left to his descendants a kingdom which had been drained of its last drop of blood. the same reason which explains the decadence of babylon shows us the cause of the periodic eclipses undergone by assyria after each outburst of her warlike spirit. she, too, had to pay the penalty of an ambition which was out of all proportion to her resources. the mighty deeds of shalmaneser and tukulti-ninip were, as a natural consequence, followed by a state of complete prostration under tukultiassurbel and assurnîrarî: the country was now forced to pay for the glories of assurîshishî and of tiglath-pileser by falling into an inglorious state of languor and depression. its kings, conscious that their rule must be necessarily precarious as long as they did not possess a larger stock of recruits to fall back on, set their wits to work to provide by various methods a more adequate reserve. while on one hand they installed native assyrians in the more suitable towns of conquered countries, on the other they imported whole hordes of alien prisoners chosen for their strength and courage, and settled them down in districts by the banks of the tigris and the zab. we do not know what eammânirâni and shalmaneser may have done in this way, but tiglath-pileser undoubtedly introduced thousands of the mushku, the urumseans, the people of kummukh and naîri, and his example was followed by all those of his successors whose history has come down to us. one might have expected that such an invasion of foreigners, still smarting under the sense of defeat, might have brought with it an element of discontent or rebellion; far from it, they accepted their exile as a judgment of the gods, which the gods alone had a right to reverse, and did their best to mitigate the hardness of their lot by rendering unhesitating obedience to their masters. their grandchildren, born in the midst of assyrians, became assyrians themselves, and if they did not entirely divest themselves of every trace of their origin, at any rate became so closely identified with the country of their adoption, that it was difficult to distinguish them from the native race. the assyrians who were sent out to colonise recently acquired provinces were at times exposed to serious risks. now and then, instead of absorbing the natives among whom they lived, they were absorbed by them, which meant a loss of so much fighting strength to the mother country; even under the most favourable conditions a considerable time must have passed before they could succeed in assimilating to themselves the races amongst whom they lived. at last, however, a day would dawn when the process of incorporation was accomplished, and assyria, having increased her area and resources twofold, found herself ready to endure to the end the strain of conquest. in the interval, she suffered from a scarcity of fighting men, due to the losses incurred in her victories, and must have congratulated herself that her traditional foe was not in a position to take advantage of this fact. the first wave of the assyrian invasion had barely touched syria; it had swept hurriedly over the regions in the north, and then flowed southwards to return no more, so that the northern races were able to resume the wonted tenor of their lives. for centuries after this their condition underwent no change; there was the same repetition of dissension and intrigue, the same endless succession of alliances and battles without any signal advantage on either side. the hittites still held northern syria: carchemish was their capital, and more than one town in its vicinity preserved the tradition of their dress, their language, their arts, and their culture in full vigour. the greek legends tell us vaguely of some sort of cilician empire which is said to have brought the eastern and central provinces of asia minor into subjection about ten centuries before our era.* * solinus, relying on the indirect evidence of hecatseus of miletus, tells us that cilicia extended not only to the countries afterwards known as cataonia, commagene, and syria, but also included lydia, media, armenia, pamphylia, and cappadocia; the conquests of the assyrian kings must have greatly reduced its area. i am of opinion that the tradition preserved by hecatous referred both to the kingdom of sapalulu and to that of the monarchs of this second epoch. is there any serious foundation for such a belief, and must we assume that there existed at this time and in this part of the world a kingdom similar to that of sapalulu? assyria was recruiting its forces, chaldæa was kept inactive by its helplessness, egypt slumbered by the banks of its river, there was no actor of the first rank to fill the stage; now was the opportunity for a second-rate performer to come on the scene and play such a part as his abilities permitted. the cilician conquest, if this be indeed the date at which it took place, had the boards to itself for a hundred years after the defeat of assurirba. the time was too short to admit of its striking deep root in the country. its leaders and men were, moreover, closely related to the syrian hittites; the language they spoke was, if not precisely the hittite, at any rate a dialect of it; their customs were similar, if, perhaps, somewhat less refined, as is often the case with mountain races, when compared with the peoples of the plain. we are tempted to conclude that some of the monuments found south of the taurus were their handiwork, or, at any rate, date from their time. for instance, the ruined palace at sinjirli, the lower portions of which are ornamented with pictures similar to those at pteria, representing processions of animals, some real, others fantastic, men armed with lances or bending the bow, and processions of priests or officials. then there is the great lion at marash, which stands erect, with menacing head, its snarling lips exposing the teeth; its body is seamed with the long lines of an inscription in the asiatic character, in imitation of those with which the bulls in the assyrian palaces are covered. these cilicians gave an impulse to the civilization of the khâti which they sorely needed, for the semitic races, whom they had kept in subjection for centuries, now pressed them hard on all the territory over which they had formerly reigned, and were striving to drive them back into the hills. [illustration: .jpg lion at makash] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the cast shown at the paris exhibition of . the aramæans in particular gave them a great deal of trouble. the states on the banks of the euphrates had found them awkward neighbours; was this the moment chosen by the pukudu, the eutu, the gambulu, and a dozen other aramaean tribes, for a stealthy march across the frontier of elam, between durilu and the coast? the tribes from which, soon after, the kaldi nation was formed, were marauding round eridu, uru, and larsa, and may have already begun to lay the foundations of their supremacy over babylon: it is, indeed, an open question whether those princes of the countries of the sea who succeeded the pashê dynasty did not come from the stock of the kaldi aramaeans. while they were thus consolidating on the south-east, the bulk of the nation continued to ascend northwards, and rejoined its outposts in the central region of the euphrates, which extends from the tigris to the khabur, from the khabur to the balîkh and the apriê. they had already come into frequent conflict with most of the victorious assyrian kings, from eammânirâri down to tiglath-pileser; the weakness of assyria and chaldæa gave them their opportunity, and they took full advantage of it. they soon became masters of the whole of mesopotamia; a part of the table-land extending from carchemish to mount amanus fell into their hands, their activity was still greater in the basin of the orontes, and their advanced guard, coming into collision with the amorites near the sources of the litany, began gradually to drive farther and farther southwards all that remained of the races which had shown so bold a front to the egyptian troops. here was an almost entirely new element, gradually eliminating from the scene of the struggle other elements which had grown old through centuries of war, and while this transformation was taking place in northern and central, a similar revolution was effecting a no less surprising metamorphosis in southern syria. there, too, newer races had gradually come to displace the nations over which the dynasties of thûtmosis and ramses had once held sway. the hebrews on the east, the philistines and their allies on the south-west, were about to undertake the conquest of the kharu and its cities. as yet their strength was inadequate, their temperament undecided, their system of government imperfect; but they brought with them the quality of youth, and energies which, rightly guided, would assure the nation which first found out how to take advantage of them, supremacy over all its rivals, and the strength necessary for consolidating the whole country into a single kingdom. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--the hebrews and the philistines--damascus _the israelites in the land of canaan: the judges--the philistines and the hebrew kingdom--saul, david, solomon, the defection of the ten tribes--the xxist egyptian dynasty--sheshonq or shishak damascus._ _the hebrews in the desert: their families, clans, and tribes--the amorites and the hebrews on the left bank of the jordan--the conquest of canaan and the native reaction against the hebrews--the judges, ehud, deborah, jerubbaal or gideon and the manassite supremacy; abimelech, jephihdh._ _the philistines, their political organisation, their army and fleet--judah, dan, and the story of samson--benjamin on the philistine frontier--eli and the ark of the covenant--the philistine dominion over israel; samuel, saul, the benjamite monarchy--david, his retreat to the desert of judah and his sojourn at zilclag--the battle of gilboa and the death of saul--the struggle between ish-bosheth and david--david sole king, and the final defeat of the philistines--jerusalem becomes the capital; the removal of the ark--wars with the peoples of the east--absalom�s rebellion; the coronation of solomon._ _solomon�s government and his buildings--phoenician colonisation in spain: hiram i. and the enlargement of tyre--the voyages to ophir and tarshish--the palace at jerusalem, the temple and its dedication: the priesthood and prophets--the death of solomon; the schism of the ten tribes and the division of the hebrew kingdom._ _the xxist egyptian dynasty: the theban high priests and the tanite pharaohs--the libyan mercenaries and their predominance in the state: the origin of the xxiind (bubastite) dynasty--sheshonq i. as king and his son aûpûti as high priest of amon; the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî--sheshonq�s expedition against jerusalem._ _the two hebrew �kingdoms�; the fidelity of judah to the descendants of solomon, and the repeated changes of dynasty in israel--asa and baasha--the kingdom of damascus and its origin--bezon, tabrimmon, benhadad i.--omri and the foundation of samaria: ahab and the tyrian alliance--the successors of hiram i. at tyre: ithobaal i.--the prophets, their struggle against phonician idolatry, the story of elijah--the wars between israel and damascus up to the time of the assyrian invasion._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii--the hebrews and the philistines--damascus _the israelites in the land of canaan: the judges--the philistines and the hebrew kingdom--saul, david, solomon, the defection of the ten tribes--the xxist egyptian dynasty--sheshonq--damascus._ after reaching kadesh-barnea, the israelites in their wanderings had come into contact with various bedawin tribes--kenites, jerahmelites, edomites, and midianites, with whom they had in turn fought or allied themselves, according to the exigencies of their pastoral life. continual skirmishes had taught them the art of war, their numbers had rapidly increased, and with this increase came a consciousness of their own strength, so that, after a lapse of two or three generations, they may be said to have constituted a considerable nation. its component elements were not, however, firmly welded together; they consisted of an indefinite number of clans, which were again subdivided into several families. each of these families had its chief or �ruler,� to whom it rendered absolute obedience, while the united chiefs formed an assembly of elders who administered justice when required, and settled any differences which arose among their respective followers. the clans in their turn were grouped into tribes,* according to certain affinities which they mutually recognised, or which may have been fostered by daily intercourse on a common soil, but the ties which bound them together at this period were of the most slender character. it needed some special event, such as a projected migration in search of fresh pasturage, or an expedition against a turbulent neighbour, or a threatened invasion by some stranger, to rouse the whole tribe to corporate action; at such times they would elect a �nasi,� or ruler, the duration of whose functions ceased with the emergency which had called him into office.** * the tribe was designated by two words signifying �staff� or �branch.� ** the word _nasi,_ first applied to the chiefs of the tribes (_exod._ xxxiv. ; _lev_. iv. ; _numb_. ii. ), became, after the captivity, the title of the chiefs of israel, who could not be called _kings_ owing to the foreign suzerainty (_esdras_ i. ). both clans and tribes were designated by the name of some ancestor from whom they claimed to be descended, and who appears in some cases to have been a god for whom they had a special devotion; some writers have believed that this was also the origin of the names given to several of the tribes, such as gad, �good fortune,� or of the totems of the hyena and the dog, in arabic and hebrew, �simeon� and �caleb.� * gad, simeon, and caleb were severally the ancestors of the families who ranged themselves under their respective names, and the eponymous heroes of all the tribes were held to have been brethren, sons of one father, and under the protection of one god. he was known as the jahveh with whom abraham of old had made a solemn covenant; his dwelling-place was mount sinai or mount seîr, and he revealed himself in the storm;** his voice was as the thunder �which shaketh the wilderness,� his breath was as �a consuming fire,� and he was decked with light �as with a garment.� when his anger was aroused, he withheld the dew and rain from watering the earth; but when his wrath was appeased, the heavens again poured their fruitful showers upon the fields.*** * simeon is derived by some from a word which at times denotes a hyena, at others a cross between a dog and a hyena, according to arab lexicography. with regard to caleb, renan prefers a different interpretation; it is supposed to be a shortened form of kalbel, and �dog of el� is a strong expression to denote the devotion of a tribe to its patron god. ** cf. the graphic description of the signs which accompanied the manifestations of jahveh in the _song of deborah (judges_ v. , ), and also in _kings_ xix. - . *** see _kings_ xvii., xviii., where the conflict between elijah and the prophets of baal for the obtaining of rain is described. he is described as being a �jealous god,� brooking no rival, and �visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.� we hear of his having been adored under the figure of a �calf,� * and of his spirit inspiring his prophets, as well as of the anointed stones which were dedicated in his honour. the common ancestor of the nation was acknowledged to have been jacob, who, by his wrestling with god, had obtained the name of israel; the people were divided theoretically into as many tribes as he had sons, but the number twelve to which they were limited does not entirely correspond with all that we know up to the present time of these �children of israel.� some of the tribes appear never to have had any political existence, as for example that of levi,** or they were merged at an early date into some fellow-tribe, as in the case of reuben with gad;*** others, such as ephraim, manasseh, benjamin, and judah, apparently did not attain their normal development until a much later date. * the most common of these animal forms was that of a calf or bull (exod. xxxii.; deut. ix. ; and in the kingly period, kings xii. - ; kings x. ); we are not told the form of the image of micah the ephraimite (judges xviii. , , , , , ). ** levi appears to have suffered dispersion after the events of which there are two separate accounts combined in gen. xxxiv. in conjunction with simeon, he appears to have revenged the violation of his sister dinah by a massacre of the shechemites, and the dispersion alluded to in jacob�s blessing (gen. xlix. - ) is mentioned as consequent on this act of barbarism. *** in the ixth century mesha of moab does not mention the reubenites, and speaks of the gadites only as inhabiting the territory formerly occupied by them. tradition attributed the misfortunes of the tribe to the crime of its chief in his seduction of bilhah, his father�s concubine (gen. xlix. , ; cf. xxxv. ) the jewish chroniclers attempted by various combinations to prove that the sacred number of tribes was the correct one. at times they included levi in the list, in which case joseph was reckoned as one;* while on other occasions levi or simeon was omitted, when for joseph would be substituted his two sons ephraim and manasseh.** in addition to this, the tribes were very unequal in size: ephraim, gad, and manasseh comprised many powerful and wealthy families; dan, on the contrary, contained so few, that it was sometimes reckoned as a mere clan. * as, for instance, in jacob�s blessing (gen. xlix. - ) and in the enumeration of the patriarch�s sons at the time of his journey to egypt (gen. xlvi. - ). ** numb. i. , et seq., where the descendants of levi are not included among the twelve, and deut. xxxiii. - , where simeon is omitted from among the tribes blessed by moses before his death. the tribal organisation had not reached its full development at the time of the sojourn in the desert. the tribes of joseph and judah, who subsequently played such important parts, were at that period not held in any particular estimation; reuben, on the other hand, exercised a sort of right of priority over the rest.* * this conclusion is drawn from the position of eldest son given to him in all the genealogies enumerating the children of jacob. stade, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that this place of honour was granted to him on account of the smallness of his family, to prevent any jealousy arising between the more powerful tribes, such as ephraim and judah (_ges. des vollces isr._, vol. i. pp. , ). the territory which they occupied soon became insufficient to support their numbers, and they sought to exchange it for a wider area, such as was offered by the neighbouring provinces of southern syria. pharaoh at this time exercised no authority over this region, and they were, therefore, no longer in fear of opposition from his troops; the latter had been recalled to egypt, and it is doubtful even whether he retained possession of the shephelah by means of his zakkala and philistine colonies; the hebrews, at any rate, had nothing to fear from him so long as they respected gaza and ascalon. they began by attempting to possess themselves of the provinces around hebron, in the direction of the dead sea, and we read that, before entering them, they sent out spies to reconnoitre and report on the country.* its population had undergone considerable modifications since the israelites had quitted goshen. the amorites, who had seriously suffered from the incursions of asiatic hordes, and had been constantly harassed by the attacks of the aramæans, had abandoned the positions they had formerly occupied on the banks of the orontes and the litany, and had moved southwards, driving the canaanites before them; their advance was accelerated as the resistance opposed to their hordes became lessened under the successors of ramses iii., until at length all opposition was withdrawn. they had possessed themselves of the regions about the lake of genesareth, the mountain district to the south of tabor, the middle valley of the jordan, and, pressing towards the territory east of that river, had attacked the cities scattered over the undulating table-land. this district had not been often subjected to incursions of egyptian troops, and yet its inhabitants had been more impressed by egyptian influence than many others. [illustration: .jpg the amorite astarte] drawn by paucher-gudin, from the squeezes and sketches published in the _zeitschrift ties palcistina-vereins_. whereas, in the north and west, cuneiform writing was almost entirely used, attempts had been made here to adapt the hieroglyphs to the native language. the only one of their monuments which has been preserved is a rudely carved bas-relief in black basalt, representing a two-horned astarte, before whom stands a king in adoration; the sovereign is ramses ii., and the inscriptions accompanying the figures contain a religious formula together with a name borrowed from one of the local dialects.* *this is the �stone of job� discovered by strahmacher. the inscription appears to give the name of a goddess, agana- zaphon, the second part of which recalls the name of baal- zephon. the amorites were everywhere victorious, but our information is confined to this bare fact; soon after their victory, however, we find the territory they had invaded divided into two kingdoms: in the north that of bashan, which comprised, besides the haurân, the plain watered by the yarrnuk; and to the south that of heshbon, containing the district lying around the arnon, and the jabbok to the east of the dead sea.* they seem to have made the same rapid progress in the country between the jordan and the mediterranean as elsewhere. they had subdued some of the small canaanite states, entered into friendly relation with others, and penetrated gradually as far south as the borders of sinai, while we find them establishing petty kings among the hill-country of shechem around hebron, on the confines of the negeb, and the shephelah.** when the hebrew tribes ventured to push forward in a direct line northwards, they came into collision with the advance posts of the amorite population, and suffered a severe defeat under the walls of hormah.*** the check thus received, however, did not discourage them. as a direct course was closed to them, they turned to the right, and followed, first the southern and then the eastern shores of the red sea, till they reached the frontier of gilead.**** * the extension of the amorite power in this direction is proved by the facts relating to the kingdoms of sihon and og gent. i. , ii. - , iii. - . . ** for the amorite occupation of the negeb and the hill- country of judah, cf. numb. xiii. ; bent. i. , - ; josh. x. , , , xi. ; for their presence in the shephelah, cf. judges i. - . *** see the long account in numb, xiii., xiv., which terminates with the mention of the defeat of the israelites at hormah; and cf. bent. i. - . **** the itinerary given in numb. xx. - , xxxi., xxxiii. - , and repeated in bent, ii., brings the israelites as far as ezion-geber, in such a manner as to avoid the midianites and the moabites. the friendly welcome accorded to them in the regions situated to the east of the dead sea, has been accounted for either by an alliance made with moab and ammon against their common enemy, the amorites, or by the fact that ammon and moab did not as yet occupy those regions; the inhabitants in that case would have been edomites and midianites, who were in continual warfare with each other. there again they were confronted by the amorites, but in lesser numbers, and not so securely entrenched within their fortresses as their fellow-countrymen in the negeb, so that the israelites were able to overthrow the kingdoms of heshbon and bashan.* * war against sihon, king of heshbon (numb. xxi. - ; beut. ii. - ), and against og, king of bashan (numb. xxi. - ; beut. iii. - ). [illustration: .jpg the valley of the jabbok, near to its confluence with the jordan] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ gad received as its inheritance nearly the whole of the territory lying between the jabbok and the yarmuk, in the neighbourhood of the ancient native sanctuaries of penuel, mahanaim, and succoth, associated with the memory of jacob.* reuben settled in the vicinity, and both tribes remained there isolated from the rest. from this time forward they took but a slight interest in the affairs of their brethren: when the latter demanded their succour, �gilead abode beyond jordan,� and �by the watercourses of reuben there were great resolves at heart,� but without any consequent action.** it was not merely due to indifference on their part; their resources were fully taxed in defending themselves against the aramæans and bedawins, and from the attacks of moab and ammon. gad, continually threatened, struggled for centuries without being discouraged, but reuben lost heart,*** and soon declined in power, till at length he became merely a name in the memory of his brethren. * gad did not possess the districts between the jabbok and the arnon till the time of the early kings, and retained them only till about the reign of jehu, as we gather from the inscription of mesa. ** these are the very expressions used by the author of the _song of deborah_ in judges v. , . *** the recollection of these raids by reuben against the beduin of the syrian desert is traceable in citron, v. , - . two tribes having been thus provided for, the bulk of the israelites sought to cross the jordan without further delay, and establish themselves as best they might in the very heart of the canaanites. the sacred writings speak of their taking possession of the country by a methodic campaign, undertaken by command of and under the visible protection of jahveh* moses had led them from egypt to kadesh, and from kadesh to the land of gilead; he had seen the promised land from the summit of mount nebo, but he had not entered it, and after his death, joshua, son of nun, became their leader, brought them across jordan dryshod, not far from its mouth, and laid siege to jericho. * the history of the conquest is to be found in the _book of joshua._ the walls of the city fell of themselves at the blowing of the brazen trumpets,* and its capture entailed that of three neighbouring towns, aï, bethel, and shechem. shechem served as a rallying-place for the conquerors; joshua took up his residence there, and built on the summit of mount ebal an altar of stone, on which he engraved the principal tenets of the divine law.** * josh, i.-vi. ** josh, vii., viii. mount ebal is the present gebel sulemiyeh. [illustration: .jpg one of the mounds of ÂÎn es-sultÂn, the ancient jericho] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought back by lortet. the sudden intrusion of a new element naturally alarmed the worshippers of the surrounding local deities; they at once put a truce to their petty discords, and united in arms against the strangers. at the instigation of adoni-zedeck, king of jerusalem, the canaanites collected their forces in the south; but they were routed not far from gibeon, and their chiefs killed or mutilated.* the amorites in the north, who had assembled round jabin, king of hazor, met with no better success; they were defeated at the waters of merom, hazor was burnt, and galilee delivered to fire and sword.** * josh. x. the same war is given rather differently in judges i. - , where the king is called adoni-bezek. ** josh. xi. as another jabin appears in the history of deborah, it has [illustration: .jpg the jordan in the neighbourhood of jericho] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the country having been thus to a certain extent cleared, joshua set about dividing the spoil, and assigned to each tribe his allotted portion of territory.* such, in its main outlines, is the account given by the hebrew chroniclers; but, if closely examined, it would appear that the israelites did not act throughout with that unity of purpose and energy which they [the hebrew chroniclers] were pleased to imagine. they did not gain possession of the land all at once, but established themselves in it gradually by detachments, some settling at the fords of jericho,** others more to the north, and in the central valley of the jordan as far up as she-chem.*** * the lot given to each tribe is described in josh, xiii.- xxi. it has been maintained by some critics that there is a double rôle assigned to one and the same person, only that some maintain that the jabin of josh. xi. has been transferred to the time of the judges, while others make out that the jabin of deborah was carried back to the time of the conquest. ** renan thinks that the principal crossing must have taken place opposite jericho, as is apparent from the account in josh, ii., iii. *** carl niebuhr believes that he has discovered the exact spot at the ford of admah, near succoth. [illustration: .jpg one of the wells of beersheba] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the latter at once came into contact with a population having a higher civilization than themselves, and well equipped for a vigorous resistance; the walled towns which had defied the veterans of the pharaohs had not much to fear from the bands of undisciplined israelites wandering in their neighbourhood. properly speaking, there were no pitched battles between them, but rather a succession of raids or skirmishes, in which several citadels would successively fall into the hands of the invaders. many of these strongholds, harassed by repeated attacks, would prefer to come to terms with the enemy, and would cede or sell them some portion of their territory; others would open their gates freely to the strangers, and their inhabitants would ally themselves by intermarriage with the hebrews. judah and the remaining descendants of simeon and levi established themselves in the south; levi comprised but a small number of families, and made no important settlements; whereas judah took possession of nearly the whole of the mountain district separating the shephelah from the western shores of the dead sea, while simeon made its abode close by on the borders of the desert around the wells of beersheba.* * wellhausen has remarked that the lot of levi must not be separated from that of simeon, and, as the remnant of simeon allied themselves with judah, that of levi also must have shared the patrimony of judah. the descendants of rachel and her handmaid received as their inheritance the regions situated more to the centre of the country, the house of joseph taking the best domains for its branches of ephraim and manasseh. ephraim received some of the old canaanite sanctuaries, such as ramah, bethel, and shiloh, and it was at the latter spot that they deposited the ark of the covenant. manasseh settled to the north of ephraim, in the hills and valleys of the carmel group, and to benjamin were assigned the heights which overlook the plain of jericho. four of the less important tribes, issachar, asher, naphtali, and zebulon, ventured as far north as the borders of tyre and sidon, behind the phoenician littoral, but were prevented by the canaanites and amorites from spreading over the plain, and had to confine themselves to the mountains. all the fortresses commanding the passes of tabor and carmel, megiddo, taanach, ibleam, jezreel, endor, and bethshan remained inviolate, and formed as it were an impassable barrier-line between the hebrews of galilee and their brethren of ephraim. the danites were long before they found a resting-place; they attempted to insert themselves to the north of judah, between ajalon and joppa, but were so harassed by the amorites, that they had to content themselves with the precarious tenure of a few towns such as zora, shaalbîn, and eshdol. the foreign peoples of the shephelah and the canaanite cities almost all preserved their autonomy; the israelites had no chance against them wherever they had sufficient space to put into the field large bodies of infantry or to use their iron-bound chariots. finding it therefore impossible to overcome them, the tribes were forced to remain cut off from each other in three isolated groups of unequal extent which they were powerless to connect: in the centre were joseph, benjamin, and dan; in the south, judah, levi, and simeon; while issachar, asher, naphtali, and zebulon lay to the north. the period following the occupation of canaan constituted the heroic age of the hebrews. the sacred writings agree in showing that the ties which bound the twelve tribes together were speedily dissolved, while their fidelity and obedience to god were relaxed with the growth of the young generations to whom moses or joshua were merely names. the conquerors �dwelt among the canaanites: the hittite, and the amorite, and the perizzite, and the hivite, and the jebusite: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. and the children of israel did that which was evil in the sight of the lord their god, and served the baalim and the asheroth.� * [illustration: .jpg map of palestine in time of the judges] when they had once abandoned their ancient faith, political unity was not long preserved. war broke out between one tribe and another; the stronger allowed the weaker to be oppressed by the heathen, and were themselves often powerless to retain their independence. in spite of the thousands of men among them, all able to bear arms, they fell an easy prey to the first comer; the amorites, the ammonites, the moabites, and the philistines, all oppressed them in turn, and repaid with usury the ills which joshua had inflicted on the canaanites. �whithersoever they went out, the hand of the lord was against them for evil, as the lord had spoken, and as the lord had sworn unto them: and they were sore distressed. and the lord raised up judges, which saved them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. and yet they hearkened not unto their judges, for they went a-whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves down unto them: they turned aside quickly out of the way wherein their fathers walked obeying the commandments of the lord; but they did not so. and when the lord raised them up judges, then the lord was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the lord because of their groaning by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. but it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their doings, nor from their stubborn way.� * the history of this period lacks the unity and precision with which we are at first tempted to credit it. * judges ii. - . the israelites, when transplanted into the promised land, did not immediately lose the nomadic habits they had acquired in the desert. they retained the customs and prejudices they had inherited from their fathers, and for many years treated the peasantry, whose fields they had devastated, with the same disdain that the bedawin of our own day, living in the saddle, lance in hand, shows towards the fellahîn who till the soil and bend patiently over the plough. the clans, as of old, were impatient of all regular authority; each tribe tended towards an isolated autonomy, a state of affairs which merited reprisals from the natives and encouraged hatred of the intruders, and it was only when the canaanite oppression became unendurable that those who suffered most from it united themselves to make a common effort, and rallied for a moment round the chief who was ready to lead them. many of these liberators must have acquired an ephemeral popularity, and then have sunk into oblivion together with the two or three generations who had known them; those whose memory remained green among their kinsmen were known by posterity as the judges of israel.* * the word �judges,� which has been adopted to designate these rulers, is somewhat misleading, as it suggests the idea of an organized civil magistracy. the word �shophet,� the same that we meet with in classical times under the form _suffetes_, had indeed that sense, but its primary meaning denotes a man invested with an absolute authority, regular or otherwise; it would be better translated _chief, prince, captain_. these judges were not magistrates invested with official powers and approved by the whole nation, or rulers of a highly organised republic, chosen directly by god or by those inspired by him. they were merely local chiefs, heroes to their own immediate tribe, well known in their particular surroundings, but often despised by those only at a short distance from them. some of them have left only a name behind them, such as shamgar, ibzan, tola, elon, and abdon; indeed, some scholars have thrown doubts on the personality of a few of them, as, for instance, jair, whom they affirm to have personified a gileadite clan, and othnîel, who is said to represent one of the kenite families associated with the children of israel.* others, again, have come down to us through an atmosphere of popular tradition, the elements of which modern criticism has tried in vain to analyse. of such unsettled and turbulent times we cannot expect an uninterrupted history:** some salient episodes alone remain, spread over a period of nearly two centuries, and from these we can gather some idea of the progress made by the israelites, and observe their stages of transition from a cluster of semi-barbarous hordes to a settled nation ripe for monarchy. * the name tola occurs as that of one of the clans of issachar (gen. xlvi. ; numb. xxvi. ); elon was one of the clans of zebulon (gen. xlvi. ; numb. xxvi. ) ** renan, however, believes that the judges �formed an almost continuous line, and that there merely lacks a descent from father to son to make of them an actual dynasty.� the chronology of the _book of judges_ appears to cover more than four centuries, from othnîel to samson, but this computation cannot be relied on, as �forty years� represents an indefinite space of time. we must probably limit this early period of hebrew history to about a century and a half, from cir. to b.c. the first of these episodes deals merely with a part, and that the least important, of the tribes settled in central canaan.* the destruction of the amorite kingdoms of heshbon and bashan had been as profitable to the kinsmen of the israelites, ammon and moab, as it had been to the israelites themselves. * the episode of othnîel and cushan-rishathaim, placed at the beginning of the history of this period (judges iii. - ), is, by general consent, regarded as resting on a worthless tradition. the moabites had followed in the wake of the hebrews through all the surrounding regions of the dead sea; they had pushed on from the banks of the arnon to those of the jabbok, and at the time of the judges were no longer content with harassing merely reuben and gad. [illustration: .jpg moabite warrior] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the louvre. they were a fine race of warlike, well-armed beda-wins. jericho had fallen into their hands, and their king eglon had successfully scoured the entire hill-country of ephraim,* so that those who wished to escape being pillaged had to safeguard themselves by the payment of an annual tribute. * the text seems to infer (judges iii. - ) that, after having taken the oily of palm trees, i.e. jericho (deut. xxxiv. ; ghron. xxviii. ), eglon had made it his residence, which makes the story incomprehensible from a geographical point of view. but all difficulties would disappear if we agreed to admit that in ver. the name of the capital of eglon has dropped out. ehud the left-handed concealed under his garments a keen dagger, and joined himself to the benjamite deputies who were to carry their dues to the moabite sovereign. the money having been paid, the deputies turned homewards, but when they reached the cromlech of gilgal,* and were safe beyond the reach of the enemy, ehud retraced his steps, and presenting himself before the palace of eglon in the attitude of a prophet, announced that he had a secret errand to the king, who thereupon commanded silence, and ordered his servants to leave him with the divine messenger in his summer parlour. * the cromlech at gilgal was composed of twelve stones, which, we are told, were erected by joshua as a remembrance of the crossing of the jordan (josh. iv. - ). �and ehud said, i have a message from god unto thee. and he arose out of his seat. and ehud put forth his left hand, and took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: and the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly; and it came out behind.� then ehud locked the doors and escaped. �now when he was gone out, his servants came; and they saw, and, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked; and they said, surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.� but by the time they had forced an entrance, ehud had reached gilgal and was in safety. he at once assembled the clans of benjamin, occupied the fords of the jordan, massacred the bands of moabites scattered over the plain of jericho, and blocked the routes by which the invaders attempted to reach the hill-country of ephraim. almost at the same time the tribes in galilee had a narrow escape from a still more formidable enemy.* they had for some time been under the amorite yoke, and the sacred writings represent them at this juncture as oppressed either by sisera of harosheth-ha-goyîm or by a second jabin, who was able to bring nine hundred chariots of iron into the field.** at length the prophetess deborah of issachar sent to barak of kadesh a command to assemble his people, together with those of zebulon, in the name of the lord;*** she herself led the contingents of issachar, ephraim, and machir to meet him at the foot of tabor, where the united host is stated to have comprised forty thousand men. sisera,**** who commanded the canaanite force, attacked the israelite army between taanach and megiddo in that plain of kishon which had often served as a battle-field during the egyptian campaigns. * the text tells us that, after the time of ehud, the land had rest eighty years (judges iii. ). this, again, is one of those numbers which represent an indefinite space of time. ** it has been maintained that two versions are here blended together in the text, one in which the principal part is played by sisera, the other in which it is attributed to jabin. the episode of deborah and barak (judges iv., v.) comprises a narrative in prose (chap, iv.), and the song (chap, v.) attributed to deborah. the prose account probably is derived from the song. the differences in the two accounts may be explained as having arisen partly from an imperfect understanding of the poetic text, and partly from one having come down from some other source. *** some critics suppose that the prose narrative (judges iv. ) has confounded the prophetess deborah, wife of lapidoth, with deborah, nurse of rachel, who was buried near bethel, under the �oak of weeping� (gen. xxxv. ), and consequently place it between rama and bethel, in the hill- country of ephraim. **** in the prose narrative (judges iv. - ) sisera is stated to have been the general of jabin: there is nothing incompatible in this statement with the royal dignity elsewhere attributed to sisera. harosheth-ha-goyîm has been identified with the present village of el-haretîyeh, on the right bank of the kishon. it would appear that heavy rains had swelled the streams, and thus prevented the chariots from rendering their expected service in the engagement; at all events, the amorites were routed, and sisera escaped with the survivors towards hazor. [illustration: .jpg tell] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lortet. the people of meroz facilitated his retreat, but a kenite named jael, the wife of heber, traitorously killed him with a blow from a hammer while he was in the act of drinking.* * meroz is the present marus, between the lake of huleh and safed. i have followed the account given in the song (judges v. - ). according to the prose version (iv. - ), jael slew sisera while he was asleep with a tent-pin, which she drove into his temple. [the text of judges v. - does not seem to warrant the view that he was slain �in the act of drinking,� nor does it seem to conflict with judges iv. .- -tr.] this exploit was commemorated in a song, the composition of which is attributed to deborah and barak: �for that the leaders took the lead in israel, for that the people offered themselves willingly, bless ye the lord. hear, o ye kings, give ear, o ye princes; i, even i, will sing unto the lord; i will sing praise to the lord, the god of israel.� * the poet then dwells on the sufferings of the people, but tells how deborah and barak were raised up, and enumerates the tribes who took part in the conflict as well as those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal. �then came down a remnant of the nobles and the people.... out of ephraim came down they whose root is in amalek:--out of machir came down governors,--and out of zebulon they that handle the marshal�s staff.--and the princes of issachar were with deborah--as was issachar so was barak,--into the valley they rushed forth at his feet.**--by the watercourses of reuben--there were great resolves of heart.--why satest thou among the sheepfolds,--to hear the pipings for the flocks?--at the watercourses of reuben--there were great searchings of heart--gilead abode beyond jordan:--and dan, why did he remain in ships?--asher sat still at the haven of the sea--and abode by his creeks.--zebulon was a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death,--and naphtali upon the high places of the field.--the kings came and fought;--then fought the kings of canaan.--in taanach by the waters of megiddo:--they took no gain of money.--they fought from heaven,--the stars in their courses fought against sisera.--the river of kishon swept them away,--that ancient river, the river kishon.--o my soul, march on with strength.--then did the horsehoofs stamp--by reason of the pransings, the pransings of their strong ones.� * judges v. , (r.v.). ** the text of the song (judges v. ) contains an allusion to benjamin, which is considered by many critics to be an interpolation. it gives a mistaken reading, �_issachar_ with barak;� issachar having been already mentioned with deborah, probably zébulon should be inserted in the text. sisera flies, and the poet follows him in fancy, as if he feared to see him escape from vengeance. he curses the people of meroz in passing, �because they came not to the help of the lord.� he addresses jael and blesses her, describing the manner in which the chief fell at her feet, and then proceeds to show how, at the very time of sisera�s death, his people were awaiting the messenger who should bring the news of his victory; �through the window she looked forth and cried--the mother of sisera cried through the lattice--�why is his chariot so long in coming?--why tarry the wheels of his chariot?�--her wise ladies answered her,--yea, she returned answer to herself,--�have they not found, have they not divided the spoil?--a damsel, two damsels to every man;--to sisera a spoil of divers colours,--a spoil of divers colours of embroidery on both sides, on the necks of the spoil?--so let all thine enemies perish, o lord:--but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.�� it was the first time, as far as we know, that several of the israelite tribes combined together for common action after their sojourn in the desert of kadesh-barnea, and the success which followed from their united efforts ought, one would think, to have encouraged them to maintain such a union, but it fell out otherwise; the desire for freedom of action and independence was too strong among them to permit of the continuance of the coalition. [illustration: .jpg mount tabor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. c. alluaud of limoges. manasseh, restricted in its development by the neighbouring canaanite tribes, was forced to seek a more congenial neighbourhood to the east of the jordan--not close to gad, in the land of gilead, but to the north of the yarmuk and its northern affluents in the vast region extending to the mountains of the haurân. the families of machir and jair migrated one after the other to the east of the lake of gennesaret, while that of nobah proceeded as far as the brook of kanah, and thus formed in this direction the extreme outpost of the children of israel: these families did not form themselves into new tribes, for they were mindful of their affiliation to manasseh, and continued beyond the river to regard themselves still as his children.* the prosperity of ephraim and manasseh, and the daring nature of their exploits, could not fail to draw upon them the antagonism and jealousy of the people on their borders. the midianites were accustomed almost every year to pass through the region beyond the jordan which the house of joseph had recently colonised. assembling in the springtime at the junction of the yarmuk with the jordan, they crossed the latter river, and, spreading over the plains of mount tabor, destroyed the growing crops, raided the villages, and pushed, sometimes, their skirmishing parties over hill and dale as far as gaza.** * manasseh was said to have been established beyond the jordan at the time that gad and reuben were in possession of the land of gilead (numb, xxxii. , - , xxxiv. , ; dent. iii. - ; josh. xiii. , - , xxii.). earlier traditions placed this event in the period which followed the conquest of canaan by joshua. it is not certain that all the families which constituted the half-tribe of manasseh took their origin from manasseh: one of them, for example, that of jair, was regarded as having originated partly from judah ( chron. ii. - ). ** judges vi. - . the inference that they dare not beat wheat in the open follows from ver. , where it is said that �gideon was beating out wheat in his winepress to hide it from the midianites.� a perpetual terror reigned wherever they were accustomed to pass*: no one dared beat out wheat or barley in the open air, or lead his herds to pasture far from his home, except under dire necessity; and even on such occasions the inhabitants would, on the slightest alarm, abandon their possessions to take refuge in caves or in strongholds on the mountains. during one of these incursions two of their sheikhs encountered some men of noble mien in the vicinity of tabor, and massacred them without compunction.** the latter were people of ophrah,*** brethren of a certain jerubbaal (gideon) who was head of the powerful family of abiezer.**** * the history of the midianite oppression (judges vi.-viii.) seems to be from two different sources; the second (judges viii. - ), which is also the shortest, is considered by some to represent the more ancient tradition. the double name of the hero, gideon-jerubbaal, has led some to assign its elements respectively to gideon, judge of the western portion of manasseh, and jerubbaal, judge of the eastern manasseh, and to the consequent fusion of the two men in one. ** this is an assumption which follows reasonably from judges viii. , . *** the site of the ophrah of abiezer is not known for certain, but it would seem from the narrative that it was in the neighbourhood of shechem. **** the position of gideon-jerubbaal as head of the house of abiezer follows clearly from the narrative; if he is represented in the first part of the account as a man of humble origin (judges vi. , ), it was to exalt the power of jahveh, who was accustomed to choose his instruments from amongst the lowly. the name jerubbaal ( sam. xii. : sam. xi. , where the name is transformed into jerubbesheth, as ishbaal and meribbaal are into ishbosheth and mephibosheth respectively), in which �baal� seems to some not to represent the canaanite god, but the title lord as applied to jahveh, was supposed to mean �baal fights against him,� and was, therefore, offensive to the orthodox. kuenen thought it meant �lord, fight for him!� renan read it yarebaal, from the vulgate form jerobaal, and translated �he who fears baal.� gideon signifies �he who overthrows� in the battle. assembling all his people at the call of the trumpet, jerubbaal chose from among them three hundred of the strongest, with whom he came down unexpectedly upon the raiders, put them to flight in the plain of jezreel, and followed them beyond the jordan. having crossed the river, �faint and yet pursuing,� he approached the men of succoth, and asked them for bread for himself and his three hundred followers. their fear of the marauders, however, was so great that the people refused to give him any help, and he had no better success with the people of penuel whom he encountered a little further on. he did not stop to compel them to accede to his wishes, but swore to inflict an exemplary punishment upon them on his return. the midianites continued their retreat, in the mean time, �by the way of them that dwelt in tents on the east of nobah and jogbehah,� but jerubbaal came up with them near karkâr, and discomfited the host. he took vengeance upon the two peoples who had refused to give him bread, and having thus fulfilled his vow, he began to question his prisoners, the two chiefs: �what manner of men were they whom ye slew at tabor?� �as thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king.� �and he said, they were my brethren, the sons of my mother: as the lord liveth, if ye had saved them alive, i would not slay you. and he said unto jether his firstborn, up, and slay them. but the youth drew not his sword: for he feared, because he was yet a youth.� true bedawins as they were, the chiefs� pride revolted at the idea of their being handed over for execution to a child, and they cried to jerubbaal: �rise thou, and fall upon us: for as the man is, so is his strength.� from this victory rose the first monarchy among the israelites. the midianites, owing to their marauding habits and the amount of tribute which they were accustomed to secure for escorting caravans, were possessed of a considerable quantity of gold, which they lavished on the decoration of their persons: their chiefs were clad in purple mantles, their warriors were loaded with necklaces, bracelets, rings, and ear-rings, and their camels also were not behind their masters in the brilliance of their caparison. the booty which gideon secured was, therefore, considerable, and, as we learn from the narrative, excited the envy of the ephraimites, who said: �why hast thou served us thus, that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with midian?� * * judges viii. - . the spoil from the golden ear-rings alone amounted to one thousand seven hundred shekels, as we learn from the narrative, and this treasure in the hands of jerubbaal was not left unemployed, but was made, doubtless, to contribute something to the prestige he had already acquired: the men of israel, whom he had just saved from their foes, expressed their gratitude by offering the crown to him and his successors. the mode of life of the hebrews had been much changed after they had taken up their abode in the mountains of canaan. the tent had given place to the house, and, like their canaanite neighbours, they had given themselves up to agricultural pursuits. this change of habits, in bringing about a greater abundance of the necessaries of life than they had been accustomed to, had begotten aspirations which threw into relief the inadequacy of the social organisation, and of the form of government with which they had previously been content. in the case of a horde of nomads, defeat or exile would be of little moment. should they be obliged by a turn in their affairs to leave their usual haunts, a few days or often a few hours would suffice to enable them to collect their effects together, and set out without trouble, and almost without regret, in search of a new and more favoured home. but with a cultivator of the ground the case would be different: the farm, clearings, and homestead upon which he had spent such arduous and continued labour; the olive trees and vines which had supplied him with oil and wine--everything, in fact, upon which he depended for a livelihood, or which was dependent upon him, would bind him to the soil, and expose his property to disasters likely to be as keenly felt as wounds inflicted on his person. he would feel the need, therefore, of laws to secure to him in time of peace the quiet possession of his wealth, of an army to protect it in time of war, and of a ruler to cause, on the one hand, the laws to be respected, and to become the leader, on the other, of the military forces. jerubbaal is said to have, in the first instance, refused the crown, but everything goes to prove that he afterwards virtually accepted it. he became, it is true, only a petty king, whose sovereignty was limited to manasseh, a part of ephraim, and a few towns, such as succoth and penuel, beyond the jordan. the canaanite city of shechem also paid him homage. like all great chiefs, he had also numerous wives, and he recognised as the national deity the god to whom he owed his victories. out of the spoil taken from the midianites he formed and set up at ophrah an ephod, which became, as we learn, �a snare unto him and unto his house,� but he had also erected under a terebinth tree a stone altar to jahveh-shalom (�jehovah is peace�).* this sanctuary, with its altar and ephod, soon acquired great celebrity, and centuries after its foundation it was the object of many pilgrimages from a distance. jerubbaal was the father by his israelite wives of seventy children, and, by a canaanite woman whom he had taken as a concubine at shechem, of one son, called abimelech.** * the _book of judges_ separates the altar from the ephod, placing the erection of the former at the time of the vocation of gideon (vi. - ) and that of the ephod after the victory (viii. - ). the sanctuary of ophrah was possibly in existence before the time of jerubbaal, and the sanctity of the place may have determined his selection of the spot for placing the altar and ephod there. ** judges viii. , . the succession to the throne would naturally have fallen to one of the seventy, but before this could be arranged, abimelech �went to shechem unto his mother�s brethren, and spake with them, and with all the family of the house of his mother�s father, saying, speak, i pray you, in the ears of all the men of shechem, whether is better for you, that all the sons of jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons, rule over you, or that one rule over you? remember also that i am your bone and your flesh.� this advice was well received; it flattered the vanity of the people to think that the new king was to be one of themselves; �their hearts inclined to follow abimelech; for they said, he is our brother. and they gave him threescore and ten pieces of silver out of the house of baal-berith (the lord of the covenant), wherewith abimelech hired vain and light fellows, which followed him.... he slew his brethren the sons of jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons, upon one stone.� the massacre having been effected, �all the men of shechem assembled themselves together, and all the house of millo,* and made abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar which was in shechem.� ** he dwelt at ophrah, in the residence, and near the sanctuary, of his father, and from thence governed the territories constituting the little kingdom of manasseh, levying tribute upon the vassal villages, and exacting probably tolls from caravans passing through his domain. * the word �millo� is a generic term, meaning citadel or stronghold of the city: there was a millo in every important town, jerusalem included. ** the �oak of the pillar� was a sacred tree overshadowing probably a _cippus_: it may have been the tree mentioned in gen. xxxv. , under which jacob buried the strange gods; or that referred to in josh. xxiv. , under which joshua set up a stone commemorative of the establishment of the law. jotham, the youngest son of gideon, escaped the massacre. as soon as he heard of the election of abimelech, he ascended mount gerizim, and gave out from there the fable of the trees, applying it to the circumstances of the time, and then fled. some critics think that this fable--which is confessedly old--was inserted in the text at a time when prophetical ideas prevailed and monarchy was not yet accepted. this condition of things lasted for three years, and then the shechemites, who had shown themselves so pleased at the idea of having �one of their brethren� as sovereign, found it irksome to pay the taxes levied upon them by him, as if they were in no way related to him. the presence among them of a certain zebul, the officer and representative of abimelech, restrained them at first from breaking out into rebellion, but they returned soon to their ancient predatory ways, and demanded ransom for the travellers they might capture even when the latter were in possession of the king�s safe conduct. this was not only an insult to their lord, but a serious blow to his treasury: the merchants who found themselves no longer protected by his guarantee employed elsewhere the sums which would have come into his hands. the king concealed his anger, however; he was not inclined to adopt premature measures, for the place was a strong one, and defeat would seriously weaken his prestige. the people of shechem, on their part, did not risk an open rupture for fear of the consequences. gaal, son of ebed,* a soldier of fortune and of israelitish blood, arrived upon the scene, attended by his followers: he managed to gain the confidence of the people of shechem, who celebrated under his protection the feast of the vintage. * the name ebed (�slave,� �servant�) is assumed to have been substituted in the massorotic text for the original name jobaal, because of the element baal in the latter word, which was regarded as that of the strange god, and would thus have the sacrilegious meaning �jahveh is baal.� the term of contempt, ebed, was, according to this view, thus used to replace it. on this occasion their merrymaking was disturbed by the presence among them of the officer charged with collecting the tithes, and gaal did not lose the opportunity of stimulating their ire by his ironical speeches: �who is abimelech, and who is shechem, that we should serve him? is not he the son of jerubbaal? and zebul his officer? serve ye the men of hamor the father of shechem: but why should we serve him? and would to god this people were under my hand! then would i remove abimelech. and he said to abimelech, increase thine army, and come out.� zebul promptly gave information of this to his master, and invited him to come by night and lie in ambush in the vicinity of the town, �that in the morning, as soon as the sun is up, thou shalt rise early, and set upon the city: and, behold, when he and the people that is with him come out against thee, thou mayest do to them as thou shalt find occasion.� it turned out as he foresaw; the inhabitants of shechem went out in order to take part in the gathering in of the vintage, while gaal posted his men at the entering in of the gate of the city. as he looked towards the hills he thought he saw an unusual movement among the trees, and, turning round, said to zebul, who was close by, �behold, there come people down from the tops of the mountains. and zebul said unto him, thou seest the shadow of the mountains as if they were men.� a moment after he looked in another direction, �and spake again and said, see, there come people down by the middle of the land, and one company cometh by the way of the terebinth of the augurs.� zebul, seeing the affair turn out so well, threw off the mask, and replied railingly, �where is now thy mouth, wherewith thou saidst, who is abimelech, that we should serve him? is not this the people that thou hast despised? go out, i pray, now, and fight with him.� the king of manasseh had no difficulty in defeating his adversary, but arresting the pursuit at the gates of the city, he withdrew to the neighbouring village of arumah.* * this is now el-ormeh, i.e.kharbet el-eurmah, to the south- west of nablus. he trusted that the inhabitants, who had taken no part in the affair, would believe that his wrath had been appeased by the defeat of gaal; and so, in fact, it turned out: they dismissed their unfortunate champion, and on the morrow returned to their labours as if nothing had occurred. [illustration: .jpg mount gerizim, with a view of nablus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph reproduced by the duc de luynes. abimelech had arranged his abiezerites in three divisions: one of which made for the gates, while the other two fell upon the scattered labourers in the vineyards. abimelech then fought against the city and took it, but the chief citizens had taken refuge in �the hold of the house of el-berith.� �abimelech gat him up to mount zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it up, and laid it on his shoulder: and he said unto the people that were with him, what ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as i have done. and all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all the men of the tower of shechem died also, about a thousand men and women.� [illustration: .jpg the town of ascalon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in the ramesseum. this is a portion of the picture representing the capture of ascalon by ramses ii. this summary vengeance did not, however, prevent other rebellions. thebez imitated shechem, and came nigh suffering the same penalty.* the king besieged the city and took it, and was about to burn with fire the tower in which all the people of the city had taken refuge, when a woman threw a millstone down upon his head �and brake his skull.� * thebez, now tubas, the north-east of nablus. the narrative tells us that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called his armour-bearer to him, and said, �draw thy sword, and kill me, that men say not of me, a woman slew him.� his monarchy ceased with him, and the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers, the seventy children of jerubbaal.* his fall may be regarded also as the natural issue of his peculiar position: the resources upon which he relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in israel. manasseh, now deprived of a chief, and given up to internal dissensions, became still further enfeebled, and an easy prey to its rivals. the divine writings record in several places the success attained by the central tribes in their conflict with their enemies. they describe how a certain jephthah distinguished himself in freeing gilead from the ammonites.** * judges ix. , . �and god sent an evil spirit between abimelech and the men of shechem; and the men of shechem dealt treacherously with abimelech: that the violence done to the threescore and ten sons of jerubbaal might come, and that their blood might be laid upon abimelech their brother, which slew them, and upon the men of shechem, which strengthened his hands to slay his brethren.� ** the story of jephthah is contained in chaps, xi., xii. - , of the _book of judges_. the passage (xi. - ) is regarded by some, owing to its faint echo of certain portions of numb, xx., xxi., to be an interpolation. jephthah is said to have had gilead for his father and a harlot for his mother. various views have been put forward as to the account of his victories over the midianites, some seeing in it, as well as in the origin of the four days�feast in honour of jephthah�s daughter, insertions of a later date. but his triumph led to the loss of his daughter, whom he sacrificed in order to fulfil a vow he had made to jahveh before the battle.* these were, however, comparatively unimportant episodes in the general history of the hebrew race. bedawins from the east, sheikhs of the midianites, moabites, and ammonites--all these marauding peoples of the frontier whose incursions are put on record--gave them continual trouble, and rendered their existence so miserable that they were unable to develop their institutions and attain the permanent freedom after which they aimed. but their real dangers--the risk of perishing altogether, or of falling back into a condition of servitude--did not arise from any of these quarters, but from the philistines. * there are two views as to the nature of the sacrifice of jephthah�s daughter. some think she was vowed to perpetual virginity, while others consider that she was actually sacrificed. by a decree of pharaoh, a new country had been assigned to the remnants of each of the maritime peoples: the towns nearest to egypt, lying between raphia and joppa, were given over to the philistines, and the forest region and the coast to the north of the philistines, as far as the phoenician stations of dor and carmel,* were appropriated to the zakkala. the latter was a military colony, and was chiefly distributed among the five fortresses which commanded the shephelah. * we are indebted to the _papyrus golenischeff_ for the mention of the position of the zakkala at the beginning of the xxist dynasty. [illustration: .jpg a zakkala] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a �squeeze.� gaza and ashdod were separated from the mediterranean by a line of sand-dunes, and had nothing in the nature of a sheltered port--nothing, in fact, but a �maiuma,� or open roadstead, with a few dwellings and storehouses arranged along the beach on which their boats were drawn up. ascalon was built on the sea, and its harbour, although well enough suited for the small craft of the ancients, could not have been entered by the most insignificant of our modern ships. the philistines had here their naval arsenal, where their fleets were fitted out for scouring the egyptian waters as a marine police, or for piratical expeditions on their own account, when the occasion served, along the coasts of phoenicia. ekron and gath kept watch over the eastern side of the plain at the points where it was most exposed to the attacks of the people of the hills--the canaanites in the first instance, and afterwards the hebrews. these foreign warriors soon changed their mode of life in contact with the indigenous inhabitants; daily intercourse, followed up by marriages with the daughters of the land, led to the substitution of the language, manners, and religion of the environing race for those of their mother country. the zakkala, who were not numerous, it is true, lost everything, even to their name, and it was all that the philistines could do to preserve their own. at the end of one or two generations, the �colts� of palestine could only speak the canaanite tongue, in which a few words of the old hellenic _patois_ still continued to survive. their gods were henceforward those of the towns in which they resided, such as marna and dagon and gaza,* dagon at ashdod,** baalzebub at ekron,*** and derketô in ascalon;**** and their mode of worship, with its mingled bloody and obscene rites, followed that of the country. * marna, �our lord,� is mentioned alongside baalzephon in a list of strange gods worshipped at memphis in the xixth dynasty. the worship of dagon at gaza is mentioned in the story of samson (judges xvi. - ). ** the temple and statue of dagon are mentioned in the account of the events following the taking of the ark in sam. v. - . it is, perhaps, to him that chron. x. refers, in relating how the philistines hung up saul�s arms in the house of their gods, although sam. xxxi. calls the place the �house of the ashtoreth.� *** baalzebub was the god of ekron ( kings i. - ), and his name was doubtfully translated �lord of flies.� the discovery of the name of the town zebub on the tell el- amarna tablets shows that it means the �baal of zebub.� zebub was situated in the philistine plains, not far from ekron. halévy thinks it may have been a suburb of that town. **** the worship of derketô or atergatis at ascalon is witnessed to by the classical writers. [illustration: .jpg a procession of philistine captives at medinet-habu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. two things belonging to their past history they still retained--a clear remembrance of their far-off origin, and that warlike temperament which had enabled them to fight their way through many obstacles from the shores of the Ægean to the frontiers of egypt. they could recall their island of caphtor,* and their neighbours in their new home were accustomed to bestow upon them the designation of cretans, of which they themselves were not a little proud.** * jer. xlvii. calls them �the remnant of the isle of caphtor;� amos (ix. ) knew that the lord had brought �the philistines from caphtor;� and in dent. ii. it is related how �the caphtorim which came forth out of caphtor destroyed the avvim, which dwelt in villages as far as gaza, and dwelt in their stead.� classical tradition falls in with the sacred record, and ascribes a cretan origin to the philistines; it is suggested, therefore, that in gen. x. the names casluhim and caphtorim should be transposed, to bring the verse into harmony with history and other parts of scripture. ** in an episode in the life of david ( sam. xxx. ), there is mention of the �south of the cherethites,� which some have made to mean cretans--that is to say, the region to the south of the philistines, alongside the territory of judah, and to the �south of caleb.� ezelc. xx. also mentions in juxtaposition with the philistines the cherethites, and �the remnant of the sea-coast,� as objects of god�s vengeance for the many evils they had inflicted on israel. by the cherethims here, and the cherethites in zoph. ii. , the cretans are by some thought to be meant, which would account for their association with the philistines. gaza enjoyed among them a kind of hegemony, alike on account of its strategic position and its favourable situation for commerce, but this supremacy was of very precarious character, and brought with it no right whatever to meddle in the internal affairs of other members of the confederacy. each of the latter had a chief of its own, a seren,* and the office of this chief was hereditary in one case at least--gath, for instance, where there existed a larger canaanite element than elsewhere, and was there identified with that of �melek,� ** or king. * the _sarnê plishtîm_ figure in the narrative of the last philistine campaign against saul ( sam. xxix. - , , ). their number, five, is expressly mentioned in sam. vi. , - , as well as the names of the towns over which they ruled. ** achish was king of gath ( sam. xxi. , , xxvii. ), and probably maoch before him. the five sarnîm assembled in council to deliberate upon common interests, and to offer sacrifices in the name of the pentapolis. these chiefs were respectively free to make alliances, or to take the field on their own account, but in matters of common importance they acted together, and took their places each at the head of his own contingent.* their armies were made up of regiments of skilled archers and of pikemen, to whom were added a body of charioteers made up of the princes and the nobles of the nation. the armour for all alike was the coat of scale mail and the helmet of brass; their weapons consisted of the two-edged battle-axe, the bow, the lance, and a large and heavy sword of bronze or iron.** * achish, for example, king of gath, makes war alone against the pillaging tribes, owing to the intervention of david and his men, without being called to account by the other princes ( sam. xxvii. - , xxviii. , ), but as soon as an affair of moment is in contemplation--such as the war against saul--they demand the dismissal of david, and achish is obliged to submit to his colleagues acting together ( sam. xxix.). ** philistine archers are mentioned in the battle of gilboa ( sam. xxxi. ) as well as chariots ( sam. i. ). the horsemen mentioned in the same connexion are regarded by some critics as an interpolation, because they cannot bring themselves to think that the philistines had cavalry corps in the xth century b.c. the philistine arms are described at length in the duel between david and goliath ( sam. xvii. - , , ). they are in some respects like those of the homeric heroes. their war tactics were probably similar to those of the egyptians, who were unrivalled in military operations at this period throughout the whole east. under able leadership, and in positions favourable for the operations of their chariots, the philistines had nothing to fear from the forces which any of their foes could bring up against them. as to their maritime history, it is certain that in the earliest period, at least, of their sojourn in syria, as well as in that before their capture by ramses iii., they were successful in sea-fights, but the memory of only one of their expeditions has come down to us: a squadron of theirs having sailed forth from ascalon somewhere towards the end of the xiith dynasty,* succeeded in destroying the sidonian fleet, and pillaging sidon itself. * _justinus_, xviii. , § . the memory of this has been preserved, owing to the disputes about precedence which raged in the greek period between the phoenician towns. the destruction of sidon must have allowed tyre to develop and take the first place. [illustration: .jpg a philistine ship of war] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. but however vigorously they may have plied the occupation of corsairs at the outset of their career, there was, it would appear, a rapid falling off in their maritime prowess; it was on land, and as soldiers, that they displayed their bravery and gained their fame. their geographical position, indeed, on the direct and almost only route for caravans passing between asia and africa, must have contributed to their success. the number of such caravans was considerable, for although egypt had ceased to be a conquering nation on account of her feebleness at home, she was still one of the great centres of production, and the most important market of the east. a very great part of her trade with foreign countries was carried on through the mouths of the nile, and of this commerce the phoenicians had made themselves masters; the remainder followed the land-routes, and passed continually through the territory of the philistines. these people were in possession of the tract of land which lay between the mediterranean and the beginning of the southern desert, forming as it were a narrow passage, into which all the roads leading from the nile to the euphrates necessarily converged. the chief of these routes was that which crossed mount carmel, near megiddo, and passed up the valleys of the litâny and the orontes. this was met at intervals by other secondary roads, such as that which came from damascus by way of tabor and the plain of jezreel, or those which, starting out from the highland of gilead, led through the fords of the lower jordan to ekron and gath respectively. the philistines charged themselves, after the example and at the instigation of the egyptians, with the maintenance of the great trunk road which was in their hands, and also with securing safe transit along it, as far as they could post their troops, for those who confided themselves to their care. in exchange for these good offices they exacted the same tolls which had been levied by the canaanites before them. in their efforts to put down brigandage, they had been brought into contact with some of the hebrew clans after the latter had taken possession of canaan. judah, in its home among the mountains of the dead sea, had become acquainted with the diverse races which were found there, and consequently there had been frequent intermarriages between the hebrews and these peoples. some critics have argued from this that the chronicler had this fact in his mind when he assigned a canaanite wife, shuah, to the father of the tribe himself. he relates how judah, having separated from his brethren, �turned in to a certain adullamite, whose name was hiram,� and that here he became acquainted with shuah, by whom he had three sons. with tamar, the widow of the eldest of the latter, he had accidental intercourse, and two children, perez and zerah, the ancestors of numerous families, were born of that union.* * gen. xxxviii., where there is a detailed account of judah�s unions. edomites, arabs, and midianites were associated with this semi-canaanite stock--for example, kain, caleb, othniel, kenaz, shobal, ephah, and jerahmeel, but the kenites took the first place among them, and played an important part in the history of the conquest of canaan. it is related how one of their subdivisions, of which caleb was the eponymous hero, had driven from hebron the three sons of anak--sheshai, ahiman, and talmai--and had then promised his daughter achsah in marriage to him who should capture debir; this turned out to be his youngest brother othniel, who captured the city, and at the same time obtained a wife. hobab, another kenite, who is represented to have been the brother-in-law of moses, occupied a position to the south of arad, in idumsean territory.* these heterogeneous elements existed alongside each other for a long time without intermingling; they combined, however, now and again to act against a common foe, for we know that the people of judah aided the tribe of simeon in the reduction of the city of zephath;** but they followed an independent course for the most part, and their isolation prevented their obtaining, for a lengthened period, any extension of territory. * the father-in-law of moses is called jethro in exod. iii. , iv. , but raguel in exod. ii. - . hobab is the son of raguel, numb. x. . ** judges i. , where zephath is the better reading, and not arad, as has been suggested. they failed, as at first, in their attempts to subjugate the province of arad, and in their efforts to capture the fortresses which guarded the caravan routes between ashdod and the mouth of the jordan. it is related, however, that they overthrew adoni-bezek, king of the jebusites, and that they had dealt with him as he was accustomed to deal with his prisoners. �and adoni-bezek said, threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as i have done, so god hath requited me.� although adoni-bezek had been overthrown, jerusalem still remained independent, as did also gibeon. beeroth, kirjath-jearim, ajalon, gezer, and the cities of the plain, for the israelites could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron, with which the hebrew foot-soldiers found it difficult to deal.* this independent and isolated group was not at first, however, a subject of anxiety to the masters of the coast, and there is but a bare reference to the exploits of a certain shamgar, son of anath, who �smote of the philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad.� ** * see josh. ix. - for an explanation of how these people were allowed afterwards to remain in a subordinate capacity among the children of israel. ** judges iii. ; cf. also judges v. , in which shamgar is mentioned in the song of deborah. [illustration: .jpg tell es-safieh, the gath of the philistines] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ these cities had also to reckon with ephraim, and the tribes which had thrown in their lot with her. dan had cast his eyes upon the northern districts of the shephelah--which were dependent upon ekron or gath--and also upon the semi-phoenician port of joppa; but these tribes did not succeed in taking possession of those districts, although they had harassed them from time to time by raids in which the children of israel did not always come off victorious. one of their chiefs--samson--had a great reputation among them for his bravery and bodily strength. but the details of his real prowess had been forgotten at an early period. the episodes which have been preserved deal with some of his exploits against the philistines, and there is a certain humour in the chronicler�s account of the weapons which he employed: �with the jawbone of an ass have i smitten a thousand men;� he burned up their harvest also by letting go three hundred foxes, with torches attached to their tails, among the standing corn of the philistines. various events in his career are subsequently narrated; such as his adventure in the house of the harlot at gaza, when he carried off the gate of the city and the gate-posts �to the top of the mountain that is before hebron.� by delilah�s treachery he was finally delivered over to his enemies, who, having put out his eyes, condemned him to grind in the prison-house. on the occasion of a great festival in honour of dagon, he was brought into the temple to amuse his captors, but while they were making merry at his expense, he took hold of the two pillars against which he was resting, and bowing �himself with all his might,� overturned them, �and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.� * * some learned critics considered samson to have been a sort of solar deity. the tribe of dan at length became weary of these unprofitable struggles, and determined to seek out another and more easily defensible settlement. they sent out five emissaries, therefore, to look out for a new home. while these were passing through the mountains they called upon a certain michah in the hill-country of ephraim and lodged there. here they took counsel of a levite whom michah had made his priest, and, in answer to the question whether their journey would be prosperous, he told them to �go in peace: before the lord is the way wherein ye go.� their search turned out successful, for they discovered near the sources of the jordan the town of laish, whose people, like the zidonians, dwelt in security, fearing no trouble. on the report of the emissaries, dan decided to emigrate: the warriors set out to the number of six hundred, carried off by the way the ephod of micah and the levite who served before it, and succeeded in capturing laish, to which they gave the name of their tribe. �they there set up for themselves the ephod: and jonathan, the son of gershom, the son of moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the danites until the day of the captivity of the land.� * the tribe of dan displayed in this advanced post of peril the bravery it had shown on the frontiers of the shephelah, and showed itself the most bellicose of the tribes of israel. * the history of this migration, which is given summarily in josh. xix. , is, as it now stands, a blending of two accounts. the presence of a descendant of moses as a priest in this local sanctuary probably offended the religious scruples of a copyist, who substituted manasseh for moses (judges xviii. ), but the correction was not generally accepted. [the r.v. reads �moses� where the authorised text has �manasseh.�--tr.] it bore out well its character--�dan is a lion�s whelp that leapeth forth from bashan� on the hermon;* �a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse�s heels, so that his rider falleth backward.� ** the new position they had taken up enabled them to protect galilee for centuries against the incursions of the aramaeans. * see the blessing of moses (dent, xxxiii. ). ** these are the words used in the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. ). [illustration: .jpg the hill of shiloh, seen from the north-east] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ their departure, however, left the descendants of joseph unprotected, with benjamin as their only bulwark. benjamin, like dan, was one of the tribes which contained scarcely more than two or three clans, but compensated for the smallness of their numbers by their energy and tenacity of character: lying to the south of ephraim, they had developed into a breed of hardy adventurers, skilled in handling the bow and sling, accustomed from childhood to use both hands indifferently, and always ready to set out on any expedition, not only against the canaanites, but, if need be, against their own kinsfolk.* they had consequently aroused the hatred of both friend and foe, and we read that the remaining tribes at length decreed their destruction; a massacre ensued, from which six hundred benjamites only escaped to continue the race.** their territory adjoined on the south that of jerusalem, the fortress of the jebusites, and on the west the powerful confederation of which gibeon was the head. it comprised some half-dozen towns--ramah, anathoth, michmash, and nob, and thus commanded both sides of the passes leading from the shephelah into the valley of the jordan. the benjamites were in the habit of descending suddenly upon merchants who were making their way to or returning from gilead, and of robbing them of their wares; sometimes they would make a raid upon the environs of ekron and gath, �like a wolf that ravineth:� realising the prediction of jacob, �in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at even he shall divide the spoil.� *** * benjamin signifies, properly speaking, �the southern.� ** story of the lévite of ephraim (judges xix.-xxi.). the groundwork of it contains only one historical element. the story of the lévite is considered by some critics to be of a later date than the rest of the text. *** he is thus characterised in the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. ). vol. vi. x the philistines never failed to make reprisals after each raid, and the benjamites were no match for their heavily armed battalions; but the labyrinth of ravines and narrow gorges into which the philistines had to penetrate to meet their enemy was a favourable region for guerilla warfare, in which they were no match for their opponents. peace was never of long duration on this ill-defined borderland, and neither intercourse between one village and another, alliances, nor intermarriage between the two peoples had the effect of interrupting hostilities; even when a truce was made at one locality, the feud would be kept up at other points of contact. all details of this conflict have been lost, and we merely know that it terminated in the defeat of the house of joseph, a number of whom were enslaved. the ancient sanctuary of shiloh still continued to be the sacred town of the hebrews, as it had been under the canaanites, and the people of ephraim kept there the ark of jahveh-sabaoth, �the lord of hosts.� * it was a chest of wood, similar in shape to the shrine which surmounted the sacred barks of the egyptian divinities, but instead of a prophesying statue, it contained two stones on which, according to the belief of a later age, the law had been engraved.** yearly festivals were celebrated before it, and it was consulted as an oracle by all the israelites. eli, the priest to whose care it was at this time consigned, had earned universal respect by the austerity of his life and by his skill in interpreting the divine oracles.*** * at the very opening of the _first book of samuel_ (i. ), shiloh is mentioned as being the sanctuary of _jahveh- sabaoth_, jahveh the lord of hosts. the tradition preserved in josh, xviii. , removes the date of its establishment as far back as the earliest times of the israelite conquest. ** the idea that the tables of the law were enclosed in the ark is frequently expressed in exodus and in subsequent books of the hexateuch. *** the history of eli extends over chaps, i.-iv. of the _first book of samuel_; it is incorporated with that of samuel, and treats only of the events which accompanied the destruction of the sanctuary of shiloh by the philistines. his two sons, on the contrary, took advantage of his extreme age to annoy those who came up to worship, and they were even accused of improper behaviour towards the women who �served at the door of� the tabernacle. they appropriated to themselves a larger portion of the victims than they were entitled to, extracting from the caldron the meat offerings of the faithful after the sacrifice was over by means of flesh-hooks. their misdeeds were such, that �men abhorred the offering of the lord,� and yet the reverence for the ark was so great in the minds of the people, that they continued to have recourse to it on every occasion of national danger.* the people of ephraim and benjamin having been defeated once between eben-ezer and aphek, bore the ark in state to the battle-field, that its presence might inspire them with confidence. the philistines were alarmed at its advent, and exclaimed, �god is come into the camp. woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods?... be strong, and quit yourselves like men, o ye philistines, that ye be not servants unto the hebrews, as they have been to you.� ** in response to this appeal, their troops fought so boldly that they once more gained a victory. �and there ran a man of benjamin out of the army, and came to shiloh the same day with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head. and when he came, lo, eli sat upon his seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled for the ark of god. and when the man came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out. and when eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, what meaneth the noise of this tumult? and the man hasted, and came and told eli. now eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were set, that he could not see. and the man said unto eli, i am he that came out of the army, and i fled to-day out of the army. and he said, how went the matter, my son? and he that brought the tidings answered and said, israel is fled before the philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, hophni and phineas, are dead, and the ark of god is taken. and it came to pass, when he made mention of the ark of god, that he fell from off his seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for he was an old man, and heavy.� *** * sam. iv. - . ** this is not mentioned in the sacred books; but certain reasons for believing this destruction to have taken place are given by stade. *** the philistine garrison at geba (gibeah) is mentioned in sam. xiii. , i. the defeat of eben-ezer completed, at least for a time, the overthrow of the tribes of central canaan. the philistines destroyed the sanctuary of shiloh, and placed a garrison at gibeah to keep the benjamites in subjection, and to command the route of the jordan;* it would even appear that they pushed their advance-posts beyond carmel in order to keep in touch with the independent canaanite cities such as megiddo, taanach, and bethshan, and to ensure a free use of the various routes leading in the direction of damascus, tyre, and coele-syria.** * after the victory at gilboa, the philistines exposed the dead bodies of saul and his sons upon the walls of bethshan ( sam. xxxi. , ), which they would not have been able to do had the inhabitants not been allies or vassals. friendly relations with bethshan entailed almost as a matter of course some similar understanding with the cities of the plain of jezreel. ** sam. vii. , . these verses represent, as a matter of fact, all that we know of samuel anterior to his relations with saul. this account seems to represent him as exercising merely a restricted influence over the territory of benjamin and the south of ephraim. it was not until the prophetic period that, together with eli, he was made to figure as judge of all israel. the philistine power continued dominant for at least half a century. the hebrew chroniclers, scandalised at the prosperity of the heathen, did their best to abridge the time of the philistine dominion, and interspersed it with israelitish victories. just at this time, however, there lived a man who was able to inspire them with fresh hope. he was a priest of bamah, samuel, the son of elkanah, who had acquired the reputation of being a just and wise judge in the towns of bethel, gilgal, and mizpah; �and he judged israel in all those places, and his return was to bamah, for there was his house... and he built there an altar unto the lord.� to this man the whole israelite nation attributed with pride the deliverance of their race. the sacred writings relate how his mother, the pious hannah, had obtained his birth from jahveh after years of childlessness, and had forthwith devoted him to the service of god. she had sent him to shiloh at the age of three years, and there, clothed in a linen tunic and in a little robe which his mother made for him herself, he ministered before god in the presence of eli. one night it happened, when the latter was asleep in his place, �and the lamp of god was not yet gone out, and samuel was laid down to sleep in the temple of the lord, where the ark of god was, that the lord called samuel: and he said, here am i. and he ran unto eli, and said, here am i; for thou calledst me. and he said, i called thee not; lie down again.� twice again the voice was heard, and at length eli perceived that it was god who had called the child, and he bade him reply: �speak, lord; for thy servant heareth.� from thenceforward jahveh was �with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. and all israel from dan even to beersheba knew that samuel was established to be a prophet of the lord.� twenty years after the sad death of his master, samuel felt that the moment had come to throw off the philistine yoke; he exhorted the people to put away their false gods, and he assembled them at mizpah to absolve them from their sins. the philistines, suspicious of this concourse, which boded ill for the maintenance of their authority, arose against him. �and when the children of israel heard it, they were afraid of the philistines. and samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a whole burnt offering unto the lord: and samuel cried unto the lord for israel, and the lord answered him.� the philistines, demoralised by the thunderstorm which ensued, were overcome on the very spot where they had triumphed over the sons of eli, and fled in disorder to their own country. �then samuel took a stone, and set it between mizpah and shen, and called the name of it eben-ezer (the stone of help), saying, hitherto hath the lord helped us.� he next attacked the tyrians and the amorites, and won back from them all the territory they had conquered.* one passage, in which samuel is not mentioned, tells us how heavily the philistine yoke had weighed upon the people, and explains their long patience by the fact that their enemies had taken away all their weapons. �now there was no smith found throughout all the land of israel: for the philistines said, lest the hebrews make them swords or spears;� and whoever needed to buy or repair the most ordinary agricultural implements was forced to address himself to the philistine blacksmiths.** the very extremity of the evil worked its own cure. the fear of the midian-ites had already been the occasion of the ephemeral rule of jerubbaal and abimelech; the philistine tyranny forced first the tribes of central and then those of southern canaan to unite under the leadership of one man. in face of so redoubtable an enemy and so grave a peril a greater effort was required, and the result was proportionate to their increased activity. * this manner of retaliating against the philistines for the disaster they had formerly inflicted on israel, is supposed by some critics to be an addition of a later date, either belonging to the time of the prophets, or to the period when the jews, without any king or settled government, rallied at mizpah. according to these scholars, sam. vii. - forms part of a biography, written at a time when the foundation of the benjamite monarchy had not as yet been attributed to saul. ** sam. xiii. , . the manassite rule extended at most over two or three clans, but that of saul and david embraced the israelite nation.* benjamin at that time reckoned among its most powerful chiefs a man of ancient and noble family--saul, the son of kish--who possessed extensive flocks and considerable property, and was noted for his personal beauty, for �there was not among the children of israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.� ** he had already reached mature manhood, and had several children, the eldest of whom, jonathan, was well known as a skilful and brave soldier, while saul�s reputation was such that his kinsmen beyond jordan had recourse to his aid as to a hero whose presence would secure victory. the ammonites had laid siege to jabesh-gilead, and the town was on the point of surrendering; saul came to their help, forced the enemy to raise the siege, and inflicted such a severe lesson upon them, that during the whole of his lifetime they did not again attempt hostilities. he was soon after proclaimed king by the benjamites, as jerubbaal had been raised to authority by the manassites on the morrow of his victory.*** * the beginning of saul�s reign, up to his meeting with david, will be found in sam. viii.-xv. we can distinguish the remains of at least two ancient narratives, which the writer of the book of samuel has put together in order to form a complete and continuous account. as elsewhere in this work, i have confined myself to accepting the results at which criticism has arrived, without entering into detailed discussions which do not come within the domain of history. ** sam. ix. . in one account he is represented as quite a young man, whose father is still in the prime of life ( sam. ix.), but this cannot refer to the time of the philistine war, where we find him accompanied, at the very outset of his reign, by his son, who is already skilled in the use of weapons. *** sam. xi. according to the text of the septuagint, the war against the ammonites broke out a month after saul had been secretly anointed by samuel; his popular proclamation did not take place till after the return from the campaign. we learn from the sacred writings that samuel�s influence had helped to bring about these events. it had been shown him by the divine voice that saul was to be the chosen ruler, and he had anointed him and set him before the people as their appointed lord; the scene of this must have been either mizpah or gilgal.* * one narrative appears to represent him as being only the priest or local prophet of hamah, and depicts him as favourable to the establishment of the monarchy ( sam. ix. - , x. - ); the other, however, admits that he was �judge� of all israel, and implies that he was hostile to the choice of a king ( sam. viii. - , x. , , xii. - ) the accession of a sovereign who possessed the allegiance of all israel could not fail to arouse the vigilance of their philistine oppressors; jonathan, however, anticipated their attack and captured gibeah. the five kings at once despatched an army to revenge this loss; the main body occupied michmash, almost opposite to the stronghold taken from them, while three bands of soldiers were dispersed over the country, ravaging as they went, with orders to attack saul in the rear. the latter had only six hundred men, with whom he scarcely dared to face so large a force; besides which, he was separated from the enemy by the wady suweinît, here narrowed almost into a gorge between two precipitous rocks, and through which no body of troops could penetrate without running the risk of exposing themselves in single file to the enemy. jonathan, however, resolved to attempt a surprise in broad daylight, accompanied only by his armour-bearer. �there was a rocky crag on the one side, and a rooky crag on the other side: and the name of the one was bozez (the shining), and the name of the other seneh (the acacia). the one crag rose up on the north in front of michmash, and the other on the south in front of geba (gribeah).� the two descended the side of the gorge, on the top of which they were encamped, and prepared openly to climb the opposite side. the philistine sentries imagined they were deserters, and said as they approached: �behold, the hebrews come forth out of the holes where they had hid themselves. and the men of the garrison answered jonathan and his armour-bearer, and said, come up to us, and we will show you a thing. and jonathan said unto his armour-bearer, come up after me: for the lord hath delivered them into the hand of israel. and jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and his armour-bearer after him: and they fell before jonathan; and his armour-bearer slew them after him. and that first slaughter that jonathan and his armour-bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were half a furrow�s length in an acre of land.� from gribeah, where saul�s troops were in ignorance of what was passing, the benjamite sentinels could distinguish a tumult. saul guessed that a surprise had taken place, and marched upon the enemy. [illustration: .jpg the wady suweinit] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund_. the philistines were ousted from their position, and pursued hotly beyond bethel as far as ajalon.* this constituted the actual birthday of the israelite monarchy. * the account of these events, separated by the parts relating to the biography of samuel ( sam. xiii. - a, thought by some to be of a later date), and of the breaking by jonathan of the fast enjoined by saul ( sam. xiv. - ), covers sam. xiii. - a, - , xiv. - , . the details appear to be strictly historical; the number of the philistines, however, seems to be exaggerated; � , chariots, and horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea-shore in multitude �( sam. xiii. ). gilead, the whole house of joseph--ephraim and manasseh--and benjamin formed its nucleus, and were saul�s strongest supporters. we do not know how far his influence extended northwards; it probably stopped short at the neighbourhood of mount tabor, and the galileans either refused to submit to his authority, or acknowledged it merely in theory. in the south the clans of judah and simeon were not long in rallying round him, and their neighbours the kenites, with caleb and jerahmeel, soon followed their example. these southerners, however, appear to have been somewhat half-hearted in their allegiance to the benjamite king: it was not enough to have gained their adhesion--a stronger tie was needed to attach them to the rest of the nation. saul endeavoured to get rid of the line of canaanite cities which isolated them from ephraim, but he failed in the effort, we know not from what cause, and his attempt produced no other result than to arouse against him the hatred of the gibeonite inhabitants.* he did his best to watch over the security of his new subjects, and protected them against the amalekites, who were constantly harassing them. * the fact is made known to us by an accidental mention of it in sam. xxi. - . the motive which induced saul to take arms against the gibeonites is immediately apparent when we realise the position occupied by gideon between judah and the tribes of central canaan. their king, agag, happening to fall into his hands, he killed him, and destroyed several of their nomad bands, thus inspiring the remainder with a salutary terror.* subsequent tradition credited him with victories gained over all the enemies of israel--over moab, edom, and even the aramaeans of zobah--it endowed him even with the projects and conquests of david. at any rate, the constant incursions of the philistines could not have left him much time for fighting in the north and east of his domains. their defeat at gibeah was by no means a decisive one, and they quickly recovered from the blow; the conflict with them lasted to the end of saul�s lifetime, and during the whole of this period he never lost an opportunity of increasing his army.** the monarchy was as yet in a very rudimentary state, without either the pomp or accessories usually associated with royalty in the ancient kingdoms of the east. saul, as king of israel, led much the same sort of life as when he was merely a benjamite chief. he preferred to reside at gibeah, in the house of his forefathers, with no further resources than those yielded by the domain inherited from his ancestors, together with the spoil taken in battle.*** * the part taken by samuel in the narrative of saul�s war against the amalekites ( sam. xv.) is thought by some critics to have been introduced with a view of exalting the prophet�s office at the expense of the king and the monarchy. they regard sam. xiv. as being the sole historic ground of the narrative. ** sam. xiv. . we may admit his successful skirmishes with moab, but some writers maintain that the defeat of the edomites and aramaeans is a mere anticipation, and consider that the passage is only a reflection of sam. viii. , and reproduces the list of the wars of david, with the exception of the expedition against damascus. *** gibeah is nowhere expressly mentioned as being the capital of saul, but the name gibeah of saul which it bore shows that it must have been the royal residence; the names of the towns mentioned in the account of saul�s pursuit of david--naioth, eamah, and nob--are all near to gibeah. it was also at gibeah that the gibeonites slew seven of the sons and grandsons of saul ( sam. xxi. - ), no doubt to bring ignominy on the family of the first king in the very place in which they had governed. all that he had, in addition to his former surroundings, were a priesthood attached to the court, and a small army entirely at his own disposal. ahijah, a descendant of eli, sacrificed for the king when the latter did not himself officiate; he fulfilled the office of chaplain to him in time of war, and was the mouthpiece of the divine oracles when these were consulted as to the propitious moment for attacking the enemy. [illustration: .jpg a phoenician soldier] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the bronze original in the louvre. the army consisted of a nucleus of benjamites, recruited from the king�s clan, with the addition of any adventurers, whether israelites or strangers, who were attracted to enlist under a popular military chief.* it comprised archers, slingers, and bands of heavily armed infantry, after the fashion of the phoenician, bearing pikes. we can gam some idea of their appearance and equipment from the bronze statuettes of an almost contemporary period, which show us the phoenician foot-soldiers or the barbarian mercenaries in the pay of the phoenician cities: they wear the horizontally striped loin-cloth of the syrians, leaving the arms and legs entirely bare, and the head is protected by a pointed or conical helmet. * ahijah ( sam. xiv. ), son of ahitub, great-grandson of eli, appears to be the same as ahimelech, son of ahitub, who subsequently helped david ( sam. xxi. - ), and was massacred by order of saul ( sam. xxii. - ). the scribe must have been shocked by the name melech--that of the god milik [moloch]--and must have substituted jah or jahveh. saul possessed none of the iron-bound chariots which always accompanied the qanaanite infantry; these heavy vehicles would have been entirely out of place in the mountain districts, which were the usual field of operations for the israelite force.* we are unable to ascertain whether the king�s soldiers received any regular pay, but we know that the spoil was divided between the prince and his men, each according to his rank and in proportion to the valour he had displayed.** in cases of necessity, the whole of the tribes were assembled, and a selection was made of all those capable of bearing arms. this militia, composed mainly of a pastoral peasantry in the prime of life, capable of heroic efforts, was nevertheless ill-disciplined, liable to sudden panics, and prone to become disbanded on the slightest reverse.*** * with regard to the use of the bow among saul�s soldiers, cf. sam. xx. - , where we find the curious scene of the meeting of david and jonathan, when the latter came out of gibeah on the pretext of practising with bow and arrows. the accoutrement of the hebrews is given in the passage where saul lends his armour to david before meeting with goliath ( sam. xvii. , ). ** cf. the quarrel which took place between the soldiers of david about the spoil taken from the amalekites, and the manner in which the strife was decided by david ( sam. xxx. - ) *** saul, for instance, assembles the people and makes a selection to attack the philistines ( sam. xiii. , , ) against the ammonites ( sam. xi. , ) and against the amalekites ( sam. xv. ). saul had the supreme command of the whole; the members of his own family served as lieutenants under him, including his son jonathan, to whom he owed some of his most brilliant victories, together with his cousin abner, the _sar-zaba_, who led the royal guard.* among the men of distinguished valour who had taken service under saul, he soon singled out david, son of jesse, a native of bethlehem of judah.** david was the first judæan hero, the typical king who served as a model to all subsequent monarchs. his elevation, like that of saul, is traced to samuel. the old prophet had repaired to bethlehem ostensibly to offer a sacrifice, and after examining all the children of jesse, he chose the youngest, and �anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the spirit of the lord came mightily upon david.� *** * sam. xiv. , . there is no record of the part played by abner during saul�s lifetime: he begins to figure in the narrative after the battle at gilboa under the double reign of ish-bosheth and david. ** the name of david is a shortened form of davdo, dodo, �the favourite of him,� i.e. god. *** the intervention of the prophet occupies sam. xvi. - . some critics have imagined that this passage was interpolated at a later date, and reflects the events which are narrated in chap. x. they say it was to show that saul was not alone in enjoying consecration by the prophet, and hence all doubt would be set at rest as to whether david was actually that �neighbour of thine, that is better than thou,� mentioned in sam. xv. . his introduction at the court of saul is variously accounted for. according to one narrative, saul, being possessed by an evil spirit, fell at times into a profound melancholy, from which he could be aroused only by the playing of a harp. on learning that david was skilled in this instrument, he begged jesse to send him his son, and the lad soon won the king�s affection. as often as the illness came upon him, david took his harp, and �saul was refreshed, and the evil spirit departed from him.� * another account relates that he entered on his soldierly career by killing with his sling goliath of gath,** who had challenged the bravest israelites to combat; though elsewhere the death of goliath is attributed to elhanan of bethlehem,*** one of the �mighty men of valour,� who specially distinguished himself in the wars against the philistines. david had, however, no need to take to himself the brave deeds of others; at ephes-dammîm, in company with eleazar, the son of dodai, and shammah, the son of agu, he had posted himself in a field of lentils, and the three warriors had kept the philistines at bay till their discomfited israelite comrades had had time to rally.**** * sam. xvi. - . this narrative is directly connected with sam. xiv. , where we are told that when �saul saw any strong man, or any valiant man, he took him unto him.� ** sam. xvii., xviii. - . according to some writers, this second version, the best known of the two, is a development at a later period of the tradition preserved in sam. xxi. , where the victory of elhanan over goliath is recorded. *** sam. xxi. , where the duel of goliath and elhanan is placed in the reign of david, during the combat at gob. some critics think that the writer of chronicles, recognising the difficulty presented by this passage, changed the epithet bethlehemite, which qualified the name of elhanan, into lahmi, the name of goliath�s brother ( citron, xx. ). say ce thought to get over the difficulty by supposing that elhanan was david�s first name; but elhanan is the son of jair, and not the son of jesse. **** the combat of paz-dammîm or ephes-dammîm is mentioned in sam. xvii. ; the exploit of david and his two comrades, sam: xxiii. - (cf. chron. xi, - , which slightly varies from sam. xxiii. - ). saul entrusted him with several difficult undertakings, in all of which he acquitted himself with honour. on his return from one of them, the women of the villages came out to meet him, singing and dancing to the sound of timbrels, the refrain of their song being: �saul hath slain his thousands, and david his ten thousands.� the king concealed the jealousy which this simple expression of joy excited within him, but it found vent at the next outbreak of his illness, and he attempted to kill david with a spear, though soon after he endeavoured to make amends for his action by giving him his second daughter michal in marriage.* this did not prevent the king from again attempting david�s life, either in a real or simulated fit of madness; but not being successful, he despatched a body of men to waylay him. according to one account it was michal who helped her husband to escape,** while another attributes the saving of his life to jonathan. this prince had already brought about one reconciliation between his father and david, and had spared no pains to reinstall him in the royal favour, but his efforts merely aroused the king�s suspicion against himself. saul imagined that a conspiracy existed for the purpose of dethroning him, and of replacing him by his son; jonathan, knowing that his life also was threatened, at length renounced the attempt, and david and his followers withdrew from court. * the account of the first disagreement between saul and david, and with regard to the marriage of david with michal, is given in sam. xviii. - , - , and presents every appearance of authenticity. verses - , mentioning a project of union between david and saul�s eldest daughter, merab, has at some time been interpolated; it is not given in the lxx., either because it was not in the hebrew version they had before them, or because they suppressed it owing to the motive appearing to them insufficient. ** sam. xix. - . many critics regard this passage as an interpolation. [illustration: .jpg aÎd-el-ra, the site of the ancient adullam] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ he was hospitably received by a descendant of eli,* ahimelech the priest, at nob, and wandered about in the neighbourhood of adullam, hiding himself in the wooded valleys of khereth, in the heart of judah. he retained the sympathies of many of the benjamites, more than one of whom doubted whether it would not be to their advantage to transfer their allegiance from their aged king to this more youthful hero. * sam. xxi. , adds that he took as a weapon the sword of goliath which was laid up in the sanctuary at nob. saul got news of their defection, and one day when he was sitting, spear in hand, under the tamarisk at gibeah, he indignantly upbraided his servants, and pointed out to them the folly of their plans. �hear, now, ye benjamites; will the son of jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards? will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds?� ahimelech was selected as the victim of the king�s anger: denounced by doeg, saul�s steward, he was put to death, and all his family, with the exception of abiathar, one of his sons, perished with him.* as soon as it became known that david held the hill-country, a crowd of adventurous spirits flocked to place themselves under his leadership, anticipating, no doubt, that spoil would not be lacking with so brave a chief, and he soon found himself at the head of a small army, with abiathar as priest, and the ephod, rescued from nob, in his possession.** * sam. xix.-xxii., where, according to some critics, two contradictory versions have been blended together at a late period. the most probable version is given in sam, xix. - [ - a], xxi. - [ - ], xxii., and is that which i have followed by preference; the other version, according to these writers, attributes too important a rôle to jonathan, and relates at length the efforts he made to reconcile his father and his friend ( sam. xviii. , xix. - , xx.). it is thought, from the confusion apparent in this part of the narrative, that a record of the real motives which provoked a rupture between the king and his son-in-law has not been preserved. ** sam. xxii. - , xxiii. . for the use of the ephod by abiathar for oracular purposes, cf. sam. xxiii. - , xxx. , ; the inquiry in sam. xxiii. - probably belongs to the same series, although neither abiathar nor the ephod is mentioned. the country was favourable for their operations; it was a perfect labyrinth of deep ravines, communicating with each other by narrow passes or by paths winding along the edges of precipices. isolated rocks, accessible only by rugged ascents, defied assault, while extensive caves offered a safe hiding-place to those who were familiar with their windings. one day the little band descended to the rescue of keilah, which they succeeded in wresting from the philistines, but no sooner did they learn that saul was on his way to meet them than they took refuge in the south of judah, in the neighbourhood of ziph and maôn, between the mountains and the dead sea.* * sam. xxiii. - ; an episode acknowledged to be historical by nearly-all modern critics. [illustration: .jpg the desert of judah] drawn by boudior, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ the heights visible in the distance are the mountains of moab, beyond the dead sea. saul already irritated by his rival�s successes, was still more galled by being always on the point of capturing him, and yet always seeing him slip from his grasp. on one afternoon, when the king had retired into a cave for his siesta, he found himself at the mercy of his adversary; the latter, however, respected the sleep of his royal master, and contented himself with cutting a piece off his mantle.* on another occasion david, in company with abishai and ahimelech the hittite, took a lance and a pitcher of water from the king�s bedside.** the inhabitants of the country were not all equally loyal to david�s cause; those of ziph, whose meagre resources were taxed to support his followers, plotted to deliver him up to the king,*** while nabal of maôn roughly refused him food. abigail atoned for her husband�s churlishness by a speedy submission; she collected a supply of provisions, and brought it herself to the wanderers. david was as much disarmed by her tact as by her beauty, and when she was left a widow he married her. this union insured the support of the calebite clan, the most powerful in that part of the country, and policy as well as gratitude no doubt suggested the alliance. * sam, xxiv. thought by some writers to be of much later date. ** sam. xxvi. - . skirmishes were not as frequent between the king�s troops and the outlaws as we might at first be inclined to believe, but if at times there was a truce to hostilities, they never actually ceased, and the position became intolerable. encamped between his kinsman and the philistines, david found himself unable to resist either party except by making friends with the other. an incursion of the philistines near maôn saved david from the king, but when saul had repulsed it, david had no choice but to throw himself into the arms of achish, king of gath, of whom he craved permission to settle as his vassal at ziklag, on condition of david�s defending the frontier against the bedawin.* * sam. xxvii. the earlier part of this chapter (vers. - ) is strictly historical. some critics take vers. - to be of later date, and pretend that they were inserted to show the cleverness of david, and to deride the credulity of the king of gath. saul did not deem it advisable to try and dislodge him from this retreat. peace having been re-established in judah, the king turned northward and occupied the heights which bound the plain of jezreel to the east; it is possible that he contemplated pushing further afield, and rallying round him those northern tribes who had hitherto never acknowledged his authority. he may, on the other hand, have desired merely to lay hands on the syrian highways, and divert to his own profit the resources brought by the caravans which plied along them. the philistines, who had been nearly ruined by the loss of the right to demand toll of these merchants, assembled the contingents of their five principalities, among them being the hebrews of david, who formed the personal guard of achish. the four other princes objected to the presence of these strangers in their midst, and forced achish to dismiss them. david returned to ziklag, to find ruin and desolation everywhere. the amalekites had taken advantage of the departure of the hebrews to revenge themselves once for all for david�s former raids on them, and they had burnt the town, carrying off the women and flocks. david at once set out on their track, overtook them just beyond the torrent of besor, and rescued from them, not only his own belongings, but all the booty they had collected by the way in the southern provinces of caleb, in judah, and in the cherethite plain. he distributed part of this spoil among those cities of judah which had shown hospitality to himself and his men, for instance, to jattir, aroer, eshtemoa, hormah, and hebron.* while he thus kept up friendly relations with those who might otherwise have been tempted to forget him, saul was making his last supreme effort against the philistines, but only ito meet with failure. he had been successful in repulsing them as long as he kept to the mountain districts, where the courage of his troops made up for their lack of numbers and the inferiority of their arms; but he was imprudent enough to take up a position on the hillsides of gilboa, whose gentle slopes offered no hindrances to the operations of the heavy philistine battalions. they attacked the israelites from the shunem side, and swept all before them. jonathan perished in the conflict, together with his two brothers, malchi-shua and abinadab; saul, who was wounded by an arrow, begged his armour-bearer to take his life, but, on his persistently refusing, the king killed himself with his own sword. the victorious philistines cut off his head and those of his sons, and placed their armour in the temple of ashtoreth,** while their bodies, thus despoiled, were hung up outside the walls of bethshan, whose canaanite inhabitants had made common cause with the philistines against israel. * sam. xxviii. , , xxix., xxx. the torrent of besor is the present wady esh-sheriah, which runs to the south of gaza. ** the text of sam. xxxi. says, in a vague manner, �in the house of the ashtaroth� (in the plural), which is corrected, somewhat arbitrarily, in chron. x. iato �in the house of dagon� (b.v.); it is possible that it was the temple at gaza, gaza being the chief of the philistine towns. the people of jabesh-gilead, who had never forgotten how saul had saved them from the ammonites, hearing the news, marched all night, rescued the mutilated remains, and brought them back to their own town, where they burned them, and buried the charred bones under a tamarisk, fasting meanwhile seven days as a sign of mourning.* * sam. xxxi. it would seem that there were two narratives describing this war: in one, the philistines encamped at shunem, and saul occupied mount gilboa ( sam. xxviii. ); in the other, the philistines encamped at aphek, and the israelites �by the fountain which is in jezreel� ( sam. xxix. ). the first of these accounts is connected with the episode of the witch of endor, the second with the sending away of david by achish. the final catastrophe is in both narratives placed on mount gilboa and stade has endeavoured to reconcile the two accounts by admitting that the battle was fought between aphek and �the fountain,� but that the final scene took place on the slopes of gilboa. there are even two versions of the battle, one in sam. xxxi. and the other in sam. i. - , where saul does not kill himself, but begs an amalekite to slay him; many critics reject the second version. [illustration: .jpg the hill of bethshan, seen from the east] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ david afterwards disinterred these relics, and laid them in the burying-place of the family of kish at zela, in benjamin. the tragic end of their king made a profound impression on the people. we read that, before entering on his last battle, saul was given over to gloomy forebodings: he had sought counsel of jahveh, but god �answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by urim, nor by prophets.� the aged samuel had passed away at ramah, and had apparently never seen the king after the flight of david;* saul now bethought himself of the prophet in his despair, and sought to recall him from the tomb to obtain his counsel. * sam. xxv. , repeated sam. xxviii. , with a mention of the measures taken by saul against the wizards and fortune-tellers. the king had banished from the land all wizards and fortune-tellers, but his servants brought him word that at endor there still remained a woman who could call up the dead. saul disguised himself, and, accompanied by two of his retainers, went to find her; he succeeded in overcoming her fear of punishment, and persuaded her to make the evocation. �whom shall i bring up unto thee?�--�bring up samuel.�--and when the woman saw samuel, she cried with a loud voice, saying, �why hast thou deceived me, for thou art saul?� and the king said unto her, �be not afraid, for what sawest thou?�--�i saw gods ascending out of the earth.�--�what form is he of?�--�an old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.� saul immediately recognised samuel, and prostrated himself with his face to the ground before him. the prophet, as inflexible after death as in his lifetime, had no words of comfort for the god-forsaken man who had troubled his repose. �the lord hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to david, because thou obeyedst not the voice of the lord,... and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. the lord also shall deliver the host of israel into the hands of the philistines.� * * sam. xxviii. - . there is no reason why this scene should not be historical; it was natural that saul, like many an ancient general in similar circumstances, should seek to know the future by means of the occult sciences then in vogue. some critics think that certain details of the evocation--as, for instance, the words attributed to samuel --are of a later date. we learn, also, how david, at ziklag, on hearing the news of the disaster, had broken into weeping, and had composed a lament, full of beauty, known as the �song of the bow,� which the people of judah committed to memory in their childhood. �thy glory, o israel, is slain upon thy high places! how are the mighty fallen! tell it not in gath, publish it not in the streets of ashkelon; lest the daughters of the philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph! ye mountains of gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, neither fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield of saul, not anointed with oil! from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of jonathan turned not back, the sword of saul returned not empty. saul and jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided.� * * sam. i. - (r.v.). this elegy is described as a quotation from jasher, the �book of the upright.� many modern writers attribute its authorship to david himself; others reject this view; all agree in regarding it as extremely ancient. the title, �song of the bow,� is based on the possibly corrupt text of ver. . the philistines occupied in force the plain of jezreel and the pass which leads from it into the lowlands of bethshan: the israelites abandoned the villages which they had occupied in these districts, and the gap between the hebrews of the north and those of the centre grew wider. the remnants of saul�s army sought shelter on the eastern bank of the jordan, but found no leader to reorganise them. the reverse sustained by the israelitish champion seemed, moreover, to prove the futility of trying to make a stand against the invader, and even the useless-ness of the monarchy itself: why, they might have asked, burthen ourselves with a master, and patiently bear with his exactions, if, when put to the test, he fails to discharge the duties for the performance of which he was chosen? and yet the advantages of a stable form of government had been so manifest during the reign of saul, that it never for a moment occurred to his former subjects to revert to patriarchal institutions: the question which troubled them was not whether they were to have a king, but rather who was to fill the post. saul had left a considerable number of descendants behind him.* from these, abner, the ablest of his captains, chose ishbaal, and set him on the throne to reign under his guidance.** * we know that he had three sons by his wife ahinoam-- jonathan, ishbaal, and malchi-shua; and two daughters, merab and michal ( sam. xiv. , , where �ishvi� should be read �ishbaal�). jonathan left at least one son, meribbaal ( chron. viii. , ix. , called mephibosheth in sam. xxi. ), and merab had five sons by adriel ( sam. xxi. ). one of saul�s concubines, rizpah, daughter of aiah, had borne him two sons, armoni and meribbaal ( sam. xxi. , where the name meribbaal is changed into mephibosheth); abinadab, who fell with him in the fight at mount gilboa ( sam. xxxi. ), whose mother�s name is not mentioned, was another son. ** ishbaal was still a child when his father died: had he been old enough to bear arms, he would have taken a part in the battle of gilboa with his brothers.. the expressions used in the account of his elevation to the throne prove that he was a minor ( sam. ii. , ); the statement that he was forty years old when he began to reign would seem, therefore, to be an error (ii. ). gibeah was too close to the frontier to be a safe residence for a sovereign whose position was still insecure; abner therefore installed ishbaal at mahanaim, in the heart of the country of gilead. the house of jacob, including the tribe of benjamin, acknowledged him as king, but judah held aloof. it had adopted the same policy at the beginning of the previous reign, yet its earlier isolation had not prevented it from afterwards throwing in its lot with the rest of the nation. but at that time no leader had come forward from its own ranks who was worthy to be reckoned among the mighty men of israel; now, on the contrary, it had on its frontier a bold and resolute leader of its own race. david lost no time in stepping into the place of those whose loss he had bewailed. their sudden removal, while it left him without a peer among his own people, exposed him to the suspicion and underground machinations of his foreign protectors; he therefore quitted them and withdrew to hebron, where his fellow-countrymen hastened to proclaim him king.* from that time onwards the tendency of the hebrew race was to drift apart into two distinct bodies; one of them, the house of joseph, which called itself by the name of israel, took up its position in the north, on the banks of the jordan; the other, which is described as the house of judah, in the south, between the dead sea and the shephelah. abner endeavoured to suppress the rival kingdom in its infancy: he brought ishbaal to gibeah and proposed to joab, who was in command of david�s army, that the conflict should be decided by the somewhat novel expedient of pitting twelve of the house of judah against an equal number of the house of benjamin. the champions of judah are said to have won the day, but the opposing forces did not abide by the result, and the struggle still continued.** * sam. ii. -- . very probably abner recognised the philistine suzerainty as david had done, for the sake of peace; at any rate, we find no mention in holy writ of a war between ishbaal and the philistines. ** sam. ii. - , iii. . an intrigue in the harem furnished a solution of the difficulty. saul had raised one of his wives of the second rank, named eizpah, to the post of favourite. abner became enamoured of her and took her. this was an insult to the royal house, and amounted to an act of open usurpation: the wives of a sovereign could not legally belong to any but his successor, and for any one to treat them as abner had treated rizpah, was equivalent to his declaring himself the equal, and in a sense the rival, of his master. ishbaal keenly resented his minister�s conduct, and openly insulted him. abner made terms with david, won the northern tribes, including that of benjamin, over to his side, and when what seemed a propitious moment had arrived, made his way to hebron with an escort of twenty men. he was favourably received, and all kinds of promises were made him; but when he was about to depart again in order to complete the negotiations with the disaffected elders, joab, returning from an expedition, led him aside into a gateway and slew him. david gave him solemn burial, and composed a lament on the occasion, of which four verses have come down to us: having thus paid tribute to the virtues of the deceased general, he lost no time in taking further precautions to secure his power. the unfortunate king ishbaal, deserted by every one, was assassinated by two of his officers as he slept in the heat of the day, and his head was carried to hebron: david again poured forth lamentations, and ordered the traitors to be killed. there was now no obstacle between him and the throne: the elders of the people met him at hebron, poured oil upon his head, and anointed him king over all the provinces which had obeyed the rule of saul in gilead--ephraim and benjamin as well as judah.* * sam. v. - ; in ghron. xi. - , xii. - , we find further details beyond those given in the book of samuel; it seems probable, however, that the northern tribes may not have recognised david�s sovereignty at this time. as long as ishbaal lived, and his dissensions with judah assured their supremacy, the philistines were content to suspend hostilities: the news of his death, and of the union effected between israel and judah, soon roused them from this state of quiescence. as prince of the house of caleb and vassal of the lord of grath, david had not been an object of any serious apprehension to them; but in his new character, as master of the dominions of saul, david became at once a dangerous rival, whom they must overthrow without delay, unless they were willing to risk being ere long overthrown by him. they therefore made an attack on bethlehem with the choicest of their forces, and entrenched themselves there, with the canaanite city of jebus as their base, so as to separate judah entirely from benjamin, and cut off the little army quartered round hebron from the reinforcements which the central tribes would otherwise have sent to its aid.* this move was carried out so quickly that david found himself practically isolated from the rest of his kingdom, and had no course left open but to shut himself up in adullam, with his ordinary guard and the judsean levies.** * the history of this war is given in sam. v. - , where the text shows signs of having been much condensed. it is preceded by the account of the capture of jerusalem, which some critics would like to transfer to chap, vi., following ver. which leads up to it. the events which followed are self-explanatory, if we assume, as i have done in the text, that the philistines wished to detach judah from israel: at first ( sam. v. - ) david endeavours to release himself and effect a juncture with israel, as is proved by the relative positions assigned to the two opposing armies, the philistines at bethlehem, david in the cave of adullam; afterwards ( sam. v. - ) david has shaken himself free, has rejoined israel, and is carrying on the struggle between gibeah and gezer. the incidents recounted in sam. xxi. - , xxiii. - , seem to refer almost exclusively to the earlier part of the war, at the time when the hebrews were hemmed in in the neighbourhood of adullam. ** the passage in sam. v. simply states that david �went down to the hold,� and gives no further details. this expression, following as it does the account of the taking of jerusalem, would seem to refer to this town itself, and renan has thus interpreted it. it really refers to adullam, as is shown by the passage in sam. xxiii. - . sam. xxi. - . the whole district round about is intersected by a network of winding streams, and abounds in rocky gorges, where a few determined men could successfully hold their ground against the onset of a much more numerous body of troops. the caves afford, as we know, almost impregnable refuges: david had often hidden himself in them in the days when he fled before saul, and now his soldiers profited by the knowledge he possessed of them to elude the attacks of the philistines. he began a sort of guerilla warfare, in the conduct of which he seems to have been without a rival, and harassed in endless skirmishes his more heavily equipped adversaries. he did not spare himself, and freely risked his own life; but he was of small stature and not very powerful, so that his spirit often outran his strength. on one occasion, when he had advanced too far into the fray and was weary with striking, he ran great peril of being killed by a gigantic philistine: with difficulty abishai succeeded in rescuing him unharmed from the dangerous position into which he had ventured, and for the future he was not allowed to run such risks on the field of battle. on another occasion, when lying in the cave of adullam, he began to feel a longing for the cool waters of bethlehem, and asked who would go down and fetch him a draught from the well by the gates of the town. three of his mighty men, joshebbasshebeth, eleazar, and shammah, broke through the host of the philistines and succeeded in bringing it; but he refused to drink the few drops they had brought, and poured them out as a libation to jehovah, saying, �shall i drink the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives?� * duels between the bravest and stoutest champions of the two hosts were of frequent occurrence. it was in an encounter of this kind that elhanan the bethlehemite [or david] slew the giant goliath at gob. at length david succeeded in breaking his way through the enemies� lines in the valley of kephaîm, thus forcing open the road to the north. here he probably fell in with the israelitish contingent, and, thus reinforced, was at last in a position to give battle in the open: he was again successful, and, routing his foes, pursued them from gibeon to gezer.** none of his victories, however, was of a sufficiently decisive character to bring the struggle to an end: it dragged on year after year, and when at last it did terminate, there was no question on either side of submission or of tribute:*** the hebrews completely regained their independence, but the philistines do not seem to have lost any portion of their domain, and apparently retained possession of all that they had previously held. * sam. xxiii. - ; cf. ghron. xi. - . popular tradition furnishes many incidents of a similar type; cf. alexander in the desert of gedrosia, godfrey de bouillon in asia minor, etc. ** the hebrew text gives �from geba [or gibeah] to gezer� ( sam. v. ); the septuagint, �from gibeon to gezer.� this latter reading [which is that of chron. xiv. .--tr.] is more in accordance with the geographical facts, and i have therefore adopted it. jahveh had shown by a continual rustling in the leaves of the mulberry trees that he was on david�s side. *** in sam. viii. we are told that david humiliated the philistines, and took �the bridle of the mother city� out of their hands, or, in other words, destroyed the supremacy which they had exercised over israel; he probably did no more than this, and failed to secure any part of their territory. the passage in chron. xviii. , which attributes to him the conquest of gath and its dependencies, is probably an amplification of the somewhat obscure wording employed in sam. viii. . but though they suffered no loss of territory, their position was in reality much inferior to what it was before. their control of the plain of jezreel was lost to them for ever, and with it the revenue which they had levied from passing caravans: the hebrews transferred to themselves this right of their former masters, and were so much the richer at their expense. to the five cities this was a more damaging blow than twenty reverses would have been to benjamin or judah. the military spirit had not died out among the philistines, and they were still capable of any action which did not require sustained effort; but lack of resources prevented them from entering on a campaign of any length, and any chance they may at one time have had of exercising a dominant influence in the affairs of southern syria had passed away. under the restraining hand of egypt they returned to the rank of a second-rate power, just strong enough to inspire its neighbours with respect, but too weak to extend its territory by annexing that of others. though they might still, at times, give david trouble by contesting at intervals the possession of some outlying citadel, or by making an occasional raid on one of the districts which lay close to the frontier, they were no longer a permanent menace to the continued existence of his kingdom. but was judah strong enough to take their place, and set up in southern syria a sovereign state, around which the whole fighting material of the country might range itself with confidence? the incidents of the last war had clearly shown the disadvantages of its isolated position in regard to the bulk of the nation. the gap between ekron and the jordan, which separated it from ephraim and manasseh, had, at all costs, to be filled up, if a repetition of the manouvre which so nearly cost david his throne at adullam were to be avoided. it is true that the gibeonites and their allies acknowledged the sovereignty of ephraim, and formed a sort of connecting link between the tribes, but it was impossible to rely on their fidelity so long as they were exposed to the attacks of the jebusites in their rear: as soon therefore as david found he had nothing more to fear from the philistines, he turned his attention to jerusalem.* this city stood on a dry and sterile limestone spur, separated on three sides from the surrounding hills by two valleys of unequal length. that of the kedron, on the east, begins as a simple depression, but gradually becomes deeper and narrower as it extends towards the south. about a mile and a half from its commencement it is nothing more than a deep gorge, shut in by precipitous rocks, which for some days after the winter rains is turned into the bed of a torrent.** * the name jerusalem occurs under the form ursalîmmu, or urusalîm, in the tel el-amarna tablets. sion was the name of the citadel preserved by the israelites after the capture of the place, and applied by them to the part of the city which contained the royal palace, and subsequently to the town itself. ** the kedron is called a nalial ( sam. xv. ; kings ii. ; jer. xxxi. ), i.e. a torrent which runs dry during the summer; in winter it was termed a brook. excavations show that the fall diminishes at the foot of the ancient walls, and that the bottom of the valley has risen nearly twelve yards. during the remainder of the year a number of springs, which well up at the bottom of the valley, furnish an unfailing supply of water to the inhabitants of gibon,* siloam,** and eôgel.*** the valley widens out again near en-kôgel, and affords a channel to the wady of the children of hinnôm, which bounds the plateau on the west. the intermediate space has for a long time been nothing more than an undulating plain, at present covered by the houses of modern jerusalem. in ancient times it was traversed by a depression in the ground, since filled up, which ran almost parallel with the kedron, and joined it near the pool of siloam.**** the ancient city of the jebusites stood on the summit of the headland which rises between these two valleys, the town of jebus itself being at the extremity, while the millo lay farther to the north on the hill of sion, behind a ravine which ran down at right angles into the valley of the hedron. * now, possibly, the �fountain of the virgin,� but its identity is not certain. ** these are the springs which feed the group of reservoirs now known as the pool of siloam. the name �siloam� occurs only in neh. iii. , but is undoubtedly more ancient. *** en-rôgel, the �traveller�s well,� is now called the �well of job.� **** this valley, which is not mentioned by name in the old testament, was called, in the time of josephus, the tyropoon, or cheesemakers�quarter. its true position, which had been only suspected up to the middle of the present century, was determined with certainty by means of the excavations carried out by the english and germans. the bottom of the valley was found at a depth of from forty to sixty feet below the present surface. an unfortified suburb had gradually grown up on the lower ground to the west, and was connected by a stairway cut in the rock* with the upper city. this latter was surrounded by ramparts with turrets, like those of the canaanitish citadels which we constantly find depicted on the egyptian monuments. its natural advantages and efficient garrison had so far enabled it to repel all the attacks of its enemies. * this is the ophel of the hebrew text. when david appeared with his troops, the inhabitants ridiculed his presumption, and were good enough to warn him of the hopelessness of his enterprise: a garrison composed of the halt and the blind, without an able-bodied man amongst them, would, they declared, be able successfully to resist him. the king, stung by their mockery, made a promise to his �mighty men� that the first of them to scale the walls should be made chief and captain of his host. we often find that impregnable cities owe their downfall to negligence on the part of their defenders: these concentrate their whole attention on the few vulnerable points, and give but scanty care to those which are regarded as inaccessible.* jerusalem proved to be no exception to this rule; joab carried it by a sudden assault, and received as his reward the best part of the territory which he had won by his valour.** * cf. the capture of sardis by cyrus (herodotus) and by antiochus iii. (polybius), as also the taking of the capitol by the gauls. ** the account of the capture of jerusalem is given in sam. v. - , where the text is possibly corrupt, with interpolated glosses, especially in ver. ; david�s reply to the mockery of the jebusites is difficult to understand. citron, xi. - gives a more correct text, but one less complete in so far as the portions parallel with sam. v. - are concerned; the details in regard to joab are undoubtedly historical, but we do not find them in the book of samuel. in attacking jerusalem, david�s first idea was probably to rid himself of one of the more troublesome obstacles which served to separate one-half of his people from the other; but once he had set foot in the place, he was not slow to perceive its advantages, and determined to make it his residence. hebron had sufficed so long as his power extended over caleb and judah only. situated as it was in the heart of the mountains, and in the wealthiest part of the province in which it stood, it seemed the natural centre to which the kenites and men of judah must gravitate, and the point at which they might most readily be moulded into a nation; it was, however, too far to the south to offer a convenient rallying-point for a ruler who wished to bring the hebrew communities scattered about on both banks of the jordan under the sway of a common sceptre. jerusalem, on the other hand, was close to the crossing point of the roads which lead from the sinaitic desert into syria, and from the shephelah to the land of gilead; it commanded nearly the whole domain of israel and the ring of hostile races by which it was encircled. from this lofty eyrie, david, with judah behind him, could either swoop down upon moab, whose mountains shut him out from a view of the dead sea, or make a sudden descent on the seaboard, by way of bethhoron, at the least sign of disturbance among the philistines, or could push straight on across mount ephraim into galilee. issachar, naphtali, asher, dan, and zebulun were, perhaps, a little too far from the seat of government; but they were secondary tribes, incapable of any independent action, who obeyed without repugnance, but also without enthusiasm, the soldier-king able to protect them from external foes. the future master of israel would be he who maintained his hold on the posterity of judah and of joseph, and david could not hope to find a more suitable place than jerusalem from which to watch over the two ruling houses at one and the same time. the lower part of the town he gave up to the original inhabitants,* the upper he filled with benjamites and men of judah;** he built or restored a royal palace on mount sion, in which he lived surrounded by his warriors and his family.*** one thing only was lacking--a temple for his god. jerubbaal had had a sanctuary at ophrah, and saul had secured the services of ahijah the prophet of shiloh: david was no longer satisfied with the ephod which had been the channel of many wise counsels during his years of adversity and his struggles against the philistines. he longed for some still more sacred object with which to identify the fortunes of his people, and by which he might raise the newly gained prestige of his capital. it so happened that the ark of the lord, the ancient safeguard of ephraim, had been lying since the battle of eben-ezer not far away, without a fixed abode or regular worshippers.**** * judges i. ; cf. zech. xi. , where ekron in its decadence is likened to the jebusite vassal of judah. ** jerusalem is sometimes assigned to benjamin (judges i. ), sometimes to judah (josh. xv. ). judah alone is right. *** sam. v. , and the parallel passage in chron. xi. , . **** the account of the events which followed the battle of eben-ezer up to its arrival in the house of abinadab, is taken from the history of the ark, referred to on pp. , , supra. it is given in sam. v., vi., vii. , where it forms an exceedingly characteristic whole, composed, it may be, of two separate versions thrown into one; the passage in sam. vi. , where the lévites receive the ark, is supposed by some to be interpolated. the reason why it had not brought victory on that occasion, was that god�s anger had been stirred at the misdeeds committed in his name by the sons of eli, and desired to punish his people; true, it had been preserved from profanation, and the miracles which took place in its neighbourhood proved that it was still the seat of a supernatural power. [illustration: .jpg mouse of metal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch published by schick and oldfield thomas. at first the philistines had, according to their custom, shut it up in the temple of dagon at ashdod. on the morrow when the priests entered the sanctuary, they found the statue of their god prostrate in front of it, his fish-like body overthrown, and his head and hands scattered on the floor;* at the same time a plague of malignant tumours broke out among the people, and thousands of mice overran their houses. the inhabitants of ashdod made haste to transfer it on to ekron: it thus went the round of the five cities, its arrival being in each case accompanied by the same disasters. the soothsayers, being consulted at the end of seven months, ordered that solemn sacrifices should be offered up, and the ark restored to its rightful worshippers, accompanied by expiatory offerings of five golden mice and five golden tumours, one for each of the five repentant cities.** * the statue here referred to is evidently similar to those of the chaldæan gods and genii, in which dagon is represented as a man with his back and head enveloped in a fish as in a cloak. ** in the oustinoff collection at jaffa, there is a roughly shaped image of a mouse, cut out of a piece of white metal, and perhaps obtained from the ruins of gaza; it would seem to be an ex-voto of the same kind as that referred to in the hebrew text, but it is of doubtful authenticity. the ark was placed on a new cart, and two milch cows with their calves drew it, lowing all the way, without guidance from any man, to the field of a certain joshua at bethshemesh. the inhabitants welcomed it with great joy, but their curiosity overcame their reverence, and they looked within the shrine. jehovah, being angered thereat, smote seventy men of them, and the warriors made haste to bring the ark to kirjath-jearim, where it remained for a long time, in the house of abinadab on the hill, under charge of his son eleazar.* kirjath-jearim is only about two leagues from jerusalem. david himself went thither, and setting �the ark of god upon a new cart,� brought it away.* two attendants, called uzzah and ahio, drove the new cart, �and david and all israel played before god with all their might: even with songs, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.� an accident leading to serious consequences brought the procession to a standstill; the oxen stumbled, and their sacred burden threatened to fall: uzzah, putting forth his hand to hold the ark, was smitten by the lord, �and there he died before the lord.� david was disturbed at this, feeling some insecurity in dealing with a deity who had thus seemed to punish one of his worshippers for a well-meant and respectful act.** * the text of sam. vi. , vii. , gives the reading kirjath-jearim, whereas the text of sam. vi. has baale- judah, which should be corrected to baal-judah. baal-judah, or, in its abbreviated form, baala, is another name for kirjath-jearim (josh. xv. - ; cf. ghron. xiii. ). similarly, we find the name kirjath-baal (josh. xv. ). kirjath-jearim is now kharbet-el-enab. ** the transport of the ark from kirjath-jearim to jerusalem is related in sam. vi. and in ghron. xiii., xv., xvi. he �was afraid of the lord that day,� and �would not remove the ark� to jerusalem, but left it for three months in the house of a philistine, obed-edom of gath; but finding that its host, instead of experiencing any evil, was blessed by the lord, he carried out his original intention, and brought the ark to jerusalem. �david, girded with a linen ephod, danced with all his might before the lord,� and �all the house of israel brought up the ark of the lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.� when the ark had been placed in the tent that david had prepared for it, he offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and at the end of the festival there were dealt out to the people gifts of bread, cakes, and wine (or flesh). there is inserted in the narrative* an account of the conduct of michal his wife, who looking out of the window and seeing the king dancing and playing, despised him in her heart, and when david returned to his house, congratulated him ironically--�how glorious was the king of israel to-day, who uncovered himself in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants!� * renan would consider this to have been inserted in the time of hezekiah. it appeared to him to answer �to the antipathy of hamutal and the ladies of the court to the worship of jahveh, and to that form of human respect which restrained the people of the world from giving themselves up to it.� david said in reply that he would rather be held in honour by the handmaids of whom she had spoken than avoid the acts which covered him with ridicule in her eyes; and the chronicler adds that �michal the daughter of saul had no child unto the day of her death.� * * [david�s reply shows ( sam. vi. , ) that it was in gratitude to jehovah who had exalted him that he thus humbled himself.--tr.] the tent and the ark were assigned at this time to the care of two priests--zadok, son of ahitub, and abiathar, son of ahimelech, who was a descendant of eli, and had never quitted david throughout his adventurous career.* it is probable, too, that the ephod had not disappeared, and that it had its place in the sanctuary; but it may have gradually fallen into neglect, and may have ceased to be the vehicle of oracular responses as in earlier years. the king was accustomed on important occasions to take part in the sacred ceremonies, after the example of contemporary monarchs, and he had beside him at this time a priest of standing to guide him in the religious rites, and to fulfil for him duties similar to those which the chief reader rendered to pharaoh. the only one of these priests of david whose name has come down to us was ira the jethrite, who accompanied his master in his campaigns, and would seem to have been a soldier also, and one of �the thirty.� these priestly officials seem, however, to have played but a subordinate part, as history is almost silent about their acts.** while david owed everything to the sword and trusted in it, he recognised at the same time that he had obtained his crown from jahveh; just as the sovereigns of thebes and nineveh saw in amon and assur the source of their own royal authority. * sam. viii. , xx. ; cf. sam. xxi. , xxii. ; chron. xv. . ** sam. xx. , where he is called the jairite, and not the ithrite, owing to an easily understood confusion of the hebrew letters. he figures in the list of the _gibborim_, �mighty men,� sam. xxiii. . he consulted the lord directly when he wished for counsel, and accepted the issue as a test whether his interpretation of the divine will was correct or erroneous. when once he had realised, at the time of the capture of jerusalem, that god had chosen him to be the champion of israel, he spared no labour to accomplish the task which the divine favour had assigned to him. he attacked one after the other the peoples who had encroached upon his domain, moab being the first to feel the force of his arm. he extended his possessions at the expense of gilead, and the fertile provinces opposite jericho fell to his sword. these territories were in dangerous proximity to jerusalem, and david doubtless realised the peril of their independence. the struggle for their possession must have continued for some time, but the details are not given, and we have only the record of a few incidental exploits: we know, for instance, that the captain of david�s guard, benaiah, slew two moabite notables in a battle.* moabite captives were treated with all the severity sanctioned by the laws of war. they were laid on the ground in a line, and two-thirds of the length of the row being measured off, all within it were pitilessly massacred, the rest having their lives spared. moab acknowledged its defeat, and agreed to pay tribute: it had suffered so much that it required several generations to recover.** * sam. xxiii. - : cf. chron. xi. - . �ariel,� who is made the father of the two slain by benaiah, may possibly be the term in . , , of the inscription of mesha (moabite stone); but its meaning is obscure, and has hitherto baffled all attempts to explain it. ** sam. viii. . gilead had become detached from david�s domain on the south, while the ammonites were pressing it on the east, and the ararnæans making encroachments upon its pasture-lands on the north. nahash, king of the ammonites, being dead, david, who had received help from him in his struggle with saul, sent messengers to offer congratulations to his son hanun on his accession. hanun, supposing the messengers to be spies sent to examine the defences of the city, �shaved off one-half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.� this was the signal for war. the ammonites, foreseeing that david would endeavour to take a terrible vengeance for this insult to his people, came to an understanding with their neighbours. the overthrow of the amorite chiefs had favoured the expansion of the aramæans towards the south. they had invaded all that region hitherto unconquered by israel in the valley of the litany to the east of jordan, and some half-dozen of their petty states had appropriated among them the greater part of the territories which were described in the sacred record as having belonged previously to jabin of hazor and the kings of bashan. the strongest of these principalities--that which occupied the position of qodshû in the bekâa, and had zoba as its capital--was at this time under the rule of hadadezer, son of behob. this warrior had conquered damascus, maacah, and geshur, was threatening the canaanite town of hamath, and was preparing to set out to the euphrates when the ammonites sought his help and protection. he came immediately to their succour. joab, who was in command of david�s army, left a portion of his troops at babbath under his brother abishaî, and with the rest set out against the syrians. he overthrew them, and returned immediately afterwards. the ammonites, hearing of his victory, disbanded their army; but joab had suffered such serious losses, that he judged it wise to defer his attack upon them until zoba should be captured. david then took the field himself, crossed the jordan with all his reserves, attacked the syrians at helam, put them to flight, killing shobach, their general, and captured damascus. hadadezer [hadarezer] �made peace with israel,� and tou or toi, the king of hamath, whom this victory had delivered, sent presents to david. this was the work of a single campaign. the next year joab invested kabbath, and when it was about to surrender he called the king to his camp, and conceded to him the honour of receiving the submission of the city in person. the ammonites were treated with as much severity as their kinsmen of moab. david �put them under saws and harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln.� * * the war with the aramaeans, described in sam. viii. - , is similar to the account of the conflict with the ammonites in sam. x.-xii., but with more details. both documents are reproduced in chron. xviii. - , and xix., xx. - . [illustration: .jpg the hebrew kingdom] this success brought others in its train. the idumæans had taken advantage of the employment of the israelite army against the aramæans to make raids into judah. joab and abishaî, despatched in haste to check them, met them in the valley of salt to the south of the dead sea, and gave them battle: their king perished in the fight, and his son hadad with some of his followers took flight into egypt. joab put to the sword all the able-bodied combatants, and established garrisons at petra, elath, and eziongeber* on the red sea. david dedicated the spoils to the lord, �who gave victory to david wherever he went.� neither elath nor eziongeber are here mentioned, but kings ix. - and chron. viii. , prove that these places had been occupied by david. for all that concerns hadad, see kings xi. - . southern syria had found its master: were the hebrews going to pursue their success, and undertake in the central and northern regions a work of conquest which had baffled the efforts of all their predecessors--canaanites, amorites, and hittites? the assyrians, thrown back on the tigris, were at this time leading a sort of vegetative existence in obscurity; and, as for egypt, it would seem to have forgotten that it ever had possessions in asia. there was, therefore, nothing to be feared from foreign intervention should the hebrew be inclined to weld into a single state the nations lying between the euphrates and the red sea. [illustration: .jpg the site of rabbath-amon, seen from the west] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. of the _palestine exploration fund._ unfortunately, the israelites had not the necessary characteristics of a conquering people. their history from the time of their entry into canaan showed, it is true, that they were by no means incapable of enthusiasm and solidarity: a leader with the needful energy and good fortune to inspire them with confidence could rouse them from their self-satisfied indolence, and band them together for a great effort. but such concentration of purpose was ephemeral in its nature, and disappeared with the chief who had brought it about. in his absence, or when the danger he had pointed out was no longer imminent, they fell back instinctively into their usual state of apathy and disorganisation. their nomadic temperament, which two centuries of a sedentary existence had not seriously modified, disposed them to give way to tribal quarrels, to keep up hereditary vendettas, to break out into sudden tumults, or to make pillaging expeditions into their neighbours� territories. long wars, requiring the maintenance of a permanent army, the continual levying of troops and taxes, and a prolonged effort to keep what they had acquired, were repugnant to them. the kingdom which david had founded owed its permanence to the strong will of its originator, and its increase or even its maintenance depended upon the absence of any internal disturbance or court intrigue, to counteract which might make too serious a drain upon his energy. david had survived his last victory sufficiently long to witness around him the evolution of plots, and the multiplication of the usual miseries which sadden, in the east, the last years of a long reign. it was a matter of custom as well as policy that an exaltation in the position of a ruler should be accompanied by a proportional increase in the number of his retinue and his wives. david was no exception to this custom: to the two wives, abigail and ahinoam, which he had while he was in exile at ziklag, he now added maacah the aramaean, daughter of the king of geshur, haggith, abital, bglah, and several others.* during the siege of babbath-ammon he also committed adultery with bathsheba, the wife of uriah the hittite, and, placing her husband in the forefront of the battle, brought about his death. rebuked by the prophet nathan for this crime, he expressed his penitence, but he continued at the same time to keep bathsheba, by whom he had several children.** there was considerable rivalry among the progeny of these different unions, as the right of succession would appear not to have been definitely settled. of the family of saul, moreover, there were still several members in existence--the son which he had by eizpah, the children of his daughter merab, merib-baal, the lame offspring of jonathan,*** and shimei****--all of whom had partisans among the tribes, and whose pretensions might be pressed unexpectedly at a critical moment. * ahinoam is mentioned in the following passages: sam. xxv. , xxvii. , xxx. ; sam. ii. , iii. ; cf. also chron. iii. ; maacah in sam. iii. ; chron. iii. ; haggith in sam. iii. ; kings i. , , ii. ; chron. iii. ; abital in sam. iii. ; chron. iii. ; eglah in sam. iii. ; chron. iii. . for the concubines, see sam. v. , xv. , xvi. , ; chron. iii. , xiv. . ** sam. xi., xii. - . *** sam. ix., xvi. - , xix. - , where the name is changed into mephibosheth; the original name is given in chron. viii. . **** sam. xvi. - , xix. - ; kings ii. , , - . the eldest son of ahinoam, amnon, whose priority in age seemed likely to secure for him the crown, had fallen in love with one of his half-sisters named tamar, the daughter of maacah, and, instead of demanding her in marriage, procured her attendance on him by a feigned illness, and forced her to accede to his desires. his love was thereupon converted immediately into hate, and, instead of marrying her, he had her expelled from his house by his servants. with rent garments and ashes on her head, she fled to her full-brother absalom. david was very wroth, but he loved his firstborn, and could not permit himself to punish him. absalom kept his anger to himself, but when two years had elapsed he invited amnon to a banquet, killed him, and fled to his grandfather talmai, king of geshur.* * it is to be noted that tamar asked amnon to marry her, and that the sole reproach directed against the king�s eldest son was that, after forcing her, he was unwilling to make her his wife. unions of brother and sister were probably as legitimate among the hebrews at this time as among the egyptians. his anger was now turned against the king for not having taken up the cause of his sister, and he began to meditate his dethronement. having been recalled to jerusalem at the instigation of joab, �absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him,� thus affecting the outward forms of royalty. judah, dissatisfied at the favour shown by david to the other tribes, soon came to recognise absalom as their chief, and some of the most intimate counsellors of the aged king began secretly to take his part. when absalom deemed things safe for action, he betook himself to hebron, under the pretence of a vow which he had made daring his sojourn at geshur. all judah rallied around him, and the excitement at jerusalem was so great that david judged it prudent to retire, with his philistine and cherethite guards, to the other side of the jordan. absalom, in the mean while, took up his abode in jerusalem, where, having received the tacit adherence of the family of saul and of a number of the notables, he made himself king. to show that the rupture between him and david was complete, he had tents erected on the top of the house, and there, in view of the people, took possession of his father�s harem. success would have been assured to him if he had promptly sent troops after the fugitives, but while he was spending his time in inactivity and feasting, david collected together those who were faithful to him, and put them under the command of joab and abishai. the king�s veterans were more than a match for the undisciplined rabble which opposed them, and in the action which followed at mahanaim absalom was defeated: in his flight through the forest of ephraim he was caught in a tree, and before he could disentangle himself was pierced through the heart by joab. david, we read, wished his people to have mercy on his son, and he wept bitterly. he spared on this occasion the family of saul, pardoned the tribe of judah, and went back triumphantly into jerusalem, which a few days before had taken part in his humiliation. the tribes of the house of joseph had taken no side in the quarrel. they were ignorant alike of the motives which set the tribe of judah against their own hero, and of their reasons for the zeal with which they again established him on the throne. they sent delegates to inquire about this, who reproached judah for acting without their cognisance: �we have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in david than ye: why then did ye despise us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king?� judah answered with yet fiercer words; then sheba, a chief of the benjamites, losing patience, blew a trumpet, and went off crying: �we have no portion in david, neither have we inheritance in the son of jesse: every man to his tents, o israel.� if these words had produced an echo among the central and northern tribes, a schism would have been inevitable: some approved of them, while others took no action, and since judah showed no disposition to put its military forces into movement, the king had once again to trust to joab and the philistine guards to repress the sedition. their appearance on the scene disconcerted the rebels, and sheba retreated to the northern frontier without offering battle. perhaps he reckoned on the support of the aramæans. he took shelter in the small stronghold of abel of bethmaacah, where he defended himself for some time; but just when the place was on the point of yielding, the inhabitants cut off sheba�s head, and threw it to joab from the wall. his death brought the crisis to an end, and peace reigned in israel. intrigues, however, began again more persistently than ever over the inheritance which the two slain princes had failed to obtain. the eldest son of the king was now adonijah, son of haggith, but bathsheba exercised an undisputed sway over her husband, and had prepared him to recognise in solomon her son the heir to the throne. she had secured, too, as his adherents several persons of influence, including zadok, the prophet nathan, and benaiah, the captain of the foreign guard. adonijah had on his side abiathar the priest, joab, and the people of jerusalem, who had been captivated by his beauty and his regal display. in the midst of these rivalries the king was daily becoming weaker: he was now very old, and although he was covered with wrappings he could not maintain his animal heat. a young girl was sought out for him to give him the needful warmth. abishag, a shunammite, was secured for the purpose, but her beauty inspired adonijah with such a violent passion that he decided to bring matters to a crisis. he invited his brethren, with the exception of solomon, to a banquet in the gardens which belonged to him in the south of jerusalem, near the well of eôgel. all his partisans were present, and, inspired by the good cheer, began to cry, �god save king adonijah!� when nathan informed bathsheba of what was going on, she went in unto the king, who was being attended on by abishag, complained to him of the weakness he was showing in regard to his eldest son, and besought him to designate his heir officially. he collected together the soldiers, and charged them to take the young man solomon with royal pomp from the hill of sion to the source of the gibôn: nathan anointed his forehead with the sacred oil, and in the sight of all the people brought him to the palace, mounted on his father�s mule. the blare of the coronation trumpets resounded in the ears of the conspirators, quickly followed by the tidings that solomon had been hailed king over the whole of israel: they fled on all sides, adonijah taking refuge at the horns of the altar. david did not long survive this event: shortly before his death he advised solomon to rid himself of all those who had opposed his accession to the throne. solomon did not hesitate to follow this counsel, and the beginning of his reign was marked by a series of bloodthirsty executions. adonijah was the first to suffer. he had been unwise enough to ask the hand of abishag in marriage: this request was regarded as indicative of a hidden intention to rebel, and furnished an excuse for his assassination. abiathar, at whose instigation adonijah had acted, owed his escape from a similar fate to his priestly character and past services: he was banished to his estate at anathoth, and zadok became high priest in his stead. joab, on learning the fate of his accomplice, felt that he was a lost man, and vainly sought sanctuary near the ark of the lord; but benaiah slew him there, and soon after, shimei, the last survivor of the race of saul, was put to death on some transparent pretext. this was the last act of the tragedy: henceforward solomon, freed from all those who bore him malice, was able to devote his whole attention to the cares of government.* * kings i., ii. this is the close of the history of david, and follows on from sam. xxiv. it would seem that adonijah was heir-apparent ( kings i. , ), and that solomon�s accession was brought about by an intrigue, which owed its success to the old king�s weakness ( kings i. , , , , , ). the change of rulers had led, as usual, to insurrections among the tributary races: damascus had revolted before the death of david, and had not been recovered. hadad returned from egypt, and having gained adherents in certain parts of edom, resisted all attempts made to dislodge him.* * it seems clear from the context that the revolt of damascus took place during david�s lifetime. it cannot, in any case, have occurred at a later date than the beginning of the reign of solomon, for we are told that rezôn, after capturing the town, �was an adversary of israel all the days of solomon� ( kings xi. - ). hadad returned from egypt when �he had heard that david slept with his fathers, and that joab the captain of the host was dead� ( kings xi. , , ). as a soldier, solomon was neither skilful nor fortunate: he even failed to retain what his father had won for him. though he continued to increase his army, it was more with a view to consolidating his power over the bnê-israel than for any aggressive action outside his borders. on the other hand, he showed himself an excellent administrator, and did his best, by various measures of general utility, to draw closer the ties which bound the tribes to him and to each other. he repaired the citadels with such means as he had at his disposal. he rebuilt the fortifications of megiddo, thus securing the control of the network of roads which traversed southern syria. he remodelled the fortifications of tamar, the two bethhorons, baâlath, hazor, and of many other towns which defended his frontiers. some of them he garrisoned with foot-soldiers, others with horsemen and chariots. by thus distributing his military forces over the whole country, he achieved a twofold object;* he provided, on the one hand, additional security from foreign invasion, and on the other diminished the risk of internal revolt. * kings ix. , - ; cf. chron. viii. - . the parallel passage in chron. viii. , and the marginal variant in the _book of kings_, give the reading tadmor palmyra for tamar, thus giving rise to the legends which state that solomon�s frontier extended to the euphrates. the tamar here referred to is that mentioned in ezeh. xlvii. , xlviii. , as the southern boundary of judah; it is perhaps identical with the modern kharbêt-kurnub. the remnants of the old aboriginal clans, which had hitherto managed to preserve their independence, mainly owing to the dissensions among the israelites, were at last absorbed into the tribes in whose territory they had settled. a few still held out, and only gave way after long and stubborn resistance: before he could triumph over gezer, solomon was forced to humble himself before the egyptian pharaoh. he paid homage to him, asked the hand of his daughter in marriage, and having obtained it, persuaded him to come to his assistance: the egyptian engineers placed their skill at the service of the besiegers and soon brought the recalcitrant city to reason, handing it over to solomon in payment for his submission.* the canaanites were obliged to submit to the poll-tax and the _corvée_: the men of the league of gibeon were made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the lord.** the hebrews themselves bore their share in the expenses of the state, and though less heavily taxed than the canaanites, were, nevertheless, compelled to contribute considerable sums; judah alone was exempt, probably because, being the private domain of the sovereign, its revenues were already included in the royal exchequer.*** * kings ix. . the pharaoh in question was probably one of the psiûkhânnît, the psûsennos ii. of manetho. ** kings ix. , . the annexation of the gibeonites and their allies is placed at the time of the conquest in josh. ix. - ; it should be rather fixed at the date of the loss of independence of the league, probably in the time of solomon. *** stade thinks that judah was not exempt, and that the original document must have given thirteen districts. in order to facilitate the collection of the taxes, solomon divided the kingdom into twelve districts, each of which was placed in charge of a collector; these regions did not coincide with the existing tribal boundaries, but the extent of each was determined by the wealth of the lands contained within it. while one district included the whole of mount ephraim, another was limited to the stronghold of mahanaim and its suburbs. mahanaim was at one time the capital of israel, and had played an important part in the life of david: it held the key to the regions beyond jordan, and its ruler was a person of such influence that it was not considered prudent to leave him too well provided with funds. by thus obliterating the old tribal boundaries, solomon doubtless hoped to destroy, or at any rate greatly weaken, that clannish spirit which showed itself with such alarming violence at the time of the revolt of sheba, and to weld into a single homogeneous mass the various hebrew and canaanitish elements of which the people of israel were composed.* * kings iv. - , where a list of the districts is given; the fact that two of solomon�s sons-in-law appear in it, show that the document from which it is taken gave the staff of collectors in office at the close of his reign. each of these provinces was obliged, during one month in each year, to provide for the wants of �the king and his household,� or, in other words, the requirements of the central government. a large part of these contributions went to supply the king�s table; the daily consumption at the court was--thirty measures of fine flour, sixty measures of meal, ten fat oxen, twenty oxen out of the pastures, a hundred sheep, besides all kinds of game and fatted fowl: nor need we be surprised at these figures, for in a country where, and at a time when money was unknown, the king was obliged to supply food to all his dependents, the greater part of their emoluments consisting of these payments in kind. the tax-collectors had also to provide fodder for the horses reserved for military purposes: there were forty thousand of these, and twelve thousand charioteers, and barley and straw had to be forthcoming either in jerusalem itself or in one or other of the garrison towns amongst which they were distributed.* the levying of tolls on caravans passing through the country completed the king�s fiscal operations which were based on the systems prevailing in neighbouring states, especially that of egypt.** * kings iv. - ; the complementary passages in kings x. and chron. i. give the number of chariots as and of charioteers at , . the numbers do not seem excessive for a kingdom which embraced the whole south of palestine, when we reflect that, at the battle of qodshû, northern syria was able to put between and chariots into the field against ramses ii. the hebrew chariots probably carried at least three men, like those of the hittites and assyrians. ** kings x. , where mention is made of the amount which the chapmen brought, and the traffic of the merchants contains an allusion to these tolls. solomon, like other oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and horses. egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of asia. chariots, at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time when their use in warfare was universal. as for horses, the cities of the delta and middle egypt possessed a celebrated strain of stallions, from which the syrian princes were accustomed to obtain their war-steeds.* solomon decreed that for the future he was to be the sole intermediary between the asiatics and the foreign countries supplying their requirements. his agents went down at regular intervals to the banks of the nile to lay in stock; the horses and chariots, by the time they reached jerusalem, cost him at the rate of six hundred silver shekels for each chariot, and one hundred and fifty shekels for each horse, but he sold them again at a profit to the aramæan and hittite princes. in return he purchased from them cilician stallions, probably to sell again to the egyptians, whose relaxing climate necessitated a frequent introduction of new blood into their stables.** by these and other methods of which we know nothing the yearly revenue of the kingdom was largely increased: and though it only reached a total which may seem insignificant in comparison with the enormous quantities of the precious metals which passed through the hands of the pharaohs of that time, yet it must have seemed boundless wealth in the eyes of the shepherds and husbandmen who formed the bulk of the hebrew nation. * the terms in which the text, kings x. - (cf. citron, i. , ), speaks of the trade in horses, show that the traffic was already in existence when solomon decided to embark in it. ** kings x. - ; chron. i. , . kuê, the name of lower cilicia, was discovered in the hebrew text by pr. lenormant. winckler, with mistaken reliance on the authority of erman, has denied that egypt produced stud-horses at this time, and wishes to identify the mizraim of the hebrew text with musri, a place near mount taurus, mentioned in the assyrian texts. in thus developing his resources and turning them to good account, solomon derived great assistance from the phoenicians of tyre and sidon, a race whose services were always at the disposal of the masters of southern syria. the continued success of the hellenic colonists on the eastern shores of the mediterranean had compelled the phoenicians to seek with redoubled boldness and activity in the western mediterranean some sort of compensation for the injury which their trade had thus suffered. they increased and consolidated their dealings with sicily, africa, and spain, and established themselves throughout the whole of that misty region which extended beyond the straits of gibraltar on the european side, from the mouth of the guadalete to that of the guadiana. this was the famous tarshish--the oriental el dorado. here they had founded a number of new towns, the most flourishing of which, gadîr,* rose not far from the mouths of the betis, on a small islet separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea. in this city they constructed a temple to melkarth, arsenals, warehouses, and shipbuilding yards: it was the tyre of the west, and its merchant-vessels sailed to the south and to the north to trade with the savage races of the african and european seaboard. on the coast of morocco they built lixos, a town almost as large as gadîr, and beyond lixos, thirty days� sail southwards, a whole host of depots, reckoned later on at three hundred. * i do not propose to discuss here the question of the identity of the country of tartessos with the tarshish or tarsis mentioned in the bible ( kings x. ). by exploiting the materials to be obtained from these lands, such as gold, silver, tin, lead, and copper, tyre and sidon were soon able to make good the losses they had suffered from greek privateersmen and marauding philistines. towards the close of the reign of saul over israel, a certain king abîbaal had arisen in tyre, and was succeeded by his son hiram, at the very moment when david was engaged in bringing the whole of israel into subjection. hiram, guided by instinct or by tradition, at once adopted a policy towards the rising dynasty which his ancestors had always found successful in similar cases. he made friendly overtures to the hebrews, and constituted himself their broker and general provider: when david was in want of wood for the house he was building at jerusalem, hiram let him have the necessary quantity, and hired out to him workmen and artists at a reasonable wage, to help him in turning his materials to good account.* * sam. v. ; cf. the reference to the same incident in kings v - . the accession of solomon was a piece of good luck for him. the new king, born in the purple, did not share the simple and somewhat rustic tastes of his father. he wanted palaces and gardens and a temple, which might rival, even if only in a small way, the palaces and temples of egypt and chaldæa, of which he had heard such glowing accounts: hiram undertook to procure these things for him at a moderate cost, and it was doubtless his influence which led to those voyages to the countries which produced precious metals, perfumes, rare animals, costly woods, and all those foreign knicknacks with which eastern monarchs of all ages loved to surround themselves. the phoenician sailors were well acquainted with the bearings of puanît, most of them having heard of this country when in egypt, a few perhaps having gone thither under the direction and by the orders of pharaoh: and hiram took advantage of the access which the hebrews had gained to the shores of the red sea by the annexation of edom, to establish relations with these outlying districts without having to pass the egyptian customs. he lent to solomon shipwrights and sailors, who helped him to fit out a fleet at eziôn-geber, and undertook a voyage of discovery in company with a number of hebrews, who were no doubt despatched in the same capacity as the royal messengers sent with the galleys of hâtshopsîtû. it was a venture similar to those so frequently undertaken by the egyptian admirals in the palmy days of the theban navy, and of which we find so many curious pictures among the bas-reliefs at deîr el-baharî. on their return, after a three years� absence, they reported that they had sailed to a country named ophir, and produced in support of their statement a freight well calculated to convince the most sceptical, consisting as it did of four hundred and twenty talents of gold. the success of this first venture encouraged solomon to persevere in such expeditions: he sent his fleet on several voyages to ophir, and procured from thence a rich harvest of gold and silver, wood and ivory, apes and peacocks.* * kings ix. - , x. , ; cf. citron, viii. , , ix. , , . a whole library might be stocked with the various treatises which have appeared on the situation of the country of ophir: arabia, persia, india, java, and america have all been suggested. the mention of almug wood and of peacocks, which may be of indian origin, for a long time inclined the scale in favour of india, but the discoveries of mauch and bent on the zimbabaye have drawn attention to the basin of the zambesi and the ruins found there. dr. peters, one of the best-known german explorers, is inclined to agree with mauch and bent, in their theory as to the position of the ophir of the bible. i am rather inclined to identify it with the egyptian pûanît, on the somali or yemen seaboard. was the profit from these distant cruises so very considerable after all? after they had ceased, memory may have thrown a fanciful glamour over them, and magnified the treasures they had yielded to fabulous proportions: we are told that solomon would have no drinking vessels or other utensils save those of pure gold, and that in his days �silver was as stone,� so common had it become.* * kings x. , . in chronicles the statement in the _book of kings_ is repeated in a still more emphatic manner, since it is there stated that gold itself was �in jerusalem as stones� ( chron. i. ). [illustration: .jpg map of tyre subsequent to hiram] doubtless hiram took good care to obtain his fall share of the gains. the phoenician king began to find tyre too restricted for him, the various islets over which it was scattered affording too small a space to support the multitudes which flocked thither. he therefore filled up the channels which separated them; by means of embankments and fortified quays he managed to reclaim from the sea a certain amount of land on the south; after which he constructed two harbours--one on the north, called the sidonian; the other on the south, named the egyptian. he was perhaps also the originator of the long causeway, the lower courses of which still serve as a breakwater, by which he transformed the projecting headland between the island and the mainland into a well-sheltered harbour. finally, he set to work on a task like that which he had already helped solomon to accomplish: he built for himself a palace of cedar-wood, and restored and beautified the temples of the gods, including the ancient sanctuary of melkarth, and that of astarté. in his reign the greatness of phoenicia reached its zenith, just as that of the hebrews culminated under david. [illustration: .jpg the breakwater of the egyptian harbour at tyre] drawn by boudier, from a photograph published by the duc de luynes. the most celebrated of solomon�s works were to be seen at jerusalem. as david left it, the city was somewhat insignificant. the water from its fountains had been amply sufficient for the wants of the little jebusite town; it was wholly inadequate to meet the requirements of the growing-population of the capital of judah. solomon made better provision for its distribution than there had been in the past, and then tapped a new source of supply some distance away, in the direction of bethlehem; it is even said that he made the reservoirs for its storage which still bear his name.* * a somewhat ancient tradition attributes these works to solomon; no single fact confirms it, but the balance of probability seems to indicate that he must have taken steps to provide a water-supply for the new city. the channels and reservoirs, of which traces are found at the present day, probably occupy the same positions as those which preceded them. [illustration: .jpg one of solomon�s reservoirs near jerusalem] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. c. alluaud of limoges. meanwhile, hiram had drawn up for him plans for a fortified residence, on a scale commensurate with the thriving fortunes of his dynasty. the main body was constructed of stone from the judæan quarries, cut by masons from byblos, but it was inlaid with cedar to such an extent that one wing was called �the house of the forest-of-lebanon.� it contained everything that was required for the comfort of an eastern potentate--a harem, with separate apartments for the favourites (one of which was probably decorated in the egyptian manner for the benefit of pharaoh�s daughter);* then there were reception-halls, to which the great men of the kingdom were admitted; storehouses, and an arsenal. the king�s bodyguard possessed five hundred shields �of beaten gold,� which were handed over by each detachment, when the guard was relieved, to the one which took its place. but this gorgeous edifice would not have been complete if the temple of jahveh had not arisen side by side with the abode of the temporal ruler of the nation. no monarch in those days could regard his position as unassailable until he had a sanctuary and a priesthood attached to his religion, either in his own palace or not far away from it. david had scarcely entered jerusalem before he fixed upon the threshing-floor of araunah the jebusite as a site for the temple, and built an altar there to the lord during a plague which threatened to decimate his people; but as he did not carry the project any farther,** solomon set himself to complete the task which his father had merely sketched out. * kings vii. , ix. ; ghron. viii. . ** sam xxiv. - , the threshing-floor of araunah the jebusite is mentioned elsewhere as the site on which solomon built his temple ( ghron. iii. ). the site was irregular in shape, and the surface did not naturally lend itself to the purpose for which it was destined. his engineers, however, put this right by constructing enormous piers for the foundations, which they built up from the slopes of the mountain or from the bottom of the valley as circumstances required: the space between this artificial casing and the solid rock was filled up, and the whole mass formed a nearly square platform, from which the temple buildings were to rise. hiram undertook to supply materials for the work. solomon had written to him that he should command �that they hew me cedar trees out of lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants; and i will give thee hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt say: for thou knowest that there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the zidonians.� hiram was delighted to carry out the wishes of his royal friend with regard to the cedar and cypress woods. [illustration: .jpg some of the stone course of solomon�s temple at jerusalem] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. �my servants,� he answered, �shall bring them down from lebanon unto the sea: and i will make them into rafts to go by sea unto the place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be broken up there, and thou shalt receive them; and thou shalt accomplish my desire, in giving food for my household.� the payment agreed on, which was in kind, consisted of twenty thousand _kôr_ of wheat, and twenty _kôr_ of pure oil per annum, for which hiram was to send to jerusalem not only the timber, but architects, masons, and gebalite carpenters (i.e. from byblos), smelters, sculptors, and overseers.* solomon undertook to supply the necessary labour, and for this purpose made a levy of men from all the tribes. the number of these labourers was reckoned at thirty thousand, and they were relieved regularly every three months; seventy thousand were occupied in the transport of the materials, while eighty thousand cut the stones from the quarry.** * kings v. -- * cf. chron. ii. -- , where the writer adds , _kôr_ of barley, , �baths� of wine, and the same quantity of oil. ** kings v. - ; of. chron. ii. , , , . it is possible that the numbers may have been somewhat exaggerated in popular estimation, since the greatest egyptian monuments never required such formidable levies of workmen for their construction; we must remember, however, that such an undertaking demanded a considerable effort, as the hebrews were quite unaccustomed to that kind of labour. the front of the temple faced eastward; it was twenty cubits wide, sixty long, and thirty high. the walls were of enormous squared stones, and the ceilings and frames of the doors of carved cedar, plated with gold; it was entered by a porch, between two columns of wrought bronze, which were called jachin and boaz.* * kings vii. - ; cf. chron. iv. - . the names were probably engraved each upon its respective column, and taken together formed an inscription which could be interpreted in various ways. the most simple interpretation is to recognise in them a kind of talismanic formula to ensure the strength of the building, affirming �that it exists by the strength� of god. the interior contained only two chambers; the _hekal,_ or holy place, where were kept the altar of incense, the seven-branched candlestick, and the table of shewbread; and the holy of holies--_debîr_--where the ark of god rested beneath the wings of two cherubim of gilded wood. against the outer wall of the temple, and rising to half its height, were rows of small apartments, three stories high, in which were kept the treasures and vessels of the sanctuary. while the high priest was allowed to enter the holy of holies only once a year, the holy place was accessible at all times to the priests engaged in the services, and it was there that the daily ceremonies of the temple-worship took place; there stood also the altar of incense and the table of shewbread. the altar of sacrifice stood on the platform in front of the entrance; it was a cube of masonry with a parapet, and was approached by stone steps; it resembled, probably, in general outline the monumental altars which stood in the forecourts of the egyptian temples and palaces. there stood by it, as was also customary in chaldæa, a �molten sea,� and some ten smaller lavers, in which the lévites washed the portions of the victims to be offered, together with the basins, knives, flesh-hooks, spoons, shovels, and other utensils required for the bloody sacrifice. a low wall surmounted by a balustrade of cedar-wood separated this sacred enclosure from a court to which the people were permitted to have free access. both palace and temple were probably designed in that pseudo-egyptian style which the phoenicians were known to affect. the few hebrew edifices of which remains have come down to us, reveal a method of construction and decoration common in egypt; we have an example of this in the uprights of the doors at lachish, which terminate in an egyptian gorge like that employed in the naos of the phonician temples. [illustration: .jpg an upright of a door at lachish] drawn by paucher-gudin, from the drawing by petrie. the completion of the whole plan occupied thirteen years; at length both palace and temple were finished in the xviith year of the king�s reign. solomon, however, did not wait for the completion of the work to dedicate the sanctuary to god. as soon as the inner court was ready, which was in his xith year, he proceeded to transfer the ark to its new resting-place; it was raised upon a cubical base, and the long staves by which it had been carried were left in their rings, as was usual in the case of the sacred barks of the egyptian deities.* the god of israel thus took up his abode in the place in which he was henceforth to be honoured. the sacrifices on the occasion of the dedication were innumerable, and continued for fourteen days, in the presence of the representatives of all israel. the ornate ceremonial and worship which had long been lavished on the deities of rival nations were now, for the first time, offered to the god of israel. the devout hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. compared with the magnificent monuments of egypt and chaldæa, the work of solomon was what the hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world--a little temple suited to a little people. * kings viii. - , and ghron. v. - . ** kings vi. , states that the foundations were laid in the ivth year of solomon�s reign, in the month of ziv, and that the temple was completed in the month of bui in the xith year; the work occupied seven years. kings vii. adds that the construction of the palace lasted thirteen years; it went on for six years after the completion of the temple. the account of the dedication ( kings viii.) contains a long prayer by solomon, part of which (vers. - ) is thought by certain critics to be of later date. they contend that the original words of solomon are confined to vers. and . the priests to whose care it was entrusted did not differ much from those whom david had gathered about him at the outset of the monarchy. they in no way formed an hereditary caste confined to the limits of a rigid hierarchy; they admitted into their number--at least up to a certain point--men of varied extraction, who were either drawn by their own inclinations to the service of the altar, or had been dedicated to it by their parents from childhood. he indeed was truly a priest �who said of his father and mother, �i have not seen him;� neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew he his own children.� he was content, after renouncing these, to observe the law of god and keep his covenant, and to teach jacob his judgments and israel his law; he put incense before the lord, and whole burnt offerings upon his altar.* * those are the expressions used in the blessing of moses (deut. xxxiii. - ); though this text is by some writers placed as late as the viiith century b.c., yet the state of things there represented would apply also to an earlier date. the hebrew priest, in short, had the same duties as a large proportion of the priesthood in chaldæ and egypt. as in egypt, the correct offering of the jewish sacrifices was beset with considerable difficulties, and the risk of marring their efficacy by the slightest inadvertence necessitated the employment of men who were thoroughly instructed in the divinely appointed practices and formulæ. the victims had to be certified as perfect, while the offerers themselves had to be ceremonially pure; and, indeed, those only who had been specially trained were able to master the difficulties connected with the minutiae of legal purity. the means by which the future was made known necessitated the intervention of skilful interpreters of the divine will. we know that in egypt the statues of the gods were supposed to answer the questions put to them by movements of the head or arms, sometimes even by the living voice; but the hebrews do not appear to have been influenced by any such recollections in the use of their sacred oracles. we are ignorant, however, of the manner in which the ephod was consulted, and we know merely that the art of interrogating the divine will by it demanded a long noviciate.* the benefits derived by those initiated into these mysteries were such as to cause them to desire the privileges to be perpetuated to their children. gathered round the ancient sanctuaries were certain families who, from father to son, were devoted to the performance of the sacred rites, as, for instance, that of eli at shiloh, and that of jonathan-ben-gershom at dan, near the sources of the jordan; but in addition to these, the text mentions functionaries analogous to those found among the canaanites, diviners, seers--_roê_--who had means of discovering that which was hidden from the vulgar, even to the finding of lost objects, but whose powers sometimes rose to a higher level when they were suddenly possessed by the prophetic spirit and enabled to reveal coming events. besides these, again, were the prophets--_nabî_**--who lived either alone or in communities, and attained, by means of a strict training, to a vision of the future. * an example of the consulting of the ephod will be found in sam. xxx. , , where david desires to know if he shall pursue the amalekites. ** sam. ix. is a gloss which identifies the _seer_ of former times with the prophet of the times of the monarchy. their prophetic utterances were accompanied by music and singing, and the exaltation of spirit which followed their exercises would at times spread to the bystanders,--as is the case in the �zikr� of the mahomedans of to-day.* * sam. x. - , where we see saul seized with the prophetic spirit on meeting with a band of prophets descending from the high place; cf. sam. vi. - , - , for david dancing before the ark. the early kings, saul and david, used to have recourse to individuals belonging to all these three classes, but the prophets, owing to the intermittent character of their inspiration and their ministry, could not fill a regular office attached to the court. one of this class was raised up by god from time to time to warn or guide his servants, and then sank again into obscurity; the priests, on the contrary, were always at hand, and their duties brought them into contact with the sovereign all the year round. the god who was worshipped in the capital of the country and his priesthood promptly acquired a predominant position in all oriental monarchies, and most of the other temples, together with the sacerdotal bodies attached to them, usually fell into disrepute, leaving them supreme. if amon of thebes became almost the sole god, and his priests the possessors of all egypt, it was because the accession of the xviiith dynasty had made his pontiffs the almoners of the pharaoh. something of the same sort took place in israel; the priesthood at jerusalem attached to the temple built by the sovereign, being constantly about his person, soon surpassed their brethren in other parts of the country both in influence and possessions. under david�s reign their head had been abiathar, son of ahimelech, a descendant of eli, but on solomon�s accession the primacy had been transferred to the line of zadok. in this alliance of the throne and the altar, it was natural at first that the throne should reap the advantage. the king appears to have continued to be a sort of high priest, and to have officiated at certain times and occasions.* the priests kept the temple in order, and watched over the cleanliness of its chambers and its vessels; they interrogated the divine will for the king according to the prescribed ceremonies, and offered sacrifices on behalf of the monarch and his subjects; in short, they were at first little more than chaplains to the king and his family. * solomon officiated and preached at the consecration of the temple ( kings viii.). the actual words appear to be of a later date; but even if that be the case, it proves that, at the time they were written, the king still possessed his full sacerdotal powers. solomon�s allegiance to the god of israel did not lead him to proscribe the worship of other gods; he allowed his foreign wives the exercise of their various religions, and he raised an altar to chemosh on the mount of olives for one of them who was a moabite. the political supremacy and material advantages which all these establishments acquired for judah could not fail to rouse the jealousy of the other tribes. ephraim particularly looked on with ill-concealed anger at the prospect of the hegemony becoming established in the hands of a tribe which could be barely said to have existed before the time of david, and was to a considerable extent of barbarous origin. taxes, homage, the keeping up and recruiting of garrisons, were all equally odious to this, as well as to the other clans descended from joseph; meanwhile their burdens did not decrease. a new fortress had to be built at jerusalem by order of the aged king. one of the overseers appointed for this work--jeroboam, the son of nebat--appears to have stirred up the popular discontent, and to have hatched a revolutionary plot. solomon, hearing of the conspiracy, attempted to suppress it; jeroboam was forewarned, and fled to egypt, where pharaoh sheshonq received him with honour, and gave him his wife�s sister in marriage.* the peace of the nation had not been ostensibly troubled, but the very fact that a pretender should have risen up in opposition to the legitimate king augured ill for the future of the dynasty. in reality, the edifice which david had raised with such difficulty tottered on its foundations before the death of his successor; the foreign vassals were either in a restless state or ready to throw off their allegiance; money was scarce, and twenty galilæan towns had been perforce ceded to hiram to pay the debts due to him for the building of the temple;** murmurings were heard among the people, who desired an easier life. * kings xi. - , where the lxx. is fuller than the a. v. ** kings ix. - ; cf. cliron. viii. , , where the fact seems to have been reversed, and hiram is made the donor of the twenty towns. in a future age, when priestly and prophetic influences had gained the ascendant, amid the perils which assailed jerusalem, and the miseries of the exile, the israelites, contrasting their humiliation with the glory of the past, forgot the reproaches which their forefathers had addressed to the house of david, and surrounded its memory with a halo of romance. david again became the hero, and solomon the saint and sage of his race; the latter �spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five. and he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.� we are told that god favoured him with a special predilection, and appeared to him on three separate occasions: once immediately after the death of david, to encourage him by the promise of a prosperous reign, and the gift of wisdom in governing; again after the dedication of the temple, to confirm him in his pious intentions; and lastly to upbraid him for his idolatry, and to predict the downfall of his house. solomon is supposed to have had continuous dealings with all the sovereigns of the oriental world,* and a queen of sheba is recorded as having come to bring him gifts from the furthest corner of arabia. * kings iv. ; on this passage are founded all the legends dealing with the contests of wit and wisdom in which solomon was supposed to have entered with the kings of neighbouring countries; traces of these are found in dius, in menander, and in eupolemus. his contemporaries, however, seem to have regarded him as a tyrant who oppressed them with taxes, and whose death was unregretted.* * i am inclined to place the date of solomon�s death between and b.c. [illustration: .jpg king solomon and the queen of sheba] his son rehoboam experienced no opposition in jerusalem and judah on succeeding to the throne of his father; when, however, he repaired to shechem to receive the oath of allegiance from the northern and central tribes, he found them unwilling to tender it except under certain conditions; they would consent to obey him only on the promise of his delivering them from the forced labour which had been imposed upon them by his predecessors. jeroboam, who had returned from his egyptian exile on the news of solomon�s death, undertook to represent their grievances to the new king. �thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.� rehoboam demanded three days for the consideration of his reply; he took counsel with the old advisers of the late king, who exhorted him to comply with the petition, but the young men who were his habitual companions urged him, on the contrary, to meet the remonstrances of his subjects with threats of still harsher exactions. their advice was taken, and when jeroboam again presented himself, rehoboam greeted him with raillery and threats. �my little finger is thicker than my father�s loins. and now whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, i will add to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions.� this unwise answer did not produce the intimidating effect which was desired; the cry of revolt, which had already been raised in the earlier days of the monarchy, was once more heard. �what portion have we in david? neither have we inheritance in the son of jesse: to your tents, o israel: now see to thine own house, david.� rehoboam attempted to carry his threats into execution, and sent the collectors of taxes among the rebels to enforce payment; but one of them was stoned almost before his eyes, and the king himself had barely time to regain his chariot and flee to jerusalem to escape an outburst of popular fury. the northern and central tribes immediately offered the crown to jeroboam, and the partisans of the son of solomon were reduced to those of his own tribe; judah, caleb, the few remaining simeonites, and some of the towns of dan and benjamin, which were too near to jerusalem to escape the influence of a great city, were all who threw in their lot with him.* * kings xii. -- ; cf. chron. x., xi. - . the text of kings xii. expressly says, �there was none that followed the house of david but the tribe of judah only;� whereas the following verse, which some think to have been added by another hand, adds that rehoboam assembled , men �which were warriors� from �the house of judah and the tribe of benjamin.� thus was accomplished the downfall of the house of david, and with it the hebrew kingdom which it had been at such pains to build up. when we consider the character of the two kings who formed its sole dynasty, we cannot refrain from thinking that it deserved a better fate. david and solomon exhibited that curious mixture of virtues and vices which distinguished most of the great semite princes. the former, a soldier of fortune and an adventurous hero, represents the regular type of the founder of a dynasty; crafty, cruel, ungrateful, and dissolute, but at the same time brave, prudent, cautious, generous, and capable of enthusiasm, clemency, and repentance; at once so lovable and so gentle that he was able to inspire those about him with the firmest friendship and the most absolute devotion. the latter was a religious though sensual monarch, fond of display--the type of sovereign who usually succeeds to the head of the family and enjoys the wealth which his predecessor had acquired, displaying before all men the results of an accomplished work, and often thereby endangering its stability. the real reason of their failure to establish a durable monarchy was the fact that neither of them understood the temperament of the people they were called upon to govern. the few representations we possess of the hebrews of this period depict them as closely resembling the nations which inhabited southern syria at the time of the egyptian occupation. they belong to the type with which the monuments have made us familiar; they are distinguished by an aquiline nose, projecting cheek-bones, and curly hair and beard. they were vigorous, hardy, and inured to fatigue, but though they lacked those qualities of discipline and obedience which are the characteristics of true warrior races, david had not hesitated to employ them in war; they were neither sailors, builders, nor given to commerce and industries, and yet solomon built fleets, raised palaces and a temple, and undertook maritime expeditions, and financial circumstances seemed for the moment to be favourable. [illustration: .jpg a jewish captive] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. the onward progress of assyria towards the mediterranean had been arrested by the hittites, egypt was in a condition of lethargy, the aramæan populations were fretting away their energies in internal dissensions; david, having encountered no serious opposition after his victory over the philistines, had extended his conquests and increased the area of his kingdom, and the interested assistance which tyre afterwards gave to solomon enabled the latter to realise his dreams of luxury and royal magnificence. but the kingdom which had been created by david and solomom rested solely on their individual efforts, and its continuance could be ensured only by bequeathing it to descendants who had sufficient energy and prudence to consolidate its weaker elements, and build up the tottering materials which were constantly threatening to fall asunder. as soon as the government had passed into the hands of the weakling rehoboam, who had at the outset departed from his predecessors� policy, the component parts of the kingdom, which had for a few years been, held together, now became disintegrated without a shock, and as if by mutual consent. the old order of things which existed in the time of the judges had passed away with the death of saul. the advantages which ensued from a monarchical regime were too apparent to permit of its being set aside, and the tribes who had been bound together by nearly half a century of obedience to a common master now resolved themselves, according to their geographical positions, into two masses of unequal numbers and extent--judah in the south, together with the few clans who remained loyal to the kingly house, and israel in the north and the regions beyond jordan, occupying three-fourths of the territory which had belonged to david and solomon. israel, in spite of its extent and population, did not enjoy the predominant position which we might have expected at the beginning of its independent existence. it had no political unity, no capital in which to concentrate its resources, no temple, and no army; it represented the material out of which a state could be formed rather than one already constituted. it was subdivided into three groups, formerly independent of, and almost strangers to each other, and between whom neither david nor solomon had been able to establish any bond which would enable them to forget their former isolation. the centre group was composed of the house of joseph--ephraim, benjamin, and manasseh--and comprised the old fortresses of perea, mahanaim, penuel, succoth, and eamoth, ranged in a line running parallel with the jordan. in the eastern group were the semi-nomad tribes of reuben and gad, who still persisted in the pastoral habits of their ancestors, and remained indifferent to the various revolutions which had agitated their race for several generations. finally, in the northern group lay the smaller tribes of asher, naphtali, issachar, zebulon, and dan, hemmed in between the phoenicians and the aramaeans of zoba and damascus. each group had its own traditions, its own interests often opposed to those of its neighbours, and its own peculiar mode of life, which it had no intention of renouncing for any one else�s benefit. the difficulty of keeping these groups together became at once apparent. shechem had been the first to revolt against rehoboam; it was a large and populous town, situated almost in the centre of the newly formed state, and the seat of an ancient oracle, both of which advantages seemed to single it out as the future capital. but its very importance, and the memories of its former greatness under jeruhhaal and abimelech, were against it. built in the western territory belonging to manasseh, the eastern and northern clans would at once object to its being chosen, on the ground that it would humiliate them before the house of joseph, in the same manner as the selection of jerusalem had tended to make them subservient to judah. jeroboam would have endangered his cause by fixing on it as his capital, and he therefore soon quitted it to establish himself at tirzah. it is true that the latter town was also situated in the mountains of ephraim, but it was so obscure and insignificant a place that it disarmed all jealousy; the new king therefore took up his residence in it, since he was forced to fix on some royal abode, but it never became for him what jerusalem was to his rival, a capital at once religious and military. he had his own sanctuary and priests at tirzah, as was but natural, but had he attempted to found a temple which would have attracted the whole population to a common worship, he would have excited jealousies which would have been fatal to his authority. on the other hand, solomon�s temple had in its short period of existence not yet acquired such a prestige as to prevent jeroboam�s drawing his people away from it: which he determined to do from a fear that contact with jerusalem would endanger the allegiance of his subjects to his person and family. such concourses of worshippers, assembling at periodic intervals from all parts of the country, soon degenerated into a kind of fair, in which commercial as well as religious motives had their part. [illustration: .jpg the mound and plain of bethel.] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by the duc de luynes. these gatherings formed a source of revenue to the prince in whose capital they were held, and financial as well as political considerations required that periodical assemblies should be established in israel similar to those which attracted judah to jerusalem. jeroboam adopted a plan which while safeguarding the interests of his treasury, prevented his becoming unpopular with his own subjects; as he was unable to have a temple for himself alone, he chose two out of the most venerated ancient sanctuaries, that of dan for the northern tribes, and that of bethel, on the judæan frontier, for the tribes of the east and centre. he made two calves of gold, one for each place, and said to the people, �it is too much for you to go up to jerusalem; behold thy gods, o israel, which brought thee up out of the land of egypt.� he granted the sanctuaries certain appanages, and established a priesthood answering to that which officiated in the rival kingdom: �whosoever would he consecrated him, that there might be priests of the high places.� * while jeroboam thus endeavoured to strengthen himself on the throne by adapting the monarchy to the temperament of the tribes over which he ruled, rehoboam took measures to regain his lost ground and restore the unity which he himself had destroyed. he recruited the army which had been somewhat neglected in the latter years of his father, restored the walls of the cities which had remained faithful to him, and fortified the places which constituted his frontier defences against the israelites.** his ambition was not as foolish as we might be tempted to imagine. he had soldiers, charioteers, generals, skilled in the art of war, well-filled storehouses, the remnant of the wealth of solomon, and, as a last resource, the gold of the temple at jerusalem. he ruled over the same extent of territory as that possessed by david after the death of saul, but the means at his disposal were incontestably greater than those of his grandfather, and it is possible that he might in the end have overcome jeroboam, as david overcame ishbosheth, had not the intervention of egypt disconcerted his plans, and, by exhausting his material forces, struck a death-blow to all his hopes. * kings xii. - ; chaps, xii. , xiii., xiv. - contain, side by side with the narrative of facts, such as the death of jeroboam�s son, comments on the religious conduct of the sovereign, which some regard as being of later date. ** kings xii. - ; cf. ghron. xi. - , where the list of strongholds, wanting in the boole of kings, is given from an ancient source. the writer affirms, in harmony with the ideas of his time, �that the lévites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to judah and jerusalem; for jeroboam and his sons cast them off, that they should not execute the priest�s office unto the lord.� the century and a half which had elapsed since the death of the last of the ramessides had, as far as we can ascertain, been troubled by civil wars and revolutions.* * i have mentioned above the uncertainty which still shrouds the xxth dynasty. the following is the order in which i propose that its kings should be placed:-- [illustration: .jpg table of kings] the imperious egypt of the theban dynasties had passed away, but a new egypt had arisen, not without storm and struggle, in its place. as long as the campaigns of the pharaohs had been confined to the nile valley and the oases, thebes had been the natural centre of the kingdom; placed almost exactly between the mediterranean and the southern frontier, it had been both the national arsenal and the treasure-house to which all foreign wealth had found its way from the persian gulf to the sahara, and from the coasts of asia minor to the equatorial swamps. the cities of the delta, lying on the frontier of those peoples with whom egypt now held but little intercourse, possessed neither the authority nor the resources of thebes; even memphis, to which the prestige of her ancient dynasties still clung, occupied but a secondary place beside her rival. the invasion of the shepherds, by making the thebaid the refuge and last bulwark of the egyptian nation, increased its importance: in the critical times of the struggle, thebes was not merely the foremost city in the country, it represented the country itself, and the heart of egypt may be said to have throbbed within its walls. the victories of ahmosis, the expeditions of thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis iii., enlarged her horizon; her pharaohs crossed the isthmus of suez, they conquered syria, subdued the valleys of the euphrates and the balîkh, and by so doing increased her wealth and her splendour. her streets witnessed during two centuries processions of barbarian prisoners laden with the spoils of conquest. but with the advent of the xixth and xxth dynasties came anxious times; the peoples of syria and libya, long kept in servitude, at length rebelled, and the long distance between karnak and gaza soon began to be irksome to princes who had to be constantly on the alert on the canaanite frontier, and who found it impossible to have their head-quarters six hundred miles from the scene of hostilities. hence it came about that ramses ii., mînephtah, and ramses iii. all took up their abode in the delta during the greater part of their active life; they restored its ancient towns and founded new ones, which soon acquired considerable wealth by foreign commerce. the centre of government of the empire, which, after the dissolution of the old memphite state, had been removed southwards to thebes on account of the conquest of ethiopia and the encroachment of theban civilization upon nubia and the sudan, now gradually returned northwards, and passing over heracleo-polis, which had exercised a transitory supremacy, at length established itself in the delta. tanis, bubastis, sais, mondes, and sebennytos all disputed the honour of forming the royal residence, and all in turn during the course of ages enjoyed the privilege without ever rising to the rank of thebes, or producing any sovereigns to be compared with those of her triumphant dynasties. tanis was, as we have seen, the first of these to rule the whole of the nile valley. its prosperity had continued to increase from the time that ramses ii. began to rebuild it; the remaining inhabitants of avaris, mingled with the natives of pure race and the prisoners of war settled there, had furnished it with an active and industrious population, which had considerably increased during the peaceful reigns of the xxth dynasty. the surrounding country, drained and cultivated by unremitting efforts, became one of the most fruitful parts of the delta; there was a large exportation of fish and corn, to which were soon added the various products of its manufactories, such as linen and woollen stuffs, ornaments, and objects in glass and in precious metals.* * the immense number of designs taken from aquatic plants, as, for instance, the papyrus and the lotus, single or in groups, as well as from fish and aquatic birds, which we observe on objects of phoenician goldsmiths� work, leads me to believe that the tyrian and sidonian artists borrowed most of their models from the delta, and doubtless from tanis, the most flourishing town of the delta during the centuries following the downfall of thebes. these were embarked on egyptian or phoenician galleys, and were exchanged in the ports of the mediterranean for syrian, asiatic, or Ægean commodities, which were then transmitted by the egyptian merchants to the countries of the east and to northern africa.* the port of tanis was one of the most secure and convenient which existed at that period. it was at sufficient distance from the coast to be safe from the sudden attacks of pirates,** and yet near enough to permit of its being reached from the open by merchantmen in a few hours of easy navigation; the arms of the nile, and the canals which here flowed into the sea, were broad and deep, and, so long as they were kept well dredged, would allow the heaviest-laden vessel of large draught to make its way up them with ease. * it was from tanis that the egyptian vessel set out carrying the messengers of hrihor to byblos. ** we may judge of the security afforded by such a position by the account in homer which ulysses gives to eumaios of his pretended voyage to egypt; the greeks having disembarked, and being scattered over the country, were attacked by the egyptians before they could capture a town or carry their booty to the ships. the site of the town was not less advantageous for overland traffic. tanis was the first important station encountered by caravans after crossing the frontier at zalû, and it offered them a safe and convenient emporium for the disposal of their goods in exchange for the riches of egypt and the delta. the combination of so many advantageous features on one site tended to the rapid development of both civic and individual wealth; in less than three centuries after its rebuilding by ramses ii., tanis had risen to a position which enabled its sovereigns to claim even the obedience of thebes itself. we know very little of the history of this tanite dynasty; the monuments have not revealed the names of all its kings, and much difficulty is experienced in establishing the sequence of those already brought to light.* * the classification of the tanite line has been complicated in the minds of most egyptologists by the tendency to ignore the existence of the sacerdotal dynasty of high priests, to confuse with the tanite pharaohs those of the high priests who bore the crown, and to identify in the lists of manetho (more or less corrected) the names they are in search of. a fresh examination of the subject has led me to adopt provisionally the following order for the series of tanite kings:-- [illustration: .jpg table of kings] their actual domain barely extended as far as siut, but their suzerainty was acknowledged by the said as well as by all or part of ethiopia, and the tanite pharaohs maintained their authority with such vigour, that they had it in their power on several occasions to expel the high priests of amon, and to restore, at least for a time, the unity of the empire. to accomplish this, it would have been sufficient for them to have assumed the priestly dignity at thebes, and this was what no doubt took place at times when a vacancy in the high priesthood occurred; but it was merely in an interim, and the tanite sovereigns always relinquished the office, after a brief lapse of time, in favour of some member of the family of hrihor whose right of primogeniture entitled him to succeed to it.* it indeed seemed as if custom and religious etiquette had made the two offices of the pontificate and the royal dignity incompatible for one individual to hold simultaneously. the priestly duties had become marvellously complicated during the theban hegemony, and the minute observances which they entailed absorbed the whole life of those who dedicated themselves to their performance.** * this is only true if the personage who entitles himself once within a cartouche, �the master of the two lands, first prophet of amon, psiûkhân-nît,� is really the tanite king, and not the high priest psiûkhânnît. ** the first book of diodorus contains a picture of the life of the kings of egypt, which, in common with much information contained in the work, is taken from a lost book of hecataeus. the historical romance written by the latter appears to have been composed from information taken from theban sources. the comparison of it with the inscribed monuments and the ritual of the cultus of amon proves that the ideal description given in this work of the life of the kings, merely reproduces the chief characteristics of the lives of the theban and ethiopian high priests; hence the greater part of the minute observances which we remark therein apply to the latter only, and not to the pharaohs properly so called. they had daily to fulfil a multitude of rites, distributed over the various hours in such a manner that it seemed impossible to find leisure for any fresh occupation without encroaching on the time allotted to absolute bodily needs. the high priest rose each morning at an appointed hour; he had certain times for taking food, for recreation, for giving audience, for dispensing justice, for attending to worldly affairs, and for relaxation with his wives and children; at night he kept watch, or rose at intervals to prepare for the various ceremonies which could only be celebrated at sunrise. he was responsible for the superintendence of the priests of amon in the numberless festivals held in honour of the gods, from which he could not absent himself except for some legitimate reason. from all this it will be seen how impossible it was for a lay king, like the sovereign ruling at tanis, to submit to such restraints beyond a certain point; his patience would soon have become exhausted, want of practice would have led him to make slips or omissions, rendering the rites null and void; and the temporal affairs of his kingdom--internal administration, justice, finance, commerce, and war--made such demands upon his time, that he was obliged as soon as possible to find a substitute to fulfil his religious duties. the force of circumstances therefore maintained the line of theban high priests side by side with their sovereigns, the tanite kings. they were, it is true, dangerous rivals, both on account of the wealth of their fief and of the immense prestige which they enjoyed in egypt, ethiopia, and in all the nomes devoted to the worship of amon. they were allied to the elder branch of the ramessides, and had thus inherited such near rights to the crown that smendes had not hesitated to concede to hrihor the cartouches, the preamble, and insignia of the pharaoh, including the pschent and the iron helmet inlaid with gold. this concession, however, had been made as a personal favour, and extended only to the lifetime of hrihor, without holding good, as a matter of course, for his successors; his son piônkhi had to confine himself to the priestly titles,* and his grandson paînotmû enjoyed the kingly privileges only during part of his life, doubtless in consequence of his marriage with a certain mâkerî, probably daughter of psiûkhânnît l, the tanite king. mâkerî apparently died soon after, and the discovery of her coffin in the hiding-place at deîr el-baharî reveals the fact of her death in giving birth to a little daughter who did not survive her, and who rests in the same coffin beside the mummy of her mother. none of the successors of paînotmû--masahirti, manakhpirrî, paînotmû ii., psiûkhânnît, nsbindîdi--enjoyed a similar distinction, and if one of them happened to surround his name with a cartouche, it was done surreptitiously, without the authority of the sovereign.** * the only monument of this prince as yet known gives him merely the usual titles of the high priest, and the inscriptions of his son paînotmû i. style him �first prophet of amon.� his name should probably be read paîônûkhi or piônûkhi, rather than pionkhi or piânkhi. it is not unlikely that some of the papyri published by spiegelberg date from his pontificate. ** manakhpirrî often places his name in a square cartouche which tends at times to become an oval, but this is the case only on some pieces of stuff rolled round a mummy and on some bricks concealed in the walls of el-hibeh, thebes, and gebeleîn. if the �psiûkhânnît, high priest of amon,� who once (to our knowledge) enclosed his name in a cartouche, is really a high priest, and not a king, his case would be analogous to that of manakhpirrî. paînotmû ii. contented himself with drawing attention to his connection with the reigning house, and styled himself �royal son of psiûkhânnît-mîamon,� on account of his ancestress mâkerî having been the daughter of the pharaoh psiûkhânnît.* * the example of the �royal sons of ramses� explains the variant which makes �paînotmû, son of manakhpirrî,� into �paînotmû, royal son of psiûkhânnît-mîamon.� the relationship of which he boasted was a distant one, but many of his contemporaries who claimed to be of the line of sesostris, and called themselves �royal sons of ramses,� traced their descent from a far more remote ancestor. [illustration: .jpg the mummies of queen mÂkerÎ and her child] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. the death of one high priest, or the appointment of his successor, was often the occasion of disturbances; the jealousies between his children by the same or by different wives were as bitter as those which existed in the palace of the pharaohs, and the suzerain himself was obliged at times to interfere in order to restore peace. it was owing to an intervention of this kind that manakhpirrî was called on to replace his brother masahirti. a section of the theban population had revolted, but the rising had been put down by the tanite siamon, and its leaders banished to the oasis; manakhpirrî had thereupon been summoned to court and officially invested with the pontificate in the xxvth year of the king�s reign. but on his return to karnak, the new high priest desired to heal old feuds, and at once recalled the exiles.* troubles and disorders appeared to beset the thebans, and, like the last of the ramessides, they were engaged in a perpetual struggle against robbers.** * this appears in the _maunier stele_ preserved for some time in the �maison française� at luxor, and now removed to the louvre. ** the series of high priests side by side with the sovereigns of the xxist dynasty may be provisionally arranged as follows:-- [illustration: .jpg table] the town, deprived of its former influx of foreign spoil, became more and more impoverished, and its population gradually dwindled. the necropolis suffered increasingly from pillagers, and the burying-places of the kings were felt to be in such danger, that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect them, withdrew the mummies from their resting-places. the bodies of seti i., ramses ii., and ramses iii. were once more carried down the valley, and, after various removals, were at length huddled together for safety in the tomb of amenôthes i. at drah-abu�l-neggah. the tanite pharaohs seemed to have lacked neither courage nor good will. the few monuments which they have left show that to some extent they carried on the works begun by their predecessors. an unusually high inundation had injured the temple at karnak, the foundations had been denuded by the water, and serious damage would have been done, had not the work of reparation been immediately undertaken. nsbindîdi reopened the sandstone quarries between erment and grebeleîn, from which seti i. had obtained the building materials for the temple, and drew from thence what was required for the repair of the edifice. two of the descendants of nsbindîdi, psiûkhânnît i. and amenemôpît, remodelled the little temple built by kheops in honour of his daughter honît-sonû, at the south-east angle of his pyramid. both siamonmîamon and psiûkhânnît i. have left traces of their work at memphis, and the latter inserted his cartouches on two of the obelisks raised by ramses at heliopolis. but these were only minor undertakings, and it is at tanis that we must seek the most characteristic examples of their activity. here it was that psiûkhânnît rebuilt the brick ramparts which defended the city, and decorated several of the halls of the great temple. the pylons of this sanctuary had been merely begun by sesostris: siamon completed them, and added the sphinxes; and the metal plaques and small objects which he concealed under the base of one of the latter have been brought to light in the course of excavations. the appropriation of the monuments of other kings, which we have remarked under former dynasties, was also practised by the tanites. siamon placed his inscriptions over those of the kamessides, and psiûkhânnît engraved his name on the sphinxes and statues of ame-nemhâît iii. as unscrupulously as apôphis and the hyksôs had done before him. the tanite sovereigns, however, were not at a loss for artists, and they had revived, after the lapse of centuries, the traditions of the local school which had flourished during the xiith dynasty. [illustration: .jpg the two niles of tanis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. one of the groups, executed by order of psiûkhânnît, has escaped destruction, and is now in the gîzeh museum. it represents two figures of the nile, marching gravely shoulder to shoulder, and carrying in front of them tables of offerings, ornamented with fish and garnished with flowers. the stone in which they are executed is of an extraordinary hardness, but the sculptor has, notwithstanding, succeeded in carving and polishing it with a skill which does credit to his proficiency in his craft. the general effect of the figures is a little heavy, but the detail is excellent, and the correctness of pose, precision in modelling, and harmony of proportion are beyond criticism. the heads present a certain element of strangeness. the artist evidently took as his model, as far as type and style of head-dress are concerned, the monuments of amenemhâît iii. which he saw around him; indeed, he probably copied one of them feature for feature. he has reproduced the severity of expression, the firm mouth, the projecting cheek-bones, the long hair and fan-shaped beard of his model, but he has not been able to imitate the broad and powerful treatment of the older artists; his method of execution has a certain hardness and conventionality which we never see to the same extent in the statues of the xiith dynasty. the work is, however, an extremely interesting one, and we are tempted to wish that many more such monuments had been saved from the ruins of the city.* * mariette attributes this group to the hyksôs; i have already expressed the opinion that it dates from the xxist dynasty. the pharaoh who dedicated it was a great builder, and, like most of his predecessors with similar tastes, somewhat of a conqueror. the sovereigns of the xxist dynasty, though they never undertook any distant campaigns, did not neglect to keep up a kind of suzerainty over the philistine shephelah to which they still laid claim. the expedition which one of them, probably psiûkhânnît ii., led against gezer, the alliance with the hebrews and the marriage of a royal princess with solomon, must all have been regarded at the court of tanis as a partial revival of the former egyptian rule in syria. the kings were, however, obliged to rest content with small results, for though their battalions were sufficiently numerous and well disciplined to overcome the canaanite chiefs, or even the israelite kingdom, it is to be doubted whether they were strong enough to attack the troops of the aramæan or hittite princes, who had a highly organised military system, modelled on that of assyria. egyptian arms and tactics had not made much progress since the great campaigns of the theban conquerors; the military authorities still complacently trusted to their chariots and their light troops of archers at a period when the whole success of a campaign was decided by heavily armed infantry, and when cavalry had already begun to change the issue of battles. the decadence of the military spirit in egypt had been particularly marked in all classes under the later ramessides, and the native militia, without exception, was reduced to a mere rabble--courageous, it is true, and able to sell their lives dearly when occasion demanded, rather than give way before the enemy, but entirely lacking that enthusiasm and resolution which sweep all obstacles before them. the chariotry had not degenerated in the same way, thanks to the care with which the pharaoh and his vassals kept up the breeding of suitable horses in the training stables of the principal towns. egypt provided solomon with draught-horses, and with strong yet light chariots, which he sold with advantage to the sovereigns of the orontes and the euphrates. but it was the mercenaries who constituted the most active and effective section of the pharaonic armies. these troops formed the backbone on which all the other elements--chariots, spearmen, and native archers--were dependent. their spirited attack carried the other troops with them, and by a tremendous onslaught on the enemy at a decisive moment gave the commanding general some chance of success against the better-equipped and better-organised battalions that he would be sure to meet with on the plains of asia. the tanite kings enrolled these mercenaries in large numbers: they entrusted them with the garrisoning of the principal towns, and confirmed the privileges which their chiefs had received from the ramessides, but the results of such a policy were not long in manifesting themselves, and this state of affairs had been barely a century in existence before egypt became a prey to the barbarians. it would perhaps be more correct to say that it had fallen a prey to the libyans only. the asiatics and europeans whom the theban pharaohs had called in to fight for them had become merged in the bulk of the nation, or had died out for lack of renewal. semites abounded, it is true, in the eastern nomes of the delta, but their presence had no effect on the military strength of the country. some had settled in the towns and villages, and were engaged in commerce or industry; these included phoenician, canaanite, edomite, and even hebrew merchants and artisans, who had been forced to flee from their own countries owing to political disturbances.* * jeroboam ( kings xi. , xii. , ) and hadad ( kings xi. - ) took refuge in this way at the court of pharaoh. a certain proportion were descendants of the hidjsôs, who had been reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of abmosis, and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with the inhabitants of the nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging nicknames as pa-shmûrî, �the stranger,� or pi-âtnû, �the asiatic.� the shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of ramses ii., and whose commanders had, under ramses iii., ranked with the great officers of the crown, had all but disappeared. it had been found difficult to recruit them since the dislodgment of the people of the sea from the delta and the syrian littoral, and their settlement in italy and the fabulous islands of the mediterranean; the adventurers from crete and the Ægean coasts now preferred to serve under the philistines, where they found those who were akin to their own race, and from thence they passed on to the hebrews, where, under david and solomon, they were gladly hired as mercenaries.* * carians or cretans (chercthites) formed part of david�s body-guard ( sam viii. , xv. , xx. ); one again meets with these carian or cretan troops in judah in the reign of athaliah ( kings xi. , ). the libyans had replaced the shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied. the kingdom of mâraîû and kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from mînephtah and ramses iii., but the mashaûasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the egyptians became accustomed to look on all the libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from libya under the common name of mashaûasha.* egypt was thus slowly flooded by libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. a berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying the eastern provinces of the delta, filling its towns--sais, damanhur, and marea--making its way into the fayum, the suburbs of heracleopolis, and penetrating as far south as abydos; at the latter place they were not found in such great numbers, but still considerable enough to leave distinct traces.** the high priests of amon seem to have been the only personages who neglected to employ this ubiquitous race; but they preferred to use the nubian tribe of the mâzaîû,*** who probably from the xiith dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of thebes. * ramses iii. still distinguished between the qahaka, the tihonû, and the mashaûasha; the monuments of the xxiind dynasty only recognise the mashaiiasha, whose name they curtail to ma. ** the presence in those regions of persons bearing asiatic names has been remarked, without drawing thence any proof for the existence of asiatic colonies in those regions. the presence of libyans at abydos seems to be proved by the discovery in that town of the little monument reproduced on the next page, and of many objects in the same style, many of which are in the louvre or the british museum. *** i have not discovered among the personal attendants of the descendants of hrihor any functionary bearing the title of _chief of the mashaiuasha _; even those who bore it later on, under the xxiind dynasty, were always officers from the north of egypt. it seems almost certain that thebes always avoided having libyan troops, and never received a mashaûasha settlement. these libyan immigrants had adopted the arts of egypt and the externals of her civilization; they sculptured rude figures on the rocks and engraved scenes on their stone vessels, in which they are represented fully armed,* and taking part in some skirmish or attack, or even a chase in the desert. the hunters are divided into two groups, each of which is preceded by a different ensign--that of the west for the right wing of the troop, and that of the east for the left wing. they carry the spear the boomerang, the club, the double-curved bow, and the dart; a fox�s skin depends from their belts over their thighs, and an ostrich�s feather waves above their curly hair. * i attribute to the libyans, whether mercenaries or tribes hovering on the egyptian frontier, the figures cut everywhere on the rocks, which no one up till now has reproduced or studied. to them i attribute also the tombs which mr. petrie has so successfully explored, and in which he finds the remains of a new race which seems to have conquered egypt after the vith dynasty: they appear to be of different periods, but all belong to the berber horsemen of the desert and the outskirts of the nile valley. [illustration: .jpg a troop of libyans hunting] drawn by boudier, from the original in the louvre. they never abandoned this special head-dress and manner of arming themselves, and they can always be recognised on the monuments by the plumes surmounting their forehead.* * this design is generally thought to represent a piece of cloth folded in two, and laid flat on the head; examination of the monuments proves that it is the ostrich plume fixed at the back of the head, and laid flat on the hair or wig. their settlement on the banks of the nile and intermarriage with the egyptians had no deteriorating effect on them, as had been the case with the shardana, and they preserved nearly all their national characteristics. if here and there some of them became assimilated with the natives, there was always a constant influx of new comers, full of energy and vigour, who kept the race from becoming enfeebled. the attractions of high pay and the prospect of a free-and-easy life drew them to the service of the feudal lords. the pharaoh entrusted their chiefs with confidential offices about his person, and placed the royal princes at their head. the position at length attained by these mashaûasha was analogous to that of the oossasans at babylon, and, indeed, was merely the usual sequel of permitting a foreign militia to surround an oriental monarch; they became the masters of their sovereigns. some of their generals went so far as to attempt to use the soldiery to overturn the native dynasty, and place themselves upon the throne; others sought to make and unmake kings to suit their own taste. the earlier tanite sovereigns had hoped to strengthen their authority by trusting entirely to the fidelity and gratitude of their guard; the later kings became mere puppets in the hands of mercenaries. at length a libyan family arose who, while leaving the externals of power in the hands of the native sovereigns, reserved to themselves the actual administration, and reduced the kings to the condition of luxurious dependence enjoyed by the elder branch of the ramessides under the rule of the high priests of amon. there was at bubastis, towards the middle or end of the xxth dynasty, a tihonû named buîuwa-buîuwa. he was undoubtedly a soldier of fortune, without either office or rank, but his descendants prospered and rose to important positions among the mashadasha chiefs: the fourth among these, sheshonq by name, married mîhtinuôskhît, a princess of the royal line. his son, namarôti, managed to combine with his function of chief of the mashauasha several religious offices, and his grandson, also called sheshonq, had a still more brilliant career. we learn from the monuments of the latter that, even before he had ascended the throne, he was recognised as king and prince of princes, and had conferred on him the command of all the libyan troops. officially he was the chief person in the state after the sovereign, and had the privilege of holding personal intercourse with the gods, amonrâ included--a right which belonged exclusively to the pharaoh and the theban high priest. the honours which he bestowed upon his dead ancestors were of a remarkable character, and included the institution of a liturgical office in connection with his father namarôti, a work which resembles in its sentiments the devotions of bamses ii. to the memory of seti. he succeeded in arranging a marriage between his son osorkon and a princess of the royal line, the daughter of psiûkhânnît ii., by which alliance he secured the tanite succession; he obtained as a wife for his second son aûpûti, the priestess of amon, and thus obtained an indirect influence over the said and nubia.* * the date of the death of paînotmû ii. is fixed at the xvith year of his reign, according to the inscriptions in the pit at deîr el-baharî. this would be the date of the accession of aûpûti�, if aûpûti succeeded him directly, as i am inclined to believe; but if psiûkhânnît was his immediate successor, and if nsbindîdî succeeded manakhpirri, we must place the accession of aûpûti some years later. [illustration: .jpg nsitanibashiru] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by e. brugsch-bey. this priestess was probably a daughter or niece of paînotmû ii., but we are unacquainted with her name. the princesses continued to play a preponderating part in the transmission of power, and we may assume that the lady in question was one of those whose names have come down to us--nsikhonsû, nsitanî-bashîrû, or isimkhobîû ii., who brought with her as a dowry the bubastite fief. we are at a loss whether to place aûpûti immediately after paînotmû, or between the ephemeral pontificates of a certain psiûkhannît and a certain nsbindîdi. his succession imposed a very onerous duty upon him. thebes was going through the agonies of famine and misery, and no police supervision in the world could secure the treasures stored up in the tombs of a more prosperous age from the attacks of a famished people. arrests, trials, and punishments were ineffectual against the violation of the sepulchres, and even the royal mummies--including those placed in the chapel of amenôthes i. by previous high priests--were not exempt from outrage. the remains of the most glorious of the pharaohs were reclining in this chapel, forming a sort of solemn parliament: here was saqnunrî tiuâqni, the last member of the xviith dynasty; here also were the first of the xviiith--ahmosis, amenôthes i., and the three of the name thûtmosis, together with the favourites of their respective harems--nofritari, ahhotpû ii., anhâpû, honittimihû, and sitkamosis; and, in addition, ramses i., seti i., ramses ii. of the xixth dynasty, ramses iii. and ramses x. of the xxth dynasty. the �servants of the true place� were accustomed to celebrate at the appointed periods the necessary rites established in their honour. inspectors, appointed for the purpose by the government, determined from time to time the identity of the royal mummies, and examined into the condition of their wrappings and coffins: after each inspection a report, giving the date and the name of the functionary responsible for the examination, was inscribed on the linen or the lid covering the bodies. the most of the mummies had suffered considerably before they reached the refuge in which they were found. the bodies of sitamon and of the princess honittimihû had been completely destroyed, and bundles of rags had been substituted for them, so arranged with pieces of wood as to resemble human figures. ramses i., ramses ii., and thûtmosis had been deprived of their original shells, and were found in extemporised cases. hrihor�s successors, who regarded these sovereigns as their legitimate ancestors, had guarded them with watchful care, but aûpûti, who did not feel himself so closely related to these old-world pharaohs, considered, doubtless, this vigilance irksome, and determined to locate the mummies in a spot where they would henceforward be secure from all attack. a princess of the family of manakhpirrî--isimkhobiû, it would appear--had prepared a tomb for herself in the rocky cliff which bounds the amphitheatre of deîr el-baharî on the south. the position lent itself readily to concealment. it consisted of a well some feet deep, with a passage running out of it at right angles for a distance of some feet and ending in a low, oblong, roughly cut chamber, lacking both ornament and paintings. paînotmû ii. had been placed within this chamber in the xvith year of the reign of psiûkhannît ii., and several members of his family had been placed beside him not long afterwards. aûpûti soon transferred thither the batch of mummies which, in the chapel of amenôthes i., had been awaiting a more definite sepulture; the coffins, with what remained of their funerary furniture, were huddled together in disorder. the chamber having been filled up to the roof, the remaining materials, consisting of coffers, boxes of _ushabti,_ canopic jars, garlands, together with the belongings of priestly mummies, were arranged along the passage; when the place was full, the entrance was walled up, the well filled, and its opening so dexterously covered that it remained concealed until-our own time. the accidental �sounding� of some pillaging arabs revealed the place as far back as , but it was not until ten years later ( ) that the pharaohs once more saw the light. they are now enthroned--who can say for how many years longer? --in the chambers of the gîzeh museum. egypt is truly a land of marvels! it has not only, like assyria and chaldæa, greece and italy, preserved for us monuments by which its historic past may be reconstructed, but it has handed on to us the men themselves who set up the monuments and made the history. her great monarchs are not any longer mere names deprived of appropriate forms, and floating colourless and shapeless in the imagination of posterity: they may be weighed, touched, and measured; the capacity of their brains may be gauged; the curve of their noses and the cut of their mouths may be determined; we know if they were bald, or if they suffered from some secret infirmity; and, as we are able to do in the case of our contemporaries, we may publish their portraits taken first hand in the photographic camera. sheshonq, by assuming the control of the theban priesthood, did not on this account extend his sovereignty over egypt beyond its southern portion, and that part of nubia which still depended on it. ethiopia remained probably outside his jurisdiction, and constituted from this time forward an independent kingdom, under the rule of dynasties which were, or claimed to be, descendants of hrihor. the oasis, on the other hand, and the libyan provinces in the neighbourhood of the delta and the sea, rendered obedience to his officers, and furnished him with troops which were recognised as among his best. sheshonq found himself at the death of psiûkhânnît ii., which took place about b.c., sole master of egypt, with an effective army and well-replenished treasury at his disposal. what better use could he make of his resources than devote them to reasserting the traditional authority of his country over syria? the intestine quarrels of the only state of any importance in that region furnished him with an opportunity of which he found it easy to take advantage. solomon in his eyes was merely a crowned vassal of egypt, and his appeal for aid to subdue gezer, his marriage with a daughter of the egyptian royal house, the position he had assigned her over all his other wives, and all that we know of the relations between jerusalem and tanis at the time, seem to indicate that the hebrews themselves acknowledged some sort of dependency upon egypt. they were not, however, on this account free from suspicion in their suzerain�s eyes, who seized upon every pretext that offered itself to cause them embarrassment. hadad, and jeroboam afterwards, had been well received at the court of the pharaoh, and it was with egyptian subsidies that these two rebels returned to their country, the former in the lifetime of solomon, and the latter after his death. when jeroboam saw that he was threatened by rehoboam, he naturally turned to his old protectors. sheshonq had two problems before him. should he confirm by his intervention the division of the kingdom, which had flourished in kharû for now half a century, into two rival states, or should he himself give way to the vulgar appetite for booty, and step in for his own exclusive interest? he invaded judæa four years after the schism, and jerusalem offered no resistance to him; rehoboam ransomed his capital by emptying the royal treasuries and temple, rendering up even the golden shields which solomon was accustomed to assign to his guards when on duty about his person.* * kings xiv. - ; cf. chron. xii. - , where an episode, not in the _book of kings_, is introduced. the prophet shemaiah played an important part in the transaction. this expedition of the pharaoh was neither dangerous nor protracted, but it was more than two hundred years since so much riches from countries beyond the isthmus had been brought into egypt, and the king was consequently regarded by the whole people of the nile valley as a great hero. aûpûti took upon himself the task of recording the exploit on the south wall of the temple of amon at karnak, not far from the spot where ramses ii. had had engraved the incidents of his syrian campaigns. his architect was sent to silsilis to procure the necessary sandstone to repair the monument. he depicted upon it his father receiving at the hands of amon processions of jewish prisoners, each one representing a captured city. the list makes a brave show, and is remarkable for the number of the names composing it: in comparison with those of thûtmosis iii., it is disappointing, and one sees at a glance how inferior, even in its triumph, the egypt of the xxiind dynasty was to that of the xviiith. [illustration: .jpg amon presenting to sheshonq the list of the cities captured in israel and judah] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it is no longer a question of carchemish, or qodshû, or mitanni, or naharaim: megiddo is the most northern point mentioned, and the localities enumerated bring us more and more to the south--eabbat, taânach, hapharaîm, mahanaîm,* gibeon, beth-horon, ajalon, jud-hammelek, migdol, jerza, shoko, and the villages of the negeb. each locality, in consequence of the cataloguing of obscure towns, furnished enough material to cover two, or even three of the crenellated cartouches in which the names of the conquered peoples are enclosed, and sheshonq had thus the puerile satisfaction of parading before the eyes of his subjects a longer _cortege_ of defeated chiefs than that of his predecessor. his victorious career did not last long: he died shortly after, and his son osorkon was content to assume at a distance authority over the kharu.** * the existence of the names of certain israelite towns on the list of. sheshonq has somewhat astonished the majority of the historians of israel. renan declared that the list must �put aside the conjecture that jeroboam had been the instigator of the expedition, which would certainly have been readily admissible, especially if any force were attached to the greek text of kings xii. , which makes jeroboam to have been a son-in-law of the king of egypt;� the same view had been already expressed by stade; others have thought that sheshonq had conquered the country for his ally jeroboam. sheshonq, in fact, was following the egyptian custom by which all countries and towns which paid tribute to the pharaoh, or who recognised his suzerainty, were made to, or might, figure on his triumphal lists whether they had been conquered or not: the presence of megiddo or mahanaim on the lists does not prove that they were _conquered_ by sheshonq, but that the prince to whom they owed allegiance was a tributary to the king of egypt. the name of jud-ham- melek, which occupies the twenty-ninth place on the list, was for a long time translated as king or kingdom of judah, and passed for being a portrait of rehoboam, which is impossible. the hebrew name was read by w. max millier jad- ham-meleh, the hand, the fort of the king. it appears to me to be more easy to see in it jud-liam-meleh and to associate it with jehudah, a town of the tribe of dan, as brugsch did long ago. ** champollion identified osorkon i. with the zerah, who, according to chron. xiv. - , xvi. , invaded judah and was defeated by asa, but this has no historic value, for it is clear that osorkon never crossed the isthmus. it does not appear, however, that either the philistines, or judah, or israel, or any of the petty tribes which had momentarily gravitated around david and solomon, were disposed to dispute osorkon�s claim, theoretic rather than real as it was. the sword of the stranger had finished the work which the intestine quarrel of the tribes had begun. if rehoboam had ever formed the project of welding together the disintegrated elements of israel, the taking of jerusalem must have been a death-blow to his hopes. his arsenals were empty, his treasury at low ebb, and the prestige purchased by david�s victories was effaced by the humiliation of his own defeat. the ease with which the edifice so laboriously constructed by the heroes of benjamin and judah had been overturned at the first shock, was a proof that the new possessors of canaan were as little capable of barring the way to egypt in her old age, as their predecessors had been when she was in her youth and vigour. the philistines had had their day; it seemed by no means improbable at one time that they were about to sweep everything before them, from the negeb to the orontes, but their peculiar position in the furthest angle of the country, and their numerical weakness, prevented them from continuing their efforts for a prolonged period, and they were at length obliged to renounce in favour of the hebrews their ambitious pretensions. the latter, who had been making steady progress for some half a century, had been successful where the philistines had signally failed, and southern syria recognised their supremacy for the space of two generations. we can only conjecture what they might have done if a second david had led them into the valleys of the orontes and euphrates. they were stronger in numbers than their possible opponents, and their troops, strengthened by mercenary guards, would have perhaps triumphed over the more skilled but fewer warriors which the amorite and aramaean cities could throw into the field against them. the pacific reign of solomon, the schism among the tribes, and the egyptian invasion furnished evidence enough that they also were not destined to realise that solidarity which alone could secure them against the great oriental empires when the day of attack came. the two kingdoms were then enjoying an independent existence. judah, in spite of its smaller numbers and its recent disaster, was not far behind the more extensive israel in its resources. david, and afterwards solomon, had so kneaded together the various elements of which it was composed--caleb, cain, jerahmeel and the judsean clans--that they had become a homogeneous mass, grouped around the capital and its splendid sanctuary, and actuated with feelings of profound admiration and strong fidelity for the family which had made them what they were. misfortune had not chilled their zeal: they rallied round rehoboam and his race with such a persistency that they were enabled to maintain their ground when their richer rivals had squandered their energies and fallen away before their eyes. jeroboam, indeed, and his successors had never obtained from their people more than a precarious support and a lukewarm devotion: their authority was continually coming into conflict with a tendency to disintegration among the tribes, and they could only maintain their rule by the constant employment of force. jeroboam had collected together from the garrisons scattered throughout the country the nucleus of an army, and had stationed the strongest of these troops in his residence at tirzah when he did not require them for some expedition against judah or the philistines. his successors followed his example in this respect, but this military resource was only an ineffectual protection against the dangers which beset them. the kings were literally at the mercy of their guard, and their reign was entirely dependent on its loyalty or caprice: any unscrupulous upstart might succeed in suborning his comrades, and the stroke of a dagger might at any moment send the sovereign to join his ancestors, while the successful rebel reigned in his stead.* the egyptian troops had no sooner set out on their homeward march, than the two kingdoms began to display their respective characteristics. an implacable and truceless war broke out between them. the frontier garrisons of the two nations fought with each other from one year�s end to another--carrying off each other�s cattle, massacring one another, burning each other�s villages and leading their inhabitants into slavery.** * among nineteen kings of israel, eight were assassinated and were replaced by the captains of their guards--nadab, elah, zimri, joram, zachariah, shallum, pekahiah, and pekah. ** this is what is meant by the hebrew historians when they say �there was war between rehoboam and jeroboam all the days of his life� ( kings xv. ; cf. ohron. xii. ), and �between abijam and jeroboam� ( kings xv. ; ohron. xiii. ), and �between asa and baasha� ( kings xv. , ) �all their days.� from time to time, when the situation became intolerable, one of the kings took the field in person, and began operations by attacking such of his enemy�s strongholds as gave him the most trouble at the time. ramah acquired an unenviable reputation in the course of these early conflicts: its position gave it command of the roads terminating in jerusalem, and when it fell into the hands of israel, the judæan capital was blockaded on this side. the strife for its possession was always of a terrible character, and the party which succeeded in establishing itself firmly within it was deemed to have obtained a great success.* * the campaign of abijah at mount zemaraim ( chron. xiii. - ), in which the foundation of the narrative and the geographical details seem fully historical. see also the campaign of baasha against ramah ( kings xv. - ; cf. chron. xvi. - ). the encounter of the armies did not, however, seem to produce much more serious results than those which followed the continual guerilla warfare along the frontier: the conqueror had no sooner defeated his enemy than he set to work to pillage the country in the vicinity, and, having accomplished this, returned promptly to his headquarters with the booty. rehoboam, who had seen something of the magnificence of solomon, tried to perpetuate the tradition of it in his court, as far as his slender revenues would permit him. he had eighteen women in his harem, among whom figured some of his aunts and cousins. the titular queen was maacah, who was represented as a daughter of absalom. she was devoted to the _asheras_, and the king was not behind his father in his tolerance of strange gods; the high places continued to be tolerated by him as sites of worship, and even jerusalem was not free from manifestations of such idolatry as was associated with the old canaanite religion. he reigned seventeen years, and was interred in the city of david;* abijam, the eldest son of maacah, succeeded him, and followed in his evil ways. three years later asa came to the throne,** no opposition being raised to his accession. in israel matters did not go so smoothly. when jeroboam, after a reign of twenty-two years, was succeeded by his son nadab, about the year b.c., it was soon evident that the instinct of loyalty to a particular dynasty had not yet laid any firm hold on the ten tribes. the peace between the philistines and israel was quite as unstable as that between israel and judah: an endless guerilla warfare was waged on the frontier, gibbethon being made to play much the same part in this region as ramah had done in regard to jerusalem. for the moment it was in the hands of the philistines, and in the second year of his reign nadab had gone to lay siege to it in force, when he was assassinated in his tent by one of his captains, a certain baasha, son of ahijah, of the tribe of issachar: the soldiers proclaimed the assassin king, and the people found themselves powerless to reject the nominee of the army.*** * kings xiv. - ; cf. chron. xi. - , where the details given in addition to those in the booh of kings seem to be of undoubted authenticity. ** kings xv. - ; cf. chron. xiii. the booh of kings describes his mother as maacah, the daughter of absalom (xv. ), which would seem to indicate that he was the brother and not the son of abijam. the uncertainty on this point is of long standing, for the author of chronicles makes abijam�s mother out in one place to be micaiah, daughter of uriel of gibcah (xiii. ), and in another (xi. ) maacah, daughter of absalom. *** kings xv. - . baasha pressed forward resolutely his campaign against judah. he seized eamah and fortified it;* and asa, feeling his incapacity to dislodge him unaided, sought to secure an ally. egypt was too much occupied with its own internal dissensions to be able to render any effectual help, but a new power, which would profit quite as much as judah by the overthrow of israel, was beginning to assert itself in the north. damascus had, so far, led an obscure and peaceful existence; it had given way before egypt and chaldæa whenever the egyptians or chaldseans had appeared within striking distance, but had refrained from taking any part in the disturbances by which syria was torn asunder. having been occupied by the amorites, it threw its lot in with theirs, keeping, however, sedulously in the background: while the princes of qodshû waged war against the pharaohs, undismayed by frequent reverses, damascus did not scruple to pay tribute to thûtmosis iii. and his descendants, or to enter into friendly relations with them. meanwhile the amorites had been overthrown, and qodshû, ruined by the asiatic invasion, soon became little more than an obscure third-rate town;** the aramaeans made themselves masters of damascus about the xiith century, and in their hands it continued to be, just as in the preceding epochs, a town without ambitions and of no great renown. * kings xv. ; cf. ghron. xvi. . ** qodshû is only once mentioned in the bible ( sam. xxiv. ), in which passage its name, misunderstood by the massoretic scribe, has been restored from the septuagint text. we have seen how the aramæans, alarmed at the sudden rise of the hebrew dynasty, entered into a coalition against david with the ammonite leaders: zoba aspired to the chief place among the nations of central syria, but met with reverses, and its defeat delivered over to the israelites its revolted dependencies in the haurân and its vicinity, such as maacah, geshur, and even damascus itself.* the supremacy was, however, shortlived; immediately after the death of david, a chief named rezôn undertook to free them from the yoke of the stranger. he had begun his military career under hada-dezer, king of zoba: when disaster overtook this leader and released him from his allegiance, he collected an armed force and fought for his own hand. a lucky stroke made him master of damascus: he proclaimed himself king there, harassed the israelites with impunity during the reign of solomon, and took over the possessions of the kings of zoba in the valleys of the litany and the orontes.** the rupture between the houses of israel and judah removed the only dangerous rival from his path, and damascus became the paramount power in southern and central palestine. while judah and israel wasted their strength in fratricidal struggles, tabrimmon, and after him benhadad i., gradually extended their territory in coele-syria;*** they conquered hamath, and the desert valleys which extend north-eastward in the direction of the euphrates, and forced a number of the hittite kings to render them homage. * cf. what is said in regard to these events on pp. , , supra. ** kings xi. - . the reading �esron� in the septuagint ( kings xi. ) indicates a form �khezrôn,� by which it was sought to replace the traditional reading �rezôn.� *** hezion, whom the jewish writer intercalates before tabrimmon ( kings xv. ), is probably a corruption of rezôn; winckler, relying on the septuagint variants azin or azael ( kings xv. ), proposes to alter hezion into hazael, and inserts a certain hazael i. in this place. tabrimmon is only mentioned in kings xv. , where he is said to have been the father of benhadad. they had concluded an alliance with jeroboam as soon as he established his separate kingdom, and maintained the treaty with his successors, nadab and baasha. asa collected all the gold and silver which was left in the temple of jerusalem and in his own palace, and sent it to benhadad, saying, �there is a league between me and thee, between thy father and my father: behold, i have sent unto thee a present of silver and gold; go, break thy league with baasha, king of israel, that he may depart from me.� it would seem that baasha, in his eagerness to complete the fortifications of ramah, had left his northern frontier undefended. benhadad accepted the proposal and presents of the king of judah, invaded galilee, seized the cities of ijôn, dan, and abel-beth-maacah, which defended the upper reaches of the jordan and the litany, the lowlands of genesareth, and all the land of naphtali. baasha hastily withdrew from judah, made terms with benhadad, and settled down in tirzah for the remainder of his reign;* asa demolished eamah, and built the strongholds of gebah and mizpah from its ruins.** benhadad retained the territory he had acquired, and exercised a nominal sovereignty over the two hebrew kingdoms. baasha, like jeroboam, failed to found a lasting dynasty; his son blah met with the same fate at the hands of zimri which he himself had meted out to nadab. as on the former occasion, the army was encamped before gibbethon, in the country of the philistines, when the tragedy took place. * kings xv. , xvi. . ** kings xv. - ; of. ghron. xvi. - . elah was at tirzah, �drinking himself drunk in the house of arza, which was over the household;� zimri, who was �captain of half his chariots,� left his post at the front, and assassinated him as he lay intoxicated. the whole family of baasha perished in the subsequent confusion, but the assassin only survived by seven days the date of his crime. when the troops which he had left behind him in camp heard of what had occurred, they refused to accept him as king, and, choosing omri in his place, marched against tirzah. zimri, finding it was impossible either to win them over to his side or defeat them, set fire to the palace, and perished in the flames. his death did not, however, restore peace to israel; while one-half of the tribes approved the choice of the army, the other flocked to the standard of tibni, son of ginath. war raged between the two factions for four years, and was only ended by the death--whether natural or violent we do not know--of tibni and his brother joram.* * kings xvi. - ; joram is not mentioned in the massoretic text, but his name appears in the septuagint. two dynasties had thus arisen in israel, and had been swept away by revolutionary outbursts, while at jerusalem the descendants of david followed one another in unbroken succession. asa outlived nadab by eleven years, and we hear nothing of his relations with the neighbouring states during the latter part of his reign. we are merely told that his zeal in the service of the lord was greater than had been shown by any of his predecessors. he threw down the idols, expelled their priests, and persecuted all those who practised the ancient religions. his grandmother maacah �had made an abominable image for an asherah;� he cut it down, and burnt it in the valley of the kedron, and deposed her from the supremacy in the royal household which she had held for three generations. he is, therefore, the first of the kings to receive favourable mention from the orthodox chroniclers of later times, and it is stated that he �did that which was right in the eyes of the lord, as did david his father.� * omri proved a warlike monarch, and his reign, though not a long one, was signalised by a decisive crisis in the fortunes of israel.** the northern tribes had, so far, possessed no settled capital, shechem, penuel, and tirzah having served in turn as residences for the successors of jeroboam and baasha. latterly tirzah had been accorded a preference over its rivals; but zimri had burnt the castle there, and the ease with which it had been taken and retaken was not calculated to reassure the head of the new dynasty. omri turned his attention to a site lying a little to the north-west of shechem and mount ebal, and at that time partly covered by the hamlet of shomerôn or shimrôn--our modern samaria.*** * kings xv. ; cf. ohron. xiv. . it is admitted, however, though without any blame being attached to him, that �the high places were not taken away� ( kings xv. ; cf. chron. xv. ). ** the hebrew writer gives the length of his reign as twelve years ( kings xvi. ). several historians consider this period too brief, and wish to extend it to twenty-four years; i cannot, however, see that there is, so far, any good reason for doubting the approximate accuracy of the bible figures. *** according to the tradition preserved in kings xvi. , the name of the city comes from shomer, the man from whom ahab bought the site. his choice was a wise and judicious one, as the rapid development of the city soon proved. it lay on the brow of a rounded hill, which rose in the centre of a wide and deep depression, and was connected by a narrow ridge with the surrounding mountains. the valley round it is fertile and well watered, and the mountains are cultivated up to their summits; throughout the whole of ephraim it would have been difficult to find a site which could compare with it in strength or attractiveness. omri surrounded his city with substantial ramparts; he built a palace for himself, and a temple in which was enthroned a golden calf similar to those at dan and bethel.* a population drawn from other nations besides the israelites flocked into this well-defended stronghold, and samaria soon came to be for israel what jerusalem already was for judah, an almost impregnable fortress, in which the sovereign entrenched himself, and round which the nation could rally in times of danger. his contemporaries fully realised the importance of this move on omri�s part; his name became inseparably connected in their minds with that of israel. samaria and the house of joseph were for them, henceforth, the house of omri, bît-omri, and the name still clung to them long after omri had died and his family had become extinct.** * amos viii. , where the sin of samaria, coupled as it is with the life of the god of dan and the way of beersheba, can, as wellhausen points out, only refer to the image of the calf worshipped at samaria. ** shalmaneser ii. even goes so far as to describe jehu, who exterminated the family of omri, as _jaua ahal khumri_, �jehu, son of omri.� he gained the supremacy over judah, and forced several of the south-western provinces, which had been in a state of independence since the days of solomon, to acknowledge his rule; he conquered the country of medeba, vanquished kamoshgad, king of moab, and imposed on him a heavy tribute in sheep and wool.* against benhadad in the north-west he was less fortunate. he was forced to surrender to him several of the cities of gilead--among others bamoth-gilead, which commanded the fords over the jabbok and jordan.** * inscription of meslia, . - ; cf. kings iii. . ** kings xx. . no names are given in the text, but external evidence proves that they were cities of persea, and that ramoth-gilead was one of them. [illustration: .jpg the hill of samaria] drawn by boudier, from photograph no. g of the _palestine exploration fund._ he even set apart a special quarter in samaria for the natives of damascus, where they could ply their trades and worship their gods without interference. it was a kind of semi-vassalage, from which he was powerless to free himself unaided: he realised this, and looked for help from without; he asked and obtained the hand of jezebel, daughter of bthbaal, king of the sidonians, for ahab, his heir. hiram i., the friend of david, had carried the greatness of tyre to its highest point; after his death, the same spirit of discord which divided the hebrews made its appearance in phoenicia. the royal power was not easily maintained over this race of artisans and sailors: baalbazer, son of hiram, reigned for six years, and his successor, abdastart, was killed in a riot after a still briefer enjoyment of power. we know how strong was the influence exercised by foster-mothers in the great families of the bast; the four sons of abda-start�s nurse assassinated their foster-brother, and the eldest of them usurped his crown. supported by the motley crowd of slaves and adventurers which filled the harbours of phoenicia, they managed to cling to power for twelve years. their stupid and brutal methods of government produced most disastrous results. a section of the aristocracy emigrated to the colonies across the sea and incited them to rebellion; had this state of things lasted for any time, the tyrian empire would have been doomed. a revolution led to the removal of the usurper and the restoration of the former dynasty, but did not bring back to the unfortunate city the tranquillity which it sorely needed. the three surviving sons of baalbezer, methuastarfc, astarym, and phelles followed one another on the throne in rapid succession, the last-named perishing by the hand of his cousin ethbaal, after a reign of eight months. so far, the israelites had not attempted to take advantage of these dissensions, but there was always the danger lest one of their kings, less absorbed than his predecessors in the struggle with judah, might be tempted by the wealth of phoenicia to lay hands on it. ethbaal, therefore, eagerly accepted the means of averting this danger by an alliance with the new dynasty offered to him by omri.* * kings xvi. , where the historian has hebraicised the phonician name ittobaal into �ethbaal,� �baal is with him.� izebel or jezebel seems to be an abbreviated form of some name like baalezbel. the presence of a phonician princess at samaria seems to have had a favourable effect on the city and its inhabitants. the tribes of northern and central palestine had, so far, resisted the march of material civilization which, since the days of solomon, had carried judah along with it; they adhered, as a matter of principle, to the rude and simple customs of their ancestors. jezebel, who from her cradle had been accustomed to all the luxuries and refinements of the phoenician court, was by no means prepared to dispense with them in her adopted country. by their contact with her, the israelites--at any rate, the upper and middle classes of them--acquired a certain degree of polish; the royal office assumed a more dignified exterior, and approached more nearly the splendours of the other syrian monarchies, such as those of damascus, hamath, sidon, tyre, and even judah. unfortunately, the effect of this material progress was marred by a religious difficulty. jezebel had been brought up by her father, the high priest of the sidonian astarte, as a rigid believer in his faith, and she begged ahab to permit her to celebrate openly the worship of her national deities. ere long the tyrian baal was installed at samaria with his asherah, and his votaries had their temples and sacred groves to worship in: their priests and prophets sat at the king�s table. ahab did not reject the god of his ancestors in order to embrace the religion of his wife--a reproach which was afterwards laid to his door; he remained faithful to him, and gave the children whom he had by jezebel names compounded with that of jahveh, such as ahaziah, joram, and athaliah.* * kings xvi. - . ahaziah and joram mean respectively �whom jahveh sustaineth,� and �jahveh is exalted.� athaliah may possibly be derived from a phoenician form, _ailialith or athlifh,_ into which the name of jahveh does not enter. this was not the first instance of such tolerance in the history of the israelites: solomon had granted a similar liberty of conscience to all his foreign wives, and neither rehoboam nor abijam had opposed maacah in her devotion to the canaanitish idols. but the times were changing, and the altar of baal could no longer be placed side by side with that of jahveh without arousing fierce anger and inexorable hatred. scarce a hundred years had elapsed since the rupture between the tribes, and already one-half of the people were unable to understand how place could be found in the breast of a true israelite for any other god but jahveh: jahveh alone was lord, for none of the deities worshipped by foreign races under human or animal shapes could compare with him in might and holiness. from this to the repudiation of all those practices associated with exotic deities, such as the use of idols of wood or metal, the anointing of isolated boulders or circles of rocks, the offering up of prisoners or of the firstborn, was but a step: asa had already furnished an example of rigid devotion in judah, and there were many in israel who shared his views and desired to imitate him. the opposition to what was regarded as apostasy on the part of the king did not come from the official priesthood; the sanctuaries at dan, at bethel, at shiloh, and at gilgal were prosperous in spite of jezebel, and this was enough for them. but the influence of the prophets had increased marvellously since the rupture between the kingdoms, and at the very beginning of his reign ahab was unwise enough to outrage their sense of justice by one of his violent acts: in a transport of rage he had slain a certain naboth, who had refused to let him have his vineyard in order that he might enlarge the grounds of the palace he was building for himself at jezreel.* the prophets, as in former times, were divided into schools, the head of each being called its father, the members bearing the title of �the sons of the prophets;� they dwelt in a sort of monastery, each having his own cell, where they ate together, performed their devotional exercises or assembled to listen to the exhortations of their chief prophets:** nor did their sacred office prevent them from marrying.*** * kings xxi., where the later tradition throws nearly all the blame on jezebel; whereas in the shorter account, in kings ix. , , it is laid entirely on ahab. ** in sam. xix. , a passage which seems to some to be a later interpolation, mentions a �company of the prophets, prophesying, and samuel standing as head over them.� cf. kings vi. - , where the narrative introduces a congregation of prophets grouped round elisha. *** kings iv. - , where an account is given of the miracle worked by elisha on behalf of �a woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets.� as a rule, they settled near one of the temples, and lived there on excellent terms with the members of the regular priesthood. accompanied by musical instruments, they chanted the songs in which the poets of other days extolled the mighty deeds of jahveh, and obtained from this source the incidents of the semi-religious accounts which they narrated concerning the early history of the people; or, when the spirit moved them, they went about through the land prophesying, either singly, or accompanied by a disciple, or in bands.* the people thronged round them to listen to their hymns or their stories of the heroic age: the great ones of the land, even kings themselves, received visits from them, and endured their reproaches or exhortations with mingled feelings of awe and terror. a few of the prophets took the part of ahab and jezebel,** but the majority declared against them, and of these, the most conspicuous, by his forcibleness of speech and action, was elijah. we do not know of what race or family he came, nor even what he was:*** the incidents of his life which have come down to us seem to be wrapped in a vague legendary grandeur. he appears before ahab, and tells him that for years to come no rain or dew shall fall on the earth save by his command, and then takes flight into the desert in order to escape the king�s anger. * sam. x. , where a band of prophets is mentioned �coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a timbrel, and a pipe, and a harp, before them, prophesying;� cf. ver. . in kings ii. - , bands of the �children of the prophets� come out from bethel and jericho to ask elisha if he knows the fate which awaits elijah on that very day. ** cf. the anonymous prophet who encourages ahab, in the name of jahveh, to surprise the camp of benhadad before samaria ( kings xx. - , - , ); and the prophet zedekiah, who gives advice contrary to that of his fellow- prophet micaiah in the council of war held by ahab with jehoshaphat, king of judah, before the attack on ramobh- gilead ( kings xxii. , , ). *** the ethnical inscription, �tishbite,� which we find after his name ( kings xvii. , xxi. ), is due to an error on the part of the copyist. he is there ministered unto by ravens, which bring him bread and meat every night and morning. when the spring from which he drinks dries up, he goes to the house of a widow at zarephath in the country of sidon, and there he lives with his hostess for twelve months on a barrel of meal and a cruse of oil which never fail. the widow�s son dies suddenly: he prays to jahveh and restores him to life; then, still guided by an inspiration from above, he again presents himself before the king. ahab receives him without resentment, assembles the prophets of baal, brings them face to face with elijah on the top of mount carmel, and orders them to put an end to the drought by which his kingdom is wasted. the phoenicians erect an altar and call upon their baâlîm with loud cries, and gash their arms and bodies with knives, yet cannot bring about the miracle expected of them. elijah, after mocking at their cries and contortions, at last addresses a prayer to jahveh, and fire comes down from heaven and consumes the sacrifice in a moment; the people, convinced by the miracle, fall upon the idolaters and massacre them, and the rain shortly afterwards falls in torrents. after this triumph he is said to have fled once more for safety to the desert, and there on horeb to have had a divine vision. �and, behold, the lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the lord; but the lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. and it was so, when elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. and, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, �what doest thou here, elijah?�� god then commanded him to anoint hazael as king of syria, and jehu, son of nimshi, as king over israel, and elisha, son of shaphat, as prophet in his stead, �and him that escapeth from the sword of hazael shall jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of jehu shall elisha slay.� the sacred writings go on to tell us that the prophet who had held such close converse with the deity was exempt from the ordinary laws of humanity, and was carried to heaven in a chariot of fire. the account that has come down to us shows the impression of awe left by elijah on the spirit of his age.* ahab was one of the most warlike among the warrior-kings of israel. he ruled moab with a strong hand,** kept judah in subjection,*** and in his conflict with damascus experienced alternately victory and honourable defeat. hadadidri [hadadezer], of whom the hebrew historians make a second benhadad,**** had succeeded the conqueror of baasha.^ * the story of elijah is found in kings xvii.-xix., xxi. - , and kings i., ii. - . ** inscription of mesha, . , . *** the subordination of judah is nowhere explicitly mentioned: it is inferred from the attitude adopted by jehoshaphat in presence of ahab ( kings xxii. , et seq.). **** the assyrian texts call this dadidri, adadidri, which exactly corresponds to the plebrew form hadadezer. ^ the information in the booh of kings does not tell us at what time during the reign of ahab his first wars with hadadezer (benhadad ii.) and the siege of samaria occurred. the rapid success of shalmaneser�s campaigns against damascus, between and b.c., does not allow us to place these events after the invasion of assyria. ahab appears, in , at the battle of karkar, as the ally of benhadad, as i shall show later. the account of his campaigns in the hebrew records has only reached us in a seemingly condensed and distorted condition. israel, strengthened by the exploits of omri, must have offered him a strenuous resistance, but we know nothing of the causes, nor of the opening scenes of the drama. when the curtain is lifted, the preliminary conflict is over, and the israelites, closely besieged in samaria, have no alternative before them but unconditional surrender. this was the first serious attack the city had sustained, and its resistance spoke well for the military foresight of its founder. in benhadad�s train were thirty-two kings, and horses and chariots innumerable, while his adversary could only oppose to them seven thousand men. ahab was willing to treat, but the conditions proposed were so outrageous that he broke off the negotiations. we do not know how long the blockade had lasted, when one day the garrison made a sortie in full daylight, and fell upon the syrian camp; the enemy were panic-stricken, and benhadad with difficulty escaped on horseback with a handful of men. he resumed hostilities in the following year, but instead of engaging the enemy in the hill-country of ephraim, where his superior numbers brought him no advantage, he deployed his lines on the plain of jezreel, near the town of aphek. his servants had counselled him to change his tactics: �the god of the hebrews is a god of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.� the advice, however, proved futile, for he sustained on the open plain a still more severe defeat than he had met with in the mountains, and the hebrew historians affirm that he was taken prisoner during the pursuit. the power of damascus was still formidable, and the captivity of its king had done little to bring the war to an end; ahab, therefore, did not press his advantage, but received the syrian monarch �as a brother,� and set him at liberty after concluding with him an offensive and defensive alliance. israel at this time recovered possession of some of the cities which had been lost under baasha and omri, and the israelites once more enjoyed the right to occupy a particular quarter of damascus. according to the hebrew account, this was the retaliation they took for their previous humiliations. it is further stated, in relation to this event, that a certain man of the sons of the prophets, speaking by the word of the lord, bade one of his companions smite him. having received a wound, he disguised himself with a bandage over his eyes, and placed himself in the king�s path, �and as the king passed by, he cried unto the king: and he said, thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold, a man turned aside, and brought a man unto me, and said, keep this man: if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. and as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. and the king of israel said unto him, so shall thy judgment be; thyself has decided it. then he hasted, and took the headband away from his eyes, and the king of israel discerned him that he was one of the prophets. and he said unto him, thus saith the lord, because thou hast let go out of thy hand the man whom i had devoted to destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. and the king of israel went to his house heavy and displeased, and came to samaria.� this story was in accordance with the popular feeling, and ahab certainly ought not to have paused till he had exterminated his enemy, could he have done so; but was this actually in his power? we have no reason to contest the leading facts in this account, or to doubt that benhadad suffered some reverses before samaria; but we may perhaps ask whether the check was as serious as we are led to believe, and whether imagination and national vanity did not exaggerate its extent and results. the fortresses of persea which, according to the treaty, ought to have been restored to israel, remained in the hands of the people of damascus, and the loss of ramoth-gilead continued to be a source of vexation to such of the tribes of gad and reuben as followed the fortunes of the house of omri:* yet these places formed the most important part of benhadad�s ransom. * �and the king of israel said unto his servants, know ye that ramoth-gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the king of syria?� the sole effect of ahab�s success was to procure for him more lenient treatment; he lost no territory, and perhaps gained a few towns, but he had to sign conditions of peace which made him an acknowledged vassal to the king of syria.* * no document as yet proves directly that ahab was vassal to benhadad ii. the fact seems to follow clearly enough from the account of the battle of karkar against shalmaneser ii., where the contingent of ahab of israel figures among those of the kings who fought for benhadad ii. against the assyrians. damascus still remained the foremost state of syria, and, if we rightly interpret the scanty information we possess, seemed in a fair way to bring about that unification of the country which neither hittites, philistines, nor hebrews had been able to effect. situated nearly equidistant from raphia and carchemish, on the outskirts of the cultivated region, the city was protected in the rear by the desert, which secured it from invasion on the east and north-east; the dusty plains of the haurân protected it on the south, and the wooded cliffs of anti-lebanon on the west and north-west. it was entrenched within these natural barriers as in a fortress, whence the garrison was able to sally forth at will to attack in force one or other of the surrounding nations: if the city were victorious, its central position made it easy for its rulers to keep watch over and preserve what they had won; if it suffered defeat, the surrounding mountains and deserts formed natural lines of fortification easy to defend against the pursuing foe, but very difficult for the latter to force, and the delay presented by this obstacle gave the inhabitants time to organise their reserves and bring fresh troops into the field. the kings of damascus at the outset brought under their suzerainty the aramaean principalities--argob, maacah, and geshur, by which they controlled the haurân, and zobah, which secured to them coele-syria from lake huleh to the bahr el-kades. they had taken upper galilee from the hebrews, and subsequently perasa, as far as the jabbok, and held in check israel and the smaller states, amnion and moab, which followed in its wake. they exacted tribute from hamath, the phoenician arvad, the lower valley of the orontes, and from a portion of the hittites, and demanded contingents from their princes in time of war. their power was still in its infancy, and its elements were not firmly welded together, but the surrounding peoples were in such a state of weakness and disunion that they might be left out of account as formidable enemies. the only danger that menaced the rising kingdom was the possibility that the two ancient warlike nations, egypt and assyria, might shake off their torpor, and reappearing on the scene of their former prowess might attack her before she had consolidated her power by the annexation of naharaim. end of vol. vi. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume vii. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: .jpg frontispiece] /* slumber song--after painting bv p. grot. johann */ [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: .jpg page image] _the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria_ _assur-nazir-pal ( - b.c.) and shalmaneser iii. ( - b.c.)--the kingdom of urartu and its conquering princes: menuas and argistis._ _the line of assyrian kings after assurirba, and the babylonian dynasties: the war between rammân-nirâri iii. and shamash-mudammiq; his victories over babylon; tukulti-ninip ii. ( - b.c.)--the empire at the accession of assur-nazir-pal: the assyrian army and the progress of military tactics; cavalry, military engines; the condition of assyria�s neighbours, methods of assyrian conquest._ _the first campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in nairi and on the khabur ( - b.c.): zamua reduced to an assyrian province ( b.c.)--the fourth campaign in naîri and the war on the euphrates ( b.c.); the first conquest of bu-adini--northern syria at the opening of the ixth century: its civilisation, arts, army, and religion--the submission of the hittite states and of the patina: the assyrians reach the mediterranean._ _the empire after the wars of assur-nazir-pal--building of the palace at calah: assyrian architecture and sculpture in the ixth century--the tunnel of negub and the palace of balawât--the last years of assur-nazir-pal: his campaign of the year in naîri--the death of assur-nazir-pal ( b.c.); his character._ _shalmaneser iii. ( - b.c.): the state of the empire at his accession--urartu: its physical features, races, towns, temples, its deities--shalmaneser�s first campaign in urartu: he penetrates as far as lake van ( b.c.)--the conquest of bît-adini and of naîri ( - b.c.)_ _the attack on damascus: the battle of qarqar ( b.c.) and the war against babylon ( - b.c.)--the alliance between judah and israel, the death of ahab ( b.c.); damascus successfully resists the attacks of assyria ( - b.c.)--moab delivered from israel, mesha; the death of ben-hadad (adadidri) and the accession of hazael; the fall of the house of omri-jehu ( b.c.)--the defeat of hazael and the homage of jehu ( - b.c.). wars in cilicia and in namri ( - b.c.): the last battles of shalmaneser iii.; his building works, the revolt of assur-dain-pal--samsi-rammân iv. ( - b.c.), his first three expeditions, his campaigns against babylon--bammdn-nirdri iv, ( - b.c.)--jehu, athaliah, joash: the supremacy of hazael over israel and judah--victory of bammdn-nirdri over mari, and the submission of all syria to the assyrians ( b.c.)._ _the growth of urartu: the conquests of menuas and argistis i., their victories over assyria--shalmaneser iv. ( - b.c.)--assurdân iii. ( - b.c.)--assur-niruri iii. ( - b.c.)--the downfall of assyria and the triumph of urartu._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter i--the assyrian revival and the struggle for syria _assur-nazir-pal ( - ) and shalmaneser iii. ( - )--the kingdom of urartu and its conquering princes: menuas and argistis._ assyria was the first to reappear on the scene of action. less hampered by an ancient past than egypt and chaldæa, she was the sooner able to recover her strength after any disastrous crisis, and to assume again the offensive along the whole of her frontier line. image drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief at koyunjik of the time of sennacherib. the initial cut, which is also by faucher-gudin, represents the broken obelisk of assur- nazir-pal, the bas-reliefs of which are as yet unpublished. during the years immediately following the ephemeral victories and reverses of assurirba, both the country and its rulers are plunged in the obscurity of oblivion. two figures at length, though at what date is uncertain, emerge from the darkness--a certain irbarammân and an assur-nadinakhê ii., whom we find engaged in building palaces and making a necropolis. they were followed towards by a tiglath-pileser ii., of whom nothing is known but his name.* he in his turn was succeeded about the year by one assurdân ii., who appears to have concentrated his energies upon public works, for we hear of him digging a canal to supply his capital with water, restoring the temples and fortifying towns. kammân-nirâri iii., who followed him in , stands out more distinctly from the mists which envelop the history of this period; he repaired the gate of the tigris and the adjoining wall at assur, he enlarged its principal sanctuary, reduced several rebellious provinces to obedience, and waged a successful warfare against the neighbouring inhabitants of karduniash. since the extinction of the race of nebuchadrezzar i., babylon had been a prey to civil discord and foreign invasion. the aramaean tribes mingled with, or contiguous to the remnants of the cossoans bordering on the persian gulf, constituted possibly, even at this period, the powerful nation of the kaldâ.** * our only knowledge of tiglath-pileser ii. is from a brick, on which he is mentioned as being the grandfather of rammân- nirâri ii. ** the names chaldæa and chaldæans being ordinarily used to designate the territory and people of babylon, i shall employ the term kaldu or kaldâ in treating of the aramæan tribes who constituted the actual chaldæan nation. it has been supposed, not without probability, that a certain simashshikhu, prince of the country of the sea, who immediately followed the last scion of the line of pashê,* was one of their chiefs. he endeavoured to establish order in the city, and rebuilt the temple of the sun destroyed by the nomads at sippar, but at the end of eighteen years he was assassinated. his son eâmukinshurnu remained at the head of affairs some three to six months; kashshu-nadinakhê ruled three or six years, at the expiration of which a man of the house of bâzi, eulbar-shakinshumi by name, seized upon the crown.** his dynasty consisted of three members, himself included, and it was overthrown after a duration of twenty years by an elamite, who held authority for another seven.*** * the name of this prince has been read simbarshiku by peiser, a reading adopted by rost; simbarshiku would have been shortened into sibir, and we should have to identify it with that of the sibir mentioned by assur-nazir-pal in his annals, col. ii. . , as a king of karduniash who lived before his (assur-nazir-pal�s) time (see p. of the present volume). ** the name of this king may be read edubarshakîn-shumi. the house of bâzi takes its name from an ancestor who must have founded it at some unknown date, but who never reigned in chaldæa. winckler has with reason conjectured that the name subsequently lost its meaning to the babylonians, and that they confused the chaldæan house of bâzi with the arab country of bâzu: this may explain why in his dynasties berosos attributes an arab origin to that one which comprises the short-lived line of bît-bâzi. *** our knowledge of these events is derived solely from the texts of the babylonian canon published and translated by g. smith, by pinches, and by sayce. the inscription of nabubaliddin informs us that kashu-nadînakhê and eulbar- shâkinshumu continued the works begun by simashshiku in the temple of the sun at sippar. it was a period of calamity and distress, during which the arabs or the aramæans ravaged the country, and pillaged without compunction not only the property of the inhabitants, but also that of the gods. the elamite usurper having died about the year , a babylonian of noble extraction expelled the intruders, and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the kingdom under his rule.* * the names of the first kings of this dynasty are destroyed in the copies of the royal canon which have come down to us. the three preceding dynasties are restored as follows:-- [illustration: .jpg table of kings] five or six of his descendants had passed away, and a certain shamash-mudammiq was feebly holding the reins of government, when the expeditions of rammân-nirâri iii. provoked war afresh between assyria and babylon. the two armies encountered each other once again on their former battlefield between the lower zab and the turnat. shamash-mudammiq, after being totally routed near the yalmân mountains, did not long survive, and naboshumishkun, who succeeded him, showed neither more ability nor energy than his predecessor. the assyrians wrested from him the fortresses of bambala and bagdad, dislodged him from the positions where he had entrenched himself, and at length took him prisoner while in flight, and condemned him to perpetual captivity.* * shamash-mudammiq appears to have died about . naboshumishkun probably reigned only one or two years, from to or to . the name of his successor is destroyed in the _synchronous history_; it might be nabubaliddin, who seems to have had a long life, but it is wiser, until fresh light is thrown on the subject, to admit that it is some prince other than nabubaliddin, whose name is as yet unknown to us. his successor abandoned to the assyrians most of the districts situated on the left bank of the lower zab between the zagros mountains and the tigris, and peace, which was speedily secured by a double marriage, remained unbroken for nearly half a century. tukulti-ninip ii. was fond of fighting; �he overthrew his adversaries and exposed their heads upon stakes,� but, unlike his predecessor, he directed his efforts against naîri and the northern and western tribes. we possess no details of his campaigns; we can only surmise that in six years, from to ,* he brought into subjection the valley of the upper tigris and the mountain provinces which separate it from the assyrian plain. having reached the source of the river, he carved, beside the image of tiglath-pileser i., the following inscription, which may still be read upon the rock. �with the help of assur, shamash, and rammân, the gods of his religion, he reached this spot. the lofty mountains he subjugated from the sun-rising to its down-setting; victorious, irresistible, he came hither, and like unto the lightning he crossed the raging rivers.� ** * the parts preserved of the eponym canon begin their record in , about the end of the reign of rammân-nirâri il the line which distinguishes the two reigns from one another is drawn between the name of the personage who corresponds to the year , and that of tukulti-ninip who corresponds to the year : tukulti-ninip ii., therefore, begins his reign in , and his death is six years later, in . ** this inscription and its accompanying bas-relief are mentioned in the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_. he did not live long to enjoy his triumphs, but his death made no impression on the impulse given to the fortunes of his country. the kingdom which he left to assur-nazir-pal, the eldest of his sons, embraced scarcely any of the countries which had paid tribute to former sovereigns. besides assyria proper, it comprised merely those districts of naîri which had been annexed within his own generation; the remainder had gradually regained their liberty: first the outlying dependencies--cilicia, melitene, northern syria, and then the provinces nearer the capital, the valleys of the masios and the zagros, the steppes of the khabur, and even some districts such as lubdi and shupria, which had been allotted to assyrian colonists at various times after successful campaigns. nearly the whole empire had to be reconquered under much the same conditions as in the first instance. assyria itself, it is true, had recovered the vitality and elasticity of its earlier days. the people were a robust and energetic race, devoted to their rulers, and ready to follow them blindly and trustingly wherever they might lead. the army, while composed chiefly of the same classes of troops as in the time of tiglath-pileser i.,--spearmen, archers, sappers, and slingers,--now possessed a new element, whose appearance on the field of battle was to revolutionize the whole method of warfare; this was the cavalry, properly so called, introduced as an adjunct to the chariotry. the number of horsemen forming this contingent was as yet small; like the infantry, they wore casques and cuirasses, but were clothed with a tight-fitting loin-cloth in place of the long kilt, the folds of which would have embarrassed their movements. one-half of the men carried sword and lance, the other half sword and bow, the latter of a smaller kind than that used by the infantry. their horses were bridled, and bore trappings on the forehead, but had no saddles; their riders rode bareback without stirrups; they sat far back with the chest thrown forward, their knees drawn up to grip the shoulder of the animal. [illustration: .jpg an assyrian horseman armed with the sword] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in bronze on the gate of balawât. the assyrian artist has shown the head and legs of the second horse in profile behind the first, but he has forgotten to represent the rest of its body, and also the man riding it. each horseman was attended by a groom, who rode abreast of him, and held his reins during an action, so that he might be free to make use of his weapons. this body of cavalry, having little confidence in its own powers, kept in close contact with the main body of the army, and was not used in independent manouvres; it was associated with and formed an escort to the chariotry in expeditions where speed was essential, and where the ordinary foot soldier would have hampered the movements of the charioteers.* * isolated horsemen must no doubt have existed in the assyrian just as in the egyptian army, but we never find any mention of a _body_ of cavalry in inscriptions prior to the time of assur-nazir-pal; the introduction of this new corps must consequently have taken place between the reigns of tiglath-pileser and assur-nazir-pal, probably nearer the time of the latter. assur-nazir-pal himself seldom speaks of his cavalry, but he constantly makes mention of the horsemen of the aramaean and syrian principalities, whom he incorporated into his own army. [illustration: .jpg a mounted assyrian archer with attendant] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs of the gate of balawât. the army thus reinforced was at all events more efficient, if not actually more powerful, than formerly; the discipline maintained was as severe, the military spirit as keen, the equipment as perfect, and the tactics as skilful as in former times. a knowledge of engineering had improved upon the former methods of taking towns by sapping and scaling, and though the number of military engines was as yet limited, the besiegers were well able, when occasion demanded, to improvise and make use of machines capable of demolishing even the strongest walls.* * the battering-ram had already reached such a degree of perfection under assur-nazir-pal, that it must have been invented some time before the execution of the first bas- reliefs on which we see it portrayed. its points of resemblance to the greek battering-ram furnished hoofer with one of his mam arguments for placing the monuments of khorsabad and koyunjik as late as the persian or parthian period. the assyrians were familiar with all the different kinds of battering-ram; the hand variety, which was merely a beam tipped with iron, worked by some score of men; the fixed ram, in which the beam was suspended from a scaffold and moved by means of ropes; and lastly, the movable ram, running on four or six wheels, which enabled it to be advanced or withdrawn at will. the military engineers of the day allowed full rein to their fancy in the many curious shapes they gave to this latter engine; for example, they gave to the mass of bronze at its point the form of the head of an animal, and the whole engine took at times the form of a sow ready to root up with its snout the foundations of the enemy�s defences. the scaffolding of the machine was usually protected by a carapace of green leather or some coarse woollen material stretched over it, which broke the force of blows from projectiles: at times it had an additional arrangement in the shape of a cupola or turret in which archers were stationed to sweep the face of the wall opposite to the point of attack. [illustration: .jpg the movable sow making a breach in the wall of a fortress] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs of the gate of balawât. the battering-rams were set up and placed in line at a short distance from the ramparts of the besieged town; the ground in front of them was then levelled and a regular causeway constructed, which was paved with bricks wherever the soil appeared to be lacking in firmness. these preliminaries accomplished, the engines were pushed forward by relays of troops till they reached the required range. the effort needed to set the ram in motion severely taxed the strength of those engaged in the work; for the size of the beam was enormous, and its iron point, or the square mass of metal at the end, was of no light weight. the besieged did their best to cripple or, if possible, destroy the engine as it approached them. [illustration: .jpg the turreted battering-ram attacking the walls of a town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief brought from nimroud, now in the british museum. torches, lighted tow, burning pitch, and stink-pots were hurled down upon its roofing: attempts were made to seize the head of the ram by means of chains or hooks, so as to prevent it from moving, or in order to drag it on to the battlements; in some cases the garrison succeeded in crushing the machinery with a mass of rock. the assyrians, however, did not allow themselves to be discouraged by such trifling accidents; they would at once extinguish the fire, release, by sheer force of muscle, the beams which the enemy had secured, and if, notwithstanding all their efforts, one of the machines became injured, they had others ready to take its place, and the ram would be again at work after only a few minutes� delay. walls, even when of burnt brick or faced with small stones, stood no chance against such an attack. [illustration: .jpg the besieged endeavouring to cripple or destroy the battering-ram] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief from nimroud, now in the british museum. the first blow of the ram sufficed to shake them, and an opening was rapidly made, so that in a few days, often in a few hours, they became a heap of ruins; the foot soldiers could then enter by the breach which the pioneers had effected. it must, however, be remembered that the strength and discipline which the assyrian troops possessed in such a high degree, were common to the military forces of all the great states--elam, damascus, naîri, the hittites, and chaldæa. it was owing to this, and also to the fact that the armies of all these powers were, as a rule, both in strength and numbers, much on a par, that no single state was able to inflict on any of the rest such a defeat as would end in its destruction. what decisive results had the terrible struggles produced, which stained almost periodically the valleys of the tigris and the zab with blood? after endless loss of life and property, they had nearly always issued in the establishment of the belligerents in their respective possessions, with possibly the cession of some few small towns or fortresses to the stronger party, most of which, however, were destined to come back to its former possessor in the very next campaign. the fall of the capital itself was not decisive, for it left the vanquished foe chafing under his losses, while the victory cost his rival so dear that he was unable to maintain the ascendency for more than a few years. twice at least in three centuries a king of assyria had entered babylon, and twice the babylonians had expelled the intruder of the hour, and had forced him back with a blare of trumpets to the frontier. although the ninevite dynasties had persisted in their pretensions to a suzerainty which they had generally been unable to enforce, the tradition of which, unsupported by any definite decree, had been handed on from one generation to another; yet in practice their kings had not succeeded in �taking the hands of bel,� and in reigning personally in babylon, nor in extorting from the native sovereign an official acknowledgment of his vassalage. profiting doubtless by past experience, assur-nazir-pal resolutely avoided those direct conflicts in which so many of his predecessors had wasted their lives. if he did not actually renounce his hereditary pretensions, he was content to let them lie dormant. he preferred to accommodate himself to the terms of the treaty signed a few years previously by rammân-nirâri, even when babylon neglected to observe them; he closed his eyes to the many ill-disguised acts of hostility to which he was exposed,* and devoted all his energies to dealing with less dangerous enemies. * he did not make the presence of cossoan troops among the allies of the sukhi a casus belli, even though they were commanded by a brother and by one of the principal officers of the king of babylon. even if his frontier touched karduniash to the south, elsewhere he was separated from the few states strong enough to menace his kingdom by a strip of varying width, comprising several less important tribes and cities;--to the east and north-east by the barbarians of obscure race whose villages and strongholds were scattered along the upper affluents of the tigris or on the lower terraces of the iranian plateau: to the west and north-west by the principalities and nomad tribes, mostly of aramoan extraction, who now for a century had peopled the mountains of the tigris and the steppes of mesopotamia. they were high-spirited, warlike, hardy populations, proud of their independence and quick to take up arms in its defence or for its recovery, but none of them possessed more than a restricted domain, or had more than a handful of soldiers at its disposal. at times, it is true, the nature of their locality befriended them, and the advantages of position helped to compensate for their paucity of numbers. [illustration: .jpg the escarpments of the zab] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. sometimes they were entrenched behind one of those rapid watercourses like the radanu, the zab, or the turnat, which are winter torrents rather than streams, and are overhung by steep banks, precipitous as a wall above a moat; sometimes they took refuge upon some wooded height and awaited attack amid its rocks and pine woods. assyria was superior to all of them, if not in the valour of its troops, at least numerically, and, towering in the midst of them, she could single out at will whichever tribe offered the easiest prey, and falling on it suddenly, would crush it by sheer force of weight. in such a case the surrounding tribes, usually only too well pleased to witness in safety the fall of a dangerous rival, would not attempt to interfere; but their turn was ere long sure to come, and the pity which they had declined to show to their neighbours was in like manner refused to them. the assyrians ravaged their country, held their chiefs to ransom, razed their strongholds, or, when they did not demolish them, garrisoned them with their own troops who held sway over the country. the revenues gleaned from these conquests would swell the treasury at nineveh, the native soldiers would be incorporated into the assyrian army, and when the smaller tribes had all in turn been subdued, their conqueror would, at length, find himself confronted with one of the great states from which he had been separated by these buffer communities; then it was that the men and money he had appropriated in his conquests would embolden him to provoke or accept battle with some tolerable certainty of victory. immediately on his accession, assur-nazir-pal turned his attention to the parts of his frontier where the population was most scattered, and therefore less able to offer any resistance to his projects.* * the principal document for the history of assur-nazir-pal is the �monolith of nimrud,� discovered by layard in the ruins of the temple of ninip; it bears the same inscription on both its sides. it is a compilation of various documents, comprising, first, a consecutive account of the campaigns of the king�s first six years, terminating in a summary of the results obtained during that period; secondly, the account of the campaign of his sixth year, followed by three campaigns not dated, the last of which was in syria; and thirdly, the history of a last campaign, that of his eighteenth year, and a second summary. a monolith found in the ruins of kurkh, at some distance from diarbekir, contains some important additions to the account of the campaigns of the fifth year. the other numerous inscriptions of assur-nazir-pal which have come down to us do not contain any information of importance which is not found in the text of the annals. the inscription of the broken obelisk, from which i have often quoted, contains in the second column some mention of the works undertaken by this king. he marched towards the north-western point of his territory, suddenly invaded nummi,* and in an incredibly short time took gubbe, its capital, and some half-dozen lesser places, among them surra, abuku, arura, and arubi. the inhabitants assembled upon a mountain ridge which they believed to be inaccessible, its peak being likened to �the point of an iron dagger,� and the steepness of its sides such that �no winged bird of the heavens dare venture on them.� in the short space of three days assur-nazir-pal succeeded in climbing its precipices and forcing the entrenchments which had been thrown up on its summit: two hundred of its defenders perished sword in hand, the remainder were taken prisoners. the kirruri,** terrified by this example, submitted unreservedly to the conqueror, yielded him their horses, mules, oxen, sheep, wine, and brazen vessels, and accepted the assyrian prefects appointed to collect the tribute. * nummi or nimmi, mentioned already in the annals of tiglath-pileser i., has been placed by hommel in the mountain group which separates lake van from lake urumiah, but by tiele in the regions situated to the southeast of nineveh; the observations of delattre show that we ought perhaps to look for it to the north of the arzania, certainly in the valley of that river. it appears to me to answer to the cazas of varto and boulanîk in the sandjak of mush. the name of the capital may be identified with the present gop, chief town of the caza of boulanîk; in this case abuku might be represented by the village of biyonkh. ** the kirruri must have had their habitat in the depression around lake frumiah, on the western side of the lake, if we are to believe schrader; jelattre has pointed out that it ought to be sought elsewhere, near the sources of the tigris, not far from the murad-su. the connection in which it is here cited obliges us to place it in the immediate neighbourhood of nummi, and its relative position to adaush and gilzân makes it probable that it is to be sought to the west and south-west of lake van, in the cazas of mush and sassun in the sandjak of mush. the neighbouring districts, adaush, gilzân, and khubushkia, followed their example;* they sent the king considerable presents of gold, silver, lead, and copper, and their alacrity in buying off their conqueror saved them from the ruinous infliction of a garrison. the assyrian army defiling through the pass of khulun next fell upon the kirkhi, dislodged the troops stationed in the fortress of nishtun, and pillaged the cities of khatu, khatara, irbidi, arzania, tela, and khalua; ** bubu, the chief of nishtun,*** was sent to arbela, flayed alive, and his skin nailed to the city wall. * kirzâu, also transcribed gilzân and guzân, has been relegated by the older assyriologists to eastern armenia, and the site further specified as being between the ancient araxes and lake urumiah, in the persian provinces of khoî and marand. the indications given in our text and the passages brought together by schrader, which place gilzân in direct connection with kirruri on one side and with kurkhi on the other, oblige us to locate the country in the upper basin of the tigris, and i should place it near bitlis- tchaî, where different forms of the word occur many times on the map, such as ghalzan in ghalzan-dagh; kharzan, the name of a caza of the sandjak of sert; khizan, the name of a caza of the sandjak of bitlis. girzân-kilzân would thus be the roman province of arzanene, ardzn in armenian, in which the initial g or h of the ancient name has been replaced in the process of time by a soft aspirate. khubushkia or khutushkia has been placed by lenormant to the east of the upper zab, and south of arapkha, and this identification has been approved by schrader and also by delitzsch; according to the passages that schrader himself has cited, it must, however, have stretched northwards as far as shatakh-su, meeting gilzân at one point of the sandjaks of van and hakkiari. ** assur-nazir-pal, in going from kirruri to kirkhi in the basin of the tigris, could go either by the pass of bitlis or that of sassun; that of bitlis is excluded by the fact that it lies in kirruri, and kirruri is not mentioned in what follows. but if the route chosen was by the pass of sassun, khulun necessarily must have occupied a position at the entrance of the defiles, perhaps that of the present town of khorukh. the name khatu recalls that of the khoith tribe which the armenian historians mention as in this locality. khaturu is perhaps hâtera in the caza of lidjô, in the sandjak of diarbekîr, and arzania the ancient arzan, arzn, the ruins of which may be seen near sheikh-yunus. tila-tela is not the same town as the tela in mesopotamia, which we shall have occasion to speak of later, but is probably to be identified with til or tilleh, at the confluence of the tigris and the bohtan-tcha. finally, it is possible that the name khalua may be preserved in that of halewi, which layard gives as belonging to a village situated almost halfway between rundvan and til. *** nishtun was probably the most important spot in this region: from its position on the list, between khulun and khataru on one side and arzania on the other, it is evident we must look for it somewhere in sassun or in the direction of mayafarrikin. [illustration: .jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in nairi] in a small town near one of the sources of the tigris, assur-nazir-pal founded a colony on which he imposed his name; he left there a statue of himself, with an inscription celebrating his exploits carved on its base, and having done this, he returned to nineveh laden with booty. [illustration: .jpg the site of shadikanni at arban, on the khabur] drawn by boudier, from a sketch taken by layard. a few weeks had sufficed for him to complete, on this side, the work bequeathed to him by his father, and to open up the neighbourhood of the northeast provinces; he was not long in setting out afresh, this time to the north-west, in the direction of the taurus.* * the text of the �annals� declares that these events took place �in this same limmu,� in what the king calls higher up in the column �the beginning of my royalty, the first year of my reign.� we must therefore suppose that he ascended the throne almost at the beginning of the year, since he was able to make two campaigns under the same eponym. he rapidly skirted the left bank of the tigris, burned some score of scattered hamlets at the foot of nipur and pazatu,* crossed to the right bank, above amidi, and, as he approached the euphrates, received the voluntary homage of kummukh and the mushku.** but while he was complacently engaged in recording the amount of vessels of bronze, oxen, sheep, and jars of wine which represented their tribute, a messenger of bad tidings appeared before him. assyria was bounded on the east by a line of small states, comprising the katna*** and the bît-khalupi,**** whose towns, placed alternately like sentries on each side the khabur, protected her from the incursions of the bedâwin. * nipur or nibur is the nibaros of strabo. if we consider the general direction of the campaign, we are inclined to place nipur close to the bank of the tigris, east of the regions traversed in the preceding campaign, and to identify it, as also pazatu, with the group of high hills called at the present day the ashit-dagh, between the kharzan-su and the batman-tchai. ** the mushku (moschiano or meshek) mentioned here do not represent the main body of the tribe, established in cappadocia; they are the descendants of such of the mushku as had crossed the euphrates and contested the possession of the regions of kashiari with the assyrians. *** the name has been read sometimes katna, sometimes shuna. the country included the two towns of kamani and dur- katlimi, and on the south adjoined bît-khalupi; this identifies it with the districts of magada and sheddadîyeh, and, judging by the information with which assur-nazir-pal himself furnishes us, it is not impossible that dur-katline may have been on the site of the present magarda, and kamani on that of sheddadîyeh. ancient ruins have been pointed out on both these spots. **** suru, the capital of bît-khalupi, was built upon the khabur itself where it is navigable, for assur-nazir-pal relates further on that he had his royal barge built there at the time of the cruise which he undertook on the euphrates in the vith year of his reign. the itineraries of modern travellers mention a place called es-sauar or es- saur, eight hours� march from the mouth of the khabur on the right bank of the river, situated at the foot of a hill some feet high; the ruins of a fortified enclosure and of an ancient town are still visible. following tomkins, i should there place suru, the chief town of khalupi; bît-khalupi would be the territory in the neighbourhood of es-saur. [illustration: .jpg one of the winged bulls found at arban] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. they were virtually chaldæan cities, having been, like most of those which flourished in the mesopotamian plains, thoroughly impregnated with babylonian civilisation. shadikanni, the most important of them, commanded the right bank of the khabur, and also the ford where the road from nineveh crossed the river on the route to hariân and carche-mish. the palaces of its rulers were decorated with winged bulls, lions, stelae, and bas-reliefs carved in marble brought from the hills of singar. the people seem to have been of a capricious temperament, and, nothwithstanding the supervision to which they were subjected, few reigns elapsed in which it was not necessary to put down a rebellion among them. bît-khalupi and its capital suru had thrown off the assyrian yoke after the death of tukulti-ninip; the populace, stirred up no doubt by aramæan emissaries, had assassinated the harnathite who governed them, and had sent for a certain akhiababa, a man of base extraction from bît-adini, whom they had proclaimed king. this defection, if not promptly dealt with, was likely to entail serious consequences, since it left an important point on the frontier exposed: and there now remained nothing to prevent the people of adini or their allies from spreading over the country between the khabur and the tigris, and even pushing forward their marauding bands as far as the very walls of singar and assur. [illustration: b.jpg no. . enameled brick (nimrod). no. . fragment of mural painting (nimrod).] [illustration: .jpg stele from arban] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard�s sketch without losing a moment, assur-nazir-pal marched down the course of the khabur, hastily collecting the tribute of the cities through which he passed. the defenders of sura were disconcerted by his sudden appearance before their town, and their rulers came out and prostrated themselves at the king�s feet: �dost thou desire it? it is life for us;--dost thou desire it? it is death;--dost thou desire it? what thy heart chooseth, that do to us!� but the appeal to his clemency was in vain; the alarm had been so great and the danger so pressing, that assur-nazir-pal was pitiless. the town was handed over to the soldiery, all the treasure it contained was confiscated, and the women and children of the best families were made slaves; some of the ringleaders paid the penalty of their revolt on the spot; the rest, with akhiabaha, were carried away and flayed alive, some at nineveh, some elsewhere. an assyrian garrison was installed in the citadel, and an ordinary governor, azilu by name, replaced the dynasty of native princes. the report of this terrible retribution induced the laqî* to tender their submission, and their example was followed by khaian, king of khindanu on the euphrates. he bought off the assyrians with gold, silver, lead, precious stones, deep-hued purple, and dromedaries; he erected a statue of assur-nazir-pal in the centre of his palace as a sign of his vassalage, and built into the wall near the gates of his town an inscription dedicated to the gods of the conqueror. * the laqî were situated on both banks of the euphrates, principally on the right bank, between the khabur and the balikh, interspersed among the sukhi, of whom they were perhaps merely a dissentient fraction. six, or at the most eight, months had sufficed to achieve these rapid successes over various foes, in twenty different directions--the expeditions in nummi and kirruri, the occupation of kummukh, the flying marches across the mountains and plains of mesopotamia--during all of which the new sovereign had given ample proof of his genius. he had, in fine, shown himself to be a thorough soldier, a conqueror of the type of tiglath-pileser, and assyria by these victories had recovered her rightful rank among the nations of western asia. the second year of his reign was no less fully occupied, nor did it prove less successful than the first. at its very beginning, and even before the return of the favourable season, the sukhi on the euphrates made a public act of submission, and their chief, ilubâni, brought to nineveh on their behalf a large sum of gold and silver. he had scarcely left the capital when the news of an untoward event effaced the good impression he had made. the descendants of the colonists, planted in bygone times by shalmaneser i. on the western slope of the masios, in the district of khalzidipkha, had thrown off their allegiance, and their leader, khulaî, was besieging the royal fortress of damdamusa.* assur-nazir-pal marched direct to the sources of the tigris, and the mere fact of his presence sufficed to prevent any rising in that quarter. he took advantage of the occasion to set up a stele beside those of his father tukulti-ninip and his ancestor tiglath-pileser, and then having halted to receive the tribute of izalla,** he turned southwards, and took up a position on the slopes of the kashiari. * the position of khalzidipkha or khalzilukha, as well as that of kina-bu, its stronghold, is shown approximately by what follows. assur-nazir-pal, marching from the sources of the supnat towards tela, could pass either to the east or west of the karajah-dagh; as the end of the campaign finds him at tushkhân, to the south of the tigris, and he returns to naîri and kirkhi by the eastern side of the karajah-dagh, we are led to conclude that the outgoing march to tela was by the western side, through the country situated between the karajah-dagh and the euphrates. on referring to a modern map, two rather important places will be found in this locality: the first, arghana, commanding the road from diarbekîr to khar-put; the other, severek, on the route from diarbekîr to orfah. arghana appears to me to correspond to the royal city of damdamusa, which would, thus have protected the approach to the plain on the north-west. severek corresponds fairly well to the position which, according to the assyrian text, kinabu must have occupied; hence the country of khalzidipkha (khalzilukha) must be the district of severek. ** izalla, written also izala, azala, paid its tribute in sheep and oxen, and also produced a wine for which it continued to be celebrated down to the time of nebuchadrezzar ii. lenormant and finzi place this country- near to nisibis, where the byzantine and syrian writers mention a district and a mountain of the same name, and this conjecture is borne out by the passages of the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_ which place it in the vicinity of bît-adini and bît-bakhiâni. it has also been adopted by most of the historians who have recently studied the question. at the first news of his approach, khulai had raised the blockade of damdamusa and had entrenched himself in kinabu; the assyrians, however, carried the place by storm, and six hundred soldiers of the garrison were killed in the attack. the survivors, to the number of three thousand, together with many women and children, were, thrown into the flames. the people of mariru hastened to the rescue;* the assyrians took three hundred of them, prisoners and burnt them alive; fifty others were ripped up, but the victors did not stop to reduce their town. the district of nirbu was next subjected to systematic ravaging, and half of its inhabitants fled into the mesopotamian desert, while the remainder sought refuge in tela at the foot of the ukhira.** * the site of mariru is unknown; according to the text of the annals, it ought to lie near severek (kinabu) to the south-east, since after having mentioned it, assur-nazir-pal speaks of the people of nirbu whom he engaged in the desert before marching against tela. ** tila or tela is the tela antoninopolis of the writers of the roman period and the present veranshehr. the district of nirbu, of which it was the capital, lay on the southern slope of the karajah-dagh at the foot of mount urkhira, the central group of the range. the name kashiari is applied to the whole mountain group which separates the basins of the tigris and euphrates to the south and south-west. the latter place was a strong one, being surrounded by three enclosing walls, and it offered an obstinate resistance. notwithstanding this, it at length fell, after having lost three thousand of its defenders:--some of its garrison were condemned to the stake, some had their hands, noses, or ears cut off, others were deprived of sight, flayed alive, or impaled amid the smoking ruins. this being deemed insufficient punishment, the conqueror degraded the place from its rank of chief town, transferring this, together with its other privileges, to a neighbouring city, tushkhân, which had belonged to the assyrians from the beginning of their conquests.* the king enlarged the place, added to it a strong enclosing wall, and installed within it the survivors of the older colonists who had been dispersed by the war, the majority of whom had taken refuge in shupria.** * from this passage we learn that tushkhân, also called tushkha, was situated on the border of nirbu, while from another passage in the campaign of the vth year we find that it was on the right bank of the tigris. following h. rawlinson, i place it at kurkh, near the tigris, to the east of diarbekîr. the existence in that locality of an inscription of assur-nazir-pal appears to prove the correctness of this identification; we are aware, in fact, of the particular favour in which this prince held tushkhân, for he speaks with pride of the buildings with which he embellished it. hommel, however, identifies kurkh with the town of matiâtô, of which mention is made further on. ** shupria or shupri, a name which has been read ruri, had been brought into submission from the time of shalmaneser i. we gather from the passages in which it is mentioned that it was a hilly country, producing wine, rich in flocks, and lying at a short distance from tushkhân; perhaps mariru, mentioned on p. , was one of its towns. i think we may safely place it on the north-western slopes of the kashiari, in the modern caza of tchernik, which possesses several vineyards held in high estimation. knudtzon, to whom we are indebted for the reading of this name, places the country rather further north, within the fork formed by the two upper branches of the tigris. he constructed a palace there, built storehouses for the reception of the grain of the province; and, in short, transformed the town into a stronghold of the first order, capable of serving as a base of operations for his armies. the surrounding princes, in the meanwhile, rallied round him, including ammibaal of bît-zamani, and the rulers of shupria, naîri, and urumi;* the chiefs of eastern nirbu alone held aloof, emboldened by the rugged nature of their mountains and the density of their forests. assur-nazir-pal attacked them on his return journey, dislodged them from the fortress of ishpilibria where they were entrenched, gained the pass of buliani, and emerged into the valley of luqia.** * the position of bît-zamani on the banks of the euphrates was determined by delattre. urumi was situated on the right bank of the same river in the neighbourhood of sumeisat, and the name has survived in that of urima, a town in the vicinity so called even as late as roman times. nirdun, with madara as its capital, occupied part of the eastern slopes of the kashiari towards ortaveran. ** hommel identifies the luqia with the northern affluent of the euphrates called on the ancient monuments lykos, and he places the scene of the war in armenia. the context obliges us to look for this river to the south of the tigris, to the north-east and to the east of the kashiari. the king coming from nirbu, the pass of buliani, in which he finds the towns of kirkhi, must be the valley of khaneki, in which the road winds from mardin to diarbekir, and the luqia is probably the most important stream in this region, the sheikhân-su, which waters savur, chief town of the caza of avinch. ardupa must have been situated near, or on the actual site of, the present mardîn, whose assyrian name is unknown to us; it was at all events a military station on the road to nineveh, along which the king returned victorious with the spoil. at ardupa a brief halt was made to receive the ambassadors of one of the hittite sovereigns and others from the kings of khanigalbat, after which he returned to nineveh, where he spent the winter. as a matter of fact, these were but petty wars, and their immediate results appear at the first glance quite inadequate to account for the contemporary enthusiasm they excited. the sincerity of it can be better understood when we consider the miserable state of the country twenty years previously. assyria then comprised two territories, one in the plains of the middle, the other in the districts of the upper, tigris, both of considerable extent, but almost without regular intercommunication. caravans or isolated messengers might pass with tolerable safety from assur and nineveh to singar, or even to nisibis; but beyond these places they had to brave the narrow defiles and steep paths in the forests of the masios, through which it was rash to venture without keeping eye and ear ever on the alert. the mountaineers and their chiefs recognized the nominal suzerainty of assyria, but refused to act upon this recognition unless constrained by a strong hand; if this control were relaxed they levied contributions on, or massacred, all who came within their reach, and the king himself never travelled from his own city of nineveh to his own town of amidi unless accompanied by an army. in less than the short space of three years, assur-nazir-pal had remedied this evil. by the slaughter of some two hundred men in one place, three hundred in another, two or three thousand in a third, by dint of impaling and flaying refractory sheikhs, burning villages and dismantling strongholds, he forced the marauders of naîri and kirkhi to respect his frontiers and desist from pillaging his country. the two divisions of his kingdom, strengthened by the military colonies in nirbu, were united, and became welded together into a compact whole from the banks of the lower zab to the sources of the khabur and the supnat. during the following season the course of events diverted the king�s efforts into quite an opposite direction (b.c. ). under the name of zamua there existed a number of small states scattered along the western slope of the iranian plateau north of the cossæans.* many of them--as, for instance, the lullumê--had been civilized by the chaldæans almost from time immemorial; the most southern among them were perpetually oscillating between the respective areas of influence of babylon and nineveh, according as one or other of these cities was in the ascendant, but at this particular moment they acknowledged assyrian sway. were they excited to rebellion against the latter power by the emissaries of its rival, or did they merely think that assur-nazir-pal was too fully absorbed in the affairs of naîri to be able to carry his arms effectively elsewhere? at all events they coalesced under nurrammân, the sheikh of dagara, blocked the pass of babiti which led to their own territory, and there massed their contingents behind the shelter of hastily erected ramparts.** * according to hommol and tiele, zamua would be the country extending from the sources of the radanu to the southern shores of the lake of urumiah; schrader believes it to have occupied a smaller area, and places it to the east and south-west of the lesser zab. delattre has shown that a distinction must be made between zamua on lake van and the well-known zamua upon the zab. zamua, as described by assur- nazir-pal, answers approximately to the present sandjak of suleimaniyeh in the vilayet of mossul. ** hommol believes that assur-nazir-pal crossed the zab near altin-keupru, and he is certainly correct: but it appears to me from a passage in the _annals_, that instead of taking the road which leads to bagdad by ker-kuk and tuz-khurmati, he marched along that which leads eastwards in the direction of suleimaniyeh. the pass of babiti must have lain between gawardis and bibân, facing the kissê tchai, which forms the western branch of the radanu. dagara would thus be represented by the district to the east of kerkuk at the foot of the kara-dagh. assur-nazir-pal concentrated his army at kakzi,* a little to the south of arbela, and promptly marched against them; he swept all obstacles before him, killed fourteen hundred and sixty men at the first onslaught, put dagara to fire and sword, and soon defeated nurrammân, but without effecting his capture. * kakzi, sometimes read kalzi, must have been situated at shemamek of shamamik, near hazeh, to the south-west of erbil, the ancient arbela, at the spot where jones noticed important assyrian ruins excavated by layard. as the campaign threatened to be prolonged, he formed an entrenched camp in a favourable position, and stationed in it some of his troops to guard the booty, while he dispersed the rest to pillage the country on all sides. [illustration: .jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in zamua] one expedition led him to the mountain group of nizir, at the end of the chain known to the people of lullumê as the kinipa.* he there reduced to ruins seven towns whose inhabitants had barricaded themselves in urgent haste, collected the few herds of cattle he could find, and driving them back to the camp, set out afresh towards a part of nizir as yet unsubdued by any conqueror. the stronghold of larbusa fell before the battering-ram, to be followed shortly by the capture of bara. thereupon the chiefs of zamua, convinced of their helplessness, purchased the king�s departure by presents of horses, gold, silver, and corn.** nurrammân alone remained impregnable in his retreat at nishpi, and an attempt to oust him resulted solely in the surrender of the fortress of birutu.*** the campaign, far from having been decisive, had to be continued during the winter in another direction where revolts had taken place,--in khudun, in kissirtu, and in the fief of arashtua,**** all three of which extended over the upper valleys of the lesser zab, the radanu, the turnat, and their affluents. * mount kinipa is a part of nizir, the khalkhalân-dagh, if we may-judge from the direction of the assyrian campaign. ** none of these places can be identified with certainty. the gist of the account leads us to gather that bara was situated to the east of dagara, and formed its frontier; we shall not be far wrong in looking for all these districts in the fastnesses of the kara-dagh, in the caza of suleimaniyeh. mount nishpi is perhaps the segirmc-dagh of the present day. *** the assyrian compiler appears to have made use of two slightly differing accounts of this campaign; he has twice repeated the same facts without noticing his mistake. **** the fief of arashtua, situated beyond the turnat, is probably the district of suleimaniyeh; it is, indeed, at this place only that the upper course of the turnat is sufficiently near to that of the radanu to make the marches of assur-nazir-pal in the direction indicated by the assyrian scribe possible. according to the account of the _annals_, it seems to me that we must seek for khudun and kissirtu to the south of the fief of arashtua, in the modern cazas of gulanbar or shehrizôr. the king once more set out from kakzi, crossed the zab and the eadanu, through the gorges of babiti, and halting on the ridges of mount simaki, peremptorily demanded tribute from dagara.* this was, however, merely a ruse to deceive the enemy, for taking one evening the lightest of his chariots and the best of his horsemen, he galloped all night without drawing rein, crossed the turnat at dawn, and pushing straight forward, arrived in the afternoon of the same day before the walls of ammali, in the very heart of the fief of arashtua.** the town vainly attempted a defence; the whole population was reduced to slavery or dispersed in the forests, the ramparts were demolished, and the houses reduced to ashes. khudun with twenty, and kissirtu with ten of its villages, bara, kirtiara, dur-lullumê, and bunisa, offered no further resistance, and the invading host halted within sight of the defiles of khashmar.*** * the _annals of assur-nazir-pal_ go on to mention that mount simaki extended as far as the turnat, and that it was close to mount azira. this passage, when compared with that in which the opening of the campaign is described, obliges us to recognise in mounts simaki and azira two parts of the shehrizôr chain, parallel to the seguirmé-dagh. the fortress of mizu, mentioned in the first of these two texts, may perhaps be the present gurân-kaleh. ** hommel thinks that ammali is perhaps the present suleimaniyeh; it is, at all events, on this side that we must look for its site. *** i do not know whether we may trace the name of the ancient mount khashmar-khashmir in the present azmir-dagh; it is at its feet, probably in the valley of suleimanabad, that we ought to place the passes of khashmar. one kinglet, however, amika of zamru, showed no intention of capitulating. entrenched behind a screen of forests and frowning mountain ridges, he fearlessly awaited the attack. the only access to the remote villages over which he ruled, was by a few rough roads hemmed in between steep cliffs and beds of torrents; difficult and dangerous at ordinary times, they were blocked in war by temporary barricades, and dominated at every turn by some fortress perched at a dizzy height above them. after his return to the camp, where his soldiers were allowed a short respite, assur-nazir-pal set out against zamru, though he was careful not to approach it directly and attack it at its most formidable points. between two peaks of the lara and bidirgi ranges he discovered a path which had been deemed impracticable for horses, or even for heavily armed men. by this route, the king, unsuspected by the enemy, made his way through the mountains, and descended so unexpectedly upon zamru, that amika had barely time to make his escape, abandoning everything in his alarm--palace, treasures, harem, and even his chariot.* a body of assyrians pursued him hotly beyond the fords of the lallu, chasing him as far as mount itini; then, retracing their steps to headquarters, they at once set out on a fresh track, crossed the idir, and proceeded to lay waste the plains of ilaniu and suâni.** * this raid, which started from the same point as the preceding one, ran eastwards in an opposite direction and ended at mount itini. leaving the fief of arashtua in the neighbourhood of suleimaniyeh, assur-nazir-pal crossed the chain of the azmir-dagh near pir-omar and gudrun, where we must place mounts lara and bidirgi, and emerged upon zamru; the only-places which appear to correspond to zamru in that region are kandishin and suleimanabad. hence the lallu is the river which runs by kandishin and suleimanabad, and itini the mountain which separates this river from the tchami-kizildjik. ** i think we may recognise the ancient name of ilaniu in that of alan, now borne by a district on the turkish and persian frontier, situated between kunekd ji-dagh and the town of serdesht. the expedition, coming from the fief of arashtua, must have marched northwards: the idir in this case must be the tchami-kizildjik, and mount sabua the chain of mountains above serdesht. despairing of taking amika prisoner, assur-nazir-pal allowed him to lie hidden among the brushwood of mount sabua, while he himself called a halt at parsindu,* and set to work to organise the fruits of his conquest. * parsindu, mentioned between mount ilaniu and the town of zamru, ought to lie somewhere in the valley of tchami- kizildjik, near murana. he placed garrisons in the principal towns---at parsindu, zamru, and at arakdi in lullumê, which one of his predecessors had re-named tukulti-ashshur-azbat,* --�i have taken the help of assur.� he next imposed on the surrounding country an annual tribute of gold, silver, lead, copper, dyed stuffs, oxen, sheep, and wine. envoys from neighbouring kings poured in--from khudun; khubushkia, and gilzân, and the whole of northern zamua bowed �before the splendour of his arms;� it now needed only a few raids resolutely directed against mounts azîra and simaki, as far as the turn at, to achieve the final pacification of the south. while in this neighbourhood, his attention was directed to the old town of atlîla,** built by sibir,*** an ancient king of karduniash, but which had been half ruined by the barbarians. he re-named it dur-assur, �the fortress of assur,� and built himself within it a palace and storehouses, in which he accumulated large quantities of corn, making the town the strongest bulwark of his power on the cossæan border. *the approximate site of arakdi is indicated in the itinerary of assur-nazir-pal itself; the king comes from zamru in the neighbourhood of sulei-manabad, crosses mount lara, which is the northern part of the azmir-dagh, and arrives at arakdi, possibly somewhere in surtash. in the course of the preceding campaign, after having laid waste bara, he set out from this same town (arakdi) to subdue nishpi, all of which bears out the position i have indicated. the present town of baziân would answer fairly well for the site of a place destined to protect the assyrian frontier on this side. ** given its position on the chaldæan frontier, atlîla is probably to be identified with the kerkuk of the present day. *** hommel is inclined to believe that sibir was the immediate predecessor of nabubaliddin, who reigned at babylon at the same time as assur-nazir-pal at nineveh; consequently he would be a contemporary of rammân-nirâri iii. and of tukulti-ninip ii. peiser and rost have identified him with simmash-shikhu. [illustration: .jpg the zab below the passes of alan, the ancient ilaniu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. the two campaigns of b.c. and had cost assur-nazir-pal great efforts, and their results had been inadequate to the energy expended. his two principal adversaries, nurrammân and amika, had eluded him, and still preserved their independence at the eastern extremities of their former states. most of the mountain tribes had acknowledged the king�s supremacy merely provisionally, in order to rid themselves of his presence; they had been vanquished scores of times, but were in no sense subjugated, and the moment pressure was withdrawn, they again took up arms. the districts of zamua alone, which bordered on the assyrian plain, and had been occupied by a military force, formed a province, a kind of buffer state between the mountain tribes and the plains of the zab, protecting the latter from incursions. assur-nazir-pal, feeling himself tolerably safe on that side, made no further demands, and withdrew his battalions to the westward part of his northern frontier. he hoped, no doubt, to complete the subjugation of the tribes who still contested the possession of various parts of the kashiari, and then to push forward his main guard as far as the euphrates and the arzania, so as to form around the plain of amidi a zone of vassals or tutelary subjects like those of zamua. with this end in view, he crossed the tigris near its source at the traditional fords, and made his way unmolested in the bend of the euphrates from the palace of tilluli, where the accustomed tribute of kummukh was brought to him, to the fortress of ishtarâti, and from thence to kibaki. the town of matiatê, having closed its gates against him, was at once sacked, and this example so stimulated the loyalty of the kurkhi chiefs, that they ha*tened to welcome him at the neighbouring military station of zazabukha. the king�s progress continued thence as before, broken by frequent halts at the most favourable points for levying contributions on the inhabitants. assur-nazir-pal encountered no serious difficulty except on the northern slopes of the kashiari, but there again fortune smiled on him; all the contested positions were soon ceded to him, including even madara, whose fourfold circuit of walls did not avail to save it from the conqueror.** after a brief respite at tushkhân, he set out again one evening with his lightest chariots and the pick of his horsemen, crossed the tigris on rafts, rode all night, and arrived unexpectedly the next morning before pitura, the chief town of the dirrabans.*** it was surrounded by a strong double enceinte, through which he broke after forty-eight hours of continuous assault: of its men perished in the breach, and others were impaled before the gates. * it is difficult to place any of these localities on the map: they ought all to be found between the ford of the tigris, at diarbeldr and the euphrates, probably at the foot of the mihrab-dagh and the kirwântchernen-dagh. ** madara belonged to a certain lapturi, son of tubusi, mentioned in the campaign of the king�s second year. in comparing the facts given in the two passages, we see it was situated on the eastern slope of the kashiari, not far from tushkhan on one side, and ardupa--that is probably mardin--? on the other. the position of ortaveran, or of one of the �tells� in its neighbourhood, answers fairly well to these conditions. *** according to the details given in the _annals_, we must place the town of bitura (or pitura) at about miles from kurkh, on the other side of the tigris, in a north-easterly direction, and consequently the country of lirrâ would be between the hazu-tchaî and the batman-tchaî. the matni, with its passes leading in to naîri, must in this case be the mountain group to the north of mayafarrikîn, known as the dordoseh-dagh or the darkôsh-dagh. arbaki, at the extreme limits of eirkhi, was the next to succumb, after which the assyrians, having pillaged dirra, carried the passes of matni after a bloody combat, spread themselves over naîri, burning of its towns and villages, and returned with immense booty to tushkhân. they had been there merely a few days when the newt arrived that the people of bît-zamâni, always impatient of the yoke, had murdered their prince ammibaal, and had proclaimed a certain burramman in his place. assur-nazir-pal marched upon sinabux and repressed the insurrection, reaping a rich harvest of spoil--chariots fully equipped, draught-horses, pounds of silver and as much of gold, pounds of lead and the same of copper, , pounds of iron, stuffs, furniture in gold and ivory, bulls, sheep, the entire harem of ammibaal, besides a number of maidens of noble family together with their dresses. burramman was by the king�s order flayed alive, and arteanu his brother chosen as his successor. sinabu* and the surrounding towns formed part of that network of colonies which in times past shalmaneser i. had organised as a protection from the incursions of the inhabitants of naîri; assur-nazir-pal now used it as a rallying-place for the remaining assyrian families, to whom he distributed lands and confided the guardianship of the neighbouring strongholds. * hommel thinks that sinabu is very probably the same as the kinabu mentioned above; but it appears from assur-nazir- pal�s own account that this kinabu was in the province of khalzidipkha (khalzilukha) on the kashiari, whereas sinabu was in bît-zamâni. the results of this measure were not long in making themselves felt: shupria, ulliba, and nirbu, besides other districts, paid their dues to the king, and shura in khamanu,* which had for some time held out against the general movement, was at length constrained to submit ( b.c.). * shur is mentioned on the return to nairi, possibly on the road leading from amidi and tushkhân to nineveh. hommel believes that the country of khamanu was the amanos in cilicia, and he admits, but unwillingly, that assur-nazir- pal made a detour beyond the euphrates. i should look for shura, and consequently for khamanu, in the tur-abdin, and should identify them with saur, in spite of the difference of the two initial articulations. however high we may rate the value of this campaign, it was eclipsed by the following one. the aramæans on the khabur and the middle euphrates had not witnessed without anxiety the revival of ninevite activity, and had begged for assistance against it from its rival. two of their principal tribes, the sukhi and the laqi, had addressed themselves to the sovereign then reigning at babylon. he was a restless, ambitious prince, named nabu-baliddin, who asked nothing better than to excite a hostile feeling against his neighbour, provided he ran no risk by his interference of being drawn into open warfare. he accordingly despatched to the prince of sukhi the best of his cossoan troops, commanded by his brother zabdanu and one of the great officers of the crown, bel-baliddin. in the spring of b.c., assur-nazir-pal determined once for all to put an end to these intrigues. he began by inspecting the citadels flanking the line of the kharmish* and the khabur,--tabiti,** magarisi,*** shadikanni, shuru in bît-khafupi, and sirki.**** * the kharmish has been identified with the hirmâs, the river flowing by nisibis, and now called the nahr-jaghjagha. ** tabiti is the thebeta (thebet) of roman itineraries and syrian writers, situated miles from nisibis and from singara, on the nahr-hesawy or one of the neighbouring wadys. *** magarisi ought to be found on the present nahr- jaghjagha, near its confluence with the nahr-jerrâhi and its tributaries; unfortunately, this part of mesopotamia is still almost entirely unexplored, and no satisfactory map of it exists as yet. **** sirki is circesium at the mouth of the khabur. between the embouchures of the khabur and the balîkh, the euphrates winds across a vast table-land, ridged with marly hills; the left bank is dry and sterile, shaded at rare intervals by sparse woods of poplars or groups of palms. the right bank, on the contrary, is seamed with fertile valleys, sufficiently well watered to permit the growth of cereals and the raising of cattle. the river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous. on nearing the ruins of halebiyeh, the river narrows as it enters the arabian hills, and cuts for itself a regular defile of three or four hundred paces in length, which is approached by the pilots with caution.* * it is at this defile of el-hammeh, and not at that of birejik at the end of the taurus, that we must place the _khinqi sha purati_--the narrows of the euphrates--so often mentioned in the account of this campaign. assur-nazir-pal, on leaving sirki, made his way along the left bank, levying toll on supri, naqarabâni, and several other villages in his course. here and there he called a halt facing some town on the opposite bank, but the boats which could have put him across had been removed, and the fords were too well guarded to permit of his hazarding an attack. one town, however, khindânu, made him a voluntary offering which, he affected to regard as a tribute, but kharidi and anat appeared not even to suspect his presence in their vicinity, and he continued on his way without having obtained from them anything which could be construed into a mark of vassalage.* * the detailed narrative of the _annals_ informs us that assur-nazir-pal encamped on a mountain between khindânu and bît-shabaia, and this information enables us to determine on the map with tolerable certainty the localities mentioned in this campaign. the mountain in question can be none other than el-hammeh, the only one met with on this bank of the euphrates between the confluents of the euphrates and the khabur. khindânu is therefore identical with the ruins of tabus, the dabausa of ptolemy; hence supri and naqabarâni are situated between this point and sirki, the former in the direction of tayebeh, the latter towards el-hoseîniyeh. on the other hand, the ruins of kabr abu-atîsh would correspond very well to bît-shabaia: is the name of abu-sbé borne by the arabs of that neighbourhood a relic of that of shabaia. kharidi ought in that case to be looked for on the opposite bank, near abu-subân and aksubi, where chesney points out ancient remains. a day�s march beyond kabr abu-atîsh brings us to el-khass, so that the town of anat would be in the isle of moglah. shuru must be somewhere near one of the two tell-menakhîrs on this side the balikh. [illustration: .jpg the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in mesopotamia] at length, on reaching shuru, shadadu, the prince of sukhi, trusting in his cossoans, offered him battle; but he was defeated by assur-na�zir-pal, who captured the king of babylon�s brother, forced his way into the town after an assault lasting two days, and returned to assyria laden with spoil. this might almost be considered as a repulse; for no sooner had the king quitted the country than the aramaeans in their turn crossed the euphrates and ravaged the plains of the khabur.* assur-nazir-pal resolved not to return until he was in a position to carry his arms into the heart of the enemy�s country. he built a flotilla at shuru in bît-khalupi on which he embarked his troops. wherever the navigation of the euphrates proved to be difficult, the boats were drawn up out of the water and dragged along the banks over rollers until they could again be safely launched; thus, partly afloat and partly on land, they passed through the gorge of halebiyeh, landed at kharidi, and inflicted a salutary punishment on the cities which had defied the king�s wrath on his last expedition. khindânu, kharidi, and kipina were reduced to ruins, and the sukhi and the laqi defeated, the assyrians pursuing them for two days in the bisuru mountains as far as the frontiers of bit-adini.** * the _annals_ do not give us either the _limmu_ or the date of the year for this new expedition. the facts taken altogether prove that it was a continuation of the preceding one, and it may therefore be placed in the year b.c. . ** the campaign of b.c. had for its arena that of the euphrates which lies between the khabur and the balikh; this time, however, the principal operations took place on the right bank. if mount bisuru is the jebel-bishri, the town of kipina, which is mentioned between it and kharidi, ought to be located between maidân and sabkha. a complete submission was brought about, and its permanency secured by the erection of two strongholds, one of which, kar-assur-nazir-pal, commanded the left, and the other, nibarti-assur, the right bank of the euphrates.* this last expedition had brought the king into contact with the most important of the numerous aramaean states congregated in the western region of mesopotamia. this was bît-adini, which lay on both sides of the middle course of the euphrates.** it included, on the right bank, to the north of carchemish, between the hills on the sajur and arabân-su, a mountainous but fertile district, dotted over with towns and fortresses, the names of some of which have been preserved--pakarrukhbuni, sursunu, paripa, dabigu, and shitamrat.*** tul-barsip, the capital, was situated on the left bank, commanding the fords of the modern birejîk,**** and the whole of the territory between this latter and the balîkh acknowledged the rule of its princes, whose authority also extended eastwards as far as the basaltic plateau of tul-abâ, in the mesopotamian desert. * the account in the annals is confused, and contains perhaps some errors with regard to the facts. the site of the two towns is nowhere indicated, but a study of the map shows that the assyrians could not become masters of the country without occupying the passes of the euphrates; i am inclined to think that kar-assur-nazir-pal is el-halebiyeh, and nibarti-assur, zalebiyeh, the zenobia of roman times. ** bît-adini appears to have occupied, on the right bank of the euphrates, a part of the cazas of aîn-tab, rum-kaleh, and birejîk, that of suruji, minus the nakhiyeh of harrân, the larger part of the cazas of membîj and of rakkah, and part of the caza of zôr, the cazas being those represented on the maps of vital cuinet. *** none of these localities can be identified with certainty, except perhaps dabigu, a name we may trace in that of the modern village of dehbek. **** tul-barsip has been identified with birejîk. to the south-east, bît-adini bordered upon the country of the sukhi and the laqi,* lying to the east of assyria; other principalities, mainly of aramoan origin, formed its boundary to the north and north-west--shugab in the bend of the euphrates, from birejîk to samosata,** tul-abnî around edessa,*** the district of harrân,**** bît-zamani, izalla in the tektek-dagh and on the upper khabur, and bît-bakhiâni in the plain extending from the khabur to the kharmish.^ * in his previous campaign assur-nazir-pal had taken two towns of bît-adini, situated on the right bank of the euphrates, at the eastern extremity of mount bisuru, near the frontier of the lâqi. ** the country of shugab is mentioned between birejîk (tul- barsip) and bît-zamani, in one of the campaigns of shalmaneser iii., which obliges us to place it in the caza of rum-kaleh; the name has been read sumu. *** tul-abnî, which was at first sought for near the sources of the tigris, has been placed in the mesopotamian plain. the position which it occupies among the other names obliges us to put it near bît-adini and bît-zamani: the only possible site that i can find for it is at orfah, the edessa of classical times. **** the country of harrân is nowhere mentioned as belonging either to bît-adini or to tul-abnî: we must hence conclude that at this period it formed a little principality independent of those two states. ^ the situation of bît-bakhiâni is shown by the position which it occupies in the account of the campaign, and by the names associated with it in another passage of the _annals_. bît-zamani had belonged to assyria by right of conquest ever since the death of ammibaal; izalla and bît-bakhiâni had fulfilled their duties as vassals whenever assur-nazir-pal had appeared in their neighbourhood; bît-adini alone had remained independent, though its strength was more apparent than real. the districts which it included had never been able to form a basis for a powerful state. if by chance some small kingdom arose within it, uniting under one authority the tribes scattered over the burning plain or along the river banks, the first conquering dynasty which sprang up in the neighbourhood would be sure to effect its downfall, and absorb it under its own leadership. as mitâni, saved by its remote position from bondage to egypt, had not been able to escape from acknowledging the supremacy of the khâti, so bît-adini was destined to fall almost without a struggle under the yoke of the assyrians. it was protected from their advance by the volcanic groups of the urâa and tul-abâ, which lay directly in the way of the main road from the marshes of the khabur to the outskirts of tul-barsip. assur-nazir-pal, who might have worked round this line of natural defence to the north through nirbu, or to the south through his recently acquired province of lâqi, preferred to approach it in front; he faced the desert, and, in spite of the drought, he invested the strongest citadel of tul-abâ in the month of june, b.c. the name of the place was kaprabi, and its inhabitants believed it impregnable, clinging as it did to the mountain-side �like a cloud in the sky.� * * the name is commonly interpreted �great rock,� and divided thus--kap-rabi. it may also be considered, like kapridargila or kapranishâ, as being formed of _kapru_ and _abi_; this latter element appears to exist in the ancient name of telaba, thallaba, now tul-abâ. kapr-abi might be a fortress of the province of tul-abâ. the king, however, soon demolished its walls by sapping and by the use of the ram, killed of its garrison, burned its houses, and carried off men with their families, whom he installed in one of the suburbs of calah. akhuni, who was then reigning in bît-adini, had not anticipated that the invasion would reach his neighbourhood: he at once sent hostages and purchased peace by a tribute; the lord of tul-abnî followed his example, and the dominion of assyria was carried at a blow to the very frontier of the khâti. it was about two centuries before this that assurirba had crossed these frontiers with his vanquished army, but the remembrance of his defeat had still remained fresh in the memory of the people, as a warning to the sovereign who should attempt the old hazardous enterprise, and repeat the exploits of sargon of agadê or of tiglath-pileser i. assur-nazir-pal made careful preparations for this campaign, so decisive a one for his own prestige and for the future of the empire. he took with him not only all the assyrian troops at his disposal, but requisitioned by the way the armies of his most recently acquired vassals, incorporating them with his own, not so much for the purpose of augmenting his power of action, as to leave no force in his rear when once he was engaged hand to hand with the syrian legions. he left calah in the latter days of april, b.c.,* receiving the customary taxes from bît-bakhiâni, izalla, and bît-adini, which comprised horses, silver, gold, copper, lead, precious stuffs, vessels of copper and furniture of ivory; having reached tul-barsip, he accepted the gifts offered by tul-abni, and crossing the euphrates upon rafts of inflated skins, he marched his columns against oarchemish. * on the th iyyâr, but without any indication of limmu, or any number of the year or of the campaign; the date b.c. is admitted by the majority of historians. the political organisation of northern syria had remained entirely unaltered since the days when tiglath-pileser made his first victorious inroad into the country. the cilician empire which succeeded to the assyrian--if indeed it ever extended as far as some suppose--did not last long enough to disturb the balance of power among the various races occupying syria: it had subjugated them for a time, but had not been able to break them up and reconstitute them. at the downfall of the cilician empire the small states were still intact, and occupied, as of old, the territory comprising the ancient naharaim of the egyptians, the plateau between the orontes and the euphrates, the forests and marshy lowlands of the amanos, the southern slopes of taurus, and the plains of cilicia. [illustration: .jpg campaigns of assur-nazir-pal in syria] of these states, the most famous, though not then the most redoubtable, was that with which the name of the khâti is indissolubly connected, and which had carchemish as its capital. this ancient city, seated on the banks of the euphrates, still maintained its supremacy there, but though its wealth and religious ascendency were undiminished, its territory had been curtailed. the people of bît-adini had intruded themselves between this state and kummukh, arazik hemmed it in on the south, khazazu and khalmân confined it on the west, so that its sway was only freely exercised in the basin of the sajur. on the north-west frontier of the khâti lay gurgum, whose princes resided at marqasi and ruled over the central valley of the pyramos together with the entire basin of the ak-su. mikhri,* iaudi, and samalla lay on the banks of the saluara, and in the forests of the amanos to the south of gurgum. kuî maintained its uneventful existence amid the pastures of cilicia, near the marshes at the mouth of the pyramos. to the south of the sajur, bît-agusi** barred the way to the orontes; and from their lofty fastness of arpad, its chiefs kept watch over the caravan road, and closed or opened it at their will. * mikhri or ismikhri, i.e. �the country of larches,� was the name of a part of the amanos, possibly near the pyramos. ** the real name of the country was iakhânu, but it was called bît-gusi or bît-agusi, like bît-adini, bît-bakhiâni, bît-omri, after the founder of the reigning dynasty. we must place iakhânu to the south of azaz, in the neighbourhood of arpad, with this town as its capital. they held the key of syria, and though their territory was small in extent, their position was so strong that for more than a century and a half the majority of the assyrian generals preferred to avoid this stronghold by making a detour to the west, rather than pass beneath its walls. scattered over the plateau on the borders of agusi, or hidden in the valleys of amanos, were several less important principalities, most of them owing allegiance to lubarna, at that time king of the patina and the most powerful sovereign of the district. the patina had apparently replaced the alasia of egyptian times, as bît-adini had superseded mitâni; the fertile meadow-lands to the south of samalla on the afrîn and the lower orontes, together with the mountainous district between the orontes and the sea as far as the neighbourhood of eleutheros, also belonged to the patina. [illustration: .jpg bas-relief from a building at sinjirli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by perrot and chipiez. on the southern frontier of the patina lay the important phoenician cities, arvad, arka, and sina; and on the south-east, the fortresses belonging to hamath and damascus. the characteristics of the country remained unchanged. fortified towns abounded on all sides, as well as large walled villages of conical huts, like those whose strange outlines on the horizon are familiar to the traveller at the present-day. the manners and civilisation of chaldæa pervaded even more than formerly the petty courts, but the artists clung persistently to asianic tradition, and the bas-reliefs which adorned the palaces and temples were similar in character to those we find scattered throughout asia minor; there is the same inaccurate drawing, the same rough execution, the same tentative and awkward composition. [illustration: .jpg jibrÎn, a village of conical huts, on the plateau of aleppo] drawn by boudier, from a photograph reproduced in peters. the scribes from force of custom still employed the cuneiform syllabary in certain official religious or royal inscriptions, but, as it was difficult to manipulate and limited in application, the speech of the aramæan immigrants and the phoenician alphabet gradually superseded the ancient language and mode of writing.* * there is no monument bearing an inscription in this alphabet which can be referred with any certainty to the time of assur-nazir-pal, but the inscriptions of the kings of samalla date back to a period not more than a century and a half later than his reign; we may therefore consider the aramæan alphabet as being in current use in northern syria at the beginning of the ninth century, some forty years before the date of mesha�s inscription (i.e. the moabite stone). thus these northern syrians became by degrees assimilated to the people of babylon and nineveh, much as the inhabitants of a remote province nowadays adapt their dress, their architecture, their implements of husbandry and handicraft, their military equipment and organisation, to the fashions of the capital.* * one can judge of their social condition from the enumeration of the objects which formed their tribute, or the spoil which the assyrian kings carried off from their country. [illustration: .jpg the war-chariot of the khÂti op the ninth century] drawn by boudier, from a bas-relief. their armies were modelled on similar lines, and consisted of archers, plkemen, slingers, and those troops of horsemen which accompanied the chariotry on flying raids; the chariots, moreover, closely followed the assyrian type, even down to the padded bar with embroidered hangings which connected the body of the chariot with the end of the pole. [illustration: .jpg the assyrian war-chariot of the ninth century b.c.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bronze bas-relief on the gates of balawât. the syrian princes did not adopt the tiara, but they wore the long fringed robe, confined by a girdle at the waist, and their mode of life, with its ceremonies, duties, and recreations, differed little from that prevailing in the palaces of calah or babylon. they hunted big game, including the lion, according to the laws of the chase recognised at nineveh, priding themselves as much on their exploits in hunting, as on their triumphs in war. [illustration: .jpg a king of the khÂti hunting a lion in his chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by hogarth, published in the _recueil de travaux_. their religion was derived from the common source which underlay all semitic religions, but a considerable number of babylonian deities were also worshipped; these had been introduced in some cases without any modification, whilst in others they had been assimilated to more ancient gods bearing similar characteristics: at nerab, among the patina, nusku and his female companion nikal, both of chaldæan origin, claimed the homage of the faithful, to the disparagement of shahr the moon and shamash the sun. local cults often centred round obscure deities held in little account by the dominant races; thus samalla reverenced uru the light, bekubêl the wind, the chariot of el, not to mention el himself, besheph, hadad, and the cabin, the servants of besheph. [illustration: .jpg the god hadad] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph in luschan. these deities were mostly of the assyrian type, and if one may draw any conclusion from the few representations of them already discovered, their rites must have been celebrated in a manner similar to that followed in the cities on the lower euphrates. scarcely any signs of egyptian influence survived, though here and there a trace of it might be seen in the figures of calf or bull, the vulture of mut or the sparrow-hawk of horus. assur-nazir-pal, marching from the banks of the khabur to bît-adini, and from bît-adini passing on to northern syria, might almost have imagined himself still in his own dominions, so gradual and imperceptible were the changes in language and civilisation in the country traversed between nineveh and assur, tul-barsip and samalla. his expedition was unattended by danger or bloodshed. lubarna, the reigning prince of the patina, was possibly at that juncture meditating the formation of a syrian empire under his rule. unki, in which lay his capital of kunulua, was one of the richest countries of asia,* being well watered by the afrin, orontes, and saluara;** no fields produced such rich harvests as his, no meadows pastured such cattle or were better suited to the breeding of war-horses. * the unki of the assyrians, the uniuqa of the egyptians, is the valley of antioch, the amk of the present day. kunulua or kinalia, the capital of the patina, has been identified with the gindaros of greek times; i prefer to identify it with the existing tell-kunâna, written for tell-kunâla by the common substitution of _n_ for _l_ at the end of proper names. ** the saluara of the assyrian texts is the present kara-su, which flows into the ak-denîz, the lake of antioch. [illustration: .jpg religious scene displaying egyptian features] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression taken from a hittite cylinder. his mountain provinces yielded him wood and minerals, and provided a reserve of semi-savage woodcutters and herdsmen from which to recruit his numerous battalions. the neighbouring princes, filled with uneasiness or jealousy by his good fortune, saw in the assyrian monarch a friend and a liberator rather than an enemy. carchemish opened its gates and laid at his feet the best of its treasures--twenty talents of silver, ingots, rings, and daggers of gold, a hundred talents of copper, two hundred talents of iron, bronze bulls, cups decorated with scenes in relief or outline, ivory in the tusk or curiously wrought, purple and embroidered stuffs, and the state carriage of its king shangara. the hittite troops, assembled in haste, joined forces with the aramæan auxiliaries, and the united host advanced on coele-syria. the scribe commissioned to record the history of this expedition has taken a delight in inserting the most minute details. leaving carchemish, the army followed the great caravan route, and winding its way between the hills of munzigâni and khamurga, skirting bît-agusi, at length arrived under the walls of khazazu among the patina.* * khazazu being the present azaz, the assyrian army must have followed the route which still leads from jerabis to this town. mount munzigâni and khamurga, mentioned between carchemish and akhânu or iakhânu, must lie between the sajur and the koweik, near shehab, at the only point on the route where the road passes between two ranges of lofty hills. the town having purchased immunity by a present of gold and of finely woven stuffs, the army proceeded to cross the apriê, on the bank of which an entrenched camp was formed for the storage of the spoil. lubarna offered no resistance, but nevertheless refused to acknowledge his inferiority; after some delay, ifc was decided to make a direct attack on his capital, kunulua, whither he had retired. the appearance of the assyrian vanguard put a speedy end to his ideas of resistance: prostrating himself before his powerful adversary, he offered hostages, and emptied his palaces and stables to provide a ransom. this comprised twenty talents of silver, one talent of gold, a hundred talents of lead, a hundred talents of iron, a thousand bulls, ten thousand sheep, daughters of his nobles with befitting changes of garments, and all the paraphernalia of vessels, jewels, and costly stuffs which formed the necessary furniture of a princely household. the effect of his submission on his own vassals and the neighbouring tribes was shown in different ways. bît-agusi at once sent messengers to congratulate the conqueror, but the mountain provinces awaited the invader�s nearer approach before following its example. assur-nazir-pal, seeing that they did not take the initiative, crossed the orontes, probably at the spot where the iron bridge now stands, and making his way through the country between laraku and iaturi,* reached the banks of the sangura* without encountering any difficulty. * the spot where assur-nazir-pal must have crossed the orontes is determined by the respective positions of kunulua and tell-kunâna. at the iron bridge, the modern traveller has the choice of two roads: one, passing antioch and beît- el-mâ, leads to urdeh on the nahr-el-kebîr; the other reaches the same point by a direct route over the gebel kosseir. if, as i believe, assur-nazir-pal took the latter route, the country and mount laraku must be the northern part of gebel kosseir in the neighbourhood of antioch, and iaturi, the southern part of the same mountain near derkush. laraku is mentioned in the same position by shalmaneser iii., who reached it after crossing the orontes, on descending from the amanos _en route_ for the country of hamath. ** the sangura or sagura has been identified by delattre with the nahr-el-kebîr, not that river which the greeks called the eleutheros, but that which flows into the sea near latakia. before naming the sangura, the _annals_ mention a country, whose name, half effaced, ended in _-ku_: i think we may safely restore this name as [ashtama]kou, mentioned by shalmaneser iii. in this region, after the name of laraku. the country of ashtamaku would thus be the present canton of urdeh, which is traversed before reaching the banks of the nahr-el-kebîr. after a brief halt there in camp, he turned his back on the sea, and passing between saratini and duppâni,* took by assault the fortress of aribua.** this stronghold commanded all the surrounding country, and was the seat of a palace which lubarna at times used as a similar residence. here assur-nazir-pal took up his quarters, and deposited within its walls the corn and spoils of lukhuti;*** he established here an assyrian colony, and, besides being the scene of royal festivities, it became henceforth the centre of operations against the mountain tribes. * the mountain cantons of saratini and duppâni (kalpâni l�adpâni?), situated immediately to the south of the nahr-el- kebîr, correspond to the southern part of gebel-el-akrad, but i cannot discover any names on the modern map at all resembling them. ** beyond duppâni, assur-nazir-pal encamped on the banks of a river whose name is unfortunately effaced, and then reached aribua; this itinerary leads us to the eastern slope of the gebel ansarieh in the latitude of hamath. the only site i can find in this direction fulfilling the requirements of the text is that of masiad, where there still exists a fort of the assassins. the name aribua is perhaps preserved in that of rabaô, er-rabahu, which is applied to a wady and village in the neighbourhood of masiad. *** lukhuti must not be sought in the plains of the orontes, where assur-nazir-pal would have run the risk of an encounter with the king of hamath or his vassals; it must represent the part of the mountain of ansarieh lying between kadmus, masiad, and tortosa. the forts of the latter were destroyed, their houses burned, and prisoners were impaled outside the gates of their cities. having achieved this noble exploit, the king crossed the intervening spurs of lebanon and marched down to the shores of the mediterranean. here he bathed his weapons in the waters, and offered the customary sacrifices to the gods of the sea, while the phoenicians, with their wonted prudence, hastened to anticipate his demands--tyre, sidon, byblos, mahallat, maîza, kaîza, the amorites and arvad,* all sending tribute. * the point where assur-nazir-pal touched the sea-coast cannot be exactly determined: admitting that he set out from masiad or its neighbourhood, he must have crossed the lebanon by the gorge of the eleutheros, and reached the sea- board somewhere near the mouth of this river. one point strikes us forcibly as we trace on the map the march of this victorious hero, namely, the care with which he confined himself to the left bank of the orontes, and the restraint he exercised in leaving untouched the fertile fields of its valley, whose wealth was so calculated to excite his cupidity. this discretion would be inexplicable, did we not know that there existed in that region a formidable power which he may have thought it imprudent to provoke. it was damascus which held sway over those territories whose frontiers he respected, and its kings, also suzerains of hamath and masters of half israel, were powerful enough to resist, if not conquer, any enemy who might present himself. the fear inspired by damascus naturally explains the attitude adopted by the hittite states towards the invader, and the precautions taken by the latter to restrict his operations within somewhat narrow limits. having accepted the complimentary presents of the phoenicians, the king again took his way northwards--making a slight detour in order to ascend the amanos for the purpose of erecting there a stele commemorating his exploits, and of cutting pines, cedars, and larches for his buildings--and then returned to nineveh amid the acclamations of his people. in reading the history of this campaign, its plan and the principal events which took place in it appear at times to be the echo of what had happened some centuries before. the recapitulation of the halting-places near the sources of the tigris and on the banks of the upper euphrates, the marches through the valleys of the zagros or on the slopes of kashiari, the crushing one by one of the mesopotamian races, ending in a triumphal progress through northern syria, is almost a repetition, both as to the names and order of the places mentioned, of the expedition made by tiglath-pileser in the first five years of his reign. the question may well arise in passing whether assur-nazir-pal consciously modelled his campaign on that of his ancestor, as, in egypt, ramses iii. imitated ramses ii., or whether, in similar circumstances, he instinctively and naturally followed the same line of march. in either case, he certainly showed on all sides greater wisdom than his predecessor, and having attained the object of his ambition, avoided compromising his success by injudiciously attacking damascus or babylon, the two powers who alone could have offered effective resistance. the victory he had gained, in , over the brother of nabu-baliddin had immensely flattered his vanity. his panegyrists vied with each other in depicting karduniash bewildered by the terror of his majesty, and the chaldæans overwhelmed by the fear of his arms; but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagant flatteries, and continued to the end of his reign to observe the treaties concluded between the two courts in the time of his grandfather rammân-nirâri.* * his frontier on the chaldæan side, between the tigris and the mountains, was the boundary fixed by rammân-nirâri. he had, however, sufficiently enlarged his dominions, in less than ten years, to justify some display of pride. he himself described his empire as extending, on the west of assyria proper, from the banks of the tigris near nineveh to lebanon and the mediterranean;* besides which, sukhi was subject to him, and this included the province of rapiku on the frontiers of babylonia.** * the expression employed in this description and in similar passages, _ishtu ibirtan nâru_, translated _from the ford over the river_, or better, _from the other side of the river_, must be understood as referring to assyria proper: the territory subject to the king is measured in the direction indicated, starting from the rivers which formed the boundaries of his hereditary dominions. _from the other bank of the tigris_ means from the bank of the tigris opposite nineveh or oalah, whence the king and his army set out on their campaigns. ** rapiku is mentioned in several texts as marking the frontier between the sukhi and chaldæa. he had added to his older provinces of amidi, masios and singar, the whole strip of armenian territory at the foot of the taurus range, from the sources of the supnat to those of the bitlis-tchaî, and he held the passes leading to the banks of the arzania, in kirruri and gilzân, while the extensive country of naîri had sworn him allegiance. towards the south-east the wavering tribes, which alternately gave their adherence to assur or babylon according to circumstances, had ranged themselves on his side, and formed a large frontier province beyond the borders of his hereditary kingdom, between the lesser zab and the turnat. but, despite repeated blows inflicted on them, he had not succeeded in welding these various factors into a compact and homogeneous whole; some small proportion of them were assimilated to assyria, and were governed directly by royal officials,* but the greater number were merely dependencies, more or less insecurely held by the obligations of vassalage or servitude. in some provinces the native chiefs were under the surveillance of assyrian residents;** these districts paid an annual tribute proportionate to the resources and products of their country: thus kirruri and the neighbouring states contributed horses, mules, bulls, sheep, wine, and copper vessels; the aramaeans gold, silver, lead, copper, both wrought and in the ore, purple, and coloured or embroidered stuffs; while izalla, nirbu, nirdun, and bît-zamâni had to furnish horses, chariots, metals, and cattle. * there were royal governors in suru in bit-khalupi, in matiâte, in madara, and in naîri. ** there were �assyrian� residents in kirruri and the neighbouring countries, in kirkhi, and in naîri. the less civilised and more distant tribes were not, like these, subject to regular tribute, but each time the sovereign traversed their territory or approached within reasonable distance, their chiefs sent or brought to him valuable presents as fresh pledges of their loyalty. royal outposts, built at regular intervals and carefully fortified, secured the fulfilment of these obligations, and served as depots for storing the commodities collected by the royal officials; such outposts were, damdamusa on the north-west of the kashiari range, tushkhân on the tigris, tilluli between the supnat and the euphrates, aribua among the patina, and others scattered irregularly between the greater and lesser zab, on the khabur, and also in naîri. these strongholds served as places of refuge for the residents and their guards in case of a revolt, and as food-depots for the armies in the event of war bringing them into their neighbourhood. in addition to these, assur-nazir-pal also strengthened the defences of assyria proper by building fortresses at the points most open to attack; he repaired or completed the defences of kaksi, to command the plain between the greater and lesser zab and the tigris; he rebuilt the castles or towers which guarded the river-fords and the entrances to the valleys of the gebel makhlub, and erected at calah the fortified palace which his successors continued to inhabit for the ensuing five hundred years. assur-nazir-pal had resided at nineveh from the time of his accession to the throne; from thence he had set out on four successive campaigns, and thither he had returned at the head of his triumphant troops, there he had received the kings who came to pay him homage, and the governors who implored his help against foreign attacks; thither he had sent rebel chiefs, and there, after they had marched in ignominy through the streets, he had put them to torture and to death before the eyes of the crowd, and their skins were perchance still hanging nailed to the battlements when he decided to change the seat of his capital. the ancient capital no longer suited his present state as a conqueror; the accommodation was too restricted, the decoration too poor, and probably the number of apartments was insufficient to house the troops of women and slaves brought back from his wars by its royal master. built on the very bank of the tebilti, one of the tributaries of the khusur, and hemmed in by three temples, there was no possibility of its enlargement--a difficulty which often occurs in ancient cities. the necessary space for new buildings could only have been obtained by altering the course of the stream, and sacrificing a large part of the adjoining quarters of the city: assur-nazir-pal therefore preferred to abandon the place and to select a new site where he would have ample space at his disposal. [illustration: .jpg the mounds of calah] drawn by boudier, from layard. the pointed mound on the left near the centre of the picture represents the ziggurât of the great temple. he found what he required close at hand in the half-ruined city of calah, where many of his most illustrious predecessors had in times past sought refuge from the heat of assur. it was now merely an obscure and sleepy town about twelve miles south of nineveh, on the right bank of the tigris, and almost at the angle made by the junction of this river with the greater zab. the place contained a palace built by shalmaneser i., which, owing to many years� neglect, had become uninhabitable. assur-nazir-pal not only razed to the ground the palaces and temples, but also levelled the mound on which they had been built; he then cleared away the soil down to the water level, and threw up an immense and almost rectangular terrace on which to lay out his new buildings. [illustration: .jpg stele of assur-nazir-pal at calah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the king chose ninip, the god of war, as the patron of the city, and dedicated to him, at the north-west corner of the terrace, a ziggurât with its usual temple precincts. here the god was represented as a bull with a man�s head and bust in gilded alabaster, and two yearly feasts were instituted in his honour, one in the month sebat, the other in the month ulul. the ziggurât was a little over two hundred feet high, and was probably built in seven stages, of which only one now remains intact: around it are found several independent series of chambers and passages, which may have been parts of other temples, but it is now impossible to say which belonged to the local belît, which to sin, to gula, to rammân, or to the ancient deity râ. at the entrance to the largest chamber, on a rectangular pedestal, stood a stele with rounded top, after the egyptian fashion. on it is depicted a figure of the king, standing erect and facing to the left of the spectator; he holds his mace at his side, his right hand is raised in the attitude of adoration, and above him, on the left upper edge of the stele, are grouped the five signs of the planets; at the base of the stele stands an altar with a triangular pedestal and circular slab ready for the offerings to be presented to the royal founder by priests or people. the palace extended along the south side of the terrace facing the town, and with the river in its rear; it covered a space one hundred and thirty-one yards in length and a hundred and nine in breadth. in the centre was a large court, surrounded by seven or eight spacious halls, appropriated to state functions; between these and the court were many rooms of different sizes, forming the offices and private apartments of the royal house. the whole palace was built of brick faced with stone. three gateways, flanked by winged, human-headed bulls, afforded access to the largest apartment, the hall of audience, where the king received his subjects or the envoys of foreign powers.* the doorways and walls of some of the rooms were decorated with glazed tiles, but the majority of them were covered with bands of coloured** bas-reliefs which portrayed various episodes in the life of the king--his state-councils, his lion hunts, the reception of tribute, marches over mountains and rivers, chariot-skirmishes, sieges, and the torture and carrying away of captives. * at the east end of the hall layard found a block of alabaster covered with inscriptions, forming a sort of platform on which the king�s throne may have stood. ** layard points out the traces of colouring still visible when the excavations were made. [illustration: .jpg the winged bulls op assur-nazir-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. incised in bands across these pictures are inscriptions extolling the omnipotence of assur, while at intervals genii with eagles� beaks, or deities in human form, imperious and fierce, appear with hands full of offerings, or in the act of brandishing thunderbolts against evil spirits. the architect who designed this imposing decoration, and the sculptors who executed it, closely followed the traditions of ancient chaldæa in the drawing and composition of their designs, and in the use of colour or chisel; but the qualities and defects peculiar to their own race give a certain character of originality to this borrowed art. they exaggerated the stern and athletic aspect of their models, making the figure thick-set, the muscles extraordinarily enlarged, and the features ludicrously accentuated. [illustration: .jpg glazed tile from palace of calah] drawn by boudier, after layard. their pictures produce an impression of awkwardness, confusion and heaviness, but the detail is so minute and the animation so great that the attention of the spectator is forcibly arrested; these uncouth beings impress us with the sense of their self-reliance and their confidence in their master, as we watch them brandishing their weapons or hurrying to the attack, and see the shock of battle and the death-blows given and received. the human-headed bulls, standing on guard at the gates, exhibit the calm and pensive dignity befitting creatures conscious of their strength, while the lions passant who sometimes replace them, snarl and show their teeth with an almost alarming ferocity. [illustration: .jpg lion from assur-nazir-pal�s palace] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the sculpture in the british museum. the statues of men and gods, as a rule, are lacking in originality. the heavy robes which drape them from head to foot give them the appearance of cylinders tied in at the centre and slightly flattened towards the top. the head surmounting this shapeless bundle is the only life-like part, and even the lower half of this is rendered heavy by the hair and beard, whose tightly curled tresses lie in stiff rows one above the other. the upper part of the face which alone is visible is correctly drawn; the expression is of rather a commonplace type of nobility--respectable but self-sufficient. the features--eyes, forehead, nose, mouth--are all those of assur-nazir-pal; the hair is arranged in the fashion he affected, and the robe is embroidered with his jewels; but amid all this we miss the keen intelligence always present in egyptian sculpture, whether under the royal head-dress of cheops or in the expectant eyes of the sitting scribe: the assyrian sculptor could copy the general outline of his model fairly well, but could not infuse soul into the face of the conqueror, whose �countenance beamed above the destruction around him.� the water of the tigris being muddy, and unpleasant to the taste, and the wells at calah so charged with lime and bitumen as to render them unwholesome, assur-nazir-pal supplied the city with water from the neighbouring zab.* an abundant stream was diverted from this river at the spot now called negub, and conveyed at first by a tunnel excavated in the rock, and thence by an open canal to the foot of the great terrace: at this point the flow of the water was regulated by dams, and the surplus was utilised for irrigation** purposes by means of openings cut in the banks. * the presence of bitumen in the waters of calah is due to the hot springs which rise in the bed of the brook shor- derreh. ** the canal of negub--_negub_ signifies _hole_ in arabic-- was discovered by layard. the zab having changed its course to the south, and scooped out a deeper bed for itself, the double arch, which serves as an entrance to the canal, is actually above the ordinary level of the river, and the water flows through it only in flood-time. the aqueduct was named bâbilat-khigal--the bringer of plenty--and, to justify the epithet, date-palms, vines, and many kinds of fruit trees were planted along its course, so that both banks soon assumed the appearance of a shady orchard interspersed with small towns and villas. the population rapidly increased, partly through the spontaneous influx of assyrians themselves, but still more through the repeated introduction of bands of foreign prisoners: forts, established at the fords of the zab, or commanding the roads which cross the gebel makhlub, kept the country in subjection and formed an inner line of defence at a short distance from the capital. [illustration: .jpg a corner of the ruined palace of assur-nazir-pal] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by rassam. assur-nazir-pal kept up a palace, garden, and small temple, near the fort of imgur-bel, the modern balawât: thither he repaired for intervals of repose from state affairs, to enjoy the pleasures of the chase and cool air in the hot season. he did not entirely abandon his other capitals, nineveh and assur, visiting them occasionally, but calah was his favourite seat, and on its adornment he spent the greater part of his wealth and most of his leisure hours. only once again did he abandon his peaceful pursuits and take the field, about the year b.c., during the eponymy of shamashnurî. the tribes on the northern boundary of the empire had apparently forgotten the lessons they had learnt at the cost of so much bloodshed at the beginning of his reign: many had omitted to pay the tribute due, one chief had seized the royal cities of amidi and damdamusa, and the rebellion threatened to spread to assyria itself. assur-nazir-pal girded on his armour and led his troops to battle as vigorously as in the days of his youth. he hastily collected, as he passed through their lands, the tribute due from kipâni, izalla, and kummukh, gained the banks of the euphrates, traversed grubbu burning everything on his way, made a detour through dirria and kirkhi, and finally halted before the walls of damdamusa. six hundred soldiers of the garrison perished in the assault and four hundred were taken prisoners: these he carried to amidi and impaled as an object-lesson round its walls; but, the defenders of the town remaining undaunted, he raised the siege and plunged into the gorges of the kashiari. having there reduced to submission udâ, the capital of lapturi, son of tubisi, he returned to calah, taking with him six thousand prisoners whom he settled as colonists around his favourite residence. this was his last exploit: he never subsequently quitted his hereditary domain, but there passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace, if not in idleness. he died in b.c., after a reign of twenty-five years. his portraits represent him as a vigorous man, with a brawny neck and broad shoulders, capable of bearing the weight of his armour for many hours at a time. he is short in the head, with a somewhat flattened skull and low forehead; his eyes are large and deep-set beneath bushy eyebrows, his cheek-bones high, and his nose aquiline, with a fleshy tip and wide nostrils, while his mouth and chin are hidden by moustache and beard. the whole figure is instinct with real dignity, yet such dignity as is due rather to rank and the habitual exercise of power, than to the innate qualities of the man.* * perrot and chipiez do not admit that the assyrian sculptors intended to represent the features of their kings; for this they rely chiefly on the remarkable likeness between all the figures in the same series of bas-reliefs. my own belief is that in assyria, as in egypt, the sculptors took the portrait of the reigning sovereign as the model for all their figures. the character of assur-nazir-pal, as gathered from the dry details of his annals, seems to have been very complex. he was as ambitious, resolute, and active as any prince in the world; yet he refrained from offensive warfare as soon as his victories had brought under his rule the majority of the countries formerly subject to tiglath-pileser i. he knew the crucial moment for ending a campaign, arresting his progress where one more success might have brought him into collision with some formidable neighbour; and this wise prudence in his undertakings enabled him to retain the principal acquisitions won by his arms. as a worshipper of the gods he showed devotion and gratitude; he was just to his subjects, but his conduct towards his enemies was so savage as to appear to us cruel even for that terribly pitiless age: no king ever employed such horrible punishments, or at least none has described with such satisfaction the tortures inflicted on his vanquished foes. perhaps such measures were necessary, and the harshness with which he repressed insurrection prevented more frequent outbreaks and so averted greater sacrifice of life. but the horror of these scenes so appals the modern reader, that at first he can only regard assur-nazir-pal as a royal butcher of the worst type. [illustration: .jpg shalmaneser iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell, taken from the original stele in the british museum. assur-nazir-pal left to his successor an overflowing treasury, a valiant army, a people proud of their progress and fully confident in their own resources, and a kingdom which had recovered, during several years of peace, from the strain of its previous conquests. shalmaneser iii.* drew largely on the reserves of men and money which his father�s foresight had prepared, and his busy reign of thirty-five years saw thirty-two campaigns, conducted almost without a break, on every side of the empire in succession. a double task awaited him, which he conscientiously and successfully fulfilled. * [the shalmaneser iii. of the text is the shalmaneser ii. of the notes.--tr.] assur-nazir-pal had thoroughly reorganised the empire and raised it to the rank of a great power: he had confirmed his provinces and vassal states in their allegiance, and had subsequently reduced to subjection, or, at any rate, penetrated at various points, the little buffer principalities between assyria and the powerful kingdoms of babylon, damascus, and urartu; but he had avoided engaging any one of these three great states in a struggle of which the issue seemed doubtful. shalmaneser could not maintain this policy of forbearance without loss of prestige in the eyes of the world: conduct which might seem prudent and cautious in a victorious monarch like assur-nazir-pal would in him have argued timidity or weakness, and his rivals would soon have provoked a quarrel if they thought him lacking in the courage or the means to attack them. immediately after his accession, therefore, he assumed the offensive, and decided to measure his strength first against urartu, which for some years past had been showing signs of restlessness. few countries are more rugged or better adapted for defence than that in which his armies were about to take the field. the volcanoes to which it owed its configuration in geological times, had become extinct long before the appearance of man, but the surface of the ground still bears evidence of their former activity; layers of basaltic rock, beds of scorias and cinders, streams of half-disintegrated mud and lava, and more or less perfect cones, meet the eye at every turn. subterranean disturbances have not entirely ceased even now, for certain craters--that of tandurek, for example--sometimes exhale acid fumes; while hot springs exist in the neighbourhood, from which steaming waters escape in cascades to the valley, and earthquakes and strange subterranean noises are not unknown. the backbone of these armenian mountains joins towards the south the line of the grordyasan range; it runs in a succession of zigzags from south-east to northwest, meeting at length the mountains of pontus and the last spurs of the caucasus. [illustration: .jpg the two peaks of mount ararat] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by a. tissandier. lofty snow-clad peaks, chiefly of volcanic origin, rise here and there among them, the most important being akhta-dagh, tandurek, ararat, bingoel, and palandoeken. the two unequal pyramids which form the summit of ararat are covered with perpetual snow, the higher of them being , feet above the sea-level. the spurs which issue from the principal chain cross each other in all directions, and make a network of rocky basins where in former times water collected and formed lakes, nearly all of which are now dry in consequence of the breaking down of one or other of their enclosing sides. two only of these mountain lakes still remain, entirely devoid of outlet, lake van in the south, and lake urumiah further to the south-east. the assyrians called the former the upper sea of naîri, and the latter the lower sea, and both constituted a defence for urartu against their attacks. to reach the centre of the kingdom of urartu, the assyrians had either to cross the mountainous strip of land between the two lakes, or by making a detour to the north-west, and descending the difficult slopes of the valley of the arzania, to approach the mountains of armenia lying to the north of lake van. the march was necessarily a slow and painful one for both horses and men, along narrow winding valleys down which rushed rapid streams, over raging torrents, through tangled forests where the path had to be cut as they advanced, and over barren wind-swept plateaux where rain and mist chilled and demoralized soldiers accustomed to the warm and sunny plains of the euphrates. the majority of the armies which invaded this region never reached the goal of the expedition: they retired after a few engagements, and withdrew as quickly as possible to more genial climes. the main part of the urartu remained almost always unsubdued behind its barrier of woods, rocks, and lakes, which protected it from the attacks levelled against it, and no one can say how far the kingdom extended in the direction of the caucasus. it certainly included the valley of the araxes and possibly part of the valley of the kur, and the steppes sloping towards the caspian sea. it was a region full of contrasts, at once favoured and ill-treated by nature in its elevation and aspect: rugged peaks, deep gorges, dense thickets, districts sterile from the heat of subterranean fires, and sandy wastes barren for lack of moisture, were interspersed with shady valleys, sunny vine-clad slopes, and wide stretches of fertile land covered with rich layers of deep alluvial soil, where thick-standing corn and meadow-lands, alternating with orchards, repaid the cultivator for the slightest attempt at irrigation. [illustration: .jpg end of the harvest--cutting straw] history does not record who were the former possessors of this land; but towards the middle of the ninth century it was divided into several principalities, whose position and boundaries cannot be precisely determined. it is thought that urartu lay on either side of mount ararat and on both banks of the araxes, that biainas lay around lake van,* and that the mannai occupied the country to the north and east of lake urumiah;** the positions of the other tribes on the different tributaries of the euphrates or the slopes of the armenian mountains are as yet uncertain. * urartu is the only name by which the assyrians knew the kingdom of van; it has been recognised from the very beginning of assyriological studies, as well as its identity with the ararat of the bible and the alarodians of herodotus. it was also generally recognised that the name biainas in the vannic inscriptions, which hincks read bieda, corresponded to the urartu of the assyrians, but in consequence of this mistaken reading, efforts have been made to connect it with adiabene. sayce was the first to show that biainas was the name of the country of van, and of the kingdom of which van was the capital; the word bitâni which sayce connects with it is not a secondary form of the name of van, but a present day term, and should be erased from the list of geographical names. ** the mannai are the minni of jeremiah (li. ), and it is in their country of minyas that one tradition made the ark rest after the deluge. the country was probably peopled by a very mixed race, for its mountains have always afforded a safe asylum for refugees, and at each migration, which altered the face of western asia, some fugitives from neighbouring nations drifted to the shelter of its fastnesses. [illustration: .jpg the kingdom of uratu] the principal element, the khaldi, were akin to that great family of tribes which extended across the range of the taurus, from the shores of the mediterranean to the euxine, and included the khalybes, the mushku, the tabal, and the khâti. the little preserved of their language resembles what we know of the idioms in use among the people of arzapi and mitânni, and their religion seems to have been somewhat analogous to the ancient worship of the hittites. the character of the ancient armenians, as revealed to us by the monuments, resembles in its main features that of the armenians of the present time. they appear as tall, strong, muscular, and determined, full of zest for work and fighting, and proud of their independence. [illustration: .jpg fragment of a votive shield of urartian work] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by hormuzd rassam. some of them led a pastoral life, wandering about with their flocks during the greater part of the year, obliged to seek pasturage in valley, forest, or mountain height according to the season, while in winter they remained frost-bound in semi-subterranean dwellings similar to those in which descendants immure themselves at the present day. where the soil lent itself to agriculture, they proved excellent husbandmen, and obtained abundant crops. their ingenuity in irrigation was remarkable, and enabled them to bring water by a system of trenches from distant springs to supply their fields and gardens; besides which, they knew how to terrace the steep hillsides so as to prevent the rapid draining away of moisture. industries were but little developed among them, except perhaps the working of metals; for were they not akin to those chalybes of the pontus, whose mines and forges already furnished iron to the grecian world? fragments have been discovered in the ruined cities of urartu of statuettes, cups, and votive shields, either embossed or engraved, and decorated with concentric bands of animals or men, treated in the assyrian manner, but displaying great beauty of style and remarkable finish of execution. [illustration: .jpg site of an urartian town at toprah-kaleh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. their towns were generally fortified or perched on heights, rendering them easy of defence, as, for example, van and toprah-kaleh. even such towns as were royal residences were small, and not to be compared with the cities of assyria or aram; their ground-plan generally assumed the form of a rectangular oblong, not always traced with equal exactitude. [illustration: .jpg the ruins of a palace of urartu at toprah-kaleh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by hormuzd rassam. the walls were built of blocks of roughly hewn stone, laid in regular courses, but without any kind of mortar or cement; they were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at intervals by square towers, at the foot of which were outworks to protect the points most open to attack. the entrance was approached by narrow and dangerous pathways, which sometimes ran on ledges across the precipitous face of the rock. the dwelling-houses were of very simple construction, being merely square cabins of stone or brick, devoid of any external ornament, and pierced by one low doorway, but sometimes surmounted by an open colonnade supported by a row of small pillars; a flat roof with a parapet crowned the whole, though this was often replaced by a gabled top, which was better adapted to withstand the rains and snows of winter. the palaces of the chiefs differed from the private houses in the size of their apartments and the greater care bestowed upon their decoration. their façades were sometimes adorned with columns, and ornamented with bucklers or carved discs of metal; slabs of stone covered with inscriptions lined the inner halls, but we do not know whether the kings added to their dedications to the gods and the recital of their victories, pictures of the battles they had fought and of the fortresses they had destroyed. the furniture resembled that in the houses of nineveh, but was of simpler workmanship, and perhaps the most valuable articles were imported from assyria or were of aramaean manufacture. the temples seemed to have differed little from the palaces, at least in external appearance. the masonry was more regular and more skilfully laid; the outer court was filled with brazen lavers and statues; the interior was furnished with altars, sacrificial stones, idols in human or animal shape, and bowls identical with those in the sanctuaries on the euphrates, but the nature and details of the rites in which they were employed are unknown. one supreme deity, khaldis, god of the sky, was, as far as we can conjecture, the protector of the whole nation, and their name was derived from his, as that of the assyrians was from assur, the cossæans from kashshu, and the khati from khâtu. [illustration: .jpg temple of khaldis at muzazir] this deity was assisted in the government of the universe by teisbas, god of the air, and ardinîs the sun-god. groups of secondary deities were ranged around this sovereign triad--auis, the water; ayas, the earth; selardis, the moon; kharubainis, irmusinis, adarutas, and arzi-melas: one single inscription enumerates forty-six, but some of these were worshipped in special localities only. [illustration: .jpg assyrian soldiers carrying off or destroying the furniture of an urartian temple] drawn by faucher-gudin, from botta. scribes are weighing gold, and soldiers destroying the statue of a god with their axes. it would appear as if no goddesses were included in the native pantheon. saris, the only goddess known to us at present, is probably merely a variant of the ishtar of nineveh or arbela, borrowed from the assyrians at a later date. the first assyrian conquerors looked upon these northern regions as an integral part of naîri, and included them under that name. they knew of no single state in the district whose power might successfully withstand their own, but were merely acquainted with a group of hostile provinces whose internecine conflicts left them ever at the mercy of a foreign foe.* two kingdoms had, however, risen to some importance about the beginning of the ninth century--that of the mannai in the east, and that of urartu in the centre of the country. urartu comprised the district of ararat proper, the province of biaina, and the entire basin of the arzania. * the single inscription of tiglath-pileser i. contains a list of twenty-three kings of nairi, and mentions sixty chiefs of the same country. [illustration: .jpg shalmanesee iii. crossing the mountains] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. arzashkun, one of its capitals, situated probably near the sources of this river, was hidden, and protected against attack, by an extent of dense forest almost impassable to a regular army. the power of this kingdom, though as yet unorganised, had already begun to inspire the neighbouring states with uneasiness. assur-nazir-pal speaks of it incidentally as lying on the northern frontier of his empire,* but the care he took to avoid arousing its hostility shows the respect in which he held it. * arzashku, arzashkun, seems to be the assyrian form of an urartian name ending in _-ka_, formed from a proper name arzash, which recalls the name arsène, arsissa, applied by the ancients to part of lake van. arzashkun might represent the ardzik of the armenian historians, west of malasgert. he was, indeed, as much afraid of urartu as of damascus, and though he approached quite close to its boundary in his second campaign, he preferred to check his triumphant advance rather than risk attacking it. it appears to have been at that time under the undisputed rule of a certain sharduris, son of lutipri, and subsequently, about the middle of assur-nazir-pal�s reign, to have passed into the hands of aramê, who styled himself king of naîri, and whose ambition may have caused those revolts which forced assur-nazir-pal to take up arms in the eighteenth year of his reign. on this occasion the assyrians again confined themselves to the chastisement of their own vassals, and checked their advance as soon as they approached urartu. their success was but temporary; hardly had they withdrawn from the neighbourhood, when the disturbances were renewed with even greater violence, very probably at the instigation of aramê. shalmaneser iii. found matters in a very unsatisfactory state both on the west and south of lake van: some of the peoples who had been subject to his father--the khubushkia, the pastoral tribes of the gordæan mountains, and the aramæans of the euphrates--had transferred their allegiance elsewhere. he immediately took measures to recall them to a sense of their duty, and set out from calah only a few days after succeeding to the crown. he marched at first in an easterly direction, and, crossing the pass of simisi, burnt the city of aridi, thus proving that he was fully prepared to treat rebels after the same fashion as his father. the lesson had immediate effect. all the neighbouring tribes, khargæans, simisæans, the people of simira, sirisha, and ulmania, hastened to pay him homage even before he had struck his camp near aridi. hurrying across country by the shortest route, which entailed the making of roads to enable his chariots and cavalry to follow him, he fell upon khubushkia, and reduced a hundred towns to ashes, pursuing the king kakia into the depths of the forest, and forcing him to an unconditional surrender. ascending thence to shugunia, a dependency of aramê�s, he laid the principality waste, in spite of the desperate resistance made on their mountain slopes by the inhabitants; then proceeding to lake van, he performed the ceremonial rites incumbent on an assyrian king whenever he stood for the first time on the shores of a new sea. he washed his weapons in the waters, offered a sacrifice to the gods, casting some portions of the victim into the lake, and before leaving carved his own image on the surface of a commanding rock. on his homeward march he received tribute from gilzân. this expedition was but the prelude of further successes. after a few weeks� repose at nineveh, he again set out to make his authority felt in the western portions of his dominions. [illustration: .jpg the people of shugunia fighting against the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. akhuni, chief of bît-adini, whose position was the first to be menaced, had formed a league with the chiefs of all the cities which had formerly bowed before assur-nazir-pal�s victorious arms, gurgum, samalla, kuî, the patina, car-chemish, and the khâti. shalmaneser seized lalati* and burmarana, two of akhuni�s towns, drove him across the euphrates, and following close on his heels, collected as he passed the tribute of gurgum, and fell upon samalla. * lalati is probably the lulati of the egyptians. the modern site is not known, nor is that of burmarana. under the walls of lutibu he overthrew the combined forces of adini, samalla, and the patina, and raised a trophy to commemorate his victory at the sources of the saluara; then turning sharply to the south, he crossed the orontes in pursuit of shapalulme, king of the patina. [illustration: .jpg prisoners from shugunia, with their arms tied and yokes on their necks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. not far from alizir he encountered a fresh army raised by akhuni and the king of samalla, with contingents from carchemish, kuî, cilicia, and iasbuki:* having routed it, he burnt the fortresses of shapalulme, and after occupying himself by cutting down cedars and cypress trees on the amanos in the province of atalur, he left a triumphal stele engraved on the mountain-side. * the country of iasbuki is represented by ishbak, a son of abraham and keturah, mentioned in genesis (xxv. ) in connection with shuah. [illustration: b.jpg sacrifice offered by shalmaneser iii.] [illustration: .jpg costumes found in the fifth tomb] next turning eastwards, he received the homage offered with alacrity by the towns of taia, khazazu, nulia, and butamu, and, with a final tribute from agusi, he returned in triumph to nineveh. the motley train which accompanied, him showed by its variety the immense extent of country he had traversed during this first campaign. among the prisoners were representatives of widely different races;--khâti with long robes and cumbrous head-dresses, following naked mountaineers from shugunia, who marched with yokes on their necks, and wore those close-fitting helmets with short crests which have such a strangely modern look on the assyrian bas-reliefs. the actual results of the campaign were, perhaps, hardly commensurate with the energy expended. this expedition from east to west had certainly inflicted considerable losses on the rebels against whom it had been directed; it had cost them dearly in men and cattle, and booty of all kinds, and had extorted from them a considerable amount of tribute, but they remained, notwithstanding, still unsubdued. as soon as the assyrian troops had quitted their neighbourhood, they flattered themselves they were safe from further attack. no doubt they thought that a show of submission would satisfy the new invader, as it had satisfied his father; but shalmaneser was not disposed to rest content with this nominal dependence. he intended to exercise effective control over all the states won by his sword, and the proof of their subjection was to be the regular payment of tribute and fulfilment of other obligations to their suzerain. year by year he unfailingly enforced his rights, till the subject states were obliged to acknowledge their master and resign themselves to servitude. the narrative of his reiterated efforts is a monotonous one. the king advanced against adini in the spring of b.c., defeated akhuni near tul-barsip, transported his victorious regiments across the euphrates on rafts of skins, seized surunu, paripa, and dabigu* besides six fortresses and two hundred villages, and then advanced into the territory of carchemish, which he proceeded to treat with such severity that the other hittite chiefs hastened to avert a similar fate by tendering their submission. * shalmaneser crossed the euphrates near tul-barsip, which would lead him into the country between birejîk, rum-kaleh, and aintab, and it is in that district that we must look for the towns subject to akhuni. dabigu, i consider, corresponds to dehbek on rey�s map, a little to the north-east of aintab; the sites of paripa and surunu are unknown. the very enumeration of their offerings proves not only their wealth, but the terror inspired by the advancing assyrian host: shapalulmê of the patina, for instance, yielded up three talents of gold, a hundred talents of silver, three hundred talents of copper, and three hundred of iron, and paid in addition to this an annual tribute of one talent of silver, two talents of purple, and two hundred great beams of cedar-wood. samalla, agusi, and kummukh were each laid under tribute in proportion to their resources, but their surrender did not necessarily lead to that of adini. akhuni realised that, situated as he was on the very borders of assyrian territory, there was no longer a chance of his preserving his semi-independence, as was the case with his kinsfolk beyond the euphrates; proximity to the capital would involve a stricter servitude, which would soon reduce him from the condition of a vassal to that of a subject, and make him merely a governor where he had hitherto reigned as king. abandoned by the khâti, he sought allies further north, and entered into a league with the tribes of naîri and urartu. when, in b.c., shalmaneser iii. forced an entrance into tul-barsip, and drove back what was left of the garrison on the right bank of the euphrates, a sudden movement of aramê obliged him to let the prey escape from his grasp. rapidly fortifying tul-barsip, nappigi, aligu, pitru, and mutkînu, and garrisoning them with loyal troops to command the fords of the river, as his ancestor shalmaneser i. had done six centuries before,* he then re-entered naîri by way of bît-zamani, devastated inziti with fire and sword, forced a road through to the banks of the arzania, pillaged sukhmi and dayaîni, and appeared under the walls of arzashkun. * pitru, the pethor of the bible (numb. xxii. ), is situated near the confluence of the sajur and the euphrates, somewhere near the encampment called oshériyéh by sachau. mutkînu was on the other bank, perhaps at kharbet-beddaî, nearly opposite pitru. nappigi was on the left bank of the euphrates, which excludes its identification with mabog- hierapolis, as proposed by hommel; nabigath, mentioned by tomkins, is too far east. nappigi and aligu must both be sought in the district between the euphrates and the town of saruj. aramê withdrew to mount adduri and awaited his attack in an almost impregnable position; he was nevertheless defeated: of his soldiers fell on the field of battle; his camp, his treasures, his chariots, and all his baggage passed into the hands of the conqueror, and he himself barely escaped with his life. shalmaneser ravaged the country �as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields;� he burnt the villages and the crops, destroyed arzashkun, and raised before its gates a pyramid of human heads, surrounded by a circle of prisoners impaled on stakes. he climbed the mountain chain of iritia, and laid waste aramali and zanziuna at his leisure, and descending for the second time to the shores of lake van, renewed the rites he had performed there in the first year of his reign, and engraved on a neighbouring rock an inscription recording his deeds of prowess. [illustration: .jpg shua, king of gilzan, bringing a war-horse fully caparisoned to shalmaneser] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. he made his way back to gilzân, where its king, shua, brought him a war-horse fully caparisoned, as a token of homage. shalmaneser graciously deigned to receive it, and further exacted from the king the accustomed contributions of chariot-horses, sheep, and wine, together with seven dromedaries, whose strange forms amused the gaping crowds of nineveh. after quitting gilzân, shalmaneser encountered the people of khubushkia, who ventured to bar his way; but its king, kakia, lost his city of shilaia, and three thousand soldiers, besides bulls, horses, and sheep innumerable. having enforced submission in khubushkia, shalmaneser at length returned to assur through the defiles of kirruri, and came to calah to enjoy a well-earned rest after the fatigues of his campaign. [illustration: .jpg dromedaries from gilzan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of balawât. but akhuni had not yet lost heart. though driven back to the right bank of the euphrates, he had taken advantage of the diversion created by aramê in his favour, to assume a strong position among the hills of shitamrat with the river in his rear.* * the position of shitamrat may answer to the ruins of the fortress of rum-kaleh, which protected a ford of the euphrates in byzantine times. shalmaneser attacked his lines in front, and broke through them after three days� preliminary skirmishing; then finding the enemy drawn up in battle array before their last stronghold, the king charged without a moment�s hesitation, drove them back and forced them to surrender. akhuni�s life was spared, but he was sent with the remainder of his army to colonise a village in the neighbourhood of assur, and adini became henceforth an integral part of assyria. [illustration: .jpg tribute from gilzan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. the war on the western frontier was hardly brought to a close when another broke out in the opposite direction. the king rapidly crossed the pass of bunagishlu and fell upon mazamua: the natives, disconcerted by his impetuous onslaught, nevertheless hoped to escape by putting out in their boats on the broad expanse of lake urumiah. shalmaneser, however, constructed rafts of inflated skins, on which his men ventured in pursuit right out into the open. the natives were overpowered; the king �dyed the sea with their blood as if it had been wool,� and did not withdraw until he had forced them to appeal for mercy. in five years shalmaneser had destroyed adini, laid low urartu, and confirmed the tributary states of syria in their allegiance; but damascus and babylon were as yet untouched, and the moment was at hand when he would have to choose between an arduous conflict with them, or such a repression of the warlike zeal of his opening years, that, like his father assur-nazir-pal, he would have to repose on his laurels. shalmaneser was too deeply imbued with the desire for conquest to choose a peaceful policy: he decided at once to assume the offensive against damascus, being probably influenced by the news of ahab�s successes, and deeming that if the king of israel had gained the ascendency unaided, assur, fully confident of its own superiority, need have no fear as to the result of a conflict. the forces, however, at the disposal of benhadad ii. (adadidri) were sufficient to cause the assyrians some uneasiness. the king of damascus was not only lord of coele-syria and the haurân, but he exercised a suzerainty more or less defined over hamath, israel, ammon, the arabian and idumean tribes, arvad and the principalities of northern phoenicia, usanata, shianu, and irkanata;* in all, twelve peoples or twelve kings owned his sway, and their forces, if united to his, would provide at need an army of nearly , men: a few years might see these various elements merged in a united empire, capable of withstanding the onset of any foreign foe.** * irkanata, the egyptian arqanatu, perhaps the irqata of the tel-el-a marna tablets, is the arka of phoenicia. the other countries enumerated are likewise situated in the same locality. shianu (for a long time read as shizanu), the sin of the bible (gen. x. ), is mentioned by tiglath-pileser iii. under the name sianu. ushanat is called uznu by tiglath-pileser, and delitzsch thought it represented the modern kalaat-el-hosu. with arvad it forms the ancient zahi of the egyptians, which was then subject to damascus. ** the suzerainty of ben-hadad over these twelve peoples is proved by the way in which they are enumerated in the assyrian documents: his name always stands at the head of the list. the manner in which the assyrian scribes introduce the names of these kings, mentioning sometimes one, sometimes two among them, without subtracting them from the total number , has been severely criticised, and schrader excused it by saying that is here used as a round number somewhat vaguely. shalmaneser set out from nineveh on the th day of the month iyyâr, b.c., and chastised on his way the aramaeans of the balikh, whose sheikh giammu had shown some inclination to assert his independence. he crossed the euphrates at tul-harsip, and held a species of durbar at pitru for his syrian subjects: sangar of carchemish, kundashpi of kummukh, aramê of agusi, lalli of melitene, khaiani of samalla, garparuda who had succeeded shapalulmê among the patina, and a second garparuda of gurgum, rallied around him with their presents of welcome, and probably also with their troops. this ceremony concluded, he hastened to khalmaa and reduced it to submission, then plunged into the hill-country between khalmân and the orontes, and swept over the whole territory of hamath. a few easy victories at the outset enabled him to exact ransom from, or burn to the ground, the cities of adinnu, mashgâ, arganâ, and qarqar, but just beyond qarqar he encountered the advance-guard of the syrian army.* * the position of these towns is uncertain: the general plan of the campaign only proves that they must lie on the main route from aleppo to kalaat-sejar, by barâ or by maarêt-en- nômân and kalaat-el-mudiq. it is agreed that qarqar must be sought not far from hamath, whatever the exact site may be. an examination of the map shows us that qarqar corresponds to the present kalaat-el-mudiq, the ancient apamasa of lebanon; the confederate army would command the ford which led to the plain of hamath by kalaat-sejar. [illustration: .jpg tribute from garparuda, king of the patina] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the black obelisk. ben-hadad had called together, to give him a fitting reception, the whole of the forces at his disposal: chariots, horse, , foot-soldiers from damascus alone; chariots, horse and , foot from hamath; chariots and , foot belonging to ahab, soldiers from kuî, mountaineers from the taurus,* chariots and , foot from irk and from arvad, from usanata, chariots and , foot from shianu, camels from gindibu the arab, and ammonites. * the people of the muzri next enumerated have long been considered as egyptians; the juxtaposition of their name with that of kuî shows that it refers here to the muzri of the taurus. the battle was long and bloody, and the issue uncertain; shalmaneser drove back one wing of the confederate army to the orontes, and forcing the other wing and the centre to retire from qarqar to kirzau, claimed the victory, though the losses on both sides were equally great. it would seem as if the battle were indecisive--the assyrians, at any rate, gained nothing by it; they beat a retreat immediately after their pretended victory, and returned to their own land without prisoners and almost without booty. on the whole, this first conflict had not been unfavourable to damascus: it had demonstrated the power of that state in the eyes of the most incredulous, and proved how easy resistance would be, if only the various princes of syria would lay aside their differences and all unite under the command of a single chief. the effect of the battle in northern syria and among the recently annexed aïamoan tribes was very great; they began to doubt the omnipotence of assyria, and their loyalty was shaken. sangar of carchemish and the khâti refused to pay their tribute, and the emirs of tul-abnî and mount kashiari broke out into open revolt. shalmaneser spent a whole year in suppressing the insurrection; complications, moreover, arose at babylon which obliged him to concentrate his attention and energy on chaldæan affairs. nabu-baliddin had always maintained peaceful and friendly relations with assyria, but he had been overthrown, or perhaps assassinated, and his son marduk-nadin-shumu had succeeded him on the throne, to the dissatisfaction of a section of his subjects. another son of nabu-baliddin, marduk-belusâtê, claimed the sovereign power, and soon won over so much of the country that marduk-nâdin-shumu had fears for the safety of babylon itself. he then probably remembered the pretensions to kharduniash, which his assyrian neighbours had for a long time maintained, and applied to shalmaneser to support his tottering fortunes. the assyrian monarch must have been disposed to lend a favourable ear to a request which allowed him to intervene as suzerain in the quarrels of the rival kingdom: he mobilised his forces, offered sacrifices in honour of bammân at zabân, and crossed the frontier in b.c.* the war dragged on during the next two years. the scene of hostilities was at the outset on the left bank of the tigris, which for ten centuries had served as the battle-field for the warriors of both countries. shalmaneser, who had invested me-turnat at the fords of the lower dîyalah, at length captured that fortress, and after having thus isolated the rebels of babylonia proper, turned his steps towards g-ananatê.** * the town of zabân is situated on the lesser zab, but it is impossible to fix the exact site. ** mè-turnat, mê-turni, �the water of the turnat,� stood upon the dîyalah, probably near the site of bakuba, where the most frequented route crosses the river; perhaps we may identify it with the artemita of classical authors. gananatê must be sought higher up near the mountains, as the context points out; i am inclined to place it near the site of khanekin, whose gardens are still celebrated, and the strategic importance of which is considerable. marduk-belusâtê, �a vacillating king, incapable of directing his own affairs,� came out to meet him, but although repulsed and driven within the town, he defended his position with such spirit that shalmaneser was at length obliged to draw off his troops after having cut down all the young compelled the fruit trees, disorganised the whole system of irrigation,--in short, after having effected all the damage he could. he returned in the following spring by the most direct route; lakhiru fell into his hands,* but marduk-belusâtê, having no heart to contend with him for the possession of a district ravaged by the struggle of the preceding summer, fell back on the mountains of yasubi and concentrated his forces round armân.** * lakhiru comes before gananate on the direct road from assyria, to the south of the lower zab, as we learn from the account of the campaign itself: wo shall not do wrong in placing this town either at kifri, or in its neighbourhood on the present caravan route. ** mount yasubi is the mountainous district which separates khanekin from holwân. shalmaneser, having first wreaked his vengeance upon gananatê, attacked his adversary in his self-chosen position; annan fell after a desperate defence, and marduk-belusâtê either perished or disappeared in a last attempt at retaliation. marduk-nadîn-shumu, although rid of his rival, was not yet master of the entire kingdom. the aramæans of the marshes, or, as they called themselves, the kaldâ, had refused him their allegiance, and were ravaging the regions of the lower euphrates by their repeated incursions. they constituted not so much a compact state, as a confederation of little states, alternately involved in petty internecine quarrels, or temporarily reconciled under the precarious authority of a sole monarch. each separate state bore the name of the head of the family--real or mythical--from whom all its members prided themselves on being descended,--bît-dakkuri, bît-adini, bît-amukkâni, bît-shalani, bît-shalli, and finally bît-yakîn, which in the end asserted its predominance over all the rest.* * as far as we can judge, bît-dakkuri and bît-adini were the most northerly, the latter lying on both sides of the euphrates, the former on the west of the euphrates, to the south of the bahr-i-nejîf; bît-yakîn was at the southern extremity near the mouths of the euphrates, and on the western shore of the persian gulf. in demanding shalmaneser�s help, marduk-nadîn-shumu had virtually thrown on him the responsibility of bringing these turbulent subjects to order, and the assyrian monarch accepted the duties of his new position without demur. he marched to babylon, entered the city and went direct to the temple of e-shaggîl: the people beheld him approach with reverence their deities bel and belît, and visit all the sanctuaries of the local gods, to whom he made endless propitiatory libations and pure offerings. he had worshipped ninip in kuta; he was careful not to forget nabo of borsippa, while on the other hand he officiated in the temple of ezida, and consulted its ancient oracle, offering upon its altars the flesh of splendid oxen and fat lambs. the inhabitants had their part in the festival as well as the gods; shalmaneser summoned them to a public banquet, at which he distributed to them embroidered garments, and plied them with meats and wine; then, after renewing his homage to the gods of babylon, he recommenced his campaign, and set out in the direction of the sea. baqâni, the first of the chaldæan cities which lay on his route, belonged to bît-adini,* one of the tribes of bît-dakkuri; it appeared disposed to resist him, and was therefore promptly dismantled and burnt--an example which did not fail to cool the warlike inclinations which had begun to manifest themselves in other parts of bît-dakkuri. * the site of baqâni is unknown; it should be sought for between lamlum and warka, and bît-adini in bît-dakkuri should be placed between the shatt-et-kaher and the arabian desert, if the name of enzudî, the other royal town, situated to the west of the euphrates, is found, as is possible, under a popular etymology, in that of kalaat ain- saîd or kalaat ain-es-saîd in the modern maps. he next crossed the euphrates, and pillaged enzudî, the fate of which caused the remainder of bît-adini to lay down arms, and the submission of the latter brought about that of bît-yakîn and bît-amukkani. these were all rich provinces, and they bought off the conqueror liberally: gold, silver, tin, copper, iron, acacia-wood, ivory, elephants� skins, were all showered upon the invader to secure his mercy. it must have been an intense satisfaction to the pride of the assyrians to be able to boast that their king had deigned to offer sacrifices in the sacred cities of accad, and that he had been borne by his war-horses to the shores of the salt sea; these facts, of little moment to us now, appeared to the people of those days of decisive importance. no king who was not actually master of the country would have been tolerated within the temple of the eponymous god, for the purpose of celebrating the rites which the sovereign alone was empowered to perform. marduk-nadîn-shumu, in recognising shalmaneser�s right to act thus, thereby acknowledged that he himself was not only the king�s ally, but his liegeman. this bond of supremacy doubtless did not weigh heavily upon him; as soon as his suzerain had evacuated the country, the two kingdoms remained much on the same footing as had been established by the treaties of the three previous generations. alliances were made between private families belonging to both, peace existed between the two sovereigns, interchange of commerce and amenities took place between the two peoples, but with one point of difference which had not existed formerly: assur protected babel, and, by taking precedence of marduk, he became the real head of the peoples of the euphrates valley. assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of babylon, shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the badanu or the zabs. he now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the armenian alps or on the banks of the orontes, leaving merely a slender contingent in the heart of assyria proper to act as the necessary guardians of order in the capital. since the indecisive battle of qarqar, the western frontier of the empire had receded as far as the euphrates, and shalmaneser had been obliged to forego the collection of the annual syrian tribute. it would have been an excellent opportunity for the khâti, while they enjoyed this accidental respite, to come to an understanding with damascus, for the purpose of acting conjointly against a common enemy; but they let the right moment slip, and their isolation made submission inevitable. the effort to subdue them cost shalmaneser dear, both in time and men; in the spring of each year he appeared at the fords of tul-barsip and ravaged the environs of carchemish, then marched upon the orontes to accomplish the systematic devastation of some fresh district, or to inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him in the open field. in b.c. the first blow was struck at the khâti; agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, aramê, lost arniê, his royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.** * historians have up to the present admitted that this campaign of the year took place in armenia. the context of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year, shalmaneser advanced against the towns of aramê, immediately after having pillaged the country of the khâti, which inclines me to think that these towns were situated in northern syria. i have no doubt that the aramê in question is not the armenian king of that name, but aramê the sovereign of bit-agusi, who is named several times in the annals of shalmaneser. ** the text of bull no. adds to the account of the war against aramê, that of a war against the damascene league, which merely repeats the account of shalmaneser�s eleventh year. it is generally admitted that the war against aramê falls under his tenth year, and the war against ben-hadad during his eleventh year. the scribes must have had at their disposal two different versions of one document, in which these two wars were described without distinction of year. the compiler of the inscription of the bulls would have considered them as forming two distinct accounts, which he has placed one after the other. in b.c. it was the turn of damascus. the league of which ben-hadad had proclaimed himself the suzerain was still in existence, but it had recently narrowly escaped dissolution, and a revolt had almost deprived it of the adherence of israel and the house of omri--after hamath, the most active of all its members. the losses suffered at qarqar had doubtless been severe enough to shake ahab�s faith in the strength of his master and ally. besides this, it would appear that the latter had not honourably fulfilled all the conditions of the treaty of peace he had signed three years previously; he still held the important fortress of bamoth-gilead, and he delayed handing it over to ahab in spite of his oath to restore it. finding that he could not regain possession of it by fair means, ahab resolved to take it by force. a great change in feeling and politics had taken place at jerusalem. jehoshaphat, who occupied the throne, was, like his father asa, a devout worshipper of jahveh, but his piety did not blind him to the secular needs of the moment. the experience of his predecessors had shown that the union of the twelve tribes under the rule of a scion of judah was a thing of the past for ever; all attempts to restore it had ended in failure and bloodshed, and the house of david had again only lately been saved from ruin by the dearly bought intervention of ben-hadad i. and his syrians. jehoshaphat from the outset clearly saw the necessity of avoiding these errors of the past; he accepted the situation and sought the friendship of israel. an alliance between two princes so unequal in power could only result in a disguised suzerainty for one of them and a state of vassalage for the other; what ben-hadad�s alliance was to ahab, that of ahab was to jehoshaphat, and it served his purpose in spite of the opposition of the prophets. the strained relations between the two countries were relaxed, and the severed tribes on both sides of the frontier set about repairing their losses; while hiel the bethelite at length set about rebuilding jericho on behalf of samaria,* jehoshaphat was collecting around him a large army, and strengthening himself on the west against the philistines and on the south against the bedawîn of the desert.** the marriage of his eldest son jehoram*** with athaliah subsequently bound the two courts together by still closer ties;**** mutual-visits were exchanged, and it was on the occasion of a stay made by jehoshaphat at jezreel that the expedition against eamoth was finally resolved on. * the subordinate position of jehoshaphat is clearly indicated by the reply which he makes to ahab when the latter asks him to accompany him on this expedition: �i am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses� ( kings xxii. ). ** kings xvi. , where the writer has preserved the remembrance of a double human sacrifice, destined, according to the common custom in the whole of the east, to create guardian spirits for the new building: �he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son segub; according to the word of the lord.� [for the curse pronounced on whoever should rebuild jericho, see josh. vi. .--tr.] *** [following the distinction in spelling given in kings viii. , i have everywhere written joram (of israel) and jehoram (of judah), to avoid confusion.--tr.] **** athaliah is sometimes called the daughter of ahab ( kings viii. ), and sometimes the daughter of omri ( kings viii. ; cf. ohron. xxii. ), and several authors prefer the latter filiation, while the majority see in it a mistake of the hebrew scribe. it is possible that both attributions may be correct, for we see by the assyrian inscriptions that a sovereign is called the son of the founder of his line even when he was several generations removed from him: thus, merodach-baladan, the adversary of sargon of assyria, calls himself son of iakin, although the founder of the bît-iakîn had been dead many centuries before his accession. the document used in kings viii. may have employed the term daughter of omri in the same manner merely to indicate that the queen of jerusalem belonged to the house of omri. it might well have appeared a more than foolhardy enterprise, and it was told in israel that micaiah, a prophet, the son of imlah, had predicted its disastrous ending. �i saw,� exclaimed the prophet, �the lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left. and the lord said, who shall entice ahab that he may go up and fall at ramoth-gilead? and one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. and there came forth a spirit, and stood before the lord, and said, i will entice him. and the lord said unto him, wherewith? and he said, i will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. and he said, thou shalt entice him, and shalt prevail also: go forth, and do so. now therefore, behold, the lord hafch put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and the lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.� * * kings xxii. - , reproduced in chron. xviii. - . the two kings thereupon invested ramoth, and ben-hadad hastened to the defence of his fortress. selecting thirty-two of his bravest charioteers, he commanded them to single out ahab only for attack, and not fight with others until they had slain him. this injunction happened in some way to come to the king�s ears, and he therefore disguised himself as a common soldier, while jehoshaphat retained his ordinary dress. attracted by the richness of the latter�s armour, the syrians fell upon him, but on his raising his war-cry they perceived their mistake, and turning from the king of judah they renewed their quest of the israelitish leader. while they were vainly seeking him, an archer drew a bow �at a venture,� and pierced him in the joints of his cuirass. �wherefore he said to his charioteer, turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for i am sore wounded.� perceiving, however, that the battle was going against him, he revoked the order, and remained on the field the whole day, supported by his armour-bearers. he expired at sunset, and the news of his death having spread panic through the ranks, a cry arose, �every man to his city, and every man to his country!� the king�s followers bore his body to samaria,* and israel again relapsed into the position of a vassal, probably under the same conditions as before the revolt. * kings xxii. - (cf. ohron. xviii. - ), with interpolations in verses and . it is impossible to establish the chronology of this period with any certainty, so entirely do the hebrew accounts of it differ from the assyrian. the latter mention ahab as alive at the time of the battle of qarqar in b.c. and jehu on the throne in b.c. we must, therefore, place in the intervening twelve years, first, the end of ahab�s reign; secondly, the two years of ahaziah; thirdly, the twelve years of joram; fourthly, the beginning of the reign of jehu--in all, possibly fourteen years. the reign of joram has been prolonged beyond reason by the hebrew annalists, and it alone lends itself to be curtailed. admitting that the siege of samaria preceded the battle of qarqar, we may surmise that the three years which elapsed, according to the tradition ( kings xxii. ), between the triumph of ahab and his death, fall into two unequal periods, two previous to qarqar, and one after it, in such a manner that the revolt of israel would have been the result of the defeat of the damascenes; ahab must have died in b.c., as most modern historians agree. on the other hand, it is scarcely probable that jehu ascended the throne at the very moment that shalmaneser was defeating hazael in b.c.; we can only carry back his accession to the preceding year, possibly . the duration of two years for the reign of ahaziah can only be reduced by a few months, if indeed as much as that, as it allows of a full year, and part of a second year (cf. kings xxii. , where it is said that ahaziah ascended the throne in the th year of jehoshaphat, and kings iii. , where it states that joram of israel succeeded ahaziah in the th year of the same jehoshaphat).; in placing these two years between and , there will remain for the reign of joram the period comprised between and , namely, eight years, instead of the twelve attributed to him by biblical tradition. ahaziah survived his father two years, and was succeeded by his brother joram.* when shalmaneser, in b.c., reappeared in the valley of the orontes, joram sent out against him his prescribed contingent, and the conquered israelites once more fought for their conqueror. * the hebrew documents merely make mention of ahaziah�s accession, length of reign, and death ( kings xxii. , - , and kings i. - ). the assyrian texts do not mention his name, but they state that in �the twelve kings� fought against shalmaneser, and, as we have already seen, one of the twelve was king of israel, here, therefore necessarily ahaziah, whose successor was joram. the assyrians had, as usual, maltreated the khâti. after having pillaged the towns of carchemish and agusi, they advanced on the amanos, held to ransom the territory of the patina enclosed within the bend of the orontes, and descending upon hamath by way of the districts of iaraku and ashta-maku, they came into conflict with the army of the twelve kings, though on this occasion the contest was so bloody that they were forced to withdraw immediately after their success. they had to content themselves with sacking apparazu, one of the citadels of aramê, and with collecting the tribute of garparuda of the patina; which done, they skirted the amanos and provided themselves with beams from its cedars. the two following years were spent in harrying the people of paqarakhbuni, on the right bank of the euphrates, in the dependencies of the ancient kingdom of adini ( b.c.), and in plundering the inhabitants of ishtaratê in the country of iaîti, near the sources of the tigris ( b.c.), till in they returned to try their fortune again in syria. they transported , men across the euphrates, hoping perhaps, by the mere mass of such a force, to crush their enemy in a single battle; but ben-hadad was supported by his vassals, and their combined army must have been as formidable numerically as that of the assyrians. as usual, after the engagement, shalmaneser claimed the victory, but he did not succeed in intimidating the allies or in wresting from them a single rood of territory.* * the care which the king takes to specify that �with , men he crossed the euphrates in flood-time� very probably shows that this number was for him in some respects an unusual one. discouraged, doubtless, by so many fruitless attempts, he decided to suspend hostilities, at all events for the present. in b.c. he visited naîri, and caused an �image of his royal majesty� to be carved at the source of the tigris close to the very spot where the stream first rises. pushing forward through the defiles of tunibuni, he next invaded urartu, and devastated it as far as the sources of the euphrates; on reaching these he purified his arms in the virgin spring, and offered a sacrifice to the gods. on his return to the frontier, the chief of dayaini �embraced his feet,� and presented him with some thoroughbred horses. in b.c. he crossed the lower zab and plunged into the heart of namri; this country had long been under babylonian influence, and its princes bore semitic names. mardukmudammiq, who was then its ruler, betook himself to the mountains to preserve his life; but his treasures, idols, and troops were carried off to assyria, and he was superseded on the throne by ianzu, the son of khambân, a noble of cossæan origin. as might be expected after such severe exertions, shalmaneser apparently felt that he deserved a time of repose, for his chroniclers merely note the date of b.c. as that of an inspection, terminating in a felling of cedars in the amanos. as a fact, there was nothing stirring on the frontier. chaldæa itself looked upon him as a benefactor, almost as a suzerain, and by its position between elam and assyria, protected the latter from any quarrel with susa. the nations on the east continued to pay their tribute without coercion, and namri, which alone entertained pretensions to independence, had just received a severe lesson. urartu had not acknowledged the supremacy of assur, but it had suffered in the last invasion, and aramê had shown no further sign of hostility. the tribes of the upper tigris--kummukh and adini--accepted their position as subjects, and any trouble arising in that quarter was treated as merely an ebullition of local dissatisfaction, and was promptly crushed. the khâti were exhausted by the systematic destruction of their towns and their harvests. lastly, of the principalities of the amanos, gurgum, samalla, and the patina, if some had occasionally taken part in the struggles for independence, the others had always remained faithful in the performance of their duties as vassals. damascus alone held out, and the valour with which she had endured all the attacks made on her showed no signs of abatement; unless any internal disturbance arose to diminish her strength, she was likely to be able to resist the growing power of assyria for a long time to come. it was at the very time when her supremacy appeared to be thus firmly established that a revolution broke out, the effects of which soon undid the work of the preceding two or three generations. ben-hadad, disembarrassed of shalmaneser, desired to profit by the respite thus gained to make a final reckoning with the israelites. it would appear that their fortune had been on the wane ever since the heroic death of ahab. immediately after the disaster at eamoth, the moabites had risen against ahaziah,* and their king, mesha, son of kamoshgad, had seized the territory north of the arnon which belonged to the tribe of gad; he had either killed or carried away the jewish population in order to colonise the district with moabites, and he had then fortified most of the towns, beginning with dhibon, his capital. owing to the shortness of his reign, ahaziah had been unable to take measures to hinder him; but joram, as soon as he was firmly seated on the throne, made every effort to regain possession of his province, and claimed the help of his ally or vassal jehoshaphat.** * kings iii. . the text does not name ahaziah, and it might be concluded that the revolt took place under joram; the expression employed by the hebrew writer, however, �when ahab was dead... the king of moab rebelled against the king of israel,� does not permit of it being placed otherwise than at the opening of ahaziah�s reign. ** kings iii. , , where jehoshaphat replies to joram in the same terms which he had used to ahab. the chronological difficulties induced ed. meyer to replace the name of jehoshaphat in this passage by that of his son jehoram. as stade has remarked, the presence of two kings both bearing the name of jehoram in the same campaign against moab would have been one of those facts which strike the popular imagination, and would not have been forgotten; if the hebrew author has connected the moabite war with the name of jehoshaphat, it is because his sources of information furnished him with that king�s name. the latter had done his best to repair the losses caused by the war with syria. being lord of edom, he had been tempted to follow the example of solomon, and the deputy who commanded in his name had constructed a vessel * at ezion-geber �to go to ophir for gold;� but the vessel was wrecked before quitting the port, and the disaster was regarded by the king as a punishment from jahveh, for when ahaziah suggested that the enterprise should be renewed at their joint expense, he refused the offer.** but the sudden insurrection of moab threatened him as much as it did joram, and he gladly acceded to the latter�s appeal for help. * [both in the hebrew and the septuagint the ships are in the plural number in kings xxii. , .--tr.] ** kings xxii. , , where the hebrew writer calls the vessel constructed by jehoshaphat a �ship of tarshish;� that is, a vessel built to make long voyages. the author of the chronicles thought that the jewish expedition to ezion- geber on the red sea was destined to go to tarshish in spain. he has, moreover, transformed the vessel into a fleet, and has associated ahaziah in the enterprise, contrary to the testimony of the book of kings; finally, he has introduced into the account a prophet named eliezer, who represents the disaster as a chastisement for the alliance with ahaziah ( ghron. xx. - ). apparently the simplest way of approaching the enemy would have been from the north, choosing gilead as a base of operations; but the line of fortresses constructed by mesha at this vulnerable point of his frontier was so formidable, that the allies resolved to attack from the south after passing the lower extremity of the dead sea. they marched for seven days in an arid desert, digging wells as they proceeded for the necessary supply of water. mesha awaited them with his hastily assembled troops on the confines of the cultivated land; the allies routed him and blockaded him within his city of kir-hareseth.* closely beset, and despairing of any help from man, he had recourse to the last resource which religion provided for his salvation; taking his firstborn son, he offered him to chemosh, and burnt him on the city wall in sight of the besiegers. the israelites knew what obligations this sacrifice entailed upon the moabite god, and the succour which he would be constrained to give to his devotees in consequence. they therefore raised the siege and disbanded in all directions.** mesha, delivered at the very moment that his cause seemed hopeless, dedicated a stele in the temple of dhibôn, on which he recorded his victories and related what measures he had taken to protect his people.*** * kir-hareseth or kir-moab is the present kcrak, the krak of mediaeval times. ** the account of the campaign ( kings iii. - ) belongs to the prophetic cycle of elisha, and seems to give merely a popular version of the event. a king of edom is mentioned ( - , - ), while elsewhere, under jehoshaphat, it is stated �there was no king in edom� ( kings xxii. ); the geography also of the route taken by the expedition is somewhat confused. finally, the account of the siege of kir- hareseth is mutilated, and the compiler has abridged the episode of the human sacrifice, as being too conducive to the honour of chemosh and to the dishonour of jahveh. the main facts of the account are correct, but the details are not clear, and do not all bear the stamp of veracity. *** this is the famous moabite stone or stele of dhibôn, discovered by clermont-ganneau in , and now preserved in the louvre. [illustration: .jpg the moabite stone of stele of mesha] from a photograph by faucher-gudin, retouched by massias from the original in the louvre. the fainter parts of the stele are the portions restored in the original. he still feared a repetition of the invasion, but this misfortune was spared him; jehoshaphat was gathered to his fathers,* and his edomite subjects revolted on receiving the news of his death. jeho--his son and successor, at once took up arms to bring them to a sense of their duty; but they surrounded his camp, and it was with difficulty that he cut his way through their ranks and escaped during the night. * the date of the death of jehoshaphat may be fixed as or b.c. the biblical documents give us for the period of the history of judah following on the death of ahab: first, eight years of jehoshaphat, from the th year of his reign ( kings xxii. ) to his th (and last) year ( kings xxii. ); secondly, eight years of jehoram, son of jehoshaphat ( kings viii. ); thirdly, one year of ahaziah, son of jehoram ( kings viii. )--in all years, which must be reduced and condensed into the period between b.c., the probable date of the battle of ramoth, and , the equally probable date of the accession of jehu. the reigns of the two ahaziahs are too short to be further abridged; we must therefore place the campaign against moab at the earliest in , during the months which followed the accession of joram of israel, and lengthen johoshaphat�s reign from to . there will then be room between and for five years (instead of eight) for the reign of jehoram of judah. the defection of the old canaanite city of libnah followed quickly on this reverse,* and jehoram was powerless to avenge himself on it, the philistines and the bedâwin having threatened the western part of his territory and raided the country.** in the midst of these calamities judah had no leisure to take further measures against mesha, and israel itself had suffered too severe a blow to attempt retaliation. the advanced age of ben-hadad, and the unsatisfactory result of the campaigns against shalmaneser, had furnished joram with an occasion for a rupture with damascus. war dragged on for some time apparently, till the tide of fortune turned against joram, and, like his father ahab in similar circumstances, he shut himself within samaria, where the false alarm of an egyptian or hittite invasion produced a panic in the syrian camp, and restored the fortunes of the israelitish king.*** * kings viii. - ; cf. ghron. xxi. - . ** this war is mentioned only in ghron. xxi. , , where it is represented as a chastisement from jahveh; the philistines and �the arabs which are beside the ethiopians� (kush) seem to have taken jerusalem, pillaged the palace, and carried away the wives and children of the king into captivity, �so that there was never a son left him, save jehoahaz (ahaziah), the youngest of his sons.� *** kuenen has proposed to take the whole account of the reign of joram, son of ahab, and transfer it to that of jehoahaz, son of jehu, and this theory has been approved by several recent critics and historians. on the other hand, some have desired to connect it with the account of the siege of samaria in ahab�s reign. i fail to see any reasonable argument which can be brought against the authenticity of the main fact, whatever opinion may be held with regard to the details of the biblical narrative. ben-hadad did not long survive the reverse he had experienced; he returned sick and at the point of death to damascus, where he was assassinated by hazael, one of his captains. hebrew tradition points to the influence of the prophets in all these events. the aged elijah had disappeared, so ran the story, caught up to heaven in a chariot of fire, but his mantle had fallen on elisha, and his power still survived in his disciple. from far and near elisha�s counsel was sought, alike by gentiles as by the followers of the true god; whether the suppliant was the weeping shunamite mourning for the loss of her only son, or naaman the captain of the damascene chariotry, he granted their petitions, and raised the child from its bed, and healed the soldier of his leprosy. during the siege of samaria, he had several times frustrated the enemy�s designs, and had predicted to joram not only the fact but the hour of deliverance, and the circumstances which would accompany it. ben-hadad had sent hazael to the prophet to ask him if he should recover, and elisha had wept on seeing the envoy--�because i know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child. and hazael said, but what is thy servant which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing? and elisha answered, the lord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over syria.� on returning to damascus hazael gave the results of his mission in a reassuring manner to ben-hadad, but �on the morrow... he took the coverlet and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died.� the deed which deprived it of its king^ seriously affected damascus itself. it was to ben-hadad that it owed most of its prosperity; he it was who had humiliated hamath and the princes of the coast of arvad, and the nomads of the arabian desert. he had witnessed the rise of the most energetic of all the israelite dynasties, and he had curbed its ambition; omri had been forced to pay him tribute; ahab, ahaziah, and joram had continued it; and ben-hadad�s suzerainty, recognised more or less by their vassals, had extended through moab and judah as far as the bed sea. not only had he skilfully built up this fabric of vassal states which made him lord of two-thirds of syria, but he had been able to preserve it unshaken for a quarter of a century, in spite of rebellions in several of his fiefs and reiterated attacks from assyria; shalmaneser, indeed, had made an attack on his line, but without breaking through it, and had at length left him master of the field. this superiority, however, which no reverse could shake, lay in himself and in himself alone; no sooner had he passed away than it suddenly ceased, and hazael found himself restricted from the very outset to the territory of damascus proper.* hamath, arvad, and the northern peoples deserted the league, to return to it no more; joram of israel called on his nephew ahaziah, who had just succeeded to jehoram of judah, and both together marched to besiege bamoth. * from this point onward, the assyrian texts which mentioned _the twelve kings of the khati_, irkhulini of hamath and adadidri (ben-hadad) of damascus, now only name _khazailu of the country of damascus_. the israelites were not successful in their methods of carrying on sieges; joram, wounded in a skirmish, retired to his palace at jezreel, where ahaziah joined him a few days later, on the pretext of inquiring after his welfare. the prophets of both kingdoms and their followers had never forgiven the family of ahab their half-foreign extraction, nor their eclecticism in the matter of religion. they had numerous partisans in both armies, and a conspiracy was set on foot against the absent sovereigns; elisha, judging the occasion to be a propitious one, despatched one of his disciples to the camp with secret instructions. the generals were all present at a banquet, when the messenger arrived; he took one of them, jehu, the son of nimshi, on one side, anointed him, and then escaped. jehu returned, and seated himself amongst his fellow-officers, who, unsuspicious of what had happened, questioned him as to the errand. �is all well? wherefore came this mad fellow to thee? and he said unto them, ye know the man and what his talk was. and they said, it is false; tell us now. and he said, thus and thus spake he to me, saying, thus saith the lord, i have anointed thee king over israel. then they hasted, and took every man his garment and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew the trumpet, saying, jehu is king.� he at once marched on jezreel, and the two kings, surprised at this movement, went out to meet him with scarcely any escort. the two parties had hardly met when joram asked, �is it peace, jehu?� to which jehu replied, �what peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?� whereupon joram turned rein, crying to his nephew, �there is treachery, o ahaziah.� but an arrow pierced him through the heart, and he fell forward in his chariot. ahaziah, wounded near ibleam, managed, however, to take refuge in megiddo, where he died, his servants bringing the body back to jerusalem.* * according to the very curtailed account in chron. xxii. , ahaziah appears to have hidden himself in samaria, where he was discovered and taken to jehu, who had him killed. this account may perhaps have belonged to the different version of which a fragment has been preserved in kings x. - . when jezebel heard the news, she guessed the fate which awaited her. she painted her eyes and tired her head, and posted herself in one of the upper windows of the palace. as jehu entered the gates she reproached him with the words, �is it peace, thou zimri--thy master�s murderer? and he lifted up his face to the window and said, who is on my side--who? two or three eunuchs rose up behind the queen, and he called to them, throw her down. so they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses; and he trode her under foot. and when he was come in he did eat and drink; and he said, see now to this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a king�s daughter.� but nothing was found of her except her skull, hands, and feet, which they buried as best they could. seventy princes, the entire family of ahab, were slain, and their heads piled up on either side of the gate. the priests and worshippers of baal remained to be dealt with. jehu summoned them to samaria on the pretext of a sacrifice, and massacred them before the altars of their god. according to a doubtful tradition, the brothers and relatives of ahaziah, ignorant of what had happened, came to salute joram, and perished in the confusion of the slaughter, and the line of david narrowly escaped extinction with the house of omri.* * kings x. - . stade has shown that this account is in direct contradiction with its immediate context, and that it belonged to a version of the events differing in detail from the one which has come down to us. according to the latter, jehu must at once have met jehonadab the son of rechab, and have entered samaria in his company (vers. - ); this would have been a poor way of inspiring the priests of baal with the confidence necessary for drawing them into the trap. according to chron. xxii. , the massacre of the princes of judah preceded the murder of ahaziah. athaliah assumed the regency, broke the tie of vassalage which bound judah to israel, and by a singular irony of fate, jerusalem offered an asylum to the last of the children of ahab. the treachery of jehu, in addition to his inexpiable cruelty, terrified the faithful, even while it served their ends. dynastic crimes were common in those days, but the tragedy of jezreel eclipsed in horror all others that had preceded it; it was at length felt that such avenging of jahveh was in his eyes too ruthless, and a century later the prophet hosea saw in the misery of his people the divine chastisement of the house of jehu for the blood shed at his accession. the report of these events, reaching calah, awoke the ambition of shalmaneser. would damascus, mistrusting its usurper, deprived of its northern allies, and ill-treated by the hebrews, prove itself as invulnerable as in the past? at all events, in b.c., shalmaneser once more crossed the euphrates, marched along the orontes, probably receiving the homage of hamath and arvad by the way. restricted solely to the resources of damascus, <hazael did not venture to advance into coele-syria as ben-hadad had always done; he barricaded the defiles of anti-lebanon, and, entrenched on mount shenir with the flower of his troops, prepared to await the attack. it proved the most bloody battle that the assyrians had up to that period ever fought. hazael lost , foot-soldiers, horsemen, chariots, and yet succeeded in falling back on damascus in good order. shalmaneser, finding it impossible to force the city, devastated the surrounding country, burnt numberless villages and farms, and felled all the fruit trees in the haurân up to the margin of the desert. this district had never, since the foundation of the kingdom by bezon a century before, suffered at the hands of an enemy�s army, and its population, enriched as much by peaceful labour as by the spoil of its successful wars, offered a prize of incalculable value. on his return march shalmaneser raided the bekaa, entered phoenicia, and carved a triumphal stele on one of the rocks of baalirasi.* * the site of baalirasi is left undecided by assyriologists. the events which follow enable us to affirm with tolerable certainty that the point on the coast where shalmaneser received the tributes of tyre and sidon is none other than the mouth of the nahr-el-kelb: the name baalirasi, �the master of the head,� would then be applicable to the rocky point which rises to the south of the river, and on which egyptian kings had already sculptured their stelæ. the kings of tyre and sidon hastened to offer him numerous gifts, and jehu, who owed to his presence temporary immunity from a syrian invasion, sent his envoys to greet him, accompanied by offerings of gold and silver in bars, vessels of gold of various forms, situlæ, salvers, cups, drinking-vessels, tin, sceptres, and wands of precious woods. shalmaneser�s pride was flattered by this homage, and he carved on one of his monuments the representation of this first official connection of assyria with israel. [illustration: .jpg jehu, king of israel, sends presents to shalmaneser] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the scenes represented on the black obelisk. the chief of the embassage is shown prostrating himself and kissing the dust before the king, while the rest advance in single file, some with vessels in their hands, some carrying sceptres, or with metal bowls supported on their heads. the prestige of the house of omri was still a living influence, or else the ninevite scribes were imperfectly informed of the internal changes which had taken place in israel, for the inscription accompanying this bas-relief calls jehu the son of omri, and grafts the regicide upon the genealogical tree of his victims. shalmaneser�s victory had been so dearly bought, that the following year the assyrians merely attempted an expedition for tree-felling in the amanos ( b.c.). their next move was to push forward into kuî, in the direction of the pyramos and saros ( b.c.). in the summer of they once more ventured southwards, but this time hazael changed his tactics: pitched battles and massed movements, in which the fate of a campaign was decided by one cast of the dice, were now avoided, and ambuscades, guerilla warfare, and long and tedious sieges became the order of the day. by the time that four towns had been taken, shalmaneser�s patience was worn out: he drew off his troops and fell back on phoenicia, laying tyre, sidon, and byblos under tribute before returning into mesopotamia. hazael had shown himself possessed of no less energy than ben-hadad; and damascus, isolated, had proved as formidable a foe as damascus surrounded by its vassals; shalmaneser therefore preferred to leave matters as they were, and accept the situation. indeed the results obtained were of sufficient importance to warrant his feeling some satisfaction. he had ruthlessly dispelled the dream of syrian hegemony which had buoyed up ben-hadad, he had forced damascus to withdraw the suzerainty it had exercised in the south, and he had conquered northern syria and the lower basin of the orontes. before running any further risks, he judged it prudent to strengthen his recently acquired authority over these latter countries, and to accustom the inhabitants to their new position as subjects of nineveh. he showed considerable wisdom by choosing the tribes of the taurus and of the oappadocian marches as the first objects of attack. in regions so difficult of access, war could only be carried on with considerable hardship and severe loss. the country was seamed by torrents and densely covered with undergrowth, while the towns and villages, which clung to the steep sides of the valleys, had no need of walls to become effective fortresses, for the houses rose abruptly one above another, and formed so many redoubts which the enemy would be forced to attack and take one by one. few pitched battles could be fought in a district of this description; the assyrians wore themselves out in incessant skirmishes and endless petty sieges, and were barely compensated by the meagre spoil which such warfare yielded. [illustration: .jpg a mountain village] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by alfred boissier. in b.c. shalmaneser swept over the country of tabal and reduced twenty-four of its princes to a state of subjection; proceeding thence, he visited the mountains of turat,* celebrated from this period downwards for their silver mines and quarries of valuable marbles. * the position of the mountains of turat is indicated by the nature of their products: �we know of _a silver mine_ at marash and an iron mine not worked, and _two fine quarries_, one of pink and the other of black marble.� turat, therefore, must be the marash mountain, the aghir-uagh and its spurs; hence the two sorts of stone mentioned in the assyrian text would be, the one the pink, the other the black marble. in he seized the stronghold of uêtash in melitene, and laid tabal under a fresh contribution; this constituted a sort of advance post for-assyria in the sight of those warlike and continually fluctuating races situated between the sources of the halys and the desert border of asia minor.* secure on this side, he was about to bring matters to a close in cilicia, when the defection of ianzu recalled him to the opposite extremity of the empire. he penetrated into namri by the defiles of khashmur,** made a hasty march through sik-hisatakh, bît-tamul, bît-shakki, and bît-shedi, surprised the rebels and drove them into the forests; he then bore down on parsua*** and plundered twenty-seven petty kings consecutively. * a fragment of an anonymous list, discovered by delitzsch, puts the expedition against the tabal in b.c. instead of in , and consequently makes the entire series of ensuing expeditions one year later, up to the revolt of assur-dain- pal. this is evidently a mistake of the scribe who compiled this edition of the canon, and the chronology of a contemporary monument, such as the black obelisk, ought to obtain until further light can be thrown on the subject. ** for the site of khashmur or khashmar, cf. _supra_, p. , note . the other localities cannot as yet be identified with any modern site; we may conjecture that they were scattered about the basin of the upper dîyalah. *** parsua, or with the native termination parsuash, has been identified first with persia and then with parthia, and rost still persists in its identification, if not with the parthia of classical geographers, at least with the parthian people. schrader has shown that it ought to be sought between namri on the south and the mannai on the north; in one of the valleys of the gordysean mountains, and his demonstration has been accepted with a few modifications of detail by most scholars. i believe it to be possible to determine its position with still further precision. parsua on one side lay on the border of namri, which comprises the districts to the east of the dîyalah in the direction of zohab, and was contiguous to the medes on the other side, and also to the mannai, who occupied the southern regions of lake urumiah; it also lies close to bît-khamban, the principal of the cossæan tribes, as it would appear. i can find only one position on the map which would answer to all these requirements: this is in the main the basin of the gavê-rud and its small affluents, the ardelân and the sources of the kizil-uzên, and i shall there place parsua until further information is forthcoming on the subject. skirting misi, amadai, araziash,* and kharkhar, and most of the districts lying on the middle heights of the table-land of iran, he at length came up with ianzu, whom he seized and brought back prisoner to assyria, together with his family and his idols. * amadai is a form of madai, with a prothetical _a_, like agusi or azala, by the side of guzi and zala. the inscription of shalmaneser iii. thus gives us the first mention of the classical medes. araziash, placed too far to the east in sagartenê by fr. lenormant, has been located further westwards by schrader, near the upper course of the kerkhâ; but the documents of all periods show us that on one side it adjoined kharkhar, that is the basin of the gamas- âb, on the other side media, that is the country of hamadan. it must, therefore, be placed between the two, in the northern part of the ancient cambadenê in the present tchamabadân. kharkhar in this case would be in the southern part of cambadene, on the main road which leads from the gates of the zagros to hamadan; an examination of the general features of the country leads me to believe that the town of kharkhar should occupy the site of kirmânshahân, or rather of the ancient city which preceded that town. it was at this juncture, perhaps, that he received from the people of muzri the gift of an elephant and some large monkeys, representations of which he has left us on one of his bas-reliefs. elephants were becoming rare, and it was not now possible to kill them by the hundred, as formerly, in syria: this particular animal, therefore, excited the wonder of the ninevites, and the possession of it flattered the vanity of the conqueror. this was, however, an interlude of short duration, and the turbulent tribes of the taurus recalled him to the west as soon as spring set in. he laid waste kuî in b.c., destroyed timur, its capital, and on his return march revenged himself on aramê of agusi, whose spirit was still unbroken by his former misfortunes. [illustration: .jpg elephant and monkeys brought as a tribute to nineveh by the people of muzbi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. tanakun and tarsus fell into his hands b.c.; shalmaneser replaced kati, the king of kuî, by his brother kirri, and made of his dominions a kind of buffer state between his own territory and that of pamphylia and lycaonia. he had now occupied the throne for a quarter of a century, not a year of which had elapsed without seeing the monarch gird on his armour and lead his soldiers in person towards one or other points of the horizon. he was at length weary of such perpetual warfare, and advancing age perchance prevented him from leading his troops with that dash and vigour which are necessary to success; however this might be, on his return from cilicia he laid aside his armour once for all, and devoted himself to peaceful occupations. but he did not on that account renounce all attempts at conquest. conducting his campaigns by proxy delegated the command of his army to his tartan dayân-assur, and the northern tribes were the first on whom this general gave proof of his prowess. urartu had passed into the hands of another sovereign since its defeat in b.c., and a second sharduris* had taken the place of the aramê who had ruled at the beginning of shalma-neser�s reign. * the name is written siduri or seduri in the text of the obelisk, probably in accordance with some popular pronunciation, in which the r was but slightly rolled and finally disappeared. the identity of seduri and sharduris, has been adopted by recent historians. belck and lehmann have shown that this seduri was not sharduris, son of lutipris, but a sharduris ii., probably the son of aramê. it would appear that the accession of this prince, who was probably young and active, was the signal for a disturbance among the people of the upper tigris and the masios--a race always impatient of the yoke, and ready to make common cause with any fresh enemy of assyria. an insurrection broke out in bît-zamani and the neighbouring districts. dayân-assur quelled it offhand; then, quitting the basin of the tigris by the défiles of armash, he crossed the arzania, and entered urartu. sharduris came out to meet him, and was defeated, if we may give credence to the official record of the campaign. even if the account be an authentic one, the victory was of no advantage to the assyrians, for they were obliged to retreat before they had subjugated the enemy, and an insurrection among the patina prevented them from returning to the attack in the following year. with obligations to their foreign master on one hand and to their own subjects on the other, the princes of the syrian states had no easy life. if they failed to fulfil their duties as vassals, then an assyrian invasion would pour in to their country, and sooner or later their ruin would be assured; they would have before them the prospect of death by impaling or under the knife of the flayer, or, if they escaped this, captivity and exile in a far-off land. prudence therefore dictated a scrupulous fidelity to their suzerain. on the other hand, if they resigned themselves to their dependent condition, the people of their towns would chafe at the payment of tribute, or some ambitious relative would take advantage of the popular discontent to hatch a plot and foment a revolution, and the prince thus threatened would escape from an assyrian reprisal only to lose his throne or fall by the blow of an assassin. in circumstances such as these the people of the patina murdered their king, lubarna ii., and proclaimed in his room a certain sum, who had no right to the crown, but who doubtless undertook to liberate them from the foreigner. dayân-assur defeated the rebels and blockaded the remains of their army in kinalua. they defended themselves at first energetically, but on the death of surri from some illness, their courage failed them and they offered to deliver over the sons of their chief if their own lives might be spared. dayân-assur had the poor wretches impaled, laid the inhabitants under a heavy contribution, and appointed a certain sâsi, son of uzza, to be their king. the remainder of syria gave no further trouble--a fortunate circumstance, for the countries on the armenian border revolted in b.c., and the whole year was occupied in establishing order among the herdsmen of kirkhi. in b.c., dayân-assiir pushed forward into khubushkia, and traversed it from end to end without encountering any resistance. he next attacked the mannai. their prince, ualki, quailed before his onslaught; he deserted his royal city zirtu,* and took refuge in the mountains. dayân-assur pursued him thither in vain, but he was able to collect considerable booty, and turning in a south-easterly direction, he fought his way along the base of the gordysean mountains till he reached parsua, which he laid under tribute. in b.c. it was the turn of muzazir, which hitherto had escaped invasion, to receive a visit from the tartan. zapparia, the capital, and fifty-six other towns were given over to the flames. from thence, dayân-assur passed into urartu proper; after having plundered it, he fell back on the southern provinces, collecting by the way the tribute of guzân, of the mannai, of andiu,** and parsua; he then pushed on into the heart of namri, and having razed to the ground two hundred and fifty of its towns, returned with his troops to assyria by the defiles of shimishi and through khalman. * the town is elsewhere called izirtu, and appears to have been designated in the inscriptions of van by the name of sisiri-khadiris. ** andia or andiu is contiguous to naîri, to zikirtu and to karalla, which latter borders on manna; it bordered on the country of misa or misi, into which it is merged under the name of misianda in the time of sargon. delattre places andiu in the country of the classical matiense, between the mationian mountains and lake urumiah. the position of misu on the confines of araziash and media, somewhere in the neighbourhood of talvantu-dagh, obliges us to place andiu lower down to the south-east, near the district of kurdasir. this was perhaps the last foreign campaign of shalmaneser iii.�s reign; it is at all events the last of which we possess any history. the record of his exploits ends, as it had begun more than thirty years previously, with a victory in namri. [illustration: .jpg black obelisk of shalmaneser iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast in the louvre. [the original is in the brit. mus.--tr.] the aged king had, indeed, well earned the right to end his allotted days in peace. devoted to calah, like his predecessor, he had there accumulated the spoils of his campaigns, and had made it the wealthiest city of his empire. he continued to occupy the palace of assur-nazir-pal, which he had enlarged. wherever he turned within its walls, his eyes fell upon some trophy of his wars or panegyric of his virtues, whether recorded on mural tiles covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs, or celebrated by statues, altars, and triumphal stelæ. the most curious among all these is a square-based block terminating in three receding stages, one above the other, like the stump of an egyptian obelisk surmounted by a stepped pyramid. five rows of bas-reliefs on it represent scenes most flattering to assyrian pride;--the reception of tribute from gilzân, muzri, the patina, the israelitish jehu, and marduk-abal-uzur, king of the land of sukhi. the latter knew his suzerain�s love of the chase, and he provided him with animals for his preserves, including lions, and rare species of deer. [illustration: .jpg stag and lions of the country of sukhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. the inscription on the monument briefly relates the events which had occurred between the first and the thirty-first years of shalmaneser�s reign;--the defeat of damascus, of babylon and urartu, the conquest of northern syria, of cilicia, and of the countries bordering on the zagros. when the king left calah for some country residence in its-neighbourhood, similar records and carvings would meet his eye. at imgur-bel, one of the gates of the palace was covered with plates of bronze, on which the skilful artist had embossed and engraved with the chisel episodes from the campaigns on the euphrates and the tigris, the crossing of mountains and rivers, the assault and burning of cities, the long lines of captives, the _mêlée_ with the enemy and the pursuit of the chariots. all the cities of assyria, nineveh,* arbela, assur, even to the more distant towns of harrân** and tushkhân,***--vied with each other in exhibiting proofs of his zeal for their gods and his affection for their inhabitants; but his predilection for calah filled them with jealousy, and assur particularly could ill brook the growing aversion with which the assyrian kings regarded her. it was of no avail that she continued to be the administrative and religious capital of the empire, the storehouse of the spoil and annual tribute of other nations, and was continually embellishing herself with fresh monuments: a spirit of discontent was daily increasing, and merely awaited some favourable occasion to break out into open revolt. shalmaneser enjoyed the dignity of _limmu_ for the second time after thirty years, and had celebrated this jubilee of his inauguration by a solemn festival in honour of assur and eammân.**** * nineveh is mentioned as the starting-place of nearly all the first campaigns in the inscription on the _monolith_; also in the balawât inscription, on the other hand, towards the end of the reign, calah is given as the residence of the king on the _black obelisk_ ** mention of the buildings of shalmaneser iii. at harrân occurs in an inscription of nabonidus. *** the monolith discovered at kurkh is in itself a proof that shalmaneser executed works in this town, the tushkhân of the inscriptions. **** any connection established between this thirty-year jubilee and the thirty years� festival of egypt rests on facts which can be so little relied on, that it must be accepted with considerable reserve. [illustration: .jpg the bronze-covered gates of balawÀt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch by pinches. it is possible that he may have thought this a favourable moment for presenting to the people the son whom he had chosen from among his children to succeed him. at any rate, assur-dain-pal, fearing that one of his brothers might be preferred before him, �proclaimed himself king,� and nearly the whole of assyria gathered around his standard. assur and twenty-six more of the most important cities revolted in his favour--nineveh, imgur-bel, sibaniba, dur-balat, arbela, zabân in the chaldæan marches, arrapkha in the valley of the upper zab, and most of the colonies, both of ancient and recent foundation--amidi on the tigris, khindanu near the mouths of the kha-bur and tul-abni on the southern slopes of the masios. the aged king remained in possession only of calah and its immediate environs--nisibis, harrân, tushkhân, and the most recently subdued provinces on the banks of the euphrates and the orontes. it is probable, however, that the army remained faithful to him, and the support which these well-tried troops afforded him enabled the king to act with promptitude. the weight of years did not permit him to command in person; he therefore entrusted the conduct of operations to his son samsi-rammân, but he did not live to see the end of the struggle. it embittered his last days, and was not terminated till b.c., at which date shalmaneser had been dead two years. this prolonged crisis had shaken the kingdom to its foundations; the syrians, the medes, the babylonians, and the peoples of the armenian and aramæan marches were rent from it, and though samsi-rammân iv. waged continuous warfare during the twelve years that he governed, he could only partially succeed in regaining the territory which had been thus lost.* * all that we know of the reign of samsi-rammân iv. comes from an inscription in archaic characters containing the account of four campaigns, without giving the years of each reign or the _limmu_, and historians have classified them in different ways. his first three campaigns were-directed against the north-eastern and eastern provinces. he began by attempting to collect the tribute from naîri, the payment of which had been suspended since the outbreak of the revolution, and he re-established the dominion of assyria from the district of paddir to the township of kar-shulmânasharid, which his father had founded at the fords of the euphrates opposite to carchemish ( b.c.). in the following campaign he did not personally take part, but the rabshakeh mutarriz-assur pillaged the shores of lake urumiah, and then made his way towards urartu, where he destroyed three hundred towns ( ). the third expedition was directed against misi and gizilbunda beyond the upper zab and mount zilar.* the inhabitants of misi entrenched themselves on a wooded ridge commanded by three peaks, but were defeated in spite of the advantages which their position secured for them;** the people of gizilbunda were not more fortunate than their neighbours, and six thousand of them perished at the assault of urash, their capital.*** * mount zilar is beyond the upper zab, on one of the roads which lead to the basin of lake urumiah, probably in khubushkia. there are two of these roads--that which passes over the neck of kelishin, and the other which runs through the gorges of alan; �with the exception of these two points, the mountain chain is absolutely impassable.� according to the general direction of the campaign, it appears to me probable that the king crossed by the passes of alan; mount zilâr would therefore be the group of chains which cover the district of pîshder, and across which the lesser zab passes before descending to the plain. ** the country of misi adjoined gizilbunda, media, araziâsh, and andiu. all these circumstances incline us to place it in the south-eastern part of kurdistan of sihmeh, in the upper valley of kisil-uzên. the ridge, overlooked by three peaks, on which the inhabitants took refuge, cannot be looked for on the west, whore there are few important heights: i should rather identify it with the part of the gordysean mountains which bounds the basin of the kisil-uzên on the west, and which contains three peaks of , feet--the tchehel- tchechma, the derbend, and the nau-kân. *** the name of the country has been read giratbunda, ginunbunda, girubbunda; a variant, to which no objections can be made, has furnished gizilbunda. it was contiguous on one side to the medes, and on the other to the mannai, which obliges us to place it in kurdistan of gerrus, on the kizil- uzôn. it may be asked if the word kizil which occurs several times in the topographical nomenclature of these regions is not a relic of the name in question, and if gizil-bunda is not a compound of the same class as kizil-uzên, kizil- gatchi, kizihalân, kizil-lôk, whether it be that part of the population spoke a language analogous to the dialects now in use in these districts, or that the ancient word has been preserved by later conquerors and assimilated to some well- known word in their own language. mutarriz-assur at once turned upon the medes, vanquished them, and drove them at the point of the sword into their remote valleys, returning to the district of araziash, which he laid waste. a score of chiefs with barbarous names, alarmed by this example, hastened to prostrate themselves at his feet, and submitted to the tribute which he imposed on them. assyria thus regained in these regions the ascendency which the victories of shalmaneser iii. in their time had won for her. babylon, which had endured the suzerainty of its rival for a quarter of a century, seems to have taken advantage of the events occurring in assyria to throw off the yoke, by espousing the cause of assur-dain-pal. samsi-rammân, therefore, as soon as he was free to turn his attention from media ( ), directed his forces against babylonia. metur-nât, as usual, was the first city attacked; it capitulated at once, and its inhabitants were exiled to assyria. kami to the south of the turnat, and dibina on mount yalrnan, suffered the same fate, but gananâtê held out for a time; its garrison, however, although reinforced by troops from the surrounding country, was utterly routed before its walls, and the survivors, who fled for refuge to the citadel in the centre of the town, were soon dislodged. the babylonians, who had apparently been taken by surprise at the first attack, at length made preparations to resist the invaders. the prince of dur-papsukal, who owned allegiance to marduk-balatsu-ikbi, king of babylon, had disposed his troops so as to guard the fords of the tigris, in order to prevent the enemy from reaching his capital. but samsi-rammân dispersed this advanced force, killing thirteen thousand, besides taking three thousand prisoners, and finally reduced dur-papsukal to ashes. [ .jpg monolith of samsi-ramman iv] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mansell. the original is in the british museum. the respite thus obtained gave marduk-balatsu-ikbi sufficient time to collect the main body of his troops: the army was recruited from kaldâ and ela-mites, soldiers from namri, and aramaean contingents, and the united force awaited the enemy behind the ruins of dur-papsukal, along the banks of the dabân canal. five thousand footmen, two hundred horsemen, one hundred chariots, besides the king�s tent and all his stores, fell into the hands of the assyrians. the victory was complete; babylon, kuta, and borsippa capitulated one after the other, and the invaders penetrated as far as the land of the kaldâ, and actually reached the persian gulf. samsi-rammân offered sacrifices to the gods, as his father had done before him, and concluded a treaty with marduk-balatsu-ikbi, the terms of which included rectification of boundaries, payment of a subsidy, and the other clauses usual in such circumstances; the peace was probably ratified by a matrimonial alliance, concluded between the babylonian princess sammuramat and bammân-nirâri, son of the conqueror. in this manner the hegemony of assyria over karduniash was established even more firmly than before the insurrection; but all available resources had been utilised in the effort necessary to secure it. samsi-rammân had no leisure to reconquer syria or asia minor, and the euphrates remained the western frontier of his kingdom, as it had been in the early days of shalmaneser iii. the peace with babylon, moreover, did not last long; bau-akhiddîn, who had succeeded marduk-balatsu-ikbi, refused to observe the terms of the treaty, and hostilities again broke out on the turnat and the tigris, as they had done six years previously. this war was prolonged from to b.c., and was still proceeding when samsi-rammân died. his son bammân-nirâri iii. quickly brought it to a successful issue. he carried bau-akhiddîn captive to assyria, with his family and the nobles of his court, and placed on the vacant throne one of his own partisans, while he celebrated festivals in honour of his own supremacy at babylon, kuta, and borsippa. karduniash made no attempt to rebel against assyria during the next half-century. bammân-nirâri proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign, and the thirty years of his reign were by no means inglorious. we learn from the eponym lists what he accomplished during that time, and against which countries he waged war; but we have not yet recovered any inscription to enable us to fill in this outline, and put together a detailed account of his reign. his first expeditions were directed against media ( ), gozân ( ), and the mannai ( - ); he then crossed the euphrates, and in four successive years conducted as many vigorous campaigns against arpad ( ), kkazaiu ( ), the town of baali ( ), and the cities of the phoenician sea-board ( ). the plague interfering with his advance in the latter direction, he again turned his attention eastward and attacked khubushkia in , , and ; media in - , - , and - ; lushia in ; namri in ; diri in - and ; itua in , - ; kishki in . this bare enumeration conjures up a vision of an enterprising and victorious monarch of the type of assur-nazir-pal or shalmaneser iii., one who perhaps succeeded even where his redoubtable ancestors had failed. the panoramic survey of his empire, as unfolded to us in one of his inscriptions, includes the mountain ranges of illipi as far as mount sihina, kharkhar, araziash, misu, media, the whole of gizilbunda, man, parsua, allabria, abdadana, the extensive territory of istaîri, far-off andiu, and, westwards beyond the euphrates, the khâti, the entire country of the amorites, tyre, sidon, israel, edom, and the philistines. never before had the assyrian empire extended so far east in the direction of the centre of the iranian tableland, nor so far to the south-west towards the frontiers of egypt.* * allabria or allabur is on the borders of parsua and of karalla, which allows us to locate it in the basins of the kerkhorâh and the saruk, tributaries of the jagatu, which flow into lake urumiah. abdadana, which borders on allabria, and was, according to rammân-nirâri, at the extreme end of naîri, was a little further to the east or north-east; if i am not mistaken, it corresponds pretty nearly to uriâd, on the banks of the kizil-uzên. in two only of these regions, namely, syria and armenia, do native documents add any information to the meagre summary contained in the annals, and give us glimpses of contemporary rulers. the retreat of shalmaneser, after his partial success in , had practically left the ancient allies of ben-hadad ii. at the mercy of hazael, the new king of damascus, but he did not apparently attempt to assert his supremacy over the whole of coele-syria, and before long several of its cities acquired considerable importance, first mansuate, and then hadrach,* both of which, casting hamath into the shade, succeeded in holding their own against hazael and his successors. he renewed hostilities, however, against the hebrews, and did not relax his efforts till he had thoroughly brought them into subjection. jehu suffered loss on all his frontiers, �from jordan eastward, all the land of gilead, the gadites, the keubenites, and the manassites, from aroer, which is by the valley of arnon, even gilead and bashan,� ** israel became thus once more entirely dependent on damascus, but the sister kingdom of judah still escaped its yoke through the energy of her rulers. * mansuati successfully resisted rammân-nirâri in b.c., but he probably caused its ruin, for after this only expeditions against hadrach are mentioned. mansuati was in the basin of the orontes, and the manner in which the assyrian texts mention it in connection with zimyra seems to show that it commanded the opening in the lebanon range between cole-syria and phoenicia. the site of khatarika, the hadrach of zech. ix. , is not yet precisely determined; but it must, as well as mansuati, have been in the neighbourhood of hamath, perhaps between hamath and damascus. it appears for the first time in . ** kings x. , . even if verse is a later addition, it gives a correct idea of the situation, except as regards bashan, which had been lost to israel for some time already. athaliah reigned seven years, not ingloriously; but she belonged to the house of ahab, and the adherents of the prophets, whose party had planned jehu�s revolution, could no longer witness with equanimity one of the accursed race thus prospering and ostentatiously practising the rites of baal-worship within sight of the great temple of jahveh. on seizing the throne, athaliah had sought out and put to death all the members of the house of david who had any claim to the succession; but jeho-sheba, half-sister of ahaziah, had with difficulty succeeded in rescuing joash, one of the king�s sons. her husband was the high priest jehoiada, and he secreted his nephew for six years in the precincts of the temple; at the end of that time, he won over the captains of the royal guard, bribed a section of the troops, and caused them to swear fealty to the child as their legitimate sovereign. athaliah, hastening to discover the cause of the uproar, was assassinated. mattan, chief priest of baal, shared her fate; and jehoiada at once restored to jahveh the preeminence which the gods of the alien had for a time usurped ( ). at first his influence over his pupil was supreme, but before long the memory of his services faded away, and the king sought only how to rid himself of a tutelage which had grown irksome. the temple had suffered during the late wars, and repairs were much needed. joash ordained that for the future all moneys put into the sacred treasury--which of right belonged to the king--should be placed unreservedly at the disposal of the priests on condition that they should apply them to the maintenance of the services and fabric of the temple: the priests accepted the gift, but failed in the faithful observance of the conditions, so that in b.c. the king was obliged to take stringent measures to compel them to repair the breaches in the sanctuary walls:* he therefore withdrew the privilege which they had abused, and henceforth undertook the administration of the temple fund in person. the beginning of the new order of things was not very successful. jehu had died in , after a disastrous reign, and both he and his son jehoahaz had been obliged to acknowledge the supremacy of hazael: not only was he in the position of an inferior vassal, but, in order to preclude any idea of a revolt, he was forbidden to maintain a greater army than the small force necessary for purposes of defence, namely, ten thousand foot-soldiers, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots.** * kings xii. - ; cf. chron. xxiv. - . the beginning of the narrative is lost, and the whole has probably been modified to make it agree with kings xxii. - . ** kings xiii. - . it may be noticed that the number of foot-soldiers given in the bible is identical with that which the assyrian texts mention as ahab�s contingent at the battle of qarqar, viz. , ; the number of the chariots is very different in the two cases. kuenen and other critics would like to assign to the reign of jehoahaz the siege of samaria by the syrians, which the actual text of the book of the kings attributes to the reign of joram. the power of israel had so declined that hazael was allowed to march through its territory unhindered on his way to wage war in the country of the philistines; which he did, doubtless, in order to get possession of the main route of egyptian commerce. the syrians destroyed gath,* reduced pentapolis to subjection, enforced tribute from edom, and then marched against jerusalem. joash took from the treasury of jahveh the reserve funds which his ancestors, jehoshaphat, joram, and ahaziah, had accumulated, and sent them to the invader,** together with all the gold which was found in the king�s house. * the text of kings xii. merely says that hazael took gath. gath is not named by amos among the cities of the philistines (amos. i. - ), but it is one of the towns cited by that prophet as examples to israel of the wrath of jahveh (vi. ). it is probable, therefore, that it was already destroyed in his time. ** kings xii. , ; cf. chron. xxiv. - , where the expedition of hazael is represented as a punishment for the murder of mechariah, son of jehoiada. from this time forward judah became, like israel, edom, the philistines and ammonites, a mere vassal of hazael; with the possible exception of moab, all the peoples of southern syria were now subject to damascus, and formed a league as strong as that which had successfully resisted the power of shalmaneser. rammân-nirâri, therefore, did not venture to attack syria during the lifetime of hazael; but a change of sovereign is always a critical moment in the history of an eastern empire, and he took advantage of the confusion caused by the death of the aged king to attack his successor mari ( b.c.). mari essayed the tactics which his father had found so successful; he avoided a pitched battle, and shut himself up in damascus. but he was soon closely blockaded, and forced to submit to terms; rammân-nirâri demanded as the price of withdrawal, , talents of silver, talents of gold, of copper, of iron, besides embroidered and dyed stuffs, an ivory couch, and a litter inlaid with ivory,--in all a considerable part of the treasures amassed at the expense of the hebrews and their neighbours. it is doubtful whether rammân-nirâri pushed further south, and penetrated in person as far as the deserts of arabia petrsæ--a suggestion which the mention of the philistines and edomites among the list of his tributary states might induce us to accept. probably it was not the case, and he really went no further than damascus. but the submission of that city included, in theory at least, the submission of all states subject to her sway, and these dependencies may have sent some presents to testify their desire to conciliate his favour; their names appear in the inscriptions in order to swell the number of direct or indirect vassals of the empire, since they were subject to a state which had been effectually conquered. rammân-nirâri did not meet with such good fortune in the north; not only did he fail to obtain the brilliant successes which elsewhere attended his arms, but he ended by sustaining considerable reverses. the ninevite historians reckoned the two expeditions of and b.c. against the mannai as victories, doubtless because the king returned with a train of prisoners and loaded with spoil; but the vannic inscriptions reveal that urartu, which had been rising into prominence during the reign of shalmaneser, had now grown still more powerful, and had begun to reconquer those provinces on the tigris and euphrates of which the assyrians thought themselves the undoubted lords. sharduris ii. had been succeeded, about , by his son ishpuinis, who had perhaps measured his strength against samsi-ranimân iv. ishpuinis appears to have conquered and reduced to the condition of a province the neighbouring principality of biainas, which up to that time had been governed by a semi-independent dynasty; at all events, he transferred thence his seat of govern-and made dhuspas his favourite residence. towards the end of his reign he associated with him on the throne his son menuas, and made him commander-in-chief of the army. menuas proved a bold and successful general, and in a few years had doubled the extent of his dominions. he first delivered from the assyrian yoke, and plundered on his father�s account, the tribes on the borders of lake urumiah, muzazir, gilzân, and kirruri; then, crossing the gordygean mountains, he burnt the towns in the valley of the upper zab, which bore the uncouth names of teraîs, ardis, khanalis, bikuras, khatqanas, inuas, and nibur, laid waste the more fertile part of khubushkia, and carved triumphal stelas in the assyrian and vannic scripts upon the rocks in the pass of rowandiz. [illustration: .jpg triumphal stele of menuas at kelishin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by j. de morgan. it was probably to recover this territory that rammân-nirâri waged war three times in khubushkia, in , , and , in a district which had formerly been ruled by a prefect from nineveh, but had now fallen into the hands of the enemy.* * it is probable that the stele of kelishin, belonging to the joint reign of ishpuinis and menuas, was intended to commemorate the events which led rammân-nirâri to undertake his first expedition; the conquest by menuas will fall then in or b.c. the inscription of meher-kapussi contains the names of the divinities belonging to several conquered towns, and may have been engraved on the return from this war. everywhere along the frontier, from the lower zab to the euphrates, menuas overpowered and drove back the assyrian outposts. he took from them aldus and erinuis on the southern shores of lake van, compelled dayaîni to abandon its allegiance, and forced its king, udhupursis, to surrender his treasure and his chariots; then gradually descending the valley of the arzania, he crushed seseti, kulmê, and ekarzu. in one year he pillaged the mannai in the east, and attacked the khâti in the west, seizing their fortresses of surisilis, tarkhigamas, and sarduras; in the province of alzu he left soldiers dead on the field after one engagement; gupas yielded to his sway, followed by the towns of khuzanas and puteria, whereupon he even crossed the euphrates and levied tribute from melitene. but the struggle against assyria absorbed only a portion of his energy; we do not know what he accomplished in the east, in the plains sloping towards the caspian sea, but several monuments, discovered near armavir and erzerum, testify that he pushed his arms a considerable distance towards the north and north-west.* he obliged etius to acknowledge his supremacy, sending a colony to its capital, lununis, whose name he changed to menua-lietzilinis.** * the inscription of erzerum, discovered by f. de saulcy and published by him, shows that menuas was in possession of the district in which this town is situated, and that he rebuilt a palace there. ** inscriptions of yazli-tash and zolakert. it follows from these texts that the country of etius is the district of armavir, and lununis is the ancient name of this city. the now name by which menuas replaced the name lununis signifies _the abode of the people of menuas_; like many names arising from special circumstances, it naturally passed away with the rule of the people who had imposed it. towards the end of his reign he partly subjugated the mannai, planting colonies throughout their territory to strengthen his hold on the country. by these campaigns he had formed a kingdom, which, stretching from the south side of the araxes to the upper reaches of the zab and the tigris, was quite equal to assyria in size, and probably surpassed it in density of population, for it contained no barren steppes such as stretched across mesopotamia, affording support merely to a few wretched bedâwin. as their dominions increased, the sovereigns of biainas began to consider themselves on an equality with the kings of nineveh, and endeavoured still more to imitate them in the luxury and display of their domestic life, as well as in the energy of their actions and the continuity of their victories. they engraved everywhere on the rocks triumphal inscriptions, destined to show to posterity their own exploits and the splendour of their gods. having made this concession to their vanity, they took effective measures to assure possession of their conquests. they selected in the various provinces sites difficult of access, commanding some defile in the� mountains, or ford over a river, or at the junction of two roads, or the approach to a plain; on such spots they would build a fortress or a town, or, finding a citadel already existing, they would repair it and remodel its fortifications so as to render it impregnable. at kalajik, ashrut-darga, and the older mukhrapert may still be seen the ruins of ramparts built by ishpuims. menuas finished the buildings his father had begun, erected others in all the districts where he sojourned, in time of peace or war, at shushanz, sirka,* anzaff, arzwapert, geuzak, zolakert, tashtepê, and in the country of the mannai, and it is possible that the fortified village of melasgerd still bears his name.** * the name of the ancient place corresponding to the modern village of sirka was probably artsunis or artsuyunis, according to the vannic inscriptions. ** a more correct form than melas-gerd is manas-gert, _the city of manas_, where manas would represent menuas: one of the inscriptions of aghtamar speaks of a certain menuakhinas, _city of menuas_, which may be a primitive version of the same name. his wars furnished him with the men and materials necessary for the rapid completion of these works, while the statues, valuable articles of furniture, and costly fabrics, vessels of silver, gold, and copper carried off from assyrian or asiatic cities, provided him with surroundings as luxurious as those enjoyed by the kings of nineveh. his favourite residence was amid the valleys and hills of the south-western shore of lake van, the sea of the rising sun. his father, ishpuinis, had already done much to embellish the site of dhuspas, or khaldinas as it was called, from the god khaldis; he had surrounded it with strong walls, and within them had laid the foundations of a magnificent palace. menuas carried on the work, brought water to the cisterns by subterranean aqueducts, planted gardens, and turned the whole place into an impregnable fortress, where a small but faithful garrison could defy a large army for several years. dhuspas, thus completed, formed the capital and defence of the kingdom during the succeeding century. menuas was gathered to his fathers shortly before the death of eammân-nirâri, perhaps in b.c.* * this date seems to agree with the text of the _annals of argistis_, as far as we are at present acquainted with them; müller has shown, in fact, that they contain the account of fourteen campaigns, probably the first fourteen of the reign of argistis, and he has recognised, in accordance with the observations of stanislas guyard, the formula which separates the campaigns one from another. there are two campaigns against the peoples of the upper euphrates mentioned before the campaigns against assyria, and as these latter follow continuously after , it is probable that the former must be placed in - , which would give or for the year of his accession. he was engaged up to the last in a quarrel with the princes who occupied the mountainous country to the north of the araxes, and his son argistis spent the first few years of his reign in completing his conquests in this region.* he crushed with ease an attempted revolt in dayaîni, and then invaded etius, systematically devastating it, its king, uduris, being powerless to prevent his ravages. all the principal towns succumbed one after another before the vigour of his assault, and, from the numbers killed and taken prisoners, we may surmise the importance of his victories in these barbarous districts, to which belonged the names of seriazis, silius, zabakhas, zirimutaras, babanis, and urmias,** though we cannot definitely locate the places indicated. * the _annals of argistis_ are inscribed on the face of the rock which crowns the citadel of van. the inscription contains (as stated in note above) the history of the first fourteen yearly campaigns of argistis. ** the site of these places is still undetermined. seriazis and silius (or tarius) lay to the north-east of dayaîni, and urmias, urmê, recalls the modern name of lake urumiah, but was probably situated on the left bank of the araxes. on a single occasion, the assault on ureyus, for instance, argistis took prisoners , children, , men fit to bear arms, , women, and the survivors of a garrison which numbered , soldiers at the opening of the siege, besides horses, , cattle, and more than , sheep. two expeditions into the heart of the country, conducted between and b.c., had greatly advanced the work of conquest, when the accession of a new sovereign in assyria made argistis decide to risk a change of front and to concentrate the main part of his forces on the southern boundary of his empire. rammân-nirâri, after his last contest in khubushkia in , had fought two consecutive campaigns against the aramæan tribes of itua, near the frontiers of babylon, and he was still in conflict with them when he died in b.c. his son, shalmaneser iv., may have wished to signalise the commencement of his reign by delivering from the power of urartu the provinces which the kings of that country had wrested from his ancestors; or, perhaps, argistis thought that a change of ruler offered him an excellent opportunity for renewing the struggle at the point where menuas had left it, and for conquering yet more of the territory which still remained to his rival. whatever the cause, the assyrian annals show us the two adversaries ranged against each other, in a struggle which lasted from to b.c. argistis had certainly the upper hand, and though his advance was not rapid, it was never completely checked. the first engagement took place at nirbu, near the sources of the supnat and the tigris: nirbu capitulated, and the enemy pitilessly ravaged the hittite states, which were subject to assyria, penetrating as far as the heart of melitene ( ). the next year the armies encountered each other nearer to nineveh, in the basin of the bitlis-tchaî, at khakhias; and, in , argistis expressly thanks his gods, the khaldises, for having graciously bestowed upon him as a gift the armies and cities of assur. the scene of the war had shifted, and the contest was now carried on in the countries bordering on lake urumiah, bustus and parsua. the natives gained nothing by the change of invader, and were as hardly used by the king of urartu as they had been by shalmaneser iii. or by samsirammân: as was invariably the case, their towns were given over to the flames, their fields ravaged, their cattle and their families carried into captivity. their resistance, however, was so determined that a second campaign was required to complete the conquest: and this time the assyrians suffered a serious defeat at surisidas ( ), and a year at least was needed for their recovery from the disaster. during this respite, argistis hastened to complete the pacification of bustus, parsua, and the small portion of man which had not been reduced to subjection by menuas. when the assyrians returned to the conflict, he defeated them again ( ), and while they withdrew to the amanus, where a rebellion had broken out ( ), he reduced one by one the small states which clustered round the eastern and southern shores of lake urumiah. he was conducting a campaign in namri, when shalmaneser iv. made a last effort to check his advance; but he was again victorious ( ), and from henceforth these troubled regions, in which nineveh had so persistently endeavoured for more than a century to establish her own supremacy, became part of the empire of urartu. argistis�s hold of them proved, however, to be a precarious and uncertain one, and before long the same difficulties assailed him which had restricted the power of his rivals. [illustration: .jpg urartian stele on the rocks of ak-keupbu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. ximones. he was forced to return again and again to these districts, destroying fortresses and pursuing the inhabitants over plain and mountain: in we find him in urmes, the territory of bikhuras, and bam, in the very heart of namri; in , in dhuaras, and gurqus, among the mannai, and at the city of uikhis, in bustus. meanwhile, to the north of the araxes, several chiefs had taken advantage of his being thus engaged in warfare in distant regions, to break the very feeble bond which held them vassals to urartu. btius was the fountain-head and main support of the rebellion; the rugged mountain range in its rear provided its chiefs with secure retreats among its woods and lakes and valleys, through which flowed rapid torrents. argistis inflicted a final defeat on the mannai in , and then turned his forces against etius. he took by storm the citadel of ardinis which defended the entrance to the country, ravaged ishqigulus,* and seized amegu, the capital of uidharus: our knowledge of his wars comes to an end in the following year with an expedition into the land of tarius. * sayce shows that ishqigulus was the district of alexandropolis, to the east of kars; its capital, irdanius, is very probably either the existing walled village of kalinsha or the neighbouring ruin of ajuk-kaleh, on the arpa-tohâî. the monuments do not tell us what he accomplished on the borders of asia minor; he certainly won some considerable advantages there, and the influence which assyria had exercised over states scattered to the north of the taurus, such as melitene, and possibly tabal and kummukh, which had formed the original nucleus of the hittite empire, must have now passed into his hands. the form of argistis looms before us as that of a great conqueror, worthy to bear comparison with the most indefatigable and triumphant of the pharaohs of egypt or the lords of chaldæa. the inscriptions which are constantly being discovered within the limits of his kingdom prove that, following the example of all oriental sovereigns, he delighted as much in building as in battle: perhaps we shall some day recover a sufficient number of records to enable us to restore to their rightful place in history this great king, and the people whose power he developed more than any other sovereign. assyria had thus lost all her possessions in the northern and eastern parts of her empire; turning to the west, how much still remained faithful to her? after the expedition of b.c. to the land of cedars, two consecutive campaigns are mentioned against damascus ( ) and hadrach ( ); it was during this latter expedition, or immediately after it, that shalmaneser iv. died. northern syria seems to have been disturbed by revolutions which seriously altered the balance of power within her borders. the ancient states, whose growth had been arrested by the deadly blows inflicted on them in the ninth century by assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., had become reduced to the condition of second-rate powers, and their dominions had been split up. the patina was divided into four small states--the patina proper, unki, iaudi, and samalla, the latter falling under the rule of an aramaean family;* perhaps the accession of qaral, the founder of this dynasty, had been accompanied by convulsions, which might explain the presence of shalmaneser iv. in the amanos in . * the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii. mention unku, iaudi, samalla, and the patin, in the districts where the texts of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., only know of the patina. all these principalities, whether of ancient or recent standing, ranged themselves under one of two kingdoms--either hadrach or arpad, whose names henceforth during the following half-century appear in the front rank whenever a coalition is formed against assyria. carchemish, whose independence was still respected by the fortresses erected in its neighbourhood, could make no move without exposing itself to an immediate catastrophe: arpad, occupying a prominent position a little in front of the afrîn, on the main route leading to the orontes, had assumed the _rôle_ which carchemish was no longer in a position to fill. agusi became the principal centre of resistance; all battles were fought under the walls of its fortresses, and its fall involved the submission of all the country between the euphrates and the sea, as in former times had been the case with kinalua and khazazu.* * that arpad was in agusi is proved, among other places, by the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii., which show us from to the king at war with matîlu of agusi and his suzerain sharduris iii. of urartu. similar to the ascendency of arpad over the plateau of aleppo was that of hadrach in the valley of the orontes. this city had taken the position formerly occupied by hamath, which was now possibly one of its dependencies; it owed no allegiance to damascus, and rallied around it all the tribes of coele-syria, whose assistance hadadezer, but a short while before, had claimed in his war with the foreigner. neither arpad, hadrach, nor damascus ever neglected to send the customary presents to any sovereign who had the temerity to cross the euphrates and advance into their neighbourhood, but the necessity for this act of homage became more and more infrequent. during his reign of eighteen years assurdân iii., son and successor of shalmaneser iv., appeared only three times beneath their walls--at hadrach in and , at arpad in , a few months only before his death. assyria was gradually becoming involved in difficulties, and the means necessary to the preservation of its empire were less available than formerly. assurdân had frankly renounced all idea of attacking urartu, but he had at least endeavoured to defend himself against his enemies on the southern and eastern frontiers; he had led his armies against gananâtê ( , ), against itua ( ), and against the medes ( ), before risking an attack on hadrach ( ), but more than this he had not attempted. on two occasions in eight years ( , ) he had preferred to abstain from offensive action, and had remained inactive in his own country. assyria found herself in one of those crises of exhaustion which periodically laid her low after each outbreak of ambitious enterprise; she might well be compared to a man worn out by fatigue and loss of blood, who becomes breathless and needs repose as soon as he attempts the least exertion. before long, too, the scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. the plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against hadrach ( ), perhaps under the walls of that city. an eclipse of the sun occurred in , in the month of sivân, and this harbinger of woe was the signal for an outbreak of revolt in the city of assur.* * the ideas which orientals held on the subject of comets renders the connection between the two events very likely, if not certain. from assur the movement spread to arrapkha, and wrought havoc there from to ; it then passed on to gozân, where it was not finally extinguished till . the last remains of assyrian authority in syria vanished during this period: assurdân, after two years� respite, endeavoured to re-establish it, and attacked successively hadrach ( ) and arpad ( ). this was his last exploit. his son assur-nirâri iii. spent his short reign of eight years in helpless inaction; he lost syria, he carried on hostilities in namri from to --whether against the aramaeans or urartians is uncertain--then relapsed into inactivity, and a popular sedition drove him finally from calah in . he died some months later, without having repressed the revolt; none of his sons succeeded him, and the dynasty, having fallen into disrepute through the misfortunes of its last kings, thus came to an end; for, on the th of iyyâr, b.c., a usurper, perhaps, the leader of the revolt at calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of tiglath-pileser.* the second assyrian empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half, from tukulti-ninip ii. to assur-nirâri iii.** * many historians have thought that tiglath-pileser iii. was of babylonian origin; most of them, however, rightly considers that he was an assyrian. the identity of tiglath- pileser iii. with pulu, the biblical pul ( kings xv. ) has been conclusively proved by the discovery of the _babylonian chronicle_, where the babylonian reigns of tiglath-pileser iii. and his son shalmaneser v. are inserted where the dynastic lists give pulu and ululai, the poros and eluloos of ptolemy. ** here is the concluding portion of the dynasty of the kings of assyria, from irba-rammân to assur-nirâri iii.:-- [illustration: .jpg table of the dynasty of the kings of assyria] in the manner in which it had accomplished its work, it resembled the egyptian empire of eight hundred years before. the egyptians, setting forth from the nile valley, had overrun syria and had at first brought it under their suzerainty, though without actually subduing it. they had invaded amurru and zahi, naharaim and mitanni, where they had pillaged, burnt, and massacred at will for years, without obtaining from these countries, which were too remote to fall naturally within their sphere of influence, more than a temporary and apparent submission; the regions in the neighbourhood of the isthmus alone had been regularly administered by the officers of pharaoh, and when the country between mount seir and lebanon seemed on the point of being organised into a real empire the invasion of the peoples of the sea had overthrown and brought to nought the work of three centuries. the assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the euphrates and the mediterranean, but, like those of the egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. their campaigns in cole-syria and palestine had enriched their own cities and spread the terror of their name throughout the eastern world, but their supremacy had only taken firm root in the plains bordering on mesopotamia, and just when they were preparing to extend their rule, a power had sprung up beside them, over which they had been unable to triumph: they had been obliged to withdraw behind the euphrates, and they might reasonably have asked themselves whether, by weakening the peoples of syria at the price of the best blood of their own nation, they had not merely laboured for the benefit of a rival power, and facilitated the rise of urartu. egypt, after her victory over the peoples of the sea, had seemed likely, for the moment, to make a fresh start on a career of conquest under the energetic influence of ramses iii., but her forces proved unequal to the task, and as soon as the master�s hand ceased to urge her on, she shrank back, without a struggle, within her ancient limits, and ere long nothing remained to her of the asiatic empire carved out by the warlike pharaohs of the theban dynasties. if tiglath-pileser could show the same courage and capacity as ramses iii., he might well be equally successful, and raise his nation again to power; but time alone could prove whether nineveh, on his death, would be able to maintain a continuous effort, or whether her new display of energy would prove merely ephemeral, and her empire be doomed to sink into irremediable weakness under the successors of her deliverer, as egypt had done under the later ramessides. chapter ii--tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from to b.c. _tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from to b.c._ _failure of urartu and re-conquest of syria--egypt again united under ethiopian auspices--piÔnkhi--the downfall of damascus, of babylon, and of israel._ _assyria and its neighbours at the accession of tiglath-pileser iii.: progress of the aramæans in the basin of the middle tigris--urartu and its expansion into the north of syria--damascus and israel--vengeance of israel on damascus--jeroboam ii.--civilisation of the hebrew kingdoms, their commerce, industries, private life, and political organisation--dawn of hebrew literature: the two historians of israel--the priesthood and the prophets--the prophecy of amos at bethel; denunciation of israel by hosea._ _early campaigns of tiglath-pileser iii. in karduniash and in media--he determines to attach urartu in syria: defeat of sharduris, campaign around arpad, and capture of that city--homage paid by the syrian princes, by menahem and rezin ii--second campaign against the medes--invasion of urartu and end of its supremacy--alliance of pekah and rezin against ahaz: the war in judæa and siege of jerusalem._ _egypt under the kings of the xxiith dynasty--the theban principality, its priests, pallacides, and revolts; the xxiiird tanite dynasty--tafnakhti and the rise of the saite family--the egyptian kingdom, of ethiopia: theocratic nature of its dynasty, annexation of the thebaid by the kingdom of napata--piônkhi-mîamun; his generals in middle egypt; submission of khmunu, of memphis, and of tafnalchti--effect produced in asia by the ethiopian conquest._ _the prophet isaiah, his rise under aliaz--intervention of tiglath-pileser iii. in hebrew affairs; the campaign of b.c. against israel--capture of rezin, and the downfall of damascus--nabunazîr; the kaldd and the close of the babylonian dynasty; usurpation of ukînzîr--campaign against ukînzîr; capture of shapîa and of babylon--tiglath-pileser ascends the throne in the last-named city under the name of fulu ( b.c.)--death of tiglath-pileser iii. ( b.c.)_ _reorganisation of the assyrian empire; provinces and feudatory states--karduniash, syria--wholesale deportation of conquered races--provincial administrators, their military and financial arrangements--buildings erected by tiglath-pileser at calah--the bit-khilâni--foundation of feudal lordships--belharrdn-beluzur--shalmaneser v. and egypt: rebellion of hoshea, the siege of samaria, and the prophecies of isaiah--sargon--destruction of the kingdom of israel._ chapter ii--tiglath-pileser iii. and the organisation of the assyrian empire from to b.c. _failure of urartu and re-conquest of syria--egypt again united under ethiopian auspices--piônkhi--the downfall of damascus, of babylon, and of israel._ * drawn by boudier, from layard. the vignette, also by boudier, represents a bronze statuette of queen karomama, now in the louvre. events proved that, in this period, at any rate, the decadence of assyria was not due to any exhaustion of the race or impoverishment of the country, but was mainly owing to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. if menuas and argistis had again and again triumphed over the assyrians during half a century, it was not because their bands of raw recruits were superior to the tried veterans of rammân-nirâri in either discipline or courage. the assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, and their muster-roll showed no trace of diminution, but their leaders had lost the power of handling their men after the vigorous fashion of their predecessors, and showed less foresight and tenacity in conducting their campaigns. although decimated and driven from fortress to fortress, and from province to province, hampered by the rebellions it was called upon to suppress, and distracted by civil discord, the assyrian army still remained a strong and efficient force, ever ready to make its full power felt the moment it realised that it was being led by a sovereign capable of employing its good qualities to advantage. tiglath-pileser had, doubtless, held a military command before ascending the throne, and had succeeded in winning the confidence of his men: as soon as he had assumed the leadership they regained their former prestige, and restored to their country that supremacy which its last three rulers had failed to maintain.* * the official documents dealing with the history of tiglath-pileser iii. have been seriously mutilated, and there is on several points some difference of opinion among historians as to the proper order in which the fragments ought to be placed, and, consequently, as to the true sequence of the various campaigns. the principal documents are as follows: ( ) the _annals_ in the central hall of the palace of shalmaneser iii. at nimroud, partly defaced by esarhaddon, and carried off to serve as materials for the south-western palace, whence they were rescued by layard, and brought in fragments to the british museum. ( ) the _tablets_, k. and d. t. , in the british museum. ( ) the _slabs of nimrud_, discovered by layard and g. smith. the empire still included the original patrimony of assur and its ancient colonies on the upper tigris, the districts of mesopotamia won from the aramæans at various epochs, the cities of khabur, khindanu, laqî, and tebabnî, and that portion of bît-adini which lay to the left of the euphrates. it thus formed a compact mass capable of successfully resisting the fiercest attacks; but the buffer provinces which assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. had grouped round their own immediate domains on the borders of namri, of naîri, of melitene, and of syria had either resumed their independence, or else had thrown in their lot with the states against which they had been intended to watch. the aramaean tribes never let slip an opportunity of encroaching on the southern frontier. so far, the migratory instinct which had brought them from the arabian desert to the swamps of the persian gulf had met with no check. those who first reached its shores became the founders of that nation of the kaldâ which had, perhaps, already furnished babylon with one of its dynasties; others had soon after followed in their footsteps, and passing beyond the kaldâ settlement, had gradually made their way along the canals which connect the euphrates with the tigris till they had penetrated to the lowlands of the uknu. towards the middle of the eighth century b.c. they wedged themselves in between elam and karduniash, forming so many buffer states of varying size and influence. they extended from north to south along both banks of the tigris, their different tribes being known as the gambulu, the puqudu, the litau, the damunu, the ruuâ, the khindaru, the labdudu, the harîlu, and the rubuu;* the itua, who formed the vanguard, reached the valleys of the turnat during the reign of kammân-nirâri iii. they were defeated in b.c., but obstinately renewed hostilities in , , , and ; favoured by circumstances, they ended by forcing the cordon of assyrian outposts, and by the time of assur-nirâri had secured a footing on the lower zab. close by, to the east of them, lay namri and media, both at that time in a state of absolute anarchy. the invasions of menuas and of argistis had entirely laid waste the country, and sharduris iii., the king who succeeded argistis, had done nothing towards permanently incorporating them with urartu.** sharduris, while still heir-apparent to the throne, had been appointed by his father governor of the recently annexed territory belonging to etius and the mannai:*** he made lununis his headquarters, and set himself to subdue the barbarians who had settled between the kur and the araxes. when he succeeded to the throne, about b.c., the enjoyment of supreme power in no way lessened his activity. on the contrary, he at once fixed upon the sort of wide isthmus which separates the araxes from lake urumiah, as the goal of his incursions, and overran the territory of the babilu; there he carried by storm three royal castles, twenty-three cities, and sixty villages; he then fell back upon etius, passing through dakis, edias, and urmes on his way, and brought back with him , children, , women, , men capable of bearing arms, , oxen, , sheep, and , horses; these figures give some idea of the importance of his victories and the wealth of the conquered territory. * the list of aramæan tribes, and the positions occupied by them towards the middle of the eighth century, have been given us by tiglath-pileser iii. himself. ** tiglath-pileser did not encounter any urartian forces in these regions, as would almost certainly have been the case had these countries remained subject to urartu from the invasions of menuas and argistis onwards. *** argistis tells us in the _annals_ that he had made his son satrap over the provinces won from the mannai and etius: though his name is not mentioned, sayce believes this son must have been sharduris. so far as we can learn, he does not seem to have attacked khubushkia,* nor to have entered into open rivalry with assyria; even under the rule of assur-nirâri iii. assyria showed a bold enough front to deter any enemy from disturbing her except when forced to do so. sharduris merely strove to recover those portions of his inheritance to which assyria attached but little value, and his inscriptions tell us of more than one campaign waged by him with this object against the mountaineers of melitene, about the year . he captured most of their citadels, one after another: dhumeskis, zapsas, fourteen royal castles, and a hundred towns, including milid itself, where king khitaruadas held his court.** * it is evident from the account of the campaigns that tiglath-pileser occupied khubushkia from the very commencement of his reign; we must therefore assume that the invasions of argistis had produced only transient effects. ** these campaigns must have preceded the descent into syria, and i believe this latter to have been anterior to the expedition of assur-nirâri against arpad in b.c. assur-nirâri probably tried to reconquer the tribes who had just become subject to sharduris. the descent of this latter into syria probably took place about or b.c., and his wars against melitene about to b.c. at this point two courses lay open before him. he could either continue his march westwards, and, penetrating into asia minor, fall upon the wealthy and industrious races who led a prosperous existence between the halys and the sangarios, such as the tabal, the chalybes, and the phrygians, or he could turn southwards. [illustration: .jpg a vista of the asianic steppe] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by alfred boissier. deterred, apparently, by the dreary and monotonous aspect of the asianic steppes, he chose the latter course; he crossed mount taurus, descended into northern syria about , and forced the khâti to swear allegiance to him. their inveterate hatred of the assyrians led the bît-agusi to accept without much reluctance the supremacy of the only power which had shown itself capable of withstanding their triumphant progress. arpad became for several years an unfailing support to urartu and the basis on which its rule in syria rested. assur-nirâri had, as we know, at first sought to recover it, but his attempt to do so in b.c. was unsuccessful, and merely served to demonstrate his own weakness: ten years later, carchemish, grurgum, kummukh, samalla, unki, kuî--in a word, all the aramæans and the khâti between the euphrates and the sea had followed in the steps of the agusi, and had acknowledged the supremacy of sharduris.* * the _minimum_ extent of the dominions of sharduris in syria may be deduced from the list of the allies assigned to him by tiglath-pileser in in the annals. this prince must now haye been sorely tempted to adopt, on his own account, the policy of the ninevite monarchs, and push on in the direction of hamath, damascus, and the phoenician seaboard, towards those countries of israel and judah which were nearly coterminous with far-off egypt. the rapidity of the victories which he had just succeeded in winning at the foot of mount taurus and mount amanus must have seemed a happy omen of what awaited his enterprise in the valleys of the orontes and the jordan. although the races of southern and central syria had suffered less than those of the north from the ambition of the ninevite kings, they had, none the less, been sorely tried during the previous century; and it might be questioned whether they had derived courage from the humiliation of assyria, or still remained in so feeble a state as to present an easy prey to the first invader. the defeat inflicted on mari by rammân-nirâri in had done but little harm to the prestige of damascus. the influence exercised by this state from the sources of the litany to the brook of egypt * was based on so solid a foundation that no temporary reverse had power to weaken it. * [not the nile, but the wady el arish, the frontier between southern syria and egypt. cf. josh. xv. ; kings xxiv. , called �river� of egypt in the a.v.--tr.] had the assyrian monarch thrown himself more seriously into the enterprise, and reappeared before the ramparts of the capital in the following year, refusing to leave it till he had annihilated its armies and rased its walls to the ground, then, no doubt, israel, judah, the philistines, edom, and ammon, seeing it fully occupied in its own defence, might have forgotten the ruthless severity of hazael, and have plucked up sufficient courage to struggle against the damascene yoke; as it was, bammân-nirâri did not return, and the princes who had, perhaps, for the moment, regarded him as a possible deliverer, did not venture on any concerted action. joash, king of judah, and jehoahaz, king of israel, continued to pay tribute till both their deaths, within a year of each other, jehoahaz in b.c., and joash in , the first in his bed, the second by the hand of an assassin.* * kings xii. , , xiii. ; cf. citron, xxiv. - , where the death of joash is mentioned as one of the consequences of the syrian invasion, and as a punishment for his crime in killing the sons of jehoiada. their children, jehoash in israel, amaziah in judah, were, at first, like their parents, merely the instruments of damascus; but before long, the conditions being favourable, they shook off their apathy and initiated a more vigorous policy, each in his own kingdom. mari had been succeeded by a certain ben-hadad, also a son of hazael,* and possibly this change of kings was accompanied by one of those revolutions which had done so much to weaken damascus: jehoash rebelled and defeated ben-hadad near aphek and in three subsequent engagements, but he failed to make his nation completely independent, and the territory beyond jordan still remained in the hands of the syrians.** we are told that before embarking on this venture he went to consult the aged elisha, then on his deathbed. he wept to see him in this extremity, and bending over him, cried out, �my father, my father, the chariots of israel and the horsemen thereof!� the prophet bade him take bow and arrows and shoot from the window toward the east. the king did so, and elisha said, �the lord�s arrow of victory *** over syria; for thou shalt smite the syrians in aphek till thou have consumed them.� * kings xiii. , . winckler is of opinion that mari and ben-hadad, son of hazael, were one and the same person. ** kings xiii. , the term �saviour� in kings xiii. is generally taken as referring to joash: winckler, however, prefers to apply it to the king of assyria. the biblical text does not expressly state that joash failed to win back the districts of gilead from the syrians, but affirms that he took from them the cities which hazael �had taken out of the hand of jehoahaz, his father.� ramah of gilead and the cities previously annexed by jehoahaz must, therefore, have remained in the hands of ben-hadad. *** [heb. �salvation;� a.v. �deliverance.�--tr.] then he went on: �take the arrows,� and the king took them; then he said, �smite upon the ground,� and the king smote thrice and stayed. and the man of god was wroth with him, and said, �thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten syria till thou hadst consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite syria but thrice.� * amaziah, on his side, had routed the edomites in the valley of salt, one of david�s former battle-fields, and had captured their capital, sela.** elated by his success, he believed himself strong enough to break the tie of vassalage which bound him to israel, and sent a challenge to jehoash in samaria. the latter, surprised at his audacity, replied in a parable, �the thistle that was in lebanon sent to the cedar that was in lebanon, saying, give thy daughter to my son to wife.� but �there passed by a wild beast that was in lebanon and trode down the thistle. thou hast indeed smitten edom, and thine heart hath lifted thee up: glory thereof and abide at home; for why shouldest thou meddle to thy hurt that thou shouldest fall, even thou, and judah with thee?� they met near beth-shemesh, on the border of the philistine lowlands. amaziah was worsted in the engagement, and fell into the power of his rival. jehoash entered jerusalem and dismantled its walls for a space of four hundred cubits, �from the gate of ephraim unto the corner gate;� he pillaged the temple, as though it had been the abode, not of jahveh, but of some pagan deity, insisted on receiving hostages before he would release his prisoner, and returned to samaria, where he soon after died ( b.c.).*** * kings xiii. - . ** kings xiv. ; cf. gliron. xxv. , . sela was rebuilt, and received the name of joktheel from its hebrew masters. the subjection of the country was complete, for, later on, the hebrew chronicler tells of the conquest of elath by king azariah, son of amaziah ( kings xiv. ). *** kings xiv. - . cf. ghron. xxv. - . jeroboam ii. completed that rehabilitation of israel, of which his father had but sketched the outline; he maintained his suzerainty, first over amaziah, and when the latter was assassinated at lachish ( ),* over his son, the young azariah.** after the defeat of ben-hadad near aphek, damascus declined still further in power, and hadrach, suddenly emerging from obscurity, completely barred the valley of the orontes against it. an expedition under shalmaneser iv. in seems to have precipitated it to a lower depth than it had ever reached before: jeroboam was able to wrest from it, almost without a struggle, the cities which it had usurped in the days of jehu, and gilead was at last set free from a yoke which had oppressed it for more than a century. tradition goes so far as to affirm that israel reconquered the bekaa, hamath, and damascus, those northern territories once possessed by david, and it is quite possible that its rivals, menaced from afar by assyria and hard pressed at their own doors by hadrach, may have resorted to one of those propitiatory overtures which eastern monarchs are only too ready to recognise as acts of submission. the lesser southern states, such as ammon, the bedâwin tribes of hauran, and, at the opposite extremity of the kingdom, the philistines,*** who had bowed themselves before hazael in the days of his prosperity, now transferred their homage to israel. * kings xiv. , ; cf. ghron. xxv. , . ** the hebrew texts make no mention of this subjection of judah to jeroboam ii.; that it actually took place must, however, be admitted, at any rate in so far as the first half of the reign of azariah is concerned, as a necessary outcome of the events of the preceding reigns. *** the conquests of jeroboam ii. are indicated very briefly in kings xiv. - : cf. amos vi. , where the expressions employed by the prophet imply that at the time at which he wrote the whole of the ancient kingdom of david, judah included, was in the possession of israel. moab alone offered any serious resistance. it had preserved its independence ever since the reign of mesha, having escaped from being drawn into the wars which had laid waste the rest of syria. it was now suddenly forced to pay the penalty of its long prosperity. jeroboam made a furious onslaught upon its cities--ar of moab, kir of moab, dibon, medeba, heshbon, elealeh--and destroyed them all in succession. the moabite forces carried a part of the population with them in their flight, and all escaped together across the deserts which enclose the southern basin of the dead sea. on the frontier of edom they begged for sanctuary, but the king of judah, to whom the edomite valleys belonged, did not dare to shelter the vanquished enemies of his suzerain, and one of his prophets, forgetting his hatred of israel in delight at being able to gratify his grudge against moab, greeted them in their distress with a hymn of joy--�i will water thee with my tears, o heshbon elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. and gladness is taken away and joy out of the fruitful fields; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise; no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; i have made the vintage shout to cease. wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for moab, and my inward parts for kir-heres. and it shall come to pass, when moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, he shall not prevail!�* * isa. xv. - ; xvi. - . this prophecy, which had been pronounced against moab �in the old days,� and which is appropriated by isaiah (xvi. , ), has been attributed to jonah, son of amittaî, of gath-hepher, who actually lived in the time of jeroboam ii. ( kings xiv. ). it is now generally recognised as the production of an anonymous judsean prophet, and the earliest authentic fragment of prophetic literature which has come down to us. this revival, like the former greatness of david and solomon, was due not so much to any inherent energy on the part of israel, as to the weakness of the nations on its frontiers. egypt was not in the habit of intervening in the quarrels of asia, and assyria was suffering from a temporary eclipse. damascus had suddenly collapsed, and hadrach or mansuati, the cities which sought to take its place, found themselves fully employed in repelling the intermittent attacks of the assyrian; the hebrews, for a quarter of a century, therefore, had the stage to themselves, there being no other actors to dispute their possession of it. during the three hundred years of their existence as a monarchy they had adopted nearly all the laws and customs of the races over whom they held sway, and by whom they were completely surrounded. the bulk of the people devoted themselves to the pasturing and rearing of cattle, and, during the better part of the year, preferred to live in tents, unless war rendered such a practice impossible.* they had few industries save those of the potter** and the smith,*** and their trade was almost entirely in the hands of foreigners. * cf. the passage in kings xiii. , �and the children of israel dwelt in their tents as beforetime.� although the word _ôhel_ had by that time acquired the more general meaning of _habitation_, the context here seems to require us to translate it by its original meaning tent. ** pottery is mentioned in sam. xvii. ; numerous fragments dating from the monarchical period have been found at jerusalem and lachish. *** the story of tubal-cain (gen. iv. ) shows the antiquity of the ironworker�s art among the israelites; the smith is practically the only artisan to be found amongst nomadic tribes. we find, however, hebrew merchants in egypt,* at tyre, and in coele-syria, and they were so numerous at damascus that they requested that a special bazaar might be allotted to them, similar to that occupied by the merchants of damascus in samaria from time immemorial.** * the accurate ideas on the subject of egypt possessed by the earliest compilers of the traditions contained in genesis and exodus, prove that hebrew merchants must have been in constant communication with that country about the time with which we are now concerned. ** kings xx. ; cf. what has been said on this point in vol. vi. pp. , . [illustration: .jpg specimens of hebrew pottery] drawn by faucher-gudin, from sketches by warren. the hebrew monarchs had done their best to encourage this growing desire for trade. it was only the complicated state of syrian politics that prevented them from following the example of solomon, and opening communications by sea with the far-famed countries of ophir, either in competition with the phoenicians or under their guidance. indeed, as we have seen, jehoshaphat, encouraged by his alliance with the house of omri, tried to establish a seagoing fleet, but found that peasants could not be turned into sailors at a day�s notice, and the vessel built by him at eziongeber was wrecked before it left the harbour. [illustration: .jpg israelites of the higher class in the time of shalmaneser iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs of the black obelisk. in appearance, the hebrew towns closely resembled the ancient canaanite cities. egyptian influences still predominated in their architecture, as may be seen from what is still left of the walls of lachish, and they were fortified in such a way as to be able to defy the military engines of besiegers. this applies not only to capitals, like jerusalem, tirzah, and samaria, but even to those towns which commanded a road or mountain pass, the ford of a river, or the entrance to some fertile plain; there were scores of these on the frontiers of the two kingdoms, and in those portions of their territory which lay exposed to the attacks of damascus, moab, edom, or the philistines.* the daily life of the inhabitants was; to all intents, the same as at arpad, sidon, or gaza; and the dress, dwellings, and customs of the upper and middle classes cannot have differed in any marked degree from those of the corresponding grades of society in syria. * chron. xi. - , where we find a list of the towns fortified by rehoboam: bethlehem, etam, beth-zur, soco, adullam, gath, mareshah, ziph, adoraim, lachish, azekah, zorah, ajalon, hebron. [illustration: .jpg judÆan peasants] drawn by boudier, from layard. these figures are taken from a bas-relief which represents sennacherib receiving the submission of judah before lachish. the men wore over their tunic a fringed kaftan, with short sleeves, open in front, a low-crowned hat, and sandals or shoes of pliant leather; * they curled their beards and hair, painted their eyes and cheeks, and wore many jewels; while their wives adopted all the latest refinements in vogue in the harems of damascus, tyre, or nineveh.** descendants of ancient families paid for all this luxury out of the revenues of the wide domains they had inherited; others kept it up by less honourable means, by usury, corruption, and by the exercise of a ruthless violence towards neighbours who were unable to defend themselves. * the kaftan met with in these parts seems to correspond to the _meîl_ (r.v. �ephod �) of the biblical texts ( sam. ii. ; xviii. , etc.). ** isa. iii. - describes in detail the whole equipment of jewels, paint, and garments required by the fashionable women of jerusalem during the last thirty years of the eighth century b.c. illustration: .jpg women and children of judÆa drawn by boudier, from layard. the king himself set them an evil example, and did not hesitate to assassinate one of his subjects in order that he might seize a vineyard which he coveted;* it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the nobles of ephraim �sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes;� ** that they demanded gifts of wheat, and �turned the needy from their right� when they sat as a jury �at the gate.� *** from top to bottom of the social ladder the stronger and wealthier oppressed those who were weaker or poorer than themselves, leaving them with no hope of redress except at the hands of the king.**** * cf. the well-known episode of naboth and ahab in kings xxi. ** amos ii. . *** amos v. , . **** kings vi. - ; viii. - , where, in both instances, it is a woman who appeals to the king. cf. for the period of david and solomon, sam. xiv. - , and kings iii. - . unfortunately, the king, when he did not himself set the example of oppression, seldom possessed the resources necessary to make his decisions effective. true, he was chief of the most influential family in either judah or israel, a chief by divine appointment, consecrated by the priests and prophets of jahveh, a priest of the lord,* and he was master in his own city of jerusalem or samaria, but his authority did not extend far beyond the walls. * cf. the anointing of saul ( sam. ix. ; x. ; and xiv. ), of david ( sam. xvi. - , , ), of solomon ( kings i. , , ), of jehu ( kings ix. - ), and compare it with the unction received by the priests on their admission to the priesthood (exod. xxix. ; xxx. , ; cf. lev. viii. , ; x. ). it was not the old tribal organisation that embarrassed him, for the secondary tribes had almost entirely given up their claims to political independence. the division of the country into provinces, a consequence of the establishment of financial districts by solomon, had broken them up, and they gradually gave way before the two houses of ephraim and judah; but the great landed proprietors, especially those who held royal fiefs, enjoyed almost unlimited power within their own domains. they were, indeed, called on to render military service, to furnish forced labour, and to pay certain trifling dues into the royal treasury;* but, otherwise, they were absolute masters in their own domains, and the sovereign was obliged to employ force if he wished to extort any tax or act of homage which they were unwilling to render. for this purpose he had a standing army distributed in strong detachments along the frontier, but the flower of his forces was concentrated round the royal residence to serve as a body-guard. it included whole companies of foreign mercenaries, like those cretan and carian warriors who, since the time of david, had kept guard round the kings of judah;** these, in time of war,*** were reinforced by militia, drawn entirely from among the landed proprietors, and the whole force, when commanded by an energetic leader, formed a host capable of meeting on equal terms the armies of damascus, edom, or moab, or even the veterans of egypt and assyria. * kings xv. (cf. ohron. xvi. ), where �king asa made a proclamation unto all judah; none was exempted,� the object in this case being the destruction of ramah, the building of which had been begun by baasha. ** the carians or cretans are again referred to in the history of athaliah ( kings xi. ). *** taking the tribute paid by menahem to pul ( kings xv. , ) as a basis, it has been estimated that the owners of landed estate in israel, who were in that capacity liable to render military service, numbered , in the time of that king; all others were exempt from military service. the reigning prince was hereditary commander-in-chief, but the _sharzaba_, or captain of the troops, often took his place, as in the time of david, and thereby became the most important person in the kingdom. more than one of these officers had already turned against their sovereign the forces which he had entrusted, to them, and these revolts, when crowned with success, had, on various occasions, in israel at any rate, led to a change of dynasty: omri had been shar zaba when he mutinied against zimri, the assassin of elah, and jehu occupied the same position when elisha deputed him to destroy the house of omri. the political constitutions of judah and israel were, on the whole, very similar to those of the numerous states which shared the territory of syria between them, and their domestic history gives us a fairly exact idea of the revolutions which agitated damascus, hamath, carchemish, arpad, and the principalities of amanos and lebanon about the same period. it would seem, however, that none of these other nations possessed a literary or religious life of any great intensity. they had their archives, it is true, in which were accumulated documents relating to their past history, their rituals of theology and religious worship, their collections of hymns and national songs; but none of these have survived, and the very few inscriptions that have come down to us merely show that they had nearly all of them adopted the alphabet invented by the phoenicians. the israelites, initiated by them into the art of writing, lost no time in setting down, in their turn, all they could recall of the destinies of their race from the creation of the world down to the time in which they lived. from the beginning of the monarchical epoch onwards, their scribes collected together in the _book of the wars of the lord_, the _book of jashar_, and in other works the titles of which have not survived, lyrics of different dates, in which nameless poets had sung the victories and glorious deeds of their national heroes, such as the song of the well, the hymn of moses, the triumphal ode of deborah, and the blessing of jacob.* they were able to draw upon traditions which preserved the memory of what had taken place in the time of the judges;** and when that patriarchal form of government was succeeded by a monarchy, they had narratives of the ark of the lord and its wanderings, of samuel, saul, david, and solomon,*** not to mention the official records which, since then, had been continuously produced and accumulated by the court historians.**** * the books of _jashar_ and of the _wars of the lord_ appear to date from the ixth century b.c.; as the latter is quoted in the elohist narrative, it cannot have been compiled later than the beginning of the viiith century b.c. the passage in numb. xxi. lib, , is the only one expressly attributed by the testimony of the ancients to the _book of the wars of the lord,_ but modern writers add to this the _song of the well _(numb. xxi. b, ), and the song of victory over moab (numb. xxi. &- ). the _song of the bow_ ( sam. i. - ) admittedly formed part of the _book of jashar_. joshua�s song of victory over the amorites (josh. x. ), and very probably the couplet recited by solomon at the dedication of the temple ( kings viii, , , placed by the lxx. after verse ), also formed part of it, as also the _song of deborah_ and the blessing of jacob (gen. xlix. - ). ** wellhausen was the first to admit the existence of a book of judges prior to the epoch of deuteronomy, and his opinion has been adopted by kuenen and driver. this book was probably drawn upon by the two historians of the ixth and viiith centuries b.c. of whom we are about to speak; some of the narratives, such as the story of abimelech, and possibly that of ehud, may have been taken from a document written at the end of the xth or the beginning of the ixth centuries b.c. *** the revolutions which occurred in the family of david ( sam. ix.-xx.) bear so evident a stamp of authenticity that they have been attributed to a contemporary writer, perhaps ahimaaz, son of zadok ( sam. xv. ), who took part in the events in question. but apart from this, the existence is generally admitted of two or three books which were drawn up shortly after the separation of the tribes, containing a kind of epic of the history of the first two kings; the one dealing with saul, for instance, was probably written in the time of jeroboam. **** the two lists in which the names of the principal personages at the court of david are handed down to us, mention a certain jehoshaphat, son of ahilud, who was _mazhir_, or recorder; he retained his post under solomon ( kings iv. ). it may be that more than one writer had already endeavoured to evolve from these materials an epie of jahveh and his faithful people, but in the second half of the ixth century b.c., perhaps in the time of jehoshaphat, a member of the tribe of judah undertook to put forth a fresh edition.* * the approximate date of the composition and source of this first _jehovist_ is still an open question., reuss and kuenen, not to mention others, believe the jehovist writer to have been a native of the northern kingdom; i have adopted the opposite view, which is supported by most modern critics. he related how god, after creating the universe out of chaos, had chosen his own people, and had led them, after trials innumerable, to the conquest of the promised land. he showed, as he went on, the origin of the tribes identified with the children of israel, and the covenants made by jahveh with moses in the arabian desert; while accepting the stories connected with the ancient sanctuaries of the north and east at shechem, bethel, peniel, mahanaim, and succoth, it was at hebron in judah that he placed the principal residence of abraham and his descendants. his style, while simple and direct, is at the same time singularly graceful and vivacious; the incidents he gives are carefully selected, apt and characteristic, while his narrative passes from scene to scene without trace of flagging, unburdened by useless details, and his dialogue, always natural and easy, rises without effort from the level of familiar conversation to heights of impassioned eloquence. his aim was not merely to compile the history of his people: he desired at the same time to edify them, by showing how sin first came into the world through disobedience to the commandments of the most high, and how man, prosperous so long as he kept to the laws of the covenant, fell into difficulties as soon as he transgressed or failed to respect them. his concept of jahveh is in the highest degree a concrete one: he regards him as a being superior to other beings, but made like unto them and moved by the same passions. he shows anger and is appeased, displays sorrow and repents him of the evil.* when the descendants of noah build a tower and a city, he draws nigh to examine what they have done, and having taken account of their work, confounds their language and thus prevents them from proceeding farther.** he desires, later on, to confer a favour on his servant abraham: he appears to him in human form, and eats and drinks with him.*** sodom and gomorrah had committed abominable iniquities, the cry against them was great and their sin very grievous: but before punishing them, he tells abraham that he will �go down and see whether they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, i will know.� **** * exod. iv. and xxxii. , anger of jahveh against moses and against israel; gen. vi. , , where he repents and is sorry for having created man; and exod. xxxii. , where he repents him of the evil he had intended to do unto israel. ** gen. xi. - . *** gen. xviii. **** gen. xviii. and xix. elsewhere he wrestles a whole night long with jacob;* or falls upon moses, seeking to kill him, until appeased by zipporah, who casts the blood-stained foreskin of her child at her husband�s feet.** this book, though it breathes the spirit of the prophets and was perhaps written in one of their schools, did not, however, include all the current narratives, and omitted many traditions that were passing from lip to lip; moreover, the excessive materialism of its treatment no longer harmonised with that more idealised concept of the deity which had already begun to prevail. consequently, within less than a century of its appearance, more than one version containing changes and interpolations in the narrative came to be circulated,*** till a scribe of ephraim, who flourished in the time of jeroboam ii., took up the subject and dealt with it in a different fashion.**** * gen. xxxii. , . ** exod. iv. - . *** schrader and wellhausen have drawn attention to contradictions in the primitive history of humanity as presented by the jehovist which forbid us to accept it as the work of a single writer. nor can these inconsistencies be due to the influence of the elohist, since the latter did not deal with this period in his book. budde has maintained that the primitive work contained no account of the deluge, and traced the descent of all the nations, israel included, back to cain, and he declares he can detect in the earlier chapters of genesis traces of a first jehovist, whom he calls j . a second jehovist, j , who flourished between and b.c., is supposed to have added to the contribution of the first, certain details borrowed from the babylonian tradition, such as the deluge, the story of noah, of nimrod, etc. finally, a third jehovist is said to have thrown the versions of his two predecessors into one, taking j as the basis of his work. **** the date and origin of the elohist have given rise to no less controversy than those of the jehovist: the view most generally adopted is that he was a native of the northern kingdom, and flourished about b.c. putting on one side the primitive accounts of the origin of the human race which his predecessors had taken pleasure in elaborating, he confined his attention solely to events since the birth of abraham;* his origin is betrayed by the preference he displays for details calculated to flatter the self-esteem of the northern tribes. to his eyes, joseph is the noblest of all the sons of jacob, before whom all the rest must bow their heads, as to a king; next to joseph comes reuben, to whom--rather than to judah**--he gives the place as firstborn. he groups his characters round bethel and shechem, the sanctuaries of israel; even abraham is represented as residing, not at hebron in judea, but at beersheba, a spot held in deep veneration by pilgrims belonging to the ten tribes.*** it is in his concept of the supreme being, however, that he differs most widely from his predecessors. god is, according to him, widely removed from ordinary humanity. he no longer reveals himself at all times and in all places, but works rather by night, and appears to men in their dreams, or, when circumstances require his active interference, is content to send his angels rather than come in his own person.**** * budde seems to have proved conclusively that the elohist did not write any part of the primitive history of mankind. ** gen. xxxvii. , , , ; xlii. , ; whereas in gen. xliii. , - , where the narrative is from the pen of the jehovist, it is judah that plays the principal part: it is possible that, in gen. xxxvii. , reuben has been substituted in the existing text for judah. *** gen. xxi. , ; xxii. ; the importance of beersheba as a holy place resorted to by pilgrims from the northern kingdom is shown in kings xix. , and amos v. ; viii. . **** gen. xx. - ; xxviii. - ; xxxi ; numb. xxii. - , . indeed, such cases of active interference are of rare occurrence, and he prefers to accomplish his purpose through human agents, who act unconsciously, or even in direct contravention of their own clearly, expressed intentions.* moreover it was only by degrees that he revealed his true nature and title; the patriarchs, abraham, isaac, jacob, and joseph, had called him elohim, or �the gods,� and it was not until the coming of moses that he disclosed his real name of jahveh to his worshippers.** * gen. . , end of the story of joseph: �and as for you, ye meant evil against me; but god meant it for good, to bring it to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive.� ** exod. iii. , ; verse is an interpolation of much later date. [illustration: .jpg prayer at sunset] after painting by gerome [illustration: -text.jpg] in a word, this new historian shows us in every line that the theological instinct has superseded popular enthusiasm, and his work loses unmistakably in literary interest by the change. we feel that he is wanting in feeling and inspiration; his characters no longer palpitate with life; his narrative drags, its interest decreases, and his language is often deficient in force and colour. but while writers, trained in the schools of the prophets, thus sought to bring home to the people the benefits which their god had showered on them, the people themselves showed signs of disaffection towards him, or were, at any rate, inclined to associate with him other gods borrowed from neighbouring states, and to overlay the worship they rendered him with ceremonies and ideas inconsistent with its original purity. the permanent division of the nation into two independent kingdoms had had its effect on their religion as well as on their political life, and had separated the worshippers into two hostile camps. the inhabitants of judah still continued to build altars on their high places, as they had done in the time before david; there, the devout prostrated themselves before the sacred stones and before the asherah, or went in unto the _kedeshôth_ in honour of astarte, and in jahveh�s own temple at jerusalem they had set up the image of a brazen serpent to which they paid homage.* the feeling, however, that the patron deity of the chosen people could have but one recognised habitation--the temple built for him by solomon--and that the priests of this temple were alone qualified to officiate there in an effective manner, came to prevail more and more strongly in judaea. the king, indeed, continued to offer sacrifices and prayer there,** but the common people could no longer intercede with their god except through the agency of the priests. * cf. what we are told of idolatrous practices in judah under rehoboam and abraham ( kings xiv. - ; xv. ), and of the tolerance of high places by asa and jehoshaphat ( kings xv. ; xxii. ); even at the period now under consideration neither amaziah ( kings xiv. ) nor azariah ( kings xv. ) showed any disposition to prohibit them. the brazen serpent was still in existence in the time of hezekiah, at the close of the viiith century b.c. ( kings xviii. ). ** kings xvi. - , where ahaz is described as offering sacrifice and giving instructions to the high priest urijah as to the reconstruction and service of the altar; cf. chron. xxvi. - , where similar conduct on the part of uzziah is recorded, and where the leprosy by which he was attacked is, in accordance with the belief of later times, represented as a punishment of the sacrilege committed by him in attempting to perform the sacrifice in person. the latter, in their turn, tended to develop into a close corporation of families consecrated for generations past to the priestly office; they came in time to form a tribe by themselves, which took rank among the other tribes of israel, and claimed levi, one of the twelve sons of jacob, as its ancestor. their head, chosen from among the descendants of zadok, who had been the first high priest in the reign of solomon, was by virtue of his office one of the chief ministers of the crown, and we know what an important part was played by jehoiadah in the revolution which led to the deposition of athaliah; the high priest was, however, no less subordinate to the supreme power than his fellow-ministers, and the sanctity of his office did not avail to protect him from ill-treatment or death if he incurred the displeasure of his sovereign.* he had control over a treasury continually enriched by the offerings of the faithful, and did not always turn his trust to the best uses; in times of extreme distress the king used to borrow from him as a last resource, in order to bring about the withdrawal of an invader, or purchase the help of a powerful ally.** the capital of israel was of too recent foundation to allow of its chapel royal becoming the official centre of national worship; the temple and priesthood of samaria never succeeded in effacing the prestige enjoyed by the ancient oracles, though in the reign of both the first and second jeroboam, dan, bethel, gilgal, and mizpah had each its band of chosen worshippers.*** * in order to form an idea of the relative positions occupied by the king and the high priest, we must read what is told of jehoiadah and joash ( kings xii. - ), or urijah and ahaz ( kings xvi. - ); the story runs that zechariah was put to death by joash ( chron. xxiv. ). ** asa did so in order to secure ben-hadad�s help against baasha ( kings xv. , ; cf. chron. xvi. , ): as to the revenues by which the treasury of the temple was supported and the special dues appropriated to it, cf. kings xii. , , - , and xxii. - , . *** in the time of jeroboam ii., bethel, gilgal, and dan are mentioned by amos (iv. ; v. , ; viii. ), by hosea (iv. ; ix. ; xii. ). mizpah is mentioned by hosea (v. ), and so is tabor. the altar of jahveh on mount carmel was restored by elijah ( kings xviii. ). at these centres adoration was rendered to the animal presentment of jahveh,* and even prophets like elijah and elisha did not condemn this as heretical; they had enough to do in hunting down the followers of baal without entering into open conflict with the worshippers of the golden calf. the priesthood of the northern kingdom was not confined to members of the family of levi, but was recruited from all the tribes; it levied a tithe on the harvest, reserved to itself the pick of the offerings and victims, and jealously forbade a plurality of sanctuaries,** the _book of the covenant_*** has handed down to us the regulations in force at one of these temples, perhaps that of bethel, one of the wealthiest of them all. * the golden calves at dan and bethel are referred to by amos (viii. ) and hosea (x. ), where bethel is called beth-aven; as to the golden calf at samaria, cf. amos viii. and hos. viii. , . ** amos iv. , ; v. - . *** this is the title given in exod. xxiv. to a writing in which moses is said to have entered the covenant made between jahveh and israel; it is preserved, with certain interpolations and alterations, in exod. xx. ?--xxiii. . it was inserted in its entirety in the elohist narrative, there taking the place at present occupied by deuteronomy in the pentateuch, viz. that of the covenant made between jahveh and israel prior to the crossing of the jordan (kuenen, _h. c. onderzoek_, i. § , no. ). reuss tries to make out that it was the code promulgated on the occasion of jehoshaphat�s legal reforms, which is only referred to in chron. xvii. - ; cf. xix. . a more probable theory is that it was the �custom� of one of the great sanctuaries of the northern kingdom reduced to writing at the end of the xth or during the ixth century b.c. [illustration: .jpg egyptian altar at deik-el-bahari] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by naville. the directions in regard to ritual are extremely simple, and the moral code is based throughout on the inexorable _lex talionis_, �life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.� * this brief code must have been almost universally applicable to every conjuncture of civil and religious life in judah no less than in israel. on one point only do we find a disagreement, and that is in connection with the one and only holy of holies to the possession of which the southern kingdom had begun to lay claim: in a passage full of significance jahveh declares, �an altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where i record my name i will come unto thee and i will bless thee. and if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.� ** * exod. xxi. - . ** exod. xx. - . the patriarchs and early ancestors of the race had performed their sacrifices in the open air, on rude and low altars, differing widely from lofty and elaborately ornamented erections like those at jerusalem, which seem to have borne a resemblance to the altars of the egyptians: the author of the _book of the covenant_ advises the faithful to follow the example of those great men rather than that of the lévites of judah. nevertheless this multiplicity of high places was not without its dangers; it led the common people to confuse jahveh with the idols of canaan, and encouraged the spread of foreign superstitions. the misfortunes which had come thick and fast upon the israelites ever since the division of the kingdom had made them only too ready to seek elsewhere that support and consolation which they could no longer find at home. the gods of damascus and assur who had caused the downfall of gath, of calneh, and of hamath,* those of tyre and sidon who lavished upon the phoenicians the wealth of the seas, or even the deities of ammon, moab, or edom, might well appear more desirable than a being who, in spite of his former promises, seemed powerless to protect his own people. a number of the israelites transferred their allegiance to these powerful deities, prostrated themselves before the celestial host, flocked round the resting-places of kevan, the star of el, and carried the tabernacles of the king of heaven;** nor was judah slow to follow their example. the prophets, however, did not view their persistent ill-fortune in the same light as the common people; far from accepting it as a proof of the power of other divinities, they recognised in it a mark of jahveh�s superiority. * amos vi. ; with regard to the destruction of gath by hazael. ** amos v. , in their eyes jahveh was the one god, compared with whom the pagan deities were no gods at all, and could not even be said to exist. he might, had he so willed it, have bestowed his protection on any one of the numerous races whom he had planted on the earth: but as a special favour, which he was under no obligation to confer, he had chosen israel to be his own people, and had promised them that they should occupy canaan so long as they kept free from sin. but israel had sinned, israel had followed after idols; its misfortunes were, therefore, but the just penalty of its unfaithfulness. thus conceived, jahveh ceased to be merely the god of a nation--he became the god of the whole world; and it is in the guise of a universal deity that some, at any rate, of the prophets begin to represent him from the time of jeroboam ii. onwards. this change of view in regard to the being of jahveh coincided with a no less marked alteration in the character of his prophets. at first they had taken an active part in public affairs; they had thrown themselves into the political movements of the time, and had often directed their course,* by persuasion when persuasion sufficed, by violence when violence was the only means that was left to them of enforcing the decrees of the most high. not long before this, we find elisha secretly conspiring against the successors of ahab, and taking a decisive part in the revolution which set the house of jehu on the throne in place of that of omri; but during the half-century which had elapsed since his death, the revival in the fortunes of israel and its growing prosperity under the rule of an energetic king had furnished the prophets with but few pretexts for interfering in the conduct of state affairs. * cf. the part taken by nathan in the conspiracy which raised solomon to the throne ( kings i. , et seq.), and previous to this in the story of david�s amour with bathsheba ( sam. xii. - ). similarly, we find prophets such as ahijah in the reign of jeroboam i. ( kings xi. - ; cf. xiv. - ; xv. , ), and shemaîah in the reign of rehoboam ( kings xii. - ), jehu son of hananiah under baasha ( kings xvi. - , , , ), micaiah son of imla, and zedekiah under ahab ( kings xxii. - ), not to speak of those mentioned in the chronicles, e.g. azariah son of oded ( ghron. xv. - ), and hanani under asa ( ghron. xvi. - ), jahaziel ( ghron. xx. - ), and eliezer, son of dodavahu ( ghron. xx. ), in the time of johoshaphat. no trace of any writings composed by these prophets is found until a very late date; but in chronicles, in addition to a letter from elijah to jehoram of juda ( ghron. xxi. - ), we find a reference to the commentary of the prophet iddo in the time of abijah ( ghron. xiii. ), and to the �history of jehu the son of hanani, which is inserted in the book of the kings of israel� ( chron. xx. ), in the time of jehoshaphat. they no longer occupied themselves in resisting the king, but addressed themselves to the people, pointed out the heinousness of their sins, and threatened them with the wrath of jahveh if they persisted in their unfaithfulness: they came to be spiritual advisers rather than political partisans, and orators rather than men of action like their predecessors. their discourses were carefully prepared beforehand, and were written down either by themselves or by some of their disciples for the benefit of posterity, in the hope that future generations would understand the dangers or witness the catastrophes which their contemporaries might not live to see. about b.c., amos of tekôa,* a native of judaea, suddenly made his appearance at bethel, in the midst of the festivals which pilgrims had flocked to celebrate in the ancient temple erected to jahveh in one of his animal forms. * the title of the book of amos fixes the date as being �in the days of uzziah king of judah, and in the days of jeroboam the son of joash king of israel� (i. ), and the state of affairs described by him corresponds pretty closely with what we know of this period. most critics fix the date somewhere between and b.c., but nearer than . his opening words filled the listening crowd with wonder: �the high places of isaac shall be desolate,� he proclaimed, �and the sanctuaries of israel shall be laid waste; and i will rise against the house of jeroboam with the sword.� * * amos vii. . yet jeroboam had by this time gained all his victories, and never before had the king of samaria appeared to be more firmly seated on the throne: what, then, did this intruder mean by introducing himself as a messenger of wrath in the name of jahveh, at the very moment when jahveh was furnishing his worshippers with abundant signs of his favour? amaziah, the priest of bethel, interrupted him as he went on to declare that �jeroboam should die by the sword, and israel should surely be led away captive out of his land.� the king, informed of what was going on, ordered amos into exile, and amaziah undertook to communicate this sentence to him: �o thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at bethel: for it is the king�s sanctuary, and it is a royal house.� and amos replied, �i was no prophet, neither was i a prophet�s son; but i was a herdman, and a dresser of sycomore trees: and the lord took me from following the flock, and the lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto my people israel. now therefore hear thou the word of the lord: thou sayest, prophesy not against israel, and drop not thy word against the house of isaac: therefore thus saith the lord: thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt die in a land that is unclean, and israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.� * * amos vii. - . this prophecy, first expanded, and then written down with a purity of diction and loftiness of thought which prove amos to have been a master of literary art,* was widely circulated, and gradually gained authority as portents indicative of the divine wrath began to accumulate, such as an earthquake which occurred two years after the incident at bethel,* an eclipse of the sun, drought, famine, and pestilence.*** it foretold, in the first place, the downfall of all the surrounding countries--damascus, gaza, tyre, edom, ammon, moab, and judah; then, denouncing israel itself, condemned it to the same penalties for the same iniquities. in vain did the latter plead its privileges as the chosen people of jahveh, and seek to atone for its guilt by endless sacrifices. �i hate, i despise your feasts,� declared jahveh, �and i will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. yea, though ye offer me your burnt offerings and meat offerings, i will not accept them: neither will i regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for i will not hear the melody of thy viols. but let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.� **** * s. jerome describes amos as �rusticus� and �imperitus sermone,� but modern writers are generally agreed that in putting forward this view he was influenced by the statement as to the peasant origin of the prophet. ** amos i. ; reference is made to it by the unknown prophet whose words are preserved in zech. xiv. . *** the famine is mentioned in amos iv. , the drought in amos iv. , , the pestilence in amos iv. . **** amos v. - . the unfaithfulness of israel, the corruption of its cities, the pride of its nobles, had sealed its doom; even at that moment the avenger was at hand on its north-eastern border, the assyrian appointed to carry out sentence upon it.* then follow visions, each one of which tends to deepen the effect of the seer�s words--a cloud of locusts,** a devouring fire,*** a plumb-line in the hands of the lord,**** a basket laden with summer fruits--till at last the whole people of israel take refuge in their temple, vainly hoping that there they may escape from the vengeance of the eternal. �there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape. though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; and though they climb up to heaven, thence will i bring them down. and though they hide themselves in the top of oarmel, i will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will i command the serpent, and he shall bite them. and though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will i command the sword, and it shall slay them; and i will set mine eyes upon them for evil and not for good.� * most commentators admit that the nation raised up by jahveh to oppress israel �from the entering in of hamath unto the brook of the arabah� (amos vi. ) was no other than assyria. at the very period in which amos flourished, assurdân made two campaigns against hadrach, in and , which brought his armies right up to the israelite frontier (schrader, keilinschrift. bibliothec, vol. i. pp. - ). ** amos vii. - . *** amos vii. - . **** amos vii. - . it is here that the speech delivered by the prophet at bethel is supposed to occur (vii. ); the narrative of what afterwards happened follows immediately (amos vii. - ). ^ amos viii. - .; amos ix. - . for the first time in history a prophet foretold disaster and banishment for a whole people: love of country was already giving place in the heart of amos to his conviction of the universal jurisdiction of god, and this conviction led him to regard as possible and probable a state of things in which israel should have no part. nevertheless, its decadence was to be merely temporary; jahveh, though prepared to chastise the posterity of jacob severely, could not bring himself to destroy it utterly. the kingdom of david was soon to flourish anew: �behold, the days come, saith the lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. and i will bring again the captivity of my people israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. and i will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which i have given them, saith the lord thy god.� * the voice of amos was not the only one raised in warning. from the midst of ephraim, another seer, this time a priest, hosea, son of beeri,** was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude, and persisted in his foretelling of the desolation to come. * amos ix. - . ** hoshea (or hosea) was regarded by the rabbis as the oldest of the lesser prophets, and his writings were placed at the head of their collected works. the title of his book (hos. i. ), where he begins by stating that he preached �in the days of jeroboam, the son of joash (jehoash), king of israel,� is a later interpolation; the additional mention of uzziah, jotham, ahaz, and hezekiah, kings of judah, is due to an attempted analogy with the title of isaiah. hosea was familiar with the prophecies of amos, and his own predictions show that the events merely foreseen by his predecessor were now in course of fulfilment in his day. the first three chapters probably date from the end of the reign of jeroboam, about b.c.; the others were compiled under his successors, and before - b.c., since gilead is there mentioned as still forming part of israel (hos. vi. ; xii. ), though it was in that year laid waste and conquered by tiglath-pileser iii. duhm has suggested that hosea must have been a priest from the tone of his writings, and this hypothesis is generally accepted by theologians. the halo of grandeur and renown with which jeroboam had surrounded the kingdom could not hide its wretched and paltry character from the prophet�s eyes; �for yet a little while, and i will avenge the blood of jezreel upon the house of jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of israel to cease. and it shall come to pass at that day that i will break the bow of israel in the valley of jezreel.� * like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. the abandoned wickedness of gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. in the bitterness of his heart, he demands of jahveh why he should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on his servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble type of that which jahveh had suffered at the hands of his people. israel had gone a-whoring after strange gods, and the day of retribution for its crimes was not far distant: �the children of israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim; afterward shall the children of israel return, and seek the lord their god, and david their king; and shall come with fear unto the lord and to his goodness in the latter days.� ** * hos. i. , . **hos. i.-iii. is the story of hosea and his wife an allegory, or does it rest on a basis of actual fact? most critics now seem to incline to the view that the prophet has here set down an authentic episode from his own career, and uses it to point the moral of his work. whether the decadence of the hebrews was or was not due to the purely moral and religious causes indicated by the prophets, it was only too real, and even the least observant among their contemporaries must have suspected that the two kingdoms were quite unfitted, as to their numbers, their military organisation, and monetary reserves, to resist successfully any determined attack that might be made upon them by surrounding nations. an armed force entering syria by way of the euphrates could hardly fail to overcome any opposition that might be offered to it, if not at the first onset, at any rate after a very brief struggle; none of the minor states to be met upon its way, such as damascus or israel, much less those of hamath or hadrach, were any longer capable of barring its progress, as ben-hadad and hazael had arrested that of the assyrians in the time of shalmaneser iii. the efforts then made by the syrian kings to secure their independence had exhausted their resources and worn out the spirit of their peoples; civil war had prevented them from making good their losses during the breathing-space afforded by the decadence of assyria, and now that nature herself had afflicted them with the crowning misfortunes of famine and pestilence, they were reduced to a mere shadow of what they had been during the previous century. if, therefore, sharduris, after making himself master of the countries of the taurus and amanos, had turned his steps towards the valley of the orontes, he might have secured possession of it without much difficulty, and after that there would have been nothing to prevent his soldiers from pressing on, if need be, to the walls of samaria or even of jerusalem itself. indeed, he seems to have at last made up his mind to embark on this venture, when the revival of assyrian power put a stop to his ambitious schemes. tiglath-pileser, hard pressed on every side by daring and restless foes, began by attacking those who were at once the most troublesome and most vulnerable--the aramæan tribes on the banks of the tigris. to give these incorrigible banditti, who boldly planted their outposts not a score of leagues from his capital, a free hand on his rear, and brave the fortune of war in armenia or syria, without first teaching them a lesson in respect, would have been simply to court serious disaster; an aramæan raid occurring at a time when he was engaged elsewhere with the bulk of his army, might have made it necessary to break off a successful campaign and fall back in haste to the relief of nineveh or calah (kalakh), just as he was on the eve of gaining some decisive advantage. moreover, the suzerainty of assyria over karduniash entailed on him the duty of safeguarding babylon from that other horde of aramæans which harassed it on the east, while the kaldâ were already threatening its southern frontier. it is not quite clear whether nabunazîr who then occupied the throne implored his help:* at any rate, he took the field as soon as he felt that his own crown was secure, overthrew the aramæans at the first encounter, and drove them back from the banks of the lower zab to those of the uknu: all the countries which they had seized to the east of the tigris at once fell again into the hands of the assyrians. * nabunazîr is the nabonassar who afterwards gave his name to the era employed by ptolemy. this first point gained, tiglath-pileser crossed the river, and made a demonstration in force before the babylonian fortresses. he visited, one after another, sippar, nipur, babylon, borsippa, kuta, kîshu, dilbat, and uruk, �cities without peer,� and offered in all of them sacrifices to the gods,--to bel, to zirbanît, to nebo, to tashmît, and to nirgal. karduniash bowed down before him, but he abstained from giving any provocation to the kaldâ, and satisfied with having convinced nabunazîr that assyria had lost none of her former vigour, he made his way back to his hereditary kingdom.* * most historians believe that tiglath-pileser entered karduniash as an enemy: that he captured several towns, and allowed the others to ransom themselves on payment of tribute. the way in which the texts known to us refer to this expedition seems to me, however, to prove that he set out as an ally and protector of nabonazir, and that his visit to the babylonian sanctuaries was of a purely pacific nature. the lightly-won success of this expedition produced the looked-for result. tiglath-pileser had set out a king _de facto_; but now that the gods of the ancient sanctuaries had declared themselves satisfied with his homage, and had granted him that religious consecration which had before been lacking, he returned a king de jure as well ( b.c.). his next campaign completed what the first had begun. the subjugation of the plain would have been of little advantage if the highlands had been left in the power of tribes as yet unconquered, and allowed to pour down with impunity bands of rapacious freebooters on the newly liberated provinces: security between the zab and the uknu could only be attained by the pacification of namri, and it was, therefore, to namri that the sea of war was transferred in b.c. all the cossæan and babylonian races intermingled in the valleys on the frontier were put to ransom one after another. [illustration: .jpg map of campaigns of tiglath-pileser iii. in media] these included the bît-sangibuti, the bît-khambân, the barrua, the bit-zualzash, the bît-matti, the umliash, the parsua, the bît-zatti, the bît-zabdâdani, the bît-ishtar, the city of zakruti, the nina, the bustus, the arakuttu, by which the conqueror gradually made his way into the heart of media, reaching districts into which none of his predecessors had ever penetrated. those least remote he annexed to his own empire, converting them into a province under the rule of an assyrian governor; he then returned to calah with a convoy of , prisoners, and countless herds of oxen, sheep, mules, and dromedaries. whilst he was thus employed, assur-dainâni, one of his generals to whom he had entrusted the pick of his army, pressed on still further to the north-east, across the almost waterless deserts of media. the mountainous district on the shores of the caspian had for centuries enjoyed a reputation for wealth and fertility among the races settled on the banks of the euphrates and tigris. it was from thence that they obtained their lapis-lazuli, and the hills from which it was extracted were popularly supposed to consist almost entirely of one compact mass of this precious mineral. their highest peak, now known as the demavend, was then called bikni,* a name which had come to be applied to the whole district. * the country of bikni is probably rhagian media and mount bikni, the modern demavend. to the assyrians it stood as the utmost boundary mark of the known world, beyond which their imagination pictured little more than a confused mist of almost fabulous regions and peoples. assur-dainâni caught a distant glimpse of the snow-capped pyramid of demavend, but approached no nearer than its lower slopes, whence he retraced his steps after having levied tribute from their inhabitants. the fame of this exploit spread far and wide in a marvellously short space of time, and chiefs who till then had vacillated in their decision now crowded the path of the victor, eager to pay him homage on his return: even the king of illipi thought it wise to avoid the risk of invasion, and hastened of his own accord to meet the conqueror. here, again, tiglath-pileser had merely to show himself in order to re-establish the supremacy of assyria: the races of the plain, for many years familiar with defeat, made no pretence of serious resistance, but bowed their necks beneath a fresh yoke almost without protest. [illustration: .jpg principal pak of mount bikni (demavend)] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. having thus secured his rear from attack for some years at any rate, tiglath-pileser no longer hesitated to try conclusions with urartu. the struggle in which he now deliberately engaged could not fail to be a decisive one; for urartu, buoyed up and borne on the wave of some fifty years of prosperity, had almost succeeded in reaching first rank among the asiatic powers: one more victory over nineveh, and it would become--for how long none might say--undisputed mistress of the whole of asia. assyria, on the other hand, had reached a. point where its whole future hung upon a single issue of defeat or victory. the prestige with which the brilliant campaigns of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. had invested its name, if somewhat diminished, had still survived its recent reverses, and the terror inspired by its arms was so great even among races who had witnessed them from a distance, that the image of assyria rose involuntarily before the eyes of the hebrew prophets as that of the avenger destined to punish israel for its excesses.* * cf. amos vi. . no doubt, during the last few reigns its prosperity had waned and its authority over distant provinces had gradually become relaxed; but now the old dynasty, worn out by its own activity, had given place to a new one, and with this change of rulers the tide of ill-fortune was, perhaps, at last about to turn. at such a juncture, a successful campaign meant full compensation for all past disasters and the attainment of a firmer position than had ever yet been held; whereas another reverse, following on those from which the empire had already suffered, would render their effect tenfold more deadly, and, by letting loose the hatred of those whom fear alone still held in check, complete its overthrow. it was essential, therefore, before entering on the struggle, to weigh well every chance of victory, and to take every precaution by which adverse contingencies might be, as far as possible, eliminated. the army, encouraged by its success in the two preceding campaigns, was in excellent fighting order, and ready to march in any direction without a moment�s hesitation, confident in its ability to defeat the forces of urartu as it had defeated those of the medes and aramæans; but the precise point of attack needed careful consideration. tiglath-pileser must have been sorely tempted to take the shortest route, challenge the enemy at his most vulnerable point on the shores of lake van, and by a well-aimed thrust deal him a blow from which he would never, or only by slow degrees, recover. but this vital region of urartu, as we have already pointed out, presented the greatest difficulties of access. the rampart of mountain and forest by which it was protected on the assyrian side could only be traversed by means of a few byways, along which bands of guerrillas could slip down easily enough to the banks of the tigris, but which were quite impassable to any army in full marching order, hampered by its horses, chariots, and baggage-train: compelled to thread its way, with columns unduly extended, through the woods and passes of an unknown country, which daily use had long made familiar to its adversaries, it would have run the risk of being cut to pieces man by man a dozen times before it could hope to range its disciplined masses on the field of battle. former assyrian invasions had, as a general rule, taken an oblique course towards some of the spurs of this formidable chain, and had endeavoured to neutralise its defences by outflanking them, either by proceeding westwards along the basins of the supnat and the arzania, or eastwards through the countries bordering on lake urumiah; but even this method presented too many difficulties and too little certainty of success to warrant tiglath-pileser in staking the reviving fortunes of his empire on its adoption. he rightly argued that sharduris would be most easily vulnerable in those provinces whose allegiance to him was of recent date, and he resolved to seek out his foe in the heart of northern syria. [illustration: .jpg view of the mountains which guard the southern border of uartu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. taken at julamerk, near the junction of the mountain tracks leading from the zab valley to the south-eastern corner of the basin of lake van. there, if anywhere, every chance was in his favour and against the armenian. the scene of operations, while it had long been familiar to his own generals and soldiers, was, on the other hand, entirely new ground to those of the enemy; the latter, though unsurpassed in mountain warfare, lost much of their superiority on the plains, and could not, with all their courage, make up for their lack of experience. moreover, it must not be forgotten that a victory on the banks of the afrîn or the orontes would have more important results than a success gained in the neighbourhood of the lakes or of urartu. not only would it free the assyrians from the only one of their enemies whom they had any cause to fear, but it would also bring back the hittite kings to their allegiance, and restore the assyrian supremacy over the wealthiest regions of western asia: they would thus disable urartu and reconquer syria at one and the same time. tiglath-pileser, therefore, crossed the euphrates in the spring of b.c., neither matîlu of agusi, kushtashpi of kummukh, nor their allies daring to interfere with his progress. he thus advanced as far as arpad, and, in the first moment of surprise, the town threw open its gates before him.* * different writers have given different versions of this campaign. some think that arpad resisted, and that tiglath- pileser was laying siege to it, when the arrival of sharduris compelled him to retire; others prefer to believe that arpad was still in the hands of the assyrians, and that tiglath-pileser used it as his base of operations. the formula ina arpadda in the eponym canon proves that tiglath- pileser was certainly in arpad: since arpad belonged to the bit-agusi, and they were the allies or vassals of sharduris, we must assume, as i have done here, that in the absence of the urartians they did not dare to resist the assyrians, and opened their gates to them. there, while he was making ready to claim the homage of the surrounding countries, he learnt that sharduris was hastening up to the rescue. he at once struck his camp and marched out to meet his rival, coming up with him in the centre of kummukh, not far from the euphrates, between kishtân and khalpi. sharduris was at the head of his syrian contingents, including the forces of agusi, melitene, kummukh, and gurgum--a formidable army, probably superior in point of numbers to that of the assyrians. the struggle lasted a whole day, and in the course of it the two kings, catching sight of one another on the field of battle, engaged in personal combat: at last, towards evening, the chariots and cavalry of urartu gave way and the rout began. the victors made their way into the camp at the heels of their flying enemies. sharduris abandoned his chariot, and could find nothing but a mare to aid him in his flight; he threw himself upon her back, careless of the ridicule at that time attached to the use of such a mount in eastern countries,* fled at a gallop all through the night, hard pressed by a large body of cavalry, crossed the hills of sibak, and with much difficulty reached the bridge over the euphrates. * so, too, later on, in the time of sargon, rusas, when defeated, gets on the back of a mare and rides off. his pursuers drew rein on the river-bank, and sharduris re-entered his kingdom in safety. he had lost nearly , men, killed or taken prisoners, in addition to his chariots, and nearly the whole train of horses, asses, servants, and artisans attached to his army; he left his tent still standing, and those who were first to enter it laid hands on his furniture and effects, his royal ornaments, his bed and portable throne, with its cushions and bearing-poles, none of which had he found time to take with him. tiglath-pileser burnt them all on the spot as a thank-offering, to the gods who had so signally favoured him; the bed alone he retained, in order that he might dedicate it as a trophy to the goddess ishtar of nineveh. he had covered himself with glory, and might well be proud of his achievement, yet the victory was in no way a decisive one. the damage inflicted on the allies, considerable though it was, had cost him dear: the forces left to him were not sufficient to enable him to finish the campaign, and extort oaths of allegiance from the syrian princes before they had recovered from the first shock of defeat. he returned to nineveh, and spent the whole winter in reorganising his troops; while his enemies, on the other hand, made preparations to repel the attack energetically. sharduris could not yet venture outside his mountain strongholds, but the hope of being reinforced by him, as soon as he had got together another army, encouraged the syrian kings to remain faithful to him in spite of his reverses.* * the part played by sharduris in the events of the years which followed, passing mention of which was made by winckler (_gesch. bab. und ass_,, pp. , ), have been fully dealt with by belck and lehmann (chaldische _forschungen, in veriiand. der berliner anthropol. gesellschaft_, , pp. - ). matîlu of agusi, unable to carry the day against the assyrians in the open field, distributed his men among his towns, and resisted all attacks with extraordinary persistence, confident that sharduris would at length come to help him, and with this hope he held out for three years in his town of arpad. this protracted resistance need no longer astonish us, now that we know, from observations made on the spot, the marvellous skill displayed in the fortification of these asiatic towns. the ruins of arpad have yet to be explored, but those of samalla have been excavated, and show us the methods adopted for the defence of a royal residence about the middle of the century with which we are now concerned. the practice of building citadels on a square or rectangular plan, which prevailed so largely under the egyptian rule, had gradually gone out of fashion as the knowledge of engineering advanced, and the use of mines and military engines had been more fully developed among the nations of western asia. it was found that the heavily fortified angles of the enclosing wall merely presented so many weak points, easy to attack but difficult to defend, no matter how carefully they might be protected by an accumulation of obstacles. in the case of fortresses built on a plain, where the plan was not modified by the nature of the site, the enclosing wall was generally round or oval in shape, and free from useless angles which might detract from its strength. the walls were surmounted by battlements, and flanked at short intervals by round or square towers, the tops of which rose but little, if indeed at all, above the level of the curtain. in front of this main wall was a second lower one, also furnished with towers and battlements, which followed the outline of the first all the way round at an interval of some yards, thus acting as a sort of continuous screen to it. the gates were little less than miniature citadels built into each line of ramparts; the gate of the outer wall was often surrounded by lower outworks, two square bastions and walls enclosing an outer quadrangle which had to be crossed before the real gate was reached. [illustration: a.jpg plan of the ancient city of zinjirli.] a reproduction by faucher-gudin of the first plan published by luschan. when a breach had been made in this double enclosure, though the town itself might be taken, the labours of the attacking force were not yet over. in the very centre of the place, on a sort of artificial mound or knoll, stood the royal castle, and resistance on the part of its garrison would make it necessary for the enemy to undertake a second siege no less deadly and protracted than the first. the keep of zinjirli had only a single gate approached by a narrow causeway. [illustration: b.jpg one of the gates of zinjirli restored] reproduction by faucher-gudin of the sketch published by luschan. within, it was divided by walls into five compartments, each of which was independent of the rest, and had to be attacked separately. ma-tîlu knew he could hope for no mercy at the hands of the assyrians; he therefore struggled on to the last, and when at length obliged to surrender, in the year b.c., he paid for his obstinacy by the loss of his throne, and perhaps also of his life.* * our knowledge of these events is imperfect, our only information being derived from the very scanty details given in the _eponym canon_; up to the present we can do no more than trace the general course of events. [illustration: .jpg bird�s-eye view of the royal castle of zinjirli as restored] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plan published in luschan. the inaction of sharduris clearly showed that he was no longer in a position to protect his allies, and that the backbone of his kingdom was broken; the kings who had put faith in his help now gave him up, and ambassadors flocked in from all parts, even from those which were not as yet directly threatened. kushtashpi of kummukh, tark-hulara of gturgum, pisiris of carchemish, uriaîk of kuî, came to arpad in person to throw themselves at the conqueror�s feet, bringing with them offerings of gold and silver, of lead and iron, of ivory, carved and in the tusk, of purple, and of dyed or embroidered stuffs, and were confirmed in the possession of their respective territories; hiram ii. of tyre, moreover, and eezin of damascus sent their greetings to him.* * _annals of tiglath-pileser iii_., where the statement at the close indicates that tiglath-pileser received the tributary kings of syria �in arpad,� after he had captured that city. the patina, who in days gone by had threatened the fortunes of assur-nazir-pal, once again endeavoured to pose as the rivals of assyria, and tutammû, sovereign of unki, the most daring of the minor states into which the patina had been split up, declined to take part in the demonstrations made by his neighbours. tiglath-pileser marched on kinalua, sacked it, built a fortress there, and left a governor and garrison behind him: agusi and unki henceforth sank down to the level of mere provinces, administered by royal officers in the king�s name, and permanently occupied by assyrian troops. northern syria was thus again incorporated with the empire, but urartu, although deprived of the resources with which syria had supplied it, continued to give cause for apprehension; in b.c., however, a large proportion of the districts of naîri, to which it still clung, was wrested from it, and a fortress was built at ulluba, with a view to providing a stable base of operations at this point on the northern frontier. a rebellion, instigated, it may be, by his own agents, recalled tiglath-pileser to the amanus in the year . the petty kings who shared with assyria the possession of the mountains and plains of the afrîn could not succeed in living at peace with one another, and every now and then their disputes broke out into open warfare. samalla was at that time subject to a family of which the first members known to history, qaral and panammu, shared yaudi equally between them. barzur, son of panammu i., had reigned there since about b.c., and there can be little doubt that he must have passed through the same vicissitudes as his neighbours; faithful to urartu as long as sharduris kept the upper hand, and to assyria as soon as tiglath-pileser had humiliated urartu, he had been killed in a skirmish by some rival. his son, panammu il, came to the throne merely as a nominee of his suzerain, and seems to have always rendered him faithful service; unfortunately, yaudi was no longer subject to the house of panammu, but obeyed the rule of a certain azriyahu, who chafed at the presence of an alien power.* * azriyahu of yaudi was identified with azariah of judah by g. smith, and this identification was for a long time accepted without question by most assyriologists. after a violent controversy it has finally been shown that the _yaudi_ of tiglath-pileser iii.�a inscriptions ought to be identified with the _yadi_ or _yaudi_ of the zinjirli inscriptions, and consequently that azriyahu was not king of judah, but a king of northern syria. this view appears to me to harmonise so well with what remains of the texts, and with our knowledge of the events, that i have had no hesitation in adopting it. azriyahu took advantage of the events which kept tiglath-pileser fully occupied in the east, to form a coalition in favour of himself among the states on the banks of the orontes, including some seventeen provinces, dependencies of hamath, and certain turbulent cities of northern phoenicia, such as byblos, arka, zimyra, usnû, siannu, coele-syria, and even hadrach itself. it is not quite clear whether damascus and the hebrews took part in this movement. jeroboam had died in , after a prosperous reign of forty-one years, and on his death israel seems to have fallen under a cloud; six months later, his son zechariah was assassinated at ibleam by shallum, son of jabesh, and the prophecy of amos, in which he declared that the house of jeroboam should fall beneath the sword of jahveh,* was fulfilled. shallum himself reigned only one month: two other competitors had presented themselves immediately after his crime;** the ablest of these, menahem, son of gadi, had come from tirzah to samaria, and, after suppressing his rivals, laid hands on the crown.*** he must have made himself master of the kingdom little by little, the success of his usurpation being entirely due to the ruthless energy invariably and everywhere displayed by him; as, for instance, when tappuakh (tiphsah) refused to open its gates at his summons, he broke into the town and slaughtered its inhabitants.**** * amos vii. . ** the nameless prophet, whose prediction is handed down to us in zech. ix.--xi., speaks of three shepherds cut off by javeh in one month (xi. ); two of these were zechariah and shallum; the third is not mentioned in the book of kings. *** kings xiv. - ; xv. - . **** kings xv. . the massoretic text gives the name of the town as tipsah, but the septuagint has taphôt, which led thenius to suggest tappuakh as an emendation of tipsah: stade prefers the emendation tirzah. all the defects of organisation, all the sources of weakness, which for the last half-century had been obscured by the glories of jeroboam ii., now came to the surface, and defied all human efforts to avert their consequences. �then,� as hosea complains, �is the iniquity of ephraim discovered, and the wickedness of samaria; for they commit falsehood: and the thief entereth in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. and they consider not in their hearts that i (jahveh) remember all their wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are before my face. they make the king glad with their wickedness and the princes with their lies. they are all adulterers; they are as an oven heated by the baker.... they... devour their judges; all their kings are fallen; there is none among them that calleth unto me.� * in judah, azariah (uzziah) had at first shown some signs of ability; he had completed the conquest of idumsea, edom, and had fortified elath,** but he suddenly found himself stricken with leprosy, and was obliged to hand over the reins of government of jotham.*** * sos. vii. - , . ** kings xiv. ; in ghron. xxvi. - he is credited with the reorganisation of the army and of the judsean fortress, in addition to campaigns against the philistines and arabs. *** kings xv. ; cf. ghron. xxvi. - . azariah is also abbreviated into uzziah. tappuakh was a town situated on the borders of ephraim and manasseh (josh. xvi. ; xvii. , ). his long life had been passed uneventfully, and without any disturbance, under the protection of jeroboam; but the very same defects which had led to the ruin of israel were at work also in judah, and menahem, in spite of his enfeebled condition, had nothing to fear in this direction. [illustration: .jpg tiglath-pileser iii. in his state chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch published by layard. the danger which menaced him came rather from the east and the north, where damascus, aroused from its state of lethargy by rezôn [rezin] ii., had again begun to strive after the hegemony of syria.* * the name of this king, written rezin in the bible ( kings xv. ; xvi. , , ), is given as _razunu_ in the assyrian texts; he was therefore ilezôn ii. a passage in the _annals_ seems to indicate that rezin�s father was prince of a city dependent on damascus, not king of damascus itself; unfortunately the text is too much mutilated to warrant us in forming any definite conclusion on this point. all these princes, when they found that the ambition of tiglath-pileser threatened to interfere with their own intrigues, were naturally tempted to combine against him, and were willing to postpone to a more convenient season the settlement of their own domestic quarrrels. but tiglath-pileser did not give them time for this; he routed azriyahu, and laid waste kullani,* the chief centre of revolt, ravaged the valley of the orontes, and carried off the inhabitants of several towns, replacing them with prisoners taken the year before during his campaign in naîri. * kullani is the calno or calneh mentioned by isaiah (x. ) and amos (vi. ), which lay somewhere between arpad and hamath; the precise spot is not yet known. after this feat the whole of syria surrendered. rezin and menahem were among the first to tender their homage, and the latter paid a thousand talents of silver for the _firman_ which definitely confirmed his tenure of the throne; the princes of tyre, byblos, hamath, carchemish, milid, tabal, and several others followed their example--even a certain zabibi, queen of an arab tribe, feeling compelled to send her gifts to the conqueror. a sudden rising among the aramæan tribes on the borders of elam obliged tiglath-pileser to depart before he had time to take full advantage of his opportunity. the governors of lullumi and naîri promptly suppressed the outbreak, and, collecting the most prominent of the rebels together, sent them to the king in order that he might distribute them throughout the cities of syria: a colony of prisoners from the town of amlati was established in the territory of damaunu, from dur were sent to the fortresses of unki, kunalia, khuzarra, taî, tarmanazi, kulmadara, khatatirra, and sagillu, while another , or so were scattered along the phoenician seaboard and among the adjacent mountains. the revolt had meanwhile spread to the nations of media, where it was, perhaps, fomented by the agents of urartu; and for the second time within seven years ( b.c.) tiglath-pileser trampled underfoot the countries over which he had ridden in triumph at the beginning of his career--the bît-kapsi, the bît-sangibuti, the bît-tazzakki, the bît-zulazash, the bît-matti, and umliash. the people of upash, among the bît-kapsi, entrenched themselves on the slopes of mount abirus; but he carried their entrenchments by storm. ushuru of taddiruta and burdadda of nirutakta were seized with alarm, and hid themselves in their mountain gorges; but he climbed up in pursuit of them, drove them out of their hiding-places, seized their possessions, and made them prisoners. similar treatment was meted out to all those who proved refractory; some he despoiled, others he led captive, and �bursting upon the remainder like the downpour of bammân,� permitted none of them to escape. he raised trophies all along his line of march: in bau, a dependency of bît-ishtar, he set up a pointed javelin dedicated to ninip, on which he had engraved a panegyric of the virtues of his master assur; near shilkhazi, a town founded, in bygone days, by the babylonians, he erected a statue of himself, and a pillar consecrated to marduk in til-ashshur. in the following year he again attacked urartu and occupied the mountain province of nâl, which formed one of its outlying defences ( ). the year after he entered on the final struggle with sharduris, and led the flower of his forces right under the walls of dhuspas,* the enemy�s capital. * the name is written turuspas in the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii. dhuspas really consisted of two towns joined together. one of these, extending over the plain by the banks of the alaîs and in the direction of the lake, was surrounded by fertile gardens and villas, in which the inhabitants spent the summer at their ease. it was protected by an isolated mass of white and red nummulitic chalk, the steep sides of which are seamed with fissures and tunnelled with holes and caverns from top to bottom. [illustration: .jpg the rock and citadel of van at the present day] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. the plateau in which it terminates, and which rises to a height of feet at its loftiest point, is divided into three main terraces, each completely isolated from the other two, and forming, should occasion arise, an independent fortress, ishpuinis, menuas, argistis, and sharduris ii. had laboured from generation to generation to make this stronghold impregnable, and they had succeeded in the attempt. [illustration: .jpg entrance to the modern citadel of van from the westward] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. binder. there can be little or no doubt, however, that this is merely a variant of the name usually written as tuspas, tuspana, dhuspana, the thospia of classical times; properly speaking, it was the capital of biainas. the only access to it was from the western side, by a narrow bridle-path, which almost overhung the precipice as it gradually mounted to the summit. this path had been partially levelled, and flanked with walls and towers which commanded the approach throughout its whole length; on the platforms at the summit a citadel had been constructed, together with a palace, temples, and storehouses, in which was accumulated a sufficient supply of arms and provisions to enable the garrison to tire out the patience of any ordinary foe; treason or an unusually prolonged siege could only get the better of such a position. tiglath-pileser invested the citadel and ravaged its outskirts without pity, hoping, no doubt, that he would thus provoke the enemy into capitulating. day after day, sharduris, perched in his lofty eyrie, saw his leafy gardens laid bare under the hatchet, and his villages and the palaces of his nobles light up the country round as far as the eye could reach: he did not flinch, however, and when all had been laid waste, the assyrians set up a statue of their king before the principal gate of the fortress, broke up their camp, and leisurely retired. they put the country to fire and sword, destroyed its cities, led away every man and beast they could find into captivity, and then returned to nineveh laden with plunder. urartu was still undaunted, and sharduris remained king as before; but he was utterly spent, and his power had sustained a blow from which it never recovered. he had played against assur with the empire of the whole asiatic world as the stake, and the dice had gone against him: compelled to renounce his great ambitions from henceforth, he sought merely to preserve his independence. since then, armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under tigranes in the roman epoch, than under sharduris in the time of the assyrians; it has been within an ace of attaining the goal of its ambitions, then at the last moment its strength has failed, and it has been forced to retire worsted from the struggle. its position prevented it from exercising very wide influence; hidden away in a corner of asia at the meeting-point of three or four great mountain ranges, near the source of four rivers, all flowing in different directions, it has lacked that physical homogeneity without which no people, however gifted, can hope to attain supremacy; nature has doomed it to remain, like syria, split up into compartments of unequal size and strength, which give shelter to half a score of independent principalities, each one of them perpetually jealous of the rest. from time to time it is invested with a semblance of unity, but for the most part it drags on an uneventful existence, dismembered into as many fragments as there happen to be powerful states around it, its only chance of complete reunion lying in the possibility of one or other of these attaining sufficient predominance to seize the share of the others and absorb it. the subjection of urartu freed assyria from the only rival which could at this moment have disputed its supremacy on the banks of the euphrates and the tigris. the other nations on its northern and eastern frontiers as yet possessed no stability; they might, in the course of a passing outburst, cut an army to pieces or annex part of a province, but they lacked strength to follow up their advantage, and even their most successful raids were sure, in the long run, to lead to terrible reprisals, in which their gains were two or three times outweighed by their losses in men and treasure. for nearly a hundred years nineveh found its hands free, and its rulers were able to concentrate all their energy on two main points of the frontier--to the south-west on syria and egypt, to the south-east on chaldæa and elam. chaldæa gave little trouble, but the condition of syria presented elements of danger. the loyalty of its princes was more apparent than real; they had bowed their necks after the fall of unki, but afterwards, as the years rolled on without any seeming increase in the power of assyria, they again took courage and began once more to quarrel among themselves. menahem had died, soon after he had paid his tribute ( b.c.); his son pekahiah had been assassinated less than two years later ( )* and his murderer, pekah, son of remaliah, was none too firmly seated on the throne. anarchy was triumphant throughout israel; so much so that judah seized the opportunity for throwing off the yoke it had borne for well-nigh a hundred years. pekah, conscious of his inability to suppress the rebellion, called in rezin to help him. the latter was already on the way when jotham was laid with his fathers ( b.c.), and it was ahaz, the son of jotham, who had to bear the brant of the assault. he was barely twenty years old, a volatile, presumptuous, and daring youth, who was not much dismayed by his position.** jotham had repaired the fortifications of jerusalem, which had been left in a lamentable state ever since the damage done to them in the reign of amaziah;*** his successor now set to work to provide the city with the supply of water indispensable for its defence,**** and, after repairing the ancient aqueducts, conceived the idea of constructing a fresh one in the spur of mount sion, which extends southwards. * kings xv. - . the chronology of the events which took place between the death of menahem and the fall of samaria, as presented by the biblical documents in the state in which they have been transmitted to us, is radically inaccurate: following the example of most recent historians, i have adhered exclusively to the data furnished by the assyrian texts, merely indicating in the notes the reasons which have led me to adopt certain dates in preference to others. ** kings xv. , xvi. , . ahaz is called iaukhazi, i.e. jehoahaz, in the assyrian texts, and this would seem to have been the original form of the name. *** the restoration of the walls of jerusalem by jotham is only mentioned in chron. xxvii. . **** we may deduce this from the words of isaiah (vii. ), where he represents ahaz �at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller�s field.� ahaz had gone there to inspect the works intended for the defence of the aqueduct. as time pressed, the work was begun simultaneously at each end; the workmen had made a wide detour underground, probably in order to avoid the caves in which the kings of judah had been laid to rest ever since the time of david,* and they were beginning to despair of ever uniting the two sections of the tunnel, when they suddenly heard one another through the wall of rock which divided them. a few blows with the pick-axe opened a passage between them, and an inscription on the wall adjoining the entrance on the east side, the earliest hebrew inscription we possess, set forth the vicissitudes of the work for the benefit of future generations. it was scarcely completed when kezin, who had joined forces with pekah at samaria, came up and laid regular siege to jerusalem.** * this is the highly ingenious hypothesis put forward and defended with much learning by clermont-ganneau, in order to account for the large curve described by the tunnel. ** kings xvi. ; cf. chron. xxviii. - . it was on this occasion that isaiah delivered the prophecies which, after subsequent revision, furnished the bulk of chaps, vi. --x. . the allies did not propose to content themselves with exacting tribute from the young king; they meant to dethrone him, and to set up in his room a son of tabeel, whom they had brought with them; they were nevertheless obliged to retire without effecting a breach in his defences and leave the final assault till the following campaign. rezin, however, had done as much injury as he could to judah; he had laid waste both mountain and plain, had taken elath by storm and restored it to the edomites,* and had given a free hand to the philistines ( ).** * kings xvi. , where the massoretic text states that the syrians retained the town, while the septuagint maintain that he restored it to the edomites. ** chron. xxviii. , where a list is given of the towns wrested from judah by the philistines. the delight felt by the philistines at the sight of judah�s abasement seems to be referred to in the short prophecy of isaiah (xiv. - ), wrongly ascribed to the year of ahaz�s death. [illustration: .jpg hebrew inscription on the siloam aqueduct] a direct reproduction from a plaster cast now in paris. the inscription discovered by schick, in , has since been mutilated, and only the fragments are preserved in the museum at constantinople. some writers think it was composed in the time of hezekiah; for my own part, i agree with stade in assigning it to the period of ahaz. the whole position seemed so hopeless, that a section of the people began to propose surrendering to the mercy of the syrians.* * this seems to be an obvious inference from the words of isaiah (viii. ): �forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of shiloah that go softly, _and lose courage because of rezin and bemaliali�s son_.� [the r.v. reads �_rejoice in_� rezin, etc.--tr.] ahaz looked around him in search of some one on whom he might call for help. all his immediate neighbours were hostile; but behind them, in the background, were two great powers who might be inclined to listen to his appeal--egypt and assyria. ever since the expedition of sheshonq into asia, egypt seemed to have lost all interest in foreign politics. osorkon had not inherited the warlike propensities of his father, and his son, takelôti i., and his grandson, osorkon ii., followed his example.* * the chronology of this period is still very uncertain, and the stelae of the serapseum, which enable us to fix the order of the various reigns, yield no information as to their length. sheshonq i. did not reign much longer than twenty-one years, which is his latest known date, and we may take the reign of twenty-one years attributed to him by manetho as being substantially correct. the latest dates we possess are as follows: osorkon i., twelfth year, and takelôti i., sixth year or seventh year. lastly, we have a twenty-ninth year in the case of osorkon ii., with a reference in the case of the twenty-eighth year to the fifth year of a takelôti whose first cartouche is missing, and who perhaps died before his father and co-regent. in manetho, osorkon i. is credited with a reign of fifteen years, and his three next successors with a total of twenty-five years between them, which is manifestly incorrect, since the monuments give twenty-nine years, or twenty-three at the very least, if we take into account the double date in the case of the first two of these kings. the wisest course seems to be to allow forty-five years to osorkon and his two successors: if sheshonq, as i believe, died in , the fifty years allotted to the next three pharaohs would bring us down to , and it is in this year that i am, for the present, inclined to place the death of osorkon ii. [illustration: .jpg bronze] drawn by faucher-gudin, from. lanzone�s statuette. [illustration: .jpg the great temple of bubastis duringnaville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by naville. these monarchs regarded themselves as traditionary suzerains of the country of kharu, i.e. of israel, judah, ammon, and moab, and their authority may perhaps have been recognised by the philistines in the main, but they seldom stirred from their own territory, and contented themselves with protecting their frontiers against the customary depredations of the libyan and asiatic nomads.* * repressive measures of this kind are evidently referred to in passages similar to those in which osorkon ii. boasts of having �overthrown beneath his feet the upper and lower lotanu,� and speaks of the exploits of the sons of queen kalamâît against certain tribes whose name, though mutilated, seems to have been libyan in character. under their rule, egypt enjoyed fifty years of profound peace, which was spent in works of public utility, especially in the delta, where, thanks to their efforts, bubastis came to be one of the most splendid among the cities of secondary importance.* * all our knowledge of the history of the temple of bubastis dates from naville�s excavations. its temple, which had been rebuilt by ramses ii. and decorated by the rames-sides, was in a sorry plight when the xxiind dynasty came into power. sheshonq i. did little or nothing to it, but osorkon i. entirely remodelled it, and osorkon ii. added several new halls, including, amongst others, one in which he celebrated, in the twenty-second year of his reign, the festival of his deification. a record of some of the ceremonies observed has come down to us in the mural paintings. there we see the king, in a chapel, consecrating a statue of himself in accordance with the ritual in use since the time of amenôthes iii., and offering the figure devout and earnest worship; all the divinities of egypt have assembled to witness the enthronement of this new member of their confraternity, and take part in the sacrifices accompanying his consecration. this gathering of the gods is balanced by a human festival, attended by nubians and kushites, as well as by the courtiers and populace. the proceedings terminated, apparently, with certain funeral rites, the object being to make the identification of osorkon with osiris complete. [illustration: .jpg picture in the hall of the harps in the fifth tomb] the egyptian deities served in a double capacity, as gods of the dead as well as of the living, and no exception could be made in favour of the deified osorkon; while yet living he became an osiris, and his double was supposed to animate those prophetic statues in which he appeared as a mummy no less than those which represented him as still alive. [illustration: .jpg gate of the festival hall at bubastis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by naville. another temple of small size, also dedicated to bastîfc or pasht, which had been built in the time of ramses ii., was enlarged by osorkon i., and richly endowed with workshops, lands, cattle, slaves, and precious metals: tumu-khopri of heliopolis, to mention but one of the deities worshipped there, received offerings of gold in value by weight.£ , , and silver ingots worth £ , .* * this is the small temple afterwards described by herodotus as being dedicated to hermes. a country which could afford to indulge in extravagances of this nature must have been in a flourishing condition, and everything goes to prove that egypt prospered under the rule of the early bubastite kings. the very same causes, however, which had ruined the ramessides and the tanites were now openly compassing the downfall of the bubastite dynasty. the military feudalism from which it had sprung, suppressed for a time by sheshonq i., developed almost unchecked under his successors. they had thought to break it up and turn it to their own advantage, by transferring the more important religious functions and the principal fiefs to their own sons or nephews. they governed memphis through the high priests of phtah; a prince of the blood represented them at khmunu,* another at khninsu** (heracleopolis), and others in various cities of the delta, each of them being at the head of several thousand mashauasha, or libyan soldiers on whose fidelity they could entirely rely. * e.g. namrôti, under piônkhi-mîamun, whose rights were such that he adopted the protocol of the pharaohs. ** stole of the serapæum contains the names of five successive princes of this city, the first of whom was namrôti, son of osorkon ii., and high priest of thebes; a member of the same family, named pefzââbastît, had taken cartouches under osorkon iii. of the xxiiird dynasty. thebes alone had managed to exclude these representatives of the ruling dynasty, and its princes, guided in this particular by the popular prejudice, persistently refused to admit into their bodyguard any but the long-tried mâzaîu. moreover, thebes lost no opportunity of proving itself to be still the most turbulent of the baronies. its territory had suffered no diminution since the time of hrihor, and half of upper egypt, from elephantine to siut, acknowledged its sway. * it is evident that this was so from the first steps taken by piônkhi-miamun�s generals: they meet the army and fleet of tafnakhti and the princes of the north right under the walls of hormopolis, but say nothing of any feudal princes of the south. their silence is explained if we assume that thebes, being a dependency of ethiopia, retained at that date, i.e. in the time of the xxiind dynasty, the same or nearly the same boundaries which it had won for itself under the xxist. through all the changes of dynasty its political constitution had remained unaltered; amon still ruled there supreme as ever, and nothing was done until he had been formally consulted in accordance with ancient usage. anputi, in spite of his being a son of sheshonq, was compelled to adopt the title of high priest in order to rule in peace, and had married some daughter or niece of the last of the painotmu. after his death, good care was taken to prevent the pontificate from passing to one of his children, as this would have re-established a theban dynasty which might have soon proved hostile to that of bubastis. to avoid this, osorkon i. made over the office and fief to his own son sheshonq. the latter, after a time, thought he was sufficiently powerful to follow the example of paînotmu and adopt the royal cartouches; but, with all his ambition, he too failed to secure the succession to the male line of his descendants, for osorkon ii. appointed his own son namrôti, already prince of khninsu, to succeed him. the amalgamation of these two posts invested the person on whom they were conferred with almost regal power; khninsu was, indeed, as we know, the natural rampart of memphis and lower egypt against invasion from the south, and its possessor was in a position to control the fate of the empire almost as he pleased. osorkon must have had weighty reasons for taking a step which placed him practically at the mercy of his son, and, indeed, events proved that but little reliance could be placed on the loyalty of the thebans, and that energetic measures were imperative to keep them in the path of duty or lead them back to it. the decadence of the ancient capital had sadly increased since the downfall of the descendants of hrihor. [illustration: .jpg small bronze sphinx of siamun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original now in the louvre. the few public works which they had undertaken, and which sheshonq i. encouraged to the best of his ability, had been suspended owing to want of money, and the craftsmen who had depended on them for support were suffering from poverty: the makers of small articles of a religious or funerary character, carvers of wood or stone, joiners, painters of mummy-cases, and workers in bronze, alone managed to eke out a bare livelihood, thanks to commissions still given to them by officials attached to the temples. theban art, which in its best period had excelled in planning its works on a gigantic scale, now gladly devoted itself to the production of mere knick-knacks, in place of the colossal figures of earlier days. [illustration: .jpg ruins of the temple at khninsu after naville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in naville. the illustration shows what now remains of the portions of the temple rebuilt in the time of ramses ii. we have statuettes some twelve or fifteen inches high, crudely coloured, wooden stelæ, shapeless _ushâbti_ redeemed from ugliness by a coating of superb blue enamel, and, above all, those miniature sphinxes representing queens or kings, which present with two human arms either a table of offerings or a salver decorated with cartouches. the starving populace, its interests and vanity alike mortified by the accession of a northern dynasty, refused to accept the decay of its fortunes with resignation, and this spirit of discontent was secretly fomented by the priests or by members of the numerous families which boasted of their descent from the eamessides. although hereditary claims to the throne and the pontificate had died out or lost their force in the male line, they were still persistently urged by the women: consecrated from their birth to the service of amon, and originally reserved to sing his praises or share his nuptial couch, those of them who married transmitted to their children, and more especially to their daughters, the divine germ which qualified them for the throne. they and their followers never ceased to look for the day when the national deity should shake off his apathy, and, becoming the champion of their cause against the bubastite or tanite usurpers, restore their city to the rank and splendour from which it had fallen. namrôti married one of these theban princesses, and thus contrived to ward off the danger of revolt during his lifetime; but on his death or disappearance an insurrection broke out. sheshonq ii. had succeeded osorkon ii., and he, in his turn, was followed by takelôti ii. takelôti chose kala-mâit, daughter of namrôti, as his lawful wife, formally recognised her as queen, and set up numerous statues and votive monuments in her honour. but all in vain: this concession failed to conciliate the rebellious, and the whole thebaid rose against him to a man. in the twelfth year of his reign he entrusted the task of putting down the revolt to his son osorkon, at the same time conferring upon him the office of high priest. it took several years to repress the rising; defeated in the eleventh year, the rebels still held the field in the fifteenth year of the king, and it was not till some time after, between the fifteenth and twenty-second year of takelôti ii., that they finally laid down their arms.* at the end of this struggle the king�s power was quite exhausted, while that of the feudal magnates had proportionately increased. before long, egypt was split up into a number of petty states, some of them containing but a few towns, while others, following the example of thebes, boldly annexed several adjacent nomes. a last remnant of respect for the traditional monarchy kept them from entirely repudiating the authority of pharaoh. they still kept up an outward show of submission to his rule; they paid him military service when called upon, and appealed to him as umpire in their disputes, without, however, always accepting his rulings, and when they actually came to blows among themselves, were content to exercise their right of private warfare under his direction.** the royal domain gradually became narrowed down to the memphite nome and the private appanages of the reigning house, and soon it no longer yielded the sums necessary for the due performance of costly religious ceremonies, such as the enthronement or burial of an apis. the pomp and luxury usually displayed on such occasions grew less and less under the successors of takelôti ii., sheshonq iii., pimi, and sheshonq iv.*** * the story of these events is told in several greatly mutilated inscriptions to be found at karnak on the outer surface of the south wall of the hall of columns. ** it is evident that this was so, from a romance discovered by krall. *** one need only go to the louvre and compare the apis stelae erected during this period with those engraved in the time of the xxvith dynasty, in order to realise the low ebb to which the later kings of the xxiind dynasty had fallen: the fact that the chapel and monuments were built under their direction shows that they were still masters of memphis. we have no authentic date for sheshonq ii., and the twenty-ninth year is the latest known in the case of takelôti ii., but we know that sheshonq iii. reigned fifty- two years, and, after two years of pimi, we find a reference to the thirty-seventh year of sheshonq iv. if we allow a round century for these last kings we are not likely to be far out: this would place the close of the bubastite dynasty somewhere about b.c. when the last of these passed away after an inglorious reign of at least thirty-seven years, the prestige of his race had so completely declined that the country would have no more of it; the sceptre passed into the hands of another dynasty, this time of tanite origin.* it was probably a younger branch of the bubastite family allied to the ramessides and theban pallacides. petu-bastis, the first of the line, secured recognition in thebes,** and throughout the rest of egypt as well, but his influence was little greater than that of his predecessors; as in the past, the real power was in the hands of the high priests. * the following list gives the names of the pharaohs of the xxiith dynasty in so far as they have been ascertained up to the present:-- [illustration: .jpg table of pharaohs of the xxiith dynasty] ** this fact has recently been placed beyond doubt by inscriptions found on the quay at karnak near the water- marks of the nile. one of them, auîti by name, even went so far, in the fourteenth or fifteenth year, as to declare himself king, and had his cartouches inscribed on official documents side by side with those of the tanite monarch.* his kingship died with him, just as that of patnotmu had done in similar circumstances, and two years later we find his successor, harsiisît, a mere high priest without pretensions to royalty. * no. of legrain�s inscriptions tells us the height of the nile in the sixteenth year of petubastît, which was also the second year of king auîti. seeing that auîti�s name occurs in the place occupied by that of the high priest of thebes in other inscriptions of the same king, i consider it probable that he was reigning in thebes itself, and that he was a high priest who had become king in the same way as paînotmu under the xxist dynasty. [illustration: .jpg king petubastis at prayer] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a small door now in the louvre. doubtless his was not an isolated case; all the grandees who happened to be nearly related either to the dethroned or to the reigning houses acted in like manner, and for the first time for many years egypt acknowledged the simultaneous sway of more than one legitimate pharaoh. matters became still worse under osorkon iii.; although he, too, introduced a daughter of anion into his harem, this alliance failed to give him any hold over thebes, and even the seven nomes and the delta were split up to such an extent that at one time they included something like a score of independent principalities, three of which, hermopolis, heracleopolis, and tentramu, were administered by kings who boasted cartouches similar to those of tanis and bubastis. about b.c. there appeared in the midst of these turbulent and extortionate nobles a man who, by sheer force of energy and talent, easily outstripped all competitors. tafnakhti was a chief of obscure origin, whose hereditary rights extended merely over the village of nutirît and the outskirts of sebennytos. one or two victories gained over his nearest neighbours encouraged him to widen the sphere of his operations. he first of all laid hands on those nomes of the delta which extended to the west of the principal arm of the nile, the saite, athribite, libyan, and memphite nomes; these he administered through officers under his own immediate control; then, leaving untouched the eastern provinces, over which osorkon iii. exercised a make-shift, easygoing rule, he made his way up the river. maitumu and the fayum accepted him as their suzerain, but khninsu and its king, pefzââbastît, faithful to their allegiance,* offered strenuous resistance. * pefzââbastît, king of heracleopolis, seems to be identical with the pharaoh pefzâbastît of the berlin sarcophagus. he then crossed over to the right bank, and received the homage of heliopolis and phebtepahê; he put the inhabitants of uabu to ransom, established a close blockade of khninsu, and persuaded namrôti, king of khmunu, to take an oath of allegiance. at length, those petty kings and princes of the said and the delta who still remained unconquered called upon ethiopia, the only power capable of holding its ground against him, for help. the �vile kaushu� (cush) probably rose to be an independent state about the time when sheshonq and the bubastite kings came into power. [illustration: .jpg view of a part of the ruins of napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph published in cailliaud. peopled by theban settlers, and governed by the civil and religious code of thebes, the provinces which lay between the cataract of hannek and the confluence of the two mies soon became a second thebaid, more barren and less wealthy than the first, but no less tied to the traditions of the past. napata, its capital, lay in the plain at the foot of a sandstone cliff, which rose perpendicularly to a height of nearly two hundred feet, its summit, when viewed from the southwest, presenting an accidental resemblance to a human profile.* this was the _du-uabu_, or sacred mount, in the heart of which the god was supposed to have his dwelling; the ruins of several temples can still be seen near the western extremity of the hill, the finest of them being dedicated to a local amon-râ. * the natives believe this profile to have been cut by human hands--an error which has been shared by more than one modern traveller. [illustration: .jpg gebel-barkal, the sacred mountain of napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in cailliaud. this amon was a replica of the theban amon on a smaller scale, and was associated with the same companions as his prototype, maut, his consort, and khonsu, his son. he owed his origin to the same religious concepts, and was the central figure of a similar myth, the only difference being that he was represented in composite shape, with a ram�s head; perhaps a survival from some earlier indigenous deity, such as didun, for instance, who had been previously worshipped in those parts; his priests lived in accordance with the rules of the theban hierarchy. [illustration: .jpg ruins of the temple of amon at napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph published by cailliaud. we can readily believe that when hrihor extorted the title of �royal son of kaushu� from the weaklings who occupied the throne at the close of the ramesside dynasty, he took care to install one of the members of his family as high priest at napata, and from henceforward had the whole country at his bidding. subsequently, when paînotmu ii. was succeeded by auputi at thebes, it seems that the ethiopian priests refused to ratify his election. whether they conferred the supreme power on one of their own number, or whether some son of paînotmu, flying from the bubastite kings, arrived at the right moment to provide them with a master, is not quite clear. [illustration: .jpg plan of the temple of amon at napata] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the plan drawn up and published by cailliaud. the kings of ethiopia, priests from the first, never lost their sacerdotal character. they continued to be men of god, and as such it was necessary that they should be chosen by the god himself. on the death of a sovereign, amon at once became regent in the person of his prophet, and continued to act until the funeral rites were celebrated. as soon as these ceremonies were completed, the army and the people collected at the foot of the sacred mount; the delegates of the various orders of the state were led into the sanctuary, and then, in their presence, all the males of the royal family--�the king�s brothers,� as they were called--were paraded before the statue of the god; he on whom the god laid his hand as he passed was considered to be the chosen one of amon, and consecrated king without delay.* * this is the ritual described in the _stele of the enthronement_. perhaps it was already in use at thebes under the xxist and xxiind dynasties, at the election of the high priest, whether he happened to be a king or not; at any rate, a story of the ptolemaic period told by synesius in _the egyptian_ seems to point to this conclusion. as may be readily imagined, the new monarch thus appointed by divine dictation was completely under the control of the priests, and before long, if he failed to prove sufficiently tractable, they claimed the right to dispense with him altogether; they sent him an order to commit suicide, and he obeyed. the boundaries of this theocratic state varied at different epochs; originally it was confined to the region between the first cataract and the mouth of the blue nile. the bulk of the population consisted of settlers of egyptian extraction and egyptianised natives; but isolated, as they were, from egypt proper by the rupture of the political ties which had bound them to the metropolis, they ceased to receive fresh reinforcements from the northern part of the valley as they had formerly done, and daily became more closely identified with the races of various origin which roamed through the deserts of libya or arabia. this constant infiltration of free or slavish bedâwin blood and the large number of black women found in the harems of the rich, and even in the huts of the common people, quickly impaired the purity of the race, even among the tipper classes of the nation, and the type came to resemble that of the negro tribes of equatorial africa.* * taharqa furnishes us with a striking example of this degeneration of the egyptian type. his face shows the characteristic features of the black race, both on the egyptian statue as well as on the assyrian stele of sinjirli. [illustration: a.jpg a nearly pure ethiopian type] [illustration: b.jpg mixed negro and ethiopian type] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the language fared no better in the face of this invasion, and the written character soon became as corrupt as the language; words foreign to the egyptian vocabulary, incorrect expressions, and barbarous errors in syntax were multiplied without stint. the taste for art decayed, and technical ability began to deteriorate, the moral and intellectual standard declined, and the mass of the people showed signs of relapsing into barbarism: the leaders of the aristocracy and the scribes alone preserved almost intact their inheritance from an older civilisation. egypt still attracted them: they looked upon it as their rightful possession, torn from them by alien usurpers in defiance of all sense of right, and they never ceased to hope that some day, when the god saw fit, they would win back their heritage. were not their kings of the posterity of sibu, the true representatives of the ramessides and the solar race, compared with whom the northern pharaohs, even those whose mothers ranked as �worshippers� of amon, were but mere mushroom kings? thebes admitted the validity of their claims: it looked to them for help, and the revolts by which it had been torn ever since the reign of osorkon ii. were, perhaps, instigated by the partisans of ethiopia. in the time of petubastis its high priests, harsiisît and takelôti, were still connected with the tanites; after that it placed itself under the immediate orders of ethiopia, and the pontificate disappeared. the accession of a sovereign who was himself invested by hereditary right with the functions and title of high priest of amon henceforth rendered the existence of such an office superfluous at thebes: it would almost have meant an _imperium in imperio_. the administration of religious, and perhaps also of political, affairs was, therefore, handed over to the deputy prophet, and this change still further enhanced the importance of the �female worshippers of the god.� in the absence of the king, who had his capital at napata, they remained the sole representatives of legitimate authority in the thebaid: the chief among them soon came to be regarded as a veritable _lady of thebes_, and, subject to the god, mistress of the city and its territory. it is not quite clear whether it was piônkhi miamun or one of his immediate predecessors who took possession of the city. the nomes dependent on amon followed the example of the capital, and the whole theban territory as far as siut had been occupied by ethiopian troops, when in the twenty-first year of the king�s reign the princes of the delta and middle egypt appealed to the court of napata for help. [illustration: .jpg map of middle egypt during the campaign of pionkhi] even had they not begged it to do so, it would have been compelled before long to intervene, for tafnakhti was already on his way to attack it; piônkki charged luâmarsakni and pu-arama, the generals he had already stationed in the thebaid, to hold tafnakhti in check, till he was able to get together the remainder of his army and descend the nile to support them. their instructions were to spare none of the rebellious towns, but to �capture their men and their beasts, and their ships on the river; to allow none of the fellaheen to go out into the fields, nor any labourer to his labour, but to attack hermopolis and harass it daily.� they followed out these orders, though, it would seem, without result, until the reinforcements from nubia came up: their movements then became more actively offensive, and falling on tafnakhti�s ships, which were making for thebes heavily laden with men and stores, they sunk several of them. [illustration: .jpg ruins of oxyrrhynchos and the modern town of bahnesa] drawn by boudier, from an engraving in vivant denon. anxious to profit by this first success, they made straight for heracleopolis with a view to relieving it. tafnakhti, accompanied by the two kings namrôti and auputi, was directing the siege in person; he had under his command, in addition to contingents from busiris, mendès, thoth, and pharbaîthos, all the vassals of osorkon iii., the successor of petubastis and titular pharaoh of the whole country. the ethiopian fleet engaged the egyptian ships at the end of the island of heracleopolis, near the mouth of the canal leading from the nile to the bahr-yusuf.* tafnakhti was defeated, and the remnants of his squadron took refuge in pipuga under cover of his land forces.** at dawn, the next day, the ethiopians disembarked and gave battle. the struggle was long and fierce, but indecisive. luâmarsakni and puarama claimed the victory, but were obliged to effect a retreat on the day following their so-called success, and when they dropped anchor in the harbour of hermopolis, they found that namrôti had made his way back to the city by land and forestalled them. powerless to hold the field without support, he collected all the men and cattle he could lay hands on, and awaited the progress of events behind his ramparts. the ethiopians invested the town, and wrote to inform piônkhi of what they had done--not, however, without some misgiving as to the reception which awaited their despatches. and sure enough, �his majesty became enraged thereat, even as a panther: �if they have allowed a remnant of the warriors of the north to remain, if they have let one of them escape to tell of the fight, if they make him not to die in their slaughter, then by my life, by the love of râ, by the praise of amon for me, i will myself go down and overthrow that which tafnakhti hath done,*** i will compel him to give up war for ever! therefore, after celebrating the festivals of the new year, when i shall have sacrificed to amon of [napata], my father, in his excellent festival wherein he appears in his procession of the new year, when he shall have sent me in peace to look upon the [theban] amon in his festivals at thebes, and when i shall have carried his image in procession to luxor, in the festival celebrated in his honour among the festivals of thebes, on the night of the feast appointed in the thebaid, established by râ at the creation, when i have led him in the procession and brought him unto his throne, on the day for introducing the god, even the second of athyr, then will i make the enemy taste the savour of my claws.�� * the ancient geographers looked upon the nome of heraoleopolis as a large island, its southern boundary being, probably, the canal of harabshent: the end of the island, which the egyptians called �the forepart of khninsu,� was probably harabshent and its environs. ** pi-puga is probably el-fokâ, on the nile, to the north of harabshent. *** the king does not mention his adversary by name in the text; he is content to indicate him by a pronoun in the third person--�that which he hath done... then will i make him taste,� etc. the generals did their very utmost to appease their master�s wrath before he appeared on the scene. they told off a force to keep watch over hermopolis while they themselves marched against the nome of uabu; they took oxyrrhynchos by storm, with �the fury of a water-spout,� and informed the king of this achievement; but �his heart was not softened thereby.� they crossed over to the right bank; they crushed the people of the north under the walls of tatehni,* they forced the walls of the town with the battering-ram, and killed many of the inhabitants, amongst others a son of tafnakhti, whose body they sent to the king; but �his heart was not softened thereby.� they then pushed on as far as haït bonua** and sacked it, but still failed to regain favour. on the th of thoth, piônkhi came down to thebes, and after hasty attendance at the services to amon, went to rejoin the vanguard of his army under the walls of hermopolis. * the modern tehneh, on the right bank of the nile, a little below minieh. ** hâit-bonu, or hâbonu, is the hipponon of the greco-roman geographers. [illustration: .jpg king namrÔti leading a horse to piÔnkhi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an impression of the stele in the gizeh museum. �no sooner had his majesty quitted the cabin of his ship, than the horses were harnessed and the charioteers in their places; the fear of his majesty spread even to the nomads of asia, and all hearts trembled before him.� piônkhi drove back the enemy behind their walls, pitched his tent to the south-west of the city, threw up earth-works, and built terraces so as to place his bowmen and sling-ers on a level with the battlements of its towers. at the end of three days, namrôti, finding himself hard pressed on every side, resolved to surrender. he sent envoys to piônkhi laden with rich presents, and despatched queen nsitentmahît after them, to beg for mercy from the women who had accompanied the ethiopian, his wives, concubines, daughters, or royal sisters. their entreaties were graciously received, and namrôti ventured to come in person, leading a horse with his right hand and shaking in his left a sistrum of gold and lapis-lazuli; he knelt down and presented with his salutations the long train of gifts which had gone before him. piônkhi visited the temple of thoth, and there, amidst the acclamations of soldiers and priests, offered up the customary sacrifices. [illustration: .jpg ruins of the temple of thoth, at hermopolis the great] drawn by boudier, from an engraving in vivant denon. the portico was destroyed about by the engineers who constructed the sugar refinery at rodah, and now only a few shapeless fragments of it remain. he then made his way to the palace and inspected its courts, chambers, treasury, and storehouses, and reviewed the whole household, including even namrôti�s own wives and daughters, though �he turned not his face towards any one of them.� he next went on to the stud-farms, and was indignant to find that the horses had suffered from hunger during the siege. thoroughbreds were probably somewhat scarce at napata, and he had, no doubt, reckoned on obtaining new blood and a complete relay of chargers from the egyptian stables; his chances of doing so seemed likely to vanish if brood mares and stallions had everywhere been debilitated by the hardships of war. he reserved a part of the booty for himself, handed over the balance to the priests of amon at karnak, and also, before he left, received tribute from heracleopolis. pefzââbastît brought him horses, the pick of his stables, slaves laden with gold and silver and precious stones; then burying his face in the dust, he offered worship to his liberator: �hell had swallowed me up, i was plunged into darkness, and lo, now a light has been given me. since i have found no man to love me in the day of adversity, or to stand by me in the day of battle, save only thee, o victorious king, who hast torn away the night from above me, i will be thy servant, i and all my house, and khninsu shall pay tribute into thy treasury. for, as to thee, thou art harmakhis, chief of the imperishable stars, thou art king, even as he is king, and even as he doth not destroy himself, neither shalt thou destroy thyself!� the downfall of khmunu led all who might still have shown resistance in middle egypt to lay down their arms also. the fortress of pisakhmakhpirrî* dominated the gorges of lahunît, and thus commanded the entrance to the fayum; but the son of tafnakhti agreed to surrender it, provided he were allowed to march out with the honours of war. * this fortress, which bears a name compounded with that of osorkon i., must have been rebuilt by that monarch on the site of an earlier fort; the new name remained in use under the xxiind and xxiiith dynasties, after which the old one reappears. it is illahun, where petrie discovered the remains of a flourishing town of the bubastite epoch. shortly after, maîtumu threw open its gates, and its example was followed by titauî; at maîtumu there was rioting among the egyptians in the streets, one party wishing to hold out, the other to surrender, but in the end the latter had their way.* piônkhi discharged his priestly duties wherever he went, and received the local taxes, always being careful to reserve a tenth for the treasury of amon-râ; the fact that his army was kept under rigid control, and that he showed great clemency to the vanquished, helped largely to conciliate those who were not bound by close ties of interest to the cause of tafnakhti. on reaching memphis, piônkhi at once had recourse to the persuasive methods which had hitherto served him so well, and entered into negotiations with the garrison. �shut not yourselves up in forts, and fight not against the upper country,** for shu the god of creation, when i enter, he entereth, and when i go out, he goeth out, and none may repel my attacks. i will present offerings to phtah and to the divinities of the white wall, i will honour sokari in his mysterious coffer, i will contemplate eîsânbuf,*** then i will return from thence in peace. if ye will trust in me, memphis shall be prosperous and healthy, even the children shall not cry therein. behold the nomes of the south; not a soul has been massacred there, saving only the impious who blasphemed god, and these rebels have been executed.� * maritumu, or maîtumu, is the modern meîdum, associated in the inscription with the characteristic epithet, pisokari- nibu-suazu, or �temple of sokari, master of the transfiguration.� titauî lay exactly on the frontier between upper and lower egypt--hence its name, which signifies �commanding the two regions;� it was in the memphite nome, and brugsch identifies it with the greek city of acanthos, near dahshur, but this position appears to me to be too close to memphis and too far from the boundary of the nome; i should prefer to place titauî at kafr el-ayat or thereabouts. ** i.e. against piônkhi, who was master of the upper country, that is, of thebes and ethiopia, and the forces from the whole of the valley to the south of memphis who accompanied him. *** lit., �he who is on the south of his wall,� a name given to one of the quarters of memphis, and afterwards applied to the god phtah, who was worshipped in that quarter. this eloquence, however, was of no avail. a detachment of archers, sailors, and engineers sent to make a reconnaissance of the harbour was taken by surprise and routed with loss, and on the following night tafnakhti suddenly made his appearance on the spot. he had the men who were defending it paraded before him, and made them a speech, in which he pointed out the great natural strength of the position, the stoutness of the walls and the abundance of provisions; he then mounted his horse, and making his way a second time through the enemy�s outposts, headed straight for the delta in order to levy reinforcements there. the next day, piônkhi went in person to examine the approaches of the city in which his ancestors had once been throned. there was a full nile, and the river came right up to the walls. he sailed close in along the whole of the eastern front, and landed on the north, much vexed and discomfited at finding it so strongly fortified. even the common soldiers were astonished, and began to discuss among themselves the difficulties of the undertaking with a certain feeling of discouragement. it would be necessary, they declared, to open a regular siege, �to make an inclined plane leading to the city, throw up- earthworks against its walls, bind ladders, set up masts and erect spars all around it.� piônkhi burst into a rage when these remarks were repeated to him: a siege in set form would have been a most serious enterprise, and would have allowed the allied princes time to get together fresh troops. he drove his ships full speed against the line of boats anchored in the harbour, and broke through it at the first onset; his sailors then scaled the bank and occupied the houses which overlooked it. reinforcements concentrated on this point gradually penetrated into the heart of the city, and after two days� fighting the garrison threw down their arms. the victor at once occupied the temples to save them from pillage: he then purified memphis with water and natron, ascended in triumph to the temple of phtah, and celebrated there those rites which the king alone was entitled to perform. the other fortresses in the neighbourhood surrendered without further hesitation. king auputi of tentramu,* prince akaneshu,** and prince petisis tendered the homage of their subjects in person, and the other sovereigns of the delta merely waited for a demonstration in force on the part of the ethiopians before following their example. * probably the original of the statue discovered by naville at tel-el-yahudîyeh. tentramu and taânu, the cities of auputi, are perhaps identical with the biblical elim (exod. xvi. ) and the daneon portus of pliny on the red sea, but naville prefers to identify daneon with the tonu of the _berlin papyrus no. _. i believe that we ought to look for the kingdom of auputi in the neighbourhood of menzaleh, near tanis. ** akaneshu ruled over sebennytos and in the xviith nome. naville discovered at samannud the statue of one of his descendants, a king of the same name, perhaps his grandson, who was prince of sebennytos in the time of psammetichus i. piônkhi crossed the nile and marched in state to heliopolis, there to receive the royal investiture. he offered up prayers at the various holy places along the route, such as the sanctuary of tumu at khriâhu and the temple of the ennead who dwelt in the cavern from which the northern nile was supposed to spring; he then crossed over mount ahu, bathed his face in the reputed source of the river, and at length penetrated into the dwelling-place of râ. he ascended the steps leading to the great chapel in order that he might there �see râ in hâît-banbonu even himself. all unattended, he drew the bolt, threw open the doors, contemplated his father râ in hâît-banbonu, adjusted ra�s boat mâdît and the saktit of shu, then closed the doors again, affixed a seal of clay, and impressed it with the royal signet.� he had thus submitted his conduct for the approval of the god in whom all attributes of royalty were vested, and the god had legitimatised his claims to universal rule: he was henceforth the master, not merely _de jure_ but _de facto_ as well, and the kings who had hitherto declined to recognise him were now obliged to bow reverently before his authority. osorkon was the first to submit, and did so before the close of piônkhi�s stay at heliopolis; when the latter pitched his camp near kahani* in the athribite nome, the nobles of the eastern delta, both small and great, came one after another with their followers; among them patinifi of pisapti, paimau of busiris, pabîsa of khriâhu and of pihâpi,** besides a dozen others. * kahani is, perhaps, the modern kaha, some distance to the north of qaliub. ** pisapti stood on the present site of shaft-el-ïïineh. khriâhu, as we know, formed part of the heliopolitan nome, and is, very possibly, to be identified with babylon of egypt, the postât of the arabs; pihâpi was a place not far from the supposed source of the southern nile. he extended his favour to all alike, merely stipulating that they should give him the best of their horses, and undertake to keep careful watch over the prosperity of their stud farms. but tafnakhti still held out, and seemed determined to defy him to the end; he had set fire to his palace and taken refuge in the islands on the river, and had provided a hiding-place for himself at masudît among the marshes on the coast in case of final defeat. a victory gained over him by the ethiopian generals suddenly induced him to sue for peace. he offered to disband his men and pay tribute, provided he was guaranteed undisturbed possession of sais and of the western districts of the delta; he refused, however, to sue for pardon in person, and asked that an envoy should be sent to receive his oath of allegiance in the temple of nit. though deserted by his brother princes and allies, he still retained sufficient power to be a thorn in his conqueror�s side; his ultimate overthrow was certain, but it would have entailed many a bloody struggle, while a defeat might easily have shaken the fidelity of the other feudatory kings, and endangered the stability of the new dynasty. piônkhi, therefore, accepted the terms offered him without modification, and asked for no guarantee beyond the oath taken in the presence of the gods. news was brought him about this time that cynopolis and aphroditopolis had at last thrown open their gates, and accordingly he summoned his vassals for the last time to his camp near athribis. with the exception of tafnakhti, they all obeyed the call, including two minor kings of upper and two of lower egypt, together with barons of lesser rank; but of these, namrôti alone was admitted to the royal apartments, because he alone was circumcised and ate no fish; after this the camp was broken up, and the ethiopians set out on their return journey southwards. piônkhi may well have been proud of the result of this campaign, both for himself and for his country. the empire of the pharaohs, which had for the last hundred and fifty years been divided, was now re-established from the confluence of the niles to the shores of the mediterranean, but it was no longer egypt that benefited by the change. it was now, after many years of slavery, the turn of ethiopia to rule, and the seat of power was transferred from thebes or memphis to napata. as a matter of fact, the fundamental constitution of the kingdom underwent no great modification; it had merely one king the more to rule over it--not a stranger, as we are often tempted to conclude, when we come to measure these old-world revolutions by our modern standards of patriotism, but a native of the south, who took the place of those natives of the north who had succeeded one another on the throne since the days of smendes. in fact, this newly crowned son of râ lived a very long way off; he had no troops of his own further north than siut, and he had imposed his suzerainty on the rival claimants and reigning princes without thereby introducing any change in the constitution of the state. in tendering their submission to him, the heads of the different nomes had not the slightest intention of parting with their liberty; they still retained it, even though nominally dependent, and continued, as in the past, to abuse it without scruple. namrôti was king at khmunu, pefzââbastît at khninsu, auputi at tentramu, and osorkon iii. at bubastis; the prestige investing the tanite race persisted so effectively that the annalists give to the last-named precedence over the usurpers of the ethiopian dynasty; the tanites continued to be the incarnate representatives of legitimate power, and when osorkon iii. died, in , it was his son psamutis who was regarded as the lord of egypt. tafnakhti had, in his defeat, gained formal recognition of his royalty. he was no longer a mere successful adventurer, a hero of the hour, whose victories were his only title-deeds, whose rights rested solely on the argument of main force. piônkhi, in granting him amnesty, had conferred official investiture on him and on his descendants. henceforth his rule at sais was every whit as legitimate as that of osorkon at bubastis, and he was not slow in furnishing material proof of this, for he granted himself cartouches, the uraeus, and all the other insignia of royalty. these changes must have been quickly noised abroad throughout asia. commercial intercourse between syria and egypt was maintained as actively as ever, and the merchant caravans and fleets exported with regularity the news of events as well as the natural products of the soil or of industry. the tidings of an ethiopian conquest and of the re-establishment of an undivided empire in the valley of the nile, coming as they did at the very moment when the first effects of the assyrian revival began to be so keenly felt, could not fail to attract the attention and arouse the hopes of syrian statesmen. the philistines, who had never entirely released themselves from the ties which bound them to the pharaohs of the delta, felt no repugnance at asking for a renewal of their former protection. [illustration: .jpg king tafnakhti presents a field to tumu and to bastit] drawn by boudier, from mallet�s photograph of the stele in the museum at athens. as for the phoenicians, the hebrews, edom, moab, ammon, and damascus, they began to consider whether they had not here, in africa, among the members of a race favourably disposed towards them by the memories of the past and by its ambition, hereditary allies against nineveh. the fact that egypt was torn by domestic dissensions and divided into a score of rival principalities in no way diminished their traditional admiration for its wealth or their confidence in its power; assyria itself was merely an agglomeration of turbulent provinces, vassal cities, and minor kingdoms, artificially grouped round the ancient domain of assur, and yet the convulsions by which it was periodically shaken had not prevented it from developing into the most formidable engine of war that had ever threatened the peace of asia. the african hosts, whether led by ordinary generals or by a king of secondary rank, formed none the less a compact army well fitted by numbers and organisation to hold its own against any forces which tiglath-pileser might put into the field; and even should the supreme pharaoh be unwilling to throw the full weight of his authority into the balance, yet an alliance with one of the lesser kings, such as the lord of sais or of bubastis, would be of inestimable assistance to any one fortunate enough to secure it. it is true that, in so far as the ultimate issue was concerned, there was little to be gained by thus pitting the two great powers together and persuading one to fight against the other; the victor must, in the long run, remain master alike of those who had appealed for help and of those who had fought against him, and if egypt emerged triumphant, there would be nothing for it but to accept her supremacy. in either event, there could be no question of independence; it was a choice between the hegemony of egypt or that of assyria. from the moment that tiglath-pileser had made his appearance on the northern horizon, the nations of southern syria had instinctively looked to pharaoh for aid. there seems to have been an egyptian faction in samaria, even during the disorders which broke out after the death of jeroboam ii., and perhaps it was a hope of overcoming it easily which led menahem of his own accord to invoke the still remote suzerainty of nineveh, after the fall of unki in ;* later on, when pekah had assassinated pekahiah and entered into alliance with eezin, he adopted the view of those who saw no hope of safety save from the banks of the nile, his only reason for doing so being, apparently, because the kings of the fallen dynasty had received support from the valley of the tigris. hosea continually reproached his countrymen with this vacillating policy, and pointed out the folly of it: �ephraim is like a silly dove without understanding; they call unto egypt, they go unto assyria; when they shall go i will spread my net upon them,� said the eternal.** * the existence of an egyptian faction at this period has been admitted by kittel. winckler has traced to the arabian or idumæan muzri everything previously referred to egypt. his arguments seem to me to be, in many cases, convincing, as i shall point out where necessary, but i think he carries his theory too far when he systematically excludes egypt and puts muzri in its place. egypt, even in its decadent state, was a far more important power than the arabian muzri, and it seems unreasonable to credit it with such a limited share in the politics of the time. i cannot believe that any other power is intended in most of those passages in the hebrew writings and assyrian inscriptions in which the words mizraîm and muzri occur. ** hos. vii. , . they were to be given up to assyria and dispersed, and while some were to go into assur and eat unclean food, ephraim was to return into egypt; �for, lo, they are gone away from destruction, yet egypt shall gather them up, memphis shall bury them.� * nevertheless, they persisted in negotiating with egypt, and though there was as yet no formal alliance between samaria and sais or tanis, their relations were so close that no enemy of israel could look for protection from psamuti or his vassals. ahaz had, therefore, nothing to hope from this quarter, and was compelled by the force of circumstances to throw himself into the arms of assyria, if he decided to call in outside aid at all. his prophets, like those of pekah, strenuously forbade him to do so, and among them was one who was beginning to exert a marvellous influence over all classes of society--isaiah, the son of amoz. he had begun his career in the year that uzziah died,** and had continued to prophesy without interruption during the brief reign of jotham.*** * hos. ix. - . ** isa. vi. . *** the fragments which can be assigned to this period now occur as follows: chap. ii. - (verses - are also found in _micah_ iv. - , and were, perhaps, borrowed from some third prophet), ii. - , iii., iv., v. - (the parable of the vineyard), and lastly, chap, vi., in so far as the substance is concerned; it seems to have been put into its present form long after the events. when jahveh first appeared to him, in the smoke of the altar, seated on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, a sense of his own unworthiness filled him with fear, but an angel purified his lips with a live coal, and he heard the voice of the lord saying, �whom shall i send, and who will go for us?� and he replied, �here am i; send me,� whereupon jahveh gave him this message: �hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again and be healed.� then the prophet asked, �lord, how long?� and jahveh answered, �until cities be waste without inhabitant and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and jahveh have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land. and if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall be eaten up; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed is the stock thereof.� * * an explanatory gloss, �the fierce anger of rezin and syria and of the son of remaliah,� which formed no part of the original prophecy, is here inserted in the text. judah, though less powerful, was quite as corrupt as his brethren of israel, and the divine wrath threatened him no less than them; it rested with himself, however, to appease it by repentance, and to enter again into divine favour after suffering his punishment; the eternal would then gather together on mount sion those of his faithful people who had survived the crisis, and would assure them a long period of prosperity under his law. the prophet, convinced that men could in no wise alter the decrees of the highest, save by repentance alone, was astonished that the heads of the state should strive to impede the progress of events that were happening under their very eyes, by the elaborately useless combinations of their worldly diplomacy. to his mind, the invasion of pekah and eezin was a direct manifestation of the divine anger, and it filled him with indignation that the king should hope to escape from it by begging for an alliance against them with one of the great powers: when jahveh should decide that the punishment was sufficient for the crime, he would know how to shatter his instruments without any earthly help. indeed, isaiah had already told his master, some days before the allied kings appeared, while the latter was busy superintending the works intended to supply jerusalem with water, to �take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands.... because syria hath counselled evil against thee, ephraim also, and the son of bemaliah, saying, let us go up against judah, hem it in, carry it by storm, and set up the son of tabeel as king: thus saith the lord god, it shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.� if, however, the course of the divine justice was to be disturbed by the intervention of a purely human agency, the city would doubtless be thereby saved, but the matter would not be allowed to rest there, and the people would suffer even more at the hands of their allies than they had formerly endured from their enemies. �behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name immanuel--god with us.... for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken,� and yet �jahveh shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father�s house, days that have not come, from the day that ephraim departed from judah.� * and then, employing one of those daring apologues, common enough in his time, the prophet took a large tablet and wrote upon it in large letters two symbolical names--_spoil-speedeth, prey-hasteth_--and set it up in a prominent place, and with the knowledge of credible witnesses went in unto the prophetess his wife. when the child was born in due course, jahveh bade him call it _spoil-speedeth, prey-hasteth_, �for before he shall have knowledge to cry, my father and, my mother, the riches of damascus and the spoil of samaria shall be carried away before the king of assyria.� but the eternal added, �forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in rezin and remaliah�s son; now therefore, behold, the lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river [the euphrates], strong and many:* and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall sweep onward into judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, o immanuel [god-with-us]!�*** finding that egypt was in favour of his adversaries, ahaz, in spite of the prophet�s warnings, turned to assyria.**** * isa. vii. - . ** a marginal gloss has here been inserted in the text, indicating that it was «the king of assyria and all his glory » that the prophet referred to *** isa. viii. - . **** the following portions of isaiah are accepted as belonging to the period of this syrian war: in addition to chap, vii., chaps, viii.-ix . xi - . xxii. - ; i. - , - ; to these kuenen adds chap, xxiii. - [illustration: .jpg map the kingdom of damascus] at one time he had found himself so hard pressed that he invoked the aid of the syrian gods, and made his eldest son pass through the fire in order to propitiate them:* he collected together all the silver and gold he could find in his own treasury or in that of the temple and sent it to tiglath-pileser, with this message: �i am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me out of the hand of the king of syria, and out of the hand of the king of israel, which rise up against me.� ** * kings xvi. (cf. chron. xxviii. ). there is nothing to indicate the date, but most historians place the event at the beginning of the syrian war, a little before or during the siege. ** kings xvi. , ; cf. chron. xxviii. , , . tiglath-pileser came in haste, and rezin and pekah, at the mere tidings of his approach, desisted from their attack on jerusalem, separated, and retired each to his own kingdom. the assyrian king did not immediately follow them up. he took the road leading along the coast, after leaving the plains of the middle orontes, and levied tribute from the phoenician cities as he passed; he then began by attacking the western frontier of israel, and sent a body of troops against the philistines, who were ceaselessly harassing judah. hannon, king of gaza, did not await the attack, but fled to egypt for safety, and ahaz breathed freely, perhaps for the first time since his accession. this, however, was only a beginning; the real struggle took place in the following year, and was hotly contested. in spite of the sorry pass to which its former defeats and present discords had brought it, damascus still possessed immense wealth, and its army, when reinforced by the arabian and israelite contingents, was capable of holding its own for a long time against the battalions of assyria, even if it could not hope to conquer them. unfortunately for its chances, eezin had failed to inherit the military capacity of his great predecessors, ben-hadad and hazael; he allowed tiglath-pileser to crush the hebrews without rendering them any effective assistance. pekah fought his best, but he lost, one after another, the strongholds which guarded his northern frontier--ijon, abel-beth-maacah, janoah, kedesh, and hazor; he saw the whole of naphtali and gilead laid waste, and their inhabitants carried off into assyria without his being able to prevent it; he himself being obliged to evacuate samaria and take refuge in the mountains almost unattended. judah followed, with mingled exultation and disquietude, the vicissitudes of the tragic drama which was thus enacted before its eyes, and isaiah foretold the speedy ruin of the two peoples who had but yesterday threatened to enslave it. he could already see the following picture in his mind�s eye: �damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. the cities of aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.� * * both of these aroêrs lay beyond jordan--one in reuben, afterwards moab (judg. xi. ; jer. xlviii. ); the other in amnion, afterwards gad (josh. xiii. ; sam. xxiv. ); here they stand for the countries beyond jordan which tiglath-pileser had just laid waste. the tradition preserved in citron, v. stated that these inhabitants of gad and reuben were led into captivity by pul, i.e. tiglath-pileser. �the fortress also shall cease from ephraim, and the kingdom from damascus, and the remnant of syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of israel, saith the lord of hosts! and it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. and it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of ephraim. yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree, saith jahveh, the god of israel!... in that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood, and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the children of israel:* and it shall be as a desolation. for thou hast forgotten the god of thy salvation.� ** * this is probably an allusion to the warlike exploits performed during rezin and pekah�s invasion of judaea, a year or two previously. ** isa. xvii. - , , . samaria was doomed to helplessness for many a day to come, if not for ever, but it had taken a whole year to lay it low ( ); tiglath-pileser returned in , and devoted yet another year to the war against damascus. eezin had not been dismayed by the evil fortune of his friends, and had made good his losses by means of fresh alliances. he had persuaded first mutton ii. of tyre, then mitinti of askalon, and with the latter a section of the philistines, to throw in their lot with him; he had even won over shamshieh, queen of the arabs, and with her a number of the most warlike of the desert tribes; for himself, he had taken up a position on the further side of anti-lebanon, and kept strict watch from mount hermon on the roads leading from the valley of the jordan to the plains of the abana, in order to prevent the enemy from outflanking him and taking him in the rear. but all to no purpose; tiglath-pileser bore directly down upon him, overwhelmed him in a pitched battle, obliged him to take refuge behind the walls of damascus, and there besieged him. [illustration: .jpg mount hermon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought back by lortet. the city was well fortified, amply supplied with provisions, and strongly garrisoned; the siege was, therefore, a long one, and the assyrians filled up the time by laying waste the fertile country at the foot of anti-lebanon. at last rezin yielded, gave himself up unconditionally, and was forthwith executed: eight thousand of his followers were carried off to kîr, on the confines of elam,* his kingdom was abolished, and a ninevite governor was installed in his palace, by whom the former domain of damascus and the territory lately wrested from israel were henceforth to be administered. * kings xvi. . kîr is generally located in armenia, media, or babylonia; a passage in isaiah (xxii. ), however, seems to point to its having been somewhere in the direction of elam, and associated with the aramæans on the banks of the tigris. the assyrian monuments have not, as yet, yielded confirmation of the details given by the _book of the kings_ in regard to the captivity of the inhabitants of damascus. a fragmentary tablet, giving an account of the death of rezin, was discovered by h. raw-linson, but it was left in assyria, and no one knows what has since become of it. [illustration: .jpg an arab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the coalition he had formed did not long survive its leader.* mutton hastily came to an understanding with the conqueror; mitinti, like hannon, fled into egypt, and his place was taken by kukibtu, a partisan of assyria. hoshea, son of elah, rebelled against pekah, assassinated him, and purchased the right to reign over what was left of israel for ten talents of gold.** shamshieh alone held out. * the following is a list of the kings of damascus from the time of david, as far as is known up to the present time:-- [illustration: list of the kings of damascus] ** kings xv. . the inscription published by h. rawlinson, merely states that �they overthrew pekah, their king, and i promoted auzi [to the kingship] over them. i received [from him] x talents of gold and... talents of silver....� she imagined herself to be safe among the sands of the desert, and it never occurred to her that the heavy masses of the assyrian army would dream of venturing into these solitudes. detachments of light cavalry were sent in pursuit of her, and at first met with some difficulties; they were, however, eventually successful; the armenian and cappadocian steeds of the ninevite horsemen easily rode down the queen�s meharis. [illustration: .jpg arab meharis ridden down by the assyrian cavalry] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the bas-relief reproduced by layard. their success made a great impression on the arab tribes, and induced the mashaî, timaî sabasans, khaiapæans, badanæans, and khattiæans to bend the knee before assyria. they all sent envoys bearing presents of gold and silver, camels, both male and female, and spices:* even the muzri, whose territory lay to the south of the dead sea, followed their example, and a certain idibiel was appointed as their chief.** * delitzsch has identified the names of several of these races with names mentioned in the bible, such as the temah, massah, ephah, sheba. ** the name muzri, as winckler has shown, here refers, not to egypt, but to a canton near edom, the nabatsea of the greco-roman geographers. while his lieutenants were settling outstanding issues in this fashion, tiglath-pileser held open courts at damascus, where he received the visits and homage of the syrians. they came to assure themselves by the evidence of their own eyes of the downfall of the power which had for more than one hundred years checked the progress of assyria. those who, like uassarmi of tabal, showed any sign of disaffection were removed, the remainder were confirmed in their dignities, subject to payment of the usual tribute, and mutton of tyre was obliged to give one hundred talents of gold to ransom his city. ahaz came to salute his preserver, and to obtain a nearer view of the soldiers to whom he owed continued possession of jerusalem;* the kings of ammon, moab, edom, and askalon, the philistines and the nomads of the arabian desert, carried away by the general example, followed the lead of judah, until there was not a single prince or lord of a city from the euphrates to the river of egypt who had not acknowledged himself the humble vassal of nineveh. * kings xvi. - . the _nimroud inscrip_. merely mentions his tribute among that of the syrian kings. with the downfall of rezin, syria�s last hope of recovery had vanished; the few states which still enjoyed some show of independence were obliged, if they wished to retain it, to make a parade of unalterable devotion to their ninevite master, or--if they found his suzerainty intolerable--had to risk everything by appealing to egypt for help. much as they may have wished from the very first to do so, it was too early to make the attempt so soon after the conference at damascus; tiglath-pileser had, therefore, no cause to fear a rebellion among them, at any rate for some years to come, and it was just as well that this was so, for at the moment of his triumph on the shores of the mediterranean his interests in chaldæa were threatened by a serious danger. nabonazîr, king of karduniash, had never swerved from the fidelity which he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of , but the tranquillity of his reign had been more than once disturbed by revolt. borsippa itself had risen on one occasion, and endeavoured to establish itself as an independent city side by side with babylon. when nabonazîr died, in , he was succeeded by his son nabunâdinzîri, but at the end of a couple of years the latter was assassinated during a popular outbreak, and nabushumukîn, one of his sons, who had been implicated in the rising, usurped the crown ( ). he wore it for two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain ukînzîr.* * the following is as complete a list as can at present be compiled of this babylonian dynasty, the eighth of those registered in pinches� canons (cf. rost, _untersucli. zur altorient. gesch._, p. ):-- [illustration: .jpg table of this babylonian dynasty] it included twenty-two kings, and lasted for about three hundred and fifty years. the latter was chief of the bît-amukkâni, one of the most important among the chaldæan communities;* the descendants of the aramaean nomads were thus once more placed upon the throne, and their accession put an end to the relations which had existed for several centuries between assyria and karduniash. * the chronicle is silent with regard to the origin of ukînzîr, but tiglath-pileser, who declines to give him the title of �king of babylon,� says that he was _mar amuhlcâni_ = son of amukkâni. pinches� _canon_ indicates that ukînzîr belonged to a dynasty the name of which may be read either shashi or shapi. the reading shapi at once recalls the name of shapîa, one of the chief cities of the bît amukkâni; it would thus confirm the evidence of the nimroud inscription. these marauders, who had always shown themselves impatient of any settled authority, and had never proffered more than a doubtful submission to even the most triumphant invader, were not likely to accept the subordinate position which members of the presiding dynasty had been, for the most part, content to occupy. it was more probable that they would, from the very first, endeavour to throw off the suzerainty of nineveh. tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne: the year after his return from syria he got together an army and marched against it. he first cleared the right bank of the tigris, where the pukudu (pekod) offered but a feeble resistance; he annexed their territory to the ancient province of arrapkha, then crossed the river and attacked the kaldi scattered among the plains and marshes of the shatt el-haî. [illustration: .jpg a kaldu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a woodcut published by tomkins. the bît-shilâni were the first to succumb; their king nabushabshi was impaled before one of the gates of his capital, sarrabânu, the town itself was taken by storm, plundered and dismantled, and , of its inhabitants were led captive into assyria. after the bît-shilâni, came the turn of the bît-shaali. dur-illataî, their capital, was razed to the ground, and its population, numbering , men and women, was deported. their chief, lakiru, who had shown great bravery in the struggle, escaped impalement, but was sent into captivity with his people, a ninevite governor being appointed in his place. ukînzîr, who was, as we know, hereditary prince of the bit-amuk-kâni, came up in haste to defend his appanage, and threw himself into his fortress at shapîa: tiglath-pileser cut down the gardens and groves of palms which lent it beauty, burnt the surrounding farms and villages, and tried, without success, to make a breach in the walls; he still, however, maintained the siege, but when winter came on and the place still held out, he broke up his camp and retreated in good order, leaving the districts which he had laid waste occupied by an assyrian force. before his departure, he received homage and tribute from most of the aramæan chiefs, including those of balasu and the bît-dakkuri, of nadînu, and even of the bît-yakîn and merodach-baladan, whose ancestors had never before �kissed the foot� of an assyrian conqueror. in this campaign he had acquired nearly three-fourths of the whole babylonian kingdom; but babylon itself still refused to yield, and it was no easy task to compel it to do so. tiglath-pileser spent the whole of the year in preparing for another attack, and in he again appeared in front of shapîa, this time with greater success: ukînzîr fell into his hands, babylon opened its gates, and he caused himself to be proclaimed king of sumir and akkad within its walls.* many centuries had passed since the two empires had been united under the rule of a single master, or an assyrian king had �taken the hands of bel.� tiglath-pileser accepted the condition attached to this solemn investiture, which obliged him to divide his time between calah and babylon, and to repeat at every festival of the new year the mystic ceremony by which the god of the city confirmed him in his office.** * contemporary documents do not furnish us with any information as to these events. the _eponym canon_ tells us that �_the king took the hands of bel_.� pinches� _chronicle_ adds that �in the third year of ukînzîr, tiglath-pileser marched against akkad, laid waste the bît- amukkâni, and took ukînzîr prisoner; ukînzîr had reigned three years in babylon. tiglath-pileser followed him upon the throne of babylon.� ** the _eponym canon_ proves that in b.c., the year of his death, he once more took the hands of bel. his babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking to him, and perhaps in order to hide from themselves their dependent condition, they shortened his purely assyrian name of tukulti-abal-esharra into the familiar sobriquet of puru or pulu, under which appellation the native chroniclers later on inscribed him in the official list of kings: he did not long survive his triumph, but died in the month of tebeth, b.c., after having reigned eighteen years over assyria, and less than two years over babylon and chaldæa. the formulae employed by the scribes in recording historical events vary so little from one reign to another, that it is, in most cases, a difficult matter to make out, under the mask of uniformity by which they are all concealed, the true character and disposition of each successive sovereign. one thing, however, is certain--the monarch who now came upon the scene after half a century of reverses, and in a brief space restored to his armies the skill necessary to defeat such formidable foes as the armenians or the syrians of damascus, must have been an able general and a born leader of men. yet nineveh had never suffered long from a lack of capable generals, and there would be little to distinguish tiglath-pileser from any of his predecessors, if we could place nothing more than a few successful campaigns to his credit. his claim to a pre-eminent place among them rests on the fact that he combined the talents of the soldier with the higher qualities of the administrator, and organised his kingdom in a manner at once so simple and so effective, that most of the oriental powers down to the time of the grecian conquest were content to accept it as a model. as soon as the ambition of the assyrian kings began to extend beyond the region confined between the khabur and the greater zab, they found it necessary to parcel out their territory into provinces under the authority of prefects for the purpose of preserving order among the vanquished peoples, and at the same time of protecting them from the attacks of adjacent tribes; these representatives of the central power were supported by garrisons, and were thus enabled to put down such minor insurrections as broke out from time to time. some of these provinces were already in existence in the reigns of shalmaneser or tiglath-pileser i.; after the reverses in the time of assurirba, their number decreased, but it grew rapidly again as assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii. gradually extended the field of their operations and of their victories. from this epoch onwards, the monuments mention over a score of them, in spite of the fact that the list thus furnished is not a complete one; the provinces of which we know most are those whose rulers were successively appointed to act as _limmi_, each of them giving their name to a year of a reign. assyria proper contained at least four, viz. assur (called _the country_, as distinguished from all others), calah, nineveh, and arbela. the basin of the lesser zab was divided into the provinces of kakzi, arrapkha, and akhizukhîna;* that of the upper tigris into those of amidi, tushkhân, and gôzan. kirruri was bounded by mazamua, and mazamua by arrapkha and lake urumiah. we hear of the three spheres of nazibina (nisibis), tela, and kazappa in mesopotamia,** the two former on the southern watersheds of the masios, on the highways leading into syria; the latter to the south of the euphrates, in the former kingdom of the laqî. * akhizukhîna is probably identical with arzukhîna = �the city of zukhma,� which is referred to as being situated in the basin of the lesser zab. ** razappa is the biblical rezeph ( kings xix. ; isa. xxxvii. ) and the resapha of ptolemy, now er-rasafa, to the south of the euphrates, on one of the routes leading to palmyra. most of them included--in addition to the territory under the immediate control of the governor--a number of vassal states, kingdoms, cities, and tribes, which enjoyed a certain measure of independence, but were liable to pay tribute and render military service. [illustration: .jpg map of the assyrian empire under tiglath-pileser iii.] each new country was annexed, as soon as conquered, to the nearest province, or, if necessary, was converted into a distinct province by itself; thus we find that assur-nazir-pal, after laying hands on the upper valleys of the radanu and the turnat, rebuilt the ruined city of atlîla, re-named it dur-assur, placed a commandant, cavalry, and eunuchs there, and established within it storehouses for the receipt of contributions from the neighbouring barbarians. he followed the same course on each occasion when the fortune of war brought him fresh subjects;* and his successors, shalmaneser iii., samsi-rammân iv., and rammân-nirâri did the same thing in media, in asia minor, and in northern syria;** tiglath-pileser iii. had only to follow their example and extend the application of their system to the countries which he gradually forced to submit to his rule.*** * we read of the appointment of a governor in bît-khalupi, at tush-khân, in naîri, and in the country of the patina. ** the territory of the bit-adini was converted into a province by shalmaneser iii. *** we find the formation of an aramæan province, with kar- assur as its capital, mentioned in the _annals of tiglatli- pileser iii_. provinces were also established in media, in unki, in the basin of the orontes, and in lebanon, from nineteen districts formerly belonging to hamath, six maritime provinces in northern phoenicia and in coele-syria, in galilee, at gaza. in his case, however, certain elements came into play which forced him to modify several of their methods, and to have recourse to others which they had seldom or never employed. the majority of the countries hitherto incorporated had been near enough to the capital--whether it were assur, calah, or nineveh--to permit of strict watch being kept for any sign of disaffection, and they could be promptly recalled to order if they attempted to throw off the yoke. these provinces were, moreover, of moderate area and sparsely populated: once drawn within the orbit of assyria�s attraction, they were unable to escape from its influence by their own unaided efforts; on the contrary, they gradually lost their individuality, and ended by becoming merged in the body of the nation. the aramaean tribes of the khabur and the balikh, the cossæans of the turnat, the marauding shepherds of the gordyæan hills and the slopes of the masios, gradually became assimilated to their conquerors after a more or less protracted resistance, till at length--in spite of differences of origin, creed, and speech--they became the best of assyrians, every whit as devoted to the person of their king and as jealous of his honour as the aboriginal assyrians themselves. a similar result could not be looked for in the case of the cities recently subdued. it was not to be expected that babylon and damascus--to name but two of the most important--would allow themselves to be influenced and to become reconciled to their lot by artifices which had been successful enough with the medes and in the country of tul-abnî. to take the case of babylon first. it was no mere conglomeration of tribes, nor a state of minor importance, but an actual empire, nearly as large as that of assyria itself, and almost as solidly welded together. it extended from the turnat and the mountains of blam to the arabian desert and the nâr-marratûtn, and even though the cossæans, elamites, kaldâ, sumerians, akkadians, and other remnants of ancient peoples who formed its somewhat motley population, had dwelt there for centuries in a state of chronic discord, they all agreed--in theory, at any rate--in recognising the common suzerainty of babylon. babylon was, moreover, by general acknowledgment, the ancient metropolis to which assyria owed its whole civilisation; it was the holy city whose gods and whose laws had served as a prototype for the gods and laws of assyria; from its temples and its archives the assyrian scribes had drawn such knowledge as they had of the history of the ancient world, their religious doctrines and ceremonies, their methods of interpreting the omens and of forecasting the future--in short, their whole literature, both sacred and profane. the king of nineveh might conquer babylon, might even enter within its gates in the hour of triumph, and, when once he had it at his mercy, might throw down its walls, demolish its palaces, destroy its _ziggurât_, burn its houses, exterminate or carry off its inhabitants, and blot out its name from the list of nations; but so long as he recoiled from the sacrilege involved in such irreparable destruction, he was not merely powerless to reduce it to the level of an ordinary leading provincial town, such as tela or tushkhân, but he could not even deprive it in any way of its rank as a capital, or hope to make it anything less than the second city of his empire. as long as it remained in existence, it necessarily took precedence of all others, thanks to its extensive area, the beauty and antiquity of its buildings, and the number of its inhabitants. the pride of its nobles and priests, subdued for a moment by defeat, would almost instantly have reasserted itself, had the victor sought to lower the dignity of their city; babylon only consented to accept an alien master provided he bowed himself respectfully before its superiority, and was willing to forget that he was a stranger within its gates, and was ready to comply with its laws and masquerade as a babylonian. tiglath-pileser iii. never dreamt, therefore, of treating the babylonians as slaves, or of subordinating them to their assyrian descendants, but left their liberties and territory alike unimpaired. he did not attempt to fuse into a single empire the two kingdoms which his ability had won for him; he kept them separate, and was content to be monarch of both on similar terms. he divided himself, as it were, into two persons, one of whom reigned in calah, while the other reigned in karduniash, and his chaldæan subjects took care to invest this dual _rôle_ --based on a fiction so soothing to their pride--with every appearance of reality; he received from them, together with all the titles of the babylonian kings, that name of pulu, which later on found its way into their chronicles, and which was so long a puzzle to historians, both ancient and modern. experience amply proved that this was the only means by which it was possible to yoke temporarily together the two great powers of the euphrates and the tigris. among the successors of tiglath-pileser, the only sovereigns to rule over babylon without considerable difficulty were those who followed the precedent set by him and were satisfied to divide their functions and reign as dual kings over a dual kingdom.* * this was so in the case of tiglath-pileser iii.�s immediate successor, shalmaneser v., of esarhaddon, and of assur-bani-pal; shalmaneser was known at babylon by the name of ululai, assur-bani-pal by that of kanda-lanu. this combination, while gratifying to the ambition of its rulers, was, perhaps, more a source of loss than of gain to assyria itself. it is true that the power of karduniash had decreased under the previous dynasty, but it had still been strong enough to hold back the aramæans of the persian gulf on one side, and the elamite hordes on the other. it lay like a broad barrier between these barbarians and the cities of the middle tigris; when an unusually vigorous attack compelled it to give way at some point, it appealed to nineveh for help, and an assyrian army, entering the country at the fords of the zab, hastened to drive back the aggressors to the place from which they had set out. when, however, the kings of assyria had become kings of babylon as well, the situation was altered. several branches of the kaldâ had hitherto held possession of the city, and still possessed representatives and allies among the other tribes, especially among the bît-yakîn, who believed themselves entitled to reassert their supremacy within in. the elamite princes, on their part, accustomed to descend at will into the plains that lay between the tigris and the euphrates, and to enrich themselves by frequent raids, could not make up their minds to change the habits of centuries, until they had at least crossed swords with the new despot, and put his mettle to the test. the ninevite king of babylon was thus in duty bound to protect his subjects against the same enemies that had ceaselessly harassed his native-born predecessors, and as the unaided resources of karduniash no longer enabled him to do so effectively, he was, naturally, obliged to fall back on the forces at his disposal as king of assyria. henceforward it was no longer the babylonian army that protected nineveh, but rather that of nineveh which had to protect babylon, and to encounter, almost every year, foes whom in former days it had met only at rare intervals, and then merely when it chose to intervene in their affairs. where the assyrian sovereigns had gained a kingdom for themselves and their posterity, assyria itself found little else but fresh battle-fields and formidable adversaries, in the effort to overcome whom its energies were all but exhausted. in syria and on the shores of the mediterranean, tiglath-pileser had nations of less stubborn vitality to deal with, nor was he bound by the traditions of a common past to show equal respect to their prejudices. arpad, unki, the bekâa, damascus, and gilead were all consecutively swallowed up by assyria, but, the work of absorption once completed, difficulties were encountered which now had to be met for the first time. the subordinate to whom he entrusted the task of governing these districts* had one or two assyrian regiments assigned him as his body-guard,** and these exercised the same ascendency over the natives as the egyptian archers had done in days gone by: it was felt that they had the whole might of assyria behind them, and the mere fact of their presence in the midst of the conquered country was, as a rule, sufficient to guarantee the safety of the assyrian governor and ensure obedience to his commands. * the governor was called _shaknu_ = �he whom the king has established in his place,� and _pekhu_ = �the pilot,� �the manager,� whence _pikhatu_ = �a district,� and _bel-pikhati_ = �the master of a district.� it seems that the _shaknu_ was of higher rank than the _bel-pikhati_, and often had the latter under his command. ** thus assur-nazir-pal selected the horsemen and other soldiers who were to form the body-guard of the governor of parzindu. this body-guard was never a very numerous one, for the army would have melted away in the course of a campaign or two, had it been necessary, after each fresh conquest, to detach from it a sufficient force to guard against rebellion. it was strengthened, it is true, by auxiliaries enlisted on the spot, and the tributary chiefs included in the provincial district were expected to furnish a reasonable quota of men in case of need;* but the loyalty of all these people was, at the best, somewhat doubtful, and in the event of their proving untrustworthy at a critical moment, the little band of assyrian horse and foot would be left to deal with the revolt unaided until such time as the king could come and relieve them. * in a despatch from belibni to assur-bani-pal we find aramæans from the persian gulf submitting to the authority of an assyrian officer, and fighting in elam side by side with his troops. again, under assur-bani-pal, an army sent to repress a revolt on the part of kedar and the nabatseans included contingents from ammon, moab, and edom, together with the assyrian garrisons of the haurân and zobah. the distance between the banks of the jordan or abana and those of the tigris was a long one, and in nearly every instance it would have been a question of months before help could arrive. meanwhile, egypt was at hand, jealous of her rival, who was thus encroaching on territory which had till lately been regarded as her exclusive sphere of influence, and vaguely apprehensive of the fate which might be in store for her if some assyrian army, spurred by the lust of conquest, were to cross the desert and bear down upon the eastern frontiers of the delta. distrustful of her own powers, and unwilling to assume a directly offensive attitude, she did all she could to foment continual disturbances among the hebrews and phoenicians, as well as in philistia and aram; she carried on secret intrigues with the independent princes, and held out tempting hopes of speedy intervention before the eyes of their peoples; her influence could readily be traced in every seditious movement. the handful of men assigned to the governors of the earlier provinces close to the capital would have been of little avail against perils of this kind. though tiglath-pileser added colony to colony in the distant regions annexed by him, he organised them on a different plan from that which had prevailed before his time. his predecessors had usually sent assyrians to these colonies, and filled the villages vacated by them with families taken from the conquered region: a transfer of inhabitants was made, for instance, from naîri or from media into assyria, and _vice versâ_. by following this system, tiglath-pileser would soon have scattered his whole people over the dependencies of his empire, and have found his hereditary states peopled by a motley and incoherent collection of aliens; he therefore left his assyrians for the most part at home, and only effected exchanges between captives. in his earlier campaigns he brought back with him, on one occasion, , prisoners from the table-land of iran, in order to distribute them over a province which he was organising on the banks of the turnat and the zab: he levied contributions of this kind without mercy from all the states that he conquered from year to year, and dispersed the captives thus obtained over the length and breadth of his empire; he transplanted the aramæans of the mesopotamian deserts, and the kaldâ to the slopes of mount amanus or the banks of the orontes, the patinians and hamathæans to ulluba, the inhabitants of damascus to kîr or to the borders of elam,* and the israelites to some place in assyria.** * kings xvi. . ** kings xv. . he allowed them to take with them their wives and their children, their herds, their chattels, their gods, and even their money. drafted into the towns and country districts in batches sufficiently numerous to be self-supporting, but yet not large enough to allow of their at once re-establishing themselves as a distinct nation in their new home, they seem to have formed, even in the midst of the most turbulent provinces, settlements of colonists who lived unaffected by any native influence or resentment. the aborigines hated them because of their religion, their customs, their clothing, and their language; in their eyes they were mere interlopers, who occupied the property of relations or fellow-countrymen who had fallen in battle or had been spirited away to the other end of the world. and even when, after many years, the native owners of the soil had become familiarised with them, this mutual antipathy had struck such deep root in their minds that any understanding between the natives and the descendants of the immigrants was quite out of the question: what had been formerly a vast kingdom, occupied by a single homogeneous race, actuated by a common patriotic spirit, became for many a year a region capriciously subdivided and torn by the dissensions of a number of paltry antagonistic communities. the colonists, exposed to the same hatreds as the original assyrian conquerors, soon forgot to look upon the latter as the oppressors of all, and, allowing their present grudge to efface the memory of past injuries, did not hesitate to make common cause with them. in time of peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of reinforcements. thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* we possess very few details with regard to the administration of these prefects.** * this was the history of the only one of those colonies whose fate is known to us--that founded at samaria by sargon and his successors. ** the texts contain a certain number of names of offices, the precise nature of which it is not easy to ascertain, e.g. the khâzanu, the labuttu, and others. one of them, apparently, should be read _shuparshak_, and identical with one of the titles mentioned in ezra (v. , vi. ) as being in existence during the persian epoch. the various functionaries, governors of towns, tax-collectors, heads of stations, and officers whose duty it was to patrol the roads and look after the safety of merchants, were, for the most part, selected from among natives who had thrown in their lot with assyria, and probably few assyrians were to be found outside the more turbulent cities and important fortresses. the kings and chiefs whose territory was attached to a given province, either took their instructions direct from nineveh, or were sometimes placed under the control of a resident, or _kipu_, with some sort of escort at his back, who kept watch over their movements and reported them to the suzerain, and saw that the tribute was paid regularly, and that the military service provided for in the treaties was duly rendered. governors and residents alike kept up a constant correspondence with the court, and such of their letters as have chanced to come down to us show what a minute account of even the most trifling occurrences was required of them by the central authorities. they were not only obliged to report any fluctuation in the temper or attitude of their subordinates, or any intrigues that were being entered into across the frontier; they had also to record the transfer of troops, the return of fugitives, the pursuit of deserters, any chance scuffle between soldiers and natives, as well as the punishment inflicted on the rebellious, the appearance of a portent in the heavens, or omens noticed by the augurs. there were plenty of envious or officious tongues among their followers to report to headquarters the slightest failure of duty, and to draw attention to their negligence. moreover, it seems certain that the object of thus compelling them to refer to the king at every turn, was not merely in order to keep him informed of all that took place in his dependencies, but also to lay bare the daily life of his prefects before his eyes. the latter were entrusted with the command of seasoned troops; they had considerable sums of money passing through their hands, and were often obliged to take prompt decisions and enter into diplomatic or military transactions on their own responsibility; in short, most of them, at any rate, who were stationed at the furthest confines of the empire were really kings in all but title, insignia, and birth. there was always the danger lest some among them should be tempted to reassert, in their own interest, the independence of the countries under their rule, and seek to found a dynasty in their midst. the strict supervision maintained over these governors generally nipped any ambition of this kind in the bud; in some cases, however, it created the very danger it was intended to prevent. if a governor who had been recalled to nineveh or calah in order to explain his conduct failed to clear himself completely, he at once fell into disgrace; and disgrace in assyria, as in other countries of the east, meant, nine times out of ten, confiscation of property, mutilation and lifelong imprisonment, or death in its most hideous form. he would, therefore, think twice before quitting his post, and if he had any reason to suppose himself suspected, or viewed with disfavour in high quarters, he would be in no hurry to obey a summons to the capital. a revolt was almost certain to be crushed without fail, and offered merely a very precarious chance of escape, but the governor was seldom likely to hesitate between almost certain condemnation and the vague possibility of a successful rising; in such a case, therefore, he staked everything on a single throw. [illustration: .jpg tiglath-pileser iii. besieging a revellious city.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mansell. the system was a defective on, in that it exposed to strong temptation the very functionaries whose loyalty was most essential to the proper working of the administration, but its dangers were out weighed by such important advantages that we cannot but regard it as a very real improvement on the haphazard methods of the past. in the first place, it opened up a larger recruiting-ground for the army, and, in a measure, guaranteed it against that premature exhaustion which had already led more than once to an eclipse of the assyrian power. it may be that the pick of these provincial troops were, preferably, told off for police duties, or for the defence of the districts in which they were levied, and that they seldom left it except to do battle in the adjacent territory;* but, even with these limitations they were none the less of inestimable value, since they relieved the main army of assyria from garrison duties in a hundred scattered localities, and allowed the king to concentrate it almost in its entirety about his own person, and to direct it _en masse_ upon those points where he wished to strike a decisive blow. * thus, in the reign of assur-bani-pal, we find the militia of the governor of uruk marching to battle against the gambulu. on the other hand, the finances of the kingdom were put on a more stable and systematic basis. for nearly the whole of the two previous centuries, during which assyria had resumed its victorious career, the treasury had been filled to some extent by taxes in kind or in money, and by various dues claimed from the hereditary kingdom and its few immediate dependencies, but mainly by booty and by tribute levied after each campaign from the peoples who had been conquered or had voluntarily submitted to assyrian rule. the result was a budget which fluctuated greatly, since all forays were not equally lucrative, and the new dependencies proved so refractory at the idea of perpetual tribute, that frequent expeditions were necessary in order to persuade them to pay their dues. we do not know how tiglath-pileser iii. organised the finances of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from them. we notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, carchemish was assessed at a hundred talents, arpad and kuî at thirty each, megiddo and manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were applied is not specified. [illustration: .jpg a herd of horses brought in as tribute] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs on the gates of balawat. the breed here represented seems to have been common in urartu, as well as in cappadocia and northern syria. on the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils; twenty talents from nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from the same city for firewood. certain provinces were expected to maintain the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry in military operations. the most highly prized animals came, perhaps, from asia minor; the nations of mount taurus, who had supplied chargers to israel and egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses to the squadrons of nineveh. the breed was small, but robust, inured to fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these countries at the present day. in war, horses formed a very considerable proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was carried on with mesopotamia. [illustration: .jpg a typical cappadocian horse] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. alfred boissier. after the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses. tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon assyria the character by which it was known during the most splendid century of its history, and the organisation which he devised for it was so admirably adapted to the oriental genius that it survived the fall of nineveh, and served as a model for every empire-maker down to the close of the macedonian era and even beyond it. [illustration: .jpg a syrian bÎt-khilÂni] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the restoration published by luschan. the wealth of the country grew rapidly, owing to the influx of capital and of foreign population; in the intervals between their campaigns its rulers set to work to remove all traces of the ruins which had been allowed to accumulate during the last forty years. the king had built himself a splendid palace at calah, close to the monuments of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., and its terraces and walls overhung the waters of the tigris. the main entrance consisted of a _bît-khilâni_, one of those porticoes, flanked by towers and supported by columns or pillars, often found in syrian towns, the fashion for which was now beginning to spread to western asia.* * the precise nature of the edifices referred to in the inscriptions under the name of bît-khilâni is still a matter of controversy. it has been identified with the pillared hall, or audience-chamber, such as we find in sargon�s palace at khorsabad, and with edifices or portions of edifices which varied according to the period, but which were ornamented with columns. it seems clear, however, that it was used of the whole series of chambers and buildings which formed the monumental gates of assyrian palaces, something analogous to the _migdol_ of ramses iii. at medinet-habu, and more especially to the gates at zinjirli. those discovered at zinjirli afford fine examples of the arrangements adopted in buildings of this kind; the lower part of the walls was covered with bas-reliefs, figures of gods and men, soldiers mounted or on foot, victims and fantastic animal shapes; the columns, where there were any, rested on the back of a sphinx or on a pair of griffins of a type which shows a curious mixture of egyptian and semitic influences. [illustration: .jpg the foundatins of a bît-khilâni] drawn by boudier, from a sketch published by luschan. [illustration: .jpg base of a column at zinjireli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph published by luschan. the wood-work of the ninevite bît-khilâni was of cedar from mount amanus, the door-frames and fittings were of various rare woods, inlaid with ivory and metal. the entrance was guarded by the usual colossal figures, and the walls of the state reception-rooms were covered with slabs of alabaster; on these, in accordance with the usual custom,* were carved scenes from the royal wars, with explanatory inscriptions. the palace was subsequently dismantled, its pictures defaced and its inscriptions obliterated,** to mark the hatred felt by later generations towards the hero whom they were pleased to regard as a usurper; we can only partially succeed in deciphering his annals by the help of the fragmentary sentences which have escaped the fury of the destroyer. * the building of tiglath-pileser�s palace is described in the nimroud inscription. it stood near the centre of the platform of nimroud. ** the materials were utilised by esarhaddon, but it does not necessarily follow that the palace was dismantled by that monarch; this was probably done by sargon or by sennacherib. the cities and fortresses which he raised throughout the length and breadth of assyria proper and its more recently acquired provinces have similarly disappeared; we can only conjecture that the nobles of his court, fired by his example, must have built and richly endowed more than one city on their hereditary estates, or in the territories under their rule. bel-harrân-beluzur, the marshal of the palace, who twice gave his name to years of the king�s reign, viz. in and b.c., possessed, it would seem, an important fief a little to the north of assur, near the banks of the tharthar, on the site of the present tel-abta. the district was badly cultivated, and little better than a wilderness; by express order of the celestial deities--marduk, nabu, shamash, sin, and the two ishtars--he dug the foundations of a city which he called dur-bel-harrân-beluzur. the description he gives of it affords conclusive evidence of the power of the great nobles, and shows how nearly they approached, by their wealth and hereditary privileges, to the kingly rank. he erected, we are told, a _ziggurât_ on a raised terrace, in which he placed his gods in true royal fashion; he assigned slaves, landed property, and a yearly income to their priests, in order that worship might be paid to them in perpetuity; he granted sanctuary to all freemen who settled within the walls or in the environs, exemption from forced labour, and the right to tap a water-course and construct a canal. a decree of foundation was set up in the temple in memory of bel-harrân-beluzur, precisely as if he were a crowned king. it is a stele of common grey stone with a circular top. the dedicator stands erect against the background of the carving, bare-foot and bare-headed, his face cleanshaven, dressed in a long robe embroidered in a chessboard pattern, and with a tunic pleated in horizontal rows; his right elbow is supported by the left hand, while the right is raised to a level with his eyes, his fist is clenched, and the thumb inserted between the first and second fingers in the customary gesture of adoration. [illustration: .jpg stele or bel-harran-beluzur.] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by father scheil. what the provost of the palace had done on his land, the other barons in all probability did on theirs; most of the departments which had fallen away and languished during the disturbances at the close of the previous dynasty, took a new lease of life under their protection. private documents--which increase in number as the century draws to an end--contracts, official reports, and letters of scribes, all give us the impression of a wealthy and industrious country, stirred by the most intense activity, and in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity. the excellent administration of tiglath-pileser and his nobles had paved the way for this sudden improvement, and had helped to develop it, and when shalmaneser v. succeeded his father on the throne it continued unchecked.* the new-comer made no changes in the system of government which had been so ably inaugurated. he still kept assyria separate from karduniash; his babylonian subjects, faithful to ancient custom, soon devised a nickname for him, that of ululai, as though seeking to persuade themselves that they had a king who belonged to them alone; and it is under this name that their annalists have inscribed him next to pulu in the list of their dynasties.** his reign was, on the whole, a calm and peaceful one; the kaldâ, the medes, urartu, and the races of mount taurus remained quiet, or, at any rate, such disorders as may have arisen among them were of too trifling a nature to be deemed worthy of notice in the records of the time. syria alone was disturbed, and several of its independent states took advantage of the change of rulers to endeavour to shake off the authority of assyria. * it was, for a long time, an open question with the earlier assyriologists whether or not shalmaneser and sargon were different names for one and the same monarch. as for monuments, we possess only one attributed to shalmaneser, a weight in the form of a lion, discovered by layard at nimroud, in the north-west palace. the length of his reign, and the scanty details we possess concerning it, have been learnt from the _eponym canon_ and _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, and also from the hebrew texts ( kings xvii. - ; xviii. - ). ** the identity of ululai and shalmaneser v., though still questioned by oppert, has been proved by the comparison of babylonian records, in some of which the names pulu and ululai occur in positions exactly corresponding with those occupied, in others, by tiglath-pileser and shalmaneser. the name ululai was given to the king because he was born in the month of ulul; in pinches� list we find a gloss, �dynasty of tinu,� which probably indicates the assyrian town in which tiglath-pileser iii. and his son were born. egypt continued to give them secret encouragement in these tactics, though its own internal dissensions prevented it from offering any effective aid. the tanite dynasty was in its death-throes. psamuti, the last of its kings, exercised a dubious sovereignty over but a few of the nomes on the arabian frontier.* * he is the psammous mentioned by manetho. the cartouches attributed to him by lepsius really belong to the psammuthis of the xxixth dynasty. it is possible that one of the marks found at karnak indicating the level of the nile belong to the reign of this monarch. his neighbours the saites were gradually gaining the upper hand in the delta and in the fiefs of middle egypt, at first under tafnakhti, and then, after his death, under his son bukunirînif, bocchoris of the greek historians. they held supremacy over several personages who, like themselves, claimed the title and rank of pharaoh; amongst others, over a certain rudamanu mîamun, son of osorkon: their power did not, however, extend beyond siut, near the former frontier of the theban kingdom. the withdrawal of piônkhi-mîamun, and his subsequent death, had not disturbed the ethiopian rule in the southern half of egypt, though it somewhat altered its character. while an unknown ethiopian king filled the place of the conquerer at napata, another ethiopian, named kashta, made his way to the throne in thebes. [illustration: .jpg manuscript on papyrus in hieroglyphics] it is possible that he was a son of piônkhi, and may have been placed in supreme power by his father when the latter reinstated the city in its place as capital. with all their partiality for real or supposed descendants of the ramesside dynasty, the thebans were, before all things, proud of their former greatness, and eagerly hoped to regain it without delay. when, therefore, they accepted this kushite king who, to their eyes, represented the only family possessed of a legitimate claim to the throne, it was mainly because they counted on him to restore them to their former place among the cities of egypt. they must have been cruelly disappointed when he left them for the sacred mountain. his invasion, far from reviving their prosperity, merely served to ratify the suppression of that pontificate of amon-râ which was the last remaining evidence of their past splendour. [illustration: .jpg cone bearing the name of kashta and of his daughter amenertas] drawn by faucher-gudin, after prisse d�avennes. all hope of re-establishing it had now to be abandoned, since the sovereign who had come to them from napata was himself by birth and hereditary privelege and hereditary sole priest of anion: in his absence the actual head of the theban religion could lay claim only to an inferior office, and indeed, even then, the only reason for accepting a second prophet was that he might direct the worship of the temple at karnak. the force of circumstances compelled the ethiopians to countenance in the thebaid what their tanite or bubastite predecessors had been obliged to tolerate at hermopolis, heracleopolis, sais, and in many another lesser city; they turned it into a feudatory kingdom, and gave it a ruler who, like auîti, half a century earlier, had the right to use the cartouches. once installed, kashta employed the usual methods to secure his seat on the throne, one of the first being a marriage alliance. the disappearance of the high priests had naturally increased the importance of the princesses consecrated to the service of amon. from henceforward they were the sole visible intermediaries between the god and his people, the privileged guardians of his body and his double, and competent to perpetuate the line of the solar kings. the theban appanage constituted their dowry, and even if their sex prevented them from discharging all those civil, military, and religious duties required by their position, no one else had the right to do so on their behalf, unless he was expressly chosen by them for the purpose. when once married they deputed their husbands to act for them; so long as they remained either single or widows, some exalted personage, the prophet of amon or montu, the ruler of thebes, or the administrator of the said, managed their houses and fiefs for them with such show of authority that strangers were at times deceived, and took him for the reigning monarch of the country.* * thus harua, in the time of amenertas, was prince and chief over the servants of the �divine worshipper.� mantumihâit, in the time of taharqa and of tanuatamanu, was ruler of thebes, and fourth prophet of amon, and it is he who is described in the assyrian monuments as king of thebes. the pharaohs had, therefore, a stronger incentive than ever to secure exclusive possession of these women, and if they could not get all of them safely housed in their harems, they endeavoured, at any rate, to reserve for themselves the chief among them, who by purity of descent or seniority in age had attained the grade of _divine worshipper_. kashta married a certain shapenuapît, daughter of osorkon iii. and a theban pallacide;* it is uncertain whether he eventually became king over ethiopia and the sudan or not. so far, we have no proof that he did, but it seems quite possible when we remember that one of his children, shabaku (sabaco), subsequently occupied the throne of napata in addition to that of thebes. kashta does not appear to have possessed sufficient energy to prevent the delta and its nomes from repudiating the ethiopian supremacy. the saites, under tafnakhti or bocchoris, soon got the upper hand, and it was to them that the syrian vassals of nineveh looked for aid, when death removed the conqueror who had trampled them so ruthlessly underfoot. ever since the fall of arpad, hadrach, and damascus, shabaraîn, a town situated somewhere in the valley of the orontes or of the upper litany,** and hitherto but little known, had served as a rallying-point for the disaffected aramaean tribes: on the accession of shalmaneser v. it ventured to rebel, probably in b.c., but was overthrown and destroyed, its inhabitants being led away captive. * it may be that, in accordance with a custom which obtained during the generations that followed, and which possibly originated about this period, this daughter of osorkon iii. was only the adoptive mother of amenertas. ** shabaraîn was originally confounded with samaria by the early commentators on the babylonian chronicle. halévy, very happily, referred it to the biblical sepharvaîm, a place always mentioned in connection with hamath and arpad ( kings xvii. , ; xviii. ; xix. : cf. isa. xxxvi. ; xxxvii. ), and to the sibraim of ezekiel (xlvii. ), called in the _septuagint_ samarêim. its identification with samaria has, since then, been generally rejected, and its connection with sibraim admitted. sibraim (or sepharvaîm, or samarêîm) has been located at shomerîyeh, to the east of the bahr-kades, and south of hamath. this achievement proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that in spite of their change of rulers the vengeance of the assyrians was as keen and sharp as ever. not one of the syrian towns dared to stir, and the phonician seaports, though their loyalty had seemed, for a moment, doubtful, took care to avoid any action which might expose them to the terrors of a like severity.* the israelites and philistines, alone of the western peoples, could not resign themselves to a prudent policy; after a short period of hesitation they drew the sword from its scabbard, and in war broke out.** * the siege of tyre, which the historian menander, in a passage quoted by josephus, places in the reign of shalmaneser, ought really to be referred to the reign of sennacherib, or the fragment of menander must be divided into three parts dealing with three different assyrian campaigns against tyre, under tiglath-pileser, sennacherib, and esarhaddon respectively. ** the war cannot have begun earlier, for the _eponym canon_, in dealing with , has the words �in the country,� thus proving that no expedition took place in that year; in the case of the year , on the other hand, it refers to a campaign against some country whose name has disappeared. the passages in the _book of kings_ ( kings xvii. - , and xviii. - ) which deal with the close of the kingdom of israel, have been interpreted in such a way as to give us two campaigns by shalmaneser against hoshea: ( ) hoshea having failed to pay the tribute imposed upon him by tiglath-pileser, shalmaneser made war upon him and compelled him to resume its payment ( kings xvii. - ); ( ) hoshea having intrigued with egypt, and declined to pay tribute, shalmaneser again took the field against him, made him prisoner, and besieged samaria for three years ( kings xvii. - ; xviii. - ). the first expedition must, in this case, have taken place in , while the second must have lasted from - . most modern historians believe that the hebrew writer has ascribed to shalmaneser the subjection of hoshea which was really the act of tiglath-pileser, as well as the final war against israel. according to winckler, the two portions of the narrative must have been borrowed from two different versions of the final war, which the final editor inserted one after the other, heedless of the contradictions contained in them. hoshea, who had ascended the throne with the consent of tiglath-pileser, was unable to keep them quiet. the whole of galilee and gilead was now an assyrian province, subject to the governor of damascus; jerusalem, moab, ammon, and the bedâwin had transferred their allegiance to nineveh; and israel, with merely the central tribes of ephraim, manasseh, and benjamin left, was now barely equal in area and population to judah. their tribute weighed heavily on the israelites; passing armies had laid waste their fields, and townsmen, merchants, and nobles alike, deprived of their customary resources, fretted with impatience under the burdens and humiliations imposed on them by their defeat; convinced of their helplessness, they again looked beyond their own borders for some nation or individual who should restore to them their lost prosperity. amid the tottering fortunes of their neighbours, egypt alone stood erect, and it was, therefore, to egypt that they turned their eyes. negotiations were opened, not with pharaoh himself, but with shabi, one of the petty kings on the eastern frontier of the delta, whose position made him better qualified than any other to deal with syrian affairs.* * this individual is called sua, seveh, and so in the hebrew text ( kings xvii. ), and the septuagint gives the transliteration sebek side by side with sêgôs. he is found again under the forms shibahi, shabi, shabé, in sargon�s inscriptions. hannon of gaza had by this time returned from exile, and it was, doubtless, owing to shabi�s support that he had been able to drive out the assyrian generals and recover his crown.* the israelite aristocracy was led away by his example, but shalmaneser hastened to the spot before the egyptian bowmen had time to cross the isthmus. hoshea begged for mercy, and was deported into assyria and condemned to lifelong imprisonment.** though deserted by her king, samaria did not despair; she refused to open her gates, and, being strongly fortified, compelled the assyrians to lay regular siege to the city. it would seem that at one moment, at the beginning of operations, when it was rumoured on all sides that pharaoh would speedily intervene, ahaz began to fear for his own personal safety, and seriously considered whether it would not be wiser to join forces with israel or with egypt.*** * this seems to be the inference from sargon�s inscription, in which he is referred to as relying on the army of shabi, the _tartan_ of egypt. ** kings xvii. . *** the _second book of kings_ (xviii. , ; cf. xvii. ) places the beginning of the siege of samaria in the seventh year of hoshea ( = fourth year of hezekiah), and the capture of the town in the ninth year of hoshea ( = sixth year of hezekiah); further on it adds that sennacherib�s campaign against hezekiah took place in the fourteenth year of the latter�s reign ( kings xviii. ; cf. isa. xxxvi. ). now, sennacherib�s campaign against hezekiah took place (as will be shown later on, in vol. viii. chapter i.) in b.c., and samaria was captured in . the synchronisms in the hebrew narrative are therefore fictitious, and rest on no real historical basis--at any rate, in so far as the king who occupied the throne of judah at the time of the fall of samaria is concerned; ahaz was still alive at that date, and continued to reign till or , or perhaps only till . [illustration: .jpg the sword dance] after painting by gerome the rapid sequence of events, however, backed by the counsel of isaiah, speedily recalled him to a more reasonable view of the situation. the prophet showed him samaria spread out before him like one of those wreaths of flowers which the guests at a banquet bind round their brows, and which gradually fade as their wearers drink deeper and deeper. �woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with wine. behold, the lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall be cast down to the earth with violence. the crown of the pride of the drunkards of ephraim shall be trodden underfoot, and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.� while the cruel fate of the perverse city was being thus accomplished, jahveh sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of his children who remained faithful to him; but judah, far from submitting itself to his laws, betrayed him even as israel had done. its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of jehovah. �whom,� they stammered between their hiccups--�whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts? for it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little!� and sure enough it was by the mouth of a stammering people, by the lips of the assyrians, that jahveh was to speak to them. in vain did the prophet implore them: �this is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary;� they did not listen to him, and now jahveh turns their own gibes against them: �precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,�--�that they may go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken.� there was to be no hope of safety for jerusalem unless it gave up all dependence on human counsels, and trusted solely to god for protection.* * isa. xxviii. giesebrecht has given it as his opinion that only verses - , - of the prophecy were delivered at this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written during sennacherib�s campaign against judah, and suggests that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus diverting it from its original application. others, such as stade and wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying a mere rhetorical figure. jerusalem, they say, appeared to the prophet as though changed into samaria, and it is this transformed city which he calls �the crown of pride of the drunkards of ephraim.� samaria was doomed; this was the general belief, and men went about repeating it after isaiah, each in his own words; every one feared lest the disaster should spread to judah also, and that jahveh, having once determined to have done with the northern kingdom, would turn his wrath against that of the south as well. micah the morashtite, a prophet born among the ranks of the middle class, went up and down the land proclaiming misery to be the common lot of the two sister nations sprung from the loins of jacob, as a punishment for their common errors and weaknesses. �the lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come and tread upon the high places of the earth. and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place. for the transgression of jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of israel. what is the transgression of jacob? is it not samaria? and what are the high places of judah? are they not jerusalem?� the doom pronounced against samaria was already being carried out, and soon the hapless city was to be no more than �an heap of the field, and as the plantings of a vineyard; and i will pour down the stones thereof into the valley,� saith the lord, �and i will discover the foundations thereof. and all her graven images shall be beaten to pieces, and all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols will i lay desolate; for of the hire of an harlot hath she gathered them, and into the hire of an harlot shall they return.� yet, even while mourning over samaria, the prophet cannot refrain from thinking of his own people, for the terrible blow which had fallen on israel �is come even unto judah; it reacheth unto the gate of my people, even to jerusalem.� doubtless the assyrian generals kept a watchful eye upon ahaz during the whole time of the siege, from to , and when once the first heat of enthusiasm had cooled, the presence of so formidable an army within striking distance must have greatly helped the king to restrain the ill-advised tendencies of some of his subjects. samaria still held out when shalmaneser died at babylon in the month of tebeth, . whether he had no son of fit age to succeed him, or whether a revolution, similar to that which had helped to place tiglath-pileser on the throne, broke out as soon as he had drawn his last breath, is not quite clear. at any rate, sargon, an officer who had served under him, was proclaimed king on the nd day of tebeth, and his election was approved by the whole of assyria. after some days of hesitation, babylon declined to recognise him, and took the oath of allegiance to a kaldu named marduk-abalidinna, or merodach-baladan. while these events were taking place in the heart of the empire, samaria succumbed; perhaps to famine, but more probably to force. it was sacked and dismantled, and the bulk of its population, amounting to , souls, were carried away into mesopotamia and distributed along the balîkh, the khabur, the banks of the river of gozân, and among the towns of the median frontier.* * sargon does not mention where he deported the israelites to, but we learn this from the _second book of kings_ (xvii. ; xviii. ). there has been much controversy as to whether samaria was taken by shalmanoser, as the hebrew chronicler seems to believe ( kings xvii. - ; xviii. , ), or by sargon, as the assyrian scribes assure us. at first, several scholars suggested a solution of the difficulty by arguing that shalmaneser and sargon were one and the same person; afterwards the theory took shape that samaria was really captured in the reign of shalmaneser, but by sargon, who was in command of the besieging army at the time, and who transferred this achievement, of which he was naturally proud, to the beginning of his own reign. the simplest course seems to be to accept for the present the testimony of contemporary documents, and place the fall of samaria at the beginning of the reign of sargon, being the time indicated by sargon in his inscriptions. sargon made the whole territory into a province; an assyrian governor was installed in the palace of the kings of israel, and soon the altars of the strange gods smoked triumphantly by the side of the altars of jahveh ( b.c.).* * kings xvii. - , a passage to which i shall have occasion to refer farther on in the present volume. the following is a list of the kings of israel, after the division of the tribes:-- [illustration: .jpg table of kings of israel] [in this table father and son are shown by a perpendicular line. the king�s name in italics signifies that he died a violent death.--tr.] thus fell samaria, and with samaria the kingdom of israel, and with israel the last of the states which had aspired, with some prospect of success, to rule over syria. they had risen one after another during the four centuries in which the absence of the stranger had left them masters of their own fate--the hittites in the north, the hebrews and the philistines in the south, and the aramæans and damascus in the centre; each one of these races had enjoyed its years of glory and ambition in the course of which it had seemed to prevail over its rivals. then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over the whole country. the hittite sphere of influence never at any time extended much further southwards than the sources of the orontes, while that of the hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the vicinity of hamath. and even progress thus far had cost both hebrews and hittites a struggle so exhausting that they could not long maintain it. no sooner did they relax their efforts, than those portions of coele-syria which they had annexed to their original territory, being too remote from the seat of power to feel its full attraction, gradually detached themselves and resumed their independence, their temporary suzerains being too much exhausted by the intensity of their own exertions to retain hold over them. damascus, which lay almost in the centre, at an equal distance from the euphrates and the �river of egypt,� could have desired no better position for grouping the rest of syria round her. [illustration: .jpg sargon of assyria and his vizier] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by flandin. if any city had a chance of establishing a single kingdom, it was damascus, and damascus alone. but lulled to blissful slumbers in her shady gardens, she did not awake to political life and to the desire of conquest until after all the rest, and at the very moment when nineveh was beginning to recover from her early reverses. both ben-hadads had had a free hand given them during the half-century which followed, and they had taken advantage of this respite to reduce coele-syria, the lebanon, arvadian phoenicia, hamath, and the hebrews--in fact, two-thirds of the whole country--to subjection, and to organise that league of the twelve kings which reckoned ahab of israel among its leaders. this rudimentary kingdom had scarcely come into existence, and its members had not yet properly combined, when shalmaneser iii. arose and launched his bands of veterans against them; it however successfully withstood the shock, and its stubborn resistance at the beginning of the struggle shows us what it might have done, had its founders been allowed time in which to weld together the various elements at their disposal. as it was, it was doomed to succumb--not so much to the superiority of the enemy as to the insubordination of its vassals and its own internal discords. the league of the twelve kings did not survive ben-hadad ii.; hazael and his successors wore themselves out in repelling the attacks of the assyrians and in repressing the revolts of israel; when tiglath-pileser iii. arrived on the scene, both princes and people, alike at damascus and samaria, were so spent that even their final alliance could not save them from defeat. its lack of geographical unity and political combination had once more doomed syria to the servitude of alien rule; the assyrians, with methodical procedure, first conquered and then made vassals of all those states against which they might have hurled their battalions in vain, had not fortune kept them divided instead of uniting them in a compact mass under the sway of a single ruler. from carchemish to arpad, from hamath to damascus and samaria, their irresistible advance had led the assyrians on towards egypt, the only other power which still rivalled their prestige in the eyes of the world; and now, at gaza, on the frontier between africa and asia, as in days gone by on the banks of the euphrates or the balîkh, these two powers waited face to face, hand on hilt, each ready to stake the empire of the asiatic world on a single throw of the dice. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--sargon of assyria ( - b.c.) _sargon as a warrior and as a builder._ _the origin of sargon ii.: the revolt of babylon, merodach-baladan and elam--the kingdom of elam from the time of the first babylonian empire; the conquest�s of shutruh-nalkunta i.; the princes of malamîr--the first encounter of assyria and elam, the battle of durilu ( b.c.)--revolt of syria, iaubîdi of hamath and hannon of gaza--bocchoris and the xxivth egyptian dynasty; the first encounter of assyria with egypt, the battle of raphia ( b.c.)._ _urartu and the coalition of the peoples of the north-east and north-west--defeat of zikartu ( b.c.), of the tabal ( ), of the khâti ( ), of the mannai, of the medes and ellipi ( ), and of the modes ( )--commencement of xxvth ethiopian dynasty: sabaco ( )-- the fall of urzana and rusas ( ) and the formation of an assyrian province in cappadocia ( - )--the revolt and fall of ashdod._ _the defeat of merodach-baladan and of shutruk-nakhunta ii.: sargon conquers babylon ( - b.c.)--success of the assyrians at mushhi: homage of the greeks of cyprus ( )--the buildings of sargon: dur-sharrukîn--the gates and walls of dur-sharrukîn; the city and its population--the royal palace, its courts, the ziggurât, the harem--revolt of kummukh ( b.c.) and of ellipi ( b.c.)--inauguration of dur-sharrukîn ( b.c.)--murder of sargon ( b.c.): his character._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii--sargon of assyria ( - b.c.) _sargon as a warrior and as a builder._ whether sargon was even remotely connected with the royal line, is a question which for the present must remain unanswered. he mentions in one of his inscriptions the three hundred princes who had preceded him in the government of assyria, and three lines further on he refers to the kings his ancestors, but he never mentions his own father by name, and this omission seems to prove that he was not a direct descendant of shalmaneser v., nor of tiglath-pileser iii. nor indeed of any of their immediate predecessors. it is, however, probable, if not certain, that he could claim some sort of kinship with them, though more or less remote. it was customary for the sovereigns of nineveh to give their daughters in marriage to important officials or lords of their court, and owing to the constant contraction of such alliances through several centuries, there was hardly a noble family but had some royal blood in its veins; and that of sargon was probably no exception to the rule. his genealogy was traced by the chroniclers, through several hundred generations of princes, to the semi-mythical heroes who had founded the city of assur; but as assur-nazir-pal and his descendants had claimed bel-kapkapi and sulili as the founders of their race, the sargonids chose a different tradition, and drew their descent from belbâni, son of adasi. the cause and incidents of the revolution which raised sargon to the throne are unknown, but we may surmise that the policy adopted with regard to karduniash was a factor in the case. tiglath-pileser had hardly entered babylon before the fascination of the city, the charm of its associations, and the sacred character of the legends which hallowed it, seized upon his imagination; he returned to it twice in the space of two years to �take the hands of bel,� and shalmaneser v. much preferred it to calah or nineveh as a place of residence. the assyrians doubtless soon became jealous of the favour shown by their princes to their ancient enemy, and their discontent must have doubtless conduced to their decision to raise a new monarch to the throne. the babylonians, on the other hand, seem to have realised that the change in the dynasty presaged a disadvantageous alteration of government; for as soon as the news reached them a movement was set on foot and search made for a rival claimant to set up in opposition to sargon.* * the succession of events, as indicated in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, seems indeed to imply that the babylonians waited to ascertain the disposition of the new king before they decided what line to adopt. in fact, shalmaneser died in the month tebeth, and sargon ascended the throne at assur in the same month, and it was only in the month nisân that mero-dach-baladan was proclaimed king. the three months intervening between the accession of sargon and that of merodach-baladan evidently represent a period of indecision., when it was not yet known if the king would follow the policy of his predecessors with regard to babylon, or adopt a different attitude towards her. of all the nations who had in turn occupied the plains of the lower euphrates and the marshes bordering on arabia, the kaldâ alone had retained their full vitality. they were constantly recruited by immigrants from their kinsfolk of the desert, and the continual infiltration of these semi-barbarous elements kept the race from becoming enervated by contact with the indigenous population, and more than compensated for the losses in their ranks occasioned by war. the invasion of tiglath-pileser and the consequent deportations of prisoners had decimated the tribes of bît-shilâni, bît-shaali, and bît-amuhkâni, the principalities of the kaldâ which lay nearest to babylonian territory, and which had borne the brunt of attack in the preceding period; but their weakness brought into notice a power better equipped for warfare, whose situation in their rear had as a rule hitherto preserved it from contact with the assyrians, namely, bît-yakîn. the continual deposit of alluvial soil at the mouths of the rivers had greatly altered the coastline from the earliest historic times downwards. the ancient estuary was partly filled up, especially on the western side, where the euphrates enters the persian gulf: a narrow barrier of sand and silt extended between the marshes of arabia and susiana, at the spot where the streams of fresh water met the tidal waters of the sea, and all that was left of the ancient gulf was a vast lagoon, or, as the dwellers on the banks called it, a kind of brackish river, _nâr marratum_. bît-yakîn occupied the southern and western portions of this district, from the mouth of the tigris to the edge of the desert. the aspect of the country was constantly changing, and presented no distinctive features; it was a region difficult to attack and easy to defend; it consisted first of a spongy plain, saturated with water, with scattered artificial mounds on which stood the clustered huts of the villages; between this plain and the shore stretched a labyrinth of fens and peat-bogs, irregularly divided by canals and channels freshly formed each year in flood-time, meres strewn with floating islets, immense reed-beds where the neighbouring peasants took refuge from attack, and into which no one would venture to penetrate without hiring some friendly native as a guide. in this fenland dwelt the kaldâ in their low, small conical huts of reeds, somewhat resembling giant beehives, and in all respects similar to those which the bedawin of irak inhabit at the present day. [illustration: .jpg assyrian soldiers pursuing kalda refugees in a bed of reeds] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief reproduced in layard. dur-yakîn, their capital, was probably situated on the borders of the gulf, near the euphrates, in such a position as to command the mouths of the river. merodach-baladan, who was king of bît-yakîn at the time of sargon�s accession, had become subject to assyria in b.c., and had paid tribute to tiglath-pileser, but he was nevertheless the most powerful chieftain who had borne rule over the chaldæans since the death of ukînzîr.* * dur-yakîn was situated on the shores of the persian gulf, as is proved by a passage in the _bull inscription_, where it is stated that sargon threw into the sea the corpses of the soldiers killed during the siege; the neighbourhood of the euphrates is implied in the text of the _inscription des fastes_, and the _annals_, where the measures taken by merodach-baladan to defend his capital are described. the name of bît-yakîn, and probably also that of dur-yakin, have been preserved to us in the name of aginis or aginnê, the name of a city mentioned by strabo, and by the historians of alexander. its site is uncertain, but can be located near the present town of kornah. it was this prince whom the babylonians chose to succeed shalmaneser v. he presented himself before the city, was received with acclamation, and prepared without delay to repulse any hostilities on the part of the assyrians. [illustration: .jpg a reed-hut of the bedawin of irak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in peters. he found a well-disposed ally in elani. from very ancient times the masters of susa had aspired to the possession of mesopotamia or the suzerainty over it, and fortune had several times favoured their ambitious designs. on one occasion they had pressed forward their victorious arms as far as the mediterranean, and from that time forward, though the theatre of their operations was more restricted, they had never renounced the right to interfere in babylonian affairs, and indeed, not long previously, one of them had reigned for a period of seven years in babylon in the interval between two dynasties. our information with regard to the order of succession and the history of these energetic and warlike monarchs is as yet very scanty; their names even are for the most part lost, and only approximate dates can be assigned to those of whom we catch glimpses from time to time.* khumban-numena, the earliest of whom we have any record, exercised a doubtful authority, from anshân to susa, somewhere about the fourteenth century b.c., and built a temple to the god kirisha in his capital, liyan.** * these names are in the majority of cases found written on stamped and baked bricks. they were first compared with the names contained in the annals of sargon and his successors, and assimilated to those of the princes who were contemporary with sennacherib and assur-bani-pal; then they were referred to the time of the great elamite empire, and one of them was identified with that kudur-nakhunta who had pillaged uruk years before assur-bani-pal. finally, they were brought down again to an intermediate period, more precisely, to the fourteenth or thirteenth century b.c. this last date appears to be justified, at least as the highest permissible, by the mention of durkurigalzu, in a text of undasgal. ** jensen was the first to recognise that liyan was a place- name, and the inscriptions of shilkhak-inshusinak add that liyan was the capital of the kingdom; perhaps it was the name of a part of susa. khumban-numena has left us no monuments of his own, but he is mentioned on those of his son. his son undasgal carried on the works begun by his father, but that is all the information the inscriptions afford concerning him, and the mist of oblivion which for a moment lifted and allowed us to discern dimly the outlines of this sovereign, closes in again and hides everything from our view for the succeeding forty or fifty years. [illustration: .jpg brick bearing the name of the susian king shilkhak-inshushinak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by marcel dieulafoy. about the thirteenth century a gleam once more pierces the darkness, and a race of warlike and pious kings emerges into view--khalludush-in-shushinak, his son shutruk-nakhunta, the latter�s two sons, kutur-nakhunta and shilkhak-inshu-shinak,* and then perhaps a certain kutir-khuban. * the order of succession of these princes is proved by the genealogies with which their bricks are covered. jensen has shown that we ought to read khalludush-inshushinak and shilkhak-inshushinak, instead of the shorter forms khalludush and shilkhak read previously. the inscriptions on their bricks boast of their power, their piety, and their inexhaustible wealth. one after another they repaired and enlarged the temple built by khumban-numena at liyan, erected sanctuaries and palaces at susa, fortified their royal citadel, and ruled over habardîp and the cossæans as well as over anshân and elam. they vigorously contested the possession of the countries on the right bank of the tigris with the babylonians, and shutruk-nakhunta even succeeded in conquering babylon itself. he deprived zamâmâ-shumiddin, the last but one of the cossæan kings, of his sceptre and his life, placed his own son kutur-nakhunta on the throne, and when the vanquished babylonians set up bel-nadinshumu as a rival sovereign, he laid waste karduniash with fire and sword. after the death of bel-nadinshumu, the pashê princes continued to offer resistance, but at first without success. shutruk-nakhunta had taken away from the temple of esagilla the famous statue of bel-merodach, whose hands had to be taken by each newly elected king of babylon, and had carried it off in his waggons to elam, together with much spoil from the cities on the euphrates.* * the name of the king is destroyed on the babylonian document, but the mention of kutur-nakhunta as his son obliges us, till further information comes to light, to recognise in him the shutruk-nakhunta of the bricks of susa, who also had a son kutur-nakhunta. this would confirm the restoration of shutruk-nakhunta as the name of a sovereign who boasts, in a mutilated inscription, that he had pushed his victories as far as the tigris, and even up to the euphrates. nebuchadrezzar i. brought the statue back to babylon after many vicissitudes, and at the same time recovered most of his lost provinces, but he had to leave at susa the bulk of the trophies which had been collected there in course of the successful wars. one of these represented the ancient hero naram-sin standing, mace in hand, on the summit of a hill, while his soldiers forced their way up the slopes, driving before them the routed hosfcs of susa. shutruk-nakhunta left the figures and names untouched, but carved in one corner of the bas-relief a dedicatory inscription, transforming this ancient proof of babylonian victories over elam into a trophy of blamite victories over babylon. [illustration: .jpg bas-relief of nakam-sin, tkansported to susa by shutkuk-nakhunta] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. his descendants would assuredly have brought mesopotamia into lasting subjection, had not the feudal organisation of their empire tolerated the existence of contemporary local dynasties, the members of which often disputed the supreme authority with the rightful king. the dynasty which ruled habardîp* seems to have had its seat of government at tarrisha in the, valley of malamîr.** * the prince represented on the bas-reliefs gives himself the title apirra, the name of apîr, apirti, or habardîp. ** tarrisha is the name of a town, doubtless the capital of the fief of malamîr; it is probably represented by the considerable ruins which layard identified as the remains of the sassanid city of aidej. three hundred figures carved singly or in groups on the rocks of kul-firaun portray its princes and their ministers in every posture of adoration, but most of them have no accompanying inscription. one large bas relief, however, forms an exception, and from its legend we learn the name of khanni, son of takhkhi-khîkhutur.* * the name of khanni has been explained by sayce as _the desirable_, and that of his father, takhkhi-khîkhutur, as _help this thy servant_. [illustration: .jpg the great rock bas-relief of malamÎr] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by babin and houssay. this prince, even if possessed of no royal protocol, was none the less a powerful and wealthy personage. his figure dominates the picture, the central space of which it completely fills;* his expression is calm, but somewhat severe. his head is covered by a low cap, from which long locks escape and flow over his shoulders; the hair on his face is symmetrically curled above the level of his mouth, and terminates in a pointed beard. the figure is clothed from head to foot in a stiff robe and mantle adorned with tufted fringes, and borders of embroidered rosettes; a girdle at the waist completes the misleading resemblance to the gala-dress of a nine vite, monarch. the hands are crossed on the breast in an attitude of contemplation, while the prince gazes thoughtfully at a sacrifice which is being offered on his behalf. at the bottom of the picture stands a small altar, behind which a priest in a short tunic seems to be accomplishing some cérémonial rite, while two men are cutting the throat of a ram. higher up the heads of three rams lie beside their headless trunks, which are resting on the ground, feet in the air, while a servant brandishes a short sword with which he is about to decapitate the fourth beast. above these, again, three musicians march in procession, one playing on a harp, another on a five-stringed lyre, and the third on a tambourine. an attendant holding a bow, and the minister shutsururazi, stand quietly waiting till the sacrifice is accomplished. the long text which runs across several of the figures is doubtless a prayer, and contains the names of peoples and princes mingled with those of deities. * perrot and chipiez, misled by the analogy of the hittite bas-relief at ibriz, took the largest figure for the image of a god. the inscription engraved on the robe, _u khanni shak takkhi-khikutur_, �i am khanni, son of takhkhi- khîkhutur,� leaves no doubt that the figure represents the prince himself, and not a divinity. the memory of these provincial chiefs would be revived, and more of their monuments discovered, if the mountains and inaccessible valleys of ancient elam could be thoroughly explored: it is evident, from the small portion of their history which has been brought to light, that they must have been great sources of trouble to the dynasties which reigned in susa, and that their revolts must often have jeopardised the safety of the empire, in spite of the assistance afforded by the aramæans from the tenth or eleventh centuries onwards. all the semi-nomadic tribes which densely peopled the banks of the tigris, and whose advance towards the north had been temporarily favoured by the weakness of assyria--the gambulu, the pukudu, the eutu, and the itua--had a natural tendency to join forces with elam for the purpose of raiding the wealthy cities of chaldæa, and this alliance, or subjection, as it might be more properly termed, always insured them against any reprisals on the part of their victims. the unknown king who dwelt at susa in b.c. committed the error of allowing tiglath-pileser to crush these allies. khumban-igash, who succeeded this misguided monarch in b.c., did not take up arms to defend bit-amuk-kâni and the other states of the kaldâ from to , but experience must have taught him that he had made a mistake in remaining an unmoved spectator of their misfortunes; for when merodach-baladan, in quest of allies, applied to him, he unhesitatingly promised him his support.* * the date of his accession is furnished by the passage in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, where it is stated that he ascended the throne of elam in the fifth year of nabonazir. the assyrian and babylonian scribes assimilated the susian _b_ to the _m_, and also suppressed the initial aspirate of the elamite name, writing generally umman-igash for khumban- igash. assyria and elam had hitherto seldom encountered one another on the field of battle. a wide barrier of semi-barbarous states had for a long time held them apart, and they would have had to cross the territory of the babylonians or the cossæans before coming into contact with each other. tiglath-pileser i., however, had come into conflict with the northern districts of elam towards the end of the twelfth century b.c., and more recently the campaigns of assur-nazir-pal, shalmaneser iii., and rammân-nirâri had frequently brought these sovereigns into contact with tribes under the influence of susa; but the wildness and poverty of the country, and the difficulties it offered to the manoeuvres of large armies, had always prevented the assyrian generals from advancing far into its mountainous regions.* the annexation of aramæan territory beyond the tigris, and the conquest of babylon by tiglath-pileser iii., at length broke through the barrier and brought the two powers face to face at a point where they could come into conflict without being impeded by almost insurmountable natural obstacles, namely, in the plains of the umliash and the united basins of the lower ulai and the uknu. ten years� experience had probably sufficed to convince khumban-igash of the dangers to which the neighbourhood of the assyrians exposed his subjects. the vigilant watch which the new-comers kept over their frontier rendered raiding less easy; and if one of the border chieftains were inclined to harry, as of old, an unlucky babylonian or cossæan village, he ran the risk of an encounter with a well-armed force, or of being plundered in turn by way of reprisal. * sargon declares distinctly that merodach-baladan had invoked the aid of khumban-igash. an irregular but abundant source of revenue was thus curtailed, without taking into consideration the wars to which such incidents must perforce lead sooner or later. even unaided the elamites considered themselves capable of repelling any attack; allied with the babylonians or the kaldâ, they felt certain of victory in any circumstances. sargon realised this fact almost as fully as did the elamites themselves; as soon, therefore, as his spies had forewarned him that an invasion was imminent, he resolved to take the initiative and crush his enemies singly before they succeeded in uniting their forces. khumban-igash had advanced as far as the walls of durîlu, a stronghold which commanded the umliash, and he there awaited the advent of his allies before laying siege to the town: it was, however, the assyrian army which came to meet him and offered him battle. the conflict was a sanguinary one, as became an engagement between such valiant foes, and both sides claimed the victory. the assyrians maintained then-ground, forcing the elamites to evacuate their positions, and tarried some weeks longer to chastise those of their aramæan subjects who had made common cause with the enemy: they carried away the tumuna, who had given up their sheikh into the hands of the emissaries of the kaldâ, and transported the whole tribe, without merodach-baladan making any attempt to save his allies, although his army had not as yet struck a single blow.* * the history of this first campaign against merodach- baladan, which is found in a mutilated condition in the _annals of sargon_, exists nowhere else in a complete form, but the facts are very concisely referred to in the _fastes_ and in the _cylinders_. the general sequence of events is indicated by _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, but the author places them in b.c., the second year of merodach- baladan, contrary to the testimony of the _annals_, and attributes the victory to the elamites in the battle of durîlu, in deference to babylonian patriotism. the course of events after the battle of durflu seems to prove clearly that the assyrians remained masters of the field. having accomplished this act of vengeance, the assyrians suspended operations and returned to nineveh to repair their losses, probably intending to make a great effort to regain the whole of babylonia in the ensuing year. grave events which occurred elsewhere prevented them, however, from carrying this ambitious project into effect. the fame of their war against elam had spread abroad in the western provinces of the empire, and doubtless exaggerated accounts circulated with regard to the battle of durîlu had roused the spirit of dissatisfaction in the west. sargon had scarcely seated himself securely on a throne to which he was not the direct heir, when he was menaced by elam and repudiated by chaldæa, and it remained to be seen whether his resources would prove equal to maintaining the integrity of his empire, or whether the example set by merodach-baladan would not speedily be imitated by all who groaned under the assyrian yoke. since the decline of damascus and arpad, hamath had again taken a prominent place in northern syria: prompt submission had saved this city from destruction in the time of tiglath-pileser iii., and it had since prospered under the foreign rule; it was, therefore, on hamath that all hopes of deliverance still cherished by rulers and people now centred. a low-born fellow, a smith named iaubîdi, rose in rebellion against the prince of hamath for being mean-spirited enough to pay tribute, proclaimed himself king, and in the space of a few months revived under his own leadership the coalition which hadadezer and rezon ii. had formed in days gone by. arpad and bît-agusi, zimyra and northern phoenicia, damascus and its dependencies, all expelled their assyrian garrisons, and samaria, though still suffering from its overthrow, summoned up courage to rid itself of its governor. meanwhile, hannon of gaza, recently reinstated in his city by egyptian support, was carrying on negotiations with a view to persuading egypt to interfere in the affairs of syria. the last of the tanite pharaohs, psamuti, was just dead, and bocchoris, who had long been undisputed master of the delta, had now ventured to assume the diadem openly ( b.c.), a usurpation which the ethiopians, fully engaged in the thebaid and on the upper nile, seemed to regard with equanimity. as soon as the petty kings and feudal lords had recognised his suzerainty, bocchoris «listened favourably to the entreaties of hannon, and promised to send an army to gaza under the command of his general shabê. sargon, threatened with the loss of the entire western half of his empire, desisted for a time from his designs on babylon, khumban-igash was wise enough to refrain from provoking an enemy who left him in peace, and merodach-baladan did not dare to enter the lists without the support of his confederate: the victory of durîlu, though it had not succeeded in gaining a province for nineveh, had at least secured the south-eastern frontier from attack, at all events for so long as it should please sargon to remain at a distance. [illustration: .jpg iaubÎdi of hamath being flayed alive.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by flandin. the league formed by hamath had not much power of cohesion. iaubîdi had assembled his forces and the contingents of his allies at the town of qarqar as hadadezer had done before: he was completely defeated, taken prisoner, and flayed alive. his kingdom was annexed to the assyrian empire, qarqar was burnt to the ground, the fortifications of hamath were demolished, and the city obliged to furnish a force of two hundred charioteers and six hundred horsemen, probably recruited from among the families of the upper classes, to serve as hostages as well as auxiliaries. arpad, zimyra, damascus, samaria, all succumbed without serious opposition, and the citizens who had been most seriously compromised in the revolt paid for their disaffection with their lives. this success confirmed the neighbouring states of tyre, sidon, judah, ammon, and moab in their allegiance, which had shown signs of wavering since the commencement of hostilities; but gaza remained unsubdued, and caused the more uneasiness because it was perceived that behind her was arrayed all the majesty of the pharaoh. the egyptians, slow to bestir themselves, had not yet crossed the isthmus when the assyrians appeared beneath the walls of gaza: hannon, worsted in a preliminary skirmish, retreated on raphia, where shabê, the egyptian general, had at length arrived, and the decisive battle took place before this town. it was the first time that the archers and charioteers of the nile valley had measured forces with the pikemen and cavalry of that of the tigris; the engagement was hotly contested, but the generals and soldiers of bocchoris, fighting according to antiquated methods of warfare, gave way before the onset of the assyrian ranks, who were better equipped and better led. shabê fled �like a shepherd whose sheep had been stolen,� hannon was taken prisoner and loaded with chains, and raphia fell into the hands of the conqueror; the inhabitants who survived the sack of their city were driven into captivity to the number of men, with their flocks and household goods. the manifest superiority of assyria was evident from the first encounter, but the contest had been so fierce and the result so doubtful that sargon did not consider it prudent to press his advantage. he judged rightly that these troops, whom he had not dispersed without considerable effort, constituted merely an advanced guard. egypt was not like the petty kingdoms of syria or asia minor, which had but one army apiece, and could not risk more than one pitched battle. though shabê�s force was routed, others would not fail to take its place and contend as fiercely for the possession of the country, and even if the assyrians should succeed in dislodging them and curbing the power of bocchoris, the fall of sais or memphis, far from putting an end to the war, would only raise fresh complications. above memphis stretched the valley of the nile, bristling with fortresses, khininsu, oxyrhynchus, hermopolis, siut, thinis, and thebes, the famous city of amon, enthroned on the banks of the river, whose very name still evoked in the minds of the asiatics a vivid remembrance of all its triumphal glories.* * thebes was at that time known among the semites by its popular name of _the city of amon_--which the hebrew writers transcribed as nô-amon (_nahum_ iii. ) or nô alone (jer. xlvi. ; ezek. xxx. , , ), and the assyrians by ni. thebes itself formed merely one stage in the journey towards syene, ethiopia, napata, and the unknown regions of africa which popular imagination filled with barbarous races or savage monsters, and however far an alien army might penetrate in a southerly direction, it would still meet with the language, customs, and divinities of egypt--an egypt whose boundary seemed to recede as the invader advanced, and which was ever ready to oppose the enemy with fresh forces whenever its troops had suffered from his attacks. sargon, having reached kaphia, halted on the very threshold of the unexplored realm whose portals stood ajar ready to admit him: the same vague disquietude which had checked the conquering career of the pharaohs on the borders of asia now stayed his advance, and bade him turn back as he was on the point of entering africa. he had repulsed the threatened invasion, and as a result of his victory the princes and towns which had invoked the aid of the foreigner lay at his mercy; he proceeded, therefore, to reorganise the provinces of philistia and israel, and received the homage of judah and her dependencies. ahaz, while all the neighbouring states were in revolt, had not wavered in his allegiance; the pacific counsels of isaiah had once more prevailed over the influence of the party which looked for safety in an alliance with egypt.* * sargon probably alludes to homage received at this time, when he styles himself �the subduer of far-off judah.� it is not certain that ahaz was still king of judah; it was for a long time admitted that hezekiah was already king when these events took place, in accordance with kings xviii. , , where it is stated that samaria was destroyed in the sixth year of hezekiah. i consider, in agreement with several historians, that the date of sennacherib�s invasion of judah must have remained more firmly fixed in the minds of the jewish historians than that of the taking of samaria, and as kings xviii. places this invasion in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, which corresponds, as we shall see, to the third year of sennacherib, or b.c., it seems better to place the accession of hezekiah about , and prolong the reign of ahaz till after the campaign of sargon against hannon of gaza. the whole country from the orontes to the mountains of seir and the river of egypt was again reduced to obedience, and set itself by peaceful labours to repair the misfortunes which had befallen it during the previous quarter of a century. sargon returned to his capital, but fate did not yet allow him to renew his projects against babylon. barely did an insurrection break out in any part of the country on the accession of a new king at nineveh without awaking echoes in the distant provinces of the empire. the report of a revolt in chaldæa roused a slumbering dissatisfaction among the syrians, and finally led them into open rebellion: the episodes of the syrian campaign, narrated in armenia or on the slopes of the taurus with the thousand embellishments suggested by the rancour of the narrators, excited the minds of the inhabitants and soon rendered an outbreak inevitable. the danger would have been serious if the suppressed hatred of all had found vent at the same moment, and if insurrections in five or six different parts of his empire had to be faced by the sovereign simultaneously; but as a rule these local wars broke out without any concentrated plan, and in localities too remote from each other to permit of any possible co-operation between the assailants; each chief, before attempting to assert his independence, seemed to wait until the assyrians had had ample time to crush the rebel who first took the field, having done which they could turn the whole of their forces against the latest foe. thus iaubîdi did not risk a campaign till the fall of elam and karduniash had been already decided on the field of durilu; in the same way, the nations of the north and east refrained from entering the lists till they had allowed sargon time to destroy the league of hamath and repel the attack of bharaoh. they were secretly incited to rebellion by a power which played nearly the same part with regard to them that egypt had played in southern syria. urartu had received a serious rebuff in b.c., and the burning of dhuspas had put an end to its ascendency, but the victory had been effected at the cost of so much bloodshed that tiglath-pileser was not inclined to risk losing the advantage already gained by pushing it too far: he withdrew, therefore, without concluding a treaty, and did not return, being convinced that no further hostilities would be attempted till the vanquished enemy had recovered from his defeat. he was justified in his anticipations, for sharduris died about , without having again taken up arms, and his son busas i. had left shalmaneser v. unmolested:* but the accession of sargon and the revolts which harassed him had awakened in busas the warlike instincts of his race, and the moment appeared advantageous for abandoning his policy of inactivity. * the name of this king is usually written ursa in the assyrian inscriptions, but the _annals of sargon_ give in each case the form rusa, in accordance with which sayce had already identified the assyrian form ursa or rusa with the form rusas found on some urartian monuments. belck and lehmann have discovered several monuments of this rusas i., son of sharduris. the remembrance of the successful exploits of menuas and argistis still lived in the minds of his people, and more than one of his generals had entered upon their military careers at a time when, from arpad and carchemish to the country of the medes, quite a third of the territory now annexed to assyria had been subject to the king of urartu; eusas, therefore, doubtless placed before himself the possibility of reconquering the lost provinces, and even winning, by a stroke of fortune, more than had been by a stroke of fortune wrested from his father. he began by intriguing with such princes as were weary of the assyrian rule, among the mannai, in zikartu,* among the tabal, and even among the khâti. * zikruti, zikirtu, zikartu, may probably be identified with the sagartians of herodotus. iranzu, who was at that time reigning over the mannai, refused to listen to the suggestions of his neighbour, but two of his towns, shuandakhul and durdukka, deserted him in b.c., and ranged themselves under mitâtti, chief of the zikartu, while about the same time the strongholds of sukkia, bala, and abitikna, which were on the borders of urartu, broke the ties which had long bound them to assyria, and concluded a treaty of alliance with rusas. sargon was not deceived as to the meaning of these events, and at once realised that this movement was not one of those local agitations which broke out at intervals in one or other of his provinces. his officers and spies must have kept him informed of the machinations of eusas and of the revolutions which the migrations of the last thirty years had provoked among the peoples of the iranian table-land. a new race had arisen in their rear, that of the cimmerians and scythians, which, issuing in irresistible waves from the gorges of the caucasus, threatened to overwhelm the whole ancient world of the east. the stream, after a moment�s vacillation, took a westerly direction, and flooded asia minor from one end to the other. some tribes, however, which had detached themselves from the main movement sought an outlet towards the south-east, on to the rich plains of the araxes and the country around lake urumiah. the native races, pressed in the rear by these barbarians, and hemmed in on either side and in front by urartu and assyria, were forced into closer proximity, and, conscious of their individual weakness, had begun to form themselves into three distinct groups, varying considerably in compactness,--the medes in the south, misianda in the north, with zikartu between them. zikartu was at that time the best organised of these nascent states, and its king, mitâtti, was not deficient either in military talent or political sagacity. the people over whom he ruled were, moreover, impregnated with the civilisation of mesopotamia, and by constantly meeting the assyrians in battle they had adopted the general principles of their equipment, organisation, and military tactics. the vigour of his soldiers and the warlike ardour which inspired them rendered his armies formidable even to leaders as experienced, and warriors as hardened, as the officers and soldiers of nineveh. mitâtti had strongly garrisoned the two rebel cities, and trusted that if the assyrians were unable to recapture them without delay, other towns would not be long in following their example; iranzu would, no doubt, be expelled, his place would be taken by a hostile chief, and the mannai, joining hands with urartu on the right and zikartu on the left, would, with these two states, form a compact coalition, whose combined forces would menace the northern frontier of the empire from the zagros to the taurus. [illustration: .jpg taking of a castle in zikartu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. sargon, putting all the available assyrian forces into the field, hurled them against the rebels, and this display of power had the desired effect upon the neighbouring kingdoms: busas and mitâtti did not dare to interfere, the two cities were taken by assault, burnt and razed to the ground, and the inhabitants of the surrounding districts of sukkia, bala, and abitikna were driven into exile among the khâti. the next year, however, the war thus checked on the iranian table-land broke out in the north-west, in the mountains of cilicia. a tabal chief, kiakku of shinukhta, refused to pay his tribute ( ). sargon seized him and destroyed his city; his family and adherents, persons in all, were carried away captives to assyria, and his principality was given to a rival chief, mattî of atuna, on a promise from the latter of an increased amount of tribute.* * the name of atuna is a variant of the name tuna, which is found in the inscriptions of tiglath-pileser iii., and tuna recalls the name of the old city of tyana, or that of tynna or tunna, near tyana, in the taurus. shinukhta, not far from atuna, must be the capital of a district situated on the karmalas or the saros, on the borders of cilicia or cataonia. in b.c. more serious dangers openly declared themselves. the khâti had not forgotten that they had once been the allies of urartu, and that their king, pisiris, together with matîlu of agusi, had fought for sharduris against tiglath-pileser iii. pisiris conspired with mita, chief of the mushki, and proclaimed his independence; but vengeance swiftly and surely overtook him. he succumbed before his accomplice had time to come to his assistance, and was sent to join kiakku and his adherents in prison, while the districts which he had ruled were incorporated into assyrian territory, and carchemish became the seat of an assyrian prefect who ranked among the _limmi_ from whom successive years took their names. the fall of pisiris made no impression on his contemporaries. they had witnessed the collapse of so many great powers--elam, urartu, egypt--that the misfortunes of so insignificant a personage awakened but little interest; and yet with him foundered one of the most glorious wrecks of the ancient world. for more than a century the khâti had been the dominant power in north-western asia, and had successfully withstood the power of thebes; crushed by the peoples of the sea, hemmed in and encroached upon by the rising wave of aramæan invasion, they had yet disputed their territory step by step with the assyrian generals, and the area over which they spread can be traced by the monuments and inscriptions scattered over cilicia, lycaonia, cappadocia, and northern syria as far as the basins of the orontes and the litâny. so lasting had proved their influence on all around them, and so fresh was the memory of their greatness, that it would have seemed but natural that their vitality should survive this last blow, and that they should enjoy a prosperous future which should vie with their past. but events proved that their national life was dead, and that no recuperative power remained: as soon as sargon had overthrown their last prince, their tribes became merged in the general body of aramæans, and their very name ere long vanished from the pages of history. up to this time eusas had not directly interfered in these quarrels between the suzerain and his vassals: he may have incited the latter to revolt, but he had avoided compromising himself, and was waiting till the mannai had decided to make common cause with him before showing his hand openly. ever since the skirmish of the year , mitâtti had actively striven to tempt the mannai from their allegiance, but his intrigues had hitherto proved of no avail against the staunch fidelity first of irânzu and then of azâ, who had succeeded the latter about . at the beginning of the year mitâtti was more successful; the mannai, seduced at length by his promises and those of eusas, assembled on mount uaush, murdered their king, and leaving his corpse unburied, hastened to place themselves under the command of bagadatti, regent of umildîsh. sargon hurried to the spot, seized bagadatti, and had him flayed alive on mount uaush, which had just witnessed the murder of azâ, and exposed the mass of bleeding flesh before the gaze of the people to demonstrate the fate reserved for his enemies. but though he had acted speedily he was too late, and the fate of their chief, far from discouraging his subjects, confirmed them in their rebellion. they had placed upon the throne ullusunu, the brother of azâ, and this prince had immediately concluded an alliance with eusas, mitâtti, and the people of andia; his example was soon followed by other eastern chiefs, assurlî of karallu and itti of allabria, whereupon, as the spirit of revolt spread from one to another, most of the districts lately laid under tribute by tiglath-pileser took up arms--niksama, bîtsagbati, bîtkhirmâmi, kilam-bâfci, armangu, and even the parts around kharkhar, and ellipi, with its reigning sovereign dalta. the general insurrection dreaded by sargon, and which eusas had for five years been fomenting, had, despite all the efforts of the assyrian government, at last broken out, and the whole frontier was ablaze from the borders of elam to those of the mushku. sargon turned his attention to where danger was most urgent; he made a descent on the territory of the mannai, and laid it waste �as a swarm of locusts might have done;� he burnt their capital, izirtu, demolished the fortifications of zibia and armaîd, and took ullusunu captive, but, instead of condemning him to death, he restored to him his liberty and his crown on condition of his paying a regular tribute. this act of clemency, in contrast with the pitiless severity shown at the beginning of the insurrection, instantly produced the good effects he expected: the mannai laid down their arms and swore allegiance to the conqueror, and their defection broke up the coalition. sargon did not give the revolted provinces time to recover from the dismay into which his first victories had thrown them, but marched rapidly to the south, and crushed them severally; commencing with andia, where he took prisoners with their cattle, he next attacked zikartu, whose king, mitâtti, took refuge in the mountains and thus escaped death at the hands of the executioner. assurlî of karalla had a similar fate to bagadatti, and was flayed alive. itti of allabria, with half of his subjects, was carried away to hamath. the towns of niksama and shurgadia were annexed to the province of parsuash. the town of kishîsim was reduced to ashes, and its king, belsharuzur, together with the treasures of his palace, was carried away to nineveh. kharkhar succumbed after a short siege, received a new population, and was henceforward known as kar-sharrukîn; dalta was restored to favour, and retained his dominion intact. never had so great a danger been so ably or so courageously averted. it was not without good reason that, after his victory over the mannai, sargon, instead of attacking busas, the most obstinate of his foes, turned against the medes. bllipi, parsuash, and kharkhar, comprising half the countries which had joined in the insurrection, were on the borders of elam or had frequent relations with that state, and it is impossible to conjecture what turn affairs might have taken had elam been induced to join their league, and had the elamite armies, in conjunction with those of merodach-baladan, unexpectedly fallen upon the assyrian rear by the valleys of the tigris or the turnât. [illustration: .jpg taking of the city of kishÎsim by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by plandin. the figures resembling stags� horns, which crown three of the upper towers, are tongues of flame, as was indicated by the red colouring which still remained on them when the bas- relief was discovered. had the elamites, however, entertained a desire to mingle in the fray, the promptness with which sargon had re-established order must have given them cause to reflect and induced them to maintain their neutrality. the year which had opened so inauspiciously thus ended in victory, though the situation was still fraught with danger. the agitation which had originated in the east and northeast in reached the north-west in , and spread as far as the borders of southern syria. rusas had employed the winter in secret negotiations with the mannai, and had won over one of their principal chiefs, a certain dayaukku, whose name seems to be identical with that which the greeks transliterated as deiokes.* * the identity of the name dayaukku with that of deiokes is admitted by all historians. as soon as spring had returned he entered the territory of ullusunu, and occupied twenty-two strongholds, which were probably betrayed into his hands by dayaukku. while this was taking place mita of mushki invaded cilicia, and the arab tribes of the idumsean desert--the thamudites, the ibadites, the marsimanu, and khayapâ--were emboldened to carry their marauding expeditions into assyrian territory. the assyrian monarch was thus called on to conduct three distinct wars simultaneously in three different directions; he was, moreover, surrounded by wavering subjects whom terror alone held to their allegiance, and whom the slightest imprudence or the least reverse might turn into open foes. sargon resolutely faced the enemy at all three points of attack. as in the previous year, he reserved for himself the position where danger was most threatening, directing the operations against the mannai. he captured one by one the twenty-two strongholds of ullusunu which rusas had seized, and laying hands on dayaukku, sent him and his family into exile to hamath. this display of energy determined ianzu of naîri to receive the assyrian monarch courteously within the royal residence of khubushkia and to supply him with horses, cattle, sheep, and goats in token of homage. proceeding from thence in an oblique direction, sargon reached andia and took prisoner its king tilusînas. having by this exploit reduced the province of mannai to order, he restored the twenty-two towns to ullusunu, and halting some days in izirtu, erected there a statue of himself, according to his custom, as a visible witness of assyrian supremacy, having done which, he retraced his steps to the south-east. the province of kharkhar, which had been reduced to subjection only a few months previously, was already in open revolt, and the district of kar-sharrukîn alone remained faithful to its governor: sargon had to reconquer it completely, town by town, imposing on the four citadels of kishislu, kindâu, bît-bagaiâ, and zaria the new names of kar-nabu, kar-sin, kar-rammânu, and kar-ishtar, besides increasing the fortifications of kar-sharrukîn. the medes once more acknowledged his suzerainty, and twenty-two of their chiefs came to tender the oath of allegiance at his feet; two or three districts which remained insubordinate were given up to pillage as far as bît-khambân, and the inhabitants of kimirra were sent into captivity. the eastern campaign was thus brought to a most successful issue, fortune, meanwhile, having also favoured the assyrian arms in the other menaced quarters. mita, after pushing forward at one point as far as the mediterranean, had been driven back into the mountains by the prefect of kuî, and the bedâwin of the south had sustained a serious reverse. these latter were mere barbarians, ignorant of the arts of reading and writing, and hitherto unconquered by any foreign power: their survivors were removed to samaria, where captives from hamath had already been established, and where they were soon joined by further exiles from babylon. [illustration: .jpg the town of bÎt-bagaÎa burnt by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. the tongues of flame which issue from the towers still bore traces of red and yellow colouring when the bas-relief was discovered. this episode had greater effect than its importance warranted; or perhaps the majority of the neighbouring states made it a convenient pretext for congratulating sargon on his victories over more serious enemies. he received gifts from shamshiê, the arabian queen who had formerly fought against tiglath-pileser, from itamar the saboan, and the sheikhs of the desert, from the kings of the mediterranean sea-board, and from the pharaoh himself. bocchoris had died after a troublous reign of seven years.* * the two dynasties of tanis and sais may be for the present reconstituted as follows:-- [illustration: .jpg table of dynasties of tanis and sais] his real character is unknown, but as he left a deep impression on the memories of his people, it is natural to conclude that he displayed, at times, both ability and energy. many legends in which the miraculous element prevailed were soon in circulation concerning him. he was, according to these accounts, weak in body and insignificant in appearance, but made up for these defects by mental ability and sound judgment. he was credited with having been simple in his mode of life, and was renowned as one of the six great legislators produced by egypt. a law concerning debt and the legal rates of interest, was attributed to him; he was also famed for the uprightness of his judgments, which were regarded as due to divine inspiration. isis had bestowed on him a serpent, which, coiling itself round his head when he sat on the judgment-seat, covered him with its shadow, and admonished him not to forget for a moment the inflexible principles of equity and truth. neither tafnakhti nor any of the local sovereigns mentioned on the stele of piônkhi wore comprised in the official computation; there is, therefore, no reason to add them to this list. a collection of the decisions he was reputed to have delivered in famous cases existed in the græco-roman period, and one of them is quoted at length: he had very ingeniously condemned a courtesan to touch the shadow of a purse as payment for the shadowy favours she had bestowed in a dream on her lover. [illustration: .jpg king bocchoris giving judgment between two women, rival claimants to a child] drawn by faucher-gudin. an alexandrian poet, pancrates, versified the accounts of this juridical collection,* and the artists of the imperial epoch drew from it motives for mural decoration; they portrayed the king pronouncing judgment between two mothers who disputed possession of an infant, between two beggars laying claim to the same cloak, and between three men asserting each of them his right to a wallet full of food.** * pancrates lived in the time of hadrian, and athenæus, who has preserved his memory for us, quotes the first book of his bocchoreidion. ** considerable remains of this decorative cycle have been discovered at pompeii and at rome, in a series of frescoes, in which lumbroso and e. lowy recognise the features of the legends of bocchoris; the dispute between the two mothers recalls the famous judgment of solomon ( kings iii. - ). a less favourable tradition represents the king as an avaricious and irreligious sovereign: he is said one day to have conceived the sacrilegious desire to bring about a conflict between an ordinary bull and the mnevis adored at heliopolis. the gods, doubtless angered by his crimes, are recorded to have called into being a lamb with eight feet, which, suddenly breaking into articulate speech, predicted that upper and lower egypt would be disgraced by the rule of a stranger.* * this legend, preserved by manetho and ulian is also known from the fragments of a demotic papyrus at vienna, which contains the prophecy of the lamb. [illustration: .jpg sabaco] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the monuments of his reign which have come down to us tell us nothing of his deeds; we can only conjecture that after the defeat sustained by his generals at raphia, the discords which had ruined the preceding dynasties again broke out with renewed violence. indeed, if he succeeded in preserving his crown for several years longer, he owed the fact more to the feebleness of the ethiopians than to his own vigour: no sooner did an enterprising prince appear at barkal and demand that he should render an account of his usurpation, than his power came to an end. kashto having died about ,* his son shabaku, the sabaco of the greeks, inherited the throne, and his daughter amenertas the priesthood and principality of thebes, in right of her mother shapenuapît. * the date of the accession of sabaco is here fixed at - , because i follow the version of the lists of manetho, which gives twelve years as the reign of that prince; an inscription from hammamât mentions his twelfth year. sabaco was an able and energetic prince, who could by no means tolerate the presence of a rival pharaoh in the provinces which piônkhi had conquered. he declared war, and, being doubtless supported in his undertaking by all the petty kings and great feudal nobles whose jealousy was aroused by the unlooked-for prosperity of the saite monarch, he defeated bocchoris and took him prisoner. tafnakhti had formerly recognised the ethiopian supremacy, and bocchoris, when he succeeded to his father�s dominions, had himself probably sought investiture at the hands of the king of napata. sabaco treated him as a rebel, and either burnt or flayed him alive ( ).* * according to manetho, he was burnt alive; the tradition which mentions that he was flayed alive is found in john of antioch. the struggle was hardly over, when the news of sargon�s victories reached egypt. it was natural that the new king, not yet securely seated on his throne, should desire to conciliate the friendship of a neighbour who was so successful in war, and that he should seize the first available pretext to congratulate him. the assyrian on his part received these advances with satisfaction and pride: he perceived in them a guarantee that egyptian intrigues with tyre and jerusalem would cease, and that he could henceforth devote himself to his projects against busas without being distracted by the fear of an ethiopian attack and the subversion of syria in his rear. sargon took advantage of these circumstances to strike a final blow at urartu. he began in the spring of by collecting among the mannai the tribute due from ullusuna, daltâ, and the median chiefs; then pushing forward into the country of the zikartu, he destroyed three forts and twenty-four villages, and burnt their capital, parda. mitatti escaped servitude, but it was at the price of his power: a proscribed fugitive, deserted by his followers, he took refuge in the woods, and never submitted to his conqueror; but he troubled him no further, and disappeared from the pages of history. having achieved this result, sargon turned towards the north-west, and coming at length into close conflict with eusas, did not leave his enemy till he had crushed him. he drove him into the gorges of uaush, slaughtered a large number of his troops, and swept away the whole of his body-guard--a body of cavalry of two hundred men, all of whom were connected by blood with the reigning family. eusas quitted his chariot, and, like his father sharduris on the night of the disaster at kishtân, leaped upon a mare, and fled, overwhelmed with shame, into the mountains. his towns, terror-stricken, opened their gates at the first summons to the victor; sargon burnt those which he knew he could not retain, granted the district of uaush to his vassal ullusunu as a recompense for his loyalty, and then marched up to rest awhile in naîri, where he revictualled his troops at the expense of ianzu of khubushkia. he had, no doubt, hoped that urzana of muzazîr, the last of the friends of eusas to hold out against assyria, would make good use of the respite thus, to all appearances unintentionally, afforded him, and would come to terms; but as the appeal to his clemency was delayed, sargon suddenly determined to assume the aggressive. muzazîr, entrenched within its mountain ranges, was accessible only by one or two dangerous passes; urzana had barricaded these, and believed himself in a position to defy every effort of the assyrians. sargon, equally convinced of the futility of a front attack, had recourse to a surprise. [illustration: .jpg taking of a town in urartu by the assyrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the drawing by botta. taking with him his chariots and one thousand picked horsemen, he left the beaten track, and crossing the four or five mountain chains--the shiak, the ardinshi, the ulayau, and the alluria--which lay between him and muzazîr, he unexpectedly bore down upon the city. urzana escaped after a desperate resistance, but the place was taken by assault and sacked, the palace destroyed, the temple overthrown, and the statues of the gods khaldîa and bagbartu dragged from their sanctuary. the entire royal family were sent into slavery, and with them , of the inhabitants who had survived the siege, besides mules, oxen, , sheep, and incalculable spoils in gold, silver, bronze, iron, and precious stones and stuffs, the furniture of urzana, and even his seal, being deposited in the treasury at nineveh. [illustration: .jpg the seal of urzana, king of muzazÎr] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an impression of the original seal which is preserved at the hague. the disaster at muzazîr was the final blow to urartu; it is impossible to say what took place where eusas himself was, and whether the feudatories refused him any further allegiance, but in a short time he found himself almost forsaken, without friends, troops, or a place of refuge, and reduced to choose between death or the degradation of appealing to the mercy of the conqueror. he stabbed himself rather than yield; and sargon, only too thankful to be rid of such a dangerous adversary, stopped the pursuit. argistis ii. succeeded to what was left of his father�s kingdom,* and, being anxious above all things to obtain peace for his subjects, suspended hostilities, without however disarming his troops. * no text states positively that argistis ii. immediately succeeded his father; but he is found mentioned as king of urartu from onwards, and hence it has been concluded, not without some reason, that such was the fact. the vannic inscriptions have not as yet given us this sovereign�s name. as was the case under tiglath-pileser iii., urartu neither submitted to assyria, nor was there any kind of treaty between the belligerents to prescribe the conditions of this temporary truce. both sides maintained their positions on their respective territories: sargon kept the frontier towns acquired by him in previous years, and which he had annexed to the border provinces, retaining also his suzerainty over muzazîr, the mannai, and the median states implicated in the struggle; argistis, on his side, strengthened himself in the regions around the sources of the euphrates and lake van--in biaînas, in etius, and in the plains of the araxes. the material injuries which he had received, however considerable they may appear, were not irreparable, and, as a fact, the country quickly recovered from them, but the people�s confidence in their prince and his chiefs was destroyed. the defeat of sharduris, following as it did on a period of advantageous victories, may have seemed to argistis one of those unimportant occurrences which constantly take place in the career of the strongest nations; the disaster of rusas proved to him that, in attempting to wipe out his first repulse, he had only made matters worse, and the conviction was borne in upon his princes that they were not in a position to contest the possession of western asia with the assyrians. they therefore renounced, more from instinct than as the result of deliberation, the project of enlarging their borders to the south, and if they subsequently reappeared on the mesopotamian plains, it was in search of booty, and not to acquire territory. any attempt to stop their incursions, or to disturb them in their mountain fastnesses, found them prepared to hold their own with the same obstinacy as of old, and they were quite able to safeguard their independence against an intruder. besides this, the cimmerians and the scythians were already pressing on their frontier, and were constantly harassing them. [illustration: .jpg the assyrians taking a median town] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile by flandin. it seems that this town was called amkaru, and its name appears, as far as i know, in none of the accounts which we possess of the campaigns. the town was apparently situated in karalla or in median territory. this fresh danger absorbed their entire attention, and from this time forward they ceased to play a part in general history; the century which had seen the rise and growth of their power was also a witness of their downfall under the attacks of assyria. during the last months of , the tribes which had formerly constituted the kingdom of karalla mutinied against the tyranny of their governor, and invited ami-tashshi, the brother of their ancient lord assurlî, to rule over them. sargon attacked them in the spring of , dispersed their troops, held them to ransom, and after having once more exacted homage from bît-dayaukku,* ellipi, and allabria. * the dayaukku who gave his name to this province was at first confounded with the personage who was entangled in the affairs of ullusunu, and was then banished by sargon to hamath. a good number of historians now admit that they were different persons. bît-dayaukku is evidently the district of ecbatana. he made a raid extending as far as the confines of the iranian desert, the barren steppes of eastern arabia,* and the district of nagira belonging to the �powerful� manda.* * the eastern arabs mentioned here were nomadic, and inhabited the confines of the great desert to the south-east of media, or the steppes of northern iran. they are those mentioned in a passage of appian, together with parthians, bactrians, and tapyræans, as having submitted to seleucus. ** the �powerful� manda, encamped in the mountain and desert, and who were named after the eastern arabs, must be the peoples situated between the caspian and the steppes of the iranian plateau, and a branch of the scythians who are soon to appear in asiatic history. while he was thus preparing the way for peace in his median domains, one of his generals crossed the euphrates to chastise the tabal for their ill deeds. the latter had figured, about the year b.c., among the peoples who had bowed before the supremacy of urartu, and their chief, uassarmi, had been the ally or vassal of sharduris. contemptuously spared at the taking of arpad, he had not been able to resign himself to the assyrian yoke, and had, in an ill-timed moment, thrown it off in ; he had, however, been overcome and forced to surrender, and tiglath-pileser had put in his place a man of obscure birth, named khulli, whose fidelity had remained unshaken throughout the reign of shalmaneser v. and the first years of sargon. khulli�s son, ambaridis, the husband of a ninevite princess, who had brought him as dowry a considerable part of cilicia, had been unable to resist the flattering offers of kusas; he had broken the ties which attached him to the new assyrian dynasty, but had been left unmolested so long as urartu and muzazir remained unshaken, since his position at the western extremity of the empire prevented him from influencing in the smallest degree the issue of the struggle, and it was well known that when the fall of kusas took place ambaridis would be speedily brought to account. he was, in fact, seized, banished to the banks of the tigris, and his hereditary fief of bît-burutash annexed to cilicia, under the rule of an assyrian. the following year was signalised by a similar execution at which sargon himself deigned to preside in person. tarkhunazi, the king of miliddu, not only had taken advantage of the troubles consequent on the armenian war to rebel against his master, but had attacked gunzinânu, who held, and had ruthlessly pillaged, the neighbouring district of kammanu.* sargon overcame him in the open field, took from him his city of miliddu, and stormed the town of tulgarimmê in which he had taken refuge.** * kammanu is probably not the kammanênc of the greek geographers, which is too far north relatively to melitênè, but is probably comana of cappadocia and its district. ** tulgarimmê has been connected with the togarmah of the bible (gen. x. ) by halévy and delitzsch, and their views on this subject have been adopted by most historians. here again the native kingdom disappeared, and was replaced by an assyrian administration. kammanu, wedged in between urartu and mushki, separated these two countries, sometimes rivals to each other, but always enemies to nineveh. its maintenance as an independent kingdom prevented them from combining their efforts, and obtaining that unity of action which alone could ensure for them, if not a definite triumph, at least preservation from complete extinction and an opportunity of maintaining their liberty; the importance of the position, however, rendered it particularly perilous to hold, and the assyrians succeeded in so doing only by strongly fortifying it. walls were built round ten cities, five on the urartian frontier, three on that of mushki, and two on the north, and the country which they protected was made into a new province, that of tulgarimmê, the district of miliddu being confided to the care of mutallu, prince of kummukh ( ). an incident which took place in the following year furnished a pretext for completing the organisation and military defence of this western border province. gurgum had been for thirty years or more in the possession of tarkhulara; this prince, after having served sharduris, had transferred his homage to tiglath-pileser, and he had thenceforward professed an unwavering loyalty to the assyrian sovereigns. this accommodating personage was assassinated by his son mutallu; and sargon, fearing a revolt, hastened, at the head of a detachment of picked troops, to avenge him. the murderer threw down his arms almost without having struck a blow, and gurgum was thenceforward placed under the direct rule of nineveh. the affair had not been brought to a close before an outbreak took place in southern syria, which might have entailed very serious consequences had it not been promptly dealt with. egypt, united from end to end under the sceptre of sabaco, jealously kept watch over the political complications in asia, and though perhaps she was not sure enough of her own strength to interfere openly before the death of eusas, she had renewed negotiations with the petty kingdoms of the hebrews and philistines. ashdod had for some time past showed signs of discontent, and it had been found necessary to replace their king, azuri, who had refused to pay tribute, by his brother akhimiti; shortly after this, however, the people had risen in rebellion: they had massacred akhimiti, whom they accused of being a mere thrall of assyria, and had placed on the throne yamani, a soldier of fortune, probably an adventurer of hellenic extraction.* the other philistine cities had immediately taken up arms; edom and moab were influenced by the general movement, and isaiah was striving to avert any imprudent step on the part of judah. sargon despatched the tartan,** and the rapidity with which that officer carried out the campaign prevented the movement from spreading beyond philistia. he devastated ashdod, and its vassal, gath, carried off their gods and their inhabitants, and peopled the cities afresh with prisoners from asia minor, urartu, and media. yamani attempted to escape into egypt, but the chief of milukhkha intercepted him on his way, and handed him over in chains to the conqueror.*** * this prince�s name, usually written yamani, is also written yatnani in the _annals_, and this variation, which is found again in the name of the island of cyprus and the cypriotes, gives us grounds for believing that the assyrian scribe took the race-name of the prince for a proper name: the new king of ashdod would have been a yamani, a greek of cyprus. ** the assyrian narratives, as usual, give the honour of conducting the campaign to the king. isaiah (xx. ) distinctly says that sargon sent the tartan to quell the revolt of ashdod. *** the _annals_ state that yamani was made prisoner and taken to assyria. the _fastes_, more accurate on this point, state that he escaped to muzri, and that he was given up by the king of milukhkha. the muzri mentioned in this passage very probably here means egypt. the latter took care not to call either moab, edom, or judah to account for the part they had taken in the movement, perhaps because they were not mentioned in his instructions, or because he preferred not to furnish them, by an untimely interference, with a pretext for calling in the help of egypt. the year was doubtless too far advanced to allow him to dream of marching against pharaoh, and moreover that would have been one of those important steps which the king alone had the right to take. there was, however, no doubt that the encounter between the two empires was imminent, and isaiah ventured to predict the precise date of its occurrence. he walked stripped and barefoot through the streets of jerusalem--a strange procedure which he explained by the words which jahveh had put into his lips: �like as my servant isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon egypt and upon kush (ethiopia); so shall the king of assyria lead away the captives of egypt and the exiles of kush, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of egypt. and they shall be dismayed and ashamed, because of kush their expectation, and of egypt their glory. and the inhabitants of this coastland shall say in that day, behold, such is our expectation, whither we fled for help to be delivered from the king of assyria: and we, how shall we escape?� * * isa. xx. the fulfilment of this prophecy did not take place as quickly as the prophet perhaps desired. egypt appeared too strong to be openly attacked by a mere section of the battalions at the disposal of assyria, and besides, it may have been deemed imprudent to involve the army to any serious extent on so distant a field as africa, when babylon was ready and waiting to fall upon the very heart of assyria at the first news of a real or supposed reverse. circumstances seemed, moreover, to favour a war against merodach-baladan. this sovereign, who had been received with acclamation by the babylonians, had already lost the popularity he had enjoyed at his accession. the fickle character of the people, which made them nearly always welcome a fresh master with enthusiasm, soon led them from love and obedience to hatred, and finally to revolt. merodach-baladan trusted to the kaldâ to help him to maintain his position, and their rude barbarity, even if it protected him against the fickleness of his more civilised subjects, increased the discontent at kutha, sippar, and borsippa. he removed the statues of the gods from these towns, imprisoned the most turbulent citizens, confiscated their goods, and distributed them among his own followers; the other cities took no part in the movement, but sargon must have expected to find in them, if not effective support, at least sympathies which would facilitate his work of conquest. it is true that elam, whose friendship for the aramæan was still undiminished, remained to be reckoned with, but elam had lost much of its prestige in the last few years. the aged khumban-igash had died in ,* and his successor, shutruk-nakhunta, had not apparently inherited all the energy of his father,** and it is possible that troubles had arisen among the vassals of his own kingdom which prevented him from interfering on behalf of his ally. sargon took account of all these circumstances in arranging his plan of campaign. he divided his army into two forces, one of which, under his own command, was to be directed against merodach-baladan, while the other was to attack the insurgent aramæans on the left bank of the tigris, and was to be manoeuvred so as to drive shutruk-nakhunta back on the marshes of the uknu.*** the eastern force was the first to be set in movement, and it pushed forward into the territory of the gambulu. these latter had concentrated themselves round dur-atkharas, one of their citadels;**** they had increased the height of the walls, and filled the ditches with water brought from the shurappu by means of a canal, and having received a reinforcement of horsemen and foot soldiers, they had drawn them up in front of the ramparts. * the date of the death of khumban-igash is indirectly given in the passage of the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, where it is said that in the first year of ashshur-nâdin- shumu, king of babylon, ishtar-khundu (= shutruk-nakhunta) was dethroned by his brother, khallushu, after having reigned over elam eighteen years: these events actually took place, as we shall see below, about the year before our era. ** shutruk-nakhunta is the susian form of the name; the assyrian texts distort it into shutur-nankhundi, and the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, into ishtar-khundu, owing to a faint resemblance in the sound of the name of the goddess ishtar with the form _shutur, sthur_, itself derived from shutruk, with which the name began. *** the earlier historians of assyria, misled in the first place by the form in which the scribes have handed down the account in the annals and the _fastes_, assumed the existence of a single army, led by sargon himself, and which would have marched on all the above-mentioned places of the country, one by one. tiele was the first to recognise that sargon must have left part of his forces to the command of one of his lieutenants, and winckler, enlarging on this idea, showed that there were then two armies, engaged at different seats of war, but manoeuvring as far as possible by mutual arrangement. **** the site of dur-atkharas is unknown. billerbeck places it hypotheti-cally on the stream of mendeli, and his conjecture is in itself very plausible. i should incline, however, to place it more to the south, on account of the passage in which it is said that the kaldâ, to complete the defences of the town, brought a canal from the shurappu and fortified its banks. the shurappu, according to delitzsch, would be the shatt umm-el-jemâl; according to delattrc, the kerkha; the account of the campaign under consideration would lead me to recognise in it a watercourse like the tib, which runs into the tigris near amara, in which case the ruins of kherîb would perhaps correspond with the site of dur-atkharas. a single morning sufficed to disperse them, and the assyrians, entering the city with the fugitives, took possession of it on the same day. they made , prisoners, and seized horses, mules, asses, camels, and both sheep and oxen in large numbers. eight of the chiefs of the neighbourhood, who ruled over the flat country between the shurappu and the uknu, begged for mercy as soon as they learned the result of the engagement. the name of dur-atkharas was changed to that of dur-nebo, the territory of the gambulu was converted into a province, and its organisation having been completed, the army continued its march, sweeping before it the euâ, the khindaru, the puqudu, in short, all the tribes occupying the district of yatbur. the chiefs of these provinces sought refuge in the morasses of the lower kerkha, but finding themselves surrounded and short of provisions, they were forced by famine to yield to the enemy, and came to terms with the assyrians, who imposed a tribute on them and included them within the new province of gambulu. the goal of this expedition was thus attained, and blam separated from karduniash, but the issue of the war remained undecided as long as shutruk-nakhunta held the cities at the edge of the plain, from which he could emerge at will into the heart of the assyrian position. the conqueror therefore turned in that direction, rapidly took from him the citadels of shamuna and babduri, then those of lakhirimmu and pillutu, and pitched his camp on the bank of the naditi, from whence he despatched marauding bands to pillage the country. dismay spread throughout the district of rashi; the inhabitants, abandoning their cities--tîl-khumba, durmishamash, bubî, and khamanu--migrated as far as bît-imbi; shutruk-nakhunta, overcome with fear, took refuge, so it was said, in the distant mountains to preserve his life.* * none of these places can be identified with certainty. so far as i can follow the account of this campaign on the map, it seems that the attacks upon shutruk-nakhunta took place on the plain and in the mountains between the ab-î-gengir and the tib, so that the river naditi would be the aftâh or one of its tributaries. if this were so, lakhirimmu and pillutu would be situated somewhere near the jughaî ben ruan and the tope ghulamen of de morgan�s map of elam, shamuna near zirzir-têpî, babdurî near hosseini-yeh. but i wish it to be understood that i do not consider these comparisons as more than simple conjectures. bît-imbi was certainly out of the reach of the assyrians, since it was used as a place of refuge by the inhabitants of rashî; at the same time it must have been close to rashî, since the people of this country fled thither. the site of ghilân which de morgan has adopted on his map seems to me to be too far north to comply with these conditions, and that of tapa, approved by billerboek, too southerly. if, as i believe, rashî corresponds to the regions of pushti-kuh which lie on both sides of the upper waters of the mendeli stream, we ought to look for bît-imbi somewhere near the desht-î-ghoaur and the zenjan, near a point where communication with the banks of the ab-î-kirind would be easy. sargon, meanwhile, had crossed the euphrates with the other force, and had marched straight upon bît-dakkuri; having there noticed that the fortress of dur-ladînu was in ruins, he rebuilt it, and, firmly installed within the heart of the country, he patiently waited until the eastern force had accomplished its mission. like his adversary, merodach-baladan, he had no desire to be drawn into an engagement until he knew what chance there was of the latter being reinforced by the king of elam. at the opening of hostilities merodach-baladan claimed the help of the elamite king, and lavished on him magnificent presents--a couch, a throne, a portable chair, a cup for the royal offerings, and his own pectoral chain; these all reached their destination in good condition, and were graciously accepted. but before long the elamite prince, threatened in his own domain, forgot everything except his own personal safety, and declared himself unable to render merodach-baladan any assistance. the latter, on receiving this news, threw himself with his face in the dust, rent his clothes, and broke out into loud weeping; after which, conscious that his strength would not permit of his meeting the enemy in the open field, he withdrew his men from the other side of the tigris, escaped secretly by night, and retired with his troops to the fortress of ikbîbel. the inhabitants of babylon and borsippa did not allow themselves to be disconcerted; they brought the arks of bel, zarpanît, nebo, and tashmît out of their sanctuaries, and came forth with chanting and musical instruments to salute sargon at dûr-ladînu. he entered the city in their company, and after he had celebrated the customary sacrifices, the people enthroned him in merodach-baladan�s palace. tribute was offered to him, but he refused to accept any part of it for his personal use, and applied it to a work of public utility--the repairing of the ancient canal of borsippa, which had become nearly filled up. this done, he detached a body of troops to occupy sippara, and returned to assyria, there to take up his winter quarters. once again, therefore, the ancient metropolis of the euphrates was ruled by an assyrian, who united in one protocol the titles of the sovereigns of assur and kar-duniash. babylon possessed for the kings of nineveh the same kind of attraction as at a later date drew the german cæsars to rome. scarcely had the assyrian monarchs been crowned within their own domains, than they turned their eyes towards babylon, and their ambition knew no rest till the day came for them to present themselves in pomp within the temple of its god and implore his solemn consecration. when at length they had received it, they scrupulously secured its renewal on every occasion which the law prescribed, and their chroniclers recorded among the important events of the year, the ceremony in which they �took the hand of bel.� sargon therefore returned, in the month nisan of the year , to preside over the procession of the god, and he devoutly accomplished the rites which constituted him the legitimate successor of the semi-fabulous heroes of the old empire, foremost among whom was his namesake shargâni of agadê. he offered sacrifices to bel, nebo, and to the divinities of sumir and akkad, and he did not return to the camp until he had fulfilled all the duties incumbent on his new dignity. he was involved that year in two important wars at opposite points of his empire. one was at the north-western extremity, against the mushki and their king mita, who, after having supported eusas, was now intriguing with argistis; the other in the south-east, against the kaldâ, and probably also against elam. he entrusted the conduct of the former to the governor of kuî, but reserved to himself the final reckoning with merodach-baladan. the babylonian king had made good use of the respite given him during the winter months. too prudent to meet his enemy in the open plain, he had transformed his hereditary principality into a formidable citadel. during the preceding campaign he had devastated the whole of the country lying between the marshes and the territory occupied by the assyrians, and had withdrawn the inhabitants. most of the towns--ikbîbel, uru, uruk, kishik, and nimid-laguda--were also deserted, and no garrisons were left in them. he had added to the fortifications of dur-yakîa, and enlarged the moat till it was two hundred cubits wide and eighteen deep, so as to reach the level of infiltration; he then turned into it the waters of the euphrates, so that the town appeared to be floating on a lake, without either bridges or quays by means of which the besiegers might have brought their machines within range and their troops been able to approach for an assault. merodach-baladan had been careful not to shut himself within the town, but had taken up a position in the marshes, and there awaited the arrival of the assyrians. sargon, having left babylon in the month of iyyâr, encountered him within sight of dur-yakîn. the aramæan infantry were crushed by repeated charges from the mnevito chariotry and cavalry, who pursued the fugitives to the outer side of the moat, and seized the camp with all its baggage and the royal train, including the king�s tent, a canopy of solid silver which protected the throne, his sceptre, weapons, and stores of all kinds. the peasants, to the number of , , crowded within the lines, also fell into their hands, together with their flocks and herds-- horses, mules, and camels, as well as sheep, oxen, and asses; the remainder of the fugitives rushed within the outworks for refuge �like a pack of wild boars,� and finally were driven into the interior of the place, or scattered among the beds of reeds along the coast. sargon cut down the groves of palm trees which adorned the suburbs, and piled up their trunks in the moat, thus quickly forming a causeway right up to the walls. merodach-baladan had been wounded in the arm during the engagement, but, nevertheless, fought stubbornly in defence of his city; when he saw that its fall was inevitable, he fled to the other side of the gulf, and took refuge among the mud flats of the lower ulaî. sargon set fire to dur-yakîn, levelled its towers and walls with the ground, and demolished its houses, temples, and palaces. it had been a sort of penal settlement, to which the kaldâ rulers used to consign those of their subjects belonging to the old aboriginal race, who had rendered themselves obnoxious by their wealth or independence of character; the number of these prisoners was considerable, babylon, borsippa, nipur, and sippar, not to speak of uni, uruk, eridu, larsam, and kishîk, having all of them furnished their share. sargon released them all, and restored their gods to the temples; he expelled the nomads from the estates which, contrary to all justice, had been distributed among them in preceding years, and reinstated the former owners. karduniash, which had been oppressed for twelve long years by a semi-barbarian despot, now breathed again, and hailed sargon as its deliverer, while he on his part was actively engaged in organising his conquest. the voluntary submission of upiri, king of dilmun, who lived isolated in the open sea, �as though in a bird�s nest,� secured to sargon possession of the watercourses which flowed beyond the chaldæan lake into the persian gulf: no sooner had he obtained it than he quitted the neighbourhood of dur-yakîn, crossed the tigris, and reinforced the garrisons which lined his elamite frontier on this side. he had just finished building a strongly fortified citadel on the site of sagbat,* when ambassadors arrived from mita. * this sagbat, which must not be confused with the district of bît-sagbati mentioned in the reign of tiglath-pileser iii., seems to correspond with a post to the south of durîlu, perhaps the ruins of baksayeh, on the tchengula. the governor of kuî had at length triumphed over the obstinacy of the mushki, and after driving them from village to village, had compelled them to sue for terms: the tidings of the victories over the kaldâ had doubtless hastened their decision, but they were still so powerful that it was thought wiser not to impose too rigorous conditions upon them. mita agreed to pay tribute, and surrendered one or two districts, which were turned into an aramæan settlement: the inhabitants were transferred to bît-yakîn, where they had to make the best they could of lands that had been devastated by war. at this juncture the greeks of cyprus flattered the pride of the assyrians in a most unexpected way: after the manner of their race they scoured the seas, and their fleets persistently devastated the coasts of syria and cilicia. [illustration: .jpb stele at larnaka] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plaster cast in the louvre. seven of their kings were so far alarmed by the report of sargon�s achievements as to dread punishment for their misdeeds. they therefore sent him presents, and, for the moment, abandoned their piratical expeditions in phoenician waters. the homage of these inveterate robbers raised sargon in his own eyes and in those of his subjects. some years later, about b.c., he presented them with a stele of black marble, on which he had engraved his own portrait, together with a long inscription setting forth his most glorious exploits. they set it up at kition (citium), where it has been preserved amongst the ruins, a priceless witness to the greatness of assyria. while war thus raged around him, sargon still found time for works of a peaceful character. he set himself to remodel and complete the system of irrigation in the assyrian plain; he repaired the dykes, and cleaned out and made good the beds of the canals which had been neglected during the troublous times of the last generation. he erected buildings at calah* and at nineveh, but in these cities everything seemed to recall too vividly the memory of the sovereigns who had gone before him: he wished for a capital which should belong to himself alone, where he would not be reminded of a past in which he had no part. after meditating day and night, his choice fell upon the village of maganubba, a little to the north-east of nineveh, in a wide plain which extends from the banks of the khuzur to the hills of muzri, and by a single decree he expropriated all its inhabitants. he then built on the land which he had purchased from them a city of unrivalled magnificence, which he called by his own name, dur-sharrukîn.** * at calah, he lived in an old palace of assur-nazir-pal restored and adapted for his use, as shown by the inscription published by layard. ** in most of the texts the village of maganubba is not named; it is mentioned in the _cylinder inscription_, and this document is the only one which furnishes details of the expropriation, etc. the modern name of the place is khorsabad, _the city of khosroes_, but the name of its founder was still associated with its ruins, in the time of yakut, who mentions him under the name of sarghun. it was first explored in by botta, then by place and oppert. the antiquities collected there by botta and place constitute the bulk of the assyrian museum in the louvre; unfortunately, a part of the objects collected by place went to the bottom of the tigris with the lighter which was carrying them. the ground plan of it is of rectangular shape, the sides being about yards long by yards wide, each corner exactly facing one of the four points of the compass. its walls rest on a limestone sub-structure some three feet six inches high, and rise fifty-seven feet above the ground; they are strengthened, every thirty yards or so, by battlemented towers which project thirteen feet from the face of the wall and stand sixteen feet higher than the ramparts.* * place reckoned the height of the wall at feet, a measurement adopted by perrot and chipiez; dieulafoy has shown that the height of the wall must be reduced to feet, and that of the towers about feet. [illustration: .jpg plan of the royal city of dur-sharrukÎn] reduction by faucher-gudin, from the plan published in place. access was gained to the interior by eight gates, two on each side of the square, each of them marked by two towers separated from one another by the width of the bay. every gate had its patron, chosen from among the gods of the city; there was the gate of shamash, the gate of rammân, those of bel and beltis, of ami, of tshtar, of eâ, and of the lady of the gods. each of them was protected externally by a _migdol_, or small castle, built in the syrian style, and flanked at each corner by a low tower thirteen yards in width; five allowed of the passage of beasts as well as men. it was through these that the peasants came in every morning, driving their cattle before them, or jolting along in waggons laden with fruit and vegetables. after passing the outposts, they crossed a paved courtyard, then made their way between the two towers through a vaulted passage over fifty yards long, intersected at almost equal intervals by two transverse galleries. the other three gates had a special arrangement of their own; a flight of twelve steps built out in front of the courtyard rendered them inaccessible to animals or vehicles. at the entrance to the passage towered two colossal bulls with human heads, standing like sentinels--their faces and foreparts turned outward, their hind-quarters ranged along the inner walls--as though gazing before them into space in company with two winged genii. the arch supported by their mitred heads was ornamented by a course of enamelled bricks, on which other genii, facing one another in pairs, offered pine-cones across a circular ornament of many colours. these were the mystic guardians of the city, who shielded it not only from the attacks of men, but also from invasions of evil spirits and pernicious diseases. the rays of the sun made the forecourt warm in winter, while it was always cool under the archway in summer; the gates served as resorts for pleasure or business, where old men and idlers congregated to discuss their affairs and settle the destinies of the state, merchants bargained and disposed of their goods, and the judge and notables of the neighbouring quarter held their courts. [illustration: .jpg part of the enamelled course of a gate] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing published in place. it was here that the king generally exposed to view the chieftains and kings whom he had taken captive; here they lay, chained like dogs in cages, dependent on the pity of their guards or of passers-by for such miserable fare as might be flung to them, and, the first feeling of curiosity once passed, no longer provoking even the jeers of the crowd, until a day came when their victor took it into his head to remove them from their ignominious position, and either restored them to their thrones or sent them to the executioner.* the town itself, being built from plans drawn up by one mind, must have presented few of the irregularities of outline characteristic of ancient cities. * to mention but a single instance, it was in this way that assur-bani-pal treated the arab kings captured by him. the streets leading from the gates were of uniform breadth throughout, from one side of the enclosure to the other. they were paved, had no sideways or footpaths, and crossed one another at right angles. the houses on either side of them seem, for the most part, to have consisted of a single story. they were built of bricks, either baked or unbaked, the outer surfaces of which were covered with white or tinted rough-casting. the high and narrow doors were nearly always hidden away in a corner of the front; the bare monotony of the walls was only relieved here and there at long intervals by tiny windows, but often instead of a flat roof the building was surmounted by a conical dome or by semi-cupolas, the concave sides of which were turned inwards. the inhabitants varied greatly in race and language: sargon had filled his city with prisoners collected from all the four quarters of his empire, from elam, chaldæa, and media, from urartu and tabal, syria and palestine, and in order to keep these incongruous elements in check he added a number of assyrians, of the mercantile, official, or priestly classes. he could overlook the whole city from the palace which he had built on both sides the north-eastern wall of the town, half within and half without the ramparts. like all palaces built on the euphratean model, this royal castle stood on an artificial eminence of bricks formed of two rectangles joined together in the shape of the letter t. the only entrance to it was on the city side, foot-passengers being admitted by a double flight of steps built out in front of the ramparts, horsemen and chariots by means of an inclined plane which rose in a gentle gradient along the right flank of the masonry work, and terminated on its eastern front. two main gates corresponded to these two means of approach; the one on the north-east led straight to the royal apartments, the other faced the city and opened on to the double staircase. it was readily distinguishable from a distance by its two flagstaffs bearing the royal standard, and its two towers, at the base of which were winged bulls and colossal figures of gilgames crushing the lion. [illustration: .jpg bird�s eye view of sargon�s palace at dur-sharrukîn] drawn by boudier, from the restoration by thomas in place. two bulls of still more monstrous size stood sentry on either side of the gate, the arch was outlined by a course of enamelled bricks, while higher up, immediately beneath the battlements, was an enamelled mosaic showing the king in all his glory. this triumphal arch was reserved for his special use, the common people being admitted by two side doors of smaller size less richly decorated. [illustration: .jpg one of the gates of the palace at dur-sharrukÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. saragon resided at caleh, where he had taken up his quarters in the former palace of assur-nazir-pal, while his new city was still in the hands of the builders. every moment that he could spare from his military and administrative labours was devoted to hastening on the progress of the work, and whenever he gained a victory or pillaged a district, he invariably set aside a considerable part of the booty in order to meet the outlay which the building involved. thus we find that on returning from his tenth campaign he brought with him an immense convoy laden with timber, stone, and precious metals which he had collected in the neighbourhood of mount taurus or among the mountains of assyria, including coloured marbles, lapis-lazuli, rock crystal, pine, cedar, and cypress-wood, gold, silver, and bronze, all of which was destined for dur-sharrukîn; the quantity of silver included among these materials was so great that its value fell to a level with that of copper. [illustration: .jpg plan of the excavated portions of the palace at dur-sharrukÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plan by thomas, in place. the interior of the building, as in the case of the old chaldæan palaces, was separated into two well-marked divisions. the larger of these was used by the king in his public capacity, and to this the nobles and soldiers, and even the common people, were admitted under certain conditions and on certain days prescribed by custom. the outer court was lined on three sides by warehouses and depots, in which were stored the provisions, commodities, and implements required for the host of courtiers and slaves who depended on the sovereign for support. each room had, as may still be seen, its own special purpose. there were cellars for wine and oil, with their rows of large oblong jars; then there were store-rooms for implements of iron, which place found full of rusty helmets, swords, pieces of armour, maces, and ploughshares; a little further on were rooms for the storage of copper weapons, enamelled bricks, and precious metals, and the king�s private treasury, in which were hidden away the spoils of the vanquished or the regular taxes paid by his subjects; some fine bronze lions of marvellous workmanship and lifelike expression were found still shut up here. [illustration: .jpg one of the bronze lions from dur-sharrukÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the louvre. the kitchens adjoined the pantries, and the stables for horses and camels communicated direct with the coach-houses in which the state chariots were kept, while the privies were discreetly hidden in a secluded corner. on the other side, among the buildings occupying the southern angle of the courtyard, the menials of the palace lived huddled together, each family quartered in small, dark rooms. the royal apartments, properly so called, stood at the back of these domestic offices, facing the south-east, near the spot where the inclined plane debouched on to the city ramparts. the monumental entrance to these apartments was guarded, in accordance with religious custom, by a company of winged bulls; behind this gate was a lawn, then a second gate, a corridor and a grand quadrangle in the very centre of the palace. [illustration: .jpg a hunting expedition in the woods near dur-sharrukÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by flandin, in botta. the king occupied a suite of some twenty rooms of a rather simple character; here he slept, ate, worked, and transacted the greater part of his daily business, guarded by his eunuchs and attended by his ministers and secretaries. the remaining rooms were apartments of state, all of the same pattern, in which the crowd of courtiers and employés assembled while waiting for a private audience or to intercept the king as he passed. a subdued light made its way from above through narrow windows let into the massive arches. the walls were lined to a height of over nine feet from the floor with endless bas-reliefs, in greyish alabaster, picked out in bright colours, and illustrating the principal occupations in which the sovereign spent his days, such as the audiences to ambassadors, hunting in the woods, sieges and battles. a few brief inscriptions interspersed above pictures of cities and persons indicated the names of the vanquished chiefs or the scenes of the various events portrayed; detailed descriptions were engraved on the back of the slabs facing the brick wall against which they rested. this was a precautionary measure, the necessity for which had been but too plainly proved by past experience. every one--the king himself included--well knew that some day or other dur-sharrukîn would be forsaken just as the palaces of previous dynasties had been, and it was hoped that inscriptions concealed in this manner would run a better chance of escaping the violence of man or the ravages of time; preserved in them, the memory of sargon would rise triumphant from the ruins. the gods reigned supreme over the north-east angle of the platform, and a large irregular block of buildings was given up to their priests; their cells contained nothing of any particular interest, merely white walls and black plinths, adorned here and there with frescoes embellished by arabesques, and pictures of animals and symbolical genii. the _ziggurât_ rose to a height of some feet above the esplanade. it had seven storeys dedicated to the gods of the seven planets, each storey being painted in the special colour of its god--the first white, the second black, the third purple, the fourth blue, the fifth a vermilion red; the sixth was coated with silver, and the seventh gilded. there was no chamber in the centre of the tower, but a small gilded chapel probably stood at its base, which was used for the worship of assuf or of ishtar. the harem, or _bît-riduti_, was at the southern corner of the enclosure, almost in the shadow of the _ziggurât_. sargon had probably three queens when he founded his city, for the harem is divided into three separate apartments, of which the two larger look out on the same quadrangle. [illustration: .jpg the ziggurat at dur-sharrukin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. two courses of enamelled bricks ran along the base of the façade, while statues were placed at intervals against the wall, and the bay of the gateway was framed by two bronze palm trees gilt: the palm being the emblem of fruitfulness and grace, no more fitting decoration could have been chosen for this part of the building. the arrangement was the same in all three divisions: an ante-chamber of greater width than length; an apartment, one half of which was open to the sky, while the other was covered by a half-dome, and a flight of twelve steps, leading to an alcove in which stood a high wooden couch. the queens and princesses spent their lives in this prison-like _bît-riduti_: their time was taken up with dress, embroidery, needlework, dancing and singing, the monotony of this routine being relieved by endless quarrels, feuds, and intrigues. the male children remained in the harem until the age of puberty, when they left it in order to continue their education as princes and soldiers under the guidance of their father.* * an inscription of assur-bani-pal, gives a summary description of the life led in the harem by heirs to the throne, and describes generally the kind of education received by them from their earliest childhood. [illustration: .jpg section of a bedroom in the harem] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. this group of buildings was completed by a park, in which cedars of lebanon, pines, cypresses, gazelles, stags, wild asses and cattle, and even lions, were acclimatised, in addition to a heterogeneous collection of other trees and animals. here, the king gave himself up to the pleasures of the chase, and sometimes invited one or other of his wives to come thither and banquet or drink with him. after mita�s surrender, sargon had hoped to be allowed to finish building his city in peace; but an ill-advised movement in kummukh obliged him to don his harness again ( b.c.). king mutallu had entered into an alliance with argistis of urartu, and took the field with his army; but when details of what had taken place in chaldæa reached his ears, and he learnt the punishment that had been inflicted on the people of bît-yakin, his courage failed him. [illustration: .jpg main book of the harem at duk-sharrukÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by thomas, in place. he fled without waiting for the assyrians to appear, and so great was his haste that he had no time to take his family and treasure with him. sargon annexed his kingdom, placed it under the government of the _tartan_, and incorporated into his own the whole army of kummukh, including chariots, horsemen, , archers, and , pikemen. in the following year ( ) his vassal dalta died, leaving two sons, nibi and ishpabara, both of whom claimed possession of the fief of ellipi; nibi appealed to elam for help, and ishpabara at once turned for aid to assyria. sargon sent him a body of troops, commanded by seven of his generals, while shutruk-nakhunta lent his _protégé_ bowmen; ishpabara won the day, took the city of marubishti by storm, and compelled his brother to take refuge in susian territory. the affair wras over so quickly that it caused practically no delay in the completion of the works at the capital. the consecration of a new city necessitated the observance of a host of complicated ceremonies, which extended over several months. first of all provision had to be made for its religious worship; the omens were consulted in order to determine which of the gods were to be invoked, and, when this was decided, there followed the installation of the various statues and arks which were to preside over the destinies of the city and the priests to whom they were intrusted; the solemn inauguration took place on the nd day of tisri, in the year b.c., and from that day forward dur-sharrukîn occupied the rank officially assigned to it among the capitals of the empire. sargon, however, did not formally take up his residence within it till six months later, on the th day of iyyâr, . he must, by this time, have been advancing in years, and even if we assume him to have been a young man when he ascended the throne, after the sixteen years of bodily fatigue and mental worry through which he had passed since coming into power, he must have needed repose. he handed over the government of the northern provinces to his eldest son sin-akhê-irba, better known to us as sennacherib, whom he regarded as his successor; to him he transferred the responsibility of keeping watch over the movements of the mannai, of urartu, and of the restless barbarians who dwelt beyond the zone of civilised states on the banks of the halys, or at the foot of the distant caucasus: a revolt among the tabal, in , was promptly suppressed by his young and energetic deputy. as for sargon himself, he was content to retain the direct control of the more pacific provinces, such as babylon, the regions of the middle euphrates, and syria, and he doubtless hoped to enjoy during his later years such tranquillity as was necessary to enable him to place his conquests on a stable basis. the envious fates, however, allowed him but little more than twelve short months: he perished early in b.c., assassinated by some soldier of alien birth, if i interpret rightly the mutilated text which furnishes us with a brief mention of the disaster. sennacherib was recalled in haste from the frontier, and proclaimed king immediately on his arrival, thus ascending unopposed to the throne on the th day of ab. his father�s body had been left unburied, doubtless in order that he might verify with his own eyes the truth of what had been told him concerning his death, and thus have no ground for harbouring suspicions that would have boded ill for the safety of the late king�s councillors and servants. he looked upon his father�s miserable ending as a punishment for some unknown transgression, and consulted the gods to learn what it was that had aroused their anger, refusing to authorise the burial within the palace until the various expiatory rites suggested by the oracle had been duly performed.* * this is my interpretation of the text published and translated by winckler. winckler sees in it the account of a campaign during which sargon was killed by mountaineers, as was cyprus in later times by the massagetse; the king�s body (according to him) remained unburied, and was recovered by sennacherib only after considerable delay. in support of his version of this event winckler cites the passage in isa. xiv. - , which he takes as having been composed to exult over the death of sargon, and then afterwards adapted to the death of a king of babylon. thus mysteriously disappeared the founder of the mightiest dynasty that ever ruled in assyria, perhaps even in the whole of western asia. at first sight, it would seem easy enough to determine what manner of man he was and to what qualities he owed his greatness, thanks to the abundance of documents which his contemporaries have bequeathed to us; but when we come to examine more closely, we soon find the task to be by no means a simple one. the inscriptions maintain so discreet a silence with regard to the antecedents of the kings before their accession, and concerning their education and private life, that at this distance of time we cannot succeed in forming any clear idea as to their individual temperament and character. the monuments record such achievements as they took pride in, in terms of uniform praise which conceal or obliterate the personality of the king in question; it is always the ideal assyrian sovereign who is held up for our admiration under a score of different names, and if, here and there, we come upon some trait which indicates the special genius of this or that monarch, we may be sure that the scribe has allowed it to slip in by accident, quite unconscious of the fact that he is thus affording us a glimpse of his master�s true character and disposition. a study of sargon�s campaigns as revealed in his annals will speedily convince us that he was something more than a fearless general, with a keen eye to plunder, who could see nothing in the most successful expedition but a means of enriching his people or adding to the splendours of his court. he was evidently convinced that certain nations, such as urartu and elam, would never really assimilate with his own subjects, and, in their case, he adhered strictly to the old system of warfare, and did all he could to bring about their ruin; other nations, on the contrary, he regarded as capable of amalgamation with the assyrians, and these he did his best to protect from the worst consequences of their rebellion and resistance. he withdrew them from the influence of their native dynasties, and converted their territories into provinces under his own vigilant administration, and though he did not scruple to send the more turbulent elements among them into exile, and did his best to weaken them by founding alien colonies in their midst, yet he respected their religion, customs, and laws, and, in return for their obedience to his rule, guaranteed them an equitable and judicious government. moreover, he took quite as much interest in their well-being as� in his own military successes, and in the midst of his heroic struggles against rusas and merodach-baladan he contrived to find time for the consideration of such prosaic themes as the cultivation of the vine and of corn; he devoted his attention to the best methods of storing wine, and sought to prevent �oil, which is the life of man and healeth wounds, from rising in price, and the cost of sesame from exceeding that of wheat.� we seem to see in him, not only the stern and at times cruel conqueror, but also the gracious monarch, kind and considerate to his people, and merciful to the vanquished when policy permitted him to indulge his natural leaning to clemency. end of vol. vii. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume iv. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] _the first chaldean empire and the hyksÔs in egypt_ _syria: the part played by it in the history of the ancient world-- babylon and the first chaldÆan empire--the dominion of the hyksÔs: Âhmosis._ _syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to neighbouring powers-lebanon, anti-lebanon, the valley of the orontes and of the litâny, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the country about damascus, the mediterranean coast, the jordan and the dead sea-civilization and primitive inhabitants, semites and asiatics: the almost entire absence of egyptian influence, the predominance of that of chaldæa._ _babylon, its ruins and its environs--it extends its rule over mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with central chaldæa-elam, its geographical position, its peoples; kutur-nakhunta conquers larsam-bimsin (eri-aku); khammurabi founds the first babylonian empire; ids victories, his buildings, his canals--the elamites in syria: kudurlagamar--syria recognizes the authority of hammurabi and his successors._ _the hyksôs conquer egypt at the end of the xivth dynasty; the founding of avaris--uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to the origin of the hyksôs: probability of their being the khati--their kings adopt the manners and civilization of the egyptians: the monuments of khiani and of apôphis i. and ii--the xvth dynasty._ _semitic incursions following the hyksôs--the migration of the phoenicians and the israelites into syria: terah, abraham and his sojourn in the land of canaan--isaac, jacob, joseph: the israelites go down into egypt and settle in the land of goshen._ _thébes revolts against the hyksôs: popular traditions as to the origin of the war, the romance of apôphis and saquinri--the theban princesses and the last icings of the xviith dynasty: tiûdqni kamosis, ahmosis i.--the lords of el-kab, and the part they played during the war of independence--the taking of avaris and the expulsion of the ilylcsôs._ _the reorganization of egypt--ahmosis i. and his nubian wars, the reopening of the quarries of turah--amenôthes i. and his mother nofrîtari: the jewellery of queen Âhhotpû--the wars of amenôthes i., the apotheosis of nofrîtari--the accession of thûtmosis i. and the re-generation of egypt._ chapter i--the first chaldÆan empire and the hyksÔs in egypt _syria: the part played by it in the ancient world--babylon and the first chaldæan empire--the dominion of the hyksôs: Âhmosis._ some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. into such regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. the nations around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent servitude. should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks. they tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded ravines in the mountains. year after year there will be scenes of bloody conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than, from an invasion. there will be no truce to their struggles until they all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations. from remote antiquity syria was in the condition just described, and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. chaldæa, egypt, assyria, and persia presided in turn over its destinies, while macedonia and the empires of the west were only waiting their opportunity to lay hold of it. by its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later to come violently into collision. confined between the sea and the desert, syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching northwards from africa into asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted to mesopotamia or to egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the euphrates or the nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach the object of their cupidity. it might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism. the twin chains, the lebanon and the anti-lebanon, which divide the country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological period.* * drake remarked in the lebanon several varieties of limestone, which have been carefully catalogued by blanche and lartet. above these strata, which belong to the jurassic formation, come reddish sandstone, then beds of very hard yellowish limestone, and finally marl. the name lebanon, in assyrian libnana, would appear to signify �the white mountain;� the amorites called the anti-lebanon saniru, shenir, according to the assyrian texts and the hebrew books. arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines, which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. these ridges, as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and offer a more varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and the summits less uniform in contour and colouring. lebanon becomes white and ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude of perpetual snows: the highest of them, mount timarun, reaches , feet, while only three others exceed .* anti-lebanon is, speaking generally, or feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes higher, however, towards the south, where the triple peak of mount hermon rises to a height of feet. the orontes and the litâny drain the intermediate space. the orontes rising on the west side of the anti-lebanon, near the ruins of baalbek, rushes northwards in such a violent manner, that the dwellers on its banks call it the rebel--nahr el-asi.** about a third of the way towards its mouth it enters a depression, which ancient dykes help to transform into a lake; it flows thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast, as far as the th degree of latitude. there it meets the last spurs of the amanos, but, failing to cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to the west, and then to the south, falling into the mediterranean after having received an increase to its volume from the waters of the afrîn. * bukton-drake, unexplored syria, vol. i. p. , attributed to it an altitude of english feet; others estimate it at , feet. the mountains which exceed metres are dahr el-kozîb, metres; jebel-mislriyah, metres; and jebel-makhmal or makmal, metres. as a matter of fact, these heights are not yet determined with the accuracy desirable. ** the egyptians knew it in early times by the name of aûnrati, or araûnti; it is mentioned in assyrian inscriptions under the name of arantû. all are agreed in acknowledging that this name is not semitic, and an aryan origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof; according to strabo (xvi. ii. § , p. ), it was originally called typhon, and was only styled orontes after a certain orontes had built the first bridge across it. the name of axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been given to it by greek colonists, in memory of a river in macedonia. this is probably the origin of the modern name of asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which arab tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a popular etymology which likened axios to asi, the identification was all the easier since it justifies the epithet by the violence of its current. the litâny rises a short distance from the orontes; it flows at first through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and forces it into a channel between the spurs of the lebanon and the galilæan hills. the water thence makes its way between two cliffs of perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active man could readily leap across it. near yakhmur some detached rocks appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over the torrent. the basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed into two beds of unequal slope. the central part of the valley is given up to marshes. it is only towards the south that we find cornfields, vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. towards the north, the alluvial deposits of, the orontes have gradually formed a black and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other produce. cole-syria, after having generously nourished the oriental empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the roman world, under the capable rule of the cæsars. syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and soil. that to the north, flanked by the amanos, is a gloomy mountainous region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which open out to the euphrates, the orontes, or the desert. vast, slightly undulating plains succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony, the streams are few in number and contain but little water. the sajur flows into the euphrates, the afrîn and the karasu when united yield their tribute to the orontes, while the others for the most part pour their waters into enclosed basins. the khalus of the greeks sluggishly pursues its course southward, and after reluctantly leaving the gardens of aleppo, finally loses itself on the borders of the desert in a small salt lake full of islets: about halfway between the khalus and the euphrates a second salt lake receives the nahr ed-dahab, the �golden river.� the climate is mild, and the temperature tolerably uniform. the sea-breeze which rises every afternoon tempers the summer heat: the cold in winter is never piercing, except when the south wind blows which comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely lies on the ground for more than twenty-four hours. it seldom rains during the autumn and winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days of spring. vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to cultivation in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever irrigation is possible. the ancients dotted these now all but desert spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals, and covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous cities. primæval forests clothed the slopes of the amanos, and pinewood from this region was famous both at babylon and in the towns of lower chaldæa. the plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities, the vine throve there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and pistachio and olive trees grew on every slope. the desert was always threatening to invade the plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever a prolonged war disturbed cultivation, or when the negligence of the inhabitants slackened the work of defence: beyond the lakes and salt marshes it had obtained a secure hold. at the present time the greater part of the country between the orontes and the euphrates is nothing but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of anti-lebanon, where two rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of marvellous beauty. the barada, dashing from cascade to cascade, flows for some distance through gorges before emerging on the plain: scarcely has it reached level ground than it widens out, divides, and forms around damascus a miniature delta, into which a thousand interlacing channels carry refreshment and fertility. below the town these streams rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily along for a day�s journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm from whence it never again emerges. at the melting of the snows a regular lake is formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy margins �like a sapphire set in emeralds.� this lake dries up almost completely in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with gigantic rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as unmolested as in the marshes of chaldæa. the awaj, unfed by any tributary, fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to the south two other lesser depressions receive the waters of the anti-lebanon and the hauran. syria is protected from the encroachments of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds: towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. the extent of the cultivated area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which forms the littoral. from the mouth of the litâny to that of the orontes, the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance. there are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow beaches lying under formidable headlands. one river, the nahr el-kebir, which elsewhere would not attract the traveller�s attention, is here noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and with tolerable regularity; the others, the leon, the adonis,* and the nahr el-kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated as it were in one leap from the lebanon to the mediterranean. olives, vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch, cypress, spruce, and cedar. the mountain range drops in altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting gebel ansarieh with the lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall. near to the termination of coele-syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of hermon a valley unlike any other in the world. at this point the surface of the earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a chasm which has never since closed up. a river, unique in character--the jordan--flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed by it from end to end.*** * the adonis of classical authors is now nahr-ibrahim. we have as yet no direct evidence as to the phoenician name of this river; it was probably identical with that of the divinity worshipped on its banks. the fact of a river bearing the name of a god is not surprising: the belos, in the neighbourhood of acre, affords us a parallel case to the adonis. ** the present nahr el-kelb is the lykos of classical authors. the due de luynes thought he recognized a corruption of the phoenician name in that of alcobile, which is mentioned hereabouts in the itinerary of the pilgrim of bordeaux. the order of the itinerary does not favour this identification, and alcobile is probably jebail: it is none the less probable that the original name of the nahr el kelb contained from earliest times the phoenician equivalent of the arab word _kelb_, �dog.� *** the jordan is mentioned in the egyptian texts under the name of yorduna: the name appears to mean _the descender, the down-flowing._ its principal source is at tell el-qadi, where it rises out of a basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of laish.* * this source is mentioned by josephus as being that of the little jordan. [illustration: .jpg the most northern source of the jordan, the naiir-el-hasbany] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by the duc de luynes. the water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows down among the brushwood to join the nahr el-hasbany, which brings the waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it mingles with the banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering lake huleh.* * lake huleh is called the waters of merom, mê-merom, in the book of joshua, xi. , ; and lake sammochonitis in josephus. the name of ulatha, which was given to the surrounding country, shows that the modern word huleh is derived from an ancient form, of which unfortunately the original has not come down to us. [illustration b.jpg lake of genesarath] at this point the jordan reaches the level of the mediterranean, but instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. it has a fall of some feet before reaching the lake of grenesareth, where it is only momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong career southwards. [illustration: .jpg one of the reaches of the jordan] drawn by boudier, from several photographs brought back by lortet. here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks, as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than miles before reaching, the dead sea, nearly feet below the level of the mediterranean.* * the exact figures are: the lake of hûleh feet above the mediterranean; the lake of genesareth feet, and the dead sea feet below the sea-level; to the south of the dead sea, towards the water-parting of the akabah, the ground is over feet higher than the level of the red sea. [illustration: .jpg the dead sea and the mountains of moab, seen fkom the heights of engedi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by the duc de luynes. nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either bank. on the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions: behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and intersected in all directions by the affluents of the jordan and the dead sea--the yarmuk,* the jabbok,** and the arnon.*** * the yarmuk does not occur in the bible, but we meet with its name in the talmud, and the greeks adopted it under the form hieromax. ** _gen._ xxxii. ; numb, xxi. . the name has been grecized under the forms lôbacchos, labacchos, iambykes. it is the present nahr zerqa. *** _numb._ xxi. - ; beut. ii. ; the present wady môjib. [shephelah = �low country,� plain (josh. xi. ). with the article it means the plain along the mediterranean from joppa to gaza.--te.] the whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation, with no ambition to take part in general history. west of the jordan, a confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives. one ridge--mount carmel--detached from the principal chain near the southern end of the lake of genesareth, runs obliquely to the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. north of this range extends galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones--the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes--an expanse of plain, a �shephelah,� dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,--and finally the mountains. the region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it--gaza, jaffa, ashdod, and ascalon--are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens. the plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no manure and very little labour. the higher ground and the hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun. the valleys, too, are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished from the desert. in fact, till the sinaitic peninsula and the frontiers of egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed by the volcanic summits of mount seir. the spring rains, however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food. we may summarise the physical characteristics of syria by saying that nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state. in the north, we have the country of the two rivers--the naharaim--extending from the orontes to the euphrates and the balikh, or even as far as the khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the lebanon, lie coele-syria and its two unequal neighbours, aram of damascus and phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces bordering the valley of the jordan. * the naharaim of the egyptians was first identified with mesopotamia; it was located between the orontes and the balikh or the euphrates by maspero. this opinion is now adopted by the majority of egyptologists, with slight differences in detail. ed. meyer has accurately compared the egyptian naharaim with the parapotamia of the administration of the seleucidæ. it is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era. wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. these remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* the study of the geographical nomenclature in use about the xvith century b.c. reveals the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and several languages. the mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in palestine and coele-syria are designated by words of semitic origin: it is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear on the egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in hebrew or assyrian. * researches with regard to the primitive inhabitants of syria and their remains have not as yet been prosecuted to any extent. the caves noticed by hedenborg at ant-elias, near tripoli, and by botta at nahr el-kelb, and at adlun by the duc de luynes, have been successively explored by lartet, tristram, lortet, and dawson. the grottoes of palestine proper, at bethzur, at gilgal near jericho, and at tibneh, have been the subject of keen controversy ever since their discovery. the abbé richard desired to identify the flints of gilgal and tibneh with the stone knives used by joshua for the circumcision of the israelites after the passage of the jordan (_josh._ v- - ), some of which might have been buried in that hero�s tomb. but once across the orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one or other of the dialects of asia minor.* the tenacity with which the place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a certain number at least of those we know in syria were in use there long before they were noted down by the egyptians, and that they must have been heirlooms from very early peoples. as they take a semitic or non-semitic form according to their geographical position, we may conclude that the centre and south were colonized by semites, and the north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the taurus. facts are not wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. the asiatic visitors who, under a king of the xiith dynasty, came to offer gifts to khnûmhotpû, the lord of beni-hasan, are completely semitic in type, and closely resemble the bedouins of the present day. their chief--abisha--bears a semitic name,** as too does the sheikh ammianshi, with whom sinûhit took refuge.*** * the non-semitic origin of the names of a number of towns in northern syria preserved in the egyptian lists, is admitted by the majority of scholars who have studied the question. ** his name has been shown to be cognate with the hebrew abishai ( sam. xxvi. - ; sam. ii. , ; xxi. ) and with the chaldæo-assyrian abeshukh. *** the name ammianshi at once recalls those of ammisatana, ammiza-dugga, and perhaps ammurabi, or khammurabi, of one of the babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element ammi, a final _anshi_. chabas connects it with two hebrew words _am-nesh_, which he does not translate. ammianshi himself reigned over the province of kadimâ, a word which in semitic denotes the east. finally, the only one of their gods known to us, hadad, was a semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of damascus. peoples of semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part of that region on the shores of the mediterranean which we find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the egyptian conquest. [illustration: .jpg asiatic women from the tomb of khnÛmhotpÛ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. for a time egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. when, however, the �lords of the sands� grew too insolent, the pharaoh sent a column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years. offenders banished from egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between sinai and the dead sea. egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; egyptian merchants were accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. the accounts they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. the traveller had first to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the isthmus, and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes who inhabited it. [illustration: .jpg two asiatics fkom the tomb of khnÛmhoptÛ.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger should he escape these initial perils, the amu--an agricultural and settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from their attacks.* the country seems to have been but thinly populated; tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards, rendered the route through them dangerous. * the merchant who sets out for foreign lands �leaves his possessions to his children--for fear of lions and asiatics.� ** thûtmosis iii. went elephant-hunting near the syrian town of niî. the notion that syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the egyptians, that their popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of kazarâti, chief of assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to engage in combat. * as, for instance, the hero in the _story of the predestined prince_, exiled from egypt with his dog, pursues his way hunting till he reaches the confines of naharaim, where he is to marry the prince�s daughter. these merchants� adventures and explorations, as they were not followed by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to the frontiers of egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest to the dead sea. the remaining populations looked rather to chaldæa, and received, though at a distance, the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the euphrates. the tradition which attributes to sargon of agadê, and to his son istaramsin, the subjection of the people of the amanos and the orontes, probably contains but a slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the lebanon or landed in cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as having been under their rule. more than three thousand years before our era, the asiatics who figure on the tomb of khnûmhotpû clothed themselves according to the fashions of uru and lagash, and affected long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. we may well ask if they had also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay tablet was to be found in their cities. the babylonian courtiers were, no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the memphite nobles, while the babylonian kings sent regularly to syria for statuary stone, precious metals, and the timber required in the building of their monuments: urbau and gudea, as well as their successors and contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the amanos, and if the forests of lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their approach more difficult and transport more costly. the mediterranean marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one denomination--martu, amurru,** the west--but there were distinctive names for each of the provinces into which they were divided. * the most ancient cuneiform tablets of syrian origin are not older than the xvith century before our era; they contain the official, correspondence of the native princes with the pharaohs amenôthes iii. and iv. of the xviiith dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at tel el- amarna in egypt. ** formerly read akharru. martu would be the sumerian and akharru the semitic form, akharru meaning _that which is behind_. the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets threw doubt on the reading of the name akharru: some thought that it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less certainty, think that it should be replaced by amuru, amurru, the country of the amorites. but the question has now been settled by babylonian contract and law tablets of the period of khaminurabi, in which the name is written _a- mu-ur-ri (ki)_. hommel originated the idea that martu might be an abbreviation of amartu, that is, amar with the feminine termination of nouns in the canaanitish dialect: martu would thus actually signify _the country of the amorites_. probably even at that date they called the north khati,* and cole-syria, amurru, the land of the amorites. the scattered references in their writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their contemporaries: a journey from lagash to the mountains of tidanum and to gubin, or to the lebanon and beyond it to byblos,** meant to them no voyage of discovery. armies undoubtedly followed the routes already frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their subjects had peaceably traded. * the name of the khati, khatti, is found in the _book of omens_, which is supposed to contain an extract from the annals of sargon and naramsin; as, however, the text which we possess of it is merely a copy of the time of assurbanipal, it is possible that the word khati is merely the translation of a more ancient term, perhaps martu. winckler thinks it to be included in lesser armenia and the melitônê of classical authors. ** gubin is probably the kûpûna, kûpnû, of the egyptians, the byblos of phoenicia. amiaud had proposed a most unlikely identification with koptos in egypt. in the time of inê-sin, king of ur, mention is found of simurru, zimyra. it does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of lagash ever extended their dominion so far. the governors of the northern cities, on the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the nile: for the first babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of syria.* * it is only since the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets that the fact of the dominant influence of chaldæa over syria and of its conquest has been definitely realized. it is now clear that the state of things of which the tablets discovered in egypt give us a picture, could only be explained by the hypothesis of a babylonish supremacy of long duration over the peoples situated between the euphrates and the mediterranean. among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of babylon is perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague magnificence and undefined dominion. cities in other parts of the world, it is true, have rivalled babylon in magnificence and power: egypt could boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than babylon ever contained in the days of her greatest prosperity. the pyramids of memphis and the colossal statues of thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurâts and the palaces of chaldæa are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain; but the egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. how is it possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? at babylon, on the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where the temple of bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were once the ramparts. [illustration: .jpg the ruins of babylon] drawn by boudier, from a drawing reproduced in hofer. it shows the state of the ruins in the first half of our century, before the excavations carried out at european instigation. the vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble, and as soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of bricks, enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light--in fine, all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence of man and to his long sojourn on the spot. but these vestiges are so mutilated and disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings cannot be determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for guessing their dimensions. he who would attempt to restore the ancient appearance of the place would find at his disposal nothing but vague indications, from which he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased. [illustration: .jpg plan of the ruins of babylon] prepared by thuillier, from a plan reproduced in g. rawlinson, _herodotus_ palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan which never entered the architect�s mind; the sacred towers as they rose would be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed; the enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data, embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting the city of blood and tears, cursed by the hebrew prophets. babylon was, however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and liable at times to become marshy. the river at this point runs almost directly north and south, between two banks of black mud, the base of which it is perpetually undermining. as long as the city existed, the vertical thrust of the public buildings and houses kept the river within bounds, and even since it was finally abandoned, the masses of _debris_ have almost everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment; towards the north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given way and sunk beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course westwards, has transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds originally on the opposite side. e-sagilla, the temple of the lofty summit, the sanctuary of merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in the depression between the babil and the hill of the kasr.* * the temple of merodach, called by the greeks the temple of belos, has been placed on the site called babîl by the two rawlinsons; and by oppert; hormuzd rassam and fr. delitzsch locate it between the hill of junjuma and the kasr, and considers babîl to be a palace of nebuchadrezzar. in early times it must have presented much the same appearance as the sanctuaries of central chaldæa: a mound of crude brick formed the substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the god, of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury, and of the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole was surmounted by a ziggurât. on other neighbouring platforms rose the royal palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the crowd of private habitations. * as, for instance, the temple e-temenanki on the actual hill of amrân-ibn-ali, the temple of shamash, and others, which there will be occasion to mention later on in dealing with the second chaldæan empire. [illustration: .jpg the kask seen from the south] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by thomas in perrot- chipiez. the houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles, on either side of narrow lanes. a massive wall surrounded the whole, shutting out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the euphrates, for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the inhabitants from the sight of their own river. on the right bank rose a suburb, which was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a second babylon, almost equalling the first in extent and population. [illustration: .jpg the tell of borsippa, the present birs-nimrud] drawn by faucher-gudin, after the plate published in ohesney. beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns, kutha and borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and south-west respectively, standing isolated above the plain. sippara on the north, nippur on the south, and the mysterious agadê, completed the circle of sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of bel. we may surmise with all probability that the history of babylon in early times resembled in the main that of the egyptian thebes. it was a small seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses, were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day came when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of northern and finally those of southern chaldæa. the lords of babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power. they were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of babel--_shakannaku babili_--and their authority was not considered legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. each ruler was obliged to go in state to the temple of bel merodach within a year of his accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves kings of babylon--_sharru babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but renewed it annually.* * the meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of babylon �took the hands of bel� has been given by winckler; tiele compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the egyptian kings--at heliopolis, for example, when they entered alone the sanctuary of râ, and there contemplated the god face to face. the rite was probably repeated annually, at the time of the zakmuku, that is, the new year festival. sargon the elder had lived in babylon, and had built himself a palace there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the akkadian dynasties. the actual sway of babylon, though arrested to the south by the petty states of lower chaldæa, had not encountered to the north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that semi-fabulous period of its history. the vast plain extending between the euphrates and the tigris is as it were a continuation of the arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there, forming slimy pits. frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. the euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them. the river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation. the aspect of the country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the khabur; but there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops. [illustration: .jpg the banks of the euphrates at zuleibeh] drawn by boudier, from the plate in chesney. the fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that it comes up to the horses� girths. in some places the meadows are so covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen. this fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a congenial soil. the population was unequally distributed in this region. some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain, dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the affluents of the euphrates and tigris, or at the foot of the northern mountains wherever springs could be found, as in assur, singar, nisibis, tilli,* kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the khabur and the balikh. kharranu, or harran, stood, like an advance guard of chaldæan civilization, near the frontiers of syria and asia minor.** to the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of the upper euphrates and tigris; it protected the roads leading to the east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of iran and the persian gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of babylon reached the countries lying around the mediterranean. we have no means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected it with uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both towns, and the sin of harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly equal to that of his namesake. * tilli, the only one of these towns mentioned with any certainty in the inscriptions of the first chaldæan empire, is the tela of classical authors, and probably the present werânshaher, near the sources of the balikh. ** kharranu was identified by the earlier assyriologists with the harran of the hebrews (_gen._ v. ), the carrhse of classical authors, and this identification is still generally accepted. he was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the town roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron. his cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices; generations after the advent to power of the abbasside caliphs, his faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give oracular responses.* the government of the surrounding country was in the hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** chaldæan civilization before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold of them, and made them willing subjects to the kings of babylon.*** * without seeking to specify exactly which were the doctrines introduced into harranian religion subsequently to the christian era, we may yet affirm that the base of this system of faith was merely a very distorted form of the ancient chaldæan worship practised in the town. ** only one vicegerent of mesopotamia is known at present, and he belongs to the assyrian epoch. his seal is preserved in the british museum. *** the importance of harran in the development of the history of the first chaldæan empire was pointed out by winckler; but the theory according to which this town was the capital of the kingdom, called by the chaldæan and assyrian scribes �the kingdom of the world,� is justly combated by tiele. these sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure personages, without much prestige, being sometimes independent and sometimes subject to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to those of agadê. in later times, when babylon had attained to universal power, and it was desired to furnish her kings with a continuous history, the names of these earlier rulers were sought out, and added to those of such foreign princes as had from time to time enjoyed the sovereignty over them--thus forming an interminable list which for materials and authenticity would well compare with that of the thinite pharaohs. this list has come down to us incomplete, and its remains do not permit of our determining the exact order of reigns, or the status of the individuals who composed it. we find in it, in the period immediately subsequent to the deluge, mention of mythical heroes, followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as sargon the elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most part real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose monuments were still existing in certain localities. towards the end of the xxvth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of which all the members come within the range of history.* * this dynasty, which is known to us in its entirety by the two lists of g. smith and by pinches, was legitimately composed of only eleven kings, and was known as the babylonian dynasty, although sayce suspects it to be of arabian origin. it is composed as follows:-- [illustration: .jpg table] the dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. the first of them, sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his successors. sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related to his predecessor; but from sumulaîlu to sam-shusatana the kingly power was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations, if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.* * simulaîlu, also written samu-la-ilu, whom mr. pinches has found in a contract tablet associated with pungunila as king, was not the son of sumuabîm, since the lists do not mention him as such; he must, however, have been connected with some sort of relationship, or by marriage, with his predecessor, since both are placed in the same dynasty. a few contracts of sumulaîlu are given by meissner. samsuiluna calls him �my forefather (d-gula-mu), the fifth king before me.� hommel believes that the order of the dynasties has been reversed, and that the first upon the lists we possess was historically the second; he thus places the babylonian dynasty between and b.c. his opinion has not been generally adopted, but every assyriologist dealing with this period proposes a different date for the reigns in this dynasty; to take only one characteristic example, khammurabi is placed by oppert in the year - , by delitzsch- murdter in - , by winckler in - , and by peiser in - , and by carl niebuhr in - . contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did not always run so smoothly. they betray the existence of at least one usurper--immêru--who, even if he did not assume the royal titles, enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of zabu and abilsin. the lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their contemporaries of southern chaldæa. they dredged the ancient canals, or constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to whom they annually rendered solemn homage. * sumulaîlu had built six such large strongholds of brick, which were repaired by samsuiluna five generations later. a contract of sinmuballit is dated the year in which he built the great wall of a strong place, the name of which is unfortunately illegible on the fragment which we possess. they repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them according to their means; we even know that zabu, the third in order of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary eulbar of anunit, in sippara. there is evidence that they possessed the small neighbouring kingdoms of kishu, sippara, and kuta, and that they had consolidated them into a single state, of which babylon was the capital. to the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings of uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an important city such as nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell under the dominion of the southern provinces. perpetual war was waged in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between them under the immediate successors of sumuabîm* --the obscure sumulaîlu, zabum, the usurper immeru, abîlsin and sinmuballit--until the reign of khammurabi (the son of sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to his side.** the struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive, since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who had considerable forces at his disposal. birnsin*** was, in reality, of elamite race, and as he held the province of yamutbal in appanage, he was enabled to muster, in addition to his chaldæan battalions, the army of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the tigris and the euphrates. * none of these facts are as yet historically proved: we may, however, conjecture with some probability what was the general state of things, when we remember that the first kings of babylon were contemporaries of the last independent sovereigns of southern chaldæa. ** the name of this prince has been read in several ways-- hammurabi, khammurabi, by the earlier assyriologists, subsequently hammuragash, khammuragash, as being of elamite or cossoan extraction: the reading khammurabi is at present the prevailing one. the bilingual list published by pinches makes khammurabi an equivalent of the semitic names kimta- rapashtum. hence halévy concluded that khammurabi was a series of ideograms, and that kimtarapashtum was the true reading of the name; his proposal, partially admitted by hommel, furnishes us with a mixed reading of khammurapaltu, amraphel. [hommel is now convinced of the identity of the amraphel of _gen._ xiv. i with khammurabi.--te.] sayce, moreover, adopts the reading khammurabi, and assigns to him an arabian origin. the part played by this prince was pointed out at an early date by menant. recent discoveries have shown the important share which he had in developing the chaldæan empire, and have, increased his reputation with assyriologists. *** the name of this king has been the theme of heated discussions: it was at first pronounced aradsin, ardusin, or zikarsin; it is now read in several different ways--rimsin, or eriaku, riaku, rimagu. others have made a distinction between the two forms, and have made out of them the names of two different kings. they are all variants of the same name. i have adopted the form rimsin, which is preferred by a few assyriologists. [the tablets recently discovered by mr. pinches, referring to kudur-lagamar and tudkhula, which he has published in a paper road before the victoria institute, jan. , , have shown that the true reading is eri-aku. the elamite name eri-aku, �servant of the moon- god,� was changed by some of his subjects into the babylonian rim-sin, �have mercy, o moon-god!� just as abêsukh, the hebrew absihu�a (�the father of welfare�) was transformed into the babylonian ebisum (�the actor�).--ed.] it was not the first time that elam had audaciously interfered in the affairs of her neighbours. in fabulous times, one of her mythical kings--khumbaba the ferocious--had oppressed. uruk, and gilgames with all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. sargon the elder is credited with having subdued elam; the kings and vicegerents of lagash, as well as those of uru and. larsam, had measured forces with anshan, but with no decisive issue. from time to time they obtained an advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by gudea, inê-sin, or bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, à princess of susa would be sent as a bride to one of the chaldæan cities, or a chaldæan lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of anshân. elam was protected along the course of the tigris and on the shores of the nâr-marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except at a few fixed and easily defended places. the alluvial plain extending behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of chaldæa. wheat and barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig, acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers� edge. the climate closely resembles that of chaldaja: if the midday heat in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent east winds. the ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending gradually towards the north-east. the distant and uniform line of mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre vegetation. they comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges, resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the tigris and the table-land of iran. the intervening valleys were formerly lakes, having had for the most part no communication with each other and no outlet into the sea. in the course of centuries they had dried up, leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds, from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. the rivers--the uknu,* the ididi,** and the ulaî***--which water this region are, on reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly shifting their beds in the light soil of the susian plain: they soon attain a width equal to that of the euphrates, but after a short time lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present day into the shatt-el-arab. they flowed formerly into that part of the persian gulf which extended as far as kornah, and the sea thus formed the southern frontier of the kingdom. * the uknu is the kerkhah of the present day, the choaspes of the greeks. ** the ididi was at first identified with the ancient pasitigris, which scholars then desired to distinguish from the eulseos: it is now known to be the arm of the karun which runs to dizful, the koprates of classical times, which has sometimes been confounded with the eulaws. *** the ulaî, mentioned in the hebrew texts (ban. viii. , ), the euloos of classical writers, also called pasitigris. it is the karun of the present day, until its confluence with the shaûr, and subsequently the shaûr itself, which waters the foot of the susian hills. from earliest times this country was inhabited by three distinct peoples, whose descendants may still be distinguished at the present day, and although they have dwindled in numbers and become mixed with elements of more recent origin, the resemblance to their forefathers is still very remarkable. there were, in the first place, the short and robust people of well-knit figure, with brown skins, black hair and eyes, who belonged to that negritic race which inhabited a considerable part of asia in prehistoric times.* * the connection of the negroid type of susians with the negritic races of india and oceania, has been proved, in the course of m. dieulafoy�s expedition to the susian plains and the ancient provinces of elam. [illustration: .jpg map of chaldÆa and elam.] [illustration: .jpg an ancient susian of negretic race] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of sargon ii. in the louvre. these prevailed in the lowlands and the valleys, where the warm, damp climate favoured their development; but they also spread into the mountain region, and had pushed their outposts as far as the first slopes of the iranian table-land. they there contact with white-skinned of medium height, who were probably allied to the nations of northern and central asia--to the scythians,* for instance, if it is permissible to use a vague term employed by the ancients. * this last-mentioned people is, by some authors, for reasons which, so far, can hardly be considered conclusive, connected with the so-called sumerian race, which we find settled in chaldæa. they are said to have been the first to employ horses and chariots in warfare. [illustration: .jpg native of mixed negritic race from susiana] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph furnished by marcel dieulafoy. semites of the same stock as those of chaldæa pushed forward as far as the east bank of the tigris, and settling mainly among the marshes led a precarious life by fishing and pillaging.* the country of the plain was called anzân, or anshân,** and the mountain region numma, or ilamma, �the high lands:� these two names were subsequently used to denote the whole country, and ilamma has survived in the hebrew word elam.*** susa, the most important and flourishing town in the kingdom, was situated between the ulaî and the ididi, some twenty-five or thirty miles from the nearest of the mountain ranges. * from the earliest times we meet beyond the tigris with names like that of durilu, a fact which proves the existence of races speaking a semitic dialect in the countries under the suzerainty of the king of elam: in the last days of the chaldæan empire they had assumed such importance that the hebrews made out elam to be one of the sons of shem (_gen._ x. ). ** anzân, anshân, and, by assimilation of the nasal with the sibilant, ashshân. this name has already been mentioned in the inscriptions of the kings and vicegerents of lagash and in the _book of prophecies_ of the ancient chaldæan astronomers; it also occurs in the royal preamble of cyrus and his ancestors, who like him were styled �kings of anshân.� it had been applied to the whole country of elam, and afterwards to persia. some are of opinion that it was the name of a part of elam, viz. that inhabited by the turanian medes who spoke the second language of the achæmenian inscriptions, the eastern half, bounded by the tigris and the persian gulf, consisting of a flat and swampy land. these differences of opinion gave rise to a heated controversy; it is now, however, pretty generally admitted that anzân-anshân was really the plain of elam, from the mountains to the sea, and one set of authorities affirms that the word anzân may have meant �plain� in the language of the country, while others hesitate as yet to pronounce definitely on this point. *** the meaning of �nunima,� �ilamma,� �ilamtu,� in the group of words used to indicate elam, had been recognised even by the earliest assyriologists; the name originally referred to the hilly country on the north and east of susa. to the hebrews, elam was one of the sons of shem (gen. x. ). the greek form of the name is elymais, and some of the classical geographers were well enough acquainted with the meaning of the word to be able to distinguish the region to which it referred from susiana proper. [illustration: .jpg the tumulus of susa, as it appeared towards the middle of the xixth century] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a plate in chesney. its fortress and palace were raised upon the slopes of a mound which overlooked the surrounding country:* at its base, to the eastward, stretched the town, with its houses of sun-dried bricks.** * susa, in the language of the country, was called shushun; this name was transliterated into chaldæo-assyrian, by shushan, shushi. ** strabo tells us, on the authority of polycletus, that the town had no walls in the time of alexander, and extended over a space two hundred stadia in length; in the viii century b.c. it was enclosed by walls with bastions, which are shown on a bas-relief of assurbanipal, but it was surrounded by unfortified suburbs. further up the course of the uknu, lay the following cities: madaktu, the badaca of classical authors,* rivalling susa in strength and importance; naditu,** til-khumba,*** dur-undash,**** khaidalu.^--all large walled towns, most of which assumed the title of royal cities. elam in reality constituted a kind of feudal empire, composed of several tribes--the habardip, the khushshi, the umliyash, the people of yamutbal and of yatbur^^--all independent of each other, but often united under the authority of one sovereign, who as a rule chose susa as the seat of government. * madaktu, mataktu, the badaka of diodorus, situated on the eulaaos, between susa and ecbatana, has been placed by rawlinson near the bifurcation of the kerkhah, either at paipul or near aiwân-i-kherkah, where there are some rather important and ancient ruins; billerbeck prefers to put it at the mouth of the valley of zal-fer, on the site at present occupied by the citadel of kala-i-riza. ** naditu is identified by finzi with the village of natanzah, near ispahan; it ought rather to be looked for in the neighbourhood of sarna. *** til-khumba, the mound of khumba, so named after one of the principal elamite gods, was, perhaps, situated among the ruins of budbar, towards the confluence of the ab-i-kirind and kerkhah, or possibly higher up in the mountain, in the vicinity of asmanabad. **** dur-undash, dur-undasi, has been identified, without absolutely conclusive reason, with the fortress of kala-i- dis on the disful-rud. ^ khaidalu, khidalu, is perhaps the present fortress of dis- malkan. ^^ the countries of yatbur and yamutbal extended into the plain between the marshes of the tigris and the mountain; the town of durilu was near the yamutbal region, if not in that country itself. umliyash lay between the uknu and the tigris. [illustration: .jpg page image] the language is not represented by any idioms now spoken, and its affinities with the sumerian which some writers have attempted to establish, are too uncertain to make it safe to base any theory upon them.* * a great part of the susian inscriptions have been collected by fr. lenormant. an attempt has been made to identify the language in which they are written with the sumero-accadian, and authorities now generally agree in considering the arcæmenian inscriptions of the second type as representative of its modern form. hommel connects it with georgian, and includes it in a great linguistic family, which comprises, besides these two idioms, the hittite, the cappadocian, the armenian of the van inscriptions, and the cosstean. oppert claims to have discovered on a tablet in the british museum a list of words belonging to one of the idioms (probably semitic) of susiana, which differs alike from the suso-medic and the assyrian. the little that we know of elamite religion reveals to us a mysterious world, full of strange names and vague forms. over their hierarchy there presided a deity who was called shushinak (the susian), dimesh or samesh, dagbag, as-siga, adaene, and possibly khumba and Æmmân, whom the chaldæns identified with their god ninip; his statue was concealed in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from thence by assurbanipal of nineveh in the viith century b.c.* this deity was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into two triads--shumudu, lagamaru, partikira; ammankasibar, uduran, and sapak: of these names, the least repellent, ammankasibar, may possibly be the memnon of the greeks. the dwelling of these divinities was near susa, in the depths of a sacred forest to which the priests and kings alone had access: their images were brought out on certain days to receive solemn homage, and were afterwards carried back to their shrine accompanied by a devout and reverent multitude. these deities received a tenth of the spoil after any successful campaign--the offerings comprising statues of the enemies� gods, valuable vases, ingots of gold and silver, furniture, and stuffs. the elamite armies were well organized, and under a skilful general became irresistible. in other respects the elamites closely resembled the chaldæans, pursuing the same industries and having the same agricultural and commercial instincts. in the absence of any bas-reliefs and inscriptions peculiar to this people, we may glean from the monuments of lagash and babylon a fair idea of the extent of their civilization in its earliest stages. * _shushinak_ is an adjective derived from the name of the town of susa. the real name of the god was probably kept secret and rarely uttered. the names which appear by the side of shushinak in the text published by h. rawlinson, as equivalents of the babylonian ninip, perhaps represent different deities; we may well ask whether the deity may not be the khumba, umma, ummân, who recurs so frequently in the names of men and places, and who has hitherto never been met with alone in any formula or dedicatory tablet. the cities of the euphrates, therefore, could have been sensible of but little change, when the chances of war transferred them from the rule of their native princes to that of an elamite. the struggle once over, and the resulting evils repaired as far as practicable, the people of these towns resumed their usual ways, hardly conscious of the presence of their foreign ruler. the victors, for their part, became assimilated so rapidly with the vanquished, that at the close of a generation or so the conquering dynasty was regarded legitimate and national one, loyally attached to the traditions and religion of its adopted country. in the year b.c., towards the close of the reign of nurrammân, or in the earlier part of that of siniddinam, a king of elam, by name kudur-nakhunta, triumphantly marched through chaldæa from end to end, devastating the country and sparing neither town nor temple: uruk lost its statue of nana, which was carried off as a trophy and placed in the sanctuary of susa. the inhabitants long mourned the detention of their goddess, and a hymn of lamentation, probably composed for the occasion by one of their priests, kept the remembrance of the disaster fresh in their memories. �until when, oh lady, shall the impious enemy ravage the country!--in thy queen-city, uruk, the destruction is accomplished,--in eulbar, the temple of thy oracle, blood has flowed like water,--upon the whole of thy lands has he poured out flame, and it is spread abroad like smoke.--oh, lady, verily it is hard for me to bend under the yoke of misfortune!--? oh, lady, thou hast wrapped me about, thou hast plunged me, in sorrow!--the impious mighty one has broken me in pieces like a reèd,--and i know not what to resolve, i trust not in myself,--like a bed of reeds i sigh day and night!--i, thy servant, i bow myself before thee!� it would appear that the whole of chaldæa, including babylon itself, was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the invader;* a susian empire thus absorbed chaldæa, reducing its states to feudal provinces, and its princes to humble vassals. kudur-nakhunta having departed, the people of larsa exerted themselves to the utmost to repair the harm that he had done, and they succeeded but too well, since their very prosperity was the cause only a short time after of the outburst of another storm. siniddinam, perhaps, desired to shake off the elamite yoke. simtishilkhak, one of the successors of kudur-nakhunta, had conceded the principality of yamutbal as a fief to kudur-mabug, one of his sons. kudur-mabug appears to have been a conqueror of no mean ability, for he claims, in his inscriptions, the possession of the whole of syria.** * the submission of babylon is evident from the title adda martu, �sovereign of the west,� assumed by several of the elamite princes (of. p. of the present work): in order to extend his authority beyond the euphrates, it was necessary for the king of elam to be first of all master of babylon. in the early days of assyriology it was supposed that this period of elamite supremacy coincided with the median dynasty of berosus. ** his preamble contains the titles _adda martu,_ �prince of syria;� _adda lamutbal_, �prince of yamutbal.� the word _adda_ seems properly to mean �lather,� and the literal translation of the full title would probably be �father of syria,� �_father_ of yamutbal,� whence the secondary meanings �master, lord, prince,� which have been provisionally accepted by most assyriologists. tiele, and winckler after him, have suggested that martu is here equivalent to yamutbal, and that it was merely used to indicate the western part of elam; winckler afterwards rejected this hypothesis, and has come round to the general opinion. he obtained a victory over siniddinam, and having dethroned him, placed the administration of the kingdom in the hands of his own son eimsin. this prince, who was at first a feudatory, afterwards associated in the government with his father, and finally sole monarch after the latter�s death, married a princess of chaldæan blood, and by this means legitimatized his usurpation in the eyes of his subjects. his domain, which lay on both sides of the tigris and of the euphrates, comprised, besides the principality of yamutbal, all the towns dependent on sumer and accad--uru, larsa, uruk, and nippur, he acquitted himself as a good sovereign in the sight of gods and men: he repaired the brickwork in the temple of nannar at uru; he embellished the temple of shamash at larsa, and caused two statues of copper to be cast in honour of the god; he also rebuilt lagash and grirsu. the city of uruk had been left a heap of ruins after the withdrawal of kudur-nakhunta: he set about the work of restoration, constructed a sanctuary to papsukal, raised the ziggurât of nana, and consecrated to the goddess an entire set of temple furniture to replace that carried off by the elamites. he won the adhesion of the priests by piously augmenting their revenues, and throughout his reign displayed remarkable energy. documents exist which attribute to him the reduction of durilu, on the borders of elam and the chaldæan states; others contain discreet allusions to a perverse enemy who disturbed his peace in the north, and whom he successfully repulsed. he drove sinmuballit out of ishin, and this victory so forcibly impressed his contemporaries, that they made it the starting-point of a new semi-official era; twenty-eight years after the event, private contracts still continued to be dated by reference to the taking of ishin. sinmuballit�s son, khammurabi, was more fortunate. eimsin vainly appealed for help against him to his relative and suzerain kudur-lagamar, who had succeeded simtishilkhak at susa. eimsin was defeated, and disappeared from the scene of action, leaving no trace behind him, though we may infer that he took refuge in his fief of yamutbal. the conquest by khammurabi was by no means achieved at one blow, the enemy offering an obstinate resistance. he was forced to destroy several fortresses, the inhabitants of which had either risen against him or had refused to do him homage, among them being those of meîr* and malgu. when the last revolt had been put down, all the countries speaking the language of chaldæa and sharing its civilization were finally united into a single kingdom, of which khammurabi proclaimed himself the head. other princes who had preceded him had enjoyed the same opportunities, but their efforts had never been successful in establishing an empire of any duration; the various elements had been bound together for a moment, merely to be dispersed again after a short interval. the work of khammurabi, on the contrary, was placed on a solid foundation, and remained unimpaired under his successors. not only did he hold sway without a rival in the south as in the north, but the titles indicating the rights he had acquired over sumer and accad were inserted in his protocol after those denoting his hereditary possessions,--the city of bel and the four houses of the world. khammurabi�s victory marks the close of those long centuries of gradual evolution during which the peoples of the lower euphrates passed from division to unity. before his reign there had been as many states as cities, and as many dynasties as there were states; after him there was but one kingdom under one line of kings. * maîru, meîr, has been identified with shurippak; but it is, rather, the town of mar, now tell-id. a and lagamal, the elamite lagamar, were worshipped there. it was the seat of a linen manufacture, and possessed large shipping. khammurabi�s long reign of fifty-five years has hitherto yielded us but a small number of monuments--seals, heads of sceptres, alabaster vases, and pompous inscriptions, scarcely any of them being of historical interest. he was famous for the number of his campaigns, no details of which, however, have come to light, but the dedication of one of his statues celebrates his good fortune on the battlefield. �bel has lent thee sovereign majesty: thou, what awaitest thou?--sin has lent thee royalty: thou, what awaitest thou?--ninip has lent thee his supreme weapon: thou, what awaitest thou?--the goddess of light, ishtar, has lent thee the shock of arms and the fray: thou, what awaitest thou?--shamash and bamman are thy varlets: thou, what awaitest thou?--it is khammurabi, the king, the powerful chieftain--who cuts the enemies in pieces,--the whirlwind of battle--who overthrows the country of the rebels--who stays combats, who crushes rebellions,--who destroys the stubborn like images of clay,--who overcomes the obstacles of inaccessible mountains.� the majority of these expeditions were, no doubt, consequent on the victory which destroyed the power of kimsin. it would not have sufficed merely to drive back the elamites beyond the tigris; it was necessary to strike a blow within their own territory to avoid a recurrence of hostilities, which might have endangered the still recent work of conquest. here, again, khammurabi seems to have met with his habitual success. [illustration: .jpg head of a sceptre in copper, bearing the name of kham-murabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a rapid sketch made at the british museum. ashnunak was a border district, and shared the fate of all the provinces on the eastern bank of the tigris, being held sometimes by elam and sometimes by chaldæa; properly speaking, it was a country of semitic speech, and was governed by viceroys owning allegiance, now to babylon, now to susa.* khammurabi seized this province, and permanently secured its frontier by building along the river a line of fortresses surrounded by earthworks. following the example of his predecessors, he set himself to restore and enrich the temples. * pognon discovered inscriptions of four of the vicegerents of ashnunak, which he assigns, with some hesitation, to the time of khammurabi, rather than to that of the kings of telloh. three of these names are semitic, the fourth sumerian; the language of the inscriptions bears a resemblance to the semitic dialect of chaldæa. the house of zamama and ninni, at kish, was out of repair, and the ziggurât threatened to fall; he pulled it down and rebuilt it, carrying it to such a height that its summit �reached the heavens.� merodach had delegated to him the government of the faithful, and had raised him to the rank of supreme ruler over the whole of chaldæa. at babylon, close to the great lake which served as a reservoir for the overflow of the euphrates, the king restored the sanctuary of esagilla, the dimensions of which did not appear to him to be proportionate to the growing importance of the city. �he completed this divine dwelling with great joy and delight, he raised the summit to the firmament,� and then enthroned merodach and his spouse, zarpanit, within it, amid great festivities. he provided for the ever-recurring requirements of the national religion by frequent gifts; the tradition has come down to us of the granary for wheat which he built at babylon, the sight of which alone rejoiced the heart of the god. while surrounding sippar with a great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly inhabitants, he did not forget shamash and malkatu, the celestial patrons of the town. he enlarged in their honour the mysterious ebarra, the sacred seat of their worship, and that which no king from the earliest times had known how to build for his divine master, that did he generously for shamash his master. he restored ezida, the eternal dwelling of merodach, at borsippa; eturka-lamma, the temple of anu, ninni, and nana, the suzerains of kish; and also ezikalamma, the house of the goddess ninna, in the village of zarilab. in the southern provinces, but recently added to the crown,--at larsa, uruk, and uru,--he displayed similar activity. [illustration: .jpg page image] he had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by the prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in securing for him the people�s obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak of a revolt. he had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting to allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil discord and foreign conquest. the irrigation of the country demanded constant attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed the work with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the country into small states, their respective resources could not be combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of water. khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage the regions of the lower tigris,* and possibly it may have been to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that he undertook the work of canalization. * contracts dated the year of an inundation which laid waste umliyash; cf. in our own time, the inundation of april , , which in a single night destroyed half the city of bagdad, and in which fifteen thousand persons lost their lives either by drowning or by the collapse of their houses. he was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between babylon and the sea. already, more than half a century previously, siniddinam had enlarged the canal on which larsa was situated, while bimsin had provided an outlet for the �river of the gods� into the persian gulf:* by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus waters of the inundation. khammurabi informs us how anu and bel, having confided to him the government of sumer and accad, and having placed in his hands the reins of power, he dug the nâr-khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country of sumir and accad. �i turned both its banks into cultivated ground, i heaped up mounds of grain and i furnished perpetual water for the people of sumir and accad. the country of sumer and accad, i gathered together its nations who were scattered, i gave them pasture and drink, i ruled over them in riches and abundance, i caused them to inhabit a peaceful dwelling-place. then it was that khammurabi, the powerful king, the favourite of the great gods, i myself, according to the prodigious strength with which merodach had endued me, i constructed a high fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the mountains, at the head of the nâr-khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people. this fortress i called dur-sinmuballit-abim-uâlidiya, the fortress of sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of the world.� * contract dated �the year the tigris, river of the gods, was canalized down to the sea�; i.e. as far as the point to which the sea then penetrated in the environs of kornah. this canal of khammurabi ran from a little south of babylon, joining those of siniddinam and rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain in its entire length.* it drained the stagnant marshes on either side along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously had been useless for purposes of cultivation. a ditch of minor importance pierced the isthmus which separates the tigris and the euphrates in the neighbourhood of sippar.** khammurabi did not rest contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire. * delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by khammurabi is the arakhtu of later epochs which began at babylon and extended as far as the larsa canal. it must therefore be approximately identified with the shatt-en-nil of the present day, which joins shatt-el-kaher, the canal of siniddinam. ** the canal which khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged may be the nâr-malkâ, or �royal canal,� which ran from the tigris to the euphrates, passing sippar on the way. the digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract. their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. samsuîluna, the son of khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second assyrian empire in the time of assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of it may still be found at the present day. abiêshukh,* ammisatana,** ammizadugga,*** and samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation was still open to improvement. * abîshukh (the hebrew abishua) is the form of the name which we find in contemporary contracts. the official lists contain the variant ebishu, ebîshum. ** ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer ammisatana. the nâr-ammisatana is mentioned in a sippar contract. another contract is dated �the year in which ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of samsuîluna.� *** this was, at first, read ammididugga. ammizadugga is mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed certain works--of what nature it is not easy to say--on the banks of the tigris; another contract is dated �the year in which ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of sha-mash, his master, [dug] the ndr-ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal of ammizadugga), prosperity of men.� in the minæan inscriptions of southern arabia the name is found under the form of ammi-zaduq. **** sometimes erroneously read samdiusatana; but, as a matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a royal name is plainly written as samsusatana. we should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by reference to important national events. they appear to have chosen by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one of the great divinities, such as shamash, merodach, ishtar, or nana, as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of the country was jealously watched over.* these sovereigns appear to have enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was immediately replaced by his son, the notaries� acts and the judicial documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal delay in the course of affairs. we may, therefore, conclude that the last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and of material prosperity. chaldæa was thus enabled to fully reap the advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. it is quite possible that those cities--uru, larsa, ishin, uruk, and nippur--which had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional pretensions. * samsuîluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor sumulaîlu had built. contract dated �the year in which ammisatana, the king, built dur-ammisatana, near the sin river,� and �the year in which ammisatana, the king, gave its name to dur-iskunsin, near the canal of ammisatana.� contract dated �the year in which the king ammisatana repaired dur-iskunsin.� contract dated �the year in which samsuîluna caused �the wall of uru and uruk� to be built.� up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. the rise of babylon destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. they gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they were always held. their ancient divinities--nana, sin, anu, and ra--were adopted, if we may use the term, by the babylonians, who claimed the protection of these gods as fully as they did that of merodach or of nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. as the inhabitants of babylon had considerable resources at their disposal, their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. the increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head, of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not of babylon or larsa alone, but of the whole of chaldæa, to offer an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a precarious sovereignty. hostilities never completely ceased between elam and babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. no document furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its commencement. the two empires were separated from south to north by the sea and the tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present village of amara and running in the direction of the mountains. durîlu probably fell ordinarily under chaldæan jurisdiction. umliyash was included in the original domain of kham-murabi, and there is no reason to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. there is every probability that they possessed the plain east of the tigris, comprising nineveh and arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples scattered over the lower slopes of the kurdish mountains rendered them homage. they kept the mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty, and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended northwards as far as mount masios, and westwards to the middle course of the euphrates. at what period the chaldæans first crossed that river is as yet unknown. many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains over syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions. kudur-mabug proclaims himself �adda� of martu, lord of the countries of the west, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest the idea of a great blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some period over western asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted at by the greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous memnon.* contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his predecessors--such as kudur-nakhunta, for instance--or whether he won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old chronicle, inserted in the hebrew scriptures, speaks distinctly of another elamite, who made war in person almost up to the egyptian frontier.** this is the kudur-lagamar (chedorlaomer) who helped eimsin against hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow. * we know that to herodotus (v. ) susa was the city of memnon, and that strabo attributes its foundation to tithonus, father of memnon. according to oppert, the word memnon is the equivalent of the susian umman-anîn, �the house of the king:� weissbach declares that �anin� does not mean king, and contradicts oppert�s view, though he does not venture to suggest a new explanation of the name. ** _gen._ xiv. prom the outset assyriologists have never doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they have connected the facts which it contains with those which seem to be revealed by the assyrian monuments. the two rawlinsons intercalate kudur-lagamar between kudur-nakhunta and kudur-mabug, and oppert places him about the same period. fr. lenormant regards him as one of the successors of kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. g. smith does not hesitate to declare positively that the kudur-mabug and kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same with the kudur-lagamar (chedor-laomer) of the bible. finally, schrader, while he repudiates smith�s view, agrees in the main fact with the other assyriologists. on the other hand, the majority of modern biblical critics have absolutely refused to credit the story in genesis. sayce thinks that the bible story rests on an historic basis, and his view is strongly confirmed by pinches�discovery of a chaldæan document which mentions kudur-lagamar and two of his allies. the hebrew historiographer reproduced an authentic fact from the chronicles of babylon, and connected it with one of the events in the life of abraham. the very late date generally assigned to gen. xiv. in no way diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated by the chaldæan document which is preserved to us in the pages of the hebrew book. in the thirteenth year of his reign over the east, the cities of the dead sea--sodom, gomorrah, adamah, zeboîm, and belâ--revolted against him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, amraphel of chaldæa, ariôch of ellasar,* tida�lo the guti, and marched with them to the confines of his dominions. tradition has invested many of the tribes then inhabiting southern syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. they are represented as being giants--rephalm; men of prodigious strength--zuzîm; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech--zamzummîm; as formidable monsters**--emîm or anakîm, before whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the horîm who were encamped on the confines of the sinaitic desert, and as the amalekites who ranged over the mountains to the west of the dead sea. kudur-lagamar defeated them one after another--the rephaîm near to ashtaroth-karnaîm, the zuzîm near ham,**** the amîm at shaveh-kiriathaim, and the horîm on the spurs of mount seir as far as el-paran; then retracing his footsteps, he entered the country of the amalekites by way of en-mishpat, and pillaged the amorites of hazazôn-tamar. * ellasar has been identified with larsa since the researches of rawlin-son and norris; the goîm, over whom tidal was king, with the guti. ** sayce considers zuzîm and zamzummîm to be two readings of the same word zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the original document. the sounds represented, in the hebrew alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the chaldæan syllabary by the same character, and a hebrew or babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the word as z-m-z-m or as z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it _zuzîm,_ others preferred _zamzummîm._ *** _numb._ xiii. . **** in deut. ii. it is stated that the zamzummîm lived in the country of ammon. sayce points out that we often find the variant am for the character usually read _ham_ or _kham_--the name khammurabi, for instance, is often found written ammurabi; the ham in the narrative of genesis would, therefore, be identical with the land of ammon in deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in the xiviith chapter of genesis had been originally copied from a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was expressed by the sign _ham-am._ in the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of siddîm, and were there resolutely awaiting kudur-lagamar. they were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. kudur-lagamar sacked sodom and gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken near the sources of the jordan by the patriarch abraham.* * an attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the chaldæan monuments. tidcal, or, if we adopt the septuagint variant, thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a sumorian name, turgal= �great chief,� �great son,� while others put him on one side as not having been a babylonian; pinches, sayce, and hommel identify him with tudkhula, an ally of kudur-lagamar against khammurabi. schrader was the first to suggest that amraphel was really khammurabi, and emended the amraphel of the biblical text into amraphi or amrabi, in order to support this identification. halévy, while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name from the pronunciation kimtarapashtum or kimtarapaltum, which he attributes to the name generally read khammurabi, and in this he is partly supported by hommel, who reads �khammurapaltu.� after his victory over kudur-lagamar, khammurabi assumed the title of king of martu,* which we find still borne by ammisatana sixty years later.** we see repeated here almost exactly what took place in ethiopia at the time of its conquest by egypt: merchants had prepared the way for military occupation, and the civilization of babylon had taken hold on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful to claim them as vassals. the empire may be said to have been virtually established from the day when the states of the middle and lower euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. we must not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders from babylon or susa, according as the chances of war favoured the ascendency of chaldæa or elam. it was in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was subjection to a common yoke. * it is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to himself on a stone tablet now in the british museum. ** in an inscription by this prince, copied probably about the time of nabonidus by the scribe belushallîm, he is called �king of the vast land of martu.� they were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected: they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. the empire was maintained by perpetual re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs, or with the resources which were for the moment available. separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. her natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and perfumes which she received from the heart of ethiopia, were well known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of asiatic courts. egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the xiith dynasty. she was now under the rule of the xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the delta, and extended merely in name over the said and nubia. the feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the possession of the nile valley below memphis: the princes of thebes, who were probably descendants of usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning the pschënt or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. a favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the chaldæans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* they stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a momentous undertaking. what they had not dared to venture, others more audacious were to accomplish. at this juncture, so runs the egyptian record, �there came to us a king named timaios. under this king, then, i know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the east, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and without fighting.� * the theory that the divisions of egypt, under the xivth dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes, were one of the main causes of the success of the shepherds, is now admitted to be correct. it is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the african--the war-chariot--and before the horse and his driver the egyptians gave way in a body.* the invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the nile. towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king salatis, one of their chiefs.** he established a semblance of regular government, chose memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon the vanquished. two perils, however, immediately threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the theban lords, taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the xoites, refused the oath of allegiance to salatis, and organized an obstinate resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect himself against an attack of the chaldæans or of the Élamites who were oppressing chaldæa.**** * the horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been employed in. egypt prior to the invasion; we find it, however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of the shepherds, see the tomb of pihiri. moreover, all historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into the country under the rule of the shepherds. the use of the war-chariot in chaldæa at an epoch prior to the hyksôs invasion, is proved by a fragment of the vulture stele; it is therefore, natural to suppose that the hyksôs used the chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was due to it. ** the name salatis (var. saitôs) seems to be derived from a semitic word, siialît = �the chief,� �the governor;� this was the title which joseph received when pharaoh gave him authority over the whole of egypt (gen. xli. ). salatis may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first hyksôs king, but his title, which the egyptians misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name: uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that manetho, being familiar with the passage referring to joseph, had forged the name of salatis. ebers imagined that he could decipher the egyptian form of this prince�s name on the colossus of tell-mokdam, where naville has since read with certainty the name of a pharaoh of the xiiith and xivth dynasties, nahsiri. *** the text of manetho speaks of taxes which he imposed on the high and low lands, which would seem to include the thebaid in the kingdom; it is, however, stated in the next few pages that the successors of salatis waged an incessant war against the egyptians, which can only refer to hostilities against the thebans. we are forced, therefore, to admit, either that manetho took the title of lord of the high and low lands which belonged to salatis, literally, or that the thebans, after submitting at first, subsequently refused to pay tribute, thus provoking a war. **** manetho here speaks of assyrians; this is an error which is to be explained by the imperfect state of historical knowledge in greece at the time of the macedonian supremacy. we need not for this reason be led to cast doubt upon the historic value of the narrative: we must remember the suzerainty which the kings of babylon exercised over syria, and read _chaldæans_ where manetho has written _assyrians_. in herodotus �assyria� is the regular term for �babylonia,� and babylonia is called �the land of the assyrians.� from the natives of the delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself, therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the nile valley in order to keep the thebans in check, he led the main body of his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. pacific immigrations had already introduced asiatic settlers into the delta, and thus prepared the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of hâwârît-avaris, in the sethro�ifce nome--a place connected by tradition with the myth of osiris and typhon--salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp, capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. he visited it yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and to preside over the distribution of rations. this permanent garrison protected him from a chaldæan invasion, a not unlikely event as long as syria remained under the supremacy of the babylonian kings; it furnished his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers, thus enabling them to complete the conquest of lower egypt. years elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves vanquished, and five kings--anôn, apachnas, apôphis i., iannas, and asses--passed their lifetime �in a perpetual warfare, desirous of tearing up egypt to the very root.� these theban kings, who were continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed in a dynasty by themselves, the xvth of manetho, but they at last succumbed to the invader, and asses became master of the entire country. his successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the xvith, the few remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and breadth of the valley from the shores of the mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract. the egyptians who witnessed the advent of this asiatic people called them by the general term amûû, asiatics, or monâtiû, the men of the desert.* they had already given the bedouin the opprobrious epithet of shaûsû--pillagers or robbers--which aptly described them;** and they subsequently applied the same name to the intruders--hiq shaûsû--from which the greeks derived their word hyksôs, or hykoussôs, for this people.*** * the meaning of the term _monîti_ was discovered by e. de rougé, who translated it _shepherd_, and applied it to the hyksôs; from thence it passed into the works of all the egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question, but _shepherd_ has not been universally accepted as the meaning of the word. it is generally agreed that it was a generic term, indicating the races with which their conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the particular term of which manetho�s word _hoiveves_ would be the literal translation. ** the name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which meant �to rob,� �to pillage.� the name shausu, shosu, was not used by the egyptians to indicate a particular race. it was used of all bedouins, and in general of all the marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains. the shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are those from the desert between egypt and syria, but there is a reference, in the time of ramses ii., to those from the lebanon and the valley of orontes. krall finds an allusion to them in a word (_shosim_) in _judges_ ii. , which is generally translated by a generic expression, �the spoilers.� *** manetho declares that the people were called hyksôs, from _syk_, which means �king� in the sacred language, and _sôs_, which means �shepherd� in the popular language. as a matter of fact, the word _hyku_ means �prince �in the classical language of egypt, or, as manetho styles it, the _sacred language_, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious, historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the populace no longer understood. shôs, on the contrary, belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that manetho�s explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to be retained from his evidence, and that is the name _hyk- shôs_ or _hyku-shôs_ given by its inventors to the alien kings. cham-pollion and rosellini were the first to identify these shôs with the shaûsû whom they found represented on the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to me an extremely plausible one: the egyptians, at a given moment, bestowed the generic name of shaûsû on these strangers, just as they had given those of amûû and manâtiû. the texts or writers from whom manetho drew his information evidently mentioned certain kings _hyku_-shaûsû; other passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were applied to the race, and were rendered _hyku_-shaûsû = �the _prisoners_ taken from the shaûsû,� a substantive derived from the root _haka_ = �to take� being substituted for the noun _hyqu_ = �prince.� josephus declares, on the authority of manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this derivation--a fact which is easily explained by the custom of the egyptian record offices. i may mention, in passing, that mariette recognised in the element �_sôs_� an egyptian word _shôs_ = �soldiers,� and in the name of king mîrmâshâû, which he read mîrshôsû, an equivalent of the title hyq- shôsû. but we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin. the writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on these questions: some confounded the hyksôs with the phoenicians, others regarded them as arabs.* modern scholars have put forward at least a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. the hyksôs have been asserted to have been canaanites, elamites, hittites, accadians, scythians. the last opinion found great favour with the learned, as long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by mariette represented apôphis or one of his predecessors. as a matter of fact, these monuments present all the characteristics of the mongoloid type of countenance--the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.** these peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at mit-farês in the fayum, in the twin figures of the nile removed to the bulaq museum from tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the villa ludovisi in rome. the same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part of the delta, particularly on the shores of lake menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of the hyksôs. * manetho takes them to be phoenicians, but he adds that certain writers thought them to be arabs: brugsch favours this latter view, but the arab legend of a conquest of egypt by sheddâd and the adites is of recent origin, and was inspired by traditions in regard to the hyksôs current during the byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it to influence us. we must wait before expressing a definite opinion in regard to the facts which glaser believes he has obtained from the minoan inscriptions which date from the time of the hyksôs. ** mariette, who was the first to describe these curious monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable characteristics of a semitic type, and the correctness of his view was, at first, universally admitted. later on hamy imagined that he could distinguish traces of mongolian influences, and er. lenormant, and then mariette himself came round to this view; it has recently been supported in england by flower, and in germany by virchow. this theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the sphinxes of san had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for amenemhâît iii., a king of the xiith dynasty. in spite of the facts we possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of the hyksôs is as mysterious as ever. we gather, however, that the third millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable migratory movements. the expeditions far afield of elamite and chaldæan princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the regions over which they passed. they must have encountered by the way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace. an impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.* * the hyksôs invasion has been regarded as a natural result of the elamite conquest. a tradition, picked up by herodotus on his travels, relates that the phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of the persian gulf;* it was also said that indathyrses, a scythian king, had victoriously scoured the whole of asia, and had penetrated as far as egypt.** either of these invasions may have been the cause of the syrian migration. in. comparison with the meagre information which has come down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause of the movement and the mode of its execution. the least improbable hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the shepherds about the xxiiird century b.c., to the arrival in naharaim of those khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of the pharaohs and the ninevite kings. they descended from the mountain region in which the halys and the euphrates take their rise, and if the bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the taurus and the amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces on the western shores of the dead sea. the most adventurous among them, reinforced by the canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on their southward course, crossed the isthmus of suez, and finding a people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.*** * it was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis, that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed ** a certain number of commentators are of opinion that the wars attributed to indathyrses have been confounded with what herodotus tells of the exploits of madyes, and are nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the viith century b.c. *** at the present time, those scholars who admit the turanian origin of the hyksôs are of opinion that only the nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all kinds--canaanitish, or, more generally, semitic. [illustration: .jpg pallate of hyksÔs scribe] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertons. it is the palette of a scribe, now in the berlin museum, and given by king apôpi ii Âusirrî to a scribe named atu. both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the egyptians, but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of �she-maû,� * strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague appellations which they applied to the bedouin of the sinaitic peninsula,--monâtiû, the shepherds, or sâtiû, the archers. they succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity. the remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of manetho after a lapse of twenty centuries.** the victors were known as the �plagues� or �pests,� and every possible crime and impiety was attributed to them. * the term _shamamil,_ variant of _sliemaû,_ is applied to them by queen hâtshopsîtu: the same term is employed shortly afterward by thutmosis iii., to indicate the enemies whom he had defeated at megiddo. ** he speaks of them in contemptuous terms as _men of ignoble race_. the epithet _aîti, iaîti, iadîti_, was applied to the nubians by the writer of the inscription of ahmosi- si-abîna, and to the shepherds of the delta by the author of the _sallier papyrus_. brugsch explained it as �the rebels,� or �disturbers,� and goodwin translated it �invaders�; chabas rendered it by �plague-stricken,� an interpretation which was in closer conformity with its etymological meaning, and groff pointed out that the malady called ait, or adit in egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of the delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is �the fever-stricken.� [illustration: .jpg a hyksÔs prisoner guiding the plough, at el-kab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. but the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. those of them stationed in the encampment at avaris retained the military qualities and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features. their sovereigns seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* once schooled to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life. * the same thing took place on every occasion when egypt was conquered by an alien race: the persian achæmenians and greeks made use of the native employés, as did the romans after them; and lastly, the mussulmans, arabs, and turks. the court of the pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new sovereign;* the titles of the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens, adapted to these �princes of foreign lands,� ** legitimatised them as descendants of horus and sons of the sun.*** they respected the local religions, and went so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect them with some of their own barbarous divinities. the chief deity of their worship was baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his resemblance to sit, the brother and enemy of osiris, was so marked, that he was identified with the egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional title of sutkhû, the great sit.^ * the narrative of the _sallier papyrus,_ no. , shows us the civil and military chiefs collected round the shepherd- king apôpi, and escorting him in the solemn processions in honour of the gods. they are followed by the scribes and magicians, who give him advice on important occasions. ** hiqu situ: this is the title of abîsha at beni-hassan, which is also assumed by khiani on several small monuments; steindorff has attempted to connect it with the name of the hyksôs. *** the preamble of the two or three shepherd-kings of whom we know anything, contains the two cartouches, the special titles, and the names of horus, which formed part of the title of the kings of pure egyptian race; thus apôphis il is proclaimed to be the living horus, who joins the two earths in peace, the good god, aqnunrî, son of the sun, apôpi, who lives for ever, on the statues of mîrmâshâu, which he had appropriated, and on the pink granite table of offerings in the gizeh museum. **** the name of baal, transcribed baâlu, is found on that of a certain petebaâlû, �the gift of baal,� who must have flourished in the time of the last shepherd-kings, or rather under the theban kings of the xviith dynasty, who were their contemporaries, whose conclusions have been adopted by brugsch. ^ sutikhû, sutkhû, are lengthened forms of sûtû, or sîtû; and chabas, who had at first denied the existence of the final _jehû_, afterwards himself supplied the philological arguments which proved the correctness of the reading: he rightly refused, however, to recognise in sutikhû or sutkhû --the name of the conquerors� god--a transliteration of the phoenician sydyk, and would only see in it that of the nearest egyptian deity. this view is now accepted as the right one, and sutkhû is regarded as the indigenous equivalent of the great asiatic god, elsewhere called baal, or supreme lord. [professor pétrie found a scarab bearing the cartouche of �sutekh� apepi i. at koptos.--te.] he was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the emblematic animal of sît, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted the deserts of the thebaid. his temples were erected in the cities of the delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at bubastis and at tanis. tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces, and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls. apôphis aq-nûnrî, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing colossi of the pharaohs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties. [illustration: .jpg table of offerings bearing the name of apÔti ÂqnÛnrÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by e. brugsch. [illustration: .jpg page image] he was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works belonging to the amenemhâîts or to mirmâshâû. khianî, who is possibly the iannas of manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* the statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by naville at bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. it is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took �his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the delta under the sovkhotpfts and the nofirhotpûs. but a small grey granite lion, also of the reign of khianî, which by a strange fate had found its way to bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the hyksôs period. * naville, who reads the name râyan or yanrâ, thinks that this prince must be the annas or iannas mentioned by manetho as being one of the six shepherd-kings of the xvth dynasty. mr. pétrie proposed to read khian, khianî, and the fragment discovered at gebeleîn confirms this reading, as well as a certain number of cylinders and scarabs. mr. pétrie prefers to place this pharaoh in the viiith dynasty, and makes him one of the leaders in the foreign occupation to which he supposes egypt to have submitted at that time; but it is almost certain that he ought to be placed among the hyksôs of the xvith dynasty. the name khianî, more correctly khiyanî or kheyanî, is connected by tomkins, and hilprecht with that of a certain khayanû or khayan, son of gabbar, who reigned in amanos in the time of salmanasar ii., king of assyria. [illustration: .jpg broken statue of khiani] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by naville. it is heavy in form, and the muzzle in no way recalls the fine profile of the lions executed by the sculptors of earlier times. the pursuit of science and the culture of learning appear to have been more successfully perpetuated than the fine arts; a treatise on mathematics, of which a copy has come down to us, would seem to have been recopied, if not remodelled, in the twenty-second year of apôphis il aûsirrî. if we only possessed more monuments or documents treating of this period, we should doubtless perceive that their sojourn on the banks of the nile was instrumental in causing a speedy change in the appearance and character of the hyksôs. the strangers retained to a certain extent their coarse countenances and rude manners: they showed no aptitude for tilling the soil or sowing grain, but delighted in the marshy expanses of the delta, where they gave themselves up to a semi-savage life of hunting and of tending cattle. the nobles among them, clothed and schooled after the egyptian fashion, and holding fiefs, or positions at court, differed but little from the native feudal chiefs. we see here a case of what generally happens when a horde of barbarians settles down in a highly organised country which by a stroke of fortune they may have conquered; as soon as the hyksôs had taken complete possession of egypt, egypt in her turn took possession of them, and those who survived the enervating effect of her civilization were all but transformed into egyptians. if, in the time of the native pharaohs, asiatic tribes had been drawn towards egypt, where they were treated as subjects or almost as slaves, the attraction which she possessed for them must have increased in intensity under the shepherds. they would now find the country in the hands of men of the same races as themselves--egyptianised, it is true, but not to such an extent as to have completely lost their own language and the knowledge of their own extraction. such immigrants were the more readily welcomed, since there lurked a feeling among the hyksôs that it was necessary to strengthen themselves against the slumbering hostility of the indigenous population. the royal palace must have more than once opened its gates to asiatic counsellors and favourites. canaanites and bedouin must often have been enlisted for the camp at avaris. invasions, famines, civil wars, all seem to have conspired to drive into egypt not only isolated individuals, but whole families and tribes. that of the beni-israel, or israelites, who entered the country about this time, has since acquired a unique position in the world�s history. they belonged to that family of semitic extraction which we know by the monuments and tradition to have been scattered in ancient times along the western shores of the persian gulf and on the banks of the euphrates. those situated nearest to chaldæa and to the sea probably led a settled existence; they cultivated the soil, they employed themselves in commerce and industries, their vessels--from dilmun, from mâgan, and from milukhkha--coasted from one place to another, and made their way to the cities of sumer and accad. they had been civilized from very early times, and some of their towns were situated on islands, so as to be protected from sudden incursions. other tribes of the same family occupied the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and delighted in the unsettled life of nomads. there appeared to be in this distant corner of arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which periodically overflowed its borders and spread over the world. it was from this very region that we see the kashdim, the true chaldæans, issuing ready armed for combat,--a people whose name was subsequently used to denote several tribes settled between the lower waters of the tigris and the euphrates. it was there, among the marshes on either side of these rivers, that the aramoans established their first settlements after quitting the desert. there also the oldest legends of the race placed the cradle of the phoenicians; it was even believed, about the time of alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the bahrein islands, the largest of which, tylos and arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of tyre and arvad. we are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they reached the mediterranean. the occurrence of violent earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the lake of syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded sidon. the question arises as to the position of the lake of syria on whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the bahr-î-nedjif and the environs of babylon; others, the lake of bambykês near the euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier. another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of merom, the lake of galilee, or the dead sea; in this case the horde must have crossed the neck of the arabian peninsula, from the euphrates to the jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.* several writers assure us that the phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered on reaching tyre was not the persian gulf, but the dead sea. if this had been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other documents. the bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of kudur-lagamar, the anger of god being kindled by the wickedness of sodom and gomorrah, he resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the valley of siddim. a cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as �of a furnace,� had passed away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** previous to their destruction, the lake into which the jordan empties itself had had but a restricted area: the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged it to its present dimensions. the earthquake which caused the phoenicians to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm, and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our dead sea. * they would thus have arrived at the shores of lake merom, or at the shores either of the dead sea or of the lake of gennesareth; the arab traditions speak of an itinerary which would have led the emigrants across the desert, but they possess no historic value is so far as these early epochs are concerned. ** _gen._ xix. - ; the whole of this episode belongs to the jehovistic narrative. one fact, however, appears to be certain in the midst of many hypotheses, and that is that the phoenicians had their origin in the regions bordering on the persian gulf. it is useless to attempt, with the inadequate materials as yet in our possession, to determine by what route they reached the syrian coast, though we may perhaps conjecture the period of their arrival. herodotus asserts that the tyrians placed the date of the foundation of their principal temple two thousand three hundred years before the time of his visit, and the erection of a sanctuary for their national deity would probably take place very soon after their settlement at tyre: this would bring their arrival there to about the xxviiith century before our era. the elamite and babylonian conquests would therefore have found the phoenicians already established in the country, and would have had appreciable effect upon them. the question now arises whether the beni-israel belonged to the group of tribes which included the phoenicians, or whether they were of chaldæan race. their national traditions leave no doubt upon that point. they are regarded as belonging to an important race, which we find dispersed over the country of padan-aram, in northern mesopotamia, near the base of mount masios, and extending on both sides of the euphrates.* * the country of padan-aram is situated between the euphrates and the upper reaches of the khabur, on both sides of the balikh, and is usually explained as the �plain� or �table-land� of aram, though the etymology is not certain; the word seems to be preserved in that of tell-faddân, near harrân. their earliest chiefs bore the names of towns or of peoples,--n akhor, peleg, and serug:* all were descendants of arphaxad,** and it was related that terakh, the direct ancestor of the israelites, had dwelt in ur-kashdîm, the ur or uru of the chaldæans.*** he is said to have had three sons--abraham, nakhôr, and harân. harân begat lot, but died before his father in ur-kashdîm, his own country; abraham and nakhor both took wives, but abraham�s wife remained a long time barren. then terakh, with his son abraham, his grandson lot, the son of harân, and his daughter-in-law sarah,**** went forth from ur-kashdîm (ur of the chaldees) to go into the land of canaan. * nakhôr has been associated with the ancient village of khaura, or with the ancient village of hâditha-en-naura, to the south of anah; peleg probably corresponds with phalga or phaliga, which was situated at the mouth of the khabur; serug with the present sarudj in the neighbourhood of edessa, and the other names in the genealogy were probably borrowed from as many different localities. ** the site of arphaxad is doubtful, as is also its meaning: its second element is undoubtedly the name of the chaldæans, but the first is interpreted in several ways--�frontier of the chaldæans,� �domain of the chaldæans.� the similarity of sound was the cause of its being for a long time associated with the arrapakhitis of classical times; the tendency is now to recognise in it the country nearest to the ancient domain of the chaldæans, i.e. babylonia proper. *** ur-kashdîm has long been sought for in the north, either at orfa, in accordance with the tradition of the syrian churches still existing in the east, or in a certain ur of mesopotamia, placed by ammianus marcellinus between nisibis and the tigris; at the present day halévy still looks for it on the syrian bank of the euphrates, to the south-east of thapsacus. rawlin-son�s proposal to identify it with the town of uru has been successively accepted by nearly all assyriologists. sayce remarks that the worship of sin, which was common to both towns, established a natural link between them, and that an inhabitant of uru would have felt more at home in harrân than in any other town. **** the names of sarah and abraham, or rather the earlier form, abram, have been found, the latter under the form abirâmu, in the contracts of the first chaldæan empire. and they came unto kharân, and dwelt there, and terakh died in kharân.* it is a question whether kharân is to be identified with harrân in mesopotamia, the city of the god sin; or, which is more probable, with the syrian town of haurân, in the neighbourhood of damascus. the tribes who crossed the euphrates became subsequently a somewhat important people. they called themselves, or were known by others, as the �ibrîm, or hebrews, the people from beyond the river;** and this appellation, which we are accustomed to apply to the children of israel only, embraced also, at the time when the term was most extended, the ammonites, moabites, edomites, ishmaelites, midianites, and many other tribes settled on the borders of the desert to the east and south of the dead sea. * gen. xi. - . in the opinion of most critics, verses , form part of the document which was the basis of the various narratives still traceable in the bible; it is thought that the remaining verses bear the marks of a later redaction, or that they may be additions of a later date. the most important part of the text, that relating the migration from ur-kashdîm to kharân, belongs, therefore, to the very oldest part of the national tradition, and may be regarded as expressing the knowledge which the hebrews of the times of the kings possessed concerning the origin of their race. ** the most ancient interpretation identified this nameless river with the euphrates; an identification still admitted by most critics; others prefer to recognise it as being the jordan. halévy prefers to identify it with one of the rivers of damascus, probably the abana. these peoples all traced their descent from abraham, the son of terakh, but the children of israel claimed the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with sarah, giving naïve or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; ammon and moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of lot and his daughters. midian and his sons were descended from keturah, who was merely a concubine, ishmael was the son of an egyptian slave, while the �hairy� esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of the edomites to his brother jacob, and consequently to the israelites, for a dish of lentils. abraham left kharân at the command of jahveh, his god, receiving from him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above all others. abraham pursued his way into the heart of canaan till he reached shechem, and there, under the oaks of moreh, jahveh, appearing to him a second time, announced to him that he would give the whole land to his posterity as an inheritance. abraham virtually took possession of it, and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at shechem, bethel, and mamre, the places where god had revealed himself to him, treating as his equals the native chiefs, abîmelech of gerar and melchizedek of jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the jordan as a place of pasturage to his nephew lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** his nomadic instinct having led him into egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by pharaoh.*** * cf. the meeting with melchizedek after the victory over the elamites (_gen_. xiv. - ) and the agreement with abîmelech about the well (gen. xxi. - ). the mention of the covenant of abraham with abîmelech belongs to the oldest part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the jehovistic narrative. many critics have questioned the historical existence of melchizedek, and believed that the passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the spoil to the priest of the supreme god residing at jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the tel- el-amarna tablets about the ancient city of jerusalem and the character of its early kings have determined sayce to pronounce melchizedek to be an historical personage. ** _gen._ xiii. - . lot has been sometimes connected of late with the people called on the egyptian monuments rotanu, or lotanu, whom we shall have occasion to mention frequently further on: he is supposed to have been their eponymous hero. lôtan, which is the name of an edomite clan, (_gen_. xxxvi. , ), is a racial adjective, derived from lot. *** _gen._ xii. - , xiii. . abraham�s visit to egypt reproduces the principal events of that of jacob. [illustration: .jpg the traditional oak of abraham at hebron] drawn by boudier, from a photograph brought home by lortet. on his return he purchased the field of ephron, near kirjath-arba, and the cave of machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family* kirjath-arba, the hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the elamites invaded the valley of siddîm, and carried off lot among their prisoners. * _gen_. xiii. , xxiii. (elohistic narrative). the tombs of the patriarchs are believed by the mohammedans to exist to the present day in the cave which is situated within the enclosure of the mosque at hebron, and the tradition on which this belief is based goes back to early christian times. abraham set out in pursuit of them, and succeeded in delivering his nephew.* god (jahveh) not only favoured him on every occasion, but expressed his will to extend over abraham�s descendants his sheltering protection. he made a covenant with him, enjoining the use on the occasion of the mysterious rites employed among the nations when effecting a treaty of peace. abraham offered up as victims a heifer, a goat, and a three-year-old ram, together with a turtle-dove and a young pigeon; he cut the animals into pieces, and piling them in two heaps, waited till the evening. �and when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon abraham; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him,� and a voice from on high said to him: �know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will i judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... and it came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.� jahveh sealed the covenant by consuming the offering. * _gen._ xiv. - . gen. xv., jehovistic narrative. two less important figures fill the interval between the divine prediction of servitude and its accomplishment. the birth of one of them, isaac, was ascribed to the divine intervention at a period when sarah had given up all hope of becoming a mother. abraham was sitting at his tent door in the heat of the day, when three men presented themselves before him, whom he invited to repose under the oak while he prepared to offer them hospitality. after their meal, he who seemed to be the chief of the three promised to return within a year, when sarah should be blessed with the possession of a son. the announcement came from jahveh, but sarah was ignorant of the fact, and laughed to herself within the tent on hearing this amazing prediction; for she said, �after i am waxed old shall i have pleasure, my lord being old also?� the child was born, however, and was called isaac, �the laugher,� in remembrance of sarah�s mocking laugh.* there is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his father.** like abraham he dwelt near hebron,*** and departing thence wandered with his household round the wells of beersheba. like him he was threatened with the loss of his wife. * _gen_. xviii. - , according to the jehovistic narrative. _gen_. xvii. - gives another account, in which the elohistic writer predicts the birth of isaac in a différent way. the name of isaac, �the laugher,� possibly abridged from isaak-el, �he on whom god smiles,� is explained in three different ways: first, by the laugh of abraham (ch. xvii. ); secondly, by that of sarah (xviii. ) when her son�s birth was foretold to her; and lastly, by the laughter of those who made sport of the delayed maternity of sarah (xxi. ). ** many critics see in the life of isaac a colourless copy of that of abraham, while others, on the contrary, consider that the primitive episodes belonged to the former, and that the parallel portions of the two lives were borrowed from the biography of the son to augment that of his father. *** _gen_. xxxv. , elohistic narrative. like him, also, he renewed relations with abîmelech of gerar.* he married his relative rebecca, the granddaughter of nâkhor and the sister of laban.** after twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins, esau and jacob, who contended with each other from their mother�s womb, and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud. we know how esau, under the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the edomites. jacob spent a portion of his youth in padan-aram; here he served laban for the hands of his cousins rachel and leah; then, owing to the bad faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years� service, taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks. at first he wandered aimlessly along the eastern bank of the jordan, where jahveh revealed himself to him in his troubles. laban pursued and overtook him, and, acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight. jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at mizpah to after-ages as the �stone of witness �--g-al-ed (galeed).*** this having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother esau, who bore him no good will. * _gen._ xxvi. -- , jehovistic narrative. in _gen._ xxv. an elohistic interpolation makes isaac also dwell in the south, near to the �well of the living one who seeth me.� ** _gen._ xxiv., where two narratives appear to have been amalgamated; in the second of these, abraham seems to have played no part, and eliezer apparently conducted rebecca direct to her husband isaac (vers. - ). *** _gen._ xxxi. - , where the writer evidently traces the origin of the word gilead to gal-ed. we gather from the context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at mizpah which separated the hebrew from the aramæan speaking peoples. one night, at the ford of the jabbok, when he had fallen behind his companions, �there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day,� without prevailing against him. the stranger endeavoured to escape before daybreak, but only succeeded in doing so at the cost of giving jacob his blessing. �what is thy name? and he said, jacob. and he said, thy name shall be called no more jacob, but israel: for thou hast striven with god and with men, and hast prevailed.� jacob called the place penîel, �for,� said he, �i have seen god face to face, and my life is preserved.� the hollow of his thigh was �strained as he wrestled with him,� and he became permanently lame.* immediately after the struggle he met esau, and endeavoured to appease him by his humility, building a house for him, and providing booths for his cattle, so as to secure for his descendants the possession of the land. from this circumstance the place received the name of succôth--the �booths �--by which appellation it was henceforth known. another locality where jahveh had met jacob while he was pitching his tents, derived from this fact the designation of the �two hosts�--mahanaîm.** on the other side of the river, at shechem,*** at bethel,**** and at hebron, near to the burial-place of his family, traces of him are everywhere to be found blent with those of abraham. * _gen._ xxxii. - . this is the account of the jehovistic writer. the elohist gives a different version of the circumstances which led to the change of name from jacob to israel; he places the scene at bethel, and suggests no precise etymology for the name israel (_gen._ xxxv. - ). ** _gen._ xxxii. , , where the theophany is indicated rather than directly stated. *** _gen._ xxxiii. - . here should be placed the episode of dinah seduced by an amorite prince, and the consequent massacre of the inhabitants by simeon and levi (_gen._ xxxiv.). the almost complete dispersion of the two tribes of simeon and levi is attributed to this massacre: cf. _gen._ xlix. - . **** _gen._ xxxv. - , where is found the elohistic version ( - ) of the circumstances which led to the change of name from jacob to israel. by his two wives and their maids he had twelve sons. leah was the mother of keuben, simeon, levi, judah, issachar, and zabulon; gad. and asher were the children of his slave zilpah; while joseph and benjamin were the only sons of rachel--dan and naphtali being the offspring of her servant bilhah. the preference which his father showed to him caused joseph to be hated by his brothers; they sold him to a caravan of midianites on their way to egypt, and persuaded jacob that a wild beast had devoured him. jahveh was, however, with joseph, and �made all that he did to prosper in his hand.� he was bought by potiphar, a great egyptian lord and captain of pharaoh�s guard, who made him his overseer; his master�s wife, however, �cast her eyes upon joseph,� but finding that he rejected her shameless advances, she accused him of having offered violence to her person. being cast into prison, he astonished his companions in misfortune by his skill in reading dreams, and was summoned to court to interpret to the king his dream of the seven lean kine who had devoured the seven fat kine, which he did by representing the latter as seven years of abundance, of which the crops should be swallowed up by seven years of famine. joseph was thereupon raised by pharaoh to the rank of prime minister. he stored up the surplus of the abundant harvests, and as soon as the famine broke out, distributed the corn to the hunger-stricken people in exchange for their silver and gold, and for their flocks and fields. hence it was,that the whole of the nile valley, with the exception of the lands belonging to the priests, gradually passed into the possession of the royal treasury. meanwhile his brethren, who also suffered from the famine, came down into egypt to buy corn. joseph revealed himself to them, pardoned the wrong they had done him, and presented them to the pharaoh. �and pharaoh said unto joseph, say unto thy brethren, this do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of canaan: and take your father and your household, and come unto me: and i will give you the good of the land of egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land.� jacob thereupon raised his camp and came to beersheba, where he offered sacrifices to the god of his father isaac; and jahveh commanded him to go down into egypt, saying, �i will there make of thee a great nation: i will go down with thee into egypt: and i will also surely bring thee up again: and joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.� the whole family were installed by pharaoh in the province of goshen, as far as possible from the centres of the native population, �for every shepherd is an abomination unto the egyptians.� in the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the hebrews of the times of the kings delighted to trace the history of their remote ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the beni-israel quitted southern syria and settled on the banks of the nile. they had remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains of judah. hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert, were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns. every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. the women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled beyond the usual period. the men lived like the bedouin--periods of activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing well. a comparatively ancient tradition relates that the hebrews arrived in egypt during the reign of aphôbis, a hyksôs king, doubtless one of the apôpi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the theban pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of amenemhâît iii. and on the colossi of mîrmâshâû.* the land which the hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality. * the year xvii. of apôphis has been pointed out as the date of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by some learned jew of alexandria, was adopted by christian chroniclers. it is unsupported by any fact of egyptian history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on the information contained in the bible. starting from the assumption that the exodus must have taken place under ahmosîs, and that the children of israel had been four hundred and thirty years on the banks of the nile, it was found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the reign of the apôphis mentioned by josephus, and, to be still more correct, in the xviith year of that prince. the tribes of the isthmus of suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are merely temporary. the lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact. should the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert. the district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to desolation. probably the same state of things existed in ancient times, and the border nomes on the east of the delta were in turn inhabited or deserted by the bedouin of the period. the towns were few in number, but a series of forts protected the frontier. these were mere village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded by a strip of cornland. beyond the frontier extended a region of bare rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of the inundation. the land of goshen was bounded by the cities of heliopolis on the south, bubastis on the west, and tanis and mendes on the north: the garrison at avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions of the monatiû and the hîrû-shâîtû.* * goshen comprised the provinces situated on the borders of the cultivable cornland, and watered by the infiltration of the nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were covered with pools and reedy swamps after each inundation. the beni-israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their traditional tastes. even if their subsequent importance as a nation has been over-estimated, they did not at least share the fate of many foreign tribes, who, when transplanted into egypt, waned and died out, or, at the end of two or three generations, became merged in the native population.* in pursuing their calling as shepherds, almost within sight of the rich cities of the nile valley, they never forsook the god of their fathers to bow down before the enneads or triads of egypt; whether he was already known to them as jahveh, or was worshipped under the collective name of elohîm, they served him with almost unbroken fidelity even in the presence of râ and osiris, of phtah and sûtkhû. * we are told that when the hebrews left ramses, they were �about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. and a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks and herds, even very much cattle� (_exod._ xii. , ). the hyksôs conquest had not in any way modified the feudal system of the country. the shepherd-kings must have inherited the royal domain just as they found it at the close of the xivth dynasty, but doubtless the whole delta, from avaris to sais, and from memphis to buto, was their personal appanage. their direct authority probably extended no further south than the pyramids, and their supremacy over the fiefs of the said was at best precarious. the turbulent lords who shared among them the possession of the valley had never lost their proud or rebellious spirit, and under the foreign as under the native pharaohs regulated their obedience to their ruler by the energy he displayed, or by their regard for the resources at his disposal. thebes had never completely lost the ascendency which it obtained over them at the fall of the memphite dynasty. the accession of the xoite dynasty, and the arrival of the shepherd-kings, in relegating thebes unceremoniously to a second rank, had not discouraged it, or lowered its royal prestige in its own eyes or in those of others: the lords of the south instinctively rallied around it, as around their natural citadel, and their resources, combined with its own, rendered it as formidable a power as that of the masters of the delta. if we had fuller information as to the history of this period, we should doubtless see that the various theban princes took occasion, as in the heracleopolitan epoch, to pick a quarrel with their sovereign lord, and did not allow themselves to be discouraged by any check.* * the length of time during which egypt was subject to asiatic rule is not fully known. historians are agreed in recognizing the three epochs referred to in the narrative of manetho as corresponding with ( ) the conquest and the six first hyksôs kings, including the xvth theban dynasty; ( ) the complete submission of egypt to the xvith foreign dynasty; ( ) the war of independence during the xviith dynasty, which consisted of two parallel series of kings, the one shepherds (pharaohs), the other thebans. there has been considerable discussion as to the duration of the oppression. the best solution is still that given by erman, according to whom the xvth dynasty lasted , the xvith , and the xviith years, or, in all, years. the invasion must, therefore, have taken place about b.c., or about the time when the elamite power was at its highest. the advent of the xvith dynasty would fall about b.c., and the commencement of the war of independence between and b.c. the period of hegemony attributed by the chronicles to the hyksôs of the xvith dynasty was not probably, as far as they were concerned, years of perfect tranquillity, or of undisputed authority. in inscribing their sole names on the lists, the compilers denoted merely the shorter or longer period during which their theban vassals failed in their rebellious efforts, and did not dare to assume openly the title or ensigns of royalty. a certain apôphis, probably the same who took the prsenomen of aqnûnrî, was reigning at tanis when the decisive revolt broke out, and saqnûnrî tiûâa i., who was the leader on the occasion, had no other title of authority over the provinces of the south than that of _hiqu,_ or regent. we are unacquainted with the cause of the outbreak or with its sequel, and the egyptians themselves seem to have been not much better informed on the subject than ourselves. they gave free flight to their fancy, and accommodated the details to their taste, not shrinking from the introduction of daring fictions into the account. a romance, which was very popular with the literati four or five hundred years later, asserted that the real cause of the war was a kind of religious quarrel. �it happened that the land of egypt belonged to the fever-stricken, and, as there was no supreme king at that time, it happened then that king saqnûnrî was regent of the city of the south, and that the fever-stricken of the city of râ were under the rule of râ-apôpi in avaris. the whole land tribute to the latter in manufactured products, and the north did the same in all the good things of the delta. now, the king râ-apôpi took to himself sûtkhû for lord, and he did not serve any other god in the whole land except sûtkhû, and he built a temple of excellent and everlasting work at the gate of the king râ-apôpi, and he arose every morning to sacrifice the daily victims, and the chief vassals were there with garlands of flowers, as it was accustomed to be done for the temple of phrâ-harmâkhis.� having finished the temple, he thought of imposing upon the thebans the cult of his god, but as he shrank from employing force in such a delicate matter, he had recourse to stratagem. he took counsel with his princes and generals, but they were unable to propose any plan. the college of diviners and scribes was more complaisant: �let a messenger go to the regent of the city of the south to tell him: the king râ-apôpi commands thee: �that the hippopotami which are in the pool of the town are to be exterminated in the pool, in order that slumber may come to me by day and by night.� he will not be able to reply good or bad, and thou shalt send him another messenger: the king râ-apôpi commands thee: �if the chief of the south does not reply to my message, let him serve no longer any god but sûtkhû. but if he replies to it, and will do that which i tell him to do, then i will impose nothing further upon him, and i will not in future bow before any other god of the whole land than amonrâ, king of the gods!�� another pharaoh of popular romance, nectanebo, possessed, at a much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of babylon, and his friend lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to wring the necks of the cocks of memphis:* the hippopotami of the theban lake, which troubled the rest of the king of tanis, were evidently of close kin to these extraordinary animals. * found in a popular story, which came in later times to be associated with the traditions connected with Æsop. the sequel is unfortunately lost. we may assume, however, without much risk of error, that saqnûnrî came forth safe and sound from the ordeal; that apôpi was taken in his own trap, and saw himself driven to the dire extremity of giving up sûtkhû for amonrâ or of declaring war. he was likely to adopt the latter alternative, and the end of the manuscript would probably have related his defeat. [illustration: .jpg pallate of tiûâa] drawn from the original by faucher-gudin. hostilities continued for a century and a half from the time when saqnûnrî tiûâa declared himself son of the sun and king of the two egypts. from the moment in which he surrounded his name with a cartouche, the princes of the said threw in their lot with him, and the xviith dynasty had its beginning on the day of his proclamation. the strife at first was undecisive and without marked advantage to either side: at length the pharaoh whom the greek copyists of manetho call alisphragmouthosis, defeated the barbarians, drove them away from memphis and from the western plains of the delta, and shut them up in their entrenched camp at avaris, between the sebennytic branch of the nile and the wady tumilât. the monuments bearing on this period of strife and misery are few in number, and it is a fortunate circumstance if some insignificant object tarns up which would elsewhere be passed over as unworthy of notice. one of the officials of tiûâa i. has left us his writing palette, on which the cartouches of his master are incised with a rudeness baffling description. we have also information of a prince of the blood, a king�s son, tûaû, who accompanied this same pharaoh in his expeditions; and the gîzeh museum is proud of having in its possession the i wooden sabre which this individual placed on the mummy of a certain aqhorû, to enable him to defend himself against the monsters of the lower world. a second saqnûnrî tiûâa succeeded the first, and like him was buried in a little brick pyramid on the border of the theban necropolis. at his death the series of rulers was broken, and we meet with several names which are difficult to classify--sakhontinibrî, sanakhtû-niri, hotpûrî, manhotpûrî, eâhotpû.* * hotpûrî and manhotpûrî are both mentioned in the fragments of a fantastic story (copied during the xxth dynasty), bits of which are found in most european museums. in one of these fragments, preserved in the louvre, mention is made of hotpûrî�s tomb, certainly situated at thebes; we possess scarabs of this king, and pétrie discovered at coptos a fragment of a stele bearing his name and titles, and describing the works which he executed in the temples of the town. the xivth year of manhotpûrî is mentioned in a passage of the story as being the date of the death of a personage born under hotpûrî. these two kings belong, as far as we are able to judge, to the middle of the xviith dynasty; i am inclined to place beside them the pharaoh nûbhotpûrî, of whom we possess a few rather coarse scarabs. as we proceed, however, information becomes more plentiful, and the list of reigns almost complete. the part which the princesses of older times played in the transmission of power had, from the xiith dynasty downward, considerably increased in importance, and threatened to overshadow that of the princes. the question presents itself whether, during these centuries of perpetual warfare, there had not been a moment when, all the males of the family having perished, the women alone were left to perpetuate the solar race on the earth and to keep the succession unbroken. as soon as the veil over this period of history begins to be lifted, we distinguish among the personages emerging from the obscurity as many queens as kings presiding over the destinies of egypt. the sons took precedence of the daughters when both were the offspring of a brother and sister born of the same parents, and when, consequently, they were of equal rank; but, on the other hand, the sons forfeited this equality when there was any inferiority in origin on the maternal side, and their prospect of succession to the throne diminished in proportion to their mother�s remoteness from the line of râ. in the latter case all their sisters, born of marriages which to us appear incestuous, took precedence of them, and the eldest daughter became the legitimate pharaoh, who sat in the seat of horus on the death of her father, or even occasionally during his lifetime. the prince whom she married governed for her, and discharged those royal duties which could be legally performed by a man only,--such as offering worship to the supreme gods, commanding the army, and administering justice; but his wife never ceased to be sovereign, and however small the intelligence or firmness of which she might be possessed, her husband was obliged to leave to her, at all events on certain occasions, the direction of affairs. [illustration: .jpg nofrÎtari, from tue wooden statuette in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by plinders pétrie. at her death her children inherited the crown: their father had formally to invest the eldest of them with royal, authority in the room of the deceased, and with him he shared the externals, if not the reality, of power.* it is doubtful whether the third saq-nûnrî tiûâa known to us--he who added an epithet to his name, and was commonly known as tiûâqni, �tiûâa the brave� ** --united in his person all the requisites of a pharaoh qualified to reign in his own right. however this may have been, at all events his wife, queen ahhotpû, possessed them. * thus we find thûtmosis i. formally enthroning his daughter hât-shopsîtû, towards the close of his reign. ** it would seem that the epithet qeni ( = the brave, the robust) did not form an indispensable part of his name, any more than ahmosi did of the names of members of the family of ahmosis, the conqueror of the shepherds. it is to him that the tiûâa cartouche refers, which is to be found on the statue mentioned by daninos-pasha, published by bouriant, and on which we find ahmosis, a princess of the same name, together with queen ahhotpû i. his eldest son ahmosû died prematurely; the two younger brothers, kamosû and a second ahmosû, the amosis of the greeks, assumed the crown after him. it is possible, as frequently happened, that their young sister ahmasi-nofrîtari entered the harem of both brothers consecutively. [illustration: .jpg the head of saqnuri] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. we cannot be sure that she was united to kamosû, but at all events she became the wife of ahmosis, and the rights which she possessed, together with those which her husband had inherited from their mother ahhotpû, gave him a legal claim such as was seldom enjoyed by the pharaohs of that period, so many of them being sovereigns merely _de facto,_ while he was doubly king by right. tiûâqni, kamosû,* and ahmosis** quickly succeeded each other. tiûâqni very probably waged war against the shepherds, and it is not known whether he fell upon the field of battle or was the victim of some plot; the appearance of his mummy proves that he died a violent death when about forty years of age. two or three men, whether assassins or soldiers, must have surrounded and despatched him before help was available. a blow from an axe must have severed part of his left cheek, exposed the teeth, fractured the jaw, and sent him senseless to the ground; another blow must have seriously injured the skull, and a dagger or javelin has cut open the forehead on the right side, a little above the eye. his body must have remained lying where it fell for some time: when found, decomposition had set in, and the embalming had to be hastily performed as best it might. the hair is thick, rough, and matted; the face had been shaved on the morning of his death, but by touching the cheek we can ascertain how harsh and abundant the hair must have been. the mummy is that of a fine, vigorous man, who might have lived to a hundred years, and he must have defended himself resolutely against his assailants; his features bear even now an expression of fury. a flattened patch of exuded brain appears above one eye, the forehead is wrinkled, and the lips, which are drawn back in a circle about the gums, reveal the teeth still biting into the tongue. kamosû did not reign long; we know nothing of the events of his life, but we owe to him one of the prettiest examples of the egyptian goldsmith�s art--the gold boat mounted on a carriage of wood and bronze, which was to convey his double on its journeys through hades. this boat was afterwards appropriated by his mother ahhotpû. * with regard to kamosû, we possess, in addition to the miniature bark which was discovered on the sarcophagus of queen ahhotpû, and which is now in the museum at gîzeh, a few scattered references to his worship existing on the monuments, on a stele at gîzeh, on a table of offerings in the marseilles museum, and in the list of princes worshipped by the �servants of the necropolis.� his pyramid was at drah- abu�l-neggah, beside those of ilûâa and amenôthês i. ** the name amosû or ahmosi is usually translated �child of the moon-god� the real meaning is, �the moon-god has brought forth,� �him� or �her� (referring to the person who bears the name) being understood. ahmosisa must have been about twenty-five years of age when he ascended the throne; he was of medium height, as his body when mummied measured only feet inches in length, but the development of the neck and chest indicates extraordinary strength. the head is small in proportion to the bust, the forehead low and narrow, the cheek-bones project, and the hair is thick and wavy. the face exactly resembles that of tiûâcrai, and the likeness alone would proclaim the affinity, even if we were ignorant of the close relationship which united these two pharaohs.* ahmosis seems to have been a strong, active, warlike man; he was successful in all the wars in which we know him to have been engaged, and he ousted the shepherds from the last towns occupied by them. it is possible that modern writers have exaggerated the credit due to ahmosis for expelling the hyksôs. he found the task already half accomplished, and the warfare of his forefathers for at least a century must have prepared the way for his success; if he appears to have played the most important _rôle_ in the history of the deliverance, it is owing to our ignorance of the work of others, and he thus benefits by the oblivion into which their deeds have passed. taking this into consideration, we must still admit that the shepherds, even when driven into avaris, were not adversaries to be despised. forced by the continual pressure of the egyptian armies into this corner of the delta, they were as a compact body the more able to make a protracted resistance against very superior forces. * here again my description is taken from the present appearance of the mummy, which is now in the gîzeh museum. it is evident, from the inspection which i have made, that ahmosis was about fifty years old at the time of his death, and, allowing him to have reigned twenty-five years, he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six when he came to the throne. [illustration: .jpg the small gold votive barque of pharaoh kamosÛ, in the gÎzeh museum.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by Émil brugsch-bey. the impenetrable marshes of menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the red sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting network of the branches of the nile, together with the artificial canals, protected them as by a series of moats in front, while syria in their rear offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their troops, or levying recruits among tribes of kindred race. as long as they could hold their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible; one victory would bring them to memphis, and the whole valley would again fall under then-suzerainty. ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold, averted this danger. it is, therefore, not without reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty. [illustration: .jpg page image] his predecessors had in reality been merely pharaohs on sufferance, ruling in the south within the confines of their theban principality, gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the suzerainty of the whole country. they were reckoned in the xviith dynasty together with the hyksôs sovereigns of uncontested legitimacy, while their successors were chosen to constitute the xviiith, comprising pharaohs with full powers, tolerating no competitors, and uniting under their firm rule the two regions of which egypt was composed--the possessions of sit and the possessions of horus.* * manetho, or his abridgers, call the king who drove out the shepherds amôsis or tethmôsis. lepsius thought he saw grounds for preferring the second reading, and identified this tethmôsis with thûtmosi manakhpirri, the ïhûtmosis iii. of our lists; ahmosis could only have driven out the greater part of the nation. this theory, to which naville still adheres, as also does stindorff, was disputed nearly fifty years ago by e. de rougé; nowadays we are obliged to admit that, subsequent to the vth year of ahmosis, there were no longer shepherd-kings in egypt, even though a part of the conquering race may have remained in the country in a state of slavery, as we shall soon have occasion to observe. the war of deliverance broke out on the accession of ahmosis, and continued during the first five years of his reign.* one of his lieutenants, the king�s namesake--Âhmosi-si-abîna--who belonged to the family of the lords of nekhabît, has left us an account, in one of the inscriptions in his tomb, of the numerous exploits in which he took part side by side with his royal master, and thus, thanks to this fortunate record of his vanity, we are not left in complete ignorance of the events which took place during this crucial struggle between the asiatic settlers and their former subjects. nekhabît had enjoyed considerable prosperity in the earlier ages of egyptian history, marking as it did the extreme southern limit of the kingdom, and forming an outpost against the barbarous tribes of nubia. as soon as the progress of conquest had pushed the frontier as far south as the first cataract, it declined in importance, and the remembrance of its former greatness found an echo only in proverbial expressions or in titles used at the pharaonic court.* the nomes situated to the south of thebes, unlike those of middle egypt, did not comprise any extensive fertile or well-watered territory calculated to enrich its possessors or to afford sufficient support for a large population: they consisted of long strips of alluvial soil, shut in between the river and the mountain range, but above the level of the inundation, and consequently difficult to irrigate. * this is evident from passage in the biography of ahmosi- si-abîna, where it is stated that, after the taking of avaris, the king passed into asia in the year vi. the first few lines of the _great inscription of el-kab_ seem to refer to four successive campaigns, i.e. four years of warfare up to the taking of avaris, and to a fifth year spent in pursuing the shepherds into syria. ** the vulture of nekhabît is used to indicate the south, while the urseus of buto denotes the extreme north; the title râ-nekhnît, �chief of nekhnît,� which is, hypothetically, supposed to refer to a judicial function, is none the less associated with the expression, �nekhabît- tekhnît,� as an indication of the south, and, therefore, can be traced to the prehistoric epoch when nekhabît was the primary designation of the south. [illustration: .jpg the walls of el-kab seen from the tomb of pihiri] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. [illustration: a.jpg collection of vases] modelled and painted in the grand temple. philae island. these nomes were cultivated, moreover, by a poor and sparse population. it needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from their poverty-stricken condition--either a war, which would bring into prominence their strategic positions; or the establishment of markets, such as those of syênê and elephantine, where the commerce of neighbouring regions would naturally centre; or the erection, as at ombos or adfû, of a temple which would periodically attract a crowd of pilgrims. the principality of the two feathers comprised, besides nekhabît, ât least two such towns--anît, on its northern boundary, and nekhnît almost facing nekhabît on the left bank of the river.* these three towns sometimes formed separate estates for as many independent lords:** even when united they constituted a fiefdom of but restricted area and of slender revenues, its chiefs ranking below those of the great feudal princes of middle egypt. the rulers of this fiefdom led an obscure existence during the whole period of the memphite empire, and when at length thebes gained the ascendency, they rallied to the latter and acknowledged her suzerainty. one of them, sovkûnakhîti, gained the favour of sovkhotpû iii. sakhemûaztaûirî, who granted him lands which made the fortune of his house; another of them, aï, married khonsu, one of the daughters of sovkûmsaûf i. and his queen nûbkhâs, and it is possible that the misshapen pyramid of qûlah, the most southern in egypt proper, was built for one of these royally connected personages. * nekhnît is the hieracônpolis of greek and roman times, hâît-baûkû, the modern name of which is kom-el-ahmar. ** pihiri was, therefore, prince of nekhabît and of anît at one and the same time, whereas the town of nekhnît had its own special rulers, several of whom are known to us from the tombs at kom-el-ahmar. the descendants of aï attached themselves faithfully to the pharaohs of the xviith dynasty, and helped them to the utmost in their struggle against the invaders. their capital, nekhabît, was situated between the nile and the arabian chain, at the entrance to a valley which penetrates some distance into the desert, and leads to the gold-mines on the red sea. the town profited considerably from the precious metals brought into it by the caravans, and also from the extraction of natron, which from prehistoric times was largely employed in embalming. it had been a fortified place from the outset, and its walls, carefully repaired by successive ages, were still intact at the beginning of this century. they described at this time a rough quadrilateral, the two longer sides of which measured some feet in length, the two shorter being about one-fourth less. the southern face was constructed in a fashion common in brick buildings in egypt, being divided into alternate panels of horizontally laid courses, and those in which the courses were concave; on the north and west façades the bricks were so laid as to present an undulating arrangement running uninterruptedly from one end to the other. the walls are feet thick, and their average height feet; broad and easy steps lead to the foot-walk on the top. the gates are unsymmetrically placed, there being one on the north, east, and west sides respectively; while the southern side is left without an opening. these walls afforded protection to a dense but unequally distributed population, the bulk of which was housed towards the north and west sides, where the remains of an immense number of dwellings may still be seen. the temples were crowded together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to nekhabît, the vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* this enclosure formed a kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had fallen into the enemy�s hands. the times were troublous; the open country was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to lie fallow. * a part of the latter temple, that which had been rebuilt in the saîte epoch, was still standing at the beginning of the xixth century, with columns bearing the cartouches of hakori; it was destroyed about the year , and champollion found only the foundations of the walls. [illustration: .jpg the ruins of the pyramid of qÛlah, near mohammerieh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. famine constantly resulted from these disturbances, and it taxed all the powers of the ruling prince to provide at such times for his people. a chief of the commissariat, bebî by name, who lived about this period, gives us a lengthy account of the number of loaves, oxen, goats, and pigs, which he allowed to all the inhabitants both great and little, down even to the quantity of oil and incense, which he had taken care to store up for them: his prudence was always justified by the issue, for �during the many years in which the famine recurred, he distributed grain in the city to all those who hungered.� babaî, the first of the lords of el-kab whose name has come down to us, was a captain in the service of saqnûnrî tiûâqni.* his son ahmosi, having approached the end of his career, cut a tomb for himself in the hill which overlooks the northern side of the town. he relates on the walls of his sepulchre, for the benefit of posterity, the most praiseworthy actions of his long life. he had scarcely emerged from childhood when he was called upon to act for his father, and before his marriage he was appointed to the command of the barque _the calf._ from thence he was promoted to the ship _the north_, and on account of his activity he was chosen to escort his namesake the king on foot, whenever he drove in his chariot. he repaired to his post at the moment when the decisive war against the hyksôs broke out. * there are still some doubts as to the descent of this ahmosi. some authorities hold that babai was the name of his father and abîna that of his grandfather; others think that babai was his father and abîna his mother; others, again, make out babai and abîna to be variants of the same name, probably a semitic one, borne by the father of ahmosi; the majority of modern egyptologists (including myself) regard this last hypothesis as being the most probable one. the tradition current in the time of the ptolemies reckoned the number of men under the command of king ahmosis when he encamped before avaris at , . this immense multitude failed to bring matters to a successful issue, and the siege dragged on indefinitely. the king afc length preferred to treat with the shepherds, and gave them permission to retreat into syria safe and sound, together with their wives, their children, and all their goods. this account, however, in no way agrees with the all too brief narration of events furnished by the inscription in the tomb. the army to which egypt really owed its deliverance was not the undisciplined rabble of later tradition, but, on the contrary, consisted of troops similar to those which subsequently invaded syria, some , to , in number, fully equipped and ably officered, supported, moreover, by a fleet ready to transfer them across the canals and arms of the river in a vigorous condition and ready for the battle.* * it may be pointed out that ahmosi, son of abîna, was a sailor and a leader of sailors; that he passed from one vessel to another, until he was at length appointed to the command of one of the most important ships in the royal fleet. transport by water always played considerable part in the wars which were carried on in egyptian territory; i have elsewhere drawn attention to campaigns conducted in this manner under the horacleopolitan dynasties, and we shall see that the ethiopian conquerors adopted the same mode of transit in the course of their invasion of egypt. as soon as this fleet arrived at the scene of hostilities, the engagement began. ahmosi-si-abîna conducted the manouvres under the king�s eye, and soon gave such evidence of his capacity, that he was transferred by royal favour to the _rising in memphis_--a vessel with a high freeboard. he was shortly afterwards appointed to a post in a division told off for duty on the river zadiku, which ran under the walls of the enemy�s fortress.* two successive and vigorous attacks made in this quarter were barren of important results. ahmosi-si-abîna succeeded in each of the attacks in killing an enemy, bringing back as trophies a hand of each of his victims, and his prowess, made known to the king by one of the heralds, twice procured for him, �the gold of valour,� probably in the form of collars, chains, or bracelets.** * the name of this canal was first recognised by brugsch, then misunderstood and translated �the water bearing the name of the water of avaris.� it is now road �zadikû,� and, with the egyptian article, pa-zadikû, or pzadikû. the name is of semitic origin, and is derived from the root meaning �to be just;� we do not know to which of the watercourses traversing the east of the delta it ought to be applied. ** the fact that the attacks from this side were not successful is proved by the sequel. if they had succeeded, as is usually supposed, the egyptians would not have fallen back on another point further south in order to renew the struggle. [illustration: .jpg the tombs of the princes of nekhabÎt, in the hillside above el-kab] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the assault having been repulsed in this quarter, the egyptians made their way towards the south, and came into conflict with the enemy at the village of taqimît.* here, again, the battle remained undecided, but ahmosi-si-abîna had an adventure. he had taken a prisoner, and in bringing him back lost himself, fell into a muddy ditch, and, when he had freed himself from the dirt as well as he could, pursued his way by mistake for some time in the direction of avaris. he found out his error, however, before it was too late, came back to the camp safe and sound, and received once more some gold as a reward of his brave conduct. a second attack upon the town was crowned with complete success; it was taken by storm, given over to pillage, and ahmosi-si-abîna succeeded in capturing one man and three women, who were afterwards, at the distribution of the spoil, given to him as slaves.** the enemy evacuated in haste the last strongholds which they held in the east of the delta, and took refuge in the syrian provinces on the egyptian frontier. whether it was that they assumed here a menacing attitude, or whether ahmosis hoped to deal them a crushing blow before they could find time to breathe, or to rally around them sufficient forces to renew the offensive, he made up his mind to cross the frontier, which he did in the th year of his reign. * the site of taqimît is unknown. ** the prisoner who was given to ahmosis after the victory, is probably paâmû, the asiatic, mentioned in the list of his slaves which he had engraved on one of the walls of his tomb. it was the first time for centuries that a pharaoh had trusted himself in asia, and the same dread of the unknown which had restrained his ancestors of the xiith dynasty, doubtless arrested ahmosis also on the threshold of the continent. he did not penetrate further than the border provinces of zahi, situated on the edge of the desert, and contented himself with pillaging the little town of sharûhana.* ahmosi-si-abîna was again his companion, together with his cousin, ahmosi-pannekhabit, then at the beginning of his career, who brought away on this occasion two young girls for his household.** * sharûhana, which is mentioned again under thûtmosis iii. is not the plain of sharon, as birch imagined, but the sharuhen of the biblical texts, in the tribe of simeon (_josh._ xix. ), as brugsch recognised it to be. it is probably identical with the modern tell-esh-sheriâh, which lies north-west of beersheba. ** ahmosi pannekhabit lay in tomb no. , at el-kab. his history is briefly told on one of the walls, and on two sides of the pedestal of his statues. we have one of these, or rather two plates from the pedestal of one of them, in the louvre; the other is in a good state of preservation, and belongs to mr. finlay. the inscription is found in a mutilated condition on the wall of the tomb, but the three monuments which have come down to us are sufficiently complementary to one another to enable us to restore nearly the whole of the original text. the expedition having accomplished its purpose, the egyptians returned home with their spoil, and did not revisit asia for a long period. if the hyksôs generals had fostered in their minds the idea that they could recover their lost ground, and easily re-enter upon the possession of their african domain, this reverse must have cruelly disillusioned them. they must have been forced to acknowledge that their power was at an end, and to renounce all hope of returning to the country which had so summarily ejected them. the majority of their own people did not follow them into exile, but remained attached to the soil on which they lived, and the tribes which had successively settled down beside them--including the beni-israel themselves--no longer dreamed of a return to their fatherland. the condition of these people varied according to their locality. those who had taken up a position in the plain of the delta were subjected to actual slavery. ahmosis destroyed the camp at avails, quartered his officers in the towns, and constructed forts at strategic points, or rebuilt the ancient citadels to resist the incursions of the bedouin. the vanquished people in the delta, hemmed in as they were by a network of fortresses, were thus reduced to a rabble of serfs, to be taxed and subjected to the _corvée_ without mercy. but further north, the fluctuating population which roamed between the sebennytic and pelusiac branches of the nile were not exposed to such rough treatment. the marshes of the coast-line afforded them a safe retreat, in which they could take refuge at the first threat of exactions on the part of the royal emissaries. secure within dense thickets, upon islands approached by interminable causeways, often covered with water, or by long tortuous canals concealed in the thick growth of reeds, they were able to defy with impunity the efforts of the most disciplined troops, and treason alone could put them at the mercy of their foes. most of the pharaohs felt that the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of nets and worm-eaten boats. the kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations were kept within reasonable limits, they were left unmolested to their wild and precarious life. the asiatic invasion had put a sudden stop to the advance of egyptian rule in the vast plains of the upper nile. the theban princes, to whom nubia was directly subject, had been too completely engrossed in the wars against their hereditary enemy, to devote much time to the continuation of that work of colonization in the south which had been carried on so vigorously by their forefathers of the xiith and xiiith dynasties. the inhabitants of the nile valley, as far as the second cataract, rendered them obedience, but without any change in the conditions and mode of their daily life, which appear to have remained unaltered for centuries. the temples of usirtasen and amenemhaît were allowed to fall into decay one after another, the towns waned in prosperity, and were unable to keep their buildings and monuments in repair; the inundation continued to bring with it periodically its fleet of boats, which the sailors of kûsh had laden with timber, gum, elephants� tusks, and gold dust: from time to time a band of bedouin from uaûaît or mazaiû would suddenly bear down upon some village and carry off its spoils; the nearest garrison would be called to its aid, or, on critical occasions, the king himself, at the head of his guards, would fall on the marauders and drive them back into the mountains. ahrnosis, being greeted on his return from syria by the news of such an outbreak, thought it a favourable moment to impress upon the nomadic tribes of nubia the greatness of his conquest. on this occasion it was the people of khonthanûnofir, settled in the wadys east of the nile, above semneh, which required a lesson. the army which had just expelled the hyksôs was rapidly conveyed to the opposite borders of the country by the fleet, the two ahmosi of nekhabît occupying the highest posts. the egyptians, as was customary, landed at the nearest point to the enemy�s territory, and succeeded in killing a few of the rebels. ahmosi-si-abîna brought back two prisoners and three hands, for which he was rewarded by a gift of two female bedouin slaves, besides the �gold of valour.� this victory in the south following on such decisive success in the north, filled the heart of the pharaoh with pride, and the view taken of it by those who surrounded him is evident even in the brief sentences of the narrative. he is described as descending the river on the royal galley, elated in spirit and flushed by his triumph in nubia, which had followed so closely on the deliverance of the delta. but scarcely had he reached thebes, when an unforeseen catastrophe turned his confidence into alarm, and compelled him to retrace his steps. it would appear that at the very moment when he was priding himself on the successful issue of his ethiopian expedition, one of the sudden outbreaks, which frequently occurred in those regions, had culminated in a sudanese invasion of egypt. we are not told the name of the rebel leader, nor those of the tribes who took part in it. the egyptian people, threatened in a moment of such apparent security by this inroad of barbarians, regarded them as a fresh incursion of the hyksôs, and applied to these southerners the opprobrious term of �fever-stricken,� already used to denote their asiatic conquerors. the enemy descended the nile, committing terrible atrocities, and polluting every sanctuary of the theban gods which came within their reach. they had reached a spot called tentoâ,* before they fell in with the egyptian troops. ahmosi-si-abîna again distinguished himself in the engagement. the vessel which he commanded, probably the _rising in memphis_, ran alongside the chief galliot of the sudanese fleet, and took possession of it after a struggle, in which ahmosi made two of the enemy�s sailors prisoners with his own hand. the king generously rewarded those whose valour had thus turned the day in his favour, for the danger had appeared to him critical; he allotted to every man on board the victorious vessel five slaves, and five ancra of land situated in his native province of each respectively. the invasion was not without its natural consequences to egypt itself. * the name of this locality does not occur elsewhere; it would seem to refer, not to a village, but rather to a canal, or the branch of a river, or a harbour somewhere along the nile. i am unable to locate it definitely, but am inclined to think we ought to look for it, if not in egypt itself, at any rate in that part of nubia which is nearest to egypt. m. revillout, taking up a theory which had been abandoned by chabas, recognising in this expedition an offensive incursion of the shepherds, suggests that tantoâ may be the modern tantah in the delta. a certain titiânu, who appears to have been at the head of a powerful faction, rose in rebellion at some place not named in the narrative, but in the rear of the army. the rapidity with which ahmosis repulsed the nubians, and turned upon his new enemy, completely baffled the latter�s plans, and he and his followers were cut to pieces, but the danger had for the moment been serious.* it was, if not the last expedition undertaken in this reign, at least the last commanded by the pharaoh in person. by his activity and courage ahmosis had well earned the right to pass the remainder of his days in peace. * the wording of the text is so much condensed that it is difficult to be sure of its moaning. modern scholars agree with brugsch that titiânu is the name of a man, but several egyptologists believe its bearer to have been chief of the ethiopian tribes, while others think him to have been a rebellious egyptian prince, or a king of the shepherds, or give up the task of identification in despair. the tortuous wording of the text, and the expressions which occur in it, seem to indicate that the rebel was a prince of the royal blood, and even that the name he bears was not his real one. later on we shall find that, on a similar occasion, the official documents refer to a prince who took part in a plot against ramses iii. by the fictitious name of pentauîrît; titiânu was probably a nickname of the same kind inserted in place of the real name. it seems that, in cases of high treason, the criminal not only lost his life, but his name was proscribed both in this world and in the next. a revival of military greatness always entailed a renaissance in art, followed by an age of building activity. the claims of the gods upon the spoils of war must be satisfied before those of men, because the victory and the booty obtained through it were alike owing to the divine help given in battle. a tenth, therefore, of the slaves, cattle, and precious metals was set apart for the service of the gods, and even fields, towns, and provinces were allotted to them, the produce of which was applied to enhance the importance of their cult or to repair and enlarge their temples. the main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of egypt�s humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. they had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. a few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. the accession to power of the great theban families had been of little advantage to thebes itself. its pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made heracleopolis, the fayum or even memphis, their seat of government, only returning to thebes in the time of the xiiith dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. the honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned. the other cities of egypt had come to regard thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had temples. the main body of the building was strengthened, halls and pylons were added to the original plan, and the impulse once given to architectural work, the co-operation of other artificers soon followed. sculptors and painters whose art had been at a standstill for generations during the centuries of egypt�s humiliation, and whose hands had lost their cunning for want of practice, were now once more in demand. they had probably never completely lost the technical knowledge of their calling, and the ancient buildings furnished them with various types of models, which they had but to copy faithfully in order to revive their old traditions. a few years after this revival a new school sprang up, whose originality became daily more patent, and whose leaders soon showed themselves to be in no way inferior to the masters of the older schools. ahmosis could not be accused of ingratitude to the gods; as soon as his wars allowed him the necessary leisure, he began his work of temple-building. the accession to power of the great theban families had been of little advantage to thebes itself. its pharaohs, on assuming the sovereignty of the whole valley, had not hesitated to abandon their native city, and had made heracleopolis, the fayum or even memphis, their seat of government, only returning to thebes in the time of the xiiith dynasty, when the decadence of their power had set in. the honour of furnishing rulers for its country had often devolved on thebes, but the city had reaped but little benefit from the fact; this time, however, the tide of fortune was to be turned. [illustration: .jpg painting in tomb of the kings thebes] the other cities of egypt had come to regard thebes as their metropolis from the time when they had learned to rally round its princes to wage war against the hyksôs. it had been the last town to lay down arms at the time of the invasion, and the first to take them up again in the struggle for liberty. thus the egypt which vindicated her position among the nations of the world was not the egypt of the memphite dynasties. it was the great egypt of the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens, still further aggrandised by recent victories. thebes was her natural capital, and its kings could not have chosen a more suitable position from whence to command effectually the whole empire. situated at an equal distance from both frontiers, the pharaoh residing there, on the outbreak of a war either in the north or south, had but half the length of the country to traverse in order to reach the scene of action. ahmosis spared no pains to improve the city, but his resources did not allow of his embarking on any very extensive schemes; he did not touch the temple of amon, and if he undertook any buildings in its neighbourhood, they must have been minor edifices. he could, indeed, have had but little leisure to attempt much else, for it was not till the xxiind year of his reign that he was able to set seriously to work.* * in the inscription of the year xxii., Âhmosis expressly states that he opened new chambers in the quarries of tûrah for the works in connection with the theban amon, as well as for those of the temple of the memphite phtah. an opportunity then occurred to revive a practice long fallen into disuse under the foreign kings, and to set once more in motion an essential part of the machinery of egyptian administration. the quarries of turah, as is well known, enjoyed the privilege of furnishing the finest materials to the royal architects; nowhere else could be found limestone of such whiteness, so easy to cut, or so calculated to lend itself to the carving of delicate inscriptions and bas-reliefs. the commoner veins had never ceased to be worked by private enterprise, gangs of quarrymen being always employed, as at the present day, in cutting small stone for building purposes, or in ruthlessly chipping it to pieces to burn for lime in the kilns of the neighbouring villages; but the finest veins were always kept for state purposes. contemporary chroniclers might have formed a very just estimate of national prosperity by the degree of activity shown in working these royal preserves; when the amount of stone extracted was lessened, prosperity was on the wane, and might be pronounced to be at its lowest ebb when the noise of the quarryman�s hammer finally ceased to be heard. [illustration: .jpg a convoy of tÛrah quarrymen drawing stone] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by vyse-perring. every dynasty whose resources were such as to justify their resumption of the work proudly recorded the fact on stelae which lined the approaches to the masons� yards. ahmosis reopened the tûrah quarry-chambers, and procured for himself �good stone and white� for the temples of anion at thebes and of phtah at memphis. no monument has as yet been discovered to throw any light on the fate of memphis subsequent to the time of the amenemhâîts. it must have suffered quite as much as any city of the delta from the shepherd invasion, and from the wars which preceded their expulsion, since it was situated on the highway of an invading army, and would offer an attraction for pillagers. by a curious turn of fortune it was the �fankhûi,� or asiatic prisoners, who were set to quarry the stone for the restoration of the monuments which their own forefathers had reduced to ruins.* the bas-reliefs sculptured on the stelæ of ahmosis show them in full activity under the _corvée;_ we see here the stone block detached from the quarry being squared by the chisel, or transported on a sledge drawn by oxen. * the _fankhûi_ are, properly speaking, all white prisoners, without distinction of race. their name is derived from the root _fôkhu, fankhu_ = to bind, press, carry off, steal, destroy; if it is sometimes used in the sense of phoenicians, it is only in the ptolemaic epoch. here the term �fankhûi� refers to the shepherds and asiatics made prisoners in the campaign of the year v. against sharuhana. ahmosis had several children by his various wives; six at least owned nofrîtari for their mother and possessed near claims to the crown, but she may have borne him others whose existence is unrecorded. the eldest appears to have been a son, sipiri; he received all the honours due to an hereditary prince, but died without having reigned, and his second brother, amenhotpû--called by the greeks amenôthes*--took his place. * the form amenôphis, which is usually employed, is, properly speaking, the equivalent of the name _amenemaupitu,_ or amenaupîti, which belongs to a king of the xxist tanite dynasty; the true greek transcription of the ptolemaic epoch, corresponding to the pronunciation _amehotpe,_ or _amenhopte,_ is amenôthes. under the xviiith dynasty the cuneiform transcription of the tablets of tel-el amarna, amankhatbi, seems to indicate the pronunciation amanhautpi, amanhatpi, side by side with the pronunciation aman-hautpu, amenhotpu. ahmosis was laid to rest in the chapel which he had prepared for himself in the cemetery of drah-abu�l-neggah, among the modest pyramids of the xith, xiiith, and xviith dynasties.* he was venerated as a god, and his cult was continued for six or eight centuries later, until the increasing insecurity of the theban necropolis at last necessitated the removal of the kings from their funeral chambers.** the coffin of ahmosis was found to be still intact, though it was a poorly made one, shaped to the contours of the body, and smeared over with yellow; it represents the king with the false beard depending from his chin, and his breast covered with a pectoral ornament, the features, hair, and accessories being picked out in blue. his name has been hastily inscribed in ink on the front of the winding-sheet, and when the lid was removed, garlands of faded pink flowers were still found about the neck, laid there as a last offering by the priests who placed the pharaoh and his compeers in their secret burying-place. * the precise site is at present unknown: we see, however, that it was in this place, when wo observe that ahmosis was worshipped by the servants of the necropolis, amongst the kings and princes of his family who were buried at drah- abu�l-neggah. ** his priests and the minor _employés_ of his cult are mentioned on a stele in the museum at turin, and on a brick in the berlin museum. he is worshipped as a god, along with osiris, horus, and isis, on a stele in the lyons museum, brought from abydos: he had, probably, during one of his journeys across egypt, made a donation to the temple of that city, on condition that he should be worshipped there for ever; for a stele at marseilles shows him offering homage to osiris in the bark of the god itself, and another stele in the louvre informs us that pharaoh thûtmosis iv. several times sent one of his messengers to abydos for the purpose of presenting land to osiris and to his own ancestor ahmosis. [illustration: .jpg coffin of ahmosis in the gÎzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. amenôthes i. had not attained his majority when his father �thus winged his way to heaven,� leaving him as heir to the throne.* nofrîtari assumed the authority; after having shared the royal honours for nearly twenty-five years with her husband, she resolutely refused to resign them.** she was thus the first of those queens by divine right who, scorning the inaction of the harem, took on themselves the right to fulfil the active duties of a sovereign, and claimed the recognition of the equality or superiority of their titles to those of their husbands or sons. * the last date known is that of the year xxii. at tûrah; manetho�s lists give, in one place, twenty-five years and four months after the expulsion; in another, twenty-six years in round numbers, as the total duration of his reign, which has every appearance of probability. ** there is no direct evidence to prove that amenôthes i. was a minor when he came to the throne; still the presumptions in favour of this hypothesis, afforded by the monuments, are so strong that many historians of ancient egypt have accepted it. queen nofrîtari is represented as reigning, side by side with her reigning son, on some few theban tombs which can be attributed to their epoch. [illustration: .jpg nofritari, hie black-skinned goddess] drawn by bouclier, from the photograph by m. de mertens taken in the berlin museum. the aged ahhotpu, who, like nofrîtari, was of pure royal descent, and who might well have urged her superior rank, had been content to retire in favour of her children; she lived to the tenth year of her grandson�s reign, respected by all her family, but abstaining from all interference in political affairs. when at length she passed away, full of days and honour, she was embalmed with special care, and her body was placed in a gilded mummy-case, the head of which presented a faithful copy of her features. beside her were piled the jewels she had received in her lifetime from her husband and son. the majority of them a fan with a handle plated with gold, a mirror of gilt bronze with ebony handle, bracelets and ankle-rings, some of solid and some of hollow gold, edged with fine chains of plaited gold wire, others formed of beads of gold, lapis-lazuli, cornelian, and green felspar, many of them engraved with the cartouche of ahmosis. belonging also to ahmosis we have a beautiful quiver, in which figures of the king and the gods stand out in high relief on a gold plaque, delicately chased with a graving tool; the background is formed of small pieces of lapis and blue glass, cunningly cut to fit each other. one bracelet in particular, found on the queen�s wrist, consisted of three parallel bands of solid gold set with turquoises, and having, a vulture with extended wings on the front. the queen�s hair was held in place by a gold circlet, scarcely as large as a bracelet; a cartouche was affixed to the circlet, bearing the name of ahmosis in blue paste, and flanked by small sphinxes, one on each side, as supporters. a thick flexible chain of gold was passed several times round her neck, and attached to it as a pendant was a beautiful scarab, partly of gold and partly of blue porcelain striped with gold. the breast ornament was completed by a necklace of several rows of twisted cords, from which depended antelopes pursued by tigers, sitting jackals, hawks, vultures, and the winged urasus, all attached to the winding-sheet by means of a small ring soldered on the back of each animal. the fastening of this necklace was formed of the heads of two gold hawks, the details of the heads being worked out in blue enamel. both weapons and amulets were found among the jewels, including three gold flies suspended by a thin chain, nine gold and silver axes, a lion�s head in gold of most minute workmanship, a sceptre of black wood plated with gold, daggers to defend the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of ahmosis. besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the pharaoh kamosû--models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the nile to reach its last resting-place, and to sail in the wake of the gods on the western sea. [illustration: b.jpg the jewels and weapons of queen ÂhhhotpÛ i. in the gÎzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by bechard. nofrîtari thus reigned conjointly with amenôthes, and even if we have no record of any act in which she was specially concerned, we know at least that her rule was a prosperous one, and that her memory was revered by her subjects. while the majority of queens were relegated after death to the crowd of shadowy ancestors to whom habitual sacrifice was offered, the worshippers not knowing even to which sex these royal personages belonged, the remembrance of nofrîtari always remained distinct in their minds, and her cult spread till it might be said to have become a kind of popular religion. in this veneration ahmosis was rarely associated with the queen, but amenôthes and several of her other children shared in it--her son sipiri, for instance, and her daughters sîtamon,* sîtkamosi, and marîtamon; nofrîtari became, in fact, an actual goddess, taking her place beside amon, khonsû, and maut,** the members of the theban triad, or standing alone as an object of worship for her devotees. * sîtamon is mentioned, with her mother, on the karnak stele and on the coffin of bûtehamon. ** she is worshipped with the theban triad by brihor, at karnak, in the temple of khonsû. [illustration: .jpg the two coffins of ahhotp ii. and nofritari standing in tub vestibule of the old bÛlak museum.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. she was identified with isis, hathor, and the mistresses of hades, and adopted their attributes, even to the black or blue coloured skin of these funerary divinities.* * her statue in the turin museum represents her as having black skin. she is also painted black standing before amenôthes (who is white) in the deir el-medineh tomb, now preserved in the berlin museum, in that of nibnûtîrû, and hi that of unnofir, at sheikh abd el-qûrnah. her face is painted blue in the tomb of kasa. the representations of this queen with a black skin have caused her to be taken for a negress, the daughter of an ethiopian pharaoh, or at any rate the daughter of a chief of some nubian tribe; it was thought that ahmosis must have married her to secure the help of the negro tribes in his wars, and that it was owing to this alliance that he succeeded in expelling the hyksôs. later discoveries have not confirmed these hypotheses. nofrîtari was most probably an egyptian of unmixed race, as we have seen, and daughter of ahhotpû i., and the black or blue colour of her skin is merely owing to her identification with the goddesses of the dead. considerable endowments were given for maintaining worship at her tomb, and were administered by a special class of priests. her mummy reposed among those of the princes of her family, in the hiding-place at deîr-el-baharî: it was enclosed in an enormous wooden sarcophagus covered with linen and stucco, the lower part being shaped to the body, while the upper part representing the head and arms could be lifted off in one piece. the shoulders are covered with a network in relief, the meshes of which are painted blue on a yellow background. the queen�s hands are crossed over her breast, and clasp the _crux ansata_, the symbol of life. the whole mummy-case measures a little over nine feet from the sole of the feet to the top of the head, which is furthermore surmounted by a cap, and two long ostrich-feathers. the appearance is not so much that of a coffin as of one of those enormous caryatides which we sometimes find adorning the front of a temple. we may perhaps attribute to the influence of nofrîtari the lack of zest evinced by amenôthes for expeditions into syria. even the most energetic kings had always shrunk from penetrating much beyond the isthmus. those who ventured so far as to work the mines of sinai had nevertheless felt a secret fear of invading asia proper--a dread which they never succeeded in overcoming. when the raids of the bedouin obliged the egyptian sovereign to cross the frontier into their territory, he would retire as soon as possible, without attempting any permanent conquest. after the expulsion of the hyksôs, ahmosis seemed inclined to pursue a less timorous course. he made an advance on sharûhana and pillaged it, and the booty he brought back ought to have encouraged him to attempt more important expeditions; but he never returned to this region, and it would seem that when his first enthusiasm had subsided, he was paralysed by the same fear which had fallen on his ancestors. nofrîtari may have counselled her son not to break through the traditions which his father had so strictly followed, for amenôthes i. confined his campaigns to africa, and the traditional battle-fields there. he embarked for the land of kûsh on the vessel of ahmosi-si-abîna �for the purpose of enlarging the frontiers of egypt.� it was, we may believe, a thoroughly conventional campaign, conducted according to the strictest precedents of the xiith dynasty. the pharaoh, as might be expected, came into personal contact with the enemy, and slew their chief with his own hand; the barbarian warriors sold their lives dearly, but were unable to protect their country from pillage, the victors carrying off whatever they could seize--men, women, and cattle. the pursuit of the enemy had led the army some distance into the desert, as far as a halting-place called the �upper cistern�--_khnûmît hirît_; instead of retracing his steps to the nile squadron, and returning slowly by boat, amenôthes resolved to take a short cut homewards. ahmosi conducted him back overland in two days, and was rewarded for his speed by the gift of a quantity of gold, and two female slaves. an incursion into libya followed quickly on the ethiopian campaign. [illustration: .jpg statue of amenÔthes i. in the turin museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph supplied by flinders pétrie. the tribe of the kihaka, settled between lake mareotis and the oasis of amon, had probably attacked in an audacious manner the western provinces of the delta; a raid was organized against them, and the issue was commemorated by a small wooden stele, on which we see the victor represented as brandishing his sword over a barbarian lying prostrate at his feet. the exploits of amenôthes appear to have ended with this raid, for we possess no monument recording any further victory gained by him. this, however, has not prevented his contemporaries from celebrating him as a conquering and �victorious king. he is portrayed standing erect in his chariot ready to charge, or as carrying off two barbarians whom he holds half suffocated in his sinewy arms, or as gleefully smiting the princes of foreign lands. he acquitted himself of the duties of the chase as became a true pharaoh, for we find him depicted in the act of seizing a lion by the tail and raising him suddenly in mid-air previous to despatching him. these are, indeed, but conventional pictures of war, to which we must not attach an undue importance. egypt had need of repose in order to recover from the losses it had sustained during the years of struggle with the invaders. if amenôthes courted peace from preference and not from political motives, his own generation profited as much by his indolence as the preceding one had gained by the energy of ahrnosis. the towns in his reign resumed their ordinary life, agriculture flourished, and commerce again followed its accustomed routes. egypt increased its resources, and was thus able to prepare for future conquest. the taste for building had not as yet sufficiently developed to become a drain upon the public treasury. we have, however, records showing that amenôthes excavated a cavern in the mountain of ibrîm in nubia, dedicated to satît, one of the goddesses of the cataract. [illustration: .jpg page image] it is also stated that he worked regularly the quarries of silsileh, but we do not know for what buildings the sandstone thus extracted was destined.* karnak was also adorned with chapels, and with at least one colossus,** while several chambers built of the white limestone of tûrah were added to ombos. thebes had thus every reason to cherish the memory of this pacific king. * a bas-relief on the western bank of the river represents him deified: panaîti, the name of a superintendent of the quarries who lived in his reign, has been preserved in several graffiti, while another graffito gives us only the protocol of the sovereign, and indicates that the quarries were worked in his reign. ** the chambers of white limestone are marked i, k, on mariette�s plan; it is possible that they may have been merely decorated under thûtmosis iii., whose cartouches alternate with those of amenôthes i. the colossus is now in front of the third pylon, and wiedemann concluded from this fact that amenôthes had begun extensive works for enlarging the temple of amon; mariette believed, with greater probability, that the colossus formerly stood at the entrance to the xiith dynasty temple, but was removed to its present position by thûtmosis iii. as nofrîtari had been metamorphosed into a form of isis, amenôthes was similarly represented as osiris, the protector of the necropolis, and he was depicted as such with the sombre colour of the funerary divinities; his image, moreover, together with those of the other gods, was used to decorate the interiors of coffins, and to protect the mummies of his devotees.* * wiedemann has collected several examples, to which it would be easy to add others. the names of the king are in this case constantly accompanied by unusual epithets, which are enclosed in one or other of his cartouches: mons. kevillout, deceived by these unfamiliar forms, has made out of one of these variants, on a painted cloth in the louvre, a new amenôthes, whom he styles amenôthes v. [illustration: .jpg the coffin and mummy of amenothes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. one of his statues, now in the turin museum, represents him sitting on his throne in the posture of a king giving audience to his subjects, or in that of a god receiving the homage of his worshippers. the modelling of the bust betrays a flexibility of handling which is astonishing in a work of art so little removed from barbaric times; the head is a marvel of delicacy and natural grace. we feel that the sculptor has taken a delight in chiselling the features of his sovereign, and in reproducing the benevolent and almost dreamy expression which characterised them.* the cult of amenôthes lasted for seven or eight centuries, until the time when his coffin was removed and placed with those of the other members of his family in the place where it remained concealed until our own times.** * another statue of very fine workmanship, but mutilated, is preserved in the gizeh museum; this statue is of the time of seti i., and, as is customary, represents amenôthes in the likeness of the king then reigning. ** we know, from the abbott papyrus, that the pyramid of amenôthes i. was situated at dr-ah abou�l-neggah, among those of the pharaohs of the xith, xiith, and xviith dynasties. the remains of it have not yet been discovered. it is shaped to correspond with the form of the human body and painted white; the face resembles that of his statue, and the eyes of enamel, touched with kohl, give it a wonderful appearance of animation. the body is swathed in orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. a wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed un-crumpled through the long centuries. amenôthes had married ahhotpû ii, his sister by the same father and mother;* ahmasi, the daughter born of this union, was given in marriage to thûtmosis, one of her brothers, the son of a mere concubine, by name sonisonbû.** ahmasi, like her ancestor nofrîtari, had therefore the right to exercise all the royal functions, and she might have claimed precedence of her husband. whether from conjugal affection or from weakness of character, she yielded, however, the priority to thûtmosis, and allowed him to assume the sole government. * ahhotpû ii. may be seen beside her husband on several monuments. the proof that she was full sister of amenôthes i. is furnished by the title of �hereditary princess� which is given to her daughter Àhmasi; this princess would not have taken precedence of her brother and husband thûtmosis, who was the son of an inferior wife, had she not been the daughter of the only legitimate spouse of amenôthes i. the marriage had already taken place before the accession of thûtmosis i., as ahmasi figures in a document dated the first year of his reign. ** the absence of any cartouche shows that sonisonbû did not belong to the royal family, and the very form of the name points her out to have been of the middle classes, and merely a concubine. the accession of her son, however, ennobled her, and he represents her as a queen on the walls of the temple at deîr el-baharî; even then he merely styles her �royal mother,� the only title she could really claim, as her inferior position in the harem prevented her from using that of �royal spouse.� [illustration: .jpg thÛtmosis i., from a statue in the gÎzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph taken by Émil brugsch-bey. he was crowned at thebes on the st of the third month of pirît; and a circular, addressed to the representatives of the ancient seignorial families and to the officers of the crown, announced the names assumed by the new sovereign. �this is the royal rescript to announce to you that my majesty has arisen king of the two egypts, on the seat of the horus of the living, without equal, for ever, and that my titles are as follows: the vigorous bull horus, beloved of mâît, the lord of the vulture and of the uraeus who raises itself as a flame, most valiant,--the golden horns, whose years are good and who puts life into all hearts, king of the two egypts, akhopirkerî, son of the sun, thûtmosis, living for ever.* cause, therefore, sacrifices to be offered to the gods of the south and of elephantine,** and hymns to be chanted for the well-being of the king akhopirkerî, living for ever, and then cause the oath to be taken in the name of my majesty, born of the royal mother sonisonbû, who is in good health.--this is sent to thee that thou mayest know that the royal house is prosperous, and in good health and condition, the st year, the st of the third month of pirît, the day of coronation.� * this is really the protocol of the king, as we find it on the monuments, with his two horus names and his solar titles. ** the copy of the letter which has come down to us is addressed to the commander of elephantine: hence the mention of the gods of that town. the names of the divinities must have been altered to suit each district, to which the order to offer sacrifices for the prosperity of the new sovereign was sent. the new king was tall in stature, broad-shouldered, well knit, and capable of enduring the fatigues of war without flagging. his statues represent him as having a full, round face, long nose, square chin, rather thick lips, and a smiling but firm expression. thûtmosis brought with him on ascending the throne the spirit of the younger generation, who, born shortly after the deliverance from the hyksôs, had grown up in the peaceful days of amenôthes, and, elated by the easy victories obtained over the nations of the south, were inspired by ambitions unknown to the egyptians of earlier times. to this younger race africa no longer offered a sufficiently wide or attractive field; the whole country was their own as far as the confluence of the two niles, and the theban gods were worshipped at napata no less devoutly than at thebes itself. what remained to be conquered in that direction was scarcely worth the trouble of reducing to a province or of annexing as a colony; it comprised a number of tribes hopelessly divided among themselves, and consequently, in spite of their renowned bravery, without power of resistance. light columns of troops, drafted at intervals on either side of the river, ensured order among the submissive, or despoiled the refractory of their possessions in cattle, slaves, and precious stones. thûtmosis i. had to repress, however, very shortly after his accession, a revolt of these borderers at the second and third cataracts, but they were easily overcome in a campaign of a few days� duration, in which the two Âhmosis of al-kab took an honourable part. there was, as usual, an encounter of the two fleets in the middle of the river: the young king himself attacked the enemy�s chief, pierced him with his first arrow, and made a considerable number of prisoners. thûtmosis had the corpse of the chief suspended as a trophy in front of the royal ship, and sailed northwards towards thebes, where, however, he was not destined to remain long.* an ample field of action presented itself to him in the north-east, affording scope for great exploits, as profitable as they were glorious.** * that this expedition must be placed at the beginning of the king�s reign, in his first year, is shown by two facts: ( ) it precedes the syrian campaign in the biography of the two Âhmosis of el-kab; ( ) the syrian campaign must have ended in the second year of the reign, since thûtmosis i., on the stele of tombos which bears that date, gives particulars of the course of the euphrates, and records the submission of the countries watered by that river. the date of the invasion may be placed between and b.c.; if we count years for the three dynasties together, as erman proposes, we find that the accession of ahmosis would fall between and . i should place it provisionally in the year , in order not to leave the position of the succeeding reigns uncertain; i estimate the possible error at about half a century. ** it is impossible at present to draw up a correct table of the native or foreign sovereigns who reigned over egypt during the time of the hyksôs. i have given the list of the kings of the xiiith and xivth dynasties which are known to us from the turin papyrus. i here append that of the pharaohs of the following dynasties, who are mentioned either in the fragments of manetho or on the monuments: [illustration: .jpg table] syria offered to egyptian cupidity a virgin prey in its large commercial towns inhabited by an industrious population, who by maritime trade and caravan traffic had amassed enormous wealth. the country had been previously subdued by the chaldæans, who still exercised an undisputed influence over it, and it was but natural that the conquerors of the hyksôs should act in their turn as invaders. the incursion of asiatics into egypt thus provoked a reaction which issued in an egyptian invasion of asiatic soil. thûtmosis and his contemporaries had inherited none of the instinctive fear of penetrating into syria which influenced ahmosis and his successor: the theban legions were, perhaps, slow to advance, but once they had trodden the roads of palestine, they were not likely to forego the delights of conquest. from that time forward there was perpetual warfare and pillaging expeditions from the plains of the blue nile to those of the euphrates, so that scarcely a year passed without bringing to the city of amon its tribute of victories and riches gained at the point of the sword. one day the news would be brought that the amorites or the khâti had taken the field, to be immediately followed by the announcement that their forces had been shattered against the valour of the egyptian battalions. another day, pharaoh would re-enter the city with the flower of his generals and veterans; the chiefs whom he had taken prisoners, sometimes with his own hand, would be conducted through the streets, and then led to die at the foot of the altars, while fantastic processions of richly clothed captives, beasts led by halters, and slaves bending under the weight of the spoil would stretch in an endless line behind him. [illustration: .jpg signs, arms and instruments] meanwhile the timihû, roused by some unknown cause, would attack the outposts stationed on the frontier, or news would come that the peoples of the sea had landed on the western side of the delta; the pharaoh had again to take the field, invariably with the same speedy and successful issue. the libyans seemed to fare no better than the syrians, and before long those who had survived the defeat would be paraded before the theban citizens, previous to being sent to join the asiatic prisoners in the mines or quarries; their blue eyes and fair hair showing from beneath strangely shaped helmets, while their white skins, tall stature, and tattooed bodies excited for a few hours the interest and mirth of the idle crowd. at another time, one of the customary raids into the land of kûsh would take place, consisting of a rapid march across the sands of the ethiopian desert and a cruise along the coasts of pûanîfc. this would be followed by another triumphal procession, in which fresh elements of interest would appear, heralded by flourish of trumpets and roll of drums: pharaoh would re-enter the city borne on the shoulders of his officers, followed by negroes heavily chained, or coupled in such a way that it was impossible for them to move without grotesque contortions, while the acclamations of the multitude and the chanting of the priests would resound from all sides as the _cortege_ passed through the city gates on its way to the temple of amon. egypt, roused as it were to warlike frenzy, hurled her armies across all her frontiers simultaneously, and her sudden appearance in the heart of syria gave a new turn to human history. the isolation of the kingdoms of the ancient world was at an end; the conflict of the nations was about to begin. chapter ii--syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest _syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest_ _nineveh and the first cossÆan kings-the peoples of syria, their towns, their civilization, their religion-phoenicia._ _the dynasty of uruazagga-the cossseans: their country, their gods, their conquest of chaldæa-the first sovereigns of assyria, and the first cossæan icings: agumhakrimê._ _the egyptian names for syria: kharâ, zahi, lotanû, kefâtiu-the military highway from the nile to the euphrates: first section from zalu to gaza-the canaanites: their fortresses, their agricultural character: the forest between jaffa and mount carmel, megiddo-the three routes beyond megiddo: qodshu-alasia, naharaim, garchemish; mitanni and the countries beyond the euphrates._ _disintegration of the syrian, canaanite, amorite, and khdti populations; obliteration of types-influence of babylon on costumes, customs, and religion--baalim and astarte, plant-gods and stone-gods-religion, human sacrifices, festivals; sacred stones--tombs and the fate of man after death-phoenician cosmogony._ _phoenicia--arad, marathus, simyra, botrys--byblos, its temple, its goddess, the myth of adonis: aphaka and the valley of the nahr-ibrahim, the festivals of the death and resurrection of adonis--berytus and its god el; sidon and its suburbs--tyre: its foundation, its gods, its necropolis, its domain in the lebanon._ _isolation of the phoenicians with regard to the other nations of syria; their love of the sea and the causes which developed it--legendary accounts of the beginning of their colonization--their commercial proceedings, their banks and factories; their ships--cyprus, its wealth, its occupations--the phoenician colonies in asia minor and the Ægean sea: purple dye--the nations of the Ægean._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter ii--syria at the beginning of the egyptian conquest nineveh and the first cossæan kings--the peoples of syria, their towns, their civilization, their religion--phoenicia. the world beyond the arabian desert presented to the eyes of the enterprising pharaohs an active and bustling scene. babylonian civilization still maintained its hold there without a rival, but babylonian rule had ceased to exercise any longer a direct control, having probably disappeared with the sovereigns who had introduced it. when ammisatana died, about the year , the line of khammurabi became extinct, and a family from the sea-lands came into power.* * the origin of this second dynasty and the reading of its name still afford matter for discussion. amid the many conflicting opinions, it behoves us to remember that gulkishar, the only prince of this dynasty whose title we possess, calls himself _king of the country of the sea_, that is to say, of the marshy country at the mouth of the euphrates: this simple fact directs us to seek the cradle of the family in those districts of southern chaldæa. sayce rejects this identification on philological and chronological grounds, and sees in gulkishar, �king of the sea-lands,� a vassal kaldâ prince. this unexpected revolution of affairs did not by any means restore to the cities of lower chaldæa the supreme authority which they once possessed. babylon had made such good use of its centuries of rule that it had gained upon its rivals, and was not likely now to fall back into a secondary place. henceforward, no matter what dynasty came into power, as soon as the fortune of war had placed it upon the throne, babylon succeeded in adopting it, and at once made it its own. the new lord of the country, ilumaîlu, having abandoned his patrimonial inheritance, came to reside near to merodach.* * the name has been read an-ma-an or anman by pinches, subsequently ilumaîlu, mailu, finally anumaîlu and perhaps humaîlu. the true reading of it is still unknown. hommel believed he had discovered in hilprecht�s book an inscription belonging to the reign of this prince; but hilprecht has shown that it belonged to a king of erech, an-a-an, anterior to the time of an-ma-an. he was followed during the four next centuries by a dynasty of ten princes, in uninterrupted succession. their rule was introduced and maintained without serious opposition. the small principalities of the south were theirs by right, and the only town which might have caused them any trouble--assur--was dependent on them, being satisfied with the title of vicegerents for its princes,--khallu, irishum, ismidagan and his son sarnsiramman i., igurkapkapu and his son sarnsiramman ii.* as to the course of events beyond the khabur, and any efforts ilumaîlu�s descendants may have made to establish their authority in the direction of the mediterranean, we have no inscriptions to inform us, and must be content to remain in ignorance. the last two of these princes, melamkurkurra and eâgamîl, were not connected with each other, and had no direct relationship with their predecessors.** the shortness of their reigns presents a striking contrast with the length of those preceding them, and probably indicates a period of war or revolution. when these princes disappeared, we know not how or why, about the year b.c., they were succeeded by a king of foreign extraction; and one of the semi-barbarous race of kashshu ascended the throne which had been occupied since the days of khammurabi by chaldæans of ancient stock.*** * inscription of irishum, son of khallu, on a brick found at kalah-shergat, and an inscription of sarnsiramman ii., son of igurkapkapu, on another brick from the same place. sarnsiramman i. and his father ismidagan are mentioned in the great inscription of tiglath-pileser ii., as having lived years before king assurdân, who himself had preceded tiglath-pileser by sixty years: they thus reigned between and years before our era, according to tradition, whose authenticity we have no other means of verifying. ** the name of the last is read eâgamîl, for want of anything better: oppert makes it eâgâ, simply transcribing the signs; and hilprecht, who took up the question again after him, has no reading to propose. *** i give here the list of the kings of the second dynasty, from the documents discovered by pinches: no monument remains of any of these princes, and even the reading of their names is merely provisional: those placed between brackets represent delitzsch�s readings. a gulkishar is mentioned in an inscription of belnadiuabal; but jensen is doubtful if the gulkishar mentioned in this place is identical with the one in the lists. [illustration: table] these kashshu, who spring up suddenly out of obscurity, had from the earliest times inhabited the mountainous districts of zagros, on the confines of elymai�s and media, where the cossæans of the classical historians flourished in the time of alexander.* * the kashshu are identified with the cossæans by sayce, by schrader, by fr. delitzsch, by halévy, by tiele, by hommel, and by jensen. oppert maintains that they answer to the kissians of herodotus, that is to say, to the inhabitants of the district of which susa is the capital. lehmann supports this opinion. winckler gives none, and several assyriologists incline to that of kiepert, according to which the kissians are identical with the cossæans. it was a rugged and unattractive country, protected by nature and easy to defend, made up as it was of narrow tortuous valleys, of plains of moderate extent but of rare fertility, of mountain chains whose grim sides were covered with forests, and whose peaks were snow-crowned during half the year, and of rivers, or, more correctly speaking, torrents, for the rains and the melting of the snow rendered them impassable in spring and autumn. the entrance to this region was by two or three well-fortified passes: if an enemy were unwilling to incur the loss of time and men needed to carry these by main force, he had to make a detour by narrow goat-tracks, along which the assailants were obliged to advance in single file, as best they could, exposed to the assaults of a foe concealed among the rocks and trees. the tribes who were entrenched behind this natural rampart made frequent and unexpected raids upon the marshy meadows and fat pastures of chaldæa: they dashed through the country, pillaging and burning all that came in their way, and then, quickly regaining their hiding-places, were able to place their booty in safety before the frontier garrisons had recovered from the first alarm.* these tribes were governed by numerous chiefs acknowledging a single king--_ianzi_--whose will was supreme over nearly the whole country:** some of them had a slight veneer of chaldæan civilization, while among the rest almost every stage of barbarism might be found. the remains of their language show that it was remotely allied to the dialect of susa, and contained many semitic words.*** what is recorded of their religion reaches us merely at second hand, and the groundwork of it has doubtless been modified by the babylonian scribes who have transmitted it to us.**** * it was thus in the time of alexander and his successors, and the information given by the classical historians about this period is equally applicable to earlier times, as we may conclude from the numerous passages from assyrian inscriptions which have been collected by fr. delitzsch. ** delitzsch conjectures that _ianzi_, or _ianzu_, had become a kind of proper name, analogous to the term _pharaoh_ employed by the egyptians. *** a certain number of cossæan words has been preserved and translated, some in one of the royal babylonian lists, and some on a tablet in the british museum, discovered and interpreted by fr. delitzsch. several assyriologists think that they showed a marked affinity with the idiom of the susa inscriptions, and with that of the achæmenian inscriptions of the second type; others deny the proposed connection, or suggest that the cossæan language was a semitic dialect, related to the chaldæo-assyrian. oppert, who was the first to point out the existence of this dialect, thirty years ago, believed it to be the elamite; he still persists in his opinion, and has published several notes in defence of it. **** it has been studied by pr. delitzsch, who insists on the influence which daily intercourse with the chaldæans had on it after the conquest; halévy, in most of the names of the gods given as cossæan, sees merely the names of chaldæan divinities slightly disguised in the writing. they worshipped twelve great gods, of whom the chief--kashshu, the lord of heaven-gave his name to the principal tribe, and possibly to the whole race:* shûmalia, queen of the snowy heights, was enthroned beside him,** and the divinities next in order were, as in the cities of the euphrates, the moon, the sun (sakh or shuriash), the air or the tempest (ubriash), and khudkha.*** then followed the stellar deities or secondary incarnations of the sun,--mirizir, who represented both istar and beltis; and khala, answering to gula.**** * the existence of kashshu is proved by the name of kashshunadinakhé: ashshur also bore a name identical with that of his worshippers. ** she is mentioned in a rescript of nebuchadrezzar i., at the head of the gods of namar, that is to say, the cossæan deities, as �the lady of the shining mountains, the inhabitants of the summits, the frequenter of peaks.� she is called shimalia in rawlinson, but delitzsch has restored her name which was slightly mutilated; one of her statues was taken by samsirammân iii., king of assyria, in one of that sovereign�s campaigns against chaldæa. *** all these identifications are furnished by the glossary of delitzsch. ubriash, under the form of buriash, is met with in a large number of proper names, burnaburiash, shagashaltiburiash, ulamburiash, kadashmanburiash, where the assyrian scribe translates it _bel-matâti_, lord of the world: buriash is, therefore, an epithet of the god who was called rammân in chaldæa. the name of the moon-god is mutilated, and only the initial syllable shi... remains, followed by an indistinct sign: it has not yet been restored. **** halévy considers khala, or khali, as a harsh form of gula: if this is the case, the cossæans must have borrowed the name, and perhaps the goddess herself, from their chaldæan neighbours. the chaldæan ninip corresponded both to gidar and maruttash, bel to kharbe and turgu, merodach to shipak, nergal to shugab.* the cossæan kings, already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet. we are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the xviiith century b.c., led to their gaining possession of it. the cossæan king who seized on babylon was named gandish, and the few inscriptions we possess of his reign are cut with a clumsiness that betrays the barbarism of the conqueror. they cover the pivot stones on which sargon of agadê or one of the bursins had hung the doors of the temple of nippur, but which gandish dedicated afresh in order to win for himself, in the eyes of posterity, the credit of the work of these sovereigns.*** * hilprecht has established the identity of turgu with bel of nippur. ** strabo relates, from some forgotten historian of alexander, that the cossæans �had formerly been able to place as many as thirteen thousand archers in line, in the wars which they waged with the help of the elymæans against the inhabitants of susa and babylon.� *** the full name of this king, gandish or gandash, which is furnished by the royal lists, is written gaddash on a monument in the british museum discovered by pinches, whose conclusions have been erroneously denied by winckler. a process of abbreviation, of which there are examples in the names of other kings of the same dynasty, reduced the name to gandê in the current language. bel found favour in the eyes of the cossæans who saw in him kharbê or turgu, the recognised patron of their royal family: for this reason gandish and his successors regarded bel with peculiar devotion. these kings did all they could for the decoration and endowment of the ancient temple of ekur, which had been somewhat neglected by the sovereigns of purely babylonian extraction, and this devotion to one of the most venerated chaldæan sanctuaries contributed largely towards their winning the hearts of the conquered people.* * hilpreoht calls attention on this point to the fact that no one has yet discovered at nippur a single ex-voto consecrated by any king of the two first babylonian dynasties. the cossæan rule over the countries of the euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the hyksôs exercised at first over the nomes of egypt. the cossæan kings did not merely bring with them an army to protect their persons, or to occupy a small number of important posts; they were followed by the whole nation, and spread themselves over the entire country. the bulk of the invaders instinctively betook themselves to districts where, if they could not resume the kind of life to which they were accustomed in their own land, they could, at least give full rein to their love of a free and wild existence. as there were no mountains in the country, they turned to the marshes, and, like the hyksôs in egypt, made themselves at home about the mouths of the rivers, on the half-submerged low lands, and on the sandy islets of the lagoons which formed an undefined borderland between the alluvial region and the persian gulf. the covert afforded, by the thickets furnished scope for the chase which these hunters had been accustomed to pursue in the depths of their native forests, while fishing, on the other hand, supplied them with an additional element of food. when their depredations drew down upon them reprisals from their neighbours, the mounds occupied, by their fortresses, and surrounded by muddy swamps, offered them almost as secure retreats as their former strongholds on the lofty sides of the zagros. they made alliances with the native aramæans--with those kashdi, properly called chaldæans, whose name we have imposed upon all the nations who, from a very early date, bore rule on the banks of the lower euphrates. here they formed themselves into a state--karduniash--whose princes at times rebelled, against all external authority, and at other times acknowledged the sovereignty of the babylonian monarchs.* * the state of karduniash, whose name appears for the first time on the monuments of the cossæan period, has been localised in a somewhat vague manner, in the south of babylonia, in the country of the kashdi, and afterwards formally identified with the _countries of the sea_, and with the principality which was called bît-yâkin in the assyrian period. in the tel-el-amarna tablets the name is already applied to the entire country occupied by the cossæan kings or their descendants, that is to say, to the whole of babylonia. sargon ii. at that time distinguishes between an upper and a lower karduniash; and in consequence the earliest assyriologists considered it as an assyrian designation of babylon, or of the district surrounding it, an opinion which was opposed by delitzsch, as he believed it to be an indigenous term which at first indicated the district round babylon, and afterwards the whole of babylonia. from one frequent spelling of the name, the meaning appears to have been _fortress of duniash_; to this delitzsch preferred the translation _garden of duniash_, from an erroneous different reading--ganduniash: duniash, at first derived from a chaldæan god _dun_, whose name may exist in _dunghi_, is a cossæan name, which the assyrians translated, as they did buriash, _belmatâti_, lord of the country. winckler rejects the ancient etymology, and proposes to divide the word as kardu-niash and to see in it a cossæan translation of the expression _mât-kaldi_, country of the caldæans: hommel on his side, as well as delitzsch, had thought of seeking in the chaldæans proper--_kaldi_ for _kashdi_, or _kash-da_, �domain of the cossæans �--the descendants of the cossæans of karduniash, at least as far as race is concerned. in the cuneiform texts the name is written kara--d. p. duniyas, �the wall of the god duniyas� (cf. the median wall or wall of semiramis which defended babylonia on the north). the people of sumir and akkad, already a composite of many different races, absorbed thus another foreign element, which, while modifying its homogeneity, did not destroy its natural character. those cossæan tribes who had not quitted their own country retained their original barbarism, but the hope of plunder constantly drew them from their haunts, and they attacked and devastated the cities of the plain unhindered by the thought that they were now inhabited by their fellow-countrymen. the raid once over, many of them did not return home, but took service under some distant foreign ruler--the syrian princes attracting many, who subsequently became the backbone of their armies,* while others remained at babylon and enrolled themselves in the body-guard of the kings. * halévy has at least proved that the khabiri mentioned in. the tel el-amarna tablets were cossæans, contrary to the opinion of sayce, who makes them tribes grouped round hebron, which w. max müller seems to accept; winckler, returning to an old opinion, believes them to have been hebrews. to the last they were an undisciplined militia, dangerous, and difficult to please: one day they would hail their chiefs with acclamations, to kill them the next in one of those sudden outbreaks in which they were accustomed to make and unmake their kings.* the first invaders were not long in acquiring, by means of daily intercourse with the old inhabitants, the new civilization: sooner or later they became blended with the natives, losing all their own peculiarities, with the exception of their outlandish names, a few heroic legends,** and the worship of two or three gods--shûmalia, shugab, and shukamuna. * this is the opinion of hommel, supported by the testimony of the _synchronous hist._: in this latter document the cossæans are found revolting against king kadashmankharbé, and replacing him on the throne by a certain nazibugash, who was of obscure origin. ** pr. delitzsch and schrader compare their name with that of kush, who appears in the bible as the father of nimrod (_gen._ x. - ); hommel and sayce think that the history of nimrod is a reminiscence of the cossæan rule. jensen is alone in his attempt to attribute to the cossæans the first idea of the epic of gilgames. as in the case of the hyksôs in africa, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilized people which they had subdued. this work of assimilation seems at first to have occupied the whole attention of both races, for the immediate successors of gandish were unable to retain under their rule all the provinces of which the empire was formerly composed. they continued to possess the territory situated on the middle course of the euphrates as far as the mouth of the balikh, but they lost the region extending to the east of the khabur, at the foot of the masios, and in the upper basin of the tigris: the vicegerents of assur also withdrew from them, and, declaring that they owed no obedience excepting to the god of their city, assumed the royal dignity. the first four of these kings whose names have come down to us, sulili, belkapkapu, adasi, and belbâni,* appear to have been but indifferent rulers, but they knew bow to hold their own against the attacks of their neighbours, and when, after a century of weakness and inactivity, babylon reasserted herself, and endeavoured to recover her lost territory, they had so completely established their independence that every attack on it was unsuccessful. the cossæan king at that time--an active and enterprising prince, whose name was held in honour up to the days of the ninevite supremacy--was agumkakrimê, the son of tassigurumash.** * these four names do not so much represent four consecutive reigns as two separate traditions which were current respecting the beginnings of assyrian royalty. the most ancient of them gives the chief place to two personages named belkapkapu and sulili; this tradition has been transmitted to us by rammânnirâri iii., because it connected the origin of his race with these kings. the second tradition placed a certain belbâni, the son of adasi, in the room of belkapkapu and sulili: esarhaddon made use of it in order to ascribe to his own family an antiquity at least equal to that of the family to which rammânnirâri iii. belonged. each king appropriated from the ancient popular traditions those names which seemed to him best calculated to enhance the prestige of his dynasty, but we cannot tell how far the personages selected enjoyed an authentic historical existence: it is best to admit them at least provisionally into the royal series, without trusting too much to what is related of them. ** the tablet discovered by pinches is broken after the fifth king of the dynasty. the inscription of agumkakrimê, containing a genealogy of this prince which goes back as far as the fifth generation, has led to the restoration of the earlier part of the list as follows: gandish, gaddash, adumitasii .... -? b.c. gandê ........................... - b.c. tassigurumash.................... ? agumrabi, his son................ - agumkakrimê ..................... ? [a]guyashi ...................... - ushshi, his son.................. - this �brilliant scion of shukamuna� entitled himself lord of the kashshu and of akkad, of babylon the widespread, of padan, of alman, and of the swarthy guti.* ashnunak had been devastated; he repeopled it, and the four �houses of the world� rendered him obedience; on the other hand, elam revolted from its allegiance, assur resisted him, and if he still exercised some semblance of authority over northern syria, it was owing to a traditional respect which the towns of that country voluntarily rendered to him, but which did not involve either subjection or control. the people of khâni still retained possession of the statues of merodach and of his consort zarpanit, which had been stolen, we know not how, some time previously from chaldæa.** agumkakrimê recovered them and replaced them in their proper temple. this was an important event, and earned him the good will of the priests. * the translation _black-headed_, i.e. dark-haired and complexioned, _guti_, is uncertain; jensen interprets the epithet _nishi saldati_ to mean �the guti, stupid (foolish? culpable?) people.� the guti held both banks of the lower zab, in the mountains on the east of assyria. delitzsch has placed padan and alman in the mountains to the east of the diyâleh; jensen places them in the chain of the khamrîn, and winckler compares alman or halman with the holwân of the present day. ** the khâni have been placed by delitzsch in the neighbourhood of mount khâna, mentioned in the accounts of the assyrian campaigns, that is to say, in the amanos, between the euphrates and the bay of alexandretta: he is inclined to regard the name as a form of that of the khâti. the king reorganised public worship; he caused new fittings for the temples to be made to take the place of those which had disappeared, and the inscription which records this work enumerates with satisfaction the large quantities of crystal, jasper, and lapis-lazuli which he lavished on the sanctuary, the utensils of silver and gold which he dedicated, together with the �seas� of wrought bronze decorated with monsters and religious emblems.* this restoration of the statues, so flattering to the national pride and piety, would have been exacted and insisted upon by a khammurabi at the point of the sword, but agumkakrimê doubtless felt that he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore sent an embassy to the khâni, and such was the prestige which the name of babylon still possessed, from the deserts of the caspian to the shores of the mediterranean, that he was able to obtain a concession from that people which he would probably have been powerless to extort by force of arms.** * we do not possess the original of the inscription which tells us of these facts, but merely an early copy. ** strictly speaking, one might suppose that a war took place; but most assyriologists declare unhesitatingly that there was merely an embassy and a diplomatic negotiation. the egyptians had, therefore, no need to anticipate chaldæan interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first time into the heart of syria. not only was babylon no longer supreme there, but the coalition of those cities on which she had depended for help in subduing the west was partially dissolved, and the foreign princes who had succeeded to her patrimony were so far conscious of their weakness, that they voluntarily kept aloof from the countries in which, previous to their advent, babylon had held undivided sway. the egyptian conquest of syria had already begun in the days of agumkakrimê, and it is possible that dread of the pharaoh was one of the chief causes which influenced the cossæans to return a favourable answer to the khâni. thûtmosis i., on entering syria, encountered therefore only the native levies, and it must be admitted that, in spite of their renowned courage, they were not likely to prove formidable adversaries in egyptian estimation. not one of the local syrian dynasties was sufficiently powerful to collect all the forces of the country around its chief, so as to oppose a compact body of troops to the attack of the african armies. the whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which even the egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. they classed the inhabitants, however, under three or four very comprehensive names--kharû, zahi, lotanû, and kefâtiû--all of which frequently recur in the inscriptions, but without having always that exactness of meaning we look for in geographical terms. as was often the case in similar circumstances, these names were used at first to denote the districts close to the egyptian frontier with which the inhabitants of the delta had constant intercourse. the kefâtiû seem to have been at the outset the people of the sea-coast, more especially of the region occupied later by the phoenicians, but all the tribes with whom the phoenicians came in contact on the asiatic and european border were before long included under the same name.* * the kefâtiû, whose name was first read kefa, and later kefto, were originally identified with the inhabitants of cyprus or crete, and subsequently with those of cilicia, although the decree of canopus locates them in phoenicia. zahi originally comprised that portion of the desert and of the maritime plain on the north-east of egypt which was coasted by the fleets, or traversed by the armies of egypt, as they passed to and fro between syria and the banks of the nile. this region had been ravaged by ahmosis during his raid upon sharuhana, the year after the fall of avaris. to the south-east of zahi lay kharû; it included the greater part of mount seir, whose wadys, thinly dotted over with oases, were inhabited by tribes of more or less stationary habits. the approaches to it were protected by a few towns, or rather fortified villages, built in the neighbourhood of springs, and surrounded by cultivated fields and poverty-stricken gardens; but the bulk of the people lived in tents or in caves on the mountain-sides. the egyptians constantly confounded those khauri, whom the hebrews in after-times found scattered among the children of edom, with the other tribes of bedouin marauders, and designated them vaguely as shaûsû. lotanû lay beyond, to the north of kharû and to the north-east of zahi, among the hills which separate the �shephelah� from the jordan.* * the name of lotanû or rotanû has been assigned by brugsch to the assyrians, but subsequently, by connecting it, more ingeniously than plausibly, with the assyrian _iltânu_, he extended it to all the peoples of the north; we now know that in the texts it denotes the whole of syria, and, more generally, all the peoples dwelling in the basins of the orontes and the euphrates. the attempt to connect the name rotanû or lotanû with that of the edomite tribe of lotan (gen. xxxvi. , ) was first made by p. de saulcy; it was afterwards taken up by haigh and adopted by renan. as it was more remote from the isthmus, and formed the egyptian horizon in that direction, all the new countries with which the egyptians became acquainted beyond its northern limits were by degrees included under the one name of lotanû, and this term was extended to comprise successively the entire valley of the jordan, then that of the orontes, and finally even that of the euphrates. lotanû became thenceforth a vague and fluctuating term, which the egyptians applied indiscriminately to widely differing asiatic nations, and to which they added another indefinite epithet when they desired to use it in a more limited sense: that part of syria nearest to egypt being in this case qualified as upper lotanû, while the towns and kingdoms further north were described as being in lower lotanû. in the same way the terms zahi and kharû were extended to cover other and more northerly regions. zahi was applied to the coast as far as the mouth of the nahr el-kebir and to the country of the lebanon which lay between the mediterranean and the middle course of the orontes. kharû ran parallel to zahi, but comprised the mountain district, and came to include most of the countries which were at first ranged under upper lotanû; it was never applied to the region beyond the neighbourhood of mount tabor, nor to the trans-jordanie provinces. the three names in their wider sense preserved the same relation to each other as before, zahi lying to the west and north-west of kharû, and lower lotanû to the north of kharû and north-east of zahi, but the extension of meaning did not abolish the old conception of their position, and hence arose confusion in the minds of those who employed them; the scribes, for instance, who registered in some far-off theban temple the victories of the pharaoh would sometimes write zahi where they should have inscribed kharû, and it is a difficult matter for us always to detect their mistakes. it would be unjust to blame them too severely for their inaccuracies, for what means had they of determining the relative positions of that confusing collection of states with which the egyptians came in contact as soon as they had set foot on syrian soil? a choice of several routes into asia, possessing unequal advantages, was open to the traveller, but the most direct of them passed through the town of zalû. the old entrenchments running from the ked sea to the marshes of the pelusiac branch still protected the isthmus, and beyond these, forming an additional defence, was a canal on the banks of which a fortress was constructed. this was occupied by the troops who guarded the frontier, and no traveller was allowed to pass without having declared his name and rank, signified the business which took him into syria or egypt, and shown the letters with which he was entrusted.* * the notes of an official living at zalu in the time of mîneptah are preserved on the back of pls. v., vi. of the _anastasi papyrus iii_,; his business was to keep a register of the movements of the comers and goers between egypt and syria during a few days of the month pakhons, in the year iii. it was from zalû that the pharaohs set out with their troops, when summoned to kharû by a hostile confederacy; it was to zalû they returned triumphant after the campaign, and there, at the gates of the town, they were welcomed by the magnates of the kingdom. the road ran for some distance over a region which was covered by the inundation of the nile during six months of the year; it then turned eastward, and for some distance skirted the sea-shore, passing between the mediterranean and the swamp which writers of the greek period called the lake of sirbonis.* * the sirbonian lake is sometimes half full of water, sometimes almost entirely dry; at the present time it bears the name of sebkhat berdawil, from king baldwin i. of jerusalem, who on his return from his egyptian campaign died on its shores, in , before he could reach el-artsh. [illustration: .jpg the fortress and bridge of zalu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. this stage of the journey was beset with difficulties, for the sirbonian lake did not always present the same aspect, and its margins were constantly shifting. when the canals which connected it with the open sea happened to become obstructed, the sheet of water subsided from evaporation, leaving in many places merely an expanse of shifting mud, often concealed under the sand which the wind brought up from the desert. travellers ran imminent risk of sinking in this quagmire, and the greek historians tell of large armies being almost entirely swallowed up in it. about halfway along the length of the lake rose the solitary hill of mount casios; beyond this the sea-coast widened till it became a vast slightly undulating plain, covered with scanty herbage, and dotted over with wells containing an abundant supply of water, which, however, was brackish and disagreeable to drink. [illustration: .jpg map] beyond these lay a grove of palms, a brick prison, and a cluster of miserable houses, bounded by a broad wady, usually dry. the bed of the torrent often served as the boundary between africa and asia, and the town was for many years merely a convict prison, where ordinary criminals, condemned to mutilation and exile, were confined; indeed, the greeks assure us that it owed its name of rhinocolûra to the number of noseless convicts who were to be seen there.* * the ruins of the ancient town, which were of considerable extent, are half buried under the sand, out of which an egyptian naos of the ptolemaic period has been dug, and placed near the well which supplies the fort, where it serves as a drinking trough for the horses. brugsch believed he could identify its site with that of the syrian town hurnikheri, which he erroneously reads harinkola; the ancient form of the name is unknown, the greek form varies between rhinocorûra and rhinocolûra. the story of the mutilated convicts is to be found in diodorus siculus, as well as in strabo; it rests on a historical fact. under the xviiith dynasty zalû was used as a place of confinement for dishonest officials. for this purpose it was probably replaced by rhinocolûra, when the egyptian frontier was removed from the neighbourhood of selle to that of el-arîsh. at this point the coast turns in a north-easterly direction, and is flanked with high sand-hills, behind which the caravans pursue their way, obtaining merely occasional glimpses of the sea. here and there, under the shelter of a tower or a half-ruined fortress, the traveller would have found wells of indifferent water, till on reaching the confines of syria he arrived at the fortified village of raphia, standing like a sentinel to guard the approach to egypt. beyond raphia vegetation becomes more abundant, groups of sycamores and mimosas and clusters of date-palms appear on the horizon, villages surrounded with fields and orchards are seen on all sides, while the bed of a river, blocked with gravel and fallen rocks, winds its way between the last fringes of the desert and the fruitful shephelah;* on the further bank of the river lay the suburbs of gaza, and, but a few hundred yards beyond, gaza itself came into view among the trees standing on its wall-crowned hill.** * the term shephelah signifies the plain; it is applied by the biblical writers to the plain bordering the coast, from the heights of gaza to those of joppa, which were inhabited at a later period by the philistines (_josh_. xi. ; _jer_. xxxii. and xxxiii. ). ** guérin describes at length the road from gaza to raphia. the only town of importance between them in the greek period was iênysos, the ruins of which are to be found near khan yunes, but the egyptian name for this locality is unknown: aunaugasa, the name of which brugsch thought he could identify with it, should be placed much farther away, in northern or in coele-syria. the egyptians, on their march from the nile valley, were wont to stop at this spot to recover from their fatigues; it was their first halting-place beyond the frontier, and the news which would reach them here prepared them in some measure for what awaited them further on. the army itself, the �troop of râ,� was drawn from four great races, the most distinguished of which came, of course, from the banks of the nile: the amû, born of sokhît, the lioness-headed goddess, were classed in the second rank; the nahsi, or negroes of ethiopia, were placed in the third; while the timihû, or libyans, with the white tribes of the north, brought up the rear. the syrians belonged to the second of these families, that next in order to the egyptians, and the name of amu, which for centuries had been given them, met so satisfactorily all political, literary, or commercial requirements, that the administrators of the pharaohs never troubled themselves to discover the various elements concealed beneath the term. we are, however, able at the present time to distinguish among them several groups of peoples and languages, all belonging to the same family, but possessing distinctive characteristics. the kinsfolk of the hebrews, the children of ishmael and edom, the moabites and ammonites, who were all qualified as shaûsû, had spread over the region to the south and east of the dead sea, partly in the desert, and partly on the confines of the cultivated land. the canaanites were not only in possession of the coast from gaza to a point beyond the nahr el-kebir, but they also occupied almost the whole valley of the jordan, besides that of the litâny, and perhaps that of the upper orontes.* there were aramaean settlements at damascus, in the plains of the lower orontes, and in naharaim.** * i use the term canaanite with the meaning most frequently attached to it, according to the hebrew use (_gen_. x. - ). this word is found several times in the egyptian texts under the forms kinakhna, kinakhkhi, and probably kûnakhaîû, in the cuneiform texts of tel el-amarna. ** as far as i know, the term aramæan is not to be found in any egyptian text of the time of the pharaohs: the only known example of it is a writer�s error corrected by chabas. w. max müller very justly observes that the mistake is itself a proof of the existence of the name and of the acquaintance of the egyptians with it. the country beyond the aramaean territory, including the slopes of the amanos and the deep valleys of the taurus, was inhabited by peoples of various origin; the most powerful of these, the khâti, were at this time slowly forsaking the mountain region, and spreading by degrees over the country between the afrîn and the euphrates.* the canaanites were the most numerous of all these groups, and had they been able to amalgamate under a single king, or even to organize a lasting confederacy, it would have been impossible for the egyptian armies to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of asia; but, unfortunately, so far from showing the slightest tendency towards unity or concentration, the canaanites were more hopelessly divided than any of the surrounding nations. their mountains contained nearly as many states as there were valleys, while in the plains each town represented a separate government, and was built on a spot carefully selected for purposes of defence. the land, indeed, was chequered with these petty states, and so closely were they crowded together, that a horseman, travelling at leisure, could easily pass through two or three of them in a day�s journey.** * thûtmosis iii. shows that, at any rate, they were established in these regions about the xvith century b.c. the egyptian pronunciation of their name is _khîti_, with the feminine _khîtaît, khîtit_; but the tel el-amarna texts employ the vocalisation _khâti, khâte_, which must be more correct than that of the egyptians, the form _khîti_ seems to me to be explicable by an error of popular etymology. egyptian ethnical appellations in _îti_ formed their plural by _-âtiû, -âteê, -âti, -âte_, so that if _khâte, khâti_, were taken for a plural, it would naturally have suggested to the scribes the form _khîti_ for the singular. ** thûtmosis iii., speaking to his soldiers, tells them that all the chiefs the projecting spur of some mountain, or on a solitary and more or less irregularly shaped eminence in the midst of a plain, and the means of defence in the country are shut up in megiddo, so that �to take it is to take a thousand cities:� this is evidently a hyperbole in the mouth of the conqueror, but the exaggeration itself shows how numerous were the chiefs and consequently the small states in central and southern syria. not only were the royal cities fenced with walls, but many of the surrounding villages were fortified, while the watch-towers, or _migdols_* built at the bends of the roads, at the fords over the rivers, and at the openings of the ravines, all testified to the insecurity of the times and the aptitude for self-defence shown by the inhabitants. * this canaanite word was borrowed by the egyptians from the syrians at the beginning of their asiatic wars; they employed it in forming the names of the military posts which they established on the eastern frontier of the delta: it appears for the first time among syrian places in the list of cities conquered by thûtmosis iii. [illustration: .jpg the canaanite fortresses] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the aspect of these migdols, or forts, must have appeared strange to the first egyptians who beheld them. these strongholds bore no resemblance to the large square or oblong enclosures to which they were accustomed, and which in their eyes represented the highest skill of the engineer. in syria, however, the positions suitable for the construction of fortresses hardly ever lent themselves to a symmetrical plan. the usual sites had to be adapted in each case to suit the particular configuration of the ground. [illustration: .jpg the walled city of dapÛr, in galilee] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken at karnak by beato. it was usually a mere wall of stone or dried brick, with towers at intervals; the wall measuring from nine to twelve feet thick at the base, and from thirty to thirty-six feet high, thus rendering an assault by means of portable ladders, nearly impracticable.* * this is, at least, the result of investigations made by modern engineers who have studied these questions of military archæology. the gateway had the appearance of a fortress in itself. it was composed of three large blocks of masonry, forming a re-entering face, considerably higher than the adjacent curtains, and pierced near the top with square openings furnished with mantlets, so as to give both a front and flank view of the assailants. the wooden doors in the receded face were covered with metal and raw hides, thus affording a protection against axe or fire.* * most of the canaanite towns, taken by ramses ii. in the campaign of his viiith year were fortified in this manner. it must have been the usual method of fortification, as it seems to have served as a type for conventional representation, and was sometimes used to denote cities which had fortifications of another kind. for instance, dapûr-tabor is represented in this way, while a picture on another monument, which is reproduced in the illustration on page , represents what seems to have been the particular form of its encompassing walls. the building was strong enough not only to defy the bands of adventurers who roamed the country, but was able to resist for an indefinite time the operations of a regular siege. sometimes, however, the inhabitants when constructing their defences did not confine themselves to this rudimentary plan, but threw up earthworks round the selected site. on the most exposed side they raised an advance wall, not exceeding twelve or fifteen feet in height, at the left extremity of which the entrance was so placed that the assailants, in endeavouring to force their way through, were obliged to expose an unprotected flank to the defenders. by this arrangement it was necessary to break through two lines of fortification before the place could be entered. supposing the enemy to have overcome these first obstacles, they would find themselves at their next point of attack confronted with a citadel which contained, in addition to the sanctuary of the principal god, the palace of the sovereign himself. this also had a double enclosing wall and massively built gates, which could be forced only at the expense of fresh losses, unless the cowardice or treason of the garrison made the assault an easy one.* * the type of town described in the text is based on a representation on the walls of karnak, where the siege of dapûr-tabor by ramses ii. is depicted. another type is given in the case of ascalon. [illustration: .jpg the migdol of ramses iii. at thebes, in the temple of medinet-abul] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by dévéria in . of these bulwarks of canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen to-day. they may have been razed to the ground during one of those destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty centuries of change have raised over them.* * the only remains of a canaanite fortification which can be assigned to the egyptian period are those which professor f. i. petrie brought to light in the ruins of tell el-hesy, and in which he rightly recognised the remains of lachish. the records of victories graven on the walls of the theban temples furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very confused character had not one of the last of the conquering pharaohs, ramses iii., taken it into his head to have one built at thebes itself, to contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship. in the greek and roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate, which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support. having passed through these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a _migdol_ of cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the point of approach by a series of abutments. a careful examination of the place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited knowledge of the egyptians would hardly permit us to expect. we discover, for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet. this served two purposes: it increased, in the first place, the strength of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface, thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance. the whole structure has an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects charged with carrying out their sovereign�s idea brought to their task an attention to detail for which the people from whom the plan was borrowed had no capacity, and at the same time preserved the arrangements of their model so faithfully that we can readily realise what it must have been. transport this migdol of ramses iii. into asia, plant it upon one of those hills which the canaanites were accustomed to select as a site for their fortifications, spread out at its base some score of low and miserable hovels, and we have before us an improvised pattern of a village which recalls in a striking manner zerîn or beîtîn, or any other small modern town which gathers the dwellings of its fellahin round some central stone building--whether it be a hostelry for benighted travellers, or an ancient castle of the crusading age. [illustration: .jpg the modern village of beÎtÎn (ancient bethel), seen from the south-west.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. there were on the littoral, to the north of gaza, two large walled towns, ascalon and joppa, in whose roadsteads merchant vessels were accustomed to take hasty refuge in tempestuous weather.* there were to be found on the plains also, and on the lower slopes of the mountains, a number of similar fortresses and villages, such as iurza, migdol, lachish, ajalon, shocho, adora, aphukîn, keilah, gezer, and ono; and, in the neighbourhood of the roads which led to the fords of the jordan, gibeah, beth-anoth, and finally urusalim, our jerusalem.** a tolerably dense population of active and industrious husbandmen maintained themselves upon the soil. * ascalon was not actually on the sea. its port, �maiumas ascalonis,� was probably merely a narrow bay or creek, now, for a long period, filled up by the sand. neither the site nor the remains of the port have been discovered. the name of the town is always spelled in egyptian with an �s �-- askaluna, which gives us the pronunciation of the time. the name of joppa is written yapu, yaphu, and the gardens which then surrounded the town are mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus i_. ** urusalim is mentioned only in the tel el-amarna tablets, alongside of kilti or keilah, ajalon, and lachish. the remaining towns are noticed in the great lists of thûtmosis iii. [illustration: .jpg page image] the plough which they employed was like that used by the egyptians and babylonians, being nothing but a large hoe to which a couple of oxen were harnessed.* the scarcity of rain, except in certain seasons, and the tendency of the rivers to run low, contributed to make the cultivators of the soil experts in irrigation and agriculture. almost the only remains of these people which have come down ti us consist of indestructible wells and cisterns, or wine and oil presses hollowed out of the rock.** * this is the form of plough still employed by the syrians in some places. ** monuments of this kind are encountered at every step in judaea, but it is very difficult to date them. the aqueduct of siloam, which goes back perhaps to the time of hezekiah. fields of wheat and barley extended along the flats of the valleys, broken in upon here and there by orchards, in which the white and pink almond, the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive flourished side by side. [illustration: .jpg amphitheatre of hills] drawn by boudier, from a plate in chesney. jerusalem, possibly in part to be attributed to the reign of solomon, are the only instances to which anything like a certain date may be assigned. but these are long posterior to the xviiith dynasty. good judges, however, attribute some of these monuments to a very distant period: the masonry of the wells of beersheba is very ancient, if not as it is at present, at least as it was when it was repaired in the time of the cæsars; the olive and wine presses hewn in the rock do not all date back to the roman empire, but many belong to a still earlier period, and modern descriptions correspond with what we know of such presses from the bible. if the slopes of the valley rose too precipitously for cultivation, stone dykes were employed to collect the falling earth, and thus to transform the sides of the hills into a series of terraces rising one above the other. here the vines, planted in lines or in trellises, blended their clusters with the fruits of the orchard-trees. it was, indeed, a land of milk and honey, and its topographical nomenclature in the egyptian geographical lists reflects as in a mirror the agricultural pursuits of its ancient inhabitants: one village, for instance, is called aubila, �the meadow;� while others bear such names as ganutu, �the gardens;� magraphut, �the mounds;� and karman, �the vineyard.� the further we proceed towards the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our western lands.* towns grew and multiplied upon this rich and loamy soil, but as these lay outside the usual track of the invading hosts--which preferred to follow the more rugged but shorter route leading straight to carmel across the plain--the records of the conquerors only casually mention a few of them, such as bîtshaîlu, birkana, and dutîna.** * shechem is not mentioned in the egyptian geographical lists, but max müller thinks he has discovered it in the name of the mountain of sikima which figures in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. . ** bîtshaîlu, identified by chabas with bethshan, and with shiloh by mariette and maspero, is more probably bethel, written bît-sha-îlu, either with _sh_, the old relative pronoun of the phoenician, or with the assyrian _sha_; on the latter supposition one must suppose, as sayce does, that the compiler of the egyptian lists had before him sources of information in the cuneiform character. birkana appears to be the modern brukin, and dutîna is certainly dothain, now tell-dothân. beyond ono reddish-coloured sandy clay took the place of the dark and compact loam: oaks began to appear, sparsely at first, but afterwards forming vast forests, which the peasants of our own days have thinned and reduced to a considerable extent. the stunted trunks of these trees are knotted and twisted, and the tallest of them do not exceed some thirty feet in height, while many of them may be regarded as nothing more imposing than large bushes.* muddy rivers, infested with crocodiles, flowed slowly through the shady woods, spreading out their waters here and there in pestilential swamps. on reaching the seaboard, their exit was impeded by the sands which they brought down with them, and the banks which were thus formed caused the waters to accumulate in lagoons extending behind the dunes. for miles the road led through thickets, interrupted here and there by marshy places and clumps of thorny shrubs. bands of shaûsû were accustomed to make this route dangerous, and even the bravest heroes shrank from venturing alone along this route. towards aluna the way began to ascend mount carmel by a narrow and giddy track cut in the rocky side of the precipice.** * the forest was well known to the geographers of the græco- roman period, and was still in existence at the time of the crusades. ** this defile is described at length in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. , and the terms used by the writer are in themselves sufficient evidence of the terror with which the place inspired the egyptians. the annals of thûtmosis iii. are equally explicit as to the difficulties which an army had to encounter here. i have placed this defile near the point which is now called umm-el-fahm, and this site seems to me to agree better with the account of the expedition of thûtmosis iii. than that of arraneh proposed by conder. beyond the mount, it led by a rapid descent into a plain covered with corn and verdure, and extending in a width of some thirty miles, by a series of undulations, to the foot of tabor, where it came to an end. two side ranges running almost parallel--little hermon and glilboa--disposed in a line from east to west, and united by an almost imperceptibly rising ground, serve rather to connect the plain of megiddo with the valley of the jordan than to separate them. a single river, the kishon, cuts the route diagonally--or, to speak more correctly, a single river-bed, which is almost waterless for nine months of the year, and becomes swollen only during the winter rains with the numerous torrents bursting from the hillsides. as the flood approaches the sea it becomes of more manageable proportions, and finally distributes its waters among the desolate lagoons formed behind the sand-banks of the open and wind-swept bay, towered over by the sacred summit of carmel.* * in the lists of thûtmosis iii. we find under no. the town of rosh-qodshu, the �sacred cape,� which was evidently situated at the end of the mountain range, or probably on the site of haifah; the name itself suggests the veneration with which carmel was invested from the earliest times. no corner of the world has been the scene of more sanguinary engagements, or has witnessed century after century so many armies crossing its borders and coming into conflict with one another. every military leader who, after leaving africa, was able to seize gaza and ascalon, became at once master of southern syria. he might, it is true, experience some local resistance, and come into conflict with bands or isolated outposts of the enemy, but as a rule he had no need to anticipate a battle before he reached the banks of the kishon. [illustration: .jpg the evergreen oaks between joppa and carmel] drawn by boudier, from a pencil sketch by lortet. here, behind a screen of woods and mountain, the enemy would concentrate his forces and prepare resolutely to meet the attack. if the invader succeeded in overcoming resistance at this point, the country lay open to him as far as the orontes; nay, often even to the euphrates. the position was too important for its defence to have been neglected. a range of forts, ibleâm, taanach, and megiddo,* drawn like a barrier across the line of advance, protected its southern face, and beyond these a series of strongholds and villages followed one another at intervals in the bends of the valleys or on the heights, such as shunem, kasuna, anaharath, the two aphuls, cana, and other places which we find mentioned on the triumphal lists, but of which, up to the present, the sites have not been fixed. * megiddo, the �legio� of the roman period, has been identified since robinson�s time with khurbet-lejûn, and more especially with the little mound known by the name of tell-el-mutesallim. conder proposed to place its site more to the east, in the valley of the jordan, at khurbet-el- mujeddah. [illustration: .jpg acre and the fringe of reefs sheltering the ancient port] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by lortet. from this point the conqueror had a choice of three routes. one ran in an oblique direction to the west, and struck the mediterranean near acre, leaving on the left the promontory of carmel, with the sacred town, rosh-qodshu, planted on its slope. [illustration: .jpg map] acre was the first port where a fleet could find safe anchorage after leaving the mouths of the nile, and whoever was able to make himself master of it had in his hands the key of syria, for it stood in the same commanding position with regard to the coast as that held by megiddo in respect of the interior. its houses were built closely together on a spit of rock which projected boldly into the sea, while fringes of reefs formed for it a kind of natural breakwater, behind which ships could find a safe harbourage from the attacks of pirates or the perils of bad weather. from this point the hills come so near the shore that one is sometimes obliged to wade along the beach to avoid a projecting spur, and sometimes to climb a zig-zag path in order to cross a headland. in more than one place the rock has been hollowed into a series of rough steps, giving it the appearance of a vast ladder.* below this precipitous path the waves dash with fury, and when the wind sets towards the land every thud causes the rocky wall to tremble, and detaches fragments from its surface. the majority of the towns, such as aksapu (ecdippa), mashal, lubina, ushu-shakhan, lay back from the sea on the mountain ridges, out of the reach of pirates; several, however, were built on the shore, under the shelter of some promontory, and the inhabitants of these derived a miserable subsistence from fishing and the chase. beyond the tyrian ladder phoenician territory began. the country was served throughout its entire length, from town to town, by the coast road, which turning at length to the right, and passing through the defile formed by the nahr-el-kebîr, entered the region of the middle orontes. * hence the name tyrian ladder, which is applied to one of these passes, either ras-en-nakurah or ras-el-abiad. [illustration: .jpg the town of qodshu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the second of the roads leading from megiddo described an almost symmetrical curve eastwards, crossing the jordan at beth-shan, then the jab-bok, and finally reaching damascus after having skirted at some distance the last of the basaltic ramparts of the haurân. here extended a vast but badly watered pasture-land, which attracted the bedouin from every side, and scattered over it were a number of walled towns, such as hamath, magato, ashtaroth, and ono-eepha.* * proof that the egyptians knew this route, followed even to this day in certain circumstances, is furnished by the lists of thûtmosis iii., in which the principal stations which it comprises are enumerated among the towns given up after the victory of megiddo. dimasqu was identified with damascus by e. de rougé, and astarotu with ashtarôth-qarnaim. hamatu is probably hamath of the gadarenes; magato, the maged of the maccabees, is possibly the present mukatta; and ono-repha, raphôn, raphana, arpha of decapolis, is the modern er-rafeh. probably damascus was already at this period the dominant authority over the region watered by these two rivers, as well as over the villages nestling in the gorges of hermon,--abila, helbôn of the vineyards, and tabrûd,--but it had not yet acquired its renown for riches and power. protected by the anti-lebanon range from its turbulent neighbours, it led a sort of vegetative existence apart from invading hosts, forgotten and hushed to sleep, as it were, in the shade of its gardens. the third road from megiddo took the shortest way possible. after crossing the kishon almost at right angles to its course, it ascended by a series of steep inclines to arid plains, fringed or intersected by green and flourishing valleys, which afforded sites for numerous towns,--pahira, merom near lake huleh, qart-nizanu, beerotu, and lauîsa, situated in the marshy district at the head-waters of the jordan.* from this point forward the land begins to fall, and taking a hollow shape, is known as coele-syria, with its luxuriant vegetation spread between the two ranges of the lebanon. it was inhabited then, as at the time of the babylonian conquest, by the amorites, who probably included damascus also in their domain.** * pahira is probably safed; qart-nizanu, the �flowery city,� the kartha of zabulon; and bcerôt, the berotha of josephus, near merom. maroma and lauîsa, laisa, have been identified with merom and laish. ** the identification of the country of amâuru with that of the amorites was admitted from the first. the only doubt was as to the locality occupied by these amorites: the mention of qodshu on the orontes, in the country of the amurru, showed that coele-syria was the region in question. in the tel el-amarna tablets the name amurru is applied also to the country east of the phoenician coast, and we have seen that there is reason to believe that it was used by the babylonians to denote all syria. if the name given by the cuneiform inscriptions to damascus and its neighbourhood, �gar-imirîshu,� �imirîshu,� �imirîsh,� really means �the fortress of the amorites,� we should have in this fact a proof that this people were in actual possession of the damascene syria. this must have been taken from them by the hittites towards the xxth century before our era, according to hommel; about the end of the xviiith dynasty, according to lenormant. if, on the other hand, the assyrians read the name �sha-imiri-shu,� with the signification, �the town of its asses,� it is simply a play upon words, and has no bearing upon the primitive meaning of the name. [illustration: .jpg the tyrian ladder at ras el-abiad] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. their capital, the sacred qodshu, was situated on the left bank of the orontes, about five miles from the lake which for a long time bore its name, bahr-el-kades.* it crowned one of those barren oblong eminences which are so frequently met with in syria. a muddy stream, the tannur, flowed, at some distance away, around its base, and, emptying itself into the orontes at a point a little to the north, formed a natural defence for the town on the west. its encompassing walls, slightly elliptic in form, were strengthened by towers, and surrounded by two concentric ditches which kept the sapper at a distance. * the name qodshu-kadesh was for a long time read uatesh, badesh, atesh, and, owing to a confusion with qodi, ati, or atet. the town was identified by champollion with bactria, then transferred to mesopotamia by bosollini, in the land of omira, which, according to pliny, was close to the taurus, not far from the khabur or from the province of aleppo: osburn tried to connect it with hadashah (_josh_. xv. ), an amorite town in the southern part of the tribe of judah; while hincks placed it in edessa. the reading kedesh, kadesh, qodshu, the result of the observations of lepsius, has finally prevailed. brugsch connected this name with that of bahr el-kades, a designation attached in the middle ages to the lake through which the orontes flows, and placed the town on its shores or on a small island on the lake. thomson pointed out tell neby-mendeh, the ancient laodicea of the lebanon, as satisfying the requirements of the site. conder developed this idea, and showed that all the conditions prescribed by the egyptian texts in regard to qodshu find here, and here alone, their application. the description given in the text is based on conder�s observations. [illustration: .jpt the dyke at baiik el-kades in its present condition] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. a dyke running across the orontes above the town caused the waters to rise and to overflow in a northern direction, so as to form a shallow lake, which acted as an additional protection from the enemy. qodshu was thus a kind of artificial island, connected with the surrounding country by two flying bridges, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. once the bridges were raised and the gates closed, the boldest enemy had no resource left but to arm himself with patience and settle down to a lengthened siege. the invader, fresh from a victory at megiddo, and following up his good fortune in a forward movement, had to reckon upon further and serious resistance at this point, and to prepare himself for a second conflict. the amorite chiefs and their allies had the advantage of a level and firm ground for the evolutions of their chariots during the attack, while, if they were beaten, the citadel afforded them a secure rallying-place, whence, having gathered their shattered troops, they could regain their respective countries, or enter, with the help of a few devoted men, upon a species of guerilla warfare in which they excelled. the road from damascus led to a point south of quodshu, while that from phonicia came right up to the town itself or to its immediate neighbourhood. the dyke of bahr el-kades served to keep the plain in a dry condition, and thus secured for numerous towns, among which hamath stood out pre-eminently, a prosperous existence. beyond hamath, and to the left, between the orontes and the sea, lay the commercial kingdom of alasia, protected from the invader by bleak mountains.* * the site of alasia, alashia, was determined from the tel el-amarna tablets by maspero. niebuhr had placed it to the west of cilicia, opposite the island of eleousa mentioned by strabo. conder connected it with the scriptural elishah, and w. max millier confounds it with asi or cyprus. on the right, between the orontes and the balikh, extended the land of rivers, naharaim. towns had grown up here thickly,--on the sides of the torrents from the amanos, along the banks of rivers, near springs or wells--wherever, in fact, the presence of water made culture possible. the fragments of the egyptian chronicles which have come down to us number these towns by the hundred,* and yet of how many more must the records have perished with the crumbling theban walls upon which the pharaohs had their names incised! khalabu was the aleppo of our own day,** and grouped around it lay turmanuna, tunipa, zarabu, nîi, durbaniti, nirabu, sarmata,*** and a score of others which depended upon it, or upon one of its rivals. the boundaries of this portion of the lower lotanû have come down to us in a singularly indefinite form, and they must also, moreover, have been subject to continual modifications from the results of tribal conflicts. * two hundred and thirty names belonging to naharaim are still legible on the lists of thûtmosis iii., and a hundred others have been effaced from the monument. ** khalabu was identified by chabas with khalybôn, the modern aleppo, and his opinion has been adopted by most egyptologists. *** tunipa has been found in tennib, tinnab, by noldoke; zarabu in zarbi, and sarmata in sarmeda, by tomkins; durbaniti in deîr el-banât, the castrum puellarum of the chroniclers of the crusades; nirabu in nirab, and tirabu in tereb, now el-athrib. nirab is mentioned by nicholas of damascus. nîi, long confounded with nineveh, was identified by lenormant with ninus vetus, membidj, and by max millier with balis on the euphrates: i am inclined to make it kefer- naya, between aleppo and turmanin. [illustration: .jpg map] we are at a loss to know whether the various principalities were accustomed to submit to the leadership of a single individual, or whether we are to relegate to the region of popular fancy that lord of naharaim of whom the egyptian scribes made such a hero in their fantastic narratives.* * in the �story of the predestined prince� the heroine is daughter of the prince of naharaim, who seems to exercise authority over all the chiefs of the country; as the manuscript does not date back further than the xxth dynasty, we are justified in supposing that the egyptian writer had a knowledge of the hittite domination, during which the king of the khâti was actually the ruler of all naharaim. carchemish represented in this region the position occupied by megiddo in relation to kharû, and by qodshu among the amorites; that is to say, it was the citadel and sanctuary of the surrounding country. whoever could make himself master of it would have the whole country at his feet. [illustration: .jpg site of carchemish] it lay upon the euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across the intervening region. like qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper. the encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of peace an abode for the surplus population. the wall still rises some five and twenty to thirty feet above the plain. two mounds divided by a ravine command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins of two fine buildings--a temple and a palace.* carchemish was the last stage in a conqueror�s march coming from the south. * karkamisha, gargamish, was from the beginning associated with the carchemish of the bible; but as the latter was wrongly identified with circesium, it was naturally located at the confluence of the khabur with the euphrates. hincks fixed the site at rum-kaleh. g. rawlinson referred it cursorily to hierapolis-mabog, which position maspero endeavoured to confirm. finzi, and after him g. smith, thought to find the site at jerabis, the ancient europos, and excavations carried on there by the english have brought to light in this place hittite monuments which go back in part to the assyrian epoch. this identification is now generally accepted, although there is still no direct proof attainable, and competent judges continue to prefer the site of membij. i fall in with the current view, but with all reserve. [illustration: .jpg the tell of jerabis in its present condition] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from a cut in the _graphic_. for an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first station. he had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for crossing the euphrates. that of thapsacus, at the bend of the river where it turns eastward to the arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst. [illustration: .jpg a northern syrian] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. for an invader proceeding from asia minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the taurus, samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had naharaim or the kingdoms of chaldæa in view, to make a long detour, and although the assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the halys, the egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road. carchemish, the place of the third ford, was about equally distant from thapsacus and samosata, and lay in a rich and fertile province, which was so well watered that a drought or a famine would not be likely to enter into the expectations of its inhabitants. hither pilgrims, merchants, soldiers, and all the wandering denizens of the world were accustomed to direct their steps, and the habit once established was perpetuated for centuries. on the left bank of the river, and almost opposite carchemish, lay the region of mitânni,* which was already occupied by a people of a different race, who used a language cognate, it would seem, with the imperfectly classified dialects spoken by the tribes of the upper tigris and upper euphrates.** harran bordered on mitânni, and beyond harran one may recognise, in the vaguely defined singar, assur, arrapkha, and babel, states that arose out of the dismemberment of the ancient chaldæan empire.*** * mitânni is mentioned on several egyptian monuments; but its importance was not recognised until after the discovery of the tel el-amarna tablets and of its situation. the fact that a letter from the prince of mitânni is stated in a hieratic docket to have come from naharaim has been used as a proof that the countries were identical; i have shown that the docket proves only that mitânni formed a part of naharaim. it extended over the province of edessa and harran, stretching out towards the sources of the tigris. niebuhr places it on the southern slope of the masios, in mygdonia; th. reinach connects it with the matiôni, and asks whether this was not the region occupied by this people before their emigration towards the caspian. ** several of the tel el-amarna tablets are couched in this language. *** these names were recognised from the first in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. and in those of other pharaohs of the xviiith and xixth dynasties. the carchemish route was, of course, well known to caravans, but armed bodies had rarely occasion to make use of it. it was a far cry from memphis to carchemish, and for the egyptians this town continued to be a limit which they never passed, except incidentally, when they had to chastise some turbulent tribe, or to give some ill-guarded town to the flames.* * a certain number of towns mentioned in the lists of thûtmosis iii. were situated beyond the euphrates, and they belonged some to mitânni and some to the regions further away. [illustration: .jpg the heads of three amorite captives] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it would be a difficult task to define with any approach to accuracy the distribution of the canaanites, amorites, and aramæans, and to indicate the precise points where they came into contact with their rivals of non-semitic stock. frontiers between races and languages can never be very easily determined, and this is especially true of the peoples of syria. they are so broken up and mixed in this region, that even in neighbourhoods where one predominant tribe is concentrated, it is easy to find at every step representatives of all the others. four or five townships, singled out at random from the middle of a province, would often be found to belong to as many different races, and their respective inhabitants, while living within a distance of a mile or two, would be as great strangers to each other as if they were separated by the breadth of a continent. [illustration: .jpg mixture of syrian races] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it would appear that the breaking up of these populations had not been carried so far in ancient as in modern times, but the confusion must already have been great if we are to judge from the number of different sites where we encounter evidences of people of the same language and blood. the bulk of the khâti had not yet departed from the taurus region, but some stray bands of them, carried away by the movement which led to the invasion of the hyksôs, had settled around hebron, where the rugged nature of the country served to protect them from their neighbours.* * in very early times they are described as dwelling near hebron or in the mountains of judah. since we have learned from the egyptian and assyrian monuments that the khâti dwelt in northern syria, the majority of commentators have been indisposed to admit the existence of southern hittites; this name, it is alleged, having been introduced into the biblical around text through a misconception of the original documents, where the term hittite was the equivalent of canaanite. the amorites* had their head-quarters qodshul in coele-syria, but one section of them had taken up a position on the shores of the lake of tiberias in galilee, others had established themselves within a short distance of jaffa** on the mediterranean, while others had settled in the neighbourhood of the southern hittites in such numbers that their name in the hebrew scriptures was at times employed to designate the western mountainous region about the dead sea and the valley of the jordan. their presence was also indicated on the table-lands bordering the desert of damascus, in the districts frequented by bedouin of the tribe of terah, ammon and moab, on the rivers yarmuk and jabbok, and at edrei and heshbon.*** * ed. meyer has established the fact that the term amorite, as well as the parallel word canaanite, was the designation of the inhabitants of palestine before the arrival of the hebrews: the former belonged to the prevailing tradition in the kingdom of israel, the latter to that which was current in judah. this view confirms the conclusion which may be drawn from the egyptian monuments as to the power of expansion and the diffusion of the people. ** these were the amorites which the tribe of dan at a later period could not dislodge from the lands which had been allotted to them. *** this was afterwards the domain of sihon, king of the amorites, and that of og. the fuller, indeed, our knowledge is of the condition of syria at the time of the egyptian conquest, the more we are forced to recognise the mixture of races therein, and their almost infinite subdivisions. the mutual jealousies, however, of these elements of various origin were not so inveterate as to put an obstacle in the way, i will not say of political alliances, but of daily intercourse and frequent contracts. owing to intermarriages between the tribes, and the continual crossing of the results of such unions, peculiar characteristics were at length eliminated, and a uniform type of face was the result. from north to south one special form of countenance, that which we usually call semitic, prevailed among them. [illustration: .jpg a caricature of the syrian type] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the syrian and egyptian monuments furnish us everywhere, under different ethnical names, with representations of a broad-shouldered people of high stature, slender-figured in youth, but with a fatal tendency to obesity in old age. their heads are large, somewhat narrow, and artificially flattened or deformed, like those of several modern tribes in the lebanon. their high cheek-bones stand out from their hollow cheeks, and their blue or black eyes are buried under their enormous eyebrows. the lower part of the face is square and somewhat heavy, but it is often concealed by a thick and curly beard. the forehead is rather low and retreating, while the nose has a distinctly aquiline curve. the type is not on the whole so fine as the egyptian, but it is not so heavy as that of the chaldæans in the time of gudea. the theban artists have represented it in their battle-scenes, and while individualising every soldier or asiatic prisoner with a happy knack so as to avoid monotony, they have with much intelligence impressed upon all of them the marks of a common parentage. [illustration: .jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original wooden object. one feels that the artists must have recognised them as belonging to one common family. they associated with their efforts after true and exact representation a certain caustic humour, which impelled them often to substitute for a portrait a more or less jocose caricature of their adversaries. on the walls of the pylons, and in places where the majesty of a god restrained them from departing too openly from their official gravity, they contented themselves with exaggerating from panel to panel the contortions and pitiable expressions of the captive chiefs as they followed behind the triumphal chariot of the pharaoh on his return from his syrian campaigns.* * an illustration of this will be found in the line of prisoners, brought by seti i. from his great asiatic campaign, which is depicted on the outer face of the north wall of the hypostyle at karnak. where religious scruples offered no obstacle they abandoned themselves to the inspiration of the moment, and gave themselves freely up to caricature. it is an amorite or canaanite--that thick-lipped, flat-nosed slave, with his brutal lower jaw and smooth conical skull--who serves for the handle of a spoon in the museum of the louvre. the stupefied air with which he trudges under his burden is rendered in the most natural manner, and the flattening to which his forehead had been subjected in infancy is unfeelingly accentuated. the model which served for this object must have been intentionally brutalised and disfigured in order to excite the laughter of pharaoh�s subjects.* * dr. regnault thinks that the head was artificially deformed in infancy: the bandage necessary to effect it must have been applied very low on the forehead in front, and to the whole occiput behind. if this is the case, the instance is not an isolated one, for a deformation of a similar character is found in the case of the numerous semites represented on the tomb of rakhmiri: a similar practice still obtains in certain parts of modern syria. [illustration: .jpg syrians dressed in the loin-cloth and double shawl] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the idea of uniformity with which we are impressed when examining the faces of these people is confirmed and extended when we come to study their costumes. men and women--we may say all syrians according to their condition of life--had a choice between only two or three modes of dress, which, whatever the locality, or whatever the period, seemed never to change. on closer examination slight shades of difference in cut and arrangement may, however, be detected, and it may be affirmed that fashion ran even in ancient syria through as many capricious evolutions as with ourselves; but these variations, which were evident to the eyes of the people of the time, are not sufficiently striking to enable us to classify the people, or to fix their date. the peasants and the lower class of citizens required no other clothing than a loin-cloth similar to that of the egyptians,* or a shirt of a yellow or white colour, extending below the knees, and furnished with short sleeves. the opening for the neck was cruciform, and the hem was usually ornamented with coloured needlework or embroidery. the burghers and nobles wore over this a long strip of cloth, which, after passing closely round the hips and chest, was brought up and spread over the shoulders as a sort of cloak. this was not made of the light material used in egypt, which offered no protection from cold or rain, but was composed of a thick, rough wool, like that employed in chaldæa, and was commonly adorned with stripes or bands of colour, in addition to spots and other conspicuous designs. * the asiatic loin-cloth differs from the egyptian in having pendent cords; the syrian fellahin still wear it when at work. rich and fashionable folk substituted for this cloth two large shawls--one red and the other blue--in which they dexterously arrayed themselves so as to alternate the colours: a belt of soft leather gathered the folds around the figure. red morocco buskins, a soft cap, a handkerchief, a _kejfîyeh_ confined by a fillet, and sometimes a wig after the egyptian fashion, completed the dress. [illustration: a.jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a figure on the tomb of ramses iii. beards were almost universal among the men, but the moustache was of rare occurrence. in many of the figures represented on the monuments we find that the head was carefully shaved, while in others the hair was allowed to grow, arranged in curls, frizzed and shining with oil or sweet-smelling pomade, sometimes thrown back behind the ears and falling on the neck in bunches or curly masses, sometimes drawn out in stiff spikes so as to serve as a projecting cover over the face. [illustration: b.jpg a syrian with hair tired pent-house fashion] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. the women usually tired their hair in three great masses, of which the thickest was allowed to fall freely down the back; while the other two formed a kind of framework for the face, the ends descending on each side as far as the breast. some of the women arranged their hair after the egyptian manner, in a series of numerous small tresses, brought together at the ends so as to form a kind of plat, and terminating in a flower made of metal or enamelled terracotta. a network of glass ornaments, arranged on a semicircle of beads, or on a background of embroidered stuff, was frequently used as a covering for the top of the head.* * examples of syrian feminine costume are somewhat rare on the egyptian monuments. in the scenes of the capturing of towns we see a few. here the women are represented on the walls imploring the mercy of the besieger. other figures are those of prisoners being led captive into egypt. [illustration: .jpg page image] the shirt had no sleeves, and the fringed garment which covered it left half of the arm exposed. children of tender years had their heads shaved, as a head-dress, and rejoiced in no more clothing than the little ones among the egyptians. with the exception of bracelets, anklets, rings on the fingers, and occasionally necklaces and earrings, the syrians, both men and women, wore little jewellery. the chaldæa women furnished them with models of fashion to which they accommodated themselves in the choice of stuffs, colours, cut of their mantles or petticoats, arrangement of the hair, and the use of cosmetics for the eyes and cheeks. in spite of distance, the modes of babylon reigned supreme. the syrians would have continued to expose their right shoulder to the weather as long as it pleased the people of the lower euphrates to do the same; but as soon as the fashion changed in the latter region, and it became customary to cover the shoulder, and to wrap the upper part of the person in two or three thicknesses of heavy wool, they at once accommodated themselves to the new mode, although it served to restrain the free motion of the body. among the upper classes, at least, domestic arrangements were modelled upon the fashions observed in the palaces of the nobles of car-chemish or assur: the same articles of toilet, the same ranks of servants and scribes, the same luxurious habits, and the same use of perfumes were to be found among both.* * an example of the fashion of leaving the shoulder bare is found even in the xxth dynasty. the tel el-amarna tablets prove that, as far as the scribes were concerned, the customs and training of syria and chaldæa were identical. the syrian princes are there represented as employing the cuneiform character in their correspondence, being accompanied by scribes brought up after the chaldæan manner. we shall see later on that the king of the khati, who represented in the time of ramses ii. the type of an accomplished syrian, had attendants similar to those of the chaldæan kings. from all that we can gather, in short, from the silence as well as from the misunderstandings of the egyptian chroniclers, syria stands before us as a fruitful and civilized country, of which one might be thankful to be a native, in spite of continual wars and frequent revolutions. the religion of the syrians was subject to the same influences as their customs; we are, as yet, far from being able to draw a complete picture of their theology, but such knowledge as we do possess recalls the same names and the same elements as are found in the religious systems of chaldæa. the myths, it is true, are still vague and misty, at least to our modern ideas: the general characteristics of the principal divinities alone stand out, and seem fairly well defined. as with the other semitic races, the deity in a general sense, the primordial type of the godhead, was called _el_ or _ilû_, and his feminine counterpart _ilât_, but we find comparatively few cities in which these nearly abstract beings enjoyed the veneration of the faithful.* the gods of syria, like those of egypt and of the countries watered by the euphrates, were feudal princes distributed over the surface of the earth, their number corresponding with that of the independent states. each nation, each tribe, each city, worshipped its own lord--_adoni_** --or its master--_baal_*** --and each of these was designated by a special title to distinguish him from neighbouring _baalîm_, or masters. * the frequent occurrence of the term _ilû_ or _el_ in names of towns in southern syria seems to indicate pretty conclusively that the inhabitants of these countries used this term by preference to designate their supreme god. similarly we meet with it in aramaic names, and later on among the nabathseans; it predominates at byblos and berytus in phoenicia and among the aramaic peoples of north syria; in the samalla country, for instance, during the viiith century b.c. ** the extension of this term to syrian countries is proved in the israelitish epoch by canaanitish names, such as adonizedek and adonibezek, or jewish names such as adonijah, adonikam, adoniram-adoram. *** movers tried to prove that there was one particular god named baal, and his ideas, popularised in prance by m. de vogiié, prevailed for some time: since then scholars have gone back to the view of münter and of the writers at the beginning of this century, who regarded the term baal as a common epithet applicable to all gods. the baal who ruled at zebub was styled �master of zebub,� or baal-zebub;* and the baal of hermon, who was an ally of gad, goddess of fortune, was sometimes called baal-hermon, or �master of hermon,� sometimes baal-g-ad, or �master of gad;� ** the baal of shechem, at the time of the israelite invasion, was �master of the covenant�--baal-berîth--doubtless in memory of some agreement which he had concluded with his worshippers in regard to the conditions of their allegiance.*** * baal-zebub was worshipped at ekxon during the philistine supremacy. ** the mountain of baal-hermon is the mountain of baniâs, where the jordan has one of its sources, and the town of baal-hermon is baniâs itself. the variant baal-gad occurs several times in the biblical books. *** baal-berith, like baal-zebub, only occurs, so far as we know at present, in the hebrew scriptures, where, by the way, the first element, baal, is changed to el, el-berith. [illustration: .jpg lotanÛ women and children from the tomb of rakhmieÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coloured sketches by prisse d�avennes. the prevalent conception of the essence and attributes of these deities was not the same in all their sanctuaries, but the more exalted among them were regarded as personifying the sky in the daytime or at night, the atmosphere, the light,* or the sun, shamash, as creator and prime mover of the universe; and each declared himself to be king--_melek_--over the other gods.** bashuf represented the lightning and the thunderbolt;*** shalmân, hadad, and his double bimmôn held sway over the air like the babylonian. * this appears under the name _or_ or _ur_ in the samalla inscriptions of the viiith century b.c.; it is, so far, a unique instance among the semites. ** we find the term applied in the bible to the national god of the ammonites, under the forms _moloch, molech, mikôm, milkâm_, and especially with the article, _ham-molek_; the real name hidden beneath this epithet was probably _amnôn or ammân_, and, strictly speaking, the god moloch only exists in the imagination of scholars. the epithet was used among the oanaanites in the name melchizedek, a similar form to adonizedek, abimelech, ahimelech; it was in current use among the phoenicians, in reference to the god of tyre, melek-karta or melkarth, and in many proper names, such as melekiathon, baalmelek, bodmalek, etc., not to mention the god milichus worshipped in spain, who was really none other than melkarth. *** resheph has been vocalised _rashuf_ in deference to the egyptian orthography rashupu. it was a name common to a whole family of lightning and storm-gods, and m. de rougé pointed out long ago the passage in the great inscription of ramses iii. at medinet-habu, in which the soldiers who man the chariots are compared to the rashupu; the rabbinic hebrew still employs this plural form in the sense of �demons.� the phoenician inscriptions contain references to several local rashufs; the way in which this god is coupled with the goddess qodshu on the egyptian stelæ leads me to think that, at the epoch now under consideration, he was specially worshipped by the amorites, just as his equivalent hadad was by the inhabitants of damascus, neighbours of the amorites, and perhaps themselves amorites. rammânu;* dagon, patron god of fishermen and husbandmen, seems to have watched over the fruitfulness of the sea and the land.** we are beginning to learn the names of the races whom they specially protected: rashuf the amorites, hadad and rimmon the aramæans of damascus, dagon the peoples of the coast between ashkelon and the forest of carmel. rashûf is the only one whose appearance is known to us. he possessed the restless temperament usually attributed to the thunder-gods, and was, accordingly, pictured as a soldier armed with javelin and mace, bow and buckler; a gazelle�s head with pointed horns surmounts his helmet, and sometimes, it may be, serves him as a cap. * hadad and rimmon are represented in assyrio-chaldæan by one and the same ideogram, which may be read either dadda- hadad or eammânu. the identity of the expressions employed shows how close the connection between the two divinities must have been, even if they were not similar in all respects; from the hebrew writings we know of the temple of rimmon at damascus (_ kings_ v. ) and that one of the kings of that city was called tabrimmôn = �llimmon is good� (_ kings_ xv. ), while hadad gave his name to no less than ten kings of the same city. even as late as the græco- roman epoch, kingship over the other gods was still attributed both to rimmon and to hadad, but this latter was identified with the sun. ** the documents which we possess in regard to dagon date from the hebrew epoch, and represent him as worshipped by the philistines. we know, however, from the tel el-amarna tablets, of a dagantakala, a name which proves the presence of the god among the canaanites long before the philistine invasion, and we find two beth-dagons--one in the plain of judah, the other in the tribe of asher; philo of byblos makes dagon a phoenician deity, and declares him to be the genius of fecundity, master of grain and of labour. the representation of his statue which appears on the græco- roman coins of abydos, reminds us of the fish-god of chaldæa. each god had for his complement a goddess, who was proclaimed �mistress� of the city, _baalat_, or �queen,� _milkat_, of heaven, just as the god himself was recognised as �master� or �king.� * as a rule, the goddess was contented with the generic name of astartê; but to this was often added some epithet, which lent her a distinct personality, and prevented her from being confounded with the astartês of neighbouring cities, her companions or rivals.** * among goddesses to whom the title �baalat �was referred, we have the goddess of byblos, baalat-gebal, also the goddess of berytus, baalat-berîth, or beyrut. the epithet �queen of heaven �is applied to the phoenician astartê by hebrew (_jer._ vii. , xliv. - ) and classic writers. the egyptians, when they adopted these oanaanitish goddesses, preserved the title, and called each of them _nibît pit,_ �lady of heaven.� in the phoenician inscriptions their names are frequently preceded by the word _rabbat: rabbat baalat-gebal_, �(my) lady baalat-gebal.� ** the hebrew writers frequently refer to the canaanite goddesses by the general title �the ashtarôth� or �astartês,� and a town in northern syria bore the significant name of istarâti = �the ishtars, the ashtarôth,� a name which finds a parallel in anathôth = �the anats,� a title assumed by a town of the tribe of benjamin; similarly, the assyrio- chaldæans called their goddesses by the plural of ishtar. the inscription on an egyptian amulet in the louvre tells us of a personage of the xxth dynasty, who, from his name, rabrabîna, must have been of syrian origin, and who styled himself �prophet of the astartês,� honnutir astiratu. [illustration: .jpg astarte as a sphinx] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a copy of an original in chased gold. thus she would be styled the �good� astartê, ashtoreth naamah, or the �horned� astartê, ashtoreth qarnaîm, because of the lunar crescent which appears on her forehead, as a sort of head-dress.* she was the goddess of good luck, and was called gad;** she was anat,*** or asîti,**** the chaste and the warlike. * the two-horned astartê gave her name to a city beyond the jordan, of which she was, probably, the eponymous goddess: (gen xiv. ) she would seem to be represented on the curious monument called by the arabs �the stone of job,� which was discovered by m. schumacher in the centre of the hauran. it was an analogous goddess whom the egyptians sometimes identified with their hâthor, and whom they represented as crowned with a crescent. ** gad, the goddess of fortune, is mainly known to us in connection with the aramæans; we find mention made of her by the hebrew writers, and geographical names, such as baal-gad and migdol-gad, prove that she must have been worshipped at a very early date in the canaanite countries. *** anat, or anaîti, or aniti, has been found in a phoenician inscription, which enables us to reconstruct the history of the goddess. her worship was largely practised among the canaanites, as is proved by the existence in the hebrew epoch of several towns, such as beth-anath, beth- anoth, anathôth; at least one of which, bît-anîti, is mentioned in the egyptian geographical lists. the appearance of anat-anîti is known to us, as she is represented in egyptian dress on several stelæ of the xixth and xxth dynasties. her name, like that of astartê, had become a generic term, in the plural form anathôth, for a whole group of goddesses. **** asîti is represented at radesieh, on a stele of the time of seti i.; she enters into the composition of a compound name, _asîtiiàkhûrû_ (perhaps �the goddess of asiti is enflamed with anger �), which we find on a monument in the vienna museum. w. max müller makes her out to have been a divinity of the desert, and the place in which the picture representing her was found would seem to justify this hypothesis; the egyptians connected her, as well as the other astartês, with sit-typhon, owing to her cruel and warlike character. [illustration: .jpg page image] the statues sometimes represent her as a sphinx with a woman�s head, but more often as a woman standing on a lion passant, either nude, or encircled round the hips by merely a girdle, her hands filled with flowers or with serpents, her features framed in a mass of heavy tresses--a faithful type of the priestesses who devoted themselves to her service, the _qedeshôt_. she was the goddess of love in its animal, or rather in its purely physical, aspect, and in this capacity was styled qaddishat the holy, like the hetairæ of her family; qodshu, the amorite capital, was consecrated to her service, and she was there associated with rashuf, the thunder-god.* * qaddishat is know to us from the egyptian monuments referred to above. the name was sometimes written qodshû, like that of the town: e. de bougé argued from this that qaddishat must have been the eponymous divinity of qodshû, and that her real name was kashit or kesh; he recalls, however, the _rôle_ played by the qedeshoth, and admits that �the holy here means the prostitute.� but she often comes before us as a warlike amazon, brandishing a club, lance, or shield, mounted on horseback like a soldier, and wandering through the desert in quest of her prey.* this dual temperament rendered her a goddess of uncertain attributes and of violent contrasts; at times reserved and chaste, at other times shameless and dissolute, but always cruel, always barren, for the countless multitude of her excesses for ever shut her out from motherhood: she conceives without ceasing, but never brings forth children.** the baalim and astartês frequented by choice the tops of mountains, such as lebanon, carmel, hermon, or kasios:*** they dwelt near springs, or hid themselves in the depths of forests.**** they revealed themselves to mortals through the heavenly bodies, and in all the phenomena of nature: the sun was a baal, the moon was astartê, and the whole host of heaven was composed of more or less powerful genii, as we find in chaldæa. * a fragment of a popular tale preserved in the british museum, and mentioned by birch, seems to show us astartê in her character of war-goddess, and the sword of astartê is mentioned by chabas. a bas-relief at edfû represents her standing upright in her chariot, drawn by horses, and trampling her enemies underfoot: she is there identified with sokhît the warlike, destroyer of men. ** this conception of the syrian goddesses had already become firmly established at the period with which we are dealing, for an egyptian magical formula defines anîti and astartê as �the great goddesses who conceiving do not bring forth young, for the horuses have sealed them and sit hath established them.� *** the baal of lebanon is mentioned in an archaic phoenician inscription, and the name �holy cape� (_rosh- qodshu_), borne in the time of thûtmosis iii. either by haifa or by a neighbouring town, proves that carmel was held sacred as far back as the egyptian epoch. baal-hermon has already been mentioned. **** the source of the jordan, near baniâs, was the seat of a baal whom the greeks identified with pan. this was probably the baal-gad who often lent his name to the neighbouring town of baal-hermon: many of the rivers of phoenicia were called after the divinities worshipped in the nearest city, e.g. the adonis, the bêlos, the asclepios, the damûras. they required that offerings and prayers should be brought to them at the high places,* but they were also pleased--and especially the goddesses--to lodge in trees; tree-trunks, sometimes leafy, sometimes bare and branchless (_ashêrah_), long continued to be living emblems of the local astartês among the peoples of southern syria. side by side with these plant-gods we find everywhere, in the inmost recesses of the temples, at cross-roads, and in the open fields, blocks of stone hewn into pillars, isolated boulders, or natural rocks, sometimes of meteoric origin, which were recognised by certain mysterious marks to be the house of the god, the betyli or beth-els in which he enclosed a part of his intelligence and vital force. * these are the �high places� (bamôth) so frequently referred to by the hebrew prophets, and which we find in the country of moab, according to the mesha inscription, and in the place-name bamoth-baal; many of them seem to have served for canaanitish places of worship before they were resorted to by the children of israel. the worship of these gods involved the performance of ceremonies more bloody and licentious even than those practised by other races. the baalim thirsted after blood, nor would they be satisfied with any common blood such as generally contented their brethren in chaldæa or egypt: they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. among several of the syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted, either by a money payment or by subjecting the infant to circumcision.** * this fact is proved, in so far as the hebrew people is concerned, by the texts of the pentateuch and of the prophets; amongst the moabites also it was his eldest son whom king mosha took to offer to his god. we find the same custom among other syrian races: philo of byblos tells us, in fact, that el-kronos, god of byblos, sacrificed his firstborn son and set the example of this kind of offering. ** redemption by a payment in money was the case among the hebrews, as also the substitution of an animal in the place of a child; as to redemption by circumcision, cf. the story of moses and zipporah, where the mother saves her son from jahveh by circumcising him. circumcision was practised among the syrians of palestine in the time of herodotus. at important junctures, however, this pretence of bloodshed would fail to appease them, and the death of the child alone availed. indeed, in times of national danger, the king and nobles would furnish, not merely a single victim, but as many as the priests chose to demand.* while they were being burnt alive on the knees of the statue, or before the sacred emblem, their cries of pain were drowned by the piping of flutes or the blare of trumpets, the parents standing near the altar, without a sign of pity, and dressed as for a festival: the ruler of the world could refuse nothing to prayers backed by so precious an offering, and by a purpose so determined to move him. such sacrifices were, however, the exception, and the shedding of their own blood by his priests sufficed, as a rule, for the daily wants of the god. seizing their knives, they would slash their arms and breasts with the view of compelling, by this offering of their own persons, the good will of the baalim.** * if we may credit tertullian, the custom of offering up children as sacrifices lasted down to the proconsulate of tiberius. ** cf., for the hebraic epoch, the scene where the priests of baal, in a trial of power with elijah before ahab, offered up sacrifices on the highest point of carmel, and finding that their offerings did not meet with the usual success, �cut themselves... with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them.� the astartês of all degrees and kinds were hardly less cruel; they imposed frequent flagellations, self-mutilation, and sometimes even emasculation, on their devotees. around the majority of these goddesses was gathered an infamous troop of profligates (_kedeshîm_), �dogs of love� (_kelabîm_), and courtesans (_kedeshôt_). the temples bore little resemblance to those of the regions of the lower euphrates: nowhere do we find traces of those _ziggurat_ which serve to produce the peculiar jagged outline characteristic of chaldæan cities. the syrian edifices were stone buildings, which included, in addition to the halls and courts reserved for religious rites, dwelling-rooms for the priesthood, and storehouses for provisions: though not to be compared in size with the sanctuaries of thebes, they yet answered the purpose of strongholds in time of need, and were capable of resisting the attacks of a victorious foe.* a numerous staff, consisting of priests, male and female singers, porters, butchers, slaves, and artisans, was assigned to each of these temples: here the god was accustomed to give forth his oracles, either by the voice of his prophets, or by the movement of his statues.** the greater number of the festivals celebrated in them were closely connected with the pastoral and agricultural life of the country; they inaugurated, or brought to a close, the principal operations of the year--the sowing of seed, the harvest, the vintage, the shearing of the sheep. at shechem, when the grapes were ripe, the people flocked out of the town into the vineyards, returning to the temple for religious observances and sacred banquets when the fruit had been trodden in the winepress.*** * the story of abimelech gives us some idea of what the canaanite temple of baal-berîth at shechem was like. ** as to the regular organisation of baal-worship, we possess only documents of a comparatively late period. *** it is probable that the vintage festival, celebrated at shiloh in the time of the judges, dated back to a period of canaanite history prior to the hebrew invasion, i.e. to the time of the egyptian supremacy. in times of extraordinary distress, such as a prolonged drought or a famine, the priests were wont to ascend in solemn procession to the high places in order to implore the pity of their divine masters, from whom they strove to extort help, or to obtain the wished-for rain, by their dances, their lamentations, and the shedding of their blood.* *cf., in the hebraic period, the scene where the priests of baal go up to the top of mount carmel with the prophet elijah. almost everywhere, but especially in the regions east of the jordan, were monuments which popular piety surrounded with a superstitious reverence. such were the isolated boulders, or, as we should call them, �menhirs,� reared on the summit of a knoll, or on the edge of a tableland; dolmens, formed of a flat slab placed on the top of two roughly hewn supports, cromlechs, or, that is to say, stone circles, in the centre of which might be found a beth-el. we know not by whom were set up these monuments there, nor at what time: the fact that they are in no way different from those which are to be met with in western europe and the north of africa has given rise to the theory that they were the work of some one primeval race which wandered ceaselessly over the ancient world. a few of them may have marked the tombs of some forgotten personages, the discovery of human bones beneath them confirming such a conjecture; while others seem to have been holy places and altars from the beginning. the nations of syria did not in all cases recognise the original purpose of these monuments, but regarded them as marking the seat of an ancient divinity, or the precise spot on which he had at some time manifested himself. when the children of israel caught sight of them again on their return from egypt, they at once recognised in them the work of their patriarchs. the dolmen at shechem was the altar which abraham had built to the eternal after his arrival in the country of canaan. isaac had raised that at beersheba, on the very spot where jehovah had appeared in order to renew with him the covenant that he had made with abraham. one might almost reconstruct a map of the wanderings of jacob from the altars which he built at each of his principal resting-places--at gilead [galeed], at ephrata, at bethel, and at shechem.* each of such still existing objects probably had a history of its own, connecting it inseparably with some far-off event in the local annals. * the heap of stones at galeed, in aramaic _jegar- sahadutha_, �the heap of witness,� marked the spot where laban and jacob were reconciled; the stele on the way to ephrata was the tomb of rachel; the altar and stele at bethel marked the spot where god appeared unto jacob. [illustration: .jpg transjordanian dolmen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: .jpg a cromlech in the neighbourhood of hesban, in the country of moab] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. most of them were objects of worship: they were anointed with oil, and victims were slaughtered in their honour; the faithful even came at times to spend the night and sleep near them, in order to obtain in their dreams glimpses of the future.* * the menhir of bethel was the identical one whereon jacob rested his head on the night in which jehovah appeared to him in a dream. in phoenicia there was a legend which told how usôos set up two stellæ to the elements of wind and fire, and how he offered the blood of the animals he had killed in the chase as a libation. men and beasts were supposed to be animated, during their lifetime, by a breath or soul which ran in their veins along with their blood, and served to move their limbs; the man, therefore, who drank blood or ate bleeding flesh assimilated thereby the soul which inhered in it. after death the fate of this soul was similar to that ascribed to the spirits of the departed in egypt and chaldæa. the inhabitants of the ancient world were always accustomed to regard the surviving element in man as something restless and unhappy--a weak and pitiable double, doomed to hopeless destruction if deprived of the succour of the living. they imagined it as taking up its abode near the body wrapped in a half-conscious lethargy; or else as dwelling with the other _rephaim_ (departed spirits) in some dismal and gloomy kingdom, hidden in the bowels of the earth, like the region ruled by the chaldæan allât, its doors gaping wide to engulf new arrivals, but allowing none to escape who had once passed the threshold.* * the expression _rephaim_ means �the feeble�; it was the epithet applied by the hebrews to a part of the primitive races of palestine. there it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the phoenician idea, was mout (death),* the grandson of el; there the slave became the equal of his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything which could raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted on their entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night before them. *among the hebrews his name was maweth, who feeds the departed like sheep, and himself feeds on them in hell. some writers have sought to identify this or some analogous god with the lion represented on a stele of piraeus which threatens to devour the body of a dead man. [illustration: .jpg a corner of the phoenician neckropolis at adlun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in lortet. the corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition, was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets, jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household utensils, together with meat and drink. the entrance was then closed, and on the spot a cippus was erected--in popular estimation sometimes held to represent the soul--or a monument was set up on a scale proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had belonged.* on certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger and thirst of the dead man.** the chapels and stellæ which marked the exterior of these �eternal� *** houses have disappeared in the course of the various wars by which syria suffered so heavily: in almost all cases, therefore, we are ignorant as to the sites of the various cities of the dead in which the nobles and common people of the canaanite and amorite towns were laid to rest.**** * the pillar or stele was used among both hebrews and phoenicians to mark the graves of distinguished persons. among the semites speaking aramaic it was called _nephesh_, especially when it took the form of a pyramid; the word means �breath,� �soul,� and clearly shows the ideas associated with the object. ** an altar was sometimes placed in front of the sarcophagus to receive these offerings. *** this expression, which is identical with that used by the egyptians of the same period, is found in one of the phoenician inscriptions at malta. **** the excavations carried out by m. gautier in - , on the little island of bahr-el-kadis, at one time believed to have been the site of the town of qodshu, have revealed the existence of a number of tombs in the enclosure which forms the central part of the tumulus: some of these may possibly date from the amorite epoch, but they are very poor in remains, and contain no object which permits us to fix the date with accuracy. in phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something of their original arrangement. sometimes the site chosen was on level ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled up. they were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed with a slab of stone. elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.* * such was the necropolis at adlûn, the last rearrangement of which took place during the græco-roman period, but which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an egyptian necropolis of the xviiith or xixth dynasty, that we may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin back to the time of the pharaonic conquest. in this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of façade similar to that of the egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at external ornament. the vaults were on the ground-level, but were not used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes of burial. except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom �the mouth of the pit had devoured� dreaded the visits of the living, and resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves from them. their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. these imprecations have not, however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and the close of the roman supremacy. when the modern explorer chances to discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker, it is hardly ever the case that the bodies whose remains are unearthed prove to be those of the original proprietors. [illustration: .jpg valley of the tomb of the kings] [illustration: -text.jpg] the gods and legends of chaldæa had penetrated to the countries of amauru and canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and their system of writing: the stories of adapa�s struggles against the south-west wind, or of the incidents which forced irishkigal, queen of the dead, to wed nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts of syrian princes. chaldæan theology, therefore, must have exercised influence on individual syrians and on their belief; but although we are forced to allow the existence of such influence, we cannot define precisely the effects produced by it. only on the coast and in the phoenician cities do the local religions seem to have become formulated at a fairly early date, and crystallised under pressure of this influence into cosmogonie theories. the baalim and astartês reigned there as on the banks of the jordan or orontes, and in each town baal was �the most high,� master of heaven and eternity, creator of everything which exists, though the character of his creating acts was variously defined according to time and place. some regarded him as the personification of justice, sydyk, who established the universe with the help of eight indefatigable cabiri. others held the whole world to be the work of a divine family, whose successive generations gave birth to the various elements. the storm-wind, colpias, wedded to chaos, had begotten two mortals, ulom (time) and kadmôn (the first-born), and these in their turn engendered qên and qênath, who dwelt in phoenicia: then came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the sun, imploring him, as lord of the heavens (_baalsamîn_), to put an end to their woes. at tyre it was thought that chaos existed at the beginning, but chaos of a dark and troubled nature, over which a breath (_rûakh_) floated without affecting it; �and this chaos had no ending, and it was thus for centuries and centuries.--then the breath became enamoured of its own principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this change was called desire:--now desire was the principle which created all things, and the breath knew not its own creation.--the breath and chaos, therefore, became united, and mot the clay was born, and from this clay sprang all the seed of creation, and mot was the father of all things; now mot was like an egg in shape.--and the sun, the moon, the stars, the great planets, shone forth.* there were living beings devoid of intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings, who were called _zophesamîn_, or �watchers of the heavens.�now the thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea.� * mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water, is probably a phoenician form of a word which means _water_ in the semitic languages. cf. the egyptian theory, according to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by khnûmû into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced the heavens and the earth. a scholar of the roman epoch, philo of byblos, using as a basis some old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been classified by sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the world was brought out of chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of civilization in phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. no doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved their substance more or less faithfully. beneath the veneer of abstraction with which the greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met with in most oriental theologies, whether egyptian or babylonian. at first we have a black mysterious chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial nû or apsû; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the nile under the hand? of khnûmû; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the lakhmû, the anshar, and the illinu of chaldæan speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings. [illustration: .jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the phoenicians, however, accustomed as they were to the mediterranean, with its blind outbursts of fury, had formed an idea of chaos which differed widely from that of most of the inland races, to whom it presented itself as something silent and motionless: they imagined it as swept by a mighty wind, which, gradually increasing to a roaring tempest, at length succeeded in stirring the chaos to its very depths, and in fertilizing its elements amidst the fury of the storm. no sooner had the earth been thus brought roughly into shape, than the whole family of the north winds swooped down upon it, and reduced it to civilized order. it was but natural that the traditions of a seafaring race should trace its descent from the winds. in phoenicia the sea is everything: of land there is but just enough to furnish a site for a score of towns, with their surrounding belt of gardens. mount lebanon, with its impenetrable forests, isolated it almost entirely from coele-syria, and acted as the eastward boundary of the long narrow quadrangle hemmed in between the mountains and the rocky shore of the sea. at frequent intervals, spurs run out at right angles from the principal chain, forming steep headlands on the sea-front: these cut up the country, small to begin with, into five or six still smaller provinces, each one of which possessed from time immemorial its own independent cities, its own religion, and its own national history. to the north were the zahi, a race half sailors, half husbandmen, rich, brave, and turbulent, ever ready to give battle to their neighbours, or rebel against an alien master, be he who he might. arvad,* which was used by them as a sort of stronghold or sanctuary, was huddled together on an island some two miles from the coast: it was only about a thousand yards in circumference, and the houses, as though to make up for the limited space available for their foundations, rose to a height of five stories. an astartê reigned there, as also a sea-baal, half man, half fish, but not a trace of a temple or royal palace is now to be found.** * the name arvad was identified in the egyptian inscriptions by birch, who, with hincks, at first saw in the name a reference to the peoples of ararat; birch�s identification, is now accepted by all egyptologists. the name is written aruada or arada in the tel el-amarna tablets. ** the arvad astartê had been identified by the egyptians with their goddess bastît. the sea-baal, who has been connected by some with dagon of askalon, is represented on the earliest arvadian coins. he has a fish-like tail, the body and bearded head of a man, with an assyrian headdress; on his breast we sometimes find a circular opening which seems to show the entrails. the whole island was surrounded by a stone wall, built on the outermost ledges of the rocks, which were levelled to form its foundation. the courses of the masonry were irregular, laid without cement or mortar of any kind. this bold piece of engineering served the double purpose of sea-wall and rampart, and was thus fitted to withstand alike the onset of hostile fleets and the surges of the mediterranean.* * the antiquity of the wall of arvad, recognised by travellers of the last century, is now universally admitted by all archæologists. [illustration: .jpg] there was no potable water on the island, and for drinking purposes the inhabitants were obliged to rely on the fall of rain, which they stored in cisterns--still in use among their descendants. in the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by salt water.* * renan tells us that �m. gaillardot, when crossing from the island to the mainland, noticed a spring of sweet water bubbling up from the bottom of the sea.... thomson and walpole noticed the same spring or similar springs a little to the north of tortosa.� [illustration: .jpg page image] the harbour opened to the east, facing the mainland: it was divided into two basins by a stone jetty, and was doubtless insufficient for the sea-traffic, but this was the less felt inasmuch as there was a safe anchorage outside it--the best, perhaps, to be found in these waters. opposite to arvad, on an almost continuous line of coast some ten or twelve miles in length, towns and villages occurred at short intervals, such as marath, antarados, enhydra, and karnê, into which the surplus population of the island overflowed. karnê possessed a harbour, and would have been a dangerous neighbour to the arvadians had they themselves not occupied and carefully fortified it.* * marath, now amrît, possesses some ancient ruins which have been described by renan. antarados, which prior to the græco-roman era was a place of no importance, occupies the site of tortosa. enhydra is not known, and karnê has been replaced by karnûn to the north of tortosa. none of the �neighbours of arados� are mentioned by name in the assyrian texts; but w. max müller has demonstrated that the egyptian form _aratût_ or _aratiût_ corresponds with a semitic plural _arvadôt_, and consequently refers not only to arad itself, but also to the fortified cities and towns which formed its continental suburbs. the cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the slope of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: lebanon, with its wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the east the mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a pass through which ran the road which joined the great military highway not far from qodshu. the influence of arvad penetrated by means of this pass into the valley of the orontes, and is believed to have gradually extended as far as hamath itself--in other words, over the whole of zahi. for the most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast between g-abala and the nahr el-kebîr; simyra at one time acknowledged its suzerainty, at another became a self-supporting and independent state, strong enough to compel the respect of its neighbours.* beyond the orontes, the coast curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a group of wind-swept hills ending in a promontory called phaniel,** the reputed scene of a divine manifestation, marked the extreme limit of arabian influence to the north, if, indeed, it ever reached so far. * simyra is the modern surnrah, near the nahr el-kebîr. ** the name has only come down to us under its greek form, but its original form, phaniel or penûel, is easily arrived at from the analogous name used in canaan to indicate localities where there had been a theophany. renan questions whether phaniel ought not to be taken in the same sense as the pnê-baal of the carthaginian inscriptions, and applied to a goddess to whom the promontory had been dedicated; he also suggests that the modern name _cap madonne_ may be a kind of echo of the title _rabbath_ borne by this goddess from the earliest times. half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, arka,* siani,** mahallat, kaiz, maîza, and botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland on the bend of some minor stream. botrys,**** the last of the six, barred the roads which cross the phaniel headland, and commanded the entrance to the holy ground where byblos and berytus celebrated each year the amorous mysteries of adonis. * arka is perhaps referred to in the tablets of tel el- amarna under the form irkata or irkat; it also appears in the bible (gen. x. ) and in the assyrian texts. it is the cassarea of classical geographers, which has now resumed its old phoenician name of tell-arka. ** sianu or siani is mentioned in the assyrian texts and in the bible; strabo knew it under the name of sinna, and a village near arka was called sin or syn as late as the xvth century. *** according to the assyrian inscriptions, these were the names of the three towns which formed the tripolis of græco-roman times. **** botrys is the hellenized form of the name bozruna or bozrun, which appears on the tablets of tel el-amarna; the modern name, butrun or batrun, preserves the final letter which the greeks had dropped. gublu, or--as the greeks named it--byblos,* prided itself on being the most ancient city in the world. the god el had founded it at the dawning of time, on the flank of a hill which is visible from some distance out at sea. a small bay, now filled up, made it an important shipping centre. the temple stood on the top of the hill, a few fragments of its walls still serving to mark the site; it was, perhaps, identical with that of which we find the plan engraved on certain imperial coins.** * _gublu_ or _gubli_ is the pronunciation indicated for this name in the tel el-amarna tablets; the egyptians transcribed it _kupuna_ or _kupna_ by substituting _n_ for _l_. the greek name byblos was obtained from gublu by substituting a _b_ for the _g_. ** renan carried out excavations in the hill of kassubah which brought to light some remains of a græco-roman temple: he puts forward, subject to correction, the hypothesis which i have adopted above. two flights of steps led up to it from the lower quarters of the town, one of which gave access to a chapel in the greek style, surmounted by a triangular pediment, and dating, at the earliest, from the time of the seleucides; the other terminated in a long colonnade, belonging to the same period, added as a new façade to an earlier building, apparently in order to bring it abreast of more modern requirements. [illustration: .jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the sanctuary which stands hidden behind this incongruous veneer is, as represented on the coins, in a very archaic style, and is by no means wanting in originality or dignity. it consists of a vast rectangular court surrounded by cloisters. at the point where lines drawn from the centres of the two doors seem to cross one another stands a conical stone mounted on a cube of masonry, which is the beth-el animated by the spirit of the god: an open-work balustrade surrounds and protects it from the touch of the profane. the building was perhaps not earlier than the assyrian or persian era, but in its general plan it evidently reproduced the arrangements of some former edifice.* * the author of the _de deâ syrâ_ classed the temple of byblos among the phoenician temples of the old order, which were almost as ancient as the temples of egypt, and it is probable that from the egyptian epoch onwards the plan of this temple must have been that shown on the coins; the cloister arcades ought, however, to be represented by pillars or by columns supporting architraves, and the fact of their presence leads me to the conclusion that the temple did not exist in the form known to us at a date earlier than the last assyrian period. at an early time el was spoken of as the first king of g-ablu in the same manner as each one of his egyptian fellow-gods had been in their several nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable prelude to the beginning of human history. grandson of eliûn who had brought chaos into order, son of heaven and earth, he dispossessed, vanquished, and mutilated his father, and conquered the most distant regions one after another--the countries beyond the euphrates, libya, asia minor and greece: one year, when the plague was ravaging his empire, he burnt his own son on the altar as an expiatory victim, and from that time forward the priests took advantage of his example to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of public danger or calamity. [illustration: .jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. he was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose: six wings grew from his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him. he was the incarnation of time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the fields. an astartê reigned with him over byblos--baalat-gublu, his own sister; like him, the child of earth and heaven. in one of her aspects she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the egyptian hâthor; but in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the greeks recognised the popular concept of aphroditê. tradition tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by the title of _adoni_, or �my lord.� we scarce know what to make of the origin of adonis, and of the legends which treat him as a hero--the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of a certain king kinyras and his own daughter myrrha is a comparatively recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar. baalat-gublu wept over her lover�s body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and adonis, ransomed by her tears, rose from the tomb, his love no whit less passionate than it had been before the catastrophe. this is nothing else than the chaldæan legend of ishtar and dûmûzi presented in a form more fully symbolical of the yearly marriage of earth and heaven. like the lady of byblos at her master�s approach, earth is thrilled by the first breath of spring, and abandons herself without shame to the caresses of heaven: she welcomes him to her arms, is fructified by him, and pours forth the abundance of her flowers and fruits. them comes summer and kills the spring: earth is burnt up and withers, she strips herself of her ornaments, and her fruitfulness departs till the gloom and icy numbness of winter have passed away. each year the cycle of the seasons brings back with it the same joy, the same despair, into the life of the world; each year baalat falls in love with her adonis and loses him, only to bring him back to life and lose him again in the coming year. the whole neighbourhood of byblos, and that part of mount lebanon in which it lies, were steeped in memories of this legend from the very earliest times. we know the precise spot where the goddess first caught sight of her lover, where she unveiled herself before him, and where at the last she buried his mutilated body, and chanted her lament for the dead. a river which flows southward not far off was called the adonis, and the valley watered by it was supposed to have been the scene of this tragic idyll. the adonis rises near aphaka,* at the base of a narrow amphitheatre, issuing from the entrance of an irregular grotto, the natural shape of which had, at some remote period, been altered by the hand of man; in three cascades it bounds into a sort of circular basin, where it gathers to itself the waters of the neighbouring springs, then it dashes onwards under the single arch of a roman bridge, and descends in a series of waterfalls to the level of the valley below. * aphaka means �spring� in syriac. the site of the temple and town of aphaka, where a temple of aphroditê and adonis still stood in the time of the emperor julian, had long been identified either with fakra, or with el-yamuni. seetzen was the first to place it at el-afka, and his proposed identification has been amply confirmed by the researches of penan. [illustration: .jpg valley of the adonis] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. [illustration: a.jpg the amphitheatre of aphaka and the source of the nahh-ibrahim] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. the temple rises opposite the source of the stream on an artificial mound, a meteorite fallen from heaven having attracted the attention of the faithful to the spot. the mountain falls abruptly away, its summit presenting a red and bare appearance, owing to the alternate action of summer sun and winter frost. as the slopes approach the valley they become clothed with a garb of wild vegetation, which bursts forth from every fissure, and finds a foothold on every projecting rock: the base of the mountain is hidden in a tangled mass of glowing green, which the moist yet sunny spring calls forth in abundance whenever the slopes are not too steep to retain a shallow layer of nourishing mould. it would be hard to find, even among the most picturesque spots of europe, a landscape in which wildness and beauty are more happily combined, or where the mildness of the air and sparkling coolness of the streams offer a more perfect setting for the ceremonies attending the worship of astartê.* * the temple had been rebuilt during the roman period, as were nearly all the temples of this region, upon the site of a more ancient structure; this was probably the edifice which the author of _de deâ syrâ_ considered to be the temple of venus, built by kinyras within a day�s journey of byblos in the lebanon. in the basin of the river and of the torrents by which it is fed, there appears a succession of charming and romantic scenes--gaping chasms with precipitous ochre-coloured walls; narrow fields laid out in terraces on the slopes, or stretching in emerald strips along the ruddy river-banks; orchards thick with almond and walnut trees; sacred grottoes, into which the priestesses, seated at the corner of the roads, endeavour to draw the pilgrims as they proceed on their way to make their prayers to the goddess;* sanctuaries and mausolea of adonis at yanukh, on the table-land of mashnaka, and on the heights of ghineh. according to the common belief, the actual tomb of adonis was to be found at byblos itself,** where the people were accustomed to assemble twice a year to keep his festivals, which lasted for several days together. * renan points out at byblos the existence of one of these caverns which gave shelter to the _kedeshoth_. many of the caves met with in the valley of the nahr-ibrahîm have doubtless served for the same purpose, although their walls contain no marks of the cult. ** melito placed it, however, near aphaka, and, indeed, there must have been as many different traditions on the subject as there were celebrated sanctuaries. at the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of adonis--terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown. these were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away. for several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of despair, and to endless appeals: �ah, lord! ah, lord! what is become of thy beauty.� once having found the image, they brought it to the feet of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud, placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais, placed it solemnly in the tomb.* * theocritus has described in his fifth idyll the laying out and burial of adonis as it was practised at alexandria in egypt in the iiird century before our era. the close and dreary summer passes away. with the first days of september the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the hollows of the valleys. the adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it. the wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson fringe.* this was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, adonis was brought back from the shades into new life. shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous delight. wives and virgins--all the women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair--were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.** * the same phenomenon occurs in spring. maundrell saw it on march , and renan in the first days of february. ** a similar usage was found in later times in the countries colonised by or subjected to the influence of the phoenicians, especially in cyprus. berytus shared with byblos the glory of having had el for its founder.* the road which connects these two cities makes a lengthy detour in its course along the coast, having to cross numberless ravines and rocky summits: before reaching palai-byblos, it passes over a headland by a series of steps cut into the rock, forming a kind of �ladder� similar to that which is encountered lower down, between acre and the plains of tyre. * the name berytus was found by hincks in the egyptian texts under the form. bîrutu, beîrutu; it occurs frequently in the tel el-amarna tablets. the river lykos runs like a kind of natural fosse along the base of this steep headland. it forms at the present time a torrent, fed by the melting snows of mount sannin, and is entirely unnavigable. it was better circumstanced formerly in this respect, and even in the early years of the boman conquest, sailors from arvad (arados) were accustomed to sail up it as far as one of the passes of the lower lebanon, leading into cole-syria. berytus was installed at the base of a great headland which stands out boldly into the sea, and forms the most striking promontory to be met with in these regions from carmel to the vicinity of arvad. the port is nothing but an open creek with a petty roadstead, but it has the advantage of a good supply of fresh water, which pours down from the numerous springs to which it is indebted for its name.* according to ancient legends, it was given by el to one of his offspring called poseidon by the greeks. * the name beyrut has been often derived from a phconician word signifying _cypress_, and which may have been applied to the pine tree. the phoenicians themselves derived it from bîr, �wells.� adonis desired to take possession of it, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the maritime baal secured the permanence of his rule by marrying one of his sisters--the baalat-beyrut who is represented as a nymph on græco-roman coins.* the rule of the city extended as far as the banks of the tamur, and an old legend narrates that its patron fought in ancient times with the deity of that river, hurling stones at him to prevent his becoming master of the land to the north. the bar formed of shingle and the dunes which contract the entrance were regarded as evidences of this conflict.** * the poet nonnus has preserved a highly embellished account of this rivalry, where adonis is called dionysos. ** the original name appears to have been tamur, tamyr, from a word signifying �palm� in the phoenician language. the myth of the conflict between poseidon and the god of the river, a baal-demarous, has been explained by renan, who accepts the identification of the river-deity with baal- thamar, already mentioned by movers. beyond the southern bank of the river, sidon sits enthroned as �the firstborn of canaan.� in spite of this ambitious title it was at first nothing but a poor fishing village founded by bel, the agenor of the greeks, on the southern slope of a spit of land which juts out obliquely towards the south-west.* it grew from year to year, spreading out over the plain, and became at length one of the most prosperous of the chief cities of the country--a �mother� in phoenicia.** * sidon is called �the firstborn of canaan� in genesis: the name means a fishing-place, as the classical authors already knew--�nam piscem phonices _sidôn_ appellant.� ** in the coins of classic times it is called �sidon, the mother--_om_--of kambe, hippo, citium, and tyre.� the port, once so celebrated, is shut in by three chains of half-sunken reefs, which, running out from the northern end of the peninsula, continue parallel to the coast for some hundreds of yards: narrow passages in these reefs afford access to the harbour; one small island, which is always above water, occupies the centre of this natural dyke of rocks, and furnishes a site for a maritime quarter opposite to the continental city.* the necropolis on the mainland extends to the east and north, and consists of an irregular series of excavations made in a low line of limestone cliffs which must have been lashed by the waves of the mediterranean long prior to the beginning of history. these tombs are crowded closely together, ramifying into an inextricable maze, and are separated from each other by such thin walls that one expects every moment to see them give way, and bury the visitors in the ruin. many date back to a very early period, while all of them have been re-worked and re-appropriated over and over again. the latest occupiers were contemporaries of the macedonian kings or the roman cæsars. space was limited and costly in this region of the dead: the sidonians made the best use they could of the tombs, burying in them again and again, as the egyptians were accustomed to do in their cemeteries at thebes and memphis. the surrounding plain is watered by the �pleasant bostrênos,� and is covered with gardens which are reckoned to be the most beautiful in all syria--at least after those of damascus: their praises were sung even in ancient days, and they had then earned for the city the epithet of �the flowery sidon.� ** * the only description of the port which we possess is that in the romance of olitophon and leucippus by achilles tatius. ** the bostrênos, which is perhaps to be recognised under the form borinos in the periplus of scylax, is the modern nahr el-awaly. here, also, an astartê ruled over the destinies of the people, but a chaste and immaculate astartê, a self-restrained and warlike virgin, sometimes identified with the moon, sometimes with the pale and frigid morning star.* in addition to this goddess, the inhabitants worshipped a baal-sidon, and other divinities of milder character--an astartê shem-baal, wife of the supreme baal, and eshmun, a god of medicine--each of whom had his own particular temple either in the town itself or in some neighbouring village in the mountain. baal delighted in travel, and was accustomed to be drawn in a chariot through the valleys of phoenicia in order to receive the prayers and offerings of his devotees. the immodest astartê, excluded, it would seem, from the official religion, had her claims acknowledged in the cult offered to her by the people, but she became the subject of no poetic or dolorous legend like her namesake at byblos, and there was no attempt to disguise her innately coarse character by throwing over it a garb of sentiment. she possessed in the suburbs her chapels and grottoes, hollowed out in the hillsides, where she was served by the usual crowd of _ephébæ_ and sacred courtesans. some half-dozen towns or fortified villages, such as bitzîti,** the lesser sidon, and sarepta, were scattered along the shore, or on the lowest slopes of the lebanon. * astartê is represented in the bible as the goddess of the sidonians, and she is in fact the object of the invocations addressed to the mistress deity in the sidonian inscriptions, the patroness of the town. kings and queens were her priests and priestesses respectively. ** bitzîti is not mentioned except in the assyrian texts, and has been identified with the modern region ait ez-zeîtûn to the south-east of sidon. it is very probably the elaia of philo of byblos, the biais of dionysios periegetes, which renan is inclined to identify with heldua, khan-khaldi, by substituting eldis as a correction. sidonian territory reached its limit at the cape of sarepta, where the high-lands again meet the sea at the boundary of one of those basins into which phoenicia is divided. passing beyond this cape, we come first upon a tyrian outpost, the town of birds;* then upon the village of nazana** with its river of the same name; beyond this upon a plain hemmed in by low hills, cultivated to their summits; then on tombs and gardens in the suburbs of autu;*** and, further still, to a fleet of boats moored at a short distance from the shore, where a group of reefs and islands furnishes at one and the same time a site for the houses and temples of tyre, and a protection from its foes. * the phoenician name of ornithônpolis is unknown to us: the town is often mentioned by the geographers of classic times, but with certain differences, some placing it to the north and others to the south of sarepta. it was near to the site of adlun, the adnonum of the latin itineraries, if it was not actually the same place. ** nazana was both the name of the place and the river, as kasimîyeh and khan kasimîyeh, near the same locality, are to-day. *** autu was identified by brugsch with avatha, which is probably el-awwâtîn, on the hill facing tyre. max müller, who reads the word as authu, ozu, prefers the uru or ushu of the assyrian texts. it was already an ancient town at the beginning of the egyptian conquest. as in other places of ancient date, the inhabitants rejoiced in stories of the origin of things in which the city figured as the most venerable in the world. after the period of the creating gods, there followed immediately, according to the current legends, two or three generations of minor deities--heroes of light and flame--who had learned how to subdue fire and turn it to their needs; then a race of giants, associated with the giant peaks of kasios, lebanon, hermon, and brathy;* after which were born two male children--twins: samem-rum, the lord of the supernal heaven, and usôos, the hunter. human beings at this time lived a savage life, wandering through the woods, and given up to shameful vices. * the identification of the peak of brathy is uncertain. the name has been associated with tabor: since it exactly recalls the name of the cypress and of berytus, it would be more prudent, perhaps, to look for the name in that of one of the peaks of the lebanon near the latter town. [illustration: .jpg the ambrosian rocks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. samemrum took up his abode among them in that region which became in later times the tyrian coast, and showed them how to build huts, papyrus, or other reeds: usôos in the mean time pursued the avocation of a hunter of wild beasts, living upon their flesh and clothing himself with their skins. a conflict at length broke out between the two brothers, the inevitable result of rivalry between the ever-wandering hunter and the husbandman attached to the soil. usôos succeeded in holding his own till the day when fire and wind took the part of his enemy against him.* the trees, shaken and made to rub against each other by the tempest, broke into flame from the friction, and the forest was set on fire. usôos, seizing a leafy branch, despoiled it of its foliage, and placing it in the water let it drift out to sea, bearing him, the first of his race, with it. * the text simply states the material facts, the tempest and the fire: the general movement of the narrative seems to prove that the intervention of these elements is an episode in the quarrel between the two brothers--that in which usôos is forced to fly from the region civilized by samemrum. landing on one of the islands, he set up two menhirs, dedicating them to fire and wind that he might thenceforward gain their favour. he poured out at their base the blood of animals he had slaughtered, and after his death, his companions continued to perform the rites which he had inaugurated. [illustration: .jpg] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the original in the _cabinet des médailles_. the town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called tyre, the �rock,� and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. it was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. two peaks looked down upon it--the �ambrosian rocks�--between which grew the olive tree of astartê, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. an eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. usôos, the herakles, destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. coins of the roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelæ only. from this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island; astartê herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star--an aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys. [illustration: .jpg tyre and its suburbs on the mainland] baal was called the melkarth. king of the city, and the greeks after» wards identified him with their herakles. his worship was of a severe and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his priests, like those of the egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused permission to married women to approach the altars.* * the worship of melkarth at gados (cadiz) and the functions of his priests are described by silius italicus: as gades was a tyrian colony, it has been naturally assumed that the main features of the religion of tyre were reproduced there, and silius�s account of the melkarth of gades thus applies to his namesake of the mother city. festivals, similar to those of adonis at byblos, were held in his honour twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with great joy. his temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. it served to remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the phoenicians on the shores of the mediterranean. the town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of arvad to provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. the waters of the well of eas el-aîn had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.** * the festival commemorating his death by fire was celebrated at tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the greater number of the tyrian colonies. ** abisharri (abimilki), king of tyre, confesses to the pharaoh amenôthes iii. that in case of a siege his town would neither have water nor wood. aqueducts and conduits of water are spoken of by menander as existing in the time of shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing their construction to a very remote antiquity. the strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the nile at several points of its course through middle egypt, but it was as effective as a broader channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened siege. * according to the writers who were contemporary with alexander, the strait was stadia wide (nearly / mile), or paces (about / mile), at the period when the macedonians undertook the siege of the town; the author followed by pliny says paces, possibly over--mile wide. from the observations of poulain de bossay, renan thinks the space between the island and the mainland might be nearly a mile in width, but we should perhaps do well to reduce this higher figure and adopt one agreeing better with the statements of diodorus and quintus curtius. like the coast region opposite arvad, the shore which faced tyre, lying between the mouth of the litany and ras el-aîn, was an actual suburb of the city itself--with its gardens, its cultivated fields, its cemeteries, its villas, and its fortifications. here the inhabitants of the island were accustomed to bury their dead, and hither they repaired for refreshment during the heat of the summer. to the north the little town of mahalliba, on the southern bank of the litâny, and almost hidden from view by a turn in the hills, commanded the approaches to the bekaa, and the high-road to coele-syria.* to the south, at ras el-aîn, old tyre (palastyrus) looked down upon the route leading into galilee by way of the mountains.** * mahalliba is the present khurbet-mahallib. ** palrotyrus has often been considered as a tyre on the mainland of greater antiquity than the town of the same name on the island; it is now generally admitted that it was merely an outpost, which is conjecturally placed by most scholars in the neighbourhood of ras el-aîn. eastwards autu commanded the landing-places on the shore, and served to protect the reservoirs; it lay under the shadow of a rock, on which was built, facing the insular temple of melkarth, protector of mariners, a sanctuary of almost equal antiquity dedicated to his namesake of the mainland.* the latter divinity was probably the representative of the legendary samemrum, who had built his village on the coast, while usôos had founded his on the ocean. he was the baalsamîm of starry tunic, lord of heaven and king of the sun. * if the name has been preserved, as i believe it to be, in that of el-awwâtîn, the town must be that whose ruins we find at the foot of tell-mashûk, and which are often mistaken for those of palastyrus. the temple on the summit of the tell was probably that of heracles astrochitôn mentioned by nonnus. as was customary, a popular astartê was associated with these deities of high degree, and tradition asserted that melkarth purchased her favour by the gift of the first robe of tyrian purple which was ever dyed. priestesses of the goddess had dwellings in all parts of the plain, and in several places the caves are still pointed out where they entertained the devotees of the goddess. behind autu the ground rises abruptly, and along the face of the escarpment, half hidden by trees and brushwood, are the remains of the most important of the tyrian burying-places, consisting of half-filled-up pits, isolated caves, and dark galleries, where whole families lie together in their last sleep. in some spots the chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger, and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of upper egypt. they present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. the entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. at one place only, near the modern village of hanaweh, a few groups of figures and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the burying-place of some chief of very early times. [illustration: .jpg the sculptured rocks of hanaweh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by lortet. these figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild ravine. they vary from feet inches to feet in height, the bodies being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn, at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the asiatic garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of a certain skill. whether they are to be regarded as the product of a primitive amorite art or of a school of phoenician craftsmen, we are unable to determine. in the time of their prosperity the tyrians certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. the wind-swept but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of the lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable industry--remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns, pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields, interspersed with oil and wine presses. the phoenicians took naturally to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later times.* * their taste for agriculture, and the comparative perfection of their modes of culture, are proved by the greatness of the remains still to be observed: �the phoenicians constructed a winepress, a trough, to last for ever.� their colonists at carthage carried with them the same clever methods, and the romans borrowed many excellent things in the way of agriculture from carthaginian books, especially from those of mago. among no other people was the art of irrigation so successfully practised, and from such a narrow strip of territory as belonged to them no other cultivators could have gathered such abundant harvests of wheat and barley, and such supplies of grapes, olives, and other fruits. from arvad to tyre, and even beyond it, the littoral region and the central parts of the valleys presented a long ribbon of verdure of varying breadth, where fields of corn were blended with gardens and orchards and shady woods. the whole region was independent and self-supporting, the inhabitants having no need to address themselves to their neighbours in the interior, or to send their children to seek their fortune in distant lands. to insure prosperity, nothing was needed but a slight exercise of labour and freedom from the devastating influence of war. the position of the country was such as to secure it from attack, and from the conflicts which laid waste the rest of syria. along almost the entire eastern border of the country the lebanon was a great wall of defence running parallel to the coast, strengthened at each extremity by the additional protection of the rivers nahr el-kebîr and litany. its slopes were further defended by the forest, which, with its lofty trees and brushwood, added yet another barrier to that afforded by rocks and snow. hunters� or shepherds� paths led here and there in tortuous courses from one side of the mountain to the other. near the middle of the country two roads, practicable in all seasons, secured communications between the littoral and the plain of the interior. they branched off on either side from the central road in the neighbourhood of tabakhi, south of qodshu, and served the needs of the wooded province of magara.* this region was inhabited by pillaging tribes, which the egyptians called at one time lamnana, the libanites,** at others shausu, using for them the same appellation as that which they bestowed upon the bedouin of the desert. * magara is mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. , and chabas has identified it with the plain of macra, which strabo places in syria, in the neighbourhood of eloutheros. ** the name lamnana is given in a picture of the campaigns of seti i. the roads through this province ran under the dense shade afforded by oaks, cedars, and cypresses, in an obscurity favourable to the habits of the wolves and hyamas which infested it, and even of those thick-maned lions known to asia at the time; and then proceeding in its course, crossed the ridge in the neighbourhood of the snow-peak called shaua, which is probably the sannîn of our times. while one of these roads, running north along the lake of yamuneh and through the gorge of akura, then proceeded along the adonis* to byblos, the other took a southern direction, and followed the nahr el-kelb to the sea. * this is the road pointed out by renan as the easiest but least known of those which cross the lebanon; the remains of an assyrian inscription graven on the rocks near aîn el- asafîr show that it was employed from a very early date, and renan thought that it was used by the armies which came from the upper valley of the orontes. towards the mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory. commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, although they offered access into the very heart of phoenicia. invaders would encounter here, in fact, a little known and broken country, lending itself readily to surprises and ambuscades; and should they reach the foot of the lebanon range, they would find themselves entrapped in a region of slippery defiles, with steep paths at intervals cut into the rock, and almost inaccessible to chariots or horses, and so narrow in places that a handful of resolute men could have held them for a long time against whole battalions. the enemy preferred to make for the two natural breaches at the respective extremities of the line of defence, and for the two insular cities which flanked the approaches to them--tyre in the case of those coming from egypt, arvad and simyra for assailants from the euphrates. the arvadians, bellicose by nature, would offer strong resistance to the invader, and not permit themselves to be conquered without a brave struggle with the enemy, however powerful he might be.* when the disproportion of the forces which they could muster against the enemy convinced them of the folly of attempting an open conflict, their island-home offered them a refuge where they would be safe from any attacks. * thûtmosis iii. was obliged to enter on a campaign against arvad in the year xxix., in the year xxx., and probably twice in the following years. under amenôthes iii. and iv. we see that these people took part in all the intrigues directed against egypt; they were the allies of the khati against ramses ii. in the campaign of the year v. and later on we find them involved in most of the wars against assyria. sometimes the burning and pillaging of their property on the mainland might reduce them to throw themselves on the mercy of their foes, but such submission did not last long, and they welcomed the slightest occasion for regaining their liberty. conquered again and again on account of the smallness of their numbers, they were never discouraged by their reverses, and phoenicia owed all its military history for a long period to their prowess. the tyrians were of a more accommodating nature, and there is no evidence, at least during the early centuries of their existence, of the display of those obstinate and blind transports of bravery by which the arvadians were carried away.* * no campaign against tyre is mentioned in any of the egyptian annals: the expedition of thûtmosis iii. against senzauru was directed against a town of coele-syria mentioned in the tel el-amarna tablets with the orthography zinzar, the sizara-larissa of græco-roman times, the shaizar of the arab chronicles. on the contrary, the tel el-amarna tablets contain several passages which manifest the fidelity of tyre and its governors to the king of egypt. their foreign policy was reduced to a simple arithmetical question, which they discussed in the light of their industrial or commercial interests. as soon as they had learned from a short experience that a certain pharaoh had at his disposal armies against which they could offer no serious opposition, they at once surrendered to him, and thought only of obtaining the greatest profit from the vassalage to which they were condemned. the obligation to pay tribute did not appear to them so much in the light of a burthen or a sacrifice, as a means of purchasing the right to go to and fro freely in egypt, or in the countries subject to its influence. the commerce acquired by these privileges recouped them more than a hundredfold for all that their overlord demanded from them. the other cities of the coast--sidon, berytus, byblos--usually followed the example of tyre, whether from mercenary motives, or from their naturally pacific disposition, or from a sense of their impotence; and the same intelligent resignation with which, as we know, they accepted the supremacy of the great egyptian empire, was doubtless displayed in earlier centuries in their submission to the babylonians. their records show that they did not accept this state of things merely through cowardice or indolence, for they are represented as ready to rebel and shake off the yoke of their foreign master when they found it incompatible with their practical interests. but their resort to war was exceptional; they generally preferred to submit to the powers that be, and to accept from them as if on lease the strip of coast-line at the base of the lebanon, which served as a site for their warehouses and dockyards. thus they did not find the yoke of the stranger irksome--the sea opening up to them a realm of freedom and independence which compensated them for the limitations of both territory and liberty imposed upon them at home. the epoch which was marked by their first venture on the mediterranean, and the motives which led to it, were alike unknown to them. the gods had taught them navigation, and from the beginning of things they had taken to the sea as fishermen, or as explorers in search of new lands.* they were not driven by poverty to leave their continental abode, or inspired thereby with a zeal for distant cruises. they had at home sufficient corn and wine, oil and fruits, to meet all their needs, and even to administer to a life of luxury. and if they lacked cattle, the abundance of fish within their reach compensated for the absence of flesh-meat. * according to one of the cosmogonies of sanchoniathon, khusôr, who has been identified with hephsestos, was the inventor of the fishing-boat, and was the first among men and gods who taught navigation. according to another legend, melkarth showed the tyrians how to make a raft from the branches of a fig tree, while the construction of the first ships is elsewhere ascribed to the _cabiri_. nor was it the number of commodiously situated ports on their coast which induced them to become a seafaring people, for their harbours were badly protected for the most part, and offered no shelter when the wind set in from the north, the rugged shore presenting little resource against the wind and waves in its narrow and shallow havens. it was the nature of the country itself which contributed more than anything else to make them mariners. the precipitous mountain masses which separate one valley from another rendered communication between them difficult, while they served also as lurking-places for robbers. commerce endeavoured to follow, therefore, the sea-route in preference to the devious ways of this highwayman�s region, and it accomplished its purpose the more readily because the common occupation of sea-fishing had familiarised the people with every nook and corner on the coast. the continual wash of the surge had worn away the bases of the limestone cliffs, and the superincumbent masses tumbling down into the sea formed lines of rocks, hardly rising above the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. it required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. the coasting trade was attracted from arvad successively to berytus, sidon, and tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. it was in full operation, doubtless, from the vith egyptian dynasty onwards, when the pharaohs no longer hesitated to embark troops at the mouth of the nile for speedy transmission to the provinces of southern syria, and it was by this coasting route that the tin and amber of the north succeeded in reaching the interior of egypt. the trade was originally, it would seem, in the hands of those mysterious kefâtiu of whom the name only was known in later times. when the phoenicians established themselves at the foot of the lebanon, they had probably only to take the place of their predecessors and to follow the beaten tracks which they had already made. we have every reason to believe that they took to a seafaring life soon after their arrival in the country, and that they adapted themselves and their civilization readily to the exigencies of a maritime career.* * connexion between phoenicia and greece was fully established at the outbreak of the egyptian wars, and we may safely assume their existence in the centuries immediately preceding the second millennium before our era. in their towns, as in most sea-ports, there was a considerable foreign element, both of slaves and freemen, but the egyptians confounded them all under one name, kefâtiu, whether they were cypriotes, asiatics, or europeans, or belonged to the true tyrian and sidonian race. the costume of the kafîti was similar to that worn by the people of the interior--the loin-cloth, with or without a long upper garment: while in tiring the hair they adopted certain refinements, specially a series of curls which the men arranged in the form of an aigrette above their foreheads. this motley collection of races was ruled over by an oligarchy of merchants and shipowners, whose functions were hereditary, and who usually paid homage to a single king, the representative of the tutelary god, and absolute master of the city.* * under the egyptian supremacy, the local princes did not assume the royal title in the despatches which they addressed to the kings of egypt, but styled themselves governors of their cities. the industries pursued in phoenicia were somewhat similar to those of other parts of syria; the stuffs, vases, and ornaments made at tyre and sidon could not be distinguished from those of hamath or of carchemish. [illustration .jpg one of the kafÎti from the tomb of rakhmirÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured sketches by prisse d�avennes in the natural hist. museum. all manufactures bore the impress of babylonian influence, and their implements, weights, measures, and system of exchange were the same as those in use among the chaldæans. the products of the country were, however, not sufficient to freight the fleets which sailed from phoenicia every year bound for all parts of the known world, and additional supplies had to be regularly obtained from neighbouring peoples, who thus became used to pour into tyre and sidon the surplus of their manufactures, or of the natural wealth of their country. the phoenicians were also accustomed to send caravans into regions which they could not reach in their caracks, and to establish trading stations at the fords of rivers, or in the passes over mountain ranges. we know of the existence of such emporia at laish near the sources of the jordan, at thapsacus, and at nisibis, and they must have served the purpose of a series of posts on the great highways of the world. the settlements of the phoenicians always assumed the character of colonies, and however remote they might be from their fatherland, the colonists never lost the manners and customs of their native country. they collected together into their _okels_ or storehouses such wares and commodities as they could purchase in their new localities, and, transmitting them periodically to the coast, shipped them thence to all parts of the world. not only were they acquainted with every part of the mediterranean, but they had even made voyages beyond its limits. in the absence, however, of any specific records of their naval enterprise, the routes they followed must be a subject of conjecture. they were accustomed to relate that the gods, after having instructed them in the art of navigation, had shown them the way to the setting sun, and had led them by their example to make voyages even beyond the mouths of the ocean. el of byblos was the first to leave syria; he conquered greece and egypt, sicily and libya, civilizing their inhabitants, and laying the foundation of cities everywhere. the sidonian astartê, with her head surmounted by the horns of an ox, was the next to begin her wanderings over the inhabited earth. melkarth completed the task of the gods by discovering and subjugating those countries which had escaped the notice of his predecessors. hundreds of local traditions, to be found on all the shores of the mediterranean down to roman times, bore witness to the pervasive influence of the old canaanite colonisation. at cyprus, for instance, wo find traces of the cultus of kinyras, king of byblos and father of adonis; again, at crete, it is the daughter of a prince of sidon, buropa, who is carried off by zeus under the form of a bull; it was kadmos, sent forth to seek buropa, who visited cyprus, rhodes, and the cyclades before building thebes in boeotia and dying in the forests of illyria. in short, wherever the phoenicians had obtained a footing, their audacious activity made such an indelible impression upon the mind of the native inhabitants that they never forgot those vigorous thick-set men with pale faces and dark beards, and soft and specious speech, who appeared at intervals in their large and swift sailing vessels. they made their way cautiously along the coast, usually keeping in sight of land, making sail when the wind was favourable, or taking to the oars for days together when occasion demanded it, anchoring at night under the shelter of some headland, or in bad weather hauling their vessels up the beach until the morrow. they did not shrink when it was necessary from trusting themselves to the open sea, directing their course by the pole-star;* in this manner they often traversed long distances out of sight of land, and they succeeded in making in a short time voyages previously deemed long and costly. * the greeks for this reason called it phonikê, the phoenician star; ancient writers refer to the use which the phoenicians made of the pole-star to guide them in navigation. it is hard to say whether they were as much merchants as pirates--indeed, they hardly knew themselves--and their peaceful or warlike attitude towards vessels which they encountered on the seas, or towards the people whose countries they frequented, was probably determined by the circumstances of the moment.* if on arrival at a port they felt themselves no match for the natives, the instinct of the merchant prevailed, and that of the pirate was kept in the background. they landed peaceably, gained the good will of the native chief and his nobles by small presents, and spreading out their wares, contented themselves, if they could do no better, with the usual advantage obtained in an exchange of goods. * the manner in which the phoenicians plied their trade is strikingly described in the _odyssey_, in the part where eumaios relates how he was carried off by a sidonian vessel and sold as a slave: cf. the passage which mentions the ravages of the greeks on the coast of the delta. herodotus recalls the rape of io, daughter of inachos, by the phoenicians, who carried her and her companions into egypt; on the other hand, during one of their egyptian expeditions they had taken two priestesses from thebes, and had transported one of them to dodona, the other into libya. they were never in a hurry, and would remain in one spot until they had exhausted all the resources of the country, while they knew to a nicety how to display their goods attractively before the expected customer. their wares comprised weapons and ornaments for men, axes, swords, incised or damascened daggers with hilts of gold or ivory, bracelets, necklaces, amulets of all kinds, enamelled vases, glass-work, stuffs dyed purple or embroidered with gay colours. at times the natives, whose cupidity was excited by the exhibition of such valuables, would attempt to gain possession of them either by craft or by violence. they would kill the men who had landed, or attempt to surprise the vessel during the night. but more often it was the phoenicians who took advantage of the friendliness or the weakness of their hosts. [illustration: .jpg page image] they would turn treacherously upon the unarmed crowd when absorbed in the interest of buying and selling; robbing and killing the old men, they would make prisoners of the young and strong, the women and children, carrying them off to sell them in those markets where slaves were known to fetch the highest price. this was a recognised trade, but it exposed the phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an undying hatred. when on these distant expeditions they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. a mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to obtain help in any of the places they might visit, their prospects were of a desperate character. they soon, therefore, learned the necessity of establishing cities of refuge at various points in the countries with which they traded--stations where they could go to refit and revictual their vessels, to fill up the complement of their crews, to take in new freight, and, if necessary, pass the winter or wait for fair weather before continuing their voyage. for this purpose they chose by preference islands lying within easy distance of the mainland, like their native cities of tyre and arvad, but possessing a good harbour or roadstead. if an island were not available, they selected a peninsula with a narrow isthmus, or a rock standing at the extremity of a promontory, which a handful of men could defend against any attack, and which could be seen from a considerable distance by their pilots. most of their stations thus happily situated became at length important towns. they were frequented by the natives from the interior, who allied themselves with the new-comers, and furnished them not only with objects of trade, but with soldiers, sailors, and recruits for their army; and such was the rapid spread of these colonies, that before long the mediterranean was surrounded by an almost unbroken chain of phoenician strongholds and trading stations. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian trading vessel of the first half of the xviiith dynasty] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. all the towns of the mother country--arvad, byblos, berytus, tyre, and sidon--possessed vessels engaged in cruising long before the egyptian conquest of syria. we have no direct information from any existing monument to show us what these vessels were like, but we are familiar with the construction of the galleys which formed the fleets of the pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty. the art of shipbuilding had made considerable progress since the times of the memphite kings. prom the period when egypt aspired to become one of the great powers of the world, she doubtless endeavoured to bring her naval force to the same pitch of perfection as her land forces could boast of, and her fleets probably consisted of the best vessels which the dockyards of that day could turn out. phoenician vessels of this period may therefore be regarded with reason as constructed on lines similar to those of the egyptian ships, differing from them merely in the minor details of the shape of the hull and manner of rigging. the hull continued to be built long and narrow, rising at the stem and stern. the bow was terminated by a sort of hook, to which, in time of peace, a bronze ornament was attached, fashioned to represent the head of a divinity, gazelle, or bull, while in time of war this was superseded by a metal cut-water made fast to the hull by several turns of stout rope, the blade rising some couple of yards above the level of the deck.* the poop was ornamented with a projection firmly attached to the body of the vessel, but curved inwards and terminated by an open lotus-flower. an upper deck, surrounded by a wooden rail, was placed at the bow and stern to serve as forecastle and quarterdecks respectively, and in order to protect the vessel from the danger of heavy seas the ship was strengthened by a structure to which we find nothing analogous in the shipbuilding of classical times: an enormous cable attached to the gammonings of the bow rose obliquely to a height of about a couple of yards above the deck, and, passing over four small crutched masts, was made fast again to the gammonings of the stern. the hull measured from the blade of the cut-water to the stern-post some twenty to five and twenty yards, but the lowest part of the hold did not exceed five feet in depth. there was no cabin, and the ballast, arms, provisions, and spare-rigging occupied the open hold.** * to get a clear idea of the details of this structure, we have only to compare the appearance of ships with and without a cut-water in the scenes at thebes, representing the celebration of a festival at the return of the fleet. ** m. glaser thinks that there were cabins for the crew under the deck, and he recognises in the sixteen oblong marks on the sides of the vessels at deîr el-bahari so many dead-lights; as there could not have been space for so many cabins, i had concluded that these were ports for oars to be used in time of battle, but on further consideration i saw that they represented the ends of the beams supporting the deck. the bulwarks were raised to a height of some two feet, and the thwarts of the rowers ran up to them on both the port and starboard sides, leaving an open space in the centre for the long-boat, bales of merchandise, soldiers, slaves, and additional passengers.* a double set of steering-oars and a single mast completed the equipment. the latter, which rose to a height of some twenty-six feet, was placed amidships, and was held in an upright position by stays. the masthead was surmounted by two arrangements which answered respectively to the top [�gabie�] and _calcet_ of the masts of a galley.** there were no shrouds on each side from the masthead to the rail, but, in place of them, two stays ran respectively to the bow and stern. the single square-sail was extended between two yards some sixty to seventy feet long, and each made of two pieces spliced together at the centre. the upper yard was straight, while the lower curved upward at the ends. the yard was hoisted and lowered by two halyards, which were made fast aft at the feet of the steersmen. the yard was kept in its place by two lifts which came down from the masthead, and were attached respectively about eight feet from the end of each yard-arm. when the yard was hauled up it was further supported by six auxiliary lifts, three being attached to each yard-arm. the lower yard, made fast to the mast by a figure-of-eight knot, was secured by sixteen lifts, which, like those of the upper yard, worked through the �calcet.� * one of the bas-reliefs exhibits a long-boat in the water at the time the fleet was at anchor at puanît. as we do not find any vessel towing one after her, we naturally conclude that the boat must have been stowed on board. ** the �gabie� was a species of top where a sailor was placed on the look-out. the �calcet� is, properly speaking, a square block of wood containing the sheaves on which the halyards travelled. the egyptian apparatus had no sheaves, and answers to the �calcet� on the masts of a galley only in its serving the same purpose. the crew comprised thirty rowers, fifteen on each side, four top-men, two steersmen, a pilot at the bow, who signalled to the men at the helm the course to steer, a captain and a governor of the slaves, who formed, together with ten soldiers, a total of some fifty men.* in time of battle, as the rowers would be exposed to the missiles of the enemy, the bulwarks were further heightened by a mantlet, behind which the oars could be freely moved, while the bodies of the men were fully protected, their heads alone being visible above it. the soldiers were stationed as follows: two of them took their places on the forecastle, a third was perched on the masthead in a sort of cage improvised on the bars forming the top, while the remainder were posted on the deck and poop, from which positions and while waiting for the order to board they could pour a continuous volley of arrows on the archers and sailors of the enemy.** * i have made this calculation from an examination of the scenes in which ships are alternatively represented as at anchor and under weigh. i know of vessels of smaller size, and consequently with a smaller crew, but i know of none larger or more fully manned. ** the details are taken from the only representation of a naval battle which we possess up to this moment, viz. that of which i shall have occasion to speak further on in connection with the reign of ramses iii. the first colony of which the phoenicians made themselves masters was that island of cyprus whose low, lurid outline they could see on fine summer evenings in the glow of the western sky. some hundred and ten miles in length and thirty-six in breadth, it is driven like a wedge into the angle which asia minor makes with the syrian coast: it throws out to the north-east a narrow strip of land, somewhat like an extended finger pointing to where the two coasts meet at the extremity of the gulf of issos. a limestone cliff, of almost uniform height throughout, bounds, for half its length at least, the northern side of the island, broken occasionally by short deep valleys, which open out into creeks deeply embayed. a scattered population of fishermen exercised their calling in this region, and small towns, of which we possess only the greek or grecised names--karpasia, aphrodision, kerynia, lapethos--led there a slumbering existence. almost in the centre of the island two volcanic peaks, troodes and olympos, face each other, and rise to a height of nearly feet, the range of mountains to which they belong--that of aous--forming the framework of the island. the spurs of this range fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out either into stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into great maritime flats fringed with brackish lagoons. the valley which lies on the northern side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an almost unbroken level. a scarcely perceptible watershed divides the valley into two basins similar to those of syria, the larger of the two lying opposite to the phoenician coast. the soil consists of black mould, as rich as that of egypt, and renewed yearly by the overflowing of the pediæos and its affluents. thick forests occupied the interior, promising inexhaustible resources to any naval power. even under the koman emperors the cypriotes boasted that they could build and fit out a ship from the keel to the masthead without looking to resources beyond those of their own island. the ash, pine, cypress, and oak flourished on the sides of the range of aous, while cedars grew there to a greater height and girth than even on the lebanon. wheat, barley, olive trees, vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the altar, medicinal plants such as the poppy and the _ladanum_, henna for staining with a deep orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and fingertips of the women, all found here a congenial habitat; while a profusion everywhere of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air with their penetrating odours--spring violets, many-coloured anemones, the lily, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose--led the greeks to bestow upon the island the designation of �the balmy cyprus.� mines also contributed their share to the riches of which the island could boast. iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and other precious stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times the neighbourhood of tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name �cyprium,� and the word passed from them into all the languages of europe. it is not easy to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the island belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the kefâtiu, who frequented the asiatic shores of the mediterranean from a very remote period. in the time of egyptian supremacy they called their country asi, and this name inclines one to connect the people with the Ægeans.* an examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs of the island seems to confirm this opinion. these consist, for the most part, of weapons and implements of stone--knives, hatchets, hammers, and arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design--pitchers with contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail variety, provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles. * �asi,� �asîi,� was at first sought for on the asiatic continent--at is on the euphrates, or in palestine: the discovery of the canopic decree allows us to identify it with cyprus, and this has now been generally done. the reading �asebi� is still maintained by some. [illustration: .jpg map of cyprus] the pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it consists of incised geometrical designs. copper and bronze, where we find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making daggers. there is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and yet cyprus had already at this time entered into relations with the civilized nations of the continent.* according to chaldæan tradition, it was conquered about the year b.c. by sargon of agadê: without insisting upon the reality of this conquest, which in any case must have been ephemeral in its nature, there is reason to believe that the island was subjected from an early period to the influence of the various peoples which lived one after another on the slopes of the lebanon. popular legend attributes to king kinyras and to the giblites [i.e. the people of byblos] the establishment of the first phoenician colonies in the southern region of the island--one of them being at paphos, where the worship of adonis and astartê continued to a very late date. the natives preserved their own language and customs, had their own chiefs, and maintained their national independence, while constrained to submit at the same time to the presence of phoenician colonists or merchants on the coast, and in the neighbourhood of the mines in the mountains. the trading centres of these settlers--kition, amathus, solius, golgos, and tamassos--were soon, however, converted into strongholds, which ensured to phonicia the monopoly of the immense wealth contained in the island.** * an examination into the origin of the cypriotes formed part of the original scheme of this work, together with that of the monuments of the various races scattered along the coast of asia minor and the islands of the Ægean; but i have been obliged to curtail it, in order to keep within the limits i had proscribed for myself, and i have merely epitomised, as briefly as possible, the results of the researches undertaken in those regions during the last few years. ** the phoenician origin of these towns is proved by passages from classical writers. the date of the colonisation is uncertain, but with the knowledge we possess of the efficient vessels belonging to the various phoenician towns, it would seem difficult not to allow that the coasts at least of cyprus must have been partially occupied at the time of the egyptian invasions. tyre and sidon had no important centres of industry on that part of the canaanite coast which extended to the south of carmel, and egypt, even in the time of the shepherd kings, would not have tolerated the existence on her territory of any great emporium not subject to the immediate supervision of her official agents. we know that the libyan cliffs long presented an obstacle to inroads into egyptian territory, and baffled any attempts to land to the westwards of the delta: the phoenicians consequently turned with all the greater ardour to those northern regions which for centuries had furnished them with most valuable products--bronze, tin, amber, and iron, both native and wrought. a little to the north of the orontes, where the syrian border is crossed and asia minor begins, the coast turns due west and runs in that direction for a considerable distance. the phoenicians were accustomed to trade along this region, and we may attribute, perhaps, to them the foundation of those obscure cities--kibyra, masura, euskopus, sylion, mygdalê, and sidyma*--all of which preserved their apparently semitic names down to the time of the roman epoch. the whole of the important island of rhodes fell into their power, and its three ports, ialysos, lindos*, and kamiros, afforded them a well-situated base of operations for further colonisation. on leaving rhodes, the choice of two routes presented itself to them. to the south-west they could see the distant outline of karpathos, and on the far horizon behind it the summits of the cretan chain. crete itself bars on the south the entrance to the Ægean, and is almost a little continent, self-contained and self-sufficing. * no direct evidence exists to lead us to attribute the foundation of these towns to the phoenicians, but the semitic origin of nearly all the names is an uncontested fact. [illustration: .jpg the murex trunculus] it is made up of fertile valleys and mountains clothed with forests, and its inhabitants could employ themselves in mines and fisheries. the phoenicians effected a settlement on the coast at itanos, at kairatos, and at arados, and obtained possession of the peak of cythera, where, it is said, they raised a sanctuary to astartê. if, on leaving rhodes, they had chosen to steer due north, they would soon have come into contact with numerous rocky islets scattered in the sea between the continents of asia and europe, which would have furnished them with as many stations, less easy of attack, and more readily defended than posts on the mainland. of these the giblites occupied melos, while the sidonians chose oliaros and thera, and we find traces of them in every island where any natural product, such as metals, sulphur, alum, fuller�s earth, emery, medicinal plants, and shells for producing dyes, offered an attraction. the purple used by the tyrians for dyeing is secreted by several varieties of molluscs common in the eastern mediterranean; those most esteemed by the dyers were the _murex trunculus_ and the _murex brandaris_, and solid masses made up of the detritus of these shells are found in enormous quantities in the neighbourhood of many phoenician towns. the colouring matter was secreted in the head of the shellfish. to obtain it the shell was broken by a blow from a hammer, and the small quantity of slightly yellowish liquid which issued from the fracture was carefully collected and stirred about in salt water for three days. [illustration: .jpg dagger of Âhmosis] drawn by faucher-gudin. it was then boiled in leaden vessels and reduced by simmering over a slow fire; the remainder was strained through a cloth to free it from the particles of flesh still floating in it, and the material to be dyed was then plunged into the liquid. the usual tint thus imparted was that of fresh blood, in some lights almost approaching to black; but careful manipulation could produce shades of red, dark violet, and amethyst. phoenician settlements can be traced, therefore, by the heaps of shells upon the shore, the cyclades and the coasts of greece being strewn with this refuse. the veins of gold in the pangaion range in macedonia attracted them off the thracian coast* received also frequent visits from them, and they carried their explorations even through the tortuous channel of the hellespont into the propontis, drawn thither, no doubt by the silver mines in the bithynian mountains** which were already being worked by asiatic miners. * the fact that they worked the mines of thasos is attested by herodotus. ** pronektos, on the gulf of ascania, was supposed to be a phoenician colony. beyond the calm waters of the propontis, they encountered an obstacle to their progress in another narrow channel, having more the character of a wide river than of a strait; it was with difficulty that they could make their way against the violence of its current, which either tended to drive their vessels on shore, or to dash them against the reefs which hampered the navigation of the channel. when, however, they succeeded in making the passage safely, they found themselves upon a vast and stormy sea, whose wooded shores extended east and west as far as eye could reach. [illustration: .jpg one of the daggers discovered at mycenÆ, showing an imitation of egyptian decoration] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the facsimile in perrot-chipiez. from the tribes who inhabited them, and who acted as intermediaries, the phoenician traders were able to procure tin, lead, amber, caucasian gold, bronze, and iron, all products of the extreme north--a region which always seemed,to elude their persevering efforts to discover it. we cannot determine the furthest limits reached by the phoenician traders, since they were wont to designate the distant countries and nations with which they traded by the vague appellations of �isles of the sea� and �peoples of the sea,� refusing to give more accurate information either from jealousy or from a desire to hide from other nations the sources of their wealth. the peoples with whom they traded were not mere barbarians, contented with worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants of the iegean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the east, possessed an independent and growing civilization, traces of which are still coming to light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses, palaces, utensils, ornaments, representations of the gods, and household and funerary furniture,--not only in the cyclades, but on the mainland of asia minor and of greece. no inferior goods or tinsel wares would have satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities as troy and mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of egypt and syria--costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate design--such objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the sovereigns and nobles of memphis or of babylon. for articles to offer in exchange they were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products of their own country. their craftsmen, though less successful in general technique than their oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable artistic intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. accustomed at first merely to copy the objects sold to them by the phoenicians, they soon developed a style of their own; the mycenaean dagger in the illustration on page , though several centuries later in date than that of the pharaoh ahmosis, appears to be traceable to this ancient source of inspiration, although it gives evidence of new elements in its method of decoration and in its greater freedom of treatment. the inhabitants of the valleys of the nile and of the orontes, and probably also those of the euphrates and tigris, agreed in the, high value they set upon these artistic objects in gold, silver, and bronze, brought to them from the further shores of the mediterranean, which, while reproducing their own designs, modified them to a certain extent; for just as we now imitate types of ornamental work in vogue among nations less civilized than ourselves, so the iegean people set themselves the task through their potters and engravers of reproducing exotic models. the phoenician traders who exported to greece large consignments of objects made under various influences in their own workshops, or purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back as a return cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the towns of the west, which eventually found their way into the various markets of asia and africa. these energetic merchants were not the first to ply this profitable trade of maritime carriers, for from the time of the memphite empire the products of northern regions had found their way, through the intermediation of the haûinibû, as far south as the cities of the delta and the thebaid. but this commerce could not be said to be either regular or continuous; the transmission was carried on from one neighbouring tribe to another, and the syrian sailors were merely the last in a long chain of intermediaries--a tribal war, a migration, the caprice of some chief, being sufficient to break the communication, and even cause the suspension of transit for a considerable period. the phoenicians desired to provide against such risks by undertaking themselves to fetch the much-coveted objects from their respective sources, or, where this was not possible, from the ports nearest the place of their manufacture. reappearing with each returning year in the localities where they had established emporia, they accustomed the natives to collect against their arrival such products as they could profitably use in bartering with one or other of their many customers. they thus established, on a fixed line of route, a kind of maritime trading service, which placed all the shores of the mediterranean in direct communication with each other, and promoted the blending of the youthful west with the ancient east. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] chapter iii--the eighteenth theban dynasty thÛtmosis i. and his army--hÂtshopsitÛ and thÛtmosis iii. _thutmosis i.�s campaign in syria--the organisation of the egyptian army: the infantry of the line, the archers, the horses, and the charioteers--the classification of the troops according to their arms--marching and encampment in the enemy�s country: battle array--chariot-charges--the enumeration and distribution of the spoil--the vice-royalty of rush and the adoption of egyptian customs by the ethiopian tribes._ _the first successors of thutmosis i.: ahmasi and hatshopsitit, thûtmosis ii--the temple of deîr el-bahari and the buildings of karnah--the ladders of incense--the expedition to pûanît: bartering with the natives, the return of the fleet._ _thûtmosis iii.: his departure for asia, the battle of megiddo and the subjection of southern syria--the year to the year of his reign--conquest of lotanû and of mitânni--the campaign of the rd year of the king�s reign._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii--the eighteenth theban dynasty _thûtmosis i. and his army--hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii._ the account of the first expedition undertaken by thûtmosis in asia, a region at that time new to the egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands upon it. we should perhaps find in the midst of official documents, or among the short phrases of funerary biographies, some indication of the impression which the country produced upon its conquerors. with the exception of a few merchants or adventurers, no one from thebes to memphis had any other idea of asia than that which could be gathered from the scattered notices of it in the semi-historical romances of the preceding age. the actual sight of the country must have been a revelation; everything appearing new and paradoxical to men of whom the majority had never left their fatherland, except on some warlike expedition into ethiopia or on some rapid raid along the coasts of the red sea. instead of their own narrow valley, extending between its two mountain ranges, and fertilised by the periodical overflowing of the nile which recurred regularly almost to a day, they had before them wide irregular plains, owing their fertility not to inundations, but to occasional rains or the influence of insignificant streams; hills of varying heights covered with vines and other products of cultivation; mountains of different altitudes irregularly distributed, clothed with forests, furrowed with torrents, their summits often crowned with snow even in the hottest period of summer: and in this region of nature, where everything was strange to them, they found nations differing widely from each other in appearance and customs, towns with crenellated walls perched upon heights difficult of access; and finally, a civilization far excelling that which they encountered anywhere in africa outside their own boundaries. thûtmosis succeeded in reaching on his first expedition a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass, and the road taken by him in this campaign--from gaza to megiddo, from megiddo to qodshû, from qodshû to carchemish--was that which was followed henceforward by the egyptian troops in all their expeditions to the euphrates. of the difficulties which he encountered on his way we have no information. on arriving at naharaim, however, we know that he came into contact with the army of the enemy, which was under the command of a single general--perhaps the king of mitanni himself, or one of the lieutenants of the �cossæan king of babylon�--who had collected together most of the petty princes of the northern country to resist the advance of the intruder. the contest was hotly fought out on both sides, but victory at length remained with the invaders, and innumerable prisoners fell into their hands. the veteran Âhmosi, son of abîna, who was serving in his last campaign, and his cousin, Âhmosi pannekhabît, distinguished themselves according to their wont. the former, having seized upon a chariot, brought it, with the three soldiers who occupied it, to the pharaoh, and received once more �the collar of gold;� the latter killed twenty-one of the enemy, carrying off their hands as trophies, captured a chariot, took one prisoner, and obtained as reward a valuable collection of jewellery, consisting of collars, bracelets, sculptured lions, choice vases, and costly weapons. a stele, erected on the banks of the euphrates not far from the scene of the battle, marked the spot which the conqueror wished to be recognised henceforth as the frontier of his empire. he re-entered thebes with immense booty, by which gods as well as men profited, for he consecrated a part of it to the embellishment of the temple of amon, and the sight of the spoil undoubtedly removed the lingering prejudices which the people had cherished against expeditions beyond the isthmus. thûtmosis was held up by his subjects to the praise of posterity as having come into actual contact with that country and its people, which had hitherto been known to the egyptians merely through the more or less veracious tales of exiles and travellers. the aspect of the great river of the naharaim, which could be compared with the nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. they were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in egypt to express going up or down the river. this first syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the pharaohs. it took the form of a bold advance of troops, directed from zalû towards the north-east, in a diagonal line through the country, who routed on the way any armies which might be opposed to them, carrying by assault such towns as were easy of capture, while passing by others which seemed strongly defended--pillaging, burning, and slaying on every side. there was no suspension of hostilities, no going into winter quarters, but a triumphant return of the expedition at the end of four or five months, with the probability of having to begin fresh operations in the following year should the vanquished break out into revolt.* * from the account of the campaigns of amenôthes ii., i thought we might conclude that this pharaoh wintered in syria at least once; but the text does not admit of this interpretation, and we must, therefore, for the present give up the idea that the pharaohs ever spent more than a few months of the year on hostile territory. the troops employed in these campaigns were superior to any others hitherto put into the field. the egyptian army, inured to war by its long struggle with the shepherd-kings, and kept in training since the reign of Âhmosis by having to repulse the perpetual incursions of the ethiopian or libyan barbarians, had no difficulty, in overcoming the syrians; not that the latter were wanting in courage or discipline, but owing to their limited supply of recruits, and the political disintegration of the country, they could not readily place under arms such enormous numbers as those of the egyptians. egyptian military organisation had remained practically unchanged since early times: the army had always consisted, firstly, of the militia who held fiefs, and were under the obligation of personal service either to the prince of the nome or to the sovereign; secondly, of a permanent force, which was divided into two corps, distributed respectively between the sa�id and the delta. those companies which were quartered on the frontier, or about the king either at thebes or at one of the royal residences, were bound to hold themselves in readiness to muster for a campaign at any given moment. the number of natives liable to be levied when occasion required, by �generations,� or as we should say by classes, may have amounted to over a hundred thousand men,* but they were never all called out, and it does not appear that the army on active service ever contained more than thirty thousand men at a time, and probably on ordinary occasions not much more than ten or fifteen thousand.** * the only numbers which we know are those given by herodotus for the saïte period, which are evidently exaggerated. coming down to modern times, we see that mehemet-ali, from to , had nearly , men in syria, egypt, and the sudan; and in , at the time when the treaties imposed upon him the ill-kept obligation of reducing his army to , men, it still contained , . we shall probably not be far wrong in estimating the total force which the pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty, lords of the whole valley of the nile, and of part of asia, had at their disposal at , or , men; these, however, were never all called out at once. ** we have no direct information respecting the armies acting in syria; we only know that, at the battle of qodshû, ramses ii. had against him chariots containing three men each, making charioteers, besides a troop estimated at the ramesseum at men, at luxor at , so that the syrian army probably contained about , men. it would seem that the egyptian army was less numerous, and i estimate it with great hesitation at about , or , men: it was considered a powerful army, while that of the hittites was regarded as an innumerable host. a passage in the anastasi papyrus, no. , tells us the composition of a corps led by ramses ii. against the tribes in the vicinity of qocoîr and the rahanû valley; it consisted of men, of whom were shardana, qahak, mashaûasha, and negroes. the infantry was, as we should expect, composed of troops of the line and light troops. the former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather thongs attached to a belt. a buckler of moderate dimensions had been substituted for the gigantic shield of the earlier theban period; it was rounded at the top and often furnished with a solid metal boss, which the experienced soldiers always endeavoured to present to the enemy�s lances and javelins. their weapons consisted of pikes about five feet long, with broad bronze or copper points, occasionally of flails, axes, daggers, short curved swords, and spears; the trumpeters were armed with daggers only, and the officers did not as a rule encumber themselves with either buckler or pike, but bore and axe and dagger, an occasionally a bow. [illustration: .jpg a platoon (troop) of egyptian spearmen at deÎr el-baharÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by naville. the light infantry was composed chiefly of bowmen--_pidâtû_--the celebrated archers of egypt, whose long bows and arrows, used with deadly skill, speedily became renowned throughout the east; the quiver, of the use of which their ancestors were ignorant, had been borrowed from the asiatics, probably from the hyksôs, and was carried hanging at the side or slung over the shoulder. both spearmen and archers were for the most part pure-bred egyptians, and were divided into regiments of unequal strength, each of which usually bore the name of some god--as, for example, the regiment of ra or of phtah, of arnon or of sûtkhû*--in which the feudal contingents, each commanded by its lord or his lieutenants, fought side by side with the king�s soldiers furnished from the royal domains. the effective force of the army was made up by auxiliaries taken from the tribes of the sahara and from the negroes of the upper nile.** * the army of ramses ii. at the battle of qodshû comprised four corps, which bore the names of amon, râ, phtah, and sûtkhû. other lesser corps were named the _tribe of pharaoh,_ the _tribe of the beauty of the solar dish._ these, as far as i can judge, must have been troops raised on the royal domains by a system of local recruiting, who were united by certain common privileges and duties which constituted them an hereditary militia, whence they were called _tribes_. ** these ethiopian recruits are occasionally represented in the theban tombs of the xviiith dynasty, among others in the tomb of pahsûkhîr. these auxiliaries were but sparingly employed in early times, but their numbers were increased as wars became more frequent and necessitated more troops to carry them on. the tribes from which they were drawn supplied the pharaohs with an inexhaustible reserve; they were courageous, active, indefatigable, and inured to hardships, and if it had not been for their turbulent nature, which incited them to continual internal dissensions, they might readily have shaken off the yoke of the egyptians. incorporated into the egyptian army, and placed under the instruction of picked officers, who subjected them to rigorous discipline, and accustomed them to the evolutions of regular troops, they were transformed from disorganised hordes into tried and invincible battalions.* * the armies of hâtshopsîtû already included libyan auxiliaries, some of which are represented at deîr el- baharî; others of asiatic origin are found under amenôthes iv., but they are not represented on the monuments among the regular troops until the reign of ramses ii., when the shardana appear for the first time among the king�s body- guard. [illustration: .jpg a platoon of egyptian archers at deÎr el-baharÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the old army, which had conquered nubia in the days of the papis and usirtasens, had consisted of these three varieties of foot-soldiers only, but since the invasion of the shepherds, a new element had been incorporated into the modern army in the-shape of the chariotry, which answered to some extent to the cavalry of our day as regards their tactical employment and efficacy. the horse, when once introduced into egypt, soon became fairly adapted to its environment. it retained both its height and size, keeping the convex forehead--which gave the head a slightly curved profile--the slender neck, the narrow hind-quarters, the lean and sinewy legs, and the long flowing tail which had characterised it in its native country. the climate, however, was enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduction of new blood from syria, to prevent the breed from deteriorating.* * the numbers of horses brought from syria either as spoils of war or as tribute paid by the vanquished are frequently recorded in the annals of thûtmosis iii. besides the usual species, powerful stallions were imported from northern syria, which were known by the semitic name of abîri, the strong. in the tombs of the xviiith dynasty, the arrival of syrian horses in egypt is sometimes represented. [illustration: .jpg the egyptian chariot preserved in the florence museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by petrie. the pharaohs kept studs of horses in the principal cities of the nile valley, and the great feudal lords, following their example, vied with each other in the possession of numerous breeding stables. the office of superintendent to these establishments, which was at the disposal of the master of the horse, became in later times one of the most important state appointments.* * in the story of the conquest of egypt by the ethiopian piônkhi, studs are indicated at hermopolis, at athribis, in the towns to the east and in the centre of the delta, and at sais. diodorus siculus relates that, in his time, the foundations of stables, each capable of containing horses, were still to be seen on the western bank of the river between memphis and thebes. [illustration: .jpg the king charging on his chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the first chariots introduced into egypt were, like the horses, of foreign origin, but when built by egyptian workmen they soon became more elegant, if not stronger than their models. lightness was the quality chiefly aimed at; and at length the weight was so reduced that it was possible for a man to carry his chariot on his shoulders without fatigue. the materials for them were on this account limited to oak or ash and leather; metal, whether gold or silver, iron or bronze, being used but sparingly, and then only for purposes of ornamentation. the wheels usually had six, but sometimes eight spokes, or occasionally only four. the axle consisted of a single stout pole of acacia. the framework of the chariot was composed of two pieces of wood mortised together so as to form a semicircle or half-ellipse, and closed by a straight bar; to this frame was fixed a floor of sycomore wood or of plaited leather thongs. the sides of the chariot were formed of upright panels, solid in front and open at the sides, each provided with a handrail. the pole, which was of a single piece of wood, was bent into an elbow at about one-fifth of its length from the end, which was inserted into the centre of the axletree. on the gigantic t thus formed was fixed the body of the chariot, the hinder part resting on the axle, and the front attached to the bent part of the pole, while the whole was firmly bound together with double leather thongs. a yoke of hornbeam, shaped like a bow, to which the horses were harnessed, was fastened to the other extremity of the pole. the asiatics placed three men in a chariot, but the egyptians only two; the warrior--_sinni_--whose business it was to fight, and the shield-bearer--_qazana_--who protected his companion with a buckler during the engagement. a complete set of weapons was carried in the chariot--lances, javelins, and daggers, curved spear, club, and battle-axe--while two bow-cases as well as two large quivers were hung at the sides. the chariot itself was very liable to upset, the slightest cause being sufficient to overturn it. even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. at such times the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself. to carry all this into practice long education was necessary, for which there were special schools of instruction, and those who were destined to enter the army were sent to these schools when little more than children. to each man, as soon as he had thoroughly mastered all the difficulties of the profession, a regulation chariot and pair of horses were granted, for which he was responsible to the pharaoh or to his generals, and he might then return to his home until the next call to arms. the warrior took precedence of the shield-bearer, and both were considered superior to the foot-soldier; the chariotry, in fact, like the cavalry of the present day, was the aristocratic branch of the army, in which the royal princes, together with the nobles and their sons, enlisted. no egyptian ever willingly trusted himself to the back of a horse, and it was only in the thick of a battle, when his chariot was broken, and there seemed no other way of escaping from the mêlée, that a warrior would venture to mount one of his steeds. there appear, however, to have been here and there a few horsemen, who acted as couriers or aides-de-camp; they used neither saddle-cloth nor stirrups, but were provided with reins with which to guide their animals, and their seat on horseback was even less secure than the footing of the driver in his chariot. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian learning to ride, from a bas-relief in the bologna museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by flinders petrie. the infantry was divided into platoons of six to ten men each, commanded by an officer and marshalled round an ensign, which represented either a sacred animal, an emblem of the king or of his double, or a divine figure placed upon the top of a pike; this constituted an object of worship to the group of soldiers to whom it belonged. we are unable to ascertain how many of these platoons, either of infantry or of chariotry, went to form a company or a battalion, or by what ensigns the different grades were distinguished from each other, or what was their relative order of rank. bodies of men, to the number of forty or fifty, are sometimes represented on the monuments, but this may be merely by chance, or because the draughtsman did not take the trouble to give the proper number accurately. the inferior officers were equipped very much like the soldiers, with the exception of the buckler, which they do not appear to have carried, and certainly did not when on the march: the superior officers might be known by their umbrella or flabellum, a distinction which gave them the right of approaching the king�s person. [illustration: .jpg the war-dance of the timihu at deÎr el-baharÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the military exercises to which all these troops were accustomed probably differed but little from those which were in vogue with the armies of the ancient empire; they consisted in wrestling, boxing, jumping, running either singly or in line at regular distances from each other, manual exercises, fencing, and shooting at a target; the war-dance had ceased to be in use among the egyptian regiments as a military exercise, but it was practised by the ethiopian and libyan auxiliaries. at the beginning of each campaign, the men destined to serve in it were called out by the military scribes, who supplied them with arms from the royal arsenals. then followed the distribution of rations. the soldiers, each carrying a small linen bag, came up in squads before the commissariat officers, and each received his own allowance.* * we see the distribution of arms made by the scribes and other officials of the royal arsenals represented in the pictures at medinet-abu. the calling out of the classes was represented in the egyptian tombs of the xviiith dynasty, as well as the distribution of supplies. once in the enemy�s country the army advanced in close order, the infantry in columns of four, the officers in rear, and the chariots either on the right or left flank, or in the intervals between divisions. skirmishers thrown out to the front cleared the line of march, while detached parties, pushing right and left, collected supplies of cattle, grain, or drinking-water from the fields and unprotected villages. the main body was followed by the baggage train; it comprised not only supplies and stores, but cooking-utensils, coverings, and the entire paraphernalia of the carpenters� and blacksmiths� shops necessary for repairing bows, lances, daggers, and chariot-poles, the whole being piled up in four-wheeled carts drawn by asses or oxen. the army was accompanied by a swarm of non-combatants, scribes, soothsayers, priests, heralds, musicians, servants, and women of loose life, who were a serious cause of embarrassment to the generals, and a source of perpetual danger to military discipline. at nightfall they halted in a village, or more frequently bivouacked in an entrenched camp, marked out to suit the circumstances of the case. this entrenchment was always rectangular, its length being twice as great as its width, and was surrounded by a ditch, the earth from which, being banked up on the inside, formed a rampart from five to six feet in height; the exterior of this was then entirely faced with shields, square below, but circular in shape at the top. the entrance to the camp was by a single gate in one of the longer sides, and a plank served as a bridge across the trench, close to which two detachments mounted guard, armed with clubs and naked swords. [illustration: .jpg a column of troops on the march, chariots and infantry] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the royal quarters were situated at one end of the camp. here, within an enclosure, rose an immense tent, where the pharaoh found all the luxury to which he was accustomed in his palaces, even to a portable chapel, in which each morning he could pour out water and burn incense to his father, amon-râ of thebes. the princes of the blood who formed his escort, his shield-bearers and his generals, were crowded together hard by, and beyond, in closely packed lines, were the horses and chariots, the draught bullocks, the workshops and the stores. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian fortified camp, forced by the enemy] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it represents the camp of ramses ii. before qodshû: the upper angle of the enclosure and part of the surrounding wall have been destroyed by the khâti, whose chariots are pouring in at the breach. in the centre is the royal tent, surrounded by scenes of military life. this picture has been sculptured partly over an earlier one representing one of the episodes of the battle; the latter had been covered with stucco, on which the new subject was executed. part of the stucco has fallen away, and the king in his chariot, with a few other figures, has reappeared, to the great detriment of the later picture. [illustration: b.jpg two companies on the march] the soldiers, accustomed from childhood to live in the open air, erected no tents or huts of boughs for themselves in these temporary encampments, but bivouacked in the open, and the sculptures on the façades of the theban pylons give us a minute picture of the way in which they employed themselves when off duty. here one man, while cleaning his armour, superintends the cooking. another, similarly engaged, drinks from a skin of wine held up by a slave. a third has taken his chariot to pieces, and t is replacing some portion the worse for wear. some are sharpening their daggers or lances; others mend their loin-cloths or sandals, or exchange blows with fists and sticks. the baggage, linen, arms, and provisions are piled in disorder on the ground; horses, oxen, and asses are eating or chewing the cud at their ease; while here and there a donkey, relieved of his burden, rolls himself on the ground and brays with delight.* * we are speaking of the camp of thûtmosis iii. near Âlûna, the day before the battle of megiddo, and the words put into the mouths of the soldiers to mark their vigilance are the same as those which we find in the ramesseum and at luxor, written above the guards of the camp where ramses ii. is reposing. [illustration: .jpg scenes from military life in an egyptian camp] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the success of the egyptians in battle was due more to the courage and hardihood of the men than to the strategical skill of their commanders. we find no trace of manouvres, in the sense in which we understand the word, either in their histories or on their bas-reliefs, but they joined battle boldly with the enemy, and the result was decided by a more or less bloody conflict. the heavy infantry was placed in the centre, the chariots were massed on the flanks, while light troops thrown out to the front began the action by letting fly volleys of arrows and stones, which through the skill of the bowmen and slingers did deadly execution; then the pikemen laid their spears in rest, and pressing straight forward, threw their whole weight against the opposing troops. at the same moment the charioteers set off at a gentle trot, and gradually quickened their pace till they dashed at full speed upon the foe, amid the confused rumbling of wheels and the sharp clash of metal. [illustration: .jpg encounter between egyptian and asiatic chariots] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by champolion. the egyptians, accustomed by long drilling to the performance of such evolutions, executed these charges as methodically as though they were still on their parade-ground at thebes; if the disposition of the ground were at all favourable, not a single chariot would break the line, and the columns would sweep across the field without swerving or falling into disorder. the charioteer had the reins tied round his body, and could, by throwing his weight either to the right or the left, or by slackening or increasing the pressure through a backward or forward motion, turn, pull up, or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins: he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear, the arrow levelled ready to let fly, while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his comrade. it would seem that the syrians were less skilful; their bows did not carry so far as those of their adversaries, and consequently they came within the enemy�s range some moments before it was possible for them to return the volley with effect. their horses would be thrown down, their drivers would fall wounded, and the disabled chariots would check the approach of those following and overturn them, so that by the time the main body came up with the enemy the slaughter would have been serious enough to render victory hopeless. nevertheless, more than one charge would be necessary finally to overturn or scatter the syrian chariots, which, once accomplished, the egyptian charioteer would turn against the foot-soldiers, and, breaking up their ranks, would tread them down under the feet of his horses.* * the whole of the above description is based on incidents from the various pictures of battles which appear on the monuments of ramses ii. nor did the pharaoh spare himself in the fight; his splendid dress, the urasus on his forehead, and the nodding plumes of his horses made him a mark for the blows of the enemy, and he would often find himself in positions of serious danger. in a few hours, as a rule, the conflict would come to an end. [illustration: .jpg ramses ii.] [illustration: -text.jpg] once the enemy showed signs of giving way, the egyptian chariots dashed upon them precipitously, and turned the retreat into a rout: the pursuit was, however, never a long one; some fortress was always to be found close at hand where the remnant of the defeated host could take refuge.* the victors, moreover, would be too eager to secure the booty, and to strip the bodies of the dead, to allow time for following up the foe. * after the battle of megiddo, the remnants of the syrian army took refuge in the city, where thûtmosis iii. besieged them; similarly under ramses ii. the hittite princes took refuge in qodshû after their defeat. the prisoners were driven along in platoons, their arms bound in strange and contorted attitudes, each under the charge of his captor; then came the chariots, arms, slaves, and provisions collected on the battle-field or in the camp, then other trophies of a kind unknown in modern warfare. when an egyptian killed or mortally wounded any one, he cut off, not the head, but the right hand or the phallus, and brought it to the royal scribes. these made an accurate inventory of everything, and even pharaoh did not disdain to be present at the registration. the booty did not belong to the persons who obtained it, but was thrown into a common stock which was placed at the disposal of the sovereign: one part he reserved for the gods, especially for his father amon of thebes, who had given him the victory; another part he kept for himself, and the remainder was distributed among his army. each man received a reward in proportion to his rank and services, such as male or female slaves, bracelets, necklaces, arms, vases, or a certain measured weight of gold, known as the �gold of bravery.� a similar sharing of the spoil took place after every successful engagement: from pharaoh to the meanest camp-follower, every man who had contributed to the success of a campaign returned home richer than he had set out, and the profits which he derived from a war were a liberal compensation for the expenses in which it had involved him. [illustration: .jpg counting of the hands] the results of the first expedition of thûtmosis i. were of a decisive character; so much so, indeed, that he never again, it would seem, found it necessary during the remainder of his life to pass the isthmus. northern syria, it is true, did not remain long under tribute, if indeed it paid any at all after the departure of the egyptians, but the southern part of the country, feeling itself in the grip of the new master, accepted its defeat: gaza became the head-quarters of a garrison which secured the door of asia for future invasion,* and pharaoh, freed from anxiety in this quarter, gave his whole time to the consolidation of his power in ethiopia. * this fact is nowhere explicitly stated on the monuments: we may infer it, however, from the way in which thûtmosis iii. tells how he reached gaza without opposition at the beginning of his first campaign, and celebrated the anniversary of his coronation there. on the other hand, we learn from details in the lists that the mountains and plains beyond gaza were in a state of open rebellion. the river and desert tribes of this region soon forgot the severe lesson which he had given them: as soon as the last egyptian soldier had left their territory they rebelled once more, and began a fresh series of inroads which had to be repressed anew year after year. thûtmosis i. had several times to drive them back in the years ii. and iii., but was able to make short work of their rebellions. an inscription at tombos on the nile, in the very midst of the disturbed districts, told them in brave words what he was, and what he had done since he had come to the throne. wherever he had gone, weapon in hand, �seeking a warrior, he had found none to withstand him; he had penetrated to valleys which were unknown to his ancestors, the inhabitants of which had never beheld the wearers of the double diadem.� all this would have produced but little effect had he not backed up his words by deeds, and taken decisive measures to restrain the insolence of the barbarians. tombos lies opposite to hannek, at the entrance to that series of rapids known as the third cataract. the course of the nile is here barred by a formidable dyke of granite, through which it has hollowed out six winding channels of varying widths, dotted here and there with huge polished boulders and verdant islets. when the inundation is at its height, the rocks are covered and the rapids disappear, with the exception of the lowest, which is named lokoli, where faint eddies mark the place of the more dangerous reefs; and were it not that the fall here is rather more pronounced and the current somewhat stronger, few would suspect the existence of a cataract at the spot. as the waters go down, however, the channels gradually reappear. when the river is at its lowest, the three westernmost channels dry up almost completely, leaving nothing but a series of shallow pools; those on the east still maintain their flow, but only one of them, that between the islands of tombos and abadîn, remains navigable. here thûtmosis built, under invocation of the gods of heliopolis, one of those brickwork citadels, with its rectangular keep, which set at nought all the efforts and all the military science of the ethiopians: attached to it was a harbour, where each vessel on its way downstream put in for the purpose of hiring a pilot.* the monarchs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties had raised fortifications at the approaches to wady haifa, and their engineers skilfully chose the sites so as completely to protect from the ravages of the nubian pirates that part of the nile which lay between wady haifa and philse.* * the foundation of this fortress is indicated in an emphatic manner in the tombos inscription: �the masters of the great castle (the gods of heliopolis) have made a fortress for the soldiers of the king, which the nine peoples of nubia combined could not carry by storm, for, like a young panther before a bull which lowers its head, the souls of his majesty have blinded them with fear.� quarries of considerable size, where cailliaud imagined he could distinguish an overturned colossus, show the importance which the establishment had attained in ancient times; the ruins of the town cover a fairly large area near the modern village of kerman. henceforward the garrison at tombos was able to defend the mighty curve described by the river through the desert of mahas, together with the island of argo, and the confines of dongola. the distance between thebes and this southern frontier was a long one, and communication was slow during the winter months, when the subsidence of the waters had rendered the task of navigation difficult for the egyptian ships. the king was obliged, besides, to concentrate his attention mainly on asiatic affairs, and was no longer able to watch the movements of the african races with the same vigilance as his predecessors had exercised before egyptian armies had made their way as far as the banks of the euphrates. thutmosis placed the control of the countries south of assuan in the hands of a viceroy, who, invested with the august title of �royal son of kûsh,� must have been regarded as having the blood of râ himself running in his veins.* * the meaning of this title was at first misunderstood. champollion and rosellini took it literally, and thought it referred to ethiopian princes, who were vassals or enemies of egypt. birch persists in regarding them as ethiopians driven out by their subjects, restored by the pharaohs as viceroys, while admitting that they may have belonged to the solar family. sura, the first of these viceroys whose name has reached us, was in office at the beginning of the campaign of the year iii.* he belonged, it would seem, to a theban family, and for several centuries afterwards his successors are mentioned among the nobles who were in the habit of attending the court. their powers were considerable: they commanded armies, built or restored temples, administered justice, and received the homage of loyal sheikhs or the submission of rebellious ones.** the period for which they were appointed was not fixed by law, and they held office simply at the king�s pleasure. during the xixth dynasty it was usual to confer this office, the highest in the state, on a son of the sovereign, preferably the heir-apparent. occasionally his appointment was purely formal, and he continued in attendance on his father, while a trusty substitute ruled in his place: often, however, he took the government on himself, and in the regions of the upper nile served an apprenticeship to the art of ruling. * he is mentioned in the sehêl inscriptions as �the royal son sura.� nahi, who had been regarded as the first holder of the office, and who was still in office under thutmosis iii., had been appointed by thutmosis i., but after sura. ** under thutmosis iii., the viceroy nahi restored the temple at semneh; under tutankhamon, the viceroy hui received tribute from the ethiopian princes, and presented them to the sovereign. [illustration: .jpg a city of modern nubia--the ancient dongola] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by insinger. this district was in a perpetual state of war--a war without danger, but full of trickery and surprises: here he prepared himself for the larger arena of the syrian campaigns, learning the arts of generalship more perfectly than was possible in the manouvres of the parade-ground. moreover, the appointment was dictated by religious as well as by political considerations. the presumptive heir to the throne was to his father what horus had been to osiris--his lawful successor, or, if need be, his avenger, should some act of treason impose on him the duty of vengeance: and was it not in ethiopia that horus had gained his first victories over typhon? to begin like horus, and flesh his maiden steel on the descendants of the accomplices of sit, was, in the case of the future sovereign, equivalent to affirming from the outset the reality of his divine extraction.* * in the _orbiney papyrus_ the title of �prince of kûsh� was assigned to the heir-presumptive to the throne. as at the commencement of the theban dynasties, it was the river valley only in these regions of the upper nile which belonged to the pharaohs. from this time onward it gave support to an egyptian population as far as the juncture of the two niles: it was a second egypt, but a poorer one, whose cities presented the same impoverished appearance as that which we find to-day in the towns of nubia. the tribes scattered right and left in the desert, or distributed beyond the confluence of the two niles among the plains of sennar, were descended from the old indigenous races, and paid valuable tribute every year in precious metals, ivory, timber, or the natural products of their districts, under penalty of armed invasion.* * the tribute of the ganbâtiû, or people of the south, and that of kûsh and of the Ûaûaîû, is mentioned repeatedly in the _annales de thûtmosis iii._ for the year xxxi., for the year xxxiii., and for the year xxxiv. the regularity with which this item recurs, unaccompanied by any mention of war, following after each syrian campaign, shows that it was an habitual operation which was registered as an understood thing. true, the inscription does not give the item for every year, but then it only dealt with ethiopian affairs in so far as they were subsidiary to events in asia; the payment was none the less an annual one, the amount varying in accordance with local agreement. among these races were still to be found descendants of the mazaiû and Ûaûaîû, who in days gone by had opposed the advance of the victorious egyptians: the name of the uaûaîû was, indeed, used as a generic term to distinguish all those tribes which frequented the mountains between the nile and the red sea,* but the wave of conquest had passed far beyond the boundaries reached in early campaigns, and had brought the egyptians into contact with nations with whom they had been in only indirect commercial relations in former times. * the annals of thûtmosis iii. mention the tribute of pûanît for the peoples of the coast, the tribute of uaûaît for the peoples of the mountain between the nile and the sea, the tribute of kûsh for the peoples of the south, or ganbâtiû. [illustration: .jpg arrival of an ethiopian queen bringing tribute to the viceroy of kÛsii] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. some of these were light-coloured men of a type similar to that of the modern abyssinians or gallas: they had the same haughty and imperious carriage, the same well-developed and powerful frames, and the same love of fighting. most of the remaining tribes were of black blood, and such of them as we see depicted on the monuments resemble closely the negroes inhabiting central africa at the present day. [illustration: .jpg typical galla woman] they have the same elongated skull, the low prominent forehead, hollow temples, short flattened nose, thick lips, broad shoulders, and salient breast, the latter contrasting sharply with the undeveloped appearance of the lower part of the body, which terminates in thin legs almost devoid of calves. egyptian civilization had already penetrated among these tribes, and, as far as dress and demeanour were concerned, their chiefs differed in no way from the great lords who formed the escort of the pharaoh. we see these provincial dignitaries represented in the white robe and petticoat of starched, pleated, and gauffered linen; an innate taste for bright colours, even in those early times, being betrayed by the red or yellow scarf in which they wrapped themselves, passing it over one shoulder and round the waist, whence the ends depended and formed a kind of apron. a panther�s skin covered the back, and one or two ostrich-feathers waved from the top of the head or were fastened on one side to the fillet confining the hair, which was arranged in short curls and locks, stiffened with gum and matted with grease, so as to form a sort of cap or grotesque aureole round the skull. the men delighted to load themselves with rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, while from their arms, necks, and belts hung long strings of glass beads, which jingled with every movement of the wearer. they seem to have frequently chosen a woman as their ruler, and her dress appears to have closely resembled that of the egyptian ladies. she appeared before her subjects in a chariot drawn by oxen, and protected from the sun by an umbrella edged with fringe. the common people went about nearly naked, having merely a loin-cloth of some woven stuff or an animal�s skin thrown round their hips. their heads were either shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair stiffened with gum. the children of both sexes wore no clothes until the age of puberty; the women wrapped themselves in a rude garment or in a covering of linen, and carried their children on the hip or in a basket of esparto grass on the back, supported by a leather band which passed across the forehead. one characteristic of all these tribes was their love of singing and dancing, and their use of the drum and cymbals; they were active and industrious, and carefully cultivated the rich soil of the plain, devoting themselves to the raising of cattle, particularly of oxen, whose horns they were accustomed to train fantastically into the shapes of lyres, bows, and spirals, with bifurcations at the ends, or with small human figures as terminations. as in the case of other negro tribes, they plied the blacksmith�s and also the goldsmith�s trade, working up both gold and silver into rings, chains, and quaintly shaped vases, some specimens of their art being little else than toys, similar in design to those which delighted the byzantine caesars of later date. [illustration: .jpg gold epergne representing scenes from ethiopian life] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a painting on the tomb of hûi. a wall-painting remains of a gold epergne, which represents men and monkeys engaged in gathering the fruit of a group of dôm-palms. two individuals lead each a tame giraffe by the halter, others kneeling on the rim raise their hands to implore mercy from an unseen enemy, while negro prisoners, grovelling on their stomachs, painfully attempt to raise their head and shoulders from the ground. this, doubtless, represents a scene from the everyday life of the people of the upper nile, and gives a faithful picture of what took place among many of its tribes during a rapid inroad of some viceroy of kush or a raid by his lieutenants. the resources which thûtmosis i. was able to draw regularly from these southern regions, in addition to the wealth collected during his syrian campaign, enabled him to give a great impulse to building work. the tutelary deity of his capital--amon-râ--who had ensured him the victory in all his battles, had a prior claim on the bulk of the spoil; he received it as a matter of course, and his temple at thebes was thereby considerably enlarged; we are not, however, able to estimate exactly what proportion fell to other cities, such as kummeh, elephantine,* abydos,** and memphis, where a few scattered blocks of stone still bear the name of the king. troubles broke out in lower egypt, but they were speedily subdued by thûtmosis, and he was able to end his days in the enjoyment of a profound peace, undisturbed by any care save that of ensuring a regular succession to his throne, and of restraining the ambitions of those who looked to become possessed of his heritage.*** * wiedemann found his name there cut in a block of brown freestone. ** a stele at abydos speaks of the building operations carried on by thûtmosis i. in that town. *** the expressions from which we gather that his reign was disturbed by outbreaks of internal rebellion seem to refer to a period subsequent to the syrian expedition, and prior to his alliance with the princess hâtshopsîtû. his position was, indeed, a curious one; although _de facto_ absolute in power, his children by queen ahmasi took precedence of him, for by her mother�s descent she had a better right to the crown than her husband, and legally the king should have retired in favour of hie sons as soon as they were old enough to reign. the eldest of them, uazmosû, died early.* the second, amenmosu, lived at least to attain adolescence; he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year of the latter�s reign, and he also held a military command in the delta,** but before long he also died, and thûtmosis i. was left with only one son--a thûtmosis like himself--to succeed him. the mother of this prince was a certain mûtnofrit,*** half-sister to the king on his father�s side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on the mother�s side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her son from being recognised as heir-apparent, hence the occupation of the �seat of horus� reverted once more to a woman, hâtshopsîtû, the eldest daughter of Âhmasi. * uazmosû is represented on the tomb of pahiri at el-kab, where mr. griffith imagines he can trace two distinct uazmosû; for the present, i am of opinion that there was but one, the son of thûtmosis i. his funerary chapel was discovered at thebes; it is in a very bad state of preservation. ** amenmosû is represented at el-kab, by the side of his brother uazmosû. also on a fragment where we find him, in the fourth year of his father�s reign, honoured with a cartouche at memphis, and consequently associated with his father in the royal power. *** mûtnofrit was supposed by mariette to have been a daughter of thûtmosis il; the statue reproduced on p. has shown us that she was wife of thûtmosis i. and mother of thûtmosis ii. hâtshopsîtû herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. her maternal ancestor, sonisonbû, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. according to egyptian belief, this defect of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception, had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner. * a similar instance of divine substitution is known to us in the case of two other sovereigns, viz. amenôthes iii., whose father, titmosis iv., was born under conditions analogous to those attending the birth of thûtmosis i.; and ptolemy caesarion, whose father, julius cæsar, was not of egyptian blood. [illustration: .jpg portrait of the queen Âhmasi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by naville. the inscriptions with which hâtshopsîtû decorated her chapel relate how, on that fateful night, amon descended upon ahmasi in a flood of perfume and light. the queen received him favourably, and the divine spouse on leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a daughter, in whom his valour and strength should be manifested once more here below. the sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures before our eyes. [illustration: .jpg queen mÛtnofrÎt in the gÎzeh museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in this portrait of her a finished work of art. the child enters the world amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and her double constitute themselves her nurses. at the appointed time, her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over egypt and the world.* * the association of hâtshopsîtû with her father on the throne, has now been placed beyond doubt by the inscriptions discovered and commented on by naville in . [illustration: .jpg queen hÂtshopsÎtÛ in male costume] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by naville. from henceforth hâtshopsîtû adopts every possible device to conceal her real sex. she changes the termination of her name, and calls herself hâtshopsîû, the chief of the nobles, in lieu of hâtshopsîtû, the chief of the favourites. she becomes the king mâkerî, and on the occasion of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume. we see her represented on the theban monuments with uncovered shoulders, devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends from her chin. [illustration: .jpg bust of queen hÂtshopsÎtÛ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. this was the head of one of the sphinxes which formed an avenue at deîr el-baharî; it was brought over by lepsius and is now in the berlin museum. the fragment has undergone extensive restoration, but this has been done with the help of fragments of other statues, in which the details here lost were in a good state of preservation. she retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking of herself, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which declared her to be the betrothed of amon--khnûmît amaûnû.* * we know how greatly puzzled the early egyptologists were by this manner of depicting the queen, and how champollion, in striving to explain the monuments of the period, was driven to suggest the existence of a regent, amenenthes, the male counterpart and husband of hâtshopsîtû, whose name he read amense. this hypothesis, adopted by rosellini, with some slight modifications, was rejected by birch. this latter writer pointed out the identity of the two personages separated by champollion, and proved them to be one and the same queen, the amenses of manetho; he called her amûn-nûm- hc, but he made her out to be a sister of amenôthes i., associated on the throne with her brothers thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis il, and regent at the beginning of the reign of thûtmosis iii. hineks tried to show that she was the daughter of thûtmosis i., the wife of thûtmosis ii. and the sister of thûtmosis iii.; it is only quite recently that her true descent and place in the family tree has been recognised. she was, not the sister, but the aunt of thûtmosis iii. the queen, called by birch amûn-nûm-het, the latter part of her name being dropped and the royal prenomen being joined to her own name, was subsequently styled ha-asû or hatasû, and this form is still adopted by some writers; the true reading is hâtshopsîtû or hâtshopsîtû, then hâtshopsîû, or hâtshepsîû, as naville has pointed out. her father united her while still young to her brother thûtmosis, who appears to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. when thûtmosis i. died, egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but hâtshopsîtû, while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp to her husband,* kept the direction of the state entirely in her own hands. the portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression. the oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and tightly closed. * it is evident, from the expressions employed by thûtmosis i. in associating his daughter with himself on the throne, that she was unmarried at the time, and naville thinks that she married her brother thûtmosis ii. after the death of her father. it appears to me more probable that thûtmosis i. married her to her brother after she had been raised to the throne, with a view to avoiding complications which might have arisen in the royal family after his own death. the inscription at shutt-er-ragel, which has furnished mariette with the hypothesis that thûtmosis i. and thûtmosis il reigned simultaneously, proves that the person mentioned in it, a certain penaîti, flourished under both these pharaohs, but by no means shows that these two reigned together; he exercised the functions which he held by their authority during their successive reigns. [illustration: .jpg painting on the tomb of the kings] she governed with so firm a hand that neither egypt nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw themselves from her authority. one raid, in which several prisoners were taken, punished a rising of the shaûsû in central syria, while the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of ethiopia, and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt. when in the second year of his reign the news was brought to thutmosis ii. that the inhabitants of the upper nile had ceased to observe the conditions which his father had imposed upon them, he �became furious as a panther,� and assembling his troops set out for war without further delay. the presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at rebelling. the earlier kings of the xviiith dynasty had chosen for their last resting-place a spot on the left bank of the nile at thebes, where the cultivated land joined the desert, close to the pyramids built by their predecessors. probably, after the burial of amenôthes, the space was fully occupied, for thutmosis i. had to seek his burying-ground some way up the ravine, the mouth of which was blocked by their monuments. the libyan chain here forms a kind of amphitheatre of vertical cliffs, which descend to within some ninety feet of the valley, where a sloping mass of detritus connects them by a gentle declivity with the plain. [illustration: .jpg the amphitheatre at deÎr el-baharÎ, as it appeared bepoee naville�s excavations] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the great lords and the queens in the times of the antufs and the usirtasens had taken possession of this spot, but their chapels were by this period in ruins, and their tombs almost all lay buried under the waves of sand which the wind from the desert drives perpetually over the summit of the cliffs. this site was seized on by the architects of thûtmosis, who laid there the foundations of a building which was destined to be unique in the world. its ground plan consisted of an avenue of sphinxes, starting from the plain and running between the tombs till it reached a large courtyard, terminated on the west by a colonnade, which was supported by a double row of pillars. [illustration: .jpg the northern collonade] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph supplied by naville. above and beyond this was the vast middle platform,* connected with the upper court by the central causeway which ran through it from end to end; this middle platform, like that below it, was terminated on the west by a double colonnade, through which access was gained to two chapels hollowed out of the mountain-side, while on the north it was bordered with excellent effect by a line of proto-dorio columns ranged against the face of the cliff. * the english nomenclature employed in describing this temple is that used in the _guide to deir el-bahari_, published by the _egypt exploration fund_.--tr. this northern colonnade was never completed, but the existing part is of as exquisite proportions as anything that greek art has ever produced. at length we reach the upper platform, a nearly square courtyard, cutting on one side into the mountain slope, the opposite side being enclosed by a wall pierced by a single door, while to right and left ran two lines of buildings destined for purposes connected with the daily worship of the temple. the sanctuary was cut out of the solid rock, but the walls were faced with white limestone; some of the chambers are vaulted, and all of them decorated with bas-reliefs of exquisite workmanship, perhaps the finest examples of this period. thûtmosis i. scarcely did more than lay the foundations of this magnificent building, but his mummy was buried in it with great pomp, to remain there until a period of disturbance and general insecurity obliged those in charge of the necropolis to remove the body, together with those of his family, to some securer hiding-place.* the king was already advanced in age at the time of his death, being over fifty years old, to judge by the incisor teeth, which are worn and corroded by the impurities of which the egyptian bread was full. * both e. de rougé and mariette were opposed to the view that the temple was founded by thûtmosis i., and naville agrees with them. judging from the many new texts discovered by naville, i am inclined to think that thûtmosis i. began the structure, but from plans, it would appear, which had not been so fully developed as they afterwards became. prom indications to be found here and there in the inscriptions of the ramesside period, i am not, moreover, inclined to regard deîr el-bâhâri as the funerary chapel of tombs which were situated in some unknown place elsewhere, but i believe that it included the burial-places of thûtmosis i., thûtmosis ii., queen hâtshopsîtû, and of numerous representatives of their family; indeed, it is probable that thûtmosis iii. and his children found here also their last resting-place. [illustration: .jpg head of the mummy of thÛtmosis i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. the body, though small and emaciated, shows evidence of unusual muscular strength; the head is bald, the features are refined, and the mouth still bears an expression characteristic of shrewdness and cunning.* * the coffin of thûtmosis i. was usurped by the priest-king pinozmû i., son of piônkhi, and the mummy was lost. i fancy i have discovered it in mummy no. , of which the head presents a striking resemblance to those of thûtmosis ii. and iii. thûtmosis ii. carried on the works begun by his father, but did not long survive him.* the mask on his coffin represents him with a smiling and amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes which show his descent from the pharaohs of the xiith dynasty. * the latest year up to the present known of this king is the iind, found upon the aswan stele. erman, followed by ed. meyer, thinks that hâtshop-sîtû could not have been free from complicity in the premature death of thûtmosis ii.; but i am inclined to believe, from the marks of disease found on the skin of his mummy, that the queen was innocent of the crime here ascribed to her. [illustration: .jpg head of the mummy of thÛtmosis ii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in the possession of emil brugsch bey. his statues bear the same expression, which indeed is that of the mummy itself. he resembles thûtmosis i., but his features are not so marked, and are characterised by greater gentleness. he had scarcely reached the age of thirty when he fell a victim to a disease of which the process of embalming could not remove the traces. the skin is scabrous in patches, and covered with scars, while the upper part of the skull is bald; the body is thin and somewhat shrunken, and appears to have lacked vigour and muscular power. by his marriage with his sister, thûtmosis left daughters only,* but he had one son, also a thûtmosis, by a woman of low birth, perhaps merely a slave, whose name was isis.** hâtshopsîtû proclaimed this child her successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite her jealousy. she betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, hâtshopsîtû ii., and having thus settled the succession in the male line, she continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother. * two daughters of queen hâtshopsîtû i. are known, of whom one, nofîrûrî, died young, and hâtshopsîtû ii. marîtrî, who was married to her half-brother on her father�s side, thûtmosis iii., who was thus her cousin as well. amenôthes ii. was offspring of this marriage. ** the name of the mother of thûtmosis iii. was revealed to us on the wrappings found with the mummy of this king in the hiding-place of deîr el-baharî; the absence of princely titles, while it shows the humble extraction of the lady isis, explains at the same time the somewhat obscure relations between hâtshopsîtû and her nephew. her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition of things was owing to the ability of her political administration or to her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. she pressed forward the work of building with great activity, under the direction of her architect sanmût, not only at deîr el-baharî, but at karnak, and indeed everywhere in thebes. the plans of the building had been arranged under thûtmosis i., and their execution had been carried out so quickly, that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the sculptural ornamentation on the all but completed walls. this work, however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to egyptian custom, to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she had of her own powers is exhibited with great naiveness in her inscriptions. she loves to pose as premeditating her actions long beforehand, and as never venturing on the smallest undertaking without reference to her divine father. [illustration: .jpg the coffin of thûtmosis i.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph in the possession of emil brugsch-bey. this is what i teach to mortals who shall live in centuries to come, and whose hearts shall inquire concerning the monument which i have raised to my father, speaking and exclaiming as they contemplate it: as for me, when i sat in the palace and thought upon him who created me, my heart prompted me to raise to him two obelisks of electrum, whose apices should pierce the firmaments, before the noble gateway which is between the two great pylons of the king thûtmosis i. and my heart led me to address these words to those who shall see my monuments in after-years and who shall speak of my great deeds: beware of saying, �i know not, i know not why it was resolved to carve this mountain wholly of gold!� these two obelisks, my majesty has made them of electrum for my father anion, that my name may remain and live on in this temple for ever and ever; for this single block of granite has been cut, without let or obstacle, at the desire of my majesty, between the first of the second month of pirîfc of the vth year, and the th of the fourth month of shomû of the vith year, which makes seven months from the day when they began to, quarry it. one of these two monoliths is still standing among the ruins of karnak, and the grace of its outline, the finish of its hieroglyphics, and the beauty of the figures which cover it, amply justify the pride which the queen and her brother felt in contemplating it. [illustration: b avenue of rams and pylon at karnak] [illustration: b-text] [illustration: .jpg the statue of sanmÛt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mortens: the original is in the berlin museum, whither lepsius brought it. sanmût is squatting and holding between his arras and knees the young king thût-mosis iii,, whose head with the youthful side lock appears from under his chin. the tops of the pyramids were gilt, so that �they could be seen from both banks of the river,� and �their brilliancy lit up the two lands of egypt:� needless to say these metal apices have long disappeared. [illustration: .jpg page image] drawn by fauoher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. later on, in the the queen�s reign, amon enjoined a work which was more difficult to carry out. on a day when hâtshopsîtû had gone to the temple to offer prayers, �her supplications arose up before the throne of the lord of karnak, and a command was heard in the sanctuary, a behest of the god himself, that the ways which lead to pûanît should be explored, and that the roads to the �ladders of incense� should be trodden.� * * the word �ladders� is the translation of the egyptian word �khâtiû,� employed in the text to designate the country laid out in terraces where the incense trees grew; cf. with a different meaning, the �ladders� of the eastern mediterranean. gums required for the temple service had hitherto reached the theban priests solely by means of foreign intermediaries; so that in the slow transport across africa they lost much of their freshness, besides being defiled by passing through impure hands. in addition to these drawbacks, the merchants confounded under the one term �anîti� substances which differed considerably both in value and character, several of them, indeed, scarcely coming under the category of perfumes, and hence being unacceptable to the gods. one kind, however, found favour with them above all others, being that which still abounds in somali-land at the present day--a gum secreted by the incense sycomore.* * from the form of the trees depicted on the monument, it is certain that the egyptians went to pûanît in search of the _boswellia thurifera_ cart.; but they brought back with them other products also, which they confounded together under the name �incense.� it was accounted a pious work to send and obtain it direct from the locality in which it grew, and if possible to procure the plants themselves for acclimatisation in the nile valley. but the relations maintained in former times with the people of these aromatic regions had been suspended for centuries. �none now climbed the �ladders of incense,� none of the egyptians; they knew of them from hearsay, from the stories of people of ancient times, for these products were brought to the kings of the delta, thy fathers, to one or other of them, from the times of thy ancestors the kings of the said who lived of yore.� all that could be recalled of this country was summed up in the facts, that it lay to the south or to the extreme east, that from thence many of the gods had come into egypt, while from out of it the sun rose anew every morning. amon, in his omniscience, took upon himself to describe it and give an exact account of its position. �the �ladders of incense� is a secret province of tonûtir, it is in truth a place of delight. i created it, and i thereto lead thy majesty, together with mût, hâthor, uîrît, the lady of pûanît, uîrît-hikaû, the magician and regent of the gods, that the aromatic gum may be gathered at will, that the vessels may be laden joyfully with living incense trees and with all the products of this earth.� hâtshopsîtû chose out five well-built galleys, and manned them with picked crews. she caused them to be laden with such merchandise as would be most attractive to the barbarians, and placing the vessels under the command of a royal envoy, she sent them forth on the bed sea in quest of the incense. we are not acquainted with the name of the port from which the fleet set sail, nor do we know the number of weeks it took to reach the land of pûanît, neither is there any record of the incidents which befell it by the way. it sailed past the places frequented by the mariners of the xiith dynasty--suakîn, massowah, and the islands of the ked sea; it touched at the country of the ilîm which lay to the west of the bab el-mandeb, went safely through the straits, and landed at last in the land of perfumes on the somali coast.* there, between the bay of zeîlah and bas hafun, stretched the barbaric region, frequented in later times by the merchants of myos hormos and of berenice. * that part of pûanît where the egyptians landed was at first located in arabia by brugsch, then transferred to somali-land by mariette, whose opinion was accepted by most egyptologists. dumichen, basing his hypothesis on a passage where pûanît is mentioned as �being on both sides of the sea,� desired to apply the name to the arabian as well as to the african coast, to yemen and hadhramaut as well as to somali-land; this suggestion was adopted by lieblein, and subsequently by ed. meyer, who believed that its inhabitants were the ancestors of the sabseans. since then krall has endeavoured to shorten the distance between this country and egypt, and he places the pûanît of hâtshopsîtû between suakin and massowah. this was, indeed, the part of the country known under the xiith dynasty at the time when it was believed that the nile emptied itself thereabouts into the red sea, in the vicinity of the island of the serpent king, but i hold, with mariette, that the pûanît where the egyptians of hâtshopsîtû�s time landed is the present somali-land--a view which is also shared by navillo, but which brugsch, in the latter years of his life, abandoned. [illustration: .jpg an inhabitant of the land of pÛanÎt] drawn by fauchon-gudin, from a photograph by gayet. the first stations which the latter encountered beyond cape direh--avails, malao, mundos, and mosylon--were merely open roadsteads offering no secure shelter; but beyond mosylon, the classical navigators reported the existence of several wadys, the last of which, the elephant river, lying between bas el-eîl and cape guardafui, appears to have been large enough not only to afford anchorage to several vessels of light draught, but to permit of their performing easily any evolutions required. during the roman period, it was there, and there only, that the best kind of incense could be obtained, and it was probably at this point also that the egyptians of hâtshopsîtû�s time landed. the egyptian vessels sailed up the river till they reached a place beyond the influence of the tide, and then dropped anchor in front of a village scattered along a bank fringed with sycomores and palms.* * i have shown, from a careful examination of the bas- reliefs, that the egyptians must have landed, not on the coast itself, as was at first believed, but in the estuary of a river, and this observation has been accepted as decisive by most egyptologists; besides this, newly discovered fragments show the presence of a hippopotamus. since then i have sought to identify the landing-place of the egyptians with the most important of the creeks mentioned by the græco-roman merchants as accessible for their vessels, viz. that which they called the elephant river, near to the present ras el-fîl. the huts of the inhabitants were of circular shape, each being surmounted with a conical roof; some of them were made of closely plaited osiers, and there was no opening in any of them save the door. they were built upon piles, as a protection from the rise of the river and from wild animals, and access to them was gained by means of moveable ladders. oxen chewing the cud rested beneath them. the natives belonged to a light-coloured race, and the portraits we possess of them resemble the egyptian type in every particular. they were tall and thin, and of a colour which varied between brick-red and the darkest brown. their beards were pointed, and the hair was cut short in some instances, while in others it was arranged in close rows of curls or in small plaits. the costume of the men consisted of a loin-cloth only, while the dress of the women was a yellow garment without sleeves, drawn in at the waist and falling halfway below the knee. the royal envoy landed under an escort of eight soldiers and an officer, but, to prove his pacific intentions, he spread out upon a low table a variety of presents, consisting of five bracelets two gold necklaces, a dagger with strap and sheath complete, a battle-axe, and eleven strings of glass beads. [illustration: .jpg a village on the bank of the river, with ladders of incense] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the inhabitants, dazzled by the display of so many valuable objects, ran to meet the new-comers, headed by their sheikh, and expressed a natural astonishment at the sight of the strangers. �how is it,� they exclaimed, �that you have reached this country hitherto unknown to men? have you come down by way of the sky, or have you sailed on the waters of the tonûtir sea? you have followed the path of the sun, for as for the king of the land of egypt, it is not possible to elude him, and we live, yea, we ourselves, by the breath which he gives us.� the name of their chief was parihû, who was distinguished from his subjects by the boomerang which he carried, and also by his dagger and necklace of beads: his right leg, moreover, appears to have been covered with a kind of sheath composed of rings of some yellow metal, probably gold.* he was accompanied by his wife ati, riding on an ass, from which she alighted in order to gain a closer view of the strangers. she was endowed with a type of beauty much admired by the people of central africa, being so inordinately fat that the shape of her body was scarcely recognisable under the rolls of flesh which hung down from it. her daughter, who appeared to be still young, gave promise of one day rivalling, if not exceeding, her mother in size.** * mariette compares this kind of armour to the �dangabor� of the congo tribes, but the �dangabor �is worn on the arm. livingstone saw a woman, the sister of sebituaneh, the highest lady of the sesketeh, who wore on each leg eighteen rings of solid brass as thick as the finger, and three rings of copper above the knee. the weight of these shining rings impeded her walking, and produced sores on her ankles; but it was the fashion, and the inconvenience became nothing. as to the pain, it was relieved by a bit of rag applied to the lower rings. ** these are two instances of abnormal fat production--the earliest with which we are acquainted. after an exchange of compliments, the more serious business of the expedition was introduced. the egyptians pitched a tent, in which they placed the objects of barter with which they were provided, and to prevent these from being too great a temptation to the natives, they surrounded the tent with a line of troops. [illustration: .jpg prince parihÛ and the princess of puanÎt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. the main conditions of the exchange were arranged at a banquet, in which they spread before the barbarians a sumptuous display of egyptian delicacies, consisting of bread, beer, wine, meat, and carefully prepared and flavoured vegetables. payment for every object was to be made at the actual moment of purchase. for several days there was a constant stream of people, and asses groaned beneath their burdens. the egyptian purchases comprised the most varied objects: ivory tusks, gold, ebony, cassia, myrrh, cynocephali and green monkeys, greyhounds, leopard skins, large oxen, slaves, and last, but not least, thirty-one incense trees, with their roots surrounded by a ball of earth and placed in large baskets. the lading of the ships was a long and tedious affair. all available space being at length exhausted, and as much cargo placed on board as was compatible with the navigation of the vessel, the squadron set sail and with all speed took its way northwards. [illustration: .jpg the embarkation of the incense sycomores on board the egyptian fleet] drawn by bouclier, from a photograph by beato. the egyptians touched at several places on the coast on their return journey, making friendly alliances with the inhabitants; the him added a quota to their freight, for which room was with difficulty found on board,--it consisted not only of the inevitable gold, ivory, and skins, but also of live leopards and a giraffe, together with plants and fruits unknown on the banks of the nile.* * lieblein thought that their country was explored, not by the sailors who voyaged to pûanît, but by a different body who proceeded by land, and this view was accepted by ed. meyer. the completed text proves that there was but a single expedition, and that the explorers of pûanît visited the ilîm also. the giraffe which they gave does not appear in the cargo of the vessels at pûanît; the visit must, therefore, have been paid on the return voyage, and the giraffe was probably represented on the destroyed part of the walls where naville found the image of this animal wandering at liberty among the woods. the fleet at length made its reappearance in egyptian ports, having on board the chiefs of several tribes on whose coasts the sailors had landed, and �bringing back so much that the like had never been brought of the products of pûanît to other kings, by the supreme favour of the venerable god, amon râ, lord of karnak.� the chiefs mentioned were probably young men of superior family, who had been confided to the officer in command of the squadron by local sheikhs, as pledges to the pharaoh of good will or as commercial hostages. national vanity, no doubt, prompted the egyptians to regard them as vassals coming to do homage, and their gifts as tributes denoting subjection. the queen inaugurated a solemn festival in honour of the explorers. the theban militia was ordered out to meet them, the royal flotilla escorting them as far as the temple landing-place, where a procession was formed to carry the spoil to the feet of the god. the good theban folk, assembled to witness their arrival, beheld the march past of the native hostages, the incense sycomores, the precious gum itself, the wild animals, the giraffe, and the oxen, whose numbers were doubtless increased a hundredfold in the accounts given to posterity with the usual official exaggeration. the trees were planted at deîr el-baharî, where a sacred garden was prepared for them, square trenches being cut in the rock and filled with earth, in which the sycomore, by frequent watering, came to flourish well.* * naville found these trenches still filled with vegetable mould, and in several of them roots, which gave every indication of the purpose to which the trenches were applied. a scene represents seven of the incense sycomores still growing in their pots, and offered by the queen to the majesty �of this god amonrâ of karnak.� the great heaps of fresh resin were next the objects of special attention. hâtshopsîtû �gave a bushel made of electrum to gauge the mass of gum, it being the first time that they had the joy of measuring the perfumes for amon, lord of karnak, master of heaven, and of presenting to him the wonderful products of pûanît. thot, the lord of hermo-polis, noted the quantities in writing; safkhîtâbûi verified the list. her majesty herself prepared from it, with her own hands, a perfumed unguent for her limbs; she gave forth the smell of the divine dew, her perfume reached even to pûanît, her skin became like wrought gold,* and her countenance shone like the stars in the great festival hall, in the sight of the whole earth.� * in order to understand the full force of the imagery here employed, one must remember that the egyptian artists painted the flesh of women as light yellow. hâtshopsîtû commanded the history of the expedition to be carved on the wall of the colonnades which lay on the west side of the middle platform of her funerary chapel: we there see the little fleet with sails spread, winging its way to the unknown country, its safe arrival at its destination, the meeting with the natives, the animated palavering, the consent to exchange freely accorded; and thanks to the minuteness with which the smallest details have been portrayed, we can as it were witness, as if on the spot, all the phases of life on board ship, not only on egyptian vessels, but, as we may infer, those of other oriental nations generally. for we may be tolerably sure that when the phoenicians ventured into the distant parts of the mediterranean, it was after a similar fashion that they managed and armed their vessels. [illustration: .jpg some of the incense trees brought from pÛanÎt to deÎr el-baiiakÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. although the natural features of the asiatic or greek coast on which they effected a landing differed widely from those of pûanît, the phoenician navigators were themselves provided with similar objects of exchange, and in their commercial dealings with the natives the methods of procedure of the european traders were doubtless similar to those of the egyptians with the barbarians of the red sea. hâtshopsîtû reigned for at least eight years after this memorable expedition, and traces of her further activity are to be observed in every part of the nile valley. she even turned her attention to the delta, and began the task of reorganising this part of her kingdom, which had been much neglected by her predecessors. the wars between the theban princes and the lords of avaris had lasted over a century, and during that time no one had had either sufficient initiative or leisure to superintend the public works, which were more needed here than in any other part of egypt. the canals were silted up with mud, the marshes and the desert had encroached on the cultivated lands, the towns had become impoverished, and there were some provinces whose population consisted solely of shepherds and bandits. hâtshopsîtû desired to remedy these evils, if only for the purpose of providing a practicable road for her armies marching to zalû _en route_ for syria.* * this follows from the great inscription at stabl-antar, which is commonly interpreted as proving that the shepherd- kings still held sway in egypt in the reign of thûtmosis iii., and that they were driven out by him and his aunt. it seems to me that the queen is simply boasting that she had repaired the monuments which had been injured by the shepherds during the time they sojourned in egypt, in the land of avaris. up to the present time no trace of these restorations has been found on the sites. the expedition to pûanît being mentioned in lines , , they must be of later date than the year ix. of hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii. she also turned her attention to the mines of sinai, which had not been worked by the egyptian kings since the end of the xiith dynasty. in the year xvi. an officer of the queen�s household was despatched to the wady magharah, the site of the ancient works, with orders to inspect the valleys, examine the veins, and restore there the temple of the goddess hâthor; having accomplished his mission, he returned, bringing with him a consignment of those blue and green stones which were so highly esteemed by the egyptians. meanwhile, thûtmosis iii. was approaching manhood, and his aunt, the queen, instead of abdicating in his favour, associated him with herself more frequently in the external acts of government.* * the account of the youth of thûtmosis iii., such as brugsch made it out to be from an inscription of this king, the exile of the royal child at bûto, his long sojourn in the marshes, his triumphal return, must all be rejected. brugsch accepted as actual history a poetical passage where the king identifies himself with horus son of isis, and goes so far as to attribute to himself the adventures of the god. she was forced to yield him precedence in those religious ceremonies which could be performed by a man only, such as the dedication of one of the city gates of ombos, and the foundation and marking out of a temple at medinet-habû; but for the most part she obliged him to remain in the background and take a secondary place beside her. we are unable to determine the precise moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end. it was still existent in the xvith year of the reign, but it had ceased before the xxiind year. death alone could take the sceptre from the hands that held it, and thûtmosis had to curb his impatience for many a long day before becoming the real master of egypt. he was about twenty-five years of age when this event took place, and he immediately revenged himself for the long repression he had undergone, by endeavouring to destroy the very remembrance of her whom he regarded as a usurper. every portrait of her that he could deface without exposing himself to being accused of sacrilege was cut away, and he substituted for her name either that of thûtmosis i. or of thûtmosis ii. [illustration: .jpg thutmosis iii., from his statue in the turin museum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. a complete political change was effected both at home and abroad from the first day of his accession to power. hâtshopsîtû had been averse to war. during the whole of her reign there had not been a single campaign undertaken beyond the isthmus of suez, and by the end of her life she had lost nearly all that her father had gained in syria; the people of kharu had shaken off the yoke,* probably at the instigation of the king of the amorites,** and nothing remained to egypt of the asiatic province but gaza, sharûhana,*** and the neighbouring villages. the young king set out with his army in the latter days of the year xxii. he reached gaza on the rd of the month of pakhons, in time to keep the anniversary of his coronation in that town, and to inaugurate the th year of his reign by festivals in honour of his father amon.**** they lasted the usual length of time, and all the departments of state took part in them, but it was not a propitious moment for lengthy ceremonies. * e. de rougé thought that he had discovered, in a slightly damaged inscription bearing upon the pûanît expedition, the mention of a tribute paid by the lotanû. there is nothing in the passage cited but the mention of the usual annual dues paid by the chiefs of pûanît and of the ilîm. ** this is at least what may be inferred from the account of the campaign, where the prince of qodshû, a town of the amaûru (amorites), figures at the head of the coalition formed against thûtmosis iii. *** this is the conclusion to be adopted from the beginning of the inscription of thûtmosis iii.: �now, during the duration of these same years, the country of the lotanû was in discord until other times succeeded them, when the people who were in the town of sharûhana, from the town of yûrza, to the most distant regions of the earth, succeeded in making a revolt against his majesty.� **** the account of this campaign has been preserved to us on a wall adjoining the granite sanctuary at karnak. the king left gaza the following day, the th of pakhons; he marched but slowly at first, following the usual caravan route, and despatching troops right and left to levy contributions on the cities of the plain--migdol, yapu (jaffa), lotanû, ono--and those within reach on the mountain spurs, or situated within the easily accessible wadys, such as sauka (socho), hadid, and harîlu. on the th day he had not proceeded further than yahmu, where he received information which caused him to push quickly forward. the lord of qodshû had formed an alliance with the syrian princes on the borders of naharaim, and had extorted from them promises of help; he had already gone so far as to summon contingents from the upper orontes, the litany, and the upper jordan, and was concentrating them at megiddo, where he proposed to stop the way of the invading army. thûtmosis called together his principal officers, and having imparted the news to them, took counsel with them as to a plan of attack. three alternative routes were open to him. the most direct approached the enemy�s position on the front, crossing mount carmel by the saddle now known as the umm el-fahm; but the great drawback attached to this route was its being so restricted that the troops would be forced to advance in too thin a file; and the head of the column would reach the plain and come into actual conflict with the enemy while the rear-guard would only be entering the defiles in the neighbourhood of aluna. the second route bore a little to the east, crossing the mountains beyond dutîna and reaching the plain near taânach; but it offered the same disadvantages as the other. the third road ran north of _zafîti_, to meet the great highway which cuts the hill-district of nablûs, skirting the foot of tabor near jenîn, a little to the north of megiddo. it was not so direct as the other two, but it was easier for troops, and the king�s generals advised that it should be followed. the king was so incensed that he was tempted to attribute their prudence to cowardice. �by my life! by the love that râ hath for me, by the favour that i enjoy from my master amon, by the perpetual youth of my nostril in life and power, my majesty will go by the way of aluna, and let him that will go by the roads of which ye have spoken, and let him that will follow my majesty. what will be said among the vile enemies detested of râ: �doth not his majesty go by another way? for fear of us he gives us a wide berth,� they will cry.� the king�s counsellors did not insist further. �may thy father amon of thebes protect thee!� they exclaimed; �as for us, we will follow thy majesty whithersoever thou goest, as it befitteth a servant to follow his master.� the word of command was given to the men; thûtmosis himself led the vanguard, and the whole army, horsemen and foot-soldiers, followed in single file, wending their way through the thickets which covered the southern slopes of mount carmel.* * the position of the towns mentioned and of the three roads has been discussed by e. de rougé, also by p. de saulcy, who fixed the position of yahmu at el-kheimeh, and showed that the egyptian army must have passed through the defiles of umm el-rahm. conder disagreed with this opinion in certain respects, and identified aluna, aruna, at first with arrabeh, and afterwards with arraneh; he thought that thûtmosis came out upon megiddo from the south-east, and he placed megiddo at mejeddah, near beisan, while tomkins placed aruna in the wady el-arriân. w. max millier seems to place yahinu too much to the north, in the neighbourhood of jett. they pitched their camp on the evening of the th near aluna, and on the morning of the th they entered the wild defiles through which it was necessary to pass in order to reach the enemy. the king had taken precautionary measures against any possible attempt of the natives to cut the main column during this crossing of the mountains. his position might at any moment have become a critical one, had the allies taken advantage of it and attacked each battalion as it issued on to the plain before it could re-form. but the prince of qodshû, either from ignorance of his adversary�s movements, or confident of victory in the open, declined to take the initiative. towards one o�clock in the afternoon, the egyptians found themselves once more united on the further side of the range, close to a torrent called the qina, a little to the south of megiddo. when the camp was pitched, thûtmosis announced his intention of engaging the enemy on the morrow. a council of war was held to decide on the position that each corps should occupy, after which the officers returned to their men to see that a liberal supply of rations was served out, and to organise an efficient system of patrols. they passed round the camp to the cry: �keep a good heart: courage! watch well, watch well! keep alive in the camp!� the king refused to retire to rest until he had been assured that �the country was quiet, and also the host, both to south and north.� by dawn the next day the whole army was in motion. it was formed into a single line, the right wing protected by the torrent, the left extended into the plain, stretching beyond megiddo towards the north-west. thûtmosis and his guards occupied the centre, standing �armed in his chariot of electrum like unto horus brandishing his pike, and like montû the theban god.� the syrians, who had not expected such an early attack, were seized with panic, and fled in the direction of the town, leaving their horses and chariots on the field; but the citizens, fearing lest in the confusion the egyptians should effect an entrance with the fugitives, had closed their gates and refused to open them. some of the townspeople, however, let down ropes to the leaders of the allied party, and drew them up to the top of the ramparts: �and would to heaven that the soldiers of his majesty had not so far forgotten themselves as to gather up the spoil left by the vile enemy! they would then have entered megiddo forthwith; for while the men of the garrison were drawing up the lord of qodshû and their own prince, the fear of his majesty was upon their limbs, and their hands failed them by reason of the carnage which the royal urous carried into their ranks.� the victorious soldiery were dispersed over the fields, gathering together the gilded and silvered chariots of the syrian chiefs, collecting the scattered weapons and the hands of the slain, and securing the prisoners; then rallying about the king, they greeted him with acclamations and filed past to deliver up the spoil. he reproached them for having allowed themselves to be drawn away from the heat of pursuit. �had you carried megiddo, it would have been a favour granted to me by râ my father this day; for all the kings of the country being shut up within it, it would have been as the taking of a thousand towns to have seized megiddo.� the egyptians had made little progress in the art of besieging a stronghold since the times of the xiith dynasty. when scaling failed, they had no other resource than a blockade, and even the most stubborn of the pharaohs would naturally shrink from the tedium of such an undertaking. thûtmosis, however, was not inclined to lose the opportunity of closing the campaign by a decisive blow, and began the investment of the town according to the prescribed modes. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian encampment before a besieged town] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. his men were placed under canvas, and working under the protection of immense shields, supported on posts, they made a ditch around the walls, strengthening it with a palisade. the king constructed also on the east side a fort which he called �manakhpirrî-holds-the-asiatics.� famine soon told on the demoralised citizens, and their surrender brought about the submission of the entire country. most of the countries situated between the jordan and the sea--shunem, cana, kinnereth, hazor, bedippa, laish, merom, and acre--besides the cities of the haurân--hamath, magato, ashtarôth, ono-repha, and even damascus itself--recognised the suzerainty of egypt, and their lords came in to the camp to do homage.* * the names of these towns are inscribed on the lists of karnak published by mariette. the syrian losses did not amount to more than killed and prisoners, showing how easily they had been routed; but they had abandoned considerable supplies, all of which had fallen into the hands of the victors. some chariots, mares, suits of armour, bows, the tent of the prince of qodshû with its poles of cypress inlaid with gold, besides oxen, cows, goats, and more than , sheep, were among the spoil. before quitting the plain of bsdraelon, the king caused an official survey of it to be made, and had the harvest reaped. it yielded , bushels of wheat, not taking into account what had been looted or damaged by the marauding soldiery. the return homewards of the egyptians must have resembled the exodus of some emigrating tribe rather than the progress of a regular army thûtmosis caused a long list of the vanquished to be engraved on the walls of the temple which he was building at karnak, thus affording the good people of thebes an opportunity for the first time of reading on the monuments the titles of the king�s syrian subjects written in hieroglyphics. one hundred and nineteen names follow each other in unbroken succession, some of them representing mere villages, while others denoted powerful nations; the catalogue, however, was not to end even here. having once set out on a career of conquest, the pharaoh had no inclination to lay aside his arms. from the xxiith year of his reign to that of his death, we have a record of twelve military expeditions, all of which he led in person. southern syria was conquered at the outset--the whole of kharû as far as the lake of grennesareth, and the amorite power was broken at one blow. [illustration: .jpg some of the plants and animals brought back from puanÎt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the three succeeding campaigns consolidated the rule of egypt in the country of the negeb, which lay to the south-west of the dead sea, in phoenicia, which prudently resigned itself to its fate, and in that part of lotanii occupying the northern part of the basin of the orontes.** * we know of these three campaigns from the indirect testimony of the annals, which end in the year xxix. with the mention of the fifth campaign. the only dated one is referred to the year xxv., and we know of that of the negeb only by the _inscription of amenemhabî_, . - : the campaign began in the negeb of judah, but the king carried it to naharaim the same year. none of these expeditions appear to have been marked by any successes comparable to the victory at megiddo, for the coalition of the syrian chiefs did not survive the blow which they then sustained; but qodshû long remained the centre of resistance, and the successive defeats which its inhabitants suffered never disarmed for more than a short interval the hatred which they felt for the egyptian. [illustration: .jpg part of the triumphal lists of thutmosis iii.] on one of the pylons of the temple at karnak. drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. during these years of glorious activity considerable tribute poured in to both memphis and thebes; not only ingots of gold and silver, bars and blocks of copper and lead, blocks of lapis-lazuli and valuable vases, but horses, oxen, sheep, goats, and useful animals of every kind, in addition to all of which we find, as in hâtshopsîtû�s reign, the mention of rare plants and shrubs brought back from countries traversed by the armies in their various expeditions. the theban priests and _savants_ exhibited much interest in such curiosities, and their royal pupil gave orders to his generals to collect for their benefit all that appeared either rare or novel. they endeavoured to acclimatise the species or the varieties likely to be useful, and in order to preserve a record of these experiments, they caused a representation of the strange plants or animals to be drawn on the walls of one of the chapels which they were then building to one of their gods. these pictures may still be seen there in interminable lines, portraying the specimens brought from the upper lotanû in the xxvth year of thûtmosis, and we are able to distinguish, side by side with many plants peculiar to the regions of the euphrates, others having their habitat in the mountains and valleys of tropical africa. this return to an aggressive policy on the part of the egyptians, after the weakness they had exhibited during the later period of hâtshopsîtû�s regency, seriously disconcerted the asiatic sovereigns. they had vainly flattered themselves that the invasion of thûtmosis i. was merely the caprice of an adventurous prince, and they hoped that when his love of enterprise had expended itself, egypt would permanently withdraw within her traditional boundaries, and that the relations of elam with babylon, carchemish with qodshû, and the barbarians of the persian gulf with the inhabitants of the iranian table-land would resume their former course. this vain delusion was dispelled by the advent of a new thûtmosis, who showed clearly by his actions that he intended to establish and maintain the sovereignty of egypt over the western dependencies, at least, of the ancient chaldæan empire, that is to say, over the countries which bordered the middle course of the euphrates and the coasts of the mediterranean. the audacity of his marches, the valour of his men, the facility with which in a few hours he had crushed the assembled forces of half syria, left no room to doubt that he was possessed of personal qualities and material resources sufficient to carry out projects of the most ambitious character. babylon, enfeebled by the perpetual dissensions of its cossæan princes, was no longer in a position to contest with him the little authority she still retained over the peoples of naharaim or of coele-syria; protected by the distance which separated her from the nile valley, she preserved a sullen neutrality, while assyria hastened to form a peaceful alliance with the invading power. again and again its kings sent to thûtmosis presents in proportion to their resources, and the pharaoh naturally treated their advances as undeniable proofs of their voluntary vassalage. each time that he received from them a gift of metal or lapis-lazuli, he proudly recorded their tribute in the annals of his reign; and if, in exchange, he sent them some egyptian product, it was in smaller quantities, as might be expected from a lord to his vassal.* * the �tribute of assûr� is mentioned in this way under the years xxiii. and xxiv. the presents sent by the pharaoh in return are not mentioned in any egyptian text, but there is frequent reference to them in the tel el-amarna tablets. it may be mentioned here that the name of nineveh does not occur on the egyptian monuments, but only that of the town nîi, in which champollion wrongly recognised the later capital of assyria. sometimes there would accompany the convoy, surrounded by an escort of slaves and women, some princess, whom the king would place in his harem or graciously pass on to one of his children; but when, on the other hand, an even distant relative of the pharaoh was asked in marriage for some king on the banks of the tigris or euphrates, the request was met with a disdainful negative: the daughters of the sun were of too noble a race to stoop to such alliances, and they would count it a humiliation to be sent in marriage to a foreign court. [illustration: .jpg some of the objects carried in tribute to the syrians] drawn by faucher-gudin, after champollion. free transit on the main road which ran diagonally through kharû was ensured by fortresses constructed at strategic points,* and from this time forward thûtmosis was able to bring the whole force of his army to bear upon both coele-syria and naharaim.** he encamped, in the year xxvii., on the table-land separating the afrîn and the orontes from the euphrates, and from that centre devastated the district of Ûânît,*** which lay to the west of aleppo; then crossing �the water of naharaim� in the neighbourhood of carchemish, he penetrated into the heart of mitanni. * the castle, for instance, near megiddo, previously referred to, which, after having contributed to the siege of the town, probably served to keep it in subjection. ** the accounts of the campaigns of thûtmosis iii. have been preserved in the annals in a very mutilated condition, the fragments of which were discovered at different times. they are nothing but extracts from an official account, made for amon and his priests. *** the province of the tree Ûanû; cf. with this designation the epithet �shad erini,� �mountain of the cedar tree,� which the assyrians bestowed on the amanus. the following year he reappeared in the same region. tunipa, which had made an obstinate resistance, was taken, together with its king, and of his nobles were forced to yield themselves prisoners. thûtmosis �with a joyous heart� was carrying them away captive, when it occurred to him that the district of zahi, which lay away for the most part from the great military highroads, was a tempting prey teeming with spoil. the barns were stored with wheat and barley, the cellars were filled with wine, the harvest was not yet gathered in, and the trees bent under the weight of their fruit. having pillaged senzaûrû on the orontes,* he made his way to the westwards through the ravine formed by the ishahr el-kebîr, and descended suddenly on the territory of arvad. the towns once more escaped pillage, but thutmosis destroyed the harvests, plundered the orchards, carried off the cattle, and pitilessly wasted the whole of the maritime plain. * senzaûrû was thought by ebers to be �the double tyre.� brugsch considered it to be tyre itself. it is, i believe, the sizara of classical writers, the shaizar of the arabs, and is mentioned in one of the tel el-amarna tablets in connection with nîi. there was such abundance within the camp that the men were continually getting drunk, and spent their time in anointing themselves with oil, which they could do only in egypt at the most solemn festivals. they returned to syria in the year xxx., and their good fortune again favoured them. the stubborn qodshû was harshly dealt with; simyra and arvad, which hitherto had held their own, now opened their gates to him; the lords of upper lotanû poured in their contributions without delay, and gave up their sons and brothers as hostages. in the year xxxi., the city of anamut in tikhisa, on the shores of lake msrana, yielded in its turn;* on the rd of pakhons, the anniversary of his coronation, the lotanû renewed their homage to him in person. * the site of the tikhisa country is imperfectly defined. nisrana was seemingly applied to the marshy lake into which the koweik flows, and it is perhaps to be found in the name kin-nesrîn. in this case tikhisa would be the country near the lake; the district of the grseco-roruan chalkis is situated on the right of the military road. the return of the expedition was a sort of triumphal procession. at every halting-place the troops found quarters and provisions prepared for them, bread and cakes, perfumes, oil, wine, and honey being provided in such quantities that they were obliged on their departure to leave the greater part behind them. the scribes took advantage of this peaceful state of affairs to draw up minute accounts of the products of lotanû--corn, barley, millet, fruits, and various kinds of oil--prompted doubtless by the desire to arrive at a fairly just apportionment of the tribute. indeed, the results of the expedition were considered so satisfactory that they were recorded on a special monument dedicated in the palace at thebes. the names of the towns and peoples might change with every war, but the spoils suffered no diminution. in the year xxxiii., the kingdoms situated to the west of the euphrates were so far pacified that thutmosis was able without risk to carry his arms to mesopotamia. he entered the country by the fords of carchemish, near to the spot where his grandfather, thutmosis i., had erected his stele half a century previously. he placed another beside this, and a third to the eastward to mark the point to which he had extended the frontier of his empire.. the mitanni, who exercised a sort of hegemony over the whole of naharaim, were this time the objects of his attack. thirty-two of their towns fell one after another, their kings were taken captive and the walls of their cities were razed, without any serious resistance. the battalions of the enemy were dispersed at the first shock, and pharaoh �pursued them for the space of a mile, without one of them daring to look behind him, for they thought only of escape, and fled before him like a flock of goats.� thutmosis pushed forward as far certainly as the balikh, and perhaps on to the khabur or even to the hermus; and as he approached the frontier, the king of singar, a vassal of assyria, sent him presents of lapis-lazuli. when this prince had retired, another chief, the lord of the great kkati, whose territory had not even been threatened by the invaders, deemed it prudent to follow the example of the petty princes of the plain of the euphrates, and despatched envoys to the pharaoh bearing presents of no great value, but testifying to his desire to live on good terms with egypt. still further on, the inhabitants of nîi begged the king�s acceptance of a troop of slaves and two hundred and sixty mares; he remained among them long enough to erect a stele commemorating his triumph, and to indulge in one of those extensive hunts which were the delight of oriental monarchs. the country abounded in elephants. the soldiers were employed as beaters, and the king and his court succeeded in killing one hundred and twenty head of big game, whose tusks were added to the spoils. these numbers indicate how the extinction of such animals in these parts was brought about. beyond these regions, again, the sheikhs of the lamnaniû came to meet the pharaoh. they were a poor people, and had but little to offer, but among their gifts were some birds of a species unknown to the egyptians, and two geese, with which, however, his majesty deigned to be satisfied.* * the campaign of the year xxxi. it is mentioned in the _annals of thulmosis iii._, . - ; the reference to the elephant-hunt occurs only in the _inscription of amenemhabi_, . , ; an allusion to the defeat of the kings of mitanni is found in a mutilated inscription from the tomb of manakhpirrîsonbû. it was probably on his return from this campaign that thûtmosis caused the great list to be engraved which, while it includes a certain number of names assigned to places beyond the euphrates, ought necessarily to contain the cities of the mitanni. end of vol. iv. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume v. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: frontispiece] [illustration: titlepage] the eighteenth theban dynasty--(continued) _thÛtmosis iii.: the organisation of the syrian provinces--amenÔthes iii.: the worshippers of atonÛ._ _thutmosis iii.: the talcing of qodshâ in the nd year of his reign--the tribute of the south--the triumph-song of amon._ _the constitution of the egyptian empire--the grown vassals and their relations with the pharaoh--the king�s messengers--the allied states--royal presents and marriages; the status of foreigners in the royal harem--commerce with asia, its resources and its risks; protection granted to the national industries, and treaties of extradition._ _amenôthes ii, his campaigns in syria and nubia--thûtmosis iv.; his dream under the shadow of the sphinx and his marriage--amenôthes iii. and his peaceful reign--the great building works--the temples of nubia: soleb and his sanctuary built by amenôthes iii, gebel barkal, elephantine--the beautifying of thebes: the temple of mat, the temples of amon at luxor and at karnak, the tomb of amenôthes iii, the chapel and the colossi of memnon._ _the increasing importance of anion and his priests: preference shown by amenôthes iii. for the heliopolitan gods, his marriage with tii--the influence of tii over amenôthes iv.: the decadence of amon and of thebes, atonû and khûîtniatonû--change of physiognomy in khûniaton, his character, his government, his relations with asia: the tombs of tel el-amarna and the art of the period--tutanlchamon, at: the return of the pharaohs to thebes and the close of the xviiith dynasty._ chapter i--the eighteenth theban dynasty--(continued) _thutmosis iii.: the organisation of the syrian provinces--amenothes iii.: the royal worshippers of atonû._ in the year xxxiv. the egyptians reappeared in zahi. the people of anaugasa having revolted, two of their towns were taken, a third surrendered, while the chiefs of the lotanû hastened to meet their lord with their usual tribute. advantage was taken of the encampment being at the foot of the lebanon to procure wood for building purposes, such as beams and planks, masts and yards for vessels, which were all shipped by the kefâtiu at byblos for exportation to the delta. this expedition was, indeed, little more than a military march through the country. it would appear that the syrians soon accustomed themselves to the presence of the egyptians in their midst, and their obedience henceforward could be fairly relied on. we are unable to ascertain what were the circumstances or the intrigues which, in the year xxxv., led to a sudden outbreak among the tribes settled on the euphrates and the orontes. the king of mitanni rallied round him the princes of naharaim, and awaited the attack of the egyptians near aruna. thûtmosis displayed great personal courage, and the victory was at once decisive. we find mention of only ten prisoners, one hundred and eighty mares, and sixty chariots in the lists of the spoil. anaugasa again revolted, and was subdued afresh in the year xxxviii.; the shaûsû rebelled in the year xxxix., and the lotanû or some of the tribes connected with them two years later. the campaign of the year xlii. proved more serious. troubles had arisen in the neighbourhood of arvad. thûtmosis, instead of following the usual caravan route, marched along the coast-road by way of phoenicia. he destroyed arka in the lebanon and the surrounding strongholds, which were the haunts of robbers who lurked in the mountains; then turning to the northeast, he took tunipa and extorted the usual tribute from the inhabitants of naharaim. on the other hand, the prince of qodshû, trusting to the strength of his walled city, refused to do homage to the pharaoh, and a deadly struggle took place under the ramparts, in which each side availed themselves of all the artifices which the strategic warfare of the times allowed. on a day when the assailants and besieged were about to come to close quarters, the amorites let loose a mare among the chariotry of thûtmosis. the egyptian horses threatened to become unmanageable, and had begun to break through the ranks, when amenemhabî, an officer of the guard, leaped to the ground, and, running up to the creature, disembowelled it with a thrust of his sword; this done, he cut off its tail and presented it to the king. the besieged were eventually obliged to shut themselves within their newly built walls, hoping by this means to tire out the patience of their assailants; but a picked body of men, led by the same brave amenemhabî who had killed the mare, succeeded in making a breach and forcing an entrance into the town. even the numerous successful campaigns we have mentioned, form but a part, though indeed an important part, of the wars undertaken by thûtmosis to �fix his frontiers in the ends of the earth.� scarcely a year elapsed without the viceroy of ethiopia having a conflict with one or other of the tribes of the upper nile; little merit as he might gain in triumphing over such foes, the spoil taken from them formed a considerable adjunct to the treasure collected in syria, while the tributes from the people of kûsh and the uaûaîû were paid with as great regularity as the taxes levied on the egyptians themselves. it comprised gold both from the mines and from the rivers, feathers, oxen with curiously trained horns, giraffes, lions, leopards, and slaves of all ages. the distant regions explored by hâtshopsîtû continued to pay a tribute at intervals. a fleet went to pûanît to fetch large cargoes of incense, and from time to time some ilîm chief would feel himself honoured by having one of his daughters accepted as an inmate of the harem of the great king. after the year xlii. we have no further records of the reign, but there is no reason to suppose that its closing years were less eventful or less prosperous than the earlier. thûtmosis iii., when conscious of failing powers, may have delegated the direction of his armies to his sons or to his generals, but it is also quite possible that he kept the supreme command in his own hands to the end of his days. even when old age approached and threatened to abate his vigour, he was upheld by the belief that his father amon was ever at hand to guide him with his counsel and assist him in battle. �i give to thee, declared the god, the rebels that they may fall beneath thy sandals, that thou mayest crush the rebellious, for i grant to thee by decree the earth in its length and breadth. the tribes of the west and those of the east are under the place of thy countenance, and when thou goest up into all the strange lands with a joyous heart, there is none who will withstand thy majesty, for i am thy guide when thou treadest them underfoot. thou hast crossed the water of the great curve of naharaim* in thy strength and in thy power, and i have commanded thee to let them hear thy roaring which shall enter their dens, i have deprived their nostrils of the breath of life, i have granted to thee that thy deeds shall sink into their hearts, that my uraeus which is upon thy head may burn them, that it may bring prisoners in long files from the peoples of qodi, that it may consume with its flame those who are in the marshes,** that it may cut off the heads of the asiatics without one of them being able to escape from its clutch. i grant to thee that thy conquests may embrace all lands, that the urseus which shines upon my forehead may be thy vassal, so that in all the compass of the heaven there may not be one to rise against thee, but that the people may come bearing their tribute on their backs and bending before thy majesty according to my behest; i ordain that all aggressors arising in thy time shall fail before thee, their heart burning within them, their limbs trembling!� * the euphrates, in the great curve described by it across naharaim, after issuing from the mountains of cilicia. ** the meaning is doubtful. the word signifies pools, marshes, the provinces situated beyond egyptian territory, and consequently the distant parts of the world--those which are nearest the ocean which encircles the earth, and which was considered as fed by the stagnant waters of the celestial nile, just as the extremities of egypt were watered by those of the terrestrial nile. [illustration: .jpg a procession of negroes] �i.--i am come that i may grant unto thee to crush the great ones of zahi, i throw them under thy feet across their mountains,--i grant to thee that they shall see thy majesty as a lord of shining splendour when thou shinest before them in my likeness! �ii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those of the country of asia, to break the heads of the people of lotanû,--i grant thee that they may see thy majesty, clothed in thy panoply, when thou seizest thy arms, in thy war-chariot. �iii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the land of the east, and invade those who dwell in the provinces of tonûtir,--i grant that they may see thy majesty as the comet which rains down the heat of its flame and sheds its dew. �iv.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the land of the west, so that kafîti and cyprus shall be in fear of thee,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the young bull, stout of heart, armed with horns which none may resist. �v.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those who are in their marshes, so that the countries of mitanni may tremble for fear of thee,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the crocodile, lord of terrors, in the midst of the water, which none can approach. �vi.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush those who are in the isles, so that the people who live in the midst of the very-green may be reached by thy roaring,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like an avenger who stands on the back of his victim. �vii.--i am come, to grant that thou mayest crush the tihonu, so that the isles of the utanâtiû may be in the power of thy souls,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like a spell-weaving lion, and that thou mayest make corpses of them in the midst of their own valleys.* �viii.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the ends of the earth, so that the circle which surrounds the ocean may be grasped in thy fist,--i grant that they may see thy majesty as the sparrow-hawk, lord of the wing, who sees at a glance all that he desires. �ix.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the peoples who are in their �duars,� so that thou mayest bring the hirû-shâîtû into captivity,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like the jackal of the south, lord of swiftness, the runner who prowls through the two lands. �x.--i am come, to grant thee that thou mayest crush the nomads, so that the nubians as far as the land of pidît are in thy grasp,--i grant that they may see thy majesty like unto thy two brothers horus and sit, whose arms i have joined in order to establish thy power.� * the name of the people associated with the tihonu was read at first tanau, and identified with the danai of the greeks. chabas was inclined to read Ûtena, and brugsch, Ûthent, more correctly utanâtiû, utanâti, the people of uatanit. the juxtaposition of this name with that of the libyans compels us to look towards the west for the site of this people: may we assign to them the ionian islands, or even those in the western mediterranean. the poem became celebrated. when seti i., two centuries later, commanded the poet laureates of his court to celebrate his victories in verse, the latter, despairing of producing anything better, borrowed the finest strophes from this hymn to thûtmosis iil, merely changing the name of the hero. the composition, unlike so many other triumphal inscriptions, is not a mere piece of official rhetoric, in which the poverty of the subject is concealed by a multitude of common-places whether historical or mythological. egypt indeed ruled the world, either directly or through her vassals, and from the mountains of abyssinia to those of cilicia her armies held the nations in awe with the threat of the pharaoh. the conqueror, as a rule, did not retain any part of their territory. he confined himself to the appropriation of the revenue of certain domains for the benefit of his gods.* amon of karnak thus became possessor of seven syrian towns which he owed to the generosity of the victorious pharaohs.** * the seven towns which amon possessed in syria are mentioned, in the time of ramses iii., in the list of the domains and revenues of the god. ** in the year xxiii., on his return from his first campaign, thûtmosis iii. provided offerings, guaranteed from the three towns anaûgasa, inûâmû, and hûrnikarû, for his father amonrâ. certain cities, like tunipa, even begged for statues of thûtmosis for which they built a temple and instituted a cultus. amon and his fellow-gods too were adored there, side by side with the sovereign the inhabitants had chosen to represent them here below.* these rites were at once a sign of servitude, and a proof of gratitude for services rendered, or privileges which had been confirmed. the princes of neighbouring regions repaired annually to these temples to renew their oaths of allegiance, and to bring their tributes �before the face of the king.� taking everything into account, the condition of the pharaoh�s subjects might have been a pleasant one, had they been able to accept their lot without any mental reservation. they retained their own laws, their dynasties, and their frontiers, and paid a tax only in proportion to their resources, while the hostages given were answerable for their obedience. these hostages were as a rule taken by thûtmosis from among the sons or the brothers of the enemy�s chief. they were carried to thebes, where a suitable establishment was assigned to them,** the younger members receiving an education which practically made them egyptians. * the statues of thûtmosis iii. and of the gods of egypt erected at tunipa are mentioned in a letter from the inhabitants of that town to amenôthes iii. later, ramses ii., speaking of the two towns in the country of the khâti in which were two statues of his majesty, mentions tunipa as one of them. ** the various titles of the lists of thûtmosis iii. at thebes show us �the children of the syrian chiefs conducted as prisoners� into the town of sûhanû, which is elsewhere mentioned as the depot, the prison of the temple of anion. w. max mullcr was the first to remark the historical value of this indication, but without sufficiently insisting on it; the name indicates, perhaps, as he says, a great prison, but a prison like those where the princes of the family of the ottoman sultans were confined by the reigning monarch-- a palace usually provided with all the comforts of oriental life. as soon as a vacancy occurred in the succession either in syria or in ethiopia, the pharaoh would choose from among the members of the family whom he held in reserve, that prince on whose loyalty he could best count, and placed him upon the throne.* the method of procedure was not always successful, since these princes, whom one would have supposed from their training to have been the least likely to have asserted themselves against the man to whom they owed their elevation, often gave more trouble than others. the sense of the supreme power of egypt, which had been inculcated in them during their exile, seemed to be weakened after their return to their native country, and to give place to a sense of their own importance. their hearts misgave them as the time approached for them to send their own children as pledges to their suzerain, and also when called upon to transfer a considerable part of their revenue to his treasury. they found, moreover, among their own cities and kinsfolk, those who were adverse to the foreign yoke, and secretly urged their countrymen to revolt, or else competitors for the throne who took advantage of the popular discontent to pose as champions of national independence, and it was difficult for the vassal prince to counteract the intrigues of these adversaries without openly declaring himself hostile to his foreign master.** * among the tel el-amarna tablets there is a letter of a petty syrian king, adadnirari, whose father was enthroned after a fashion in nûkhassi by thûtmosis iii. ** thus, in the tel el-amarna correspondence, zimrida, governor of sidon, gives information to amenôthes iii. on the intrigues which the notables of the town were concocting against egyptian authority. ribaddû relates in one of these despatches that the notables of byblos and the women of his harem were urging him to revolt; later, a letter of amûnirâ to the king of egypt informs us that ribaddû had been driven from byblos by his own brother. a time quickly came when a vestige of fear alone constrained them to conceal their wish for liberty; the most trivial incident then sufficed to give them the necessary encouragement, and decided them to throw off the mask, a repulse or the report of a repulse suffered by the egyptians, the news of a popular rising in some neighbouring state, the passing visit of a chaldæan emissary who left behind him the hope of support and perhaps of subsidies from babylon, and the unexpected arrival of a troop of mercenaries whose services might be hired for the occasion.* a rising of this sort usually brought about the most disastrous results. the native prince or the town itself could keep back the tribute and own allegiance to no one during the few months required to convince pharaoh of their defection and to allow him to prepare the necessary means of vengeance; the advent of the egyptians followed, and the work of repression was systematically set in hand. they destroyed the harvests, whether green or ready for the sickle, they cut down the palms and olive trees, they tore up the vines, seized on the flocks, dismantled the strongholds, and took the inhabitants prisoners.** * bûrnabûriash, king of babylon, speaks of syrian agents who had come to ask for support from his father, kûrigalzû, and adds that the latter had counselled submission. in one of the letters preserved in the british museum, azîrû defends himself for having received an emissary of the king of the khâti. ** cf. the raiding, for instance, of the regions of arvad and of the zahi by thûtmosis iii., described in the annals, . , . we are still in possession of the threats which the messenger khâni made against the rebellious chief of a province of the zahi--possibly aziru. the rebellious prince had to deliver up his silver and gold, the contents of his palace, even his children,* and when he had finally obtained peace by means of endless sacrifices, he found himself a vassal as before, but with an empty treasury, a wasted country, and a decimated people. * see, in the accounts of the campaigns of thûtmosis, the record of the spoils, as well as the mention of the children of the chiefs brought as prisoners into egypt. [illustration: .jpg a syrian town and its outskirts after an egyptian army had passed through it] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gayet. in spite of all this, some head-strong native princes never relinquished the hope of freedom, and no sooner had they made good the breaches in their walls as far as they were able, than they entered once more on this unequal contest, though at the risk of bringing irreparable disaster on their country. the majority of them, after one such struggle, resigned themselves to the inevitable, and fulfilled their feudal obligations regularly. they paid their fixed contribution, furnished rations and stores to the army when passing through their territory, and informed the ministers at thebes of any intrigues among their neighbours.* years elapsed before they could so far forget the failure of their first attempt to regain independence, as to venture to make a second, and expose themselves to fresh reverses. the administration of so vast an empire entailed but a small expenditure on the egyptians, and required the offices of merely a few functionaries.** the garrisons which they kept up in foreign provinces lived on the country, and were composed mainly of light troops, archers, a certain proportion of heavy infantry, and a few minor detachments of chariotry dispersed among the principal fortresses.*** * we find in the _annals_, in addition to the enumeration of the tributes, the mention of the foraging arrangements which the chiefs were compelled to make for the army on its passage. we find among the tablets letters from aziru denouncing the intrigues of the khâti; letters also of ribaddu pointing out the misdeeds of abdashirti, and other communications of the same nature, which demonstrate the supervision exercised by the petty syrian princes over each other. ** under thûtmosis iii. we have among others �mir,� or �nasi sîtû mihâtîtû,� �governors of the northern countries,� the thûtîi who became afterwards a hero of romance. the individuals who bore this title held a middle rank in the egyptian hierarchy. *** the archers--_pidâtid, pidâti, pidâte_--and the chariotry quartered in syria are often mentioned in the tel el-amarna correspondence. steindorff has recognised the term -ddû aûîtû, meaning infantry, in the word ûeû, ûiû, of the tel el-amarna tablets. the officers in command had orders to interfere as little as possible in local affairs, and to leave the natives to dispute or even to fight among themselves unhindered, so long as their quarrels did not threaten the security of the pharaoh.* it was never part of the policy of egypt to insist on her foreign subjects keeping an unbroken peace among themselves. if, theoretically, she did not recognise the right of private warfare, she at all events tolerated its practice. it mattered little to her whether some particular province passed out of the possession of a certain eibaddû into that of a certain azîru, or _vice versa_, so long as both eibaddû and azîru remained her faithful slaves. she never sought to repress their incessant quarrelling until such time as it threatened to take the form of an insurrection against her own power. then alone did she throw off her neutrality; taking the side of one or other of the dissentients, she would grant him, as a pledge of help, ten, twenty, thirty, or even more archers.** * a half at least of the tel el-amarna correspondence treats of provincial wars between the kings of towns and countries subject to egypt--wars of abdashirti and his son azîru against the cities of the phoenician coast, wars of abdikhiba, or abdi-tabba, king of jerusalem, against the chiefs of the neighbouring cities. ** abimilki (abisharri) demands on one occasion from the king of egypt ten men to defend tyre, on another occasion twenty; the town of gula requisitioned thirty or forty to guard it. delattre thinks that these are rhetorical expressions answering to a general word, just as if we should say �a handful of men�; the difference of value in the figures is to me a proof of their reality. no doubt the discipline and personal courage of these veterans exercised a certain influence on the turn of events, but they were after all a mere handful of men, and their individual action in the combat would scarcely ever have been sufficient to decide the result; the actual importance of their support, in spite of their numerical inferiority, lay in the moral weight they brought to the side on which they fought, since they represented the whole army of the pharaoh which lay behind them, and their presence in a camp always ensured final success. the vanquished party had the right of appeal to the sovereign, through whom he might obtain a mitigation of the lot which his successful adversary had prepared for him; it was to the interest of egypt to keep the balance of power as evenly as possible between the various states which looked to her, and when she prevented one or other of the princes from completely crushing his rivals, she was minimising the danger which might soon arise from the vassal whom she had allowed to extend his territory at the expense of others. these relations gave rise to a perpetual exchange of letters and petitions between the court of thebes and the northern and southern provinces, in which all the petty kings of africa and asia, of whatever colour or race, set forth, either openly or covertly, their ambitions and their fears, imploring a favour or begging for a subsidy, revealing the real or suspected intrigues of their fellow-chiefs, and while loudly proclaiming their own loyalty, denouncing the perfidy and the secret projects of their neighbours. as the ethiopian peoples did not, apparently, possess an alphabet of their own, half of the correspondence which concerned them was carried on in egyptian, and written on papyrus. in syria, however, where babylonian civilization maintained itself in spite of its conquest by thûtmosis, cuneiform writing was still employed, and tablets of dried clay.* it had, therefore, been found necessary to establish in the pharaoh�s palace a department for this service, in which the scribes should be competent to decipher the chaldæan character. dictionaries and easy mythological texts had been procured for their instruction, by means of which they had learned the meaning of words and the construction of sentences. having once mastered the mechanism of the syllabary, they set to work to translate the despatches, marking on the back of each the date and the place from whence it came, and if necessary making a draft of the reply.** in these the pharaoh does not appear, as a rule, to have insisted on the endless titles which we find so lavishly used in his inscriptions, but the shortened protocol employed shows that the theory of his divinity was as fully acknowledged by strangers as it was by his own subjects. they greet him as their sun, the god before whom they prostrate themselves seven times seven, while they are his slaves, his dogs, and the dust beneath his feet.*** * a discovery made by the fellahîn, in , at tel el- arnarna, in the rums of the palace of khûniaton, brought to light a portion of the correspondence between asiatic monarchs, whether vassals or independent of egypt, with the officers of amenôthes iii. and iv., and with these pharaohs themselves. ** several of these registrations are still to be read on the backs of the tablets at berlin, london, and gîzeh. ***the protocols of the letters of abdashirti may be taken as an example, or those of abimilki to pharaoh, sometimes there is a development of the protocol which assumes panegyrical features similar to those met with in egypt. the runners to whom these documents were entrusted, and who delivered them with their own hand, were not, as a rule, persons of any consideration; but for missions of grave importance �the king�s messengers� were employed, whose functions in time became extended to a remarkable degree. those who were restricted to a limited sphere of activity were called �the king�s messengers for the regions of the south,� or �the king�s messengers for the regions of the north,� according to their proficiency in the idiom and customs of africa or of asia. others were deemed capable of undertaking missions wherever they might be required, and were, therefore, designated by the bold title of �the king�s messengers for all lands.� in this case extended powers were conferred upon them, and they were permitted to cut short the disputes between two cities in some province they had to inspect, to excuse from tribute, to receive presents and hostages, and even princesses destined for the harem of the pharaoh, and also to grant the support of troops to such as could give adequate reason for seeking it.* their tasks were always of a delicate and not infrequently of a perilous nature, and constantly exposed them to the danger of being robbed by highwaymen or maltreated by some insubordinate vassal, at times even running the risk of mutilation or assassination by the way.** * the tel el-amarna correspondence shows the messengers in the time of amenôthes iii. and iv. as receiving tribute, as bringing an army to the succour of a chief in difficulties, as threatening with the anger of the pharaoh the princes o£ doubtful loyalty, as giving to a faithful vassal compliments and honours from his suzerain, as charged with the conveyance of a gift of slaves, or of escorting a princess to the harem of the pharaoh. ** a letter of ribaddu, in the time of amenôthes iii., represents a royal messenger as blockaded in by bios by the rebels. they were obliged to brave the dangers of the forests of lebanon and of the taurus, the solitudes of mesopotamia, the marshes of chaldoa, the voyages to pûanît and asia minor. some took their way towards assyria and babylon, while others embarked at tyre or sidon for the islands of the Ægean archipelago.* the endurance of all these officers, whether governors or messengers, their courage, their tact, the ready wit they were obliged to summon to help them out of the difficulties into which their calling frequently brought them, all tended to enlist the public sympathy in their favour.** * we hear from the tablets of several messengers to babylon, and the mitanni, rasi, mani, khamassi. the royal messenger thûtîi, who governed the countries of the north, speaks of having satisfied the heart of the king in �the isles which are in the midst of the sea.� this was not, as some think, a case of hyperbole, for the messengers could embark on phoenician vessels; they had a less distance to cover in order to reach the Ægean than the royal messenger of queen hâtshopsîtû had before arriving at the country of the somalis and the �ladders of incense.� ** the hero of the _anastasi papyrus_, no. , with whom chabas made us acquainted in his _voyage d�un Égyptien_, is probably a type of the �messenger� or the time of ramses ii.; in any case, his itinerary and adventures are natural to a �royal messenger� compelled to traverse syria alone. many of them achieved a reputation, and were made the heroes of popular romance. more than three centuries after it was still related how one of them, by name thûtîi, had reduced and humbled jaffa, whose chief had refused to come to terms. thûtîi set about his task by feigning to throw off his allegiance to thûtmosis iii., and withdrew from the egyptian service, having first stolen the great magic wand of his lord; he then invited the rebellious chief into his camp, under pretence of showing him this formidable talisman, and killed him after they had drunk together. the cunning envoy then packed five hundred of his soldiers into jars, and caused them to be carried on the backs of asses before the gates of the town, where he made the herald of the murdered prince proclaim that the egyptians had been defeated, and that the pack train which accompanied him contained the spoil, among which was thûtîi himself. the officer in charge of the city gate was deceived by this harangue, the asses were admitted within the walls, where the soldiers quitted their jars, massacred the garrison, and made themselves masters of the town. the tale is, in the main, the story of ali baba and the forty thieves. the frontier was continually shifting, and thûtmosis iii., like thûtmosis i., vainly endeavoured to give it a fixed character by erecting stelas along the banks of the euphrates, at those points where he contended it had run formerly. while kharu and phoenicia were completely in the hands of the conqueror, his suzerainty became more uncertain as it extended northwards in the direction of the taurus. beyond qodshû, it could only be maintained by means of constant supervision, and in naharaim its duration was coextensive with the sojourn of the conqueror in the locality during his campaign, for it vanished of itself as soon as he had set out on his return to africa. it will be thus seen that, on the continent of asia, egypt possessed a nucleus of territories, so far securely under her rule that they might be actually reckoned as provinces; beyond this immediate domain there was a zone of waning influence, whose area varied with each reign, and even under one king depended largely on the activity which he personally displayed. this was always the case when the rulers of egypt attempted to carry their supremacy beyond the isthmus; whether under the ptolemies or the native kings, the distance to which her influence extended was always practically the same, and the teaching of history enables us to note its limits on the map with relative accuracy.* * the development of the egyptian navy enabled the ptolemies to exercise authority over the coasts of asia minor and of thrace, but this extension of their power beyond the indicated limits only hastened the exhaustion of their empire. this instance, like that of mehemet ali, thus confirms the position taken up in the text. the coast towns, which were in maritime communication with the ports of the delta, submitted to the egyptian yoke more readily than those of the interior. but this submission could not be reckoned on beyond berytus, on the banks of the lykos, though occasionally it stretched a little further north as far as byblos and arvad; even then it did not extend inland, and the curve marking its limits traverses coele-syria from north-west to south-east, terminating at mount hermon. damascus, securely entrenched behind anti-lebanon, almost always lay outside this limit. the rulers of egypt generally succeeded without much difficulty in keeping possession of the countries lying to the south of this line; it demanded merely a slight effort, and this could be furnished for several centuries without encroaching seriously on the resources of the country, or endangering its prosperity. when, however, some province ventured to break away from the control of egypt, the whole mechanism of the government was put into operation to provide soldiers and the necessary means for an expedition. each stage of the advance beyond the frontier demanded a greater expenditure of energy, which, with prolonged distances, would naturally become exhausted. the expedition would scarcely have reached the taurus or the euphrates, before the force of circumstances would bring about its recall homewards, leaving but a slight bond of vassalage between the recently subdued countries and the conqueror, which would speedily be cast off or give place to relations dictated by interest or courtesy. thûtmosis iii. had to submit to this sort of necessary law; a further extension of territory had hardly been gained when his dominion began to shrink within the frontiers that appeared to have been prescribed by nature for an empire like that of egypt. kharû and phoenicia proper paid him their tithes with due regularity; the cities of the amurru and of zahi, of damascus, qodshû, hamath, and even of tunipa, lying on the outskirts of these two subject nations, formed an ill-defined borderland, kept in a state of perpetual disturbance by the secret intrigues or open rebellions of the native princes. the kings of alasia, naharaim, and mitanni preserved their independence in spite of repeated reverses, and they treated with the conqueror on equal terms.* * the difference of tone between the letters of these kings and those of the other princes, as well as the consequences arising from it, has been clearly defined by delattre. the tone of their letters to the pharaoh, the polite formulas with which they addressed him, the special protocol which the egyptian ministry had drawn up for their reply, all differ widely from those which we see in the despatches coming from commanders of garrisons or actual vassals. in the former it is no longer a slave or a feudatory addressing his master and awaiting his orders, but equals holding courteous communication with each other, the brother of alasia or of mitanni with his brother of egypt. they inform him of their good health, and then, before entering on business, they express their good wishes for himself, his wives, his sons, the lords of his court, his brave soldiers, and for his horses. they were careful never to forget that with a single word their correspondent could let loose upon them a whirlwind of chariots and archers without number, but the respect they felt for his formidable power never degenerated into a fear which would humiliate them before him with their faces in the dust. this interchange of diplomatic compliments was called for by a variety of exigencies, such as incidents arising on the frontier, secret intrigues, personal alliances, and questions of general politics. the kings of mesopotamia and of northern syria, even those of assyria and chaldæa, who were preserved by distance from the dangers of a direct invasion, were in constant fear of an unexpected war, and heartily desired the downfall of egypt; they endeavoured meanwhile to occupy the pharaoh so fully at home that he had no leisure to attack them. even if they did not venture to give open encouragement to the disposition in his subjects to revolt, they at least experienced no scruple in hiring emissaries who secretly fanned the flame of discontent. the pharaoh, aroused to indignation by such plotting, reminded them of their former oaths and treaties. the king in question would thereupon deny everything, would speak of his tried friendship, and recall the fact that he had refused to help a rebel against his beloved brother.* these protestations of innocence were usually accompanied by presents, and produced a twofold effect. they soothed the anger of the offended party, and suggested not only a courteous answer, but the sending of still more valuable gifts. oriental etiquette, even in those early times, demanded that the present of a less rich or powerful friend should place the recipient under the obligation of sending back a gift of still greater worth. every one, therefore, whether great or little, was obliged to regulate his liberality according to the estimation in which he held himself, or to the opinion which others formed of him, and a personage of such opulence as the king of egypt was constrained by the laws of common civility to display an almost boundless generosity: was he not free to work the mines of the divine land or the diggings of the upper nile; and as for gold, �was it not as the dust of his country�?** * see the letter of amenôthes iii. to kallimmasin of babylon, where the king of egypt complains of the inimical designs which the babylonian messengers had planned against him, and of the intrigues they had connected on their return to their own country; see also the letter from burnaburiash to amenôthes iv., in which he defends himself from the accusation of having plotted against the king of egypt at any time, and recalls the circumstance that his father kurigalzu had refused to encourage the rebellion of one of the syrian tribes, subjects of amenôthes iii. ** see the letter of dushratta, king of mitanni, to the pharaoh amenôthes iv. he would have desired nothing better than to exhibit such liberality, had not the repeated calls on his purse at last constrained him to parsimony; he would have been ruined, and egypt with him, had he given all that was expected of him. except in a few extraordinary cases, the gifts sent never realised the expectations of the recipients; for instance, when twenty or thirty pounds of precious metal were looked for, the amount despatched would be merely two or three. the indignation of these disappointed beggars and their recriminations were then most amusing: �from the time when my father and thine entered into friendly relations, they loaded each other with presents, and never waited to be asked to exchange amenities;* and now my brother sends me two minas of gold as a gift! send me abundance of gold, as much as thy father sent, and even, for so it must be, more than thy father.� ** pretexts were never wanting to give reasonable weight to such demands: one correspondent had begun to build a temple or a palace in one of his capitals,*** another was reserving his fairest daughter for the pharaoh, and he gave him to understand that anything he might receive would help to complete the bride�s trousseau.**** * burnaburiash complains that the king�s messengers had only brought him on one occasion two minas of gold, on another occasion twenty minas; moreover, that the quality of the metal was so bad that hardly five minas of pure gold could be extracted from it. ** literally, �and they would never make each other a fair request.� the meaning i propose is doubtful, but it appears to be required by the context. the letter from which this passage was taken is from burnaburiash, king of babylon, to amenôthes iv. *** this is the pretext advanced by burnaburiash in the letter just cited. **** this seems to have been the motive in a somewhat embarrassing letter which dushratta, king of mitanni, wrote to the pharaoh amenôthes iii. on the occasion of his fixing the dowry of his daughter. the princesses thus sent from babylon or mitanni to the court of thebes enjoyed on their arrival a more honourable welcome, and were assigned a more exalted rank than those who came from kharû and phoenicia. as a matter of fact, they were not hostages given over to the conqueror to be disposed of at will, but queens who were united in legal marriage to an ally.* once admitted to the pharaoh�s court, they retained their full rights as his wife, as well as their own fortune and mode of life. some would bring to their betrothed chests of jewels, utensils, and stuffs, the enumeration of which would cover both sides of a large tablet; others would arrive escorted by several hundred slaves or matrons as personal attendants.** a few of them preserved their original name,*** many assumed an egyptian designation,**** and so far adapted themselves to the costumes, manners, and language of their adopted country, that they dropped all intercourse with their native land, and became regular egyptians. * the daughter of the king of the khâti, wife of ramses il, was treated, as we see from the monuments, with as much honour as would have been accorded to egyptian princesses of pure blood. ** gilukhipa, who was sent to egypt to become the wife of amenôthes iii., took with her a company of three hundred and seventy women for her service. she was a daughter of sutarna, king of mitanni, and is mentioned several times in the tel el-amarna correspondence. *** for example, gilukhipa, whose name is transcribed kilagîpa in egyptian, and another princess of mitanni, niece of gilukhipa, called tadu-khîpa, daughter of dushratta and wife of amenôthes iv. **** the prince of the khâti�s daughter who married ramses ii. is an example; we know her only by her egyptian name mâîtnofîrûrî. the wife of ramses iii. added to the egyptian name of isis her original name, humazarati. when, after several years, an ambassador arrived with greetings from their father or brother, he would be puzzled by the changed appearance of these ladies, and would almost doubt their identity: indeed, those only who had been about them in childhood were in such cases able to recognise them.* these princesses all adopted the gods of their husbands,** though without necessarily renouncing their own. from time to time their parents would send them, with much pomp, a statue of one of their national divinities--ishtar, for example--which, accompanied by native priests, would remain for some months at the court.*** * this was the case with the daughter of kallimmasin, king of babylon, married to amenôthes iii.; her father�s ambassador did not recognise her. ** the daughter of the king of the khâti, wife of ramses ii., is represented in an attitude of worship before her deified husband and two egyptian gods. *** dushratta of mitanni, sending a statue of ishtar to his daughter, wife of amenôthes iii., reminds her that the same statue had already made the voyage to egypt in the time of his father sutarna. the children of these queens ranked next in order to those whose mothers belonged to the solar race, but nothing prevented them marrying their brothers or sisters of pure descent, and being eventually raised to the throne. the members of their families who remained in asia were naturally proud of these bonds of close affinity with the pharaoh, and they rarely missed an opportunity of reminding him in their letters that they stood to him in the relationship of brother-in-law, or one of his fathers-in-law; their vanity stood them in good stead, since it afforded them another claim on the favours which they were perpetually asking of him.* * dushratta of mitanni never loses an opportunity of calling aoienôthes iii., husband of his sister gilukhîpa, and of one of his daughters, �akhiya,� my brother, and �khatani-ya,� my son-in-law. these foreign wives had often to interfere in some of the contentions which were bound to arise between two states whose subjects were in constant intercourse with one another. invasions or provincial wars may have affected or even temporarily suspended the passage to and from of caravans between the countries of the tigris and those of the nile; but as soon as peace was re-established, even though it were the insecure peace of those distant ages, the desert traffic was again resumed and carried on with renewed vigour. the egyptian traders who penetrated into regions beyond the euphrates, carried with them, and almost unconsciously disseminated along the whole extent of their route, the numberless products of egyptian industry, hitherto but little known outside their own country, and rendered expensive owing to the difficulty of transmission or the greed of the merchants. the syrians now saw for the first time in great quantities, objects which had been known to them hitherto merely through the few rare specimens which made their way across the frontier: arms, stuffs, metal implements, household utensils--in fine, all the objects which ministered to daily needs or to luxury. these were now offered to them at reasonable prices, either by the hawkers who accompanied the army or by the soldiers themselves, always ready, as soldiers are, to part with their possessions in order to procure a few extra pleasures in the intervals of fighting. [illustration: .jpg the lotanÛ and the goldsmiths�work constituting their tribute] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. the scene here reproduced occurs in most of the theban tombs of the xviiii. dynasty. on the other hand, whole convoys of spoil were despatched to egypt after every successful campaign, and their contents were distributed in varying proportions among all classes of society, from the militiaman belonging to some feudal contingent, who received, as a reward of his valour, some half-dozen necklaces or bracelets, to the great lord of ancient family or the crown prince, who carried off waggon-loads of booty in their train. these distributions must have stimulated a passion for all syrian goods, and as the spoil was insufficient to satisfy the increasing demands of the consumer, the waning commerce which had been carried on from early times was once more revived and extended, till every route, whether by land or water, between thebes, memphis, and the asiatic cities, was thronged by those engaged in its pursuit. it would take too long to enumerate the various objects of merchandise brought in almost daily to the marts on the nile by phoenician vessels or the owners of caravans. they comprised slaves destined for the workshop or the harem,* hittite bulls and stallions, horses from singar, oxen from alasia, rare and curious animals such as elephants from nîi, and brown bears from the lebanon,** smoked and salted fish, live birds of many-coloured plumage, goldsmiths�work*** and precious stones, of which lapis-lazuli was the chief. * syrian slaves are mentioned along with ethiopian in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. , and there is mention in the tel el-amarna correspondence of hittite slaves whom dushratta of mitanni brought to amenôthes iii., and of other presents of the same kind made by the king of alasia as a testimony of his grateful homage. ** the elephant and the bear are represented on the tomb of liakhmirî among the articles of tribute brought into egypt. *** the _annals of thutmosis iii_. make a record in each campaign of the importation of gold and silver vases, objects in lapis-lazuli and crystal, or of blocks of the same materials; the theban tombs of this period afford examples of the vases and blocks brought by the syrians. the tel el-amarna letters also mention vessels of gold or blocks of precious stone sent as presents or as objects of exchange to the pharaoh by the king of babylon, by the king of mitanni, by the king of the hittites, and by other princes. the lapis-lazuli of babylon, which probably came from persia, was that which was most prized by the egyptians on account of the golden sparks in it, which enhanced the blue colour; this is, perhaps, the uknu of the cuneiform inscriptions, which has been read for a long time as �crystal.� [illustration: b.jpg painted tablets in the hall of harps] wood for building or for ornamental work--pine,cypress, yew, cedar, and oak,* musical instruments,** helmets, leathern jerkins covered with metal scales, weapons of bronze and iron,*** chariots,**** dyed and embroidered stuffs,^ perfumes,^^ dried cakes, oil, wines of kharû, liqueurs from alasia, khâti, singar, naharaim, amurru, and beer from qodi.^^^ * building and ornamental woods are often mentioned in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. a scene at karnak represents seti i. causing building-wood to be cut in the region of the lebanon. a letter of the king of alasia speaks of contributions of wood which several of his subjects had to make to the king of egypt. ** some stringed instruments of music, and two or three kinds of flutes and flageolets, are designated in egyptian by names borrowed from some semitic tongue--a fact which proves that they were imported; the wooden framework of the harp, decorated with sculptured heads of astartô, figures among the objects coming from syria in the temple of the theban anion. *** several names of arms borrowed from some semitic dialect have been noticed in the texts of this period. the objects as well as the words must have been imported into egypt, e.g. the quiver, the sword and javelins used by the charioteers. cuirasses and leathern jerkins are mentioned in the inscriptions of thûtmosis iii. **** chariots plated with gold and silver figure frequently among the spoils of thûtmosis iii.: the anastasi papyrus, no. , contains a detailed description of syrian chariots-- markabûti--with a reference to the localities whore certain parts of them were made;--the country of the amurru, that of aûpa, the town of pahira. the tel el-amarna correspondence mentions very frequently chariots sent to the pharaoh by the king of babylon, either as presents or to be sold in egypt; others sent by the king of alasia and by the king of mitanni. ^ some linen, cotton, or woollen stuffs are mentioned in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. , and elsewhere as coming from syria. the egyptian love of white linen always prevented their estimating highly the coloured and brocaded stuffs of asia; and one sees nowhere, in the representations, any examples of stuffs of such origin, except on furniture or in ships equipped with something of the kind in the form of sails. ^^ the perfumed oils of syria are mentioned in a general way in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. ; the king of alasia speaks of essences which he is sending to amenôthes iii.; the king of mitanni refers to bottles of oil which he is forwarding to gilukhîpa and to tii. ^^^ a list of cakes of syrian origin is found in the _anastasi papyrus_, no. ; also a reference to balsamic oils from naharaim, and to various oils which had arrived in the ports of the delta, to the wines of syria, to palm wine and various liqueurs manufactured in alasia, in singar, among the khâti, amorites, and the people of. tikhisa; finally, to the beer of qodi. [illustration: .jpg. the bear and elephant brought as tribute in the tomb of rakhmiri] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of prisse d�avennes� sketch. on arriving at the frontier, whether by sea or by land, the majority of these objects had to pay the custom dues which were rigorously collected by the officers of the pharaoh. this, no doubt, was a reprisal tariff, since independent sovereigns, such as those of mitanni, assyria, and babylon, were accustomed to impose a similar duty on all the products of egypt. the latter, indeed, supplied more than she received, for many articles which reached her in their raw condition were, by means of native industry, worked up and exported as ornaments, vases, and highly decorated weapons, which, in the course of international traffic, were dispersed to all four corners of the earth. the merchants of babylon and assyria had little to fear as long as they kept within the domains of their own sovereign or in those of the pharaoh; but no sooner did they venture within the borders of those turbulent states which separated the two great powers, than they were exposed to dangers at every turn. safe-conducts were of little use if they had not taken the additional precaution of providing a strong escort and carefully guarding their caravan, for the shaûsû concealed in the depths of the lebanon or the needy sheikhs of kharû could never resist the temptation to rob the passing traveller.* * the scribe who in the reign of ramses ii. composed the _travels of an egyptian_, speaks in several places of marauding tribes and robbers, who infested the roads followed by the hero. the tel el-amarna correspondence contains a letter from the king of alasia, who exculpates himself from being implicated in the harsh treatment certain egyptians had received in passing through his territory; and another letter in which the king of babylon complains that chaldoan merchants had been robbed at khinnatun, in galilee, by the prince of akku (acre) and his accomplices: one of them had his feet cut off, and the other was still a prisoner in akku, and burnaburiash demands from amenôthes iv. the death of the guilty persons. the victims complained to their king, who felt no hesitation in passing on their woes to the sovereign under whose rule the pillagers were supposed to live. he demanded their punishment, but his request was not always granted, owing to the difficulties of finding out and seizing the offenders. an indemnity, however, could be obtained which would nearly compensate the merchants for the loss sustained. in many cases justice had but little to do with the negotiations, in which self-interest was the chief motive; but repeated refusals would have discouraged traders, and by lessening the facilities of transit, have diminished the revenue which the state drew from its foreign commerce. the question became a more delicate one when it concerned the rights of subjects residing out of their native country. foreigners, as a rule, were well received in egypt; the whole country was open to them; they could marry, they could acquire houses and lands, they enjoyed permission to follow their own religion unhindered, they were eligible for public honours, and more than one of the officers of the crown whose tombs we see at thebes were themselves syrians, or born of syrian parents on the banks of the nile.* * in a letter from the king of alasia, there is question of a merchant who had died in egypt. among other monuments proving the presence of syrians about the pharaoh, is the stele of ben-azana, of the town of zairabizana, surnamed ramses-empirî: he was surrounded with semites like himself. hence, those who settled in egypt without any intention of returning to their own country enjoyed all the advantages possessed by the natives, whereas those who took up a merely temporary abode there were more limited in their privileges. they were granted the permission to hold property in the country, and also the right to buy and sell there, but they were not allowed to transmit their possessions at will, and if by chance they died on egyptian soil, their goods lapsed as a forfeit to the crown. the heirs remaining in the native country of the dead man, who were ruined by this confiscation, sometimes petitioned the king to interfere in their favour with a view of obtaining restitution. if the pharaoh consented to waive his right of forfeiture, and made over the confiscated objects or their equivalent to the relatives of the deceased, it was solely by an act of mercy, and as an example to foreign governments to treat egyptians with a like clemency should they chance to proffer a similar request.* * all this seems to result from a letter in which the king of alasia demands from amenôthes iii. the restitution of the goods of one of his subjects who had died in egypt; the tone of the letter is that of one asking a favour, and on the supposition that the king of egypt had a right to keep the property of a foreigner dying on his territory. it is also not improbable that the sovereigns themselves had a personal interest in more than one commercial undertaking, and that they were the partners, or, at any rate, interested in the enterprises, of many of their subjects, so that any loss sustained by one of the latter would eventually fall upon themselves. they had, in fact, reserved to themselves the privilege of carrying on several lucrative industries, and of disposing of the products to foreign buyers, either to those who purchased them out and out, or else through the medium of agents, to whom they intrusted certain quantities of the goods for warehousing. the king of babylon, taking advantage of the fashion which prompted the egyptians to acquire objects of chaldæan goldsmiths� and cabinet-makers� art, caused ingots of gold to be sent to him by the pharaoh, which he returned worked up into vases, ornaments, household utensils, and plated chariots. he further fixed the value of all such objects, and took a considerable commission for having acted as intermediary in the transaction.* in alasia, which was the land of metals, the king appears to have held a monopoly of the bronze. whether he smelted it in the country, or received it from more distant regions ready prepared, we cannot say, but he claimed and retained for himself the payment for all that the pharaoh deigned to order of him.** * letter of burnaburiash to amenôthes iv. ** letter from the king of alasia to amenôthes iii., where, whilst pretending to have nothing else in view than making a present to his royal brother, he proposes to make an exchange of some bronze for the products of egypt, especially for gold. from such instances we can well understand the jealous, watch which these sovereigns exercised, lest any individual connected with corporations of workmen should leave the kingdom and establish himself in another country without special permission. any emigrant who opened a workshop and initiated his new compatriots in the technique or professional secrets of his craft, was regarded by the authorities as the most dangerous of all evil-doers. by thus introducing his trade into a rival state, he deprived his own people of a good customer, and thus rendered himself liable to the penalties inflicted on those who were guilty of treason. his savings were confiscated, his house razed to the ground, and his whole family--parents, wives, and children--treated as partakers in his crime. as for himself, if justice succeeded in overtaking him, he was punished with death, or at least with mutilation, such as the loss of eyes and ears, or amputation of the feet. this severity did not prevent the frequent occurrence of such cases, and it was found necessary to deal with them by the insertion of a special extradition clause in treaties of peace and other alliances. the two contracting parties decided against conceding the right of habitation to skilled workmen who should take refuge with either party on the territory of the other, and they agreed to seize such workmen forthwith, and mutually restore them, but under the express condition that neither they nor any of their belongings should incur any penalty for the desertion of their country. it would be curious to know if all the arrangements agreed to by the kings of those times were sanctioned, as in the above instance, by properly drawn up agreements. certain expressions occur in their correspondence which seem to prove that this was the case, and that the relations between them, of which we can catch traces, resulted not merely from a state of things which, according to their ideas, did not necessitate any diplomatic sanction, but from conventions agreed to after some war, or entered on without any previous struggle, when there was no question at issue between the two states.* * the treaty of ramses ii. with the king of the khâti, the only one which has come down to us, was a renewal of other treaties effected one after the other between the fathers and grandfathers of the two contracting sovereigns. some of the tel el-amarna letters probably refer to treaties of this kind; e.g. that of burnaburiash of babylon, who says that since the time of karaîndash there had been an exchange of ambassadors and friendship between the sovereigns of chaldoa and of egypt, and also that of dushratta of mitanni, who reminds queen tîi of the secret negotiations which had taken place between him and amenôthes iii. when once the syrian conquest had been effected, egypt gave permanency to its results by means of a series of international decrees, which officially established the constitution of her empire, and brought about her concerted action with the asiatic powers. [illustration: .jpg the mummy of thutmosis iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by emil brugsch-bey. she already occupied an important position among them, when thûtmosis iii. died, on the last day of phamenoth, in the ivth year of his reign.* he was buried, probably, at deîr el-baharî, in the family tomb wherein the most illustrious members of his house had been laid to rest since the time of thûtmosis i. his mummy was not securely hidden away, for towards the close of the xxth dynasty it was torn out of the coffin by robbers, who stripped it and rifled it of the jewels with which it was covered, injuring it in their haste to carry away the spoil. it was subsequently re-interred, and has remained undisturbed until the present day; but before re-burial some renovation of the wrappings was necessary, and as portions of the body had become loose, the restorers, in order to give the mummy the necessary firmness, compressed it between four oar-shaped slips of wood, painted white, and placed, three inside the wrappings and one outside, under the bands which confined the winding-sheet. * dr. mahler has, with great precision, fixed the date of the accession of thûtmosis iii, as the th of march, , and that of his death as the th of february, b.c. i do not think that the data furnished to dr. mahler by brugsch will admit of such exact conclusions being drawn from them, and i should fix the fifty-four years of the reign of thûtmosis iii. in a less decided manner, between and b.c., allowing, as i have said before, for an error of half a century more or less in the dates which go back to the time of the second theban empire. [illustration: .jpg head of the mummy of thÛtmosis iii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph lent by m. grébaut, taken by emil brugsch-bey. happily the face, which had been plastered over with pitch at the time of embalming, did not suffer at all from this rough treatment, and appeared intact when the protecting mask was removed. its appearance does not answer to our ideal of the conqueror. his statues, though not representing him as a type of manly beauty, yet give him refined, intelligent features, but a comparison with the mummy shows that the artists have idealised their model. the forehead is abnormally low, the eyes deeply sunk, the jaw heavy, the lips thick, and the cheek-bones extremely prominent; the whole recalling the physiognomy of thûtmosis ii., though with a greater show of energy. thûtmosis iii. is a fellah of the old stock, squat, thickset, vulgar in character and expression, but not lacking in firmness and vigour.* amenôthes ii., who succeeded him, must have closely resembled him, if we may trust his official portraits. he was the son of a princess of the blood, hâtshopsîtû ii., daughter of the great hâtshopsîtû,** and consequently he came into his inheritance with stronger claims to it than any other pharaoh since the time of amenôthes i. possibly his father may have associated him with himself on the throne as soon as the young prince attained his majority;*** at any rate, his accession aroused no appreciable opposition in the country, and if any difficulties were made, they must have come from outside. * the restored remains allow us to estimate the height at about ft. in. ** his parentage is proved by the pictures preserved in the tomb of his foster-father, where he is represented in company with the _royal mother_, marîtrî. hâtshopsîtû. *** it is thus that wiedemann explains his presence by the side of thûtmosis iii. on certain bas-reliefs in the temple of amada. it is always a dangerous moment in the existence of a newly formed empire when its founder having passed away, and the conquered people not having yet become accustomed to a subject condition, they are called upon to submit to a successor of whom they know little or nothing. it is always problematical whether the new sovereign will display as great activity and be as successful as the old one; whether he will be capable of turning to good account the armies which his predecessor commanded with such skill, and led so bravely against the enemy; whether, again, he will have sufficient tact to estimate correctly the burden of taxation which each province is capable of bearing, and to lighten it when there is a risk of its becoming too heavy. if he does not show from the first that it is his purpose to maintain his patrimony intact at all costs, or if his officers, no longer controlled by a strong hand, betray any indecision in command, his subjects will become unruly, and the change of monarch will soon furnish a pretext for widespread rebellion. the beginning of the reign of amenôthes ii. was marked by a revolt of the libyans inhabiting the theban oasis, but this rising was soon put down by that amenemhabî who had so distinguished himself under thûtmosis.* soon after, fresh troubles broke out in different parts of syria, in galilee, in the country of the amurru, and among the peoples of naharaim. the king�s prompt action, however, prevented their resulting in a general war.** he marched in person against the malcontents, reduced the town of shamshiaduma, fell upon the lamnaniu, and attacked their chief, slaying him with his own hand, and carrying off numbers of captives. * brugsch and wiedemann place this expedition at the time when amenôthes il was either hereditary prince or associated with his father the inscription of amenemhabî places it explicitly after the death of thûtmosis iii., and this evidence outweighs every other consideration until further discoveries are made. ** the campaigns of amenôthes ii. were related on a granite stele, which was placed against the second of the southern pylons at karnak. the date of this monument is almost certainly the year ii.; there is strong evidence in favour of this, if it is compared with the inscription of amada, where amenôthes ii. relates that in the year iii. he sacrificed the prisoners whom he had taken in the country of tikhisa. [illustration: .jpg amenÔthes ii., from the statue at turin] drawn by faucher-gudin. he crossed the orontes on the th of pachons, in the year ii., and seeing some mounted troops in the distance, rushed upon them and overthrew them; they proved to be the advanced guard of the enemy�s force, which he encountered shortly afterwards and routed, collecting in the pursuit considerable booty. he finally reached naharaim, where he experienced in the main but a feeble resistance. nîi surrendered without resistance on the th of epiphi, and its inhabitants, both men and women, with censers in their hands, assembled on the walls and prostrated themselves before the conqueror. at akaîti, where the partisans of the egyptian government had suffered persecution from a considerable section of the natives, order was at once reestablished as soon as the king�s approach was made known. no doubt the rapidity of his marches and the vigour of his attacks, while putting an end to the hostile attitude of the smaller vassal states, were effectual in inducing the sovereigns of alasia, of mitanni,* and of the hittites to renew with amenôthes the friendly relations which they had established with his father.** * amenôthes ii. mentions tribute from mitanni on one of the columns which he decorated at karnak, in the hall of the caryatides, close to the pillars finished by his predecessors. ** the cartouches on the pedestal of the throne of amenôthes il, in the tomb of one of his officers at sheîkh-abd-el- qûrneh, represent--together with the inhabitants of the oasis, libya, and kush--the kefatiû, the people of naharaim, and the upper lotanû, that is to say, the entire dominion of thûtmosis iii., besides the people of manûs, probably mallos, in the cilician plain. this one campaign, which lasted three or four months, secured a lasting peace in the north, but in the south a disturbance again broke out among the barbarians of the upper nile. amenôthes suppressed it, and, in order to prevent a repetition of it, was guilty of an act of cruel severity quite in accordance with the manners of the time. he had taken prisoner seven chiefs in the country of tikhisa, and had brought them, chained, in triumph to thebes, on the forecastle of his ship. he sacrificed six of them himself before amon, and exposed their heads and hands on the façade of the temple of karnak; the seventh was subjected to a similar fate at napata at the beginning of his third year, and thenceforth the sheîkhs of kush thought twice before defying the authority of the pharaoh.* * in an inscription in the temple of amada, it is there said that the king offered this sacrifice on his return from his first expedition into asia, and for this reason i have connected the facts thus related with those known to us through the stele of karnak. amenôthes�reign was a short one, lasting ten years at most, and the end of it seems to have been darkened by the open or secret rivalries which the question of the succession usually stirred up among the kings� sons. the king had daughters only by his marriage with one of his full sisters, who like himself possessed all the rights of sovereignty; those of his sons who did not die young were the children of princesses of inferior rank or of concubines, and it was a subject of anxiety among these princes which of them would be chosen to inherit the crown and be united in marriage with the king�s heiresses, khûît and mûtemûaû. [illustration: .jpg the great sphinx and the chapel of thutmosis iv.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph taken in by Émil brugsch-bey [illustration: .jpg the simoom. sphinx and pyramids at gizeh] one of his sons, named thûtmosis, who resided at the �white wall,� was in the habit of betaking himself frequently to the libyan desert to practise with the javelin, or to pursue the hunt of lions and gazelles in his chariot. on these occasions it was his pleasure to preserve the strictest incognito, and he was accompanied by two discreet servants only. one day, when chance had brought him into the neighbourhood of the great pyramid, he lay down for his accustomed siesta in the shade cast by the sphinx, the miraculous image of khopri the most powerful, the god to whom all men in memphis and the neighbouring towns raised adoring hands filled with offerings. the gigantic statue was at that time more than half buried, and its head alone was seen above the sand. as soon as the prince was asleep it spoke gently to him, as a father to his son: �behold me, gaze on me, o my son thûtmosis, for i, thy father harmakhis-khopri-tûmû, grant thee sovereignty over the two countries, in both the south and the north, and thou shalt wear both the white and the red crown on the throne of sibû, the sovereign, possessing the earth in its length and breadth; the flashing eye of the lord of all shall cause to rain on thee the possessions of egypt, vast tribute from all foreign countries, and a long life for, many years as one chosen by the sun, for my countenance is thine, my heart is thine, no other than thyself is mine! nor am i covered by the sand of the mountain on which i rest, and have given thee this prize that thou mayest do for me what my heart desires, for i know that thou art my son, my defender; draw nigh, i am with thee, i am thy well-beloved father.� the prince understood that the god promised him the kingdom on condition of his swearing to clear the sand from the statue. he was, in fact, chosen to be the husband of the queens, and immediately after his accession he fulfilled his oath; he removed the sand, built a chapel between the paws, and erected against the breast of the statue a stele of red granite, on which he related his adventure. his reign was as short as that of amenôthes, and his campaigns both in asia and ethiopia were unimportant.* * the latest date of his reign at present known is that of the year vii., on the rocks of konosso, and on a stele of sarbût el-khâdîm. there is an allusion to his wars against the ethiopians in an inscription of amada, and to his campaigns against the peoples of the north and south on the stele of nofirhaît. [illustration: .jpg the stele of the sphinx of gizer] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by Émil brugsch-bey. he had succeeded to an empire so firmly established from naharaim to kari,* that, apparently, no rebellion could disturb its peace. one of the two heiress-princesses, kûît, the daughter, sister, and wife of a king, had no living male offspring, but her companion mûtemûaû had at least one son, named amenôthes. in his case, again, the noble birth of the mother atoned for the defects of the paternal origin. moreover, according to tradition, amon-ka himself had intervened to renew the blood of his descendants: he appeared in the person of thûtmosis iv., and under this guise became the father of the heir of the pharaohs.** * the peoples of naharaim and of northern syria are represented bringing him tribute, in a tomb at sheîkh-abd- el-qûrneh. the inscription published by mariette, speaks of the first expedition of thûtmosis iv. to the land of [naharai]na, and of the gifts which he lavished on this occasion on the temple of anion. ** it was at first thought that mûtemûaû was an ethiopian, afterwards that she was a syrian, who had changed her name on arriving at the court of her husband. the manner in which she is represented at luxor, and in all the texts where she figures, proves not only that she was of egyptian race, but that she was the daughter of amenôthes ii., and born of the marriage of that prince with one of his sisters, who was herself an hereditary princess. like queen ahmasis in the bas-reliefs of deîr el-baharî, mûtemûaû is shown on those of luxor in the arms of her divine lover, and subsequently greeted by him with the title of mother; in another bas-relief we see the queen led to her couch by the goddesses who preside over the birth of children; her son amenôthes, on coming into the world with his double, is placed in the hands of the two niles, to receive the nourishment and the education meet for the children of the gods. he profited fully by them, for he remained in power forty years, and his reign was one of the most prosperous ever witnessed by egypt during the theban dynasties. [illustration: .jpg queen mutemÛau.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel héron. amenôthes iii. had spent but little of his time in war. he had undertaken the usual raids in the south against the negroes and the tribes of the upper nile. in his fifth year, a general defection of the sheikhs obliged him to invade the province of abhaît, near semneh, which he devastated at the head of the troops collected by mari-ifi mosû, the prince of kûsh; the punishment was salutary, the booty considerable, and a lengthy peace was re-established. the object of his rare expeditions into naharaim was not so much to add new provinces to his empire, as to prevent disturbances in the old ones. the kings of alasia, of the khâti, of mitanni, of singar,* of assyria, and of babylon did not dare to provoke so powerful a neighbour.** * amenôthes entitles himself on a scarabæus �he who takes prisoner the country of singar;� no other document has yet been discovered to show whether this is hyperbole, or whether he really reached this distant region. ** the lists of the time of amenôthes iii. contain the names of phoenicia, naharaim, singar, qodshu, tunipa, patina, carchomish, and assur; that is to say, of all the subject or allied nations mentioned in the correspondence of tel el- amarna. certain episodes of these expeditions had been engraved on the exterior face of the pylon constructed by the king for the temple of amon at karnak; at the present time they are concealed by the wall at the lower end of the hypostyle hall. the tribute of the lotanû was represented on the tomb of hûi, at sheîkh-abd-el-qûrneh. [illustration: b.jpg amenothes iii. colossal head in the british museum] [illustration: b-text.jpg] the remembrance of the victories of thûtmosis iii. was still fresh in their memories, and, even had their hands been free, would have made them cautious in dealing with his great-grandson; but they were incessantly engaged in internecine quarrels, and had recourse to pharaoh merely to enlist his support, or at any rate make sure of his neutrality, and prevent him from joining their adversaries. [illustration: .jpg amenothes iii. from the tomb of khamhait] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by daniel héron. whatever might have been the nature of their private sentiments, they professed to be anxious to maintain, for their mutual interests, the relations with egypt entered on half a century before, and as the surest method of attaining their object was by a good marriage, they would each seek an egyptian wife for himself, or would offer amenôthes a princess of one of their own royal families. the egyptian king was, however, firm in refusing to bestow a princess of the solar blood even on the most powerful of the foreign kings; his pride rebelled at the thought that she might one day be consigned to a place among the inferior wives or concubines, but he gladly accepted, and even sought for wives for himself, from among the syrian and chaldæan princesses. kallimmasin of babylon gave amenôthes first his sister, and when age had deprived this princess of her beauty, then his daughter irtabi in marriage.* * letter from amenôthes iii. to kallimmasin, concerning a sister of the latter, who was married to the king of egypt, but of whom there are no further records remaining at babylon, and also one of his daughters whom amenôthes had demanded in marriage; and letters from kallimmasin, consenting to bestow his daughter irtabi on the pharaoh, and proposing to give to amenothes whichever one he might choose of the daughters of his house. sutarna of mitanni had in the same way given the pharaoh his daughter gilukhîpa; indeed, most of the kings of that period had one or two relations in the harem at thebes. this connexion usually proved a support to asiatic sovereigns, such alliances being a safeguard against the rivalries of their brothers or cousins. at times, however, they were the means of exposing them to serious dangers. when sutarna died he was succeeded by his son dushratta, but a numerous party put forward another prince, named artassumara, who was probably gilukhîpa�s brother, on the mother�s side;* a hittite king of the name of pirkhi espoused the cause of the pretender, and a civil war broke out. * her exact relationship is not explicitly expressed, but is implied in the facts, for there seems no reason why gilukhîpa should have taken the part of one brother rather than another, unless artassumara had been nearer to her than dushratta; that is to say, her brother on the mother�s side as well as on the father�s. dushratta was victorious, and caused his brother to be strangled, but was not without anxiety as to the consequences which might follow this execution should gilukhîpa desire to avenge the victim, and to this end stir up the anger of the suzerain against him. dushratta, therefore, wrote a humble epistle, showing that he had received provocation, and that he had found it necessary to strike a decisive blow to save his own life; the tablet was accompanied by various presents to the royal pair, comprising horses, slaves, jewels, and perfumes. gilukhîpa, however, bore dushratta no ill-will, and the latter�s anxieties were allayed. the so-called expeditions of amenôthes to the syrian provinces must constantly have been merely visits of inspection, during which amusements, and especially the chase, occupied nearly as important a place as war and politics. amenôthes iii. took to heart that pre-eminently royal duty of ridding the country of wild beasts, and fulfilled it more conscientiously than any of his predecessors. he had killed lions during the first ten years of his reign, and as it was an exploit of which he was remarkably proud, he perpetuated the memory of it in a special inscription, which he caused to be engraved on numbers of large scarabs of fine green enamel. egypt prospered under his peaceful government, and if the king made no great efforts to extend her frontiers, he spared no pains to enrich the country by developing industry and agriculture, and also endeavoured to perfect the military organisation which had rendered the conquest of the east so easy a matter. a census, undertaken by his minister amenôthes, the son of hâpi, ensured a more correct assessment of the taxes, and a regular scheme of recruiting for the army. [illustration: .jpg scarab of the hunt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph published in mariette. whole tribes of slaves were brought into the country by means of the border raids which were always taking place, and their opportune arrival helped to fill up the vacancies which repeated wars had caused among the rural and urban population; such a strong impetus to agriculture was also given by this importation, that when, towards the middle of the reign, the minister khâmhâîfc presented the tax-gathers at court, he was able to boast that he had stored in the state granaries a larger quantity of corn than had been gathered in for thirty years. the traffic carried on between asia and the delta by means of both egyptian and foreign ships was controlled by customhouses erected at the mouths of the nile, the coast being protected by cruising vessels against the attacks of pirates. the fortresses of the isthmus and of the libyan border, having been restored or rebuilt, constituted a check on the turbulence of the nomad tribes, while garrisons posted at intervals at the entrance to the wadys leading to the desert restrained the plunderers scattered between the nile and the red sea, and between the chain of oases and the unexplored regions of the sahara.* egypt was at once the most powerful as well as the most prosperous kingdom in the world, being able to command more labour and more precious metals for the embellishment of her towns and the construction of her monuments than any other. all this information is gathered from the inscription on the statue of amenôthes, the son of hâpi. public works had been carried on briskly under thûtmosis iii. and his successors. the taste for building, thwarted at first by the necessity of financial reforms, and then by that of defraying the heavy expenses incurred through the expulsion of the hyksôs and the earlier foreign wars, had free scope as soon as spoil from the syrian victories began to pour in year by year. while the treasure seized from the enemy provided the money, the majority of the prisoners were used as workmen, so that temples, palaces, and citadels began to rise as if by magic from one end of the valley to the other.* * for this use of prisoners of war, cf. the picture from the tomb of rakhmirî on p. of the present work, in which most of the earlier egyptologists believed they recognised the hebrews, condemned by pharaoh to build the cities of ramses and pithom in the delta. nubia, divided into provinces, formed merely an extension of the ancient feudal egypt--at any rate as far as the neighbourhood of the tacazzeh--though the egyptian religion had here assumed a peculiar character. [illustration: .jpg a gang of syrian prisoners making brick for the temple of amon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the chromolithograph in lepsius. the conquest of nubia having been almost entirely the work of the theban dynasties, the theban triad, amon, maût, and montû, and their immediate followers were paramount in this region, while in the north, in witness of the ancient elephantinite colonisation, we find khnûmû of the cataract being worshipped, in connexion with didûn, father of the indigenous nubians. the worship of amon had been the means of introducing that of eâ and of horus, and osiris as lord of the dead, while phtah, sokhît, atûmû, and the memphite and heliopolitan gods were worshipped only in isolated parts of the province. a being, however, of less exalted rank shared with the lords of heaven the favour of the people. this was the pharaoh, who as the son of amon was foreordained to receive divine honours, sometimes figuring, as at bohani, as the third member of a triad, at other times as head of the ennead. Ûsirtasen iii. had had his chapels at semneh and at kûmmeh, they were restored by thûtmosis iii., who claimed a share of the worship offered in them, and whose son, amenôthes ii., also assumed the symbols and functions of divinity. [illustration: .jpg one of the rams of amenÔthes iii] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by mons. de mertens. amenôthes i. was venerated in the province of kari, and amenôthes iii., when founding the fortress hâît-khâmmâît* in the neighbourhood of a nubian village, on a spot now known as soleb, built a temple there, of which he himself was the protecting genius.** * the name signifies literally �the citadel of khâmmâît,� and it is formed, as lepsius recognised from the first, from the name of the sparrow-hawk khâmmâît, �mait rising as goddess,� which amenôthes had assumed on his accession. ** lepsius recognised the nature of the divinity worshipped in this temple; the deified statue of the king, �his living statue on earth,� which represented the god of the temple, is there named �nibmâûrî, lord of nubia.� thûtmosis iii. had already worked at soleb. the edifice was of considerable size, and the columns and walls remaining reveal an art as perfect as that shown in the best monuments at thebes. it was approached by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, while colossal statues of lions and hawks, the sacred animals of the district, adorned the building. the sovereign condescended to preside in person at its dedication on one of his journeys to the southern part of his empire, and the mutilated pictures still visible on the façade show the order and detail of the ceremony observed on this occasion. the king, with the crown upon his head, stood before the centre gate, accompanied by the queen and his minister amenôthes, the son of hâpi, who was better acquainted than any other man of his time with the mysteries of the ritual.* * on amenôthes, the son of hâpi, see p. of the present volume; it will be seen in the following chapter, in connection with the egyptian accounts of the exodus, what tradition made of him. the king then struck the door twelve times with his mace of white stone, and when the approach to the first hall was opened, he repeated the operation at the threshold of the sanctuary previous to entering and placing his statue there. he deposited it on the painted and gilded wooden platform on which the gods were exhibited on feast-days, and enthroned beside it the other images which were thenceforth to constitute the local ennead, after which he kindled the sacred fire before them. the queen, with the priests and nobles, all bearing torches, then passed through the halls, stopping from time to time to perform acts of purification, or to recite formulas to dispel evil spirits and pernicious influences; finally, a triumphal procession was formed, and the whole _cortege_ returned to the palace, where a banquet brought the day�s festivities to a close.* it was amenôthes iii. himself, or rather one of his statues animated by his double, who occupied the chief place in the new building. indeed, wherever we come across a temple in nubia dedicated to a king, we find the homage of the inhabitants always offered to the image of the founder, which spoke to them in oracles. all the southern part of the country beyond the second cataract is full of traces of amenôthes, and the evidence of the veneration shown to him would lead us to conclude that he played an important part in the organisation of the country. sedeinga possessed a small temple under the patronage of his wife tîi. the ruins of a sanctuary which he dedicated to anion, the sun-god, have been discovered at gebel-barkal; amenôthes seems to have been the first to perceive the advantages offered by the site, and to have endeavoured to transform the barbarian village of napata into a large egyptian city. some of the monuments with which he adorned soleb were transported, in later times, to gebel-barkal, among them some rams and lions of rare beauty. they lie at rest with their paws crossed, the head erect, and their expression suggesting both power and repose.** as we descend the nile, traces of the work of this king are less frequent, and their place is taken by those of his predecessors, as at sai, at semneh, at wady haifa, at amada, at ibrîm, and at dakkeh. distant traces of amenôthes again appear in the neighbourhood of the first cataract, and in the island of elephantine, which he endeavoured to restore to its ancient splendour. * thus the small temple of sarrah, to the north of wady haifa, is dedicated to �the living statue of ramses ii. in the land of nubia,� a statue to which his majesty gave the name of �usirmârî zosir-shâfi.� ** one of the rams was removed from gebel-barkal by lepsius, and is now in the berlin museum, as well as the pedestal of one of the hawks. prisse has shown that these two monuments originally adorned the temple of soleb, and that they were afterwards transported to napata by an ethiopian king, who engraved his name on the pedestal of one of them. [illustration: .jpg one of the lions of gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the two lions of gebel- barkal in the british museum two of the small buildings which he there dedicated to khnûmû, the local god, were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. that least damaged, on the south side of the island, consisted of a single chamber nearly forty feet in length. the sandstone walls, terminating in a curved cornice, rested on a hollow substructure raised rather more than six feet above the ground, and surrounded by a breast-high parapet. a portico ran round the building, having seven square pillars on each of its two sides, while at each end stood two columns having lotus-shaped capitals; a flight of ten or twelve steps between two walls of the same height as the basement, projected in front, and afforded access to the cella. the two columns of the façade were further apart than those at the opposite end of the building, and showed a glimpse of a richly decorated door, while a second door opened under the peristyle at the further extremity. the walls were covered with the half-brutish profile of the good khnûmû, and those of his two companions, anûkît and satît, the spirits of stormy waters. the treatment of these figures was broad and simple, the style free, light, and graceful, the colouring soft; and the harmonious beauty of the whole is unsurpassed by anything at thebes itself. it was, in fact, a kind of oratory, built on a scale to suit the capacities of a decaying town, but the design was so delicately conceived in its miniature proportions that nothing more graceful can be imagined.* * amenôthes ii. erected some small obelisks at elephantine, one of which is at present in england. the two buildings of amenôthes iii. at elephantine were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. they have been described and drawn by french scholars; between and they were destroyed, and the materials used for building barracks and magazines at syene. ancient egypt and its feudal cities, ombos, edfû,* nekhabît, esneh,** medamôt,*** coptos,**** denderah, abydos, memphis,^ and heliopolis, profited largely by the generosity of the pharaohs. * the works undertaken by thûtmosis iii. in the temple of edfû are mentioned in an inscription of the ptolemaic period; some portions are still to be seen among the ruins of the town. ** an inscription of the roman period attributes the rebuilding of the great temple of esneh to thûtmosis iii. grébaut discovered some fragments of it in the quay of the modern town. *** amenôthes ii. appears to have built the existing temple. **** the temple of hâthor was built by thûtmosis iii. some fragments found in the ptolemaic masonry bear the cartouche of thûtmosis iv. ^ amenôthes ii. certainly carried on works at memphis, for he opened a new quarry at tûrah, in the year iv. amenôthes iii. also worked limestone quarries, and built at saqqârah the earliest chapels of the serapeum which are at present known to us. since the close of the xiith dynasty these cities had depended entirely on their own resources, and their public buildings were either in ruins, or quite inadequate to the needs of the population, but now gold from syria and kûsh furnished them with the means of restoration. the delta itself shared in this architectural revival, but it had suffered too severely under the struggle between the theban kings and the shepherds to recover itself as quickly as the remainder of the country. all effort was concentrated on those of its nomes which lay on the eastern frontier, or which were crossed by the pharaohs in their journeys into asia, such as the bubastite and athribite nomes; the rest remained sunk in their ancient torpor.* * mariette and e. de rougé, attribute this torpor, at least as far as tanis is concerned, to the aversion felt by the pharaohs of egyptian blood for the hyksôs capital, and for the provinces where the invaders had formerly established themselves in large numbers. beyond the red sea the mines were actively worked, and even the oases of the libyan desert took part in the national revival, and buildings rose in their midst of a size proportionate to their slender revenues. thebes naturally came in for the largest share of the spoils of war. although her kings had become the rulers of the world, they had not, like the pharaohs of the xiith and xiiith dynasties, forsaken her for some more illustrious city: here they had their ordinary residence as well as their seat of government, hither they returned after each campaign to celebrate their victory, and hither they sent the prisoners and the spoil which they had reserved for their own royal use. in the course of one or two generations thebes had spread in every direction, and had enclosed within her circuit the neighbouring villages of ashîrû, the fief of maiit, and apît-rîsîfc, the southern thebes, which lay at the confluence of the nile with one of the largest of the canals which watered the plain. the monuments in these two new quarters of the town were unworthy of the city of which they now formed part, and amenôthes iii. consequently bestowed much pains on improving them. he entirely rebuilt the sanctuary of maût, enlarged the sacred lake, and collected within one of the courts of the temple several hundred statues in black granite of the memphite divinity, the lioness-headed sokhît, whom he identified with his theban goddess. the statues were crowded together so closely that they were in actual contact with each other in places, and must have presented something of the appearance of a regiment drawn up in battle array. the succeeding pharaohs soon came to look upon this temple as a kind of storehouse, whence they might provide themselves with ready-made figures to decorate their buildings either at thebes or in other royal cities. about a hundred of them, however, still remain, most of them without feet, arms, or head; some over-turned on the ground, others considerably out of the perpendicular, from the earth having given way beneath them, and a small number only still perfect and in situ. [illustration: .jpg the temple at elephantine, as it was in ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the _description de l�egypte, ant_., vol. i p. . a good restoration of it, made from the statements in the _description_, is to be found in pekrot-cuipiez, _histoire de l�art dans l�antiquité_, vol. i. pp. , . [illustration: .jpg the great court of the temple of luxor during the inundation] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. [illustration: .jpg part of the avenue of rams, between the temples of amon and maÛt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. at luxor amenôthes demolished the small temple with which the sovereigns of the xiith and xiiith dynasties had been satisfied, and replaced it by a structure which is still one of the finest yet remaining of the times of the pharaohs. the naos rose sheer above the waters of the nile, indeed its cornices projected over the river, and a staircase at the south side allowed the priests and devotees to embark directly from the rear of the building. the sanctuary was a single chamber, with an opening on its side, but so completely shut out from the daylight by the long dark hall at whose extremity it was placed as to be in perpetual obscurity. it was flanked by narrow, dimly lightly chambers, and was approached through a pronaos with four rows of columns, a vast court surrounded with porticoes occupying the foreground. at the present time the thick walls which enclosed the entire building are nearly level with the ground, half the ceilings have crumbled away, air and light penetrate into every nook, and during the inundation the water flowing into the courts, transformed them until recently into lakes, whither the flocks and herds of the village resorted in the heat of the day to bathe or quench their thirst. pictures of mysterious events never meant for the public gaze now display their secrets in the light of the sun, and reveal to the eyes of the profane the supernatural events which preceded the birth of the king. on the northern side an avenue of sphinxes and crio-sphinxes led to the gates of old thebes. at present most of these creatures are buried under the ruins of the modern town, or covered by the earth which overlies the ancient road; but a few are still visible, broken and shapeless from barbarous usage, and hardly retaining any traces of the inscriptions in which amenôthes claimed them boastingly as his work. [illustration: .jpg the pylons of thÛtmosis iii. and harmhabÎ at kaknak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. triumphal processions passing along this route from luxor to karnak would at length reach the great court before the temple of amon, or, by turning a little to the right after passing the temple of maût, would arrive in front of the southern façade, near the two gilded obelisks whose splendour once rejoiced the heart of the famous hâtshopsîtû. thûtmosis iii. was also determined on his part to spare no expense to make the temple of his god of proportions suitable to the patron of so vast an empire. not only did he complete those portions which his predecessors had merely sketched out, but on the south side towards ashîrû he also built a long row of pylons, now half ruined, on which he engraved, according to custom, the list of nations and cities which he had subdued in asia and africa. to the east of the temple he rebuilt some ancient structures, the largest of which served as a halting-place for processions, and he enclosed the whole with a stone rampart. the outline of the sacred lake, on which the mystic boats were launched on the nights of festivals, was also made more symmetrical, and its margin edged with masonry. [illustration: .jpg sacred lake akd the southern part of the temple of karnak.] drawn by boucher, from a photograph by boato: the building near the centre of the picture is the covered walk constructed by thûtmosis iii. by these alterations the harmonious proportion between the main buildings and the façade had been destroyed, and the exterior wall was now too wide for the pylon at the entrance. amenôthes iii. remedied this defect by erecting in front a fourth pylon, which was loftier, larger, and in all respects more worthy to stand before the enlarged temple. its walls were partially covered with battle-scenes, which informed all beholders of the glory of the conqueror.* * portions of the military bas-reliefs which covered the exterior face of the pylon are still to be seen through the gaps in the wall at the end of the great hall of pillars built by seti i. and ramses ii. progress had been no less marked on the left bank of the river. as long as thebes had been merely a small provincial town, its cemeteries had covered but a moderate area, including the sandy plain and low mounds opposite karnak and the valley of deîr el-baharî beyond; but now that the city had more than doubled its extent, the space required for the dead was proportionately greater. the tombs of private persons began to spread towards the south, and soon reached the slopes of the assassîf, the hill of sheikh-abd-el-qurnah and the district of qûrnet-mûrraî--in fact, all that part which the people of the country called the �brow� of thebes. on the borders of the cultivated land a row of chapels and mastabas with pyramidal roofs sheltered the remains of the princes and princesses of the royal family. the pharaohs themselves were buried either separately under their respective brick pyramids or in groups in a temple, as was the case with the first three thûtmosis and hâtshopsîtû at deîr el-baharî. amenôthes ii. and thûtmosis iv. could doubtless have found room in this crowded necropolis,* although the space was becoming limited, but the pride of the pharaohs began to rebel against this promiscuous burial side by side with their subjects. amenôthes iii. sought for a site, therefore, where he would have ample room to display his magnificence, far from the vulgar crowd, and found what he desired at the farther end of the valley which opens out behind the village of qurnah. here, an hour�s journey from the bank of the nile, he cut for himself a magnificent rock-tomb with galleries, halls, and deep pits, the walls being decorated with representations of the voyage of the sun through the regions which he traverses during the twelve hours of his nocturnal course. * the generally received opinion is that these sovereigns of the xviiith dynasty were buried in the bibân el-molûk, but i have made several examinations of this valley, and cannot think that this was the case. on the contrary, the scattered notices in the fragments of papyrus preserved at turin seem to me to indicate that amenôthes ii. and thûtmosis iv. must have been buried in the neighbourhood of the assassîf or of deîr el-baharî. a sarcophagus of red granite received his mummy, and _ushabti�s_ of extraordinary dimensions and admirable workmanship mounted guard around him, so as to release him from the corvée in the fields of ialû. the chapel usually attached to such tombs is not to be found in the neighbourhood. as the road to the funeral valley was a difficult one, and as it would be unreasonable to condemn an entire priesthood to live in solitude, the king decided to separate the component parts which had hitherto been united in every tomb since the memphite period, and to place the vault for the mummy and the passages leading to it some distance away in the mountains, while the necessary buildings for the cultus of the statue and the accommodation of the priests were transferred to the plain, and were built at the southern extremity of the lands which were at that time held by private persons. the divine character of amenôthes, ascribed to him on account of his solar origin and the co-operation of amon-râ at his birth, was, owing to this separation of the funerary constituents, brought into further prominence. when once the body which he had animated while on earth was removed and hidden from sight, the people soon became accustomed to think only of his double enthroned in the recesses of the sanctuary: seeing him receive there the same honours as the gods themselves, they came naturally to regard him as a deity himself. [illustration: .jpg the two colossi of memnon in the plain of thebes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the �vocal statue of memon� is that on the right-hand side of the illustration. the arrangement of his temple differed in no way from those in which amon, maût, and montû were worshipped, while it surpassed in size and splendour most of the sanctuaries dedicated to the patron gods of the chief towns of the nomes. it contained, moreover, colossal statues, objects which are never found associated with the heavenly gods. several of these figures have been broken to pieces, and only a few scattered fragments of them remain, but two of them still maintain their positions on each side of the entrance, with their faces towards the east. they are each formed of a single block of red breccia from syenê,* and are fifty-three feet high, but the more northerly one was shattered in the earthquake which completed the ruin of thebes in the year b.c. the upper part toppled over with the shock, and was dashed to pieces on the floor of the court, while the lower half remained in its place. soon after the disaster it began to be rumoured that sounds like those produced by the breaking of a harp-string proceeded from the pedestal at sunrise, whereupon travellers flocked to witness the miracle, and legend soon began to take possession of the giant who spoke in this marvellous way. in vain did the egyptians of the neighbourhood declare that the statue represented the pharaoh amenôthes; the greeks refused to believe them, and forthwith recognised in the colossus an image of memnon the ethiopian, son of tithonus and aurora, slain by their own achilles beneath the walls of troy--maintaining that the music heard every morning was the clear and harmonious voice of the hero saluting his mother. * it is often asserted that they are made of rose granite, but jollois and devilliers describe them as being of �a species of sandstone breccia, composed of a mass of agate flint, conglomerated together by a remarkably hard cement. this material, being very dense and of a heterogeneous composition, presents to the sculptor perhaps greater difficulties than even granite.� towards the middle of the second century of our era, hadrian undertook a journey to upper egypt, and heard the wonderful song; sixty years later, septimus severus restored the statue by the employment of courses of stones, which were so arranged as to form a rough representation of a human head and shoulders. his piety, however, was not rewarded as he expected, for memnon became silent, and his oracle fell into oblivion. the temple no longer exists, and a few ridges alone mark the spot where it rose; but the two colossi remain at their post, in the same condition in which they were left by the roman cæsar: the features are quite obliterated, and the legs and the supporting female figures on either side are scored all over with greek and latin inscriptions expressing the appreciation of ancient tourists. although the statues tower high above the fields of corn and _bersîm_ which surround them, our first view of them, owing to the scale of proportion observed in their construction, so different from that to which we are accustomed, gives us the impression that they are smaller than they really are, and it is only when we stand close to one of them and notice the insignificant appearance of the crowd of sightseers clustered on its pedestal that we realize the immensity of the colossi. the descendants of ahmosis had by their energy won for thebes not only the supremacy over the peoples of egypt and of the known world, but had also secured for the theban deities pre-eminence over all their rivals. the booty collected both in syria and ethiopia went to enrich the god amon as much as it did the kings themselves; every victory brought him the tenth part of the spoil gathered on the field of battle, of the tribute levied on vassals, and of the prisoners taken as slaves. when thûtmosis iil, after having reduced megiddo, organised a systematic plundering of the surrounding country, it was for the benefit of amon-eâ that he reaped the fields and sent their harvest into egypt; if during his journeys he collected useful plants or rare animals, it was that he might dispose of them in the groves or gardens of amon as well as in his own, and he never retained for his personal use the whole of what he won by arms, but always reserved some portion for the sacred treasury. [illustration: .jpg a party of tourists at the foot of the vocal statue of memnok] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. his successors acted in a similar manner, and in the reigns of amenôthes ii., thût-mosis iv., and amenôthes iii., the patrimony of the theban priesthood continued to increase. the pharaohs, perpetually called upon as they were to recompense one or other of their servants, were never able to retain for long their share of the spoils of war. gold and silver, lands, jewels, and slaves passed as quickly out of their hands as they had fallen into them, and although then fortune was continually having additions made to it in every fresh campaign, yet the increase was rarely in proportion to the trouble expended. the god, on the contrary, received what he got for all time, and gave back nothing in return: fresh accumulations of precious metals were continually being added to his store, his meadows were enriched by the addition of vineyards, and with his palm forests he combined fish-ponds full of fish; he added farms and villages to those he already possessed, and each reign saw the list of his possessions increase. he had his own labourers, his own tradespeople, his own fishermen, soldiers, and scribes, and, presiding over all these, a learned hierarchy of divines, priests, and prophets, who administered everything. this immense domain, which was a kind of state within the state, was ruled over by a single high priest, chosen by the sovereign from among the prophets. he was the irresponsible head of it, and his spiritual ambition had increased step by step with the extension of his material resources. as the human pharaoh showed himself entitled to homage from the lords of the earth, the priests came at length to the conclusion that amon had a right to the allegiance of the lords of heaven, and that he was the supreme being, in respect of whom the others were of little or no account, and as he was the only god who was everywhere victorious, he came at length to be regarded by them as the only god in existence. it was impossible that the kings could see this rapid development of sacerdotal power without anxiety, and with all their devotion to the patron of their city, solicitude for their own authority compelled them to seek elsewhere for another divinity, whose influence might in some degree counterbalance that of amon. the only one who could vie with him at thebes, either for the antiquity of his worship or for the rank which he occupied in the public esteem, was the sun-lord of heliopolis, head of the first ennead. thûtmosis iv. owed his crown to him, and �displayed his gratitude in clearing away the sand from the sphinx, in which the spirit of harmakhis was considered to dwell; and amenôthes iii., although claiming to be the son of amon himself, inherited the disposition shown by thûtmosis in favour of the heliopolitan religions, but instead of attaching himself to the forms most venerated by theologians, he bestowed his affection on a more popular deity--atonû, the fiery disk. he may have been influenced in his choice by private reasons. like his predecessors, he had taken, while still very young, wives from among his own family, but neither these reasonable ties, nor his numerous diplomatic alliances with foreign princesses, were enough for him. from the very beginning of his reign he had loved a maiden who was not of the blood of the pharaohs, tîi, the daughter of iûîa and his wife tûîa.* * for the last thirty years queen tîi has been the subject of many hypotheses and of much confusion. the scarabasi engraved under amenôthes iii. say explicitly that she was the daughter of two personages, iûîa and tûîa, but these names are not accompanied by any of the signs which are characteristic of foreign names, and were considered egyptian by contemporaries. hincks was the first who seems to have believed her to be a syrian; he compares her father�s name with that of levi, and attributes the religious revolution which followed to the influence of her foreign education. this theory has continued to predominate; some prefer a libyan origin to the asiatic one, and latterly there has been an attempt to recognise in tîi one of the princesses of mitanni mentioned in the correspondence of tel el-amarna. as long ago as , i showed that tîi was an egyptian of middle rank, probably of heliopolitan origin. connexions of this kind had been frequently formed by his ancestors, but the egyptian women of inferior rank whom they had brought into their harems had always remained in the background, and if the sons of these concubines were ever fortunate enough to come to the throne, it was in default of heirs of pure blood. amenôthes iii. married tîi, gave her for her dowry the town of zâlû in lower egypt, and raised her to the position of queen, in spite of her low extraction. she busied herself in the affairs of state, took precedence of the princesses of the solar family, and appeared at her husband�s side in public ceremonies, and was so figured on the monuments. if, as there is reason to believe, she was born near heliopolis, it is easy to understand how her influence may have led amenôthes to pay special honour to a heliopolitan divinity. he had built, at an early period of his reign, a sanctuary to atonû at memphis, and in the xth year he constructed for him a chapel at thebes itself,* to the south of the last pylon of ïhûtmosis iii., and endowed this deity with property at the expense of anion. * this temple seems to have been raised on the site of the building which is usually attributed to amenôthes ii. and amenôthes iii. the blocks bearing the name of amenôthes ii. had been used previously, like most of those which bear the cartouches of amenôthes iii. the temple of atonû, which was demolished by harmhabî or one of the ramses, was subsequently rebuilt with the remains of earlier edifices, and dedicated to amon. [illustration: .jpg marriage scarabÆus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the scarabaeus preserved at gîzeh. he had several sons;* but the one who succeeded him, and who, like him, was named amenôthes, was the most paradoxical of all the egyptian sovereigns of ancient times.** * one of them, thûtmosis, was high priest of phtah, and we possess several monuments erected by him in the temple of memphis; another, tûtonkhamon, subsequently became king. he also had several daughters by tîi--sîtamon. ** the absence of any cartouches of amenôthes iv. or his successors in the table of abydos prevented champollion and rosellini from classifying these sovereigns with any precision. nestor l�hôte tried to recognise in the first of them, whom he called _bakhen-balchnan_, a king belonging to the very ancient dynasties, perhaps the hyksôs apakhnan, but lepsius and hincks showed that he must be placed between amenôthes iii. and harmhabî, that he was first called amenôthes like his father, but that he afterwards took the name of baknaten, which is now read khûnaten or khûniaton. his singular aspect made it difficult to decide at first whether a man or a woman was represented. mariette, while pronouncing him to be a man, thought that he had perhaps been taken prisoner in the sudan and mutilated, which would have explained his effeminate appearance, almost like that of an eunuch. recent attempts have been made to prove that amenôthes iv. and khûniaton were two distinct persons, or that khûniaton was a queen; but they have hitherto been rejected by egyptologists. he made up for the inferiority of his birth on account of the plebeian origin of his mother tîî,* by his marriage with nofrîtîti, a princess of the pure solar race.** tîi, long accustomed to the management of affairs, exerted her influence over him even more than she had done over her husband. without officially assuming the rank, she certainly for several years possessed the power, of regent, and gave a definite oriental impress to her son�s religious policy. no outward changes were made at first; amenôthes, although showing his preference for heliopolis by inscribing in his protocol the title of prophet of harmakhis, which he may, however, have borne before his accession, maintained his residence at thebes, as his father had done before him, continued to sacrifice to the theban divinities, and to follow the ancient paths and the conventional practices.*** * the filiation of amenôthes iv. and tîi has given rise to more than one controversy. the egyptian texts do not define it explicitly, and the title borne by tîi has been considered by some to prove that amenôthes iv. was her son, and by others that she was the mother of queen nofrîtîti. the tel el-amarna correspondence solves the question, however, as it gives a letter from dushratta to khûniaton, in which tîi is called �thy mother.� ** nofrîtîti, the wife of amenôthes iv., like all the princesses of that time, has been supposed to be of syrian origin, and to have changed her name on her arrival in egypt. the place which she holds beside her husband is the same as that which belongs to legitimate queens, like nofritari, ahmosis, and hâtshopsîtû, and the example of these princesses is enough to show us what was her real position; she was most probably a daughter of one of the princesses of the solar blood, perhaps of one of the sisters of amenôthes iii., and amenôthes iv. married her so as to obtain through her the rights which were wanting to him through his mother tîi. *** the tomb of ramses, governor of thebes and priest of mâît, shows us in one part of it the king, still faithful to his name of amenôthes, paying homage to the god amon, lord of karnak, while everywhere else the worship of atonû predominates. the cartouches on the tomb of pari, read by bouriant akhopîrûrî, and by scheil more correctly nofirkhopîrûrî, seem to me to represent a transitional form of the protocol of amenôthes iv., and not the name of a new pharaoh; the inscription in which they are to be found bears the date of his third year. he either built a temple to the theban god, or enlarged the one which his father had constructed at karnak, and even opened new quarries at syene and silsileh for providing granite and sandstone for the adornment of this monument. his devotion to the invincible disk, however, soon began to assert itself, and rendered more and more irksome to him the religious observances which he had constrained himself to follow. there was nothing and no one to hinder him from giving free course to his inclinations, and the nobles and priests were too well trained in obedience to venture to censure anything he might do, even were it to result in putting the whole population into motion, from elephantine to the sea-coast, to prepare for the intruded deity a dwelling which should eclipse in magnificence the splendour of the great temple. a few of those around him had become converted of their own accord to his favourite worship, but these formed a very small minority. thebes had belonged to amon so long that the king could never hope to bring it to regard atonû as anything but a being of inferior rank. each city belonged to some god, to whom was attributed its origin, its development, and its prosperity, and whom it could not forsake without renouncing its very existence. if thebes became separated from amon it would be thebes no longer, and of this amenôthes was so well aware that he never attempted to induce it to renounce its patron. his residence among surroundings which he detested at length became so intolerable, that he resolved to leave the place and create a new capital elsewhere. the choice of a new abode would have presented no difficulty to him had he been able to make up his mind to relegate atonû to the second rank of divinities; memphis, heracleopolis, siût, khmûnû, and, in fact, all the towns of the valley would have deemed themselves fortunate in securing the inheritance of their rival, but not one of them would be false to its convictions or accept the degradation of its own divine founder, whether phtah, harshafîtû, anubis, or thot. a newly promoted god demanded a new city; amenôthes, therefore, made selection of a broad plain extending on the right bank of the nile, in the eastern part of the hermopolitan nome, to which he removed with all his court about the fourth or fifth year of his reign.* * the last date with the name of amenôthes is that of the year v., on a papyrus from the payilm; elsewhere we find from the year vi. the name of khûniaton, by the side of monuments with the cartouche of amenôthes; we may conclude from this that the foundation of the town dates from the year iv. or v. at the latest, when the prince, having renounced the worship of amon, left thebes that he might be able to celebrate freely that of atonû. he found here several obscure villages without any historical or religious traditions, and but thinly populated; amenôthes chose one of them, the et-tel of the present day, and built there a palace for himself and a temple for his god. the temple, like that of eâ at heliopolis, was named _haît-banbonû_, the mansion of the obelisk. it covered an immense area, of which the sanctuary, however, occupied an inconsiderable part; it was flanked by brick storehouses, and the whole was surrounded by a thick wall. the remains show that the temple was built of white limestone, of fine quality, but that it was almost devoid of ornament, for there was no time to cover it with the usual decorations.* * the opinion of brugsch, that the arrangement of the various parts differed from that of other temples, and was the effect of foreign influence, has not been borne out by the excavations of prof. pétrie, the little which he has brought to light being entirely of egyptian character. the temple is represented on the tomb of the high priest mariri. [illustration: .jpg map] the palace was built of brick; it was approached by a colossal gateway, and contained vast halls, interspersed with small apartments for the accommodation of the household, and storehouses for the necessary provisions, besides gardens which had been hastily planted with rare shrubs and sycamores. fragments of furniture and of the roughest of the utensils contained in the different chambers are still unearthed from among the heaps of rubbish, and the cellars especially are full of potsherds and cracked jars, on which we can still see written an indication of the reign and the year when the wine they once contained was made. altars of massive masonry rose in the midst of the courts, on which the king or one of his ministers heaped offerings and burnt incense morning, noon, and evening, in honour of the three decisive moments in the life of atonû.* * naville discovered at deîr el-baharî a similar altar, nearly intact. no other example was before known in any of the ruined towns or temples, and no one had any idea of the dimensions to which these altars, attained. a few painted and gilded columns supported the roofs of the principal apartments in which the pharaoh held his audiences, but elsewhere the walls and pillars were coated with cream-coloured stucco or whitewash, on which scenes of private life were depicted in colours. the pavement, like the walls, was also decorated. in one of the halls which seems to have belonged to the harem, there is still to be seen distinctly the picture of a rectangular piece of water containing fish and lotus-flowers in full bloom; the edge is adorned with water-plants and flowering shrubs, among which birds fly and calves graze and gambol; on the right and left were depicted rows of stands laden with fruit, while at each end of the room were seen the grinning faces of a gang of negro and syrian prisoners, separated from each other by gigantic arches. the tone of colouring is bright and cheerful, and the animals are treated with great freedom and facility. the pharaoh, had collected about him several of the best artists then to be found at thebes, placing them under the direction of baûki, the chief of the corporation of sculptors,* and probably others subsequently joined these from provincial studios. * baûki belonged to a family of artists, and his father mani had filled before him the post of chief of the sculptors. the part played by these personages was first defined by brugsch, with perhaps some exaggeration of their artistic merit and originality of talent. work for them was not lacking, for houses had to be built for all the courtiers and government officials who had been obliged to follow the king, and in a few years a large town had sprung up, which was called khûîtatonû, or the �horizon of the disk.� it was built on a regular plan, with straight streets and open spaces, and divided into two separate quarters, interspersed with orchards and shady trellises. workmen soon began to flock to the new city--metal-founders, glass-founders, weavers; in fine, all who followed any trade indispensable to the luxury of a capital. the king appropriated a territory for it from the ancient nome of the hare, thus compelling the god thot to contribute to the fortune of atonû; he fixed its limits by means of stelæ placed in the mountains, from gebel-tûnah to deshlûît on the west, and from sheikh-said to el-hauata on the eastern bank;* it was a new nome improvised for the divine _parvenu_. * we know at present of fourteen of these stelæ. a certain number must still remain to be discovered on both banks of the nile. [illustration: .jpg the decorated pavement of the palace] atonû was one of the forms of the sun, and perhaps the most material one of all those devised by the egyptians. he was defined as �the good god who rejoices in truth, the lord of the solar course, the lord of the disk, the lord of heaven, the lord of earth, the living disk which lights up the two worlds, the living harmakhis who rises on the horizon bearing his name of shû, which is disk, the eternal infuser of life.� his priests exercised the same functions as those of heliopolis, and his high priest was called �oîrimaû,� like the high priest of râ in aunû. this functionary was a certain marirl, upon whom the king showered his favours, and he was for some time the chief authority in the state after the pharaoh himself. atonû was represented sometimes by the ordinary figure of horus,* sometimes by the solar disk, but a disk whose rays were prolonged towards the earth, like so many arms ready to lay hold with their little hands of the offerings of the faithful, or to distribute to mortals the _crux ansata_, the symbol of life. the other gods, except amon, were sharers with humanity in his benefits. atonû proscribed him, and tolerated him only at thebes; he required, moreover, that the name of amon should be effaced wherever it occurred, but he respected râ and horus and harmakhis--all, in fact, but amon: he was content with being regarded as their king, and he strove rather to become their chief than their destroyer.** * it was probably this form of horus which had, in the temple at thebes, the statue called �the red image of atonû in paatoml.� ** prisse d�avennes has found at karnak, on fragments of the temple, the names of other divinities than atonû worshipped by khûniatonû. his nature, moreover, had nothing in it of the mysterious or ambiguous; he was the glorious torch which gave light to humanity, and which was seen every day to flame in the heavens without ever losing its brilliance or becoming weaker. when he hides himself �the world rests in darkness, like those dead who lie in their rock-tombs, with their heads swathed, their nostrils stuffed up, their eyes sightless, and whose whole property might be stolen from them, even that which they have under their head, without their knowing it; the lion issues from his lair, the serpent roams ready to bite, it is as obscure as in a dark room, the earth is silent whilst he who creates everything dwells in his horizon.� he has hardly arisen when �egypt becomes festal, one awakens, one rises on one�s feet; when thou hast caused men to clothe themselves, they adore thee with outstretched hands, and the whole earth attends to its work, the animals betake themselves to their herbage, trees and green crops abound, birds fly to their marshy thickets with wings outstretched in adoration of thy double, the cattle skip, all the birds which were in their nests shake themselves when thou risest for them; the boats come and go, for every way is open at thy appearance, the fish of the river leap before thee as soon as thy rays descend upon the ocean.� it is not without reason that all living things thus rejoice at his advent; all of them owe their existence to him, for �he creates the female germ, he gives virility to men, and furnishes life to the infant in its mother�s womb; he calms and stills its weeping, he nourishes it in the maternal womb, giving forth the breathings which animate all that he creates, and when the infant escapes from the womb on the day of its birth, thou openest his mouth for speech, and thou satisfiest his necessities. when the chick is in the egg, a cackle in a stone, thou givest to it air while within to keep it alive; when thou hast caused it to be developed in the egg to the point of being able to break it, it goes forth proclaiming its existence by its cackling, and walks on its feet from the moment of its leaving the egg.� atonû presides over the universe and arranges within it the lot of human beings, both egyptians and foreigners. the celestial nile springs up in hades far away in the north; he makes its current run down to earth, and spreads its waters over the fields during the inundation in order to nourish his creatures. he rules the seasons, winter and summer; he constructed the far-off sky in order to display himself therein, and to look down upon his works below. from the moment that he reveals himself there, �cities, towns, tribes, routes, rivers--all eyes are lifted to him, for he is the disk of the day upon the earth.� * the sanctuary in which he is invoked contains only his divine shadow;** for he himself never leaves the firmament. * these extracts are taken from the hymns of tel el-amarna. ** in one of the tombs at tel el-amarna the king is depicted leading his mother tîi to the temple of atonû in order to see �the shadow of râ,� and it was thought with some reason that �the shadow of râ� was one of the names of the temple. i think that this designation applied also to the statue or symbol of the god; the _shadow_ of a god was attached to the statue in the same manner as the �double,� and transformed it into an animated body. his worship assumes none of the severe and gloomy forms of the theban cults: songs resound therein, and hymns accompanied by the harp or flute; bread, cakes, vegetables, fruits, and flowers are associated with his rites, and only on very rare occasions one of those bloody sacrifices in which the other gods delight. the king made himself supreme pontiff of atonu, and took precedence of the high priest. he himself celebrated the rites at the altar of the god, and we see him there standing erect, his hands outstretched, offering incense and invoking blessings from on high.* like the caliph hakim of a later age, he formed a school to propagate his new doctrines, and preached them before his courtiers: if they wished to please him, they had to accept his teaching, and show that they had profited by it. the renunciation of the traditional religious observances of the solar house involved also the rejection of such personal names as implied an ardent devotion to the banished god; in place of amenôthes, �he to whom amon is united,� the king assumed after a time the name of khûniatonû, �the glory of the disk,� and all the members of his family, as well as his adherents at court, whose appellations involved the name of the same god, soon followed his example. the proscription of amon extended to inscriptions, so that while his name or figure, wherever either could be got at, was chiselled out, the vulture, the emblem of mût, which expressed the idea of mother, was also avoided.** * the altar on which the king stands upright is one of those cubes of masonry of which naville discovered such a fine example in the temple of hâtshopsîtû at deîr el-baharî. ** we find, however, some instances where the draughtsman, either from custom or design, had used the vulture to express the word mailt, �the mother,� without troubling himself to think whether it answered to the name of the goddess. the king would have nothing about him to suggest to eye or ear the remembrance of the gods or doctrines of thebes. it would consequently have been fatal to them and their pretensions to the primacy of egypt if the reign of the young king had continued as long as might naturally have been expected. after having been for nearly two centuries almost the national head of africa, amon was degraded by a single blow to the secondary rank and languishing existence in which he had lived before the expulsion of the hyksôs. he had surrendered his sceptre as king of heaven and earth, not to any of his rivals who in old times had enjoyed the highest rank, but to an individual of a lower order, a sort of demigod, while he himself had thus become merely a local deity, confined to the corner of the said in which he had had his origin. there was not even left to him the peaceful possession of this restricted domain, for he was obliged to act as host to the enemy who had deposed him: the temple of atonû was erected at the door of his own sanctuary, and without leaving their courts the priests of amon could hear at the hours of worship the chants intoned by hundreds of heretics in the temple of the disk. amon�s priests saw, moreover, the royal gifts flowing into other treasuries, and the gold of syria and ethiopia no longer came into their hands. should they stifle their complaints, and bow to this insulting oppression, or should they raise a protest against the action which had condemned them to obscurity and a restricted existence? if they had given indications of resistance, they would have been obliged to submit to prompt repression, but we see no sign of this. the bulk of the people--clerical as well as lay--accepted the deposition with complacency, and the nobles hastened to offer their adherence to that which afterwards became the official confession of faith of the lord king.* the lord of thebes itself, a certain ramses, bowed his head to the new cult, and the bas-reliefs of his tomb display to our eyes the proofs of his apostasy: on the right-hand side amon is the only subject of his devotion, while on the left he declares himself an adherent of atonû. religious formularies, divine appellations, the representations of the costume, expression, and demeanour of the figures are at issue with each other in the scenes on the two sides of the door, and if we were to trust to appearances only, one would think that the two pictures belonged to two separate reigns, and were concerned with two individuals strangers to each other.** * the political character of this reaction against the growing power of the high priests and the town of amon was pointed out for the first time by masporo in . ed. meyer and tiele blond with the political idea a monotheistic conception which does not seem to me to be fully justified, at least at present, by anything in the materials we possess. ** his tomb was discovered in by villiers-stuart. the rupture between the past and the present was so complete, in fact, that the sovereign was obliged to change, if not his face and expression, at least the mode in which they were represented. [illustration: .jpg the mask of kihÛniatonÛ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. petrie thinks that the monument discovered by him, which is of fine plaster, is a cast of the dead king, executed possibly to enable the sculptors to make _ushabtu_, �respondents,� for him. the name and personality of an egyptian were so closely allied that interference with one implied interference with the other. khûniatonû could not continue to be such as he was when amenôthes, and, in fact, their respective portraits differ from each other to that degree that there is some doubt at moments as to their identity. amenôthes is hardly to be distinguished from his father: he has the same regular and somewhat heavy features, the same idealised body and conventional shape as those which we find in the orthodox pharaohs. khûniatonû affects a long and narrow head, conical at the top, with a retreating forehead, a large aquiline and pointed nose, a small mouth, an enormous chin projecting in front, the whole being supported by a long, thin neck. his shoulders are narrow, with little display of muscle, but his breasts are so full, his abdomen so prominent, and his hips so large, that one would think they belonged to a woman. etiquette required the attendants upon the king, and those who aspired to his favour, to be portrayed in the bas-reliefs of temples or tombs in all points, both as regards face and demeanour, like the king himself. hence it is that the majority of his contemporaries, after having borne the likeness of amenôthes, came to adopt, without a break, that of khûniatonû. the scenes at tel el-amarna contain, therefore, nothing but angular profiles, pointed skulls, ample breasts, flowing figures, and swelling stomachs. the outline of these is one that lends itself readily to caricature, and the artists have exaggerated the various details with the intention, it may be, of rendering the representations grotesque. there was nothing ridiculous, however, in the king, their model, and several of his statues attribute to him a languid, almost valetudinarian grace, which is by no means lacking in dignity. [illustration: .jpg amenÔthes iv., from the statuette in the louvre.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a drawing by petrie. [illustration: .jpg page image] he was a good and affectionate man, and was passionately fond of his wife, nofrîtîti, associating her with himself in his sovereign acts. if he set out to visit the temple, she followed him in a chariot; if he was about to reward one of his faithful subjects, she stood beside him and helped to distribute the golden necklaces. she joined him in his prayers to the solar disk; she ministered to him in domestic life, when, having broken away from the worries of his public duties, he sought relaxation in his harem; and their union was so tender, that we find her on one occasion, at least, seated in a coaxing attitude on her husband�s knees--a unique instance of such affection among all the representations on the monuments of egypt. [illustration: .jpg khÛniatonÛ and his wife rewarding one of the great officers of the court] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. they had six daughters, whom they brought up to live with them on terms of the closest intimacy: they accompanied their father and mother everywhere, and are exhibited as playing around the throne while their parents are engaged in performing the duties of their office. the gentleness and gaiety of the king were reflected in the life of his subjects: all the scenes which they have left us consist entirely of processions, cavalcades, banquets, and entertainments. khûniatonû was prodigal in the gifts of gold and the eulogies which he bestowed on marirî, the chief priest: the people dance around him while he is receiving from the king the just recompense of his activity. when hûîa, who came back from syria in the xiith year of the king�s reign, brought solemnly before him the tribute he had collected, the king, borne in his jolting palanquin on the shoulders of his officers, proceeded to the temple to return thanks to his god, to the accompaniment of chants and the waving of the great fans. when the divine father aï had married the governess of one of the king�s daughters, the whole city gave itself up to enjoyment, and wine flowed freely during the wedding feast. notwithstanding the frequent festivals, the king found time to watch jealously over the ordinary progress of government and foreign affairs. the architects, too, were not allowed to stand idle, and without taking into account the repairs of existing buildings, had plenty to do in constructing edifices in honour of atonû in the principal towns of the nile valley, at memphis, heliopolis, hermopolis, hermonthis, and in the fayûm. the provinces in ethiopia remained practically in the same condition as in the time of amenôthes iii.;* kûsh was pacified, notwithstanding the raids which the tribes of the desert were accustomed to make from time to time, only to receive on each occasion rigorous chastisement from the king�s viceroy. * the name and the figure of khûniatonû are met with on the gate of the temple of soleb, and he received in his xiith year the tributes of kûsh, as well as those of syria. the sudden degradation of amon had not brought about any coldness between the pharaoh and his princely allies in asia. the aged amenôthes had, towards the end of his reign, asked the hand of dushratta�s daughter in marriage, and the mitannian king, highly flattered by the request, saw his opportunity and took advantage of it in the interest of his treasury. he discussed the amount of the dowry, demanded a considerable sum of gold, and when the affair had been finally arranged to his satisfaction, he despatched the princess to the banks of the nile. on her arrival she found her affianced husband was dead, or, at all events, dying. amenôthes iv., however, stepped into his father�s place, and inherited his bride with his crown. [illustration: .jpg the door of a tomb at tel el-amarna] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the new king�s relations with other foreign princes were no less friendly; the chief of the khâti (hittites) complimented him on his accession, the king of alasia wrote to him to express his earnest desire for a continuance of peace between the two states. burnaburiash of babylon had, it is true, hoped to obtain an egyptian princess in marriage for his son, and being disappointed, had endeavoured to pick a quarrel over the value of the presents which had been sent him, together with the notice of the accession of the new sovereign. but his kingdom lay too far away to make his ill-will of much consequence, and his complaints passed unheeded. in coele-syria and phoenicia the situation remained unchanged. the vassal cities were in a perpetual state of disturbance, though not more so than in the past. azîru, son of abdashirti, chief of the country of the amorites, had always, even during the lifetime of amenôthes iii., been the most turbulent of vassals. the smaller states of the orontes and of the coast about arvad had been laid waste by his repeated incursions and troubled by his intrigues. he had taken and pillaged twenty towns, among which were simyra, sini, irqata, and qodshû, and he was already threatening byblos, berytus, and sidon. it was useless to complain of him, for he always managed to exculpate himself to the royal messengers. khaî, dûdû, amenemaûpît had in turn all pronounced him innocent. pharaoh himself, after citing him to appear in egypt to give an explanation of his conduct, had allowed himself to be won over by his fair speaking, and had dismissed him uncondemned. other princes, who lacked his cleverness and power, tried to imitate him, and from north to south the whole of syria could only be compared to some great arena, in which fighting was continually carried on between one tribe or town and another--tyre against sidon, sidon against byblos, jerusalem against lachish. all of them appealed to khûniatonû, and endeavoured to enlist him on their side. their despatches arrived by scores, and the perusal of them at the present day would lead us to imagine that egypt had all but lost her supremacy. the egyptian ministers, however, were entirely unmoved by them, and continued to refuse material support to any of the numerous rivals, except in a few rare cases, where a too prolonged indifference would have provoked an open revolt in some part of the country. khûniatonû died young, about the xviiith year of his reign.* he was buried in the depths of a ravine in the mountain-side to the east of the town, and his tomb remained unknown till within the last few years. although one of his daughters who died before her father had been interred there, the place seems to have been entirely unprepared for the reception of the king�s body. the funeral chamber and the passages are scarcely even rough-hewn, and the reception halls show a mere commencement of decoration.** the other tombs of the locality are divided into two groups, separated by the ravine reserved for the burying-place of the royal house. the noble families possessed each their own tomb on the slopes of the hillside; the common people were laid to rest in pits lower down, almost on the level of the plain. the cutting and decoration of all these tombs had been entrusted to a company of contractors, who had executed them according to two or three stereotyped plans, without any variation, except in size. nearly all the walls are bare, or present but few inscriptions; those tombs only are completed whose occupants died before the pharaoh. * the length of khûniatonû�s reign was fixed by griffith with almost absolute certainty by means of the dates written in ink on the jars of wine and preserves found in the ruins of the palace. ** the tomb has been found, as i anticipated, in the ravine which separates the northern after the southern group of burying-places. the arabs opened it in , and grébaut has since completely excavated it. the scenes depicted in it are connected with the death and funeral of the princess mâqîtatonû. [illustration: .jpg interior of a tomb at tel el-amarna] drawn by boudier, after a photograph by insinger. the façades of the tombs are cut in the rock, and contain, for the most part, but one door, the jambs of which are covered on both sides by several lines of hieroglyphs; and it is just possible to distinguish traces of the adoration of the radiant disk on the lintels, together with the cartouches containing the names of the king and god. the chapel is a large rectangular chamber, from one end of which opens the inclined passage leading to the coffin. the roof is sometimes supported by columns, having capitals decorated with designs of flowers or of geese hung from the abacus by their feet with their heads turned upwards. the religious teaching at tel el-amarna presents no difference in the main from that which prevailed in other parts of egypt.* the double of osiris was supposed to reside in the tomb, or else to take wing to heaven and embark with atonû, as elsewhere he would embark with eâ. the same funerary furniture is needed for the deceased as in other local cults--ornaments of vitreous paste, amulets, and _ushabtiu_, or �respondents,� to labour for the dead man in the fields of ialû. those of khûniatonû were, like those of amenôthes iii., actual statuettes in granite of admirable workmanship. the dead who reached the divine abode, retained the same rank in life that they had possessed here below, and in order to ensure the enjoyment of it, they related, or caused to be depicted in their tombs, the events of their earthly career. * the peculiar treatment of the two extremities of the sign for the sky, which surmounts the great scene on the tomb of ahmosis, shows that there had been no change in the ideas concerning the two horizons or the divine tree found in them: the aspirations for the soul of marirî, the high priest of atonû, or for that of the sculptor baûkû, are the same as those usually found, and the formula on the funerary stelae differs only in the name of the god from that on the ordinary stelae of the same kind. a citizen of khûîtatonû would naturally represent the manners and customs of his native town, and this would account for the local colouring of the scenes in which we see him taking part. they bear no resemblance to the traditional pictures of the buildings and gardens of thebes with which we are familiar; we have instead the palaces, colonnades, and pylons of the rising city, its courts planted with sycomores, its treasuries, and its storehouses. the sun�s disk hovers above and darts its prehensile rays over every object; its hands present the _crux ansata_ to the nostrils of the various members of the family, they touch caressingly the queen and her daughters, they handle the offerings of bread and cakes, they extend even into the government warehouses to pilfer or to bless. throughout all these scenes khûniatonû and the ladies of his harem seem to be ubiquitous: here he visits one of the officers, there he repairs to the temple for the dedication of its sanctuary. his chariot, followed at a little distance by that of the princesses, makes its way peaceably through the streets. the police of the city and the soldiers of the guard, whether egyptians or foreigners, run before him and clear a path among the crowd, the high priest marirî stands at the gate to receive him, and the ceremony is brought to a close by a distribution of gold necklaces or rings, while the populace dance with delight before the sovereign. meantime the slaves have cooked the repast, the dancers and musicians within their chambers have rehearsed for the evening�s festival, and the inmates of the house carry on animated dialogues during their meal. the style and the technique of these wall-paintings differ in no way from those in the necropolis of the preceding period, and there can be no doubt that the artists who decorated these monuments were trained in the schools of thebes. their drawing is often very refined, and there is great freedom in their composition; the perspective of some of the bas-reliefs almost comes up to our own, and the movement of animated crowds is indicated with perfect accuracy. it is, however, not safe to conclude from these examples that the artists who executed them would have developed egyptian art in a new direction, had not subsequent events caused a reaction against the worship of atonû and his followers. [illustration: .jpg profile of head of mummy (thebes tombs.)] [illustration: .jpg two of the daughters of khÛhi atonÛ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. although the tombs in which they worked differ from the generality of egyptian burying-places, their originality does not arise from any effort, either conscious or otherwise, to break through the ordinary routine of the art of the time; it is rather the result of the extraordinary appearance of the sovereign whose features they were called on to portray, and the novelty of several of the subjects which they had to treat. that artist among them who first gave concrete form to the ideas circulated by the priests of atonû, and drew the model cartoons, evidently possessed a master-hand, and was endowed with undeniable originality and power. no other egyptian draughtsman ever expressed a child�s grace as he did, and the portraits which he sketched of the daughters of khûniatonû playing undressed at their mother�s side, are examples of a reserved and delicate grace. but these models, when once composed and finished even to the smallest details, were entrusted for execution to workmen of mediocre powers, who were recruited not only from thebes, but from the neighbouring cities of hermopolis and siût. these estimable people, with a praiseworthy patience, traced bit by bit the cartoons confided to them, omitting or adding individuals or groups according to the extent of the wall-space they had to cover, or to the number of relatives and servants whom the proprietor of the tomb desired should share in his future happiness. the style of these draughtsmen betrays the influence of the second-rate schools in which they had learned their craft, and the clumsiness of their work would often repel us, were it not that the interest of the episodes portrayed redeems it in the eyes of the egyptologist. khûniatonû left no son to succeed him; two of his sons-in-law successively occupied the throne--sâakerî, who had married his eldest daughter marîtatonû, and tûtankhamon, the husband of ankhnasaton. the first had been associated in the sovereignty by his father-in-law;* he showed himself a zealous partisan of the �disk,� and he continued to reside in the new capital during the few years of his sole reign.** the second son-in-law was a son of amenôthes iii., probably by a concubine. he returned to the religion of amon, and his wife, abjuring the creed of her father, changed her name from ankhnasaton to that of ankhnasamon. her husband abandoned khûitatonû*** at the end of two or three years, and after his departure the town fell into decadence as quickly as it had arisen. the streets were unfrequented, the palaces and temples stood empty, the tombs remained unfinished and unoccupied, and its patron god returned to his former state, and was relegated to the third or fourth rank in the egyptian pantheon. * he and his wife are represented by the side of khûniatonû, with the protocol and the attributes of royalty. pétrie assigns to this double reign those minor objects on which the king�s prenomen ankhkhopîrûri is followed by the epithet beloved of uânirâ, which formed part of the name of khûniatonû. ** pétrie thinks, on the testimony of the lists of manetho, which give twelve years to akenkheres, daughter of horos, that sâakerî reigned twelve years, and only two or three years as sole monarch without his father-in-law. i think these two or three years a probable maximum length of his reign, whatever may be the value we should here assign to the lists of manetho. *** pétrie, judging from the number of minor objects which he has found in his excavations at tel el-amarna, believes that he can fix the length of tûtankhamon�s sojourn at khûîtatonû at six years, and that of his whole reign at nine years. the town struggled for a short time against its adverse fate, which was no doubt retarded owing to the various industries founded in it by khûniatonû, the manufactories of enamel and coloured glass requiring the presence of many workmen; but the latter emigrated ere long to thebes or the neighbouring city of hermopolis, and the �horizon of atonû� disappeared from the list of nomes, leaving of what might have been the capital of the egyptian empire, merely a mound of crumbling bricks with two or three fellahîn villages scattered on the eastern bank of the nile.* * pétrie thinks that the temples and palaces were systematically destroyed by harmhabî, and the ruins used by him in the buildings which he erected at different places in egypt. but there is no need for this theory: the beauty of the limestone which khûniatonû had used sufficiently accounts for the rapid disappearance of the deserted edifices. thebes, whose influence and population had meanwhile never lessened, resumed her supremacy undisturbed. if, out of respect for the past, tûtankhamon continued the decoration of the temple of atonû at karnak, he placed in every other locality the name and figure of amon; a little stucco spread over the parts which had been mutilated, enabled the outlines to be restored to their original purity, and the alteration was rendered invisible by a few coats of colour. tûtankhamon was succeeded by the divine father aï, whom khûniatonû had assigned as husband to one of his relatives named tîi, so called after the widow of amenôthes iii. aï laboured no less diligently than his predecessor to keep up the traditions which had been temporarily interrupted. he had been a faithful worshipper of the disk, and had given orders for the construction of two funerary chapels for himself in the mountain-side above tel el-amarna, the paintings in which indicate a complete adherence to the faith of the reigning king. but on becoming pharaoh, he was proportionally zealous in his submission to the gods of thebes, and in order to mark more fully his return to the ancient belief, he chose for his royal burying-place a site close to that in which rested the body of amenôthes iii.* * the first tomb seems to have been dug before his marriage, at the time when he had no definite ambitions; the second was prepared for him and his wife tîi. his sarcophagus, a large oblong of carved rose granite, still lies open and broken on the spot. [illustration: .jpg sarcophagus of the pharaoh aÎ] drawn by faucher-gudin, after the drawing of prisse d�avenues. figures of goddesses stand at the four angles and extend their winged arms along its sides, as if to embrace the mummy of the sovereign. tûtankhamon and aï were obeyed from one end of egypt to the other, from napata to the shores of the mediterranean. the peoples of syria raised no disturbances during their reigns, and paid their accustomed tribute regularly;* if their rule was short, it was at least happy. it would appear, however, that after their deaths, troubles arose in the state. the lists of manetho give two or three princes--râthôtis, khebres, and akherres--whose names are not found on the monuments.** it is possible that we ought not to regard them as historical personages, but merely as heroes of popular romance, of the same type as those introduced so freely into the history of the preceding dynasties by the chroniclers of the saite and greek periods. they were, perhaps, merely short-lived pretenders who were overthrown one by the other before either had succeeded in establishing himself on the seat of horus. be that as it may, the xviiith dynasty drew to its close amid strife and quarreling, without our being able to discover the cause of its overthrow, or the name of the last of its sovereigns.*** * tûtankhamon receives the tribute of the kûshites as well as that of the syrians; aï is represented at shataûi in nubia as accompanied by paûîrû, the prince of kûsh. ** wiedemann has collected six royal names which, with much hesitation, he places about this time. *** the list of kings who make up the xviiith dynasty can be established with certainty, with the exception of the order of the three last sovereigns who succeed khûniatonû. it is here given in its authentic form, as the monuments have permitted us to reconstruct it, and in its greek form as it is found in the lists of manetho: [illustration: .jpg table] manetho�s list, as we have it, is a very ill-made extract, wherein the official kings are mixed up with the legitimate queens, as well as, at least towards the end, with persons of doubtful authenticity. several kings, between khûniatonû and harmhabi, are sometimes added at the end of the list; some of these i think, belonged to previous dynasties, e.g. teti to the vith, râhotpû to the xviith; several are heroes of romance, as mernebphtah or merkhopirphtah, while the names of the others are either variants from the cartouche names of known princes, or else are nicknames, such as was sesû, sestûrî for ramses ii. dr. mahler believes that he can fix, within a few days, the date of the kings of whom the list is composed, from ahmosis i. to aî. i hold to the approximate date which i have given in vol. iv. p. of this history, and i give the years to as the period of the dynasty, with a possible error of about fifty years, more or less. scarcely half a century had elapsed between the moment when the xviii�s dynasty reached the height of its power under amenôthes iii. and that of its downfall. it is impossible to introduce with impunity changes of any kind into the constitution or working of so complicated a machine as an empire founded on conquest. when the parts of the mechanism have been once put together and set in motion, and have become accustomed to work harmoniously at a proper pace, interference with it must not be attempted except to replace such parts as are broken or worn out, by others exactly like them. to make alterations while the machine is in motion, or to introduce new combinations, however ingenious, into any part of the original plan, might produce an accident or a breakage of the gearing when perhaps it would be least expected. when the devout khûniatonû exchanged one city and one god for another, he thought that he was merely transposing equivalents, and that the safety of the commonwealth was not concerned in the operation. whether it was amon or atonu who presided over the destinies of his people, or whether thebes or tel el-amarna were the centre of impulse, was, in his opinion, merely a question of internal arrangement which could not affect the economy of the whole. but events soon showed that he was mistaken in his calculations. it is probable that if, on the expulsion of the hyksôs, the earlier princes of the dynasty had attempted an alteration in the national religion, or had moved the capital to any other city they might select, the remainder of the kingdom would not have been affected by the change. but after several centuries of faithful adherence to amon in his city of thebes, the governing power would find it no easy matter to accomplish such a resolution. during three centuries the dynasty had become wedded to the city and to its patron deity, and the locality had become so closely associated with the dynasty, that any blow aimed at the god could not fail to destroy the dynasty with it; indeed, had the experiment of khûniatonû been prolonged beyond a few years, it might have entailed the ruin of the whole country. all who came into contact with egypt, or were under her rule, whether asiatics or africans, were quick to detect any change in her administration, and to remark a falling away from the traditional systems of the times of thûtmosis iii. and amenothes ii. the successors of the heretic king had the sense to perceive at once the first symptoms of disorder, and to refrain from persevering in his errors; but however quick they were to undo his work, they could not foresee its serious consequences. his immediate followers were powerless to maintain their dynasty, and their posterity had to make way for a family who had not incurred the hatred of amon, or rather that of his priests. if those who followed them were able by their tact and energy to set egypt on her feet again, they were at the same time unable to restore her former prosperity or her boundless confidence in herself. [illustration: .jpg tailpiece] chapter ii--the reaction against egypt _the xith dynasty: harmhabÎ--the hittite empire in syria and in asia minor--seti i. and ramses ii.--the people of the sea: mÎnephtah and the israelite exodus._ _the birth and antecedents of harmhabî, his youth, his enthronement--the final triumph of amon and his priests--harmhabî infuses order into the government: his wars against the ethiopians and asiatics--the khâti, their civilization, religion; their political and military constitution; the extension of their empire towards the north--the countries and populations of asia minor; commercial routes between the euphrates and the Ægean sea--the treaty concluded between harmhabî and sapalulu._ _ramses i. and the uncertainties as to his origin--seti i. and the campaign against syria in the st year of his reign; the re-establishment of the egyptian empire--working of the gold-mines at etaï--the monuments constructed by seti i. in nubia, at karnak, luxor, and abydos--the valley of the kings and tomb of seti i. at thebes._ _ramses ii., his infancy, his association in the government, his début in ethiopia: he builds a residence in the delta--his campaign against the khâti in the th year of his reign--the talcing of qodshu, the victory of ramses ii. and the truce established with khâtusaru: the poem of pentaûîrît--his treaty with the khâti in the st year of his reign: the balance of power in syria: the marriage of ramses ii. with a hittite princess--public works: the speos at abu-simbel; luxor, karnak, the eamesseum, the monuments in the delta--the regency of khamoîsît and mînephtah, the legend of sesostris, the coffin and mummy of ramses ii._ _minephtah--the kingdom of libya, the people of the sea--the first invasion of libya: the egyptian victory at piriû; the triumph of minephtah--seti ii., amenmeses, siphtah-minephtah--the foreign captives in egypt; the exodus of the hebrews and their march to sinai--an egyptian romance of the exodus: amenophis, son of pa-apis._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter ii--the reaction against egypt _the xixth dynasty: harmhabî--the hittite empire in syria and in asia minor--seti i. and ramses ii.--the people of the sea: minephtah and the israelite exodus._ while none of these ephemeral pharaohs left behind them a, either legitimate or illegitimate, son there was no lack of princesses, any of which, having on her accession to the throne to choose a consort after her own heart, might thus become the founder of a new dynasty. by such a chance alliance harmhabî, who was himself descended from thûtmosis iii., was raised to the kingly office.* his mother, mûtnozmît, was of the royal line, and one of the most beautiful statues in the gîzeh museum probably represents her. the body is mutilated, but the head is charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. the material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. it is possible that mûtnozmît was the daughter of amenôthes iii. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that harmhabî derived his indisputable claims to royalty.** * a fragment of an inscription at karnak calls thûtmosis iii. �the father of his fathers.� champollion called him hornemnob, rosellini, hôr-hemheb, hôr-em-hbai, and both identified him with the hôros of manetho, hence the custom among egyptologists for a long time to designate him by the name horus. dévéria was the first to show that the name corresponded with the armais of the lists of manetho, and, in fact, armais is the greek transcription of the group harmhabî in the bilingual texts of the ptolemaic period. ** mûtnozmît was at first considered the daughter and successor of harmhabî, or his wife. birch showed that the monuments did not confirm these hypotheses, and he was inclined to think that she was harmhabî�s mother. as far as i can see for the present, it is the only solution which agrees with the evidence on the principal monument which has made known her existence. he was born, probably, in the last years of amenôthes, when tîi was the exclusive favourite of the sovereign; but it was alleged later on, when harmhabî had emerged from obscurity, that amon, destining him for the throne, had condescended to become his father by mûtnozmît--a customary procedure with the god when his race on earth threatened to become debased.* it was he who had rocked the newly born infant to sleep, and, while harsiesis was strengthening his limbs with protective amulets, had spread over the child�s skin the freshness and brilliance which are the peculiar privilege of the immortals. while still in the nursery, the great and the insignificant alike prostrated themselves before harmhabî, making him liberal offerings. every one recognised in him, even when still a lad and incapable of reflection, the carriage and complexion of a god, and horus of cynopolis was accustomed to follow his steps, knowing that the time of his advancement was near. after having called the attention of the egyptians to harmhabî, amon was anxious, in fact, to hasten the coming of the day when he might confer upon him supreme rank, and for this purpose inclined the heart of the reigning pharaoh towards him. aï proclaimed him his heir over the whole land.** * all that we know of the youth of harmhabî is contained in the texts on a group preserved in the turin museum, and pointed out by champollion, translated and published subsequently by birch and by brugsch. the first lines of the inscription seem to me to contain an account of the union of amon with the queen, analogous to those at deîr el-baharî treating of the birth of hâtshopsîtû, and to those at luxor bearing upon amenôthes iii. (cf. vol. iv. pp. , ; and p. of the present volume), and to prove for certain that harmhabî�s mother was a princess of the royal line by right. ** the king is not named in the inscription. it cannot have been amenôthes iv., for an individual of the importance of harmhabî, living alongside this king, would at least have had a tomb begun for him at. tel el-amarna. we may hesitate between aï and tûtankhamon; but the inscription seems to say definitely that harmhabî succeeded directly to the king under whom he had held important offices for many years, and this compels us to fix upon aï, who, as we have said at p. , et seq., of the present volume, was, to all appearances, the last of the so-called heretical sovereigns. he never gave cause for any dissatisfaction when called to court, and when he was asked questions by the monarch he replied always in fit terms, in such words as were calculated to produce serenity, and thus gained for himself a reputation as the incarnation of wisdom, all his plans and intentions appearing to have been conceived by thot the ibis himself. for many years he held a place of confidence with the sovereign. the nobles, from the moment he appeared at the gate of the palace, bowed their backs before him; the barbaric chiefs from the north or south stretched out their arms as soon as they approached him, and gave him the adoration they would bestow upon a god. his favourite residence was memphis, his preference for it arising from his having possibly been born there, or from its having been assigned to him for his abode. here he constructed for himself a magnificent tomb, the bas-reliefs of which exhibit him as already king, with the sceptre in his hand and the uraaus on his brow, while the adjoining cartouche does not as yet contain his name.* * this part of the account is based upon, a study of a certain number of texts and representations all coming from harmhabî�s tomb at saqqârah, and now scattered among the various museums--at gîzeh, leyden, london, and alexandria. birch was the first to assign those monuments to the pharaoh harmhabî, supposing at the same time that he had been dethroned by ramses i., and had lived at memphis in an intermediate position between that of a prince and that of a private individual; this opinion was adopted by ed. meyer, rejected by wiedemann and by myself. after full examination, i think the harmhabî of the tomb at saqqârah and the pharaoh harmhabî are one and the same person; harmhabî, sufficiently high placed to warrant his wearing the uraius, but not high enough to have his name inscribed in a cartouche, must have had his tomb constructed at saqqârah, as aï and possibly ramses i. had theirs built for them at tel el-amarna. he was the mighty of the mighty, the great among the great, the general of generals, the messenger who ran to convey orders to the people of asia and ethiopia, the indispensable companion in council or on the field of battle,* at the time when horus of cynopolis resolved to seat him upon his eternal throne. aï no longer occupied it. horus took harmhabî with him to thebes, escorted him thither amid expressions of general joy, and led him to amon in order that the god might bestow upon him the right to reign. the reception took place in the temple of luxor, which served as a kind of private chapel for the descendants of amenôthes. amon rejoiced to see harmhabî, the heir of the two worlds; he took him with him to the royal palace, introduced him into the apartments of his august daughter, mûtnozmît; then, after she had recognised her child and had pressed him to her bosom, all the gods broke out into acclamations, and their cries ascended up to heaven.** * the fragments of the tomb preserved at leyden show him leading to the pharaoh asiatics and ethiopians, burthened with tribute. the expressions and titles given above are borrowed from the fragments at gîzeh. ** owing to a gap, the text cannot be accurately translated at this point. the reading can be made out that amon �betook himself to the palace, placing the prince before him, as far as the sanctuary of his (amon�s) daughter, the very august...; she poured water on his hands, she embraced the beauties (of the prince), she placed herself before him.� it will be seen that the name of the daughter of amon is wanting, and birch thought that a terrestrial princess whom harmhabî had married was in question, miifcnozmît, according to brugsch. if the reference is not to a goddess, who along with amon took part in the ceremonies, but to mûtnozmît, we must come to the conclusion that she, as heir and queen by birth, must have ceded her rights by some ritual to her son before he could be crowned. �behold, amon arrives with his son before him, at the palace, in order to put upon his head the diadem, and to prolong the length of his life! we install him, therefore, in his office, we give to him the insignia of eâ, we pray amon for him whom he has brought as our protector: may he as king have the festivals of eâ and the years of horus; may he accomplish his good pleasure in thebes, in heliopolis, in memphis, and may he add to the veneration with which these cities are invested.� and they immediately decided that the new pharaoh should be called horus-sturdy-bull, mighty in wise projects, lord of the vulture and of the very marvellous urseus in thebes, the conquering horus who takes pleasure in the truth, and who maintains the two lands, the lord of the south and north, sozir khopîrûrî chosen of eâ, the offspring of the sun, harmhabî mîamûn, giver of life. the _cortege_ came afterwards to the palace, the king walking before amon: there the god embraced his son, placed the diadems upon his head, delivered to him the rule of the whole world, over foreign populations as well as those of egypt, inasmuch as he possessed this power as the sovereign of the universe. this is the customary subject of the records of enthronement. pharaoh is the son of a god, chosen by his father, from among all those who might have a claim to it, to occupy for a time the throne of horus; and as he became king only by a divine decree, he had publicly to express, at the moment of his elevation, his debt of gratitude to, and his boundless respect for, the deity, who had made him what he was. in this case, however, the protocol embodied something more than the traditional formality, and its hackneyed phrases borrowed a special meaning from the circumstances of the moment. amon, who had been insulted and proscribed by khûniatonû, had not fully recovered his prestige under the rule of the immediate successors of his enemy. [illustration: .jpg the first pylon of harmhabÎ at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken by beato. they had restored to him his privileges and his worship, they had become reconciled to him, and avowed themselves his faithful ones, but all this was as much an act of political necessity as a matter of religion: they still continued to tolerate, if not to favour, the rival doctrinal system, and the temple of the hateful disk still dishonoured by its vicinity the sanctuary of karnak. harmhabî, on the other hand, was devoted to amon, who had moulded him in embryo, and had trained him from his birth to worship none but him. harmhabî�s triumph marked the end of the evil days, and inaugurated a new era, in which amon saw himself again master of thebes and of the world. immediately after his enthronement harmhabî rivalled the first amen-ôthes in his zeal for the interests of his divine father: he overturned the obelisks of atonû and the building before which they stood; then, that no trace of them might remain, he worked up the stones into the masonry of two pylons, which he set up upon the site, to the south of the gates of thûtmosis iii. they remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year b.c. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. we find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of amenôfches iv., aï, and tûtankhamon. the work begun by harmhabî at thebes was continued with unabated zeal through the length of the whole river-valley. �he restored the sanctuaries from the marshes of athû even to nubia; he repaired their sculptures so that they were better than before, not to speak of the fine things he did in them, rejoicing the eyes of râ. that which he had found injured he put into its original condition, erecting a hundred statues, carefully formed of valuable stone, for every one which was lacking. he inspected the ruined towns of the gods in the land, and made them such as they had been in the time of the first ennead, and he allotted to them estates and offerings for every day, as well as a set of sacred vessels entirely of gold and silver; he settled priests in them, bookmen, carefully chosen soldiers, and assigned to them fields, cattle, all the necessary material to make prayers to râ every morning.� these measures were inspired by consideration for the ancient deities; but he added to them others, which tended to secure the welfare of the people and the stability of the government. up to this time the officials and the egyptian soldiers had displayed a tendency to oppress the fellahîn, without taking into consideration the injury to the treasury occasioned by their rapacity. constant supervision was the only means of restraining them, for even the best-served pharaohs, thûtmosis, and amenôthes iii. themselves, were obliged to have frequent recourse to the rigour of the law to keep the scandalous depredations of the officials within bounds.* * harmhabî refers to the edicts of thûtmosis iii. the religious disputes of the preceding years, in enfeebling the authority of the central power, had given a free hand to these oppressors. the scribes and tax-collectors were accustomed to exact contributions for the public service from the ships, whether laden or not, of those who were in a small way of business, and once they had laid their hands upon them, they did not readily let them go. the poor fellow falling into their clutches lost his cargo, and he was at his wits� end to know how to deliver at the royal storehouses the various wares with which he calculated to pay his taxes. no sooner had the court arrived at some place than the servants scoured the neighbourhood, confiscating the land produce, and seizing upon slaves, under pretence that they were acting for the king, while they had only their personal ends in view. soldiers appropriated all the hides of animals with the object, doubtless, of making from them leather jackets and helmets, or of duplicating their shields, with the result that when the treasury made its claim for leather, none was to be found. it was hardly possible, moreover, to bring the culprits to justice, for the chief men of the towns and villages, the prophets, and all those who ought to have looked after the interests of the taxpayer, took money from the criminals for protecting them from justice, and compelled the innocent victims also to purchase their protection. harmhabî, who was continually looking for opportunities to put down injustice and to punish deceit, at length decided to pro-mulgate a very severe edict against the magistrates and the double-dealing officials: any of them who was found to have neglected his duty was to have his nose cut off, and was to be sent into perpetual exile to zalu, on the eastern frontier. his commands, faithfully carried out, soon produced a salutary effect, and as he would on no account relax the severity of the sentence, exactions were no longer heard of, to the advantage of the revenue of the state. on the last day of each month the gates of his palace were open to every one. [illustration: .jpg amenothes iv. from a fragment used again by harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by prisse d�avennes. any one on giving his name to the guard could enter the court of honour, where he would find food in abundance to satisfy his hunger while he was awaiting an audience. the king all the while was seated in the sight of all at the tribune, whence he would throw among his faithful friends necklaces and bracelets of gold: he inquired into complaints one after another, heard every case, announced his judgments in brief words, and dismissed his subjects, who went away proud and happy at having had their affairs dealt with by the sovereign himself.* * all these details are taken from a stele discovered in . the text is so mutilated that it is impossible to give a literal rendering of it in all its parts, but the sense is sufficiently clear to warrant our rilling up the whole with considerable certainty. the portraits of harmhabî which have come down to us give us the impression of a character at once energetic and agreeable. the most beautiful of these is little more than a fragment broken off a black granite statue. its mournful expression is not pleasing to the spectator, and at the first view alienates his sympathy. the face, which is still youthful, breathes an air of melancholy, an expression which is somewhat rare among the pharaohs of the best period: the thin and straight nose is well set on the face, the elongated eyes have somewhat heavy lids; the large, fleshy lips, slightly contracted at the corners of the mouth, are cut with a sharpness that gives them singular vigour, and the firm and finely modelled chin loses little of its form from the false beard depending from it. every detail is treated with such freedom that one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result. the dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent harmhabî from displaying beyond egypt, as within it, singular activity. [illustration: .jpg harmhabi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a autograph by emil brugsch-bey. although egypt had never given up its claims to dominion over the whole river-valley, as far as the plains of sennar, yet since the time of amenôthes iii. no sovereign had condescended, it would i appear, to conduct in person the expeditions directed against the tribes of! the upper nile. harmhabî was anxious to revive the custom which imposed upon the pharaohs the obligation to make their first essay in arms in ethiopia, as horus, son of isis, had done of yore, and he seized the pretext of the occurrence of certain raids there to lead a body of troops himself into the heart of the negro country. [illustration: .jpg the vaulted passage of the rock-tomb at gebel silsileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he had just ordered at this time the construction of the two southern pylons at karnak, and there was great activity in the quarries of silsileh. a commemorative chapel also was in course of excavation here in the sandstone rock, and he had dedicated it to his father, amon-ba of thebes, coupling with him the local divinities, hapî the nile, and sobkû the patron of ombos. the sanctuary is excavated somewhat deeply into the hillside, and the dark rooms within it are decorated with the usual scenes of worship, but the vaulted approach to them displays upon its western wall the victory of the king. we see here a figure receiving from amon the assurance of a long and happy life, and another letting fly his arrows at a host of fleeing enemies; ethiopians raise their heads to him in suppliant gesture; soldiers march past with their captives; above one of the doors we see twelve military leaders marching and carrying the king aloft upon their shoulders, while a group of priests and nobles salute him, offering incense.* * the significance of the monument was pointed out first by champollion. the series of races conquered was represented at karnak on the internal face of one of the pylons built by harmhabi; it appears to have been �usurped� by ramses ii. at this period egyptian ships were ploughing the red sea, and their captains were renewing official relations with pûanît. somali chiefs were paying visits to the palace, as in the time of thûtmosis iii. the wars of amon had, in fact, begun again. the god, having suffered neglect for half a century, had a greater need than ever of gold and silver to fill his coffers; he required masons for his buildings, slaves and cattle for his farms, perfumed essences and incense for his daily rites. his resources had gradually become exhausted, and his treasury would soon be empty if he did not employ the usual means to replenish it. he incited harmhabi to proceed against the countries from which, in olden times he had enriched himself--to the south in the first place, and then, having decreed victory there, and having naturally taken for himself the greater part of the spoils, he turned his attention to asia. [illustration: .jpg the triumph op harmhabÎ in the sanctuary of gebel silsileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by daniel heron. the black spots are due to the torches of the fellahîn of the neighbourhood who have visited the rock tomb in bygone years. in the latter campaign the egyptian troops took once more the route through coele-syria, and if the expedition experienced here more difficulties than on the banks of the upper nile, it was, nevertheless, brought to an equally triumphant conclusion. those of their adversaries who had offered an obstinate resistance were transported into other lands, and the rebel cities were either razed to the ground or given to the flames: the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains, where they were in danger of perishing from hunger, made supplications for peace, which was granted to them on the usual conditions of doing homage and paying tribute.* * these details are taken from the fragment of an inscription now in the museum at vienna; bergmann, and also erman, think that we have in this text the indication of an immigration into egypt of a tribe of the monâtiu. we do not exactly know how far he penetrated into the country; the list of the towns and nations over which he boasts of having triumphed contains, along with names unknown to us, some already famous or soon to become so--arvad, pibukhu, the khâti, and possibly alasia. the haui-nibu themselves must have felt the effects of the campaign, for several of their chiefs associated, doubtless, with the phoenicians, presented themselves before the pharaoh at thebes. egypt was maintaining, therefore, its ascendency, or at least appearing to maintain it in those regions where the kings of the xviiith dynasty had ruled after the campaigns of thûtmosis i., thûtmosis iii., and amenothes ii. its influence, nevertheless, was not so undisputed as in former days; not that the egyptian soldiers were less valiant, but owing to the fact that another power had risen up alongside them whose armies were strong enough to encounter them on the field of battle and to obtain a victory over them. beyond naharaim, in the deep recesses of the amanus and taurus, there had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike tribes of the khâti, related not so, much to the semites of the syrian plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied the upper basins of the halys and euphrates.* the chaldæan conquest had barely touched them; the egyptian campaign had not more effect, and thûtmosis iii. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among his subjects. their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we find to have accompanied the sovereigns of assyria and babylon.** these chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the king at thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to maintain good faith with their son-in-law. * halévy asserts that the khâti were semites, and bases his assertion on materials of the assyrian period. thés khâti, absorbed in syria by the semites, with whom they were blended, appear to have been by origin a non-semitic people. ** a letter from the king of the khâti to the pharaoh amenothes iv. is written in cuneiform writing and in a semitic language. it has been thought that other documents, drawn up in a non-semitic language and coming from mitanni and arzapi, contain a dialect of the hittite speech or that language itself. a �writer of books,� attached to the person of the hittite king khatusaru, is named amongst the dead found on the field of battle at qodshû. *** it is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of tribute from the khâti in the _annals of thûtmosis iii._, . , in the year xxxiii., also in the year xl. one of the tel el-amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the king of khâti addresses to amenôthes iv. to celebrate his enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the traditional good relations of their two families. they had, moreover, commercial relations with egypt, and furnished it with cattle, chariots, and those splendid cappadocian horses whose breed was celebrated down to the greek period.* they were already, indeed, people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the contemporaries of thutmosis iii. called them the greater khâti; and the epithet �vile,� which the chancellors of the pharaohs added to their name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced upon the mind of their adversaries.** * the horses of the khâti were called _abarî_, strong, vigorous, as also their bulls. the king of alasia, while offering to amenôthes iii. a profitable speculation, advises him to have nothing to do with the king of the khâti or with the king of sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the egyptians held constant commercial relations with the khâti. ** m. de rougé suggested that khâti �the little� was the name of the hittites of hebron. the expression, �khâti the great,� has been compared with that of khanirabbat, �khani the great,� which in the assyrian texts would seem to designate a part of cappadocia, in which the province of miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found an ardent defender in w. max millier. until further light is thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not khani-_ra_bat, but khani-_gal_bat. the name khani-galbat is possibly preserved in julbat, which the arab geographers applied in the middle ages to a province situated in lesser armenia. their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations conterminous with them on the south. the egyptian draughtsmen represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous, strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as inclined frequently to obesity in old age. the head is long and heavy, the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent, the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles; the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that of the phoenicians or the amurru. [illustration: .jpg three heads of hittite soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt. to these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. they wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm. * this characteristic is found on the majority of the monuments which the peoples of asia minor have left to us, and it is one of the most striking indications of the northern origin of the khâti. the egyptian artists and modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority of them have represented the khâti without shoes. they shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to fall upon their backs and breasts. the king�s head-dress, which was distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some extent the white crown of the pharaohs. the dress of the people, taken all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the syrians or egyptians. the mountains and elevated plateaus which they inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold. if the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an extreme rigour, and dragged on for months: clothing and footgear had to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of december were to be resisted. the character of their towns, and the domestic life of their nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at. some, at least, of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this region. the town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the chaldæan or egyptian manners and customs in use among the semites of syria. as to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests. above this crowd there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air, sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called khâti, and was considered to be the father of the nation. they ascribed to all their deities a warlike and savage character. the egyptians pictured some of them as a kind of râ,* others as representing sit, or rather sûtkhû, that patron of the hyksôs which was identified by them with sit: every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its sûtkhû--sûtkhû of paliqa, sûtkhû of khissapa, sûtkhû of sarsu, sûtkhû of salpina. the goddesses in their eyes also became astartés, and this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their phoenician and canaanite sisters, of a double nature--in one aspect chaste, fierce, and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific. one god was called mauru, another targu, others qaui and khepa.** * the cilician inscriptions of the græco-roman period reveal the existence in this region of a god, rho, rhos. did this god exist among the khâti, and did the similarity of the pronunciation of it to that of the god râ suggest to the egyptians the existence of a similar god among these people, or did they simply translate into their language the name of the hittite god representing the sun? ** the names mauru and qaui are deduced from the forms maurusaru and qauisaru, which were borne by the khâti: qaui was probably the eponymous hero of the qui people, as khâti was of the khâti. tarku and tisubu appear to me to be contained in the names targanunasa, targazatas, and tartisubu; tisubu is probably the têssupas mentioned in the letter from dushratta written in mitannian, and identical with the tushupu of another letter from the same king, and in a despatch from tarkondaraush. targu, targa, targanu, resemble the god tarkhu, which is known to us from the proper names of these regions preserved in attributes covered by each of these divine names, and as to the forms with which they were invested. [illustration: .jpg a hittite king.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a picture in lepsius. khatusaru, king of the khâti, who was for thirty years a contemporary of ramses ii. tishubu, the rammân of the assyrians, was doubtless lord of the tempest and of the atmosphere; shausbe answered to shala and to ishtar the queen of love;* but we are frequently in ignorance as to the assyrian and greek inscriptions. kheba, khepa, khîpa, is said to be a denomination of rammân; we find it in the names of the princesses tadu-khîpa, gilu-khîpa, puu-khîpa. the majority of them, both male and female, were of gigantic stature, and were arrayed in the vesture of earthly kings and queens: they brandished their arms, displayed the insignia of their authority, such as a flower or bunch of grapes, and while receiving the offerings of the people were seated on a chair before an altar, or stood each on the animal representing him--such as a lion, a stag, or wild goat. the temples of their towns have disappeared, but they could never have been, it would seem, either-large or magnificent: the favourite places of worship were the tops of mountains, in the vicinity of springs, or the depths of mysterious grottoes, where the deity revealed himself to his priests, and received the faithful at the solemn festivals celebrated several times a year.* * the association of tushupu, tessupas, tisubu, with rammânu is made out from an assyrian tablet published by bezold: it was reserved for say ce and jensen to determine the nature of the god. shausbe has been identified with ishtar or shala by jensen. we know as little about their political organisation as about their religion.* we may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective authority depended upon his character and age.** * the religious cities and the festivals of the greek epoch are described by strabo; these festivals were very ancient, and their institution, if not the method of celebrating them, may go back to the time of the hittite empire. ** the description of the battle of qodshû in the time of ramses ii. shows us the king of the khâti surrounded by his vassals. the evidence of the existence of a similar feudal organisation from the time of the xviiith dynasty is furnished by a letter of dushratta, king of mitanni, where he relates to amenôthes iv. the revolt of his brother artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the neighbouring chiefs, pirkhi, and all the khâti had given to the rebel. the various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of egypt. still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which syria had ever been able to put into the field. the infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers. they had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft. the bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point. [illustration: .jpg a hittite chariot with its three occupants] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the taurus. the chariotry comprised the nobles and the _élite_ of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the egyptians, and employed other tactics. the hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved. it was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold. there were no quiver-cases as in egyptian chariots, for the hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow. the occupants of a chariot were three in number--the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance. the hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with thûtmosîs iii. and amenôthes ii. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them. it was owing probably to the feebleness of their character or to the turbulence of their barons that we must ascribe the poor part they played in the revolutions of the eastern world at this time. the establishment of a strong military power on their southern frontier was certain, moreover, to be anything but pleasing to them; if they preferred not to risk everything by entering into a great struggle with the invaders, they could, without compromising themselves too much, harass them with sudden attacks, and intrigue in an underhand way against them to their own profit. pharaoh�s generals were accustomed to punish, one after the other, these bands of invading tribes, and the sculptors duly recorded their names on a pylon at thebes among those of the conquered nations, but these disasters had little effect in restraining the hittites. they continued, in spite of them, to march southward, and the letters from the egyptian governors record their progress year after year. they had a hand in all the plots which were being hatched among the syrians, and all the disaffected who wished to be free from foreign oppression--such as abdashirti and his son azîru--addressed themselves to them for help in the way of chariots and men.* * azîru defends himself in one of his letters against the accusation of having received four messengers from the king of the khâti, while he refused to receive those from egypt. the complicity of aziru with the khâti is denounced in an appeal from the inhabitants of tunipa. in a mutilated letter, an unknown person calls attention to the negotiations which a petty-syrian prince had entered into with the king of the khâti. even inthe time of amenôfches iii. they had endeavoured to reap profit from the discords of mitanni, and had asserted their supremacy over it. dushratta, however, was able to defeat one of their chiefs. repulsed on this side, they fell back upon that part of naharaim lying between the euphrates and orontes, and made themselves masters of one town after another in spite of the despairing appeals of the conquered to the theban king. from the accession of khûniatonû, they set to work to annex the countries of nukhassi, nîi, tunipa, and zinzauru: they looked with covetous eyes upon phoenicia, and were already menacing coele-syria. the religious confusion in egypt under tûtankhamon and aî left them a free field for their ambitions, and when harmhabî ventured to cross to the east of the isthmus, he found them definitely installed in the region stretching from the mediterranean and the lebanon to the euphrates. their then reigning prince, sapalulu, appeared to have been the founder of a new dynasty: he united the forces of the country in a solid body, and was within a little of making a single state out of all northern syria.* * sapalulu has the same name as that wo meet with later on in the country of patin, in the time of salmanasar iii., viz. sapalulme. it is known to us only from a treaty with the khâti, which makes him coeval with ramses i.: it was with him probably that harmhabî had to deal in his syrian campaigns. the limit of his empire towards the south is gathered in a measure from what we know of the wars of seti i. with the khâti. all naharaim had submitted to him: zahi, alasia, and the amurru had passed under his government from that of the pharaohs; carchemish, tunipa, nîi, hamath, figured among his royal cities, and qodshû was the defence of his southern frontier. his progress towards the east was not less considerable. mitanni, arzapi, and the principalities of the euphrates as far as the balikh, possibly even to the khabur,* paid him homage: beyond this, assyria and chaldæa barred his way. here, as on his other frontiers, fortune brought him face to face with the most formidable powers of the asiatic world. * the text of the poem of pentaûîrît mentions, among the countries confederate with the khâti, all naharaim; that is to say, the country on either side of the euphrates, embracing mitanni and the principalities named in the amarna correspondence, and in addition some provinces whose sites have not yet been discovered, but which may be placed without much risk of error to the north of the taurus. the latter prince was obliged to capture qodshû, and to conquer the people of the lebanon. had he sufficient forces at his disposal to triumph over them, or only enough to hold his ground? both hypotheses could have been answered in the affirmative if each one of these great powers, confiding in its own resources, had attacked him separately. the amorites, the people of zahi, alasia, and naharaim, together with recruits from hittite tribes, would then have put him in a position to resist, and even to carry off victory with a high hand in the final struggle. but an alliance between assyria or babylon and thebes was always possible. there had been such things before, in the time of thut-mosis iv. and in that of amenôthes iii., but they were lukewarm agreements, and their effect was not much to boast of, for the two parties to the covenant had then no common enemy to deal with, and their mutual interests were not, therefore, bound up with their united action. the circumstances were very different now. the rapid growth of a nascent kingdom, the restless spirit of its people, its trespasses on domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,--did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? if they decided to act in concert, how could sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? the hittites, as we know them more especially from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, might be regarded as the lords only of northern syria, and their power be measured merely by the extent of territory which they occupied to the south of the taurus and on the two banks of the middle euphrates. but this does not by any means represent the real facts. this was but the half of their empire; the rest extended to the westward and northward, beyond the mountains into that region, known afterwards as asia minor, in which egyptian tradition had from ancient times confused some twenty nations under the common vague epithet of haûî-nîbû. official language still employed it as a convenient and comprehensive term, but the voyages of the phoenicians and the travels of the �royal messengers,� as well as, probably, the maritime commerce of the merchants of the delta, had taught the scribes for more than a century and a half to make distinctions among these nations which they had previously summed up in one. the lufeu* were to be found there, as well as the danauna,** the shardana,*** and others besides, who lay behind one another on the coast. of the second line of populations behind the region of the coast tribes, we have up to the present no means of knowing anything with certainty. asia minor, furthermore, is divided into two regions, so distinctly separated by nature as well as by races that one would be almost inclined to regard them as two countries foreign to each other. * the luku, luka, are mentioned in the amarna correspondence under the form lukki as pirates and highway robbers. the identity of these people with the lycians i hold as well established. ** the danauna are mentioned along with the luku in the amarna correspondence. the termination, _-auna, -ana_ of this word appears to be the ending in -aon found in asiatic names like lykaôn by the side of lykos, kataôn by the side of kêtis and kat-patuka; while the form of the name danaos is preserved in greek legend, danaôn is found only on oriental monuments. the danauna came �from their islands,� that is to say, from the coasts of asia minor, or from greece, the term not being pressed too literally, as the egyptians were inclined to call all distant lands situated to the north beyond the mediterranean sea �islands.� *** e. de rougé and chabas were inclined to identify the shardana with the sardes and the island of sardinia. unger made them out to be the khartanoi of libya, and was followed by brugsch. w. max müller revived the hypotheses of de rougé and chabas, and saw in them bands from the italian island. i am still persuaded, as i was twenty-five years ago, that they were asiatics--the mæonian tribe which gave its name to sardis. the serdani or shardana are mentioned as serving in the egyptian army in the tel el-amarna tablets. in its centre it consists of a well-defined undulating plain, having a gentle slope towards the black sea, and of the shape of a kind of convex trapezium, clearly bounded towards the north by the highlands of pontus, and on the south by the tortuous chain of the taurus. a line of low hills fringes the country on the west, from the olympus of mysia to the taurus of pisidia. towards the east it is bounded by broken chains of mountains of unequal height, to which the name anti-taurus is not very appropriately applied. an immense volcanic cone, mount argseus, looks down from a height of some , feet over the wide isthmus which connects the country with the lands of the euphrates. this volcano is now extinct, but it still preserved in old days something of its languishing energy, throwing out flames at intervals above the sacred forests which clothed its slopes. the rivers having their sources in the region just described, have not all succeeded in piercing the obstacles which separate them from the sea, but the pyramus and the sarus find their way into the mediterranean and the iris, halys and sangarios into the euxine. the others flow into the lowlands, forming meres, marshes, and lakes of fluctuating extent. the largest of these lakes, called tatta, is salt, and its superficial extent varies with the season. in brief, the plateau of this region is nothing but an extension of the highlands of central asia, and has the same vegetation, fauna, and climate, the same extremes of temperature, the same aridity, and the same wretched and poverty-stricken character as the latter. the maritime portions are of an entirely different aspect. [illustration: .jpg map] the western coast which stretches into the Ægean is furrowed by deep valleys, opening out as they reach the sea, and the rivers--the caicus, the hermos, the cayster, and meander--which flow through them are effective makers of soil, bringing down with them, as they do, a continual supply of alluvium, which, deposited at their mouths, causes the land to encroach there upon the sea. the littoral is penetrated here and there by deep creeks, and is fringed with beautiful islands--lesbos, chios, samos, cos, rhodes--of which the majority are near enough to the continent to act as defences of the seaboard, and to guard the mouths of the rivers, while they are far enough away to be secure from the effects of any violent disturbances which might arise in the mainland. the cyclades, distributed in two lines, are scattered, as it were, at hazard between asia and europe, like great blocks which have fallen around the piers of a broken bridge. the passage from one to the other is an easy matter, and owing to them, the sea rather serves to bring together the two continents than to divide them. two groups of heights, imperfectly connected with the central plateau, tower above the Ægean slope--wooded ida on the north, veiled in cloud, rich in the flocks and herds upon its sides, and in the metals within its bosom; and on the south, the volcanic bastions of lycia, where tradition was wont to place the fire-breathing chimaera. a rocky and irregularly broken coast stretches to the west of lycia, in a line almost parallel with the taurus, through which, at intervals, torrents leaping from the heights make their way into the sea. at the extreme eastern point of the coast, almost at the angle where the cilician littoral meets that of syria, the pyramus and the sarus have brought down between them sufficient material to form an alluvial plain, which the classical geographers designated by the name of the level cilicia, to distinguish it from the rough region of the interior, gilicia trachea. the populations dwelling in this peninsula belong to very varied races. on the south and south-west certain semites had found an abode--the mysterious inhabitants of solyma, and especially the phoenicians in their scattered trading-stations. on the north-east, beside the khâti, distributed throughout the valleys of the anti-taurus, between the euphrates and mount argseus, there were tribes allied to the khâti*--possibly at this time the tabal and the mushkâ--and, on the shores of the black sea, those workers in metal, which, following the greeks, we may call, for want of a better designation, the chalybes. * a certain number of these tribes or of their towns are to be found in the list contained in the treaty of ramses ii. with the khâti. we are at a loss to know the distribution of tribes in the centre and in the north-west, but the bosphorus and the hellespont, we may rest assured, never formed an ethnographical frontier. the continents on either side of them appear at this point to form the banks of a river, or the two slopes of a single valley, whose bottom lies buried beneath the waters. the barbarians of the balkans had forced their way across at several points. dardanians were to be encountered in the neighbourhood of mount ida, as well as on the banks of the axios, from early times, and the kebrenes of macedonia had colonised a district of the troad near ilion, while the great nation of the mysians had issued, like them, from the european populations of the hebrus and the strymon. the hero dardanos, according to legend, had at first founded, under the auspices of the idasan zeus, the town of dardania; and afterwards a portion of his progeny followed the course of the scamander, and entrenched themselves upon a precipitous hill, from the top of which they could look far and wide over the plain and sea. the most ancient ilion, at first a village, abandoned on more than one occasion in the course of centuries, was rebuilt and transformed, earlier than the xvth century before christ, into an important citadel, the capital of a warlike and prosperous kingdom. the ruins on the spot prove the existence of a primitive civilization analogous to that of the islands of the archipelago before the arrival of the phoenician navigators. we find that among both, at the outset, flint and bone, clay, baked and unbaked, formed the only materials for their utensils and furniture; metals were afterwards introduced, and we can trace their progressive employment to the gradual exclusion of the older implements. these ancient trojans used copper, and we encounter only rarely a kind of bronze, in which the proportion of tin was too slight to give the requisite hardness to the alloy, and we find still fewer examples of iron and lead. they were fairly adroit workers in silver, electrum, and especially in gold. the amulets, cups, necklaces, and jewellery discovered in their tombs or in the ruins of their houses, are sometimes of a not ungraceful form. their pottery was made by hand, and was not painted or varnished, but they often gave to it a fine lustre by means of a stone-polisher. other peoples of uncertain origin, but who had attained a civilization as advanced as that of the trojans, were the maeonians, the leleges, and the carians who had their abode to the south of troy and of the mysians. the maeonians held sway in the fertile valleys of the hermos, cayster, and maaander. they were divided into several branches, such as the lydians, the tyrseni, the torrhebi, and the shardana, but their most ancient traditions looked back with pride to a flourishing state to which, as they alleged, they had all belonged long ago on the slopes of mount sipylos, between the valley of the hermos and the gulf of smyrna. the traditional capital of this kingdom was magnesia, the most ancient of cities, the residence of tantalus, the father of niobe and the pelopidae. the leleges rise up before us from many points at the same time, but always connected with the most ancient memories of greece and asia. the majority of the strongholds on the trojan coast belonged to them--such as antandros and gargara--and pedasos on the satniois boasted of having been one of their colonies, while several other towns of the same name, but very distant from each other, enable us to form some idea of the extent of their migrations.* * according to the scholiast on nicander, the word �pedasos� signified �mountain,� probably in the language of the leleges. we know up to the present of four pedasi, or pedasa: the first in messenia, which later on took the name of methône; the second in the troad, on the banks of the satniois; the third in the neighbourhood of cyzicus; and the fourth in caria. in the time of strabo, ruined tombs and deserted sites of cities were shown in caria which the natives regarded as lelegia--that is, abode of the leleges. the carians were dominant in the southern angle of the peninsula and in the Ægean islands; and the lycians lay next them on the east, and were sometimes confounded with them. one of the most powerful tribes of the carians, the tremilse, were in the eyes of the greeks hardly to be separated from the mountainous district which they knew as lycia proper; while other tribes extended as far as the halys. a district of the troad, to the south of mount ida, was called lycia, and there was a lycaonia on both sides of the middle taurus; while attica had its lycia, and crete its lycians. these three nations--the lycians, carians, and leleges--were so entangled together from their origin, that no one would venture now to trace the lines of demarcation between them, and we are often obliged to apply to them collectively what can be appropriately ascribed to only one. how far the hittite power extended in the first years of its expansion we have now hardly the means of knowing. it would appear that it took within its scope, on the south-west, the cilician plain, and the undulating region bordering on it--that of qodi: the prince of the latter district, if not his vassal, was at least the colleague of the king of the khâti, and he acted in concert with him in peace as well as in war.* * the country of qidi, qadi, qodi, has been connected by chabas with galilee, and brugsch adopted the identification. w. max müller identified it with phoenicia. i think the name served to designate the cilician coast and plain from the mouth of the orontes, and the country which was known in the græco-roman period by the name kêtis and kataonia. it embraced also the upper basin of the pyramos and its affluents, as well as the regions situated between the euphrates and the halys, but its frontier in this direction was continually fluctuating, and our researches fail to follow it. it is somewhat probable that it extended considerably towards the west and north-west in the direction of the Ægean sea. the forests and escarpments of lycaonia, and the desolate steppes of the central plateau, have always presented a barrier difficult to surmount by any invader from the east. if the khâti at that period attacked it in front, or by a flank movement, the assault must rather have been of the nature of a hurried reconnaissance, or of a raid, than of a methodically conducted campaign.* * the idea of a hittite empire extending over almost all asia minor was advanced by sayce. they must have preferred to obtain possession of the valleys of the thermodon and the iris, which were rich in mineral wealth, and from which they could have secured an inexhaustible revenue. the extraction and working of metals in this region had attracted thither from time immemorial merchants from neighbouring and distant countries--at first from the south to supply the needs of syria, chaldæa, and egypt, then from the west for the necessities of the countries on the Ægean. the roads, which, starting from the archipelago on the one hand, or the euphrates on the other, met at this point, fell naturally into one, and thus formed a continuous route, along which the caravans of commerce, as well as warlike expeditions, might henceforward pass. starting from the cultivated regions of mæonia, the road proceeded up the valley of the hermos from west to east; then, scaling the heights of the central plateau and taking a direction more and more to the north-east, it reached the fords of the halys. crossing this river twice--for the first time at a point about two-thirds the length of its course, and for the second at a short distance from its source--it made an abrupt turn towards the taurus, and joined, at melitene, the routes leading to the upper tigris, to nisibis, to singara, and to old assur, and connecting further down beyond the mountainous region, under the walls of carchemish, with the roads which led to the nile and to the river-side cities on the persian gulf.* * the very early existence of this road, which partly coincides with the royal route of the persian achemenids, was proved by kiepert. there were other and shorter routes, if we think only of the number of miles, from the hermos in pisidia or lycaonia, across the central steppe and through the cilician gates, to the meeting of the ways at carchemish; but they led through wretched regions, without industries, almost without tillage, and inhospitable alike to man and beast, and they were ventured on only by those who aimed at trafficking among the populations who lived in their neighbourhood. the khâti, from the time even when they were enclosed among the fastnesses of the taurus, had within their control the most important section of the great land route which served to maintain regular relations between the ancient kingdoms of the east and the rising states of the Ægean, and whosoever would pass through their country had to pay them toll. the conquest of naharaim, in giving them control of a new section, placed almost at their discretion the whole traffic between chaldæa and egypt. from the time of thûtmosis iii. caravans employed in this traffic accomplished the greater part of their journey in territories depending upon babylon, assyria, or memphis, and enjoyed thus a relative security; the terror of the pharaoh protected the travellers even when they were no longer in his domains, and he saved them from the flagrant exactions made upon them by princes who called themselves his brothers, or were actually his vassals. but the time had now come when merchants had to encounter, between qodshu and the banks of the khabur, a sovereign owing no allegiance to any one, and who would tolerate no foreign interference in his territory. from the outbreak of hostilities with the khâti, egypt could communicate with the cities of the lower euphrates only by the wadys of the arabian desert, which were always dangerous and difficult for large convoys; and its commercial relations with chaldæa were practically brought thus to a standstill, and, as a consequence, the manufactures which fed this trade being reduced to a limited production, the fiscal receipts arising from it experienced a sensible diminution. when peace was restored, matters fell again into their old groove, with certain reservations to the khâti of some common privileges: egypt, which had formerly possessed these to her own advantage, now bore the burden of them, and the indirect tribute which she paid in this manner to her rivals furnished them with arms to fight her in case she should endeavour to free herself from the imposition. all the semi-barbaric peoples of the peninsula of asia minor were of an adventurous and warlike temperament. they were always willing to set out on an expedition, under the leadership of some chief of noble family or renowned for valour; sometimes by sea in their light craft, which would bring them unexpectedly to the nearest point of the syrian coast, sometimes by land in companies of foot-soldiers and charioteers. they were frequently fortunate enough to secure plenty of booty, and return with it to their homes safe and sound; but as frequently they would meet with reverses by falling into some ambuscade: in such a case their conqueror would not put them to the sword or sell them as slaves, but would promptly incorporate them into his army, thus making his captives into his soldiers. the king of the khâti was able to make use of them without difficulty, for his empire was conterminous on the west and north with some of their native lands, and he had often whole regiments of them in his army--mysians, lycians, people of augarît,* of ilion,** and of pedasos.*** * the country of augarît, ugarît, is mentioned on several occasions in the tel el-amarna correspondence. the name has been wrongly associated with caria; it has been placed by w. max miiller well within naharaim, to the east of the orontes, between khalybôn (aleppo) and apamoea, the writer confusing it with akaiti, named in the campaign of amenôthes ii. i am not sure about the site, but its association in the amarna letters with gugu and khanigalbat inclines me to place it beyond the northern slopes of the taurus, possibly on the banks of the halys or of the upper euphrates. ** the name of this people was read eiûna by champollion, who identified it with the ionians; this reading and identification were adopted by lenormant and by w. max müller. chabas hesitates between eiûna and maiûna, ionia and moonia and brugsch read it malunna. the reading iriûna, iliûna, seems to me the only possible one, and the identification with ilion as well. *** owing to its association with the dardanians, mysians, and ilion, i think it answers to the pedasos on the satniois near troy. the revenue of the provinces taken from egypt, and the products of his tolls, furnished him with abundance of means for obtaining recruits from among them.* all these things contributed to make the power of the khâti so considerable, that harmhabî, when he had once tested it, judged it prudent not to join issues with them. he concluded with sapalulu a treaty of peace and friendship, which, leaving the two powers in possession respectively of the territory each then occupied, gave legal sanction to the extension of the sphere of the khâti at the expense of egypt.** syria continued to consist of two almost equal parts, stretching from byblos to the sources of the jordan and damascus: the northern portion, formerly tributary to egypt, became a hittite possession; while the southern, consisting of phoenicia and canaan,*** which the pharaoh had held for a long time with a more effective authority, and had more fully occupied, was retained for egypt. * e. de rougé and the egyptologists who followed him thought at first that the troops designated in the egyptian texts as lycians, mysians, dardanians, were the national armies of these nations, each one commanded by its king, who had hastened from asia minor to succour their ally the king of the khâti. i now think that those were bands of adventurers, consisting of soldiers belonging to these nations, who came to put themselves at the service of civilized monarchs, as the oarians, ionians, and the greeks of various cities did later on: the individuals whom the texts mention as their princes were not the kings of these nations, but the warrior chiefs to which each band gave obedience. ** it is not certain that harmhabî was the pharaoh with whom sapalulu entered into treaty, and it might be insisted with some reason that ramses i. was the party to it on the side of egypt; but this hypothesis is rendered less probable by the fact of the extremely short reign of the latter pharaoh. i am inclined to think, as w. max miiller has supposed, that the passage in the _treaty of ramses ii. with the prince of the khâti,_ which speaks of a treaty concluded with sapalulu, looks back to the time of ramses ii.�s predecessor, harmhabî. *** this follows from the situation of the two empires, as indicated in the account of the campaign of seti i. in his first year. the king, after having defeated the nomads of the arabian desert, passed on without further fighting into the country of the amûrrû and the regions of the lebanon, which fact seems to imply the submission of kharû. w. max miiller was the first to* discern clearly this part of the history of egyptian conquest; he appears, however, to have circumscribed somewhat too strictly the dominion of harmhabî in assigning carmel as its limit. the list of the nations of the north who yielded, or are alleged to have yielded, submission to harmhabî, were traced on the first pylon of this monarch at karnak, and on its adjoining walls. among others, the names of the khâti and of arvad are to be read there. this could have been but a provisional arrangement: if thebes had not altogether renounced the hope of repossessing some day the lost conquests of thûtmosis iii., the khâti, drawn by the same instinct which had urged them to cross their frontiers towards the south, were not likely to be content with less than the expulsion of the egyptians from syria, and the absorption of the whole country into the hittite dominion. peace was maintained during harmhabî�s lifetime. we know nothing of egyptian affairs during the last years of his reign. his rule may have come to an end owing to some court intrigue, or he may have had no male heir to follow him.* ramses, who succeeded him, did not belong to the royal line, or was only remotely connected with it.** * it would appear, from an ostracon in the british museum, that the year xxi. follows after the year vii. of harmhabî�s reign; it is possible that the year xxi. may belong to one of harmhabî�s successors, seti i. or ramses ii., for example. ** the efforts to connect ramses i. with a family of semitic origin, possibly the shepherd-kings themselves, have not been successful. everything goes to prove that the ramses family was, and considered itself to be, of egyptian origin. brugsch and ed. meyer were inclined to see in ramses i. a younger brother of harmhabî. this hypothesis has nothing either for or against it up to the present. he was already an old man when he ascended the throne, and we ought perhaps to identify him with one or other of the ramses who flourished under the last pharaohs of the xviiith dynasty, perhaps the one who governed thebes under khûniatonû, or another, who began but never finished his tomb in the hillside above tel el-amarna, in the burying-place of the worshippers of the disk. [illustration: .jpg ramses i.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in rosellini. he had held important offices under harmhabî,* and had obtained in marriage for his son seti the hand of tuîa, who, of all the royal family, possessed the strongest rights to the crown.** * this tel el-amarna ramses is, perhaps, identical with the theban one: he may have followed his master to his new capital, and have had a tomb dug for himself there, which he subsequently abandoned, on the death of khûniatonû, in order to return to thebes with tûtankhamon and aï. ** the fact that the marriage was celebrated under the auspices of harmhabî, and that, consequently, ramses must have occupied an important position at the court of that prince, is proved by the appearance of ramses ii., son of tuîa, as early as the first year of seti, among the ranks of the combatants in the war carried on by that prince against the tihonû; even granting that he was then ten years old, we are forced to admit that he must have been born before his grandfather came to the throne. there is in the vatican a statue of tuîa; other statues have been discovered at san. ramses reigned only six or seven years, and associated seti with himself in the government from his second year. he undertook a short military expedition into ethiopia, and perhaps a raid into syria; and we find remains of his monuments in nubia, at bohani near wady haifa, and at thebes, in the temple of amon.* * he began the great hypostyle hall at karnak; e. de rougé thinks that the idea of building this was first conceived under the xviiith dynasty. he displayed little activity, his advanced age preventing him from entering on any serious undertaking: but his accession nevertheless marks an important date in the history of egypt. although harmhabî was distantly connected with the line of the ahmessides, it is difficult at the present day to know what position to assign him in the pharaonic lists: while some regard him as the last of the xviiith dynasty, others prefer to place him at the head of the xixth. no such hesitation, however, exists with regard to ramses i., who was undoubtedly the founder of a new family. the old familiar names of thûtmosis and amenôthes henceforward disappear from the royal lists, and are replaced by others, such as seti, mînephtah, and, especially, ramses, which now figure in them for the first time. the princes who bore these names showed themselves worthy successors of those who had raised egypt to the zenith of her power; like them they were successful on the battle-field, and like them they devoted the best of the spoil to building innumerable monuments. no sooner had seti celebrated his father�s obsequies, than he assembled his army and set out for war. it would appear that southern syria was then in open revolt. �word had been brought to his majesty: �the vile shaûsû have plotted rebellion; the chiefs of their tribes, assembled in one place on the confines of kharû, have been smitten with blindness and with the spirit of violence; every one cutteth his neighbour�s throat.� * it was imperative to send succour to the few tribes who remained faithful, to prevent them from succumbing to the repeated attacks of the insurgents. seti crossed the frontier at zalu, but instead of pursuing his way along the coast, he marched due east in order to attack the shaûsû in the very heart of the desert. the road ran through wide wadys, tolerably well supplied with water, and the length of the stages necessarily depended on the distances between the wells. this route was one frequented in early times, and its security was ensured by a number of fortresses and isolated towers built along it, such as �the house of the lion �--_ta ait pa maû_--near the pool of the same name, the migdol of the springs of huzîna, the fortress of uazît, the tower of the brave, and the migdol of seti at the pools of absakaba. the bedawîn, disconcerted by the rapidity of this movement, offered no serious resistance. their flocks were carried off, their trees cut down, their harvests destroyed, and they surrendered their strongholds at discretion. pushing on from one halting-place to another, the conqueror soon reached babbîti, and finally pakanâna.** * the pictures of this campaign and the inscriptions which explain them were engraved by seti i., on the outside of the north wall of the great hypostyle hall at karnak. ** the site of pakanâna has, with much probability, been fixed at el-kenân or khurbet-kanâan, to the south of hebron. brugsch had previously taken this name to indicate the country of canaan, but chabas rightly contested this view. w. max millier took up the matter afresh: he perceived that we have here an allusion to the first town encountered by seti i. in the country of canaan to the south-west of raphia, the name of which is not mentioned by the egyptian sculptor; it seems to me that this name should be pakanâna, and that the town bore the same name as the country. the latter town occupied a splendid position on the slope of a rocky hill, close to a small lake, and defended the approaches to the vale of hebron. it surrendered at the first attack, and by its fall the egyptians became possessed of one of the richest provinces in the southern part of kharû. this result having been achieved, seti took the caravan road to his left, on the further side of gaza, and pushed forward at full speed towards the hittite frontier. [illustration: .jpg the return of the north wall of the hypostyle hall at karnak, where seti i. represents some episodes in his first campaign] drawn by boudier, from a photograph, by Émil brugsch-bey. it was probably unprotected by any troops, and the hittite king was absent in some other part of his empire. seti pillaged the amurru, seized ianuâmu and qodshû by a sudden attack, marched in an oblique direction towards the mediterranean, forcing the inhabitants of the lebanon to cut timber from their mountains for the additions which he was premeditating in the temple of the theban amon, and finally returned by the coast road, receiving, as he passed through their territory, the homage of the phoenicians. his entry into egypt was celebrated by solemn festivities. the nobles, priests, and princes of both south and north hastened to meet him at the bridge of zalû, and welcomed, with their chants, both the king and the troops of captives whom he was bringing back for the service of his father amon at karnak. the delight of his subjects was but natural, since for many years the egyptians bad not witnessed such a triumph, and they no doubt believed that the prosperous era of thûtmosis iii. was about to return, and that the wealth of naharaim would once more flow into thebes as of old. their illusion was short-lived, for this initial victory was followed by no other. maurusaru, king of the khâti, and subsequently his son mautallu, withstood the pharaoh with such resolution that he was forced to treat with them. a new alliance was concluded on the same conditions as the old one, and the boundaries of the two kingdoms remained the same as under harmhabî, a proof that neither sovereign had gained any advantage over his rival. hence the campaign did not in any way restore egyptian supremacy, as had been hoped at the moment; it merely served to strengthen her authority in those provinces which the khâti had failed to take from egypt. the phoenicians of tyre and sidon had too many commercial interests on the banks of the nile to dream of breaking the slender tie which held them to the pharaoh, since independence, or submission to another sovereign, might have ruined their trade. the kharû and the bedawîn, vanquished wherever they had ventured to oppose the pharaoh�s troops, were less than ever capable of throwing off the egyptian yoke. syria fell back into its former state. the local princes once more resumed their intrigues and quarrels, varied at intervals by appeals to their suzerain for justice or succour. the �royal messengers� appeared from time to time with their escorts of archers and chariots to claim tribute, levy taxes, to make peace between quarrelsome vassals, or, if the case required it, to supersede some insubordinate chief by a governor of undoubted loyalty; in fine, the entire administration of the empire was a continuation of that of the preceding century. the peoples of kûsh meanwhile had remained quiet during the campaign in syria, and on the western frontier the tihonû had suffered so severe a defeat that they were not likely to recover from it for some time.* the bands of pirates, shardana and others, who infested the delta, were hunted down, and the prisoners taken from among them were incorporated into the royal guard.** * this war is represented at karnak, and ramses ii. figures there among the children of seti i. ** we gather this from passages in the inscriptions from the year v. onwards, in which ramses ii. boasts that he has a number of shardana prisoners in his guard; rouge was, perhaps, mistaken in magnifying these piratical raids into a war of invasion. [illustration: .jpg representation of seti i. vanquishing the libyans and asiatics on the walls, karnak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by ernil brugsch-bey. seti, however, does not appear to have had a confirmed taste for war. he showed energy when occasion required it, and he knew how to lead his soldiers, as the expedition of his first year amply proved; but when the necessity was over, he remained on the defensive, and made no further attempt at conquest. by his own choice he was �the jackal who prowls about the country to protect it,� rather than �the wizard lion marauding abroad by hidden paths,� * and egypt enjoyed a profound peace in consequence of his ceaseless vigilance. * these phrases are taken direct from the inscriptions of seti i. a peaceful policy of this kind did not, of course, produce the amount of spoil and the endless relays of captives which had enabled his predecessors to raise temples and live in great luxury without overburdening their subjects with taxes. seti was, therefore, the more anxious to do all in his power to develop the internal wealth of the country. the mining colonies of the sinaitic peninsula had never ceased working since operations had been resumed there under hâtshopsîtû and thûtmosis iii., but the output had lessened during the troubles under the heretic kings. seti sent inspectors thither, and endeavoured to stimulate the workmen to their former activity, but apparently with no great success. we are not able to ascertain if he continued the revival of trade with pûanît inaugurated by harmhabî; but at any rate he concentrated his attention on the regions bordering the red sea and the gold-mines which they contained. those of btbaï, which had been worked as early as the xiith dynasty, did not yield as much as they had done formerly; not that they were exhausted, but owing to the lack of water in their neighbourhood and along the routes leading to them, they were nearly deserted. it was well known that they contained great wealth, but operations could not be carried on, as the workmen were in danger of dying of thirst. seti despatched engineers to the spot to explore the surrounding wadys, to clear the ancient cisterns or cut others, and to establish victualling stations at regular intervals for the use of merchants supplying the gangs of miners with commodities. these stations generally consisted of square or rectangular enclosures, built of stones without mortar, and capable of resisting a prolonged attack. the entrance was by a narrow doorway of stone slabs, and in the interior were a few huts and one or two reservoirs for catching rain or storing the water of neighbouring springs. sometimes a chapel was built close at hand, consecrated to the divinities of the desert, or to their compeers, mînû of coptos, horus, maut, or isis. one of these, founded by seti, still exists near the modern town of redesieh, at the entrance to one of the valleys which furrow this gold region. [illustration: .jpg a fortified station on the route between the nile and the red sea. drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de bock it is built against, and partly excavated in, a wall of rock, the face of which has been roughly squared, and it is entered through a four-columned portico, giving access to two dark chambers, whose walls are covered with scenes of adoration and a lengthy inscription. in this latter the sovereign relates how, in the ixth year of his reign, he was moved to inspect the roads of the desert; he completed the work in honour of amon-râ, of phtah of memphis, and of harmakhis, and he states that travellers were at a loss to express their gratitude and thanks for what he had done. �they repeated from mouth to mouth: �may amon give him an endless existence, and may he prolong for him the length of eternity! o ye gods of fountains, attribute to him your life, for he has rendered back to us accessible roads, and he has opened that which was closed to us. henceforth we can take our way in peace, and reach our destination alive; now that the difficult paths are open and the road has become good, gold can be brought back, as our lord and master has commanded.�� plans were drawn on papyrus of the configuration of the district, of the beds of precious metal, and of the position of the stations. [illustration: .jpg the temple of seti i. at redesieh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by golénischeff. one of these plans has come down to us, in which the districts are coloured bright red, the mountains dull ochre, the roads dotted over with footmarks to show the direction to be taken, while the superscriptions give the local names, and inform us that the map represents the bukhni mountain and a fortress and stele of seti. the whole thing is executed in a rough and naive manner, with an almost childish minuteness which provokes a smile; we should, however, not despise it, for it is the oldest map in the world. [illustration: .jpg fragment of the map of the gold-mines] facsimile by faucher-gudin of coloured chalk-drawing by chabas. the gold extracted from these regions, together with that brought from ethiopia, and, better still, the regular payment of taxes and custom-house duties, went to make up for the lack of foreign spoil all the more opportunely, for, although the sovereign did not share the military enthusiasm of thûtmosis iii., he had inherited from him the passion for expensive temple-building. [illustration: .jpg the three standing columns of the temple of sesebi] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. he did not neglect nubia in this respect, but repaired several of the monuments at which the xviiith dynasty had worked--among others, kalabsheh, dakkeh, and amada, besides founding a temple at sesebi, of which three columns are still standing.* * in lepsius�s time there were still four columns standing; insinger shows us only three. the outline of these columns is not graceful, and the decoration of them is very poor, for art degenerated rapidly in these distant provinces of the empire, and only succeeded in maintaining its vigour and spirit in the immediate neighbourhood of the pharaoh, as at abydos, memphis, and above all at thebes. seti�s predecessor ramses, desirous of obliterating all traces of the misfortunes lately brought about by the changes effected by the heretic kings, had contemplated building at karnak, in front of the pylon of amenôthes iii., an enormous hall for the ceremonies connected with the cult of amon, where the immense numbers of priests and worshippers at festival times could be accommodated without inconvenience. it devolved on seti to carry out what had been merely an ambitious dream of his father�s.* * the great hypostyle hall was cleared and the columns were strengthened in the winter of - , as far, at least, as it was possible to carry out the work of restoration without imperilling the stability of the whole. we long to know who was the architect possessed of such confidence in his powers that he ventured to design, and was able to carry out, this almost superhuman undertaking. his name would be held up to almost universal admiration beside those of the greatest masters that we are familiar with, for no one in greece or italy has left us any work which surpasses it, or which with such simple means could produce a similar impression of boldness and immensity. it is almost impossible to convey by words to those who have not seen it, the impression which it makes on the spectator. failing description, the dimensions speak for themselves. the hall measures one hundred and sixty-two feet in length, by three hundred and twenty-five in breadth. a row of twelve columns, the largest ever placed inside a building, runs up the centre, having capitals in the form of inverted bells. [illustration: an avenue of one of the aisles of the hypostyle hall at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. one hundred and twenty-two columns with lotiform capitals fill the aisles, in rows of nine each. the roof of the central bay is seventy-four feet above the ground, and the cornice of the two towers rises sixty-three feet higher. the building was dimly lighted from the roof of the central colonnade by means of stone gratings, through which the air and the sun�s rays entered sparingly. the daylight, as it penetrated into the hall, was rendered more and more obscure by the rows of columns; indeed, at the further end a perpetual twilight must have reigned, pierced by narrow shafts of light falling from the ventilation holes which were placed at intervals in the roof. [illustration: .jpg the gratings of the central colonnade in the hypostyle hall at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. in the background, on the right, may be seen a column which for several centuries has been retained in a half-fallen position by the weight of its architrave. the whole building now lies open to the sky, and the sunshine which floods it, pitilessly reveals the mutilations which it has suffered in the course of ages; but the general effect, though less mysterious, is none the less overwhelming. it is the only monument in which the first _coup d�oil_ surpasses the expectations of the spectator instead of disappointing him. the size is immense, and we realise its immensity the more fully as we search our memory in vain to find anything with which to compare it. seti may have entertained the project of building a _replica_ of this hall in southern thebes. amenôthes iii. had left his temple at luxor unfinished. the sanctuary and its surrounding buildings were used for purposes of worship, but the court of the customary pylon was wanting, and merely a thin wall concealed the mysteries from the sight of the vulgar. seti resolved to extend the building in a northerly direction, without interfering with the thin screen which had satisfied his predecessors. starting from the entrance in this wall, he planned an avenue of giant columns rivalling those of karnak, which he destined to become the central colonnade of a hypostyle hall as vast as that of the sister temple. either money or time was lacking to carry out his intention. he died before the aisles on either side were even begun. at abydos, however, he was more successful. we do not know the reason of seti�s particular affection for this town; it is possible that his family held some fief there, or it may be that he desired to show the peculiar estimation in which he held its local god, and intended, by the homage that he lavished on him, to cause the fact to be forgotten that he bore the name of sit the accursed. [illustration: .jpg one of the colonnades of the hypostyle hall in the temple of seti i. at abydos] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the king selected a favourable site for his temple to the south of the town, on the slope of a sandhill bordering the canal, and he marked out in the hardened soil a ground plan of considerable originality. the building was approached through two pylons, the remains of which are now hidden under the houses of aarabat el-madfuneh. [illustration: b.jpg the facade of the temple of seti] a fairly large courtyard, bordered by two crumbling walls, lies between the second pylon and the temple façade, which was composed of a portico resting on square pillars. passing between these, we reach two halls supported by-columns of graceful outline, beyond which are eight chapels arranged in a line, side by side, in front of two chambers built in to the hillside, and destined for the reception of osiris. the holy of holies in ordinary temples is surrounded by chambers of lesser importance, but here it is concealed behind them. the building-material mainly employed here was the white limestone of tûrah, but of a most beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in ancient egypt. the artists who carved and painted them belonged to the theban school, and while their subjects betray a remarkable similarity to those of the monuments dedicated by amenôthes iii., the execution surpasses them in freedom and perfection of modelling; we can, in fact, trace in them the influence of the artists who furnished the drawings for the scenes at tel el-amarna. they have represented the gods and goddesses with the same type of profile as that of the king--a type of face of much purity and gentleness, with its aquiline nose, its decided mouth, almond-shaped eyes, and melancholy smile. when the decoration of the temple was completed, seti regarded the building as too small for its divine inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish it completely. several parts of it are lined with religious representations, but in others the subjects have been merely sketched out in black ink with corrections in red, while elsewhere the walls are bare, except for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers into a convent. this new wing was connected with the second hypostyle hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the sovereign traced back to mini. the whole temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world. it was here, at the mouth of the �cleft,� that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. as the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the boat of the sun. seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself, as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of hades. after having dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need. thebes possessed this king�s actual tomb. the chapel was at qurnah, a little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the pharaohs of the xith dynasty lay side by side with those of the xiiith and xviith. ramses had begun to build it, and seti continued the work, dedicating it to the cult of his father and of himself. its pylon has altogether disappeared, but the façade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect, together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. the decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as that in the work at abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings. [illustration: .jpg the temple of qurnah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not in the same ravine as that in which amenôthes iii., aï, and probably tûtankhamon and harmhabî, are buried.* * there are, in fact, close to those of aï and amenôthes iii., three other tombs, two at least of which have been decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and which may have served as the burying-places of tûtankhamon and harmhabî: the earlier egyptologists believed them to have been dug by the first kings of the xviiith dynasty. there then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of deîr el-baharî, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of hâtshopsîtû. this basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly direction, while the other trends to the south-west, and is subdivided into minor branches. to the east rises a barren peak, the outline of which is not unlike that of the step-pyramid of saqqâra, reproduced on a colossal scale. no spot could be more appropriate to serve as a cemetery for a family of kings. the difficulty of reaching it and of conveying thither the heavy accessories and of providing for the endless processions of the pharaonic funerals, prevented any attempt being made to cut tombs in it during the ancient and middle empires. about the beginning of the xixth dynasty, however, some engineers, in search of suitable burial sites, at length noticed that this basin was only separated from the wady issuing to the north of qurnah by a rocky barrier barely five hundred cubits in width. this presented no formidable obstacle to such skilful engineers as the egyptians. they cut a trench into the living rock some fifty or sixty cubits in depth, at the bottom of which they tunnelled a narrow passage giving access to the valley.* * french scholars recognised from the beginning of this century that the passage in question had been made by human agency. i attribute the execution of this work to ramses i., as i believe harmhabî to have been buried in the eastern valley, near amenôthes iii. it is not known whether this herculean work was accomplished during the reign of harnhabî or in that of ramses i. the latter was the first of the pharaohs to honour the spot by his presence. his tomb is simple, almost coarse in its workmanship, and comprises a gentle inclined passage, a vault and a sarcophagus of rough stone. that of seti, on the contrary, is a veritable palace, extending to a distance of feet into the mountain-side. it is entered by a wide and lofty door, which opens on to a staircase of twenty-seven steps, leading to an inclined corridor; other staircases of shallow steps follow with their landings; then come successively a hypostyle hall, and, at the extreme end, a vaulted chamber, all of which are decorated with mysterious scenes and covered with inscriptions. this is, however, but the first storey, containing the antechambers of the dead, but not their living-rooms. a passage and steps, concealed under a slab to the left of the hall, lead to the real vault, which held the mummy and its funerary furniture. as we penetrate further and further by the light of torches into this subterranean abode, we see that the walls are covered with pictures and formulae, setting forth the voyages of the soul through the twelve hours of the night, its trials, its judgment, its reception by the departed, and its apotheosis--all depicted on the rock with the same perfection as that which characterises the bas-reliefs on the finest slabs of tûrah stone at qurnah and abydos. a gallery leading out of the last of these chambers extends a few feet further and then stops abruptly; the engineers had contemplated the excavation of a third storey to the tomb, when the death of their master obliged them to suspend their task. the king�s sarcophagus consists of a block of alabaster, hollowed out, polished, and carved with figures and hieroglyphs, with all the minuteness which we associate with the cutting of a gem. [illustration: .jpg one of the pillars of the tomb of seti i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger, taken in . it contained a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze. the mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with pitch, but when this was raised by means of a chisel, the fine kingly head was exposed to view. it was a masterpiece of the art of the embalmer, and the expression of the face was that of one who had only a few hours previously breathed his last. death had slightly drawn the nostrils and contracted the lips, the pressure of the bandages had flattened the nose a little, and the skin was darkened by the pitch; but a calm and gentle smile still played over the mouth, and the half-opened eyelids allowed a glimpse to be seen from under their lashes of an apparently moist and glistening line,--the reflection from the white porcelain eyes let in to the orbit at the time of burial. seti had had several children by his wife tuîa, and the eldest had already reached manhood when his father ascended the throne, for he had accompanied him on his syrian campaign. the young prince died, however, soon after his return, and his right to the crown devolved on his younger brother, who, like his grandfather, bore the name of ramses. the prince was still very young,* but seti did not on that account delay enthroning with great pomp this son who had a better right to the throne than himself. * the history of the youth and the accession of ramses ii. is known to us from the narrative given by himself in the temple of seti i. at abydos. the bulk of the narrative is confirmed by the evidence of the kubân inscription, especially as to the extreme youth of ramses at the time when he was first associated with the crown. �from the time that i was in the egg,� ramses writes later on, �the great ones sniffed the earth before me; when i attained to the rank of eldest son and heir upon the throne of sibû, i dealt with affairs, i commanded as chief the foot-soldiers and the chariots. my father having appeared before the people, when i was but a very little boy in his arms, said to me: �i shall have him crowned king, that i may see him in all his splendour while i am still on this earth!� the nobles of the court having drawn near to place the pschent upon my head: �place the diadem upon his forehead!� said he.� as ramses increased in years, seti delighted to confer upon him, one after the other, the principal attributes of power; �while he was still upon this earth, regulating everything in the land, defending its frontiers, and watching over the welfare of its inhabitants, he cried: �let him reign!� because of the love he had for me.� seti also chose for him wives, beautiful �as are those of his palace,� and he gave him in marriage his sisters nofrîtari ii. mîmût and isîtnofrît, who, like ramses himself, had claims to the throne. ramses was allowed to attend the state councils at the age of ten; he commanded armies, and he administered justice under the direction of his father and his viziers. seti, however, although making use of his son�s youth and activity, did not in any sense retire in his favour; if he permitted ramses to adopt the insignia of royalty--the cartouches, the pschent, the bulbous-shaped helmet, and the various sceptres--he still remained to the day of his death the principal state official, and he reckoned all the years of this dual sovereignty as those of his sole reign.* * brugsoh is wrong in reckoning the reign of ramses ii. from the time of his association in the crown; the great inscription of abydos, which has been translated by brugsch himself, dates events which immediately followed the death of seti i. as belonging to the first year of ramses ii. ramses repulsed the incursions of the tihonû, and put to the sword such of their hordes as had ventured to invade egyptian territory. he exercised the functions of viceroy of ethiopia, and had on several occasions to chastise the pillaging negroes. we see him at beît-wally and at abu simbel charging them in his chariot: in vain they flee in confusion before him; their flight, however swift, cannot save them from captivity and destruction. [illustration: .jpg ramses ii. puts the negroes to flight] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he was engaged in ethiopia when the death of seti recalled him to thebes.* * we do not know how long seti i. reigned; the last date is that of his ixth year at redesieh and at aswan, and that of the year xxvii. sometimes attributed to him belongs to one of the later ramessides. i had at first supposed his reign to have been a long one, merely on the evidence afforded by manetho�s lists, but the presence of ramses ii. as a stripling, in the campaign of seti�s st year, forces us to limit its duration to fifteen or twenty years at most, possibly to only twelve or fifteen. he at once returned to the capital, celebrated the king�s funeral obsequies with suitable pomp, and after keeping the festival of amon, set out for the north in order to make his authority felt in that part of his domains. he stopped on his way at abydos to give the necessary orders for completing the decoration of the principal chambers of the resting-place built by his father, and chose a site some feet to the north-west of it for a similar memnonium for himself. he granted cultivated fields and meadows in the thinite name for the maintenance of these two mausolea, founded a college of priests and soothsayers in connexion with them, for which he provided endowments, and also assigned them considerable fiefs in all parts of the valley of the nile. the delta next occupied his attention. the increasing importance of the syrian provinces in the eyes of egypt, the growth of the hittite monarchy, and the migrations of the peoples of the mediterranean, had obliged the last princes of the preceding dynasty to reside more frequently at memphis than amenôthes i. or thûtmosis iii. had done. amenôthes iii. had set to work to restore certain cities which had been abandoned since the days of the shepherds, and bubastis, athribis, and perhaps tanis, had, thanks to his efforts, revived from their decayed condition. the pharaohs, indeed, felt that at thebes they were too far removed from the battle-fields of asia; distance made it difficult for them to counteract the intrigues in which their vassals in kharû and the lords of naharaim were perpetually implicated, and a revolt which might have been easily anticipated or crushed had they been advised of it within a few days, gained time to increase and extend during the interval occupied by the couriers in travelling to and from the capital. ramses felt the importance of possessing a town close to the isthmus where he could reside in security, and he therefore built close to zalû, in a fertile and healthy locality, a stronghold to which he gave his own name,* and of which the poets of the time have left us an enthusiastic description. �it extends,� they say, �between zahi and egypt--and is filled with provisions and victuals.--it resembles hermonthis,--it is strong like memphis,--and the sun rises--and sets in it--so that men quit their villages and establish themselves in its territory.�--�the dwellers on the coasts bring conger eels and fish in homage,--they pay it the tribute of their marshes.--the inhabitants don their festal garments every day,--perfumed oil is on their heads and new wigs;--they stand at their doors, their hands full of bunches of flowers,--green branches from the village of pihâthor,--garlands of pahûrû,--on the day when pharaoh makes his entry.--joy then reigns and spreads, and nothing can stay it,--o usirmarî-sotpûnirî, thou who art montû in the two lands,--ramses-mîamûn, the god.� the town acted as an advance post, from whence the king could keep watch against all intriguing adversaries,--whether on the banks of the orontes or the coast of the mediterranean. * an allusion to the foundation of this residence occurs in an inscription at abu simbel, dated in his xxvth year. nothing appeared for the moment to threaten the peace of the empire. the asiatic vassals had raised no disturbance on hearing of the king�s accession, and mautallu continued to observe the conditions of the treaty which he had signed with seti. two military expeditions undertaken beyond the isthmus in the iind and ivth years of the new sovereign were accomplished almost without fighting. he repressed by the way the marauding shaûsû, and on reaching the nahr el-kelb, which then formed the northern frontier of his empire, he inscribed at the turn of the road, on the rocks which overhang the mouth of the river, two triumphal stelæ in which he related his successes.* towards the end of his ivth year a rebellion broke out among the khâti, which caused a rupture of relations between the two kingdoms and led to some irregular fighting. khâtusaru, a younger brother of maurusaru, murdered the latter and made himself king in his stead.** it is not certain whether the egyptians took up arms against him, or whether he judged it wise to oppose them in order to divert the attention of his subjects from his crime. * the stelæ are all in a very bad condition; in the last of them the date is no longer legible. ** in the _treaty of harrises ii. with the prince of khâti_, the writer is content to use a discreet euphemism, and states that mautallu succumbed �to his destiny.� the name of the prince of the khâti is found later on under the form khatusharu, in that of a chief defeated by tiglath-pileser i. in the country of kummukh, though this name has generally been read khatukhi. at all events, he convoked his syrian vassals and collected his mercenaries; the whole of naharaim, khalupu, carchemish, and arvad sent their quota, while bands of dardanians, mysians, trojans, and lycians, together with the people of pedasos and girgasha,* furnished further contingents, drawn from an area extending from the most distant coasts of the mediterranean to the mountains of cilicia. ramses, informed of the enemy�s movement by his generals and the governors of places on the frontier, resolved to anticipate the attack. he assembled an army almost as incongruous in its component elements as that of his adversary: besides egyptians of unmixed race, divided into four corps bearing the names of amon, phtah, harmakhis and sûtkhû, it contained ethiopian auxiliaries, libyans, mazaiu, and shardana.** * the name of this nation is written karkisha, kalkisha, or kashkisha, by one of those changes of _sh_ into _r-l_ which occur so frequently in assyro-chaldæan before a dental; the two different spellings seem to show that the writers of the inscriptions bearing on this war had before them a list of the allies of khâtusaru, written in cuneiform characters. if we may identify the nation with the kashki or kashku of the assyrian texts, the ancestors of the people of colchis of classical times, the termination _-isha_ of the egyptian word would be the inflexion _-ash_ or _-ush_ of the eastern- asiatic tongues which we find in so many race-names, e.g. adaush, saradaush, ammaush. rouge and brugsch identified them with the girgashites of the bible. brugsch, adopting the spelling kashki, endeavoured to connect them with casiotis; later on he identified them with the people of gergis in troas. ramsay recognises in them the kisldsos of cilicia. ** in the account of the campaign the shardana only are mentioned; but we learn from a list in the _anastasi papyrus i_, that the army of ramses ii. included, in ordinary circumstances, in addition to the shardana, a contingent of mashauasha, kahaka, and other libyan and negro mercenaries. when preparations were completed, the force crossed the canal at zalû, on the th of payni in his vth year, marched rapidly across canaan till they reached the valley of the litâny, along which they took their way, and then followed up that of the orontes. they encamped for a few days at shabtuna, to the south-west of qodshû,* in the midst of the amorite country, sending out scouts and endeavouring to discover the position of the enemy, of whose movements they possessed but vague information. * shabtuna had been placed on the nahr es-sebta, on the site now occupied by kalaat el-hosn, a conjecture approved by mariette; it was more probably a town situated in the plain, to the south of bahr el-kades, a little to the south-west of tell keby mindoh which represents qodshû, and close to some forests which at that time covered the slopes of lebanon, and, extending as they did to the bottom of the valley, concealed the position of the khâti from the egyptians. khâtusaru lay concealed in the wooded valleys of the lebanon; he was kept well posted by his spies, and only waited an opportunity to take the field; as an occasion did not immediately present itself, he had recourse to a ruse with which the generals of the time were familiar. ramses, at length uneasy at not falling in with the enemy, advanced to the south of shabtuna, where he endeavoured to obtain information from two bedawîn. �our brethren,� said they, �who are the chiefs of the tribes united under the vile prince of khâti, send us to give information to your majesty: we desire to serve the pharaoh. we are deserting the vile prince of the khâti; he is close to khalupu (aleppo), to the north of the city of tunipa, whither he has rapidly retired from fear of the pharaoh.� this story had every appearance of probability; and the distance--khalupu was at least forty leagues away--explained why the reconnoitring parties of the egyptians had not fallen in with any of the enemy. the pharaoh, with this information, could not decide whether to lay siege to qodshû and wait until the hittites were forced to succour the town, or to push on towards the euphrates and there seek the engagement which his adversary seemed anxious to avoid. [illustration: .jpg the shardana guard of ramses ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. he chose the latter of the two alternatives. he sent forward the legions of anion, phrâ, phtah, and sutkhu, which constituted the main body of his troops, and prepared to follow them with his household chariotry. at the very moment when this division was being effected, the hittites, who had been represented by the spies as being far distant, were secretly massing their forces to the north-east of qodshu, ready to make an attack upon the pharaoh�s flank as soon as he should set out on his march towards khalupu. the enemy had considerable forces at their disposal, and on the day of the engagement they placed , to , picked soldiers in the field.* besides a well-disciplined infantry, they possessed to chariots, containing, as was the asiatic custom, three men in each.** * an army corps is reckoned as containing men on the wall scenes at luxor, and at the eamesseum; the chariots were manned by men. in allowing four to five thousand men for the rest of the soldiers engaged, we are not likely to be far wrong, and shall thus obtain the modest total mentioned in the text, contrary to the opinion current among historians. * the mercenaries are included in these figures, as is shown by the reckoning of the lycian, dardanian, and pedasian chiefs who were in command of the chariots during the charges against ramses ii. the egyptian camp was not entirely broken up, when the scouts brought in two spies whom they had seized--asiatics in long blue robes arranged diagonally over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. the king, who was seated on his throne delivering his final commands, ordered them to be beaten till the truth should be extracted from them. they at last confessed that they had been despatched to watch the departure of the egyptians, and admitted that the enemy was concealed in ambush behind the town. ramses hastily called a council of war and laid the situation before his generals, not without severely reprimanding them for the bad organisation of the intelligence department. the officers excused themselves as best they could, and threw the blame on the provincial governors, who had not been able to discover what was going on. the king cut short these useless recriminations, sent swift messengers to recall the divisions which had started early that morning, and gave orders that all those remaining in camp should hold themselves in readiness to attack. the council were still deliberating when news was brought that the hittites were in sight. [illustration: .jpg two hittite spies beaten by the egyptian soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the picture in the temple at abu simbel. their first onslaught was so violent that they threw down one side of the camp wall, and penetrated into the enclosure. ramses charged them at the head of his household troops. eight times he engaged the chariotry which threatened to surround him, and each time he broke their ranks. once he found himself alone with manna, his shield-bearer, in the midst of a knot of warriors who were bent on his destruction, and he escaped solely by his coolness and bravery. the tame lion which accompanied him on his expeditions did terrible work by his side, and felled many an asiatic with his teeth and claws.* * the lion is represented and named in the battle-scenes at abu simbel, at dorr, and at luxor, where we see it in camp on the eve of the battle, with its two front paws tied, and its keeper threatening it. [illustration: .jpg the egyptian camp and the council of war on the morning of the battle of qodshÛ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato of the west front of the eamesseum. the soldiers, fired by the king�s example, stood their ground resolutely during the long hours of the afternoon; at length, as night was drawing on, the legions of phrâ and sûtkhû, who had hastily retraced their steps, arrived on the scene of action. a large body of khâfci, who were hemmed in in that part of the camp which they had taken in the morning, were at once killed or made prisoners, not a man of them escaping. khâtusaru, disconcerted by this sudden reinforcement of the enemy, beat a retreat, and nightfall suspended the struggle. it was recommenced at dawn the following morning with unabated fury, and terminated in the rout of the confederates. garbatusa, the shield-bearer of the hittite prince, the generals in command of his infantry and chariotry, and khalupsaru, the �writer of books,� fell during the action. the chariots, driven back to the orontes, rushed into the river in the hope of fording it, but in so doing many lives were lost. mazraîma, the prince of khâti�s brother, reached the opposite bank in safety, but the chief of tonisa was drowned, and the lord of khalupu was dragged out of the water more dead than alive, and had to be held head downwards to disgorge the water he had swallowed before he could be restored to consciousness. [illustration: .jpg the garrison of qodshÛ issuing forth to help the prince of khÂti.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by bénédite. khâtusaru himself was on the point of perishing, when the troops which had been shut up in qodshû, together with the inhabitants, made a general sortie; the egyptians were for a moment held in check, and the fugitives meanwhile were able to enter the town. either there was insufficient provision for so many mouths, or the enemy had lost all heart from the disaster; at any rate, further resistance appeared useless. the next morning khâtusaru sent to propose a truce or peace to the victorious pharaoh. the egyptians had probably suffered at least as much as their adversaries, and perhaps regarded the eventuality of a siege with no small distaste; ramses, therefore, accepted the offers made to him and prepared to return to egypt. the fame of his exploits had gone before him, and he himself was not a little proud of the energy he had displayed on the day of battle. his predecessors had always shown themselves to be skilful generals and brave soldiers, but none of them had ever before borne, or all but borne, single-handed the brunt of an attack. ramses loaded his shield-bearer manna with rewards for having stood by him in the hour of danger, and ordered abundant provender and sumptuous harness for the good horses--�strength-in-thebaid� and �nûrît the satisfied�--who had drawn his chariot.* * a gold ring in the louvre bears in relief on its bezel two little horses; which are probably �strength-in-thebaid� and �nûrît satisfied.� he determined that the most characteristic episodes of the campaign--the beating of the spies, the surprise of the camp, the king�s repeated charges, the arrival of his veterans, the flight of the syrians, and the surrender of qodshû--should be represented on the walls and pylons of the temples. a poem in rhymed strophes in every case accompanies these records of his glory, whether at luxor, at the eamesseum, at the memnonium of abydos, or in the heart of nubia at abu simbel. the author of the poem must have been present during the campaign, or must have had the account of it from the lips of his sovereign, for his work bears no traces of the coldness of official reports, and a warlike strain runs through it from one end to the other, so as still to invest it with life after a lapse of more than thirty centuries.* * the author is unknown: pentaûr, or rather pentaûîrît, to whom e. de rougé attributed the poem, is merely the transcriber of the copy we possess on papyrus. but little pains are bestowed on the introduction, and the poet does not give free vent to his enthusiasm until the moment when he describes his hero, left almost alone, charging the enemy in the sight of his followers. the pharaoh was surrounded by two thousand five hundred chariots, and his retreat was cut off by the warriors of the �perverse� khâti and of the other nations who accompanied them--the peoples of arvad, mysia, and pedasos; each of their chariots contained three men, and the ranks were so serried that they formed but one dense mass. �no other prince was with me, no general officers, no one in command of the archers or chariots. my foot-soldiers deserted me, my charioteers fled before the foe, and not one of them stood firm beside me to fight against them.� then said his majesty: �who art thou, then, my father amon? a father who forgets his son? or have i committed aught against thee? have i not marched and halted according to thy command? when he does not violate thy orders, the lord of egypt is indeed great, and he overthrows the barbarians in his path! what are these asiatics to thy heart? amon will humiliate those who know not the god. have i not consecrated innumerable offerings to thee? filling thy holy dwelling-place with my prisoners, i build thee a temple for millions of years, i lavish all my goods on thy storehouses, i offer thee the whole world to enrich thy domains.... a miserable fate indeed awaits him who sets himself against thy will, but happy is he who finds favour with thee by deeds done for thee with a loving heart. i invoke thee, o my father amon! here am i in the midst of people so numerous that it cannot be known who are the nations joined together against me, and i am alone among them, none other is with me. my many soldiers have forsaken me, none of my charioteers looked towards me when i called them, not one of them heard my voice when i cried to them. but i find that amon is more to me than a million soldiers, than a hundred thousand charioteers, than a myriad of brothers or young sons, joined all together, for the number of men is as nothing, amon is greater than all of them. each time i have accomplished these things, amon, by the counsel of thy mouth, as i do not transgress thy orders, i rendered thee glory even to the ends of the earth.� so calm an invocation in the thick of the battle would appear misplaced in the mouth of an ordinary man, but pharaoh was a god, and the son of a god, and his actions and speeches cannot be measured by the same standard as that of a common mortal. he was possessed by the religious spirit in the hour of danger, and while his body continued to fight, his soul took wing to the throne of amon. he contemplates the lord of heaven face to face, reminds him of the benefits which he had received from him, and summons him to his aid with an imperiousness which betrays the sense of his own divine origin. the expected help was not delayed. �while the voice resounds in hermonthis, amon arises at my behest, he stretches out his hand to me, and i cry out with joy when he hails me from behind: �face to face with thee, face to face with thee, ramses miamun, i am with thee! it is i, thy father! my hand is with thee, and i am worth more to thee than hundreds of thousands. i am the strong one who loves valour; i have beheld in thee a courageous heart, and my heart is satisfied; my will is about to be accomplished!� i am like montû; from the right i shoot with the dart, from the left i seize the enemy. i am like baal in his hour, before them; i have encountered two thousand five hundred chariots, and as soon as i am in their midst, they are overthrown before my mares. not one of all these people has found a hand wherewith to fight; their hearts sink within their breasts, fear paralyses their limbs; they know not how to throw their darts, they have no strength to hold their lances. i precipitate them into the water like as the crocodile plunges therein; they are prostrate face to the earth, one upon the other, and i slay in the midst of them, for i have willed that not one should look behind him, nor that one should return; he who falls rises not again.� this sudden descent of the god has, even at the present day, an effect upon the reader, prepared though he is by his education to consider it as a literary artifice; but on the egyptian, brought up to regard amon with boundless reverence, its influence was irresistible. the prince of the khâti, repulsed at the very moment when he was certain of victory, �recoiled with terror. he sends against the enemy the various chiefs, followed by their chariots and skilled warriors,--the chiefs of arvad, lycia, and ilion, the leaders of the lycians and dardanians, the lords of carchemish, of the girgashites, and of khalupu; these allies of the khâti, all together, comprised three thousand chariots.� their efforts, however, were in vain. �i fell upon them like montû, my hand devoured them in the space of a moment, in the midst of them i hewed down and slew. they said one to another: �this is no man who is amongst us; it is sûtkhû the great warrior, it is baal incarnate! these are not human actions which he accomplishes: alone, by himself, he repulses hundreds of thousands, without leaders or men. up, let us flee before him, let us seek to save our lives, and let us breathe again!�� when at last, towards evening, the army again rallies round the king, and finds the enemy completely defeated, the men hang their heads with mingled shame and admiration as the pharaoh reproaches them: �what will the whole earth say when it is known that you left me alone, and without any to succour me? that not a prince, not a charioteer, not a captain of archers, was found to place his hand in mine? i fought, i repulsed millions of people by myself alone. �victory-in-thebes� and �nûrît satisfied� were my glorious horses; it was they that i found under my hand when i was alone in the midst of the quaking foe. i myself will cause them to take their food before me, each day, when i shall be in my palace, for i was with them when i was in the midst of the enemy, along with the prince manna my shield-bearer, and with the officers of my house who accompanied me, and who are my witnesses for the combat; these are those whom i was with. i have returned after a victorious struggle, and i have smitten with my sword the assembled multitudes.� the ordeal was a terrible one for the khâti; but when the first moment of defeat was over, they again took courage and resumed the campaign. this single effort had not exhausted their resources, and they rapidly filled up the gaps which had been made in their ranks. the plains of naharaim and the mountains of cilicia supplied them with fresh chariots and foot-soldiers in the place of those they had lost, and bands of mercenaries were furnished from the table-lands of asia minor, so that when ramses ii. reappeared in syria, he found himself confronted by a completely fresh army. khâtusaru, having profited by experience, did not again attempt a general engagement, but contented himself with disputing step by step the upper valleys of the litany and orontes. meantime his emissaries spread themselves over phoenicia and kharû, sowing the seeds of rebellion, often only too successfully. in the king�s viiith year there was a general rising in galilee, and its towns--galaput in the hill-country of bît-aniti, merorn, shalama, dapur, and anamaîm*--had to be reduced one after another. * episodes from this war are represented at karnak. the list of the towns taken, now much mutilated, comprised twenty- four names, which proves the importance of the revolt. dapur was the hardest to carry. it crowned the top of a rocky eminence, and was protected by a double wall, which followed the irregularities of the hillside. it formed a rallying-point for a large force, which had to be overcome in the open country before the investment of the town could be attempted. the siege was at last brought to a conclusion, after a series of skirmishes, and the town taken by scaling, four egyptian princes having been employed in conducting the attack. in the pharaoh�s ixth year a revolt broke out on the egyptian frontier, in the shephelah, and the king placed himself at the head of his troops to crush it. ascalon, in which the peasantry and their families had found, as they hoped, a safe refuge, opened its gates to the pharaoh, and its fall brought about the submission of several neighbouring places. this, it appears, was the first time since the beginning of the conquests in syria that the inhabitants of these regions attempted to take up arms, and we may well ask what could have induced them thus to renounce their ancient loyalty. their defection reduced egypt for the moment almost to her natural frontiers. peace had scarcely been resumed when war again broke out with fresh violence in coele-syria, and one year it reached even to naharaim, and raged around tunipa as in the days of thûtmosis iii. �pharaoh assembled his foot-soldiers and chariots, and he commanded his foot-soldiers and his chariots to attack the perverse khâti who were in the neighbourhood of tunipa, and he put on his armour and mounted his chariot, and he waged battle against the town of the perverse khâti at the head of his foot-soldiers and his chariots, covered with his armour;� the fortress, however, did not yield till the second attack. ramses carried his arms still further afield, and with such results, that, to judge merely from the triumphal lists engraved on the walls of the temple of karnak, the inhabitants on the banks of the euphrates, those in carchemish, mitanni, singar, assyria, and mannus found themselves once more at the mercy of the egyptian battalions. these victories, however brilliant, were not decisive; if after any one of them the princes of assyria and singar may have sent presents to the pharaoh, the hittites, on the other hand, did not consider themselves beaten, and it was only after fifteen campaigns that they were at length sufficiently subdued to propose a treaty. at last, in the egyptian king�s xxist year, on the st of the month tybi, when the pharaoh, then residing in his good town of anakhîtû, was returning from the temple where he had been offering prayers to his father amon-eâ, to harmakhis of heliopolis, to phtah, and to sûtkhû the valiant son of nûît, eamses, one of the �messengers� who filled the office of lieutenant for the king in asia, arrived at the palace and presented to him tartisubu, who was authorised to make peace with egypt in the name of khâtusaru.* tartisubu carried in his hand a tablet of silver, on which his master had prescribed the conditions which appeared to him just and equitable. a short preamble recalling the alliances made between the ancestors of both parties, was followed by a declaration of friendship, and a reciprocal obligation to avoid in future all grounds of hostility. * the treaty of ramses ii. with the prince of the khâti was sculptured at karnak. not only was a perpetual truce declared between both peoples, but they agreed to help each other at the first demand. �should some enemy march against the countries subject to the great king of egypt, and should he send to the great prince of the khâti, saying: �come, bring me forces against them,� the great prince of the khâti shall do as he is asked by the great king of egypt, and the great prince of the khâti shall destroy his enemies. and if the great prince of the khâti shall prefer not to come himself, he shall send his archers and his chariots to the great king of egypt to destroy his enemies.� a similar clause ensured aid in return from ramses to khâtusaru, �his brother,� while two articles couched in identical terms made provision against the possibility of any town or tribe dependent on either of the two sovereigns withdrawing its allegiance and placing it in the hands of the other party. in this case the egyptians as well as the hittites engaged not to receive, or at least not to accept, such offers, but to refer them at once to the legitimate lord. the whole treaty was placed under the guarantee of the gods both, of egypt and of the khâti, whose names were given at length: �whoever shall fail to observe the stipulations, let the thousand gods of khâti and the thousand gods of egypt strike his house, his land, and his servants. but he who shall observe the stipulations engraved on the tablet of silver, whether he belong to the hittite people or whether he belong to the people of egypt, as he has not neglected them, may the thousand gods of khâti and the thousand gods of egypt give him health, and grant that he may prosper, himself, the people of his house, and also his land and his servants.� the treaty itself ends by a description of the plaque of silver on which it was engraved. it was, in fact, a facsimile in metal of one of those clay tablets on which the chaldæans inscribed their contracts. the preliminary articles occupied the upper part in closely written lines of cuneiform characters, while in the middle, in a space left free for the purpose, was the impress of two seals, that of the prince of the khâti and of his wife pûûkhîpa. khâtusaru was represented on them as standing upright in the arms of sûtkhû, while around the two figures ran the inscription, �seal of sûtkhû, the sovereign of heaven.� pûûkhîpa leaned on the breast of a god, the patron of her native town of aranna in qaauadana, and the legend stated that this was the seal of the sun of the town of Àranna, the regent of the earth. the text of the treaty was continued beneath, and probably extended to the other side of the tablet. the original draft had terminated after the description of the seals, but, to satisfy the pharaoh, certain additional articles were appended for the protection of the commerce and industry of the two countries, for the prevention of the emigration of artisans, and for ensuring that steps taken against them should be more effectual and less cruel. any criminal attempting to evade the laws of his country, and taking refuge in that of the other party to the agreement, was to be expelled without delay and consigned to the officers of his lord; any fugitive not a criminal, any subject carried off or detained by force, any able artisan quitting either territory to take up permanent residence in the other, was to be conducted to the frontier, but his act of folly was not to expose him to judicial condemnation. �he who shall thus act, his fault shall not be brought up against him; his house shall not be touched, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not have his throat cut, nor shall his eyes be touched, nor his mouth, nor his feet; no criminal accusation shall be made against him.� this treaty is the most ancient of all those of which the text has come down to us; its principal conditions were--perfect equality and reciprocity between the contracting sovereigns, an offensive and defensive alliance, and the extradition of criminals and refugees. the original was drawn up in chaldæan script by the scribes of khâtusaru, probably on the model of former conventions between the pharaohs and the asiatic courts, and to this the egyptian ministers had added a few clauses relative to the pardon of emigrants delivered up by one or other of the contracting parties. when, therefore, tartisubu arrived in the city of eamses, the acceptance of the treaty was merely a matter of form, and peace was virtually concluded. it did not confer on the conqueror the advantages which we might have expected from his successful campaigns: it enjoined, on the contrary, the definite renunciation of those countries, mitanni, naharaim, alasia, and amurru, over which thûtmosis iii. and his immediate successors had formerly exercised an effective sovereignty. sixteen years of victories had left matters in the same state as they were after the expedition of harmhabî, and, like his predecessor, ramses was able to retain merely those asiatic provinces which were within the immediate influence of egypt, such as the phoenician coast proper, kharû, persea beyond jordan, the oases of the arabian desert, and the peninsula of sinai.* * the _anastasi papyrus i_. mentions a place called _zaru of sesostris_, in the neighbourhood of aleppo, in a part of syria which was not in egyptian territory: the frontier in this locality must have passed between arvad and byblos on the coast, and between qodshû and hazor from merom inland. egyptian rule on the other side of the jordan seems to be proved by the monument discovered a few years ago in the haurân, and known under the name of the �stone of job� by the bedawîn of the neighbourhood. this apparently unsatisfactory result, after such supreme efforts, was, however, upon closer examination, not so disappointing. for more than half a century at least, since the hittite kingdom had been developed and established under the impulse given to it by sapalulu, everything had been in its favour. the campaign of seti had opposed merely a passing obstacle to its expansion, and had not succeeded in discouraging its ambitions, for its rulers still nursed the hope of being able one day to conquer syria as far as the isthmus. the check received at qodshû, the abortive attempts to foment rebellion in galilee and the shephelah, the obstinate persistence with which ramses and his army returned year after year to the attack, the presence of the enemy at tunipa, on the banks of the euphrates, and in the provinces then forming the very centre of the hittite kingdom--in short, all the incidents of this long struggle--at length convinced khâtusaru that he was powerless to extend his rule in this direction at the expense of egypt. moreover, we have no knowledge of the events which occupied him on the other frontiers of his kingdom, where he may have been engaged at the same time in a conflict with assyria, or in repelling an incursion of the tribes on the black sea. the treaty with pharaoh, if made in good faith and likely to be lasting, would protect the southern extremities of his kingdom, and allow of his removing the main body of his forces to the north and east in case of attack from either of these quarters. the security which such an alliance would ensure made it, therefore, worth his while to sue for peace, even if the egyptians should construe his overtures as an acknowledgment of exhausted supplies or of inferiority of strength. ramses doubtless took it as such, and openly displayed on the walls at karnak and in the eamesseum a copy of the treaty so flattering to his pride, but the indomitable resistance which he had encountered had doubtless given rise to reflections resembling those of khâtusaru, and he had come to realise that it was his own interest not to lightly forego the good will of the khâti. egypt had neighbours in africa who were troublesome though not dangerous: the timihû, the tihonu, the mashûasha, the negroes of kûsh and of pûanît, might be a continual source of annoyance and disturbance, even though they were incapable of disturbing her supremacy. the coast of the delta, it is true, was exposed to the piracy of northern nations, but up to that time this had been merely a local trouble, easy to meet if not to obviate altogether. the only real danger was on the asiatic side, arising from empires of ancient constitution like chaldæa, or from hordes who, arriving at irregular intervals from the north, and carrying all before them, threatened, after the example of the hyksôs, to enter the delta. the hittite kingdom acted as a kind of buffer between the nile valley and these nations, both civilized and barbarous; it was a strongly armed force on the route of the invaders, and would henceforth serve as a protecting barrier, through which if the enemy were able to pass it would only be with his strength broken or weakened by a previous encounter. the sovereigns loyally observed the peace which they had sworn to each other, and in his xxxivth year the marriage of ramses with the eldest daughter of khâtusaru strengthened their friendly relations. [illustration: .jpg khÂtusaru, prince of khÂti, and his daughter] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plate in lepsius; the triad worshipped by khâtusaru and his daughter is composed of ramses ii., seated between amon-râ and phtah-totûnen. pharaoh was not a little proud of this union, and he has left us a naive record of the manner in which it came about. the inscription is engraved on the face of the rock at abu simbel in nubia; and ramses begins by boasting, in a heroic strain, of his own energy and exploits, of the fear with which his victories inspired the whole world, and of the anxiety of the syrian kinglets to fulfil his least wishes. the prince of the khâti had sent him sumptuous presents at every opportunity, and, not knowing how further to make himself agreeable to the pharaoh, had finally addressed the great lords of his court, and reminded them how their country had formerly been ruined by war, how their master sûtkhû had taken part against them, and how they had been delivered from their ills by the clemency of the sun of egypt. �let us therefore take our goods, and placing my eldest daughter at the head of them, let us repair to the domains of the great god, so that the king sesostris may recognise us.� he accordingly did as he had proposed, and the embassy set out with gold and silver, valuable horses, and an escort of soldiers, together with cattle and provisions to supply them with food by the way. when they reached the borders of khâru, the governor wrote immediately to the pharaoh as follows: �here is the prince of the khâti, who brings his eldest daughter with a number of presents of every kind; and now this princess and the chief of the country of the khâti, after having crossed many mountains and undertaken a difficult journey from distant parts, have arrived at the frontiers of his majesty. may we be instructed how we ought to act with regard to them.� the king was then in residence at ramses. when the news reached him, he officially expressed his great joy at the event, since it was a thing unheard of in the annals of the country that so powerful a prince should go to such personal inconvenience in order to marry his daughter to an ally. the pharaoh, therefore, despatched his nobles and an army to receive them, but he was careful to conceal the anxiety which he felt all the while, and, according to custom, took counsel of his patron god sûtkhû: �who are these people who come with a message at this time to the country of zahi?� the oracle, however, reassured him as to their intentions, and he thereupon hastened to prepare for their proper reception. the embassy made a triumphal entry into the city, the princess at its head, escorted by the egyptian troops told off for the purpose, together with the foot-soldiers and charioteers of the khâti, comprising the flower of their army and militia. a solemn festival was held in their honour, in which food and drink were served without stint, and was concluded by the celebration of the marriage in the presence of the egyptian lords and of the princes of the whole earth.* * the fact of the marriage is known to us by the decree of phtah totûnen at abu simbel in the xxxvth year of the king�s reign. the account of it in the text is taken from the stele at abu simbel. the last lines are so mutilated that i have been obliged to paraphrase them. the stele of the princess of bakhtan has preserved the romantic version of this marriage, such as was current about the saite period. the king of the khâti must have taken advantage of the expedition which the pharaoh made into asia to send him presents by an embassy, at the head of which he placed his eldest daughter: the princess found favour with ramses, who married her. ramses, unwilling to relegate a princess of such noble birth to the companionship of his ordinary concubines, granted her the title of queen, as if she were of solar blood, and with the cartouche gave her the new name of Ûirimaûnofîrurî--�she who sees the beauties of the sun.� she figures henceforth in the ceremonies and on the monuments in the place usually occupied by women of egyptian race only, and these unusual honours may have compensated, in the eyes of the young princess, for the disproportion in age between herself and a veteran more than sixty years old. the friendly relations between the two courts became so intimate that the pharaoh invited his father-in-law to visit him in his own country. �the great prince of khâti informed the prince of qodi: �prepare thyself that we may go down into egypt. the word of the king has gone forth, let us obey sesostris. he gives the breath of life to those who love him; hence all the earth loves him, and khâti forms but one with him.�� they were received with pomp at ramses-anakhîtû, and perhaps at thebes. it was with a mixture of joy and astonishment that egypt beheld her bitterest foe become her most faithful ally, �and the men of qimît having but one heart with the chiefs of the khâti, a thing which had not happened since the ages of pa.� the half-century following the conclusion of this alliance was a period of world-wide prosperity. syria was once more able to breathe freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. not only caravans, but isolated travellers, were able to pass through the country from north to south without incurring any risks beyond those occasioned by an untrustworthy guide or a few highwaymen. it became in time a common task in the schools of thebes to describe the typical syrian tour of some soldier or functionary, and we still possess one of these imaginative stories in which the scribe takes his hero from qodshû across the lebanon to byblos, berytus, tyre, and sidon, �the fish� of which latter place �are more numerous than the grains of sand;� he then makes him cross galilee and the forest of oaks to jaffa, climb the mountains of the dead sea, and following the maritime route by raphia, reach pelusium. the egyptian galleys thronged the phoenician ports, while those of phoenicia visited egypt. the latter drew so little water that they had no difficulty in coming up the nile, and the paintings in one of the tombs represent them at the moment of their reaching thebes. the hull of these vessels was similar to that of the nile boats, but the bow and stern were terminated by structures which rose at right angles, and respectively gave support to a sort of small platform. upon this the pilot maintained his position by one of those wondrous feats of equilibrium of which the orientals were masters. [illustration: .jpg phoenician boats landing at thebes] drawn by boudier, from the photograph published by daressy. an open rail ran round the sides of the vessel, so as to prevent goods stowed upon the deck from falling into the sea when the vessel lurched. voyages to pûanît were undertaken more frequently in quest of incense and precious metals. the working of the mines of akiti had been the source of considerable outlay at the beginning of the reign. the measures taken by seti to render the approaches to them practicable at all seasons had not produced the desired results; as far back as the iiird year of ramses the overseers of the south had been forced to acknowledge that the managers of the convoys could no longer use any of the cisterns which had been hewn and built at such great expense. �half of them die of thirst, together with their asses, for they have no means of carrying a sufficient number of skins of water to last during the journey there and back.� the friends and officers whose advice had been called in, did not doubt for a moment that the king would be willing to complete the work which his father had merely initiated. �if thou sayest to the water, �come upon the mountain,� the heavenly waters will spring out at the word of thy mouth, for thou art râ incarnate, khopri visibly created, thou art the living image of thy father tûmû, the heliopolitan.�--�if thou thyself sayest to thy father the nile, father of the gods,� added the viceroy of ethiopia, ��raise the water up to the mountain,� he will do all that thou hast said, for so it has been with all thy projects which have been accomplished in our presence, of which the like has never been heard, even in the songs of the poets.� the cisterns and wells were thereupon put into such a condition that the transport of gold was rendered easy for years to come. the war with the khâti had not suspended building and other works of public utility; and now, owing to the establishment of peace, the sovereign was able to devote himself entirely to them. he deepened the canal at zalû; he repaired the walls and the fortified places which protected the frontier on the side of the sinaitic peninsula, and he built or enlarged the strongholds along the nile at those points most frequently threatened by the incursions of nomad tribes. ramses was the royal builder _par excellence_, and we may say without fear of contradiction that, from the second cataract to the mouths of the nile, there is scarcely an edifice on whose ruins we do not find his name. in nubia, where the desert approaches close to the nile, he confined himself to cutting in the solid rock the monuments which, for want of space, he could not build in the open. the idea of the cave-temple must have occurred very early to the egyptians; they were accustomed to house their dead in the mountain-side, why then should they not house their gods in the same manner? the oldest forms of speos, those near to beni-hasan, at deîr el-baharî, at bl-kab, and at gebel silsileh, however, do not date further back than the time of the xviiith dynasty. all the forms of architectural plan observed in isolated temples were utilised by ramses and applied to rock-cut buildings with more or less modification, according to the nature of the stratum in which he had to work. where space permitted, a part only of the temple was cut in the rock, and the approaches to it were built in the open air with blocks brought to the spot, so that the completed speos became only in part a grotto--a hemi-speos of varied construction. it was in this manner that the architects of ramses arranged the court and pylon at beît-wally, the hypostyle hall, rectangular court and pylon at gerf-hosseîn, and the avenue of sphinxes at wady es-sebuah, where the entrance to the avenue was guarded by two statues overlooking the river. the pylon at gerf-hosseîn has been demolished, and merely a few traces of the foundations appear here and there above the soil, but a portion of the portico which surrounded the court is still standing, together with its massive architraves and statues, which stand with their backs against the pillars. [illustration: .jpg the projecting columns of the speos of gerf-hosseÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger. the sanctuary itself comprised an antechamber, supported by two columns and flanked by two oblong recesses; this led into the holy of holies, which was a narrow niche with a low ceiling, placed between two lateral chapels. a hall, nearly square in shape, connected these mysterious chambers with the propylæa, which were open to the sky and faced with osiride caryatides. [illustration: .jpg the caryatides of gerf-hosseÎn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. these appear to keep rigid and solemn watch over the approaches to the tabernacle, and their faces, half hidden in the shadow, still present such a stern appearance that the semi-barbaric nubians of the neighbouring villages believe them to be possessed by implacable genii. they are supposed to move from their places during the hours of night, and the fire which flashes from their eyes destroys or fascinates whoever is rash enough to watch them. other kings before ramses had constructed buildings in these spots, and their memory would naturally become associated with his in the future; he wished, therefore, to find a site where he would be without a rival, and to this end he transformed the cliff at abu simbel into a monument of his greatness. the rocks here project into the nile and form a gigantic conical promontory, the face of which was covered with triumphal stelæ, on which the sailors or troops going up or down the river could spell out as they passed the praises of the king and his exploits. a few feet of shore on the northern side, covered with dry and knotty bushes, affords in winter a landing-place for tourists. at the spot where the beach ends near the point of the promontory, sit four colossi, with their feet nearly touching the water, their backs leaning against a sloping wall of rock, which takes the likeness of a pylon. a band of hieroglyphs runs above their heads underneath the usual cornice, over which again is a row of crouching cynocephali looking straight before them, their hands resting upon their knees, and above this line of sacred images rises the steep and naked rock. one of the colossi is broken, and the bust of the statue, which must have been detached by some great shock, has fallen to the ground; the others rise to the height of feet, and appear to look across the nile as if watching the wadys leading to the gold-mines. [illustration .jpg the two colossi of abu simbel to the south of the doorway] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. the pschent crown surmounts their foreheads, and the two ends of the head-dress fall behind their ears; their features are of a noble type, calm and serious; the nose slightly aquiline, the under lip projecting above a square, but rather heavy, chin. of such a type we may picture ramses, after the conclusion of the peace with the khâti, in the full vigour of his manhood and at the height of his power. [illustration: .jpg the interior of the speos of abu simbel] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger and daniel héron. the doorway of the temple is in the centre of the façade, and rises nearly to a level with the elbows of the colossi; above the lintel, and facing the river, stands a figure of the god râ, represented with a human body and the head of a sparrow-hawk, while two images of the king in profile, one on each side of the god, offer him a figure of truth. the first hall, feet long by feet broad, takes the place of the court surrounded by a colonnade which in other temples usually follows the pylon. her eight osiride figures, standing against as many square pillars, appear to support the weight of the superincumbent rock. their profile catches the light as it enters through the open doorway, and in the early morning, when the rising sun casts a ruddy ray over their features, their faces become marvellously life-like. we are almost tempted to think that a smile plays over their lips as the first beams touch them. the remaining chambers consist of a hypostyle hall nearly square in shape, the sanctuary itself being between two smaller apartments, and of eight subterranean chambers excavated at a lower level than the rest of the temple. the whole measures feet from the threshold to the far end of the holy of holies. the walls are covered with bas-reliefs in which the pharaoh has vividly depicted the wars which he carried on in the four corners of his kingdom; here we see raids against the negroes, there the war with the khâti, and further on an encounter with some libyan tribe. ramses, flushed by the heat of victory, is seen attacking two timihu chiefs: one has already fallen to the ground and is being trodden underfoot; the other, after vainly letting fly his arrows, is about to perish from a blow of the conqueror. [illustration: .jpg the face of the rock at abu simgel] his knees give way beneath him, his head falls heavily backwards, and the features are contracted in his death-agony. pharaoh with his left hand has seized him by the arm, while with his right he points his lance against his enemy�s breast, and is about to pierce him through the heart. as a rule, this type of bas-relief is executed with a conventional grace which leaves the spectator unmoved, and free to consider the scene merely from its historical point of view, forgetful of the artist. [illustration: .jpg ramses ii. pierces a libyan chief with his lance] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by mons. do bock. an examination of most of the other wall-decorations of the speos will furnish several examples of this type: we see ramses with a suitable gesture brandishing his weapon above a group of prisoners, and the composition furnishes us with a fair example of official sculpture, correct, conventional, but devoid of interest. here, on the contrary, the drawing is so full of energy that it carries the imagination hack to the time and scene of those far-off battles. [illustration: .jpg ramses ii. strikes a group of prisoners] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by insinger. the indistinct light in which it is seen helps the illusion, and we almost forget that it is a picture we are beholding, and not the action itself as it took place some three thousand years ago. a small speos, situated at some hundred feet further north, is decorated with standing colossi of smaller size, four of which represent ramses, and two of them his wife, isit nofrîtari. this speos possesses neither peristyle nor crypt, and the chapels are placed at the two extremities of the transverse passage, instead of being in a parallel line with the sanctuary; on the other hand, the hypostyle hall rests on six pillars with hathor-headed capitals of fine proportions. [illustration: .jpg the faÇade of the little speos of hauthor at abu simbel] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the plates in champollion. a third excavated grotto of modest dimensions served as an accessory chamber to the two others. an inexhaustible stream of yellow sand poured over the great temple from the summit of the cliff, and partially covered it every year. no sooner were the efforts to remove it relaxed, than it spreads into the chambers, concealing the feet of the colossi, and slowly creeping upwards to their knees, breasts, and necks; at the beginning of this century they were entirely hidden. in spite of all that was done to divert it, it ceaselessly reappeared, and in a few summers regained all the ground which had been previously cleared. it would seem as if the desert, powerless to destroy the work of the conqueror, was seeking nevertheless to hide it from the admiration of posterity.* * the english engineers have succeeded in barring out the sand, and have prevented it from pouring over the cliff any more.--ed. seti had worked indefatigably at thebes, but the shortness of his reign prevented him from completing the buildings he had begun there. there existed everywhere, at luxor, at karnak, and on the left bank of the nile, the remains of his unfinished works; sanctuaries partially roofed in, porticoes incomplete, columns raised to merely half their height, halls as yet imperfect with blank walls, here and there covered with only the outlines in red and black ink of their future bas-reliefs, and statues hardly blocked out, or awaiting the final touch of the polisher.* * this is the description which ramses gave of the condition in which he found the memnonium of abydos. an examination of the inscriptions existing in the theban temples which seti i. had constructed, shows that it must have applied also to the appearance of certain portions of qurneh, luxor, and karnak in the time of ramses ii. ramses took up the work where his father had relinquished it. at luxor there was not enough space to give to the hypostyle hall the extension which the original plans proposed, and the great colonnade has an unfinished appearance. [illustration: .jpg columns of temple at luxor] the nile, in one of its capricious floods, had carried away the land upon which the architects had intended to erect the side aisles; and if they wished to add to the existing structure a great court and a pylon, without which no temple was considered complete, it was necessary to turn the axis of the building towards the east. [illustration: .jpg the chapel of thutmosis iii. and one of the pylons of ramses ii. at luxor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. in their operations the architects came upon a beautiful little edifice of rose granite, which had been either erected or restored by thûtmosis iii. at a time when the town was an independent municipality and was only beginning to extend its suburban dwellings to meet those of karnak. they took care to make no change in this structure, but set to work to incorporate it into their final plans. it still stands at the north-west corner of the court, and the elegance of its somewhat slender little columns contrasts happily with the heaviness of the structure to which it is attached. a portion of its portico is hidden by the brickwork of the mosque of abu�l haggag: the part brought to light in the course of the excavations contains between each row of columns a colossal statue of ramses ii. we are accustomed to hear on all sides of the degeneracy of the sculptor�s art at this time, and of its having fallen into irreparable neglect. nothing can be further from the truth than this sweeping statement. there are doubtless many statues and bas-reliefs of this epoch which shock us by their crudity and ugliness, but these owed their origin for the most part to provincial workshops which had been at all times of mediocre repute, and where the artists did not receive orders enough to enable them to correct by practice the defects of their education. we find but few productions of the theban school exhibiting bad technique, and if we had only this one monument of luxor from which to form our opinion of its merits, it would be sufficient to prove that the sculptors of ramses ii. were not a whit behind those of harmham or seti i. adroitness in cutting the granite or hard sandstone had in no wise been lost, and the same may be said of the skill in bringing out the contour and life-like action of the figure, and of the art of infusing into the features and demeanour of the pharaoh something of the superhuman majesty with which the egyptian people were accustomed to invest their monarchs. if the statues of ramses ii. in the portico are not perfect models of sculpture, they have many good points, and their bold treatment makes them effectively decorative. [illustration: .jpg the colonnade of seti i. and the three colossal statues of ramses ii. at luxor] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. eight other statues of ramses are arranged along the base of the façade, and two obelisks--one of which has been at paris for half a century*--stood on either side of the entrance. * the colonnade and the little temple of thûtmosis iii. were concealed under the houses of the village; they were first brought to light in the excavations of - . the whole structure lacks unity, and there is nothing corresponding to it in this respect anywhere else in egypt. the northern half does not join on to the southern, but seems to belong to quite a distinct structure, or the two parts might be regarded as having once formed a single edifice which had become divided by an accident, which the architect had endeavoured to unite together again by a line of columns running between two walls. the masonry of the hypostyle hall at karnak was squared and dressed, but the walls had been left undecorated, as was also the case with the majority of the shafts of the columns and the surface of the architraves. ramses covered the whole with a series of sculptured and painted scenes which had a rich ornamental effect; he then decorated the pylon, and inscribed on the outer wall to the south the list of cities which he had captured. the temple of amon then assumed the aspect which it preserved henceforward for centuries. the ramessides and their successors occupied themselves in filling it with furniture, and in taking steps for the repair of any damage that might accrue to the hall or pillars; they had their cartouches or inscriptions placed in vacant spaces, but they did not dare to modify its arrangement. it was reserved for the ethiopian and greek pharaohs, in presence of the hypostyle and pylon of the xixth dynasty, to conceive of others on a still vaster scale. [illustration: .jpg paintings of chairs] ramses, having completed the funerary chapel of seti at qurneh upon the left bank of the river, then began to think of preparing the edifice destined for the cult of his �double�--that eamesseum whose majestic ruins still stand at a short distance to the north of the giants of amenôthes. did these colossal statues stimulate his spirit of emulation to do something yet more marvellous? he erected here, at any rate, a still more colossal figure. the earthquake which shattered memnon brought it to the ground, and fragments of it still strew the soil where they fell some nineteen centuries ago. there are so many of them that the spectator would think himself in the middle of a granite quarry.* * the ear measures feet inches (feet ?) in length; the statue is feet high from the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and the weight of the whole has been estimated at over a thousand tons. [illustration: .jpg the remains of the colossal statue of ramses ii. at the ramesseum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato the portions forming the breast, arms, and thighs are in detached pieces, but they are still recognisable where they lie close to each other. the head has lost nothing of its characteristic expression, and its proportions are so enormous, that a man could sleep crouched up in the hollow of one of its ears as if on a sofa. behind the court overlooked by this colossal statue lay a second court, surrounded by a row of square pillars, each having a figure of osiris attached to it. the god is represented as a mummy, the swathings throwing the body and limbs into relief. [illustration: .jpg the ramesseum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato; the great blocks in the foreground are the fragments of the colossal statue of ramses ii. his hands are freed from the bandages and are crossed on the breast, and hold respectively the flail and crook; the smiling face is surmounted by an enormous head-dress. the sanctuary with the buildings attached to it has perished, but enormous brick structures extend round the ruins, forming an enclosure of storehouses. here the priests of the �double� were accustomed to dwell with their wives and slaves, and here they stored up the products of their domains--meat, vegetables, corn, fowls dried or preserved in fat, and wines procured from all the vineyards of egypt. these were merely the principal monuments put up by ramses ii. at thebes during the sixty-seven years of his rule. there would be no end to the enumeration of his works if we were to mention all the other edifices which he constructed in the necropolis or among the dwellings of the living, all those which he restored, or those which he merely repaired or inscribed with his cartouches. these are often cut over the name of the original founder, and his usurpations of monuments are so numerous that he might be justly accused of having striven to blot out the memory of his predecessors, and of claiming for himself the entire work of the whole line of pharaohs. it would seem as if, in his opinion, the glory of egypt began with him, or at least with his father, and that no victorious campaigns had been ever heard of before those which he conducted against the libyans and the hittites. the battle of qodshû, with its attendant episodes--the flogging of the spies, the assault upon the camp, the charge of the chariots, the flight of the syrians--is the favourite subject of his inscriptions; and the poem of pentaûîrît adds to the bas-reliefs a description worthy of the acts represented. this epic reappears everywhere, in nubia and in the said, at abu simbel, at beît-wally, at derr, at luxor, at karnak, and on the eamesseum, and the same battle-scenes, with the same accompanying texts, reappear in the memnonium, whose half-ruined walls still crown the necropolis of abydos. [illustration: .jpg the ruins of the memnonium of ramses ii. at abydos] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by emil brugsch-bey. he had decided upon the erection of this latter monument at the very beginning of his reign, and the artisans who had worked at the similar structure of seti i. were employed to cover its walls with admirable bas-reliefs. ramses also laid claim to have his own resting-place at �the cleft;� in this privilege he associated all the pharaohs, from whom he imagined himself to be descended, and the same list of their names, which we find engraved in the chapel of his father, appears on his building also. some ruins, lying beyond abydos, are too formless to do more than indicate the site of some of his structures. he enlarged the temple of harshafîtû and that of osiris at heracleopolis, and, to accomplish these works the more promptly, his workmen had recourse for material to the royal towns of the ivth and xiith dynasties; the pyramids of usirtasen ii. and snofrûi at medûm suffered accordingly the loss of the best part of their covering. he finished the mausoleum at memphis, and dedicated the statue which seti had merely blocked out; he then set to work to fill the city with buildings of his own device--granite and sandstone chambers to the east of the sacred lake,* monumental gateways to the south,** and before one of them a fine colossal figure in granite.*** it lay not long ago at the bottom of a hole among the palm trees, and was covered by the inundation every year; it has now been so raised as to be safe from the waters. ramses could hardly infuse new life into all the provinces which had been devastated years before by the shepherd-kings; but heliopolis,**** bubastes, athribis, patûmû, mendis, tell moqdam, and all the cities of the eastern corner of the delta, constitute a museum of his monuments, every object within them testifying to his activity. * partly excavated and published by mariette, and partly by m. de morgan. this is probably the temple mentioned in the _great inscription of abu simbel_. ** these are probably those mentioned by herodotus, when he says that sesostris constructed a propylon in the temple of hephaistos. *** this is abu- -hôl of the arabs. **** ruins of the temple of râ bear the cartouche of ramses ii. �cleopatra�s needle,� transported to alexandria by one of the ptolemies, had been set up by ramses at heliopolis; it is probably one of the four obelisks which the traditional sesostris is said to have erected in that city, according to pliny. he colonised these towns with his prisoners, rebuilt them, and set to work to rouse them from the torpor into which they had fallen after their capture by ahmosis. he made a third capital of tanis, which rivalled both memphis and thebes. [illustration: .jpg the colossal statue of ramses ii. at mitrahineh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph brought back by bénédite. before this it had been little more than a deserted ruin: he cleared out the _débris_, brought a population to the place; rebuilt the temple, enlarging it by aisles which extended its area threefold; and here he enthroned, along with the local divinities, a triad, in which amonrâ and sûtkhû sat side by side with his own deified �double.� the ruined walls, the overturned stelæ, the obelisks recumbent in the dust, and the statues of his usurped predecessors, all bear his name. his colossal figure of statuary sandstone, in a sitting attitude like that at the eamesseum, projected from the chief court, and seemed to look down upon the confused ruin of his works.* * the fragments of the colossus were employed in the græco- roman period as building material, and used in the masonry of a boundary wall. we do not know how many wives he had in his harem, but one of the lists of his children which has come down to us enumerates, although mutilated at the end, one hundred and eleven sons, while of his daughters we know of fifty-five.* * the list of abydos enumerates thirty-three of his sons and thirty-two of his daughters, that of wady-sebua one hundred and eleven of his sons and fifty-one of his daughters; both lists are mutilated. the remaining lists for the most part record only some of the children living at the time they were drawn up, at derr, at the eamesseum, and at abu simbel. the majority of these were the offspring of mere concubines or foreign princesses, and possessed but a secondary rank in comparison with himself; but by his union with his sisters nofrîtari marîtmût and isîtnofrît, he had at least half a dozen sons and daughters who might aspire to the throne. death robbed him of several of these before an opportunity was open to them to succeed him, and among them amenhikhopshûf, amenhiunamif, and ramses, who had distinguished themselves in the campaign against the khâti; and some of his daughters--bitanîti, marîtamon, nibîttaûi--by becoming his wives lost their right to the throne. about the xxxth year of his reign, when he was close upon sixty, he began to think of an associate, and his choice rested on the eldest surviving son of his queen isîtnofrît, who was called khâmoîsît. this prince was born before the succession of his father, and had exhibited distinguished bravery under the walls of qodshu and at ascalon. when he was still very young he had been invested with the office of high priest of the memphite phtah, and thus had secured to him the revenues of the possessions of the god, which were the largest in all egypt after those of the theban anion. he had a great reputation for his knowledge of abstruse theological questions and of the science of magic--a later age attributing to him the composition of several books on magic giving directions for the invocation of spirits belonging to this world and the world beyond. he became the hero also of fantastic romances, in which it was related of him how, in consequence of his having stolen from the mummy of an old wizard the books of thot, he became the victim of possession by a sort of lascivious and sanguinary ghoul. ramses relieved himself of the cares of state by handing over to khâmoîsîfc the government of the country, without, however, conferring upon him the titles and insignia of royalty. the chief concern of khâmoîsît was to secure the scrupulous observance of the divine laws. he celebrated at silsilis the festivals of the inundation; he presided at the commemoration of his father�s apotheosis, and at the funeral rites of the apis who died in the xxxth year of the king�s reign. before his time each sacred bull had its separate tomb in a quarter of the memphite necropolis known to the greeks as the serapeion. the tomb was a small cone-roofed building erected on a square base, and containing only one chamber. khâmoîsît substituted for this a rock-tomb similar to those used by ordinary individuals. he had a tunnel cut in the solid rock to a depth of about a hundred yards, and on either side of this a chamber was prepared for each apis on its death, the masons closing up the wall after the installation of the mummy. his regency had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, when, the burden of government becoming too much for him, he was succeeded in the lvth year of ramses by his younger brother mînephtah, who was like himself a son of isîtnofrît.* mînephtah acted, during the first twelve years of his rule, for his father, who, having now almost attained the age of a hundred, passed peacefully away at thebes in the lxviii year of his reign, full of days and sated with glory.** he became the subject of legend almost before he had closed his eyes upon the world. * mînephtah was in the order of birth the thirteenth son of ramses ii. ** a passage on a stele of ramses iv. formally attributes to him a reign of sixty-seven years. i procured at koptos a stele of his year lxvi. [illustration: .jpg the chapel of the apis of amekÔthes iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by mariette. he had obtained brilliant successes during his life, and the scenes describing them were depicted in scores of places. popular fancy believed everything which he had related of himself, and added to this all that it knew of other kings, thus making him the pharaoh of pharaohs--the embodiment of all preceding monarchs. legend preferred to recall him by the name sesûsû, sesûstûrî--a designation which had been applied to him by his contemporaries, and he thus became better known to moderns as sesostris than by his proper name ramses mîamûn.* * this designation, which is met with at medinet-habu and in the anmtasi papyrus i., was shown by e. de rougé to refer to ramses ii.; the various readings sesû, sesûsû, sesûstûrî, explain the different forms sesosis, sesoosis, sesostris. wiedemann saw in this name the mention of a king of the xviiith dynasty not yet classified. according to tradition, he was at first sent to ethiopia with a fleet of four hundred ships, by which he succeeded in conquering the coasts of the red sea as far as the indus. in later times several stelæ in the cinnamon country were ascribed to him. he is credited after this with having led into the east a great army, with which he conquered syria, media, persia, bactriana, and india as far as the ocean; and with having on his return journey through the deserts of scythia reached the don [tanais], where, on the shore of the masotic sea, he left a number of his soldiers, whose descendants afterwards peopled colchis. it was even alleged that he had ventured into europe, but that the lack of provisions and the inclemency of the climate had prevented him from advancing further than thrace. [illustration: .jpg statue of khamoisit] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a statue in the british museum. he returned to egypt after an absence of nine years, and after having set up on his homeward journey statues and stelæ everywhere in commemoration of his victories. herodotus asserts that he himself had seen several of these monuments in his travels in syria and ionia. some of these are of genuine egyptian manufacture, and are to be attributed to our ramses; they are to be found near tyre, and on the banks of the nahr el-kelb, where they mark the frontier to which his empire extended in this direction. others have but little resemblance to egyptian monuments, and were really the work of the asiatic peoples among whom they were found. the two figures referred to long ago by herodotus, which have been discovered near ninfi between sardis and smyrna, are instances of the latter. [illustration: .jpg stele of the nahr el-kelb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the shoes of the figures are turned up at the toe, and the head-dress has more resemblance to the high hats of the people of asia minor than to the double crown of egypt, while the lower garment is striped horizontally in place of vertically. the inscription, moreover, is in an asiatic form of writing, and has nothing egyptian about it. ramses ii. in his youth was the handsomest man of his time. he was tall and straight; his figure was well moulded--the shoulders broad, the arms full and vigorous, the legs muscular; the face was oval, with a firm and smiling mouth, a thin aquiline nose, and large open eyes. [illustration: .jpg the bas-belief of ninfi] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. [illustration: .jpg the coffin and mummy of ramses ii] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the mummy itself, by emil brugsch-bey. there may be seen below the cartouche the lines of the official report of inspection written during the xxist dynasty. old age and death did not succeed in marring the face sufficiently to disfigure it. the coffin containing his body is not the same as that in which his children placed him on the day of his obsequies; it is another substituted for it by one of the ramessides, and the mask upon it has but a distant resemblance to the face of the victorious pharaoh. the mummy is thin, much shrunken, and light; the bones are brittle, and the muscles atrophied, as one would expect in the case of a man who had attained the age of a hundred; but the figure is still tall and of perfect proportions.* * even after the coalescence of the vertebrae and the shrinkage produced by mummification, the body of ramses ii. still measures over feet inches. the head, which is bald on the top, is somewhat long, and small in relation to the bulk of the body; there is but little hair on the forehead, but at the back of the head it is thick, and in smooth stiff locks, still preserving its white colour beneath the yellow balsams of his last toilet. the forehead is low, the supra-orbital ridges accentuated, the eyebrows thick, the eyes small and set close to the nose, the temples hollow, the cheek-bones prominent; the ears, finely moulded, stand out from the head, and are pierced, like those of a woman, for the usual ornaments pendant from the lobe. a strong jaw and square chin, together, with a large thick-lipped mouth, which reveals through the black paste within it a few much-worn but sound teeth, make up the features of the mummied king. his moustache and beard, which were closely shaven in his lifetime, had grown somewhat in his last sickness or after his death; the coarse and thick hairs in them, white like those of the head and eyebrows, attain a length of two or three millimetres. the skin shows an ochreous yellow colour under the black bituminous plaster. the mask of the mummy, in fact, gives a fair idea of that of the living king; the somewhat unintelligent expression, slightly brutish perhaps, but haughty and firm of purpose, displays itself with an air of royal majesty beneath the sombre materials used by the embalmer. the disappearance of the old hero did not produce many changes in the position of affairs in egypt: mînephtah from this time forth possessed as pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. he was now no longer young. born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of ramses ii., he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. the danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of asia, for the relations of the pharaoh with his kharu subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated syria,* he sent wheat to his hittite allies. * a document preserved in the _anastasi papyrus iii._ shows how regular the relations with syria had become. it is the journal of a custom-house officer, or of a scribe placed at one of the frontier posts, who notes from day to day the letters, messengers, officers, and troops which passed from the th to the th of pachons, in the iiird year of the reign. the nations, however, to the north and east, in libya and in the mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the old world. the tirnihû, some of them tributaries from the xiith, and others from the first years of the xviiith dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. from time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle, and place garrisons in the principal oases--even in sîwah itself. for more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. a current of invasion, having its origin in the region of the atlas, or possibly even in europe, was setting towards the nile, forcing before it the scattered tribes of the sudan. who were these invaders? were they connected with the race which had planted its dolmens over the plains of the maghreb? whatever the answer to this question may be, we know that a certain number of berber tribes*--the labû and mashaûasha--who had occupied a middle position between egypt and the people behind them, and who had only irregular communications with the nile valley, were now pushed to the front and forced to descend upon it.** * the nationality of these tribes is evidenced by the names of their chiefs, which recall exactly those of the numidians--massyla, massinissa, massiva. ** the labû, laûbû, lobû, are mentioned for the first time under ramses ii.; these are the libyans of classical geographers. the mashaûasha answer to the maxycs of herodotus; they furnished mercenaries to the armies of ramses ii. they were men tall of stature and large of limb, with fair skins, light hair, and blue eyes; everything, in fact, indicating their northern origin. they took pleasure in tattooing the skin, just as the tuaregs and kabyles are now accustomed to do, and some, if not all, of them practised circumcision, like a portion of the egyptians and semites. in the arrangement of the hair, a curl fell upon the shoulder, while the remainder was arranged in small frizzled locks. their chiefs and braves wore on their heads two flowering plumes. a loin-cloth, a wild-beast�s skin thrown over the back, a mantle, or rather a covering of woollen or dyed cloth, fringed and ornamented with many-coloured needlework, falling from the left shoulder with no attachment in front, so as to leave the body unimpeded in walking,--these constituted the ordinary costume of the people. their arms were similar to those of the egyptians, consisting of the lance, the mace, the iron or copper dagger, the boomerang, the bow and arrow, and the sling. [illustration: .jpg a libyan] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. they also employed horses and chariots. their bravery made them a foe not to be despised, in spite of their ignorance of tactics and their want of discipline. when they were afterwards formed into regiments and conducted by experienced generals, they became the best auxiliary troops which egypt could boast of. the labû from this time forward were the most energetic of the tribes, and their chiefs prided themselves upon possessing the leadership over all the other clans in this region of the world.* * this was the case in the wars of mînephtah and ramses iii., in which the labû and their kings took the command of the confederate armies assembled against egypt. the labû might very well have gained the mastery over the other inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the egyptians. at the moment when mînephtah ascended the throne, their king, mâraîû, son of didi, ruled over the immense territory lying between the fayûm and the two syrtes: the timihu, the kahaka, and the mashaûasha rendered him the same obedience as his own people. a revolution had thus occurred in africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in naharaim, when sapalulu founded the hittite empire. a great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing egyptian control had existed before. the danger was serious. the hittites, separated from the nile by the whole breadth of kharu, could not directly threaten any of the egyptian cities; but the libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. mînephtah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the westerns, as his father had formerly done that of the easterns, and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new enemies some of the adversaries with whom the egyptians had fought under the walls of qodshû sixty years before. the shardana, lycians, and others, having left the coasts of the delta and the phoenician seaports owing to the vigilant watch kept by the egyptians over their waters, had betaken themselves to the libyan littoral, where they met with a favourable reception. whether they had settled in some places, and formed there those colonies of which a greek tradition of a recent age speaks, we cannot say. they certainly followed the occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the troops of the king of the khâti or of the pharaoh himself. mâraîû brought with him achæans, shardana, tûrsha, shagalasha,* and lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.** this was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. mâraîû had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into the nile valley, to settle permanently there as the hyksôs had done before him. * the shakalasha, shagalasha, identified with the sicilians by e. de rougé, were a people of asia minor whose position there is approximately indicated by the site of the town sagalassos, named after them. ** the _inscription of mînephtah_ distinguishes the libyans of mâraîû from �the people of the sea.� he set out on his march towards the end of the ivth year of the pharaoh�s reign, or the beginning of his vth, surrounded by the elite of his troops, �the first choice from among all the soldiers and all the heroes in each land.� the announcement of their approach spread terror among the egyptians. the peace which they had enjoyed for fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their military organisation had become somewhat rusty. the standing army had almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough to protect the frontier. as a consequence, the oases of farafrah and of the natron lakes fell into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the eastern provinces of the delta became the possession of the invader before any steps could be taken for their defence. memphis, which realised the imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent rulers who had given no heed to the country�s ramparts, and had allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. fortunately syria remained quiet. the khâti, in return for the aid afforded them by mînephtah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his asiatic provinces. he could with perfect security take the necessary measures for ensuring �heliopolis, the city of tûmû,� against surprise, �for arming memphis, the citadel of phtah-tonen, and for restoring all things which were in disorder: he fortified pibalîsît, in the neighbourhood of the shakana canal, on a branch of that of heliopolis,� and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised lines.* * chabas would identify pibalîsît with bubastis; i agree with brugsch in placing it at belbeîs. mâraîû, however, continued to advance; in the early months of the summer he had crossed the canopic branch of the nile, and was now about to encamp not far from the town of pirici. when the king heard of this �he became furious against them as a lion that fascinates its victim; he called his officers together and addressed them: �i am about to make you hear the words of your master, and to teach you this: i am the sovereign shepherd who feeds you; i pass my days in seeking out that which is useful for you: i am your father; is there among you a father like me who makes his children live? you are trembling like geese, you do not know what is good to do: no one gives an answer to the enemy, and our desolated land is abandoned to the incursions of all nations. the barbarians harass the frontier, rebels violate it every day, every one robs it, enemies devastate our seaports, they penetrate into the fields of egypt; if there is an arm of a river they halt there, they stay for days, for months; they come as numerous as reptiles, and no one is able to sweep them back, these wretches who love death and hate life, whose hearts meditate the consummation of our ruin. behold, they arrive with their chief; they pass their time on the land which they attack in filling their stomachs every day; this is the reason why they come to the land of egypt, to seek their sustenance, and their intention is to install themselves there; mine is to catch them like fish upon their bellies. their chief is a dog, a poor devil, a madman; he shall never sit down again in his place.�� he then announced that on the th of epiphi he would himself conduct the troops against the enemy. these were brave words, but we may fancy the figure that this king of more than sixty years of age would have presented in a chariot in the middle of the fray, and his competence to lead an effective charge against the enemy. on the other hand, his absence in such a critical position of affairs would have endangered the _morale_ of his soldiers and possibly compromised the issue of the battle. a dream settled the whole question.* * ed. meyer sees in this nothing but a customary rhetorical expression, and thinks that the god spoke in order to encourage the king to defend himself vigorously. while mînephtah was asleep one night, he saw a gigantic figure of phtah standing before him, and forbidding him to advance. ��stay,� cried the god to him, while handing him the curved khopesh: �put away discouragement from thee!� his majesty said to him: �but what am i to do then?� and phtah answered him: �despatch thy infantry, and send before it numerous chariots to the confines of the territory of piriû.��** * this name was read pa-ari by e. de rougé, pa-ali by lauth, and was transcribed pa-ari-shop by brugsch, who identified with prosopitis. the orthography of the text at athribis shows that we ought to read piri, pirû, piriû; possibly the name is identical with that of larû which is mentioned in the pyramid-texts. the pharaoh obeyed the command, and did not stir from his position. mâraîû had, in the mean time, arranged his attack for the st of epiphi, at the rising of the sun: it did not take place, however, until the rd. �the archers of his majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut off by the edge of the sword.� when mâraîû saw the carnage, �he was afraid, his heart failed him; he betook himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him.� his treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; �he tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of those wretched libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who had the care of his majesty�s team of horses followed in their steps� and put most of them to the sword. mâraîû succeeded, however, in escaping in the darkness, and regained his own country without water or provisions, and almost without escort. the conquering troops returned to the camp laden with booty, and driving before them asses carrying, as bloody tokens of victory, quantities of hands and phalli cut from the dead bodies of the slain. the bodies of six generals and of libyan soldiers were found upon the field of battle, together with shagalasha, tursha, and some hundreds of shardana and achæans: several thousands of prisoners passed in procession before the pharaoh, and were distributed among such of his soldiers as had distinguished themselves. these numbers show the gravity of the danger from which egypt had escaped: the announcement of the victory filled the country with enthusiasm, all the more sincere because of the reality of the panic which had preceded it. the fellahîn, intoxicated with joy, addressed each other: ��come, and let us go a long distance on the road, for there is now no fear in the hearts of men.�the fortified posts may at last be left; the citadels are now open; messengers stand at the foot of the walls and wait in the shade for the guard to awake after their siesta, to give them entrance. the military police sleep on their accustomed rounds, and the people of the marshes once more drive their herds to pasture without fear of raids, for there are no longer marauders near at hand to cross the river; the cry of the sentinels is heard no more in the night: �halt, thou that comest, thou that comest under a name which is not thine own--sheer off!� and men no longer exclaim on the following morning: �such or such a thing has been stolen;� but the towns fall once more into their usual daily routine, and he who works in the hope of the harvest, will nourish himself upon that which he shall have reaped.� the return from memphis to thebes was a triumphal march. [illustration: .jpg statue of mÎnephtah] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by dévéria. �he is very strong, binrî mînephtah,� sang the court poets, �very wise are his projects--his words have as beneficial effect as those of thot--everything which he does is completed to the end.--when he is like a guide at the head of his armies--his voice penetrates the fortress walls.--very friendly to those who bow their backs--before mîamun--his valiant soldiers spare him who humbles himself--before his courage and before his strength;--they fall upon the libyans--they consume the syrian;--the shardana whom thou hast brought back by thy sword--make prisoners of their own tribes.--very happy thy return to thebes--victorious! thy chariot is drawn by hand--the conquered chiefs march backwards before thee--whilst thou leadest them to thy venerable father--amon, husband of his mother.� and the poets amuse themselves with summoning mâraîû to appear in egypt, pursued as he was by his own people and obliged to hide himself from them. �he is nothing any longer but a beaten man, and has become a proverb among the labû, and his chiefs repeat to themselves: �nothing of the kind has occurred since the time of râ.� the old men say each one to his children: �misfortune to the labû! it is all over with them! no one can any longer pass peacefully across the country; but the power of going out of our land has been taken from us in a single day, and the tihonu have been withered up in a single year; sûtkhû has ceased to be their chief, and he devastates their �duars;� there is nothing left but to conceal one�s self, and one feels nowhere secure except in a fortress.�� the news of the victory was carried throughout asia, and served to discourage the tendencies to revolt which were beginning to make themselves manifest there. �the chiefs gave there their salutations of peace, and none among the nomads raised his head after the crushing defeat of the libyans; khâti is at peace, canaan is a prisoner as far as the disaffected are concerned, the inhabitant of ascalon is led away, gezer is carried into captivity, ianuâmîm is brought to nothing, the israîlû are destroyed and have no longer seed, kharu is like a widow of the land of egypt.� * * this passage is taken from a stele discovered by petrie in , on the site of the amenophium at thebes. the mention of the israîlû immediately calls to mind the place-names yushaph-îlu, yakob-îlu, on lists of thûtmosis iii. which have been compared with the names jacob and joseph. mînephtah ought to have followed up his opportunity to the end, but he had no such intention, and his inaction gave mâraîû time to breathe. perhaps the effort which he had made had exhausted his resources, perhaps old age prevented him from prosecuting his success; he was content, in any case, to station bodies of pickets on the frontier, and to fortify a few new positions to the east of the delta. the libyan kingdom was now in the same position as that in which the hittite had been after the campaign of seti i.: its power had been checked for the moment, but it remained intact on the egyptian frontier, awaiting its opportunity. mînephtah lived for some time after this memorable year* and the number of monuments which belong to this period show that he reigned in peace. we can see that he carried out works in the same places as his father before him; at tanis as well as thebes, in nubia as well as in the delta. he worked the sandstone quarries for his building materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the inundation at silsileh. one at least of the stelae which he set up on the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves and columns, and still, excites the admiration of the traveller on account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance. * the last known year of his reign is the year viii. the lists of manetho assign to him a reign of from twenty to forty years; brugsch makes it out to have been thirty-four years, from to b.c., which is evidently too much, but we may attribute to him without risk of serious error a reign of about twenty years. the last years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was obliged to delegate his authority. [illustration: .jpg the chapels of ramses ii. and minephtah at sisileh] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. one of the latter, a man of semite origin, named ben-azana, of zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation of his first patron, ramsesûpirnirî, appears to have acted for him as regent. mînephtah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called seti, after his great-grandfather.* seti ii. had doubtless reached middle age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him, nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man.** the expression in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholic. mu it is the type of seti i. and ramses ii., but enfeebled and, as it were, saddened. an inscription of his second year attributes to him victories in asia,*** but others of the same period indicate the existence of disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his father. * e. de rougé introduced amenmeses and siphtah between mînephtah and seti ii., and i had up to the present followed his example; i have come back to the position of chabas, making seti ii. the immediate successor of mînephtah, which is also the view of brugsch, wiedemann, and ed. meyer. the succession as it is now given does not seem to me to be free from difficulties; the solution generally adopted has only the merit of being preferable to that of e. de rougé, which i previously supported. ** the last date known of his reign is the year ii. which is found at silsilis; chabas was, nevertheless, of the opinion that he reigned a considerable time. *** the expressions employed in this document do not vary much from the usual protocol of all kings of this period. the triumphal chant of seti ii. preserved in the _anastasi papyrus iv_. is a copy of the triumphal chant of mînephtah, which is in the same papyrus. [illustration: .jpg statue of seti ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. these were occasioned by a certain aiari, who was high priest of phtah, and who had usurped titles belonged ordinarily to the pharaoh or his eldest son, in the house of sibû, �heir and hereditary prince of the two lands.� seti died, it would seem, without having had time to finish his tomb. we do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but were probably the grandsons of the amenmesis and the siphtah, whom we meet with among the children of ramses. the first of these was also called amenmesis,* and he held sway for several years over the whole of egypt, and over its foreign possessions. * graffiti of this sovereign have been found at the second cataract. certain expressions have induced e. de rougé to believe that he, as well as siphtah, came originally from khibît in the aphroditopolite nome. this was an allusion, as chabas had seen, to the myth of horus, similar to that relating to thûtmosis iii., and which we more usually meet with in the cases of those kings who were not marked out from their birth onwards for the throne. [illustration: .jpg seti ii.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by Émil brugsch-bey. the second, who was named siphtah-mînephtah, ascended �the throne of his father� thanks to the devotion of his minister baî,* but in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called tausirît. he maintained himself in this position for at least six years, during which he made an expedition into ethiopia, and received in audience at thebes messengers from all foreign nations. he kept up so zealously the appearance of universal dominion, that to judge from his inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his predecessors at thebes. egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick pace towards its downfall. no sooner had this monarch disappeared than it began to break up.** there were no doubt many claimants for the crown, but none of them succeeded in disposing of the claims of his rivals, and anarchy reigned supreme from one end of the nile valley to the other. the land of qîmît began to drift away, and the people within it had no longer a sovereign, and this, too, for many years, until other times came; for �the land of qîmît was in the hands of the princes ruling over the nomes, and they put each other to death, both great and small. * baî has left two inscriptions behind him, one at silsilis and the other at sehêl, and the titles he assumes on both monuments show the position he occupied at the theban court during the reign of siphtah-mînephtah. chabas thought that baî had succeeded in maintaining his rights to the crown against the claims of amenmesis. ** the little that we know about this period of anarchy has been obtained from the _harris papyrus_. other times came afterwards, during years of nothingness, in which arisu, a syrian,* was chief among them, and the whole country paid tribute before him; every one plotted with his neighbour to steal the goods of others, and it was the same with regard to the gods as with regard to men, offerings were no longer made in the temples.� * the name of this individual was deciphered by chabas; lauth, and after him krall, were inclined to read it as ket, ketesh, in order to identify it with the ketes of diodorus siculus. a form of the name arisai in the bible may be its original, or that of arish which is found in phoenician, especially punic, inscriptions. this was in truth the revenge of the feudal system upon pharaoh. the barons, kept in check by ahmosis and amenôthes i., restricted by the successors of these sovereigns to the position of simple officers of the king, profited by the general laxity to recover as many as possible of their ancient privileges. for half a century and more, fortune had given them as masters only aged princes, not capable of maintaining continuous vigilance and firmness. the invasions of the peoples of the sea, the rivalry of the claimants to the throne, and the intrigues of ministers had, one after the other, served to break the bonds which fettered them, and in one generation they were able to regain that liberty of action of which they had been deprived for centuries. to this state of things egypt had been drifting from the earliest times. unity could be maintained only by a continuous effort, and once this became relaxed, the ties which bound the whole country together were soon broken. there was another danger threatening the country beside that arising from the weakening of the hands of the sovereign, and the turbulence of the barons. for some three centuries the theban pharaohs were accustomed to bring into the country after each victorious campaign many thousands of captives. the number of foreigners around them had, therefore, increased in a striking manner. the majority of these strangers either died without issue, or their posterity became assimilated to the indigenous inhabitants. in many places, however, they had accumulated in such proportions that they were able to retain among themselves the remembrance of their origin, their religion, and their customs, and with these the natural desire to leave the country of their exile for their former fatherland. as long as a strict watch was kept over them they remained peaceful subjects, but as soon as this vigilance was relaxed rebellion was likely to break out, especially amongst those who worked in the quarries. traditions of the greek period contain certain romantic episodes in the history of these captives. some babylonian prisoners brought back by sesostris, these traditions tell us, unable to endure any longer the fatiguing work to which they were condemned, broke out into open revolt. [illustration: .jpg amenmesis] drawn by faucher-gudin, after a picture in rosellini. they made themselves masters of a position almost opposite memphis, and commanding the river, and held their ground there with such obstinacy that it was found necessary to give up to them the province which they occupied: they built here a town, which they afterwards called babylon. a similar legend attributes the building of the neighbouring village of troîû to captives from troy.* the scattered barbarian tribes of the delta, whether hebrews or the remnant of the ïïyksôs, had endured there a miserable lot ever since the accession of the ramessides. the rebuilding of the cities which had been destroyed there during the wars with the hyksôs had restricted the extent of territory on which they could pasture their herds. ramses ii. treated them as slaves of the treasury,** and the hebrews were not long under his rule before they began to look back with regret on the time of the monarchs �who knew joseph.� ** * the name babylon comes probably from _banbonu, barbonu, babonu_--a term which, under the form _hât-banbonu,_ served to designate a quarter of heliopolis, or rather a suburban village of that city. troja was, as we have seen, the ancient city of troîû, now tûrah, celebrated for its quarries of fine limestone. the narratives collected by the historians whom diodorus consulted were products of the saite period, and intended to explain to greeks the existence on egyptian territory of names recalling those of babylon in chaldæa and of homeric troy. ** a very ancient tradition identifies ramses ii. with the pharaoh �who knew not joseph� (_exod._ i. ). recent excavations showing that the great works in the east of the delta began under this king, or under seti ii. at the earliest, confirm in a general way the accuracy of the traditional view: i have, therefore, accepted it in part, and placed the exodus after the death of ramses ii. other authorities place it further back, and lieblein in was inclined to put it under amenôthes iii. the egyptians set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. and they built for pharaoh treasure cities, pithom and raamses. but the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. and they were �grieved because of the children of israel.� * a secondary version of the same narrative gives a more detailed account of their condition: �they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.� ** the unfortunate slaves awaited only an opportunity to escape from the cruelty of their persecutors. * _exod_. i. , . excavations made by naville have brought to light near tel el-maskhutah the ruins of one of the towns which the hebrews of the alexandrine period identified with the cities constructed by their ancestors in egypt: the town excavated by naville is pitûmû, and consequently the pithom of the biblical account, and at the same time also the succoth of exod. xii. , xiii. , the first station of the bnê-israel after leaving ramses. ** _exod,_ i. , . the national traditions of the hebrews inform us that the king, in displeasure at seeing them increase so mightily notwithstanding his repression, commanded the midwives to strangle henceforward their male children at their birth. a woman of the house of levi, after having concealed her infant for three months, put him in an ark of bulrushes and consigned him to the nile, at a place where the daughter of pharaoh was accustomed to bathe. the princess on perceiving the child had compassion on him, adopted him, called him moses--saved from the waters--and had him instructed in all the knowledge of the egyptians. moses had already attained forty years of age, when he one day encountered an egyptian smiting a hebrew, and slew him in his anger, shortly afterwards fleeing into the land of midian. here he found an asylum, and jethro the priest gave him one of his daughters in marriage. after forty years of exile, god, appearing to him in a burning bush, sent him to deliver his people. the old pharaoh was dead, but moses and his brother aaron betook themselves to the court of the new pharaoh, and demanded from him permission for the hebrews to sacrifice in the desert of arabia. they obtained it, as we know, only after the infliction of the ten plagues, and after the firstborn of the egyptians had been stricken.* the emigrants started from ramses; as they were pursued by a body of troops, the sea parted its waters to give them passage over the dry ground, and closing up afterwards on the egyptian hosts, overwhelmed them to a man. thereupon moses and the children of israel sang this song unto jahveh, saying: �jahveh is my strength and song--and he has become my salvation.--this is my god, and i will praise him,--my father�s god, and i will exalt him.--the lord is a man of war,--and jahveh is his name.--pharaoh�s chariots and his hosts hath he cast into the sea, --and his chosen captains are sunk in the sea of weeds.--the deeps cover them--they went down into the depths like a stone.... the enemy said: �i will pursue, i will overtake--i will divide the spoil--my lust shall be satiated upon them--i will draw my sword--my hand shall destroy them.�--thou didst blow with thy wind--the sea covered them--they sank as lead in the mighty waters.� ** * _exod._ ii.-xiii. i have limited myself here to a summary of the biblical narrative, without entering into a criticism of the text, which i leave to others. ** _exod._ xv. - (r.v.) from this narrative we see that the hebrews, or at least those of them who dwelt in the delta, made their escape from their oppressors, and took refuge in the solitudes of arabia. according to the opinion of accredited historians, this exodus took place in the reign of mînephtah, and the evidence of the triumphal inscription, lately discovered by prof. petrie, seems to confirm this view, in relating that the people of israîlû were destroyed, and had no longer a seed. the context indicates pretty clearly that these ill-treated israîlû were then somewhere south of syria, possibly in the neighbourhood of ascalon and glezer. if it is the biblical israelites who are here mentioned for the first time on an egyptian monument, one might suppose that they had just quitted the land of slavery to begin their wanderings through the desert. although the peoples of the sea and the libyans did not succeed in reaching their settlements in the land of goshen, the israelites must have profited both by the disorder into which the egyptians were thrown by the invaders, and by the consequent withdrawal to memphis of the troops previously stationed on the east of the delta, to break away from their servitude and cross the frontier. if, on the other hand, the israîlû of mînephtah are regarded as a tribe still dwelling among the mountains of canaan, while the greater part of the race had emigrated to the banks of the nile, there is no need to seek long after mînephtah for a date suiting the circumstances of the exodus. the years following the reign of seti ii. offer favourable conditions for such a dangerous enterprise: the break-up of the monarchy, the discords of the barons, the revolts among the captives, and the supremacy of a semite over the other chiefs, must have minimised the risk. we can readily understand how, in the midst of national disorders, a tribe of foreigners weary of its lot might escape from its settlements and betake itself towards asia without meeting with strenous opposition from the pharaoh, who would naturally be too much preoccupied with his own pressing necessities to trouble himself much over the escape of a band of serfs. having crossed the red sea, the israelites pursued their course to the north-east on the usual road leading into syria, and then turning towards the south, at length arrived at sinai. it was a moment when the nations of asia were stirring. to proceed straight to canaan by the beaten track would have been to run the risk of encountering their moving hordes, or of jostling against the egyptian troops, who still garrisoned the strongholds of the she-phelah. the fugitives had, therefore, to shun the great military roads if they were to avoid coming into murderous conflict with the barbarians, or running into the teeth of pharaoh�s pursuing army. the desert offered an appropriate asylum to people of nomadic inclinations like themselves; they betook themselves to it as if by instinct, and spent there a wandering life for several generations.* * this explanation of the wanderings of the israelites has been doubted by most historians: it has a cogency, once we admit the reality of the sojourn in egypt and the exodus. the traditions collected in their sacred books described at length their marches and their halting-places, the great sufferings they endured, and the striking miracles which god performed on their behalf.* * the itinerary of the hebrew people through the desert contains a very small number of names which were not actually in use. they represent possibly either the stations at which the caravans of the merchants put up, or the localities where the bedawin and their herds were accustomed to sojourn. the majority of them cannot be identified, but enough can still be made out to give us a general idea of the march of the emigrants. moses conducted them through all these experiences, continually troubled by their murmurings and seditions, but always ready to help them out of the difficulties into which they were led, on every occasion, by their want of faith. he taught them, under god�s direction, how to correct the bitterness of brackish waters by applying to them the wood of a certain tree.* when they began to look back with regret to the �flesh-pots of egypt� and the abundance of food there, another signal miracle was performed for them. �at even the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay round about the host; and when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. and when the children of israel saw it, they said one to another, �what is it? �for they wist not what it was. and moses said unto them, �it is the bread which the lord hath given you to eat.��** * _exod._ xv. - . the station marah, �the bitter waters,� is identified by modern tradition with ain howarah. there is a similar way of rendering waters potable still in use among the bedawin of these regions. ** _exod._ xvi. - . �and the house of israel called the name thereof �manna: �and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.� * �and the children of israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna until they came unto the borders of the land of canaan.� ** further on, at eephidim, the water failed: moses struck the rocks at horeb, and a spring gushed out.*** the amalekites, in the meantime, began to oppose their passage; and one might naturally doubt the power of a rabble of slaves, unaccustomed to war, to break through such an obstacle. joshua was made their general, �and moses, aaron, and hur went up to the top of the hill: and it came to pass, when moses held up his hand, that israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand, amalek prevailed. but moses� hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and aaron and hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. and joshua discomfited amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.� **** * _exod._ xvi. . prom early times the manna of the hebrews had been identified with the mann-es-sama, �the gift of heaven,� of the arabs, which exudes in small quantities from the leaves of the tamarisk after being pricked by insects: the question, however, is still under discussion whether another species of vegetable manna may not be meant. ** _exod._ xvi. . *** _exod._ xvii. - . there is a general agreement as to the identification of rephidim with the wady peîrân, the village of pharan of the græco-roman geographers. **** exod. xvii. - . three months after the departure of the israelites from egypt they encamped at the foot of sinai, and �the lord called unto moses out of the mountain, saying, �thus shalt thou say to the house of jacob, and tell the children of israel: ye have seen what i did unto the egyptians, and how i bare you on eagles� wings, and brought you unto myself. now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from among all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.� the people answered together and said, �all that the lord hath spoken we will do.� and the lord said unto moses, �lo, i come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when i speak with thee, and may also believe thee for ever.�� �on the third day, when it was morning, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. and moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet god; and they stood at the nether part of the mountain. and mount sinai was altogether on smoke, because the lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. and when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, moses spake, and god answered him by a voice.� * * _exod._ xix. - , , - . then followed the giving of the supreme law, the conditions of the covenant which the lord himself deigned to promulgate directly to his people. it was engraved on two tables of stone, and contained, in ten concise statements, the commandments which the creator of the universe imposed upon the people of his choice. �i. i am jahveh, which brought thee out of the land of egypt. thou shalt have none other gods before me. ii. thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, etc. iii. thou shalt not take the name of jahveh thy god in vain. iv. remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. v. honour thy father and thy mother. vi. thou shalt do no murder. vii. thou shalt not commit adultery. viii. thou shalt not steal. ix. thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. x. thou shalt not covet.� * * we have two forms of the decalogue--one in _exod._ xx. - , and the other in _deut._ v. - . �and all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. and they said unto moses, �speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not god speak with us, lest we die.��* god gave his commandments to moses in instalments as the circumstances required them: on one occasion the rites of sacrifice, the details of the sacerdotal vestments, the mode of consecrating the priests, the composition of the oil and the incense for the altar; later on, the observance of the three annual festivals, and the orders as to absolute rest on the seventh day, as to the distinctions between clean and unclean animals, as to drink, as to the purification of women, and lawful and unlawful marriages.** * _exod._ xx. , . ** this legislation and the history of the circumstances on which it was promulgated are contained in four of the books of the pentateuch, viz. _exodus, leviticus, numbers, and deuteronomy_. any one of the numerous text-books published in germany will be found to contain an analysis of these books, and the prevalent opinions as to the date of the documents which it [the hexateuch] contains. i confine myself here and afterwards only to such results as may fitly be used in a general history. the people waited from week to week until jahveh had completed the revelation of his commands, and in their impatience broke the new law more than once. on one occasion, when �moses delayed to come out of the mount,� they believed themselves abandoned by heaven, and obliged aaron, the high priest, to make for them a golden calf, before which they offered burnt offerings. the sojourn of the people at the foot of sinai lasted eleven months. at the end of this period they set out once more on their slow marches to the promised land, guided during the day by a cloud, and during the night by a pillar of fire, which moved before them. this is a general summary of what we find in the sacred writings. the israelites, when they set out from egypt, were not yet a nation. they were but a confused horde, flying with their herds from their pursuers; with no resources, badly armed, and unfit to sustain the attack of regular troops. after leaving sinai, they wandered for some time among the solitudes of arabia petraea in search of some uninhabited country where they could fix their tents, and at length settled on the borders of idumaea, in the mountainous region surrounding kadesh-barnea.* kadesh had from ancient times a reputation for sanctity among the bedawin of the neighbourhood: it rejoiced in the possession of a wonderful well--the well of judgment--to which visits were made for the purpose of worship, and for obtaining the �judgment� of god. the country is a poor one, arid and burnt up, but it contains wells which never fail, and wadys suitable for the culture of wheat and for the rearing of cattle. the tribe which became possessed of a region in which there was a perennial supply of water was fortunate indeed, and a fragment of the psalmody of israel at the time of their sojourn here still echoes in a measure the transports of joy which the people gave way to at the discovery of a new spring: �spring up, o well; sing ye unto it: the well which the princes digged, which the nobles of the people delved with the sceptre and with their staves.� ** * the site of kadesh-barnea appears to have been fixed with certainty at ain-qadis by c. trumbull. ** _numb._ xxi. , . the context makes it certain that this song was sung at beer, beyond the arnon, in the land of moab. it has long been recognised that it had a special reference, and that it refers to an incident in the wanderings of the people through the desert. the wanderers took possession of this region after some successful brushes with the enemy, and settled there, without being further troubled by their neighbours or by their former masters. the egyptians, indeed, absorbed in their civil discords, or in wars with foreign nations, soon forgot their escaped slaves, and never troubled themselves for centuries over what had become of the poor wretches, until in the reign of the ptolemies, when they had learned from the bible something of the people of god, they began to seek in their own annals for traces of their sojourn in egypt and of their departure from the country. a new version of the exodus was the result, in which hebrew tradition was clumsily blended with the materials of a semi-historical romance, of which amenôthes iii. was the hero. his minister and namesake, amenôthes, son of hâpû, left ineffaceable impressions on the minds of the inhabitants of thebes: he not only erected the colossal figures in the amenophium, but he constructed the chapel at deîr el-medineh, which was afterwards restored in ptolemaic times, and where he continued to be worshipped as long as the egyptian religion lasted. profound knowledge of the mysteries of magic were attributed to him, as in later times to prince khâmoîsît, son of ramses ii. on this subject he wrote certain works which maintained their reputation for more than a thousand years after his death,* and all that was known about him marked him out for the important part he came to play in those romantic stories so popular among the egyptians. * one of these books, which is mentioned in several religious texts, is preserved in the _louvre papyrus_. the pharaoh in whose good graces he lived had a desire, we are informed, to behold the gods, after the example of his ancestor horus. the son of hâpû, or pa-apis, informed him that he could not succeed in his design until he had expelled from the country all the lepers and unclean persons who contaminated it. acting on this information, he brought together all those who suffered from physical defects, and confined them, to the number of eighty thousand, in the quarries of tûrah. there were priests among them, and the gods became wrathful at the treatment to which their servants were exposed; the soothsayer, therefore, fearing the divine anger, predicted that certain people would shortly arise who, forming an alliance with the unclean, would, together with them, hold sway in egypt for thirteen years. he then committed suicide, but the king nevertheless had compassion on the outcasts, and granted to them, for their exclusive use, the town of avaris, which had been deserted since the time of ahmosis. the outcasts formed themselves into a nation under the rule of a heliopolitan priest called osarsyph, or moses, who gave them laws, mobilised them, and joined his forces with the descendants of the shepherds at jerusalem. the pharaoh amenôphis, taken by surprise at this revolt, and remembering the words of his minister amenôthes, took flight into ethiopia. the shepherds, in league with the unclean, burned the towns, sacked the temples, and broke in pieces the statues of the gods: they forced the egyptian priests to slaughter even their sacred animals, to cut them up and cook them for their foes, who ate them derisively in their accustomed feasts. amenôphis returned from ethiopia, together with his son ramses, at the end of thirteen years, defeated the enemy, driving them back into syria, where the remainder of them became later on the jewish nation.* * a list of the pharaohs after aï, as far as it is possible to make them out, is here given: [illustration: .jpg table] this is but a romance, in which a very little history is mingled with a great deal of fable: the scribes as well as the people were acquainted with the fact that egypt had been in danger of dissolution at the time when the hebrews left the banks of the nile, but they were ignorant of the details, of the precise date and of the name of the reigning pharaoh. a certain similarity in sound suggested to them the idea of assimilating the prince whom the chroniclers called menepthes or amenepthes with amen-ôthes, i.e. amenophis iii.; and they gave to the pharaoh of the xixth dynasty the minister who had served under a king of the xviiith: they metamorphosed at the same time the hebrews into lepers allied with the shepherds. from this strange combination there resulted a narrative which at once fell in with the tastes of the lovers of the marvellous, and was a sufficient substitute for the truth which had long since been forgotten. as in the case of the egyptians of the greek period, we can see only through a fog what took place after the deaths of mînephtah and seti ii. we know only for certain that the chiefs of the nomes were in perpetual strife with each other, and that a foreign power was dominant in the country as in the time of apôphis. the days of the empire would have harmhabî himself belonged to the xviiith dynasty, for he modelled the form of his cartouches on those of the ahmesside pharaohs: the xixth dynasty began only, in all probability, with ramses i., but the course of the history has compelled me to separate harmhabî from his predecessors. not knowing the length of the reigns, we cannot determine the total duration of the dynasty: we shall not, however, be far wrong in assigning to it a length of years or thereabouts, i.e. from to somewhere near b.c. been numbered if a deliverer had not promptly made his appearance. the direct line of ramses ii. was extinct, but his innumerable sons by innumerable concubines had left a posterity out of which some at least might have the requisite ability and zeal, if not to save the empire, at least to lengthen its duration, and once more give to thebes days of glorious prosperity. egypt had set out some five centuries before this for the conquest of the world, and fortune had at first smiled upon her enterprise. thûtmosis i., thûtmosis iii., and the several pharaohs bearing the name of amenôthes had marched with their armies from the upper waters of the nile to the banks of the euphrates, and no power had been able to withstand them. new nations, however, soon rose up to oppose her, and the hittites in asia and the libyans of the sudan together curbed her ambition. neither the triumphs of ramses ii. nor the victory of mînephtah had been able to restore her prestige, or the lands of which her rivals had robbed her beyond her ancient frontier. now her own territory itself was threatened, and her own well-being was in question; she was compelled to consider, not how to rule other tribes, great or small, but how to keep her own possessions intact and independent: in short, her very existence was at stake. chapter iii--the close of the theban empire _ramses iii.--the theban city under the ramessides--manners and customs._ _nalthtâsît and ramses iii.: the decline of the military spirit in egypt--the reorganisation of the army and fleet by ramses--the second libyan invasion--the asiatic peoples, the pulasati, the zakleala, and the tyrseni: their incursions into syria and their defeat--the campaign of the year xl and the fall of the libyan kingdom--cruising on the red sea--the buildings at medinet-habû--the conspiracy of pentaûîrît--the mummy of ramses iii._ _the sons and immediate successors of ramses iii.--thebes and the egyptian population: the transformation of the people and of the great lords: the feudal system from being military becomes religious--the wealth of precious metals, jewellery, furniture, costume--literary education, and the influence of the semitic language on the egyptian: romantic stories, the historical novel, fables, caricatures and satires, collections of maxims and moral dialogues, love-poems._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii--the close of the theban empire _ramses iii.--the theban city under the ramessides--manners and customs._ as in a former crisis, egypt once more owed her salvation to a scion of the old theban race. a descendant of seti i. or ramses ii., named nakhtûsît, rallied round him the forces of the southern nomes, and succeeded, though not without difficulty, in dispossessing the syrian arisû. �when he arose, he was like sûtkhû, providing for all the necessities of the country which, for feebleness, could not stand, killing the rebels which were in the delta, purifying the great throne of egypt; he was regent of the two lands in the place of tûmû, setting himself to reorganise that which had been overthrown, to such good purpose, that each one recognised as brethren those who had been separated from him as by a wall for so long a time, strengthening the temples by pious gifts, so that the traditional rites could be celebrated at the divine cycles.� * * the exact relationship between nakhtûsît and ramses ii. is not known; he was probably the grandson or great-grandson of that sovereign, though ed. meyer thinks he was perhaps the son of seti ii. the name should be read either nakhîtsît, with the singular of the first word composing it, or nakhîtûsît, nakhtûsît, with the plural, as in the analogous name of the king of the xxxth dynasty, nectanebo. many were the difficulties that he had to encounter before he could restore to his country that peace and wealth which she had enjoyed under the long reign of sesostris. it seems probable that his advancing years made him feel unequal to the task, or that he desired to guard against the possibility of disturbances in the event of his sudden death; at all events, he associated with himself on the throne his eldest son ramses--not, however, as a pharaoh who had full rights to the crown, like the coadjutors of the amenemhâîts and usirtasens, but as a prince invested with extraordinary powers, after the example of the sons of the pharaohs thûtmosis and seti i. ramses recalls with pride, towards the close of his life, how his father �had promoted him to the dignity of heir-presumptive to the throne of sibû,� and how he had been acclaimed as �the supreme head of qimît for the administration of the whole earth united together.� * this constituted the rise of a new dynasty on the ruins of the old--the last, however, which was able to retain the supremacy of egypt over the oriental world. we are unable to ascertain how long this double reign lasted. * the only certain monument that we as yet possess of this double reign is a large stele cut on the rock behind medinet-habû. [illustration: .jpg nakhtÛsÎt.] nakhtûsît, fully occupied by enemies within the country, had no leisure either to build or to restore any monuments;* on his death, as no tomb had been prepared for him, his mummy was buried in that of the usurper siphtah and the queen tausirît. * wiedemann attributes to him the construction of one of the doors of the temple of mût at karnak; it would appear that there is a confusion in his notes between the prenomen of this sovereign and that of seti ii., who actually did decorate one of the doorways of that temple. nakhûsît must have also worked on the temple of phtah at memphis. his cartouche is met with on a statue originally dedicated by a pharaoh of the xiith dynasty, discovered at tell-nebêsheh. he was soon forgotten, and but few traces of his services survived him; his name was subsequently removed from the official list of the kings, while others not so deserving as he--as, for instance, siphtah-minephtah and amenmesis--were honourably inscribed in it. the memory of his son overshadowed his own, and the series of the legitimate kings who formed the xxth dynasty did not include him. ramses iii. took for his hero his namesake, ramses the great, and endeavoured to rival him in everything. this spirit of imitation was at times the means of leading him to commit somewhat puerile acts, as, for example, when he copied certain triumphal inscriptions word for word, merely changing the dates and the cartouches,* or when he assumed the prenomen of usirmârî, and distributed among his male children the names and dignities of the sons of sesostris. we see, moreover, at his court another high priest of phtah at memphis bearing the name of khâmoîsît, and marîtûmû, another supreme pontiff of râ in heliopolis. however, this ambition to resemble his ancestor at once instigated him to noble deeds, and gave him the necessary determination to accomplish them. * thus the great decree of phtah-totûnen, carved by ramses ii. in the year xxxv. on the rocks of abu simbel, was copied by ramses iii. at medinet-habû in the year xii. he began by restoring order in the administration of affairs; �he established truth, crushed error, purified the temple from all crime,� and made his authority felt not only in the length and breadth of the nile valley, but in what was still left of the asiatic provinces. the disturbances of the preceding years had weakened the prestige of amon-râ, and the king�s supremacy would have been seriously endangered, had any one arisen in syria of sufficient energy to take advantage of the existing state of affairs. but since the death of khâtusaru, the power of the khâti had considerably declined, and they retained their position merely through their former prestige; they were in as much need of peace, or even more so, than the egyptians, for the same discords which had harassed the reigns of seti ii. and his successors had doubtless brought trouble to their own sovereigns. they had made no serious efforts to extend their dominion over any of those countries which had been the objects of the cupidity of their forefathers, while the peoples of kharu and phoenicia, thrown back on their own resources, had not ventured to take up arms against the pharaoh. the yoke lay lightly upon them, and in no way hampered their internal liberty; they governed as they liked, they exchanged one prince or chief for another, they waged petty wars as of old, without, as a rule, exposing themselves to interference from the egyptian troops occupying the country, or from the �royal messengers.� these vassal provinces had probably ceased to pay tribute, or had done so irregularly, during the years of anarchy following the death of siphtah, but they had taken no concerted action, nor attempted any revolt, so that when ramses iii. ascended the throne he was spared the trouble of reconquering them. he had merely to claim allegiance to have it at once rendered him--an allegiance which included the populations in the neighbourhood of qodshû and on the banks of the nahr el-kelb. the empire, which had threatened to fall to pieces amid the civil wars, and which would indeed have succumbed had they continued a few years longer, again revived now that an energetic prince had been found to resume the direction of affairs, and to weld together those elements which had been on the point of disintegration. one state alone appeared to regret the revival of the imperial power; this was the kingdom of libya. it had continued to increase in size since the days of mînephtah, and its population had been swelled by the annexation of several strange tribes inhabiting the vast area of the sahara. one of these, the mashaûasha, acquired the ascendency among these desert races owing to their numbers and valour, and together with the other tribes--the sabati, the kaiakasha, the shaîû, the hasa, the bikana, and the qahaka*--formed a confederacy, which now threatened egypt on the west. this federation was conducted by didi, mashaknû, and mâraîû, all children of that mâraîû who had led the first libyan invasion, and also by zamarû and zaûtmarû, two princes of less important tribes.** their combined forces had attacked egypt for the second time during the years of anarchy, and had gained possession one after another of all the towns in the west of the delta, from the neighbourhood of memphis to the town of qarbîna: the canopic branch of the nile now formed the limit of their dominion, and they often crossed it to devastate the central provinces.*** * this enumeration is furnished by the summary of the campaigns of ramses iii. in _the great harris papyrus_. the sabati of this text are probably identical with the people of the sapudiu or spudi (asbytse), mentioned on one of the pylons of medinet-habû. ** the relationship is nowhere stated, but it is thought to be probable from the names of didi and mâraîû, repeated in both series of inscriptions. *** the town of qarbîna has been identified with the canopus of the greeks, and also with the modern korbani; and the district of gautu, which adjoined it, with the territory of the modern town of edkô. spiegel-berg throws doubt on the identification of qarbu or qarbîna, with canopus. révillout prefers to connect qarbîna with heracleopolis parva in lower egypt. nakhtûsîti had been unable to drive them out, and ramses had not ventured on the task immediately after his accession. the military institutions of the country had become totally disorganised after the death of mînephtah, and that part of the community responsible for furnishing the army with recruits had been so weakened by the late troubles, that they were in a worse condition than before the first libyan invasion. the losses they had suffered since egypt began its foreign conquests had not been repaired by the introduction of fresh elements, and the hope of spoil was now insufficient to induce members of the upper classes to enter the army. there was no difficulty in filling the ranks from the fellahîn, but the middle class and the aristocracy, accustomed to ease and wealth, no longer came forward in large numbers, and disdained the military profession. it was the fashion in the schools to contrast the calling of a scribe with that of a foot-soldier or a charioteer, and to make as merry over the discomforts of a military occupation as it had formerly been the fashion to extol its glory and profitableness. these scholastic exercises represented the future officer dragged as a child to the barracks, �the side-lock over his ear.--he is beaten and his sides are covered with scars,--he is beaten and his two eyebrows are marked with wounds,--he is beaten and his head is broken by a badly aimed blow; he is stretched on the ground� for the slightest fault, �and blows fall on him as on a papyrus,--and he is broken by the stick.� his education finished, he is sent away to a distance, to syria or ethiopia, and fresh troubles overtake him. �his victuals and his supply of water are about his neck like the burden of an ass,--and his neck and throat suffer like those of an ass,--so that the joints of his spine are broken.--he drinks putrid water, keeping perpetual guard the while.� his fatigues soon tell upon his health and vigour: �should he reach the enemy,--he is like a bird which trembles.--should he return to egypt,--he is like a piece of old worm-eaten wood.--he is sick and must lie down, he is carried on an ass,--while thieves steal his linen,--and his slaves escape.� the charioteer is not spared either. he, doubtless, has a moment of vain-glory and of flattered vanity when he receives, according to regulations, a new chariot and two horses, with which he drives at a gallop before his parents and his fellow-villagers; but once having joined his regiment, he is perhaps worse off than the foot-soldier. �he is thrown to the ground among thorns:--a scorpion wounds him in the foot, and his heel is pierced by its sting.--when his kit is examined,--his misery is at its height.� no sooner has the fact been notified that his arms are in a bad condition, or that some article has disappeared, than �he is stretched on the ground--and overpowered with blows from a stick.� this decline of the warlike spirit in all classes of society had entailed serious modifications in the organisation of both army and navy. the native element no longer predominated in most battalions and on the majority of vessels, as it had done under the xviiith dynasty; it still furnished those formidable companies of archers--the terror of both africans and asiatics--and also the most important part, if not the whole, of the chariotry, but the main body of the infantry was composed almost exclusively of mercenaries, particularly of the shardana and the qahaka. ramses began his reforms by rebuilding the fleet, which, in a country like egypt, was always an artificial creation, liable to fall into decay, unless a strong and persistent effort were made to keep it in an efficient condition. shipbuilding had made considerable progress in the last few centuries, perhaps from the impulse received through phoenicia, and the vessels turned out of the dockyards were far superior to those constructed under hâtshopsîtû. the general outlines of the hull remained the same, but the stem and stern were finer, and not so high out of the water; the bow ended, moreover, in a lion�s head of metal, which rose above the cut-water. a wooden structure running between the forecastle and quarter-deck protected the rowers during the fight, their heads alone being exposed. the mast had only one curved yard, to which the sail was fastened; this was run up from the deck by halyards when the sailors wanted to make sail, and thus differed from the egyptian arrangement, where the sail was fastened to a fixed upper yard. at least half of the crews consisted of libyan prisoners, who were branded with a hot iron like cattle, to prevent desertion; the remaining half was drawn from the syrian or asiatic coast, or else were natives of egypt. in order to bring the army into better condition, ramses revived the system of classes, which empowered him to compel all egyptians of unmixed race to take personal service, while he hired mercenaries from libya, phoenicia, asia minor, and wherever he could get them, and divided them into regular regiments, according to their extraction and the arms that they bore. in the field, the archers always headed the column, to meet the advance of the foe with their arrows; they were followed by the egyptian lancers--the shardana and the tyrseni with their short spears and heavy bronze swords--while a corps of veterans, armed with heavy maces, brought up the rear.* in an engagement, these various troops formed three lines of infantry disposed one behind the other--the light brigade in front to engage the adversary, the swordsmen and lancers who were to come into close quarters with the foe, and the mace-bearers in reserve, ready to advance on any threatened point, or to await the critical moment when their intervention would decide the victory: as in the times of thûtmosis and ramses ii. the chariotry covered the two wings. * this is the order of march represented during the syrian campaign, as gathered from the arrangement observed in the pictures at medinet-habu. it was well for ramses that on ascending the throne he had devoted himself to the task of recruiting the egyptian army, and of personally and carefully superintending the instruction and equipment of his men; for it was thanks to these precautions that, when the confederated libyans attacked the country about the vth year of his reign, he was enabled to repulse them with complete success. �didi, mashaknû, maraîû, together with zamarû and zaûtmarû, had strongly urged them to attack egypt and to carry fire before them from one end of it to the other.�--�their warriors confided to each other in their counsels, and their hearts were full: �we will be drunk!� and their princes said within their breasts: �we will fill our hearts with violence!� but their plans were overthrown, thwarted, broken against the heart of the god, and the prayer of their chief, which their lips repeated, was not granted by the god.� they met the egyptians at a place called �kamsisû-khasfi-timihû� (�ramses repulses the timihû�), but their attack was broken by the latter, who were ably led and displayed considerable valour. �they bleated like goats surprised by a bull who stamps its foot, who pushes forward its horn and shakes the mountains, charging whoever seeks to annoy it.� they fled afar, howling with fear, and many of them, in endeavouring to escape their pursuers, perished in the canals. �it is,� said they, �the breaking of our spines which threatens us in the land of egypt, and its lord destroys our souls for ever and ever. woe be upon them! for they have seen their dances changed into carnage, sokhît is behind them, fear weighs upon them. we march no longer upon roads where we can walk, but we run across fields, all the fields! and their soldiers did not even need to measure arms with us in the struggle! pharaoh alone was our destruction, a fire against us every time that he willed it, and no sooner did we approach than the flame curled round us, and no water could quench it on us.� the victory was a brilliant one; the victors counted , of the enemy killed,* and many more who surrendered at discretion. the latter were formed into a brigade, and were distributed throughout the valley of the nile in military settlements. they submitted to their fate with that resignation which we know to have been a characteristic of the vanquished at that date. * the number of the dead is calculated from that of the hands and phalli brought in by the soldiers after the victory, the heaps of which are represented at medinet-habu. they regarded their defeat as a judgment from god against which there was no appeal; when their fate had been once pronounced, nothing remained to the condemned except to submit to it humbly, and to accommodate themselves to the master to whom they were now bound by a decree from on high. the prisoners of one day became on the next the devoted soldiers of the prince against whom they had formerly fought resolutely, and they were employed against their own tribes, their employers having no fear of their deserting to the other side during the engagement. they were lodged in the barracks at thebes, or in the provinces under the feudal lords and governors of the pharaoh, and were encouraged to retain their savage customs and warlike spirit. they intermarried either with the fellahîn or with women of their own tribes, and were reinforced at intervals by fresh prisoners or volunteers. drafted principally into the delta and the cities of middle egypt, they thus ended by constituting a semi-foreign population, destined by nature and training to the calling of arms, and forming a sort of warrior caste, differing widely from the militia of former times, and known for many generations by their national name of mashaûasha. as early as the xiith dynasty, the pharaohs had, in a similar way, imported the mazaîû from nubia, and had used them as a military police; ramses iii. now resolved to naturalise the libyans for much the same purpose. his victory did not bear the immediate fruits that we might have expected from his own account of it; the memory of the exploits of ramses ii. haunted him, and, stimulated by the example of his ancestor at qodshû, he doubtless desired to have the sole credit of the victory over the libyans. he certainly did overcome their kings, and arrested their invasion; we may go so far as to allow that he wrested from them the provinces which they had occupied on the left bank of the canopic branch, from marea to the natron lakes, but he did not conquer them, and their power still remained as formidable as ever. he had gained a respite at the point of the sword, but he had not delivered egypt from their future attacks. [illustration: .jpg one of the libyan chiefs vanquished by ramses iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. he might perhaps have been tempted to follow up his success and assume the offensive, had not affairs in asia at this juncture demanded the whole of his attention. the movement of great masses of european tribes in a southerly and easterly direction was beginning to be felt by the inhabitants of the balkans, who were forced to set out in a double stream of emigration--one crossing the bosphorus and the propontis towards the centre of asia minor, while the other made for what was later known as greece proper, by way of the passes over olympus and pindus. the nations who had hitherto inhabited these regions, now found themselves thrust forward by the pressure of invading hordes, and were constrained to move towards the south and east by every avenue which presented itself. it was probably the irruption of the phrygians into the high table-land which gave rise to the general exodus of these various nations--the pulasati, the zakkala, the shagalasha, the danauna, and the uashasha--some of whom had already made their way into syria and taken part in campaigns there, while others had as yet never measured strength with the egyptians. the main body of these migrating tribes chose the overland route, keeping within easy distance of the coast, from pamphylia as far as the confines of naharaim. [illustration: .jpg the waggons of the pulasati and their confederates] drawn by faucher-gudin, from champollion. they were accompanied by their families, who must have been mercilessly jolted in the ox-drawn square waggons with solid wheels in which they travelled. the body of the vehicle was built either of roughly squared planks, or else of something resembling wicker-work. the round axletree was kept in its place by means of a rude pin, and four oxen were harnessed abreast to the whole structure. the children wore no clothes, and had, for the most part, their hair tied into a tuft on the top of their heads; the women affected a closely fitting cap, and were wrapped in large blue or red garments drawn close to the body.* the men�s attire varied according to the tribe to which they belonged. the pulasati undoubtedly held the chief place; they were both soldiers and sailors, and we must recognise in them the foremost of those tribes known to the greeks of classical times as the oarians, who infested the coasts of asia minor as well as those of greece and the Ægean islands.** * these details are taken from the battle-scenes at medinet- habu. ** the pulasati have been connected with the philistines by champollion, and subsequently by the early english egyptologists, who thought they recognised in them the inhabitants of the shephelah. chabas was the first to identify them with the pelasgi; unger and brugsch prefer to attribute to them a libyan origin, but the latter finally returns to the pelasgic and philistine hypothesis. they were without doubt the philistines, but in their migratory state, before they settled on the coast of palestine. [illustration: .jpg pulasati] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. crete was at this time the seat of a maritime empire, whose chiefs were perpetually cruising the seas and harassing the civilized states of the eastern mediterranean. these sea-rovers had grown wealthy through piracy, and contact with the merchants of syria and egypt had awakened in them a taste for a certain luxury and refinement, of which we find no traces in the remains of their civilization anterior to this period. some of the symbols in the inscriptions found on their monuments recall certain of the egyptian characters, while others present an original aspect and seem to be of Ægean origin. we find in them, arranged in juxtaposition, signs representing flowers, birds, fish, quadrupeds of various kinds, members of the human body, and boats and household implements. from the little which is known of this script we are inclined to derive it from a similar source to that which has furnished those we meet with in several parts of asia minor and northern syria. it would appear that in ancient times, somewhere in the centre of the peninsula--but under what influence or during what period we know not--a syllabary was developed, of which varieties were handed on from tribe to tribe, spreading on the one side to the hittites, cilicians, and the peoples on the borders of syria and egypt, and on the other to the trojans, to the people of the cyclades, and into crete and greece. it is easy to distinguish the pulasati by the felt helmet which they wore fastened under the chin by two straps and surmounted by a crest of feathers. the upper part of their bodies was covered by bands of leather or some thick material, below which hung a simple loin-cloth, while their feet were bare or shod with short sandals. they carried each a round buckler with two handles, and the stout bronze sword common to the northern races, suspended by a cross belt passing over the left shoulder, and were further armed with two daggers and two javelins. they hurled the latter from a short distance while attacking, and then drawing their sword or daggers, fell upon the enemy; we find among them a few chariots of the hittite type, each manned by a driver and two fighting men. the tyrseni appear to have been the most numerous after the pulasati, next to whom came the zakkala. the latter are thought to have been a branch of the siculo-pelasgi whom greek tradition represents as scattered at this period among the cyclades and along the coast of the hellespont;* they wore a casque surmounted with plumes like that of the pulasati. the tyrseni may be distinguished by their feathered head-dress, but the shaga-lasha affected a long ample woollen cap falling on the neck behind, an article of apparel which is still worn by the sailors of the archipelago; otherwise they were equipped in much the same manner as their allies. the other members of the confederation, the shardana, the danauna, and the nashasha, each furnished an inconsiderable contingent, and, taken all together, formed but a small item of the united force.** * the zakkara, or zakkala, have been identified with the teucrians by lauth, chabas, and fr. lenormant, with the zygritse of libya by linger and brugsch, who subsequently returned to the teucrian hypothesis; w. max millier regards them as an asiatic nation probably of the lydian family. the identification with the siculo-pelasgi of the Ægean sea was proposed by maspero. ** the form of the word shows that it is of asiatic origin, uasasos, uassos, which refers us to caria or lycia. their fleet sailed along the coast and kept within sight of the force on land. the squadrons depicted on the monuments are without doubt those of the two peoples, the pulasati and zakkala. their ships resembled in many respects those of egypt, except in the fact that they had no cut-water. the bow and stern rose up straight like the neck of a goose or swan; two structures for fighting purposes were erected above the dock, while a rail running round the sides of the vessel protected the bodies of the rowers. an upper yard curved in shape hung from the single mast, which terminated in a top for the look-out during a battle. the upper yard was not made to lower, and the top-men managed the sail in the same manner as the egyptian sailors. the resemblance between this fleet and that of ramses is easily explained. the dwellers on the Ægean, owing to the knowledge they had acquired of the phoenician galleys, which were accustomed to cruise annually in their waters, became experts in shipbuilding. [illustration: .jpg a sihagalasha chief] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by petrie. they copied the lines of the phoenician craft, imitated the rigging, and learned to manoeuvre their vessels so well, both on ordinary occasions and in a battle, that they could now oppose to the skilled eastern navigators ships as well fitted out and commanded by captains as experienced as those of egypt or asia. there had been a general movement among all these peoples at the very time when ramses was repelling the attack of the libyans; �the isles had quivered, and had vomited forth their people at once.� * * this campaign is mentioned in the inscription of medinet- habu. we find some information about the war in the _great harris papyrus_, also in the inscription of medinet-habu which describes the campaign of the year v., and in other shorter texts of the same temple. they were subjected to one of those irresistible impulses such as had driven the shepherds into egypt; or again, in later times, had carried away the cimmerians and the scyths to the pillage of asia minor: �no country could hold out against their arms, neither khâti, nor qodi, nor carchemish, nor arvad, nor alasia, without being brought to nothing.� the ancient kingdoms of sapalulu and khâtusaru, already tottering, crumbled to pieces under the shock, and were broken up into their primitive elements. the barbarians, unable to carry the towns by assault, and too impatient to resort to a lengthened siege, spread over the valley of the orontes, burning and devastating the country everywhere. having reached the frontiers of the empire, in the country of the amorites, they came to a halt, and constructing an entrenched camp, installed within it their women and the booty they had acquired. some of their predatory bands, having ravaged the bekâa, ended by attacking the subjects of the pharaoh himself, and their chiefs dreamed of an invasion of egypt. ramses, informed of their design by the despatches of his officers and vassals, resolved to prevent its accomplishment. he summoned his troops together, both indigenous and mercenary, in his own person looked after their armament and commissariat, and in the viiith year of his reign crossed the frontier near zalu. he advanced by forced marches to meet the enemy, whom he encountered somewhere in southern syria, on the borders of the shephelah,* and after a stubbornly contested campaign obtained the victory. he carried off from the field, in addition to the treasures of the confederate tribes, some of the chariots which had been used for the transport of their families. the survivors made their way hastily to the north-west, in the direction of the sea, in order to receive the support of their navy, but the king followed them step by step. * no site is given for these battles. e. de rougé placed the theatre of war in syria, and his opinion was accepted by brugsch. chabas referred it to the mouth of the nile near pelusium, and his authority has prevailed up to the present. the remarks of w. max müller have brought me back to the opinion of the earlier egyptologists; but i differ from him in looking for the locality further south, and not to the mouth of nahr el-kelb as the site of the naval battle. it seems to me that the fact that the zakkala were prisoners at dor, and the pulasati in the shephelah, is enough to assign the campaign to the regions i have mentioned in the text. it is recorded that he occupied himself with lion-hunting _en route_ after the example of the victors of the xviiith dynasty, and that he killed three of these animals in the long grass on one occasion on the banks of some river. he rejoined his ships, probably at jaffa, and made straight for the enemy. the latter were encamped on the level shore, at the head of a bay wide enough to offer to their ships a commodious space for naval evolutions--possibly the mouth of the belos, in the neighbourhood of magadîl. the king drove their foot-soldiers into the water at the same moment that his admirals attacked the combined fleet of the pulasati and zakkala. [illustration: .jpg the army op ramses iii. on the march, and the lion-hunt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. some of the Ægean galleys were capsized and sank when the egyptian vessels rammed them with their sharp stems, and the crews, in endeavouring to escape to land by swimming, were picked off by the arrows of the archers of the guard who were commanded by ramses and his sons; they perished in the waves, or only escaped through the compassion of the victors. �i had fortified,� said the pharaoh, �my frontier at zahi; i had drawn up before these people my generals, my provincial governors, the vassal princes, and the best of my soldiers. the mouths of the river seemed to be a mighty rampart of galleys, barques, and vessels of all kinds, equipped from the bow to the stern with valiant armed men. the infantry, the flower of egypt, were as lions roaring on the mountains; the charioteers, selected from among the most rapid warriors, had for their captains only officers confident in themselves; the horses quivered in all their limbs, and were burning to trample the nations underfoot. as for me, i was like the warlike montû: i stood up before them and they saw the vigour of my arms. i, king ramses, i was as a hero who is conscious of his valour, and who stretches his hands over the people in the day of battle. those who have violated my frontier will never more garner harvests from this earth: the period of their soul has been fixed for ever. my forces were drawn up before them on the �very green,� a devouring flame approached them at the river mouth, annihilation embraced them on every side. those who were on the strand i laid low on the seashore, slaughtered like victims of the butcher. i made their vessels to capsize, and their riches fell into the sea.� those who had not fallen in the fight were caught, as it were, in the cast of a net. a rapid cruiser of the fleet carried the egyptian standard along the coast as far as the regions of the orontes and saros. the land troops, on the other hand, following on the heels of the defeated enemy, pushed through coele-syria, and in their first burst of zeal succeeded in reaching the plains of the euphrates. a century had elapsed since a pharaoh had planted his standard in this region, and the country must have seemed as novel to the soldiers of ramses iii. as to those of his predecessor thûtmosis. [illustration: .jpg the defeat of the peoples of the sea] the khâti were still its masters; and all enfeebled as they were by the ravages of the invading barbarians, were nevertheless not slow in preparing to resist their ancient enemies. the majority of the citadels shut their gates in the face of ramses, who, wishing to lose no time, did not attempt to besiege them: he treated their territory with the usual severity, devastating their open towns, destroying their harvests, breaking down their fruit trees, and cutting away their forests. he was able, moreover, without arresting his march, to carry by assault several of their fortified towns, alaza among the number, the destruction of which is represented in the scenes of his victories. the spoils were considerable, and came very opportunely to reward the soldiers or to provide funds for the erection of monuments. the last battalion of troops, however, had hardly recrossed the isthmus when lotanû became again its own master, and egyptian rule was once more limited to its traditional provinces of kharû and phoenicia. the king of the khâti appears among the prisoners whom the pharaoh is represented as bringing to his father amon; carchemish, tunipa, khalabu, katna, pabukhu, arvad, mitanni, mannus, asi, and a score of other famous towns of this period appear in the list of the subjugated nations, recalling the triumphs of thûtmosis iii. and amenothes ii. ramses did not allow himself to be deceived into thinking that his success was final. he accepted the protestations of obedience which were spontaneously offered him, but he undertook no further expedition of importance either to restrain or to provoke his enemies: the restricted rule which satisfied his exemplar ramses ii. ought, he thought, to be sufficient for his own ambition. egypt breathed freely once more on the announcement of the victory; henceforward she was �as a bed without anguish.� �let each woman now go to and fro according to her will,� cried the sovereign, in describing the campaign, �her ornaments upon her, and directing her steps to any place she likes!� and in order to provide still further guarantees of public security, he converted his asiatic captives, as he previously had his african prisoners, into a bulwark against the barbarians, and a safeguard of the frontier. the war must, doubtless, have decimated southern syria; and he planted along its coast what remained of the defeated tribes--the philistines in the shephelah, and the zakkala on the borders of the great oak forest stretching from oarmel to dor.* * it is in this region that we find henceforward the hebrews in contact with the philistines: at the end of the xxist egyptian dynasty a scribe makes dor a town of the zakkala. watch-towers were erected for the supervision of this region, and for rallying-points in case of internal revolts or attacks from without. one of these, the migdol of ramses iii., was erected, not far from the scene of the decisive battle, on the spot where the spoils had been divided. this living barrier, so to speak, stood between the nile valley and the dangers which threatened it from asia, and it was not long before its value was put to the proof. the libyans, who had been saved from destruction by the diversion created in their favour on the eastern side of the empire, having now recovered their courage, set about collecting their hordes together for a fresh invasion. they returned to the attack in the xith year of ramses, under the leadership of kapur, a prince of the mashauasha.* * the second campaign against the libyans is known to us from the inscriptions of the year xi. at medinet-habu. [illustration: .jpg the captive chiefs of ramses iii. at medinet-ihabu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. the first prisoner on the left is the prince of the khâti (cf. the cut on p. of the present work), the second is the prince of the amâuru [amoritos], the third the prince of the zakkala, the fourth that of the shardana, the fifth that of the shakalasha (see the cut on p. of this work), and the sixth that of the tursha [tyrseni]. their soul had said to them for the second time that �they would end their lives in the nomes of egypt, that they would till its valleys and its plains as their own land.� the issue did not correspond with their intentions. �death fell upon them within egypt, for they had hastened with their feet to the furnace which consumes corruption, under the fire of the valour of the king who rages like baal from the heights of heaven. all his limbs are invested with victorious strength; with his right hand he lays hold of the multitudes, his left extends to those who are against him, like a cloud of arrows directed upon them to destroy them, and his sword cuts like that of montû. kapur, who had come to demand homage, blind with fear, threw down his arms, and his troops did the same. he sent up to heaven a suppliant cry, and his son [mashashalu] arrested his foot and his hand; for, behold, there rises beside him the god who knows what he has in his heart: his majesty falls upon their heads as a mountain of granite and crushes them, the earth drinks up their blood as if it had been water...; their army was slaughtered, slaughtered their soldiers,� near a fortress situated on the borders of the desert called the �castle of usirmarî-miamon.� they were seized, �they were stricken, their arms bound, like geese piled up in the bottom of a boat, under the feet of his majesty.� * the fugitives were pursued at the sword�s point from the _castle of usirmarî-miamon_ to the _castle of the sands_, a distance of over thirty miles.** * the name of the son of kapur, mashashalu, masesyla, which is wanting in this inscription, is supplied from a parallel inscription. * the castle of usirmarî-miamon was �on the mountain of the horn of the world,� which induces me to believe that we must seek its site on the borders of the libyan desert. the royal title entering into its name being liable to change with every reign, it is possible that we have an earlier reference to this stronghold in a mutilated passage of the athribis stele, which relates to the campaigns of mînephtah; it must have commanded one of the most frequented routes leading to the oasis of amon. [illustration: .jpg ramses iii. binds the chiefs of the libyans] from a photograph by beato. two thousand and seventy-five libyans were left upon the ground that day, two thousand and fifty-two perished in other engagements, while two thousand and thirty-two, both male and female, were made prisoners. these were almost irreparable losses for a people of necessarily small numbers, and if we add the number of those who had succumbed in the disaster of six years before, we can readily realise how discouraged the invaders must have been, and how little likely they were to try the fortune of war once more. their power dwindled and vanished almost as quickly as it had arisen; the provisional cohesion given to their forces by a few ambitious chiefs broke up after their repeated defeats, and the rudiments of an empire which had struck terror into the pharaohs, resolved itself into its primitive elements, a number of tribes scattered over the desert. they were driven back beyond the libyan mountains; fortresses* guarded the routes they had previously followed, and they were obliged henceforward to renounce any hope of an invasion _en masse_, and to content themselves with a few raiding expeditions into the fertile plain of the delta, where they had formerly found a transitory halting-place. counter-raids organised by the local troops or by the mercenaries who garrisoned the principal towns in the neighbourhood of memphis--hermopolis and thinisl--inflicted punishment upon them when they became too audacious. their tribes, henceforward, as far as egypt was concerned, formed a kind of reserve from which the pharaoh could raise soldiers every year, and draw sufficient materials to bring his army up to fighting strength when internal revolt or an invasion from without called for military activity. * _the great harris papyrus_ speaks of fortifications erected in the towns of anhûri-shû, possibly thinis, and of thot, possibly hermopolis, in order to repel the tribes of the tihonu who were ceaselessly harassing the frontier. [illustration: .jpg the prince of the khati] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken at medinet- habu. the campaign of the xith year brought to an end the great military expeditions of ramses iii. henceforward he never took the lead in any more serious military enterprise than that of repressing the bedawin of seîr for acts of brigandage,* or the ethiopians for some similar reason. he confined his attention to the maintenance of commercial and industrial relations with manufacturing countries, and with the markets of asia and africa. he strengthened the garrisons of sinai, and encouraged the working of the ancient mines in that region. he sent a colony of quarry-men and of smelters to the land of atika, in order to work the veins of silver which were alleged to exist there.** *the sâîrû of the egyptian texts have been identified with the bedawin of seîr. ** this is the gebel-ataka of our day. all this district is imperfectly explored, but we know that it contains mines and quarries some of which were worked as late as in the time of the mameluk sultans. he launched a fleet on the red sea, and sent it to the countries of fragrant spices. �the captains of the sailors were there, together with the chiefs of the _corvée_ and accountants, to provide provision� for the people of the divine lands �from the innumerable products of egypt; and these products were counted by myriads. sailing through the great sea of qodi, they arrived at pûântt without mishap, and there collected cargoes for their galleys and ships, consisting of all the unknown marvels of tonûtir, as well as considerable quantities of the perfumes of pûâtîn, which they stowed on board by tens of thousands without number. the sons of the princes of tonûtir came themselves into qîmit with their tributes. they reached the region of coptos safe and sound, and disembarked there in peace with their riches.� it was somewhere about sau and tuau that the merchants and royal officers landed, following the example of the expeditions of the xiith and xviiith dynasties. here they organised caravans of asses and slaves, which taking the shortest route across the mountain--that of the valley of rahanû--carried the precious commodities to coptos, whence they were transferred to boats and distributed along the river. the erection of public buildings, which had been interrupted since the time of mînephtah, began again with renewed activity. the captives in the recent victories furnished the requisite labour, while the mines, the voyages to the somali coast, and the tributes of vassals provided the necessary money. syria was not lost sight of in this resumption of peaceful occupations. the overthrow of the khâti secured egyptian rule in this region, and promised a long tranquillity within its borders. one temple at least was erected in the country--that of pa-kanâna--where the princes of kharu were to assemble to offer worship to the pharaoh, and to pay each one his quota of the general tribute. the pulasati were employed to protect the caravan routes, and a vast reservoir was erected near aîna to provide a store of water for the irrigation of the neighbouring country. the delta absorbed the greater part of the royal subsidies; it had suffered so much from the libyan incursions, that the majority of the towns within it had fallen into a condition as miserable as that in which they were at the time of the expulsion of the shepherds. heliopolis, bubastis, thmuis, amû, and tanis still preserved some remains of the buildings which had already been erected in them by ramses; he constructed also, at the place at present called tel el-yahûdîyeh, a royal palace of limestone, granite, and alabaster, of which the type is unique amongst all the structures hitherto discovered. its walls and columns were not ornamented with the usual sculptures incised in stone, but the whole of the decorations--scenes as well as inscriptions--consisted of plaques of enamelled terra-cotta set in cement. the forms of men and animals and the lines of hieroglyphs, standing out in slight relief from a glazed and warm-coloured background, constitute an immense mosaic-work of many hues. the few remains of the work show great purity of design and an extraordinary delicacy of tone. [illustration: .jpg signs, arms and instruments] all the knowledge of the egyptian painters, and all the technical skill of their artificers in ceramic, must have been employed to compose such harmoniously balanced decorations, with their free handling of line and colour, and their thousands of rosettes, squares, stars, and buttons of varicoloured pastes.* * this temple has been known since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the louvre is in possession of some fragments from it which came from salt�s collection; it was rediscovered in , and some portions of it were transferred by mariette to the boulaq museum. the remainder was destroyed by the fellahîn, at the instigation of the enlightened amateurs of cairo, and fragments of it have passed into various private collections. the decoration has been attributed to chaldoan influence, but it is a work purely egyptian, both in style and in technique. [illustration: .jpg the colossal osirian figures in the first court at medinet-habu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the difficulties to overcome were so appalling, that when the marvellous work was once accomplished, no subsequent attempt was made to construct a second like it: all the remaining structures of ramses iii., whether at memphis, in the neighbourhood of abydos, or at karnak, were in the conventional style of the pharaohs. he determined, nevertheless, to give to the exterior of the memnonium, which he built near medinet-habu for the worship of himself, the proportions and appearance of an asiatic �migdol,� influenced probably by his remembrance of similar structures which he had seen during his syrian campaign. the chapel itself is of the ordinary type, with its gigantic pylons, its courts surrounded by columns--each supporting a colossal osirian statue--its hypostyle hall, and its mysterious cells for the deposit of spoils taken from the peoples of the sea and the cities of asia. his tomb was concealed at a distant spot in the biban-el-moluk, and we see depicted on its walls the same scenes that we find in the last resting-place of seti i. or ramses ii., and in addition to them, in a series of supplementary chambers, the arms of the sovereign, his standards, his treasure, his kitchen, and the preparation of offerings which were to be made to him. his sarcophagus, cut out of an enormous block of granite, was brought for sale to europe at the beginning of this century, and cambridge obtained possession of its cover, while the louvre secured the receptacle itself. these were years of profound tranquillity. the pharaoh intended that absolute order should reign throughout his realm, and that justice should be dispensed impartially within it. [illustration: .jpg the first pylon of the temple] there were to be no more exactions, no more crying iniquities: whoever was discovered oppressing the people, no matter whether he were court official or feudal lord--was instantly deprived of his functions, and replaced by an administrator of tried integrity. ramses boasts, moreover, in an idyllic manner, of having planted trees everywhere, and of having built arbours wherein the people might sit in the shade in the open air; while women might go to and fro where they would in security, no one daring to insult them on the way. the shardanian and libyan mercenaries were restricted to the castles which they garrisoned, and were subjected to such a severe discipline that no one had any cause of complaint against these armed barbarians settled in the heart of egypt. �i have,� continues the king, �lifted up every miserable one out of his misfortune, i have granted life to him, i have saved him from the mighty who were oppressing him, and have secured rest for every one in his own town.� the details of the description are exaggerated, but the general import of it is true. egypt had recovered the peace and prosperity of which it had been deprived for at least half a century, that is, since the death of mînephtah. the king, however, was not in such a happy condition as his people, and court intrigues embittered the later years of his life. one of his sons, whose name is unknown to us, but who is designated in the official records by the nickname of pentaûîrît, formed a conspiracy against him. his mother, tîi, who was a woman of secondary rank, took it into her head to secure the crown for him, to the detriment of the children of queen isît. an extensive plot was hatched in which scribes, officers of the guard, priests, and officials in high place, both natives and foreigners, were involved. a resort to the supernatural was at first attempted, and the superintendent of the herds, a certain panhûibaûnû, who was deeply versed in magic, undertook to cast a spell upon the pharaoh, if he could only procure certain conjuring books of which he was not possessed. these were found to be in the royal library. he managed to introduce himself under cover of the night into the harem, where he manufactured certain waxen figures, of which some were to excite the hate of his wives against their husband, while others would cause him to waste away and finally perish. a traitor betrayed several of the conspirators, who, being subjected to the torture, informed upon others, and these at length brought the matter home to pentaûîrît and his immediate accomplices. all were brought before a commission of twelve members, summoned expressly to try the case, and the result was the condemnation and execution of six women and some forty men. the extreme penalty of the egyptian code was reserved for pentaûîrît, and for the most culpable,--�they died of themselves,� and the meaning of this phrase is indicated, i believe, by the appearance of one of the mummies disinterred at deîr el-baharî.* the coffin in which it was placed was very plain, painted white and without inscription; the customary removal of entrails had not been effected, but the body was covered with a thick layer of natron, which was applied even to the skin itself and secured by wrappings. * the translations by dévéria, lepage-renouf, and erman agree in making it a case of judicial suicide: there was left to the condemned a choice of his mode of death, in order to avoid the scandal of a public execution. it is also possible to make it a condemnation to death in person, which did not allow of the substitution of a proxy willing, for a payment to his family, to undergo death in place of the condemned; but, unfortunately, no other text is to be found supporting the existence of such a practice in egypt. it makes one�s flesh creep to look at it: the hands and feet are tied by strong bands, and are curled up as if under an intolerable pain; the abdomen is drawn up, the stomach projects like a ball, the chest is contracted, the head is thrown back, the face is contorted in a hideous grimace, the retracted lips expose the teeth, and the mouth is open as if to give utterance to a last despairing cry. the conviction is borne in upon us that the man was invested while still alive with the wrappings of the dead. is this the mummy of pentaûîrît, or of some other prince as culpable as he was, and condemned to this frightful punishment? in order to prevent the recurrence of such wicked plots, pharaoh resolved to share his throne with that one of his sons who had most right to it. in the xxxiind year of his reign he called together his military and civil chiefs, the generals of the foreign mercenaries, the shardana, the priests, and the nobles of the court, and presented to them, according to custom, his heir-designate, who was also called ramses. he placed the double crown upon his brow, and seated him beside himself upon the throne of horus. this was an occasion for the pharaoh to bring to remembrance all the great exploits he had performed during his reign--his triumphs over the libyans and over the peoples of the sea, and the riches he had lavished upon the gods: at the end of the enumeration he exhorted those who were present to observe the same fidelity towards the son which they had observed towards the father, and to serve the new sovereign as valiantly as they had served himself. [illustration: .jpg the mummy of ramses iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a, photograph by emil brugsch- bey. the joint reign lasted for only four years. ramses iii. was not much over sixty years of age when he died. he was still vigorous and muscular, but he had become stout and heavy. the fatty matter of the body having been dissolved by the natron in the process of embalming, the skin distended during life has gathered up into enormous loose folds, especially about the nape of the neck, under the chin, on the hips, and at the articulations of the limbs. the closely shaven head and cheeks present no trace of hair or beard. the forehead, although neither broad nor high, is better proportioned than that of ramses ii.; the supra-orbital ridges are less accentuated than his, the cheek-bones not so prominent, the nose not so arched, and the chin and jaw less massive. the eyes were perhaps larger, but no opinion can be offered on this point, for the eyelids have been cut away, and the cleared-out cavities have been filled with rags. the ears do not stand out so far from the head as those of ramses ii., but they have been pierced for ear-rings. the mouth, large by nature, has been still further widened in the process of embalming, owing to the awkwardness of the operator, who has cut into the cheeks at the side. the thin lips allow the white and regular teeth to be seen; the first molar on the right has been either broken in half, or has worn away more rapidly than the rest. ramses iii. seems, on the whole, to have been a sort of reduced copy, a little more delicate in make, of ramses ii.; his face shows more subtlety of expression and intelligence, though less nobility than that of the latter, while his figure is not so upright, his shoulders not so broad, and his general muscular vigour less. what has been said of his personality may be extended to his reign; it was evidently and designedly an imitation of the reign of ramses il, but fell short of its model owing to the insufficiency of his resources in men and money. if ramses iii. did not succeed in becoming one of the most powerful of the theban pharaohs, it was not for lack of energy or ability; the depressed condition of egypt at the time limited the success of his endeavours and caused them to fall short of his intentions. the work accomplished by him was not on this account less glorious. at his accession egypt was in a wretched state, invaded on the west, threatened by a flood of barbarians on the east, without an army or a fleet, and with no resources in the treasury. in fifteen years he had disposed of his inconvenient neighbours, organised an army, constructed a fleet, re-established his authority abroad, and settled the administration at home on so firm a basis, that the country owed the peace which it enjoyed for several centuries to the institutions and prestige which he had given it. his associate in the government, ramses iv., barely survived him. then followed a series of _rois fainéants_ bearing the name of ramses, but in an order not yet clearly determined. it is generally assumed that ramses v., brother of ramses iii., succeeded ramses iv. by supplanting his nephews--who, however, appear to have soon re-established their claim to the throne, and to have followed each other in rapid succession as ramses vi., ramses vil, ramses viii., and maritûmû.* others endeavour to make out that ramses v. was the son of ramses iv., and that the prince called ramses vi. never succeeded to the throne at all. at any rate, his son, who is styled ramses vil, but who is asserted by some to have been a son of ramses iii., is considered to have succeeded ramses v., and to have become the ancestor from whom the later ramessides traced their descent.** * the order of the ramessides was first made out by champollion the younger and by rosellini. bunsen and lepsius reckon in it thirteen kings; e. de rougé puts the number at fifteen or sixteen; maspero makes the number to be twelve, which was reduced still further by setho. erman thinks that ramses ix. and ramses x. were also possibly sons of ramses iii.; he consequently declines to recognise king maritûmû as a son of that sovereign, as brugsch would make out. * the monuments of these later ramessides are so rare and so doubtful that i cannot yet see my way to a solution of the questions which they raise. the short reigns of these pharaohs were marked by no events which would cast lustre on their names; one might say that they had nothing else to do than to enjoy peacefully the riches accumulated by their forefather. ramses iv. was anxious to profit by the commercial relations which had been again established between egypt and puanît, and, in order to facilitate the transit between coptos and kosseir, founded a station, and a temple dedicated to isis, in the mountain of bakhni; by this route, we learn, more than eight thousand men had passed under the auspices of the high priest of amon, nakh-tû-ramses. this is the only undertaking of public utility which we can attribute to any of these kings. as we see them in their statues and portraits, they are heavy and squat and without refinement, with protruding eyes, thick lips, flattened and commonplace noses, round and expressionless faces. their work was confined to the engraving of their cartouches on the blank spaces of the temples at karnak and medinet-habu, and the addition of a few stones to the buildings at memphis, abydos, and heliopolis. whatever energy and means they possessed were expended on the construction of their magnificent tombs. [illustration: .jpg a ramses of the xxth dynasty] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by emil brugsch- bey. this is the ramses vi. of the series now generally adopted. these may still be seen in the biban el-moluk, and no visitor can refrain from admiring them for their magnitude and decoration. as to funerary chapels, owing to the shortness of the reigns of these kings, there was not time to construct them, and they therefore made up for this want by appropriating the chapel of their father, which was at medinet-habu, and it was here consequently that their worship was maintained. the last of the sons of ramses iii. was succeeded by another and equally ephemeral ramses; after whom came ramses x. and ramses xi., who re-established the tradition of more lasting reigns. there was now no need of expeditions against kharu or libya, for these enfeebled countries no longer disputed, from the force of custom, the authority of egypt. from time to time an embassy from these countries would arrive at thebes, bringing presents, which were pompously recorded as representing so much tribute.* if it is true that a people which has no history is happy, then egypt ought to be reckoned as more fortunate under the feebler descendants of ramses iii. than it had ever been under the most famous pharaohs. * the mention of a tribute, for instance, in the time of ramses iv. from the lotanu. thebes continued to be the favourite royal residence. here in its temple the kings were crowned, and in its palaces they passed the greater part of their lives, and here in its valley of sepulchres they were laid to rest when their reigns and lives were ended. the small city of the beginning of the xviiith dynasty had long encroached upon the plain, and was now transformed into an immense town, with magnificent monuments, and a motley population, having absorbed in its extension the villages of ashirû,* and madit, and even the southern apît, which we now call luxor. but their walls could still be seen, rising up in the middle of modern constructions, a memorial of the heroic ages, when the power of the theban princes was trembling in the balance, and when conflicts with the neighbouring barons or with the legitimate king were on the point of breaking out at every moment.** * the village of ashirû was situated to the south of the temple of karnak, close to the temple of mût. its ruins, containing the statues of sokhît collected by amenôthes iii., extend around the remains marked x in mariette�s plan. * these are the walls which are generally regarded as marking the sacred enclosure of the temples: an examination of the ruins of thebes shows us that, during the xxth and xxist dynasties, brick-built houses lay against these walls both on the inner and outer sides, so that they must have been half hidden by buildings, as are the ancient walls of paris at the present day. the inhabitants of apît retained their walls, which coincided almost exactly with the boundary of nsîttauî, the great sanctuary of amon; ashirû sheltered behind its ramparts the temple of mût, while apît-rîsît clustered around a building consecrated by amenôthes iii. to his divine father, the lord of thebes. within the boundary walls of thebes extended whole suburbs, more or less densely populated and prosperous, through which ran avenues of sphinxes connecting together the three chief boroughs of which the sovereign city was composed. on every side might have been seen the same collections of low grey huts, separated from each other by some muddy pool where the cattle were wont to drink and the women to draw water; long streets lined with high houses, irregularly shaped open spaces, bazaars, gardens, courtyards, and shabby-looking palaces which, while presenting a plain and unadorned exterior, contained within them the refinements of luxury and the comforts of wealth. the population did not exceed a hundred thousand souls,* reckoning a large proportion of foreigners attracted hither by commerce or held as slaves. * letronne, after having shown that we have no authentic ancient document giving us the population, fixes it at , souls. my estimate, which is, if anything, exaggerated, is based on the comparison of the area of ancient thebes and that of such modern towns as shit, girgeh and qina, whose populations are known for the last fifty years from the census. [illustration: .jpg map: thebes in the xxth dynasty] the court of the pharaoh drew to the city numerous provincials, who, coming thither to seek their fortune, took up their abode there, planting in the capital of southern egypt types from the north and the centre of the country, as well as from nubia and the oases; such a continuous infusion of foreign material into the ancient theban stock gave rise to families of a highly mixed character, in which all the various races of egypt were blended in the most capricious fashion. in every twenty officers, and in the same number of ordinary officials, about half would be either syrians, or recently naturalised nubians, or the descendants of both, and among the citizens such names as pakhari the syrian, palamnanî the native of the lebanon, pinahsî the negro, palasiaî the alasian, preserved the indications of foreign origin.* a similar mixture of races was found in other cities, and memphis, bubastis, tanis, and siût must have presented as striking an aspect in this respect as thebes.** at memphis there were regular colonies of phoenician, canaanite, and amorite merchants sufficiently prosperous to have temples there to their national gods, and influential enough to gain adherents to their religion from the indigenous inhabitants. they worshipped baal, anîti. baal-zaphuna, and ashtoreth, side by side with phtah, nofîrtûmû, and sokhit,*** and this condition of things at memphis was possibly paralleled elsewhere--as at tanis and bubastis. * among the forty-three individuals compromised in the conspiracy against ramses iii. whose names have been examined by dévéria, nine are foreigners, chiefly semites, and were so recognised by the egyptians themselves--adiram, balmahara, garapusa, lunîni the libyan, paiarisalama, possibly the jerusalemite, nanaiu, possibly the ninevite, palulca the lycian, qadendena, and uarana or naramu. ** an examination of the stelæ of abydos shows the extent of foreign influence in this city in the middle of the xviiith dynasty. *** these gods are mentioned in the preamble of a letter written on the _verso_ of the _sallier papyrus_. from the mode in which they are introduced we may rightly infer that they had, like the egyptian gods who are mentioned with them, their chapels at memphis. a place in memphis is called �the district called the district of the khâtiû� is an inscription of the iiith year of aï, and shows that hittites were there by the side of canaanites. this blending of races was probably not so extensive in the country districts, except in places where mercenaries were employed as garrisons; but sudanese or hittite slaves, brought back by the soldiers of the ranks, had introduced ethiopian and asiatic elements into many a family of the fellahîn.* * one of the letters in the great bologna papyrus treats of a syrian slave, employed as a cultivator at hermopolis, who had run away from his master. we have only to examine in any of our museums the statues of the memphite and theban periods respectively, to see the contrast between the individuals represented in them as far as regards stature and appearance. some members of the courts of the ramessides stand out as genuine semites notwithstanding the disguise of their egyptian names; and in the times of kheops and Ûsirtasen they would have been regarded as barbarians. many of them exhibit on their faces a blending of the distinctive features of one or other of the predominant oriental races of the time. additional evidence of a mixture of races is forthcoming when we examine with an unbiased mind the mummies of the period, and the complexity of the new elements introduced among the people by the political movements of the later centuries is thus strongly confirmed. the new-comers had all been absorbed and assimilated by the country, but the generations which arose from this continual cross-breeding, while representing externally the egyptians of older epochs, in manners, language, and religion, were at bottom something different, and the difference became the more accentuated as the foreign elements increased. the people were thus gradually divested of the character which had distinguished them before the conquest of syria; the dispositions and defects imported from without counteracted to such an extent their own native dispositions and defects that all marks of individuality were effaced and nullified. the race tended to become more and more what it long continued to be afterwards,--a lifeless and inert mass, without individual energy--endowed, it is true, with patience, endurance, cheerfulness of temperament, and good nature, but with little power of self-government, and thus forced to submit to foreign masters who made use of it and oppressed it without pity. the upper classes had degenerated as much as the masses. the feudal nobles who had expelled the shepherds, and carried the frontiers of the empire to the banks of the euphrates, seemed to have expended their energies in the effort, and to have almost ceased to exist. as long as egypt was restricted to the nile valley, there was no such disproportion between the power of the pharaoh and that of his feudatories as to prevent the latter from maintaining their privileges beside, and, when occasion arose, even against the monarch. the conquest of asia, while it compelled them either to take up arms themselves or to send their troops to a distance, accustomed them and their soldiers to a passive obedience. the maintenance of a strict discipline in the army was the first condition of successful campaigning at great distances from the mother country and in the midst of hostile people, and the unquestioning respect which they had to pay to the orders of their general prepared them for abject submission to the will of their sovereign. to their bravery, moveover, they owed not only money and slaves, but also necklaces and bracelets of honour, and distinctions and offices in the pharaonic administration. the king, in addition, neglected no opportunity for securing their devotion to himself. he gave to them in marriage his sisters, his daughters, his cousins, and any of the princesses whom he was not compelled by law to make his own wives. he selected from their harems nursing-mothers for his own sons, and this choice established between him and them a foster relationship, which was as binding among the egyptians and other oriental peoples as one of blood. it was not even necessary for the establishment of this relation that the foster-mother�s connexion with the pharaoh�s son should be durable or even effective: the woman had only to offer her breast to the child for a moment, and this symbol was quite enough to make her his nurse--his true _monâît_. this fictitious fosterage was carried so far, that it was even made use of in the case of youths and persons of mature age. when an egyptian woman wished to adopt an adult, the law prescribed that she should offer him the breast, and from that moment he became her son. a similar ceremony was prescribed in the case of men who wished to assume the quality of male nurse--_monâî_--or even, indeed, of female nurse--_monâît_--like that of their wives; according to which they were to place, it would seem, the end of one of their fingers in the mouth of the child.* once this affinity was established, the fidelity of these feudal lords was established beyond question; and their official duties to the sovereign were not considered as accomplished when they had fulfilled their military obligations, for they continued to serve him in the palace as they had served him on the field. wherever the necessities of the government called them--at memphis, at ramses, or elsewhere--they assembled around the pharaoh; like him they had their palaces at thebes, and when they died they were anxious to be buried there beside him.** * these symbolical modes of adoption were first pointed out by maspero. legend has given examples of them: as, for instance, where isis fosters the child of malkander, king of byblos, by inserting the tip of her finger in its mouth. ** the tomb of a prince of tobûî, the lesser aphroditopolis, was discovered at thebes by maspero. the rock-out tombs of two thinite princes were noted in the same necropolis. these two were of the time of thûtmosis iii. i have remarked in tombs not yet made public the mention of princes of el-kab, who played an important part about the person of the pharaohs down to the beginning of the xxth dynasty. many of the old houses had become extinct, while others, owing to marriages, were absorbed into the royal family; the fiefs conceded to the relations or favourites of the pharaoh continued to exist, indeed, as of old, but the ancient distrustful and turbulent feudality had given place to an aristocracy of courtiers, who lived oftener in attendance on the monarch than on their own estates, and whose authority continued to diminish to the profit of the absolute rule of the king. there would be nothing astonishing in the �count� becoming nothing more than a governor, hereditary or otherwise, in thebes itself; he could hardly be anything higher in the capital of the empire.* but the same restriction of authority was evidenced in all the provinces: the recruiting of soldiers, the receipt of taxes, most of the offices associated with the civil or military administration, became more and more affairs of the state, and passed from the hands of the feudal lord into those of the functionaries of the crown. the few barons who still lived on their estates, while they were thus dispossessed of the greater part of their prerogatives, obtained some compensation, on the other hand, on the side of religion. from early times they had been by birth the heads of the local cults, and their protocol had contained, together with those titles which justified their possession of the temporalities of the nome, others which attributed to them spiritual supremacy. the sacred character with which they were invested became more and more prominent in proportion as their political influence became curtailed, and we find scions of the old warlike families or representatives of a new lineage at thinis, at akhmîm,** in the nome of baalû, at hierâconpolis,*** at el-kab,**** and in every place where we have information from the monuments as to their position, bestowing more concern upon their sacerdotal than on their other duties. * rakhmirî and his son manakhpirsonbû were both �counts �of thebes under thûtmosis iii., and there is nothing to show that there was any other person among them invested with the same functions and belonging to a different family. ** for example, the tomb of anhûrimôsû, high priest of anhuri-shû and prince of thinis, under mînephtah, where the sacerdotal character is almost exclusively prominent. the same is the case with the tombs of the princes of akhmîm in the time of khûniatonû and his successors: the few still existing in - have not been published. the stelæ belonging to them are at paris and berlin. *** horimôsû, prince of hierâconpolis under thûtmosis iii., is, above everything else, a prophet of the local horus. **** the princes of el-kab during the xixth and xxth dynasties were, before everything, priests of nekhabit, as appears from an examination of their tombs, which, lying in a side valley, far away from the tomb of pihirî, are rarely visited. this transfiguration of the functions of the barons, which had been completed under the xixth and xxth dynasties, corresponded with a more general movement by which the pharaohs themselves were driven to accentuate their official position as high priests, and to assign to their sons sacerdotal functions in relation to the principal deities. this rekindling of religious fervour would not, doubtless, have restrained military zeal in case of war;* but if it did not tend to suppress entirely individual bravery, it discouraged the taste for arms and for the bold adventures which had characterised the old feudality. * the sons of ramses ii., khâmoîsît and marîtùmû, were bravo warriors in spite of their being high priests of phtah at memphis, and of râ at heliopolis. the duties of sacrificing, of offering prayer, of celebrating the sacred rites according to the prescribed forms, and rendering due homage to the gods in the manner they demanded, were of such an exactingly scrupulous and complex character that the pharaohs and the lords of earlier times had to assign them to men specially fitted for, and appointed to, the task; now that they had assumed these absorbing functions themselves, they were obliged to delegate to others an increasingly greater proportion of their civil and military duties. thus, while the king and his great vassals were devoutly occupying themselves in matters of worship and theology, generals by profession were relieving them of the care of commanding their armies; and as these individuals were frequently the chiefs of ethiopian, asiatic, and especially of libyan bands, military authority, and, with it, predominant influence in the state were quickly passing into the hands of the barbarians. a sort of aristocracy of veterans, notably of shardana or mashauasha, entirely devoted to arms, grew up and increased gradually side by side with the ancient noble families, now by preference devoted to the priesthood.* * this military aristocracy was fully developed in the xxist and xxiind dynasties, but it began to take shape after ramses iii. had planted the shardana and qahaka in certain towns as garrisons. the barons, whether of ancient or modern lineage, were possessed of immense wealth, especially those of priestly families. the tribute and spoil of asia and africa, when once it had reached egypt, hardly ever left it: they were distributed among the population in proportion to the position occupied by the recipients in the social scale. the commanders of the troops, the attendants on the king, the administrators of the palace and temples, absorbed the greater part, but the distribution was carried down to the private soldier and his relations in town or country, who received some of the crumbs. when we remember for a moment the four centuries and more during which egypt had been reaping the fruits of her foreign conquest, we cannot think without amazement of the quantities of gold and other precious metals which must have been brought in divers forms into the valley of the nile.* every fresh expedition made additions to these riches, and one is at a loss to know whence in the intervals between two defeats the conquered could procure so much wealth, and why the sources were never exhausted nor became impoverished. this flow of metals had an influence upon commercial transactions, for although trade was still mainly carried on by barter, the mode of operation was becoming changed appreciably. in exchanging commodities, frequent use was now made of rings and ingots of a certain prescribed weight in _tabonû_; and it became more and more the custom to pay for goods by a certain number of _tabonû_ of gold, silver, or copper, rather than by other commodities: it was the practice even to note down in invoices or in the official receipts, alongside the products or manufactured articles with which payments were made, the value of the same in weighed metal.** * the quantity of gold in ingots or rings, mentioned in the _annals of tkutmosis iii._, represents altogether a weight of nearly a ton and a quarter, or in value some £ , of our money. and this is far from being the whole of the metal obtained from the enemy, for a large portion of the inscription has disappeared, and the unrecorded amount might be taken, without much risk of error, at as much as that of which we have evidence--say, some two and a half tons, which thûtmosis had received or brought back between the years xxiii. and xlii. of his reign--an estimation rather under than over the reality. these figures, moreover, take no account of the vessels and statues, or of the furniture and arms plated with gold. silver was not received in such large quantities, but it was of great value, and the like may be said of copper and lead. * the facts justifying this position were observed and put together for the first time by chabas: a translation is given in his memoir of a register of the xxth or xxist dynasty, which gives the price of butcher�s meat, both in gold and silver, at this date. fresh examples have been since collected by spiegelberg, who has succeeded in drawing up a kind of tariff for the period between the xviiith and xxth dynasties. this custom, although not yet widely extended, placed at the disposal of trade enormous masses of metal, which were preserved in the form of ingots or bricks, except the portion which went to the manufacture of rings, jewellery, or valuable vessels.* * there are depicted on the monuments bags or heaps of gold dust, ingots in the shape of bricks, rings, and vases, arranged alongside each other. the general prosperity encouraged a passion for goldsmith�s work, and the use of bracelets, necklaces, and chains became common among classes of the people who were not previously accustomed to wear them. there was henceforward no scribe or merchant, however poor he might be, who had not his seal made of gold or silver, or at any rate of copper gilt. the stone was sometimes fixed, but frequently arranged so as to turn round on a pivot; while among people of superior rank it had some emblem or device upon it, such as a scorpion, a sparrow-hawk, a lion, or a cynocephalous monkey. chains occupied the same position among the ornaments of egyptian women as rings among men; they were indispensable decorations. examples of silver chains are known of some five feet in length, while others do not exceed two to three inches. there are specimens in gold of all sizes, single, double, and triple, with large or small links, some thick and heavy, while others are as slight and flexible as the finest venetian lace. the poorest peasant woman, alike with the lady of the court, could boast of the possession of a chain, and she must have been in dire poverty who had not some other ornament in her jewel-case. the jewellery of queen Âhhotpû shows to what degree of excellence the work of the egyptian goldsmiths had attained at the time of the expulsion of the nyksôs: they had not only preserved the good traditions of the best workmen of the xiith dynasty, but they had perfected the technical details, and had learned to combine form and colour with a greater skill. the pectorals of prince khâmoîsît and the lord psaru,now in the louvre, but which were originally placed in the tomb of the apis in the time of ramses ii., are splendid examples. [illustration: .jpg pectoral of ramses ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the jewel in the louvre. the most common form of these represents in miniature the front of a temple with a moulded or flat border, surmounted by a curved cornice. in one of them, which was doubtless a present from the king himself, the cartouche, containing the first name of the pharaoh-usirmari, appears just below the frieze, and serves as a centre for the design within the frame. the wings of the ram-headed sparrow-hawk, the emblem of amonrâ, are so displayed as to support it, while a large urseus and a vulture beneath embracing both the sparrow-hawk and the cartouche with outspread wings give the idea of divine protection. two _didû_, each of them filling one of the lower corners, symbolise duration. the framework of the design is made up of divisions marked out in gold, and filled either with coloured enamels or pieces of polished stone. the general effect is one of elegance, refinement, and harmony, the three principal elements of the design becoming enlarged from the top downwards in a deftly adjusted gradation. the dead-gold of the cartouche in the upper centre is set off below by the brightly variegated and slightly undulating band of colours of the sparrow-hawk, while the urseus and vulture, associated together with one pair of wings, envelope the upper portions in a half-circle of enamels, of which the shades pass from red through green to a dull blue, with a freedom of handling and a skill in the manipulation of colour which do honour to the artist. it was not his fault if there is still an element of stiffness in the appearance of the pectoral as a whole, for the form which religious tradition had imposed upon the jewel was so rigid that no artifice could completely get over this defect. it is a type which arose out of the same mental concepts as had given birth to egyptian architecture and sculpture--monumental in character, and appearing often as if designed for colossal rather than ordinary beings. the dimensions, too overpowering for the decoration of normal men or women, would find an appropriate place only on the breasts of gigantic statues: the enormous size of the stone figures to which alone they are adapted would relieve them, and show them in their proper proportions. the artists of the second theban empire tried all they could, however, to get rid of the square framework in which the sacred bird is enclosed, and we find examples among the pectorals in the louvre of the sparrow-hawk only with curved wings, or of the ram-headed hawk with the wings extended; but in both of them there is displayed the same brilliancy, the same purity of line, as in the square-shaped jewels, while the design, freed from the trammels of the hampering enamelled frame, takes on a more graceful form, and becomes more suitable for personal decoration. [illustration: .jpg the ram-headed sparrow-hawk in the louvre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a jewel in the louvre. the ram�s head in the second case excels in the beauty of its workmanship anything to be found elsewhere in the museums of europe or egypt. it is of the finest gold, but its value does not depend upon the precious material: the ancient engraver knew how to model it with a bold and free hand, and he has managed to invest it with as much dignity as if he had been carving his subject in heroic size out of a block of granite or limestone. it is not an example of pure industrial art, but of an art for which a designation is lacking. other examples, although more carefully executed and of more costly materials, do not approach it in value: such, for instance, are the earrings of ramses xii. at gîzeh, which are made up of an ostentatious combination of disks, filigree-work, chains, beads, and hanging figures of the urseus. to get an idea of the character of the plate on the royal sideboards, we must have recourse to the sculptures in the temples, or to the paintings on the tombs: the engraved gold or silver centrepieces, dishes, bowls, cups, and amphoras, if valued by weight only, were too precious to escape the avarice of the impoverished generations which followed the era of theban prosperity. in the fabrication of these we can trace foreign influences, but not to the extent of a predominance over native art: even if the subject to be dealt with by the artist happened to be a phoenician god or an asiatic prisoner, he was not content with slavishly copying his model; he translated it and interpreted it, so as to give it an egyptian character. the household furniture was in keeping with these precious objects. beds and armchairs in valuable woods, inlaid with ivory, carved, gilt, painted in subdued and bright colours, upholstered with mattresses and cushions of many-hued asiatic stuffs, or of home-made materials, fashioned after chaldæan patterns, were in use among the well-to-do, while people of moderate means had to be content with old-fashioned furniture of the ancient regime. [illustration: .jpg decorated armchair] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of these objects in the tomb of ramses iii. the theban dwelling-house was indeed more sumptuously furnished than the earliest memphite, but we find the same general arrangements in both, which provided, in addition to quarters for the masters, a similar number of rooms intended for the slaves, for granaries, storehouses, and stables. while the outward decoration of life was subject to change, the inward element remained unaltered. costume was a more complex matter than in former times: the dresses and lower garments were more gauffered, had more embroidery and stripes; the wigs were larger and longer, and rose up in capricious arrangements of curls and plaits. [illustration: .jpg egyptian wig] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by m. de mertens. the use of the chariot had now become a matter of daily custom, and the number of domestics, already formidable, was increased by fresh additions in the shape of coachmen, grooms, and _saises_, who ran before their master to clear a way for the horses through the crowded streets of the city.* * the pictures at tel el-amarna exhibit the king, queen, and princesses driving in their chariots with escorts of soldiers and runners. we often find in the tomb-paintings the chariot and coachman of some dignitary, waiting while their master inspects a field or a workshop, or while he is making a visit to the palace for some reward. as material, existence became more complex, intellectual life partook of the same movement, and, without deviating much from the lines prescribed for it by the learned and the scribes of the memphite age, literature had become in the mean time larger, more complicated, more exacting, and more difficult to grapple with and to master. it had its classical authors, whose writings were committed to memory and taught in the schools. these were truly masterpieces, for if some felt that they understood and enjoyed them, others found them almost beyond their comprehension, and complained bitterly of their obscurity. the later writers followed them pretty closely, in taking pains, on the one hand to express fresh ideas in the forms consecrated by approved and ancient usage, or when they failed to find adequate vehicles to convey new thoughts, resorting in their lack of imagination to the foreigner for the requisite expressions. the necessity of knowing at least superficially, something of the dialect and writings of asia compelled the egyptian scribes to study to some degree the literature of phonecia and of chaldæa. [illustration: .jpg page image with furniture] drawn by faucher-gudin, from photographs of the objects in the museums of berlin and gîzeh. from these sources they had borrowed certain formulae and incantation, medical recipes, and devout legends, in which the deities of assyria and especially astartê played the chief part. they appropriated in this manner a certain number of words and phrases with which they were accustomed to interlard their discourses and writings. they thought it polite to call a door no longer by the word _ro_, but the term _tira_, and to accompany themselves no longer with the harp _bordt_, but with the same instrument under its new name _kinnôr_, and to make the _salâm_ in saluting the sovereign in place of crying before him, _aaû_. they were thorough-going semiticisers; but one is less offended by their affectation when one considers that the number of captives in the country, and the intermarriages with canaanite women, had familiarised a portion of the community from childhood with the sounds and ideas of the languages from which the scribes were accustomed to borrow unblushingly. this artifice, if it served to infuse an appearance of originality into their writings, had no influence upon their method of composition. their poetical ideal remained what it had been in the time of their ancestors, but seeing that we are now unable to determine the characteristic cadence of sentences or the mental attitude which marked each generation of literary men, it is often difficult for us to find out the qualities in their writings which gave them popularity. a complete library of one of the learned in the ramesside period must have contained a strange mixture of works, embracing, in addition to books of devotion, which were indispensable to those who were solicitous about their souls,* collections of hymns, romances, war and love songs, moral and philosophical treatises, letters, and legal documents. * there are found in the rubrics of many religious books, for example that dealing with the unseen world, promises of health and prosperity to the soul which, �while still on earth,� had read and learned them. a similar formula appears at the end of several important chapters of the _book of the dead._ it would have been similar in character to the literary-possessions of an egyptian of the memphite period,* but the language in which it was written would not have been so stiff and dry, but would have flowed more easily, and been more sustained and better balanced. * the composition of these libraries may be gathered from the collections of papyri which have turned up from time to time, and have been sold by the arabs to europeans buyers; e.g. the sallier collection, the anastasi collections, and that of harris. they have found their way eventually into the british museum or the museum at leyden, and have been published in the _select papyri_ of the former, or in the _monuments Égyptiens_ of the latter. the great odes to the deities which we find in the theban _papyri_ are better fitted, perhaps, than the profane compositions of the period, to give us an idea of the advance which egyptian genius had made in the width and richness of its modes of expression, while still maintaining almost the same dead-level of idea which had characterised it from the outset. among these, one dedicated to harmakhis, the sovereign sun, is no longer restricted to a bare enumeration of the acts and virtues of the �disk,� but ventures to treat of his daily course and his final triumphs in terms which might have been used in describing the victorious campaigns or the apotheosis of a pharaoh. it begins with his awakening, at the moment when he has torn himself away from the embraces of night. standing upright in the cabin of the divine bark, �the fair boat of millions of years,� with the coils of the serpent mihni around him, he glides in silence on the eternal current of the celestial waters, guided and protected by those battalions of secondary deities with whose odd forms the monuments have made us familiar. �heaven is in delight, the earth is in joy, gods and men are making festival, to render glory to phrâ-harmakhis, when they see him arise in his bark, having overturned his enemies in his own time!� they accompany him from hour to hour, they fight the good fight with him against apopi, they shout aloud as he inflicts each fresh wound upon the monster: they do not even abandon him when the west has swallowed him up in its darkness.* some parts of the hymn remind us, in the definiteness of the imagery and in the abundance of detail, of a portion of the poem of pentaûîrît, or one of those inscriptions of ramses iii. wherein he celebrates the defeat of hordes of asiatics or libyans. * the remains of egyptian romantic literature have been collected and translated into french by maspero, and subsequently into english by flinders petrie. the egyptians took a delight in listening to stories. they preferred tales which dealt with the marvellous and excited their imagination, introducing speaking animals, gods in disguise, ghosts and magic. one of them tells of a king who was distressed because he had no heir, and had no sooner obtained the favour he desired from the gods, than the seven hathors, the mistresses of fate, destroyed his happiness by predicting that the child would meet with his death by a serpent, a dog, or a crocodile. efforts were made to provide against such a fatality by shutting him up in a tower; but no sooner had he grown to man�s estate, than he procured himself a dog, went off to wander through the world, and married the daughter of the prince of naharaim. his fate meets him first under the form of a serpent, which is killed by his wife; he is next assailed by a crocodile, and the dog kills the crocodile, but as the oracles must be fulfilled, the brute turns and despatches his master without further consideration. another story describes two brothers, anûpû and bitiû, who live happily together on their farm till the wife of the elder falls in love with the younger, and on his repulsing her advances, she accuses him to her husband of having offered her violence. the virtue of the younger brother would not have availed him much, had not his animals warned him of danger, and had not phrâ-harmakhis surrounded him at the critical moment with a stream teeming with crocodiles. he mutilates himself to prove his innocence, and announces that henceforth he will lead a mysterious existence far from mankind; he will retire to the valley of the acacia, place his heart on the topmost flower of the tree, and no one will be able with impunity to steal it from him. the gods, however, who frequent this earth take pity on his loneliness, and create for him a wife of such beauty that the nile falls in love with her, and steals a lock of her hair, which is carried by its waters down into egypt. pharaoh finds the lock, and, intoxicated by its scent, commands his people to go in quest of the owner. having discovered the lady, pharaoh marries her, and ascertaining from her who she is, he sends men to cut down the acacia, but no sooner has the flower touched the earth, than bitiû droops and dies. the elder brother is made immediately acquainted with the fact by means of various prodigies. the wine poured out to him becomes troubled, his beer leaves a deposit. he seizes his shoes and staff and sets out to find the heart. after a search of seven years he discovers it, and reviving it in a vase of water, he puts it into the mouth of the corpse, which at once returns to life. bitiû, from this moment, seeks only to be revenged. he changes himself into the bull apis, and, on being led to court, he reproaches the queen with the crime she has committed against him. the queen causes his throat to be cut; two drops of his blood fall in front of the gate of the palace, and produce in the night two splendid �persea� trees, which renew the accusation in a loud voice. the queen has them cut down, but a chip from one of them flies into her mouth, and ere long she gives birth to a child who is none other than a reincarnation of bitiû. when the child succeeds to the pharaoh, he assembles his council, reveals himself to them, and punishes with death her who was first his wife and subsequently his mother. the hero moves throughout the tale without exhibiting any surprise at the strange incidents in which he takes part, and, as a matter of fact, they did not seriously outrage the probabilities of contemporary life. in every town sorcerers could be found who knew how to transform themselves into animals or raise the dead to life: we have seen how the accomplices of pentaûîrît had recourse to spells in order to gain admission to the royal palace when they desired to rid themselves of ramses iii. the most extravagant romances differed from real life merely in collecting within a dozen pages more miracles than were customarily supposed to take place in the same number of years; it was merely the multiplicity of events, and not the events themselves, that gave to the narrative its romantic and improbable character. the rank of the heroes alone raised the tale out of the region of ordinary life; they are always the sons of kings, syrian princes, or pharaohs; sometimes we come across a vague and undefined pharaoh, who figures under the title of pîrûîâûi or prûîti, but more often it is a well-known and illustrious pharaoh who is mentioned by name. it is related how, one day, kheops, suffering from _ennui_ within his palace, assembled his sons in the hope of learning from them something which he did not already know. they described to him one after another the prodigies performed by celebrated magicians under kanibri and snofrûi; and at length mykerinos assured him that there was a certain didi, living then not far from meîdum, who was capable of repeating all the marvels done by former wizards. most of the egyptian sovereigns were, in the same way, subjects of more or less wonderful legends--sesostris, amenôthes iii., thûfcmosis iii., amenemhâît i., khîti, sahûrî, usirkaf, and kakiû. these stories were put into literary shape by the learned, recited by public story-tellers, and received by the people as authentic history; they finally filtered into the writings of the chroniclers, who, in introducing them into the annals, filled up with their extraordinary details the lacunæ of authentic tradition. sometimes the narrative assumed a briefer form, and became an apologue. in one of them the members of the body were supposed to have combined against the head, and disputed its supremacy before a jury; the parties all pleaded their cause in turn, and judgment was given in due form.* * this version of the _fable of the members and the stomach_ was discovered upon a schoolboy�s tablet at turin. animals also had their place in this universal comedy. the passions or the weaknesses of humanity were attributed to them, and the narrator makes the lion, rat, or jackal to utter sentiments from which he draws some short practical moral. la fontaine had predecessors on the banks of the nile of whose existence he little dreamed. [illustration: .jpg the cat and the jackal go off to the fields with their flocks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. as la fontaine found an illustrator in granville, so, too, in egypt the draughtsman brought his reed to the aid of the fabulist, and by his cleverly executed sketches gave greater point to the sarcasm of story than mere words could have conveyed. where the author had briefly mentioned that the jackal and the cat had cunningly forced their services on the animals whom they wished to devour at their leisure, the artist would depict the jackal and the cat equipped as peasants, with wallets on their backs, and sticks over their shoulders, marching behind a troup of gazelles or a flock of fat geese: it was easy to foretell the fate of their unfortunate charges. elsewhere it is an ox who brings up before his master a cat who has cheated him, and his proverbial stupidity would incline us to think that he will end by being punished himself for the misdeeds of which he had accused the other. puss�s sly and artful expression, the ass-headed and important-looking judge, with the wand and costume of a high and mighty dignitary, give pungency to the story, and recall the daily scenes at the judgment-seat of the lord of thebes. in another place we see a donkey, a lion, a crocodile, and a monkey giving an instrumental and vocal concert. [illustration: .jpg the cat before its judge] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. a lion and a gazelle play a game of chess. a cat of fashion, with a flower in her hair, has a disagreement with a goose: they have come to blows, and the excitable puss, who fears she will come off worst in the struggle, falls backwards in a fright. the draughtsmen having once found vent for their satire, stopped at nothing, and even royalty itself did not escape their attacks. while the writers of the day made fun of the military calling, both in prose and verse, the caricaturists parodied the combats and triumphal scenes of the ramses or thutmosis of the day depicted on the walls of the pylons. the pharaoh of all the rats, perched upon a chariot drawn by dogs, bravely charges an army of cats; standing in the heroic attitude of a conqueror, he pierces them with his darts, while his horses tread the fallen underfoot; his legions meanwhile in advance of him attack a fort defended by tomcats, with the same ardour that the egyptian battalions would display in assaulting a syrian stronghold. [illustration: .jpg a concert of animals devoted to music] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. this treatment of ethics did not prevent the egyptian writers from giving way to their natural inclinations, and composing large volumes on this subject after the manner of kaqîmni or phtahhotpû. one of their books, in which the aged ani inscribes his instructions to his son, khonshotpû, is compiled in the form of a dialogue, and contains the usual commonplaces upon virtue, temperance, piety, the respect due to parents from children, or to the great ones of this world from their inferiors. the language in which it is written is ingenious, picturesque, and at times eloquent; the work explains much that is obscure in egyptian life, and upon which the monuments have thrown no light. �beware of the woman who goes out surreptitiously in her town, do not follow her or any like her, do not expose thyself to the experience of what it costs a man to face an ocean of which the bounds are unknown.* the wife whose husband is far from home sends thee letters, and invites thee to come to her daily when she has no witnesses; if she succeeds in entangling thee in her net, it is a crime which is punishable by death as soon as it is known, even if no wicked act has taken place, for men will commit every sort of crime when under this temptation alone.� * i have been obliged to paraphrase the sentence considerably to render it intelligible to the modern reader. the egyptian text says briefly: �do not know the man who braves the water of the ocean whose bounds are unknown.�_to know the man_ means here _know the state of the man_ who does an action. �be not quarrelsome in breweries, for fear that thou mayest be denounced forthwith for words which have proceeded from thy mouth, and of having spoken that of which thou art no longer conscious. thou fallest, thy members helpless, and no one holds out a hand to thee, but thy boon-companions around thee say: �away with the drunkard!� thou art wanted for some business, and thou art found rolling on the ground like an infant.� in speaking of what a man owes to his mother, ani waxes eloquent: �when she bore thee as all have to bear, she had in thee a heavy burden without being able to call on thee to share it. when thou wert born, after thy months were fulfilled, she placed herself under a yoke in earnest, her breast was in thy mouth for three years; in spite of the increasing dirtiness of thy habits, her heart felt no disgust, and she never said: �what is that i do here?� when thou didst go to school to be instructed in writing, she followed thee every day with bread and beer from thy house. now thou art a full-grown man, thou hast taken a wife, thou hast provided thyself with a house; bear always in mind the pains of thy birth and the care for thy education that thy mother lavished on thee, that her anger may not rise up against thee, and that she lift not her hands to god, for he will hear her complaint!� the whole of the book does not rise to this level, but we find in it several maxims which appear to be popular proverbs, as for instance: �he who hates idleness will come without being called;� �a good walker comes to his journey�s end without needing to hasten;� or, �the ox which goes at the head of the flock and leads the others to pasture is but an animal like his fellows.� towards the end, the son khonshotpû, weary of such a lengthy exhortation to wisdom, interrupts his father roughly: �do not everlastingly speak of thy merits, i have heard enough of thy deeds;� whereupon ani resignedly restrains himself from further speech, and a final parable gives us the motive of his resignation: �this is the likeness of the man who knows the strength of his arm. the nursling who is in the arms of his mother cares only for being suckled; but no sooner has he found his mouth than he cries: �give me bread!�� it is, perhaps, difficult for us to imagine an egyptian in love repeating madrigals to his mistress,* for we cannot easily realise that the hard and blackened bodies we see in our museums have once been men and women loving and beloved in their own day. * the remains of egyptian amatory literature have been collected, translated, and commentated on by maspero. they have been preserved in two papyri, one of which is at turin, the other in the british museum. the first of these appears to be a sort of dialogue in which the trees of a garden boast one after another of the beauty of a woman, and discourse of the love-scenes which took place under their shadow. the feeling which they entertained one for another had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love: they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste. the manners and customs of daily life among the egyptians tended to blunt in them the feelings of modesty and refinement to which our civilization has accustomed us. their children went about without clothes, or, at any rate, wore none until the age of puberty. owing to the climate, both men and women left the upper part of the body more or less uncovered, or wore fabrics of a transparent nature. in the towns, the servants who moved about their masters or his guests had merely a narrow loin-cloth tied round their hips; while in the country, the peasants dispensed with even this covering, and the women tucked up their garments when at work so as to move more freely. the religious teaching and the ceremonies connected with their worship drew the attention of the faithful to the unveiled human form of their gods, and the hieroglyphs themselves contained pictures which shock our sense of propriety. hence it came about that the young girl who was demanded in marriage had no idea, like the maiden of to-day, of the vague delights of an ideal union. the physical side was impressed upon her mind, and she was well aware of the full meaning of her consent. her lover, separated from her by her disapproving parents, thus expresses the grief which overwhelms him: �i desire to lie down in my chamber,--for i am sick on thy account,--and the neighbours come to visit me.--ah! if my sister but came with them,--she would show the physicians what ailed me,--for she knows my sickness!� even while he thus complains, he sees her in his imagination, and his spirit visits the places she frequents: �the villa of my sister,--(a pool is before the house),--the door opens suddenly,--and my sister passes out in wrath.--ah! why am i not the porter,--that she might give me her orders!--i should at least hear her voice, even were she angry,--and i, like a little boy, full of fear before her!� meantime the young girl sighs in vain for �her brother, the beloved of her heart,� and all that charmed her before has now ceased to please her. �i went to prepare my snare, my cage and the covert for my trap--for all the birds of puânît alight upon egypt, redolent with perfume;--he who flies foremost of the flock is attracted by my worm, bringing odours from puânît,--its claws full of incense.--but my heart is with thee, and desires that we should trap them together,--i with thee, alone, and that thou shouldest be able to hear the sad cry of my perfumed bird,--there near to me, close to me, i will make ready my trap,--o my beautiful friend, thou who goest to the field of the well-beloved!� the latter, however, is slow to appear, the day passes away, the evening comes on: �the cry of the goose resounds--which is caught by the worm-bait,--but thy love removes me far from the bird, and i am unable to deliver myself from it; i will carry off my net, and what shall i say to my mother,--when i shall have returned to her?--every day i come back laden with spoil,--but to-day i have not been able to set my trap,--for thy love makes me its prisoner!� �the goose flies away, alights,--it has greeted the barns with its cry;--the flock of birds increases on the river, but i leave them alone and think only of thy love,--for my heart is bound to thy heart--and i cannot tear myself away from thy beauty.� her mother probably gave her a scolding, but she hardly minds it, and in the retirement of her chamber never wearies of thinking of her brother, and of passionately crying for him: �o my beautiful friend! i yearn to be with thee as thy wife--and that thou shouldest go whither thou wishest with thine arm upon my arm,--for then i will repeat to my heart, which is in thy breast, my supplications.--if my great brother does not come to-night,--i am as those who lie in the tomb--for thou, art thou not health and life,--he who transfers the joys of thy health to my heart which seeks thee?� the hours pass away and he does not come, and already �the voice of the turtle-dove speaks,--it says: �behold, the dawn is here, alas! what is to become of me?� thou, thou art the bird, thou callest me,--and i find my brother in his chamber,--and my heart is rejoiced to see him!--i will never go away again, my hand will remain in thy hand,--and when i wander forth, i will go with thee into the most beautiful places,--happy in that he makes me the foremost of women--and that he does not break my heart.� we should like to quote the whole of it, but the text is mutilated, and we are unable to fill in the blanks. it is, nevertheless, one of those products of the egyptian mind which it would have been easy for us to appreciate from beginning to end, without effort and almost without explanation. the passion in it finds expression in such sincere and simple language as to render rhetorical ornament needless, and one can trace in it, therefore, nothing of the artificial colouring which would limit it to a particular place or time. it translates a universal sentiment into the common language of humanity, and the hieroglyphic groups need only to be put into the corresponding words of any modern tongue to bring home to the reader their full force and intensity. we might compare it with those popular songs which are now being collected in our provinces before the peasantry have forgotten them altogether: the artlessness of some of the expressions, the boldness of the imagery, the awkwardness and somewhat abrupt character of some of the passages, communicate to both that wild charm which we miss in the most perfect specimens of our modern love-poets. end of vol. v. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume viii. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: .jpg frontispiece] arab family at dinner [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: .jpg page image] _sennacherib ( - b.c.)_ _the struggle of sennacherib with judÆa and egypt--destruction of babylon_ _the upheaval of the entire eastern world on the accession of sennacherib--revolt of babylon: return of merodach-baladan and his efforts to form a coalition against assyria; the battle of kish ( b.c.)--belibni, king of babylon ( - b.c.)--sabaco, king of egypt, amenertas and pionkhi, shàbî-toku--tyre and its kings after ethbaal ii.: phoenician colonisation in libya and the foundation of carthage--the kingdom of tyre in the time of tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon: elulai--judah and the reforms of hezekiah; alliance of judah and tyre with egypt, the downfall of the tyrian kingdom ( b.c.)--the battle of altaku and the siege of jerusalem: sennacherib encamped before lachish, his egyptian expedition, the disaster at pelusium._ _renewed revolt of babylon and the tabal ( b.c.); flight of the people of bît-yakîn into elamite territory; sennacherib�s fleet and descent on nagitu ( - b.c.)--khalludush invades karduniash ( b.c.); nirgal-ushezib and mushesîb-marduk at babylon ( - b.c.)--sennacherib invades elam ( b.c.): battle of khalulê ( b.c.), siege and destruction of babylon ( b.c.)--buildings of sennacherib at nineveh: his palace at kouyunjik; its decoration with battle, hunting, and building scenes._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter i--sennacherib ( - b.c.) _the struggle of sennacherib with judæa and egypt--destruction of babylon._ sennacherib either failed to inherit his father�s good fortune, or lacked his ability.* he was not deficient in military genius, nor in the energy necessary to withstand the various enemies who rose against him at widely removed points of his frontier, but he had neither the adaptability of character nor the delicate tact required to manage successfully the heterogeneous elements combined under his sway. * the two principal documents for the reign of sennacherib are engraved on cylinders: the taylor cylinder and the bellino cylinder, duplicates of which, more or less perfect, exist in the collections of the british museum. the taylor cylinder, found at kouyunjik or usebi-yunus, contains the history or the first eight years of this reign; the bellino cylinder treats of the two first years of the reign. he lacked the wisdom to conciliate the vanquished, or opportunely to check his own repressive measures; he destroyed towns, massacred entire tribes, and laid whole tracts of country waste, and by failing to repeople these with captive exiles from other nations, or to import colonists in sufficient numbers, he found himself towards the end of his reign ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had bequeathed to him flourishing provinces and populous cities. his was the system of the first assyrian conquerors, shalmaneser iii. and assur-nazir-pal, substituted for that of tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon. the assimilation of the conquered peoples to their conquerors was retarded, tribute was no longer paid regularly, and the loss of revenue under this head was not compensated by the uncertain increase in the spoils obtained by war; the recruiting of the army, rendered more difficult by the depopulation of revolted districts, weighed heavier still on those which remained faithful, and began, as in former times, to exhaust the nation. the news of sargon�s murder, published throughout the eastern world, had rekindled hope in the countries recently subjugated by assyria, as well as in those hostile to her. phoenicia, egypt, media, and elam roused themselves from their lethargy and anxiously awaited the turn which events should take at nineveh and babylon. sennacherib did not consider it to his interest to assume the crown of chaldæa, and to treat on a footing of absolute equality a country which had been subdued by force of arms: he relegated it to the rank of a vassal state, and while reserving the suzerainty for himself, sent thither one of his brothers to rule as king.* * the events which took place at babylon at the beginning of sennacherib�s reign are known to us from the fragments of berosus, compared with the canon of ptolemy and pinches� babylonian canon. the first interregnum in the canon of ptolemy ( - b.c.) is filled in pinches� canon by three kings who are said to have reigned as follows: sennacherib, two years; marduk-zâkir-shumu, one month; merodach-baladan, nine months. berosus substitutes for sennacherib one of his brothers, whose name apparently he did not know; and this is the version i have adopted, in agreement with most modern historians, as best tallying with the evident lack of affection for babylon displayed by sennacherib throughout his reign. the babylonians were indignant at this slight. accustomed to see their foreign ruler conform to their national customs, take the hands of bel, and assume or receive from them a new throne-name, they could not resign themselves to descend to the level of mere tributaries: in less than two years they rebelled, assassinated the king who had been imposed upon them, and proclaimed in his stead marduk-zâkir-shumu,* who was merely the son of a female slave ( b.c.). * the servile origin of this personage is indicated in pinches� babylonian canon; he might, however, be connected through his father with a princely, or even a royal, family, and thereby be in a position to win popular support. among modern assyriologists, some suppose that the name akises in berosus is a corruption of [marduk-]zâkir[shumu]; others consider akises-akishu as being the personal name of the king, and marduk-zâkir-shumu his throne-name. this was the signal for a general insurrection in chaldæa and the eastern part of the empire. merodach-baladan, who had remained in hiding in the valleys on the elamite frontier since his defeat in b.c., suddenly issued forth with his adherents, and marched at once to babylon; the very news of his approach caused a sedition, in the midst of which marduk-zâkir-shumu perished, after having reigned for only one month. merodach-baladan re-entered his former capital, and as soon as he was once more seated on the throne, he endeavoured to form alliances with all the princes, both small and great, who might create a diversion in his favour. his envoys obtained promises of help from elam; other emissaries hastened to syria to solicit the alliance of hezekiah, and might have even proceeded to egypt if their sovereign�s good fortune had lasted long enough.* but sennacherib did not waste his opportunities in lengthy-preparations. * kings xx. - ; isa. xxxix. the embassy to hezekiah has been assigned to the first reign of merodach-baladan, under sargon. in accordance with the information obtained from the assyrian monuments, it seems to me that it could only have taken place during his second reign, in b.c. the magnificent army left by sargon was at his disposal, and summoning it at once into the field, he advanced on the town of kîsh, where the kaldâ monarch was entrenched with his aramæan forces and the elamite auxiliaries furnished by shutruk-nakhunta. the battle issued in the complete rout of the confederate forces. merodach-baladan fled almost unattended, first to guzum-manu, and then to the marshes of the tigris, where he found a temporary refuge; the troops who were despatched in pursuit followed him for five days, and then, having failed to secure the fugitive, gave up the search.* * the detail is furnished by the _bellino cylinder_. berosus affirmed that merodach-baladan was put to death by belibni. his camp fell into the possession of the victor, with all its contents--chariots, horses, mules, camels, and herds of cattle belonging to the commissariat department of the army: babylon threw open its gates without resistance, hoping, no doubt, that sennacherib would at length resolve to imitate the precedent set by his father and retain the royal dignity for himself. he did, indeed, consent to remit the punishment for this first insurrection, and contented himself with pillaging the royal treasury and palace, but he did not deign to assume the crown, conferring it on belibni, a babylonian of noble birth, who had been taken, when quite a child, to nineveh and educated there under the eyes of sargon.* * the name is transcribed belibos in greek, and it seems as if the assyrian variants justify the pronunciation belibush. while he was thus reorganising the government, his generals were bringing the campaign to a close: they sacked, one after another, eighty-nine strongholds and eight hundred and twenty villages of the kaldâ; they drove out the arabian and aramaean garrisons which merodach-baladan had placed in the cities of karduniash, in urak, nipur, kuta, and kharshag-kalamma, and they re-established assyrian supremacy over all the tribes on the east of the tigris up to the frontiers of elam, the tumuna, the ubudu, the gambulu, and the khindaru, as also over the nabataeans and hagarenes, who wandered over the deserts of arabia to the west of the mouths of the euphrates. the booty was enormous: , prisoners, both male and female, horses, , asses, camels, , oxen, , sheep, made their way like a gigantic horde of emigrants to assyria under the escort of the victorious army. meanwhile the khirimmu remained defiant, and showed not the slightest intention to submit: their strongholds had to be attacked and the inhabitants annihilated before order could in any way be restored in the country. the second reign of merodach-baladan had lasted barely nine months. the blow which ruined merodach-baladan broke up the coalition which he had tried to form against assyria. babylon was the only rallying-point where states so remote, and such entire strangers to each other as judah and elam, could enter into friendly relations and arrange a plan of combined action. having lost babylon as a centre, they were once more hopelessly isolated, and had no means of concerting measures against the common foe: they renounced all offensive action, and waited under arms to see how the conqueror would deal with each severally. the most threatening storm, however, was not that which was gathering over palestine, even were egypt to be drawn into open war: for a revolt of the western provinces, however serious, was never likely to lead to disastrous complications, and the distance from pelusium to the tigris was too great for a victory of the pharaoh to compromise effectually the safety of the empire. on the other hand, should intervention on the part of elam in the affairs of babylon or media be crowned with success, the most disastrous consequences might ensue: it would mean the loss of karduniash, or of the frontier districts won with such difficulty by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon; it would entail permanent hostilities on the tigris and the zab, and perhaps the appearance of barbarian troops under the walls of calah or of nineveh. elam had assisted merodach-baladan, and its soldiers had fought on the plains of kish. months had elapsed since that battle, yet shutruk-nakhunta showed no disposition to take the initiative: he accepted his defeat at all events for the time, but though he put off the day of reckoning till a more favourable opportunity, it argued neither weakness nor discouragement, and he was ready to give a fierce reception to any assyrian monarch who should venture within his domain. sennacherib, knowing both the character and resources of the elamite king, did not attempt to meet him in the open field, but wreaked his resentment on the frontier tribes who had rebelled at the instigation of the elamites, on the cossoans, on ellipi and its king ishpabara. he pursued the inhabitants into the narrow valleys and forests of the khoatras, where his chariots were unable to follow: proceeding with his troops, sometimes on horseback, at other times on foot, he reduced bît-kilamzak, khardishpi, and bît-kubatti to ashes, and annexed the territories of the cossoans and the yasubigallâ to the prefecture of arrapkha. thence he entered ellipi, where ishpabara did not venture to come to close quarters with him in the open field, but led him on from town to town. he destroyed the two royal seats of marubishti and akkuddu, and thirty-four of their dependent strongholds; he took possession of zizirtu, kummalu, the district of bitbarru, and the city of elinzash, to which he gave the name kar-sennacherib,--the fortress of sennacherib,--and annexed them to the government of kharkhar. the distant medes, disquieted at his advance, sent him presents, and renewed the assurances of devotion they had given to sargon, but sennacherib did not push forward into their territory as his predecessors had done: he was content to have maintained his authority as far as his outlying posts, and to have strengthened the assyrian empire by acquiring some well-situated positions near the main routes which led from the iranian table-land to the plains of mesopotamia. having accomplished this, he at once turned his attention towards the west, where the spirit of rebellion was still active in the countries bordering on the african frontier. sabaco, now undisputed master of egypt, was not content, like piônkhi, to bring egypt proper into a position of dependence, and govern it at a distance, by means of his generals. he took up his residence within it, at least during part of every year, and played the rôle of pharaoh so well that his egyptian subjects, both at thebes and in the delta, were obliged to acknowledge his sovereignty and recognise him as the founder of a new dynasty. he kept a close watch over the vassal princes, placing garrisons in memphis and the other principal citadels, and throughout the country he took in hand public works which had been almost completely interrupted for more than a century owing to the civil wars: the highways were repaired, the canals cleaned out and enlarged, and the foundations of the towns raised above the level of the inundation. bubastis especially profited under his rule, and regained the ascendency it had lost ever since the accession of the second tanite dynasty; but this partiality was not to the detriment of other cities. several of the temples at memphis were restored, and the inscriptions effaced by time were re-engraved. thebes, happy under the government of amenertas and her husband piônkhi, profited largely by the liberality of its ethiopian rulers. at luxor sabaco restored the decoration of the principal gateway between the two pylons, and repaired several portions of the temple of amon at karnak. history subsequently related that, in order to obtain sufficient workmen, he substituted forced labour for the penalty of death: a policy which, beside being profitable, would win for him a reputation for clemency. egypt, at length reduced to peace and order, began once more to flourish, and to display that inherent vitality of which she had so often given proof, and her reviving prosperity attracted as of old the attention of foreign powers. at the beginning of his reign, sabaco had attempted to meddle in the intrigues of syria, but the ease with which sargon had quelled the revolt of ashdod had inspired the egyptian monarch with salutary distrust in his own power; he had sent presents to the conqueror and received gifts in exchange, which furnished him with a pretext for enrolling the asiatic peoples among the tributary nations whose names he inscribed on his triumphal lists.* since then he had had some diplomatic correspondence with his powerful neighbour, and a document bearing his name was laid up in the archives at calah, where the clay seal once attached to it has been discovered. peace had lasted for a dozen years, when he died about b.c., and his son shabîtoku ascended the throne.** * it was probably with reference to this exchange of presents that sabaco caused the bas-relief at karnak to be engraved, in which he represents himself as victorious over both asiatics and africans. ** one version of manetho assigns twelve years to the reign of sabaco, and this duration is confirmed by an inscription in hammamât, dated in his twelfth year. sabaco having succeeded to the throne in - b.c., his reign brings us down to or b.c., which obliges us to place the accession of shabî-toku in the year following the death of sargon. [illustration: .jpg clay seal with cartouche of sabaco] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by layard. the temporary embarrassments in which the babylonian revolution had plunged sennacherib must have offered a tempting opportunity for interference to this inexperienced king. tyre and judah alone of all the syrian states retained a sufficiently independent spirit to cherish any hope of deliverance from the foreign yoke. tyre still maintained her supremacy over southern phoenicia, and her rulers were also kings of sidon.* the long reign of eth-baal and his alliance with the kings of israel had gradually repaired the losses occasioned by civil discord, and had restored tyre to the high degree of prosperity which it had enjoyed under hiram. few actual facts are known which can enlighten us as to the activity which prevailed under eth-baal: we know, however, that he rebuilt the small town of botrys, which had been destroyed in the course of some civil war, and that he founded the city of auza in libyan territory, at the foot of the mountains of aures, in one of the richest mineral districts of modern algeria.** * eth-baal ii., who, according to the testimony of the native historians, belonged to the royal family of tyre, is called king of the sidonians in the bible ( kings xvi. ), and the assyrian texts similarly call elulai king of the sidonians, while menander mentions him as king of tyre. it is probable that the king of sidon, mentioned in the annals of shal-maneser iii. side by side with the king of tyre, was a vassal of the tyrian monarch. ** the two facts are preserved in a passage of menander. i admit the identity of the auza mentioned in this fragment with the auzea of tacitus, and with the _colonia septimia aur. auziensium_ of the roman inscriptions the present aumale. in b.c. assur-nazir-pal had crossed the lebanon and skirted the shores of the mediterranean: eth-baal, naturally compliant, had loaded him with gifts, and by this opportune submission had preserved his cities and country from the horrors of invasion.* * the king of tyre who sent gifts to assur-nazir-pal is not named in the assyrian documents: our knowledge of tyrian chronology permits us with all probability to identify him with eth-baal. twenty years later shalmaneser iii. had returned to syria, and had come into conflict with damascus. the northern phoenicians formed a league with ben-hadad (adadidri) to withstand him, and drew upon themselves the penalty of their rashness; the tynans, faithful to their usual policy, preferred to submit voluntarily and purchase peace. their conduct showed the greater wisdom in that, after the death of eth-baal, internal troubles again broke out with renewed fierceness and with even more disastrous results. his immediate successor was balezor ( - b.c.), followed by mutton i. ( - b.c.), who flung himself at the feet of shalmaneser iii., in b.c., in the camp at baalirasi, and renewed his homage three years later, in b.c. the legends concerning the foundation of carthage blend with our slight knowledge of his history. they attribute to mutton i. a daughter named elissa, who was married to her uncle sicharbal, high priest of melkarth, and a young son named pygmalion ( - b.c.). sicharbal had been nominated by mutton as regent during the minority of pygmalion, but he was overthrown by the people, and some years later murdered by his ward. from that time forward elissa�s one aim was to avenge the murder of her husband. she formed a conspiracy which was joined by all the nobles, but being betrayed and threatened with death, she seized a fleet which lay ready to sail in the harbour, and embarking with all her adherents set sail for africa, landing in the district of zeugitanê, where the sidonians had already built kambê. there she purchased a tract of land from larbas, chief of the liby-phoenicians, and built on the ruins of the ancient factory a new town, qart-hadshat, which the greeks called carchedo and the romans carthage. the genius of virgil has rendered the name of dido illustrious: but history fails to recognise in the narratives which form the basis of his tale anything beyond a legendary account fabricated after the actual origin ( - b.c.) of the great punic city had been forgotten. thus weakened, tyre could less than ever think of opposing the ambitious designs of assyria: pygmalion took no part in the rebellions of the petty syrian kings against samsî-rammân, and in b.c. he received his suzerain rammân-nirâri with the accustomed gifts, when that king passed through phoenicia before attacking damascus. pygmalion died about b.c., and the names of his immediate successors are not known;* it may be supposed, however, that when the power of nineveh temporarily declined, the ties which held tyre to assyria became naturally relaxed, and the city released herself from the burden of a tribute which had in the past been very irregularly paid. * the fragment of menander �which has preserved for us the list of tyrian kings from abî-baal to pygmalion, was only quoted by josephus, because, the seventh year of pygmalion�s reign corresponding to the date of the foundation of carthage,-- -- b.c. according to the chronological system of timssus,--the hebrew historian found in it a fixed date which seemed to permit of his establishing the chronology of the kings of israel and judah on a trustworthy basis between the reign of pygmalion and hiram i., the contemporary of david and solomon. the yoke was reassumed half a century later, at the mere echo of the first victories of tiglath-pileser iii.; and hiram ii., who then reigned in tyre, hastened to carry to the camp at arpad assurances of his fidelity ( b.c.). he gave pledges of his allegiance once more in b.c.; then he disappears, and mutton ii. takes his place about b.c. this king cast off, unhappily for himself, his hereditary apathy, and as soon as a pretext offered itself, abandoned the policy of neutrality to which his ancestors had adhered so firmly. he entered into an alliance in b.c. with damascus, israel and philistia, secretly supported and probably instigated by egypt; then, when israel was conquered and damascus overthrown, he delayed repairing his error till an assyrian army appeared before tyre: he had then to pay the price of his temerity by talents of gold and many loads of merchandise ( b.c.). the punishment was light and the loss inconsiderable in comparison with the accumulated wealth of the city, which its maritime trade was daily increasing:* mutton thought the episode was closed,** but the peaceful policy of his house, having been twice interrupted, could not be resumed. *[for a description of the trade carried on by tyre, cf. ezelc. xxvi., xxvii., and xxviii.---tr.] ** pygmalion having died about b.c., and hiram ii. not appearing till b.c., it is probable that we should intercalate between these two kings at least one sovereign whose name is still unknown. southern phoenicia, having once launched on the stream of asiatic politics, followed its fluctuations, and was compelled henceforth to employ in her own defence the forces which had hitherto been utilised in promoting her colonial enterprises. but it was not due to the foolish caprice of ignorant or rash sovereigns that tyre renounced her former neutral policy: she was constrained to do so, almost perforce, by the changes which had taken place in europe. the progress of the greeks, and their triumph in the waters of the Ægean and ionian seas, and the rapid expansion of the etruscan navy after the end of the ninth century, had gradually restricted the phoenician merchantmen to the coasts of the western mediterranean and the atlantic: they industriously exploited the mineral wealth of africa and spain, and traffic with the barbarous tribes of morocco and lusitania, as well as the discovery and working of the british tin mines, had largely compensated for the losses occasioned by the closing of the greek and italian markets. their ships, obliged now to coast along the inhospitable cliffs of northern africa and to face the open sea, were more strongly and scientifically built than any vessels hitherto constructed. the egyptian undecked galleys, with stem and stern curving inwards, were discarded as a build ill adapted to resist the attacks of wind or wave. the new phoenician galley had a long, low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy�s ship. motive power was supplied by two banks of oars, the upper ones resting in rowlocks on the gunwale, the lower ones in rowlocks pierced in the timbers of the vessel�s side. an upper deck, supported by stout posts, ran from stem to stern, above the heads of the rowers, and was reserved for the soldiers and the rest of the crew: on a light railing surrounding it were hung the circular shields of the former, forming as it were a rampart on either side. [illustration: .jpg a phoenician galley with two banks of oars] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. sennacherib affirms that vessels of this type had been constructed by syrian shipwrights, and were manned by tyrian, sidonian, and ionian sailors. the mast, passing through both decks, was firmly fixed in the keel, and was supported by two stays made fast to stem and stern. the rectangular sail was attached to a yard which could be hoisted or lowered at will. the wealth which accrued to the tyrians from their naval expeditions had rendered the superiority of tyre over the neighbouring cities so manifest that they had nearly all become her vassals. arvad and northern phoenicia were still independent, as also the sacred city of bylos, but the entire coast from the nahr-el-kelb to the headland formed by mount carmel was directly subject to tyre,* comprising the two sidons, bît-zîti, and sarepta, the country from mahalliba to the fords of the litâny, ushu and its hinterland as far as kana, akzîb, akko, and dora; and this compact territory, partly protected by the range of lebanon, and secured by the habitual prudence of its rulers from the invasions which had desolated syria, formed the most flourishing, and perhaps also the most populous, kingdom which still existed between the euphrates and the egyptian desert.** * the kings of arvad and byblos are still found mentioned at the beginning of sennacherib�s reign. ** the extent of the kingdom of tyro is indicated by the passage in which sennacherib enumerated the cities which he had taken from elulai. to these must be added dor, to the south of carmel, which was always regarded as belonging to the tyrians, and whose isolated position between the headland, the sea, and the forest might cause the assyrians to leave it unmolested. besides these, some parts of cyprus were dependent on tyre, though the achaean colonies, continually reinforced by fresh immigrants, had absorbed most of the native population and driven the rest into the mountains. [illustration: .jpg map of kingdom of tyre, the campaign of sennacherib] a hybrid civilisation had developed among these early greek settlers, amalgamating the customs, religions, and arts of the ancient eastern world of egypt, syria, and chaldoa in variable proportions: their script was probably derived from one of the asianic systems whose monuments are still but partly known, and it consisted of a syllabary awkwardly adapted to a language for which it had not been designed. a dozen petty kings, of whom the majority were greeks, disputed possession of the northern and eastern parts of the island, at idalion, khytros, paphos, soli, kourion, tamassos, and ledron. the phoenicians had given way at first before the invaders, and had grouped themselves in the eastern plain round kition; they had, however, subsequently assumed the offensive, and endeavoured to regain the territory they had lost. kition, which had been destroyed in one of their wars, had been rebuilt, and thus obtained the name of qart-hadshat, �the new city.� * * the name of this city, at first read as amtikhadashti, and identified with ammokhostos or with amathous,--_amti- khadash_ would in this case be equivalent to _new amathous_,--is really karti-khadashti, as is proved by the variant reading discovered by schrader, and this is identical with the native name of carthage in africa. this new city must have been of some antiquity by the time of elulai, for it is mentioned on a fragment of a bronze vase found in cyprus itself: this fragment belonged to a king hiram, who according to some authorities would be hiram ii., according to others, hiram i. mutton�s successor, elulai, continued, as we know, the work of defence and conquest: perhaps it was with a view to checking his advance that seven kings of cyprus sent an embassy, in b.c., to his suzerain, sargon, and placed themselves under the protection of assyria. if this was actually the case, and elulai was compelled to suspend hostilities against these hereditary foes, one can understand that this grievance, added to the reasons for uneasiness inspired by the situation of his continental dominions, may have given him the desire to rid himself of the yoke of assyria, and contributed to his resolution to ally himself with the powers which were taking up arms against her. the constant intercourse of his subjects with the delta, and his natural anxiety to avoid anything which might close one of the richest markets of the world to the tyrian trade, inclined him to receive favourably the overtures of the pharaoh: the emissaries of shabîtoku found him as much disposed as hezekiah himself to begin the struggle. the latter monarch, who had ascended the throne while still very young, had at first shown no ambition beyond the carrying out of religious reforms. his father ahaz had been far from orthodox, in spite of the influence exerted over him by isaiah. during his visit to tiglath-pileser at damascus ( b.c.) he had noticed an altar whose design pleased him. he sent a description of it to the high priest urijah, with orders to have a similar one constructed, and erected in the court of the temple at jerusalem: this altar he appropriated to his personal use, and caused the priests to minister at it, instead of at the old altar, which he relegated to an inferior position. he also effected changes in the temple furniture, which doubtless appeared to him old-fashioned in comparison with the splendours of the assyrian worship which he had witnessed, and he made some alterations in the approaches to the temple, wishing, as far as we can judge, that the king of judah should henceforth, like his brother of nineveh, have a private, means of access to his national god. this was but the least of his offences: for had he not offered his own son as a holocaust at the moment he felt himself most menaced by the league of israel and damascus? among the people themselves there were many faint-hearted and faithless, who, doubting the power of the god of their forefathers, turned aside to the gods of the neighbouring nations, and besought from them the succour they despaired of receiving from any other source; the worship of jahveh was confounded with that of moloch in the valley of the children of hinnom, where there was a sanctuary or tophet, at which the people celebrated the most horrible rites: a large and fierce pyre was kept continually burning there, to consume the children whose fathers brought them to offer in sacrifice.* isaiah complains bitterly of these unbelievers who profaned the land with their idols, �worshipping the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers had made.� ** the new king, obedient to the divine command, renounced the errors of his father; he removed the fetishes with which the superstition of his predecessors had cumbered the temple, and which they had connected with the worship of jahveh, and in his zeal even destroyed the ancient brazen serpent, the nehushtan, the origin of which was attributed to moses.*** * isa. xxx. , where the prophet describes the tophet jahveh�s anger is preparing for assyria. ** isa. ii. . *** kings xviii. . i leave the account of this religious reformation in the place assigned to it in the bible; other historians relegate it to a time subsequent to the invasion of sennacherib. on the occasion of the revolt of yamani, isaiah counselled hezekiah to remain neutral, and this prudence enabled him to look on in security at the ruin of the philistines, the hereditary foes of his race. under his wise administration the kingdom of judah, secured against annoyance from envious neighbours by the protection which assur freely afforded to its obedient vassals, and revived by thirty years of peace, rose rapidly from the rank of secondary importance which it had formerly been content to occupy. �their land was full of silver and gold, neither was there any end of their treasures; their land also was full of horses, neither was there any end of their chariots.� * * isa. ii. , where the description applies better to the later years of ahaz or the reign, of hezekiah than to the years preceding the war against pekah and rezin. now that the kingdom of israel had been reduced to the condition of an assyrian province, it was on judah and its capital that the hopes of the whole hebrew nation were centred. tyre and jerusalem had hitherto formed the extreme outwork of the syrian states; they were the only remaining barrier which separated the empires of egypt and assyria, and it was to the interest of the pharaoh to purchase their alliance and increase their strength by every means in his power. negotiations must have been going on for some time between the three powers, but up to the time of the death of sargon and the return of merodach-baladan to babylon their results had been unimportant, and it was possible that the disasters which had befallen the kaldâ would tend to cool the ardour of the allies. an unforeseen circumstance opportunely rekindled their zeal, and determined them to try their fortune. [illustration: .jpg map of the campaign of sennacherib in judea] the inhabitants of ekron, dissatisfied with padî, the chief whom the assyrians had set over them, seized his person and sent him in chains to hezekiah.* * the name of the city, written amgarruna, is really akkaron-ekron. to accept the present was equivalent to open rebellion, and a declaration of war against the power of the suzerain. isaiah, as usual, wished judah to rely on jahveh alone, and preached against alliance with the babylonians, for he foresaw that success would merely result in substituting the kaldâ for the ninevite monarch, and in aggravating the condition of judah. �all that is in thine house,� he said to hezekiah, �and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried to babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the lord. and of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of babylon.� hezekiah did not pay much heed to the prediction, for, he reflected, �peace and truth shall be in my days,� and the future troubled him little.* when the overthrow of merodach-baladan had taken place, the prophet still more earnestly urged the people not to incur the vengeance of assyria without other help than that of tyre or ethiopia, and eliakim, son of hilkiah, spoke in the same strain; but shebna, the prefect of the palace, declaimed against this advice, and the latter�s counsel prevailed with his master.** * kings xx. - . ** this follows from the terms in which the prophet compares the two men (isa. xxii. - ). hezekiah agreed to accept the sovereignty over ekron which its inhabitants offered to him, but a remnant of prudence kept him from putting padî to death, and he contented himself with casting him into prison. isaiah, though temporarily out of favour with the king, ceased not to proclaim aloud in all quarters the will of the almighty. �woe to the rebellious children, saith the lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering (form alliances), but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into egypt, and have not asked at my mouth, to strengthen themselves in the strength of pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of egypt! therefore shall the strength of pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of egypt your confusion. when your princes shall be at tanis, and your messengers shall come to heracleopolis,* [heb. hanes.--tr.] you shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit you.... for egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have i called her rahab that sitteth still.� * he returned, unwearied and with varying imagery, to his theme, contrasting the uncertainty and frailty of the expedients of worldly wisdom urged by the military party, with the steadfast will of jahveh and the irresistible authority with which he invests his faithful servants. �the egyptians are men, and not god; and their horses flesh, and not spirit; and when the lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they shall all fail together. for thus saith the lord unto me, like as when the lion growleth, and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the lord of hosts come down to fight upon mount zion, and upon the hill thereof. as birds flying, so will the lord of hosts protect jerusalem: he will protect and deliver it. turn ye unto him from whom ye have deeply revolted, o children of israel.� ** * isa. xxx. - , . in verses , , the original text employs the third person; i have restored the second person, to avoid confusion. ** isa. xxxi. - . no one, however, gave heed to his warnings, either king or people; but the example of phoenicia soon proved that he was right. when sennacherib bestirred himself, in the spring of b.c., either the ethiopians were not ready, or they dared not advance to encounter him in coele-syria, and they left elulai to get out of his difficulties as best he might. he had no army to risk in a pitched battle; but fondly imagined that his cities, long since fortified, and protected on the east by the range of lebanon, would offer a resistance sufficiently stubborn to wear out the patience of his assailant. the assyrians, however, disconcerted his plans. instead of advancing against him by the pass of nahr-el-kebir, according to their usual custom, they attacked him in flank, descending into the very midst of his positions by the _col_ of legnia or one of the neighbouring passes.* they captured in succession the two sidons, bît-zîti, sarepta, mahalliba, ushu, akzîb, and acco: elulai, reduced to the possession of the island of tyre alone, retreated to one of his colonies in cyprus, where he died some years later, without having set foot again on the continent. all his former possessions on the mainland were given to a certain eth-baal, who chose sidon for his seat of government, and tyre lost by this one skirmish the rank of metropolis which she had enjoyed for centuries.** this summary punishment decided all the syrian princes who were not compromised beyond hope of pardon to humble themselves before the suzerain. menahem of samsi-muruna,*** * this follows from the very order in which the cities were taken in the course of this campaign. ** the assyrian text gives for the name of the king of sidon a shortened form tu-baal instead of eth-baal, paralleled by lulia for elulai. *** several of the early assyriologists read usi-muruna, and identified the city bearing this name with samaria. the discovery of the reading samsi-muruna on a fragment of the time of assur-bani-pal no longer permits of this identification, and obliges us to look for the city in phoenicia. abdiliti of arvad, uru-malîk of byblos, puduîlu of amnion, chemosh-nadab of moab, malîk-rammu of edom, mitinti of ashdod, all brought their tribute in person to the assyrian camp before ushu: zedekiah of ashkelon and hezekiah of judah alone persisted in their hostility. egypt had at length been moved by the misfortunes of her allies, and the ethiopian troops had advanced to the seat of war, but they did not arrive in time to save zedekiah: sennacherib razed to the ground all his strongholds one after another, beth-dagon, joppa, bene-berak, and hazor,* took him prisoner at ascalon, and sent him with his family to assyria, setting up sharludarî, son of bukibti, in his stead. sennacherib then turned against ekron, and was about to begin the siege of the city, when the long-expected egyptians at length made their appearance. shabîtoku did not command them in person, but he had sent his best troops--the contingents furnished by the petty kings of the delta, and the sheikhs of the sinaitic peninsula, who were vassals of egypt. the encounter took place near altaku,** and on this occasion again, as at raphia, the scientific tactics of the assyrians prevailed over the stereotyped organisation of pharaoh�s army: the ethiopian generals left some of their chariots in the hands of the conqueror, and retreated with the remnants of their force beyond the isthmus. * these are the cities attributed to the tribes of dan and judah in josh. xv. , ; xix. . beth-dagon is now bêt- dejân; azuru is yazûr, to the south-east of joppa; beni- barak is ibn-abrak, to the north-east of the same town. ** altaku is certainly eltekeh of dan (josh. xix. ), as was seen from the outset; the site, however, of eltekeh cannot be fixed with any certainty. it has been located at bêt-lukkieh, in the mountainous country north-west of jerusalem, but this position in no way corresponds to the requirements of the assyrian text, according to which the battle took place on a plain large enough for the evolutions of the egyptian chariots, and situated between the group of towns formed by beth-dagon, joppa, beni-barak, and hazor, which sennacherib had just captured, and the cities of ekrbn, timnath, and eltekeh, which he took directly after his victory: a suitable locality must be looked for in the vicinity of ramleh or zernuka. altaku capitulated, an example followed by the neighbouring fortress of timnath, and subsequently by ekron itself, all three being made to feel sennacherib�s vengeance. �the nobles and chiefs who had offended, i slew,� he remarks, �and set up their corpses on stakes in a circle round the city; those of the inhabitants who had offended and committed crimes, i took them prisoners, and for the rest who had neither offended nor transgressed, i pardoned them.� [illustration: .jpg the pass of legnia, in lebanon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph given in lortet. [illustration: b.jpg esneh--principal abyssinian trading village] we may here pause to inquire how hezekiah was occupied while his fate was being decided on the field of altaku. he was fortifying jerusalem, and storing within it munitions of war, and enrolling jewish soldiers and mercenary troops from the arab tribes of the desert. he had suddenly become aware that large portions of the wall of the city of david had crumbled away, and he set about demolishing the neighbouring houses to obtain materials for repairing these breaches: he hastily strengthened the weak points in his fortifications, stopped up the springs which flowed into the gibon, and cut off the brook itself, constructing a reservoir between the inner and outer city walls to store up the waters of the ancient pool. these alterations* rendered the city, which from its natural position was well defended, so impregnable that sennacherib decided not to attack it until the rest of the kingdom had been subjugated: with this object in view he pitched his camp before lachish, whence he could keep a watch over the main routes from egypt where they crossed the frontier, and then scattered his forces over the land of judah, delivering it up to pillage in a systematic manner. he took forty-six walled towns, and numberless strongholds and villages, demolishing the walls and leading into captivity , persons of all ages and conditions, together with their household goods, their horses, asses, mules, camels, oxen, and sheep;** it was a war as disastrous in its effects as that which terminated in the fall of samaria, or which led to the final captivity in babylon.*** * isa. xxii. - . * an allusion to the sojourn of sennacherib near lachish is found in kings xviii. - ; xix. , and in isa. xxxvi. ; xxxvii. *** it seems that the jewish historian demetrios considered the captivities under nebuchadrezzar and sennacherib to be on the same footing. the work of destruction accomplished, the rabshakeh brought up all his forces and threw up a complete circle of earthworks round jerusalem: hezekiah found himself shut up in his capital �like a bird in a cage.� the inhabitants soon became accustomed to this isolated life, but isaiah was indignant at seeing them indifferent to their calamities, and inveighed against them with angry eloquence: �what aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? o thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town; thy slain are not slain with the sword, neither are they dead in battle. all thy rulers fled away together, they are made prisoners without drawing the bow; they are come hither from afar for safety, and all that meet together here shall be taken together.� * * [the r.v. gives this passage as follows: �they were bound by the archers: all that were found of thee were bound together, they fled afar off.�--tr.] the danger was urgent; the assyrians were massed in their entrenchments with their auxiliaries ranged behind them to support them: �elam bare the quiver with chariots of men and horsemen, and kir uncovered the shield (for the assault). and it came to pass that thy choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at thy gate, and he took away the covering of judah.� [illustration: .jpg sennacherib receiving the submissions of the jews] in those days, therefore, jahveh, without pity for his people, called them to �weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. and the lord of hosts revealed himself in mine ears, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the lord, the lord of hosts.� * the prophet threw the blame on the courtiers especially shebna, who still hoped for succour from the egyptians, and kept up the king�s illusions on this point. he threatened him with the divine anger; he depicted him as seized by jahveh, rolled and kneaded into a lump, �and tossed like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame of thy lord�s house. and i will thrust thee from thy office, and from thy station he shall pull thee down!�** meanwhile, day after day elapsed, and pharaoh did not hasten to the rescue. hezekiah�s eyes were opened; he dismissed shebna, and degraded him to the position of scribe, and set eliakim in his place in the council of state.*** * isa. xxii. - . ** isa. xxii. - . ***in the duplicate narrative of these negotiations with the assyrian generals, shebna is in fact considered as a mere scribe, while eliakim is the prefect of the king�s house ( kings xviii. , ; xix. : isa. xxxvi. , ; xxxvii. ). isaiah�s influence revived, and he persuaded the king to sue for peace while yet there was time. sennacherib was encamped at lachish; but the tartan and his two lieutenants received the overtures of peace, and proposed a parley near the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller�s field. hezekiah did not venture to go in person to the meeting-place; he sent eliakirn, the new prefect of the palace, shebna, and the chancellor joah, the chief cupbearer, and tradition relates that the assyrian addressed them in severe terms in his master�s name: �now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it: so is pharaoh, king of egypt, to all that trust on him.� then, as he continued to declaim in a loud voice, so that the crowds gathered on the wall could hear him, the delegates besought him to speak in aramaic, which they understood, but �speak not to us in the jews� language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall!� instead, however, of granting their request, the assyrian general advanced towards the spectators and addressed them in hebrew: �hear ye the words of the great king, the king of assyria. let not hezekiah deceive you; for he shall not be able to deliver you: neither let hezekiah make you trust in the lord, saying, the lord will surely deliver us: this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of assyria. hearken not to hezekiah: for thus saith the king of assyria, make your peace with me, and come out to me; and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; until i come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. beware lest hezekiah persuade you, saying, the lord will deliver us!� the specified conditions were less hard than might have been feared.* * the hebrew version of these events is recorded in kings xviii. - ; xix., and in isa. xxxvi., xxxvii., with only one important divergence, namely, the absence from isaiah of verses - of kings xviii. this particular passage, in which the name of the king has a peculiar form, is a detached fragment of an older document, perhaps the official annals of the kingdom, whose contents agreed with the facts recorded in the assyrian text. the rest is borrowed from the cycle of prophetic narratives, and contains two different versions of the same events. the first comprises kings xviii. , - ; xix. l- a, &- , where sennacherib is represented as despatching a verbal message to hezekiah by the tartan and his captains. the second consists merely of kings xix. - a, and in this has been inserted a long prophecy of isaiah�s (xix. - ) which has but a vague connection with the rest of the narrative. in this sennacherib defied hezekiah in a letter, which the jewish king spread before the lord, and shortly afterwards received a reply through the prophet. the two versions were combined towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century, by the compiler of the _book of kings_, and passed thence into the collection of the prophecies attributed to isaiah. the jewish king was to give up his wives and daughters as hostages, to pledge himself to pay a regular tribute, and disburse immediately a ransom of thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred talents of silver: he could only make up this large sum by emptying the royal and sacred treasuries, and taking down the plates of gold with which merely a short while before he had adorned the doors and lintels of the temple. padî was released from his long captivity, reseated on his throne, and received several jewish towns as an indemnity: other portions of territory were bestowed upon mitinti of ashdod and zillibel of graza as a reward for their loyalty.* * the sequence of events is not very well observed in the assyrian text, and the liberation of padî is inserted in . - , before the account of the war with hezekiah. it seems very unlikely that the king of judah would have released his prisoner before his treaty with sennacherib; the assyrian scribe, wishing to bring together all the facts relating to ekron, anticipated this event. hebrew tradition fixed the ransom at the lowest figure, talents of silver instead of the given in the assyrian document ( kings xviii. ), and authorities have tried to reconcile this divergence by speculating on the different values represented by a talent in different countries and epochs. hezekiah issued from the struggle with his territory curtailed and his kingdom devastated; the last obstacle which stood in the way of the assyrians� victorious advance fell with him, and sennacherib could now push forward with perfect safety towards the nile. he had, indeed, already planned an attack on egypt, and had reached the isthmus, when a mysterious accident arrested his further progress. the conflict on the plains of altaku had been severe; and the army, already seriously diminished by its victory, had been still further weakened during the campaign in judæa, and possibly the excesses indulged in by the soldiery had developed in them the germs of one of those terrible epidemics which had devastated western asia several times in the course of the century: whatever may have been the cause, half the army was destroyed by pestilence before it reached the frontier of the delta, and sennacherib led back the shattered remnants of his force to nineveh.* * the assyrian texts are silent about this catastrophe, and the sacred books of the hebrews seem to refer it to the camp at libnah in palestine ( kings xix. - ); the egyptian legend related by herodotus seems to prove that it took place near the egyptian frontier. josephus takes the king as far as pelusium, and describes the destruction of the assyrian army as taking place in the camp before this town. he may have been misled by the meaning �mud,� which attaches to the name of libnah as well as to that of pelusium. oppert upheld his opinion, and identified the libnah of the biblical narrative with the pelusium of herodotus. it is probable that each of the two nations referred the scene of the miracle to a different locality. the hebrews did not hesitate to ascribe the event to the vengeance of jahveh, and to make it a subject of thankfulness. they related that before their brutal conqueror quitted the country he had sent a parting message to hezekiah: �let not thy god in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of assyria. behold, thou hast heard what the kings of assyria have done to all lands, by destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered? have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, gozan and haran and rezepk, and the children of eden which were in telassar? where is the king of hamath, and the king of arpad, and the king of the city of sepharvaim, of hena, and ivvah?� hezekiah, having received this letter of defiance, laid it in the temple before jahveh, and prostrated himself in prayer: the response came to him through the mouth of isaiah. �thus saith the lord concerning the king of assyria, he shall not come unto this city, nor shoot an arrow there, neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor cast a mount against it. by the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and he shall not come unto this city, saith the lord. for i will defend this city to save it, for mine own sake and for my servant david�s sake. and it came to pass that night, that the angel of the lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the assyrians an hundred four-score and five thousand: and when men arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.� * * kings xix. - ; isa. xxxvii. - ; this is the second tradition of which mention has been made, but already amalgamated with the first to form the narrative as it now stands. the egyptians considered the event no less miraculous than did the hebrews, and one of their popular tales ascribed the prodigy to phtah, the god of memphis. sethon, the high priest of phtah, lived in a time of national distress, and the warrior class, whom he had deprived of some of its privileges, refused to take up arms in his behalf. he repaired, therefore, to the temple to implore divine assistance, and, falling asleep, was visited by a dream. the god appeared to him, and promised to send him some auxiliaries who should ensure him success. he enlisted such of the egyptians as were willing to follow him, shopkeepers, fullers, and sutlers, and led them to pelusium to resist the threatened invasion. in the night a legion of field-mice came forth, whence no one knew, and, noiselessly spreading throughout the camp of the assyrians, gnawed the quivers, the bowstrings, and the straps of the bucklers in such a way that, on the morrow, the enemy, finding themselves disarmed, fled after a mere pretence at resistance, and suffered severe losses. a statue was long shown in the temple at memphis portraying this sethon: he was represented holding a mouse in his hand, and the inscription bade men reverence the god who had wrought this miracle.* * the statue with which this legend has been connected, must have represented a king offering the image of a mouse crouching on a basket, like the cynocephalus on the hieroglyphic sign which denotes centuries, or the frog of the goddess hiqît. historians have desired to recognise in sethon a king zêt of the xxiiith dynasty, or even shabîtoku of the xxvth dynasty; krall identified him with satni in the demotic story of satni-umois. the disaster was a terrible one: sennacherib�s triumphant advance was suddenly checked, and he was forced to return to asia when the goal of his ambition was almost reached. the loss of a single army, however much to be deplored, was not irreparable, since assyria could furnish her sovereign with a second force as numerous as that which lay buried in the desert on the road to egypt, but it was uncertain what effect the news of the calamity and the sight of the survivors might have on the minds of his subjects and rivals. the latter took no immediate action, and the secret joy which they must have experienced did not blind them to the real facts of the case; for though the power of assyria was shaken, she was still stronger than any one of them severally, or even than all of them together, and to attack her or rebel against her now, was to court defeat with as much certainty as in past days. the pharaoh kept himself behind his rivers; the military science and skill which had baffled his generals on the field of altaku did not inspire him with any desire to reappear on the plains of palestine. hezekiah, king of judah, had emptied his treasury to furnish his ransom, his strongholds had capitulated one by one, and his territory, diminished by the loss of some of the towns of the shephelah, was little botter than a waste of smoking ruins. he thought himself fortunate to have preserved his power under the suzerainty of assyria, and his sole aim for many years was to refill his treasury, reconstitute his army, and re-establish his kingdom. the philistine and nabatasan princes, and the chiefs of moab, ammon, and idumsea, had nothing to gain by war, being too feeble to have any chance of success without the help of judah, tyre, and egypt. the syrians maintained a peaceful attitude, which was certainly their wisest policy; and during the following quarter of a century they loyally obeyed their governors, and gave sennacherib no cause to revisit them. it was fortunate for him that they did so, for the peoples of the north and east, the kaldâ, and, above all, the elamites, were the cause of much trouble, and exclusively occupied his attention during several years. the inhabitants of bît-yakîn, urged on either by their natural restlessness or by the news of the misfortune which had befallen their enemy, determined once more to try the fortunes of war. incited by marduk-ushezlb,* one of their princes, and by merodach-baladan, these people of the marshes intrigued with the courts of babylon and susa, and were emboldened to turn against the assyrian garrisons stationed in their midst to preserve order. sennacherib�s vengeance fell first on marduk-ushezîb, who fled from his stronghold of bîttutu after sustaining a short siege. merodach-baladan, deserted by his accomplice, put the statues of his gods and his royal treasures on board his fleet, and embarking with his followers, crossed the lagoon, and effected a landing in the district of nagîtu, in susian territory, beyond the mouth of the ulaî.** sennacherib entered bît-yakîn without striking a blow, and completed the destruction of the half-deserted town; he next proceeded to demolish the other cities one after the other, carrying off into captivity all the men and cattle who fell in his way. * three kings of babylon at this period bore very similar names--marduk-ushezîb, nergal-ushezîb, and mushezîb-marduk. nergal-ushezîb is the elder of the two whom the texts call shuzub, and whom assyriologists at first confused one with another. ** nagîtu was bounded by the nar-marratum and the ulaî, which allows us to identify it with the territory south of edrisieh. the elamites, disconcerted by the rapidity of his action, allowed him to crush their allies unopposed; and as they had not openly intervened, the conqueror refrained from calling them to account for their intrigues. babylon paid the penalty for all: its sovereign, belibni, who had failed to make the sacred authority of the suzerain respected in the city, and who, perhaps, had taken some part in the conspiracy, was with his family deported to nineveh, and his vacant throne was given to assur-nadin-shumu, a younger son of sargon ( b.c.).* * berosus, misled by the deposition of belibni, thought that the expedition was directed against babylon itself; he has likewise confounded assur-nâdin-shumu with esar-haddon, and he has given this latter, whom he calls asordancs, as the immediate successor of belibni. the date b.c. for these events is indicated in _pinches� babylonian chronicle_, which places them in the third year of belibni. order was once more restored in karduniash, but sennacherib felt that its submission would be neither sincere nor permanent, so long as merodach-baladan was hovering on its frontier possessed of an army, a fleet, and a supply of treasure, and prepared to enter the lists as soon as circumstances seemed favourable to his cause. sennacherib resolved, therefore, to cross the head of the persian gulf and deal him such a blow as would once for all end the contest; but troubles which broke out on the urartian frontier as soon as he returned forced, him to put off his project. the tribes of tumurru, who had placed their strongholds like eyries among the peaks of nipur, had been making frequent descents on the plains of the tigris, which they had ravaged unchecked by any fear of assyrian power. sennacherib formed an entrenched camp at the foot of their mountain retreat, and there left the greater part of his army, while he set out on an adventurous expedition with a picked body of infantry and cavalry. over ravines and torrents, up rough and difficult slopes, they made their way, the king himself being conveyed in a litter, as there were no roads practicable for his royal chariot; he even deigned to walk when the hillsides were too steep for his bearers to carry him; he climbed like a goat, slept on the bare rocks, drank putrid water from a leathern bottle, and after many hardships at length came up with the enemy. he burnt their villages, and carried off herds of cattle and troops of captives; but this exploit was more a satisfaction of his vanity than a distinct advantage gained, for the pillaging of the plains of the tigris probably recommenced as soon as the king had quitted the country. the same year he pushed as far as dayaîni, here similar tactics were employed. constructing a camp in the neighbourhood of mount anara and mount uppa, he forced his way to the capital, ukki, traversing a complicated network of gorges and forests which had hitherto been considered impenetrable. the king, manîya, fled; ukki was taken by assault and pillaged, the spoil obtained from it slightly exceeding that from tumurru ( b.c.). shortly afterwards the province of tulgarimmê revolted in concert with the tabal: sennacherib overcame the allied forces, and led his victorious regiments through the defiles of the taurus.* * the dates of and connection between these two wars are not determined with any certainty. some authorities assign them both to the same year, somewhere between and b.c., while others assign them to two different years, the first to or b.c., the second to or b.c. [illustration: .jpg a raid among the woods and mountains.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layahd, monuments of nineveh, vol. i. pi. . greek pirates or colonists having ventured from time to time to ravage the seaboard, he destroyed one of their fleets near the mouth of the saros, and took advantage of his sojourn in this region to fortify the two cities of tarsus and ankhialê, to defend his cilician frontier against the peoples of asia minor.* * the encounter of the assyrians with the greeks is only known to us from a fragment of berosus. the foundation of tarsus is definitely attributed to sennacherib in the same passage; that of ankhialc is referred to the fabulous sardanapalus, but most historians with much probability attribute the foundation to sennacherib. this was a necessary precaution, for the whole of asia minor was just then stirred by the inrush of new nations which were devastating the country, and the effect of these convulsions was beginning to be felt in the country to the south of the central plain, at the foot of the taurus, and on the frontiers of the assyrian empire. barbarian hordes, attracted by the fame of the ancient hittite sanctuaries in the upper basin of the euphrates and the araxes, had descended now and again to measure their strength against the advanced posts of assyria or urartu, but had subsequently withdrawn and disappeared beyond the halys. their movements may at this time have been so aggressive as to arouse serious anxiety in the minds of the ninevite rulers; it is certain that sennacherib, though apparently hindered by no revolt, delayed the execution of the projects he had formed against merodach-baladan for three years; and it is possible his inaction may be attributed to the fear of some complication arising on his north-western frontier. he did not carry out his scheme till b.c., when all danger in that quarter had passed away. the enterprise was a difficult one, for nagîtu and the neighbouring districts were dependencies of susa, and could not be reached by land without a violation of blamite neutrality, which would almost inevitably lead to a conflict. shutruk-nakhunta was no longer alive. in the very year in which his rival had set up assur-nâdin-shumu as king of karduniash, a revolution had broken out in elam, which was in all probability connected with the events then taking place in babylon. his subjects were angry with him for having failed to send timely succour to his allies the kaldâ, and for having allowed bît-yakîn to be destroyed: his own brother khalludush sided with the malcontents, threw shutruk-nakhunta into prison, and proclaimed himself king. this time the ninevites, thinking that elam was certain to intervene, sought how they might finally overpower merodach-baladan before this interference could prove effectual. the feudal constitution of the blamite monarchy rendered, as we know, the mobilisation of the army at the opening of a war a long and difficult task: weeks might easily elapse before the first and second grades of feudatory nobility could join the royal troops and form a combined army capable of striking an important blow. this was a cause of dangerous inferiority in a conflict with the assyrians, the chief part of whose forces, bivouacking close to the capital during the winter months, could leave their quarters and set out on a campaign at little more than a day�s notice; the kings of elam minimised the danger by keeping sufficient troops under arms on their northern and western frontiers to meet any emergency, but an attack by sea seemed to them so unlikely that they had not, for a long time past, thought of protecting their coast-line. the ancient chaldæan cities, uru, bagash, uruk, and bridu had possessed fleets on the persian gulf; but the times were long past when they used to send to procure stone and wood from the countries of magan and melukhkha, and the seas which they had ruled were now traversed only by merchant vessels or fishing-boats. besides this, the condition of the estuary seemed to prohibit all attack from that side. the space between bît-yakîn and the long line of dunes or mud-banks which blocked the entrance to it was not so much a gulf as a lagoon of uncertain and shifting extent; the water flowed only in the middle, being stagnant near the shores; the whole expanse was irregularly dotted over with mud-banks, and its service was constantly altered by the alluvial soil brought down by the tigris, the euphrates, the ulaî, and the uknu. the navigation of this lagoon was dangerous, for the relative positions of the channels and shallows were constantly shifting, and vessels of deep draught often ran aground in passing from one end of it to the other.* * the condition i describe here is very similar to what alexander�s admirals found years later. arrian has preserved for us the account of nearchus� navigation in these waters, and his description shows such a well-defined condition of the estuary that its main outline must have remained unchanged for a considerable time; the only subsequent alterations which had taken place must have been in the internal configuration, where the deposit of alluvium must have necessarily reduced the area of the lake since the time of sennacherib. the little map on the next page has no pretension to scientific exactitude; its only object is to show roughly what the estuary of the euphrates was like, and to illustrate approximately the course of the assyrian expedition. [illustration: .jpg map the nar-marratum in the time of sennacherib] sennacherib decided to march his force to the mouth of the euphrates, and, embarking it there, to bring it to bear suddenly on the portion of elamite territory nearest to nagîtu: if all went well, he would thus have time to crush the rising power of merodach-baladan and regain his own port of departure before khalludush could muster a sufficient army to render efficient succour to his vassal. more than a year was consumed in preparations. the united cities of chaldæa being unable to furnish the transports required to convey such a large host across the nar-marratum, it was necessary to construct a fleet, and to do so in such a way that the enemy should have no suspicion of danger. sennacherib accordingly set up his dockyards at tul-barsîp on the euphrates and at nineveh on the tigris, and syrian shipwrights built him a fleet of vessels after two distinct types. some were galleys identical in build and equipment with those which the mediterranean natives used for their traffic with distant lands. the others followed the old babylonian model, with stem and stern both raised, the bows being sometimes distinguished by the carving of a horse�s head, which justified the name of _sea-horse_ given to a vessel of this kind. they had no masts, but propelling power was provided by two banks of oars one above the other, as in the galleys. the two divisions of the fleet were ready at the beginning of b.c., and it was arranged that they should meet at bît-dakkuri, to the south of babylon. [illustration: .jpg the fleet of sennacherib on the nar-marratum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the fleet from tul-barsîp had merely to descend the euphrates to reach the meeting-place,* but that from nineveh had to make a more complicated journey. * the story of the preparations, as it has been transmitted to us in sennacherib�s inscriptions, is curiously similar to the accounts given by the greek historians of the vessels alexander had built at babylon and thap-sacus by phoenician workmen, which descended the euphrates to join the fleet in the persian gulf. this fleet consisted of quinquiremos, according to aristobulus, who was present at their construction: quintus-curtius makes them all vessels with seven banks of oars, but he evidently confuses the galleys built at thapsacus with those which came in sections from phoenicia and which alexander had put together at babylon. by following the course of the tigris to its mouth it would have had to skirt the coast of elam for a considerable distance, and would inevitably have aroused the suspicions of khalludush; the passage of such a strong squadron must have revealed to him the importance of the enterprise, and put him on his guard. the vessels therefore stayed their course at upi, where they were drawn ashore and transported on rollers across the narrow isthmus which separates the tigris from the arakhtu canal, on which they were then relaunched. either the canal had not been well kept, or else it never had the necessary depth at certain places; but the crews managed to overcome all obstacles and rejoined their comrades in due time. sennacherib was ready waiting for them with all his troops--foot-soldiers, charioteers, and horsemen--and with supplies of food for the men, and of barley and oats for the horses; as soon as the last contingent had arrived, he gave the signal for departure, and all advanced together, the army marching along the southern bank, the fleet descending the current, to the little port of bab-salimeti, some twelve miles below the mouth of the river.* * the mouth of the euphrates being at that time not far from the site of kornah, bab-salimeti, which was about twelve miles distant, must have been somewhere near the present village of abu-hatira, on the south bank of the river. there they halted in order to proceed to the final embarcation, but at the last moment their inexperience of the sea nearly compromised the success of the expedition. even if they were not absolutely ignorant of the ebb and flow of the tide, they certainly did not know how dangerous the spring tide could prove at the equinox under the influence of a south wind. the rising tide then comes into conflict with the volume of water brought down by the stream, and in the encounter the banks are broken down, and sometimes large districts are inundated: this is what happened that year, to the terror of the assyrians. their camp was invaded and completely flooded by the waves; the king and his soldiers took refuge in haste on the galleys, where they were kept prisoners for five days �as in a huge cage.� as soon as the waters abated, they completed their preparations and started on their voyage. at the point where the euphrates enters the lagoon, sennacherib pushed forward to the front of the line, and, standing in the bows of his flag-ship, offered a sacrifice to eâ, the god of the ocean. having made a solemn libation, he threw into the water a gold model of a ship, a golden fish, and an image of the god himself, likewise in gold; this ceremony performed, he returned to the port of bab-salimeti with his guard, while the bulk of his forces continued their voyage eastward. the passage took place without mishap, but they could not disembark on the shore of the gulf itself, which was unapproachable by reason of the deposits of semi-liquid mud which girdled it; they therefore put into the mouth of the ulaî, and ascended the river till they reached a spot where the slimy reed-beds gave place to firm ground, which permitted them to draw their ships to land.* * billerbeck recognises in the narrative of sennacherib the indication of two attempts at debarcation, of which the second only can have been successful; i can distinguish only one crossing. the inhabitants assembled hastily at sight of the enemy, and the news, spreading through the neighbouring tribes, brought together for their defence a confused crowd of archers, chariots, and horsemen. the assyrians, leaping into the stream and climbing up the bank, easily overpowered these undisciplined troops. [illustration: .jpg a skirmish in the marshes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. they captured at the first onset nagîtu, nagîtu-dibîna, khilmu, pillatu, and khupapânu; and raiding the kaldâ, forced them on board the fleet with their gods, their families, their flocks, and household possessions, and beat a hurried retreat with their booty. merodach-baladan himself and his children once more escaped their clutches, but the state he had tried to create was annihilated, and his power utterly crushed. sennacherib received his generals with great demonstrations of joy at bab-salimeti, and carried the spoil in triumph to nineveh. khalludush, exasperated by the affront put upon him, instantly retaliated by invading karduniash, where he pushed forward as far as sippara, pillaging and destroying the inhabitants without opposition. the babylonians who had accompanied merodach-baladan into exile, returned in the train of the elamites, and, secretly stealing back to their homes, stirred up a general revolt: assur-nâdin-shumu, taken prisoner by his own subjects, was put in chains and despatched to susa, his throne being bestowed on a babylonian named nergal-ushezîb,* who at once took the field ( b.c.). * this is the prince whom the assyrian documents name shuzub, and whom we might call shuzub the babylonian, in contradistinction to mushezib-marduk, who is shuzub the kaldu. his preliminary efforts were successful: he ravaged the frontier along the turnât with the help of the elamites, and took by assault the city of nipur, which refused to desert the cause of sennacherib ( b.c.). meanwhile the assyrian generals had captured uruk (erech) on the st of tisri, after the retreat of khalludush; and having sacked the city, were retreating northwards with their spoil when they were defeated on the th near nipur by nergal-ushezîb. he had already rescued the statues of the gods and the treasure, when his horse fell in the midst of the fray, and he could not disengage himself. his vanquished foes led him captive to nineveh, where sennacherib exposed him in chains at the principal gateway of his palace: the babylonians, who owed to him their latest success, summoned a kaldu prince, mushezîb-marduk, son of gahut, to take command. he hastened to comply, and with the assistance of blamite troops offered such a determined resistance to all attack, that he was finally left in undisturbed possession of his kingdom ( b.c.): the actual result to assyria, therefore, of the ephemeral victory gained by the fleet had been the loss of babylon. [illustration: .jpg the horse of nergal-ushezÎb falling in the battle] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. a revolution in elam speedily afforded assyria an opportunity for revenge. when nergal-ushezîb was taken prisoner, the people of susa, dissatisfied with the want of activity displayed by khalludush, conspired to depose him: on hearing, therefore, the news of the revolutions in chaldæa, they rose in revolt on the th of tisri, and, besieging him in his palace, put him to death, and elected a certain kutur-nakhunta as his successor. sennacherib, without a moment�s hesitation, crossed the frontier at durîlu, before order was re-established at susa, and recovered, after very slight resistance, baza and bît-khaîri which shutruk-nakhunta had taken from sargon. this preliminary success laid the lower plain of susiana at his mercy, and he ravaged it pitilessly from baza to bît-bunaki. �thirty-four strongholds and the townships depending on them, whose number is unequalled, i besieged and took by assault, their inhabitants i led into captivity, i demolished them and reduced them to ashes: i caused the smoke of their burning to rise into the wide heaven, like the smoke of one great sacrifice.� kutur-nakhunta, still insecurely seated on the throne of susa, retreated with his army towards khaîdalu, in the almost unexplored regions which bordered the banian plateau,* and entrenched himself strongly in the heart of the mountains. * khaîdalu is very probably the present dis malkân. the season was already well advanced when the assyrians set out on this expedition, and november set in while they were ravaging the plain: but the weather was still so fine that sennacherib determined to take advantage of it to march upon madaktu. hardly had he scaled the heights when winter fell upon him with its accompaniment of cold and squally weather. �violent storms broke out, it rained and snowed incessantly, the torrents and streams overflowed their banks,� so that hostilities had to be suspended and the troops ordered back to nineveh. the effect produced, however, by these bold measures was in no way diminished: though kutur-nakhunta had not had the necessary time to prepare for the contest, he was nevertheless discredited among his subjects for failing to bring them out of it with glory, and three months after the retreat of the assyrians he was assassinated in a riot on the th of ab, b.c.* * the assyrian documents merely mention the death of kutur- nakhunta less than three months after the return of sennacherib to nineveh. pinches� _babylonian chronicle_ only mentions the revolution in which he perished, and informs us that he had reigned ten months. it contracts ummân-minânu, the name of the elamite king, to minânu. his younger brother, ummân-minânu, assumed the crown, and though his enemies disdainfully refused to credit him with either prudence or judgment, he soon restored his kingdom to such a formidable degree of power that mushezîb-marduk thought the opportunity a favourable one for striking a blow at assyria, from which she could never recover. elam had plenty of troops, but was deficient in the resources necessary to pay the men and their chiefs, and to induce the tribes of the table-land to furnish their contingents. mushezîb-marduk, therefore, emptied the sacred treasury of e-sagilla, and sent the gold and silver of bel and zarpanit to ummân-minânu with a message which ran thus: �assemble thine army, and prepare thy camp, come to babylon and strengthen our hands, for thou art our help.� the elamite asked nothing better than to avenge the provinces so cruelly harassed, and the cities consumed in the course of the last campaign: he summoned all his nobles, from the least to the greatest, and enlisted the help of the troops of parsuas, ellipi, and anzân, the aramaean puqudu and gambulu of the tigris, as well as the aramæans of the euphrates, and the peoples of bît-adini and bît-amukkâni, who had rallied round sam una, son of merodach-baladan, and joined forces with the soldiers of mushezîb-marduk in babylon. �like an invasion of countless locusts swooping down upon the land, they assembled, resolved to give me battle, and the dust of their feet rose before me, like a thick cloud which darkens the copper-coloured dome of the sky.� the conflict took place near the township of khalulê, on the banks of the tigris, not far from the confluence of this river with the turnât.* * haupt attributes to the name the signification _holes, bogs_, and this interpretation agrees well enough with the state of the country round the mouths of the dîyala, in the low-lying district which separates that river from the tigris; he compares it with the name haulâyeh, quoted by arab geographers in this neighbourhood, and with that of the canton of hâleh, mentioned in syrian texts as belonging to the district of râdhân, between the adhem and the dîyala. at this point the turnât, flowing through the plain, divides into several branches, which ramify again and again, and form a kind of delta extending from the ruins of nayân to those of reshadeh. during the whole of the day the engagement between the two hosts raged on this unstable soil, and their leaders themselves sold their lives dearly in the struggle. sennacherib invoked the help of assur, sin, shamash, nebo, bel, nergal, ishtar of nineveh, and ishtar of arbela, and the gods heard his prayers. �like a lion i raged, i donned my harness, i covered my head with my casque, the badge of war; my powerful battle-chariot, which mows down the rebels, i ascended it in haste in the rage of my heart; the strong bow which assur entrusted to me, i seized it, and the javelin, destroyer of life, i grasped it: the whole host of obdurate rebels i charged, shining like silver or like the day, and i roared as kammân roareth.� khumba-undash, the elamite general, was killed in one of the first encounters, and many of his officers perished around him, �of those who wore golden daggers at their belts, and bracelets of gold on their wrists.� they fell one after the other, �like fat bulls chained� for the sacrifice, or like sheep, and their blood flowed on the broad plain as the water after a violent storm: the horses plunged in it up to their knees, and the body of the royal chariot was reddened with it. a son of merodach-baladan, nabu-shumishkun, was taken prisoner, but ummân-minânu and mushezîb-marduk escaped unhurt from the fatal field. it seems as if fortune had at last decided in favour of the assyrians, and they proclaimed the fact loudly, but their success was not so evident as to preclude their adversaries also claiming the victory with some show of truth. in any case, the losses on both sides were so considerable as to force the two belligerents to suspend operations; they returned each to his capital, and matters remained much as they had been before the battle took place.* * _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ attributes the victory to the elamites, and says that the year in which the battle was fought was unknown. the testimony of this chronicle is so often marred by partiality, that to prefer it always to that of the ninevite inscriptions shows deficiency of critical ability: the course of events seems to me to prove that the advantage remained with the assyrians, though the victory was not decisive. the date, which necessarily falls between and b.c., has been decided by general considerations as b.c., the very year in which the _taylor cylinder_ was written. years might have elapsed before sennacherib could have ventured to recommence hostilities: he was not deluded by the exaggerated estimate of his victory in the accounts given by his court historians, and he recognised the fact that the issue of the struggle must be uncertain as long as the alliance subsisted between elam and chaldæa. but fortune came to his aid sooner than he had expected. ummân-minânu was not absolute in his dominions any more than his predecessors had been, and the losses he had sustained at khalulê, without obtaining any compensating advantages in the form of prisoners or spoil, had lowered him in the estimation of his vassals; mushezîb-marduk, on the other hand, had emptied his treasuries, and though karduniash was wealthy, it was hardly able, after such a short interval, to provide further subsidies to purchase the assistance of the mountain tribes. sennacherib�s emissaries kept him well informed of all that occurred in the enemy�s court, and he accordingly took the field again at the beginning of b.c., and on this occasion circumstances seemed likely to combine to give him an easy victory.* * the assyrian documents insert the account of the capture of babylon directly after the battle of khalulê, and modern historians therefore concluded that the two events took place within a few months of each other. the information afforded by _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ has enabled us to correct this mistake, and to bring down the date of the taking of babylon to b.c. mushezîb-marduk shut himself up in babylon, not doubting that the elamites would hasten to his succour as soon as they should hear of his distress; but his expectation was not fulfilled. ummân-minânu was struck down by apoplexy, on the th of nisân, and though his illness did not at once terminate fatally, he was left paralysed with distorted mouth, and loss of speech, incapable of action, and almost unfit to govern. his seizure put a stop to his warlike preparations: and his ministers, preoccupied with the urgent question of the succession to the throne, had no desire to provoke a conflict with assyria, the issue of which could not be foretold: they therefore left their ally to defend his own interests as best he might. babylon, reduced to rely entirely on its own resources, does not seem to have held out long, and perhaps the remembrance of the treatment it had received on former occasions may account for the very slight resistance it now offered. the assyrian kings who had from time to time conquered babylon, had always treated it with great consideration. they had looked upon it as a sacred city, whose caprices and outbreaks must always be pardoned; it was only with infinite precautions that they had imposed their commands upon it, and even when they had felt that severity was desirable, they had restrained themselves in using it, and humoured the idiosyncrasies of the inhabitants. tiglath-pileser iii, shalmaneser v., and sargon had all preferred to be legally crowned as sovereigns of babylon instead of remaining merely its masters by right of conquest, and though sennacherib had refused compliance with the traditions by which his predecessors had submitted to be bound, he had behaved with unwonted lenity after quelling the two previous revolts. he now recognised that his clemency had been shown in vain, and his small stock of patience was completely exhausted just when fate threw the rebellious city into his power. if the inhabitants had expected to be once more let off easily, their illusions were speedily dissipated: they were slain by the sword as if they had been ordinary foes, such as jews, tibarenians, or kaldâ of bît-yakîn, and they were spared none of the horrors which custom then permitted the stronger to inflict upon the weaker. for several days the pitiless massacre lasted. young and old, all who fell into the hands of the soldiery, perished by the sword; piles of corpses filled the streets and the approaches to the temples, especially the avenue of winged bulls which led to e-sagilla, and, even after the first fury of carnage had been appeased, it was only to be succeeded by more organised pillage. mushezîb-marduk was sent into exile with his family, and immense convoys of prisoners and spoil followed him. the treasures carried off from the royal palace, the temples, and the houses of the rich nobles were divided among the conquerors: they comprised gold, silver, precious stones, costly stuffs, and provisions of all sorts. the sacred edifices were sacked, the images hacked to pieces or carried off to nineveh: bel-marduk, introduced into the sanctuary of assur, became subordinate to the rival deity amid a crowd of strange gods. in the inmost recess of a chapel were discovered some ancient statues of kammân and shala of e-kallati, which marduk-nâdin-akhê had carried off in the time of tiglath-pileser i., and these were brought back in triumph to their own land, after an absence of four hundred and eighteen years. the buildings themselves suffered a like fate to that of their owners and their gods. �the city and its houses, from foundation to roof, i destroyed them, i demolished them, i burnt them with fire; walls, gateways, sacred chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, i laid them all low and cast them into the arakhtu.� the incessant revolts of the people justified this wholesale destruction. babylon, as we have said before, was too powerful to be reduced for long to the second rank in a mesopotamian empire: as soon as fate established the seat of empire in the districts bordering on the euphrates and the middle course of the tigris, its well-chosen situation, its size, its riches, the extent of its population, the number of its temples, and the beauty of its palaces, all conspired to make it the capital of the country. in vain assur, calah, or nineveh thrust themselves into the foremost rank, and by a strenuous effort made their princes rulers of babylon; in a short time babylon replenished her treasury, found allies, soldiers, and leaders, and in spite of reverses of fortune soon regained the upper hand. the only treatment which could effectually destroy her ascendency was that of leaving in her not one brick upon another, thus preventing her from being re-peopled for several generations, since a new city could not at once spring up from the ashes of the old; until she had been utterly destroyed her conquerors had still reason to fear her. this fact sennacherib, or his councillors, knew well. if he merits any reproach, it is not for having seized the opportunity of destroying the city which babylon offered him, but rather for not having persevered in his design to the end, and reduced her to a mere name. in the midst of these costly and absorbing wars, we may well wonder how sennacherib found time and means to build villas or temples; yet he is nevertheless, among the kings of assyria, the monarch who has left us the largest number of monuments. he restored a shrine of nergal in the small town of tarbizi; he fortified the village of alshi; and in b.c. he founded a royal residence in the fortress of kakzi, which defended the approach to calah from the south-east. he did not reside much at dur-sharrukîn, neither did he complete the decoration of his father�s palace there: his pride as a victorious warrior suffered when his surroundings reminded him of a more successful conqueror than himself, and calah itself was too full of memories of tiglath-pileser iii. and the sovereigns of the eighth century for him to desire to establish his court there. he preferred to reside at nineveh, which had been much neglected by his predecessors, and where the crumbling edifices merely recalled the memory of long-vanished splendours. [illustration: .jpg the mounds of nineveh seen from the terrace of a house in mosul] drawn by boudier, from a lithograph in layard. he selected this city as his residence at the very beginning of his reign, perhaps while he was still only crown prince, and began by repairing its ancient fortifications; later on, when the success of his earlier campaigns had furnished him with a sufficient supply of prisoners, he undertook the restoration of the whole city, with its avenues, streets, canals, quays, gardens, and aqueducts: the labour of all the captives brought together from different quarters of his empire was pressed into the execution of his plans--the kaldâ, the aramæans, the mannai, the people of kuî, the cilicians, the philistines, and the ïyrians; the provinces vied with each other in furnishing him with materials without stint,--precious woods were procured from syria, marbles from kapri-dargîla, alabaster from balad, while bît-yakîn provided the rushes to be laid between the courses of brickwork. the river tebilti, after causing the downfall of the royal mausolea and �displaying to the light of day the coffins which they concealed,� had sapped the foundations of the palace of assur-nazir-pal, and caused it to fall in: a muddy pool now occupied the north-western quarter, between the court of ishtar and the lofty ziggurât of assur. this pool sennacherib filled up, and regulated the course of the stream, providing against the recurrence of such-accidents in future by building a substructure of masonry, cubits long by wide, formed of large blocks of stone cemented together by bitumen. on this he erected a magnificent palace, a bît-khilâni in the syrian style, with woodwork of fragrant cedar and cypress overlaid with gold and silver, panellings of sculptured marble and alabaster, and friezes and cornices in glazed tiles of brilliant colouring: inspired by the goddess nin-kurra, he caused winged bulls of white alabaster and limestone statues of the gods to be hewn in the quarries of balad near nineveh. he presided in person at all these operations--at the raising of the soil, the making of the substructures of the terrace, the transport of the colossal statues or blocks and their subsequent erection; indeed, he was to be seen at every turn, standing in ids ebony and ivory chariot, drawn by a team of men. when the building was finished, he was so delighted with its beauty that he named it �the incomparable palace,� and his admiration was shared by his contemporaries; they were never wearied of extolling in glowing terms the twelve bronze lions, the twelve winged bulls, and the twenty-four statues of goddesses which kept watch over the entrance, and for the construction of which a new method of rapid casting had been invented. [illustration: .jpg king sennacherib watching the transport of a colossal statue] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. formerly the erection of such edifices cost much in suffering to the artificers employed on them, but sennacherib brought his great enterprise to a prompt completion without extravagant outlay or unnecessary hardship inflicted on his workmen. he proceeded to annex the neighbouring quarters of the city, relegating the inhabitants to the suburbs while he laid out a great park on the land thus cleared; this park was well planted with trees, like the heights of amanus, and in it flourished side by side all the forest growths indigenousnto the cilician mountains and the plains of chaldæa. a lake, fed by a canal leading from the khuzur, supplied it with water, which was conducted in streams and rills through the thickets, keeping them always fresh and green. vines trained on trellises afforded a grateful shade during the sultry hours of the day; birds sang in the branches, herds of wild boar and deer roamed through the coverts, in order that the prince might enjoy the pleasures of the chase without quitting his own private grounds. [illustration: .jpg assyrian bas-reliefs at bavian] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. the main part of these constructions was finished about b.c., but many details were left incomplete, and the work was still proceeding after the court had long been in residence on the spot. meanwhile a smaller palace, as well as barracks and a depot for arms and provisions, sprang up elsewhere. eighteen aqueducts, carried across the country, brought the water from the muzri to the khuzur, and secured an adequate supply to the city; the ninevites, who had hitherto relied upon rain-water for the replenishing of their cisterns, awoke one day to find themselves released from all anxiety on this score. an ancient and semi-subterranean canal, which assur-nazir-pal had constructed nearly two centuries before, but which, owing to the neglect of his successors, had become choked up, was cleaned out, enlarged and repaired, and made capable of bringing water to their doors from the springs of mount tas, in the same year as that in which the battle of khalulê took place.* at a later date, magnificent bas-reliefs, carved on the rock by order of esar-haddon, representing winged bulls, figures of the gods and of the king, with explanatory inscriptions, marked the site of the springs, and formed a kind of monumental façade to the ravine in which they took their rise.** * mount tas is the group of hills enclosing the ravine of bavian. these works were described in the bavian inscription, of which they occupy the whole of the first part. ** the bavian text speaks of six inscriptions and statues which the king had engraved on the mount of tas, at the source of the stream. it would be hard to account for the rapidity with which these great works were completed, did one not remember that sargon had previously carried out extensive architectural schemes, in which he must have employed all the available artists in his empire. the revolutions which had shattered the realm under the last descendants of assur-nazir-pal, and the consequent impoverishment of the kingdom, had not been without a disastrous effect on the schools of assyrian sculpture. [ illustration: .jpg unknown subjects from the fifth tomb] [illustration: .jpg great assyrian stele at baviaÎt.] drawn by boudior, from layard. since the royal treasury alone was able to bear the expense of those vast compositions in which the artistic skill of the period could have free play, the closing of the royal workshops, owing to the misfortunes of the time, had the immediate effect of emptying the sculptors� studios. even though the period of depression lasted for the space of two or three generations only, it became difficult to obtain artistic workmen; and those who were not discouraged from the pursuit of art by the uncertainty of employment, no longer possessed the high degree of skill attained by their predecessors, owing to lack of opportunity to cultivate it. sculpture was at a very low ebb when tiglath-pileser iii. desired to emulate the royal builders of days gone by, and the awkwardness of composition noticeable in some of his bas-reliefs, and the almost barbaric style of the stelae erected by persons of even so high a rank as belharrân-beluzur, prove the lamentable deficiency of good artists at that epoch, and show that the king had no choice but to employ all the surviving members of the ancient guilds, whether good, bad, or indifferent workmen. the increased demand, however, soon produced an adequate supply of workers, and when sargon ascended the throne, the royal guild of sculptors had been thoroughly reconstituted; the inefficient workmen on whom tiglath-pileser and shalmaneser had been obliged to rely had been eliminated in course of time, and many of the sculptures which adorned the palace at khorsabad display a purity of design and boldness of execution comparable to that of the best egyptian art. the composition still shows traces of chaldæan stiffness, and the exaggerated drawing of the muscles produces an occasionally unpleasing-heaviness of outline, but none the less the work as a whole constitutes one of the richest and most ingenious schemes of decoration ever devised, which, while its colouring was still perfect, must have equalled in splendour the great triumphal battle-scenes at ibsambul or medinet-habu. sennacherib found ready to his hand a body of well-trained artists, whose number had considerably increased during the reign of sargon, and he profited by the experience which they had acquired and the talent that many of them had developed. what immediately strikes the spectator in the series of pictures produced under his auspices, is the great skill with which his artists covered the whole surface at their disposal without overcrowding it. they no longer treated their subject, whether it were a warlike expedition, a hunting excursion, a sacrificial scene, or an episode of domestic life, as a simple juxtaposition of groups of almost equal importance ranged at the same elevation along the walls, the subject of each bas-relief being complete in itself and without any necessary connection with its neighbour. they now selected two or three principal incidents from the subjects proposed to them for representation, and round these they grouped such of the less important episodes as lent themselves best to picturesque treatment, and scattered sparingly over the rest of the field the minor accessories which seemed suitable to indicate more precisely the scene of the action. under the auspices of this later school, assyrian foot-soldiers are no longer depicted attacking the barbarians of media or elam on backgrounds of smooth stone, where no line marks the various levels, and where the remoter figures appear to be walking in the air without anything to support them. if the battle represented took place on a wooded slope crowned by a stronghold on the summit of the hill, the artist, in order to give an impression of the surroundings, covered his background with guilloche patterns by which to represent the rugged surface of the mountains; he placed here and there groups of various kinds of trees, especially the straight cypresses and firs which grew upon the slopes of the iranian table-land: or he represented a body of lancers galloping in single file along the narrow woodland paths, and hastening to surprise a distant enemy, or again foot-soldiers chasing their foes through the forest or engaging them in single combat; while in the corners of the picture the wounded are being stabbed or otherwise despatched, fugitives are trying to escape through the undergrowth, and shepherds are pleading with the victors for their lives. it is the actual scene the sculptor sets himself to depict, and one is sometimes inclined to ask, while noting the precision with which the details of the battle are rendered, whether the picture was not drawn on the spot, and whether the conqueror did not carry artists in his train to make sketches for the decorators of the main features of the country traversed and of the victories won. the masses of infantry seem actually in motion, a troop of horsemen rush blindly over uneven ground, and the episodes of their raid are unfolded in all their confusion with unfailing animation. [illustration: .jpg an assyrian cavalry raid through the woods] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. for the first time a spectator can realise assyrian warfare with its striking contrasts of bravery and unbridled cruelty; he is no longer reduced to spell out laboriously a monotonous narrative of a battle, for the battle takes place actually before his eyes. and after the return from the scene of action, when it is desired to show how the victor employed his prisoners for the greater honour of his gods and his own glory, the picture is no less detailed and realistic. [illustration: .jpg (and ) transport of a winged bull on a sledge.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. there we see them, the noble and the great of all the conquered nations, chaldæans and elamites, inhabitants of cilicia, phoenicia, and judaea, harnessed to ropes and goaded by the whips of the overseers, dragging the colossal bull which is destined to mount guard at the gates of the palace: with bodies bent, pendant arms, and faces contorted with pain, they, who had been the chief men in their cities, now take the place of beasts of burden, while sennacherib, erect on his state chariot, with steady glance and lips compressed, watches them as they pass slowly before him in their ignominy and misery. after the destruction of babylon there is a pause in the history of the conqueror, and with him in that of assyria itself. it seems as if nineveh had been exhausted by the greatness of her effort, and was stopping to take breath before setting out on a fresh career of conquest: the other nations also, as if overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe, appear to have henceforth despaired of their own security, and sought only how to avoid whatever might rouse against them the enmity of the master of the hour. his empire formed a compact and solid block in their midst, on which no human force seemed capable of making any impression. they had attacked it each in turn, or all at once, elam in the east, urartu in the north, egypt in the south-west, and their efforts had not only miserably failed, but had for the most part drawn down upon them disastrous reprisals. the people of urartu remained in gloomy inaction amidst their mountains, the elamites had lost their supremacy over half the aramæan tribes, and if egypt was as yet inaccessible beyond the intervening deserts, she owed it less to the strength of her armies than to the mysterious fatality at libnah. in one half-century the assyrians had effectually and permanently disabled the first of these kingdoms, and inflicted on the others such serious injuries that they were slow in recovering from them. the fate of these proud nations had intimidated the inferior states--arabs, medes, tribes of asia minor, barbarous cimmerians or scythians,--all alike were careful to repress their natural inclinations to rapine and plunder. if occasionally their love of booty overpowered their prudence, and they hazarded a raid on some defenceless village in the neighbouring border territory, troops were hastily despatched from the nearest assyrian garrison, who speedily drove them back across the frontier, and pursuing them into their own country, inflicted on them so severe a punishment that they remained for some considerable time paralysed by awe and terror. assyria was the foremost kingdom of the east, and indeed of the whole world, and the hegemony which she exercised over all the countries within her reach cannot be accounted for solely by her military superiority. not only did she excel in the art of conquest, as many before her had done--babylonians, elamites, hittites, and egyptians--but she did what none of them had been able to accomplish; she exacted lasting obedience from the conquered nations, ruling them with a firm hand, and accustoming them to live on good terms with one another in spite of diversity of race, and this with a light rein, with unfailing tact, and apparently with but little effort. the system of deportation so resolutely carried out by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon began to produce effect, and up to this time the most happy results only were discernible. the colonies which had been planted throughout the empire from palestine to media, some of them two generations previously, others within recent years, were becoming more and more acclimatised to their new surroundings, on which they were producing the effect desired by their conquerors; they were meant to hold in check the populations in whose midst they had been set down, to act as a curb upon them, and also to break up their national unity and thus gradually prepare them for absorption into a wider fatherland, in which they would cease to be exclusively damascenes, samaritans, hittites, or aramæans, since they would become assyrians and fellow-citizens of a mighty empire. the provinces, brought at length under a regular system of government, protected against external dangers and internal discord, by a well-disciplined soldiery, and enjoying a peace and security they had rarely known in the days of their independence, gradually became accustomed to live in concord under the rule of a common sovereign, and to feel themselves portions of a single empire. the speech of assyria was their official language, the gods of assyria were associated with their national gods in the prayers they offered up for the welfare of the sovereign, and foreign nations with whom they were brought into communication no longer distinguished between them and their conquerors, calling their country assyria, and regarding its inhabitants as assyrians. as is invariably the case, domestic peace and good administration had caused a sudden development of wealth and commercial activity. although nineveh and calah never became such centres of trade and industry as babylon had been, yet the presence of the court and the sovereign attracted thither merchants from all parts of the world. [illustration: .jpg sennacherib] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard. the medes, reaching the capital by way of the passes of kowândîz and suleimaniyeh, brought in the lapis-lazuli, precious stones, metals, and woollen stuffs of central asia and the farthest east, while the phoenicians and even greeks, who were already following in their foot steps, came thither to sell in the à bazaars of assyria the most precious of the wares brought back by their merchant vessels from the shores of the mediterranean, the atlantic, and the farthest west. the great cities of the triangle of assyria were gradually supplanting all the capitals of the ancient world, not excepting memphis, and becoming the centres of universal trade; unexcelled for centuries in the arts of war, assyria was in a fair way to become mistress also in the arts of peace. a jewish prophet thus described the empire at a later date: �the assyrian was a cedar in lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick clouds. the waters nourished him, the deep made him grow: therefore his stature was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long by reason of many waters, when he shot them forth. all the fowls of the heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by many waters. the cedars in the garden of god could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane trees were not as his branches; nor was any tree like unto him in beauty: so that all the trees of eden, that were in the garden of god, envied him.� (ezek. xxxi. - ). chapter ii--the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal _the medes and cimmerians: lydia--the conquest of egypt, op arabia, and of elam._ _last years of sennacherib--new races appear upon the scene--the medes: deiokes and the foundation of ecbatana, the bit-dayaukku and their origin--the races of asia minor--the phrygians, their earliest rulers, their conquests, and their religion--last of the heraclidæ in lydia, trade and constitution of their kingdom--the tylonidæ, and mermnadæ--the cimmerians driven back into asia by the scythians--the treves._ _murder of sennacherib and accession of esarhaddon: defeat of sharezer ( b.c.)--campaigns against the kaldd, the cimmerians, the tribes of cilicia, and against sidon ( - b.c.); cimmerian and scythian invasions, revolt of vie mannai, and expeditions against the medes; submission of the northern arabs ( - b.c.)--egyptian affairs; taharqa (tirhakah), his building operations, his syrian policy--disturbances on the frontiers of elam and urartu._ _first invasion of egypt and subjection of the country to nineveh ( b.c.)--intrigues of rival claimants to the throne, and division of the assyrian empire between assùr-bani-pal and shamash shumukîn ( b.c.)--revolt of egypt and death of esarhaddon ( b.c.); accession of assur-bani-pal; his campaign against kirbît; defeat of taharqa and reconstitution of the egyptian province ( b.c.)--affairs of asia minor: gyges ( b.c.), his tears against the greeks and cimmerians; he sends ambassadors to nineveh ( b.c.)._ _tanuatamanu reasserts the authority of ethiopia in egypt ( b.c.), and tammaritu of elam invades karduniash; reconquest of the said and sack of thebes--psammetichus i. and the rise of the xxvith dynasty--disturbances among the medes and mannai--war against teumman and the victory of tulliz ( b.c.): elam yields to the assyrians for the first time--shamash-shumukin at babylon; is at first on good terms with his brother, then becomes dissatisfied, and forms a coalition against the ninevite supremacy._ _the uruk incident and outbreak of the war between karduniash, elam, and assyria; elam disabled by domestic discords--siege and capture of babylon; assur-bani-pal ascends the throne under the name of kandalanu ( - b.c.)--revolt of egypt: defeat and death of gyges ( b.c. ): ardys drives out the cimmerians and dugdamis is killed in cilicia--submission of arabia._ _revolution in elam--attack on indabigash--tammaritu restored to power--pillage and destruction of susa--campaign against the arabs of kedar and the nabatæans: suppression of the tyrian rebellion --dying struggles of elam--capture of madaktu and surrender of khumban-khaldash--the power of assyria reaches its zenith._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter ii--the power of assyria at its zenith; esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal _the medes and cimmerians: lydia--the conquest of egypt, of arabia, and of elam._ as we have already seen, sennacherib reigned for eight years after his triumph; eight years of tranquillity at home, and of peace with all his neighbours abroad. if we examine the contemporary monuments or the documents of a later period, and attempt to glean from them some details concerning the close of his career, we find that there is a complete absence of any record of national movement on the part of either elam, urartu, or egypt. drawn by faucher-gudin, after layard. the vignette, also by faucher-gudin, represents taharqa in a kneeling attitude, and is taken from a bronze statuette in the macgregor collection. the only event of which any definite mention is made is a raid across the north of arabia, in the course of which hazael, king of adumu, and chief among the princes of kedar, was despoiled of the images of his gods. the older states of the oriental world had, as we have pointed out, grown weary of warfare which brought them nothing but loss of men and treasure; but behind these states, on the distant horizon to the east and north-west, were rising up new nations whose growth and erratic movements assumed an importance that became daily more and more alarming. on the east, the medes, till lately undistinguishable from the other tribes occupying the western corner of the iranian table-land, had recently broken away from the main body, and, rallying round a single leader, already gave promise of establishing an empire formidable alike by the energy of its people and the extent of its domain. a tradition afterwards accepted by them attributed their earlier successes to a certain deïokes, son of phraortes, a man wiser than his fellows, who first set himself to deal out justice in his own household. the men of his village, observing his merits, chose him to be the arbiter of all their disputes, and, being secretly ambitious of sovereign power, he did his best to settle their differences on lines of the strictest equity and justice. by these means he gained such credit with his fellow-citizens as to attract the attention of those who lived in the neighbouring villages, who had suffered from unjust judgments, so that when they heard of the singular uprightness of deïokes and of the equity of his decisions they joyfully had recourse to him until at last they came to put confidence in no one else. the number of complaints brought before him continually increasing as people learnt more and more the justice of his judgments, deïokes, finding himself now all-important, announced that he did not intend any longer to hear causes, and appeared no more in the seat in which he had been accustomed to sit and administer justice. ��it was not to his advantage,� he said, �to spend the whole day in regulating other men�s affairs to the neglect of his own.� hereupon robbery and lawlessness broke out afresh and prevailed throughout the country even more than heretofore; wherefore the medes assembled from all quarters and held a consultation on the state of affairs. the speakers, as i think, were chiefly friends of deïokes. �we cannot possibly,� they said, �go on living in this country if things continue as they now are; let us, therefore, set a king over us, so that the land may be well governed, and we ourselves may be able to attend to our own affairs, and not be forced to quit our country on account of anarchy.� after speaking thus, they persuaded themselves that they desired a king, and forthwith debated whom they should choose. deïokes was proposed and warmly praised by all, so they agreed to elect him.� whereupon deïokes had a great palace built, and enrolled a bodyguard to attend upon him. he next called upon his subjects to leave their villages, and �the medes, obedient to his orders, built the city now called ecbatana, the walls of which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the other. the walls are concentric, and so arranged that they rise one above the other by the height of their battlements. the nature of the ground, which is a gentle hill, favoured this arrangement. the number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. the circuit of the outer wall is very nearly the same as that of athens. of this wall the battlements are white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the fifth orange. the two last have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold. all these fortifications deïokes caused to be raised for himself and his own palace; the people he required to dwell outside the citadel. when the town was finished, he established a rule that no one should have direct access to the king, but that all communications should pass through the hands of messengers. it was declared to be unseemly for any one to see the king face to face, or to laugh or spit in his presence. this ceremonial deïokes established for his own security, fearing lest his compeers who had been brought up with him, and were of as good family and parts as he, should be vexed at the sight of him and conspire against him: he thought that by rendering himself invisible to his vassals they would in time come to regard him as quite a different sort of being from themselves.� two or three facts stand out from this legendary background. it is probable that deïokes was an actual person; that the empire of the medes first took shape under his auspices; that he formed an important kingdom at the foot of mount elvend, and founded ecbatana the great, or, at at any rate, helped to raise it to the rank of a capital.* * the existence of deïokes has been called in question by grote and by the rawlinsons. most recent historians, however, accept the story of this personage as true in its main facts; some believe him to have been merely the ancestor of the royal house which later on founded the united kingdom of the medes. its site was happily chosen, in a rich and fertile valley, close to where the roads emerge which cross the zagros chain of mountains and connect iran with the valleys of the tigris and euphrates, almost on the border of the salt desert which forms and renders sterile the central regions of the plateau. mount elvend shelters it, and feeds with its snows the streams that irrigate it, whose waters transform the whole country round into one vast orchard. the modern town has, as it were, swallowed up all traces of its predecessor; a stone lion, overthrown and mutilated, marks the site of the royal palace. [illustration: .jpg stone lion at hamadÂn] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plandin and coste. the chronological reckoning of the native annalists, as handed down to us by herodotus, credits deïokes with a reign of fifty-three years, which occupied almost the whole of the first half of the seventh century, i.e. from to , or from to b.c.* * herodotus expressly attributes a reign of fifty-three years to his deïokes, and the total of a hundred and fifty years which we obtain by adding together the number of years assigned by him to the four median kings ( + + + ) brings us back to - , if we admit, as he does, that the year of the proclamation by cyrus as king of persia ( - ) was that in which astyages was overthrown; we get - as the date of deiokes� accession, if we separate the two facts, as the monuments compel us to do, and reckon the hundred and fifty years of the median empire from the fall of astyages in - . the records of nineveh mention a certain dayaukku who was governor of the mannai, and an ally of the assyrians in the days of sargon, and was afterwards deported with his family to hamath in ; two years later reference is made to an expedition across the territory of bît-dayaukku, which is described as lying between ellipi and karalla, thus corresponding to the modern province of hamadân. it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the dayaukku who gave his name to this district was identical with the deiokes of later writers.* * the form deïokes, in place of daïokes, is due to the ionic dialect employed by herodotus. justi regards the name as an abbreviated form of the ancient persian _dahyaupati_--�the master of a province,� with the suffix _-ha_. [illustration: .jpg view of hamadÂn and mount elvend in winter] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de morgan. he was the official ancestor of a royal house, a fact proved by the way in which his conqueror uses the name to distinguish the country over which he had ruled; moreover, the epoch assigned to him by contemporary chroniclers coincides closely enough with that indicated by tradition in the case of deïokes. he was never the august sovereign that posterity afterwards made him out to be, and his territory included barely half of what constituted the province of media in classical times; he contrived, however--and it was this that gained him universal renown in later days--to create a central rallying-point for the median tribes around which they henceforth grouped themselves. the work of concentration was merely in its initial stage during the lifetime of sennacherib, and little or nothing was felt of its effects outside its immediate area of influence, but the pacific character ascribed to the worthy deïokes by popular legends, is to a certain extent confirmed by the testimony of the monuments: they record only one expedition, in , against ellipi and the neighbouring tribes, in the course of which some portions of the newly acquired territory were annexed to the province of kharkhar, and after mentioning this the annals have nothing further to relate during the rest of the reign. sennacherib was too much taken up with his retaliatory measures against babylon, or his disputes with blam, to think of venturing on expeditions such as those which had brought tiglath-pileser iii. or sargon within sight of mount bikni; while the medes, on their part, had suffered so many reverses under these two monarchs that they probably thought twice before attacking any of the outposts scattered along the assyrian frontier: nothing occurred to disturb their tranquillity during the early years of the seventh century, and this peaceful interval probably enabled deïokes to consolidate, if not to extend, his growing authority. but if matters were quiet, at all events on the surface, in this direction, the nations on the north and north-west had for some time past begun to adopt a more threatening attitude. that migration of races between europe and asia, which had been in such active progress about the middle of the second millennium before our era, had increased twofold in intensity after the rise of the xxth egyptian dynasty, and from thenceforward a wave of new races had gradually spread over the whole of asia minor, and had either driven the older peoples into the less fertile or more inaccessible districts, or else had overrun and absorbed them. [illustration: .jpg asia minor in the th century] many of the nations that had fought against ramses ii. and ramses iii., such as the uashasha, the shagalasha, the zakkali, the danauna, and the tursha, had disappeared, but the thracians, whose appearance on the scene caused such consternation in days gone by, had taken root in the very heart of the peninsula, and had, in the course of three or four generations, succeeded in establishing a thriving state. the legend which traced the descent of the royal line back to the fabulous hero ascanius proves that at the outset the haughty tribe of the ascanians must have taken precedence over their fellows;* it soon degenerated, however, and before long the phrygian tribe gained the upper hand and gave its name to the whole nation. * the name of this tribe was retained by a district afterwards included in the province of bithynia, viz. ascania, on the shores of the ascanian lake: the distribution of place and personal names over the face of the country makes it seem extremely probable that ascania and the early ascanians occupied the whole of the region bounded on the north by the propontis; in other words, the very country in which, according to xanthus of lydia, the phry gians first established themselves after their arrival in asia. phrygia proper, the country first colonised by them, lay between mount dindymus and the river halys, in the valley of the upper sangarios and its affluents: it was there that the towns and strongholds of their most venerated leaders, such as midaion, dorylaion, gordiaion, tataion, and many others stood close together, perpetuating the memory of midas, dorylas, gordios, and tatas. its climate was severe and liable to great extremes of temperature, being bitterly cold in winter and almost tropical during the summer months; forests of oak and pine, however, and fields of corn flourished, while the mountain slopes favoured the growth of the vine; it was, in short, an excellent and fertile country, well fitted for the development of a nation of vinedressers and tillers of the soil. the slaying of an ox or the destruction of an agricultural implement was punishable by death, and legend relates that gordios, the first phrygian king, was a peasant by birth. his sole patrimony consisted of a single pair of oxen, and the waggon used by him in bringing home his sheaves after the harvest was afterwards placed as an offering in the temple of cybele at ancyra by his son midas; there was a local tradition according to which the welfare of all asia depended on the knot which bound the yoke to the pole being preserved intact. midas did not imitate his father�s simple habits, and the poets, after crediting him with fabulous wealth, tried also to make out that he was a conqueror. the kingdom expanded in all directions, and soon included the upper valley of the masander, with its primeval sanctuaries, kydrara, colossæ, and kylsenæ, founded wherever exhalations of steam and boiling springs betrayed the presence of some supernatural power. the southern shores of the hellespont, which formed part of the troad, and was the former territory of the ascania, belonged to it, as did also the majority of the peoples scattered along the coast of the euxine between the mouth of the sangarios and that of the halys; those portions of the central steppe which border on lake tatta were also for a time subject to it, lydia was under its influence, and it is no exaggeration to say that in the tenth and eleventh centuries before our era there was a regular phrygian empire which held sway, almost without a rival, over the western half of asia minor. [illustration: .jpg monument commemorative of midas] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a plate in perrot and chipiez. it has left behind it so few relics of its existence, that we can only guess at what it must have been in the days of its prosperity. three or four ruined fortresses, a few votive stelae, and a dozen bas-reliefs cut on the faces of cliffs in a style which at first recalls the hittite and asianic carvings of the preceding age, and afterwards, as we come down to later times, betrays the influence of early greek art. in the midst of one of their cemeteries we come upon a monument resembling the façade of a house or temple cut out of the virgin rock; it consists of a low triangular pediment, surmounted by a double scroll, then a rectangle of greater length than height, framed between two pilasters and a horizontal string-course, the centre being decorated with a geometrical design of crosses in a way which suggests the pattern of a carpet; a recess is hollowed out on a level with the ground, and filled by a blind door with rebated doorposts. is it a tomb? the inscription carefully engraved above one side of the pediment contains the name of midas, and seems to show that we have before us a commemorative monument, piously dedicated by a certain ates in honour of the phrygian hero. [illustration: .jpg a phrygian god] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by ramsay. elsewhere we come upon the outlines of a draped female form, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by two lions, or of a man clothed in a short tunic, holding a sort of straight sceptre in his hand, and we fancy that we have the image of a god before our eyes, though we cannot say which of the deities handed down by tradition it may represent. the religion of the phrygians is shrouded in the same mystery as their civilisation and their art, and presents a curious mixture of european and asianic elements. the old aboriginal races had worshipped from time immemorial a certain mother-goddess, ma, or amma, the black earth, which brings forth without ceasing, and nourishes all living things. her central place of worship seems, originally, to have been in the region of the anti-taurus, and it was there that her sacred cities--tyana, venasa, and the cappadocian comana--were to be found as late as roman times; in these towns her priests were regarded as kings, and thousands of her priestesses spent lives of prostitution in her service; but her sanctuaries, with their special rites and regulations, were scattered over the whole peninsula. she was sometimes worshipped under the form of a meteoric stone, or betyle similar to those found in canaan;* more frequently she was represented in female shape, with attendant lions, or placed erect on a lion in the attitude of walking. * e.g. at mount dindymus and at pessinus, which latter place was supposed to possess the oldest sanctuary of cybele. the pessinus stone, which was carried off to rome in b.c., was small, irregular in shape, and of a dark colour. another stone represented ida. [illustration: .jpg the mother-goddess between lions] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch by ramsay. a moon-god, men, shared divine honours with her, and with a goddess nana whose son atys had been the only love of ma and the victim of her passion. we are told that she compelled him to emasculate himself in a fit of mad delirium, and then transformed him into a pine tree: thenceforward her priests made the sacrifice of their virility with their own hands at the moment of dedicating themselves to the service of the goddess.* * nana was made out to be the daughter of the river sangarios. she is said to have conceived atys by placing in her bosom the fruit of an almond tree which sprang from the hermaphrodite agdistis. this was the form--extremely ancient in its main features--in which the legend was preserved at pessinus. [illustration: .jpg the mother-goddess and atys] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by chantre. one of the bas-reliefs at iasilikiaia, to which we shall have occasion to refer later on in chapter iii. of the present volume. the gods introduced from thrace by the phrygians showed a close affinity with those of the purely asianic peoples. precedence was universally given to a celestial divinity named bagaios, lord of the oak, perhaps because he was worshipped under a gigantic sacred oak; he was king of gods and men, then-father,* lord of the thunder and the lightning, the warrior who charges in his chariot. * in this capacity he bore the surname papas. he, doubtless, allowed a queen-regent of the earth to share his throne,* but sauazios, another, and, at first, less venerable deity had thrown this august pair into the shade. * the existence of such a goddess may be deduced from the passage in which dionysius of halicarnassus states that manes, first king of the phrygians, was the son of zeus and demeter. [illustration: .jpg the god men associated with the sun and other deities] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by perdrizet. the last figure on the left is the god men; the sun overlooks all the rest, and a god bearing an axe occupies the extreme right of the picture. the shapes of these ancient aboriginal deities have been modified by the influence of græco-roman syncretism, and i merely give these figures, as i do many others, for lack of better representations. the greeks, finding this sauazios at the head of the phrygian pantheon, identified him with their zeus, or, less frequently, with the sun; he was really a variant of their dionysos. he became torpid in the autumn, and slept a death-like sleep all through the winter; but no sooner did he feel the warmth of the first breath of spring, than he again awoke, glowing with youth, and revelled during his summer in the heart of the forest or on the mountain-side, leading a life of riot and intoxication, guarded by a band of sauades, spirits of the springs and streams, the sileni of greek mythology. the resemblances detected by the new-comers between the orgies of thrace and those of asia quickly led to confusion between the different dogmas and divinities. the phrygians adopted ma, and made her their queen, the cybele who dwells in the hills, and takes her title from the mountain-tops which she inhabits--dindymêne on mount dindymus, sipylêne on mount sipylus. she is always the earth, but the earth untilled, and is seated in the midst of lions, or borne through her domain in a car drawn by lions, accompanied by a troop of corybantes with dishevelled locks. sauazios, identified with the asianic atys, became her lover and her priest, and men, transformed by popular etymology into manes, the good and beautiful, was looked upon as the giver of good luck, who protects men after death as well as in life. this religion, evolved from so many diverse elements, possessed a character of sombre poetry and sensual fanaticism which appealed strongly to the greek imagination: they quickly adopted even its most barbarous mysteries, those celebrated in honour of the goddess and atys, or of sauazios. they tell us but little of the inner significance of the symbols and doctrines taught by its votaries, but have frequently described its outward manifestations. these consisted of aimless wanderings through the forests, in which the priest, incarnate representative of his god, led after him the ministers of the temple, who were identified with the sauades and nymphs of the heavenly host. men heard them passing in the night, heralded by the piercing notes of the flute provoking to frenzy, and by the clash of brazen cymbals, accompanied by the din of uproarious ecstasy: these sounds were broken at intervals by the bellowing of bulls and the roll of drums, like the rambling of subterranean thunder. [illustration: .jpg midas of phrygia] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the _cabinet des médailles_. it is a bronze coin from prymnessos in phrygia, belonging to the imperial epoch. a midas followed a gordios, and a gordios a midas, in alternate succession, and under their rule the phrygian empire enjoyed a period of prosperous obscurity. lydia led an uneventful existence beside them, under dynasties which have received merely passing notice at the hands of the greek chroniclers. they credit it at the outset with the almost fabulous royal line of the atyadæ, in one of whose reigns the tyrseni are said to have migrated into italy. towards the twelfth century the atyadæ were supplanted by a family of heraclido, who traced their descent to a certain agrôn, whose personality is only a degree less mythical than his ancestry; he was descended from heracles through alcseus, belus, and ninus. whether these last two names point to intercourse with one or other of the courts on the banks of the euphrates, it is difficult to say. twenty-one heraclido, each one the son of his predecessor, are said to have followed agrôn on the throne, their combined reigns giving a total of five hundred years.* most of these princes, whether atyadæ or heraclidæ, have for us not even a shadowy existence, and what we know of the remainder is of a purely fabulous nature. for instance, kambles is reported to have possessed such a monstrous appetite, that he devoured his own wife one night, while asleep.** * the number is a purely conventional one, and gutschmid has shown how it originated. the computation at first comprised the complete series of heraclidæ and mermnadæ, estimated reasonably at kings to a century, i.e. x = years, from the taking of sardes to the supposed accession of agrôn. as it was known from other sources that the mermnadæ had reigned years, these were subtracted from the , to obtain the duration of the heraclidæ alone, and by this means were obtained the years mentioned by herodotus. ** another version, related by nicolas of damascus, refers the story to the time of lardanos, a contemporary of hercules; it shows that the lydian chronographers considered kambles or kamblitas as being one of the last of the atyad kings. the concubine of meles, again, is said to have brought forth a lion, and the oracle of telmessos predicted that the town of sardes would be rendered impregnable if the animal were led round the city walls; this was done, except on the side of the citadel facing mount tmolus, which was considered unapproachable, but it was by that very path that the persians subsequently entered the town. alkimos, we are told, accumulated immense treasures, and under his rule his subjects enjoyed unequalled prosperity for fourteen years. it is possible that the story of the expedition despatched into palestine by a certain akiamos, which ended in the foundation of ascalon, is merely a feeble echo of the raids in syrian and egyptian waters made by the tyrseni and sardinians in the thirteenth century b.c. the spread of the phrygians, and the subsequent progress of greek colonisation, must have curtailed the possessions of the heraclidas from the eleventh to the ninth centuries, but the material condition of the people does not appear to have suffered by this diminution of territory. when they had once firmly planted themselves in the ports along the asianic littoral--at kymê, at phocæ, at smyrna, at clazomenæ, at colophon, at ephesus, at magnesia, at miletus--the Æolians and the ionians lost no time in reaping the advantages which this position, at the western extremities of the great high-road through asia minor, secured to them. they overran all the lydian settlements in phrygia--sardes, leontocephalos, pessinus, gordioon, and ancyra. the steep banks and the tortuous course of the halys failed to arrest them; and they pushed forward beyond the mysterious regions peopled by the white syrians, where the ancient civilisation of asia minor still held its sway. the search for precious metals mainly drew them on--the gold and silver, the copper, bronze, and above all iron, which the chalybæ found in their mountains, and which were conveyed by caravans from the regions of the caucasus to the sacred towns of teiria and pteria.* * the site of pteria has been fixed at boghaz-keui by texier, an identification which has been generally adopted; euyuk is very probably teiria, a town of the lcucosyrians, mentioned by hecatsous of miletus in his work. the friendly relations into which they entered with the natives on these journeys resulted before long in barter and intermarriage, though their influence made itself felt in different ways, according to the character of the people on whom it was brought to bear. [illustration: .jpg the steep banks of the halys failed to arrest them] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by a. boissier. the road leading from angora to yuzgat crosses the river not far from the site shown here, near the spot where the ancient road crossed. they gave as a legacy to phrygia one of their alphabets, that of kymê, which soon banished the old hittite syllabary from the monuments, and they borrowed in exchange phrygian customs, musical instruments, traditions, and religious orgies. a midas sought in marriage hermodikê, the daughter of agamemnon the kymsoan, while another midas, who had consulted the oracle of delphi, presented to the god the chryselephantine throne on which he was wont to sit when he dispensed justice. [illustration: .jpg view ovek the plain of sardes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. this interchange of amenities and these alliances, however, had a merely superficial effect, and in no way modified the temperament and life of the people in inner asia minor. they remained a robust, hardworking race, attached to their fields and woods, loutish and slow of understanding, unskilled in war, and not apt in defending themselves in spite of their natural bravery. the lydians, on the contrary, submitted readily to foreign influence, and the greek leaven introduced among them became the germ of a new civilisation, which occupied an intermediate place between that of the greek and that of the oriental world. about the first half of the eighth century b.c. the lydians had become organised into a confederation of several tribes, governed by hereditary chiefs, who were again in their turn subject to the heraclidæ occupying sardes.* this town rose in terraces on the lower slopes of a detached spur of the tmolus running in the direction of the hermos, and was crowned by the citadel, within which were included the royal palace, the treasury, and the arsenals. it was surrounded by an immense plain, bounded on the south by a curve of the tmolus, and on the west by the distant mountains of phrygia katake-kaumenê. the mæonians still claimed primacy over the entire race, and the family was chosen from among their nobles. the king, who was supposed to be descended from the gods, bore, as the insignia of his rank, a double-headed axe, the emblem of his divine ancestors. the greeks of later times said that the axe was that of their heracles, which was wrested by him from the amazon hippolyta, and given to omphalê.** * gelzer was the first, to my knowledge, to state that lydia was a feudal state, and he defined its constitution. radet refuses to recognise it as feudal in the true sense of the term, and he prefers to see in it a confederation of states under the authority of a single prince. ** gelzer sees in the legend about the axe related by plutarch, a reminiscence of a primitive gynocracy. the axe is the emblem of the god of war, and, as such, belongs to the king: the coins of mylasa exhibit it held by zeus labraundos. [illustration: .jpg the axe borne by zeus labraundos] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. the king was the supreme head of the priesthood, as also of the vassal chiefs and of the army, but he had as a subordinate a �companion� who could replace him when occasion demanded, and he was assisted in the exercise of his functions by the counsel of �friends,� and further still in extraordinary circumstances by the citizens of the capital assembled in the public square. this intervention of the voice of the populace was a thing unknown in the east, and had probably been introduced in imitation of customs observed among the greeks of Æolia or ionia; it was an important political factor, and might possibly lead to an outbreak or a revolution. outside the pale of sardes and the province of mæonia, the bulk of lydian territory was distributed among a very numerous body of landowners, who were particularly proud of their noble descent. many of these country magnates held extensive fiefs, and had in their pay small armies, which rendered them almost independent, and the only way for the sovereign to succeed in ruling them was to conciliate them at all hazards, and to keep them in perpetual enmity with their fellows. two of these rival families vied with each other in their efforts to secure the royal favour; that of the tylonidæ and that of the mermnadæ, the principal domain of which latter lay at teira, in the valley of the cayster, though they had also other possessions at dascylion, in hellespontine phrygia. the head sometimes of one and sometimes of the other family would fill that post of �companion� which placed all the resources of the kingdom at the disposal of the occupant. the first of the mermnadæ of whom we get a glimpse is daskylos, son of gyges, who about the year was �companion� during the declining years of ardys, over whom he exercised such influence that adyattes, the heir to the throne, took umbrage at it, and caused him to be secretly assassinated, whereupon his widow, fearing for her own safety, hastily fled into phrygia, of which district she was a native. on hearing of the crime, ardys, trembling with anger, convoked the assembly, and as his advanced age rendered walking difficult, he caused himself to be carried to the public square in a litter. having reached the place, he laid the assassins under a curse, and gave permission to any who could find them to kill them; he then returned to his palace, where he died a few years later, about b.c. adyattes took the name of meles on ascending the throne, and at first reigned happily, but his father�s curse weighed upon him, and before long began to take effect. lydia having been laid waste by a famine, the oracle declared that, before appeasing the gods, the king must expiate the murder of the mermnad noble, by making every atonement in his power, if need be by an exile of three years� duration. meles submitted to the divine decree. he sought out the widow of his victim, and learning that during her flight she had given birth to a son, called, like his father, daskylos, he sent to entreat the young man to repair immediately to sardes, that he might make amends for the murder; the youth, however, alleged that he was as yet unborn at the hour of his father�s death, and therefore not entitled to be a party to an arrangement which did not personally affect him, and refused to return to his own country. having failed in this attempt, meles entrusted the regency of his kingdom to sadyattes, son of kadys, one of the tylonidas, who probably had already filled the post of companion to the king for some time past, and set out for babylon. when the three years had elapsed, sadyattes faithfully handed over to him the reins of government and resumed the second place. myrsos succeeded meles about ,* and his accession immediately became the cause of uneasiness to the younger daskylos, who felt that he was no longer safe from the intrigues of the heraclidaî; he therefore quitted phrygia and settled beyond the italys among the white syrians, one of whom he took in marriage, and had by her a son, whom he called gyges, after his ancestor. the lydian chronicles which have come down to us make no mention of him, after the birth of this child, for nearly a quarter of a century. we know, however, from other sources, that the country in which he took refuge had for some time past been ravaged by enemies coming from the caucasus, known to us as the cimmerians.** * the lists of eusebius give years to ardys, years to meles or adyattes, years to myrsos, and years to candaules; that is to say, if we place the accession of gyges in , the dates of the reign of candaules are - , of that of mysros - , of that of meles - , of that of ardys i. - . oelzer thinks that the double names each represent a different icing; radet adheres to the four generations of eusebius. ** i would gladly have treated at length the subject of the cimmerians with its accompanying developments, but lack of space prevents me from doing more than summing up here the position i have taken. most modern critics have rejected that part of the tradition preserved by herodotus which refers to the itinerary of the cimmerians, and have confused the cimmerian invasion with that of the thracian tribes. i think that there is reason to give weight to herodotus� statement, and to distinguish carefully between two series of events: ( ) a movement of peoples coming from europe into asia, by the routes that herodotus indicates, about the latter half of the eighth century b.c., who would be more especially the cimmerians; ( ) a movement of peoples coming from europe into asia by the thracian bosphorus, and among whom there was perhaps, side by side with the treres, a remnant of cimmerian tribes who had been ousted by the scythians. the two streams would have had their confluence in the heart of asia minor, in the first half of the seventh century. [illustration: .jpg a conflict with two griffins.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the reliefs on the crown of the great blinitza. previous to this period these had been an almost mythical race in the eyes of the civilised races of the oriental world. they imagined them as living in a perpetual mist on the confines of the universe: �never does bright helios look upon them with his rays, neither when he rises towards the starry heaven, nor when he turns back from heaven towards the earth, but a baleful night spreads itself over these miserable mortals.� * * odyssey, xi. - . it is this passage which ephorus applies to the cimmerians of his own time who were established in the crimea, and which accounts for his saying that they were a race of miners, living perpetually underground. fabulous animals, such as griffins with lions� bodies, having the neck and ears of a fox, and the wings and beak of an eagle, wandered over their plains, and sometimes attacked them; the inhabitants were forced to defend themselves with axes, and did not always emerge victorious from these terrible conflicts. [illustration: .jpg scythians armed for war] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the reliefs on the silver vase of kul-oba. the few merchants who had ventured to penetrate into their country had returned from their travels with less fanciful notions concerning the nature of the regions frequented by them, but little continued to be known of them, until an unforeseen occurrence obliged them to quit their remote steppes. the scythians, driven from the plains of the iaxartes by an influx of the massagetæ, were urged forwards in a westerly direction beyond the volga and the don, and so great was the terror inspired by the mere report of their approach, that the cimmerians decided to quit their own territory. a tradition current in asia three centuries later, told how their kings had counselled them to make a stand against the invaders; the people, however, having refused to listen to their advice, their rulers and those who were loyal to them fell by each other�s hands, and their burial-place was still shown near the banks of the tyras. some of their tribes took refuge in the chersonesus taurica, but the greater number pushed forward beyond the mæotio marshes; a body of scythians followed in their track, and the united horde pressed onwards till they entered asia minor, keeping to the shores of the black sea.* this heterogeneous mass of people came into conflict first with urartu; then turning obliquely in a south-easterly direction, their advance-guard fell upon the mannai. but they were repulsed by sargon�s generals; the check thus administered forced them to fall back speedily upon other countries less vigorously defended. the scythians, therefore, settled themselves in the eastern basin of the araxes, on the frontiers of urartu and the mannai, where they formed themselves into a kind of marauding community, perpetually quarrelling with their neighbours.** the cimmerians took their way westwards, and established themselves upon the upper waters of the araxes, the euphrates, the halys, and the thermodon,*** greatly to the vexation of the rulers of urartu. * the version of aristaeas of proconnesus, as given by herodotus and by damastes of sigsea, attributes a more complex origin to this migration, i.e. that the arimaspes had driven the issedonians before them, and that the latter had in turn driven the scythians back on the cimmerians. ** the scythians of the tradition preserved by herodotus must have been the ashguzai or ishkuzai of the cuneiform documents. the original name must have been skuza, shkuza, with a sound in the second syllable that the greeks have rendered by _th_, and the assyrians by _z_: the initial vowel has been added, according to a well-known rule, to facilitate the pronunciation of the combination sk, sine. an oracle of the time of esarhaddon shows that they occupied one of the districts really belonging to the mannai: and it is probably they who are mentioned in a passage of jer. li. , where the traditional reading _aschenaz_ should be replaced by that of ashkuz. *** it is doubtless to these events that the tradition preserved by pompeius trogus, which is known to us through his abbreviator justin, or through the compilers of a later period, refers, concerning the two scythian princes ylinus and scolopitus: they seem to have settled along the coast, on the banks of the thermodon and in the district of themiscyra. they subsequently felt their way along the valleys of the anti-taurus, but finding them held by assyrian troops, they turned their steps towards the country of the white syrians, seized sinôpê, where the greeks had recently founded a colony, and bore down upon phrygia. it would appear that they were joined in these regions by other hordes from thrace which had crossed the bosphorus a few years earlier, and among whom the ancient historians particularly make mention of the treres;* the results of the scythian invasion had probably been felt by all the tribes on the banks of the dnieper, and had been the means of forcing them in the direction of the danube and the balkans, whence they drove before them, as they went, the inhabitants of the thracian peninsula across into asia minor. it was about the year b.c. that the cimmerians had been forced to quit their first home, and towards that they came into contact with the empires of the east; the treres had crossed the bosphorus about , and the meeting of the two streams of immigration may be placed in the opening years of the seventh century.** * strabo says decisively that the treres were both cimmerians and thracians; elsewhere he makes the treres synonymous with the cimmerians. the treres were probably the predominating tribe among the people which had come into asia on that side. ** gelzer thinks that the invasion by the bosphorus took place about , and radet about ; and their reckoning seems to me to be so likely to be correct, that i do not hesitate to place the arrival of the treres in asia about the time they have both indicated--roughly speaking, about b.c. the combined hordes did not at once attack phrygia itself, but spread themselves along the coast, from the mouths of the ehyndakos to those of halys, constituting a sort of maritime confederation of which heraclea and sinôpê were the chief towns. this confederation must not be regarded as a regularly constituted state, but rather as a vast encampment in which the warriors could leave their families and their spoil in safety; they issued from it nearly every year to spread themselves over the neighbouring provinces, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. the ancient sanctuaries of pteria and the treasures they contained excited their cupidity, but they were not well enough equipped to undertake the siege of a strongly fortified place, and for want of anything better were content to hold it to ransom. the bulk of the indigenous population lived even then in those subterranean dwellings so difficult of access, which are still used as habitations by the tribes on the banks of the halys, and it is possible that they helped to swell the marauding troops of the new-comers. in the declining years of sennacherib, it would appear that the ninevite provinces possessed an irresistible attraction for these various peoples. the fame of the wealth accumulated in the regions beyond the taurus and the euphrates, in syria and mesopotamia, provoked their cupidity beyond all bounds, and the time was at hand when the fear alone of the assyrian armies would no longer avail to hold them in check. the last years of sennacherib had been embittered by the intrigues which usually gathered around a monarch enfeebled by age and incapable of bearing the cares of government with his former vigour. a fierce rivalry existed between those of his sons who aspired to the throne, each of whom possessed his following of partisans, both at court and among the people, who were ready to support him, if need be even with the sword. [illustration: .jpg inhabited caves on the banks of the halys] drawn by boudier, from a photograph sent by alfred boissier. one of these princes, probably the eldest of the king�s remaining sons,* named assur-akhê-iddin, called by us esarhaddon, bad already been nominated his successor, and had received the official investiture of the babylonian kingdom under the name of assur-etilmukîn-pal.** * the eldest was perhaps that assur-nadin-shumu who reigned in babylon, and who was taken prisoner to elam by king khalludush. ** the idea of an enthronisation at babylon in the lifetime of sennacherib, put forward by the earlier assyriologists, based on an inscription on a lion�s head discovered at babylon, has been adopted and confirmed by winckler. it was doubtless on this occasion that esarhaddon received as a present from his father the objects mentioned in the document which sayce and budge have called, without sufficient reason, _the will of sennacherib_. the catastrophe of had not resulted in bringing about the ruin of babylon, as sennacherib and his ministers had hoped. the temples, it is true, had been desecrated and demolished, the palaces and public buildings razed to the ground, and the ramparts thrown down, but, in spite of the fact that the city had been set on fire by the conquerors, the quarters inhabited by the lower classes still remained standing, and those of the inhabitants who had escaped being carried away captive, together with such as had taken refuge in the surrounding country or had hidden themselves in neighbouring cities, had gradually returned to their desolated homes. they cleared the streets, repaired the damage inflicted during the siege, and before long the city, which was believed to be hopelessly destroyed, rose once more with the vigour, if not with the wealth, which it had enjoyed before its downfall. the mother of esarhaddon was a babylonian, by name nakïa; and as soon as her son came into possession of his inheritance, an impulse of filial piety moved him to restore to his mother�s city its former rank of capital. animated by the strong religious feeling which formed the groundwork of his character, esarhaddon had begun his reign by restoring the sanctuaries which had been the cradle of the assyrian religion, and his intentions, thus revealed at the very outset, had won for him the sympathy of the babylonians;* this, indeed, was excited sooner than he expected, and perhaps helped to secure to him his throne. during his absence from nineveh, a widespread plot had been formed in that city, and on the th day of tebeth, , at the hour when sennacherib was praying before the image of his god, two of his sons, sharezer and adarmalik (adrammelech), assassinated their father at the foot of the altar.** * a fragment seems to show clearly that the restoration of the temples was begun even in the lifetime of sennacherib. ** we possess three different accounts of the murder of sennacherib: . in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_. . in the bible ( kings xix. , ; cf. isa. xxxvii. , ; chron. xxxii. ). . in berosus. the biblical account alone mentions both murderers; the _chronicle_ and berosus speak of only one, and their testimony seems to prevail with several historians. i believe that the silence of the _chronicle_ and of berosus is explained by the fact that sharezer was chief in the conspiracy, and the one among the sons who aspired to the kingdom: the second murderer merely acted for his brother, and consequently had no more right to be mentioned by name than those accomplices not of the blood-royal who shared in the murder. the name sharezer is usually considered as an abbreviation of the assyrian name nergal-sharuzur, or assur-sharuzur. winckler thinks that he sees in it a corruption of sharitir, abbreviated from sharitir-assur, which he finds as a royal name on a fragment in the british museum; he proposes to recognise in this sharitir-assur, sharezer enthroned after his father�s death. one half of the army proclaimed sharezer king; the northern provinces espoused his cause; and esarhaddon must for the moment have lost all hope of the succession. his father�s tragic fate overwhelmed him with fear and grief; he rent his clothes, groaned and lamented like a lion roaring, and could be comforted only by the oracles pronounced by the priests of babylon. an assurance that the gods favoured his cause reached him even from assyria, and nineveh, after a few weeks of vacillation, acknowledged him as its sovereign, the rebellion being mercilessly crushed on the nd of adar.* * the bible alone tells us that sharezer retired to urartu ( kings xix. ). to explain the plan of this campaign, it is usually supposed that at the time of his father�s death esarhaddon was either beyond mount taurus or else on the armenian frontier; the sequence of the dates in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_, compels me to revert to the opinion that esarhaddon marched from babylon against the rebels, and pursued them as far as mount taurus, and beyond it to khanigalbat. although this was a considerable advantage to esarhaddon�s cause, it could not be considered as decisive, since the provinces of the euphrates still declared for sharezer; the gods, therefore, once more intervened. ishtar of arbela had long been considered as the recognised patroness and oracle of the dynasty. whether it were a question of a foreign expedition or a rebellion at home, of a threatened plague or invasion, of a marriage or an alliance with some powerful neighbour, the ruling sovereign would invariably have recourse to her, always with the same formula, to demand counsel of her for the conduct of affairs in hand, and the replies which she vouchsafed in various ways were taken into consideration; her will, as expressed by the mouth of her ministers, would hasten, suspend, or modify the decisions of the king. esarhaddon did not neglect to consult the goddess, as well as assur and sin, shamash, bel, nebo, and nergal; and their words, transcribed upon a tablet of clay, induced him to act without further delay: �go, do not hesitate, for we march with thee and we will cast down thine enemies!� thus encouraged, he made straight for the scene of danger without passing through nineveh, so as to prevent sharezer and his party having time to recover. his biographers depict esarhaddon hurrying forward, often a day or more in advance of his battalions, without once turning to see who followed him, and without waiting to allow the horses of his baggage-waggons to be unharnessed or permitting his servant^ to pitch his tent; he rested merely for a few moments on the bare ground, indifferent to the cold and nocturnal frosts of the month of sebat. it would appear as if sharezer had placed his hopes on the cimmerians, and had expected their chiefs to come to the rescue. this hypothesis seems borne out by the fact that the decisive battle took place beyond the euphrates and the taurus, in the country of khanigalbat. esarhaddon attributed his success to ishtar, the goddess of bravery and of combat; she alone had broken the weapons of the rebels, she alone had brought confusion into their lines, and had inclined the hearts of the survivors to submit. they cried aloud, �this is our king!� and sharezer thereupon fled into armenia. the war had been brought to a close with such rapidity that even the most unsettled of the assyrian subjects and vassals had not had time to take advantage of it for their own purposes; the kaldâ on the persian gulf, and the sidonians on the mediterranean, were the only two peoples who had openly revolted, and were preparing to enter on a struggle to preserve their independence thus once more regained. yet the events of the preceding months had shaken the power of nineveh more seriously than we should at first suppose. for the first time since the accession of tiglath-pileser iii. the almost inevitable troubles which accompany the change of a sovereign had led to an open war. the vast army of sargon and sennacherib had been split up, and the two factions into which it was divided, commanded as they were by able generals and composed of troops accustomed to conquer, must have suffered more keenly in an engagement with each other than in the course of an ordinary campaign against a common enemy. one part at least of the military staff had become disorganised; regiments had been decimated, and considerable contingents were required to fill the vacancies in the ranks. the male population of assyria, suddenly called on to furnish the necessary effective force, could not supply the demand without drawing too great a proportion of men from the country; and one of those crises of exhaustion was imminent which come upon a nation after an undue strain, often causing its downfall in the midst of its success, and yielding it an easy prey to the wiles of its adversaries.* * the information we possess concerning esarhaddon is gathered from: . _the insertion of cylinders a, b, c_, the second of the three better known as the _broken cylinder_. these texts contain a summary of the king�s wars, in which the subject-matter is arranged geographically, not chronologically: they cease with the _eponymy_ of akhazilu, i.e. the year . . some mutilated fragments, of the _annals_. . _the blade stone of aberdeen_, on which the account of the rebuilding of babylon is given. . _the stele of zindjirli_. . the consultations of the god shamash by esarhaddon in different circumstances of his reign. . a considerable number of small inscriptions and some tablets. the classification of the events of this reign presents serious difficulties, which have been partly overcome by passages in the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_. esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, and as soon as he was established on the throne he gave orders that the building works, which had been suspended during the late troubles, should be resumed and actively pushed forward; but the unfortunate disturbances of the times did not permit of his pursuing his favourite occupation without interruption, and, like those of his warlike predecessors, his life was passed almost entirely on the field of battle. babylon, grateful for what he had done for her, tendered him an unbroken fidelity throughout the stormy episodes of his reign, and showed her devotion to him by an unwavering obedience. the kaldâ received no support from that quarter, and were obliged to bear the whole burden of the war which they had provoked. their chief, nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir, who had been placed over them by sennacherib, now harassed the cities of karduniash, and ningal-shumiddin, the prefect of uru, demanded immediate help from assyria. esarhaddon at once despatched such a considerable force that the kaldu chief did not venture to meet it in the open field, and after a few unimportant skirmishes he gave up the struggle, and took refuge in elam. khumbân-khaldash, had died there in , a few months before the murder of sennacherib, and his son, a second khumbân-khaldash, had succeeded him; this prince appears either to have shared the peaceful tastes of his brother-king of assyria, or more probably did not feel himself sufficiently secure of his throne to risk the chance of coming into collision with his neighbour. he caused nabu-zîru-kînish-lîshir to be slain, and nâîd-marduk, the other son of merodach-baladan, who had shared his brother�s flight, was so terrified at his murder that he at once sought refuge in nineveh; he was reinstated in his paternal domain on condition of paying a tribute, and, faithful to his oath of allegiance, he thenceforward came yearly in person to bring his dues and pay homage to his sovereign ( ). the kaldâ rising had, in short, been little more than a skirmish, and the chastisement of the sidonians would have involved neither time nor trouble, had not the desultory movements of the barbarians obliged the assyrians to concentrate their troops on several points which were threatened on their northern frontier. the cimmerians and the scythians had not suffered themselves to be disconcerted by the rapidity with which the fate of sharezer had been decided, and after a moment�s hesitation they had again set out in various directions on their work of conquest, believing, no doubt, that they would meet with a less vigorous resistance after so serious an upheaval at nineveh. the cimmerians appear to have been the first to have provoked hostilities; their king tiushpa, who ruled over their territory on the black sea, ejected the assyrian garrisons placed on the cappadocian frontier, and his presence in that quarter aroused all the insubordinate elements still remaining in the cilician valleys. esarhaddon brought him to a stand on the confines of the plain of saros, defeated him in khubushna,* and drove the remains of the horde back across the halys. * several assyriologists have thought that khubushna might be an error for khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war on the eastern frontier of assyria: in reality the context shows that the place under discussion is a district in asia minor, identified with kamisene by gelzcr, but left unidentified by most authorities. jensen has shown that the name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of tiglath- pileser iii., where we should read khubishna, and he places the country in northern syria, or perhaps further north in the western part of taurus. the determinative proves that there was a town of this name as well as a district, and this consideration encourages mo to recognise in khubushna or khubishna the town of kabissos-kabessos, the sis of the kingdom of lesser armenia. having thus averted the cimmerian danger, he was able, without much difficulty, to bring the rebels of the western provinces into subjection.* his troops thrust back the cilicians and duha into the rugged fastnesses of the taurus, and razed to the ground one and twenty of their strongholds, besides burning numberless villages and carrying the inhabitants away captive.** * these expeditions are not dated in any of the documents that deal with them: the fact that they are mentioned along with the war against tiushpa and sidon makes me inclined to consider them as being a result of the cimmerian invasion. they were, strictly speaking, the quelling of revolts caused by the presence of the cimmerians in that part of the empire. ** the duua or duha of this campaign, who are designated as neighbours of the tabal, lived in the anti-taurus: the name of the town, tyana, _tuana_, is possibly composed of their name and of the suffix _-na_, which is met with in asianio languages. the people of parnaki, in the bend of the euphrates between tel-assur and the sources of the balîkh, had taken up arms on hearing of the brief successes of tiushpa, but were pitilessly crushed by esarhaddon. the sheikh of arzani, in the extreme south of syria, close to the brook of egypt, had made depredations on the assyrian frontier, but he was seized by the nearest governor and sent in chains to nineveh. a cage was built for him at the gate of the city, and he was exposed in it to the jeers of the populace, in company with the bears, dogs, and boars which the ninevites were in the habit of keeping confined there. it would appear that esarhaddon set himself to come to a final reckoning with sidon and phoenicia, the revolt of which had irritated him all the more, in that it showed an inexcusable ingratitude towards his family. for it was sennacherib who, in order to break the power of blulai, had not only rescued sidon from the dominion of tyre, but had enriched it with the spoils taken from its former rulers, and had raised it to the first rank among the phoenician cities. ethbaal in his lifetime had never been wanting in gratitude, but his successor, abdimilkôt, forgetful of recent services, had chafed at the burden of a foreign yoke, and had recklessly thrown it off as soon as an occasion presented itself. he had thought to strengthen himself by securing the help of a certain sanduarri, who possessed the two fortresses of kundu and sîzu, in the cilician mountains;* but neither this alliance nor the insular position of his capital was able to safeguard him, when once the necessity for stemming the tide of the cimmerian influx was over, and the whole of the assyrian force was free to be brought against him. * some assyriologists have proposed to locate these two towns in cilicia; others place them in the lebanon, kundi being identified with the modern village of ain-kundiya. the name of kundu so nearly recalls that of kuinda, the ancient fort mentioned by strabo, to the north of anchialê, between tarsus and anazarbus, that i do not hesitate to identify them, and to place kundu in cilicia. abdimilkôt attempted to escape by sea before the last attack, but he was certainly taken prisoner, though the circumstances are unrecorded, and sanduarri fell into the enemy�s hands a short time after. the suppression of the rebellion was as vindictive as the ingratitude which prompted it was heinous. sidon was given up to the soldiery and then burnt, while opposite to the ruins of the island city the assyrians built a fortress on the mainland, which they called kar-esarhaddon. the other princes of phoenicia and syria were hastily convoked, and were witnesses of the vengeance wreaked on the city, as well as of the installation of the governor to whom the new province was entrusted. they could thus see what fate awaited them in the event of their showing any disposition to rebel, and the majority of them were not slow to profit by the lesson. the spoil was carried back in triumph to nineveh, and comprised, besides the two kings and their families, the remains of their court and people, and the countless riches which the commerce of the world had brought into the great ports of the mediterranean--ebony, ivory, gold and silver, purple, precious woods, household furniture, and objects of value from all parts in such quantities that it was long before the treasury at nineveh needed any replenishing.* the reverses of the cimmerians did not serve as a warning to the scythians. settled on the borders of manna, partly, no doubt, on the territory formerly dependent on that state,** they secretly incited the inhabitants to revolt, and to join in the raids which they made on the valley of the upper zab, and they would even have urged their horses up to the very walls of nineveh had the occasion presented itself. * the importance of the event and the amount of the spoil captured are apparent, if we notice that esarhaddon does not usually record the booty taken after each campaign; he does so only when the number of objects and of prisoners taken from the enemy is extraordinary. the _babylonian chronicle of pinches_ places the capture of sidon in the second, and the death of abdimilkôt in the fifth year of his reign. hence winckler has concluded that abdimilkôt held out for fully two years after the loss of sidon. the general tenor of the account, as given by the inscriptions, seems to me to be that the capture of the king followed closely on the fall of the town: abdimilkôt and sanduarri probably spent the years between and in prison. ** one of the oracles of shamash speaks of the captives as dwelling in a canton of the mannai. esarhaddon, warned of their intrigues by the spies which he sent among them, could not bring himself either to anticipate their attack or to assume the offensive, but anxiously consulted the gods with regard to them: �o shamash,� he wrote to the sun-god, �great lord, thou whom i question, answer me in sincerity! from this day forth, the nd day of this month of simanu, until the st day of the month of duzu of this year, during these thirty days and thirty nights, a time has been foreordained favourable to the work of prophecy. in this time thus foreordained, the hordes of the scythians who inhabit a district of the mannai, and who have crossed the mannian frontier,--will they succeed in their undertaking? will they emerge from the passes of khubushkia at the towns of kharrânia and anîsuskia; will they ravage the borders of assyria and steal great booty, immense spoil? that doth thy high divinity know. is it a decree, and in the mouth of thy high divinity, o shamash, great lord, ordained and promulgated? he who sees, shall he see it; he who hears, shall he hear it?� * * the town of anîsuskia is not mentioned elsewhere, but kharrânia is met with in the account of the thirty-first campaign of shalmaneser iii. with kharrâna as its variant. the god comforted his faithful servant, but there was a brief delay before his answer threw light on the future, and the king�s questions were constantly renewed as fresh couriers brought in further information. in b.c. the scythians determined to try their fortune, and their king, ishpakai,* took the field, followed by the mannai. he was defeated and driven back to the north of lake urumiah, the mannai were reduced to subjection, and assyria once more breathed freely. the victory, however, was not a final one, and affairs soon assumed as threatening an aspect as before. the scythian tribes came on the scene, one after another, and allied themselves to the various peoples subject either directly or indirectly to nineveh.** on one occasion it was kashtariti, the regent of karkashshi,*** who wrote to mamitiarshu, one of the median princes, to induce him to make common cause with himself in attacking the fortress of kishshashshu on the eastern border of the empire. at another time we find the same chief plotting with the mannai and the saparda to raid the town of kilmân, and esarhaddon implores the god to show him how the place may be saved from their machinations.**** * this king�s name seems to be of iranian origin. justi has connected it with the name aspakos, which is read in a greek inscription of the cimmerian bosphorus; both forms have been connected with the sanskrit açvalca. ** this subdivision of the horde into several bodies seems to be indicated by the number of different royal names among the scythians which are mentioned in the assyrian documents. *** the site of karkashshi is unknown, but the list of median princes subdued by sargon shows that it was situated in media. kishshashshu is very probably the same as kishisim or kishisu, the town which sargon subdued, and which he called kar-nergal or kar-ninib, and which is mentioned in the neighbourhood of parsuash, karalla, kharkhar, media, and ellipi. i think that it would be in the basin of the gave-- rud; billerbeck places it at the ruins of siama, in the upper valley of the lesser zab. **** the people of saparda, called by the persians sparda, have been with good reason identified with the sepharad of the prophet obadiah (ver. ): the assyrian texts show that this country should be placed in the neighbourhood of the mannai of the medes. he opens negotiations in order to gain time, but the barbarity of his adversary is such that he fears for his envoy�s safety, and speculates whether he may not have been put to death. the situation would indeed have become critical if kashtariti had succeeded in bringing against assyria a combined force of medes, scythians, mannai, and cimmerians, together with urartu and its king, eusas iii.; but, fortunately, petty hatreds made the combination of these various elements an impossibility, and they were unable to arrive at even a temporary understanding. the scythians themselves were not united as to the best course to be pursued, and while some endeavoured to show their hostility by every imaginable outrage and annoyance, others, on the contrary, desired to enter into friendly relations with assyria. esarhaddon received on one occasion an embassy from bartatua,* one of their kings, who humbly begged the hand of a lady of the blood-royal, swearing to make a lasting friendship with him if esarhaddon would consent to the marriage. it was hard for a child brought up in the harem, amid the luxury and comfort of a civilised court, to be handed over to a semi-barbarous spouse; but state policy even in those days was exacting, and more than one princess of the line of sargon had thus sacrificed herself by an alliance which was to the interest of her own people.** * bartatua is, according to winckler�s ingenious observation, the proto-thyes of herodotus, the father of madyes. [the name should more probably be read masta-tua-- ed.] ** sargon had in like manner given one of his daughters in marriage to ambaris, king of tabal, in order to attach him to the assyrian cause, but without permanent success. what troubled esarhaddon was not the thought of sacrificing a sister or a daughter, but a misgiving that the sacrifice would not produce the desired result, and in his difficulty he once more had recourse to shamash. �if esarhaddon, king of assyria, grants a daughter of the blood (royal) to bartatua, the king of the iskuza, who has sent an embassy to him to ask a wife, will bartatua, king of the iskuza, act loyally towards esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he honestly and faithfully enter into friendly engagements with esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he observe the conditions (made by) esarhaddon, king of assyria? will he fulfil them punctually? that thy high divinity knoweth. his promises, in a decree and in the mouth of thy high divinity, o shamash, great lord, are they decreed, promulgated?� it is not recorded what came of these negotiations, nor whether the god granted the hand of the princess to her barbarian suitor. all we know is, that the incursions and intrigues of the scythians continued to be a perpetual source of trouble to the medes, and roused them either to rebel against assyria or to claim the protection of its sovereign. esarhaddon, in the course of his reign, was more than once compelled to interfere in order to ensure peace and quietness to the provinces on the table-land of iran, which sargon had conquered and which sennacherib had retained.* * several recent historians allege that sennacherib did not keep the territories that sargon had conquered, and that the assyrian frontier became contracted on that side; whereas the general testimony of the known texts seems to me to prove the contrary, namely, that he preserved nearly all the territory annexed by his father, and that esarhaddon was far from diminishing this inheritance. if these two kings mention only insignificant deeds of arms in the western region, it is because the population, exhausted by the wars of the two preceding reigns, easily recognised the ninevite supremacy, and paid tribute to the assyrian governors with sufficient regularity to prevent any important military expedition against them. he had first to carry his arms to the extreme edge of the desert, into the rugged country of patusharra, lying at the foot of demavend, rich in lapis-lazuli, and as yet untrodden by any king of assyria.* having reached his destination, he captured two petty kings, eparna and shîtirparna, and exiled them to assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,--in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. shortly after this, three other median chiefs, hitherto intractable--uppis of par-takka, zanasana of partukka,** ramatea of urakazabarna--came to nineveh to present the king with horses and lapis-lazuli, the best of everything they possessed, and piteously entreated him to forgive their misdeeds. * the country of patusharra has been identified with that of the patischorians mentioned by strabo in persia proper, who would have lived further north, not far from demavend; sachau calls attention to the existence of a mountain chain patashwar-gar or padishwar-gir, in front of choarcnê, and he places the country of patusharra between demavend and the desert. ** partakka and partukka seem to be two different adaptations of the name paraituka, the parsetakênô of the greek geographers; tiele thinks of parthyênô. i think that these two names designate the northern districts of partetakênô, the present ashnakhor or the country near to it. they represented that the whole of media was torn asunder by countless strifes, prince against prince, city against city, and an iron will was needed to bring the more turbulent elements to order. esarhaddon lent a favourable ear to their prayers; he undertook to protect them on condition of their paying an annual tribute, and he put them under the protection of the assyrian governors who were nearest to their territory. kharkhar, securely entrenched behind its triple ramparts, assumed the position of capital to these iranian marches. it is difficult to determine the precise dates of these various events; we learn merely that they took place before , and we surmise that they must have occurred between the second and sixteenth year of the king�s reign.* * the facts relating to the submission of patusharra and of partukka are contained in cylinder a, dated from the eponymous year of akhazilu, in . moreover, the version which this document contains seems to have been made up of two pieces placed one at the end of the other: the first an account of events which occurred during an earlier period of the reign, and in which the exploits are classified in geographical order, from sidon in the west the arabs bordering on chaldæa in the east; and the second consisting of additional campaigns carried out after the completion of the former--which is proved by the place which these exploits occupy, out of their normal position in the geographical series--and making mention of partusharra and partuhka, as well as of belikisha. the editor of the _broken cylinder_ has tried to combine these latter elements with the former in the order adopted by the original narrator. as far as can be seen in what is left of the columns, he has placed, after the chaldsean events, the facts concerning partukka, then those concerning patusharra, and finally the campaign against bazu, the extreme limit of esarhaddon�s activity in the south. knowing that the campaign in the desert and the death of abdimilkôt took place in , and that we find them already alluded to in the first part of the narrative, as well as the events of relating to the revolt of dakkuri, we may conclude that the submission of patusharra and that of partukka occurred in , or at latest in the beginning of . [illustration: .jpg the town of kharkhar with its triple rampart] drawn by faucher-gudin, from flandin, in botta. the outcome of them was a distinct gain to assyria, in the acquisition of several new vassals. the recently founded kingdom of ecbatana lacked as yet the prestige which would have enabled it to hold its own against nineveh; besides which, deïokes, the contemporary ruler assigned to it by tradition, was of too complaisant a nature to seek occasions of quarrel. the scythians, after having declared their warlike intentions, seem to have come to a more peaceable frame of mind, and to have curried favour with nineveh; but the rulers of the capital kept a strict watch upon them, since their numbers, their intrepid character, and instinct for rapine made them formidable enemies--the most dangerous, indeed, that the empire had encountered on its north-eastern frontier for nearly a century. this policy of armed _surveillance_, which proved so successful in these regions, was also carefully maintained by esarhaddon on his south-eastern border against assyria�s traditional enemy, the king of susa. babylon, far from exhibiting any restlessness at her present position, showed her gratitude for the favours which her suzerain had showered upon her by resigning herself to become the ally of assyria. she regarded her late disaster as the punishment inflicted by marduk for her revolts against sargon and sennacherib. the god had let loose the powers of evil against her, and the arakhtu, overflowing among the ruins, had swept them utterly away; indeed, for the space of ten years, destruction and desolation seemed to have taken the place of her former wealth of temples and palaces. in the eleventh year, the divine wrath was suddenly appeased. no sooner had esarhaddon mounted the throne, than he entreated shamash, rammân, and even marduk himself, to reveal to him their will with regard to the city; whereupon the omens, interpreted by the seers, commanded him to rebuild babylon and to raise again the temple of Ê-sagilla. for this purpose he brought together all the captives taken in war that he had at his disposal, and employed them in digging out clay and in brick-making; he then prepared the foundations, upon which he poured libations of oil, honey, palm-wine, and other wines of various kinds; he himself took the mason�s hod, and with tools of ebony, cypress wood, and oak, moulded a brick for the new sanctuary. the work was, indeed, a gigantic undertaking, and demanded years of uninterrupted labour, but esarhaddon pushed it forward, sparing neither gold, silver, costly stone, rare woods, or plates of enamel in its embellishment. he began to rebuild at the same time all the other temples and the two city walls--imgurbel and nimittibel; to clear and make good the canals which supplied the place with water, and to replant the sacred groves and the gardens of the palace. the inhabitants were encouraged to come back to their homes, and those who had been dispersed among distant provinces were supplied with clothes and food for their return journey, besides having their patrimony restored to them. this rebuilding of the ancient city certainly displeased and no doubt alarmed her two former rivals, the kaldâ and elam, who had hoped one day to wrest her heritage from assyria. elam concealed its ill-feeling, but the kaldâ of bît-dakkuri had invaded the almost deserted territory, and appropriated the lands which had belonged to the noble families of babylon, borsippa, and sippara. when the latter, therefore, returned from exile, and, having been reinstituted in their rights, attempted to resume possession of their property, the usurpers peremptorily refused to relinquish it. esarhaddon was obliged to interfere to ensure its restoration, and as their king, shamash-ibni, was not inclined to comply with the order, esarhaddon removed him from the throne, and substituted in his place a certain nabushallim, son of belesys, who showed more deference to the suzerain�s wishes. it is possible that about this time the kaldâ may have received some support from the aramaeans of the desert and the arab tribes encamped between the banks of the euphrates and syria, or, on the other hand, the latter may have roused the wrath of assyria by inroads of a more than usually audacious character. however this may be, in esarhaddon resolved to invade their desert territory, and to inflict such reprisals as would force them thenceforward to respect the neighbouring border provinces. his first relations with them had been of a courteous and friendly nature. hazael of adumu, one of the sheikhs of kedar, defeated by sennacherib towards the end of his reign, had taken the opportunity of the annual tribute to come to nineveh with considerable presents, and to implore the restoration of the statues of his gods. esarhaddon had caused these battered idols to be cleaned and repaired, had engraved upon them an inscription in praise of assur, and had further married the suppliant sheikh to a woman of the royal harem, named tabua. in consideration of this, he had imposed upon the arab a supplementary tribute of sixty-five camels, and had restored to him his idols. all this took place, no doubt, soon after the king�s accession. a few years later, on the death of hazael, his son yauta solicited investiture, but a competitor for the chieftaincy, a man of unknown origin, named uahab, treacherously incited the arabs to rebel, and threatened to overthrow him. esarhaddon caused uahab to be seized, and exposed him in chains at the gate of nineveh; but, in consideration of this service to the arabs, he augmented the tribute which already weighed upon the people by a further demand for ten gold _minas_, one thousand precious stones, fifty camels, and a thousand measures of spicery. the repression of these arabs of kedar thus confirmed esarhaddon�s supremacy over the extreme northern region of arabia, between damascus and sippara or babylon; but in a more southerly direction, in the wadys which unite lower chaldæa to the districts of the jordan and the dead sea, there still remained several rich and warlike states--among others, bazu,* whose rulers had never done homage to the sovereigns of either assyria or karduniash. * the bazu of this text is certainly the buz which the hebrew books name among the children of nahor (gen. xxii. ; jer. xxv. ). the early assyriologists identified khazu with uz, the son of nahor; delitzsch compares the name with that of hazo (huz), the fifth son of nahor (gen. xxii. ), and his opinion is admitted by most scholars. for the site of these countries i have followed the ideas of delattro, who identifies them with the oases of jauf and meskakeh, in the centre of northern arabia. the assyrians must have set out by the wady haurân or by one of the wadys near to babylon, and have returned by a more southern wady. to carry hostilities into the heart of their country was a bold and even hazardous undertaking; it could be reached only by traversing miles of arid and rocky plains, exposed to the rays of a burning sun, vast extents of swamps and boggy pasture land, desolate wastes infested with serpents and scorpions, and a mountain range of blackish lava known as khâzu. it would have been folly to risk a march with the heavy assyrian infantry in the face of such obstacles. esarhaddon probably selected for the purpose a force composed of cavalry, chariots, and lightly equipped foot-soldiers, and despatched them with orders to reach the jauf by forced marches through the wady haurân. the arabs, who were totally unprepared for such a movement, had not time to collect their forces; eight of their chiefs were taken by surprise and killed one after another--among them kisu of khaldili, agbaru of ilpiati, mansaku of magalani,--and also some reigning queens. la, the king of yadi, at first took refuge in the mountains, but afterwards gave himself up to the enemy, and journeyed as far as nineveh to prostrate himself at esarhaddon�s feet, who restored to him his gods and his crown, on the usual condition of paying tribute. a vassal occupying a country so remote and so difficult of access could not be supposed to preserve an unbroken fidelity towards his suzerain, but he no longer ventured to plunder the caravans which passed through his territory, and that in reality was all that was expected of him. esarhaddon thus pursued a prudent and unadventurous policy in the northern and eastern portions of his empire, maintaining a watchful attitude towards the cimmerians and scythians in the north, carrying on short defensive campaigns among the medes in the east, preserving peace with elam, and making occasional flying raids in the south, rather from the necessity for repressing troublesome border tribes than with any idea of permanent conquest. [illustration: .jpg shabitoku, king of egypt] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. this policy must have been due to a presentiment of danger from the side of egypt, or to the inception of a great scheme for attacking the reigning pharaoh. after the defeat of his generals at altaku, shabîtoku had made no further attempt to take the offensive; his authority over the feudal nobility of egypt was so widely acknowledged that it causes us no surprise to meet with his cartouches on more than one ruin between thebes and memphis,* but his closing years were marred by misfortune. there was then living at napata a certain taharqa, one of those scions of the solar race who enjoyed the title of �royal brothers,� and from among whom anion of the holy mountain was wont to choose his representative to reign over the land of ethiopia whenever the throne became vacant. it does not appear that the father of taharqa ever held the highest rank; it was from his mother, Âkaluka, that he inherited his pretensions to the crown, and through her probably that he traced his descent from the family of the high priests. tradition asserts that he did not gain the regal power without a struggle; having been proclaimed king in ethiopia at the age of twenty, as the result of some revolution, he is said to have marched against shabîtoku, and, coming up with him in the delta, to have defeated him, taken him prisoner, and put him to death.** these events took place about b.c.,*** and taharqa employed the opening years of his reign in consolidating his authority over the double kingdom. * his name or monuments of his erection have been discovered at karnak. ** eusebius, who cites the fact, had his information from a trustworthy greek source, perhaps from manetho himself. the inscription of tanis seems to say that taharqa was twenty years old at the time of his revolt. *** most of the lists of kings taken from manetho assign twelve years to the reign of sébikhos; one alone, that of africanus, assigns him fourteen years. he married the widow of sabaco, queen dikahîtamanu, and thus assumed the guardianship of tanuatamanu, her son by her first husband, and this marriage secured him supreme authority in ethiopia.* that he regarded egypt as a conquered country can no longer be doubted, seeing that he inserted its name on his monuments among those of the nations which he had vanquished. * the text of several documents only mentioned that tanuata- manu was the �son of his wife,� which opport interpreted to mean son of taharqa himself, while others see in him a son of kashto, a brother of amenertas, or a son of shabîtoku. [illustration: .jpg taharqa and his queen dikahÎtamanu] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the coloured plate in lepsius. he nevertheless felt obliged to treat it with consideration; he respected the rights of the feudal princes, and behaved himself in every way like a pharaoh of the old royal line. he summoned his mother from napatà, where he had left her, and after proclaiming her regent of the south and the north, he associated her with himself in the rejoicings at his coronation. this ceremony, celebrated at tanis with the usages customary in the delta, was repeated at karnak in accordance with the theban ritual, and a chapel erected shortly afterwards on the northern quay of the great sacred lake has preserved to us the memory of it. akaluka, installed with the rank and prerogatives of the �divine spouse� of amon, presented her son to the deity, who bestowed upon him through his priests dominion over the whole world. she bent the bow, and let fly the arrows towards the four cardinal points, which she thereby symbolically delivered to him as wounded prisoners; the king, on his part, hurled against them bullets of stone, and by this attack figuratively accomplished their defeat. his wars in africa were crowned with a certain meed of success,* and his achievements in this quarter won for him in after time so much popularity among the egyptians, that they extolled him to the greeks as one of their most illustrious conquering pharaohs; they related that he had penetrated as far as the pillars of hercules in the west, and that he had invaded europe in imitation of sesostris. * the list inscribed on the base of the statue discovered by mariette contains a large number of names belonging to africa. they are the same as those met with in the time of the xviiith dynasty, and were probably copied from some monument of ramses ii., who had himself perhaps borrowed them from a document of the time of thûtmosis iii. a bas- relief at medinet-habu shows him to us in the act of smiting a group of tribes, among which figure the tepa, doshrît, and �the humbled kush;� this bas-relief was appropriated later on by nectanebo. what we know to be a fact is, that he secured to the valley of the nile nearly twenty years of prosperity, and recalled the glories of the great reigns of former days, if not by his victories, at least by the excellence of his administration and his activity. he planned the erection at karnak of a hypostyle hall in front of the pylons of ramses ii., which should equal, if not surpass, that of seti i.* * these columns have been looked upon as triumphal pillars, designed to support statues or divine emblems. mariette thinks that they supported �an edifice in the architectural style of the kiosk at philæ and the small hypothral temple on the roof of denderah.� i am of opinion that the architect intended to make a hypostyle hall, but that when the columns were erected, he perceived that the great width of the aisle they formed would render the strength of the roof very doubtful, and so renounced the execution of his first design. [illustration: .jpg the column of taharqa, at karnak] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by beato. the columns of the central aisle were disposed in two lines of six pillars each, but only one of these now remains standing in its original place; its height, which is the same as that of seti�s columns, is nearly sixty-nine feet. the columns of the side aisles, like those which should have flanked the immense colonnade at luxor, were never even begun, and the hall of taharqa, like that of seti i., remains unfinished to this day. he bestowed his favour on nubia and ethiopia, as well as on egypt proper; even napata owed to his munificence the most beautiful portions of its temples. the temple of amon, and subsequently that of mût, were enlarged by him; and he decorated their ancient halls with bas-reliefs, representing himself, accompanied by his mother and his wife, in attitudes of adoration before the deity. the style of the carving is very good, and the hieroglyphics would not disgrace the walls of the theban temples. the ethiopian sculptors and painters scrupulously followed the traditions of the mother-country, and only a few insignificant details of ethnic type or costume enable us to detect a slight difference between their works and those of pure egyptian art. at the other extremity of napata, on the western side of the holy mountain, taharqa excavated in the cliff a rock-hewn shrine, which he dedicated to hathor and bîsû (bes), the patron of jollity and happiness, and the god of music and of war. [illustration: .jpg the hemispeos op hÂthor and bÎsÛ, at gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in caillaud. bîsû, who was at first relegated to the lowest rank among the crowd of genii adored by the people, had gradually risen to the highest place in the hierarchy of the gods, and his images predominated in chapels destined to represent the cradle of the infant gods, and the sacred spots where goddesses gave birth to their divine offspring. [illustration: .jpg entrance to the hemispeos of bÎsÛ (bes), at gebel-barkal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lithograph in caillaud. the portico erected in front of the pylon had a central avenue of pillars, against which stood monstrous and grinning statues of bîsû, his hands on his hips, and his head crowned with a large bunch of lotus-flowers and plumes. two rows of columns with hathor-headed capitals flanked the central aisle, which led to a hall supported by massive columns, also with hathor capitals, and beyond it again lay the actual shrine similarly excavated in the rocky hill; two statues of bîsû, standing erect against their supporting columns, kept guard over the entrance, and their fantastic forms, dimly discernible in the gloom, must have appeared in ancient times to have prohibited the vulgar throng from approaching the innermost sanctuary. half of the roof has fallen in since the building was deserted, and a broad beam of light falling through the aperture thus made reveals the hideous grotesqueness of the statues to all comers. the portraits of taharqa represent him with a strong, square-shaped head, with full cheeks, vigorous mouth, and determined chin, such as belong to a man well suited to deal with that troubled epoch, and the knowledge we as yet possess of his conflict with assyria fully confirms the character exhibited by his portrait statues. [illustration: .jpg taharqa] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a cast of the fragment preserved at gizeh we may surmise that, when once absolute master of egypt, he must have cast his eyes beyond the isthmus, and considered how he might turn to his own advantage the secret grudge borne by the syrians against their suzerain at nineveh, but up to the present time we possess no indications as to the policy he pursued in palestine. we may safely assume, however, that it gave umbrage to the assyrians, and that esarhaddon resolved to put an end once for all to the uneasiness it caused him. more than half a century had elapsed since the day when the kings of syria, alarmed at the earliest victories of tiglath-pileser iii., had conceived the idea of pitting their former conquerors against those of the day, and had solicited help from the pharaohs against assyria. none of the sovereigns to whom they turned had refused to listen to their appeals, or failed to promise subsidies and reinforcements; but these engagements, however definite, had for the most part been left unfulfilled, and when an occasion for their execution had occurred, the egyptian armies had merely appeared on the fields of battle to beat a hasty retreat: they had not prevented the subjugation of damascus, israel, tyre, the philistines, nor, indeed, of any of the princes or people who trusted to their renown; yet, notwithstanding these numerous disappointments, the prestige of the egyptians was still so great that insubordinate or rebel states invariably looked to them for support and entreated their help. the assyrian generals had learnt by experience to meet them unmoved, being well aware that the egyptian army was inferior to their own in organisation, and used antiquated weapons and methods of warfare; they were also well aware that the egyptian and even the ethiopian soldiery had never been able successfully to withstand a determined attack by the assyrian battalions, and that when once the desert which protected egypt had been crossed, she would, like babylon, fall an easy prey to their arms. it would merely be necessary to guard against the possible danger of opposition being offered to the passage of the invading host by the idumoan and arab tribes sparsely scattered over the country between the nile and the gulf of akabah, as their hostility would be a cause of serious uneasiness. an expedition, sent against milukhkha* in b.c., had taught the inhabitants to respect the power of assyria; but the campaign had not been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, for the king of elam, khumbân-khaldash ii., seeing his rival occupied at the opposite extremity of his empire, fell unexpectedly upon babylon, and pushing forward as far as sippara, laid waste the surrounding country; and his hateful presence even prevented the god shamash from making his annual progress outside the walls of the city. the people of bît-dakkuri seem to have plucked up courage at his approach, and invaded the neighbouring territory, probably that of borsippa. esarhaddon was absent on a distant expedition, and the garrisons scattered over the province were not sufficiently strong in numbers to risk a pitched battle: khumbân-khaldash, therefore, marched back with his booty to susa entirely unmolested. he died suddenly in his palace a few days after his return, and was succeeded by his brother, urtaku, who was too intent upon seating himself securely on the throne to send his troops on a second raid in the following year. * the name of milukhkha, first applied to the countries in the neighbourhood of the persian gulf, had been transferred to the western coasts of arabia, as well as that of magan. esarhaddon deferred his revenge to a more convenient season, and utilised the respite fate had accorded him on the elamite border to hasten his attack on egypt ( b.c.). the expedition was a failure, and taharqa was greatly elated at having issued with honour from this trial of strength. as most of the countries over which his enemy exercised his supremacy were those which had been ruled by his theban ancestors in days gone by, taharqa engraved on the base of his statue a list of nations and towns copied from one of the monuments of ramses ii. the khâti, carchemish, mitanni, arvad--in short, a dozen peoples already extinct or in their decline, and whose names were merely perpetuated in the stereotyped official lists,--were enumerated in the list of his vanquished foes side by side with assyria. it was a mere piece of bravado, for never, even when victorious, did he set foot on syrian soil; but all the same the victory had caused the invading host to retire, and the fame of this exploit, spreading throughout asia, was not without its effect on the minds of the inhabitants. the island of tyre had never officially recognised the assyrian suzerainty. the tyrians had lived in peace since the defeat of elulai, and had maintained constant commercial relations with the continent without interfering in active politics: they had, perhaps, even been permitted to establish some settlements on the coast of the mainland. their king, bâal, now deemed the moment a propitious one for coming forward and recovering his lost territory, and since the greek princes of cyprus had ranged themselves under the hegemony of assyria, he thought he could best counterbalance their influence by seeking support from egypt, whose ancient greatness was apparently reviving. he therefore concluded an alliance with taharqa,* and it would be no cause for astonishment if we should one day discover that judah had followed his example. * the alliance of bâal with taharqa is mentioned in the fragment of the _annals_, under the date of year x., and the name bâal is still decipherable amid the defaced linos which contained the account of events which took place before that year. i think we may reasonably assign the first understanding between the two sovereigns, either to the actual year of the first campaign or to the following year. hezekiah had devoted his declining years to religious reformation, and the organisation of his kingdom under the guidance of isaiah or the group of prophets of which isaiah was the leader. judah had increased in population, and had quickly recovered its prosperity; when hezekiah died, about b.c., it had entirely regained its former vigour, but the memory of the disasters of was still sufficiently fresh in the minds of the people to prevent the change of sovereign being followed by a change of policy. manasseh, who succeeded his father, though he did not walk, as hezekiah had done, in the ways of the lord, at least remained loyal to his assyrian masters. it is, however, asserted that he afterwards rebelled, though his reason for doing so is not explained, and that he was carried captive to babylon as a punishment for this crime: he succeeded, nevertheless, in regaining favour, and was reinstated at jerusalem on condition of not repeating his offence. if this statement is true, as i believe it to be, it was probably after the egyptian campaign of b.c.* that his conspiracy with baal took place. * the fact of manasseh�s captivity is only known to us from the testimony of chron. xxxiii. - , and most modern critics consider it apocryphal. the moral development which accompanies the narrative, and the conversion which follows it, are certainly later additions, but the story may have some foundation in fact; we shall see later on that necho i., king of sais, was taken prisoner, led into captivity, and received again into favour in the same way as manasseh is said to have been. the exile to babylon, which at one time appeared to demonstrate the unauthenticity of the passage, would be rather in favour of its authenticity. esarhaddon was king of babylon during the whole of his reign, and the great works which he executed in that city obliged him, we know, to transport thither a large proportion of the prisoners whom he brought back from his wars. the assyrian governors of the neighbouring provinces easily crushed these attempts at independence, but, the islands of tyre being secure from attack, they were obliged to be content with establishing a series of redoubts along the coast, and with prohibiting the tyrians from having access to the mainland. the promptitude of their action quenched the hopes of the egyptian party and prevented the spread of the revolt. esarhaddon was, nevertheless, obliged to put off the fulfilment of his schemes longer than he desired: complications arose on his northern frontiers, near the sources of the tigris, which distracted his attention from the intrigues taking place on the banks of the nile. urartu, hard pressed by the cimmerians and scythians, had lived for a quarter of a century in a condition of sullen peace with assyria, and its kings avoided anything which could bring them into conflict with their hereditary rival. argistis ii. had been succeeded by one of his sons, eusas il, and both of them had been more intent upon strengthening their kingdom than on extending its area; they had rebuilt their capital, dhuspas, on a magnificent scale, and from the security of their rocky home they watched the course of events without taking any part in it, unless forced to do so by circumstances. andaria, chief of lubdi, one of the remote mountain districts, so difficult of access that it always retained its independence in spite of frequent attacks, had seized shupria, a province which had been from very early times subject to the sovereigns of nineveh, and was the first to be colonised by them. the inhabitants, forgetful of their origin, had yielded voluntarily to andaria; but this prince, after receiving their homage, was seized with alarm at his own audacity. he endeavoured to strengthen his position by an alliance with the cimmerians,* and the spirit of insubordination which he aroused spread beyond the euphrates; mugallu of milid, a king of the tabal, resorted to such violent measures that esarhaddon was alarmed lest the wild mountaineers of the taurus should pour down upon the plain of kuî and lay it waste. the danger would indeed have been serious had all these tribes risen simultaneously; but the cimmerians were detained in asia minor by their own concerns,** and mugallu, when he saw the assyrian troops being concentrated to bring him to reason, remained quiet. * this seems, indeed, to be proved by a tablet in which esarhaddon, addressing the god shamash, asks him if the cimmerians or urartians will unite with a certain prince who can be no other than the king of shupria. ** it was about this time they were dealing the death-blow to the kingdom of phrygia. the extension of lubdi was not likely to meet with favour in the eyes of eusas; he did not respond to the advances made to him, and esarhaddon opened his campaign against the rebels without having to dread the intervention of urartu. andaria, besieged in his capital of ubbumi, laid aside his royal robes, and, assuming the ragged garments of a slave, appeared upon the ramparts and pleaded for mercy in a voice choked with tears: �shupria, the country which has sinned against thee, will yield to thee of her own accord; place thy officers over her, she will vow obedience to thee; impose on her a ransom and an annual tribute for ever. i am a robber, and for the crime i have committed i will make amends fifty-fold.� esarhaddon would listen to no terms before a breach had been effected in the city walls. this done, he pardoned the prince who had taken refuge in the citadel, but resumed possession of shupria: its inhabitants were mercilessly punished, being condemned to slavery, and their lands and goods divided among new colonists. many urartians were numbered among the captives: these esarhaddon separated from the rest, and sent back to rusas as a reward for his having remained neutral. all this had barely occupied the space of one month, the month of tebet. the first-fruits of the spoil reserved for uruk had already reached that town by the month kislev, and the year was not so far advanced as to render further undertakings impossible, when the death of the queen, on the th adar, suspended all warlike enterprises. the last months of the year were given up to mourning, and the whole of b.c. passed without further action. the ethiopian king was emboldened by this inactivity on the part of his foe to renew his intrigues with syria with redoubled energy; at one moment, indeed, the philistines of ashkelon, secretly instigated, seemed on the point of revolt.* * ashkelon is mentioned in two of the prayers in which esarhaddon consults shamash on the subject of his intended campaign in egypt; he seems to fear lest that city and the bedâwin of the idumoan desert should espouse the cause of the king of ethiopia. they held themselves, however, in check, and esarhaddon, reassured as to their attitude, entered into negotiations with the sheikhs of the arab tribes, and purchased their assistance to cross the desert of sinai. he bade them assemble at raphia, at the western extremity of palestine, each chief bringing all the camels he could command, and as many skins of water as their beasts could carry: this precaution, a wise one at any time, might secure the safety of the army in case taharqa should have filled up the wells which marked the stages in the caravan route.* when all was ready, esarhaddon consulted the oracle of shamash, and, on receiving a favourable reply from the god, left nineveh in the beginning of the month nisân, b.c., to join the invading army in syria.** * this information is furnished by the fragment of the _annals_. the assyrian text introduces this into the narrative in such a manner that it would appear as if these negotiations were carried on at the very commencement of the campaign; it is, however, more probable that they were concluded beforehand, as occurred later on, in the time of cambyses, when the persians invaded egypt. ** the published texts refer to the second egyptian campaign of esarhaddon. the reply of the god is not easy to interpret, but it was certainly favourable, since the expedition took place. he made a detour in order to inspect the lines of forts which his generals had established along the coast opposite tyre, and strengthened their garrisons to prevent bâal from creating a diversion in the rear of his base of operations; he then proceeded southwards to the neighbourhood of aphek, in the territory of the tribe of simeon. the news which there met him must doubtless have informed him that the bedâwin had been won over in the interval by the emissaries of taharqa, and that he would run great risk by proceeding with his campaign before bringing them back to a sense of their duty. on leaving aphek* he consequently turned southwards, and plunged into the heart of the desert, as if he had renounced all designs upon egypt for that season, and was bent only on restoring order in milukhkha and magân before advancing further. for six weeks he marched in short stages, without other water than the supply borne, in accordance with his commands, by the arab camels, passing through tracts of desert infested by strange birds and double-headed serpents; when he had at length dispersed the bands which had endeavoured to oppose his advance, he suddenly turned in a north-westerly direction, and, following the dry bed of the torrent of muzur, at length reached raphia. from thence he did not select the usual route, which follows the coast-line and leads to pelusium, a place which he may have feared was too well defended, but he again pressed forward across the sands of the desert, and in the first days of tammuz reached the cultivated land of the delta by way of the wady tumilât. the frontier garrisons, defeated on the rd of tammuz near ishkhupri,** retreated in good order. * the defaced name of the country in which this aphek was situated was read as samirina and translated �samaria� by the first editor. this interpretation has been adopted by most historians, who have seen in aphek the town of this name belonging to the western portion of manasseh. budge read it samina, and this reading, verified by craig, gave winckler the idea of identifying samina or simina with the tribe of simeon, and aphek with the aphckah (josh. xv. ) in the mountains of judah. ** the text on the stele at zinjirli gives a total of fifteen days� march from ishkhupri to memphis, while pinches� babyl. chron. indicates three battles as having been fought on the rd, th, and th of tammuz, and the taking of memphis as occurring on the nd of the same month. if fifteen days is precisely accurate for the length of march, esarhaddon would have reached ishkhupri about the th of sivan. taharqa, hastening to their succour, disputed the ground inch by inch, and engaged the invaders in several conflicts, two at least of which, fought on the th and th of tammuz, were regular pitched battles, but in every case the assyrian tactics triumphed in spite of the dashing onslaught of the egyptians; memphis succumbed on the nd, after an assault lasting merely a few hours, and was mercilessly sacked. the ethiopian king, with his army decimated and exhausted, gave up the struggle, and beat a hasty retreat southwards. the attack had been made with such rapidity that he had had no time to remove his court from the �palace of the white wall� to the said; the queen, therefore, together with other women of less exalted rank, fell into the hands of the conqueror, besides the crown-prince, ushana-horu, several younger sons and daughters, and such of the children of sabaco and shabîtoku as resided at court. but the victory had cost the assyrians dearly, and the enemy still appeared to them so formidable that esarhaddon prudently abstained from pursuing him up the nile valley. he favourably received those feudal lords and petty kings who presented themselves to pay him homage, and confirmed them in possession of their fiefs, but he placed over them assyrian governors and imposed new official names on their cities; thus athribis was officially called limir-pateshî-assur, and other cities received the names assur-makan-tishkul, bîfc-marduk-sha-assur-taru, shaîmuk-assur. he further imposed on them a heavy annual tribute of more than six talents of gold and six hundred talents of silver, besides robes and woven stuffs, wine, skins, horses, sheep, and asses; and having accomplished this, he retraced his steps towards the north-east with immense booty and innumerable convoys of prisoners. the complete defeat of the ethiopian power filled not only esarhaddon himself but all asia with astonishment. his return to nineveh was a triumphal progress; travelling through syria by short stages, he paraded his captives and trophies before the peoples and princes who had so long relied on the invincible power of the pharaoh. [illustration: .jpg southern promontory at the mouth of the nahr-el-kelb] drawn by boudier, from a photograph recently brought back by lortet. esarhaddon�s predecessors had more than once inscribed the record of their campaigns on the rocks of the nahr-el-kelb, beside the bas-relief engraved there by ramses ii., and it had been no small gratification to their pride thus to place themselves on a footing of equality with one of the most illustrious heroes of the ancient egyptian empire. [illustration: .jpg stele of esarhaddon at the nahr-el-kelb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lortet. the footpath which skirts the southern bank of the river, and turning to the south is continued along the seashore, was bordered by the great stelæ in which, one after another, they had thought to immortalise their glory; following their example, esarhaddon was in like manner pleased to celebrate his prowess, and exhibit the ancient lords of the world subjugated to his will. he erected numerous triumphal monuments along his route, and the stele which was discovered at one of the gates of zinjirli is, doubtless, but an example of those which he erected in other important cities. [illustration: .jpg stele of zinjirli] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the berlin museum. he is represented on the zinjirli stele standing erect, while at his feet are two kneeling prisoners, whom he is holding by a bridle of cord fastened to metal rings passed through their lips; these figures represent bâal of tyre and taharqa of napata, the latter with the uraaus on his forehead. as a matter of fact, these kings were safe beyond his reach, one surrounded by the sea, the other above the cataracts, and the people were well aware that they did not form part of the band of prisoners which denied before their eyes; but they were accustomed to the vain and extravagant boastings of their conquerors, and these very exaggerations enabled them to understand more fully the extent of the victory. esarhaddon thenceforward styled himself king of egypt, king of the kings of egypt, of the said and of kush, so great was his pride at having trampled underfoot the land of the delta. and, in fact, egypt had, for a century, been the only one of the ancient eastern states which had always eluded the grasp of assyria. the elamites had endured disastrous defeats, which had cost them some of their provinces; the urartians had been driven back into their mountains, and no longer attempted to emerge from them; babylon had nearly been annihilated in her struggles for independence; while the khâti, the phoenicians, damascus, and israel had been absorbed one after another in the gradual extension of ninevehe supremacy. egypt, although she had had a hand in all then-wars and revolutions, had never herself paid the penalty of her intrigues, and even when she had sometimes risked her troops on the battle-fields of palestine, her disasters had not cost her more than the loss of a certain number of men: having once retired to the banks of the nile, no one had dared to follow, and the idea had gained credence among her enemies as well as among her friends that egypt was effectually protected by the desert from every attack. the victory of esarhaddon proved that she was no more invulnerable than the other kingdoms of the world, and that before a bold advance the obstacles, placed by nature in the path of an invader, disappeared; the protecting desert had been crossed, the archers and chariots of egypt had fled before the assyrian cavalry and pikemen, her cities had endured the ignominy and misery of being taken by storm, and the wives and daughters of her pharaohs had been carried off into servitude in common with the numerous princesses of elam and syria of that day. esarhaddon filled his palaces with furniture and woven stuffs, with vases of precious metal and sculptured ivories, with glass ornaments and statuettes looted from memphis: his workers in marble took inspiration from the sphinxes of egypt to modify the winged, human-headed lions upon which the columns of their palaces rested, and the plans of his architects became more comprehensive at the mere announcement of such a vast amount of spoil. the palace they had begun to build at nineveh, on the ruins of an ancient edifice, already surpassed all previous architectural efforts. the alabaster quarries of the assyrian mountains and the forests of phoenicia had alike been put under contribution to face the walls of its state apartments; twenty-two chiefs of the country of the khâti, of phoenicia, and of the mediterranean littoral--among them the greek kings of cyprus--had vied with one another in supplying esarhaddon with great beams of pine, cedar, and cypress for its construction. the ceilings were of cedar supported by pillars of cypress-wood encircled by silver and iron; stone lions and bulls stood on either side of the gates, and the doors were made of cedar and cypress, incrusted or overlaid with iron, silver and ivory. the treasures of egypt enabled esarhaddon to complete this palace and begin a new one at calah, where the buildings erected somewhat hurriedly by tiglath-pileser iii. had already fallen into ruin. some of the slabs on which the latter conqueror had engraved his annals, and recounted the principal episodes of his campaigns, were removed and transferred to the site selected by esarhaddon, and one of the surfaces of each was pared down in order to receive new pictures and fresh inscriptions. they had, however, hardly been placed in the stonemason�s hands when the work was interrupted.* * the date of the building of the palace at calah is furnished by the inscriptions, in which esarhaddon assumes the title of king of egypt. [illustration: .jpg assyrian sphinx in egyptian style supporting the base of a column] drawn by boudier, from the alabaster sculpture reproduced by layard. it may have been that esarhaddon had to suspend all his operations while putting down some conspiracy. at any rate, we know that in b.c. many high personages of his court were seized and executed. the question of the succession to the throne was still undecided; sinidina-bal, the son whom esarhaddon had previously designated as his heir presumptive, was dead, and the people feared lest he should choose from among his other sons some prince who had not their interests at heart. the king�s affection for babylon had certainly aroused jealousy and anxiety among his assyrian subjects, and perhaps some further tokens of preference made them uneasy lest� he should select shamash-shumukîn, one of his children who manifested the same tendencies, and who was, moreover, the son of a babylonian wife. most of the nobles who had been led to join the conspiracy paid for their indiscretion with their heads, but their opposition gave the sovereign cause for reflection, and decided him to modify his schemes. convinced that it was impossible to unite babylon and nineveh permanently under the same ruler, he reluctantly decided to divide his kingdom into two parts--assyria, the strongest portion, falling naturally to his eldest son, assur-bani-pal, while babylonia was assigned to shamash-shumukîn, on condition of his paying homage to his brother as suzerain.* the best method to ensure his wishes being carried into effect was to prepare their way for the fulfilment while he was still alive; and rebellions which broke out about this time beyond the isthmus afforded a good opportunity for so doing. egypt was at this period divided into twenty states of various dimensions, very nearly the same as had existed a century before, when piônkhi had, for the first time, brought the whole country under ethiopian rule.** in the south, the extensive theban province occupied both sides of the river from assuan to thinis and khemmis. * winokler considers that assur-bani-pal was the leader of tha conspiracy, and that he obliged his father to recognise him as heir to the crown of assyria, and to associate him on the throne. ** the list of the principalities in the time of esarhaddon and assur-bani-pal is found on the cylinders of assur-bani- pal. it was nominally governed by amenertas or her daughter, shapenuapît, but the administration was, as usual, entrusted to a member of the priestly college, at that time to montumihâît, count of thebes, and fourth prophet of anion.* * the assyrian name of this personage, spelt first mantimiankhi, has been more accurately transcribed mantimikhi. the identification with the montumihâît of the theban documents, is now generally adopted. the four principalities of thinis, siut, hermopolis, and heracleopolis separated it from the small kingdom of memphis and sais, and each of the regions of the delta was divided into one or two fiefs, according to the number and importance of the towns it contained. in the south, thebes was too directly under the influence of ethiopia to be able to exercise an independent policy with regard to the rest of the country. in the north, two families contested the supremacy more or less openly. one of them, whose hereditary domains included the arabian, and parts of the surrounding nomes, was then represented by a certain pakruru. he had united under his banner the numerous petty chiefs of the eastern side of the delta, the heirs of the ancient dynasties of tanis and bubastis, and his energy or ability must have made a good impression on the minds of his contemporaries, for they handed down his memory to their successors, who soon metamorphosed him into a popular legendary hero, famed both for his valour and wisdom. the nobles of the western nomes acknowledged as their overlords the regents of sais, the descendants of that bocchoris who had for a short while brought the whole valley of the nile under his sway. sabaco, having put his rival to death, had installed in his hereditary domains an ethiopian named ammeris, but this ammeris had disappeared from the scene about the same time as his patron, in b.c., and after him three princes at least had succeeded to the throne, namely, stephinates, nekhepsos, and necho.* stephinates had died about b.c., without accomplishing anything which was worth recording. nekhepsos had had no greater opportunities of distinguishing himself than had fallen to the lot of his father, and yet legends grew up round his name as round that of pakruru: he was reputed to have been a great soothsayer, astrologist, and magician, and medical treatises were ascribed to him, and almanacs much esteemed by the superstitious in the roman period.** * the lists of eusebius give the series ammeres, stephinates, nekhepsos, necho i., but lepsius displaced ammeres and identified him with the queen amenertas; others have thought to recognise in him miamun piônkhi, or tanuatamanu, the successor of taharqa. he must, however, be left in this place in the list, and we may perhaps consider him as the founder of the xxvith dynasty. if the number of seven years for the reign of stephinates is adopted, we must suppose either that manetho passed over the name of a prince at the beginning of the xxvith dynasty, or that ammeris was only enthroned at memphis after the death of sabaco; but the lists of the syncellus and of sothis assign years to the reign of stephinates. ** the astrological works of nekhepsos are cited, among others, by pliny, and it is probably he whom a greek papyrus of the salt collection mentions under the name of nekheus. necho had already occupied the throne for three or four years when the invasion of b.c. delivered him from the ethiopian supremacy. he is represented as being brave, energetic, and enterprising, ready to hazard everything in order to attain the object towards which the ambition of his ancestors had been tending for a century past, namely, to restore unity to the ancient kingdom under the rule of the house of sais. the extent of his realm, and, above all, the possession of memphis, gave him a real superiority, and esarhaddon did not hesitate to esteem him above his competitors; the ninevite scribes placed him in the first rank, and he heads the list of the egyptian vassals. he soon had an opportunity of proving his devotion to his foreign suzerain. taharqa did not quietly accept his defeat, and egypt looked to him to be revenged on the assyrian as soon as he should have reorganised his army. he once more, accordingly, took the field in the middle of b.c.; the barons of the said rallied to his standard without hesitation, and he soon re-entered the �white wall,� but there his advance was arrested. necho and the neighbouring chiefs of the delta, held in check by the presence of semitic garrisons, did not venture to proclaim themselves on his side, and awaited under arms the arrival of assyrian reinforcements.* esarhaddon, in spite of failing health, assumed command of the troops, and before leaving home carried out the project to which the conspiracy of the preceding year had given rise; he assigned the government of babylon to shamash-shumukin, and solemnly designated assur-bani-pal as the heir to assyria proper, and to the suzerainty over the whole empire.** * the first egyptian campaign of assur-bani-pal is also the last campaign of esarhaddon, and assur-bani-pal appropriated all the earlier incidents of it, some of which belong to the sole reign of his father, and some to the few weeks in which he shared the throne with him. ** the association of assur-bani-pal with his father on the throne was pointed out by g. smith, who thought he could fix the date about b.c., three or four years before the death of esarhaddon. tielo showed that assur-bani-pal was then only made viceroy, and assigned his association in the sovereignty to the year or b.c., about the time of the second egyptian campaign, while hommel brought it down to . winckler has, with much reason, placed the date in b.c. the assyrian documents do not mention the coronation of shamash-shuniukîn, for assur-bani-pal afterwards affected to consider his brother a mere viceroy, appointed by himself after the death of his father esarhaddon; but an examination of all the circumstances has shown that the enthronement of shamash-shumukîn at babylon was on a par with that of assur-bani-pal at nineveh, and that both owed their elevation to their father. on the th of lyyar, b.c., on the day of the feast of gula, he presented their new lord to all the inhabitants of assyria, both small and great, who had assembled to be present at the ceremony, which ended in the installation of the prince in the palace of bîtriduti, reserved for the heirs-apparent. a few weeks later esarhaddon set out for egypt, but his malady became more serious on the journey, and he died on the th of arakhsamna, in the twelfth year of his reign.* * arakhsamna corresponds to the jewish marcheswân, and to our month of may. when we endeavour to conjure up his image before us, we fancy we are right in surmising that he was not cast in the ordinary mould of assyrian monarchs. the history of his campaigns shows that he was as active and resolute as assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., but he did not add to these good qualities their inflexible harshness towards their subjects, nor their brutal treatment of conquered foes. circumstances in which they would have shown themselves merciless, he seized upon as occasions for clemency, and if massacres and executions are recorded among the events of his reign, at least he does not class them among the most important: the records of his wars do not continually speak of rebels flayed alive, kings impaled before the gates of their cities, and whole populations decimated by fire and sword. of all the assyrian conquerors, he is almost the only one for whom the historian can feel any regard, or from the study of whose reign he passes on with regret to pursue that of others in due course. as soon as esarhaddon had passed away, the separation of the two parts of the empire which he had planned was effected almost automatically: assur-bani-pal proclaimed himself king of assyria, and shamash-shumukîn, in like manner, king of babylon. one fact, which seems insignificant enough to us when we read it in the annals, but was decisive in the eyes of their contemporaries, sanctioned the transformation thus accomplished: bel and the gods of accad quitted assur in the month of iyyâr and returned to their resting-place in babylon. the restoration of the images to their own country became necessary as soon as it was decided to have a king in karduniash, even though he were an assyrian. to enable him to exercise legitimate authority, he must have celebrated the rites and �taken the hands of bel,� but it was a question whether this obligation could be fulfilled if bel remained a prisoner in the neighbouring capital. assur-bani-pal believed for a moment that this difficulty could be obviated, and consulted shamash on this delicate question: �shamash-shumukîn, the son of esarhaddon, the king of assyria, can he in this year take the hands of bel, the mighty lord marduk, in this very city, and then go to babylon with the favour of bel! if that would be pleasing to thy great divinity and to the mighty lord marduk, thy great divinity must know it.� the reply was not favourable, and shamash gave it as his opinion that bel could not act as a sovereign lord while still languishing in prison in a city which was not his own. assur-bani-pal had to resign himself to the release of his captive, and he did it with a good grace. he proceeded in pomp to the temple of assur, where marduk was shut up, and humbly entreated the exiled deity to vouchsafe to return to his own country. [illustration: .jpg assur-banipal as a bearer of offerings] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lehmann. �think on babylon, which thou didst bring to nought in the rage of thy heart, and turn thy face towards the temple of e-sagilla, the lofty seat of thy divinity! revisit thy city which thou hast forsaken to inhabit a place which is not worthy of thee, and do thou thyself, o marduk, lord of the gods, give the command to return to babylon.� the statue set out on its journey, and was escorted by a solemn procession headed by the two kings. the gods, by one accord, came forth from their cities and saluted the traveller as he passed by--beltis of agadê, nebo of borsippa, shamash of sippara, and nirgal. at length he reached his beloved city, and entered e-sagilla in the midst of an immense throng of people. the kings headed the _cortège_, and the delighted multitude joined their two names with that of the god in their acclamations: it was a day never to be forgotten. assur-bani-pal, in his capacity of suzerain, opened the sacred edifice, and then presented his brother, who thereupon �took the hands of bel.� [illustration: .jpg sihamash-shumukin as a bearer of offerings] drawn by boudier, from a photograph in lehmann. a quarter of a century had not passed since the victorious sennacherib had, as he thought, inflicted a mortal blow on the one power which stood in the way of assyria�s supremacy in western asia; already, in spite of his efforts, the city had sprung up from its ruins as vigorous as ever, and his sons and grandsons had felt themselves irresistibly drawn to resuscitate that which their ancestors had desired to annihilate irrevocably. babylon had rebuilt her palaces, her walls, and her temples; she had received back her gods without a war, and almost without any agitation, by the mere force of the prestige she exercised over all around her, and even over her conquerors. as a matter of fact, she had not regained her former position, and was still depressed and enfeebled by the blow which had laid her low; in addition to this, her king was an assyrian, and a vassal of assyria, but nevertheless he was her own king, and hers alone. her independence was already half regained. shamash-shumukîn established his court at babylon, and applied himself from the outset to restore, as far as he was able, the material and moral forces of his kingdom. assur-bani-pal, on his side, met with no opposition from his subjects, but prudence cautioned him not to estrange them; the troubles of the preceding year were perhaps not so completely suppressed as to prevent the chiefs who had escaped punishment from being encouraged by the change of sovereign to renew their intrigues. the king, therefore, remained in nineveh to inaugurate his rule, and confided to his generals the charge of conducting the expeditions which had been undertaken during his father�s lifetime.* one of these undertakings was unimportant. tandaî of kirbît, a petty chief, was continually engaged in harassing the inhabitants of yamutbal; he bore down upon them every year, and, after dealing a blow, retreated to his hiding-place in the mountains. he was attacked in his stronghold, and carried away captive with all his people into egypt, at the furthest extremity of the empire, to serve in assyrian garrisons in the midst of the fellahîn.** * in the numerous documents relating to the reign of assur- bani-pal the facts are arranged in geographical order, not by the dates of the successive expeditions, and the chronological order of the campaigns is all the more difficult to determine accurately, as _pinches� babylonian chronicle_ fails us after the beginning of this reign, immediately after the mention of the above-mentioned war with kirbît. even the _eponym canon_ is only accurate down to b.c.; in that year there is a break, and although we possess for the succeeding period more than forty names of eponyms, their classification is not at present absolutely certain. ** the expedition against kirbît is omitted in certain documents; it is inserted in the others in the fourth place, between the wars in asia minor and the campaign against the mannai. the place assigned to it in the bab. chron. quite in the beginning of the reign, is confirmed by a fragment of a tablet quoted by winckler. perhaps it was carried out by a babylonian army: although assur-bani-pal claimed the glory of it, by reason of his suzerainty over karduniash. meanwhile, the army which esarhaddon had been leading against taharqa pursued its course under command of the tartan.* syria received it submissively, and the twenty-two kings who still possessed a shadow of autonomy in the country sent assurances of their devotion to the new monarch: even yakînlu, king of arvad, who had aroused suspicion by frequent acts of insubordination,** thought twice before rebelling against his terrible suzerain, and joined the rest in paying both homage and tribute. cyprus and also phoenicia remained faithful to their allegiance, and, what was of still more consequence, the states which lay nearest to egypt--philistia, judah, moab, and ammon; the assyrians were thus able to push forward to the delta without losing time in repressing rebellions along their route. the ethiopians had entrenched themselves at karbanîti;*** they were, however, once more defeated, and left; so many of their soldiers dead upon the field, that taharqa had not sufficient troops left to defend memphis. * the text of tablet k -k of the brit. mus., states distinctly that the tartan commanded the first army. ** assur-bani-pal, acting in the name of his father, esarhaddon, king of assyria, had consulted shamash on the desirability of sending troops against arvad: the prince of this city is called ikkalu, which is a variant of yakînlu. winckler concluded that the campaign against arvad took place before b.c., in the reign of esarhaddon. it seems to me more natural to place it on the return from egypt, when the people of arvad were demoralised by the defeat of the pharaoh whose alliance they had hoped for. *** i had compared karbanîti with the qarbîna mentioned in the _great harris papyrus_, and this identification was accepted by most egyptologists, even after brugsch recognised in qarbîna the name of canopus or a town near canopus. it has been contested by steindorf, and, in fact, karbanîti could not be identified with canopus, any more than the qarbina of the harris papyrus; its site must be looked for in the eastern or central part of the delta. he retreated upon thebes, where he strongly fortified himself; but the tartan had not suffered less than his adversary, and he would have been unable to pursue him, had not reinforcements promptly reached him. the bab-shakeh, who had been despatched from nineveh with some assyrian troops, had summoned to his aid the principal syrian feudal chiefs, who, stimulated by the news of the victories achieved on the banks of the nile, placed themselves unreservedly at his disposal. he ordered their vessels to proceed along the coast as far as the delta, where he purposed to collect a fleet to ascend the river, while their troops augmented the force already under his command. the two assyrian generals, the tartan and the rabshakeh, quitted memphis, probably in the early part of b.c., and, cautiously advancing southwards, covered the distance separating the two egyptian capitals in a steady march of forty days. when the assyrians had advanced well up the valley, the princes of the delta thought the opportunity had arrived to cut them off by a single bold stroke. they therefore opened cautious negotiations with the ethiopian king, and proposed an arrangement which should secure their independence: �we will divide the country between us, and neither of us shall exercise authority over the other.� however secretly these negotiations were conducted, they were certain to come to the knowledge of the assyrian generals: the couriers were intercepted; and discovering from the despatches the extent of the danger, the assyrians seized as many of the leaders of the league as they could. as a warning they sacked sais, mendes, and tanis, demolishing the fortifications, and flaying or impaling the principal citizens before their city gates; they then sent two of the intriguing chiefs, necho and sharludari of pelusium, bound hand and foot with chains, to nineveh. pakruru, of the arabian nome, managed, however, to escape them. taharqa, thus bereft of his allies, was no longer in a condition to repel the invader: he fled to ethiopia, abandoning thebes to its fate. the city was ransomed by despoiling the temple of amon of half its treasures: montumihâît transferred his allegiance unhesitatingly to assur-bani-pal, and the whole of egypt from the mediterranean to the first cataract once more became assyrian territory. the victory was so complete that assur-bani-pal thought he might without risk show clemency to his prisoners. he summoned them to his presence, and there, instead of putting out their eyes or subjecting them to some horrible form of torture, he received them back into favour, and confirmed necho in the possession of all the honours which esarhaddon had conceded to him. he clothed him in a mantle of honour, and bestowed on him a straight-bladed sword with an iron scabbard ornamented with gold, engraved with his names and titles, besides rings, gold bracelets, chariots, horses, and mules; in short, all the appurtenances of royalty. not content with restoring to him the cities of sais and memphis, he granted him the fief of athribis for his eldest son, psammetichus. [illustration: .jpg montumihÂÎt, prince of thebes] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by miss benson. it is not quite certain that this statue represents montumihâît, as the inscription is wanting: the circumstances of the discovery, however, render it very probable. moreover, he neglected no measure likely to show his supremacy. athribis received the new name of limir-patesi-assur, _may the high priest of assur be glorious_, and sais that of kar-bel-matâti, _the fortress of the lord of the countries_. psammetichus was called nebo-shezib-anni, _nebo, deliver me_, and residents were installed at his court and that of his father, who were entrusted with the _surveillance_ of their conduct, and the task of keeping them to the path of duty: necho, thus well guarded, thenceforward never faltered in his allegiance. the subjection of egypt reacted on syria and asia minor. of the only two states still existing along the phoenician seaboard, one, namely tyre, had been in revolt for many years, and the other, arvad, showed symptoms of disaffection. [illustration: .jpg psammetichus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief in the british museum. esarhaddon, from lack of a sufficient fleet, had never been able to subdue the former, but he had interrupted the communications of the island with the mainland, and the blockade, which was constantly increasing in strictness, had already lasted for four years. on receipt of the news from egypt, bâal realised that further resistance was hopeless; he therefore delivered up to the victor his heir-apparent, yahî-melek, and one of his daughters, together with other hostages, besides silver, gold, and wood, and intreated for pardon. assur-bani-pal left him in possession of his kingdom on condition of paying the regular tribute, but yakînlu, the king of arvad, met with harsher treatment. in vain did he give up his sons, his daughters, and all his treasures; his intractability had worn out the patience of his suzerain: he was carried away captive to nineveh, and replaced by azîbaal, his eldest son. two chiefs of the taurus--mugallu of tabal, who had given trouble to esarhaddon in the last years of his life, and sanda-sarme of cilicia--purchased immunity from the punishment due for various acts of brigandage, by gifts of horses, and by handing over each of them a daughter, richly dowered, to the harem of the king at nineveh. but these were incidents of slight moment, and their very insignificance proves how completely resigned to foreign domination the nations of the mediterranean coast had now become. vassal kings, princes, cities, peasants of the plain or shepherds of the mountains, all who were subject directly or indirectly to assyria, had almost ceased to imagine that a change of sovereign afforded them any chance of regaining their independence. they no longer considered themselves the subjects of a conqueror whose death might free them from allegiance; they realised that they were the subjects of an empire whose power did not depend on the genius or incapacity of one man, but was maintained from age to age in virtue of the prestige it had attained, whatever might be the qualities of the reigning sovereign. the other independent states had at length come to the same conclusion, and the news of the accession of a fresh assyrian king no longer awakened among them hopes of conquest or, at all events, of booty; such an occasion was regarded as a suitable opportunity for strengthening the bonds of neighbourly feeling or conciliatory friendship which united them to assyria, by sending an embassy to congratulate the new sovereign. one of these embassies, which arrived about b.c., caused much excitement at the court of nineveh, and greatly flattered the vanity of the king. reports brought back by sailors or the chiefs of caravans had revealed the existence of a kingdom of lydia in the extreme west of asia minor, at the place of embarcation for crossing the sea.* * it is called _nagu sha nibirti tâmtim_, �the country of the crossing of the sea,� or more concisely, �the country this side the sea.� it was known to be celebrated for its gold and its horses, but no direct relations between the two courts had ever been established, and the lydian kings had hitherto affected to ignore the existence of assyria. a revolution had broken out in this province a quarter of a century previously, which had placed on the throne of the heraclidse that family of the mermnado whose previous history had been so tragic. dascylus, who had made his home for a long time among the white syrians, had no intention of abandoning his adopted country, when one day, about the year b.c., a messenger arrived bidding him repair to sardes without delay. his uncle ardys, prince of tyrrha, having no children, had applied to sadyattes, beseeching him to revoke the sentence of banishment passed on his nephew. �my house is desolate,� said he, �and all my kinsfolk are dead; and furthermore, dascylus and his house have already been pardoned by thine ancestors.� sadyattes consented, but dascylus, preferring not to return, sent his son gyges, then about eighteen years of age, in his stead. gyges was a tall and very beautiful youth, and showed unusual skill as a charioteer and in the use of weapons, so that his renown soon spread throughout the country. sadyattes desired to see him, and being captivated by his bold demeanour, enrolled him in his bodyguard, loaded him with presents, and took him into his entire confidence. gyges was clever enough to utilise the king�s favour in order to enlarge his domains and increase his riches, and thus win partisans among the people and the body of �friends.� carian mercenaries at that time formed one of the most vigorous and best disciplined contingents in the armies of the period.* the carians were, above all, a military race, and are said to have brought the shield and helmet to their highest perfection; at sardes they formed the garrison of the citadel, and their captains were in high favour with the king. gyges formed a fast friendship with arselis of mylasa, one of the chief of these officers, and thus made sure of the support of the garrison, and of the possibility of recruiting a corps among the carian clans who remained in their own country.** he thus incurred the bitter jealousy of the tylonidag, whose chief, lixos, was ready to adopt any measures which might damage his rival, even going so far as to simulate madness and run through the streets of sardes crying out that gyges, the son of dascylus, was about to assassinate the king; but this stratagem did not succeed any better than his other treacherous devices. meanwhile sadyattes had sought the hand of toudô,*** daughter of arnossos of mysia, and sent his favourite to receive his affianced bride at the hand of her father. * archilochus of paros, a contemporary of gyges, mentions the carian mercenaries, and later on ephorus said of them, that they had been the first to sell their services to strangers. ** the connection between arselis and gyges is mentioned by plutarch. *** it is not certain whether the name is toudô or trydô. gyges fell in love with her on the journey, and tried in vain to win her favour. she repulsed his advances with indignation, and on the very night of her marriage complained to her husband of the insult which had been offered her. sadyattes swore that he would avenge her on the morrow; but gyges, warned by a servant, slew the king before daybreak. immediately after thus assassinating his sovereign, gyges called together the �friends,� and ridding himself of those who were hostile to him, induced the others by bribes to further his designs; then descending to the place of public assembly, he summoned the people to a conclave. after a long and stormy debate, it was decided to consult the oracle at delphi, which, corrupted by the gold from the pactolus, enjoined on the lydians to recognise gyges as their king. he married toudô, and by thus espousing the widow of the heraclid sovereign, obtained some show of right to the crown; but the decision of the oracle was not universally acceptable, and war broke out, in which gyges was victorious, thanks to the bravery of his carian mercenaries. his career soon served as the fabric on which the popular imagination was continually working fresh embroideries. he was reported at the outset to have been of base extraction, a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised himself by degrees to the highest posts and had finally supplanted his patron. herodotus, following the poet archilochus of paros, relates how the last of the heraclidas, whom he calls by his private name of kandaules, and not his official name of sadyattes,* forcibly insisted on exposing to the admiration of gyges the naked beauty of his wife; the queen, thus outraged, called upon the favourite to avenge the insult to her modesty by the blood of her husband, and then bestowed on him her hand, together with the crown. * schubert considers that the names sadyattes and kandaules belong to two distinct persons. kandaules, according to him, was probably a second son of myrsos, who, after the murder of sadyattes, disputed the possession of the crown with gyges; in this case he was killed in battle by the carian commander, arselis, as related by plutarch, and gyges was not really king till after the death of kandaules. plato made this story the groundwork of a most fantastic tale. gyges, according to him, was originally a shepherd, who, after a terrible storm, noticed a fissure in the ground, into which he crept; there he discovered an enormous bronze horse, half broken, and in its side the corpse of a giant with a gold ring on his finger. chance revealed to him that this ring rendered its wearer invisible: he set out for the court in quest of adventures, seduced the queen, murdered the king and seized his crown, accomplishing all this by virtue of his talisman.* * this version is curious, because it has preserved for us one of the earliest examples of a ring which renders its wearer invisible; it is well known how frequently such a talisman appears in oriental tales of a later period. according to a third legend, his crime and exaltation had been presaged by a wondrous prodigy. two eagles of supernatural size had alighted on the roof of toudô�s room while she was still dwelling in her father�s house, and the soothsayers who were consulted prognosticated that the princess would be the wife of two kings in a single night; and, in fact, gyges, having stabbed sadyattes when his marriage was but just consummated, forced toudô to become his wife on the spot without waiting for the morrow. other stories were current, in which the events were related with less of the miraculous element, and which attributed the success of gyges to the unbounded fidelity shown him by the carian arselis. in whatever manner it was brought about, his accession marked the opening of a new era for lydia. the country had always been noted for its valiant and warlike inhabitants, but the heraclidse had not expended its abundant resources on foreign conquest, and none of the surrounding peoples suspected that it could again become the seat of a brilliant empire as in fabulous times. [illustration: .jpg lydian horsemen] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a lydian bas-relief now in the british museum. gyges endeavoured to awaken the military instincts of his subjects. if he were not actually the first to organise that admirable cavalry corps which for nearly a century proved itself invincible on the field of battle, at least he enlarged and disciplined it, giving it cohesion and daring; and it was well he did so, for a formidable danger already menaced his newly acquired kingdom. the cimmerians and treres, so long as they did not act in concert, had been unable to overcome the resistance offered by the phrygians; their raids, annually renewed, had never resulted in more than the destruction of a city or the pillaging of an ill-defended district. but from to b.c. the cimmerians, held in check by the bold front displayed by sennacherib and esarhaddon, had at last broken away from the seductions of the east, and poured down in force on the centre of the peninsula. king midas, after an heroic defence, at length gave way before their overwhelming numbers, and, rather than fall alive into the hands of the barbarians, poisoned himself by drinking the blood of a bull ( b.c.).* the flower of his nobility perished with him, and the people of lower rank who survived were so terrified by the invasion, that they seemed in one day to lose entirely the brave and energetic character which had hitherto been their safeguard. the cimmerians seized town after town;** they descended from the basin of the sangarios into that of the bhyndakos; they laid waste the troad, and, about b.c., they established themselves securely in the stronghold of antandros, opposite the magnificent Æolian island of lesbos, and ere long their advanced posts were face to face on all sides with the outposts of lydia. * the date of b.c. has been borrowed from julius africanus by the christian chronologists of the byzantine period; these latter made the fall of the phrygian kingdom coincide with the reign of amon in judæa, and this date is accepted by most modern historians. ** one fact alone, probably taken from the lydiaca of xanthus, is known to us concerning their operations in phrygia, namely, the taking of syassos and the capture of enormous stores of corn which were laid up in the silos in that city. gyges resolutely held his own, and successfully repulsed them; but the struggle was too unequal between their vast hordes, recruited incessantly from their reserves in thrace or the caucasus, and his scanty battalions of lydians, carians, and creeks. unaided, he had no chance of reopening the great royal highway, which the fall of the phrygian monarchy had laid at the mercy of the barbarians along the whole of its middle course, and yet he was aware that a cessation of the traffic which passed between the euphrates and the hermos was likely to lead in a short time to the decay of his kingdom. if the numerous merchants who were wont to follow this ancient traditional route were once allowed to desert it and turn aside to one of the coast-roads which might replace it--either that of the pontus in the north or of the mediterranean in the south--they might not be willing to return to it even when again opened to traffic, and lydia would lose for ever one of her richest sources of revenue.* * radet deserves credit for being the first to point out the economic reasons which necessarily led gyges to make his attempt at forming an alliance with assur-bani-pal. he has thus definitely dismissed the objections which some recent critics had raised against the authenticity of this episode in order to defend classic tradition and diminish the authority of the assyrian texts. we may well conceive that gyges, whose fortune and very existence was thus in jeopardy, would seek assistance against these barbarians from the sovereign whose interests appeared identical with his own. the renown of the assyrian empire had penetrated far into the west; the achæns of cyprus who were its subjects, the greek colonists of cilicia, and the soldiers whom the exigencies of the coast-trade brought to syrian ports, must all have testified to its splendour; and the fame of its conquests over the tabal and the peoples on the halys had spread abroad more than once during the previous century, and had reached as far as the western extremity of the peninsula of asia minor, by means of the merchants of sardes or ionia. the cimmerians had harassed assyria, and still continued to be a source of anxiety to her rulers; gyges judged that participation in a common hatred or danger would predispose the king in his favour, and a dream furnished him with a pretext for notifying to the court of nineveh his desire to enter into friendly relations with it. he dreamed that a god, undoubtedly assur, had appeared to him in the night, and commanded him to prostrate himself at the feet of assur-bani-pal: �in his name thou shalt overcome thine enemies.� the next morning he despatched horsemen to the great king, but when the leader of the embassy reached the frontier and met the assyrians for the first time, they asked him, �who, then, art thou, brother, thou from whose land no courier has as yet visited our country?� the language he spoke was unknown to them; they only gathered that he desired to be conducted into the presence of the king, and consequently sent him on to nineveh under good escort. there the same obstacle presented itself, for none of the official interpreters at the court knew the lydian tongue; however, an interpreter was at length discovered, who translated the story of the dream as best he could. assur-bani-pal joyfully accepted the homage offered to him from such a far-off land, and from thenceforward some sort of alliance existed between assyria and lydia--an alliance of a very platonic order, from which gyges at least derived no sensible advantage. some troops sent into the country of the white syrians may have disquieted the cimmerians, and, by causing a diversion in their rear, procured a respite for lydia; but the caravan route across asia minor was only of secondary importance to the prosperity of nineveh and the syrian provinces, since the phoenician navy provided sufficient outlets for their trade in the west. assur-bani-pal lavished friendly speeches on the lydians, but left them to bear the brunt of the attack alone, and devoutly thanked assur for the security which their determined courage procured for the western frontier of his empire. the cimmerian peril being, for the present at least, averted, there no longer remained any foe to trouble the peace of the empire on the northern or eastern frontier, urartu, the mannai, and the medes having now ceased to be formidable. urartu, incessantly exposed to the ravages of the barbarians, had drawn closer and closer to assyria; and though not actually descending to the point of owning its rival�s superiority in order to obtain succour against these terrible foes, it yet carefully avoided all pretexts for war, and persistently maintained friendly relations with its powerful neighbour. its kings, eusas ii. and his successor erimenas, no longer meditated feats of arms and successful raids, but devoted themselves to building their city walls, erecting palaces and temples, and planning pleasant retreats in the mountain fastnesses, where they lived surrounded by gardens planted at great cost, watered by streams brought thither from distant springs. the mannai submitted without a murmur to their assyrian governors, and the medes, kept in check by the garrisons of parsua and kharkhar, seemed to have laid aside much of their fierce and turbulent disposition. esarhaddon had endeavoured to conciliate the good will of elam by a signal service. he had supplied its inhabitants with corn, wine, and provisions of all sorts during a famine which had afflicted the country about b.c.; nor had his good will ended there. he refused to bring into servitude those elamite subjects who had taken refuge with their families on assyrian territory to escape the scourge, although the rights of nations authorised him so to do, but having nourished them as long as the dearth lasted, he then sent them back to their fellow-citizens. urtaku of elam had thenceforward maintained a kind of sullen neutrality, entering only into secret conspiracies against the babylonian prefects on the tigris. the aramaeans in the valleys of the ulaî, indeed, were restless, and several of their chiefs, bel-ikîsha of the g-ambula, and nabo-shumirîsh, plotted in secret with marduk-shumibni, the elamite general in command on the frontier. but no hint of this had yet transpired, and peace apparently reigned there as elsewhere. never had the empire been so respected; never had it united so many diverse nations under one sceptre--egyptians, syrians, tribes of the taurus, and the mountain districts round the tigris and euphrates, mannai, medes, babylonians, and arabs; never, moreover, had it possessed greater resources wherewith to compel obedience from the provinces or defend them against foreign attack. [illustration: .jpg assur-bani-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs from kouyunjik in the british museum. doubtless the population of assyria proper, and the ancient districts whose contingents formed the nucleus of the army, were still suffering from the results of the civil war which had broken out more than fifteen years before, after the assassination of sennacherib; but under the easy rule of esarhaddon the natural increase of population, unchecked by any extraordinary call for recruits, must have almost repaired their losses. the egyptian campaigns, partially carried out by syrian auxiliaries, had not sensibly retarded this progress, and, provided that peace were maintained for some years longer, the time seemed at hand when the king, having repaired his losses, could call upon the nation to make fresh efforts in offensive or defensive warfare, without the risk of seeing his people melt and disappear before his eyes. it seems, indeed, as if assur-bani-pal, either by policy or natural disposition, was inclined for peace. but this did not preclude, when occasion demanded, his directing his forces and fighting in person like any other assyrian monarch; he, however, preferred repose, and when circumstances forced war upon him, he willingly delegated the conduct of the army to his generals. he would probably have renounced possession of egypt if he could have done so with safety and such a course would not have been without wisdom, the retention of this newly acquired province being difficult and costly. not to speak of differences in language, religion, and manners, which would prevent it from ever becoming assimilated to assyria as damascus, hamath, and samaria, and most of the asiatic states had been, it was merely connected with the rest of the empire by the thin chain of rocks, desert, and marshes stretching between the red sea and the mediterranean. a revolt of the cities of the philistines, or of one of the idumsean sheikhs, would have sufficed to isolate it, and, communications once interrupted, the safety of the numerous assyrian officers and garrisons would be seriously jeopardised, all of whom must be maintained there if the country was to be permanently retained. the inclination to meddle in the affairs of syria always displayed by the pharaohs, and their obsolete claims to rule the whole country as far as the euphrates, did not allow of their autonomy being restored to them at the risk of the immediate renewal of their intrigues with tyre or judah, and the fomenting of serious rebellions among the vassal princes of palestine. on the other hand, egypt was by its natural position so detached from the rest of the empire that it was certain to escape from the influence of nineveh as soon as the pressure of circumstances obliged the suzerain to relax his efforts to keep it in subjection. besides this, ethiopia lay behind egypt, almost inaccessible in the fabled realms of the south, always ready to provoke conspiracies or renew hostilities when the occasion offered. montumihâît had already returned to thebes on the retreat of the assyrian battalions, and though taharqa, rendered inactive, as it was said, by a dream which bade him remain at napata,* had not reappeared north of the cataract, he had sent tanuatamanu, the son of his wife by sabaco, to administer the province in his name.** taharqa died shortly after ( b.c.), and his stepson was preparing to leave thebes in order to be solemnly crowned at gebel barkal, when he saw one night in a dream two serpents, one on his right hand, the other on his left. the soothsayers whom he consulted on the matter prognosticated for him a successful career: �thou holdest the south countries; seize thou those of the north, and let the crowns of the two regions gleam upon thy brow!� he proceeded at once to present himself before his divine father amon of napata, and, encountering no opposition from the ethiopian priests or nobles, he was able to fulfil the prediction almost immediately after his coronation.*** * the legend quoted by herodotus relates that sabaco, having slain necho i., the father of psammetichus, evacuated egypt which he had conquered, and retired to ethiopia in obedience to a dream. the name of sabaco was very probably substituted for that of taharqa in the tradition preserved in sais and memphis, echoes of which reached the greek historian in the middle of the fifth century b.c. ** it appears, from the _stele of the dream_, that tanuatamanu was in the thebaid at the time of his accession to the throne. *** steindorff thinks that tanuatamanu had been officially associated with himself on the throne by taharqa, and schsefer supposes that the dream dates from the first year of their joint reign. the presence of tanuatamanu beside taharqa, in the small theban temple, the bas-reliefs of which were published by mariette, does not necessarily prove that the two kings reigned conjointly: it may equally well indicate that the one accomplished the work commenced by the other. the said hailed his return with joy, and the inhabitants, massed upon either bank of the river, acclaimed him as he glided past them on his boat: �go in peace! mayest thou have peace! restore life to egypt! rebuild the ruined temples, set up once more the statues and emblems of the deities! reestablish the endowments raised to the gods and goddesses, even the offerings to the dead! restore the priest to his place, that he may minister at all the rites!� the assyrian officials and the princes of the north, with necho at their head, were drawn up beneath the walls of memphis to defy him. he overcame them, however, captured the city, and pushed on into the delta in pursuit of the retreating foe. necho either fell in a skirmish, or was taken prisoner and put to death: his son psammetichus escaped to syria, but the remaining princes shut themselves up, each in his own stronghold, to await reinforcements from asia, and a series of tedious and interminable sieges began. impatient at this dilatory method of warfare, tanuatamanu at length fell back on memphis, and there opened negotiations in the hope of securing at least a nominal submission, which might enable him to withdraw from the affair with honour. [illustration: .jpg mural decorations from the grottoes] the princes of the east received his overtures favourably, and consented to prostrate themselves before him at the white wall under the auspices of pakruru. �grant us the breath of life, for he who acknowledges thee not cannot live, and we will be thy vassals, as thou didst declare at the beginning, on the day in which thou becamest king!� [illustration: .jpg king tanuatamanu in adoration before the gods of thebes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by legrain, taken in the small temple at thebes. the heart of his majesty was filled with joy when he heard this discourse: he bestowed upon them in abundance bread, beer, and all manner of good things. after sojourning some days at the court of pharaoh their lord, they said to him, �why stay we here, o prince our master?� his majesty replied, �wherefore?� they answered then, �graciously permit us to return to our own cities, that we may give commands to our subjects, and may bring thee our tribute offerings!� they returned ere long, bringing the promised gifts, and the king withdrew to napata loaded with spoil.* the delta proper at once ceased to obey him, but memphis, as well as thebes, still acknowledged his sway for some two or three years longer.** * tanuatamanu was at first identified by haigh with the person whose name assyriologists read as urdamani, but the impossibility of recognising the name _tanuatamanu_ in _urdamani_ decided e. de rougé, and subsequently others, to admit an urdamani different from tanuatamanu. the discovery of the right reading of the name _tandamanu_ by steindorff has banished all doubts, and it is now universally admitted that the person mentioned in the assyrian documents is identical with the king who erected the _stele of the dream_ at gebel barkal. ** a monument still exists which was dedicated at thebes in the third year of tanuatamanu. it was neither indolence nor fear which had kept assur-bani-pal from marching to the succour of his subjects as soon as the movement under tanuatamanu became manifest, but serious complications had arisen in the south-east which had for the moment obliged him to leave egypt to itself. elam had at last laid aside the mask, and urtaku, yielding to the entreaties of the aramæan sheikhs, who were urged on by marduk-shumibni, had crossed the tigris. shamash-shumukîn, thus taken unawares, could only shut himself up in babylon, and in all haste send information of his plight to his brother and suzerain. assur-bani-pal, preoccupied with the events taking place on the nile, was for a moment in doubt whether this incursion was merely a passing raid or the opening of a serious war, but the reports of his scouts soon left no doubt as to the gravity of the danger: �the elamite, like a swarm of grasshoppers, covers the fields, he covers accad; against babylon he has pitched his camp and drawn out his lines.� the city was too strong to be taken by storm. the assyrians hastened to relieve it, and threatened to cut off the retreat of the aggressors: the latter, therefore, gave up the siege, and returned to their own country, but their demeanour was still so undaunted that assur-bani-pal did not cross the frontier in pursuit of them ( b.c.). he doubtless fully expected that they would soon return in larger numbers, and perhaps his fear would not have proved unfounded had not fate suddenly deprived them of all their leaders. bel-ikîsha was killed in hunting by a wild boar, nabu-shumirîsh was struck down by dropsy, and marduk-shumibni perished in a mysterious manner. finally urtaku succumbed to an attack of apoplexy, and the year which had been so fatal to his allies proved not less so to himself ( b.c.). it now seemed as if assur-bani-pal might breathe freely, and inflict his long-deferred vengeance on tanuatamanu, but the death of urtaku did not remove all causes of uneasiness. peace was not yet concluded, and it depended on the new king of elam whether hostilities would be renewed. fortunately for the assyrians, the transmission of power had rarely taken place at susa for a century past without a disturbance, and urtaku himself had gained the throne by usurpation, possibly accompanied by murder. as he had treated his elder brother khumbân-khaldash and the children of the latter, so did his younger brother tammaritu now treat his sons. tammaritu was �a devil� incarnate, whose whole thoughts were of murder and rapine; at least, this was the idea formed of him by his assyrian contemporaries, who declared that he desired to put to death the sons of his two predecessors out of sheer cruelty. but we do not need a very vivid imagination to believe that these princes were anxious to dethrone him, and that in endeavouring to rid himself of them he was merely forestalling their secret plots. they escaped his murderous designs, however, and fled to assyria,--khumbân-igash, khumbân-appa, and tammaritu, sons of uxtaku, and kuduru and parru, sons of khumbân-khaldash, followed by sixty other princes of royal blood, together with archers and servants--forming, in fact, a small army of elamites. assur-bani-pal received them with honour, for their defection furnished him with a powerful weapon against the usurper: by succouring them he could rouse half elam and involve it in civil war, in which the pretenders would soon exhaust their resources. it was now a favourable moment to renew hostilities in egypt, while tammaritu, still insecure on his throne, would not venture to provoke a conflict.* * the time of the war against urtaku and the expedition against tanuatamanu is indicated by a passage in a cylinder as yet unedited. there we read that the invasion of urtaku took place at the moment when tanuatamanu ascended the throne. these preliminary difficulties with elam would thus have coincided with the two years which elapsed between the accession of tanuatamanu and his conquest of memphis, up to the third year mentioned in the berlin inscription; the testimony of the egyptian monuments would thus be in almost complete accord with the assyrian documents on this point. as a matter of fact, tanuatamanu did not risk the defence of memphis, but concentrated his forces at thebes. once more the assyrian generals ascended the nile, and, after a voyage lasting six weeks, at length reached the suburbs of the great city. tanuatamanu had fled towards kipkip, leaving thebes at the mercy of the invaders. it was given up to pillage, its population was carried off into slavery, and its temples and palaces were despoiled of their treasures--gold, silver, metals, and precious stones, broidered and richly dyed stuffs, and horses of the royal stud. [illustration: .jpg assyrian helmet found at thebes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph by pétrie. two of the obelisks which adorned the temple of amon were taken down from their pedestals and placed on rafts to be transported to nineveh, and we shall perhaps unearth them some day from its ruins. this work of reprisal accomplished, the conquerors made their way northwards, and the bulk of the army recrossed the isthmus: ethiopian rule had ceased north of the cataract, and egypt settled down once more under the assyrian yoke ( - b.c.).* * the dates which i have adopted follow from the date of b.c. given for the death of taharqa and the accession of psammetichus i. the expedition against thebes must have taken place at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth year of the reign of tanuatamanu, shortly after the inscription of the third year, and was engraved either in or b.c. at the latest. impoverished and decayed as thebes had now long since become, the nations whom she had afflicted so sorely in the days of her glory had retained for her feelings of respect and almost of awe: the rumour of her fall, spread through the eastern world, filled them with astonishment and pity. the hebrews saw in it the chastisement inflicted by their god on the tyrant who had oppressed their ancestors, and their prophets used it to impress upon the minds of their contemporaries the vanity of human prosperity. half a century later, when nineveh, menaced in her turn, was desperately arming herself to repel the barbarians, nahum the elkoshite demanded of her, amid his fierce denunciations, whether she vaunted herself to be better than �no-amon (city of amon), that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about her; whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was of the sea? ethiopia and egypt were her strength, and it was infinite. put and lubim (libya and the nubians) came to her succour. yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.� assur-bani-pal, lord of egypt and conqueror of ethiopia, might reasonably consider himself invincible; it would have been well for the princes who trembled at the name of assur-bani-pal, if they had taken this lesson to heart, and had learned from the downfall of tanuata-manu what fate awaited them in the event of their daring to arouse the wrath of assyria by any kind of intrigue. unfortunately, many of them either failed to see the warning or refused to profit by it. the mannai had quickly recovered from the defeat inflicted on them by esarhaddon, and their king, akhsheri, in spite of his advancing years, believed that his own energy and resources were sufficient to warrant him in anticipating a speedy revenge. perhaps a further insight into the real character of assur-bani-pal may have induced him to venture on hostilities. for the king�s contemporaries had begun to realise that, beneath his apparent bravery and ostentation, he was by nature indolent, impatient of restraint, and fond of ease and luxury. when not absorbed in the routine of the court and the pleasures of the harem, he spent his leisure in hunting on the mesopotamian plains, or in the extensive parks which had been laid out by himself or his predecessors in the vicinity of their summer palaces. urus-stalking had become merely a memory of the past: these animals had been so persistently hunted for centuries that the species had almost become extinct; solitary specimens only were occasionally met with in remote parts of the forest or in out-of-the-way marshes. the wild ass was still to be found in large numbers, as well as the goat, the ostrich, and small game, but the lion was now rarely met with, and the beaters were no longer sure of finding him in his ancient haunts. specimens had to be sought by the royal gamekeepers in the provinces, and when successfully trapped were forthwith despatched to one or other of the king�s country seats. the beast was often kept for several days in a cage while preparations were made for a fête, at which he was destined to form one of the chief attractions, and when the time came he was taken to the appointed place and let loose; the sovereign pursued him either in a chariot or on horseback, and did not desist from the chase till he had pierced his quarry with arrows or lance. [illustration: .jpg a lion issuing from its cage] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken from the original in the british museum. frequently the beast would be turned loose in the park, and left there till accustomed to his surroundings, so that later on he might be run down under conditions somewhat resembling his native freedom. assur-bani-pal did not shun a personal encounter with an infuriated lion; he displayed in this hazardous sport a bravery and skill which rivalled that of his ancestors, and he never relegated to another the task of leading the attack or dealing the final death-blow. this, however, was not the case when it was a question of starting on some warlike expedition; he would then leave to his tartans, or to the eabshakeh, or to some other chosen officer, the entire conduct of all operations.* * we have seen, for example, that after the death of esarhaddon, the egyptian campaign was conducted by one of the tartans and the eabshakeh. this did not preclude the king from taking an interest in what was passing beyond the frontier, nor did he fail in his performance of the various religious duties which custom imposed on an assyrian sovereign: he consulted the oracles of shamash or ishtar, he offered sacrifices, he fasted and humbled himself in the temples to obtain the success of his troops, and when they returned laden with spoil from the campaign, he attributed their victories no less to his prayers than to their courage or to the skill of their leaders. his generals, thoroughly equipped for their task, and well supported by their troops, had no need of the royal presence to ensure their triumph over any foe they might encounter; indeed, in the absence of the king they experienced a liberty of action and boldness in pressing their victories to the uttermost which they would not have enjoyed had he been in command. foreigners, accustomed to see the sovereigns of nineveh conduct their armies in person, as long as they were not incapacitated by age, thought that the indolence of assur-bani-pal was the unconscious expression of weariness or of his feeble control of the empire, and akhsheri determined to be one of the first to take advantage of it. events proved that he was mistaken in his calculations. no sooner had his intentions become known, than a division of assyrian troops appeared on his frontier, and prepared to attack him. resolving to take the initiative, he fell one night unexpectedly upon the assyrian camp, but fortune declared against him: he was driven back, and his broken ranks were closely pursued for a distance of twenty-three miles. eight of his strongholds fell one after the other, and he was at length forced to abandon his capital of izirtu, and flee precipitately to his fortress of adrana in the heart of the mountains. even there he did not find the security he desired, for the conqueror pursued him thither, methodically devastating by the way the districts through which he passed: he carried off everything--men, slaves, and herds of cattle--and he never retired from a city or village without previously setting it on fire. paddir, arsiyanîsh, and eristiana were thus laid waste, after which the assyrians returned to their camp, having re-established the authority of their master over several districts which had been lost to them for some generations previously. akhsheri had shown no sign of yielding, but his people, weary of a hopeless resistance, put him to death, and hurling his corpse over the wall of adrana, proclaimed his son ualli as king. the new sovereign hastened to conclude a treaty with the assyrians on reasonable terms: he gave up his eldest son, erisinni, and one of his daughters as hostages, and promised to pay the former tribute augmented by an annual present of thirty horses; peace was not again disturbed on this side except by some unimportant skirmishes. in one of these, a median chieftain, named biriz-khadri, made an alliance with two princes of the people of the sakhi, sarâti, and parikhia, sons of gâgu,* to ravage the marches of the greater zab; but their territory was raided in return, and they themselves taken prisoners. * the name of biriz-khadri has an iranian appearance. the first element _biriz_ recalls the zend _bereza, berez_, �tall, large;� the second, which appears in the names bisi- khadir and khali-khadri, is of uncertain derivation, and has been connected with _atar_, �fire,� or with _ichwathra_, �brilliance.� gâgu, which is found as the name of a people (gagâti) in the tel-el-amarna tablets, has been identified from the first with the name of gog, prince of rosh, meshech, and tubal (ezek. xxxviii. , ; xxxix.) the name of the country of sakhi, which has not been met with elsewhere, has been compared with that of the sacaj, which seems to have existed not only in the name of the province of sakascnô mentioned by the classical geographers, but in that of shake known to the old armenian geographers; the country itself, however, as it seems to me, cannot be sought in the direction of sakasenô, and consequently the proposed identification cannot hold good. a little later, andaria, prince of lubdi, forgetful of his oath of allegiance to the aged esarhad-don, made a night attack on the towns of kullimir and ubbumî: the inhabitants armed in haste, and he was not only defeated, but was taken captive, and his head cut off to be sent to nineveh. the garrisons and military colonies along the north-east frontier were constantly required to be on the alert; but they usually had sufficient available resources to meet any emergency, and the enemies who molested them were rarely dangerous enough to necessitate the mobilisation of a regular army. this was not the case, however, in the south-west, where tiummân, counting on the military strength of elam, made continual hostile demonstrations. he was scarcely settled on his throne before he hastened to form alliances with those aramæan states which had so often invoked the aid of his predecessors against the ancestors of assur-bani-pal. the kaldâ rejected his proposals, as did most of the tribes of the littoral; but the gambulâ yielded to his solicitations, and their king, dunânu, son of bel-ikîsha, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with elam. their defection left the eastern frontier of karduniash unprotected, and, by opening to the elamite the fords of the tigris, permitted him to advance on babylon unhindered by any serious obstacle. as soon as the compact was sealed, tiummân massed his battalions on the middle course of the uknu, and, before crossing the frontier, sent two of his generals, the susian khumba-darà and the chaldean nabu-damîq, as the bearers of an insolent ultimatum to the court of nineveh: he offered the king the choice between immediate hostilities, or the extradition of the sons of urtaku and khumbân-khaldash, as well as of their partisans who had taken refuge in assyria. to surrender the exiles would have been an open confession of inferiority, and such a humiliating acknowledgment of weakness promptly reported throughout the eastern world might shortly have excited a general revolt: hence assur-bani-pal disdainfully rejected the proposal of the elamite sovereign, which had been made rather as a matter of form than with any hope of its acceptance, but the issue of a serious war with susa was so uncertain that his refusal was accompanied with serious misgivings. it needed many favourable omens from the gods to encourage him to believe in his future success. the moon-god sin was the first to utter his prediction: he suffered eclipse in the month of tammuz, and for three successive days, at nightfall, showed himself in the sky surrounded by strange appearances which heralded the death of a king in elam, and foretold calamity to that country. then assur and ishtar struck tiummân with violent convulsions; they caused his lips and eyes to be horribly distorted, but he despised their warning, and as soon as his seizure had passed, set out to assume command of his army. the news of his action reached nineveh in the month of ab, on the morning of the solemn festival of ishtar. assur-bani-pal was at arbela, celebrating the rites in honour of the goddess, when the messenger appeared before him and repeated, together with the terms of the declaration of war, the scornful words which tiummân had uttered against him and his patroness: �this prince whose wits have been crazed by ishtar--i will let him escape no more, when once i have gone forth and measured my strength against him!� this blasphemy filled the assyrian king with horror. that very evening he betook himself to the sanctuary, and there, prostrate before the image of the goddess, he poured forth prayers mingled with tears: �lady of arbela, i am assur-bani-pal, king of assyria, the creature of thy hands, the offspring of a father whom thou didst create! behold now, this tiummân, the king of elam, who despises the gods of assyria, hath sent forth his host and prepared himself for the conflict; he hath called for his arms to rush to attack assyria. do thou, o archer of the gods, like a bolt falling in the midst of the battle, overthrow him, and let loose upon him a tempest, and an evil wind!� ishtar heard his prayer, and her voice sounded through the gloom: �fear not,� said she, comforting him: �since thou hast raised thy hands to me in supplication, and thine eyes are bedewed with tears grant thee a boon!� towards the end of that night, a seer slept in the temple and was visited by a dream. ishtar of arbela appeared to him, with a quiver on either side, a bow in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. she advanced towards the king, and spoke to him as if she had been his mother: �make war boldly! whichever way thou turnest thy countenance, there will i go!� and the king replied to her, �where thou goest, will i go with thee, sovereign lady!� but she answered, �stay thou here. dwell in this home of nebo, eat thy food and drink thy wine, listen to joyful songs and honour my divinity, until i have gone and accomplished this work. let not thy countenance grow pale, nor thy feet fail under thee, and expose not thyself to the danger of battle.� �and then, o king,� added the seer, �she hid thee in her bosom as a mother, and protected thy image. a flame shall spring forth before her, and shall spread abroad to destroy thine enemies: against tiummân, king of elam, who has angered her, has she set her face!� like mînephtah of old, in the days of the libyan invasions of egypt, assur-bani-pal allowed himself to be readily convinced by the decision of the gods; he did not quit arbela, but gave orders to his troops to proceed to the front. his generals opened the campaign in the month of em, and directed the main body of their forces against the fortress of durîlu, at the point on the frontier nearest to susa. tiummân was not expecting such a prompt and direct attack: he had reckoned doubtless on uniting his forces with those of dunânu with a view to invading karduniash, and suddenly realised that his adversary had forestalled him and was advancing on the heart of his empire. he slowly withdrew his advanced guard, and concentrated his forces round the town of tullîz, a few leagues on this side of susa, and there awaited the enemy�s attack.* * the site of tullîz is unknown. billerbock considers, and with reason, i think, that the battle took place to the south of susa, on the river shavur, which would correspond to the ulaî, on the lowest spurs of the ridge of hills bordering the alluvial plain of susiana. his position was a strong one, flanked on the right by a wood and on the left by the ulaî, while the flower of the elamite nobility was ranged around him. the equipment of his soldiers was simpler than that of the enemy: consisting of a low helmet, devoid of any crest, but furnished with a large pendant tress of horsehair to shade the neck; a shield of moderate dimensions; a small bow, which, however, was quite as deadly a weapon as that of the assyrians, when wielded by skilful hands; a lance, a mace, and a dagger. he had only a small body of cavalry, but the chariotry formed an important force, and presented several original features. the chariot did not follow the classic model, rounded in front and open at the back; it was a kind of light car, consisting of a square footboard placed flat on the axle of the wheels, and furnished with triangular side-pieces on two sides only, the vehicle being drawn by a pair of horses. such chariots were easier to manage, better adapted for rapid motion, and must have been more convenient for a reconnaissance or for skirmishes with infantry; but when thrown in a mass against the heavy chariotry of the peoples of the euphrates, they were far too slightly built to overthrow the latter, and at close quarters were of necessity crushed by the superior weight of the adversary. [illustration: .jpg ituni breaks his bow with a blow of his sword, and gives himself up to the executioner] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the original in the british museum. [illustration: b.jpg the battle of tulliz] tiummân had not succeeded in collecting all his forces before the first columns of the assyrian army advanced to engage his front line, but as he was expecting reinforcements, he endeavoured to gain time by despatching ituni, one of his generals, with orders to negotiate a truce. the assyrian commander, suspecting a ruse, would not listen to any proposals, but ordered the envoy to be decapitated on the spot: ituni broke his bow with a blow of his sword, and stoically yielded his neck to the executioner. the issue of the battle was for a long time undecided, but the victory finally remained with the heavy regiments of assyria. the left wing of the susians, driven into the ulaî, perished by drowning, and the river was choked with the corpses of men and horses, and the débris of arms and broken chariots. the right wing took to flight under cover of a wood, and the survivors tried to reach the mountains. [illustration: .jpg urtaku cousin of tiummÂn, surrendering to an assyrian] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. urtaku, the cousin of tiummân, was wounded by an arrow; perceiving an assyrian soldier coming up to him, he told him who he was, and recommended him to carry his head to the general: �he will pay you handsomely for it,� he added. tiummân had led in person several charges of his body-guard; and on being wounded, his son tammaritu had succeeded in rescuing him from the thick of the fight: both seated together in a chariot, were in full flight, when one of the wheels caught against a tree and was shattered, the shock flinging the occupants to the ground. a large body of assyrians were in close pursuit, led by one of the exiled susian princes, a second tam-maritu, son of urtaku. [illustration: .jpg the last arrow of tiummÂn and his son] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. at the first discharge an arrow wounded tiummân in the right side, and brought him to his knee. he felt that all was over, and desiring at all events to be revenged, he pointed out the deserter prince to his companion, crying indignantly, �let fly at him.� the arrow missed its mark, and a flight of hostile darts stretched the young man on the ground: the traitor tammaritu dealt the son his death-blow with his mace, while an assyrian decapitated the father. the corpses were left on the field, but the head of the king, after being taken to the general in command, was carried through the camp on one of the chariots captured during the action, and was eventually sent to the palace of arbela by the hand of a well-mounted courier. [illustration: .jpg death of tiummÂn and his son] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the day concluded with the making of an inventory of the spoil, and by an enumeration of the heads of the slain: prisoners from the rank and file were beaten to death according to custom, and several of the principal officers had their tongues torn out or were flayed alive. the news of the disaster was brought to susa towards evening by the fugitives, and produced a revolution in the city. the partisans of the exiled princes, seizing the adherents of tiummân, put them in chains, and delivered them up to the conqueror. the shattered remnants of the army rallied round them, and a throng of men and women in festal garb issued forth along the banks of the ulai to meet the assyrians. the priests and sacred singers marched to the sound of music, marking the rhythm with their feet, and filling the air with the noise of their harps and double flutes, while behind them came a choir of children, chanting a hymn under the direction of the consecrated eunuchs. the tartan met them, and, acting in accordance with the orders of assur-bani-pal, presented to the multitude khumbân-igash, the eldest son of urtaku, as their king. the people joyfully hailed the new sovereign, and the assyrians, after exacting tribute from him and conferring the fief of khaîdalu on his brother tammaritu, withdrew, leaving to the new princes the task of establishing their authority outside the walls of susa and madaktu. as they returned, they attacked the gambulâ, speedily reducing them to submission. dunânu, besieged in his stronghold of shapîbel, surrendered at discretion, and was carried away captive with all his family. [illustration: .jpg khumbân-igash proclaimed king] thus assur-bani-pal had scrupulously obeyed the orders of ishtar. while his generals were winning his victories he had been eating and drinking, hunting, dallying with his wives, and living in the open air. he was taking his pleasure with the queen in the palace garden when the head of tiummân was brought to him: he caused it to be suspended from the branch of a pine tree in full view of the whole court, and continued his banquet to the sound of harps and singing. rusas iii., king of urartu, died about this time, and his successor, sharduris iii., thought it incumbent on him to announce his accession at nineveh. assur-bani-pal received the embassy at arbela, with the graciousness befitting a suzerain whom a faithful vassal honours by his dutiful homage, and in order to impress the urartians still further with an idea of his power, he showed them the two elamite delegates, khumba-darâ and nabu-damîq, in chains at his feet.* * belck and lehmann have very ingeniously connected the embassy, mentioned in the assyrian documents, with the fact of the accession of the king who sent it. [illustration: .jpg the head of thumman sent to nineveh] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the chariot speeding along at a gallop in the topmost series of pictures carries a soldier bearing the head of tiumraân in his hand; behind him, under a tent, scribes are registering the heads which are brought in. in the two lower bas-reliefs are displayed the closing scenes of the battle. these wretched men had a more cruel ordeal yet in store for them: when the assyrian army re-entered nineveh, assur-bani-pal placed them on the route along which the cortège had to pass, and made them realise to the full the humiliation of their country. dunânu walked at the head of the band of captive chiefs, with the head of tiummân, taken from its tree, suspended round his neck. when the delegates perceived it, they gave way to despair: khumba-darâ tore out his beard by handfuls, and nabu-damîq, unsheathing the dagger which hung from his belt, plunged it into his own breast. [illustration: .jpg assur-bani-pal banqueting with his queen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum the head of tiummân hangs on the second tree on the left-hand side. the triumphal entry was followed by the usual tortures. the head of tiummân was fixed over the gate of nineveh, to rot before the eyes of the multitude. dunânu was slowly flayed alive, and then bled like a lamb; his brother shamgunu had his throat cut, and his body was divided into pieces, which were distributed over the country as a warning. even the dead were not spared: the bones of nabu-shumirîsh were disinterred and transported to assyria, where his sons were forced to bray them in a mortar.* we may estimate the extent of the alarm which had been felt at nineveh by the outburst of brutal joy with which the victory was hailed. * the fullest text of all those which narrate the campaign against tiummân and dunânu is that on _cylinder b of the british museum_. it pretends, as usual, that the king led the army in person, but the words which the seer places in the mouth of ishtar prove that the king remained at arbela by divine command, and the inscription on one of the bas- reliefs, as well as _tablet k _, mentions, without giving his name, the general who was sent against susa. [illustration: .jpg two elamite chiefs flayed alive after the battle of tullÎz] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the british museum. the experience of the past showed what a terrible enemy assyria had in elam, and how slight was the chance of a successful issue in a war against her. her kings had often invaded chaldæa, and had more than once brought it directly under their sway; they had ravaged its cities and pillaged its temples, and the sanctuary of susa were filled with statues of the gods or with bas-reliefs which they had dedicated after their campaigns on the euphrates. although they had not been successful against assyria to the same extent, they had at least always victoriously repelled her attacks: they had held their own against sargon, given much trouble to sennacherib, and defied the power of esarhaddon with impunity. never till now had an assyrian army gained such an important victory over elam, and though it was by no means decisive, we can easily believe that assur-bani-pal was filled with pride and delight, since it was the first time that a king of nineveh had imposed on elam a sovereign of his own choice. since homage was voluntarily rendered him by the rulers of foreign nations, assur-bani-pal doubtless believed that he might exact it without hesitation from the vassal princes dependent on the empire; and not from the weaker only like those who were still to be found in syria, but also from the more powerful, not excepting the lord of karduniash. shamash-shumukîn had fully risen to his position as king of babylon, and the unbroken peace which he had enjoyed since the death of urtaku had enabled him almost to complete the restoration of the kingdom begun under esarhaddon. he had finished the rebuilding of the walls of babylon, and had fortified the approaches to the city, thus rendering it capable of withstanding a long siege; he had repaired the temple of sippara, which had never recovered from the elamite invasion; and while unstintingly lavishing his treasures in honour of the gods and for the safety of his capital, he watched with jealous care over the interests of his subjects. he obtained for them the privilege of being treated on the same footing as the assyrians throughout his father�s ancestral domains; they consequently enjoyed the right of trading without restriction throughout the empire, and met with the same degree of protection from the officials of nineveh as from the magistrates of their own country. assur-bani-pal had at the outset furthered the wishes of his brother to the utmost of his power: he had granted the privileges demanded, and whenever a chaldæan of noble birth arrived at his court, he received him with special marks of favour. the two states enjoyed a nearly absolute equality during the opening years of his reign, and though the will of esarhaddon had made babylon dependent on assyria, the yoke of vassalage was far from heavy. the suzerain reserved to himself the honour of dedicating the mighty works begun by his father, the restoration of the temple of bel-marduk and of the double wall of fortification; he claimed, in his inscriptions, the whole merit of the work, but he none the less respected his brother�s rights, and in no way interfered in the affairs of the city except in state ceremonies in which the assertion of his superior rank was indispensable. but with success his moderation gradually gave place to arrogance. in proportion as his military renown increased, he accentuated his supremacy, and accustomed himself to treat babylon more and more as a vassal state. after the conquest of elam his infatuated pride knew no bounds, and the little consideration he still retained for shamash-shumukîn vanished completely. he thenceforward refused to regard him as being more than a prefect bearing a somewhat higher title than his fellows, a viceroy owing his crown, not to the will of their common father, but to the friendship of his brother, and liable to be deprived of it at any moment through the caprice of the sovereign. he affected to consider all that took place at babylon as his own doing, and his brother as being merely his docile instrument, not deserving mention any more than the ordinary agents who carried out his designs; and if, indeed, he condescended to mention him, it was with an assumption of disdainful superiority. it is a question whether shamash-shumukîn at this juncture believed that his brother was meditating a design to snatch the reins of government from his hand, or whether he merely yielded to the impulse of wounded vanity in resolving to shake off a yoke which had become intolerable. knowing that his power was not equal to that of assur-bani-pal, he sought to enter into relations with foreign allies who shared the same fears, or nursed a similar feeling of bitterness. the nobles and priests of the ancient sumerian and accadian cities were already on his side, but the aramaeans had shown themselves hostile at his accession, and had brought down on him the forces of elam. he found means, however, to conciliate them, together with the tribes which dwelt on the tigris and the uknu, as well as those of the lower euphrates and the arabian desert. he won over to his projects nabu-bêlzikri, the chief of the kaldâ--grandson of that merodach-baladan who had cherished invincible hatred against sargon and sennacherib--besides the lords of the bit-dakkuri and bît-amukkâni, and the sheikh of the pukudu. khumbân-igash ought to have remained loyal to the friend to whom he owed his kingdom, but he chafed at the patronage of assyria, and assur-bani-pal had just formulated a demand to which he, not unreasonably, hesitated to accede. the archaic statue of nana, stolen from uruk by kutur-nakhunta sixteen centuries before, and placed by that prince in one of the temples of susa, had become so naturalised in its new abode that the kings of elam, not content with rendering it an official cult, were wont to send presents to babylonia, to the image which had replaced it in its original sanctuary. assur-bani-pal now required khumbân-igash to give back the original statue, but the elamite could not obey this mandate without imperilling both his throne and his person: he would thereby have risked incurring the displeasure both of the nobles, whose pride would have suffered at the loss of so precious a trophy, and of the common people, who would have thus been deprived of one of their most venerable objects of devotion. the messengers of shamash-shumukîn, arriving at the moment when this question was agitating the court of susa, found the way already prepared for a mutual understanding. besides, they held in their hands an irresistible argument, the treasures of bel-marduk of babylon, of nebo of borsippa, and of nergal of kuta, which had been confided to them by the priests with a view to purchasing, if necessary, the support of elam. khumbân-igash thereupon promised to send a detachment of troops to karduniash, and to invade the provinces of assyria the moment war should be declared. the tribes of guti were easily won over, and were followed by the kings of phoenicia and the bedâwin of melukhkha, and perhaps egypt itself was implicated in the plot. the prince of kedar, amuladdin, undertook to effect a diversion on the frontiers of syria, and uatê, son of layali, one of the arab kings who had paid homage to esarhaddon, was not behindhand in furnishing his contingent of horsemen and wild native infantry. the coalition already extended from the shores of the mediterranean and the red sea to the persian gulf before assur-bani-pal became aware of its existence. an unforeseen occurrence suddenly broke in upon his peace and revealed the extent of the peril which threatened him.* * the chronology of this war has been determined by g. smith from the dates attached to the documents in the british museum, which give the names of three _limmi_, assur- durnzur, zagabbu, and bel-kharrân-shadua: these he assigned respectively to the years , , and b.c. tiele has shown that these three _limmi_ must be assigned to the years - b.c. though these dates seem in the highest degree probable, we must wait before we can consider them as absolutely certain till chance restores to us the missing parts of the canon. kudur, the assyrian prefect of uruk, learnt from sin-tabnî-uzur, the governor of uru, that certain emissaries of shamash-shumukîn had surreptitiously entered that city and were secretly fomenting rebellion among the people. sin-tabnî-uzur himself had been solicited to join the movement, but had absolutely refused to do so, and considering himself powerless to repress the disaffection with the few soldiers at his disposal, he had demanded reinforcements. kudur first furnished him with five hundred men of his own troops, and subsequently sent some battalions which were under the command of the governors of arrapkha and amidi, but which were, for some unknown reason, encamped in the neighbourhood. it would appear that shamash-shumukîn, finding his projects interfered with by this premature exposure, tried to counteract its effects by protestations of friendship: a special embassy was despatched to his brother to renew the assurances of his devotion, and he thus gained the time necessary to complete his armaments. as soon as he felt himself fully prepared, he gave up further dissimulation, and, throwing away the mask, proclaimed himself independent of assyria, while at the same moment khumbân-igash despatched his army to the frontier and declared war on his former protector. assur-bani-pal was touched to the quick by what he truly considered the ingratitude of the babylonians. �as for the children of babylon, i had set them upon seats of honour, i had clothed them in robes of many colours, i had placed rings of gold upon their fingers; the children of babylon had been established in assyria, and were admitted into my presence. but shamash-shumukîn, the false brother, he has not observed my ordinances, but has raised against me the peoples of akkad, the kaldâ, the aramaeans, the peoples of the country of the sea, from akabah to bab-salimêti!� nineveh was at first in a state of trepidation at this unexpected blow; the sacred oracles gave obscure replies, and presaged evil four times out of five. at last, one day, a seer slept and dreamed a dream, in which he saw this sentence written on the ground in the temple of sin: �all those who are meditating evil against assur-bani-pal, king of assyria, and who are preparing themselves to fight with him, i will inflict on them a terrible death: by the swift sword, by flinging them into fire, by famine and by pestilence, will i destroy their lives!� the courage of the people being revived by this prophecy, assur-bani-pal issued a proclamation to the babylonians, in which he denounced his brother�s treason, and commanded them to remain quiet as they valued their lives, and, having done this, he boldly assumed the offensive ( b.c.).* * the proclamation is dated in the eponymous year of assur- duruzur, corresponding to b.c.; the events which immediately preceded the proclamation ought, very probably, to be assigned to the same year. the only real danger came from the side of elam; this state alone was in a condition to oppose him with as numerous and determined an army as that which he himself could put into the field; if blam were disabled, it would be impossible for babylon to be victorious, and its fall would be a mere question of time. the opening of the campaign was a difficult matter. khumbân-igash, having sold his support dearly, had at all events spared no pains to satisfy his employer, and had furnished him with the flower of his nobility, comprising undashi, one of the sons of tiumman; zazaz, prefect of billatê; parru, chief of khilmu; attamîtu, commanding the archers; and nesu, commander-in-chief of his forces. in order to induce undashi to serve under him, he had not hesitated to recall to his memory the sad fate of tiumman: �go, and avenge upon assyria the murder of the father who begat thee!� the two opposing forces continued to watch one another�s movements without any serious engagement taking place during the greater part of the year b.c.; though the assyrians won some slight advantages, killing attamîtu in a skirmish and sending his head to nineveh, some serious reverses soon counterbalanced these preliminary successes. nabo-bel-shumi had arrived on the scene with his aramæan forces, and had compelled the troops engaged in the defence of uruk and uru to lay down their arms: their leaders, including sin-tabni-uzur himself, had been forced to renounce the supremacy of assyria, and had been enrolled in the rebel ranks.* * the official accounts say nothing of the intervention of nabo-bel-shumi at this juncture, but the information furnished by _tablet k _ in the british museum makes up for their silence. the objection raised by tielo to the interpretation given by g. smith that this passage cannot refer to assyrian deserters, falls to the ground if one admits that the assyrian troops led into elam at a subsequent period by nabo-bel-shumi, were none other than the garrisons of the lower euphrates which were obliged to side with the insurgents in b.c. the two despatches, _k _ and _k _ in the british museum, which refer to the defection of sin-tabni-uzur, are dated the th and th abu in the eponymous year of zagabbu, corresponding to the year b.c., as indicated by tiele with very good reason. operations seemed likely to be indefinitely prolonged, and assur-bani-pal, anxious as to the issue, importunately besought the gods to intervene on his behalf, when discords breaking out in the royal family of elam caused the scales of fortune once more to turn in his favour. the energy with which khumbân-igash had entered on the present struggle had not succeeded in effacing the disagreeable impression left on the minds of the majority of his subjects, by the fact that he had returned to his country in the chariots of the stranger and had been enthroned by the decree of an assyrian general. tammaritu, of khaîdalu, who had then fought at his side in the ranks of the invaders, was now one of those who reproached him most bitterly for his conduct. he frankly confessed that his hand had cut off the head of tiummân, but denied that he did so in obedience to the hereditary enemies of his country; he had but avenged his personal injuries, whereas khumbân-igash, following the promptings of ambition, had kissed the ground at the feet of a slave of assur-bani-pal and had received the crown as a recompense for his baseness. putting his rival to death, tammaritu seized the throne, and in order to prove that he was neither consciously nor unconsciously an instrument of ninevite policy, he at once sent reinforcements to the help of babylon without exacting in return any fresh subsidy. the assyrians, taking advantage of the isolated position of shamash-shumukîn, had pressed forward one of their divisions as far as the districts on the sea coast, which they had recovered from the power of nabo-bel-shumi, and had placed under the administration of belibni, a person of high rank. the arrival of the elamite force was on the point of further compromising the situation, and rekindling the flames of war more fiercely than ever, when a second revolution broke out, which shattered for ever the hopes of shamash-shumukîn. assur-bani-pal naturally looked upon this event as the result of his supplications and sacrifices; assur and ishtar, in answer to his entreaties, raised up indabigash, one of the most powerful feudal lords of the kingdom of susa, and incited him to revolt. tarnmaritu fled to the marshes which bordered the nâr-marratum, and seizing a vessel, put out to sea with his brothers, his cousins, seventeen princes of royal blood, and eighty-four faithful followers: the ship, driven by the wind on to the assyrian shore, foundered, and the dethroned monarch, demoralised by sea-sickness, would have perished in the confusion had not one of his followers taken him on his back and carried him safely to land across the mud. belibni sent him prisoner to nineveh with all his suite, and assur-bani-pal, after allowing him to humble himself before him, raised him from the ground, embraced him, and assigned to him apartments in the palace and a train of attendants befitting the dignity which he had enjoyed for a short time at susa. indabigash was too fully occupied with his own affairs to interfere again in the quarrel between the two brothers: his country, disorganised by the successive shocks it had sustained, had need of repose, for some years at least, before re-entering the lists, except at a disadvantage. he concluded no direct treaty with the assyrian king, but he at once withdrew the troops which had entered karduniash, and abstained from all hostile demonstrations against the garrisons of the border provinces: for the moment, indeed, this was all that was required of him ( b.c.). deprived of the support of elam, babylon was doomed to fall. the aramaeans deserted her cause, and nabu-bel-shumi, grandson of merodach-baladan, despairing of ever recovering the heritage of his family, withdrew to his haunts among the reed beds of the uknu, taking back with him as hostages the assyrians whom he had forced to join his army at the beginning of the campaign. shamash-shumukîn, however, was not disconcerted: he probably hoped that his distant allies might yet effect a diversion in his favour, and thus oblige his brother to withdraw half of the forces employed against him. indeed, after the blockade had already begun, a band of arabs under the two sheikhs abiyatê and aamu forced a way through the besieging lines and entered the city. this was the last succour which reached babylon from without: for many long months all communication between her citizens and the outer world was completely cut off. the assyrians laid waste the surrounding country with ruthless and systematic cruelty, burning the villages, razing to the ground isolated houses, destroying the trees, breaking down the dykes, and filling up the canals. the year b.c. was spent in useless skirmishes; the city offered an energetic and obstinate resistance, and as the walls were thick and the garrison determined, it would not have succumbed had not the supply of provisions finally failed. famine raged in the city, and the inhabitants devoured even their own children, while pestilence spreading among them mowed them down by thousands. [illustration: .jpg the eastern world in the reign of assur-bani-pal] the arab auxiliaries at this juncture deserted the cause of the defenders, and their sheikhs surrendered to assur-bani-pal, who received and pardoned them; but the babylonians themselves, knowing that they could expect no mercy, held out some time longer: at length, their courage and their strength exhausted, they rose against their chiefs, whose ambition or patriotic pride had brought them to such a pass, and determined to capitulate on any terms. shamash-shumukm, not wishing to fall alive into the hands of his brother, shut himself up in his palace, and there immolated himself on a funeral pyre with his wives his children, his slaves, and his treasures at the moment when his conquerors were breaking down the gates and penetrating into the palace precincts.* * g. smith thought that the babylonians, rendered furious by their sufferings, had seized shamash-shumukîn and burnt him to death. it is, however, certain that shamash-shumukîn killed himself, according to the eastern custom, to escape the tortures which awaited him if he fell alive into the hands of his enemies. the memory of this event, transferred by the popular imagination to assur-bani-pal, appears lu the concluding portion of the legendary history of sardanapalus. the city presented a terrible spectacle, and shocked even the assyrians, accustomed as they were to horrors of this sort. most of the numerous victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of the soldiery as were comparatively strong had endeavoured to escape into the country, and only those remained who had not sufficient strength left to drag themselves beyond the walls. assur-bani-pal pursued the fugitives, and, having captured nearly all of them, vented on them the full fury of his vengeance. he caused, the tongues of the soldiers to be torn out, and then had them clubbed to death. he massacred the common folk in front of the great winged bulls which had already witnessed a similar butchery half a century before, under his grandfather sennacherib; the corpses of his victims remained long unburied, a prey to all unclean beasts and birds. when the executioners and the king himself were weary of the slaughter, the survivors were pardoned; the remains of the victims were collected and piled up in specified places, the streets were cleansed, and the temples, purified by solemn lustrations, were reopened for worship.* assur-hani-pal proclaimed himself king in his brother�s room: he took the hands of bel, and, according to custom, his babylonian subjects gave him a new name, that of kandalanu, by which he was henceforth known among them.** * the date of - b.c. for the taking of babylon and the death of shamash-shumukîn is corroborated by the canon of ptolemy and the fragments of berosus, both of which attribute twenty or twenty-one years to the reign of saosdukhm (sammughes). lehmann points out a document dated in the xxth year of shamash-shumukîn, which confirms the exactitude of the information furnished by the greek chronologists. ** the canon of ptolemy gives as the successor of saosdukhm a certain kinêladan, who corresponds to kandalanu, whose date has been fixed by contemporary documents. the identity of kinêladan with assur-bani-pal was known from the greek chronologists, for whereas ptolemy puts kinêladan after saosdukhm, the fragments of berosus state that the successor of sammughes was his _brother_; that is to say, sardanapalus or assur-bani-pal. this identification had been proposed by g. smith, who tried to find the origin of the form kinêladan in the name of sinidinabal, which seems to be borne by assur-bani-pal in _tablet k of the british museum_, and which is really the name of his elder brother; it found numerous supporters as soon as pinches had discovered the tablets dated in the reign of kandalanu, and the majority of assyriologists and historians hold that kandalanu and assur- bani-pal are one and the same person. had he been wise, he would have completed the work begun by famine, pestilence, and the sword, and, far from creating, a new babylon, he would have completed the destruction of the ancient city. the same religious veneration which had disarmed so many of his predecessors probably withheld him from giving free rein to his resentment, and not daring to follow the example of sennacherib, he fell back on the expedient adopted by tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon, adhering to their idea of two capitals for two distinct states, but endeavouring to unite in his own person the two irreconcilable sovereignties of marduk and assur. he delegated the administration of babylonian affairs to shamash-danâni, one of his high officers of state,* and re-entered nineveh with an amount of spoil almost equalling that taken from egypt after the sack of thebes. * tin�s shamash-danâni, who was _limmu_ in b.c., was called at that date prefect of akkad, that is to say, of babylon. he probably entered on this office immediately after the taking of the city. kuta, sippara, and borsippa, the vassal states of babylon, which had shared the misfortune of their mistress, were, like her, cleared of their ruins, rebuilt and repeopled, and were placed under the authority of shamash-danâni: such was their inherent vitality that in the short space of ten or a dozen years they had repaired their losses and reattained their wonted prosperity. soon no effect of their disaster remained except an additional incentive for hating nineveh, and a determination more relentless than ever not to spare her when the day of her overthrow should come and they should have her in their power. it was impossible for so violent and so prolonged a crisis to take place without in some degree injuring the prestige of the empire. subjects and allies of long standing remained loyal, but those only recently subjugated by conquest, as well as the neighbouring independent kingdoms, without hesitation threw off the yoke of suzerainty or of obligatory friendship under which they had chafed. egypt freed herself from foreign domination as soon as the possibilities of war with elam had shown themselves, and it was psammetichus of sais, son of necho, one of the princes most favoured by the court of nineveh, who set on foot this campaign against his former patron. he expelled the assyrian garrisons, reduced the petty native princes to submission, and once more set up the kingdom of the pharaohs from elephantine to the syrian desert, without assur-bani-pal having been able to spare a single soldier to prevent him, or to bring him back to a sense of his duty. the details of his proceedings are unknown to us: we learn only that he owed his success to mercenaries imported from asia minor, and the assyrian chroniclers, unaccustomed to discriminate between the different peoples dwelling on the shores of the Ægean, believed that these auxiliaries were supplied to the pharaoh by the only sovereign with whom they had had any dealings, namely, gyges, king of lydia. that gyges had had negotiations with psammetichus and procured assistance for him has not yet been proved, but to assert that he was incapable of conceiving and executing such a design is quite a different matter. on the contrary, all the information we possess concerning his reign shows that he was daring in his political undertakings, and anxious to court alliances with the most distant countries. the man who tried to draw assur-bani-pal into a joint enterprise against the cimmerians would not have hesitated to ally himself with psammetichus if he hoped to gain the least profit from so doing. constant intercourse by sea took place between ionia or caria and egypt, and no event of any importance could occur in the delta without being promptly reported in ephesus or miletus. before this time the heraclid rulers of sardes had lived on excellent terms with most of the Æolian or ionian colonies: during the anxious years which followed his accession gyges went still further, and entered into direct relations with the nations of greece itself. it was no longer to the gods of asia, to zeus of telmissos, that he addressed himself in order to legitimatise his new sovereignty, but, like midas of phrygia, he applied to the prophetic god of hellas, to the delphian apollo and his priests. [illustration: .jpg psammetichus i.] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. he recompensed them lavishly for pronouncing judgment in his favour: beside the silver offerings with which he endowed the temple at delphi, he presented to it a number of golden vases, and, among others, six craters weighing thirty talents each, which, placed by the side of the throne of midas, were still objects of admiration in the treasury of the corinthians in the time of herodotus. to these he added at various times such valuable gifts that the pythian priestess, who had hitherto been poor, was in later times accounted to have owed to him her wealth. having made sure of the good will of the immortals, gyges endeavoured to extend his influence among the greek colonies along the coast, and if he did not in every case gain a footing amongst them, his failure seems to have been due, not to his incapacity, but to the force of circumstances or to the ambiguous position which he happened to occupy with regard to these colonies. ambition naturally incited him to annex them and make them into lydian cities, but the bold disposition of their inhabitants and their impatience of constraint never allowed any foreign rule to be established over them: conquest, to be permanent, would have to be preceded by a long period of alliance on equal terms, and of discreet patronage which might insensibly accustom them to recognise in their former friend, first a protector, and then a suzerain imbued with respect for their laws and constitution. gyges endeavoured to conciliate them severally, and to attach them to himself by treaties favourable to their interests or flattering to their vanity, and by timely and generous assistance in their internecine quarrels; and thus, secretly fostering their mutual jealousies, he was able to reduce some by force of arms without causing too much offence to the rest. he took colophon, and also, after several fruitless campaigns, the magnesia which lay near sardes, magnesia of sipylos, tradition subsequently adorning this fortunate episode in his history with various amusing anecdotes. according to one account he had a favourite in a youth of marvellous beauty called magnes, whom the magnesians, as an act of defiance to gryges, had mutilated till he was past recognition; and it was related that the king appealed to the fortune of war to avenge the affront. by a bold stroke he seized the lower quarters of smyrna, but was unable to take the citadel,* and while engaged in the struggle with this city, he entered into a friendly understanding with ephesus and miletus. * herodotus mentions this war without entering into any details. we know from pausanias that the people of smyrna defended themselves bravely, and that the poet mimnermus composed an elegy on this episode in their history. ephesus, situated at the mouth of the river oayster, was the natural port of sardes, the market in which the gold of lydia, and the commodities imported from the east by the caravans which traversed the royal route, might be exchanged for the products of hellas and of the countries of the west visited by the greek mariners. the city was at this time under the control of a family of rich shipowners, of whom the head was called melas: gryges gave him his daughter in marriage, and by this union gained free access to the seaboard for himself and his successors. the reason for his not pushing his advantages further in this direction is not hard to discover; since the fall of the kingdom of phrygia had left his eastern frontier unprotected, the attacks of the cimmerians had obliged him to concentrate his forces in the interior, and though he had always successfully repulsed them, the obstinacy with which these inroads were renewed year after year prevented him from further occupying himself with the greek cities. he had carefully fortified his vast domains in the basin of the ehyndakos, he had reconquered the troad, and though he had been unable to expel the barbarians from adramyttium, he prevented them from having any inland communications. miletus rendered vigorous assistance in this work of consolidating his power, for she was interested in maintaining a buffer state between herself and the marauders who had already robbed her of sinope; and it was for this reason that gyges, after mercilessly harassing her at the beginning of his reign, now preferred to enter into an alliance with her. he had given the milesians permission to establish colonies along the hellespont and the propontid at the principal points where communication took place between europe and asia; abydos, lampsacus, parium, and cyzicus, founded successively by milesian admirals, prevented the tribes which remained in thrace from crossing over to reinforce their kinsfolk who were devastating phrygia. gryges had hoped that his act of deference would have obtained for him the active support of assur-bani-pal, and during the following years he perseveringly continued at intervals to send envoys to nineveh: on one occasion he despatched with the embassy two cimmerian chiefs taken in battle, and whom he offered in token of homage to the gods of assyria. experience, however, soon convinced him that his expectations were vain; the assyrians, far from creating a diversion in his favour, were careful to avoid every undertaking which might draw the attention of the barbarians on themselves. as soon as gyges fully understood their policy, he broke off all connection with them, and thenceforth relied on himself alone for the protection of his interests. the disappointment he thus experienced probably stirred up his anger against assyria, and if he actually came to the aid of psammetichus, the desire of giving expression to a secret feeling of rancour no doubt contributed to his decision. assur-bani-pal deeply resented this conduct, but lydia was too far off for him to wreak his vengeance on it in a direct manner, and he could only beseech the gods to revenge what he was pleased to consider as base ingratitude: he therefore prayed assur and ishtar that �his corpse might lie outstretched before his enemies, and his bones be scattered far and wide.� a certain tugdami was at that time reigning over the cimmerians, and seems to have given to their hitherto undisciplined hordes some degree of cohesion and guidance.*; he gathered under his standard not only the trêres, the thracian kinsfolk of the cimmerians, but some of the asianic tribes, such as the lycians,** who were beginning to feel uneasy at the growing prosperity of gyges, and let them loose upon their lydian quarry. * the name tugdami, mentioned in the hymn published by strong, has been identified by sayce with the cimmerian chief mentioned by strabo under the name of lygdamis. the opinion of sayce has been adopted by other assyriologists. the inscription makes tugdami a king of the manda, and thus overthrows the hypothesis that lygdamis or dygdamis was a lycian chief who managed to discipline the barbarian hordes. ** the alliance of the lycians with the cimmerians and trêres is known from the evidence of callisthenes preserved for us by strabo. it is probable that many of the marauding tribes of the taurus--isaurians, lycaonians, and painphylians--similarly joined the cimmerians. their heavy cavalry, with metal helmets and long steel swords, overran the peninsula from end to end, treading down everything under their horses� hoofs. gyges did his best to stand up against the storm, but his lancers quailed beneath the shock and fled in confusion: he himself perished in the flight, and his corpse remained in the enemy�s hands ( b.c.). the whole of lydia was mercilessly ravaged, and the lower town of sardes was taken by storm.* * strabo states definitely that it was lygdamis who took the city. the account given by the same author of a double destruction of sardes in and b.c. is due to an unfortunate borrowing from the work of caliisthenes. [illustration: .jpg battle of the cimmerians against the greeks accompanied by their dogs] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sarcophagus of clazomenæ. ardys, who had succeeded his father on the throne, was able, however, to save the citadel: he rallied around him the remnants of his army and once more took the field. the cities of ionia made common cause with him; their hoplites issued victorious from more than one engagement, and their dogs, trained to harry fearlessly the horses of the enemy, often took an active part in the battle. city after city was attacked by the barbarians, and the suburbs plundered. ephesus, on account of the wealth it contained, formed their chief attraction, but their forces dashed themselves fruitlessly against its walls; they avenged themselves for their failure by setting on fire the temple of artemis which stood in the outskirts. this act of sacrilege profoundly stirred the whole hellenic world, and when the first fury of pillage was exhausted, the barbarians themselves seemed to have been struck with superstitious horror at their crime: deadly fevers contracted in the marshes near the city thinned their ranks, and in the scourge which struck down their forces they recognised the chastisement of the goddess.* * the invasion of ionia by the cimmerians is indicated in general terms by herodotus; the details of the attack on ephesus and the destruction of the temple of artemis are preserved in a passage of callimachus, and in the fragments quoted by hesychius. the survivors abandoned the siege and withdrew in disorder towards the mountains of the interior. on their way they surprised magnesia on the mæander and entirely destroyed it, but this constituted their sole military success: elsewhere, they contented themselves with devastating the fields without venturing to attack the fortified towns. scarcely had ardys freed himself from their unwelcome presence, than, like his father before him, he tried to win the support of assyria. he sent an envoy to nineveh with a letter couched in very humble terms: �the king whom the gods acknowledge, art thou; for as soon as thou hadst pronounced imprecations against my father, misfortune overtook him. i am thy trembling servant; receive my homage graciously, and i will bear thy yoke!� assur-bani-pal did not harden his heart to this suppliant who confessed his fault so piteously, and circumstances shortly constrained him to give a more efficacious proof of his favour to ardys than he had done in the days of gyges. on quitting lydia, tugdami, with his hordes, had turned eastwards, bent upon renewing in the provinces of the taurus and the euphrates the same destructive raids which he had made among the peoples of the Ægean seaboard; but in the gorges of cilicia he came into contact with forces much superior to his own, and fell fighting against them about the year b.c. his son sanda-khshatru led the survivors of this disaster back towards the centre of the peninsula, but the conflict had been so sanguinary that the cimmerian power never fully recovered from it. assur-bani-pal celebrated the victory won by his generals with a solemn thanksgiving to marduk, accompanied by substantial offerings of gold and objects of great value.* * strabo was aware, perhaps from xanthus of lyclia, that lygdamis had fallen in battle in cilicia. the hymn to marduk, published by strong, informs us that the cimmerian chief fell upon the assyrians, and that his son sanda- khshatru carried on hostilities some time longer. sanda- khshatru is an iranian name of the same type as that of the median king uva-khshatra or cyaxares. the tranquillity of the north-west frontier was thus for a time secured, and this success most opportunely afforded the king leisure to turn his attention to those of his vassals who, having thrown off their allegiance during the war against shamash-shumukîn, had not yet returned to their obedience. among these were the arabs and the petty princes of egypt. the contingents furnished by yauta, son of hazael, had behaved valiantly during the siege of babylon, and when they thought the end was approaching, their leaders, abiyatê and aamu, had tried to cut a way through the assyrian lines: being repulsed, they had laid down their arms on condition of their lives being spared. there now remained the bulk of the arab tribes to be reduced to submission, and the recent experiences of esarhaddon had shown the difficulties attending this task. assur-bani-pal entrusted its accomplishment to his subjects in edom, moab, ammon, the haurân, and damascus, since, dwelling on the very borders of the desert, they were familiar with the routes and the methods of warfare best suited to the country. they proved victorious all along the line. yauta, betrayed by his own subjects, took refuge with the nabatæans; but their king, nadanu, although he did not actually deliver him up to the assyrians, refused to grant him an asylum, and the unhappy man was finally obliged to surrender to his pursuers. his cousin uatê, son of birdadda, was made chief in his place by the assyrians, and yauta was sent to nineveh, where he was exposed at one of the city gates, chained in a niche beside the watch-dogs. amuladdin, the leading prince of kedar, met with no better fate: he was overcome, in spite of the assistance rendered him by adîya, the queen of a neighbouring tribe, and was also carried away into captivity. his defeat completed the discouragement of the tribes who still remained unsubdued. they implored mercy, which assur-bani-pal granted to them, although he deposed most of their sheikhs, and appointed as their ruler that abiyatê who had dwelt at his court since the capitulation of babylon. abiyatê took the oath of fidelity, and was sent back to kedar, where he was proclaimed king of all the arab tribes under the suzerainty of assyria.* * the _cylinder b of the brit. mus._ attributes to the reign of assur-bani-pala whole series of events, comprising the first submission of yauta and the restitution of the statues of atarsamain, which had taken place under esarhaddon. the assyrian annalists do not seem to have always clearly distinguished between yauta, son of hazael, and uatè, son of birdadda. of all the countries which had thrown off their allegiance during the late troubles, egypt alone remained unpunished, and it now seemed as if its turn had come to suffer chastisement for its rebellion. it was, indeed, not to be tolerated that so rich and so recently acquired a province should slip from the grasp of the very sovereign who had completed its conquest, without his making an effort on the first opportunity to reduce it once more to submission. such inaction on his part would be a confession of impotence, of which the other vassals of the empire would quickly take advantage: tyre, judah, moab, the petty kings of the taurus, and the chiefs of media, would follow the example of pharaoh, and the whole work of the last three centuries would have to be done over again. there can be no doubt that assur-bani-pal cherished the secret hope of recovering egypt in a short campaign, and that he hoped to attach it to the empire by more permanent bonds than before, but as a preliminary to executing this purpose it was necessary to close and settle if possible the account still open against elam. recent events had left the two rival powers in such a position that neither peace nor even a truce of long duration could possibly exist between them. elam, injured, humiliated, and banished from the plains of the lower euphrates, over which she had claimed at all times an almost exclusive right of pillage, was yet not sufficiently enfeebled by her disasters to be convinced of her decided inferiority to assyria. only one portion of her forces, and that perhaps the smallest, had taken the field and sustained serious reverses: she had still at her disposal, besides the peoples of the plain and the marshes who had suffered the most, those almost inexhaustible reserves of warlike and hardy mountaineers, whose tribes were ranged on the heights which bounded the horizon, occupying the elevated valleys of the uknu, the ulaî, and their nameless affluents, on the western or southern slopes or in the enclosed basins of the iranian table-land. here elam had at her command at least as many men as her adversaries could muster against her, and though these barbarian contingents lacked discipline and systematic training, their bravery compensated for the imperfection of their military education. elam not only refused to admit herself conquered, but she believed herself sure of final victory, and, as a matter of fact, it is not at all certain that assur-bani-pal�s generals would ever have completely triumphed over her, if internal discords and treason had not too often paralysed her powers. the partisans of khumbân-igash were largely responsible for bringing about the catastrophe in which tiummân had perished, and those who sided with tammaritu had not feared to provoke a revolt at the moment when khumbân-igash was occupied in chaldæa; indabigash in his turn had risen in rebellion in the rear of tammaritu, and his intervention had enabled the assyrians to deal their final blow at shamash-shumukîn. the one idea of the non-reigning members of the royal house was to depose the reigning sovereign, and they considered all means to this end as justifiable, whether assassination, revolt, desertion to the enemy, or defection on the very field of battle. as soon as one of them had dethroned another, hatred of the foreigner again reigned supreme in his breast, and he donned his armour with a firm determination to bring the struggle to an end, but the course he had pursued towards his predecessor was now adopted by one of his relatives towards himself; the enemy meanwhile was still under arms, and each of these revolutions brought him a step nearer to the goal of his endeavours, the complete overthrow of the elamite kingdom and its annexation to the empire of nineveh. even before the struggle with babylon was concluded, assur-bani-pal had demanded of indabigash the release of the assyrians whom nabo-bel-shumu had carried off in his train, besides the extradition of that personage himself. indabigash had no desire for war at this juncture, but hesitated to surrender the kaldâ, who had always served him faithfully: he entered into negotiations which were interminably prolonged, neither of the two parties being anxious to bring them to a close. after the fall of babylon, assur-bani-pal, who was tenacious in his hatred, summoned the elamite ambassadors, and sent them back to their master with a message conceived in the following menacing terms: �if thou dost not surrender those men, i will go and destroy thy cities, and lead into captivity the inhabitants of susa, madaktu, and khaidalu. i will hurl thee from thy throne, and will set up another thereon: as aforetime i destroyed tiummân, so will i destroy thee.� a detachment of troops was sent to enforce the message of defiance, but when the messengers had reached the frontier town of deri, indabigash was no longer there: his nobles had assassinated him, and had elected khumbân-khaldash, the son of atta-mêtush, king in his stead. the opportunity was a favourable one to sow the seeds of division in the elamite camp, before the usurper should have time to consolidate his power: assur-bani-pal therefore threw himself into the cause of tammaritu, supporting him with an army to which many malcontents speedily rallied. the aramæans and the cities of the marsh-lands on the littoral, khilmu, billatê, dummuku, sulâa, lakhiru, and dibirîna, submitted without a struggle, and the invaders met with no resistance till they reached bît-imbi. this town had formerly been conquered by sennacherib, but it had afterwards returned to the rule of its ancient masters, who had strongly fortified it. it now offered a determined resistance, but without success: its population was decimated, and the survivors mutilated and sent as captives into assyria--among them the commander of the garrison, imbappi, son-in-law of khumbân-khaldash, together with the harem of tiummân, with his sons and daughters, and all the members of his family whom his successors had left under guard in the citadel. the siege had been pushed forward so rapidly that the king had not been able to make any attempt to relieve the defenders: besides this, a pretender had risen up against him, one umbakhabua, who had been accepted as king by the important district of bubîlu. the fall of bît-imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands on the shores of the nar-marratum. tammaritu entered susa in triumph and was enthroned afresh; but the insolence and rapacity of his auxiliaries was so ruthlessly manifested, that at the end of some days he resolved to rid himself of them by the sword. a traitor having revealed the design, tammaritu was seized, stripped of his royal apparel, and cast into prison. the generals of assur-bani-pal had no one whom they could proclaim king in his stead, and furthermore, the season being well advanced, the elamites, who had recovered from their first alarm, were returning in a body, and threatened to cut off the assyrian retreat: they therefore evacuated susa, and regained assyria with their booty. they burnt all the towns along the route whose walls were insufficient to protect them against a sudden escalade or an attack of a few hours� duration, and the country between the capital and the frontier soon contained nothing but heaps of smoking ruins ( e.g.).* * the difficulty we experience in locating on the map most of the names of elamite towns is the reason why we cannot determine with any certainty the whole itinerary followed by the assyrian army. the campaign, which had been so successful at the outset, had not produced all the results expected from it. the assyrians had hoped henceforth to maintain control of elam through tammaritu, but in a short time they had been obliged to throw aside the instrument with which they counted on effecting the complete humiliation of the nation: khumbân-khaldash had reoccupied susa, following on the heels of the last assyrian detachment, and he reigned as king once more without surrendering nabo-bel-shumi, or restoring the statue of nana, or fulfilling any of the conditions which had been the price of a title to the throne. assur-bani-pal was not inclined to bear patiently this partial reverse; as soon as spring returned he again demanded the surrender of the chaldæan and the goddess, under pain of immediate invasion. khumbân-khaldash offered to expel nabo-bel-shumi from lakhiru where he had entrenched himself, and to thrust him towards the assyrian frontier, where the king�s troops would be able to capture him. his offer was not accepted, and a second embassy, headed by tammaritu, who was once more in favour, arrived to propose more trenchant terms. the elamite might have gone so far as to grant the extradition of nabo-bel-shumi, but if he had yielded the point concerning nana, a rebellion would have broken out in the streets of susa: he preferred war, and prepared in desperation to carry it on to the bitter end. the conflict was long and sanguinary, and the result disastrous for elam. bît-imbi opened its gates, the district of kashi surrendered at discretion, followed by the city of khamanu and its environs, and the assyrians approached madaktu: khumbân-khaldash evacuated the place before they reached it, and withdrew beneath the walls of dur-undasi, on the western bank of the ididi. his enemies pursued him thither, but the stream was swift and swollen by rain, so that for two days they encamped on its bank without daring to cross, and were perhaps growing discouraged, when ishtar of arbela once more came to the rescue. appearing in a dream to one of her seers, she said, �i myself go before assur-bani-pal, the king whom my hands have created;� the army, emboldened by this revelation, overcame the obstacle by a vigorous effort, and dashed impetuously over regions as yet unvisited by any conqueror. the assyrians burnt down fourteen royal cities, numberless small towns, and destroyed the cornfields, the vines, and the orchards; khumbàn-khaldash, utterly exhausted, fled to the mountains �like a young dog.� banunu and the districts of tasarra, twenty cities in the country of khumir, khaîdalu, and bashimu, succumbed one after another, and when the invaders at length decided to retrace their steps to the frontier, susa, deserted by her soldiers and deprived of her leaders, lay before them an easy prey. it was not the first time in the last quarter of a century that the assyrians had had the city at their mercy. they had made some stay in it after the battle of tullîz, and also after the taking of bît-imbi in the preceding year; but on those occasions they had visited it as allies, to enthrone a king owing allegiance to their own sovereign, and political exigencies had obliged them to repress their pillaging instincts and their long-standing hatred. now that they had come as enemies, they were restrained by no considerations of diplomacy: the city was systematically pillaged, and the booty found in it was so immense that the sack lasted an entire month. the royal treasury was emptied of its gold and silver, its metals and the valuable objects which had been brought to it from sumir, accad, and karduniash at successive periods from the most remote ages down to that day, in the course of the successful invasions conducted by the princes of susa beyond the tigris; among them, the riches of the babylonian temples, which shamash-shumukîn had lavished on tiumman to purchase his support, being easily distinguishable. the furniture of the palace was sent to nineveh in a long procession; it comprised beds and chairs of ivory, and chariots encrusted with enamel and precious stones, the horses of which were caparisoned with gold. the soldiers made their way into the ziggurât, tore down the plates of ruddy copper, violated the sanctuary, and desecrated the prophetic statues of the gods who dwelt within it, shrouded in the sacred gloom, and whose names were only uttered by their devotees with trembling lips. shumudu, lagamar, partikira, ammankasibar, udurân, sapak, aîpaksina, bilala, panintimri, and kindakarpu, were now brought forth to the light, and made ready to be carried into exile together with their belongings and their priests. [illustration: .jpg statues of the gods carried off by assyrian soldiery] drawn by faucher-gudin, from layard, _the monuments of nineveh_. thirty-two statues of the kings, both ancient and modern, in silver, gold, bronze, and marble, escorted the gods on their exodus, among their number being those of khumbânigash, son of umbadarâ, shutruk-nakhunta, and tammaritu ii., the sovereigns who had treated assyria with the greatest indignity. the effigy of khalludush was subjected to humiliating outrage: �his mouth, with its menacing smile, was mutilated; his lips, which breathed forth defiance, were slit; his hands, which had brandished the bow against assur, were cut off,� to avenge, though tardily, the ill success of sennacherib. the sacred groves shared the fate of the temples, and all the riches collected in them by generations of victors were carried off in cartloads. they contained, amongst other edifices, the tombs of the ancient heroes of elam, who had feared neither assur nor ishtar, and who had often brought trouble on the ancestors of assur-bani-pal. their sepulchres were violated, their coffins broken open, their bones collected and despatched to nineveh, to crumble finally into dust in the land of exile: their souls, chained to their mortal bodies, shared their captivity, and if they were provided with the necessary sustenance and libations to keep them from annihilation, it was not from any motives of compassion or pity, but from a refinement of vengeance, in order that they might the longer taste the humiliation of captivity. [illustration: .jpg the tumulus of suza] the image of nana was found among those of the native gods: it was now separated from them, and after having been cleansed from pollution by the prescribed ceremonies, it was conducted to uruk, which it entered in triumph on the st of the month kislev. it was reinstated in the temple it had inhabited of old: sixteen hundred and thirty-five years had passed since it had been carried off, in the reign of kutur-nakhunta, to dwell as a prisoner in susa. assur-bani-pal had no intention of preserving the city of susa from destruction, or of making it the capital of a province which should comprise the plain of elam. possibly it appeared to him too difficult to defend as long as the mountain tribes remained unsubdued, or perhaps the elamites themselves were not so completely demoralised as he was pleased to describe them in his inscriptions, and the attacks of their irregular troops would have rendered the prolonged sojourn of the assyrian garrison difficult, if not impossible. whatever the reason, as soon as the work of pillage was fully accomplished, the army continued its march towards the frontier, carrying with it the customary spoil of the captured towns, and their whole population, or all, at least, who had not fled at the approach of the enemy. the king reserved for himself the archers and pikemen, whom he incorporated into his own bodyguard, as well as the artisans, smelters, sculptors, and stonemasons, whose talents he turned to account in the construction and decoration of his palaces; the remainder of the inhabitants he apportioned, like so many sheep, to the cities and the temples, governors of provinces, officers of state, military chiefs, and private soldiers. khumbân-khaldash reoccupied susa after the assyrians had quitted it, but the misery there was so great that he could not endure it: he therefore transferred his court to madaktu, one of the royal cities which had suffered least from the invasion, and he there tried to establish a regular government. rival claimants to the throne had sprung up, but he overcame them without much difficulty: one of them, named paê, took refuge in assyria, joining tammaritn and that little band of dethroned kings or pretenders to the throne of susa, of whom assur-bani-pal had so adroitly made use to divide the forces of his adversary. khumbân-khaldash might well believe that the transportation of the statue of nana and the sack of susa had satisfied the vengeance of the assyrians, at least for a time, and that they would afford him a respite, however short; but he had reckoned without taking into consideration the hatred which had pursued nabo-bel-shumi during so many years: an envoy followed him as far as madaktu, and offered khumbân-khaldash once more the choice between the extradition of the chaldean or the immediate reopening of hostilities. he seems to have had a moment�s hesitation, but when nabo-bel-shumi was informed of the terms offered by the envoy, �life had no more value in his eyes: he desired death.� he ordered his shield-bearer to slay him, and when the man refused to do so, declaring that he could not live without his master, they stabbed each other simultaneously, and perished, as they had lived, together. khumbân-khaldash, delivered by this suicide from his embarrassments, had the corpse of the master and the head of the faithful shield-bearer duly embalmed, and sent them to nineveh. assur-bani-pal mutilated the wretched body in order to render the conditions of life in the other world harder for the soul: he cut off its head, and forbade the burial of the remains, or the rendering to the dead of the most simple offerings. [illustration: .jpg prayer in the desert after painting by gerome] about this time the inhabitants of bît-imbi, of til-khumba, and a dozen other small towns, who had fled for refuge to the woods of mount saladri, came forth from their hiding-places and cast themselves on the mercy of the conqueror: he deigned to receive them graciously, and enrolled them in his guard, together with the prisoners taken in the last campaign. he was contented to leave elam to itself for the moment, as he was disquieted at the turn affairs were taking in arabia. abiyatê, scarcely seated on the throne, had refused to pay tribute, and had persuaded uatê and nadanu to join him in his contumacy; several cities along the phoenician seaboard, led away by his example, shut their gates and declared themselves independent. assur-bani-pal had borne all this patiently, while the mass of his troops were engaged against khumbân-khaldash; but after the destruction of susa, he determined to revenge himself. his forces left nineveh in the spring of b.c., crossed the euphrates, and the line of wooded hills which bordered the course of the river towards the west, provisioned themselves with water at the halting-place of laribda, and plunged into the desert in search of the rebels. the assyrians overran the country of mash, from the town of iarki to azalla, where �there dwell no beasts of the field, where no bird of the sky builds its nest,� and then, after filling their water-skins at the cisterns of azalla, they advanced boldly into the thirsty lands which extend towards qurazite; they next crossed the territory of kedar, cutting down the trees, filling up the wells, burning the tents, and reached damascus from the north-east side, bringing in their train innumerable flocks of asses, sheep, camels, and slaves. the bedâwin of the north had remained passive, but the nabathæans, encouraged by the remoteness of their country and the difficulty of access to it, persisted in their rebellion. the assyrian generals did not waste much time in celebrating their victory in the syrian capital: on the rd of ab, forty days after leaving the chaldsean frontier, they started from damascus towards the south, and seized the stronghold of khalkhuliti, at the foot of the basaltic plateau overlooked by the mountains of the haurân; they then destroyed all the fortresses of the country one after another, driving the inhabitants to take shelter in the rugged range of volcanic rocks, where they were blockaded, and finally reduced by famine: abiyatê capitulated, nadanu ransomed himself by a promise of tribute, and the whole desert between syria and the euphrates fell once more into the condition of an assyrian province. before returning to nineveh, assur-bani-pal�s generals inflicted chastisement on akko and ushu, the two chief tyrian cities which had revolted, and this vigorous action confirmed the fidelity of the assyrian vassals in palestine. uate�s life was spared, but his lip and cheek were pierced by the hand of the king himself, and he was led by a cord passed through the wounds, as if he had been a wild beast intended for domestication; a dog�s collar was riveted round his neck, and he was exposed in a cage at one of the gates of nineveh. aamu, the brother of abiyatê, was less fortunate, for he was flayed alive before the eyes of the mob. assyria was glutted with the spoil: the king, as was customary, reserved for his own service the able-bodied men for the purpose of recruiting his battalions, distributing the remainder among his officers and soldiers. the camels captured were so numerous that their market-value was for a long time much reduced; they were offered in the open market, like sheep, for a half-shekel of silver apiece, and the vendor thought himself fortunate to find a purchaser even at this price. the final ruin of elam followed swiftly on the subjugation of arabia. while one division of the army was scouring the desert, the remainder were searching the upland valleys of the ulaî and the uknu, and relentlessly pursuing khumbân-khaldash. the wretched monarch was now in command of merely a few bands of tattered followers, and could no longer take the field; the approach of the enemy obliged him to flee from madaktu, and entrench himself on the heights. famine, misery, and probably also the treachery of his last adherents, soon drove him from his position, and, despairing of his cause, he surrendered himself to the officers who were in pursuit of him. he was the third king of elam whom fate had cast alive into the hands of the conqueror: his arrival at nineveh afforded the haughty assur-bani-pal an occasion for celebrating one of those triumphal processions in which his proud soul delighted, and of going in solemn state to thank the gods for the overthrow of his most formidable enemy. on the day when he went to prostrate himself before assur and ishtar, he sent for tammaritu, paê, and khumbân-khaldash, and adding to them uatê, who was taken out of his cage for the occasion, he harnessed all four to his chariot of state, and caused himself to be drawn through nineveh by this team of fallen sovereigns to the gate of the temple of emashmash. and, indeed, at that moment, he might reasonably consider himself as having reached the zenith of his power. egypt, it is true, still remained unpunished, and its renewed vitality under the influence of the saïte pharaohs allowed no hope of its being speedily brought back into subjection, but its intrigues no longer exerted any influence over syria, and tyre itself appeared to be resigned to the loss of its possessions on the mainland. lydia under the rule of ardys continued to maintain intermittent intercourse with its distant protector. the provinces of the taurus, delivered from the terror inspired by the cimmerians, desired peace above all things, and the mannai had remained quiet since the defeat of akhsheri. babylon was rapidly recovering from the ills she had endured. she consoled herself for her actual servitude by her habitual simulation of independence; she called assur-bani-pal kandalanu, and this new name allowed her to fancy she had a separate king, distinct from the king of assyria. elam no longer existed. its plains and marsh lands were doubtless occupied by assyrian garrisons, and formed an ill-defined annexation to nineveh; the mountain tribes retained their autonomy, and although still a source of annoyance to their neighbours by their raids or sudden incursions, they no longer constituted a real danger to the state: if there still remained some independent elamite states, elam itself, the most ancient, except babylon, of all the asiatic kingdoms, was erased from the map of the world. the memories of her actual history were soon effaced, or were relegated to the region of legend, where the fabulous memnon supplanted in the memory of men those lines of hardy conquerors who had levied tribute from syria in the day when nineveh was still an obscure provincial town. assyria alone remained, enthroned on the ruins of the past, and her dominion seemed established for all time; yet, on closer investigation, indications were not wanting of the cruel sufferings that she also had endured. once again, as after the wars of tiglath-pileser i. and those of assur-nazir-pal and shalmaneser iii., her chiefs had overtaxed her powers by a long series of unremitting wars against vigorous foes. doubtless the countries comprised within her wide empire furnished her with a more ample revenue and less restricted resources than had been at the command of the little province of ancient days, which had been bounded by the khabur and the zab, and lay on the two banks of the middle course of the tigris; but, on the other hand, the adversaries against whom she had measured her forces, and whom she had overthrown, were more important and of far greater strength than her former rivals. she had paid dearly for humiliating egypt and laying babylon in the dust. as soon as babylon was overthrown, she had, without pausing to take breath, joined issue with elam, and had only succeeded in triumphing over it by drawing upon her resources to the utmost during many years: when the struggle was over, she realised to what an extent she had been weakened by so lavish an outpouring of the blood of her citizens. the babylonian and elamite recruits whom she incorporated into her army after each of her military expeditions, more or less compensated for the void which victory itself had caused in her population and her troops; but the fidelity of these vanquished foes of yesterday, still smarting from their defeat, could not be relied on, and the entire assimilation of their children to their conquerors was the work of at least one or two generations. assyria, therefore, was on the eve of one of those periods of exhaustion which had so often enfeebled her national vitality and imperilled her very existence. on each previous occasion she had, it is true, recovered after a more or less protracted crisis, and the brilliancy of her prospects, though obscured for a moment, appeared to be increased by their temporary eclipse. there was, therefore, good reason to hope that she would recover from her latest phase of depression; and the only danger to be apprehended was that some foreign power, profiting by her momentary weakness, might rise up and force her, while still suffering from the effects of her heroic labours, to take the field once more. chapter iii--the medes and the second chaldÆan empire _the fall of nineveh and the rise of the chaldÆan and median empires--the xxvith egyptian dynasty: cyaxares, alyattes, and nebuchadrezzar._ _the legendary history of the kings of media and the first contact of the medes with the assyrians: the alleged iranian migrations of the avesta--media-proper, its fauna and flora; phraortes and the beginning of the median empire--persia proper and the persians; conquest of persia by the medes--the last monuments of assur-bani-pal: the library of kouyunjik--phraortes defeated and slain by the assyrians._ _cyaxares and his first attach on nineveh--the assyrian triangle and the defence of nineveh: assur-bani-pal summons the scythians to his aid--the scythian invasion--judah under manasseh and amon: development in the conceptions of the prophets--the scythians in syria and on the borders of egypt: they are defeated and driven back by cyaxares--the last kings of nineveh and naliopolassar--taking and, destruction of nineveh: division of the assyrian empire between the chaldæans and the medes ( b.c.)._ _the xxvith egyptian dynasty--psammetichus i. and the ionian and carian mercenaries; final retreat of the ethiopians and the annexation of the theban principality; the end of egypt as a great power--first greek settlements in the delta; flight of the mashauasha and the reorganisation of the army--resumption of important works and the renaissance of art in egypt--the occupation of ashdod, and the syrian policy of psammetichus i._ _josiah, king of judah: the discovery and public reading of the book of the covenant; the religious reform--necho ii. invades syria: josiah slain at megiddo, the battle of carchemish--nebuchadrezzar ii.: his policy with regard to media--the conquests of cyaxares and the struggles of the mermnadæ against the greek colonies--the war between alyattes and cyaxares: the battle of the halys and the peace of b.c.--necho reorganises his army and his fleet: the circumnavigation of africa--jeremiah and the egyptian party in jerusalem: the revolt of jehoiakim and the captivity of jehoiachin._ _psammetichus i. and zedekiah--apries and the revolt of tyre and of judah: the siege and destruction of jerusalem--the last convulsions of judah and the submission of tyre; the successes of aprics in phoenicia--the greeks in libya and the founding of cyrene: the defeat of irasa and the fall of apries--amasis and the campaign of nebuchadrezzar against egypt--relations between nebuchadrezzar and astyages--the fortifications of babylon and the rebuilding of the great ziggurât--the successors of nebuchadrezzar: nabonidus._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter iii--the medes and the second chaldÆan empire _the fall of nineveh and the rise of the chaldæan and median empires--the xxvith egyptian dynasty: cyaxares, alyattes, and nebuchadrezzar._ drawn by faucher-gudin, from the silver vase of tchertomlitsk, now in the museum of the hermitage. the vignette is also drawn by faucher-gudin, and represents an egyptian torso in the turin museum; the cartouche which is seen upon the arm is that of psammetichus i. the east was ever a land of kaleidoscopic changes and startling dramatic incidents. an oriental empire, even when built up by strong hands and watched over with constant vigilance, scarcely ever falls to pieces in the slow and gradual process of decay arising from the ties that bind it together becoming relaxed or its constituent elements growing antiquated. it perishes, as a rule, in a cataclysm; its ruin comes like a bolt from the blue, and is consummated before the commencement of it is realised. one day it stands proud and stately in the splendour of its glory; there is no report abroad but that which tells of its riches, its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things. suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of an eye, amid the glare of lightning, the resounding crash of thunder, whirlwinds of dust and rain: when the storm has passed away as quickly as it came, its mutterings heralding the desolation which it bears to other climes, the brightening sky no longer reveals the old contours and familiar outlines, but the sun of history rises on a new empire, emerging, as if by the touch of a magic wand, from the ruins which the tempest has wrought. there is nothing apparently lacking of all that, in the eyes of the many, invested its predecessor with glory; it seems in no wise inferior in national vigour, in the number of its soldiers, in the military renown of its chiefs, in the proud prosperity of its people, or in the majesty of its gods; the present fabric is as spacious and magnificent, it would seem, as that which has but just vanished into the limbo of the past. no kingdom ever shone with brighter splendour, or gave a greater impression of prosperity, than the kingdom of assyria in the days succeeding its triumphs over blam and arabia: precisely at this point the monuments and other witnesses of its activity fail us, just as if one of the acts of the piece in which it had played a chief part having come to an end, the drop-curtain must be lowered, amid a flourish of trumpets and the illuminations of an apotheosis, to allow the actors a little breathing-space. half a century rolls by, during which we have a dim perception of the subdued crash of falling empires, and of the trampling of armies in fierce fight; then the curtain rises on an utterly different drama, of which the plot has been woven behind the scenes, and the exciting _motif_ has just come into play. we no longer hear of assyria and its kings; their palaces are in ruins; their last faithful warriors sleep in unhonoured graves beneath the ashes of their cities, their prowess is credited to the account of half a dozen fabulous heroes such as ninus, sardanapalus, and semiramis--heroes whose names call up in the memory of succeeding generations only vague but terrible images, such as the phantasies of a dream, which, although but dimly remembered in the morning, makes the hair to stand on end with terror. the nations which erewhile disputed the supremacy with assyria have either suffered a like eclipse--such as the khâti, urartu, the cossæans, and elam--or have fallen like egypt and southern syria into the rank of second-rate powers. it is chaldaea which is now in the van of the nations, in company with lydia and with media, whose advent to imperial power no one would have ventured to predict forty or fifty years before. the principality founded by deïokes about the beginning of the seventh century b.c., seemed at first destined to play but a modest part; it shared the fortune of the semi-barbarous states with which the ninevite conquerors came in contact on the western boundary of the iranian plateau, and from which the governors of arrapkha or of kharkhar had extorted tribute to the utmost as often as occasion offered. according to one tradition, it had only three kings in an entire century: deïokes up till b.c., phraortes from to , and after the latter year cyaxares, the hero of his race.* another tradition claimed an earlier foundation for the monarchy, and doubled both the number of the kings and the age of the kingdom.** * this is the tradition gleaned by herodotus, probably at sardes, from the mouths of persians residing in that city. ** this is the tradition derived from the court of artaxerxes by ctesias of cnidus. volney discovered the principle upon which the chronology of his median dynasty was based by ctesias. if we place his list side by side with that of herodotus-- [illustration: .jpg and .jpg table of median dynasty] we see that, while rejecting the names given by herodotus, ctesias repeats twice over the number of years assigned by the latter to the reigns of his kings, at least for the four last generations-- at the beginning herodotus gives before deïokes an interregnum of uncertain duration. ctesias substituted the round number of fifty years for the fifty-three assigned to deïokes, and replaced the interregnum by a reign which he estimated at the mean duration of a human generation, thirty years; he then applied to this new pair of numbers the process of doubling he had employed for the couple mentioned above-- the number twenty-eight has been attributed to the reign of arbakes, instead of the number thirty, to give an air of truthfulness to the whole catalogue. this tradition ignored the monarchs who had rendered the second assyrian empire illustrious, and substituted for them a line of inactive sovereigns, reputed to be the descendants of ninus and semiramis. the last of them, sardanapalus, had, according to this account, lived a life of self-indulgence in his harem, surrounded by women, dressing himself in their garb, and adopting feminine occupations and amusements. the satrap of media, arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in concert with belesys the babylonian. the imminence of the danger thus occasioned roused sardanapalus from his torpor, and revived in him the warlike qualities of his ancestors; he placed himself at the head of his troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when his hand was stayed by the defection of some bactrian auxiliaries. he shut himself up in nineveh, and for two whole years heroically repulsed all assaults; in the third year, the tigris, swollen by the rains, overflowed its banks and broke down the city walls for a distance of twenty stadia. the king thereupon called to mind an oracle which had promised him victory until the day when the river should betray him. judging that the prediction was about to be accomplished, he resolved not to yield himself alive to the besieger, and setting fire to his palace, perished therein, together with his children and his treasures, about b.c. arbakes, thus rendered an independent sovereign, handed down the monarchy to his son mandaukas, and he in his turn was followed successively by sosarmos, artykas, arbianes, artaios, artynes, and astibaras.* these names are not the work of pure invention; they are met with in more than one assyrian text: among the petty kings who paid tribute to sargon are enumerated some which bear such names as mashdaku,** ashpanda,*** arbaku, and khartukka,*** and many others, of whom traces ought to be found some day among the archives of princely families of later times. * oppert thought that the names given by herodotus represented �aryanised forms of turanian names, of which otesias has given the persian translation.� ** mashdaku is identified by post with the mandaukas or maydaukas of ctesias, which would then be a copyist�s error for masdaukas. the identification with vashd[t]aku, vashtak, the name of a fabulous king of armenia, is rejected by rost; mashdaku would be the iranian mazdaka, preserved in the mazakes of arrian. *** ashpanda is the aspandas or aspadas which ctesias gives instead of the astyages of herodotus. **** the name of artykas is also found in the secondary form kardikoas, which is nearer the khartukka of the assyrian texts. there were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers inclined to reconstruct the history of asia, a supply of materials of varying value--authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of the composer: from these elements it was easy to compile lists of median kings which had no real connection with each other as far as their names, order of succession, or duration of reign were concerned. the assyrian chronicles have handed down to us, in place of these dynasties which were alleged to have exercised authority over the whole territory, a considerable number of noble houses scattered over the country, each of them autonomous, and a rival of its neighbour, and only brought into agreement with one another at rare intervals by their common hatred of the invader. some of them were representatives of ancient races akin to the susians, and perhaps to the first inhabitants of chaldæa; others belonged to tribes of a fresh stock, that of the aryans, and more particularly to the iranian branch of the aryan family. we catch glimpses of them in the reign of shalmaneser iii., who calls them the amadaî; then, after this first brush with assyria, intercourse and conflict between the two nations became more and more frequent every year, until the �distant medes� soon began to figure among the regular adversaries of the ninevite armies, and even the haughtiest monarchs refer with pride to victories gained over them. rammân-nirâri waged ceaseless war against them, tiglath-pileser iii. twice drove them before him from the south-west to the north-east as far as the foot of demavend, while sargon, sennacherib, and esarhaddon, during their respective reigns, kept anxious watch upon them, and endeavoured to maintain some sort of authority over the tribes which lay nearest to them. both in the personal names and names of objects which have come down to us in the records of these campaigns, we detect iranian characteristics, in spite of the semitic garb with which the inscriptions have invested them: among the names of countries we find partukka, diristânu, patusharra, nishaîa, urivzân, abîruz, and ariarma, while the men bear such names as ishpabarra, eparna, shîtirparna, uarzân, and dayaukku. as we read through the lists, faint resemblances in sound awaken dormant classical memories, and the ear detects familiar echoes in the names of those persians whose destinies were for a time linked with those of athens and sparta in the days of darius and of xerxes: it is like the first breath of greek influence, faint and almost imperceptible as yet, wafted to us across the denser atmosphere of the east. the iranians had a vague remembrance of a bygone epoch, during which they had wandered, in company with other nations of the same origin as themselves, in that cradle of the aryan peoples, aryanem-vaêjô. modern historians at first placed their mythical birthplace in the wilder regions of central asia, near the oxus and the jaxartes, and not far from the so-called table-land of pamir, which they regarded as the original point of departure of the indo-european races. they believed that a large body of these primitive aryans must have descended southwards into the basin of the indus and its affluents, and that other detachments had installed themselves in the oases of margiana and khorasmia, while the iranians would have made their way up to the plateau which separates the caspian sea from the persian gulf, where they sought to win for themselves a territory sufficient for their wants. the compilers of the sacred books of the iranians claimed to be able to trace each stage of their peregrinations, and to describe the various accidents which befell them during this heroic period of their history. according to these records, it was no mere chance or love of adventure which had led them to wander for years from clime to clime, but rather a divine decree. while ahurômazdaô, the beneficent deity whom they worshipped, had provided them with agreeable resting-places, a perverse spirit, named angrômaînyus, had on every occasion rendered their sojourn there impossible, by the plagues which he inflicted on them. bitter cold, for instance, had compelled them to forsake aryanem-vaêjô and seek shelter in sughdhâ and mûru.* locusts had driven them from sughdhâ; the incursions of the nomad tribes, coupled with their immorality, had forced them to retire from mûru to bâkhdhî, �the country of lofty banners,� ** and subsequently to nisaya, which lies to the south-east, between mûru and bâkhdhî. from thence they made their way into the narrow valleys of the harôyu, and overran vaêkereta, the land of noxious shadows.*** * sughdhâ is sogdiana; mûru, in ancient persian margush, is the modern merv, the margiana of classical geographers. ** bâkhdhî is identical with bactriana, but, as spiegel points out, this avestic form is comparatively recent, and readily suggests the modern balkh, in which the consonants have become weakened. *** the avesta places nisaya between mûru and bâkhdhî to distinguish it from other districts of the same name to be found in this part of asia: eugène burnouf is probably correct in identifying it with the nêssea of strabo and of ptolemy, which lay to the south of margiana, at the junction of the roads leading to hyrcania in one direction and bactriana in the other. from this point forwards, the countries mentioned by their chroniclers are divided into two groups, lying in opposite directions: arahvaiti, haêtumant, and haptahindu* on the east; and on the west, urvâ,** harôyu or haraêva is the greek aria, the modern province of herat. * arahvaiti, the harauvatish of the achsemenian inscriptions, is the greek arachosia, and haêtumant the basin of their etymander, the modern helmend; in other words, the present province of seîstan. hapta-hindu is the western part of the indian continent, i.e. the punjaub. ** the pehlevi commentators identify urvâ with mesônê, mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the tigris and euphrates, or perhaps the plain around ispahan which bore the name of masân in the sassanid period. fr. lenormant had connected it with the name urivzân, which is applied in the assyrian inscriptions to a district of media in the time of tiglath-pileser iii. [illustration: .jpg map of the lands created by ahura-mazda] the pehlevi commentators identify vaêkereta with kabulistan, and also volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies the name: �the shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or as some say, the shadow of the mountains,� and it produces fever there. arguing from passages of similar construction, lassen was led to recognise in the epithet _duzhako-shayanem_ a place-name, �inhabitant of duzhakô,� which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood called dushak; haug believed he had found a confirmation of this hypothesis in the fact that the pairika khnâthaiti created there by angrô-maînyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions. khnenta-vehrkâna,* bhagâ,** and chakhra,*** as far as the districts of varena**** and the basin of the upper tigris.^ this legend was composed long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the relationship between the two great families into which the oriental aryans were divided, viz. the indian and iranian, and in the second to account for the peopling by the iranians of a certain number of provinces between the indus and the euphrates. as a matter of fact, it is more likely that the iranians came originally from europe, and that they migrated from the steppes of southern russia into the plains of the kur and the araxes by way of mount caucasus.^^ * the name khnenta seems to have been hellenised into that of kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier between hyrcania and media; according to the pehlevi version it was really a river of hyrcania, the djordjân. the epithet vehrkâna, which qualifies the name khnenta, has been identified by burnouf with the hyrcania of classical geographers. ** raghâ is identified with azerbaijan in the pehlevi version of the vendidâd, but is, more probably, the rhago of classical geographers, the capital of eastern media. *** chakhra seems to be identical with the country of karkh, at the northwestern extremity of khorassan. **** varena is identified by the pehlevi commentators with patishkhvargâr, i.e. probably the patusharra of the assyrian inscriptions. ^ haug proposed to identify this last station with the regions situated on the shores of the caspian, near the south-western corner of that sea. but, as garrez points out, the pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries on the upper tigris. ^^ spiegel has argued that aryanem-vaôjô is probably arrân, the modern kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the kur and the aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance. the settlement of the iranians in russia, and their entrance into asia by way of the caucasus, have been admitted by rost. classical writers reversed this order of things, and derived the sauromato and other scythian tribes from media. it is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge themselves in between the halys and the euphrates as far as the centre of asia minor. their presence in this quarter would explain why we encounter iranian personal names in the sargonide epoch on the two spurs of mount taurus, such as that of the kushtashpi, king of kummukh, in the time of tiglath-pileser iii., and of the kundashpi mentioned in the _annals_ of shalmaneser iii. in the ninth century b.c.* * the name kushtashpi has been compared with that of vistâspa or gushtâsp by fr. lenormant, the name kundashpi with that of vindâspa by gutschmid, and, later on, ball has added to these a long list of names in egyptian and assyrian inscriptions which he looks upon as iranian. kundashpi recalls at first sight gundobunas, a name of the sassanid epoch, if this latter form be authentic. tiele adopts the identification of kushtashpi with vistâspa, and justi has nothing to say against it, nor against the identification of kundashpi with vindâspa. the main body, finding its expansion southwards checked by urartu, diverged in a south-easterly direction, and sweeping before it all the non-aryan or turanian tribes who were too weak to stem its progress, gradually occupied the western edge of the great plateau, where it soon became mainly represented by the two compact groups, the persians to the south on the farthest confines of elam, and the medes between the greater zab, the turnât, and the caspian. it is probable that the kingdom founded by deïokes originally included what was afterwards termed _media magna_ by the græco-roman geographers. this sovereignty was formed by the amalgamation under a single monarch of six important tribes--the buzo, paraatakeni, struchatas, arizanti, budii, and magi. it extended north-westwards as far as the kiziluzôn, which formed the frontier between the persians and the mannai on this side. northwards, it reached as far as demavend; the salt desert that rendered central iran a barren region, furnished a natural boundary on the east; on both the south and west, the assyrian border-lands of ellipi, kharkhar, and arrapkha prevented it from extending to the chief ranges of the zagros and cordioan mountains. the soil, though less fertile than that of chaldæa or of egypt, was by no means deficient in resources. the mountains contained copper, iron, lead, some gold and silver,* several kinds of white or coloured marble,** and precious stones, such as topaz, garnets, emeralds, sapphires, cornelian, and lapis-lazuli, the latter being a substance held in the highest esteem by eastern jewellers from time immemorial; mount bikni was specially celebrated for the fine specimens of this stone which were obtained there.*** its mountains were in those days clothed with dense forests, in which the pine, the oak, and the poplar grew side by side with the eastern plane tree, the cedar, lime, elm, ash, hazel, and terebinth.**** * rawlinson has collected traditions in reference to gold and silver mining among the mountains in the neighbourhood of takht-i-suleiman; one of these is still called _zerreh- shardn_, the mount of the _gold-washers_. ** the best known was the so-called tauris marble quarried from the hills in the neighbourhood of lake urumiyah. *** the list of precious stones which pliny tells us were found in media, contains several kinds which we are unable to identify, _e.g_. the zathênê, the gassinades and narcissitis. pliny calls lapis-lazuli _sapphirus_, and declares that the bright specks of pyrites it contained rendered it unsuitable for engraving. in the assyrian inscriptions mount bikni, the modern demavend, is described as a mountain of uknu, or lapis-lazuli. **** a large part of the mountains and plains is now treeless, but it is manifest, both from the evidence of the inscriptions and from the observations of travellers, that the whole of media was formerly well wooded. the intermediate valleys were veritable orchards, in which the vegetation of the temperate zones mingled with tropical growths. the ancients believed that the lemon tree came originally from persia.* to this day the peach, pear, apple, quince, cherry, apricot, almond, filbert, chestnut, fig, pistachio-nut, and pomegranate still flourish there: the olive is easily acclimatised, and the vine produces grapes equally suitable for the table or the winepress.** the plateau presents a poorer and less promising appearance--not that the soil is less genial, but the rivers become lost further inland, and the barrenness of the country increases as they come to an end one after another. where artificial irrigation has been introduced, the fertility of the country is quite as great as in the neighbourhood of the mountains;*** outside this irrigated region no trees are to be seen, except a few on the banks of rivers or ponds, but wheat, barley, rye, oats, and an abundance of excellent vegetables grow readily in places where water is present. * the apple obtained from media was known as the modicum malum, and was credited with the property of being a powerful antidote to poison: it was supposed that it would not grow anywhere outside media. ** in some places, as, for instance, at kirmânshahàn, the vine stocks have to be buried during the winter to protect them from the frost. *** irrigation was effected formerly, as now, by means of subterranean canals with openings at intervals, known as _kanât_. the fauna include, besides wild beasts of the more formidable kinds, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals, or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass, buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps, whose gait caused so much merriment among the ninevite idlers when they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were, moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the nisasan steed was greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* in short, media was large enough and rich enough to maintain a numerous population, and offered a stable foundation to a monarch ambitious of building up a new empire.** * in the time of the seleucides, media supplied nearly the whole of asia with these animals, and the grazing-lands of bagistana, the modern behistun, are said to have supported , of them. under the parthian kings media paid a yearly tribute of horses, and the nisæan breed was still celebrated at the beginning of the byzantine era. horses are mentioned among the tribute paid by the medic chiefs to the kings of assyria. ** the history of the medes remains shrouded in greater obscurity than that of any other asiatic race. we possess no original documents which owe their existence to this nation, and the whole of our information concerning its history is borrowed from assyrian and babylonian inscriptions, and from the various legends collected by the greeks, especially by herodotus and ctesias, from persian magnates in asia minor or at the court of the achæmenian kings, or from fragments of vanished works such as the writings of borosus. and yet modern archaeologists and philologists have, during the last thirty years, allowed their critical faculties, and often their imagination as well, to run riot when dealing with this very period. after carefully examining, one after another, most of the theories put forward, i have adopted those hypotheses which, while most nearly approximating to the classical legends, harmonise best with the chronological framework--far too imperfect as yet--furnished by the inscriptions dealing with the closing years of nineveh; i do not consider them all to be equally probable, but though they may be mere stop-gap solutions, they have at least the merit of reproducing in many cases the ideas current among those races of antiquity who had been in direct communication with the medes and with the last of their sovereigns. [illustration: .jpg nisÆan houses harnessed to a royal chariot] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the bas-relief from persepolis now in the british museum. the first person to conceive the idea of establishing one was, perhaps, a certain fravartish, the phraortes of the greeks, whom herodotus declares to have been the son and successor of deiokes.* * the ancient form of the name, fravartish or frawarti, has been handed down to us by a passage in the great inscription of behistun; it means the man who proclaims faith in ahura- mazda, the believer. [illustration: .jpg the persian realm] he came to the throne about b.c. at a time when the styar of assur-bani-pal was still in the ascendant, and at first does not seem to have thought of trying to shake off the incubus of assyrian rule. he began very wisely by annexing such of the petty neighbouring states as had hitherto remained independent, and then set himself to attack the one other nation of iranian blood which, by virtue of the number and warlike qualities of its clans, was in a position to enter into rivalry with his own people. the persians, originally concentrated in the interior, among the steep valleys which divide the plateau on the south, had probably taken advantage of the misfortunes of elam to extend their own influence at its expense. their kings were chosen from among the descendants of a certain akhâmanish, the achæmenes of the greeks, who at the time of the iranian invasion had been chief of the pasargadæ, one of the persian clans. achæmenes is a mythical hero rather than a real person; he was, we are told, fed during infancy by an eagle--that mighty eagle whose shadow, according to a persian belief in mediaeval times, assured the sovereignty to him on whom it chanced to fall. achæmenes would seem to have been followed by a certain chaispi--or teispes--a less fabulous personage, described in the legends as his son. it was, doubtless, during his reign that assur-bani-pal, in hot pursuit of tiummân and khumbân-khaldash, completed the downfall of susa; chaispi claimed the eastern half of elam as his share of the spoil, and on the strength of his victory styled himself king of anshân--a title on which his descendants still prided themselves a hundred years after his death.* * the fact that teispes was the immediate successor of achæmenes, indicated by herodotus, is affirmed by darius himself in the behistun inscription. according to billet- beck, the anzân (anshân) of the early achæmenidæ was merely a very small part of the ancient anzân (anshân), viz. the district on the east and south-east of kuh-i-dena, which includes the modern towns of yezdeshast, abadeh, yoklîd, and kushkiserd. persia, as then constituted, extended from the mouths of the oroatis--the modern tab--as far as the entrance to the straits of ormuzd.* the coast-line, which has in several places been greatly modified since ancient times by the formation of alluvial deposits, consists of banks of clay and sand, which lie parallel with the shore, and extend a considerable distance inland; in some places the country is marshy, in others parched and rocky, and almost everywhere barren and unhealthy. the central region is intersected throughout its whole length by several chains of hills, which rise terrace-like, one behind the other, from the sea to the plateau; some regions are sterile, more especially in the north and east, but for the most part the country is well wooded, and produces excellent crops of cereals. only a few rivers, such as the oroatis, which forms the boundary between persia and susiana,** the araxes, and the bagradas succeed in breaking through the barriers that beset their course, and reach the persian gulf;*** most of the others find no outlet, and their waters accumulate at the bottom of the valleys, in lakes whose areas vary at the different seasons. * herodotus imagined carmania and persia proper to be one and the same province; from the alexandrine period onwards historians and geographers drew a distinction between the two. ** the form of the name varies in different writers. strabo calls it the oroatis, nearchus the arosis; in pliny it appears as oratis and zarotis, and in ammianus marcellinus as oroates. *** the araxes is the modern bendamîr. the kyros, which flowed past persepolis, is now the pulwar, an affluent of the bendamîr. the bagradas of ptolemy, called the hyperis by juba, is the modern nabend. [illustration: .jpg scene in the mountains of persia.] drawn by boudier, from costs and flandin, _voyage en perse_, vol. i. pl. xcvi. [illustration: .jpg head of a persian archer] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the naksh-i-rustem bas-relief taken by dieulafoy. the mountainous district is furrowed in all directions by deep ravines, with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents follow a headlong course. the landscape wears a certain air of savage grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail and narrow that they seem likely to be swept away in the first gail that blows. no country could present greater difficulties to the movements of a regular army or lend itself more readily to a system of guerrilla warfare. it was unequally divided between some ten or twelve tribes:* chief among these were the pasargadaa, from which the royal family took its origin; after them came the maraphii and maspii. * herodotus only mentions ten persian tribes; xenophon speaks of twelve. the chiefs of these two tribes were elected from among the members of seven families, who, at first taking equal rank with that of the pasargadaæ, had afterwards been reduced to subjection by the achæmenidæ, forming a privileged class at the court of the latter, the members of which shared the royal prerogatives and took a part in the work of government. of the remaining tribes, the panthialad, derusiæi, and carmenians lived a sedentary life, while the dai, mardians, dropici, and sagartians were nomadic in their habits. each one of these tribes occupied its own allotted territory, the limits of which were not always accurately defined; we know that sagartia, parseta-kônê, and mardia lay towards the north, on the confines of media and the salt desert,* taokênê extended along the seaboard, and carmania lay to the east. the tribes had constructed large villages, such as armuza, sisidôna, apostana, gogana, and taôkê, on the sea-coast (the last named possessing a palace which was one of the three chief residences of the achæmenian kings),** and carmana, persepolis, pasargadæ, and gabæ in the interior.*** * parsetakênê, which has already been identified with the partukkanu (or partakkanu) of the assyrian inscriptions, is placed by ptolemy in persia; mardia corresponds to the mountainous district of bebahan and kazrun. ** the position of most of these towns is still somewhat doubtful. armuza is probably ormuz (or hormuz) on the mainland, the forerunner of the insular hormuz of the portuguese, as the french scholar d�anville has pointed out; sisidôna has been identified with the modern village of mogu, near ras-jerd, apostana with the town of shewâr, the name seeming to be perpetuated in that of the jebel asban which rises not far from there. gogana is probably bender kongûn, and taokô, at the mouth of the granis, is either khor gasseîr or rohilla at the mouth of the bishawer. the palace, which was one of the three principal residences of the achæmenian kings, is probably mentioned by strabo, and possibly in dionysius periegetes. *** carmana is the modern kermân; the exact position of gabæ, which also possesses a palace, is not known. [illustration: .jpg a persian] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of one of the bas- reliefs at persepolis, in dieulafoy. the persians were a keen-witted and observant race, inured to all kinds of hardships in their occupation as mountain shepherds, and they were born warriors. the type preserved on the monuments differs but little from that which still exists at the present day in the more remote districts. it was marked by a tall and slender figure, with sturdy shoulders and loins, a small head, with a thick shock of hair and curling beard, a straight nose, a determined mouth, and an eye steady and alert. yet, in spite of their valour, phraortes overpowered them, and was henceforward able to reckon the princes of anshân among his vassals; strengthened by the addition of their forces to his own, he directed his efforts to the subjection of the other races of the plateau. if we may believe the tradition of the hellenic epoch, he reduced them to submission, and, intoxicated by his success, ventured at last to take up arms against the assyrians, who for centuries past had held rule over upper asia. this was about b.c., or less than ten years after the downfall of elam, and it does not seem likely that the vital forces of assyria can have suffered any serious diminution within so short a space of time.* * the date is indicated by the figures given by herodotus in regard to the medic kings, based on the calculations of himself or his authorities. phraortes died in b.c., after a reign of twenty-two years, and as the last year of his reign coincides with the war against assyria, the preparations for it cannot have been much earlier than or b.c., a year or two before the catastrophe. assur-bani-pal, weary of fighting, even though he no longer directed operations in person, had apparently determined to remain entirely on the defensive, and not to take the field, unless absolutely compelled to do so by rebellion at home or an attack from outside. in view of the growing need of rest for the assyrian nation, he could not have arrived at a wiser decision, provided always that circumstances allowed of its being carried into effect, and that the tributary races and frontier nations were willing to fall in with his intentions. they did so at first, for the fate of elam had filled even the most unruly among them with consternation, and peace reigned supreme from the persian gulf to the mediterranean. assur-bani-pal took advantage of this unexpected lull to push forward the construction of public works in the valleys of the tigris and euphrates. the palace of sennacherib, though it had been built scarcely fifty years before, was already beginning to totter on its foundations; assur-bani-pal entirely remodeled and restored it--a proceeding which gave universal satisfaction. the common people had, as usual, to make the bricks with their own hands and convey them to the spot, but as the chariots employed for this purpose formed part of the booty recently brought back from elam, the privilege of using these trophies did something to lighten the burden of the tasks imposed on them. moreover, they had the satisfaction of seeing at work among the squads of labourers several real kings, the arabian chiefs who had been pursued and captured in the heart of the desert by assur-bani-pal�s generals; they plodded along under their heavy baskets, stimulated by the crack of the whip, amid insults and jeers. this palace was one of the largest and most ornate ever built by the rulers of assyria. true, the decoration does not reveal any novel process or theme; we find therein merely the usual scenes of battle or of the chase, but they are designed and executed with a skill to which the sculptor of nineveh had never before attained. the animals, in particular, are portrayed with a light and delicate touch--the wild asses pursued by hounds, or checked while galloping at full speed by a cast of the lasso; the herds of goats and gazelles hurrying across the desert; the wounded lioness, which raises herself with a last dying effort to roar at the beaters. we are conscious of egyptian influence underlying the asiatic work, and the skilful arrangement of the scenes from the elamite campaigns also reminds us of egypt. the picture of the battle of tullîz recalls, in the variety of its episodes and the arrangement of the perspective, the famous engagement at qodshu, of which ramses ii. has left such numerous presentments on the theban pylons. the assyrians, led by the vicissitudes of invasion to luxor and the ramesseum, had, doubtless, seen these masterpieces of egyptian art in a less mutilated state than that in which we now possess them, and profited by the remembrance when called upon to depict the private life of their king and the victories gained by his armies. [illustration: .jpg a herd of wild goats--a bas-relief of the time of assur-bani-pal] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the sketch by place. it was in this magnificent residence that assur-bani-pal led an existence of indolent splendour, such as the chroniclers of a later age were wont to ascribe to all the assyrian monarchs from the time of semiramis onwards.* * stories of the effeminacy of sardanapalus had been collected by ctesias of cnidus; they soon grew under the hands of historians in the time of alexander, and were passed on by them to writers of the roman and byzantine epochs. [illustration: b illustrated manuscript in heiroglyphics] we would gladly believe that he varied the monotony of his hunting expeditions, his banquets, and entertainments in the gardens in company with the women of the harem, by pleasures of a more refined nature, and that he took an unusual interest in the history and literature of the races who had become subject to his rule. as a matter of fact, there have been discovered in several of the ruined chambers of his palaces the remains of a regular library, which must originally have contained thousands of clay tablets, all methodically arranged and catalogued for his use. a portion of them furnish us at first-hand with the records of his reign, and include letters exchanged with provincial governors, augural predictions, consultation of oracles, observations made by the royal astrologers, standing orders, accounts of income and expenditure, even the reports of physicians in regard to the health of members of the royal family or of the royal household: these documents reveal to us the whole machinery of government in actual operation, and we almost seem to witness the secret mechanism by which the kingdom was maintained in activity. other tablets contain authentic copies of works which were looked upon as classics in the sanctuaries of the euphrates. probably, when babylon was sacked, sennacherib had ordered the books which lay piled up in e-sagilla and the other buildings of the city to be collected and carried away to nineveh along with the statues and property of the gods. they had been placed in the treasury, and there they remained until esarhaddon re-established the kingdom of karduniash, and assur-bani-pal was forced to deliver up the statue of marduk and restore to the sanctuaries, now rebuilt, all the wealth of which his grandfather had robbed them: but before sending back the tablets, he ordered copies to be made of them, and his secretaries set to work to transcribe for his use such of these works as they considered worthy of reproduction. the majority of them were treatises compiled by the most celebrated adepts in the sciences for which chaldæa had been famous from time immemorial; they included collections of omens, celestial and terrestrial, in which the mystical meaning of each phenomenon and its influence on the destinies of the world was explained by examples borrowed from the annals of world-renowned conquerors, such as naramsin and sargon of agade; then there were formulæ for exorcising evil spirits from the bodies of the possessed, and against phantoms, vampires, and ghosts, the recognised causes of all disease; prayers and psalms, which had to be repeated before the gods in order to obtain pardon for sin; and histories of divinities and kings from the time of the creation down to the latest date. among these latter were several versions of the epic of grilgames, the story of etana, of adapa, and many others; and we may hope to possess all that the assyrians knew of the old chaldæan literature in the seventh century b.c., as soon as the excavators have unearthed from the mound at kouyunjik all the tablets, complete or fragmentary, which still lie hidden there. even from the shreds of information which they have already yielded to us, we are able to piece together so varied a picture that we can readily imagine assur-bani-pal to have been a learned and studious monarch, a patron of literature and antiquarian knowledge. very possibly he either read himself, or had read to him, many of the authors whose works found a place in his library: the kings of nineveh, like the pharaohs, desired now and then to be amused by tales of the marvellous, and they were doubtless keenly alive to the delightful rhythm and beautiful language employed by the poets of the past in singing the praises of their divine or heroic ancestors. but the mere fact that his palace contained the most important literary collection which the ancient east has so far bequeathed to us, in no way proves that assur-bani-pal displayed a more pronounced taste for literature than his predecessors; it indicates merely the zeal and activity of his librarians, their intelligence, and their respect and admiration for the great works of the past. once he had issued his edict ordering new editions of the old masters to be prepared, assur-bani-pal may have dismissed the matter from his mind, and the work would go on automatically without need for any further interference on his part. the scribes enriched his library for him, in much the same way as the generals won his battles, or the architects built his monuments: they were nothing more than nameless agents, whose individuality was eclipsed by that of their master, their skill and talent being all placed to his credit. babylonia shared equally with assyria in the benefits of his government. he associated himself with his brother shamash-shumukin in the task of completing the temple of Ê-sagilla; afterwards, when sole monarch, he continued the work of restoration, not only in babylon, but in the lesser cities as well, especially those which had suffered most during the war, such as uru, uruk, borsippa, and cutha.* he refers to the works at borsippa and kuta towards the end of the account of his campaign against shamash-shumukin, and to those at uruk in describing the war against khumbân- khaldash. he remodelled the temple of bel at nippur, the walls built there by him being even now distinguishable from the rest by the size of the bricks and the careful dressing of the masonry. from the shores of the persian gulf to the mountains of armenia, assyria and karduniash were covered with building-yards just as they had been in the most peaceful days of the monarchy. [illustration: .jpg remains of assur-bani-pal�s wall at nippur] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the photograph published by peters. it was at this unique juncture of apparent grandeur and prosperity that phraortes resolved to attack assur-bani-pal. there is nothing to indicate that his action took place simultaneously with some movement on the part of other peoples, or with a serious insurrection in any of the assyrian provinces. for my part, i prefer to set it down to one of those sudden impulses, those irresistible outbursts of self-confidence, which from time to time actuated the princes tributary to nineveh or the kings on its frontier. the period of inactivity to which some previous defeat inflicted on them or on their predecessors had condemned them, allowed them to regain their strength, and one or two victories over less powerful neighbours served to obliterate the memory of former humiliation and disaster; they flew to arms full of hope in the result, and once more drew down defeat upon their heads, being lucky indeed if their abortive rising led to nothing worse than the slaughter of their armies, the execution of their generals, and an increase in the amount of their former tribute. this was the fate that overtook phraortes; the conqueror of the persians, when confronted by the veteran troops of assyria, failed before their superior discipline, and was left dead upon the field of battle with the greater part of his army. so far the affair presented no unusual features; it was merely one more commonplace repetition of a score of similar episodes which had already taken place in the same region, under tiglath-pileser iii. or the early sargonides; but huvakshatara, the son of phraortes, known to the greeks as cyaxares,* instead of pleading for mercy, continued to offer a stubborn resistance. cyaxares belongs to history, and there can be no doubt that he exercised a decisive influence over the destinies of the oriental world, but precise details of his exploits are wanting, and his personality is involved in such obscuring mists that we can scarcely seize it; the little we have so far been able to glean concerning him shows us, not so much the man himself, as a vague shadow of him seen dimly through the haze. * the original form of the name is furnished by passages in the behistun inscription, where chitrantakhma of sagartia and fravartish of media, two of the claimants for the throne who rose against darius, are represented as tracing their descent from huvakshatara. his achievements prove him to have been one of those perfect rulers of men, such as asia produces every now and then, who knew how to govern as well as how to win battles--a born general and lawgiver, who could carry his people with him, and shone no less in peace than in war.* * g. rawlinson takes a somewhat different view of cyaxares� character; he admits that cyaxares knew how to win victories, but refuses to credit him with the capacity for organisation required in order to reap the full benefits of conquest, giving as his reason for this view the brief duration of the medic empire. the test applied by him does not seem to me a conclusive one, for the existence of the second chaldæan empire was almost as short, and yet it would be decidedly unfair to draw similar inferences touching the character of nabopolassar or nebuchadrezzar from this fact. [illustration: .jpg medic and persian foot-soldiers] drawn by faucher-gudin, after coste and flandin. the first and third figures are medes, the second and fourth persians. the armies at the disposal of his predecessors had been little more than heterogeneous assemblies of feudal militia; each clan furnished its own contingent of cavalry, archers, and pikemen, but instead of all these being combined into a common whole, with kindred elements contributed by the other tribes, each one acted separately, thus forming a number of small independent armies within the larger one. cyaxares saw that defeat was certain so long as he had nothing but these ill-assorted masses to match against the regular forces of assyria: he therefore broke up the tribal contingents and rearranged the units of which they were composed according to their natural affinities, grouping horsemen with horsemen, archers with archers, and pikemen with pikemen, taking the assyrian cavalry and infantry as his models.* * herodotus tells us that cyaxares was �the first to divide the asiatics into different regiments, separating the pikemen from the archers and horsemen; before his time, these troops were all mixed up haphazard together.� i have interpreted his evidence in the sense which seems most in harmony with what we know of assyrian military tactics. it seems incredible that the medic armies can have fought pell-mell, as herodotus declares, seeing that for two hundred years past the medes had been frequently engaged against such well-drilled troops as those of assyria: if the statement be authentic, it merely means that cyaxares converted all the small feudal armies which had hitherto fought side by side on behalf of the king into a single royal army in which the different kinds of troops were kept separate. the foot-soldiers wore a high felt cap known as a tiara; they had long tunics with wide sleeves, tied in at the waist by a belt, and sometimes reinforced by iron plates or scales, as well as gaiters, buskins of soft leather, and large wickerwork shields covered with ox-hide, which they bore in front of them like a movable bulwark; their weapons consisted of a short sword, which depended from the belt and lay along the thigh, one or two light javelins, a bow with a strongly pronounced curve, and a quiver full of arrows made from reeds.* their horsemen, like those of other warlike nations ii of the east, used neither saddle nor stirrups, and though they could make skilful use of lance and sword, their favourite weapon was the bow.** * herodotus describes the equipment of the persians in much the same terms as i have used above, and then adds in the following chapter that �the medes had the same equipment, for it is the equipment of the medes and not that of the persians.� ** herodotus says that the medic horsemen were armed in the same manner as the infantry. [illustration: .jpg a medic horseman] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a cast of the medic intaglio in the cabinet des médailles. accustomed from their earliest childhood to all kinds of equestrian exercises, they seemed to sit their horses as though they actually formed part of the animal. they seldom fought in line, but, from the very beginning of an action, hung like a dense cloud on the front and flanks of the enemy, and riddled them with missiles, without, however, coming to close quarters. like the parthians of a later epoch, they waited until they had bewildered and reduced the foe by their ceaseless evolutions before giving the final charge which was to rout them completely. no greater danger could threaten the assyrians than the establishment of a systematically organised military power within the borders of media. an invader starting from egypt or asia minor, even if he succeeded in overthrowing the forces sent out to meet him, had still a long way to go before he could penetrate to the heart of the empire. even if cilicia and syria should be conquered, nothing was easier than to oppose a further advance at the barrier of the euphrates; and should the euphrates be crossed, the khabur still remained, and behind it the desert of singar, which offered the last obstacle between nineveh and the invaders. the distances were less considerable in the case of an army setting out from urartu and proceeding along the basin of the tigris or its affluents; but here, too, the difficulties of transit were so serious that the invader ran a great risk of gradually losing the best part of his forces on the road. on the north-east and east, however, the ancient heritage of assur lay open to direct and swift attack. an enemy who succeeded in destroying or driving back the garrisons stationed as outposts on the rim of the plateau, from kharkhar to parsua, if he ventured to pursue his advantage and descended into the plain of the tigris, had no less than three routes to choose from--the kirind road on the south, the baneh road on the north, and the suleimanych road between the two. the last was the easiest of all, and led almost straight to the fords of altun-keupri and the banks of the lesser zab, on the confines of assyria proper, close under the walls of arbela, the holy city of ishtar. [illustration: .jpg the assyrian triangle] he needed but to win two victories, one upon leaving the mountains, the other at the passage of the zab, and two or three weeks� steady marching would bring him from hamadân right up to the ramparts of nineveh. cyaxares won a victory over assur-bani-pal�s generals, and for the first time in over a hundred years assyria proper suffered the ignominy of foreign invasion. the various works constructed by twenty generations of kings had gradually transformed the triangle enclosed between the upper zab, the tigris, and the jebel-makhlub into a regular fortified camp. the southern point of this triangle was defended by calah from the attacks of chaldoa or from foes coming down from media by iïolwân and suleimanyeh, while nineveh guarded it on the northeast, and several lines of walled cities--among which dur-sharrukîn and imgur-bel can still be identified--protected it on the north and east, extending from the tigris as far as the g-hazîr and zab. it was necessary for an enemy to break through this complex defensive zone, and even after this had been successfully accomplished and the walls of the capital had been reached, the sight which would meet the eye was well calculated to dismay even the most resolute invader. viewed as a whole, nineveh appeared as an irregular quadrilateral figure, no two sides of which were parallel, lying on the left bank of the tigris. [illustration: .jpg map of nineveh] the river came right up to the walls on the west, and the two mounds of kouyunjik and nebi-yunus, on which stood the palaces of the sargonides, were so skilfully fortified that a single wall connecting the two sufficed to ward off all danger of attack on this side. the south wall, which was the shortest of the four, being only about yards in length, was rendered inaccessible by a muddy stream, while the north wall, some yards long, was protected by a wide moat which could be filled from the waters of the khuzur. [illustration: .jpg part of the fosse at nineveh] drawn by boudier, from a sketch in layard. the eastern front had for a long time depended for its safety on a single wall reinforced by a moat, but sennacherib, deeming it insufficiently protected against a sudden attack, had piled up obstacles in front of it, so that it now presented a truly formidable appearance. it was skirted throughout its whole length by a main rampart, yards long, which described a gentle curve from north to south, and rose to a height of about feet, being protected by two small forts placed close to the main gates. the fosse did not run along the foot of the wall, but at a distance of about fifty yards in front of it, and was at least some feet deep and over feet in width. it was divided into two unequal segments by the khuzur: three large sluice-gates built on a level with the wall and the two escarpments allowed the river to be dammed back, so that its waters could be diverted into the fosse and thus keep it full in case of siege. in front of each segment was a kind of demi-lune, and--as though this was not precaution enough--two walls, each over yards long, were built in front of the demi-lunes, the ditch which separated them being connected at one end with the khuzur, and allowed to empty itself into a stream on the south. the number of inhabitants sheltered behind these defences was perhaps , souls;* each separate quarter of the city was enclosed by ramparts, thus forming, as it were, a small independent town, which had to be besieged and captured after a passage had been cut through the outer lines of defence. * jones and g. rawlinson credit nineveh with a population of not more than , . cyaxares might well have lost heart in the face of so many difficulties, but his cupidity, inflamed by reports of the almost fabulous wealth of the city, impelled him to attack it with extraordinary determination: the spoils of susa, babylon, and thebes, in fact, of the whole of western asia and ethiopia, were, he felt, almost within his reach, and would inevitably fall into his hands provided his courage and perseverance did not fail him. after shutting up the remnant of the assyrian army inside nineveh he laid patient siege to the city, and the fame of his victories being noised abroad on all sides, it awoke among the subject races that longing for revenge which at one time appeared to have been sent to sleep for ever. it almost seemed as though the moment was approaching when the city of blood should bleed in its turn, when its kings should at length undergo the fate which they had so long imposed on other monarchs. nahum the elkoshite,* a hebrew born in the assyrian province of samaria, but at that time an exile in judah, lifted up his voice, and the echo of his words still resounds in our ears, telling us of the joy and hope felt by judah, and with judah, by the whole of asia, at the prospect. speaking as the prophet of jahveh, it was to jahveh that he attributed the impending downfall of the oppressor: �jahveh is a jealous god and avengeth; jahveh avengeth and is full of wrath; jahveh taketh vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. jahveh is slow to anger and great in power, and will by no means clear the guilty; jahveh hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. he rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: bashan languisheth, and carmel, and the flower of lebanon languisheth.� * and, �behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.� then he goes on to unfold before the eyes of his hearers a picture of nineveh, humiliated and in the last extremity. * elkosh is identified by eusebius with elkese, which st. jerome declares to have been in galileo, the modern el- kauzeh, two and a half hours� walk south of tibnin. the prophecy of nahum has been taken by some as referring to the campaign of phraortes against assyria, but more frequently to the destruction of nineveh by the medes and chaldæans. it undoubtedly refers to the siege interrupted by the scythian invasion. there she lies, behind her bastions of brick, anxiously listening for the approach of the victorious medes. �the noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels; and prancing horses and jumping chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear; and a multitude of slain and a great heap of carcases: and there is no end of the corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. behold, i am against thee, saith jahveh of hosts, and i will discover thy skirts upon they face; and i will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. and i will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing-stock. and it shall come to pass that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? whence shall i seek comforters for thee?� thebes, the city of amon, did not escape captivity; why then should nineveh prove more fortunate? �all thy fortresses shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater. behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women; the gates of thy land are set wide open unto thine enemies: the fire hath devoured thy bars. draw thee water for the siege, strengthen thy fortresses: go into the clay and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. there shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off,... make thyself many as the cankerworm, make thyself many as the locusts. thou hast multiplied thy merchants as the stars of heaven: the cankerworm spoileth and flieth away. thy crowned are as the locusts and thy marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are. thy shepherds slumber, o king of assyria: thy worthies are at rest: thy people are scattered upon the mountains, and there is none to gather them. there is no assuaging of thy hurt; thy wound is grievous: all that hear the bruit of thee clap the hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?� on this occasion nineveh escaped the fate with which the prophet had threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. according to the tradition accepted in asia minor two hundred years later, a horde of scythians under king madyes, son of protothyes, setting out from the bussian steppes in pursuit of the cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. we are told that they flung themselves through the caspian gates into the basin of the kur, and came into contact with the medes at the foot of mount caucasus. the defeat of the medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of nineveh. this crisis in the history of asia was certainly not determined by chance. for eighty years assyria had been in contact with the scythians, and the assyrian kings had never ceased to keep an eye upon their movements, or lose sight of the advantage to which their bellicose temper might be turned in circumstances like the present. they had pitted them against the cimmerians, then against the medes, and probably against the kings of urartu as well, and the intimacy between the two peoples came to be so close that the scythian king bartatua did not hesitate to demand one of the daughters of bsarhaddon in marriage. from the very beginning of his reign assur-bani-pal had shown them the utmost consideration, and when king madyes, son of his ally bartatua, intervened thus opportunely in the struggle, he did so, not by mere chance, as tradition would have us believe, but at the urgent request of assyria. he attacked media in the rear, and cyaxares, compelled to raise the siege of nineveh, hastened to join battle with him. the engagement probably took place on the banks of the lower araxes or to the north of lake urumiah, in the region formerly inhabited by the mannai; but after defeating his foe and dictating to him the terms of submission, madyes, carried away by the lust of conquest, did not hesitate to turn his arms against his ally. exhausted by her recent struggle, assyria lay at his mercy, her fortresses alone being able to offer any serious resistance: he overran the country from end to end, and though the walled cities withstood the fury of his attack, the rural districts were plundered right and left, and laid desolate for many a year to come. the scythians of this epoch probably resembled those whom we find represented on the monuments of greek art two centuries later. tall fierce-looking men, with unkempt beards, their long and straggling locks surmounted by the _kyrbasis_, or pointed national cap of felt; they wore breeches and a blouse of embroidered leather, and were armed with lances, bows, and battle-axes. they rode bareback on untrained horses, herds of which followed their tribes about on their wanderings; each man caught the animal he required with the help of a lasso, put bit and bridle on him, and vaulting on to his back at a single bound, reduced him to a state of semi-obedience. no troops could stand their ground before the frantic charge of these wild horsemen; like the huns of roman times, the scythians made a clean sweep of everything they found in their path. they ruined the crops, carried off or slaughtered the herds, and set fire to the villages from sheer love of destruction, or in order to inspire terror; every one who failed to fly to the mountains or take refuge in some fortress, was either massacred on the spot or led away into slavery. [illustration: .jpg scythians tending their wounded] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the reliefs on a silver vase from kul-oba. too ignorant of the arts of war to undertake a siege in the regular way, they usually contented themselves with levying ransoms on fortified towns; occasionally, however, when the wealth accumulated behind the walls held out a prospect of ample booty, they blockaded the place until famine compelled it to surrender. more than one ancient city which, thanks to the good government of its rulers and the industry of its citizens, had amassed treasure of inestimable value, was put to fire and sword, and more than one fertile and populous region left unfilled and deserted.* most of the states which for the last three centuries had fought so stubbornly against the assyrians for independence, went down before the storm, including the kingdoms of urartu, of the mushku, and of the tabal,** the miserable end furnishing the hebrew prophets full fifty years later with a theme of sombre rejoicing. �there is meshech, tubal, and all her multitude; her graves are round about her: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in the land of the living. and they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war, and have laid their swords under their heads,*** and their iniquities are upon their bones; for they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.� **** * this may be deduced from the passage in herodotus, where he says that � the scythians were masters of asia for twenty-eight years, and overturned everything by their brutality and stupidity: for, in addition to tribute, they exacted from every one whatever they chose, and, moreover, they prowled here and there, plundering as they thought good.� ** strabo refers in general terms to the presence of scythians (or, as he calls them, sacae) in armenia, cappadocia, and on the shores of the black sea. *** this, doubtless, means that the mushku and tabal had been so utterly defeated that they could not procure honourable burial for their dead, i.e. with their swords beneath their heads and their weapons on their bodies. **** ezek. xxxii. , . the cimmerians, who, since their reverses in lydia and on mount taurus, had concentrated practically the whole of their tribes in cappadocia and in the regions watered by the halys and thermodon, shared the good fortune of their former adversaries. at that time they lived under the rule of a certain kôbos, who seems to have left a terrible reputation behind him; tradition gives him a place beside sesostris among the conquerors of the heroic age, and no doubt, like his predecessor dugdamis, he owed this distinction to some expedition or other against the peoples who dwelt on the shores of the Ægean sea, but our knowledge of his career is confined to the final catastrophe which overtook him. after some partial successes, such as that near zela, for instance, he was defeated and made prisoner by madyes. his subjects, as vassals of the scythians, joined them in their acts of brigandage,* and together they marched from province to province, plundering as they went; they overran the western regions of the assyrian kingdom from melitene and mesopotamia to northern syria, from northern syria to phoenicia, damascus, and palestine,** and at length made their appearance on the judaean frontier. * it seems probable that this was so, when we consider the confusion between the scythians or sakse, and the cimmerians in the babylonian and persian inscriptions of the achsemenian epoch. ** their migration from media into syria and palestine is expressly mentioned by herodotus. since the day when sennacherib had been compelled to return to assyria without having succeeded in destroying jerusalem, or even carrying it by storm, judah had taken little or no part in external politics. divided at first by a conflict between the party of prudence, who advised submission to nineveh, and the more warlike spirits who advocated an alliance with egypt, it had ended by accepting its secondary position, and had on the whole remained fairly loyal to the dynasty of sargon. [illustration: .jpg iranian soldier fighting against the scythians] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast of a cylinder given by cunningham. the cylinder is usually described as persian, but the dress is that of the medes as well as of the persians. on the death of hezekiah, his successor, manasseh, had, as we know, been tempted to intervene in the revolutions of the hour, but the prompt punishment which followed his first attempt put an end for ever to his desire for independence. his successor, amon, during his brief reign of two years,* had no time to desert the ways of his father, and josiah,** who came to the throne in b.c., at the age of eight, had so far manifested no hostility towards assyria. * kings xxi. - ; cf. chron. xxxiii. - . the reign of fifty-five years attributed to manasseh by the jewish annalists cannot be fitted into the chronology of the period; we must either take off ten years, thus reducing the duration of the reign to forty-five years, or else we must assume the first ten of manasseh to be synchronous with the last ten of hezekiah. ** kings xxii. ; cf. chron. xxxiv. . thus, for more than fifty years, judah enjoyed almost unbroken peace, and led as happy and prosperous an existence as the barrenness of its soil and the unruly spirit of its inhabitants would permit. but though its political activity had been almost nothing during this interval, its spiritual life had seldom been developed with a greater intensity. the reverse sustained by sennacherib had undoubtedly been a triumph for isaiah, and for the religious party of which we are accustomed to regard him as the sole representative. it had served to demonstrate the power of jahveh, and his aversion for all idolatrous worship and for all foreign alliances. in vain did the partisans of egypt talk loudly of pharaoh and of all those principalities of this world which were drawn round in pharaoh�s orbit; egypt had shown herself incapable of safeguarding her friends, and things had gone steadily from bad to worse so long as these latter held the reins of government; their removal from office had been, as it were, the signal for a welcome change in the fortunes of the jews. jahveh had delivered his city the moment when, ceasing to rely upon itself, it had surrendered its guidance into his hands, and the means of avoiding disaster in the future was clearly pointed out to it. judah must be content to follow the counsels which isaiah had urged upon it in the name of the most high, and submissively obey the voice of its prophets. �thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. and ye shall defile the over-laying of thy graven images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast them away as an unclean thing; thou shalt say unto it, get thee hence.� isaiah seems to disappear after his triumph, and none of his later prophecies have come down to us: yet the influence of his teaching lasted throughout the reign of hezekiah, and the court, supported by the more religious section of the people, not only abjured the worship of false gods, but forsook the high places and discontinued the practices which he had so strenuously denounced. the great bulk of the nation, however, soon returned to their idolatrous practices, if, indeed, they had ever given them up, and many of the royal advisers grew weary of the rigid observances which it was sought to impose upon them; rites abhorrent to jahveh found favour even among members of the king�s own family, and on hezekiah�s death, about b.c., a reaction promptly set in against both his religious views and the material reforms he had introduced.* * kings xxi. - (cf. chron. xxxiii. - ), where, in spite of manifest recensions of the text, the facts themselves seem to have been correctly set forth. manasseh was only thirteen years old when he came to the throne, and his youth naturally inclined him towards the less austere forms of divine worship: from the very first he tolerated much that his father had forbidden, and the spirit of eclecticism which prevailed among his associates rendered him, later on, an object of special detestation to the orthodox historians of jerusalem. worshippers again began openly to frequent the high places; they set up again the prostrate idols, replanted the sacred groves, and even �built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of jahveh.� the chariots and horses of the sun reappeared within the precincts of the temple, together with the sacred courtesans. baal and the phoenician astarte were worshipped on mount sion. the valley of hinnom, where ahaz had already burnt one of his children during a desperate crisis in the syrian wars, was again lighted up by the flames of the sacred pyre. we are told that manasseh himself set the example by passing his son through the flames; he also had recourse to astrologers, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, and sorcerers of the lowest type. the example of assyria in matters of this kind exercised a preponderant influence on jewish customs, and certainly it would have been a miracle if jerusalem had succeeded in escaping it; did not nineveh owe the lofty place it occupied to these occult sciences and to the mysterious powers of its gods? in thus imitating its conqueror, judah was merely borrowing the weapons which had helped him to subdue the world. the partisans of the ancient religions who were responsible for these innovations must have regarded them as perfectly legitimate reforms, and their action was received with favour in the provinces: before long the latter contained as many sanctuaries as there were towns,* and by thus multiplying the centres of worship, they hoped that, in accordance with ancient belief, the ties which existed between jahveh and his chosen people would also be increased. * jer. ii. - . for the quotation see also jer. xi. : �for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, o judah; and according to the number of the streets of jerusalem have ye set up altars to the shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto baal.� the fact that the provinces had been ravaged from end to end in the days of sennacherib, while jerusalem had been spared, was attributed to the circumstance that hezekiah had destroyed the provincial sanctuaries, leaving the temple on mount sion alone standing. wherever jahveh possessed altars, he kept guard over his people, but his protection was not extended to those places where sacrifices were no longer offered to him. the reaction was not allowed to take place without opposition on the part of the prophets and their followers. we are told that manasseh �shed innocent blood very much till he had filled jerusalem from one end to another;� there is even a kabbinic tradition to the effect that, weary of the admonitions of the aged isaiah, he put him to death by shutting him up in the hollow trunk of a tree, and causing him to be sawn in two.* * kings xxi. . the tradition in regard to the fate of isaiah took its foundation in this text, and it is perhaps indirectly referred to in heb. xi. . for a long time after this no instance can be found of a prophet administering public affairs or directing the actions of the king himself; the priests and reformers, finding no outlet for their energy in this direction, fell back on private preaching and literary propaganda. and, above all, they applied themselves to the task of rewriting the history of israel, which, as told by the chroniclers of the previous century, presented the national deity in too material a light, and one which failed to harmonise with the ideals then obtaining. so long as there were two separate hebrew kingdoms, the existence of the two parallel versions of the elohist and jahvist gave rise to but little difficulty: each version had its own supporters and readers, whose consciences were readily satisfied by the interpolation of a few new facts into the text as occasion arose. but now that samaria had fallen, and the whole political and religious life of the hebrew race was centred in judah alone, the necessity for a double and often contradictory narrative had ceased to exist, and the idea occurred of combining the two in a single work. this task, which was begun in the reign of hezekiah and continued under manasseh, resulted in the production of a literature of which fragments have been incorporated into the historical books of our bible.* the reign of amon witnessed no alteration in the policy initiated by his predecessor manasseh; but when, after less than two years� rule, he was suddenly struck down by the knife of an assassin, the party of reform carried the day, and the views of hezekiah and isaiah regained their ascendency. josiah had been king, in name at any rate, for twelve years,** and was learning to act on his own responsibility, when the scythian danger appeared on the horizon. * the scheme of the present work prevents me from doing more than allude in passing to these preliminary stages in the composition of the priestly code. i shall have occasion to return briefly to the subject at the close of volume ix. ** the date is supplied by the opening passage of the prophecy of jeremiah, �to whom the word of jehovah came in the days of josiah, the son of amon, king of judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign� (i. ). volney recognised that chaps, i., iv., v., and vi. of jeremiah refer to the scythian invasion, and since his time it has been admitted that, with the exception of certain interpolations in chaps, i. and iii., the whole of the first six chapters date from this period, but that they underwent slight modifications in the recension which was made in the fourth year of jehoiachin in order to make them applicable to the threatened chaldæan invasion. the date is important, since by using it as a basis we can approximately restore the chronology of the whole period. if we assume the thirteenth year of josiah to have been - b.c., we are compelled to place all the early medic wars in the reign of assur- bani-pal, as i have done. this barbarian invasion, which burst upon the peace of assyria like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, restored to the faithful that confidence in the omnipotence of their god which had seemed about to fail them; when they beheld the downfall of states, the sack of provinces innumerable, whole provinces in flames and whole peoples irresistibly swept away to death or slavery, they began to ask themselves whether these were not signs of the divine wrath, indicating that the day of jahveh was at hand. prophets arose to announce the approaching judgment, among the rest a certain zephaniah, a great-grandson of hezekiah:* �i will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith jahveh. i will consume man and beast; i will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumbling-blocks with the wicked; and i will cut off man from the face of the earth, saith jahveh. and i will stretch out my hand upon judah, and upon all the inhabitants of jerusalem; and i will cut off the remnant of baal from this place, and the name of the chemarim with the priests; and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship, which swear to jahveh and swear by malcham; and them that are turned back from following jahveh; and those that have not sought jahveh nor inquired after him. hold thy peace at the presence of the lord jahveh; for the day of jahveh is at hand; for jahveh hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath sanctified his guests.� * zephaniah gives his own genealogy at the beginning of his prophecy (i. ), though, it is true, he does not add the title �king of judah� after the name of his ancestor hezekiah. �that day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm, against the fenced cities, and against the high battlements. and i will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against jahveh: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung. neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of jahveh�s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy; for he shall make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land.� during this same period of stress and terror, there came forward another prophet, one of the greatest among the prophets of israel--jeremiah, son of hilkiah. he was born in the village of anathoth, near jerusalem, being descended from one of those priestly families in which the faith had been handed down from generation to generation in all its original purity.* * the descent and birthplace of jeremiah are given at the beginning of his prophecies (i. ). he must have been quite young in the thirteenth year of josiah, as is evident from the statement in i. . we are told in chap, xxxvi. that in the fourth year of jehoiakim he dictated a summary of all the prophecies delivered by him from the thirteenth year of josiah up to the date indicated to his servant baruch, and that later on he added a number of others of the same kind. when jahveh called him, he cried out in amazement, �ah, lord god! behold, i cannot speak: for i am a child.� but jahveh reassured him, and touching his lips, said unto him, �behold, i have put my words in thy mouth: see, i have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.� then the prophet perceived a seething cauldron, the face of which appeared from the north, for the eternal declared to him that �out of the north evil shall break out upon all the inhabitants of the land.� already the enemy is hastening: �behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as the whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. woe unto us! for we are spoiled. o jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. how long shall thine evil thoughts lodge within thee? for a voice declareth from dan, and publisheth evil from the hills of ephraim: make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against jerusalem!� the scythians had hardly been mentioned before they were already beneath the walls, and the prophet almost swoons with horror at the sound of their approach. �my bowels, my bowels! i am pained at my very heart: my heart is disquieted in me; i cannot hold my peace; because thou hast heard, o my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. how long shall i see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?� it would seem that the torrent of invasion turned aside from the mountains of judah; it flowed over galilee, samaria, and the philistine shephelah, its last eddies dying away on the frontiers of egypt. psammetiehus is said to have bribed the barbarians to retire. as they fell back they plundered the temple of derketô, near ashkelon: we are told that in order to punish them for this act of sacrilege, the goddess visited them with a disease which caused serious ravages amongst them, and which the survivors carried back with them to their own country.* * herodotus calls the goddess aphrodite urania, by which we must understand derketô or atargatis, who is mentioned by several other classical authors, e.g. xanthus of lydia, diodorus siculus, strabo, pliny. according to justin, the scythians were stopped only by the marshes of the delta. the disease by which the scythians were attacked is described by hippocrates; but in spite of what he tells us about it, its precise nature has not yet been determined. there was, however, no need to introduce a supernatural agency in order to account for their rapid disappearance. the main body of invaders had never quitted media or the northern part of the assyrian empire, and only the southern regions of syria were in all probability exposed to the attacks of isolated bands. these stragglers, who year after year embarked in one desperate adventure after another, must have found great difficulty in filling up the gaps which even victories made in their ranks; enervated by the relaxing nature of the climate, they could offer little resistance to disease, and excess completed what the climate had begun, the result being that most of them died on the way, and only a few survived to rejoin the main body with their booty. for several months the tide of invasion continued to rise, then it ebbed as quickly as it had risen, till soon nothing was left to mark where it had passed save a pathway of ruins, not easily made good, and a feeling of terror which it took many a year to efface. it was long before judah forgot the �mighty nation, the ancient nation, the nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest thou what they say.� * men could still picture in imagination their squadrons marauding over the plains, robbing the fellah of his crops, his bread, his daughters, his sheep and oxen, his vines and fig trees, for �they lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea, and they ride upon horses; every one set in array as a man to the battle,** against thee, o daughter of sion. we have heard the fame thereof; our hands wax feeble; anguish hath taken hold of us, and pangs as of a woman in travail.� *** the supremacy of the scythians was of short duration. it was said in after-times that they had kept the whole of asia in a state of terror for twenty-eight years, dating from their defeat of cyaxares; but the length of this period is exaggerated.**** * jer. v. ; it seems curious that the hebrew prophet should use the epithet �ancient,� when we remember that the scythians claimed to be the oldest nation in the world, older than even the egyptians themselves. ** an obvious allusion to the regular formation adopted by the scythian squadrons. *** jer. v. ; vi. , . **** the authenticity of the number of years given in herodotus has been energetically defended by some modern historians, and not less forcibly denied by others, who reduce it, for example, in accordance with a doubtful passage of justin, to eight years. by assigning all the events relating to the scythian invaders to the mean period of twenty years, we should obtain the length of time which best corresponds to what is actually known of the general history of this epoch. the medes soon recovered from their disaster, but before engaging their foes in open conflict, they desired to rid themselves of the prince who had conquered them, and on whom the fortunes of the whole scythian nation depended. cyaxares, therefore, invited madyes and his officers to a banquet, and after plying them to excess with meat and drink, he caused them all to be slain.* * this episode is regarded as legendary by many modern historians. winckler even goes so far as to deny the defeat of the scythians: according to his view, they held possession of media till their chief, astyages, was overthrown by cyrus; rost has gone even further, deeming even cyaxares himself to have been a scythian. for my part, i see no reason to reject the tradition of the fatal banquet. without referring to more ancient illustrations, noldeke recalls the fact that in a period of only ten years, from to a.d., the princes reigning over the iranian lands rid themselves by similar methods of the turcoman bands which harassed them. such a proceeding has never been repugnant to oriental morality, and it is of a kind to fix itself in the popular mind: far from wishing to suppress it, i should be inclined to see in it the nucleus of the whole tradition. the barbarians made a brave resistance, in spite of the treason which had deprived them of their leaders: they yielded only after a long and bloody campaign, the details of which are unknown to us. iranian legends wove into the theme of their expulsion all kinds of fantastic or romantic incidents. they related, for instance, how, in combination with the parthians, the scythians, under the leadership of their queen zarinsea, several times defeated the medes: she consented at last to conclude a treaty on equal terms, and peace having been signed, she retired to her capital of boxanakê, there to end her days. one body of the survivors re-entered europe through the caspian gates, another wandered for some time between the araxes and the halys, seeking a country adapted to their native instincts and customs.* cyaxares, relieved from the pressure put upon him by the scythians, immediately resumed his efforts against assyria, and was henceforward able to carry his plans to completion without encountering any serious obstacle. it would be incorrect to say that the scythian invasion had overthrown the empire of the sargonids: it had swept over it like a whirlwind, but had not torn from it one province, nor, indeed, even a single city. the nations, already exhausted by their struggles for independence, were incapable of displaying any energy when the barbarians had withdrawn, and continued to bow beneath the ninevite yoke as much from familiarity with habitual servitude as from inability to shake themselves free. assur-bani-pal had died about the year b.c., after a reign of forty-two years, and his son assur-etililâni had assumed the double crown of assyria and babylon without opposition.** * herodotus speaks of these scythians as having lived at first on good terms with cyaxares. ** the date of assur-bani-pal�s death is not furnished by any assyrian monument, but is inferred from the canon of ptolemy, where saosduchîn or shamash-shumukin and chinaladan or assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from or to or b.c. the order of succession of the last assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and sin-shar- ishkun was placed before assur-etililâni; the inverse order seems to be now conclusively proved. the documents which seemed at one time to prove the existence of a last king of assyria named esarhaddon, identical with the saracos of classical writers, really belong to esarhaddon, the father of assur-bani-pal. [another king, sin-sum-lisir, is mentioned in a contract dated at nippur in his accession year. he may have been the immediate predecessor of sarakos.--? ed.] nineveh had been saved from pillage by the strength of her ramparts, but the other fortresses, assur, calah, and dur-sharrukîn, had been destroyed during the late troubles; the enemy, whether medes or scythians, had taken them by storm or reduced them by famine, and they were now mere heaps of ruin, deserted save for a few wretched remnants of their population. assur-etililâni made some feeble attempts to restore to them a semblance of their ancient splendour. he erected at calah, on the site of the palaces which had been destroyed by fire, a kind of castle rudely built, and still more rudely decorated, the rooms of which were small and low, and the walls of sun-dried brick were panelled only to the height of about a yard with slabs of limestone roughly squared, and without sculpture or inscription: the upper part of the walls was covered with a coating of uneven plaster. we do not know how long the inglorious reign of assur-etililâni lasted, nor whether he was assassinated or died a natural death. his brother, sin-shar-ishkun,* who succeeded him about b.c., at first exercised authority, as he had done, over babylon as well as nineveh,** and laboured, like his predecessor, to repair the edifices which had suffered by the invasion, making war on his neighbours, perhaps even on the medes, without incurring serious losses. * the name of this king was discovered by g. smith on the fragments of a cylinder brought from kouyunjik, where he read it as bel-zakir-iskun. the real reading is sin-shar- ishkun, and the similarity of this name with that of saracos, the last king of assyria according to greek tradition, strikes one immediately. the relationship of this king to assur-etililâni was pointed out by father scheil from the fragment of a tablet on which sin-shar-ishkun is declared to be the son of assur-bani-pal, king of assyria. ** this may be deduced from a passage of abydenus, where saracos or sin-shar-ishkun sends bussalossoros (that is, nabopolassar) to defend chaldæ against the invasion of the peoples of the sea; so according to abydenus, or rather berosus, from whom abydenus indirectly obtained his information, saracos was king of babylon as well as of nineveh at the beginning of his reign. the chaldæans, however, merely yielded him obedience from force of habit, and the moment was not far distant when they would endeavour to throw off his yoke. babylon was at that time under the rule of a certain nabu-bal-uzur, known to us as nabopolassar, a kaldu of ancient lineage, raised possibly by assur-bani-pal to the dignity of governor, but who, in any case, had assumed the title of king on the accession of assur-etililâni.* * the canon of ptolemy makes nabopolassar the direct successor of chinaladan, and his testimony is justified by the series of babylonian contracts which exist in fairly regular succession from the second to the twenty-first years of nabopolassar. the account given by berosus makes him a general of saracos, but the contradiction which this offers to the testimony of the canon can be explained if he is considered as a vassal-king; the kings of egypt and of media were likewise only satraps, according to babylonian tradition. his was but a local sovereignty, restricted probably to the city and its environs; and for twelve or thirteen years he had rested content with this secondary position, when an unforeseen incident presented him with the opportunity of rising to the first rank. tradition asserted that an immense army suddenly landed at the mouths of the euphrates and the tigris; probably under this story is concealed the memory of one of those revolts of the bît-yakîn and the tribes dwelling on the shores of the nar-marratum, such as had often produced consternation in the minds of the sargonid kings.* sin-shar-ishkun, distracted doubtless by other anxieties, acted as his ancestors had done in similar circumstances, and enjoined on his vassal to march against the aggressors and drive them into the sea; but nabopolassar, instead of obeying his suzerain, joined forces with the rebels, and declared his independence. assur-etililâni and his younger brother had possibly neglected to take the hands of bel, and were therefore looked upon as illegitimate sovereigns. the annalists of later times erased their names from the royal canon, and placed nabopolassar immediately after assur-bani-pal, whom they called kandalanu. but however feeble assyria had become, the cities on the lower euphrates feared her still, and refused to ally themselves with the pretender. nabopolassar might perhaps have succumbed, as so many before him had done, had he been forced to rely entirely on his own resources, and he might have shared the sad fate of merodach-baladan or of shamash-shumukîn; but marduk, who never failed to show favour to his faithful devotees, �raised up help for him and secured him an ally.� the eyes of all who were oppressed by the cruel yoke of nineveh were now turned on cyaxares, and from the time that he had dispersed the scythian hordes it was to him that they looked for salvation. nabopolassar besought his assistance, which the median king graciously promised;** it is even affirmed that a marriage concluded between one of his daughters, amyfcis, and nebuchadrezzar, the heir to the throne of babylon, cemented the alliance.*** * formerly these barbarians were identified with the remains of the scythian hordes, and this hypothesis has been recently revived by prashek. g. rawlinson long ago recognised that the reference must be to the chaldæans, who were perhaps joined by the susians. ** the _cylinder of nabonichs_, the only original document in which allusion is made to the destruction of nineveh, speaks of the ummân-manda and their king, whom it does not name, and it has been agreed to recognise cyaxares in this sovereign. on the other hand, the name of ummân-manda certainly designates in the assyrian texts the wandering iranian tribes to whom the greeks gave the name of sakse or scythians; the result, in the opinions of several assyriologists of the present day, is that neither astyages nor cyaxares were medes in the sense in which we have hitherto accepted them as such on the evidence of herodotus, but that they were scythians, the scythians of the great invasion. this conclusion does not seem to me at present justified. the babylonians, who up till then had not had any direct intercourse either with the madai or the ummân-manda, did as the egyptians had done whether in saite or ptolemaic times, continuing to designate as kharî, kafîti, lotanu, and khâti the nations subject to the persians or macedonians; they applied a traditional name of olden days to present circumstances, and i see, at present, no decisive reason to change, on the mere authority of this one word, all that the classical writers have handed down concerning the history of the epoch according to the tradition current in their days. *** the name of the princess is written amuhia, amyitis. the classical sources, the only ones which mention her, make her the daughter of astyages, and this has given rise to various hypotheses. according to some, the notice of this princess has no historical value. according to others, the astyages mentioned as her father is not cyaxares the mede, but a scythian prince who came to the succour of nabopolassar, perhaps a predecessor of cyaxares on the median throne, and in this case phraortes himself under another name. the most prudent course is still to admit that abydenus, or one of the compilers of extracts to whom we owe the information, has substituted the name of the last king of media for that of his predecessor, either by mistake, or by reason of some chronological combinations. amyitis, transported into the harem of the chaldæan monarch, served, like all princesses married out of their own countries, as a pledge for the faithful observance by her relatives of the treaty which had been concluded. the western provinces of the empire did not permit themselves to be drawn into the movement, and judah, for example, remained faithful to its suzerain till the last moment,* but sin-shar-ishkun received no help from them, and was obliged to fight his last battles single-handed. he shut himself up in nineveh, and held out as long as he could; but when all his resources were exhausted--ammunitions of war, men and food supplies--he met his fate as a king, and burnt himself alive in his palace with his children and his wives, rather than fall alive into the hands of his conquerors ( b.c.). the babylonians would take no part in pillaging the temples, out of respect for the gods, who were practically identical with their own, but the medes felt no such scruples. �their king, the intrepid one, entirely destroyed the sanctuaries of the gods of assur, and the cities of accad which had shown themselves hostile to the lord of accad, and had not rendered him assistance. he destroyed their holy places, and left not one remaining; he devastated their cities, and laid them waste as it were with a hurricane.� nineveh laid low, assyria no longer existed. after the lapse of a few years, she was named only among the legends of mythical days: two centuries later, her very site was forgotten, and a greek army passed almost under the shadow of her dismantled towers, without a suspicion that there lay before it all that remained of the city where semiramis had reigned in her glory.** * it was to oppose the march of necho _against the king of assyria_ that josiah fought the battle of megiddo ( kings xxiii. , ; cf. chron. xxxv. - , where the mention of the king of assyria is suppressed). ** this is what the _ten thousand_ did when they passed before larissa and mespila. the name remained famous, and later on the town which bore it attained a relative importance. it is true that egypt, chaldæa, and the other military nations of the east, had never, in their hours of prosperity, shown the slightest consideration for their vanquished foes; the theban pharaohs had mercilessly crushed africa and asia beneath their feet, and had led into slavery the entire population of the countries they had subdued. but the egyptians and chaldaeans had, at least, accomplished a work of civilization whose splendour redeemed the brutalities of their acts of reprisal. it was from egypt and chaldæa that the knowledge and the arts of antiquity--astronomy, medicine, geometry, physical and natural sciences--spread to the ancestors of the classic races; and though chaldæa yields up to us unwillingly, with niggard hand, the monuments of her most ancient kings, the temples and tombs of egypt still exist to prove what signal advances the earliest civilised races made in the arts of the sculptor and the architect. but on turning to assyria, if, after patiently studying the successive centuries during which she held supreme sway over the eastern world, we look for other results besides her conquests, we shall find she possessed nothing that was not borrowed from extraneous sources. she received all her inspirations from chaldæa--her civilisation, her manners, the implements of her industries and of agriculture, besides her scientific and religious literature: one thing alone is of native growth, the military tactics of her generals and the excellence of her soldiery. from the day when assyria first realised her own strength, she lived only for war and rapine; and as soon as the exhaustion of her population rendered success on the field of battle an impossibility, the reason for her very existence vanished, and she passed away. two great kingdoms rose simultaneously from her ruins. cyaxares claimed assyria proper and its dependencies on the upper tigris, but he specially reserved for himself the yet unconquered lands on the northern and eastern frontiers, whose inhabitants had only recently taken part in the political life of the times. nabopolassar retained the suzerainty over the lowlands of elam, the districts of mesopotamia lying along the euphrates, syria, palestine, and most of the countries which had hitherto played a part in history;* he claimed to exert his supremacy beyond the isthmus, and the chaldæan government looked upon the egyptian kings as its feudatories because for some few years they had owned the suzerainty of nineveh.** * there was no actual division of the empire, as has been often asserted, but each of the allies kept the portion which fell into his power at the moment of their joint effort. the two new states gradually increased in power by successive conquests, each annexing by degrees the ancient provinces of assyria nearest to its own frontier. ** this seems to be implied by the terms in which berosus speaks of necho: he considers him as a rebel satrap over the provinces of egypt, coele-syria, and phoenicia, and enumerates egypt in conjunction with syria, phoenicia, and arabia among the dependencies of nabopolassar and nebuchadrezzar. just as the egyptian state documents never mentioned the lotanu or the kharu without entitling them _children of rebellion_, so the chaldæan government, the heir of assyria, could only look upon the kings of syria, arabia, and egypt as rebellious vassals. [illustration: . map of the eastern world in the time of nebuchadnezzar] the pharaoh, however, did not long tolerate this pretension, and far from looking forward to bend the knee before a chaldæan monarch, he believed himself strong enough to reassert his ancestral claims to the possession of asia. egypt had experienced many changes since the day when tanuatamanu, returning to ethiopia, had abandoned her to the ambition of the petty dynasties of the delta. one of the romances current among the people of sais in the fifth century b.c. related that at that time the whole land was divided between twelve princes. they lived peaceably side by side in friendly relations with each other, until an oracle predicted that the whole valley would finally belong to that prince among them who should pour a libation to phtah into a brazen cup, and thenceforward they jealously watched each other each time they assembled to officiate in the temple of memphis. one day, when they had met together in state, and the high priest presented to them the golden cups they were wont to use, he found he had mistaken their number, and had only prepared eleven. psammetichus was therefore left without one, and in order not to disarrange the ceremonial he took off his brazen helmet and used it to make his libation; when the rest perceived this, the words of the oracle came to their remembrance, and they exiled the imprudent prince to the marshes along the sea-coast, and forbade him ever to quit them. he secretly consulted the oracle of isis of buto to know what he might expect from the gods, and she replied that the means of revenge would reach him from the sea, on the day when brazen soldiers should issue from its waters. he thought at first that the priests were mocking him, but shortly afterwards ionian and carian pirates, clad in their coats of mail, landed not far from his abode. the messenger who brought tidings of their advent had never before seen a soldier fully armed, and reported that brazen men had issued from the waves and were pillaging the country. psammetichus, realising at once that the prediction was being fulfilled, ran to meet the strangers, enrolled them in his service, and with their aid overthrew successively his eleven rivals.* * the account given by diodorus of these events is in general derived from that of herodotus, with additional details borrowed directly or indirectly from some historian of the same epoch, perhaps hellanicus of mitylene: the reason of the persecution endured by psammetichus is, according to him, not the fear of seeing the prediction fulfilled, but jealousy of the wealth the saite prince had acquired by his commerce with the greeks. i have separated the narrative of herodotus from his account of the labyrinth which did not originally belong to it, but was connected with a different cycle of legends. the original romance was part of the cycle which grew up around the oracle of buto, so celebrated in egypt at the persian epoch, several other fragments of which are preserved in herodotus; it had been mixed up with one of the versions of the stories relating to the labyrinth, probably by some dragoman of the fayyûm. the number twelve does not correspond with the information furnished by the assyrian texts, which enumerate more than twenty egyptian princes; it is perhaps of greek origin, like the _twelve_ great gods which the informants of herodotus tried to make out in egypt, and was introduced into the egyptian version by a greek interpreter. a brazen helmet and an oracle had dethroned him; another oracle and brazen men had replaced him on his throne. a shorter version of these events made no mention of the twelve kings, but related instead that a certain pharaoh named tementhes had been warned by the oracle of amon to beware of cocks. now psammetichus had as a companion in exile a carian named pigres, and in conversing with him one day, he learned by chance that the carians had been the first people to wear crested helmets; he recalled at once the words of the oracle, and hired from asia a number of these �cocks,� with whose assistance he revolted and overthrew his suzerain in battle under the walls of memphis, close to the temple of isis. such is the legendary account of the saite renaissance; its true history is not yet clearly and precisely known. egypt was in a state of complete disintegration when psammetichus at length revived the ambitious projects of his family, but the dissolution of the various component parts had not everywhere taken place in the same manner. [illustration: .jpg three hoplites in action] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an archaic vase-painting in the collection of salzmann. in the north, the delta and the nile valley, as far as siut, were in the power of a military aristocracy, supported by irregular native troops and bands of mercenaries, for the most part of libyan extraction, who were always designated by the generic name of mashauasha. most of these nobles were in possession of not more than two or three cities apiece: they had barely a sufficient number of supporters to maintain their precarious existence in their restricted domains, and would soon have succumbed to the attacks of their stronger neighbours, had they not found a powerful protector to assist them. they had finally separated themselves into two groups, divided roughly by the central arm of the nile. one group comprised the districts that might be designated as the asiatic zone of the country--heliopolis, bubastis, mendes, tanis, busiris, and seben-nytos--and it recognised as chief the lord of one or other of those wealthy cities, now the ruler of bubastis, now of tanis, and lastly pakruru of pisaptit. the second group centred in the lords of sais, to whom the possession of memphis had secured a preponderating voice in the counsels of the state for more than a century.* * this grouping, which might already have been suspected from the manner in which the assyrian and egyptian monuments of the period show us the feudal princes rallying round necho i. and pakruru, is indicated by the details in the demotic romance published by krall, where the foundation of the story is the state of egypt in the time of the �twelve kings.� the fiefs and kingdoms of middle egypt wavered between the two groups, playing, however, a merely passive part in affairs: abandoning themselves to the stream of events rather than attempting to direct it, they owed allegiance to sais and tanis alternately as each prevailed over its rival. on passing thence into the thebaid a different world appeared to be entered. there amon reigned, ever increasingly supreme, and the steady advance of his influence had transformed his whole domain into a regular theocracy, where the women occupied the highest position and could alone transmit authority. at first, as we have seen, it was passed on to their husbands and their children, but latterly the rapidity with which the valley had changed masters had modified this law of succession in a remarkable way. each time the principality shifted its allegiance from one king to another, the new sovereign naturally hastened to install beside the _divine female worshipper_ a man devoted to his interests, who should administer the fief to the best advantage of the suzerain. it is impossible to say whether he actually imposed this minister on her as a husband, or whether the time came when she was obliged to submit to as many espousals as there occurred revolutions in the destinies of egypt.* however this may be, we know that from the first half of the seventh century b.c. the custom arose of placing beside �the divine worshipper� a princess of the dominant family, whom she adopted, and who thus became her heiress-designate. taharqa had in this way associated one of his sisters, shapenuapît ii., with the queen amenertas when the latter had lost her husband, piônkhi; and shapenuapît, succeeding her adopted mother, had reigned over thebes in the ethiopian interest during many years. there is nothing to show that she was married, and perhaps she was compensated for her official celibacy by being authorised to live the free life of an ordinary pallacide;** her minister montumihâît directed her affairs for her so completely that the assyrian conquerors looked upon him as petty king of thebes. tanuatamanu confirmed him in his office when the assyrians evacuated the said, and the few years which had elapsed since that event had in no way modified the _régime_ established immediately on their departure. * they would have been, in fact, in the same condition as the hova queens of our century, who married the ministers who reigned in their names. ** it is perhaps these last female descendants of the high priests that are intended in a passage where strabo speaks of the pallacides who were chosen from among the most noble families of the city. diodorus mentions their tombs, quoting from hecatous of abdera, but he does not appear to know the nature of their life; but the name of pallacides which he applies to them proves that their manner of life was really that which strabo describes. it is uncertain how long assur-bani-pal in the north, and tanuatamanu in the south, respectively maintained a precarious sovereignty over the portions of egypt nearest to their own capitals. [illustration: .jpg statue of a theban queen] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. de bissing. the statue, whose feet are missing, represents either amenertas i. or mutertas; it was never completely finished, and several of the parts have never received their final polish. the opening of the reign of psammetichus seems to have been fraught with difficulties, and the tradition which represents him as proscribed by his peers, and confined to the marshes of the sea-coast, has probably a certain basis of truth. pakruru, who had brought all the western part of the delta under his own influence, and who, incessantly oscillating between assyria and ethiopia, had yet been able to preserve his power and his life, had certainly not of his own free will renounced the hope of some day wearing the double crown. it was against him or his successor that psammetichus must have undertaken his first wars, and it was perhaps with the help of assyrian governors that the federal coalition drove him back to the coast. he extricated himself from this untoward situation by the help of greek and asiatic mercenaries, his ionians and carians. some historians stated that the decisive battle was fought near memphis, in sight of the temple of isis; others affirmed that it took place at momemphis, that several of the princes perished in the conflict, and that the rest escaped into libya, whence they never returned; others, again, spoke of an encounter on the nile, when the fleet of the saite king dispersed that of his rivals. it is, in fact, probable that a single campaign sufficed for psammetichus, as formerly for the ethiopian pretenders, to get the upper hand, and that the egyptian feudal lords submitted after one or two defeats at most, hoping that, as in days gone by, when the first dash made by the new pharaoh was over, his authority would decline, and their own would regain the ascendency. events showed that they were deceived. psammetichus, better served by his hellenes than tafnakhti or bocchoris had been by their libyans, or piônkhi and tanuatamanu by their ethiopians, soon consolidated his rule over the country he had conquered. from or b.c. he so effectively governed egypt that foreigners, and even the assyrians themselves commonly accorded him the title of king. the fall of the ninevite rule had been involved in that of the feudal lords, but it was generally believed that assur-bani-pal would leave no means untried to recall the countries of the nile to their obedience: psammetichus knew this, and knew also that, as soon as they were no longer detained by wars or rebellions elsewhere, the assyrian armies would reappear in egypt. he therefore entered into an alliance with gyges,* and subsequently, perhaps, with shamash-shumukîn also; then, while his former suzerain was waging war in elam and chaldæa, he turned southwards, in b.c., and took possession of the thebaid without encountering any opposition from the ethiopians, as his ancestor tafnakhti had from piônkhi-miamun. mon-tumihâît** negotiated this capitulation of thebes, as he had already negotiated so many others; in recompense for this service, he was confirmed in his office, and his queen retained her high rank. * the annexation of the thebaid and the consequent pacification of egypt was an accomplished fact in the year ix. of psammetichus i. the analogy of similar documents, e.g. the stele of the high priest menkhopirrî, shows that the ceremony of adoption which consecrated the reunion of upper and lower egypt cannot have been separated by a long interval from the completion of the reunion itself: in placing this at the end of the year viii., we should have for the two events the respective dates of - and - b.c. ** the part played by montumihâît in this affair is easily deduced: ( ) from our knowledge of his conduct some years previously under taharqa and tanuatamanu; ( ) from the position he occupied at thebes, in the year ix., with regard to shapenuapît, according to the stele of legrain. a century or two earlier psammetichus would have married one of the princesses of sacerdotal lineage, and this union would have sufficed to legalise his position; perhaps he actually associated shapenuapît with himself by a show of marriage, but in any case he provided her with an adopted daughter according to the custom instituted by the ethiopian pharaohs. she already had one daughter by adoption, whom she had received at the hands of taharqa, and who, in changing her family, had assumed the name of amenertas in honour of the queen who had preceded shapenuapît: psammetichus forced her to replace the ethiopian princess by one of his own daughters, who was henceforth called shapenuapît, after her new mother. a deputation of the nobles and priests of thebes came to escort the princess from memphis, in the month of tybi, in the ninth year of the reign: psammetichus formally presented her to them, and the ambassadors, having listened to his address, expatiated in the customary eulogies on his splendour and generosity. �they shall endure as long as the world lasteth; all that thou ordainest shall endure. how beautiful is that which god hath done for thee, how glorious that which thy divine father hath done for thee? he is pleased that thy double should be commemorated, he rejoices in the pronouncing of thy name, for our lord psammetichus has made a gift to his father amon, he has given him his eldest daughter, his beloved mtauqrît shapenuapît, to be his divine spouse, that she may shake the sistrum before him!� on the th of tybi the princess left the harem, clothed in fine linen and adorned with ornaments of malachite, and descended to the quay, accompanied by an immense throng, to set out for her new home. relays stationed along the river at intervals made the voyage so expeditious that at the end of sixteen days the princess came in sight of thebes. she disembarked on the th of khoiak, amid the acclamations of the people: �she comes, the daughter of the king of the south, nitauqrît, to the dwelling of amon, that he may possess her and unite her to himself; she comes, the daughter of the king of the north, shapenuapît, to the temple of karnak, that the gods may there chant her praises.� as soon as the aged shapenuapît had seen her coadjutor, �she loved her more than all things,� and assigned her a dowry, the same as that which she had received from her own parents, and which she had granted to her first adopted daughter amenertas. the magnates of thebes--the aged montumihâît, his son nsiphtah, and the prophets of amon--vied with each other in their gifts of welcome: psammetichus, on his side, had acted most generously, and the temples of egypt assigned to the princess an annual income out of their revenues, or bestowed upon her grants of houses and lands, in all constituting a considerable inheritance, which somewhat consoled the thebans for their subjection to a dynasty emanating from the cities of the north. the rest of the principality imitated the example of thebes and the whole of egypt, from the shores of the mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract, once more found itself reunited under the sceptre of an egyptian king. a small part of nubia, the portion nearest to elephantine, followed this movement, but the greater part refused to cut itself off from the ethiopians. these latter were henceforth confined to the regions along the middle course of the nile, isolated from the rest of the world by the deserts, the red sea, and egypt. it is probable that they did not give up without a struggle the hope of regaining the ground they had lost, and that their armies made more than one expedition in a northerly direction. the inhabitants of the thebaid could hardly fail to remain faithful to them at heart, and to recognise in them the legitimate representatives of the posterity of amon; it is possible that now and again they succeeded in penetrating as far as the ancient capital, but if so, their success was always ephemeral, and their sojourn left no permanent traces. the same causes, however, which had broken up the constituent elements, and destroyed the unity of greater egypt at the end of the theban period, were still at work in saite times to prevent the building up again of the empire. the preservation of the balance of power in this long and narrow strip of country depended on the centre of attraction and on the seat of government being nearly equidistant from the two extremities. this condition had been fulfilled as long as the court resided at thebes; but as the removal of the seat of government to the delta caused the loss and separation of the southern provinces, so its sudden return to the extreme south, with a temporary sojourn at napata, necessarily produced a similar effect, and led to the speedy secession of the northern provinces. in either case, the dynasty placed at one extremity of the empire was unable to sustain for any length of time the weight depending on it at the other; when once the balance became even slightly disturbed, it could not regain its equilibrium, and there was consequently a sudden dislocation of the machinery of government. the triumph of the saite dynasty accomplished the final ruin of the work begun under the papis, and brought to completion by the amenemhâîts and the usirtasens. greater egypt ceased to exist, after more than twenty centuries of glorious life, and was replaced by the little egypt of the first ages of history. the defeat of the military chiefs of the north, the annexation of the principality of amon, and the final expulsion of the ethiopians and the asiatics had occupied scarcely nine years, but these feats constituted only the smaller part of the work psammetichus had to accomplish: his subsequent task lay in restoring prosperity to his kingdom, or, at all events, in raising it from the state of misery into which two centuries of civil wars and invasions had plunged it. the important cities had suffered grievously: memphis had been besieged and taken by assault by both piônkhi and esar-haddon, thebes had been twice sacked by the veterans of assur-bani-pal, and from syenê to pelusium there was not a township but had suffered at the hands of foreigners or of the egyptians themselves. the country had enjoyed a moment�s breathing-space under sabaco, but the little good which this prince had been able to accomplish was effaced immediately after his death: the canals and dykes had been neglected, the supervision of the police relaxed, and the population, periodically decimated or driven to take refuge in the strongholds, had often allowed the lands to lie waste, so that famine had been superadded to the other evils under which the land already groaned. psammetichus, having forced the feudal lords to submit to his supremacy, deprived them of the royal titles they had unduly assumed; he no longer tolerated their habits of private warfare, but restricted them to the functions of hereditary governors, which their ancestors had exercised under the conquering dynasties of former times,* and this enforced peace soon allowed the rural population to devote themselves joyfully to their regular occupations. * during the last few years records of a certain number of persons have been discovered whose names and condition prove that they were the descendants of semi-independent princes of the ethiopian and bubastite periods: e.g. a certain akaneshu, who was prince of sebennytos under psammetichus i., and who very probably was the grandson of akaneshu, prince of the same town under piônkhi; and a sheshonq of busiris, who was perhaps a descendant of sheshonq, prince of busiris under piônkhi. with so fertile a soil, two or three years of security, during which the fellahîn were able to sow and reap their crops free from the fear of marauding bands, sufficed to restore abundance, if not wealth, to the country, and psammetichus succeeded in securing both these and other benefits to egypt, thanks to the vigilant severity of his administration. he would have been unable to accomplish these reforms had he relied only on the forces which had been at the disposal of his ancestors--the native troops demoralised by poverty, and the undisciplined bands of libyan mercenaries, which constituted the sole normal force of the tanite and bubastite pharaohs and the barons of the delta and middle egypt. his experience of these two classes of soldiery had decided him to look elsewhere for a less precarious support, and ever since chance had brought him in contact with the ionians and carians, he had surrounded himself with a regular army of hellenic and asiatic mercenaries. it is impossible to exaggerate the terror that the apparition of these men produced in the minds of the african peoples, or the revolution they effected, alike in peace or war, in oriental states: the charge of the spanish soldiery among the lightly clad foot-soldiers of mexico and peru could not have caused more dismay than did that of the hoplites from beyond the sea among the half-naked archers and pikemen of egypt and libya. with their bulging corselets, the two plates of which protected back and chest, their greaves made of a single piece of bronze reaching from the ankle to the knee, their square or oval bucklers covered with metal, their heavy rounded helmets fitting closely to the head and neck, and surmounted by crests of waving plumes, they were, in truth, men of brass, invulnerable to any oriental weapon. drawn up in close array beneath their �tortoise,� they received almost unhurt the hail of arrows and stones hurled against them by the lightly armed infantry, and then, when their own trumpet sounded the signal for attack, and they let themselves fall with their whole weight upon the masses of the enemy, brandishing their spears above the upper edge of their bucklers, there was no force of native troops or company of mashauasha that did not waver beneath the shock and finally give way before their attack. the egyptians felt themselves incapable of overcoming them except by superior numbers or by stratagem, and it was the knowledge of their own hopeless inferiority which prevented the feudal lords from attempting to revenge themselves on psammetichus. to make themselves his equals, they would have been obliged either to take a sufficient number of similar warriors into their own pay--and this they were not able to afford--or they must have won over those already in the employ of their suzerain; but the liberality with which psammetichus treated his mercenaries gave them good cause to be faithful, even if military honour had not sufficed to keep them loyal to their employer. psammetichus granted to them and their compatriots, who were attracted by the fame of egypt, a concession of the fertile lands of the delta stretching along the pelusiac branch of the nile, and he was careful to separate the ionians from the carians by the whole breadth of the river: this was a wise precaution, for their union beneath a common flag had not extinguished their inherited hatred of one another, and the authority of the general did not always suffice to prevent fatal quarrels breaking out between contingents of different nationalities. [illustration: .jpg the saite fortress of daphne] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a restoration by fl. petrie. they occupied, moreover, regularly entrenched camps, enclosed within massive walls, containing a collection of mud huts or houses of brick, the whole enclosure commanded by a fortress which formed the headquarters of the general and staff of officers. some merchants from miletus, emboldened by the presence of their fellow-countrymen, sailed with thirty vessels into the mouth of the bolbitine branch of the nile, and there founded a settlement which they named the port of the milesians, and, following in their wake, successive relays of emigrants arrived to reinforce the infant colony. the king entrusted a certain number of egyptian children to the care of these greek settlers, to be instructed in their language,* and the interpreters thus educated in their schools increased in proportion as the bonds of commercial and friendly intercourse between greece and egypt became strengthened, so that ere long, in the towns of the delta, they constituted a regular class, whose function was to act as intermediaries between the two races. * diodorus, or rather the historian whom he follows, assures us that psammetichus went still further, and gave his own children a greek education; what is possible and even probable, is, that he had them taught greek. a bronze apis in the gizeh museum was dedicated by an interpreter who inscribed on it a bilingual inscription in hieroglyphics and carian. [illustration: a.jpg egyptian greek] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pi, pétrie. the original statuette in alabaster is now in the gizeh museum; the cyprian style of the figure is easily recognised. [illustration: b.jpg egyptian greek] drawn by faucher-gudin, from pi. pétrie. the original limestone statuette is in the gizeh museum. by thus bringing his subjects in contact with an active, industrious, and enterprising nation, full of youthful vigour, psammetichus no doubt hoped to inspire them with some of the qualities which he discerned in the colonists, but egypt during the last two centuries had suffered too much at the hands of foreigners of all kinds to be favourably disposed to these new-comers. it would have been different had they presented themselves in humble guise like the asiatics and africans to whom egypt had opened her doors so freely after the xviiith dynasty, and if they had adopted the obsequious manners of the phoenician and hebrew merchants; but they landed from their ships fully equipped for war, and, proud of their own courage and ability, they vied with the natives of the ancient race, whether of plebeian or noble birth, for the favour of the sovereign. their language, their rude military customs, their cunning devices in trade, even the astonishment they manifested at the civilisation of the country, rendered them objects of disdain, as well as of jealous hatred to the egyptian. the food of which they partook made them unclean in native estimation, and the horrified fellah shunned contact with them from fear of defiling himself, refusing to eat with them, or to use the same knife or cooking-vessel: the scribes and members of the higher classes, astonished at their ignorance, treated them like children with no past history, whose ancestors a few generations back had been mere savages. although unexpressed at first, this hostility towards the hellenes was not long in manifesting itself openly. the saite tradition attributed it to a movement of wounded vanity. psammetichus, to recompense the prowess of his ionian and carian soldiers, had attached them to his own person, and assigned to them the post of honour on the right wing when the army was drawn up for review or in battle array.* * diodorus siculus states that it was during the syrian war that the king thus honoured his mercenary troops. wiedemann thinks this is an erroneous inference drawn from the passage of herodotus, in which he explains the meaning of the word asmakh. they reaped thus the double advantage of the glory, which they greatly prized, and of the higher pay attached to the title of body-guard, but the troops who had hitherto enjoyed these advantages were naturally indignant at losing them, and began to murmur. one particularly galling circumstance at last caused their discontent to break out. the eastern and southern frontiers of egypt were conterminous with those of two conquering empires, assyria and ethiopia, and on the west the libyan tribes along the shores of the mediterranean were powerful enough to demand constant vigilance on the part of the border garrisons. psammetichus, among other reforms, had reorganised the ancient system of defence. while placing outposts at the entrance to the passes leading from the desert into the nile valley, he had concentrated considerable masses of troops at the three most vulnerable points--the outlets of the road to syria, the country surrounding lake mareotis, and the first cataract; he had fortified daphnse, near the old town of zalu, as a defence against the assyrians, marea against the libyan bedâwin, and elephantine against the ethiopians. these advanced posts had been garrisoned with native troops who were quartered there for a year at a time. to be condemned to such an exile for so long a period raised in them a sense of profound indignation, but when the king apparently forgot them and left them there three years without sending other troops to relieve them, their anger knew no bounds. they resolved to put an end to such treatment, and as the hope of a successful rebellion seemed but small, they decided to leave the country. two hundred and forty thousand of them assembled on a given day with their arms and baggage, and marched in good order towards ethiopia. psammetichus, warned of their intentions when ifc was too late, hastened after them with a handful of followers, and coming up with them, besought them not to desert their national gods, their wives, and their children. he had nearly prevailed on them to return, when one soldier, with a significant gesture, intimated that while manhood lasted they had power to create new families wherever they might chance to dwell. the details of this story betray the popular legend, but nevertheless have a basis of truth. the inscriptions from the time of psammetichus onwards never mention the mashauasha, while their name and their exploits constantly recur in the history of the preceding dynasties: henceforth they and their chiefs vanish from sight, and discord and brigandage simultaneously cease in the egyptian nomes. it was very probably the most turbulent among these auxiliaries who left the country in the circumstances above narrated: since they could not contest the superiority of their greek rivals, they concluded that their own part was played out, and rather than be relegated to the second rank, they preferred to quit the land in a body. psammetichus, thus deprived of their support at the moment when egypt had more than ever need of all her forces to regain her rightful position in the world, reorganised the military system as best he could. he does not seem to have relied much upon the contingents from upper egypt, to whom was doubtless entrusted the defence of the nubian frontier, and who could not be withdrawn from their posts without danger of invasion or revolt. but the source of imminent peril did not lie in this direction, where ethiopia, exhausted by the wars of taharqa and tanuatamanu, perhaps needed repose even more than egypt itself, but rather on the asiatic side, where assur-bani-pal, in spite of the complications constantly arising in karduniash and elam, had by no means renounced his claims to the suzerainty of egypt. the pharaoh divided the feudatory militia of the delta into two classes, which resided apart in different sets of nomes. the first group, who were popularly called hermotybies, were stationed at busiris, sais, and khemmis, in the island of prosopitis, and in one half of natho--in fact, in the district which for the last century had formed the centre of the principality of the saite dynasty: perhaps they were mostly of libyan origin, and represented the bands of mashauasha who, from father to son, had served under tafnakhti and his descendants. popular report numbered them at , men, all told, and the total number of the other class, known as the calasiries, at , ; these latter belonged, in my opinion, to the pure egyptian race, and were met with at thebes, while the troops of the north, who were more generally called out, were scattered over the territory which formerly supported the tanite and bubastite kings, and latterly pakruru, and which comprised the towns of bubastis, aphthis, tanis, mendes, sebennytos, athribis, pharbaathos, thmuis, onuphis, anysis, and myecphoris. each year one thousand hermotybies and one thousand calasiries were chosen to form the royal body-guard, and these received daily five minae of bread apiece, two minas of beef, and four bowls of wine; the jealousy which had been excited by the greek troops was thus lessened, as well as the discontent provoked by the emigration.* * _calasiris_, the exact transcription of _khala-shiri, khala-shere_, signifying _young man_. the meaning and original of the word transcribed hermotybies by herodotus, and hermotymbies according to a variant given by stephen of byzantium, is as yet unknown, but it seems to me to conceal a title analogous to that of _hir-mazaîu_, and to designate what remained of libyan soldiers in egypt. this organisation of the army is described by herodotus as existing in his own days, and there were calasiries and hermotybies in the egyptian contingent which accompanied the army of mardonius to greece; it is nowhere stated that it was the work of psammetichus, but everything points to the conclusion that it was so, at all events in the form in which it was known to the greeks. the king of napata gladly welcomed the timely reinforcements which arrived to fill up the vacancies in his army and among his people, weakened by a century of rapid changes, and generously gave them permission to conquer for themselves some territory in the possession of his enemies! having driven out the barbarians, they established themselves in the peninsula formed by the white and blue niles, and their numbers increased so greatly that in course of time they became a considerable nation. they called themselves asmakh, the men who stand on the king�s left hand, in memory of the affront put upon them, and which they had avenged by their self-exile: greek travellers and geographers called them sometimes automoli, sometimes sembrites, names which clung to them till almost the beginning of our present era. this departure of the mashauasha was as the last blast of wind after a storm: the swell subsided by degrees, and peace reigned in the interior. thebes accommodated itself as best it could to the new order of things under the nominal administration of the divine spouses, the two shapenuapîts. building works were recommenced at all points where it appeared necessary, and the need of restoration was indeed pressing after the disorders occasioned by the assyrian invasion and the ethiopian suzerainty. at karnak, and in the great temples on both banks of the nile, psammetichus, respecting the fiction which assigned the chief authority to the pallacides, effaced himself in favour of them, allowing them to claim all the merit of the work; in the cities they erected small chapels, in which they are portrayed as queens fulfilling their sacerdotal functions, humbly escorted by the viceroy who in other respects exercised the real power. the king�s zeal for restoration is manifest all along the nile, at coptos, abydos,* and in the plains of the delta, which are crowded with memorials of him. his two favourite capitals were memphis and sais, on both of which he impartially lavished his favours. * the first egyptologists attributed the prénommai cartouche of psammetichus i. to psammetichus ii., and _vice versa_: this error must always be kept in mind in referring to their works. at memphis he built the propylons on the south side of the temple of phtah, and the court in which the living apis took his exercise and was fed: this court was surrounded by a colonnade, against the pillars of which were erected statues twelve cubits high, probably representing osiris as in the eames-seum and at medinet-habu. apis even when dead also received his share of attention. since the days when ramses ii. had excavated the subterranean serapeum as a burial-place of the sacred bulls, no subsequent pharaoh who had reigned at memphis had failed to embellish their common tomb, and to celebrate with magnificence their rites of sepulture. [illustration: .jpg chamber and sarcophagus of an apis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving published in mariette. the body of the apis, carefully embalmed, was sealed up in a coffin or sarcophagus of hard stone, the mouth of the vault was then walled up, and against the fresh masonry, at the foot of the neighbouring rocks, on the very floor of the passage, or wherever there was a clear space available, the high dignitaries, the workmen or the priests who had taken any part in the ceremonial, set up a votive stele calling down upon themselves and their families divine benedictions. [illustration: .jpg the great gallery of the serapeum] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving of devéria. the gallery was transformed by degrees into a kind of record-office, where each dynasty in turn recorded its name, whenever a fresh apotheosis afforded them the opportunity: these records were discovered in our own time by mariette, almost perfect in spite of the destroying hand of men, and comprised inscriptions by the bubastites, by bocchoris, and even by the ethiopians. taharqa, when menaced by the assyrians, had stayed at memphis, only a year before his death, in the interval between two campaigns, in order to bury an apis, and psammetichus likewise took care not to neglect this part of his regal duties. he at first was content to imitate his predecessors, but a subsidence having occurred in that part of the serapeum where the apis who had died in the twentieth year of his reign reposed, he ordered his engineers to bore another gallery in a harder vein of limestone, and he performed the opening ceremony in his fifty-second year. it was the commencement of a thorough restoration. the vaults in which the sacred bulls were entombed were severally inspected, the wrappings were repaired together with the mummy cases, the masonry of the chapel was strengthened, and the building endowed with woods, stuffs, perfumes, and the necessary oils. no less activity apparently was displayed at sais, the native home and favourite residence of the pharaoh; but all the monuments which adorned the place, including the temple of nit, and the royal palace, have been entirely destroyed; the enclosing wall of unbaked bricks alone remains, and here and there, amid the _débris_ of the houses, may be seen some heaps of shattered stone where the public buildings once stood. on several blocks the name and titles of psammetichus may yet be deciphered, and there are few cities in the delta which cannot make a similar show. from one end of the nile valley to the other the quarries were reopened, and the arts, stimulated by the orders which flowed in, soon flourished anew. the engraving of hieroglyphics and the art of painting both attained a remarkable degree of elegance; fine statues and bas-reliefs were executed in large numbers, and a widely spread school of art was developed. the local artists had scrupulously observed and handed down the traditions which obtained in the time of the pyramids, and more especially those of the first theban period; even the few fragments that have come down to us of the works of these artists in the age of the ramessides recall rather the style of the vith and xiith dynasties than that of their theban contemporaries. their style, brought to perfection by evident imitation of the old memphite masters, pleases us by its somewhat severe elegance, the taste shown in the choice of detail, and the extraordinary skill displayed in the working of the stone. the memphites had by preference used limestone for their sculpture, the thebans red and grey granite or sandstone; but the artists of the age of psammetichus unhesitatingly attacked basalt, breccia, or serpentine, and obtained marvellous effects from these finely grained materials of regular and even texture. the artistic renaissance which they brought to its height had been already inaugurated under the ethiopians, and many of the statues we possess of the reign of taharqa are examples of excellent workmanship. that of amenertas was over-praised at the time of its discovery; the face, half buried by the wig which we usually associate with the statues of the goddesses, has a dull and vacant expression in spite of its set smile, and the modelling of the figure is rather weak, but nevertheless there is something easy and refined in the gracefulness of the statue as a whole. [ .jpg chieck beled--gizeh museum] a statuette of another �divine spouse,� though mutilated and unfinished, is pleasing from its greater breadth of style, although such breadth is rarely found in the works of this school, which toned down, elongated, and attenuated the figure till it often lost in vigour what it gained in distinction. the one point in which the saite artists made a real advance, was in the treatment of the heads of their models. [illustration: .jpg memphite bas-relief of the saite epoch] drawn by boudier, from a heliogravure in mariette. the bas- relief was worked into the masonry of a house in memphis in the byzantine period, and it was in order to fit it to the course below that the masons bevelled the lower part of it. the expression is often refined and idealised as in the case of older works, but occasionally the portraiture is exact even to coarseness. it was not the idealised likeness of montumihâît which the artist wished to portray, but montumihâît himself, with his low forehead, his small close-set eyes, his thin cheeks, and the deep lines about his nose and mouth. and besides this, the wrinkles, the crows� feet, the cranial projections, the shape of ear and neck, are brought out with minute fidelity. a statue was no longer, as in earlier days, merely a piece of sacred stone, the support of the divine or human double, in which artistic value was an accessory of no importance and was esteemed only as a guarantee of resemblance: without losing aught of its religious significance, a statue henceforward became a work of art, admired and prized for the manner in which the sculptor faithfully represented his model, as well as for its mystic utility. the reign of psammetichus lasted till nearly the end of the century, and was marked by peace both at home and abroad. no doubt skirmishes of some kind took place in lydia and nubia, but we know nothing of them, nor have we any account of engagements with the asiatics which from time to time must have taken place during this reign. psammetichus followed with a vigilant eye the revolutionary changes beyond the isthmus, actuated at first by the fear of an offensive movement on the part of syria, and when that ceased to be a danger, by the hope of one day recovering, in southern syria, at all events, that leading position which his predecessors had held so long. tradition asserts that he wisely confined his ambition to the conquest of the philistine pentapolis; it is even reported that he besieged ashdod for twenty-nine years before gaining possession of it. if we disregard the cipher, which is evidently borrowed from some popular romance, the fact in itself is in no way improbable. ashdod was a particularly active community, and had played a far more important part in earlier campaigns than any other member of the pentapolis. it possessed outside the town proper, which was situated some little distance from the coast, a seaport similar to that of gaza, and of sufficient size to shelter a whole fleet. [illustration: .jpg the ruins of sais] drawn by boudior, from a photograph by golenischeff. whoever held this harbour could exercise effective control over the main routes leading from syria into egypt. psammetichus probably undertook this expedition towards the end of his life, when the victories gained by the medes had demonstrated the incapacity of assyria to maintain the defence of her distant provinces.* * at one time i was inclined to explain this period of twenty-nine years by assuming that the fall of ashdod took place in the twenty-ninth year of the king�s reign, and that herodotus had mistaken the date of its surrender for the duration of the siege: such an hypothesis is, however, unnecessary, since it is very probable that we have here one of those exaggerated estimates of time so dear to the hearts of popular historians. if we are to believe the account given by diodorus, it was in syria that psammetichus granted the honour of a place in the right wing of his army to the greek mercenaries: the capture of ashdod must, in this case, have occurred before the emigration of the native troops. in jer. xxv. , reference is made to �the remnant of ashdod,� in the fourth year of jehoiakim, i.e. about b.c., and the decadence of the city is generally attributed to the war with egypt; it might with equal probability be ascribed to the scythian invasion. the attack of the scythians, which might have proved dangerous to egypt, had it been pushed far enough, had left her unharmed, and was in the end even advantageous to her. it was subsequent to the retreat of the barbarians, no doubt, that psam-metichus sent his troops into philistia and succeeded in annexing the whole or part of it. after this success he was content to wait and watch the course of events. the surprising revival of egypt must have had the effect of infusing fresh life into the egyptian factions existing in all the autonomous states, and in the prefectures of syria. the appearance of the pharaoh�s troops, and the toleration of their presence within the territory of the assyrian empire, aroused on all sides the hope of deliverance, and incited the malcontents to take some immediate action. we do not know what may have happened at tyre and sidon, or among the peoples of edom and arabia, but judah, at any rate, under the rule of josiah, carefully abstained from any action inconsistent with the pledge of fidelity which it had given to assyria. indeed, the whole kingdom was completely absorbed in questions of a theological nature, and the agitations which affected the religious life of the nation reacted on its political life as well. josiah, as he grew older, began to identify himself more and more with the doctrines taught by the prophets, and, thanks to his support, the party which sought to complete the reforms outlined by hezekiah gained fresh recruits every day. the opposition which they had formerly aroused among the priests of the temple had gradually died out, partly as the result of genuine conviction, and partly because the priests had come to realise that the establishment of a single exclusive sanctuary would work for their own interest and advantage. the high priest hilkiah took up the line followed by jeremiah, and was supported by a number of influential personages such as shaphan the scribe, son of azaliah, ahikam, achbor son of micaiab, and a prophetess named huldah, who had married the keeper of the royal wardrobe. the terrors of the scythian invasion had oppressed the hearts and quickened the zeal of the orthodox. judah, they declared, had no refuge save jahveh alone; all hope was lost if it persisted in the doctrines which had aroused against the faithless the implacable wrath of jahveh; it must renounce at once those idols and superstitious rites with which his worship had been disfigured, and overthrow the altars which were to be found in every part of the country in order to concentrate all its devotion on the temple of solomon. in a word, judah must return to an observance of the strict letter of the law, as it had been followed by their forefathers. but as this venerable code was not to be found either in the �book of the covenant� or in any of the other writings held sacred by israel, the question naturally arose as to where it was now hidden. in the eighteenth year of his reign, josiah sent shaphan the scribe to the temple in order to audit the accounts of the sums collected at the gates for the maintenance of the building. after the accounts had been checked, hilkiah suddenly declared that he had �found the book of the law� in the temple, and thereupon handed the document to shaphan, who perused it forthwith. on his return to the palace, the scribe made his report: �thy servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen;� then he added �hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book,� and proceeded to read it to the king. when the latter had heard the words contained in this book of the law, he was seized with anguish, and rent his garments; then, unable to arrive at any decision by himself, he sent hilkiah, shaphan, ahikam, achbor, and asaiah to inquire of jahveh for him and for his people, �for great is the wrath of the lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.� [illustration: .jpg decorations on the wrappings of a mummy.] the envoys betook themselves not to the official oracle or the recognised prophets, but to a woman, the prophetess huldah, who was attached to the court in virtue of her husband�s office; and she bade them, in the name of the most high, to summon a meeting of the faithful, and, after reading the new code to them, to call upon all present to promise that they would henceforth observe its ordinances: thus jahveh would be appeased, and since the king had �rent his garments and wept before me, i also have heard thee, saith jahveh. therefore, behold, i will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace.� josiah thereupon having summoned the elders of judah and jerusalem, went up into the temple, and there, standing on the platform, he read the book of the law in the presence of the whole people.* * kings xxii. - ; xxiii. , . the narrative has undergone slight interpolation in places, e.g. verses , a, , and , where the compiler has made it harmonise with events previously recorded in connection with the reign of joash ( kings xii. - ). the beginning of huldah�s prophecy was suppressed, when the capture of jerusalem proved that the reform of divine worship had not succeeded in averting the wrath of jahveh. it probably contained directions to read the _book of the covenant_ to the people, and to persuade them to adopt its precepts, followed by a promise to save judah provided it remained faithful to its engagements. it dealt with questions which had been frequent subjects of debate in prophetic circles since the days of hezekiah, and the anonymous writer who had compiled it was so strongly imbued with the ideas of jeremiah, and had so closely followed his style, that some have been inclined to ascribe the work to jeremiah himself. it has always been a custom among orientals to affirm that any work for which they profess particular esteem was discovered in the temple of a god; the egyptian priests, for instance, invented an origin of this nature for the more important chapters of their book of the dead, and for the leading treatises in the scientific literature of egypt. the author of the book of the law had ransacked the distant past for the name of the leader who had delivered israel from captivity in egypt. he told how moses, when he began to feel the hand of death upon him, determined to declare in gilead the decrees which jahveh had delivered to him for the guidance of his people.* in these ordinances the indivisible nature of god, and his jealousy of any participation of other deities in the worship of his people, are strongly emphasised. �ye shall surely destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills, and under every green tree: and ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their asherim with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.� ** * even st. jerome and st. john chrysostom admitted that deuteronomy was the book discovered by hilkiah in the temple during the reign of josiah, and this view is accepted at present, though it is applied, not to the book of deuteronomy as it appears in the pentateuch, but rather to the nucleus of this book, and especially chaps, xii.-xxvi. ** deut. xii. , . even were a prophet or dreamer of dreams to arise in the midst of the faithful and direct them by a sign or a miracle to turn aside after those accursed gods, they must not follow the teaching of these false guides, not even if the sign or miracle actually came to pass, but must seize and slay them. even �if thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, let us go and serve other gods,... thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him: neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and, afterwards the hand of all the people. and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die; because he hath sought to draw thee away from jahveh!�* and this jahveh was not the jahveh of any special place. he was not the jahveh of bethel, or of dan, or of mizpah, or of geba, or of beersheba; he is simply jahveh.** yet the seat of his worship was not a matter of indifference to him. �unto the place which jahveh shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither shalt thou come: and thither shall ye bring your... sacrifices and your tithes.� *** jerusalem is not mentioned by name, but the reference to it was clear, since every one knew that the suppression of the provincial sanctuaries must necessarily benefit it. one part of the new code dealt with the relations between different members of the community. the king was to approximate as closely as possible to the ideal priest; he was not to lift up his heart above his brethren, nor set his mind on the possession of many chariots, horses, or wives, but must continually read the law of god and ponder over his ordinances, and observe them word for word all the days of his life.**** * deut. xiii. - . ** deut. vi. . the expression found in zecli. xiv. was borrowed from the second of the introductions added to _deuteronomy_ at a later date; the phrase harmonises so closely with the main purpose of the book itself, that there can be no objection to employing it here. *** deut. xii. , . **** deut. xvii. - ; cf. xx. - for the regulations in regard to the levying of troops. even in time of war he was not to put his trust in his soldiers or in his own personal valour; here again he must allow himself to be guided by jahveh, and must undertake nothing without first consulting him through the medium of his priests. the poor,* the widow, and the orphan,** the bondservant,*** and even the stranger within the gates--in remembrance of the bondage in egypt ****--were all specially placed under the divine protection; every jew who had become enslaved to a fellow-countryman was to be set at liberty at the end of six years, and was to receive a small allowance from his master which would ensure him for a time against starvation.^ * as to the poor, and the charitable obligations towards them imposed by their common religion, cf. deut. xv. - ; as to the rights of the hired servant, cf. xxiv. , . ** deut. xxiv. - forbids the taking of a widow�s clothing in pledge, and lays down regulations in regard to gleaning permitted to widows and orphans (cf. lev. xix. , ); reference is also made to their share in triennial tithe (deut. xiv. , ; xxvi. , ) and in the solemn festivals (deut. xvi. - ). *** slaves were allowed to share in the rejoicings during the great festivals (deut. xvi. , ), and certain rights were accorded to women taken prisoners in war who had become their captors� concubines (deut. xxi. - ). ****participation of the stranger in the triennial tithe (deut. xiv. , ; xxvi. , ). ^ deut. xv. - . the regulations in regard to divine worship had not as yet been drawn up in that spirit of hair-splitting minuteness which, later on, became a characteristic of hebrew legislation. only three great festivals are mentioned in the book of the law. the passover was celebrated in the month of abîb, when the grain is in the ear, and had already come to be regarded as commemorative of the exodus; but the other two, the feast of weeks and the feast of tabernacles, were merely associated with the agricultural seasons, and took place, the former seven weeks after the beginning of the harvest, the latter after the last of the crops had been housed.* the claim of the priest to a share in the victim and in the offerings made on various occasions is maintained, and the lawgiver allows him to draw a similar benefit from the annual and triennial tithes which he imposes on corn and wine and on the firstborn of cattle, the produce of this tithe being devoted to a sort of family festival celebrated in the holy place.** the priest was thus placed on the same footing as the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, and his influence was but little greater than it had been in the early days of the monarchy. it was to the prophet and not to the priest that the duty belonged of directing the public conscience in all those cases for which the law had made no provision. �i will put my words into his mouth (said jahveh), and he shall speak unto them all that i shall command him. and it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, i will require it of him. but the prophet which shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which i have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. and if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the lord hath not spoken?--when a prophet speaketh in the name of jahveh, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which jahveh hath not spoken: the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.� * deut. xvi. - . ** deut. xviii. - ; as to the share in the triennial tithe, cf. deut. xiv. , ; xxvi. , . when the reading of the law had ended, josiah implored the people to make a covenant with jahveh; that is to say, �to walk after jahveh, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all their hearts and all their souls, to confirm the words of this covenant that were written in this book.� the final words, which lingered in every ear, contained imprecations of even more terrible and gloomy import than those with which the prophets had been wont to threaten judah. �if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of jahveh thy god, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which i command thee this day; then all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. cursed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough. cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, the increase of thy kine, and the young of thy flock.... thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her; thou shalt build an house, and shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not use the fruit thereof. thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof.... thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people; and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day: and there shall be naught in the power of thine hand.... jahveh shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shalt not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young.� this enemy was to burn and destroy everything: �and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, throughout all thy land, which jahveh thy god hath given thee. and thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters... in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall straiten thee.� those who escape must depart into captivity, and there endure for many a long year the tortures of direst slavery; �thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, would god it were even! and at even thou shalt say, would god it were morning! for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.� * * deut. xxviii. the two sets of imprecations (xxvii., xxviii.) which terminate the actual work are both of later redaction, but the original ms. undoubtedly ended with some analogous formula. i have quoted above the most characteristic parts of the twenty-eighth chapter. the assembly took the oath required of them, and the king at once displayed the utmost zeal in exacting literal performance of the ordinances contained in the book of the law. his first step was to purify the temple: hilkiah and his priests overthrew all the idols contained in it, and all the objects that had been fashioned in honour of strange gods--the baals, the asherim, and all the host of heaven--and, carrying them out of jerusalem into the valley of the kidron, cast them into the flames, and scattered the ashes upon the place where all the filth of the city was cast out. the altars and the houses of the sodomites which defiled the temple courts were demolished, the chariots of the sun broken in pieces, and the horses of the god sent to the stables of the king�s chamberlain;* the sanctuaries and high places which had been set up at the gates of the city, in the public places, and along the walls were razed to the ground, and the tophet, where the people made their children pass through the fire, was transformed into a common sewer. * [the hebrew text admits of this meaning, which is, however, not clear in the english a.v.--tr.] the provincial sanctuaries shared the fate of those of the capital; in a short time, from geba to beersheba, there remained not one of those �high places,� at which the ancestors of the nation and their rulers had offered prayers for generations past. the wave of reform passed even across the frontier and was borne into the assyrian province of samaria; the temple and image which jeroboam had set up at bethel were reduced to ashes, and human bones were burnt upon the altar to desecrate it beyond possibility of purification.* * kings xxiii. - , - , where several glosses and interpolations are easily recognisable, such as the episode at bethel (v. - ), the authenticity of which is otherwise incontestable. the account in chron. xxxiv. is a defaced reproduction of that of kings, and it places the reform, in part at least, before the discovery of the new law. the governor offered no objection to these acts; he regarded them, in the first place, as the private affairs of the subjects of the empire, with which he had no need to interfere, so long as the outburst of religious feeling did not tend towards a revolt: we know, moreover, that josiah, guided on this point by the prophets, would have believed that he was opposing the divine will had he sought to free himself from the assyrian yoke by ordinary political methods; besides this, in , under assur-etililâni, five years after the scythian invasion, the prefect of samaria had possibly not sufficient troops at his disposal to oppose the encroachments of the vassal princes. it was an affair of merely a few months. in the following year, when the work of destruction was over, josiah commanded that the passover should be kept in the manner prescribed in the new book; crowds flocked into jerusalem, from israel as well as from judah, and the festival made a deep impression on the minds of the people. centuries afterwards the passover of king josiah was still remembered: �there was not kept such a passover from the days of the judges... nor in all the days of the kings of israel, nor of the kings of judah.� * kings xxiii. - ; cf. chron. xxxv. - . the text of the soptuagint appears to imply that it was the first passover celebrated in jerusalem. it also gives in chap. xxii. , after the mention of the eighteenth year, a date of the seventh or eighth month, which is not usually accepted, as it is in contradiction with what is affirmed in chap, xxiii. - , viz. that the passover celebrated at jerusalem was in the same year as the reform, in the eighteenth year. it is to do away with the contradiction between these two passages that the hebrew text has suppressed the mention of the month. i think, however, it ought to be considered authentic and be retained, if we are allowed to place the celebration of the passover in what would be one year after. to do this it would not be needful to correct the regnal date in the text: admitting that the reform took place in , the passover of would still quite well have taken place in the eighteenth year of josiah, that being dependent on the time of year at which the king had ascended the throne. the first outburst of zeal having spent itself, a reaction was ere long bound to set in both among the ruling classes and among the people, and the spectacle that asia at that time presented to their view was truly of a nature to incite doubts in the minds of the faithful. assyria--that assyria of which the prophets had spoken as the irresistible emissary of the most high--had not only failed to recover from the injuries she had received at the hands, first of the medes, and then of the scythians, but had with each advancing year seen more severe wounds inflicted upon her, and hastening her irretrievably to her ruin. and besides this, egypt and chaldæa, the ancient kingdoms which had for a short time bent beneath her yoke, had now once more arisen, and were astonishing the world by their renewed vigour. psammetichus, it is true, after having stretched his arm across the desert and laid hands upon the citadel which secured to him an outlet into syria for his armies, had proceeded no further, and thus showed that he was not inclined to reassert the ancient rights of egypt over the countries of the jordan and the orontes; but he had died in , and his son, necho ii., who succeeded him, did not manifest the same peaceful intentions.* * the last dated stele of psammetichus i. is the official epitaph of the apis which died in his fifty-second year. on the other hand, an apis, born in the fifty-third year of psammetichus, died in the sixteenth year of necho, after having lived years, months, days. a very simple calculation shows that psammetichus i. reigned fifty-four years, as stated by herodotus and manetho, according to julius africanus. if he decided to try his fortune in syria, supported by his greek and egyptian battalions, what would be the attitude that judah would assume between moribund assyria and the kingdom of the pharaohs in its renewed vigour? it was in the spring of that the crisis occurred. nineveh, besieged by the medes, was on the point of capitulating, and it was easy to foresee that the question as to who should rule there would shortly be an open one: should egypt hesitate longer in seizing what she believed to be her rightful heritage, she would run the risk of finding the question settled and another in possession. necho quitted memphis and made his way towards the asiatic frontier with the army which his father had left to him. it was no longer composed of the ill-organised bands of the ethiopian kings or the princes of the delta, temporarily united under the rule of a single leader, but all the while divided by reciprocal hatreds and suspicions which doomed it to failure. all the troops which constituted it--egyptians, libyans, and greeks alike--were thoroughly under the control of their chief, and advanced in a compact and irresistible mass �like the nile: like a river its volume rolls onward. it said: i arise, i inundate the earth, i will drown cities and people! charge, horses! chariots, fly forward at a gallop! let the warriors march, the ethiopian and the libyan under the shelter of his buckler, the fellah bending the bow!�* * jer. xlvi. - , where the prophet describes, not the army which marched against josiah, but that which was beaten at carchemish. with a difference of date of only three or four years, the constituent elements of the army were certainly the same, so that the description of one would apply to the other. as soon as josiah heard the news, he called together his troops and prepared to resist the attack. necho affected not to take his demonstrations seriously, and sent a disdainful message recommending him to remain neutral: �what have i to do with thee, thou king of judah? i come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith i have war: and god hath commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with god who is with me, that he destroy thee not!�* * the message of necho to josiah is known to us from chron. xxxv. - . having despatched the message, probably at the moment of entering the shephelah, he continued in a northerly direction, nothing doubting that his warning had met a friendly reception; but however low nineveh had fallen, josiah could not feel that he was loosed from the oaths which bound him to her, and, trusting in the help of jahveh, he threw himself resolutely into the struggle. the egyptian generals were well acquainted with the route as far as the farther borders of philistia, having passed along it a few years previously, at the time of the campaign of psammetichus; but they had no experience of the country beyond ashdod, and were solely dependent for guidance on the information of merchants or the triumphant records of the old theban pharaohs. these monuments followed the traditional road which had led their ancestors from gaza to megiddo, from megiddo to qodshu, from qodshu to carchemish, and they were reckoning on passing through the valley of the jordan, and then that of the orontes, without encountering any resistance, when, at the entrance to the gorges of carmel, they were met by the advance guard of the judæan army. josiah, not having been warned in time to meet them as they left the desert, had followed a road parallel to their line of march, and had taken up his position in advance of them on the plain of megiddo, on the very spot where thutmosis iii. had vanquished the syrian confederates nearly ten centuries before. the king of judah was defeated and killed in the confusion of the battle, and the conqueror pushed on northwards without, at that moment, giving the fate of the scattered jews a further thought.* he rapidly crossed the plain of the orontes by the ancient caravan track, and having reached the euphrates, he halted under the walls of carchemish. perhaps he may have heard there of the fall of nineveh, and the fear of drawing down upon himself the medes or the babylonians prevented him from crossing the river and raiding the country of the balikh, which, from the force of custom, the royal scribes still persisted in designating by the disused name of mitanni.** * kings xxiii. ; cf. chron. xxxv. , . it is probably to this battle that herodotus alludes when he says that necho overcame the syrians at magdôlos. the identity of magdôlos and megiddo, accepted by almost all historians, was disputed by gutschmid, who sees in the magdôlos of herodotus the migdol of the syro-egyptian frontier, and in the engagement itself, an engagement of necho with the assyrians and their philistine allies; also by th. reinach, who prefers to identify magdôlos with one of the migdols near ascalon, and considers this combat as fought against the assyrian army of occupation. if the information in herodotus were indeed borrowed from hecatasus of miletus, and by the latter from the inscription placed by necho in the temple of branchidae, it appears to me impossible to admit that magdôlos does not here represent megiddo. ** the text of kings xxiii. says positively that necho was marching towards the euphrates. the name mitanni is found even in ptolemaic times. he returned southwards, after having collected the usual tributes and posted a few garrisons at strategic points; at biblah he held a kind of _durbar_ to receive the homage of the independent phoenicians* and of the old vassals of assyria, who, owing to the rapidity of his movements, had not been able to tender their offerings on his outward march. * the submission of the phoenicians to necho is gathered from a passage in berosus, where he says that the egyptian army beaten at carchemish comprised phoenicians, besides syrians and arabs. [illustration: .jpg victorious necho] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph published in mariette. this scarab, now in the gizeh museum, is the only egyptian monument which alludes to the victories of necho. above, the king stands between nît and isis; below, the vanquished are stretched on the ground. the jews had rescued the body of their king and had brought it back in his chariot to jerusalem; they proclaimed in his stead, not his eldest son eliakim, but the youngest, shallum, who adopted the name of jehoahaz on ascending the throne. he was a young man, twenty-three years of age, light and presumptuous of disposition, opposed to the reform movement, and had doubtless been unwise enough to display his hostile feelings towards the conqueror. necho summoned him to eiblah, deposed him after a reign of three months, condemned him to prison, and replaced him by eliakim, who changed his name to that of jehoiakim--�he whom jahveh exalts;� and after laying judah under a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and one of gold, the egyptian monarch returned to his own country. certain indications lead us to believe that he was obliged to undertake other punitive expeditions. the philistines, probably deceived by false rumours of his defeat, revolted against him about the time that he was engaged in hostilities in northern syria, and on receiving news not only of his safety, but of the victory he had gained, their alarm was at once aroused. judah forgot her own sorrows on seeing the peril in which they stood, and jeremiah pronounced against them a prophecy full of menace. �behold,� he cried, �waters rise up out of the north, and shall become an overflowing stream, and shall overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and them that dwell therein; and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl... for the lord will spoil the philistines, the remnant of the isle of caphtor. baldness is come upon gaza; ascalon is dumb with terror, and you, all that are left of the giants, how long will ye tear your faces in your mourning?� * ascalon was sacked and then gaza,** and necho at length was able to re-enter his domains, doubtless by the bridge of zalu, following in this his models, his heroic ancestors of the great theban dynasties. * [r.v., �ashkolon is brought to nought, the remnant of their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?�--tr.] ** jer. xlvii., which is usually attributed to a period subsequent to the defeat at carchemish or even later; the title, which alone mentions the egyptians, is wanting in the lxx. if we admit that the enemy coming from the north is the egyptian and not the chaldaean, as do most writers, the only time that danger could have threatened philistia from the egyptians coming from the north, was when necho, victorious, was returning from his first campaign. in this case, the kadytis of herodotus, which has caused so much trouble to commentators, would certainly be gaza, and there would be no difficulty in explaining how the tradition preserved by the greek historian placed the taking of this town after the battle of megiddo. he wished thereupon to perpetuate the memory of the greeks who had served him so bravely, and as soon as the division of the spoil had been made, he sent as an offering to the temple of apollo at miletus, the cuirass which he had worn throughout the campaign. we can picture the reception which his subjects gave him, and how the deputations of priests and nobles in white robes flocked out to meet him with garlands of flowers in their hands, and with acclamations similar to those which of old had heralded the return of seti i. or ramses ii. national pride, no doubt, was flattered by this revival of military glory, but other motives than those of vanity lay at the root of the delight exhibited by the whole country at the news of the success of the expedition. the history of the century which was drawing to its close, had demonstrated more than once how disadvantageous it was to egypt to be separated from a great power merely by the breadth of the isthmus. if taharqa, instead of awaiting the attack on the banks of the nile, had met the assyrians at the foot of carmel, or even before gaza, it would have been impossible for esarhaddon to turn the glorious kingdom of the pharaohs into an assyrian province after merely a few weeks of fighting. the dictates of prudence, more than those of ambition, rendered, therefore, the conquest of syria a necessity, and necho showed his wisdom in undertaking it at the moment when the downfall of nineveh reduced all risk of opposition to a minimum; it remained to be seen whether the conquerors of sin-shar-ishkun would tolerate for long the interference of a third robber, and would consent to share the spoil with these africans, who, having had none of the trouble, had hastened to secure the profit. all the mediterranean dependencies of assyria, such as mesopotamia, syria, and judæ, fell naturally within the sphere of babylon rather than that of media, and, indeed, cyaxares never troubled himself about them; and nabopolassar, who considered them his own by right, had for the moment too much in hand to permit of his reclaiming them. the aramæans of the khabur and the balikh, the nomads of the mesopotamian plain, had not done homage to him, and the country districts were infested with numerous bands of cimmerians and scythians, who had quite recently pillaged the sacred city of harrân and violated the temple of the god sin.* nabopolassar, who was too old to command his troops in person, probably entrusted the conduct of them to nebuchadrezzar, who was the son he had appointed to succeed him, and who had also married the median princess. three years sufficed this prince to carry the frontier of the new chaldæan empire as far as the syrian fords of the euphrates, within sight of thapsacus and carchemish. harrân remained in the hands of the barbarians,** probably on condition of their paying a tribute, but the district of the subaru was laid waste, its cities reduced to ashes, and the babylonian suzerainty established on the southern slopes of the masios. * _inscrip. of the cylinder of nabonidus_ mentions the pillage of harrân as having taken place fifty-four years before the date of its restoration by nabonidus. this was begun, as we know, in the third year of that king, possibly in - . the date of the destruction is, therefore, - , that is to say, a few months before the destruction of nineveh. ** the passage in the _cylinder of nabonidus_ shows that the barbarians remained in possession of the town. having brought these preliminary operations to a successful issue, nabopolassar, considering himself protected on the north and north-east by his friendship with cyaxares, no longer hesitated to make an effort to recover the regions dominated by egyptian influence, and, if the occasion presented itself, to reduce to submission the pharaoh who was in his eyes merely a rebellious satrap. nebuchadrezzar again placed himself at the head of his troops; necho, warned of his projects, hastened to meet him with all the forces at his disposal, and, owing probably to the resistance offered by the garrisons which he possessed in the hittite fortresses, he had time to continue his march as far as the euphrates. the two armies encountered each other at carchemish; the egyptians were completely defeated in spite of their bravery and the skilful tactics of their greek auxiliaries, and the asiatic nations, who had once more begun to rely on egypt, were obliged to acknowledge that they were as unequal to the task of overcoming chaldaea as they had been of sustaining a struggle with assyria.* * jer. xlvi. ; cf. kings xxiv. , where the editor, without mentioning the battle of carchemish, recalls in passing that �the king of babylon had taken, from the brook of egypt unto the river euphrates, all that pertained to the king of egypt.� the religious party in judah, whose hopes had been disappointed by the victory of pharaoh at megiddo, now rejoiced at his defeat, and when the remains of his legions made their way back across the philistine plain, closely pressed by the enemy, jeremiah hailed them as they passed with cutting irony. two or three brief, vivid sentences depicting the spirit that had fired them a few months before, and then the picture of their disorderly flight: �order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, put on the coats of mail. wherefore have i seen it? they are dismayed and turn backward; and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back; terror is on every side, saith the lord. let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; in the north by the river euphrates have they stumbled and fallen.... go up into gilead, and take balm, o virgin daughter of egypt; in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee. the nations have heard of thy shame, and the earth is full of thy cry: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, they are fallen both of them together.� * nebuchadrezzar received by the way the submission of jehoiakim, and of the princes of ammon, moab, and the philistines;** he was nearing pelusium on his way into egypt, when a messenger brought him the news of his father�s death. * jer. xlvi. - , , . ** the submission of all these peoples is implied by the passage already cited in kings xxiv. ; berosus speaks of the phoenician, jewish, and syrian prisoners whom nebuchadrezzar left to his generals, when he resolved to return to babylon by the shortest route. he feared lest a competitor should dispute his throne--perhaps his younger brother, that nabu-shum-lishir who had figured at his side at the dedication of a temple to marduk. he therefore concluded an armistice with necho, by the terms of which he remained master of the whole of syria between the euphrates and the wady el-arish, and then hastily turned homewards. but his impatience could not brook the delay occasioned by the slow march of a large force, nor the ordinary circuitous route by carchemish and through mesopotamia. he hurried across the arabian desert, accompanied by a small escort of light troops, and presented himself unexpectedly at the gates of babylon. he found all in order. his chaldæan ministers had assumed the direction of affairs, and had reserved the throne for the rightful heir; he had only to appear to be acclaimed and obeyed (b.c. ). his reign was long, prosperous, and on the whole peaceful. the recent changes in asiatic politics had shut out the chaldæans from the majority of the battle-fields on which the assyrians had been wont to wage warfare with the tribes on their eastern and northern frontiers. we no longer see stirring on the border-land those confused masses of tribes and communities of whose tumultuous life the ninevite annals make such frequent record: elam as an independent state no longer existed, neither did philipi and namri, nor the cossæans, nor parsua, nor the medes with their perpetual divisions, nor the urartians and the mannai in a constant state of ferment within their mountain territory; all that remained of that turbulent world now constituted a single empire, united under the hegemony of the medes, and the rule of a successful conqueror. the greater part of blam was already subject to those achæmenides who called themselves sovereigns of anshân as well as of persia, and whose fief was dependent on the kingdom of ecbatana:* it is probable that chaldasa received as her share of the ancient susian territory the low countries of the uknu and the ulai, occupied by the aramæan tribes of the puqudu, the eutu, and the grambulu;** but susa fell outside her portion, and was soon transformed into a flourishing iranian town. * �the king and the princes of elam� mentioned in jer. xxv. , xlix. - , and in ezele. xxxii. , , in the time of nebuchadrezzar, are probably the persian kings of anshân and their elamite vassals--not only, as is usually believed, the kings and native princes conquered by assur-bani-pal; the same probably holds good of the elam which an anonymous prophet associates with the medes under nabonidus, in the destruction of babylon (isa. xxi. ). the princes of malamîr appear to me to belong to an anterior epoch. ** the enumeration given in ezelc. xxiii. , �the babylonians and all the chaldæans, pelted, and shoa, and koa,� shows us probably that the aramæans of the lower tigris represented by pekôd, as those of the lower euphrates are by the chaldæans, belonged to the babylonian empire in the time of the prophet. they are also considered as belonging to babylon in the passage of an anonymous prophet (jer. i. ), who wrote in the last days of the chaldæn empire: �go up against the land of merathaim, even against it and the inhabitants of pekod.� translators and commentators have until quite recently mistaken the import of the name pekôd. the plains bordering the right bank of the tigris, from the uknu to the turnat or the eadanu, which had belonged to babylon from the very earliest times, were no doubt still retained by her;* but the mountain district which commanded them certainly remained in the hands of cyaxares, as well as the greater part of assyria proper, and there is every reason to believe that from the eadanu northwards the tigris formed the boundary between the two allies, as far as the confluence of the zab. * this is what appears to me to follow from the account of the conquest o£ babylon by cyrus, as related by herodotus. the entire basin of the upper tigris and its assyrian colonies, amidi and tushkân were now comprised in the sphere of medic influence, and the settlement of the scythians at harrân, around one of the most venerated of the semitic sanctuaries, shows to what restrictions the new authority of chaldasa was subjected, even in the districts of mesopotamia, which were formerly among the most faithful possessions of nineveh. if these barbarians had been isolated, they would not long have defied the king of babylon, but being akin to the peoples who were subject to cyaxares, they probably claimed his protection, and regarded themselves as his liege men; it was necessary to treat them with consideration, and tolerate the arrogance of their presence upon the only convenient road which connected the eastern with the western provinces of the kingdom. it is therefore evident that there was no opening on this side for those ever-recurring struggles in which assyria had exhausted her best powers; one war was alone possible, that with media, but it was fraught with such danger that the dictates of prudence demanded that it should be avoided at all costs, even should the alliance between the two courts cease to be cemented by a royal marriage. however great the confidence which he justly placed in the valour of his chaldæans, nebuchadrezzar could not hide from himself the fact that for two centuries they had always been beaten by the assyrians, and that therefore he would run too great a risk in provoking hostilities with an army which had got the better of the conquerors of his people. besides this, cyaxares was fully engaged in subjecting the region which he had allotted to himself, and had no special desire to break with his ally. nothing is known of his history during the years which followed the downfall of nineveh, but it is not difficult to guess what were the obstacles he had to surmount, and the result of the efforts which he made to overcome them. the country which extends between the caspian and the black sea--the mountain block of armenia, the basins of the araxes and the kur, the valleys of the halys, the iris, and the thermodon, and the forests of the anti-taurus and the taurus itself--had been thrown into utter confusion by the cimmerians and the scythians. nothing remained of the previous order of things which had so long prevailed there, and the barbarians who for a century and a half had destroyed everything in the country seemed incapable of organising anything in its place. urartu had shrunk within its ancient limits around ararat, and it is not known who ruled her; the civilisation of argistis and menuas had almost disappeared with the dynasty which had opposed the power of assyria, and the people, who had never been much impregnated by it, soon fell back into their native rude habits of life. confused masses of european barbarians were stirring in etiaus and the regions of the araxes, seeking a country in which to settle themselves, and did not succeed in establishing themselves firmly till a much later period in the district of sakasênê, to which was attached the name of one of their tribes.* * strabo states that armenia and the maritime regions of cappadocia suffered greatly from the invasion of the scythians. such of the mushku and the tabal as had not perished had taken refuge in the north, among the mountains bordering the black sea, where they were ere long known to the greeks as the moschi and the tibarenians. the remains of the cimmerian hordes had taken their place in cappadocia, and the phrygian population which had followed in their wake had spread themselves over the basin of the upper halys and over the ancient milidu, which before long took from them the name of armenia.* all these elements constituted a seething, struggling, restless mass of people, actuated by no plan or method, and subject merely to the caprice of its chiefs; it was, indeed, the �seething cauldron� of which the hebrew prophets had had a vision, which at times overflowed over the neighbouring nations, and at others was consumed within and wasted itself in fruitless ebullition.** * the phrygian origin of the armenians is pointed out by herodotus and by eudoxius. ** jer. i. . it took cyaxares years to achieve his conquests; he finally succeeded, however, in reducing the various elements to subjection--urartians, scythians, cimmerians, chaldæ, and the industrious tribes of the chalybes and the white syrians--and, always victorious, appeared at last on the right hank of the halys; but having reached it, he found himself face to face with foes of quite a different calibre from those with whom he had hitherto to deal. lydia had increased both in wealth and in vigour since the days when her king ardys informed his ally assur-bani-pal that he had avenged the death of his father and driven the cimmerians from the valley of the msoander. he had by so doing averted all immediate danger; but as long as the principal horde remained unexterminated, another invasion was always to be feared; besides which, the barbarian inroad, although of short duration, had wrought such havoc in the country that no native power in asia minor appeared, nor in reality was, able to make the effort needful to destroy them. their king dugdamis, it will be remembered, met his death in cilicia at the hands of the assyrians about the year , and kôbos, his successor, was defeated and killed by the scythians under madyes about . the repeated repulses they had suffered had the effect of quickly relieving lydia, phrygia, and the remaining states of the Ægean and the black sea from their inroads; the milesians wrested sinope from them about , and the few bands left behind when the main body set out for the countries of the euphrates were so harried and decimated by the people over whom they had terrorised for nearly a century, that they had soon no refuge except round the fortress of antandros, in the mountains of the troad. most of the kingdoms whose downfall they had caused never recovered from their reverses; but lydia, which had not laid down its arms since the death of gyges, became possessed by degrees of the whole of their territory; phrygia proper came back to her in the general redistribution, and with it most of the countries which had been under the rule of the dynasty of midas, from the mountains of lycia to the shores of the black sea. the transfer was effected, apparently, with very slight opposition and with little loss of time, since in the four or five years which followed the death of kôbos, ardys had risen in the estimation of the greeks to the position enjoyed by gyges; and when, in , aristomenes, the hero of the messenian wars, arrived at rhodes, it is said that he contemplated proceeding from thence, first to sardes and then to ecbatana, for the purpose of gaining the adherence of lydia and media to his cause. [illustration: .jpga view in the mountains of the messogis] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of rayet and thomas. death put an end to his projects, but he would not for a moment have entertained them had not ardys been at that time at the head of a renowned and flourishing kingdom. the renewal of international commerce followed closely on the re-establishment of peace, and even if the long period of scythian invasion, followed by the destruction of nineveh, rendered the overland route less available for regular traffic than before, at all events relations between the inhabitants of the euphrates valley and those of the iegean littoral were resumed to such good purpose that before long several fresh marts were opened in lydia. [illustration: .jpg the site of priÊnÊ.] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of rayet and thomas. kymê and ephesus put the region of the messogis and the tmolus into communication with the sea, but the lower valleys of the hermos and the masander were closed by the existence of greek colonies at smyrna, clazomenas, colophon, priênê, and miletus--all hostile to the mermnadæ--which it would be necessary to overcome if these countries were to enjoy the prosperity shared by other parts of the kingdom; hence the principal effort made by the lydians was either directly to annex these towns, or to impose such treaties on them as would make them their dependencies. ardys seized priênê towards , and after having thus established himself on the northern shore of the latrnio gulf,* he proceeded to besiege miletus in , at the very close of his career. hostilities were wearily prolonged all through the reign of sadyattes ( - ), and down to the sixth year of alyattes.** * the well-known story that priênê was saved under alyattes by a stratagem of the philosopher bias is merely a fable, of which several other examples are found. it would not be possible to conclude from it, as grote did, that ardys� rule over the town was but ephemeral. ** the periods of duration assigned here to the reigns of these princes are those of euschius--that is to say, years for crosus, for alyattes, for sadyattes, for ardys; julius africanus gives for sadyattes and for ardys, while herodotus suggests for crosus, for alyattes, for sadyattes, and for ardys. the position of miletus was too strong to permit of its being carried by a _coup de main_; besides which, the lydians were unwilling to destroy at one blow a town whose colonies, skilfully planted at the seaports from the coasts of the black sea to those of egypt, would one day furnish them with so many outlets for their industrial products. their method of attacking it resolved itself into a series of exhausting raids. �every year, as soon as the fruit crops and the harvests began to ripen, alyattes set out at the head of his troops, whom he caused to march and encamp to the sound of instruments. having arrived in the milesian territory, he completely destroyed the crops and the orchards, and then again withdrew.� in these expeditions he was careful to avoid any excesses which would have made the injury inflicted appear irretrievable; his troops were forbidden to destroy dwelling-houses or buildings dedicated to the gods; indeed, on one occasion, when the conflagration which consumed the lands accidentally spread to the temple of athena near assêsos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. the milesians sustained the struggle courageously, until two reverses at limeneion and in the plain of the maeander at length induced them to make terms. their tyrant, thrasybulus, acting on the advice of the delphic apollo and by the mediation of periander of corinth, concluded a treaty with alyattes in which the two princes, declaring themselves the guest and the ally one of the other, very probably conceded extensive commercial privileges to one another both by land and sea ( ).* * thrasybulus� stratagem is said to have taken place at priênê by diogenes laertes and by polysenus. the war begins under ardys, lasts for five years under sadyattes, instead of the six years which herodotus attributes to it, and five years under alyattes. alyattes rewarded the oracle by the gift of a magnificent bowl, the work of glaucus of chios, which continued to be shown to travellers of the roman period as one of the most remarkable curiosities of delphi. alyattes continued his expeditions against the other greek colonies, but directed them prudently and leisurely, so as not to alarm his european friends, and provoke the formation against himself of a coalition of the hellenic communities shattered over the isles or along the littoral of the Ægean. we know that towards the end of his reign he recovered colophon, which had been previously acquired by gyges, but had regained its independence during the cimmerian crisis;* he razed smyrna to the ground, and forced its inhabitants to occupy unfortified towns, where his suzerainty could not be disputed;** he half devastated clazomense, whose citizens saved it by a despairing effort, and he renewed the ancient alliances with ephesus, kymê, and the cities of the region of the caicus and the hellespont,*** though it is impossible to attribute an accurate date to each of these particular events. * polysenus tells the story of the trick by which alyattes, after he had treated with the people of colophon, destroyed their cavalry and seized on their town. the fact that a treaty was made seems to be confirmed by a fragment of phylarchus, and the surrender of the town to the lydians by a fragment of xenophanes, quoted in athenseus. schubert does not seem to believe that the town was taken by alyattes; i have adopted the opinion of ladet on this point. ** herodotus and nicolas of damascus confine themselves to relating the capture of the city; adds that the lydians compelled the inhabitants to dwell in unfortified towns. schubert thinks that the passage in strabo refers, not to the time of alyattes, but to a subsequent event in the fifth century; he relies for this opinion on a fragment of pindar, which represents smyrna as still flourishing in his time. but, as busolt has pointed out, the intention of the text of pindar is to represent the state of the city at about the time of homer�s birth, and not in the fifth century. *** the peace between ephesus and lydia must have been troubled for a little while in the reign of sadyattes, but it was confirmed under alyattes by the marriage of melas ii. with one of the king�s daughters. most of them had already taken place or were still proceeding when the irruption of the medes across the halys obliged him to concentrate all his energies on the eastern portion of his kingdom. the current tradition in lydia of a century later attributed the conflict of the two peoples to a romantic cause. it related that cyaxares had bestowed his favour on the bands of scythians who had become his mercenaries on the death of madyes, and that he had entrusted to them the children of some of the noblest medic families, that they might train them to hunt and also teach them the use of the bow. one day, on their returning from the chase without any game, cyaxares reproached them for their want of skill in such angry and insulting terms, that they resolved on immediate revenge. they cut one of the children in pieces, which they dressed after the same manner as that in which they were accustomed to prepare the game they had killed, and served up the dish to the king; then, while he was feasting upon it with his courtiers, they lied in haste and took refuge with alyattes. the latter welcomed them, and refused to send them back to cyaxares; hence the outbreak of hostilities. it is, of course, possible that the emigration of a nomad horde may have been the cause of the war,* but graver reasons than this had set the two nations at variance. * grote has collected a certain number of examples in later times to show that the journeying of a nomad horde from one state to another may provoke wars, and he concludes therefrom that at least the basis of herodotus� account may be considered as true. the hardworking inhabitants of the valleys of the iris and the halys were still possessed of considerable riches, in spite of the losses they had suffered from the avaricious cimmerians, and their chief towns, comana, pteria and teiria, continued to enjoy prosperity under the rule of their priest-kings. pteria particularly had developed in the course of the century, thanks to her favourable situation, which had enabled her to offer a secure refuge to the neighbouring population during the late disasters. [illustation: .jpg the ruins of pteria] drawn by boudier, from charles texier. the town itself was crowded into a confined plain, on the left bank of a torrent which flowed into the halys, and the city walls may still be clearly traced upon the soil; the outline of the houses, the silos, cisterns, and rock-cut staircases are still visible in places, besides the remains of a palace built of enormous blocks of almost rough-hewn limestone. the town was defended by wide ramparts, and also by two fortresses perched upon enormous masses of rock, while a few thousand yards to the east of the city, on the right bank of the torrent, three converging ravines concealed the sanctuary of one of those mysterious oracles whose fame attracted worshippers from far and wide during the annual fairs. [illustration: b.jpg the entrance to the sanctuary of pteria] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by chantre. the bas-reliefs which decorate them belong to that semi-barbarous art which we have already met with in the monuments attributed to the khâfci, near the orontes and euphrates, on both slopes of the amanus, in cilioia, and in the ravines of the taurus. [illustration: .jpg one of the processions in the ravine of pteria] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by chantre. long processions of priests and votaries defile before figures of the gods and goddesses standing erect upon their sacred animals; in one scene, a tall goddess, a cybele or an anaitis, leans affectionately upon her chosen lover, and seems to draw him with her towards an image with a lion�s body and the head of a youth.* * these bas-reliefs seem to me to have been executed at about the time with which we are dealing, or perhaps a few years later--in any case, before the persian conquest. pteria and its surrounding hills formed a kind of natural fortress which overlooked the whole bend of the halys; it constituted, in the land of the lydians, an outpost which effectually protected their possessions in phrygia and papnlagonia against an attack from the east; in the hands of the medes it would be a dominant position which would counteract the defensive features of the halys, and from it they might penetrate into the heart of asia minor without encountering any serious obstacles. the struggle between the two sovereigns was not so unequal as might at first appear. no doubt the army of alyattes was inferior in numbers, but the bravery of its component forces and the ability of its leaders compensated for its numerical inferiority, and cyaxares had no troop to be compared with the carian lancers, with the hoplites of ionia, or with the heavy mæonian cavalry. during six years the two armies met again and again--fate sometimes favouring one and sometimes the other--and were about to try their fortune once more, after several indecisive engagements, when an eclipse of the sun suspended operations ( ). the iranian peoples would fight only in full daylight, and their adversaries, although warned, so it is said, by the milesian philosopher thaïes of the phenomenon about to take place in the heavens, were perhaps not completely reassured as to its significance, and the two hosts accordingly separated without coming to blows.* * this eclipse was identified at one time with that of sept. , , at another with that of may , . the latter of these two dates appears to me to be the correct one, and is the only one which agrees with what we know of the general history of the sixth century. nebuchadrezzar had followed, not without some misgivings, the vicissitudes of the campaign, and his anxiety was shared by the independent princes of asia minor, who were allies of the lydians; he and they alike awaited with dread a decisive action, which, by crushing one of the belligerents beyond hope of recovery, would leave the onlookers at the mercy of the victor in the full flush of his success. tradition relates that syennesis of cilicia and the babylonian nabonidus had taken advantage of the alarm produced by the eclipse to negotiate an armistice, and that they were soon successful in bringing the rival powers to an agreement.* the halys remained the recognised frontier of the two kingdoms, but the lydians probably obtained advantages for their commerce, which they regarded as compensatory for the abandonment of their claim to the district of pteria. to strengthen the alliance, it was agreed that alyattes should give his daughter aryenis in marriage to ishtuvigu, or, as the greeks called him, astyages, the son of cyaxares.** according to the custom of the times, the two contracting parties, after taking the vow of fidelity, sealed the compact by pricking each other�s arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed from the puncture.*** * the name labynetos given by herodotus is a transcript of nabonidus, but cannot here designate the babylonian king of that name, for the latter reigned more than thirty years after the peace was concluded between the lydians and the medes. if herodotus has not made the mistake of putting labynetos for nebuchadrezzar, we may admit that this labynetos was a prince of the royal family, or simply a general who was commanding the chaldoan auxiliaries of cyaxares. ** the form ishtuvigu is given us by the chaldoan documents. its exact transcript was astuigas, astyigas, according to ctosias; in fact, this coincides so remarkably with the babylonian mode of spelling, that we may believe that it faithfully reproduces the original pronunciation. *** many ancient authors have spoken of this war, or at least of the eclipse which brought it to an end. several of them place the conclusion of peace not in the reign of cyaxares, but in that of astyages--cicero, solinus, and the armenian eusebius--and their view has been adopted by some modern historians. the two versions of the account can be reconciled by saying that astyages was commanding the median army instead of his father, who was too old to do so, but such an explanation is unnecessary, and cyaxares, though over seventy, might still have had sufficient vigour to wage war. the substitution of astyages for cyaxares by the authors of roman times was probably effected with the object of making the date of the eclipse agree with a different system of chronology from that followed by herodotus. cyaxares died in the following year ( ), full of days and renown, and was at once succeeded by astyages. few princes could boast of having had such a successful career as his, even in that century of unprecedented fortunes and boundless ambitions. inheriting a disorganised army, proclaimed king in the midst of mourning, on the morrow of a defeat in which the fate of his kingdom had hung in the balance, he succeeded within a quarter of a century in overthrowing his enemies and substituting his supremacy for theirs throughout the whole of western asia. at his accession media had occupied only a small portion of the iranian table-land; at his death, the median empire extended to the banks of the halys. it is now not difficult to understand why nebuchadrezzar abstained from all expeditions in the regions of the taurus, as well as in those of the upper tigris. he would inevitably have come into contact with the allies of the lydians, perchance with the lydians themselves, or with the medes, as the case might be; and he would have been drawn on to take an active part in their dangerous quarrels, from which, after all, he could not hope to reap any personal advantage. in reality, there was one field of action only open to him, and that was southern syria, with egypt in her rear. he found himself, at this extreme limit of his dominions, in a political situation almost identical with that of his assyrian predecessors, and consequently more or less under the obligation of repeating their policy. the saites, like the ethiopians before them, could enjoy no assured sense of security in the delta, when they knew that they had a great military state as their nearest neighbour on the other side of the isthmus; they felt with reason that the thirty leagues of desert which separated pelusium from gaza was an insufficient protection from invasion, and they desired to have between themselves and their adversary a tract of country sufficiently extensive to ward off the first blows in the case of hostilities. if such a buffer territory could be composed of feudal provinces or tributary states, egyptian pride would be flattered, while at the same time the security of the kingdom would be increased, and indeed the victorious progress of necho had for the moment changed their most ambitious dreams into realities. driven back into the nile valley after the battle of carchemish, their pretensions had immediately shrunk within more modest limits; their aspirations were now confined to gaining the confidence of the few surviving states which had preserved some sort of independence in spite of the assyrian conquest, to detaching them from chaldoan interests and making them into a protecting zone against the ambition of a new esarhaddon. to this work necho applied himself as soon as nebuchadrezzar had left him in order to hasten back to babylon. the egyptian monarch belonged to a persevering race, who were never kept, down by reverses, and had not once allowed themselves to be discouraged during the whole of the century in which they had laboured to secure the crown for themselves; his defeat had not lessened his tenacity, nor, it would seem, his certainty of final success. besides organising his egyptian and libyan troops, he enrolled a still larger number of hellenic mercenaries, correctly anticipating that the restless spirits of the phoenicians and jews would soon furnish him with an opportunity of distinguishing himself upon the scene of action. it was perhaps at this juncture that he decided to strengthen his position by the co-operation of a fleet. the superiority of the chaldoan battalions had been so clearly manifested, that he could scarcely hope for a decisive victory if he persisted in seeking it on land; but if he could succeed in securing the command of the sea, his galleys, by continually cruising along the syrian coast, and conveying troops, provisions, arms, and money to the phoenician towns, would so successfully foster and maintain a spirit of rebellion, that the chaldæans would not dare to venture into egypt until they had dealt with this source of danger in their rear. he therefore set to work to increase the number of his war-vessels on the bed sea, but more especially on the mediterranean, and as he had drawn upon greece for his troops, he now applied to her for shipbuilders.* * herodotus tells us that in his time the ruins of the docks which necho had made for the building of his triremes could still be seen on the shore of the red sea as well as on that of the mediterranean. he seems also to say that the building of the fleet was anterior to the first syrian expedition. [illustration: .jpg an egyptian vessel of the saite period] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph sent by g. benédite. the trireme, which had been invented by either the samian or corinthian naval constructors, had as yet been little used, and possibly herodotus is attributing an event of his own time to this earlier period when he affirms that necho filled a dockyard with a whole fleet of these vessels; he possessed, at any rate, a considerable number of them, and along with them other vessels of various build, in which the blunt stem and curved poop of the greeks were combined with the square-cabined barque of the egyptians. at the same time, in order to transport the squadron from one sea to another when occasion demanded, he endeavoured to reopen the ancient canal. he improved its course and widened it so as to permit of two triremes sailing abreast or easily clearing each other in passing. the canal started from the pelusiac branch of the nile, not far from patumos, and skirted the foot of the arabian hills from west to east; it then plunged into the wady tumilat, and finally entered the head of the bay which now forms the lake of ismaïlia. the narrow channel by which this sheet of water was anciently connected with the gulf of suez was probably obstructed in places, and required clearing out at several points, if not along its entire extent. a later tradition states that after having lost , men in attempting this task, the king abandoned the project on the advice of an oracle, a god having been supposed to have predicted to him that he was working for the barbarians.* * the figures, , men, are evidently exaggerated, for in a similar undertaking, the digging of the mahmudiyeh canal, mehemet-ali lost only , men, though the work was greater. [illustration: .jpg the ancient head of the red sea, now the northern extremity of the bitter lakes] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken from the railway between ismaïlia and suez, on the eastern shore of the lake. another of necho�s enterprises excited the admiration of his contemporaries, and remained for ever in the memory of the people. the carthaginians had discovered on the ocean coast of libya, a country rich in gold, ivory, precious woods, pepper, and spices, but their political jealousy prevented other nations from following in their wake in the interests of trade. the egyptians possibly may have undertaken to dispute their monopoly, or the phoenicians may have desired to reach their colony by a less frequented highway than the mediterranean. the merchants of the said and the delta had never entirely lost touch with the people dwelling on the shores of the red sea, and though the royal fleets no longer pursued their course down it on their way to punt as in the days of hâtshopsîtu and ramses iii., private individuals ventured from time to time to open trade communications with the ancient �ladders of incense.� necho despatched the phoenician captains of his fleet in search of new lands, and they started from the neighbourhood of suez, probably accompanied by native pilots accustomed to navigate in those waters. the undertaking, fraught with difficulty even in the last century, was, indeed, a formidable one for the small vessels of the saite period. they sailed south for months with the east to the left of them, and on their right the continent which seemed to extend indefinitely before them. towards the autumn they disembarked on some convenient shore, sowed the wheat with which they were provided, and waited till the crop was ripe; having reaped the harvest, they again took to the sea. any accurate remembrance of what they saw was soon effaced; they could merely recollect that, having reached a certain point, they observed with astonishment that the sun appeared to have reversed its course, and now rose on their right hand. this meant that they had turned the southern extremity of africa and were unconsciously sailing northwards. in the third year they passed through the pillars of hercules and reached egypt in safety. the very limited knowledge of navigation possessed by the mariners of that day rendered this voyage fruitless; the dangerous route thus opened up to commerce remained unused, and its discovery was remembered only as a curious feat devoid of any practical use.* * the greek writers after herodotus denied the possibility of such a voyage, and they thought that it could not be decided whether africa was entirely surrounded by water, and that certainly no traveller had ever journeyed above stadia beyond the entrance to the red sea. modern writers are divided on the point, some denying and others maintaining the authenticity of the account. the observation made by the navigators of the apparent change in the course of the sun, which herodotus has recorded, and which neither he nor his authorities understood, seems to me to be so weighty an argument for its authenticity, that it is impossible to reject the tradition until we have more decided grounds for so doing. in order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its tyrian policy. necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the assyrians to the chaldæans. he could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in moab, ammon, and edom, as well as among the nabatæans and the arabs of kedar; but the key of the whole position lay with judah--that ally without whom none of necho�s other partisans would venture to declare openly against their master. the death of josiah had dealt a fatal blow to the hopes of the prophets, and even long after the event they could not recall it without lamenting the fate of this king after their own heart. �and like unto him,� exclaims their chronicler, �was there no king before him, that turned to the lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of moses; neither after him arose there any like him.� * * kings xxiii. . the events which followed his violent death--the deposition of jehoahaz, the establishment and fall of the egyptian supremacy, the proclamation of the chaldæan suzerainty, the degradation of the king and the misery of the people brought about by the tribute exacted from them by their foreign masters,--all these revolutions which had succeeded each other without break or respite had all but ruined the belief in the efficacy of the reform due to hilkiah�s discovery, and preached by jeremiah and his followers. the people saw in these calamities the vengeance of jahveh against the presumptuous faction which had overthrown his various sanctuaries and had attempted to confine his worship to a single temple; they therefore restored the banished attractions, and set themselves to sacrifice to strange gods with greater zest than ever. a like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around jehoiakim similar to those at the court of ahaz and hezekiah a century earlier. the populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the chaldæans by earthly means, and since necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with egypt. jeremiah, on the contrary, and those who remained faithful to the teaching of the prophets, saw in all that was passing around them cogent reasons for rejecting worldly wisdom and advice, and for yielding themselves unreservedly to the divine will in bowing before the chaldæan of whom jahveh made use, as of the assyrian of old, to chastise the sins of judah. the struggle between the two factions constantly disturbed the public peace, and it needed little to cause the preaching of the prophets to degenerate into an incitement to revolt. on a feast-day which occurred in the early months of jehoiakim�s reign, jeremiah took up his station on the pavement of the temple and loudly apostrophised the crowd of worshippers. �thus saith the lord: if ye will not hearken unto me, to walk in my law, which i have set before you, to hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom i send unto you, even rising up early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened; then will i make this house like shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.� such a speech, boldly addressed to an audience the majority of whom were already moved by hostile feelings, brought their animosity to a climax; the officiating priests, the prophets, and the pilgrims gathered round jeremiah, crying, �thou shalt surely die.� the people thronged into the temple, the princes of judah went up to the king�s house and to the house of the lord, and sat in council in the entry of the new gate. they decreed that jeremiah, having spoken in the name of the lord, did not merit death, and some of their number, recalling the precedent of micaiah the morasthite, who in his time had predicted the ruin of jerusalem, added, �did hezekiah king of judah and all judah put him at all to death?� ahikam, the son of shaphan, one of those who had helped in restoring the law, took the prophet under his protection and prevented the crowd from injuring him, but some others were not able to escape the popular fury. the prophet uriah of kirjath-jearim, who unweariedly prophesied against the city and country after the manner of jeremiah, fled to egypt, but in vain; jehoiakim despatched elnathan, the son of achbor, �and certain men with him,� who brought him back to judah, �slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people.� * if popular feeling had reached such a pitch before the battle of carchemish, to what height must it have risen when the news of nebuchadrezzar�s victory had given the death-blow to the hopes of the egyptian faction! jeremiah believed the moment ripe for forcibly arresting the popular imagination while it was swayed by the panic of anticipated invasion. he dictated to his disciple baruch the prophecies he had pronounced since the appearance of the scythians under josiah, and on the day of the solemn fast proclaimed throughout judah during the winter of the fifth year of the reign, a few months after the defeat of the egyptians, he caused the writing to be read to the assembled people at the entry of the new gate.** * jer. xxvi., where the scene takes place at the beginning of jehoiakim�s reign, i.e. under the egyptian domination. ** the date given in jer. xxxvi. makes the year begin in spring, since the ninth month occurs in winter; this date belongs, therefore, to the later recensions of the text. it is nevertheless probably authentic, representing the exact equivalent of the original date according to the old calendar. micaiah, the son of gremariah, was among those who listened, and noting that the audience were moved by the denunciations which revived the memory of their recent misfortunes, he hastened to inform the ministers sitting in council within the palace of what was passing. they at once sent for baruch, and begged him to repeat to them what he had read. they were so much alarmed at its recital, that they advised him to hide himself in company with jeremiah, while they informed the king of the matter. jehoiakim was sitting in a chamber with a brazier burning before him on account of the severe cold: scarcely had they read three or four pages before him when his anger broke forth; he seized the roll, slashed it with the scribe�s penknife, and threw the fragments into the fire. jeremiah recomposed the text from memory, and inserted in it a malediction against the king. �thus saith the lord concerning jehoiakim, king of judah: he shall have none to sit upon the throne of david: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. and i will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity: and i will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of jerusalem, and upon the men of judah, all the evil that i have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not.� * * jer. xxxvi. attempts have been made to reconstruct the contents of jeremiah�s roll, and most of the authors who have dealt with this subject think that the roll contained the greater part of the fragments which, in the book of the prophet, occupy chaps, i. - , ii., iii. - , - , iv.- vi., vii., viii., ix. - , x. - , xi., xii. - , xvii. - , xviii., xix. - , which it must be admitted have not in every case been preserved in their original form, but have been abridged or rearranged after the exile. other chapters evidently belong to the years previous to the fifth year of jehoiakim, as well as part of the prophecies against the barbarians, but they could not have been included in the original roll, as the latter would then have been too long to have been read three times in one day. the egyptian tendencies evinced at court, at first discreetly veiled, were now accentuated to such a degree that nebuchadrezzar became alarmed, and came in person to jerusalem in the year . his presence frustrated the intrigues of pharaoh. jehoiakim was reduced to order for a time, but three years later he revolted afresh at the instigation of necho, and this time the chaldæan satraps opened hostilities in earnest. they assembled their troops, which were reinforced by syrian, moabite, and ammonite contingents, and laid siege to jerusalem.* * kings xxiv. - . the passage is not easy to be understood as it stands, and it has been differently interpreted by historians. some have supposed that it refers to events immediately following the battle of carchemish, and that jehoiakim defended jerusalem against nebuchadrezzar in . others think that, after the battle of carchemish, jehoiakim took advantage of nebuchadrezzar�s being obliged to return at once to babylon, and would not recognise the authority of the chaldæans; that nebuchadrezzar returned later, towards , and took jerusalem, and that it is to this second war that allusion is made in the book of kings. it is more simple to consider that which occurred about as a first attempt at rebellion which was punished lightly by the chaldæans. jehoiakim, left to himself, resisted with such determination that nebuchadrezzar was obliged to bring up his chaldæan forces to assist in the attack. judah trembled with fear at the mere description which her prophet habakkuk gave of this fierce and sturdy people, �which march through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling-places which are not theirs. they are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen spread themselves; yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteneth to devour. they come all of them for violence; their faces are set eagerly as the east wind, and they gather captives as the sand. yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him: he derideth every stronghold: for he heapeth up dust and taketh it. then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over the guilty, even he whose might is his god.� nebuchadrezzar�s army must have presented a spectacle as strange as did that of necho. it contained, besides its nucleus of chaldæn and babylonian infantry, squadrons of scythian and median cavalry, whose cruelty it was, no doubt, that had alarmed the prophet, and certainly bands of greek hoplites, for the poet alcasus had had a brother, antimenidas by name, in the chaldæan monarch�s service. jehoiakim died before the enemy appeared beneath the walls of jerusalem, and was at once succeeded by his son jeconiah,* a youth of eighteen years, who assumed the name of jehoiachin.** * [jehoiachin is called coniah in jer. xxii. and xxiv. , and jeconiah in chron. iii. .--tr.] ** kings xxiv. - ; cf. chron. xxxvi. - , where the writer says that nebuchadrezzar bound jehoiakim �in fetters, to carry him to babylon.� the new king continued the struggle at first courageously, but the advent of nebuchadrezzar so clearly convinced him of the futility of the defence, that he suddenly decided to lay down his arms. he came forth from the city with his mother nehushta, the officers of his house, his ministers, and his eunuchs, and prostrated himself at the feet of his suzerain. the chaldæn monarch was not inclined to proceed to extremities; he therefore exiled to babylon jehoiachin and the whole of his seditious court who had so ill-advised the young king, the best of his officers, and the most skilful artisans, in all persons, but the priests and the bulk of the people remained at jerusalem. the conqueror appointed mattaniah, the youngest son of josiah, to be their ruler, who, on succeeding to the crown, changed his name, after the example of his predecessors, adopting that of zedekiah. jehoiachin had reigned exactly three months over his besieged city ( ).* the egyptians made no attempt to save their ally, but if they felt themselves not in a condition to defy the chaldasans on syrian territory, the chaldaeans on their side feared to carry hostilities into the heart of the delta. necho died two years after the disaster at jerusalem, without having been called to account by, or having found an opportunity of further annoying, his rival, and his son psammetichus ii. succeeded peacefully to the throne.** he was a youth at this time,*** and his father�s ministers conducted the affairs of state on his behalf, and it was they who directed one of his early campaigns, if not the very first, against ethiopia.**** * kings xxiv. - ; cf. chron. xxxvi. . ** the length of necho�s reign is fixed at sixteen years by herodotus, and at six or at nine years by the various abbreviators of manetho. the contemporaneous monuments have confirmed the testimony of herodotus on this point as against that of manetho, and the stelse of the florentine museum, of the leyden museum, and of the louvre have furnished certain proof that necho died in the sixteenth year, after fifteen and a half years� reign. *** his sarcophagus, discovered in , and now preserved in the gizeh museum, is of such small dimensions that it can have been used only for a youth. **** the graffiti of abu-simbel have been most frequently attributed to psammetichus i., and until recently i had thought it possible to maintain this opinion. a. von gutsehmid was the first to restore them to psammetichus il, and his opinion has gained ground since wiedemann�s vigorous defence of it. the alysian mercenary�s graffito contains the greek translation of the current egyptian phrase �when his majesty came on his first military expedition into this country,� which seems to point to no very early date in a reign for a first campaign. moreover, one of the generals in command of the expedition is a psammetichus, son of theocles, that is, a greek with an egyptian name. a considerable lapse of time must have taken place since psammetichus� first dealings with the greeks, for otherwise the person named after the king would not have been of sufficiently mature age to be put at the head of a body of troops. they organised a small army for him composed of egyptians, greeks, and asiatic mercenaries, which, while the king was taking up his residence at elephantine, was borne up the nile in a fleet of large vessels.* it probably went as far south as the northern point of the second cataract, and not having encountered any ethiopian force,** it retraced its course and came to anchor at abu-simbel. * the chief graffito at abu-simbel says, in fact, that the king came to elephantine, and that only the troops accompanying the general psammetichus, the son of theocles, went beyond kerkis. it was probably during his stay at elephantine, while awaiting the return of the expedition, that psammetichus ii. had the inscriptions containing his cartouches engraved upon the rocks of bigga, abaton, philo, and konosso, or among the ruins of elephantine and of phila?. ** the greek inscription says _above kerlcis_. wiedemann has corrected _kerkis_ into _kortis_, the korte of the first cataract, but the reading kerkis is too well established for there to be any reason for change. the simplest explanation is to acknowledge that the inscription refers to a place situated a few miles above abu-simbel, towards wady-halfa. the officers in command, after having admired the rock-cut chapel of ramses ii., left in it a memento of their visit in a fine inscription cut on the right leg of one of the colossi. this inscription informs us that �king psammatikhos having come to elephantine, the people who were with psammatikhos, son of theocles, wrote this. they ascended above kerkis, to where the river ceases; potasimto commanded the foreigners, amasis the egyptians. at the same time also wrote arkhôn, son of amoibikhos, and peleqos, son of ulamos.� following the example of their officers, the soldiers also wrote their names here and there, each in his own language--ionians, rhodians, carians, phoenicians, and perhaps even jews; e.g. elesibios of teos, pabis of colophon, telephos of ialysos, abdsakon son of petiehvê, gerhekal son of hallum. the whole of this part of the country, brought to ruin in the gradual dismemberment of greater egypt, could not have differed much from the nubia of to-day; there were the same narrow strips of cultivation along the river banks, gigantic temples half buried by their own ruins, scattered towns and villages, and everywhere the yellow sand creeping insensibly down towards the nile. the northern part of this province remained in the hands of the saite pharaohs, and the districts situated further south just beyond abu-simbel formed at that period a sort of neutral ground between their domain and that of the pharaohs of napata. while all this was going on, syria continued to plot in secret, and the faction which sought security in a foreign alliance was endeavouring to shake off the depression caused by the reverses of jehoiakim and his son; and the tide of popular feeling setting in the direction of egypt became so strong, that even zedekiah, the creature of nebuchadrezzar, was unable to stem it. the prophets who were inimical to religious reform, persisted in their belief that the humiliation of the country was merely temporary. [illustration: .jpg the faÇade of the great temple of abu-simbel] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by daniel héron. those of them who still remained in jerusalem repeated at every turn, �ye shall not serve the king of babylon... the vessels of the lord�s house shall now shortly be brought again from babylon.� jeremiah endeavoured to counteract the effect of their words, but in vain; the people, instead of listening to the prophet, waxed wroth with him, and gave themselves more and more recklessly up to their former sins. incense was burnt every morning on the roofs of the houses and at the corners of the streets in honour of baal, lamentations for tammuz again rent the air at the season of his festival; the temple was invaded by uncircumcised priests and their idols, and the king permitted the priests of moloch to raise their pyres in the valley of hinnom. the exiled jews, surrounded on all sides by heathen peoples, presented a no less grievous spectacle than their brethren at jerusalem; some openly renounced the god of their fathers, others worshipped their chosen idols in secret, while those who did not actually become traitors to their faith, would only listen to such prophets as promised them a speedy revenge--ahab, zedekiah, son of maaseiah, and shemaiah. there was one man, however, who appeared in their midst, a priest, brought up from his youth in the temple and imbued with the ideas of reform--ezekiel, son of buzi, whose words might have brought them to a more just appreciation of their position, had they not drowned his voice by their clamour; alarmed at their threats, he refrained from speech in public, but gathered round him a few faithful adherents at his house in tel-amb, where the spirit of the lord first came upon him in their presence about the year .* * ezelc. i. , . we see him receiving the elders in his house in chaps, viii. , xiv. , xx. , et. seq. this little band of exiles was in constant communication with the mother-country, and the echo of the religious quarrels and of the controversies provoked between the various factions by the events of the political world, was promptly borne to them by merchants, travelling scribes, or the king�s legates who were sent regularly to babylon with the tribute.* they learnt, about the year , that grave events were at hand, and that the moment had come when judah, recovering at length from her trials, should once more occupy, in the sight of the sun, that place for which jahveh had destined her. the kings of moab, ammon, edom, tyre, and sidon had sent envoys to jerusalem, and there, probably at the dictation of egypt, they had agreed on what measures to take to stir up a general insurrection against chaldæa.** the report of their resolutions had revived the courage of the national party, and of its prophets; hananiah, son of azzur, had gone through the city announcing the good news to all.*** * jer. xxix. gives the names of two of these transmitters of the tribute--elasah the son of shaphan, and gemariah the son of hilkiah, to whom jeremiah had entrusted a message for those of the captivity. ** jer. xxvii. - . the statement at the beginning of this chapter: _in the beginning of the reign of jehoiakim_, contains a copyist�s error; the reading should be: _in the beginning of the reign of zedekiah_ (see ver. ). *** jer. xxvii., xxviii. �thus speaketh the lord of hosts, the god of israel, saying, i have broken the yoke of the king of babylon. within two full years will i bring again into this place all the vessels of the lord�s house .. . and jeconiah the son of jehoiakim, king of judah, with all the captives of judah that went to babylon!� but jeremiah had made wooden yokes and had sent them to the confederate princes, threatening them with divine punishment if they did not bow their necks to nebuchadrezzar; the prophet himself bore one on his own neck, and showed himself in the streets on all occasions thus accoutred, as a living emblem of the slavery in which jahveh permitted his people to remain for their spiritual good. hananiah, meeting the prophet by chance, wrested the yoke from him and broke it, exclaiming, �thus saith the lord: even so will i break the yoke of nebuchadrezzar, king of babylon, within two full years from off the neck of all the nations.� the mirth of the bystanders was roused, but on the morrow jeremiah appeared with a yoke of iron, which jahveh had put �upon the neck of all the nations, that they may serve nebuchadrezzar, king of babylon.� moreover, to destroy in the minds of the exiled jews any hope of speedy deliverance, he wrote to them: �let not your prophets that be in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you, neither hearken ye to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. for they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: i have not sent them, saith the lord.� the prophet exhorted them to resign themselves to their fate, at all events for the time, that the unity of their nation might be preserved until the time when it might indeed please jahveh to restore it: �build ye houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them: take ye wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply ye there and be not diminished. and seek the peace of the city whither i have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.� psammetichus ii. died in ,* and his reign, though short, was distinguished by the activity shown in rebuilding and embellishing the temples. * herodotus reckoned the length of the reign of psammetichus ii. at six years, in which he agrees with the syncellus, while the abbreviators of manetho fix it at seventeen years. the results given by the reading of a stele of the louvre enable us to settle that the figure is to be preferred to the other, and to reckon the length of the reign at five years and a half. his name is met with everywhere on the banks of the nile--at karnak, where he completed the decoration of the great columns of taharqa, at abydos, at heliopolis, and on the monuments that have come from that town, such as the obelisk set up in the campus martius at borne. the personal influence of the young sovereign did not count for much in the zeal thus displayed; but the impulse that had been growing during three or four generations, since the time of the expulsion of the assyrians, now began to have its full effect. egypt, well armed, well governed by able ministers, and more and more closely bound to greece by both mercantile and friendly ties, had risen to a very high position in the estimation of its contemporaries; the inhabitants of elis had deferred to her decision in the question whether they should take part in the olympic games in which they were the judges, and following the advice she had given on the matter, they had excluded their own citizens from the sports so as to avoid the least suspicion of partiality in the distribution of the prizes.* the new king, probably the brother of the late pharaoh, had his prenomen of uahibn from his grandfather psammetichus i., and it was this sovereign that the greeks called indifferently uaphres and apries.** * diodorus siculus has transferred the anecdote to amasis, and the decision given is elsewhere attributed to one of the seven sages. the story is a popular romance, of which herodotus gives the version current among the greeks in egypt. ** according to herodotus, apries was the son of psammis. the size of the sarcophagus of psammetichus ii., suitable only for a youth, makes this filiation improbable. psammetichus, who came to the throne when he was hardly more than a child, could have left behind him only children of tender age, and apries appears from the outset as a prince of full mental and physical development. [illustration: .jpg apries, from a sphinx in the louvre] drawn by boudier, from the bronze statuette in the louvre museum. he was young, ambitious, greedy of fame and military glory, and longed to use the weapon that his predecessors had for some fifteen years past been carefully whetting; his emissaries, arriving at jerusalem at the moment when the popular excitement was at its height, had little difficulty in overcoming zede-kiah�s scruples. edoni, moab, and the philistines, who had all taken their share in the conferences of the rebel party, hesitated at the last moment, and refused to sever their relations with babylon. tyre and the ammonites alone persisted in their determination, and allied themselves with egypt on the same terms as judah. [illustration: .jpg stele of nebuchadrezzar] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by pognon. the figures have been carefully defaced with the hammer, but the outline of the king can still be discerned on the left; he seizes the rampant lion by the right paw, and while it raises its left paw against him, he plunges his dagger into the body of the beast. nebuchadrezzar, thus defied by three enemies, was at a loss to decide upon which to make his first attack. ezekiel, whose place of exile put him in a favourable position for learning what was passing, shows him to us as he �stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver.� judah formed as it were the bridge by which the egyptians could safely enter syria, and if nebuchadrezzar could succeed in occupying it before their arrival, he could at once break up the coalition into three separate parts incapable of rejoining one another--ammon in the desert to the east, tyre and sidon on the seaboard, and pharaoh beyond his isthmus to the south-west. he therefore established himself in a central position at eiblah on the orontes, from whence he could observe the progress of the operations, and hasten with his reserve force to a threatened point in the case of unforeseen difficulties; having done this, he despatched the two divisions of his army against his two principal adversaries. one of these divisions crossed the lebanon, seized its fortresses, and, leaving a record of its victories on the rocks of the wady brissa, made its way southwards along the coast to blockade tyre.* * the account of this phoenician campaign is contained in one of the inscriptions discovered and commented on by pognon. winckler, the only one to my knowledge who has tried to give a precise chronological position to the events recorded in the inscription, places them at the very beginning of the reign, after the victory of carchemish, about the time when nebuchadrezzar heard that his father had just died. i think that this date is not justified by the study of the inscription, for the king speaks therein of the great works that he had accomplished, the restoration of the temples, the rebuilding of the walls of babylon, and the digging of canals, all of which take us to the middle or the end of his reign. we are therefore left to choose between one of two dates, namely, that of - , during the jewish war, and that from the king�s thirty-seventh year to b.c., during the war against amasis which will be treated below. i have chosen the first, because of nebuchadrezzar�s long sojourn at riblah, which gave him sufficient time for the engraving of the stelse on lebanon: the bas-reliefs of wady. brissa could have been cut before the taking of jerusalem, for no allusion to the war against the jews is found in them. the enemy mentioned in the opening lines is perhaps apries, whose fleet was scouring the phoenician coasts. the other force bore down upon zedekiah, and made war upon him ruthlessly. it burnt the villages and unwalled towns, gave the rural districts over as a prey to the philistines and the edomites, surrounded the two fortresses of lachish and azekah, and only after completely exhausting the provinces, appeared before the walls of the capital. jerusalem was closely beset when the news reached the chaldæans that apries was approaching gaza; zedekiah, in his distress, appealed to him for help, and the promised succour at length came upon the scene. the chaldæans at once raised the siege with the object of arresting the advancing enemy, and the popular party, reckoning already on a chaldean defeat, gave way to insolent rejoicing over the prophets of evil. jeremiah, however, had no hope of final success. �deceive not yourselves, saying, the chaldæans shall surely depart from us; for they shall not depart. for though ye had smitten the whole army of the chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire.� what actually took place is not known; according to one account, apries accepted battle and was defeated; according to another, he refused to be drawn into an engagement, and returned haughtily to egypt.* * that, at least, is what jeremiah seems to say (xxxvii. ): �behold, pharaoh�s army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to egypt into their own land.� there is no hint here of defeat or even of a battle. his fleet probably made some effective raiding on the phoenician coast. it is easy to believe that the sight of the chaldoan camp inspired him with prudence, and that he thought twice before compromising the effects of his naval campaign and risking the loss of his fine army--the only one which egypt possessed--in a conflict in which his own safety was not directly concerned. nebuchadrezzar, on his side, was not anxious to pursue so strongly equipped an adversary too hotly, and deeming himself fortunate in having escaped the ordeal of a trial of strength with him, he returned to his position before the walls of jerusalem. the city receiving no further succour, its fall was merely a question of time, and resistance served merely to irritate the besiegers. the jews nevertheless continued to defend it with the heroic obstinacy and, at the same time, with the frenzied discord of which they have so often shown themselves capable. during the respite which the diversion caused by apries afforded them, jeremiah had attempted to flee from jerusalem and seek refuge in benjamin, to which tribe he belonged. arrested at the city gate on the pretext of treason, he was unmercifully beaten, thrown into prison, and the king, who had begun to believe in him, did not venture to deliver him. he was confined in the court of the palace, which served as a gaol, and allowed a ration of a loaf of bread for his daily food. the courtyard was a public place, to which all comers had access who desired to speak to the prisoners, and even here the prophet did not cease to preach and exhort the people to repentance: �he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the chaldæans shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey, and he shall live. thus saith the lord, this city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of babylon, and he shall take it.� [illustration: .jpg prisoners under torture having their tongues torn out] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. the princes and officers of the king, however, complained to zedekiah of him: �let this man, we pray thee, be put to death; forasmuch as he weakeneth the hands of the men of war, and the hands of all the people in speaking such words.� given up to his accusers and plunged in a muddy cistern, he escaped by the connivance of a eunuch of the royal household, only to renew his denunciations with greater force than ever. [illustration: .jpg a king putting out the eyes of a prisoner] drawn by faucher-gudin, from several engravings in botta. the mutilated remains of several bas-reliefs have been combined so as to form a tolerably correct scene; the prisoners have a ring passed through their lips, and the king holds them by a cord attached to it. the king sent for him secretly and asked his advice, but could draw from him nothing but threats: �if thou wilt go forth unto the king of babylon�s princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and thou shalt live and thine house: but if thou wilt not go forth to the king of babylon�s princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the chal-dseans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.� zedekiah would have asked no better than to follow his advice, but he had gone too far to draw back now. to the miseries of war and sickness the horrors of famine were added, but the determination of the besieged was unshaken; bread was failing, and yet they would not hear of surrender. at length, after a year and a half of sufferings heroically borne, in the eleventh year of zedekiah, the eleventh month, and the fourth day of the month, a portion of the city wall fell before the attacks of the battering-rams, and the chaldæan army entered by the breach. zedekiah assembled his remaining soldiers, and took counsel as to the possibility of cutting his way through the enemy to beyond the jordan; escaping by night through the gateway opposite the pool of siloam, he was taken prisoner near jericho, and carried off to eiblah, where nebuchadrezzar was awaiting with impatience the result of the operations. the chaldæans were accustomed to torture their prisoners in the fashion we frequently see represented on the monuments of nineveh, and whenever an unexpected stroke of good fortune brings to light any decorative bas-relief from their palaces, we shall see represented on it the impaling stake, rebels being flayed alive, and chiefs having their tongues torn out. nebuchadrezzar, whose patience was exhausted, caused the sons of zedekiah to be slain in the presence of their father, together with all the prisoners of noble birth, and then, having put out his eyes, sent the king of babylon loaded with chains. as for the city which had so long defied his wrath, he gave it over to nebuzaradan, one of the great officers of the crown, with orders to demolish it and give it up systematically to the flames. the temple was despoiled of its precious wall-coverings, the pillars and brazen ornaments of the time of solomon which still remained were broken up, and the pieces carried off to chaldoa in sacks, the masonry was overthrown and the blocks of stone rolled down the hill into the ravine of the kedron. the survivors among the garrison, the priests, scribes, and members of the upper classes, were sent off into exile, but the mortality during the siege had been so great that the convoy barely numbered eight hundred and thirty-two persons. [illustration: b.jpg a people carried away into captivity] some of the poorer population were allowed to remain in the environs, and the fields and vineyards of the exiles were divided among them. having accomplished the work of destruction, the chal-dseans retired, leaving the government in the hands of gedaliah, son of ahikam,* a friend of jeremiah. gedaliah established himself at mizpah, where he endeavoured to gather around him the remnant of the nation, and fugitives poured in from moab, ammon, and edom. *chron. xxxvi. - . the following is the table of the kings of judah from the death of solomon to the destruction of jerusalem:-- [illustration: .jpg table of the kings of judah] it seemed that a jewish principality was about to rise again from the ruins of the kingdom. jeremiah was its accredited counsellor, but his influence could not establish harmony among these turbulent spirits, still smarting from their recent misfortunes.* the captains of the bands which had been roaming over the country after the fall of jerusalem refused, moreover, to act in concert with gedaliah, and one of them, ishmael by name, who was of the royal blood, assassinated him, but, being attacked in gibeon by johanan, the son of kareah, was forced to escape almost alone and take refuge with the ammonites.** these acts of violence aroused the vigilance of the chaldasans; johanan feared reprisals, and retired into egypt, taking with him jeremiah, baruch, and the bulk of the people.*** apries gave the refugees a welcome, and assigned them certain villages near to his military colony at daphnae, whence they soon spread into the neighbouring nomes as far as migdol, memphis, and even as far as the thebaid.**** * for the manner in which jeremiah was separated from the rest of the captives, set at liberty and sent back to gedaliah, see jer. xxxix. - , xl. - . ** kings xxv. - , and jer. xl. - , xli. - , where these events are recorded at length. *** kings xxv. ; jer. xli. - , xlii., xliii. - . **** jer. xliv. , where the word of the lord is spoken to �all the jews... which dwelt at migdol, and at tahpanhes (daphno), and at moph (corr. moph, memphis), and in the country of pathros.� even after all these catastrophes judah�s woes were not yet at an end. in , the few remaining jews in palestine allied themselves with the moabites and made a last wild effort for independence; a final defeat, followed by a final exile, brought them to irretrievable ruin.* the earlier captives had entertained no hope of advantage from these despairing efforts, and ezekiel from afar condemned them without pity: �they that inherit those waste places in the land of israel speak, saying, abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.... ye lift up your eyes unto your idols and shed blood: and shall ye possess the land? ye stand upon your sword, ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbour�s wife: and shall ye possess the land?... thus saith the lord god: as i live, surely they that are in the waste places shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will i give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the strongholds and in the caves shall die of the pestilence.� ** * josephus, following berosus, speaks of a war against the moabites and the ammonites, followed by the conquest of egypt in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar. to this must be added a jewish revolt if we are to connect with these events the mention of the third captivity, carried out in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar by nebuzaradan. ** ezek. xxxiii. - . the first act of the revolution foreseen by the prophets was over; the day of the lord, so persistently announced by them, had at length come, and it had seen not only the sack of jerusalem, but the destruction of the earthly kingdom of judah. many of the survivors, refusing still to acknowledge the justice of the chastisement, persisted in throwing the blame of the disaster on the reformers of the old worship, and saw no hope of salvation except in their idolatrous practices. �as for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the lord, we will not hearken unto thee. but we will certainly perform every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of judah and in the streets of jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well and saw no evil. but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.� there still remained to these misguided jews one consolation which they shared in common with the prophets--the certainty of seeing the hereditary foes of israel involved in the common overthrow: ammon had been already severely chastised; tyre, cut off from the neighbouring mainland, seemed on the point of succumbing, and the turn of egypt must surely soon arrive in which she would have to expiate in bitter sufferings the wrongs her evil counsels had brought upon jerusalem. their anticipated joy, however, of witnessing such chastisements was not realised. tyre defied for thirteen years the blockade of nebuchadrezzar, and when the city at length decided to capitulate, it was on condition that its king, ethbaal iii., should continue to reign under the almost nominal suzerainty of the chaldeans ( b.c.).* * the majority of christian writers have imagined, contrary to the testimony of the phoenician annals, that the island of tyre was taken by nebuchadrezzar; they say that the chaldæans united the island to the mainland by a causeway similar to that constructed subsequently by alexander. it is worthy of notice that a local tradition, still existing in the eleventh century of our era, asserted that the besiegers were not successful in their enterprise. egypt continued not only to preserve her independence, but seemed to increase in prosperity in proportion to the intensity of the hatred which she had stirred up against her. [illustration: .jpg bronze lion of bohbait] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an engraving in mariette. apries set about repairing the monuments and embellishing the temples: he erected throughout the country stelæ, tables of offerings, statues and obelisks, some of which, though of small size, like that which adorns the piazza della minerva at borne,* erected so incongruously on the back of a modern elephant, are unequalled for purity of form and delicacy of cutting. the high pitch of artistic excellence to which the schools of the reign of psam-metichus ii. had attained was maintained at the same exalted level. if the granite sphinxes** and bronze lions of this period lack somewhat in grace of form, it must be acknowledged that they display greater refinement and elegance in the technique of carving or moulding than had yet been attained. * [one of the two obelisks of the campus martius, on which site the church of s. maria sopra minerva was built.--tr.] ** above the summary of the contents of the present chapter, will be found one of these sphinxes which was discovered in rome. [illustration: .jpg the small obelisk in the piazza della minerva at home] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. while engaged in these works at home, apries was not unobservant of the revolutions occurring in asia, upon which he maintained a constant watch, and in the years which followed the capitulation of tyre, he found the opportunity, so long looked for, of entering once more upon the scene. the phoenician navy had suffered much during the lengthy blockade of their country, and had become inferior to the egyptian, now well organised by thelonians: apries therefore took the offensive by sea, and made a direct descent on the phoenician coasts. nebuchadrezzar opposed him with the forces of the recently subjugated tyrians, and the latter, having cooled in their attachment to egypt owing to the special favour shown by the pharaoh to their rivals the hellenes, summoned their cypriote vassals to assist them in repelling the attack. the egyptians dispersed the combined fleets, and taking possession of sidon, gave it up to pillage. the other maritime cities surrendered of their own accord,* including gebal, which received an egyptian garrison, and where the officers of pharaoh founded a temple to the goddess whom they identified with the egyptian hâthor. * the war of apries against the phoenicians cannot have taken place before the capitulation of tyre in b.c., because the tyrians took part in it by order of nebuchadrezzar, and on the other hand it cannot be put later than b.c., the date of the revolt of amasis; it must therefore be assigned to about b.c. the object at which necho and psammetichus ii. had aimed for fifteen years was thus attained by apries at one fortunate blow, and he could legitimately entitle himself �more fortunate than all the kings his predecessors,� and imagine, in his pride, that �the gods themselves were unable to injure him.� the gods, however, did not allow him long to enjoy the fruits of his victory. greeks had often visited libya since the time when egypt had been thrown open to the trade of the iegean. their sailors had discovered that the most convenient course thither was to sail straight to crete, and then to traverse the sea between this island and the headlands of the libyan plateau; here they fell in with a strong current setting towards the east, which carried them quickly and easily as far as eakotis and canopus, along the marmarican shore. in these voyages they learned to appreciate the value of the country; and about b.c. some dorians of thera, who had set out to seek for a new home at the bidding of the delphic oracle, landed in the small desert island of platsea, where they built a strongly fortified settlement. their leader, battos,* soon crossed over to the mainland, where, having reached the high plateau, he built the city of cyrene on the borders of an extremely fertile region, watered by abundant springs. the tribes of the labu, who had fought so valiantly against the pharaohs of old, still formed a kind of loose confederation, and their territory stretched across the deserts from the egyptian frontier to the shores of the syrtes. the chief of this confederation assumed the title of king, as in the days of mînephtah or of ramses iii.** * herodotus seems to have been ignorant of the real name of the founder of cyrene, which has been preserved for us by pindar, by callimachus, by the spurious heraclides of pontus, and by the chronologists of the christian epoch. herodotus says that _battos_ signifies _king_ in the language of libya. ** the description given by herodotus of these libyan tribes agrees with the slight amount of information furnished by the egyptian monuments for the thirteenth century b.c. the most civilised of these tribes were those which now dwelt nearest to the coast: first the adyrmakhides, who were settled beyond marea, and had been semi-egyptianised by constant intercourse with the inhabitants of the delta; then the giligammes, who dwelt between the port of plynus and the island of aphrodisias; and beyond these, again, the asbystes, famed for their skill in chariot-driving, the cabales, and the auschises. the oases of the hinterland were in the hands of the nasamones and of the mashauasha, whom the greeks called maxyes. one of the revolutions so frequent among the desert tribes had compelled the latter to remove from their home near the nile valley, to a district far to the west, on the banks of the river triton. [illustration: .jpg the oasis of amok and the spring of the sun] drawn by boudier, from minutoli. there they had settled down in a permanent fashion, dwelling in houses of stone, and giving themselves up to the cultivation of the soil. they continued, however, to preserve in their new life some of their ancient customs, such as that of painting their bodies with vermilion, and of shaving off the hair from their heads, with the exception of one lock which hung over the right ear. the theban pharaohs had formerly placed garrisons in the most important oases, and had consecrated temples there to their god amon. [illustration: b.jpg portion of the ruins of cyrene] one of these sanctuaries, built close to an intermittent spring, which gave forth alternately hot and cold water, had risen to great eminence, and the oracle of these ammonians was a centre of pilgrimage from far and near. the first libyans who came into contact with the greeks, the asbystes and the giligammes, received the new-comers kindly, giving them their daughters in marriage; from the fusion of the two races thus brought about sprang, first under battos and then under his son arkesilas i., an industrious and valiant race. [illustration: .jpg map of lybia in the vith century b.c.] the main part of their revenues was derived from commerce in silphium and woollen goods, and even the kings themselves did not deem it beneath their dignity to preside in person at the weighing of the crop, and the storing of the trusses in their magazines. the rapid increase in the wealth of the city having shortly brought about a breach in the friendly relations hitherto maintained between it and its neighbours, battos the fortunate, the son of arkesilas i., sent for colonists from greece: numbers answered to his call, on the faith of a second oracular prediction, and in order to provide them with the necessary land, battos did not hesitate to dispossess his native allies. the latter appealed to adikrân, king of the confederacy, and this prince, persuaded that this irregular militia would not be able to withstand the charge of the hoplites, thereupon applied in his turn to apries for assistance. [illustration: b.jpg the silphium ] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the cast of a coin of cyrene. there was much tempting spoil to be had in cyrene, and apries was fully aware of the fact, from the accounts of the libyans and the greeks. his covetousness must have been aroused at the prospect of such rich booty, and perhaps he would have thought of appropriating it sooner, had he not been deterred from the attempt by his knowledge of the superiority of the greek fleets, and of the dangers attendant on a long and painful march over an almost desert country through disaffected tribes. [illustration: .jpg weighing silphium in presence of king arkesilas] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the coin room in the bibliothèque nationale at paris. the king here represented is arkesilas ii. the bad. now that he could rely on the support of the libyans, he hesitated no longer to run these risks. deeming it imprudent, with good reason, to employ his mercenary troops against their own compatriots, apries mobilised for his encounter with battos an army exclusively recruited from among his native reserves. the troops set out full of confidence in themselves and of disdain for the enemy, delighted moreover at an opportunity for at length convincing their kings of their error in preferring barbarian to native forces. but the engagement brought to nought all their boastings. the egyptians were defeated in the first encounter near irasa, hard by the fountain of thestê, near the spot where the high plateaus of cyrene proper terminate in the low cliffs of marmarica: and the troops suffered so severely during the subsequent retreat that only a small remnant of the army regained in safety the frontier of the delta.* * the interpretation i have given to the sentiments of the egyptian army follows clearly enough from the observation of herodotus, that �the egyptians, having never experienced themselves the power of the greeks, had felt for them nothing but contempt.� the site of irasa and the fountain of thestê has been fixed with much probability in the fertile district watered still by the fountain of ersen, erazem, or erasân. this unexpected reverse was the occasion of the outbreak of a revolution which had been in preparation for years. the emigration to ethiopia of some contingents of the military class had temporarily weakened the factions hostile to foreign influence; these factions had felt themselves powerless under the rule of psammetichus i., and had bowed to his will, prepared all the while to reassert themselves when they felt strong enough to do so successfully. the reorganisation of the native army furnished them at once with the means of insurrection, of which they had temporarily been deprived. although pharaoh had lavished privileges on the hermotybies and calasiries, she had not removed the causes for discontent which had little by little alienated the good will of the mashauasha: to do so would have rendered necessary the disbanding of the ionian guard, the object of their jealousy, and to take this step neither he nor his successors could submit themselves. the hatred of these mercenaries, and the irritation against the sovereigns who employed them, grew fiercer from reign to reign, and now wanted nothing but a pretext to break forth openly: such a pretext was furnished by the defeat at irasa. when the fugitives arrived at the entrenched camp of marea, exasperated by their defeat, and alleging doubtless that it was due to treachery, they found others who affected to share their belief that pharaoh had despatched his egyptian troops against cyrene with the view of consigning to certain death those whose loyalty to him was suspected, and it was not difficult to stir up the disaffected soldiers to open revolt. it was not the first time that a military tumult had threatened the sovereignty of apries. some time previous to this, in an opposite quarter of the nile valley, the troops stationed at elephantine, composed partly of egyptians, partly of asiatic and greek mercenaries--possibly the same who had fought in the ethiopian campaign under psammetichus ii.--had risen in rebellion owing to some neglect in the payment of their wages: having devastated the thebaid, they had marched straight across the desert to the port of shashirît, in the hope of there seizing ships to enable them to reach the havens of idumæa or nabatoa. the governor of elephantine, nsihor, had at first held them back with specious promises; but on learning that apries was approaching with reinforcements, he attacked them boldly, and driving them before him, hemmed them in between his own force and that of the king and massacred them all. apries thought that the revolt at marea would have a similar issue, and that he might succeed in baffling the rebels by fair words; he sent to them as his representative amasis, one of his generals, distantly connected probably with the royal house. what took place in the camp is not clearly known, for the actual events have been transformed in the course of popular transmission into romantic legends. the story soon took shape that amasis was born of humble parentage in the village of siuph, not far from sais; he was fond, it was narrated, of wine, the pleasures of the table, and women, and replenished his empty purse by stealing what he could lay his hands on from his neighbours or comrades--a gay boon-companion all the while, with an easy disposition and sarcastic tongue. according to some accounts, he conciliated the favour of apries by his invariable affability and good humour; according to others, he won the king�s confidence by presenting him with a crown of flowers on his birthday.* * the king to whom amasis made this offering is called patarmis, and the similarity of this name with the patarbemis of herodotus seems to indicate a variant of the legend, in which patarmis or patarbemis took the place of apries. the story goes on to say that while he was haranguing the rebels, one of them, slipping behind him, suddenly placed on his head the rounded helmet of the pharaohs: the bystanders immediately proclaimed him king, and after a slight show of resistance he accepted the dignity. as soon as the rumour of these events had reached sais, apries despatched patarbemis, one of his chief officers, with orders to bring back the rebel chief alive. the latter was seated on his horse, on the point of breaking up his camp and marching against his former patron, when the envoy arrived. on learning the nature of his mission, amasis charged him to carry back a reply to the effect that he had already been making preparation to submit, and besought the sovereign to grant him patiently a few days longer, so that he might bring with him the egyptian subjects of pharaoh. tradition adds that, on receiving this insolent defiance, apries fell into a violent passion, and without listening to remonstrance, ordered the nose and ears of patarbemis to be cut off, whereupon the indignant people, it is alleged, deserted his cause and ranged themselves on the side of amasis. the mercenaries, however, did not betray the confidence reposed in them by their egyptian lords. although only thirty thousand against a whole people, they unflinchingly awaited the attack at momemphis ( b.c.); but, being overwhelmed by the numbers of their assailants, disbanded and fled, after a conflict lasting one day. apries, taken prisoner in the rout, was at first well treated by the conqueror, and seems even to have retained for a time the external pomp of royalty; but the populace of sais demanding his execution with vehemence, amasis was at length constrained to deliver him up to their vengeance, and apries was strangled by the mob. he was honourably interred between the royal palace and the temple of nit, not far from the spot where his predecessors reposed in their glory,* and the usurper made himself sole master of the country. it was equivalent to a change of dynasty, and amasis had recourse to the methods usual in such cases to consolidate his power. he entered into a marriage alliance with princesses of the saite line, and thus legitimatised his usurpation as far as the north was concerned.** * it was probably from this necropolis that the coffin of psammetichus ii. came. ** the wife of amasis, who was mother of psammetichus iii., the queen tintkhiti, daughter of petenit, prophet of phtah, was probably connected with the royal family of sais. in the south, the �divine worshippers� had continued to administer the extensive heritage of amon, and nitocris, heiress of shapenuapît, had adopted in her old age a daughter of her great-nephew, psammetichus il, named ankhnasnofiribrî: this princess was at this time in possession of thebes, and amasis appears to have entered into a fictitious marriage with her in order to assume to himself her rights to the crown. he had hardly succeeded in establishing his authority on a firm basis when he was called upon to repel the chaldaean invasion. the hebrew prophets had been threatening egypt with this invasion for a long time, and ezekiel, discounting the future, had already described the entrance of pharaoh into hades, to dwell among the chiefs of the nations--assur, elam, meshech, tubal, edom, and philistia--who, having incurred the vengeance of jahveh, had descended into the grave one after the other: �pharaoh and all his army shall be slain by the sword, saith the lord god! for i have put this terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain by the sword, even pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the lord god!� nebuchadrezzar had some hesitation in hazarding his fortune in a campaign on the banks of the nile: he realised tolerably clearly that babylon was not in command of such resources as had been at the disposal of nineveh under esarhaddon or assur-bani-pal, and that egypt in the hands of a saite dynasty was a more formidable foe than when ruled by the ethiopians. the report of the revolution of which apries had become a victim at length determined him to act; the annihilation of the hellenic troops, and the dismay which the defeat at irasa had occasioned in the hearts of the egyptians, seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. the campaign was opened by nebuchadrezzar about , in the thirty-seventh year of his reign,* but we have no certain information as to the issue of his enterprise. * a fragment of his annals, discovered by pinches, mentions in the thirty-seventh year of his reign a campaign against [ah]masu, king of egypt; and wiedemann, from the evidence of this document combined with the information derived from one of the monuments in the louvre, thought that the fact of a conquest of egypt as far as syenô might be admitted; at that point the egyptian general nsihor would have defeated the chaldæans and repelled the invasion, and this event would have taken place during the joint reign of apries and amasis. a more attentive examination of the egyptian monument shows that it refers not to a chaldæan war, but to a rebellion of the garrisons in the south of egypt, including the greek and semitic auxiliaries. according to chaldæan tradition, nebuchadrezzar actually invaded the valley of the nile and converted egypt into a babylonian province, with amasis as its satrap.* we may well believe that amasis lost the conquests won by his predecessor in phoenicia, if, indeed, they still belonged to egypt at his accession: but there is nothing to indicate that the chaldæans ever entered egypt itself and repeated the assyrian exploit of a century before. * these events would have taken place in the twenty-third year of nebuchadrezzar; the reigning king (apries) being killed and his place taken by one of his generals (amasis), who remained a satrap of the babylonian empire. this was nebuchadrezzar�s last war, the last at least of which history makes any mention. as a fact, the kings of the second babylonian empire do not seem to have been the impetuous conquerors which we have fancied them to be. we see them as they are depicted to us in the visions of the hebrew prophets, who, regarding them and their nation as a scourge in the hands of god, had no colours vivid enough or images sufficiently terrible to portray them. they had blotted out nineveh from the list of cities, humiliated pharaoh, and subjugated syria, and they had done all this almost at their first appearance in the field--such a feat as assyria and egypt in the plenitude of their strength had been unable to accomplish: they had, moreover, destroyed jerusalem and carried judah into captivity. there is nothing astonishing in the fact that this nebuchadrezzar, whose history is known to us almost entirely from jewish sources, should appear as a fated force let loose upon the world. �o thou sword of the lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into the scabbard; rest and be still! how canst thou be quiet, seeing the lord hath given thee a charge?� but his campaigns in syria and africa, of which the echoes transmitted to us still seem so formidable, were not nearly so terrible in reality as those in which blam had perished a century previously; they were, moreover, the only conflicts which troubled the peace of his reign. the arabian chroniclers affirm, indeed, that the fabulous wealth of yemen had incited him to invade that region. nebuchadrezzar, they relate, routed, not far from the town of dhât-îrk, the joctanides of jorhom, who had barred his road to the kaabah, and after seizing mecca, reached the borders of the children of himyrâ: the exhausted condition of his soldiers having prevented him from pressing further forward in his career of conquest, he retraced his steps and returned to babylon with a great number of prisoners, including two entire tribes, those of hadhurâ and uabar, whom he established as colonists in chaldæa.* he never passed in this direction beyond the limits reached by assur-bani-pal, and his exploits were restricted to some successful raids against the tribes of kedar and nabatsea.** * most of the arabic legends relating to these conquests of nebuchadrezzar are indirectly derived from the biblical story; but it is possible that the history of the expeditions against central arabia is founded on fact. ** this seems to follow from jeremiah�s imprecations upon kedar the same reasons which at the commencement of his reign had restrained his ambition to extend his dominions towards the east and north, were operative up to the end of his life. astyages had not inherited the martial spirit of his father cyaxares, and only one warlike expedition, that against the cadusians, is ascribed to him.* * moses of chorene attributes to him long wars against an armenian king named tigranes; but this is a fiction of a later age. naturally indolent, lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert. but if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of media, retained his respect for them up to the end of his life, even when there was no longer any occasion to do so. nebuchadrezzar was, after all, not so much a warrior as a man of peace, whether so constituted by nature or rendered so by political necessity in its proper sense, and he took advantage of the long intervals of quiet between his campaigns to complete the extensive works which more than anything else have won for him his renown. during the century which had preceded the fall of nineveh, babylonia had had several bitter experiences; it had suffered almost entire destruction at the hands of sennacherib; it had been given up to pillage by assur-bani-pal, not to mention the sieges and ravages it had sustained in the course of continual revolts. the other cities of babylonia, sippara, borsippa, kutha, nipur, uruk, and uru, had been subjected to capture and recapture, while the surrounding districts, abandoned in turn to elamites, assyrians, and the kaldâ, had lain uncultivated for many years. the canals at the same time had become choked with mud, the banks had fallen in, and the waters, no longer kept under control, had overflowed the land, and the plains long since reclaimed for cultivation had returned to their original condition of morasses and reed-beds; at babylon itself the arakhtu, still encumbered with the _debris_ cast into it by sennacherib, was no longer navigable, and was productive of more injury than profit to the city: in some parts the aspect of the country must have been desolate and neglected as at the present day, and the work accomplished by twenty generations had to be begun entirely afresh. nabopolassar had already applied himself to the task in spite of the anxieties of his assyrian campaigns, and had raised many earthworks in both the capital and the provinces. but a great deal more still remained to be done, and nebuchadrezzar pushed forward the work planned by his father, and carried it to completion undeterred and undismayed by any difficulties.* the combined system of irrigation and navigation introduced by the kings of the first babylonian empire twenty centuries previously, was ingeniously repaired; the beds of the principal canals, the royal river and the arakhtu, were straightened and deepened; the drainage of the country between the tigris and the euphrates was regulated by means of subsidiary canals and a network of dykes; the canals surrounding babylon or intersecting in the middle of the city were cleaned out, and a waterway was secured for navigation from one river to the other, and from the plateau of mesopotamia to the nar-marratum.** * the only long inscriptions of nebuchadrezzar which we possess, are those commemorating the great works he designed and executed. ** the irrigation works of nebuchadrezzar are described at length, and perhaps exaggerated, by abydenus, who merely quotes berosus more or less inaccurately. the completion of the quays along the arakhtu, begun by nabopolassar, is noticed in the _east india company�s inscription_. a special inscription, publ. by h. rawlinson, gives an account of the repairing of the canal libil-khigallu, which crossed babylon. we may well believe that all nebuchadrezzar�s undertakings were carried out in accordance with a carefully prepared scheme for perfecting the defences of the kingdom while completing the system of internal communication. the riches of karduniash, now restored to vigour by continued peace, and become the centre of a considerable empire, could not fail to excite the jealousy of its neighbours, and particularly that of the most powerful among them, the medes of ecbatana. it is true that the relations between nebuchadrezzar and astyages continued to be cordial, and as yet there were no indications of a rupture; but it was always possible that under their successors the good understanding between the two courts might come to an end, and it was needful to provide against the possibility of the barbarous tribes of iran being let loose upon babylon, and attempting to inflict on her the fate they had brought upon nineveh. nebuchadrezzar, therefore, was anxious to interpose, between himself and these possible foes, such a series of fortifications that the most persevering enemy would be worn out by the prolonged task of forcing them one after another, provided that they were efficiently garrisoned. he erected across the northern side of the isthmus between the two rivers a great embankment, faced with bricks cemented together with bitumen, called the _wall of media_; this wall, starting from sippara, stretched from the confluence of the saklauiyeh with the euphrates to the site of the modern village of jibbara on the tigris; on both sides of it four or five deep trenches were excavated, which were passable on raised causeways or by bridges of boats, so arranged as to be easily broken up in case of invasion. [illustration: .jpg city defended by a triple wall] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a bas-relief of the time of sargon, in the museum of the louvre. the eastern frontier was furnished with a rampart protected by a wide moat, following, between jibbara and nipur, the contours of a low-lying district which could be readily flooded. the western boundary was already protected by the pallakottas, and the lakes or marshes of bahr-î-nejîf: nebuchadrezzar multiplied the number of the dikes, and so arranged them that the whole country between the suburbs of borsippa and babylon could be inundated at will. babylon itself formed as it were the citadel in the midst of these enormous outlying fortifications, and the engineers both of nabopo-lassar and of his son expended all the resources of their art on rendering it impregnable. a triple rampart surrounded it and united it to borsippa, built on the model of those whose outline is so frequently found on the lowest tier of an assyrian bas-relief. [illustration: .jpg probable section of the triple wall of babylon] reproduced by faucher-gudin, from the restoration by dieulafoy. a moat of great width, with banks of masonry, communicating with the euphrates, washed the foot of the outer wall, which retained the traditional name of imgur-bel: behind this wall rose nimitti-bel, the true city wall, to a height of more than ninety feet above the level of the plain, appearing from a distance, with its battlements and towers, more like a mountain chain than a rampart built by the hand of man; finally, behind nimitti-bel ran a platform on the same level as the curtain of imgur-bel, forming a last barrier behind which the garrison could rally before finally owning itself defeated and surrendering the city. large square towers rose at intervals along the face of the walls, to the height of some eighteen feet above the battlements: a hundred gates fitted with bronze-plated doors, which could be securely shut at need, gave access to the city.* * the description of the fortifications of the city is furnished by herodotus, who himself saw them still partially standing; the account of their construction has been given by nebuchadrezzar himself, in the _east india company�s inscription_. the space within the walls was by no means completely covered by houses, but contained gardens, farms, fields, and, here and there, the ruins of deserted buildings. as in older babylon, the city proper clustered round the temple of merodach, with its narrow winding streets, its crowded bazaars, its noisy and dirty squares, its hostelries and warehouses of foreign merchandise. [illustration: .jpg fragment of a babylonian bas-relief] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. the pyramid of esarhad-don and assur-bani-pal, too hastily built, had fallen into ruins: nebuchadrezzar reconstructed its seven stages, and erected on the topmost platform a shrine furnished with a table of massive gold, and a couch on which the priestess chosen to be the spouse of the god might sleep at night. other small temples were erected here and there on both banks of the river, and the royal palace, built in the marvellously short space of fifteen days, was celebrated for its hanging gardens, where the ladies of the harem might walk unveiled, secure from vulgar observation. no trace of all these extensive works remains at the present day. [illustration: .jpg ruins of the ziggurÂt of the temple of bel] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a sketch in layard. some scattered fragments of crumbling walls alone betray the site of the great ziggurât, a few bas-reliefs are strewn over the surface of the ground, and a lion of timeworn stone, lying on its back in a depression of the soil, is perhaps the last survivor of those which kept watch, according to custom, at the gates of the palace. but the whole of this vast work of reconstruction and ornamentation must not be attributed to nebuchadrezzar alone. the plans had been designed by nabopolassar under the influence of one of his wives, who by a strange chance bears in classic tradition the very egyptian name of nitocris; but his work was insignificant compared with that accomplished by his son, and the name of nebuchadrezzar was justly connected with the marvels of babylon by all ancient writers. but even his reign of fifty-five years did not suffice for the completion of all his undertakings, and many details still remained imperfect at his death in the beginning of b.c. though of kaldu origin, and consequently exposed to the suspicions and secret enmity of the native babylonians, as all of his race, even mero-dach-baladan himself, had been before him, he had yet succeeded throughout the whole of his reign in making himself respected by the turbulent inhabitants of his capital, and in curbing the ambitious pretensions of the priests of merodach. as soon as his master-hand was withdrawn, the passions so long repressed broke forth, and proved utterly beyond the control of his less able or less fortunate successors.* * the sequel of this history is known from the narrative of berosus. its authenticity is proved by passages on the _cylinder of nabonidus_. messer-schmidt considers that amil- marduk and labashi-marduk were overthrown by the priestly faction, but a passage on the _cylinder_, in which nabonidus represents himself as inheriting the political views of nebuchadrezzar and nergal-sharuzur, leads me to take the opposite view. we know what hatred nabonidus roused in the minds of the priests of merodach because his principles of government were opposed to theirs: the severe judgment he passed on the rule of amil-marduk and labashi-marduk seems to prove that he considered them as belonging to the rival party in the state, that is, to the priestly faction. the forms of the names and the lengths of the several reigns have been confirmed by contemporary monuments, especially by the numerous contract tablets. the principal inscriptions belonging to the reign of nergal-sharuzur deal only with public works and the restoration of monuments. [illustration: .jpg the stone lion of babylon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph furnished by father scheil. as far as we are able to judge by the documents which have come down to us, two factions had arisen in the city since the fall of nineveh, both of which aspired to power and strove to gain a controlling influence with the sovereign. the one comprised the descendants of the kaldâ who had delivered the city from the assyrian yoke, together with those of the ancient military nobility. the other was composed of the great priestly families and their adherents, who claimed for the gods or their representatives the right to control the affairs of the state, and to impose the will of heaven on the rulers of the kingdom. the latter faction seems to have prevailed at first at the court of amil-marduk, the sole surviving son and successor of nebuchadrezzar. this prince on his accession embraced a policy contrary to that pursued by his father: and one of his first acts was to release jehoiachin, king of judah, who had been languishing in chains for twenty-seven years, and to ameliorate the condition of the other expatriated jews. the official history of a later date represented him as having been an unjust sovereign, but we have no information as to his misdeeds, and know only that after two years a conspiracy broke out against him, led by his own brother-in-law, nergal-sharuzur, who assassinated him and seized the vacant throne ( b.c.). nergal-sharuzur endeavoured to revive the policy of nebuchadrezzar, and was probably supported by the military party, but his reign was a short one; he died in b.c., leaving as sole heir a youth of dissipated character named labashi-marduk, whose name is stigmatised by the chroniclers as that of a prince who knew not how to rule. he was murdered at the end of nine months, and his place taken by a native babylonian, a certain nabonâîd (nabonidus), son of nabo-balatsu-ikbi, who was not connected by birth with his immediate predecessors on the throne ( - b.c.). no oriental empire could escape from the effects of frequent and abrupt changes in its rulers: like so many previous dynasties, that of nabopolassar became enfeebled as if from exhaustion immediately after the death of its most illustrious scion, and foundered in imbecility and decrepitude. popular imagination, awe-struck by such a sudden downfall from exalted prosperity, recognised the hand of god in the events which brought about the catastrophe. a chaldæan legend, current not long after, related how nebuchadrezzar, being seized towards the end of his life with the spirit of prophecy, mounted to the roof of his palace, and was constrained, as a punishment for his pride, to predict to his people, with his own lips, the approaching ruin of their city; thereupon the glory of its monarch suffered an eclipse from which there was no emerging. the jews, nourishing undying hatred for conqueror who had overthrown jerusalem and destroyed the temple of solomon, were not satisfied with a punishment so inadequate. according to them, nebuchadrezzar, after his victorious career, was so intoxicated with his own glory that he proclaimed himself the equal of god. �is not this great babylon,� he cried, �which i have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty!� and while he thus spake, there came a voice from heaven, decreeing his metamorphosis into the form of a beast. �he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair was grown like eagles� feathers, and his nails like birds� claws.� for seven years the king remained in this state, to resume his former shape at the end of this period, and recover his kingdom after having magnified the god of israel.* * dan. iv. the founder of the dynasty which replaced that of nebuchadrezzar, nabonidus, was certainly ill fitted to brave the storms already threatening to break over his kingdom. it has not been ascertained whether he had any natural right to the throne, or by what means he attained supreme power, but the way in which he dwells on the names of nebuchadrezzar and nergal-sharuzur renders it probable that he was raised to the throne by the military faction. he did not prove, as events turned turned out, a good general, nor even a soldier of moderate ability, and it is even possible that he also lacked that fierce courage of which none of his predecessors was ever destitute. he allowed his army to dwindle away and his fortresses to fall into ruins; the foreign alliances existing at his accession, together with those which he himself had concluded, were not turned to the best advantage; his provinces were badly administered, and his subjects rendered discontented: his most salient characteristic was an insatiable curiosity concerning historical and religious antiquities, which stimulated him to undertake excavations in all the temples, in order to bring to light monuments of ages long gone by. he was a monarch of peaceful disposition, who might have reigned with some measure of success in a century of unbroken peace, or one troubled only by petty wars with surrounding inferior states; but, unfortunately, the times were ill suited to such mild sovereignty. the ancient eastern world, worn out by an existence reckoned by thousands of years, as well as by its incessant conflicts, would have desired, indeed, no better fate than to enjoy some years of repose in the condition in which recent events had left it; but other nations, the greeks and the persians, by no means anxious for tranquillity, were entering the lists. for the moment the efforts of the greeks were concentrated on egypt, where pharaoh manifested for them inexhaustible good will, and on cyprus, two-thirds of which belonged to them; the danger for chaldæa lay in the persians, kinsfolk and vassals of the medes, whose semi-barbarous chieftains had issued from their mountain homes some eighty years previously to occupy the eastern districts of elam. end of vol. viii. [illustration: spines] [illustration: cover] history of egypt chaldea, syria, babylonia, and assyria by g. maspero, honorable doctor of civil laws, and fellow of queen�s college, oxford; member of the institute and professor at the college of france edited by a. h. sayce, professor of assyriology, oxford translated by m. l. mcclure, member of the committee of the egypt exploration fund containing over twelve hundred colored plates and illustrations volume ix. london the grolier society publishers [illustration: .jpg frontispiece] howling dervish [illustration: titlepage] [illustration: .jpg page image] [illustration: .jpg page image] _the iranian conquest_ _the iranian religions--cyrus in lydia and at babylon; cambyses in egypt--darius and the organisation of the empire._ _the constitution of the median empire borrowed from the ancient peoples of the euphrates: its religion only is peculiar to itself--legends concerning zoroaster, his laws; the avesta and its history--elements contained in it of primitive religion--the supreme god ahura-mazâ and his amêsha-spentas: the yazatas, the fravashis--angrô-mainyus and his agents, the daîvas, the pairîkas, their struggle with ahura-mazdâ--the duties of man here below, funerals, his fate after death---worship and temples: fire-altars, sacrifices, the magi_. _cyrus and the legends concerning his origin: his revolt against astyages and the fall of the median empire--the early years of the reign of nabonidus: revolutions in tyre, the taking of harrân--the end of the reign of alyattes, lydian art and its earliest coinage--croesus, his relations with continental greece, his conquests, his alliances with babylon and egypt--the war between lydia and persia: the defeat of the lydians, the taking of sardes, the death of croesus and subsequent legends relating to it--the submission of the cities of the asiatic littoral._ _cyrus in bactriana and in the eastern regions of the iranian table-land --the impression produced on the chaldæan by his victories; the jewish exiles, ezekiel and his dreams of restoration, the new temple, the prophecies against babylon; general discontent with nabonidus--the attach of cyrus and the battle of zalzallat, the taking of babylon and the fall of nabonidus: the end of the chaldæan empire and the deliverance of the jews._ _egypt under amasis: building works, support given to the greeks; naukratis, its temples, its constitution, and its prosperity--preparations for defence and the unpopularity of amasis with the native egyptians--the death of cyrus and legends relating to it: his palace at pasargadæ and his tomb--cambyses and smerdis--the legendary causes of the war with egypt--psammetichus iii., the battle of pelusium; egypt reduced to a persian province._ _cambyses� plans for conquest; the abortive expeditions to the oceans of amnion and carthage--the kingdom of ethiopia, its kings, its customs: the persians fail to reach napata, the madness of cambyses--the fraud of gaumâta, the death of cambyses and the reign of the pseudo-smerdis, the accession of darius--the revolution in susiana, chaldæa, and media: nebuchadrezzar iii. and the fall of babylon, the death of orætes, the defeat of khshatrita, restoration of peace throughout asia, egyptian affairs and the re-establishment of the royal power._ _the organisation of the country and its division into satrapies: the satrap, the military commander, the royal secretary; couriers, main roads, the eyes and ears of the king--the financial system and the provincial taxes: the daric--advantages and drawbacks of the system of division into satrapies; the royal guard and the military organisation of the empire--the conquest of the hapta-hindu and the prospect of war with greece._ [illustration: .jpg page image] chapter i--the iranian conquest drawn by boudier, from the engraving in coste and flandin. the vignette, drawn by faucher-gudin, from a statuette in terra-cotta, found in southern russia, represents a young scythian. _the iranian religions--cyrus in lydia and at babylon: cambyses in egypt --darius and the organisation of the empire._ the median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a time over the destinies of a portion of western asia. the reason of this is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: the chaldæan empire of nebuchadrezzar lasted for a period quite as brief, and yet the main outlines of its history can be established with some certainty in spite of large blanks and much obscurity. whereas at babylon, moreover, original documents abound, enabling us to put together, feature by feature, the picture of its ancient civilisation and of the chronology of its kings, we possess no contemporary monuments of ecbatana to furnish direct information as to its history. to form any idea of the median kings or their people, we are reduced to haphazard notices gleaned from the chroniclers of other lands, retailing a few isolated facts, anecdotes, legends, and conjectures, and, as these materials reach us through the medium of the babylonians or the greeks of the fifth or sixth century b.c., the picture which we endeavour to compose from them is always imperfect or out of perspective. we seemingly catch glimpses of ostentatious luxury, of a political and military organisation, and a method of government analogous to that which prevailed at later periods among the persians, but more imperfect, ruder, and nearer to barbarism--a persia, in fact, in the rudimentary stage, with its ruling spirit and essential characteristics as yet undeveloped. the machinery of state had doubtless been adopted almost in its entirety from the political organisations which obtained in the kingdoms of assyria, elam, and chaldæa, with which sovereignties the founders of the median empire had held in turns relations as vassals, enemies, and allies; but once we penetrate this veneer of mesopotamian civilisation and reach the inner life of the people, we find in the religion they profess--mingled with some borrowed traits--a world of unfamiliar myths and dogmas of native origin. the main outlines of this religion were already fixed when the medes rose in rebellion against assur-bani-pal; and the very name of _confessor_--fravartîsh--applied to the chief of that day, proves that it was the faith of the royal family. it was a religion common to all the iranians, the persians as well as the medes, and legend honoured as its first lawgiver and expounder an ancient prophet named zarathustra, known to us as zoroaster.* most classical writers relegated zoroaster to some remote age of antiquity--thus he is variously said to have lived six thousand years before the death of plato,** five thousand before the trojan war,*** one thousand before moses, and six hundred before xerxes� campaign against athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the philosopher pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the fifth century b.c. * the name zarathustra has been interpreted in a score of different ways. the greeks sometimes attributed to it the meaning �worshipper of the stars,� probably by reason of the similarity in sound of the termination �-astres� of zoroaster with the word �astron.� among modern writers, h. rawlinson derived it from the assyrian zîru-ishtar, �the seed of ishtar,� but the etymology now most generally accepted is that of burnouf, according to which it would signify �the man with gold-coloured camels,� the �possessor of tawny camels.� the ordinary greek form zoroaster seems to be derived from some name quite distinct from zarathustra. ** this was, as pliny records, the opinion of eudoxus; not eudoxus of cnidus, pupil of plato, as is usually stated, but a more obscure personage, eudoxus of rhodes. *** this was the statement of hermodorus. according to the most ancient national traditions, he was born in the aryanem-vaêjô, or, in other words, in the region between the araxes and the kur, to the west of the caspian sea. later tradition asserted that his conception was attended by supernatural circumstances, and the miracles which accompanied his birth announced the advent of a saint destined to regenerate the world by the revelation of the true law. in the belief of an iranian, every man, every living creature now existing or henceforth to exist, not excluding the gods themselves, possesses a frôhar, or guardian spirit, who is assigned to him at his entrance into the world, and who is thenceforth devoted entirely to watching over his material and moral well-being,* about the time appointed for the appearance of the prophet, his frôhar was, by divine grace, imprisoned in the heart of a haoma,** and was absorbed, along with the juice of the plant, by the priest purushâspa,*** during a sacrifice, a ray of heavenly glory descending at the same time into the bosom of a maiden of noble race, named dughdôva, whom purushâspa shortly afterwards espoused. * the fravashi (for _fravarti_, from _fra-var_, �to support, nourish�), or the _frôhar (feruer)_, is, properly speaking, the nurse, the genius who nurtures. many of the practices relating to the conception and cult of the fravashis seem to me to go back to the primitive period of the iranian religions. ** the haoma is an _asclepias sarcostema viminalis_. *** the name signifies �he who has many horses.� zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the frôhar with the celestial ray. the evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened, endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched one of his agents, named bôuiti, from the country of the far north to oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: �the will of the lord is the rule of good!� and proceeded to pour libations in honour of the river darêja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment before, reciting at the same time the �profession of faith which puts evil spirits to flight.� bôuiti fled aghast, but his master set to work upon some fresh device. zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity supplied him. the mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, �how shall we succeed in destroying him? for he is the weapon which strikes down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings.� his infancy and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each attack. when he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, vôhumanô, appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of ahura-mazdâ, the supreme being. when invited to question the deity, zoroaster asked, �which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?� the answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his fellows. he next desired to know the names and functions of the angels, and the nature and attributes of evil. his instruction ended, he crossed a mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification, during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal did he receive from the hands of ahura-mazdâ the book of the law, the avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious burden. at that time, vîshtâspa, son of aurvatâspa, was reigning over bactria. for ten years zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin maidhyoi-mâonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one after the other, the two sons of hvôgva, the grand vizir jâmâspa, who afterwards married the prophet�s daughter, and frashaoshtra, whose daughter hvôgvi he himself espoused; the queen, hutaosa, was the next convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king vîshtâspa himself became a disciple. the triumph of the good cause was hastened by the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the avesta before them. the legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his saintly life. according to some accounts, he was stricken dead by lightning,* while others say he was killed by a turanian soldier, brâtrôk-rêsh, in a war against the hyaonas. * this is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred by western historians of the post-classical period. the question has often been asked whether zoroaster belongs to the domain of legend or of history. the only certain thing we know concerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, or religious fiction. classical writers attributed to him the composition or editing of all the writings comprised in persian literature: the whole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which had been expounded and analysed by hermippus in his commentaries on the secret doctrines of the magi. the iranians themselves averred that he had given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _nasks_ of the avesta,* which the supreme deity had created from the twenty-one words of the magian profession of faith, the _ahuna vairya_. king vîshtâspa is said to have caused two authentic copies of the avesta--which contained in all ten or twelve hundred chapters**--to be made, one of which was consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up in the treasury of a fortress, either shapîgân, shîzîgân, samarcand, or persepolis.*** * the word _avesta_, in pehlevi _apastâk_, whence come the persian forms _âvasta, ôstâ_, is derived from the achæmenian word _abasta_, which signifies _law_ in the inscriptions of darius. the term zend-avesta, commonly used to designate the sacred book of the persians, is incorrectly derived from the expression _apastâc u zend_, which in pehlevi designates first the law itself, and then the translation and commentary in more modern language which conduces to a _knowledge (zend)_ of the law. the customary application, therefore, of the name zend to the language of the avesta is incorrect. ** the dinkart fixes the number of chapters at , and the shâh-nâmak at , written on plates of gold. according to masudi, the book itself and the two commentaries formed , volumes, written in letters of gold, the twenty-one nasks each contained pages, and the whole of these writings had been inscribed on , cow-hides. *** the site of shapîgân or shaspîgân is unknown. j. darmesteter suggests that it ought to be read as _shizîgân_, which would permit of the identification of the place with shîz, one of the ancient religious centres of iran, whose temple was visited by the sassanids on their accession to the throne. according to the ardâ-vîrâf the law was preserved at istakhr, or persepolis, according to the shâh- nâmak at samarcand in the temple of the fire-god. alexander is said to have burnt the former copy: the latter, stolen by the greeks, is reported to have been translated into their language and to have furnished them with all their scientific knowledge. one of the arsacids, vologesus i., caused a search to be made for all the fragments which existed either in writing or in the memory of the faithful,* and this collection, added to in the reign of the sassanid king, ardashîr bâbagan, by the high priest tansar, and fixed in its present form under sapor i., was recognised as the religious code of the empire in the time of sapor ii., about the fourth century of the christian era.*** the text is composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by no means equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it with sufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult of iran, such as they were under the achæmenids, and perhaps even under the hegemony of the medes. * tradition speaks simply of a king valkash, without specifying which of the four kings named vologesus is intended. james darmesteter has given good reasons for believing that this valkash is vologesus i. ( - a.d.), the contemporary of nero. ** this is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the dinkart. *** darmesteter declares that ancient zoroastrianism is, in its main lines, the religion of the median magi, even though he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of the avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it greek, jewish, and christian elements. it is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period of development. the doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship, loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by laws prescribing minute details of ritual,* which were only put in practice by priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of the faithful. * renan defined the avesta as �the code of a very small religious sect; it is a talmud, a book of casuistry and strict observance. i have difficulty in believing that the great persian empire, which, at least in religious matters, professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law so strict. i think, that had the persians possessed a sacred book of this description, the greeks must have mentioned it.� the primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly: but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the ancient nations of western asia--the stars, sirius, the moon, the sun, water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and reduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of a powerful priesthood. families consecrated to the service of the altar had ended, as among the hebrews, by separating themselves from the rest of the nation and forming a special tribe, that of the magi, which was the last to enter into the composition of the nation in historic times. all the magi were not necessarily devoted to the service of religion, but all who did so devote themselves sprang from the magian tribe; the avesta, in its oldest form, was the sacred book of the magi, as well as that of the priests who handed down their religious tradition under the various dynasties, native or foreign, who bore rule over iran. the creator was described as �the whole circle of the heavens,� �the most steadfast among the gods,� for �he clothes himself with the solid vault of the firmament as his raiment,� �the most beautiful, the most intelligent, he whose members are most harmoniously proportioned; his body was the light and the sovereign glory, the sun and the moon were his eyes.� the theologians had gradually spiritualised the conception of this deity without absolutely disconnecting him from the material universe. [illustration: .jpg the ahura-mazd of the bas-reliefs of persepolis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from flandin and coste. he remained under ordinary circumstances invisible to mortal eyes, and he could conceal his identity even from the highest gods, but he occasionally manifested himself in human form. he borrowed in such case from assyria the symbol of assur, and the sculptors depict him with the upper part of his body rising above that winged disk which is carved in a hovering attitude on the pediments of assyrian monuments or stelæ. [illustration: b.jpg hypostyle of hall of xerxes: detail of entablature] in later days he was portrayed under the form of a king of imposing stature and majestic mien, who revealed himself from time to time to the princes of iran.* * in a passage of philo of byblos the god is described as having the head of a falcon or an eagle, perhaps by confusion with one of the genii represented on the walls of the palaces. [illustration: .jpg an iranian genius in form of a winged bull] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. he was named ahurô-mazdâo or ahura-mazdâ, the omniscient lord,* _spento-mainyus_, the spirit of good, _mainyus-spenishtô_** the most beneficent of spirits. * _ahura_ is derived from _ahu_ = _lord_: mazdâo can be analysed into the component parts, _maz = great_, and _dâo = he who knows_. at first the two terms were interchangeable, and even in the gâthas the form mazda ahura is employed much more often than the form ahura mazda. in the achsemenian inscriptions, auramazdâ is only found as a single word, except in an inscription of xerxes, where the two terms are in one passage separated and declined _aurahya mazdâha_. the form ormuzd, ormazd, usually employed by europeans, is that assumed by the name in modern persian. ** these two names are given to him more especially in connection with his antagonism to angrômainyus. himself uncreated, he is the creator of all things, but he is assisted in the administration of the universe by legions of beings, who are all subject to him.* * darius styles ahura-mazdâ, _mathishta bagânâm_, the greatest of the gods, and xerxes invokes the protection of ahura-mazdâ along with that of the gods. the classical writers also mention gods alongside of ahura-mazdâ as recognised not only among the achæmenian persians, but also among the parthians. darmesteter considers that the earliest achæmenids worshipped ahura-mazdâ alone, �placing the other gods together in a subordinate and anonymous group: may ahura-mazdâ and the other gods protect me.� [illustration: .jpg ahura-mazd bestowing the tokens of royalty on an iranian king] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by dieulafoy. the most powerful among his ministers were originally nature-gods, such as the sun, the moon, the earth, the winds, and the waters. the sunny plains of persia and media afforded abundant witnesses of their power, as did the snow-clad peaks, the deep gorges through which rushed roaring torrents, and the mountain ranges of ararat or taurus, where the force of the subterranean fires was manifested by so many startling exhibitions of spontaneous conflagration.* the same spiritualising tendency which had already considerably modified the essential concept of ahura-mazdâ, affected also that of the inferior deities, and tended to tone down in them the grosser traits of their character. it had already placed at their head six genii of a superior order, six ever-active energies, who, after assisting their master at the creation of the universe, now presided under his guidance over the kingdoms and forces of nature.** * all these inferior deities, heroes, and genii who presided over persia, the royal family, and the different parts of the empire, are often mentioned in the most ancient classical authors that have come down to us. ** the six amesha-spentas, with their several characteristics, are enumerated in a passage of the _de iside_. this exposition of persian doctrine is usually attributed to theopompus, from which we may deduce the existence of a belief in the amesha-spentas in the achsemenian period. j. darmesteter affirms, on the contrary, that �the author describes the zoro-astrianism of his own times (the second century a.d.), and quotes theopompus for a special doctrine, that of the periods of the world�s life.� although this last point is correct, the first part of darmesteter�s theory does not seem to me justified by investigation. the whole passage of plutarch is a well- arranged composition of uniform style, which may be regarded as an exposition of the system described by theopompus, probably in the eighth of his philippics. [illustration: a.jpg the moon-god] [illustration: b.jpg god of the wind] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king kanishka, published by percy gardner. these benevolent and immortal beings--_amesha-spentas_--were, in the order of precedence, vohu-manô (good thought), asha-vahista (perfect holiness), khshathra-vairya (good government), spenta-armaiti (meek piety), haurvatât (health), ameretât (immortality). each of them had a special domain assigned to him in which to display his energy untrammelled: vohu-manô had charge of cattle, asha-vahista of fire, khshathra-vairya of metals, spenta-armaiti of the earth, haurvatât and ameretât of vegetation and of water. they were represented in human form, either masculine as vohu-manô and asha-vahista,* or feminine as spenta-armaiti, the daughter and spouse of ahura-mazdâ, who became the mother of the first man, gayomaretan, and, through gayomaretan, ancestress of the whole human race. * the image of asha-vahista is known to us from coins of the indo-scythian kings of bactriana. vohu-manô is described as a young man. [illustration: a.jpg atar the god of fire] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king kanishka, published by percy gardner. [illustration: b.jpg aurvataspa] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coin published by percy gardner. [illustration: c.jpg mithra] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king huvishka, published by percy gardner. sometimes ahura-mazdâ is himself included among the amesha-spentas, thus bringing their number up to seven; sometimes his place is taken by a certain sraôsha (obedience to the law), the first who offered sacrifice and recited the prayers of the ritual. subordinate to these great spirits were the yazatas, scattered by thousands over creation, presiding over the machinery of nature and maintaining it in working order. most of them received no special names, but many exercised wide authority, and several were accredited by the people with an influence not less than that of the greater deities themselves. such were the regent of the stars--tishtrya, the bull with golden horns, sirius, the sparkling one; mâo, the moon-god; the wind, vâto; the atmosphere, vayu, the strongest of the strong, the warrior with golden armour, who gathers the storm and hurls it against the demon; atar, fire under its principal forms, divine fire, sacred fire, and earthly fire; vere-thraghna, the author of war and giver of victory; aurva-taspa, the son of the waters, the lightning born among the clouds; and lastly, the spirit of the dawn, the watchful mithra, �who, first of the celestial yazatas, soars above mount hara,* before the immortal sun with his swift steeds, who, first in golden splendour, passes over the beautiful mountains and casts his glance benign on the dwellings of the aryans.� ** * hara is haroberezaiti, or elburz, the mountain over which the sun rises, �around which many a star revolves, where there is neither night nor darkness, no wind of cold or heat, no sickness leading to a thousand kinds of death, nor infection caused by the daôvas, and whose summit is never reached by the clouds.� ** this is the mithra whose religion became so powerful in alexandrian and roman times. his sphere of action is defined in the bundehesh. mithra was a charming youth of beautiful countenance, his head surrounded with a radiant halo. the nymph anâhita was adored under the form of one of the incarnations of the babylonian goddess mylitta, a youthful and slender female, with well-developed breasts and broad hips, sometimes represented clothed in furs and sometimes nude.* like the foreign goddess to whom she was assimilated, she was the dispenser of fertility and of love; the heroes of antiquity, and even ahura-mazdâ himself, had vied with one another in their worship of her, and she had lavished her favours freely on all.** * the popularity of these two deities was already well established at the period we are dealing with, for herodotus mentions mithra and confuses him with anâhita. ** her name ardvî-sûra anâhita seems to signify _the lofty and immaculate power_. the less important yazatas were hardly to be distinguished from the innumerable multitude of fravashis. the fravasliis are the divine types of all intelligent beings. they were originally brought into being by ahura-mazdâ as a distinct species from the human, but they had allowed themselves to be entangled in matter, and to be fettered in the bodies of men, in order to hasten the final destruction of the demons and the advent of the reign of good.* * the legend of the descent of the fravashis to dwell among men is narrated in the bundehesh. [illustration: .jpg mylitta-anÂhita] drawn by faucher-gudin, from loftus [illustration: a.jpg nana-anÂhita] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of king huvishka, published by percy gardner. once incarnate, a fravasliis devotes himself to the well-being of the mortal with whom he is associated; and when once more released from the flesh, he continues the struggle against evil with an energy whose efficacy is proportionate to the virtue and purity displayed in life by the mortal to whom he has been temporarily joined. the last six days of the year are dedicated to the fravashis. they leave their heavenly abodes at this time to visit the spots which were their earthly dwelling-places, and they wander through the villages inquiring, �who wishes to hire us? who will offer us a sacrifice? who will make us their own, welcome us, and receive us with plenteous offerings of food and raiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity on him who offers it?� and if they find a man to hearken to their request, they bless him: �may his house be blessed with herds of oxen and troops of men, a swift horse and a strongly built chariot, a man who knoweth how to pray to god, a chieftain in the council who may ever offer us sacrifices with a hand filled with food and raiment, with a prayer which bestows sanctity on him who offers it!� ahura-mazdâ created the universe, not by the work of his hands, but by the magic of his word, and he desired to create it entirely free from defects. his creation, however, can only exist by the free play and equilibrium of opposing forces, to which he gives activity: the incompatibility of tendency displayed by these forces, and their alternations of growth and decay, inspired the iranians with the idea that they were the result of two contradictory principles, the one beneficent and good, the other adverse to everything emanating from the former.* * spiegel, who at first considered that the iranian dualism was derived from polytheism, and was a preliminary stage in the development of monotheism, held afterwards that a rigid monotheism had preceded this dualism. the classical writers, who knew zoroastrianism at the height of its glory, never suggested that the two principles might be derived from a superior principle, nor that they were subject to such a principle. the iranian books themselves nowhere definitely affirm that there existed a single principle distinct from the two opposing principles. in opposition to the god of light, they necessarily formed the idea of a god of darkness, the god of the underworld, who presides over death, angrô-mainyus. the two opposing principles reigned at first, each in his own domain, as rivals, but not as irreconcilable adversaries: they were considered as in fixed opposition to each other, and as having coexisted for ages without coming into actual conflict, separated as they were by the intervening void. as long as the principle of good was content to remain shut up inactive in his barren glory, the principle of evil slumbered unconscious in a darkness that knew no beginning; but when at last �the spirit who giveth increase�--spentô-mainyus--determined to manifest himself, the first throes of his vivifying activity roused from inertia the spirit of destruction and of pain, angrô-mainyus. the heaven was not yet in existence, nor the waters, nor the earth, nor ox, nor fire, nor man, nor demons, nor brute beasts, nor any living thing, when the evil spirit hurled himself upon the light to quench it for ever, but ahura-mazdâ had already called forth the ministers of his will--amêsha-spentas, yazatas, fravashis--and he recited the prayer of twenty-one words in which all the elements of morality are summed up, the ahuna-vairya: �the will of the lord is the rule of good. let the gifts of vohu-manô be bestowed on the works accomplished, at this moment, for mazda. he makes ahura to reign, he who protects the poor.� the effect of this prayer was irresistible: �when ahura had pronounced the first part of the formula, zânak mînoî, the spirit of destruction, bowed himself with terror; at the second part he fell upon his knees; and at the third and last he felt himself powerless to hurt the creatures of ahura-mazdâ.� * * theopompus was already aware of this alternation of good and bad periods. according to the tradition enshrined in the first chapter of the bundehesh, it was the result of a sort of compact agreed upon at the beginning by ahura-mazdâ and angrô-mainyus. ahura-mazdâ, rearing to be overcome if he entered upon the struggle immediately, but sure of final victory if he could gain time, proposed to his adversary a truce of nine thousand years, at the expiration of which the battle should begin. as soon as the compact was made, angrô- mainyus realised that he had been tricked into taking a false step, but it was not till after three thousand years that he decided to break the truce and open the conflict. the strife, kindled at the beginning of time between the two gods, has gone on ever since with alternations of success and defeat; each in turn has the victory for a regular period of three thousand years; but when these periods are ended, at the expiration of twelve thousand years, evil will be finally and for ever defeated. while awaiting this blessed fulness of time, as spentô-mainyus shows himself in all that is good and beautiful, in light, virtue, and justice, so angrô-mainyus is to be perceived in all that is hateful and ugly, in darkness, sin, and crime. against the six amesha-spentas he sets in array six spirits of equal power--akem-manô, evil thought; andra, the devouring fire, who introduces discontent and sin wherever he penetrates; sauru, the flaming arrow of death, who inspires bloodthirsty tyrants, who incites men to theft and murder; nâongaithya, arrogance and pride; tauru, thirst; and zairi, hunger.* * the last five of these spirits are enumerated in the _vendidad_, and the first, akem-manô, is there replaced by nasu, the chief spirit of evil. to the yazatas he opposed the daêvas, who never cease to torment mankind, and so through all the ranks of nature he set over against each good and useful creation a counter-creation of rival tendency. ��like a fly he crept into� and infected �the whole universe.� he rendered the world as dark at full noonday as in the darkest night. he covered the soil with vermin, with his creatures of venomous bite and poisonous sting, with serpents, scorpions, and frogs, so that there was not a space as small as a needle�s point but swarmed with his vermin. he smote vegetation, and of a sudden the plants withered.... he attacked the flames, and mingled them with smoke and dimness. the planets, with their thousands of demons, dashed against the vault of heaven and waged war on the stars, and the universe became darkened like a space which the fire blackens with its smoke.� and the conflict grew ever keener over the world and over man, of whom the evil one was jealous, and whom he sought to humiliate. [illustration: .jpg one of the bad genii, subject to angrÔ-mainyus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken from the original bas-relief in glazed tiles in the louvre. [illustration: .jpg the king struggling against an evil genius] drawn by boudier, from the photograph in marcel dieulafoy. the children of angrô-mainyus disguised themselves under those monstrous forms in which the imagination of the chaldæans had clothed the allies of mummu-tiamât, such as lions with bulls� heads, and the wings and claws of eagles, which the achæmenian king combats on behalf of his subjects, boldly thrusting them through with his short sword. aêshma of the blood-stained lance, terrible in wrath, is the most trusted leader of these dread bands,* the chief of twenty other daêvas of repulsive aspect--astô-vîdhôtu, the demon of death, who would devote to destruction the estimable fravashis;** apaosha, the enemy of tishtrya the wicked black horse, the bringer of drought, who interferes with the distribution of the fertilising waters; and bûiti, who essayed to kill zoroaster at his birth.*** * the name aêshma means _anger_. he is the asmodeus, aêshmo- daevô, of rabbinic legends. ** the name of this demon signifies _he who separates the bones_. *** the greater bundehesh connects the demon bûiti with the indian buddha, and j. darmestefer seems inclined to accept this interpretation. in this case we must either admit that the demon bûiti is of relatively late origin, or that he has, in the legend of zoroaster, taken the place of a demon whose name resembled his own closely enough to admit of the assimilation. the female demons, the bruges, the incubi (yâtus), the succubi (pairîka), the peris of our fairy tales, mingled familiarly with mankind before the time of the prophet, and contracted with them fruitful alliances, but zoroaster broke up their ranks, and prohibited them from becoming incarnate in any form but that of beasts; their hatred, however, is still unquenched, and their power will only be effectually overthrown at the consummation of time. it is a matter of uncertainty whether the medes already admitted the possibility of a fresh revelation, preparing the latest generations of mankind for the advent of the reign of good. the traditions enshrined in the sacred books of iran announce the coming of three prophets, sons of zoroaster --ukhshyatereta, ukhshyatnemô, and saoshyant* --who shall bring about universal salvation. * the legend ran that they had been conceived in the waters of the lake kansu. the name saoshyant signifies _the useful one, the saviour_; ukshyate-reta, _he who malces the good increase_; ukshyatnemô, _he who makes prayer increase_. saoshyant, assisted by fifteen men and fifteen pure women, who have already lived on earth, and are awaiting their final destiny in a magic slumber, shall offer the final sacrifice, the virtue of which shall bring about the resurrection of the dead. �the sovereign light shall accompany him and his friends, when he shall revivify the world and ransom it from old age and death, from corruption and decay, and shall render it eternally living, eternally growing, and master of itself.� the fatal conflict shall be protracted, but the champions of saoshyant shall at length obtain the victory. �before them shall bow aêshma of the blood-stained lance and of ominous renown, and saoshyant shall strike down the she-demon of the unholy light, the daughter of darkness. akem-manô strikes, but vohu-manô shall strike him in his turn; the lying word shall strike, but the word of truth shall strike him in his turn; haurvatât and ameretâfc shall strike down hunger and thirst; haurvatât and ameretât shall strike down terrible hunger and terrible thirst.� angrô-mainyus himself shall be paralysed with terror, and shall be forced to confess the supremacy of good: he shall withdraw into the depths of hell, whence he shall never again issue forth, and all the reanimated beings devoted to the mazdean law shall live an eternity of peace and contentment. man, therefore, incessantly distracted between the two principles, laid wait for by the baêvas, defended by the yazatas, must endeavour to act according to law and justice in the condition in which fate has placed him. he has been raised up here on earth to contribute as far as in him lies to the increase of life and of good, and in proportion as he works for this end or against it, is he the _ashavan_, the pure, the faithful one on earth and the blessed one in heaven, or the _anashavan_, the lawless miscreant who counteracts purity. the highest grade in the hierarchy of men belongs of right to the mage or the _âthravan_, to the priest whose voice inspires the demons with fear, or the soldier whose club despatches the impious, but a place of honour at their side is assigned to the peasant, who reclaims from the power of angrô-mainyus the dry and sterile fields. among the places where the earth thrives most joyously is reckoned that �where a worshipper of ahura-mazdâ builds a house, with a chaplain, with cattle, with a wife, with sons, with a fair flock; where man grows the most corn, herbage, and fruit trees; where he spreads water on a soil without water, and drains off water where there is too much of it.� he who sows corn, sows good, and promotes the mazdean faith; �he nourishes the mazdean religion as fifty men would do rocking a child in the cradle, five hundred women giving it suck from their breasts.* when the corn was created the daêvas leaped, when it sprouted the daêvas lost courage, when the stem set the daêvas wept, when the ear swelled the daêvas fled. in the house where corn is mouldering the daêvas lodge, but when the corn sprouts, one might say that a hot iron is being turned round in their mouths.� and the reason of their horror is easily divined: �whoso eats not, has no power either to accomplish a valiant work of religion, or to labour with valour, or yet to beget children valiantly; it is by eating that the universe lives, and it dies from not eating.� the faithful follower of zoroaster owes no obligation towards the impious man or towards a stranger,** but is ever bound to render help to his coreligionist. * the original text says in a more enigmatical fashion, �he nourishes the religion of mazdâ as a hundred feet of men and a thousand breasts of women might do.� ** charity is called in parsee language, _ashô-dâd_ the _gift to a pious man_, or the _gift of piety_, and the pious man, the _ashavan_, is by definition the worshipper of ahura-mazdâ alone. he will give a garment to the naked, and by so doing will wound zemaka, the demon of winter. he will never refuse food to the hungry labourer, under pain of eternal torments, and his charity will extend even to the brute beasts, provided that they belong to the species created by ahura-mazdâ: he has duties towards them, and their complaints, heard in heaven, shall be fatal to him later on if he has provoked them. asha-vahista will condemn to hell the cruel man who has ill-treated the ox, or allowed his flocks to suffer; and the killing of a hedgehog is no less severely punished--for does not a hedgehog devour the ants who steal the grain? the dog is in every case an especially sacred animal--the shepherd�s dog, the watchdog, the hunting-dog, even the prowling dog. it is not lawful to give any dog a blow which renders him impotent, or to slit his ears, or to cut his foot, without incurring grave responsibilities in this world and in the next; it is necessary to feed the dog well, and not to throw bones to him which are too hard, nor have his food served hot enough to burn his tongue or his throat. for the rest, the faithful zoroastrian was bound to believe in his god, to offer to him the orthodox prayers and sacrifices, to be simple in heart, truthful, the slave of his pledged word, loyal in his very smallest acts. if he had once departed from the right way, he could only return to it by repentance and by purification, accompanied by pious deeds: to exterminate noxious animals, the creatures of angrô-mainyus and the abode of his demons, such as the frog, the scorpion, the serpent or the ant, to clear the sterile tracts, to restore impoverished land, to construct bridges over running water, to distribute implements of husbandry to pions men, or to build them a house, to give a pure and healthy maiden in marriage to a just man,--these were so many means of expiation appointed by the prophet.* marriage was strictly obligatory,** and seemed more praiseworthy in proportion as the kinship existing between the married pair was the closer: not only was the sister united in marriage to her brother, as in egypt, but the father to his daughter, and the mother to her son, at least among the magi. * a passage in the _vendidad_ even enumerates how many noisome beasts must be slain to accomplish one full work of expiation--�to kill serpents of those who drag themselves upon the belly, and of the other species, land frogs or water frogs, ants who steal the grain,� and so on. ** the _vendidad_ says, �and i tell thee, o spitama zarathustra, the man who has a wife is above him who lives in continency;� and, as we have seen in the text, one of these forms of expiation consisted in �marrying to a worthy man a young girl who has never known a man� (_vendidad_, , § ). herodotus of old remarked that one of the chief merits in an iranian was to have many children: the king of persia encouraged fecundity in his realm, and awarded a prize each year to that one of his subjects who could boast the most numerous progeny. polygamy was also encouraged and widely practised: the code imposed no limit on the number of wives and concubines, and custom was in favour of a man�s having as many wives as his fortune permitted him to maintain. on the occasion of a death, it was forbidden to burn the corpse, to bury it, or to cast it into a river, as it would have polluted the fire, the earth, or the water--an unpardonable offence. the corpse could be disposed of in different ways. the persians were accustomed to cover it with a thick layer of wax, and then to bury it in the ground: the wax coating obviated the pollution which direct contact would have brought upon the soil. the magi, and probably also strict devotees, following their example, exposed the corpse in the open air, abandoning it to the birds or beasts of prey. it was considered a great misfortune if these respected the body, for it was an almost certain indication of the wrath of ahura-mazdâ, and it was thought that the defunct had led an evil life. when the bones had been sufficiently stripped of flesh, they were collected together, and deposited either in an earthenware urn or in a stone ossuary with a cover, or in a monumental tomb either hollowed out in the heart of the mountain or in the living rock, or raised up above the level of the ground. meanwhile the soul remained in the neighbourhood for three days, hovering near the head of the corpse, and by the recitation of prayers it experienced, according to its condition of purity or impurity, as much of joy or sadness as the whole world experiences. when the third night was past, the just soul set forth across luminous plains, refreshed by a perfumed breeze, and its good thoughts and words and deeds took shape before it �under the guise of a young maiden, radiant and strong, with well-developed bust, noble mien, and glorious face, about fifteen years of age, and as beautiful as the most beautiful;� the unrighteous soul, on the contrary, directed its course towards the north, through a tainted land, amid the squalls of a pestilential hurricane, and there encountered its past ill deeds, under the form of an ugly and wicked young woman, the ugliest and most wicked it had ever seen. the genius rashnu razishta, the essentially truthful, weighed its virtues or vices in an unerring balance, and acquitted or condemned it on the impartial testimony of its past life. on issuing from the judgment-hall, the soul arrived at the approach to the bridge cinvaut, which, thrown across the abyss of hell, led to paradise. the soul, if impious, was unable to cross this bridge, but was hurled down into the abyss, where it became the slave of angrô-mainyus. if pure, it crossed the bridge without difficulty by the help of the angel sraôsha, and was welcomed by vohu-manô, who conducted it before the throne of ahura-mazdâ, in the same way as he had led zoroaster, and assigned to it the post which it should occupy until the day of the resurrection of the body.* * all this picture of the fate of the soul is taken from the _vendidad_, where the fate of the just is described, and in the _yasht_, where the condition of faithful and impious souls respectively is set forth on parallel lines. the classical authors teach us nothing on this subject, and the little they actually say only proves that the persians believed in the immortality of the soul. the main outlines of the picture here set forth go back to the times of the achæmenids and the medes, except the abstract conception of the goddess who leads the soul of the dead as an incarnation of his good or evil deeds. the religious observances enjoined on the members of the priestly caste were innumerable and minute. ahura-mazdâ and his colleagues had not, as was the fashion among the assyrians and egyptians, either temples or tabernacles, and though they were represented sometimes under human or animal forms, and even in some cases on bas-reliefs, yet no one ever ventured to set up in their sanctuaries those so-called animated or prophetic statues to which the majority of the nations had rendered or were rendering their solicitous homage. altars, however, were erected on the tops of hills, in palaces, or in the centre of cities, on which fires were kindled in honour of the inferior deities or of the supreme god himself. [illustration: .jpg the two iranian altakrat nakhsh-Î-rustem] drawn by boudier, from a heliogravure in marcel dieulafoy. two altars were usually set up together, and they are thus found here and there among the ruins, as at nakhsh-î-kustem, the necropolis of persepolis, where a pair of such altars exist; these are cut, each out of a single block, in a rocky mass which rises some thirteen feet above the level of the surrounding plain. they are of cubic form and squat appearance, looking like towers flanked at the four corners by supporting columns which are connected by circular arches; above a narrow moulding rises a crest of somewhat triangular projections; the hearth is hollowed out on the summit of each altar.* * according to perrot and chipiez, �it is not impossible that these altars were older than the great buildings of persepolis, and that they were erected for the old persian town which darius raised to the position of capital.� at meshed-î-murgâb, on the site of the ancient pasargadas, the altars have disappeared, but the basements on which they were erected are still visible, as also the flight of eight steps by which they were approached. those altars on which burned, a perpetual fire were not left exposed to the open air: they would have run too great a risk of contracting impurities, such as dust borne by the wind, flights of birds, dew, rain, or snow. they were enclosed in slight structures, well protected by walls, and attaining in some cases considerable dimensions, or in pavilion-shaped edifices of stone adorned with columns. [illustration: .jpg the two iranian altars of murgab] drawn by boudier, from plandin and coste. the sacrificial rites were of long duration, and frequent, and were rendered very complex by interminable manual acts, ceremonial gestures, and incantations. [illustration: b.jpg the occupations of ani in the elysian fields] in cases where the altar was not devoted to maintaining a perpetual fire, it was kindled when necessary with small twigs previously barked and purified, and was subsequently fed with precious woods, preferably cypress or laurel;* care was taken not to quicken the flame by blowing, for the human breath would have desecrated the fire by merely passing over it; death was the punishment for any one who voluntarily committed such a heinous sacrilege. the recognised offering consisted of flowers, bread, fruit, and perfumes, but these were often accompanied, as in all ancient religions, by a bloody sacrifice; the sacrifice of a horse was considered the most efficacious, but an ox, a cow, a sheep, a camel, an ass, or a stag was frequently offered: in certain circumstances, especially when it was desired to conciliate the favour of the god of the underworld, a human victim, probably as a survival of very ancient rites was preferred.** * pausanias, who witnessed the cult as practised at hierocæsarsea, remarked the curious colour of the ashes heaped upon the altar. * most modern writers deny the authenticity of herodotus� account, because a sacrifice of this kind is opposed to the spirit of the magian religion, which is undoubtedly the case, as far as the latest form of the religion is concerned; but the testimony of herodotus is so plain that the fact itself must be considered as indisputable. we may note that the passage refers to the foundation of a city; and if we remember how persistent was the custom of human sacrifice among ancient races at the foundation of buildings, we shall be led to the conclusion that the ceremony described by the greek historian was a survival of a very ancient usage, which had not yet fallen entirely into desuetude at the achæmenian epoch. [illustration: .jpg the sacred fire burning on the altar] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression of a persian intaglio. the king, whose royal position made him the representative of ahura-mazdâ on earth, was, in fact, a high priest, and was himself able to officiate at the altar, but no one else could dispense with the mediation of the magi. the worshippers proceeded in solemn procession to the spot where the ceremony was to take place, and there the priest, wearing the tiara on his head, recited an invocation in a slow and mysterious voice, and implored the blessings of heaven on the king and nation. he then slaughtered the victim by a blow on the head, and divided it into portions, which he gave back to the offerer without reserving any of them, for ahura-mazdâ required nothing but the soul; in certain cases, the victim was entirely consumed by fire, but more frequently nothing but a little of the fat and some of the entrails were taken to feed and maintain the flame, and sometimes even this was omitted.* sacrifices were of frequent occurrence. without mentioning the extraordinary occasions on which a king would have a thousand bulls slain at one time,** the achæmenian kings killed each day a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags: sacrifice under such circumstances was another name for butchery, the object of which was to furnish the court with a sufficient supply of pure meat. the ceremonial bore resemblance in many ways to that still employed by the modern zoroastrians of persia and india. * a relic of this custom may be discerned in the expiatory sacrifice decreed in the _vendidad_: �he shall sacrifice a thousand head of small cattle, and he shall place their entrails devoutly on the fire, with libations.� ** the number seems to have had some ritualistic significance, for it often recurs in the penances imposed on the faithful as expiation for their sins: thus it was enjoined to slay serpents, frogs, ants who steal the grain, head of small cattle, swift horses, camels, brown oxen. the officiating priest covered his mouth with the bands which fell from his mitre, to prevent the god from being polluted by his breath; he held in his hand the baresman, or sacred bunch of tamarisk, and prepared the mysterious liquor from the haoma plant.* he was accustomed each morning to celebrate divine service before the sacred fire, not to speak of the periodic festivals in which he shared the offices with all the members of his tribe, such as the feast of mithra, the feast of the fravashis,** the feast commemorating the rout of angrô-mainyus,*** the feast of the saksea, during which the slaves were masters of the house.**** * the drink mentioned by the author of the _de iside_, which was extracted from the plant omômi, and which the magi offered to the god of the underworld, is certainly the haoma. the rite mentioned by the greek author, which appears to be an incantation against ahriman, required, it seems, a potion in which the blood of a wolf was a necessary ingredient: this questionable draught was then carried to a place where the sun�s rays never shone, and was there sprinkled on the ground as a libation. ** menander speaks of this festival as conducted in his own times, and tells us that it was called eurdigan; modern authorities usually admit that it goes back to the times of the achæmenids or even beyond. *** agathias says that every worshipper of ahura-mazdâ is enjoined to kill the greatest possible number of animals created by angrô-mainyus, and bring to the magi the fruits of his hunting. herodotus had already spoken of this destruction of life as one of the duties incumbent on every persian, and this gives probability to the view of modern writers that the festival went back to the achæmenian epoch. **** the festival of the sakoa is mentioned by ctesias. it was also a babylonian festival, and most modern authorities conclude from this double use of the name that the festival was borrowed from the babylonians by the persians, but this point is not so certain as it is made out to be, and at any rate the borrowing must have taken place very early, for the festival was already well established in the achæmenian period. all the magi were not necessarily devoted to the priesthood; but those only became apt in the execution of their functions who had been dedicated to them from infancy, and who, having received the necessary instruction, were duly consecrated. these adepts were divided into several classes, of which three at least were never confounded in their functions--the sorcerers, the interpreters of dreams, and the most venerated sages--and from these three classes were chosen the ruling body of the order and its supreme head. their rule of life was strict and austere, and was encumbered with a thousand observances indispensable to the preservation of perfect purity in their persons, their altars, their victims, and their sacrificial vessels and implements. the magi of highest rank abstained from every form of living thing as food, and the rest only partook of meat under certain restrictions. their dress was unpretentious, they wore no jewels, and observed strict fidelity to the marriage vow;* and the virtues with which they were accredited obtained for them, from very early times, unbounded influence over the minds of the common people as well as over those of the nobles: the king himself boasted of being their pupil, and took no serious step in state affairs without consulting ahura-mazdâ or the other gods by their mediation. the classical writers maintain that the magi often cloaked monstrous vices under their apparent strictness, and it is possible that this was the case in later days, but even then moral depravity was probably rather the exception than the rule among them:*** the majority of the magi faithfully observed the rules of honest living and ceremonial purity enjoined on them in the books handed down by their ancestors. * clement of alexandria assures us that they were strictly celibate, but besides the fact that married magi are mentioned several times, celibacy is still considered by zoroastrians an inferior state to that of marriage. ** in the greek period, a spurious epitaph of darius, son of hystaspes, was quoted, in which the king says of himself, �i was the pupil of the magi.� *** these accusations are nearly all directed against their incestuous marriages: it seems that the classical writers took for a refinement of debauchery what really was before all things a religious practice. there is reason to believe that the magi were all-powerful among the medes, and that the reign of astyages was virtually the reign of the priestly caste; but all the iranian states did not submit so patiently to their authority, and the persians at last proved openly refractory. their kings, lords of susa as well as of pasargadse, wielded all the resources of elam, and their military power must have equalled, if it did not already surpass, that of their suzerain lords. their tribes, less devoted to the manner of living of the assyrians and chaldæans, had preserved a vigour and power of endurance which the medes no longer possessed; and they needed but an ambitious and capable leader, to rise rapidly from the rank of subjects to that of rulers of iran, and to become in a short time masters of asia. such a chief they found in cyrus,* son of cambyses; but although no more illustrious name than his occurs in the list of the founders of mighty empires, the history of no other has suffered more disfigurement from the imagination of his own subjects or from the rancour of the nations he had conquered.** * the original form of the name is kûru, kûrush, with a long _o_, which forces us to reject the proposed connection with the name of the indian hero kuru, in which the _u_ is short. numerous etymologies of the name cyrus have been proposed. the persians themselves attributed to it the sense of _the sun_. ** we possess two entirely different versions of the history of the origin of cyrus, but one, that of herodotus, has reached us intact, while that of ctesias is only known to us in fragments from extracts made by nicolas of damascus, and by photius. spiegel and duncker thought to recognise in the tradition followed by ctesias one of the persian accounts of the history of cyrus, but bauer refuses to admit this hypothesis, and prefers to consider it as a romance put together by the author, according to the taste of his own times, from facts partly different from those utilised by herodotus, and partly borrowed from herodotus himself: but it should very probably be regarded as an account of median origin, in which the founder of the persian empire is portrayed in the most unfavourable light. or perhaps it may be regarded as the form of the legend current among the pharnaspids who established themselves as satraps of dascylium in the time of the achæmenids, and to whom the royal house of cappadocia traced its origin. it is almost certain that the account given by herodotus represents a median version of the legend, and, considering the important part played in it by harpagus, probably that version which was current among the descendants of that nobleman. the historian dinon, as far as we can judge from the extant fragments of his work, and from the abridgment made by trogus pompeius, adopted the narrative of ctesias, mingling with it, however, some details taken from herodotus and the romance of xenophon, the cyropodia. the medes, who could not forgive him for having made them subject to their ancient vassals, took delight in holding him up to scorn, and not being able to deny the fact of his triumph, explained it by the adoption of tortuous and despicable methods. they would not even allow that he was of royal birth, but asserted that he was of ignoble origin, the son of a female goatherd and a certain atradates,* who, belonging to the savage clan of the mardians, lived by brigandage. cyrus himself, according to this account, spent his infancy and early youth in a condition not far short of slavery, employed at first in sweeping out the exterior portions of the palace, performing afterwards the same office in the private apartments, subsequently promoted to the charge of the lamps and torches, and finally admitted to the number of the royal cupbearers who filled the king�s goblet at table. * according to one of the historians consulted by strabo, cyrus himself, and not his father, was called atradates. [illustration: .jpg a royal hunting-party in hun] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the silver vase in the museum of the hermitage. when he was at length enrolled in the bodyguard,* he won distinction by his skill in all military exercises, and having risen from rank to rank, received command of an expedition against the cadusians. * the tradition reproduced by dinon narrated that cyrus had begun by serving among the kavasses, the three hundred staff-bearers who accompanied the sovereign when he appeared in public, and that he passed next into the royal body- guard, and that once having attained this rank, he passed rapidly through all the superior grades of the military profession. on the march he fell in with a persian groom named oebaras,* who had been cruelly scourged for some misdeed, and was occupied in the transportation of manure in a boat: in obedience to an oracle the two united their fortunes, and together devised a vast scheme for liberating their compatriots from the median yoke. * this oebaras whom ctesias makes the accomplice of cyrus, seems to be an antedated forestallment of theoebaras whom the tradition followed by herodotus knows as master of the horse under darius, and to whom that king owed his elevation to the throne. how atradates secretly prepared the revolt of the mardians; how cyrus left his camp to return to the court at ecbatana, and obtained from astyages permission to repair to his native country under pretext of offering sacrifices, but in reality to place himself at the head of the conspirators; how, finally, the indiscretion of a woman revealed the whole plot to a eunuch of the harem, and how he warned astyages in the middle of his evening banquet by means of a musician or singing-girl, was frequently narrated by the median bards in their epic poems, and hence the story spread until it reached in later times even as far as the greeks.* * according to ctesias, it was a singing-girl who revealed the existence of the plot to astyages; according to dinon, it was the bard angarês. windischmann has compared this name with that of the vedic guild of singers, the angira. astyages, roused to action by the danger, abandons the pleasures of the chase in which his activity had hitherto found vent, sets out on the track of the rebel, wins a preliminary victory on the hyrba, and kills the father of cyrus: some days after, he again overtakes the rebels, at the entrance to the defiles leading to pasargadse, and for the second time fortune is on the point of declaring in his favour, when the persian women, bringing back their husbands and sons to the conflict, urge them on to victory. the fame of their triumph having spread abroad, the satraps and provinces successfully declared for the conqueror; hyrcania, first, followed by the parthians, the sakae, and the bactrians: astyages was left almost alone, save for a few faithful followers, in the palace at ecbatana. his daughter amytis and his son-in-law spitamas concealed him so successfully on the top of the palace, that he escaped discovery up to the moment when cyrus was on the point of torturing his grandchildren to force them to reveal his hiding-place: thereupon he gave himself up to his enemies, but was at length, after being subjected to harsh treatment for a time, set at liberty and entrusted with the government of a mountain tribe dwelling to the south-east of the caspian sea, that of the barcanians. later on he perished through the treachery of oebaras, and his corpse was left unburied in the desert, but by divine interposition relays of lions were sent to guard it from the attacks of beasts of prey: cyrus, acquainted with this miraculous circumstance, went in search of the body and gave it a magnificent burial.* another legend asserted, on the contrary, that cyrus was closely connected with the royal line of cyaxares; this tradition was originally circulated among the great median families who attached themselves to the achaemenian dynasty.** * the passage in herodotus leads marquart to believe that the murder of astyages formed part of the primitive legend, but was possibly attributed to cambysos, son of cyrus, rather than to oebaras, the companion of the conqueror�s early years. ** this is the legend as told to herodotus in asia minor, probably by the members of the family of harpagus, which the greek historian tried to render credible by interpreting the miraculous incidents in a rationalising manner. [illustration: .jpg remains of the palace of ecbatana] drawn by boudier, from coste and flandin. according to this legend astyages had no male heirs, and the sceptre would have naturally descended from him to his daughter mandanê and her sons. astyages was much alarmed by a certain dream concerning his daughter: he dreamt that water gushed forth so copiously from her womb as to flood not only ecbatana, but the whole of asia, and the interpreters, as much terrified as himself, counselled him not to give mandanê in marriage to a persian noble of the race of the achæmenids, named cambyses; but a second dream soon troubled the security into which this union had lulled him: he saw issuing from his daughter�s womb a vine whose branches overshadowed asia, and the interpreters, being once more consulted, predicted that a grandson was about to be born to him whose ambition would cost him his crown. he therefore bade a certain nobleman of his court, named harpagus--he whose descendants preserved this version of the story of cyrus--to seize the infant and put it to death as soon as its mother should give it birth; but the man, touched with pity, caused the child to be exposed in the woods by one of the royal shepherds. a bitch gave suck to the tiny creature, who, however, would soon have succumbed to the inclemency of the weather, had not the shepherd�s wife, being lately delivered of a still-born son, persuaded her husband to rescue the infant, whom she nursed with the same tenderness as if he had been her own child. the dog was, as we know, a sacred animal among the iranians: the incident of the bitch seems, then, to have been regarded by them as an indication of divine intervention, but the greeks were shocked by the idea, and invented an explanation consonant with their own customs. they supposed that the woman had borne the name of spakô: spakô signifying _bitch_ in the language of media.* * herodotus asserts that the child�s foster-mother was called in greek _kynô_, in median _spalcô_, which comes to the same thing, for _spaha_ means _bitch_ in median. further on he asserts that the parents of the child heard of the name of his nurse with joy, as being of good augury; �and, in order that the persians might think that cyrus had been preserved alive by divine agency, _they spread abroad the report that cyrus had been suckled by a bitch_. and thus arose the fable commonly accepted.� trogus pompeius received the original story probably through dinon, and inserted it in his book. cyrus grew to boyhood, and being accepted by mandanê as her son, returned to the court; his grandfather consented to spare his life, but, to avenge himself on harpagus, he caused the limbs of the nobleman�s own son to be served up to him at a feast. thenceforth harpagus had but one idea, to overthrow the tyrant and transfer the crown to the young prince: his project succeeded, and cyrus, having overcome astyages, was proclaimed king by the medes as well as by the persians. the real history of cyrus, as far as we can ascertain it, was less romantic. we gather that kurush, known to us as cyrus, succeeded his father cambyses as ruler of anshân about or b.c.,* and that he revolted against astyages in or b.c.,** and defeated him. the median army thereupon seizing its own leader, delivered him into the hands of the conqueror: ecbatana was taken and sacked, and the empire fell at one blow, or, more properly speaking, underwent a transformation ( b.c.). the transformation was, in fact, an internal revolution in which the two peoples of the same race changed places. the name of the medes lost nothing of the prestige which it enjoyed in foreign lands, but that of the persians was henceforth united with it, and shared its renown: like astyages and his predecessors, cyrus and his successors reigned equally over the two leading branches of the ancient iranian stock, but whereas the former had been kings of the medes and persians, the latter became henceforth kings of the persians and medes.*** * the length of cyrus� reign is fixed at thirty years by ctesias, followed by dinon and trogus pompeius, but at twenty-nine years by herodotus, whose computation i here follow. hitherto the beginning of his reign has been made to coincide with the fall of astyages, which was consequently placed in or b.c., but the discovery of the _annals of nabonidus_ obliges us to place the taking of ecbatana in the sixth year of the babylonian king, which corresponds to the year b.c., and consequently to hold that cyrus reckoned his twenty-nine years from the moment when he succeeded his father cambyses. ** the inscription on the _rassam cylinder of abu-habba_, seems to make the fall of the median king, who was suzerain of the scythians of harrân, coincide with the third year of nabonidus, or the year - b.c. but it is only the date of the commencement of hostilities between cyrus and astyages which is here furnished, and this manner of interpreting the text agrees with the statement of the median traditions handed down by the classical authors, that three combats took place between astyages and cyrus before the final victory of the persians. *** this equality of the two peoples is indicated by the very terms employed by darius, whom he speaks of them, in the _great inscription of behistun_. he says, for example, in connection with the revolt of the false smerdis, that �the deception prevailed greatly in the land, in persia and media as well as in the other provinces,� and further on, that �the whole people rose, and passed over from cambyses to him, persia and media as well as the other countries.� in the same way he mentions �the army of persians and medes which was with him,� and one sees that he considered medes and persians to be on exactly the same footing. the change effected was so natural that their nearest neighbours, the chaldæans, showed no signs of uneasiness at the outset. they confined themselves to the bare registration of the fact in their annals at the appointed date, without comment, and nabonidus in no way deviated from the pious routine which it had hitherto pleased him to follow. under a sovereign so good-natured there was little likelihood of war, at all events with external foes, but insurrections were always breaking out in different parts of his territory, and we read of difficulties in khumê in the first year of his reign, in hamath in his second year, and troubles in plionicia in the third year, which afforded an opportunity for settling the tyrian question. tyre had led a far from peaceful existence ever since the day when, from sheer apathy, she had accepted the supremacy of nebuchadrezzar.* * all these events are known through the excerpt from menander preserved to us by josephus in his treatise _against apion_. baal ii. had peacefully reigned there for ten years ( - ), but after his death the people had overthrown the monarchy, and various _suffetes_ had followed one another rapidly--eknibaal ruled two months, khelbes ten months, the high priest abbar three months, the two brothers mutton and gerastratus six years, all of them no doubt in the midst of endless disturbances; whereupon a certain baalezor restored the royal dignity, but only to enjoy it for the space of one year. on his death, the inhabitants begged the chaldæans to send them, as a successor to the crown, one of those princes whom, according to custom, baal had not long previously given over as hostages for a guarantee of his loyalty, and nergal-sharuzur for this purpose selected from their number mahar-baal, who was probably a son of ithobaal ( - ).* when, at the end of four years, the death of mahar-baal left the throne vacant ( - ), the tyrians petitioned for his brother hirôm, and nabonidus, who was then engaged in syria, came south as far as phoenicia and installed the prince.** * the fragment of menander does not give the babylonian king�s name, but a simple chronological calculation proves him to have been nergal-sharuzur. ** _annals of nabonidus_, where mention is made of a certain nabu-makhdan-uzur--but the reading of the name is uncertain --who seems to be in revolt against the chaldæans. floigl has very ingeniously harmonised the dates of the annals with those obtained from the fragment of menander, and has thence concluded that the object of the expedition of the third year was the enthroning of hirôm which is mentioned in the fragment, and during whose fourteenth year cyrus became king of babylon. this took place at the very moment when cyrus was preparing his expedition against astyages; and the babylonian monarch took advantage of the agitation into which the medes were thrown by this invasion, to carry into execution a project which he had been planning ever since his accession. shortly after that event he had had a dream, in which marduk, the great lord, and sin, the light of heaven and earth, had appeared on either side of his couch, the former addressing him in the following words: �nabonidus, king of babylon, with the horses of thy chariot bring brick, rebuild e-khul-khul, the temple of harrân, that sin, the great lord, may take up his abode therein.� nabonidus had respectfully pointed out that the town was in the hands of the scythians, who were subjects of the medes, but the god had replied: �the scythian of whom thou speakest, he, his country and the kings his protectors, are no more.� cyrus was the instrument of the fulfilment of the prophecy. nabonidus took possession of harrân without difficulty, and immediately put the necessary work in hand. this was, indeed, the sole benefit that he derived from the changes which were taking place, and it is probable that his inaction was the result of the enfeebled condition of the empire. the country over which he ruled, exhausted by the assyrian conquest, and depopulated by the scythian invasions, had not had time to recover its forces since it had passed into the hands of the chaldæans; and the wars which nebuchadrezzar had been obliged to undertake for the purpose of strengthening his own power, though few in number and not fraught with danger, had tended to prolong the state of weakness into which it had sunk. if the hero of the dynasty who had conquered egypt had not ventured to measure his strength with the median princes, and if he had courted the friendship not only of the warlike cyaxares but of the effeminate astyages, it would not be prudent for nabonidus to come into collision with the victorious new-comers from the heart of iran. chaldsea doubtless was right in avoiding hostilities, at all events so long as she had to bear the brunt of them alone, but other nations had not the same motives for exercising prudence, and lydia was fully assured that the moment had come for her to again take up the ambitious designs which the treaty of had forced her to renounce. alyattes, relieved from anxiety with regard to the medes, had confined his energies to establishing firmly his kingdom in the regions of asia minor extending westwards from the halys and the anti-taurus. the acquisition of colophon, the destruction of smyrna, the alliance with the towns of the littoral, had ensured him undisputed possession of the valleys of the caicus and the hermus, but the plains of the maeander in the south, and the mountainous districts of mysia in the north, were not yet fully brought under his sway. he completed the occupation of the troad and mysia about , and afterwards made of the entire province an appanage for adramyttios, who was either his son or his brother.* * the doings of alyattes in troas and in mysia are vouched for by the anecdote related by plutarch concerning this king�s relations with pittakos. the founding of adramyttium is attributed to him by stephen of byzantium, after aristotle, who made adramyttios the brother of croesus. radat gives good reasons for believing that adramyttios was brother to alyattes and uncle to crosus, and the same person as adramys, the son of sadyattes, according to xanthus of lydia. radet gives the year for the date of these events. he even carried his arms into bithynia, where, to enforce his rule, he built several strongholds, one of which, called alyatta, commanded the main road leading from the basin of the rhyndacus to that of the sangarius, skirting the spurs of olympus.* he experienced some difficulty in reducing caria, and did not finally succeed in his efforts till nearly the close of his reign in . adramyttios was then dead, and his fief had devolved on his eldest surviving brother or nephew, crosus, whose mother was by birth a carian. this prince had incurred his father�s displeasure by his prodigality, and an influential party desired that he should be set aside in favour of his brother pantaleon, the son of alyattes by an ionian. croesus, having sown his wild oats, was anxious to regain his father�s favour, and his only chance of so doing was by distinguishing himself in the coming war, if only money could be found for paying his mercenaries. sadyattes, the richest banker in lydia, who had already had dealings with all the members of the royal family, refused to make him a loan, but theokharides of priênê advanced him a thousand gold staters, which enabled crosus to enroll his contingent at bphesus, and to be the first to present himself at the rallying-place for the troops.** * radet places the operations in bithynia before the median war, towards at the latest. i think that they are more probably connected with those in mysia, and that they form part of the various measures taken after the median war to achieve the occupation of the regions west of the halys. ** a mutilated extract from xanthus of lydia in suidas seems to carry these events back to the time of the war against priênê, towards the beginning of the reign. the united evidence of the accompanying circumstances proves that they belong to the time of the old age of alyattes, and makes it very likely that they occurred in , the date proposed by radet for the carian campaign. caria was annexed to the kingdom, but the conditions under which the annexation took place are not known to us;* and croesus contributed so considerably to the success of the campaign, that he was reinstated in popular favour. alyattes, however, was advancing in years, and was soon about to rejoin his adversaries cyaxares and nebuchadrezzar in hades. like the pharaohs, the kings of lydia were accustomed to construct during their lifetime the monuments in which they were to repose after death. their necropolis was situated not far from sardes, on the shores of the little lake gygaea; it was here, close to the resting-place of his ancestors and their wives, that alyattes chose the spot for his tomb,** and his subjects did not lose the opportunity of proving to what extent he had gained their affections. * the fragment of nicolas of damascus does not speak of the result of the war, but it was certainly favourable, for herodotus counts the carians among croesus� subjects. ** the only one of these monuments, besides that of alyattes, which is mentioned by the ancients, belonged to one of the favourites of gyges, and was called _the tomb of the courtesan_. strabo, by a manifest error, has applied this name _to_ the tomb of alyattes. [illustration: .jpg the tumulus of alyattes and the entrance to the passage] drawn by boudier, from the sketch by spiegolthal. his predecessors had been obliged to finish their work at their own expense and by forced labour;* but in the case of alyattes the three wealthiest classes of the population, the merchants, the craftsmen, and the courtesans, all united to erect for him an enormous tumulus, the remains of which still rise feet above the plains of the hermus. * this, at least, seems to be the import of the passage in clearchus of soli, where that historian gives an account of the erection of the _tomb of the courtesan_. [illustration: .jpg one of the lydian ornaments in the louvre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. the sub-structure consisted of a circular wall of great blocks of limestone resting on the solid rock, and it contained in the centre a vault of grey marble which was reached by a vaulted passage. a huge mound of red clay and yellowish earth was raised above the chamber, surmounted by a small column representing a phallus, and by four stelæ covered with inscriptions, erected at the four cardinal points. it follows the traditional type of burial-places in use among the old asianic races, but it is constructed with greater regularity than most of them; alyattes was laid within it in , after a glorious reign of forty-nine years.* * herodotus gave fifty-seven years� length of reign to alyattes, whilst the chronographers, who go back as far as xanthus of lydia, through julius africanus, attribute to him only forty-nine; historians now prefer the latter figures, at least as representing the maximum length of reign. [illustration: .jpg mould for jewellery of lydian origin] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph. it was wholly due to him that lydia was for the moment raised to the level of the most powerful states which then existed on the eastern shores of the mediterranean. he was by nature of a violent and uncontrolled temper, and during his earlier years he gave way to fits of anger, in which he would rend the clothes of those who came in his way or would spit in their faces, but with advancing years his character became more softened, and he finally earned the reputation of being a just and moderate sovereign. the little that we know of his life reveals an energy and steadfastness of purpose quite unusual; he proceeded slowly but surely in his undertakings, and if he did not succeed in extending his domains as far as he had hoped at the beginning of his campaigns against the medes, he at all events never lost any of the provinces he had acquired. under his auspices agriculture flourished, and manufactures attained a degree of perfection hitherto unknown. [illustration: .jpg a lydian funery couch] drawn by faucher-gudin, from choisy. none of the vases in gold, silver, or wrought-iron, which he dedicated and placed among the treasures of the greek temples, has come down to us, but at rare intervals ornaments of admirable workmanship are found in the lydian tombs. those now in the louvre exhibit, in addition to human figures somewhat awkwardly treated, heads of rams, bulls, and griffins of a singular delicacy and faithfulness to nature. these examples reveal a blending of grecian types and methods of production with those of egypt or chaldæa, the hellenic being predominant,* and the same combination of heterogeneous elements must have existed in the other domains of industrial art---in the dyed and embroidered stuffs,** the vases,*** and the furniture.**** * the ornaments, of which we have now no specimens, but only the original moulds cut in serpentine, betray imitation of assyria and chaldæa. ** the custom of clothing themselves in dyed and embroidered stuffs was one of the effeminate habits with which the poet xenophanes reproached the ionians as having been learned from their lydian neighbours. *** m. perrot points out that one of the vases discovered by g. dennis at bintépé is an evident imitation of the egyptian and phoenician chevroned glasses. the shape of the vase is one of those found represented, with the same decoration, on egyptian monuments subsequent to the middle empire, where the chevroned lines seem to be derived from the undulations of ribbon-alabaster. **** the stone funerary couches which have been discovered in lydian tombs are evidently copied from pieces of wooden furniture similarly arranged and decorated. [illustration: a.jpg lydian coin bearing a running fox] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the cabinet des médailles: a stater of electrum weighing . grammes. [these illustrations are larger than the original pieces.--tr.] [illustration: b.jpg lydian coin with a hare] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles._ lydia, inheriting the traditions of phrygia, and like that state situated on the border of two worlds, allied moreover with egypt as well as babylon, and in regular communication with the delta, borrowed from each that which fell in with her tastes or seemed likely to be most helpful to her in her commercial relations. as the country produced gold in considerable quantities, and received still more from extraneous sources, the precious metal came soon to be employed as a means of exchange under other conditions than those which had hitherto prevailed. besides acting as commission agents and middle-men for the disposal of merchandise at sardes, ephesus, miletus, clazomenaa, and all the maritime cities, the lydians performed at the same time the functions of pawnbrokers, money-changers, and bankers, and they were ready to make loans to private individuals as well as to kings. obliged by the exigencies of their trade to cut up the large gold ingots into sections sufficiently small to represent the smallest values required in daily life, they did not at first impress upon these portions any stamp as a guarantee of the exact weight or the purity of the metal; they were estimated like the _tabonu_ of the egyptians, by actual weighing on the occasion of each business transaction. [illustration: .jpg lydian coins with a lion and lion�s head] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. the idea at length occurred to them to impress each of these pieces with a common stamp, serving, like the trade-marks employed by certain guilds of artisans, to testify at once to their genuineness and their exact weight: in a word, they were the inventors of money. the most ancient coinage of their mint was like a flattened sphere, more or less ovoid, in form: it consisted at first of electrum, and afterwards of smelted gold, upon which parallel striae or shallow creases were made by a hammer. there were two kinds of coinage, differing considerably from each other; one consisted of the heavy stater, weighing about . grammes, perhaps of phoenician origin, the other of the light stater, of some . grammes in weight, which doubtless served as money for the local needs of lydia: both forms were subdivided into pieces representing respectively the third, the sixth, the twelfth, and the twenty-fourth of the value of the original. [illustration: a.jpg coin bearing head of mouflon goat] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. [illustration: b.jpg money of croesus] the stamp which came to be impressed upon the money was in relief, and varied with the banker; * when political communities began to follow the example of individuals, it also bore the name of the city where it was minted. * [the best english numismatists do not agree with m. babelon�s �banker� theory. cf. barclay v. head, _historia nummorum_, p. xxxiv.---tr.] the type of impression once selected, was little modified for fear of exciting mistrust among the people, but it was more finely executed and enlarged so as to cover one of the faces, that which we now call the _obverse_. several subjects entered into the composition of the design, each being impressed by a special punch: thus in the central concavity we find the figure of a running fox, emblem of apollo bassareus, and in two similar depressions, one above and the other below the central, appear a horse�s or stag�s head, and a flower with four petals. later on the design was simplified, and contained only one, or at most two figures--a hare squatting under a tortuous climbing plant, a roaring lion crouching with its head turned to the left, the grinning muzzle of a lion, the horned profile of an antelope or mouflon sheep: rosettes and flowers, included within a square depression, were then used to replace the stria and irregular lines of the reverse. these first efforts were without inscriptions; it was not long, however, before there came to be used, in addition to the figures, legends, from which we sometimes learn the name of the banker; we read, for instance, �i am the mark of phannes,� on a stater of electrum struck at ephesus, with a stag grazing on the right. we are ignorant as to which of the lydian kings first made use of the new invention, and so threw into circulation the gold and electrum which filled his treasury to overflowing. the ancients say it was gyges, but the gygads of their time cannot be ascribed to him; they were, without any doubt, simply ingots marked with the stamp of the banker of the time, and were attributed to gyges either out of pure imagination or by mistake.* * the gold of gyges is known to us through a passage in pollux. fr. lenormant attributed to gyges the coins which babelon restores to the banks of asia minor. babelon sees in the gygads only �ingots of gold, struck _possibly_ in the name of gyges, capable of being used as coin, doubtless representing a definitely fixed weight, but still lacking that ultimate perfection which characterises the coinage of civilised peoples: from the standpoint of circulation in the market their shape was defective and inconvenient; their subdivision did not extend to such small fractions as to make all payments easy; they were too large and too dear for easy circulation through many hands.� the same must be said of the pieces of money which have been assigned to his successors, and, even when we find on them traces of writing, we cannot be sure of their identification; one legend which was considered to contain the name of sadyattes has been made out, without producing conviction, as involving, instead, that of clazomenæ. there is no certainty until after the time of alyattes, that is, in the reign of croesus. it is, as a fact, to this prince that we owe the fine gold and silver coins bearing on the obverse a demi-lion couchant confronting a bull treated similarly.* the two creatures appear to threaten one another, and the introduction of the lion recalls a tradition regarding the city of sardes; it may represent the actual animal which was alleged to have been begotten by king meles of one of his concubines, and which he caused to be carried solemnly round the city walls to render them impregnable. croesus did not succeed to the throne of his father without trouble. his enemies had not laid down their arms after the carian campaign, and they endeavoured to rid themselves of him by all the means in use at oriental courts. the ionian mother of his rival furnished the slave who kneaded the bread with poison, telling her to mix it with the dough, but the woman revealed the intended crime to her master, who at once took the necessary measures to frustrate the plot; later on in life he dedicated in the temple of delphi a statue of gold representing the faithful bread-maker.** the chief of the rival party seems to have been sadyattes, the banker from whom croesus had endeavoured to borrow money at the beginning of his career, but several of the lydian nobles, whose exercise of feudal rights had been restricted by the growing authority of the mermnado, either secretly or openly gave their adhesion to pantaleon, among them being glaucias of sidênê; the greek cities, always ready to chafe at authority, were naturally inclined to support a claimant born of a greek mother, and pindarus the tyrant of ephesus, and grandson of the melas who had married the daughter of gyges, joined the conspirators. * lenormant ascribed an issue of coins without inscriptions to the kings ardys, sadyattes, and alyattes, but this has since been believed not to have been their work. ** herodotus mentions the statue of the bread-maker, giving no reason why crosus dedicated it. the author quoted by plutarch would have it that in revenge he made his half- brothers eat the poisoned bread. [illustration: .jpg view of the site and ruins of ephesus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. as soon as alyattes was dead, crosus, who was kept informed by his spies of their plans, took action with a rapidity which disconcerted his adversaries. it is not known what became of pantaleon, whether he was executed or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death or had to purchase their pardon dearly. sadyattes was stretched on a rack and torn with carding combs.* glaucias, besieged in his fortress of sidênê, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the king demolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who should thereafter rebuild them. pindarus, summoned to surrender, refused, but as he had not sufficient troops to defend the entire city, he evacuated the lower quarters, and concentrated all his forces on the defence of the citadel; he refused to open negotiations until after the fall of a tower at the moment when a practicable breach had been made, and succeeded in obtaining an honourable capitulation for himself and his people by a ruse. * the history of sadyattes and of his part in the conspiracy results from points of agreement which have been established between various passages in herodotus and in nicolas of damascus, where the person is sometimes named and sometimes not. he dedicated the town to artemis, and by means of a rope connected the city walls with the temple, which stood nearly a mile away in the suburbs, and then entreated for peace in the name of the goddess. croesus was amused at the artifice, and granted favourable conditions to the inhabitants, but insisted on the expulsion of the tyrant. the latter bowed before the decree, and confiding the care of his children and possessions to his friend pasicles, left for the peloponnesus with his retinue. bphesus up to this time had been a kind of allied principality, whose chiefs, united to the royal family of lydia by marriages from generation to generation, recognised the nominal suzerainty of the reigning king rather than his effective authority. it was in fact a species of protectorate, which, while furthering the commercial interests of lydia, satisfied at the same time the passion of the greek cities for autonomy. croesus, encouraged by his first success, could not rest contented with such a compromise. he attacked, successively, miletus and the various ionian, Æolian, and dorian communities of the littoral, and brought them all under his sway, promising on their capitulation that their local constitutions should be respected if they became direct dependencies of his empire. he placed garrisons in such towns as were strategically important for him to occupy, but everywhere else he razed to the ground the fortresses and ramparts which might afford protection to his enemies in case of rebellion, compelling the inhabitants to take up their abode on the open plain where they could not readily defend themselves.* the administration of the affairs of each city was entrusted to either a wealthy citizen, or an hereditary tyrant, or an elected magistrate, who was held responsible for its loyalty; the administrator paid over the tribute to the sovereign�s treasurers, levied the specified contingent and took command of it in time of war, settled any quarrels which might occur, and was empowered, when necessary, to exile turbulent and ambitious persons whose words or actions appeared to him to be suspicious. croesus treated with generosity those republics which tendered him loyal obedience, and affected a special devotion to their gods. he gave a large number of ex-voto offerings to the much-revered sanctuary of bran-chidse, in the territory of miletus; he dedicated some golden heifers at the artemision of ephesus, and erected the greater number of the columns of that temple at his own expense.** * he treated thus the ephesians and the ilians. ** the fragments of columns brought from this temple by wood and preserved in the british museum have on one of the bases the remains of an inscription confirming the testimony of herodotus. at one time in his career he appears to have contemplated extending his dominion over the greek islands, and planned, as was said, the equipment of a fleet, but he soon acknowledged the imprudence of such a project, and confined his efforts to strengthening his advantageous position on the littoral by contracting alliances with the island populations and with the nations of greece proper.* * he seems to have been deterred from his project by a sarcastic remark made, as some say, by pittakos the mitylenian, or according to others, by bias of priênê. following the diplomacy of his ancestors, he began by devoting himself to the gods of the country, and took every pains to gain the good graces of apollo of delphi. he dispensed his gifts with such liberality that neither his contemporaries nor subsequent generations grew weary of admiring it. on one occasion he is said to have sacrificed three thousand animals, and burnt, moreover, on the pyre the costly contents of a palace--couches covered with silver and gold, coverlets and robes of purple, and golden vials. his subjects were commanded to contribute to the offering, and he caused one hundred and seventeen hollow half-bricks to be cast of the gold which they brought him for this purpose. these bricks were placed in regular layers within the treasury at delphi where the gifts of lydia from the time of alyattes were deposited, and the top of the pile was surmounted by a lion of fine gold of such a size that the pedestal and statue together were worth £ , , of our present money. these, however, formed only a tithe of his gifts; many of the objects dedicated by him were dispersed half a century ( b.c.) later when the temple was burnt, and found their way into the treasuries of the greek states which enjoyed the favour of apollo--among them being an enormous gold cup sent to clazomeme, and four barrels of silver and two bowls, one of silver and one of gold, sent to the corinthians. the people at delphi, as well as their god, participated in the royal largesse, and croesus distributed to them the sum of two staters per head. no doubt their gratitude led them by degrees to exaggerate the total of the benefits showered upon them, especially as time went on and their recollection of the king became fainter; but even when we reduce the number of the many gifts which they attributed to him, we are still obliged to acknowledge that they surpassed anything hitherto recorded, and that they produced throughout the whole of greece the effect that croesus had desired. the oracle granted to him and to the lydians the rights of citizenship in perpetuity, the privilege of priority in consulting it before all comers, precedence for his legates over other foreign embassies, and a place of honour at the games and at all religious ceremonies. it was, in fact, the admission of lydia into the hellenic concert, and the offerings which croesus showered upon the sanctuaries of lesser fame--that of zeus at dodona, of amphiaraos at oropos, of trophonios at lebadsea, on the oracle of abee in phocis, and on the ismenian apollo at thebes--secured a general approval of the act. political alliances contracted with the great families of athens, the alcmonidæ and eupatridæ,* with the cypselidæ of, corinth,** and with the heraclidæ of sparta,*** completed the policy of bribery which croesus had inaugurated in the sacerdotal republics, with the result that, towards , being in the position of uncontested patron of the greeks of asia, he could count upon the sympathetic neutrality of the majority of their compatriots in europe, and on the effective support of a smaller number of them in the event of his being forced into hostilities with one or other of his asiatic rivals. * traditions as to crcesus� relations with alcrnseon are preserved by herodotus. the king compelled the inhabitants of lampsacus, his vassals, to release the elder miltiades, whom they had taken prisoner, and thus earned the gratitude of the eupatridæ. ** alyattes had been the ally of periander, as is proved by an anecdote in herodotus. this friendship continued under crosus, for after the fall of the monarchy, when the special treasuries of lydia were suppressed, the ex-voto offerings of the lydian kings were deposited in the treasury of corinth. *** according to theopompus, the lacedaemonians, wishing to gild the face of the statue of the amyclsean, apollo, and finding no gold in greece, consulted the delphian prophetess: by her advice they sent to lydia to buy the precious metal from croesus. this, however, constituted merely one side of his policy, and the negotiations which he carried on with his western neighbours were conducted simultaneously with his wars against those of the east. alyattes had asserted his supremacy over the whole of the country on the western side of the halys, but it was of a very vague kind, having no definite form, and devoid of practical results as far as several of the districts in the interior were concerned. croesus made it a reality, and in less than ten years all the peoples contained within it, the lycians excepted--mysians, phrygians, mariandynians, paphlagonians, thynians, bithynians, and pamphylians--had rendered him homage. in its constitution his empire in no way differed from those which at that time shared the rule of western asia; the number of districts administered directly by the sovereign were inconsiderable, and most of the states comprised in it preserved their autonomy. phrygia had its own princes, who were descendants of midas,* and in the same way caria and mysia also retained theirs; but these vassal lords paid tribute and furnished contingents to their liege of sardes, and garrisons lodged in their citadels as well as military stations or towns founded in strategic positions, such as prusa** in bithynia, cibyra, hyda, grimenothyræ, and temenothyræ,*** kept strict watch over them, securing the while free circulation for caravans or individual merchants throughout the whole country. croesus had achieved his conquest just as media was tottering to its fall under the attacks of the persians. * this is proved by the history of the prince adrastus in herodotus. herodotus probably alluded to this colonisation by crcesus, when he said that the mysians of olympus were descendants of lydian colonists. ** strabo merely says that the kibyrates were descended from the lydians who dwelt in cabalia; since croesus was, as far as we know, the only lydian king who ever possessed this part of asia, radet, with good reason, concludes that kibyra was colonised by him. *** radet has given good reasons for believing that at least some of these towns were enlarged and fortified by croesus. their victory placed the lydian king in a position of great perplexity, since it annulled the treaties concluded after the eclipse of , and by releasing him from the obligations then contracted, afforded him an opportunity of extending the limits within which his father had confined himself. now or never was the time for crossing the halys in order to seize those mineral districts with which his subjects had so long had commercial relations; on the other hand, the unexpected energy of which the persians had just given proof, their bravery, their desire for conquest, and the valour of their leader, all tended to deter him from the project: should he be victorious, cyrus would probably not rest contented with tke annexation of a few unimportant districts or the imposition of a tribute, but would treat his adversary as he had astyages, and having dethroned him, would divide lydia into departments to be ruled by one or other of his partisans. warlike ideas, nevertheless, prevailed at the court of sardes, and, taking all into consideration, we cannot deny that they had reason on their side. the fall of ecbatana had sealed the fate of media proper, and its immediate dependencies had naturally shared the fortunes of the capital; but the more distant provinces still wavered, and they would probably attempt to take advantage of the change of rule to regain their liberty. cyrus, obliged to take up arms against them, would no longer have his entire forces at his disposal, and by attacking him at that juncture it might be possible to check his power before it became irresistible. having sketched out his plan of campaign, croesus prepared to execute it with all possible celerity. egypt and chaldæa, like himself, doubtless felt themselves menaced; he experienced little difficulty in persuading them to act in concert with him in face of the common peril, and he obtained from both amasis and nabonidus promises of effective co-operation. at the same time he had recourse to the greek oracles, and that of delphi was instrumental in obtaining for him a treaty of alliance and friendship with sparta. negotiations had been carried on so rapidly, that by the end of all was in readiness for a simultaneous movement; sparta was equipping a fleet, and merely awaited the return of the favourable season to embark her contingent; egypt had already despatched hers, and her cypriot vassals were on the point of starting, while bands of thracian infantry were marching to reinforce the lydian army. these various elements represented so considerable a force of men, that, had they been ranged on a field of battle, cyrus would have experienced considerable difficulty in overcoming them. an unforeseen act of treachery obliged the lydians to hasten their preparations and commence hostilities before the moment agreed on. eurybatos, an ephesian, to whom the king had entrusted large sums of money for the purpose of raising mercenaries in the peloponnesus, fled with his gold into persia, and betrayed the secret of the coalition. the achaemenian sovereign did not hesitate to forestall the attack, and promptly assumed the offensive. the transport of an army from ecbatana to the middle course of the halys would have been a long and laborious undertaking, even had it kept within the territory of the empire; it would have necessitated crossing the mountain groups of armenia at their greatest width, and that at a time when the snow was still lying deep upon the ground and the torrents were swollen and unfordable. the most direct route, which passed through assyria and the part of mesopotamia south of the masios, lay for the most part in the hands of the chaldæans, but their enfeebled condition justified cyrus�s choice of it, and he resolved, in the event of their resistance, to cut his way through sword in hand. he therefore bore down upon arbela by the gorges of rowandîz in the month nisan, making as though he were bound for karduniash; but before the babylonians had time to recover from their alarm at this movement, he crossed the river not far from nineveh and struck into mesopotamia. he probably skirted the slopes of the masios, overcoming and killing in the month iyyâr some petty king, probably the ruler of armenia,* and debouched into cappadocia. this province was almost entirely in the power of the enemy; nabonidus had despatched couriers by the shortest route in order to warn his ally, and if necessary to claim his promised help. * ploigl, who was the first to refer a certain passage in the _annals of nabonidus_ to the expedition against croesus, restored is[parda] as the name of the country mentioned, and saw even the capture of sardes in the events of the month iyyâr, in direct contradiction to the greek tradition. the connection between the campaign beyond the tigris and the lydian war seems to me incontestable, but the babylonian chronicler has merely recorded the events which affected babylonia. cyrus� object was both to intimidate nabonidus and also to secure possession of the most direct, and at the same time the easiest, route: by cutting across mesopotamia, he avoided the difficult marches in the mountainous districts of armenia. perhaps we should combine, with the information of the _annals_, the passage of xenophon, where it is said that the armenians refused tribute and service to the king of persia: cyrus would have punished the rebels on his way, after crossing the euphrates. croesus, when he received them, had with him only the smaller portion of his army, the lydian cavalry, the contingents of his asiatic subjects, and a few greek veterans, and it would probably have been wiser to defer the attack till after the disembarkation of the lacedaemonians; but hesitation at so critical a moment might have discouraged his followers, and decided his fate before any action had taken place. he therefore collected his troops together, fell upon the right bank of the halys,* devastated the country, occupied pteria and the neighbouring towns, and exiled the inhabitants to a distance. he had just completed the subjection of the white syrians when he was met by an emissary from the persians; cyrus offered him his life, and confirmed his authority on condition of his pleading for mercy and taking the oath of vassalage.** croesus sent a proud refusal, which was followed by a brilliant victory, after which a truce of three months was concluded between the belligerents.*** * on this point herodotus tells a current story of his time: thaïes had a trench dug behind the army, which was probably encamped in one of the bends made by the halys; he then diverted the stream into this new bed, with the result that the lydians found themselves on the right bank of the river without having had the trouble of crossing it. ** nicolas of damascus records that cyrus, after the capture of sardes, for a short time contemplated making croesus a vassal king, or at least a satrap of lydia. *** we have two very different accounts of this campaign, viz. that of herodotus, and that of polyonus. according to herodotus, croesus gave battle only once in pteria, with indecisive result, and on the next day quietly retired to his kingdom, thinking that cyrus would not dare to pursue him. according to polyonus, croesus, victorious in a first engagement owing to a more or less plausible military stratagem, consented to a truce, but on the day after was completely defeated, and obliged to return to his kingdom with a routed army. herodotus� account of the fall of croesus and of sardes, borrowed partly from a good written source, xanthus or charon of lampsacus, partly from the tradition of the harpagidse, seems to have for its object the soothing of the vanity both of the persians and of the lydians, since, if the result of the war could not be contested, the issue of the battle was at least left uncertain. if he has given a faithful account, no one can understand why croesus should have retired and ceded white syria to a rival who had never conquered him. the account given by polysenus, in spite of the improbability of some of its details, comes from a well-informed author: the defeat of the lydians in the second battle explains the retreat of crcesus, who is without excuse in herodotus� version of the affair. pompeius trogus adopted a version similar to that of polysenus. cyrus employed the respite in attempting to win over the greek cities of the littoral, which he pictured to himself as nursing a bitter hatred against the mermnadæ; but it is to be doubted if his emissaries succeeded even in wresting a declaration of neutrality from the milesians; the remainder, ionians and Æolians, all continued faithful to their oaths.* on the resumption of hostilities, the tide of fortune turned, and the lydians were crushed by the superior forces of the persians and the medes; crcesus retired under cover of night, burning the country as he retreated, to prevent the enemy from following him, and crossed the halys with the remains of his battalions. the season was already far advanced; he thought that the persians, threatened in the rear by the babylonian troops, would shrink from the prospect of a winter campaign, and he fell back upon sardes without further lingering in phrygia. but nabonidus did not feel himself called upon to show the same devotion that his ally had evinced towards him, or perhaps the priests who governed in his name did not permit him to fulfil his engagements.** * herodotus makes the attempted corruption of the ionians to date from the beginning of the war, even before cyrus took the field. ** the author followed by pompeius trogus has alone preserved the record of this treaty. the fact is important as explaining croesus� behaviour after his defeat, but schubert goes too far when he re-establishes on this ground an actual campaign of cyrus against babylon: radet has come back to the right view in seeing only a treaty made with nabonidus. as soon as peace was proposed, he accepted terms, without once considering the danger to which the lydians were exposed by his defection. the persian king raised his camp as soon as all fear of an attack to rearward was removed, and, falling upon defenceless phrygia, pushed forward to sardes in spite of the inclemency of the season. no movement could have been better planned, or have produced such startling results. croesus had disbanded the greater part of his feudal contingents, and had kept only his body-guard about him, the remainder of his army--natives, mercenaries, and allies--having received orders not to reassemble till the following spring. the king hastily called together all his available troops, both lydians and foreigners, and confronted his enemies for the second time. even under these unfavourable conditions he hoped to gain the advantage, had his cavalry, the finest in the world, been able to take part in the engagement. but cyrus had placed in front of his lines a detachment of camels, and the smell of these animals so frightened the lydian horses that they snorted and refused to charge.* * herodotus� mention of the use of camels is confirmed, with various readings, by xenophon, by polysenus, and by Ælian; their employment does not necessarily belong to a legendary form of the story, especially if we suppose that the camel, unknown before in asia minor, was first introduced there by the persian army. the site of the battle is not precisely known. according to herodotus, the fight took place in the great plain before sardes, which is crossed by several small tributaries of the hermus, amongst others the hyllus. radet recognises that the hyllus of herodotus is the whole or part of the stream now called the kusu-tchaî, and he places the scene of action near the township of adala, which would correspond with xenophon�s thymbrara. this continues to be the most likely hypothesis. after the battle croesus would have fled along the hermus towards sardes. xenophon�s story is a pure romance. croesus was again worsted on the confines of the plain of the hermus, and taking refuge in the citadel of sardes, he despatched couriers to his allies in greece and egypt to beg for succour without delay. the lacedaemonians hurried on the mobilisation of their troops, and their vessels were on the point of weighing anchor, when the news arrived that sardes had fallen in the early days of december, and that croesus himself was a prisoner.* how the town came to be taken, the greeks themselves never knew, and their chroniclers have given several different accounts of the event.** * radet gives the date of the capture of sardes as about november , ; but the number and importance of the events occurring between the retreat of croesus and the decisive catastrophe--the negotiations with babylon, the settling into winter quarters, the march of cyrus across phrygia--must have required a longer time than radet allots to them in his hypothesis, and i make the date a month later. ** ctesias and xenophon seem to depend on herodotus, the former with additional fabulous details concerning his oebaras, cyrus� counsellor, which show the probable origin of his additions. polysenus had at his disposal a different story, the same probably that he used for his account of the campaign in cappadocia, for in it can be recognised the wish to satisfy, within possible limits, the pride of the lydians: here again the decisive success is preceded by a check given to cyrus and a three months� truce. the least improbable is that found in herodotus. the blockade had lasted, so he tells us, fourteen days, when cyrus announced that he would richly reward the first man to scale the walls. many were tempted by his promises, but were unsuccessful in their efforts, and their failure had discouraged all further attempts, when a mardian soldier, named hyreades, on duty at the foot of the steep slopes overlooking the tmolus, saw a lydian descend from rock to rock in search of his helmet which he had lost, and regain the city by the same way without any great difficulty. he noted carefully the exact spot, and in company with a few comrades climbed up till he reached the ramparts; others followed, and taking the besieged unawares, they opened the gates to the main body of the army.* * about three and a half centuries later sardes was captured in the same way by one of the generals of antiochus the great. croesus could not bear to survive the downfall of his kingdom: he erected a funeral pyre in the courtyard of his palace, and took up his position on it, together with his wives, his daughters, and the noblest youths of his court, surrounded by his most precious possessions. he could cite the example of more than one vanquished monarch of the ancient asiatic world in choosing such an end, and one of the fabulous ancestors of his race, sandon-herakles, had perished after this fashion in the midst of the flames. was the sacrifice carried out? everything leads us to believe that it was, but popular feeling could not be resigned to the idea that a prince who had shown such liberality towards the gods in his prosperity should be abandoned by them in the time of his direst need. they came to believe that the lydian monarch had expiated by his own defeat the crime by the help of which his ancestor gyges had usurped the throne. apollo had endeavoured to delay the punishment till the next generation, that it might fall on the son of his votary, but he had succeeded in obtaining from fate a respite of three years only. even then he had not despaired, and had warned croesus by the voice of the oracles. they had foretold him that, in crossing the halys, the lydians ^would destroy a great empire, and that their power would last till the day when a mule should sit upon the throne of media. croesus, blinded by fate, could not see that cyrus, who was of mixed race, persian by his father and median by his mother, was the predicted mule. he therefore crossed the halys, and a great empire fell, but it was his own. at all events, the god might have desired to show that to honour his altars and adorn his temple was in itself, after all, the best of treasures. �when sardes, suffering the vengeance of zeus, was conquered by the army of the persians, the god of the golden sword, apollo, was the guardian of croesus. when the day of despair arrived, the king could not resign himself to tears and servitude; within the brazen-walled court he erected a funeral pyre, on which, together with his chaste spouse and his bitterly lamenting daughters of beautiful locks, he mounted; he raised his hands towards the depths of the ether and cried: �proud fate, where is the gratitude of the gods, where is the prince, the child of leto? where is now the house of alyattes?... the ancient citadel of sardes has fallen, the pactolus of golden waves runs red with blood; ignominiously are the women driven from their well-decked chambers! that which was once my hated foe is now my friend, and the sweetest thing is to die!� thus he spoke, and ordered the softly moving eunuch* to set fire to the wooden structure. * the word translated �softly moving eunuch� is here perhaps a proper name: the slave whose duty it was to kindle the pyre was called abrobatas in the version of the story chosen by bacchylides, while that adopted by the potter whose work is reproduced on the opposite page, calls him euthymos. the maidens shrieked and threw their arms around their mother, for the death before them was that most hated by mortals. but just when the sparkling fury of the cruel fire had spread around, zeus, calling up a black-flanked cloud, extinguished the yellow flame. nothing is incredible of that which the will of the gods has decreed: apollo of delos, seizing the old man, bore him, together with his daughters of tender feet, into the hyperborean land as a reward for his piety, for no mortal had sent richer offerings to the illustrious pythô!� [illustration: .jpg cimesus on his pyre] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the museum of the louvre. this miraculous ending delighted the poets and inspired many fine lines, but history could with difficulty accommodate itself to such a materialistic intervention of a divine being, and sought a less fabulous solution. the legend which appeared most probable to the worthy herodotus did not even admit that the lydian king took his own life; it was cyrus who condemned him, either with a view of devoting the first-fruits of his victory to the immortals, or to test whether the immortals would save the rival whose piety had been so frequently held up to his admiration. the edges of the pyre had already taken light, when the lydian king sighed and thrice repeated the name of solon. it was a tardy recollection of a conversation in which the athenian sage had stated, without being believed, that none can be accounted truly happy while they still live. cyrus, applying it to himself, was seized with remorse or pity, and commanded the bystanders to quench the fire, but their efforts were in vain. thereupon croesus implored the pity of apollo, and suddenly the sky, which up till then had been serene and clear, became overcast; thick clouds collected, and rain fell so heavily that the burning pile was at once extinguished.* * the story told by nicolas of damascus comes down probably from xanthus of lydia, but with many additions borrowed directly from herodotus and rhetorical developments by the author himself. most other writers who tell the story depend for their information, either directly or indirectly, on herodotus: in later times it was supposed that the lydian king was preserved from the flames by the use of some talisman such as the ephesian letters. well treated by his conqueror, the lydian king is said to have become his friend and most loyal counsellor; he accepted from him the fief of barênê in media, often accompanied him in his campaigns, and on more than one occasion was of great service to him by the wise advice which he gave. we may well ask what would have taken place had he gained the decisive victory over cyrus that he hoped. chaldæa possessed merely the semblance of her former greatness and power, and if she still maintained her hold over mesopotamia, syria, phoenicia, and parts of arabia, it was because these provinces, impoverished by the assyrian conquest, and entirely laid waste by the scythians, had lost the most energetic elements of their populations, and felt themselves too much enfeebled to rise against their suzerain. egypt, like chaldæa, was in a state of decadence, and even though her pharaohs attempted to compensate for the inferiority of their native troops by employing foreign mercenaries, their attempts at asiatic rule always issued in defeat, and just as the babylonian sovereigns were unable to reduce them to servitude, so they on their part were powerless to gain an advantage over the sovereigns of babylon. hence lydia, in her youth and vigour, would have found little difficulty in gaining the ascendency over her two recent allies, but beyond that she could not hope to push her success; her restricted territory, sparse population, and outlying position would always have debarred her from exercising any durable dominion over them, and though absolute mistress of asia minor, the countries beyond the taurus were always destined to elude her grasp. if the achæmenian, therefore, had confined himself, at all events for the time being, to the ancient limits of his kingdom, egypt and chaldæa would have continued to vegetate each within their respective area, and the triumph of croesus would, on the whole, have caused but little change in the actual balance of power in the east. the downfall of croesus, on the contrary, marked a decisive era in the world�s history. his army was the only one, from the point of numbers and organisation, which was a match for that of cyrus, and from the day of its dispersion it was evident that neither egypt nor chaldæa had any chance of victory on the battle-field. the subjection of babylon and harrân, of hamath, damascus, tyre and sidon, of memphis and thebes, now became merely a question of time, and that not far distant; the whole of asia, and that part of africa which had been the oldest cradle of human civilisation, were now to pass into the hands of one man and form a single empire, for the benefit of the new race which was issuing forth in irresistible strength from the recesses of the iranian table-land. it was destined, from the very outset, to come into conflict with an older, but no less vigorous race than itself, that of the greeks, whose colonists, after having swarmed along the coasts of the mediterranean, were now beginning to quit the seaboard and penetrate wherever they could into the interior. [illustration: .jpg a persian king fighting with greeks] drawn by faucher-gudin, from an intaglio reproduced in the _antiquités du bosphore cimmérien._ they had been on friendly terms with that dynasty of the meramadæ who had shown reverence for the hellenic gods; they had, as a whole, disdained to betray croesus, or to turn upon him when he was in difficulties beyond the halys; and now that he had succumbed to his fate, they considered that the ties which had bound them to sardes were broken, and they were determined to preserve their independence at all costs. this spirit of insubordination would have to be promptly dealt with and tightly curbed, if perpetual troubles in the future were to be avoided. the asianic peoples soon rallied round their new master--phrygians, mysians, the inhabitants on the shores of the black sea, and those of the pamphylian coast;* even cilicia, which had held its own against chaldæa, media, and lydia, was now brought under the rising power, and its kings were henceforward obedient to the persian rule.** * none of the documents actually say this, but the general tenor of herodotus� account seems to show clearly that, with the exception of the greek cities of the carians and lycians, all the peoples who had formed part of the lydian dominion under croesus submitted, without any appreciable resistance, after the taking of sardes. ** herodotus mentions a second syennesis king of cilicia forty years later at the time of the ionian revolt. the two leagues of the ionians and Æolians had at first offered to recognise cyrus as their suzerain under the same conditions as those with which croesus had been satisfied; but he had consented to accept it only in the case of miletus, and had demanded from the rest an unconditional surrender. this they had refused, and, uniting in a common cause perhaps for the first time in their existence, they had resolved to take up arms. as the persians possessed no fleet, the creeks had nothing to fear from the side of the Ægean, and the severity of the winter prevented any attack being made from the land side till the following spring. they meanwhile sought the aid of their mother-country, and despatched an embassy to the spartans; the latter did not consider it prudent to lend them troops, as they would have done in the case of croesus, but they authorised lakrines, one of their principal citizens, to demand of the great king that he should respect the hellenic cities, under pain of incurring their enmity. [illustration: .jpg the present site of miletus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. cyrus was fully occupied with the events then taking place in the eastern regions of iran; babylon had not ventured upon any move after having learned the news of the fall of sardes, but the bactrians and the sakæ had been in open revolt during the whole of the year that he had been detained in the extreme west, and a still longer absence might risk the loss of his prestige in media, and even in persia itself.* * the tradition followed by ctesias maintained that the submission of the eastern peoples was an accomplished fact when the lydian war began. that adopted by herodotus placed this event after the fall of croesus; at any rate, it showed that fear of the bactrians and the sakæ, as well as of the babylonians and egyptians was the cause that hastened cyrus� retreat. the threat of the lacedaæmonians had little effect upon him; he inquired as to what sparta and greece were, and having been informed, he ironically begged the lacedæmonian envoy to thank his compatriots for the good advice with which they had honoured him; �but,� he added, �take care that i do not soon cause you to babble, not of the ills of the ionians, but of your own.� he confided the government of sardes to one of his officers, named tabalos, and having entrusted paktyas, one of the lydians who had embraced his cause, with the removal of the treasures of croesus to persia, he hastily set out for ecbatana. he had scarcely accomplished half of his journey when a revolt broke out in his rear; paktyas, instead of obeying his instructions, intrigued with the ionians, and, with the mercenaries he had hired from them, besieged tabalos in the citadel of sardes. if the place capitulated, the entire conquest would have to be repeated; fortunately it held out, and its resistance gave cyrus time to send its governor reinforcements, commanded by mazares the median. as soon as they approached the city, paktyas, conscious that he had lost the day, took refuge at kymê. its inhabitants, on being summoned to deliver him up, refused, but helped him to escape to mytilene, where the inhabitants of the island attempted to sell him to the enemy for a large sum of money. the kymæans saved him a second time, and conveyed him to the temple of athene poliarchos at chios. the citizens, however, dragged him from his retreat, and delivered him over to the median general in exchange for atarneus, a district of mysia, the possession of which they were disputing with the lesbians.* paktyas being a prisoner, the lydians were soon recalled to order, and mazares was able to devote his entire energies to the reduction of the greek cities; but he had accomplished merely the sack of priênê,** and the devastation of the suburbs of magnesia on the æander, when he died from some illness. * a passage which has been preserved of charon of lampsacus sums up in a few words the account given by herodotus of the adventures of paktyas, but without mentioning the treachery of the islanders: he confines himself to saying cyrus caught the fugitive after the latter had successively left chios and mytilene. ** herodotus attributes the taking of this city to the persian tabules, who is evidently the tabalos of herodotus. the median harpagus, to whom tradition assigns so curious a part as regards astyages and the infant cyrus, succeeded him as governor of the ancient lydian kingdom, and completed the work which he had begun. the first two places to be besieged were phocæa and teos, but their inhabitants preferred exile to slavery; the phocæans sailed away to found marseilles in the western regions of the mediterranean, and the people of teos settled along the coast of thracia, near to the gold-mines of the pangseus, and there built abdera on the site of an ancient clazomenian colony. the other greek towns were either taken by assault or voluntarily opened their gates, so that ere long both ionians and Æolians were, with the exception of the samians, under persian rule. the very position of the latter rendered them safe from attack; without a fleet they could not be approached, and the only people who could have furnished cyrus with vessels were the phoenicians, who were not as yet under his power. the rebellion having been suppressed in this quarter, harpagus made a descent into caria; the natives hastened to place themselves under the persian yoke, and the dorian colonies scattered along the coast, halicarnas-sus, cnidos, and the islands of cos and rhodes, followed their examples, but lycia refused to yield without a struggle. [illustration: .jpg a lycian city upon its inaccessible rock] the rock and tombs of tlôs, drawn by boudier, from the view in fellows. its steep mountain chains, its sequestered valleys, its towns and fortresses perched on inaccessible rocks, all rendered it easy for the inhabitants to carry on a successful petty warfare against the enemy. the inhabitants of xanthos, although very inferior in numbers, issued down into the plain and disputed the victory with the invaders for a considerable time; at length their defeat and the capitulation of their town induced the remainder of the lycians to lay down arms, and brought about the final pacification of the peninsula. it was parcelled out into several governorships, according to its ethnographical affinities; as for instance, the governorship of lydia, that of ionia, that of phrygia,* and others whose names are unknown to us. harpàgus appeared to have resided at sardes, and exercised vice-regal functions over the various districts, but he obtained from the king an extensive property in lycia and in caria, which subsequently caused these two provinces to be regarded as an appanage of his family. * herodotus calls a certain mitrobates satrap of daskylion; he had perhaps been already given this office by cyrus. orcetes had been made governor of ionia and lydia by cyrus. while thus consolidating his first conquest, cyrus penetrated into the unknown regions of the far east. nothing would have been easier for him than to have fallen upon babylon and overthrown, as it were by the way, the decadent rule of nabonidus; but the formidable aspect which the empire still presented, in spite of its enfeebled condition, must have deceived him, and he was unwilling to come into conflict with it until he had made a final reckoning with the restless and unsettled peoples between the caspian and the slopes on the indian side of the table-land of iran. as far as we are able to judge, they were for the most part of iranian extraction, and had the same religion, institutions, and customs as the medes and persians. tradition had already referred the origin of zoroaster, and the scene of his preaching, to bactriana, that land of heroes whose exploits formed the theme of persian epic song. it is not known, as we have already had occasion to remark, by what ties it was bound to the empire of cyaxares, nor indeed if it ever had been actually attached to it. we do not possess, unfortunately, more than almost worthless scraps of information on this part of the reign of cyrus, perhaps the most important period of it, since then, for the first time, peoples who had been hitherto strangers to the asiatic world were brought within its influence. if ctesias is to be credited, bactriana was one of the first districts to be conquered. its inhabitants were regarded as being among the bravest of the east, and furnished the best soldiers. they at first obtained some successes, but laid down arms on hearing that cyrus had married a daughter of astyages.* this tradition was prevalent at a time when the achaemenians were putting forward the theory that they, and cyrus before them, were the legitimate successors of the old median sovereigns; they welcomed every legend which tended to justify their pretensions, and this particular one was certain to please them, since it attributed the submission of bactriana not to a mere display of brute force, but to the recognition of an hereditary right. the annexation of this province entailed, as a matter of course, that of margiana, of the khoramnians,** and of sogdiana. cyrus constructed fortresses in all these districts, the most celebrated being that of kyropolis, which commanded one of the principal fords of the iaxartes.*** * this is the campaign which ctesias places before the lydian war, but which herodotus relegates to a date after the capture of sardes. ** ctesias must have spoken of the submission of these peoples, for a few words of a description which he gave of the khoramnians have been preserved to us. *** tomaschek identifies kyra or kyropolis with the present ura-tepe, but distinguishes it from the kyreskhata of ptolemy, to which he assigns a site near usgent. the steppes of siberia arrested his course on the north, but to the east, in the mountains of chinese turkestan, the sakas, who were renowned for their wealth and bravery, did not escape his ambitious designs. the account which has come down to us of his campaigns against them is a mere romance of love and adventure, in which real history plays a very small part. he is said to have attacked and defeated them at the first onset, taking their king amorges prisoner; but this capture, which cyrus considered a decisive advantage, was supposed to have turned the tide of fortune against him. sparêthra, the wife of amorges, rallied the fugitives round her, defeated the invaders in several engagements, and took so many of their men captive, that they were glad to restore her husband to her in exchange for the prisoners she had made. the struggle finally ended, however, in the subjection of the sakae; they engaged to pay tribute, and thenceforward constituted the advance-guard of the iranians against the nomads of the east. cyrus, before quitting their neighbourhood, again ascended the table-land, and reduced ariana, thatagus, harauvati, zaranka, and the country of cabul; and we may well ask if he found leisure to turn southwards beyond lake hamun and reach the shores of the indian ocean. one tradition, of little weight, relates that, like alexander at a later date, he lost his army in the arid deserts of gedrosia; the one fact that remains is that the conquest of gedrosia was achieved, but the details of it are lost. the period covered by his campaigns was from five to six years, from to , but cyrus returned from these expeditions into the unknown only to plan fresh undertakings. there remained nothing now to hinder him from marching against the chaldæans, and the discord prevailing at babylon added to his chance of success. nabonidus�s passion for archæology had in no way lessened since the opening of his reign. the temple restorations prompted by it absorbed the bulk of his revenues. he made excavations in the sub-structures of the most ancient sanctuaries, such as larsam, uruk, uru, sippar, and nipur; and when his digging was rewarded by the discovery of cylinders placed there by his predecessors, his delight knew no bounds. such finds constituted the great events of his life, in comparison with which the political revolutions of asia and africa diminished in importance day by day. it is difficult to tell whether this indifference to the weighty affairs of government was as complete as it appears to us at this distance of time. certain facts recorded in the official chronicles of that date go to prove that, except in name and external pomp, the king was a nonentity. the real power lay in the hands of the nobles and generals, and bel-sharuzur, the king�s son, directed affairs for them in his father�s name. nabonidus meanwhile resided in a state of inactivity at his palace of tima, and it is possible that his condition may have really been that of a prisoner, for he never left tima to go to babylon, even on the days of great festivals, and his absence prevented the celebration of the higher rites of the national religion, with the procession of bel and its accompanying ceremonies, for several consecutive years. the people suffered from these quarrels in high places; not only the native babylonians or kaldâ, who were thus deprived of their accustomed spectacles, and whose piety was scandalised by these dissensions, but also the foreign races dispersed over mesopotamia, from the confluence of the khabur to the mouths of the euphrates. too widely scattered or too weak to make an open declaration of their independence, their hopes and their apprehensions were alternately raised by the various reports of hostilities which reached their ears. the news of the first victories of the persians aroused in the exiled jews the idea of speedy deliverance, and cyrus clearly appeared to them as the hero chosen by jahveh to reinstate them in the country, of their forefathers. the number of the jewish exiles, which perhaps at first had not exceeded , * had largely increased in the half-century of their captivity, and even if numerically they were of no great importance, their social condition entitled them to be considered as the _élite_ of all israel. * the body of exiles of consisted of ten thousand persons, of whom seven thousand belonged to the wealthy, and one thousand to the artisan class, while the remainder consisted of people attached to the court ( kings xxiv. - ). in the body of are reckoned three thousand and twenty-three inhabitants of judah, and eight hundred and thirty-two dwellers in jerusalem. but the body of exiles of numbers only seven hundred and forty-five persons (jer. lii. ). these numbers are sufficiently moderate to be possibly exact, but they are far from being certain. there had at first been the two kings, jehoiachin and zedekiah, their families, the aristocracy of judah, the priests and pontiff of the temple, the prophets, the most skilled of the artisan class and the soldiery. though distributed over babylon and the neighbouring cities, we know from authentic sources of only one of their settlements, that of tell-abîb on the chebar* though many of the jewish colonies which flourished thereabouts in roman times could undoubtedly trace their origin to the days of the captivity; one legend found in the talmud affirmed that the synagogue of shafyâthîb, near nehardaa, had been built by king jehoiachin with stones brought from the ruins of the temple at jerusalem. these communities enjoyed a fairly complete autonomy, and were free to administer their own affairs as they pleased, provided that they paid their tribute or performed their appointed labours without complaint. the shêkhs, or elders of the family or tribe, who had played so important a part in their native land, still held their respective positions; the chaldæans had permitted them to retain all the possessions which they had been able to bring with them into exile, and recognised them as the rulers of their people, who were responsible to their conquerors for the obedience of those under them, leaving them entire liberty to exercise their authority so long as they maintained order and tranquillity among their subordinates.** * ezek. iii. . the chebar or kebar has been erroneously identified with the khabur; cuneiform documents show that it was one of the canals near nipur. ** cf. the assemblies of these chiefs at the house of ezekiel and their action (viii. ; xiv. ; xx. ). how the latter existed, and what industries they pursued in order to earn their daily bread, no writer of the time has left on record. the rich plain of the euphrates differed so widely from the soil to which they had been accustomed in the land of judah, with its bare or sparsely wooded hills, slopes cultivated in terraces, narrow and ill-watered wadys, and tortuous and parched valleys, that they must have felt themselves much out of their element in their chaldæan surroundings. they had all of them, however, whether artisans, labourers, soldiers, gold-workers, or merchants, to earn their living, and they succeeded in doing so, following meanwhile the advice of jeremiah, by taking every precaution that the seed of israel should not be diminished.* the imagination of pious writers of a later date delighted to represent the exiled jews as giving way to apathy and vain regrets: �by the rivers of babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered zion. upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged up our harps. for there they that led us captive required of us songs, and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of zion. how shall we sing the lord�s song in a strange land?� ** * jer. xxix. - . ** ps. cxxxvii. - . this was true of the priests and scribes only. a blank had been made in their existence from the moment when the conqueror had dragged them from the routine of daily rites which their duties in the temple service entailed upon them. the hours which had been formerly devoted to their offices were now expended in bewailing the misfortunes of their nation, in accusing themselves and others, and in demanding what crime had merited this punishment, and why jahveh, who had so often shown clemency to their forefathers, had not extended his forgiveness to them. it was, however, by the long-suffering of god that his prophets, and particularly ezekiel, were allowed to make known to them the true cause of their downfall. the more ezekiel in his retreat meditated upon their lot, the more did the past appear to him as a lamentable conflict between divine justice and jewish iniquity. at the time of their sojourn in egypt, jahveh had taken the house of jacob under his protection, and in consideration of his help had merely demanded of them that they should be faithful to him. �cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of egypt: i am the lord your god.� the children of israel, however, had never observed this easy condition, and this was the root of their ills; even before they were liberated from the yoke of pharaoh, they had betrayed their protector, and he had thought to punish them: �but i wrought for my name�s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, among whom they were, in whose sight i made myself known unto them.... so i caused them to go forth out of the land of egypt, and brought them into the wilderness. and i gave them my statutes, and showed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. moreover also i gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them... but the house of israel rebelled against me.� as they had acted in egypt, so they acted at the foot of sinai, and again jahveh could not bring himself to destroy them; he confined himself to decreeing that none of those who had offended him should enter the promised land, and he extended his goodness to their children. but these again showed themselves no wiser than their fathers; scarcely had they taken possession of the inheritance which had fallen to them, �a land flowing with milk and honey... the glory of all lands,� than when they beheld �every high hill and every thick tree... they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering, there also they made their sweet savour, and they poured out there their drink offerings.� not contented with profaning their altars by impious ceremonies and offerings, they further bowed the knee to idols, thinking in their hearts, �we will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.� �as i live, saith the lord god, surely with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will i be king over you.� * ezek. xx. however just the punishment, bzekiel did not believe that it would last for ever. the righteousness of god would not permit future generations to be held responsible for ever for the sins of generations past and present. �what mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children�s teeth are set on edge? as i live, saith the lord god, ye shall not have occasion to use this proverb any more in israel! behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth it shall die. but if a man be just... he shall surely live, saith the lord god.� israel, therefore, was master of his own destiny. if he persisted in erring from the right way, the hour of salvation was still further removed from him; if he repented and observed the law, the divine anger would be turned away. �therefore... o house of israel... cast away from you all your transgressions wherein ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, o house of israel? for i have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth... wherefore turn yourselves and live.� there were those who objected that it was too late to dream of regeneration and of hope in the future: �our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.� the prophet replied that the lord had carried him in the spirit and set him down in the midst of a plain strewn with bones. �so i prophesied... and as i prophesied there was a noise... and the bones came together, bone to his bone. and i beheld, and lo, there were sinews upon them, and flesh came up and skin covered them above; but there was no breath in them. then said (the lord) unto me, prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the lord god: come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. so i prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. then he said unto me... these bones are the whole house of israel.... behold, i will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, o my people; and i will bring you into the land of israel.... and i will put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and i will place you in your own land; and ye shall know that i the lord hath spoken it and performed it, saith the lord.� a people raised from such depths would require a constitution, a new law to take the place of the old, from the day when the exile should cease. ezekiel would willingly have dispensed with the monarchy, as it had been tried since the time of samuel with scarcely any good results. for every hezekiah or josiah, how many kings of the type of ahaz or manasseh had there been! the jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to the house of david, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude it from his plan for their future government. he resolved to tolerate a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the compiler of the book of deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servant of the servants of god, whose principal function should be to provide the means of worship. indeed, the lord himself was the only sovereign whom the prophet fully accepted, though his concept of him differed greatly from that of his predecessors: from that, for instance, of amos--the lord god who would do nothing without revealing �his secret unto his servants the prophets;� or of hosea--who desired �mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of god more than burnt offerings.� the jahveh of ezekiel no longer admitted any intercourse with the interpreters of his will. he held �the son of man� at a distance, and would consent to communicate with him only by means of angels who were his messengers. the love of his people was, indeed, acceptable to him, but he preferred their reverence and fear, and the smell of the sacrifice offered according to the law was pleasing to his nostrils. the first care of the returning exiles, therefore, would be to build him a house upon the holy mountain. ezekiel called to mind the temple of solomon, in which the far-off years of his youth were spent, and mentally rebuilt it on the same plan, but larger and more beautiful; first the outer court, then the inner court and its chambers, and lastly the sanctuary, the dimensions of which he calculates with scrupulous care: �and the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cubits on the other side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits; and the breadth, twenty cubits�--and so forth, with a wealth of technical details often difficult to be understood. and as a building so well proportioned should be served by a priesthood worthy of it, the sons of zadok only were to bear the sacerdotal office, for they alone had preserved their faith unshaken; the other lévites were to fill merely secondary posts, for not only had they shared in the sins of the nation, but they had shown a bad example in practising idolatry. the duties and prerogatives of each one, the tithes and offerings, the sacrifices, the solemn festivals, the preparation of the feasts,--all was foreseen and prearranged with scrupulous exactitude. ezekiel was, as we have seen, a priest; the smallest details were as dear to him as the noblest offices of his calling, and the minute ceremonial instructions as to the killing and cooking of the sacrificial animals appeared to him as necessary to the future prosperity of his people as the moral law. towards the end, however, the imagination of the seer soared above the formalism of the sacrificing priest; he saw in a vision waters issuing out of the very threshold of the divine house, flowing towards the dead sea through a forest of fruit trees, �whose leaf shall not wither, neither shall the fruit thereof fail.� the twelve tribes of israel, alike those of whom a remnant still existed as well as those which at different times had become extinct, were to divide the regenerated land by lot among them--dan in the extreme north, reuben and judah in the south; and they would unite to found once more, around mount sion, that new jerusalem whose name henceforth was to be jahveh-shammah, �the lord is there.� * * ezek. xlvii., xlviii. the image of the river seems to be borrowed from the _vessel of water_ of chaldæan mythology. the influence of ezekiel does not seem to have extended beyond a restricted circle of admirers. untouched by his preaching, many of the exiles still persisted in their worship of the heathen gods; most of these probably became merged in the bulk of the chaldæan population, and were lost, as far as israel was concerned, as completely as were the earlier exiles of ephraim under tiglath-pileser iii. and sargon. the greater number of the jews, however, remained faithful to their hopes of future greatness, and applied themselves to discerning in passing events the premonitory signs of deliverance. �like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been before thee, o lord.... come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. for, behold, the lord cometh forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.� * the condition of the people improved after the death of nebuchadrezzar. amil-marduk took jehoiachin out of the prison in which he had languished for thirty years, and treated him with honour:** this was not as yet the restoration that had been promised, but it was the end of the persecution. * an anonymous prophet, about , in isa. xxvi. , , . ** kings xxv. - ; cf. jer. lii. - . a period of court intrigues followed, during which the sceptre of nebuchadrezzar changed hands four times in less than seven years; then came the accession of the peaceful and devout nabonidus, the fall of astyages, and the first victories of cyrus. nothing escaped the vigilant eye of the prophets, and they began to proclaim that the time was at hand, then to predict the fall of babylon, and to depict the barbarians in revolt against her, and israel released from the yoke by the all-powerful will of the persians. �thus saith the lord to his anointed, to cyrus, whose right hand i have holden to subdue nations before him, and i will loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut; i will go before thee and make the rugged places plain: i will break in pieces the doors of brass, rend in sunder the bars of iron: and i will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that i am the lord which call thee by thy name, even the god of israel. for jacob my servant�s sake, and israel my chosen, i have called thee by thy name: i have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.� * nothing can stand before the victorious prince whom jahveh leads: �bel boweth down, nebo stoopeth; their idols are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: the things that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beast. they stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity.� ** �o virgin daughter of babylon, sit on the ground without a throne, o daughter of the chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. take the millstones and grind meal: remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers. they nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen.... sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, o daughter of the chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called the lady of kingdoms.� *** * second isaiah, in isa. xlv. - . ** second isaiah, in isa. xlvi. , . *** second isaiah, in isa. xlvii. - . the task which cyrus had undertaken was not so difficult as we might imagine. not only was he hailed with delight by the strangers who thronged babylonia, but the babylonians themselves were weary of their king, and the majority of them were ready to welcome the persian who would rid them of him, as in old days they hailed the assyrian kings who delivered them from their chaldæan lords. it is possible that towards the end of his reign nabonidus partly resumed the supreme power;* but anxious for the future, and depending but little on human help, he had sought a more powerful aid at the hands of the gods. he had apparently revived some of the old forgotten cults, and had applied to their use revenues which impoverished the endowment of the prevalent worship of his own time. as he felt the growing danger approach, he remembered those towns of secondary grade--uru, uruk, larsam, and eridu--all of which, lying outside nebuchadrezzar�s scheme of defence, would be sacrificed in the case of an invasion: he had therefore brought away from them the most venerated statues, those in which the spirit of the divinity was more particularly pleased to dwell, and had shut them up in the capital, within the security of its triple rampart.** * this seems to follow from the part which he plays in the final crisis, as told in the _cylinder of cyrus_ and in the _annals_. ** the chronicler adds that the gods of sippar, kutha, and borsippa were not taken to babylon; and indeed, these cities being included within the lines of defence of the great city, their gods were as well defended from the enemy as if they had been in babylon itself. this attempt to concentrate the divine powers, accentuating as it did the supremacy of bel-marduk over his compeers, was doubtless flattering to his pride and that of his priests, but was ill received by the rest of the sacerdotal class and by the populace. all these divine guests had not only to be lodged, but required to be watched over, decked, fed, and feted, together with their respective temple retinues; and the prestige and honour of the local bel, as well as his revenues, were likely to suffer in consequence. the clamour of the gods in the celestial heights soon re-echoed throughout the land; the divinities complained of their sojourn at babylon as of a captivity in e-sagilla; they lamented over the suppression of their daily sacrifices, and marduk at length took pity on them. he looked upon the countries of sumir and akkad, and saw their sanctuaries in ruins and their towns lifeless as corpses; �he cast his eyes over the surrounding regions; he searched them with his glance and sought out a prince, upright, after his own heart, who should take his hands. he proclaimed by name cyrus, king of anshân, and he called him by his name to universal sovereignty.� alike for the people of babylon and for the exiled jew, and also doubtless for other stranger-colonies, cyrus appeared as a deliverer chosen by the gods; his speedy approach was everywhere expected, if not with the same impatience, at least with an almost joyful resignation. his plans were carried into action in the early months of , and his habitual good fortune did not forsake him at this decisive moment of his career. the immense citadel raised by nebuchadrezzar in the midst of his empire, in anticipation of an attack by the medes, was as yet intact, and the walls rising one behind another, the moats, and the canals and marshes which protected it, had been so well kept up or restored since his time, that their security was absolutely complete; a besieging army could do little harm--it needed a whole nation in revolt to compass its downfall. a whole nation also was required for its defence, but the babylonians were not inclined to second the efforts of their sovereign. nabonidus concentrated his troops at the point most threatened, in the angle comprised near opis between the medic wall and the bend of the tigris, and waited in inaction the commencement of the attack. it is supposed that cyrus put two bodies of troops in motion: one leaving susa under his own command, took the usual route of all blamite invasions in the direction of the confluence of the tigris and the dîyala; the other commanded by gobryas, the satrap of gutium, followed the course of the adhem or the dîyala, and brought the northern contingents to the rallying-place. from what we know of the facts as a whole, it would appear that the besieging force chose the neighbourhood of the present bagdad to make a breach in the fortifications. taking advantage of the months when the rivers were at their lowest, they drew off the water from the dîyala and the tigris till they so reduced the level that they were able to cross on foot; they then cut their way through the ramparts on the left bank, and rapidly transported the bulk of their forces into the very centre of the enemy�s position. the principal body of the chaldæan troops were still at opis, cut off from the capital; cyrus fell upon them, overcame them on the banks of the zalzallat in the early days of tammuz, urging forward gobryas meanwhile upon babylon itself.* on the th of tammuz, nabonidus evacuated sippar, which at once fell into the hands of the persian outposts; on the th gobryas entered babylon without striking a blow, and nabonidus surrendered himself a prisoner.** * for the strategic interpretation of the events of this campaign i have generally adopted the explanations of billerbeck. herodotus� account with regard to the river gyndes is probably a reminiscence of alterations made in the river-courses at the time of the attack in the direction of bagdad. ** the _cylinder of cyrus_, . , expressly says so: �without combat or battle did marduk make him enter babylon,� the _annals of nabonidus_ confirm this testimony of the official account. the victorious army had received orders to avoid all excesses which would offend the people; they respected the property of the citizens and of the temples, placed a strong detachment around Ê-sagilla to protect it from plunder, and no armed soldier was allowed within the enclosure until the king� had determined on the fate of the vanquished. cyrus arrived after a fortnight had elapsed, on the rd of march-esvân, and his first act was one of clemency. he prohibited all pillage, granted mercy to the inhabitants, and entrusted the government of the city to gobryas. bel-sharuzur, the son of nabonidus, remained to be dealt with, and his energetic nature might have been the cause of serious difficulties had he been allowed an opportunity of rallying the last partisans of the dynasty around him. gobryas set out to attack him, and on the th of march-esvân succeeded in surprising and slaying him. with him perished the last hope of the chaldæans, and the nobles and towns, still hesitating on what course to pursue, now vied with each other in their haste to tender submission. the means of securing their good will, at all events for the moment, was clearly at hand, and it was used without any delay: their gods were at once restored to them. this exodus extended over nearly two months, during march-esvân and adar, and on its termination a proclamation of six days of mourning, up to the rd of nisân, was made for the death of bel-sharuzur, and as an atonement for the faults of nabonidus, after which, on the th of nisân, the notables of the city were called together in the temple of nebo to join in the last expiatory ceremonies. cyrus did not hesitate for a moment to act as tiglath-pileser iii. and most of the sargonids had done; he �took the hands of bel,� and proclaimed himself king of the country, but in order to secure the succession, he associated his son cambyses with himself as king of babylon. mesopotamia having been restored to order, the provinces in their turn transferred their allegiance to persia; �the kings enthroned in their palaces, from the upper sea to the lower, those of syria and those who dwell in tents, brought their weighty tribute to babylon and kissed the feet of the suzerain.� events had followed one another so quickly, and had entailed so little bloodshed, that popular imagination was quite disconcerted: it could not conceive that an empire of such an extent and of so formidable an appearance should have succumbed almost without a battle, and three generations had not elapsed before an entire cycle of legends had gathered round the catastrophe. they related how cyrus, having set out to make war, with provisions of all kinds for his household, and especially with his usual stores of water from the river choaspes, the only kind of which he deigned to drink, had reached the banks of the gyndes. while seeking for a ford, one of the white horses consecrated to the sun sprang into the river, and being overturned by the current, was drowned before it could be rescued. cyrus regarded this accident as a personal affront, and interrupted his expedition to avenge it. he employed his army during one entire summer in digging three hundred and sixty canals, and thus caused the principal arm of the stream to run dry, and he did not resume his march upon babylon till the following spring, when the level of the water was low enough to permit of a woman crossing from one bank to the other without wetting her knees. the babylonians at first attempted to prevent the blockade of the place, but being repulsed in their _sorties_, they retired within the walls, much to cyrus�s annoyance, for they were provisioned for several years. he therefore undertook to turn the course of the euphrates into the bahr-î-nejîf, and having accomplished it, he crept into the centre of the city by the dry bed of the river. if the babylonians had kept proper guard, the persians would probably have been surrounded and caught like fish in a net; but on that particular day they were keeping one of their festivals, and continued their dancing and singing till they suddenly found the streets alive with the enemy. babylon suffered in no way by her servitude, and far from its being a source of unhappiness to her, she actually rejoiced in it; she was rid of nabonidus, whose sacrilegious innovations had scandalised her piety, and she possessed in cyrus a legitimate sovereign since he had �taken the hands of bel.� it pleased her to believe that she had conquered her victor rather than been conquered by him, and she accommodated herself to her persian dynasty after the same fashion that she had in turn accustomed herself to cossæan or elamite, ninevite or chaldæan dynasties in days gone by. nothing in or around the city was changed, and she remained what she had been since the fall of assyria, the real capital of the regions situated between the mediterranean and the zagros. it seems that none of her subjects--whether syrians, tyrians, arabs, or idumæans--attempted to revolt against their new master, but passively accepted him, and the persian dominion extended uncontested as far as the isthmus of suez; cyprus even, and such of the phoenicians as were still dependencies of egypt, did homage to her without further hesitation. the jews alone appeared only half satisfied, for the clemency shown by cyrus to their oppressors disappointed their hopes and the predictions of their prophets. they had sung in anticipation of children killed before their fathers� eyes, of houses pillaged, of women violated, and babylon, the glory of the empire and the beauty of chaldæan pride, utterly destroyed like sodom and gomorrha when overthrown by jahveh. �it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. and wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces.� * * the table of the last kings of ptolemy and the monuments, is given below:-- [illustration: .jpg table of the last kings of ptolemy] cyrus, however, was seated on the throne, and the city of nebuchadrezzar, unlike that of sargon and sennacherib, still continued to play her part in the world�s history. the revenge of jerusalem had not been as complete as that of samaria, and her sons had to content themselves with obtaining the cessation of their exile. it is impossible to say whether they had contributed to the downfall of nabonidus otherwise than by the fervency of their prayers, or if they had rendered cyrus some service either in the course of his preparations or during his short campaign. they may have contemplated taking up arms in his cause, and have been unable to carry the project into execution owing to the rapidity with which events took place. however this may be, he desired to reward them for their good intentions, and in the same year as his victory, he promulgated a solemn edict, in which he granted them permission to return to judah and to rebuild not only their city, but the temple of their god. the inhabitants of the places where they were living were charged to furnish them with silver, gold, materials, and cattle, which would be needed by those among them who should claim the benefits of the edict; they even had restored to them, by order of the king, what remained in the babylonian treasury of the vessels of gold and silver which had belonged to the sanctuary of jahveh. the heads of the community received the favour granted to them from such high quarters, without any enthusiasm. now that they were free to go, they discovered that they were well off at babylon. they would have to give up their houses, their fields, their business, their habits of indifference to politics, and brave the dangers of a caravan journey of three or four months� duration, finally encamping in the midst of ruins in an impoverished country, surrounded by hostile and jealous neighbours; such a prospect was not likely to find favour with many, and indeed it was only the priests, the lévites, and the more ardent of the lower classes who welcomed the idea of the return with a touching fervour. the first detachment organised their departure in , under the auspices of one of the princes of the royal house, named shauash-baluzur (sheshbazzar), a son of jehoiachin.* it comprised only a small number of families, and contained doubtless a few of the captives of nebuchadrezzar who in their childhood had seen the temple standing and had been present at its destruction. * the name which is written sheshbazzar in the hebrew text of the book of ezra (i. , ; v. , ) is rendered sasabalassaros in lucian�s recension of the septuagint, and this latter form confirms the hypothesis of hoonacker, which is now universally accepted, that it corresponds to the babylonian shamash-abaluzur. it is known that shamash becomes shauash in babylonian; thus saosdukhînos comes from shamash-shumukîn: similarly shamash-abaluzur has become shauash-abaluzur. imbert has recognised sheshbazzar, shauash-abaluzur in the shenazzar mentioned in chron. iii. , as being one of the sons of jeconiah, and this identification has been accepted by several recent historians of israel. it should be remembered that shauash- abaluzur and zerubbabel have long been confounded one with the other. the returning exiles at first settled in the small towns of judah and benjamin, and it was not until seven months after their arrival that they summoned courage to clear the sacred area in order to erect in its midst an altar of sacrifice.* * the history of this first return from captivity is summarily set forth in ezra i.; cf. v. - ; vi. - , . its authenticity has been denied: with regard to this point and the questions relating to jewish history after the exile, the modifications which have been imposed on the original plan of this work have obliged me to suppress much detail in the text and the whole of the bibliography in the notes. they formed there, in the land of their fathers, a little colony, almost lost among the heathen nations of former times--philistines, idumasans, moabites, ammonites, and the settlers implanted at various times in what had been the kingdom of israel by the sovereigns of assyria and chaldæa. grouped around the persian governor, who alone was able to protect them from the hatred of their rivals, they had no hope of prospering, or even of maintaining their position, except by exhibiting an unshaken fidelity to their deliverers. it was on this very feeling that cyrus mainly relied when he granted them permission to return to their native hills, and he was actuated as much by a far-seeing policy as from the promptings of instinctive generosity. it was with satisfaction that he saw in that distant province, lying on the frontier of the only enemy yet left to him in the old world, a small band, devoted perforce to his interests, and whose very existence depended entirely on that of his empire. he no doubt extended the same favour to the other exiles in chaldæa who demanded it of him, but we do not know how many of them took advantage of the occasion to return to their native countries, and this exodus of the jews still remains, so far as we know, a unique fact. the administration continued the same as it had been under the chaldæans; aramæan was still the official language in the provincial dependencies, and the only change effected was the placing of persians at the head of public offices, as in asia minor, and allowing them a body of troops to support their authority.* * the presence of persian troops in asia minor is proved by the passage in herodotus where he says that orotes had with him persians as his body-guard. one great state alone remained of all those who had played a prominent part in the history of the east. this was egypt; and the policy which her rulers had pursued since the development of the iranian power apparently rendered a struggle with it inevitable. amasis had taken part in all the coalitions which had as their object the perpetuation of the balance of the powers in western asia; he had made a treaty with croesus, and it is possible that his contingents had fought in the battles before sardes; lydia having fallen, he did all in his power to encourage nabonidus in his resistance. as soon as he found himself face to face with cyrus, he understood that a collision was imminent, and did his best in preparing to meet it. even if cyrus had forgotten the support which had been freely given to his rivals, the wealth of egypt was in itself sufficient to attract the persian hordes to her frontiers. a century later, the egyptians, looking back on the past with a melancholy retrospection, confessed that �never had the valley been more flourishing or happier than under amasis; never had the river shown itself more beneficent to the soil, nor the soil more fertile for mankind, and the inhabitated towns might be reckoned at , in number.� the widespread activity exhibited under psammetichus ii., and apries, was redoubled under the usurper, and the quarries of turah,* silsileh,** assuan, and even those of hammamât, were worked as in the palmy days of the theban dynasties. the island of philæ, whose position just below the cataract attracted to it the attention of the military engineers, was carefully fortified and a temple built upon it, the materials of which were used later on in the masonry of the sanctuary of ptolemaic times. thebes exhibited a certain outburst of vitality under the impulse given by ankhnasnofiribri and by shashonqu, the governor of her palace;*** two small chapels, built in the centre of the town, still witness to the queen�s devotion to amon, of whom she was the priestess. wealthy private individuals did their best to emulate their sovereign�s example, and made for themselves at shêkh abd-el-gurnah and at assassif those rock-hewn tombs which rival those of the best periods in their extent and the beauty of their bas-reliefs.**** * a stele of his forty-fourth year still exists in the quarries of the mokattam. ** according to herodotus, it was from the quarries of elephantine that amasis caused to be brought the largest blocks which he used in the building of sais. *** her tomb still exists at deir el-medineh, and the sarcophagus, taken from the tomb in , is now in the british museum. **** the most important of these tombs is that of petenit, the father of shashonqu, who was associated with ankhnasnofiribri in the government of thebes. most of the cities of the said were in such a state of decadence that it was no longer possible to restore to them their former prosperity, but abydos occupied too important a place in the beliefs connected with the future world, and attracted too many pilgrims, to permit of its being neglected. the whole of its ancient necropolis had been rifled by thieves during the preceding centuries, and the monuments were nearly as much buried by sand as in our own times. [illustration: .jpg an osiris stretched full length on the ground] drawn by faucher-gudin, after mariette. the monument is a statuette measuring only centimetres in length; it has been reproduced to give an idea of the probable form of the statue seen by herodotus. the dismantled fortress now known as the shunêt ez-zebîb served as the cemetery for the ibises of thoth, and for the stillborn children of the sacred singing-women, while the two memnonia of seti and ramses, now abandoned by their priests, had become mere objects of respectful curiosity, on which devout egyptians or passing travellers--phoenicians, aramæans, cypriots, carians, and greeks from ionia and the isles--came to carve their names.* * the position occupied by the graffiti on certain portions of the walls show that in these places in the temple of seti there was already a layer of sand varying from one to three metres in depth. amasis confided the work of general restoration to one of the principal personages of his court, pefzââunît, prince of sais, who devoted his attention chiefly to two buildings--the great sanctuary of osiris, which was put into good condition throughout, and the very ancient necropolis of omm-el-graab, where lay hidden the _àlquhah_, one of the sepulchres of the god; he restored the naos, the table of offerings, the barques, and the temple furniture, and provided for the sacred patrimony by an endowment of fields, vineyards, palm groves, and revenues, so as to ensure to the sanctuary offerings in perpetuity. it was a complete architectural resurrection. the nomes of middle egypt, which had suffered considerably during the ethiopian and assyrian wars, had some chance of prosperity now that their lords were relieved from the necessity of constantly fighting for some fresh pretender. horu, son of psam-metichus, prince of the oleander nome, rebuilt the ancient sanctuary of harshafaîtu at heracleopolis, and endowed it with a munificence which rivalled that of pefzââunîfc at abydos. the king himself devoted his resources chiefly to works at memphis and in the delta. he founded a temple of isis at memphis, which herodotus described as extending over an immense area and being well worth seeing; unfortunately nothing now remains of it, nor of the recumbent colossus, sixty feet in length, which the king placed before the court of phtah, nor of the two gigantic statues which he raised in front of the temple, one on each side of the door. [illustration: .jpg the two goddesses of law; ani adoring osiris] the trial of the conscience; toth and the feather of the law. besides these architectural works, amasis invested the funerary ceremonies of the apis-bulls with a magnificence rarely seen before his time, and the official stelae which he carved to the memory of the animals who died in his reign exhibit a perfection of style quite unusual. his labours at memphis, however, were eclipsed by the admirable work which he accomplished at sais. the propylæ which he added to the temple of nît �surpassed most other buildings of the same kind, as much by their height and extent, as by the size and quality of the materials;� he had, moreover, embellished them by a fine colonnade, and made an approach to them by an avenue of sphinxes. [illustration: .jpg amasis in adoration before the bull apis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph taken in the louvre. in other parts of the same building were to be seen two superb obelisks, a recumbent figure similar to that at memphis, and a monolithic naos of rose granite brought from the quarries of elephantine. amasis had a special predilection for this kind of monument. that which he erected at thmuis is nearly twenty-three feet in height,* and the louvre contains another example, which though smaller still excites the admiration of the modern visitor.** * the exact measurements are / ft. in height, ft. ins. in width, and ft. ins. in depth. the naos of saft el-hinneh must have been smaller, but it is impossible to determine its exact dimensions. ** it measures ft. ins. in height, ft. in. in width, and ft. ins. [illustration: .jpg the naos of amasis at thmuis] drawn by boudier, from the sketch of burton. the naos of sais, which amazed herodotus, was much larger than either of the two already mentioned, or, indeed, than any known example. tradition states that it took two thousand boatmen three years to convey it down from the first cataract. it measured nearly thirty feet high in the interior, twenty-four feet in depth, and twelve feet in breadth; even when hollowed out to contain the emblem of the god, it still weighed nearly , kilograms. it never reached its appointed place in the sanctuary. the story goes that �the architect, at the moment when the monument had been moved as far as a certain spot in the temple, heaved a sigh, oppressed with the thought of the time expended on its transport and weary of the arduous work. amasis overheard the sigh, and taking it as an omen, he commanded that the block should be dragged no further. others relate that one of the overseers in charge of the work was crushed to death by the monument, and for this reason it was left standing on the spot,� where for centuries succeeding generations came to contemplate it.* * the measurements given by herodotus are so different from those of any naos as yet discovered, that i follow kenrick in thinking that herodotus saw the monument of amasis lying on its side, and that he took for the height what was really the width in depth. it had been erected in the nome of athribis, and afterwards taken to alexandria about the ptolemaic era; it was discovered under water in one of the ports of the town at the beginning of this century, and drovetti, who recovered it, gave it to the museum of the louvre in . amasis, in devoting his revenues to such magnificent works, fully shared the spirit of the older pharaohs, and his labours were nattering to the national vanity, even though many lives were sacrificed in their accomplishment; but the glory which they reflected on egypt did not have the effect of removing the unpopularity in which tie was personally held. the revolution which overthrew apries had been provoked by the hatred of the native party towards the foreigners; he himself had been the instrument by which it had been accomplished, and it would have been only natural that, having achieved a triumph in spite of the greeks and the mercenaries, he should have wished to be revenged on them, and have expelled them from his dominions. but, as a fact, nothing of the kind took place, and amasis, once crowned, forgot the wrongs he had suffered as an aspirant to the royal dignity; no sooner was he firmly seated on the throne, than he recalled the strangers, and showed that he had only friendly intentions with regard to them. his predecessors had received them into favour, he, in fact, showed a perfect infatuation for them, and became as complete a greek as it was possible for an egyptian to be. his first care had been to make a treaty with the dorians of oyrene, and he displayed so much tact in dealing with them, that they forgave him for the skirmish of irasa, and invited him to act as arbitrator in their dissensions. a certain arkesilas ii. had recently succeeded the battos who had defeated the egyptian troops, but his suspicious temper had obliged his brothers to separate themselves from him, and they had founded further westwards the independent city of barca. on his threatening to evict them, they sent a body of libyans against him. fighting ensued, and he was beaten close to the town of leukon. he lost hoplites in the engagement, and the disaster aroused so much ill-feeling against him that laarchos, another of his brothers, strangled him. laarchos succeeded him amid the acclamations of the soldiery; but not long after, eryxô and polyarchos, the wife and brother-in-law of his victim, surprised and assassinated him in his turn. the partisans of laarchos then had recourse to the pharaoh, who showed himself disposed to send them help; but his preparations were suspended owing to the death of his mother. polyarchos repaired to egypt before the royal mourning was ended, and pleaded his cause with such urgency that he won over the king to his side; he obtained the royal investiture for his sister�s child, who was still a minor, battos iii., the lame, and thus placed oyrene in a sort of vassalage to the egyptian crown.* * herodotus narrates these events without mentioning amasis, and nicolas of damascus adopted herodotus� account with certain modifications taken from other sources. the intervention of amasis is mentioned only by plutarch and by polyaanus; but the record of it had been handed down to them by some more ancient author--perhaps by akesandros; or perhaps, in the first instance, by hellanicos of lesbos, who gave a somewhat detailed account of certain points in egyptian history. the passage of herodotus is also found incorporated in accounts of cyrenian origin: his informants were interested in recalling deeds which reflected glory on their country, like the defeat of apries at irasa, but not in the memory of events so humiliating for them as the sovereign intervention of pharaoh only a few years after this victory. and besides, the merely pacific success which amasis achieved was not of a nature to leave a profound mark on the egyptian mind. it is thus easy to explain how it was that herodotus makes no allusion to the part played by egypt in this affair. the ties which connected the two courts were subsequently drawn closer by marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, amasis espoused a cyrenian woman named ladikê, the daughter, according to some, of arkesilas or of battos, according to others, of a wealthy private individual named kritobulos.* the greeks of europe and asia minor fared no less to their own satisfaction at his hand than their compatriots in africa; following the example of his ally croesus, he entered into relations with their oracles on several occasions, and sent them magnificent presents. the temple of delphi having been burnt down in , the athenian family of the alcmæonides undertook to rebuild it from the ground for the sum of three hundred talents, of which one-fourth was to be furnished by the delphians. when these, being too poor to pay the sum out of their own resources, made an appeal to the generosity of other friendly powers, amasis graciously offered them a thousand talents of egyptian alum, then esteemed the most precious of all others. alum was employed in dyeing, and was an expensive commodity in the markets of europe; the citizens of delphi were all the more sensible of pharaoh�s generosity, since the united greeks of the nile valley contributed only twenty _minæ_ of the same mineral as their quota. amasis erected at cyrene a statue of his wife ladikê, and another of the goddess neît, gilded from head to foot, and to these he added his own portrait, probably painted on a wooden panel.** * the very fact of the marriage is considered by wiedemann as a pure legend, but there is nothing against its authenticity; the curious story of the relations of the woman with amasis told by the cyrenian commentators is the only part which need be rejected. ** the text of herodotus can only mean a painted panel similar to those which have been found on the mummies of the græco-roman era in the fayum. he gave to athene of lindos two stone statues and a corselet of linen of marvellous fineness;* and hera of samos received two wooden statues, which a century later herodotus found still intact. the greeks flocked to egypt from all quarters of the world in such considerable numbers that the laws relating to them had to be remodelled in order to avoid conflicts with the natives. * it seems that one of these statues is that which, after being taken to constantinople, was destroyed in a fire in a.d. fragments of the corselet still existed in the first century of our era, but inquisitive persons used to tear off pieces to see for themselves whether, as herodotus assures us, each thread was composed of three hundred and sixty-five strands, every one visible with the naked eye. the townships founded a century earlier along the pelusiac arm of the nile had increased still further since the time of necho, and to their activity was attributable the remarkable prosperity of the surrounding region. but the position which they occupied on the most exposed side of egypt was regarded as permanently endangering the security of the country: her liberty would be imperilled should they revolt during a war with the neighbouring empire, and hand over the line of defence which was garrisoned by them to the invader. amasis therefore dispossessed their inhabitants, and transferred them to memphis and its environs. the change benefited him in two ways, for, while securing himself from possible treason, he gained a faithful guard for himself in the event of risings taking place in his turbulent capital. while he thus distributed these colonists of ancient standing to his best interests, he placed those of quite recent date in the part of the delta furthest removed from asia, where surveillance was most easy, in the triangle, namely, lying to the west of sais, between the canopic branch of the nile, the mountains, and the sea-coast. the milesians had established here some time previously, on a canal connected with the main arm of the river, the factory of naucratis, which long remained in obscurity, but suddenly developed at the beginning of the xxvith dynasty, when sais became the favourite residence of the pharaohs. this town amasis made over to the greeks so that they might make it the commercial and religious centre of their communities in egypt. [illustration: .jpg the present site of naucratis] reduced by faucher-gudin from the plan published by petrie. the site of the hellenion is marked a, the modern arab village b, the temenos of hera and apollo e, that of the dioskuri f, and that of aphrodite g. temples already existed there, those of apollo and aphrodite, together with all the political and religious institutions indispensable to the constitution of an hellenic city; but the influx of immigrants was so large and rapid, that, after the lapse of a few years, the entire internal organism and external aspect of the city were metamorphosed. new buildings rose from the ground with incredible speed--the little temple of the dioskuri, the protectors of the sailor, the temple of the samian hera, that of zeus of Ægina, and that of athene;* ere long the great temenos, the hellenion, was erected at the public expense by nine Æolian, ionian, and dorian towns of asia minor, to serve as a place of assembly for their countrymen, as a storehouse, as a sanctuary, and, if need be, even as a refuge and fortress, so great was its area and so thick its walls.** * the temple of athene, the nît of the saite nome, is as yet known only by an inscription in pctrie. ** the site has been rediscovered by petrie at the southern extremity of and almost outside the town; the walls were about feet thick and feet high, and the rectangular area enclosed by them could easily contain fifty thousand men. it was not possible for the constitution of naucratis to be very homogeneous, when a score of different elements assisted in its composition. it appears to have been a compromise between the institutions of the dorians and those of the ionians. its supreme magistrates were called timuchi, but their length of office and functions are alike unknown to us. the inspectors of the emporia and markets could be elected only by the citizens of the nine towns, and it is certain that the chief authority was not entirely in the hands either of the timuchi or the inspectors; perhaps each quarter of the town had its council taken from among the oldest residents. a prytanasum was open to all comers where assemblies and banquets were held on feast-days; here were celebrated at the public expense the festivals of dionysos and apollo komasos. amasis made the city a free port, accessible at all times to whoever should present themselves with peaceable intent, and the privileges which he granted naturally brought about the closing of all the other seaports of egypt. when a greek ship, pursued by pirates, buffeted by storms, or disabled by an accident at sea, ran ashore at some prohibited spot on the coast, the captain had to appear before the nearest magistrate, in order to swear that he had not violated the law wilfully, but from the force of circumstances. if his excuse appeared reasonable, he was permitted to make his way to the mouth of the canopic branch of the nile; but when the state of the wind or tide did not allow of his departure, his cargo was transferred to boats of the locality, and sent to the hellenic settlement by the canals of the delta. this provision of the law brought prosperity to naucratis; the whole of the commerce of egypt with the greek world passed through her docks, and in a few years she became one of the wealthiest emporia of the mediterranean. the inhabitants soon overflowed the surrounding country, and covered it with villas and townships. such merchants as refused to submit to the rule of their own countrymen found a home in some other part of the valley which suited them, and even upper egypt and the libyan desert were subject to their pacific inroads. the milesians established depots in the ancient city of abydos;* the cypriots and lesbians, and the people of ephesus, chios, and samos, were scattered over the islands formed by the network of canals and arms of the nile, and delighted in giving them the names of their respective countries;** greeks of diverse origin settled themselves at neapolis, not far from panopolis; and the samians belonging to the Æschrionian tribe penetrated as far as the great oasis; in fact, there was scarcely a village where hellenic traders were not found, like the _bakals_ of to-day, selling wine, perfumes, oil, and salted provisions to the natives, practising usury in all its forms, and averse from no means of enriching themselves as rapidly as possible. * in stephen of byzantium the name of the town is said to be derived from that of the milesian abydos who founded it, probably on the testimony of aristagoras. letronne has seen that the historian meant a factory established by the milesians probably in the reign of amasis, at the terminus of the route leading to the great oasis. ** the compiler confines himself to stating that there were in the nile islands called ephesus, chios, samos, lesbos, cyprus, and so on; the explanation i have given in the text accounts for this curious fact quite simply. those who returned to their mother-country carried thither strange tales, which aroused the curiosity and cupidity of their fellow-citizens; and philosophers, merchants, and soldiers alike set out for the land of wonders in pursuit of knowledge, wealth, or adventures. amasis, ever alert upon his asiatic frontier, and always anxious to strengthen himself in that quarter against a chaldæan or persian invasion, welcomed them with open arms: those who remained in the country obtained employment about his person, while such as left it not to return, carried away with them the memory of his kindly treatment, and secured for him in hellas alliances of which he might one day stand in need. the conduct of amasis was politic, but it aroused the ill-feeling of his subjects against him. like the jews under hezekiah, the babylonians under nabonidus, and all other decadent races threatened by ruin, they attributed their decline, not to their own vices, but to the machinations of an angry god, and they looked on favours granted to strangers as a sacrilege. had not the greeks brought their divinities with them? did they not pervert the simple country-folk, so that they associated the greek religion with that of their own country? money was scarce; amasis had been obliged to debit the rations and pay of his mercenaries to the accounts of the most venerated egyptian temples--those of sais, heliopolis, bubastis, and memphis; and each of these institutions had to rebate so much per cent. on their annual revenues in favour of the barbarians, and hand over to them considerable quantities of corn, cattle, poultry, stuffs, woods, perfumes, and objects of all kinds. the priests were loud in their indignation, the echo of which still rang in the ears of the faithful some centuries later, and the lower classes making common cause with their priests, a spirit of hatred was roused among the populace as bitter as that which had previously caused the downfall of apries. as the fear of the army prevented this feeling from manifesting itself in a revolt, it found expression in the secret calumnies which were circulated against the king, and misrepresented the motives of all his actions. scores of malicious stories were repeated vilifying his character. it was stated that before his accession he was much addicted to eating and drinking, but that, suffering from want of money, he had not hesitated in procuring what he wished for by all sorts of means, the most honest of which had been secret theft. when made king, he had several times given way to intoxication to such an extent as to be incapable of attending to public business; his ministers were then obliged to relate moral tales to him to bring him to a state of reason. many persons having taunted him with his low extraction, he had caused a statue of a divinity to be made out of a gold basin in which he was accustomed to wash his feet, and he had exposed it to the adoration of the faithful. when it had been worshipped by them for some time, he revealed the origin of the idol, and added �that it had been with himself as with the foot-pan.... if he were a private person formerly, yet now he had come to be their king, and so he bade them honour and reverence him.� towards the middle and end of his reign he was as much detested as he had been beloved at the outset. he had, notwithstanding, so effectively armed egypt that the persians had not ventured to risk a collision with her immediately after their conquest of babylon. cyrus had spent ten years in compassing the downfall of nabonidus, and, calculating that that of amasis would require no less a period of time, he set methodically to work on the organisation of his recently acquired territory; the cities of phoenicia acknowledged him as their suzerain, and furnished him with what had hitherto been a coveted acquisition, a fleet. these preliminaries had apparently been already accomplished, when the movements of the barbarians suddenly made his presence in the far east imperative. he hurried thither, and was mysteriously lost to sight ( ). tradition accounts for his death in several ways. if xenophon is to be credited, he died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying those present by his wisdom and his almost superhuman resignation.* * a similar legend, but later in date, told how cyrus, when a hundred years old, asked one day to see his friends. he was told that his son had had them all put to death: his grief at the cruelty of cambyses caused his death in a few days. berosus tells us that he was killed in a campaign against the daliæ; ctesias states that, living been wounded in a skirmish with the Æerbikes, one of the savage tribes of bactriana, he succumbed to his injuries three days after the engagement. according to the worthy herodotus, he asked the hand of tomyris, queen of the massagetse, in marriage, and was refused with disdain. he declared war against her to avenge his wounded vanity, set out to fight with her beyond the araxes, in the steppes of turkestan, defeated the advance-guard of cavalry, and took prisoner the heir to the crown, spargapises, who thereupon ran himself through with his sword. �then tomyris collected all the forces of her kingdom, and gave him (cyrus) battle.� of all the combats in which barbarians have engaged among themselves, i reckon this to have been the fiercest. the following, as i understand, was the manner of it:--first, the two armies stood apart and shot their arrows at each other; then, when their quivers were empty, they closed and fought hand to hand with lances and daggers; and thus they continued fighting for a length of time, neither choosing to give ground. at length the massagetse prevailed. the greater part of the army of the persians was destroyed. search was made among the slain by order of the queen for the body of cyrus; and when it was found, she took a skin, and, filling it full of human blood, she dipped the head of cyrus in the gore, saying, as she thus insulted the corse, �i live and have conquered thee in fight, and yet by thee am i ruined, for thou tookest my son with guile; but thus i make good my threat, and give thee thy fill of blood.� the engagement was not as serious as the legend would have us believe, and the growth of the persian power was in no way affected, by it. it cost cyrus his life, but his army experienced no serious disaster, and his men took the king�s body and brought it to pasargadæ. he had a palace there, the remains of which can still be seen on the plain of murgâb. the edifice was unpretentious, built upon a rectangular plan, with two porches of four columns on the longer sides, a lateral chamber at each of the four angles, and a hypostyle hall in the centre, divided lengthways by two rows of columns which supported the roof. the walls were decorated with bas-reliefs, and wherever the inscriptions have not been destroyed, we can read in cuneiform characters in the three languages which thenceforward formed the official means of communication of the empire--persian, medic, and chaldæan--the name, title, and family of the royal occupant. cyrus himself is represented in a standing posture on the pilasters, wearing a costume in which egyptian and assyrian features are curiously combined. he is clothed from neck to ankle in the close-fitting fringed tunic of the babylonian and mnevite sovereigns; his feet are covered with laced boots, while four great wings, emblems of the supreme power, overshadow his shoulders and loins, two of them raised in the air, the others pointing to the earth; he wears on his head the egyptian skull-cap, from which rises one of the most complicated head-dresses of the royal wardrobe of the pharaohs. the monarch raises his right hand with the gesture of a man speaking to an assembled people, and as if repeating the legend traced above his image: �i am cyrus, the king, the achæmenian.� he was buried not far off, in the monumental tomb which he had probably built for himself in a square enclosure, having a portico on three of its sides; a small chamber, with a ridge roof, rises from a base composed of six receding steps, so arranged as to appear of unequal height. [illustration: .jpg cyrus the achaemenian] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by dieulafoy. the doorway is narrow, and so low that a man of medium statue finds some difficulty in entering. it is surmounted by a hollow moulding, quite egyptian in style, and was closed by a two-leaved stone door. the golden coffin rested on a couch of the same metal, covered with precious stuffs; and a circular table, laden with drinking-vessels and ornaments enriched with precious stones, completed the furniture of the chamber. the body of the conqueror remained undisturbed on this spot for two centuries under the care of the priests; but while alexander was waging war on the indian frontier, the greek officers, to whom he had entrusted the government of persia proper, allowed themselves to be tempted by the enormous wealth which the funerary chapel was supposed to contain. [illustration: .jpg the tomb op cyrus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure of dieulafoy. they opened the coffin, broke the couch and the table, and finding them too heavy to carry away easily, they contented themselves with stealing the drinking-vessels and jewels. alexander on his return visited the place, and caused the entrance to be closed with a slight wall of masonry; he intended to restore the monument to its former splendour, but he himself perished shortly after, and what remained of the contents probably soon disappeared. after the death of cyrus, popular imagination, drawing on the inexhaustible materials furnished by his adventurous career, seemed to delight in making him the ideal of all a monarch should be; they attributed to him every virtue--gentleness, bravery, moderation, justice, and wisdom. there is no reason to doubt that he possessed the qualities of a good general--activity, energy, and courage, together with the astuteness and the duplicity so necessary to success in asiatic conquest--but he does not appear to have possessed in the same degree the gifts of a great administrator. he made no changes in the system of government which from the time of tiglath-pileser iii. onwards had obtained among all oriental sovereigns; he placed satraps over the towns and countries of recent acquisition, at sardes and babylon, in syria and palestine, but without clearly defining their functions or subjecting them to a supervision sufficiently strict to ensure the faithful performance of their duties. he believed that he was destined to found a single empire in which all the ancient empires were to be merged, and he all but carried his task to a successful close: egypt alone remained to be conquered when he passed away. his wife kassandanê, a daughter of pharnaspes, and an achæmenian like himself, had borne him five children; two sons, cambyses* and smerdis,** and three daughters, atossa, roxana, and artystonê.*** * the persian form of the name rendered kambyses by the greeks was kâbuzîyâ or kambuzîya. herodotus calls him the son of kassandanê, and the tradition which he has preserved is certainly authentic. ctesias has erroneously stated that his mother was amytis, the daughter of astyages, and dinon, also erroneously, the egyptian women nitêtis; diodorus siculus and strabo make him the son of meroê. ** the original form was bardiya or barzîya, �the laudable,� and the first greek transcript known, in Æschylus, is mardos, or, in the scholiasts on the passage, merdias, which has been corrupted into marphios by hellanikos and into merges by pompeius trogus. the form smerdis in herodotus, and in the historians who follow him, is the result of a mistaken assimilation of the persian name with the purely greek one of smerdis or smerdies. *** herodotus says that atossa was the daughter of kassandanê, and the position which she held during three reigns shows that she must have been so; justi, however, calls her the daughter of amytis. a second daughter is mentioned by herodotus, the one whom cambyses killed in egypt by a kick; he gives her no name, but she is probably the same as the roxana who according to ctesias bore a headless child. the youngest, artystonê, was the favourite wife of darius. josephus speaks of a fourth daughter of cyrus called meroê, but without saying who was the mother of this princess. cambyses was probably born about , soon after his father�s accession, and he was his legitimate successor, according to the persian custom which assigned the crown to the eldest of the sons born in the purple. he had been associated, as we have seen, in the babylonian regal power immediately after the victory over nabonidus, and on the eve of his departure for the fatal campaign against the massagetse his father, again in accordance with the persian law, had appointed him regent. a later tradition, preserved by ctesias, relates that on this occasion the territory had been divided between the two sons: smerdis, here called tanyoxarkes, having received as his share bactriana, the khoramnians, the parthians, and the carmanians, under the suzerainty of his brother. cambyses, it is clear, inherited the whole empire, but intrigues gathered round smerdis, and revolts broke out in the provinces, incited, so it was said, whether rightly or wrongly, by his partisans.* the new king was possessed of a violent, merciless temper, and the persians subsequently emphasised the fact by saying that cyrus had been a father to them, cambyses a master. the rebellions were repressed with a vigorous hand, and finally smerdis disappeared by royal order, and the secret of his fate was so well kept, that it was believed, even by his mother and sisters, that he was merely imprisoned in some obscure median fortress.** * herodotus speaks of peoples subdued by cambyses in asia, and this allusion can only refer to a revolt occurring after the death of cyrus, before the egyptian expedition; these troubles are explicitly recorded in xenophon. ** the inscription of behistun says distinctly that cambyses had his brother bardîya put to death before the egyptian expedition; on the other hand, herodotus makes the murder occur during the egyptian expedition and ctesias after this expedition. ctesias� version of the affair adds that cambyses, the better to dissimulate his crime, ordered the murderer sphendadates to pass himself off as tanyoxarkes, as there was a great resemblance between the two: sphendadates --the historian goes on to say--was exiled to bactriana, and it was not until five years afterwards that the mother of the two princes heard of the murder and of the substitution. these additions to the story are subsequent developments suggested by the traditional account of the pseudo-smerdis. in recent times several authorities have expressed the opinion that all that is told us of the murder of smerdis and about the pseudo-smerdis is merely a legend, invented by darius or those about him in order to justify his usurpation in the eyes of the people: the pseudo-smerdis would be smerdis himself, who revolted against cambyses, and was then, after he had reigned a few months, assassinated by darius. winckler acknowledges �that certainty is impossible in such a case;� and, in reality, all ancient tradition is against his hypothesis, and it is best to accept herodotus� account, with all its contradictions, until contemporaneous documents enable us to decide what to accept and what to reject in it. the ground being cleared of his rival, and affairs on the scythian frontier reduced to order, cambyses took up the projects against egypt at the exact point at which his predecessor had left them. amasis, who for ten years had been expecting an attack, had taken every precaution in his power against it, and had once more patiently begun to make overtures of alliance with the hellenic cities; those on the european continent did not feel themselves so seriously menaced as to consider it to their interest to furnish him with any assistance, but the greeks of the independent islands, with their chief, poly crates, tyrant of samos, received his advances with alacrity. polycrates had at his disposal a considerable fleet, the finest hitherto seen in the waters of the Ægean, and this, combined with the egyptian navy, was not any too large a force to protect the coasts of the delta, now that the persians had at their disposition not only the vessels of the Æolian and ionian cities, but those of phoenicia and cyprus. a treaty was concluded, bringing about an exchange of presents and amenities between the two princes which lasted as long as peace prevailed, but was ruptured at the critical moment by the action of polycrates, though not actually through his own fault. the aristocratic party, whose chiefs were always secretly plotting his overthrow, had given their adherence to the persians, and their conduct became so threatening about the time of the death of cyras, that polycrates had to break his engagements with egypt in order to avert a catastrophe.* * herodotus laid the blame for the breach of the treaty to the king of egypt, and attributed to his fear of the constant good fortune of polycrates. the lattor�s accession to power is fixed at about the year by some, by others in the year , or in the year - ; his negotiations with amasis must be placed somewhere during the last fifteen years of the pharaoh. he made a treaty with the persian king, and sent a squadron of forty galleys to join the fleet then being equipped in the phoenician ports.* * herodotus records two opposing traditions: one that the samians joined in the egyptian campaign, the other that they went only as far as the neighbourhood of karpathos. amasis, therefore, when war at last broke out, found himself left to face the enemy alone. the struggle was inevitable, and all the inhabitants of the eastern coasts of the mediterranean had long foreseen its coming. without taking into consideration the danger to which the persian empire and its syrian provinces were exposed by the proximity of a strong and able power such as egypt, the hardy and warlike character of cambyses would naturally have prompted him to make an attempt to achieve what his predecessors, the warrior-kings of nineveh and babylon, had always failed to accomplish successfully. policy ruled his line of action, and was sufficient to explain it, but popular imagination sought other than the very natural causes which had brought the most ancient and most recent of the great empires of the world into opposition; romantic reasons were therefore invented to account for the great drama which was being enacted, and the details supplied varied considerably, according as the tradition was current in asia or africa. it was said that a physician lent to cyrus by amasis, to treat him for an affection of the eyes, was the cause of all the evil. the unfortunate man, detained at susa and chafing at his exile, was said to have advised cambyses to ask for the daughter of pharaoh in marriage, hoping either that amasis would grant the request, and be dishonoured in the eyes of his subjects for having degraded the solar race by a union with a barbarian, or that he would boldly refuse, and thus arouse the hatred of the persians against himself. amasis, after a slight hesitation, substituted nitêtis, a daughter of apries, for his own child. it happened that one day in sport cambyses addressed the princess by the name of her supposed father, whereupon she said, �i perceive, o king, that you have no suspicion of the way in which you have been deceived by amasis; he took me, and having dressed me up as his own daughter, sent me to you. in reality i am the daughter of apries, who was his lord and master until the day that he revolted, and, in concert with the rest of the egyptians, put his sovereign to death.� the deceit which cambyses thus discovered had been put upon him irritated him so greatly as to induce him to turn his arms against egypt. so ran the persian account of the tale, but on the banks of the nile matters were explained otherwise. here it was said that it was to cyrus himself that nitêtis had been married, and that she had borne cambyses to him; the conquest had thus been merely a revenge of the legitimate heirs of psammetichus upon the usurper, and cambyses had ascended the throne less as a conqueror than as a pharaoh of the line of apries. it was by this childish fiction that the egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves before the stranger for their loss of power. always proud of their ancient prowess, but incapable of imitating the deeds of their forefathers, they none the less pretended that they could neither be vanquished nor ruled except by one of themselves, and the story of nitêtis afforded complete satisfaction to their vanity. if cambyses were born of a solar princess, persia could not be said to have imposed a barbarian king upon egypt, but, on the contrary, that egypt had cleverly foisted her pharaoh upon persia, and through persia upon half the universe. one obstacle still separated the two foes--the desert and the marshes of the delta. the distance between the outposts of pelusium and the fortress of Ænysos* on the syrian frontier was scarcely fifty-six miles, and could be crossed by an army in less than ten days.** formerly the width of this strip of desert had been less, but the assyrians, and after them the chaldæans, had vied with each other in laying waste the country, and the absence of any settled population now rendered the transit difficult. cambyses had his head-quarters at gaza, at the extreme limit of his own dominions,*** but he was at a loss how to face this solitary region without incurring the risk of seeing half his men buried beneath its sands, and his uncertainty was delaying his departure when a stroke of fortune relieved him from his difficulty. * the Ænysos of herodotus is now khân yunes. ** in , napoleon�s army left kattiyeh on the th of pluviôse, and was at gaza on the th of ventose, after remaining from the st to the th of pluviôse before el- arîsh besieging that place. *** this seems to follow from the tradition, according to which cambyses left his treasures at gaza during the egyptian campaign, and the town was thence called _gaza_, �the treasury.� the etymology is false, but the fact that suggested it is probably correct, considering the situation of gaza and the part it must necessarily play in an invasion of egypt. phanes of halicarnassus, one of the mercenaries in the service of egypt, a man of shrewd judgment and an able soldier, fell out with amasis for some unknown reason, and left him to offer his services to his rival. this was a serious loss for egypt, since phanes possessed considerable authority over the mercenaries, and was better versed in egyptian affairs than any other person. he was pursued and taken within sight of the lycian coast, but he treated his captors to wine and escaped from them while they were intoxicated. he placed cambyses in communication with the shêkh of the scattered tribes between syria and the delta. the arab undertook to furnish the persian king with guides, as one of his predecessors had done in years gone by for esar-haddon, and to station relays of camels laden with water along the route that the invading army was to follow. having taken these precautions, cambyses entrusted the cares of government and the regulation of his household to oropastes,* one of the persian magi, and gave the order to march forward. * herodotus calls this individual patizeithes, and dionysius of miletus, who lived a little before herodotus, gives panzythes as a variant of this name: the variant passed into the syncellus as pauzythes, but the original form patikhshâyathiya is a title signifying _viceroy, regent, or minister_, answering to the modern persian _padishah_: herodotus, or the author he quotes, has taken the name of the office for that of the individual. on the other hand, pompeius trogus, who drew his information from good sources, mentions, side by side with comètes or gaumata, his brother oropastes, whose name ahura-upashta is quite correct, and may mean, _him whom ahura helps_. it is generally admitted that pompeius trogus, or rather justin, has inverted the parts they played, and that his comètes is the pseudo- smerdis, and not, as he says, oropastes; it was, then, the latter who was the usurper�s brother, and it is his name of oropastes which should be substituted for that of the patizeithes of herodotus. [illustration: .jpg psammetichus iii. ] drawn by boudier, from a photograph of the original in the louvre. on arriving at pelusium, he learned that his adversary no longer existed. amasis had died after a short illness, and was succeeded by his son psammetichus iii. this change of command, at the most critical moment, was almost in itself, a disaster. Àmasis, with his consummate experience of men and things, his intimate knowledge of the resources of egypt, his talents as a soldier and a general, his personal prestige, his hellenic leanings, commanded the confidence of his own men and the respect of foreigners; but what could be expected of his unknown successor, and who could say whether he were equal to the heavy task which fate had assigned to him? the whole of the nile valley was a prey to gloomy presentiment.* * psammetichus iii. has left us very few monuments, which is accounted for by the extreme shortness of his reign. for the same reason doubtless several writers of classical times have ignored his existence, and have made the conquest of egypt take place under amasis. ctesias calls the pharaoh amyrtseus, and gives the same name to those who rebelled against the persians in his own time, and he had an account of the history of the conquest entirely different from that of herodotus. egypt was threatened not only, as in the previous century, by the nations of the tigris and euphrates, but all asia, from the indus to the hellespont, was about to fall on her to crush her. she was destitute of all human help and allies, and the gods themselves appeared to have forsaken her. the fellahin, inspired with vague alarm, recognised evil omens in all around them. rain is rare in the thebaid, and storms occur there only twice or three times in a century: but a few days after the accession of psammetichus, a shower of fine rain fell at thebes, an event, so it was stated with the exaggeration characteristic of the bearers of ill news, which had never before occurred.* * the inhabitants of the said have, up to our own time, always considered rain in the valley as an ill-omened event. they used to say in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when speaking of napoleon�s expedition, �we knew that misfortune threatened us, because it rained at luxor shortly before the french came.� wilkinson assures us that rain is not so rare at thebes as herodotus thought: he speaks of five or six showers a year, and of a great storm on an average every ten years. but even he admits that it is confined to the mountain district, and does not reach the plain: i never heard of rain at luxor during the six winters that i spent in upper egypt. pharaoh hastened to meet the invader with all the men, chariots, and native bowmen at his disposal, together with his libyan and cyrenoan auxiliaries, and the ionians, carians, and greeks of the isles and mainland. the battle took place before pelusium, and was fought on both sides with brave desperation, since defeat meant servitude for the egyptians, and for the persians, cut off by the desert from possible retreat, captivity or annihilation. phanes had been obliged to leave his children behind him, and pharaoh included them in his suite, to serve, if needful, as hostages. the carians and ionians, who felt themselves disgraced by the defection of their captain, called loudly for them just before the commencement of the action. they were killed immediately in front of the lines, their father being a powerless onlooker; their blood was thrown into a cask half full of wine, and the horrible mixture was drunk by the soldiers, who then furiously charged the enemy�s battalions. the issue of the struggle was for a long time doubtful, but the egyptians were inferior in numbers; towards evening their lines gave way and the flight began.* all was not, however, lost, if psammetichus had but followed the example of taharqa, and defended the passage of the various canals and arms of the river, disputing the ground inch by inch with the persians, and gaining time meanwhile to collect a fresh army. the king lost his presence of mind, and without attempting to rally what remained of his regiments, he hastened to take refuge within the white wall. cambyses halted a few days to reduce pelusium,** and in the mean time sent a vessel of mitylene to summon memphis to capitulate: the infuriated populace, as soon as they got wind of the message, massacred the herald and the crew, and dragged their bleeding limbs through the streets. * according to herodotus, eighty years later the battle- field used to be shown covered with bones, and it was said that the egyptians could be distinguished from the persians by the relative hardness of their skulls. ** polysenus hands down a story that cambyses, in order to paralyse the resistance of the besieged, caused cats, dogs, ibises, and other sacred animals to march at the head of his attacking columns: the egyptians would not venture to use their arms for fear of wounding or killing some of their gods. the city held out for a considerable time; when at length she opened her gates, the remaining inhabitants of the said who had hesitated up to then, hastened to make their submission, and the whole of egypt as far as philae became at one stroke a persian province. the libyans did not wait to be summoned to bring their tribute; cyrene and barca followed their example, but their offerings were so small that the conqueror�s irritation was aroused, and deeming himself mocked, he gave way to his anger, and instead of accepting them, he threw them to his soldiers with his own hand (b.c. ).* * the question as to the year in which egypt was subdued by cambyses has long divided historians: i still agree with those who place the conquest in the spring of . this sudden collapse of a power whose exalted position had defied all attacks for centuries, and the tragic fate of the king who had received his crown merely to lose it, filled contemporary beholders with astonishment and pity. it was said that, ten days after the capitulation of memphis, the victorious king desired out of sport to test the endurance of his prisoner. psammetichus beheld his daughter and the daughters of his nobles pass before him, half naked, with jars on their shoulders, and go down to the nile to fetch water from the river like common slaves; his son and two thousand young men of the same age, in chains and with ropes round their necks, also defiled before him on their way to die as a revenge for the murder of the mitylenians; yet he never for a moment lost his royal imperturbability. but when one of his former companions in pleasure chanced to pass, begging for alms and clothed in rags, psammetichus suddenly broke out into weeping, and lacerated his face in despair. cambyses, surprised at this excessive grief in a man who up till then had exhibited such fortitude, demanded the reason of his conduct. �son of cyrus,� he replied, �the misfortunes of my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction of my friend. when a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury and abundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate.� when the speech was reported to cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it. croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the persians round him were moved with pity. cambyses, likewise touched, commanded that the son of the pharaoh should be saved, but the remission of the sentence arrived too late. he at all events treated pharaoh himself with consideration, and it is possible that he might have replaced him on the throne, under an oath of vassalage, had he not surprised him in a conspiracy against his own life. he thereupon obliged him to poison himself by drinking bulls� blood, and he confided the government of the nile valley to a persian named aryandes. no part of the ancient world now remained unconquered except the semi-fabulous kingdom of ethiopia in the far-off south. cities and monarchies, all the great actors of early times, had been laid in the dust one after another--tyre, damascus, carchemish, urartu, elam, assyria, jerusalem, media, the lydians, babylon, and finally egypt; and the prey they had fought over so fiercely and for so many centuries, now belonged in its entirety to one master for the first time as far as memory could reach back into the past. cambyses, following in the footsteps of cyrus, had pursued his victorious way successfully, but it was another matter to consolidate his conquests and to succeed in governing within the limits of one empire so many incongruous elements--the people of the caucasus and those of the nile valley, the greeks of the Ægean and the iranians, the scythians from beyond the oxus and the semites of the banks of the euphrates or of the mediterranean coast; and time alone would show whether this heritage would not fall to pieces as quickly as it had been built up. the asiatic elements of the empire appeared, at all events for the moment, content with their lot, and babylon showed herself more than usually resigned; but egypt had never accepted the yoke of the stranger willingly, and the most fortunate of her assyrian conquerors had never exercised more than a passing supremacy over her. cambyses realised that he would never master her except by governing her himself for a period of several years, and by making himself as egyptian as a persian could be without offending his own subjects at home. he adopted the titles of the pharaohs, their double cartouche, their royal costume, and their solar filiation; as much to satisfy his own personal animosity as to conciliate the egyptian priests, he repaired to sais, violated the tomb of amasis, and burnt the mummy after offering it every insult.* * herodotus gives also a second account, which declares that cambyses thus treated the body, not of amasis, but of some unknown person whom he took for amasis. the truth of the story is generally contested, for the deed would have been, as herodotus himself remarks, contrary to persian ideas about the sanctity of fire. i think that by his cruel treatment of the mummy, cambyses wished to satisfy the hatred of the natives against the greek-loving king, and so render himself more acceptable to them. the destruction of the mummy entailing that of the soul, his act gave the saitic population a satisfaction similar to that experienced by the refined cruelty of those who, a few centuries ago, killed their enemies when in a state of deadly sin, and so ensure not only their dismissal from this world, but also their condemnation in the next. [illustration: .jpg the naophoros statuette of the vatican] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph: the head and hands are a restoration of the eighteenth century, in the most inappropriate græco-roman style. he removed his troops from the temple of nît, which they had turned into a barrack to the horror of the faithful, and restored at his own expense the damage they had done to the building. he condescended so far as to receive instruction in the local religion, and was initiated in the worship of the goddess by the priest uzaharrîsnîti. this was, after all, a pursuance of the policy employed by his father towards the babylonians, and the projects which he had in view necessitated his gaining the confidence of the people at all costs. asia having no more to offer him, two almost untried fields lay open to his ambition--africa and europe--the greek world and what lay beyond it, the carthaginian world and ethiopia. the necessity of making a final reckoning with egypt had at the outset summoned him to africa, and it was therefore in that continent that he determined to carry on his conquests. memphis was necessarily the base of his operations, the only point from which he could direct the march of his armies in a westerly or southerly direction, and at the same time keep in touch with the rest of his empire, and he would indeed have been imprudent had he neglected anything which could make him acceptable to its inhabitants. as soon as he felt he had gained their sympathies, he despatched two expeditions, one to carthage and one to ethiopia. cyrene had spontaneously offered him her homage; he now further secured it by sending thither with all honour ladikê, the widow of amasis, and he apparently contemplated taking advantage of the good will of the cyrenians to approach carthage by sea. the combined fleets of ionia and phonicia were without doubt numerically sufficient for this undertaking, but the tyrians refused to serve against their own colonies, and he did not venture to employ the greeks alone in waters which were unfamiliar to them. besides this, the information which he obtained from those about him convinced him that the overland route would enable him to reach his destination more surely if more slowly; it would lead him from the banks of the nile to the oases of the theban desert, from there to the ammonians, and thence by way of the libyans bordering on the syrtes and the liby-phoenicians. he despatched an advance-guard of fifty thousand men from thebes to occupy the oasis of ammon and to prepare the various halting-places for the bulk of the troops. the fate of these men has never been clearly ascertained. they crossed the oasis of el-khargeh and proceeded to the north-west in the direction of the oracle. the natives afterwards related that when they had arrived halfway, a sudden storm of wind fell upon them, and the entire force was buried under mounds of sand during a halt. cambyses was forced to take their word; in spite of all his endeavours, no further news of his troops was forthcoming, except that they never reached the temple, and that none of the generals or soldiers ever again saw egypt ( ). the expedition to ethiopia was not more successful. since the retreat of tanuatamanu, the pharaohs of napata had severed all direct relations with asia; but on being interfered with by psammetichus i. and ii., they had repulsed the invaders, and had maintained their frontier almost within sight of philæ.* in nubia proper they had merely a few outposts stationed in the ruins of the towns of the theban period--at derr, at pnubsu, at wady-halfa, and at semneh; the population again becoming dense and the valley fertile to the south of this spot. kush, like egypt, was divided into two regions --to-qonusît, with its cities of danguru,** napata, asta-muras, and barua; and alo,*** which extended along the white and the blue nile in the plain of sennaar: the asmakh, the descendants of the mashauasha emigrants of the time of psammetichus i., dwelt on the southern border of alo. * the northern boundary of ethiopia is given us approximately by the lists of temples in the inscriptions of harsiatef and of nastosenen: pnubsu is mentioned several times as receiving gifts from the king, which carries the permanent dominion of the ethiopian kings as far as the second cataract. ** now old dongola. *** berua is the meroê of strabo, astaboras the modern ed- dameîr, and alo the kingdom of aloah of the mediæval arab geographers. [illustration: .jpg ethiopian gkoup] drawn by boudier, from the photograph by berghoff. a number of half-savage tribes, maditi and bohrehsa, were settled to the right and to the left of the territory watered by the nile, between darfur, the mountains of abyssinia, and the red sea; and the warlike disposition of the ethiopian kings found in these tribes an inexhaustible field for obtaining easy victories and abundant spoil. many of these sovereigns--piônkhi, alaru, harsiatef, nastosenen--whose respective positions in the royal line are still undetermined, specially distinguished themselves in these struggles, but the few monuments they have left, though bearing witness to their military enterprise and ability, betray their utter decadence in everything connected with art, language, and religion. the ancient egyptian syllabary, adapted to the needs of a barbarous tongue, had ended by losing its elegance; architecture was degenerating, and sculpture slowly growing more and more clumsy in appearance. some of the work, however, is not wanting in a certain rude nobility--as, for instance, the god and goddess carved side by side in a block of grey granite. ethiopian worship had become permeated with strange superstitions, and its creed was degraded, in spite of the strictness with which the priests supervised its application and kept watch against every attempt to introduce innovations. towards the end of the seventh century some of the families attached to the temple of am on at napata had endeavoured to bring about a kind of religious reform; among other innovations they adopted the practice of substituting for the ordinary sacrifice, new rites, the chief feature of which was the offering of the flesh of the victim raw, instead of roasted with fire. this custom, which was doubtless borrowed from the negroes of the upper nile, was looked upon as a shameful heresy by the orthodox. the king repaired in state to the temple of anion, seized the priests who professed these seditious beliefs, and burnt them alive. [illustration: .jpg encampment de bacharis] the use of raw meat, nevertheless, was not discontinued, and it gained such ground in the course of ages that even christianity was unable to suppress it; up to the present time, the _brindê_, or piece of beef cut from the living animal and eaten raw, is considered a delicacy by the abyssinians. the isolation of the ethiopians had rather increased than lowered their reputation among other nations. their transitory appearance on the battle-fields of asia had left a deep impression on the memories of their opponents. the tenacity they had displayed during their conflict with assyria had effaced the remembrance of their defeat. popular fancy delighted to extol the wisdom of sabaco,* and exalted taharqa to the first rank among the conquerors of the old world; now that kush once more came within the range of vision, it was invested with a share of all these virtues, and the inquiries cambyses made concerning it were calculated to make him believe that he was about to enter on a struggle with a nation of demigods rather than of men. he was informed that they were taller, more beautiful, and more vigorous than all other mortals, that their age was prolonged to one hundred and twenty years and more, and that they possessed a marvellous fountain whose waters imparted perpetual youth to then-bodies. there existed near their capital a meadow, perpetually furnishing an inexhaustible supply of food and drink; whoever would might partake of this �table of the sun,� and eat to his fill.** * the eulogy bestowed on him by herodotus shows the esteem in which he was held even in the saite period; later on he seems to have become two persons, and so to have given birth to the good ethiopian king aktisanes. ** pausanias treats it as a traveller�s tale. heeren thought that he saw in herodotus� account a reference to intercourse by signs, so frequent in africa. the �table of the sun� would thus have been a kind of market, whither the natives would come for their provisions, using exchange to procure them. i am inclined rather to believe the story to be a recollection, partly of the actual custom of placing meats, which the first comer might take, on the tombs in the necropolis, partly of the mythical �meadow of offerings� mentioned in the funerary texts, to which the souls of the dead and the gods alike had access. this divine region would have transferred to our earth by some folk-tale, like the judgment of the dead, the entrance into the solar bark, and other similar beliefs. gold was so abundant that it was used for common purposes, even for the chains of their prisoners; but, on the other hand, copper was rare and much prized. canibyses despatched some spies chosen from among the ichthyophagi of the bed sea to explore this region, and acting on the report they brought back, he left memphis at the head of an army and a fleet.* the expedition was partly a success and partly a failure. it followed the nile valley as far as korosko, and then struck across the desert in the direction of napata;** but provisions ran short before a quarter of the march had been achieved, and famine obliged the invaders to retrace their steps after having endured terrible sufferings.*** * herodotus� text speaks of an army only, but the accounts of the wars between ethiopia and egypt show that the army was always accompanied by the necessary fleet. ** it is usually thought that the expedition marched by the side of the nile as far as napata; to support this theory the name of a place mentioned in pliny is quoted, cambusis at the third cataract, which is supposed to contain the name of the conqueror. this town, which is sometimes mentioned by the classical geographers, is called kambiusit in the ethiopie texts, and the form of the name makes its connection with the history of cambyses easy. i think it follows, from the text of herodotus, that the persians left the grassy land, the river-valley, at a given moment, to enter the sand, i.e. the desert. now this is done to-day at two points--near korosko to rejoin the nile at abu-hammed, and near wady-halfah to avoid the part of the nile called the �stony belly,� batn el-hagar. the korosko route, being the only one suitable for the transit of a body of troops, and also the only route known to herodotus, seems, i think, likely to be the one which was followed in the present instance; at all events, it fits in best with the fact that cambyses was obliged to retrace his steps hurriedly, when he had accomplished hardly a fifth of the journey. *** many modern historians are inclined to assume that cambyses� expedition was completely successful, and that its result was the overthrow of the ancient kingdom of nepata and the foundation of that of meroê. cambyses would have given the new town which he built there the name of his sister meroê. the traditions concerning cambusis and meroê belong to the alexandrine era, and rest only on chance similarities of sound. with regard to the ethiopian province of the persian empire and to the ethiopian neighbours of egypt whom cambyses subdued, the latter are not necessarily ethiopians of napata. herodotus himself says that the ethiopians dwelt in the country above elephantine, and that half of what he calls the island of takhompsô was inhabited by ethiopians: the subjugated ethiopians and their country plainly correspond with the dodekaschênos of the græco-roman era. cambyses had to rest content with the acquisition of those portions of nubia adjoining the first cataract--the same, in fact, that had been annexed to egypt by psammetichus i. and ii. ( ). the failure of this expedition to the south, following so closely on the disaster which befell that of the west, had a deplorable effect on the mind of cambyses. he had been subject, from childhood, to attacks of epilepsy, during which he became a maniac and had no control over his actions. these reverses of fortune aggravated the disease, and increased the frequency and length of the attacks.* * recent historians admit neither the reality of the illness of cambyses nor the madness resulting from it, but consider them egyptian fables, invented out of spite towards the king who had conquered and persecuted them. the bull apis had died shortly before the close of the ethiopian campaign, and the egyptians, after mourning for him during the prescribed number of weeks, were bringing his successor with rejoicings into the temple of phtah, when the remains of the army re-entered memphis. cambyses, finding the city holiday-making, imagined that it was rejoicing over his misfortunes. he summoned the magistrates before him, and gave them over to the executioner without deigning to listen to their explanations. he next caused the priests to be brought to him, and when they had paraded the apis before him, he plunged his dagger into its flank with derisive laughter: �ah, evil people! so you make for yourselves divinities of flesh and blood which fear the sword! it is indeed a fine god that you egyptians have here; i will have you to know, however, that you shall not rejoice overmuch at having deceived me!� the priests were beaten as impostors, and the bull languished from its wound and died in a few days* its priests buried it, and chose another in its place without the usual ceremonies, so as not to exasperate the anger of the tyrant,** but the horror evoked by this double sacrilege raised passions against cambyses which the ruin of the country had failed to excite. * later historians improved upon the account of herodotus, and it is said in the _de iside_, that cambyses killed the apis and threw him to the dogs. here there is probably a confusion between the conduct of cambyses and that attributed to the eunuch bagoas nearly two centuries later, at the time of the second conquest of egypt by ochus. ** mariette discovered in the serapseum and sent to the louvre fragments of the epitaph of an apis buried in epiphi in the sixth year of cambyses, which had therefore died a few months previously. this fact contradicts the inference from the epitaph of the apis that died in the fourth year of darius, which would have been born in the fifth year of cambyses, if we allow that there could not have been two apises in egypt at once. this was, indeed, the usual rule, but a comparison of the two dates shows that here it was not followed, and it is therefore simplest, until we have further evidence, to conclude that at all events in cases of violence, such as sacrilegious murder, there could have been two apises at once, one discharging his functions, and the other unknown, living still in the midst of the herds. the manifestations of this antipathy irritated him to such an extent that he completely changed his policy, and set himself from that time forward to act counter to the customs and prejudices of the egyptians. they consequently regarded his memory with a vindictive hatred. the people related that the gods had struck him with madness to avenge the murder of the apis, and they attributed to him numberless traits of senseless cruelty, in which we can scarcely distinguish truth from fiction. it was said that, having entered the temple of phtah, he had ridiculed the grotesque figure under which the god was represented, and had commanded the statues to be burnt. on another occasion he had ordered the ancient sepulchres to be opened, that he might see what was the appearance of the mummies. the most faithful members of his family and household, it was said, did not escape his fury. he killed his own sister roxana, whom he had married, by a kick in the abdomen; he slew the son of prexaspes with an arrow; he buried alive twelve influential persians; he condemned croesus to death, and then repented, but punished the officers who had failed to execute the sentence pronounced against the lydian king.* * the whole of this story of croesus is entirely fabulous. he had no longer any reason for remaining in egypt, since he had failed in his undertakings; yet he did not quit the country, and through repeated delays his departure was retarded a whole year. meanwhile his long sojourn in africa, the report of his failures, and perhaps whispers of his insanity, had sown the seeds of discontent in asia; and as darius said in after-years, when recounting these events, �untruth had spread all over the country, not only in persia and media, but in other provinces.� cambyses himself felt that a longer absence would be injurious to his interests; he therefore crossed the isthmus in the spring of , and was making his way through northern syria, perhaps in the neighbourhood of hamath,* when he learned that a revolution had broken out, and that its rapid progress threatened the safety of his throne and life. * herodotus calls the place where cambyses died agbatana (ecbatana). pliny says that the town of carmel was thus named at first; but the place here mentioned cannot well have been in that direction. it has been identified with batansea in the country between the orontes and the euphrates, but the most likely theory is the one suggested by a passage in stephen of byzantium, that the place in question is the large syrian city of hamath. josephus makes him die at damascus. tradition asserted that a herald appeared before him and proclaimed aloud, in the hearing of the whole army, that cambyses, son of cyrus, had ceased to reign, and summoned whoever had till that day obeyed him to acknowledge henceforth smerdis, son of cyrus, as their lord. cambyses at first believed that his brother had been spared by the assassins, and now, after years of concealment, had at length declared himself; but he soon received proofs that his orders had been faithfully accomplished, and it is said that he wept at the remembrance of the fruitless crime. the usurper was gaumâta, one of the persian magi, whose resemblance to smerdis was so remarkable that even those who were cognisant of it invariably mistook the one for the other,* and he was brother to that oropastes to whom cambyses had entrusted the administration of his household before setting out for egypt.** * greek tradition is unanimous on this point, but the inscription of behistun does not mention it. ** the inscription of behistun informs us that the usurper�s name was gaumâta. pompeius trogus alone, probably following some author who made use of charon of lampsacus, handed down this name in the form comètes or gometes, which his abbreviator justin carelessly applied to the second brother. ctesias gives the mage the name sphendadates, which answers to the old persian spentôdâta, �he who is given by the holy one,� i.e. by ahura-mazdâ. the supporters of the mage gave him this name, as an heroic champion of the mazdoan faith who had destroyed such sanctuaries as were illegal, and identified him with spentôdâta, son of wistâspa. both of them were aware of the fate of smerdis; they also knew that the persians were ignorant of it, and that every one at court, including the mother and sisters of the prince, believed that he was still alive. gaumâta headed a revolt in the little town of pasyauvadâ on the th of viyakhna, in the early days of march, , and he was hailed by the common people from the moment of his appearance. persia, media, and the iranian provinces pronounced in his favour, and solemnly enthroned him three months later, on the th of garmapada; babylon next accepted him, followed by elam and the regions of the tigris. though astounded at first by such a widespread defection, cambyses soon recovered his presence of mind, and was about to march forward at the head of the troops who were still loyal to him, when he mysteriously disappeared. whether he was the victim of a plot set on foot by those about him, is not known. the official version of the story given by darius states that he died by his own hand, and it seems to insinuate that it was a voluntary act, but another account affirms that he succumbed to an accident;* while mounting his horse, the point of his dagger pierced his thigh in the same spot in which he had stabbed the apis of the egyptians. feeling himself seriously wounded, he suddenly asked the name of the place where he was lying, and was told it was �agbatana� (ecbatana). �now, long before this, the oracle of buto had predicted that he should end his days in agbatana, and he, believing it to be the agbatana in media where were his treasures, understood that he should die there in his old age; whereas the oracle meant agbatana in syria. when he heard the name, he perceived his error. he understood what the god intended, and cried, �it is here, then, that cambyses, son of cyrus, must perish!�� he expired about three weeks after, leaving no posterity and having appointed no successor.** * it has been pointed out, for the purpose of harmonising the testimony of herodotus with that of the inscription of behistun, that although the latter speaks of the death of cambyses by his own hand, it does not say whether that death was voluntary or accidental. ** the story of a person whose death has been predicted to take place in some well-known place, and who has died in some obscure spot of the same name, occurs several times in different historians, e.g. in the account of the emperor julian, and in that of henry iii. of england, who had been told that he would die in jerusalem, and whose death took place in the jerusalem chamber at westminster. ctesias has preserved an altogether different tradition--that cambyses on his return from babylon wounded himself while carving a piece of wood for his amusement, and died eleven days after the accident. what took place in the ensuing months still remains an enigma to us. the episode of gaumâta has often been looked on as a national movement, which momentarily restored to the medes the supremacy of which cyrus had robbed them; but it was nothing of the sort. gaumâta was not a mede by birth: he was a persian, born in persia, in the township of pisyauvadâ, at the foot of mount ara-kadrish, and the persians recognised and supported him as much as did the medes. it has also been thought that he had attempted to foment a religious revolution,* and, as a matter of fact, he destroyed several temples in a few months. * most of the ancient writers shared this opinion, and have been followed therein by many modern writers. rawlinson was the first to show that gaumâta�s movement was not median, and that he did not in the least alter the position of the persians in the empire: but he allows the magian usurpation to have been the prelude to a sort of religious reform. here, however, the reform touched less upon a question of belief than on one of fact. the unity of the empire presupposed the unity of the royal fire, and where-ever that fire was burning another could not be lighted without sacrilege in the eyes of the faithful. the pyres that gaumâta desired to extinguish were, no doubt, those which the feudal families had maintained for their separate use in defiance of the law, and the measure which abolished them had a political as well as a religious side. the little we can glean of the line of action adopted by smerdis does not warrant the attribution to him of the vast projects which some modern writers credit him with. he naturally sought to strengthen himself on the throne, which by a stroke of good fortune he had ascended, and whatever he did tended solely to this end. the name and the character that he had assumed secured him the respect and fidelity of the iranians: �there was not one, either among the medes or the persians, nor among the members of the achæmenian race, who dreamed of disputing his power� in the early days of his reign. the important thing in his eyes was, therefore, to maintain among his subjects as long as possible the error as to his identity. he put to death all, whether small or great, who had been in any way implicated in the affairs of the real smerdis, or whom he suspected of any knowledge of the murder. he withdrew from public life as far as practicable, and rarely allowed himself to be seen. having inherited the harem of his predecessors, together with their crown, he even went so far as to condemn his wives to a complete seclusion. he did not venture to hope, nor did those in his confidence, that the truth would not one day be known, but he hoped to gain, without loss of time, sufficient popularity to prevent the revelation of the imposture from damaging his prospects. the seven great houses which he had dispossessed would, in such a case, refuse to rally round him, and it was doubtless to lessen their prestige that he extinguished their pyres; but the people did not trouble themselves as to the origin of their sovereign, if he showed them his favour and took proper precautions to secure their good will. he therefore exempted the provinces from taxes and military service for a period of three years. he had not time to pursue this policy, and if we may believe tradition, the very precautions which he took to conceal his identity became the cause of his misfortunes. in the royal harem there were, together with the daughters of cyrus, relatives of all the persian nobility, and the order issued to stop all their communications with the outer world had excited suspicion: the avowals which had escaped cambyses before the catastrophe were now called to mind, and it was not long before those in high places became convinced that they had been the dupes of an audacious imposture. a conspiracy broke out, under the leadership of the chiefs of the seven clans, among whom was numbered darius, the son of hystaspes, who was connected, according to a genealogy more or less authentic, with the family of the achæmenides:* the conspirators surprised gaumâta in his palace of sikayauvatish, which was situated in the district of nisaya, not far from ecbatana, and assassinated him on the th of bâgayâdîsh, b.c. * the passage in the behistun inscription, in which darius sets forth his own genealogy, has received various interpretations. that of oppert seems still the most probable, that the text indicates two parallel branches of achæmenides, which nourished side by side until cambyses died and darius ascended the throne. such a genealogy, however, appears to be fictitious, invented solely for the purpose of connecting darius with the ancient royal line, with which in reality he could claim no kinship, or only a very distant connection. [illustration: .jpg darius, son of hystaspes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from m. dieulafoy. the exact particulars of this scene were never known, but popular imagination soon supplied the defect, furnishing a full and complete account of all that took place. in the first place, phædimê, daughter of otanes, one of the seven, furnished an authentic proof of the fraud which had been perpetrated. her father had opportunely recalled the marvellous resemblance between smerdis and the magian, and remembered at the same time that the latter had been deprived of his ears in punishment for some misdeed: he therefore sent certain instructions to phffidimê, who, when she made the discovery, at the peril of her life, that her husband had no ears, communicated the information to the disaffected nobles. the conspirators thereupon resolved to act without delay; but when they arrived at the palace, they were greeted with an extraordinary piece of intelligence. the magi, disquieted by some vague rumours which were being circulated against them, had besought prexaspes to proclaim to the people that the reigning monarch was indeed smerdis himself. but prexaspes, instead of making the desired declaration, informed the multitude that the son of cyrus was indeed dead, for he himself had murdered him at the bidding of cambyses, and, having made this confession, he put himself to death, in order to escape the vengeance of the magi. this act of prexaspes was an additional inducement to the conspirators to execute their purpose. the guard stationed at the gates of the palace dared not refuse admission to so noble a company, and when the throne-room was reached and the eunuchs forbade further advance, the seven boldly drew their swords and forced their way to the apartment occupied by the two magi. the usurpers defended themselves with bravery, but succumbed at length to the superior number of their opponents, after having wounded two of the conspirators. gobryas pinioned gaumâta with his arms, and in such a way that darius hesitated to make the fatal thrust for fear of wounding his comrade; but the latter bade him strike at all hazards, and by good fortune the sword did not even graze him. the crime accomplished, the seven conspirators agreed to choose as king that member of their company whose horse should first neigh after sunrise: a stratagem of his groom caused the election to fall on darius. as soon as he was duly enthroned, he instituted a festival called the �magophonia,� or �massacre of the magi,� in commemoration of the murder which had given him the crown. his first care was to recompense the nobles to whom he owed his position by restoring to them the privileges of which they had been deprived by the pseudo-smerdis, namely, the right of free access to the king, as well as the right of each individual to a funeral pyre; but the usurper had won the affection of the people, and even the inhabitants of those countries which had been longest subject to the persian sway did not receive the new sovereign favourably. darius found himself, therefore, under the necessity of conquering his dominions one after the other.* * the history of the early part of the reign of darius is recorded in the great inscription which the king caused to be cut in three languages on the rocks of behistun. the order of the events recorded in it is not always easy to determine. i have finally adopted, with some modifications, the arrangement of marquart, which seems to me to give the clearest �conspectus� of these confused wars. the persian empire, like those of the chaldæans and medes, had consisted hitherto of nothing but a fortuitous collection of provinces under military rule, of vassal kingdoms, and of semi-independent cities and tribes; there was no fixed division of authority, and no regular system of government for the outlying provinces. the governors assigned by cyrus and cambyses to rule the various provinces acquired by conquest, were actual viceroys, possessing full control of an army, and in some cases of a fleet as well, having at their disposal considerable revenues both in money and in kind, and habituated, owing to their distance from the capital, to settle pressing questions on their own responsibility, subject only to the necessity of making a report to the sovereign when the affair was concluded, or when the local resources were insufficient to bring it to a successful issue. for such free administrators the temptation must have been irresistible to break the last slender ties which bound them to the empire, and to set themselves up as independent monarchs. the two successive revolutions which had taken place in less than a year, convinced such governors, and the nations over which they bore rule, that the stately edifice erected by cyrus and cambyses was crumbling to pieces, and that the moment was propitious for each of them to carve out of its ruins a kingdom for himself; the news of the murder, rapidly propagated, sowed the seeds of revolt in its course--in susiana, at babylon, in media, in parthia, in margiana, among the sattagydes, in asia minor, and even in egypt itself*--which showed itself in some places in an open and undisguised form, while in others it was contemptuously veiled under the appearance of neutrality, or the pretence of waiting to see the issue of events. * in the _behistun inscription_, it is stated that insurrections broke out in all these countries while darius was at babylon; that is to say, while he was occupied in besieging that city, as is evident from the order of the events narrated. the first to break out into open rebellion were the neighbouring countries of elam and chaldæa: the death of smerdis took place towards the end of september, and a fortnight later saw two rebel chiefs enthroned--a certain athrîna at susa, and a nadinta-bel at babylon.* athrîna, the son of umbadaranma, was a scion of the dynasty dispossessed by the successors of sargon in the preceding century, but nevertheless he met with but lukewarm assistance from his own countrymen;** he was taken prisoner before a month had passed, and sent to darius, who slew him with his own hand. * the latest known document of the pseudo-smerdis is dated the st of tisri at babylon, and the first of nebuchadrezzar iii. are dated the th and th of the same month. the revolt of babylon, then, must be placed between the st and th of tisri; that is, either at the end of september or the beginning of october, b.c. ** the revolt cannot have lasted much more than six weeks, for on the th of athriyâdiya following, that is to say, at the beginning of december, darius had already joined issue with the babylonians on the banks of the tigris. babylon was not so easily mastered. her chosen sovereign claimed to be the son of nabonidus, and had, on ascending the throne, assumed the illustrious name of nebuchadrezzar; he was not supported, moreover, by only a few busybodies, but carried the whole population with him. the babylonians, who had at first welcomed cyrus so warmly, and had fondly imagined that they had made him one of themselves, as they had made so many of their conquerors for centuries past, soon realised their mistake. the differences of language, manners, spirit, and religion between themselves and the persians were too fundamental to allow of the naturalisation of the new sovereign, and of the acceptance by the achæmenides of that fiction of a double personality to which tiglath-pileser iii., shalmaneser, and even assur-bani-pal had submitted. popular fancy grew weary of cyrus, as it had already grown weary in turn of all the foreigners it had at first acclaimed--whether elamite, kaldâ, or assyrian--and by a national reaction the self-styled son of nabonidus enjoyed the benefit of a devotion proportionately as great as the hatred which had been felt twenty years before for his pretended sire. the situation might become serious if he were given time to consolidate his power, for the loyalty of the ancient provinces of the chaldæan empire was wavering, and there was no security that they would not feel inclined to follow the example of the capital as soon as they should receive news of the sedition. darius, therefore, led the bulk of his forces to babylon without a day�s more delay than was absolutely necessary, and the event proved that he had good reason for such haste. nebuchadrezzar iii. had taken advantage of the few weeks which had elapsed since his accession, to garrison the same positions on the right bank of the tigris, as nabonidus had endeavoured to defend against cyrus at the northern end of the fortifications erected by his ancestor. a well-equipped flotilla patrolled the river, and his lines presented so formidable a front that darius could not venture on a direct attack. he arranged his troops in two divisions, which he mounted partly on horses, partly on camels, and eluding the vigilance of his adversary by attacking him simultaneously on many sides, succeeded in gaining the opposite bank of the river. the chaldæans, striving in vain to drive him back into the stream, were at length defeated on the th of athriyâdiya, and they retired in good order on babylon. six days later, on the nd of anâmaka, they fought a second battle at zazanu, on the bank of the euphrates, and were again totally defeated. nebuchadrezzar escaped with a handful of cavalry, and hastened to shut himself up in his city. darius soon followed him, but if he cherished a hope that the babylonians would open their gates to him without further resistance, as they had done to cyrus, he met with a disappointment, for he was compelled to commence a regular siege and suspend all other operations, and that, too, at a moment when the provinces were breaking out into open insurrection on every hand.* * the account given by darius seems to imply that no interval of time elapsed between the second defeat of nebuchadrezzar iii. and the taking of babylon, so that several modern historians have rejected the idea of an obstinate resistance. herodotus, however, speaks of the long siege the city sustained, and the discovery of tablets dated in the first and even the second year of nebuchadrezzar iii. shows that the siege was prolonged into the second year of this usurper, at least until the month of nisân (march- april), b.c. no evidence can be drawn from the tablets dated in the reign of darius, for the oldest yet discovered, which is dated in the month sebat (jan.-feb.), in the year of his accession, and consequently prior to the second year of nebuchadrezzar, comes from abu-habba. on the other hand, the statement that all the revolts broke out while darius was �at babylon� does not allow of the supposition that all the events recorded before his departure for media could have been compressed into the space of three or four months. it seems, therefore, more probable that the siege lasted till b.c., as it can well have done if credit be given to the mention of �twenty-one months at least� by herodotus; perhaps the siege was brought to an end in the may of that year, as calculated by marquart. [illustration: .jpg darius piercing a rebel with his lance before a group of four prisoners] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the impression of an intaglio at st. petersburg. the attempt of the persian adventurer martîya to stir up the susians to revolt in his rear failed, thanks to the favourable disposition of the natives, who refused to recognise in him ummanîsh, the heir of their national princes. media, however, yielded unfortunately to the solicitations of a certain fravartîsh, who had assumed the personality of khshatrita of the race of cyaxares, and its revolt marked almost the beginning of a total break-up of the empire. the memory of astyages and cyaxares had not yet faded so completely as to cause the median nobles to relinquish the hope of reasserting the supremacy of media; the opportunity for accomplishing this aim now seemed all the more favourable, from the fact that darius had been obliged to leave this province almost immediately after the assassination of the usurper, and to take from it all the troops that he could muster for the siege of babylon. several of the nomadic tribes still remained faithful to him, but all the settled inhabitants of media ranged themselves under the banner of the pretender, and the spirit of insurrection spread thereupon into armenia and assyria. for one moment there was a fear lest it should extend to asia minor also, where orcetes, accustomed, in the absence of cambyses, to act as an autonomous sovereign, displayed little zeal in accommodating himself to the new order of things. there was so much uncertainty as to the leanings of the persian guard of orcetes, that darius did not venture to degrade the satrap officially, but despatched bagseus to sardes with precise instructions, which enabled him to accomplish his mission by degrees, so as not to risk a lydian revolt. his first act was to show the guard a rescript by which they were relieved from attendance on orcetes, and �thereupon they immediately laid down their spears.� emboldened by their ready obedience, bagseus presented to the secretary a second letter, which contained his instructions: �the great king commands those persians who are in sardes to kill orestes.� �whereupon,� it is recorded, �they drew their swords and slew him.� * * the context of herodotus indicates that the events narrated took place shortly after the accession of darius. further on herodotus mentions, as contemporaneous with the siege of babylon, events which took place after the death of orcetes; it is probable, therefore, that the scene described by herodotus occurred in b.c. at the latest. a revolt in asia minor was thus averted, at a time when civil war continued to rage in the centre of iran. the situation, however, continued critical. darius could not think of abandoning the siege of babylon, and of thus both losing the fruits of his victories and seeing nebuchadrezzar reappear in assyria or susiana. on the other hand, his army was a small one, and he would incur great risks in detaching any of his military chiefs for a campaign against the mede with an insufficient force. he decided, however, to adopt the latter course, and while he himself presided over the blockade, he simultaneously despatched two columns--one to media, under the command of the persian vidarna, one of the seven; the other to armenia, under the armenian dâdarshîsh. vidarna, encountered khshatrita near marush, in the mountainous region of the old namri, on the th of anâmaka, and gave him battle; but though he claimed the victory, the result was so indecisive that he halted in kambadênê, at the entrance to the gorges of the zagros mountains, and was there obliged to await reinforcements before advancing further. dâdarshîsh, on his side, gained three victories over the armenians--one near zuzza on the th of thuravâhara, another at tigra ten days later, and the third on the nd of thâigarshîsh, at a place not far from uhyâma--but he also was compelled to suspend operations and remain inactive pending the arrival of fresh troops. half the year was spent in inaction on either side, for the rebels had not suffered less than their opponents, and, while endeavouring to reorganise their forces, they opened negotiations with the provinces of the north-east with the view of prevailing on them to join their cause. darius, still detained before babylon, was unable to recommence hostilities until the end of b.c. he sent vaumisa to replace dâdarshîsh as the head of the army in armenia, and the new general distinguished himself at the outset by winning a decisive victory on the th of anâmaka, near izitush in assyria; but the effect which he hoped to secure from this success was neutralised almost immediately by grievous defections. sagartia, in the first place, rose in rebellion at the call of a pretended descendant of oyaxares, named chitrantakhma; hyrcania, the province governed by hystaspes, the father of darius, followed suit and took up the cause of khshatrita, and soon after margiana broke out into revolt at the instigation of a certain frâda. even persia itself deserted darius, and chose another king instead of a sovereign whom no one seemed willing to acknowledge. many of the mountain tribes could not yet resign themselves to the belief that the male line of cyrus had become extinct with the death of cambyses. the usurpation of gaumâta and the accession of darius had not quenched their faith in the existence of smerdis: if the magian were an impostor, it did not necessarily follow that smerdis had been assassinated, and when a certain vahyazdâta rose up in the town of târavâ in the district of yautiyâ, and announced himself as the younger son of cyrus, they received him with enthusiastic acclamations. a preliminary success gained by hystaspes at vispauzatîsh, in parthia, on the nd of viyakhna, b.c., prevented the guerilla bands of hyrcania from joining forces with the medes, and some days later the fall of babylon at length set darius free to utilise his resources to the utmost. the long resistance of nebuchadrezzar furnished a fruitful theme for legend: a fanciful story was soon substituted for the true account of the memorable siege he had sustained. half a century later, when his very name was forgotten, the heroism of his people continued to be extolled beyond measure. when darius arrived before the ramparts he found the country a desert, the banks of the canals cut through, and the gardens and pleasure-houses destroyed. the crops had been gathered and the herds driven within the walls of the city, while the garrison had reduced by a massacre the number of non-combatants, the women having all been strangled, with the exception of those who were needed to bake the bread. at the end of twenty months the siege seemed no nearer to its close than at the outset, and the besiegers were on the point of losing heart, when at length zopyrus, one of the seven, sacrificed himself for the success of the blockading army. slitting his nose and ears, and lacerating his back with the lash of a whip, he made his way into the city as a deserter, and persuaded the garrison to assign him a post of danger under pretence of avenging the ill-treatment he had received from his former master. he directed some successful sallies on points previously agreed upon, and having thus lulled to rest any remaining feelings of distrust on the part of the garrison, he treacherously opened to the persians the two gates of which he was in charge; three thousand babylonians were impaled, the walls were razed to the ground, and the survivors of the struggle were exiled and replaced by strange colonists.* the only authentic fact about this story is the length of the siege. nebuchadrezzar was put to death, and darius, at length free to act, hastened to despatch one of his lieutenants, the persian artavardiya, against vahyazdâta, while he himself marched upon the medes with the main body of the royal army.** * ctesias places the siege of babylon forty years later, under xerxes i.; according to him, it was megabysus, son of zopyrus, who betrayed the city. polysenus asserts that the stratagem of zopyrus was adopted in imitation of a sakian who dwelt beyond the oxus. latin writers transferred the story to italy, and localised it at gabii: but the roman hero, sextus tarquinius, did not carry his devotion to the point of mutilating himself. ** _beldstun inscr_.: �then i sent the army of the persians and medes which was with me. one named artavardiya, a persian, my servant, i made their general; the rest of the persian army went to media with me.� the rebels had hitherto been confronted by the local militia, brave but inexperienced troops, with whom they had been able to contend on a fairly equal footing: the entry into the field of the veteran regiments of cyrus and cambyses changed the aspect of affairs, and promptly brought the campaign to a successful issue. darius entered media by the defiles of kerend, reinforced vidarna in kambadçnê, and crushed the enemy near the town of kundurush, on the th of adukanîsh, b.c. khshatrita fled towards the north with some few horsemen, doubtless hoping to reach the recesses of mount elburz, and to continue there the struggle; but he was captured at bagâ and carried to ecbatana. his horrible punishment was proportionate to the fear he had inspired: his nose, ears, and tongue were cut off, and his eyes gouged out, and in this mutilated condition he was placed in chains at the gate of the palace, to demonstrate to his former subjects how the achæmenian� king could punish an impostor. when the people had laid this lesson sufficiently to heart, khshatrita was impaled; many of his principal adherents were ranged around him and suffered the same fate, while the rest were decapitated as an example. babylon and media being thus successfully vanquished, the possession of the empire was assured to darius, whatever might happen in other parts of his territory, and henceforth the process of repressing disaffection went on unchecked. immediately after the decisive battle of kundurush, vaumisa accomplished the pacification of armenia by a victory won near autiyâra, and artavardiya defeated vahyazdâta for the first time at eakhâ in persia. vahyazdâta had committed the mistake of dividing his forces and sending a portion of them to arachosia. vivâna, the governor of this province, twice crushed the invaders, and almost at the same time the persian dâdardîsh of bactriana was triumphing over frâda and winning margiana back to allegiance. for a moment it seemed as if the decisive issue of the struggle might be prolonged for months, since it was announced that the appearance of a new pseudo-smerdis on the scene had been followed by the advent of a second pseudo-nebuchadrezzar in chaldæa. darius left only a weak garrison at babylon when he started to attack khshatrita: a certain arakha, an armenian by birth, presenting himself to the babylonian people as the son of nabonidus, caused himself to be proclaimed king in december, b.c.; but the city was still suffering so severely from the miseries of the long siege, that it was easy for the mede vindafrâ to reduce it promptly to submission after a month or six weeks of semi-independence. this was the last attempt at revolt. chitran-takhma expiated his crimes by being impaled, and hystaspes routed the hyrcanian battalions at patigrabana in parthia: artavardiya having defeated vahyazdâta, near mount paraga, on the th of garmapada, b.c., besieged him in his fortress of uvâdeshaya, and was not long in effecting his capture. the civil war came thus to an end. it had been severe, but it had brought into such prominence the qualities of the sovereign that no one henceforth dared to dispute his possession of the crown. a man of less energetic character and calm judgment would have lost his head at the beginning of the struggle, when almost every successive week brought him news of a fresh rebellion--in susiana, babylon, media, armenia, assyria, margiana, hyrcania, and even persia itself, not to speak of the intrigues in asia minor and egypt; he would have scattered his forces to meet the dangers on all sides at once, and would assuredly have either succumbed in the struggle, or succeeded only by chance after his fate had trembled in the balance for years. darius, however, from the very beginning knew how to single out the important points upon which to deal such vigorous blows as would ensure him the victory with the least possible delay. he saw that babylon, with its numerous population, its immense wealth and prestige, and its memory of recent supremacy, was the real danger to his empire, and he never relaxed his hold on it until it was subdued, leaving his generals to deal with the other nations, the medes included, and satisfied if each of them could but hold his adversary in check without gaining any decided advantage over him. the event justified his decision. when once babylon had fallen, the remaining rebels were no longer a source of fear; to defeat khshatrita was the work of a few weeks only, and the submission of the other provinces followed as a natural consequence on the ruin of media.* * mention of some new wars is made towards the end of the inscription, but the text here is so mutilated that the sense can no longer be easily determined. [illustration: .jpg rebels brought to darius by ahura-mazd] this is the scene depicted on the rock of behistun. after consummating his victories, darius caused an inscription in commemoration of them to be carved on the rocks in the pass of bagistana [behistun], one of the most frequented routes leading from the basin of the tigris to the tableland of iran. [illustration: .jpg the rocks of behistun] drawn by boudier, from flandin and coste. there his figure is still to be seen standing, with his foot resting on the prostrate body of an enemy, and his hand raised in the attitude of one addressing an audience, while nine figures march in file to meet him, their arms tied behind their backs, and cords round their necks, representing all the pretenders whom he had fought and put to death--athrîna, nadinta-bel, khshatrita, vahyazdâta, arakha, and chitrantakhma; an inscription, written in the three official languages of the court, recounts at full length his mighty deeds. the drama did not, however, come to a close with the punishment of vahyazdâta, for though no tribe or chieftain remained now in open revolt, many of those who had taken no active share in the rebellion had, by their conduct during the crisis, laid themselves open to grave suspicions, and it seemed but prudent to place them under strict surveillance or to remove them from office altogether. orotes had been summarily despatched, and his execution did not disturb the peace of asia minor; but aryandes, to whose rule cambyses had entrusted the valley of the nile, displayed no less marked symptoms of disaffection, and deserved the same fate. though he had not ventured to usurp openly the title of king, he had arrogated to himself all the functions and rights of royalty, and had manifested as great an independence in his government as if he had been an actual pharaoh. the inhabitants of gyrene did not approve of the eagerness displayed by their tyrant arkesilas iii. to place himself under the persian yoke: after first expelling and then recalling him, they drove him away a second time, and at length murdered him at barca, whither he had fled for refuge. pheretimô came to egypt to seek the help of aryandes, just as laarchos had formerly implored the assistance of amasis, and represented to him that her son had fallen a victim to his devotion to his suzerain. it was a good opportunity to put to ransom one of the wealthiest countries of africa; so the governor sent to the cyrenaica all the men and vessels at his disposal. barca was the only city to offer any resistance, and the persian troops were detained for nine months motionless before its walls, and the city then only succumbed through treachery. some detachments forced their way as far as the distant town of euesperides,* and it is possible that aryandes dreamt for a moment of realising the designs which cambyses had formed against carthage. insufficiency of supplies stayed the advance of his generals; but the riches of their ally, cyrene, offered them a strong temptation, and they were deliberating how they might make this wealth their own before returning to memphis, and were, perhaps, on the point of risking the attempt, when they received orders to withdraw. the march across the desert proved almost fatal to them. the libyans of marmarica, attracted by the spoils with which the persian troops were laden, harassed them incessantly, and inflicted on them serious losses; they succeeded, however, in arriving safely with their prisoners, among whom were the survivors of the inhabitants of barca. at this time the tide of fortune was setting strongly in favour of darius: aryandes, anxious to propitiate that monarch, despatched these wretched captives to persia as a trophy of his success, and darius sent them into bactriana, where they founded a new barca.** * this is the town which later on under the lagidæ received the name of berenice, and which is now called benghazi. ** it is doubtless to these acts of personal authority on the part of aryandes that darius alludes in the behistun inscription, when he says, �while i was before babylon, the following provinces revolted against me--persia and susiana, the medes and assyria, and the egyptians...� but this tardy homage availed him nothing. darius himself visited egypt and disembarrassed himself of �his troublesome subject by his summary execution, inflicted, some said, because he had issued coins of a superior fineness to those of the royal mint,* while, according to others, it was because he had plundered egypt and so ill-treated the egyptians as to incite them to rebellion. * it is not certain that aryandes did actually strike any coinage in his own name, and perhaps herodotus has only repeated a popular story current in egypt in his days. if this money actually existed, its coinage was but a pretext employed by darius; the true motive of the condemnation of aryandes was certainly an armed revolt, or a serious presumption of revolutionary intentions. after the suppression of this rival, darius set himself to win the affection of his egyptian province, or, at least, to render its servitude bearable. with a country so devout and so impressed with its own superiority over all other nations, the best means of accomplishing his object was to show profound respect for its national gods and its past glory. darius, therefore, proceeded to shower favours on the priests, who had been subject to persecution ever since the disastrous campaign in ethiopia. cambyses had sent into exile in elam the chief priest of sais--that uza-harrîsnîti who had initiated him into the sacred rites; darius gave permission to this important personage to return to his native land, and commissioned him to repair the damage inflicted by the madness of the son of cyrus. uzaharrîsnîti, escorted back with honour to his native city, re-established there the colleges of sacred scribes, and restored to the temple of nît the lands and revenues which had been confiscated. greek tradition soon improved upon the national account of this episode, and asserted that darius took an interest in the mysteries of egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books, and that on his arrival at memphis in b.c., immediately after the death of an apis, he took part publicly in the general mourning, and promised a reward of a hundred talents of gold to whosoever should discover the successor of the bull. according to a popular story still current when herodotus travelled in egypt, the king visited the temple of pthah before leaving memphis, and ordered his statue to be erected there beside that of sesostris. the priests refused to obey this command, for, said they, �darius has not equalled the deeds of sesostris: he has not conquered the scythians, whom sesostris overcame.� darius replied that �he hoped to accomplish as much as sesostris had done, if he lived as long as sesostris,� and so conciliated the patriotic pride of the priests. the egyptians, grateful for his moderation, numbered him among the legislators whose memory they revered, by the side of menés, asykhis, bocchoris, and sabaco. the whole empire was now obedient to the will of one man, but the ordeal from which it had recently escaped showed how loosely the elements of it were bound together, and with what facility they could be disintegrated. the system of government in force hitherto was that introduced into assyria by tiglath-pileser iii., which had proved so eminently successful in the time of sargon and his descendants; babylon and ecbatana had inherited it from nineveh, and persepolis had in turn adopted it from ecbatana and babylon. it had always been open to objections, of which by no means the least was the great amount of power and independence accorded by it to the provincial governors; but this inconvenience had been little felt when the empire was of moderate dimensions, and when no province permanently annexed to the empire lay at any very great distance from the capital for the time being. but this was no longer the case, now that persian rule extended over nearly the whole of asia, from the indus to the thracian bosphorus, and over a portion of africa also. it must have seemed far from prudent to set governors invested with almost regal powers over countries so distant that a decree despatched from the palace might take several weeks to reach its destination. the heterogeneity of the elements in each province was a guarantee of peace in the eyes of the sovereign, and darius carefully abstained from any attempt at unification: not only did he allow vassal republics, and tributary kingdoms and nations to subsist side by side, but he took care that each should preserve its own local dynasty, language, writing, customs, religion, and peculiar legislation, besides the right to coin money stamped with the name of its chief or its civic symbol. the greek cities of the coast maintained their own peculiar constitutions which they had enjoyed under the mernmadas; darius merely required that the chief authority among them should rest in the hands of the aristocratic party, or in those of an elective or hereditary tyrant whose personal interest secured his fidelity. the carians,* lycians,** pamphylians, and cilicians*** continued under the rule of their native princes, subject only to the usual obligations. of the _corvée_, taxation, and military service as in past days; the majority of the barbarous tribes which inhabited the taurus and the mountainous regions in the centre of asia minor were even exempted from all definite taxes, and were merely required to respect the couriers, caravans, and armies which passed through their territory. * herodotus cites among the commanders of the persian fleet three carian dynasts, histiseus, pigres, and damasithymus, besides the famous artemisia of halicarnassus. ** in herodotus where a dynast named kyberniskos, son of sika, is mentioned among the commanders of the fleet. the received text of herodotus needs correction, and we should read kybernis, son of kossika, some of whose coins are still in existence. *** the cilician contingent in the fleet of xerxes at salamis was commanded by syennesis himself, and cilicia never had a satrap until the time of cyrus the younger. [illustration: .jpg map of the archaemenian strapies] native magistrates and kings still bore sway in phoenicia* and cyprus, and the shêkhs of the desert preserved their authority over the marauding and semi-nomadic tribes of idumasa, nabatsea, moab, and ammon, and the wandering bedâwin on the euphrates and the khabur. egypt, under darius, remained what she had been under the saitic and ethiopian dynasties, a feudal state governed by a pharaoh, who, though a foreigner, was yet reputed to be of the solar race; the land continued to be divided unequally into diverse principalities, thebes still preserving its character as a theocracy under the guidance of the pallacide of amon and her priestly counsellors, while the other districts subsisted under military chieftains. our information concerning the organisation of the central and eastern provinces is incomplete, but it is certain that here also the same system prevailed. in the years of peace which succeeded the troubled opening of his reign, that is, from to b.c.,** darius divided the whole empire into satrapies, whose number varied at different periods of his reign from twenty to twenty-three, and even twenty-eight.*** * three kings, viz. the kings of sidon, tyre, and arvad, bore commands in the phoenician fleet of xerxes. ** herodotus states that this dividing of the empire into provinces took place immediately after the accession of darius, and this mistake is explained by the fact that he ignores almost entirely the civil wars which filled the earliest years of the reign. his enumeration of twenty satrapies comprises india and omits thrace, which enables us to refer the drawing up of his list to a period before the scythian campaign, viz. before b.c. herodotus very probably copied it from the work of hecatseus of miletus, and consequently it reproduces a document contemporary with darius himself. *** the number twenty is, as has been remarked, that given by herodotus, and probably by hecatæus of miletus. the great behistun inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and the inscription of nakhsh-î-rustem gives twenty-eight. persia proper was not included among these, for she had been the cradle of the reigning house, and the instrument of conquest.* * in the great behistun inscription darius mentions persia first of all the countries in his possession. in the inscription e of persepolis he omits it entirely, and in that of nakhsh-î-rustem he does not include it in the general catalogue. the iranian table-land, and the parts of india or regions beyond the oxus which bordered on it, formed twelve important vice-royalties--media, hyrcania, parthia, zaranka, aria, khorasmia, bactriana, sogdiana, gandaria, and the country of the sakae--reaching from the plains of tartary almost to the borders of china, the country of the thatagus in the upper basin of the elmend, arachosia, and the land of maka on the shores of the indian ocean. ten satrapies were reckoned in the west--uvayâ, elam, in which lay susa, one of the favourite residences of darius; babirus (babylon) and chaldæa; athurâ, the ancient kingdom of assyria; arabayâ, stretching from the khabur to the litany, the jordan, and the orontes; egypt, the peoples of the sea, among whom were reckoned the phoenicians, cilicians, and cypriots, and the islanders of the Ægean; yaunâ, which comprised lycia, caria, and the greek colonies along the coast; sparda, with phrygia and mysia; armenia; and lastly, katpatuka or cappadocia, which lay on both sides of the halys from the taurus to the black sea. if each of these provinces had been governed, as formerly, by a single individual, who thus became king in all but name and descent, the empire would have run great risk of a speedy dissolution. darius therefore avoided concentrating the civil and military powers in the same hands. in each province he installed three officials independent of each other, but each in direct communication with himself--a satrap, a general, and a secretary of state. the satraps were chosen from any class in the nation, from among the poor as well as from among the wealthy, from foreigners as well as from persians;* but the most important satrapies were bestowed only on persons allied by birth** or marriage with the achæmenids,*** and, by preference, on the legitimate descendants of the six noble houses. they were not appointed for any prescribed period, but continued in office during the king�s pleasure. they exercised absolute authority in all civil matters, and maintained a court, a body-guard,**** palaces and extensive parks, or _paradises_, where they indulged in the pleasures of the chase; they controlled the incidence of taxation,^ administered justice, and possessed the power of life and death. * herodotus mentions a satrap chosen from among the lydians, pactyas, and another satrap of greek extraction, xenagoras of halicarnassus. ** the most characteristic instance is that of hystaspes, who was satrap of persia under oambyses, and of parthia and hyrcania under his own son. one of the brothers of darius, artaphernes, was satrap of sardes, and three of the king�s sons, achemenes, ariabignes, and masistes, were satraps of egypt, ionia, and bactriana respectively. *** to understand how well established was the custom of bestowing satrapies on those only who were allied by marriage to the royal house, it is sufficient to recall the fact that, later on, under xerxes i., when pausanias, king of sparta, had thoughts of obtaining the position of satrap in greece, he asked for the hand of an achæmenian princess. **** we know, for example, that orcotes, satrap of sardes under cyrus, cambyses, and darius, had a body-guard of persians. ^ thus, artaphernes, satrap of sardes, had a cadastral survey made of the territory of the ionians, and by the results of this survey he regulated the imposition of taxes, �which from that time up to the present day are exacted according to his ordinance.� attached to each satrap was a secretary of state, who ostensibly acted as his chancellor, but whose real function was to exercise a secret supervision over his conduct and report upon it to the imperial ministers.* the persian troops, native militia and auxiliary forces quartered in the province, were placed under the orders, moreover, of a general, who was usually hostile to the satrap and the secretary.** these three officials counterbalanced each other, and held each other mutually in check, so that a revolt was rendered very difficult, if not impossible. all three were kept in constant communication with the court by relays of regular couriers, who carried their despatches on horseback or on camels, from one end of asia to the other, in the space of a few weeks.*** * the rôle played by the secretary is clearly indicated by the history of orotes, satrap of sardes. ** while darius appoints his brother artaphernes satrap of lydia, he entrusts the command of the army and the fleet to otanes, son of sisamnes. similarly several generals are met with at the side of artaphernes in the ionic revolt. *** xenophon compares their speed in travelling to the flight of birds. a good example of the use of the camel for the postal service is cited by strabo, on the occasion of the death of philotas and the execution of parmenion under alexander. the most celebrated of the post-roads was that which ran from sardes to susa through lydia and phrygia, crossing the halys, traversing cappadocia and cilicia, and passing through armenia and across the euphrates, until at length, after passing through matiênê and the country of the cossæans, it reached elam. this main route was divided into one hundred and eleven stages, which were performed by couriers on horseback and partly in ferry-boats, in eighty-four days. other routes, of which we have no particular information, led to egypt, media, bactria, and india,* and by their means the imperial officials in the capital were kept fully informed of all that took place in the most distant parts of the empire. as an extra precaution, the king sent out annually certain officers, called his �eyes� or his �ears,� ** who appeared on the scene when they were least expected, and investigated the financial or political situation, reformed abuses in the administration, and reprimanded or even suspended the government officials; they were accompanied by a body of troops to support their decisions, whose presence invested their counsels with the strongest sanction.*** an unfavourable report, a slight irregularity, a mere suspicion, even, was sufficient to disqualify a satrap. sometimes he was deposed, often secretly condemned to death without a trial, and the execution of the judgment was committed even to his own servants. * ctesias at the end of his work describes the route leading from ephesus to bactriana and india. it is probable that the route described by isidorus of charax in his _stathma parthica_ already existed in the times of the achæmenids, and was traversed by their postal couriers. ** mention of the _eye of the king_ occurs in herodotus, in Æschylus, and in plutarch, of the _ear_ in xenophon; cf. the persian proverb, according to which �the king has many eyes and many ears.� *** xenophon affirms that these inspections were still held in his day. [illustration: .jpg street vender of curios] after the painting by gerome. a messenger would arrive unexpectedly, and remit to the guards an order charging them to put their chief to death--an order which was promptly executed at the mere sight of the royal decree. this reform in the method of government was displeasing to the persian nobles, whose liberty of action it was designed to curtail, and they took their revenge in sneering at the obedience they could not refuse to render. cyrus, they said, had been a father, cambyses a master, but darius was only a pedler greedy of gain. the chief reason for this division of the empire into provinces was, indeed, fiscal rather than political: to arrange the incidence of taxation in his province, to collect the revenue in due time and forward the total amount to the imperial treasury, formed the fundamental duty of a satrap, to which all others had to yield. persia proper was exempt from the payment of any fixed sum, its inhabitants being merely required to offer presents to the king whenever he passed through their districts. these semi-compulsory gifts were proportioned to the fortunes of the individual contributors; they might consist merely of an ox or a sheep, a little milk or cheese, some dates, a handful of flour, or some vegetables. the other provinces, after being subjected to a careful survey, were assessed partly in money, partly in kind, according to their natural capacity or wealth. the smallest amount of revenue raised in any province amounted to talents of silver--the sum, for instance, collected from arachosia with its dependencies gedrosia and grandara; while egypt yielded a revenue of talents, and the amount furnished by babylon, the wealthiest province of all, amounted to talents. the total revenue of the empire reached the enormous sum of.£ , , , estimated by weight of silver, which is equivalent to over £ , , of modern english money, if the greater value of silver in antiquity is taken into consideration. in order to facilitate the collection of the revenue, darius issued the gold and silver coins which are named after him. on the obverse side these darics are stamped with a figure of the sovereign, armed with the bow or javelin. they were coined on the scale of gold darics to one talent, each daric weighing normally. oz. troy, and being worth exactly silver drachmae or medic shekels; so that the relative value of the two metals was approximately to / |. [illustration: .jpg daric of darius, son of hystaspes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a specimen in the bibliothèque nationale. the most ancient type of daric was thick and irregular in shape, and rudely stamped, but of remarkable fineness, the amount of alloy being never more than three per cent. the use of this coinage was nowhere obligatory, and it only became general in the countries bordering on the mediterranean, where it met the requirements of international traffic and political relations, and in the payment of the army and the navy. in the interior, the medium of exchange used in wholesale and retail commercial transactions continued to be metals estimated by weight, and the kings of persia themselves preferred to store their revenues in the shape of bullion; as the metal was received at the royal treasury it was melted and poured into clay moulds, and was minted into money only gradually, according to the whim or necessity of the moment.* * arrian relates that alexander found , talents� weight of silver in the treasury at susa; other hoards quite as rich were contained in the palaces of persepolis and pasargadæ. taxes in kind were levied even more largely than in money, but the exact form they assumed in the different regions of the empire has not yet been ascertained. the whole empire was divided into districts, which were charged with the victualling of the army and the court, and babylon alone bore a third of the charges under this head. we learn elsewhere that egypt was bound to furnish corn for the , men of the army of occupation, and that the fisheries of the fayum yielded the king a yearly revenue of talents. the medes furnished similarly , sheep, mules, and horses; the armenians, , foals; the cilicians, white horses, one for each day in the year; the babylonians, youthful eunuchs; and any city or town which produced or manufactured any valuable commodity was bound to furnish a regular supply to the sovereign. thus, chalybon provided wine; libya and the oases, salt; india, dogs, with whose support four large villages in babylonia were charged; the Æolian assos, cheese; and other places, in like manner, wool, wines, dyes, medicines, and chemicals. these imperial taxes, though they seem to us somewhat heavy, were not excessive, but taken by themselves they give us no idea of the burdens which each province had to resign itself to bear. the state provided no income for the satraps; their maintenance and that of their suite were charged on the province, and they made ample exactions on the natives. the province of babylon was required to furnish its satrap daily with an _ardeb_ of silver; egypt, india, media, and syria each provided a no less generous allowance for its governor, and the poorest provinces were not less heavily burdened. the satraps required almost as much to satisfy their requirements as did the king; but for the most part they fairly earned their income, and saved more to their subjects than they extorted from them. they repressed brigandage, piracy, competition between the various cities, and local wars; while quarrels, which formerly would have been settled by an appeal to arms, were now composed before their judgment-seats, and in case of need the rival factions were forcibly compelled to submit to their decisions. they kept up the roads, and afforded complete security to travellers by night and day; they protected industries and agriculture, and, in accordance with the precepts of their religious code, they accounted it an honourable task to break up waste land or replant deserted sites. darius himself did not disdain to send congratulations to a satrap who had planted trees in asia minor, and laid out one of those wooded parks in which the king delighted to refresh himself after the fatigues of government, by the exercise of walking or in the pleasures of the chase. in spite of its defects, the system of government inaugurated by darius secured real prosperity to his subjects, and to himself a power far greater than that enjoyed by any of his predecessors. it rendered revolts on the part of the provincial governors extremely difficult, and enabled the court to draw up a regular budget and provide for its expenses without any undue pressure on its subjects; in one point only was it defective, but that point was a cardinal one, namely, in the military organisation. darius himself maintained, for his personal protection, a bodyguard recruited from the persians and the medes. it was divided into three corps, consisting respectively of cavalry, infantry of noble birth, armed with lances whose shafts were ornamented below with apples of gold or silver--whence their name of _mêlophori_--and under them the , �immortals,� in ten battalions, the first of which had its lances ornamented with golden pomegranates. this guard formed the nucleus of the standing army, which could be reinforced by the first and second grades of persian and median feudal nobility at the first summons. forces of varying strength garrisoned the most important fortresses of the empire, such as sardes, memphis, elephantine, daphnæ, babylon, and many others, to hold the restless natives in check. these were, indeed, the only regular troops on which the king could always rely. whenever a war broke out which demanded no special effort, the satraps of the provinces directly involved summoned the military contingents of the cities and vassal states under their control, and by concerted action endeavoured to bring the affair to a successful issue without the necessity of an appeal to the central authority. if, on the contrary, troubles arose which threatened the welfare of the whole empire, and the sovereign felt called upon to conduct the campaign in person, he would mobilise his guard, and summon the reserves from several provinces or even from all of them. veritable hordes of recruits then poured in, but these masses of troops, differing from each other in their equipment and methods of fighting, in disposition and in language, formed a herd of men rather than an army. they had no cohesion or confidence in themselves, and their leaders, unaccustomed to command such enormous numbers, suffered themselves to be led rather than exercise authority as guides. any good qualities the troops may have possessed were neutralised by lack of unity in their methods of action, and their actual faults exaggerated this defect, so that, in spite of their splendid powers of endurance and their courage under every ordeal, they ran the risk of finding themselves in a state of hopeless inferiority when called upon to meet armies very much smaller, but composed of homogenous elements, all animated with the same spirit and drilled in the same school. by continual conquests, the persians were now reduced to only two outlets for their energies, in two opposite directions--in the east towards india, in the west towards greece. everywhere else their advance was arrested by the sea or other obstacles almost as impassable to their heavily armed battalions: to the north the empire was bounded by the black sea, the caucasus, the caspian sea, and the siberian steppes; to the south, by the indian ocean, the sandy table-land of arabia, and the african deserts. at one moment, about b.c., it is possible that they pushed forward towards the east.* * india is not referred to in the behistun inscription, but is mentioned in one of the inscriptions of persepolis, and in that of nakhsh-î-rustem. the campaign in which it was subjugated must be placed about b.c. [illustration: .jpg funeral offerings.] from the iranian plateau they beheld from afar the immense plain of the hapta hindu (or the punjab). darius invaded this territory, and made himself master of extensive districts which he formed into a new satrapy, that of india, but subsequently, renouncing all idea of pushing eastward as far as the granges, he turned his steps towards the southeast. a fleet, constructed at peukêla and placed under the command of a greek admiral, scylax of caryanda, descended the indus by order of the king;* subjugating the tribes who dwelt along the banks as he advanced, scylax at length reached the ocean, on which he ventured forth, undismayed by the tides, and proceeded in a westerly direction, exploring, in less than thirty months, the shores of gedrosia and arabia. * scylax published an account of his voyage which was still extant in the time of aristotle. hugo berger questions the authenticity of the circumnavigation of arabia, as that of the circumnavigation of africa under necho. once on the threshold of india, the persians saw open before them a brilliant and lucrative career: the circumstances which prevented them from following up this preliminary success are unknown--perhaps the first developments of nascent buddhism deterred them--but certain it is that they arrested their steps when they had touched merely the outskirts of the basin of the indus, and retreated at once towards the west. the conquest of lydia, and subsequently of the greek cities and islands along the coast of the Ægean, had doubtless enriched the empire by the acquisition of active subject populations, whose extraordinary aptitude in the arts of peace as well as of war might offer incalculable resources to a sovereign who should know how to render them tractable and rule them wisely. not only did they possess the elements of a navy as enterprising and efficacious as that of the phoenicians, but the perfection of their equipment and their discipline on land rendered them always superior to any asiatic army, in whatever circumstances, unless they were crushed by overwhelming numbers. inquisitive, bold, and restless, greedy of gain, and inured to the fatigues and dangers of travel, the greeks were to be encountered everywhere--in asia minor, egypt, syria, babylon, and even persia itself; and it was a greek, we must remember, whom the great king commissioned to navigate the course of the indus and the waters of the indian ocean. at the same time, the very ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, their impatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness to civic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, rendered them the most dangerous subjects imaginable to govern, and their loyalty very uncertain. moreover, their admission as vassals of the persian empire had not altered their relations with european greece, and commercial transactions between the opposite shores of the Ægean, inter-marriages, the travels of voyagers, movements of mercenaries, and political combinations, went on as freely and frequently under the satraps of sardes as under the mermnadas. it was to corinth, sparta, and athens that the families banished by cyrus after his conquest fled for refuge, and every time a change of party raised a new tyrant to power in one of the Æolian, ionian, or doric communities, the adherents of the deposed ruler rushed in similar manner to seek shelter among their friends across the sea, sure to repay their hospitality should occasion ever require it. plots and counterplots were formed between the two shores, without any one paying much heed to the imperial authority of persia, and the constant support which the subject greeks found among their free brethren was bound before long to rouse the anger of the court at susa. when polycrates, foreseeing the fall of amasis, placed himself under the suzerainty of cambyses, the corinthians and spartans came to besiege him in samos without manifesting any respect for the great king. they failed in this particular enterprise,* but later on, after oroetes had been seized and put to death, it was to the spartans that the successor of polycrates, maaandrios, applied for help to assert his claim to the possession of the tyranny against syloson, brother of polycrates and a personal friend of darius.** * the date of the death of polycrates must be placed between that of the conquest of egypt and that of the revolt of gaumâta, either in or b.c. ** the reinstatement of syloson may be placed in b.c., about the time when darius was completing the reorganisation of the empire and preparing to attack greece. this constant intervention of the foreigner was in evident contradiction to the spirit which had inspired the reorganisation of the empire. just when efforts were being made to strengthen the imperial power and ensure more effective obedience from the provincials by the institution of satrapies, it was impossible to put up with acts of unwarrantable interference, which would endanger the prestige of the sovereign and the authority of his officers. conquest presented the one and only natural means of escape from the difficulties of the present situation and of preventing their recurrence; when satraps should rule over the european as well as over the asiatic coasts of the Ægean, all these turbulent greeks would be forced to live at peace with one another and in awe of the sovereign, as far as their fickle nature would allow. it was not then, as is still asserted, the mere caprice of a despot which brought upon the greek world the scourge of the persian wars, but the imperious necessity of security, which obliges well-organised empires to subjugate in turn all the tribes and cities which cause constant trouble on its frontiers. darius, who was already ruler of a good third of the hellenic world, from trebizond to barca, saw no other means of keeping what he already possessed, and of putting a stop to the incessant fomentation of rebellion in his own territories, than to conquer the mother-country as he had conquered the colonies, and to reduce to subjection the whole of european hellas. chapter ii--the last days of the old eastern world _the median war--the last native dynasties of egypt--the eastern world on the eve op the macedonian conquest._ _the persians in b.c.--european greece and the dangers which its independence presented to the safety of the empire--the preliminaries of the median wars: the scythian expedition, the conquest of thrace and macedonia--the ionic revolt, the intervention of athens and the taking of sardes; the battle of lade--mardonius in thrace and in macedonia._ _the median wars--the expedition of datis and artaphernes: the taking of eretria, the battle of marathon ( )--the revolt of egypt under khabbisha; the death of darius and the accession of xerxes i.--the revolt of babylon under shamasherïb--the invasion of greece: artemision, thermopylæ, the taking of athens, salamis--platsæ and the final retreat of the persians: mycalê--the war carried on by the athenians and the league of delos: inaros, the campaigns in cyprus and egypt, the peace of oallias--the death of xerxes._ _artaxerxes i. ( - ): the revolt of megabyzos--the palaces of pasargadæ. persepolis, and susa; persian architecture and sculpture; court life, the king and his harem--revolutions in the palace--xerxes i., sekudianos, darius ii.--intervention in greek affairs and the convention of miletus; the end of the peace of gallias--artaxerxes ii. ( - ) and gyrus the younger: the battle of kunaxa and the retreat of the ten thousand ( )._ _troubles in asia minor, syria, and egypt--amyrtxus and the xxviiith saite dynasty--the xxixth sebennytic dynasty--nephorites i, hakoris, psammutis, their alliances with evagoras and with the states of continental greece--the xxxth mendesian dynasty--nectanebo i, tachôs and the invasion of syria, the revolt of nectanebo ii.--the death of artaxerxes ii.--the accession of ochus ( b.c.), his unfortunate wars in the delta, the conquest of egypt ( ) and the reconstitution of the empire._ _the eastern world: elam, urartu, the syrian kingdoms, the ancient semitic states decayed and decaying--babylon in its decline--the jewish state and its miseries--nehemiah, ezra--egypt in the eyes of the greeks: sais, the delta, the inhabitants of the marshes--memphis, its monuments, its population--travels in upper egypt: the fayum, khemmis, thebes, elephantine--the apparent vigour and actual feebleness of egypt._ _persia and its powerlessness to resist attack: the rise of macedonia, philippi --arses ( ) and darius codomannos ( )--alexander the great--the invasion of asia--the battle of granicus and the conquest of the asianic peninsula--issus, the siege of tyre and of gaza, the conquest of egypt, the foundation of alexandria--arbela: the conquest of babylon, susa, and ecbatana--the death of darius and the last days of the old eastern world._ [illustration: .jpg page image] [page and need to be rescanned] chapter ii--the last days of the old eastern world _the median wars--the last native dynasties of egypt--the eastern world on the eve of the macedonian conquest._ [drawn by boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of sidon, now in the museum of st. irene. the vignette, which is by faucher-gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of nectanebo i., now in the egyptian museum at the vatican.] darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies had taught him not only the condition and needs of asia minor, but of the teaching the scythians such a lesson as would prevent them from bearing down upon his right flank during his march, or upon his rear while engaged in a crucial struggle in the hellenic peninsula. on the other hand, the geographical information possessed by the persians with regard to the danubian regions was of so vague a character, that darius must have believed the scythians to have been nearer to his line of operations, and their country less desolate than was really the case.* a flotilla, commanded by ariaramnes, satrap of cappadocia, ventured across the black sea in ,** landed a few thousand men upon the opposite shore, and brought back prisoners who furnished those in command with the information they required.*** * the motives imputed to darius by the ancients for making this expedition are the desire of avenging the disasters of the scythian invasion, or of performing an exploit which should render him as famous as his predecessors in the eyes of posterity. ** the reconnaissance of ariaramnes is intimately connected with the expedition itself in ctesias, and could have preceded it by a few months only. if we take for the date of the latter the year - , the date given in the table of the capitol, that of the former cannot be earlier than . ariaramnes was not satrap of cappadocia, for cappadocia belonged then to the satrapy of daskylion. *** the supplementary paragraphs of the inscription of behistun speak of an expedition of darius against the sako, which is supposed to have had as its objective either the sea of aral or the tigris. would it not be possible to suppose that the sea mentioned is the pontus euxinus, and to take the mutilated text of behistun to be a description either of the campaign beyond the danube, or rather of the preliminary _reconnaissance_ of ariaramnes a year before the expedition itself? darius, having learned what he could from these poor wretches, crossed the bosphorus in , with a body of troops which tradition computed at , , conquered the eastern coast of thrace, and won his way in a series of conflicts as far as the ister. the ionian sailors built for him a bridge of boats, which he entrusted to their care, and he then started forward into the steppes in search of the enemy. the scythians refused a pitched battle, but they burnt the pastures before him on every side, filled up the wells, carried off the cattle, and then slowly retreated into the interior, leaving darius to face the vast extent of the steppes and the terrors of famine. later tradition stated that he wandered for two months in these solitudes between the ister and the tanais; he had constructed on the banks of this latter river a series of earthworks, the remains of which were shown in the time of herodotus, and had at length returned to his point of departure with merely the loss of a few sick men. the barbarians stole a march upon him, and advised the greeks to destroy the bridge, retire within their cities, and abandon the persians to their fate. the tyrant of the ohersonnesus, miltiades the athenian, was inclined to follow their advice; but histiasus, the governor of miletus, opposed it, and eventually carried his point. darius reached the southern bank without difficulty, and returned to asia.* * ctesias limits the campaign beyond the danube to a fifteen days� march; and strabo places the crossing of the danube near the mouth of that river, at the island of peukê, and makes the expedition stop at the dniester. neither the line of direction of the persian advance nor their farthest point reached is known. the eight forts which they were said to have built, the ruins of which were shown on the banks of the oaros as late as the time of herodotus, were probably tumuli similar to those now met with on the russian steppes, the origin of which is ascribed by the people to persons celebrated in their history or traditions. the greek towns of thrace thought themselves rid of him, and rose in revolt; but he left , men in europe who, at first under megabyzos, and then under otanes, reduced them to subjection one after another, and even obliged amyntas i., the king of macedonia, to become a tributary of the empire. the expedition had not only failed to secure the submission of the scythians, but apparently provoked reprisals on their part, and several of their bands penetrated ere long into the chersonnesus. it nevertheless was not without solid result, for it showed that darius, even if he could not succeed in subjugating the savage danubian tribes, had but little to fear from them; it also secured for him a fresh province, that of thrace, and, by the possession of macedonia, brought his frontier into contact with northern greece. the overland route, in any case the more satisfactory of the two, was now in the hands of the invader. revolutions at athens prevented him from setting out on his expedition as soon as he had anticipated. hippias had been overthrown in , and having taken refuge at sigoum, was seeking on all sides for some one to avenge him against his fellow-citizens. the satrap of sardes, arta-phernes, declined at first to listen to him, for he hoped that the athenians themselves would appeal to him, without his being obliged to have recourse to their former tyrant. as a matter of fact, they sent him an embassy, and begged his help against the spartans. he promised it on condition that they would yield the traditional homage of earth and water, and their delegates complied with his demand, though on their return to athens they were disowned by the citizens ( ). artaphernes, disappointed in this direction, now entered into communications with hippias, and such close relations soon existed between the two that the athenians showed signs of uneasiness. two years later they again despatched fresh deputies to sardes to beg the satrap not to espouse the cause of their former ruler. for a reply the satrap summoned them to recall the exiles, and, on their refusing ( ),* their city became thenceforward the ostensible objective of the persian army and fleet. the partisans of hippias within the town were both numerous and active; it was expected that they would rise and hand over the city as soon as their chief should land on a point of territory with a force sufficient to intimidate the opposing faction. athens in the hands of hippias, would mean athens in the hands of the persians, and greece accessible to the persian hordes at all times by the shortest route. darius therefore prepared to make the attempt, and in order to guard against any mishap, he caused all the countries that he was about to attack to be explored beforehand. spies attached to his service were sent to scour the coasts of the peloponnesus and take note of all its features, the state of its ports, the position of the islands and the fortresses; and they penetrated as far as italy, if we may believe the story subsequently told to herodotus.** * herodotus fixes the date at the time when the athenians first ostracised the principal partisans of the pisistratids, and amongst others hipparchus, son of charmes, i.e. in - . ** herodotus said that darius sent spies with the physician democedes of crotona shortly before the scythian expedition. while he thus studied the territory from a distance, he did not neglect precautions nearer to hand, but ordered the milesians to occupy in his name the principal stations of the Ægean between ionia and attica. histiasus, whose loyalty had stood darius in such good stead at the bridge over the danube, did not, however, appear to him equal to so delicate a task: the king summoned him to susa on some slight pretext, loaded him with honours, and replaced him by his nephew aristagoras. aristagoras at once attempted to justify the confidence placed in him by taking possession of naxos; but the surprise that he had prepared ended in failure, discontent crept in among his men, and after a fruitless siege of four months he was obliged to withdraw ( ).* his failure changed the tide of affairs. he was afraid that the persians would regard it as a crime, and this fear prompted him to risk everything to save his fortune and his life. he retired from his office as tyrant, exhorted the milesians, who were henceforth free to do so, to make war on the barbarians, and seduced from their allegiance the crews of the vessels just returned from naxos, and still lying in the mouths of the meander; the tyrants who commanded them were seized, some exiled, and some put to death. the Æolians soon made common cause with their neighbours the ionians, and by the last days of autumn the whole of the Ægean littoral was under arms ( ).** * herodotus attributes an unlikely act of treachery to megabates the persian, who was commanding the iranian contingent attached to the ionian troops. ** the dorian cities took no part in the revolt--at least herodotus never mentions them among the confederates. the three ionian cities of ephesus, kolophon, and lebedos also seem to have remained aloof, and we know that the ephesians were not present at the battle of ladê. from the outset aristagoras realised that they would be promptly overcome if asiatic hellas were not supported by hellas in europe. while the lydian satrap was demanding reinforcements from his sovereign, aristagoras therefore repaired to the peloponnesus as a suppliant for help. sparta, embroiled in one of her periodical quarrels with argos, gave him an insolent refusal;* even athens, where the revolution had for the moment relieved her from the fear of the pisistratidaa and the terrors of a barbarian invasion, granted him merely twenty triremes--enough to draw down reprisals on her immediately after their defeat, without sensibly augmenting the rebels� chances of success; to the athenian contingent bretria added five vessels, and this comprised his whole force. the leaders of the movement did not hesitate to assume the offensive with these slender resources. as early as the spring of , before artaphernes had received reinforcements, they marched suddenly on sardes. they burnt the lower town, but, as on many previous occasions, the citadel held out; after having encamped for several days at the foot of its rock, they returned to ephesus laden with the spoil.** * aristagoras had with him a map of the world engraved on a bronze plate, which was probably a copy of the chart drawn up by hecatseus of miletus. ** herodotus says that the ionians on their return suffered a serious reverse near ephesus. the author seems to have adopted some lydian or persian tradition hostile to the ionians, for charon of lampsacus, who lived nearer to the time of these events, mentions only the retreat, and hints at no defeat. if the expedition had really ended in this disaster, it is not at all likely that the revolt would have attained the dimensions it did immediately afterwards. this indeed was a check to their hostilities, and such an abortive attempt was calculated to convince them of their powerlessness against the foreign rule. none the less, however, when it was generally known that they had burnt the capital of asia minor, and had with impunity made the representative of the great king feel in his palace the smoke of the conflagration, the impression was such as actual victory could have produced. the cities which had hitherto hesitated to join them, now espoused their cause--the ports of the troad and the hellespont, lycia, the carians, and cyprus--and their triumph would possibly have been secured had greece beyond the Ægean followed the general movement and joined the coalition. sparta, however, persisted in her indifference, and athens took the opportunity of withdrawing from the struggle. the asiatic greeks made as good a defence as they could, but their resources fell far short of those of the enemy, and they could do no more than delay the catastrophe and save their honour by their bravery. cyprus was the first to yield during the winter of - . its vessels, in conjunction with those of the ionians, dispersed the fleet of the phoenicians off salamis, but the troops of their princes, still imbued with the old system of military tactics, could not sustain the charge of the persian battalions; they gave way under the walls of salamis, and their chief, onesilus, was killed in a final charge of his chariotry.* * the movement in cyprus must have begun in the winter of - , for onesilus was already in the field when darius heard of the burning of sardes; and as it lasted for a year, it must have been quelled in the winter of - . his death effected the ruin of the ionian cause in cyprus, which on the continent suffered at the same time no less serious reverses. the towns of the hellespont and of Æolia succumbed one after another; kymê and clazomenæ next opened their gates; the carians were twice beaten, once near the white columns, and again near labranda, and their victory at pedasos suspended merely for an instant the progress of the persian arms, so that towards the close of the struggle was almost entirely concentrated round miletus. aristagoras, seeing that his cause was now desperate, agreed with his partisans that they should expatriate themselves. he fell fighting against the edonians of thrace, attempting to force the important town of enneahodoi, near the mouth of the strymon ( );* but his defection had not discouraged any one, and histiseus, who had been sent to sardes by the great king to negotiate the submission of the rebels, failed in his errand. even when blockaded on the land side, miletus could defy an attack so long as communication with the sea was not cut off. * in herodotus the town is not named, but a passage in thucydides shows that it was enneahodoi, afterwards amphipolis, and that the death of aristagoras took place thirty-two years before the athenian defeat at drabeskos, i.e. probably in . [illustration: .jpg a cypriot chariot] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the terra-cotta group in the new york museum. darius therefore brought up the phoenician fleet, reinforced it with the cypriot contingents, and despatched the united squadrons to the archipelago during the summer of . the confederates, even after the disasters of the preceding years, still possessed vessels, most of them of to oars; they were, however, completely defeated near the small island of ladê, in the latter part of the summer, and miletus, from that moment cut off from the rest of the world, capitulated a few weeks later. a small proportion of its inhabitants continued to dwell in the ruined city, but the greater number were carried away to ampê, at the mouth of the tigris, in the marshes of the nâr-marratum.* * the year , i.e. three years before the capture of the town, appears to be an unlikely date for the battle of ladê: miletus must have fallen in the autumn or winter months following the defeat. caria was reconquered during the winter of - , and by the early part of , chios, lesbos, tenedos, the cities of the chersonnesus and of propontis--in short, all which yet held out--were reduced to obedience. artaphernes reorganised his vanquished states entirely in the interest of persia. he did not interfere with the constitutions of the several republics, but he reinstated the tyrants. he regulated and augmented the various tributes, prohibited private wars, and gave to the satrap the right of disposing of all quarrels at his own tribunal. the measures which he adopted had long after his day the force of law among the asiatic greeks, and it was by them they regulated their relations with the representatives of the great king. if darius had ever entertained doubts as to the necessity for occupying european greece to ensure the preservation of peace in her asiatic sister-country, the revolt of ionia must have completely dissipated them. it was a question whether the cities which had so obstinately defied him for six long years, would ever resign themselves to servitude as long as they saw the peoples of their race maintaining their independence on the opposite shores of the Ægean, and while the misdeeds of which the contingents of eretria and athens had been guilty during the rebellion remained unpunished. a tradition, which sprang up soon after the event, related that on hearing of the burning of sardes, darius had bent his bow and let fly an arrow towards the sky, praying zeus to avenge him on the athenians: and at the same time he had commanded one of his slaves to repeat three times a day before him, at every meal, �sire, remember the athenians!�* * the legend is clearly older than the time of herodotus, for in the _persæ_ of eschylus the shade of darius, when coming out of his tomb, cries to the old men, �remember athens and greece!� as a matter of fact, the intermeddling of these strangers between the sovereign and his subjects was at once a serious insult to the achæmenids and a cause of anxiety to the empire; to leave it unpunished would have been an avowal of weakness or timidity, which would not fail to be quickly punished in syria, egypt, babylon, and on the scythian frontiers, and would ere long give rise to similar acts of revolt and interference. darius, therefore, resumed his projects, but with greater activity than before, and with a resolute purpose to make a final reckoning with the greeks, whatever it might cost him. the influence of his nephew mardonius at first inclined him to adopt the overland route, and he sent him into thrace with a force of men and a fleet of galleys sufficient to overcome all obstacles. mardonius marched against the greek colonies and native tribes which had throw off the yoke during the ionian war, and reduced those who had still managed to preserve their independence. the bryges opposed him with such determination, that summer was drawing to its close before he was able to continue his march. he succeeded, however, in laying hands on macedonia, and obliged its king, alexander, to submit to the conditions accepted by his father amyntas; but at this juncture half of his fleet was destroyed by a tempest in the vicinity of mount athos, and the disaster, which took place just as winter was approaching, caused him to suspend his operations ( ). he was recalled on account of his failure, and the command was transferred to datis the mede and to the persian artaphernes. darius, however, while tentatively using the land routes through greece for his expeditions, had left no stone unturned to secure for himself that much-coveted sea-way which would carry him straight into the heart of the enemy�s position, and he had opened negotiations with the republics of greece proper. several of them had consented to tender him earth and water, among them being Ægina,* and besides this, the state of the various factions in athens was such, that he had every reason to believe that he could count on the support of a large section of the population when the day came for him to disembark his force on the shores of attica. * herodotus states that _all_ the island-dwelling greeks submitted to the great king. but herodotus himself says later on that the people of naxos, at all events, proved refractory. [illustration: a.jpg alexander i. of macedon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. [illustration: b.jpg a phoenician galley] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin of byblos in the _cabinet des médailles_. he therefore decided to direct his next expedition against athens itself, and he employed the year in concentrating his troops and triremes in cilicia, at a sufficient distance from the european coast to ensure their safety from any sudden attack. in the spring of the army recruited from among the most warlike nations of the empire--the persians, medes, and sakse--went aboard the phoenician fleet, while galleys built on a special model were used as transports for the cavalry. the entire convoy sailed safely out of the mouth of the pyramos to the port of samos, coasting the shores of asia minor, and then passing through the cyclades, from samos to naxos, where they met with no opposition from the inhabitants, headed for delos, where datis offered a sacrifice to apollo, whom he confounded with his god mithra; finally they reached eubæa, where eretria and carystos vainly endeavoured to hold their own against them. eretria was reduced to ashes, as sardes had been, and such of its citizens as had not fled into the mountains at the enemy�s approach were sent into exile among the kissians in the township of arderikka. hippias meanwhile had joined the persians and had been taken into their confidence. while awaiting the result of the intrigues of his partisans in athens, he had advised datis to land on the eastern coast of attica, in the neighbourhood of marathon, at the very place from whence his father pisistratus had set out forty years before to return to his country after his first exile. the position was well chosen for the expected engagement. [illustration: .jpg map of marathon] the bay and the strand which bordered it afforded an excellent station for the fleet, and the plain, in spite of its marshes and brushwood, was one of those rare spots where cavalry might be called into play without serious drawbacks. a few hours on foot would bring the bulk of the infantry up to the acropolis by a fairly good road, while by the same time the fleet would be able to reach the roadstead of phalerum. all had been arranged beforehand for concerted action when the expected rising should take place; but it never did take place, and instead of the friends whom the persians expected, an armed force presented itself, commanded by the polemarch callimachus and the ten strategi, among whom figured the famous miltiades. at the first news of the disembarkation of the enemy, the republic had despatched the messenger phidippides to sparta to beg for immediate assistance, and in the mean time had sent forward all her able-bodied troops to meet the invaders. they comprised about , hoplites, accompanied, as was customary, by nearly as many more light infantry, who were shortly reinforced by platæans. they encamped in the valley of avlona, around a small temple of heracles, in a position commanding the roads into the interior, and from whence they could watch the enemy without exposing themselves to an unexpected attack. [illustration: .jpg the battle-field of marathon] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by m. amédée hauvette. the two armies watched each other for a fortnight, datis expecting a popular outbreak which would render an engagement unnecessary, miltiades waiting patiently till the lacedaemonians had come up, or till some false move on the part of his opponent gave him the opportunity of risking a decisive action. what took place at the end of this time is uncertain. whether datis grew tired of inaction, or whether he suddenly resolved to send part of his forces by sea, so as to land on the neighbouring shore of athens, and miltiades fell upon his rear when only half his men had got on board the fleet, is not known. at any rate, miltiades, with the platæans on his left, set his battalions in movement without warning, and charged the enemy with a rush. the persians and the sakæ broke the centre of the line, but the two wings, after having dispersed the assailants on their front, wheeled round upon them and overcame them: barbarians were left dead upon the field as against some athenians and platæans, but by dint of their valiant efforts the remainder managed to save the fleet with a loss of only seven galleys. datis anchored that evening off the island of Ægilia, and at the same moment the victorious army perceived a signal hoisted on the heights of pentelicus apparently to attract his attention; when he set sail the next morning and, instead of turning eastwards, proceeded to double cape sunion, miltiades had no longer any doubt that treachery was at work, and returned to athens by forced marches. datis, on entering the roads of phalerum, found the shore defended, and the army that he had left at marathon encamped upon the cynosargê. he cruised about for a few hours in sight of the shore, and finding no movement made to encourage him to land, he turned his vessels about and set sail for ionia. the material loss to the persians was inconsiderable, for even the cyclades remained under their authority; miltiades, who endeavoured to retake them, met with a reverse before paros, and the athenians, disappointed by his unsuccessful attempt, made no further efforts to regain them. the moral effect of the victory on greece and the empire was extraordinary. up till then the median soldiers had been believed to be the only invincible troops in the world; the sight of them alone excited dread in the bravest hearts, and their name was received everywhere with reverential awe. but now a handful of hoplites from one of the towns of the continent, and that not the most renowned for its prowess, without cavalry or bowmen, had rushed upon and overthrown the most terrible of all oriental battalions, the persians and the sakæ. darius could not put up with such an affront without incurring the risk of losing his prestige with the people of asia and europe, who up till then had believed him all-powerful, and of thus exposing himself to the possibility of revolutions in recently subdued countries, such as egypt, which had always retained the memory of her past greatness. in the interest of his own power, as well as to soothe his wounded pride, a renewed attack was imperative, and this time it must be launched with such dash and vigour that all resistance would be at once swept before it. events had shown him that the influence of the pisistratidæ had not been strong enough to secure for him the opening of the gates of athens, and that the sea route did not permit of his concentrating an adequate force of cavalry and infantry on the field of battle; he therefore reverted to the project of an expedition by the overland route, skirting the coasts of thrace and macedonia. during three years he collected arms, provisions, horses, men, and vessels, and was ready to commence hostilities in the spring of , when affairs in egypt prevented him. this country had undeniably prospered under his suzerainty. it formed, with cyrene and the coast of libya, the sixth of his satrapies, to which were attached the neighbouring nubian tribes of the southern frontier.* the persian satrap, installed at the white wall in the ancient palace of the pharaohs, was supported by an army of , men, who occupied the three entrenched camps of the saites--daphnæ and marea on the confines of the delta, and elephantinê in the south.** outside these military stations, where the authority of the great king was exercised in a direct manner, the ancient feudal organisation existed intact. the temples retained their possessions and their vassals, and the nobles within their principalities were as independent and as inclined to insurrection as in past times. the annual tribute, the heaviest paid by any province with the exception of cossæa and assyria, amounted only to talents of silver. to this sum must be added the farming of the fishing in lake moeris, which, according to herodotus,*** brought in one talent a day during the six months of the high nile, but, according to diodorus,**** during the whole year, as well as the , medimni of wheat required for the army of occupation, and the obligation to furnish the court of susa with libyan nitre and nile water; the total of these impositions was far from constituting a burden disproportionate to the wealth of the nile valley. * the nubian tribes, who are called ethiopians by herodotus and the cuneiform inscriptions, paid no regular tribute, but were obliged to send annually two chænikes of pure gold, two hundred pieces of ebony, twenty elephants� tusks, and five young slaves, all under the name of a free gift. ** herodotus states that in his own time the persians, like the saite pharaohs, still had garrisons at daphnæ and at elephantine. *** herodotus says that the produce sank to the value of a third of a talent a day during the six other months. **** diodorus siculus says that the revenue produced by the fisheries in the lake had been handed over by moris to his wife for the expenses of her toilet. [illustration: .jpg darius on the stele of the isthmus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the _description de l�egypte_. commerce brought in to it, in fact, at least as much money as the tribute took out of it. incorporated with an empire which extended over three continents, egypt had access to regions whither the products of her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. the produce of ethiopia and the sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract customers in the markets of tyre, sidon, babylon, and susa, and the isthmus of suez and kosseir were the nearest ports through which arabia and india could reach the mediterranean. darius therefore resumed the work of necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut afresh the canal between the nile and the gulf of suez. trilingual stelæ in egyptian, persian, and medic were placed at intervals along its banks, and set forth to all comers the method of procedure by which the sovereign had brought his work to a successful end. in a similar manner he utilised the wadys which wind between koptos and the red sea, and by their means placed the cities of the said in communication with the �ladders of incense,� punt and the sabæans.* * several of the inscriptions engraved on the rocks of the wady hammamât show to what an extent the route was frequented at certain times during the reign. they bear the dates of the th, th, th, th, and th years of darius. the country of saba (sheba) is mentioned on one of the stelæ of the isthmus. he extended his favour equally to the commerce which they carried on with the interior of africa; indeed, in order to ensure the safety of the caravans in the desert regions nearest to the nile, he skilfully fortified the great oasis. he erected at habît, kushît, and other places, several of those rectangular citadels with massive walls of unburnt brick, which resisted every effort of the nomad tribes to break through them; and as the temple at habit, raised in former times by the theban pharaohs, had become ruinous, he rebuilt it from its foundations. [illustration: .jpg walls of the fortress of ditsh-el-qalÂa] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by cailliaud. dush is the kushît of the hieroglyphs, the kysis of græco-roman times, and is situated on the southern border of the great oasis, about the latitude of assuân. he was generous in his gifts to the gods, and even towns as obscure as edfu was then received from him grants of money and lands. the egyptians at first were full of gratitude for the favours shown them, but the news of the defeat at marathon, and the taxes with which the susian court burdened them in order to make provision for the new war with greece, aroused a deep-seated discontent, at all events amongst those who, living in the delta, had had their patriotism or their interests most affected by the downfall of the saite dynasty. it would appear that the priests of buto, whose oracles exercised an indisputable influence alike over greeks and natives, had energetically incited the people to revolt. the storm broke in , and a certain khabbisha, who perhaps belonged to the family of psammetichus, proclaimed himself king both at sais and memphis.* * herodotus does not give the name of the leader of the rebellion, but says that it took place in the fourth year after marathon. a demotic contract in the turin museum bears the date of the third month of the second season of the thirty-fifth year of darius i.: khabbîsha�s rebellion therefore broke out between june and september, . stern makes this prince to have been of libyan origin. from the form of his name, révillout has supposed that he was an arab, and birch was inclined to think that he was a persian satrap who made a similar attempt to that of aryandes. but nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to his insurrection against darius. [illustration: .jpg the great temple of darius at habÎt] drawn by boudier, from the engraving by cailliaud. darius did not believe the revolt to be of sufficient gravity to delay his plans for any length of time. he hastily assembled a second army, and was about to commence hostilities on the banks of the nile simultaneously with those on the hellespont, when he died in , in the thirty-sixth year of his reign. he was one of the great sovereigns of the ancient world--the greatest without exception of those who had ruled over persia. cyrus and cambyses had been formidable warriors, and the kingdoms of the bast had fallen before their arms, but they were purely military sovereigns, and if their successor had not possessed other abilities than theirs, their empire would have shared the fate of that of the medes and the chaldæans; it would have sunk to its former level as rapidly as it had risen, and the splendour of its opening years would have soon faded from remembrance. darius was no less a general by instinct and training than they, as is proved by the campaigns which procured him his crown; but, after having conquered, he knew how to organise and build up a solid fabric out of the materials which his predecessors had left in a state of chaos; if persia maintained her rule over the east for two entire centuries, it was due to him and to him alone. the question of the succession, with its almost inevitable popular outbreaks, had at once to be dealt with. darius had had several wives, and among them, the daughter of gobryas, who had borne him three children: artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the heir-presumptive, and had probably filled the office of regent during the expedition in scythia. but atossa, the daughter of cyrus, who had already been queen under cambyses and gaumâta, was indignant at the thought of her sons bowing down before the child of a woman who was not of achæmenian race, and at the moment when affairs in egypt augured ill for the future, and when the old king, according to custom, had to appoint his successor, she intreated him to choose khshayarsha, the eldest of her children, who had been borne to the purple, and in whose veins flowed the blood of cyrus. darius acceded to her request, and on his death, a few months after, khshayarsha ascended the throne. his brothers offered no opposition, and the persian nobles did homage to their new king. khshayarsha, whom the greeks called xerxes, was at that time thirty-four years of age. he was tall, vigorous, of an imposing figure and noble countenance, and he had the reputation of being the handsomest man of his time, but neither his intelligence nor disposition corresponded to his outward appearance; he was at once violent and feeble, indolent, narrow-minded, and sensual, and was easily swayed by his courtiers and mistresses. the idea of a war had no attractions for him, and he was inclined to shirk it. his uncle artabanus exhorted him to follow his inclination for peace, and he lent a favourable ear to his advice until his cousin mardonius remonstrated with him, and begged him not to leave the disgrace of marathon unpunished, or he would lower the respect attached to the name of persia throughout the world. he wished, at all events, to bring egyptian affairs to an issue before involving himself in a serious european war. khabbîsha had done his best to prepare a stormy reception for him. during a period of two years khabbîsha had worked at the extension of the entrenchments along the coast and at the mouths of the nile, in order to repulse the attack that he foresaw would take place simultaneously with that on land, but his precautions proved fruitless when the decisive moment arrived, and he was completely crushed by the superior numbers of xerxes. [illustration: .jpg xerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a daric in the _cabinet des médailles_. the nomes of the delta which had taken a foremost part in the rising were ruthlessly raided, the priests heavily fined, and the oracle of buto deprived of its possessions as a punishment for the encouragement freely given to the rebels. khabbîsha disappeared, and his fate is unknown. achæmenes, one of the king�s brothers, was made satrap, but, as on previous occasions, the constitution of the country underwent no modification. the temples retained their inherited domains, and the nomes continued in the hands of their hereditary princes, without a suspicion crossing the mind of xerxes that his tolerance of the priestly institutions and the local dynasties was responsible for the maintenance of a body of chiefs ever in readiness for future insurrection ( ).* * the only detailed information on this revolt furnished by the egyptian monuments is given in the stele of ptolemy, the son of lagos. an apis, whose sarcophagus still exists, was buried by khabbîsha in the serapoum in the second year of his reign, which proves that he was in possession of memphis: the white wall had perhaps been deprived of its garrison in order to reinforce the army prepared against greece, and it was possibly thus that it fell into the hands of khabbîsha. order was once more restored, but he was not yet entirely at liberty to pursue his own plan of action. classical tradition tells us, that on the occasion of his first visit to babylon he had offended the religious prejudices of the chaldæans by a sacrilegious curiosity. he had, in spite of the entreaties of the priests, forced an entrance into the ancient burial-place of bel-etana, and had beheld the body of the old hero preserved in oil in a glass sarcophagus, which, however, was not quite full of the liquid. a notice posted up beside it, threatened the king who should violate the secret of the tomb with a cruel fate, unless he filled the sarcophagus to the brim, and xerxes had attempted to accomplish this mysterious injunction, but all his efforts had failed. the example set by egypt and the change of sovereign are sufficient to account for the behaviour of the babylonians; they believed that the accession of a comparatively young monarch, and the difficulties of the campaign on the banks of the nile, afforded them a favourable occasion for throwing off the yoke. they elected as king a certain shamasherib, whose antecedents are unknown; but their independence was of short duration,* for megabyzos, son of zopyrus, who governed the province by hereditary right, forced them to disarm after a siege of a few months. * this shamasherib is mentioned only on a contract dated from his accession, which is preserved in the british museum. it would appear that xerxes treated them with the greatest severity: he pillaged the treasury and temple of bel, appropriated the golden statue which decorated the great inner hall of the ziggurât, and carried away many of the people into captivity ( ). babylon never recovered this final blow: the quarters of the town that had been pillaged remained uninhabited and fell into ruins; commerce dwindled and industry flagged. the counsellors of xerxes had, no doubt, wished to give an object-lesson to the province by their treatment of babylon, and thus prevent the possibility of a revolution taking place in asia while its ruler was fully engaged in a struggle with the greeks. meanwhile all preparations were completed, and the contingents of the eastern and southern provinces concentrated at kritalla, in cappadocia, merely awaited the signal to set out. xerxes gave the order to advance in the autumn of , crossed the halys and took up his quarters at sardes, while his fleet prepared to winter in the neighbouring ports of phocæ and kymê.* * diodorus, who probably follows ephorus, is the only writer who informs us of the place where the fleet was assembled. gathered together in that little corner of the world, were forces such as no king had ever before united under his command; they comprised vessels of various build, and probably , combatants, besides the rabble of servants, hucksters, and women which followed all the armies of that period. the greeks exaggerated the number of the force beyond all probability. they estimated it variously at , , at , , , and at , , men; , , of whom were able-bodied foot-soldiers, and , of them horsemen.* * herodotus records the epigram to the effect that , , men attacked thermopylæ. ctesias and ephorus adopt the same figures; iso-crates is contented with , combatants and , , men in all. [illustration: .jpg a trireme in motion] drawn by faucher-gudin: the left portion is a free reproduction of a photograph of the bas-relief of the acropolis; the right, of the picture of pozzo. the two partly overlap one another, and give both together the idea of a trireme going at full speed. the troops which they could bring up to oppose these hordes were, indeed, so slender in number, when reckoned severally, that all hope of success seemed impossible. xerxes once more summoned the greeks to submit, and most of the republics appeared inclined to comply; athens and sparta alone refused, but from different motives. athens knew that, after the burning of sardes and the victory of marathon, they could hope for no pity, and she was well aware that persia had decreed her complete destruction; the athenians were familiar with the idea of a struggle in which their very existence was at stake, and they counted on the navy with which themistocles had just provided them to enable them to emerge from the affair with honour. sparta was not threatened with the same fate, but she was at that time the first military state in greece, and the whole of the peloponnesus acknowledged her sway; in the event of her recognising the suzerainty of the barbarians, the latter would not fail to require of her the renunciation of her hegemony, and she would then be reduced to the same rank as her former rivals, tegea and argos. athens and sparta therefore united to repulse the common enemy, and the advantage that this alliance afforded them was so patent that none of the other states ventured to declare openly for the great king. argos and crete, the boldest of them, announced that they would observe neutrality; the remainder, thessalians, boeotians, and people of corcyra, gave their support to the national cause, but did so unwillingly. xerxes crossed the hellespont in the spring of , by two bridges of boats thrown across it between abydos and sestos; he then formed his force into three columns, and made his way slowly along the coast, protected on the left by the whole of his fleet from any possible attack by the squadrons of the enemy. the greeks had three lines of defence which they could hold against him, the natural strength of which nearly compensated them for the inferiority of their forces; these were mount olympus, mount oeta, and the isthmus of corinth. the first, however, was untenable, owing to the ill will of the thessalians; as a precautionary measure , hoplites were encamped upon it, but they evacuated the position as soon as the enemy�s advance-guard came into sight. the natural barrier of oeta, less formidable than that of olympus, was flanked by the euboean straits on the extreme right, but the range was of such extent that it did not require to be guarded with equal vigilance along its whole length. the spartans did not at first occupy it, for they intended to accumulate all the greek forces, both troops and vessels, around the isthmus. at that point the neck of land was so narrow, and the sea so shut in, that the numbers of the invading force proved a drawback to them, and the advantage almost of necessity lay with that of the two adversaries who should be best armed and best officered. this plan of the spartans was a wise one, but athens, which was thereby sacrificed to the general good, refused to adopt it, and as she alone furnished almost half the total number of vessels, her decision had to be deferred to. a body of about , hoplites was therefore posted in the pass of thermopylæ under the command of leonidas, while a squadron of vessels disposed themselves near the promontory of artemision, off the euripus, and protected the right flank of the pass against a diversion from the fleet. meanwhile xerxes had been reinforced in the course of his march by the contingents from macedonia, and had received the homage of the cities of thessaly; having reached the defiles of the oeta and the euboea, he began by attacking the creeks directly in front, both fleets and armies facing one another. leonidas succeeded in withstanding the assault on two successive days, and then the inevitable took place. a detachment of persians, guided by the natives of the country, emerged by a path which had been left unguarded, and bore down upon the greeks in the rear; a certain number managed to escape, but the bulk of the force, along with the spartans and their king, succumbed after a desperate resistance. as for the fleet, it had borne itself bravely, and had retained the ascendency throughout, in spite of the superiority of the enemy�s numbers; on hearing the news of the glorious death of leonidas, they believed their task ended for the time being, and retired with the athenians in their wake, ready to sustain the attack should they come again to close quarters. the victorious side had suffered considerable losses in men and vessels, but they had forced the passage, and central greece now lay at their mercy. xerxes received the submission of the thebans, the phocæans, the locrians, the dorians, and of all who appealed to his clemency; then, having razed to the ground platæa and thespisæ, the only two towns which refused to come to terms with him, he penetrated into attica by the gorges of the cithssron. the population had taken refuge in salamis, Ægina, and troezen. the few fanatics who refused to desist in their defence of the acropolis, soon perished behind their ramparts; xerxes destroyed the temple of pallas by fire to avenge the burning of sardes, and then entrenched his troops on the approaches to the isthmus, stationing his squadrons in the ports of munychia, phalerum, and the piræus, and suspended all hostilities while waiting to see what policy the greeks would pursue. it is possible that he hoped that a certain number of them would intreat for mercy, and others being encouraged by their example to submit, no further serious battle would have to be fought. when he found that no such request was proffered, he determined to take advantage of the superiority of his numbers, and, if possible, destroy at one blow the whole of the greek naval reserve; he therefore gave orders to his admirals to assume the offensive. the greek fleet lay at anchor across the bay of salamis. the left squadron of the persians, leaving munychia in the middle of the night, made for the promontory of cynosura, landing some troops as it passed on the island of psyttalia, on which it was proposed to fall back in case of accident, while the right division, sailing close to the coast of attica, closed the entrance to the straits in the direction of eleusis; this double movement was all but completed, when the greeks were informed by fugitives of what was taking place, and the engagement was inevitable. they accepted it fearlessly. xerxes, enthroned with his immortals on the slopes of Ægialeos, could, from his exalted position, see the athenians attack his left squadron: the rest of the allies followed them, and from afar these words were borne upon the breeze: �go, sons of greece, deliver your country, deliver your children, your wives, and the temples of the gods of your fathers and the tombs of your ancestors. a single battle will decide the fate of all you possess.� the persians fought with their accustomed bravery, �but before long their numberless vessels, packed closely together in a restricted space, begin to hamper each other�s movements, and their rams of brass collide; whole rows of oars are broken.� the greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvre than those of the phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them in detail. �the surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage and corpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead.� at length, towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, they slowly fell back upon the piræus, closely followed by their adversaries, while aristides bore down upon psyttalia with a handful of athenians. �like tunnies, like fish just caught in a net, with blows from broken oars, with fragments of spars, they fall upon the persians, they tear them to pieces. the sea resounds from afar with groans and cries of lamentation. night at length unveils her sombre face� and separates the combatants.* * Æschylus gives the only contemporaneous account of the battle, and the one which herodotus and all the historians after him have paraphrased, while they also added to it oral traditions. [illustration: .jpg part of the battlefield of salamis] the advantage lay that day with the greeks, but hostilities might be resumed on the morrow, and the resources of the persians were so considerable that their chances of victory were not yet exhausted. xerxes at first showed signs of wishing to continue the struggle; he repaired the injured vessels and ordered a dyke to be constructed, which, by uniting salamis to the mainland, would enable him to oust the athenians from their last retreat. but he had never exhibited much zest for the war; the inevitable fatigues and dangers of a campaign were irksome to his indolent nature, and winter was approaching, which he would be obliged to spend far from susa, in the midst of a country wasted and trampled underfoot by two great armies. mardonius, guessing what was passing in his sovereign�s mind, advised him to take advantage of the fine autumn weather to return to sardes; he proposed to take over from xerxes the command of the army in greece, and to set to work to complete the conquest of the peloponnesus. he was probably glad to be rid of a sovereign whose luxurious habits were a hindrance to his movements. xerxes accepted his proposal with evident satisfaction, and summarily despatching his vessels to the hellespont to guard the bridges, he set out on his return journey by the overland route. at the time of his departure the issue of the struggle was as yet unforeseen. mardonius evacuated attica, which was too poor and desolate a country to support so large an army, and occupied comfortable winter quarters in the rich plains of thessaly, where he recruited his strength for a supreme effort in the spring. he had with him about , men, picked troops from all parts of asia--medes, sakæ, bactrians, and indians, besides the regiment of the immortals and the egyptian veterans who had distinguished themselves by their bravery at salamis; the heavy hoplites of thebes and of the boeotian towns, the thessalian cavalry, and the battalions of macedonia were also in readiness to join him as soon as called on. the whole of these troops, relieved from the presence of the useless multitude which had impeded its movements under xerxes, and commanded by a bold and active general, were anxious to distinguish themselves, and the probabilities of their final success were great. the confederates were aware of the fact, and although resolved to persevere to the end, their maoeuvres betrayed an unfortunate indecision. their fleet followed the persian squadron bound for the hellespont for several days, but on realising that the enemy were not planning a diversion against the peloponnesus, they put about and returned to their various ports. the winter was passed in preparations on both sides. xerxes, on his return to sardes, had got together a fleet of triremes and an army of , men, and had stationed them at cape mycale, opposite samos, to be ready in case of an ionian revolt, or perhaps to bear down upon any given point in the peloponnesus when mardonius had gained some initial advantage. the lacædemonians, on their part, seem to have endeavoured to assume the defensive both by land and sea; while their foot-soldiers were assembling in the neighbourhood of corinth, their fleet sailed as far as delos and there anchored, as reluctant to venture beyond as if it had been a question of proceeding to the pillars of hercules. athens, which ran the risk of falling into the enemy�s hands for the second time through these hesitations, evinced such marked displeasure that mardonius momentarily attempted to take advantage of it. he submitted to the citizens, through alexander, king of macedon, certain conditions, the leniency of which gave uneasiness to the spartans; the latter at once promised athens all she wanted, and on the strength of their oaths she at once broke off the negotiations with the persians. mardonius immediately resolved on action: he left his quarters in thessaly in the early days of may, reached attica by a few quick marches, and spread his troops over the country before the peloponnesians were prepared to resist. the people again took refuge in salamis; the persians occupied athens afresh, and once more had recourse to diplomacy. this time the spartans were alarmed to good purpose; they set out to the help of their ally, and from that moment mardonius showed no further consideration in his dealing with athens. he devastated the surrounding country, razed the city walls to the ground, and demolished and burnt the remaining houses and temples; he then returned to boeotia, the plains of which were more suited to the movements of his squadrons, and took up a position in an entrenched camp on the right bank of the asopos. the greek army, under the command of pausanias, king of sparta, subsequently followed him there, and at first stationed themselves on the lower slopes of mount cithseron. their force was composed of about , hoplites, and about as many more light troops, and was scarcely inferior in numbers to the enemy, but it had no cavalry of any kind. several days passed in skirmishing without definite results, mardonius fearing to let his asiatic troops attack the heights held by the heavy greek infantry, and pausanias alarmed lest his men should be crushed by the thessalian and persian horse if he ventured down into the plains. want of water at length obliged the greeks to move slightly westwards, their right wing descending as far as the spring of gargaphia, and their left to the bank of the asopos. but this position facing east, exposed them so seriously to the attacks of the light asiatic horse, that after enduring it for ten days they raised their camp and fell back in the night on platæa. unaccustomed to manouvre together, they were unable to preserve their distances; when day dawned, their lines, instead of presenting a continuous front, were distributed into three unequal bodies occupying various parts of the plain. mardonius unhesitatingly seized his opportunity. he crossed the asopos, ordered the thebans to attack the athenians, and with the bulk of his asiatic troops charged the spartan contingents. here, as at marathon, the superiority of equipment soon gave the greeks the advantage: mardonius was killed while leading the charge of the persian guard, and, as is almost always the case among orientals, his death decided the issue of the battle. the immortals were cut to pieces round his dead body, while the rest took flight and sought refuge in their camp. [illustration: .jpg map] [illustration: .jpg the battle-field of plataea] almost simultaneously the athenians succeeded in routing the boeotians. they took the entrenchments by assault, gained possession of an immense quantity of spoil, and massacred many of the defenders, but they could not prevent artabazus from retiring in perfect order with , of his best troops protected by his cavalry. he retired successively from thessaly, macedonia, and thrace, reached asia after suffering severe losses, and european greece was freed for ever from the presence of the barbarians. while her fate was being decided at platsæ, that of asiatic greece was being fought out on the coast of ionia. the entreaties of the samians had at length encouraged leotychidas and xanthippus to take the initiative. the persian generals, who were not expecting this aggressive movement, had distributed the greater part of their vessels throughout the ionian ports, and had merely a small squadron left at their disposal at mycale. surprised by the unexpected appearance of the enemy, they were compelled to land, were routed, and their vessels burnt ( ). this constituted the signal for a general revolt: samos, chios, and lesbos affiliated themselves to the hellenic confederation, and the cities of the littoral, which sparta would have been powerless to protect for want of a fleet, concluded an alliance with athens, whose naval superiority had been demonstrated by recent events. the towns of the hellespont threw off the yoke as soon as the triremes of the confederates appeared within their waters, and sestos, the only one of them prevented by its persian garrison from yielding to the athenians, succumbed, after a long siege, during the winter of - . the campaign of completed the deliverance of the greeks. a squadron commanded by pausanias roused the islands of the carian coast and cyprus itself, without encountering any opposition, and then steering northwards drove the persians from byzantium. the following winter the conduct of operations passed out of the hands of sparta into those of athens--from the greatest military to the greatest naval power in greece; and the latter, on assuming command, at once took steps to procure the means which would enable her to carry, out her task thoroughly. she brought about the formation of a permanent league between the asiatic greeks and those of the islands. each city joining it preserved a complete autonomy as far as its internal affairs were concerned, but pledged itself to abide by the advice of athens in everything connected with the war against the persian empire, and contributed a certain quota of vessels, men, and money, calculated according to its resources, for the furtherance of the national cause. the centre of the confederation was fixed at delos; the treasure held in common was there deposited under the guardianship of the god, and the delegates from the confederate states met there every year at the solemn festivals, athens to audit the accounts of her administration, and the allies to discuss the interests of the league and to decide on the measures to be taken against the common enemy. oriental empires maintain their existence only on condition of being always on the alert and always victorious. they can neither restrict themselves within definite limits nor remain upon the defensive, for from the day when they desist from extending their area their ruin becomes inevitable; they must maintain their career of conquest, or they must cease to exist. this very activity which saves them from downfall depends, like the control of affairs, entirely on the ruling sovereign; when he chances to be too indolent or too incapable of government, he retards progress by his inertness or misdirects it through his want of skill, and the fate of the people is made thus to depend entirely on the natural disposition of the prince, since none of his subjects possesses sufficient authority to correct the mistakes of his master. having conquered asia, the persian race, finding itself hemmed in by insurmountable obstacles--the sea, the african and arabian deserts, the mountains of turkestan and the caucasus, and the steppes of siberia--had only two outlets for its energy, greece and india. darius had led his army against the greeks, and, in spite of the resistance he had encountered from them, he had gained ground, and was on the point of striking a crucial blow, when death cut short his career. the impetus that he had given to the militant policy was so great that xerxes was at first carried away by it; but he was naturally averse to war, without individual energy and destitute of military genius, so that he allowed himself to be beaten where, had he possessed anything of the instincts of a commander, he would have been able to crush his adversary with the sheer weight of his ships and battalions. even after salamis, even after platæa and mycale, the resources of hellas, split up as it was into fifty different republics, could hardly bear comparison with those of all asia concentrated in the hands of one man: xerxes must have triumphed in the end had he persevered in his undertaking, and utilised the inexhaustible amount of fresh material with which his empire could have furnished him. but to do that he would have had to take a serious view of his duties as a sovereign, as cyrus and darius had done, whereas he appears to have made use of his power merely for the satisfaction of his luxurious tastes and his capricious affections. during the winter following his return, and while he was reposing at sardes after the fatigues of his campaign in greece, he fell in love with the wife of masistes, one of his brothers, and as she refused to entertain his suit, he endeavoured to win her by marrying his son darius to her daughter artayntas. he was still amusing himself with this ignoble intrigue during the year which witnessed the disasters of platæa and mycale, when he was vaguely entertaining the idea of personally conducting a fresh army beyond the Ægean: but the marriage of his son having taken place, he returned to susa in the autumn, accompanied by the entire court, and from thenceforward he remained shut up in the heart of his empire. after his departure the war lost its general character, and deteriorated into a series of local skirmishes between the satraps in the vicinity of the mediterranean and the members of the league of delos. the phoenician fleet played the principal part in the naval operations, but the central and eastern asiatics--bactrians, indians, parthians, arians, arachosians, armenians, and the people from susa and babylon--scarcely took any part in the struggle. the athenians at the outset assumed the offensive under the intelligent direction of cimon. they expelled the persian garrisons from eion and thrace in . they placed successively under their own hegemony all the greek communities of the asianic littoral. towards , they destroyed a fleet anchored within the gulf of pamphylia, close to the mouth of the eurymedon, and, as at mycale, they landed and dispersed the force destined to act in concert with the squadron. sailing from thence to cyprus, they destroyed a second phoenician fleet of eighty vessels, and returned to the piraeus laden with booty. such exploits were not devoid of glory and profit for the time being, but they had no permanent results. all these naval expeditions were indeed successful, and the islands and towns of the Ægean, and even those of the black sea and the southern coasts of asia minor, succeeded without difficulty in freeing themselves from the persian yoke under the protection of the athenian triremes; but their influence did not penetrate further inland than a few miles from the shore, beyond which distance they ran the risk of being cut off from their vessels, and the barbarians of the interior--lydians, phrygians, mysians, pamphylians, and even most of the lycians and carians--remained subject to the rule of the satraps. the territory thus liberated formed but a narrow border along the coast of the peninsula; a border rent and interrupted at intervals, constantly in peril of seizure by the enemy, and demanding considerable efforts every year for its defence. athens was in danger of exhausting her resources in the performance of this ungrateful task, unless she could succeed in fomenting some revolution in the vast possessions of her adversary which should endanger the existence of his empire, or which, at any rate, should occupy the persian soldiery in constantly recurring hostilities against the rebellious provinces. if none of the countries in the centre of asia minor would respond to their call, and if the interests of their commercial rivals, the phoenicians, were so far opposed to their own as to compel them to maintain the conflict to the very end, egypt, at any rate, always proud of her past glory and impatient of servitude, was ever seeking to rid herself of the foreign yoke and recover her independent existence under, the authority of her pharaohs. it was not easy to come to terms with her and give her efficient help from athens itself; but cyprus, with its semi-greek population hostile to the achæmenids, could, if they were to take possession of it, form an admirable base of operations in that corner of the mediterranean. the athenians were aware of this from the outset, and, after their victory at the mouth of the eurymedon, a year never elapsed without their despatching a more or less numerous fleet into cypriot waters; by so doing they protected the Ægean from the piracy of the phoenicians, and at the same time, in the event of any movement arising on the banks of the nile, they were close enough to the delta to be promptly informed of it, and to interfere to their own advantage before any repressive measures could be taken. the field of hostilities having shifted, and greece having now set herself to attempt the dismemberment of the persian empire, we may well ask what has become of xerxes. the little energy and intelligence he had possessed at the outset were absorbed by a life of luxury and debauchery. weary of his hopeless pursuit of the wife of masistes, he transferred his attentions to the artayntas whom he had given in marriage to his son darius, and succeeded in seducing her. the vanity of this unfortunate woman at length excited the jealously of the queen. amestris believed herself threatened by the ascendency of this mistress; she therefore sent for the girl�s mother, whom she believed guilty of instigating the intrigue, and, having cut off her breasts, ears, nose, lips, and torn out her tongue, she sent her back, thus mutilated, to her family. masistes, wishing to avenge her, set out for bactriana, of which district he was satrap: he could easily have incited the province to rebel, for its losses in troops during the wars in europe had been severe, and a secret discontent was widespread; but xerxes, warned in time, despatched horsemen in pursuit, who overtook and killed him. the incapacity of the king, and the slackness with which he held the reins of government�, were soon so apparent as to produce intrigues at court: artabanus, the chief captain of the guards, was emboldened by the state of affairs to attempt to substitute his own rule for that of the achæmenids, and one night he assassinated xerxes. his method of procedure was never exactly known, and several accounts of it were soon afterwards current. one of them related that he had as his accomplice the eunuch aspamithres. having committed the crime, both of them rushed to the chamber of artaxerxes,* one of the sons of the sovereign, but still a child; they accused darius, the heir to the throne, of the murder, and having obtained an order to seize him, they dragged him before his brother and stabbed him, while he loudly protested his innocence. * artaxerxes is the form commonly adopted by the greek historians and by the moderns who follow them, but ctcsias and others after him prefer artoxerxes. the original form of the persian name was artakhshathra. [illustration: .jpg artaxerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a daric in the _cabinet des médailles_. other tales related that artabanus had taken advantage of the free access to the palace which his position allowed him, to conceal himself one night within it, in company with his seven sons. having murdered xerxes, he convinced artaxerxes of the guilt of his brother, and conducting him to the latter�s chamber, where he was found asleep, artabanus stabbed him on the spot, on the pretence that he was only feigning slumber.* * of the two principal accounts, the first is as old as ctesias, who was followed in general outline by ephorus, of whose account diodorus siculus preserves a summary compilation; the second was circulated by dinon, and has come down to us through the abbreviation of pompeius trogus. the remains of a third account are met with in aristotle. Ælian knew a fourth in which the murder was ascribed to the son of xerxes himself. the murderer at first became the virtual sovereign, and he exercised his authority so openly that later chronographers inserted his name in the list of the achæmenids, between that of his victim and his _protégé_; but at the end of six months, when he was planning the murder of the young prince, he was betrayed by megabyzos and slain, together with his accomplices. his sons, fearing a similar fate, escaped into the country with some of the troops. they perished in a skirmish, sword in hand; but their prompt defeat, though it helped to establish the new king upon his throne, did not ensure peace, for the most turbulent provinces at the two extremes of the empire, bactriana on the northeast and egypt in the south-west, at once rose in arms. the bactrians were led by hystaspes, one of the sons of xerxes, who, being older than artaxerxes, claimed the throne; his pretensions were not supported by the neighbouring provinces, and two bloody battles soon sealed his fate ( ).* the chastisement of egypt proved a harder task. since the downfall of the saites, the eastern nomes of the delta had always constituted a single fief, which the greeks called the kingdom of libya. lords of marea and of the fertile districts extending between the canopic arm of the nile, the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzerainty over several of the libyan tribes of marmarica. inaros, son of psammetichus,** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the persians openly. the inhabitants of the delta, oppressed by the tax-gatherers of achæmenes,*** welcomed him with open arms, and he took possession of the country between the two branches of the nile, probably aided by the cyrenians; the nile valley itself and memphis, closely guarded by the persian garrisons, did not, however, range themselves on his side. * the date is approximate, and is inferred from the fact that the war in bactriana is mentioned in ctesias between the war against the sons of artabanus which must have occupied a part of , and the egyptian rebellion which broke out about , as diodorus siculus points out, doubtless following ephorus. ** the name of the father of inaros is given us by the contemporary testimony of thucydides. *** achomenes is the form given by herodotus and by diodorus siculus, who make him the son of darius i., appointed governor of egypt after the repression of the revolt of khabbîsha. ctesias calls him achæmenides, and says that he was the son of xerxes. meanwhile the satrap, fearing that the troops at his disposal were insufficient, had gone to beg assistance of his nephew. artaxerxes had assembled an army and a fleet, and, in the first moment of enthusiasm, had intended to assume the command in person; but, by the advice of his counsellors, he was with little difficulty dissuaded from carrying this whim into effect, and he delegated the conduct of affairs to achæmenes. the latter at first repulsed the libyans ( ), and would probably have soon driven them back into their deserts, had not the athenians interfered in the fray. they gave orders to their fleet at cyprus to support the insurgents by every means in their power, and their appearance on the scene about the autumn of changed the course of affairs. achæmenes was overcome at papremis, and his army almost completely exterminated. inaros struck him down with his own hand in the struggle; but the same evening he caused the body to be recovered, and sent it to the court of susa, though whether out of bravado, or from respect to the achæmenian race, it is impossible to say.* * diodorus siculus says in so many words that the athenians took part in the battle of papremis; thucydides and herodotus do not speak of their being there, and several modern historians take this silence as a proof that their squadron arrived after the battle had been fought. his good fortune did not yet forsake him. some days afterwards, the athenian squadron of charitimides came up by chance with the phoenician fleet, which was sailing to the help of the persians, and had not yet received the news of the disaster which had befallen them at papremis. the greeks sunk thirty of the enemy�s vessels and took twenty more, and, after this success, the allies believed that they had merely to show themselves to bring about a general rising of the fellahîn, and effect the expulsion of the persians from the whole of egypt. they sailed up the river and forced memphis after a few days� siege; but the garrison of the white wall refused to surrender, and the allies were obliged to lay siege to it in the ordinary manner ( ):* in the issue this proved their ruin. artaxerxes raised a fresh force in cilicia, and while completing his preparations, attempted to bring about a diversion in greece. the strength of pharaoh did not so much depend on his libyan and egyptian hordes, as on the little body of hoplites and the crews of the athenian squadron; and if the withdrawal of the latter could be effected, the repulse of the others would be a certainty. persian agents were therefore employed to beg the spartans to invade attica; but the remembrance of salamis and platæa was as yet too fresh to permit of the lacedæmonians allying themselves with the common enemy, and their virtue on this occasion was proof against the darics of the orientals.** the egyptian army was placed in the field early in the year , under the leadership of megabyzos, the satrap of syria: it numbered, so it was said, some , men, and it was supported by phoenician vessels commanded by artabazos.*** * the date of - for the arrival of the athenians is concluded from the passage of thucydides, who gives an account of the end of the war after the cruise of tolmides in , in the sixth year of its course. ** megabyzos opened these negotiations, and his presence at sparta during the winter of - is noticed. *** ctesias here introduces the persian admiral horiscos, but diodorus places artabazos and megabyzos side by side, as was the case later on in the war in cyprus, one at the head of the fleet, the other of the army; it is probable that the historian from whom diodorus copied, viz. ephorus, recognised the same division of leadership in the egyptian campaign. the allies raised the blockade of the white wall as soon as he entered the delta, and hastened to attack him; but they had lost their opportunity. defeated in a desperate encounter, in which charitimides was killed and inaros wounded in the thigh, they barricaded themselves within the large island of prosopitis, about the first fortnight in january of the year , and there sustained a regular siege for the space of eighteen months. at the end of that time megabyzos succeeded in turning an arm of the river, which left their fleet high and dry, and, rather than allow it to fall into his hands, they burned their vessels, whereupon he gave orders to make the final assault. the bulk of the athenian auxiliaries perished in that day�s attack, the remainder withdrew with inaros into the fortified town of byblos, where megabyzos, unwilling to prolong a struggle with a desperate enemy, permitted them to capitulate on honourable terms. some of them escaped and returned to cyrene, from whence they took ship to their own country; but the main body, to the number of , were carried away to susa by megabyzos in order to receive the confirmation of the treaty which he had concluded. as a crowning stroke of misfortune, a reinforcement of fifty athenian triremes, which at this juncture entered the mendesian mouth of the nile, was surrounded by the phoenician fleet, and more than half of them destroyed. the fall of prosopitis brought the rebellion to an end.* * the accounts of these events given by ctesias and thucydides are complementary, and, in spite of their brevity, together form a whole which must be sufficiently near the truth. that of ephorus, preserved in diodorus, is derived from an author who shows partiality to the athenians, and who passes by everything not to their honour, while he seeks to throw the blame for the final disaster on the cowardice of the egyptians. the summary of aristodemus comes directly from that of thucydides. the nomes of the delta were restored to order, and, as was often customary in oriental kingdoms, the vanquished petty princes or their children were reinvested in their hereditary fiefs; even libya was not taken from the family of inaros, but was given to his son thannyras and a certain psammetichus. a few bands of fugitives, however, took refuge in the marshes of the littoral, in the place where the saites in former times had sought a safe retreat, and they there proclaimed king a certain amyrtgeus, who was possibly connected with the line of amasis, and successfully defied the repeated attempts of the persians to dislodge them. the greek league had risked the best of its forces in this rash undertaking, and had failed in its enterprise. it had cost the allies so dearly in men and galleys, that if the persians had at once assumed the offensive, most of the asiatic cities would have found themselves in a most critical situation; and athens, then launched in a quarrel with the states of the peloponnesus, would have experienced the greatest difficulty in succouring them. the feebleness of artaxerxes, however, and possibly the intrigues at court and troubles in various other parts of the empire, prevented the satraps from pursuing their advantage, and when at length they meditated taking action, the opportunity had gone by. they nevertheless attempted to regain the ascendency over cyprus; artabazos with a sidonian fleet cruised about the island, megabyzos assembled troops in cilicia, and the petty kings of greek origin raised a cry of alarm. athens, which had just concluded a truce with the peloponnesians, at once sent two hundred vessels to their assistance under the command of oimon ( ). cimon acted as though he were about to reopen the campaign in egypt and despatched sixty of his triremes to king amyrtceus, while he himself took marion and blockaded kition with the rest of his forces. the siege dragged on; he was perhaps about to abandon it, when he took to his bed and died. those who succeeded him in the command were obliged to raise the blockade for want of provisions, but as they returned and were passing salamis, they fell in with the phoenician vessels which had just been landing the cilician troops, and defeated them; they then disembarked, and, as at mycale and eurymedon, they gained a second victory in the open field, after which they joined the squadron which had been sent to egypt, and sailed for athens with the dead body of their chief. they had once more averted the danger of an attack on the Ægean, but that was all. the athenian statesmen had for some time past realised that it was impossible for them to sustain a double conflict, and fight the battles of greece against the common enemy, while half of the cities whose safety was secured by their heroic devotion were harassing them on the continent, but the influence of cimon had up till now encouraged them to persist; on the death of cimon, they gave up the attempt, and callias, one of their leaders, repaired in state to susa for the purpose of opening negotiations. the peace which was concluded on the occasion of this embassy might at first sight appear advantageous to their side. the persian king, without actually admitting his reverses, accepted their immediate consequences. he recognised the independence of the asiatic creeks, of those at least who belonged to the league of delos, and he promised that his armies on land should never advance further than three days� march from the Ægean littoral. on the seas, he forbade his squadrons to enter hellenic waters from the chelidonian to the cyanæan rocks--that is, from the eastern point of lycia to the opening of the black sea: this prohibition did not apply to the merchant vessels of the contracting parties, and they received permission to traffic freely in each other�s waters--the phoenicians in greece, and the greeks in phonicia, cilicia, and egypt. and yet, when we consider the matter, athens and hellas were, of the two, the greater losers by this convention, which appeared to imply their superiority. not only did they acknowledge indirectly that they felt themselves unequal to the task of overthrowing the empire, but they laid down their arms before they had accomplished the comparatively restricted task which they had set themselves to perform, that of freeing all the greeks from the iranian yoke: their egyptian compatriots still remained persian tributaries, in company with the cities of cyrenaïca, pamphylia, and cilicia, and, above all, that island of cyprus in which they had gained some of their most signal triumphs. the persians, relieved from a war which for a quarter of a century had consumed their battalions and squadrons, drained their finances, and excited their subjects to revolt, were now free to regain their former wealth and perhaps their vigour, could they only find generals to command their troops and guide their politics. artaxerxes was incapable of directing this revival, and his inveterate weakness exposed him perpetually to the plotting of his satraps or to the intrigues of the women of his harem. the example of artabanus, followed by that of hystaspes, had shown how easy it was for an ambitious man to get rid secretly of a monarch or a prince and seriously endanger the crown. the members of the families who had placed darius on the throne, possessed by hereditary right, or something little short of it, the wealthiest and most populous provinces--babylonia, syria, lydia, phrygia, and the countries of the halys--and they were practically kings in all but name, in spite of the _surveillance_ which the general and the secretary were supposed to exercise over their actions. besides this, the indifference and incapacity of the ruling sovereigns had already tended to destroy the order of the administrative system so ably devised by darius: the satrap had, as a rule, absorbed the functions of a general within his own province, and the secretary was too insignificant a personage to retain authority and independence unless he received the constant support of the sovereign. the latter, a tool in the hands of women and eunuchs, usually felt himself powerless to deal with his great vassals. his toleration went to all lengths if he could thereby avoid a revolt; when this was inevitable, and the rebels were vanquished, he still continued to conciliate them, and in most cases their fiefs and rights were preserved or restored to them, the monarch knowing that he could rid himself of them treacherously by poison or the dagger in the case of their proving themselves too troublesome. megabyzos by his turbulence was a thorn in the side of artaxerxes during the half of his reign. he had ended his campaign in egypt by engaging to preserve the lives of inaros and the greeks who had capitulated at byblos, and, in spite of the anger of the king, he succeeded in keeping his word for five years, but at the end of that time the demands of amestris prevailed. she succeeded in obtaining from him some fifty greeks whom she beheaded, besides inaros himself, whom she impaled to avenge achæmenes. megabyzos, who had not recovered from the losses he had sustained in his last campaign against cimon, at first concealed his anger, but he asked permission to visit his syrian province, and no sooner did he reach it, than he resorted to hostilities. he defeated in succession usiris and menostates, the two generals despatched against him, and when force failed to overcome his obstinate resistance, the government condescended to treat with him, and swore to forget the past if he would consent to lay down arms. to this he agreed, and reappeared at court; but once there, his confidence nearly proved fatal to him. having been invited to take part in a hunt, he pierced with his javelin a lion which threatened to attack the king: artaxerxes called to mind an ancient law which punished by death any intervention of that kind, and he ordered that the culprit should be beheaded. megabyzos with difficulty escaped this punishment through the entreaties of amestris and of his wife amytis; but he was deprived of his fiefs, and sent to kyrta, on the shores of the persian gulf. after five years this exile became unbearable; he therefore spread the report that he was attacked by leprosy, and he returned home without any one venturing to hinder him, from fear of defiling themselves by contact with his person. amestris and amytis brought about his reconciliation with his sovereign; and thenceforward he regulated his conduct so successfully that the past was completely forgotten, and when he died, at the age of seventy-six years, artaxerxes deeply regretted his loss.* * these events are known to us only through ctesias. their date is uncertain, but there is no doubt that they occurred after cimon�s campaign in cyprus and the conclusion of the peace of callias. peace having been signed with athens, and the revolt of megabyzos being at an end, artaxerxes was free to enjoy himself without further care for the future, and to pass his time between his various capitals and palaces. [illustration: .jpg view of the achaemenian ruins of istakhr] drawn by boudier, from the engraving of flandin and coste. his choice lay between susa and persepolis, between ecbatana and babylon, according as the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter induced him to pass from the plains to the mountains, or from the latter to the plains. during his visits to babylon he occupied one of the old chaldæan palaces, but at ecbatana he possessed merely the ancient residence of the median kings, and the seraglio built or restored by xerxes in the fashion of the times: at susa and in persia proper, the royal buildings were entirely the work of the achæmenids, mostly that of darius and xerxes. the memory of cyrus and of the kings to whom primitive persia owed her organisation in the obscure century preceding her career of conquest, was piously preserved in the rude buildings of pasargadæ, which was regarded as a sacred city, whither the sovereigns repaired for coronation as soon as their predecessors had expired. but its lonely position and simple appointments no longer suited their luxurious and effeminate habits, and darius had in consequence fixed his residence a few miles to the south of it, near to the village, which after its development became the immense royal city of persepolis. he there erected buildings more suited to the splendour of his court, and found the place so much to his taste during his lifetime, that he was unwilling to leave it after death. he therefore caused his tomb to be cut in the steep limestone cliff which borders the plain about half a mile to the north-west of the town. it is an opening in the form of a greek cross, the upper part of which contains a bas-relief in which the king, standing in front of the altar, implores the help of ahura-mazdâ poised with extended wings above him; the platform on which the king stands is supported by two rows of caryatides in low relief, whose features and dress are characteristic of persian vassals, while other personages, in groups of three on either side, are shown in the attitude of prayer. below, in the transverse arms of the cross, is carved a flat portico with four columns, in the centre of which is the entrance to the funeral vault. within the latter, in receptacles hollowed out of the rock, darius and eight of his family were successively laid. xerxes caused a tomb in every way similar to be cut for himself near that of darius, and in the course of years others were added close by.* * the tomb of darius alone bears an inscription. darius iii. was also buried there by command of alexander. [illustration: .jpg the tomb of darius] drawn by faucher-gudin, from the heliogravure by marcel dieulafoy. both the tombs and the palace are built in that eclectic style which characterises the achæmenian period of iranian art. the main features are borrowed from the architecture of those nations which were vassals or neighbours of the empire--babylonia, egypt, and greece; but these various elements have been combined and modified in such a manner as to form a rich and harmonious whole. [illustration: .jpg the hill of the royal achaemenian tombs at nakush-i-rustem] drawn by boudier, from the engraving of flandin and coste. the core of the walls was of burnt bricks, similar to those employed in the euphrates valley, but these were covered with a facing of enamelled tiles, disposed as a skirting or a frieze, on which figured those wonderful processions of archers, and the lions which now adorn the louvre, while the pilasters at the angles, the columns, pillars, window-frames, and staircases were of fine white limestone or of hard bluish-grey marble. [illustration: .jpg one of the capitals from susa] drawn by boudier, from a photograph taken in the louvre by faucher-gudin. [illustration: b.jpg freize of archers at suza] [illustration: .jpg general ruins of persipolis] the doorways are high and narrow; the moulding which frames them is formed of three ionic fillets, each projecting beyond the other, surmounted by a coved egyptian lintel springing from a row of alternate eggs and disks. the framing of the doors is bare, but the embrasures are covered with bas-reliefs representing various scenes in which the king is portrayed fulfilling his royal functions--engaged in struggles with evil genii which have the form of lions or fabulous animals, occupied in hunting, granting audiences, or making an entrance in state, shaded by an umbrella which is borne by a eunuch behind him. the columns employed in this style of architecture constitute its most original feature. the base of them usually consists of two mouldings, resting either on a square pedestal or on a cylindrical drum, widening out below into a bell-like curve, and sometimes ornamented with several rows of inverted leaves. the shafts, which have forty-eight perpendicular ribs cut on their outer surface, are perhaps rather tall in proportion to their thickness. they terminate in a group of large leaves, an evident imitation of the egyptian palm-leaf capital, from which spring a sort of rectangular fluted die or abacus, flanked on either side with four rows of volutes curved in opposite directions, generally two at the base and two at the summit. the heads and shoulders of two bulls, placed back to back, project above the volutes, and take the place of the usual abacus of the capital. the dimensions of these columns, their gracefulness, and the distance at which they were placed from one another, prove that they supported not a stone architrave, but enormous beams of wood, which were inserted between the napes of the bulls� necks, and upon which the joists of the roof were superimposed. the palace of persepolis, built by darius after he had crushed the revolts which took place at the outset of his reign, was situated at the foot of a chain of rugged mountains which skirt the plain on its eastern side, and was raised on an irregularly shaped platform or terrace, which was terminated by a wall of enormous polygonal blocks of masonry. the terrace was reached by a double flight of steps, the lateral walls of which are covered with bas-reliefs, representing processions of satellites, slaves, and tributaries, hunting scenes, fantastic episodes of battle, and lions fighting with and devouring bulls. the area of the raised platform was not of uniform level, and was laid out in gardens, in the midst of which rose the pavilions that served as dwelling-places. the reception-rooms were placed near the top of the flight of steps, and the more important of them had been built under the two preceding kings. those nearest to the edge of the platform were the propylæ of xerxes--gigantic entrances whose gateways were guarded on either side by winged bulls of assyrian type; beyond these was the _apadana_, or hall of honour, where the sovereign presided in state at the ordinary court ceremonies. to the east of the _apadana_, and almost in the centre of the raised terrace, rose the hall of a hundred columns, erected by darius, and used only on special occasions. artaxerxes i. seems to have had a particular affection for susa. it had found favour with his predecessors, and they had so frequently resided there, even after the building of persepolis, that it had continued to be regarded as the real capital of the empire by other nations, whereas the persian sovereigns themselves had sought to make it rather an impregnable retreat than a luxurious residence. artaxerxes built there an _apadana_ on a vaster scale than any hitherto designed. [illustration: .jpg the propylaea of xerxes i. at persepolis] drawn by boudier, from the heliogravure of marcel dieulafoy. it comprised three colonnades, which, taken together, formed a rectangle measuring feet by feet on the two sides, the area being approximately that of the courtyard of the louvre. the central colonnade, which was the largest of the three, was enclosed by walls on three sides, but was open to the south. immense festoons of drapery hung from the wooden entablature, and curtains, suspended from rods between the first row of columns, afforded protection from the sun and from the curiosity of the vulgar. [illustration: .jpg bas-relief of the staircase leading to the apadana of xerxes] drawn by faucher-gudin, from marcel dieulafoy. at the hour appointed for the ceremonies, the great king took his seat in solitary grandeur on the gilded throne of the achæmenids; at the extreme end of the colonnade his eunuchs, nobles, and guards ranged themselves in silence on either side, each in the place which etiquette assigned to him. meanwhile the foreign ambassadors who had been honoured by an invitation to the audience--greeks from thebes, sparta, or athens; sakae from the regions of the north; indians, arabs, nomad chiefs from mysterious ethiopia-ascended in procession the flights of steps which led from the town to the palace, bearing the presents destined for its royal master. [illustration: .jpg the king on his throne] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plandin and coste. having reached the terrace, the curtains of the _apadana_ were suddenly parted, and in the distance, through a vista of columns, they perceived a motionless figure, resplendent with gold and purple, before whom they fell prostrate with their faces to the earth. the heralds were the bearers of their greetings, and brought back to them a gracious or haughty reply, as the case may be. when they rose from the ground, the curtains had closed, the kingly vision was eclipsed, and the escort which had accompanied them into the palace conducted them back to the town, dazzled with the momentary glimpse of the spectacle vouchsafed to them. [illustration: .jpg a view of the apadana of susa, restored] drawn by boudier, from the restoration by marcel dieulafoy. the achæemenian monarchs were not regarded as gods or as sons of gods, like the egyptian pharaohs, and the persian religion forbade their ever becoming so, but the person of the king was hedged round with such ceremonial respect as in other oriental nations was paid only to the gods: this was but natural, for was he not a despot, who with a word or gesture could abase the noblest of his subjects, and determine the well-being or misery of his people? his dress differed from that of his nobles only by the purple dye of its material and the richness of the gold embroideries with which it was adorned, but he was distinguished from all others by the peculiar felt cap, or _kidaris_, which he wore, and the blue-and-white band which encircled it like a crown; the king is never represented without his long sceptre with pommelled handle, whether he be sitting or standing, and wherever he went he was attended by his umbrella- and fan-bearers. the prescriptions of court etiquette were such as to convince his subjects and persuade himself that he was sprung from a nobler race than that of any of his magnates, and that he was outside the pale of ordinary humanity. the greater part of his time was passed in privacy, where he was attended only by the eunuchs appointed to receive his orders; and these orders, once issued, were irrevocable, as was also the king�s word, however much he might desire to recall a promise once made. his meals were, as a rule, served to him alone; he might not walk on foot beyond the precincts of the palace, and he never showed himself in public except on horseback or in his chariot, surrounded by his servants and his guards. the male members of the royal family and those belonging to the six noble houses enjoyed the privilege of approaching the king at any hour of the day or night, provided he was not in the company of one of his wives. these privileged persons formed his council, which he convoked on important occasions, but all ordinary business was transacted by means of the scribes and inferior officials, on whom devolved the charge of the various departments of the government. a vigorous ruler, such as darius had proved himself, certainly trusted no one but himself to read the reports sent in by the satraps, the secretaries, and the generals, or to dictate the answers required by each; but xerxes and artaxerxes delegated the heaviest part of such business to their ministers, and they themselves only fulfilled such state functions as it was impossible to shirk--the public administration of justice, receptions of ambassadors or victorious generals, distributions of awards, annual sacrifices, and state banquets: they were even obliged, in accordance with an ancient and inviolable tradition, once a year to set aside their usual sober habits and drink to excess on the day of the feast of mithra. occasionally they would break through their normal routine of life to conduct in person some expedition of small importance, directed against one of the semi-independent tribes of iran, such as the cadusians, but their most glorious and frequent exploits were confined to the chase. they delighted to hunt the bull, the wild boar, the deer, the wild ass, and the hare, as the pharaohs or assyrian kings of old had done; and they would track the lion to his lair and engage him single-handed; in fact, they held a strict monopoly in such conflicts, a law which punished with death any huntsman who had the impertinence to interpose between the monarch and his prey being only abolished by artaxerxes. a crowd of menials, slaves, great nobles, and priests filled the palace; grooms, stool-bearers, umbrella- and fan-carriers, _havasses_, �immortals,� bakers, perfumers, soldiers, and artisans formed a retinue so numerous as to require a thousand bullocks, asses, and stags to be butchered every day for its maintenance; and when the king made a journey in full state, this enormous train looked like an army on the march. the women of the royal harem lived in seclusion in a separate wing of the palace, or in isolated buildings erected in the centre of the gardens. the legitimate wives of the sovereign were selected from the ladies of the royal house, the sisters or cousins of the king, and from the six princely persian families; but their number were never very large, usually three or four at most.* * cambyses had had three wives, including his two sisters atossa and roxana. darius had four wives--two daughters of cyrus, atossa and artystônê, parmys daughter of srnerdis, and a daughter of otanes. the concubines, on the other hand, were chosen from all classes of society, and were counted by hundreds. [illustration: .jpg processional display of tribute brought to the king of persia] drawn by faucher-gudin, from plates in flandin and coste. they sang or played on musical instruments at the state banquets of the court, they accompanied their master to the battle-field or the chase, and probably performed the various inferior domestic duties in the interior of the harem, such as spinning, weaving, making perfumes, and attending to the confectionery and cooking. each of the king�s wives had her own separate suite of apartments and special attendants, and occupied a much higher position than a mere concubine; but only one was actually queen and had the right to wear the crown, and this position belonged of right to a princess of achæ-menian race. thus atossa, daughter of cyrus, was queen successively to cambyses, gaumâta, and darius; amestris to xerxes; and damaspia to artaxerxes. besides the influence naturally exerted by the queen over the mind of her husband, she often acquired boundless authority in the empire, in spite of her secluded life.* * thus atossa induced darius to designate xerxes as his heir-apparent. her power was still further increased when she became a widow, if the new king happened to be one of her own sons. in such circumstances she retained the external attributes of royalty, sitting at the royal table whenever the king deigned to dine in the women�s apartments, and everywhere taking precedence of the young queen; she was attended by her own body of eunuchs, of whom, as well as of her private revenues, she had absolute control. those whom the queen-mother took under her protection escaped punishment, even though they richly deserved it, but the object of her hatred was doomed to perish in the end, either by poison treacherously administered, or by some horrible form of torture, being impaled, suffocated in ashes, tortured in the trough, or flayed alive. artaxerxes reigned for forty-two years, spending his time between the pleasures of the chase and the harem; no serious trouble disturbed his repose after his suppression of the revolt under megabyzos, but on his death in b.c. there was a renewal of the intrigues and ambitious passions which had stained with bloodshed the opening years of his reign. the legitimate heir, xerxes ii., was assassinated, after a reign of forty-five days, by secudianus (sogdianus), one of his illegitimate brothers, and the _cortège_ which was escorting the bodies of his parents conveyed his also to the royal burying-place at persepolis. meanwhile secudianus became suspicious of another of his brothers, named ochus, whom artaxerxes had caused to marry parysatis, one of the daughters of xerxes, and whom he had set over the important province of hyrcania. ochus received repeated summonses to appear in his brother�s presence to pay him homage, and at last obeyed the mandate, but arrived at the head of an army. the persian nobility rose at his approach, and one by one the chief persons of the state declared themselves in his favour: first arbarius, commander of the cavalry; then arxanes, the satrap of egypt; and lastly, the eunuch artoxares, the ruler of armenia. these three all combined in urging ochus to assume the _edaris_ publicly, which he, with feigned reluctance, consented to do, and proceeded, at the suggestion of parysatis, to open negotiations with secudianus, offering to divide the regal power with him. secudianus accepted the offer, against the advice of his minister menostanes, and gave himself up into the hands of the rebels. he was immediately seized and cast into the ashes, where he perished miserably, after a reign of six months and fifteen days. on ascending the throne, ochus assumed the name of darius. his confidential advisers were three eunuchs, who ruled the empire in his name--artoxares, who had taken such a prominent part in the campaign which won him the crown, artibarzanes, and athôos; but the guiding spirit of his government was, in reality, his wife, the detestable parysatis. she had already borne him two children before she became queen; a daughter, amestris, and a son, arsaces, who afterwards became king under the name of artaxerxes. soon after the accession of her husband, she bore him a second son, whom she named cyrus, in memory of the founder of the empire, and a daughter, artostê; several other children were born subsequently, making thirteen in all, but these all died in childhood, except one named oxendras. violent, false, jealous, and passionately fond of the exercise of power, parysatis hesitated at no crime to rid herself of those who thwarted her schemes, even though they might be members of her own family; and, not content with putting them out of the way, she delighted in making them taste her hatred to the full, by subjecting them to the most skilfully graduated refinements of torture; she deservedly left behind her the reputation of being one of the most cruel of all the cruel queens, whose memory was a terror not only to the harems of persia, but to the whole of the eastern world. the numerous revolts which broke out soon after her husband�s accession, furnished occasions for the revelation of her perfidious cleverness. all the malcontents of the reign of artaxerxes, those who had been implicated in the murder of xerxes ii., or who had sided with secudianus, had rallied round a younger brother of darius, named arsites, and one of them, artyphios, son of megabyzos, took the field in asia minor. being supported by a large contingent of greek mercenaries, he won two successive victories at the opening of the campaign, but was subsequently defeated, though his forces still remained formidable. but persian gold accomplished what persian bravery had failed to achieve, and prevailed over the mercenaries so successfully that all deserted him with the exception of three milesians. [illustration: .jpg darius ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the coins in the _cabinet des médailles._ artyphios and arsites, thus discouraged, committed the imprudence of capitulating on condition of receiving a promise that their lives should be spared, and that they should be well treated; but parysatis persuaded her husband to break his plighted word, and they perished in the ashes. their miserable fate did not discourage the satrap of lydia, pissuthnes, who was of achæmenian race: he entered the lists in b.c., with the help of the athenians. the relations between the persian empire and greece had continued fairly satisfactory since the peace of b.c., and the few outbreaks which had taken place had not led to any widespread disturbance. the athenians, absorbed in their quarrel with sparta, preferred to close their eyes to all side issues, lest the persians should declare war against them, and the satraps of asia minor, fully alive to the situation, did not hesitate to take advantage of any pretext for recovering a part of the territory they coveted: it was thus that they had seized colophon about b.c., and so secured once more a port on the Ægean. darius despatched to oppose pissuthnes a man of noble birth, named tissaphernes, giving him plenary power throughout the whole of the peninsula, and tissaphernes endeavoured to obtain by treachery the success he would with difficulty have won on the field of battle: he corrupted by his darics lycon, the commander of the athenian contingent, and pissuthnes, suddenly abandoned by his best auxiliaries, was forced to surrender at discretion. he also was suffocated in the ashes, and darius bestowed his office on tissaphernes. but the punishment of pissuthnes did not put an end to the troubles: his son amorges roused caria to revolt, and with the title of king maintained his independence for some years longer. while these incidents were taking place, the news of the disasters in sicily reached the east: as soon as it was known in susa that athens had lost at syracuse the best part of her fleet and the choicest of her citizens, the moment was deemed favourable to violate the treaty and regain control of the whole of asia minor. two noteworthy men were at that time set over the western satrapies, tissaphernes ruling at sardes, and tiribazus over hellespontine phrygia. these satraps opened negotiations with sparta at the beginning of b.c., and concluded a treaty with her at miletus itself, by the terms of which the peloponnesians recognised the suzerainty of darius over all the territory once held by his ancestors in asia, including the cities since incorporated into the athenian league. they hoped shortly to be strong enough to snatch from him what they now ceded, and to set free once more the greeks whom they thus condemned to servitude after half a century of independence, but their expectations were frustrated. the towns along the coast fell one after another into the power of tissaphernes, amorges was taken prisoner in lassos, and at the beginning of b.c. there remained to the athenians in ionia and caria merely the two ports of halicarnassus and notium, and the three islands of cos, samos, and lesbos: from that time the power of the great king increased from year to year, and weighed heavily on the destinies of greece. meanwhile darius ii. was growing old, and intrigues with regard to the succession were set on foot. two of his sons put forward claims to the throne: arsaces had seniority in his favour, but had been born when his father was still a mere satrap; cyrus, on the contrary, had been born in the purple, and his mother parysatis was passionately devoted to him.* thanks to her manouvres, he was practically created viceroy of asia minor in b.c., with such abundant resources of men and money at his disposal, that he was virtually an independent sovereign. while he was consolidating his power in the west, his mother endeavoured to secure his accession to the throne by intriguing at the court of the aged king; if her plans failed, cyrus was prepared to risk everything by an appeal to arms. * cyrus was certainly not more than seventeen years old in b.c., evening admitting that he was born immediately after his father�s accession in - b.c. [illustration: .jpg cyrus the younger] drawn by faucher-gudin, from one of the coins in the _cabinet des médailles_. he realised that the greeks would prove powerful auxiliaries in such a contingency; and as soon as he had set up his court at sardes, he planned how best to conciliate their favour, or at least to win over those whose support was likely to be most valuable. athens, as a maritime power, was not in a position to support him in an enterprise which especially required the co-operation of a considerable force of heavily armed infantry. he therefore deliberately espoused the cause of the peloponnesians, and the support he gave them was not without its influence on the issue of the struggle: the terrible day of Ægos potamos was a day of triumph for him as much as for the lacedaemonians ( b.c.). his intimacy with lysander, however, his constant enlistments of mercenary troops, and his secret dealings with the neighbouring provinces, had already aroused suspicion, and the satraps placed under his orders, especially tissaphernes, accused him to the king of treason. darius summoned him to susa to explain his conduct ( b.c.), and he arrived just in time to be present at his father�s death ( ), but too late to obtain his designation as heir to the throne through the intervention of his mother, parysatis; arsaces inherited the crown, and assumed the name of artaxerxes. [illustration: .jpg artaxerxes mnemon] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. this coin, which was struck at mallos, in cilicia, bears as a counter-mark the figure of a bull and the name of the city of issus. cyrus entered the temple of pasargadae surreptitiously during the coronation ceremony, with the intention of killing his brother at the foot of the altar; but tissaphernes, warned by one of the priests, denounced him, and he would have been put to death on the spot, had not his mother thrown her arms around him and prevented the executioner from fulfilling his office. having with difficulty obtained pardon and been sent back to his province, he collected thirty thousand greeks and a hundred thousand native troops, and, hastily leaving sardes ( b.c.), he crossed asia minor, northern syria, and mesopotamia, encountered the royal army at cunaxa, to the north of babylon, and rashly met his end at the very moment of victory. he was a brave, active, and generous prince, endowed with all the virtues requisite to make a good oriental monarch, and he had, moreover, learnt, through contact with the greeks, to recognise the weak points of his own nation, and was fully determined to remedy them: his death, perhaps, was an irreparable misfortune for his country. had he survived and supplanted the feeble artaxerxes, it is quite possible that he might have confirmed and strengthened the power of persia, or, at least, temporarily have arrested its decline. having lost their leader, his asiatic followers at once dispersed; but the mercenaries did not lose heart, and, crossing asia and armenia, gained at length the shores of the black sea. up to that time the greeks had looked upon persia as a compact state, which they were sufficiently powerful to conquer by sea and hold in check by land, but which they could not, without imprudence, venture to attack within its own frontiers. the experience of the ten thousand was a proof to them that a handful of men, deprived of their proper generals, without guides, money, or provisions, might successfully oppose the overwhelming forces of the great king, and escape from his clutches without any serious difficulty. national discords prevented them from at once utilising the experience they thus acquired, but the lesson was not lost upon the court of susa. the success of lysander had been ensured by persian subsidies, and now sparta hesitated to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of miletus; the lacedæmonians demanded liberty once more for the former allies of athens, fostered the war in asia in order to enforce their claims, and their king agesilaus, penetrating to the very heart of phrygia, would have pressed still further forward in the tracks of the ten thousand, had not an opportune diversion been created in his rear by the bribery of the persians. athens once more flew to arms: her fleet, in conjunction with the phoenicians, took possession of cythera; the long walls were rebuilt at the expense of the great king, and sparta, recalled by these reverses to a realisation of her position, wisely abandoned her inclination for distant enterprises. asia minor was reconquered, and persia passed from the position of a national enemy to that of the friend and arbiter of greece; but she did so by force of circumstances only, and not from having merited in any way the supremacy she attained. her military energy, indeed, was far from being exhausted; but poor artaxerxes, bewildered by the rivalries between his mother and his wives, did not know how to make the most of the immense resources still at his disposal, and he met with repeated checks as soon as he came face to face with a nation and leaders who refused to stoop to treachery. he had no sooner recovered possession of the Ægean littoral than egypt was snatched from his grasp by a new pharaoh who had arisen in the nile valley. the peace had not been seriously disturbed in egypt during the forty years which had elapsed since the defeat of inarus. satrap had peaceably succeeded satrap in the fortress of memphis; the exhaustion of libya had pre-vented any movement on the part of thannyras; the aged amyrtæus had passed from the scene, and his son, pausiris, bent his neck submissively to the persian yoke. more than once, however, unexpected outbursts had shown that the fires of rebellion were still smouldering. a psammetichus, who reigned about b.c. in a corner of the delta, had dared to send corn and presents to the athenians, then at war with artaxerxes i., and the second year of darius ii. had been troubled by a sanguinary sedition, which, however, was easily suppressed by the governor then in power; finally, about b.c., a king of egypt had, not without some show of evidence, laid himself open to the charge of sending a piratical expedition into phoenician waters, an arab king having contributed to the enterprise.* * the revolt mentioned by ctesias has nothing to do with the insurrection of the satrap of egypt which is here referred to, the date of which is furnished by the syncellus. it was easy to see, moreover, from periodical revolts--such as that of megabyzos in syria, those of artyphios and arsites, of pissuthnes and amorges in asia minor--with what impunity the wrath of the great king could be defied: it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that, about b.c., an enemy should appear in the heart of the delta in the person of a grandson and namesake of amyrtæus. he did not at first rouse the whole country to revolt, for egyptian troops were still numbered in the army of artaxerxes at the battle of cunaxa in b.c.; but he succeeded in establishing a regular native government, and struggled so resolutely against the foreign domination that the historians of the sacred colleges inscribed his name on the list of the pharaohs. he is there made to represent a whole dynasty, the xxviiith which lasted six years, coincident with the six years of his reign. it was due to a mendesian dynasty, however, whose founder was nephorites, that egypt obtained its entire freedom, and was raised once more to the rank of a nation. this dynasty from the very outset adopted the policy which had proved so successful in the case of the saites three centuries previously, and employed it with similar success. egypt had always been in the position of a besieged fortress, which needed, for its complete security, that its first lines of defence should be well in advance of its citadel: she must either possess syria or win her as an ally, if she desired to be protected against all chance of sudden invasion. nephorites and his successors, therefore, formed alliances beyond the isthmus, and even on the other side of the mediterranean, with cyprus, caria, and greece, in one case to purchase support, and in another to re-establish the ancient supremacy exercised by the theban pharaohs.* * this is, at any rate, the idea given of him by egyptian tradition in the time of the ptolemies, as results from a passage in the _demotic rhapsody_, where his reign is mentioned. every revolt against the persians, every quarrel among the satraps, helped forward their cause, since they compelled the great king to suspend his attacks against egypt altogether or to prosecute them at wide intervals: the egyptians therefore fomented such quarrels, or even, at need, provoked them, and played their game so well that for a long time they had to oppose only a fraction of the persian forces. like the saite pharaohs before them, they were aware how little reliance could be placed on native troops, and they recruited their armies at great expense from the european greeks. this occurred at the time when mercenary forces were taking the place of native levies throughout hellas, and war was developing into a lucrative trade for those who understood how to conduct it: adventurers, greedy for booty, flocked to the standards of the generals who enjoyed the best reputation for kindness or ability, and the generals themselves sold their services to the highest bidder. the persian kings took large advantage of this arrangement to procure troops: the pharaohs imitated their example, and in the years which followed, the most experienced captains, iphicrates, chabrias, and timotheus, passed from one camp to another, as often against the will as with the consent of their fatherland. the power of sparta was at her zenith when nephorites ascended the throne, and she was just preparing for her expedition to phrygia. the pharaoh concluded an alliance with the lacedomonians, and in b.c. sent to agesilaus a fleet laden with arms, corn, and supplies, which, however, was intercepted by conon, who was at that moment cruising in the direction of rhodes in command of the persian squadron. this misadventure and the abrupt retreat of the spartans from asia minor cooled the good will of the egyptian king towards his allies. thinking that they had abandoned him, and that he was threatened with an imminent attack on the shore of the delta, he assembled, probably at pelusium, the forces he had apparently intended for a distant enterprise. matters took longer to come to a crisis than he had expected. the retreat of agesilaus had not pacified the Ægean satrapies; after the disturbance created by cyrus the younger, the greater number of the native tribes--mysians, pisidians, people of pontus and paphlagonia--had shaken off the persian yoke, and it was a matter of no small difficulty to reduce them once more to subjection. their incessant turbulence gave egypt time to breathe and to organise new combinations. cyprus entered readily into her designs. since the subjugation of that island in b.c., the greek cities had suffered terrible oppression at the hands of the great king. artaxerxes i., despairing of reducing them to obedience, depended exclusively for support on the phoenician inhabitants of the island, who, through his favour, regained so much vigour that in the space of less than two generations they had recovered most of the ground lost during the preceding centuries: semitic rulers replaced the achaean tyrants at salamis, and in most of the other cities, and citium became what it had been before the rise of salamis, the principal commercial centre in the island. evagoras, a descendant of the ancient kings, endeavoured to retrieve the grecian cause: after driving out of salamis abdemon, its tyrian ruler, he took possession of all the other towns except citium and amathus. this is not the place to recount the brilliant part played by evagoras, in conjunction with conon, during the campaigns against the spartans in the peloponnesian war. the activity he then displayed and the ambitious designs he revealed soon drew upon him the dislike of the persian governors and their sovereign; and from b.c. he was at open war with persia. he would have been unable, single-handed, to maintain the struggle for any length of time, but egypt and greece were at his back, ready to support him with money or arms. hakoris had succeeded nephorites i. in b.c.,* and had repulsed an attack of artaxerxes between and .** * the length of the reign of nephorites i. is fixed at six years by the lists of manetho; the last-known date of his reign is that of his fourth year, on a mummy-bandage preserved in the louvre. ** this war is alluded to by several ancient authors in passages which have been brought together and explained by judeah; but unfortunately the detailed history of the events is not known. he was not unduly exalted by his success, and had immediately taken wise precautions in view of a second invasion. after safeguarding his western frontier by concluding a treaty with the libyans of barca, he entered into an alliance with evagoras and the athenians. [illustration: .jpg hakoris] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. he sent lavish gifts of corn to the cypriots, as well as munitions of war, ships, and money while athens sent them several thousand men under the command of chabrias; not only did an expedition despatched against them under autophradates fail miserably, but evagoras seized successively citium and amathus, and, actually venturing across the sea, took tyre by assault and devastated phoenicia and cilicia. the princes of asia minor were already preparing for revolt, and one of them, hecatomnus of caria, had openly joined the allies, when sparta suddenly opened negotiations with persia: antalcidas presented himself at susa to pay homage before the throne of the great king. the treaty of miletus had brought the efforts of athens to naught, and sold the asiatic greeks to their oppressors: the peace obtained by antalcidas effaced the results of salamis and platsæ, and laid european greece prostrate at the feet of her previously vanquished foes. an order issuing from the centre of persia commanded the cities of greece to suspend hostilities and respect each other�s liberties; the issuing of such an order was equivalent to treating them as vassals whose quarrels it is the function of the suzerain to repress, but they nevertheless complied with the command ( b.c.), artaxerxes, relieved from anxiety for the moment, as to affairs on the Ægean, was now free to send his best generals into the rebel countries, and such was the course his ministers recommended. evagoras was naturally the first to be attacked. cyprus was, in fact, an outpost of egypt; commanding as she did the approach by sea, she was in a position to cut the communications of any army, which, issuing from palestine, should march upon the delta. artaxerxes assembled three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and three hundred triremes under the command of tiribazus, and directed the whole force against the island. at first the cypriot cruisers intercepted the convoys which were bringing provisions for this large force, and by so doing reduced the invaders to such straits that sedition broke out in their camp; but evagoras was defeated at sea off the promontory of citium, and his squadron destroyed. he was not in any way discouraged by this misfortune, but leaving his son, pnytagoras, to hold the barbarian forces in check, he hastened to implore the help of the pharaoh ( b.c.). but hakoris was too much occupied with securing his own immediate safety to risk anything in so desperate an enterprise. evagoras was able to bring back merely an insufficient subsidy; he shut himself up in salamis, and there maintained the conflict for some years longer. meanwhile hakoris, realising that the submission of cyprus would oppose his flank to attack, tried to effect a diversion in asia minor, and by entering into alliance with the pisidians, then in open insurrection, he procured for it a respite, of which he himself took advantage to prepare for the decisive struggle. the peace effected by antalcidas had left most of the mercenary soldiers of greece without employment. hakoris hired twenty thousand of them, and the phoenician admirals, still occupied in blockading the ports of cyprus, failed to intercept the vessels which brought him these reinforcements. it was fortunate for egypt that they did so, for the pharaoh died in b.c., and his successors, psamuthis il, mutis, and nephorites il, each occupied the throne for a very short time, and the whole country was in confusion for rather more than two years ( - b.c.) during the settlement of the succession.* * hakoris reigned thirteen years, from to b.c. the reigns of the three succeeding kings occupied only two years and four months between them, from the end of to the beginning of . muthes or mutis, who is not mentioned in all the lists of manetho, seems to have his counterpart in the _demotic rhapsody_. wiedemann has inverted the order usually adopted, and proposed the following series: nephorites i., muthes, psamuthis, hakoris, nephorites ii. the discovery at karnak of a small temple where psamuthis mentions hakoris as his predecessor shows that on this point at least manetho was well informed. the turbulent disposition of the great feudatory nobles, which had so frequently brought trouble upon previous pharaohs during the assyrian wars, was no less dangerous in this last century of egyptian independence; it caused the fall of the mendesian dynasty in the very face of the enemy, and the prince of sebennytos, nakht-har-habît, nectanebo i., was raised to the throne by the military faction. according to a tradition current in ptolemaic times, this sovereign was a son of nephorites i., who had been kept out of his heritage by the jealousy of the gods; whatever his origin, the people had no cause to repent of having accepted him as their king. he began his reign by suppressing the slender subsidies which evagoras had continued to receive from his predecessors, and this measure, if not generous, was at least politic. for cyprus was now virtually in the power of the persians, and the blockade of a few thousand men in salamis did not draught away a sufficiently large proportion of their effective force to be of any service to egypt: the money which had hitherto been devoted to the cypriots was henceforth reserved for the direct defence of the nile valley. evagoras obtained unexpectedly favourable conditions: artaxerxes conceded to him his title of king and the possession of his city ( b.c.), and turned his whole attention to nectanebo, the last of his enemies who still held out. nectanebo had spared no pains in preparing effectively to receive his foe. he chose as his coadjutor the athenian chabrias, whose capacity as a general had been manifested by recent events, and the latter accepted this office although he had received no instructions from his government to do so, and had transformed the delta into an entrenched camp. he had fortified the most vulnerable points along the coast, had built towers at each of the mouths of the river to guard the entrance, and had selected the sites for his garrison fortresses so judiciously that they were kept up long after his time to protect the country. two of them are mentioned by name: one, situated below pelusium, called the castle of chabrias; the other, not far from lake mareotis, which was known as his township.* * both are mentioned by strabo; the exact sites of these two places are not yet identified. diodorus siculus, describing the defensive preparations of egypt, does not state expressly that they were the work of chabrias, but this fact seems to result from a general consideration of the context. [illustration: .jpg pharnabazus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. the persian generals endeavoured to make their means of attack proportionate to the defences of the enemy. acre was the only port in southern syria large enough to form the rendezvous for a fleet, where it might be secure from storms and surprises of the enemy. this was chosen as the persian headquarters, and formed the base of their operations. during three years they there accumulated supplies of food and military stores, phoenician and creek vessels, and both foreign and native troops. the rivalries between the military commanders, tithraustes, datâmes, and abrocomas, and the intrigues of the court, had on several occasions threatened the ruin of the enterprise, but pharnabazus, who from the outset had held supreme command, succeeded in ridding himself of his rivals, and in the spring of b.c. was at length ready for the advance. the expedition consisted of two hundred thousand asiatic troops, and twenty thousand greeks, three hundred triremes, two hundred galleys of thirty oars, and numerous transports. superiority of numbers was on the side of the persians, and that just at the moment when nectanebo lost his most experienced general. artaxerxes had remonstrated with the athenians for permitting one of their generals to serve in egypt, in spite of their professed friendship for himself, and, besides insisting on his recall, had requested for himself the services of the celebrated iphicrates. the athenians complied with his demand, and while summoning chabrias to return to athens, despatched iphicrates to syria, where he was placed in command of the mercenary troops. pharnabazus ordered a general advance in may, b.c.,* but when he arrived before pelusium, he perceived that he was not in a position to take the town by storm; not only had the fortifications been doubled, but the banks of the canals had been cut and the approaches inundated. iphicrates advised him not to persevere in attempting a regular siege: he contended that it would be more profitable to detach an expeditionary force towards some less well-protected point on the coast, and there to make a breach in the system of defence which protected the enemies� front. * as kenrick justly observes, �the persian and athenian generals committed the same mistake which led to the defeat of saint louis and the capture of his army in a.d., and which bonaparte avoided in his campaign of .� anyhow, it seems that the fault must be laid on pharnabazus alone, and that iphicrates was entirely blameless. three thousand men were despatched with all secrecy to the mouth of the mendesian branch of the nile, and there disembarked unexpectedly before the forts which guarded the entrance. the garrison, having imprudently made a sortie in face of the enemy, was put to rout, and pursued so hotly that victors and vanquished entered pell-mell within the walls. [illustration: .jpg artaxerxes ii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a silver stater in the _cabinet des médailles_. after this success victory was certain, if the persians pursued their advantage promptly and pushed forward straight into the heart of the delta; the moment was the more propitious for such a movement, since nectanebo had drained memphis of troops to protect his frontier. iphicrates, having obtained this information from one of the prisoners, advised pharnabazus to proceed up the nile with the fleet, and take the capital by storm before the enemy should have time to garrison it afresh; the persian general, however, considered the plan too hazardous, and preferred to wait until the entire army should have joined him. iphicrates offered to risk the adventure with his body of auxiliary troops only, but was suspected of harbouring some ambitious design, and was refused permission to advance. meanwhile these delays had given the egyptians time to recover from their first alarm; they boldly took the offensive, surrounded the position held by pharnabazus, and were victorious in several skirmishes. summer advanced, the nile rose more rapidly than usual, and soon the water encroached upon the land; the invaders were obliged to beat a retreat before it, and fall back towards syria. iphicrates, disgusted at the ineptitude and suspicion of his asiatic colleagues, returned secretly to greece: the remains of the army were soon after disbanded, and egypt once more breathed freely. the check received by the persian arms, however, was not sufficiently notorious to shake that species of supremacy which artaxerxes had exercised in greece since the peace of . sparta, thebes, and athens vied with each other in obtaining an alliance with him as keenly as if he had been successful before pelusium. antalcidas reappeared at susa in b.c. to procure a fresh act of intervention; pelopidas and ismenias, in , begged for a rescript similar to that of antalcidas; and finally athens sent a solemn embassy to entreat for a subsidy. it seemed as if the great king had become a kind of supreme arbiter for greece, and that all the states hitherto leagued against him now came in turn to submit their mutual differences for his decision. but this arbiter who thus imposed his will on states beyond the borders of his empire was never fully master within his own domains. of gentle nature and pliant disposition, inclined to clemency rather than to severity, and, moreover, so lacking in judgment as a general that he had almost succumbed to an attack by the cadusians on the only occasion that he had, in a whim of the moment, undertaken the command of an army in person, artaxerxes busied himself with greater zeal in religious reforms than in military projects. he introduced the rites of mithra and anâhita into the established religion of the state, but he had not the energy necessary to curb the ambitions of his provincial governors. asia minor, whose revolts followed closely on those of egypt, rose in rebellion against him immediately after the campaign on the nile, ariobarzanes heading the rebellion in phrygia, datâmes and aspis that in cilicia and cappadocia, and both defying his power for several years. when at length they succumbed through treachery, the satraps of the mediterranean district, from the hellespont to the isthmus of suez, formed a coalition and simultaneously took the field: the break-up of the empire would have been complete had not persian darics been lavishly employed once more in the affair. meanwhile nectanebo had died in ,* and had been succeeded by tachôs.** * the lists of manetho assign ten or eighteen years to his reign. a sarcophagus in vienna bears the date of his fifteenth year, and the great inscription of edfu speaks of gifts he made to the temple in this town in the eighteenth year of his reign. the reading eighteen is therefore preferable to the reading ten in the lists of manetho; if the very obscure text of the _demotic rhapsody_ really applies the number nine or ten to the length of the reign, this reckoning must be explained by some mystic calculations of the priests of the ptolemaic epoch. ** the name of this king, written by the greeks teôs or tachôs, in accordance with the pronunciation of different egyptian dialects, has been discovered in hieroglyphic writing on the external wall of the temple of khonsu at karnak. the new pharaoh deemed the occasion opportune to make a diversion against persia and to further secure his own safety: he therefore offered his support to the satraps, who sent eheomitres as a delegate to discuss the terms of an offensive and defensive alliance. having inherited from nectanebo a large fleet and a full treasury, tachôs entrusted to the ambassador talents of silver, and gave him fifty ships, with which he cruised along the coast of asia minor towards leukê. his accomplices were awaiting him there, rejoicing at the success of his mission, but he himself had no confidence in the final issue of the struggle, and merely sought how he might enter once more into favour with the persian court; he therefore secured his safety by betraying his associates. he handed over the subsidies and the egyptian squadron to orontes, the satrap of daskylium, and then seizing the insurgent chiefs sent them in chains to susa. these acts of treachery changed the complexion of affairs; the league suddenly dissolved after the imprisonment of its leaders, and arta-xerxes re-established his authority over asia minor. [illustration: .jpg datames iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. egypt became once more the principal object of attack, and by the irony of fate pharaoh had himself contributed to enrich the coffers and reinforce the fleet of his foes. in spite of this mischance, however, circumstances were so much in his favour that he ventured to consider whether it would not be more advantageous to forestall the foe by attacking him, rather than passively to await an onslaught behind his own lines. he had sought the friendship of athens,* and, though it had not been granted in explicit terms, the republic had, nevertheless, permitted ghabrias to resume his former post at his side. * the memory of this embassy has been preserved for us by a decree of the athenian assembly, unfortunately much mutilated, which has been assigned to various dates between and b.c. m. paul foucart has shown that the date of the decree must be referred to one of three archon-ships-- the archonship of callimedes, - ; that of eucharistus, - ; or that of cephisodotus, - ^ without entering into a discussion of the other evidence on the subject, it seems to me probable that the embassy may be most conveniently assigned to the archonship of callimedes, towards the end of b.c., at the moment when chabrias had just arrived in egypt, and was certain to endeavour to secure the help of athens for the king he served. chabrias exhorted him to execute his project, and as he had not sufficient money to defray the expenses of a long campaign outside his own borders, the athenian general instructed him how he might procure the necessary funds. he suggested to him that, as the egyptian priests were wealthy, the sums of money annually assigned to them for the sacrifices and maintenance of the temples would be better employed in the service of the state, and counselled him to reduce or even to suppress most of the sacerdotal colleges. the priests secured their own safety by abandoning their personal property, and the king graciously deigned to accept their gifts, and then declared to them that in future, as long as the struggle against persia continued, he should exact from them nine-tenths of their sacred revenues. this tax would have sufficed for all requirements if it had been possible to collect it in full, but there is no doubt that very soon the priests must have discovered means of avoiding part of the payment, for it was necessary to resort to other expedients. chabrias advised that the poll and house taxes should be increased; that one obol should be exacted for each �ardeb� of corn sold, and a tithe levied on the produce of all ship-building yards, manufactories, and manual industries. money now poured into the treasury, but a difficulty arose which demanded immediate solution. egypt possessed very little specie, and the natives still employed barter in the ordinary transactions of life, while the foreign mercenaries refused to accept payment in kind or uncoined metal; they demanded good money as the price of their services. orders were issued to the natives to hand over to the royal exchequer all the gold and silver in their possession, whether wrought or in ingots, the state guaranteeing gradual repayment through the nomarchs from the future product of the poll-tax, and the bullion so obtained was converted into specie for the payment of the auxiliary troops. these measures, though winning some unpopularity for tachôs, enabled him to raise eighty thousand native troops and ten thousand greeks, to equip a fleet of two hundred vessels, and to engage the best generals of the period. his eagerness to secure the latter, however, was injurious to his cause. having already engaged chabrias and obtained the good will of athens, he desired also to gain the help of agesilaus and the favourable opinion of the lacedaemonians. though now eighty years old, agesilaus was still under the influence of cupidity and vanity; the promise of being placed in supreme command enticed him, and he set sail with one thousand hoplites. a disappointment awaited him at the moment of his disembarkation: tachôs gave him command of the mercenary troops only, reserving for himself the general direction of operations, and placing the whole fleet under the orders of chabrias. the aged hero, having vented his indignation by indulging a more than ordinary display of spartan rudeness, allowed himself to be appeased by abundant presents, and assumed the post assigned to him. but soon after a more serious subject of disagreement arose between him and his ally; agesilaus was disposed to think that tachôs should remain quietly on the banks of the nile, and leave to his generals the task of conducting the campaign. the ease with which mercenary leaders passed from one camp to the other, according to the fancy of the moment, was not calculated to inspire the egyptian pharaoh with confidence: he refused to comply with the wishes of agesilaus, and, entrusting the regency to one of his relatives, proceeded to invade syria. he found the persians unprepared: they shut themselves up in their strongholds, and the pharaoh confided to his cousin nectanebo, son of the regent, the task of dislodging them. the war dragged on for some time; discontent crept in among the native levies, and brought treachery in its train. the fiscal measures which had been adopted had exasperated the priests and the common people; complaints, at first only muttered in fear, found bold expression as soon as the expeditionary force had crossed the frontier. [illustration: .jpb nectanebo i] drawn by faucher-gudin, from lepsius. the regent secretly encouraged the malcontents, and wrote to his son warning him of what was going on, and advised him to seize the crown. nectanebo could easily have won over the egyptian troops to his cause, but their support would have proved useless as long as the greeks did not pronounce in his favour, and chabrias refused to break his oaths. agesilaus, however, was not troubled by the same scruples. his vanity had been sorely wounded by the pharaoh: after being denied the position which was, he fancied, his by right, his short stature, his ill-health, and native coarseness had exposed him to the unseemly mockery of the courtiers. tachôs, considering his ability had been over-estimated, applied to him, it is said, the fable of the mountain bringing forth a mouse; to which he had replied, �when opportunity offers, i will prove to him that i am the lion.� when tachôs requested him to bring the rebels to order, he answered ironically that he was there to help the egyptians, not to attack them; and before giving his support to either of the rival claimants, he should consult the ephors. the ephors enjoined him to act in accordance with the welfare of his country, and he thereupon took the side of nectanebo, despite the remonstrances of chabrias. tachôs, deserted by his veterans, fled to sidon, and thence to susa, where artaxerxes received him hospitably and without reproaching him ( b.c.); but the news of his fall was not received on the banks of the nile with as much rejoicing as he had anticipated. the people had no faith in any revolution in which the greeks whom they detested took the chief part, and the feudal lords refused to acknowledge a sovereign whom they had not themselves chosen; they elected one of their number--the prince of mendes--to oppose nectanebo. the latter was obliged to abandon the possessions won by his predecessor, and return with his army to egypt: he there encountered the forces of his enemy, which, though as yet undisciplined, were both numerous and courageous. agesilaus counselled an immediate attack before these troops had time to become experienced in tactics, but he no longer stood well at court; the prince of mendes had endeavoured to corrupt him, and, though he had shown unexpected loyalty, many, nevertheless, suspected his good faith. nectanebo set up his headquarters at tanis, where he was shortly blockaded by his adversary. it is well known how skilfully the egyptians handled the pick-axe, and how rapidly they could construct walls of great strength; the circle of entrenchments was already near completion, and provisions were beginning to fail, when agesilaus received permission to attempt a sortie. he broke through the besieging lines under cover of the night, and some days later won a decisive victory ( b.c.). nectanebo would now have gladly kept the spartan general at his side, for he was expecting a persian attack; but agesilaus, who had had enough of egypt and its intrigues, deserted his cause, and shortly afterwards died of exhaustion on the coast near cyrene. the anticipated persian invasion followed shortly after, but it was conducted without energy or decision. artaxerxes had entrusted the conduct of the expedition to tachôs, doubtless promising to reinstate him in his former power as satrap or vassal king of egypt, but tachôs died before he could even assume his post,* and the discords which rent the family of the persian king prevented the generals who replaced him from taking any effective action. * Ælian narrates, probably following dinon, that tachôs died of dysentery due to over-indulgence at dinner. the aged artaxerxes had had, it was reported, one hundred and fifteen sons by the different women in his harem, but only three of those by his queen statira were now living--darius, ariaspes, and ochus. darius, the eldest of the three, had been formally recognised as heir-apparent--perhaps at the time of the disastrous war against the cadusians* --but the younger brother, ochus, who secretly aspired to the throne, had managed to inspire him with anxiety with regard to the succession, and incited him to put the aged king out of the way. contemporary historians, ill informed as to the intrigues in the palace, whose effects they noted without any attempt to explore their intricacies, invented several stories to account for the conduct of the young prince. some assigned as the reason of his conspiracy a romantic love-affair. they said that cyrus the younger had had an ionian mistress named aspasia, who, after the fatal battle of cunaxa, had been taken into the harem of the conqueror, and had captivated him by her beauty. darius conceived a violent passion for this damsel, and his father was at first inclined to give her up to him, but afterwards, repenting of his complaisance, consecrated her to the service of mithra, a cult which imposed on her the obligation of perpetual chastity. darius, exasperated by this treatment, began to contemplate measures of vengeance, but, being betrayed by his brother ochus, was put to death with his whole family.** * pompeius trogus asserts that such co-regencies were contrary to persian law; we have seen above that, on the contrary, they were obligatory when the sovereign was setting out on a campaign. ** this is the version of the story given by dinon and accepted by pompoius trogus. a chronological calculation easily demonstrates its unlikelihood. it follows from the evidence given by justin himself that artaxerxes died of grief soon after the execution of his son; but, on the other hand, that the battle of cunaxa took place in b.c.: aspasia must then have been fifty or sixty years old when darius fell in love with her. by the removal of this first obstacle the crafty prince found himself only one step nearer success, for his brother ariaspes was acknowledged as heir-apparent: ochus therefore persuaded him that their father, convinced of the complicity of ariaspes in the plot imputed to darius, intended to put him to an ignominious death, and so worked upon him that he committed suicide to escape the executioner. a bastard named arsames, who might possibly have aspired to the crown, was assassinated by ochus. this last blow was too much for artaxerxes, and he died of grief after a reign of forty-six years ( b.c.).* ochus, who immediately assumed the name of artaxerxes, began his reign by the customary massacre: he put to death all the princes of the royal family,** and having thus rid himself of all the rival claimants to the supreme power, he hastened on preparations for the war with egypt which had been interrupted by his father�s death and his own accession. * this is the length attributed by plutarch to this reign, and which is generally accepted. it was narrated in after- days that the king kept the fact of his father�s death hidden for ten months, but it is impossible to tell how much truth there is in this statement, which was accepted by dinon. ** according to the author followed by pompeius trogus, the princesses themselves were involved in this massacre. this is certainly an exaggeration, for we shall shortly see that darius iii., the last king of persia, was accounted to be the grandson of darius ii.; the massacre can only have involved the direct heirs of artaxerxes. the necessity for restoring persian dominion on the banks of the nile was then more urgent than at any previous time. during the half-century which had elapsed since the recovery of her independence, egypt had been a perpetual source of serious embarrassment to the great king. the contemporaries of amyrtseus, whether greeks or barbarians, had at first thought that his revolt was nothing more than a local rising, like many a previous one which had lasted but a short time and had been promptly suppressed. but when it was perceived that the native dynasties had taken a hold upon the country, and had carried on a successful contest with persia, in spite of the immense disproportion in their respective resources; when not only the bravest soldiers of asia, but the best generals of greece, had miserably failed in their attacks on the frontier of the delta, phoenicia and syria began to think whether what was possible in africa might not also be possible in asia. from that time forward, whenever a satrap or vassal prince meditated revolt, it was to egypt that he turned as a natural ally, and from egypt he sought the means to carry out his project; however needy the pharaoh of that day might be, he was always able to procure for such a suitor sufficient money, munitions of war, ships, and men to enable him to make war against the empire. the attempt made by ochus failed, as all previous attempts had done: the two adventurers who commanded the forces of nectanebo, the athenian diophantes and lamius of sparta, inflicted a disastrous defeat on the imperial troops, and forced them to beat a hasty retreat. this defeat was all the more serious in its consequences because of the magnitude of the efforts which had been made: the king himself was in command of the troops, and had been obliged to turn his back precipitately on the foe. the syrian provinces, which had been in an unsettled condition ever since the invasion under tachôs, flew to arms; nine petty kings of cyprus, including evagoras ii., nephew of the famous prince of that name, refused to pay tribute, and artabazus roused asia minor to rebellion. the phoenicians still hesitated; but the insolence of their satrap, the rapacity of the generals who had been repulsed from egypt, and the lack of discipline in the persian army forced them to a decision. in a convention summoned at tripoli, the representatives of the phoenician cities conferred on tennes, king of sidon, the perilous honour of conducting the operations of the confederate army, and his first act was to destroy the royal villa in the lebanon, and his next to burn the provisions which had been accumulated in various ports in view of the egyptian war ( - b.c.). [illustration: .jpg evagoras ii. of salamis] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the _cabinet des médailles_. ochus imagined at the outset that his generals would soon suppress these rebellions, and, in fact, idrieus, tyrant of caria, supported by eight thousand mercenaries under the athenian phocion, overcame the petty tyrants of cyprus without much difficulty; but in asia minor, artabazus, supported by athens and thebes, held at bay the generals sent to oppose him, and tennes won a signal victory in syria. he turned for support to egypt, and nectanebo, as might be expected, put greek troops at his disposal to the number of four thousand, commanded by one of his best generals, mentor of ehodes: belesys, the satrap of syria, and mazseus, satrap of cilicia, suffered a total defeat. ochus, exasperated at their want of success, called out every available soldier, three hundred thousand asiatics and ten thousand greeks; the sidonians, on their side, dug a triple trench round their city, raised their ramparts, and set fire to their ships, to demonstrate their intention of holding out to the end. unfortunately, their king, tennes, was not a man of firm resolution. hitherto he had lived a life of self-indulgence, surrounded by the women of his harem, whom he had purchased at great cost in ionia and greece, and had made it the chief object of his ambition to surpass in magnificence the most ostentatious princes of cyprus, especially nicocles of salamis, son of evagoras. the approach of ochus confused his scanty wits; he endeavoured to wipe out his treachery towards his suzerain by the betrayal of his own subjects. he secretly despatched his confidential minister, a certain thessalion, to the persian camp, promising to betray sidon to the persian king, and to act as his guide into egypt on condition of having his life preserved and his royal rank guaranteed to him. ochus had already agreed to these conditions, when an impulse of vanity on his part nearly ruined the whole arrangement. thessalion, not unreasonably doubting the king�s good faith, had demanded that he should swear by his right hand to fulfil to the letter all the clauses of the treaty; whereupon ochus, whose dignity was offended by this insistence, gave orders for the execution of the ambassador. but as the latter was being dragged away, he cried out that the king could do as he liked, but that if he disdained the help of tennes, he would fail in his attacks both upon phonicia and egypt. these words produced a sudden reaction, and thessalion obtained all that he demanded. when the persians had arrived within a few days� march of sidon, tennes proclaimed that a general assembly of the phoenician deputies was to be held, and under pretext of escorting the hundred leading men of his city to the appointed place of meeting, led them into the enemy�s camp, where they were promptly despatched by the javelins of the soldiery. the sidonians, deserted by their king, were determined to carry on the struggle, in the expectation of receiving succour from egypt; but the persian darics had already found their way into the hands of the mercenary troops, and the general whom nectanebo had lent them, declared that his men considered the position desperate, and that he should surrender the city at the first summons. the sidonians thereupon found themselves reduced to the necessity of imploring the mercy of the conqueror, and five hundred of them set out to meet him as suppliants, carrying olive branches in their hands. bub ochus was the most cruel monarch who had ever reigned in persia--the only one, perhaps, who was really bloodthirsty by nature; he refused to listen to the entreaties of the suppliants, and, like the preceding hundred delegates, they were all slain. the remaining citizens, perceiving that they could not hope for pardon, barricaded themselves in their houses, to which they set fire with their own hands; forty thousand persons perished in the flames, and so great was the luxury in the appointments of the private houses, that large sums were paid for the right to dig for the gold and silver ornaments buried in the ruins. the destruction of the city was almost as complete as in the days of esarhaddon. when sidon had thus met her fate, the persians had no further reason for sparing its king, tennes, and he was delivered to the executioner; whereupon the other phoenician kings, terrified by his fate, opened their gates without a struggle. once more the treachery of a few traitors had disconcerted the plans of the pharaoh, and delivered the outposts of egypt into the hands of the enemy: but ochus renewed his preparations with marvellous tenacity, and resolved to neglect nothing which might contribute to his final success. his victories had confirmed the cities of the empire in their loyalty, and they vied with one another in endeavouring to win oblivion for their former hesitation by their present zeal: �what city, or what nation of asia did not send embassies to the sovereign? what wealth did they not lavish on him, whether the natural products of the soil, or the rare and precious productions of art? did he not receive a quantity of tapestry and woven hangings, some of purple, some of diverse colours, others of pure white? many gilded pavilions, completely furnished, and containing an abundant supply of linen and sumptuous beds? chased silver, wrought gold, cups and bowls, enriched with precious stones, or valuable for the perfection and richness of their work? he also received untold supplies of barbarian and grecian weapons, and still larger numbers of draught cattle and of sacrificial victims, bushels of preserved fruits, bales and sacks full of parchments or books, and all kinds of useful articles? so great was the quantity of salted meats which poured in from all sides, that from a distance the piles might readily be mistaken for rows of hillocks or high mounds.� the land-force was divided into three corps, each under a barbarian and a greek general. it advanced along the sea coast, following the ancient route pursued by the armies of the pharaohs, and as it skirted the marshes of sirbonis, some detachments, having imprudently ventured over the treacherous soil, perished to a man. when the main force arrived in safety before pelusium, it found nectanebo awaiting it behind his ramparts and marshes. he had fewer men than his adversary, his force numbering only six thousand egyptians, twenty thousand libyans, and the same number of greeks; but the remembrance of the successes won by himself and his predecessors with inferior numbers inspired him with confidence in the issue of the struggle. his fleet could not have ventured to meet in battle the combined squadrons of cyprus and phoenicia, but, on the other hand, he had a sufficient number of flat-bottomed boats to prevent any adversary from entering the mouths of the nile. the weak points along his mediterranean seaboard and eastern frontier were covered by strongholds, fortifications, and entrenched camps: in short, his plans were sufficiently well laid to ensure success in a defensive war, if the rash ardour of his greek mercenaries had not defeated his plans. five thousand of these troops were in occupation of pelusium, under command of philophrôn. some companies of thebans, who were serving under lacrates in the persian army, crossed a deep canal which separated them from the city, and provoked the garrison to risk an encounter in the open field. philophrôn, instead of treating their challenge with indifference, accepted it, and engaged in a combat which lasted till nightfall. on the following day, lacrates, having drawn off the waters of the canal and thrown a dyke across it, led his entire force up to the glacis of the fortifications, dug some trenches, and brought up a line of battering-rams. he would soon have effected a breach, but the egyptians understood how to use the spade as well as the lance, and while the outer wall was crumbling, they improvised behind it a second wall, crowned with wooden turrets. nectanebo, who had come up with thirty thousand native, five thousand greek troops, and half the libyan contingent, observed the vicissitudes of the siege from a short distance, and by his presence alone opposed the advance of the bulk of the persian army. weeks passed by, the time of the inundation was approaching, and it seemed as if this policy of delay would have its accustomed success, when an unforeseen incident decided in a moment the fate of egypt. among the officers of ochus was a certain nicostratus of argos, who on account of his prodigious strength was often compared to heracles, and who out of vanity dressed himself up in the traditional costume of that hero, the lion�s skin and the club. having imbibed, doubtless, the ideas formerly propounded by iphicrates, nicostratus forced some peasants, whose wives and children he had seized as hostages, to act as his guides, and made his way up one of the canals which traverse the marshes of menzaleh: there he disembarked his men in the rear of nectanebo, and took up a very strong position on the border of the cultivated land. this enterprise, undertaken with a very insufficient force, was an extremely rash one; if the egyptian generals had contented themselves with harassing nicostratus without venturing on engaging him in a pitched battle, they would speedily have forced him to re-embark or to lay down his arms. unfortunately, however, five thousand mercenaries, who formed the garrison of one of the neighbouring towns, hastened to attack him under the command of clinias of cos, and suffered a severe defeat. as a result, the gates of the town were thrown open to the enemy, and if the persians, encouraged by the success of this forlorn hope, had followed it up boldly, nectanebo would have run the risk of being cut off from his troops which were around pelusium, and of being subsequently crushed. he thought it wiser to retreat towards the apex of the delta, but this very act of prudence exposed him to one of those accidental misfortunes which are wont to occur in armies formed of very diverse elements. while he was concentrating his reserves at memphis, the troops of the first line thought that, by leaving them exposed to the assaults of the great king, he was deliberately sacrificing them. pelusium capitulated to lacrates; mentor of ehodes pushed forward and seized bubastis, and the other cities in the eastern portion of the delta, fearing to bring upon themselves the fate of sidon, opened their gates to the persians after a mere show of resistance. the forces which had collected at memphis thereupon disbanded, and nectanebo, ruined by these successive disasters, collected his treasures and fled to ethiopia. the successful issue of the rash enterprise of nicostratus had overthrown the empire of the pharaohs, and re-established the persian empire in its integrity ( b.c.).* * the complete history of this war is related by diodorus siculus, who generally follows the narrative of theopompus. the chronology is still sufficiently uncertain to leave some doubt as to the exact date of each event; i have followed that arrangement which seems to accord best with the general history of the period. the following table may be drawn up of the last egyptian dynasties as far as they can be restored at present:-- [illustration: .jpg table of the last egyptian dynasties] egypt had prospered under the strong rule of its last native pharaohs. every one of them, from amyrtous down to nectanebo, had done his best to efface all traces of the persian invasions and restore to the country the appearance which it had presented before the days of its servitude; even kings like psamutis and tachôs, whose reign had been of the briefest, had, like those who ruled for longer periods, constructed or beautified the monuments of the country. the thebaid was in this respect a special field of their labours. the island of philæ, exposed to the ceaseless attacks of the ethiopians, had been reduced to little more than a pile of ruins. [illustration: .jpg small temple of nectanebo, at the southern extremity of philae] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. nectanebo ii. erected a magnificent gate there, afterwards incorporated into the first pylon of the temple built by the ptolemies, and one at least of the buildings that still remain, the charming rectangular kiosk, the pillars of which, with their hathor capitals, rise above the southern extremity of the island and mark the spot at which the ethiopian pilgrims first set foot on the sacred territory of the bountiful isis. nectanebo i. restored the sanctuaries of nekhabît at el-kab, and of horus at edfu, in which latter place he has left an admirable naos which delights the modern traveller by its severe proportions and simplicity of ornament, while nectanebo ii. repaired the ancient temple of mînu at coptos; in short, without giving a detailed list of what was accomplished by each of these later pharaohs, it may be said that there are few important sites in the valley of the nile where some striking evidence of their activity may not still be discovered even after the lapse of so many centuries. [illustration: .jpg naos of nectanebo in the temple at edfu] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. it will be sufficient to mention thebes, memphis, sebennytos, bubastis, pahabît, patumu, and tanis. nor did the theban oases, including that of amon himself, escape their zeal, for the few europeans who have visited them in modern times have observed their cartouches there. [illustration: .jpg great gate of nectanebo at karnak] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by beato. moreover, in spite of the brief space of time within which they were carried out, the majority of these works betray no signs of haste or slipshod execution; the craftsmen employed on them seem to have preserved in their full integrity all the artistic traditions of earlier times, and were capable of producing masterpieces which will bear comparison with those of the golden age. the eastern gate, erected at karnak in the time of nectanebo ii., is in no way inferior either in purity of proportion or in the beauty of its carvings to what remains of the gates of amenôthes iii. [illustration: .jpg fragment of a naos of the time of nectanebo ii. in the bologna museum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by flinders pétrie. the sarcophagus of nectanebo i. is carved and decorated with a perfection of skill which had never been surpassed in any age, and elsewhere, on all the monuments which bear the name of this monarch the hieroglyphics have been designed and carved with as much care as though each one of them had been a precious cameo.* * the sarcophagus was for a long time preserved near the mosque of ibn-tulun, and was credited with peculiar virtues by the superstitious inhabitants of cairo. the basalt torso of nectanebo ii., which attracts so much admiration in the bibliothèque nationale in paris for accuracy of proportion and delicacy of modelling, deserves to rank with the finest statues of the ancient empire. the men�s heads are veritable portraits, in which such details as a peculiar conformation of the skull, prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks, or the modelling of the chin, have all been observed and reproduced with a fidelity and keenness of observation which we fail to find in such works of the earlier artists as have come down to us. these later sculptors display the same regard for truth in their treatment of animals, and their dog-headed divinities; their dogs, lions, and sphinxes will safely bear comparison with the most lifelike presentments of these creatures to be found among the remains of the memphite or theban eras. egypt was thus in the full tide of material prosperity when it again fell under the persian yoke, and might have become a source of inexhaustible wealth to ochus had he known how to secure acceptance of his rule, as darius, son of hystaspes, had done in the days of amasis. [illustration: .jpg one of the lions in the vatican] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph by flinders pétrie. the violence of his temperament, however, impelled him to a course of pitiless oppression, and his favourite minister, the eunuch bagoas, seems to have done his best to stimulate his master�s natural cruelty. in the days when they felt themselves securely protected from his anger by their libyan and greek troops, the fellahîn had freely indulged in lampoons at the expense of their persian suzerain; they had compared him to typhon on account of his barbarity, and had nicknamed him �the ass,� this animal being in their eyes a type of everything that is vile. on his arrival at memphis, ochus gave orders that an ass should be installed in the temple of phtah, and have divine honours paid to it; he next had the bull apis slaughtered and served up at a set banquet which he gave to his friends on taking possession of the white wall. the sacred goat of mendes suffered the same fate as the apis, and doubtless none of the other sacred animals were spared. bagoas looted the temples in the most systematic way, despatched the sacred books to persia, razed the walls of the cities to the ground, and put every avowed partisan of the native dynasty to the sword. after these punitive measures had been carried out, ochus disbanded his mercenaries and returned to babylon, leaving pherendates in charge of the reconquered province.* * it seems that a part of the atrocities committed by ochus and bagoas soon came to be referred to the time of the �impure� and to that of cambyses. the downfall of egypt struck terror into the rebellious satraps who were in arms elsewhere. artabazus, who had kept asia minor in a ferment ever since the time of artaxerxes ii., gave up the struggle of his own accord and took refuge in macedonia. the petty kings of the cities on the shores of the hellespont and the Ægean submitted themselves in order to regain favour, or if, like hermias of atarnasa, the friend of aristotle, they still resisted, they were taken prisoners and condemned to death. the success of ochus was a reality, but there was still much to be done before things were restored to the footing they had occupied before the crisis. we know enough of the course of events in the western provinces to realise the pitch of weakness to which the imbecility of darius ii. and his son artaxerxes ii. had reduced the empire of darius and xerxes, but it is quite certain that the disastrous effects of their misgovernment were not confined to the shores of the mediterranean, but were felt no less acutely in the eastern and central regions of the empire. there, as on the greek frontiers, the system built up at the cost of so much ingenuity by darius was gradually being broken down with each year that passed, and the central government could no longer make its power felt at the extremities of the empire save at irregular intervals, when its mandates were not intercepted or nullified in transmission. the functions of the �eyes� and �ears� of the king had degenerated into a mere meaningless formality, and were, more often than not, dispensed with altogether. the line of demarcation between the military and civil power had been obliterated: not only had the originally independent offices of satrap, general, and secretary ceased to exist in each separate province, but, in many instances, the satrap, after usurping the functions of his two colleagues, contrived to extend his jurisdiction till it included several provinces, thus establishing himself as a kind of viceroy. absorbed in disputes among themselves, or in conspiracies against the achsemenian dynasty, these officials had no time to look after the well-being of the districts under their control, and the various tribes and cities took advantage of this to break the ties of vassalage. to take asia minor alone, some of the petty kings of bithynia, paphlagonia, and certain districts of cappadocia or the mountainous parts of phrygia still paid their tribute intermittently, and only when compelled to do so; others, however, such as the pisidians, lycaonians, a part of the lycians, and some races of mount taurus, no longer dreamed of doing so. the three satrapies on the shores of the caspian, which a hundred years before had wedged themselves in between that sea and the euxine, were now dissolved, all trace of them being lost in a confused medley of kingdoms and small states, some of which were ready enough to acknowledge the supremacy of persia, while others, such as the gordiseans, taochi, chalybes, colchi, mosynoki, and tibarenians, obeyed no rule but their own. [illustration: .jpg map of the persian empire] all along the caspian, the cadusians and amardians, on either side of the chain of mountains bordering the iranian plateau, defied all the efforts made to subdue them.* india and the sakse had developed from the condition of subjects into that of friendly allies, and the savage hordes of gedrosia and the paropamisus refused to recognise any authority at all.** * they appear in the history of every epoch as the irreconcilable foes of the great king, enemies against whom even the most peacefully disposed sovereigns were compelled to take the field in person. ** the sakæ fought at arbela, but only as allies of the persians. the indians who are mentioned with them came from the neighbourhood of cabul; most of the races who had formerly figured in darius� satrapy of india had become independent by the time alexander penetrated into the basin of the indus. the whole empire needed to be reconquered and reorganised bit by bit if it was to exercise that influence in the world to which its immense size entitled it, and the question arose whether the elements of which it consisted would lend themselves to any permanent reorganisation or readjustment. the races of the ancient eastern world, or, at any rate, that portion of them which helped to make its history, either existed no longer or had sunk into their dotage. they had worn each other out in the centuries of their prime, chaldæans and assyrians fighting against cossæans or elamites, egyptians against ethiopians and against hittites, urartians, armæans, the peoples of lebanon and of damascus, the phoenicians, canaanites and jews, until at last, with impoverished blood and flagging energies, they were thrown into conflict with younger and more vigorous nations. the medes had swept away all that still remained of assyria and urartu; the persians had overthrown the medes, the lydians, and the chaldæans, till egypt alone remained and was struck down by them in her turn. what had become of these conquered nations during the period of nearly two hundred years that the achæmenians had ruled over them? first, as regards elam, one of the oldest and formerly the most powerful of them all. she had been rent into two halves, each of them destined to have a different fate. in the mountains, the uxians, mardians, elymasans, and cossæans--tribes who had formerly been the backbone of the nation--had relapsed into a semi-barbarous condition, or rather, while the rest of the world had progressed in civilization and refinement, they had remained in a state of stagnation, adhering obstinately to the customs of their palmy days: just as they had harried the chaldæans or assyrians in the olden times, so now they harried the persians; then, taking refuge in their rocky fastnesses, they lived on the proceeds of their forays, successfully resisting all attempts made to dislodge them. the people of the plains, on the other hand, kept in check from the outset by the presence of the court at susa, not only promptly resigned themselves to their fate, but even took pleasure in it, and came to look upon themselves as in some sort the masters of asia. was it not to their country, to the very spot occupied by the palace of their king, that, for nearly two hundred years, satraps, vassal kings, the legates of foreign races, ambassadors of greek republics--in a word, all the great ones of this world--came every year to render homage, and had not the treasures which these visitors brought with them been expended, in part at any rate, on their country? the memory of their former prosperity paled before the splendours of their new destiny, and the glory of their ancestors suffered eclipse. the names of the national kings, the story of their chaldæan and syrian conquests, the trophies of their victories over the great generals of nineveh, the horrors of their latest discords and of the final catastrophe were all forgotten; even the documents which might have helped to recall them lay buried in the heart of the mound which served as a foundation for the palace of the achgernenides. beyond the vague consciousness of a splendid past, the memory of the common people was a blank, and when questioned by strangers they could tell them nothing save legends of the gods or the exploits of mythical heroes; and from them the greeks borrowed their memnon, that son of tithonus and eôs who rushed to the aid of priam with his band of ethiopians, and whose prowess had failed to retard by a single day the downfall of troy. further northwards, the urartians and peoples of ancient naîri, less favoured by fortune, lost ground with each successive generation, yielding to the steady pressure of the armenians. in the time of herodotus they were still in possession of the upper basins of the euphrates and araxus, and, in conjunction with the matieni and saspires, formed a satrapy--the eighteenth--the boundaries of which coincided pretty closely with those of the kingdom ruled over by the last kings of van in the days of assur-bani-pal; the armenians, on their side, constituted the thirteenth satrapy, between mount taurus and the lower arsanias. [illustration: .jpg coins of the satraps with aramaean inscriptions] drawn by faucher-gudin, from coins in the _cabinet des médailles_ the whole face of their country had undergone a profound change since that time: the urartians, driven northwards, became intermingled with the tribes on the slopes of the caucasus, while the armenians, carried along towards the east, as though by some resistless current, were now scaling the mountainous bulwark of ararat, and slowly but surely encroaching on the lower plains of the araxes. these political changes had been almost completed by the time of ochus, and urartu had disappeared from the scene, but an armenia now flourished in the very region where urartu had once ruled, and its princes, who were related to the family of the achæmenides, wielded an authority little short of regal under the modest name of satraps. thanks to their influence, the religions and customs of iran were introduced into the eastern borders of asia minor. they made their way into the valleys of the iris and the halys, into cappadocia and the country round mount taurus, and thither they brought with them the official script of the empire, the persian and aramaean cuneiform which was employed in public documents, in inscriptions, and on coins. the centre of the peninsula remained very much the same as it had been in the period of the phrygian supremacy, but further westward hellenic influences gradually made themselves felt. [illustration: .jpg a lycian tomb] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a woodcut in bonndorff. the arts of greece, its manners, religious ideals, and modes of thought, were slowly displacing civilisations of the asianic type, and even in places like lycia, where the language successfully withstood the greek invasion, the life of the nations, and especially of their rulers, became so deeply impregnated with hellenism as to differ but little from that in the cities on the ionic, Æolian, or doric seaboard. the lycians still adhered to the ancient forms which characterised their funerary architecture, but it was to greek sculptors, or pupils from the grecian schools, that they entrusted the decoration of the sides of their sarcophagi and of their tombs. [illustration: b.jpg statue of mausolus] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photograph of the original in the british museum. [illustration: a.jpg coin of a lycian king] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a silver stater in the _cabinet des médailles._ the king in question was named deneveles, and is only known by the coins bearing his superscription. he flourished about b.c. their kings minted coins many of which are reckoned among the masterpieces of antique engraving; and if we pass from lycia to the petty states of caria, we come upon one of the greatest triumphs of greek art--that huge mausoleum in which the inconsolable artemisia enclosed the ashes and erected the statue of her husband. the asia minor of egyptian times, with its old-world dynasties, its old-world names, and old-world races, had come to be nothing more than an historic memory; even that martial world, in which the assyrian conquerors fought so many battles from the euphrates to the black sea, was now no more, and its neighbours and enemies of former days had, for the most part, disappeared from the land of the living. [illustration: .jpg lycian sarcophagus decorated with greek carvings] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photogravure published by hamdy-beg and th. reinach. the lotanu were gone, the khâti were gone, and gone, too, were carchemish, arpad, and qodshu, much of th§ir domain having been swallowed up again by the desert for want of hands to water and till it; even assyria itself seemed but a shadow half shrouded in the mists of oblivion. sangara, nisibis, resaina, and edessa still showed some signs of vigour, but on quitting the slopes of the masios and proceeding southwards, piles of ruins alone marked the sites of those wealthy cities through which the ninevite monarchs had passed in their journeyings towards syria. here wide tracts of arid and treeless country were now to be seen covered with aromatic herbage, where the scenite arabs were wont to pursue the lion, wild ass, ostrich, bustard, antelope, and gazelle; a few abandoned forts, such as korsortê, anatho, and is (hit) marked the halting-places of armies on the banks of the euphrates. in the region of the tigris, the descendants of assyrian captives who, like the jews, had been set free by cyrus, had rebuilt assur, and had there grown wealthy by husbandry and commerce,* but in the district of the zab solitude reigned supreme.** calah and nineveh were alike deserted, and though their ruins still littered the sites where they had stood, their names were unknown in the neighbouring villages. xenophon, relying on his guides, calls the former place larissa, the second mespila.*** * this seems to be indicated by a mutilated passage in the _cylinder of gyrus_, where assur is mentioned in the list of towns and countries whose inhabitants were sent back to their homes by cyrus after the capture of babylon. xenophon calls it esense, this being, possibly, a translation of the name given to it by its inhabitants. nothing could be more natural than for exiles to call the villages founded by them on their return �new.� the town seems to have been a large and wealthy one. ** xenophon calls this country media, a desert region which the ten thousand took six days to cross. *** the name larissa is, possibly, a corruption of some name similar to that of the city of larsam in chaldæa; mespila may be a generic term. [mespila is muspula, �the low ground� at the foot of kouyunjik; larissa probably al resen or res-eni, between kouyunjik and nebi yunus.--ed.] already there were historians who took the ziggurât at nineveh to be the burial-place of sardanapalus. they declared that cyrus had pulled it down in order to strengthen his camp during the siege of the town, and that formerly it had borne an epitaph afterwards put into verse by the poet choerilus of iassus: �i reigned, and so long as i beheld the light of the sun, i ate, i drank, i loved, well knowing how brief is the life of man, and to how many vicissitudes it is liable.� many writers, remembering the assyrian monument at anchialê in cilicia, were inclined to place the king�s tomb there. it was surmounted by the statue of a man--according to one account, with his hands crossed upon his breast, according to another, in the act of snapping his fingers--and bore the following inscription in chaldaic letters: �i, sardanapalus, son of anakyndaraxes, founded anchialê and tarsus in one day, but now am dead.� thus ten centuries of conquests and massacre had passed away like a vapour, leaving nothing but a meagre residue of old men�s tales and moral axioms. in one respect only does the civilisation of the euphrates seem to have fairly held its own. cossæa, though it had lost its independence, had lost but little of its wealth; its former rebellions had done it no great injury, and its ancient cities were still left standing, though shorn of their early splendour. uru, it is true, numbered but few citizens round its tottering sanctuaries, but uruk maintained a school of theologians and astronomers no less famous throughout the east than those of borsippa. the swamps, however, which surrounded it possessed few attractions, and greek travellers rarely ventured thither. they generally stopped at babylon, or if they ventured off the beaten track, it was only to visit the monuments of nebuchadrezzar, or the tombs of the early kings in its immediate neighbourhood. babylon was, indeed, one of the capitals of the empire--nay, for more than half a century, during the closing years of artaxerxes i., in the reign of darius ii., and in the early days of artaxerxes il, it had been the real capital; even under ochus, the court spent the winter months there, and resorted thither in quest of those resources of industry and commerce which susa lacked. the material benefits due to the presence of the sovereign seem to have reconciled the city to its subject condition; there had been no seditious movement there since the ill-starred rising of shamasherîb, which xerxes had quelled with ruthless severity. the greek mercenaries or traders who visited it, though prepared for its huge size by general report, could not repress a feeling of astonishment as they approached it. first of all there was the triple wall of nebuchadrezzar, with its moats, its rows of towers, and its colossal gateways. unlike the greek cities, it had been laid out according to a regular plan, and formed a perfect square, inside which the streets crossed one another at right angles, some parallel to the euphrates, others at right angles to it; every one of the latter terminated in a brazen gate opening through the masonry of the quay, and giving access to the river. the passengers who crowded the streets included representatives of all the asiatic races, the native babylonians being recognisable by their graceful dress, consisting of a linen tunic falling to the feet, a fringed shawl, round cap, and heavy staff terminating in a knob. from this ever-changing background stood out many novel features calculated to stimulate greek curiosity, such as the sick persons exposed at street-corners in order that they might beg the passers-by to prescribe for them, the prostitution of her votaries within the courts of the goddess mylitta, and the disposal of marriageable girls by auction: herodotus, however, regretted that this latter custom had fallen into abeyance. and yet to the attentive eye of a close observer even babylon must have furnished many unmistakable symptoms of decay. the huge boundary wall enclosed too large an area for the population sheltered behind it; whole quarters were crumbling into heaps of ruins, and the flower and vegetable gardens were steadily encroaching on spaces formerly covered with houses. public buildings had suffered quite as much as private dwellings from the persian wars. xerxes had despoiled the temples, and no restoration had been attempted since his time. the ziggurât of bel lay half buried already beneath piles of rubbish; the golden statues which had once stood within its chambers had disappeared, and the priests no longer carried on their astronomical observations on its platform.* * herodotus merely mentions that xerxes had despoiled the temple; strabo tells us that alexander wished to restore it, but that it was in such a state of dilapidation that it would have taken ten thousand men two months merely to remove the rubbish. the palaces of the ancient kings were falling to pieces from lack of repairs, though the famous hanging gardens in the citadel were still shown to strangers. the guides, of course, gave them out to be a device of semiramis, but the well-informed knew that they had been constructed by nebuchadrezzar for one of his wives the daughter of oyaxares, who pined for the verdure of her native mountains. �they were square in shape, each side being four hundred feet long; one approached them by steps leading to terraces placed one above the other, the arrangement of the whole, resembling that of an amphitheatre. each terrace rested on pillars which, gradually increasing in size, supported the weight of the soil and its produce. the loftiest pillar attained a height of fifty feet; it reached to the upper part of the garden, its capital being on a level with the balustrades of the boundary wall. the terraces were covered with a layer of soil of sufficient depth for the roots of the largest trees; plants of all kinds that delight the eye by their shape or beauty were grown there. one of the columns was hollowed from top to bottom; it contained hydraulic engines which pumped up quantities of water, no part of the mechanism being visible from the outside.� many travellers were content to note down only such marvels as they considered likely to make their narratives more amusing, but others took pains to collect information of a more solid character, and before they had carried their researches very far, were at once astounded and delighted with the glimpses they obtained of chaldæan genius. no doubt, they exaggerated when they went so far as to maintain that all their learning came to them originally from babylon, and that the most famous scholars of greece, pherecydes of scyros, democritus of abdera, and pythagoras,* owed the rudiments of philosophy, mathematics, physics, and astrology to the school of the _magi_. * the story which asserts that pythagoras served under nergilos, king of assyria, is probably based on some similarity of names: thus among the greek kings of cyprus, and in the time of assur-bani-pal, we find one whose name would recall that of pythagoras, if the accuracy of the reading were beyond question. yet it is not surprising that they should have believed this to be the case, when increasing familiarity with the priestly seminaries revealed to them the existence of those libraries of clay tablets in which, side by side with theoretic treatises dating from two thousand years back and more, were to be found examples of applied mechanics, observations, reckonings, and novel solutions of problems, which generations of scribes had accumulated in the course of centuries. the greek astronomers took full advantage of these documents, but it was their astrologers and soothsayers who were specially indebted to them. the latter acknowledged their own inferiority the moment they came into contact with their euphratean colleagues, and endeavoured to make good their deficiencies by taking lessons from the latter or persuading them to migrate to greece. a hundred years later saw the babylonian berosus opening at cos a public school of divination by the stars. from thenceforward �chaldæan� came to be synonymous with �astrologer� or �sorcerer,� and chaldæan magic became supreme throughout the world at the very moment when chaldæa itself was in its death-throes. nor was its unquestioned supremacy in the black art the sole legacy that chaldæa bequeathed to the coming generations: its language survived, and reigned for centuries afterwards in the regions subjugated by its arms. the cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of nineve and babylon in the palmy days of their race, had long become a sort of literary dialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by a select few, but unintelligible to the common people. the populace in town or country talked an aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolix than assyrian, but easier to understand. we know how successfully the aramæans had managed to push their way along the euphrates and into syria towards the close of the hittite supremacy: their successive encroachments had been favoured, first by the assyrian, later by the chaldæan conquests, and now they had become sole possessors of the ancient naharaîna, the plains of cilicia, the basin of the orontes, and the country round damascus; but the true home of the aramæans was in syria rather than in the districts of the lower euphrates. even in the time of the sargonids their alphabet had made so much headway that at nineveh itself and at calah it had come into everyday use; when chaldæan supremacy gave way to that of the persians, its triumph--in the western provinces, at any rate--was complete, and it became the recognised vehicle of the royal decrees: we come upon it in every direction, on the coins issued by the satraps of asia minor, on the seals of local governors or dynasts, on inscriptions or stelæ in egypt, in the letters of the scribes, and in the rescripts of the great king. from nisib to baphia, between the tigris and the mediterranean, it gradually supplanted most of the other dialects--semitic or otherwise--which had hitherto prevailed. phoenician held its ground in the seaports, but hebrew gave way before it, and ended by being restricted to religious purposes, as a literary and liturgical language. it was in the neighbourhood of babylon itself that the judæan exiles had, during the captivity, adopted the aramaic language, and their return to canaan failed to restore either the purity of their own language or the dignity and independence of their religious life. their colony at jerusalem possessed few resources; the wealthier hebrews had, for the most part, remained in chaldæa, leaving the privilege of repopulating the holy city to those of their brethren who were less plenteously endowed with this world�s goods. these latter soon learned to their cost that zion was not the ideal city whose �gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth of the nations;� far from �sucking the milk of nations and the breast of kings,� * their fields produced barely sufficient to satisfy the more pressing needs of daily life. �ye have sown much, and bring in little,� as jahveh declared to them �ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.� ** * an anonymous prophet in isa. lx. - . ** hagg. i. . they quickly relinquished the work of restoration, finding themselves forgotten by all--their babylonian brethren included--in the midst of the great events which were then agitating the world, the preparations for the conquest of egypt, the usurpation of the pseudo-smerdis, the accession of darius, the babylonian and median insurrections. possibly they believed that the achæmenides had had their day, and that a new chaldæan empire, with a second nebuchadrezzar at its head, was about to regain the ascendency. it would seem that the downfall of nadintav-bel inspired them with new faith in the future and encouraged them to complete their task: in the second year of darius, two prophets, haggai and zechariah, arose in their midst and lifted up their voices. [illustration: .jpg chaldean seal with aramaic inscription] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a photogravure published in menant. zerubbabel, a prince of the royal line, governed judah in the persian interest, and with him was associated the high priest joshua, who looked after the spiritual interests of the community: the reproaches of the two prophets aroused the people from their inaction, and induced them to resume their interrupted building operations. darius, duly informed of what was going on by the governor of syria, gave orders that they were not to be interfered with, and four years later the building of the temple was completed.* * ezra iv.-vi.; the account given by josephus of the two expeditions of zerubbabel seems to have been borrowed partly from the canonical book, partly from the apocryphal writing known as the _ st book of esdras_. for nearly a century after this the little jewish republic remained quiescent. it had slowly developed until it had gradually won back a portion of the former territories of benjamin and judah, but its expansion southwards was checked by the idumæans, to whom nebuchadrezzar had years before handed over hebron and acrabattenê (akrabbim) as a reward for the services they had rendered. on the north its neighbours were the descendants of those aramaean exiles whom sargon, sennacherib, and esar-haddon, kings of assyria, had, on various occasions, installed around samaria in mount ephraim. at first these people paid no reverence to the �god of the land,� so that jahveh, in order to punish them, sent lions, which spread carnage in their ranks. then the king of assyria allotted them an israelitish priest from among his prisoners, who taught them �the law� of jahveh, and appointed other priests chosen from the people, and showed them how to offer up sacrifices on the ancient high places.* * kings xvii. - . there do not seem to have been the continual disputes between the inhabitants of judaea and samaria before the return of nehemiah, which the compilers of the books of ezra and nehemiah seem to have believed. thus another israel began to rise up again, and, at first, the new judah seems to have been on tolerably friendly terms with it: the two communities traded and intermarried with one another, the samaritans took part in the religious ceremonies, and certain of their leaders occupied a court in the temple at jerusalem. the alliance, however, proved dangerous to the purity of the faith, for the proselytes, while they adopted jahveh and gave him that supreme place in their devotions which was due to �the god of the land,� had by no means entirely forsworn their national superstitions, and adrammelek, nergal, tartak, anammelek, and other deities still found worshippers among them. judah, which in the days of its independence had so often turned aside after the gods of canaan and moab, was in danger of being led away by the idolatrous practices of its new neighbours; intermarriage with the daughters of moab and ammon, of philistia and samaria, was producing a gradual degeneracy: the national language was giving way before the aramaean; unless some one could be found to stem the tide of decadence and help the people to remount the slope which they were descending, the fate of judah was certain. a prophet--the last of those whose predictions have survived to our time--stood forth amid the general laxity and called the people to account for their transgressions, in the name of the eternal, but his single voice, which seemed but a feeble echo of the great prophets of former ages, did not meet with a favourable hearing. salvation came at length from the jews outside judah, the naturalised citizens of babylon, a well-informed and wealthy body, occupying high places in the administration of the empire, and sometimes in the favour of the sovereign also, yet possessed by an ardent zeal for the religion of their fathers and a steadfast faith in the vitality of their race. one of these, a certain nehemiah, was employed as cupbearer to artaxerxes ii. he was visited at susa by some men of judah whose business had brought them to that city and inquired of them how matters fared in jerusalem. hanani, one of his visitors, replied that �the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.� nehemiah took advantage of a moment when the king seemed in a jovial mood to describe the wretched state of his native land in moving terms: he obtained leave to quit susa and authority to administer the city in which his fathers had dwelt.* * nehemiah i., ii. this took place in the twentieth year of artaxerxes, about b.c. nehemiah at once made his way to jerusalem with such escort as befitted his dignity, and the news of his mission, and, apparently, the sentiments of rigid orthodoxy professed by him from the beginning, provoked the resentment of the neighbouring potentates against him: sanballat the horonite, tobiah the ammonite, chief of the samaritans, and geshem the bedâwin did their best to thwart him in the execution of his plans. he baffled their intrigues by his promptitude in rebuilding the walls, and when once he had rendered himself safe from any sudden attack, he proceeded with the reforms which he deemed urgent. his tenure of office lasted twelve years--from to b.c.--and during the whole of that time he refused to accept any of the dues to which he was entitled, and which his predecessors had received without scruple. ever since their return from exile, the common people had been impoverished and paralysed by usury. the poor had been compelled to mortgage their fields and their vineyards in order to pay the king�s taxes; then, when their land was gone, they had pledged their sons and their daughters; the moneyed classes of the new israel thus absorbed the property of their poorer brethren, and reduced the latter to slavery. nehemiah called the usurers before him and severely rebuking them for their covetousness, bade them surrender the interest and capital of existing debts, and restore the properties which had fallen into their hands owing to their shameful abuse of wealth, and release all those of their co-religionists whom they had enslaved in default of payment of their debts.* his high place in the royal favour doubtless had its effect on those whose cupidity suffered from his zeal, and prevented external enemies from too openly interfering in the affairs of the community: by the time he returned to the court, in b.c., after an absence of twelve years, jerusalem and its environs had to some extent regained the material prosperity of former days. the part played by nehemiah was, however, mainly political, and the religious problem remained in very much the same state as before. the high priests, who alone possessed the power of solving it, had fallen in with the current that was carrying away the people, and--latterly, at any rate--had become disqualified through intermarriage with aliens: what was wanted was a scribe deeply versed in sacred things to direct them in the right way, and such a man could be found only in babylonia, the one country in which the study of the ancient traditions still flourished. a certain ezra, son of seraiah, presented himself in b.c., and, as he was a man of some standing, artaxerxes not only authorised him to go himself, but to take with him a whole company of priests and lévites and families formerly attached to the service of the temple.** the books containing the law of god and the history of his people had, since the beginning of the captivity, undergone alterations which had profoundly modified their text and changed their spirit. * neh. v. ** neh. xiii. : �in the two and thirtieth year of artaxerxes, king of babylon, i went unto the king.� this work of revision, begun under the influence of ezekiel, and perhaps by his own followers, had, since his time, been carried on without interruption, and by mingling the juridical texts with narratives of the early ages collected from different sources, a lengthy work had been produced, very similar in composition and wording to the five books of moses and the book of joshua as we now possess them.* it was this version of the revelation of jahveh that ezra brought with him from babylon in order to instruct the people of judah, and the first impressions received by him at the end of his journey convinced him that his task would be no light one, for the number of mixed marriages had been so great as to demoralise not only the common people, but even the priests and leading nobles as well. nevertheless, at a general assembly** of the people he succeeded in persuading them to consent to the repudiation of alien wives. * this is the priestly revision presupposed by recent critics; here again, in order to keep within the prescribed limits of space, i have been compelled to omit much that i should have liked to add in regard to the nature of this work and the spirit in which it was carried out. ** ezra, vii.-xi., where the dates given do not form part of the work as written by ezra, but have been introduced later by the editor of the book as it now stands. but this preliminary success would have led to nothing unless he could secure formal recognition of the rigorous code of which he had constituted himself the champion, and protracted negotiations were necessary before he could claim a victory on this point as well as on the other. at length, about b.c., more than a year after his arrival, he gained his point, and the covenant between jahveh and his people was sealed with ceremonies modelled on those which had attended the promulgation of deuteronomy in the time of josiah. on the first day of the seventh month, a little before the autumn festival, the people assembled at jerusalem in �the broad place which was before the water gate.� ezra mounted a wooden pulpit, and the chief among the priests sat beside him. he �opened the book in the sight of all the people... and... all the people stood up: and ezra blessed the lord, the great god. and all the people answered �amen, amen!� with the lifting up of their hands; and they bowed their heads and worshipped the lord with their faces to the ground.� then began the reading of the sacred text. as each clause was read, the lévites stationed here and there among the people interpreted and explained its provisions in the vulgar tongue, so as to make their meaning clear to all. the prolix enumeration of sins and their expiation, and threats expressed in certain chapters, produced among the crowd the same effect of nervous terror as had once before been called forth by the precepts and maledictions of deuteronomy. the people burst into tears, and so vehement were their manifestations of despair, that all the efforts of ezra and his colleagues were needed to calm them. ezra took advantage of this state of fervour to demand the immediate application of the divine ordinances. and first of all, it was �found written in the law, how that the lord had commanded by moses that the children of israel should dwell in booths.� for, seven days jerusalem was decked with leaves; tabernacles of olive, myrtle, and palm branches rose up on all sides, on the roofs of houses, in courtyards, in the courts of the temple, at the gates of the city. then, on the th day of the same month, the people put on mourning in order to confess their own sins and the sins of their fathers. finally, to crown the whole, ezra and his followers required the assembly to swear a solemn oath that they would respect �the law of moses,� and regulate their conduct by it.* after the first enthusiasm was passed, a reaction speedily set in. many even among the priests thought that ezra had gone too far in forbidding marriage with strangers, and that the increase of the tithes and sacrifices would lay too heavy a burden on the nation. the gentile women reappeared, the sabbath was no longer observed either by the israelites or aliens; eliashîb, son of the high priest joiakim, did not even deprive tobiah the ammonite of the chamber in the temple which he had formerly prepared for him, and things were almost imperceptibly drifting back into the same state as before the reformation, when nehemiah returned from susa towards the close of the reign of artaxerxes. he lost no time in re-establishing respect for the law, and from henceforward opposition, if it did not entirely die out, ceased to manifest itself in jerusalem.** * neh. viii., ix., with an interpolation in ver. of chap, viii., inserted in order to identify nehemiah with the representative of the persian government. ** neh. xiii. elsewhere, however, among the samaritans, indumæans, and philistines, it continued as keen as ever, and the jews themselves were imprudent enough to take part in the political revolutions that were happening around them in their corner of the empire. their traditions tell how they were mixed up in the rising of the phoenician cities against ochus, and suffered the penalty; when sidon capitulated, they were punished with the other rebels, the more recalcitrant among them being deported into hyrcania. assyria was nothing more than a name, babylon and phoenicia were growing weaker every day; the jews, absorbed in questions of religious ethics, were deficient in material power, and had not as yet attained sufficient moral authority to exercise an influence over the eastern world: the egypt indestructible had alone escaped the general shipwreck, and seemed fated to survive her rivals for a long time. of all these ancient nations it was she who appealed most strongly to the imagination of the greeks: greek traders, mercenaries, scholars, and even tourists wandered freely within her borders, and accounts of the strange and marvellous things to be found there were published far and wide in the writings of hecataeus of miletus, herodotus of halicarnassus, and hellanicus of lesbos. as a rule, they entered the country from the west, as european tourists and merchants still do; but eakôtis, the first port at which they touched, was a mere village, and its rocky pharos had no claim to distinction beyond the fact that it had been mentioned by homer. from hence they followed the channel of the canopic arm, and as they gradually ascended, they had pointed out to them anthylla, arkandrupolis, and gyna> copolis, townships dependent on naucratis, lying along the banks, or situated some distance off on one of the minor canals; then naucratis itself, still a flourishing place, in spite of the rebellions in the delta and the suppressive measures of the persians. all this region seemed to them to be merely an extension of greece under the african sky: to their minds the real egypt began at sais, a few miles further eastwards. sais was full in memories of the xxvith dynasty; there they had pointed out to them the tombs of the pharaohs in the enclosure of nit, the audience hall in which psammetichus ii. received the deputation of the eleians, the prison where the unfortunate apries had languished after his defeat. the gateways of the temple of nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to the modest dimensions of most greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, the first great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, and the novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keenness of the impression produced. the goddess showed herself in hospitable guise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, greek or persian, at her festivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, without demanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points of doctrine. [illustration: .jpg fountain and school of the mother of little mohamad] her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired the greeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their own goddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex mingling of war and industry: in her they fountain and school of the mother of little mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own pallas. on the evening of the th day of thoth, herodotus saw the natives, rich and poor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filled with a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night in honour of osiris and of the dead.* * in my opinion it is not the festivals of athyr that are here referred to, but those of the month of thoth, when, as the inscriptions show, it was the practice to _light the new fire_, according to the ritual, after first extinguishing the fire of the previous year, not only in the temple of the god, but in all the houses of the city. he made his way into the dwelling of the ineffable god, and there, unobserved among the crowd, he witnessed scenes from the divine life represented by the priests on the lake by the light of torches, episodes of his passion, mourning, and resurrection. the priests did not disclose their subtler mysteries before barbarian eyes, nor did they teach the inner meaning of their dogmas, but the little they did allow him to discern filled the traveller with respect and wonder, recalling sometimes by their resemblance to them the mysteries in which he was accustomed to take part in his own country. then, as now, but little attention was paid to the towns in the centre and east of the delta; travellers endeavoured to visit one or two of them as types, and collected as much information as they could about the remainder. herodotus and his rivals attached little importance to those details of landscape which possess so much attraction for the modern tourist. they bestowed no more than a careless glance on the chapels scattered up and down the country like the mohammedan shrines at the present day, and the waters extending on all sides beneath the acacias and palm trees during the inundation, or the fellahin trotting along on their little asses beside the pools, did not strike them as being of sufficient interest to deserve passing mention in an account of their travels. [illustration: .jpg modern mohammedan shekhs tombs] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. they passed by the most picturesque villages with indifference, and it was only when they reached some great city, or came upon some exceptionally fine temple or eccentric deity, that their curiosity was aroused. mendes worshipped its patron god in the form of a live ram,* and bestowed on all members of the same species some share of the veneration it lavished on the divine animal. the inhabitants of atarbêkhis,** on the island of prosopitis, gave themselves up to the worship of the bull. * herodotus says that both the goats and the god were named mendes in egyptian, but he is here confusing ordinary goats with the special goat which was supposed to contain the soul of osiris. it was the latter that the egyptians named after the god himself, baînibdîduît, i.e. _the soul of the master of the city of diduît_. ** the old explanation of this name as the _city of hathor_ has been rightly rejected as inconsistent with one of the elementary rules of hieroglyphic grammar. the name, when properly divided into its three constituent parts, means literally _the castle of horus the sparrow-hawk, or hat-har- baki_ when one of these animals died in the neighbourhood they buried it, leaving one horn above the earth in order to mark the spot, and once every year the boats of atarbêkhis made a tour round the island to collect the skeletons or decaying bodies, in order that they might be interred in a common burying-place. [illustration: .jpg part of the inundation in a palm grove] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the people of busiris patronised a savage type of religion. during the festival of isis they gave themselves up to fierce conflicts, their fanatical fury even infecting strangers who chanced to be present. the carians also had hit upon a means of outdoing the extravagance of the natives themselves: like the shiite mohammedans of the present day at the festival of the hassanên, they slashed their faces with knives amidst shrieks and yells. at paprêmis a pitched battle formed part of the religious observances: it took place, however, under certain special conditions. on the evening of the festival of anhurît, as the sun went down, a number of priests performed a hasty sacrifice in the temple, while the remainder of the local priesthood stationed themselves at the gate armed with heavy cudgels. when the ceremony was over, the celebrants placed the statue of the god on a four-wheeled car as though about to take it away to some other locality, but their colleagues at the gate opposed its departure and barred the way. it was at this juncture that the faithful intervened; they burst in the door and set upon the priests with staves, the latter offering a stout resistance. the cudgels were heavy, the arms that wielded them lusty, and the fight lasted a long time, yet no one was ever killed in the fray--at least, so the priests averred--and i am at a loss to understand why herodotus, who was not a native of paprêmis, should have been so unkind as to doubt their testimony.* * the god whom the greeks identified with their ares was anhurît, as is proved by one of the leyden papyri. so, too, in modern times at cairo, it used to be affirmed that no mohammedan who submitted to the dôseh was ever seriously injured by the hoofs of the horse which trampled over the bodies extended on the ground. [illustration: .jpg ephemeral hovels of clay or dried bricks] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by haussoullier. it is nearly always in connection with some temple or religious festival that he refers to the towns of the delta, and, indeed, in most of the minor cities of egypt, just as in those of modern italy there is little to interest visitors except the religious monuments or ceremonies. herodotus went to tanis or mendes as we go to orvieto or loretto, to admire the buildings or pay our devotions at a famous shrine. more often than not the place was nothing in itself, consisting merely of a fortified enclosure, a few commonplace houses occupied by the wealthy inhabitants or by government officials, and on mounds of ancient _debris_, the accumulation of centuries, a number of ephemeral hovels built of clay, or dried bricks, divided into irregular blocks by winding alleys. the whole local interest was centred in the sanctuary and its inmates, human and divine. the traveller made his way in as best he could, went into ecstasies over the objects that were shown to him, and as soon as he had duly gone the rounds, set out for the next place on his list, deeming himself lucky if he happened to arrive during one of the annual fairs, such as that of bubastis, for instance. bands of pilgrims flocked in from all parts of egypt; the river craft were overflowing with men and women, who converted the journey into one long carnival. every time the vessel put in to land, the women rushed on shore, amid the din of castanets and flutes, and ran hither and thither challenging the women of the place with abuse to dance against them with uplifted garments. to the foreigners there was little to distinguish the festival of bastît from many other egyptian ceremonies of the kind; it consisted of a solemn procession, accompanied by the singing of hymns and playing of harps, dancing and sacrifices, but for weeks before and after it the town was transformed into one vast pleasure-ground. the people of bubastis took a certain pride in declaring that more wine was drunk in it during a single day than during the rest of the whole year. butô enjoyed exceptional popularity among the greeks in egypt. its patron goddess, the isis who took refuge amid the pools in a moving thicket of reeds and lotus, in order that she might protect her son horus from the jealousy of typhon, reminded them of the story of latona and the cycle of the delian legends; they, visited her in crowds, and her oracle became to most of them what that of delos was to their brethren in europe. at butô they found a great temple, similar to all egyptian temples, a shrine in which the statues of the goddess continued her mysterious existence, and, in the midst of the sacred lake, the little island of khemmis, which was said to float hither and thither upon the waters. herodotus did not venture to deny this absolutely, but states that he had never seen it change its position or even stir: perhaps his incredulity may have been quickened by the fact that this miracle had already been inquired into by hecatasus of miletus, an author who was his pet aversion. the priests of butô declared that their prophets had foretold everything that had happened for a long time past, and for each event they had a version which redounded to the credit of their goddess: she had shown pheron how he might recover his sight, had foretold how long the reign of mykerinos would last, had informed psammetichus that he would be saved by men of brass rising out of the sea, and had revealed to cambyses that he should die in a town named ecbatana. her priests had taken an active part in the revolt of khabbîsha against darius, and had lost a goodly portion of their treasure and endowments for their pains. they still retained their prestige, however, in spite of the underhand rivalry of the oracle of zeus ammon. the notaries of the libyan deity could bring forward miracles even more marvellous than those credited to the egyptian latona, and in the case of many of the revolutions which had taken place on the banks of the nile, a version of the legend in his honour was circulated side by side with the legends of butô. the latter city lay on the very outskirts of one of those regions which excited the greatest curiosity among travellers, the almost inaccessible bucolicum, where, it was said, no rebel ever failed to find a safe refuge from his alien pursuers. the egyptians of the marshes were a very courageous race, but savage, poor, and ill fed. they drank nothing but beer, and obtained their oil not from the olive, but from the castor-oil plant,* and having no corn, lived on the seeds or roots of the lotus, or even on the stalks of the papyrus, which they roasted or boiled. * it seems, moreover, that this custom was not confined to the delta; herodotus, in contrasting the custom of bucolicum with that of the rest of egypt, was evidently thinking of sais, memphis, and other great cities in which he had resided, where foreign olive oil obtained from greece or syria was generally used. fish was their staple article of food, and this they obtained in considerable quantity from lake menzaleh, the lagoons along the coast, and the canals or pools left by the inundation. but little was known of their villages or monuments, and probably they were not worth the trouble of a visit after those of the cities of the plain: endless stories were told of feats of brigandage and of the mysterious hiding-places which these localities offered to every outlaw, one of the most celebrated being the isle of elbô, where the blind anysis defied the power of ethiopia for thirty years, and in which the first amyrtasus found refuge. with the exception of a few merchants or adventurers who visited them with an eye to gain, most travellers coming from or returning to asia avoided their territory, and followed the military road along the pelusiac arm of the nile from pehisium to daphno or zalu, and from daphnæ or zalu to bubastis. a little below kerkasoron, near the apex of the delta, the pyramids stood out on the horizon, looking insignificant at first, but afterwards so lofty that, during the period of inundation, when the whole valley, from the mountains of arabia to those of libya, was nothing but one vast river, a vessel seemed to sail in their shadow for a long time before it reached their base. the traveller passed heliopolis on his left with its temple of the sun, next the supposed sources of the northern nile, the quarries of the red mountain, and then entering at length the nile itself, after a journey of some hours, came to anchor by the quays of memphis. to the greeks of that time, memphis was very much what cairo is to us, viz. the typical oriental city, the quintessence and chief representative of ancient egypt. in spite of the disasters which had overwhelmed it during the last few centuries, it was still a very beautiful city, ranking with babylon as one of the largest in the world. its religious festivals, especially those in honour of apis, attracted numberless pilgrims to it at certain seasons of the year, and hosts of foreigners, recruited from every imaginable race of the old continent, resorted to it for purposes of trade. most of the nationalities who frequented it had a special quarter, which was named after them; the phoenicians occupied the _tyrian camp_, the greeks and carians the _hellenic wall and carian wall_, and there were oaromemphites or hellenomemphites side by side with the native inhabitants. a persian garrison was stationed within the white wall, ready to execute the satrap�s orders in the event of rebellion, and could have held out for a long time even after the rest of the country had fallen into the hands of the insurgents. animals which one would scarcely have expected to find in the streets of a capital, such as cows, sheep, and goats, wandered about unheeded in the most crowded thoroughfares; for the common people, instead of living apart from their beasts, as the greeks did, stabled them in their own houses. nor was this the only custom which must have seemed strange in the eyes of a newly arrived visitor, for the egyptians might almost have been said to make a point of doing everything differently from other nation�s. the baker, seen at the kneading-trough inside his shop, worked the dough with his foot; on the other hand, the mason used no trowel in applying his mortar, and the poorer classes scraped up handfuls of mud mixed with dung when they had occasion to repair the walls of their hovels. in greece, even the very poorest retired to their houses and ate with closed doors; the egyptians felt no repugnance at eating and drinking in the open air, declaring that unbecoming and improper acts should be performed in secret, but seemly acts in public. the first blind alley they came to, a recess between two hovels, the doorstep of a house or temple, any of these seemed to them a perfectly natural place to dine in. their bill of fare was not a sumptuous one. a sort of flat pancake somewhat bitter in taste, and made--not of corn or barley--but of spelt, a little oil, an onion or a leek, with an occasional scrap of meat or poultry, washed down by a jug of beer or wine; there was nothing here to tempt the foreigner, and, besides, it would not have been thought right for him to invite himself. a greek who lived on the flesh of the cow was looked upon as unclean in the highest degree; no egyptian would have thought of using the same pot or knife with him, or of kissing him on the mouth by way of greeting. moreover, egyptian etiquette did not tolerate the same familiarities as the greek: two friends on catching sight of one another paused before they met, bowed, then clasped one another round the knees or pretended to do so. young people gave way to an old man, or, if seated, rose to let him pass. the traveller recalled the fact that the spartans behaved in the same way, and approved this mark of deference; but nothing in his home-life had prepared him for the sight of respectable women coming and going as they pleased, without escort and unveiled, carrying burdens on their shoulders (whereas the men carried them on their heads), going to market, keeping stalls or shops, while their husbands or fathers stayed comfortably at home, wove cloth, kneaded the potter�s clay or turned the wheel, and worked at their trades; no wonder that they were ready to believe that the man was the slave, and the wife the mistress of the family. some historians traced the origin of these customs back to osiris, others only as far as sesostris: sesostris was the last resource of greek historians when they got into difficulties. the city was crowded with monuments; there was the temple of the phoenician astarte, in which priests of syrian descent had celebrated the mysteries of the great goddess ever since the days of the xviiith dynasty; then there was the temple of râ, the temple of amon, the temple of tamu, the temple of bastît, and the temple of isis.* * this list is taken mainly from one of the mutilated letters found on the back of the _sallier papyrus_. the phoenician astarte, called a foreign aphrodite by herodotus, was regarded by the egyptians as a counterpart of bastît, lady of onkhtoui. the temple of phtah, as yet intact, provided the visitor with a spectacle scarcely less admirable than that offered by the temple of the theban amon at karnak. the kings had modified the original plan as each thought best, one adding obelisks or colossal statues, another a pylon, a third a pillared hall. completed in this way by the labours of a score of dynasties, it formed, as it were, a microcosm of egyptian history, in which each image, inscription and statue, aroused the attention of the curious. they naturally desired to learn who were the strangely dressed races shown struggling in a battle scene, the name of the king who had conquered them, and the reasons which had led him to construct this or that part of a monument, and there were plenty of busybodies ready to satisfy, as far as they could, the curiosity of visitors. interpreters were at hand who bartered such information as they possessed, and the modern traveller who has had occasion to employ the services of a dragoman will have no difficulty in estimating the value of intelligence thus hawked about in ancient times. priests of the lower class, doorkeepers and sacristans were trained to act as _ciceroni_, and knew the main outlines of the history of the temple in which they lived. menés planned it, moeris added the northern propylæ, ehampsinitus those on the west, psammetichus the south, asychis those on the east, the most noteworthy of them all. a native of memphis, born at the foot of the pyramids, had been familiar with the names of menés and cheops from childhood; he was consequently apt to attribute to them everything of importance achieved by the pharaohs of the old days. menés had built the temple, menés had founded the city, menés had created the soil on which the city stood, and preserved it from floods by his dykes. the thoughtful traveller would assent, for had he not himself observed the action of the mud; a day�s journey from the coast one could not let down a plummet without drawing it up covered with a blackish slime, a clear proof that the nile continued to gain upon the sea. menés, at all events, had really existed; but as to asychis, moris, proteus, pheron, and most of the characters glibly enumerated by herodotus, it would be labour lost to search for their names among the inscriptions; they are mere puppets of popular romance, some of their names, such as pirâui or pruti, being nothing more than epithets employed by the story-tellers to indicate in general terms the heroes of their tales. we can understand how strangers, placed at the mercy of their dragoman, were misled by this, and tempted to transform each title into a man, taking pruti and pirâui to be pharaoh proteus and pharaoh pheron, each of them celebrated for his fabulous exploits. the guides told herodotus, and herodotus retails to us, as sober historical facts, the remedy employed by this unhistorical pheron in order to recover his sight; the adventures of paris and helen at the court of proteus,* and the droll tricks played by a thief at the expense of the simple ehampsinitus. * some dragomans identified the helen of the homeric legend with the �foreign aphrodite� who had a temple in the tyrian quarter at memphis, and who was really a semitic divinity. [illustration: .jpg the step pyramid seen from the grove op palm trees to the north of saqqarah] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by haussoullier. the excursions made by the greek traveller in the environs of memphis were very similar to those taken by modern visitors to cairo: on the opposite bank of the nile there was heliopolis with its temple of râ, then there were the quarries of turah, which had been worked from time immemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he had been admiring, and the very pyramids themselves had been taken stone by stone.* * these are �the quarries in the arabian mountain,� mentioned by herodotus without indication of the local name. the sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearest pyramids, those at saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;* they were told as they passed by that the step pyramid was the most ancient of all, having been erected by uenephes, one of the kings of the first dynasty, and they asked no further questions. * herodotus does not mention it, nor does any other writer of the greek period. their whole curiosity was reserved for the three giants at gizeh and their inmates, cheops, chephren, mykerinos, and the fair nitokris with the rosy cheeks. through all the country round, at heliopolis, and even in the fayum itself, they heard the same names that had been dinned into their ears at memphis; the whole of the monuments were made to fit into a single cycle of popular history, and what they learned at one place completed, or seemed to complete, what they had learned at another. i cannot tell whether many of them cared to stray much beyond lake moris: the repressive measures of ochus had, as it would appear, interrupted for a time the regular trade which, ever since the saite kings of the xxvith dynasty, had been carried on by the greeks with the oases, by way of abydos. a stranger who ventured as far as the thebaid would have found himself in the same plight as a european of the last century who undertook to reach the first cataract. their point of departure--memphis or cairo--was very much the same; their destinations--elephantine and assuan--differed but little. they employed the same means of transport, for, excepting the cut of the sails, the modern dahabeah is an exact counterpart of the pleasure and passenger boats shown on the monuments. lastly, they set out at the same time of year, in november or december, after the floods had subsided. the same length of time was required for the trip; it took a month to reach assuan from cairo if the wind-were favourable, and if only such stoppages were made as were strictly necessary for taking in fresh provisions. pococke, having left cairo on the th of december, , about midday, was at akhmîm by the th. he set sail again on the th, stayed at thebes from the th of january, , till the th, and finally moored at assuan on the evening of january th, making in all forty-five days, fourteen of which were spent at various stopping-places. if the diary of a greek excursionist or tourist had come down to us, we should probably find in it entries of a very similar kind.* the departure from memphis would take place in november or december; ten or twelve days later the traveller would find himself at panopolis;** from panopolis to elephantine, stopping at coptos and thebes, would take about a month, allowing time for a stay at thebes, and returning to memphis in february or march. * herodotus fixes twenty days for the voyage from sais to elephantine. this period of time must be probably correct, since at the present day dahabeahs constantly run from cairo to the second cataract and back in two months, including stoppages of ten days to a fortnight for seeing the monuments. the twenty days of herodotus represent the minimum duration of the voyage, without taking into account the stoppages and accidents which often delay sailing vessels on the nile. nine days, which herodotus gives as the time for reaching thebes, is not sufficient, if the voyage is undertaken in the usual way, stopping every evening for the night; but it would be possible if the navigation were uninterrupted day and night. this is now rarely done, but it might have been frequent in ancient times, especially in the service of the state. ** it would seem clear that herodotus stopped at panopolis and had communications with the people of the town. [panopolis or khemmis is the present ekhmîm.--tr.] [illustration: a.jpg long strings of laden vessels] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the greater part of the time was employed in getting from one point to another, and the necessity of taking advantage of a favourable wind in going up the river, often obliged the travellers to neglect more than one interesting locality. [illustration: b.jpg the vast sheet of water in the midday heat] the greek was not so keenly alive to the picturesqueness of the scenes through which he passed as the modern visitor, and in the account of his travels he took no note of the long lines of laden boats going up or down stream, nor of the vast sheet of water glowing in the midday sun, nor of the mountains honeycombed with tombs and quarries, at the foot of which he would be sailing day after day. what interested him above all things was information with regard to the sources of the immense river itself, and the reasons for its periodic inundation, and, according to the mental attitude impressed on him by his education, he accepted the mythological solution offered by the natives, or he sought for a more natural one in the physical lore of his own _savants_: thus he was told that the nile took its rise at elephantine, between the two rocks called krôphi and môphi, and in showing them to him his informant would add that psammetichus i. had attempted to sound the depth of the river at this point, but had failed to fathom it. at the few places where the pilot of the barque put in to port, the population showed themselves unfriendly, and refused to hold any communication with the greeks. [illustration: .jpg the mountains honeycombed with tombs and quarries] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by gautier. the interpreters, who were almost all natives of the delta, were not always familiar with the people and customs of the said, and felt almost as completely foreign at thebes as did their employers. their office was confined to translating the information furnished by the inhabitants when the latter were sufficiently civilised to hold communication with the travellers. what most astonished herodotus at panopolis was the temple and the games held in honour, so he believed, of perseus, the son of danaë. these exercises terminated in an attempt to climb a regular �greasy pole� fixed in the ground, and strengthened right and left by three rows of stays attached to the mast at different heights; as for perseus, he was the ithyphallic god of the locality, mînu himself, one of whose epithets--pehresu, the runner--was confounded by the greek ear with the name of the hero. the dragomans, enlarging on this mistaken identity, imagined that the town was the birthplace of danaos and lyncseus; that perseus, returning from libya with the head of medusa, had gone out of his way to visit the cradle of his family, and that he had instituted the games in remembrance of his stay there. thebes had become the ghost of its former self; the persian governors had neglected the city, and its princesses and their ministers were so impoverished that they were unable to keep up its temples and palaces. herodotus scarcely mentions it, and we can hardly wonder at it: he had visited the still flourishing memphis, where the temples were cared for and were filled with worshippers. what had thebes to show him in the way of marvels which he had not already seen, and that, too, in a better state of preservation? his theban ciceroni also told him the same stories that he had heard in lower egypt, and he states that their information agreed in the main with that which he had received at memphis and heliopolis, which made it unnecessary to repeat it at length. two or three things only appeared to him worthy of mention. his admiration was first roused by the statues of the high priests of amon which had already excited the wonder of his rival hecataeus; he noted that all these personages were, without exception, represented as mere men, each the son of another man, and he took the opportunity of ridiculing the vanity of his compatriots, who did not hesitate to inscribe the name of a god at the head of their genealogies, removed by some score of generations only from their own. on the other hand, the temple servitors related to him how two theban priestesses, carried off by the phoenicians and sold, one in libya and the other in greece, had set up the first oracles known in those two countries: herodotus thereupon remembered the story he had heard in epirus of two black doves which had flown away from thebes, one towards the oasis of ammon, the other in the direction of dodona; the latter had alighted on an old beech tree, and in a human voice had requested that a temple consecrated to zeus should be founded on the spot.* * this indicates a confusion in the minds of the egyptian dragomans with the two brooding birds of osiris, isis and nephthys, considered as _zarait_, that is to say, as two birds of a different species, according to the different traditions either vultures, rooks, or doves. herodotus is quite overcome with joy at the thought that greek divination could thus be directly traced to that of egypt, for like most of his contemporaries, he felt that the hellenic cult was ennobled by the fact of its being derived from the egyptian. the traveller on the nile had to turn homewards on reaching elephantine, as that was the station of the last persian garrison. nubia lay immediately beyond the cataract, and the ethiopians at times crossed the frontier and carried their raids as far as thebes. elephantine, like assuan at the present day, was the centre of a flourishing trade. here might be seen kushites from napata or meroë, negroes from the upper nile and the bahr el-ghazal, and ammonians, from all of whom the curious visitor might glean information while frequenting the bazaars. the cataract was navigable all the year round, and the natives in its vicinity enjoyed the privilege of piloting freight boats through its difficult channel. it took four days to pass through it, instead of the three, or even two, which suffice at the present day. above it, the nile spread out and resembled a lake dotted over with islands, several of which, such as phike and biggeh, contained celebrated temples, which were as much frequented by the ethiopians as by the egyptians. correctly speaking, it was not egypt herself that the greeks saw, but her external artistic aspect and the outward setting of egyptian civilisation. the vastness of her monuments, the splendour of her tombs, the pomp of her ceremonies, the dignity and variety of her religious formulas, attracted their curiosity and commanded their respect: the wisdom of the egyptians had passed into a proverb with them, as it had with the hebrews. but if they had penetrated behind the scenes, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that beneath this attractive exterior there was hopeless decay. as with all creatures when they have passed their prime, egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losing her elasticity and energy. her spirit had sunk into a torpor, she had become unresponsive to her environment, and could no longer adapt herself to the form she had so easily acquired in her youth: it was as much as she could do to occupy fully the narrower limits to which she had been reduced, and to maintain those limits unbroken. the instinct which made her shrink from the intrusion of foreign customs and ideas, or even mere contact with nations of recent growth, was not the mere outcome of vanity. she realised that she maintained her integrity only by relying on the residue of her former solidarity and on the force of custom. the slightest disturbance of the equilibrium established among her members, instead of strengthening her, would have robbed her of the vigour she still possessed, and brought about her dissolution. [illustration: .jpg darius iii.] drawn by faucher-gudin, from a coin in the cabinet des médailles. she owed whatever activity she possessed to impulses imparted to her by the play of her ancient mechanism--a mechanism so stable in its action, and so ingeniously constructed, that it had still a reserve of power within it sufficient to keep the whole in motion for centuries, provided there was no attempt to introduce new wheels among the old. she had never been singularly distinguished for her military qualities; not that she was cowardly, and shrank from facing death, but because she lacked energy and enthusiasm for warlike enterprise. the tactics and armaments by which she had won her victories up to her prime, had at length become fetters which she was no longer inclined to shake off, and even if she was still able to breed a military caste, she was no longer able to produce armies fit to win battles without the aid of mercenaries. in order to be successful in the field, she had to associate with her own troops recruits from other countries--libyans, asiatics, and greeks, who served to turn the scale. the egyptians themselves formed a compact body in this case, and bearing down upon the enemy already engaged by the mercenaries, broke through his ranks by their sheer weight, or, if they could not accomplish this, they stood their ground bravely, taking to flight only when the vacancies in their ranks showed them that further resistance was impossible. the machinery of government, like the organisation of their armies, had become antiquated and degenerate. [illustration: .jpg an elephant armed for war] drawn by boudier, from a little terra-cotta group from myrrhina now in the louvre. this object dates from the time of the kings of pergamos, and the soldier round whom the elephant winds his trunk in order to dash him to the ground is a gaul of asia minor. the nobility were as turbulent as in former times, and the royal authority was as powerless now as of old to assert itself in the absence of external help, or when treason was afoot among the troops. religion alone maintained its ascendency, and began to assume to itself the loyalty once given to the pharaoh, and the devotion previously consecrated to the fatherland. the fellahîn had never fully realised the degradation involved in serving a stranger, and what they detested in the persian king was not exactly the fact that he was a persian. their national pride, indeed, always prompted them to devise some means of connecting the foreign monarch with their own solar line, and to transform an achæmenian king into a legitimate pharaoh. that which was especially odious to them in a cambyses or an ochus was the disdain which such sovereigns displayed for their religion, and the persecution to which they subjected the immortals. they accustomed themselves without serious repining to have no longer one of their own race upon the throne, and to behold their cities administered by asiatics, but they could not understand why the foreigner preferred his own gods, and would not admit amon, phtah, horus, and râ to the rank of supreme deities. ochus had, by his treatment of the apis and the other divine animals, put it out of his power ever to win their good will. his brutality had made an irreconcilable enemy of that state which alone gave signs of vitality among the nations of the decaying east. this was all the more to be regretted, since the persian empire, in spite of the accession of power which it had just manifested, was far from having regained the energy which had animated it, not perhaps in the time of darius, but at all events under the first xerxes. the army and the wealth of the country were doubtless still intact--an army and a revenue which, in spite of all losses, were still the largest in the world--but the valour of the troops was not proportionate to their number. the former prowess of the persians, medians, bactrians, and other tribes of iran showed no degeneracy: these nations still produced the same race of brave and hardy foot-soldiers, the same active and intrepid horsemen; but for a century past there had not been the improvements either in the armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which were necessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the greek army. the persian king placed great faith in extraordinary military machines. he believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes; besides this, his relations with india had shown him what use his oriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employ these animals, he had collected a whole corps of them, from which he. hoped great things. in spite of the addition of these novel recruits, it was not on the asiatic contingents that he chiefly relied in the event of war, but on the mercenaries who� were hired at great expense, and who formed the chief support of his power. from the time of artaxerxes ii. onwards, it was the greek hoplites and peltasts who had always decided the issue of the persian battles. the expeditions both by land and sea had been under the conduct of athenian or spartan generals--conon, chabrias, iphi-crates, agesilas, timotheus, and their pupils; and again also it was to the greeks--to the rhodian mentor and to, memnon--that ochus had owed his successes. the older nations--egypt, syria, chaldæa, and elam--had all had their day of supremacy; they had declined in the course of centuries, and assyria had for a short time united them under her rule. on the downfall of assyria, the iranians had succeeded to her heritage, and they had built up a single empire comprising all the states which had preceded them in western asia; but decadence had fallen upon them also, and when they had been masters for scarcely two short centuries, they were in their turn threatened with destruction. their rule continued to be universal, not by reason of its inherent vigour, but on account of the weakness of their subjects and neighbours, and a determined attack on any of the frontiers of the empire would doubtless have resulted in its overthrow. greece herself was too demoralised to cause darius any grave anxiety. not only had she renounced all intention of attacking the great king in his own domain, as in the days of the athenian hegemony, when she could impose her own conditions of peace, but her perpetual discords had yielded her an easy prey to persia, and were likely to do so more and more. the greek cities chose the great king as the arbiter in their quarrels; they vied with each other in obtaining his good will, his subsidies in men and vessels, and his darics: they armed or disarmed at his command, and the day seemed at hand when they would become a normal dependency of persia, little short of a regular satrapy like asiatic hellas. one chance of escape from such a fate remained to them--if one or other of them, or some neighbouring state, could acquire such an ascendency as to make it possible to unite what forces remained to them under one rule. macedonia in particular, having hitherto kept aloof from the general stream of politics, had at this juncture begun to shake off its lethargy, and had entered with energy into the hellenic concert under the auspices of its king, philip. bagoas recognised the danger which threatened his people in the person of this ambitious sovereign, and did not hesitate to give substantial support to the adversaries of the macedonian prince; chersobleptes of thrace and the town of perinthus receiving from him such succour as enabled them to repulse philip successfully ( ). unfortunately, while bagoas was endeavouring to avert danger in this quarter, his rivals at court endeavoured to prejudice the mind of the king against him, and their intrigues were so successful that he found himself ere long condemned to the alternative of murdering his sovereign or perishing himself. he therefore poisoned ochus, to avoid being assassinated or put to the torture, and placed on the throne arses, the youngest of the king�s sons, while he caused the remaining royal children to be put to death ( ).* egypt hailed this tragic end as a mark of the vengeance of the gods whom ochus had outraged. a report was spread that the eunuch was an egyptian, that he had taken part in the murder of the apis under fear of death, but that when he was sure of his own safety he had avenged the sacrilege. as soon as the poison had taken effect, it was said he ate a portion of the dead body and threw the remainder to the cats: he then collected the bones and made them into whistles and knife-handles.** * plutarch calls the successor of ochus oarses, which recalls the name which dinon gives to artaxerxes ii. diodorus says that bagoas destroyed the whole family of ochus, but he is mistaken. arrian mentions a son of ochus about , and several other members of the royal achæmenian race are known to have been living in the time of alexander. ** the body of the enemy thrown to the cats to be devoured is a detail added by the popular imagination, which crops up again in the tale of satni khâmois. ochus had astonished his contemporaries by the rapidity with which he had re-established the integrity of the empire; they were pleased to compare him with the heroes of his race, with cyrus, cambyses, and darius. but to exalt him to such a level said little for their moral or intellectual perceptions, since in spite of his victories he was merely a despot of the ordinary type; his tenacity degenerated into brutal obstinacy, his severity into cruelty, and if he obtained successes, they were due rather to his generals and his ministers than to his own ability. his son arses was at first content to be a docile instrument in the hands of bagoas; but when the desire for independence came to him with the habitual exercise of power, and he began to chafe at his bonds, the eunuch sacrificed him to his own personal safety, and took his life as he had done that of his father in the preceding year ( ). so many murders following each other in rapid succession had considerably reduced the achsemenian family, and bagoas for a moment was puzzled where to find a king: he at length decided in favour of codomannos, who according to some was a great-grandson of darius ii., but according to others was not of the royal line, but had in his youth been employed as a courier. he had distinguished himself in the hostilities against the casduians, and had been nominated satrap of armenia by ochus as a reward for his bravery. he assumed at his accession the name of darius; brave, generous, clement, and possessed with an ardent desire to do right, he was in every way the superior of his immediate predecessors, and he deserved to have reigned at a time when the empire was less threatened. bagoas soon perceived that his new protégé, whose conduct he had reckoned on directing as he pleased, intended to govern for himself, and he therefore attempted to get rid of him; bagoas was, however, betrayed by his accomplices, and compelled to drink the poison which he had prepared for darius. these revolutions had distracted the attention of the court of susa from the events which were taking place on the shores of the Ægean, and philip had taken advantage of them to carry into effect the designs against persia which he had been long meditating. after having been victorious against the greeks, he had despatched an army of ten thousand men into asia under the command of parmenion and attains ( ). we may ask if it were not he who formed the project of universal conquest which was so soon to be associated with the name of his son alexander. he was for the moment content to excite revolt among the cities of the Ægean littoral, and restore to them that liberty of which they had been deprived for nearly a century. he himself followed as soon as these lost children of greece had established themselves firmly in asia. the story of his assassination on the eve of his departure is well known ( ), and of the difficulties which compelled alexander to suspend the execution of the plans which his father had made. darius attempted to make use of the respite thus afforded him by fortune; he adopted the usual policy of liberally bribing one part of greece to take up arms against macedonia--a method which was at first successful. while alexander was occupied in the destruction of thebes, the rhodian general memnon, to whom had been entrusted the defence of asia minor, forced the invaders to entrench themselves in the troad. if the persian fleet had made its appearance in good time, and had kept an active watch over the straits, the advance-guard of the macedonians would have succumbed to the enemy before the main body of the troops had succeeded in joining them in asia, and it was easy to foretell what would have been the fate of an enterprise inaugurated by such a disaster. persia, however, had not yet learnt to seize the crucial moment for action: her vessels were still arming when the enemy made their appearance on the european shore of hellespont, and alexander had ample time to embark and disembark the whole of his army without having to draw his sword from the scabbard. he was accompanied by about thirty thousand foot soldiers and four thousand five hundred horse; the finest troops commanded by the best generals of the time--parmenion, his two sons nikanor and philotas, crater, clitos, antigonus, and others whose names are familiar to us all; a larger force than memnon and his subordinates were able to bring up to oppose him, at all events at the opening of the campaign, during the preliminary operations which determined the success of the enterprise. the first years of the campaign seem like a review of the countries and nations which in bygone times had played the chief part in oriental history. an engagement at the fords of the granicus, only a few days after the crossing of the hellespont, placed asia minor at the mercy of the invader ( ). mysia, lydia, caria, and lycia tendered their submission, miletus and halicarnassus being the only towns to offer any resistance. in the spring of , phrygia followed the general movement, in company with cappadocia and cilicia; these represented the hittite and asianic world, the last representatives of which thus escaped from the influences of the east and passed under the hellenic supremacy. [illustration: .jpg the battlefield of issus] drawn by boudier, from a photograph by lortet. at the foot of the amanus, alexander came into conflict not only with the generals of darius, but with the great king himself. the amanus, and the part of the taurus which borders on the euphrates valley, had always constituted the line of demarcation between the domain of the races of the asianic peninsula and that of the semitic peoples. [illustration: .jpg a bas-relief on a sidonian sarcophagus] a second battle near the issus, at the entrance to the cilician gates, cleared the ground, and gave the conqueror time to receive the homage of the maritime provinces. both northern and coele-syria submitted to him from samosata to damascus. [illustration: .jpg the isthmus of tyre at the present day] drawn by boudier, from a sketch by lortet. the less important towns of phonicia, such as arvad, byblos, sidon, and those of cyprus, followed their example; but tyre closed its gates, and trusted to its insular position for the preservation of its independence, as it had done of old in the time of sennacherib and of nebuchadrezzar. it was not so much a scrupulous feeling of loyalty which emboldened her to take this step, as a keen realisation of what her conquest by the macedonian would entail. it was entirely-owing to persia that she had not succumbed in all parts of the eastern mediterranean in that struggle with greece which had now lasted for centuries: persia had not only arrested the progress of hellenic colonisation in cyprus, but had given a fresh impulse to that of tyre, and phoenician influence had regained its ascendency over a considerable part of the island. the surrender of tyre, therefore, would be equivalent to a greek victory, and would bring about the decay of the city; hence its inhabitants preferred hostilities, and they were prolonged in desperation over a period of seven months. at the end of that time alexander succeeded in reducing the place by constructing a dyke or causeway, by means of which he brought his machines of war up to the foot of the ramparts, and filled in the channel which separated the town from the mainland; the island thus became a peninsula, and tyre henceforth was reduced to the rank of an ordinary town, still able to maintain her commercial activity, but having lost her power as an independent state ( ). phoenicia being thus brought into subjection, judæa and samaria yielded to the conqueror without striking a blow, though the fortress of gaza followed the example set by tyre, and for the space of two months blocked the way to the delta. egypt revolted at the approach of her liberator, and the rising was so unanimous as to dismay the satrap mazakes, who capitulated at the first summons. alexander passed the winter on the banks of the nile. finding that the ancient capitals of the country--thebes, sais, and even memphis itself--occupied positions which were no longer suited to the exigencies of the times, he founded opposite to the island of pharos, in the township of eakotis, a city to which he gave his own name. the rapid growth of the prosperity of alexandria showed how happy the founder had been in the choice of its site: in less than half a century from the date of its foundation, it had eclipsed all the other capitals of the eastern mediterranean, and had become the centre of african hellenism. while its construction was in progress, alexander, having had opportunities of studying the peculiarities and characteristics of the egyptians, had decided to perform the one act which would conciliate the good feeling of the natives, and secure for him their fidelity during his wars in the east: he selected from among their gods the one who was also revered by the greeks, zeus-amnion, and repaired to the oasis that he might be adopted by the deity. as a son of the god, he became a legitimate pharaoh, an egyptian like themselves, and on returning to memphis he no longer hesitated to adopt the _pschent_ crown with the accompanying ancient rites. he returned to asia early in the year , and crossed the euphrates. darius had attempted to wrest asia minor from his grasp, but antigonus, the governor of phrygia, had dispersed the troops despatched for this purpose in , and alexander was able to push forward fearlessly into those regions beyond the euphrates, where the ten thousand had pursued their victorious march before him. he crossed the tigris about the th of september, and a week later fell in with his rival in the very heart of assyria, not far from, the village of gaugamela, where he took up a position which had been previously studied, and was particularly suited for the evolutions of cavalry. [illustration: .jpg the battle of arbela, from the mosaic of herculanum] drawn by boudier, from a photograph. at the granicus and near issus, the greek element had played an important part among the forces which contested the field; on this occasion, however, the great king was accompanied by merely two or three thousand mercenaries, while, on the other hand, the whole of asia seemed to have roused herself for a last effort, and brought forward her most valiant troops to oppose the disciplined ranks of the macedonians. persians, susians, medes, armenians, iranians from bactriana, sakae, and indians were all in readiness to do their best, and were accompanied by every instrument of military warfare employed in oriental tactics; chariots armed with scythes, the last descendants of the chariotry which had dominated all the battle-fields from the time of the xviiith theban dynasty down to the latest sargonids, and, employed side by side with these relics of a bygone day, were indian elephants, now for the first time brought into use against european battalions. these picked troops sold their lives dearly, but the perfection of the macedonian arms, and, above all, the superiority of the tactics employed by their generals, carried the day; the evening of the th of september found darius in flight, and the achæmenian empire crushed by the furious charges of alexander�s squadrons. babylon fell into their hands a few days later, followed by susa, and in the spring of , ecbatana; and shortly after darius met his end on the way to media, assassinated by the last of his generals. with his death, persia sank back into the obscurity from which cyrus had raised her rather more than two centuries previously. with the exception of the medes, none of the nations which had exercised the hegemony of the east before her time, not even assyria, had had at their disposal such a wealth of resources and had left behind them so few traces of their power. a dozen or so of palaces, as many tombs, a few scattered altars and stelæ, remains of epics preserved by the greeks, fragments of religious books, often remodelled, and issuing in the avesta--when we have reckoned up all that remains to us of her, what do we find to compare in interest and in extent with the monuments and wealth of writings bequeathed to us by egypt and chaldæa? the iranians received oriental civilisation at a time when the latter was in its decline, and caught the spirit of decadence in their contact with it. in succeeding to the patrimony of the nations they conquered, they also inherited their weakness; in a few years they had lost all the vigour of their youth, and were barely able to maintain the integrity of the empire they had founded. moreover, the great peoples to whom they succeeded, although lacking the vigour necessary for the continuance of their independent existence, had not yet sunk so low as to acquiesce in their own decay, and resign themselves to allowing their national life to be absorbed is that of another power: they believed that they would emerge from the crisis, as they had done from so many others, with fresh strength, and, as soon as an occasion presented itself, they renewed the war against their iranian suzerain. prom, the first to the latest of the sovereigns bearing the name of darius, the history of the achæmenids in an almost uninterrupted series of internal wars and provincial revolts. the greeks of ionia, the egyptians, chaldæans, syrians, and the tribes of asia minor, all rose one after another, sometimes alone, sometimes in concert; some carrying on hostilities for not more than two or three years; others, like egypt, maintaining them for more than half a century. they were not discouraged by the reprisals which followed each of these rebellions; they again had recourse to arms as soon as there seemed the least chance of success, and they renewed the struggle till from sheer exhaustion the sword fell from their hand. persia was worn out by this perpetual warfare, in which at the same time each of her rivals expended the last relics of their vitality, and when macedonia entered on the scene, both lords and vassals were reduced to such a state of prostration, that it was easy to foretell their approaching end. the old oriental world was in its death-throes; but before it passed away, the successful audacity of alexander had summoned greece to succeed to its inheritance. the history of herodotus by herodotus translated into english by g. c. macaulay in two volumes vol. ii {e herodotou diathesis en apasin epieikes, kai tois men agathois sunedomene, tois de kakois sunalgousa}.�dion. halic. preparer's note this text was prepared from the third edition, printed in , by macmillan and co., limited, st. martin's street, london. greek text has been transliterated and marked with brackets, as in the opening citation above. the history of herodotus book v. the fifth book of the histories, called terpsichore . in the meantime those of the persians who had been left behind in europe by dareios, of whom megabazos was the commander, had subdued the people of perinthos first of the hellespontians, since they refused to be subject to dareios. these had in former times also been hardly dealt with by the paionians: for the paionians from the strymon had been commanded by an oracle of their god to march against the perinthians; and if the perinthians, when encamped opposite to them, should shout aloud and call to them by their name, they were to attack them; but if they should not shout to them, they were not to attack them: and thus the paionians proceeded to do. now when the perinthians were encamped opposite to them in the suburb of their city, a challenge was made and a single combat took place in three different forms; for they matched a man against a man, and a horse against a horse, and a dog against a dog. then, as the perinthians were getting the better in two of the three, in their exultation they raised a shout of paion, and the paionians conjectured that this was the very thing which was spoken of in the oracle, and said doubtless to one another, "now surely the oracle is being accomplished for us, now it is time for us to act." so the paionians attacked the perinthians when they had raised the shout of paion, and they had much the better in the fight, and left but few of them alive. . thus it happened with respect to those things which had been done to them in former times by the paionians; and at this time, although the perinthians proved themselves brave men in defence of their freedom, the persians and megabazos got the better of them by numbers. then after perinthos had been conquered, megabazos marched his army through the length of thracia, forcing every city and every race of those who dwell there to submit to the king, for so it had been commanded him by dareios, to subdue thracia. . now the thracian race is the most numerous, except the indians, in all the world: and if it should come to be ruled over by one man, or to agree together in one, it would be irresistible in fight and the strongest by far of all nations, in my opinion. since however this is impossible for them and cannot ever come to pass among them, they are in fact weak for that reason. they have many names, belonging to their various tribes in different places; but they all follow customs which are nearly the same in all respects, except the getai and trausians and those who dwell above the crestonians. . of these the practices of the getai, who believe themselves to be immortal, have been spoken of by me already: and the trausians perform everything else in the same manner as the other thracians, but in regard to those who are born and die among them they do as follows:--when a child has been born, the nearest of kin sit round it and make lamentation for all the evils of which he must fulfil the measure, now that he is born, enumerating the whole number of human ills; but when a man is dead, they cover him up in the earth with sport and rejoicing, saying at the same time from what great evils he has escaped and is now in perfect bliss. . those who dwell above the crestonians do as follows:--each man has many wives, and when any man of them is dead, a great competition takes place among his wives, with much exertion on the part of their friends, about the question of which of them was most loved by their husband; and she who is preferred by the decision and so honoured, is first praised by both men and women, then her throat is cut over the tomb by her nearest of kin, and afterwards she is buried together with her husband; and the others are exceedingly grieved at it, for this is counted as the greatest reproach to them. . of the other thracians the custom is to sell their children to be carried away out of the country; and over their maidens they do not keep watch, but allow them to have commerce with whatever men they please, but over their wives they keep very great watch; and they buy their wives for great sums of money from their parents. to be pricked with figures is accounted a mark of noble rank, and not to be so marked is a sign of low birth. not to work is counted most honourable, and to be a worker of the soil is above all things dishonourable: to live on war and plunder is the most honourable thing. . these are their most remarkable customs; and of the gods they worship only ares and dionysos and artemis. their kings, however, apart from the rest of the people, worship hermes more than all gods, and swear by him alone; and they say that they are descended from hermes. . the manner of burial for the rich among them is this:--for three days they expose the corpse to view, and they slay all kinds of victims and feast, having first made lamentation. then they perform the burial rites, either consuming the body with fire or covering it up in the earth without burning; and afterwards when they have heaped up a mound they celebrate games with every kind of contest, in which reasonably the greatest prizes are assigned for single combat. this is the manner of burial among the thracians. . of the region lying further on towards the north of this country no one can declare accurately who the men are who dwell in it; but the parts which lie immediately beyond the ister are known to be uninhabited and vast in extent. the only men of whom i can hear who dwell beyond the ister are those who are said to be called sigynnai, and who use the median fashion of dress. their horses, it is said, have shaggy hair all over their bodies, as much as five fingers long; and these are small and flat-nosed and too weak to carry men, but when yoked in chariots they are very high-spirited; therefore the natives of the country drive chariots. the boundaries of this people extend, it is said, to the parts near the enetoi, who live on the adriatic; and people say that they are colonists from the medes. in what way however these have come to be colonists from the medes i am not able for my part to conceive, but everything is possible in the long course of ages. however that may be, the ligurians who dwell in the region inland above massalia call traders sigynnai, and the men of cyprus give the same name to spears. . now the thracians say that the other side of the ister is occupied by bees, and that by reason of them it is not possible to pass through and proceed further: but to me it seems that when they so speak, they say that which is not probable; for these creatures are known to be intolerant of cold, and to me it seems that the regions which go up towards the pole are uninhabitable by reason of the cold climate. these then are the tales reported about this country; and however that may be, megabazos was then making the coast-regions of it subject to the persians. . meanwhile dareios, so soon as he had crossed over the hellespont and come to sardis, called to mind the service rendered to him by histiaios the milesian and also the advice of the mytilenian coës, and having sent for them to come to sardis he offered them a choice of rewards. histiaios then, being despot of miletos, did not make request for any government in addition to that, but he asked for the district of myrkinos which belonged to the edonians, desiring there to found a city. histiaios chose this for himself; but coës, not being a despot but a man of the people, asked to be made despot of mitylene. . after the desires of both had been fulfilled, they betook themselves to that which they had chosen: and at this same time it chanced that dareios saw a certain thing which made him desire to command megabazos to conquer the paionians and remove them forcibly from europe into asia: and the thing was this:--there were certain paionians named pigres and mantyas, who when dareios had crossed over into asia, came to sardis, because they desired themselves to have rule over the paionians, and with them they brought their sister, who was tall and comely. then having watched for a time when dareios took his seat publicly in the suburb of the lydian city, they dressed up their sister in the best way they could, and sent her to fetch water, having a water-jar upon her head and leading a horse after her by a bridle round her arm, and at the same time spinning flax. now when the woman passed out of the city by him, dareios paid attention to the matter, for that which was done by the woman was not of persian nor yet of lydian fashion, nor indeed after the manner of any people of asia. he sent therefore some of his spearmen, bidding them watch what the woman would do with the horse. they accordingly followed after her; and she having arrived at the river watered the horse, and having watered him and filled her jar with the water, she passed along by the same way, bearing the water upon her head, leading the horse after her by a bridle round her arm, and at the same time turning the spindle. . then dareios, marvelling both at that which he heard from those who went to observe and also at that which he saw himself, bade them bring her into his presence: and when she was brought, her brothers also came, who had been watching these things at no great distance off. so then when dareios asked of what country she was, the young men said that they were paionians and that she was their sister; and he replied: "who then are these paionians, and where upon the earth do they dwell?" and he asked them also what they desired, that they had come to sardis. they declared to him that they had come to give themselves up to him, and that paionia was a country situated upon the river strymon, and that the strymon was not far from the hellespont, and finally that they were colonists from the teucrians of troy. all these things severally they told him; and he asked whether all the women of that land were as industrious as their sister; and they very readily replied to this also, saying that it was so, for it was with a view to that very thing that they had been doing this. . then dareios wrote a letter to megabazos, whom he had left to command his army in thrace, bidding him remove the paionians from their place of habitation and bring them to the king, both themselves and their children and their wives. then forthwith a horseman set forth to ride in haste bearing the message to the hellespont, and having passed over to the other side he gave the paper to megabazos. so he having read it and having obtained guides from thrace, set forth to march upon paionia: . and the paionians, being informed that the persians were coming against them, gathered all their powers together and marched out in the direction of the sea, supposing that the persians when they invaded them would make their attack on that side. the paionians then were prepared, as i say, to drive off the army of megabazos when it came against them; but the persians hearing that the paionians had gathered their powers and were guarding the entrance which lay towards the sea, directed their course with guides along the upper road; and passing unperceived by the paionians they fell upon their cities, which were left without men, and finding them without defenders they easily took possession of them. the paionians when they heard that their cities were in the hands of the enemy, at once dispersed, each tribe to its own place of abode, and proceeded to deliver themselves up to the persians. thus then it happened that these tribes of the paionians, namely the siropaionians, the paioplians and all up to the lake prasias, were removed from their place of habitation and brought to asia; . but those who dwell about mount pangaion, and about the doberians and agrianians and odomantians, and about the lake prasias itself, were not conquered at all by megabazos. he tried however to remove even those who lived in the lake and who had their dwellings in the following manner:--a platform fastened together and resting upon lofty piles stood in the middle of the water of the lake, with a narrow approach to it from the mainland by a single bridge. the piles which supported the platform were no doubt originally set there by all the members of the community working together, but since that time they continue to set them by observance of this rule, that is to say, every man who marries brings from the mountain called orbelos three piles for each wife and sets them as supports; and each man takes to himself many wives. and they have their dwelling thus, that is each man has possession of a hut upon the platform in which he lives and of a trap-door leading through the platform down to the lake: and their infant children they tie with a rope by the foot, for fear that they should roll into the water. to their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for fodder; and of fish there is so great quantity that if a man open the trap-door and let down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, after waiting quite a short time he draws it up again full of fish. of the fish there are two kinds, and they call them paprax and tilon. . so then those of the paionians who had been conquered were being brought to asia: and megabazos meanwhile, after he had conquered the paionians, sent as envoys to macedonia seven persians, who after himself were the men of most repute in the army. these were being sent to amyntas to demand of him earth and water for dareios the king. now from lake prasias there is a very short way into macedonia; for first, quite close to the lake, there is the mine from which after this time there came in regularly a talent of silver every day to alexander; and after the mine, when you have passed over the mountain called dysoron, you are in macedonia. . these persians then, who had been sent to amyntas, having arrived came into the presence of amyntas and proceeded to demand earth and water for king dareios. this he was willing to give, and also he invited them to be his guests; and he prepared a magnificent dinner and received the persians with friendly hospitality. then when dinner was over, the persians while drinking pledges to one another said thus: "macedonian guest-friend, it is the custom among us persians, when we set forth a great dinner, then to bring in also our concubines and lawful wives to sit beside us. do thou then, since thou didst readily receive us and dost now entertain us magnificently as thy guests, and since thou art willing to give to king dareios earth and water, consent to follow our custom." to this amyntas replied: "persians, among us the custom is not so, but that men should be separate from women. since however ye being our masters make this request in addition, this also shall be given you." having so said amyntas proceeded to send for the women; and when they came being summoned, they sat down in order opposite to the persians. then the persians, seeing women of comely form, spoke to amyntas and said that this which had been done was by no means well devised; for it was better that the women should not come at all, than that they should come and should not seat themselves by their side, but sit opposite and be a pain to their eyes. so amyntas being compelled bade them sit by the side of the persians; and when the women obeyed, forthwith the persians, being much intoxicated, began to touch their breasts, and some no doubt also tried to kiss them. . amyntas seeing this kept quiet, notwithstanding that he felt anger, because he excessively feared the persians; but alexander the son of amyntas, who was present and saw this, being young and without experience of calamity was not able to endure any longer; but being impatient of it he said to amyntas: "my father, do thou grant that which thy age demands, and go away to rest, nor persevere longer in the drinking; but i will remain here and give to our guests all that is convenient." on this amyntas, understanding that alexander was intending to do some violence, said: "my son, i think that i understand thy words, as the heat of anger moves thee, namely that thou desirest to send me away and then do some deed of violence: therefore i ask of thee not to do violence to these men, that it may not be our ruin, but endure to see that which is being done: as to my departure, however, in that i will do as thou sayest." . when amyntas after having made of him this request had departed, alexander said to the persians: "with these women ye have perfect freedom, guests, to have commerce with all, if ye so desire, or with as many of them as ye will. about this matter ye shall be they who give the word; but now, since already the hour is approaching for you to go to bed and i see that ye have well drunk, let these women go away, if so it is pleasing to you, to bathe themselves; and when they have bathed, then receive them back into your company." having so said, since the persians readily agreed, he dismissed the women, when they had gone out, to the women's chambers; and alexander himself equipped men equal in number to the women and smooth-faced, in the dress of the women, and giving them daggers he led them into the banqueting-room; and as he led them in, he said thus to the persians: "persians, it seems to me that ye have been entertained with a feast to which nothing was wanting; for other things, as many as we had, and moreover such as we were able to find out and furnish, are all supplied to you, and there is this especially besides, which is the chief thing of all, that is, we give you freely in addition our mothers and our sisters, in order that ye may perceive fully that ye are honoured by us with that treatment which ye deserve, and also in order that ye may report to the king who sent you that a man of hellas, ruler under him of the macedonians, entertained you well at board and bed." having thus said alexander caused a macedonian man in the guise of a woman to sit by each persian, and they, when the persians attempted to lay hands on them, slew them. . so these perished by this fate, both they themselves and their company of servants; for there came with them carriages and servants and all the usual pomp of equipage, and this was all made away with at the same time as they. afterwards in no long time a great search was made by the persians for these men, and alexander stopped them with cunning by giving large sums of money and his own sister, whose name was gygaia;--by giving, i say, these things to bubares a persian, commander of those who were searching for the men who had been killed, alexander stopped their search. . thus the death of these persians was kept concealed. and that these descendants of perdiccas are hellenes, as they themselves say, i happen to know myself, and not only so, but i will prove in the succeeding history that they are hellenes. moreover the hellanodicai, who manage the games at olympia, decided that they were so: for when alexander wished to contend in the games and had descended for this purpose into the arena, the hellenes who were to run against him tried to exclude him, saying that the contest was not for barbarians to contend in but for hellenes: since however alexander proved that he was of argos, he was judged to be a hellene, and when he entered the contest of the foot-race his lot came out with that of the first. . thus then it happened with regard to these things: and at the same time megabazos had arrived at the hellespont bringing with him the paionians; and thence after passing over the straits he came to sardis. then, since histiaios the milesian was already engaged in fortifying with a wall the place which he had asked and obtained from dareios as a reward for keeping safe the bridge of boats (this place being that which is called myrkinos, lying along the bank of the river strymon), megabazos, having perceived that which was being done by histiaios, as soon as he came to sardis bringing the paionians, said thus to dareios: "o king, what a thing is this that thou hast done, granting permission to a hellene who is skilful and cunning to found a city in thracia in a place where there is forest for shipbuilding in abundance and great quantity of wood for oars and mines of silver and great numbers both of hellenes and barbarians living round, who when they have obtained a leader will do that which he shall command them both by day and by night. therefore stop this man from doing so, that thou be not involved in a domestic war: and stop him by sending for him in a courteous manner; but when thou hast got him in thy hands, then cause that he shall never again return to the land of the hellenes." . thus saying megabazos easily persuaded dareios, who thought that he was a true prophet of that which was likely to come to pass: and upon that dareios sent a messenger to myrkinos and said as follows: "hisiaios, king dareios saith these things:--by taking thought i find that there is no one more sincerely well disposed than thou art to me and to my power; and this i know having learnt by deeds not words. now therefore, since i have it in my mind to accomplish great matters, come hither to me by all means, that i may communicate them to thee." histiaios therefore, trusting to these sayings and at the same time accounting it a great thing to become a counsellor of the king, came to sardis; and when he had come dareios spoke to him as follows: "histiaios, i sent for thee for this reason, namely because when i had returned from the scythians and thou wert gone away out of the sight of my eyes, never did i desire to see anything again within so short a time as i desired then both to see thee and that thou shouldst come to speech with me; since i perceived that the most valuable of all possessions is a friend who is a man of understanding and also sincerely well-disposed, both which qualities i know exist in thee, and i am able to bear witness of them in regard to my affairs. now therefore (for thou didst well in that thou camest hither) this is that which i propose to thee:--leave miletos alone and also thy newly-founded city in thracia, and coming with me to susa, have whatsoever things i have, eating at my table and being my counseller." . thus said dareios, and having appointed artaphrenes his own brother and the son of his father to be governor of sardis, he marched away to susa taking with him histiaios, after he had first named otanes to be commander of those who dwelt along the sea coasts. this man's father sisamnes, who had been made one of the royal judges, king cambyses slew, because he had judged a cause unjustly for money, and flayed off all his skin: then after he had torn away the skin he cut leathern thongs out of it and stretched them across the seat where sisamnes had been wont to sit to give judgment; and having stretched them in the seat, cambyses appointed the son of that sisamnes whom he had slain and flayed, to be judge instead of his father, enjoining him to remember in what seat he was sitting to give judgment. . this otanes then, who was made to sit in that seat, had now become the successor of megabazos in the command: and he conquered the byzantians and calchedonians, and he conquered antandros in the land of troas, and lamponion; and having received ships from the lesbians he conquered lemnos and imbros, which were both at that time still inhabited by pelasgians. . of these the lemnians fought well, and defending themselves for a long time were at length brought to ruin; and over those of them who survived the persians set as governor lycaretos the brother of that maiandrios who had been king of samos. this lycaretos ruled in lemnos till his death. and the cause of it was this:--he continued to reduce all to slavery and subdue them, accusing some of desertion to the scythians and others of doing damage to the army of dareios as it was coming back from scythia. . otanes then effected so much when he was made commander: and after this for a short time there was an abatement of evils; and then again evils began a second time to fall upon the ionians, arising from naxos and miletos. for naxos was superior to all the other islands in wealth, and miletos at the same time had just then come to the very height of its prosperity and was the ornament of ionia; but before these events for two generations of men it had been afflicted most violently by faction until the parians reformed it; for these the milesians chose of all the hellenes to be reformers of their state. . now the parians thus reconciled their factions:--the best men of them came to miletos, and seeing that the milesians were in a grievously ruined state, they said that they desired to go over their land: and while doing this and passing through the whole territory of miletos, whenever they saw in the desolation of the land any field that was well cultivated, they wrote down the name of the owner of that field. then when they had passed through the whole land and had found but few of such men, as soon as they returned to the city they called a general gathering and appointed these men to manage the state, whose fields they had found well cultivated; for they said that they thought these men would take care of the public affairs as they had taken care of their own: and the rest of the milesians, who before had been divided by factions, they commanded to be obedient to these men. . the parians then had thus reformed the milesians; but at the time of which i speak evils began to come to ionia from these states in the following manner:--from naxos certain men of the wealthier class were driven into exile by the people, and having gone into exile they arrived at miletos. now of miletos it happened that aristagoras son of molpagoras was ruler in charge, being both a son-in-law and also a cousin of histiaios the son of lysagoras, whom dareios was keeping at susa: for histiaios was despot of miletos, and it happened that he was at susa at this time when the naxians came, who had been in former times guest-friends of histiaios. so when the naxians arrived, they made request of aristagoras, to see if perchance he would supply them with a force, and so they might return from exile to their own land: and he, thinking that if by his means they should return to their own state, he would be ruler of naxos, but at the same time making a pretext of the guest-friendship of histiaios, made proposal to them thus: "i am not able to engage that i can supply you with sufficient force to bring you back from exile against the will of those naxians who have control of the state; for i hear that the naxians have an army which is eight thousand shields strong and many ships of war: but i will use every endeavour to devise a means; and my plan is this:--it chances that artaphrenes is my friend: now artaphrenes, ye must know, is a son of hystaspes and brother of dareios the king; and he is ruler of all the people of the sea-coasts in asia, with a great army and many ships. this man then i think will do whatsoever we shall request of him." hearing this the naxians gave over the matter to aristagoras to manage as best he could, and they bade him promise gifts and the expenses of the expedition, saying that they would pay them; for they had full expectation that when they should appear at naxos, the naxians would do all their bidding, and likewise also the other islanders. for of these islands, that is the cyclades, not one was as yet subject to dareios. . aristagoras accordingly having arrived at sardis, said to artaphrenes that naxos was an island not indeed large in size, but fair nevertheless and of fertile soil, as well as near to ionia, and that there was in it much wealth and many slaves: "do thou therefore send an expedition against this land, and restore it to those who are now exiles from it: and if thou shalt do this, first i have ready for thee large sums of money apart from the expenses incurred for the expedition (which it is fair that we who conduct it should supply), and next thou wilt gain for the king not only naxos itself but also the islands which are dependent upon it, paros and andros and the others which are called cyclades; and setting out from these thou wilt easily attack euboea, an island which is large and wealth, as large indeed as cyprus, and very easy to conquer. to subdue all these a hundred ships are sufficient." he made answer in these words: "thou makest thyself a reporter of good things to the house of the king; and in all these things thou advisest well, except as to the number of the ships: for instead of one hundred there shall be prepared for thee two hundred by the beginning of the spring. and it is right that the king himself also should join in approving this matter." . so aristagoras hearing this went back to miletos greatly rejoiced; and artaphrenes meanwhile, when he had sent to susa and communicated that which was said by aristagoras, and dareios himself also had joined in approving it, made ready two hundred triremes and a very great multitude both of persians and their allies, and appointed to be commander of these megabates a persian, one of the achaimenidai and a cousin to himself and to dareios, to whose daughter afterwards pausanias the son of cleombrotus the lacedaemonian (at least if the story be true) betrothed himself, having formed a desire to become a despot of hellas. having appointed megabates, i say, to be commander, artaphrenes sent away the armament to aristagoras. . so when megabates had taken force together with the naxians, he sailed with the pretence of going to the hellespont; but when he came to chios, he directed his ships to caucasa, in order that he might from thence pass them over to naxos with a north wind. then, since it was not fated that the naxians should be destroyed by this expedition, there happened an event which i shall narrate. as megabates was going round to visit the guards set in the several ships, it chanced that in a ship of myndos there was no one on guard; and he being very angry bade his spearmen find out the commander of the ship, whose name was skylax, and bind him in an oar-hole of his ship in such a manner that his head should be outside and his body within. when skylax was thus bound, some one reported to aristagoras that megabates had bound his guest-friend of myndos and was doing to him shameful outrage. he accordingly came and asked the persian for his release, and as he did not obtain anything of that which he requested, he went himself and let him loose. being informed of this megabates was exceedingly angry and broke out in rage against aristagoras; and he replied: "what hast thou to do with these matters? did not artaphrenes send thee to obey me, and to sail whithersoever i should order? why dost thou meddle with things which concern thee not?" thus said aristagoras; and the other being enraged at this, when night came on sent men in a ship to naxos to declare to the naxians all the danger that threatened them. . for the naxians were not at all expecting that this expedition would be against them: but when they were informed of it, forthwith they brought within the wall the property which was in the fields, and provided for themselves food and drink as for a siege, and strengthened their wall. these then were making preparations as for war to come upon them; and the others meanwhile having passed their ships over from chios to naxos, found them well defended when they made their attack, and besieged them for four months. then when the money which the persians had brought with them had all been consumed by them, and not only that, but aristagoras himself had spent much in addition, and the siege demanded ever more and more, they built walls for the naxian exiles and departed to the mainland again with ill success. . and so aristagoras was not able to fulfil his promise to artaphrenes; and at the same time he was hard pressed by the demand made to him for the expenses of the expedition, and had fears because of the ill success of the armament and because he had become an enemy of megabates; and he supposed that he would be deprived of his rule over miletos. having all these various fears he began to make plans of revolt: for it happened also that just at this time the man who had been marked upon the head had come from hisiaios who was at susa, signifying that aristagoras should revolt from the king. for histiaios, desiring to signify to aristagoras that he should revolt, was not able to do it safely in any other way, because the roads were guarded, but shaved off the hair of the most faithful of his slaves, and having marked his head by pricking it, waited till the hair had grown again; and as soon as it was grown, he sent him away to miletos, giving him no other charge but this, namely that when he should have arrived at miletos he should bid aristagoras shave his hair and look at his head: and the marks, as i have said before, signified revolt. this thing histiaios was doing, because he was greatly vexed by being detained at susa. he had great hopes then that if a revolt occurred he would be let go to the sea-coast; but if no change was made at miletos he had no expectation of ever returning thither again. . accordingly hisiaios with this intention was sending the messenger; and it chanced that all these things happened to aristagoras together at the same time. he took counsel therefore with his partisans, declaring to them both his own opinion and the message from hisiaios; and while all the rest expressed an opinion to the same effect, urging him namely to make revolt, hecataios the historian urged first that they should not undertake war with the king of the persians, enumerating all the nations over whom dareios was ruler, and his power: and when he did not succeed in persuading him, he counselled next that they should manage to make themselves masters of the sea. now this, he continued, could not come to pass in any other way, so far as he could see, for he knew that the force of the milesians was weak, but if the treasures should be taken which were in the temple at branchidai, which croesus the lydian dedicated as offerings, he had great hopes that they might become masters of the sea; and by this means they would not only themselves have wealth at their disposal, but the enemy would not be able to carry the things off as plunder. now these treasures were of great value, as i have shown in the first part of the history. this opinion did not prevail; but nevertheless it was resolved to make revolt, and that one of them should sail to myus, to make the force which had returned from naxos and was then there, and endeavour to seize the commanders who sailed in the ships. . so iatragoras was sent for this purpose and seized by craft oliatos the son of ibanollis of mylasa, and histiaios the son of tymnes of termera, and coës the son of erxander, to whom dareios had given mytilene as a gift, and aristagoras the son of heracleides of kyme, and many others; and then aristagoras openly made revolt and devised all that he could to the hurt of dareios. and first he pretended to resign the despotic power and give to miletos equality, in order that the milesians might be willing to revolt with him: then afterwards he proceeded to do this same thing in the rest of ionia also; and some of the despots he drove out, but those whom he had taken from the ships which had sailed with him to naxis, these he surrendered, because he desired to do a pleasure to their cities, delivering them over severally to that city from which each one came. . now the men of mitylene, so soon as they received coës into their hands, brought him out and stoned him to death; but the men of kyme let their despot go, and so also most of the others let them go. thus then the despots were deposed in the various cities; and aristagoras the milesian, after having deposed the despots, bade each people appoint commanders in their several cities, and then himself set forth as an envoy to lacedemon; for in truth it was necessary that he should find out some powerful alliance. . now at sparta anaxandrides the son of leon was no longer surviving as king, but had brought his life to an end; and cleomenes the son of anaxandrides was holding the royal power, not having obtained it by merit but by right of birth. for anaxandrides had to wife his own sister's daughter and she was by him much beloved, but no children were born to him by her. this being so, the ephors summoned him before them and said: "if thou dost not for thyself take thought in time, yet we cannot suffer this to happen, that the race of eurysthenes should become extinct. do thou therefore put away from thee the wife whom thou now hast, since, as thou knowest, she bears thee no children, and marry another: and in doing so thou wilt please the spartans." he made answer saying that he would do neither of these two things, and that they did not give him honourable counsel, in that they advised him to send away the wife whom he had, though she had done him no wrong, and to take to his house another; and in short he would not follow their advice. . upon this the ephors and the senators deliberated together and proposed to anaxandrides as follows: "since then we perceive that thou art firmly attached to the wife whom thou now hast, consent to do this, and set not thyself against it, lest the spartans take some counsel about thee other than might be wished. we do not ask of thee the putting away of the wife whom thou hast; but do thou give to her all that thou givest now and at the same time take to thy house another wife in addition to this one, to bear thee children." when they spoke to him after this manner, anaxandrides consented, having two wives, a thing which was not by any means after the spartan fashion. . then when no long time had elapsed, the wife who had come in afterwards bore this cleomenes of whom we spoke; and just when she was bringing to the light an heir to the kingdom of the spartans, the former wife, who had during the time before been childless, then by some means conceived, chancing to do so just at that time: and though she was in truth with child, the kinsfolk of the wife who had come in afterwards, when they heard of it cried out against her and said that she was making a vain boast, and that she meant to pass off another child as her own. since then they made a great show of indignation, as the time was fast drawing near, the ephors being incredulous sat round and watched the woman during the birth of her child: and she bore dorieos and then straightway conceived leonidas and after him at once cleombrotos,--nay, some even say that cleombrotos and leonidas were twins. the wife however who had born cleomenes and had come in after the first wife, being the daughter of primetades the son of demarmenos, did not bear a child again. . now cleomenes, it is said, was not quite in his right senses but on the verge of madness, while dorieos was of all his equals in age the first, and felt assured that he would obtain the kingdom by merit. seeing then that he had this opinion, when anaxandrides died and the lacedemonians followed the usual custom established the eldest, namely cleomenes, upon the throne, dorieos being indignant and not thinking it fit that he should be a subject of cleomenes, asked the spartans to give him a company of followers and led them out to found a colony, without either inquiring of the oracle at delphi to what land he should go to make a settlement, or doing any of the things which are usually done; but being vexed he sailed away with his ships to libya, and the theraians were his guides thither. then having come to kinyps he made a settlement in the fairest spot of all libya, along the banks of the river; but afterwards in the third year he was driven out from thence by the macai and the libyans and the carthaginians, and returned to peloponnesus. . then antichares a man of eleon gave him counsel out of the oracles of laïos to make a settlement at heracleia in sicily, saying that the whole land of eryx belonged to the heracleidai, since heracles himself had won it: and hearing this he went forthwith to delphi to inquire of the oracle whether he would be able to conquer the land to which he was setting forth; and the pythian prophetess replied to him that he would conquer it. dorieos therefore took with him the armament which he conducted before to libya, and voyaged along the coast of italy. . now at this time, the men of sybaris say that they and their king telys were about to make an expedition against croton, and the men of croton being exceedingly alarmed asked dorieos to help them and obtained their request. so dorieos joined them in an expedition against sybaris and helped them to conquer sybaris. this is what the men of sybaris say of the doings of dorieos and his followers; but those of croton say that no stranger helped them in the war against the sybarites except callias alone, a diviner of elis and one of the descendants of iamos, and he in the following manner:--he ran away, they say, from telys the despot of the sybarites, when the sacrifices did not prove favourable, as he was sacrificing for the expedition against croton, and so he came to them. . such, i say, are the tales which these tell, and they severally produce as evidence of them the following facts:--the sybarites point to a sacred enclosure and temple by the side of the dried-up bed of the crathis, which they say that dorieos, after he had joined in the capture of the city, set up to athene surnamed "of the crathis"; and besides they consider the death of dorieos himself to be a very strong evidence, thinking that he perished because he acted contrary to the oracle which was given to him; for if he had not done anything by the way but had continued to do that for which he was sent, he would have conquered the land of eryx and having conquered it would have become possessor of it, and he and his army would not have perished. on the other hand the men of croton declare that many things were granted in the territory of croton as special gifts to callias the eleisan, of which the descendants of callias were still in possession down to my time, and that nothing was granted to dorieos or the descendants of dorieos: but if dorieos had in fact helped them in the way with sybaris, many times as much, they say, would have been given to him as to callias. these then are the evidences which the two sides produce, and we may assent to whichever of them we think credible. . now there sailed with dorieos others also of the spartans, to be joint-founders with him of the colony, namely thessalos and paraibates and keleas and euryleon; and these when they had reached sicily with all their armament, were slain, being defeated in battle by the phenicians and the men of egesta; and euryleon only of the joint-founders survived this disaster. this man then having collected the survivors of the expedition, took possession of minoa the colony of selinus, and he helped to free the men of selinus from their despot peithagoras. afterwards, when he had deposed him, he laid hands himself upon the despotism in selinus and became sole ruler there, though but for a short time; for the men of selinus rose in revolt against him and slew him, notwithstanding that he had fled for refuge to the altar of zeus agoraios. . there had accompanied dorieos also and died with him philip the son of butakides, a man of croton, who having betrothed himself to the daughter of telys the sybarite, became an exile from croton; and then being disappointed of this marriage he sailed away to kyrene, whence he set forth and accompanied dorieos with a trireme of his own, himself supplying the expenses of the crew. now this man had been a victor at the olympic games, and he was the most beautiful of the hellenes who lived in his time; and on account of his beauty he obtained from the men of egesta that which none else ever obtained from them, for they established a hero-temple over his tomb, and they propitiate him still with sacrifices. . in this manner dorieos ended his life: but if he had endured to be a subject of cleomenes and had remained in sparta, he would have been king of lacedemon; for cleomenes reigned no very long time, and died leaving no son to succeed him but a daughter only, whose name was gorgo. . however, aristagoras the despot of miletos arrived at sparta while cleomenes was reigning: and accordingly with him he came to speech, having, as the lacedemonians say, a tablet of bronze, on which was engraved a map of the whole earth, with all the sea and all the rivers. and when he came to speech with cleomenes he said to him as follows: "marvel not, cleomenes, at my earnestness in coming hither, for the case is this.--that the sons of the ionians should be slaves instead of free is a reproach and a grief most of all indeed to ourselves, but of all others most to you, inasmuch as ye are the leaders of hellas. now therefore i entreat you by the gods of hellas to rescue from slavery the ionians, who are your own kinsmen: and ye may easily achieve this, for the barbarians are not valiant in fight, whereas ye have attained to the highest point of valour in that which relates to war: and their fighting is of this fashion, namely with bows and arrows and a short spear, and they go into battle wearing trousers and with caps on their heads. thus they are easily conquered. then again they who occupy that continent have good things in such quantity as not all the other nations of the world together possess; first gold, then silver and bronze and embroidered garments and beasts of burden and slaves; all which ye might have for yourselves, if ye so desired. and the nations moreover dwell in such order one after the other as i shall declare:--the ionians here; and next to them the lydians, who not only dwell in a fertile land, but are also exceedingly rich in gold and silver," --and as he said this he pointed to the map of the earth, which he carried with him engraved upon the tablet,--"and here next to the lydians," continued aristagoras, "are the eastern phrygians, who have both the greatest number of sheep and cattle of any people that i know, and also the most abundant crops. next to the phrygians are the cappadokians, whom we call syrians; and bordering upon them are the kilikians, coming down to this sea, in which lies the island of cyprus here; and these pay five hundred talents to the king for their yearly tribute. next to these kilikians are the armenians, whom thou mayest see here, and these also have great numbers of sheep and cattle. next to the armenians are the matienians occupying this country here; and next to them is the land of kissia here, in which land by the banks of this river choaspes is situated that city of susa where the great king has his residence, and where the money is laid up in treasuries. after ye have taken this city ye may then with good courage enter into a contest with zeus in the matter of wealth. nay, but can it be that ye feel yourselves bound to take upon you the risk of battles against messenians and arcadians and argives, who are equally matched against you, for the sake of land which is not much in extent nor very fertile, and for confines which are but small, though these peoples have neither gold nor silver at all, for the sake of which desire incites one to fight and to die,--can this be, i say, and will ye choose some other way now, when it is possible for you easily to have the rule over all asia?" aristagoras spoke thus, and cleomenes answered him saying: "guest-friend from miletos, i defer my answer to thee until the day after to-morrow." . thus far then they advanced at that time; and when the appointed day arrived for the answer, and they had come to the place agreed upon, cleomenes asked aristagoras how many days' journey it was from the sea of the ionians to the residence of the king. now aristagoras, who in other respects acted cleverly and imposed upon him well, in this point made a mistake: for whereas he ought not to have told him the truth, at least if he desired to bring the spartans out to asia, he said in fact that it was a journey up from the sea of three months: and the other cutting short the rest of the account which aristagoras had begun to give of the way, said: "guest-friend from miletos, get thee away from sparta before the sun has set; for thou speakest a word which sounds not well in the ears of the lacedemonians, desiring to take them a journey of three months from the sea." . cleomenes accordingly having so said went away to his house: but aristagoras took the suppliant's branch and went to the house of cleomenes; and having entered in as a suppliant, he bade cleomenes send away the child and listen to him; for the daughter of cleomenes was standing by him, whose name was gorgo, and this as it chanced was his only child, being of the age now of eight or nine years. cleomenes however bade him say that which he desired to say, and not to stop on account of the child. then aristagoras proceeded to promise him money, beginning with ten talents, if he would accomplish for him that for which he was asking; and when cleomenes refused, aristagoras went on increasing the sums of money offered, until at last he had promised fifty talents, and at that moment the child cried out: "father, the stranger will do thee hurt, if thou do not leave him and go." cleomenes, then, pleased by the counsel of the child, departed into another room, and aristagoras went away from sparta altogether, and had no opportunity of explaining any further about the way up from the sea to the residence of the king. . as regards this road the truth is as follows.--everywhere there are royal stages and excellent resting-places, and the whole road runs through country which is inhabited and safe. through lydia and phrygia there extend twenty stages, amounting to ninety-four and a half leagues; and after phrygia succeeds the river halys, at which there is a gate which one must needs pass through in order to cross the river, and a strong guard-post is established there. then after crossing over into cappadokia it is twenty-eight stages, being a hundred and four leagues, by this way to the borders of kilikia; and on the borders of the kilikians you will pass through two several gates and go by two several guard-posts: then after passing through these it is three stages, amounting to fifteen and a half leagues, to journey through kilikia; and the boundary of kilikia and armenia is a navigable river called euphrates. in armenia the number of stages with resting-places is fifteen, and of leagues fifty-six and a half, and there is a guard-post on the way: then from armenia, when one enters the land of matiene, there are thirty-four stages, amounting to a hundred and thirty-seven leagues; and through this land flow four navigable rivers, which cannot be crossed but by ferries, first the tigris, then a second and third called both by the same name, though they are not the same river nor do they flow from the same region (for the first-mentioned of them flows from the armenian land and the other from that of the matienians), and the fourth of the rivers is called gyndes, the same which once cyrus divided into three hundred and sixty channels. passing thence into the kissian land, there are eleven stages, forty-two and a half leagues, to the river choaspes, which is also a navigable stream; and upon this is built the city of susa. the number of these stages amounts in all to one hundred and eleven. . this is the number of stages with resting-places, as one goes up from sardis to susa: and if the royal road has been rightly measured as regards leagues, and if the league is equal to thirty furlongs, (as undoubtedly it is), the number of furlongs from sardis to that which is called the palace of memnon is thirteen thousand five hundred, the number of leagues being four hundred and fifty. so if one travels a hundred and fifty furlongs each day, just ninety days are spent on the journey. . thus the milesian aristagoras, when he told cleomenes the lacedemonian that the journey up from the sea to the residence of the king was one of three months, spoke correctly: but if any one demands a more exact statement yet than this, i will give him that also: for we ought to reckon in addition to this the length of the road from ephesos to sardis; and i say accordingly that the whole number of furlongs from the sea of hellas to susa (for by that name the city of memnon is known) is fourteen thousand and forty; for the number of furlongs from ephesos to sardis is five hundred and forty: thus the three months' journey is lengthened by three days added. . aristagoras then being driven out of sparta proceeded to athens; which had been set free from the rule of despots in the way which i shall tell.--when hipparchos the son of peisistratos and brother of the despot hippias, after seeing a vision of a dream which signified it to him plainly, had been slain by aristogeiton and harmodios, who were originally by descent gephyraians, the athenians continued for four years after this to be despotically governed no less than formerly,--nay, even more. . now the vision of a dream which hipparchos had was this:--in the night before the panathenaia it seemed to hipparchos that a man came and stood by him, tall and of fair form, and riddling spoke to him these verses: "with enduring soul as a lion endure unendurable evil: no one of men who doth wrong shall escape from the judgment appointed." these verses, as soon as it was day, he publicly communicated to the interpreters of dreams; but afterwards he put away thought of the vision and began to take part in that procession during which he lost his life. . now the gephyraians, of whom were those who murdered hipparchos, according to their own account were originally descended from eretria; but as i find by carrying inquiries back, they were phenicians of those who came with cadmos to the land which is now called boeotia, and they dwelt in the district of tanagra, which they had had allotted to them in that land. then after the cadmeians had first been driven out by the argives, these gephyraians next were driven out by the boeotians and turned then towards athens: and the athenians received them on certain fixed conditions to be citizens of their state, laying down rules that they should be excluded from a number of things not worth mentioning here. . now these phenicians who came with cadmos, of whom were the gephyraians, brought in among the hellenes many arts when they settled in this land of boeotia, and especially letters, which did not exist, as it appears to me, among the hellenes before this time; and at first they brought in those which are used by the phenician race generally, but afterwards, as time went on, they changed with their speech the form of the letters also. during this time the ionians were the race of hellenes who dwelt near them in most of the places where they were; and these, having received letters by instruction of the phenicians, changed their form slightly and so made use of them, and in doing so they declared them to be called "phenicians," as was just, seeing that the phenicians had introduced them into hellas. also the ionians from ancient time call paper "skins," because formerly, paper being scarce, they used skins of goat and sheep; nay, even in my own time many of the barbarians write on such skins. . i myself too once saw cadmeian characters in the temple of ismenian apollo at thebes of the boeotians, engraved on certain tripods, and in most respects resembling the ionic letters: one of these tripods has the inscription, "me amphitryon offered from land teleboian returning:" this inscription would be of an age contemporary with laïos the son of labdacos, the son of polydoros, the son of cadmos. . another tripod says thus in hexameter rhythm: "me did scaios offer to thee, far-darting apollo, victor in contest of boxing, a gift most fair in thine honour:" now scaios would be the son of hippocoön (at least if it were really he who offered it, and not another with the same name as the son of hippocoön), being of an age contemporary with oedipus the son of laïos: . and the third tripod, also in hexameter rhythm, says: "me laodamas offered to thee, fair-aiming apollo, he, of his wealth, being king, as a gift most fair in thine honor:" now it was in the reign of this very laodamas the son of eteocles that the cadmeians were driven out by the argives and turned to go to the enchelians; and the gephyraians being then left behind were afterwards forced by the boeotians to retire to athens. moreover they have temples established in athens, in which the other athenians have no part, and besides others which are different from the rest, there is especially a temple of demeter achaia and a celebration of her mysteries. . i have told now of the vision of a dream seen by hipparchos, and also whence the gephrynians were descended, of which race were the murderers of hipparchos; and in addition to this i must resume and continue the story which i was about to tell at first, how the athenians were freed from despots. when hippias was despot and was dealing harshly with the athenians because of the death of hipparchos, the alcmaionidai, who were of athenian race and were fugitives from the sons of peisistratos, as they did not succeed in their attempt made together with the other athenian exiles to return by force, but met with great disaster when they attempted to return and set athens free, after they had fortified leipsydrion which is above paionia,--these alomaionidai after that, still devising every means against the sons of peisistratos, accepted the contract to build and complete the temple at delphi, that namely which now exists but then did not as yet: and being wealthy and men of repute already from ancient time, they completed the temple in a manner more beautiful than the plan required, and especially in this respect, that having agreed to make the temple of common limestone, they built the front parts of it in parian marble. . so then, as the athenians say, these men being settled at delphi persuaded the pythian prophetess by gifts of money, that whenever men of the spartans should come to inquire of the oracle, either privately or publicly sent, she should propose to them to set athens free. the lacedemonians therefore, since the same utterance was delivered to them on all occasions, sent anchimolios the son of aster, who was of repute among their citizens, with an army to drive out the sons of peisistratos from athens, although these were very closely connected with them by guest-friendship; for they held that the concerns of the god should be preferred to those of men: and this force they sent by sea in ships. he therefore, having put in to shore at phaleron, disembarked his army; but the sons of peisistratos being informed of this beforehand called in to their aid an auxiliary force from thessaly, for they had made an alliance with the thessalians; and the thessalians at their request sent by public resolution a body of a thousand horse and also their king kineas, a man of conion. so having obtained these as allies, the sons of peisistratos contrived as follows:--they cut down the trees in the plain of phaleron and made this district fit for horsemen to ride over, and after that they sent the cavalry to attack the enemy's camp, who falling upon it slew (besides many others of the lacedemonians) anchimolios himself also: and the survivors of them they shut up in their ships. such was the issue of the first expedition from lacedemon: and the burial-place of anchimolios is at alopecai in attica, near the temple of heracles which is at kynosarges. . after this the lacedemonians equipped a larger expedition and sent it forth against athens; and they appointed to be commander of the army their king cleomenes the son of anaxandrides, and sent it this time not by sea but by land. with these, when they had invaded the land of attica, first the thessalian horse engaged battle; and in no long time they were routed and there fell of them more than forty men; so the survivors departed without more ado and went straight back to thessaly. then cleomenes came to the city together with those of the athenians who desired to be free, and began to besiege the despots shut up in the pelasgian wall. . and the lacedemonians would never have captured the sons of peisistratos at all; for they on their side had no design to make a long blockade, and the others were well provided with food and drink; so that they would have gone away back to sparta after besieging them for a few days only: but as it was, a thing happened just at this time which was unfortunate for those, and at the same time of assistance to these; for the children of the sons of peisistratos were captured, while being secretly removed out of the country: and when this happened, all their matters were thereby cast into confusion, and they surrendered receiving back their children on the terms which the athenians desired, namely that they should depart out of attica within five days. after this they departed out of the country and went to sigeion on the scamander, after their family had ruled over the athenians for six-and-thirty years. these also were originally pylians and sons of neleus, descended from the same ancestors as the family of codros and melanthos, who had formerly become kings of athens being settlers from abroad. hence too hippocrates had given to his son the name of peisistratos as a memorial, calling him after peisistratos the son of nestor. thus the athenians were freed from despots; and the things worthy to be narrated which they did or suffered after they were liberated, up to the time when ionia revolted from dareios and aristagoras the milesian came to athens and asked them to help him, these i will set forth first before i proceed further. . athens, which even before that time was great, then, after having been freed from despots, became gradually yet greater; and in it two men exercised power, namely cleisthenes a descendant of alcmaion, the same who is reported to have bribed the pythian prophetess, and isagoras, the son of tisander, of a family which was highly reputed, but of his original descent i am not able to declare; his kinsmen however offer sacrifices to the carian zeus. these men came to party strife for power; and then cleisthenes was being worsted in the struggle, he made common cause with the people. after this he caused the athenians to be in ten tribes, who were formerly in four; and he changed the names by which they were called after the sons of ion, namely geleon, aigicoreus, argades, and hoples, and invented for them names taken from other heroes, all native athenians except ajax, whom he added as a neighbour and ally, although he was no athenian. . now in these things it seems to me that this cleisthenes was imitating his mother's father cleisthenes the despot of sikyon: for cleisthenes when he went to war with argos first caused to cease in sikyon the contests of rhapsodists, which were concerned with the poems of homer, because argives and argos are celebrated in them almost everywhere; then secondly, since there was (as still there is) in the market-place itself of the sikyonians a hero-temple of adrastos the son of talaos, cleisthenes had a desire to cast him forth out of the land, because he was an argive. so having come to delphi he consulted the oracle as to whether he should cast out adrastos; and the pythian prophetess answered him saying that adrastos was king of the sikyonians, whereas he was a stoner of them. so since the god did not permit him to do this, he went away home and considered means by which adrastos should be brought to depart of his own accord: and when he thought that he had discovered them, he sent to thebes in boeotia and said that he desired to introduce into his city melanippos the son of astacos, and the thebans gave him leave. so cleisthenes introduced melanippos into his city, and appointed for him a sacred enclosure within the precincts of the city hall itself, and established him there in the strongest position. now cleisthenes introduced melanippos (for i must relate this also) because he was the greatest enemy of adrastos, seeing that he had killed both his brother mekisteus and his son-in-law tydeus: and when he had appointed the sacred enclosure for him, he took away the sacrifices and festivals of adrastos and gave them to melanippos. now the sikyonians were accustomed to honour adrastos with very great honours; for this land was formerly the land of polybos, and adrastos was daughter's son to polybos, and polybos dying without sons gave his kingdom to adrastos: the sikyonians then not only gave other honours to adrastos, but also with reference to his sufferings they specially honoured him with tragic choruses, not paying the honour to dionysos but to adrastos. cleisthenes however gave back the choruses to dionysos, and the other rites besides this he gave to melannipos. . thus he had done to adrastos; and he also changed the names of the dorian tribes, in order that the sikyonians might not have the same tribes as the argives; in which matter he showed great contempt of the sikyonians, for the names he gave were taken from the names of a pig and an ass by changing only the endings, except in the case of his own tribe, to which he gave a name from his own rule. these last then were called archelaoi, while of the rest those of one tribe were called hyatai, of another oneatai, and of the remaining tribe choireatai. these names of tribes were used by the men of sikyon not only in the reign of cleisthenes, but also beyond that for sixty years after his death; then however they considered the matter and changed them into hylleis, pamphyloi, and dymanatai, adding to these a fourth, to which they gave the name aigialeis after aigialeus the son of adrastos. . thus had the cleisthenes of sikyon done: and the athenian cleisthenes, who was his daughter's son and was called after him, despising, as i suppose, the ionians, as he the dorians, imitated his namesake cleisthenes in order that the athenians might not have the same tribes as the ionians: for when at the time of which we speak he added to his own party the whole body of the common people of the athenians, which in former time he had despised, he changed the names of the tribes and made them more in number than they had been; he made in fact ten rulers of tribes instead of four, and by tens also he distributed the demes in the tribes; and having added the common people to his party he was much superior to his opponents. . then isagoras, as he was being worsted in his turn, contrived a plan in opposition to him, that is to say, he called in cleomenes the lacedemonian to help him, who had been a guest-friend to himself since the siege of the sons of peisistratos; moreover cleomenes was accused of being intimate with the wife of isagoras. first then cleomenes sent a herald to athens demanding the expulsion of cleisthenes and with him many others of the athenians, calling them the men who were under the curse: this message he sent by instruction of isagoras, for the alcmaionidai and their party were accused of the murder to which reference was thus made, while he and his friends had no part in it. . now the men of the athenians who were "under the curse" got this name as follows:--there was one kylon among the athenians, a man who had gained the victory at the olympic games: this man behaved with arrogance, wishing to make himself despot; and having formed for himself an association of men of his own age, he endeavoured to seize the acropolis: but not being able to get possession of it, he sat down as a suppliant before the image of the goddess. these men were taken from their place as suppliants by the presidents of the naucraries, who then administered affairs at athens, on the condition that they should be liable to any penalty short of death; and the alcmaionidai are accused of having put them to death. this had occurred before the time of peisistratos. . now when cleomenes sent demanding the expulsion of cleisthenes and of those under the curse, cleisthenes himself retired secretly; but after that nevertheless cleomenes appeared in athens with no very large force, and having arrived he proceeded to expel as accursed seven hundred athenian families, of which isagoras had suggested to him the names. having done this he next endeavoured to dissolve the senate, and he put the offices of the state into the hands of three hundred, who were the partisans of isagoras. the senate however making opposition, and not being willing to submit, cleomenes with isagoras and his partisans seized the acropolis. then the rest of the athenians joined together by common consent and besieged them for two days; and on the third day so many of them as were lacedemonians departed out of the country under a truce. thus was accomplished for cleomenes the ominous saying which was uttered to him: for when he had ascended the acropolis with the design of taking possession of it, he was going to the sanctuary of the goddess, as to address her in prayer; but the priestess stood up from her seat before he had passed through the door, and said, "lacedemonian stranger, go back and enter not into the temple, for it is not lawful for dorians to pass in hither." he said: "woman, i am not a dorian, but an achaian." so then, paying no attention to the ominous speech, he made his attempt and then was expelled again with the lacedemonians; but the rest of the men the athenians laid in bonds to be put to death, and among them timesitheos the delphian, with regard to whom i might mention very great deeds of strength and courage which he performed. . these then having been thus laid in bonds were put to death; and the athenians after this sent for cleisthenes to return, and also for the seven hundred families which had been driven out by cleomenes: and then they sent envoys to sardis, desiring to make an alliance with the persians; for they were well assured that the lacedemonians and cleomenes had been utterly made their foes. so when these envoys had arrived at sardis and were saying that which they had been commanded to say, artaphrenes the son of hystaspes, the governor of sardis, asked what men these were who requested to be allies of the persians, and where upon the earth they dwelt; and having heard this from the envoys, he summed up his answer to them thus, saying that if the athenians were willing to give earth and water to dareios, he was willing to make alliance with them, but if not, he bade them begone: and the envoys taking the matter upon themselves said that they were willing to do so, because they desired to make the alliance. . these, when they returned to their own land, were highly censured: and cleomenes meanwhile, conceiving that he had been outrageously dealt with by the athenians both with words and with deeds, was gathering together an army from the whole of the peloponnese, not declaring the purpose for which he was gathering it, but desiring to take vengeance on the people of the athenians, and intending to make isagoras despot; for he too had come out of the acropolis together with cleomenes. cleomenes then with a large army entered eleusis, while at the same time the boeotians by agreement with him captured oinoe and hysiai, the demes which lay upon the extreme borders of attica, and the chalkidians on the other side invaded and began to ravage various districts of attica. the athenians then, though attacked on more sides than one, thought that they would remember the boeotians and chalkidians afterwards, and arrayed themselves against the peloponnesians who were in eleusis. . then as the armies were just about the join battle, the corinthians first, considering with themselves that they were not acting rightly, changed their minds and departed; and after that demaratos the son of ariston did the same, who was king of the spartans as well as cleomenes, though he had joined with him in leading the army out from lacedemon and had not been before this at variance with cleomenes. in consequence of this dissension a law was laid down at sparta that it should not be permitted, when an army went out, that both the kings should go with it, for up to this time both used to go with it, and that as one of the kings was set free from service, so one of the sons of tyndareus also should be left behind; for before this time both of these two were called upon by them for help and went with the armies. . at this time then in eleusis the rest of the allies, seeing that the kings of the lacedemonians did not agree and also that the corinthians had deserted their place in the ranks, themselves too departed and got them away quickly. and this was the fourth time that the dorians had come to attica, twice having invaded it to make war against it, and twice to help the mass of the athenian people,--first when they at the same time colonised megara (this expedition may rightly be designated as taking place when codros was king of the athenians), for the second and third times when they came making expeditions from sparta to drive out the sons of peisistratos, and fourthly on this occasion, when cleomenes at the head of the peloponnesians invaded eleusis: thus the dorians invaded athens then for the fourth time. . this army then having been ingloriously broken up, the athenians after that, desiring to avenge themselves, made expedition first against the chalkidians; and the boeotians came to the euripos to help the chalkidians. the athenians, therefore, seeing those who had come to help, resolved first to attack the boeotians before the chalkidians. accordingly they engaged battle with the boeotians, and had much the better of them, and after having slain very many they took seven hundred of them captive. on this very same day the athenians passed over into euboea and engaged battle with the chalkidians as well; and having conquered these also, they left four thousand holders of allotments in the land belonging to the "breeders of horses": now the wealthier of the chalkidians were called the breeders of horses. and as many of them as they took captive, they kept in confinement together with the boeotians who had been captured, bound with fetters; and then after a time they let them go, having fixed their ransom at two pounds of silver apiece: but their fetters, in which they had been bound, they hung up on the acropolis; and these were still existing even to my time hanging on walls which had been scorched with fire by the mede, and just opposite the sanctuary which lies towards the west. the tenth part of the ransom also they dedicated for an offering, and made of it a four-horse chariot of bronze, which stands on the left hand as you enter the propylaia in the acropolis, and on it is the following inscription: "matched in the deeds of war with the tribes of boeotia and chalkis the sons of athens prevailed, conquered and tamed them in fight: in chains of iron and darkness they quenched their insolent spirit; and to athene present these, of their ransom a tithe." . the athenians accordingly increased in power; and it is evident, not by one instance only but in every way, that equality is an excellent thing, since the athenians while they were ruled by despots were not better in war that any of those who dwelt about them, whereas after they had got rid of despots they became far the first. this proves that when they were kept down they were wilfully slack, because they were working for a master, whereas when they had been set free each one was eager to achieve something for himself. . these then were faring thus: and the thebans after this sent to the god, desiring to be avenged on the athenians; the pythian prophetess however said that vengeance was not possible for them by their own strength alone, but bade them report the matter to the "many-voiced" and ask help of those who were "nearest" to them. so when those who were sent to consult the oracle returned, they made a general assembly and reported the oracle; and then the thebans heard them say that they were to ask help of those who were nearest to them, they said: "surely those who dwell nearest to us are the men of tanagra and coroneia and thespiai; and these always fight zealously on our side and endure the war with us to the end: what need is there that we ask of these? rather perhaps that is not the meaning of the oracle." . while they commented upon it thus, at length one perceived "that which the oracle means to tell us. asopos is said to have had two daughters born to him, thebe and egina; and as these are sisters, i think that the god gave us for answer that we should ask the men of egina to become our helpers." then as there seemed to be no opinion expressed which was better than this, they sent forthwith and asked the men of egina to help them, calling upon them in accordance with the oracle; and they, when these made request, said that they sent with them the sons of aiacos to help them. . after that the thebans, having made an attempt with the alliance of the sons of aiacos and having been roughly handled by the athenians, sent again and gave them back the sons of aiacos and asked them for men. so the eginetans, exalted by great prosperity and calling to mind an ancient grudge against the athenians, then on the request of the thebans commenced a war against the athenians without notice: for while the athenians were intent on the boeotians, they sailed against them to attica with ships of war, and they devastated phaleron and also many demes in the remainder of the coast region, and so doing they deeply stirred the resentment of the athenians. . now the grudge which was due beforehand from the eginetans to the athenians came about from a beginning which was as follows:--the land of the epidaurians yielded to its inhabitants no fruit; and accordingly with reference to this calamity the epidaurians went to inquire at delphi, and the pythian prophetess bade them set up images of damia and auxesia, and said that when they had set up these, they would meet with better fortune. the epidaurians then asked further whether they should make images of bronze or of stone; and the prophetess bade them not use either of these, but make them of the wood of a cultivated olive-tree. the epidaurians therefore asked the athenians to allow them to cut for themselves an olive-tree, since they thought that their olives were the most sacred; nay some say that at that time there were no olives in any part of the earth except at athens. the athenians said that they would allow them on condition that they should every year bring due offerings to athene polias and to erechtheus. the epidaurians, then, having agreed to these terms, obtained that which they asked, and they made images out of these olive-trees and set them up: and their land bore fruit and they continued to fulfil towards the athenians that which they had agreed to do. . now during this time and also before this the eginetans were subject to the epidaurians, and besides other things they were wont to pass over to epidauros to have their disputes with one another settled by law: but after this time they built for themselves ships and made revolt from the epidaurians, moved thereto by wilfulness. so as they were at variance with them, they continued to inflict damage on them, since in fact they had command of the sea, and especially they stole away from them these images of damia and auxesia, and they brought them and set them up in the inland part of their country at a place called oia, which is about twenty furlongs distant from their city. having set them up in this spot they worshipped them with sacrifices and choruses of women accompanied with scurrilous jesting, ten men being appointed for each of the deities to provide the choruses: and the choruses spoke evil of no man, but only of the women of the place. now the epidaurians also had the same rites; and they have also rites which may not be divulged. . these images then having been stolen, the epidaurians no longer continued to fulfil towards the athenians that which they had agreed. the athenians accordingly sent and expressed displeasure to the epidaurians; and they declared saying that they were doing no wrong; for during the time when they had the images in their country they continued to fulfil that which they had agreed upon, but since they had been deprived of them, it was not just that they should make the offerings any more; and they bade them demand these from the men of egina, who had the images. so the athenians sent to egina and demanded the images back; but the eginetans said that they had nothing to do with the athenians. . the athenians then report that in one single trireme were despatched those of their citizens who were sent by the state after this demand; who having come to egina, attempted to tear up from off their pedestals the images, (alleging that they were made of wood which belonged to the athenians), in order to carry them back with them: but not being able to get hold of them in this manner (say the athenians) they threw ropes round them and were pulling them, when suddenly, as they pulled, thunder came on and an earthquake at the same time with the thunder; and the crew of the trireme who were pulling were made beside themselves by these, and being brought to this condition they killed one another as if they were enemies, until at last but one of the whole number was left; and he returned alone to phaleron. . thus the athenians report that it came to pass: but the eginetans say that it was not with a single ship that the athenians came; for a single ship, and even a few more than one, they could have easily repelled, even if they had not happened to have ships of their own: but they say that the athenians sailed upon their country with a large fleet of ships, and they gave way before them and did not fight a sea-battle. they cannot however declare with certainty whether they gave way thus because they admitted that they were not strong enough to fight the battle by sea, or because they intended to do something of the kind which they actually did. the athenians then, they say, as no one met them in fight, landed from their ships and made for the images; but not being able to tear them up from their pedestals, at last they threw ropes round them and began to pull, until the images, as they were being pulled, did both the same thing (and here they report something which i cannot believe, but some other man may), for they say that the images fell upon their knees to them and that they continue to be in that position ever since this time. the athenians, they say, were doing thus; and meanwhile they themselves (say the eginetans), being informed that the athenians were about to make an expedition against them, got the argives to help them; and just when the athenians had disembarked upon the eginetan land, the argives had come to their rescue, and not having been perceived when they passed over from epidauros to the island, they fell upon the athenians before these had heard anything of the matter, cutting them off secretly from the way to their ships; and at this moment it was that the thunder and the earthquake came upon them. . this is the report which is given by the argives and eginetans both, and it is admitted by the athenians also that but one alone of them survived and came back to attica: only the argives say that this one remained alive from destruction wrought by them upon the army of athens, while the athenians say that the divine power was the destroyer. however, even this one man did not remain alive, but perished, they say, in the following manner:--when he returned to athens he reported the calamity which had happened; and the wives of the men who had gone on the expedition to egina, hearing it and being very indignant that he alone of all had survived, came round this man and proceeded to stab him with the brooches of their mantles, each one of them asking of him where her husband was. thus he was slain; and to the athenians it seemed that the deed of the women was a much more terrible thing even than the calamity which had happened; and not knowing, it is said, how they should punish the women in any other way, they changed their fashion of dress to that of ionia,--for before this the women of the athenians wore dorian dress, very like that of corinth,--they changed it therefore to the linen tunic, in order that they might not have use for brooches. . in truth however this fashion of dress is not ionian originally but carian, for the old hellenic fashion of dress for women was universally the same as that which we now call dorian. moreover it is said that with reference to these events the argives and eginetans made it a custom among themselves in both countries to have the brooches made half as large again as the size which was then established in use, and that their women should offer brooches especially in the temple of these goddesses, and also that they should carry neither pottery of athens nor anything else of athenian make to the temple, but that it should be the custom for the future to drink there from pitchers made in the lands themselves. . the women of the argives and eginetans from this time onwards because of the quarrel with the athenians continued to wear brooches larger than before, and still do so even to my time; and the origin of the enmity of the athenians towards the eginetans came in the manner which has been said. so at this time, when the thebans invaded them, the eginetans readily came to the assistance of the boeotians, calling to mind what occurred about the images. the eginetans then were laying waste, as i have said, the coast regions of attica; and when the athenians were resolved to make an expedition against the eginetans, an oracle came to them from delphi bidding them stay for thirty years reckoned from the time of the wrong done by the eginetans, and in the one-and-thirtieth year to appoint a sacred enclosure for aiacos and then to begin the war against the eginetans, and they would succeed as they desired; but if they should make an expedition against them at once, they would suffer in the meantime very much evil and also inflict very much, but at last they would subdue them. when the athenians heard the report of this, they appointed a sacred enclosure for aiacos, namely that which is now established close to the market-place, but they could not endure to hear that they must stay for thirty years, when they had suffered injuries from the eginetans. . while however they were preparing to take vengeance, a matter arose from the lacedemonians which provided a hindrance to them: for the lacedemonians, having learnt that which had been contrived by the alcmaionidai with respect to the pythian prophetess, and that which had been contrived by the pythian prophetess against themselves and the sons of peisistratos, were doubly grieved, not only because they had driven out into exile men who were their guest-friends, but also because after they had done this no gratitude was shown to them by the athenians. moreover in addition to this, they were urged on by the oracles which said that many injuries would be suffered by them from the athenians; of which oracles they had not been aware of before, but they had come to know them, since cleomenes had brought them to sparta. in fact cleomenes had obtained from the acropolis of the athenians those oracles which the sons of peisistratos possessed before and had left in the temple when they were driven out; and cleomenes recovered them after they had been left behind. . at this time, then, when the lacedemonians had recovered the oracles and when they saw that the athenians were increasing in power and were not at all willing to submit to them, observing that the athenian race now that it was free was becoming a match for their own, whereas when held down by despots it was weak and ready to be ruled,--perceiving, i say, all these things, they sent for hippias the son of peisistratos to come from sigeion on the hellespont, whither the family of peisistratos go for refuge; and when hippias had come upon the summons, the spartans sent also for envoys to come from their other allies and spoke to them as follows: "allies, we are conscious within ourselves that we have not acted rightly; for incited by counterfeit oracles we drove out into exile men who were very closely united with us as guest-friends and who undertook the task of rendering athens submissive to us, and then after having done this we delivered over the state to a thankless populace, which so soon as it had raised its head, having been freed by our means drove out us and our king with wanton outrage; and now exalted with pride it is increasing in power, so that the neighbours of these men first of all, that is the boeotians and chalkidians, have already learnt, and perhaps some others also will afterwards learn, that they committed an error. as however we erred in doing those things of which we have spoken, we will try now to take vengeance on them, going thither together with you; since it was for this very purpose that we sent for hippias, whom ye see here, and for you also, to come from your cities, in order that with common counsel and a common force we might conduct him to athens and render back to him that which we formerly took away." . thus they spoke; but the majority of the allies did not approve of their words. the rest however kept silence, but the corinthian socles spoke as follows: (a) "surely now the heaven shall be below the earth, and the earth raised up on high above the heaven, and men shall have their dwelling in the sea, and fishes shall have that habitation which men had before, seeing that ye, lacedemonians, are doing away with free governments and are preparing to bring back despotism again into our cities, than which there is no more unjust or more murderous thing among men. for if in truth this seems to you to be good, namely that the cities should be ruled by despots, do ye yourselves first set up a despot in your own state, and then endeavour to establish them also for others: but as it is, ye are acting unfairly towards your allies, seeing that ye have had no experience of despots yourselves and provide with the greatest care at sparta that this may never come to pass. if however ye had had experience of it, as we have had, ye would be able to contribute juster opinions of it than at present. (b) for the established order of the corinthian state was this:--the government was an oligarchy, and the oligarchs, who were called bacchiadai, had control over the state and made marriages among themselves. now one of these men, named amphion, had a daughter born to him who was lame, and her name was labda. this daughter, since none of the bacchiadai wished to marry her, was taken to wife by aëtion the son of echecrates, who was of the deme of petra, but by original descent a lapith and of the race of caineus. neither from this wife nor from another were children born to him, therefore he set out to delphi to inquire about offspring; and as he entered, forthwith the prophetess addressed him in these lines: "'much to be honoured art thou, yet none doth render thee honour. labda conceives, and a rolling rock will she bear, which shall ruin down on the heads of the kings, and with chastisement visit corinthos.' this answer given to aëtion was by some means reported to the bacchiadai, to whom the oracle which had come to corinth before this was not intelligible, an oracle which had reference to the same thing as that of aëtion and said thus: "'an eagle conceives in the rocks and shall bear a ravening lion, strong and fierce to devour, who the knees of many shall loosen. ponder this well in your minds, i bid you, corinthians, whose dwelling lies about fair peirene's spring and in craggy corinthos.' (c) this oracle, i say, having come before to the bacchiadai was obscure; but afterwards when they heard that which had come to aëtion, forthwith they understood the former also, that it was in accord with that of aëtion; and understanding this one also they kept quiet, desiring to destroy the offspring which should be born to aëtion. then, so soon as his wife bore a child, they sent ten of their own number to the deme in which aëtion had his dwelling, to slay the child; and when these had come to petra and had passed into the court of aëtion's house, they asked for the child; and labda, not knowing anything of the purpose for which they had come, and supposing them to be asking for the child on account of friendly feeling towards its father, brought it and placed it in the hands of one of them. now they, it seems, had resolved by the way that the first of them who received the child should dash it upon the ground. however, when labda brought and gave it, it happened by divine providence that the child smiled at the man who had received it; and when he perceived this, a feeling of compassion prevented him from killing it, and having this compassion he delivered it to the next man, and he to the third. thus it passed through the hands of all the ten, delivered from one to another, since none of them could bring himself to destroy its life. so they gave the child back to its mother and went out; and then standing by the doors they abused and found fault with one another, laying blame especially on the one who had first received the child, because he had not done according to that which had been resolved; until at last after some time they determined again to enter and all to take a share in the murder. (d) from the offspring of aëtion however it was destined that evils should spring up for corinth: for labda was listening to all this as she stood close by the door, and fearing lest they should change their mind and take the child a second time and kill it, she carried it and concealed it in the place which seemed to her the least likely to be discovered, that is to say a corn-chest, feeling sure that if they should return and come to a search, they were likely to examine everything: and this in fact happened. so when they had come, and searching had failed to find it, they thought it best to return and say to those who had sent them that they had done all that which they had been charged by them to do. (e) they then having departed said this; and after this the son of aëtion grew, and because he had escaped this danger, the name of kypselos was given him as a surname derived from the corn-chest. then when kypselos had grown to manhood and was seeking divination, a two-edged answer was given him at delphi, placing trust in which he made an attempt upon corinth and obtained possession of it. now the answer was as follows: "'happy is this man's lot of a truth, who enters my dwelling, offspring of aëtion, he shall rule in famous corinthos, kypselos, he and his sons, but his children's children no longer.' such was the oracle: and kypselos when he became despot was a man of this character,--many of the corinthians he drove into exile, many he deprived of their wealth, and very many more of their lives. (f) and when he had reigned for thirty years and had brought his life to a prosperous end, his son periander became his successor in the despotism. now periander at first was milder than his father; but after he had had dealings through messengers with thrasybulos the despot of miletos, he became far more murderous even than kypselos. for he sent a messenger to thrasybulos and asked what settlement of affairs was the safest for him to make, in order that he might best govern his state: and thrasybulos led forth the messenger who had come from periander out of the city, and entered into a field of growing corn; and as he passed through the crop of corn, while inquiring and asking questions repeatedly of the messenger about the occasion of his coming from corinth, he kept cutting off the heads of those ears of corn which he saw higher than the rest; and as he cut off their heads he cast them away, until he had destroyed in this manner the finest and richest part of the crop. so having passed through the place and having suggested no word of counsel, he dismissed the messenger. when the messenger returned to corinth, periander was anxious to hear the counsel which had been given; but he said that thrasybulos had given him no counsel, and added that he wondered at the deed of periander in sending him to such a man, for the man was out of his senses and a waster of his own goods,--relating at the same time that which he had seen thrasybulos do. (g) so periander, understanding that which had been done and perceiving that thrasybulos counselled him to put to death those who were eminent among his subjects, began then to display all manner of evil treatment to the citizens of the state; for whatsoever kypselos had left undone in killing and driving into exile, this periander completed. and in one day he stripped all the wives of the corinthians of their clothing on account of his own wife melissa. for when he had sent messengers to the thesprotians on the river acheron to ask the oracle of the dead about a deposit made with him by a guest-friend, melissa appeared and said she would not tell in what place the deposit was laid, for she was cold and had no clothes, since those which he had buried with her were of no use to her, not having been burnt; and this, she said, would be an evidence to him that she was speaking the truth, namely that when the oven was cold, periander had put his loaves into it. when the report of this was brought back to periander, the token made him believe, because he had had commerce with melissa after she was dead; and straightway after receiving the message he caused proclamation to be made that all the wives of the corinthians should come out to the temple of hera. they accordingly went as to a festival in their fairest adornment; and he having set the spearmen of his guard in ambush, stripped them all alike, both the free women and their attendant; and having gathered together all their clothes in a place dug out, he set fire to them, praying at the same time to melissa. then after he had done this and had sent a second time, the apparition of melissa told him in what spot he had laid the deposit entrusted to him by his guest-friend. "such a thing, ye must know, lacedemonians, is despotism, and such are its deeds: and we corinthians marvelled much at first when we saw that ye were sending for hippias, and now we marvel even more because ye say these things; and we adjure you, calling upon the gods of hellas, not to establish despotisms in the cities. if however ye will not cease from your design, but endeavour to restore hippias contrary to that which is just, know that the corinthians at least do not give their consent to that which ye do." . socles being the envoy of corinth thus spoke, and hippias made answer to him, calling to witness the same gods as he, that assuredly the corinthians would more than all others regret the loss of the sons of peisistratos, when the appointed days should have come for them to be troubled by the athenians. thus hippias made answer, being acquainted with the oracles more exactly than any other man: but the rest of the allies, who for a time had restrained themselves and kept silence, when they heard socles speak freely, gave utterance every one of them to that which they felt, and adopted the opinion of the corinthian envoy, adjuring the lacedemonians not to do any violence to a city of hellas. . thus was this brought to an end: and hippias being dismissed from thence had anthemus offered to him by amyntas king of the macedonians and iolcos by the thessalians. he however accepted neither of these, but retired again to sigeion; which city peisistratos had taken by force of arms from the mytilenians, and having got possession of it, had appointed his own natural son hegesistratos, born of an argive woman, to be despot of it: he however did not without a struggle keep possession of that which he received from peisistratos; for the mytilenians and athenians carried on war for a long time, having their strongholds respectively at achilleion and at sigeion, the one side demanding that the place be restored to them, and the athenians on the other hand not admitting this demand, but proving by argument that the aiolians had no better claim to the territory of ilion than they and the rest of the hellenes, as many as joined with menelaos in exacting vengeance for the rape of helen. . now while these carried on the war, besides many other things of various kinds which occurred in the battles, once when a fight took place and the athenians were conquering, alcaios the poet, taking to flight, escaped indeed himself, but the athenians retained possession of his arms and hung them up on the walls of the temple of athene which is at sigeion. about this matter alcaios composed a song and sent it to mytilene, reporting therein his misadventure to one melanippos, who was his friend. finally periander the son of kypselos made peace between the athenians and the mytilenians, for to him they referred the matter as arbitrator; and he made peace between them on the condition that each should continue to occupy that territory which they then possessed. . sigeion then in this matter had come under the rule of the athenians. and when hippias had returned to asia from lacedemon, he set everything in motion, stirring up enmity between the athenians and artaphrenes, and using every means to secure that athens should come under the rule of himself and of dareios. hippias, i say, was thus engaged; and the athenians meanwhile hearing of these things sent envoys to sardis, and endeavoured to prevent the persians from following the suggestions of the exiled athenians. artaphrenes however commanded them, if they desired to be preserved from ruin, to receive hippias back again. this proposal the athenians were not by any means disposed to accept when it was reported; and as they did not accept this, it became at once a commonly received opinion among them that they were enemies of the persians. . while they had these thoughts and had been set at enmity with the persians, at this very time aristagoras the milesian, ordered away from sparta by cleomenes the lacedemonian, arrived at athens; for this was the city which had most power of all the rest besides sparta. and aristagoras came forward before the assembly of the people and said the same things as he had said at sparta about the wealth which there was in asia, and about the persian manner of making war, how they used neither shield nor spear and were easy to overcome. thus i say he said, and also he added this, namely that the milesians were colonists from the athenians, and that it was reasonable that the athenians should rescue them, since they had such great power; and there was nothing which he did not promise, being very urgent in his request, until at last he persuaded them: for it would seem that it is easier to deceive many than one, seeing that, though he did not prove able to deceive cleomenes the lacedemonian by himself, yet he did this to thirty thousand athenians. the athenians then, i say, being persuaded, voted a resolution to despatch twenty ships to help the ionians, and appointed to command them melanthios one of their citizens, who was in all things highly reputed. these ships proved to be the beginning of evils for the hellenes and the barbarians. . aristagoras however sailed on before and came to miletos; and then having devised a plan from which no advantage was likely to come for the ionians (nor indeed was he doing what he did with a view to that, but in order to vex king dareios), he sent a man to phrygia to the piaonians who had been taken captive by megabazos from the river strymon, and who were dwelling in a district and village of phrygia apart by themselves; and when the messenger came to the paionians he spoke these words: "paionians, aristagoras the despot of miletos sent me to offer to you salvation, if ye shall be willing to do as he says; for now all ionia has revolted from the king and ye have an opportunity of coming safe to your own land: to reach the sea shall be your concern, and after this it shall be thenceforth ours." the paionians hearing this received it as a most welcome proposal, and taking with them their children and their women they began a flight to the sea; some of them however were struck with fear and remained in the place where they were. having come to the coast the paionians crossed over thence to chios, and when they were already in chios there arrived in their track a large body of persian horsemen pursuing the paionians. these, as they did not overtake them, sent over to chios to bid the paionians return back: the paionians however did not accept their proposal, but the men of chios conveyed them from chios to lesbos, and the lesbians brought them to doriscos, and thence they proceeded by land and came to paionia. . aristagoras meanwhile, when the athenians had arrived with twenty ships, bringing with them also five triremes of the eretrians, joined the expedition not for the sake of the athenians but of the milesians themselves, to repay them a debt which they owed (for the milesians in former times had borne with the eretrians the burden of all that war which they had with the chalkidians at the time when the chalkidians on their side were helped by the samians against the eretrians and milesians),--when these, i say, had arrived and the other allies were on the spot, aristagoras proceeded to make a march upon sardis. on this march he did not go himself, but remained at miletos and appointed others to be in command of the milesians, namely his brother charopinos and of the other citizens one hermophantos. . with this force then the ionians came to ephesos, and leaving their ships at coresos in the land of ephesos, went up themselves in a large body, taking ephesians to guide them in their march. so they marched along by the river caÿster, and then when they arrived after crossing the range of tmolos, they took sardis without any resistance, all except the citadel, but the citadel artaphrenes himself saved from capture, having with him a considerable force of men. . from plundering this city after they had taken it they were prevented by this:--the houses in sardis were mostly built of reeds, and even those of them which were of brick had their roofs thatched with reeds: of these houses one was set on fire by a soldier, and forthwith the fire going on from house to house began to spread over the whole town. so then as the town was on fire, the lydians and all the persians who were in the city being cut off from escape, since the fire was prevailing in the extremities round about them, and not having any way out of the town, flowed together to the market-place and to the river pactolos, which brings down gold-dust for them from tmolos, flowing through the middle of their market-place, and then runs out into the river hermos, and this into the sea;--to this pactolos, i say, and to the market-place the lydians and persians gathered themselves together, and were compelled to defend themselves. the ionians then, seeing some of the enemy standing on their defence and others in great numbers coming on to the attack, were struck with fear and retired to the mountain called tmolos, and after that at nightfall departed to go to their ships. . sardis was then destroyed by fire, and in it also the temple of the native goddess hybebe; which the persians alleged afterwards as a reason for setting on fire in return the temples in the land of the hellenes. however at the time of which i speak the persians who occupied districts within the river halys, informed beforehand of this movement, were gathering together and coming to the help of the lydians; and, as it chanced, they found when they came that the ionians no longer were in sardis; but they followed closely in their track and came up with them at ephesos: and the ionians stood indeed against them in array, but when they joined battle they had very much the worse; and besides other persons of note whom the persians slaughtered, there fell also eualkides commander of the eretrians, a man who had won wreaths in contests of the games and who was much celebrated by simonides of keos: and those of them who survived the battle dispersed to their various cities. . thus then they fought at that time; and after the battle the athenians left the ionians together, and when aristagoras was urgent in calling upon them by messengers for assistance, they said that they would not help them: the ionians, however, though deprived of the alliance of the athenians, none the less continued to prepare for the war with the king, so great had been the offences already committed by them against dareios. they sailed moreover to the hellespont and brought under their power byzantion and all the other cities which are in those parts; and then having sailed forth out of the hellespont, they gained in addition the most part of caria to be in alliance with them: for even caunos, which before was not willing to be their ally, then, after they had burnt sardis, was added to them also. . the cyprians too, excepting those of amathus, were added voluntarily to their alliance; for these also had revolted from the medes in the following manner:--there was one onesilos, younger brother of gorgos king of salamis, and son of chersis, the son of siromos, the son of euelthon. this man in former times too had been wont often to advise gorgos to make revolt from the king, and at this time, when he heard that the ionians had revolted, he pressed him very hard and endeavoured to urge him to it. since however he could not persuade gorgos, onesilos watched for a time when he had gone forth out of the city of salamis, and then together with the men of his own faction he shut him out of the gates. gorgos accordingly being robbed of the city went for refuge to the medes, and onesilos was ruler of salamis and endeavoured to persuade all the men of cyprus to join him in revolt. the others then he persuaded; but since those of amathus were not willing to do as he desired, he sat down before their city and besieged it. . onesilos then was besieging amathus; and meanwhile, when it was reported to king dareios that sardis had been captured and burnt by the athenians and the ionians together, and that the leader of the league for being about these things was the milesian aristagoras, it is said that at first being informed of this he made no account of the ionians, because he knew that they at all events would not escape unpunished for their revolt, but he inquired into who the athenians were; and when he had been informed, he asked for his bow, and having received it and placed an arrow upon the string, he discharged it upwards towards heaven, and as he shot into the air he said: "zeus, that it may be granted me to take vengeance upon the athenians!" having so said he charged one of his attendants, that when dinner was set before the king he should say always three times: "master, remember the athenians." . when he had given this charge, he called into his presence histiaios the milesian, whom dareios had now been keeping with him for a long time, and said: "i am informed, histiaios, that thy deputy, to whom thou didst depute the government of miletos, has made rebellion against me; for he brought in men against me from the other continent and persuaded the ionians also,--who shall pay the penalty to me for that which they did,--these, i say, he persuaded to go together with them, and thus he robbed me of sardis. now therefore how thinkest thou that this is well? and how without thy counsels was anything of this kind done? take heed lest thou afterwards find reason to blame thyself for this." histiaios replied: "o king, what manner of speech is this that thou hast uttered, saying that i counselled a matter from which it was likely that any vexation would grow for thee, either great or small? what have i to seek for in addition to that which i have, that i should do these things; and of what am i in want? for i have everything that thou hast, and i am thought worthy by thee to hear all thy counsels. nay, but if my deputy is indeed acting in any such manner as thou hast said, be assured that he has done it merely on his own account. i however, for my part, do not even admit the report to be true, that the milesians and my deputy are acting in any rebellious fashion against thy power: but if it prove that they are indeed doing anything of that kind, and if that which thou hast heard, o king, be the truth, learn then what a thing thou didst in removing me away from the sea-coast; for it seems that the ionians, when i had gone out of the sight of their eyes, did that which they had long had a desire to do; whereas if i had been in ionia, not a city would have made the least movement. now therefore as quickly as possible let me set forth to go to ionia, that i may order all these matters for thee as they were before, and deliver into thy hands this deputy of miletos who contrived these things: and when i have done this after thy mind, i swear by the gods of the royal house that i will not put off from me the tunic which i wear when i go down to ionia, until i have made sardinia tributary to thee, which is the largest of all islands." . thus saying histiaios endeavoured to deceive the king, and dareios was persuaded and let him go, charging him, when he should have accomplished that which he had promised, to return to him again at susa. . in the meantime, while the news about sardis was going up to the king, and while dareios, after doing that which he did with the bow, came to speech with histiaios, and histiaios having been let go by dareios was making his journey to the sea-coast,--during all that time the events were happening which here follow.--as onesilos of salamis was besieging those of amathus, it was reported to him that artybios a persian, bringing with him in ships a large persian army, was to be expected shortly to arrive in cyprus. being informed of this, onesilos sent heralds to different places in ionia to summon the ionians to his assistance; and they took counsel together and came without delay with a large force. now the ionians arrived in cyprus just at the time when the persians having crossed over in ships from kilikia were proceeding by land to attack salamis, while the phenicians with the ships were sailing round the headland which is called the "keys of cyprus." . this being the case, the despots of cyprus called together the commanders of the ionians and said: "ionians, we of cyprus give you a choice which enemy ye will rather fight with, the persians or the phenicians: for if ye will rather array yourselves on land and make trial of the persians in fight, it is time now for you to disembark from your ships and array yourselves on the land, and for us to embark in your ships to contend against the phenicians; but if on the other hand ye will rather make trial of the phenicians,--whichever of these two ye shall choose, ye must endeavour that, so far as it rests with you, both ionia and cyprus shall be free." to this the ionians replied: "we were sent out by the common authority of the ionians to guard the sea, and not to deliver our ships to the cyprians and ourselves fight with the persians on land. we therefore will endeavour to do good service in that place to which we were appointed; and ye must call to mind all the evils which ye suffered from the medes, when ye were in slavery to them, and prove yourselves good men." . the ionians made answer in these words; and afterwards, when the persians had come to the plain of salamis, the kings of the cyprians set in order their array, choosing the best part of the troops of salamis and of soloi to be arrayed against the persians and setting the other cyprians against the rest of the enemy's troops; and against artybios, the commander of the persians, onesilos took up his place in the array by his own free choice. . now artybios was riding a horse which had been trained to rear up against a hoplite. onesilos accordingly being informed of this, and having a shield-bearer, by race of caria, who was of very good repute as a soldier and full of courage besides, said to this man: "i am informed that the horse of artybios rears upright and works both with his feet and his mouth against any whom he is brought to attack. do thou therefore consider the matter, and tell me forthwith which of the two thou wilt rather watch for and strike, the horse or artybios himself." to this his attendant replied: "o king, i am ready to do both or either of these two things, and in every case to do that which thou shalt appoint for me; but i will declare to thee the way in which i think it will be most suitable for thy condition. i say that it is right for one who is king and commander to fight with a king and commander; for if thou shalt slay the commander of the enemy, it turns to great glory for thee; and again, if he shall slay thee, which heaven forbid, even death when it is at the hands of a worthy foe is but half to be lamented: but for us who are under thy command it is suitable to fight with the others who are under his command and with his horse: and of the tricks of the horse have thou no fear at all, for i engage to thee that after this at least he shall never stand against any man more." thus he spoke; and shortly afterwards the opposed forces joined battle both on land and with their ships. . on that day the ionians for their part greatly distinguished themselves and overcame the phenicians, and of them the samians were best: and meanwhile on land, when the armies met, they came to close quarters and fought; and as regards the two commanders, what happened was this:--when artybios came to fight with onesilos sitting upon his horse, onesilos, as he had concerted with his shield-bearer, struck at artybios himself, when he came to fight with him; and when the horse put its hoofs against the shield of onesilos, then the carian struck with a falchion and smote off the horse's feet. . so artybios the commander of the persians fell there on the spot together with his horse: and while the others also were fighting, stesenor the despot of curion deserted them, having with him a large force of men,--now these curians are said to be settlers from argos,--and when the curians had deserted, forthwith also the war-chariots of the men of salamis proceeded to do the same as the curians. when these things took place, the persians had the advantage over the cyprians; and after their army had been put to rout, many others fell and among them onesilos the son of chersis, he who brought about the revolt of the cyprians, and also the king of the solians, aristokypros the son of philokypros,--that philokypros whom solon the athenian, when he came to cyprus, commended in verse above all other despots. . so the men of amathus cut off the head of onesilos, because he had besieged them; and having brought it to amathus they hung it over the gate of the city: and as the head hung there, when it had now become a hollow, a swarm of bees entered into it and filled it with honeycomb. this having so come to pass, the amathusians consulted an oracle about the head, and they received an answer bidding them take it down and bury it and sacrifice to onesilos every year as a hero; and if they did this, it would go better with them. . the amathusians accordingly continued to do so even to my time. but the ionians who had fought the sea-fight in cyprus, when they perceived that the fortunes of onesilos were ruined and that the cities of the cyprians were besieged, except salamis, and that this city had been delivered over by the salaminians to gorgos the former king,--as soon as they perceived this, the ionians sailed away back to ionia. now of the cities in cyprus soloi held out for the longest time under the siege; and the persians took it in the fifth month by undermining the wall round. . the cyprians then, after they had made themselves free for one year, had again been reduced to slavery afresh: and meanwhile daurises, who was married to a daughter of dareios, and hymaies and otanes, who were also persian commanders and were married also to daughters of dareios, after they had pursued those ionians who had made the expedition to sardis and defeating them in battle had driven them by force to their ships,--after this distributed the cities amongst themselves and proceeded to sack them. . daurises directed his march to the cities on the hellespont, and he took dardanos and abydos and percote and lampsacos and paisos, of these he took on each day one; and as he was marching from paisos against the city of parion, the report came that the carians had made common cause with the ionians and were in revolt from the persians. he turned back therefore from the hellespont and marched his army upon caria. . and, as it chanced, a report of this was brought to the carians before daurises arrived; and the carians being informed of it gathered together at the place which is called the "white pillars" and at the river marsyas, which flows from the region of idrias and runs out into the maiander. when the carians had been gathered together there, among many other counsels which were given, the best, as it seems to me, was that of pixodaros the son of mausolos, a man of kindye, who was married to the daughter of the king of the kilikians, syennesis. the opinion of this man was to the effect that the carians should cross over the maiander and engage battle with the persians having the river at their backs, in order that the carians, not being able to fly backwards and being compelled to remain where they were, might prove themselves even better men in fight than they naturally would. this opinion did not prevail; but they resolved that the persians rather than themselves should have the maiander at their backs, evidently in order that if there should be a flight of the persians and they should be worsted in the battle, they might never return home, but might fall into the river. . after this, when the persians had come and had crossed the maiander, the carians engaged with the persians on the river marsyas and fought a battle which was obstinately contested and lasted long; but at length they were worsted by superior numbers: and of the persians there fell as many as two thousand, but of the carians ten thousand. then those of them who escaped were shut up in labraunda within the sanctuary of zeus stratios, which is a large sacred grove of plane-trees; now the carians are the only men we know who offer sacrifices to zeus stratios. these men then, being shut up there, were taking counsel together about their safety, whether they would fare better if they delivered themselves over to the persians or if they left asia altogether. . and while they were thus taking counsel, there came to their aid the milesians and their allies. then the carians dismissed the plans which they were before considering and prepared to renew the war again from the beginning: and when the persians came to attack them, they engaged with them and fought a battle, and they were worsted yet more completely than before; and while many were slain of all parties, the milesians suffered most. . then afterwards the carians repaired this loss and retrieved their defeat; for being informed that the persians had set forth to march upon their cities, they laid an ambush on the road which is by pedasos, and the persians falling into it by night were destroyed both they and their commanders, namely daurises and amorges and sisimakes; and with them died also myrsos the son of gyges. of this ambush the leader was heracleides the son of ibanollis, a man of mylasa. . these then of the persians were thus destroyed; and meanwhile hymaies, who was another of those who pursued after the ionians that had made the expedition to sardis, directed his march to the propontis and took kios in mysia; and having conquered this city, when he was informed that daurises had left the hellespont and was marching towards caria, he left the propontis and led his army to the hellespont: and he conquered all the aiolians who occupy the district of ilion, and also the gergithes, who were left behind as a remnant of the ancient teucrians. while conquering these tribes hymaies himself ended his life by sickness in the land of troas. . he thus brought his life to an end; and artaphrenes the governor of the province of sardis was appointed with otanes the third of the commanders to make the expedition against ionia and that part of aiolia which bordered upon it. of ionia these took the city of clazomenai, and of the aiolians kyme. . while the cities were thus being taken, aristagoras the milesian, being, as he proved in this instance, not of very distinguished courage, since after having disturbed ionia and made preparation of great matters he counselled running away when he saw these things, (moreover it had become clear to him that it was impossible to overcome king dareios),--he, i say, having regard to these things, called together those of his own party and took counsel with them, saying that it was better that there should be a refuge prepared for them, in case that they should after all be driven out from miletos, and proposing the question whether he should lead them from thence to sardinia, to form a colony there, or to myrkinos in the land of the edonians, which histiaios had been fortifying, having received it as a gift from dareios. this was the question proposed by aristagoras. . now the opinion of hecataios the son of hegesander the historian was that he should not take a colony to either of these places, but build a wall of defence for himself in the island of leros and keep still, if he should be forced to leave miletos; and afterwards with this for his starting point he would be able to return to miletos. . this was the counsel of hecataios; but aristagoras was most inclined to go forth to myrkinos. he therefore entrusted the government of miletos to pythagoras, a man of repute among the citizens, and he himself sailed away to thrace, taking with him every one who desired to go; and he took possession of the region for which he had set out. but starting from this to make war, he perished by the hands of the thracians, that is both aristagoras himself and his army, when he was encamped about a certain city and the thracians desired to go out from it under a truce. ***** notes to book v [ {ie paion} (or {paian}), as the burden of a song of triumph.] [ {eggenetai}: many mss. and some editors read {en genetai}, "and the race can never become united."] [ iv. .] [ or "from the time that he was born."] [ {to astikton} is probably for {to me estikhthai}: but possibly the meaning may be, "those who are not so marked are of low birth."] [ "the greatest prizes are assigned for single combat in proportion" (as it is more difficult).] [ or "siriopaionians."] [ the words "and about the doberians and agrianians and odomantians" are marked by stein as an interpolation, on the ground that the two tribes first mentioned are themselves paionian; but doberians are distinguished from paionians in vii. .] [ {theres katarraktes}: the mss. have {thures katapaktes} (which can hardly be right, since the ionic form would be {katapektes}), meaning "fastened down." stein suggests {thures katepaktes} (from {katepago}), which might mean "a door closed downwards," but the word is not found. (the medicean ms. has {e} written over the last {a} of {katapaktes}.)] [ {diapinontes}: or perhaps, "drinking against one another."] [ see viii. .] [ i.e. "he was drawn to run in the first pair."] [ the best mss. give this form throughout, which is also used by Æschylus: cp. iii. , note .] [ {ekakothesan}.] [ {toutou}: it is doubtful whether this means his power or his death. perhaps something has dropped out after {teleuta}.] [ {anesis}: a conjectural emendation of {aneos}. (perhaps however, the word was rather {ananeosis}, "after a short time there was a renewal of evils"). grote wishes to translate this clause, "after a short time there was an abatement of evils," being of opinion that the {anesis kakon} lasted about eight years. however the expression {ou pollon khronon} is so loose that it might well cover the required period of time.] [ {praskhema}.] [ i.e. miletos and naxos.] [ {ton pakheon}.] [ {umin}: omitted in some mss. and editions.] [ lit. "dividing him in such a manner."] [ {kai to teikhos esaxanto}: {esaxanto} from {satto}, which generally means "load." various conjectures have been made, e.g. {kai to teikhos ephraxanto}, or {kata takhos esaxanto}, the comma after {pota} being removed.] [ {me de neoteron ti poieuses tes miletou}, "if miletos made no change (i.e. rebellion)."] [ {katairetheie}, "taken down" from their place (cp. {anetheke} below).] [ {en to peoto ton logon}. the reference is to i. .] [ {isonomien}: cp. iii. .] [ {akromantes}: cp. {akrakholos}. it may mean "somewhat mad," so {akrozumos}, "slightly leavened," and other words.] [ {kinupa}: for this stein reads by conjecture {aibuen} and afterwards {para kinupa potamon} for {para potamon}: but kinyps was the name of the district about the river (iv. ), and the name of the river is easily supplied from this.] [ {makeon te kai libuon}. the macai were of course libyans, therefore perhaps we should read (with niebuhr) {makeon te libuon}: or {makeon te kai allon libuon}.] [ stein thinks that heracleia minoa on the s. coast of sicily cannot be meant, because too distant to be considered part of the "land of eryx." evidently however this expression is very vague, and there seems no need to correct the text as he proposes.] [ {para ten italion}: the name applied anciently only to the south-west of the peninsula.] [ {krathin}, the mss. give {krastin} here, and {krastie} below for {krathie}. sybaris was situated between the rivers crathis and sybaris.] [ i.e. "of the market-place."] [ {periodos}.] [ {kurbasias}: see vii. .] [ {poluargurotatoi}: this seems to include gold also, for which lydia was famous.] [ {poluprobatotatoi}.] [ {tende}, pointing to it in the map.] [ if {anaballesthai} is the true reading here, it cannot mean, "put off to another time," as stein translates it; for the form of the sentence proves that it is to be taken as a question, co-ordinate with that which follows: {peri men khores ara ou polles khreon esti umeas makhas anaballesthai, parekhon de tes asies arkhein allo ti airesesthe}; the first clause being in sense subordinate to the second.] [ {es triten emeren}.] [ {diaphthereei se}. it is impossible to reproduce the double meaning of {diaphtheirein}, "to destroy," and "to corrupt with bribes." the child was apparently alarmed by the vehement gestures of aristagoras and supposed that he was going to kill her father. cleomenes accepts the omen.] [ {stathmoi}: "stations," the distance between them averaging here about stades.] [ {parasaggai}: the "parasang," as estimated at stades, would be nearly ½ english miles.] [ i.e. a narrow pass; so also below in speaking of the passes into kilikia.] [ in the mss. this clause follows the account of the four rivers, and the distance through matiene is given as "four stages" with no number of leagues added. by transposing the clause we avoid placing the rivers in armenia instead of matiene; and by making the number of stages thirty-four, with a corresponding number of leagues, we make the total right at the end and give the proper extension to matiene.] [ i.e. zabatos: the name has perhaps fallen out of the text.] [ {o d' usteron}: "the one mentioned afterwards." stein reads {o d' usteros}.] [ see i. .] [ {parasagges}.] [ {stadia}: the stade being equal to ¾ english feet.] [ reckoned for the march of an army.] [ omitting {to eoutou pathei} which stands in the mss. before {enargestaten}. if the words are retained, we must translate "which clearly pointed to his fate."] [ {apeipamenos ten opsin}, which some translate "he made offerings to avert the dream."] [ {tisi}: many editors adopt the conjecture {trisi}, three.] [ {anetheken eon}: various conjectures have been made here, e.g. {anetheken elon}, {anetheken ion}, {anetheke theo}, {anetheken eont}, {anetheke neon}: the last, which is bentley's, is perhaps the best; but it is doubtful whether the active form of the verb is admissible.] [ {autos}: the mss. have {auton}. if {autos} is right, the meaning is "from his own property."] [ the expression {peisistratidai} is used loosely for the family in general.] [ {porinou lithou}, "tufa."] [ or "of god."] [ {koniaion}. there is no such place as conion known in thessaly, but we cannot correct the text with any certainty.] [ there is perhaps a play of words in {basileus} and {leuster}.] [ {prutaneio}.] [ "rulers of the people."] [ "swine-ites."] [ "ass-ites."] [ "pig-ites."] [ {proteron aposmenon, tote panta}: most of the mss. read {panton} for {panta}. the editors propose various corrections, e.g. {proteron apospenon panton, tote k.t.l.}, "which before were excluded from everything," or {proteron apospenon, tote panton metadidous}, "giving the people, which before he had despised, a share of all rights": or {panton} is corrected to {epanion}, "on his from exile," temporary exile being supposed as the result of the defeat mentioned in ch. .] [ {tous enageas}.] [ i.e. of athene polias in the erechtheion.] [ cp. iv. .] [ {tous boethous}: most of the mss. have {tous boiotous}.] [ {ippobotai}.] [ {dimneos apotimesamenoi}.] [ see viii. .] [ {isegorin}: probably not "equal freedom of speech," but practically the same as {isonomie}, ch. .] [ lit. "penetrated the athenian greatly": most mss. and editors read {esineonto} (or {esinonto}) for {esikneonto}, which is given by the first hand in at least two good mss.] [ i.e. "athene (protectress) of the city," who shared with erechtheus the temple on the acropolis called the "erechtheion"; see viii. .] [ more lit. "to give and receive from one another satisfaction."] [ {eti tode poiesai nomon einai, para sphisi ekateroisi k.t.l.} the editors punctuate variously, and alterations have been proposed in the text.] [ i.e. damia and auxesia.] [ {ginoito}: some mss. read {an ginoito}, "would become": so stein and many other editors.] [ some editors omit this clause, "whither--refuge."] [ "having grown a good opinion of itself."] [ or, altering {oste} to {os ge} or {osper}, "as the neighbours of these men first of all, that is the boeotians and chalkidians, have already learnt, and perhaps some others will afterwards learn that they have committed an error." the word {amarton} would thus be added as an afterthought, with reference primarily to the corinthians, see ch. .] [ {peiresometha spheas ama umin apikomenoi tisasthai}: some mss. read {akeomenoi} and omit {tisasthai}. hence it has been proposed to read {peisesometha sphea ama umin akeomenoi}, "we will endeavour to remedy this with your help," which may be right.] [ so the name is given by the better class of mss. others, followed by most editors, make it "sosicles."] [ {isokratias}.] [ lit. "gave and took (in marriage) from one another."] [ {eetion, outis se tiei polutiton eonta}: the play upon {eetion} and {tio} can hardly be rendered. the "rolling rock" in the next line is an allusion to petra, the name of the deme.] [ {aietos en petresi kuei}, with a play upon the names {eetion} ({aeton}) and {petre} again.] [ {ophruoenta}, "situated on a brow or edge," the regular descriptive epithet of corinth.] [ {kupselen}: cp. aristoph. pax, .] [ {amphidexion}: commonly translated "ambiguous," but in fact the oracle is of the clearest, so much so that abicht cuts the knot by inserting {ouk}. stein explains it to mean "doubly favourable," {amphoterothen dexion}. i understand it to mean "two-edged" (cp. {amphekes}), in the sense that while promising success to kypselos and his sons, it prophesies also the deposition of the family in the generation after, and so acts (or cuts) both ways.] [ {anapodizon}, "calling him back over the same ground again."] [ evidently the war must be dated earlier than the time of peisistratos.] [ or (according to some mss.), "another of the citizens, named hermophantos."] [ {tes sulloges oste tauta sunuphanthenai}, "the assembling together so that these things were woven."] [ {kai allos lematos pleos}.] [ {plospheresteron}, or perhaps {plopheresteron}, "to be preferred"; so one ms.: {plospheres} ordinarily means "like."] [ {drepano}, cp. vii. .] [ {delade}, ironical.] [ or, "labranda."] [ i.e. carians, persians, and ionians.] [ {en pedaso}: the mss. vary between {en pidaso, epi daso}, and {epi lasoisi}, and valla's translation has "in viam quae in mylassa fert." some editors read {epi mulasoisi}, others {epi pedaso}.] [ {egkerasamenos pregmata megala}.] [ {andros logopoiou} book vi. the sixth book of the histories, called erato . aristagoras accordingly, after having caused ionia to revolt, thus brought his life to an end; and meanwhile histiaios the despot of miletos, having been let go by dareios had arrived at sardis: and when he came from susa, artaphrenes the governor of sardis asked him for what reason he supposed the ionians had revolted; and he said that he could not tell, and moreover he expressed wonder at that which had happened, pretending that he knew nothing of the state of affairs. then artaphrenes seeing that he was using dissimulation said, having knowledge of the truth about the revolt: "thus it is with thee, histiaios, about these matters,--this shoe was stitched by thee, and put on by aristagoras.". . thus said artaphrenes with reference to the revolt; and histiaios fearing artaphrenes because he understood the matter, ran away the next night at nightfall and went to the sea-coast, having deceived king dareios, seeing that he had engaged to subdue sardinia the largest of islands, and instead of that he was endeavouring to take upon himself leadership of the ionians in the war against dareios. then having crossed over to chios he was put in bonds by the chians, being accused by them of working for a change of their state by suggestion of dareios. when however the chians learnt the whole story and heard that he was an enemy to the king, they released him.. . then histiaios, being asked by the ionians for what reason he had so urgently charged aristagoras to revolt from the king and had wrought so great an evil for the ionians, did not by any means declare to them that which had been in truth the cause, but reported to them that king dareios had resolved to remove the phenicians from their land and to settle them in ionia, and the ionians in phenicia; and for this reason, he said, he had given the charge. thus he attempted to alarm the ionians, although the king had never resolved to do so at all. . after this histiaios acting through a messenger, namely hermippos a man of atarneus, sent papers to the persians who were at sardis, implying that he had already talked matters over with them about a revolt: and hermippos did not deliver them to those to whom he was sent, but bore the papers and put them into the hands of artaphrenes. he then, perceiving all that was being done, bade hermippos bear the papers sent by histiaios and deliver them to those to whom he was sent to bear them, and to deliver to him the replies sent back by the persians to histiaios. these things having been discovered, artaphrenes upon that put to death many of the persians. . as regards sardis therefore there was confusion of the design; and when histiaios had been disappointed of this hope, the chians attempted to restore him to miletos at the request of histiaios himself. the milesians, however, who had been rejoiced before to be rid of aristagoras, were by no means eager to receive another despot into their land, seeing that they had tasted of liberty: and in fact histiaios, attempting to return to miletos by force and under cover of night, was wounded in the thigh by one of the milesians. he then, being repulsed from his own city, returned to chios; and thence, as he could not persuade the chians to give him ships, he crossed over to mytilene and endeavoured to persuade the lesbians to give him ships. so they manned eight triremes and sailed with histiaios to byzantion, and stationing themselves there they captured the ships which sailed out of the pontus, excepting where the crews of them said that they were ready to do the bidding of histiaios. . while histiaios and the men of mytilene were acting thus, a large army both of sea and land forces was threatening to attack miletos itself; for the commanders of the persians had joined together to form one single army and were marching upon miletos, considering the other towns of less account. of their naval force the most zealous were the phenicians, and with them also served the cyprians, who had just been subdued, and the kilikians and egyptians.. . these, i say, were advancing upon miletos and the rest of ionia; and meanwhile the ionians being informed of this were sending deputies chosen from themselves to the panionion. when these had arrived at that place and took counsel together, they resolved not to gather a land-army to oppose the persians, but that the milesians should defend their walls by themselves, and that the ionians should man their fleet, leaving out not one of their ships, and having done so should assemble as soon as possible at lade, to fight a sea-battle in defence of miletos. now lade is a small island lying opposite the city of the milesians.. . then the ionians manned their ships and came thither, and with them also those aiolians who inhabit lesbos; and they were drawn up in order thus:--the extremity of the line towards the east was held by the milesians themselves, who furnished eighty ships; next to them were the prienians with twelve ships and the men of myus with three; next to those of myus were the teians with seventeen ships, and after the teians the chians with a hundred; after these were stationed the men of erythrai and of phocaia, the former furnishing eight ships and the latter three; next to the phocaians were the lesbians with seventy ships, and last, holding the extremity of the line towards the west, were stationed the samians with sixty ships. of all these the total number proved to be three hundred and fifty-three triremes.. . these were the ships of the ionians; and of the barbarians the number of ships was six hundred. when these too were come to the milesian coast and their whole land-army was also there, then the commanders of the persians, being informed of the number of the ionian ships, were struck with fear lest they should be unable to overcome them, and thus on the one hand should not be able to conquer miletos from not having command of the sea, and at the same time should run a risk of being punished by dareios. reflecting upon these things they gathered together the despots of the ionians who were exiles with the medes, having been deposed from their governments by aristagoras the milesian, and who chanced to be then joining in the expedition against miletos,--of these men they called together those who were present and spoke to them as follows: "ionians, now let each one of you show himself a benefactor of the king's house, that is to say, let each one of you endeavour to detach his own countrymen from the body of the alliance: and make your proposals promising at the same time that they shall suffer nothing unpleasant on account of the revolt, and neither their temples nor their private houses shall be burnt, nor shall they have any worse treatment than they had before this; but if they will not do so, but will by all means enter into a contest with us, threaten them and tell them this, which in truth shall happen to them, namely that if they are worsted in the fight they shall be reduced to slavery, and we shall make their sons eunuchs, and their maidens we shall remove to bactria, and deliver their land to others.". . they thus spoke; and the despots of ionia sent each one by night to his own people announcing to them this. the ionians however, that is those to whom these messages came, continued obstinate and would not accept the thought of treason to their cause; and each people thought that to them alone the persians were sending this message. . this happened as soon as the persians came to miletos; and after this the ionians being gathered together at lade held meetings; and others no doubt also made speeches to them, but especially the phocaian commander dionysios, who said as follows: "seeing that our affairs are set upon the razor's edge, ionians, whether we shall be free or slaves, and slaves too to be dealt with as runaways, now therefore if ye shall be willing to take upon yourselves hardships, ye will have labour for the time being, but ye will be able to overcome the enemy and be free; whereas if ye continue to be self-indulgent and without discipline, i have no hope for you that ye will not pay the penalty to the king for your revolt. nay, but do as i say, and deliver yourselves over to me; and i engage, if the gods grant equal conditions, that either the enemy will not fight with us, or that fighting he shall be greatly discomfited.". . hearing this the ionians delivered themselves to dionysios; and he used to bring the ships out every day in single file, that he might practise the rowers by making the ships break through one another's line, and that he might get the fighting-men in the ships under arms; an then for the rest of the day he would keep the ships at anchor; and thus he gave the ionians work to do during the whole day. for seven days then they submitted and did that which he commanded; but on the day after these the ionians, being unaccustomed to such toils and being exhausted with hard work and hot sun, spoke to one another thus: "against which of the deities have we offended, that we thus fill up the measure of evil? for surely we have delivered ourselves to a phocaian, an impostor, who furnishes but three ships: and he has taken us into his hands and maltreats us with evil dealing from which we can never recover; and many of us in fact have fallen into sicknesses, and many others, it may be expected, will suffer the same thing shortly; and for us it is better to endure anything else in the world rather than these ills, and to undergo the slavery which will come upon us, whatever that shall be, rather than to be oppressed by that which we have now. come, let us not obey him after this any more." so they said, and forthwith after this every one refused to obey him, and they pitched their tents in the island like an army, and kept in the shade, and would not go on board their ships or practise any exercises. . perceiving this which was being done by the ionians, the commanders of the samians then at length accepted from aiakes the son of syloson those proposals which aiakes sent before at the bidding of the persians, asking them to leave the alliance of the ionians; the samians, i say, accepted these proposals, perceiving that there was great want of discipline on the part of the ionians, while at the same time it was clear to them that it was impossible to overcome the power of the king; and they well knew also that even if they should overcome the present naval force of dareios, another would be upon them five times as large. having found an occasion then, so soon as they saw that the ionians refused to be serviceable, they counted it gain for themselves to save their temples and their private property. now aiakes, from whom the samians accepted the proposals, was the son of syloson, the son of aiakes, and being despot of samos he had been deprived of his rule by aristagoras the milesian, like the other despots of ionia.. . so when the phenicians sailed to the attack, the ionians also put out their ships from shore against them, sailing in single file: and when they came near and engaged battle with one another, as regards what followed i am not able exactly to record which of the ionians showed themselves cowards or good men in this sea-fight, for they throw blame upon one another. the samians however, it is said, according to their agreement with aiakes put up their sails then and set forth from their place in the line to sail back to samos, excepting only eleven ships: of these the captains stayed in their places and took part in the sea-fight, refusing to obey the commanders of their division; and the public authority of the samians granted them on account of this to have their names written up on a pillar with their fathers' names also, as having proved themselves good men; and this pillar exists still in the market-place. then the lesbians also, when they saw that those next them in order were taking to flight, did the same things as the samians had done, and so also most of the ionians did the very same thing.. . of those which remained in their places in the sea-fight the chians suffered very severely, since they displayed brilliant deeds of valour and refused to play the coward. these furnished, as was before said, a hundred ships and in each of them forty picked men of their citizens served as fighting-men; and when they saw the greater number of their allies deserting them, they did not think fit to behave like the cowards among them, but left along with a few only of their allies they continued to fight and kept breaking through the enemy's line; until at last, after they had conquered many ships of the enemy, they lost the greater number of their own.. . the chians then with the remainder of their ships fled away to their own land; but those of the chians whose ships were disabled by the damage which they had received, being pursued fled for refuge to mycale; and their ships they ran ashore there and left them behind, while the men proceeded over the mainland on foot: and when the chians had entered the ephesian territory on their way, then since they came into it by night and at a time when a festival of thesmophoria was being celebrated by the women of the place, the ephesians, not having heard beforehand how it was with the chians and seeing that an armed body had entered their land, supposed certainly that they were robbers and had a design upon the women; so they came out to the rescue in a body and slew the chians. . such was the fortune which befell these men: but dionysios the phocaian, when he perceived that the cause of the ionians was ruined, after having taken three ships of the enemy sailed away, not to pocaia any more, for he knew well that it would be reduced to slavery together with the rest of ionia, and he sailed forthwith straight to phenicia; and having there sunk merchant ships and taken a great quantity of goods, he sailed thence to sicily. then with that for his starting-point he became a freebooter, not plundering any hellenes, but carthaginians and tyrsenians only. . the persians, then, being conquerors of the ionians in the sea-fight, besieged miletos by land and sea, undermining the walls and bringing against it all manner of engines; and they took it completely in the sixth year from the revolt of aristagoras, and reduced the people to slavery; so that the disaster agreed with the oracle which had been uttered with reference to miletos.. . for when the argives were inquiring at delphi about the safety of their city, there was given to them an oracle which applied to both, that is to say, part of it had reference to the argives themselves, while that which was added afterwards referred to the milesians. the part of it which had reference to the argives i will record when i reach that place in the history, but that which the oracle uttered with reference to the milesians, who were not there present, is as follows: "and at that time, o miletos, of evil deeds the contriver, thou shalt be made for many a glorious gift and a banquet: then shall thy wives be compelled to wash the feet of the long-haired, and in didyma then my shrine shall be tended by others." at the time of which i speak these things came upon the milesians, since most of the men were killed by the persians, who are long-haired, and the women and children were dealt with as slaves; and the temple at didyma, with the sacred building and the sanctuary of the oracle, was first plundered and then burnt. of the things in this temple i have made mention frequently in other parts of the history. . . after this the milesians who had been taken prisoner were conducted to susa; and king dareios did to them no other evil, but settled them upon the sea called erythraian, in the city of ampe, by which the tigris flows when it runs out into the sea. of the milesian land the persians themselves kept the surroundings of the city and the plain, but the heights they gave to the carians of pedasa for a possession. . when the milesians suffered this treatment from the persians, the men of sybaris, who were dwelling in laos and skidros, being deprived of their own city, did not repay like with like: for when sybaris was taken by the men of croton, the milesians all from youth upwards shaved their heads and put on great mourning: for these cities were more than all others of which we know bound together by ties of friendship. not like the sybarites were the athenians; for these made it clear that they were grieved at the capture of miletos, both in many other ways and also by this, that when phrynichos had composed a drama called the "capture of miletos" and had put it on the stage, the body of spectators fell to weeping, and the athenians moreover fined the poet a thousand drachmas on the ground that he had reminded them of their own calamities; and they ordered also that no one in future should represent this drama. . miletos then had been stripped bare of its former inhabitants: but of the samians they who had substance were by no means satisfied with that which had been concerted by the commanders of their fleet with the medes; and taking counsel forthwith after the sea-fight it seemed good to them, before their despot aiakes arrived in the country, to sail away and make a colony, and not to stay behind and be slaves of the medes and of aiakes: for just at this time the people of zancle in sicily were sending messengers to ionia and inviting the ionians to come to the "fair strand," desiring there to found a city of ionians. now this which is called the fair strand is in the land of the sikelians and on that side of sicily which lies towards tyrsenia. so when these gave the invitation, the samians alone of all the ionians set forth, having with them those of the milesians who had escaped: and in the course of this matter it happened as follows:-- . the samians as they made their way towards sicily reached locroi epizephyroi, and at the same time the people of zancle, both themselves and their king, whose name was skythes, were encamped about a city of the sikelians, desiring to conquer it. perceiving these things, anaxilaos the despot of rhegion, being then at variance with those of zancle, communicated with the samians and persuaded them that they ought to leave the fair strand alone, to which they were sailing, and take possession of zancle instead, since it was left now without men to defend it. the samians accordingly did as he said and took possession of zancle; and upon this the men of zancle, being informed that their city was possessed by an enemy, set out to rescue it, and invited hippocrates the despot of gela to help them, for he was their ally. when however hippocrates also with his army had come up to their rescue, first he put skythes the ruler of the zanclaians in fetters, on the ground that he had been the cause of the city being lost, and together with him his brother pythogenes, and sent them away to the town of incyos; then he betrayed the cause of the remaining zanclaians by coming to terms with the samians and exchanging oaths with them; and in return for this it had been promised by the samians that hippocrates should receive as his share the half of all the movable goods in the city and of the slaves, and the whole of the property in the fields round. so the greater number of the zanclaians he put in bonds and kept himself as slaves, but the chief men of them, three hundred in number, he gave to the samians to put to death; which however the samians did not do. . now skythes the ruler of the zanclaians escaped from incyos to himera, and thence he came to asia and went up to the court of dareios: and dareios accounted him the most righteous of all the men who had come up to him from hellas; for he obtained leave of the king and went away to sicily, and again came back from sicily to the king; and at last he brought his life to an end among the persians in old age and possessing great wealth. the samians then, having got rid of the rule of the medes, had gained for themselves without labour the fair city of zancle. . after the sea-battle which was fought for miletos, the phenicians by the command of the persians restored to samos aiakes the son of syloson, since he had been to them of much service and had done for them great things; and the samians alone of all who revolted from dareios, because of the desertion of their ships which were in the sea-fight, had neither their city nor their temples burnt. then after the capture of miletos the persians forthwith got possession of caria, some of the cities having submitted to their power voluntarily, while others of them they brought over by force. . thus it came to pass as regards these matters: and meanwhile histiaios the milesian, who was at byzantion and was seizing the merchant vessels of the ionians as they sailed forth out of the pontus, received the report of that which had happened about miletos. upon that he entrusted the matters which had to do with the hellespont to bisaltes the son of apollophanes, a man of abydos, while he himself with the lesbians sailed to chios; and when a body of the chians who were on guard did not allow him to approach, he fought with them at that spot in the chian land which is called the "hollows." histiaios then not only slew many of these, but also, taking polichne of the chians as his base, he conquered with the help of the lesbians the remainder of the chians as well, since they had suffered great loss by the sea-fight.. . and heaven is wont perhaps to give signs beforehand whenever great evils are about to happen to a city or a race of men; for to the chians also before these events remarkable signs had come. in the first place when they had sent to delphi a chorus of a hundred youths, two only returned home, the remaining ninety-eight of them having been seized by a plague and carried off; and then secondly in their city about the same time, that is shortly before the sea-fight, as some children were being taught in school the roof fell in upon them, so that of a hundred and twenty children only one escaped. these signs god showed to them beforehand; and after this the sea-fight came upon them and brought their state down upon its knees; and as the chians had suffered great loss, he without difficulty effected the conquest of them. . thence histiaios made an expedition against thasos, taking with him a large force of ionians and aiolians; and while he was encamped about the town of thasos, a report came to him that the phenicians were sailing up from miletos to conquer the rest of ionia. being informed of this he left thasos unconquered and himself hastened to lesbos, taking with him his whole army. then, as his army was in want of food, he crossed over from lesbos to reap the corn in atarneus and also that in the plain of the caïcos, which belonged to the mysians. in these parts there chanced to be a persian named harpagos commanding a considerable force; and this man fought a battle with him after he had landed, and he took histiaios himself prisoner and destroyed the greater part of his army.. . and histiaios was taken prisoner in the following manner:--as the hellenes were fighting with the persians at malene in the district of atarneus, after they had been engaged in close combat for a long time, the cavalry at length charged and fell upon the hellenes; and the cavalry in fact decided the battle. so when the hellenes had been turned to flight, histiaios trusting that he would not be put to death by the king on account of his present fault, conceived a love of life, so that when he was being caught in his flight by a persian and was about to be run through by him in the moment of his capture, he spoke in persian and made himself known, saying that he was histiaios the milesian.. . if then upon being taken prisoner he had been brought to king dareios, he would not, as i think, have suffered any harm, but dareios would have forgiven the crime with which he was charged; as it was, however, for this very reason and in order that he might not escape from punishment and again become powerful with the king, artaphrenes the governor of sardis and harpagos who had captured him, when he had reached sardis on his way to the king, put him to death there and then, and his body they impaled, but embalmed his head and brought it up to dareios at susa. dareios having been informed of this, found fault with those who had done so, because they had not brought him up to his presence alive; and he bade wash the head of histiaios and bestow upon it proper care, and then bury it, as that of one who had been greatly a benefactor both of the king himself and of the persians. . thus it happened about histiaios; and meanwhile the persian fleet, after wintering near miletos, when it put to sea again in the following year conquered without difficulty the islands lying near the mainland, chios, lesbos, and tenedos; and whenever they took one of the islands, the barbarians, as each was conquered, swept the inhabitants off it; and this they do in the following manner:--they extend themselves from the sea on the north to the sea on the south, each man having hold of the hand of the next, and then they pass through the whole island hunting the people out of it. they took also the ionian cities on the mainland in the same manner, except that they did not sweep off the inhabitants thus, for it was not possible.. . then the commanders of the persians proved not false to the threats with which they had threatened the ionians when these were encamped opposite to them: for in fact when they conquered the cities, they chose out the most comely of the boys and castrated them, making eunuchs of them, and the fairest of the maidens they carried off by force to the king; and not only this, but they also burnt the cities together with the temples. thus for the third time had the ionians been reduced to slavery, first by the lydians and then twice in succession by the persians. . departing from ionia the fleet proceeded to conquer all the places of the hellespont on the left as one sails in, for those on the right had been subdued already by the persians themselves, approaching them by land. now the cities of the hellespont in europe are these:--first comes the chersonese, in which there are many cities, then perinthos, the strongholds of the thracian border, selymbria, and byzantion. the people of byzantion and those of calchedon opposite did not even wait for the coming of the persian ships, but had left their own land first and departed, going within the euxine; and there they settled in the city of mesambria. so the phenicians, having burnt these places which have been mentioned, directed their course next to proconnesos and artake; and when they had delivered these also to the flames, they sailed back to the chersonese to destroy the remaining cities which they had not sacked when they touched there before: but against kyzicos they did not sail at all; for the men of kyzicos even before the time when the phenicians sailed in had submitted to the king of their own accord, and had made terms with oibares the son of megabazos, the persian governor at daskyleion. . . in the chersonese then the phenicians made themselves masters of all the other cities except the city of cardia. of these cities up to that time miltiades the son of kimon, the son of stesagoras, had been despot, miltiades the son of kypselos having obtained this government in the manner which here follows:--the inhabitants of this chersonese were dolonkian thracians; and these dolonkians, being hard pressed in war by the apsinthians, sent their kings to delphi to consult the oracle about the war. and the pythian prophetess answered them that they must bring into their land as founder of a settlement the man who should first offer them hospitality as they returned from the temple. the dolonkians then passed along the sacred road through the land of the phokians and of the boeotians, and as no man invited them, they turned aside and came to athens.. . now at that time in athens the government was held by peisistratos, but miltiades also the son of kypselos had some power, who belonged to a family which kept four-horse chariot teams, and who was descended originally from aiacos and egina, though in more recent times his family was athenian, philaios the son of ajax having been the first of his house who became an athenian. this miltiades was sitting in the entrance of his own dwelling, and seeing the dolonkians going by with dress that was not of the native athenian fashion and with spears, he shouted to them; and when they approached, he offered them lodging and hospitality. they then having accepted and having been entertained by him, proceeded to declare all the utterances of the oracle; and having declared it they asked him to do as the god had said: and miltiades when he heard it was at once disposed to agree, because he was vexed by the rule of peisistratos and desired to be removed out of the way. he set out therefore forthwith to delphi to inquire of the oracle whether he should do that which the dolonkians asked of him:. , and as the pythian prophetess also bade him do so, miltiades the son of kypselos, who had before this been victor at olympia with a four-horse chariot, now taking with him of the athenians everyone who desired to share in the expedition, sailed with the dolonkians and took possession of the land: and they who had invited him to come to them made him despot over them. first then he made a wall across the isthmus of the chersonese from the city of cardia to pactye, in order that the apsinthians might not be able to invade the land and do them damage. now the number of furlongs across the isthmus at this place is six-and-thirty, and from this isthmus the chersonese within is altogether four hundred and twenty furlongs in length.. . having made a wall then across the neck of the chersonese and having in this manner repelled the apsinthians, miltiades made war upon the people of lampsacos first of all others; and the people of lampsacos laid an ambush and took him prisoner. now miltiades had come to be a friend of croesus the lydian; and croesus accordingly, being informed of this event, sent and commanded the people of lampsacos to let miltiades go; otherwise he threatened to destroy them utterly like a pine-tree. then when the people of lampsacos were perplexed in their counsels as to what that saying should mean with which croesus had threatened them, namely that he would destroy them utterly like a pine-tree, at length one of the elder men with difficulty perceived the truth, and said that a pine alone of all trees when it has been cut down does not put forth any further growth but perishes, being utterly destroyed. the people of lampsacos therefore fearing croesus loosed miltiades and let him go.. . he then escaped by means of croesus, but afterwards he brought his life to an end leaving no son to succeed him, but passing over his rule and his possessions to stesagoras, who was the son of kimon, his brother on the mother's side: and the people of the chersonese still offer sacrifices to him after his death as it is usual to do to a founder, and hold in his honour a contest of horse-races and athletic exercises, in which none of the men of lampsacos are allowed to contend. after this there was war with those of lampsacos; and it happened to stesagoras also that he died without leaving a son, having been struck on the head with an axe in the city hall by a man who pretended to be a deserter, but who proved himself to be in fact an enemy and a rather hot one moreover.. . then after stesagoras also had ended his life in this manner, miltiades son of kimon and brother of that stesagoras who was dead, was sent in a trireme to the chersonese to take possession of the government by the sons of peisistratos, who had dealt well with him at athens also, pretending that they had had no share in the death of his father kimon, of which in another part of the history i will set forth how it came to pass. now miltiades, when he came to the chersonese, kept himself within his house, paying honours in all appearance to the memory of his brother stesagoras; and the chief men of the inhabitants of the chersonese in every place, being informed of this, gathered themselves together from all the cities and came in a body to condole with him, and when they had come they were laid in bonds by him. miltiades then was in possession of the chersonese, supporting a body of five hundred mercenary troops; and he married the daughter of oloros the king of the thracians, who was named hegesipyle. . now this miltiades son of kimon had at the time of which we speak but lately returned to the chersonese; and after he had returned, there befell him other misfortunes worse than those which had befallen him already; for two years before this he had been a fugitive out of the land from the scythians, since the nomad scythians provoked by king dareios had joined all in a body and marched as far as this chersonese, and miltiades had not awaited their attack but had become a fugitive from the chersonese, until at last the scythians departed and the dolonkians brought him back again. these things happened two years before the calamities which now oppressed him:. , and now, being informed that the phenicians were at tenedos, he filled five triremes with the property which he had at hand and sailed away for athens. and having set out from the city of cardia he was sailing through the gulf of melas; and as he passed along by the shore of the chersonese, the phenicians fell in with his ships, and while miltiades himself with four of his ships escaped to imbros, the fifth of his ships was captured in the pursuit by the phenicians. of this ship it chanced that metiochos the eldest of the sons of miltiades was in command, not born of the daughter of oloros the thracian, but of another woman. him the phenicians captured together with his ship; and being informed about him, that he was the son of miltiades, they brought him up to the king, supposing that they would lay up for themselves a great obligation; because it was miltiades who had declared as his opinion to the ionians that they should do as the scythians said, at that time when the scythians requested them to break up the bridge of boats and sail away to their own land. dareios however, when the phenicians brought up to him metiochos the son of miltiades, did metiochos no harm but on the contrary very much good; for he gave him a house and possessions and a persian wife, by whom he had children born who have been ranked as persians. miltiades meanwhile came from imbros to athens. . in the course of this year there was done by the persians nothing more which tended to strife with the ionians, but these things which follow were done in this year very much to their advantage.--artaphrenes the governor of sardis sent for envoys from all the cities and compelled the ionians to make agreements among themselves, so that they might give satisfaction for wrongs and not plunder one another's land. this he compelled them to do, and also he measured their territories by parasangs,--that is the name which the persians give to the length of thirty furlongs, --he measured, i say, by these, and appointed a certain amount of tribute for each people, which continues still unaltered from that time even to my own days, as it was appointed by artaphrenes; and the tribute was appointed to be nearly of the same amount for each as it had been before.. . these were things which tended to peace for the ionians; but at the beginning of the spring, the other commanders having all been removed by the king, mardonios the son of gobryas came down to the sea, bringing with him a very large land-army and a very large naval force, being a young man and lately married to artozostra daughter of king dareios. when mardonios leading this army came to kilikia, he embarked on board a ship himself and proceeded together with the other ships, while other leaders led the land-army to the hellespont. mardonios however sailing along the coast of asia came to ionia: and here i shall relate a thing which will be a great marvel to those of the hellenes who do not believe that to the seven men of the persians otanes declared as his opinion that the persians ought to have popular rule; for mardonios deposed all the despots of the ionians and established popular governments in the cities. having so done he hastened on to the hellespont; and when there was collected a vast number of ships and a large land-army, they crossed over the hellespont in the ships and began to make their way through europe, and their way was directed against eretria and athens.. . these, i say, furnished them the pretence for the expedition, but they had it in their minds to subdue as many as they could of the hellenic cities; and in the first place they subdued with their ships the thasians, who did not even raise a hand to defend themselves: then with the land-army they gained the macedonians to be their servants in addition to those whom they had already; for all the nations on the east of the macedonians had become subject to them already before this. crossing over then from thasos to the opposite coast, they proceeded on their way near the land as far as acanthos, and then starting from acanthos they attempted to get round mount athos; but as they sailed round, there fell upon them a violent north wind, against which they could do nothing, and handled them very roughly, casting away very many of their ships on mount athos. it is said indeed that the number of the ships destroyed was three hundred, , and more than twenty thousand men; for as this sea which is about athos is very full of sea monsters, some were seized by these and so perished, while others were dashed against the rocks; and some of them did not know how to swim and perished for that cause, others again by reason of cold.. . thus fared the fleet; and meanwhile mardonios and the land-army while encamping in macedonia were attacked in the night by the brygian thracians, and many of them were slain by the brygians and mardonios himself was wounded. however not even these escaped being enslaved by the persians, for mardonios did not depart from that region until he had made them subject. but when he had subdued these, he proceeded to lead his army back, since he had suffered great loss with his land-army in fighting against the brygians and with his fleet in going round athos. so this expedition departed back to asia having gained no honour by its contests. . in the next year after this dareios first sent a messenger to the men of thasos, who had been accused by their neighbours of planning revolt, and bade them take away the wall around their town and bring their ships to abdera. the thasians in fact, as they had been besieged by histiaios the milesian and at the same time had large revenues coming in, were using their money in building ships of war and in surrounding their city with a stronger wall. now the revenues came to them from the mainland and from the mines: from the gold-mines in scapte hyle there came in generally eighty talents a year, and from those in thasos itself a smaller amount than this but so much that in general the thasians, without taxes upon the produce of their soil, had a revenue from the mainland and from the mines amounting yearly to two hundred talents, and when the amount was highest, to three hundred.. . i myself saw these mines, and by much the most marvellous of them were those which the phenicians discovered, who made the first settlement in this island in company with thasos; and the island had the name which it now has from this thasos the phenician. these phenician mines are in that part of thasos which is between the places called ainyra and koinyra and opposite samothrake, where there is a great mountain which has been all turned up in the search for metal. thus it is with this matter: and the thasians on the command of the king both razed their walls and brought all their ships to abdera. . after this dareios began to make trial of the hellenes, what they meant to do, whether to make war with him or to deliver themselves up. he sent abroad heralds therefore, and appointed them to go some to one place and others to another throughout hellas, bidding them demand earth and water for the king. these, i say, he sent to hellas; and meanwhile he was sending abroad other heralds to his own tributary cities which lay upon the sea-coast, and he bade them have ships of war built and also vessels to carry horses.. . they then were engaged in preparing these things; and meanwhile when the heralds had come to hellas, many of those who dwelt upon the mainland gave that for which the persian made demand, and all those who dwelt in the islands did so, to whomsoever they came to make their demand. the islanders, i say, gave earth and water to dareios, and among them also those of egina, and when these had done so, the athenians went forthwith urgent against them, supposing that the eginetans had given with hostile purpose against themselves, in order to make an expedition against them in combination with the persians; and also they were glad to get hold of an occasion against them. accordingly they went backward and forwards to sparta and accused the eginetans of that which they had done, as having proved themselves traitors to hellas.. . in consequence of this accusation cleomenes the son of anaxandrides, king of the spartans, crossed over to egina meaning to seize those of the eginetans who were the most guilty; but as he was attempting to seize them, certain of the eginetans opposed him, and among them especially crios the son of polycritos, who said that he should not with impunity carry off a single eginetan, for he was doing this (said he) without authority from the spartan state, having been persuaded to it by the athenians with money; otherwise he would have come and seized them in company with the other king: and this he said by reason of a message received from demaratos. cleomenes then as he departed from egina, asked crios what was his name, and he told him the truth; and cleomenes said to him: "surely now, o ram, thou must cover over thy horns with bronze for thou wilt shortly have a great trouble to contend with." . meanwhile demaratos the son of ariston was staying behind in sparta and bringing charges against cleomenes, he also being king of the spartans but of the inferior house; which however is inferior in no other way (for it is descended from the same ancestor), but the house of eurysthenes has always been honoured more, apparently because he was the elder brother.. . for the lacedemonians, who herein agree with none of the poets, say that aristodemos the son of aristomachos, the son of cleodaios, the son of hyllos, being their king, led them himself (and not the sons of aristodemos) to this land which they now possess. then after no long time the wife of aristodemos, whose name was argeia,--she was the daughter, they say, of autesion, the son of tisamenes, the son of thersander, the son of polyneikes,--she, it is said, brought forth twins; and aristodemos lived but to see his children and then ended his life by sickness. so the lacedemonians of that time resolved according to established custom to make the elder of the children their king; but they did not know which of them they should take, because they were like one another and of equal size; and when they were not able to make out, or even before this, they inquired of their mother; and she said that even she herself did not know one from the other. she said this, although she knew in truth very well, because she desired that by some means both might be made kings. the lacedemonians then were in a strait; and being in a strait they sent to delphi to inquire what they should do in the matter. and the pythian prophetess bade them regard both children as their kings, but honour most the first in age. the prophetess, they say, thus gave answer to them; and when the lacedemonians were at a loss none the less how to find out the elder of them, a messenian whose name was panites made a suggestion to them: this panites, i say, suggested to the lacedemonians that they should watch the mother and see which of the children she washed and fed before the other; and if she was seen to do this always in the same order, then they would have all that they were seeking and desiring to find out, but if she too was uncertain and did it in a different order at different times, it would be plain to them that even she had no more knowledge than any other, and they must turn to some other way. then the spartans following the suggestion of the messenian watched the mother of the sons of aristodemos and found that she gave honour thus to the first-born both in feeding and in washing; for she did not know with that design she was being watched. they took therefore the child which was honoured by its mother and brought it up as the first-born in the public hall, and to it was given the name of eurysthenes, while the other was called procles. these, when they had grown up, both themselves were at variance, they say, with one another, though they were brothers, throughout the whole time of their lives, and their descendants also continued after the same manner. . this is the report given by the lacedemonians alone of all the hellenes; but this which follows i write in accordance with that which is reported by the hellenes generally,--i mean that the names of these kings of the dorians are rightly enumerated by the hellenes up to perseus the son of danae (leaving the god out of account), and proved to be of hellenic race; for even from that time they were reckoned as hellenes. i said "up to perseus" and did not take the descent from a yet higher point, because there is no name mentioned of a mortal father for perseus, as amphitryon is for heracles. therefore with reason, as is evident, i have said "rightly up to perseus"; but if one enumerates their ancestors in succession going back from danae the daughter of acrisios, the rulers of the dorians will prove to be egyptians by direct descent.. . thus i have traced the descent according to the account given by the hellenes; but as the story is reported which the persians tell, perseus himself was an assyrian and became a hellene, whereas the ancestors of perseus were not hellenes; and as for the ancestors of acrisios, who (according to this account) belonged not to perseus in any way by kinship, they say that these were, as the hellenes report, egyptians.. . let it suffice to have said so much about these matters; and as to the question how and by what exploits being egyptians they received the sceptres of royalty over the dorians, we will omit these things, since others have told about them; but the things with which other narrators have not dealt, of these i will make mention. . these are the royal rights which have been given by the spartans to their kings, namely, two priesthoods, of zeus lakedaimon and zeus uranios; and the right of making war against whatsoever land they please, and that no man of the spartans shall hinder this right, or if he do, he shall be subject to the curse; and that when they go on expeditions the kings shall go out first and return last; that a hundred picked men shall be their guard upon expeditions; and that they shall use in their goings forth to war as many cattle as they desire, and take both the hides and the backs of all that are sacrificed.. . these are their privileges in war; and in peace moreover things have been assigned to them as follows:--if any sacrifice is performed at the public charge, it is the privilege of the kings to sit down at the feast before all others, and that the attendants shall begin with them first, and serve to each of them a portion of everything double of that which is given to the other guests, and that they shall have the first pouring of libations and the hides of the animals slain in sacrifice; that on every new moon and seventh day of the month there shall be delivered at the public charge to each one of these a full-grown victim in the temple of apollo, and a measure of barley-groats and a laconian "quarter" of wine; and that at all the games they shall have seats of honour specially set apart for them: moreover it is their privilege to appoint as protectors of strangers whomsoever they will of the citizens, and to choose each two "pythians:" now the pythians are men sent to consult the god at delphi, and they eat with the kings at the public charge. and if the kings do not come to the dinner, it is the rule that there shall be sent out for them to their houses two quarts of barley-groats for each one and half a pint of wine; but if they are present, double shares of everything shall be given them, and moreover they shall be honoured in this same manner when they have been invited to dinner by private persons. the kings also, it is ordained, shall have charge of the oracles which are given, but the pythians also shall have knowledge of them. it is the rule moreover that the kings alone give decision on the following cases only, that is to say, about the maiden who inherits her father's property, namely who ought to have her, if her father have not betrothed her to any one, and about public ways; also if any man desires to adopt a son, he must do it in presence of the kings: and it is ordained that they shall sit in council with the senators, who are in number eight-and-twenty, and if they do not come, those of the senators who are most closely related to them shall have the privileges of the kings and give two votes besides their own, making three in all. . . these rights have been assigned to the kings for their lifetime by the spartan state; and after they are dead these which follow:--horsemen go round and announce that which has happened throughout the whole of the laconian land, and in the city women go about and strike upon a copper kettle. whenever this happens so, two free persons of each household must go into mourning, a man and a woman, and for those who fail to do this great penalties are appointed. now the custom of the lacedemonians about the deaths of their kings is the same as that of the barbarians who dwell in asia, for most of the barbarians practise the same customs as regards the death of their kings. whensoever a king of the lacedemonians is dead, then from the whole territory of lacedemon, not reckoning the spartans, a certain fixed number of the "dwellers round" are compelled to go to the funeral ceremony: . and when there have been gathered together of these and of the helots and of the spartans themselves many thousands in the same place, with their women intermingled, they beat their foreheads with a good will and make lamentation without stint, saying that this one who has died last of their kings was the best of all: and whenever any of their kings has been killed in war, they prepare an image to represent him, laid upon a couch with fair coverings, and carry it out to be buried. then after they have buried him, no assembly is held among them for ten days, nor is there any meeting for choice of magistrates, but they have mourning during these days. in another respect too these resemble the persians; that is to say, when the king is dead and another is appointed king, this king who is newly coming in sets free any man of the spartans who was a debtor to the king or to the state; while among the persians the king who comes to the throne remits to all the cities the arrears of tribute which are due. . in the following point also the lacedemonians resemble the egyptians; that is to say, their heralds and fluteplayers and cooks inherit the crafts of their fathers, and a fluteplayer is the son of a fluteplayer, a cook of a cook, and a herald of a herald; other men do not lay hands upon the office because they have loud and clear voices, and so shut them out of it, but they practise their craft by inheritance from their fathers. . thus are these things done: and at this time of which we speak, while cleomenes was in egina doing deeds which were for the common service of hellas, demaratos brought charges against him, not so much because he cared for the eginetans as because he felt envy and jealousy of him. then cleomenes, after he returned from egina, planned to depose demaratos from being king, making an attempt upon him on account of this matter which follows:--ariston being king in sparta and having married two wives, yet had no children born to him; and since he did not acknowledge that he himself was the cause of this, he married a third wife; and he married her thus:--he had a friend, a man of the spartans, to whom of all the citizens ariston was most inclined; and it chanced that this man had a wife who was of all the women in sparta the fairest by far, and one too who had become the fairest from having been the foulest. for as she was mean in her aspect, her nurse, considering that she was the daughter of wealthy persons and was of uncomely aspect, and seeing moreover that her parents were troubled by it,--perceiving i say these things, her nurse devised as follows:--every day she bore her to the temple of helen, which is in the place called therapne, lying above the temple of phoebus; and whenever the nurse bore her thither, she placed her before the image and prayed the goddess to deliver the child from her unshapeliness. and once as the nurse was going away out of the temple, it is said that a woman appeared to her, and having appeared asked her what she was bearing in her arms; and she told her that she was bearing a child; upon which the other bade her show the child to her, but she refused, for it had been forbidden to her by the parents to show it to any one: but the woman continued to urge her by all means to show it to her. so then perceiving that the woman earnestly desired to see it, the nurse showed her the child. then the woman stroking the head of the child said that she should be the fairest of all the women in sparta; and from that day her aspect was changed. afterwards when she came to the age for marriage, she was married to agetos the son of alkeides, this friend of ariston of whom we spoke.. . now ariston it seems was ever stung by the desire of this woman, and accordingly he contrived as follows:--he made an engagement himself with his comrade, whose wife this woman was, that he would give him as a gift one thing of his own possessions, whatsoever he should choose, and he bade his comrade make return to him in similar fashion. he therefore, fearing nothing for his wife, because he saw that ariston also had a wife, agreed to this; and on these terms they imposed oaths on one another. after this ariston on his part gave that which agetos had chosen from the treasures of ariston, whatever the thing was; and he himself, seeking to obtain from him the like return, endeavoured then to take away the wife of his comrade from him: and he said that he consented to give anything else except this one thing only, but at length being compelled by the oath and by the treacherous deception, he allowed her to be taken away from him.. . thus had ariston brought into his house the third wife, having dismissed the second: and this wife, not having fulfilled the ten months but in a shorter period of time, bore him that demaratos of whom we were speaking; and one of his servants reported to him as he was sitting in council with the ephors, that a son had been born to him. he then, knowing the time when he took to him his wife, and reckoning the months upon his fingers, said, denying with an oath, "the child would not be mine." this the ephors heard, but they thought it a matter of no importance at the moment; and the child grew up and ariston repented of that which he had said, for he thought demaratos was certainly his own son; and he gave him the name "demaratos" for this reason, namely because before these things took place the spartan people all in a body had made a vow praying that a son might be born to ariston, as one who was pre-eminent in renown over all the kings who had ever arisen in sparta. . for this reason the name demaratos was given to him. and as time went on ariston died, and demaratos obtained the kingdom: but it was fated apparently that these things should become known and should cause demaratos to be deposed from the kingdom; and therefore demaratos came to be at variance greatly with cleomenes both at the former time when he withdrew his army from eleusis, and also now especially, when cleomenes had crossed over to take those of the eginetans who had gone over to the medes.. . cleomenes then, being anxious to take vengeance on him, concerted matters with leotychides the son of menares, the son of agis, who was of the same house as demaratos, under condition that if he should set him up as king instead of demaratos, he would go with him against the eginetans. now leotychides had become a bitter foe of demaratos on account of this matter which follows:--leotychides had betrothed himself to percalos the daughter of chilon son of demarmenos; and demaratos plotted against him and deprived leotychides of his marriage, carrying off percalos himself beforehand, and getting her for his wife. thus had arisen the enmity of leotychides against demaratos; and now by the instigation of cleomenes leotychides deposed against demaratos, saying that he was not rightfully reigning over the spartans, not being a son of ariston: and after this deposition he prosecuted a suit against him, recalling the old saying which ariston uttered at the time when his servant reported to him that a son was born to him, and he reckoning up the months denied with an oath, saying that it was not his. taking his stand upon this utterance, leotychides proceeded to prove that demaratos was not born of ariston nor was rightfully reigning over sparta; and he produced as witnesses those ephors who chanced then to have been sitting with ariston in council and to have heard him say this.. . at last, as there was contention about those matters, the spartans resolved to ask the oracle at delphi whether demaratos was the son of ariston. the question then having been referred by the arrangement of cleomenes to the pythian prophetess, thereupon cleomenes gained over to his side cobon the son of aristophantos, who had most power among the delphians, and cobin persuaded perialla the prophetess of the oracle to say that which cleomenes desired to have said. thus the pythian prophetess, when those who were sent to consult the god asked her their question, gave decision that demaratos was not the son of ariston. afterwards however these things became known, and both cobon went into exile from delphi and perialla the prophetess of the oracle was removed from her office. . with regard to the deposing of demaratos from the kingdom it happened thus: but demaratos became an exile from sparta to the medes on account of a reproach which here follows:--after he had been deposed from the kingdom demaratos was holding a public office to which he had been elected. now it was the time of the gymnopaidiai; and as demaratos was a spectator of them, leotychides, who had now become king himself instead of demaratos, sent his attendant and asked demaratos in mockery and insult what kind of a thing it was to be a magistrate after having been king; and he vexed at the question made answer and said that he himself had now had experience of both, but leotychides had not; this question however, he said, would be the beginning either of countless evil or countless good fortune for the lacedemonians. having thus said, he veiled his head and went forth out of the theatre to his own house; and forthwith he made preparations and sacrificed an ox to zeus, and after having sacrificed he called his mother.. . then when his mother had come, he put into her hands some of the inner parts of the victim, and besought her, saying as follows: "mother, i beseech thee, appealing to the other gods and above all to this zeus the guardian of the household, to tell me the truth, who is really and truly my father. for leotychides spoke in his contention with me, saying that thou didst come to ariston with child by thy former husband; and others besides, reporting that which is doubtless an idle tale, say that thou didst go in to one of the servants, namely the keeper of the asses, and that i am his son. i therefore entreat thee by the gods to tell me the truth; for if thou hast done any of these things which are reported, thou hast not done them alone, but with many other women; and the report is commonly believed in sparta that there was not in ariston seed which should beget children; for if so, then his former wives also would have borne children.". . thus he spoke, and she made answer as follows: "my son, since thou dost beseech me with entreaties to speak the truth, the whole truth shall be told to thee. when ariston had brought me into his house, on the third night there came to me an apparition in the likeness of ariston, and having lain with me it put upon me the garlands which it had on; and the apparition straitway departed, and after this ariston came; and when he saw me with garlands, he asked who it was who had given me them; and i said that he had given them, but he did not admit it; and i began to take oath of it, saying that he did not well to deny it, for he had come (i said) a short time before and had lain with me and given me the garlands. then ariston, seeing that i made oath of it, perceived that the matter was of the gods; and first the garlands were found to be from the hero-temple which stands by the outer door of the house, which they call the temple of astrabacos, and secondly the diviners gave answer that it was this same hero. thus, my son, thou hast all, as much as thou desirest to learn; for either thou art begotten of this hero and the hero astrabacos is thy father, or ariston is thy father, for on that night i conceived thee: but as to that wherein thy foes most take hold of thee, saying that ariston himself, when thy birth was announced to him, in the hearing of many declared that thou wert not his son, because the time, the ten months namely, had not yet been fulfilled, in ignorance of such matters he cast forth that saying; for women bring forth children both at the ninth month and also at the seventh, and not all after they have completed ten months; and i bore thee, my son, at the seventh month: and ariston himself also perceived after no long time that he had uttered this saying in folly. do not thou then accept any other reports about thy begetting, for thou hast heard in all the full truth; but to leotychides and to those who report these things may their wives bear children by keepers of asses!" . thus she spoke; and he, having learnt that which he desired to learn, took supplies for travelling and set forth to go to elis, pretending that he was going to delphi to consult the oracle: but the lacedemonians, suspecting that he was attempting to escape, pursued after him; and it chanced that before they came demaratos had passed over to zakynthos from elis; and the lacedemonians crossing over after him laid hands on his person and carried away his attendants from him. afterwards however, since those of zakynthos refused to give him up, he passed over from thence to asia, to the presence of king dareios; and dareios both received him with great honour as a guest, and also gave him land and cities. thus demaratos had come to asia, and such was the fortune which he had had, having been distinguished in the estimation of the lacedemonians in many other ways both by deeds and by counsels, and especially having gained for them an olympic victory with the four-horse chariot, being the only one who achieved this of all the kings who ever arose in sparta. . demaratos being deposed, leotychides the son of menares succeeded to the kingdom; and he had born to him a son zeuxidemos, whom some of the spartans called kyniscos. this zeuxidemos did not become king of sparta, for he died before leotychides, leaving a son archidemos: and leotychides having lost zeuxidemos married a second wife eurydame, the sister of menios and daughter of diactorides, by whom he had no male issue, but a daughter lampito, whom archidemos the son of zeuxidemos took in marriage, she being given to him by leotychides.. . leotychides however did not himself live to old age in sparta, but paid a retribution for demaratos as follows:--he went as commander of the lacedemonians to invade thessaly, and when he might have reduced all to subjection, he accepted gifts of money amounting to a large sum; and being taken in the act there in the camp, as he was sitting upon a glove full of money, he was brought to trial and banished from sparta, and his house was razed to the ground. so he went into exile to tegea and ended his life there.. . these things happened later; but at this time, when cleomenes had brought to a successful issue the affair which concerned demaratos, forthwith he took with him leotychides and went against the eginetans, being very greatly enraged with them because of their insults towards him. so the eginetans on their part, since both the kings had come against them, thought fit no longer to resist; and the spartans selected ten men who were the most considerable among the eginetans both by wealth and by birth, and took them away as prisoners, and among others also crios the son of polycritos and casambos the son of aristocrates, who had the greatest power among them; and having taken these away to the land of attica, they deposited them as a charge with the athenians, who were the bitterest enemies of the eginetans. . after this cleomenes, since it had become known that he had devised evil against demaratos, was seized by fear of the spartans and retired to thessaly. thence he came to arcadia, and began to make mischief and to combine the arcadians against sparta; and besides other oaths with which he caused them to swear that they would assuredly follow him whithersoever he should lead them, he was very desirous also to bring the chiefs of the arcadians to the city of nonacris and cause them to swear by the water of styx; for near this city it is said by the arcadians that there is the water of styx, and there is in fact something of this kind: a small stream of water is seen to trickle down from a rock into a hollow ravine, and round the ravine runs a wall of rough stones. now nonacris, where it happens that this spring is situated, is a city of arcadia near pheneos.. . the lacedemonians, hearing that cleomenes was acting thus, were afraid, and proceeded to bring him back to sparta to rule on the same terms as before: but when he had come back, forthwith a disease of madness seized him (who had been even before this somewhat insane ), and whenever he met any of the spartans, he dashed his staff against the man's face. and as he continued to do this and had gone quite out of his senses, his kinsmen bound him in stocks. then being so bound, and seeing his warder left alone by the rest, he asked him for a knife; and the warder not being at first willing to give it, he threatened him with that which he would do to him afterwards if he did not; until at last the warder fearing the threats, for he was one of the helots, gave him a knife. then cleomenes, when he had received the steel, began to maltreat himself from the legs upwards: for he went on cutting his flesh lengthways from the legs to the thighs and from the thighs to the loins and flanks, until at last he came to the belly; and cutting this into strips he died in that manner. and this happened, as most of the hellenes report, because he persuaded the pythian prophetess to advise that which was done about demaratos; but as the athenians alone report, it was because when he invaded eleusis he laid waste the sacred enclosure of the goddesses; and according to the report of the argives, because from their sanctuary dedicated to argos he caused to come down those of the argives who had fled for refuge from the battle and slew them, and also set fire to the grove itself, holding it in no regard.. . for when cleomenes was consulting the oracle at delphi, the answer was given him that he should conquer argos; so he led the spartans and came to the river erasinos, which is said to flow from the stymphalian lake; for this lake, they say, running out into a viewless chasm, appears again above ground in the land of argos; and from thence onwards this water is called by the argives erasinos: having come, i say, to this river, cleomenes did sacrifice to it; and since the sacrifices were not at all favourable for him to cross over, he said that he admired the erasinos for not betraying the men of its country, but the argives should not even so escape. after this he retired back from thence and led his army down to thyrea; and having done sacrifice to the sea by slaying a bull, he brought them in ships to the land of tiryns and nauplia.. . being informed of this, the argives came to the rescue towards the sea; and when they had got near tiryns and were at the place which is called hesipeia, they encamped opposite to the lacedemonians leaving no very wide space between the armies. there the argives were not afraid of the open fighting, but only lest they should be conquered by craft; for to this they thought referred the oracle which the pythian prophetess gave in common to these and to the milesians, saying as follows: "but when the female at length shall conquer the male in the battle, conquer and drive him forth, and glory shall gain among argives, then many wives of the argives shall tear both cheeks in their mourning; so that a man shall say some time, of the men that came after, 'quelled by the spear it perished, the three-coiled terrible serpent,' the conjunction of all these things caused fear to the argives, and with a view to this they resolved to make use of the enemy's herald; and having so resolved they proceeded to do as follows:--whenever the spartan herald proclaimed anything to the lacedemonians, the argives also did that same thing.. . so cleomenes, perceiving that the argives were doing whatever the herald of the lacedemonians proclaimed, passed the word to the lacedemonians that when the herald should proclaim that they were to get breakfast, then they should take up their arms and go to attack the argives. this was carried out even so by the lacedemonians; for as the argives were getting breakfast according to the herald's proclamation, they attacked them; and many of them they slew, but many more yet took refuge in the sacred grove of argos, and upon these they kept watch, sitting round about the place. then cleomenes did this which follows:-- . he had with him deserters, and getting information by inquiring of these, he sent a herald and summoned forth those of the argives who were shut up in the sanctuary, mentioning each by name; and he summoned them forth saying that he had received their ransom. now among the peloponnesians ransom is two pounds weight of silver appointed to be paid for each prisoner. so cleomenes summoned forth about fifty of the argives one by one and slew them; and it chanced that the rest who were in the enclosure did not perceive that this was being done; for since the grove was thick, those within did not see how it fared with those who were without, at least until one of them climbed up a tree and saw from above that which was being done. accordingly they then no longer came forth when they were called. . so cleomenes thereupon ordered all the helots to pile up brushwood round the sacred grove; and they obeying, he set fire to the grove. and when it was now burning, he asked one of the deserters to what god the grove was sacred, and the man replied that it was sacred to argos. when he heard that, he groaned aloud and said, "apollo who utterest oracles, surely thou hast greatly deceived me, saying that i should conquer argos: i conjecture that the oracle has had its fulfilment for me already.". . after this cleomenes sent away the greater part of his army to go back to sparta, but he himself took a thousand of the best men and went to the temple of hera to sacrifice: and when he wished to sacrifice upon the altar, the priest forbade him, saying that it was not permitted by religious rule for a stranger to sacrifice in that place. cleomenes however bade the helots take away the priest from the altar and scourge him, and he himself offered the sacrifice. having so done he returned back to sparta;. , and after his return his opponents brought him up before the ephors, saying that he had received gifts and therefore had not conquered argos, when he might easily have conquered it. he said to them,--but whether he was speaking falsely or whether truly i am not able with certainty to say,--however that may be, he spoke and said that when he had conquered the sanctuary of argos, it seemed to him that the oracle of the god had had its fulfilment for him; therefore he did not think it right to make an attempt on the city, at least until he should have had recourse to sacrifice, and should have learnt whether the deity permitted him or whether she stood opposed to him: and as he was sacrificing for augury in the temple of hera, a flame of fire blazed forth from the breasts of the image; and thus he knew the certainty of the matter, namely that he would not conquer argos: for if fire had blazed forth from the head of the image, he would have been conqueror of the city from top to bottom, but since it blazed from the breasts, everything had been accomplished for him which the god desired should come to pass. thus speaking he seemed to the spartans to speak credibly and reasonably, and he easily escaped his pursuers. . argos however was so bereft of men that their slaves took possession of all the state, ruling and managing it until the sons of those who had perished grew to be men. then these, endeavouring to gain argos back to themselves, cast them out; and the slaves being driven forth gained possession of tiryns by fighting. now for a time these two parties had friendly relations with one another; but afterwards there came to the slaves a prophet named cleander, by race a phigalian from arcadia: this man persuaded the slaves to attack their masters, and in consequence of this there was war between them for a long time, until at last with difficulty the argives overcame them. . the argives then say that this was the reason why cleomenes went mad and had an evil end: but the spartans themselves say that cleomenes was not driven mad by any divine power, but that he had become a drinker of unmixed wine from having associated with scythians, and that he went mad in consequence of this: for the nomad scythians, they say, when dareios had made invasion of their land, desired eagerly after this to take vengeance upon him; and they sent to sparta and tried to make an alliance, and to arrange that while the scythians themselves attempted an invasion of media by the way of the river phasis, the spartans should set forth from ephesos and go up inland, and then that they should meet in one place: and they say that cleomenes when the scythians had come for this purpose, associated with them largely, and that thus associating more than was fit, he learnt the practice of drinking wine unmixed with water; and for this cause (as the spartans think) he went mad. thenceforth, as they say themselves, when they desire to drink stronger wine, they say "fill up in scythian fashion." thus the spartans report about cleomenes; but to me it seems that this was a retribution which cleomenes paid for demaratos. . now when the eginetans heard that cleomenes had met his end, they sent messengers to sparta to denounce leotychides for the matter of the hostages which were being kept at athens: and the lacedemonians caused a court to assemble and judged that the eginetans had been dealt with outrageously by leotychides; and they condemned him to be taken to egina and delivered up in place of the men who were being kept at athens. then when the eginetans were about to take leotychides, theasides the son of leoprepes, a man of repute in sparta, said to them: "what are ye proposing to do, men of egina? do ye mean to take away the king of the spartans, thus delivered up to you by his fellow-citizens? if the spartans now being in anger have decided so, beware lest at some future time, if ye do this, they bring an evil upon your land which may destroy it." hearing this the eginetans abstained from taking him; but they came to an agreement that leotychides should accompany them to athens and restore the men to the eginetans. . when however leotychides came to athens and asked for the deposit back, the athenians, not being willing to give up the hostages, produced pretexts for refusing, and alleged that two kings had deposited them and they did not think it right to give them back to the one without the other: so since the athenians said that they would not give them back, leotychides spoke to them as follows: (a) "athenians, do whichever thing ye yourselves desire; for ye know that if ye give them up, ye do that which religion commands, and if ye refuse to give them up, ye do the opposite of this: but i desire to tell you what kind of a thing came to pass once in sparta about a deposit. we spartans report that there was in lacedemon about two generations before my time on glaucos the son of epikydes. this man we say attained the highest merit in all things besides, and especially he was well reported of by all who at that time dwelt in lacedemon for his uprightness: and we relate that in due time it happened to him thus:--a man of miletos came to sparta and desired to have speech with him, alleging the reasons which follow: 'i am a milesian,' he said, 'and i am come hither desiring to have benefit from thy uprightness, glaucos; for as there was much report of thy uprightness throughout all the rest of hellas and also in ionia, i considered with myself that ionia is ever in danger, whereas peloponnesus is safely established, and also that we never see wealth continue in the possession of the same persons long;--reflecting, i say, on these things and taking counsel with myself, i resolved to turn into money the half of my possessions, and to place it with thee, being well assured that if it were placed with thee i should have it safe. do thou therefore, i pray thee, receive the money, and take and keep these tallies; and whosoever shall ask for the money back having the tokens answering to these, to him do thou restore it.' (b) the stranger who had come from miletos said so much; and glaucos accepted the deposit on the terms proposed. then after a long time had gone by, there came to sparta the sons of him who had deposited the money with glaucos; and they came to speech with glaucos, and producing the tokens asked for the money to be given back: but he repulsed them answering them again thus: 'i do not remember the matter, nor does my mind bring back to me any knowledge of those things whereof ye speak; but i desire to recollect and do all that is just; for if i received it, i desire to restore it honestly; and if on the other hand i did not receive it at all, i will act towards you in accordance with the customs of the hellenes: therefore i defer the settling of the matter with you for three months from now.' (c) the milesians accordingly went away grieved, for they supposed that they had been robbed of the money; but glaucos set forth to delphi to consult the oracle: and when he inquired of the oracle whether he should rob them of the money by an oath, the pythian prophetess rebuked him with these lines: "'glaucos, thou, epikydes' son, yea, this for the moment, this, to conquer their word by an oath and to rob, is more gainful. swear, since the lot of death waits also for him who swears truly. but know thou that oath has a son, one nameless and handless and footless, yet without feet he pursues, without hands he seizes, and wholly he shall destroy the race and the house of the man who offendeth. but for the man who swears truly his race is the better hereafter.' having heard this glaucos entreated that the god would pardon him for that which he had said, but the prophetess said that to make trial of the god and to do the deed were things equivalent. (d) glaucos then, having sent for the milesians, gave back to them the money: but the reason for which, o athenians, i set forth to relate to you this story, shall now be told. at the present time there is no descendant of glaucos existing, nor any hearth which is esteemed to be that of glaucos, but he has been utterly destroyed and rooted up out of sparta. thus it is good not even to entertain a thought about a deposit other than that of restoring it, when they who made it ask for it again." . when leotychides had thus spoken, since not even so were the athenians willing to listen to him, he departed back; and the eginetans, before paying the penalty for their former wrongs wherein they did outrage to the athenians to please the thebans, acted as follows:--complaining of the conduct of the athenians and thinking that they were being wronged, they made preparations to avenge themselves upon the athenians; and since the athenians were celebrating a four-yearly festival at sunion, they lay in wait for the sacred ship which was sent to it and took it, the vessel being full of men who were the first among the athenians; and having taken it they laid the men in bonds.. . the athenians after they had suffered this wrong from the eginetans no longer delayed to contrive all things possible to their hurt. and there was in egina a man of repute, one nicodromos the son of cnithos: this man had cause of complaint against the eginetans for having before this driven him forth out of the island; and hearing now that the athenians had resolved to do mischief to the eginetans, he agreed with the athenians to deliver up egina to them, telling them on what day he would make his attempt and by what day it would be necessary for them to come to his assistance.. . after this nicodromos, according as he had agreed with the athenians, seized that which is called the old city, but the athenians did not come to his support at the proper time; for, as it chanced, they had not ships sufficient to fight with the eginetans; so while they were asking the corinthians to lend them ships, during this time their cause went to ruin. the corinthians however, being at this time exceedingly friendly with them, gave the athenians twenty ships at their request; and these they gave by selling them at five drachmas apiece, for by the law it was not permitted to give them as a free gift. having taken these ships of which i speak and also their own, the athenians with seventy ships manned in all sailed to egina, and they were later by one day than the time agreed.. . nicodromos meanwhile, as the athenians did not come to his support at the proper time, embarked in a ship and escaped from egina, and with him also went others of the eginetans; and the athenians gave them sunion to dwell in, starting from whence these men continued to plunder the eginetans who were in the island.. . this happened afterwards: but at the time of which we speak the well-to-do class among the eginetans prevailed over the men of the people, who had risen against them in combination with nicodromos, and then having got them into their power they were bringing their prisoners forth to execution. from this there came upon them a curse which they were not able to expiate by sacrifice, though they devised against it all they could; but they were driven forth from the island before the goddess became propitious to them. for they had taken as prisoners seven hundred of the men of the people and were bringing them forth to execution, when one of them escaped from his bonds and fled for refuge to the entrance of the temple of demeter the giver of laws, and he took hold of the latch of the door and clung to it; and when they found that they could not drag him from it by pulling him away, they cut off his hands and so carried him off, and those hands remained clinging to the latch of the door.. . thus did the eginetans to one another: and when the athenians came, they fought against them with seventy ships, and being worsted in the sea-fight they called to their assistance the same whom they had summoned before, namely the argives. these would no longer come to their help, having cause of complaint because the ships of egina compelled by cleomenes had put in to the land of argos and their crews had landed with the lacedemonians; with whom also had landed men from ships of sikyon in this same invasion: and as a penalty for this there was laid upon them by the argives a fine of a thousand talents, five hundred for each state. the sikyonians accordingly, acknowledging that they had committed a wrong, had made an agreement to pay a hundred talents and be free from the penalty; the eginetans however did not acknowledge their wrong, but were more stubborn. for this reason then, when they made request, none of the argives now came to their help at the charge of the state, but volunteers came to the number of a thousand; and their leader was a commander named eurybates, a man who had practised the five contests. of these men the greater number never returned back, but were slain by the athenians in egina; and the commander himself, eurybates, fighting in single combat killed in this manner three men and was himself slain by the fourth, sophanes namely of dekeleia. . the eginetans however engaged in contest with the athenians in ships, when these were in disorder, and defeated them; and they took of them four ships together with their crews. . so the athenians were at war with the eginetans; and meanwhile the persian was carrying forward his design, since he was put in mind ever by his servant to remember the athenians, and also because of the sons of peisistratos were near at hand and brought charges continually against the athenians, while at the same time dareios himself wished to take hold of this pretext and subdue those nations of hellas which had not given him earth and water. mardonios then, since he had fared miserably in his expedition, he removed from his command; and appointing other generals to command he despatched them against eretria and athens, namely datis, who was a mede by race, and artaphrenes the son of artaphrenes, a nephew of the king: and he sent them forth with the charge to reduce athens and eretria to slavery and to bring the slaves back into his presence.. . when these who had been appointed to command came in their march from the king to the aleïan plain in kilikia, taking with them a large and well-equipped land-army, then while they were encamping there, the whole naval armament came up, which had been appointed for several nations to furnish; and there came to them also the ships for carrying horses, which in the year before dareios had ordered his tributaries to make ready. in these they placed their horses, and having embarked the land-army in the ships they sailed for ionia with six hundred triremes. after this they did not keep their ships coasting along the mainland towards the hellespont and thrace, but they started from samos and made their voyage by the icarian sea and between the islands; because, as i think, they feared more than all else the voyage round athos, seeing that in the former year while making the passage by this way they had come to great disaster. moreover also naxos compelled them, since it had not been conquered at the former time. . . and when they had arrived at naxos, coming against it from the icarian sea (for it was against naxos first that the persians intended to make expedition, remembering the former events), the naxians departed forthwith fleeing to the mountains, and did not await their attack; but the persians made slaves of those of them whom they caught and set fire to both the temples and the town. having so done they put out to sea to attack the other islands. . while these were doing thus, the delians also had left delos and fled away to tenos; and when the armament was sailing in thither, datis sailed on before and did not allow the ships to anchor at the island of delos, but at rhenaia on the other side of the channel; and he himself, having found out by inquiry where the men of delos were, sent a herald and addressed them thus: "holy men, why are ye fled away and departed, having judged of me that which is not convenient? for even i of myself have wisdom at least so far, and moreover it has been thus commanded me by the king, not to harm at all that land in which the two divinities were born, neither the land itself nor the inhabitants of it. now therefore return to your own possessions and dwell in your island." thus he proclaimed by a herald to the delians; and after this he piled up and burned upon the altar three hundred talents' weight of frankincense. . datis having done these things sailed away with his army to fight against eretria first, taking with him both ionians and aiolians; and after he had put out to sea from thence, delos was moved, not having been shaken (as the delians reported to me) either before that time or since that down to my own time; and this no doubt the god manifested as a portent to men of the evils that were about to be; for in the time of dareios the son of hystaspes and xerxes the son of dareios and artoxerxes the son of xerxes, three generations following upon one another, there happened more evils to hellas than during the twenty other generations which came before dareios, some of the evils coming to it from the persians, and others from the leaders themselves of hellas warring together for supremacy. thus it was not unreasonable that delos should be moved, which was before unmoved. [and in an oracle it was thus written about it: "delos too will i move, unmoved though it hath been aforetime."] now in the hellenic tongue the names which have been mentioned have this meaning--dareios means "compeller," xerxes "warrior," artoxerxes "great warrior." thus then might the hellenes rightly call these kings in their own tongue. . the barbarians then, when they had departed from delos, touched at the islands as they went, and from them received additional forces and took sons of the islanders as hostages: and when in sailing round about the islands they put in also to carystos, seeing that the carystians would neither give them hostages nor consent to join in an expedition against cities that were their neighbours, meaning eretria and athens, they began to besiege them and to ravage their land; until at last the carystians also came over to the will of the persians.. . the eretrians meanwhile being informed that the armament of the persians was sailing to attack them, requested the athenians to help them; and the athenians did not refuse their support, but gave as helpers those four thousand to whom had been allotted the land of the wealthy chalkidians. the eretrians however, as it turned out, had no sound plan of action, for while they sent for the athenians, they had in their minds two different designs: some of them, that is, proposed to leave the city and go to the heights of euboea; while others of them, expecting to win gain for themselves from the persian, were preparing to surrender the place. having got knowledge of how things were as regards both these plans, aischines the son of nothon, one of the leaders of the eretrians, told the whole condition of their affairs to those of the athenians who had come, and entreated them to depart and go to their own land, that they might not also perish. so the athenians did according to this counsel given to them by aischines.. . and while these passed over to oropos and saved themselves, the persians sailed on and brought their ships to land about temenos and chioreai and aigilea in the eretrian territory; and having taken possession of these places, forthwith they began to disembark their horses and prepared to advance against the enemy. the eretrians however did not intend to come forth against them and fight; but their endeavour was if possible to hold out by defending their walls, since the counsel prevailed not to leave the city. then a violent assault was made upon the wall, and for six days there fell many on both sides; but on the seventh day euphorbos the son of alkimachos and philagros the son of kyneos, men of repute among the citizens, gave up the city to the persians. these having entered the city plundered and set fire to the temples in retribution for the temples which were burned at sardis, and also reduced the people to slavery according to the commands of dareios. . having got eretria into their power, they stayed a few days and then sailed for the land of attica, pressing on hard and supposing that the athenians would do the same as the eretrians had done. and since marathon was the most convenient place in attica for horsemen to act and was also very near to eretria, therefore hippias the son of peisistratos was guiding them thither.. . when the athenians had information of this, they too went to marathon to the rescue of their land; and they were led by ten generals, of whom the tenth was miltiades, whose father kimon of stesagoras had been compelled to go into exile from athens because of peisistratos the son of hippocrates: and while he was in exile it was his fortune to win a victory at the olympic games with a four-horse chariot, wherein, as it happened, he did the same thing as his half-brother miltiades had done, who had the same mother as he. then afterwards in the next succeeding olympic games he gained a victory with the same mares and allowed peisistratos to be proclaimed as victor; and having resigned to him the victory he returned to his own native land under an agreement for peace. then after he had won with the same mares at another olympic festival, it was his hap to be slain by the sons of peisistratos, peisistratos himself being no longer alive. these killed him near the city hall, having set men to lie in wait for him by night; and the burial-place of kimon is in the outskirts of the city, on the other side of the road which is called the way through coile, and just opposite him those mares are buried which won in three olympic games. this same thing was done also by the mares belonging to euagoras the laconian, but besides these by none others. now the elder of the sons of kimon, stesagoras, was at that time being brought up in the house of his father's brother miltiades in the chersonese, while the younger son was being brought up at athens with kimon himself, having been named miltiades after miltiades the settler of the chersonese.. . this miltiades then at the time of which we speak had come from the chersonese and was a general of the athenians, after escaping death in two forms; for not only did the phenicians, who had pursued after him as far as imbros, endeavour earnestly to take him and bring him up to the presence of the king, but also after this, when he had escaped from these and had come to his own native land and seemed to be in safety from that time forth, his opponents, who had laid wait for him there, brought him up before a court and prosecuted him for his despotism in the chersonese. having escaped these also, he had then been appointed a general of the athenians, being elected by the people. . first of all, while they were still in the city, the generals sent off to sparta a herald, namely pheidippides an athenian and for the rest a runner of long day-courses and one who practised this as his profession. with this man, as pheidippides himself said and as he made report to the athenians, pan chanced to meet by mount parthenion, which is above tegea; and calling aloud the name of pheidippides, pan bade him report to the athenians and ask for what reason they had no care of him, though he was well disposed to the athenians and had been serviceable to them on many occasions before that time, and would be so also yet again. believing that this tale was true, the athenians, when their affairs had been now prosperously settled, established under the acropolis a temple of pan; and in consequence of this message they propitiate him with sacrifice offered every year and with a torch-race.. . however at that time, the time namely when he said that pan appeared to him, this pheidippides having been sent by the generals was in sparta on the next day after that on which he left the city of the athenians; and when he had come to the magistrates he said: "lacedemonians, the athenians make request of you to come to their help and not to allow a city most anciently established among the hellenes to fall into slavery by the means of barbarians; for even now eretria has been enslaved, and hellas has become the weaker by a city of renown." he, as i say, reported to them that with which he had been charged, and it pleased them well to come to help the athenians; but it was impossible for them to do so at once, since they did not desire to break their law; for it was the ninth day of the month, and on the ninth day they said they would not go forth, nor until the circle of the moon should be full. . these men were waiting for the full moon: and meanwhile hippias the son of peisistratos was guiding the barbarians in to marathon, after having seen on the night that was just past a vision in his sleep of this kind,--it seemed to hippias that he lay with his own mother. he conjectured then from the dream that he should return to athens and recover his rule, and then bring his life to an end in old age in his own land. from the dream, i say, he conjectured this; and after this, as he guided them in, first he disembarked the slaves from eretria on the island belonging to the styrians, called aigleia; and then, as the ships came in to shore at marathon, he moored them there, and after the barbarians had come from their ships to land, he was engaged in disposing them in their places. while he was ordering these things, it came upon him to sneeze and cough more violently than was his wont. then since he was advanced in years, most of his teeth were shaken thereby, and one of these teeth he cast forth by the violence of the cough: and the tooth having fallen from him upon the sand, he was very desirous to find it; since however the tooth was not to be found when he searched, he groaned aloud and said to those who were by him: "this land is not ours, nor shall we be able to make it subject to us; but so much part in it as belonged to me the tooth possesses." . hippias then conjectured that his vision had been thus fulfilled: and meanwhile, after the athenians had been drawn up in the sacred enclosure of heracles, there joined them the plataians coming to their help in a body: for the plataians had given themselves to the athenians, and the athenians before this time undertook many toils on behalf of them; and this was the manner in which they gave themselves:--being oppressed by the thebans, the plataians at first desired to give themselves to cleomenes the son of anaxandrides and to the lacedemonians, who chanced to come thither; but these did not accept them, and said to them as follows: "we dwell too far off, and such support as ours would be to you but cold comfort; for ye might many times be reduced to slavery before any of us had information of it: but we counsel you rather to give yourselves to the athenians, who are both neighbours and also not bad helpers." thus the lacedemonians counselled, not so much on account of their goodwill to the plataians as because they desired that the athenians should have trouble by being involved in a conflict with the boetians. the lacedemonians, i say, thus counselled the men of plataia; and they did not fail to follow their counsel, but when the athenians were doing sacrifice to the twelve gods, they sat down as suppliants at the altar and so gave themselves. then the thebans having been informed of these things marched against the plataians, and the athenians came to their assistance: and as they were about to join battle, the corinthians did not permit them to do so, but being by chance there, they reconciled their strife; and both parties having put the matter into their hands, they laid down boundaries for the land, with the condition that the thebans should leave those of the boeotians alone who did not desire to be reckoned with the other boeotians. the corinthians having given this decision departed; but as the athenians were going back, the boeotians attacked them, and having attacked them they were worsted in the fight. upon that the athenians passed beyond the boundaries which the corinthians had set to be for the plataians, and they made the river asopos itself to be the boundary of the thebans towards the land of plataia and towards the district of hysiai. the plataians then had given themselves to the athenians in the manner which has been said, and at this time they came to marathon to bring them help. . now the opinions of the generals of the athenians were divided, and the one party urged that they should not fight a battle, seeing that they were too few to fight with the army of the medes, while the others, and among them miltiades, advised that they should do so: and when they were divided and the worse opinion was like to prevail, then, since he who had been chosen by lot to be polemarch of the athenians had a vote in addition to the ten (for in old times the athenians gave the polemarch an equal vote with the generals) and at that time the polemarch was callimachos of the deme of aphidnai, to him came miltiades and said as follows: "with thee now it rests, callimachos, either to bring athens under slavery, or by making her free to leave behind thee for all the time that men shall live a memorial such as not even harmodios and aristogeiton have left. for now the athenians have come to a danger the greatest to which they have ever come since they were a people; and on the one hand, if they submit to the medes, it is determined what they shall suffer, being delivered over to hippias, while on the other hand, if this city shall gain the victory, it may become the first of the cities of hellas. how this may happen and how it comes to thee of all men to have the decision of these matters, i am now about to tell. of us the generals, who are ten in number, the opinions are divided, the one party urging that we fight a battle and the others that we do not fight. now if we do not, i expect that some great spirit of discord will fall upon the minds of the athenians and so shake them that they shall go over to the medes; but if we fight a battle before any unsoundness appear in any part of the athenian people, then we are able to gain the victory in the fight, if the gods grant equal conditions. these things then all belong to thee and depend on thee; for if thou attach thyself to my opinions, thou hast both a fatherland which is free and a native city which shall be the first among the cities of hellas; but if thou choose the opinion of those who are earnest against fighting, thou shalt have the opposite of those good things of which i told thee.". . thus speaking miltiades gained callimachos to his side; and the opinion of the polemarch being added, it was thus determined to fight a battle. after this, those generals whose opinion was in favour of fighting, as the turn of each one of them to command for the day came round, gave over their command to miltiades; and he, accepting it, would not however yet bring about a battle, until his own turn to command had come.. . and when it came round to him, then the athenians were drawn up for battle in the order which here follows:--on the right wing the polemarch callimachos was leader (for the custom of the athenians then was this, that the polemarch should have the right wing); and he leading, next after him came the tribes in order as they were numbered one after another, and last were drawn up the plataians occupying the left wing: for ever since this battle, when the athenians offer sacrifices in the solemn assemblies which are made at the four-yearly festivals, the herald of the athenians prays thus, "that blessings may come to the athenians and to the plataians both." on this occasion however, when the athenians were being drawn up at marathon something of this kind was done:--their army being made equal in length of front to that of the medes, came to drawn up in the middle with a depth of but few ranks, and here their army was weakest, while each wing was strengthened with numbers.. . and when they had been arranged in their places and the sacrifices proved favourable, then the athenians were let go, and they set forth at a run to attack the barbarians. now the space between the armies was not less than eight furlongs: and the persians seeing them advancing to the attack at a run, made preparations to receive them; and in their minds they charged the athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers. such was the thought of the barbarians; but the athenians when all in a body they had joined in combat with the barbarians, fought in a memorable fashion: for they were the first of all the hellenes about whom we know who went to attack the enemy at a run, and they were the first also who endured to face the median garments and the men who wore them, whereas up to this time the very name of the medes was to the hellenes a terror to hear.. . now while they fought in marathon, much time passed by; and in the centre of the army, where the persians themselves and the sacans were drawn up, the barbarians were winning,--here, i say, the barbarians had broken the ranks of their opponents and were pursuing them inland, but on both wings the athenians and the plataians severally were winning the victory; and being victorious they left that part of the barbarians which had been routed to fly without molestation, and bringing together the two wings they fought with those who had broken their centre, and the athenians were victorious. so they followed after the persians as they fled, slaughtering them, until they came to the sea; and then they called for fire and began to take hold of the ships.. . in this part of the work was slain the polemarch callimachos after having proved himself a good man, and also one of the generals, stesilaos the son of thrasylaos, was killed; and besides this kynegeiros the son of euphorion while taking hold there of the ornament at the stern of a ship had his hand cut off with an axe and fell; and many others also of the athenians who were men of note were killed.. . seven of the ships the athenians got possession of in this manner, but with the rest the barbarians pushed off from land, and after taking the captives from eretria off the island where they had left them, they sailed round sunion, purposing to arrive at the city before the athenians. and an accusation became current among the athenians to the effect that they formed this design by contrivance of the alcmaionidai; for these, it was said, having concerted matters with the persians, displayed to them a shield when they had now embarked in their ships.. . these then, i say, were sailing round sunion; and meanwhile the athenians came to the rescue back to the city as speedily as they could, and they arrived there before the barbarians came; and having arrived from the temple of heracles at marathon they encamped at another temple of heracles, namely that which is in kynosarges. the barbarians however came and lay with their ships in the sea which is off phaleron, (for this was then the seaport of the athenians), they anchored their ships, i say, off this place, and then proceeded to sail back to asia. . in this fight at marathon there were slain of the barbarians about six thousand four hundred men, and of the athenians a hundred and ninety and two. such was the number which fell on both sides; and it happened also that a marvel occurred there of this kind:--an athenian, epizelos the son of cuphagoras, while fighting in the close combat and proving himself a good man, was deprived of the sight of his eyes, neither having received a blow in any part of his body nor having been hit with a missile, and for the rest of his life from this time he continued to be blind: and i was informed that he used to tell about that which had happened to him a tale of this kind, namely that it seemed to him that a tall man in full armour stood against him, whose beard overshadowed his whole shield; and this apparition passed him by, but killed his comrade who stood next to him. thus, as i was informed, epizelos told the tale. . datis, however, as he was going with his army to asia, when he had come to myconos saw a vision in his sleep; and of what nature the vision was it is not reported, but as soon as day dawned he caused a search to be made of the ships, and finding in a phenician ship an image of apollo overlaid with gold, he inquired from whence it had been carried off. then having been informed from what temple it came, he sailed in his own ship to delos: and finding that the delians had returned then to the island, he deposited the image in the temple and charged the men of delos to convey it back to delion in the territory of the thebans, which is situated by the sea-coast just opposite chalkis. datis having given this charge sailed away: the delians however did not convey the statue back, but after an interval of twenty years the thebans themselves brought it to delion by reason of an oracle.. . now as to those eretrians who had been reduced to slavery, datis and artaphrenes, when they reached asia in their voyage, brought them up to susa; and king dareios, though he had great anger against the eretrians before they were made captive, because the eretrians had done wrong to him unprovoked, yet when he saw that they had been brought up to him and were in his power, he did them no more evil, but established them as settlers in the kissian land upon one of his own domains, of which the name is ardericca: and this is distant two hundred and ten furlongs from susa and forty from the well which produces things of three different kinds; for they draw from it asphalt, salt and oil, in the manner which here follows:--the liquid is drawn with a swipe, to which there is fastened half a skin instead of a bucket, and a man strikes this down into it and draws up, and then pours it into a cistern, from which it runs through into another vessel, taking three separate ways. the asphalt and the salt become solid at once, and the oil which is called by the persians rhadinake, is black and gives out a disagreeable smell. here king dareios established the eretrians as settlers; and even to my time they continued to occupy this land, keeping still their former language. thus it happened with regard to the eretrians. . of the lacedemonians there came to athens two thousand after the full moon, making great haste to be in time, so that they arrived in attica on the third day after leaving sparta: and though they had come too late for the battle, yet they desired to behold the medes; and accordingly they went out to marathon and looked at the bodies of the slain: then afterwards they departed home, commending the athenians and the work which they had done. . now it is a cause of wonder to me, and i do not accept the report, that the alcmaionidai could ever have displayed to the persians a shield by a previous understanding, with the desire that the athenians should be under the barbarians and under hippias; seeing that they are evidently proved to have been haters of despots as much or more than callias the son of phainippos and father of hipponicos, while callias for his part was the only man of all the athenians who dared, when peisistratos was driven out of athens, to buy his goods offered for sale by the state, and in other ways also he contrived against him everything that was most hostile: . of this callias it is fitting that every one should have remembrance for many reasons: first because of that which has been before said, namely that he was a man of excellence in freeing his country; and then also for that which he did at the olympic games, wherein he gained a victory in the horse-race and was second in the chariot-race, and he had before this been a victor at the pythian games, so that he was distinguished in the sight of all hellenes by the sums which he expended; and finally because he showed himself a man of such liberality towards his daughters, who were three in number; for when they came to be of ripe age for marriage, he gave them a most magnificent dowry and also indulged their inclinations; for whomsoever of all the athenians each one of them desired to choose as a husband for herself, to that man he gave her.] . , and similarly, the alcmaionidai were haters of despots equally or more than he. therefore this is a cause of wonder to me, and i do not admit the accusation that these they were who displayed the shield; seeing that they were in exile from the despots during their whole time, and that by their contrivance the sons of peisistratos gave up their rule. thus it follows that they were the men who set athens free much more than harmodios and aristogeiton, as i judge: for these my slaying hipparchos exasperated the rest of the family of peisistratos, and did not at all cause the others to cease from their despotism; but the alcmaionidai did evidently set athens free, at least if these were in truth the men who persuaded the pythian prophetess to signify to the lacedemonians that they should set athens free, as i have set forth before.. . it may be said however that they had some cause of complaint against the people of the athenians, and therefore endeavoured to betray their native city. but on the contrary there were no men in greater repute than they, among the athenians at least, nor who had been more highly honoured. thus it is not reasonable to suppose that by them a shield should have been displayed for any such purpose. a shield was displayed, however; that cannot be denied, for it was done: but as to who it was who displayed it, i am not able to say more than this. . now the family of alcmaionidai was distinguished in athens in the earliest times also, and from the time of alcmaion and of megacles after him they became very greatly distinguished. for first alcmaion the son of megacles showed himself a helper of the lydians from sardis who came from croesus to the oracle at delphi, and assisted them with zeal; and croesus having heard from the lydians who went to the oracle that this man did him service, sent for him to sardis; and when he came, he offered to give him a gift of as much gold as he could carry away at once upon his own person. with a view to this gift, its nature being such, alcmaion made preparations and used appliances as follows:--he put on a large tunic leaving a deep fold in the tunic to hang down in front, and he draw on his feet the widest boots which he could find, and so went to the treasury to which they conducted him. then he fell upon a heap of gold-dust, and first he packed in by the side of his legs so much of the gold as his boots would contain, and then he filled the whole fold of the tunic with the gold and sprinkled some of the gold dust on the hair of his head and took some into his mouth, and having so done he came forth out of the treasury, with difficulty dragging along his boots and resembling anything in the world rather than a man; for his mouth was stuffed full, and every part of him was swelled out: and upon croesus came laughter when he saw him, and he not only gave him all that, but also presented him in addition with more not inferior in value to that. thus this house became exceedingly wealthy, and thus the alcmaion of whom i speak became a breeder of chariot-horses and won a victory at olympia.. . then in the next generation after this, cleisthenes the despot of sikyon exalted the family, so that it became of much more note among the hellenes than it had been formerly. for cleisthenes the son of arisonymos, the son of myron, the son of andreas, had a daughter whose name was agariste; and as to her he formed a desire to find out the best man of all the hellenes and to assign her to him in marriage. so when the olympic games were being held and cleisthenes was victor in them with a four-horse chariot, he caused a proclamation to be made, that whosoever of the hellenes thought himself worthy to be the son-in-law of cleisthenes should come on the sixtieth day, or before that if he would, to sikyon; for cleisthenes intended to conclude the marriage within a year, reckoning from the sixtieth day. then all those of the hellenes who had pride either in themselves or in their high descent, came as wooers, and for them cleisthenes had a running-course and a wrestling-place made and kept them expressly for their use.. . from italy came smindyrides the son of hippocrates of sybaris, who of all men on earth reached the highest point of luxury (now sybaris at this time was in the height of its prosperity), and damasos of siris, the son of that amyris who was called the wise; these came from italy: from the ionian gulf came amphimnestos the son of epistrophos of epidamnos, this man from the ionian gulf: from aitolia came males, the brother of that titormos who surpassed all the hellenes in strength and who fled from the presence of men to the furthest extremities of the aitolian land: from peloponnesus, leokedes the son of pheidon the despot of the argives, that pheidon who established for the peloponnesians the measures which they use, and who went beyond all other hellenes in wanton insolence, since he removed from their place the presidents of the games appointed by the eleians and himself presided over the games at olympia,--his son, i say, and amiantos the son of lycurgos an arcadian from trapezus, and laphanes an azanian from the city of paios, son of that euphorion who (according to the story told in arcadia) received the dioscuroi as guests in his house and from thenceforth was wont to entertain all men who came, and onomastos the son of agaios of elis; these, i say, came from peloponnesus itself: from athens came megacles the son of that alcmaion who went to croesus, and besides him hippocleides the son of tisander, one who surpassed the other athenians in wealth and in comeliness of form: from eretria, which at that time was flourishing, came lysanias, he alone from euboea: from thessalia came diactorides of crannon, one of the family of the scopadai: and from the molossians, alcon.. . so many in number did the wooers prove to be: and when these had come by the appointed day, cleisthenes first inquired of their native countries and of the descent of each one, and then keeping them for a year he made trial continually both of their manly virtue and of their disposition, training and temper, associating both with each one separately and with the whole number together: and he made trial of them both by bringing out to bodily exercises those of them who were younger, and also especially in the common feast: for during all the time that he kept them he did everything that could be done, and at the same time he entertained them magnificently. now it chanced that those of the wooers pleased him most who had come from athens, and of these hippocleides the son of tisander was rather preferred, both by reason of manly virtues and also because he was connected by descent with the family of kypselos at corinth. . then when the appointed day came for the marriage banquet and for cleisthenes himself to declare whom he selected from the whole number, cleisthenes sacrificed a hundred oxen and feasted both the wooers themselves and all the people of sikyon; and when the dinner was over, the wooers began to vie with one another both in music and in speeches for the entertainment of the company; and as the drinking went forward and hippocleides was very much holding the attention of the others, he bade the flute-player play for him a dance-measure; and when the flute-player did so, he danced: and it so befell that he pleased himself in his dancing, but cleisthenes looked on at the whole matter with suspicion. then hippocleides after a certain time bade one bring in a table; and when the table came in, first he danced upon it laconian figures, and then also attic, and thirdly he planted his head upon the table and gesticulated with his legs. cleisthenes meanwhile, when he was dancing the first and the second time, though he abhorred the thought that hippocleides should now become his son-in-law, because of his dancing and his shamelessness, yet restrained himself, not desiring to break out in anger against him; but when he saw that he thus gesticulated with his legs, he was no longer able to restrain himself, but said: "thou hast danced away thy marriage however, son of tisander!" and hippocleides answered and said: "hippocleides cares not!" . and hence comes this saying. then cleisthenes caused silence to be made, and spoke to the company as follows: "men who are wooers of my daughter, i commend you all, and if it were possible i would gratify you all, neither selecting one of you to be preferred, nor rejecting the remainder. since however it is not possible, as i am deliberating about one maiden only, to act so as to please all, therefore to those of you who are rejected from this marriage i give as a gift a talent of silver to each one for the worthy estimation ye had of me, in that ye desired to marry from my house, and for the time of absence from your homes; and to the son of alcmaion, megacles, i offer my daughter agariste in betrothal according to the customs of the athenians." thereupon megacles said that he accepted the betrothal, and so the marriage was determined by cleisthenes. . thus it happened as regards the judgment of the wooers, and thus the alcmaionidai got renown over all hellas. and these having been married, there was born to them that cleisthenes who established the tribes and the democracy for the athenians, he being called after the sikyonian cleisthenes, his mother's father; this son, i say, was born to megacles, and also hippocrates: and of hippocrates came another megacles and another agariste, called after agariste, the daughter of cleisthenes, who having been married to xanthippos the son of ariphron and being with child, saw a vision in her sleep, and it seemed to her that she had brought forth a lion: then after a few days she bore to xanthippos pericles. . after the defeat at marathon, miltiades, who even before was well reputed with the athenians, came then to be in much higher estimation: and when he asked the athenians for seventy ships and an army with supplies of money, not declaring to them against what land he was intending to make an expedition, but saying that he would enrich them greatly if they would go with him, for he would lead them to a land of such a kind that they would easily get from it gold in abundance,--thus saying he asked for the ships; and the athenians, elated by these words, delivered them over to him.. . then miltiades, when he had received the army, proceeded to sail to paris with the pretence that the parians had first attacked athens by making expedition with triremes to marathon in company with the persian: this was the pretext which he put forward, but he had also a grudge against the parians on account of lysagoras the son of tisias, who was by race of paros, for having accused him to hydarnes the persian. so when miltiades had arrived at the place to which he was sailing, he began to besiege the parians with his army, first having shut them up within their wall; and sending in to them a herald he asked for a hundred talents, saying that if they refused to give them, his army should not return back until it had conquered them completely. the parians however had no design of giving any money to miltiades, but contrived only how they might defend their city, devising various things besides and also this,--wherever at any time the wall proved to be open to attack, that point was raised when night came on to double its former height.. . so much of the story is reported by all the hellenes, but as to what followed the parians alone report, and they say that it happened thus:--when miltiades was at a loss, it is said, there came a woman to speech with him, who had been taken prisoner, a parian by race whose name was timo, an under-priestess of the earth goddesses; she, they say, came into the presence of miltiades and counselled him that if he considered it a matter of much moment to conquer paros, he could do that which she should suggest to him; and upon that she told him her meaning. he accordingly passed through to the hill which is before the city and leapt over the fence of the temple of demeter giver of laws, not being able to open the door; and then having leapt over he went on towards the sanctuary with the design of doing something within, whether it were that he meant to lay hands on some of the things which should not be touched, or whatever else he intended to do; and when he had reached the door, forthwith a shuddering fear came over him and he set off to go back the same way as he came, and as he leapt down from the wall of rough stones his thigh was dislocated, or, as others say, he struck his knee against the wall.. . miltiades accordingly, being in a wretched case, set forth to sail homewards, neither bringing wealth to the athenians nor having added to them the possession of paros, but having besieged the city for six-and-twenty days and laid waste the island: and the parians being informed that timo the under-priestess of the goddesses had acted as a guide to miltiades, desired to take vengeance upon her for this, and they sent messengers to delphi to consult the god, so soon as they had leisure from the siege; and these messengers they sent to ask whether they should put to death the under-priestess of the goddesses, who had been a guide to their enemies for the capture of her native city and had revealed to miltiades the mysteries which might not be uttered to a male person. the pythian prophetess however forbade them, saying that timo was not the true author of these things, but since it was destined that miltiades should end his life not well, she had appeared to guide him to his evil fate.. . thus the pythian prophetess replied to the parians: and the athenians, when miltiades had returned back from paros, began to talk of him, and among the rest especially xanthippos the son of ariphron, who brought miltiades up before the people claiming the penalty of death and prosecuted him for his deception of the athenians: and miltiades did not himself make his own defence, although he was present, for he was unable to do so because his thigh was mortifying; but he lay in public view upon a bed, while his friends made a defence for him, making mention much both of the battle which had been fought at marathon and of the conquest of lemnos, namely how he had conquered lemnos and taken vengeance on the pelasgians, and had delivered it over to the athenians: and the people came over to his part as regards the acquittal from the penalty of death, but they imposed a fine of fifty talents for the wrong committed: and after this miltiades died, his thigh having gangrened and mortified, and the fifty talents were paid by his son kimon. . now miltiades son of kimon had thus taken possession of the lemnos:--after the pelasgians had been cast out of attica by the athenians, whether justly or unjustly,--for about this i cannot tell except the things reported, which are these:--hecataois on the one hand, the son of hegesander, said in his history that it was done unjustly; for he said that when the athenians saw the land which extends below hymettos, which they had themselves given them to dwell in, as payment for the wall built round the acropolis in former times, when the athenians, i say, saw that this land was made good by cultivation, which before was bad and worthless, they were seized with jealousy and with longing to possess the land, and so drove them out, not alleging any other pretext: but according to the report of the athenians themselves they drove them out justly; for the pelasgians being settled under hymettos made this a starting-point and committed wrong against them as follows:--the daughters and sons of the athenians were wont ever to go for water to the spring of enneacrunos; for at that time neither they nor the other hellenes as yet had household servants; and when these girls came, the pelasgians in wantonness and contempt of the athenians would offer them violence; and it was not enough for them even to do this, but at last they were found in the act of plotting an attack upon the city: and the narrators say that they herein proved themselves better men than the pelasgians, inasmuch as when they might have slain the pelasgians, who had been caught plotting against them, they did not choose to do so, but ordered them merely to depart out of the land: and thus having departed out of the land, the pelasgians took possession of several older places and especially of lemnos. the former story is that which was reported by hecataios, while the latter is that which is told by the athenians.. . these pelasgians then, dwelling after that in lemnos, desired to take vengeance on the athenians; and having full knowledge also of the festivals of the athenians, they got fifty-oared galleys and laid wait for the women of the athenians when they were keeping festival to artemis in brauron; and having carried off a number of them from thence, they departed and sailed away home, and taking the women to lemnos they kept them as concubines. now when these women had children gradually more and more, they made it their practice to teach their sons both the attic tongue and the manners of the athenians. and these were not willing to associate with the sons of the pelasgian women, and moreover if any of them were struck by any one of those, they all in a body came to the rescue and helped one another. moreover the boys claimed to have authority over the other boys and got the better of them easily. perceiving these things the pelasgians considered the matter; and when they took counsel together, a fear came over them and they thought, if the boys were indeed resolved now to help one another against the sons of the legitimate wives, and were endeavouring already from the first to have authority over them, what would they do when they were grown up to be men? then they determined to put to death the sons of the athenian women, and this they actually did; and in addition to them they slew their mothers also. from this deed and from that which was done before this, which the women did when they killed thoas and the rest, who were their own husbands, it has become a custom in hellas that all deeds of great cruelty should be called "lemnian deeds.". . after the pelasgians had killed their own sons and wives, the earth did not bear fruit for them, nor did their women or their cattle bring forth young as they did before; and being hard pressed by famine and by childlessness, they sent to delphi to ask for a release from the evils which were upon them; and the pythian prophetess bade them pay such penalty to the athenians as the athenians themselves should appoint. the pelasgians came accordingly to athens and professed that they were willing to pay the penalty for all the wrong which they had done: and the athenians laid a couch in the fairest possible manner in the city hall, and having set by it a table covered with all good things, they bade the pelasgians deliver up to them their land in that condition. then the pelasgians answered and said: "when with a north wind in one single day a ship shall accomplish the voyage from your land to ours, then we will deliver it up," feeling assured that it was impossible for this to happen, since attica lies far away to the south of lemnos.. . such were the events which happened then: and very many years later, after the chersonese which is by the hellespont had come to be under the athenians, miltiades the son of kimon, when the etesian winds blew steadily, accomplished the voyage in a ship from elaius in the chersonese to lemnos, and proclaimed to the pelasgians that they should depart out of the island, reminding them of the oracle, which the pelasgians had never expected would be accomplished for them. the men of hephaistia accordingly obeyed; but those of myrina, not admitting that the chersonese was attica, suffered a siege, until at last these also submitted. thus it was that the athenians and miltiades took possession of lemnos. notes to book vi. [ {proboulous}.] [ see i. .] [ {epi keras}.] [ {diekploon poieumenos tesi neusi di alleleon}.] [ {tou dareiou}: a conjecture based upon valla's translation. the mss. have {ton dareion}.] [ {prophasios epilabomenoi}.] [ {en stele anagraphenai patrothen}.] [ "were very roughly handled."] [ {epibateuontas}.] [ {nuktos te gar}: so stein for {nuktos te}.] [ {kat akres}, lit. "from the top downwards," i.e. town and citadel both.] [ see ch. .] [ see i. and v. .] [ {kalen akten}.] [ possibly the reading should be {inuka}, "inyx."] [ {ton en te naumakhie}: perhaps we should read {ten en te naumakhin}, "which took place in the sea-fight."] [ {en koiloisi kaleomenoisi}.] [ {grammata didaskomenoisi}.] [ {limainouses}: a conjectural reading for {deimainouses}.] [ lit. "and it became in fact the work of the cavalry."] [ {esagenouon}.] [ or (according to some good mss.) "thelymbri ."] [ cp. iii. .] [ {stadioi}: the distances here mentioned are equal to a little more than four and a little less than fifty miles respectively.] [ {en gnome gegonos}.] [ {pituos tropon}: the old name of the town was pityuss .] [ that is to say, kimon was his half-brother, and stesagoras and the younger miltiades his nephews.] [ see ch. .] [ {delade}.] [ {eleluthee}, but the meaning must be this, and it is explained by the clause, {trito men gar etei k.t.l.}] [ {stadia}: see v. , note .] [ see iii. .] [ {entos makedonon}, "on their side of the macedonians."] [ or (according to some mss.) "about three hundred."] [ or "scaptesyle." (the medicean ms. however has {skaptes ules}, not {skaptesules}, as reported by stein.)] [ {ta proiskheto aiteon}, "that which he put forward demanding it."] [ i.e. "ram."] [ {ton geraiteron}.] [ {en to demosio}.] [ this is commonly understood to mean, leaving out of account the god who was father of perseus; but the reason for stopping short at perseus is given afterwards, and the expression {tou theou apeontos} refers perhaps rather to the case of heracles, the legend of whose birth is rejected by herodotus (see ii. ), and rejected also by this genealogy, which passes through amphitryon up to perseus. i take it that {tou theou apeontos} means "reckoning heracles" (who is mentioned by name just below in this connexion) "as the son of amphitryon and not of zeus."] [ i.e. "of heaven."] [ {medimnon}, the lacedemonian {medimnos} being equal to rather more than two bushels.] [ {tetarten lakomiken}, quantity uncertain.] [ {proxeinous}.] [ {khoinikas}. there were {khoinikes} in the {medimnos}.] [ {kotulen}.] [ the loose manner in which this is expressed, leaving it uncertain whether each king was supposed by the writer to have two votes given for him (cp. thuc. i. ), or whether the double vote was one for each king, must of course be reproduced in the translation.] [ {perioikon}.] [ see ch. .] [ {proergazomenon}: a conjectural emendation of {prosergazomenon}.] [ {tes apates te paragoge}, "by the misleading of the deception."] [ i.e. lunar months.] [ {en thoko katemeno}.] [ {pandemei}.] [ {aren}.] [ i.e. "prayed for by the people."] [ {di a}: a conjectural emendation of {dia ta}. some editors suppose that other words have dropped out.] [ {promantin}: cp. vii. iii.] [ {ton splagkhnon}.] [ {tou erkeiou}.] [ {ton mataioteron logon legontes}.] [ lit. "on the third night after the first," but the meaning is as given.] [ most of the mss. have "astrobacos," which may be right.] [ or "to the honour of the lacedemonians."] [ i.e. any more than his predecessor.] [ see ch. .] [ {neotera epresse pregmata}.] [ {up arkadon}: several good mss. have {ton arkadon}, which is adopted by some editors. the meaning would be "near this city it is said that there is the styx water of the arcadians."] [ {upomargoteron}.] [ demeter and core.] [ the mss. give also "sepeia" and "sipei ." the place is not elsewhere mentioned.] [ see ch. .] [ {duo mneai}: cp. v. .] [ {o theos}, i.e. hera: cp. i. .] [ {kalliereumeno}.] [ {kat akres}: cp. ch. .] [ i.e. was acquitted of the charge brought against him.] [ {episkuthison}.] [ {bouleuesthe}: some mss. and editions have {boulesthe}, "desiring."] [ {en khrono ikneumeno}.] [ i.e. take an oath to that effect.] [ see v. .] [ {penteteris}. the reading {penteres}, which is given by most of the mss. and by several editors, can hardly be defended.] [ {kai en gar}, "and since there was."] [ {knoithou kaleomenos}: cp. vii. .] [ {thesmophorou}.] [ {pentaethlon epaskesas}.] [ {mounomakhien epaskeon}, "practising single combat," as if training for the games.] [ {para te ikarion}: the use of {para} and the absence of the article may justify the conjecture {para te ikarion} (or {ikaron}) "by icaria" (or "icaros"), the island from which the icarian sea had its name.] [ this perhaps should be emended, for the event referred to occurred two years before, cp. ch. and : the reading {trito proteron etei} has been proposed.] [ see v. ff.] [ i.e. apollo: or perhaps more generally, "god," as in ch. .] [ this in brackets is probably an interpolation. it is omitted by some of the best mss. some editors suspect the genuineness of the next four lines also, on internal grounds.] [ {erxies}, perhaps meaning "worker."] [ {areios}.] [ {megas areios}.] [ {ippoboteon}, lit. "horse-breeding": see v. .] [ or (according to some mss.), "having come to shore at these places."] [ {katergontes}: the word is not elsewhere found intransitive, yet it is rather difficult to supply {tous athenaious}. some alterations have been proposed, but none probable.] [ lit. "and it happened that in winning this victory he won the same victory as his half-brother miltiades." see ch. .] [ or, according to some authorities, "philippides."] [ lit. "except the circle were full."] [ or "aigilei ."] [ lit. "by violence, having coughed."] [ "by the bean."] [ {es se toi}, a conjectural emendation of {es se ti}.] [ {prutaneie tes emeres}.] [ some editors propose to omit {gar} or alter it. if it be allowed to stand, the meaning must be that the importance of the place is testified by the commemoration mentioned.] [ {es tas panegurias}, some mss. have {kai panegurias}, "hold sacrifices and solemn assemblies."] [ {penteterisi}.] [ lit. "the good things."] [ {stadioi}: the distance would be rather over yards.] [ whether this is thrown in here by the historian as an explanation of the rapid advance, or as an additional source of wonder on the part of the persians at the boldness of the athenians, is not clear.] [ or (according to some mss.) "having taken hold."] [ the account of how the oil was dealt with has perhaps dropt out: one ms. and the aldine edition have "the oil they collect in vessels, and this," etc.] [ this chapter is omitted by several of the best mss., and is almost certainly an interpolation. (in the medicean ms. it has been added in the margin by a later hand.)] [ answering to "callias for his part" at the end of ch. , the connexion being broken by the interpolated passage.] [ {ouden esson}.] [ {patre}, "family," or possibly "country," as in ch. .] [ {to legomeno es to meson}: perhaps only "general conversation."] [ {katekhon pollon tous allous}.] [ i.e. "though the dancing may be good."] [ {aponostesein}: some mss. have {apanastesein}, "he would not take away his army thence."] [ {upozakoron}.] [ {ton khthonion theon}, i.e. demeter and persephone: cp. vii. .] [ {thesmophorou}.] [ {to megaron}.] [ {sphi autoi}: a conjectural rendering of {sphisi autoisi}, which can only be taken with {eousan}, meaning "belonging to them" i.e. the athenians, and involves the insertion of {pelasgoisi} or something equivalent with {edosan}.] [ {ktesamenoi}: some mss. and editions have {stesamenoi}, "set fifty-oared galleys in place."] book vii. the seventh book of the histories, called polymnia . now when the report came to dareios the son of hystaspes of the battle which was fought at marathon, the king, who even before this had been greatly exasperated with the athenians on account of the attack made upon sardis, then far more than before displayed indignation, and was far more desirous of making a march against hellas. accordingly at once he sent messengers to the various cities and ordered that they should get ready a force, appointing to each people to supply much more than at the former time, and not only ships of war, but also horses and provisions and transport vessels; and when these commands were carried round, all asia was moved for three years, for all the best men were being enlisted for the expedition against hellas, and were making preparations. in the fourth year however the egyptians, who had been reduced to subjection by cambyses, revolted from the persians; and then he was even more desirous of marching against both these nations. . while dareios was thus preparing to set out against egypt and against athens, there arose a great strife among his sons about the supreme power; and they said that he must not make his expeditions until he had designated one of them to be king, according to the custom of the persians. for to dareios already before he became king three sons had been born of his former wife the daughter of gobryas, and after he became king four other sons of atossa the daughter of cyrus: of the first the eldest was artobazanes, and of those who had been born later, xerxes. these being not of the same mother were at strife with one another, artobazanes contending that he was the eldest of all the sons, and that it was a custom maintained by all men that the eldest should have the rule, and xerxes arguing that he was the son of atossa the daughter of cyrus, and that cyrus was he who had won for the persians their freedom. . now while dareios did not as yet declare his judgment, it chanced that demaratos also, the son of ariston, had come up to susa at this very same time, having been deprived of the kingdom in sparta and having laid upon himself a sentence of exile from lacedemon. this man, hearing of the difference between the sons of dareios, came (as it is reported of him) and counselled xerxes to say in addition to those things which he was wont to say, that he had been born to dareios at the time when he was already reigning as king and was holding the supreme power over the persians, while artobazanes had been born while dareios was still in a private station: it was not fitting therefore nor just that another should have the honour before him; for even in sparta, suggested demaratos, this was the custom, that is to say, if some of the sons had been born first, before their father began to reign, and another came after, born later while he was reigning, the succession of the kingdom belonged to him who had been born later. xerxes accordingly made use of the suggestion of demaratos; and dareios perceiving that he spoke that which was just, designated him to be king. it is my opinion however that even without this suggestion xerxes would have become king, for atossa was all-powerful. . then having designated xerxes to the persians as their king, dareios wished to go on his expeditions. however in the next year after this and after the revolt of egypt, it came to pass that dareios himself died, having been king in all six-and-thirty years; and thus he did not succeed in taking vengeance either upon the revolted egyptians or upon the athenians. . dareios being dead the kingdom passed to his son xerxes. now xerxes at the first was by no means anxious to make a march against hellas, but against egypt he continued to gather a force. mardonios however, the son of gobryas, who was a cousin of xerxes, being sister's son to dareios, was ever at his side, and having power with him more than any other of the persians, he kept continually to such discourse as this which follows, saying: "master, it is not fitting that the athenians, after having done to the persians very great evil, should not pay the penalty for that which they have done. what if thou shouldest at this present time do that which thou hast in thy hands to do; and when thou hast tamed the land of egypt, which has broken out insolently against us, then do thou march an army against athens, that a good report may be made of thee by men, and that in future every one may beware of making expeditions against thy land." thus far his speech had to do with vengeance, and to this he would make addition as follows, saying that europe was a very fair land and bore all kinds of trees that are cultivated for fruit, and was of excellent fertility, and such that the king alone of all mortals was worthy to possess it. . these things he was wont to say, since he was one who had a desire for perilous enterprise and wished to be himself the governor of hellas under the king. so in time he prevailed upon xerxes and persuaded him to do this; for other things also assisted him and proved helpful to him in persuading xerxes. in the first place there had come from thessaly messengers sent by the aleuadai, who were inviting the king to come against hellas and were showing great zeal in his cause, (now these aleuadai were kings of thessaly): and then secondly those of the sons of peisistratos who had come up to susa were inviting him also, holding to the same arguments as the aleuadai; and moreover they offered him yet more inducement in addition to these; for there was one onomacritos an athenian, who both uttered oracles and also had collected and arranged the oracles of musaios; and with this man they had come up, after they had first reconciled the enmity between them. for onomacritos had been driven forth from athens by hipparchos the son of peisistratos, having been caught by lasos of hermion interpolating in the works of musaios an oracle to the effect that the islands which lie off lemnos should disappear under the sea. for this reason hipparchos drove him forth, having before this time been very much wont to consult him. now however he had gone up with them; and when he had come into the presence of the king, the sons of peisistratos spoke of him in magnificent terms, and he repeated some of the oracles; and if there was in them anything which imported disaster to the barbarians, of this he said nothing; but choosing out of them the most fortunate things he told how it was destined that the hellespont should be yoked with a bridge by a persian, and he set forth the manner of the march. he then thus urged xerxes with oracles, while the sons of peisistratos and the aleuadai pressed him with their advice. . so when xerxes had been persuaded to make an expedition against hellas, then in the next year after the death of dareios he made a march first against those who had revolted. having subdued these and having reduced all egypt to slavery much greater than it had suffered in the reign of dareios, he entrusted the government of it to achaimenes his own brother, a son of dareios. now this achaimenes being a governor of egypt was slain afterwards by inaros the son of psammetichos, a libyan. . xerxes then after the conquest of egypt, being about to take in hand the expedition against athens, summoned a chosen assembly of the best men among the persians, that he might both learn their opinions and himself in the presence of all declare that which he intended to do; and when they were assembled, xerxes spoke to them as follows: (a) "persians, i shall not be the first to establish this custom in your nation, but having received it from others i shall follow it: for as i am informed by those who are older than myself, we never yet have kept quiet since we received this supremacy in succession to the medes, when cyrus overthrew astyages; but god thus leads us, and for ourselves tends to good that we are busied about many things. now about the nations which cyrus and cambyses and my father dareios subdued and added to their possessions there is no need for me to speak, since ye know well: and as for me, from the day when i received by inheritance this throne upon which i sit i carefully considered always how in this honourable place i might not fall short of those who have been before me, nor add less power to the dominion of the persians: and thus carefully considering i find a way by which not only glory may be won by us, together with a land not less in extent nor worse than that which we now possess, (and indeed more varied in its productions), but also vengeance and retribution may be brought about. wherefore i have assembled you together now, in order that i may communicate to you that which i have it in my mind to do. (b) i design to yoke the hellespont with a bridge, and to march an army through europe against hellas, in order that i may take vengeance on the athenians for all the things which they have done both to the persians and to my father. ye saw how my father dareios also was purposing to make an expedition against these men; but he has ended his life and did not succeed in taking vengeance upon them. i however, on behalf of him and also of the other persians, will not cease until i have conquered athens and burnt it with fire; seeing that they did wrong unprovoked to me and to my father. first they went to sardis, having come with aristagoras the milesian our slave, and they set fire to the sacred groves and the temples; and then secondly, what things they did to us when we disembarked in their land, at the time when datis and artaphrenes were commanders of our army, ye all know well, as i think. (c) for these reasons i have resolved to make an expedition against them, and reckoning i find in the matter so many good things as ye shall hear:--if we shall subdue these and the neighbours of these, who dwell in the land of pelops the phrygian, we shall cause the persian land to have the same boundaries as the heaven of zeus; since in truth upon no land will the sun look down which borders ours, but i with your help shall make all the lands into one land, having passed through the whole extent of europe. for i am informed that things are so, namely that there is no city of men nor any race of human beings remaining, which will be able to come to a contest with us, when those whom i just now mentioned have been removed out of the way. thus both those who have committed wrong against us will have the yoke of slavery, and also those who have not committed wrong. (d) and ye will please me best if ye do this:--whensoever i shall signify to you the time at which ye ought to come, ye must appear every one of you with zeal for the service; and whosoever shall come with a force best equipped, to him i will give gifts such as are accounted in our land to be the most honourable. thus must these things be done: but that i may not seem to you to be following my own counsel alone, i propose the matter for discussion, bidding any one of you who desires it, declare his opinion." . having thus spoken he ceased; and after him mardonios said: "master, thou dost surpass not only all the persians who were before thee, but also those who shall come after, since thou didst not only attain in thy words to that which is best and truest as regards other matters, but also thou wilt not permit the ionians who dwell in europe to make a mock of us, having no just right to do so: for a strange thing it would be if, when we have subdued and kept as our servants sacans, indians, ethiopians, assyrians, and other nations many in number and great, who have done no wrong to the persians, because we desired to add to our dominions, we should not take vengeance on the hellenes who committed wrong against us unprovoked. (a) of what should we be afraid?--what gathering of numbers, or what resources of money? for their manner of fight we know, and as for their resources, we know that they are feeble; and we have moreover subdued already their sons, those i mean who are settled in our land and are called ionians, aiolians, and dorians. moreover i myself formerly made trial of marching against these men, being commanded thereto by thy father; and although i marched as far as macedonia, and fell but little short of coming to athens itself, no man came to oppose me in fight. (b) and yet it is true that the hellenes make wars, but (as i am informed) very much without wise consideration, by reason of obstinacy and want of skill: for when they have proclaimed war upon one another, they find out first the fairest and smoothest place, and to this they come down and fight; so that even the victors depart from the fight with great loss, and as to the vanquished, of them i make no mention at all, for they are utterly destroyed. they ought however, being men who speak the same language, to make use of heralds and messengers and so to take up their differences and settle them in any way rather than by battles; but if they must absolutely war with one another, they ought to find out each of them that place in which they themselves are hardest to overcome, and here to make their trial. therefore the hellenes, since they use no good way, when i had marched as far as the land of macedonia, did not come to the resolution of fighting with me. (c) who then is likely to set himself against thee, o king, offering war, when thou art leading both all the multitudes of asia and the whole number of the ships? i for my part am of opinion that the power of the hellenes has not attained to such a pitch of boldness: but if after all i should prove to be deceived in my judgment, and they stirred up by inconsiderate folly should come to battle with us, they would learn that we are the best of all men in the matters of war. however that may be, let not anything be left untried; for nothing comes of itself, but from trial all things are wont to come to men." . mardonios having thus smoothed over the resolution expressed by xerxes had ceased speaking: and when the other persians were silent and did not venture to declare an opinion contrary to that which had been proposed, then artabanos the son of hystaspes, being father's brother to xerxes and having reliance upon that, spoke as follows: (a) "o king, if opinions opposed to one another be not spoken, it is not possible to select the better in making the choice, but one must accept that which has been spoken; if however opposite opinions be uttered, this is possible; just as we do not distinguish the gold which is free from alloy when it is alone by itself, but when we rub it on the touchstone in comparison with other gold, then we distinguish that which is the better. now i gave advice to thy father dareios also, who was my brother, not to march against the scythians, men who occupied no abiding city in any part of the earth. he however, expecting that he would subdue the scythians who were nomads, did not listen to me; but he made a march and came back from it with the loss of many good men of his army. but thou, o king, art intending to march against men who are much better than the scythians, men who are reported to be excellent both by sea and on land: and the thing which is to be feared in this matter it is right that i should declare to thee. (b) thou sayest that thou wilt yoke the hellespont with a bridge and march an army through europe to hellas. now supposing it chance that we are worsted either by land or by sea, or even both, for the men are reported to be valiant in fight, (and we may judge for ourselves that it is so, since the athenians by themselves destroyed that great army which came with datis and artaphrenes to the attic land),--suppose however that they do not succeed in both, yet if they shall attack with their ships and conquer in a sea-fight, and then sail to the hellespont and break up the bridge, this of itself, o king, will prove to be a great peril. (c) not however by any native wisdom of my own do i conjecture that this might happen: i am conjecturing only such a misfortune as all but came upon us at the former time, when thy father, having yoked the bosphorus of thracia and made a bridge over the river ister, had crossed over to go against the scythians. at that time the scythians used every means of entreaty to persuade the ionians to break up the passage, to whom it had been entrusted to guard the bridges of the ister. at that time, if histiaios the despot of miletos had followed the opinion of the other despots and had not made opposition to them, the power of the persians would have been brought to an end. yet it is a fearful thing even to hear it reported that the whole power of the king had come to depend upon one human creature. (d) do not thou therefore propose to go into any such danger when there is no need, but do as i say:--at the present time dissolve this assembly; and afterwards at whatever time it shall seem good to thee, when thou hast considered prudently with thyself, proclaim that which seems to thee best: for good counsel i hold to be a very great gain; since even if anything shall prove adverse, the counsel which has been taken is no less good, though it has been defeated by fortune; while he who took counsel badly at first, if good fortune should go with him has lighted on a prize by chance, but none the less for that his counsel was bad. (e) thou seest how god strikes with thunderbolts the creatures which stand above the rest and suffers them not to make a proud show; while those which are small do not provoke him to jealousy: thou seest also how he hurls his darts ever at those buildings which are the highest and those trees likewise; for god is wont to cut short all those things which stand out above the rest. thus also a numerous army is destroyed by one of few men in some such manner as this, namely when god having become jealous of them casts upon them panic or thundering from heaven, then they are destroyed utterly and not as their worth deserves; for god suffers not any other to have high thoughts save only himself. (f) moreover the hastening of any matter breeds disasters, whence great losses are wont to be produced; but in waiting there are many good things contained, as to which, if they do not appear to be good at first, yet one will find them to be so in course of time. (g) to thee, o king, i give this counsel: but thou son of gobryas, mardonios, cease speaking foolish words about the hellenes, since they in no way deserve to be spoken of with slight; for by uttering slander against the hellenes thou art stirring the king himself to make an expedition, and it is to this very end that i think thou art straining all thy endeavour. let not this be so; for slander is a most grievous thing: in it the wrongdoers are two, and the person who suffers wrong is one. the slanderer does a wrong in that he speaks against one who is not present, the other in that he is persuaded of the thing before he gets certain knowledge of it, and he who is not present when the words are spoken suffers wrong in the matter thus,--both because he has been slandered by the one and because he has been believed to be bad by the other. (h) however, if it be absolutely needful to make an expedition against these men, come, let the king himself remain behind in the abodes of the persians, and let us both set to the wager our sons; and then do thou lead an army by thyself, choosing for thyself the men whom thou desirest, and taking an army as large as thou thinkest good: and if matters turn out for the king as thou sayest, let my sons be slain and let me also be slain in addition to them; but if in the way which i predict, let thy sons suffer this, and with them thyself also, if thou shalt return back. but if thou art not willing to undergo this proof, but wilt by all means lead an army against hellas, then i say that those who are left behind in this land will hear that mardonios, after having done a great mischief to the persians, is torn by dogs and birds, either in the land of the athenians, or else perchance thou wilt be in the land of the lacedemonians (unless indeed this should have come to pass even before that upon the way), and that thou hast at length been made aware against what kind of men thou art persuading the king to march." . artabanos thus spoke; and xerxes enraged by it made answer as follows: "artabanos, thou art my father's brother, and this shall save thee from receiving any recompense such as thy foolish words deserve. yet i attach to thee this dishonour, seeing that thou art a coward and spiritless, namely that thou do not march with me against hellas, but remain here together with the women; and i, even without thy help, will accomplish all the things which i said: for i would i might not be descended from dareios, the son of hystaspes, the son of arsames, the son of ariaramnes, the son of teïspes, or from cyrus, the son of cambyses, the son of teïspes, the son of achaimenes, if i take not vengeance on the athenians; since i know well that if we shall keep quiet, yet they will not do so, but will again march against our land, if we may judge by the deeds which have been done by them to begin with, since they both set fire to sardis and marched upon asia. it is not possible therefore that either side should retire from the quarrel, but the question before us is whether we shall do or whether we shall suffer; whether all these regions shall come to be under the hellenes or all those under the persians: for in our hostility there is no middle course. it follows then now that it is well for us, having suffered wrong first, to take revenge, that i may find out also what is this terrible thing which i shall suffer if i lead an army against these men,--men whom pelops the phrygian, who was the slave of my forefathers, so subdued that even to the present day both the men themselves and their land are called after the name of him who subdued them." . thus far was it spoken then; but afterwards when darkness came on, the opinion of artabanos tormented xerxes continually; and making night his counsellor he found that it was by no means to his advantage to make the march against hellas. so when he had thus made a new resolve, he fell asleep, and in the night he saw, as is reported by the persians, a vision as follows:--xerxes thought that a man tall and comely of shape came and stood by him and said: "art thou indeed changing thy counsel, o persian, of leading an expedition against hellas, now that thou hast made proclamation that the persians shall collect an army? thou dost not well in changing thy counsel, nor will he who is here present with thee excuse thee from it; but as thou didst take counsel in the day to do, by that way go." . after he had said this, xerxes thought that he who had spoken flew away; and when day had dawned he made no account of this dream, but gathered together the persians whom he had assembled also the former time and said to them these words: "persians, pardon me that i make quick changes in my counsel; for in judgment not yet am i come to my prime, and they who advise me to do the things which i said, do not for any long time leave me to myself. however, although at first when i heard the opinion of artabanos my youthful impulses burst out, so that i cast out unseemly words against a man older than myself; yet now i acknowledge that he is right, and i shall follow his opinion. consider then i have changed my resolve to march against hellas, and do ye remain still." . the persians accordingly when they heard this were rejoiced and made obeisance: but when night had come on, the same dream again came and stood by xerxes as he lay asleep and said: "son of dareios, it is manifest then that thou hast resigned this expedition before the assembly of the persians, and that thou hast made no account of my words, as if thou hadst heard them from no one at all. now therefore be well assured of this:--if thou do not make thy march forthwith, there shall thence spring up for thee this result, namely that, as thou didst in short time become great and mighty, so also thou shalt speedily be again brought low." . xerxes then, being very greatly disturbed by fear of the vision, started up from his bed and sent a messenger to summon artabanos; to whom when he came xerxes spoke thus: "artabanos, at the first i was not discreet, when i spoke to thee foolish words on account of thy good counsel; but after no long time i changed my mind and perceived that i ought to do these things which thou didst suggest to me. i am not able however to do them, although i desire it; for indeed, now that i have turned about and changed my mind, a dream appears haunting me and by no means approving that i should do so; and just now it has left me even with a threat. if therefore it is god who sends it to me, and it is his absolute will and pleasure that an army should go against hellas, this same dream will fly to thee also, laying upon thee a charge such as it has laid upon me; and it occurs to my mind that this might happen thus, namely if thou shouldst take all my attire and put it on, and then seat thyself on my throne, and after that lie down to sleep in my bed." . xerxes spoke to him thus; and artabanos was not willing to obey the command at first, since he did not think himself worthy to sit upon the royal throne; but at last being urged further he did that which was commanded, first having spoken these words: (a) "it is equally good in my judgment, o king, whether a man has wisdom himself or is willing to follow the counsel of him who speaks well: and thou, who hast attained to both these good things, art caused to err by the communications of evil men; just as they say that the sea, which is of all things the most useful to men, is by blasts of winds falling upon it prevented from doing according to its own nature. i however, when i was evil spoken of by thee, was not so much stung with pain for this, as because, when two opinions were laid before the persians, the one tending to increase wanton insolence and the other tending to check it and saying that it was a bad thing to teach the soul to endeavour always to have something more than the present possession,--because, i say, when such opinions as these were laid before us, thou didst choose that one which was the more dangerous both for thyself and for the persians. (b) and now that thou hast turned to the better counsel, thou sayest that when thou art disposed to let go the expedition against the hellenes, a dream haunts thee sent by some god, which forbids thee to abandon thy enterprise. nay, but here too thou dost err, my son, since this is not of the deity; for the dreams of sleep which come roaming about to men, are of such nature as i shall inform thee, being by many years older than thou. the visions of dreams are wont to hover above us in such form for the most part as the things of which we were thinking during the day; and we in the days preceding were very much occupied with this campaign. (c) if however after all this is not such a thing as i interpret it to be, but is something which is concerned with god, thou hast summed the matter up in that which thou hast said: let it appear, as thou sayest, to me also, as to thee, and give commands. but supposing that it desires to appear to me at all, it is not bound to appear to me any the more if i have thy garments on me than if i have my own, nor any more if i take my rest in thy bed than if i am in thy own; for assuredly this thing, whatever it may be, which appears to thee in thy sleep, is not so foolish as to suppose, when it sees me, that it is thou, judging so because the garments are thine. that however which we must find out now is this, namely if it will hold me in no account, and not think fit to appear to me, whether i have my own garments or whether i have thine, but continue still to haunt thee; for if it shall indeed haunt thee perpetually, i shall myself also be disposed to say that it is of the deity. but if thou hast resolved that it shall be so, and it is not possible to turn aside this thy resolution, but i must go to sleep in thy bed, then let it appear to me also, when i perform these things: but until then i shall hold to the opinion which i now have." . having thus said artabanos, expecting that he would prove that xerxes was speaking folly, did that which was commanded him; and having put on the garments of xerxes and seated himself in the royal throne, he afterwards went to bed: and when he had fallen asleep, the same dream came to him which used to come to xerxes, and standing over artabanos spoke these words: "art thou indeed he who endeavours to dissuade xerxes from making a march against hellas, pretending to have a care of him? however, neither in the future nor now at the present shalt thou escape unpunished for trying to turn away that which is destined to come to pass: and as for xerxes, that which he must suffer if he disobeys, hath been shown already to the man himself." . thus it seemed to artabanos that the dream threatened him, and at the same time was just about to burn out his eyes with hot irons; and with a loud cry he started up from his bed, and sitting down beside xerxes he related to him throughout the vision of the dream, and then said to him as follows: "i, o king, as one who has seen before now many great things brought to their fall by things less, urged thee not to yield in all things to the inclination of thy youth, since i knew that it was evil to have desire after many things; remembering on the one hand the march of cyrus against the massagetai, what fortune it had, and also that of cambyses against the ethiopians; and being myself one who took part with dareios in the campaign against the scythians. knowing these things i had the opinion that thou wert to be envied of all men, so long as thou shouldest keep still. since however there comes a divine impulse, and, as it seems, a destruction sent by heaven is taking hold of the hellenes, i for my part am both changed in myself and also i reverse my opinions; and do thou signify to the persians the message which is sent to thee from god, bidding them follow the commands which were given by thee at first with regard to the preparations to be made; and endeavour that on thy side nothing may be wanting, since god delivers the matter into thy hands." these things having been said, both were excited to confidence by the vision, and so soon as it became day, xerxes communicated the matter to the persians, and artabanos, who before was the only man who came forward to dissuade him, now came forward to urge on the design. . xerxes being thus desirous to make the expedition, there came to him after this a third vision in his sleep, which the magians, when they heard it, explained to have reference to the dominion of the whole earth and to mean that all men should be subject to him; and the vision was this:--xerxes thought that he had been crowned with a wreath of an olive-branch and that the shoots growing from the olive-tree covered the whole earth; and after that, the wreath, placed as it was about his head, disappeared. when the magians had thus interpreted the vision, forthwith every man of the persians who had been assembled together departed to his own province and was zealous by all means to perform the commands, desiring each one to receive for himself the gifts which had been proposed: and thus xerxes was gathering his army together, searching every region of the continent. . during four full years from the conquest of egypt he was preparing the army and the things that were of service for the army, and in the course of the fifth year he began his campaign with a host of great multitude. for of all the armies of which we have knowledge this proved to be by far the greatest; so that neither that led by dareios against the scythians appears anything as compared with it, nor the scythian host, when the scythians pursuing the kimmerians made invasion of the median land and subdued and occupied nearly all the upper parts of asia, for which invasion afterwards dareios attempted to take vengeance, nor that led by the sons of atreus to ilion, to judge by that which is reported of their expedition, nor that of the mysians and teucrians, before the trojan war, who passed over into europe by the bosphorus and not only subdued all the thracians, but came down also as far as the ionian sea and marched southwards to the river peneios. . all these expeditions put together, with others, if there be any, added to them, are not equal to this one alone. for what nation did xerxes not lead out of asia against hellas? and what water was not exhausted, being drunk by his host, except only the great rivers? for some supplied ships, and others were appointed to serve in the land-army; to some it was appointed to furnish cavalry, and to others vessels to carry horses, while they served in the expedition themselves also; others were ordered to furnish ships of war for the bridges, and others again ships with provisions. . then in the first place, since the former fleet had suffered disaster in sailing round athos, preparations had been going on for about three years past with regard to athos: for triremes lay at anchor at elaius in the chersonese, and with this for their starting point men of all nations belonging to the army worked at digging, compelled by the lash; and the men went to the work regularly in succession: moreover those who dwelt round about athos worked also at the digging: and bubares the son of megabazos and artachaies the son of artaios, persians both, were set over the work. now athos is a mountain great and famous, running down to the sea and inhabited by men: and where the mountain ends on the side of the mainland the place is like a peninsula with an isthmus about twelve furlongs across. here it is plain land or hills of no great size, extending from the sea of the acanthians to that which lies off torone; and on this isthmus, where athos ends, is situated a hellenic city called sane: moreover there are others beyond sane and within the peninsula of athos, all which at this time the persian had resolved to make into cities of an island and no longer of the mainland; these are, dion, olophyxos, acrothoon, thyssos, cleonai. . these are the cities which occupy athos: and they dug as follows, the country being divided among the barbarians by nations for the work:--at the city of sane they drew a straight line across the isthmus, and when the channel became deep, those who stood lowest dug, while others delivered the earth as it was dug out to other men who stood above, as upon steps, and they again to others when it was received, until they came to those that were highest; and these bore it away and cast it forth. now the others except the phenicians had double toil by the breaking down of the steep edges of their excavation; for since they endeavoured to make the opening at the top and that at the bottom both of the same measure, some such thing was likely to result, as they worked: but the phenicians, who are apt to show ability in their works generally, did so in this work also; for when they had had assigned to them by lot so much as fell to their share, they proceeded to dig, making the opening of the excavation at the top twice as wide as the channel itself was to be; and as the work went forward, they kept contracting the width; so that, when they came to the bottom, their work was made of equal width with that of the others. now there is a meadow there, in which there was made for them a market and a place for buying and selling; and great quantities of corn came for them regularly from asia, ready ground. . it seems to me, making conjecture of this work, that xerxes when he ordered this to be dug was moved by a love of magnificence and by a desire to make a display of his power and to leave a memorial behind him; for though they might have drawn the ships across the isthmus with no great labour, he bade them dig a channel for the sea of such breadth that two triremes might sail through, propelled side by side. to these same men to whom the digging had been appointed, it was appointed also to make a bridge over the river strymon, yoking together the banks. . these things were being done by xerxes thus; and meanwhile he caused ropes also to be prepared for the bridges, made of papyrus and of white flax, appointing this to the phenicians and egyptians; and also he was making preparations to store provisions for his army on the way, that neither the army itself nor the baggage animals might suffer from scarcity, as they made their march against hellas. accordingly, when he had learnt by inquiry of the various places, he bade them make stores where it was most convenient, carrying supplies to different parts by merchant ships and ferry-boats from all the countries of asia. so they conveyed the greater part of the corn to the place which is called leuke acte in thrace, while others conveyed stores to tyrodiza of the perinthians, others to doriscos, others to eïon on the strymon, and others to macedonia, the work being distributed between them. . during the time that these were working at the task which had been proposed to them, the whole land-army had been assembled together and was marching with xerxes to sardis, setting forth from critalla in cappadokia; for there it had been ordered that the whole army should assemble, which was to go with xerxes himself by the land: but which of the governors of provinces brought the best equipped force and received from the king the gifts proposed, i am not able to say, for i do not know that they even came to a competition in this matter. then after they had crossed the river halys and had entered phrygia, marching through this land they came to kelainai, where the springs of the river maiander come up, and also those of another river not less than the maiander, whose name is catarractes; this rises in the market-place itself of kelainai and runs into the maiander: and here also is hanging up in the city the skin of marsyas the silenos, which is said by the phrygians to have been flayed off and hung up by apollo. . in this city pythios the son of atys, a lydian, was waiting for the king and entertained his whole army, as well as xerxes himself, with the most magnificent hospitality: moreover he professed himself ready to supply money for the war. so when pythios offered money, xerxes asked those of the persians who were present, who pythios was and how much money he possessed, that he made this offer. they said: "o king, this is he who presented thy father dareios with the golden plane-tree and the golden vine; and even now he is in wealth the first of all men of whom we know, excepting thee only." . marvelling at the conclusion of these words xerxes himself asked of pythios then, how much money he had; and he said: "o king, i will not conceal the truth from thee, nor will i allege as an excuse that i do not know my own substance, but i will enumerate it to thee exactly, since i know the truth: for as soon as i heard that thou wert coming down to the sea of hellas, desiring to give thee money for the war i ascertained the truth, and calculating i found that i had of silver two thousand talents, and of gold four hundred myriads of daric staters all but seven thousand: and with this money i present thee. for myself i have sufficient livelihood from my slaves and from my estates of land." . thus he said; and xerxes was pleased by the things which he had spoken, and replied: "lydian host, ever since i went forth from the persian land i have encountered no man up to this time who was desirous to entertain my army, or who came into my presence and made offer of his own free will to contribute money to me for the war, except only thee: and thou not only didst entertain my army magnificently, but also now dost make offer of great sums of money. to thee therefore in return i give these rewards,--i make thee my guest-friend, and i will complete for thee the four hundred myriads of staters by giving from myself the seven thousand, in order that thy four hundred myriads may not fall short by seven thousand, but thou mayest have a full sum in thy reckoning, completed thus by me. keep possession of that which thou hast got for thyself, and be sure to act always thus; for if thou doest so, thou wilt have no cause to repent either at the time or afterwards." . having thus said and having accomplished his promise, he continued his march onwards; and passing by a city of the phrygians called anaua and a lake whence salt is obtained, he came to colossai, a great city of phrygia, where the river lycos falls into an opening of the earth and disappears from view, and then after an interval of about five furlongs it comes up to view again, and this river also flows into the maiander. setting forth from colossai towards the boundaries of the phrygians and lydians, the army arrived at the city of kydrara, where a pillar is fixed, set up by croesus, which declares by an inscription that the boundaries are there. . from phrygia then he entered lydia; and here the road parts into two, and that which goes to the left leads towards caria, while that which goes to the right leads to sardis; and travelling by this latter road one must needs cross the river maiander and pass by the city of callatebos, where men live whose trade it is to make honey of the tamarisk-tree and of wheat-flour. by this road went xerxes and found a plane-tree, to which for its beauty he gave an adornment of gold, and appointed that some one should have charge of it always in undying succession; and on the next day he came to the city of the lydians. . having come to sardis he proceeded first to send heralds to hellas, to ask for earth and water, and also to give notice beforehand to prepare meals for the king; except that he sent neither to athens nor lacedemon to ask for earth, but to all the other states: and the reason why he sent the second time to ask for earth and water was this,--as many as had not given at the former time to dareios when he sent, these he thought would certainly give now by reason of their fear: this matter it was about which he desired to have certain knowledge, and he sent accordingly. . after this he made his preparations intending to march to abydos: and meanwhile they were bridging over the hellespont from asia to europe. now there is in the chersonese of the hellespont between the city of sestos and madytos, a broad foreland running down into the sea right opposite abydos; this is the place where no long time afterwards the athenians under the command of xanthippos the son of ariphron, having taken artaÿctes a persian, who was the governor of sestos, nailed him alive to a board with hands and feet extended (he was the man who was wont to take women with him to the temple of protesilaos at elaius and to do things there which are not lawful). . to this foreland they on whom this work was laid were making their bridges, starting from abydos, the phenicians constructing the one with ropes of white flax, and the egyptians the other, which was made with papyrus rope. now from abydos to the opposite shore is a distance of seven furlongs. but when the strait had been bridged over, a great storm came on and dashed together all the work that had been made and broke it up. then when xerxes heard it he was exceedingly enraged, and bade them scourge the hellespont with three hundred strokes of the lash and let down into the sea a pair of fetters. nay, i have heard further that he sent branders also with them to brand the hellespont. however this may be, he enjoined them, as they were beating, to say barbarian and presumptuous words as follows: "thou bitter water, thy master lays upon thee this penalty, because thou didst wrong him not having suffered any wrong from him: and xerxes the king will pass over thee whether thou be willing or no; but with right, as it seems, no man doeth sacrifice to thee, seeing that thou art a treacherous and briny stream." the sea he enjoined them to chastise thus, and also he bade them cut off the heads of those who were appointed to have charge over the bridging of the hellespont. . thus then the men did, to whom this ungracious office belonged; and meanwhile other chief-constructors proceeded to make the bridges; and thus they made them:--they put together fifty-oared galleys and triremes, three hundred and sixty to be under the bridge towards the euxine sea, and three hundred and fourteen to be under the other, the vessels lying in the direction of the stream of the hellespont (though crosswise in respect to the pontus), to support the tension of the ropes. they placed them together thus, and let down very large anchors, those on the one side towards the pontus because of the winds which blow from within outwards, and on the other side, towards the west and the egean, because of the south-east and south winds. they left also an opening for a passage through, so that any who wished might be able to sail into the pontus with small vessels, and also from the pontus outwards. having thus done, they proceeded to stretch tight the ropes, straining them with wooden windlasses, not now appointing the two kinds of rope to be used apart from one another, but assigning to each bridge two ropes of white flax and four of the papyrus ropes. the thickness and beauty of make was the same for both, but the flaxen ropes were heavier in proportion, and of this rope a cubit weighed one talent. when the passage was bridged over, they sawed up logs of wood, and making them equal in length to the breadth of the bridge they laid them above the stretched ropes, and having set them thus in order they again fastened them above. when this was done, they carried on brushwood, and having set the brushwood also in place, they carried on to it earth; and when they had stamped down the earth firmly, they built a barrier along on each side, so that the baggage-animals and horses might not be frightened by looking out over the sea. . when the construction of the bridges had been finished, and the works about athos, both the embankments about the mouths of the channel, which were made because of the breaking of the sea upon the beach, that the mouths of it might not be filled up, and the channel itself, were reported to be fully completed, then, after they had passed the winter at sardis, the army set forth from thence fully equipped, at the beginning of spring, to march to abydos; and when it had just set forth, the sun left his place in the heaven and was invisible, though there was no gathering of clouds and the sky was perfectly clear; and instead of day it became night. when xerxes saw and perceived this, it became a matter of concern to him; and he asked the magians what the appearance meant to portend. these declared that the god was foreshowing to the hellenes a leaving of their cities, saying that the sun was the foreshower of events for the hellenes, but the moon for the persians. having been thus informed, xerxes proceeded on the march with very great joy. . then as he was leading forth his army on its march, pythios the lydian, being alarmed by the appearance in the heavens and elated by the gifts which he had received, came to xerxes, and said as follows: "master, i would desire to receive from thee a certain thing at my request, which, as it chances, is for thee an easy thing to grant, but a great thing for me, if i obtain it." then xerxes, thinking that his request would be for anything rather than that which he actually asked, said that he would grant it, and bade him speak and say what he desired. he then, when he heard this, was encouraged, and spoke these words: "master, i have, as it chances, five sons, and it is their fortune to be all going together with thee on the march against hellas. do thou, therefore, o king, have compassion upon me, who have come to so great an age, and release from serving in the expedition one of my sons, the eldest, in order that he may be caretaker both of myself and of my wealth: but the other four take with thyself, and after thou hast accomplished that which thou hast in thy mind, mayest thou have a safe return home." . then xerxes was exceedingly angry and made answer with these words: "thou wretched man, dost thou dare, when i am going on a march myself against hellas, and am taking my sons and my brothers and my relations and friends, dost thou dare to make any mention of a son of thine, seeing that thou art my slave, who ought to have been accompanying me thyself with thy whole household and thy wife as well? now therefore be assured of this, that the passionate spirit of man dwells within the ears; and when it has heard good things, it fills the body with delight, but when it has heard the opposite things to this, it swells up with anger. as then thou canst not boast of having surpassed the king in conferring benefits formerly, when thou didst to us good deeds and madest offer to do more of the same kind, so now that thou hast turned to shamelessness, thou shalt receive not thy desert but less than thou deservest: for thy gifts of hospitality shall rescue from death thyself and the four others of thy sons, but thou shalt pay the penalty with the life of the one to whom thou dost cling most." having answered thus, he forthwith commanded those to whom it was appointed to do these things, to find out the eldest of the sons of pythios and to cut him in two in the middle; and having cut him in two, to dispose the halves, one on the right hand of the road and the other on the left, and that the army should pass between them by this way. . when these had so done, the army proceeded to pass between; and first the baggage-bearers led the way together with their horses, and after these the host composed of all kinds of nations mingled together without distinction: and when more than the half had gone by, an interval was left and these were separated from the king. for before him went first a thousand horsemen, chosen out of all the persians; and after them a thousand spearmen chosen also from all the persians, having the points of their spears turned down to the ground; and then ten sacred horses, called "nesaian," with the fairest possible trappings. now the horses are called nesaian for this reason:--there is a wide plain in the land of media which is called the nesaian plain, and this plain produces the great horses of which i speak. behind these ten horses the sacred chariot of zeus was appointed to go, which was drawn by eight white horses; and behind the horses again followed on foot a charioteer holding the reins, for no human creature mounts upon the seat of that chariot. then behind this came xerxes himself in a chariot drawn by nesaian horses, and by the side of him rode a charioteer, whose name was patiramphes, son of otanes a persian. . thus did xerxes march forth out of sardis; and he used to change, whenever he was so disposed, from the chariot to a carriage. and behind him went spearmen, the best and most noble of the persians, a thousand in number, holding their spear-points in the customary way; and after them another thousand horsemen chosen out from the persians; and after the horsemen ten thousand men chosen out from the remainder of the persians. this body went on foot; and of these a thousand had upon their spears pomegranates of gold instead of the spikes at the butt-end, and these enclosed the others round, while the remaining nine thousand were within these and had silver pomegranates. and those also had golden pomegranates who had their spear-points turned towards the earth, while those who followed next after xerxes had golden apples. then to follow the ten thousand there was appointed a body of ten thousand persian cavalry; and after the cavalry there was an interval of as much as two furlongs. then the rest of the host came marching without distinction. . so the army proceeded on its march from lydia to the river caïcos and the land of mysia; and then setting forth from the caïcos and keeping the mountain of cane on the left hand, it marched through the region of atarneus to the city of carene. from this it went through the plain of thebe, passing by the cities of adramytteion and antandros of the pelasgians; and taking mount ida on the left hand, it came on to the land of ilion. and first, when it had stopped for the night close under mount ida, thunder and bolts of lightning fell upon it, and destroyed here in this place a very large number of men. . then when the army had come to the river scamander,--which of all rivers to which they had come, since they set forth from sardis and undertook their march, was the first of which the stream failed and was not sufficient for the drinking of the army and of the animals with it,--when, i say, xerxes had come to this river, he went up to the citadel of priam, having a desire to see it; and having seen it and learnt by inquiry of all those matters severally, he sacrificed a thousand heifers to athene of ilion, and the magians poured libations in honour of the heroes: and after they had done this, a fear fell upon the army in the night. then at break of day he set forth from thence, keeping on his left hand the cities of rhoition and ophryneion and dardanos, which last borders upon abydos, and having on the right hand the gergith teucrians. . when xerxes had come into the midst of abydos, he had a desire to see all the army; and there had been made purposely for him beforehand upon a hill in this place a raised seat of white stone, which the people of abydos had built at the command of the king given beforehand. there he took his seat, and looking down upon the shore he gazed both upon the land-army and the ships; and gazing upon them he had a longing to see a contest take place between the ships; and when it had taken place and the phenicians of sidon were victorious, he was delighted both with the contest and with the whole armament. . and seeing all the hellespont covered over with the ships, and all the shores and the plains of abydos full of men, then xerxes pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he fell to weeping. . artabanos his uncle therefore perceiving him,--the same who at first boldly declared his opinion advising xerxes not to march against hellas,--this man, i say, having observed that xerxes wept, asked as follows: "o king, how far different from one another are the things which thou hast done now and a short while before now! for having pronounced thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears." he said: "yea, for after i had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by." he then made answer and said: "to another evil more pitiful than this we are made subject in the course of our life; for in the period of life, short as it is, no man, either of these here or of others, is made by nature so happy, that there will not come to him many times, and not once only, the desire to be dead rather than to live; for misfortunes falling upon us and diseases disturbing our happiness make the time of life, though short indeed, seem long: thus, since life is full of trouble, death has become the most acceptable refuge for man; and god, having given him to taste of the sweetness of life, is discovered in this matter to be full of jealousy." . xerxes made answer saying: "artabanos, of human life, which is such as thou dost define it to be, let us cease to speak, and do not remember evils when we have good things in hand: but do thou declare to me this:--if the vision of the dream had not appeared with so much evidence, wouldest thou still be holding thy former opinion, endeavouring to prevent me from marching against hellas, or wouldest thou have changed from it? come, tell me this exactly." he answered saying: "o king, may the vision of the dream which appeared have such fulfilment as we both desire! but i am even to this moment full of apprehension and cannot contain myself, taking into account many things besides, and also seeing that two things, which are the greatest things of all, are utterly hostile to thee." . to this xerxes made answer in these words: "thou strangest of men, of what nature are these two things which thou sayest are utterly hostile to me? is it that the land-army is to be found fault with in the matter of numbers, and that the army of the hellenes appears to thee likely to be many times as large as ours? or dost thou think that our fleet will fall short of theirs? or even that both of these things together will prove true? for if thou thinkest that in these respects our power is deficient, one might make gathering at once of another force." . then he made answer and said: "o king, neither with this army would any one who has understanding find fault, nor with the number of the ships; and indeed if thou shalt assemble more, the two things of which i speak will be made thereby yet more hostile: and these two things are--the land and the sea. for neither in the sea is there, as i suppose, a harbour anywhere large enough to receive this fleet of thine, if a storm should arise, and to ensure the safety of the ships till it be over; and yet not one alone ought this harbour to be, but there should be such harbours along the whole coast of the continent by which thou sailest; and if there are not harbours to receive thy ships, know that accidents will rule men and not men the accidents. now having told thee of one of the two things, i am about to tell thee of the other. the land, i say, becomes hostile to thee in this way:--if nothing shall come to oppose thee, the land is hostile to thee by so much the more in proportion as thou shalt advance more, ever stealing on further and further, for there is no satiety of good fortune felt by men: and this i say, that with no one to stand against thee the country traversed, growing more and more as time goes on, will produce for thee famine. man, however, will be in the best condition, if when he is taking counsel he feels fear, reckoning to suffer everything that can possibly come, but in doing the deed he is bold." . xerxes made answer in these words: "artabanos, reasonably dost thou set forth these matters; but do not thou fear everything nor reckon equally for everything: for if thou shouldest set thyself with regard to all matters which come on at any time, to reckon for everything equally, thou wouldest never perform any deed. it is better to have good courage about everything and to suffer half the evils which threaten, than to have fear beforehand about everything and not to suffer any evil at all: and if, while contending against everything which is said, thou omit to declare the course which is safe, thou dost incur in these matters the reproach of failure equally with him who says the opposite to this. this then, i say, is evenly balanced: but how should one who is but man know the course which is safe? i think, in no way. to those then who choose to act, for the most part gain is wont to come; but to those who reckon for everything and shrink back, it is not much wont to come. thou seest the power of the persians, to what great might it has advanced: if then those who came to be kings before me had had opinions like to thine, or, though not having such opinions, had had such counsellors as thou, thou wouldest never have seen it brought forward to this point. as it is however, by running risks they conducted it on to this: for great power is in general gained by running great risks. we therefore, following their example, are making our march now during the fairest season of the year; and after we have subdued all europe we shall return back home, neither having met with famine anywhere nor having suffered any other thing which is unpleasant. for first we march bearing with us ourselves great store of food, and secondly we shall possess the corn-crops of all the peoples to whose land and nation we come; and we are making a march now against men who plough the soil, and not against nomad tribes." . after this artabanos said: "o king, since thou dost urge us not to have fear of anything, do thou i pray thee accept a counsel from me; for when speaking of many things it is necessary to extend speech to a greater length. cyrus the son of cambyses subdued all ionia except the athenians, so that it was tributary to the persians. these men therefore i counsel thee by no means to lead against their parent stock, seeing that even without these we are able to get the advantage over our enemies. for supposing that they go with us, either they must prove themselves doers of great wrong, if they join in reducing their mother city to slavery, or doers of great right, if they join in freeing her: now if they show themselves doers of great wrong, they bring us no very large gain in addition; but if they show themselves doers of great right, they are able then to cause much damage to thy army. therefore lay to heart also the ancient saying, how well it has been said that at the first beginning of things the end does not completely appear." . to this xerxes made answer: "artabanos, of all the opinions which thou hast uttered, thou art mistaken most of all in this; seeing that thou fearest lest the ionians should change side, about whom we have a most sure proof, of which thou art a witness thyself and also the rest are witnesses who went with dareios on his march against the scythians,--namely this, that the whole persian army then came to be dependent upon these men, whether they would destroy or whether they would save it, and they displayed righteous dealing and trustworthiness, and nought at all that was unfriendly. besides this, seeing that they have left children and wives and wealth in our land, we must not even imagine that they will make any rebellion. fear not then this thing either, but have a good heart and keep safe my house and my government; for to thee of all men i entrust my sceptre of rule." . having thus spoken and having sent artabanos back to susa, next xerxes summoned to his presence the men of most repute among the persians, and when they were come before him, he spoke to them as follows: "persians, i assembled you together desiring this of you, that ye should show yourselves good men and should not disgrace the deeds done in former times by the persians, which are great and glorious; but let us each one of us by himself, and all together also, be zealous in our enterprise; for this which we labour for is a common good for all. and i exhort you that ye preserve in the war without relaxing your efforts, because, as i am informed, we are marching against good men, and if we shall overcome them, there will not be any other army of men which will ever stand against us. now therefore let us begin the crossing, after having made prayer to those gods who have the persians for their allotted charge." . during this day then they were making preparation to cross over; and on the next day they waited for the sun, desiring to see him rise, and in the meantime they offered all kinds of incense upon the bridges and strewed the way with branches of myrtle. then, as the sun was rising, xerxes made libation from a golden cup into the sea, and prayed to the sun, that no accident might befall him such as should cause him to cease from subduing europe, until he had come to its furthest limits. after having thus prayed he threw the cup into the hellespont and with it a golden mixing-bowl and a persian sword, which they call akinakes: but whether he cast them into the sea as an offering dedicated to the sun, or whether he had repented of his scourging of the hellespont and desired to present a gift to the sea as amends for this, i cannot for certain say. . when xerxes had done this, they proceeded to cross over, the whole army both the footmen and the horsemen going by one bridge, namely that which was on the side of the pontus, while the baggage-animals and the attendants went over the other, which was towards the egean. first the ten thousand persians led the way, all with wreaths, and after them came the mixed body of the army made up of all kinds of nations: these on that day; and on the next day, first the horsemen and those who had their spear-points turned downwards, these also wearing wreaths; and after them the sacred horses and the sacred chariot, and then xerxes himself and the spear-bearers and the thousand horsemen; and after them the rest of the army. in the meantime the ships also put out from shore and went over to the opposite side. i have heard however another account which says that the king crossed over the very last of all. . when xerxes had crossed over into europe, he gazed upon the army crossing under the lash; and his army crossed over in seven days and seven nights, going on continuously without any pause. then, it is said, after xerxes had now crossed over the hellespont, a man of that coast exclaimed: "why, o zeus, in the likeness of a persian man and taking for thyself the name of xerxes instead of zeus, art thou proposing to lay waste hellas, taking with thee all the nations of men? for it was possible for thee to do so even without the help of these." . when all had crossed over, after they had set forth on their way a great portent appeared to them, of which xerxes made no account, although it was easy to conjecture its meaning,--a mare gave birth to a hare. now the meaning of this was easy to conjecture in this way, namely that xerxes was about to march an army against hellas very proudly and magnificently, but would come back again to the place whence he came, running for his life. there happened also a portent of another kind while he was still at sardis,--a mule brought forth young and gave birth to a mule which had organs of generation of two kinds, both those of the male and those of the female, and those of the male were above. xerxes however made no account of either of these portents, but proceeded on his way, and with him the land-army. . the fleet meanwhile was sailing out of the hellespont and coasting along, going in the opposite direction to the land-army; for the fleet was sailing towards the west, making for the promontory of sarpedon, to which it had been ordered beforehand to go, and there wait for the army; but the land-army meanwhile was making its march towards the east and the sunrising, through the chersonese, keeping on its right the tomb of helle the daughter of athamas, and on its left the city of cardia, and marching through the midst of a town the name of which is agora. thence bending round the gulf called melas and having crossed over the river melas, the stream of which did not suffice at this time for the army but failed,--having crossed, i say, this river, from which the gulf also has its name, it went on westwards, passing by ainos a city of the aiolians, and by the lake stentoris, until at last it came to doriscos. . now doriscos is a sea-beach and plain of great extent in thrace, and through it flows the great river hebros: here a royal fortress had been built, the same which is now called doriscos, and a garrison of persians had been established in it by dareios, ever since the time when he went on his march against the scythians. it seemed then to xerxes that the place was convenient to order his army and to number it throughout, and so he proceeded to do. the commanders of the ships at the bidding of xerxes had brought all their ships, when they arrived at doriscos, up to the sea-beach which adjoins doriscos, on which there is situated both sale a city of the samothrakians, and also zone, and of which the extreme point is the promontory of serreion, which is well known; and the region belonged in ancient time to the kikonians. to this beach then they had brought in their ships, and having drawn them up on land they were letting them get dry: and during this time he proceeded to number the army at doriscos. . now of the number which each separate nation supplied i am not able to give certain information, for this is not reported by any persons; but of the whole land-army taken together the number proved to be one hundred and seventy myriads: and they numbered them throughout in the following manner:--they gathered together in one place a body of ten thousand men, and packing them together as closely as they could, they drew a circle round outside: and thus having drawn a circle round and having let the ten thousand men go from it, they built a wall of rough stones round the circumference of the circle, rising to the height of a man's navel. having made this, they caused others to go into the space which had been built round, until they had in this manner numbered them all throughout: and after they had numbered them, they ordered them separately by nations. . now those who served were as follows:--the persians with this equipment:--about their heads they had soft felt caps called tiaras, and about their body tunics of various colours with sleeves, presenting the appearance of iron scales like those of a fish, and about the legs trousers; and instead of the ordinary shields they had shields of wicker-work, under which hung quivers; and they had short spears and large bows and arrows of reed, and moreover daggers hanging by the right thigh from the girdle: and they acknowledged as their commander otanes the father of amestris the wife of xerxes. now these were called by the hellenes in ancient time kephenes; by themselves however and by their neighbours they were called artaians: but when perseus, the son of danae and zeus, came to kepheus the son of belos and took to wife his daughter andromeda, there was born to them a son to whom he gave the name perses, and this son he left behind there, for it chanced that kepheus had no male offspring: after him therefore this race was named. . the medes served in the expedition equipped in precisely the same manner; for this equipment is in fact median and not persian: and the medes acknowledged as their commander tigranes an achaimenid. these in ancient time used to be generally called arians; but when medea the colchian came from athens to these arians, they also changed their name. thus the medes themselves report about themselves. the kissians served with equipment in other respects like that of the persians, but instead of the felt caps they wore fillets: and of the kissians anaphes the son of otanes was commander. the hyrcanians were armed like the persians, acknowledging as their leader megapanos, the same who after these events became governor of babylon. . the assyrians served with helmets about their heads made of bronze or plaited in a barbarian style which it is not easy to describe; and they had shields and spears, and daggers like the egyptian knives, and moreover they had wooden clubs with knobs of iron, and corslets of linen. these are by the hellenes called syrians, but by the barbarians they have been called always assyrians: [among these were the chaldeans]: and the commander of them was otaspes the son of artachaies. . the bactrians served wearing about their heads nearly the same covering as the medes, and having native bows of reed and short spears. the scaran scythians had about their heads caps which were carried up to a point and set upright and stiff; and they wore trousers, and carried native bows and daggers, and besides this axes of the kind called sagaris. these were called amyrgian sacans, being in fact scythians; for the persians call all the scythians sacans: and of the bactrians and sacans the commander was hystaspes, the son of dareios and of atossa the daughter of cyrus. . the indians wore garments made of tree-wool, and they had bows of reed and arrows of reed with iron points. thus were the indians equipped; and serving with the rest they had been assigned to pharnazathres the son of artabates. . the arians were equipped with median bows, and in other respects like the bactrians: and of the arians sisamnes the son of hydarnes was in command. the parthians and chorasmians and sogdians and gandarians and dadicans served with the same equipment as the bactrians. of these the commanders were, artabazos the son of pharnakes of the parthians and chorasmians, azanes the son of artaios of the sogdians, and artyphios the son of artabanos of the gandarians and dadicans. the caspians served wearing coats of skin and having native bows of reed and short swords: thus were these equipped; and they acknowledged as their leader ariomardos the brother of artyphios. the sarangians were conspicuous among the rest by wearing dyed garments; and they had boots reaching up to the knee, and median bows and spears: of these the commander was pherendates the son of megabazos. the pactyans were wearers of skin coats and had native bows and daggers: these acknowledged as their commander artaÿntes the son of ithamitres. . the utians and mycans and paricanians were equipped like the pactyans: of these the commanders were, arsamenes the son of dareios of the utians and mycans, and of the paricanians siromitres the son of oiobazos. . the arabians wore loose mantles girt up, and they carried at their right side bows that bent backward of great length. the ethiopians had skins of leopards and lions tied upon them, and bows made of a slip of palm-wood, which were of great length, not less than four cubits, and for them small arrows of reed with a sharpened stone at the head instead of iron, the same stone with which they engrave seals: in addition to this they had spears, and on them was the sharpened horn of a gazelle by way of a spear-head, and they had also clubs with knobs upon them. of their body they used to smear over half with white, when they went into battle, and the other half with red. of the arabians and the ethiopians who dwelt above egypt the commander was arsames, the son of dareios and of artystone, the daughter of cyrus, whom dareios loved most of all his wives, and had an image made of her of beaten gold. . of the ethiopians above egypt and of the arabians the commander, i say, was arsames; but the ethiopians from the direction of the sunrising (for the ethiopians were in two bodies) had been appointed to serve with the indians, being in no way different from the other ethiopians, but in their language and in the nature of their hair only; for the ethiopians from the east are straight-haired, but those of libya have hair more thick and woolly than that of any other men. these ethiopians from asia were armed for the most part like the indians, but they had upon their heads the skin of a horse's forehead flayed off with the ears and the mane, and the mane served instead of a crest, while they had the ears of the horse set up straight and stiff: and instead of shields they used to make defences to hold before themselves of the skins of cranes. . the libyans went with equipments of leather, and they used javelins burnt at the point. these acknowledged as their commander massages the son of oarizos. . the paphlagonians served with plaited helmets upon their heads, small shields, and spears of no great size, and also javelins and daggers; and about their feet native boots reaching up to the middle of the shin. the ligyans and matienians and mariandynoi and syrians served with the same equipment as the paphlagonians: these syrians are called by the persians cappadokians. of the paphlagonians and matienians the commander was dotos the son of megasidros, and of the mariandynoi and lygians and syrians, gobryas, who was the son of dareios and artystone. . the phrygians had an equipment very like that of the paphlagonians with some slight difference. now the phrygians, as the macedonians say, used to be called brigians during the time that they were natives of europe and dwelt with the macedonians; but after they had changed into asia, with their country they changed also their name and were called phrygians. the armenians were armed just like the phrygians, being settlers from the phrygians. of these two together the commander was artochmes, who was married to a daughter of dareios. . the lydians had arms very closely resembling those of the hellenes. now the lydians were in old time called medonians, and they were named again after lydos the son of atys, changing their former name. the mysians had upon their heads native helmets, and they bore small shields and used javelins burnt at the point. these are settlers from the lydians, and from mount olympos they are called olympienoi. of the lydians and mysians the commander was artaphrenes the son of artaphrenes, he who invaded marathon together with datis. . the thracians served having fox-skins upon their heads and tunics about their body, with loose mantles of various colours thrown round over them; and about their feet and lower part of the leg they wore boots of deer-skin; and besides this they had javelins and round bucklers and small daggers. these when they had crossed over into asia came to be called bithynians, but formerly they were called, as they themselves report, strymonians, since they dwelt upon the river strymon; and they say that they were driven out of their abode by the teucrians and mysians. of the thracians who lived in asia the commander was bassakes the son of artabanos. .... and they had small shields of raw ox-hide, and each man carried two hunting-spears of lykian workmanship. on their heads they wore helmets of bronze, and to the helmets the ears and horns of an ox were attached, in bronze, and upon them also there were crests; and the lower part of their legs was wrapped round with red-coloured strips of cloth. among these men there is an oracle of ares. . the meonian cabelians, who are called lasonians, had the same equipment as the kilikians, and what this was i shall explain when in the course of the catalogue i come to the array of the kilikians. the milyans had short spears, and their garments were fastened on with buckles; some of them had lykian bows, and about their heads they had caps made of leather. of all these badres the son of hystanes was in command. . the moschoi had wooden caps upon their heads, and shields and small spears, on which long points were set. the tibarenians and macronians and mossynoicoi served with equipment like that of the moschoi, and these were arrayed together under the following commanders,--the moschoi and tibarenians under ariomardos, who was the son of dareios and of parmys, the daughter of smerdis son of cyrus; the macronians and mossynoicoi under artaÿctes the son of cherasmis, who was governor of sestos on the hellespont. . the mares wore on their heads native helmets of plaited work, and had small shields of hide and javelins; and the colchians wore wooden helmets about their heads, and had small shields of raw ox-hide and short spears, and also knives. of the mares and colchians the commander was pharandates the son of teaspis. the alarodians and saspeirians served armed like the colchians; and of these the commander was masistios the son of siromitres. . the island tribes which came with the army from the erythraian sea, belonging to the islands in which the king settles those who are called the "removed," had clothing and arms very like those of the medes. of these islanders the commander was mardontes the son of bagaios, who in the year after these events was a commander of the army at mykale and lost his life in the battle. . these were the nations which served in the campaign by land and had been appointed to be among the foot-soldiers. of this army those who have been mentioned were commanders; and they were the men who sit it in order by divisions and numbered it and appointed commanders of thousands and commanders of tens of thousands, but the commanders of hundreds and of tens were appointed by the commanders of ten thousands; and there were others who were leaders of divisions and nations. . these, i say, who have been mentioned were commanders of the army; and over these and over the whole army together that went on foot there were in command mardonios the son of gobryas, tritantaichmes the son of that artabanos who gave the opinion that they should not make the march against hellas, smerdomenes the son of otanes (both these being sons of brothers of dareios and so cousins of xerxes), masistes the son of dareios and atossa, gergis the son of ariazos, and megabyzos the son of zopyros. . these were generals of the whole together that went on foot, excepting the ten thousand; and of these ten thousand chosen persians the general was hydarnes the son of hydarnes; and these persians were called "immortals," because, if any one of them made the number incomplete, being overcome either by death or disease, another man was chosen to his place, and they were never either more or fewer than ten thousand. now of all the nations, the persians showed the greatest splendour of ornament and were themselves the best men. they had equipment such as has been mentioned, and besides this they were conspicuous among the rest for great quantity of gold freely used; and they took with them carriages, and in them concubines and a multitude of attendants well furnished; and provisions for them apart from the soldiers were borne by camels and beasts of burden. . the nations who serve as cavalry are these; not all however supplied cavalry, but only as many as here follow:--the persians equipped in the same manner as their foot-soldiers, except that upon their heads some of them had beaten-work of metal, either bronze or iron. . there are also certain nomads called sagartians, persian in race and in language and having a dress which is midway between that of the persians and that of the pactyans. these furnished eight thousand horse, and they are not accustomed to have any arms either of bronze or of iron excepting daggers, but they use ropes twisted of thongs, and trust to these when they go into war: and the manner of fighting of these men is as follows:--when they come to conflict with the enemy, they throw the ropes with nooses at the end of them, and whatsoever the man catches by the throw, whether horse or man, he draws to himself, and they being entangled in toils are thus destroyed. . this is the manner of fighting of these men, and they were arrayed next to the persians. the medes had the same equipment as their men on foot, and the kissians likewise. the indians were armed in the same manner as those of them who served on foot, and they both rode horses and drove chariots, in which were harnessed horses or wild asses. the bactrians were equipped in the same way as those who served on foot, and the caspians likewise. the libyans too were equipped like those who served on foot, and these also all drove chariots. so too the caspians and paricanians were equipped like those who served on foot, and they all rode on camels, which in swiftness were not inferior to horses. . these nations alone served as cavalry, and the number of the cavalry proved to be eight myriads, apart from the camels and the chariots. now the rest of the cavalry was arrayed in squadrons, but the arabians were placed after them and last of all, for the horses could not endure the camels, and therefore they were placed last, in order that the horses might not be frightened. . the commanders of the cavalry were harmamithras and tithaios sons of datis, but the third, pharnuches, who was in command of the horse with them, had been left behind at sardis sick: for as they were setting forth from sardis, an accident befell him of an unwished-for kind,--as he was riding, a dog ran up under his horse's feet, and the horse not having seen it beforehand was frightened, and rearing up he threw pharnuches off his back, who falling vomited blood, and his sickness turned to a consumption. to the horse however they forthwith at the first did as he commanded, that is to say, the servants led him away to the place where he had thrown his master and cut off his legs at the knees. thus was pharnuches removed from his command. . of the triremes the number proved to be one thousand two hundred and seven, and these were they who furnished them:--the phenicians, together with the syrians who dwell in palestine furnished three hundred; and they were equipped thus, that is to say, they had about their heads leathern caps made very nearly in the hellenic fashion, and they wore corslets of linen, and had shields without rims and javelins. these phenicians dwelt in ancient time, as they themselves report, upon the erythraian sea, and thence they passed over and dwell in the country along the sea coast of syria; and this part of syria and all as far as egypt is called palestine. the egyptians furnished two hundred ships: these men had about their heads helmets of plaited work, and they had hollow shields with the rims large, and spears for sea-fighting, and large axes: the greater number of them wore corslets, and they had large knives. . these men were thus equipped; and the cyprians furnished a hundred and fifty ships, being themselves equipped as follows,--their kings had their heads wound round with fillets, and the rest had tunics, but in other respects they were like the hellenes. among these there are various races as follows,--some of them are from salamis and athens, others from arcadia, others from kythnos, others again from phenicia and others from ethiopia, as the cyprians themselves report. . the kilikians furnished a hundred ships; and these again had about their heads native helmets, and for shields they carried targets made of raw ox-hide: they wore tunics of wool and each man had two javelins and a sword, this last being made very like the egyptian knives. these in old time were called hypachaians, and they got their later name from kilix the son of agenor, a phenician. the pamphylians furnished thirty ships and were equipped in hellenic arms. these pamphylians are of those who were dispersed from troy together with amphilochos and calchas. . the lykians furnished fifty ships; and they were wearers of corslets and greaves, and had bows of cornel-wood and arrows of reeds without feathers and javelins and a goat-skin hanging over their shoulders, and about their heads felt caps wreathed round with feathers; also they had daggers and falchions. the lykians were formerly called termilai, being originally of crete, and they got their later name from lycos the son of pandion, an athenian. . the dorians of asia furnished thirty ships; and these had hellenic arms and were originally from the peloponnese. the carians supplied seventy ships; and they were equipped in other respects like hellenes but they had also falchions and daggers. what was the former name of these has been told in the first part of the history. . the ionians furnished a hundred ships, and were equipped like hellenes. now the ionians, so long time as they dwelt in the peloponnese, in the land which is now called achaia, and before the time when danaos and xuthos came to the peloponnese, were called, as the hellenes report, pelasgians of the coast-land, and then ionians after ion the son of xuthos. . the islanders furnished seventeen ships, and were armed like hellenes, this also being a pelasgian race, though afterwards it came to be called ionian by the same rule as the ionians of the twelve cities, who came from athens. the aiolians supplied sixty ships; and these were equipped like hellenes and used to be called pelasgians in the old time, as the hellenes report. the hellespontians, excepting those of abydos (for the men of abydos had been appointed by the king to stay in their place and be guards of the bridges), the rest, i say, of those who served in the expedition from the pontus furnished a hundred ships, and were equipped like hellenes: these are colonists of the ionians and dorians. . in all the ships there served as fighting-men persians, medes, or sacans;: and of the ships, those which sailed best were furnished by the phenicians, and of the phenicians the best by the men of sidon. over all these men and also over those of them who were appointed to serve in the land-army, there were for each tribe native chieftains, of whom, since i am not compelled by the course of the inquiry, i make no mention by the way; for in the first place the chieftains of each separate nation were not persons worthy of mention, and then moreover within each nation there were as many chieftains as there were cities. these went with the expedition too not as commanders, but like the others serving as slaves; for the generals who had the absolute power and commanded the various nations, that is to say those who were persians, having already been mentioned by me. . of the naval force the following were commanders,--ariabignes the son of dareios, prexaspes the son of aspathines, megabazos the son of megabates, and achaimenes the son of dareios; that is to say, of the ionian and carian force ariabignes, who was the son of dareios and of the daughter of gobryas; of the egyptians achaimenes was commander, being brother of xerxes by both parents; and of the rest of the armament the other two were in command: and galleys of thirty oars and of fifty oars, and light vessels, and long ships to carry horses had been assembled together, as it proved, to the number of three thousand. . of those who sailed in the ships the men of most note after the commanders were these,--of sidon, tetramnestos son of anysos; of tyre, matten son of siromos; or arados, merbalos son of agbalos; of kilikia, syennesis son of oromedon; of lykia, kyberniscos son of sicas; of cyprus, gorgos son of chersis and timonax son of timagoras; of caria, histiaios son of tymnes, pigres son of hysseldomos, and damasithymos son of candaules. . of the rest of the officers i make no mention by the way (since i am not bound to do so), but only of artemisia, at whom i marvel most that she joined the expedition against hellas, being a woman; for after her husband died, she holding the power herself, although she had a son who was a young man, went on the expedition impelled by high spirit and manly courage, no necessity being laid upon her. now her name, as i said, was artemisia and she was the daughter of lygdamis, and by descent she was of halicarnassos on the side of her father, but of crete by her mother. she was ruler of the men of halicarnassos and cos and nisyros and calydna, furnishing five ships; and she furnished ships which were of all the fleet reputed the best after those of the sidonians, and of all his allies she set forth the best counsels to the king. of the states of which i said that she was leader i declare the people to be all of dorian race, those of halicarnassos being troizenians, and the rest epidaurians. so far then i have spoken of the naval force. . then when xerxes had numbered the army, and it had been arranged in divisions, he had a mind to drive through it himself and inspect it: and afterwards he proceeded so to do; and driving through in a chariot by each nation, he inquired about them and his scribes wrote down the names, until he had gone from end to end both of the horse and of the foot. when he had done this, the ships were drawn down into the sea, and xerxes changing from his chariot to a ship of sidon sat down under a golden canopy and sailed along by the prows of the ships, asking of all just as he had done with the land-army, and having the answers written down. and the captains had taken their ships out to a distance of about four hundred feet from the beach and were staying them there, all having turned the prows of the ships towards the shore in an even line and having armed all the fighting-men as for war; and he inspected them sailing within, between the prows of the ships and the beach. . now when he had sailed through these and had disembarked from his ship, he sent for demaratos the son of ariston, who was marching with him against hellas; and having called him he asked as follows: "demaratos, now it is my pleasure to ask thee somewhat which i desire to know. thou art not only a hellene, but also, as i am informed both by thee and by the other hellenes who come to speech with me, of a city which is neither the least nor the feeblest of hellas. now therefore declare to me this, namely whether the hellenes will endure to raise hands against me: for, as i suppose, even if all the hellenes and the remaining nations who dwell towards the west should be gathered together, they are not strong enough in fight to endure my attack, supposing them to be my enemies. i desire however to be informed also of thy opinion, what thou sayest about these matters." he inquired thus, and the other made answer and said: "o king, shall i utter the truth in speaking to thee, or that which will give pleasure?" and he bade him utter the truth, saying that he should suffer nothing unpleasant in consequence of this, any more than he suffered before. . when demaratos heard this, he spoke as follows: "o king, since thou biddest me by all means utter the truth, and so speak as one who shall not be afterwards convicted by thee of having spoken falsely, i say this:--with hellas poverty is ever an inbred growth, while valour is one that has been brought in, being acquired by intelligence and the force of law; and of it hellas makes use ever to avert from herself not only poverty but also servitude to a master. now i commend all the hellenes who are settled in those dorian lands, but this which i am about to say has regard not to all, but to the lacedemonians alone: of these i say, first that it is not possible that they will ever accept thy terms, which carry with them servitude for hellas; and next i say that they will stand against thee in fight, even if all the other hellenes shall be of thy party: and as for numbers, ask now how many they are, that they are able to do this; for whether it chances that a thousand of them have come out into the field, these will fight with thee, or if there be less than this, or again if there be more." . xerxes hearing this laughed, and said: "demaratos, what a speech is this which thou hast uttered, saying that a thousand men will fight with this vast army! come tell me this:--thou sayest that thou wert thyself king of these men; wilt thou therefore consent forthwith to fight with ten men? and yet if your state is such throughout as thou dost describe it, thou their king ought by your laws to stand in array against double as many as another man; that is to say, if each of them is a match for ten men of my army, i expect of thee that thou shouldest be a match for twenty. thus would be confirmed the report which is made by thee: but if ye, who boast thus greatly are such men and in size so great only as the hellenes who come commonly to speech with me, thyself included, then beware lest this which has been spoken prove but an empty vaunt. for come, let me examine it by all that is probable: how could a thousand or ten thousand or even fifty thousand, at least if they were all equally free and were not ruled by one man, stand against so great an army? since, as thou knowest, we shall be more than a thousand coming about each one of them, supposing them to be in number five thousand. if indeed they were ruled by one man after our fashion, they might perhaps from fear of him become braver than it was their nature to be, or they might go compelled by the lash to fight with greater numbers, being themselves fewer in number; but if left at liberty, they would do neither of these things: and i for my part suppose that, even if equally matched in numbers, the hellenes would hardly dare to fight with the persians taken alone. with us however this of which thou speakest is found in single men, not indeed often, but rarely; for there are persians of my spearmen who will consent to fight with three men of the hellenes at once: but thou hast had no experience of these things and therefore thou speakest very much at random." . to this demaratos replied: "o king, from the first i was sure that if i uttered the truth i should not speak that which was pleasing to thee; since however thou didst compel me to speak the very truth, i told thee of the matters which concern the spartans. and yet how i am at this present time attached to them by affection thou knowest better than any; seeing that first they took away from me the rank and privileges which came to me from my fathers, and then also they have caused me to be without native land and an exile; but thy father took me up and gave me livelihood and a house to dwell in. surely it is not to be supposed likely that the prudent man will thrust aside friendliness which is offered to him, but rather that he will accept it with full contentment. and i do not profess that i am able to fight either with ten men or with two, nay, if i had my will, i would not even fight with one; but if there were necessity or if the cause which urged me to the combat were a great one, i would fight most willingly with one of these men who says that he is a match for three of the hellenes. so also the lacedemonians are not inferior to any men when fighting one by one, and they are the best of all men when fighting in a body: for though free, yet they are not free in all things, for over them is set law as a master, whom they fear much more even than thy people fear thee. it is certain at least that they do whatsoever that master commands; and he commands ever the same thing, that is to say, he bids them not flee out of battle from any multitude of men, but stay in their post and win the victory or lose their life. but if when i say these things i seem to thee to be speaking at random, of other things for the future i prefer to be silent; and at this time i spake only because i was compelled. may it come to pass however according to thy mind, o king." . he thus made answer, and xerxes turned the matter to laughter and felt no anger, but dismissed him with kindness. then after he had conversed with him, and had appointed mascames son of megadostes to be governor at this place doriscos, removing the governor who had been appointed by dareios, xerxes marched forth his army through thrace to invade hellas. . and mascames, whom he left behind here, proved to be a man of such qualities that to him alone xerxes used to send gifts, considering him the best of all the men whom either he himself or dareios had appointed to be governors,--he used to send him gifts, i say, every year, and so also did artaxerxes the son of xerxes to the descendants of mascames. for even before this march governors had been appointed in thrace and everywhere about the hellespont; and these all, both those in thrace and in the hellespont, were conquered by the hellenes after this expedition, except only the one who was at doriscos; but mascames at doriscos none were ever able to conquer, though many tried. for this reason the gifts are sent continually for him from the king who reigns over the persians. . of those however who were conquered by the hellenes xerxes did not consider any to be a good man except only boges, who was at eïon: him he never ceased commending, and he honoured very highly his children who survived him in the land of persia. for in truth boges proved himself worthy of great commendation, seeing that when he was besieged by the athenians under kimon the son of miltiades, though he might have gone forth under a truce and so returned home to asia, he preferred not to do this, for fear that the king should that it was by cowardice that he survived; and he continued to hold out till the last. then when there was no longer any supply of provisions within the wall, he heaped together a great pyre, and he cut the throats of his children, his wife, his concubines and his servants, and threw them into the fire; and after this he scattered all the gold and silver in the city from the wall into the river strymon, and having so done he threw himself into the fire. thus he is justly commended even to this present time by the persians. . xerxes from doriscos was proceeding onwards to invade hellas; and as he went he compelled those who successively came in his way, to join his march: for the whole country as far as thessaly had been reduced to subjection, as has been set forth by me before, and was tributary under the king, having been subdued by megabazos and afterwards by mardonios. and he passed in his march from doriscos first by the samothrakian strongholds, of which that which is situated furthest towards the west is a city called mesambria. next to this follows stryme, a city of the thasians, and midway between them flows the river lisos, which at this time did not suffice when supplying its water to the army of xerxes, but the stream failed. this country was in old time called gallaïke, but now briantike; however by strict justice this also belongs to the kikonians. . having crossed over the bed of the river lisos after it had been dried up, he passed by these hellenic cities, namely maroneia, dicaia and abdera. these i say he passed by, and also the following lakes of note lying near them,--the ismarian lake, lying between maroneia and stryme; the bistonian lake near dicaia, into which two rivers pour their waters, the trauos and the compsantos; and at abdera no lake indeed of any note was passed by xerxes, but the river nestos, which flows there into the sea. then after passing these places he went by the cities of the mainland, near one of which there is, as it chances, a lake of somewhere about thirty furlongs in circumference, abounding in fish and very brackish; this the baggage-animals alone dried up, being watered at it: and the name of this city is pistyros. . these cities, i say, lying by the sea coast and belonging to hellenes, he passed by, leaving them on the left hand; and the tribes of thracians through whose country he marched were as follows, namely the paitians, kikonians, bistonians, sapaians, dersaians, edonians, satrians. of these they who were settled along the sea coast accompanied him with their ships, and those of them who dwelt inland and have been enumerated by me, were compelled to accompany him on land, except the satrians: , the satrians however never yet became obedient to any man, so far as we know, but they remain up to my time still free, alone of all the thracians; for they dwell in lofty mountains, which are covered with forest of all kinds and with snow, and also they are very skilful in war. these are they who possess the oracle of dionysos; which oracle is on their most lofty mountains. of the satrians those who act as prophets of the temple are the bessians; it is a prophetess who utters the oracles, as at delphi; and beyond this there is nothing further of a remarkable character. . xerxes having passed over the land which has been spoken of, next after this passed the strongholds of the pierians, of which the name of the one is phagres and of the other pergamos. by this way, i say, he made his march, going close by the walls of these, and keeping mount pangaion on the right hand, which is both great and lofty and in which are mines both of gold and of silver possessed by the pierians and odomantians, and especially by the satrians. . thus passing by the paionians, doberians and paioplians, who dwell beyond pangaion towards the north wind, he went on westwards, until at last he came to the river strymon and the city of eïon, of which, so long as he lived, boges was commander, the same about whom i was speaking a short time back. this country about mount pangaion is called phyllis, and it extends westwards to the river angites, which flows into the strymon, and southwards it stretches to the strymon itself; and at this river the magians sacrificed for good omens, slaying white horses. . having done this and many other things in addition to this, as charms for the river, at the nine ways in the land of the edonians, they proceeded by the bridges, for they had found the strymon already yoked with bridges; and being informed that this place was called the nine ways, they buried alive in it that number of boys and maidens, children of the natives of the place. now burying alive is a persian custom; for i am informed that amestris also, the wife of xerxes, when she had grown old, made return for her own life to the god who is said to be beneath the earth by burying twice seven children of persians who were men of renown. . as the army proceeded on its march from the strymon, it found after this a sea-beach stretching towards the setting of the sun, and passed by the hellenic city, argilos, which was there placed. this region and that which lies above it is called bisaltia. thence, keeping on the left hand the gulf which lies of posideion, he went through the plain which is called the plain of syleus, passing by stageiros a hellenic city, and so came to acanthos, taking with him as he went each one of these tribes and also of those who dwell about mount pangaion, just as he did those whom i enumerated before, having the men who dwelt along the sea coast to serve in the ships and those who dwelt inland to accompany him on foot. this road by which xerxes the king marched his army, the thracians do not disturb nor sow crops over, but pay very great reverence to it down to my own time. . then when he had come to acanthos, xerxes proclaimed a guest-friendship with the people of acanthos and also presented them with the median dress and commended them, perceiving that they were zealous to serve him in the war and hearing of that which had been dug. . and while xerxes was in acanthos, it happened that he who had been set over the making of the channel, artachaies by name, died of sickness, a man who was highly esteemed by xerxes and belonged to the achaimenid family; also he was in stature the tallest of all the persians, falling short by only four fingers of being five royal cubits in height, and he had a voice the loudest of all men; so that xerxes was greatly grieved at the loss of him, and carried him forth and buried him with great honour, and the whole army joined in throwing up a mound for him. to this artachaies the acanthians by the bidding of an oracle do sacrifice as a hero, calling upon his name in worship. . king xerxes, i say, was greatly grieved at the loss of artachaies: and meanwhile the hellenes who were entertaining his army and providing xerxes with dinners had been brought to utter ruin, so that they were being driven from house and home; seeing that when the thasians, for example, entertained the army of xerxes and provided him with a dinner on behalf of their towns upon the mainland, antipater the son of orgeus, who had been appointed for this purpose, a man of repute among the citizens equal to the best, reported that four hundred talents of silver had been spent upon the dinner. . just so or nearly so in the other cities also those who were set over the business reported the reckoning to be: for the dinner was given as follows, having been ordered a long time beforehand, and being counted by them a matter of great importance:--in the first place, so soon as they heard of it from the heralds who carried round the proclamation, the citizens in the various cities distributed corn among their several households, and all continued to make wheat and barley meal for many months; then they fed cattle, finding out and obtaining the finest animals for a high price; and they kept birds both of the land and of the water, in cages or in pools, all for the entertainment of the army. then again they had drinking-cups and mixing-bowls made of gold and of silver, and all the other things which are placed upon the table: these were made for the king himself and for those who ate at his table; but for the rest of the army only the things appointed for food were provided. then whenever the army came to any place, there was a tent pitched ready wherein xerxes himself made his stay, while the rest of the army remained out in the open air; and when it came to be time for dinner, then the entertainers had labour; but the others, after they had been satiated with food and had spent the night there, on the next day tore up the tent and taking with them all the movable furniture proceeded on their march, leaving nothing, but carrying all away with them. . then was uttered a word well spoken by megacreon, a man of abdera, who advised those of abdera to go in a body, both themselves and their wives, to their temples, and to sit down as suppliants of the gods, entreating them that for the future also they would ward off from them the half of the evils which threatened; and he bade them feel great thankfulness to the gods for the past events, because king xerxes had not thought good to take food twice in each day; for if it had been ordered to them beforehand to prepare breakfast also in like manner as the dinner, it would have remained for the men of abdera either not to await the coming of xerxes, or if they stayed, to be crushed by misfortune more than any other men upon the earth. . they then, i say, though hard put to it, yet were performing that which was appointed to them; and from acanthos xerxes, after having commanded the generals to wait for the fleet at therma, let the ships take their course apart from himself, (now this therma is that which is situated on the thermaic gulf, from which also this gulf has its name); and thus he did because he was informed that this was the shortest way: for from doriscos as far as acanthos the army had been making its march thus:--xerxes had divided the whole land-army into three divisions, and one of them he had set to go along the sea accompanying the fleet, of which division mardonios and masistes were commanders; another third of the army had been appointed to go by the inland way, and of this the generals in command were tritantaichmes and gergis; and meanwhile the third of the subdivisions, with which xerxes himself went, marched in the middle between them, and acknowledged as its commanders smerdomenes and megabyzos. . the fleet, when it was let go by xerxes and had sailed right through the channel made in athos (which went across to the gulf on which are situated the cities of assa, piloros, singos and sarte), having taken up a contingent from these cities also, sailed thence with a free course to the thermaïc gulf, and turning round ampelos the headland of torone, it left on one side the following hellenic cities, from which it took up contingents of ships and men, namely torone, galepsos, sermyle, mekyberna, olynthos: this region is called sithonia. . and the fleet of xerxes, cutting across from the headland of ampelos to that of canastron, which runs out furthest to sea of all pallene, took up there contingents of ships and men from potidaia, aphytis, neapolis, aige, therambo, skione, mende and sane, for these are the cities which occupy the region which now is called pallene, but was formerly called phlegra. then sailing along the coast of this country also the fleet continued its course towards the place which has been mentioned before, taking up contingents also from the cities which come next after pallene and border upon the thermaïc gulf; and the names of them are these,--lipaxos, combreia, lisai, gigonos, campsa, smila, aineia; and the region in which these cities are is called even to the present day crossaia. then sailing from aineia, with which name i brought to an end the list of the cities, at once the fleet came into the thermaïc gulf and to the region of mygdonia, and so it arrived at the aforesaid therma and at the cities of sindos and chalestra upon the river axios. this river is the boundary between the land of mygdonia and bottiaia, of which district the narrow region which lies on the sea coast is occupied by the cities of ichnai and pella. . now while his naval force was encamped about the river axios an the city of therma and the cities which lie between these two, waiting for the coming of the king, xerxes and the land-army were proceeding from acanthos, cutting through the middle by the shortest way with a view to reaching therma: and he was proceeding through paionia and crestonia to the river cheidoros, which beginning from the land of the crestonians, runs through the region of mygdonia and comes out alongside of the marsh which is by the river axios. . as he was proceeding by this way, lions attacked the camels which carried his provisions; for the lions used to come down regularly by night, leaving their own haunts, but they touched nothing else, neither beast of burden nor man, but killed the camels only: and i marvel what was the cause, and what was it that impelled the lions to abstain from all else and to attack the camels only, creatures which they had never seen before, and of which they had had no experience. . now there are in these parts both many lions and also wild oxen, those that have the very large horns which are often brought into hellas: and the limit within which these lions are found is on the one side the river nestos, which flows through abdera, and on the other the achelos, which flows through acarnania; for neither do the east of the nestos, in any part of europe before you come to this, would you see a lion, nor again in the remaining part of the continent to the west of the acheloos, but they are produced in the middle space between these rivers. . when xerxes had reached therma he established the army there; and his army encamping there occupied of the land along by the sea no less than this,--beginning from the city of therma and from mygdonia it extended as far as the river lydias and the haliacmon, which form the boundary between the lands of bottiaia and macedonia, mingling their waters together in one and the same stream. the barbarians, i say, were encamped in these regions; and of the rivers which have been enumerated, only the river cheidoros flowing from the crestonian land was insufficient for the drinking of the army and failed in its stream. . then xerxes seeing from therma the mountains of thessaly, olympos and ossa, that they were of very great height, and being informed that in the midst between them there was a narrow channel, through which flows the peneios, and hearing also that by this way there was a good road leading to thessaly, formed a desire to sail thither and look at the outlet of the peneios, because he was meaning to march by the upper road, through the land of the macedonians who dwell inland, until he came to the perraibians, passing by the city of gonnos; for by this way he was informed that it was safest to go. and having formed this desire, so also he proceeded to do; that is, he embarked in a sidonian ship, the same in which he used always to embark when he wished to do anything of this kind, and he displayed a signal for the others to put out to sea also, leaving there the land-army. then when xerxes had looked at the outlet of the peneios, he was possessed by great wonder, and summoning his guides he asked them whether it was possible to turn the river aside and bring it out to the sea by another way. . now it is said that thessaly was in old time a lake, being enclosed on all sides by very lofty mountains: for the parts of it which lie towards the east are shut in by the ranges of pelion and ossa, which join one another in their lower slopes, the parts towards the north wind by olympos, those towards the west by pindos and those towards the mid-day and the south wind by othrys; and the region in the midst, between these mountains which have been named, is thessaly, forming as it were a hollow. whereas then many rivers flow into it and among them these five of most note, namely peneios, apidanos, onochonos, enipeus and pamisos, these, which collect their waters from the mountains that enclose thessaly round, and flow into this plain, with names separate each one, having their outflow into the sea by one channel and that a narrow one, first mingling their waters all together in one and the same stream; and so soon as they are mingled together, from that point onwards the peneios prevails with its name over the rest and causes the others to lose their separate names. and it is said that in ancient time, there not being yet this channel and outflow between the mountains, these rivers, and besides these rivers the lake boibeïs also, had no names as they have now, but by their waters they made thessaly to be all sea. the thessalians themselves say that poseidon made the channel through which the peneios flows; and reasonably they report it thus, because whosoever believes that it is poseidon who shakes the earth and that the partings asunder produced by earthquake are the work of this god, would say, if he saw this, that it was made by poseidon; for the parting asunder of the mountains is the work of an earthquake, as is evident to me. . so the guides, when xerxes asked whether there was any other possible outlet to the sea for the peneios, said with exact knowledge of the truth: "o king, for this river there is no other outgoing which extends to the sea, but this alone; for all thessaly is circled about with mountains as with a crown." to this xerxes is said to have replied: "the thessalians then are prudent men. this it appears was that which they desired to guard against in good time when they changed their counsel, reflecting on this especially besides other things, namely that they had a country which, it appears, is easy to conquer and may quickly be taken: for it would have been necessary only to let the river flow over their land by making an embankment to keep it from going through the narrow channel and so diverting the course by which now it flows, in order to put all thessaly under water except the mountains." this he said in reference to the sons of aleuas, because they, being thessalians, were the first of the hellenes who gave themselves over to the king; for xerxes thought that they offered him friendship on behalf of their whole nation. having said thus and having looked at the place, he sailed back to therma. . he then was staying in the region of pieria many days, for the road over the mountains of macedonia was being cut meanwhile by a third part of his army, that all the host might pass over by this way into the land of the perraibians: and now the heralds returned who had been sent to hellas to demand the gift of earth, some empty-handed and others bearing earth and water. . and among those who gave that which was demanded were the following, namely the thessalians, dolopians, enianians, perraibians, locrians, megnesians, malians, achaians of phthiotis, and thebans, with the rest of the boeotians also excepting the thespians and plataians. against these the hellenes who took up war with the barbarian made an oath; and the oath was this,--that whosoever being hellenes had given themselves over to the persian, not being compelled, these, if their own affairs should come to a good conclusion, they would dedicate as an offering to the god at delphi. . thus ran the oath which was taken by the hellenes: xerxes however had not sent to athens or to sparta heralds to demand the gift of earth, and for this reason, namely because at the former time when dareios had sent for this very purpose, the one people threw the men who made the demand into the pit and the others into a well, and bade them take from thence earth and water and bear them to the king. for this reason xerxes did not send men to make this demand. and what evil thing came upon the athenians for having done this to the heralds, i am not able to say, except indeed that their land and city were laid waste; but i do not think that this happened for that cause: , on the lacedemonians however the wrath fell of talthybios, the herald of agamemnon; for in sparta there is a temple of talthybios, and there are also descendants of talthybios called talthybiads, to whom have been given as a right all the missions of heralds which go from sparta; and after this event it was not possible for the spartans when they sacrificed to obtain favourable omens. this was the case with them for a long time; and as the lacedemonians were grieved and regarded it as a great misfortune, and general assemblies were repeatedly gathered together and proclamation made, asking if any one of the lacedemonians was willing to die for sparta, at length sperthias the son of aneristos and bulis the son of nicolaos, spartans of noble birth and in wealth attaining to the first rank, voluntarily submitted to pay the penalty to xerxes for the heralds of dareios which had perished at sparta. thus the spartans sent these to the medes to be put to death. . and not only the courage then shown by these men is worthy of admiration, but also the following sayings in addition: for as they were on their way to susa they came to hydarnes (now hydarnes was a persian by race and commander of those who dwelt on the sea coasts of asia), and he offered them hospitality and entertained them; and while they were his guests he asked them as follows: "lacedemonians, why is it that ye flee from becoming friends to the king? for ye may see that the king knows how to honour good men, when ye look at me and at my fortunes. so also ye, lacedemonians, if ye gave yourselves to the king, since ye have the reputation with him already of being good men, would have rule each one of you over hellenic land by the gift of the king." to this they made answer thus: "hydarnes, thy counsel with regard to us is not equally balanced, for thou givest counsel having made trial indeed of the one thing, but being without experience of the other: thou knowest well what it is to be a slave, but thou hast never yet made trial of freedom, whether it is pleasant to the taste or no; for if thou shouldest make trial of it, thou wouldest then counsel us to fight for it not with spears only but also with axes." . thus they answered hydarnes; and then, after they had gone up to susa and had come into the presence of the king, first when the spearmen of the guard commanded them and endeavoured to compel them by force to do obeisance to the king by falling down before him, they said that they would not do any such deed, though they should be pushed down by them head foremost; for it was not their custom to do obeisance to a man, and it was not for this that they had come. then when they had resisted this, next they spoke these words or words to this effect: "o king of the medes, the lacedemonians sent us in place of the heralds who were slain in sparta, to pay the penalty for their lives." when they said this, xerxes moved by a spirit of magnanimity replied that he would not be like the lacedemonians; for they had violated the rules which prevailed among all men by slaying heralds, but he would not do that himself which he blamed them for having done, nor would he free the lacedemonians from their guilt by slaying these in return. . thus the wrath of talthybios ceased for the time being, even though the spartans had done no more than this and although sperthias and bulis returned back to sparta; but a long time after this it was roused again during the war between the peloponnesians and athenians, as the lacedemonians report. this i perceive to have been most evidently the act of the deity: for in that the wrath of talthybios fell upon messengers and did not cease until it had been fully satisfied, so much was but in accordance with justice; but that it happened to come upon the sons of these men who went up to the king on account of the wrath, namely upon nicolaos the son of bulis and aneristos the son of sperthias (the same who conquered the men of halieis, who came from tiryns, by sailing into their harbour with a merchant ship filled with fighting men),--by this it is evident to me that the matter came to pass by the act of the deity caused by this wrath. for these men, sent by the lacedemonians as envoys to asia, having been betrayed by sitalkes the son of teres king of the thracians and by nymphodoros the son of pythes a man of abdera, were captured at bisanthe on the hellespont; and then having been carried away to attica they were put to death by the athenians, and with them also aristeas the son of adeimantos the corinthian. these things happened many years after the expedition of the king; and i return now to the former narrative. . now the march of the king's army was in name against athens, but in fact it was going against all hellas: and the hellenes being informed of this long before were not all equally affected by it; for some of them having given earth and water to the persian had confidence, supposing that they would suffer no hurt from the barbarian; while others not having given were in great terror, seeing that there were not ships existing in hellas which were capable as regards number of receiving the invader in fight, and seeing that the greater part of the states were not willing to take up the war, but adopted readily the side of the medes. . and here i am compelled by necessity to declare an opinion which in the eyes of most men would seem to be invidious, but nevertheless i will not abstain from saying that which i see evidently to be the truth. if the athenians had been seized with fear of the danger which threatened them and had left their land, or again, without leaving their land, had stayed and given themselves up to xerxes, none would have made any attempt by sea to oppose the king. if then none had opposed xerxes by sea, it would have happened on the land somewhat thus:--even if many tunics of walls had been thrown across the isthmus by the peloponnesians, the lacedemonians would have been deserted by their allies, not voluntarily but of necessity, since these would have been conquered city after city by the naval force of the barbarian, and so they would have been left alone: and having been left alone and having displayed great deeds of valour, they would have met their death nobly. either they would have suffered this fate, or before this, seeing the other hellenes also taking the side of the medes, they would have made an agreement with xerxes; and thus in either case hellas would have come to be under the rule of the persians: for as to the good to be got from the walls thrown across the isthmus, i am unable to discover what it would have been, when the king had command of the sea. as it is however, if a man should say that the athenians proved to be the saviours of hellas, he would not fail to hit the truth; for to whichever side these turned, to that the balance was likely to incline: and these were they who, preferring that hellas should continue to exist in freedom, roused up all of hellas which remained, so much, that is, as had not gone over to the medes, and (after the gods at least) these were they who repelled the king. nor did fearful oracles, which came from delphi and cast them into dread, induce them to leave hellas, but they stayed behind and endured to receive the invader of their land. . for the athenians had sent men to delphi to inquire and were preparing to consult the oracle; and after these had performed the usual rites in the sacred precincts, when they had entered the sanctuary and were sitting down there, the pythian prophetess, whose name was aristonike, uttered to them this oracle: "why do ye sit, o ye wretched? flee thou to the uttermost limits, leaving thy home and the heights of the wheel-round city behind thee! lo, there remaineth now nor the head nor the body in safety,--neither the feet below nor the hands nor the middle are left thee,--all are destroyed together; for fire and the passionate war-god, urging the syrian car to speed, doth hurl them to ruin. not thine alone, he shall cause many more great strongholds to perish, yes, many temples of gods to the ravening fire shall deliver,--temples which stand now surely with sweat of their terror down-streaming, quaking with dread; and lo! from the topmost roof to the pavement dark blood trickles, forecasting the dire unavoidable evil. forth with you, forth from the shrine, and steep your soul in the sorrow!" . hearing this the men who had been sent by the athenians to consult the oracle were very greatly distressed; and as they were despairing by reason of the evil which had been prophesied to them, timon the son of androbulos, a man of the delphians in reputation equal to the first, counselled them to take a suppliant's bough and to approach the second time and consult the oracle as suppliants. the athenians did as he advised and said: "lord, we pray thee utter to us some better oracle about our native land, having respect to these suppliant boughs which we have come to thee bearing; otherwise surely we will not depart away from the sanctuary, but will remain here where we are now, even until we bring our lives to an end." when they spoke these words, the prophetess gave them a second oracle as follows: "pallas cannot prevail to appease great zeus in olympos, though she with words very many and wiles close-woven entreat him. but i will tell thee this more, and will clench it with steel adamantine: then when all else shall be taken, whatever the boundary of kecrops holdeth within, and the dark ravines of divinest kithairon, a bulwark of wood at the last zeus grants to the trito-born goddess sole to remain unwasted, which thee and thy children shall profit. stay thou not there for the horsemen to come and the footmen unnumbered; stay thou not still for the host from the mainland to come, but retire thee, turning thy back to the foe, for yet thou shalt face him hereafter. salamis, thou the divine, thou shalt cause sons of women to perish, or when the grain is scattered or when it is gathered together." . this seemed to them to be (as in truth it was) a milder utterance than the former one; therefore they had it written down and departed with it to athens: and when the messengers after their return made report to the people, many various opinions were expressed by persons inquiring into the meaning of the oracle, and among them these, standing most in opposition to one another:--some of the elder men said they thought that the god had prophesied to them that the acropolis should survive; for the acropolis of the athenians was in old time fenced with a thorn hedge; and they conjectured accordingly that this saying about the "bulwark of wood" referred to the fence: others on the contrary said that the god meant by this their ships, and they advised to leave all else and get ready these. now they who said that the ships were the bulwark of wood were shaken in their interpretation by the two last verses which the prophetess uttered: "salamis, thou the divine, thou shalt cause sons of women to perish, or when the grain is scattered or when it is gathered together." in reference to these verses the opinions of those who said that the ships were the bulwark of wood were disturbed; for the interpreters of oracles took these to mean that it was fated for them, having got ready for a sea-fight, to suffer defeat round about salamis. . now there was one man of the athenians who had lately been coming forward to take a place among the first, whose name was themistocles, called son of neocles. this man said that the interpreters of oracles did not make right conjecture of the whole, and he spoke as follows, saying that if these words that had been uttered referred really to the athenians, he did not think it would have been so mildly expressed in the oracle, but rather thus, "salamis, thou the merciless," instead of "salamis, thou the divine," at least if its settlers were destined to perish round about it: but in truth the oracle had been spoken by the god with reference to the enemy, if one understood it rightly, and not to the athenians: therefore he counselled them to get ready to fight a battle by sea, for in this was their bulwark of wood. when themistocles declared his opinion thus, the athenians judged that this was to be preferred by them rather than the advice of the interpreters of oracles, who bade them not make ready for a sea-fight, nor in short raise their hands at all in opposition, but leave the land of attica and settle in some other. . another opinion too of themistocles before this one proved the best at the right moment, when the athenians, having got large sums of money in the public treasury, which had come in to them from the mines which are at laureion, were intending to share it among themselves, taking each in turn the sum of ten drachmas. then themistocles persuaded the athenians to give up this plan of division and to make for themselves with this money two hundred ships for the war, meaning by that the war with the eginetans: for this war having arisen proved in fact the salvation of hellas at that time, by compelling the athenians to become a naval power. and the ships, not having been used for the purpose for which they had been made, thus proved of service at need to hellas. these ships then, i say, the athenians had already, having built them beforehand, and it was necessary in addition to these to construct others. they resolved then, when they took counsel after the oracle was given, to receive the barbarian invading hellas with their ships in full force, following the commands of the god, in combination with those of the hellenes who were willing to join them. . these oracles had been given before to the athenians: and when those hellenes who had the better mind about hellas came together to one place, and considered their affairs and interchanged assurances with one another, then deliberating together they thought it well first of all things to reconcile the enmities and bring to an end the wars which they had with one another. now there were wars engaged between others also, and especially between the athenians and the eginetans. after this, being informed that xerxes was with his army at sardis, they determined to send spies to asia to make observation of the power of the king; and moreover they resolved to send envoys to argos to form an alliance against the persian, and to send others to sicily to gelon the son of deinomenes and also to corcyra, to urge them to come to the assistance of hellas, and others again to crete; for they made it their aim that if possible the hellenic race might unite in one, and that they might join all together and act towards the same end, since dangers were threatening all the hellenes equally. now the power of gelon was said to be great, far greater than any other hellenic power. . when they had thus resolved, they reconciled their enmities and then sent first three men as spies to asia. these having come to sardis and having got knowledge about the king's army, were discovered, and after having been examined by the generals of the land-army were being led off to die. for these men, i say, death had been determined; but xerxes, being informed of this, found fault with the decision of the generals and sent some of the spearmen of his guard, enjoining them, if they should find the spies yet alive, to bring them to his presence. so having found them yet surviving they brought them into the presence of the king; and upon that xerxes, being informed for what purpose they had come, commanded the spearmen to lead them round and to show them the whole army both foot and horse, and when they should have had their fill of looking at these things, to let them go unhurt to whatsoever land they desired. . such was the command which he gave, adding at the same time this saying, namely that if the spies had been put to death, the hellenes would not have been informed beforehand of his power, how far beyond description it was; while on the other hand by putting to death three men they would not very greatly have damaged the enemy; but when these returned back to hellas, he thought it likely that the hellenes, hearing of his power, would deliver up their freedom to him themselves, before the expedition took place which was being set in motion; and thus there would be no need for them to have the labour of marching an army against them. this opinion of his is like his manner of thinking at other times; for when xerxes was in abydos, he saw vessels which carried corn from the pontus sailing out through the hellespont on their way to egina and the peloponnese. those then who sat by his side, being informed that the ships belonged to the enemy, were prepared to capture them, and were looking to the king to see when he would give the word; but xerxes asked about them whither the men were sailing, and they replied: "master, to thy foes, conveying to them corn": he then made answer and said: "are we not also sailing to the same place as these men, furnished with corn as well as with other things necessary? how then do these wrong us, since they are conveying provisions for our use?" . the spies then, having thus looked at everything and after that having been dismissed, returned back to europe: and meanwhile those of the hellenes who had sworn alliance against the persian, after the sending forth of the spies proceeded to send envoys next to argos. now the argives report that the matters concerning themselves took place as follows:--they were informed, they say, at the very first of the movement which was being set on foot by the barbarian against hellas; and having been informed of this and perceiving that the hellenes would endeavour to get their alliance against the persians, they had sent messengers to inquire of the god at delphi, and to ask how they should act in order that it might be best for themselves: because lately there had been slain of them six thousand men by the lacedemonians and by cleomenes the son of anaxandrides, and this in fact was the reason that they were sending to inquire: and when they inquired, the pythian prophetess made answer to them as follows: "thou to thy neighbours a foe, by the gods immortal beloved, keep thou thy spear within bounds, and sit well-guarded behind it: guard well the head, and the head shall preserve the limbs and the body." thus, they say, the pythian prophetess had replied to them before this; and afterwards when the messengers of the hellenes came, as i said, to argos, they entered the council-chamber and spoke that which had been enjoined to them; and to that which was said the council replied that the argives were ready to do as they were requested, on condition that they got peace made with the lacedemonians for thirty years and that they had half the leadership of the whole confederacy: and yet by strict right (they said) the whole leadership fell to their share, but nevertheless it was sufficient for them to have half. . thus they report that the council made answer, although the oracle forbade them to make the alliance with the hellenes; and they were anxious, they say, that a truce from hostilities for thirty years should be made, although they feared the oracle, in order, as they allege, that their sons might grow to manhood in these years; whereas if a truce did not exist, they had fear that, supposing another disaster should come upon them in fighting against the persian in addition to that which had befallen them already, they might be for all future time subject to the lacedemonians. to that which was spoken by the council those of the envoys who were of sparta replied, that as to the truce they would refer the matter to their public assembly, but as to the leadership they had themselves been commissioned to make reply, and did in fact say this, namely that they had two kings, while the argives had one; and it was not possible to remove either of the two who were of sparta from the leadership, but there was nothing to prevent the argive king from having an equal vote with each of their two. then, say the argives, they could not endure the grasping selfishness of the spartans, but chose to be ruled by the barbarians rather than to yield at all to the lacedemonians; and they gave notice to the envoys to depart out of the territory of the argives before sunset, or, if not, they would be dealt with as enemies. . the argives themselves report so much about these matters: but there is another story reported in hellas to the effect that xerxes sent a herald to argos before he set forth to make an expedition against hellas, and this herald, they say, when he had come, spoke as follows: "men of argos, king xerxes says to you these things:--we hold that perses, from whom we are descended, was the son of perseus, the son of danae, and was born of the daughter of kepheus, andromeda; and according to this it would seem that we are descended from you. it is not fitting then that we should go forth on an expedition against those from whom we trace our descent, nor that ye should set yourselves in opposition to us by rendering assistance to others; but it is fitting that ye keep still and remain by yourselves: for if things happen according to my mind, i shall not esteem any people to be of greater consequence than you." having heard this the argives, it is said, considered it a great matter; and therefore at first they made no offer of help nor did they ask for any share; but afterwards, when the hellenes tried to get them on their side, then, since they knew well that the lacedemonians would not give them a share in the command, they asked for this merely in order that they might have a pretext for remaining still. . also some of the hellenes report that the following event, in agreement with this account, came to pass many years after these things:--there happened, they say, to be in susa the city of memnon envoys of the athenians come about some other matter, namely callias the son of hipponicos and the others who went up with him; and the argives at that very time had also sent envoys to susa, and these asked artoxerxes the son of xerxes, whether the friendship which they had formed with xerxes still remained unbroken, if they themselves desired to maintain it, or whether they were esteemed by him to be enemies; and king artoxerxes said that it most certainly remained unbroken, and that there was no city which he considered to be more his friend than argos. . now whether xerxes did indeed send a herald to argos saying that which has been reported, and whether envoys of the argives who had gone up to susa inquired of artoxerxes concerning friendship, i am not able to say for certain; nor do i declare any opinion about the matters in question other than that which the argives themselves report: but i know this much, that if all the nations of men should bring together into one place the evils which they have suffered themselves, desiring to make exchange with their neighbours, each people of them, when they had examined closely the evils suffered by their fellows, would gladly carry away back with them those which they had brought. thus it is not the argives who have acted most basely of all. i however am bound to report that which is reported, though i am not bound altogether to believe it; and let this saying be considered to hold good as regards every narrative in the history: for i must add that this also is reported, namely that the argives were actually those who invited the persian to invade hellas, because their war with the lacedemonians had had an evil issue, being willing to suffer anything whatever rather than the trouble which was then upon them. . that which concerns the argives has now been said: and meanwhile envoys had come to sicily from the allies, to confer with gelon, among whom was also syagros from the lacedemonians. now the ancestor of this gelon, he who was at gela as a settler, was a native of the island of telos, which lies off triopion; and when gela was founded by the lindians of rhodes and by antiphemos, he was not left behind. then in course of time his descendants became and continued to be priests of the mysteries of the earth goddesses, an office which was acquired by telines one of their ancestors in the following manner:--certain of the men of gela, being worsted in a party struggle, had fled to mactorion, the city which stands above gela: these men telines brought back to gela from exile with no force of men but only with the sacred rites of these goddesses; but from whom he received them, or whether he obtained them for himself, this i am not able to say; trusting in these however, he brought the men back from exile, on the condition that his descendants should be priests of the mysteries of the goddesses. to me it has caused wonder also that telines should have been able to perform so great a deed, considering that which i am told; for such deeds, i think, are not apt to proceed from every man, but from one who has a brave spirit and manly vigour, whereas telines is said by the dwellers in sicily to have been on the contrary a man of effeminate character and rather poor spirit. . he then had thus obtained the privilege of which i speak: and when cleander the son of pantares brought his life to an end, having been despot of gela for seven years and being killed at last by sabyllos a man of gela, then hippocrates succeeded to the monarchy, who was brother of cleander. and while hippocrates was despot, gelon, who was a descendant of telines the priest of the mysteries, was spearman of the guard to hippocrates with many others and among them ainesidemos the son of pataicos. then after no long time he was appointed by reason of valour to be commander of the whole cavalry; for when hippocrates besieged successively the cities of callipolis, naxos, zancle, leontini, and also syracuse and many towns of the barbarians, in these wars gelon showed himself a most brilliant warrior; and of the cities which i just now mentioned, not one except syracuse escaped being reduced to subjection by hippocrates: the syracusans however, after they had been defeated in battle at the river eloros, were rescued by the corinthians and corcyreans; these rescued them and brought the quarrel to a settlement on this condition, namely that the syracusans should deliver up camarina to hippocrates. now camarina used in ancient time to belong to the men of syracuse. . then when it was the fate of hippocrates also, after having been despot for the same number of years as his brother cleander, to be killed at the city of hybla, whither he had gone on an expedition against the sikelians, then gelon made a pretence of helping the sons of hippocrates, eucleides and cleander, when the citizens were no longer willing to submit; but actually, when he had been victorious in a battle over the men of gela, he robbed the sons of hippocrates of the power and was ruler himself. after this stroke of fortune gelon restored those of the syracusans who were called "land-holders," after they had been driven into exile by the common people and by their own slaves, who were called kyllyrians, these, i say, he restored from the city of casmene to syracuse, and so got possession of this last city also, for the common people of syracuse, when gelon came against them, delivered up to him their city and themselves. . so after he had received syracuse into his power, he made less account of gela, of which he was ruler also in addition, and he gave it in charge to hieron his brother, while he proceeded to strengthen syracuse. so forthwith that city rose and shot up to prosperity; for in the first place he brought all those of camarina to syracuse and made them citizens, and razed to the ground the city of camarina; then secondly he did the same to more than half of the men of gela, as he had done to those of camarina: and as regards the megarians of sicily, when they were besieged and had surrendered by capitulation, the well-to-do men of them, though they had stirred up war with him and expected to be put to death for this reason, he brought to syracuse and made them citizens, but the common people of the megarians, who had no share in the guilt of this war and did not expect that they would suffer any evil, these also he brought to syracuse and sold them as slaves to be carried away from sicily: and the same thing he did moreover to the men of euboia in sicily, making a distinction between them: and he dealt thus with these two cities because he thought that a body of commons was a most unpleasant element in the state. . in the manner then which has been described gelon had become a powerful despot; and at this time when the envoys of the hellenes had arrived at syracuse, they came to speech with him and said as follows: "the lacedemonians and their allies sent us to get thee to be on our side against the barbarian; for we suppose that thou art certainly informed of him who is about to invade hellas, namely that a persian is designing to bridge over the hellespont, and to make an expedition against hellas, leading against us out of asia all the armies of the east, under colour of marching upon athens, but in fact meaning to bring all hellas to subjection under him. do thou therefore, seeing that thou hast attained to a great power and hast no small portion of hellas for thy share, being the ruler of sicily, come to the assistance of those who are endeavouring to free hellas, and join in making her free; for if all hellas be gathered together in one, it forms a great body, and we are made a match in fight for those who are coming against us; but if some of us go over to the enemy and others are not willing to help, and the sound portion of hellas is consequently small, there is at once in this a danger that all hellas may fall to ruin. for do not thou hope that if the persian shall overcome us in battle he will not come to thee, but guard thyself against this beforehand; for in coming to our assistance thou art helping thyself; and the matter which is wisely planned has for the most part a good issue afterwards." . the envoys spoke thus; and gelon was very vehement with them, speaking to them as follows: "hellenes, a selfish speech is this, with which ye have ventured to come and invite me to be your ally against the barbarian; whereas ye yourselves, when i in former time requested of you to join with me in fighting against an army of barbarians, contention having arisen between me and the carthaginians, and when i charged you to exact vengeance of the men of egesta for the death of dorieos the son of anaxandrides, while at the same time i offered to help in setting free the trading-places, from which great advantages and gains have been reaped by you,--ye, i say, then neither for my own sake came to my assistance, nor in order to exact vengeance for the death of dorieos; and, so far as ye are concerned, all these parts are even now under the rule of barbarians. but since it turned out well for us and came to a better issue, now that the war has come round and reached you, there has at last arisen in your minds a recollection of gelon. however, though i have met with contempt at your hands, i will not act like you; but i am prepared to come to your assistance, supplying two hundred triremes and twenty thousand hoplites, with two thousand horsemen, two thousand bowmen, two thousand slingers and two thousand light-armed men to run beside the horsemen; and moreover i will undertake to supply corn for the whole army of the hellenes, until we have finished the war. these things i engage to supply on this condition, namely that i shall be commander and leader of the hellenes against the barbarian; but on any other condition i will neither come myself nor will i send others." . hearing this syagros could not contain himself but spoke these words: "deeply, i trow, would agamemnon son of pelops lament, if he heard that the spartans had had the leadership taken away from them by gelon and by the syracusans. nay, but make thou no further mention of this condition, namely that we should deliver the leadership to thee; but if thou art desirous to come to the assistance of hellas, know that thou wilt be under the command of the lacedemonians; and if thou dost indeed claim not to be under command, come not thou to our help at all." . to this gelon, seeing that the speech of syagros was adverse, set forth to them his last proposal thus: "stranger from sparta, reproaches sinking into the heart of a man are wont to rouse his spirit in anger against them; thou however, though thou hast uttered insults against me in thy speech, wilt not bring me to show myself unseemly in my reply. but whereas ye so strongly lay claim to the leadership, it were fitting that i should lay claim to it more than ye, seeing that i am the leader of an army many times as large and of ships many more. since however this condition is so distasteful to you, we will recede somewhat from our former proposal. suppose that ye should be leaders of the land-army and i of the fleet; or if it pleases you to lead the sea-forces, i am willing to be leader of those on land; and either ye must be contented with these terms or go away without the alliance which i have to give." . gelon, i say, made these offers, and the envoy of the athenians, answering before that of the lacedemonians, replied to him as follows: "o king of the syracusans, it was not of a leader that hellas was in want when it sent us to thee, but of an army. thou however dost not set before us the hope that thou wilt send an army, except thou have the leadership of hellas; and thou art striving how thou mayest become commander of the armies of hellas. so long then as it was thy demand to be leader of the whole army of the hellenes, it was sufficient for us athenians to keep silence, knowing that the lacedemonian would be able to make defence even for us both; but now, since being repulsed from the demand for the whole thou art requesting to be commander of the naval force, we tell that thus it is:--not even if the lacedemonian shall permit thee to be commander of it, will we permit thee; for this at least is our own, if the lacedemonians do not themselves desire to have it. with these, if they desire to be the leaders, we do not contend; but none others beside ourselves shall we permit to be in command of the ships: for then to no purpose should we be possessors of a sea-force larger than any other which belongs to the hellenes, if, being athenians, we should yield the leadership to syracusans, we who boast of a race which is the most ancient of all and who are of all the hellenes the only people who have not changed from one land to another; to whom also belonged a man whom homer the epic poet said was the best of all who came to ilion in drawing up an army and setting it in array. thus we are not justly to be reproached if we say these things." . to this gelon made answer thus: "stranger of athens, it would seem that ye have the commanders, but that ye will not have the men to be commanded. since then ye will not at all give way, but desire to have the whole, it were well that ye should depart home as quickly as possible and report to the hellenes that the spring has been taken out of their year." now this is the meaning of the saying:--evidently the spring is the noblest part of the year; and so he meant to say that his army was the noblest part of the army of the hellenes: for hellas therefore, deprived of his alliance, it was, he said, as if the spring had been taken out of the year. . the envoys of the hellenes, having thus had conference with gelon, sailed away; and gelon upon this, fearing on the one hand about the hellenes, lest they should not be able to overcome the barbarian, and on the other hand considering it monstrous and not to be endured that he should come to peloponnesus and be under the command of the lacedemonians, seeing that he was despot of sicily, gave up the thought of this way and followed another: for so soon as he was informed that the persian had crossed over the hellespont, he sent cadmos the son of skythes, a man of cos, with three fifty-oared galleys to delphi, bearing large sums of money and friendly proposals, to wait there and see how the battle would fall out: and if the barbarian should be victorious, he was to give him the money and also to offer him earth and water from those over whom gelon had rule; but if the hellenes should be victorious, he was bidden to bring it back. . now this cadmos before these events, having received from his father in a prosperous state the government of the people of cos, had voluntarily and with no danger threatening, but moved merely by uprightness of nature, placed the government in the hands of the people of cos and had departed to sicily, where he took from the samians and newly colonised the city of zancle, which had changed its name to messene. this same cadmos, having come thither in such manner as i have said, gelon was now sending, having selected him on account of the integrity which in other matters he had himself found to be in him; and this man, in addition to the other upright acts which had been done by him, left also this to be remembered, which was not the least of them: for having got into his hands that great sum of money which gelon entrusted to his charge, though he might have taken possession of it himself he did not choose to do so; but when the hellenes had got the better in the sea-fight and xerxes had marched away and departed, he also returned to sicily bringing back with him the whole sum of money. . the story which here follows is also reported by those who dwell in sicily, namely that, even though he was to be under the command of the lacedemonians, gelon would have come to the assistance of the hellenes, but that terillos, the son of crinippos and despot of himera, having been driven out of himera by theron the son of ainesidemos the ruler of the agrigentines, was just at this very time bringing in an army of phenicians, libyans, iberians, ligurians, elisycans, sardinians and corsicans, to the number of thirty myriads, with amilcas the son of annon king of the carthaginians as their commander, whom terillos had persuaded partly by reason of his own guest-friendship, and especially by the zealous assistance of anaxilaos the son of cretines, who was despot of rhegion, and who to help his father-in-law endeavoured to bring in amilcas to sicily, and had given him his sons as hostages; for anaxilaos was married to the daughter of terillos, whose name was kydippe. thus it was, they say, that gelon was not able to come to the assistance of the hellenes, and sent therefore the money to delphi. . in addition to this they report also that, as it happened, gelon and theron were victorious over amilcas the carthaginian on the very same day when the hellenes were victorious at salamis over the persian. and this amilcas, who was a carthaginian on the father's side but on the mother's syracusan, and who had become king of the carthaginians by merit, when the engagement took place and he was being worsted in the battle, disappeared, as i am informed; for neither alive nor dead did he appear again anywhere upon the earth, though gelon used all diligence in the search for him. . moreover there is also this story reported by the carthaginians themselves, who therein relate that which is probable in itself, namely that while the barbarians fought with the hellenes in sicily from the early morning till late in the afternoon (for to such a length the combat is said to have been protracted), during this time amilcas was remaining in the camp and was making sacrifices to get good omens of success, offering whole bodies of victims upon a great pyre: and when he saw that there was a rout of his own army, he being then, as it chanced, in the act of pouring a libation over the victims, threw himself into the fire, and thus he was burnt up and disappeared. amilcas then having disappeared, whether it was in such a manner as this, as it is reported by the phenicians, or in some other way, the carthaginians both offer sacrifices to him now, and also they made memorials of him then in all the cities of their colonies, and the greatest in carthage itself. . so far of the affairs of sicily: and as for the corcyreans, they made answer to the envoys as follows, afterwards acting as i shall tell: for the same men who had gone to sicily endeavoured also to obtain the help of these, saying the same things which they said to gelon; and the corcyreans at the time engaged to send a force and to help in the defence, declaring that they must not permit hellas to be ruined without an effort on their part, for if it should suffer disaster, they would be reduced to subjection from the very first day; but they must give assistance so far as lay in their power. thus speciously they made reply; but when the time came to send help, they manned sixty ships, having other intentions in their minds, and after making much difficulty they put out to sea and reached peloponnese; and then near pylos and tainaron in the land of the lacedemonians they kept their ships at anchor, waiting, as gelon did, to see how the war would turn out: for they did not expect that the hellenes would overcome, but thought that the persian would gain the victory over them with ease and be ruler of all hellas. accordingly they were acting of set purpose, in order that they might be able to say to the persian some such words as these: "o king, when the hellenes endeavoured to obtain our help for this war, we, who have a power which is not the smallest of all, and could have supplied a contingent of ships in number not the smallest, but after the athenians the largest, did not choose to oppose thee or to do anything which was not to thy mind." by speaking thus they hoped that they would obtain some advantage over the rest, and so it would have happened, as i am of opinion: while they had for the hellenes an excuse ready made, that namely of which they actually made use: for when the hellenes reproached them because they did not come to help, they said that they had manned sixty triremes, but had not been able to get past malea owing to the etesian winds; therefore it was that they had not come to salamis, nor was it by any want of courage on their part that they had been left of the sea-fight. . these then evaded the request of the hellenes thus: but the cretans, when those of the hellenes who had been appointed to deal with these endeavoured to obtain their help, did thus, that is to say, they joined together and sent men to inquire of the god at delphi whether it would be better for them if they gave assistance to hellas: and the pythian prophetess answered: "ye fools, do ye think those woes too few, which minos sent upon you in his wrath, because of the assistance that ye gave to menelaos? seeing that, whereas they did not join with you in taking vengeance for his death in camicos, ye nevertheless joined with them in taking vengeance for the woman who by a barbarian was carried off from sparta." when the cretans heard this answer reported, they abstained from the giving of assistance. . for the story goes that minos, having come to sicania, which is now called sicily, in search of daidalos, died there by a violent death; and after a time the cretans, urged thereto by a god, all except the men of polichne and praisos, came with a great armament to sicania and besieged for seven years the city of camicos, which in my time was occupied by the agrigentines; and at last not being able either to capture it or to remain before it, because they were hard pressed by famine, they departed and went away. and when, as they sailed, they came to be off the coast of iapygia, a great storm seized them and cast them away upon the coast; and their vessels being dashed to pieces, they, since they saw no longer any way of coming to crete, founded there the city of hyria; and there they stayed and were changed so that they became instead of cretans, messapians of iapygia, and instead of islanders, dwellers on the mainland: then from the city of hyria they founded those other settlements which the tarentines long afterwards endeavoured to destroy and suffer great disaster in that enterprise, so that this in fact proved to be the greatest slaughter of hellenes that is known to us, and not only of the tarentines themselves but of those citizens of rhegion who were compelled by mikythos the son of choiros to go to the assistance of the tarentines, and of whom there were slain in this manner three thousand men: of the tarentines themselves however, who were slain there, there was no numbering made. this mikythos, who was a servant of anaxilaos, had been left by him in charge of rhegion; and he it was who after being driven out of rhegion took up his abode at tegea of the arcadians and dedicated those many statues at olympia. . this of the men of rhegion and of the tarentines has been an episode in my narrative: in crete however, as the men of praisos report, after it had been thus stripped of inhabitants, settlements were made by various nations, but especially by hellenes; and in the next generation but one after the death of minos came the trojan war, in which the cretans proved not the most contemptible of those who came to assist menelaos. then after this, when they had returned home from troy, famine and pestilence came upon both the men and their cattle, until at last crete was stripped of its inhabitants for the second time, and a third population of cretans now occupy it together with those which were left of the former inhabitants. the pythian prophetess, i say, by calling these things to their minds stopped them from giving assistance to the hellenes, though they desired to do so. . as for the thessalians, they at first had taken the side of the persians against their will, and they gave proof that they were not pleased by that which the aleuadai were designing; for so soon as they heard that the persian was about to cross over into europe, they sent envoys to the isthmus: now at the isthmus were assembled representatives of hellas chosen by the cities which had the better mind about hellas: having come then to these, the envoys of the thessalians said: "hellenes, ye must guard the pass by olympos, in order that both thessaly and the whole of hellas may be sheltered from the war. we are prepared to join with you in guarding it, but ye must send a large force as well as we; for if ye shall not send, be assured that we shall make agreement with the persian; since it is not right that we, standing as outposts so far in advance of the rest of hellas, should perish alone in your defence: and not being willing to come to our help, ye cannot apply to us any force to compel inability; but we shall endeavour to devise some means of safety for ourselves." . thus spoke the thessalians; and the hellenes upon this resolved to send to thessaly by sea an army of men on foot to guard the pass: and when the army was assembled it set sail through euripos, and having come to alos in the achaian land, it disembarked there and marched into thessaly leaving the ships behind at alos, and arrived at tempe, the pass which leads from lower macedonia into thessaly by the river peneios, going between the mountains of olympos and ossa. there the hellenes encamped, being assembled to the number of about ten thousand hoplites, and to them was added the cavalry of the thessalians; and the commander of the lacedemonians was euainetos the son of carenos, who had been chosen from the polemarchs, not being of the royal house, and of the athenians themistocles the son of neocles. they remained however but few days here, for envoys came from alexander the son of amyntas the macedonian, who advised them to depart thence and not to remain in the pass and be trodden under foot by the invading host, signifying to them at the same time both the great numbers of the army and the ships which they had. when these gave them this counsel, they followed the advice, for they thought that the counsel was good, and the macedonian was evidently well-disposed towards them. also, as i think, it was fear that persuaded them to it, when they were informed that there was another pass besides this to the thessalian land by upper macedonia through the perraibians and by the city of gonnos, the way by which the army of xerxes did in fact make its entrance. so the hellenes went down to their ships again and made their way back to the isthmus. . such was the expedition to thessaly, which took place when the king was about to cross over from asia to europe and was already at abydos. so the thessalians, being stripped of allies, upon this took the side of the medes with a good will and no longer half-heartedly, so that in the course of events they proved very serviceable to the king. . when the hellenes had returned to the isthmus, they deliberated, having regard to that which had been said by alexander, where and in what regions they should set the war on foot: and the opinion which prevailed was to guard the pass at thermopylai; for it was seen to be narrower than that leading into thessaly, and at the same time it was single, and nearer also to their own land; and as for the path by means of which were taken those of the hellenes who were taken by the enemy at thermopylai, they did not even know of its existence until they were informed by the people of trachis after they had come to thermopylai. this pass then they resolved to guard, and not permit the barbarian to go by into hellas; and they resolved that the fleet should sail to artemision in the territory of histiaia: for these points are near to one another, so that each division of their forces could have information of what was happening to the other. and the places are so situated as i shall describe. . as to artemision first, coming out of the thracian sea the space is contracted from great width to that narrow channel which lies between the island of skiathos and the mainland of magnesia; and after the strait there follows at once in euboea the sea-beach called artemision, upon which there is a temple of artemis. then secondly the passage into hellas by trechis is, where it is narrowest, but fifty feet wide: it is not here however that the narrowest part of this whole region lies, but in front of thermopylai and also behind it, consisting of a single wheel-track only both by alpenoi, which lies behind thermopylai and again by the river phoinix near the town of anthela there is no space but a single wheel-track only: and on the west of thermopylai there is a mountain which is impassable and precipitous, rising up to a great height and extending towards the range of oite, while on the east of the road the sea with swampy pools succeeds at once. in this passage there are hot springs, which the natives of the place call the "pots," and an altar of heracles is set up near them. moreover a wall had once been built at this pass, and in old times there was a gate set in it; which wall was built by the phokians, who were struck with fear because the thessalians had come from the land of the thesprotians to settle in the aiolian land, the same which they now possess. since then the thessalians, as they supposed, were attempting to subdue them, the phokians guarded themselves against this beforehand; and at that time they let the water of the hot springs run over the passage, that the place might be converted into a ravine, and devised every means that the thessalians might not make invasion of their land. now the ancient wall had been built long before, and the greater part of it was by that time in ruins from lapse of time; the hellenes however resolved to set it up again, and at this spot to repel the barbarian from hellas: and very near the road there is a village called alpenoi, from which the hellenes counted on getting supplies. . these places then the hellenes perceived to be such as their purpose required; for they considered everything beforehand and calculated that the barbarians would not be able to take advantage either of superior numbers or of cavalry, and therefore they resolved here to receive the invader of hellas: and when they were informed that the persian was in pieria, they broke up from the isthmus and set forth for the campaign, some going to thermopylai by land, and others making for artemision by sea. . the hellenes, i say, were coming to the rescue with speed, having been appointed to their several places: and meanwhile the men of delphi consulted the oracle of the god on behalf of themselves and on behalf of hellas, being struck with dread; and a reply was given them that they should pray to the winds, for these would be powerful helpers of hellas in fight. so the delphians, having accepted the oracle, first reported the answer which had been given them to those of the hellenes who desired to be free; and having reported this to them at a time when they were in great dread of the barbarian, they laid up for themselves an immortal store of gratitude: then after this the men of delphi established an altar for the winds in thuia, where is the sacred enclosure of thuia the daughter of kephisos, after whom moreover this place has its name; and also they approached them with sacrifices. . the delphians then according to the oracle even to this day make propitiary offerings to the winds: and meanwhile the fleet of xerxes setting forth from the city of therma had passed over with ten of its ships, which were those that sailed best, straight towards skiathos, where three hellenic ships, a troizenian, an eginetan and an athenian, were keeping watch in advance. when the crews of these caught sight of the ships of the barbarians, they set off to make their escape: , and the ship of troizen, of which prexinos was in command, was pursued and captured at once by the barbarians; who upon that took the man who was most distinguished by beauty among the fighting-men on board of her, and cut his throat at the prow of the ship, making a good omen for themselves of the first of the hellenes whom they had captured who was pre-eminent for beauty. the name of this man who was sacrificed was leon, and perhaps he had also his name to thank in some degree for what befell him. . the ship of egina however, of which asonides was master, even gave them some trouble to capture it, seeing that pytheas the son of ischenoös served as a fighting-man on board of her, who proved himself a most valiant man on this day; for when the ship was being taken, he held out fighting until he was hacked all to pieces: and as when he had fallen he did not die, but had still breath in him, the persians who served as fighting-men on board the ships, because of his valour used all diligence to save his life, both applying unguents of myrrh to heal his wounds and also wrapping him up in bands of the finest linen; and when they came back to their own main body, they showed him to all the army, making a marvel of him and giving him good treatment; but the rest whom they had taken in this ship they treated as slaves. . two of the three ships, i say, were captured thus; but the third, of which phormos an athenian was master, ran ashore in its flight at the mouth of the river peneios; and the barbarians got possession of the vessel but not of the crew; for so soon as the athenians had run the ship ashore, they leapt out of her, and passing through thessaly made their way to athens. . of these things the hellenes who were stationed at artemision were informed by fire-signals from skiathos; and being informed of them and being struck with fear, they removed their place of anchorage from atermision to chalkis, intending to guard the euripos, but leaving at the same time watchers by day on the heights of euboea. of the ten ships of the barbarians three sailed up to the reef called myrmex, which lies between skiathos and magnesia; and when the barbarians had there erected a stone pillar, which for that purpose they brought to the reef, they set forth with their main body from therma, the difficulties of the passage having now been cleared away, and sailed thither with all their ships, having let eleven days go by since the king set forth on his march from therma. now of this reef lying exactly in the middle of the fairway they were informed by pammon of skyros. sailing then throughout the day the barbarians accomplished the voyage to sepias in magnesia and to the sea-beach which is between the city of casthanaia and the headland of sepias. . so far as this place and so far as thermopylai the army was exempt from calamity; and the number was then still, as i find by computation, this:--of the ships which came from asia, which were one thousand two hundred and seven, the original number of the crews supplied by the several nations i find to have been twenty-four myriads and also in addition to them one thousand four hundred, if one reckons at the rate of two hundred men to each ship: and on board of each of these ships there served as fighting-men, besides the fighting-men belonging to its own nation in each case, thirty men who were persians, medes, or sacans; and this amounts to three myriads six thousand two hundred and ten in addition to the others. i will add also to this and to the former number the crews of the fifty-oared galleys, assuming that there were eighty men, more or less, in each one. of these vessels there were gathered together, as was before said, three thousand: it would follow therefore that there were in them four-and-twenty myriads of men. this was the naval force which came from asia, amounting in all to fifty-one myriads and also seven thousand six hundred and ten in addition. then of the footmen there had been found to be a hundred and seventy myriads, and of the horsemen eight myriads: and i will add also to these the arabian camel-drivers and the libyan drivers of chariots, assuming them to amount to twenty thousand men. the result is then that the number of the ships' crews combined with that of the land-army amounts to two hundred and thirty-one myriads and also in addition seven thousand six hundred and ten. this is the statement of the army which was brought up out of asia itself, without counting the attendants which accompanied it or the corn-transports and the men who sailed in these. . there is still to be reckoned, in addition to all this which has been summed up, the force which was being led from europe; and of this we must give a probable estimate. the hellenes of thrace and of the islands which lie off the coast of thrace supplied a hundred and twenty ships; from which ships there results a sum of twenty-four thousand men: and as regards the land-force which was supplied by the thracians, paionians, eordians, bottiaians, the race which inhabits chalkidike, the brygians, pierians, macedonians, perraibians, enianians, dolopians, magnesians, achaians, and all those who dwell in the coast-region of thrace, of these various nations i estimate that there were thirty myriads. these myriads then added to those from asia make a total sum of two hundred and sixty-four myriads of fighting men and in addition to these sixteen hundred and ten. . such being the number of this body of fighting-men, the attendants who went with these and the men who were in the small vessels which carried corn, and again in the other vessels which sailed with the army, these i suppose were not less in number but more than the fighting men. i assume them to be equal in number with these, and neither at all more nor less; and so, being supposed equal in number with the fighting body, they make up the same number of myriads as they. thus five hundred and twenty-eight myriads three thousand two hundred and twenty was the number of men whom xerxes son of dareios led as far as sepias and thermopylai. . this is the number of the whole army of xerxes; but of the women who made bread for it, and of the concubines and eunuchs no man can state any exact number, nor again of the draught-animals and other beasts of burden or of the indian hounds, which accompanied it, could any one state the number by reason of their multitude: so that it does not occur to me to wonder that the streams of some rivers should have failed them, but i wonder rather how the provisions were sufficient to feed so many myriads; for i find on computation that if each man received a quart of wheat every day and nothing more, there would be expended every day eleven myriads of medimnoi and three hundred and forty medimnoi besides: and here i am not reckoning anything for the women, eunuchs, baggage-animals, or dogs. of all these men, amounting to so many myriads, not one was for beauty and stature more worthy than xerxes himself to possess this power. . the fleet, i say, set forth and sailed: and when it had put in to land in the region of magnesia at the beach which is between the city of casthanaia and the headland of sepias, the first of the ships which came lay moored by the land and the others rode at anchor behind them; for, as the beach was not large in extent, they lay at anchor with prows projecting towards the sea in an order which was eight ships deep. for that night they lay thus; but at early dawn, after clear sky and windless calm, the sea began to be violently agitated and a great storm fell upon them with a strong east wind, that wind which they who dwell about those parts call hellespontias. now as many of them as perceived that the wind was rising and who were so moored that it was possible for them to do so, drew up their ships on land before the storm came, and both they and their ships escaped; but as for those of the ships which it caught out at sea, some it cast away at the place called ipnoi in pelion and others on the beach, while some were wrecked on the headland of sepias itself, others at the city of meliboia, and others were thrown up on shore at casthanaia: and the violence of the storm could not be resisted. . there is a story reported that the athenians had called upon boreas to aid them, by suggestion of an oracle, because there had come to them another utterance of the god bidding them call upon their brother by marriage to be their helper. now according to the story of the hellenes boreas has a wife who is of attica, oreithuia the daughter of erechththeus. by reason of this affinity, i say, the athenians, according to the tale which has gone abroad, conjectured that their "brother by marriage" was boreas, and when they perceived the wind rising, as they lay with their ships at chalkis in euboea, or even before that, they offered sacrifices and called upon boreas and oreithuia to assist them and to destroy the ships of the barbarians, as they had done before round about mount athos. whether it was for this reason that the wind boreas fell upon the barbarians while they lay at anchor, i am not able to say; but however that may be, the athenians report that boreas had come to their help in former times, and that at this time he accomplished those things for them of which i speak; and when they had returned home they set up a temple dedicated to boreas by the river ilissos. . in this disaster the number of the ships which were lost was not less than four hundred, according to the report of those who state the number which is lowest, with men innumerable and an immense quantity of valuable things; insomuch that to ameinocles the son of cretines, a magnesian who held lands about sepias, this shipwreck proved very gainful; for he picked up many cups of gold which were thrown up afterwards on the shore, and many also of silver, and found treasure-chests which had belonged to the persians, and made acquisition of other things of gold more than can be described. this man however, though he became very wealthy by the things which he found, yet in other respects was not fortunate; for he too suffered misfortune, being troubled by the slaying of a child. . of the corn-transports and other vessels which perished there was no numbering made; and so great was the loss that the commanders of the fleet, being struck with fear lest the thessalians should attack them now that they had been brought into an evil plight, threw round their camp a lofty palisade built of the fragments of wreck. for the storm continued during three days; but at last the magians, making sacrifice of victims and singing incantations to appease the wind by enchantments, and in addition to this, offering to thetis and the nereïds, caused it to cease on the fourth day, or else for some other reason it abated of its own will. now they offered sacrifice to thetis, being informed by the ionians of the story that she was carried off from the place by peleus, and that the whole headland of sepias belonged to her and to the other nereïds. . the storm then had ceased on the fourth day; and meanwhile the day-watchers had run down from the heights of euboea on the day after the first storm began, and were keeping the hellenes informed of all that had happened as regards the shipwreck. they then, being informed of it, prayed first to poseidon the saviour and poured libations, and then they hastened to go back to artemision, expecting that there would be but a very few ships of the enemy left to come against them. . they, i say, came for the second time and lay with their ships about artemision: and from that time even to this they preserve the use of the surname "saviour" for poseidon. meanwhile the barbarians, when the wind had ceased and the swell of the sea had calmed down, drew their ships into the sea and sailed on along the shore of the mainland, and having rounded the extremity of magnesia they sailed straight into the gulf which leads towards pagasai. in this gulf of magnesia there is a place where it is said that heracles was left behind by jason and his comrades, having been sent from the argo to fetch water, at the time when they were sailing for the fleece to aia in the land of colchis: for from that place they designed, when they had taken in water, to loose their ship into the open sea; and from this the place has come to have the name aphetai. here then the fleet of xerxes took up its moorings. . now it chanced that fifteen of these ships put out to sea a good deal later than the rest, and they happened to catch sight of the ships of the hellenes at artemision. these ships the barbarians supposed to be their own, and they sailed thither accordingly and fell among the enemy. of these the commander was sandokes the son of thamasios, the governor of kyme in aiolia, whom before this time king dareios had taken and crucified (he being one of the royal judges) for this reason, namely that sandokes had pronounced judgment unjustly for money. so then after he was hung up, dareios reckoned and found that more good services had been done by him to the royal house than were equal to his offences; and having found this, and perceived that he had himself acted with more haste than wisdom, he let him go. thus he escaped from king dareios, and did not perish but survived; now, however, when he sailed in toward the hellenes, he was destined not to escape the second time; for when the hellenes saw them sailing up, perceiving the mistake which was being made they put out against them and captured them without difficulty. . sailing in one of these ships aridolis was captured, the despot of alabanda in caria, and in another the paphian commander penthylos son of demonoös, who brought twelve ships from paphos, but had lost eleven of them in the storm which had come on by sepias, and now was captured sailing in towards artemision with the one which had escaped. these men the hellenes sent away in bonds to the isthmus of the corinthians, after having inquired of them that which they desired to learn of the army of xerxes. . the fleet of the barbarians then, except the fifteen ships of which i said that sandokes was in command, had arrived at aphetai; and xerxes meanwhile with the land-army, having marched through thessalia and achaia, had already entered the land of the malians two days before, after having held in thessaly a contest for his own horses, making trial also of the thessalian cavalry, because he was informed that it was the best of all among the hellenes; and in this trial the horses of hellas were far surpassed by the others. now of the rivers in thessalia the onochonos alone failed to suffice by its stream for the drinking of the army; but of the rivers which flow in achaia even that which is the largest of them, namely epidanos, even this, i say, held out but barely. . when xerxes had reached alos of achaia, the guides who gave him information of the way, wishing to inform him fully of everything, reported to him a legend of the place, the things, namely, which have to do with the temple of zeus laphystios; how athamas the son of aiolos contrived death for phrixos, having taken counsel with ino, and after this how by command of an oracle the achaians propose to his descendants the following tasks to be performed:--whosoever is the eldest of this race, on him they lay an injunction that he is forbidden to enter the city hall, and they themselves keep watch; now the city hall is called by the achaians the "hall of the people"; and if he enter it, it may not be that he shall come forth until he is about to be sacrificed. they related moreover in addition to this, that many of these who were about to be sacrificed had before now run away and departed to another land, because they were afraid; and if afterwards in course of time they returned to their own land and were caught, they were placed in the city hall: and they told how the man is sacrificed all thickly covered with wreaths, and with what form of procession he is brought forth to the sacrifice. this is done to the descendants of kytissoros the son of phrixos, because, when the achaians were making of athamas the son of aiolos a victim to purge the sins of the land according to the command of an oracle, and were just about to sacrifice him, this kytissoros coming from aia of the colchians rescued him; and having done so he brought the wrath of the gods upon his own descendants. having heard these things, xerxes, when he came to the sacred grove, both abstained from entering it himself, and gave the command to his whole army to so likewise; and he paid reverence both to the house and to the sacred enclosure of the descendants of athamas. . these then are the things which happened in thessalia and in achaia; and from these regions he proceeded to the malian land, going along by a gulf of the sea, in which there is an ebb and flow of the tide every day. round about this gulf there is a level space, which in parts is broad but in other parts very narrow; and mountains lofty and inaccessible surrounding this place enclose the whole land of malis and are called the rocks of trachis. the first city upon this gulf as one goes from achaia is antikyra, by which the river spercheios flowing from the land of the enianians runs out into the sea. at a distance of twenty furlongs or thereabouts from this river there is another, of which the name is dyras; this is said to have appeared that it might bring assistance to heracles when he was burning: then again at a distance of twenty furlongs from this there is another river called melas. . from this river melas the city of trachis is distant five furlongs; and here, in the parts where trachis is situated, is even the widest portion of all this district, as regards the space from the mountains to the sea; for the plain has an extent of twenty-two thousand plethra. in the mountain-range which encloses the land of trachis there is a cleft to the south of trachis itself; and through this cleft the river asopos flows, and runs along by the foot of the mountain. . there is also another river called phoinix, to the south of the asopos, of no great size, which flowing from these mountains runs out into the asopos; and at the river phoinix is the narrowest place, for here has been constructed a road with a single wheel-track only. then from the river phoinix it is a distance of fifteen furlongs to thermopylai; and in the space between the river phoinix and thermopylai there is a village called anthela, by which the river asopos flows, and so runs out into the sea; and about this village there is a wide space in which is set up a temple dedicated to demeter of the amphictyons, and there are seats for the amphictyonic councillors and a temple dedicated to amphictyon himself. . king xerxes, i say, was encamped within the region of trachis in the land of the malians, and the hellenes within the pass. this place is called by the hellenes in general thermopylai, but by the natives of the place and those who dwell in the country round it is called pylai. both sides then were encamped hereabout, and the one had command of all that lies beyond trachis in the direction of the north wind, and the others of that which tends towards the south wind and the mid-day on this side of the continent. . these were the hellenes who awaited the attack of the persian in this place:--of the spartans three hundred hoplites; of the men of tegea and mantineia a thousand, half from each place, from orchomenos in arcadia a hundred and twenty, and from the rest of arcadia a thousand,--of the arcadians so many; from corinth four hundred, from phlius two hundred, and of the men of mykene eighty: these were they who came from the peloponnese; and from the boeotians seven hundred of the thespians, and of the thebans four hundred. . in addition to these the locrians of opus had been summoned to come in their full force, and of the phokians a thousand: for the hellenes had of themselves sent a summons to them, saying by messengers that they had come as forerunners of the others, that the rest of the allies were to be expected every day, that their sea was safely guarded, being watched by the athenians and the eginetans and by those who had been appointed to serve in the fleet, and that they need fear nothing: for he was not a god, they said, who was coming to attack hellas, but a man; and there was no mortal, nor would be any, with those fortunes evil had not been mingled at his very birth, and the greatest evils for the greatest men; therefore he also who was marching against them, being mortal, would be destined to fail of his expectation. they accordingly, hearing this, came to the assistance of the others at trachis. . of these troops, although there were other commanders also according to the state to which each belonged, yet he who was most held in regard and who was leader of the whole army was the lacedemonian leonidas son of anaxandrides, son of leon, son of eurycratides, son of anaxander, son of eurycrates, son of polydoros, son of alcamenes, son of teleclos, son of archelaos, son of hegesilaos, son of doryssos, son of leobotes, son of echestratos, son of agis, son of eurysthenes, son of aristodemos, son of aristomachos, son of cleodaios, son of hyllos, son of heracles; who had obtained the kingdom of sparta contrary to expectation. . for as he had two brothers each older than himself, namely cleomenes and dorieos, he had been far removed from the thought of becoming king. since however cleomenes had died without male child, and dorieos was then no longer alive, but he also had brought his life to an end in sicily, thus the kingdom came to leonidas, both because was of elder birth than cleombrotos (for cleombrotos was the youngest of the sons of anaxandrides) and also because he had in marriage the daughter of cleomenes. he then at this time went to thermopylai, having chosen the three hundred who were appointed by law and men who chanced to have sons; and he took with him besides, before he arrived, those thebans whom i mentioned when i reckoned them in the number of the troops, of whom the commander was leontiades the son of eurymachos: and for this reason leonidas was anxious to take up these with him of all the hellenes, namely because accusations had been strongly brought against them that they were taking the side of the medes; therefore he summoned them to the war, desiring to know whether they would send troops with them or whether they would openly renounce the alliance of the hellenes; and they sent men, having other thoughts in their mind the while. . these with leonidas the spartans had sent out first, in order that seeing them the other allies might join in the campaign, and for fear that they also might take the side of the medes, if they heard that the spartans were putting off their action. afterwards, however, when they had kept the festival, (for the festival of the carneia stood in their way), they intended then to leave a garrison in sparta and to come to help in full force with speed: and just so also the rest of the allies had thought of doing themselves; for it chanced that the olympic festival fell at the same time as these events. accordingly, since they did not suppose that the fighting in thermopylai would so soon be decided, they sent only the forerunners of their force. . these, i say, had intended to do thus: and meanwhile the hellenes at thermopylai, when the persian had come near to the pass, were in dread, and deliberated about making retreat from their position. to the rest of the peloponnesians then it seemed best that they should go to the peloponnese and hold the isthmus in guard; but leonidas, when the phokians and locrians were indignant at this opinion, gave his vote for remaining there, and for sending at the same time messengers to the several states bidding them to come up to help them, since they were but few to repel the army of the medes. . as they were thus deliberating, xerxes sent a scout on horseback to see how many they were in number and what they were doing; for he had heard while he was yet in thessaly that there had been assembled in this place a small force, and that the leaders of it were lacedemonians together with leonidas, who was of the race of heracles. and when the horseman had ridden up towards their camp, he looked upon them and had a view not indeed of the whole of their army, for of those which were posted within the wall, which they had repaired and were keeping a guard, it was not possible to have a view, but he observed those who were outside, whose station was in front of the wall; and it chanced at that time that the lacedemonians were they who were posted outside. so then he saw some of the men practising athletic exercises and some combing their long hair: and as he looked upon these things he marvelled, and at the same time he observed their number: and when he had observed all exactly, he rode back unmolested, for no one attempted to pursue him and he found himself treated with much indifference. and when he returned he reported to xerxes all that which he had seen. . hearing this xerxes was not able to conjecture the truth about the matter, namely that they were preparing themselves to die and to deal death to the enemy so far as they might; but it seemed to him that they were acting in a manner merely ridiculous; and therefore he sent for demaratos the son of ariston, who was in his camp, and when he came, xerxes asked him of these things severally, desiring to discover what this was which the lacedemonians were doing: and he said: "thou didst hear from my mouth at a former time, when we were setting forth to go against hellas, the things concerning these men; and having heard them thou madest me an object of laughter, because i told thee of these things which i perceived would come to pass; for to me it is the greatest of all ends to speak the truth continually before thee, o king. hear then now also: these men have come to fight with us for the passage, and this is it that they are preparing to do; for they have a custom which is as follows;--whenever they are about to put their lives in peril, then they attend to the arrangement of their hair. be assured however, that if thou shalt subdue these and the rest of them which remain behind in sparta, there is no other race of men which will await thy onset, o king, or will raise hands against thee: for now thou art about to fight against the noblest kingdom and city of those which are among the hellenes, and the best men." to xerxes that which was said seemed to be utterly incredible, and he asked again a second time in what manner being so few they would fight with his host. he said; "o king, deal with me as with a liar, if thou find not that these things come to pass as i say." . thus saying he did not convince xerxes, who let four days go by, expecting always that they would take to flight; but on the fifth day, when they did not depart but remained, being obstinate, as he thought, in impudence and folly, he was enraged and sent against them the medes and the kissians, charging them to take the men alive and bring them into his presence. then when the medes moved forward and attacked the hellenes, there fell many of them, and others kept coming up continually, and they were not driven back, though suffering great loss: and they made it evident to every man, and to the king himself not least of all, that human beings are many but men are few. this combat went on throughout the day: , and when the medes were being roughly handled, then these retired from the battle, and the persians, those namely whom the king called "immortals," of whom hydarnes was commander, took their place and came to the attack, supposing that they at least would easily overcome the enemy. when however these also engaged in combat with the hellenes, they gained no more success than the median troops but the same as they, seeing that they were fighting in a place with a narrow passage, using shorter spears than the hellenes, and not being able to take advantage of their superior numbers. the lacedemonians meanwhile were fighting in a memorable fashion, and besides other things of which they made display, being men perfectly skilled in fighting opposed to men who were unskilled, they would turn their backs to the enemy and make a pretence of taking to flight; and the barbarians, seeing them thus taking a flight, would follow after them with shouting and clashing of arms: then the lacedemonians, when they were being caught up, turned and faced the barbarians; and thus turning round they would slay innumerable multitudes of the persians; and there fell also at these times a few of the spartans themselves. so, as the persians were not able to obtain any success by making trial of the entrance and attacking it by divisions and every way, they retired back. . and during these onsets it is said that the king, looking on, three times leapt up from his seat, struck with fear for his army. thus they contended then: and on the following day the barbarians strove with no better success; for because the men opposed to them were few in number, they engaged in battle with the expectation that they would be found to be disabled and would not be capable any longer of raising their hands against them in fight. the hellenes however were ordered by companies as well as by nations, and they fought successively each in turn, excepting the phokians, for these were posted upon the mountain to guard the path. so the persians, finding nothing different from that which they had seen on the former day, retired back from the fight. . then when the king was in a strait as to what he should do in the matter before him, epialtes the son of eurydemos, a malian, came to speech with him, supposing that he would win a very great reward from the king; and this man told him of the path which leads over the mountain to thermopylai, and brought about the destruction of those hellenes who remained in that place. afterwards from fear of the lacedemonians he fled to thessaly, and when he had fled, a price was proclaimed for his life by the deputies, when the amphictyons met for their assembly at pylai. then some time afterwards having returned to antikyra he was slain by athenades a man of trachis. now this athenades killed epialtes for another cause, which i shall set forth in the following part of the history, but he was honoured for it none the less by the lacedemonians. . thus epialtes after these events was slain: there is however another tale told, that onetes the son of phanagoras, a man of carystos, and corydallos of antikyra were those who showed the persians the way round the mountain; but this i can by no means accept: for first we must judge by this fact, namely that the deputies of the hellenes did not proclaim a price for the lives of onetes and corydallos, but for that of epialtes the trachinian, having surely obtained the most exact information of the matter; and secondly we know that epialtes was an exile from his country to avoid this charge. true it is indeed that onetes might know of this path, even though he were not a malian, if he had had much intercourse with the country; but epialtes it was who led them round the mountain by the path, and him therefore i write down as the guilty man. . xerxes accordingly, being pleased by that which epialtes engaged to accomplish, at once with great joy proceeded to send hydarnes and the men of whom hydarnes was commander; and they set forth from the camp about the time when the lamps are lit. this path of which we speak had been discovered by the malians who dwell in that land, and having discovered it they led the thessalians by it against the phokians, at the time when the phokians had fenced the pass with a wall and thus were sheltered from the attacks upon them: so long ago as this had the pass been proved by the malians to be of no value. and this path lies as follows:--it begins from the river asopos, which flows through the cleft, and the name of this mountain and of the path is the same, namely anopaia; and this anopaia stretches over the ridge of the mountain and ends by the town of alpenos, which is the first town of the locrians towards malis, and by the stone called black buttocks and the seats of the kercopes, where is the very narrowest part. . by this path thus situated the persians after crossing over the asopos proceeded all through the night, having on their right hand the mountains of the oitaians and on the left those of the trachinians: and when dawn appeared, they had reached the summit of the mountain. in this part of the mountain there were, as i have before shown, a thousand hoplites of the phokians keeping guard, to protect their own country and to keep the path: for while the pass below was guarded by those whom i have mentioned, the path over the mountain was guarded by the phokians, who had undertaken the business for leonidas by their own offer. . while the persians were ascending they were concealed from these, since all the mountain was covered with oak-trees; and the phokians became aware of them after they had made the ascent as follows:--the day was calm, and not a little noise was made by the persians, as was likely when leaves were lying spread upon the ground under their feet; upon which the phokians started up and began to put on their arms, and by this time the barbarians were close upon them. these, when they saw men arming themselves, fell into wonder, for they were expecting that no one would appear to oppose them, and instead of that they had met with an armed force. then hydarnes, seized with fear lest the phokians should be lacedemonians, asked epialtes of what people the force was; and being accurately informed he set the persians in order for battle. the phokians however, when they were hit by the arrows of the enemy, which flew thickly, fled and got away at once to the topmost peak of the mountain, fully assured that it was against them that the enemy had designed to come, and here they were ready to meet death. these, i say, were in this mind; but the persians meanwhile with epialtes and hydarnes made no account of the phokians, but descended the mountain with all speed. . to the hellenes who were in thermopylai first the soothsayer megistias, after looking into the victims which were sacrificed, declared the death which was to come to them at dawn of day; and afterwards deserters brought the report of the persians having gone round. these signified it to them while it was yet night, and thirdly came the day-watchers, who had run down from the heights when day was already dawning. then the hellenes deliberated, and their opinions were divided; for some urged that they should not desert their post, while others opposed this counsel. after this they departed from their assembly, and some went away and dispersed each to their several cities, while others of them were ready to remain there together with leonidas. . however it is reported also that leonidas himself sent them away, having a care that they might not perish, but thinking that it was not seemly for himself and for the spartans who were present to leave the post to which they had come at first to keep guard there. i am inclined rather to be of this latter opinion, namely that because leonidas perceived that the allies were out of heart and did not desire to face the danger with him to the end, he ordered them to depart, but held that for himself to go away was not honourable, whereas if he remained, a great fame of him would be left behind, and the prosperity of sparta would not be blotted out: for an oracle had been given by the pythian prophetess to the spartans, when they consulted about this war at the time when it was being first set on foot, to the effect that either lacedemon must be destroyed by the barbarians, or their king must lose his life. this reply the prophetess gave them in hexameter verses, and it ran thus: "but as for you, ye men who in wide-spaced sparta inhabit, either your glorious city is sacked by the children of perses, or, if it be not so, then a king of the stock heracleian dead shall be mourned for by all in the boundaries of broad lacedemon. him nor the might of bulls nor the raging of lions shall hinder; for he hath might as of zeus; and i say he shall not be restrained, till one of the other of these he have utterly torn and divided." i am of opinion that leonidas considering these things and desiring to lay up for himself glory above all the other spartans, dismissed the allies, rather than that those who departed did so in such disorderly fashion, because they were divided in opinion. . of this the following has been to my mind a proof as convincing as any other, namely that leonidas is known to have endeavoured to dismiss the soothsayer also who accompanied this army, megistias the acarnanian, who was said to be descended from melampus, that he might not perish with them after he had declared from the victims that which was about to come to pass for them. he however when he was bidden to go would not himself depart, but sent away his son who was with him in the army, besides whom he had no other child. . the allies then who were dismissed departed and went away, obeying the word of leonidas, and only the thespians and the thebans remained behind with the lacedemonians. of these the thebans stayed against their will and not because they desired it, for leonidas kept them, counting them as hostages; but the thespians very willingly, for they said that they would not depart and leave leonidas and those with him, but they stayed behind and died with them. the commander of these was demophilos the son of diadromes. . xerxes meanwhile, having made libations at sunrise, stayed for some time, until about the hour when the market fills, and then made an advance upon them; for thus it had been enjoined by epialtes, seeing that the descent of the mountain is shorter and the space to be passed over much less than the going round and the ascent. the barbarians accordingly with xerxes were advancing to the attack; and the hellenes with leonidas, feeling that they were going forth to death, now advanced out much further than at first into the broader part of the defile; for when the fence of the wall was being guarded, they on the former days fought retiring before the enemy into the narrow part of the pass; but now they engaged with them outside the narrows, and very many of the barbarians fell: for behind them the leaders of the divisions with scourges in their hands were striking each man, ever urging them on to the front. many of them then were driven into the sea and perished, and many more still were trodden down while yet alive by one another, and there was no reckoning of the number that perished: for knowing the death which was about to come upon them by reason of those who were going round the mountain, they displayed upon the barbarians all the strength which they had, to its greatest extent, disregarding danger and acting as if possessed by a spirit of recklessness. . now by this time the spears of the greater number of them were broken, so it chanced, in this combat, and they were slaying the persians with their swords; and in this fighting fell leonidas, having proved himself a very good man, and others also of the spartans with him, men of note, of whose names i was informed as of men who had proved themselves worthy, and indeed i was told also the names of all the three hundred. moreover of the persians there fell here, besides many others of note, especially two sons of dareios, abrocomes and hyperanthes, born to dareios of phratagune the daughter of artanes: now artanes was the brother of king dareios and the son of hystaspes, the son of arsames; and he in giving his daughter in marriage to dareios gave also with her all his substance, because she was his only child. . two brothers of xerxes, i say, fell here fighting; and meanwhile over the body of leonidas there arose a great struggle between the persians and the lacedemonians, until the hellenes by valour dragged this away from the enemy and turned their opponents to flight four times. this conflict continued until those who had gone with epialtes came up; and when the hellenes learnt that these had come, from that moment the nature of the combat was changed; for they retired backwards to the narrow part of the way, and having passed by the wall they went and placed themselves upon the hillock, all in a body together except only the thebans: now this hillock is in the entrance, where now the stone lion is placed for leonidas. on this spot while defending themselves with daggers, that is those who still had them left, and also with hands and with teeth, they were overwhelmed by the missiles of the barbarians, some of these having followed directly after them and destroyed the fence of the wall, while others had come round and stood about them on all sides. . such were the proofs of valour given by the lacedemonians and thespians; yet the spartan dienekes is said to have proved himself the best man of all, the same who, as they report, uttered this saying before they engaged battle with the medes:--being informed by one of the men of trachis that when the barbarians discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows, so great was the number of their host, he was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the medes, he said that their guest from trachis brought them very good news, for if the medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun. . this and other sayings of this kind they report that dienekes the lacedemonian left as memorials of himself; and after him the bravest they say of the lacedemonians were two brothers alpheos and maron, sons of orsiphantos. of the thespians the man who gained most honour was named dithyrambos son of harmatides. . the men were buried were they fell; and for these, as well as for those who were slain before being sent away by leonidas, there is an inscription which runs thus: "here once, facing in fight three hundred myriads of foemen, thousands four did contend, men of the peloponnese." this is the inscription for the whole body; and for the spartans separately there is this: "stranger, report this word, we pray, to the spartans, that lying here in this spot we remain, faithfully keeping their laws." this, i say, for the lacedemonians; and for the soothsayer as follows: "this is the tomb of megistias renowned, whom the median foemen, where sperchios doth flow, slew when they forded the stream; soothsayer he, who then knowing clearly the fates that were coming, did not endure in the fray sparta's good leaders to leave." the amphictyons it was who honoured them with inscriptions and memorial pillars, excepting only in the case of the inscription to the soothsayer; but that of the soothsayer megistias was inscribed by simonides the son of leoprepes on account of guest-friendship. . two of these three hundred, it is said, namely eurystos and aristodemos, who, if they had made agreement with one another, might either have come safe home to sparta together (seeing that they had been dismissed from the camp by leonidas and were lying at alpenoi with disease of the eyes, suffering extremely), or again, if they had not wished to return home, they might have been slain together with the rest,--when they might, i say, have done either one of these two things, would not agree together; but the two being divided in opinion, eurystos, it is said, when he was informed that the persians had gone round, asked for his arms and having put them on ordered his helot to lead him to those who were fighting; and after he had led him thither, the man who had led him ran away and departed, but eurystos plunged into the thick of the fighting, and so lost his life: but aristodemos was left behind fainting. now if either aristodemos had been ill alone, and so had returned home to sparta, or the men had both of them come back together, i do not suppose that the spartans would have displayed any anger against them; but in this case, as the one of them had lost his life and the other, clinging to an excuse which the first also might have used, had not been willing to die, it necessarily happened that the spartans had great indignation against aristodemos. . some say that aristodemos came safe to sparta in this manner, and on a pretext such as i have said; but others, that he had been sent as a messenger from the camp, and when he might have come up in time to find the battle going on, was not willing to do so, but stayed upon the road and so saved his life, while his fellow-messenger reached the battle and was slain. . when aristodemos, i say, had returned home to lacedemon, he had reproach and dishonour; and that which he suffered by way of dishonour was this,--no one of the spartans would either give him light for a fire or speak with him, and he had reproach in that he was called aristodemos the coward. . he however in the battle at plataia repaired all the guilt that was charged against him: but it is reported that another man also survived of these three hundred, whose name was pantites, having been sent as a messenger to thessaly, and this man, when he returned back to sparta and found himself dishonoured, is said to have strangled himself. . the thebans however, of whom the commander was leontiades, being with the hellenes had continued for some time to fight against the king's army, constrained by necessity; but when they saw that the fortunes of the persians were prevailing, then and not before, while the hellenes with leonidas were making their way with speed to the hillock, they separated from these and holding out their hands came near to the barbarians, saying at the same time that which was most true, namely that they were on the side of the medes and that they had been among the first to give earth and water to the king; and moreover that they had come to thermopylai constrained by necessity, and were blameless for the loss which had been inflicted upon the king: so that thus saying they preserved their lives, for they had also the thessalians to bear witness to these words. however, they did not altogether meet with good fortune, for some had even been slain as they had been approaching, and when they had come and the barbarians had them in their power, the greater number of them were branded by command of xerxes with the royal marks, beginning with their leader leontiades, the same whose son eurymachos was afterwards slain by the plataians, when he had been made commander of four hundred thebans and had seized the city of the plataians. . thus did the hellenes at thermopylai contend in fight; and xerxes summoned demaratos and inquired of him, having first said this: "demaratos, thou art a good man; and this i conclude by the truth of thy words, for all that thou saidest turned out so as thou didst say. now, however, tell me how many in number are the remaining lacedemonians, and of them how many are like these in matters of war; or are they so even all of them?" he said: "o king, the number of all the lacedemonians is great and their cities are many, but that which thou desirest to learn, thou shalt know. there is in lacedemon the city of sparta, having about eight thousand men; and these are all equal to those who fought here: the other lacedemonians are not equal to these, but they are good men too." to this xerxes said: "demaratos, in what manner shall we with least labour get the better of these men? come set forth to us this; for thou knowest the courses of their counsels, seeing that thou wert once their king." . he made answer: "o king, if thou dost in very earnest take counsel with me, it is right that i declare to thee the best thing. what if thou shouldest send three hundred ships from thy fleet to attack the laconian land? now there is lying near it an island named kythera, about which chilon, who was a very wise man among us, said that it would be a greater gain for the spartans that it should be sunk under the sea than that it should remain above it; for he always anticipated that something would happen from it of such a kind as i am now setting forth to thee: not that he knew of thy armament beforehand, but that he feared equally every armament of men. let thy forces then set forth from this island and keep the lacedemonians in fear; and while they have a war of their own close at their doors, there will be no fear for thee from them that when the remainder of hellas is being conquered by the land-army, they will come to the rescue there. then after the remainder of hellas has been reduced to subjection, from that moment the lacedemonian power will be left alone and therefore feeble. if however thou shalt not do this, i will tell thee what thou must look for. there is a narrow isthmus leading to the peloponnese, and in this place thou must look that other battles will be fought more severe than those which have taken place, seeing that all the peloponnesians have sworn to a league against thee: but if thou shalt do the other thing of which i spoke, this isthmus and the cities within it will come over to thy side without a battle." . after him spoke achaimenes, brother of xerxes and also commander of the fleet, who chanced to have been present at this discourse and was afraid lest xerxes should be persuaded to do this: "o king," he said, "i see that thou art admitting the speech of a man who envies thy good fortune, or is even a traitor to thy cause: for in truth the hellenes delight in such a temper as this; they envy a man for his good luck, and they hate that which is stronger than themselves. and if, besides other misfortunes which we have upon us, seeing that four hundred of our ships have suffered wreck, thou shalt send away another three hundred from the station of the fleet to sail round peloponnese, then thy antagonists become a match for thee in fight; whereas while it is all assembled together our fleet is hard for them to deal with, and they will not be at all a match for thee: and moreover the whole sea-force will support the land-force and be supported by it, if they proceed onwards together; but if thou shalt divide them, neither wilt thou be of service to them nor they to thee. my determination is rather to set thy affairs in good order and not to consider the affairs of the enemy, either where they will set on foot the war or what they will do or how many in number they are; for it is sufficient that they should themselves take thought for themselves, and we for ourselves likewise: and if the lacedemonians come to stand against the persians in fight, they will assuredly not heal the wound from which they are now suffering." . to him xerxes made answer as follows: "achaimenes, i think that thou speakest well, and so will i do; but demaratos speaks that which he believes to be best for me, though his opinion is defeated by thine: for i will not certainly admit that which thou saidest, namely that he is not well-disposed to my cause, judging both by what was said by him before this, and also by that which is the truth, namely that though one citizen envies another for his good fortune and shows enmity to him by his silence, nor would a citizen when a fellow-citizen consulted him suggest that which seemed to him the best, unless he had attained to a great height of virtue, and such men doubtless are few; yet guest-friend to guest-friend in prosperity is well-disposed as nothing else on earth, and if his friend should consult him, he would give him the best counsel. thus then as regards the evil-speaking against demaratos, that is to say about one who is my guest-friend, i bid every one abstain from it in the future." . having thus said xerxes passed in review the bodies of the dead; and as for leonidas, hearing that he had been the king and commander of the lacedemonians he bade them cut off his head and crucify him. and it has been made plain to me by many proofs besides, but by none more strongly than by this, that king xerxes was enraged with leonidas while alive more than with any other man on earth; for otherwise he would never have done this outrage to his corpse; since of all the men whom i know, the persians are accustomed most to honour those who are good men in war. they then to whom it was appointed to do these things, proceeded to do so. . i will return now to that point of my narrative where it remained unfinished. the lacedemonians had been informed before all others that the king was preparing an expedition against hellas; and thus it happened that they sent to the oracle at delphi, where that reply was given them which i reported shortly before this. and they got this information in a strange manner; for demaratos the son of ariston after he had fled for refuge to the medes was not friendly to the lacedemonians, as i am of opinion and as likelihood suggests supporting my opinion; but it is open to any man to make conjecture whether he did this thing which follows in a friendly spirit or in malicious triumph over them. when xerxes had resolved to make a campaign against hellas, demaratos, being in susa and having been informed of this, had a desire to report it to the lacedemonians. now in no other way was he able to signify it, for there was danger that he should be discovered, but he contrived thus, that is to say, he took a folding tablet and scraped off the wax which was upon it, and then he wrote the design of the king upon the wood of the tablet, and having done so he melted the wax and poured it over the writing, so that the tablet (being carried without writing upon it) might not cause any trouble to be given by the keepers of the road. then when it had arrived at lacedemon, the lacedemonians were not able to make conjecture of the matter; until at last, as i am informed, gorgo, the daughter of cleomenes and wife of leonidas, suggested a plan of which she had herself thought, bidding them scrape the wax and they would find writing upon the wood; and doing as she said they found the writing and read it, and after that they sent notice to the other hellenes. these things are said to have come to pass in this manner. notes to book vii [ {kai ploia}, for transport of horses and also of provisions: however these words are omitted in some of the best mss.] [ {all ei}: this is the reading of the better class of mss. the rest have {alla}, which with {pressois} could only express a wish for success, and not an exhortation to action.] [ {outos men oi o logos en timoros}: the words may mean "this manner of discourse was helpful for his purpose."] [ {khresmologon e kai diatheten khresmon ton mousaiou}.] [ {aphanizoiato}, representing the present tense {aphanizontai} in the oracle.] [ {ton thronon touton}: most mss. have {ton thronon, touto}.] [ {epistasthe kou pantes}: the mss. have {ta epistasthe kou pantes}, which is given by most editors. in that case {oia erxan} would be an exclamation, "what evils they did to us,... things which ye all know well, i think."] [ {touton mentoi eineka}: it is hardly possible here to give {mentoi} its usual meaning: stein in his latest edition reads {touton men toinun}.] [ {suneneike}: stein reads {suneneike se}, "supposing that thou art worsted."] [ {ep andri ge eni}, as opposed to a god.] [ {akousesthai tina psemi ton k.t.l.}, "each one of those who are left behind."] [ {kai kurou}, a conjectural emendation of {tou kurou}. the text of the mss. enumerates all these as one continuous line of ascent. it is clear however that the enumeration is in fact of two separate lines, which combine in teïspes, the line of ascent through the father dareios being, dareios, hystaspes, arsames, ariamnes, teïspes, and through the mother, atossa, cyrus, cambyses, teïspes.] [ {kai mala}: perhaps, "even."] [ lit. "nor is he present who will excuse thee."] [ lit. "my youth boiled over."] [ lit. "words more unseemly than was right."] [ {all oude tauta esti o pai theia}.] [ {peplanesthai}.] [ {autai}: a correction of {autai}.] [ {se de epiphoitesei}: the better mss. have {oude epiphoitesei}, which is adopted by stein.] [ {pempto de etei anomeno}.] [ {ton ionion}.] [ {kai oud ei eperai pros tautesi prosgenomenai}: some mss. read {oud eterai pros tautesi genomenai}, which is adopted (with variations) by some editors. the meaning would be "not all these, nor others which happened in addition to these, were equal to this one."] [ {ama strateuomenoisi}: {ama} is omitted in some mss.] [ {stadion}, and so throughout.] [ {entos sanes}: some mss. read {ektos sanes}, which is adopted by stein, who translates "beyond sane, but on this side of mount athos": this however will not suit the case of all the towns mentioned, e.g. acrothoon, and {ton athen} just below clearly means the whole peninsula.] [ {leukolinou}.] [ {ton de on pleiston}: if this reading is right, {siton} must be understood, and some mss. read {allon} for {alla} in the sentence above. stein in his latest edition reads {siton} instead of {pleiston}.] [ lit. "the name of which happens to be catarractes."] [ i.e. , , .] [ the {stater dareikos} was of nearly pure gold (cp. iv. ), weighing about grains.] [ {stele}, i.e. a square block of stone.] [ {athanato andri}, taken by some to mean one of the body of "immortals."] [ {akte pakhea}: some inferior mss. read {akte trakhea}, and hence some editors have {akte trekhea}, "a rugged foreland."] [ {dolero}: some editors read {tholero}, "turbid," by conjecture.] [ the meaning is much disputed. i understand herodotus to state that though the vessels lay of course in the direction of the stream from the hellespont, that is presenting their prows (or sterns) to the stream, yet this did not mean that they pointed straight towards the propontis and euxine; for the stream after passing sestos runs almost from north to south with even a slight tendency to the east (hence {eurou} a few lines further on), so that ships lying in the stream would point in a line cutting at right angles that of the longer axis (from east to west) of the pontus and propontis. this is the meaning of {epikarsios} elsewhere in herodotus (i. and iv. ), and it would be rash to assign to it any other meaning here. it is true however that the expression {pros esperes} is used loosely below for the side toward the egean. for {anakokheue} a subject must probably be supplied from the clause {pentekonterous--sunthentes}, "that it (i.e. the combination of ships) might support etc.," and {ton tonon ton oplon} may either mean as below "the stretched ropes," or "the tension of the ropes," which would be relieved by the support: the latter meaning seems to me preferable.] mr. whitelaw suggests to me that {epikarsios} ({epi kar}) may mean rather "head-foremost," which seems to be its meaning in homer (odyss. ix. ), and from which might be obtained the idea of intersection, one line running straight up against another, which it has in other passages. in that case it would here mean "heading towards the pontus."] [ {tas men pros tou pontou tes eteres}. most commentators would supply {gephures} with {tes eteres}, but evidently both bridges must have been anchored on both sides.] [ {eurou}: stein adopts the conjecture {zephurou}.] [ {ton pentekonteron kai triereon trikhou}: the mss. give {ton pentekonteron kai trikhou}, "between the fifty-oared galleys in as many as three places," but it is strange that the fifty-oared galleys should be mentioned alone, and there seems no need of {kai} with {trikhou}. stein reads {ton pentekonteron kai triereon} (omitting {trikhou} altogether), and this may be right.] [ i.e. in proportion to the quantity: there was of course a greater weight altogether of the papyrus rope.] [ {autis epezeugnuon}.] [ {ekleipsin}: cp. {eklipon} above.] [ or, according to some mss., "nisaian."] [ i.e. not downwards.] [ {tina autou sukhnon omilon}.] [ {to priamou pergamon}.] [ {en abudo mese}: some inferior authorities (followed by most editors) omit {mese}: but the district seems to be spoken of, as just above.] [ {proexedre lothou leukou}: some kind of portico or loggia seems to be meant.] [ {daimonie andoon}.] [ {ena auton}.] [ {to proso aiei kleptomenos}: "stealing thy advance continually," i.e. "advancing insensibly further." some take {kleptomenos} as passive, "insensibly lured on further."] [ {neoteron ti poiesein}.] [ or, according to some mss., "the persian land."] [ lit. "the name of which happens to be agora."] [ i.e. , , .] [ {sunnaxantes}: a conjectural emendation very generally adopted of {sunaxantes} or {sunapsantes}.] [ {apageas}, i.e. not stiffly standing up; the opposite to {pepeguias} (ch. ).] [ {lepidos siderees opsin ikhthueideos}: many editors suppose that some words have dropped out. the {kithon} spoken of may have been a coat of armour, but elsewhere the body armour {thorex} is clearly distinguished from the {kithon}, see ix. .] [ {gerra}: cp. ix. and .] [ cp. i. .] [ {mitrephoroi esan}: the {mitre} was perhaps a kind of turban.] [ {tesi aiguptiesi}, apparently {makhairesi} is meant to be supplied: cp. ch. .] [ {eklethesan}, "were called" from the first.] [ these words are by some editors thought to be an interpolation. the chaldeans in fact had become a caste of priests, cp. i. .] [ {kurbasias}: supposed to be the same as the tiara (cp. v. ), but in this case stiff and upright.] [ i.e. areians, cp. iii. .] [ {sisurnas}: cp. iv. .] [ {akinakas}.] [ {sisurnophoroi}.] [ {zeiras}.] [ {toxa palintona}.] [ {spathes}, which perhaps means the stem of the leaf.] [ {gupso}, "white chalk."] [ {milto}, "red ochre."] [ some words have apparently been lost containing the name of the nation to which the following description applies. it is suggested that this might be either the chalybians or the pisidians.] [ {lukioergeas}, an emendation from athenæus of {lukoergeas} (or {lukergeas}), which might perhaps mean "for wolf-hunting."] [ {anastpastous}: cp. iii. .] [ some editors place this clause before the words: "and smerdomenes the son of otanes," for we do not hear of otanes or smerdomenes elsewhere as brother and nephew of dareios. on the other hand mardonios was son of the sister of dareios.] [ {tukhe}, "hits."] [ {keletas}, "single horses."] [ this name is apparently placed here wrongly. it has been proposed to read {kaspeiroi} or {paktues}.] [ {ippeue}: the greater number of mss. have {ippeuei} here as at the beginning of ch. , to which this is a reference back, but with a difference of meaning. there the author seemed to begin with the intention of giving a full list of the cavalry force of the persian empire, and then confined his account to those actually present on this occasion, whereas here the word in combination with {mouna} refers only to those just enumerated.] [ i.e. , .] [ {suroisi}, see note on ii. .] [ {tukous}, which appears to mean ordinarily a tool for stone-cutting.] [ {mitresi}, perhaps "turbans."] [ {kithonas}: there is some probability in the suggestion of {kitarias} here, for we should expect mention of a head-covering, and the word {kitaris} (which is explained to mean the same as {tiara}), is quoted by pollux as occurring in herodotus.] [ {kithonas}.] [ {drepana}, "reaping-hooks," cp. v. .] [ see i. .] [ {pelasgoi aigialees}.] [ {kerkouroi}.] [ {makra}: some mss. and editions have {smikra}, "small."] [ or "mapen."] [ or "seldomos."] [ {metopedon}.] [ {me oentes arthmioi}. this is generally taken to mean, "unless they were of one mind together"; but that would very much weaken the force of the remark, and {arthmios} elsewhere is the opposite of {polemios}, cp. vi. and ix. , : xerxes professes enmity only against those who had refused to give the tokens of submission.] [ {men mounoisi}: these words are omitted in some good mss., and {mounoisi} has perhaps been introduced from the preceding sentence. the thing referred to in {touto} is the power of fighting in single combat with many at once, which demaratos is supposed to have claimed for the whole community of the spartans.] [ {stergein malista}.] [ {oudamoi ko}.] [ or, "strauos."] [ or, "compsatos."] [ {tas epeirotidas polis}: it is not clear why these are thus distinguished. stein suggests {thasion tas epeirotidas polis}, cp. ch. [footnote ; and if that be the true reading {ion} is probably a remnant of {thasion} after {khoras}.] [ or, "pistiros."] [ {oi propheteountes}, i.e. those who interpret the utterances of the oracle, cp. viii. .] [ {promantis}.] [ {kai ouden poikiloteron}, an expression of which the meaning is not quite clear; perhaps "and the oracles are not at all more obscure," cp. eur. phoen. and hel. (quoted by bähr).] [ "ennea hodoi."] [ cp. iii. .] [ the "royal cubit" is about inches; the {daktulos}, "finger's breadth," is rather less than ¾ inch.] [ or, "cape canastraion."] [ or "echeidoros": so it is usually called, but not by any ms. here, and by a few only in ch. .] [ {pro mesogaian tamnon tes odou}: cp. iv. and ix. .] [ cp. ch. and : but it does not appear that the aleuadai, of whom xerxes is here speaking, ever thought of resistance, and perhaps {gnosimakheontes} means, "when they submitted without resistance."] [ some mss. have {ainienes} for {enienes}.] [ {dekateusai}: there is sufficient authority for this rendering of {dekateuein}, and it seems better here than to understand the word to refer only to a "tithing" of goods.] [ {es to barathron}, the place of execution at athens.] [ "undesirable thing."] [ {ouk ex isou}: i.e. it is one-sided, because the speaker has had experience of only one of the alternatives.] [ cp. ch. (end), and viii. .] [ {teikheon kithones}, a poetical expression, quoted perhaps from some oracle; and if so, {kithon} may here have the epic sense of a "coat of mail," equivalent to {thorex} in i. : see ch. , note .] [ {to megaron}.] [ the form of address changes abruptly to the singular number, referring to the athenian people.] [ {azela}, probably for {aionla}, which has been proposed as a correction: or possibly "wretched."] [ {oxus ares}.] [ i.e. assyrian, cp. ch. .] [ {min}, i.e. the city, to which belong the head, feet, and body which have been mentioned.] [ {kakois d' epikidnate thumon}: this might perhaps mean (as it is taken by several editors), "show a courageous soul in your troubles," but that would hardly suit with the discouraging tone of the context.] [ {onax}, cp. iv. .] [ {ouros}: the word might of course be for {oros}, "mountain," and {kekropos ouros} would then mean the acropolis (so it is understood by stein and others), but the combination with kithairon makes it probable that the reference is to the boundaries of attica, and this seems more in accordance with the reference to it in viii. .] [ {demeteros}.] [ {sustas}, "having been joined" cp. viii. .] [ {ton peri ten ellada ellenon ta ameino phroneonton}: the mss. have {ton} also after {ellenon}, which would mean "those of the hellenes in hellas itself, who were of the better mind;" but the expression {ton ta ameino phroneouseon peri ten ellada} occurs in ch. : some editors omit {ellenon} as well as {ton}.] [ {egkekremenoi} (from {egkerannumi}, cp. v. ), a conjectural emendation (by reiske) of {egkekhremenoi}. others have conjectured {egkekheiremenoi} or {egegermenoi}.] [ {te ge alle}: many editors adopt the conjecture {tede alle} "is like the following, which he expressed on another occasion."] [ see vi. : this calamity had occurred about fourteen years before, and it was not in order to recover from this that the argives wished now for a thirty years' truce; but warned by this they desired (they said) to guard against the consequence of a similar disaster in fighting with the persians, against whom, according to their own account, they were going to defend themselves independently. so great was their fear of this that, "though fearing the oracle," they were willing to disobey it on certain conditions.] [ {probalaion}, cp. {probolous}, ch. .] [ {es tous pleunas}.] [ cp. v. .] [ {ethelousi}: this is omitted in most of the mss., but contained in several of the best. many editors have omitted it.] [ {ta oikeia kaka} seems to mean the grievances which each has against his neighbours, "if all the nations of men should bring together into one place their own grievances against their neighbours, desiring to make a settlement with them, each people, when they had examined closely the grievances of others against themselves, would gladly carry away back with them those which they had brought," judging that they had offended others more than they had suffered themselves.] [ {oiketor o en gele}: some editors read by conjecture {oiketor eon geles}, others {oiketor en gele}.] [ {iropsantai ton khthonion theon}: cp. vi. .] [ i.e. by direct inspiration.] [ {en dorupsoros}: the mss. have {os en dorupsoros}. some editors mark a lacuna.] [ {gamorous}, the name given to the highest class of citizens.] [ or, "killyrians." they were conquered sicanians, in the position of the spartan helots.] [ {pakheas}: cp. v. .] [ {gar}: inserted conjecturally by many editors.] [ see v. .] [ {e ke meg oimexeie}, the beginning of a homeric hexameter, cp. il. vii. .] [ or, "since your speech is so adverse."] [ see il. ii. .] [ some editors mark this explanation "now this is the meaning-- year," as interpolated.] [ {purannida}.] [ {es meson kooisi katatheis ten arkhen}.] [ {para samion}: this is the reading of the best mss.: others have {meta samion}, "together with the samians," which is adopted by many editors. there can be little doubt however that the skythes mentioned in vi. was the father of this cadmos, and we know from thuc. vi. that the samians were deprived of the town soon after they had taken it, by anaxilaos, who gave it the name of messene, and no doubt put cadmos in possession of it, as the son of the former king.] [ cp. ch. .] [ i.e. , .] [ the mss. add either {os karkhedonioi}, or {os karkhedonioi kai surekosioi}, but the testimony of the carthaginians has just been given, {os phoinikes legousi}, and the syracusans professed to be unable to discover anything of him at all. most of the editors omit or alter the words.] [ {epimemphesthe}: some editors have tried corrections, e.g. {ou ti memnesthe}, "do ye not remember," or {epimemnesthe}, "remember"; but cp. viii. , {oste se me mempsasthai ten... diken}.] [ {osa umin... minos epempse menion dakrumata}. the oracle would seem to have been in iambic verse.] [ {parentheke}.] [ {ou boulomenoi}, apparently equivalent to {me boulemenoi}.] [ cp. viii. .] [ i.e. the six commanders of divisions {morai} in the spartan army.] [ {mia}: for this most mss. have {ama}. perhaps the true reading is {ama mia}.] [ {amaxitos moune}, cp. ch. .] [ {khutrous}.] [ {ton epibateon autes}.] [ {emeroskopous}: perhaps simply "scouts," cp. ch. , by which it would seem that they were at their posts by night also, though naturally they would not see much except by day.] [ i.e. "ant."] [ {autoi}.] [ i.e. , .] [ {epebateuon}.] [ , .] [ {o ti pleon en auton e elasson}. in ch. , which is referred to just above, these ships are stated to have been of many different kinds, and not only fifty-oared galleys.] [ , .] [ , .] [ , , : see ch. .] [ , .] [ , , .] [ {dokesin de dei legein}.] [ some mss. have {ainienes} for {enienes}.] [ , .] [ , , .] [ {tou makhimou toutou}.] [ {akatoisi}.] [ , , .] [ {khoinika}, the usual daily allowance.] [ the {medimnos} is about a bushel and a half, and is equal to {khoinikes}. the reckoning here of , {medimnoi} is wrong, owing apparently to the setting down of some numbers in the quotient which were in fact part of the dividend.] [ {prokrossai ormeonto es ponton}: the meaning of {prokrossai} is doubtful, but the introduction of the word is probably due to a reminiscence of homer, il. xiv. , where the ships are described as drawn up in rows one behind the other on shore, and where {prokrossas} is often explained to mean {klimakedon}, i.e. either in steps one behind the other owing to the rise of the beach, or in the arrangement of the quincunx. probably in this passage the idea is rather of the prows projecting in rows like battlements {krossai}, and this is the sense in which the word is used by herodotus elsewhere (iv. ). the word {krossai} however is used for the successively rising stages of the pyramids (ii. ), and {prokrossos} may mean simply "in a row," or "one behind the other," which would suit all passages in which it occurs, and would explain the expression {prokrossoi pheromenoi epi ton kindunon}, quoted by athenæus.] [ {apeliotes}. evidently, from its name {ellespontias} and from its being afterwards called {boreas}, it was actually a north-east wind.] [ i.e. "ovens."] [ {exebrassonto}.] [ {thesaurous}.] [ the word {khrusea}, "of gold," is omitted by some editors.] [ "in his case also {kai touton} there was an unpleasing misfortune of the slaying of a child {paidophonos} which troubled him," i.e. he like others had misfortunes to temper his prosperity.] [ {goesi}, (from a supposed word {goe}): a correction of {geosi}, "by enchanters," which is retained by stein. some read {khoesi}, "with libations," others {boesi}, "with cries."] [ {aphesein}, whence the name {aphetai} was supposed to be derived.] [ or, "had crucified... having convicted him of the following charge, namely," etc. cp. iii. (end).] [ {tritaios}. according to the usual meaning of the word the sense should be "on the third day after" entering thessaly, but the distance was much greater than a two-days' march.] [ i.e. "the devourer."] [ {prutaneiou}, "hall of the magistrates."] [ {leiton}.] [ {estellonto}: many editors, following inferior mss., read {eselthontes} and make changes in the rest of the sentence.] [ some mss. have {ainienon} for {enienon}.] [ {stadion}.] [ {diskhilia te gar kai dismuria plethra tou pediou esti}. if the text is right, the {plethron} must here be a measure of area. the amount will then be about acres.] [ {mekhri trekhinos}, "up to trachis," which was the southern limit.] [ {to epi tautes tes epeirou}. i take {to epi tautes} to be an adverbial expression like {tes eteres} in ch. , for i cannot think that the rendering "towards this continent" is satisfactory.] [ see v. .] [ {tous katesteotas}. there is a reference to the body of so called {ippeis} (cp. i. ), who were appointed to accompany the king in war; but we must suppose that on special occasions the king made up this appointed number by selection, and that in this case those were preferred who had sons to keep up the family. others (including grote) understand {tous katesteotas} to mean "men of mature age."] [ {ton pulagoron}.] [ {es ten pulaien}.] [ an indication that the historian intended to carry his work further than the year .] [ see ch. .] [ {ek te tosou de katededekto eousa ouden khreste melieusi}, i.e. {e esbole}.] [ {melampugon}.] [ lit. "had set out to go at first."] [ lit. "and afterwards deserters were they who reported."] [ {diakrithentes}.] [ {taute kai mallon te gnome pleistos eimi}.] [ i.e. the persian.] [ {prin tond eteron dia panta dasetai}: i.e. either the city or the king.] [ {mounon spartieteon}: some editors (following plutarch) read {mounon spartieteon}, "lay up for the spartans glory above all other nations."] [ {to men gar eruma tou teikheos ephulasseto, oi de k.t.l.}] [ i.e. the lacedemonians.] [ {izonto epi ton kolonon}.] [ some editors insert {tous} after {e}, "before those who were sent away by leonidas had departed."] [ {remasi}.] [ {leipopsukheonta}, a word which refers properly to bodily weakness. it has been proposed to read {philopsukheonta}, "loving his life," cp. vi. .] [ {algesanta}: some good mss. have {alogesanta}, which is adopted by stein, "had in his ill-reckoning returned alone."] [ {tes autes ekhomenou prophasios}.] [ {atimien}.] [ {o tresas}.] [ thuc. ii. ff.] [ {tas diexodous ton bouleumaton}, cp. iii. .] [ {ton vees k.t.l.}: some editors insert {ek} before {ton}, "by which four hundred ships have suffered shipwreck."] [ {ta seoutou de tithemenos eu gnomen ekho}: for {ekho} some inferior mss. have {ekhe}, which is adopted by several editors, "rather set thy affairs in good order and determine not to consider," etc.] [ {to pareon troma}, i.e. their defeat.] [ {kai esti dusmenes te sige}. some commentators understand {te sige} to mean "secretly," like {sige}, viii. .] [ see ch. .] [ many editors pronounce the last chapter to be an interpolation, but perhaps with hardly sufficient reason.] book viii. the eighth book of the histories, called urania . those of the hellenes who had been appointed to serve in the fleet were these:�the athenians furnished a hundred and twenty-seven ships, and the plataians moved by valour and zeal for the service, although they had had no practice in seamanship, yet joined with the athenians in manning their ships. the corinthians furnished forty ships, the megarians twenty; the chalkidians manned twenty ships with which the athenians furnished them; the eginetans furnished eighteen ships, the sikyonians twelve, the lacedemonians ten, the epidaurians eight, the eretrians seven, the troizenians five, the styrians two, the keïans two ships and two fifty-oared galleys, while the locrians of opus came also to the assistance of the rest with seven fifty-oared galleys. . these were those who joined in the expedition to artemision, and i have mentioned them according to the number of the ships which they severally supplied: so the number of the ships which were assembled at artemision was (apart from the fifty-oared galleys) two hundred and seventy-one: and the commander who had the supreme power was furnished by the spartans, namely eurybiades son of eurycleides, since the allies said that they would not follow the lead of the athenians, but unless a lacedemonian were leader they would break up the expedition which was to be made: , for it had come to be said at first, even before they sent to sicily to obtain allies, that the fleet ought to be placed in the charge of the athenians. so as the allies opposed this, the athenians yielded, having it much at heart that hellas should be saved, and perceiving that if they should have disagreement with one another about the leadership, hellas would perish: and herein they judged rightly, for disagreement between those of the same race is worse than war undertaken with one consent by as much as war is worse than peace. being assured then of this truth, they did not contend, but gave way for so long time as they were urgently in need of the allies; and that this was so their conduct proved; for when, after repelling the persian from themselves, they were now contending for his land and no longer for their own, they alleged the insolence of pausanias as a pretext and took away the leadership from the lacedemonians. this however took place afterwards. . but at this time these hellenes also who had come to artemision, when they saw that a great number of ships had put in to aphetai and that everything was filled with their armament, were struck with fear, because the fortunes of the barbarians had different issue from that which they expected, and they deliberated about retreating from artemision to the inner parts of hellas. and the euboeans perceiving that they were so deliberating, asked eurybiades to stay there by them for a short time, until they should have removed out of their land their children, and their households; and as they did not persuade him, they went elsewhere and persuaded themistocles the commander of the athenians by a payment of thirty talents, the condition being that the fleet should stay and fight the sea-battle in front of euboea. . themistocles then caused the hellenes to stay in the following manner:�to eurybiades he imparted five talents of the sum with the pretence that he was giving it from himself; and when eurybiades had been persuaded by him to change his resolution, adeimantos son of okytos, the corinthian commander, was the only one of all the others who still made a struggle, saying that he would sail away from artemision and would not stay with the others: to him therefore themistocles said with an oath: "thou at least shalt not leave us, for i will give thee greater gifts than the king of the medes would send to thee, if thou shouldest desert thy allies." thus he spoke, and at the same time he sent to the ship of adeimantos three talents of silver. so these all had been persuaded by gifts to change their resolution, and at the same time the request of the euboeans had been gratified and themistocles himself gained money; and it was not known that he had the rest of the money, but those who received a share of this money were fully persuaded that it had come from the athenian state for this purpose. . thus they remained in euboea and fought a sea-battle; and it came to pass as follows:�when the barbarians had arrived at aphetai about the beginning of the afternoon, having been informed even before they came that a few ships of the hellenes were stationed about artemision and now seeing them for themselves, they were eager to attack them, to see if they could capture them. now they did not think it good yet to sail against them directly for this reason,�for fear namely that the hellenes, when they saw them sailing against them, should set forth to take flight and darkness should come upon them in their flight; and so they were likely (thought the persians) to get away; whereas it was right, according to their calculation, that not even the fire-bearer should escape and save his life. . with a view to this then they contrived as follows:�of the whole number of their ships they parted off two hundred and sent them round to sail by caphereus and round geriastos to the euripos, going outside skiathos so that they might not be sighted by the enemy as they sailed round euboea: and their purpose was that with these coming up by that way, and blocking the enemies' retreat, and themselves advancing against them directly, they might surround them on all sides. having formed this plan they proceeded to send off the ships which were appointed for this, and they themselves had no design of attacking the hellenes on that day nor until the signal agreed upon should be displayed to them by those who were sailing round, to show that they had arrived. these ships, i say, they were sending round, and meanwhile they were numbering the rest at aphetai. . during this time, while these were numbering their ships, it happened thus:�there was in that camp a man of skione named skyllias, as a diver the best of all the men of that time, who also in the shipwreck which took place by pelion had saved for the persians many of their goods and many of them also he had acquired for himself: this skyllias it appears had had an intention even before this of deserting to the side of the hellenes, but it had not been possible for him to do so then. in what manner after this attempt he did actually come to the hellenes, i am not able to say with certainty, but i marvel if the tale is true which is reported; for it is said that he dived into the sea at aphetai and did not come up till he reached artemision, having traversed here somewhere about eighty furlongs through the sea. now there are told about this man several other tales which seem likely to be false, but some also which are true: about this matter however let it be stated as my opinion that he came to artemision in a boat. then when he had come, he forthwith informed the commanders about the shipwreck, how it had come to pass, and of the ships which had been sent away to go round euboea. . hearing this the hellenes considered the matter with one another; and after many things had been spoken, the prevailing opinion was that they should remain there that day and encamp on shore, and then, when midnight was past, they should set forth and go to meet those ships which were sailing round. after this however, as no one sailed out to attack them, they waited for the coming of the late hours of the afternoon and sailed out themselves to attack the barbarians, desiring to make a trial both of their manner of fighting and of the trick of breaking their line. . and seeing them sailing thus against them with few ships, not only the others in the army of xerxes but also their commanders judged them to be moved by mere madness, and they themselves also put out their ships to sea, supposing that they would easily capture them: and their expectation was reasonable enough, since they saw that the ships of the hellenes were few, while theirs were many times as numerous and sailed better. setting their mind then on this, they came round and enclosed them in the middle. then so many of the ionians as were kindly disposed to the hellenes and were serving in the expedition against their will, counted it a matter of great grief to themselves when they saw them being surrounded and felt assured that not one of them would return home, so feeble did they think the power of the hellenes to be; while those to whom that which was happening was a source of pleasure, were vying with one another, each one endeavouring to be the first to take an athenian ship and receive gifts from the king: for in their camps there was more report of the athenians than of any others. . the hellenes meanwhile, when the signal was given, first set themselves with prows facing the barbarians and drew the sterns of their ships together in the middle; and when the signal was given a second time, although shut off in a small space and prow against prow, they set to work vigorously; and they captured thirty ships of the barbarians and also philaon the son of chersis, the brother of gorgos kind of the salaminians, who was a man of great repute in the army. now the first of the hellenes who captured a ship of the enemy was an athenian, lycomedes the son of aischraios, and he received the prize for valour. so these, as they were contending in this sea-fight with doubtful result, were parted from one another by the coming on of night. the hellenes accordingly sailed away to artemision and the barbarians to aphetai, the contest having been widely different from their expectation. in this sea-fight antidoros of lemnos alone of the hellenes who were with the king deserted to the side of the hellenes, and the athenians on account of this deed gave him a piece of land in salamis. . when the darkness had come on, although the season was the middle of summer, yet there came on very abundant rain, which lasted through the whole of the night, with crashing thunder from mount pelion; and the dead bodies and pieces of wreck were cast up at aphetai and became entangled round the prows of the ships and struck against the blades of the oars: and the men of the army who were there, hearing these things became afraid, expecting that they would certainly perish, to such troubles had they come; for before they had had even breathing space after the shipwreck and the storm which had arisen off mount pelion, there had come upon them a hard sea-fight, and after the sea-fight a violent storm of rain and strong streams rushing to the sea and crashing thunder. . these then had such a night as i have said; and meanwhile those of them who had been appointed to sail round euboea experienced the very same night, but against them it raged much more fiercely, inasmuch as it fell upon them while they were making their course in the open sea. and the end of it proved distressful to them; for when the storm and the rain together came upon them as they sailed, being then off the "hollows" of euboea, they were borne by the wind not knowing by what way they were carried, and were cast away upon the rocks. and all this was being brought about by god in order that the persian force might be made more equal to that of the hellenes and might not be by very much the larger. . these then, i say, were perishing about the hollows of euboea, and meanwhile the barbarians at aphetai, when day had dawned upon them, of which they were glad, were keeping their ships quiet, and were satisfied in their evil plight to remain still for the present time; but to the hellenes there came as a reinforcement three-and-fifty athenian ships. the coming of these gave them more courage, and at the same time they were encouraged also by a report that those of the barbarians who had been sailing round euboea had all been destroyed by the storm that had taken place. they waited then for the same time of day as before, and then they sailed and fell upon some kilikian ships; and having destroyed these, they sailed away when the darkness came on, and returned to artemision. . on the third day the commanders of the barbarians, being exceedingly indignant that so small a number of ships should thus do them damage, and fearing what xerxes might do, did not wait this time for the hellenes to begin the fight, but passed the word of command and put out their ships to sea about the middle of the day. now it so happened that these battles at sea and the battles on land at thermopylai took place on the same days; and for those who fought by sea the whole aim of the fighting was concerned with the channel of euripos, just as the aim of leonidas and of his band was to guard the pass: the hellenes accordingly exhorted one another not to let the barbarians go by into hellas; while these cheered one another on to destroy the fleet of the hellenes and to get possession of the straits. . now while the forces of xerxes were sailing in order towards them, the hellenes kept quiet at artemision; and the barbarians, having made a crescent of their ships that they might enclose them, were endeavouring to surround them. then the hellenes put out to sea and engaged with them; and in this battle the two sides were nearly equal to one another; for the fleet of xerxes by reason of its great size and numbers suffered damage from itself, since the ships were thrown into confusion and ran into one another: nevertheless it stood out and did not give way, for they disdained to be turned to flight by so few ships. many ships therefore of the hellenes were destroyed and many men perished, but many more ships and men of the barbarians. thus contending they parted and went each to their own place. . in this sea-fight the egyptians did best of the men who fought for xerxes; and these, besides other great deeds which they displayed, captured five ships of the hellenes together with their crews: while of the hellenes those who did best on this day were the athenians, and of the athenians cleinias the son of alkibiades, who was serving with two hundred man and a ship of his own, furnishing the expense at his own proper cost. . having parted, both sides gladly hastened to their moorings; and after they had separated and got away out of the sea-fight, although the hellenes had possession of the bodies of the dead and of the wrecks of the ships, yet having suffered severely (and especially the athenians, of whose ships half had been disabled), they were deliberating now about retreating to the inner parts of hellas. . themistocles however had conceived that if there should be detached from the force of the barbarians the ionian and carian nations, they would be able to overcome the rest; and when the people of euboea were driving their flocks down to that sea, he assembled the generals and said to them that he thought he had a device by which he hoped to cause the best of the king's allies to leave him. this matter he revealed to that extent only; and with regard to their present circumstances, he said that they must do as follows:�every one must slaughter of the flocks of the euboeans as many as he wanted, for it was better that their army should have them than the enemy; moreover he advised that each one should command his own men to kindle a fire: and as for the time of their departure he would see to it in such wise that they should come safe to hellas. this they were content to do, and forthwith when they had kindled a fire they turned their attention to the flocks. . for in fact the euboeans, neglecting the oracle of bakis as if it had no meaning at all, had neither carried away anything from their land nor laid in any store of provisions with a view to war coming upon them, and by their conduct moreover they had brought trouble upon themselves. for the oracle uttered by bakis about these matters runs as follows: "mark, when a man, a barbarian, shall yoke the sea with papyrus, then do thou plan to remove the loud-bleating goats from euboea." in the evils which at this time were either upon them or soon to be expected they might feel not a little sorry that they had paid no attention to these lines. . while these were thus engaged, there came to them the scout from trachis: for there was at artemision a scout named polyas, by birth of antikyra, to whom it had been appointed, if the fleet should be disabled, to signify this to those at thermopylai, and he had a vessel equipped and ready for this purpose; and similarly there was with leonidas abronichos son of lysicles, an athenian, ready to carry news to those at artemision with a thirty-oared galley, if any disaster should happen to the land-army. this abronichos then had arrived, and he proceeded to signify to them that which had come to pass about leonidas and his army; and then when they were informed of it no longer put off their retreat, but set forth in the order in which they were severally posted, the corinthians first and the athenians last. . themistocles however selected those ships of the athenians which sailed best, and went round to the springs of drinking-water, cutting inscriptions on the stones there, which the ionians read when they came to artemision on the following day. these inscriptions ran thus: "ionians, ye act not rightly in making expedition against the fathers of your race and endeavouring to enslave hellas. best of all were it that ye should come and be on our side; but if that may not be done by you, stand aside even now from the combat against us and ask the carians to do the same as ye. if however neither of these two things is possible to be done, and ye are bound down by too strong compulsion to be able to make revolt, then in the action, when we engage battle, be purposely slack, remember that ye are descended from us and that our quarrel with the barbarian took its rise at the first from you." themistocles wrote thus, having, as i suppose, two things together in his mind, namely that either the inscriptions might elude the notice of the king and cause the ionians to change and come over to the side on which he was, or that having been reported and denounced to xerxes they might cause the ionians to be distrusted by him, and so he might keep them apart from the sea-fights. . themistocles then had set these inscriptions: and to the barbarians there came immediately after these things a man of histaia in a boat bringing word of the retreat of the hellenes from artemision. they however, not believing it, kept the messenger under guard and sent swift-sailing ships to look on before. then these having reported the facts, at last as daylight was spreading over the sky, the whole armament sailed in a body to artemision; and having stayed at this place till mid-day, after this they sailed to histaia, and there arrived they took possession of the city of histaia and overran all the villages which lie along the coast in the region of ellopia, which is the land of histaia. . while they were there, xerxes, after he had made his dispositions with regard to the bodies of the dead, sent a herald to the fleet: and the dispositions which he made beforehand were as follows:�for all those of his army who were lying dead at thermopylai, (and there were as many as twenty thousand in all), with the exception of about a thousand whom he left, he dug trenches and buried them, laying over them leaves and heaping earth upon them, that they might not be seen by the men of the fleet. then when the herald had gone over to histaia, he gathered an assembly of the whole force and spoke these words: "allies, king xerxes grants permission to any one of you who desires it, to leave his post and to come and see how he fights against those most senseless men who looked to overcome the power of the king." . when the herald had proclaimed this, then boats were of all things most in request, so many were they who desired to see this sight; and when they had passed over they went through the dead bodies and looked at them: and every one supposed that those who were lying there were all lacedemonians or thespians, though the helots also were among those that they saw: however, they who had passed over did not fail to perceive that xerxes had done that which i mentioned about the bodies of his own dead; for in truth it was a thing to cause laughter even: on the one side there were seen a thousand dead bodies lying, while the others lay all gathered together in the same place, four thousand of them. during this day then they busied themselves with looking, and on the day after this they sailed back to the ships at histaia, while xerxes and his army set forth upon their march. . there had come also to them a few deserters from arcadia, men in want of livelihood and desiring to be employed. these the persians brought into the king's presence and inquired about the hellenes, what they were doing; and one man it was who asked them this for all the rest. they told them that the hellenes were keeping the olympic festival and were looking on at a contest of athletics and horsemanship. he then inquired again, what was the prize proposed to them, for the sake of which they contended; and they told them of the wreath of olive which is given. then tigranes the son of artabanos uttered a thought which was most noble, though thereby he incurred from the king the reproach of cowardice: for hearing that the prize was a wreath and not money, he could not endure to keep silence, but in the presence of all he spoke these words: "ah! mardonios, what kind of men are these against whom thou hast brought us to fight, who make their contest not for money but for honour!" thus was it spoken by this man. . in the meantime, so soon as the disaster at thermopylai had come about, the thessalians sent a herald forthwith to the phokians, against whom they had a grudge always, but especially because of the latest disaster which they had suffered: for when both the thessalians themselves and their allies had invaded the phokian land not many years before this expedition of the king, they had been defeated by the phokians and handled by them roughly. for the phokians had been shut up in mount parnassos having with them a soothsayer, tellias the eleian; and this tellias contrived for them a device of the following kind:�he took six hundred men, the best of the phokians, and whitened them over with chalk, both themselves and their armour, and then he attacked the thessalians by night, telling the phokians beforehand to slay every man whom they should see not coloured over with white. so not only the sentinels of the thessalians, who saw these first, were terrified by them, supposing it to be something portentous and other than it was, but also after the sentinels the main body of their army; so that the phokians remained in possession of four thousand bodies of slain men and shields; of which last they dedicated half at abai and half at delphi; and from the tithe of booty got by this battle were made the large statues which are contending for the tripod in front of the temple at delphi, and others similar to these are dedicated as an offering at abai. . thus had the phokians done to the thessalian footmen, when they were besieged by them; and they had done irreparable hurt to their cavalry also, when this had invaded their land: for in the pass which is by hyampolis they had dug a great trench and laid down in it empty wine-jars; and then having carried earth and laid it on the top and made it like the rest of the ground, they waited for the thessalians to invade their land. these supposing that they would make short work with the phokians, riding in full course fell upon the wine-jars; and there the legs of their horses were utterly crippled. . bearing then a grudge for both of these things, the thessalians sent a herald and addressed them thus: "phokians, we advise you to be more disposed now to change your minds and to admit that ye are not on a level with us: for in former times among the hellenes, so long as it pleased us to be on that side, we always had the preference over you, and now we have such great power with the barbarian that it rests with us to cause you to be deprived of your land and to be sold into slavery also. we however, though we have all the power in our hands, do not bear malice, but let there be paid to us fifty talents of silver in return for this, and we will engage to avert the dangers which threaten to come upon your land." . thus the thessalians proposed to them; for the phokians alone of all the people in those parts were not taking the side of the medes, and this for no other reason, as i conjecture, but only because of their enmity with the thessalians; and if the thessalians had supported the cause of the hellenes, i am of opinion that the phokians would have been on the side of the medes. when the thessalians proposed this, they said that they would not give the money, and that it was open to them to take the median side just as much as the thessalians, if they desired it for other reasons; but they would not with their own will be traitors to hellas. . when these words were reported, then the thessalians, moved with anger against the phokians, became guides to the barbarian to show him the way: and from the land of trachis they entered doris; for a narrow strip of the dorian territory extends this way, about thirty furlongs in breadth, lying between malis and phokis, the region which was in ancient time called dryopis; this land is the mother-country of the dorians in peloponnese. now the barbarians did not lay waste this land of doris when they entered it, for the people of it were taking the side of the medes, and also the thessalians did not desire it. . when however from doris they entered phokis, they did not indeed capture the phokians themselves; for some of them had gone up to the heights of parnassos,�and that summit of parnassos is very convenient to receive a large number, which lies by itself near the city of neon, the name of it being tithorea,�to this, i say, some of them had carried up their goods and gone up themselves; but most of them had conveyed their goods out to the ozolian locrians, to the city of amphissa, which is situated above the crissaian plain. the barbarians however overran the whole land of phokis, for so the thessalians led their army, and all that they came to as they marched they burned or cut down, and delivered to the flames both the cities and the temples: , for they laid everything waste, proceeding this way by the river kephisos, and they destroyed the city of drymos by fire, and also the following, namely charadra, erochos, tethronion, amphikaia, neon, pedieis, triteis, elateia, hyampolis, parapotamioi and abai, at which last-named place there was a temple of apollo, wealthy and furnished with treasuries and votive offerings in abundance; and there was then, as there is even now, the seat of an oracle there: this temple they plundered and burnt. some also of the phokians they pursued and captured upon the mountains, and some women they did to death by repeated outrage. . passing by parapotamioi the barbarians came to panopeus, and from this point onwards their army was separated and went different ways. the largest and strongest part of the army, proceeding with xerxes himself against athens, entered the land of the boeotians, coming into the territory of orchomenos. now the general body of the boeotians was taking the side of the medes, and their cities were being kept by macedonians appointed for each, who had been sent by alexander; and they were keeping them this aim, namely in order to make it plain to xerxes that the boeotians were disposed to be on the side of the medes. . these, i say, of the barbarians took their way in this direction; but others of them with guides had set forth to go to the temple at delphi, keeping parnassos on their right hand: and all the parts of phokis over which these marched they ravaged; for they set fire to the towns of panopeus and daulis and aiolis. and for this reason they marched in that direction, parted off from the rest of the army, namely in order that they might plunder the temple at delphi and deliver over the treasures there to king xerxes: and xerxes was well acquainted with all that there was in it of any account, better, i am told, than with the things which he had left in his own house at home, seeing that many constantly reported of them, and especially of the votive offerings of croesus the son of alyattes. . meanwhile the delphians, having been informed of this, had been brought to extreme fear; and being in great terror they consulted the oracle about the sacred things, whether they should bury them in the earth or carry them forth to another land; but the god forbade them to meddle with these, saying that he was able by himself to take care of his own. hearing this they began to take thought for themselves, and they sent their children and women over to achaia on the other side of the sea, while most of the men themselves ascended up towards the summits of parnassos and carried their property to the corykian cave, while others departed for refuge to amphissa of the locrians. in short the delphians had all left the town excepting sixty men and the prophet of the oracle. . when the barbarians had come near and could see the temple, then the prophet, whose name was akeratos, saw before the cell arms lying laid out, having been brought forth out of the sanctuary, which were sacred and on which it was not permitted to any man to lay hands. he then was going to announce the portent to those of the delphians who were still there, but when the barbarians pressing onwards came opposite the temple of athene pronaia, there happened to them in addition portents yet greater than that which had come to pass before: for though that too was a marvel, that arms of war should appear of themselves laid forth outside the cell, yet this, which happened straightway after that, is worthy of marvel even beyond all other prodigies. when the barbarians in their approach were opposite the temple of athene pronaia, at this point of time from the heaven there fell thunderbolts upon them, and from parnassos two crags were broken away and rushed down upon them with a great crashing noise falling upon many of them, while from the temple of pronaia there was heard a shout, and a battle-cry was raised. . all these things having come together, there fell fear upon the barbarians; and the delphians having perceived that they were flying, came down after them and slew a great number of them; and those who survived fled straight to boeotia. these who returned of the barbarians reported, as i am informed, that in addition to this which we have said they saw also other miraculous things; for two men (they said) in full armour and of stature more than human followed them slaying and pursuing. . these two the delphians say were the native heroes phylacos and autonoös, whose sacred enclosures are about the temple, that of phylacos being close by the side of the road above the temple of pronaia and that of autonoös near castalia under the peak called hyampeia. moreover the rocks which fell from parnassos were still preserved even to my time, lying in the sacred enclosure of athene pronaia, into which they fell when they rushed through the ranks of the barbarians. such departure had these men from the temple. . meanwhile the fleet of the hellenes after leaving artemision put in to land at salamis at the request of the athenians: and for this reason the athenians requested them to put in to salamis, namely in order that they might remove out of attica to a place of safety their children and their wives, and also deliberate what they would have to do; for in their present case they meant to take counsel afresh, because they had been deceived in their expectation. for they had thought to find the peloponnesians in full force waiting for the barbarians in boeotia; they found however nothing of this, but they were informed on the contrary that the peloponnesians were fortifying the isthmus with a wall, valuing above all things the safety of the peloponnese and keeping this in guard; and that they were disposed to let all else go. being informed of this, the athenians therefore made request of them to put in to salamis. . the others then put in their ships to land at salamis, but the athenians went over to their own land; and after their coming they made a proclamation that every one of the athenians should endeavour to save his children and household as best he could. so the greater number sent them to troizen, but others to egina, and others to salamis, and they were urgent to put these out of danger, both because they desired to obey the oracle and also especially for another reason, which was this:�the athenians say that a great serpent lives in the temple and guards the acropolis; and they not only say this, but also they set forth for it monthly offerings, as if it were really there; and the offering consists of a honey-cake. this honey-cake, which before used always to be consumed, was at this time left untouched. when the priestess had signified this, the athenians left the city much more and with greater eagerness than before, seeing that the goddess also had (as they supposed) left the acropolis. then when all their belongings had been removed out of danger, they sailed to the encampment of the fleet. . when those who came from artemision had put their ships in to land at salamis, the remainder of the naval force of the hellenes, being informed of this, came over gradually to join them from troizen: for they had been ordered beforehand to assemble at pogon, which is the harbour of the troizenians. there were assembled accordingly now many more ships than those which were in the sea-fight at artemision, and from more cities. over the whole was set as admiral the same man as at artemision, namely eurybiades the son of eurycleides, a spartan but not of the royal house; the athenians however supplied by far the greatest number of ships and those which sailed the best. . the following were those who joined the muster:�from peloponnese the lacedemonians furnishing sixteen ships, the corinthians furnishing the same complement as at artemision, the sikyonians furnishing fifteen ships, the epidaurians ten, the troizenians five, the men of hermion three, these all, except the hermionians, being of doric and makednian race and having made their last migration from erineos and pindos and the land of dryopis; but the people of hermion are dryopians, driven out by heracles and the malians from the land which is now called doris. . these were the peloponnesians who joined the fleet, and those of the mainland outside the peloponnese were as follows:�the athenians, furnishing a number larger than all the rest, namely one hundred and eighty ships, and serving alone, since the plataians did not take part with the athenians in the sea-fight at salamis, because when the hellenes were departing from artemision and come near chalkis, the plataians disembarked on the opposite shore of boeotia and proceeded to the removal of their households. so being engaged in saving these, they had been left behind. as for the athenians, in the time when the pelasgians occupied that which is now called hellas, they were pelasgians, being named cranaoi, and in the time of king kecrops they came to be called kecropidai; then when erechtheus had succeeded to his power, they had their name changed to athenians; and after ion the son of xuthos became commander of the athenians, they got the name from him of ionians. . the megarians furnished the same complement as at artermision; the amprakiots came to the assistance of the rest with seven ships, and the leucadians with three, these being by race dorians from corinth. . of the islanders the eginetans furnished thirty; these had also other ships manned, but with them they were guarding their own land, while with the thirty which sailed best they joined in the sea-fight at salamis. now the eginetans are dorians from epidauros, and their island had formerly the name of oinone. after the eginetans came the chalkidians with the twenty ships which were at artemision, and the eretrians with their seven: these are ionians. next the keïans, furnishing the same as before and being by race ionians from athens. the naxians furnished four ships, they having been sent out by the citizens of their state to join the persians, like the other islanders; but neglecting these commands they had come to the hellenes, urged thereto by democritos, a man of repute among the citizens and at that time commander of a trireme. now the naxians are ionians coming originally from athens. the styrians furnished the same ships as at artemision, and the men of kythnos one ship and one fifty-oared galley, these both being dryopians. also the seriphians, the siphnians and the melians served with the rest; for they alone of the islanders had not given earth and water to the barbarian. . these all who have been named dwelt inside the land of the thesprotians and the river acheron; for the thesprotians border upon the land of the amprakiots and leucadians, and these were they who came from the greatest distance to serve: but of those who dwell outside these limits the men of croton were the only people who came to the assistance of hellas in her danger; and these sent one ship, of whom the commander was phaÿlos, a man who had three times won victories at the pythian games. now the men of croton are by descent achaians. . all the rest who served in the fleet furnished triremes, but the melians, siphnian and seriphians fifty-oared galleys: the melians, who are by descent from lacedemon, furnished two, the siphnians and seriphians, who are ionians from athens, each one. and the whole number of the ships, apart from the fifty-oared galleys, was three hundred and seventy-eight. . when the commanders had assembled at salamis from the states which have been mentioned, they began to deliberate, eurybiades having proposed that any one who desired it should declare his opinion as to where he thought it most convenient to fight a sea-battle in those regions of which they had command; for attica had already been let go, and he was now proposing the question about the other regions. and the opinions of the speakers for the most part agreed that they should sail to the isthmus and there fight a sea-battle in defence of the peloponnese, arguing that if they should be defeated in the sea-battle, supposing them to be at salamis they would be blockaded in an island, where no help would come to them, but at the isthmus they would be able to land where their own men were. . while the commanders from the peloponnese argued thus, an athenian had come in reporting that the barbarians were arrived in attica and that all the land was being laid waste with fire. for the army which directed its march through boeotia in company with xerxes, after it had burnt the city of the thespians (the inhabitants having left it and gone to the peloponnese) and that of the plataians likewise, had now come to athens and was laying waste everything in those regions. now he had burnt thespiai and plataia because he was informed by the thebans that these were not taking the side of the medes. . so in three months from the crossing of the hellespont, whence the barbarians began their march, after having stayed there one month while they crossed over into europe, they had reached attica, in the year when calliades was archon of the athenians. and they took the lower city, which was deserted, and then they found that there were still a few athenians left in the temple, either stewards of the temple or needy persons, who had barred the entrance to the acropolis with doors and with a palisade of timber and endeavoured to defend themselves against the attacks of the enemy, being men who had not gone out to salamis partly because of their poverty, and also because they thought that they alone had discovered the meaning of the oracle which the pythian prophetess had uttered to them, namely that the "bulwark of wood" should be impregnable, and supposed that this was in fact the safe refuge according to the oracle, and not the ships. . so the persians taking their post upon the rising ground opposite the acropolis, which the athenians call the hill of ares, proceeded to besiege them in this fashion, that is they put tow round about their arrows and lighted it, and then shot them against the palisade. the athenians who were besieged continued to defend themselves nevertheless, although they had come to the extremity of distress and their palisade had played them false; nor would they accept proposals for surrender, when the sons of peisistratos brought them forward: but endeavouring to defend themselves they contrived several contrivances against the enemy, and among the rest they rolled down large stones when the barbarians approached the gates; so that for a long time xerxes was in a difficulty, not being able to capture them. . in time however there appeared for the barbarians a way of approach after their difficulties, since by the oracle it was destined that all of attica which is on the mainland should come to be under the persians. thus then it happened that on the front side of the acropolis behind the gates and the way up to the entrance, in a place where no one was keeping guard, nor would one have supposed that any man could ascend by this way, here men ascended by the temple of aglauros the daughter of kecrops, although indeed the place is precipitous: and when the athenians saw that they had ascended up to the acropolis, some of them threw themselves down from the wall and perished, while others took refuge in the sanctuary of the temple. then those of the persians who had ascended went first to the gates, and after opening these they proceeded to kill the suppliants; and when all had been slain by them, they plundered the temple and set fire to the whole of the acropolis. . then xerxes, having fully taken possession of athens, sent to susa a mounted messenger to report to artabanos the good success which they had. and on the next day after sending the herald he called together the exiles of the athenians who were accompanying him, and bade them go up to the acropolis and sacrifice the victims after their own manner; whether it was that he had seen some vision of a dream which caused him to give this command, or whether perchance he had a scruple in his mind because he had set fire to the temple. the athenian exiles did accordingly that which was commanded them: , and the reason why i made mention of this i will here declare:�there is in this acropolis a temple of erechtheus, who is said to have been born of the earth, and in this there is an olive-tree and a sea, which (according to the story told by the athenians) poseidon and athene, when they contended for the land, set as witnesses of themselves. now it happened to this olive-tree to be set on fire with the rest of the temple by the barbarians; and on the next day after the conflagration those of the athenians who were commanded by the king to offer sacrifice, saw when they had gone up to the temple that a shoot had run up from the stock of the tree about a cubit in length. these then made report of this. . the hellenes meanwhile at salamis, when it was announced to them how it had been as regards the acropolis of the athenians, were disturbed so greatly that some of the commanders did not even wait for the question to be decided which had been proposed, but began to go hastily to their ships and to put up their sails, meaning to make off with speed; and by those of them who remained behind it was finally decided to fight at sea in defence of the isthmus. so night came on, and they having been dismissed from the council were going to their ships: , and when themistocles had come to his ship, mnesiphilos an athenian asked him what they had resolved; and being informed by him that it had been determined to take out the ships to the isthmus and fight a battle by sea in defence of the peloponnese, he said: "then, if they set sail with the ships from salamis, thou wilt not fight any more sea-battles at all for the fatherland, for they will all take their way to their several cities and neither eurybiades nor any other man will be able to detain them or to prevent the fleet from being dispersed: and hellas will perish by reason of evil counsels. but if there by any means, go thou and try to unsettle that which has been resolved, if perchance thou mayest persuade eurybiades to change his plans, so as to stay here." . this advice very much commended itself to themistocles; and without making any answer he went to the ship of eurybiades. having come thither he said that he desired to communicate to him a matter which concerned the common good; and eurybiades bade him come into his ship and speak, if he desired to say anything. then themistocles sitting down beside him repeated to him all those things which he had heard mnesiphilos say, making as if they were his own thoughts, and adding to them many others; until at last by urgent request he persuaded him to come out of his ship and gather the commanders to the council. . so when they were gathered together, before eurybiades proposed the discussion of the things for which he had assembled the commanders, themistocles spoke with much vehemence being very eager to gain his end; and as he was speaking, the corinthian commander, adeimantos the son of okytos, said: "themistocles, at the games those who stand forth for the contest before the due time are beaten with rods." he justifying himself said: "yes, but those who remain behind are not crowned." . at that time he made answer mildly to the corinthian; and to eurybiades he said not now any of those things which he had said before, to the effect that if they should set sail from salamis they would disperse in different directions; for it was not seemly for him to bring charges against the allies in their presence: but he held to another way of reasoning, saying: "now it is in thy power to save hellas, if thou wilt follow my advice, which is to stay here and here to fight a sea-battle, and if thou wilt not follow the advice of those among these men who bid thee remove the ships to the isthmus. for hear both ways, and then set them in comparison. if thou engage battle at the isthmus, thou wilt fight in an open sea, into which it is by no means convenient for us that we go to fight, seeing that we have ships which are heavier and fewer in number than those of the enemy. then secondly thou wilt give up to destruction salamis and megara and egina, even if we have success in all else; for with their fleet will come also the land-army, and thus thou wilt thyself lead them to the peloponnese and wilt risk the safety of all hellas. if however thou shalt do as i say, thou wilt find therein all the advantages which i shall tell thee of:�in the first place by engaging in a narrow place with few ships against many, if the fighting has that issue which it is reasonable to expect, we shall have very much the better; for to fight a sea-fight in a narrow space is for our advantage, but to fight in a wide open space is for theirs. then again salamis will be preserved, whither our children and our wives have been removed for safety; and moreover there is this also secured thereby, to which ye are most of all attached, namely that by remaining here thou wilt fight in defence of the peloponnese as much as if the fight were at the isthmus; and thou wilt not lead the enemy to peloponnese, if thou art wise. then if that which i expect come to pass and we gain a victory with our ships, the barbarians will not come to you at the isthmus nor will they advance further than attica, but they will retire in disorder; and we shall be the gainers by the preservation of megara and egina and salamis, at which place too an oracle tells us that we shall get the victory over our enemies. now when men take counsel reasonably for themselves, reasonable issues are wont as a rule to come, but if they do not take counsel reasonably, then god is not wont generally to attach himself to the judgment of men." . when themistocles thus spoke, the corinthian adeimantos inveighed against him for the second time, bidding him to be silent because he had no native land, and urging eurybiades not to put to the vote the proposal of one who was a citizen of no city; for he said that themistocles might bring opinions before the council if he could show a city belonging to him, but otherwise not. this objection he made against him because athens had been taken and was held by the enemy. then themistocles said many evil things of him and of the corinthians both, and declared also that he himself and his countrymen had in truth a city and a land larger than that of the corinthians, so long as they had two hundred ships fully manned; for none of the hellenes would be able to repel the athenians if they came to fight against them. . signifying this he turned then to eurybiades and spoke yet more urgently: "if thou wilt remain here, and remaining here wilt show thyself a good man, well; but if not, thou wilt bring about the overthrow of hellas, for upon the ships depends all our power in the war. nay, but do as i advise. if, however, thou shalt not do so, we shall forthwith take up our households and voyage to siris in italy, which is ours already of old and the oracles say that it is destined to be colonised by us; and ye, when ye are left alone and deprived of allies such as we are, will remember my words." . when themistocles thus spoke, eurybiades was persuaded to change his mind; and, as i think, he changed his mind chiefly from fear lest the athenians should depart and leave them, if he should take the ships to the isthmus; for if the athenians left them and departed, the rest would be no longer able to fight with the enemy. he chose then this counsel, to stay in that place and decide matters there by a sea-fight. . thus those at salamis, after having skirmished with one another in speech, were making preparations for a sea-fight there, since eurybiades had so determined: and as day was coming on, at the same time when the sun rose there was an earthquake felt both on the land and on the sea: and they determined to pray to the gods and to call upon the sons of aiacos to be their helpers. and as they had determined, so also they did; for when they had prayed to all the gods, they called ajax and telamon to their help from salamis, where the fleet was, and sent a ship to egina to bring aiacos himself and the rest of the sons of aiacos. . moreover dicaios the son of theokydes, an athenian, who was an exile and had become of great repute among the medes at this time, declared that when the attic land was being ravaged by the land-army of xerxes, having been deserted by the athenians, he happened then to be in company with demaratos the lacedemonian in the thriasian plain; and he saw a cloud of dust going up from eleusis, as if made by a company of about thirty thousand men, and they wondered at the cloud of dust, by what men it was caused. then forthwith they heard a sound of voices, and dicaios perceived that the sound was the mystic cry iacchos; but demaratos, having no knowledge of the sacred rites which are done at eleusis, asked him what this was that uttered the sound, and he said: "demaratos, it cannot be but that some great destruction is about to come to the army of the king: for as to this, it is very manifest, seeing that attica is deserted, that this which utters the sound is of the gods, and that it is going from eleusis to help the athenians and their allies: if then it shall come down in the peloponnese, there is danger for the king himself and for the army which is upon the mainland, but if it shall direct its course towards the ships which are at salamis, the king will be in danger of losing his fleet. this feast the athenians celebrate every year to the mother and the daughter; and he that desires it, both of them and of the other hellenes, is initiated in the mysteries; and the sound of voices which thou hearest is the cry iacchos which they utter at this feast." to this demaratos said: "keep silence and tell not this tale to any other man; for if these words of thine be reported to the king, thou wilt surely lose thy head, and neither i nor any other man upon earth will be able to save thee: but keep thou quiet, and about this expedition the gods will provide." he then thus advised, and after the cloud of dust and the sound of voices there came a mist which was borne aloft and carried towards salamis to the camp of the hellenes: and thus they learnt (said he) that the fleet of xerxes was destined to be destroyed. such was the report made by dicaios the son of theodykes, appealing to demaratos and others also as witnesses. . meanwhile those who were appointed to serve in the fleet of xerxes, having gazed in trachis upon the disaster of the lacedemonians and having passed over from thence to histiaia, after staying three days sailed through euripos, and in other three days they had reached phaleron. and, as i suppose, they made their attack upon athens not fewer in number both by land and sea than when they had arrived at sepias and at thermopylai: for against those of them who perished by reason of the storm and those who were slain at thermopylai and in the sea-fights at artemision, i will set those who at that time were not yet accompanying the king, the malians, dorians, locrians, and boeotians (who accompanied him in a body, except the thespians and plataians), and moreover those of carystos, andros, and tenos, with all the other islanders except the five cities of which i mentioned the names before; for the more the persian advanced towards the centre of hellas, the more nations accompanied him. . so then, when all these had come to athens except the parians (now the parians had remained behind at kythnos waiting to see how the war would turn out),�when all the rest, i say, had come to phaleron, then xerxes himself came down to the ships desiring to visit them and to learn the opinions of those who sailed in them: and when he had come and was set in a conspicuous place, then those who were despots of their own nations or commanders of divisions being sent for came before him from their ships, and took their seats as the king had assigned rank to each one, first the king of sidon, then he of tyre, and after them the rest: and when they were seated in due order, xerxes sent mardonios and inquired, making trial of each one, whether he should fight a battle by sea. . so when mardonios went round asking them, beginning with the king of sidon, the others gave their opinions all to the same effect, advising him to fight a battle by sea, but artemisia spoke these words:�(a) "tell the king i pray thee, mardonios, that i, who have proved myself not to be the worst in the sea-fights which have been fought near euboea, and have displayed deeds not inferior to those of others, speak to him thus: master, it is right that i set forth the opinion which i really have, and say that which i happen to think best for thy cause: and this i say,�spare thy ships and do not make a sea-fight; for the men are as much stronger than thy men by sea, as men are stronger than women. and why must thou needs run the risk of sea-battles? hast thou not athens in thy possession, for the sake of which thou didst set forth on thy march, and also the rest of hellas? and no man stands in thy way to resist, but those who did stand against thee came off as it was fitting that they should. (b) now the manner in which i think the affairs of thy adversaries will have their issue, i will declare. if thou do not hasten to make a sea-fight, but keep thy ships here by the land, either remaining here thyself or even advancing on to the peloponnese, that which thou hast come to do, o master, will easily be effected; for the hellenes are not able to hold out against thee for any long time, but thou wilt soon disperse them and they will take flight to their several cities: since neither have they provisions with them in this island, as i am informed, nor is it probable that if thou shalt march thy land-army against the peloponnese, they who have come from thence will remain still; for these will have no care to fight a battle in defence of athens. (c) if however thou hasten to fight forthwith, i fear that damage done to the fleet may ruin the land-army also. moreover, o king, consider also this, that the servants of good men are apt to grow bad, but those of bad men good; and thou, who art of all men the best, hast bad servants, namely those who are reckoned as allies, egyptians and cyprians and kilikians and pamphylians, in whom there is no profit." . when she thus spoke to mardonios, those who were friendly to artemisia were grieved at her words, supposing that she would suffer some evil from the king because she urged him not to fight at sea; while those who had envy and jealousy of her, because she had been honoured above all the allies, were rejoiced at the opposition, supposing that she would now be ruined. when however the opinions were reported to xerxes, he was greatly pleased with the opinion of artemisia; and whereas even before this he thought her excellent, he commended her now yet more. nevertheless he gave orders to follow the advice of the greater number, thinking that when they fought by euboea they were purposely slack, because he was not himself present with them, whereas now he had made himself ready to look on while they fought a sea-battle. . so when they passed the word to put out to sea, they brought their ships out to salamis and quietly ranged themselves along the shore in their several positions. at that time the daylight was not sufficient for them to engage battle, for night had come on; but they made their preparations to fight on the following day. meanwhile the hellenes were possessed by fear and dismay, especially those who were from peloponnese: and these were dismayed because remaining in salamis they were to fight a battle on behalf of the land of the athenians, and being defeated they would be cut off from escape and blockaded in an island, leaving their own land unguarded. and indeed the land-army of the barbarians was marching forward during that very night towards the peloponnese. . yet every means had been taken that the barbarians might not be able to enter peloponnesus by land: for as soon as the peloponnesians heard that leonidas and his company had perished at thermopylai, they came together quickly from the cities and took post at the isthmus, and over them was set as commander cleombrotos, the son of anaxandrides and brother of leonidas. these being posted at the isthmus had destroyed the skironian way, and after this (having so determined in counsel with one another) they began to build a wall across the isthmus; and as they were many myriads and every man joined in the work, the work proceeded fast; for stones and bricks and pieces of timber and baskets full of sand were carried to it continually, and they who had thus come to help paused not at all in their work either by night or by day. . now those of the hellenes who came in full force to the isthmus to help their country were these,�the lacedemonians, the arcadians of every division, the eleians, corinthians, sikyonians, epidaurians, phliasians, troizenians and hermionians. these were they who came to the help of hellas in her danger and who had apprehension for her, while the rest of the peloponnesians showed no care: and the olympic and carneian festivals had by this time gone by. . now peloponnesus is inhabited by seven races; and of these, two are natives of the soil and are settled now in the place where they dwelt of old, namely the arcadians and the kynurians; and one race, that of the achaians, though it did not remove from the peloponnese, yet removed in former time from its own land and dwells now in that which was not its own. the remaining races, four in number, have come in from without, namely the dorians, aitolians, dryopians and lemnians. of the dorians there are many cities and of great renown; of the aitolians, elis alone; of the dryopians, hermion and asine, which latter is opposite cardamyle in the laconian land; and of the lemnians, all the paroreatai. the kynurians, who are natives of the soil, seem alone to be ionians, but they have become dorians completely because they are subject to the argives and by lapse of time, being originally citizens of orneai or the dwellers in the country round orneai. of these seven nations the remaining cities, except those which i enumerated just now, stood aside and did nothing; and if one may be allowed to speak freely, in thus standing aside they were in fact taking the side of the medes. . those at the isthmus were struggling with the labour which i have said, since now they were running a course in which their very being was at stake, and they did not look to have any brilliant success with their ships: while those who were at salamis, though informed of this work, were yet dismayed, not fearing so much for themselves as for peloponnesus. for some time then they spoke of it in private, one man standing by another, and they marvelled at the ill-counsel of eurybiades; but at last it broke out publicly. a meeting accordingly was held, and much was spoken about the same points as before, some saying that they ought to sail away to peloponnesus and run the risk in defence of that, and not stay and fight for a land which had been captured by the enemy, while the athenians, eginetans and megarians urged that they should stay there and defend themselves. . then themistocles, when his opinion was like to be defeated by the peloponnesians, secretly went forth from the assembly, and having gone out he sent a man to the encampment of the medes in a boat, charging him with that which he must say: this man's name was sikinnos, and he was a servant of themistocles and tutor to his children; and after these events themistocles entered him as a thespian citizen, when the thespians were admitting new citizens, and made him a wealthy man. he at this time came with a boat and said to the commanders of the barbarians these words: "the commander of the athenians sent me privately without the knowledge of the other hellenes (for, as it chances, he is disposed to the cause of the king, and desires rather that your side should gain the victory than that of the hellenes), to inform you that the hellenes are planning to take flight, having been struck with dismay; and now it is possible for you to execute a most noble work, if ye do not permit them to flee away: for they are not of one mind with one another and they will not stand against you in fight, but ye shall see them fighting a battle by sea with one another, those who are disposed to your side against those who are not." . he then having signified to them this, departed out of the way; and they, thinking that the message deserved credit, landed first a large number of persians in the small island of psyttaleia, which lies between salamis and the mainland; and then, as midnight came on, they put out the western wing of their fleet to sea, circling round towards salamis, and also those stationed about keos and kynosura put out their ships to sea; and they occupied all the passage with their ships as far as munychia. and for this reason they put out their ships, namely in order that the hellenes might not even be permitted to get away, but being cut off in salamis might pay the penalty for the contests at artemision: and they disembarked men of the persians on the small island called psyttaleia for this reason, namely that when the fight should take place, these might save the men of one side and destroy those of the other, since there especially it was likely that the men and the wrecks of ships would be cast up on shore, for the island lay in the way of the sea-fight which was to be. these things they did in silence, that the enemy might not have information of them. . they then were making their preparations thus in the night without having taken any sleep at all: and with regard to oracles, i am not able to make objections against them that they are not true, for i do not desire to attempt to overthrow the credit of them when they speak clearly, looking at such matters as these which here follow: "but when with ships they shall join the sacred strand of the goddess, artemis golden-sword-girded, and thee, wave-washed kynosura, urged by a maddening hope, having given rich athens to plunder, then shall justice divine quell riot, of insolence first-born, longing to overthrow all things and terribly panting for bloodhshed: brass shall encounter with brass, and ares the sea shall empurple, tinging its waves with the blood: then a day of freedom for hellas cometh from wide-seeing zeus and from victory, lady and mother." looking to such things as this, and when bakis speaks so clearly, i do not venture myself to make any objections about oracles, nor can i admit them from others. . now between the commanders that were at salamis there came to be great contention of speech and they did not yet know that the barbarians were surrounding them with their ships, but they thought that they were still in their place as they saw them disposed in the day. . then while the commanders were engaged in strife, there came over from egina aristeides the son of lysimachos, an athenian who had been ostracised by the people, a man whom i hold (according to that which i hear of his character) to have been the best and most upright of all athenians. this man came into the council and called forth themistocles, who was to him not a friend, but an enemy to the last degree; but because of the greatness of the present troubles he let those matters be forgotten and called him forth, desiring to communicate with him. now he had heard beforehand that the peloponnesians were pressing to take the ships away to the isthmus. so when themistocles came forth to him, aristeides spoke these words: "both at other times when occasion arises, and also especially at this time we ought to carry on rivalry as to which of us shall do more service to our country. and i tell thee now that it is indifferent whether the peloponnesians say many words or few about sailing away from hence; for having been myself an eye-witness i tell thee that now not even if the corinthians and eurybiades himself desire to sail out, will they be able; for we are encompassed round by the enemy. go thou in then, and signify this to them." . he made answer as follows: "thou advisest very well, and also the news which thou hast brought is good, since thou art come having witnessed with thine own eyes that which i desired might come to pass: for know that this which is being done by the medes is of my suggestion; because, when the hellenes would not come to a battle of their own will, it was necessary to bring them over to us against their will. do thou however, since thou art come bearing good news, thyself report it to them; for if i say these things, i shall be thought to speak that which i have myself invented, and i shall not persuade them, but they will think that the barbarians are not doing so. do thou thyself however come forward to speak, and declare to them how things are; and when thou hast declared this, if they are persuaded, that will be the best thing, but if this is not credible to them, it will be the same thing so far as concerns us, for they will no longer be able to take to flight, if we are encompassed on all sides, as thou sayest." . aristeides accordingly came forward and told them this, saying that he had come from egina and had with difficulty escaped without being perceived by those who were blockading them; for the whole encampment of the hellenes was encompassed by the ships of xerxes; and he counselled them to get ready to defend themselves. he then having thus spoken retired, and among them again there arose dispute, for the greater number of the commanders did not believe that which was reported to them: . and while these were doubting, there came a trireme manned by tenians, deserting from the enemy, of which the commander was panaitios the son of sosimenes, which brought them the whole truth. for this deed the tenians were inscribed at delphi on the tripod among those who had conquered the barbarians. with the ship which deserted at salamis and the lemnian ship which deserted before and came to artemision, the naval force of the hellenes was completed to the number of three hundred and eighty ships, for before this two ships were yet wanting to make up this number. . the hellenes then, since they believed that which was said by the tenians, were preparing for a sea-fight: and as the dawn appeared, they made an assembly of those who fought on board the ships and addressed them, themistocles making a speech which was eloquent beyond the rest; and the substance of it was to set forth all that is better as opposed to that which is worse, of the several things which arise in the nature and constitution of man; and having exhorted them to choose the better, and thus having wound up his speech, he bade them embark in their ships. these then proceeded to embark, and there came in meanwhile the trireme from egina which had gone away to bring the sons of aiacos. . then the hellenes put out all their ships, and while they were putting out from shore, the barbarians attacked them forthwith. now the other hellenes began backing their ships and were about to run them aground, but ameinias of pallene, an athenian, put forth with his ship and charged one of the enemy; and his ship being entangled in combat and the men not being able to get away, the others joined in the fight to assist ameinias. the athenians say that the beginning of the battle was made thus, but the eginetans say that the ship which went away to egina to bring the sons of aiacos was that which began the fight. it is also reported that an apparition of a woman was seen by them, and that having appeared she encouraged them to the fight so that the whole of the army of the hellenes heard it, first having reproached them in these words: "madmen, how far will ye yet back your ships?" . opposite the athenians had been ranged the phenicians, for these occupied the wing towards eleusis and the west, and opposite the lacedemonians were the ionians, who occupied the wing which extended to the east and to piræus. of them however a few were purposely slack in the fight according to the injunctions of themistocles, but the greater number were not so. i might mention now the names of many captains of ships who destroyed ships of the hellenes, but i will make no use of their names except in the case of theomestor, the son of androdamas and phylacos the son of histiaios, of samos both: and for this reason i make mention of these and not of the rest, because theomestor on account of this deed became despot of samos, appointed by the persians, and phylacos was recorded as a benefactor of the king and received much land as a reward. now the benefactors of the king are called in the persian tongue orosangai. . thus it was with these; but the greater number of their ships were disabled at salamis, being destroyed some by the athenians and others by the eginetans: for since the hellenes fought in order and ranged in their places, while the barbarians were no longer ranged in order nor did anything with design, it was likely that there would be some such result as in fact followed. yet on this day they surpassed themselves much more than when they fought by euboea, every one being eager and fearing xerxes, and each man thinking that the king was looking especially at him. . as regards the rest i cannot speak of them separately, or say precisely how the barbarians or the hellenes individually contended in the fight; but with regard to artemisia that which happened was this, whence she gained yet more esteem than before from the king.�when the affairs of the king had come to great confusion, at this crisis a ship of artemisia was being pursued by an athenian ship; and as she was not able to escape, for in front of her were other ships of her own side, while her ship, as it chanced, was furthest advanced towards the enemy, she resolved what she would do, and it proved also much to her advantage to have done so. while she was being pursued by the athenian ship she charged with full career against a ship of her own side manned by calyndians and in which the king of the calyndians damasithymos was embarked. now, even though it be true that she had had some strife with him before, while they were still about the hellespont, yet i am not able to say whether she did this by intention, or whether the calyndian ship happened by chance to fall in her way. having charged against it however and sunk it, she enjoyed good fortune and got for herself good in two ways; for first the captain of the athenian ship, when he saw her charge against a ship manned by barbarians, turned away and went after others, supposing that the ship of artemisia was either a hellenic ship or was deserting from the barbarians and fighting for the hellenes, ,�first, i say, it was her fortune to have this, namely to escape and not suffer destruction; and then secondly it happened that though she had done mischief, she yet gained great reputation by this thing with xerxes. for it is said that the king looking on at the fight perceived that her ship had charged the other; and one of those present said: "master, dost thou see artemisia, how well she is fighting, and how she sank even now a ship of the enemy?" he asked whether this was in truth the deed of artemisia, and they said that it was; for (they declared) they knew very well the sign of her ship: and that which was destroyed they thought surely was one of the enemy; for besides other things which happened fortunately for her, as i have said, there was this also, namely that not one of the crew of the calyndian ship survived to become her accuser. and xerxes in answer to that which was said to him is reported to have uttered these words: "my men have become women, and my women men." thus it is said that xerxes spoke. . and meanwhile in this struggle there was slain the commander ariabignes, son of dareios and brother of xerxes, and there were slain too many others of note of the persians and medes and also of the allies; and of the hellenes on their part a few; for since they knew how to swim, those whose ships were destroyed and who were not slain in hand-to-hand conflict swam over to salamis; but of the barbarians the greater number perished in the sea, not being able to swim. and when the first ships turned to flight, then it was that the largest number perished, for those who were stationed behind, while endeavouring to pass with their ships to the front in order that they also might display some deed of valour for the king to see, ran into the ships of their own side as they fled. . it happened also in the course of this confusion that some of the phenicians, whose ships had been destroyed, came to the king and accused the ionians, saying that by means of them their ships had been lost, and that they had been traitors to the cause. now it so came about that not only the commanders of the ionians did not lose their lives, but the phenicians who accused them received a reward such as i shall tell. while these men were yet speaking thus, a samothrakian ship charged against an athenian ship: and as the athenian ship was being sunk by it, an eginetan ship came up against the samothrakian vessel and ran it down. then the samothrakians, being skilful javelin-throwers, by hurling cleared off the fighting-men from the ship which had wrecked theirs and then embarked upon it and took possession of it. this event saved the ionians from punishment; for when xerxes saw that they had performed a great exploit, he turned to the phenicians (for he was exceedingly vexed and disposed to find fault with all) and bade cut off their heads, in order that they might not, after having been cowards themselves, accuse others who were better men than they. for whensoever xerxes (sitting just under the mountain opposite salamis, which is called aigaleos) saw any one of his own side display a deed of valour in the sea-fight, he inquired about him who had done it, and the scribes recorded the name of the ship's captain with that of his father and the city from whence he came. moreover also ariaramnes, a persian who was present, shared the fate of the phenicians, being their friend. they then proceeded to deal with the phenicians. . in the meantime, as the barbarians turned to flight and were sailing out towards phaleron, the eginetans waited for them in the passage and displayed memorable actions: for while the athenians in the confused tumult were disabling both those ships which resisted and those which were fleeing, the eginetans were destroying those which attempted to sail away; and whenever any escaped the athenians, they went in full course and fell among the eginetans. . then there met one another the ship of themistocles, which was pursuing a ship of the enemy, and that of polycritos the son of crios the eginetan. this last had charged against a ship of sidon, the same that had taken the eginetan vessel which was keeping watch in advance at skiathos, and in which sailed pytheas the son of ischenoös, whom the persians kept in their ship, all cut to pieces as he was, making a marvel of his valour. the sidonian ship then was captured bearing with it this man as well as the persians of whom i spoke, so that pytheas thus came safe to egina. now when polycritos looked at the athenian vessel he recognised when he saw it the sign of the admiral's ship, and shouting out he addressed themistocles with mockery about the accusation brought against the eginetans of taking the side of the medes, and reproached him. this taunt polycritos threw out against themistocles after he had charged against the ship of sidon. and meanwhile those barbarians whose ships had escaped destruction fled and came to phaleron to be under cover of the land-army. . in this sea-fight the eginetans were of all the hellenes the best reported of, and next to them the athenians; and of the individual men the eginetan polycritos and the athenians eumenes of anagyrus and ameinias of pallene, the man who had pursued after artemisia. now if he had known that artemisia was sailing in this ship, he would not have ceased until either he had taken her or had been taken himself; for orders had been given to the athenian captains, and moreover a prize was offered of ten thousand drachmas for the man who should take her alive; since they thought it intolerable that a woman should make an expedition against athens. she then, as has been said before, had made her escape; and the others also, whose ships had escaped destruction, were at phaleron. . as regards adeimantos the commander of the corinthians, the athenians say that forthwith at the beginning when the ships were engaging in the fight, being struck with panic and terror he put up his sails and fled away; and the corinthians, when they saw the admiral's ship fleeing, departed likewise: and after this, as the story goes, when they came in their flight opposite to the temple of athene skiras in the land of salamis, there fell in with them by divine guidance a light vessel, which no one was ever found to have sent, and which approached the corinthians at a time when they knew nothing of that which was happening with the fleet. and by this it is conjectured that the matter was of the deity; for when they came near to the ships, the men in the light vessel said these words: "adeimantos, thou hast turned thy ships away and hast set forth to flee, deserting the cause of the hellenes, while they are in truth gaining a victory and getting the better of their foes as much as they desired." when they said this, since adeimantos doubted of it, they spoke a second time and said that they might be taken as hostages and slain, if the hellenes should prove not to be gaining the victory. then he turned his ship back, he and the others with him, and they reached the camp when the work was finished. such is the report spread by the athenians against these: the corinthians however do not allow this to be so, but hold that they were among the first in the sea-fight; and the rest of hellas also bears witness on their side. . aristeides moreover the son of lysimachos, the athenian, of whom i made mention also shortly before this as a very good man, he in this tumult which had arisen about salamis did as follows:�taking with him a number of the hoplites of athenian race who had been ranged along the shore of the land of salamis, with them he disembarked on the island of psyttaleia; and these slew all the persians who were in this islet. . when the sea-fight had been broken off, the hellenes towed in to salamis so many of the wrecks as chanced to be still about there, and held themselves ready for another sea-fight, expecting that the king would yet make use of the ships which remained unhurt; but many of the wrecks were taken by the west wind and borne to that strand in attica which is called colias; so as to fulfil not only all that other oracle which was spoken about this sea-fight by bakis and musaios, but also especially, with reference to the wrecks cast up here, that which had been spoken in an oracle many years before these events by lysistratos, an athenian who uttered oracles, and which had not been observed by any of the hellenes: "then shall the colian women with firewood of oars roast barley." this was destined to come to pass after the king had marched away. . when xerxes perceived the disaster which had come upon him, he feared lest some one of the ionians should suggest to the hellenes, or they should themselves form the idea, to sail to the hellespont and break up the bridges; and so he might be cut off in europe and run the risk of perishing utterly: therefore he began to consider about taking flight. he desired however that his intention should not be perceived either by the hellenes or by those of his own side; therefore he attempted to construct a mole going across to salamis, and he bound together phenician merchant vessels in order that they might serve him both for a bridge and a wall, and made preparations for fighting as if he were going to have another battle by sea. seeing him do so, all the rest made sure that he had got himself ready in earnest and intended to stay and fight; but mardonios did not fail to perceive the true meaning of all these things, being by experience very well versed in his way of thinking. . while xerxes was doing thus, he sent a messenger to the persians, to announce the calamity which had come upon them. now there is nothing mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skilfully has this been invented by the persians: for they say that according to the number of days of which the entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day's journey. these neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. the first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among the hellenes, which they perform for hephaistos. this kind of running of their horses the persians call angareion. . the first message then which came to susa, announcing that xerxes had athens in his possession, so greatly rejoiced the persians who had been left behind, that they strewed all the ways with myrtle boughs and offered incense perpetually, and themselves continued in sacrifices and feasting. the second message however, which came to them after this, so greatly disturbed them that they all tore their garments and gave themselves up to crying and lamentation without stint, laying the blame upon mardonios: and this the persians did not so much because they were grieved about the ships, as because they feared for xerxes himself. . as regards the persians this went on for all the time which intervened, until the coming of xerxes himself caused them to cease: and mardonios seeing that xerxes was greatly troubled by reason of the sea-fight, and suspecting that he was meaning to take flight from athens, considered with regard to himself that he would have to suffer punishment for having persuaded the king to make an expedition against hellas, and that it was better for him to run the risk of either subduing hellas or ending his own life honourably, placing his safety in suspense for a great end, though his opinion was rather that he would subdue hellas;�he reckoned up these things, i say, and addressed his speech to the king as follows: "master, be not thou grieved, nor feel great trouble on account of this thing which has come to pass; for it is not upon a contest of timbers that all our fortunes depend, but of men and of horses: and none of these who suppose now that all has been achieved by them will attempt to disembark from the ships and stand against thee, nor will any in this mainland do so; but those who did stand against us paid the penalty. if therefore thou thinkest this good to do, let us forthwith attempt the peloponnese, or if thou thinkest good to hold back, we may do that. do not despond however, for there is no way of escape for the hellenes to avoid being thy slaves, after they have first given an account of that which they did to thee both now and at former times. thus it were best to do; but if thou hast indeed resolved to retire thyself and to withdraw thy army, i have another counsel to offer for that case too. do not thou, o king, let the persians be an object of laughter to the hellenes; for none of thy affairs have suffered by means of the persians, nor wilt thou be able to mention any place where we proved ourselves cowards: but if phenicians or egyptians or cyprians or kilikians proved themselves cowards, the calamity which followed does not belong to the persians in any way. now therefore, since it is not the persians who are guilty towards thee, follow my counsel. if thou hast determined not to remain here, retire thou to thine own abode, taking with thee the main body of the army, and it must then be for me to deliver over to thee hellas reduced to subjection, choosing for this purpose thirty myriads from the army." . hearing this xerxes was rejoiced and delighted so far as he might be after his misfortunes, and to mardonios he said that when he had taken counsel he would reply and say which of these two things he would do. so when he was taking counsel with those of the persians who were called to be his advisers, it seemed good to him to send for artemisia also to give him counsel, because at the former time she alone had showed herself to have perception of that which ought to be done. so when artemisia had come, xerxes removed from him all the rest, both the persian councillors and also the spearmen of the guard and spoke to her thus: "mardonios bids me stay here and make an attempt on the peloponnese, saying that the persians and the land-army are not guilty of any share in my calamity, and that they would gladly give me proof of this. he bids me therefore either do this or, if not, he desires himself to choose thirty myriads from the army and to deliver over to me hellas reduced to subjection; and he bids me withdraw with the rest of the army to my own abode. do thou therefore, as thou didst well advise about the sea-fight which was fought, urging that we should not bring it on, so also now advise me which of these things i shall do, that i may succeed in determining well." . he thus consulted her, and she spoke these words: "o king, it is hard for me to succeed in saying the best things when one asks me for counsel; yet it seems good to me at the present that thou shouldest retire back and leave mardonios here, if he desires it and undertakes to do this, together with those whom he desires to have: for on the one hand if he subdue those whom he says that he desires to subdue, and if those matters succeed well which he has in mind when he thus speaks, the deed will after all be thine, master, seeing that thy slaves achieved it: and on the other hand if the opposite shall come to pass of that which mardonios intends, it will be no great misfortune, seeing that thou wilt thyself remain safe, and also the power in those parts which concerns thy house: for if thou shalt remain safe with thy house, many contests many times over repeated will the hellenes have to pass through for their own existence. of mardonios however, if he suffer any disaster, no account will be made; and if the hellenes conquer they gain a victory which is no victory, having destroyed one who is but thy slave. thou however wilt retire having done that for which thou didst make thy march, that is to say, having delivered athens to the fire." . with this advice xerxes was greatly delighted, since she succeeded in saying that very thing which he himself was meaning to do: for not even if all the men and all the women in the world had been counselling him to remain, would he have done so, as i think, so much had he been struck with terror. he commended artemisia therefore and sent her away to conduct his sons to ephesos, for there were certain bastard sons of his which accompanied him. . with these sons he sent hermotimos to have charge of them, who was by race of pedasa and was in the estimation of the king second to none of the eunuchs. [now the pedasians dwell above halicarnassos, and at this pedasa a thing happens as follows:�whenever to the whole number of those who dwell about this city some trouble is about to come within a certain time, then the priestess of athene in that place gets a long beard; and this has happened to them twice before now. . of these pedasians was hermotimos.] and this man of all persons whom we know up to this time obtained the greatest revenge for a wrong done to him. for he had been captured by enemies and was being sold, and panionios a man of chios bought him, one who had set himself to gain his livelihood by the most impious practices; for whenever he obtained boys who possessed some beauty, he would make eunuchs of them, and then taking them to sardis or ephesos sold them for large sums of money, since with the barbarians eunuchs are held to be of more value for all matters of trust than those who are not eunuchs. panionios then, i say, made eunuchs of many others, since by this he got his livelihood, and also of this man about whom i speak: and hermotimos, being not in everything unfortunate, was sent from sardis to the king with other gifts, and as time went on he came to be honoured more than all the other eunuchs in the sight of xerxes. . and when the king, being at that time in sardis, was setting the persian army in motion to march against athens, then hermotimos, having gone down for some business to that part of mysia which the chians occupy and which is called atarneus, found there panionios: and having recognised him he spoke to him many friendly words, first recounting to him all the good things which he had by his means, and next making promises in return for this, and saying how many good things he would do for him, if he would bring his household and dwell in that land; so that panionios gladly accepting his proposals brought his children and his wife. then, when he had caught him together with his whole house, hermotimos spoke as follows: "o thou, who of all men that ever lived up to this time didst gain thy substance by the most impious deeds, what evil did either i myself or any of my forefathers do either to thee or to any of thine, that thou didst make me to be that which is nought instead of a man? didst thou suppose that thou wouldest escape the notice of the gods for such things as then thou didst devise? they however following the rule of justice delivered thee into my hands, since thou hadst done impious deeds; so that thou shalt not have reason to find fault with the penalty which shall be inflicted upon thee by me." when he had thus reproached him, the man's sons were brought into his presence and panionios was compelled to make eunuchs of his own sons, who were four in number, and being compelled he did so; and then when he had so done, the sons were compelled to do the same thing to him. thus vengeance by the hands of hermotimos overtook panionios. . when xerxes had entrusted his sons to artemisia to carry them back to ephesos, he called mardonios and bade him choose of the army whom he would, and make his deeds, if possible, correspond to his words. during this day then things went so far; and in the night on the command of the king the leaders of the fleet began to withdraw their ships from phaleron to the hellespont, as quickly as they might each one, to guard the bridges for the king to pass over. and when the barbarians were near zoster as they sailed, then seeing the small points of rock which stretch out to sea from this part of the mainland, they thought that these were ships and fled for a good distance. in time however, perceiving that they were not ships but points of rock, they assembled together again and continued on their voyage. . when day dawned, the hellenes, seeing that the land-army was staying still in its place, supposed that the ships also were about phaleron; and thinking that they would fight another sea-battle, they made preparations to repel them. when however they were informed that the ships had departed, forthwith upon this they thought it good to pursue after them. they pursued therefore as far as andros, but did not get a sight of the fleet of xerxes; and when they had come to andros, they deliberated what they should do. themistocles then declared as his opinion that they should take their course through the islands and pursue after the ships, and afterwards sail straight to the hellespont to break up the bridges; but eurybiades expressed the opposite opinion to this, saying that if they should break up the floating-bridges, they would therein do the greatest possible evil to hellas: for if the persian should be cut off and compelled to remain in europe, he would endeavour not to remain still, since if he remained still, neither could any of his affairs go forward, nor would any way of returning home appear; but his army would perish of hunger: whereas if he made the attempt and persevered in it, all europe might be brought over to him, city by city and nation by nation, the inhabitants being either conquered or surrendering on terms before they were conquered: moreover they would have for food the crops of the hellenes which grew year by year. he thought however that conquered in the sea-fight the persian would not stay in europe, and therefore he might be allowed to flee until in his flight he came to his own land. then after that they might begin the contest for the land which belonged to the persian. to this opinion the commanders of the other peloponnesians adhered also. . when themistocles perceived that he would not be able to persuade them, or at least the greater number of them, to sail to the hellespont, he changed his counsel and turning to the athenians (for these were grieved most at the escape of the enemy and were anxious to sail to the hellespont even by themselves alone, if the others were not willing) to them he spoke as follows: "i myself also have been present before now on many occasions, and have heard of many more, on which something of this kind came to pass, namely that men who were forced into great straits, after they had been defeated fought again and repaired their former disaster: and as for us, since we have won as a prize from fortune the existence of ourselves and of hellas by repelling from our land so great a cloud of men, let us not pursue enemies who flee from us: for of these things not we were the doors, but the gods and heroes, who grudged that one man should become king of both asia and of europe, and he a man unholy and presumptuous, one who made no difference between things sacred and things profane, burning and casting down the images of the gods, and who also scourged the sea and let down into it fetters. but as things are at present, it is well that we should now remain in hellas and look after ourselves and our households; and let each man repair his house, and have a care for sowing his land, after he has completely driven away the barbarian: and then at the beginning of the spring let us sail down towards the hellespont and ionia." thus he spoke, intending to lay up for himself a store of gratitude with the persian, in order that if after all any evil should come upon him at the hands of the athenians, he might have a place of refuge: and this was in fact that which came to pass. . themistocles then speaking thus endeavoured to deceive them, and the athenians followed his advice: for he had had the reputation even in former times of being a man of ability and he had now proved himself to be in truth both able and of good judgment; therefore they were ready in every way to follow his advice when he spoke. so when these had been persuaded by him, forthwith after this themistocles sent men with a vessel, whom he trusted to keep silence, to whatever test they might be brought, of that which he himself charged them to tell the king; and of them sikinnos his servant again was one. when these came to attica, the rest stayed behind in the ship, while sikinnos went up to xerxes and spoke these words: "themistocles the son of neocles sent me, who is commander of the athenians, and of all the allies the best and ablest man, to tell thee that themistocles the athenian, desiring to be of service to thee, held back the hellenes when they were desirous to pursue after thy ships and to destroy the bridges on the hellespont. now therefore thou mayest make thy way home quite undisturbed." they having signified this sailed away again. . the hellenes meanwhile, having resolved not to pursue after the ships of the barbarians further, nor to sail to the hellespont to break up the passage, were investing andros intending to take it: for the andrians were the first of the islanders who, being asked by themistocles for money, refused to give it: and when themistocles made proposals to them and said that the athenians had come having on their side two great deities, persuasion and compulsion, and therefore they must by all means give them money, they replied to this that not without reason, as it now appeared, was athens great and prosperous, since the athenians were well supplied with serviceable deities; but as for the andrians, they were poor, having in this respect attained to the greatest eminence, and there were two unprofitable deities which never left their island but always remained attached to the place, poverty, namely, and helplessness: and the andrians being possessed of these deities would not give money; for never could the power of the athenians get the better of their inability. . these, i say, having thus made answer and having refused to give the money, were being besieged: and themistocles not ceasing in his desire for gain sent threatening messages to the other islands and asked them for money by the same envoys, employing those whom he had before sent to the king; and he said that if they did not give that which was demanded of them, he would bring the fleet of the hellenes against them to besiege and take them. thus saying he collected great sums of money from the carystians and the parians, who being informed how andros was being besieged, because it had taken the side of the medes, and how themistocles was held in more regard than any of the other commanders, sent money for fear of this. whether any others of the islanders also gave money i am not able to say, but i think that some others gave and not these alone. yet to the carystians at least there was no respite from the evil on this account, but the parians escaped the attack, because they propitiated themistocles with money. thus themistocles with andros as his starting-point was acquiring sums of money for himself from the men of the islands without the knowledge of the other commanders. . xerxes meanwhile with his army stayed for a few days after the sea-fight, and then they all began to march forth towards boeotia by the same way by which they had come: for mardonios thought both that it was well for him to escort the king on his way, and also that it was now too late in the year to carry on the war; it was better, he thought, to winter in thessaly and then at the beginning of spring to attempt the peloponnese. when he came to thessaly, then mardonios chose out for himself first all those persians who are called "immortals," except only their commander hydarnes (for hydarnes said that he would not be left behind by the king), and after them of the other persians those who wore cuirasses, and the body of a thousand horse: also the medes, sacans, bactrians and indians, foot and horsemen both. these nations he chose in the mass, but from the other allies he selected by few at a time, choosing whose who had fine appearance of those of whom he knew that they had done good service. from the persians he chose more than from any other single nation, and these wore collars of twisted metal and bracelets; and after them came the medes, who in fact were not inferior in number to the persians, but only in bodily strength. the result was that there were thirty myriads in all, including cavalry. . during this time, while mardonios was selecting his army and xerxes was in thessaly, there had come an oracle from delphi to the lacedemonians, bidding them ask satisfaction from xerxes for the murder of leonidas and accept that which should be given by him. the spartans therefore sent a herald as quickly as possible, who having found the whole army still in thessaly came into the presence of xerxes and spoke these words: "o king of the medes, the lacedemonians and the sons of heracles of sparta demand of thee satisfaction for murder, because thou didst kill their king, fighting in defence of hellas." he laughed and then kept silence some time, and after that pointing to mardonios, who happened to be standing by him, he said: "then mardonios here shall give them satisfaction, such as is fitting for them to have." . the herald accordingly accepted the utterance and departed; and xerxes leaving mardonios in thessaly went on himself in haste to the hellespont and arrived at the passage where the crossing was in five-and-thirty days, bringing back next to nothing, as one may say, of his army: and whithersoever they came on the march and to whatever nation, they seized the crops of that people and used them for provisions; and if they found no crops, then they took the grass which was growing up from the earth, and stripped off the bark from the trees and plucked down the leaves and devoured them, alike of the cultivated trees and of those growing wild; and they left nothing behind them: thus they did by reason of famine. then plague too seized upon the army and dysentery, which destroyed them by the way, and some of them also who were sick the king left behind, laying charge upon the cities where at the time he chanced to be in his march, to take care of them and support them: of these he left some in thessaly, and some at siris in paionia, and some in macedonia. in these parts too he had left behind him the sacred chariot of zeus, when he was marching against hellas; but on his return he did not receive it back: for the paionians had given it to the thracians, and when xerxes asked for it again, they said that the mares while at pasture had been carried off by the thracians of the upper country, who dwelt about the source of the strymon. . here also a thracian, the king of the bisaltians and of the crestonian land, did a deed of surpassing horror; for he had said that he would not himself be subject to xerxes with his own will and had gone away up to mount rhodope, and also he had forbidden his sons to go on the march against hellas. they however, either because they cared not for his command, or else because a desire came upon them to see the war, went on the march with the persian: and when they returned all unhurt, being six in number, their father plucked out their eyes for this cause. . they then received this reward: and as to the persians, when passing on from thrace they came to the passage, they crossed over the hellespont in haste to abydos by means of the ships, for they did not find the floating-bridges still stretched across but broken up by a storm. while staying there for a time they had distributed to them an allowance of food more abundant than they had had by the way, and from satisfying their hunger without restraint and also from the changes of water there died many of those in the army who had remained safe till then. the rest arrived with xerxes at sardis. . there is also another story reported as follows, namely that when xerxes on his march away from athens came to eïon on the strymon, from that point he did not continue further to make marches by road, but delivered his army to hydarnes to lead back to the hellespont, while he himself embarked in a phenician ship and set forth for asia; and as he sailed he was seized by a wind from the strymon, violent and raising great waves; and since he was tossed by the storm more and more, the ship being heavily laden (for there were upon the deck great numbers of persians, those namely who went with xerxes), the king upon that falling into fear shouted aloud and asked the pilot whether there were for them any means of safety. he said: "master, there are none, unless some way be found of freeing ourselves of the excessive number of passengers." then it is said that xerxes, when he heard this, spoke thus: "persians, now let each one of you show that he has care for the king; for my safety, as it seems, depends upon you." he, they say, thus spoke, and they made obeisance to him and leapt out into the sea; and so the ship being lightened came safe to asia. as soon as they had landed xerxes, they say, first presented the pilot with a wreath of gold, because he had saved the life of the king, and then cut off his head, because he had caused the death of many of the persians. . this other story, i say, is reported about the return of xerxes, but i for my part can by no means believe it, either in other respects or as regards this which is said to have happened to the persians; for if this which i have related had in truth been said by the pilot to xerxes, not one person's opinion in ten thousand will differ from mine that the king would have done some such thing as this, that is to say, he would have caused those who were upon the deck to go down below into the hold, seeing that they were persians of the highest rank among the persians; and of the rowers, who were phenicians, he would have thrown out into the sea a number equal to the number of those. in fact however, as i have said before, he made his return to asia together with the rest of the army by road. . and this also which follows is a strong witness that it was so; for xerxes is known to have come to abdera on his way back, and to have made with them a guest-friendship and presented them with a persian sword of gold and a gold-spangled tiara: and as the men of abdera themselves say (though i for my part can by no means believe it), he loosed his girdle for the first time during his flight back from athens, considering himself to be in security. now abdera is situated further towards the hellespont than the river strymon and eïon, from which place the story says that he embarked in the ship. . the hellenes meanwhile, when it proved that they were not able to conquer andros, turned towards carystos, and having laid waste the land of that people they departed and went to salamis. first then for the gods they chose out first-fruits of the spoil, and among them three persian triremes, one to be dedicated as an offering at the isthmus, which remained there still up to my time, another at sunion, and the third to ajax in salamis where they were. after this they divided the spoil among themselves and sent the first-fruits to delphi, of which was made a statue holding in its hand the beak of a ship and in height measuring twelve cubits. this statue stood in the same place with the golden statue of alexander the macedonian. . then when the hellenes had sent first-fruits to delphi, they asked the god on behalf of all whether the first-fruits which he had received were fully sufficient and acceptable to him. he said that from the hellenes he had received enough, but not from the eginetans, and from them he demanded the offering of their prize of valour for the sea-fight at salamis. hearing this the eginetans dedicated golden stars, three in number, upon a ship's mast of bronze, which are placed in the corner close to the mixing-bowl of croesus. . after the division of the spoil the hellenes sailed to the isthmus, to give the prize of valour to him who of all the hellenes had proved himself the most worthy during this war: and when they had come thither and the commanders distributed their votes at the altar of poseidon, selecting from the whole number the first and the second in merit, then every one of them gave in his vote for himself, each man thinking that he himself had been the best; but for the second place the greater number of votes came out in agreement, assigning that to themistocles. they then were left alone in their votes, while themistocles in regard to the second place surpassed the rest by far: , and although the hellenes would not give decision of this by reason of envy, but sailed away each to their own city without deciding, yet themistocles was loudly reported of and was esteemed throughout hellas to be the man who was the ablest by far of the hellenes: and since he had not received honour from those who had fought at salamis, although he was the first in the voting, he went forthwith after this to lacedemon, desiring to receive honour there; and the lacedemonians received him well and gave him great honours. as a prize of valour they gave to eurybiades a wreath of olive; and for ability and skill they gave to themistocles also a wreath of olive, and presented him besides with the chariot which was judged to be the best in sparta. so having much commended him, they escorted him on his departure with three hundred picked men of the spartans, the same who are called the "horsemen," as far as the boundaries of tegea: and he is the only man of all we know to whom the spartans ever gave escort on his way. . when however he had come to athens from lacedemon, timodemos of aphidnai, one of the opponents of themistocles, but in other respects not among the men of distinction, maddened by envy attacked him, bringing forward against him his going to lacedemon, and saying that it was on account of athens that he had those marks of honour which he had from the lacedemonians, and not on his own account. then, as timodemos continued ceaselessly to repeat this, themistocles said: "i tell thee thus it is:�if i had been a native of belbina i should never have been thus honoured by the spartans; but neither wouldest thou, my friend, for all that thou art an athenian." so far then went these matters. . artabazos meanwhile the son of pharnakes, a man who was held in esteem among the persians even before this and came to be so yet more after the events about plataia, was escorting the king as far as the passage with six myriads of that army which mardonios had selected for himself; and when the king was in asia and artabazos on his march back came near to pallene, finding that mardonios was wintering in thessaly and macedonia and was not at present urgent with him to come and join the rest of the army, he thought it not good to pass by without reducing the potidaians to slavery, whom he had found in revolt: for the men of potidaia, when the king had marched by them and when the fleet of the persians had departed in flight from salamis, had openly made revolt from the barbarians; and so also had the others done who occupy pallene. . so upon this artabazos began to besiege potidaia, and suspecting that the men of olynthos also were intending revolt from the king, he began to besiege this city too, which was occupied by bottiaians who had been driven away from the thermaian gulf by the macedonians. so when he had taken these men by siege, he brought them forth to a lake and slew them there; and the city he delivered to critobulos of torone to have in charge, and to the natives of chalkidike; and thus it was that the chalkidians got possession of olynthos. . having taken this city artabazos set himself to attack potidaia with vigour, and as he was setting himself earnestly to this work, timoxeinos the commander of the troops from skione concerted with him to give up the town by treachery. now in what manner he did this at the first, i for my part am not able to say, for this is not reported; at last however it happened as follows. whenever either timoxeinos wrote a paper wishing to send it to artabazos, or artabazos wishing to send one to timoxeinos, they wound it round by the finger-notches of an arrow, and then, putting feathers over the paper, they shot it to a place agreed upon between them. it came however to be found out that timoxeinos was attempting by treachery to give up potidaia; for artabazos, shooting an arrow at the place agreed upon, missed this spot and struck a man of potidaia in the shoulder; and when he was struck, a crowd came about him, as is apt to happen when there is fighting, and they forthwith took the arrow and having discovered the paper carried it to the commanders. now there was present an allied force of the other men of pallene also. then when the commanders had read the paper and discovered who was guilty of the treachery, they resolved not openly to convict timoxeinos of treachery, for the sake of the city of skione, lest the men of skione should be esteemed traitors for all time to come. . he then in such a manner as this had been discovered; and when three months had gone by while artabazos was besieging the town, there came to be a great ebb of the sea backwards, which lasted for a long time; and the barbarians, seeing that shallow water had been produced, endeavoured to get by into the peninsula of pallene, but when they had passed through two fifth-parts of the distance, and yet three-fifths remained, which they must pass through before they were within pallene, then there came upon them a great flood-tide of the sea, higher than ever before, as the natives of the place say, though high tides come often. so those of them who could not swim perished, and those who could were slain by the men of potidaia who put out to them in boats. the cause of the high tide and flood and of that which befell the persians was this, as the potidaians say, namely that these same persians who perished by means of the sea had committed impiety towards the temple of poseidon and his image in the suburb of their town; and in saying that this was the cause, in my opinion they say well. the survivors of his army artabazos led away to thessaly to join mardonios. thus it fared with these who escorted the king on his way. . the fleet of xerxes, so much of it as remained, when it had touched asia in its flight from salamis, and had conveyed the king and his army over from the chersonese to abydos, passed the winter at kyme: and when spring dawned upon it, it assembled early at samos, where some of the ships had even passed the winter; and most of the persians and medes still served as fighting-men on board of them. to be commanders of them there came mardontes the son of bagaios, and artaÿntes the son of artachaies, and with them also ithamitres was in joint command, who was brother's son to artaÿntes and had been added by the choice of artaÿntes himself. they then, since they had suffered a heavy blow, did not advance further up towards the west, nor did any one compel them to do so; but they remained still in samos and kept watch over ionia, lest it should revolt, having three hundred ships including those of the ionians; and they did not expect that the hellenes on their part would come to ionia, but thought that it would satisfy them to guard their own land, judging from the fact that they had not pursued after them in their flight from salamis but were well contented then to depart homewards. as regards the sea then their spirit was broken, but on land they thought that mardonios would get much the advantage. so they being at samos were taking counsel to do some damage if they could to their enemies, and at the same time they were listening for news how the affairs of mardonios would fall out. . the hellenes on their part were roused both by the coming on of spring and by the presence of mardonios in thessaly. their land-army had not yet begun to assemble, when the fleet arrived at egina, in number one hundred and ten ships, and the commander and admiral was leotychides, who was the son of menares, the son of hegesilaos, the son of hippocratides, the son of leotychides, the son of anaxilaos, the son of archidemos, the son of anaxandriddes, the son of theopompos, the son of nicander, the son of charilaos, the son of eunomos, the son of polydectes, the son of prytanis, the son of euryphon, the son of procles, the son of aristodemos, the son of aristomachos, the son of cleodaios, the son of hyllos, the son of heracles, being of the other royal house. these all, except the two enumerated first after leotychides, had been kings of sparta. and of the athenians the commander was xanthippos the son of ariphon. . when all the ships had arrived at egina, there came ionian envoys to the camp of the hellenes, who also came a short time before this to sparta and asked the lacedemonians to set ionia free; and of them one was herodotus the son of basileides. these had banded themselves together and had plotted to put to death strattis the despot of chios, being originally seven in number; but when one of those who took part with them gave information of it and they were discovered to be plotting against him, then the remaining six escaped from chios and came both to sparta and also at this time to egina, asking the hellenes to sail over to ionia: but they with difficulty brought them forward as far as delos; for the parts beyond this were all fearful to the hellenes, since they were without experience of those regions and everything seemed to them to be filled with armed force, while their persuasion was that it was as long a voyage to samos as to the pillars of heracles. thus at the same time it so chanced that the barbarians dared sail no further up towards the west than samos, being smitten with fear, and the hellenes no further down towards the east than delos, when the chians made request of them. so fear was guard of the space which lay between them. . the hellenes, i say, sailed to delos; and mardonios meanwhile had been wintering in thessaly. from thence he sent round a man, a native of europos, whose name was mys, to the various oracles, charging him to go everywhere to consult, wherever they were permitted to make trial of the oracles. what he desired to find out from the oracles when he gave this charge, i am not able to say, for that is not reported; but i conceive for my part that he sent to consult about his present affairs and not about other things. . this mys is known to have come to lebadeia and to have persuaded by payment of money one of the natives of the place to go down to trophonios, and also he came to the oracle at abai of the phokians; and moreover when he came for the first time to thebes, he not only consulted the ismenian apollo,�there one may consult just as at olympia with victims,�but also by payment he persuaded a stranger who was not a theban, and induced him to lie down to sleep in the temple of amphiaraos. in this temple no one of the thebans is permitted to seek divination, and that for the following reason:�amphiaraos dealing by oracles bade them choose which they would of these two things, either to have him as a diviner or else as an ally in war, abstaining from the other use; and they chose that he should be their ally in war: for this reason it is not permitted to any of the thebans to lie down to sleep in that temple. . after this a thing which to me is a very great marvel is said by the thebans to have come to pass:�it seems that this man mys of europos, as he journeyed round to all the oracles, came also to the sacred enclosure of the ptoan apollo. this temple is called "ptoon," and belongs to the thebans, and it lies above the lake copaïs at the foot of the mountains, close to the town of acraiphia. when the man called mys came to this temple with three men chosen from the citizens in his company, who were sent by the public authority to write down that which the god should utter in his divination, forthwith it is said the prophet of the god began to give the oracle in a barbarian tongue; and while those of the thebans who accompanied him were full of wonder, hearing a barbarian instead of the hellenic tongue, and did not know what to make of the matter before them, it is said that the man of europos, mys, snatched from them the tablet which they bore and wrote upon it that which was being spoken by the prophet; and he said that the prophet was giving his answer in the carian tongue: and then when he had written it, he went away and departed to thessaly. . mardonios having read that which the oracles uttered, whatever that was, after this sent as an envoy to athens alexander the son of amyntas, the macedonian, both because the persians were connected with him by marriage, (for gygaia the sister of alexander and daughter of amyntas had been married to a persian bubares, and from her had been born to him that amyntas who lived in asia, having the name of his mother's father, to whom the king gave alabanda, a great city of phrygia, to possess), and also mardonios was sending him because he was informed that alexander was a public guest-friend and benefactor of the athenians; for by this means he thought that he would be most likely to gain over the athenians to his side, about whom he heard that they were a numerous people and brave in war, and of whom he knew moreover that these were they who more than any others had brought about the disasters which had befallen the persians by sea. therefore if these should be added to him, he thought that he should easily have command of the sea (and this in fact would have been the case), while on land he supposed himself to be already much superior in force. thus he reckoned that his power would be much greater than that of the hellenes. perhaps also the oracles told him this beforehand, counselling him to make the athenian his ally, and so he was sending in obedience to their advice. . now of this alexander the seventh ancestor was that perdiccas who first became despot of the macedonians, and that in the manner which here follows:�from argos there fled to the illyrians three brothers of the descendents of temenos, gauanes, aëropos, and perdiccas; and passing over from the illyrians into the upper parts of macedonia they came to the city of lebaia. there they became farm-servants for pay in the household of the king, one pasturing horses, the second oxen, and the youngest of them, namely perdiccas, the smaller kinds of cattle; for in ancient times even those who were rulers over men were poor in money, and not the common people only; and the wife of the king cooked for them their food herself. and whenever she baked, the loaf of the boy their servant, namely perdiccas, became double as large as by nature it should be. when this happened constantly in the same manner, she told it to her husband, and he when he heard it conceived forthwith that this was a portent and tended to something great. he summoned the farm-servants therefore, and gave notice to them to depart out of his land; and they said that it was right that before they went forth they should receive the wages which were due. now it chanced that the sun was shining into the house down through the opening which received the smoke, and the king when he heard about the wages said, being infatuated by a divine power: "i pay you then this for wages, and it is such as ye deserve," pointing to the sunlight. so then gauanes and aëropos the elder brothers stood struck with amazement when they heard this, but the boy, who happened to have in his hand a knife, said these words: "we accept, o king, that which thou dost give;" and he traced a line with his knife round the sunlight on the floor of the house, and having traced the line round he thrice drew of the sunlight into his bosom, and after that he departed both himself and his fellows. . they then were going away, and to the king one of those who sat by him at table told what manner of thing the boy had done, and how the youngest of them had taken that which was given with some design: and he hearing this and being moved with anger, sent after them horsemen to slay them. now there is a river in this land to which the descendents of these men from argos sacrifice as a saviour. this river, so soon as the sons of temenos had passed over it, began to flow with such great volume of water that the horsemen became unable to pass over. so the brothers, having come to another region of macedonia, took up their dwelling near the so-called gardens of midas the son of gordias, where roses grow wild which have each one sixty petals and excel all others in perfume. in these gardens too silenos was captured, as is reported by the macedonians: and above the gardens is situated a mountain called bermion, which is inaccessible by reason of the cold. having taken possession of that region, they made this their starting-point, and proceeded to subdue also the rest of macedonia. . from this perdiccas the descent of alexander was as follows:�alexander was the son of amyntas, amyntas was the son of alketes, the father of alketes was aëropos, of him philip, of philip argaios, and of this last the father was perdiccas, who first obtained the kingdom. . thus then, i say, alexander the son of amyntas was descended; and when he came to athens sent from mardonios, he spoke as follows: (a) "athenians, mardonios speaks these words:�there has come to me a message from the king which speaks in this manner:�to the athenians i remit all the offences which were committed against me: and now, mardonios, thus do,�first give them back their own land; then let them choose for themselves another in addition to this, whichsoever they desire, remaining independent; and set up for them again all their temples, which i set on fire, provided that they consent to make a treaty with me. this message having come to me, it is necessary for me to do so, unless by your means i am prevented: and thus i speak to you now:�why are ye so mad as to raise up war against the king? since neither will ye overcome him, nor are ye able to hold out against him for ever: for ye saw the multitude of the host of xerxes and their deeds, and ye are informed also of the power which is with me at the present time; so that even if ye overcome and conquer us (of which ye can have no hope if ye are rightly minded), another power will come many times as large. do not ye then desire to match yourselves with the king, and so to be both deprived of your land and for ever running a course for your own lives; but make peace with him: and ye have a most honourable occasion to make peace, since the king has himself set out upon this road: agree to a league with us then without fraud or deceit, and remain free. (b) these things mardonios charged me to say to you, o athenians; and as for me, i will say nothing of the goodwill towards you on my part, for ye would not learn that now for the first time; but i ask of you to do as mardonios says, since i perceive that ye will not be able to war with xerxes for ever,�if i perceived in you ability to do this, i should never have come to you speaking these words,�for the power of the king is above that of a man and his arm is very long. if therefore ye do not make an agreement forthwith, when they offer you great things as the terms on which they are willing to make a treaty, i have fear on your behalf, seeing that ye dwell more upon the highway than any of your allies, and are exposed ever to destruction alone, the land which ye possess being parted off from the rest and lying between the armies which are contending together. nay, but be persuaded, for this is a matter of great consequence to you, that to you alone of the hellenes the great king remits the offences committed and desires to become a friend." . thus spoke alexander; and the lacedemonians having been informed that alexander had come to athens to bring the athenians to make a treaty with the barbarians, and remembering the oracles, who it was destined that they together with the other dorians should be driven forth out of the peloponnese by the medes and the athenians combined, had been very greatly afraid lest the athenians should make a treaty with the persians; and forthwith they had resolved to send envoys. it happened moreover that they were introduced at the same time with alexander; for the athenians had waited for them, protracting the time, because they were well assured that the lacedemonians would hear that an envoy had come from the barbarians to make a treaty, and that having heard it they would themselves send envoys with all speed. they acted therefore of set purpose, so as to let the lacedemonians see their inclination. . so when alexander had ceased speaking, the envoys from sparta followed him forthwith and said: "as for us, the lacedemonians sent us to ask of you not to make any change in that which concerns hellas, nor to accept proposals from the barbarian; since this is not just in any way nor honourable for any of the hellenes to do, but least of all for you, and that for many reasons. ye were they who stirred up this war, when we by no means willed it; and the contest came about for your dominion, but now it extends even to the whole of hellas. besides this it is by no means to be endured that ye athenians, who are the authors of all this, should prove to be the cause of slavery to the hellenes, seeing that ye ever from ancient time also have been known as the liberators of many. we feel sympathy however with you for your sufferings and because ye were deprived of your crops twice and have had your substance ruined now for a long time. in compensation for this the lacedemonians and their allies make offer to support your wives and all those of your households who are unfitted for war, so long as this war shall last: but let not alexander the macedonian persuade you, making smooth the speech of mardonios; for these things are fitting for him to do, since being himself a despot he is working in league with a despot: for you however they are not fitting to do, if ye chance to be rightly minded; for ye know that in barbarians there is neither faith nor truth at all." thus spoke the envoys: , and to alexander the athenians made answer thus: "even of ourselves we know so much, that the mede has a power many times as numerous as ours; so that there is no need for thee to cast this up against us. nevertheless because we long for liberty we shall defend ourselves as we may be able: and do not thou endeavour to persuade us to make a treaty with the barbarian, for we on our part shall not be persuaded. and now report to mardonios that the athenians say thus:�so long as the sun goes on the same course by which he goes now, we will never make an agreement with xerxes; but we will go forth to defend ourselves against him, trusting in the gods and the heroes as allies, for whom he had no respect when he set fire to their houses and to their sacred images. and in the future do not thou appear before the athenians with any such proposals as these, nor think that thou art rendering them good service in advising them to do that which is not lawful; for we do not desire that thou shouldest suffer anything unpleasant at the hands of the athenians, who art their public guest and friend." . to alexander they thus made answer, but to the envoys from sparta as follows: "that the lacedemonians should be afraid lest we should make a treaty with the barbarian was natural no doubt; but it seems to be an unworthy fear for men who know so well the spirit of the athenians, namely that there is neither so great quantity of gold anywhere upon the earth, nor any land so much excelling in beauty and goodness, that we should be willing to accept it and enslave hellas by taking the side of the medes. for many and great are the reasons which hinder us from doing this, even though we should desire it; first and greatest the images and houses of the gods set on fire or reduced to ruin, which we must necessarily avenge to the very utmost rather than make an agreement with him who did these deeds; then secondly there is the bond of hellenic race, by which we are of one blood and of one speech, the common temples of the gods and the common sacrifices, the manners of life which are the same for all; to these it would not be well that the athenians should become traitors. and be assured of this, if by any chance ye were not assured of it before, that so long as one of the athenians remains alive, we will never make an agreement with xerxes. we admire however the forethought which ye had with regard to us, in that ye took thought for us who have had our substance destroyed, and are willing to support the members of our households; and so far as ye are concerned, the kindness has been fully performed: but we shall continue to endure as we may, and not be a trouble in any way to you. now therefore, with full conviction this is so, send out an army as speedily as ye may: for, as we conjecture, the barbarian will be here invading our land at no far distant time but so soon as he shall be informed of the message sent, namely that we shall do none of those things which he desired of us. therefore before he arrives here in attica, it is fitting that ye come to our rescue quickly in boeotia." thus the athenians made answer, and upon that the envoys went away back to sparta. notes to book viii [ see v. .] [ i.e. triremes.] [ {os to plethos ekastoi ton neon pareikhonto}: some read by conjecture {oson to plethos k.t.l.}] [ perhaps "also" refers to the case of those who had come to thermopylai, cp. vii. : others translate, "these hellenes who had come after all to artemision," i.e. after all the doubt and delay.] [ {pantes}: some mss. have {plegentes}, which is adopted by most editors, "smitten by bribes."] [ {dethen}, with ironical sense.] [ {mede purphoron}: the {purphoros} had charge of the fire brought for sacrifices from the altar of zeus agetor at sparta, and ordinarily his person would be regarded as sacred; hence the proverb {oude purphoros esothe}, used of an utter defeat.] [ {tou diekploou}.] [ {kata stoma}.] [ {sklerai brontai}: the adjective means "harsh-sounding."] [ {akhari}.] [ {ta koila tes euboies}.] [ "having been roughly handled."] [ {epi ten thalassan tauten}: some mss. read {taute} for {tauten}, which is to be taken with {sullexas}, "he assembled the generals there."] [ {peripetea epoiesanto sphisi autoisi ta pregmata}.] [ {paleseie}, a word which does not occur elsewhere, and is explained by hesychius as equivalent to {diaphtharein}. various emendations have been proposed, and valla seems to have had the reading {apelaseie}, for he says discessisset. stein explains {paleseie} (as from {pale}) "should contend."] [ some suppose the number "four thousand" is interpolated by misunderstanding of the inscription in vii. ; and it seems hardly possible that the dead were so many as four thousand, unless at least half were helots.] [ some mss. have "tritantaichmes," which is adopted by many editors.] [ {neou}.] [ {os anarpasomenoi tous phokeas}: cp. ix. .] [ {podeon steinos}, like the neck of a wineskin; cp. ii. , note [footnote .] [ {tou propheten}, the interpreter of the utterances of the {promantis}.] [ {neou}.] [ {megarou}.] [ i.e. of athene polias, the erechtheion; so throughout this account.] [ {sunerree}, "kept flowing together."] [ or, "hermione."] [ see i. .] [ see ch. .] [ {pros pantas tous allous}, "in comparison with all the rest," cp. iii. .] [ {stratarkheo}: a vague expression, because being introduced after kecrops he could not have the title of king.] [ the number obtained by adding up the separate contingents is . many editors suppose that the ships with which the eginetans were guarding their own coast (ch. ) are counted here, and quote the authority of pausanias for the statement that the eginetans supplied more ships than any others except the athenians. stein suggests the insertion of the number twelve in ch. .] [ or, "thespeia."] [ i.e. "areopagus."] [ i.e. the north side.] [ {megaron}.] [ {neos}.] [ {pollos en en tois logois}: cp. ix. .] [ see vii. - .] [ {autothen ik salaminos}.] [ {te metri kai te koure}, demeter and persephone.] [ {te anakrisi}: cp. {anakrinomenous}, ix. : some editors, following inferior mss., read {te krisi}, "at the judgment expressed."] [ {muriadon}, "ten thousands."] [ or, "hermione."] [ {oi perioikoi}: some editors omit the article and translate "and these are the so-called orneates or dwellers round (argos)," orneates being a name for the {perioikoi} of argos, derived from the conquered city of orneai.] [ {elpidi mainomene}, "with a mad hope."] [ {krateron koron ubrios uion}.] [ {dokeunt ana panta tithesthai}: the mss. have also {pithesthai}. possibly {tithesthai} might stand, though {anatithesthai} is not found elsewhere in this sense. stein adopts in his last edition the conjecture {piesthai}, "swallow up."] [ {kronides}.] [ {potnia nike}.] [ i.e. about rivalry.] [ {ton epibateon}.] [ many editors reading {osa de} and {parainesas de}, make the stop after {antitithemena}: "and in all that is produced in the nature and constitution of man he exhorted them to choose the better."] [ {o daimonioi}, "strange men."] [ see ch. .] [ {pros de eti kai proselabeto}: the mss. have {prosebaleto}. most editors translate, "moreover ariamnes... contributed to the fate of the phenicians, being a friend (of the ionians);" but this does not seem possible unless we read {philos eon iosi} (or {ionon}). valla translates nearly as i have done. (it does not appear that {prosballesthai} is found elsewhere in the sense of {sumballesthai}.)] [ i.e. they who were commanded to execute them.] [ see vii. , .] [ see vi. , etc., and .] [ {keleta}.] [ {sumballontai}: the athenians apparently are spoken of, for they alone believed the story.] [ {apoplesai}: this is the reading of the mss.; but many editors adopt corrections ({apoplesthai} or {apoplesthenai}). the subject to {apoplesai} is to be found in the preceding sentence and the connexion with {ton te allon panta k.t.l.} is a loose one. this in fact is added as an afterthought, the idea being originally to call attention simply to the fulfilment of the oracle of lysistratos.] [ {phruxousi}: a conjectural emendation, adopted by most editors, of {phrixousi}, "will shudder (at the sight of oars)."] [ {kat allon kai allon}: the mss. have {kat allon}, but valla's rendering is "alium atque alium."] [ {uper megalon aiorethenta}.] [ i.e. , .] [ {os ek kakon}: some translate, "thinking that he had escaped from his troubles."] [ {toisi epikletoisi}, cp. vii. and ix. .] [ i.e. asia, as opposed to "these parts."] [ stein would take {peri oikon ton son} with {oudemia sumphore}, but the order of words is against this.] [ {pollous pollakis agonas drameontai peri spheon auton}.] [ see i. : the manner of the repetition and some points in the diction raise suspicion that the passage is interpolated here; and so it is held to be by most editors. in i. we find {tris} instead of {dis}.] [ {upegagon}, cp. vi. , with the idea of bringing before a court for punishment, not "by underhand means," as it is understood by larcher and bähr.] [ "vengeance and hermotimos."] [ {spheis... ergasaiato}: the mss. read {sphi} (one {spheas}) and {ergasaito}, and this is retained by some editors.] [ "taken."] [ {metabalon}: others translate, "he turned from them to the athenians"; but cp. vii. : the words {pros tous athenaious} are resumed by {sphi} with {elege}.] [ {kai epi spheon auton balomenoi}, "even at their own venture," cp. iii. .] [ {ta idia}, "things belonging to private persons."] [ {sophos}.] [ {geopeinas}, "poor in land."] [ it seems necessary to insert {an} with {einai}. for the sentiment cp. vii. .] [ {khreomenos toisi kai pros basilea ekhresato}. this is the reading of the best mss.: the rest have {khreomenos logoisi toisi kai pros andrious ekhresato}, "using the same language as he had before used to the andrians."] [ {kai ten allen ippon}: some mss. omit {allen}.] [ {ola}, i.e. not the whole number of them, but great masses without individual selection.] [ {ouden meros os eipein}.] [ {anemon strumonien}, "the wind called strymonias."] [ {ta akrothinia}, i.e. the tithe.] [ i.e. the corner of the entrance-hall, {epi tou proneiou tes gonies}, i. .] [ {dienemon}: some understand this to mean "distributed the voting tablets," and some mss. read {dienemonto}, "distributed among themselves," which is adopted by many editors.] [ {sophotatos}.] [ see i. .] [ a small island near attica, taken here as the type of insignificance. to suppose that timodemos was connected with it is quite unnecessary. the story in plutarch about the seriphian is different.] [ i.e. , .] [ {katesphaxe}, "cut their throats."] [ {para tas gluphidas}: some editors read {peri tas gluphidas} on the authority of Æneas tacticus. the {gluphides} are probably notches which give a hold for the fingers as they draw back the string.] [ {kataplexai}, "strike down" by the charge.] [ the way was shut against them ordinarily by the town of potidaia, which occupied the isthmus.] [ i.e. most of those who before served as {epibatai} (vii. ) continued to serve still. the sentence is usually translated, "of those who served as fighting-men in them the greater number were persians or medes," and this may be right.] [ the mss. have "charilos" or "charillos."] [ some editors read "eurypon," which is the form found elsewhere.] [ cp. vii. .] [ {duon}. it seems certain that the number required here is seven and not two, and the emendation {epta} for {duon} ({z} for {b}) is approved by several editors.] [ {khresomenon}: the best mss. read {khresamenon}, which is retained by stein, with the meaning "charging him to consult the oracles everywhere... and then return."] [ i.e. mardonios and the persians.] [ i.e. theban citizens.] [ {promantin}: he is afterwards called {prophetes}.] [ cp. v. .] [ some editors would read "alabastra." alabanda was a carian town.] [ counting alexander himself as one.] [ {esan gar}: this is the reading of the best mss.: others have {esan de}. stein (reading {esan gar}) places this clause after the next, "the wife of the king herself baked their bread, for in ancient times, etc." this transposition is unnecessary; for it would be easy to understand it as a comment on the statement that three members of the royal house of argos became farm-servants.] [ {ai turannides ton anthropon}.] [ {exaireton metaikhmion te ten gun ektemenon}: there are variations of reading and punctuation in the mss.] [ {sunepipte oste omou spheon ginesthai ten katastasin}, i.e. their introduction before the assembly, cp. iii. .] [ {epeximen amunomenoi}, which possibly might be translated, "we will continue to defend ourselves."] [ {karta anthropeion}.] book ix. the ninth book of the histories, called calliope . mardonios, when alexander had returned back and had signified to him that which was said by the athenians, set forth from thessaly and began to lead his army with all diligence towards athens: and to whatever land he came, he took up with him the people of that land. the leaders of thessaly meanwhile did not repent of all that which had been done already, but on the contrary they urged on the persian yet much more; and thorax of larissa had joined in escorting xerxes in his flight and at this time he openly offered mardonios passage to invade hellas.. . then when the army in its march came to boeotia, the thebans endeavoured to detain mardonios, and counselled him saying that there was no region more convenient for him to have his encampment than that; and they urged him not to advance further, but to sit down there and endeavour to subdue to himself the whole of hellas without fighting: for to overcome the hellenes by open force when they were united, as at the former time they were of one accord together, was a difficult task even for the whole world combined, "but," they proceeded, "if thou wilt do that which we advise, with little labour thou wilt have in thy power all their plans of resistance. send money to the men who have power in their cities, and thus sending thou wilt divide hellas into two parties: after that thou wilt with ease subdue by the help of thy party those who are not inclined to thy side.". . thus they advised, but he did not follow their counsel; for there had instilled itself into him a great desire to take athens for the second time, partly from obstinacy and partly because he meant to signify to the king in sardis that he was in possession of athens by beacon-fires through the islands. however he did not even at this time find the athenians there when he came to attica; but he was informed that the greater number were either in salamis or in the ships, and he captured the city finding it deserted. now the capture of the city by the king had taken place ten months before the later expedition of mardonios against it. . when mardonios had come to athens, he sent to salamis morychides a man of the hellespont, bearing the same proposals as alexander the macedonian had brought over to the athenians. these he sent for the second time, being aware beforehand that the dispositions of the athenians were not friendly, but hoping that they would give way and leave their obstinacy, since the attic land had been captured by the enemy and was in his power.. . for this reason he sent morychides to salamis; and he came before the council and reported the words of mardonios. then one of the councillors, lykidas, expressed the opinion that it was better to receive the proposal which morychides brought before them and refer it to the assembly of the people. he, i say, uttered this opinion, whether because he had received money from mardonios, or because this was his own inclination: however the athenians forthwith, both those of the council and those outside, when they heard of it, were very indignant, and they came about lykidas and stoned him to death; but the hellespontian morychides they dismissed unhurt. then when there had arisen much uproar in salamis about lykidas, the women of the athenians heard of that which was being done, and one woman passing the word to another and one taking another with her, they went of their own accord to the house of lykidas and stoned his wife and his children to death. . the athenians had passed over to salamis as follows:�so long as they were looking that an army should come from the peloponnese to help them, they remained in attica; but as those in peloponnesus acted very slowly and with much delay, while the invader was said to be already in boeotia, they accordingly removed everything out of danger, and themselves passed over to salamis; and at the same time they sent envoys to lacedemon to reproach the lacedemonians for having permitted the barbarian to invade attica and for not having gone to boeotia to meet him in company with them, and also to remind them how many things the persian had promised to give the athenians if they changed sides; bidding the envoys warn them that if they did not help the athenians, the athenians would find some shelter for themselves.. . for the lacedemonians in fact were keeping a feast during this time, and celebrating the hyakinthia; and they held it of the greatest consequence to provide for the things which concerned the god, while at the same time their wall which they had been building at the isthmus was just at this moment being completed with battlements. and when the envoys from the athenians came to lacedemon, bringing with them also envoys from megara and plataia, they came in before the ephors and said as follows: "the athenians sent us saying that the king of the medes not only offers to give us back our land, but also desires to make us his allies on fair and equal terms without deceit or treachery, and is desirous moreover to give us another land in addition to our own, whichsoever we shall ourselves choose. we however, having respect for zeus of the hellenes and disdaining to be traitors to hellas, did not agree but refused, although we were unjustly dealt with by the other hellenes and left to destruction, and although we knew that it was more profitable to make a treaty with the persian than to carry on war: nor shall we make a treaty at any future time, if we have our own will. thus sincerely is our duty done towards the hellenes: but as for you, after having come then to great dread lest we should make a treaty with the persian, so soon as ye learnt certainly what our spirit was, namely that we should never betray hellas, and because your wall across the isthmus is all but finished, now ye make no account of the athenians, but having agreed with us to come to boeotia to oppose the persian, ye have now deserted us, and ye permitted the barbarian moreover to make invasion of attica. for the present then the athenians have anger against you, for ye did not do as was fitting to be done: and now they bid you with all speed send out an army together with us, in order that we may receive the barbarian in the land of attica; for since we failed of boeotia, the most suitable place to fight in our land is the thriasian plain.". . when the ephors heard this they deferred their reply to the next day, and then on the next day to the succeeding one; and this they did even for ten days, deferring the matter from day to day, while during this time the whole body of the peloponnesians were building the wall over the isthmus with great diligence and were just about to complete it. now i am not able to say why, when alexander the macedonian had come to athens, they were so very anxious lest the athenians should take the side of the medes, whereas now they had no care about it, except indeed that their wall over the isthmus had now been built, and they thought they had no need of the athenians any more; whereas when alexander came to attica the wall had not yet been completed, but they were working at it in great dread of the persians.. . at last however the answer was given and the going forth of the spartans took place in the following manner:�on the day before that which was appointed for the last hearing of the envoys, chileos a man of tegea, who of all strangers had most influence in lacedemon, heard from the ephors all that which the athenians were saying; and he, it seems, said to them these words: "thus the matter stands, ephors:�if the athenians are not friendly with us but are allies of the barbarian, then though a strong wall may have been built across the isthmus, yet a wide door has been opened for the persian into peloponnesus. listen to their request, however, before the athenians resolve upon something else tending to the fall of hellas.". . thus he counselled them, and they forthwith took his words to heart; and saying nothing to the envoys who had come from the cities, while yet it was night they sent out five thousand spartans, with no less than seven of the helots set to attend upon each man of them, appointing pausanias the son of cleombrotos to lead them forth. now the leadership belonged to pleistarchos the son of leonidas; but he was yet a boy, and the other was his guardian and cousin: for cleombrotos, the father of pausanias and son of anaxandrides, was no longer alive, but when he had led home from the isthmus the army which had built the wall, no long time after this he died. now the reason why cleombrotos led home the army from the isthmus was this:�as he was offering sacrifice for fighting against the persian, the sun was darkened in the heaven. and pausanias chose as commander in addition to himself euryanax the son of dorieos, a man of the same house.. . so pausanias with his army had gone forth out of sparta; and the envoys, when day had come, not knowing anything of this going forth, came in before the ephors meaning to depart also, each to his own state: and when they had come in before them they said these words: "ye, o lacedemonians, are remaining here and celebrating this hyakinthia and disporting yourselves, having left your allies to destruction; and the athenians being wronged by you and for want of allies will make peace with the persians on such terms as they can: and having made peace, evidently we become allies of the king, and therefore we shall join with him in expeditions against any land to which the persians may lead us; and ye will learn then what shall be the issue for you of this matter." when the envoys spoke these words, the ephors said and confirmed it with an oath, that they supposed by this time the men were at orestheion on their way against the strangers: for they used to call the barbarians "strangers." so they, not knowing of the matter, asked the meaning of these words, and asking they learnt all the truth; so that they were struck with amazement and set forth as quickly as possible in pursuit; and together with them five thousand chosen hoplites of the lacedemonian "dwellers in the country round" did the same thing also. . they then, i say, were hastening towards the isthmus; and the argives so soon as they heard that pausanias with his army had gone forth from sparta, sent as a herald to attica the best whom they could find of the long-distance runners, because they had before of their own motion engaged for mardonios that they would stop the spartans from going forth: and the herald when he came to athens spoke as follows: "mardonios, the argives sent me to tell thee that the young men have gone forth from lacedemon, and that the argives are not able to stop them from going forth: with regard to this therefore may it be thy fortune to take measures well." . . he having spoken thus departed and went back; and mardonios was by no means anxious any more to remain in attica when he heard this message. before he was informed of this he had been waiting, because he desired to know the news from the athenians as to what they were about to do; and he had not been injuring or laying waste the land of attica, because he hoped always that they would make a treaty with him; but as he did not persuade them, being now informed of everything he began to retire out of the country before the force of pausanias arrived at the isthmus, having first set fire to athens and cast down and destroyed whatever was left standing of the walls, houses or temples. now he marched away for this cause, namely first because attica was not a land where horsemen could act freely, and also because, if he should be defeated in a battle in attica, there was no way of retreat except by a narrow pass, so that a few men could stop them. he intended therefore to retreat to thebes, and engage battle near to a friendly city and to a country where horsemen could act freely. . mardonios then was retiring out of the way, and when he was already upon a road a message came to him saying that another body of troops in advance of the rest had come to megara, consisting of a thousand lacedemonians. being thus informed he took counsel with himself, desiring if possible first to capture these. therefore he turned back and proceeded to lead his army towards megara, and the cavalry going in advance of the rest overran the megaran land: this was the furthest land in europe towards the sun-setting to which this persian army came.. . after this a message came to mardonios that the hellenes were assembled at the isthmus; therefore he marched back by dekeleia, for the chiefs of boeotia had sent for those of the asopians who dwelt near the line of march, and these were his guides along the road to sphendaleis and thence to tanagra. so having encamped for the night at tanagra and on the next day having directed his march to scolos, he was within the land of the thebans. then he proceeded to cut down the trees in the lands of the thebans, although they were on the side of the medes, moved not at all by enmity to them, but pressed by urgent necessity both to make a defence for his camp, and also he was making it for a refuge, in case that when he engaged battle things should not turn out for him as he desired. now the encampment of his army extended from erythrai along by hysiai and reached the river asopos: he was not however making the wall to extend so far as this, but with each face measuring somewhere about ten furlongs. . while the barbarians were engaged upon this work, attaginos the son of phyrnon, a theban, having made magnificent preparations invited to an entertainment mardonios himself and fifty of the persians who were of most account; and these being invited came; and the dinner was given at thebes. now this which follows i heard from thersander, an orchomenian and a man of very high repute in orchomenos. this thersander said that he too was invited by attaginos to this dinner, and there were invited also fifty men of the thebans, and their host did not place them to recline separately each nation by themselves, but a persian and a theban upon every couch. then when dinner was over, as they were drinking pledges to one another, the persian who shared a couch with him speaking in the hellenic tongue asked him of what place he was, and he answered that he was of orchomenos. the other said: "since now thou hast become my table-companion and the sharer of my libation, i desire to leave behind with thee a memorial of my opinion, in order that thou thyself also mayest know beforehand and be able to take such counsels for thyself as may be profitable. dost thou see these persians who are feasting here, and the army which we left behind encamped upon the river? of all these, when a little time has gone by, thou shalt see but very few surviving." while the persian said these words he shed many tears, as thersander reported; and he marvelling at his speech said to him: "surely then it is right to tell mardonios and to those of the persians who after him are held in regard." he upon this said: "friend, that which is destined to come from god, it is impossible for a man to avert; for no man is willing to follow counsel, even when one speaks that which is reasonable. and these things which i say many of us persians know well; yet we go with the rest being bound in the bonds of necessity: and the most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event." these things i heard from thersander of orchomenos, and in addition to them this also, namely that he told them to various persons forthwith, before the battle took place at plataia. . mardonios then being encamped in boeotia, the rest of the hellenes who lived in these parts and took the side of the medes were all supplying troops and had joined in the invasion of attica, but the phokians alone had not joined in the invasion,�the phokians, i say, for these too were now actively taking the side of the medes, not of their own will however, but by compulsion. not many days however after the arrival of mardonios at thebes, there came of them a thousand hoplites, and their leader was harmokydes, the man who was of most repute among their citizens. when these too came to thebes, mardonios sent horsemen and bade the phokians take up their position by themselves in the plain. after they had so done, forthwith the whole cavalry appeared; and upon this there went a rumour through the army of hellenes which was with the medes that the cavalry was about to shoot them down with javelins, and this same report went through the phokians themselves also. then their commander harmokydes exhorted them, speaking as follows: "phokians, it is manifest that these men are meaning to deliver us to a death which we may plainly foresee, because we have been falsely accused by the thessalians, as i conjecture: now therefore it is right that every one of you prove himself a good man; for it is better to bring our lives to an end doing deeds of valour and defending ourselves, than to be destroyed by a dishonourable death offering ourselves for the slaughter. let each man of them learn that they are barbarians and that we, against whom they contrived murder, are hellenes.". . while he was thus exhorting them, the horsemen having encompassed them round were riding towards them as if to destroy them; and they were already aiming their missiles as if about to discharge them, nay some perhaps did discharge them: and meanwhile the phokians stood facing them gathered together and with their ranks closed as much as possible every way. then the horsemen turned and rode away back. now i am not able to say for certain whether they came to destroy the phokians at the request of the thessalians, and then when they saw them turn to defence they feared lest they also might suffer some loss, and therefore rode away back, for so mardonios had commanded them; or whether on the other hand he desired to make trial of them and to see if they had in them any warlike spirit. then, when the horsemen had ridden away back, mardonios sent a herald and spoke to them as follows: "be of good courage, phokians, for ye proved yourselves good men, and not as i was informed. now therefore carry on this way with zeal, for ye will not surpass in benefits either myself or the king." thus far it happened as regards the phokians. . when the lacedemonians came to the isthmus they encamped upon it, and hearing this the rest of the peloponnesians who favoured the better cause, and some also because they saw the spartans going out, did not think it right to be behind the lacedemonians in their going forth. so from the isthmus, when the sacrifices had proved favourable, they marched all together and came to eleusis; and having performed sacrifices there also, when the signs were favourable they marched onwards, and the athenians together with them, who had passed over from salamis and had joined them at eleusis. and then they had come to erythrai in boeotia, then they learnt that the barbarians were encamping on the asopos, and having perceived this they ranged themselves over against them on the lower slopes of kithairon.. . then mardonios, as the hellenes did not descend into the plain, sent towards them all his cavalry, of which the commander was masistios (by the hellenes called makistios), a man of reputation among the persians, who had a nesaian horse with a bridle of gold and in other respects finely caparisoned. so when the horsemen had ridden up to the hellenes they attacked them by squadrons, and attacking they did them much mischief, and moreover in contempt they called them women.. . now it happened by chance that the megarians were posted in the place which was the most assailable of the whole position and to which the cavalry could best approach: so as the cavalry were making their attacks, the megarians being hard pressed sent a herald to the commanders of the hellenes, and the herald having come spoke these words: "the megarians say:�we, o allies, are not able by ourselves to sustain the attacks of the persian cavalry, keeping this position where we took post at the first; nay, even hitherto by endurance and valour alone have we held out against them, hard pressed as we are: and now unless ye shall send some others to take up our position in succession to us, know that we shall leave the position in which we now are." the herald brought report to them thus; and upon this pausanias made trial of the hellenes, whether any others would voluntarily offer to go to this place and post themselves there in succession to the megarians: and when the rest were not desirous to go, the athenians undertook the task, and of the athenians those three hundred picked men of whom olympidoros the son of lampon was captain. . these they were who undertook the task and were posted at erythrai in advance of the other hellenes who ere there present, having chosen to go with them the bow-men also. for some time then they fought, and at last an end was set to the fighting in the following manner:�while the cavalry was attacking by squadrons, the horse of masistios, going in advance of the rest, was struck in the side by an arrow, and feeling pain he reared upright and threw masistios off; and when he had fallen, the athenians forthwith pressed upon him; and his horse they took and himself, as he made resistance, they slew, though at first they could not, for his equipment was of this kind,�he wore a cuirass of gold scales underneath, and over the cuirass he had put on a crimson tunic. so as they struck upon the cuirass they could effect nothing, until some one, perceiving what the matter was, thrust into his eye. then at length he fell and died; and by some means the other men of the cavalry had not observed this take place, for they neither saw him when he had fallen from his horse nor when he was being slain, and while the retreat and the turn were being made, they did not perceive that which was happening; but when they had stopped their horses, then at once they missed him, since there was no one to command them; and when they perceived what had happened, they passed the word to one another and all rode together, that they might if possible recover the body.. . the athenians upon that, seeing that the cavalry were riding to attack them no longer by squadrons but all together, shouted to the rest of the army to help them. then while the whole number of those on foot were coming to their help, there arose a sharp fight for the body; and so long as the three hundred were alone they had much the worse and were about to abandon the body, but when the mass of the army came to their help, then the horsemen no longer sustained the fight, nor did they succeed in recovering the body; and besides him they lost others of their number also. then they drew off about two furlongs away and deliberated what they should do; and it seemed good to them, as they had no commander, to ride back to mardonios.. . when the cavalry arrived at the camp, the whole army and also mardonios made great mourning for masistios, cutting off their own hair and that of their horses and baggage-animals and giving way to lamentation without stint; for all boeotia was filled with the sound of it, because one had perished who after mardonios was of the most account with the persians and with the king.. . the barbarians then were paying honours in their own manner to masistios slain: but the hellenes, when they had sustained the attack of the cavalry and having sustained it had driven them back, were much more encouraged; and first they put the dead body in a cart and conveyed it along their ranks; and the body was a sight worth seeing for its size and beauty, wherefore also the men left their places in the ranks and went one after the other to gaze upon masistios. after this they resolved to come down further towards plataia; for the region of plataia was seen to be much more convenient for them to encamp in than that of erythrai, both for other reasons and because it is better watered. to this region then and to the spring gargaphia, which is in this region, they resolved that they must come, and encamp in their several posts. so they took up their arms and went by the lower slopes of kithairon past hysiai to the plataian land; and having there arrived they posted themselves according to their several nations near the spring gargaphia and the sacred enclosure of androcrates the hero, over low hills or level ground. . then in the arranging of the several posts there arose a contention of much argument between the tegeans and the athenians; for they each claimed to occupy the other wing of the army themselves, alleging deeds both new and old. the tegeans on the one hand said as follows: "we have been always judged worthy of this post by the whole body of allies in all the common expeditions which the peloponnesians have made before this, whether in old times or but lately, ever since that time when the sons of heracles endeavoured after the death of eurystheus to return to the peloponnese. this honour we gained at that time by reason of the following event:�when with the achaians and the ionians who were then in peloponnesus we had come out to the isthmus to give assistance and were encamped opposite those who desired to return, then it is said that hyllos made a speech saying that it was not right that the one army should risk its safety by engaging battle with the other, and urging that that man of the army of the peloponnesians whom they should judge to be the best of them should fight in single combat with himself on terms concerted between them. the peloponnesians then resolved that this should be done; and they made oath with one another on this condition,�that if hyllos should conquer the leader of the peloponnesians, then the sons of heracles should return to their father's heritage; but he should be conquered, then on the other hand the sons of heracles should depart and lead away their army, and not within a hundred years attempt to return to the peloponnese. there was selected then of all the allies, he himself making a voluntary offer, echemos the son of aëropos, the son of phegeus, who was our commander and king: and he fought a single combat and slew hyllos. by reason of this deed we obtained among the peloponnesians of that time, besides many other great privileges which we still possess, this also of always leading the other wing of the army, when a common expedition is made. to you, lacedemonians, we make no opposition, but we give you freedom of choice, and allow you to command whichever wing ye desire; but of the other we say that it belongs to us to be the leaders as in former time: and apart from this deed which has been related, we are more worthy than the athenians to have this post; for in many glorious contests have we contended against you, o spartans, and in many also against others. therefore it is just that we have the other wing rather than the athenians; for they have not achieved deeds such as ours, either new or old.". . thus they spoke, and the athenians replied as follows: "though we know that this gathering was assembled for battle with the barbarian and not for speech, yet since the tegean has proposed to us as a task to speak of things both old and new, the deeds of merit namely which by each of our two nations have been achieved in all time, it is necessary for us to point out to you whence it comes that to us, who have been brave men always, it belongs as a heritage rather than to the arcadians to have the chief place. first as to the sons of heracles, whose leader they say that they slew at the isthmus, these in the former time, when they were driven away by all the hellenes to whom they came flying from slavery under those of mykene, we alone received; and joining with them we subdued the insolence of eurystheus, having conquered in fight those who then dwelt in peloponnesus. again when the argives who with polyneikes marched against thebes, had been slain and were lying unburied, we declare that we marched an army against the cadmeians and recovered the dead bodies and gave them burial in our own land at eleusis. we have moreover another glorious deed performed against the amazons who invaded once the attic land, coming from the river thermodon: and in the toils of troy we were not inferior to any. but it is of no profit to make mention of these things; for on the one hand, though we were brave men in those times, we might now have become worthless, and on the other hand even though we were then worthless, yet now we might be better. let it suffice therefore about ancient deeds; but if by us no other deed has been displayed (as many there have been and glorious, not less than by any other people of the hellenes), yet even by reason of the deed wrought at marathon alone we are worthy to have this privilege and others besides this, seeing that we alone of all the hellenes fought in single combat with the persian, and having undertaken so great a deed we overcame and conquered six-and-forty nations. are we not worthy then to have this post by reason of that deed alone? however, since at such a time as this it is not fitting to contend for post, we are ready to follow your saying, o lacedemonians, as to where ye think it most convenient that we should stand and opposite to whom; for wheresoever we are posted, we shall endeavour to be brave men. prescribe to us therefore and we shall obey." they made answer thus; and the whole body of the lacedemonians shouted aloud that the athenians were more worthy to occupy the wing than the arcadians. thus the athenians obtained the wing, and overcame the tegeans. . after this the hellenes were ranged as follows, both those of them who came in continually afterwards and those who had come at the first. the right wing was held by ten thousand lacedemonians; and of these the five thousand who were spartans were attended by thirty-five thousand helots serving as light-armed troops, seven of them appointed for each man. to stand next to themselves the spartans chose the tegeans, both to do them honour and also because of their valour; and of these there were one thousand five hundred hoplites. after these were stationed five thousand corinthians, and they had obtained permission from pausanias that the three hundred who were present of the men of potidaia in pallene should stand by their side. next to these were stationed six hundred arcadians of orchomenos; and to these three thousand sikyonians. next after these were eight hundred epidaurians: by the side of these were ranged a thousand troizenians: next to the troizenians two hundred lepreates: next to these four hundred of the men of mikene and tiryns; and then a thousand phliasians. by the side of these stood three hundred hermionians; and next to the hermionians were stationed six hundred eretrians and styrians; next to these four hundred chalkidians; and to these five hundred men of amprakia. after these stood eight hundred leucadians and anactorians; and next to them two hundred from pale in kephallenia. after these were ranged five hundred eginetans; by their side three thousand megarians; and next to these six hundred plataians. last, or if you will first, were ranged the athenians, occupying the left wing, eight thousand in number, and the commander of them was aristeides the son of lysimachos.. . these all, excepting those who were appointed to attend the spartans, seven for each man, were hoplites, being in number altogether three myriads eight thousand and seven hundred. this was the whole number of hoplites who were assembled against the barbarian; and the number of the light-armed was as follows:�of the spartan division thirty-five thousand men, reckoning at the rate of seven for each man, and of these every one was equipped for fighting; and the light-armed troops of the rest of the lacedemonians and of the other hellenes, being about one for each man, amounted to thirty-four thousand five hundred.. . of the light-armed fighting men the whole number then was six myriads nine thousand and five hundred; and of the whole hellenic force which assembled at plataia the number (including both the hoplites and the light-armed fighting men) was eleven myriads all but one thousand eight hundred men; and with the thespians who were present the number of eleven myriads was fully made up; for there were present also in the army those of the thespians who survived, being in number about one thousand eight hundred, and these too were without heavy arms. these then having been ranged in order were encamped on the river asopos. . meanwhile the barbarians with mardonios, when they had sufficiently mourned for masistios, being informed that the hellenes were at plataia came themselves also to that part of the asopos which flows there; and having arrived there, they were ranged against the enemy by mardonios thus:�against the lacedemonians he stationed the persians; and since the persians were much superior in numbers, they were arrayed in deeper ranks than those, and notwithstanding this they extended in front of the tegeans also: and he ranged them in this manner,�all the strongest part of that body he selected from the rest and stationed it opposite to the lacedemonians, but the weaker part he ranged by their side opposite to the tegeans. this he did on the information and suggestion of the thebans. then next to the persians he ranged the medes; and these extended in front of the corinthians, potidaians, orchomenians and sikyonians. next to the medes he ranged the bactrians; and these extended in front of the epidaurians, troizenians, lepreates, tirynthians, mykenians and phliasians. after the bactrians he stationed the indians; and these extended in front of the hermionians, eretrians, styrians and chalkidians. next to the indians he ranged the sacans, who extended in front of the men of amprakia, the anactorians, leucadians, palians and eginetans. next to the sacans and opposite to the athenians, plataians and megarians, he ranged the boeotians, locrians, malians, thessalians, and the thousand men of the phokians: for not all the phokians had taken the side of the medes, but some of them were even supporting the cause of the hellenes, being shut up in parnassos; and setting out from thence they plundered from the army of mardonios and from those of the hellenes who were with him. he ranged the macedonians also and those who dwell about the borders of thessaly opposite to the athenians.. . these which have been named were the greatest of the nations who were arrayed in order by mardonios, those, i mean, which were the most renowned and of greatest consideration: but there were in his army also men of several other nations mingled together, of the phrygians, thracians, mysians, paionians, and the rest; and among them also some ethiopians, and of the egyptians those called hermotybians and calasirians, carrying knives, who of all the egyptians are the only warriors. these men, while he was yet at phaleron, he had caused to disembark from the ships in which they served as fighting-men; for the egyptians had not been appointed to serve in the land-army which came with xerxes to athens. of the barbarians then there were thirty myriads, as has been declared before; but of the hellenes who were allies of mardonios no man knows what the number was, for they were not numbered; but by conjecture i judge that these were assembled to the number of five myriads. these who were placed in array side by side were on foot; and the cavalry was ranged apart from them in a separate body. . when all had been drawn up by nations and by divisions, then on the next day they offered sacrifice on both sides. for the hellenes tisamenos the son of antiochos was he who offered sacrifice, for he it was who accompanied this army as diviner. this man the lacedemonians had made to be one of their own people, being an eleian and of the race of the iamidai: for when tisamenos was seeking divination at delphi concerning issue, the pythian prophetess made answer to him that he should win five of the greatest contests. he accordingly, missing the meaning of the oracle, began to attend to athletic games, supposing that he should win contests of athletics; and he practised for the "five contests" and came within one fall of winning a victory at the olympic games, being set to contend with hieronymos of andros. the lacedemonians however perceived that the oracle given to tisamenos had reference not to athletic but to martial contests, and they endeavoured to persuade tisamenos by payment of money, and to make him a leader in their wars together with the kings of the race of heracles. he then, seeing that the spartans set much store on gaining him over as a friend, having perceived this, i say, he raised his price and signified to them that he would do as they desired, if they would make him a citizen of their state and give him full rights, but for no other payment. the spartans at first when they heard this displayed indignation and altogether gave up their request, but at last, when great terror was hanging over them of this persian armament, they gave way and consented. he then perceiving that they had changed their minds, said that he could not now be satisfied even so, nor with these terms alone; but it was necessary that his brother hegias also should be made a spartan citizen on the same terms as he himself became one.. . by saying this he followed the example of melampus in his request, if one may compare royal power with mere citizenship; for melampus on his part, when the women in argos had been seized by madness, and the argives endeavoured to hire him to come from pylos and to cause their women to cease from the malady, proposed as payment for himself the half of the royal power; and the argives did not suffer this, but departed: and afterwards, when more of their women became mad, at length they accepted that which melampus had proposed, and went to offer him this: but he then seeing that they had changed their minds, increased his demand, and said that he would not do that which they desired unless they gave to his brother bias also the third share in the royal power. and the argives, being driven into straits, consented to this also. . just so the spartans also, being very much in need of tisamenos, agreed with him on any terms which he desired: and when the spartans had agreed to this demand also, then tisamenos the eleian, having become a spartan, had part with them in winning five of the greatest contests as their diviner: and these were the only men who ever were made fellow-citizens of the spartans. now the five contests were these: one and the first of them was this at plataia; and after this the contest at tegea, which took place with the tegeans and the argives; then that at dipaieis against all the arcadians except the mantineians; after that the contest with the messenians at ithome; and last of all that which took place at tanagra against the athenians and argives. this, i say, was accomplished last of the five contests. . this tisamenos was acting now as diviner for the hellenes in the plataian land, being brought by the spartans. now to the hellenes the sacrifices were of good omen if they defended themselves only, but not if they crossed the asopos and began a battle;. , and mardonios too, who was eager to begin a battle, found the sacrifices not favourable to this design, but they were of good omen to him also if he defended himself only; for he too used the hellenic manner of sacrifice, having as diviner hegesistratos an eleian and the most famous of the telliadai, whom before these events the spartans had taken and bound, in order to put him to death, because they had suffered much mischief from him. he then being in this evil case, seeing that he was running a course for his life and was likely moreover to suffer much torment before his death, had done a deed such as may hardly be believed. being made fast on a block bound with iron, he obtained an iron tool, which in some way had been brought in, and contrived forthwith a deed the most courageous of any that we know: for having first calculated how the remaining portion of his foot might be got out of the block, he cut away the flat of his own foot, and after that, since he was guarded still by warders, he broke through the wall and so ran away to tegea, travelling during the nights and in the daytime entering a wood and resting there; so that, though the lacedemonians searched for him in full force, he arrived at tegea on the third night; and the lacedemonians were possessed by great wonder both at his courage, when they saw the piece of the foot that was cut off lying there, and also because they were not able to find him. so he at that time having thus escaped them took refuge at tegea, which then was not friendly with the lacedemonians; and when he was healed and had procured for himself a wooden foot, he became an open enemy of the lacedemonians. however in the end the enmity into which he had fallen with the lacedemonians was not to his advantage; for he was caught by them while practising divination in zakynthos, and was put to death. . however the death of hegesistratos took place later than the events at plataia, and he was now at the asopos, having been hired by mardonions for no mean sum, sacrificing and displaying zeal for his cause both on account of his enmity with the lacedemonians and on account of the gain which he got: but as the sacrifices were not favourable for a battle either for the persians themselves or for those hellenes who were with them (for these also had a diviner for themselves, hippomachos a leucadian), and as the hellenes had men constantly flowing in and were becoming more in number, timagenides the son of herpys, a theban, counselled mardonios to set a guard on the pass of kithairon, saying that the hellenes were constantly flowing in every day and that he would thus cut off large numbers.. . eight days had now passed while they had been sitting opposite to one another, when he gave this counsel to mardonios; and mardonios, perceiving that the advice was good, sent the cavalry when night came on to the pass of kithairon leading towards plataia, which the boeotians call the "three heads" and the athenians the "oak heads." having been thus sent, the cavalry did not come without effect, for they caught five hundred baggage-animals coming out into the plain, which were bearing provisions from peloponnesus to the army, and also the men who accompanied the carts: and having taken this prize the persians proceeded to slaughter them without sparing either beast or man; and when they were satiated with killing they surrounded the rest and drove them into the camp to mardonios. . after this deed they spent two days more, neither side wishing to begin a battle; for the barbarians advanced as far as the asopos to make trial of the hellenes, but neither side would cross the river. however the cavalry of mardonios made attacks continually and did damage to the hellenes; for the thebans, being very strong on the side of the medes, carried on the war with vigour, and always directed them up to the moment of fighting; and after this the persians and medes took up the work and were they who displayed valour in their turn. . for ten days then nothing more was done than this; but when the eleventh day had come, while they still sat opposite to one another at plataia, the hellenes having by this time grown much more numerous and mardonios being greatly vexed at the delay of action, then mardonios the son of gobryas and artabazos the son of pharnakes, who was esteemed by xerxes as few of the persians were besides, came to speech with one another; and as they conferred, the opinions they expressed were these,�that of artabazos, that they must put the whole army in motion as soon as possible and go to the walls of the thebans, whither great stores of corn had been brought in for them and fodder for their beasts; and that they should settle there quietly and get their business done as follows:�they had, he said, great quantities of gold, both coined and uncoined, and also of silver and of drinking-cups; and these he advised they should send about to the hellenes without stint, more especially to those of the hellenes who were leaders in their several cities; and these, he said, would speedily deliver up their freedom: and he advised that they should not run the risk of a battle. his opinion then was the same as that of the thebans, for he as well as they had some true foresight: but the opinion of mardonios was more vehement and more obstinate, and he was by no means disposed to yield; for he said that he thought their army far superior to that of the hellenes, and he gave as his opinion that they should engage battle as quickly as possible and not allow them to assemble in still greater numbers than were already assembled; and as for the sacrifices of hegesistratos, they should leave them alone and not endeavour to force a good sign, but follow the custom of the persians and engage battle.. . when he so expressed his judgment, none opposed him, and thus his opinion prevailed; for he and not artabazos had the command of the army given him by the king. he summoned therefore the commanders of the divisions and the generals of those hellenes who were with him, and asked whether they knew of any oracle regarding the persians, which said that they should be destroyed in hellas; and when those summoned to council were silent, some not knowing the oracles and others knowing them but not esteeming it safe to speak, mardonios himself said: "since then ye either know nothing or do not venture to speak, i will tell you, since i know very well. there is an oracle saying that the persians are destined when they come to hellas to plunder the temple at delphi, and having plundered it to perish every one of them. we therefore, just because we know this, will not go to that temple nor will we attempt to plunder it; and for this cause we shall not perish. so many of you therefore as chance to wish well to the persians, have joy so far as regards this matter, and be assured that we shall overcome the hellenes." having spoken to them thus, he next commanded to prepare everything and to set all in order, since at dawn of the next day a battle would be fought. . now this oracle, which mardonios said referred to the persians, i know for my part was composed with reference with the illyrians and the army of the enchelians, and not with reference to the persians at all. however, the oracle which was composed by bakis with reference to this battle, "the gathering of hellenes together and cry of barbarian voices, where the thermodon flows, by the banks of grassy asopos; here very many shall fall ere destiny gave them to perish, medes bow-bearing in fight, when the fatal day shall approach them,"� these sayings, and others like them composed by musaios, i know had reference to the persians. now the river thermodon flows between tanagra and glisas. . after the inquiry about the oracles and the exhortation given by mardonios night came on and the guards were set: and when night was far advanced, and it seemed that there was quiet everywhere in the camps, and that the men were in their deepest sleep, then alexander the son of amyntas, commander and king of the macedonians, rode his horse up to the guard-posts of the athenians and requested that he might have speech with their generals. so while the greater number of the guards stayed at their posts, some ran to the generals, and when they reached them they said that a man had come riding on a horse out of the camp of the medes, who discovered nothing further, but only named the generals and said that he desired to have speech with them.. . having heard this, forthwith they accompanied the men to the guard-posts, and when they had arrived there, alexander thus spoke to them: "athenians, i lay up these words of mine as a trust to you, charging you to keep them secret and tell them to no one except only to pausanias, lest ye bring me to ruin: for i should not utter them if i did not care greatly for the general safety of hellas, seeing that i am a hellene myself by original descent and i should not wish to see hellas enslaved instead of free. i say then that mardonios and his army cannot get the offerings to be according to their mind, for otherwise ye would long ago have fought. now however he has resolved to let the offerings alone and to bring on a battle at dawn of day; for, as i conjecture, he fears lest ye should assemble in greater numbers. therefore prepare yourselves; and if after all mardonios should put off the battle and not bring it on, stay where ye are and hold out patiently; for they have provisions only for a few days remaining. and if this way shall have its issue according to your mind, then each one of you ought to remember me also concerning liberation, since i have done for the sake of the hellenes so hazardous a deed by reason of my zeal for you, desiring to show you the design of mardonios, in order that the barbarians may not fall upon you when ye are not as yet expecting them: and i am alexander the macedonian." thus having spoken he rode away back to the camp and to his own position. . then the generals of the athenians came to the right wing and told pausanias that which they had heard from alexander. upon this saying he being struck with fear of the persians spoke as follows: "since then at dawn the battle comes on, it is right that ye, athenians, should take your stand opposite to the persians, and we opposite to the boeotians and those hellenes who are now posted against you; and for this reason, namely because ye are acquainted with the medes and with their manner of fighting, having fought with them at marathon, whereas we have had no experience of these men and are without knowledge of them; for not one of the spartans has made trial of the medes in fight, but of the boeotians and thessalians we have had experience. it is right therefore that ye should take up your arms and come to this wing of the army, and that we should go to the left wing." in answer to this the athenians spoke as follows: "to ourselves also long ago at the very first, when we saw that the persians were being ranged opposite to you, it occurred to us to say these very things, which ye now bring forward before we have uttered them; but we feared lest these words might not be pleasing to you. since however ye yourselves have made mention of this, know that your words have caused us pleasure, and that we are ready to do this which ye say.". . both then were content to do this, and as dawn appeared they began to change their positions with one another: and the boeotians perceiving that which was being done reported it to mardonios, who, when he heard it, forthwith himself also endeavoured to change positions, bringing the persians along so as to be against the lacedemonians: and when pausanias learnt that this was being done, he perceived that he was not unobserved, and he led the spartans back again to the right wing; and just so also did mardonios upon his left. . when they had been thus brought to their former positions, mardonios sent a herald to the spartans and said as follows: "lacedemonians, ye are said forsooth by those who are here to be very good men, and they have admiration for you because ye do not flee in war nor leave your post, but stay there and either destroy your enemies or perish yourselves. in this however, as it now appears, there is no truth; for before we engaged battle and came to hand-to-hand conflict we saw you already flee and leave your station, desiring to make the trial with the athenians first, while ye ranged yourselves opposite to our slaves. these are not at all the deeds of good men in war, but we were deceived in you very greatly; for we expected by reason of your renown that ye would send a herald to us, challenging us and desiring to fight with the persians alone; but though we on our part were ready to do this, we did not find that ye said anything of this kind, but rather that ye cowered with fear. now therefore since ye were not the first to say this, we are the first. why do we not forthwith fight, ye on behalf of the hellenes, since ye have the reputation of being the best, and we on behalf of the barbarians, with equal numbers on both sides? and if we think it good that the others should fight also, then let them fight afterwards; and if on the other hand we should not think it good, but think it sufficient that we alone should fight, then let us fight it out to the end, and whichsoever of us shall be the victors, let these be counted as victorious with their whole army.". . the herald having thus spoken waited for some time, and then, as no one made him any answer, he departed and went back; and having returned he signified to mardonios that which had happened to him. mardonios then being greatly rejoiced and elated by his empty victory, sent the cavalry to attack the hellenes: and when the horsemen had ridden to attack them, they did damage to the whole army of the hellenes by hurling javelins against them and shooting with bows, being mounted archers and hard therefore to fight against: and they disturbed and choked up the spring gargaphia, from which the whole army of the hellenes was drawing its water. now the lacedemonians alone were posted near this spring, and it was at some distance from the rest of the hellenes, according as they chanced to be posted, while the asopos was near at hand; but when they were kept away from the asopos, then they used to go backwards and forwards to this spring; for they were not permitted by the horsemen and archers to fetch water from the river.. . such then being the condition of things, the generals of the hellenes, since the army had been cut off from its water and was being harassed by the cavalry, assembled to consult about these and other things, coming to pausanias upon the right wing: for other things too troubled them yet more than these of which we have spoken, since they no longer had provisions, and their attendants who had been sent to peloponnese for the purpose of getting them had been cut off by the cavalry and were not able to reach the camp.. . it was resolved then by the generals in council with one another, that if the persians put off the battle for that day, they would go to the island. this is distant ten furlongs from the asopos and the spring gargaphia, where they were then encamped, and is in front of the city of the plataians: and if it be asked how there can be an island on the mainland, thus it is :�the river parts in two above, as it flows from kithairon down to the plain, keeping a distance of about three furlongs between its streams, and after that it joins again in one stream; and the name of it is oëroe, said by the natives of the country to be the daughter of asopos. to this place of which i speak they determined to remove, in order that they might be able to get an abundant supply of water and that the cavalry might not do them damage, as now when they were right opposite. and they proposed to remove when the second watch of the night should have come, so that the persians might not see them set forth and harass them with the cavalry pursuing. they proposed also, after they had arrived at this place, round which, as i say, oëroe the daughter of asopos flows, parting into two streams as she runs from kithairon, to send half the army to kithairon during this same night, in order to take up their attendants who had gone to get the supplies of provisions; for these were cut off from them in kithairon. . having thus resolved, during the whole of that day they had trouble unceasingly, while the cavalry pressed upon them; but when the day drew to a close and the attacks of the cavalry had ceased, then as it was becoming night and the time had arrived at which it had been agreed that they should retire from their place, the greater number of them set forth and began to retire, not however keeping it in mind to go to the place which had been agreed upon; but on the contrary, when they had begun to move, they readily took occasion to flee from the cavalry towards the city of the plataians, and in their flight they came as far as the temple of hera, which temple is in front of the city of the plataians at a distance of twenty furlongs from the spring gargaphia; and when they had there arrived they halted in front of the temple. . these then were encamping about the temple of hera; and pausanias, seeing that they were retiring from the camp, gave the word to the lacedemonians also to take up their arms and go after the others who were preceding them, supposing that these were going to the place to which they had agreed to go. then, when all the other commanders were ready to obey pausanias, amompharetos the son of poliades, the commander of the pitanate division, said that he would not flee from the strangers, nor with his own will would he disgrace sparta; and he expressed wonder at seeing that which was being done, not having been present at the former discussion. and pausanias and euryanax were greatly disturbed that he did not obey them and still more that they should be compelled to leave the pitanate division behind, since he thus refused; for they feared that if they should leave it in order to do that which they had agreed with the other hellenes, both amompharetos himself would perish being left behind and also the men with him. with this thought they kept the lacedemonian force from moving, and meanwhile they endeavoured to persuade him that it was not right for him to do so.. . they then were exhorting amompharetos, who had been left behind alone of the lacedemonians and tegeans; and meanwhile the athenians were keeping themselves quiet in the place where they had been posted, knowing the spirit of the lacedemonians, that they were apt to say otherwise than they really meant; and when the army began to move, they sent a horseman from their own body to see whether the spartans were attempting to set forth, or whether they had in truth no design at all to retire; and they bade him ask pausanias what they ought to do. . so when the herald came to the lacedemonians, he saw that they were still in their place and that the chiefs of them had come to strife with one another: for when euryanax and pausanias both exhorted amompharetos not to run the risk of remaining behind with his men, alone of all the lacedemonians, they did not at all persuade him, and at last they had come to downright strife; and meanwhile the herald of the athenians had arrived and was standing by them. and amompharetos in his contention took a piece of rock in both his hands and placed it at the feet of pausanias, saying that with this pebble he gave his vote not to fly from the strangers, meaning the barbarians. pausanias then, calling him a madman and one who was not in his right senses, bade tell the state of their affairs to the athenian herald, who was asking that which he had been charged to ask; and at the same time he requested the athenians to come towards the lacedemonians and to do in regard to the retreat the same as they did.. . he then went away back to the athenians; and as the dawn of day found them yet disputing with one another, pausanias, who had remained still throughout all this time, gave the signal, and led away all the rest over the low hills, supposing that amonpharetos would not stay behind when the other lacedemonians departed (in which he was in fact right); and with them also went the tegeans. meanwhile the athenians, following the commands which were given them, were going in the direction opposite to that of the lacedemonians; for these were clinging to the hills and the lower slope of kithairon from fear of the cavalry, while the athenians were marching below in the direction of the plain.. . as for amonpharetos, he did not at first believe that pausanias would ever venture to leave him and his men behind, and he stuck to it that they should stay there and not leave their post; but when pausanias and his troops were well in front, then he perceived that they had actually left him behind, and he made his division take up their arms and led them slowly towards the main body. this, when it had got away about ten furlongs, stayed for the division of amompharetos, halting at the river moloeis and the place called argiopion, where also there stands a temple of the eleusinian demeter: and it stayed there for this reason, namely in order that of amonpharetos and his division should not leave the place where they had been posted, but should remain there, it might be able to come back to their assistance. so amompharetos and his men were coming up to join them, and the cavalry also of the barbarians was at the same time beginning to attack them in full force: for the horsemen did on this day as they had been wont to do every day; and seeing the place vacant in which the hellenes had been posted on the former days, they rode their horses on continually further, and as soon as they came up with them they began to attack them. . then mardonios, when he was informed that the hellenes had departed during the night, and when he saw their place deserted, called thorax of larissa and his brothers eurypylos and thrasydeios, and said: "sons of aleuas, will ye yet say anything, now that ye see these places deserted? for ye who dwell near them were wont to say that the lacedemonians did not fly from a battle, but were men unsurpassed in war; and these men ye not only saw before this changing from their post, but now we all of us see that they have run away during the past night; and by this they showed clearly, when the time came for them to contend in battle with those who were in truth the best of all men, that after all they were men of no worth, who had been making a display of valour among hellenes, a worthless race. as for you, since ye had had no experience of the persians, i for my part was very ready to excuse you when ye praised these, of whom after all ye knew something good; but much more i marvelled at artabazos that he should have been afraid of the lacedemonians, and that having been afraid he should have uttered that most cowardly opinion, namely that we ought to move our army away and go to the city of the thebans to be besieged there,�an opinion about which the king shall yet be informed by me. of these things we will speak in another place; now however we must not allow them to act thus, but we must pursue them until they are caught and pay the penalty to us for all that they did to the persians in time past.". . thus having spoken he led on the persians at a run, after they had crossed the asopos, on the track of the hellenes, supposing that these were running away from him; and he directed his attack upon the lacedemonians and tegeans only, for the athenians, whose march was towards the plain, he did not see by reason of the hills. then the rest of the commanders of the barbarian divisions, seeing that the persians had started to pursue the hellenes, forthwith all raised the signals for battle and began to pursue, each as fast as they could, not arranged in any order or succession of post.. . these then were coming on with shouting and confused numbers, thinking to make short work of the hellenes; and pausanias, when the cavalry began to attack, sent to the athenians a horseman and said thus: "athenians, now that the greatest contest is set before us, namely that which has for its issue the freedom or the slavery of hellas, we have been deserted by our allies, we lacedemonians and ye athenians, seeing that they have run away during the night that is past. now therefore it is determined what we must do upon this, namely that we must defend ourselves and protect one another as best we may. if then the cavalry had set forth to attack you at the first, we and the tegeans, who with us refuse to betray the cause of hellas, should have been bound to go to your help; but as it is, since the whole body has come against us, it is right that ye should come to that portion of the army which is hardest pressed, to give aid. if however anything has happened to you which makes it impossible for you to come to our help, then do us a kindness by sending to us the archers; and we know that ye have been in the course of this present war by far the most zealous of all, so that ye will listen to our request in this matter also.". . when the athenians heard this they were desirous to come to their help and to assist them as much as possible; and as they were already going, they were attacked by those of the hellenes on the side of the king who had been ranged opposite to them, so that they were no longer able to come to the help of the lacedemonians, for the force that was attacking them gave them much trouble. thus the lacedemonians and tegeans were left alone, being in number, together with light-armed men, the former fifty thousand and the tegeans three thousand; for these were not parted at all from the lacedemonians: and they began to offer sacrifice, meaning to engage battle with mardonios and the force which had come against them. then since their offerings did not prove favourable, and many of them were being slain during this time and many more wounded,�for the persians had made a palisade of their wicker-work shields and were discharging their arrows in great multitude and without sparing,�pausanias, seeing that the spartans were hard pressed and that the offerings did not prove favourable, fixed his gaze upon the temple of hera of the plataians and called upon the goddess to help, praying that they might by no means be cheated of their hope:. , and while he was yet calling upon her thus, the tegeans started forward before them and advanced against the barbarians, and forthwith after the prayer of pausanias the offerings proved favourable for the lacedemonians as they sacrificed. so when this at length came to pass, then they also advanced against the persians; and the persians put away their bows and came against them. then first there was fighting about the wicker-work shields, and when these had been overturned, after that the fighting was fierce by the side of the temple of demeter, and so continued for a long time, until at last they came to justling; for the barbarians would take hold of the spears and break them off. now in courage and in strength the persians were not inferior to the others, but they were without defensive armour, and moreover they were unversed in war and unequal to their opponents in skill; and they would dart out one at a time or in groups of about ten together, some more and some less, and fall upon the spartans and perish.. . in the place where mardonios himself was, riding on a white horse and having about him the thousand best men of the persians chosen out from the rest, here, i say, they pressed upon their opponents most of all: and so long as mardonios survived, they held out against them, and defending themselves they cast down many of the lacedemonians; but when mardonios was slain and the men who were ranged about his person, which was the strongest portion of the whole army, had fallen, then the others too turned and gave way before the lacedemonians; for their manner of dress, without defensive armour, was a very great cause of destruction to them, since in truth they were contending light-armed against hoplites.. . then the satisfaction for the murder of leonidas was paid by mardonios according to the oracle given to the spartans, and the most famous victory of all those about which we have knowledge was gained by pausanias the son of cleombrotos, the son of anaxandrides; of his ancestors above this the names have been given for leonidas, since, as it happens, they are the same for both. now mardonios was slain by arimnestos, a man of consideration in sparta, who afterwards, when the median wars were over, with three hundred men fought a battle against the whole army of the messenians, then at war with the lacedemonians, at stenycleros, and both he was slain and also the three hundred.. . when the persians were turned to flight at plataia by the lacedemonians, they fled in disorder to their own camp and to the palisade which they had made in the theban territory: and it is a marvel to me that, whereas they fought by the side of the sacred grove of demeter, not one of the persians was found to have entered the enclosure or to have been slain within it, but round about the temple in the unconsecrated ground fell the greater number of the slain. i suppose (if one ought to suppose anything about divine things) that the goddess herself refused to receive them, because they had set fire to the temple, that is to say the "palace" at eleusis. . thus far then had this battle proceeded: but artabazos the son of pharnakes had been displeased at the very first because mardonios remained behind after the king was gone; and afterwards he had been bringing forward objections continually and doing nothing, but had urged them always not to fight a battle: and for himself he acted as follows, not being pleased with the things which were being done by mardonios.�the men of whom artabazos was commander (and he had with him no small force but one which was in number as much as four myriads of men), these, when the fighting began, being well aware what the issue of the battle would be, he led carefully, having first given orders that all should go by the way which he should lead them and at the same pace at which they should see him go. having given these orders he led his troops on pretence of taking them into battle; and when he was well on his way, he saw the persians already taking flight. then he no longer led his men in the same order as before, but set off at a run, taking flight by the quickest way not to the palisade nor yet to the wall of the thebans, but towards phokis, desiring as quickly as possible to reach the hellespont.. . these, i say, were thus directing their march: and in the meantime, while the other hellenes who were on the side of the king were purposely slack in the fight, the boeotians fought with the athenians for a long space; for those of the thebans who took the side of the medes had no small zeal for the cause, and they fought and were not slack, so that three hundred of them, the first and best of all, fell there by the hands of the athenians: and when these also turned to flight, they fled to thebes, not to the same place as the persians: and the main body of the other allies fled without having fought constantly with any one or displayed any deeds of valour.. . and this is an additional proof to me that all the fortunes of the barbarians depended upon the persians, namely that at that time these men fled before they had even engaged with the enemy, because they saw the persians doing so. thus all were in flight except only the cavalry, including also that of the boeotians; and this rendered service to the fugitives by constantly keeping close to the enemy and separating the fugitives of their own side from the hellenes.. . the victors then were coming after the troops of xerxes, both pursuing them and slaughtering them; and during the time when this panic arose, the report was brought to the other hellenes who had posted themselves about the temple of hera and had been absent from the battle, that a battle had taken place and that the troops of pausanias were gaining the victory. when they heard this, then without ranging themselves in any order the corinthians and those near them turned to go by the skirts of the mountain and by the low hills along the way which led straight up to the temple of demeter, while the megarians and phliasians and those near them went by the plain along the smoothest way. when however the megarians and phliasians came near to the enemy, the cavalry of the thebans caught sight of them from a distance hurrying along without any order, and rode up to attack them, the commander of the cavalry being asopodoros the son of timander; and having fallen upon them they slew six hundred of them, and the rest they pursued and drove to kithairon. . these then perished thus ingloriously; and meanwhile the persians and the rest of the throng, having fled for refuge to the palisade, succeeded in getting up to the towers before the lacedemonians came; and having got up they strengthened the wall of defence as best they could. then when the lacedemonians came up to attack it, there began between them a vigorous fight for the wall: for so long as the athenians were away, they defended themselves and had much the advantage over the lacedemonians, since these did not understand the art of fighting against walls; but when the athenians came up to help them, then there was a fierce fight for the wall, lasting for a long time, and at length by valour and endurance the athenians mounted up on the wall and made a breach in it, through which the hellenes poured in. now the tegeans were the first who entered the wall, and these were they who plundered the tent of mardonios, taking, besides the other things which were in it, also the manger of his horse, which was all of bronze and a sight worth seeing. this manger of mardonios was dedicated by the tegeans as an offering in the temple of athene alea, but all the other things which they took, they brought to the common stock of the hellenes. the barbarians however, after the wall had been captured, no longer formed themselves into any close body, nor did any of them think of making resistance, but they were utterly at a loss, as you might expect from men who were in a panic with many myriads of them shut up together in a small space: and the hellenes were able to slaughter them so that out of an army of thirty myriads, if those four be subtracted which artabazos took with him in his flight, of the remainder not three thousand men survived. of the lacedemonians from sparta there were slain in the battle ninety-one in all, of the tegeans sixteen, and of the athenians two-and-fifty. . among the barbarians those who proved themselves the best men were, of those on foot the persians, and of the cavalry the sacans, and for a single man mardonios it is said was the best. of the hellenes, though both the tegeans and the athenians proved themselves good men, yet the lacedemonians surpassed them in valour. of this i have no other proof (for all these were victorious over their opposites), but only this, that they fought against the strongest part of the enemy's force and overcame it. and the man who proved himself in my opinion by much the best was that aristodemos who, having come back safe from thermopylai alone of the three hundred, had reproach and dishonour attached to him. after him the best were poseidonios and philokyon and amompharetos the spartan. however, when there came to be conversation as to which of them had proved himself the best, the spartans who were present gave it as their opinion that aristodemos had evidently wished to be slain in consequence of the charge which lay against him, and so, being as it were in a frenzy and leaving his place in the ranks, he had displayed great deeds, whereas poseidonios had proved himself a good man although he did not desire to be slain; and so far he was the better man of the two. this however they perhaps said from ill-will; and all these whose names i mentioned among the men who were killed in this battle, were specially honoured, except aristodemos; but aristodemos, since he desired to be slain on account of the before-mentioned charge, was not honoured. . these obtained the most renown of those who fought at plataia, for as for callicrates, the most beautiful who came to the camp, not of the lacedemonians alone, but also of all the hellenes of his time, he was not killed in the battle itself; but when pausanias was offering sacrifice, he was wounded by an arrow in the side, as he was sitting down in his place in the ranks; and while the others were fighting, he having been carried out of the ranks was dying a lingering death: and he said to arimnestos a plataian that it did not grieve him to die for hellas, but it grieved him only that he had not proved his strength of hand, and that no deed of valour had been displayed by him worthy of the spirit which he had in him to perform great deeds. . of the athenians the man who gained most glory is said to have been sophanes the son of eutychides of the deme of dekeleia,�a deme of which the inhabitants formerly did a deed that was of service to them for all time, as the athenians themselves report. for when of old the sons of tyndareus invaded the attic land with a great host, in order to bring home helen, and were laying waste the demes, not knowing to what place of hiding helen had been removed, then they say that the men of dekeleia, or as some say dekelos himself, being aggrieved by the insolence of theseus and fearing for all the land of the athenians, told them the whole matter and led them to aphidnai, which titakos who was sprung from the soil delivered up by treachery to the sons of tyndareus. in consequence of this deed the dekeleians have had continually freedom from dues in sparta and front seats at the games, privileges which exist still to this day; insomuch that even in the war which many years after these events arose between the athenians and the peloponnesians, when the lacedemonians laid waste all the rest of attica, they abstained from injury to dekeleia.. . to this deme belonged sophanes, who showed himself the best of all the athenians in this battle; and of him there are two different stories told: one that he carried an anchor of iron bound by chains of bronze to the belt of his corslet; and this he threw whensoever he came up with the enemy, in order, they say, that the enemy when they came forth out of their ranks might not be able to move him from his place; and when a flight of his opponents took place, his plan was to take up the anchor first and then pursue after them. this story is reported thus; but the other of the stories, disputing the truth of that which has been told above, is reported as follows, namely that upon his shield, which was ever moving about and never remaining still, he bore an anchor as a device, and not one of iron bound to his corslet. . there was another illustrious deed done too by sophanes; for when the athenians besieged egina he challenged to a fight and slew eurybates the argive, one who had been victor in the five contests at the games. to sophanes himself it happened after these events that when he was general of the athenians together with leagros the son of glaucon, he was slain after proving himself a good man by the edonians at daton, fighting for the gold mines. . when the barbarians had been laid low by the hellenes at plataia, there approached to these a woman, the concubine of pharandates the son of teaspis a persian, coming over of her own free will from the enemy, who when she perceived that the persians had been destroyed and that the hellenes were the victors, descended from her carriage and came up to the lacedemonians while they were yet engaged in the slaughter. this woman had adorned herself with many ornaments of gold, and her attendants likewise, and she had put on the fairest robe of those which she had; and when she saw that pausanias was directing everything there, being well acquainted before with his name and with his lineage, because she had heard it often, she recognised pausanias and taking hold of his knees she said these words: "o king of sparta, deliver me thy suppliant from the slavery of the captive: for thou hast also done me service hitherto in destroying these, who have regard neither for demigods nor yet for gods. i am by race of cos, the daughter of hegetorides the son of antagoras; and the persian took me by force in cos and kept me a prisoner." he made answer in these words: "woman, be of good courage, both because thou art a suppliant, and also if in addition to this it chances that thou art speaking the truth and art the daughter of hegetorides the coan, who is bound to me as a guest-friend more than any other of the men who dwell in those parts." having thus spoken, for that time her gave her in charge to those ephors who were present, and afterwards he sent her away to egina, whither she herself desired to go. . after the arrival of the woman, forthwith upon this arrived the mantineians, when all was over; and having learnt that they had come too late for the battle, they were greatly grieved, and said that they deserved to be punished: and being informed that the medes with artabazos were in flight, they pursued after them as far as thessaly, though the lacedemonians endeavoured to prevent them from pursuing after fugitives. then returning back to their own country they sent the leaders of their army into exile from the land. after the mantineians came the eleians; and they, like the mantineians, were greatly grieved by it and so departed home; and these also when they had returned sent their leaders into exile. so much of the mantineians and eleians. . at plataia among the troops of the eginetans was lampon the son of pytheas, one of the leading men of the eginetans, who was moved to go to pausanias with a most impious proposal, and when he had come with haste, he said as follows: "son of cleombrotos, a deed has been done by thee which is of marvellous greatness and glory, and to thee god has permitted by rescuing hellas to lay up for thyself the greatest renown of all the hellenes about whom we have any knowledge. do thou then perform also that which remains to do after these things, in order that yet greater reputation may attach to thee, and also that in future every one of the barbarians may beware of being the beginner of presumptuous deeds towards the hellenes. for when leonidas was slain at thermopylai, mardonios and xerxes cut off his head and crucified him: to him therefore do thou repay like with like, and thou shalt have praise first from all the spartans and then secondly from the other hellenes also; for if thou impale the body of mardonios, thou wilt then have taken vengeance for leonidas thy father's brother.". . he said this thinking to give pleasure; but the other made him answer in these words: "stranger of egina, i admire thy friendly spirit and thy forethought for me, but thou hast failed of a good opinion nevertheless: for having exalted me on high and my family and my deed, thou didst then cast me down to nought by advising me to do outrage to a dead body, and by saying that if i do this i shall be better reported of. these things it is more fitting for barbarians to do than for hellenes; and even with them we find fault for doing so. however that may be, i do not desire in any such manner as this to please either eginetans or others who like such things; but it is enough for me that i should keep from unholy deeds, yea and from unholy speech also, and so please the spartans. as for leonidas, whom thou biddest me avenge, i declare that he has been greatly avenged already, and by the unnumbered lives which have been taken of these men he has been honoured, and not he only but also the rest who brought their lives to an end at thermopylai. as for thee however, come not again to me with such a proposal, nor give me such advice; and be thankful moreover that thou hast no punishment for it now." . he having heard this went his way; and pausanias made a proclamation that none should lay hands upon the spoil, and he ordered the helots to collect the things together. they accordingly dispersed themselves about the camp and found tents furnished with gold and silver, and beds overlaid with gold and overlaid with silver, and mixing-bowls of gold, and cups and other drinking vessels. they found also sacks laid upon waggons, in which there proved to be caldrons both of gold and of silver; and from the dead bodies which lay there they stripped bracelets and collars, and also their swords if they were of gold, for as to embroidered raiment, there was no account made of it. then the helots stole many of the things and sold them to the eginetans, but many things also they delivered up, as many of them as they could not conceal; so that the great wealth of the eginetans first came from this, that they bought the gold from the helots making pretence that it was brass.. . then having brought the things together, and having set apart a tithe for the god of delphi, with which the offering was dedicated of the golden tripod which rests upon the three-headed serpent of bronze and stands close by the altar, and also for the god at olympia, with which they dedicated the offering of a bronze statue of zeus ten cubits high, and finally for the god at the isthmus, with which was made a bronze statue of poseidon seven cubits high,�having set apart these things, they divided the rest, and each took that which they ought to have, including the concubines of the persians and the gold and the silver and the other things, and also the beasts of burden. how much was set apart and given to those of them who had proved themselves the best men at plataia is not reported by any, though for my part i suppose that gifts were made to these also; pausanias however had ten of each thing set apart and given to him, that is women, horses, talents, camels, and so also of the other things. . it is said moreover that this was done which here follows, namely that xerxes in his flight from hellas had left to mardonios the furniture of his own tent, and pausanias accordingly seeing the furniture of mardonios furnished with gold and silver and hangings of different colours ordered the bakers and the cooks to prepare a meal as they were used to do for mardonios. then when they did this as they had been commanded, it is said that pausanias seeing the couches of gold and of silver with luxurious coverings, and the tables of gold and silver, and the magnificent apparatus of the feast, was astonished at the good things set before him, and for sport he ordered his own servants to prepare a laconian meal; and as, when the banquet was served, the difference between the two was great, pausanias laughed and sent for the commanders of the hellenes; and when these had come together, pausanias said, pointing to the preparation of the two meals severally: "hellenes, for this reason i assembled you together, because i desired to show you the senselessness of this leader of the medes, who having such fare as this, came to us who have such sorry fare as ye see here, in order to take it away from us." thus it is said that pausanias spoke to the commanders of the hellenes. . however, in later time after these events many of the plataians also found chests of gold and of silver and of other treasures; and moreover afterwards this which follows was seen in the case of the dead bodies here, after the flesh had been stripped off from the bones; for the plataians brought together the bones all to one place:�there was found, i say, a skull with no suture but all of one bone, and there was seen also a jaw-bone, that is to say the upper part of the jaw, which had teeth joined together and all of one bone, both the teeth that bite and those that grind; and the bones were seen also of a man five cubits high.. . the body of mardonios however had disappeared on the day after the battle, taken by whom i am not able with certainty to say, but i have heard the names of many men of various cities who are said to have buried mardonios, and i know that many received gifts from artontes the son of mardonios for having done this: who he was however who took up and buried the body of mardonios i am not able for certain to discover, but dionysophanes an ephesian is reported with some show of reason to have been he who buried mardonios.. . he then was buried in some such manner as this: and the hellenes when they had divided the spoil at plataia proceeded to bury their dead, each nation apart by themselves. the spartans made for themselves three several burial-places, one in which they buried the younger spartans, of whom also were poseidonios, amompharetos, philokyon and callicrates,�in one of the graves, i say, were laid the younger men, in the second the rest of the spartans, and in the third the helots. these then thus buried their dead; but the tegeans buried theirs all together in a place apart from these, and the athenians theirs together; and the megarians and phliasians those who had been slain by the cavalry. of all these the burial-places had bodies laid in them, but as to the burial-places of other states which are to be seen at plataia, these, as i am informed, are all mere mounds of earth without any bodies in them, raised by the several peoples on account of posterity, because they were ashamed of their absence from the fight; for among others there is one there called the burial-place of the eginetans, which i hear was raised at the request of the eginetans by cleades the son of autodicos, a man of plataia who was their public guest-friend, no less than ten years after these events. . when the hellenes had buried their dead at plataia, forthwith they determined in common council to march upon thebes and to ask the thebans to surrender those who had taken the side of the medes, and among the first of them timagenides and attaginos, who were leaders equal to the first; and if the thebans did not give them up, they determined not to retire from the city until they had taken it. having thus resolved, they came accordingly on the eleventh day after the battle and began to besiege the thebans, bidding them give the men up: and as the thebans refused to give them up, they began to lay waste their land and also to attack their wall.. . so then, as they did not cease their ravages, on the twentieth day timagenides spoke as follows to the thebans: "thebans, since it has been resolved by the hellenes not to retire from the siege until either they have taken thebes or ye have delivered us up to them, now therefore let not the land of boeotia suffer any more for our sakes, but if they desire to have money and are demanding our surrender as a colour for this, let us give them money taken out of the treasury of the state; for we took the side of the medes together with the state and not by ourselves alone: but if they are making the siege truly in order to get us into their hands, then we will give ourselves up for trial." in this it was thought that he spoke very well and seasonably, and the thebans forthwith sent a herald to pausanias offering to deliver up the men.. . after they had made an agreement on these terms, attaginos escaped out of the city; and when his sons were delivered up to pausanias, he released them from the charge, saying that the sons had no share in the guilt of taking the side of the medes. as to the other men whom the thebans delivered up, they supposed that they would get a trial, and they trusted moreover to be able to repel the danger by payment of money; but pausanias, when he had received them, suspecting this very thing, first dismissed the whole army of allies, and then took the men to corinth and put them to death there. these were the things which happened at plataia and at thebes. . artabazos meanwhile, the son of pharnakes, in his flight from plataia was by this time getting forward on his way: and the thessalians, when he came to them, offered him hospitality and inquired concerning the rest of the army, not knowing anything of that which had happened at plataia; and artabazos knowing that if he should tell them the whole truth about the fighting, he would run the risk of being destroyed, both himself and the whole army which was with him, (for he thought that they would all set upon him if they were informed of that which had happened),�reflecting, i say, upon this he had told nothing of it to the phokians, and now to the thessalians he spoke as follows: "i, as you see, thessalians, am earnest to march by the shortest way to thracia; and i am in great haste, having been sent with these men for a certain business from the army; moreover mardonios himself and his army are shortly to be looked for here, marching close after me. to him give entertainment and show yourselves serviceable, for ye will not in the end repent of so doing." having thus said he continued to march his army with haste through thessaly and macedonia straight for thracia, being in truth earnest to proceed and going through the land by the shortest possible way: and so he came to byzantion, having left behind him great numbers of his army, who had either been cut down by the thracians on the way or had been overcome by hunger and fatigue; and from byzantion he passed over in ships. he himself then thus made his return back to asia. . now on the same day on which the defeat took place at plataia, another took place also, as fortune would have it, at mycale in ionia. for when the hellenes who had come in the ships with leotychides the lacedemonian, were lying at delos, there came to them as envoys from samos lampon the son of thrasycles and athenagoras the son of archestratides and hegesistratos the son of aristagoras, who had been sent by the people of samos without the knowledge either of the persians or of the despot theomestor the son of androdamas, whom the persians had set up to be despot of samos. when these had been introduced before the commanders, hegesistratos spoke at great length using arguments of all kinds, and saying that so soon as the ionians should see them they would at once revolt from the persians, and that the barbarians would not wait for their attack; and if after all they did so, then the hellenes would take a prize such as they would never take again hereafter; and appealing to the gods worshipped in common he endeavoured to persuade them to rescue from slavery men who were hellenes and to drive away the barbarian: and this he said was easy for them to do, for the ships of the enemy sailed badly and were no match for them in fight. moreover if the hellenes suspected that they were endeavouring to bring them on by fraud, they were ready to be taken as hostages in their ships.. . then as the stranger of samos was urgent in his prayer, leotychides inquired thus, either desiring to hear for the sake of the omen or perhaps by a chance which providence brought about: "stranger of samos, what is thy name?" he said "hegesistratos." the other cut short the rest of the speech, stopping all that hegesistratos had intended to say further, and said: "i accept the augury given in hegesistratos, stranger of samos. do thou on thy part see that thou give us assurance, thou and the men who are with thee, that the samians will without fail be our zealous allies, and after that sail away home.". . thus he spoke and to the words he added the deed; for forthwith the samians gave assurance and made oaths of alliance with the hellenes, and having so done the others sailed away home, but hegesistratos he bade sail with the hellenes, considering the name to be an augury of good success. then the hellenes after staying still that day made sacrifices for success on the next day, their diviner being deïphonos the son of euenios an apolloniate, of that apollonia which lies in the ionian gulf. . . to this man's father euenios it happened as follows:�there are at this place apollonia sheep sacred to the sun, which during the day feed by a river running from mount lacmon through the land of apollonia to the sea by the haven of oricos; and by night they are watched by men chosen for this purpose, who are the most highly considered of the citizens for wealth and noble birth, each man having charge of them for a year; for the people of apollonia set great store on these sheep by reason of an oracle: and they are folded in a cave at some distance from the city. here at the time of which i speak this man euenios was keeping watch over them, having been chosen for that purpose; and it happened one night that he fell asleep during his watch, and wolves came by into the cave and killed about sixty of the sheep. when he perceived this, he kept it secret and told no one, meaning to buy others and substitute them in the place of those that were killed. it was discovered however by the people of apollonia that this had happened; and when they were informed of it, they brought him up before a court and condemned him to be deprived of his eyesight for having fallen asleep during his watch. but when they had blinded euenios, forthwith after this their flocks ceased to bring forth young and their land to bear crops as before. then prophesyings were uttered to them both at dodona and also at delphi, when they asked the prophets the cause of the evil which they were suffering, and they told them that they had done unjustly in depriving of his sight euenios the watcher of the sacred sheep; for the gods of whom they inquired had themselves sent the wolves to attack the sheep; and they would not cease to take vengeance for him till the men of apollonia should have paid to euenios such satisfaction as he himself should choose and deem sufficient; and this being fulfilled, the gods would give to euenios a gift of such a kind that many men would think him happy in that he possessed it.. . these oracles then were uttered to them, and the people of apollonia, making a secret of it, proposed to certain men of the citizens to manage the affair; and they managed it for them thus:�when euenios was sitting on a seat in public, they came and sat by him, and conversed about other matters, and at last they came to sympathising with him in his misfortune; and thus leading him on they asked what satisfaction he should choose, if the people of apollonia should undertake to give him satisfaction for that which they had done. he then, not having heard the oracle, made choice and said that if there should be given him the lands belonging to certain citizens, naming those whom he knew to possess the two best lots of land in apollonia, and a dwelling-house also with these, which he knew to be the best house in the city,�if he became the possessor of these, he said, he would have no anger against them for the future, and this satisfaction would be sufficient for him if it should be given. then as he was thus speaking, the men who sat by him said interrupting him: "euenios, this satisfaction the apolloniates pay to thee for thy blinding in accordance with the oracles which have been given to them." upon this he was angry, being thus informed of the whole matter and considering that he had been deceived; and they bought the property from those who possessed it and gave him that which he had chosen. and forthwith after this he had a natural gift of divination, so that he became very famous.. . of this euenios, i say, deïphonos was the son, and he was acting as diviner for the army, being brought by the corinthians. i have heard however also that deïphonos wrongly made use of the name of euenios, and undertook work of this kind about hellas, not being really the son of euenios. . now when the sacrifices were favourable to the hellenes, they put their ships to sea from delos to go to samos; and having arrived off calamisa in samos, they moored their ships there opposite the temple of hera which is at this place, and made preparations for a sea-fight; but the persians, being informed that they were sailing thither, put out to sea also and went over to the mainland with their remaining ships, (those of the phenicians having been already sent away to sail home): for deliberating of the matter they thought it good not to fight a battle by sea, since they did not think that they were a match for the enemy. and they sailed away to the mainland in order that they might be under the protection of their land-army which was in mycale, a body which had stayed behind the rest of the army by command of xerxes and was keeping watch over ionia: of this the number was six myriads and the commander of it was tigranes, who in beauty and stature excelled the other persians. the commanders of the fleet then had determined to take refuge under the protection of this army, and to draw up their ships on shore and put an enclosure round as a protection for the ships and a refuge for themselves.. . having thus determined they began to put out to sea; and they came along by the temple of the "revered goddesses" to the gaison and to scolopoeis in mycale, where there is a temple of the eleusinian demeter, which philistos the son of pasicles erected when he had accompanied neileus the son of codros for the founding of miletos; and there they drew up their ships on shore and put an enclosure round them of stones and timber, cutting down fruit-trees for this purpose, and they fixed stakes round the enclosure and made their preparations either for being besieged or for gaining a victory, for in making their preparations they reckoned for both chances. . the hellenes however, when they were informed that the barbarians had gone away to the mainland, were vexed because they thought that they had escaped; and they were in a difficulty what they should do, whether they should go back home, or sail down towards the hellespont. at last they resolved to do neither of these two things, but to sail on to the mainland. therefore when they had prepared as for a sea-fight both boarding-bridges and all other things that were required, they sailed towards mycale; and when they came near to the camp and no one was seen to put out against them, but they perceived ships drawn up within the wall and a large land-army ranged along the shore, then first leotychides, sailing along in his ship and coming as near to the shore as he could, made proclamation by a herald to the ionians, saying: "ionians, those of you who chance to be within hearing of me, attend to this which i say: for the persians will not understand anything at all of that which i enjoin to you. when we join battle, each one of you must remember first the freedom of all, and then the watchword 'hebe'; and this let him also who has not heard know from him who has heard." the design in this act was the same as that of themistocles at artemision; for it was meant that either the words uttered should escape the knowledge of the barbarians and persuade the ionians, or that they should be reported to the barbarians and make them distrustful of the hellenes. . after leotychides had thus suggested, then next the hellenes proceeded to bring their ships up to land, and they disembarked upon the shore. these then were ranging themselves for fight; and the persians, when they saw the hellenes preparing for battle and also that they had given exhortation to the ionians, in the first place deprived the samians of their arms, suspecting that they were inclined to the side of the hellenes; for when the athenian prisoners, the men whom the army of xerxes had found left behind in attica, had come in the ships of the barbarians, the samians had ransomed these and sent them back to athens, supplying them with means for their journey; and for this reason especially they were suspected, since they had ransomed five hundred persons of the enemies of xerxes. then secondly the persians appointed the milesians to guard the passes which lead to the summits of mycale, on the pretext that they knew the country best, but their true reason for doing this was that they might be out of the camp. against these of the ionians, who, as they suspected, would make some hostile move if they found the occasion, the persians sought to secure themselves in the manner mentioned; and they themselves then brought together their wicker-work shields to serve them as a fence. . then when the hellenes had made all their preparations, they proceeded to the attack of the barbarians; and as they went, a rumour came suddenly to their whole army, and at the same time a herald's staff was found lying upon the beach; and the rumour went through their army to this effect, namely that the hellenes were fighting in boeotia and conquering the army of mardonios. now by many signs is the divine power seen in earthly things, and by this among others, namely that now, when the day of the defeat at plataia and of that which was about to take place at mycale happened to be the same, a rumour came to the hellenes here, so that the army was encouraged much more and was more eagerly desirous to face the danger.. . moreover this other thing by coincidence happened besides, namely that there was a sacred enclosure of the eleusinian demeter close by the side of both the battle-fields; for not only in the plataian land did the fight take place close by the side of the temple of demeter, as i have before said, but also in mycale it was to be so likewise. and whereas the rumour which came to them said that a victory had been already gained by the hellenes with pausanias, this proved to be a true report; for that which was done at plataia came about while it was yet early morning, but the fighting at mycale took place in the afternoon; and that it happened on the same day of the same month as the other became evident to them not long afterwards, when they inquired into the matter. now they had been afraid before the rumour arrived, not for themselves so much as for the hellenes generally, lest hellas should stumble and fall over mardonios; but when this report had come suddenly to them, they advanced on the enemy much more vigorously and swiftly than before. the hellenes then and the barbarians were going with eagerness into the battle, since both the islands and the hellespont were placed before them as prizes of the contest. . now for the athenians and those who were ranged next to them, to the number perhaps of half the whole army, the road lay along the sea-beach and over level ground, while the lacedemonians and those ranged in order by these were compelled to go by a ravine and along the mountain side: so while the lacedemonians were yet going round, those upon the other wing were already beginning the fight; and as long as the wicker-work shields of the persians still remained upright, they continued to defend themselves and had rather the advantage in the fight; but when the troops of the athenians and of those ranged next to them, desiring that the achievement should belong to them and not to the lacedemonians, with exhortations to one another set themselves more vigorously to the work, then from that time forth the fortune of the fight was changed; for these pushed aside the wicker-work shields and fell upon the persians with a rush all in one body, and the persians sustained their first attack and continued to defend themselves for a long time, but at last they fled to the wall; and the athenians, corinthians, sikyonians and troizenians, for that was the order in which they were ranged, followed close after them and rushed in together with them to the space within the wall: and when the wall too had been captured, then the barbarians no longer betook themselves to resistance, but began at once to take flight, excepting only the persians, who formed into small groups and continued to fight with the hellenes as they rushed in within the wall. of the commanders of the persians two made their escape and two were slain; artaÿntes and ithamitres commanders of the fleet escaped, while mardontes and the commander of the land-army, tigranes, were slain.. . now while the persians were still fighting, the lacedemonians and those with them arrived, and joined in carrying through the rest of the work; and of the hellenes themselves many fell there and especially many of the sikyonians, together with their commander perilaos. and those of the samians who were serving in the army, being in the camp of the medes and having been deprived of their arms, when they saw that from the very first the battle began to be doubtful, did as much as they could, endeavouring to give assistance to the hellenes; and the other ionians seeing that the samians had set the example, themselves also upon that made revolt from the persians and attacked the barbarians.. . the milesians too had been appointed to watch the passes of the persians in order to secure their safety, so that if that should after all come upon them which actually came, they might have guides and so get safe away to the summits of mycale,�the milesians, i say, had been appointed to do this, not only for that end but also for fear that, if they were present in the camp, they might make some hostile move: but they did in fact the opposite of that which they were appointed to do; for they not only directed them in the flight by other than the right paths, by paths indeed which led towards the enemy, but also at last they themselves became their worst foes and began to slay them. thus then for the second time ionia revolted from the persians. . in this battle, of the hellenes the athenians were the best men, and of the athenians hermolycos the son of euthoinos, a man who had trained for the pancration. this hermolycos after these events, when there was war between the athenians and the carystians, was killed in battle at kyrnos in the carystian land near geraistos, and there was buried. after the athenians the corinthians, troizenians and sikyonians were the best. . when the hellenes had slain the greater number of the barbarians, some in the battle and others in their flight, they set fire to the ships and to the whole of the wall, having first brought out the spoil to the sea-shore; and among the rest they found some stores of money. so having set fire to the wall and to the ships they sailed away; and when they came to samos, the hellenes deliberated about removing the inhabitants of ionia, and considered where they ought to settle them in those parts of hellas of which they had command, leaving ionia to the barbarians: for it was evident to them that it was impossible on the one hand for them to be always stationed as guards to protect the ionians, and on the other hand, if they were not stationed to protect them, they had no hope that the ionians would escape with impunity from the persians. therefore it seemed good to those of the peloponnesians that were in authority that they should remove the inhabitants of the trading ports which belonged to those peoples of hellas who had taken the side of the medes, and give that land to the ionians to dwell in; but the athenians did not think it good that the inhabitants of ionia should be removed at all, nor that the peloponnesians should consult about athenian colonies; and as these vehemently resisted the proposal, the peloponnesians gave way. so the end was that they joined as allies to their league the samians, chians, lesbians, and the other islanders who chanced to be serving with the hellenes, binding them by assurance and by oaths to remain faithful and not withdraw from the league: and having bound these by oaths they sailed to break up the bridges, for they supposed they would find them still stretched over the straits. these then were sailing towards the hellespont;. , and meanwhile those barbarians who had escaped and had been driven to the heights of mycale, being not many in number, were making their way to sardis: and as they went by the way, masistes the son of dareios, who had been present at the disaster which had befallen them, was saying many evil things of the commander artaÿntes, and among other things he said that in respect of the generalship which he had shown he was worse than a woman, and that he deserved every kind of evil for having brought evil on the house of the king. now with the persians to be called worse than a woman is the greatest possible reproach. so he, after he had been much reviled, at length became angry and drew his sword upon masistes, meaning to kill him; and as he was running upon him, xeinagoras the son of prexilaos, a man of halicarnassos, perceived it, who was standing just behind artaÿntes; and this man seized him by the middle and lifting him up dashed him upon the ground; and meanwhile the spearmen of masistes came in front to protect him. thus did xeinagoras, and thus he laid up thanks for himself both with masistes and also with xerxes for saving the life of his brother; and for this deed xeinagoras became ruler of all kilikia by the gift of the king. nothing further happened than this as they went on their way, but they arrived at sardis. now at sardis, as it chanced, king xerxes had been staying ever since that time when he came thither in flight from athens, after suffering defeat in the sea-fight.. . at that time, while he was in sardis, he had a passionate desire, as it seems, for the wife of masistes, who was also there: and as she could not be bent to his will by his messages to her, and he did not wish to employ force because he had regard for his brother masistes and the same consideration withheld the woman also, for she well knew that force would not be used towards her, then xerxes abstained from all else, and endeavoured to bring about the marriage of his own son dareios with the daughter of this woman and of masistes, supposing that if he should do so he would obtain her more easily. then having made the betrothal and done all the customary rites, he went away to susa; and when he had arrived there and had brought the woman into his own house for dareios, then he ceased from attempting the wife of masistes and changing his inclination he conceived a desire for the wife of dareios, who was daughter of masistes, and obtained her: now the name of this woman was artaÿnte.. . however as time went on, this became known in the following manner:�amestris the wife of xerxes had woven a mantle, large and of various work and a sight worthy to be seen, and this she gave to xerxes. he then being greatly pleased put it on and went to artaÿnte; and being greatly pleased with her too, he bade her ask what she would to be given to her in return for the favours which she had granted to him, for she should obtain, he said, whatsoever she asked: and she, since it was destined that she should perish miserably with her whole house, said to xerxes upon this: "wilt thou give me whatsoever i ask thee for?" and he, supposing that she would ask anything rather than that which she did, promised this and swore to it. then when he had sworn, she boldly asked for the mantle; and xerxes tried every means of persuasion, not being willing to give it to her, and that for no other reason but only because he feared amestris, lest by her, who even before this had some inkling of the truth, he should thus be discovered in the act; and he offered her cities and gold in any quantity, and an army which no one else should command except herself. now this of an army is a thoroughly persian gift. since however he did not persuade her, he gave her the mantle; and she being overjoyed by the gift wore it and prided herself upon it.. . and amestris was informed that she had it; and having learnt that which was being done, she was not angry with the woman, but supposing that her mother was the cause and that she was bringing this about, she planned destruction for the wife of masistes. she waited then until her husband xerxes had a royal feast set before him:�this feast is served up once in the year on the day on which the king was born, and the name of this feast is in persian tycta, which in the tongue of the hellenes means "complete"; also on this occasion alone the king washes his head, and he makes gifts then to the persians:�amestris, i say, waited for this day and then asked of xerxes that the wife of masistes might be given to her. and he considered it a strange and untoward thing to deliver over to her his brother's wife, especially since she was innocent of this matter; for he understood why she was making the request.. . at last however as she continued to entreat urgently and he was compelled by the rule, namely that it is impossible among them that he who makes request when a royal feast is laid before the king should fail to obtain it, at last very much against his will consented; and in delivering her up he bade amestris do as she desired, and meanwhile he sent for his brother and said these words: "masistes, thou art the son of dareios and my brother, and moreover in addition to this thou art a man of worth. i say to thee, live no longer with this wife with whom thou now livest, but i give thee instead of her my daughter; with her live as thy wife, but the wife whom thou now hast, do not keep; for it does not seem good to me that thou shouldest keep her." masistes then, marvelling at that which was spoken, said these words: "master, how unprofitable a speech is this which thou utterest to me, in that thou biddest me send away a wife by whom i have sons who are grown up to be young men, and daughters one of whom even thou thyself didst take as a wife for thy son, and who is herself, as it chances, very much to my mind,�that thou biddest me, i say, send away her and take to wife thy daughter! i, o king, think it a very great matter that i am judged worthy of thy daughter, but nevertheless i will do neither of these things: and do not thou urge me by force to do such a thing as this: but for thy daughter another husband will be found not in any wise inferior to me, and let me, i pray thee, live still with my own wife." he returned answer in some such words as these; and xerxes being stirred with anger said as follows: "this then, masistes, is thy case,�i will not give thee my daughter for thy wife, nor yet shalt thou live any longer with that one, in order that thou mayest learn to accept that which is offered thee." he then when he heard this went out, having first said these words: "master, thou hast not surely brought ruin upon me?" . . during this interval of time, while xerxes was conversing with his brother, amestris had sent the spearmen of xerxes to bring the wife of masistes, and she was doing to her shameful outrage; for she cut away her breasts and threw them to dogs, and she cut off her nose and ears and lips and tongue, and sent her back home thus outraged. . then masistes, not yet having heard any of these things, but supposing that some evil had fallen upon him, came running to his house; and seeing his wife thus mutilated, forthwith upon this he took counsel with his sons and set forth to go to bactria together with his sons and doubtless some others also, meaning to make the province of bactria revolt and to do the greatest possible injury to the king: and this in fact would have come to pass, as i imagine, if he had got up to the land of the bactrians and sacans before he was overtaken, for they were much attached to him, and also he was the governor of the bactrians: but xerxes being informed that he was doing this, sent after him an army as he was on his way, and slew both him and his sons and his army. so far of that which happened about the passion of xerxes and the death of masistes. . now the hellenes who had set forth from mycale to the hellespont first moored their ships about lecton, being stopped from their voyage by winds; and thence they came to abydos and found that the bridges had been broken up, which they thought to find still stretched across, and on account of which especially they had come to the hellespont. so the peloponnesians which leotychides resolved to sail back to hellas, while the athenians and xanthippos their commander determined to stay behind there and to make an attempt upon the chersonese. those then sailed away, and the athenians passed over from abydos to the chersonese and began to besiege sestos.. . to this town of sestos, since it was the greatest stronghold of those in that region, men had come together from the cities which lay round it, when they heard that the hellenes had arrived at the hellespont, and especially there had come from the city of cardia oiobazos a persian, who had brought to sestos the ropes of the bridges. the inhabitants of the city were aiolians, natives of the country, but there were living with them a great number of persians and also of their allies.. . and of the province artaÿctes was despot, as governor under xerxes, a persian, but a man of desperate and reckless character, who also had practised deception upon the king on his march against athens, in taking away from elaius the things belonging to protesilaos the son of iphiclos. for at elaius in the chersonese there is the tomb of protesilaos with a sacred enclosure about it, where there were many treasures, with gold and silver cups and bronze and raiment and other offerings, which things artaÿctes carried off as plunder, the king having granted them to him. and he deceived xerxes by saying to him some such words as these: "master, there is here the house of a man, a hellene, who made an expedition against thy land and met with his deserts and was slain: this man's house i ask thee to give to me, that every one may learn not to make expeditions against thy land." by saying this it was likely that he would easily enough persuade xerxes to give him a man's house, not suspecting what was in his mind: and when he said that protesilaos had made expedition against the land of the king, it must be understood that the persians consider all asia to be theirs and to belong to their reigning king. so when the things had been given him, he brought them from elaius to sestos, and he sowed the sacred enclosure for crops and occupied it as his own; and he himself, whenever he came to elaius, had commerce with women in the inner cell of the temple. and now he was being besieged by the athenians, when he had not made any preparation for a siege nor had been expecting that the hellenes would come; for they fell upon him, as one may say, inevitably. . . when however autumn came and the siege still went on, the athenians began to be vexed at being absent from their own land and at the same time not able to conquer the fortress, and they requested their commanders to lead them away home; but these said that they would not do so, until either they had taken the town or the public authority of the athenians sent for them home: and so they endured their present state. . those however who were within the walls had now come to the greatest misery, so that they boiled down the girths of their beds and used them for food; and when they no longer had even these, then the persians and with them artaÿctes and oiobazos ran away and departed in the night, climbing down by the back part of the wall, where the place was left most unguarded by the enemy; and when day came, the men of the chersonese signified to the athenians from the towers concerning that which had happened, and opened the gates to them. so the greater number of them went in pursuit, and the rest occupied the city.. . now oiobazos, as he was escaping into thrace, was caught by the apsinthian thracians and sacrificed to their native god pleistoros with their rites, and the rest who were with him they slaughtered in another manner: but artaÿctes with his companions, who started on their flight later and were overtaken at a little distance above aigospotamoi, defended themselves for a considerable time and were some of them killed and others taken alive: and the hellenes had bound these and were bringing them to sestos, and among them artaÿctes also in bonds together with his son.. . then, it is said by the men of the chersonese, as one of those who guarded them was frying dried fish, a portent occurred as follows,�the dried fish when laid upon the fire began to leap and struggle just as if they were fish newly caught: and the others gathered round and were marvelling at the portent, but artaÿctes seeing it called to the man who was frying the fish and said: "stranger of athens, be not at all afraid of this portent, seeing that it has not appeared for thee but for me. protesilaos who dwells at elaius signifies thereby that though he is dead and his body is dried like those fish, yet he has power given him by the gods to exact vengeance from the man who does him wrong. now therefore i desire to impose this penalty for him, �that in place of the things which i took from the temple i should pay down a hundred talents to the god, and moreover as ransom for myself and my son i will pay two hundred talents to the athenians, if my life be spared." thus he engaged to do, but he did not prevail upon the commander xanthippos; for the people of elaius desiring to take vengeance for protesilaos asked that he might be put to death, and the inclination of the commander himself tended to the same conclusion. they brought him therefore to that headland to which xerxes made the passage across, or as some say to the hill which is over the town of madytos, and there they nailed him to boards and hung him up; and they stoned his son to death before the eyes of artaÿctes himself.. . having so done, they sailed away to hellas, taking with them, besides other things, the ropes also of the bridges, in order to dedicate them as offerings in the temples: and for that year nothing happened further than this. . now a forefather of this artaÿctes who was hung up, was that artembares who set forth to the persians a proposal which they took up and brought before cyrus, being to this effect: "seeing that zeus grants to the persians leadership, and of all men to thee, o cyrus, by destroying astyages, come, since the land we possess is small and also rugged, let us change from it and inhabit another which is better: and there are many near at hand, and many also at a greater distance, of which if we take one, we shall have greater reverence and from more men. it is reasonable too that men who are rulers should do such things; for when will there ever be a fairer occasion than now, when we are rulers of many nations and of the whole of asia?" cyrus, hearing this and not being surprised at the proposal, bade them do so if they would; but he exhorted them and bade them prepare in that case to be no longer rulers but subjects; "for," said he, "from lands which are not rugged men who are not rugged are apt to come forth, since it does not belong to the same land to bring forth fruits of the earth which are admirable and also men who are good in war." so the persians acknowledged that he was right and departed from his presence, having their opinion defeated by that of cyrus; and they chose rather to dwell on poor land and be rulers, than to sow crops in a level plain and be slaves to others. notes to book ix [ "the same who at the former time also were of one accord together."] [ {ta ekeinon iskhura bouleumata}: some good mss. omit {iskhura}, and so many editors.] [ {up agnomosunes}.] [ {boulen}.] [ {exeneikai es ton dumon}.] [ {aleoren}.] [ cp. viii. (a).] [ {to men ap emeon outo akibdelon nemetai epi tous ellenas}, "that which we owe to the hellenes is thus paid in no counterfeit coin."] [ {ekeleusan}, i.e. "their bidding was" when they sent us.] [ this clause, "with no less�each man of them," is omitted in some mss. and considered spurious by several editors.] [ cp. ch. .] [ {perioikon}.] [ {ton emerodromon}, cp. vi. .] [ {tugkhane eu bouleoumenos}: perhaps, "endeavour to take measures well."] [ {prodromon}, a conjectural emendation of {prodromos}.] [ {boiotarkhai}, i.e. the heads of the boeotian confederacy.] [ {os epi deka stadious malista ke}.] [ {klinai}: several editors have altered this, reading {klithenai} or {klinenai}, "they were made to recline."] [ {diapinonton}, cp. v. .] [ {polla phroneonta medenos krateein}.] [ {sphodra}: not quite satisfactory with {emedizon}, but it can hardly go with {ouk ekontes}, as krüger suggests.] [ {pheme}, as in ch. .] [ {proopto thanato}.] [ {prosballontes}: most of the mss. have {prosbalontes}, and so also in ch. and they have {prosbalouses}.] [ i.e. the retreat with which each charge ended and the turn from retreat in preparation for a fresh charge. so much would be done without word of command, before reining in their horses.] [ {ephoiteon}.] [ or, according to some mss., "much contention in argument."] [ i.e. the left wing.] [ the name apparently should be kepheus, but there is no authority for changing the text.] [ this is the number of nations mentioned in vii. - as composing the land-army of xerxes.] [ {oi epiphoiteontes}.] [ {peri andra ekaston}.] [ i.e. , .] [ i.e. , .] [ i.e. , .] [ {opla de oud outoi eikhon}: i.e. these too must be reckoned with the light-armed.] [ cp. ii. .] [ {makhairophoroi}: cp. vii. .] [ i.e. , : see viii. .] [ {geneos tou iamideon}: the mss. have {klutiaden} after {iamideon}, but the clytiadai seem to have been a distinct family of soothsayers.] [ {pentaethlon}.] [ {para en palaisma edrame nikan olumpiada}. the meaning is not clear, because the conditions of the {pentaethlon} are not known: however the wrestling {pale} seems to have been the last of the five contests, and the meaning may be that both tisamenos and hieronymos had beaten all the other competitors and were equal so far, when tisamenos failed to win two out of three falls in the wrestling.] [ {metientes}: some mss. have {metiontes}, "they went to fetch him."] [ {aiteomenos}: this is the reading of the mss., but the conjecture {aiteomenous} (or {aiteomenon}) seems probable enough: "if one may compare the man who asked for royal power with him who asked only for citizenship."] [ i.e. instead of half for himself, he asks for two-thirds to be divided between himself and his brother.] [ {o pros ithome}: a conjectural emendation of {o pros isthmo}.] [ {ton tarson eoutou}.] [ {treis kephalas}.] [ {druos kephalas}.] [ see ch. .] [ {ton epikleton}: cp. vii. .] [ {mardonio te kai te stratie ta sphagia ou dunatai katathumia genesthai}.] [ he asks for their help to free his country also from the persian yoke.] [ {emakhesametha}.] [ {psukhre}, cp. vi. .] [ {deka stadious}.] [ {nesos de outo an eie en epeiro}.] [ {periskhizetai}.] [ {epheugon asmenoi}.] [ {tou pitaneteon lokhou}, called below {ton lokhon ton pitaneten}. evidently {lokhos} here is a division of considerable size.] [ {anainomenou}: some mss. and many editors read {nenomenou}, "since he was thus minded."] [ {os alla phroneonton kai alla legonton}.] [ cp. ch. .] [ the structure of the sentence is rather confused, and perhaps some emendation is required.] [ {eti ti lexete}. the mss. and most editors read {ti}, "what will ye say after this?" the order of the words is against this.] [ {anarpasomenoi}: cp. viii. .] [ {phraxantes ta gerra}: cp. ch. .] [ {anoploi}, by which evidently more is meant than the absence of shields; cp. the end of ch. , where the equipment of the persians is compared to that of light-armed troops.] [ see viii. .] [ {es leoniden}: this is ordinarily translated "as far as leonidas;" but to say "his ancestors above anaxandrides have been given as far as leonidas" (the son of anaxandrides), is hardly intelligible. the reference is to vii. .] [ most of the mss. call him aeimnestos (with some variation of spelling), but plutarch has arimnestos.] [ see ch. : there is no sharp distinction here between camp and palisade, the latter being merely the fortified part of the encampment.] [ {anaktoron}, a usual name for the temple of demeter and persephone at eleusis.] [ i.e. , .] [ {ege katertemenos}: the better mss. have {eie} for {ege}, which is retained by some editors ({toutous} being then taken with {inai pantas}): for {katertemenos} we find as variations {katertemenos} and {katertismenos}. many editors read {katertismenos} ("well prepared"), following the aldine tradition.] [ {ephelokakeonton}.] [ {en oudeni logo apolonto}.] [ stein proposes to substitute "athenians" for "lacedemonians" here, making the comparative {erremenestere} anticipate the account given in the next few clauses.] [ {erromenestere}.] [ cp. i. .] [ {aluktazon}, a word of doubtful meaning which is not found elsewhere.] [ i.e. , .] [ {o spartietes}: it has been proposed to read {spartietai}, for it can hardly be supposed that the other two were not spartans also.] [ one ms. at least calls him aeimenstos, cp. ch. : thucydides (iii. [footnote ) mentions aeimnestos as the name of a plataian citizen, the father of lacon. stein observes that in any case this cannot be that arimnestos who is mentioned by plutarch as commander of the plataian contingent.] [ {eoutou axion prophumeumenou apodexasthai}.] [ {atelein te kai proedrin}.] [ vi. .] [ {andra pentaethlon}.] [ {oute daimonon oute theon}: heroes and in general divinities of the second order are included under the term {daimonon}.] [ most of the commentators (and following them the historians) understand the imperfect {ediokon} to express the mere purpose to attempt, and suppose that this purpose was actually hindered by the lacedemonians, but for a mere half-formed purpose the expression {mekhri thessalies} seems to definite, and diodorus states that artabazos was pursued. i think therefore that krüger is right in understanding {eon} of an attempt to dissuade which was not successful. the alternative version would be "they were for pursuing them as far as thessaly, but the lacedemonians prevented them from pursuing fugitives."] [ {akinakas}.] [ whether three tithes were taken or only one is left uncertain.] [ "furniture furnished" is hardly tolerable; perhaps herodotus wrote {skenen} for {kataskeuen} here.] [ the connexion here is not satisfactory, and the chapter is in part a continuation of chapter : it is possible that ch. may be a later addition by the author, thrown in without much regard to the context.] [ "whereas however the body of mardonios had disappeared on the day after the battle (taken by whom i am not able to say....), it is reported with some show of reason that dionysophanes, an ephesian, was he who buried it." the construction however is irregular and broken by parentheses: possibly there is some corruption of text.] [ {tous irenas}. spartans between twenty and thirty years old were so called. the mss. have {ireas}.] [ {proxeinon}.] [ "fill up more calamities," cp. v. .] [ {es antilogien}.] [ {antilogies kuresein}.] [ {ten mesogaian tamnon tes odou}, cp. vii. : the expression seems almost equivalent to {tamnon ten mesen odon}, apart from any question of inland or coast roads.] [ {limo sustantas kai kamato}, "having struggled with hunger and fatigue."] [ {autos}: some mss. read {outos}. if the text is right, it means artabazos as distinguished from his troops.] [ i.e. "leader of the army."] [ {en to ionio kolpo}.] [ stein reads {para khona potamon}, "by the river chon," a conjecture derived from theognostus.] [ it is thought by some editors that "the prophets" just above, and these words, "and they told them," are interpolated.] [ {emphuton mantiken}, as opposed to the {entekhnos mantike} possessed for example by melampus, cp. ii. .] [ or possibly "calamoi."] [ i.e. , .] [ {ton potneion}, i.e. either the eumenides or demeter and persephone.] [ {apistous toisi ellesi}. perhaps the last two words are to be rejected, and {apistous} to be taken in its usual sense, "distrusted"; cp. viii. .] [ {neokhmon an ti poieein}.] [ {pheme eseptato}.] [ {eteralkea}, cp. viii. .] [ {ton perseon}: perhaps we should read {ek ton perseon}, "appointed by the persians to guard the passes."] [ {ti neokhmon poieoien}.] [ {ten kephalen smatai}: the meaning is uncertain.] [ {pou de kou me apolesas}: some editors read {ko} for {kou} (by conjecture), and print the clause as a statement instead of a question, "not yet hast thou caused by ruin."] [ {en to aduto}.] [ {aphuktos}: many editors adopt the reading {aphulakto} from inferior mss., "they fell upon him when he was, as one may say, off his guard."] [ {estergon ta pareonta}.] [ {ekpheugonta}: many editors have {ekphugonta}, "after he had escaped."] [ {tarikhos eon}. the word {tarikhos} suggests the idea of human bodies embalmed, as well as of dried or salted meat.] [ {oi}: some editors approve the conjecture {moi}, "impose upon myself this penalty."] [ {sanidas}: some read by conjecture {sanidi}, or {pros sanida}: cp. vii. .] [ or, "when he had heard this, although he did not admire the proposal, yet bade them do so if they would."] team (http://www.fadedpage.com) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) the story of extinct civilizations of the west by robert e. anderson, m.a., f.a.s. author of extinct civilizations of the east [illustration: prehistoric structure, uxmal (yucatan) (p. ).] [illustration] venient annis saecula seris quibus oceanus vincula rerum laxet, et ingens pateat tellus tethys que novos detegat orbes. --seneca. new york _mcclure, phillips & co._ mcmiv copyright, , by d. appleton and company contents chapter page introduction i. pre-columbian discoveries of america ii. "discovery of the world and of man" iii. the extinct civilization of the aztecs iv. american archeology v. mexico before the spanish invasion vi. arrival of the spaniards vii. cortÉs and montezuma viii. balboa and the isthmus ix. extinct civilization of peru x. pizarro and the incas maps, etc. page prehistoric structure, uxmal (yucatan) _frontispiece_ imaginary continent, south of africa and asia remains of a norse church at katortuk, greenland map of vinland the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts the dighton stone. fig. cipher autograph of columbus chulpa or stone tomb of the peruvians quetzalcoatl ancient bridge near tezcuco teocalli, aztec temple for human sacrifices monolith doorway. near lake titicaca. fig. image over the doorway shown in fig. . near lake titicaca. fig. the quipu gold ornament (? zodiac) from a tomb at cuzco extinct civilizations of the west introduction throughout all the periods of european history, ancient or modern, no age has been more remarkable for events of first-rate importance than the latter half of the fifteenth century. the rise of the new learning, the "discovery of the world and of man," the displacement of many outworn beliefs, these with other factors produced an awakening that startled kings and nations. then felt they like balboa, when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise silent, upon a peak in darien. it was at this historical juncture that the "middle ages" came to an end, and modern europe had its beginning. (see chapter ii.) why was europe so long in discovering the vast continent which all the time lay beyond the western ocean? simply because every skipper and every "board of admiralty" believed that this world on which we live and move is flat and level. they did not at all realize the fact that it is _ball_-shaped; and that when a ball is very large (say, as large as a balloon), then any small portion of the surface must appear flat and level to a fly or "mite" traveling in that vicinity. homer believed that our world is a flat and level plain, with a great river, oceanus, flowing round it; and for many ages that seemed a very natural and sufficient theory. the pythagoreans, it is true, argued that our earth must be spherical, but why? oh, said they, because in geometry the sphere is the "most perfect" of all solid figures. aristotle, being scientific, gave better reasons for believing that the earth is spherical or ball-shaped. he said the shadow of the earth is always round like the shadow of a ball; and the shadow of the earth can be seen during any eclipse of the moon; therefore, all who see that shadow on the moon's disk know, or ought to know, that the earth is ball-shaped. another reason given by aristotle is that the altitude of any star above the horizon changes when the observer travels north or south. for example, if at london a star appears to be ° above the northern horizon, and at york the same star at the same instant appears - / °, it is evident that - / ° is the difference (increase) of altitude at york compared with london. such an observation shows that the road from london to york is not over a flat, level plane, but over the curved surface of a sphere, the arc of a circle, in fact. herodotus, the father of history, was a good geographer and an experienced traveler, yet his only conception of the world was as a flat, wide-extending surface. in egypt he was told how pharaoh necho had sent a crew of phenicians to explore the coast of africa by setting out from the red sea, and how they sailed south till they had _the sun on their right hand_. "absurd!" says herodotus, in his naïve manner, "this story i can not believe." in egypt, as in greece or europe generally, the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing north; whereas in south africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing south, and sunrise is therefore on the _right hand_. the honest sailors had told the truth; they had merely "crossed the line," without knowing it. if herodotus had known that the world was spherical or ball-shaped, he could easily have understood that by traveling due south the sun must at last appear at noon to the north instead of the south. a counterpart to the story of the phenician sailors occurs in pliny: he tells how some ambassadors came to the roman emperor claudius from an island in the south of asia, and when in italy were much astonished to see the sun at noon to the south, casting shadows to the north. they also wondered, he says, to see the great bear and other groups of stars which had never been visible in their native land (nat. hist., vi, ). that there were islands or even a continent in the western ocean was a tradition not infrequent in classical and medieval times, as we shall presently see, but to place a continent in the southern ocean was a greater stretch of imagination. the great outstanding problem of the sources of the nile probably suggested this southern continent to some. ptolemy, the great egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that the southern continent was joined to africa by a broad isthmus, as indicated in certain maps. such a connection of the two continents would at once dispose of the story that the phenician sailors had "doubled the cape." in several maps after the time of columbus, australia is extended westward in order to pass muster for the southern continent. [illustration: imaginary continent, south of africa and asia. [the cardinal points are shown by the four winds.] beginning of the fifteenth century. the word brumæ = the winter solstices.] it is with a western continent, however, that we are now mainly concerned. what lands were imagined by the ancients in the far west under the setting sun? the mighty ocean beyond spain was to the greeks and latins a place of dread and mystery. "stout was his heart and girt with triple brass," says the roman poet, "who first hazarded his weak vessel on the pitiless ocean." even the western parts of the mediterranean were shrunk from, according to the odyssey, without speaking of the horrors of the great ocean beyond. "beyond gades," i. e., scarcely outside of the pillars of hercules, the extreme limit of the ancient world, "no man," said pindar, "however daring, could pass; only a god might voyage those waters!" in spite of the dread which the ancient mariners felt for the great western ocean, their poets found it replete with charm and mystery. the imagination rested upon those golden sunsets, and the tales of marvel which, after long intervals, sea-borne sailors had told of distant lands in the west. the poets placed there the happy home destined for the souls of heroes. thus (odys. iv, ): no snow is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill west, and bloweth cool on men. so far homer. his contemporary, hesiod, thus describes the elysian fields as islands under the setting sun: there on earth's utmost limits zeus assigned a life, a seat, distinct from human kind, beside the deepening whirlpools of the main, in those blest isles where saturn holds his reign, apart from heaven's immortals calm they share, a rest unsullied by the clouds of care: and yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground. the poet pindar places in the same mysterious west "the castle of chronos" (i. e., "old time"), "where o'er the isles of the blest ocean breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads." _vesper_, the star of evening, was called hesperus by the greeks; and hence the hesperides, daughters of the western star, had the task of watching the golden apples planted by the goddess hera in the garden of the gods, on the other side of the river oceanus. one of the labors of hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of mycenae. the poet euripides thus refers to the gardens of the west, when the chorus wish to fly "over the adriatic wave": or to the famed hesperian plains, whose rich trees bloom with gold, to join the grief-attunèd strains my winged progress hold; beyond whose shores no passage gave the ruler of the purple wave. of all the lands imagined to lie in the western ocean by the greeks, the most important was "atlantis." some have thought it may possibly have been a prehistoric discovery of america. in any case it has exercised the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. the tale of atlantis we owe to plato himself, who perhaps learned it in egypt, just as herodotus picked up there the account of the circumnavigation of africa by the phenician mariners. "when solon was in egypt," says plato, "he had talk with an aged priest of sais who said, 'you greeks are all children: you know but of one deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by flood and fire.'... in the distant western ocean lay a continent larger than libya and asia together."... in this atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were descended from poseidon and had extended their sway over many islands and over a portion of the great continent; even libya up to the gates of egypt, and europe as far as tyrrhenia, submitted to their sway.... afterward came a day and night of great floods and earthquakes; atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves. geologists and geographers have seriously tried to find evidence of atlantis having existed in the atlantic, whether as a portion of the american continent, or as a huge island in the ocean which could have served as a stepping-stone between the western world and the eastern. from a series of deep-sea soundings ordered by the british, american, and german governments, it is now very well known that in the middle of the atlantic basin there is a ridge, running north and south, whose depth is less than , fathoms, while the valleys east and west of it average , fathoms. at the azores the north atlantic ridge becomes broader. the theory is that a part of the ridge-plateau was the atlantis of plato that "disappeared swallowed by the waves." (nature, xv, , , xxvii, ; science, june , .) buffon, the naturalist, with reference to fauna and flora, dated the separation of the new and old world "from the catastrophe of atlantis" (epoques, ix, ); and sir charles lyell confessed a temptation to "accept the theory of an atlantis island in the northern atlantic." (geology, p. .) the following account "from an historian of the fourth century b. c." is another possible reference to a portion of america--from a translation "delivered in english," . selenus told midas that without this worlde there is a continent or percell of dry lande which in greatnesse (as hee reported) was unmeasureable; that it nourished and maintained, by the benifite of the greene meadowes and pasture plots, sundrye bigge and mighty beastes; that the men which inhabite the same climate exceede the stature of us twise, and yet the length of there life is not equale to ours. the historian plutarch, in his morals, gives an account of ogygia, with an illusion to a continent, possibly america: an island, ogygia, lies in the arms of the ocean, about five days' sail west from britain.... the adjacent sea is termed the saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly environed is distant from ogygia about , stadia, but from the other islands not so far.... one of the men paid a visit to the great island, as they called europe. from him the narrator learned many things about the state of men after death--the conclusion being that the souls of men arrive at the moon, wherein lie the elysian fields of homer. the greek historian, diodorus siculus, has a similar account with curious details of an "island" which might very well have been part of a continent. columbus believed to the last that cuba was a continent. in the ocean, at the distance of several days' sailing to the west, there lies an island watered by several navigable rivers. its soil is fertile, hilly, and of great beauty.... there are country houses handsomely constructed, with summer-houses and flower-beds. the hilly district is covered with dense woods and fruit-trees of every kind. the inhabitants spend much time in hunting and thus procure excellent food. they have naturally a good supply of fish, their shores being washed by the ocean.... in a word this island seems a happy home for gods rather than for men (v. ). another greek writer, lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to an island in the atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the pillars of hercules--the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has already been seen. readers of henry fielding and admirers of squire westers will remember how in the london of the eighteenth century the limits of piccadilly westward was a tavern at hyde park corner called the _hercules' pillars_, on the site of the future apsley house.[ ] although neither greek nor roman navigators were likely to attempt a voyage into the ocean beyond the straits of gibraltar, yet a trading vessel from carthage or phenicia might easily have been driven by an easterly gale into, or even across, the atlantic. some involuntary discoveries were no doubt due to this chance, and the reports brought to europe were probably the germs of such tales as the poets invented about the fair regions of the west. in celtic literature, moreover, "avalon" was placed far under the setting sun beyond the ocean--avalon or "glas-inis" being to the bards the land of the dead, marvelous and mysterious. [footnote : tom jones, xvi. chap. , , etc.] in english literature of the middle ages there is a remarkable passage relating to our present subject, which was written long before that rise of the new learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. it is a statement made by roger bacon, the greatest of oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics. in his opus majus, the elder bacon wrote: more than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still unknown to us.... it is evident therefore that between the extreme west and the confines of india, there must be a surface which comprises more than half the earth. though roger bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten, buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of modern science. there now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. we have been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly happy anticipation of the discovery of the new world, so happy that it became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. this we learn from the life of the "great admiral," written by his son ferdinand. secondly, because it adorns our title-page and has been characterized as "a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century a. d. the author, seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at the end of one of his choruses--medea, . we may thus translate the prophetic stanza: for at a distant date this ancient world will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose beyond the main a vast new continent, with realms of wealth and might. chapter i pre-columbian discoveries of america _norse discovery._--by glancing at a map of the north atlantic, the reader will at once see that the natural approach from europe to the western continent was by iceland and greenland--especially in those early days when ocean navigation was unknown. iceland is nearer to greenland than to norway; and greenland is part of america. but in iceland there were celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even king arthur, according to the history of geoffrey of monmouth, sailed north to that "ultima thule." during the ninth century a christian community had been established there under certain irish monks. this early civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct. it was in a. d. , i. e., during the reign of alfred the great in england, that the norse earl, ingolf, led a colony to iceland. more strenuous and savage than the christian celts whom they found there, the latter with their preaching monks soon sailed to the south, and left the northmen masters of the island. the norse colony under ingolf was strongly reenforced by norwegians who took refuge there to avoid the tyranny of their king, harold, the fair-haired. ingolf built the town ingolfshof, named after him, and also reikiavik, afterward the capital, named from the "reek" or steam of its hot springs. so important did this colony become that in the second generation the population amounted to , . ingolf was admired by the poet james montgomery (not to be confounded with robert, whom macaulay criticized so severely), who in thus wrote of him and his island: there on a homeless soil his foot he placed, framed his hut-palace, colonized the waste, and ruled his horde with patriarchal sway --where justice reigns, 'tis freedom to obey.... and iceland shone for generous lore renowned, a northern light when all was gloom around. the next year after ingolf had come to iceland, gunnbiorn, a hardy norseman, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land.... about half a century later, judging by the icelandic sagas, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away which was called "mickle ireland" (_irland it mikla_)--[winsor's hist. america, i, ]. gunnbiorn's discovery was utilized by erik the red, another sea-rover, in a. d. , who sailed to it and, after three years' stay, returned with a favorable account--giving it the fair name _greenland_. the norse established two centers of population on greenland. it is now believed that after doubling cape farewell, they built their first town near that head and the second farther north. the former, _eystribygd_ (i. e., "easter bigging"), developed into a large colony, having in the fourteenth century settlements, with a cathedral and eleven churches, and containing two cities and three or four monasteries. the second town, _westribygd_ (i. e., "wester bigging") had grown to ninety settlements and four churches in the same time. the germ and root of that civilization (afterward extinct, as we shall see) was due to leif the son of red erik, who visited norway, the mother-country, at the very close of the tenth century. [illustration: remains of a norse church at katortuk, greenland.] he found that the king and people there had enthusiastically embraced the new religion, _christianity_. leif presently shared their fervor, and decided to reject woden, thor, and the other gods of old scandinavia. a priest was told off to accompany leif back to greenland, and preach the new faith. it was thus that a christian civilization first found footing in arctic america. the ruins of those early christian churches (see illustration above) form most interesting objects in modern greenland; near the chief ruin is a curious circular group of large stones. the poet of "greenland," to whom we have already referred, quotes from a danish chronicle to the effect that, in the golden age of the colony, there were a hundred parishes to form the bishopric; and that the see was ruled by seventeen bishops from a. d. to . bishop andrew is the last mentioned, ordained in by the archbishop of drontheim. from the same authority we learn that according to some of the annals "the best wheat grew to perfection in the valleys; the forests were extensive; flocks and herds were numerous and very large and fat." the cloister of st. thomas was heated by pipes from a warm spring, and attached to the cloister was a richly cultivated garden. after leif, son of erik, had introduced christianity into greenland, his next step was to extend the norse civilization still farther within the american continent. news had reached him of a new land, with a level coast, lying nine days' sailing southwest of greenland. picking thirty-five men, leif started for further exploration. one part of the new country was barren and rocky, therefore leif named it _helluland_ (i. e., "stone land"), which appears to have been newfoundland. farther south they found a sandy shore, backed by a level forest country, which leif named _markland_ (i. e., "wood land"), identified with nova scotia. after two days' sail, according to the saga account, having landed and explored the new continent along the banks of a river, they resolved to winter there. in one of these explorations a german called tyrker found some grapes on a wild vine, and brought a specimen for the admiration of leif and his party. this country was therefore named _vinland_ (i. e., "wine land"), and is identified with new england, part of rhode island, and massachusetts.[ ] [footnote : prof. r. b. anderson says, "the basin of the charles river should be selected as the most probable scene of the visits of leif erikson, etc." [_v._ map.]] our greenland poet thus refers to leif's landing: wineland the glad discoverers called that shore, and back the tidings of its riches bore; but soon return'd with colonizing bands. the norsemen founded a regular settlement in vinland, establishing there a christian community related to that of greenland. leif's brother, korvald, explored the interior in all directions. with the natives, who are called "skraelings" in the sagas, they traded in furs; these people, who seemed dwarfish to the norsemen, used leathern boats and were no doubt eskimos: a stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock. the principal settler in vinland was thorfinn, an icelander, who had married a daughter-in-law of erik the red. she persuaded thorfinn to sail to the new country in order to make a permanent settlement there. in the year a. d. he sailed with men, having live stock and other colonial equipments. after three years he returned to greenland, his wife having given birth to a son during their first year in vinland. from this son, snorre, it is claimed by some norwegian historians, that thorwaldsen, the eminent danish sculptor is descended. after the time of thorfinn, the settlement in vinland continued to flourish, having a good export trade in timber with greenland. in a. d. according to the icelandic saga, the bishop, erik upsi, visited vinland, that country being, like iceland and greenland, included in his bishopric. the last voyage to vinland for timber, according to the sagas, was in . [illustration: map] professor horsford, of cambridge, mass., finds the site of norumbega, mentioned in various old maps, on the river charles, near waltham, mass., and maintains that town to be identical with vinland of the norsemen. to prove his belief in this theory, the professor built a tower commemorating the norse discoveries. he argued that norumbega was a corruption by the indians of the word _norvegr_ a norse form of "norway." the abandonment of vinland by the norse settlers may be compared with that of gosnold's expedition to the same region near the end of queen elizabeth's reign. gosnold was sent to plant an english colony in america, after the failure of sir walter raleigh's settlement at roanoke (north carolina); and the coast explored corresponded exactly to that which the norse settlers had named vinland, lying between the sites of boston and new york. he gave the name cape cod to that promontory, and also named the islands nantucket, martha's vineyard, and the elizabeth group. selecting one of these for settling a colony, he built on it a storehouse and fort. the scheme, however, failed, owing to the threats of the natives and the scarcity of supplies, and all the colonists sailed from massachusetts, just as the norse settlers had done many generations previously. the expedition of gosnold to vinland, however, bore good fruit, from the favorable report of the new country which he made at home. the merchants of bristol fitted out two ships under martin pring, and in the first voyage a great part of maine (lying north of massachusetts) was explored, and the coast south to martha's vineyard, where gosnold had been. this led to profitable traffic with the natives, and three years later pring made a more complete survey of maine. vinland was also the scene of the famous landing of the mayflower, bringing its puritans from england. it was in cape cod bay that she was first moored. after exploring the new country, just as leif erikson had done so many generations previously, they chose a place on the west side of the bay and named the little settlement "plymouth," after the last english port from which they had sailed. farther north, still in vinland, they soon founded two other towns, "salem" and "boston." those three settlements have ever since been important centers of energy and intelligence in massachusetts, as well as memorials of the norse occupation of vinland. on the occasion of a public statue being erected in boston, mass., to the memory of leif erikson, a committee of the massachusetts historical society formally decided thus: "it is antecedently probable that the northmen discovered america in the early part of the eleventh century." prof. daniel wilson, in his learned work prehistoric man (ii, , ), thus gives his opinion as to the norse colony: with all reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of details, there is the strongest probability in favor of the authenticity of the american vinland. [illustration: the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts.] of the norse colonies in greenland there are some undoubted remains, one being a stone inscription in _runes_, proving that it was made before the reformation, when that mode of writing was forbidden by law. the stone is four miles beyond upernavik. the inscription, according to professor rask, runs thus: erling the son of sigvat, and enride oddsoen, had cleared the place and raised a mound on the friday after rogation-day; --date either or . rafn, the celebrated danish archeologist, states as the result of many years' research, that america was repeatedly visited by the icelanders in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; that the estuary of the st. lawrence was their chief station; that they had coasted southward to carolina, everywhere introducing some christian civilization among the natives. [illustration: the dighton stone. fig. .] a supposed rock memorial of the norsemen is the dighton stone in the taunton river, massachusetts; one of its sentences, according to professor rafn, being: "thorfinn with norse seafaring men took possession of this land." the figures and letters (whether runic or merely indian) inscribed on the dighton rock have been copied by antiquaries at the following dates: , , , , , , . the above illustration (fig. ) shows the last mentioned. there have been many probable traces of ancient norsemen found in america, besides those already given. at cape cod, in the last generation, a number of hearth-stones were found under a layer of peat. a more famous relic was the skeleton dug up in fall river, mass., with an ornamental belt of metal tubes made from fragments of flat brass; there were also some arrow-heads of the same material. longfellow, the new england poet, naturally had his attention directed to this discovery (made, ), and founded on it his ballad the skeleton in armor, connecting it with the round tower at newport. the latter, according to professor rafn, "was erected decidedly not later than the twelfth century." i was a viking old, my deeds, though manifold, no skald in song has told no saga taught thee!... far in the northern land by the wild baltic's strand i with my childish hand tamed the ger-falcon. oft to his frozen lair tracked i the grisly bear, while from my path the hare fled like a shadow. * * * * * scarce had i put to sea bearing the maid with me-- fairest of all was she among the norsemen! three weeks we westward bore, and when the storm was o'er, cloud-like we saw the shore stretching to leeward; there for my lady's bower, built i this lofty tower which to this very hour stands looking seaward! sir clements markham, of the royal geographical society, believes that the norse settlers in greenland were driven from their settlements there by eskimos coming, not from the interior of america, but from west siberia along the polar regions, by wrangell land [_v._ journal, r, g. s., , and arctic geography, ]. there was much curiosity from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century as to the site of the lost colonies of greenland which had so long flourished. in and the king of denmark sent two expeditions, the latter in charge of an englishman, but no traces were found. at the beginning of the eighteenth century some light was thrown upon the problem by a missionary called egede, who first described the ruins and relics observable on the west coast. by the success of his preaching among the greenlanders for fifteen years, assisted by other gospel missionaries, the moravians were induced to found their settlements in the country, principally in the southwest. it seems probable that in early times the climate of iceland was milder than it now is. columbus, some fifteen years before his great voyage across the atlantic, sailed to this northern "thule," and reports that there was no ice. if so, it is surely possible that greenland also may have been greener and more attractive than during the recent centuries. why should it not at one time have been fully deserving of the name by which we still know it? some would explain the change in climatic conditions by the closing in of icepacks. at present greenland is buried deep under a vast, solid ice-cap from which only a few of the highest peaks protrude to show the position of the submerged mountains, but at former periods, according to geologists, there were gardens and farms flourishing under a genial climate. others suppose that, were the ice removed, we should see an archipelago of elevated islands. . _celtic discovery of america._--we have already glanced at the fact that when the norsemen first seized iceland they found that island inhabited by irish celts. these christianized celts made way before the savage invaders, who did not accept the catholic religion till about the close of the tenth century. sailing south, those dispossessed irish probably joined their brother celts who had already long held a district on the eastern coast of north america, which some norse skippers called "white man's land," and also _irland-it-mikla_ (i. e., "mickle ireland"). professor rafn places this district on the coast of carolina. a learned memoir, published , attempts to prove that the mysterious "mound-builders" of the ohio valley were of the same race as the settlers on mickle ireland, and related to the "white-bearded men" who established an extinct civilization in mexico. a french antiquary, , identified mickle ireland with ontario and quebec. beauvois, in his elysée trans-atlantique, derives the name labrador from the _innis labrada_, an island mentioned in an ancient irish romance.[ ] another irish discoverer was st. brandan,[ ] abbot of cluainfert, ireland (died may , ), who was told that far in the ocean lay an island which was the land promised to the saints. st. brandan set sail in company with seventy-five monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean in two voyages, discovering this island and many others equally marvelous, including one which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they celebrated easter.[ ] [footnote : as to the irish claim for the pre-columbian discovery of america, see also humboldt (cosmos, ii, ), and laing (heimsk., i, ).] [footnote : ms. book of lismore.] [footnote : the story is given by humboldt and d'avezac.] among the celtic claimants for discovery we must also include the welsh, who lay stress upon certain resemblances between their language and the dialects of the native americans. a better argument is the historical account taken from their annals about the expedition of prince madoc, son of a welsh chieftain, who sailed due west in the year , after the rumor of the norse discoveries had reached britain. he landed on a vast and fertile continent where he settled colonists. on his return to wales he fitted out a second fleet of ten ships, but the annals give no report of the result. several writers state that the place of landing was near the gulf of mexico: hakluyt connecting the discovery with mexico ( ) and again with the west indies (edition of ). in the seventeenth century some authors wished to substantiate the story of prince madoc, in order that the british claim to america should antedate the spanish claim through columbus. prince madoc is, to most readers, only known by southey's poem.[ ] [footnote : some quotations from southey's poem are given in chapters v, vi.] . _basque discovery of america._--who are the basque people? a curious race of spanish mountaineers, who have been as great a puzzle to ethnologists and historians as their language has been to philologists and scholars. we know, however, that in former times they were nearly all seamen, making long voyages to the north for whale and newfoundland cod fishing. they have produced excellent navigators; and possibly preceded columbus in discovering america. sebastian, the lieutenant of magellan, was one of the basque race. magellan did not live to complete his famous voyage, therefore sebastian was the first actual circumnavigator of our globe. françois michel, in his work le pays basque, says that the basque sailors knew the coasts of newfoundland a century before the time of columbus; and that it was from one of these ocean mariners that he first learned the existence of a continent beyond the atlantic. other arguments are derived from comparing the peculiarities of the basque tongue with those of the american dialects. whitney, an american scholar, concludes that "no other dialect of the old world so much resembles the american languages in structure as the basque." . _jewish discovery of america._--there is one claim for the discovery of america, which, though quite improbable, if not impossible, has been upheld and sanctioned by many scholarly works in several languages. it is argued that the red indians represent the ten "lost tribes" of the hebrew people who had been deported to assyria and media (_v._ extinct civilizations of the east, p. ). the theory was first started by some spanish priest-missionaries, and has since been defended by many learned divines both in england and america, one leading argument being certain similarities in the languages. catlin (_v._ smithsonian report, ) enumerates many analogies which he found among the western indians. the most authoritative statement is that of lord kingsborough in the well-known mexican antiquities ( -' ), chiefly in vol. vii. some writers actually quote a statement made in the mormon bible! leading new england divines, like mayhew and cotton mather, espoused the cause with similar faith, as well as roger williams and william penn. . _the italian discovery of america._--not through columbus the genoese, or amerigo vespucci, the florentine, although they were certainly italians, but by two venetians, nicolo and antonio zeno. in a. d. or these brothers zeni were shipwrecked in the north atlantic, and, when staying in frislanda, made the acquaintance of a sailor who, after twenty-six years' absence, had returned, giving them the following report: "being driven west in a gale, he found an island with civilized inhabitants, who had latin books, but could not speak norse, and whose country was called estotiland, while a region on the mainland, farther south, to which he had also gone, was called drogeo. here he had met with cannibals. still farther south was a great country with towns and temples." the two brothers zeni finally conveyed this account to another brother in venice, together with a map of those distant regions, but these documents remained neglected till , when a descendant compiled a book to embody the information, accompanied by a map, now famous as "the zeno map." humboldt, with reference to this map, remarks that it is singular that the name frislanda should have been applied by columbus to an island south of iceland. washington irving (in his life of columbus) explains the book by a desire to appeal to the national pride of italy, since, if true, the discovery of the brothers would antedate that of columbus by a century. malte-brun, the distinguished geographer, distinctly accepted the zeni narrative as true, and believed that it was by colonists from greenland that the latin books had reached estotiland. another strong advocate afterward appeared in mr. major, an official in the map department of the british museum, who believed that much of the map in question represented genuine information of the fourteenth century, mixed with some spurious parts inserted by the younger zeno. mr. major's paper on the site of the lost colony of greenland determined, and the pre-columbian discoveries of america confirmed, appeared in r. geog. soc. journal, ; _v_. also proc. mass. hist. soc., . nordenskjöld also accepted the chief results of this italian discovery, and as an arctic explorer of experience, his opinion carries weight. mercator and hugo grotius were also believers in the zeni account. chapter ii "discovery of the world and of man" at the beginning of this book a reference was made to the great upheaval in european history called the "renascence" (fr. _renaissance_) or revival of learning. in the turks took constantinople, driving the greek scholars to take refuge in italy, which at once became the most civilized nation in europe. poetry, philosophy, and art thence found their way to france, england, and germany, being greatly assisted by the invention of printing, which just then was beginning to make books cheaper than they ever had been. at the same time feudalism was ruined, because the invention of gunpowder had previously been changing the art of war. for example, the king of france, louis xi, as well as the king of england, henry vii, had entire disposal of the national artillery; and therefore overawed the barons and armored knights. neither moated fortresses nor mail-clad warriors, nor archers with bows and arrows, could prevail against powder and shot. the middle ages had come to an end; modern europe was being born. france had become concentrated by the union of the south to the north on the conclusion of the "hundred years' war," the final expulsion of the english, and the abolition of all the great feudatories of the kingdom. england, at the same time, had entirely swept away the rule of the barons by the recent "wars of the roses," and henry had strengthened his position by alliance with france, spain, and scotland. spain, by the expulsion of the moors from granada in a. d. , was for the first time concentrated into one great state by the union of isabella's kingdom of castile-leon to ferdinand's kingdom of aragon-sicily. from the importance of the word _renaissance_ as indicating the "movement of transition from the medieval to the modern world," matthew arnold gave it the english form "renascence"--adopted by j. r. green, coleridge, and others. in germany, this great revival of letters and learning was contemporaneous with the reformation, which had long been preparing (e. g., in england since john wyclif) and was specially assisted by the invention of printing, which we have just mentioned. the minds of men everywhere were expanded: "whatever works of history, science, morality, or entertainment seemed likely to instruct or amuse were printed and distributed among the people at large by printers and booksellers." thus it was that, though the turks never had any pretension to learning or culture, yet their action in the middle of the fifteenth century indirectly caused a marvelous tide of civilization to overflow all the western countries of europe. another result in the same age was the increase of navigation and exploration--the discovery of the world as well as of man. when the turks became masters of the eastern shores of the mediterranean, the european merchants were prevented from going to india and the east by the overland route, as had been done for generations. thus, since geography was at this very time improved by the science of copernicus and others, the natural inquiry was how to reach india by sea instead of going overland. columbus, therefore, sailed due west to reach asia, and stumbled upon a "new world" without knowing what he did; then cabot, sailing from bristol, sailed northwest to reach india, and stumbled upon the continent of america; and during the same reign (henry vii) the atlantic coast of both north and south america was visited by english, portuguese, or spanish navigators. the third expedition to reach india by sea was under de gama. he set out in the same year as cabot, sailing into the south atlantic, and ultimately did find the west coast of india at calicut, after rounding the cape. the mere enumeration of so many events, all of first-rate importance, proves that that half century (say from a. d. to ) must be called "an age of marvels," _sæclum mirabile_. the concurrence of so many epoch-making results gave a great impulse, not only to the study of literature, science, and art, but to the exploration of many unknown countries in america, africa, and asia, and the universal expansion of human knowledge generally. i.--we shall now consider the first of these discoverers, who was also the greatest. columbus, the latinized form of the italian colombo, spanish, colon. this genoese navigator must throughout all history be called the discoverer of america, notwithstanding all the work of smaller men. from his study of geographical books in several languages, columbus had convinced himself that our planet is spherical or ball-shaped, not a flat, plane surface. till then india had always been reached by traveling overland toward the rising sun. why not sail westward from europe over the ocean, and thus come to the eastern parts of asia by traveling toward the setting sun? by doing so, since our world is ball-shaped, said columbus, we must inevitably reach zipango (i. e., "japan") and cathay (i. e., "china"), which are the most eastern parts of asia. india then will be a mere detail. judging from the accounts of asia and its eastern islands given by marco polo, a venetian, as well as from the maps sketched by ptolemy, the egyptian geographer, columbus believed that the east coast of asia was not so very far from the west coast of europe. columbus was confirmed in this opinion by a learned geographer of florence, named paul, and henceforward impatiently waited for an opportunity of testing the truth of his theory. he convinced himself, but could not convince any one else, that a westerly route to india was quite feasible. first he laid his plans before the authorities at genoa, who had for generations traded with asia by the overland journey, and ought therefore to have been glad to learn of this new alternative route, since the turks were now playing havoc with the other; but no, they told columbus that his idea was chimerical! next he applied to the court of france. "ridiculous!" was the reply, accompanied with a polite sneer. next columbus sent his scheme to henry vii of england, a prince full of projects, but miserly. "too expensive!" was the tudor's reply, though presently, after the spanish success, he became eager to despatch expeditions from bristol under the cabots. then columbus, by the advice of his brother, who had settled in lisbon as a map-maker, approached king john, seeking patronage and assistance, pleading the foremost position of portugal among the maritime states. the portuguese neglected the golden opportunity, ocean navigation not being in their way as yet; their skippers preferred "to hug the african shore." at last columbus gained the ear of isabella, queen of castile; she believed in him and tried to get the assistance of her husband, ferdinand, king of aragon, in providing an outfit for the great expedition. owing to ferdinand's war in expelling the moors from granada, columbus had still to wait several years. in a previous year, , columbus had sailed to the north atlantic, perhaps in one of those basque whalers already referred to, going "a hundred leagues beyond thule." if that means iceland, as is generally supposed, it seems most probable that, when conversing with the sailors there he must have heard how leif, with his norsemen, had discovered the american coasts of newfoundland and vinland some five centuries earlier, and how they had settled a colony on the new continent. other writers have pointed out that columbus could very well have heard of vinland and the northmen before leaving genoa, since one of the popes had sanctioned the appointment of a bishop over the new diocese. if so, the visit of columbus to iceland probably gave him confirmation as to the norse discovery of the american continent. when at last king ferdinand had taken granada from the moors, columbus was put in command of three ships, with men. he set sail from the port of palos, in andalusia, on a friday, august , , first steering to the canary islands, and then standing due west. in september, to the amazement of all on board, the compass was seen to "vary": an important scientific discovery--viz., that the magnetic needle does not always point to the pole-star. some writers have imagined that the compass was for the first time utilized for a long journey by columbus, but the occult power of the magnetic needle or "lodestone" had been known for ages before the fifteenth century. the ancient persians and other "wise men of the east" used the lodestone as a talisman. both the mongolian and caucasian races used it as an infallible guide in traveling across the mighty plains of asia. the cynosure in the great bear was the "guiding star," whether by sea or land; but when the heavens were wrapped in clouds, the magic stone or needle served to point exactly the position of the unseen star. what columbus and his terrified crews discovered was the "variation of the compass," due to the fact that the magnetic needle points, not to the north star, but to the "magnetic pole," a point in canada to the west of baffin's bay and north of hudson bay. if columbus had continued steering due west he would have landed on the continent of america in florida; but before sighting that coast the course was changed to southwest, because some birds were seen flying in that direction. the first land reached was an island of the bahama group, which he named _san salvador_. as the spanish boats rowed to shore they were welcomed by crowds of astonished natives, mostly naked, unless for a girdle of wrought cotton or plaited feathers. hence the lines of milton: such of late columbus found the american, so girt with feathered cincture, naked else and wild, among the trees on isles and woody shores. the spot of landing was formerly identified by washington irving and baron humboldt with "cat island"; but from the latest investigation it is now believed to have been watling's island. here he landed on a friday, october , . so little was then known of the geography of the atlantic or of true longitude, that columbus attributed these islands to the _east coast of asia_. he therefore named them "indian islands," as if close to hindustan, a blunder that has now been perpetuated for four hundred and ten years. the natives were called "indians" for the same reasons. as the knowledge of geography advanced it became necessary to say "west indies" or "east indies" respectively, to distinguish american from asiatic--"indian corn" means american, but "indian ink" means asiatic, etc. even after his fourth and last voyage columbus believed that the continent, as well as the islands, was a portion of eastern asia, and he died in that belief, without any suspicion of having discovered a new world. a curious confirmation of the opinion of columbus has just been discovered ( ) in the florence library, by dr. wieser, of innsbruck. it is the actual copy of a map by the great admiral, drawn roughly in a letter written from jamaica, july, . it shows that his belief as to the part of the world reached in his voyages was that it was the east coast of asia. the chief discovery made by columbus in his first voyage was the great island of cuba, which he imagined to be part of a continent. some of the spaniards went inland for sixty miles and reported that they had reached a village of more than a thousand inhabitants, and that the corn used for food was called _maize_--probably the first instance of europeans using a term which was afterward to become as familiar as "wheat" or "barley." the natives told columbus that their gold ornaments came from _cubakan_, meaning the interior of cuba; but he, on hearing the syllable _kan_, immediately thought of the "khan" mentioned by marco polo, and therefore imagined that "cathay" (the china of that famous traveler) was close at hand. the simple-minded cubans were amazed that the spaniards had such a love for gold, and pointed eastward to another island, which they called _hayti_, saying it was more plentiful there than in cuba. thus columbus discovered the second in size of all the west indian islands, cuba being the first; he, after landing on it, called it "hispaniola," or little spain. hayti in a few years became the headquarters of the spanish establishments in the new world, after its capital, san domingo, had been built by bartholomew columbus. it was in this island that the spaniards saw the first of the "caziques," or native princes, afterward so familiar during the conquest of mexico; he was carried on the shoulders of four men, and courteously presented columbus with some plates of gold. in a letter to the monarchs of spain the admiral thus refers to the natives of hayti: the people are so affectionate, so tractable, and so peaceable that i swear to your highnesses there is not a better race of men, nor a better country in the world; ... their conversation is the sweetest and mildest in the world, and always accompanied with a smile. the king is served with great state, and his behavior is so decent that it is pleasant to see him. the admiral had previously described the indians of cuba as equally simple and friendly, telling how they had "honored the strangers as sacred beings allied to heaven." the pity of it, and the shame, is that those frank, unsuspicious, islanders had no notion or foresight of the cruel desolation which their gallant guests were presently to bring upon the native races--death, and torture, and extermination! a harbor in cuba is thus described by columbus in a letter to ferdinand and isabella: i discovered a river which a galley might easily enter.... i found from five to eight fathoms of water. having proceeded a considerable way up the river, everything invited me to settle there. the beauty of the river, the clearness of the water, the multitude of palm-trees and an infinite number of other large and flourishing trees, the birds and the verdure of the plains, ... i am so much amazed at the sight of such beauty, that i know not how to describe it. having lost his flag-ship, columbus returned to spain with the two small caravels that remained from his petty fleet of three, arriving in the port of palos march , . the reception of the successful explorer was a national event. he entered barcelona to be presented at court with every circumstance of honor and triumph. sitting in presence of the king and queen he related his wondrous tale, while his attendants showed the gold, the cotton, the parrots and other unknown birds, the curious arms and plants, and above all the nine "indians" with their outlandish trappings--brought to be made christians by baptism. ferdinand and isabella heaped honors upon the successful navigator; and in return he promised them the untold riches of zipango and cathay. a new fleet, larger and better equipped, was soon found for a second voyage. with his new ships, in , columbus again stood due west from the canaries; and at last discovering an island with three mountain summits he named it trinidad (i. e., "trinity") without knowing that he was then coasting the great continent of south america. a few days later he and the crew were amazed by a tumult of waves caused by the fresh water of a great river meeting the sea. it was the "oronooko," afterward called orinoco; and from its volume columbus and his shipmates concluded that it must drain part of a continent or a very large island. where orinoco in his pride, rolls to the main no tribute tide, but 'gainst broad ocean urges far a rival sea of roaring war; while in ten thousand eddies driven the billows fling their foam to heaven, and the pale pilot seeks in vain, where rolls the river, where the main. that was the first glimpse which they had of america proper, still imagining it was only a part of eastern asia. in the following voyage, his last, columbus coasted part of the isthmus of darien. it was not, however, explored till the visit of balboa. [illustration: cipher autograph of columbus. the interpretation of the cipher is probably: servatf christus maria yosephus (christoferens).] it was during his third voyage that the "great admiral" suffered the indignity at san domingo of being thrown into chains and sent back to spain. this was done by bobadilla, an officer of the royal household, who had been sent out with full power to put down misrule. the monarchs of spain set columbus free; and soon afterward he was provided with four ships for his fourth voyage. stormy weather wrecked this final expedition, and at last he was glad to arrive in spain, november , . he now felt that his work on earth was done, and died at valladolid, may , . after temporary interment there his body was transferred to the cathedral of san domingo--whence, , some remains were removed with imposing ceremonies to havana. from later investigations it appears that the ashes of the genoese discoverer are still in the tomb of san domingo. it was in the cathedral of seville, over his first tomb, that king ferdinand is said to have honored the memory of the great admiral with a marble monument bearing the well-known epitaph: a castilla y aragon nuevo mundo dio colon. or, "_to the united kingdom of castile-aragon columbus gave a new world_." after the death of columbus, it seemed as if fate intended his family to enjoy the honors and rewards of which he had been so unjustly deprived. his son, diego, wasted two years trying to obtain from king ferdinand the offices of viceroy and admiral, which he had a right to claim in accordance with the arrangement formerly made with his father. at last diego began a suit against ferdinand before the council which managed indian affairs. that court decided in favor of diego's claim; and as he soon greatly improved his social position by marrying the niece of the duke of alva, a high nobleman, diego received the appointment of governor (not viceroy), and went to hayti, attended by his brother and uncles, as well as his wife and a large retinue. there diego columbus and his family lived, "with a splendor hitherto unknown in the new world." ii.--henry vii of england, after repenting that he had not secured the services of columbus, commissioned john cabot to sail from bristol across the atlantic in a northwesterly direction, with the hope of finding some passage there-abouts to india. in june, , a new coast was sighted (probably labrador or newfoundland), and named _prima vista_. they coasted the continent southward, "ever with intent to find the passage to india," till they reached the peninsula now called florida. on this important voyage was based the claim which the english kings afterward made for the possession of all the atlantic coast of north america. king henry wished colonists to settle in the new land, _tam viri quam feminæ_, but since, in his usual miserly character, he refused to give a single "testoon," or "groat" toward the enterprise, no colonies were formed till the days of walter raleigh, more than a century later. sebastian cabot, born in bristol, , was more renowned as a navigator than his father, john, and almost ranks with columbus. after discovering labrador or newfoundland with his father, he sailed a second time with men to form colonies, passing apparently into hudson bay. he wished to discover a channel leading to hindustan, but the difficulties of icebergs and cold weather so frightened his crews that he was compelled to retrace his course. in another attempt at the northwest passage to asia, he reached latitude - / ° north, and "gave english names to sundry places in hudson bay." in , when commanding a spanish expedition from seville, he sailed to brazil, which had already been annexed to portugal by cabrera, explored the river la plata and ascended part of the paraguay, returning to spain in . after his return to england, king edward vi had some interviews with cabot, one topic being the "variation of the compass." he received a royal pension of marks, and did special work in relation to trade and navigation. the great honor of cabot is that he saw the american continent before columbus or amerigo vespucci. iii.--of the great navigators of that unexampled age of discovery, as spain was honored by columbus and england by cabot, so portugal was honored by de gama. vasco de gama, the greatest of portuguese navigators, left lisbon in to explore the unknown world lying east of the cape of good hope, arriving at calicut, may, . before that, diaz had actually rounded the cape, but seems to have done so merely before a high gale. he named it "the stormy cape." cabrera, or cabral, was another great explorer sent from portugal to follow in the route of de gama; but being forced into a southwesterly route by currents in the south atlantic, he landed on the continent of america, and annexed the new country to portugal under the name of brazil. cabrera afterward drew up the first commercial treaty between portugal and india. iv.--magellan, scarcely inferior to columbus, brought honor as a navigator both to portugal and spain. for the latter country, when in the service of charles v, he revived the idea of columbus that we may sail to asia or the spice islands by sailing _west_. with a squadron of five ships, men, he sailed, in , to brazil and convinced himself that the great estuary was not a strait. sailing south along the american coast, he discovered the strait that bears his name, and through it entered the pacific, then first sailed upon by europeans, though already seen by balboa and his men "upon a peak in darien"--as keats puts it in his famous sonnet.[ ] from the continuous fine weather enjoyed for some months, magellan naturally named the new sea "the pacific." after touching at the ladrones and the philippines, magellan was killed in a fight with the inhabitants of matan, a small island. sebastian, his basque lieutenant (mentioned in chapter i) then successfully completed the circumnavigation of the world, sailing first to the moluccas and thence to spain. [footnote : the poet, however, makes the clerical blunder of writing cortez for balboa.] v.--of all the world-famous navigators contemporary with colon, the genoese, there remains only one deserving of our notice, and that because his name is for all time perpetuated in that of the new world. amerigo (latin _americus_) vespucci, born at florence, , had commercial occupation in cadiz, and was employed by the spanish government. he has been charged with a fraudulent attempt to usurp the honor due to columbus, but humboldt and others have defended him, after a minute examination of the evidence. in a book published in by a german, _waldseemüller_, the author happens to say: and the fourth part of the world having been discovered by americus, it may be called amerige, that is the land of americus, or _america_. vespucci never called himself the discoverer of the new continent; as a mere subordinate he could not think of such a thing. as a matter of fact, he and columbus were always on friendly terms, attached, and trusted. humboldt explains the blunder of waldseemüller and others by the general ignorance of the history of how america was discovered, since for some years it was jealously guarded as a "state secret." humboldt curiously adds that the "musical sound of the name caught the public ear," and thus the blunder has been universally perpetuated: _statque stabitque in omne volubilis ævum_. another reason for the universal renown of amerigo was that his book was the first that told of the new "western world"; and was therefore eagerly read in all parts of europe. cuba, though the largest of the west indian islands, and second to be discovered, was not colonized till after the death of columbus. thus for more than three centuries and a half, as "queen of the antilles" and "pearl of the antilles," cuba has been noted as a chief colonial possession of spain, till recent events brought it under the power of the united states. the conquest of the island was undertaken by velasquez, who, after accompanying the great admiral in his second voyage, had settled in hispaniola (or hayti) and acquired a large fortune there. he had little difficulty in the annexation of cuba, because the natives, like those of hispaniola, were of a peaceful character, easily imposed upon by the invaders. the only difficulty velasquez had was in the eastern part of the island, where hatuey, a cazique or native chief, who had fled there from hispaniola, made preparations to resist the spaniards. when defeated, he was cruelly condemned by velasquez to be burned to death, as a "slave who had taken arms against his master." the scene at hatuey's execution is well known: when fastened to the stake, a franciscan friar promised him immediate admittance into the joys of heaven, if he would embrace the christian faith. "are there any spaniards," says he, after some pause, "in that region of bliss which you describe?" "yes," replied the monk, "but only such as are worthy and good." "the best of them have neither worth nor goodness: i will not go to a place where i may meet with one of that accursed race." being thus annexed in , by the middle of the century all the native indians of cuba had become extinct. in the following century this large and fertile island suffered severely by the buccaneers, but during the eighteenth century it prospered. during the nineteenth century, the united states government had often been urged to obtain possession of it; for example, the sum of one hundred million dollars was offered in by president polk. slavery was at last abolished absolutely in . in recent years spain, by ceding cuba and the philippines to the united states and the carolines to germany, has brought her colonial history to a close. two other important events occurred when velasquez was governor of cuba: first, the escape of balboa from hispaniola, to become afterward governor of darien; and, second, the expedition under cordova to explore that part of the continent of america which lies nearest to cuba. this expedition of men, in three small ships, led to the discovery of that large peninsula now known as yucatan. cordova imagined it to be an island. the natives were not naked, like those of the west indian islands, but wore cotton clothes, and some had ornaments of gold. in the towns, which contained large stone houses, and country generally, there were many proofs of a somewhat advanced civilization. the natives, however, were much more warlike than the simple islanders of cuba and hispaniola; and cordova, in fact, was glad to return from yucatan. velasquez, on hearing the report of cordova, at once fitted out four vessels to explore the newly discovered country, and despatched them under command of his nephew, grijalva. everywhere were found proofs of civilization, especially in architecture. the whole district, in fact, abounds in prehistoric remains. from a friendly chief grijalva received a sort of coat of mail covered with gold plates; and on meeting the ruler of the province he exchanged some toys and trinkets, such as glass beads, pins, scissors, for a rich treasure of jewels, gold ornaments and vessels. grijalva was therefore the first european to step on the aztec soil and open an intercourse with the natives. velasquez, the governor, at once prepared a larger expedition, choosing as leader or commander an officer who was destined henceforth to fill a much larger place in history than himself, one who presently appeared capable of becoming a general in the foremost rank, hernando cortés, greatest of all spanish explorers. chapter iii the extinct civilization of the aztecs in the extinct civilizations of the east it was shown that the cosmogony of the chaldeans closely resembles that of the hebrews and the phenicians, and that the account of the deluge in genesis exactly reproduces the much earlier one found on one of the babylonian tablets. traces of a deluge legend also existed among the early aztecs. they believed that two persons survived the deluge, a man named koksoz and his wife. their heads are represented in ancient paintings together with a boat floating on the waters at the foot of a mountain. a dove is also depicted, with a hieroglyphical emblem of languages in his mouth.... tezpi, the noah of a neighboring people, also escaped in a boat, which was filled with various kinds of animals and birds. after some time a vulture was sent out from it, but remained feeding on the dead bodies of the giants, which had been left on the earth as the waters subsided. the little humming-bird was then sent forth and returned with the branch of a tree in its mouth. another aztec tradition of the deluge is that the pyramidal mound, the temple of cholula (a sacred city on the way between the capital and the seaport), was built by the giants to escape drowning. like the tower of babel, it was intended to reach the clouds, till the gods looked down and, by destroying the pyramid by fires from heaven, compelled the builders to abandon the attempt. the hieroglyphics used in the aztec calendar correspond curiously with the zodiacal signs of the mongols of eastern asia. "the symbols in the mongolian calendar are borrowed from animals, and four of the twelve are the same as the aztec." the antiquity of most of the monuments is proved--e. g., by the growth of trees in the midst of the buildings in yucatan. many have had time to attain a diameter of from six to nine feet. in a courtyard at uxmal, the figures of tortoises sculptured in relief upon the granite pavement are so worn away by the feet of countless generations of the natives that the design of the artist is scarcely recognizable. the spanish invaders demolished every vestige of the aztec religious monuments, just as roman catholic images and paraphernalia were once treated by the "straitest sects" of protestants, or even mohammedans. the beautiful plateau around the lakes of mexico, as well as other central portions of america, were without any doubt occupied from the earliest ages by peoples who gradually advanced in civilization from generation to generation and passed through cycles of revolutions--in one century relapsing, in another advancing by leaps and bounds by an infusion of new blood or a change of environment--exactly similar to the checkered annals of the successive dynasties in the nile valley and the plains of babylonia. in the new world, as in the old world, from prehistoric times wealth was accumulated at such centers, bringing additional comfort and refinement, and implying the practise of the useful arts and some applications of science. as to the legendary migrations or even those extinct races whose names still remain, max müller said:[ ] [footnote : chips from a german workshop, i, .] the traditions are no better than the greek traditions about pelasgians, Æolians, and ionians, and it would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a systematic history, only to be destroyed again sooner or later, by some niebuhr, grote, or lewis. _anahuac_ (i. e., "waterside" or "the lake-country"), in the early centuries of our era, was a name of the country round the lakes and town afterward called mexico. to this center, as a place for settlement, there came from the north or northwest a succession of tribes more or less allied in race and language--especially (according to one theory) the _toltecs_ from tula, and the _aztecs_ from aztlan. tula, north of the mexican valley, had been the first capital of the toltecs, and at the time of the spanish conquest there were remains of large buildings there. most of the extensive temples and other edifices found throughout "new spain" were attributed to this race and the word "toltek" became synonymous with "architect." some five centuries after the toltecs had abandoned tula, the aztecs or early mexicans arrived to settle in the valley of anahuac. with the aztecs came the tezcucans, whose capital, tezcuco, on the eastern border of the mexican lake, has given it its still surviving name. the aztecs, again, after long migrations from place to place, finally, in a. d. , halted on the southwestern shores of the great lake. according to tradition, a heavenly vision thus announced the site of their future capital: they beheld perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot out from the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal eagle of extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in its talons, and its broad wings opened to the rising sun. they hailed the auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the sight of their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water.... the place was called tenochtitlan (i. e. "the cactus on a rock") in token of its miraculous origin. [such were the humble beginnings of the venice of the western world.][ ] [footnote : prescott, i, i, pp. , .] to this day the arms of the mexican republic show the device of the eagle and the cactus--to commemorate the legend of the foundation of the capital--afterward called mexico from the name of their war-god. fiercer and more warlike than their brethren of tezcuco, the men of the latter town were glad of their assistance, when invaded and defeated by a hostile tribe. thus mexico and tezcuco became close allies, and by the time of montezuma i, in the middle of the fifteenth century, their sovereignty had extended beyond their native plateau to the coast country along the gulf of mexico. the capital rapidly increased in population, the original houses being replaced by substantial stone buildings. there are documents showing that tenochtitlan was of much larger dimensions than the modern capital of mexico, on the same site. just before the arrival of the spaniards, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kingdom extended from the gulf across to the pacific; and southward under the ruthless ahuitzotl over the whole of guatemala and nicaragua. the aztecs resembled the ancient peruvians in very few respects, one being the use of knots on strings of different colors to record events and numbers. compare our account of "the quipu" in chapter x. the aztecs seem to have replaced that rude method of making memoranda during the seventh century by picture-writing. before the spanish invasion, thousands of native clerks or chroniclers were employed in painting on vegetable paper and canvas. examples of such manuscripts may still be seen in all the great museums. their contents chiefly refer to ritual, astrology, the calendar, annals of the kings, etc. most of the literary productions of the ancient mexicans were stupidly destroyed by the spanish under cortés. the first archbishop of mexico founded a professorship in for expounding the hieroglyphs of the aztecs, but in the following century the study was abandoned. even the native-born scholars confessed that they were unable to decipher the ancient writing. one of the most ancient books (assigned to tula, the "toltec" capital, a. d. , and written by huetmatzin, an astrologer), describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations, the arrangement of time in the official calendar, with some geography, mythology, and cosmogony. in the fifteenth century the king of tezcuco published sixty hymns in honor of the supreme being, with an elegy on the destruction of a town, and another on the instability of human greatness. in the same century the three anahuac states (acolhua, mexico, and tlacopan) formed a confederacy with a constant tendency to give mexico the supremacy. the two capitals looking at each other across the lake were steadily growing in importance, with all the adjuncts of public works--causeways, canals, aqueducts, temples, palaces, gardens, and other evidences of wealth. the horror and disgust caused by the aztec sacrificial bloodshed are greatly increased by considering the number of the victims. the kings actually made war in order to provide as many victims as possible for the public sacrifices--especially on such an occasion as a coronation or the consecration of a new temple. captives were sometimes reserved a considerable time for the purpose of immolation. it was the regular method of the aztec warrior in battle not to kill one's opponent if he could be made a captive; to take him alive was a meritorious act in religion. in fact, the spaniards in this way frequently escaped death at the hands of their mexican opponents. when king montezuma was asked by a european general why he had permitted the republic of tlascala to remain independent on the borders of his kingdom, his reply was, "that she might furnish me with victims for my gods." in reckoning the number of victims prescott seems to have trusted too implicitly to the almost incredible accounts of the spanish. zumurraga, the first bishop of mexico, asserts that , were sacrificed annually, but casas points out that with such a "waste of the human species," as is implied in some histories, the country could not have been so populous as cortés found it. the estimate of casas is "that the mexicans never sacrificed more than fifty or a hundred persons in a year." notwithstanding the wholesale bloodshed before the shrines of their gory gods, we can still assign to the aztecs a high degree of civilization. the history of even modern europe will illustrate this statement, although apparently paradoxical. consider "the condition of some of the most polished countries in the sixteenth century after the establishment of the modern inquisition--an institution which yearly destroyed its thousands by a death more painful than the aztec sacrifices, ... which did more to stay the march of improvement than any other scheme ever devised by human cunning.... human sacrifice was sometimes voluntarily embraced by the aztecs as the most glorious death, and one that opened a sure passage into paradise. the inquisition, on the other hand, branded its victims with infamy in this world, and consigned them to everlasting perdition in the next." the difficulty with the aztecs is how to reconcile such refinement as their extinct civilization showed with their savage enjoyment of bloodshed. "no captive was ever ransomed or spared; all were sacrificed without mercy, and their flesh devoured." the first of the four chief counselors of the empire was called the "prince of the deadly lance," the second "divider of men," the third "shedder of blood," the fourth "the lord of the dark house." the temples were very numerous, generally merely pyramidal masses of clay faced with brick or stone. the roof was a broad area on which stood one or two towers, from forty to fifty feet in height, forming the sanctuaries of the presiding deities, and therefore containing their images. before these sanctuaries stood the dreadful stone of sacrifice. there were also two altars with sacred fires kept ever burning. all the religious services were public, and the pyramidal temples, with stairs round their massive sides, allowed the long procession of priests to be visible as they ceremoniously ascended to perform the dread office of slaughtering the human victims. human sacrifices had not originally been a feature of the aztec worship. but about years before the arrival of the spanish invaders was the beginning of this religious atrocity, and at last no public festival was considered complete without some human bloodshed. prescott takes as an example the great festival in honor of tezcatlipoca, a handsome god of the second rank, called "the soul of the world," and endowed with perpetual youth. a year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty and without a blemish on his body, was selected.... tutors took charge of him and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. he was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers.... when he went abroad he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity.... four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. when at length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of the royal barges transported him across a lake to a temple which rose on its margin.... hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked to witness the consummation of the ceremony. as the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers and broke in pieces his musical instruments. ... on the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed in disorder over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. they led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. on this the victim was stretched. five priests secured his head and limbs, while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of _itzli_, and inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart, and after holding it up to the sun (as representing the supreme god), cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. such was an instance of the human sacrifices for which ancient mexico became infamous to the whole civilized world. one instance of a sacrifice differing from the ordinary sort is thus given by a spanish historian: a captive of distinction was sometimes furnished with arms for single combat against a number of mexicans in succession. if he defeated them all, as did occasionally happen, he was allowed to escape. if vanquished he was dragged to the block and sacrificed in the usual manner. the combat was fought on a huge circular stone before the population of the capital. women captives were occasionally sacrificed before those bloodthirsty gods, and in a season of drought even children were sometimes slaughtered to propitiate tlaloc, the god of rain. borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest hearts to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests who read in their tears a favorable augury for the rain prayer. one spanish historian informs us that these innocent victims of this repulsive religion were generally bought by the priests from parents who were poor. we may now resume the traditional settlement of the ancient mexicans on the region called anahuac, including all the fertile plateau and extending south to the lake of nicaragua. the chief tribes of the race were said to have come from california, and after being subject to the colhua people asserted their independence about a. d. . soon afterward, their first capital, tenochtitlan, was built on the site of mexico, their permanent center. for several generations they lived, like their remote ancestors, the red men of the woods, as hunters, fishers, and trappers, but at last their prince or chief cazique was powerful enough to be called king. the rule of this aztec prince, beginning a. d. , marked the beginning of their greatness as a race. it became a rule of their kingdom that every new king must gain a victory before being crowned; and thus by the conquest of a new nation furnish a supply of captives to gratify their tutelary deity by the necessary human sacrifices. in the younger montezuma ascended the throne. he is better known to us than the previous kings, because it was in his reign that the spanish conquerors appeared on the scene. from the time of cortés the history of the aztecs becomes part of that of the mexicans. they were easily conquered by the european troops, partly because of their betrayal by various of the neighboring nations whom they had formerly conquered. at the beginning of the sixteenth century, according to prescott, the aztec king ruled the continent from the atlantic to the pacific. from the scientific side of their extinct civilization it is their knowledge of astronomy that chiefly causes astonishment (see also p. ). as in the case of the chaldeans and babylonians, a motive for the study of the stars and planets was the priestly one of accurately fixing the religious festivals. the tropical year being thus ascertained, their tables showed the exact time of the equinox or sun's transit across the equatorial, and of the solstice. from a very early period they had practised agriculture, growing indian corn and "mexican aloe." having no animals of draft, such as the horse, or ox, their farming was naturally of a rude and imperfect sort. "the degree of civilization," says prescott, "which the aztecs reached, as inferred by their political institutions, may be considered, perhaps, not much short of that enjoyed by our saxon ancestors under alfred." in a passage comparing the aztecs to the american indians, we read: the latter has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature. he shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. even when this foreign influence comes in the form of civilization he seems to sink and pine away beneath it. it has been so with the mexicans. under the spanish domination their numbers have silently melted away. their energies are broken. they no longer tread their mountain plains with the conscious independence of their ancestors. in their faltering step and meek and melancholy aspect we read the sad characters of the conquered race.... their civilization was of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. the fierce virtues of the aztec were all his own. humboldt found some analogy between the aztec theory of the universe, as taught by the priests, and the asiatic "cosmogonies." the aztecs, in explaining the great mystery of man's existence after death, believed that future time would revolve in great periods or cycles, each embracing thousands of years. at the end of each of the four cycles of future time in the present world, "the human family will be swept from the earth by the agency of one of the elements, and the sun blotted out from the heavens to be again rekindled." the priesthood comprised a large number who were skilled in astrology and divination. the great temple of mexico, alone, had , priests in attendance, of whom the chief dignitaries superintended the dreadful rites of human sacrifice. others had management of the singing choirs with their musical accompaniment of drums and other instruments; others arranged the public festivals according to the calendar, and had charge of the hieroglyphical word-painting and oral traditions. one important section of the priesthood were teachers, responsible for the education of the children and instruction in religion and morality. the head management of the hierarchy or whole ecclesiastical system, was under two high priests--the more dignified that they were chosen by the king and principal nobles without reference to birth or social station. these high priests were consulted on any national emergency, and in precedency of rank were superior to every man except the king. montezuma is said to have been a priest. the priestly power was more absolute than any ever experienced in europe. two remarkable peculiarities were that when a sinner was pardoned by a priest, the certificate afterward saved the culprit from being legally punished for any offense; secondly, there could be no pardon for an offense once atoned for if the offense were repeated. "long after the conquest, the simple natives when they came under the arm of the law, sought to escape by producing the certificate of their former confession." (prescott, i, .) the prayer of the priest-confessor, as reported by a spanish historian, is very remarkable: "o, merciful lord, thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let thy forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, _not from his own free will_, but from the influence of the sign under which he was born...." after enjoining on the penitent a variety of minute ceremonies by way of penance, the confessor urges the necessity of instantly procuring a slave for sacrifice to the deity. in the schools under the clergy the boys were taught by priests and the girls by priestesses. there was a higher school for instruction in tradition and history, the mysteries of hieroglyphs, the principles of government, and certain branches of astronomical and natural science. in the education of their children the mexican community were very strict, but from a letter preserved by one of the spanish historians, we can not doubt the womanly affection of a mother who thus wrote to her daughter: my beloved daughter, very dear little dove, you have already heard and attended to the words which your father has told you. they are precious words, which have proceeded from the bowels and heart in which they were treasured up; and your beloved father well knows that you, his daughter, begotten of him, are his blood and his flesh; and god our lord knows that it is so. although you are a woman, and are the image of your father, what more can i say to you than has already been said?... my dear daughter, whom i tenderly love, see that you live in the world in peace, tranquillity, and contentment--see that you disgrace not yourself, that you stain not your honor, nor pollute the luster and fame of your ancestors.... may god prosper you, my first-born, and may you come to god, who is in every place.[ ] [footnote : sahagun, hist. de nueva españa, vi, .] some trace of a "natural piety," which will probably surprise our readers, is also found in the ceremony of aztec baptism, as described by the same writer. after the head and lips of the infant were touched with water and a name given to it, the goddess cioacoatl was implored "that the sin which was given to us before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew." in sahagun's account we read: when all the relations of the child were assembled, the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was summoned. when the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water.... to perform the rite, she placed herself _with her face toward the west_, and began to go through certain ceremonies.... after this she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, "o my child! receive the water of the lord of the world, which is our life, and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. it is to wash and to purify." ... [after a prayer] she took the child in both hands, and lifting him toward heaven said, "o lord, thou seest here thy creature whom thou hast sent into this world, this place of sorrow, suffering, and penitence. grant him, o lord, thy gifts and thine inspiration." the science of the aztecs has excited the wonder of all competent judges, such as humboldt (already quoted) and the astronomer la place. lord kingsborough remarks in his great work: it can hardly be doubted that the mexicans were acquainted with many scientifical instruments of strange invention;... whether the telescope may not have been of the number is uncertain; but the thirteenth plate of m. dupaix's monuments, which represents a man holding something of a similar nature to his eye, affords reason to suppose that they knew how to improve the powers of vision. references to the calendar of the aztecs should not omit the secular festival occurring at the end of their great cycle of fifty-two years. from the length of the period, two generations, one might compare it with the "jubilee" of ancient israel--a word made familiar toward the close of queen victoria's reign. the great event always took place at midwinter, the most dreary period of the year, and when the five intercalary days arrived they "abandoned themselves to despair," breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes to rags. this disorder and gloom signified that figuratively the end of the world was at hand. on the evening of the last day, a procession of priests, assuming the dress and ornaments of their gods, moved from the capital toward a lofty mountain, about two leagues distant. they carried with them a noble victim, the flower of their captives, and an apparatus for kindling the _new fire_, the success of which was an augury of the renewal of the cycle. on the summit of the mountain, the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the pleiades[ ] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. the flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. as the light streamed up toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the housetops.... couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing beacon, rapidly bore them over every part of the country.... a new cycle had commenced its march. the following thirteen days were given up to festivity. ... the people, dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned with garlands and chaplets of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up their oblations and thanksgivings in the temples. dances and games were instituted emblematical of the regeneration of the world. [footnote : a famous group of seven small stars in the bull constellation. the "seven sisters" appear as only _six_ to ordinary eyesight: to make out the seventh is a test of a practised eye and excellent vision.] prescott compares this carnival of the aztecs to the great secular festival of the romans or ancient etruscans, which (as suetonius remarked) "few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to witness again." the _ludi sæculares_ or secular games of rome were held only at very long intervals and lasted for three days and nights. the poet southey thus refers to the ceremony of opening the new aztec cycle, or circle of the years. on his bare breast the cedar boughs are laid, on his bare breast, dry sedge and odorous gums, laid ready to receive the sacred spark, and blaze, to herald the ascending sun, upon his living altar. round the wretch the inhuman ministers of rites accurst stand, and expect the signal when to strike the seed of fire. their chief, apart from all, ... eastward turns his eyes; for now the hour draws nigh, and speedily he look's to see the first faint dawn of day break through the orient sky. _madoc_, ii, . chapter iv american archeology long before the time of columbus and the spanish conquest there existed on the table-land of mexico two great races or nations, as has already been shown, both highly civilized, and both akin in language, art, and religion. ethnologists and antiquaries are not agreed as to their origin or the development of their civilization. many recent critics have held the theory that there had been a previous people from whom both races inherited their extinct civilization, this previous race being the "toltecs," whom we have repeatedly mentioned in the preceding chapter. to that previous race some attribute the colossal stonework around lake titicaca, as well as other survivals of long-forgotten culture. some would even class them with the "mound-builders" of the ohio valley. other recent antiquaries, however, while fully admitting the aztec-tescucan civilization to be real and historical, treat the toltec theory as partly or entirely mythical. one writer alleges, after the manner of max müller, that the toltecs are "simply a personification of the rays of light" radiating from the aztec sun-god. leaving abstract theories, we shall devote this chapter to the principal facts of american archeology--especially as regards the races and the monuments of their long extinct civilizations. throughout many parts of both north and south america, and over large areas, the red-skinned natives continued their generations as their ancestors had done through untold centuries, scarcely rising above the state of rude, uncultured sons of the soil living as hunters, trappers, fishers, as had been done immemorially when wild in woods the noble savage ran, as dryden puts it. but in mexico, yucatan, and central america, colombia, and peru there were men of the original redskin race who had distinctly attained to civilization for unknown generations before the time of columbus. not only so, but in many centers of wealth and population the process of social improvement and advance had been continuous for unrecorded ages; and in certain cases a long extinct civilization had over-laid a previous civilization still more remotely extinct. some works constructed for supplying water, for example, could only have been applied to that purpose when the climate or geological conditions were quite different from what they have always been in historical times! who is the red man? compared in numbers with the yellow man, the white man, or even the black, he is very unimportant, being only one-tenth as great as the african race.[ ] in american ethnology, however, the red man is all-important. primeval men of this race undoubtedly formed the original stock whence during the centuries were derived all the numerous tribes of "indians" found in either north or south america. throughout asia and africa there is great diversity in type among the races that are indigenous; but as to america, to quote humboldt: [footnote : white or caucasian , , , yellow or mongolian , , , black or african , , , red or american , , .] the indians of new spain [i. e., mexico] bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit canada, florida, peru, and brazil. we have the same swarthy and copper color, straight and smooth hair, small beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner directed upward toward the temples, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, and expression of gentleness in the mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe look. whence the original red men of america were derived it is impossible to say. the date is too remote and the data too few. from fossil remains of human bones, agassiz estimated a period of at least ten thousand years; and near new orleans, beneath four buried forests, a skeleton was found which was possibly fifty thousand years old. if, therefore, the redskins branched off from the yellow man, it must have been at a period which lies utterly beyond historic ken or calculation. some recent ethnologists have borrowed the "glacier theory" from the science of geology, in order to trace the development of civilization among certain races. in switzerland and greenland the signs of the action of a glacier can be traced and recognized just as we trace the proofs of the action of water in a dry channel. visit the front of a glacier in autumn after the summer heat has made it shrink back, you will see ( ) rounded rocks, as if planed on the top, with ( ) a mixed mass of stones and gravel like a rubbish-heap, scattered on ( ) a mass of clay and sand, containing boulders. the same three tests are frequently found in countries where there have been no glaciers within the memory of man. such traces, found not only in england, scotland, and ireland, but in northern germany and denmark, prove that the mountain mass of scandinavia was the nucleus of a huge ice-cap "radiating to a distance of not less than , miles, and thick enough to block up with solid ice the north sea, the german ocean, the baltic, and even the atlantic up to the -fathom line." in north america the same thing is proved by similar evidence. a gigantic ice-cap extending from canada has glaciated all the minor mountain ranges to the south, sweeping over the whole continent. the drift and boulders still remain to prove the fact, as far south as only ° north of the tropic. a warm oceanic current, like the gulf stream of the atlantic, would shorten a glacial period. speaking of scotland, one authority states that "if the gulf stream were diverted and the highlands upheaved to the height of the new zealand alps, the whole country would again be buried under glaciers pushing out into the seas" on the west and east. the theory is that as the climate became warmer, the ice-fronts retreated northward by the shrinking of the glaciers, and therefore the animals, including man, were able to live farther north. the men of that very remote period were "neolithic," and some of the stone monuments are attributed to them that were formerly called "druidic." a recent writer asks; with reference to stonehenge: did neolithic men slowly coming northward, as the rigors of the last glacial period abated, domicile here, and build this huge gaunt temple before they passed farther north, to degrade and dwindle down into eskimos wandering the dismal coasts of arctic seas? another writer, with reference to the american ice-sheet, says: during the second glacial epoch when the great boreal ice-sheet covered one-half of the north american continent, reaching as far south as the present cities of philadelphia and st. louis, and the glaciated portions were as unfit for human occupation as the snow-cap of greenland is to-day, aggregations of population clustered around the equatorial zone, because the climatic conditions were congenial. and inasmuch as civilization, the world over, clings to the temperate climates and thrives there best, we are not surprised to learn that communities far advanced in arts and architecture built and occupied those great cities in yucatan, honduras, guatemala, and other central american states, whose populations once numbered hundreds of thousands. an approximate date when this civilization was at the acme of its glory would be about ten thousand years ago. this is established by observations upon the recession of the existing glacier fronts, which are known to drop back twelve miles in one hundred years. with the gradual withdrawal of the glacial ice-sheet the climate grew proportionately milder, and flora and fauna moved simultaneously northward. some emigrants went to south america and settled there, carrying their customs, arts, ceremonial rites, hieroglyphs, architecture, etc.; and an immense exodus took place into mexico, which ultimately extended westward up the pacific coast. in subsequent epochs when the ice-sheet had withdrawn from large areas, there were immense influxes of people from asia via bering strait on the pacific side, and from northwestern europe via greenland on the atlantic side. the korean immigration of the year led to the founding of the mexican empire in . to trace then the gradations of ascent from the native american--called "indians" by a blunder of the great admiral, as afterward they were nicknamed "redskins" by the english settlers--to the mexicans, peruvians, or colombians is a task far beyond our strength. leaving the question of race, therefore, we now turn to the antiquarian remains, especially the architectural. the prehistoric civilization which was developed to the south of mexico is generally known as "mayan," although the mayas were undoubtedly akin to the aztecs or early mexicans. the maya tribes in yucatan and honduras, from abundant evidence, must have risen to a refinement in prehistoric times, which, in several respects, was superior to that of the aztecs. in architecture they were in advance from the earliest ages not only of the aztec peoples, but of all the american races. in yucatan the mayas have left some wonderful remains at mayapan, their prehistoric capital, and near it at a place called uxmal which has become famous from its vast and elaborate structures,[ ] evidencing a knowledge of art and science which had flourished in this region for centuries before the arrival of the spanish. the chief building in uxmal is in pyramidal form, the principal design in the ancient aztec temples (as well as those of chaldea, etc.), consisting of three terraces faced with hewn stone. the terraces are in length , , and feet respectively; with the temple on the summit, feet, and a great flight of stairs leading to it. the whole building is surrounded by a belt of richly sculptured figures, above a cornice. at chichen, also in yucatan, there is an area of two miles perimeter entirely covered with architectural ruins; many of the roofs having apparently consisted of stone arches, painted in various colors. one building, of peculiar construction, proves an enigma to all travelers: it is more than ninety yards long and consists of two parallel walls, each ten yards thick, the distance between them being also ten yards. it has been conjectured that the anomalous construction had reference to some public games by which the citizens amused themselves in that long-forgotten period. among other memorials of mayan architecture in this country is the city of tuloom on the east coast, fortified with strong walls and square towers. a more remarkable "find" in the dense forests of chiapas, in the same country, is the city recorded by stephens and other travelers. it is near the coast, at the place where cortés and his spanish soldiers were moving about for a considerable time, yet they do not appear to have ever seen the splendid ruins, or to have at all suspected their existence. even if the natives knew, the spaniards might have found the toil of forcing a passage through such forests too laborious. the name of the city which had so long been buried under the tropical vegetation was quite unknown, nor was there any tradition of it; but when found it was called "palenque," from the nearest inhabited village. there were substantial and handsome buildings with excellent masonry, and in many cases beautiful sculptures and hieroglyphical figures. [footnote : see frontispiece.] merida, the capital of yucatan, is on the site of a prehistoric city whose name had also become unknown. when building the present town, the spaniards utilized the ancient buildings as quarries for good stones. the larger prehistoric structures are frequently on artificial mounds, being probably intended for religious or ceremonial purposes. the walls both within and without are elaborately decorated, sometimes with symbolic figures. sometimes officials in ceremonial costumes are seen apparently performing religious rites. these are often accompanied by inscriptions in low relief, with the peculiar mayan characters which some archeologists call "calculiform hieroglyphs" (_v._ p. ). on one of the altar-slabs near palenque there occurs a sculptured group of several figures in the act of making offerings to a central object shaped like the latin cross. "the latin, the greek, and the egyptian cross or _tau_ (t) were evidently sacred symbols to this ancient people, bearing some religious meanings derived from their own cult."[ ] [footnote : d. g. brinton.] the cross occurs frequently, not only in the mayan sculptures, but also in the ceremonial of the aztecs. the spanish followers of cortés were astonished to see this symbol used by these "barbarians," as they called them. winsor (i, ) says that the mayan cross has been explained to mean "the four cardinal points, the rain-bringers, the symbol of life and health"; and again, "the emblem of fire, indeed an ornamental fire-drill." students of architecture find a rudimentary form of the arch occurring in some of the ruins, notably at palenque. two walls are built parallel to each other, at some distance apart, then at the beginning of the arch the layers on both sides have the inner stones slightly projecting, each layer projecting a little more than the previous one, till at a certain height the stones of one wall are almost touching those of the wall opposite. finally, a single flat stone closes in the space between and completes the arch. in honduras, on the banks of the copan, the spaniards found a prehistoric capital in ruins, on an elevated area, surrounded by substantial walls built of dressed stones, and enclosing large groups of buildings. one structure is mainly composed of huge blocks of polished stone. in several houses the whole of the external surface is covered with elaborate carved designs: the adjacent soil is covered with sculptured obelisks, pillars, and idols, with finely dressed stones, and with blocks ornamented with skilfully carved figures of the characteristic maya hieroglyphs, which, could they be deciphered, would doubtless reveal the story of this strange and solitary city. in western guatemala, at utatla, the ancient capital of the quiches, a tribe allied to the mayas, several pyramids still remain. one is feet high, surmounted by a stone wall, and another is ascended by a staircase of nineteen steps, each nineteen inches in height. the literary remains (such as alphabets, hieroglyphs, manuscripts, etc.) of the maya and aztec races are in some respects as vivid a proof of the extinct civilizations as any of the architectural monuments already discussed. both aztecs and mayans of yucatan and central america used picture-writing, and sometimes an imperfect form of hieroglyphics. the most elementary kind was simply a rough sketch of a scene or historical group which they wished to record. when, for example, cortés had his first interview with some messengers sent by montezuma, one of the aztecs was observed sketching the dress and appearance of the spaniards, and then completing his picture by using colors. even in recent times indians have recorded facts by pictographs: in harper's magazine (august, ) we read that "pictographs and painted rocks to the number of over , are scattered all over the united states, from the dighton rock, massachusetts (_v_. pp. , ), to the kern river cañon in california, and from the florida cape to the mouse river in manitoba. the identity of the indians with their ancient progenitors is further proved by relics, mortuary customs, linguistic similarities, plants and vegetables, and primitive industrial and mechanical arts, which have remained constant throughout the ages." the pictographs of the kern river cañon, according to the same writer, were inscribed on the rocks there "about five thousand years ago." a more advanced form of picture-writing is frequently found in the mayan and other inscriptions and manuscripts. two objects are represented, whose names, when pronounced together, give a sound which suggests the name to be recorded or remembered. thus, the name gladstone may be expressed in this manner by two pictures, one a laughing face (i. e., "happy" or "glad"), the other a rock (i. e., "stone"). it is exactly the same contrivance that is used to construct the puzzle called a "rebus." a third form of hieroglyphic was by devising some conventional mark or symbol to suggest the initial sound of the name to be recorded. such a mark or character would be a "letter," in fact; and thus the prehistoric alphabets were arrived at, not only among the early mayans of yucatan, etc., but among the prehistoric peoples of asia, as the chinese, the hittites, etc., as well as the primeval egyptians. many of the sculptures in copan and palenque to which we have referred contain pictographs and hieroglyphs. a spanish bishop of yucatan drew up a mayan alphabet in order to express the hieroglyphs on monuments and manuscripts in roman letters; but much more data are needed before scholars will read the ancient mayan-aztec tongues as they have been enabled to understand the egyptian inscriptions or the cuneiform records of babylonia. for the american hieroglyphs we still lack a second young or champollion. there are three famous manuscripts in the mayan character: . the dresden codex, preserved in the royal library of that city. it is called a "religious and astrological ritual" by abbé brasseur. . codex troano, in madrid, described in two folios by abbé brasseur. . codex peresianus, named from the wrapper in which it was found, , which had the name "perez." it is also known as codex mexicanus. in lord kingsborough's great work on mexican antiquities there are several of the mayan manuscripts printed in facsimile, and others in a book by m. aubin, of paris. each group of letters in a mayan inscription is enclosed in an irregular oval, supposed to resemble the cross-section of a pebble; hence the term _calculiform_ (i. e., "pebble-shaped") is applied to their hieroglyphs, as _cuneiform_ (i. e., "wedge-shaped") is applied to the babylonian and assyrian letters. the paper which the prehistoric mexicans (mayas, aztecs, or tescucans, etc.) used for writing and drawing upon was of vegetable origin, like the egyptian papyrus. it was made by macerating the leaves of the _maguey_, a plant of the greatest importance (_v._ p. ). when the surface of the paper was glazed, the letters were painted on in brilliant colors, proceeding from left to right, as we do. each book was a strip of paper, several yards long and about ten inches wide, not rolled round a stick, as the volumes of ancient rome were, but folded zigzag, like a screen. the protecting boards which held the book were often artistically carved and painted. the topics of the ordinary books, so far as we yet know, were religious ritual, dreams, and prophecies, the calendar, chronological notes, medical superstitions, portents of marriage and birth. the written language was in common and extensive use for the legal conveyance and sale of property. one of the most remarkable facts connected with this extinct civilization was the accuracy of their calendar and chronological system. their calendar was actually superior to that then existing in europe. they had two years: one for civil purposes, of three hundred and sixty-five days, divided into eighteen months of twenty days, besides five supplementary days; the other, a ritual or ecclesiastical year, to regulate the public festivals. the civil year required thirteen days to be added at the end of every fifty-two years, so as to harmonize with the ritual year. each month contained four weeks of five days, but as each of the twenty days (forming a month) had a distinct name, humboldt concluded that the names were borrowed from a prehistoric calendar, used in india and tartary. wilson (prehistoric man, i, ) remarks: by the unaided results of native science the dwellers on the mexican plateau had effected an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning according to the unreformed julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily effaced. in there was found in the square of mexico a famous relic, the mexican calendar stone, "one of the most striking monuments of american antiquity." it was long supposed to have been intended for chronological purposes; but later authorities call it a votive tablet or sacrificial altar.[ ] similar circular stones have been dug up in other parts of mexico and in yucatan. [footnote : pp. - , _v._ p. .] both the mayas and the aztecs excelled in the ordinary arts of civilized life. paper-making has already been spoken of. cotton being an important produce of their soil, they understood its spinning, dyeing, and weaving so well that the spaniards mistook some of the finer aztec fabrics for silk. they cultivated maize, potatoes, plantains, and other vegetables. both in mexico and yucatan they produced beautiful work in feathers; metal working was not so important as in some countries, being chiefly for ornamental purposes. in fact, it was the comparative plenty of gold and silver around mexico that delayed the invasion of the mayan country for more than twenty years. the mayas had developed trade to a considerable extent before the spanish invasion, and interchanged commodities with the island of cuba. it was there, accordingly, that columbus first saw this people, and first heard of yucatan. of the mexican remains on the central plateau, the most conspicuous is the mound or pyramid of cholula, although it retains few traces of prehistoric art. a modern church with a dome and two towers now occupies the summit, with a paved road leading up to it. it is chiefly noted, first, by antiquaries, as having originally been a great temple of quetzalcoatl, the beneficent deity, famous in story; and, secondly, for the fierce struggle around the mound and on the slopes between the mexicans and spanish. (_v._ pp. - .) another mound in this district, yochicalco, lies seventy-five miles southwest of the capital. it is considered one of the best memorials of the extinct civilization, consisting of five terraces supported by stone walls, and formerly surmounted by a pyramid. passing from the traces of aztec and mayan civilization, we may now glance at the antiquities of the colombian states. there are no temples or large structures, because the natives, before the spanish conquest, used timber for building, but owing to the abundance of gold in their brooks and rivers, they developed skill in gold-working, and produced fine ornaments of wonderful beauty. many hollow figures have been found, evidently cast from molds, representing men, beasts, and birds, etc. stone-cutting was also an art of this ancient race, sometimes applied to making idols bearing hieroglyphs. when the spaniards invaded them to take their gold and precious stones, the "chibchas," who then held the colombian table-land and valleys, threw large quantities of those valuables into a lake near bogota, the capital. it was afterward attempted to recover those treasures by draining off the water, but only a small portion was found; and in the present year ( ) a new engineering attempt has been made. a spanish writer, in , asserted that evidence was found in the caves and mines that in ancient times the colombians produced an alloy of gold, copper, and iron having the temper and hardness of steel. on a tributary of the river magdalena there are many curious stone images, sometimes with grotesquely carved faces. turning next to the mound-builders, in the ohio and upper mississippi valley, we find traces of an extinct civilization in high mounds, evidently artificial, extensive embankments, broad deep ditches, terraced pyramids, and an interesting variety of stone implements and pottery. some mounds were for burial-places, others for sacrificial purposes, others again as a site for building, like those we have seen in mexico and maya. many enclosures contain more than fifty acres of land; and one embankment is fifty miles long. among the relics associated with those works are articles of pottery, knives, and copper ornaments, hammered silver, mica, obsidian, pearls, beautifully sculptured pipes, shells, and stone implements. the mounds found in some of the gulf states seem to confirm a theory that the mound-builders were the ancestors of the choctaw indians and their allies, and had been driven southward. in the lower mississippi valley, eastward to the seacoast, there are many large earthworks, including round and quadrilateral mounds, embankments, canals, and artificial lakes. similar works can be traced to the southern extremity of florida. some were constructed as sites for large buildings. the tribes to whom they are due are now known to have been agricultural--growing maize, beans, and pumpkins; with these products and those of the chase they supported a considerable population. among other antiquarian remains in america are the cliff-houses and "pueblos." the former peculiarity is explained by the deep cañons of the dry table-land of colorado. imagine a narrow deep cutting or narrow trench worn by water-courses out of solid rock, deep enough to afford a channel to the stream from to , feet below the plateau above. next imagine one of the caves which the water many ages ago had worn out of the perpendicular sides of the cañon; and in that cave a substantial, well-built structure of cut stones bedded in firm mortar. such are the "cliff--houses," sometimes of two stories. occasionally there is a watch-tower perched on a conspicuous point of rock near a cliff-dwelling, with small windows looking to the east and north. these curious buildings, though now prehistoric, in a sense, are believed by archeologists to be later than the spanish conquest. peru is very important archeologically, but some interesting points will properly fall under our general account of that country and its conquest by spain. [illustration: chulpa or stone tomb of the peruvians.] in peruvian architecture, we find "cyclopean walls," with polygonal stones of five or six feet diameter, so well polished and adjusted that no mortar was necessary; sometimes with a projecting part of the stone fitting exactly into a corresponding cavity of the stone immediately above or below it. such huge stones are of hard granite or basalt, etc. the walls are often very massive and substantial, sometimes from thirty to forty feet in thickness. the only approach to the modern "arch" in the peruvian structures is a device similar to that which was described under the mayan architecture. some important buildings were surrounded with large upright stones, similar to the famous "druidic" temple at stonehenge. all of the chief structures were accurately placed with reference to the cardinal points, and the main entrance always faced the east. the peruvian tombs were very elaborate, one kind being made by cutting caverns in the steep precipices of the cordillera and then carefully walling in the entrance. another variety (the _chulpa_) was really a stone tower erected above ground, twelve to thirty feet high. the chulpas were sometimes built in groups. chapter v mexico before the spanish invasion the aztecs and the tescucans were the chief races occupying the great table-land of anahuac, including, as we have seen, the famous mexican valley. in the preceding chapter we have set forth some of the leading points in the extinct civilization of those races, and also that of the mayas, who in several respects were perhaps superior to the anahuac kingdoms. several features of the early mexican civilization will come before us as we accompany the european conquerors, in their march over the table-land. meantime, we glance first at the geography of this magnificent region, and secondly at the manners and institutions of the people, their industrial arts, etc., and their terrible religion. the last-mentioned topic has already been partly discussed in chapter iii. the tropic of cancer passes through the middle of mexico, and therefore its southern half, which is the most important, is all under the burning sun of the "torrid zone." this heat, however, is greatly modified by the height of the surface above sea-level, since the country, taken as a whole, is simply an extensive table-land. the height of the plain in the two central states, mexico and puebla, is , feet, or about double the average height of the highest summits in the british isles. on the west of the republic is a continuous chain of mountains, and on the east of the table-land run a series of mountainous groups parallel to the seacoast, with a summit in vera cruz of over , feet. to the south of the capital an irregular range running east and west contains these remarkable volcanoes--colima, , feet; jorulla, popocatepetl, , ; orizaba (extinct), , , the highest summit in mexico, and, with the exception of some of the mountains of alaska, in north america. the great plateau-basin formed around the capital and its lakes is completely enclosed by mountains. this high table-land has its own climate as compared with the broad tract lying along the atlantic. hence the latter is known as the hot region (_caliente_), and the former the cold region (_fria_). between the two climates, as the traveler mounts from the sea-level to the great plateau, is the temperate region (_templada_), an intermediate belt of perpetual humidity, a welcome escape from the heat and deadly malaria of the hot region with its "bilious fevers." sometimes as he passes along the bases of the volcanic mountains, casting his eye "down some steep slope or almost unfathomable ravine on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enameled vegetation of the tropics." this contrast arises from the height he has now gained above the hot coast region. the climate on the table-land is only cold in a relative sense, being mild to europeans, with a mean temperature at the capital of °, seldom lowered to the freezing-point. the "temperate" slopes form the "paradise of mexico," from "the balmy climate, the magnificent scenery, and the wealth of semitropical vegetation." the aztec and tescucan laws were kept in state records, and shown publicly in hieroglyphs. the great crimes against society were all punished with death, including the murder of a slave. slaves could hold property, and all their sons were freedmen. the code in general showed real respect for the leading principles of morality. in mexico, as in ancient egypt, the soldier shared with the priest the highest consideration. the king must be an experienced warrior. the tutelary deity of the aztecs was the god of war. a great object of military expeditions was to gather hecatombs of captives for his altars. the soldier who fell in battle was transported at once to the region of ineffable bliss in the bright mansions of the sun.... thus every war became a crusade; and the warrior was not only raised to a contempt of danger, but courted it--animated by a religious enthusiasm like that of the early saracen or the christian crusader. the officers of the armies wore rich and conspicuous uniforms--a tight-fitting tunic of quilted cotton sufficient to turn the arrows of the native indians; a cuirass (for superior officers) made of thin plates of gold or silver; an overcoat or cloak of variegated feather-work; helmets of wood or silver, bearing showy plumes, adorned with precious stones and gold ornaments. their belts, collars, bracelets, and earrings were also of gold or silver. southey, in his poem, makes his welsh prince, madoc, thus boast: their mail, if mail it may be called, was woven of vegetable down, like finest flax, bleached to the whiteness of new-fallen snow, ... others of higher office were arrayed in feathery breastplates, of more gorgeous hue than the gay plumage of the mountain-cock, than the pheasants' glittering pride. but what were these or what the thin gold hauberk, when opposed to arms like ours in battle? _madoc_, i, . we learn of the ancient mexicans, to their honor, that in the large towns hospitals were kept for the cure of the sick and wounded soldiers, and as a permanent refuge if disabled. not only so, says a spanish historian, but "the surgeons placed over them were so far better than those in europe that they did not protract the cure to increase the pay." even the red man of the woods, as we learn from fenimore cooper and catlin, believes reverently in the great spirit who upholds the universe; and similarly his more civilized brother of mexico or tezcuco spoke of a supreme creator, lord of heaven and earth. in their prayers some of the phrases were: the god by whom we live, omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without whom man is nothing, invisible, incorporeal, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defense. prescott, however, remarks that notwithstanding such attributes "the idea of unity--of a being with whom volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute his purposes--was too simple, or too vast, for their understandings; and they sought relief, as usual, in a plurality of deities, who presided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man." the aztecs, in fact, believed in thirteen _dii majores_ and over _dii minores_. to each of these a special day was assigned in the calendar, with its appropriate festival. chief of them all was that bloodthirsty monster _huitsilopochtli_, the hideous god of war--tutelary deity of the nation. there was a huge temple to him in the capital, and on the great altar before his image there, and on all his altars throughout the empire, the reeking blood of thousands of human victims was being constantly poured out. the terrible name of this mexican mars has greatly puzzled scholars of the language. according to one derivation, the name is a compound of two words, _humming-bird_ and _on the left_, because his image has the feathers of that bird on the left foot. prescott naturally thinks that "too amiable an etymology for so ruffian a deity." the other name of the war-god, _mexitl_ (i. e., "the hare of the aloes"), is much better known, because from it is derived the familiar name of the capital. [illustration: quetzalcoatl.] the god of the air, _quetzalcoatl_, a beneficent deity, who taught mexicans the use of metals, agriculture, and the arts of government. prescott remarks that he was doubtless one of those benefactors of their species who have been deified by the gratitude of posterity. there was a remarkable tradition of quetzalcoatl, preserved among the mexicans, that he had been a king, afterward a god, and had a temple dedicated to his worship at cholula[ ] when on his way to the mexican gulf. embarking there, he bade his people a long farewell, promising that he and his descendants would revisit them. the expectation of his return prepared the way for the success of the tall white-skinned invaders. [footnote : the ruins were referred to in chap, iv, (_v._ p. , also .)] in the aztec agriculture, the staple plant was of course the _maize_ or indian corn. humboldt tells us that at the conquest it was grown throughout america, from the south of chile to the river st. lawrence; and it is still universal in the new world. other important plants on the aztec soil were the _banana_, which (according to one spanish writer) was the forbidden fruit that tempted our poor mother eve; the _cacao_, whose fruit supplies the valuable chocolate; the _vanilla_, used for flavoring; and most important of all, the _maguey_, or mexican aloe, much valued because its leaves were manufactured into paper, and its juice by fermentation becomes the national intoxicant, "pulque." the _maguey_, or great mexican aloe, grown all over the table-land, is called "the miracle of nature," producing not only the _pulque_, but supplying _thatch_ for the cottages, _thread_ and _cords_ from its tough fiber, _pins_ and _needles_ from the thorns which grow on the leaves, an excellent _food_ from its roots, and _writing-paper_ from its leaves. one writer, after speaking of the "pulque" being made from the "maguey," adds, "with what remains of these leaves they manufacture excellent and very fine cloth, resembling holland or the finest linen." the _itztli_, formerly mentioned as being used at the sacrifices by the officiating priest, was "obsidian," a dark transparent mineral, of the greatest hardness, and therefore useful for making knives and razors. the mexican sword was serrated, those of the finest quality being of course edged with itztli. sculptured figures abounded in every aztec temple and town, but in design very inferior to the ancient specimens of egypt and babylonia, not to mention greece. a remarkable collection of their sculptured images occurred in the _place_ or great square of mexico--the aztec forum--and similar spots. ever since the spanish invasion the destruction of the native objects of art has been ceaseless and ruthless. "two celebrated bas-reliefs of the last montezuma and his father," says prescott, "cut in the solid rock, in the beautiful groves of chapoltepec, were deliberately destroyed, as late as the last century [i. e., the eighteenth], by order of the government." he further remarks: this wantonness of destruction provokes the bitter animadversion of the spanish writer martyr, whose enlightened mind respected the vestiges of civilization wherever found. "the conquerors," says he, "seldom repaired the buildings that they defaced; they would rather sack twenty stately cities than erect one good edifice." the pre-columbian mexicans inherited a practical knowledge of mechanics and engineering. the calendar stone, for example (spoken of in the preceding chapter), a mass of dark porphyry estimated at fifty tons weight, was carried for a distance of many leagues from the mountains beyond lake chalco, through a rough country crossed by rivers and canals. in the passage its weight broke down a bridge over a canal, and the heavy rock had to be raised from the water beneath. with such obstacles, without the draft assistance of horses or cattle, how was it possible to effect such a transport? perhaps the mechanical skill of their builders and engineers had contrived some tramway or other machinery. an english traveler had a curious suggestion: latrobe accommodates the wonders of nature and art very well to each other, by suggesting that these great masses of stone were transported by means of the mastodon, whose remains are occasionally disinterred in the mexican valley. the mexicans wove many kinds of cotton cloth, sometimes using as a dye the rich crimson of the cochineal insect. they made a more expensive fabric by interweaving the cotton with the fine hair of rabbits, and other animals; sometimes embroidering with pretty designs of flowers and birds, etc. the special art of the aztec weaver was in feather-work, which when brought to europe produced the highest admiration: with feathers they could produce all the effect of a beautiful mosaic. the gorgeous plumage of the tropical birds, especially of the parrot tribe, afforded every variety of color; and the fine down of the humming-bird, which reveled in swarms among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico, supplied them with soft aerial tints that gave an exquisite finish to the picture. the feathers, pasted on a fine cotton web, were wrought into dresses for the wealthy, hangings for apartments, and ornaments for the temples. when some of the mexican feather-work was shown at strasbourg: "never," says one admirer, "did i behold anything so exquisite for brilliancy and nice gradation of color, and for beauty of design. no european artist could have made such a thing." instead of shops the aztecs had in every town a market-place, where fairs were held every fifth day--i. e., once a week. each commodity had a particular quarter, and the traffic was partly by barter, and partly by using the following articles as money: bits of tin shaped like an egyptian cross (t), bags of cacao holding a specified number of grains, and, for large values, quills of gold-dust. the married women among the aztecs were treated kindly and respectfully by their husbands. the feminine occupations were spinning and embroidery, etc., as among the ancient greeks, while listening to ballads and love stories related by their maidens and musicians (ramusio, iii, ). in banquets and other social entertainments the women had an equal share with the men. sometimes the festivities were on a large scale, with costly preparations and numerous attendants. the mexicans, ancient and modern, have always been passionately fond of flowers, and on great occasions not only were the halls and courts strewed and adorned in profusion with blossoms of every hue and sweet odor, but perfumes scented every room. the guests as they sat down found ewers of water before them and cotton napkins, since washing the hands both before and after eating was a national habit of almost religious obligation.[ ] modern europeans believe that tobacco was introduced from america in the time of queen isabella and queen elizabeth, but ages before that period the aztecs at their banquets had the "fragrant weed" offered to the company, "in pipes, mixed up with aromatic substances, or in the form of cigars, inserted in tubes of tortoise-shell or silver." the smoke after dinner was no doubt preliminary to the _siesta_ or nap of "forty winks." it is not known if the aztec ladies, like their descendants in modern mexico, also appreciated the _yetl_, as the mexicans called "tobacco." our word came from the natives of hayti, one of the islands discovered by columbus. [footnote : sahagun (vi, ) quotes the precise instructions of a father to his son: he must wash face and hands before sitting down to table, and must not leave till he has repeated the operation and cleansed his teeth.] the tables of the aztecs abounded in good food--various dishes of meat, especially game, fowl, and fish. the turkey, for example, was introduced into europe from mexico, although stupidly supposed to have come from asia. the french named it _coq d'inde_,[ ] the "indian cock," meaning american, but the ordinary hearer imagined _d'inde_ meant from hindustan. the blunder arose from that misapplication of the word "indian," first made by columbus, as we formerly explained. [footnote : the spanish named this handsome bird _gallopavo_ (lat. _pavo_, the "peacock"). the wild turkey is larger and more beautiful than the tame, and therefore benjamin franklin, when speaking sarcastically of the "american eagle," insisted that the wild turkey was the proper national emblem.] the aztec cooks dressed their viands with various sauces and condiments, the more solid dishes being followed by fruits of many kinds, as well as sweetmeats and pastry. chafing-dishes even were used. besides the varieties of beautiful flowers which adorned the table there were sculptured vases of silver and sometimes gold. at table the favorite beverage was the _chocolatl_ flavored with vanilla and different spices. the fermented juice of the maguey, with a mixture of sweets and acids, supplied also various agreeable drinks, of different degrees of strength. when the young mexicans of both sexes amused themselves with dances, the older people kept their seats in order to enjoy their _pulque_ and gossip, or listen to the discourse of some guest of importance. the music which accompanied the dances was frequently soft and rather plaintive. the early mexicans included the tezcucans as well as the aztecs proper; and since their capitals were on the same lake and both races were closely akin, we may devote some space to these alcohuans or eastern aztecs. their civilization was superior to that of the western aztecs in some respects, and nezahual-coyotl, their greatest prince, formed alliance with the western state, and then remodeled the various departments of his government. he had a council of war, another of finance, and a third of justice. a remarkable institution, under king nezahual-coyotl, was the "council of music," intended to promote the study of science and the practise of art. tezcuco, in fact, became the nursery not only of such sciences as could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and ornamental arts. "its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated throughout the country.... its idiom, more polished than the mexican, continued long after the conquest to be that in which the best productions of the native races were composed. tezcuco was the athens of the western world.... among the most illustrious of her bards was their king himself." a spanish writer adds that it was to the eastern aztecs that noblemen sent their sons "to study poetry, moral philosophy, the heathen theology, astronomy, medicine, and history." [illustration: ancient bridge near tezcuco.] the most remarkable problem connected with ancient mexico is how to reconcile the general refinement and civilization with the sacrifices of human victims. there was no town or city but had its temples in public places, with stairs visibly leading up to the sacrificial stone, ever standing ready before some hideous idol or other--as already described. in all countries there have been public spectacles of bloodshed, not only as in the gladiators in the ancient circus-- butchered to make a roman holiday, or the tournays of the middle ages, but in the prize-ring fights and public executions by ax or guillotine, of the age that is just passing away. the thousands who perished for religious ideas by means of the holy roman inquisition should not be overlooked by the spanish writers who are so indignant that montezuma and his priests sacrificed tens of thousands under the claims of a heathen religion. the very day on which we write these words, august th, is the anniversary of the last sentence for beheading passed by our house of lords. by that sentence three scottish "jacobites" passed under the ax on tower hill, where their remains still rest in a chapel hard by. so lately as , the shah of persia, when resident as a visitor in buckingham palace, was amazed to find that the laws of great britain prevented him from depriving five of his courtiers of their lives. they had just been found guilty of some paltry infringement of persian etiquette. during the last generation or the previous one, both in england and scotland, the country schoolmaster on a certain day had the schoolroom cleared so that the children and their friends should enjoy the treat of seeing all the game-cocks of the parish bleeding on the floor one after another, being either struck by a spur to the brain, or else wounded to a painful death. when james boswell and others regularly attended the spectacles of tyburn and sometimes cheered the wretched victim if he "died game," the philosopher will not wonder at the populace of some city of ancient mexico crowding round the great temple and greedily watching the bloody sacrifice done with full sanction of the priesthood and the king. the primitive religions were derived from sun-worship, and as fire is the nearest representative of the sun, it seemed essential to _burn_ the victim offered as a sacrifice. at carthage, the great phenician colony, children were cruelly sacrificed by fire to the god melkarth of tyre. "melkarth" being simply _melech kiriath_ (i. e., "king of the city"), and therefore identical with the "moloch" or "molech" of the ammonites, moabites, and israelites. in the earliest prehistoric age the children of ammon, moab, and israel were apparently so closely akin that they had practically the same religion and worshiped the same idols. the tribal god was originally the god of syria or canaan. in more than a dozen places of the old testament we find the hebrews accused of burning their children or passing them through the fire to the sun-god, but the ancient mexicans did not burn their victims, and _in no case were the victims their own children_. the victims were captives taken in war, or persons convicted of crime; and thus the mexicans were in atrocity far surpassed by those races akin to the hebrews who are much denounced by the sacred writers, e. g.: josiah ... defiled topheth that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to molech ( kings xxiii, ). they have built also the high places to burn their sons with fire for burnt-offerings (jer. xix, ). yea, they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of canaan (ps. cvi, ). that a father should offer his own child as a sacrifice to the sun-god or any other, would to the mild and gentle aztec be too dreadful a conception. it is the enormous number who were immolated that shocks the european mind, but to the populace enjoying the spectacle the victims were enemies of the king or criminals deserving execution. perhaps it is a more difficult problem to explain how so civilized a community as the aztec races undoubtedly were could look with complacency upon any one tasting a dish composed of some part of the captive he had taken in battle. it is not only repulsive as an idea, but seems impossible. yet much depends on the point of view as well as the atmosphere. according to archeologists, all the primeval races of men could at a pinch feed on human flesh, but after many generations learned to do better without it. we may have simply outgrown the craving, till at last we call it unnatural, whereas those ancient mexicans, with all their wealth of food, had refined upon it. let us again refer to the old testament: thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters and these hast thou sacrificed to be devoured (ezek. xvi, ). ... have caused their sons to pass for them through the fire, to devour them (ezek. xxiii, ). we may therefore infer that to the early races of canaan (including israel), as well as to the primeval aztecs, it was a privilege and religious custom to eat part of any sacrifice that had been offered. there can be little doubt, to any one who has studied the earliest human antiquities, that all races indulged in cannibalism, not only during that enormously remote age called paleolithic, but in comparatively recent though still prehistoric times. "this is clearly proved by the number of human bones, chiefly of women and young persons, which have been found charred by fire and split open for extraction of the marrow." such charred bones have frequently been preserved in caves, as at chaleux in belgium, where in some instances they occurred "in such numbers as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal feasts." the survival of human sacrifice among the aztecs, with its accompanying traces of cannibalism, was due to the savagery of a long previous condition of their indian race; just as in the greek drama, when that ancient people had attained a high level of culture and refinement, the sacrifice of a human life, sometimes a princess or other distinguished heroine, was not unfrequent. we remember polyxena, the virgin daughter of hecuba, whom her own people resolved to sacrifice on the tomb of achilles; and her touching bravery, as she requests the greeks not to bind her, being ashamed, she says, "having lived a princess to die a slave." a better known example is iphigenia, so beloved by her father, king agamemnon, and yet given up by him a victim for purposes of state and religion. [illustration: teocalli, aztec temple for human sacrifices.] from the greek drama, human sacrifices frequently passed to the roman; nor does such a refined critic as horace object to it, but only suggests that the bloodshed ought to be perpetrated behind the scenes. in seneca's play, medea (quoted in our introduction), that rule was grossly violated, since the children have their throats cut by their heroic mother in full view of the audience. in the same passage (ars poët., , ) horace forbids a banquet of human flesh being prepared before the eyes of the public, as had been done in a play written by ennius, the roman poet. the religious sacrifice of human victims by the "druids" or priests of ancient gaul and britain seems exactly parallel to the wholesale executions on the mexican _teocallis_, since the wretched victims whom our celtic ancestors packed for burning into those huge wicker images, were captives taken in battle, like those stretched for slaughter upon the mexican stone of sacrifice. human sacrifice was so common in civilized rome that it was not till the first century b. c. that a law was passed expressly forbidding it--(pliny, hist. nat., xxx, , ). chapter vi arrival of the spaniards the "new birth" of the world, which characterized the end of the fifteenth century, had an enormous influence upon spain. her queen, the "great catholic isabella," had, by assisting columbus, done much in the great discovery of the western world. spain speedily had substantial reward in the boundless wealth poured into her lap, and the rich colonies added to her dominion. thus in the beginning of the sixteenth century the new consolidated spain, formed by the union of the two kingdoms, castile and aragon, became the richest and greatest of all the european states. the spanish governors in the west indies being ambitious of planting new colonies in the name of the spanish king, conquest and annexation were stimulated in all directions. when cuba and hayti were overrun and annexed to spain, not without much unjust treatment of the simple natives, as we have seen, they became centers of operation, whence expeditions could be sent to trinidad or any other island, to panama, to yucatan, or florida, or any other part of the continent. after the marvelous experience of grijalva in yucatan, then considered an island, and his report that its inhabitants were quite a civilized community compared with the natives of the isles, velasquez, the governor of cuba, resolved at once to invade the new country for purposes of annexation and plunder. velasquez prepared a large expedition for this adventure, consisting of eleven ships with more than armed men on board; and after much deliberation chose fernando cortés to be the commander. who was this cortés, destined by his military genius and unscrupulous policy to be comparable to hannibal or julius cæsar among the ancients, and to clive or napoleon bonaparte among the moderns? velasquez knew him well as one of his subordinates in the cruel conquest of cuba; before that cortés had distinguished himself in hayti as an energetic and skilled officer. of an impetuous and fiery temper which he had learned to keep thoroughly in command, he was characterized by that quality possessed by all commanders of superior genius, the "art of gaining the confidence and governing the minds of men." as a youth in spain he had studied for the bar at the university of salamanca; and in some of his speeches on critical occasions one can find certain traces of his academical training in the adroit arguments and clever appeals. other qualifications as an officer were his manly and handsome appearance, his affable manners, combined with "extraordinary address in all martial exercises, and a constitution of such vigor as to be capable of enduring any fatigue." cortés on reviewing his commission from the governor, velasquez, was too shrewd not to be aware of the importance of his new position. the "great admiral," with reference to the discovery of the new world, had said: "i have only opened the door for others to enter"; and cortés was conscious that now was the moment for that entrance. filled with unbounded ambition he rose to the occasion. velasquez somewhat hypocritically pretended that the object he had in view was merely barter with the natives of new spain--that being the name given by grijalva to yucatan and the neighboring country. he ordered cortés to impress on the natives the grandeur and goodness of his royal master; to invite them to give in their allegiance to him, and to manifest it by regaling him with such comfortable presents of gold, pearls, and precious stones as by showing their own good-will would secure his favor and protection. mustering his forces for the new expedition, cortés found that he had no sailors, soldiers, besides indians of the island; ten heavy guns, four lighter ones, called falconets. he had also sixteen horses, knowing the effect of even a small body of cavalry in dealing with savages. on february , , cortés sailed with eleven vessels for the coast of yucatan. landing at tabasco, where grijalva had found the natives friendly, cortés found that the yucatans had resolved to oppose him, and were presently assembled in great numbers. the result of the fighting, however, was naturally a foregone conclusion, partly on account of "the astonishment and terror excited by the destructive effect" of the european firearms, and the "monstrous apparition" of men on horseback. such quadrupeds they had never seen before, and they concluded that the rider with his horse formed one unaccountable animal. gomara and other chroniclers tell how st. james, the tutelar saint of spain, appeared in the ranks on a gray horse, and led the christians to victory over the heathen. an especially fortunate thing for cortés was that among the female slaves presented after this battle, there was one of remarkable intelligence, who understood both the aztec and the mayan languages, and soon learned the spanish. she proved invaluable to cortés as an interpreter, and afterward had a share in all his campaigns. she is generally called marina. if the spanish accounts are true, stating that the native army consisted of five squadrons of , men each, then this victory is one of the most remarkable on record, as a proof of the value of gunpowder as compared with primitive bows and arrows. to the simple americans the terrible invaders seemed actually to wield the thunder and the lightning. next day cortés made an arrangement with the chiefs; and after confidence was restored, asked where they got their gold from. they pointed to the high grounds on the west, and said _culhua_, meaning mexico. the palm sunday being at hand, the conversion of the "heathen" was duly celebrated by pompous and solemn ceremonial. the army marched in procession with the priests at their head, accompanied by crowds of indians of both sexes, till they reached the principal temple. a new altar being built, the image of the presiding deity was taken from its place and thrown down, to make room for that of the virgin carrying the infant saviour. cortés now learned that the capital of the mexican empire was on the mountain plains nearly seventy leagues inland; and that the ruler was the great and powerful montezuma. it was on the morning of good friday that cortés landed on the site of vera cruz, which after the conquest of mexico speedily grew into a flourishing seaport, becoming the commercial capital of new spain. a friendly conference took place between cortés and teuhtlile, an aztec chief, who asked from what country the strangers had come and why they had come. "i am a servant," replied cortés, "of a mighty monarch beyond the seas, who rules over an immense empire, having kings and princes for his vassals. since my master has heard of the greatness of the mexican emperor he has desired me to enter into communication with him, and has sent me as envoy to wait upon montezuma with a present in token of good-will, and with a message which i must deliver in person. when can i be admitted to your sovereign's presence?" the aztec chief replied with an air of dignity: "how is it that you have been here only two days, and demand to see the emperor? if there is another monarch as powerful as montezuma, i have no doubt my master will be happy to interchange courtesies." the slaves of teuhtlile presented to cortés ten loads of fine cotton, several mantles of that curious feather-work whose rich and delicate dyes might vie with the most beautiful painting, and a wicker basket filled with ornaments of wrought gold, all calculated to inspire the spaniards with high ideas of the wealth and mechanical ingenuity of the mexicans. having duly expressed his thanks, cortés then laid before the aztec chief the presents intended for montezuma. these were "an armchair richly carved and painted; a crimson cap bearing a gold medal emblazoned with st. george and the dragon; collars, bracelets, and other ornaments of cut-glass, which, in a country where glass was unknown, might claim to have the value of real gems." during the interview teuhtlile had been curiously observing a shining gilt helmet worn by a soldier, and said that it was exactly like that of quetzalcoatl. "who is he?" asked cortés. "quetzalcoatl is the god about whom the aztecs have the prophecy that he will come back to them across the sea." cortés promised to send the helmet to montezuma, and expressed a wish that it would be returned filled with the gold-dust of the aztecs, that he might compare it with the spanish gold-dust! one reporter who was present says: he further told governor teuhtlile that the spaniards were troubled with a disease of the heart for which gold was a specific remedy! another incident of this notable interview was that one of the mexican attendants was observed by cortés to be scribbling with a pencil. it was an artist sketching the appearance of the strangers, their dress, arms, and attitude, and filling in the picture with touches of color. struck with the idea of being thus represented to the mexican monarch, cortés ordered the cavalry to be exercised on the beach in front of the artists. the bold and rapid movements of the troops, ... the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, which cortés ordered to be fired at the same time, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were filled with consternation and wonder, from which the aztec chief himself was not wholly free. this was all faithfully copied by the picture-writers, so far as their art went, in sketching and vivid coloring. they also recorded the ships of the strangers--"the water-houses," as they were named--whose dark hulls and snow-white sails were swinging at anchor in the bay. meantime what had montezuma been doing, the sad-faced[ ] and haughty emperor of mexico, land of the aztecs and the tezcucans? at the beginning of his reign he had as a skilful general led his armies as far as honduras and nicaragua, extending the limits of the empire, so that it had now reached the maximum. [footnote : the name montezuma means "sad or severe man," a title suited to his features, though not to his mild character.] tezcuco, the sister state to mexico, had latterly shown hostility to montezuma, and still more formidable was the republic of tlascala, lying between his capital and the coast. prodigies and prophecies now began to affect all classes of the population in the mexican valley. everybody spoke of the return from over the sea of the popular god quetzalcoatl, the fair-skinned and longhaired (p. ). a generation had already elapsed since the first rumors that white men in great mysterious vessels, bearing in their hands the thunder and lightning, were seizing the islands and must soon seize the mainland. no wonder that montezuma, stern, tyrannical, and disappointed, should be dismayed at the news of grijalva's landing, and still more so when hearing of the fleet and army of cortés, and seeing their horsemen pictured by his artists--the whole accompanied by exaggerated accounts of the guns and cannon able to produce thunder and lightning. after holding a council, montezuma resolved to send an embassy to cortés, presenting him with a present which should reflect the incomparable grandeur and resources of mexico, and at the same time forbidding an approach to the capital. the governor teuhtlile, on this second embassy, was accompanied by two aztec nobles and slaves, bearing the present from montezuma to cortés. as they entered the pavilion of the spanish general the air was filled with clouds of incense which rose from censers carried by some attendants. some delicately wrought mats were then unrolled, and on them the slaves displayed the various articles, ... shields, helmets, cuirasses, embossed with plates and ornaments of pure gold; collars and bracelets of the same metal, sandals, fans, and crests of variegated feathers, intermingled with gold and silver thread, and sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; imitations of birds and animals in wrought and cast gold and silver, of exquisite workmanship; curtains, coverlets, and robes of cotton, fine as silk, of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather-work that rivaled the delicacy of painting.... the things which excited most admiration were two circular plates of gold and silver, as "large as carriage-wheels"; one representing the sun was richly carved with plants and animals. it was thirty palms in circumference, and was worth about £ , sterling.[ ] [footnote : robertson, the historian, gives £ , ; but prescott reckons a _peso de oro_ at £ s. d.; whence the , of the text gives , x - / = , x = £ , .] cortés was interested in seeing the soldier's helmet brought back to him full to the brim with grains of gold. the courteous message from montezuma, however, did not please him much. montezuma excused himself from having a personal interview by "the distance being too great, and the journey beset with difficulties and dangers from formidable enemies.... all that could be done, therefore, was for the strangers to return to their own land." soon after cortés, by a species of statecraft, formed a new municipality, thus transforming his camp into a civil community. the name of the new city was _villa rica de vera cruz_, i. e., "the rich town of the true cross." once the municipality was formed, cortés resigned before them his office of captain-general, and thus became free from the authority of velasquez. the city council at once chose cortés to be captain-general and chief justice of the colony. he could now go forward unchecked by any superior except the crown. it was a desperate undertaking to climb with an army from the hot region of this flat coast through the varied succession of "slopes" which form the temperate region, and at last, on the high table-land, obtain entrance upon the great enclosed valley of mexico. cortés found that an essential preliminary was to gain the friendship of the totonacs, a nation tributary to montezuma. their subjection to the aztecs he had already verified, since one day when holding a conference with the totonac leaders and a neighboring cazique (i. e., "prince"), cortés saw five men of haughty appearance enter the market-place, followed by several attendants, and at once receive the politest attention from the totonacs. cortés asked marina, his slave interpreter, who or what they were. "they are aztec nobles," she replied, "sent by montezuma to receive tribute." presently the totonac chiefs came to cortés with looks of dire dismay, to inform him of the great emperor's resentment at the entertainment offered to the spaniards, and demanding in expiation twenty young men and women for sacrifice to the aztec gods. cortés, with every look of indignation, insisted that the totonacs should not only refuse to comply, but should seize the aztec messengers and hold them strictly confined in prison. unscrupulous to gain his ends, cortés by lies and cunning duplicity managed to set the mexican nobles free, dismissing them with a friendly message to montezuma, while at the same time securing the confidence of the simple-minded totonacs, urging them to join the spaniards and make a bold effort to regain their independence. some thought that cortés was really the kindly divinity quetzalcoatl, promised by the prophets to bring freedom and happiness. as an instance of the religious enthusiasm of the spanish invaders, we may give the account of the "conversion" of zempoalla, a city in the totonac district. when cortés pressed upon the cazique of zempoalla that his mission was to turn the indians from the abominations of their present religion, that prince replied that he could not accept what the spanish priests had told him about the creator and ruler of the universe; especially that he ever stooped to become a mere man, weak and poor, so as to suffer voluntarily persecution and even death at the hands of some of his own creatures. the cazique added that he "would resist any violence offered to his gods, who would, indeed, avenge the act themselves by the instant destruction of their enemies." cortés and his men seized the opportunity. there is no doubt that, after witnessing some of the barbarous sacrifices of human victims followed by cannibal feasts, their souls had naturally been sickened. they now proceeded to force the work of conversion as soon as cortés had appealed to them and declared that "god and the holy saints would never favor their enterprise, if such atrocities were allowed; and that for his own part, he was resolved the indian idols should be demolished that very hour if it cost him his life. "scarcely waiting for his commands the spaniards moved toward one of the principal _teocallis_, or temples, which rose high on a pyramidal foundation with a steep ascent of stone steps in the middle. the cazique, divining their purpose, instantly called his men to arms. the indian warriors gathered from all quarters, with shrill cries and clashing of weapons, while the priests, in their dark cotton robes, with disheveled tresses matted with blood, rushed frantic among the natives, calling on them to protect their gods from violation! all was now confusion and tumult.... cortés took his usual prompt measures. causing the cazique and some of the principal citizens and priests to be arrested, he commanded them to quiet the people, declaring that if a single arrow was shot against a spaniard, it should cost every one of them his life.... the cazique covered his face with his hands, exclaiming that the gods would avenge their own wrongs. "the christians were not slow in availing themselves of his tacit acquiescence. fifty soldiers, at a signal from their general, sprang up the great stairway of the temple, entered the building on the summit, the walls of which were black with human gore, and dragged the huge wooden idols to the edge of the terrace. their fantastic forms and features, conveying a symbolic meaning which was lost on the spaniards, seemed to their eyes only the hideous lineaments of satan. with great alacrity they rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of the pyramid, amid the triumphant shouts of their own companions and the groans and lamentations of the natives. they then consummated the whole by burning them in the presence of the assembled multitude." after the temple had been cleansed from every trace of the idol-worship and its horrors, a new altar was raised, surmounted by a lofty cross, and hung with garlands of roses. a reaction having now set in among the indians, many were willing to become christians, and some of the aztec priests even joined in a procession to signify their conversion, wearing white robes instead of their former dark mantles, and carrying lighted candles in their hands, "while an image of the virgin half smothered under the weight of flowers was borne aloft, and, as the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar.... the impressive character of the ceremony and the passionate eloquence of the good priest touched the feelings of the motley audience, until indians as well as spaniards, if we may trust the chronicler, were melted into tears and audible sobs." before finally marching westward toward the temperate "slopes" of the mountains, cortés had another opportunity of proving his generalship and prompt resource at a critical moment. when agathocles, the autocratic ruler of syracuse, sailed over to defeat the carthaginians, the first thing he did on landing in africa was to burn his ships, that his soldiers might have no opportunity of retreat, and no hope but in victory. cortés now acted on exactly the same principle. after discovering that a number of his soldiers had formed a conspiracy to seize one of the ships and sail to cuba, cortés, on conviction, punished two of the ringleaders with death. soon after, he formed the extraordinary resolution of destroying his ships without the knowledge of his army. the five worst ships were first ordered to be dismantled; and, soon after, to be sunk. when the rest were inspected, four of them were condemned in the same manner. when the news reached zempoalla, the army were excited almost to open mutiny. cortés, however, was perfectly cool. addressing the army collectively, he assured them that the ships were not fit for service, as had been shown by due inspection. "there is one important advantage gained to the army, viz., the addition of a hundred able-bodied recruits who were necessary to man the lost ships. besides all that, of what use could ships be to us in the present expedition? as for me, i will remain here even without a comrade. as for those who shrink from the dangers of our glorious enterprise, let them go back, in god's name! let them go home, since there is still one vessel left; let them go on board and return to cuba. they can tell how they deserted their commander and their comrades, and patiently wait till they see us return loaded with the spoils of the aztecs." persuasion is the end of true oratory. the reply of the army to cortés was the unanimous shout "to mexico! to mexico!" after beginning the gradual ascent in their march toward the table-land of mexico, the first place noted by the invaders was jalapa, a town which still retains its aztec name, known to all the world by the well-known drug grown there. it is a favorite resort of the wealthier residents in vera cruz, and that too tropical plain which cortés had just left. the mighty mountain orizaba, one of the guardians of the mexican valley, is now full in sight, towering in solitary grandeur with its robe of snow. at last they reached a town so populous that there were thirteen aztec temples with the usual sacrificial stone for human victims before each idol. in the suburbs the spanish were shocked by a gathering of human skulls, many thousand in number. this appalling reminder of the unspeakable sacrifices soon became a familiar sight as they marched through that country. cortés asked the cazique if he were subject to montezuma. "who is there," replied the local prince, "that is not tributary to that emperor?" "_i_ am not," said the stranger general. cortés assured him that the monarch whom the spaniards served had princes as vassals, who were more powerful than the aztec ruler. the cazique said: montezuma could muster thirty great vassals, each master of , men. his revenues were incalculable, since every subject, however poor, paid something.... more than , victims, the fruit of his wars, were annually sacrificed on the altars of his gods! his capital stood on a lake, in the center of a spacious valley.... the approach to the city was by means of causeways several miles long; and when the connecting bridges were raised all communication with the country was cut off. the indians showed the greatest curiosity respecting the dresses, weapons, horses, and dogs of their strange visitors. the country all around was then well wooded and full of villages and towns, which disappeared after the conquest. humboldt remarked, when he traveled there, that the whole district had, "at the time of the arrival of the spanish, been more inhabited and better cultivated, and that in proportion as they got higher up near the table-land, they found the villages more frequent, the fields more subdivided, and the people more law-abiding." before entering upon the table-land, cortés resolved to visit the republic of tlascala, which was noted for having retained its independence in spite of the aztecs. after sending an embassy, consisting of the four chief zempoallas, who had accompanied the army, he set out toward tlascala, lingering as they proceeded, so that his ambassadors should have time to return. while wondering at the delay, they suddenly reached a remarkable fortification which marked the limits of the republic, and acted as a barrier against the mexican invasions. prescott thus describes it: a stone wall nine feet in height and twenty in thickness, with a parapet a foot and a half broad raised on the summit for the protection of those who defended it. it had only one opening in the center, made by two semicircular lines of wall overlapping each other for the space of forty paces, and affording a passageway between, ten paces wide, so contrived, therefore, as to be perfectly commanded by the inner wall. this fortification, which extended more than two leagues, rested at either end on the bold natural buttresses formed by the sierra. the work was built of immense blocks of stone nicely laid together without cement, and the remains still existing, among which are rocks of the whole breadth of the rampart, fully attest its solidity and size. who were the people of this stout-hearted republic? the tlascalans were a kindred tribe to the aztecs, and after coming to the mexican valley, toward the close of the twelfth century, had settled for many years on the western shore of lake tezcuco. afterward they migrated to that district of fruitful valleys where cortés found them; _tlascala_, meaning "land of bread." they then, as a nation, consisted of four separate states, considerably civilized, and always able to protect their confederacy against foreign invasion. their arts, religion, and architecture were the same as those of the aztecs and tezcucans. more than once had the aztecs attempted to bring the little republic into subjection, but in vain. in one campaign montezuma had lost a favorite, besides having his army defeated; and though a much more formidable invasion followed, "the bold mountaineers withdrew into the recesses of their hills, and coolly watching their opportunity, rushed like a torrent on the invaders, and drove them back with dreadful slaughter from their territories." the tlascalans had of course heard of the redoubtable europeans and their advance upon montezuma's kingdom, but not expecting any visit themselves, they were in doubt about the embassy sent by cortés, and the council had not reached a decision when the arrival of cortés was announced at the head of his cavalry. attacked by a body of several thousand indians, he sent back a horseman to make the infantry hurry up to his assistance. two of the horses were killed, a loss seriously felt by cortés; but when the main body had discharged a volley from their muskets and crossbows, so astounded were the tlascalan indians that they stopped fighting and withdrew from the field. next morning, after cortés had given careful instruction to his army (now more than , in number, with his indian auxiliaries), they had not marched far when they were met by two of the zempoallans, who had been sent as ambassadors. they informed cortés that, as captives, they had been reserved for the sacrificial stone, but had succeeded in breaking out of prison. they also said that forces were being collected from all quarters to meet the spaniards. at the first encounter, the indians, after some spirited fighting, retreated in order to draw the spanish army into a defile impracticable for artillery or cavalry. pressing forward they found, on turning an abrupt corner of the glen, that an army of many thousands was drawn up in order, prepared to receive them. as they came into view, the tlascalans set up a piercing war-cry, shrill and hideous, accompanied by the melancholy beat of a thousand drums. cortés spurred on the cavalry to force a passage for the infantry, and kept exhorting his soldiers, while showing them an example of personal daring. "if we fail now," he cried, "the cross of christ can never be planted in this land. forward, comrades! when was it ever known that a castilian turned his back on a foe?" with desperate efforts the soldiers forced a passage through the indian columns, and then, as soon as the horse opened room for the movements of the gunners, the terrible "thunder and lightning" of the cannon did the rest. the havoc caused in their ranks, combined with the roar and the flash of gunpowder, and the mangled carcasses, filled the whole of the barbarian army with horror and consternation. eight leaders of the tlascalan army having fallen, the prince ordered a retreat. the chief of the tlascalans, xicotencatl, was no ordinary leader. when cortés wished to press on to the capital, he sent two envoys to the tlascalan camp, but all that xicotencatl deigned to reply was that the spaniards might pass on as soon as they chose to tlascala, and when they reached it their flesh would be hewn from their bodies for sacrifice to the gods. if they preferred to remain in their own quarters, he would pay them a visit there the next day. the envoys also told cortés that the chief had now collected another very large army, five battalions of , men each. there was evidently a determination to try the fate of tlascala by a pitched battle and exterminate the bold invaders. the next day, september , , was therefore a critical one in the annals of cortés. he resolved to meet the tlascalan chief in the field, after directing the foot-soldiers to use the point of their swords and not the edge; the horse to charge at half speed, directing their lances at the eyes of their enemies; the gunners and crossbowmen to support each other, some loading while others were discharging their pieces. before cortés and his soldiers had marched a mile they saw the immense tlascalan army stretched far and wide over a vast plain. nothing could be more picturesque than the aspect of these indian battalions, with the naked bodies of the common soldiers gaudily painted, the fantastic helmets of the chiefs bright with ornaments and precious stones, and the glowing panoplies of feather-work.... the golden glitterance and the feather-mail more gay than glittering gold; and round the helm a coronal of high upstanding plumes.... ... with war-songs and wild music they came on.[ ] [footnote : southey (madoc, i, ).] the tlascalan warriors had attained wonderful skill in throwing the javelin. "one species, with a thong attached to it, which remained in the slinger's hand, that he might recall the weapon, was especially dreaded by the spaniards." their various weapons were pointed with bone or obsidian, and sometimes headed with copper. the yell or scream of defiance raised by these indians almost drowned the volume of sound from "the wild barbaric minstrelsy of shell, atabal, and trumpet with which they proclaimed their triumphant anticipations of victory over the paltry forces of the invaders." advancing under a thick shower of arrows and other missiles, the spanish soldiers at a certain distance quickly halted and drew up in order, before delivering a general fire along the whole line. the front ranks of their wild opponents were mowed down and those behind were "petrified with dismay." but for the accident of dissension having arisen between the chiefs of the tlascalans, it almost seemed as if nothing could have saved cortés and his spanish army. before the battle, the haughty treatment of one of those chiefs by xicotencatl, the cazique, provoked the injured man to draw off all his contingent during the battle, and persuade another chief to do the same. with his forces so weakened, the cazique was compelled to resign the field to the spaniards. xicotencatl, in his eagerness for revenge, consulted some of the aztec priests, who recommended a night attack upon cortés's camp in order to take his army by surprise. the tlascalan, therefore, with , warriors, marched secretly toward the spanish camp, but owing to the bright moonlight they were not unseen by the vedettes. besides that, cortés had accustomed his army to sleep with their arms by their side and the horses ready saddled. in an instant, as it were, the whole camp were on the alert and under arms. the indians, meanwhile, were stealthily advancing to the silent camp, and, "no sooner had they reached the slope of the rising ground than they were astounded by the deep battle-cry of the spaniards, followed by the instantaneous appearance of the whole army. scarcely awaiting the shock of their enemy, the panic-struck barbarians fled rapidly and tumultuously across the plain. the horse easily overtook the fugitives, riding them down, and cutting them to pieces without mercy." next day cortés sent new ambassadors to the tlascalan capital, accompanied by his faithful slave interpreter, marina. they found the cazique's council sad and dejected, every gleam of hope being now extinguished. the message of cortés still promised friendship and pardon, if only they agreed to act as allies. if the present offer were rejected, "he would visit their capital as a conqueror, raze every house to the ground, and put every inhabitant to the sword." on hearing this ultimatum, the council chose four leading chiefs to be entrusted with a mission to cortés, "assuring him of a free passage through the country, and a friendly reception in the capital." the ambassadors, on their way back to cortés, called at the camp of xicotencatl, and were there detained by him. he was still planning against the terrible invaders. cortés, in the meantime, had another opportunity of showing his resource and presence of mind. some of his soldiers had shown a grumbling discontent: "the idea of conquering mexico was madness; if they had encountered such opposition from the petty republic, what might they not expect from the great mexican empire? there was now a temporary suspension of hostilities; should they not avail themselves of it to retrace their steps to vera cruz?" to this cortés listened calmly and politely, replying that "he had told them at the outset that glory was to be won only by toil and danger; he had never shrunk from his share of both. to go back now was impossible. what would the tlascalans say? how would the mexicans exult at such a miserable issue! instead of turning your eyes toward cuba, fix them on mexico, the great object of our enterprise." many other soldiers having gathered round, the mutinous party took courage to say that "another such victory as the last would be their ruin; they were going to mexico only to be slaughtered." with some impatience cortés gaily quoted a soldiers' song: better die with honor than live in long disgrace! --a sentiment which the majority of the audience naturally cheered to the echo, while the malcontents slunk away to their quarters. the next event was the arrival of some tlascalans wearing white badges as an indication of peace. they brought a message, they said, from xicotencatl, who now desired an arrangement with cortés, and would soon appear in person. most of them remained in the camp, where they were treated kindly; but marina, with her "woman's wit," became somewhat suspicious of them. perhaps some of them, forgetting that she knew their language, let drop a phrase in talking to each other, which awoke her distrust. she told cortés that the men were spies. he had them arrested and examined separately, ascertaining in that way that they were sent to obtain secret information of the spanish camp, and that, in fact, xicotencatl was mustering his forces to make another determined attack on the invading army. to show the fierceness of his resentment at such treatment, cortés ordered the fifty spy ambassadors to have their hands hacked off, and sent back to tell their lord that "the tlascalans might come by day or night, they would find the spaniards ready for them." the sight of their mutilated comrades filled the indian camp with dread and horror. all thoughts of resistance to the advance of cortés were now abandoned, and not long after the arrival of xicotencatl himself was announced, attended by a numerous train. he advanced with "the firm and fearless step of one who was coming rather to bid defiance than to sue for peace. he was rather above the middle size, with broad shoulders and a muscular frame, intimating great activity and strength. he made the usual salutation by touching the ground with his hand and carrying it to his head." he threw no blame on the tlascalan senate, but assumed all the responsibility of the war. he admitted that the spanish army had beaten him, but hoped they would use their victory with moderation, and not trample on the liberties of the republic. cortés admired the cazique's lofty spirit, while pretending to rebuke him for having so long remained an enemy. "he was willing to bury the past in oblivion, and to receive the tlascalans as vassals to the emperor, his master." before the entry into tlascala, the capital, there arrived an embassy from montezuma, who had been keenly disappointed, no doubt, that cortés had not only not been defeated by the bravest race on the mexican table-land, but had formed a friendly alliance with them. as cortés, with his army, approached the populous city, they were welcomed by great crowds of men and women in picturesque dresses, with nosegays and wreaths of flowers; priests in white robes and long matted tresses, swinging their burning censers of incense. the anniversary of this entry into tlascala, september , , is still celebrated as a day of rejoicing. cortés, in his letter to the emperor, king of spain, compares it for size and appearance to granada, the moorish capital. pottery was one of the industries in which tlascala excelled. the tlascalan was chiefly agricultural in his habits; his honest breast glowed with the patriotic attachment to the soil, which is the fruit of its diligent culture, while he was elevated by that consciousness of independence which is the natural birthright of a child of the mountains. cholula, capital of the republic of that name, is six leagues north of tlascala, and about twenty southeast of mexico. in the time of the conquest of the table-land of anahuac, as the whole district is sometimes termed, this city was large and populous. the people excelled in mechanical arts, especially metal-working, cloth-weaving, and a delicate kind of pottery. reference has already been made to the god quetzalcoatl, in whose honor a huge pyramid was erected here. from the farthest parts of anahuac devotees thronged to cholula, just as the mohammedans to mecca. the spaniards found the people of cholula superior in dress and looks to any of the races they had seen. the higher classes "wore fine embroidered mantles resembling the moorish cloak in texture and fashion.... they showed the same delicate taste for flowers as the other tribes of the plateau, tossing garlands and bunches among the soldiers.... the spaniards were also struck with the cleanliness of the city, the regularity of the streets, the solidity of the houses, and the number and size of the pyramidal temples." after being treated with kindness and hospitality for several days, all at once the scene changed, the cause being the arrival of messengers from montezuma. at the same time some tlascalans told cortés that a great sacrifice, mostly of children, had been offered to propitiate the favor of the gods. at this juncture, marina, the indian slave interpreter, again proved to be the "good angel" of cortés. she had become very friendly with the wife of one of the cholula caziques, who gave her a hint that there was danger in staying at the house of any spaniard; and, when further pressed by marina, said that the spaniards were to be slaughtered when marching out of the capital. the plot had originated with the aztec emperor, and , mexicans were already quartered a little distance out of town. in this most critical position, cortés at once decided to take possession of the great square, placing a strong guard at each of its three gates of entrance. the rest of what troops he had in the town, he posted without with the cannon, to command the avenues. he had already sent orders to the tlascalan chiefs to keep their soldiers in readiness to march, at a given signal, into the city to support the spaniards. presently the caziques of cholula arrived with a larger body of levies than cortés had demanded. he at once charged them with conspiring against the spaniards after receiving them as friends. they were so amazed at his discovery of their perfidy that they confessed everything, laying the blame on montezuma. "that pretense," said cortés, assuming a look of fierce indignation, "is no justification; i shall now make such an example of you for your treachery that the report of it will ring throughout the wide borders of anahuac!" at the firing of a harquebus, the fatal signal, the crowd of unsuspecting cholulans were massacred as they stood, almost without resistance. meantime the other indians without the square commenced an attack on the spaniards, but the heavy guns of the battery played upon them with murderous effect, and cavalry advanced to support the attack. the steeds, the guns, the weapons of the spaniards, were all new to the cholulans. notwithstanding the novelty of the terrific spectacle, the flash of arms mingling with the deafening roar of the artillery, the desperate indians pushed on to take the places of their fallen comrades. while this scene of bloodshed was progressing, the tlascalans, as arranged, were hastening to the assistance of their spanish allies. the cholulans, when thus attacked in rear by their traditional enemies, speedily gave way, and tried to save themselves in the great temple and elsewhere. the "holy city," as it was called, was converted into a pandemonium of massacre. in memory of the signal defeat of the cholulans, cortés converted the chief part of the great temple into a christian church. envoys again arrived from mexico with rich presents and a message vindicating the pusillanimous emperor from any share in the conspiracy against cortés. continuing their march, the allied army of spaniards and tlascalans proceeded till they reached the mountains which separate the table-land of puebla from that of mexico. to cross this range they followed the route which passes between the mighty popocatepetl (i. e., "the smoking mountain") and another called the "white woman" from its broad robe of snow. the first lies about forty miles southeast of the capital to which their march was directed. it is more than , feet higher than mont blanc, and has two principal craters, one of which is about , feet deep and has large deposits of sulfur which are regularly mined. popocatepetl has long been only a quiescent volcano, but during the invasion by cortés it was often burning, especially at the time of the siege of tlascala. that was naturally interpreted all over the district of anahuac to be a bad omen, associated with the landing and approach of the spaniards. cortés insisted on several descents being made into the great crater till sufficient sulfur was collected to supply gunpowder to his army. the icy cold winds, varied by storms of snow and sleet, were more trying to the europeans than the tlascalans, but some relief was found in the stone shelters which had been built at certain intervals along the roads for the accommodation of couriers and other travelers. at last they reached the crest of the sierra which unites popocatepetl, the "great _volcan_," to its sister mountain the "woman in white." soon after, at a turning of the road, the invaders enjoyed their first view of the famous valley of mexico or tenochtitlan, with its beautiful lakes in their setting of cultivated plains, here and there varied by woods and forests. "in the midst, like some indian empress with her coronal of pearls, the fair city with her white towers and pyramidal temples, reposing as it were on the bosom of the waters--the far-famed 'venice of the aztecs.'" this view of the "promised land" will remind some of the picturesque account given by livy (xxi, ) of hannibal reaching the top of the pass over the alps and pointing out the fair prospect of italy to his soldiers. we may thus render the passage: "on the ninth day the ridge of the alps was reached, over ground generally trackless and by roundabout ways.... the order for marching being given at break of day, the army were sluggishly advancing over ground wholly covered with snow, listlessness, and despair depicted on the features of all, hannibal went on in front, and after ordering the soldiers to halt on a height which commanded a distant view, far and wide, points out to them italy and the plains of lombardy on both banks of the po, at the foot of the alps, telling them that at that moment they were crossing not only the walls of italy but of the roman capital; that the rest of the march was easy and downhill." the situation of hannibal and his carthaginians surveying italy for the first time is in some respects closely analogous to that of cortés pointing out the valley of mexico to his spanish soldiers. chapter vii cortÉs and montezuma we have now seen the spanish conquerors with a large contingent of , natives surmounting the mountains to the east of the mexican valley and looking down upon the lake of tezcuco on which were built the sister capitals. montezuma, the aztec monarch, was already in a state of dismay, and sent still another embassy to propitiate the terrible cortés, with a great present of gold and robes of the most precious fabrics and workmanship; and a promise that, if the foreign general would turn back toward vera cruz, the mexicans would pay down four loads of gold for himself and one to each of his captains, besides a yearly tribute to their king in europe. these promises did not reach cortés till he was descending from the sierra. he replied that details were best arranged by a personal interview, and that the spaniards came with peaceful motives. montezuma was now plunged in deep despair. at last he summoned a council to consult his nobles and especially his nephew, the young king of tezcuco, and his warlike brother. the latter advised him to "muster as large an army as possible, and drive back the invaders from his capital or die in its defense." "ah!" replied the monarch, "the gods have declared themselves against us!" still another embassy was prepared, with his nephew, lord of tezcuco, at its head, to offer a welcome to the unwelcome visitors. cortés approached through fertile fields, plantations, and maguey-vineyards till they reached lake chalco. there they found a large town built in the water on piles, with canals instead of streets, full of movement and animation. "the spaniards were particularly struck with the style and commodious structure of the houses, chiefly of stone, and with the general aspect of wealth and even elegance which prevailed." next morning the king of tezcuco came to visit cortés, in a palanquin richly decorated with plates of gold and precious stones, under a canopy of green plumes. he was accompanied by a numerous suite. advancing with the mexican salutation, he said he had been commanded by montezuma to welcome him to the capital, at the same time offering three splendid pearls as a present. cortés "in return threw over the young king's neck a chain of cut glass, which, where glass was as rare as diamonds, might be admitted to have a value as real as the latter." the army of cortés next marched along the southern side of lake chalco, "through noble woods and by orchards glowing with autumnal fruits, of unknown names, but rich and tempting hues." they also passed "through cultivated fields waving with the yellow harvest, and irrigated by canals introduced from the neighboring lake, the whole showing a careful and economical husbandry, essential to the maintenance of a crowded population." a remarkable public work next engaged the attention of the spaniards, viz., a solid causeway of stone and lime running directly through the lake, in some places so wide that eight horsemen could ride on it abreast. its length is some four or five miles. marching along this causeway, they saw other wonders; numbers of the natives darting in all directions in their skiffs, curious to watch the strangers marching, and some of them bearing the products of the country to the neighboring cities. they were amazed also by the sight of the floating gardens, teeming with flowers and vegetables, and moving like rafts over the waters. all round the margin, and occasionally far in the lake, they beheld little towns and villages, which, half concealed by the foliage, and gathered in white clusters round the shore, "looked in the distance like companies of white swans riding quietly on the waves." about the middle of this lake was a town, to which the spaniards gave the name of venezuela[ ] (i. e., "little venice"). from its situation and the style of the buildings, cortés called it the most beautiful town that he had yet seen in new spain. [footnote : not to be confounded with the indian village on the shore of lake maracaibo, to which (with similar motive) vespucci had given that name--now capital of a large republic.] after crossing the isthmus which separates that lake from lake tezcuco they were now at iztapalapan, a royal residence in charge of the emperor's brother. here a ceremonious reception was given to cortés and his staff, "a collation being served in one of the great halls of the palace. the excellence of the architecture here excited the admiration of the general. the buildings were of stone, and the spacious apartments had roofs of odorous cedar-wood, while the walls were tapestried with fine cotton stained with brilliant colors. "but the pride of iztapalapan was its celebrated gardens, covering an immense tract of land and laid out in regular squares. the gardens were stocked with fruit-trees and with the gaudy family of flowers which belonged to the mexican flora, scientifically arranged, and growing luxuriant in the equable temperature of the table-land. in one quarter was an aviary filled with numerous kinds of birds remarkable in this region both for brilliancy of plumage and for song. but the most elaborate piece of work was a huge reservoir of stone, filled to a considerable height with water, well supplied with different sorts of fish. this basin was , paces in circumference, and surrounded by a walk." readers must remember that at that age no beautiful gardens on a large scale were known in any part of europe. the first "garden of plants" (to use the name afterward applied by the french) is said to have been an italian one, at padua, in , a whole generation after the time of the arrival of cortés in mexico. it was only under louis "le magnifique" that france created the versailles gardens, and not till the time of george iii and his tutor bute could we boast of the gardens at kew, now admired by all the world. the ancient mexicans, therefore, under their extinct civilization, had developed this taste for the beautiful many ages before the most cultivated races in europe. cortés took up his quarters at this residence of iztapalapan for the night, expecting to meet montezuma on the morrow. mexico was now distinctly full in view, looking "like a thing of fairy creation," a city of enchantment. there aztlan stood upon the farther shore; amid the shade of trees its dwellings rose, their level roofs with turrets set around and battlements all burnished white, which shone like silver in the sunshine. i beheld the imperial city, her far-circling walls, her garden groves and stately palaces, her temples mountain size, her thousand roofs. and when i saw her might and majesty my mind misgave me then. _madoc_, i, . that following day, november , , should be noted in every calendar, when the great capital of the western world admitted the conquering general from the eastern world. the invaders were now upon a larger causeway, which stretched across the salt waters of lake tezcuco; and "had occasion more than ever to admire the mechanical science of the aztecs." it was wide enough throughout its whole extent for ten horsemen to ride abreast. the spaniards saw everywhere "evidence of a crowded and thriving population, exceeding all they had yet seen." the water was darkened by swarms of canoes filled with indians; and here also were those fairy islands of flowers. half a league from the capital they encountered a solid work of stone, which traversed the road. it was twelve feet high, strengthened by towers at the extremities, and in the center was a battlemented gateway, which opened a passage to the troops. here they were met by several hundred aztec chiefs, who came out to announce the approach of montezuma, and to welcome the spaniards to his capital. they were dressed in the fanciful gala costume of the country, with the cotton sash around their loins, and a broad mantle of the same material, or of the brilliant feather embroidery, flowing gracefully down their shoulders. on their necks and arms they displayed collars and bracelets of turquoise mosaic, with which delicate plumage was curiously mingled, while their ears, under lips, and occasionally their noses were garnished with pendants formed of precious stones, or crescents of fine gold. after all the caziques had performed the same formal salutation separately, there was no further delay till they reached a bridge near the gates of the capital. soon after "they beheld the glittering retinue of the emperor emerging from the great street leading through the heart of the city. amid a crowd of indian nobles preceded by three officers of state bearing golden wands, they saw the royal palanquin blazing with burnished gold. it was borne on the shoulders of nobles, and over it a canopy of gaudy feather-work, covered with jewels and fringed with silver, was supported by four attendants of the same rank." at a certain distance from the spaniards "the train halted, and montezuma, descending from the litter, came forward, leaning on the arms of the lords of tezcuco and iztapalapan"--the emperor's nephew and brother, already mentioned. "as the monarch advanced, his subjects, who lined the sides of the causeway, bent forward, with their eyes fastened on the ground, as he passed." montezuma wore the ample square cloak common to the mexicans, but of the finest cotton sprinkled with pearls and precious stones; his sandals were similarly sprinkled, and had soles of solid gold. his only head ornament was a bunch of feathers of the royal green color. a man about forty; tall and rather thin; black hair, cut rather short for a person of rank; dignified in his movements; his features wearing an expression of benignity not to be expected from his character. after dismounting from horseback, cortés advanced to meet montezuma, who received him with princely courtesy, while cortés responded by profound expressions of respect, with thanks for his experience of the emperor's munificence. he then hung round montezuma's neck a sparkling chain of colored crystal, accompanying this with a movement as if to embrace him, when he was restrained by the two aztec lords, shocked at the menaced profanation of the sacred person of their monarch and master. montezuma appointed his brother to conduct the spaniards to their residence in the capital, and was again carried through the adoring crowds in his litter. "the spaniards quickly followed, and with colors flying and music playing soon made their entrance into the southern quarter." on entering "they found fresh cause for admiration in the grandeur of the city and the superior style of its architecture. the great avenue through which they were now marching was lined with the houses of the nobles, who were encouraged by the emperor to make the capital their residence. the flat roofs were protected by stone parapets, so that every house was a fortress. sometimes these roofs seemed parterres of flowers ... broad terraced gardens laid out between the buildings. occasionally a great square intervened surrounded by its porticoes of stone and stucco; or a pyramidal temple reared its colossal bulk crowned with its tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with unextinguishable fires. but what most impressed the spaniards was the throngs of people who swarmed through the streets and on the canals." probably, however, the spectacle of the european army with their horses, their guns, bright swords and helmets of steel, a metal to them unknown; their weird and mysterious music--the whole formed to the aztec populace an inexplicable wonder, combined with those foreigners who had arrived from the distant east, "revealing their celestial origin in their fair complexions." many of the aztec citizens betrayed keen hatred of the tlascalans who marched with the spaniards in friendly alliance. at length cortés with his mixed army halted near the center of the city in a great open space, "where rose the huge pyramidal pile dedicated to the patron war-god of the aztecs, second only to the temple of cholula in size as well as sanctity." the present famous cathedral of modern mexico is built on part of the same site. a palace built opposite the west side of the great temple was assigned to cortés. it was extensive enough to accommodate the whole of the army of cortés. montezuma paid him a visit there, having a long conversation through the indispensable assistance of marina, the slave interpreter. "that evening the spaniards celebrated their arrival in the mexican capital by a general discharge of artillery. the thunders of the ordnance reverberating among the buildings and shaking them to their foundations, the stench of the sulfureous vapor reminding the inhabitants of the explosions of the great volcano (popocatepetl) filled the hearts of the superstitious aztecs with dismay." next day cortés had gracious permission to return the visit of the emperor, and therefore proceeded to wait upon him at the royal palace, dressed in his richest suit of clothes. the spanish general felt the importance of the occasion and resolved to exercise all his eloquence and power of argument in attempting the "conversion" of montezuma to the christian faith. for this purpose, with the assistance of the faithful marina, cortés engaged the emperor in a theological discussion; explaining the creation of the world as taught in the jewish scriptures; the fall of man from his first happy and holy condition by the temptation of satan; the mysterious redemption of the human race by the incarnation and atonement of the son of god himself. "he assured montezuma that the idols worshiped in mexico were satan under different forms. a sufficient proof of this was the bloody sacrifices they imposed, which he contrasted with the pure and simple rite of the mass. it was to snatch the emperor's soul and the souls of his people from the flames of eternal fire that the christians had come to this land." montezuma replied that the god of the spaniards must be a good being, and "my gods also are good to me; there was no need to further discourse on the matter." if he had "resisted their visit to his capital, it was because he had heard such accounts of their cruelties--that they sent the lightning to consume his people, or crushed them to pieces under the hard feet of the ferocious animals on which they rode. he was now convinced that these were idle tales; that the spaniards were kind and generous in their nature." he concluded by admitting the superiority of the sovereign of cortés beyond the seas. "your sovereign is the rightful lord of all: i rule in his name." the rough spanish cavaliers were touched by the kindness and affability of montezuma. as they passed him, says diaz, in his history, they made him the most profound obeisance, hat in hand; and on the way home could discourse of nothing but the gentle breeding and courtesy of the indian monarch. montezuma's capital cortés and his army being now fairly domesticated in mexico, and the emperor having apparently become reconciled to the presence of his formidable guests, we may pause to consider the surroundings. the present capital occupies the site of tenochtitlan, but many changes have occurred in the intervening four centuries. first of all, the salt waters of the great lake have entirely shrunk away, leaving modern mexico high and dry, a league away from the waters that cortés saw flowing in ample canals through all the streets. formerly the houses stood on elevated piles and were independent of the floods which rose in lake tezcuco by the overflowing of other lakes on a higher level. but when the foundations were on solid ground it became necessary to provide against the accumulated volume of water by excavating a tunnel to drain off the flood. this was constructed about one hundred years after the invasion of the spaniards, and has been described by humboldt as "one of the most stupendous hydraulic works in existence." the appearance of the lake and suburbs of the capital have long lost much of the attractive appearance they had at the time of the spanish visit; but the town itself is still the most brilliant city in spanish america, surmounted by a cathedral, which forms "the most sumptuous house of worship in the new world." the great causeway already described as leading north from the royal city of iztapalapan, had another to the north of the capital, which might be called its continuation. the third causeway, leading west to the town tacuba from the island city, will be noticed presently as the scene of the spaniards' retreat. there were excellent police regulations for health and cleanliness. water supplied by earthen pipes was from a hill about two miles distant. besides the palaces and temples there were several important buildings: an armory filled with weapons and military dresses; a granary; various warehouses; an immense aviary, with "birds of splendid plumage assembled from all parts of the empire--the scarlet cardinal, the golden pheasant, the endless parrot tribe, and that miniature miracle of nature, the humming-bird, which delights to revel among the honeysuckle bowers of mexico." the birds of prey had a separate building. the menagerie adjoining the aviary showed wild animals from the mountain forests, as well as creatures from the remote swamps of the hot lands by the seashore. the serpents "were confined in long cages lined with down or feathers, or in troughs of mud and water." wishing to visit the great mexican temple, cortés, with his cavalry and most of his infantry, followed the caziques whom montezuma had politely sent as guides. on their way to the central square the spaniards "were struck with the appearance of the inhabitants, and their great superiority in the style and quality of their dress over the people of the lower countries. the women, as in other parts of the country, seemed to go about as freely as the men. they wore several skirts or petticoats of different lengths, with highly ornamented borders, and sometimes over them loose-flowing robes, which reached to the ankles. no veils were worn here as in some other parts of anahuac. the aztec women had their faces exposed; and their dark raven tresses floated luxuriantly over their shoulders, revealing features which, although of a dusky or rather cinnamon hue, were not unfrequently pleasing, while touched with the serious, even sad expression characteristic of the national physiognomy." when near the great market "the spaniards were astonished at the throng of people pressing toward it, and on entering the place their surprise was still further heightened by the sight of the multitudes assembled there, and the dimensions of the enclosure, twice as large, says one spanish observer, as the celebrated square of salamanca. here were traders from all parts; the goldsmiths from azcapozalco, the potters and jewelers of cholula, the painters of tezcuco, the stone-cutters, hunters, fishermen, fruiterers, mat and chair makers, florists, etc. the pottery department was a large one; so were the armories for implements of war; razors and mirrors--booths for apothecaries with drugs, roots, and medical preparations. in other places again, blank-books or maps for the hieroglyphics or pictographs were to be seen folded together like fans. animals both wild and tame were offered for sale, and near them, perhaps, a gang of slaves with collars round their necks. one of the most attractive features of the market was the display of provisions: meats of all kinds, domestic poultry, game from the neighboring mountains, fish from the lakes and streams, fruits in all the delicious abundance of these temperate regions, green vegetables, and the unfailing maize." this market, like hundreds of smaller ones, was of course held every fifth day--the week of the ancient mexicans being one-fourth of the twenty days which constituted the aztec month. this great market was comparable to "the periodical fairs in europe, not as they now exist, but as they existed in the middle ages," when from the difficulties of intercommunication they served as the great central marts for commercial intercourse, exercising a most important and salutary influence on the community. one of the spaniards in the party accompanying cortés was the historian diaz, and his testimony is remarkable: there were among us soldiers who had been in many parts of the world, constantinople and rome, and through all italy, and who said that a market-place so large, so well ordered and regulated, and so filled with people, they had never seen. proceeding next to the great _teocalli_ or aztec temple, covering the site of the modern cathedral with part of the market-place and some adjoining streets, they found it in the midst of a great open space, surrounded by a high stone wall, ornamented on the outside by figures of serpents raised in relief, and pierced by huge battlemented gateways opening on the four principal streets of the capital. the _teocalli_ itself was a solid pyramidal structure of earth and pebbles, coated on the outside with hewn stones, the sides facing the cardinal points. it was divided into five stories, each of smaller dimensions than that immediately below. the ascent was by a flight of steps on the outside, which reached to the narrow terrace at the bottom of the second story, passing quite round the building, when a second stairway conducted to a similar landing at the base of the third. thus the visitor was obliged to pass round the whole edifice four times in order to reach the top. this had a most imposing effect in the religious ceremonials, when the pompous procession of priests with their wild minstrelsy came sweeping round the huge sides of the pyramid, as they rose higher and higher toward the summit in full view of the populace assembled in their thousands. cortés marched up the steps at the head of his men, and found at the summit "a vast area paved with broad flat stones. the first object that met their view was a large block of jasper, the peculiar shape of which showed it was the stone on which the bodies of the unhappy victims were stretched for sacrifice. its convex surface, by raising the breast, enabled the priest to perform more easily his diabolical task of removing the heart. at the other end of the area were two towers or sanctuaries, consisting of three stories, the lower one of stone, the two upper of wood elaborately carved. in the lower division stood the images of their gods; the apartments above were filled with utensils for their religious services, and with the ashes of some of their aztec princes who had fancied this airy sepulcher. before each sanctuary stood an altar, with that undying fire upon it, the extinction of which boded as much evil to the empire as that of the vestal flame would have done in ancient rome. here also was the huge cylindrical drum made of serpents' skins, and struck only on extraordinary occasions, when it sent forth a melancholy, weird sound, that might be heard for miles" over the country, indicating fierce anger of deity against the enemies of mexico. as cortés reached the summit he was met by the emperor himself attended by the high priest. taking the general by the hand, montezuma pointed out the chief localities in the wide prospect which their position commanded, including not only the capital, "bathed on all sides by the salt floods of the tezcuco, and in the distance the clear fresh waters of lake chalco," but the whole of the valley of mexico to the base of the circular range of mountains, and the wreaths of vapor rolling up from the hoary head of popocatepetl. cortés was allowed "to behold the shrines of the gods. they found themselves in a spacious apartment, with sculptures on the walls, representing the mexican calendar, or the priestly ritual. before the altar in this sanctuary stood the colossal image of huitzilopochtli, the tutelary deity and war-god of the aztecs. his countenance was distorted into hideous lineaments of symbolical import. the huge folds of a serpent, consisting of pearls and precious stones, were coiled round his waist, and the same rich materials were profusely sprinkled over his person. on his left foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, which gave its name to the dread deity. the most conspicuous ornament was a chain of gold and silver hearts alternate, suspended round his neck, emblematical of the sacrifice in which he most delighted. a more unequivocal evidence of this was afforded by three human hearts that now lay smoking on the altar before him. "the adjoining sanctuary was dedicated to a milder deity. this was tezcatlipoca, who created the world, next in honor to that invisible being the supreme god, who was represented by no image, and confined by no temple. he was represented as a young man, and his image of polished black stone was richly garnished with gold plates and ornaments. but the homage to this god was not always of a more refined or merciful character than that paid to his carnivorous brother." according to diaz, whom we have already quoted, the stench of human gore in both those chapels was more intolerable than that of all the slaughter-houses in castile. glad to escape into the open air, cortés expressed wonder that a great and wise prince like montezuma could have faith "in such evil spirits as these idols, the representatives of the devil! permit us to erect here the true cross, and place the images of the blessed virgin and her son in these sanctuaries; you will soon see how your false gods will shrink before them!" this extraordinary speech of the general shocked montezuma, who, in reproof, said: "had i thought you would have offered this outrage to the gods of the aztecs, i would not have admitted you into their presence." cortés, as a general, had some of the great qualities of napoleon, but he also resembled him occasionally in a singular lack of delicacy and good taste. we do not, however, find that he ever showed such mean malignity as the french general did when persecuting madame de staël, because in her germany she had omitted to mention his campaigns and administration. within the same enclosure, cortés and his companions visited a temple dedicated to quetzalcoatl, a god referred to already. other buildings served as seminaries for the instruction of youth of both sexes; and according to the spanish accounts of the teaching and management of these institutions there was "the greatest care for morals and the most blameless deportment." seizure of montezuma after being guest of the mexican emperor for a week, cortés resolved to carry out a most daring and unprecedented scheme--a purely "napoleonic movement," such as could scarcely have entered the brain of any general ancient or modern. he argued with himself that a quarrel might at any moment break out between his men and the citizens; the spaniards again could not remain long quiet unless actively employed; and, thirdly, there was still greater danger with the tlascalans, "a fierce race now in daily contact with a nation that regards them with loathing and detestation." lastly, the governor of cuba, already grossly offended with cortés, might at any moment send after him a sufficient army to wrest from him the glory of conquest. cortés therefore formed the daring resolve to seize montezuma in his palace and carry him as a prisoner to the spanish quarters. he hoped thus to have in his own hands the supreme management of affairs, and at the same time secure his own safety with such a "sacred pledge" in keeping. it was necessary to find a pretext for seizing the hospitable montezuma. news had already come to cortés, when at cholula, that escalante, whom he had left in charge of vera cruz, had been defeated by the aztecs in a pitched battle, and that the head of a spaniard, then slain, had been sent to the emperor, after being shown in triumph throughout some of the chief cities. cortés asked an audience from montezuma, and that being readily granted, he prepared for his plot by having a large body of armed men posted in the courtyard. choosing five companions of tried courage, cortés then entered the palace, and after being graciously received, told montezuma that he knew of the treachery that had taken place near the coast, and that the emperor was said to be the cause. the emperor said that such a charge could only have been concocted by his enemies. he agreed with the proposal of cortés to summon the aztec chief who was accused of treachery to the garrison at vera cruz; and was then persuaded to transfer his residence to the palace occupied by the spaniards. he was there received and treated with ostentatious respect; but his people observed that in front of the palace there was constantly posted a patrol of sixty soldiers, with another equally large in the rear. when the aztec chief arrived from the coast, he and his sixteen aztec companions were condemned to be burned alive before the palace. the next daring act of the spanish general was to order iron fetters to be fastened on montezuma's ankles. the great emperor seemed struck with stupor and spoke never a word. meanwhile the aztec chiefs were executed in the courtyard without interruption, the populace imagining the sentence had been passed upon them by montezuma, and the victims submitting to their fate without a murmur. cortés returning then to the room where montezuma was imprisoned, unclasped the fetters and said he was now at liberty to return to his own palace. the emperor, however, declined the offer. the instinctive sense of human sympathy must have frequently been not only repressed but extinguished by all the great conquering generals who have crushed nations under foot. besides those of prehistoric times in asia and europe, we have examples in alexander the greek, julius cæsar the roman, cortés and pizarro the spaniards, frederick the prussian, and napoleon the corsican. the great french general consciously aimed at dramatic effect in his exploits, but how paltry his seizing the duc d'enghien at dead of night by a troop of soldiers, or his coercing the king of spain to resign his sovereignty after inducing him to cross the border into france. in the unparalleled case of cortés, a powerful emperor is seized by a few strangers at noonday and carried off a prisoner without opposition or bloodshed. so extraordinary a transaction, says robertson, would appear "extravagant beyond the bounds of probability" were it not that all the circumstances are "authenticated by the most unquestionable evidence." the nephew of montezuma, cakama, the lord of tezcuco, had been closely watching all the motions of the spaniards. he "beheld with indignation and contempt the abject condition of his uncle; and now set about forming a league with several of the neighboring caziques to break the detested yoke of the spaniards." news of this league reached the ears of cortés, and arresting him with the permission of montezuma, he deposed him, and appointed a younger brother in his place. the other caziques were seized, each in his own city, and brought to mexico, where cortés placed them in strict confinement along with cakama. the next step taken by cortés was to demand from montezuma an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the spanish emperor. the aztec monarch and chief caziques easily granted this; and even agreed that a gratuity should be sent by each of them as proof of loyalty. collectors were sent out, and "in a few weeks most of them returned, bringing back large quantities of gold and silver plate, rich stuffs, etc." to this montezuma added a huge hoard, the treasures of his father. when brought into the quarters, the gold alone was sufficient to make three great heaps. it consisted partly of native grains, and partly of bars; but the greatest portion was in utensils, and various kinds of ornaments and curious toys, together with imitations of birds, insects, or flowers, executed with uncommon truth and delicacy. there were also quantities of collars, bracelets, wands, fans, and other trinkets, in which the gold and feather-work were richly powdered with pearls and precious stones. montezuma expressed regret that the treasure was no larger; he had "diminished it," he said, "by his former gifts to the white men." the spaniards gazed on this display of riches, far exceeding all hitherto seen in the new world--though small compared with the quantity of treasure found in peru. the whole amount of this mexican gift was about £ , , , according to prescott, dr. robertson making it smaller. it was no easy task to divide the spoil. a fifth had to be deducted for the crown, and an equal share went to the general, besides a "large sum to indemnify him and the governor of cuba for the charges of the expedition and the loss of the fleet. the garrison of vera cruz was also to be provided for. the cavalry, musketeers, and crossbowmen each received double pay." thus for each of the common soldiers there was only gold _pesos_--i. e., £ - / x = £ s. to many this share seemed paltry, compared with their expectations; and it required all the tact and authority of cortés to quell the grumbling. there still remained one important object of the spanish invasion, an object which cortés as a good catholic dared not overlook--the conversion of the aztec nation from heathenism. the bloody ritual of the _teocallis_ was still observed in every city. cortés waited on montezuma, urging a request that the great temple be assigned for public worship according to the christian rites. montezuma was evidently much alarmed, declaring that his people would never allow such a profanation, but at last, after consulting the priest, agreed that one of the sanctuaries on the summit of the temple should be granted to the christians as a place of worship. an altar was raised, surmounted by a crucifix and the image of the virgin. the whole army ascended the steps in solemn procession and listened with silent reverence to the service of the mass. in conclusion, "as the beautiful te deum rose toward heaven, cortés and his soldiers kneeling on the ground, with tears streaming from their eyes, poured forth their gratitude to the almighty for this glorious triumph of the cross." such a union of heathenism and christianity was too unnatural to continue. a few days later the emperor sent for cortés and earnestly advised him to leave the country at once. cortés replied that ships were necessary. montezuma agreed to supply timber and workmen, and in a short time the construction of several ships was begun at vera cruz on the seacoast, while in the capital the garrison kept itself ready by day and by night for a hostile attack. only six months had elapsed since the arrival of the spaniards in the capital, , and now the army was in more uncomfortable circumstances than ever. meanwhile, while cortés had been reducing mexico and humbling the unfortunate montezuma, the governor of cuba had complained to the court of spain, but without success. charles v, since his election to the imperial crown of germany, had neglected the affairs of spain; and when the envoys from vera cruz waited upon him, little came of the conference except the astonishment of the court at the quantity of gold, and the beautiful workmanship of the ornaments and the rich colors of the mexican feather-work. the opposition of the bishop of burgos thwarted the conqueror of mexico, as he had already successfully opposed the schemes of the "great admiral" and his son diego columbus. we shall presently see how this influential ecclesiastic was able to thwart balboa when governor of darien. velasquez was now determined to wreak his revenge upon cortés without waiting longer for assistance from spain. he prepared an expedition of eighteen ships with eighty horsemen, infantry, crossbowmen, and twelve pieces of artillery. to command these velasquez chose a hidalgo named narvaez, who had assisted formerly in subduing cuba and hispaniola. the personal appearance of narvaez, as given by diaz, is worth quoting: he was tall, stout-limbed, with a large head and red beard, an agreeable presence, a voice deep and sonorous, as if it rose from a cavern. he was a good horseman and valiant. meanwhile cortés persuaded montezuma that some friends from spain had arrived at vera cruz, and therefore got permission to leave him and the capital in charge of alvarado and a small garrison. montezuma, in his royal litter, borne on the shoulders of his aztec nobles, accompanied the spanish general to the southern causeway. when cortés was within fifteen leagues' distance of zempoalla, where narvaez was encamped, the latter sent a message that if his authority were acknowledged he would supply ships to cortés and his army so that all who wished might freely leave the country with all their property. cortés, however, with his usual astuteness, replied: "if narvaez bears a royal commission i will readily submit to him. but he has produced none. he is a deputy of my rival, velasquez. for myself, i am a servant of the king; i have conquered the country for him; and for him i and my brave followers will defend it to the last drop of our blood. if we fall it will be glory enough to have perished in the discharge of our duty." narvaez and his army were meantime spending their time frivolously; and when the actual attack was begun in the dead of night, under a pouring rain-storm, it appeared that only two sentinels were on guard. narvaez, badly wounded, was taken prisoner on the top of a _teocalli_; and in a very short time his army was glad to capitulate. the horse-soldiers whom narvaez had sent to waylay one of the roads to zempoalla, rode in soon after to tender their submission. the victorious general, seated in a chair of state, with a richly embroidered mexican mantle on his shoulders, received his congratulations from the officers and soldiers of both armies. narvaez and several others were led in chains. cortés not only defeated narvaez, but, after the battle, enlisted under his standard the spanish soldiers who had been sent to attack him--reminding one of the "magnetism" of hannibal or napoleon, and the consequent enthusiasm caused by mere presence, looks, and words. before the rejoicings were finished, however, tidings were brought to cortés from the mexican capital that the whole city was in a state of revolt against alvarado. on his march back to the great plateau cortés found the inhabitants of tlascala still friendly and willing to assist as allies in the struggle against their ancient foes, the mexicans. on reaching the camp of the spaniards in mexico, cortés found that alvarado had provoked the insurrection by a massacre of the aztec populace. having entered the precincts with his army, cortés at once made anxious preparations for the siege which was threatened by the aztecs, now assembling in thousands. as the assailants approached "they set up a hideous yell, or rather that shrill whistle used in fight by the nations of anahuac," accompanied by the sound of shell and atabal and their other rude instruments of wild music. this was followed by a tempest of missiles, stones, darts, and arrows. the spaniards waited until the foremost column had arrived within distance, when a general discharge of artillery and muskets swept the ranks of the assailants. never till now had the mexicans witnessed the murderous power of these formidable engines. at first they stood aghast, but soon rallying, they rushed forward over the prostrate bodies of their comrades. pressing on, some of them tried to scale the parapet, while others tried to force a breach in it. when the parapet proved too strong they shot burning arrows upon the wooden outworks. next day there were continually fresh supplies of warriors added to the forces of the assailants, so that the danger of the situation was greatly increased. diaz, an onlooker, thus wrote: the mexicans fought with such ferocity that if we had been assisted by , hectors and as many orlandos, we should have made no impression on them. there were several of our troops who had served in the italian wars, but neither there nor in the battles with the turks had they ever seen anything like the desperation shown by these indians. cortés at last drew off his men and sounded a retreat, taking refuge in the fortress. the mexicans encamped round it, and during the night insulted the besieged, shouting, "the gods have at last delivered you into our hands: the stone of sacrifice is ready: the knives are sharpened." cortés now felt that he had not fully understood the character of the mexicans. the patience and submission formerly shown in deference to the injured montezuma was now replaced by concentrated arrogance and ferocity. the spanish general even stooped to request the interposition of the aztec emperor; and, at last, when assured that the foreigners would leave his country if a way were opened through the mexican army he agreed to use his influence. for this purpose he put on his imperial robes; his mantle of white and blue flowed over his shoulders, held together by its rich clasp of the green _chalchivitl_. the same precious gem, with emeralds of uncommon size, set in gold, profusely ornamented other parts of his dress. his feet were shod with the golden sandals, and his brows covered with the mexican diadem, resembling in form the pontifical tiara. thus attired and surrounded by a guard of spaniards, and several aztec nobles, and preceded by the golden wand, the symbol of sovereignty, the indian monarch ascended the central turret of the palace. at the sight of montezuma all the mexican army became silent, partly, no doubt, from curiosity. he assured them that he was no prisoner; that the strangers were his friends, and would leave mexico of their own accord as soon as a way was opened. to call himself a friend of the hateful spaniards was a fatal argument. instead of respecting their monarch, though in his official robes, the populace howled angry curses at him as a degenerate aztec, a coward, no longer a warrior or even a man! a cloud of missiles was hurled at montezuma, and he was struck to the ground by the blow of a stone on his head. the unfortunate monarch only survived his wounds for a few days, disdaining to take any nourishment, or to receive advice from the spanish priests. meanwhile, cortés and his army met with an unexpected danger. a large body of the indian warriors had taken possession of the great temple, at a short distance from the spanish quarters. from this commanding position they kept shooting a deadly flight of arrows on the spaniards. cortés sent his chamberlain, escobar, with a body of men to storm the temple, but, after three efforts, the party had to relinquish the attempt. cortés himself then led a storming party, and after some determined fighting reached the platform at the top of the temple where the two sanctuaries of the aztec deities stood. this large area was now the scene of a desperate battle, fought in sight of the whole capital as well as of the spanish troops still remaining in the courtyard. this struggle between such deadly enemies caused dreadful carnage on both sides: the edge of the area was unprotected by parapet or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. cortés himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... the number of the enemy was double that of the christians; but the invulnerable armor of the spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical strength and numbers. this unparalleled scene of bloodshed lasted for three hours. of the mexicans "two or three priests only survived to be led away in triumph"; yet the loss of the spaniards was serious enough, amounting to forty-five of their best men. nearly all the others were wounded, some seriously. after dragging the uncouth monster, huitzilopochtli, from his sanctuary, the assailants hurled the repulsive image down the steps of the temple, and then set fire to the building. the same evening they burned a large part of the town. cortés now resolved upon a night retreat from the capital; but when marching along one of the causeways they were attacked by the mexicans in such numbers that, when morning dawned, the shattered battalion was reduced to less than half its number. in after years that disastrous retreat was known to the spanish chroniclers as _noche triste_, the "night of sorrows." after a hurried six days' march before the pursuers, cortés gained a victory so signal that an alliance was speedily formed with tlascala against mexico. cortés built twelve brigantines at vera cruz in order to secure the command of lake tescuco and thus attempt the reduction of the mexican capital. on his return to the great lake he found that the throne was now occupied by guatimozin, a nephew of montezuma. using their brigantines the spanish soldiers now began the siege of mexico--"the most memorable event in the conquest of america." it lasted seventy-five days, during which the whole of the capital was reduced to ruins. guatimozin, the last of the aztec emperors, was condemned by the spanish general to be hanged on the charge of treason. cortés was now master of all mexico. the spanish court and people were full of admiration for his victories and the extent of his conquests; and charles v appointed him "captain-general and governor of new spain." on revisiting europe, the emperor honored him with the order of st. jago and the title of marquis. latterly, however, after some failures in his exploring expeditions, cortés, on his return to spain, found himself treated with neglect. it was then, according to voltaire's story, that when charles asked the courtiers, "who is that man?" referring to cortés, the latter said aloud: "it is one, sire, that has added more provinces to your dominions than any other governor has added towns!" cortés died in his sixty-second year, december , . chapter viii balboa and the isthmus in the spanish conquest of america there are three great generals: cortés, balbao, and pizarro. the third may to many readers seem immeasurably superior as explorer and conqueror to the second, but it must be remembered that pizarro's scheme of discovering and invading peru was precisely that which balboa had already prepared. pizarro could afford to say, "others have labored, and i have merely entered into their labors." what, then, was the work done by balboa, and what prevented him from taking peru? in , the year before the conquest of cuba, balboa was glad to escape from hispaniola, not to avoid the spanish cruelties, like hatuey, the luckless cazique, but to escape from his spanish creditors. so anxious was he to get on board that he concealed himself in a cask to avoid observation. balboa, however, had administrative qualities, and after taking possession of the uncleared district of darien in the name of the king of spain, he was appointed governor of the new province. he built the town santa maria on the coast of the darien gulf; but so pestilential was the district (and still is) that the settlers were glad after a short time to remove to the other side of the isthmus. it was by mere accident that balboa first heard of a great ocean beyond the mountains of darien, and of the enormous wealth of peru, a country hitherto unknown to spain or europe. as several soldiers were one day disputing about the division of some gold-dust, an indian cazique called out: "why quarrel about such a trifle? i can show you a region where the commonest pots and pans are made of that metal." to the inquiries of balboa and his companions, the cazique replied that by traveling six days to the south they should see another ocean, near which lay the wealthy kingdom. resolving to cross the isthmus, notwithstanding a thousand formidable obstructions, balboa formed a party consisting of veterans, accompanied by , indians, and several fierce dogs trained to hunt the naked natives. such were the difficulties that the "six days' journey" occupied twenty-five before the ridge of the isthmus range was reached. balboa commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. as soon as he beheld the sea stretching in endless prospect below him he fell on his knees; ... his followers observing his transports of joy rushed forward to join in his wonder, exultation, and gratitude. that was the moment, september , , immortalized in keats's sonnet: when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent, upon a peak in darien. balboa hurried down the western slope of the isthmus range to take formal possession in the name of the spanish monarch. he found a fishing village there which had been named panama (i. e., "plenty fish") by the indians, but had also a reputation for the pearls found in its bay. in his letter to spain, balboa said, to illustrate the difficulties of the expedition, that of all the men in his party there were never more than eighty fit for service at one time. notwithstanding the wonderful news of the discovery of the "great southern ocean," as the pacific was then called, ferdinand overlooked the great services of balboa, and appointed a new governor of darien called pedrarias, who instituted a judicial inquiry into some previous transactions of balboa, imposing a heavy fine as punishment. the new governor committed other acts of great imprudence, and at length ferdinand felt that he had only superseded the most active and experienced officer he had in the new world. to make amends to balboa, he was appointed "lieutenant-governor of the countries upon the south sea," with great privileges and authority. at the same time pedrarias was commanded to "support balboa in all his operations, and to consult with him concerning every measure which he himself pursued." balboa, in , began his preparations for entering the south sea and conveying troops to the country which he proposed to invade. with four small brigantines and chosen soldiers (a force superior to that with which pizarro afterward undertook the same expedition), he was on the point of sailing toward the coasts of which they had such expectations, when a message arrived from pedrarias. balboa being unconscious of crime, agreed to delay the expedition, and meet pedrarias for conference. on entering the palace balboa was arrested and immediately tried on the charge of disloyalty to the king and intention of revolt against the governor. he was speedily sentenced to death, although the accusation was so absurd that the judges who pronounced the sentence "seconded by the whole colony, interceded warmly for his pardon." "the spaniards beheld with astonishment and sorrow the public execution of a man whom they universally deemed more capable than any who had borne command in america, of forming and accomplishing great designs." this gross injustice amounting to a public scandal was accounted for by the malignant influence of the bishop of burgos, in spain, who was the original cause of balboa being superseded as governor of darien. the expedition designed by balboa was now relinquished; but the removal of the colony soon afterward to the pacific side of the isthmus may be considered a step toward the realization of an exactly similar attempt by pizzaro. to some historical readers the word "darien" only recalls the bitter prejudice entertained against william iii, our "dutch king," notwithstanding the special pleading of lord macaulay and others. some scottish merchants had adopted a scheme recommended by the most reliable authorities[ ] of that age, viz., the settlement of a half-commercial, half-military colony on the atlantic coast of the isthmus. such a company, in the words of paterson, would be masters of the "door of the seas," and the "key of the universe." the east india companies both of england and holland showed an envious jealousy of the scottish merchants, and therefore no assistance was to be expected from the king, although he had given his royal sanction to the scots act of parliament creating the company. the scottish people, however, zealously continued the scheme. some , men "set sail from leith amid the blessings of many thousands of their assembled countrymen. they reached the gulf of darien in safety, and established themselves on the coast in localities to which they gave the names of new caledonia and new st. andrews." the government of spain (secretly instigated, it was believed, by the english king) resolved to attack the embryo colony. the shipwreck of the whole scheme soon followed, due undoubtedly more to the jealousy of the english merchants (who believed that any increase of trade in scotland or ireland was a positive loss to england) and the bad faith of our dutch king, than to all other causes whatever. of the colony, according to dalrymple (ii, ), not more than thirty ever saw their own country again. [footnote : e.g., paterson, founder of the bank of england, fletcher of saltoun, the marquis of tweeddale, then chief minister of scotland, sir john dalrymple, etc.] in a company of english merchants was formed to trade with the west indies and the "spanish main," and commanded great success. other merchants did the same. soon after the spanish court instituted a coast-guard to make war upon these traders; and as they had full power to capture and slay all who did not bear the king of spain's commission, there were terrible tales told in europe of mutilation, torture, and revenge. the windward islands having been gradually settled by french and english adventurers, frederick of toledo was sent with a large fleet to destroy those petty colonies. this harsh treatment rendered the planters desperate, and under the name of buccaneers,[ ] they continued "a retaliation so horribly savage [_v._ notes to rokeby] that the perusal makes the reader shudder. from piracy at sea, they advanced to making predatory descents on the spanish territories; in which they displayed the same furious and irresistible valor, the same thirst of spoil, and the same brutal inhumanity to their captives." the pride and presumption of spain were partly resisted by the english monarchs, but not with real effect before the time of cromwell, strongest of all the rulers of britain. under his government of the seas spain was deprived of the island of jamaica; and the buccaneers to their disgust found that the flag of the great protector was a check against all piracy and injustice. [footnote : named from _boucan_, a kind of preserved meat, used by those rovers. they had learned this peculiar art of preserving from the native caribs.] under charles ii, however, the buccaneers resumed their conflict with the spanish, and in , henry morgan, with , english and french ruffians resolved to cross the isthmus like balboa, to plunder the depositories of gold and silver which lay in the city of panama and other places on the pacific coast. having stormed a strong fortress at the mouth of the chagres river, they forced their way through the entangled forests for ten days, and after much hardship reached panama, to find it defended by a regular army of twice their number. the spaniards, however, were beaten, and morgan thoroughly sacked and plundered the city, taking captive all the chief citizens in order to extort afterward large ransoms. ten years afterward the isthmus of darien was crossed by dampier, another celebrated buccaneer, but his party was too small to attack panama. they seized some spanish vessels in the bay and plundered all the coast for some distance. the following description by the bold buccaneer is not without interest to those who consider the present importance of the place: near the riverside stands new panama, a very handsome city, in a spacious bay of the same name, into which disembogue many long and navigable rivers, some whereof are not without gold; besides that it is beautified by many pleasant isles, the country about it affording a delightful prospect to the sea.... the houses are chiefly of brick and pretty lofty, especially the president's, the churches, the monasteries, and other public structures, which make the best show i have seen in the west indies. the present prosperity of panama is due to its large transit trade, which was recently estimated at £ , , a year. the pearl-fisheries, famous at the time of balboa's visit, have now little value. the narrowest breadth of the isthmus being only thirty miles, there have naturally been many engineering proposals to connect the pacific and atlantic oceans by a canal. m. de lesseps founded a french company in for the construction of a ship-canal with eight locks, and over forty-six miles in length; but in , the excavations stopped after some - / millions of cubic meters of earth and rock had been removed. meanwhile a railway - / miles long connects colon on the atlantic with panama on the pacific. the mexican isthmus of tehuantepec, only miles across, separates the bay of campeachy from the pacific, and failing the panama canal some engineers were in favor of a _ship-railway_ for conveying large vessels _bodily_ from the atlantic to the pacific. the scheme met with great favor in the united states, but has not yet been carried out. the third proposal for connecting the two great oceans is probably the most feasible because it follows the most deeply marked depression of the isthmus. the nicaraguan ship-canal will, if the scheme be carried out, pass from greytown on the atlantic to brito on the pacific, about miles apart, through the republic of nicaragua, which lies north of panama and south of guatemala. one obvious advantage of this ship-canal is that the great lake is utilized, affording already about one-third of the waterway; only twenty-eight miles, in fact, being actual canal, and the rest river, lake, and lagoon navigation. in the latest specifications the engineers proposed to dam up the river (san juan) by a stone wall seventy feet high and , feet long, thus raising the water to a level of feet above the sea. only three locks will be required to work the nicaraguan ship-canal. chapter ix extinct civilization of peru § (a) _peruvian archeology_ as the extinct civilization of the incas of peru is the most important phase of development among all the american races, so also their prehistoric remains are extremely interesting to the archeologist. [illustration: monolith doorway. near lake titicaca. fig. .] . _architecture._--in the interior of the country we find many remarkable examples of stone building, such as walls of huge polygonal stones, four-sided or five-sided or six-sided, some six feet across, laid without mortar, and so finely polished and adjusted that the blade of a knife can not be inserted between them. the strength of the masonry is sometimes assisted by having the projecting parts of a stone fitting into corresponding hollows or recesses in the stone above or below it. the stones being frequently extremely hard granite, or basalt, etc., antiquarian travelers have wondered how in early times the natives could have cut and polished them without any metal tools. the ordinary explanation is that the work was done by patiently rubbing one stone against another, with the aid of sharp sand, "time being no object" in the case of the laborers among savage and primitive races. it is believed by most antiquaries that long before the period of the incas there was a powerful empire to which we must attribute such cyclopean ruins; especially as the construction and style differ so greatly from what is found in the inca period. the huge stones occur at tiahuanacu (near lake titicaca), cuzco, ollantay, and the altar of concacha. fig. is a broken doorway at tiahuanacu, composed of huge monoliths. fig. is an enlargement of an image over the doorway shown in fig. . the doorway forms the entrance to a quadrangular area ( yards by ) surrounded by large stones standing on end. the gateway or doorway of fig. is one of the most marvelous stone monuments existing, being _one block of hard rock_, deeply sunk in the ground. the present height is over seven feet. the whole of the inner side "from a line level with the upper lintel of the doorway to the top" is a mass of sculpture, "which speaks to us," says sir c. r. markham, "in difficult riddles of the customs and art culture, of the beliefs and traditions of an ancient" extinct civilization. the figure in high relief above the doorway (fig. ) is a head surrounded by rays, "each terminating in a circle or the head of an animal." six human heads hang from the girdle, and two more from the elbows. each hand holds a scepter terminating at the lower end with the head of a condor--that huge american vulture familiar to the peruvians. that bird of prey was probably an emblem of royalty to the prehistoric dynasty now long forgotten. [illustration: image over the doorway shown in fig. . near lake titicaca. fig. .] some older historians speak of richly carved statues which formerly stood in this enclosure, and "many cylindrical pillars." of the masonry of these ruins generally, squier says: "the stone is faced with a precision that no skill can excel, its right angles turned with an accuracy that the most careful geometer could not surpass. i do not believe there exists a better piece of stone-cutting, the material considered, on this or the other continent." the fortress above cuzco, the capital of the incas, is considered the grandest monument of extinct american civilization. "like the pyramids and the coliseum, it is imperishable.... a fortified work, yards in length, built of gigantic stones, in three lines, forming walls supporting terraces and parapets.... the stones are of blue limestone, of enormous size and irregular in shape, but fitted into each other with rare precision. one stone is twenty-seven feet high by fourteen; and others fifteen feet high by twelve are common throughout the work." in all the architecture of the prehistoric peruvians the true arch is not found, though there is an approach to the "maya arch," formerly described, finishing the doorway overhead by overlapping stones. the immense fortresses of ollantay and pisac are really hills which, by means of encircling walls, have been transformed into immense pyramids with many terraces rising above each other. all large buildings, such as temples and palaces, were laid out to agree with the "cardinal points," the principal entrance always facing the rising sun. the tomb construction of the ancient peruvians has been already noticed (_v._ chap. iv). to the south of cuzco are the ruins of a temple, cacha, which is considered to be of a date between the cyclopean structures already described and the inca architecture. the chief part is yards long, built of wrought stones; and in the middle of the building from end to end runs a wall pierced by twelve high doorways. there were also two series of pillars which had formerly supported a floor. those traces of the cyclopean builders point to an extremely early date, but several students of the peruvian antiquities point confidently to distinct evidence of a still more primitive race--to be compared, perhaps, with those builders of "druidic monuments" whom it is now the fashion to call "neolithic men." some "cromlechs" or burial-places have been found in bolivia and other parts of peru; and in many respects they are parallel to the stone monuments found in great britain as well as brittany and other parts of europe. some of those peruvian cromlechs consist of four great slabs of slate, each about five feet high, four or five in width, and more than an inch thick. a fifth is placed over them. over the whole a pyramid of clay and rough stones is piled. possibly that race of cromlech builders bore the same relation to the temple builders described above that the builders of kits coty house, between rochester and maidstone, bore to the temple builders of stonehenge on salisbury plain. if they had to retreat, as the ice-sheet was driven farther from the torrid zone, then by the theory of the glacial period the cromlech men in both cases would at last be simply eskimos. . _aqueducts._--the ancient peruvians attained great skill in the distribution of water--especially for irrigation. artificial lakes or reservoirs were formed, so that by damming up the streams in the rainy season a good supply was created for the dry season. some great monuments still remain of their hydraulic engineering, such as extensive cisterns, solid dikes along the rivers to prevent overflow, tunnels to drain lakes during an oversupply, and, in some places, artificial cascades. . _roads and bridges._--the roads and highways of the incas were so excellent that "in many places" they still offer by far the most convenient avenues of transit. they are from fifteen to twenty-five feet in width, bedded with small stones often laid in concrete. as the use of beasts of burden was almost unknown, the roads did not ascend a steep inclination by zigzags but by steps cut in the rock. at certain distances public shelters were erected for travelers, and some of these still offer the best lodging-houses to be found along the routes. bridges were of wood, of ropes made from maguey fiber, or of stone. some of the latter are still in excellent condition, in spite of the violence of the mountain torrents which they have spanned for four centuries. . _sculpture._--the maya race of yucatan and central america were much superior to the prehistoric peruvians in stone sculpture. except those examples already referred to under , their artists have apparently produced nothing to show skill in workmanship, much less fertility of imagination. that is largely explained by their lack of suitable tools. . _goldsmith's work._--in this branch of art the ancient peruvians greatly excelled, especially in inlaying and gilding. gold-beating and gilding had been prosecuted to remarkable delicacy, and the very thin layers of gold-leaf on many articles led the spaniards at first to believe they were of the solid metal. these delicate layers showed ornamental designs, including birds, butterflies, and the like. . _pottery._--in this department of industrial art the prehistoric peruvians showed much aptitude both "in regard to variety of design and technical skill in preparing the material. vases with pointed bottoms and painted sides recalling those of ancient greece and etruria are often disinterred along the coast." the merit of those artists lay in perfect imitation of natural objects, such as birds, fishes, fruits, plants, skulls, persons in various positions, faces (often with graphic individuality). some jars exactly resembled the "magic vases" which are still found in hindustan, and can be emptied only when held at a certain angle. . though ignorant of perspective and the rules of light and shade, these ancient peruvians had an accurate eye for color. "spinning, weaving, and dyeing," to quote sir c. r. markham, "were arts which were sources of employment to a great number, owing to the quantity and variety of the fabrics.... there were rich dresses interwoven with gold or made of gold thread; fine woolen mantles ornamented with borders of small square plates of gold and silver; colored cotton cloths worked in complicated patterns; and fabrics of aloe fiber and sheep's sinews for breeches. coarser cloths of llama wool were also made in vast quantities." [illustration: the quipu.] . the _quipu_ (i e., "knot").--without writing or even any of the simpler forms of pictographs which some indian races inferior to them in refinement had invented, the peruvians had no means of sending a message relating to tribute or the number of warriors in an army, or a date, except the _quipu_. it consisted of one principal cord about two feet long held horizontally, to which other cords of various colors and lengths were attached, hanging vertically. the knots on the vertical cords, and their various lengths served by means of an arranged code to convey certain words and phrases. each color and each knot had so many conventional significations; thus _white_ = silver, _green_ = corn, _yellow_ = gold; but in another quipu, _white_ = peace, _red_ = war, soldiers, etc. the quipu was originally only a means of numeration and keeping accounts, thus: a single knot = a double knot = a triple knot = , two singles = two doubles = etc. . the great stone monuments described in our first section belonged, according to some writers, to a dynasty called pirua, who ruled over the highlands of peru and bolivia long before the times of the incas. that early race had as the center of their civilization the shores of lake titicaca. . _the ancient capital._--cuzco, the center of government till the time of the conquest by the spaniards, and for a long time the only city in the peruvian empire, deserves a paragraph under the head archeology. its wonderful fortress has already been referred to, and there are other cyclopean remains, such as the great wall which contains the "stone of twelve corners." some monuments of the inca period also attract much attention, such as the curi-cancha temple, feet long, the palace of amaru-cancha (i. e., "place of serpents"), so called from the serpents sculptured in relief on the exterior. of these and other buildings squier remarks that the "joints are of a precision unknown in our architecture; the world has nothing to show in the way of stone-cutting and fitting to surpass the skill and accuracy displayed in the inca structures of cuzco." to obtain the site for their capital the incas had to carry out a great engineering work, by confining two mountain torrents between walls of substantial masonry so solid as to serve even to modern times. the valley of cuzco was the source of the peruvian civilization, center and origin of the empire. hence the name, cuzco = "navel," just as the ancient greeks called athens _umbilicus terræ_, and our new england cousins fondly refer to boston, mass., as "the hub of the universe"! [illustration: gold ornament (? zodiac) from a tomb at cuzco.] § (b) _peru before the arrival of the spaniards_ the "national myth" of the peruvians was that at lake titicaca two supernatural beings appeared, both children of the sun. one was manco capac, the first inca, who taught the people agriculture; the other was his wife, who taught the women to spin and weave. from them were lineally derived all the incas. as representing the sun, the inca was high priest and head of the hierarchy, and therefore presided at the great religious festivals. he was the source from which everything flowed--all dignity, all power, all emolument. louis le magnifique when at the height of his power might be taken as a type of the emperor inca: both could literally use the phrase, _l'état c'est moi,_ "the state! i am the state!" in the royal palaces and dress great barbaric pomp was assumed. all the apartments were studded with gold and silver ornaments. the worship of the sun, representing the creator, the dweller in space, the teacher and ruler of the universe,[ ] was the religion of the incas inherited from their distant ancestry. the great temple at cuzco, with its gorgeous display of riches, was called "the place of gold, the abode of the teacher of the universe." an elliptical plate of gold was fixed on the wall to represent the deity. [footnote : according to sir c. r. markham, f. r. s.] sufficient evidence is still visible of the engineering industry evinced by the natives before the arrival of pizarro. we give some particulars of the two principal highways, both joining quito to cuzco, then passing south to chile. first, the high level road, , miles in length, crossing the great peruvian table-land, and conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; with galleries cut for leagues through the living rock, rivers crossed by means of bridges, and ravines of hideous depth filled up with solid masonry. the roadway consisted of heavy flags of freestone. secondly, the low level highway along the coast country between the andes and the pacific. the prehistoric engineers had here to encounter quite a different task. the causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, with trees planted along the margin. in the strips of sandy waste, huge piles (many of them to be seen to this day) were driven into the ground to indicate the route. another colossal effort was the conveyance of water to the rainless country by the seacoast, especially to certain parts capable of being reclaimed and made fertile. some of the aqueducts were of great length--one measuring between and miles. the following table gives the peruvian calendar for a year: i. raymi, the _festival of the winter solstice_, in honor of the sun june d. season of plowing july d. season of sowing august d. ii. _festival of the spring equinox_ september d. season of brewing october d. commemoration of the dead november d. iii. _festival of the summer solstice_ december d. season of exercises january d. season of ripening february d. iv. _festival of autumn equinox_ march d. beginning of harvest april d. harvesting month may d. since quito is exactly on the equator, the vertical rays of the sun at noon during the equinox cast no shadow. that northern capital, therefore, was "held in especial veneration as the favored abode of the great deity." at the feast of raymi, or new year's day, the sacrifice usually offered was that of the llama, a fire being kindled by means of a concave mirror of polished metal collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a quantity of dried cotton. the national festival of the aztecs we compared to the secular celebration of the romans; so now the raymi of the peruvians may be likened to the panathenæa of ancient athens, when the people of attica ascended in splendid procession to the shrine on the acropolis. in mexico the spanish travelers often experienced severe famines; and in india, even at the present day (to the disgrace perhaps of our management) nearly every year many thousands die of hunger. it was very different under the ancient peruvians, because by law "the product of the lands consecrated to the sun, as well as those set apart for the incas, was deposited in the _tambos_, or public storehouses, as a stated provision for times of scarcity." the spaniards found those prehistoric agriculturists utilizing the inexhaustible supply of guano found on all the islands of the pacific. it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the british farmer found the value of this fertilizer. chapter x pizarro and the incas when stout-hearted balboa first reached the summit of the isthmus range and looked south over the bay of panama, he might have seen the "silver bell," which forms the summit of the mighty volcano chimborazo. still farther south in the same direction lay the "land of gold," of which he had heard. balboa was unjustly prevented from exploring that unknown country, but among the spanish soldiers in panama there were two who determined to carry out balboa's scheme. the younger, pizarro, was destined to rival cortés as explorer and conqueror; almagro, his companion in the expedition, was less crafty and cruel. sailing from panama, the spanish first landed on the coast below quito, and found the natives wearing gold and silver trinkets. on a second voyage, with more men, they explored the coast of peru and visited tumbez, a town with a lofty temple and a palace for the incas. they beheld a country fully peopled and cultivated; the natives were decently clothed, and possessed of ingenuity so far surpassing the other inhabitants of the new world as to have the use of tame domestic animals. but what chiefly attracted the notice of the visitors was such a show of gold and silver, not only in ornaments, but in several vessels and utensils for common use, formed of those precious metals as left no room to doubt that they abounded with profusion in the country. after his return pizarro visited spain and secured the patronage of charles v, who appointed him governor and captain-general of the newly discovered country. in the next voyage from panama, pizarro set sail with soldiers in three small ships--"a contemptible force surely to invade the great empire of peru." pizarro was very fortunate in the time of his arrival, because two brothers were fiercely contending in civil war to obtain the sovereignty. their father, huana capac, the twelfth inca in succession from manco capac, had recently died after annexing the kingdom of quito, and thus doubling the power of the empire. pizarro made friends with atahualpa, who had become inca by the defeat and death of his brother, and a friendly meeting was arranged between them. the peruvians are thus described by a spanish onlooker: first of all there arrived men in uniform; the inca himself, on a couch adorned with plumes, and almost covered with plates of gold and silver, enriched with precious stones, was carried on the shoulders of his principal attendants. several bands of singers and dancers accompanied the procession; and the whole plain was covered with troops, more than , men. after engaging in a religious dispute with the inca, who refused to acknowledge the authority of the pope and threw the breviary on the ground, the spanish chaplain exclaimed indignantly that the word of god had been insulted by a heathen. pizarro instantly gave the signal of assault: the martial music struck up, the cannon and muskets began to fire, the horse rallied out fiercely to the charge, the infantry rushed on sword in hand. the peruvians, astonished at the suddenness of the attack, dismayed with the effect of the firearms and the irresistible impression of the cavalry, fled with universal consternation on every side. pizarro, at the head of his chosen band, soon penetrated to the royal seat, and seizing the inca by the arm, carried him as a prisoner to the spanish quarters. for his ransom atahualpa agreed to pay a weight of gold amounting to more than five millions sterling. instead of keeping faith with the inca by restoring him to liberty, pizarro basely allowed him to be tried on several false charges and condemned to be burned alive. after hearing of the enormous ransom many spaniards hurried from guatemala, panama, and nicaragua to share in the newly discovered booty of peru, the "land of gold." pizarro, therefore, being now greatly reenforced with soldiers, forced his way to cuzco, the capital. the riches found there exceeded in value what had been received as atahualpa's ransom. as governor of peru, pizarro chose a new site for his capital, nearer the coast than cuzco, and there founded lima. it is now a great center of trade. pizarro lived here in great state till the year , when his fate reached him by means of a party of conspirators seeking to avenge the death of almagro, his former rival, whom he had cruelly executed as a traitor. on sunday, june th, at midday, while all lima was quiet under the siesta, the conspirators passed unobserved through the two outer courts of the palace, and speedily despatched the soldier-adventurer, intrepidly defending himself with a sword and buckler. "a deadly thrust full in the throat," and the tale of daring pizarro was told. _raro antecedentem scelestum_ _deseruit pede poena claudo._ when did doom, though lame, not bide its time, to clutch the nape of skulking crime? w. e. gladstone. general index. a. agathocles, . agassiz, . alfred, king, . almagro, pizarro's rival, , . alvarado, , . america, discoveries of, - , - , - . america, origin of the name, . american archeology, - (_see_ also aztec, peru, civilization). amerigo (_americus_), (_see_ vespucci). anahuac, , , . archeology, - (see under aztec, mexico, peru, and civilization, extinct). aristotle, shape of the earth, . arthur, king, . atahualpa, inca, , . atlantic, ridge, . atlantis, island or continent, , . avalon, . aztecs, their traditions, , , , , . aztecs, antiquities, . aztecs, kingdom, ; empire founded, . aztecs, letters, etc., , - . aztecs, astronomy, , , , . aztecs, human sacrifices, , , , , ; how explained by comparison with jews, greeks, druids, etc., - . aztecs, priesthood, , . aztecs, religion, , ; laws, . aztecs, natural piety, - . aztecs, secular festival, - . aztecs, soldiery, , . aztecs, agriculture, . aztecs, markets, , . aztecs, banquets, social amusements, , . aztlan, . b. bacon, roger, . bahamas, . balboa, , , , , . balboa scheme--adopted by pizarro, . balboa hears of the land of gold, . balboa crosses the isthmus, , . balboa unjustly treated, , . barcelona, columbus honored at court, . basque discovery, . boston in vinland, , . brandan, st. discoverer, . brito, ship-canal, . buccaneers, origin, etc., , . buffon, . burgos, bishop of, , . c. cabot, , , . cabrera reaches brazil, . cakama, prince of tezcuco, . calendar stone, , . calicut reached by gama, . canaanites, etc., sun-worship, , . cannibalism, , . capac, inca, , . carthage, , . cathay, , , . cazique, , , etc. celtic discoveries, , - . chalco, lake, , . charles v. and cortés, . chiapas, . chibchas, . cholula, , , , . civilization, extinct, chaps, iii, ix. civilization, celtic, . civilization, norse, - , - . civilization, aztec, etc., - , , . civilization, peru, - . colon (_see_ columbus); also an atlantic port on the isthmus of darien, . columbia, , . columbus, - , , - , . columbus, early failures, . columbus, voyage to iceland, . columbus, variation of the compass, , , . columbus, discovers bahamas, cuba, hayti, - . columbus, discovers trinidad and orinoco, . columbus, map by (found in ), . columbus, autograph (cut) and epitaph, . columbus, ferdinand, ; bartholomew, . columbus, diego, , . continent, supposed southern (cut), . continent, western, (_see_ atlantis, hesperides). condor, emblem of prehistoric inca, , (cuts). copan, - . cordova lands on yucatan, . cortés appointed leader, , , , . cortés at cuba and hayti, . cortés at yucatan, . cortés and teuhtile, in, . cortés, generalship, , , , . cortés, resource, , , . cortés, cruelty, , , . cortés at popocatepetl, . cortés and montezuma, , - . cortés, lack of delicacy, . cortés, arrest of montezuma, - . cortés, personal courage, . cortés, retreat, "night of sorrows," . cortés, mexico retaken and its emperor hanged, . cortés and charles v., . cliff-houses, . cotton, az. tec., preparation of, , . cromwell, his influence, . cruz, vera, , , , , , . cuba, - , - , . culhua, . cuzco, , , , , . cuzco, cyclopean remains, , . cuzco, temple, . cyclopean ruins in peru, , , - . cyclopean ruins in peru (cuts), , . d. dalrymple, sir john, , . dampier, buccaneer, . darien, taken by balboa, . darien, scottish expedition, . darien, causes of failure, , . darien, crossed by morgan, , . darien, crossed by dampier, . diaz, navigator, rounds the cape of good hope and names it the "stormy cape," . diaz, historian, quoted, , , , . dighton stone, (cuts, , ). diodorus siculus, . druid sacrifices, . "druidic," , , . e. edward vi and cabot, . elysian fields, , , . erik the red, . escobar, . euripides, quoted, . f. feather-work, , . ferdinand and isabella, , . feudalism ended, . g. gama, de, , . gardens, , . glazier, theory, - . gladstone quoted, . gosnold's expedition, , . greenland, - , , . grijalva and yucatan, , . guatemala, , , . guatimozin, . gunnbiorn, . h. hannibal on the alps, , . harold fair-hair, . hatuey, , . hayti, , . helluland (newfoundland), . henry vii., , . hercules' pillars, , . herodotus, , . hesiod, quoted, . hesperides, isles of the blest, . homer, quoted, , . honduras, , . huitzilopochtli, god of battles, , , , (_see_ mexitl.) humboldt, , , , , , . i. iceland, , . incas, , (_see_ peru). "indian," as a term applied to the new world by mistake, a blunder still perpetuated, (_cf_. .) indians, "red-skins," - , , . ingolf, . iphigenia, . ireland, mickle, , , . italian discovery, - . itztli (obsidian), used as a sharp flint, . iztapalapan, . j. jamaica, . jewish "discovery," . juan, s., ship-canal, . k. katortuk (greenland), , (cut, ). kingsborough, lord, , , . l. leif erikson, - . lesseps de, - . loadstone, , . longfellow, quoted, . lucian, quoted, . m. madoc, , , . magellan reaches the pacific ocean and names it, ; killed at matan, . magnetic pole, . maguey plant, its singular value, . major, mr., on pre-columbian discoveries of america, and site of the greenland colonies, , . malte-brun, . marina, "slave-interpreter," , , , . markham, sir c., quoted, , , , . markland (nova scotia), . marvels, age of, , . maya, mayapan, , . maya, ms., , . maya, trade, . _mayflower_ lands in vinland, . medea, , . merida, . mexico, mexicans (_see also_ aztecs). mexico, archeology, - . mexico, geography, , , - . mexico, valley, , . mexico, town, , , - . mexico, wealth, . mexico, siege, - . mexico, ferocity in war, - . mexitl, the god of battles, another name for huitzilopochtli, . monolith (cuts), , . montezuma i., . montezuma, - . montezuma, meaning of name, . montezuma, power, , , , . montezuma, affability, . montezuma, dress, etc., . montezuma, death, . montgomery, james, , , . morgan, buccaneer, . mound builders, , , . müller, max, quoted, . n. narvaez, , . nicaragua, ship-canal, , . norse discovery, - . norse towns in greenland, . norumbega, . o. ocean, western, , , . ocean, southern, first name for the atlantic (q.v.) oceanus, river, . ogygia, . ollantay, peru, , . orinoco, discovered, . orizaba, . overland route, . p. pacific, first seen, . pacific, first sailed upon, . palenque, , , . palos, , . panama, , , . panama, modern, . paper (prehistoric) of mexico, . pedrarias, , . peru and incas, chaps. ix., x. peru agriculture, , . peru aqueducts, roads, etc., . peru archeology, - . peru architecture, , - . peru calendar, , . peru chulpas, (cut). peru quipu, (cut). peru sculpture and pottery, . peru history and religion, . phenicians, , . pictograph, , . pindar, quoted, . pizarro, , . pizarro and atahualpha, , . pizarro and peru, - . pizarro, first and second voyages, , . pizarro imitated balboa, , . pizarro invades peru, . pizarro, his treachery and cruelty, , . pizarro at cusco, . pizarro founds lima, . pizarro, "doom" at last, . plato, , . plutarch, . polo, marco, , . polyxena, . popocatepetl, , . ptolemy, , . pythagorean theory, . q. quetzalcoatl, , , , , , , . quipu, , (cut, ). r. rafn, , , . raymi, peruvian festival, , . renascence, , , . renascence influence on travel and exploration, . renascence assisted the reformation, . runes in greenland, , . s. sebastian, magellan's basque lieutenant, , . seneca, , (title-page). "scraelings," vinland, . "skeleton in armor," . spain, how consolidated, , . spain, close of its colonial history, . squier, quoted, , . t. tambos, peru, . tehuantepec, isthmus, . tenochtitlan, mexico, . teocalli, , , - , (cut, ). tezcatlipoca, god of youth, . tezcuco, eastern capital, mexico, . tezcuco, , , . tezcuco, king of, . tezcuco, lake, - . thorfinn, . thorwaldsen, . titicaca, lake, , . titicaca (_see_ cyclopean ruins), , . tlaloc, god of rain, . tlascala, , - , , , , . tlascala, people, and siege, , . toltecs, , . totonacs, . trinidad, . tula, . tumbez, peru, . turks, causing civilization, , . u. utatla, . uxmal, , (frontispiece). v. valladolid, . velasquez, - , , , . vesper, (_see_ hesperides). vespucci, , , . vinland (new england), , . vinland, map of, . voltaire, story of cortés, . w. waldseemüller, . watling's island, . welsh discovery, , . william iii. and darien scheme, - . wilson, "prehistoric man," , . world, shape of, - . x. xalapa, . xicotencatl, tlascalan, , , - . xicotencatl appearance, . y. yochicalco, . yucatan, , , - . z. zempoalla, "conversion of," . zempoalla, , , . zeni, italian brothers, - . zeno map, , . zipango (japan), , . zodiac, comparative, . zodiac (cut) from a tomb at cusco, . * * * * * transcriber's note: the many spelling and hyphenation discrepancies in this text are as in the original. the history of herodotus by herodotus translated into english by g. c. macaulay in two volumes volume i. {e herodotou diathesis en apasin epieikes, kai tois men agathois sunedomene, tois de kakois sunalgousa}.�dion. halic. {monos 'erodotos 'omerikhotatos egeneto}.�longinus. preparer's note this text was prepared from an edition dated , published by macmillan and co., london and new york. greek text has been transliterated and marked with brackets, as in the opening citation above. preface if a new translation of herodotus does not justify itself, it will hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it was needed may be left here without discussion. the aim of the translator has been above all things faithfulness�faithfulness to the manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to the meaning of the author. at the same time it is conceived that the freedom and variety of herodotus is not always best reproduced by such severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of the epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only because the affectation of an archaic style would necessarily be offensive to the reader, but also because in language herodotus is not archaic. his style is the "best canon of the ionic speech," marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. at the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the epic and tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern english, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means avoid the courtier phrase by which the style of herodotus has too often been made "more noble." as regards the text from which this translation has been made, it is based upon that of stein's critical edition (berlin, - ), that is to say the estimate there made of the comparative value of the authorities has been on the whole accepted as a just one, rather than that which depreciates the value of the medicean ms. and of the class to which it belongs. on the other hand the conjectural emendations proposed by stein have very seldom been adopted, and his text has been departed from in a large number of other instances also, which will for the most part be found recorded in the notes. as it seemed that even after stein's re-collation of the medicean ms. there were doubts felt by some scholars as to the true reading in some places of this ms., which is very generally acknowledged to be the most important, i thought it right to examine it myself in all those passages where questions about text arise which concern a translator, that is in nearly five hundred places altogether; and the results, when they are worth observing, are recorded in the notes. at the same time, by the suggestion of dr. stein, i re-collated a large part of the third book in the ms. which is commonly referred to as f (i.e. florentinus), called by stein c, and i examined this ms. also in a certain number of other places. it should be understood that wherever in the notes i mention the reading of any particular ms. by name, i do so on my own authority. the notes have been confined to a tolerably small compass. their purpose is, first, in cases where the text is doubtful, to indicate the reading adopted by the translator and any other which may seem to have reasonable probability, but without discussion of the authorities; secondly, where the rendering is not quite literal (and in other cases where it seemed desirable), to quote the words of the original or to give a more literal version; thirdly, to add an alternative version in cases where there seems to be a doubt as to the true meaning; and lastly, to give occasionally a short explanation, or a reference from one passage of the author to another. for the orthography of proper names reference may be made to the note prefixed to the index. no consistent system has been adopted, and the result will therefore be open to criticism in many details; but the aim has been to avoid on the one hand the pedantry of seriously altering the form of those names which are fairly established in the english language of literature, as distinguished from that of scholarship, and on the other hand the absurdity of looking to latin rather than to greek for the orthography of the names which are not so established. there is no intention to put forward any theory about pronunciation. the index of proper names will, it is hoped, be found more complete and accurate than those hitherto published. the best with which i was acquainted i found to have so many errors and omissions that i was compelled to do the work again from the beginning. in a collection of more than ten thousand references there must in all probability be mistakes, but i trust they will be found to be few. my acknowledgments of obligation are due first to dr. stein, both for his critical work and also for his most excellent commentary, which i have had always by me. after this i have made most use of the editions of krüger, bähr, abicht, and (in the first two books) mr. woods. as to translations, i have had rawlinson's before me while revising my own work, and i have referred also occasionally to the translations of littlebury (perhaps the best english version as regards style, but full of gross errors), taylor, and larcher. in the second book i have also used the version of b. r. reprinted by mr. lang: of the first book of this translation i have access only to a fragment written out some years ago, when the british museum was within my reach. other particular obligations are acknowledged in the notes. ����� notes to preface [ see the remarks of p.-l. courier (on larcher's version) in the preface to his specimens of a new translation of herodotus (oeuvres complètes de p.-l. courier, bruxelles, ).] [ mr. woods, for example, in his edition of the first book (published in ) gives a list of readings for the first and second books, in which he almost invariably prefers the authority of gronovius to that of stein, where their reports differ. in so doing he is wrong in all cases (i think) except one, namely i. {to degomeno}. he is wrong, for examine, in i. , where the ms. has {touto}, i. {an agesthai}, i. {odon}, ii. {te de}, ii. {up auto}, ii. {kai prosotata}, ii. {to addo} (without {dao}), ii. {no}. abicht also has made several inaccurate statements, e.g. i. , where the ms. has {es ton euphreten}, and vii. {xerxes}.] [ for example in the index of proper names attached to stein's annotated edition (berlin, ), to which i am under obligation, having checked my own by it, i find that i have marked upwards of two hundred mistakes or oversights: no doubt i have been saved by it from at least as many.] the history of herodotus book i. the first book of the histories, called clio this is the showing forth of the inquiry of herodotus of halicarnassos, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by hellenes and some by barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another. . those of the persians who have knowledge of history declare that the phenicians first began the quarrel. these, they say, came from that which is called the erythraian sea to this of ours; and having settled in the land where they continue even now to dwell, set themselves forthwith to make long voyages by sea. and conveying merchandise of egypt and of assyria they arrived at other places and also at argos; now argos was at that time in all points the first of the states within that land which is now called hellas;�the phenicians arrived then at this land of argos, and began to dispose of their ship's cargo: and on the fifth or sixth day after they had arrived, when their goods had been almost all sold, there came down to the sea a great company of women, and among them the daughter of the king; and her name, as the hellenes also agree, was io the daughter of inachos. these standing near to the stern of the ship were buying of the wares such as pleased them most, when of a sudden the phenicians, passing the word from one to another, made a rush upon them; and the greater part of the women escaped by flight, but io and certain others were carried off. so they put them on board their ship, and forthwith departed, sailing away to egypt. . in this manner the persians report that io came to egypt, not agreeing therein with the hellenes, and this they say was the first beginning of wrongs. then after this, they say, certain hellenes (but the name of the people they are not able to report) put in to the city of tyre in phenicia and carried off the king's daughter europa;�these would doubtless be cretans;�and so they were quits for the former injury. after this however the hellenes, they say, were the authors of the second wrong; for they sailed in to aia of colchis and to the river phasis with a ship of war, and from thence, after they had done the other business for which they came, they carried off the king's daughter medea: and the king of colchis sent a herald to the land of hellas and demanded satisfaction for the rape and to have his daughter back; but they answered that, as the barbarians had given them no satisfaction for the rape of io the argive, so neither would they give satisfaction to the barbarians for this. . in the next generation after this, they say, alexander the son of priam, having heard of these things, desired to get a wife for himself by violence from hellas, being fully assured that he would not be compelled to give any satisfaction for this wrong, inasmuch as the hellenes gave none for theirs. so he carried off helen, and the hellenes resolved to send messengers first and to demand her back with satisfaction for the rape; and when they put forth this demand, the others alleged to them the rape of medea, saying that the hellenes were now desiring satisfaction to be given to them by others, though they had given none themselves nor had surrendered the person when demand was made. . up to this point, they say, nothing more happened than the carrying away of women on both sides; but after this the hellenes were very greatly to blame; for they set the first example of war, making an expedition into asia before the barbarians made any into europe. now they say that in their judgment, though it is an act of wrong to carry away women by force, it is a folly to set one's heart on taking vengeance for their rape, and the wise course is to pay no regard when they have been carried away; for it is evident that they would never be carried away if they were not themselves willing to go. and the persians say that they, namely the people of asia, when their women were carried away by force, had made it a matter of no account, but the hellenes on account of a woman of lacedemon gathered together a great armament, and then came to asia and destroyed the dominion of priam; and that from this time forward they had always considered the hellenic race to be their enemy: for asia and the barbarian races which dwell there the persians claim as belonging to them; but europe and the hellenic race they consider to be parted off from them. . the persians for their part say that things happened thus; and they conclude that the beginning of their quarrel with the hellenes was on account of the taking of ilion: but as regards io the phenicians do not agree with the persians in telling the tale thus; for they deny that they carried her off to egypt by violent means, and they say on the other hand that when they were in argos she was intimate with the master of their ship, and perceiving that she was with child, she was ashamed to confess it to her parents, and therefore sailed away with the phenicians of her own will, for fear of being found out. these are the tales told by the persians and the phenicians severally: and concerning these things i am not going to say that they happened thus or thus, but when i have pointed to the man who first within my own knowledge began to commit wrong against the hellenes, i shall go forward further with the story, giving an account of the cities of men, small as well as great: for those which in old times were great have for the most part become small, while those that were in my own time great used in former times to be small: so then, since i know that human prosperity never continues steadfast, i shall make mention of both indifferently. . croesus was lydian by race, the son of alyattes and ruler of the nations which dwell on this side of the river halys; which river, flowing from the south between the syrians and the paphlagonians, runs out towards the north wind into that sea which is called the euxine. this croesus, first of all the barbarians of whom we have knowledge, subdued certain of the hellenes and forced them to pay tribute, while others he gained over and made them his friends. those whom he subdued were the ionians, the aiolians, and the dorians who dwell in asia; and those whom he made his friends were the lacedemonians. but before the reign of croesus all the hellenes were free; for the expedition of the kimmerians, which came upon ionia before the time of croesus, was not a conquest of the cities but a plundering incursion only. . now the supremacy which had belonged to the heracleidai came to the family of croesus, called mermnadai, in the following manner:�candaules, whom the hellenes call myrsilos, was ruler of sardis and a descendant of alcaios, son of heracles: for agron, the son of ninos, the son of belos, the son of alcaios, was the first of the heracleidai who became king of sardis, and candaules the son of myrsos was the last; but those who were kings over this land before agrond, were descendants of lydos the son of atys, whence this whole nation was called lydian, having been before called meonian. from these the heracleidai, descended from heracles and the slave-girl of iardanos, obtained the government, being charged with it by reason of an oracle; and they reigned for two-and-twenty generations of men, five hundred and five years, handing on the power from father to son, till the time of clandaules the son of myrsos. . this candaules then of whom i speak had become passionately in love with his own wife; and having become so, he deemed that his wife was fairer by far than all other women; and thus deeming, to gyges the son of daskylos (for he of all his spearmen was the most pleasing to him), to this gyges, i say, he used to impart as well the more weighty of his affairs as also the beauty of his wife, praising it above measure: and after no long time, since it was destined that evil should happen to candaules, he said to gyges as follows: "gyges, i think that thou dost not believe me when i tell thee of the beauty of my wife, for it happens that men's ears are less apt of belief than their eyes: contrive therefore means by which thou mayest look upon her naked." but he cried aloud and said: "master, what word of unwisdom is this which thou dost utter, bidding me look upon my mistress naked? when a woman puts off her tunic she puts off her modesty also. moreover of old time those fair sayings have been found out by men, from which we ought to learn wisdom; and of these one is this,�that each man should look on his own: but i believe indeed that she is of all women the fairest and i entreat thee not to ask of me that which it is not lawful for me to do." . with such words as these he resisted, fearing lest some evil might come to him from this; but the king answered him thus: "be of good courage, gyges, and have no fear, either of me, that i am saying these words to try thee, or of my wife, lest any harm may happen to thee from her. for i will contrive it so from the first that she shall not even perceive that she has been seen by thee. i will place thee in the room where we sleep, behind the open door; and after i have gone in, my wife also will come to lie down. now there is a seat near the entrance of the room, and upon this she will lay her garments as she takes them off one by one; and so thou wilt be able to gaze upon her at full leisure. and when she goes from the chair to the bed and thou shalt be behind her back, then let it be thy part to take care that she sees thee not as thou goest through the door." . he then, since he might not avoid it, gave consent: and candaules, when he considered that it was time to rest, led gyges to the chamber; and straightway after this the woman also appeared: and gyges looked upon her after she came in and as she laid down her garments; and when she had her back turned towards him, as she went to the bed, then he slipped away from his hiding-place and was going forth. and as he went out, the woman caught sight of him, and perceiving that which had been done by her husband she did not cry out, though struck with shame, but she made as though she had not perceived the matter, meaning to avenge herself upon candaules: for among the lydians as also among most other barbarians it is a shame even for a man to be seen naked. . at the time then she kept silence, as i say, and made no outward sign; but as soon as day had dawned, and she made ready those of the servants whom she perceived to be the most attached to herself, and after that she sent to summon gyges. he then, not supposing that anything of that which had been done was known to her, came upon her summons; for he had been accustomed before to go whenever the queen summoned him. and when gyges was come, the woman said to him these words: "there are now two ways open to thee, gyges, and i give thee the choice which of the two thou wilt prefer to take. either thou must slay candaules and possess both me and the kingdom of lydia, or thou must thyself here on the spot be slain, so that thou mayest not in future, by obeying candaules in all things, see that which thou shouldest not. either he must die who formed this design, or thou who hast looked upon me naked and done that which is not accounted lawful." for a time then gyges was amazed at these words, and afterwards he began to entreat her that she would not bind him by necessity to make such a choice: then however, as he could not prevail with her, but saw that necessity was in truth set before him either to slay his master or to be himself slain by others, he made the choice to live himself; and he inquired further as follows: "since thou dost compel me to take my master's life against my own will, let me hear from thee also what is the manner in which we shall lay hands upon him." and she answering said: "from that same place shall the attempt be, where he displayed me naked; and we will lay hands upon him as he sleeps." . so after they had prepared the plot, when night came on, (for gyges was not let go nor was there any way of escape for him, but he must either be slain himself or slay candaules), he followed the woman to the bedchamber; and she gave him a dagger and concealed him behind that very same door. then afterwards, while candaules was sleeping, gyges came privily up to him and slew him, and he obtained both his wife and his kingdom: of him moreover archilochos the parian, who lived about that time, made mention in a trimeter iambic verse. . he obtained the kingdom however and was strengthened in it by means of the oracle at delphi; for when the lydians were angry because of the fate of candaules, and had risen in arms, a treaty was made between the followers of gyges and the other lydians to this effect, that if the oracle should give answer that he was to be king of the lydians, he should be king, and if not, he should give back the power to the sons of heracles. so the oracle gave answer, and gyges accordingly became king: yet the pythian prophetess said this also, that vengeance for the heracleidai should come upon the descendants of gyges in the fifth generation. of this oracle the lydians and their kings made no account until it was in fact fulfilled. . thus the mermnadai obtained the government having driven out from it the heracleidai: and gyges when he became ruler sent votive offerings to delphi not a few, for of all the silver offerings at delphi his are more in number than those of any other man; and besides the silver he offered a vast quantity of gold, and especially one offering which is more worthy of mention than the rest, namely six golden mixing-bowls, which are dedicated there as his gift: of these the weight is thirty talents, and they stand in the treasury of the corinthians, (though in truth this treasury does not belong to the state of the corinthians, but is that of kypselos the son of aëtion). this gyges was the first of the barbarians within our knowledge who dedicated votive offerings at delphi, except only midas the son of gordias king of phrygia, who dedicated for an offering the royal throne on which he sat before all to decide causes; and this throne, a sight worth seeing, stands in the same place with the bowls of gyges. this gold and silver which gyges dedicated is called gygian by the people of delphi, after the name of him who offered it. now gyges also, as soon as he became king, led an army against miletos and smyrna, and he took the lower town of colophon: but no other great deed did he do in his reign, which lasted eight-and-thirty years, therefore we will pass him by with no more mention than has already been made, , and i will speak now of ardys the son of gyges, who became king after gyges. he took priene and made an invasion against miletos; and while he was ruling over sardis, the kimmerians driven from their abodes by the nomad scythians came to asia and took sardis except the citadel. . now when ardys had been king for nine-and-forty years, sadyattes his son succeeded to his kingdom, and reigned twelve years; and after him alyattes. this last made war against kyaxares the descendant of deïokes and against the medes, and he drove the kimmerians forth out of asia, and he took smyrna which had been founded from colophon, and made an invasion against clazomenai. from this he ed not as he desired, but with great loss: during his reign however he performed other deeds very worthy of mention as follows:� . he made war with those of miletos, having received this war as an inheritance from his father: for he used to invade their land and besiege miletos in the following manner:�whenever there were ripe crops upon the land, then he led an army into their confines, making his march to the sound of pipes and harps and flutes both of male and female tone: and when he came to the milesian land, he neither pulled down the houses that were in the fields, nor set fire to them nor tore off their doors, but let them stand as they were; the trees however and the crops that were upon the land he destroyed, and then departed by the way he came: for the men of miletos had command of the sea, so that it was of no use for his army to blockade them: and he abstained from pulling down the houses to the end that the milesians might have places to dwell in while they sowed and tilled the land, and by the means of their labour he might have somewhat to destroy when he made his invasion. . thus he continued to war with them for eleven years; and in the course of these years the milesians suffered two great defeats, once when they fought a battle in the district of limenion in their own land, and again in the plain of maiander. now for six of the eleven years sadyattes the son of ardys was still ruler of the lydians, the same who was wont to invade the land of miletos at the times mentioned; for this sadyattes was he who first began the war: but for the five years which followed these first six the war was carried on by alyattes the son of sadyattes, who received it as an inheritance from his father (as i have already said) and applied himself to it earnestly. and none of the ionians helped those of miletos bear the burden of this war except only the men of chios. these came to their aid to pay back like with like, for the milesians had formerly assisted the chians throughout their war with the people of erythrai. . then in the twelfth year of the war, when standing corn was being burnt by the army of the lydians, it happened as follows:�as soon as the corn was kindled, it was driven by a violent wind and set fire to the temple of athene surnamed of assessos; and the temple being set on fire was burnt down to the ground. of this no account was made then; but afterwards when the army had ed to sardis, alyattes fell sick, and as his sickness lasted long, he sent messengers to inquire of the oracle at delphi, either being advised to do so by some one, or because he himself thought it best to send and inquire of the god concerning his sickness. but when these arrived at delphi, the pythian prophetess said that she would give them no answer, until they should have built up again the temple of athene which they had burnt at assessos in the land of miletos. . thus much i know by the report of the people of delphi; but the milesians add to this that periander the son of kypselos, being a special guest-friend of thrasybulos the then despot of miletos, heard of the oracle which had been given to alyattes, and sending a messenger told thrasybulos, in order that he might have knowledge of it beforehand and take such counsel as the case required. this is the story told by the milesians. . and alyattes, when this answer was reported to him, sent a herald forthwith to miletos, desiring to make a truce with thrasybulos and the milesians for so long a time as he should be building the temple. he then was being sent as envoy to miletos; and thrasybulos in the meantime being informed beforehand of the whole matter and knowing what alyattes was meaning to do, contrived this device:�he gathered together in the market-place all the store of provisions which was found in the city, both his own and that which belonged to private persons; and he proclaimed to the milesians that on a signal given by him they should all begin to drink and make merry with one another. . this thrasybulos did and thus proclaimed to the end that the herald from sardis, seeing a vast quantity of provisions carelessly piled up, and the people feasting, might report this to alyattes: and so on fact it happened; for when the herald ed to sardis after seeing this and delivering to thrasybulos the charge which was given to him by the king of lydia, the peace which was made, came about, as i am informed, merely because of this. for alyattes, who thought that there was a great famine in miletos and that the people had been worn down to the extreme of misery, heard from the herald, when he ed from miletos, the opposite to that which he himself supposed. and after this the peace was made between them on condition of being guest-friends and allies to one another, and alyattes built two temples to athene at assessos in place of one, and himself recovered from his sickness. with regard then to the war waged by alyattes with the milesians and thrasybulos things went thus. . as for periander, the man who gave information about the oracle to thrasybulos, he was the son of kypselos, and despot of corinth. in his life, say the corinthians, (and with them agree the lesbians), there happened to him a very great marvel, namely that arion of methymna was carried ashore at tainaron upon a dolphin's back. this man was a harper second to none of those who then lived, and the first, so far as we know, who composed a dithyramb, naming it so and teaching it to a chorus at corinth. . this arion, they say, who for the most part of his time stayed with periander, conceived a desire to sail to italy and sicily; and after he had there acquired large sums of money, he wished to again to corinth. he set forth therefore from taras, and as he had faith in corinthians more than in other men, he hired a ship with a crew of corinthians. these, the story says, when out in open sea, formed a plot to cast arion overboard and so possess his wealth; and he having obtained knowledge of this made entreaties to them, offering them his wealth and asking them to grant him his life. with this however he did not prevail upon them, but the men who were conveying him bade him either slay himself there, that he might receive burial on the land, or leap straightway into the sea. so arion being driven to a strait entreated them that, since they were so minded, they would allow him to take his stand in full minstrel's garb upon the deck of the ship and sing; and he promised to put himself to death after he had sung. they then, well pleased to think that they should hear the best of all minstrels upon earth, drew back from the stern towards the middle of the ship; and he put on the full minstrel's garb and took his lyre, and standing on the deck performed the orthian measure. then as the measure ended, he threw himself into the sea just as he was, in his full minstrel's garb; and they went on sailing away to corinth, but him, they say, a dolphin supported on its back and brought him to shore at tainaron: and when he had come to land he proceeded to corinth with his minstrel's garb. thither having arrived he related all that had been done; and periander doubting of his story kept arion in guard and would let him go nowhere, while he kept careful watch for those who had conveyed him. when these came, he called them and inquired of them if they had any report to make of arion; and when they said that he was safe in italy and that they had left him at taras faring well, arion suddenly appeared before them in the same guise as when he made his leap from the ship; and they being struck with amazement were no longer able to deny when they were questioned. this is the tale told by the corinthians and lesbians alike, and there is at tainaron a votive offering of arion of no great size, namely a bronze figure of a man upon a dolphin's back. . alyattes the lydian, when he had thus waged war against the milesians, afterwards died, having reigned seven-and-fifty years. this king, when he recovered from his sickness, dedicated a votive offering at delphi (being the second of his house who had so done), namely a great mixing-bowl of silver with a stand for it of iron welded together, which last is a sight worth seeing above all the offerings at delphi and the work of glaucos the chian, who of all men first found out the art of welding iron. . after alyattes was dead croesus the son of alyattes received the kingdom in succession, being five-and-thirty years of age. he (as i said) fought against the hellenes and of them he attacked the ephesians first. the ephesians then, being besieged by him, dedicated their city to artemis and tied a rope from the temple to the wall of the city: now the distance between the ancient city, which was then being besieged, and the temple is seven furlongs. these, i say, where the first upon whom croesus laid hands, but afterwards he did the same to the other ionian and aiolian cities one by one, alleging against them various causes of complaint, and making serious charges against those in whose cases he could find serious grounds, while against others of them he charged merely trifling offences. . then when the hellenes in asia had been conquered and forced to pay tribute, he designed next to build for himself ships and to lay hands upon those who dwelt in the islands; and when all was prepared for his building of ships, they say that bias of priene (or, according to another account, pittacos of mytilene) came to sardis, and being asked by croesus whether there was any new thing doing in hellas, brought to an end his building of ships by this saying: "o king," said he, "the men of the islands are hiring a troop of ten thousand horse, and with this they mean to march to sardis and fight against thee." and croesus, supposing that what he reported was true, said: "may the gods put it into the minds of the dwellers of the islands to come with horses against the sons of the lydians!" and he answered and said: "o king, i perceive that thou dost earnestly desire to catch the men of the islands on the mainland riding upon horses; and it is not unreasonable that thou shouldest wish for this: what else however thinkest thou the men of the islands desire and have been praying for ever since the time they heard that thou wert about to build ships against them, than that they might catch the lydians upon the sea, so as to take vengeance upon thee for the hellenes who dwell upon the mainland, whom thou dost hold enslaved?" croesus, they say, was greatly pleased with this conclusion, and obeying his suggestion, for he judged him to speak suitably, he stopped his building of ships; and upon that he formed a friendship with the ionians dwelling in the islands. . as time went on, when nearly all those dwelling on this side the river halys had been subdued, (for except the kilikians and lykians croesus subdued and kept under his rule all the nations, that is to say lydians, phrygians, mysians, mariandynoi, chalybians, paphlagonians, thracians both thynian and bithynian, carians, ionians, dorians, aiolians, and pamphylians), , when these, i say, had been subdued, and while he was still adding to his lydian dominions, there came to sardis, then at the height of its wealth, all the wise men of the hellas who chanced to be alive at that time, brought thither severally by various occasions; and of them one was solon the athenian, who after he had made laws for the athenians at their bidding, left his native country for ten years and sailed away saying that he desired to visit various lands, in order that he might not be compelled to repeal any of the laws which he had proposed. for of themselves the athenians were not competent to do this, having bound themselves by solemn oaths to submit for ten years to the laws which solon should propose for them. . so solon, having left his native country for this reason and for the sake of seeing various lands, came to amasis in egypt, and also to croesus at sardis. having there arrived he was entertained as a guest by croesus in the king's palace; and afterwards, on the third or fourth day, at the bidding of croesus his servants led solon round to see his treasuries; and they showed him all things, how great and magnificent they were: and after he had looked upon them all and examined them as he had occasion, croesus asked him as follows: "athenian guest, much report of thee has come to us, both in regard to thy wisdom and thy wanderings, how that in thy search for wisdom thou hast traversed many lands to see them; now therefore a desire has come upon me to ask thee whether thou hast seen any whom thou deemest to be of all men the most happy." this he asked supposing that he himself was the happiest of men; but solon, using no flattery but the truth only, said: "yes, o king, tellos the athenian." and croesus, marvelling at that which he said, asked him earnestly: "in what respect dost thou judge tellos to be the most happy?" and he said: "tellos, in the first place, living while his native state was prosperous, had sons fair and good and saw from all of them children begotten and living to grow up; and secondly he had what with us is accounted wealth, and after his life a most glorious end: for when a battle was fought by the athenians at eleusis against the neighbouring people, he brought up supports and routed the foe and there died by a most fair death; and the athenians buried him publicly where he fell, and honoured him greatly." . so when solon had moved croesus to inquire further by the story of tellos, recounting how many points of happiness he had, the king asked again whom he had seen proper to be placed next after this man, supposing that he himself would certainly obtain at least the second place; but he replied: "cleobis and biton: for these, who were of argos by race, possessed a sufficiency of wealth and, in addition to this, strength of body such as i shall tell. both equally had won prizes in the games, and moreover the following tale is told of them:�there was a feast of hera among the argives and it was by all means necessary that their mother should be borne in a car to the temple. but since their oxen were not brought up in time from the field, the young men, barred from all else by lack of time, submitted themselves to the yoke and drew the wain, their mother being borne by them upon it; and so they brought it on for five-and-forty furlongs, and came to the temple. then after they had done this and had been seen by the assembled crowd, there came to their life a most excellent ending; and in this the deity declared that it was better for man to die than to continue to live. for the argive men were standing round and extolling the strength of the young men, while the argive women were extolling the mother to whose lot it had fallen to have such sons; and the mother being exceedingly rejoiced both by the deed itself and by the report made of it, took her stand in front of the image of the goddess and prayed that she would give to cleobis and biton her sons, who had honoured her greatly, that gift which is best for man to receive: and after this prayer, when they had sacrificed and feasted, the young men lay down to sleep within the temple itself, and never rose again, but were held bound in this last end. and the argives made statues in the likeness of them and dedicated them as offerings at delphi, thinking that they had proved themselves most excellent." . thus solon assigned the second place in respect of happiness to these: and croesus was moved to anger and said: "athenian guest, hast thou then so cast aside our prosperous state as worth nothing, that thou dost prefer to us even men of private station?" and he said: "croesus, thou art inquiring about human fortunes of one who well knows that the deity is altogether envious and apt to disturb our lot. for in the course of long time a man may see many things which he would not desire to see, and suffer also many things which he would not desire to suffer. the limit of life for a man i lay down at seventy years: and these seventy years give twenty-five thousand and two hundred days, not reckoning for any intercalated month. then if every other one of these years shall be made longer by one month, that the seasons may be caused to come round at the due time of the year, the intercalated months will be in number five-and-thirty besides the seventy years; and of these months the days will be one thousand and fifty. of all these days, being in number twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, which go to the seventy years, one day produces nothing at all which resembles what another brings with it. thus then, o croesus, man is altogether a creature of accident. as for thee, i perceive that thou art both great in wealth and king of many men, but that of which thou didst ask me i cannot call thee yet, until i learn that thou hast brought thy life to a fair ending: for the very rich man is not at all to be accounted more happy than he who has but his subsistence from day to day, unless also the fortune go with him of ending his life well in possession of all things fair. for many very wealthy men are not happy, while many who have but a moderate living are fortunate; and in truth the very rich man who is not happy has two advantages only as compared with the poor man who is fortunate, whereas this latter has many as compared with the rich man who is not happy. the rich man is able better to fulfil his desire, and also to endure a great calamity if it fall upon him; whereas the other has advantage over him in these things which follow:�he is not indeed able equally with the rich man to endure a calamity or to fulfil his desire, but these his good fortune keeps away from him, while he is sound of limb, free from disease, untouched by suffering, the father of fair children and himself of comely form; and if in addition to this he shall end his life well, he is worthy to be called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man; but before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy but only fortunate. now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for itself, but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case of a man, no single person is complete in himself, for one thing he has and another he lacks; but whosoever of men continues to the end in possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, o king, to receive this name. but we must of every thing examine the end and how it will turn out at the last, for to many god shows but a glimpse of happiness and then plucks them up by the roots and overturns them." . thus saying he refused to gratify croesus, who sent him away from his presence holding him in no esteem, and thinking him utterly senseless in that he passed over present good things and bade men look to the end of every matter. . after solon had departed, a great retribution from god came upon croesus, probably because he judged himself to be the happiest of all men. first there came and stood by him a dream, which showed to him the truth of the evils that were about to come to pass in respect of his son. now croesus had two sons, of whom one was deficient, seeing that he was deaf and dumb, while the other far surpassed his companions of the same age in all things: and the name of this last was atys. as regards this atys then, the dream signified to croesus that he should lose him by the blow of an iron spear-point: and when he rose up from sleep and considered the matter with himself, he was struck with fear on account of the dream; and first he took for his son a wife; and whereas his son had been wont to lead the armies of the lydians, he now no longer sent him forth anywhere on any such business; and the javelins and lances and all such things which men use for fighting he conveyed out of the men's apartments and piled them up in the inner bed-chambers, for fear lest something hanging up might fall down upon his son. . then while he was engaged about the marriage of his son, there came to sardis a man under a misfortune and with hands not clean, a phrygian by birth and of the royal house. this man came to the house of croesus, and according to the customs which prevail in that land made request that he might have cleansing; and croesus gave him cleansing: now the manner of cleansing among the lydians is the same almost as that which the hellenes use. so when croesus had done that which was customary, he asked of him whence he came and who he was, saying as follows: "man, who art thou, and from what region of phrygia didst thou come to sit upon my hearth? and whom of men or women didst thou slay?" and he replied: "o king, i am the son of gordias, the son of midas, and i am called adrastos; and i slew my own brother against my will, and therefore am i here, having been driven forth by my father and deprived of all that i had." and croesus answered thus: "thou art, as it chances, the offshoot of men who are our friends and thou hast come to friends, among whom thou shalt want of nothing so long as thou shalt remain in our land: and thou wilt find it most for thy profit to bear this misfortune as lightly as may be." so he had his abode with croesus. . during this time there was produced in the mysian olympos a boar of monstrous size. this, coming down from the mountain aforesaid, ravaged the fields of the mysians, and although the mysians went out against it often, yet they could do it no hurt, but rather received hurt themselves from it; so at length messengers came from the mysians to croesus and said: "o king, there has appeared in our land a boar of monstrous size, which lays waste our fields; and we, desiring eagerly to take it, are not able: now therefore we ask of thee to send with us thy son and also a chosen band of young men with dogs, that we may destroy it out of our land." thus they made request, and croesus calling to mind the words of the dream spoke to them as follows: "as touching my son, make no further mention of him in this matter; for i will not send him with you, seeing that he is newly married and is concerned now with the affairs of his marriage: but i will send with you chosen men of the lydians and the whole number of my hunting dogs, and i will give command to those who go, to be as zealous as may be in helping you to destroy the wild beast out of your land." . thus he made reply, and while the mysians were being contented with this answer, there came in also the son of croesus, having heard of the request made by the mysians: and when croesus said that he would not send his son with them, the young man spoke as follows: "my father, in times past the fairest and most noble part was allotted to us, to go out continually to wars and to the chase and so have good repute; but now thou hast debarred me from both of these, although thou hast not observed in me any cowardly or faint-hearted spirit. and now with what face must i appear when i go to and from the market-place of the city? what kind of a man shall i be esteemed by the citizens, and what kind of a man shall i be esteemed by my newly-married wife? with what kind of a husband will she think that she is mated? therefore either let me go to the hunt, or persuade me by reason that these things are better for me done as now they are." . and croesus made answer thus: "my son, not because i have observed in thee any spirit of cowardice or any other ungracious thing, do i act thus; but a vision of a dream came and stood by me in my sleep and told me that thou shouldest be short-lived, and that thou shouldest perish by a spear-point of iron. with thought of this vision therefore i both urged on this marriage for thee, and i refuse now to send thee upon the matter which is being taken in hand, having a care of thee that i may steal thee from thy fate at least for the period of my own life, if by any means possible for me to do so. for thou art, as it chances, my only son: the other i do not reckon as one, seeing that he is deficient in hearing." . the young man made answer thus: "it may well be forgiven in thee, o my father, that thou shouldest have a care of me after having seen such a vision; but that which thou dost not understand, and in which the meaning of the dream has escaped thee, it is right that i should expound to thee. thou sayest the dream declared that i should end my life by means of a spear-point of iron: but what hands has a boar, or what spear-point of iron, of which thou art afraid? if the dream had told thee that i should end my life by a tusk, or any other thing which resembles that, it would be right for thee doubtless to do as thou art doing; but it said 'by a spear-point.' since therefore our fight will not be with men, let me now go." . croesus made answer: "my son, thou dost partly prevail with me by declaring thy judgment about the dream; therefore, having been prevailed upon by thee, i change my resolution and allow thee to go to the chase." . having thus said croesus went to summon adrastos the phrygian; and when he came, he addressed him thus: "adrastos, when thou wast struck with a grievous misfortune (with which i reproach thee not), i cleansed thee, and i have received thee into my house supplying all thy costs. now therefore, since having first received kindness from me thou art bound to requite me with kindness, i ask of thee to be the protector of my son who goes forth to the chase, lest any evil robbers come upon you by the way to do you harm; and besides this thou too oughtest to go where thou mayest become famous by thy deeds, for it belongs to thee as an inheritance from thy fathers so to do, and moreover thou hast strength for it." . adrastos made answer: "o king, but for this i should not have been going to any such contest of valour; for first it is not fitting that one who is suffering such a great misfortune as mine should seek the company of his fellows who are in prosperity, and secondly i have no desire for it; and for many reasons i should have kept myself away. but now, since thou art urgent with me, and i ought to gratify thee (for i am bound to requite thee with kindness), i am ready to do this: expect therefore that thy son, whom thou commandest me to protect, will home to thee unhurt, so far as his protector may avail to keep him safe." . when he had made answer to croesus in words like these, they afterwards set forth provided with chosen young men and with dogs. and when they were come to mount olympos, they tracked the animal; and having found it and taken their stand round in a circle, they were hurling against it their spears. then the guest, he who had been cleansed of manslaughter, whose name was adrastos, hurling a spear at it missed the boar and struck the son of croesus. so he being struck by the spear-point fulfilled the saying of the dream. and one ran to report to croesus that which had come to pass, and having come to sardis he signified to him of the combat and of the fate of his son. and croesus was very greatly disturbed by the death of his son, and was much the more moved to complaining by this, namely that his son was slain by the man whom he had himself cleansed of manslaughter. and being grievously troubled by the misfortune he called upon zeus the cleanser, protesting to him that which he had suffered from his guest, and he called moreover upon the protector of suppliants and the guardian of friendship, naming still the same god, and calling upon him as the protector of suppliants because when he received the guest into his house he had been fostering ignorantly the slayer of his son, and as the guardian of friendship because having sent him as a protector he had found him the worst of foes. . after this the lydians came bearing the corpse, and behind it followed the slayer: and he taking his stand before the corpse delivered himself up to croesus, holding forth his hands and bidding the king slay him over the corpse, speaking of his former misfortune and saying that in addition to this he had now been the destroyer of the man who had cleansed him of it; and that life for him was no more worth living. but croesus hearing this pitied adrastos, although he was himself suffering so great an evil of his own, and said to him: "guest, i have already received from thee all the satisfaction that is due, seeing that thou dost condemn thyself to suffer death; and not thou alone art the cause of this evil, except in so far as thou wert the instrument of it against thine own will, but some one, as i suppose, of the gods, who also long ago signified to me that which was about to be." so croesus buried his son as was fitting: but adrastos the son of gordias, the son of midas, he who had been the slayer of his own brother and the slayer also of the man who had cleansed him, when silence came of all men round about the tomb, recognising that he was more grievously burdened by misfortune than all men of whom he knew, slew himself upon the grave. . for two years then croesus remained quiet in his mourning, because he was deprived of his son: but after this period of time the overthrowing of the rule of astyages the son of kyaxares by cyrus the son of cambyses, and the growing greatness of the persians caused croesus to cease from his mourning, and led him to a care of cutting short the power of the persians, if by any means he might, while yet it was in growth and before they should have become great. so having formed this design he began forthwith to make trial of the oracles, both those of the hellenes and that in libya, sending messengers some to one place and some to another, some to go to delphi, others to abai of the phokians, and others to dodona; and some were sent to the shrine of amphiaraos and to that of trophonios, others to branchidai in the land of miletos: these are the oracles of the hellenes to which croesus sent messengers to seek divination; and others he sent to the shrine of ammon in libya to inquire there. now he was sending the messengers abroad to the end that he might try the oracles and find out what knowledge they had, so that if they should be found to have knowledge of the truth, he might send and ask them secondly whether he should attempt to march against the persians. . and to the lydians whom he sent to make trial of the oracles he gave charge as follows,�that from the day on which they set out from sardis they should reckon up the number of the days following and on the hundredth day they should consult the oracles, asking what croesus the son of alyattes king of the lydians chanced then to be doing: and whatever the oracles severally should prophesy, this they should cause to be written down and bear it back to him. now what the other oracles prophesied is not by any reported, but at delphi, so soon as the lydians entered the sanctuary of the temple to consult the god and asked that which they were commanded to ask, the pythian prophetess spoke thus in hexameter measure: "but the number of sand i know, and the measure of drops in the ocean; the dumb man i understand, and i hear the speech of the speechless: and there hath come to my soul the smell of a strong-shelled tortoise boiling in caldron of bronze, and the flesh of a lamb mingled with it; under it bronze is laid, it hath bronze as a clothing upon it." . when the pythian prophetess had uttered this oracle, the lydians caused the prophecy to be written down, and went away at once to sardis. and when the rest also who had been sent round were there arrived with the answers of the oracles, then croesus unfolded the writings one by one and looked upon them: and at first none of them pleased him, but when he heard that from delphi, forthwith he did worship to the god and accepted the answer, judging that the oracle at delphi was the only true one, because it had found out what he himself had done. for when he had sent to the several oracles his messengers to consult the gods, keeping well in mind the appointed day he contrived the following device,�he thought of something which it would be impossible to discover or to conceive of, and cutting up a tortoise and a lamb he boiled them together himself in a caldron of bronze, laying a cover of bronze over them. . this then was the answer given to croesus from delphi; and as regards the answer of amphiaraos, i cannot tell what he replied to the lydians after they had done the things customary in his temple, for there is no record of this any more than of the others, except only that croesus thought that he also possessed a true oracle. . after this with great sacrifices he endeavoured to win the favour of the god at delphi: for of all the animals that are fit for sacrifice he offered three thousand of each kind, and he heaped up couches overlaid with gold and overlaid with silver, and cups of gold, and robes of purple, and tunics, making of them a great pyre, and this he burnt up, hoping by these means the more to win over the god to the side of the lydians: and he proclaimed to all the lydians that every one of them should make sacrifice with that which each man had. and when he had finished the sacrifice, he melted down a vast quantity of gold, and of it he wrought half-plinths making them six palms in length and three in breadth, and in height one palm; and their number was one hundred and seventeen. of these four were of pure gold weighing two talents and a half each, and others of gold alloyed with silver weighing two talents. and he caused to be made also an image of a lion of pure gold weighing ten talents; which lion, when the temple of delphi was being burnt down, fell from off the half-plinths, for upon these it was set, and is placed now in the treasury of the corinthians, weighing six talents and a half, for three talents and a half were melted away from it. . so croesus having finished all these things sent them to delphi, and with them these besides:�two mixing bowls of great size, one of gold and the other of silver, of which the golden bowl was placed on the right hand as one enters the temple, and the silver on the left, but the places of these also were changed after the temple was burnt down, and the golden bowl is now placed in the treasury of the people of clazomenai, weighing eight and a half talents and twelve pounds over, while the silver one is placed in the corner of the vestibule and holds six hundred amphors (being filled with wine by the delphians on the feast of the theophania): this the people of delphi say is the work of theodoros the samian, and, as i think, rightly, for it is evident to me that the workmanship is of no common kind: moreover croesus sent four silver wine-jars, which stand in the treasury of the corinthians, and two vessels for lustral water, one of gold and the other of silver, of which the gold one is inscribed "from the lacedemonians," who say that it is their offering: therein however they do not speak rightly; for this also is from croesus, but one of the delphians wrote the inscription upon it, desiring to gratify the lacedemonians; and his name i know but will not make mention of it. the boy through whose hand the water flows is from the lacedemonians, but neither of the vessels for lustral water. and many other votive offerings croesus sent with these, not specially distinguished, among which are certain castings of silver of a round shape, and also a golden figure of a woman three cubits high, which the delphians say is a statue of the baker of croesus. moreover croesus dedicated the ornaments from his wife's neck and her girdles. . these are the things which he sent to delphi; and to amphiaraos, having heard of his valour and of his evil fate, he dedicated a shield made altogether of gold throughout, and a spear all of solid gold, the shaft being of gold also as well as the two points, which offerings were both remaining even to my time at thebes in the temple of ismenian apollo. . to the lydians who were to carry these gifts to the temples croesus gave charge that they should ask the oracles this question also,�whether croesus should march against the persians, and if so, whether he should join with himself any army of men as his friends. and when the lydians had arrived at the places to which they had been sent and had dedicated the votive offerings, they inquired of the oracles and said: "croesus, king of the lydians and of other nations, considering that these are the only true oracles among men, presents to you gifts such as your revelations deserve, and asks you again now whether he shall march against the persians, and if so, whether he shall join with himself any army of men as allies." they inquired thus, and the answers of both the oracles agreed in one, declaring to croesus that if he should march against the persians he should destroy a great empire: and they counselled him to find out the most powerful of the hellenes and join these with himself as friends. . so when the answers were brought back and croesus heard them, he was delighted with the oracles, and expecting that he would certainly destroy the kingdom of cyrus, he sent again to pytho, and presented to the men of delphi, having ascertained the number of them, two staters of gold for each man: and in for this the delphians gave to croesus and to the lydians precedence in consulting the oracle and freedom from all payments, and the right to front seats at the games, with this privilege also for all time, that any one of them who wished should be allowed to become a citizen of delphi. . and having made presents to the men of delphi, croesus consulted the oracle the third time; for from the time when he learnt the truth of the oracle, he made abundant use of it. and consulting the oracle he inquired whether his monarchy would endure for a long time. and the pythian prophetess answered him thus: "but when it cometh to pass that a mule of the medes shall be monarch then by the pebbly hermos, o lydian delicate-footed, flee and stay not, and be not ashamed to be callèd a coward." . by these lines when they came to him croesus was pleased more than by all the rest, for he supposed that a mule would never be ruler of the medes instead of a man, and accordingly that he himself and his heirs would never cease from their rule. then after this he gave thought to inquire which people of the hellenes he should esteem the most powerful and gain over to himself as friends. and inquiring he found that the lacedemonians and the athenians had the pre-eminence, the first of the dorian and the others of the ionian race. for these were the most eminent races in ancient time, the second being a pelasgian and the first a hellenic race: and the one never migrated from its place in any direction, while the other was very exceedingly given to wanderings; for in the reign of deucalion this race dwelt in pthiotis, and in the time of doros the son of hellen in the land lying below ossa and olympos, which is called histiaiotis; and when it was driven from histiaiotis by the sons of cadmos, it dwelt in pindos and was called makednian; and thence it moved afterwards to dryopis, and from dryopis it came finally to peloponnesus, and began to be called dorian. . what language however the pelasgians used to speak i am not able with certainty to say. but if one must pronounce judging by those that still remain of the pelasgians who dwelt in the city of creston above the tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now called dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the pelasgians who settled at plakia and skylake in the region of the hellespont, who before that had been settlers with the athenians, and of the natives of the various other towns which are really pelasgian, though they have lost the name,�if one must pronounce judging by these, the pelasgians used to speak a barbarian language. if therefore all the pelasgian race was such as these, then the attic race, being pelasgian, at the same time when it changed and became hellenic, unlearnt also its language. for the people of creston do not speak the same language with any of those who dwell about them, nor yet do the people of phakia, but they speak the same language one as the other: and by this it is proved that they still keep unchanged the form of language which they brought with them when they migrated to these places. . as for the hellenic race, it has used ever the same language, as i clearly perceive, since it first took its rise; but since the time when it parted off feeble at first from the pelasgian race, setting forth from a small beginning it has increased to that great number of races which we see, and chiefly because many barbarian races have been added to it besides. moreover it is true, as i think, of the pelasgian race also, that so far as it remained barbarian it never made any great increase. . of these races then croesus was informed that the athenian was held subject and torn with faction by peisistratos the son of hippocrates, who then was despot of the athenians. for to hippocrates, when as a private citizen he went to view the olympic games, a great marvel had occurred. after he had offered the sacrifice, the caldrons which were standing upon the hearth, full of pieces of flesh and of water, boiled without fire under them and ran over. and chilon the lacedemonian, who chanced to have been present and to have seen the marvel, advised hippocrates first not to bring into his house a wife to bear him children, and secondly, if he happened to have one already, to dismiss her, and if he chanced to have a son, to disown him. when chilon had thus recommended, hippocrates, they say, was not willing to be persuaded, and so there was born to him afterwards this peisistratos; who, when the athenians of the shore were at feud with those of the plain, megacles the son of alcmaion being leader of the first faction, and lycurgos the son of aristolaïdes of that of the plain, aimed at the despotism for himself and gathered a third party. so then, after having collected supporters and called himself leader of the men of the mountain-lands, he contrived a device as follows:�he inflicted wounds upon himself and upon his mules, and then drove his car into the market-place, as if he had just escaped from his opponents, who, as he alleged, had desired to kill him when he was driving into the country: and he asked the commons that he might obtain some protection from them, for before this he had gained reputation in his command against the megarians, during which he took nisaia and performed other signal service. and the commons of the athenians being deceived gave him those men chosen from the dwellers in the city who became not indeed the spear-men of peisistratos but his club-men; for they followed behind him bearing wooden clubs. and these made insurrection with peisistratos and obtained possession of the acropolis. then peisistratos was ruler of the athenians, not having disturbed the existing magistrates nor changed the ancient laws; but he administered the state under that constitution of things which was already established, ordering it fairly and well. . however, no long time after this the followers of megacles and those of lycurgos joined together and drove him forth. thus peisistratos had obtained possession of athens for the first time, and thus he lost the power before he had it firmly rooted. but those who had driven out peisistratos became afterwards at feud with one another again. and megacles, harassed by the party strife, sent a message to peisistratos asking whether he was willing to have his daughter to wife on condition of becoming despot. and peisistratos having accepted the proposal and made an agreement on these terms, they contrived with a view to his a device the most simple by far, as i think, that ever was practised, considering at least that it was devised at a time when the hellenic race had been long marked off from the barbarian as more skilful and further removed from foolish simplicity, and among the athenians who are accounted the first of the hellenes in ability. in the deme of paiania there was a woman whose name was phya, in height four cubits all but three fingers, and also fair of form. this woman they dressed in full armour and caused her to ascend a chariot and showed her the bearing in which she might best beseem her part, and so they drove to the city, having sent on heralds to run before them, who, when they arrived at the city, spoke that which had been commanded them, saying as follows: "o athenians, receive with favour peisistratos, whom athene herself, honouring him most of all men, brings back to her acropolis." so the heralds went about hither and thither saying this, and straightway there came to the demes in the country round a report that athene was bringing peisistratos back, while at the same time the men of the city, persuaded that the woman was the very goddess herself, were paying worship to the human creature and receiving peisistratos. . so having received back the despotism in the manner which has been said, peisistratos according to the agreement made with megacles married the daughter of megacles; but as he had already sons who were young men, and as the descendants of alcmaion were said to be under a curse, therefore not desiring that children should be born to him from his newly-married wife, he had commerce with her not in the accustomed manner. and at first the woman kept this secret, but afterwards she told her mother, whether in answer to her inquiry or not i cannot tell; and the mother told her husband megacles. he then was very indignant that he should be dishonoured by peisistratos; and in his anger straightway he proceeded to compose his quarrel with the men of his faction. and when peisistratos heard of that which was being done against himself, he departed wholly from the land and came to eretria, where he took counsel together with his sons: and the advice of hippias having prevailed, that they should endeavour to win back the despotism, they began to gather gifts of money from those states which owed them obligations for favours received: and many contributed great sums, but the thebans surpassed the rest in the giving of money. then, not to make the story long, time elapsed and at last everything was prepared for their . for certain argives came as mercenaries from the peloponnesus, and a man of naxos had come to them of his own motion, whose name was lygdamis, and showed very great zeal in providing both money and men. . so starting from eretria after the lapse of ten years they ed back; and in attica the first place of which they took possession was marathon. while they were encamping here, their partisans from the city came to them, and also others flowed in from the various demes, to whom despotic rule was more welcome than freedom. so these were gathering themselves together; but the athenians in the city, so long as peisistratos was collecting the money, and afterwards when he took possession of marathon, made no account of it; but when they heard that he was marching from marathon towards the city, then they went to the rescue against him. these then were going in full force to fight against the ing exiles, and the forces of peisistratos, as they went towards the city starting from marathon, met them just when they came to the temple of athene pallenis, and there encamped opposite to them. then moved by divine guidance there came into the presence of peisistratos amphilytos the arcarnanian, a soothsayer, who approaching him uttered an oracle in hexameter verse, saying thus: "but now the cast hath been made and the net hath been widely extended, and in the night the tunnies will dart through the moon-lighted waters." . this oracle he uttered to him being divinely inspired, and peisistratos, having understood the oracle and having said that he accepted the prophecy which was uttered, led his army against the enemy. now the athenians from the city were just at that time occupied with the morning meal, and some of them after their meal with games of dice or with sleep; and the forces of peisistratos fell upon the athenians and put them to flight. then as they fled, peisistratos devised a very skilful counsel, to the end that the athenians might not gather again into one body but might remain scattered abroad. he mounted his sons on horseback and sent them before him; and overtaking the fugitives they said that which was commanded them by peisistratos, bidding them be of good cheer and that each man should depart to his own home. . thus then the athenians did, and so peisistratos for the third time obtained possession of athens, and he firmly rooted his despotism by many foreign mercenaries and by much revenue of money, coming partly from the land itself and partly from about the river strymon, and also by taking as hostages the sons of those athenians who had remained in the land and had not at once fled, and placing them in the hands of naxos; for this also peisistratos conquered by war and delivered into the charge of lygdamis. moreover besides this he cleansed the island of delos in obedience to the oracles; and his cleansing was of the following kind:�so far as the view from the temple extended he dug up all the dead bodies which were buried in this part and removed them to another part of delos. so peisistratos was despot of the athenians; but of the athenians some had fallen in the battle, and others of them with the sons of alcmaion were exiles from their native land. . such was the condition of things which croesus heard was prevailing among the athenians during this time; but as to the lacedemonians he heard that they had escaped from great evils and had now got the better of the tegeans in the war. for when leon and hegesicles were kings of sparta, the lacedemonians, who had good success in all their other wars, suffered disaster in that alone which they waged against the men of tegea. moreover in the times before this they had the worst laws of almost all the hellenes, both in matters which concerned themselves alone and also in that they had no dealings with strangers. and they made their change to a good constitution of laws thus:�lycurgos, a man of the spartans who was held in high repute, came to the oracle at delphi, and as he entered the sanctuary of the temple, straightway the pythian prophetess said as follows: "lo, thou art come, o lycurgos, to this rich shrine of my temple, loved thou by zeus and by all who possess the abodes of olympos. whether to call thee a god, i doubt, in my voices prophetic, god or a man, but rather a god i think, o lycurgos." . some say in addition to this that the pythian prophetess also set forth to him the order of things which is now established for the spartans; but the lacedemonians themselves say that lycurgos having become guardian of leobotes his brother's son, who was king of the spartans, brought in these things from crete. for as soon as he became guardian, he changed all the prevailing laws, and took measures that they should not transgress his institutions: and after this lycurgos established that which appertained to war, namely enomoties and triecads and common meals, and in addition to this the ephors and the senate. having changed thus, the spartans had good laws; and to lycurgos after he was dead they erected a temple, and they pay him great worship. so then, as might be supposed, with a fertile land and with no small number of men dwelling in it, they straightway shot up and became prosperous: and it was no longer sufficient for them to keep still; but presuming that they were superior in strength to the arcadians, they consulted the oracle at delphi respecting conquest of the whole of arcadia; and the pythian prophetess gave answer thus: "the land of arcadia thou askest; thou askest me much; i refuse it; many there are in arcadian land, stout men, eating acorns; these will prevent thee from this: but i am not grudging towards thee; tegea beaten with sounding feet i will give thee to dance in, and a fair plain i will give thee to measure with line and divide it." when the lacedemonians heard report of this, they held off from the other arcadians, and marched against the tegeans with fetters in their hands, trusting to a deceitful oracle and expecting that they would make slaves of the men of tegea. but having been worsted in the encounter, those of them who were taken alive worked wearing the fetters which they themselves brought with them and having "measured with line and divided" the plain of the tegeans. and these fetters with which they had been bound were preserved even to my own time at tegea, hanging about the temple of athene alea. . in the former war then i say they struggled against the tegeans continually with ill success; but in the time of croesus and in the reign of anaxandrides and ariston at lacedemon the spartans had at length become victors in the war; and they became so in the following manner:�as they continued to be always worsted in the war by the men of tegea, they sent messengers to consult the oracle at delphi and inquired what god they should propitiate in order to get the better of the men of tegea in the war: and the pythian prophetess made answer to them that they should bring into their land the bones of orestes the son of agamemnon. then as they were not able to find the grave of orestes, they sent men again to go to the god and to inquire about the spot where orestes was laid: and when the messengers who were sent asked this, the prophetess said as follows: "tegea there is, in arcadian land, in a smooth place founded; where there do blow two blasts by strong compulsion together; stroke too there is and stroke in , and trouble on trouble. there agamemnon's son in the life-giving earth is reposing; him if thou bring with thee home, of tegea thou shalt be master." when the lacedemonians had heard this they were none the less far from finding it out, though they searched all places; until the time that lichas, one of those spartans who are called "well-doers," discovered it. now the "well-doers" are of the citizens the eldest who are passing from the ranks of the "horsemen," in each year five; and these are bound during that year in which they pass out from the "horsemen," to allow themselves to be sent without ceasing to various places by the spartan state. . lichas then, being one of these, discovered it in tegea by means both of fortune and ability. for as there were at that time dealings under truce with the men of tegea, he had come to a forge there and was looking at iron being wrought; and he was in wonder as he saw that which was being done. the smith therefore, perceiving that he marvelled at it, ceased from his work and said: "surely, thou stranger of lacedemon, if thou hadst seen that which i once saw, thou wouldst have marvelled much, since now it falls out that thou dost marvel so greatly at the working of this iron; for i, desiring in this enclosure to make a well, lighted in my digging upon a coffin of seven cubits in length; and not believing that ever there had been men larger than those of the present day, i opened it, and i saw that the dead body was equal in length to the coffin: then after i had measured it, i filled in the earth over it again." he then thus told him of that which he had seen; and the other, having thought upon that which was told, conjectured that this was orestes according to the saying of the oracle, forming his conjecture in the following manner:�whereas he saw that the smith had two pairs of bellows, he concluded that these were the winds spoken of, and that the anvil and the hammer were the stroke and the stroke in , and that the iron which was being wrought was the trouble laid upon trouble, making comparison by the thought that iron has been discovered for the evil of mankind. having thus conjectured he came back to sparta and declared the whole matter to the lacedemonians; and they brought a charge against him on a fictitious pretext and drove him out into exile. so having come to tegea, he told the smith of his evil fortune and endeavoured to hire from him the enclosure, but at first he would not allow him to have it: at length however lichas persuaded him and he took up his abode there; and he dug up the grave and gathered together the bones and went with them away to sparta. from that time, whenever they made trial of one another, the lacedemonians had much the advantage in the war; and by now they had subdued to themselves the greater part of peloponnesus besides. . croesus accordingly being informed of all these things was sending messengers to sparta with gifts in their hands to ask for an alliance, having commanded them what they ought to say: and they when they came said: "croesus king of the lydians and also of other nations sent us hither and saith as follows: o lacedemonians, whereas the god by an oracle bade me join with myself the hellene as a friend, therefore, since i am informed that ye are the chiefs of hellas, i invite you according to the oracle, desiring to be your friend and your ally apart from all guile and deceit." thus did croesus announce to the lacedemonians through his messengers; and the lacedemonians, who themselves also had heard of the oracle given to croesus, were pleased at the coming of the lydians and exchanged oaths of friendship and alliance: for they were bound to croesus also by some services rendered to them even before this time; since the lacedemonians had sent to sardis and were buying gold there with purpose of using it for the image of apollo which is now set up on mount thornax in the lacedemonian land; and croesus, when they desired to buy it, gave it them as a gift. . for this reason therefore the lacedemonians accepted the alliance, and also because he chose them as his friends, preferring them to all the other hellenes. and not only were they ready themselves when he made his offer, but they caused a mixing-bowl to be made of bronze, covered outside with figures round the rim and of such a size as to hold three hundred amphors, and this they conveyed, desiring to give it as a gift in to croesus. this bowl never came to sardis for reasons of which two accounts are given as follows:�the lacedemonians say that when the bowl was on its way to sardis and came opposite the land of samos, the men of samos having heard of it sailed out with ships of war and took it away; but the samians themselves say that the lacedemonians who were conveying the bowl, finding that they were too late and hearing that sardis had been taken and croesus was a prisoner, sold the bowl in samos, and certain private persons bought it and dedicated it as a votive offering in the temple of hera; and probably those who had sold it would say when they ed to sparta that it had been taken from them by the samians. . thus then it happened about the mixing-bowl: but meanwhile croesus, mistaking the meaning of the oracle, was making a march into cappadokia, expecting to overthrow cyrus and the power of the persians: and while croesus was preparing to march against the persians, one of the lydians, who even before this time was thought to be a wise man but in consequence of this opinion got a very great name for wisdom among the lydians, had advised croesus as follows (the name of the man was sandanis):�"o king, thou art preparing to march against men who wear breeches of leather, and the rest of their clothing is of leather also; and they eat food not such as they desire but such as they can obtain, dwelling in a land which is rugged; and moreover they make no use of wine but drink water; and no figs have they for dessert, nor any other good thing. on the one hand, if thou shalt overcome them, what wilt thou take away from them, seeing they have nothing? and on the other hand, if thou shalt be overcome, consider how many good things thou wilt lose; for once having tasted our good things, they will cling to them fast and it will not be possible to drive them away. i for my own part feel gratitude to the gods that they do not put it into the minds of the persians to march against the lydians." thus he spoke not persuading croesus: for it is true indeed that the persians before they subdued the lydians had no luxury nor any good thing. . now the cappadokians are called by the hellenes syrians; and these syrians, before the persians had rule, were subjects of the medes, but at this time they were subjects of cyrus. for the boundary between the median empire and the lydian was the river halys; and this flows from the mountain-land of armenia through the kilikians, and afterwards, as it flows, it has the matienians on the right hand and the phrygians on the other side; then passing by these and flowing up towards the north wind, it bounds on the one side the cappadokian syrians and on the left hand the paphlagonians. thus the river halys cuts off from the rest almost all the lower parts of asia by a line extending from the sea that is opposite cyprus to the euxine. and this tract is the neck of the whole peninsula, the distance of the journey being such that five days are spent on the way by a man without encumbrance. . now for the following reasons croesus was marching into cappadokia:�first because he desired to acquire the land in addition to his own possessions, and then especially because he had confidence in the oracle and wished to take vengeance on cyrus for astyages. for cyrus the son of cambyses had conquered astyages and was keeping him in captivity, who was brother by marriage to croesus and king of the medes: and he had become the brother by marriage of croesus in this manner:�a horde of the nomad scythians at feud with the rest withdrew and sought refuge in the land of the medes: and at this time the ruler of the medes was kyaxares the son of phraortes, the son of deïokes, who at first dealt well with these scythians, being suppliants for his protection; and esteeming them very highly he delivered boys to them to learn their speech and the art of shooting with the bow. then time went by, and the scythians used to go out continually to the chase and always brought back something; till once it happened that they took nothing, and when they ed with empty hands kyaxares (being, as he showed on this occasion, not of an eminently good disposition ) dealt with them very harshly and used insult towards them. and they, when they had received this treatment from kyaxares, considering that they had suffered indignity, planned to kill and to cut up one of the boys who were being instructed among them, and having dressed his flesh as they had been wont to dress the wild animals, to bear it to kyaxares and give it to him, pretending that it was game taken in hunting; and when they had given it, their design was to make their way as quickly as possible to alyattes the son of sadyattes at sardis. this then was done; and kyaxares with the guests who ate at his table tasted of that meat, and the scythians having so done became suppliants for the protection of alyattes. . after this, seeing that alyattes would not give up the scythians when kyaxares demanded them, there had arisen war between the lydians and the medes lasting five years; in which years the medes often discomfited the lydians and the lydians often discomfited the medes (and among others they fought also a battle by night): and as they still carried on the war with equally balanced fortune, in the sixth year a battle took place in which it happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night. and this change of the day thales the milesian had foretold to the ionians laying down as a limit this very year in which the change took place. the lydians however and the medes, when they saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much more eager both of them that peace should be made between them. and they who brought about the peace between them were syennesis the kilikian and labynetos the babylonian: these were they who urged also the taking of the oath by them, and they brought about an interchange of marriages; for they decided that alyattes should give his daughter aryenis to astyages the son of kyaxares, seeing that without the compulsion of a strong tie agreements are apt not to hold strongly together. now these nations observe the same ceremonies in taking oaths as the hellenes, and in addition to them they make incision into the skin of their arms, and then lick up the blood each of the other. . this astyages then, being his mother's father, cyrus had conquered and made prisoner for a reason which i shall declare in the history which comes after. this then was the complaint which croesus had against cyrus when he sent to the oracles to ask if he should march against the persians; and when a deceitful answer had come back to him, he marched into the dominion of the persians, supposing that the answer was favourable to himself. and when croesus came to the river halys, then, according to my account, he passed his army across by the bridges which there were; but, according to the account which prevails among the hellenes, thales the milesian enabled him to pass his army across. for, say they, when croesus was at a loss how his army should pass over the river (since, they add, there were not yet at that time the bridges which now there are), thales being present in the army caused the river, which flowed then on the left hand of the army, to flow partly also on the right; and he did it thus:�beginning above the camp he proceeded to dig a deep channel, directing it in the form of a crescent moon, so that the river might take the camp there pitched in the rear, being turned aside from its ancient course by this way along the channel, and afterwards passing by the camp might fall again into its ancient course; so that as soon as the river was thus parted in two it became fordable by both branches: and some say even that the ancient course of the river was altogether dried up. but this tale i do not admit as true, for how then did they pass over the river as they went back? . and croesus, when he had passed over with his army, came to that place in cappadokia which is called pteria (now pteria is the strongest place in this country, and is situated somewhere about in a line with the city of sinope on the euxine). here he encamped and ravaged the fields of the syrians. moreover he took the city of the pterians, and sold the people into slavery, and he took also all the towns that lay about it; and the syrians, who were not guilty of any wrong, he forced to remove from their homes. meanwhile cyrus, having gathered his own forces and having taken up in addition to them all who dwelt in the region between, was coming to meet croesus. before he began however to lead forth his army, he had sent heralds to the ionians and tried to induce them to revolt from croesus; but the ionians would not do as he said. then when cyrus was come and had encamped over against croesus, they made trial of one another by force of arms in the land of pteria: and after hard fighting, when many had fallen on both sides, at length, night having come on, they parted from one the other with no victory on either side. . thus the two armies contended with one another: and croesus being ill satisfied with his own army in respect of number (for the army which he had when he fought was far smaller than that of cyrus), being dissatisfied with it i say on this account, as cyrus did not attempt to advance against him on the following day, marched back to sardis, having it in his mind to call the egyptians to his help according to the oath which they had taken (for he had made an alliance with amasis king of egypt before he made the alliance with the lacedemonians), and to summon the babylonians as well (for with these also an alliance had been concluded by him, labynetos being at that time ruler of the babylonians), and moreover to send a message to the lacedemonians bidding them appear at a fixed time: and then after he had got all these together and had gathered his own army, his design was to let the winter go by and at the coming of spring to march against the persians. so with these thoughts in his mind, as soon as he came to sardis he proceeded to send heralds to his several allies to give them notice that by the fifth month from that time they should assemble at sardis: but the army which he had with him and which had fought with the persians, an army which consisted of mercenary troops, he let go and disbanded altogether, never expecting that cyrus, after having contended against him with such even fortune, would after all march upon sardis. . when croesus had these plans in his mind, the suburb of the city became of a sudden all full of serpents; and when these had appeared, the horses leaving off to feed in their pastures came constantly thither and devoured them. when croesus saw this he deemed it to be a portent, as indeed it was: and forthwith he despatched messengers to the dwelling of the telmessians, who interpret omens: and the messengers who were sent to consult arrived there and learnt from the telmessians what the portent meant to signify, but they did not succeed in reporting the answer to croesus, for before they sailed back to sardis croesus had been taken prisoner. the telmessians however gave decision thus: that an army speaking a foreign tongue was to be looked for by croesus to invade his land, and that this when it came would subdue the native inhabitants; for they said that the serpent was born of the soil, while the horse was an enemy and a stranger. the men of telmessos thus made answer to croesus after he was already taken prisoner, not knowing as yet anything of the things which had happened to sardis and to croesus himself. . cyrus, however, so soon as croesus marched away after the battle which had been fought in pteria, having learnt that croesus meant after he had marched away to disband his army, took counsel with himself and concluded that it was good for him to march as quickly as possible to sardis, before the power of the lydians should be again gathered together. so when he had resolved upon this, he did it without delay: for he marched his army into lydia with such speed that he was himself the first to announce his coming to croesus. then croesus, although he had come to a great strait, since his affairs had fallen out altogether contrary to his own expectation, yet proceeded to lead forth the lydians into battle. now there was at this time no nation in asia more courageous or more stout in battle than the lydian; and they fought on horseback carrying long spears, the men being excellent in horsemanship. . so when the armies had met in that plain which is in front of the city of sardis,�a plain wide and open, through which flow rivers (and especially the river hyllos) all rushing down to join the largest called hermos, which flows from the mountain sacred to the mother surnamed "of dindymos" and runs out into the sea by the city of phocaia,�then cyrus, when he saw the lydians being arrayed for battle, fearing their horsemen, did on the suggestion of harpagos a mede as follows:�all the camels which were in the train of his army carrying provisions and baggage he gathered together, and he took off their burdens and set men upon them provided with the equipment of cavalry: and having thus furnished them forth he appointed them to go in front of the rest of the army towards the horsemen of croesus; and after the camel-troop he ordered the infantry to follow; and behind the infantry he placed his whole force of cavalry. then when all his men had been placed in their several positions, he charged them to spare none of the other lydians, slaying all who might come in their way, but croesus himself they were not to slay, not even if he should make resistance when he was captured. such was his charge: and he set the camels opposite the horsemen for this reason,�because the horse has a fear of the camel and cannot endure either to see his form or to scent his smell: for this reason then the trick had been devised, in order that the cavalry of croesus might be useless, that very force wherewith the lydian king was expecting most to shine. and as they were coming together to the battle, so soon as the horses scented the camels and saw them they turned away back, and the hopes of croesus were at once brought to nought. the lydians however for their part did not upon that act as cowards, but when they perceived what was coming to pass they leapt from their horses and fought with the persians on foot. at length, however, when many had fallen on either side, the lydians turned to flight; and having been driven within the wall of their fortress they were besieged by the persians. . by these then a siege had been established: but croesus, supposing that the siege would last a long time, proceeded to send from the fortress other messengers to his allies. for the former messengers were sent round to give notice that they should assemble at sardis by the fifth month, but these he was sending out to ask them to come to his assistance as quickly as possible, because croesus was being besieged. . so then in sending to his other allies he sent also to lacedemon. but these too, the spartans i mean, had themselves at this very time (for so it had fallen out) a quarrel in hand with the argives about the district called thyrea. for this thyrea, being part of the argive possessions, the lacedemonians had cut off and taken for themselves. now the whole region towards the west extending as far down as malea was then possessed by the argives, both the parts situated on the mainland and also the island of kythera with the other islands. and when the argives had come to the rescue to save their territory from being cut off from them, then the two sides came to a parley together and agreed that three hundred should fight of each side, and whichever side had the better in the fight that nation should possess the disputed land: they agreed moreover that the main body of each army should withdraw to their own country, and not stand by while the contest was fought, for fear lest, if the armies were present, one side seeing their countrymen suffering defeat should come up to their support. having made this agreement they withdrew; and chosen men of both sides were left behind and engaged in fight with one another. so they fought and proved themselves to be equally matched; and there were left at last of six hundred men three, on the side of the argives alkenor and chromios, and on the side of the lacedemonians othryades: these were left alive when night came on. so then the two men of the argives, supposing that they were the victors, set off to run to argos, but the lacedemonian othryades, after having stripped the corpses of the argives and carried their arms to his own camp, remained in his place. on the next day both the two sides came thither to inquire about the result; and for some time both claimed the victory for themselves, the one side saying that of them more had remained alive, and the others declaring that these had fled away, whereas their own man had stood his ground and had stripped the corpses of the other party: and at length by reason of this dispute they fell upon one another and began to fight; and after many had fallen on both sides, the lacedemonians were the victors. the argives then cut their hair short, whereas formerly they were compelled by law to wear it long, and they made a law with a curse attached to it, that from that time forth no man of the argives should grow the hair long nor their women wear ornaments of gold, until they should have won back thyrea. the lacedemonians however laid down for themselves the opposite law to this, namely that they should wear long hair from that time forward, whereas before that time they had not their hair long. and they say that the one man who was left alive of the three hundred, namely othryades, being ashamed to to sparta when all his comrades had been slain, slew himself there in thyrea. . such was the condition of things at sparta when the herald from sardis arrived asking them to come to the assistance of croesus, who was being besieged. and they notwithstanding their own difficulties, as soon as they heard the news from the herald, were eager to go to his assistance; but when they had completed their preparations and their ships were ready, there came another message reporting that the fortress of the lydians had been taken and that croesus had been made prisoner. then (and not before) they ceased from their efforts, being grieved at the event as at a great calamity. . now the taking of sardis came about as follows:�when the fourteenth day came after croesus began to be besieged, cyrus made proclamation to his army, sending horsemen round to the several parts of it, that he would give gifts to the man who should first scale the wall. after this the army made an attempt; and when it failed, then after all the rest had ceased from the attack, a certain mardian whose name was hyroiades made an attempt to approach on that side of the citadel where no guard had been set; for they had no fear that it would ever be taken from that side, seeing that here the citadel is precipitous and unassailable. to this part of the wall alone meles also, who formerly was king of sardis, did not carry round the lion which his concubine bore to him, the telmessians having given decision that if the lion should be carried round the wall, sardis should be safe from capture: and meles having carried it round the rest of the wall, that is to say those parts of the citadel where the fortress was open to attack, passed over this part as being unassailable and precipitous: now this is a part of the city which is turned towards tmolos. so then this mardian hyroiades, having seen on the day before how one of the lydians had descended on that side of the citadel to recover his helmet which had rolled down from above, and had picked it up, took thought and cast the matter about in his own mind. then he himself ascended first, and after him came up others of the persians, and many having thus made approach, sardis was finally taken and the whole city was given up to plunder. . meanwhile to croesus himself it happened thus:�he had a son, of whom i made mention before, who was of good disposition enough but deprived of speech. now in his former time of prosperity croesus had done everything that was possible for him, and besides other things which he devised he had also sent messengers to delphi to inquire concerning him. and the pythian prophetess spoke to him thus: "lydian, master of many, much blind to destiny, croesus, do not desire to hear in thy halls that voice which is prayed for, voice of thy son; much better if this from thee were removèd, since he shall first utter speech in an evil day of misfortune." now when the fortress was being taken, one of the persians was about to slay croesus taking him for another; and croesus for his part, seeing him coming on, cared nothing for it because of the misfortune which was upon him, and to him it was indifferent that he should be slain by the stroke; but this voiceless son, when he saw the persian coming on, by reason of terror and affliction burst the bonds of his utterance and said: "man, slay not croesus." this son, i say, uttered voice then first of all, but after this he continued to use speech for the whole time of his life. . the persians then had obtained possession of sardis and had taken croesus himself prisoner, after he had reigned fourteen years and had been besieged fourteen days, having fulfilled the oracle in that he had brought to an end his own great empire. so the persians having taken him brought him into the presence of cyrus: and he piled up a great pyre and caused croesus to go up upon it bound in fetters, and along with him twice seven sons of lydians, whether it was that he meant to dedicate this offering as first-fruits of his victory to some god, or whether he desired to fulfil a vow, or else had heard that croesus was a god-fearing man and so caused him to go up on the pyre because he wished to know if any one of the divine powers would save him, so that he should not be burnt alive. he, they say, did this; but to croesus as he stood upon the pyre there came, although he was in such evil case, a memory of the saying of solon, how he had said with divine inspiration that no one of the living might be called happy. and when this thought came into his mind, they say that he sighed deeply and groaned aloud, having been for long silent, and three times he uttered the name of solon. hearing this, cyrus bade the interpreters ask croesus who was this person on whom he called; and they came near and asked. and croesus for a time, it is said, kept silence when he was asked this, but afterwards being pressed he said: "one whom more than much wealth i should have desired to have speech with all monarchs." then, since his words were of doubtful import, they asked again of that which he said; and as they were urgent with him and gave him no peace, he told how once solon an athenian had come, and having inspected all his wealth had made light of it, with such and such words; and how all had turned out for him according as solon had said, not speaking at all especially with a view to croesus himself, but with a view to the whole human race and especially those who seem to themselves to be happy men. and while croesus related these things, already the pyre was lighted and the edges of it round about were burning. then they say that cyrus, hearing from the interpreters what croesus had said, changed his purpose and considered that he himself also was but a man, and that he was delivering another man, who had been not inferior to himself in felicity, alive to the fire; and moreover he feared the requital, and reflected that there was nothing of that which men possessed which was secure; therefore, they say, he ordered them to extinguish as quickly as possible the fire that was burning, and to bring down croesus and those who were with him from the pyre; and they using endeavours were not able now to get the mastery of the flames. . then it is related by the lydians that croesus, having learned how cyrus had changed his mind, and seeing that every one was trying to put out the fire but that they were no longer able to check it, cried aloud entreating apollo that if any gift had ever been given by him which had been acceptable to the god, he would come to his aid and rescue him from the evil which was now upon him. so he with tears entreated the god, and suddenly, they say, after clear sky and calm weather clouds gathered and a storm burst, and it rained with a very violent shower, and the pyre was extinguished. then cyrus, having perceived that croesus was a lover of the gods and a good man, caused him to be brought down from the pyre and asked him as follows: "croesus, tell me who of all men was it who persuaded thee to march upon my land and so to become an enemy to me instead of a friend?" and he said: "o king, i did this to thy felicity and to my own misfortune, and the causer of this was the god of the hellenes, who incited me to march with my army. for no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons. but it was pleasing, i suppose, to the divine powers that these things should come to pass thus." . so he spoke, and cyrus loosed his bonds and caused him to sit near himself and paid to him much regard, and he marvelled both himself and all who were about him at the sight of croesus. and croesus wrapt in thought was silent; but after a time, turning round and seeing the persians plundering the city of the lydians, he said: "o king, must i say to thee that which i chance to have in my thought, or must i keep silent in this my present fortune?" then cyrus bade him say boldly whatsoever he desired; and he asked him saying: "what is the business that this great multitude of men is doing with so much eagerness?" and he said: "they are plundering thy city and carrying away thy wealth." and croesus answered: "neither is it my city that they are plundering nor my wealth which they are carrying away; for i have no longer any property in these things: but it is thy wealth that they are carrying and driving away." . and cyrus was concerned by that which croesus had said, and he caused all the rest to withdraw and asked croesus what he discerned for his advantage as regards that which was being done; and he said: "since the gods gave me to thee as a slave, i think it right if i discern anything more than others to signify it to thee. the persians, who are by nature unruly, are without wealth: if therefore thou shalt suffer them to carry off in plunder great wealth and to take possession of it, then it is to be looked for that thou wilt experience this result, thou must expect namely that whosoever gets possession of the largest share will make insurrection against thee. now therefore, if that which i say is pleasing to thee, do this:�set spearmen of thy guard to watch at all the gates, and let these take away the things, and say to the men who were bearing them out of the city that they must first be tithed for zeus: and thus thou on the one hand wilt not be hated by them for taking away the things by force, and they on the other will willingly let the things go, acknowledging within themselves that thou art doing that which is just." . hearing this, cyrus was above measure pleased, because he thought that croesus advised well; and he commended him much and enjoined the spearmen of his guard to perform that which croesus had advised: and after that he spoke to croesus thus: "croesus, since thou art prepared, like a king as thou art, to do good deeds and speak good words, therefore ask me for a gift, whatsoever thou desirest to be given thee forthwith." and he said: "master, thou wilt most do me a pleasure if thou wilt permit me to send to the god of the hellenes, whom i honoured most of all gods, these fetters, and to ask him whether it is accounted by him right to deceive those who do well to him." then cyrus asked him what accusation he made against the god, that he thus requested; and croesus repeated to him all that had been in his mind, and the answers of the oracles, and especially the votive offerings, and how he had been incited by the prophecy to march upon the persians: and thus speaking he came back again to the request that it might be permitted to him to make this reproach against the god. and cyrus laughed and said: "not this only shalt thou obtain from me, croesus, but also whatsoever thou mayst desire of me at any time." hearing this croesus sent certain of the lydians to delphi, enjoining them to lay the fetters upon the threshold of the temple and to ask the god whether he felt no shame that he had incited croesus by his prophecies to march upon the persians, persuading him that he should bring to an end the empire of cyrus, seeing that these were the first-fruits of spoil which he had won from it,�at the same time displaying the fetters. this they were to ask, and moreover also whether it was thought right by the gods of the hellenes to practice ingratitude. . when the lydians came and repeated that which they were enjoined to say, it is related that the pythian prophetess spoke as follows: "the fated destiny it is impossible even for a god to escape. and croesus paid the debt due for the sin of his fifth ancestor, who being one of the spearmen of the heracleidai followed the treacherous device of a woman, and having slain his master took possession of his royal dignity, which belonged not to him of right. and although loxias eagerly desired that the calamity of sardis might come upon the sons of croesus and not upon croesus himself, it was not possible for him to draw the destinies aside from their course; but so much as these granted he brought to pass, and gave it as a gift to croesus: for he put off the taking of sardis by three years; and let croesus be assured that he was taken prisoner later by these years than the fated time: moreover secondly, he assisted him when he was about to be burnt. and as to the oracle which was given, croesus finds fault with good ground: for loxias told him beforehand that if he should march upon the persians he should destroy a great empire: and he upon hearing this, if he wished to take counsel well, ought to have sent and asked further whether the god meant his own empire or that of cyrus: but as he did not comprehend that which was uttered and did not ask again, let him pronounce himself to be the cause of that which followed. to him also when he consulted the oracle for the last time loxias said that which he said concerning a mule; but this also he failed to comprehend: for cyrus was in fact this mule, seeing that he was born of parents who were of two different races, his mother being of nobler descent and his father of less noble: for she was a median woman, daughter of astyages and king of the medes, but he was a persian, one of a race subject to the medes, and being inferior in all respects he was the husband of one who was his royal mistress." thus the pythian prophetess replied to the lydians, and they brought the answer back to sardis and repeated it to croesus; and he, when he heard it, acknowledged that the fault was his own and not that of the god. with regard then to the empire of croesus and the first conquest of ionia, it happened thus. . now there are in hellas many other votive offerings made by croesus and not only those which have been mentioned: for first at thebes of the boeotians there is a tripod of gold, which he dedicated to the ismenian apollo; then at ephesos there are the golden cows and the greater number of the pillars of the temple; and in the temple of athene pronaia at delphi a large golden shield. these were still remaining down to my own time, but others of his votive offerings have perished: and the votive offerings of croesus at branchidai of the milesians were, as i am told, equal in weight and similar to those at delphi. now those which he sent to delphi and to the temple of amphiaraos he dedicated of his own goods and as first-fruits of the wealth inherited from his father; but the other offerings were made of the substance of a man who was his foe, who before croesus became king had been factious against him and had joined in endeavouring to make pantaleon ruler of the lydians. now pantaleon was a son of alyattes and a brother of croesus, but not by the same mother, for croesus was born to alyattes of a carian woman, but pantaleon of an ionian. and when croesus had gained possession of the kingdom by the gift of his father, he put to death the man who opposed him, drawing him upon the carding-comb; and his property, which even before that time he had vowed to dedicate, he then offered in the manner mentioned to those shrines which have been named. about his votive offerings let it suffice to have said so much. . of marvels to be recorded the land of lydia has no great store as compared with other lands, excepting the gold-dust which is carried down from tmolos; but one work it has to show which is larger far than any other except only those in egypt and babylon: for there is there the sepulchral monument of alyattes the father of croesus, of which the base is made of larger stones and the rest of the monument is of earth piled up. and this was built by contributions of those who practised trade and of the artisans and the girls who plied their traffic there; and still there existed to my own time boundary-stones five in number erected upon the monument above, on which were carved inscriptions telling how much of the work was done by each class; and upon measurement it was found that the work of the girls was the greatest in amount. for the daughters of the common people in lydia practice prostitution one and all, to gather for themselves dowries, continuing this until the time when they marry; and the girls give themselves away in marriage. now the circuit of the monument is six furlongs and two hundred feet, and the breadth is thirteen hundred feet. and adjoining the monument is a great lake, which the lydians say has a never-failing supply of water, and it is called the lake of gyges. such is the nature of this monument. . now the lydians have very nearly the same customs as the hellenes, with the exception that they prostitute their female children; and they were the first of men, so far as we know, who struck and used coin of gold or silver; and also they were the first retail-traders. and the lydians themselves say that the games which are now in use among them and among the hellenes were also their invention. these they say were invented among them at the same time as they colonised tyrsenia, and this is the account they give of them:�in the reign of atys the son of manes their king there came to be a grievous dearth over the whole of lydia; and the lydians for a time continued to endure it, but afterwards, as it did not cease, they sought for remedies; and one devised one thing and another of them devised another thing. and then were discovered, they say, the ways of playing with the dice and the knucklebones and the ball, and all the other games excepting draughts (for the discovery of this last is not claimed by the lydians). these games they invented as a resource against the famine, and thus they used to do:�on one of the days they would play games all the time in order that they might not feel the want of food, and on the next they ceased from their games and had food: and thus they went on for eighteen years. as however the evil did not slacken but pressed upon them ever more and more, therefore their king divided the whole lydian people into two parts, and he appointed by lot one part to remain and the other to go forth from the land; and the king appointed himself to be over that one of the parts which had the lot to stay in the land, and his son to be over that which was departing; and the name of his son was tyrsenos. so the one party of them, having obtained the lot to go forth from the land, went down to the sea at smyrna and built ships for themselves, wherein they placed all the movable goods which they had and sailed away to seek for means of living and a land to dwell in; until after passing by many nations they came at last to the land of the ombricans, and there they founded cities and dwell up to the present time: and changing their name they were called after the king's son who led them out from home, not lydians but tyrsenians, taking the name from him. the lydians then had been made subject to the persians as i say: , and after this our history proceeds to inquire about cyrus, who he was that destroyed the empire of croesus, and about the persians, in what manner they obtained the lead of asia. following then the report of some of the persians,�those i mean who do not desire to glorify the history of cyrus but to speak that which is in fact true,�according to their report, i say, i shall write; but i could set forth also the other forms of the story in three several ways. the assyrians ruled upper asia for five hundred and twenty years, and from them the medes were the first who made revolt. these having fought for their freedom with the assyrians proved themselves good men, and thus they pushed off the yoke of slavery from themselves and were set free; and after them the other nations also did the same as the medes: and when all on the continent were thus independent, they ed again to despotic rule as follows:� . there appeared among the medes a man of great ability whose name was deïokes, and this man was the son of phraortes. this deïokes, having formed a desire for despotic power, did thus:�whereas the medes dwelt in separate villages, he, being even before that time of great repute in his own village, set himself to practise just dealing much more and with greater zeal than before; and this he did although there was much lawlessness throughout the whole of media, and although he knew that injustice is ever at feud with justice. and the medes of the same village, seeing his manners, chose him for their judge. so he, since he was aiming at power, was upright and just, and doing thus he had no little praise from his fellow-citizens, insomuch that those of the other villages learning that deïokes was a man who more than all others gave decision rightly, whereas before this they had been wont to suffer from unjust judgments, themselves also when they heard it came gladly to deïokes to have their causes determined, and at last they trusted the business to no one else. . then, as more and more continually kept coming to him, because men learnt that his decisions proved to be according to the truth, deïokes perceiving that everything was referred to himself would no longer sit in the place where he used formerly to sit in public to determine causes, and said that he would determine causes no more, for it was not profitable for him to neglect his own affairs and to determine causes for his neighbours all through the day. so then, since robbery and lawlessness prevailed even much more in the villages than they did before, the medes having assembled together in one place considered with one another and spoke about the state in which they were: and i suppose the friends of deïokes spoke much to this effect: "seeing that we are not able to dwell in the land under the present order of things, let us set up a king from among ourselves, and thus the land will be well governed and we ourselves shall turn to labour, and shall not be ruined by lawlessness." by some such words as these they persuaded themselves to have a king. . and when they straightway proposed the question whom they should set up to be king, deïokes was much put forward and commended by every one, until at last they agreed that he should be their king. and he bade them build for him a palace worthy of the royal dignity and strengthen him with a guard of spearmen. and the medes did so: for they built him a large and strong palace in that part of the land which he told them, and they allowed him to select spearmen from all the medes. and when he had obtained the rule over them, he compelled the medes to make one fortified city and pay chief attention to this, having less regard to the other cities. and as the medes obeyed him in this also, he built large and strong walls, those which are now called agbatana, standing in circles one within the other. and this wall is so contrived that one circle is higher than the next by the height of the battlements alone. and to some extent, i suppose, the nature of the ground, seeing that it is on a hill, assists towards this end; but much more was it produced by art, since the circles are in all seven in number. and within the last circle are the royal palace and the treasure-houses. the largest of these walls is in size about equal to the circuit of the wall round athens; and of the first circle the battlements are white, of the second black, of the third crimson, of the fourth blue, of the fifth red: thus are the battlements of all the circles coloured with various tints, and the two last have their battlements one of them overlaid with silver and the other with gold. . these walls then deïokes built for himself and round his own palace, and the people he commanded to dwell round about the wall. and after all was built, deïokes established the rule, which he was the first to establish, ordaining that none should enter into the presence of the king, but that they deal with him always through messengers; and that the king should be seen by no one; and moreover that to laugh or to spit in presence is unseemly, and this last for every one without exception. now he surrounded himself with this state to the end that his fellows, who had been brought up with him and were of no meaner family nor behind him in manly virtue, might not be grieved by seeing him and make plots against him, but that being unseen by them he might be thought to be of different mould. . having set these things in order and strengthened himself in his despotism, he was severe in preserving justice; and the people used to write down their causes and send them in to his presence, and he determined the questions which were brought in to him and sent them out again. thus he used to do about the judgment of causes; and he also took order for this, that is to say, if he heard that any one was behaving in an unruly manner, he sent for him and punished him according as each act of wrong deserved, and he had watchers and listeners about all the land over which he ruled. . deïokes then united the median race alone, and was ruler of this: and of the medes there are the tribes which here follow, namely, busai, paretakenians, struchates, arizantians, budians, magians: the tribes of the medes are so many in number. . now the son of deïokes was phraortes, who when deïokes was dead, having been king for three-and-fifty years, received the power in succession; and having received it he was not satisfied to be ruler of the medes alone, but marched upon the persians; and attacking them first before others, he made these first subject to the medes. after this, being ruler of these two nations and both of them strong, he proceeded to subdue asia going from one nation to another, until at last he marched against the assyrians, those assyrians i mean who dwelt at nineveh, and who formerly had been rulers of the whole, but at that time they were left without support their allies having revolted from them, though at home they were prosperous enough. phraortes marched, i say, against these, and was both himself slain, after he had reigned two-and-twenty years, and the greater part of his army was destroyed. . when phraortes had brought his life to an end, kyaxares the son of phraortes, the son of deïokes, received the power. this king is said to have been yet much more warlike than his forefathers; and he first banded the men of asia into separate divisions, that is to say, he first arrayed apart from one another the spearmen and the archers and the horsemen, for before that time they were all mingled together without distinction. this was he who fought with the lydians when the day became night as they fought, and who also united under his rule the whole of asia above the river halys. and having gathered together all his subjects he marched upon nineveh to avenge his father, and also because he desired to conquer that city. and when he had fought a battle with the assyrians and had defeated them, while he was sitting down before nineveh there came upon him a great army of scythians, and the leader of them was madyas the son of protohyas, king of the scythians. these had invaded asia after driving the kimmerians out of europe, and in pursuit of them as they fled they had come to the land of media. . now from the maiotian lake to the river phasis and to the land of the colchians is a journey of thirty days for one without encumbrance; and from colchis it is not far to pass over to media, for there is only one nation between them, the saspeirians, and passing by this nation you are in media. however the scythians did not make their invasion by this way, but turned aside from it to go by the upper road which is much longer, keeping mount caucasus on their right hand. then the medes fought with the scythians, and having been worsted in the battle they lost their power, and the scythians obtained rule over all asia. . thence they went on to invade egypt; and when they were in syria which is called palestine, psammetichos king of egypt met them; and by gifts and entreaties he turned them from their purpose, so that they should not advance any further: and as they retreated, when they came to the city of ascalon in syria, most of the scythians passed through without doing any damage, but a few of them who had stayed behind plundered the temple of aphrodite urania. now this temple, as i find by inquiry, is the most ancient of all the temples which belong to this goddess; for the temple in cyprus was founded from this, as the people of cyprus themselves report, and it was the phenicians who founded the temple in kythera, coming from this land of syria. so these scythians who had plundered the temple at ascalon, and their descendants for ever, were smitten by the divinity with a disease which made them women instead of men: and the scythians say that it was for this reason that they were diseased, and that for this reason travellers who visit scythia now, see among them the affection of those who by the scythians are called enareës. . for eight-and-twenty years then the scythians were rulers of asia, and by their unruliness and reckless behaviour everything was ruined; for on the one hand they exacted that in tribute from each people which they laid upon them, and apart from the tribute they rode about and carried off by force the possessions of each tribe. then kyaxares with the medes, having invited the greater number of them to a banquet, made them drunk and slew them; and thus the medes recovered their power, and had rule over the same nations as before; and they also took nineveh,�the manner how it was taken i shall set forth in another history, �and made the assyrians subject to them excepting only the land of babylon. . after this kyaxares died, having reigned forty years including those years during which the scythians had rule, and astyages son of kyaxares received from him the kingdom. to him was born a daughter whom he named mandane; and in his sleep it seemed to him that there passed from her so much water as to fill his city and also to flood the whole of asia. this dream he delivered over to the magian interpreters of dreams, and when he heard from them the truth at each point he became afraid. and afterwards when this mandane was of an age to have a husband, he did not give her in marriage to any one of the medes who were his peers, because he feared the vision; but he gave her to a persian named cambyses, whom he found to be of a good descent and of a quiet disposition, counting him to be in station much below a mede of middle rank. . and when mandane was married to cambyses, in the first year astyages saw another vision. it seemed to him that from the womb of this daughter a vine grew, and this vine overspread the whole of asia. having seen this vision and delivered it to the interpreters of dreams, he sent for his daughter, being then with child, to come from the land of the persians. and when she had come he kept watch over her, desiring to destroy that which should be born of her; for the magian interpreters of dreams signified to him that the offspring of his daughter should be king in his room. astyages then desiring to guard against this, when cyrus was born, called harpagos, a man who was of kin near him and whom he trusted above all the other medes, and had made him manager of all his affairs; and to him he said as follows: "neglect not by any means, harpagos, the matter which i shall lay upon thee to do, and beware lest thou set me aside, and choosing the advantage of others instead, bring thyself afterwards to destruction. take the child which mandane bore, and carry it to thy house and slay it; and afterwards bury it in whatsoever manner thou thyself desirest." to this he made answer: "o king, never yet in any past time didst thou discern in me an offence against thee, and i keep watch over myself also with a view to the time that comes after, that i may not commit any error towards thee. if it is indeed thy pleasure that this should so be done, my service at least must be fitly rendered." . thus he made answer, and when the child had been delivered to him adorned as for death, harpagos went weeping to his wife all the words which had been spoken by astyages. and she said to him: "now, therefore, what is it in thy mind to do?" and he made answer: "not according as astyages enjoined: for not even if he shall come to be yet more out of his senses and more mad than he now is, will i agree to his will or serve him in such a murder as this. and for many reasons i will not slay the child; first because he is a kin to me, and then because astyages is old and without male issue, and if after he is dead the power shall come through me, does not the greatest of dangers then await me? to secure me, this child must die; but one of the servants of astyages must be the slayer of it, and not one of mine." . thus he spoke, and straightway sent a messenger to that one of the herdsmen of astyages who he knew fed his herds on the pastures which were most suitable for his purpose, and on the mountains most haunted by wild beasts. the name of this man was mitradates, and he was married to one who was his fellow-slave; and the name of the woman to whom he was married was kyno in the tongue of the hellenes and in the median tongue spaco, for what the hellenes call kyna (bitch) the medes call spaca. now, it was on the skirts of the mountains that this herdsman had his cattle-pastures, from agbatana towards the north wind and towards the euxine sea. for here in the direction of the saspeirians the median land is very mountainous and lofty and thickly covered with forests; but the rest of the land of media is all level plain. so when this herdsman came, being summoned with much urgency, harpagos said these words: "astyages bids thee take this child and place it on the most desolate part of the mountains, so that it may perish as quickly as possible. and he bade me to say that if thou do not kill it, but in any way shalt preserve it from death, he will slay thee by the most evil kind of destruction: and i have been appointed to see that the child is laid forth." . having heard this and having taken up the child, the herdsman went back by the way he came, and arrived at his dwelling. and his wife also, as it seems, having been every day on the point of bearing a child, by a providential chance brought her child to birth just at that time, when the herdsman was gone to the city. and both were in anxiety, each for the other, the man having fear about the child-bearing of his wife, and the woman about the cause why harpagos had sent to summon her husband, not having been wont to do so aforetime. so as soon as he ed and stood before her, the woman seeing him again beyond her hopes was the first to speak, and asked him for what purpose harpagos had sent for him so urgently. and he said: "wife, when i came to the city i saw and heard that which i would i had not seen, and which i should wish had never chanced to those whom we serve. for the house of harpagos was all full of mourning, and i being astonished thereat went within: and as soon as i entered i saw laid out to view an infant child gasping for breath and screaming, which was adorned with gold ornaments and embroidered clothing: and when harpagos saw me he bade me forthwith to take up the child and carry it away and lay it on that part of the mountains which is most haunted by wild beasts, saying that it was astyages who laid this task upon me, and using to me many threats, if i should fail to do this. and i took it up and bore it away, supposing that it was the child of some one of the servants of the house, for never could i have supposed whence it really was; but i marvelled to see it adorned with gold and raiment, and i marvelled also because mourning was made for it openly in the house of harpagos. and straightway as we went by the road, i learnt the whole of the matter from the servant who went with me out of the city and placed in my hands the babe, namely that it was in truth the son of mandane the daughter of astyages, and of cambyses the son of cyrus, and that astyages bade slay it. and now here it is." . and as he said this the herdsman uncovered it and showed it to her. and she, seeing that the child was large and of fair form, wept and clung to the knees of her husband, beseeching him by no means to lay it forth. but he said that he could not do otherwise than so, for watchers would come backwards and forwards sent by harpagos to see that this was done, and he would perish by a miserable death if he should fail to do this. and as she could not after all persuade her husband, the wife next said as follows: "since then i am unable to persuade thee not to lay it forth, do thou this which i shall tell thee, if indeed it needs must be seen laid forth. i also have borne a child, but i have borne it dead. take this and expose it, and let us rear the child of the daughter of astyages as if it were our own. thus thou wilt not be found out doing a wrong to those whom we serve, nor shall we have taken ill counsel for ourselves; for the dead child will obtain a royal burial and the surviving one will not lose his life." . to the herdsman it seemed that, the case standing thus, his wife spoke well, and forthwith he did so. the child which he was bearing to put to death, this he delivered to his wife, and his own, which was dead, he took and placed in the chest in which he had been bearing the other; and having adorned it with all the adornment of the other child, he bore it to the most desolate part of the mountains and placed it there. and when the third day came after the child had been laid forth, the herdsman went to the city, leaving one of his under-herdsmen to watch there, and when he came to the house of harpagos he said that he was ready to display the dead body of the child; and harpagos sent the most trusted of his spearmen, and through them he saw and buried the herdsman's child. this then had had burial, but him who was afterwards called cyrus the wife of the herdsman had received, and was bringing him up, giving him no doubt some other name, not cyrus. . and when the boy was ten years old, it happened with regard to him as follows, and this made him known. he was playing in the village in which were stalls for oxen, he was playing there, i say, with other boys of his age in the road. and the boys in their play chose as their king this one who was called the son of the herdsman: and he set some of them to build palaces and others to be spearmen of his guard, and one of them no doubt he appointed to be the eye of the king, and to one he gave the office of bearing the messages, appointing a work for each one severally. now one of these boys who was playing with the rest, the son of artembares a man of repute among the medes, did not do that which cyrus appointed him to do; therefore cyrus bade the other boys seize him hand and foot, and when they obeyed his command he dealt with the boy very roughly, scourging him. but he, so soon as he was let go, being made much more angry because he considered that he had been treated with indignity, went down to the city and complained to his father of the treatment which he had met with from cyrus, calling him not cyrus, for this was not yet his name, but the son of the herdsman of astyages. and artembares in the anger of the moment went at once to astyages, taking the boy with him, and he declared that he had suffered things that were unfitting and said: "o king, by thy slave, the son of a herdsman, we have been thus outraged," showing him the shoulders of his son. . and astyages having heard and seen this, wishing to punish the boy to avenge the honour of artembares, sent for both the herdsman and his son. and when both were present, astyages looked at cyrus and said: "didst thou dare, being the son of so mean a father as this, to treat with such unseemly insult the son of this man who is first in my favour?" and he replied thus: "master, i did so to him with right. for the boys of the village, of whom he also was one, in their play set me up as king over them, for i appeared to them most fitted for this place. now the other boys did what i commanded them, but this one disobeyed and paid no regard, until at last he received the punishment due. if therefore for this i am worthy to suffer any evil, here i stand before thee." . while the boy thus spoke, there came upon astyages a sense of recognition of him and the lineaments of his face seemed to him to resemble his own, and his answer appeared to be somewhat over free for his station, while the time of the laying forth seemed to agree with the age of the boy. being struck with amazement by these things, for a time he was speechless; and having at length with difficulty recovered himself, he said, desiring to dismiss artembares, in order that he might get the herdsman by himself alone and examine him: "artembares, i will so order these things that thou and thy son shall have no cause to find fault"; and so he dismissed artembares, and the servants upon the command of astyages led cyrus within. and when the herdsman was left alone with the king, astyages being alone with him asked whence he had received the boy, and who it was who had delivered the boy to him. and the herdsman said that he was his own son, and that the mother was living with him still as his wife. but astyages said that he was not well advised in desiring to be brought to extreme necessity, and as he said this he made a sign to the spearmen of his guard to seize him. so he, as he was being led away to the torture, then declared the story as it really was; and beginning from the beginning he went through the whole, telling the truth about it, and finally ended with entreaties, asking that he would grant him pardon. . so when the herdsman had made known the truth, astyages now cared less about him, but with harpagos he was very greatly displeased and bade his spearmen summon him. and when harpagos came, astyages asked him thus: "by what death, harpagos, didst thou destroy the child whom i delivered to thee, born of my daughter?" and harpagos, seeing that the herdsman was in the king's palace, turned not to any false way of speech, lest he should be convicted and found out, but said as follows: "o king, so soon as i received the child, i took counsel and considered how i should do according to thy mind, and how without offence to thy command i might not be guilty of murder against thy daughter and against thyself. i did therefore thus:�i called this herdsman and delivered the child to him, saying first that thou wert he who bade him slay it�and in this at least i did not lie, for thou didst so command. i delivered it, i say, to this man commanding him to place it upon a desolate mountain, and to stay by it and watch it until it should die, threatening him with all kinds of punishment if he should fail to accomplish this. and when he had done that which was ordered and the child was dead, i sent the most trusted of my eunuchs and through them i saw and buried the child. thus, o king, it happened about this matter, and the child had this death which i say." . so harpagos declared the truth, and astyages concealed the anger which he kept against him for that which had come to pass, and first he related the matter over again to harpagos according as he had been told it by the herdsman, and afterwards, when it had been thus repeated by him, he ended by saying that the child was alive and that that which had come to pass was well, "for," continued he, "i was greatly troubled by that which had been done to this child, and i thought it no light thing that i had been made at variance with my daughter. therefore consider that this is a happy change of fortune, and first send thy son to be with the boy who is newly come, and then, seeing that i intend to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the preservation of the boy to those gods to whom that honour belongs, be here thyself to dine with me." . when harpagos heard this, he did reverence and thought it a great matter that his offence had turned out for his profit and moreover that he had been invited to dinner with happy augury; and so he went to his house. and having entered it straightway, he sent forth his son, for he had one only son of about thirteen years old, bidding him go to the palace of astyages and do whatsoever the king should command; and he himself being overjoyed told his wife that which had befallen him. but astyages, when the son of harpagos arrived, cut his throat and divided him limb from limb, and having roasted some pieces of the flesh and boiled others he caused them to be dressed for eating and kept them ready. and when the time arrived for dinner and the other guests were present and also harpagos, then before the other guests and before astyages himself were placed tables covered with flesh of sheep; but before harpagos was placed the flesh of his own son, all but the head and the hands and the feet, and these were laid aside covered up in a basket. then when it seemed that harpagos was satisfied with food, astyages asked him whether he had been pleased with the banquet; and when harpagos said that he had been very greatly pleased, they who had been commanded to do this brought to him the head of his son covered up, together with the hands and the feet; and standing near they bade harpagos uncover and take of them that which he desired. so when harpagos obeyed and uncovered, he saw the remains of his son; and seeing them he was not overcome with amazement but contained himself: and astyages asked him whether he perceived of what animal he had been eating the flesh: and he said that he perceived, and that whatsoever the king might do was well pleasing to him. thus having made answer and taking up the parts of the flesh which still remained he went to his house; and after that, i suppose, he would gather all the parts together and bury them. . on harpagos astyages laid this penalty; and about cyrus he took thought, and summoned the same men of the magians who had given judgment about his dream in the manner which has been said: and when they came, astyages asked how they had given judgment about his vision; and they spoke according to the same manner, saying that the child must have become king if he had lived on and had not died before. he made answer to them thus: "the child is alive and not dead: and while he was dwelling in the country, the boys of the village appointed him king; and he performed completely all those things which they do who are really kings; for he exercised rule, appointed to their places spearmen of the guard and doorkeepers and bearers of messages and all else. now therefore, to what does it seem to you that these things tend?" the magians said: "if the child is still alive and became king without any arrangement, be thou confident concerning him and have good courage, for he shall not be ruler again the second time; since some even of our oracles have had but small results, and that at least which has to do with dreams comes often in the end to a feeble accomplishment." astyages made answer in these words: "i myself also, o magians, am most disposed to believe that this is so, namely that since the boy was named king the dream has had its fulfilment and that this boy is no longer a source of danger to me. nevertheless give counsel to me, having well considered what is likely to be most safe both for my house and for you." replying to this the magians said: "to us also, o king, it is of great consequence that thy rule should stand firm; for in the other case it is transferred to strangers, coming round to this boy who is a persian, and we being medes are made slaves and become of no account in the eyes of the persians, seeing that we are of different race; but while thou art established as our king, who art one of our own nation, we both have our share of rule and receive great honours from thee. thus then we must by all means have a care of thee and of thy rule. and now, if we saw in this anything to cause fear, we would declare all to thee beforehand: but as the dream has had its issue in a trifling manner, both we ourselves are of good cheer and we exhort thee to be so likewise: and as for this boy, send him away from before thine eyes to the persians and to his parents." . when he heard this astyages rejoiced, and calling cyrus spoke to him thus: "my son, i did thee wrong by reason of a vision of a dream which has not come to pass, but thou art yet alive by thine own destiny; now therefore go in peace to the land of the persians, and i will send with thee men to conduct thee: and when thou art come thither, thou shalt find a father and a mother not after the fashion of mitradates the herdsman and his wife." . thus having spoken astyages sent cyrus away; and when he had ed and come to the house of cambyses, his parents received him; and after that, when they learnt who he was, they welcomed him not a little, for they had supposed without doubt that their son had perished straightway after his birth; and they inquired in what manner he had survived. and he told them, saying that before this he had not known but had been utterly in error; on the way, however, he had learnt all his own fortunes: for he had supposed without doubt that he was the son of the herdsman of astyages, but since his journey from the city began he had learnt the whole story from those who conducted him. and he said that he had been brought up by the wife of the herdsman, and continued to praise her throughout, so that kyno was the chief person in his tale. and his parents took up this name from him, and in order that their son might be thought by the persians to have been preserved in a more supernatural manner, they set on foot a report that cyrus when he was exposed had been reared by a bitch: and from that source has come this report. . then as cyrus grew to be a man, being of all those of his age the most courageous and the best beloved, harpagos sought to become his friend and sent him gifts, because he desired to take vengeance on astyages. for he saw not how from himself, who was in a private station, punishment should come upon astyages; but when he saw cyrus growing up, he endeavoured to make him an ally, finding a likeness between the fortunes of cyrus and his own. and even before that time he had effected something: for astyages being harsh towards the medes, harpagos communicated severally with the chief men of the medes, and persuaded them that they must make cyrus their leader and cause astyages to cease from being king. when he had effected this and when all was ready, then harpagos wishing to make known his design to cyrus, who lived among the persians, could do it no other way, seeing that the roads were watched, but devised a scheme as follows:�he made ready a hare, and having cut open its belly but without pulling off any of the fur, he put into it, just as it was, a piece of paper, having written upon it that which he thought good; and then he sewed up again the belly of the hare, and giving nets as if he were a hunter to that one of his servants whom he trusted most, he sent him away to the land of the persians, enjoining him by word of mouth to give the hare to cyrus, and to tell him at the same time to open it with his own hands and let no one else be present when he did so. . this then was accomplished, and cyrus having received from him the hare, cut it open; and having found within it the paper he took and read it over. and the writing said this: "son of cambyses, over thee the gods keep guard, for otherwise thou wouldst never have come to so much good fortune. do thou therefore take vengeance on astyages who is thy murderer, for so far as his will is concerned thou art dead, but by the care of the gods and of me thou art still alive; and this i think thou hast long ago learnt from first to last, both how it happened about thyself, and also what things i have suffered from astyages, because i did not slay thee but gave thee to the herdsman. if therefore thou wilt be guided by me, thou shalt be ruler of all that land over which now astyages is ruler. persuade the persians to revolt, and march any army against the medes: and whether i shall be appointed leader of the army against thee, or any other of the medes who are in repute, thou hast what thou desirest; for these will be the first to attempt to destroy astyages, revolting from him and coming over to thy party. consider then that here at least all is ready, and therefore do this and do it with speed." . cyrus having heard this began to consider in what manner he might most skilfully persuade the persians to revolt, and on consideration he found that this was the most convenient way, and so in fact he did:�he wrote first on a paper that which he desired to write, and he made an assembly of the persians. then he unfolded the paper and reading from it said that astyages appointed him commander of the persians; "and now, o persians," he continued, "i give you command to come to me each one with a reaping-hook." cyrus then proclaimed this command. (now there are of the persians many tribes, and some of them cyrus gathered together and persuaded to revolt from the medes, namely those, upon which all the other persians depend, the pasargadai, the maraphians and the maspians, and of these the pasargadai are the most noble, of whom also the achaimenidai are a clan, whence are sprung the perseïd kings. but other persian tribes there are, as follows:�the panthaliaians, the derusiaians and the germanians, these are all tillers of the soil; and the rest are nomad tribes, namely the daoi, mardians, dropicans and sagartians.) . now there was a certain region of the persian land which was overgrown with thorns, extending some eighteen or twenty furlongs in each direction; and when all had come with that which they had been before commanded to bring, cyrus bade them clear this region for cultivation within one day: and when the persians had achieved the task proposed, then he bade them come to him on the next day bathed and clean. meanwhile cyrus, having gathered together in one place all the flocks of goats and sheep and the herds of cattle belonging to his father, slaughtered them and prepared with them to entertain the host of the persians, and moreover with wine and other provisions of the most agreeable kind. so when the persians came on the next day, he made them recline in a meadow and feasted them. and when they had finished dinner, cyrus asked them whether that which they had on the former day or that which they had now seemed to them preferable. they said that the difference between them was great, for the former day had for them nothing but evil, and the present day nothing but good. taking up this saying cyrus proceeded to lay bare his whole design, saying: "men of the persians, thus it is with you. if ye will do as i say, ye have these and ten thousand other good things, with no servile labour; but if ye will not do as i say, ye have labours like that of yesterday innumerable. now therefore do as i say and make yourselves free: for i seem to myself to have been born by providential fortune to take these matters in hand; and i think that ye are not worse men than the medes, either in other matters or in those which have to do with war. consider then that this is so, and make revolt from astyages forthwith." . so the persians having obtained a leader willingly attempted to set themselves free, since they had already for a long time been indignant to be ruled by the medes: but when astyages heard that cyrus was acting thus, he sent a messenger and summoned him; and cyrus bade the messenger report to astyages that he would be with him sooner than he would himself desire. so astyages hearing this armed all the medes, and blinded by divine providence he appointed harpagos to be the leader of the army, forgetting what he had done to him. then when the medes had marched out and began to fight with the persians, some of them continued the battle, namely those who had not been made partakers in the design, while others went over to the persians; but the greater number were wilfully slack and fled. . so when the median army had been shamefully dispersed, so soon as astyages heard of it he said, threatening cyrus: "but not even so shall cyrus at least escape punishment." thus having spoken he first impaled the magian interpreters of dreams who had persuaded him to let cyrus go, and then he armed those of the medes, youths and old men, who had been left behind in the city. these he led out and having engaged battle with the persians he was worsted, and astyages himself was taken alive, and he lost also those of the medes whom he had led forth. . then when astyages was a prisoner, harpagos came and stood near him and rejoiced over him and insulted him; and besides other things which he said to grieve him, he asked him especially how it pleased him to be a slave instead of a king, making reference to that dinner at which astyages had feasted him with the flesh of his own son. he looking at him asked him in whether he claimed the work of cyrus as his own deed: and harpagos said that since he had written the letter, the deed was justly his. then astyages declared him to be at the same time the most unskilful and the most unjust of men; the most unskilful because, when it was in his power to become king (as it was, if that which had now been done was really brought about by him), he had conferred the chief power on another, and the most unjust, because on account of that dinner he had reduced the medes to slavery. for if he must needs confer the kingdom on some other and not keep it himself, it was more just to give this good thing to one of the medes rather than to one of the persians; whereas now the medes, who were guiltless of this, had become slaves instead of masters, and the persians who formerly were slaves of the medes had now become their masters. . astyages then, having been king for five-and-thirty years, was thus caused to cease from being king; and the medes stooped under the yoke of the persians because of his cruelty, after they had ruled asia above the river halys for one hundred and twenty-eight years, except during that period for which the scythians had rule. afterwards however it repented them that they had done this, and they revolved from dareios, and having revolted they were subdued again, being conquered in a battle. at this time then, i say, in the reign of astyages, the persians with cyrus rose up against the medes and from that time forth were rulers of asia: but as for astyages, cyrus did no harm to him besides, but kept him with himself until he died. thus born and bred cyrus became king; and after this he subdued croesus, who was the first to begin the quarrel, as i have before said; and having subdued him he then became ruler of all asia. . these are the customs, so far as i know, which the persians practise:�images and temples and altars they do not account it lawful to erect, nay they even charge with folly those who do these things; and this, as it seems to me, because they do not account the gods to be in the likeness of men, as do the hellenes. but it is their wont to perform sacrifices to zeus going up to the most lofty of the mountains, and the whole circle of the heavens they call zeus: and they sacrifice to the sun and the moon and the earth, to fire and to water and to the winds: these are the only gods to whom they have sacrificed ever from the first; but they have learnt also to sacrifice to aphrodite urania, having learnt it both from the assyrians and the arabians; and the assyrians call aphrodite mylitta, the arabians alitta, and the persians mitra. . now this is the manner of sacrifice for the gods aforesaid which is established among the persians:�they make no altars neither do they kindle fire; and when they mean to sacrifice they use no libation nor music of the pipe nor chaplets nor meal for sprinkling; but when a man wishes to sacrifice to any one of the gods, he leads the animal for sacrifice to an unpolluted place and calls upon the god, having his tiara wreathed round generally with a branch of myrtle. for himself alone separately the man who sacrifices may not request good things in his prayer, but he prays that it may be well with all the persians and with the king; for he himself also is included of course in the whole body of persians. and when he has cut up the victim into pieces and boiled the flesh, he spreads a layer of the freshest grass and especially clover, upon which he places forthwith all the pieces of flesh; and when he has placed them in order, a magian man stands by them and chants over them a theogony (for of this nature they say that their incantation is), seeing that without a magian it is not lawful for them to make sacrifices. then after waiting a short time the sacrificer carries away the flesh and uses it for whatever purpose he pleases. . and of all days their wont is to honour most that on which they were born, each one: on this they think it right to set out a feast more liberal than on other days; and in this feast the wealthier of them set upon the table an ox or a horse or a camel or an ass, roasted whole in an oven, and the poor among them set out small animals in the same way. they have few solid dishes, but many served up after as dessert, and these not in a single course; and for this reason the persians say that the hellenes leave off dinner hungry, because after dinner they have nothing worth mentioning served up as dessert, whereas if any good dessert were served up they would not stop eating so soon. to wine-drinking they are very much given, and it is not permitted for a man to vomit or to make water in presence of another. thus do they provide against these things; and they are wont to deliberate when drinking hard about the most important of their affairs, and whatsoever conclusion has pleased them in their deliberation, this on the next day, when they are sober, the master of the house in which they happen to be when they deliberate lays before them for discussion: and if it pleases them when they are sober also, they adopt it, but if it does not please them, they let it go: and that on which they have had the first deliberation when they are sober, they consider again when they are drinking. . when they meet one another in the roads, by this you may discern whether those who meet are of equal rank,�for instead of greeting by words they kiss one another on the mouth; but if one of them is a little inferior to the other, they kiss one another on the cheeks, and if one is of much less noble rank than the other, he falls down before him and does worship to him. and they honour of all most after themselves those nations which dwell nearest to them, and next those which dwell next nearest, and so they go on giving honour in proportion to distance; and they hold least in honour those who dwell furthest off from themselves, esteeming themselves to be by far the best of all the human race on every point, and thinking that others possess merit according to the proportion which is here stated, and that those who dwell furthest from themselves are the worst. and under the supremacy of the medes the various nations used also to govern one another according to the same rule as the persians observe in giving honour, the medes governing the whole and in particular those who dwelt nearest to themselves, and these having rule over those who bordered upon them, and those again over the nations that were next to them: for the race went forward thus ever from government by themselves to government through others. . the persians more than any other men admit foreign usages; for they both wear the median dress judging it to be more comely than their own, and also for fighting the egyptian corslet: moreover they adopt all kinds of luxuries when they hear of them, and in particular they have learnt from the hellenes to have commerce with boys. they marry each one several lawful wives, and they get also a much larger number of concubines. . it is established as a sign of manly excellence next after excellence in fight, to be able to show many sons; and to those who have most the king sends gifts every year: for they consider number to be a source of strength. and they educate their children, beginning at five years old and going on till twenty, in three things only, in riding, in shooting, and in speaking the truth: but before the boy is five years old he does not come into the presence of his father, but lives with the women; and it is so done for this reason, that if the child should die while he is being bred up, he may not be the cause of any grief to his father. . i commend this custom of theirs, and also the one which is next to be mentioned, namely that neither the king himself shall put any to death for one cause alone, nor any of the other persians for one cause alone shall do hurt that is irremediable to any of his own servants; but if after reckoning he finds that the wrongs done are more in number and greater than the services rendered, then only he gives vent to his anger. moreover they say that no one ever killed his own father or mother, but whatever deeds have been done which seemed to be of this nature, if examined must necessarily, they say, be found to be due either to changelings or to children of adulterous birth; for, say they, it is not reasonable to suppose that the true parent would be killed by his own son. . whatever things it is not lawful for them to do, these it is not lawful for them even to speak of: and the most disgraceful thing in their estimation is to tell an lie, and next to this to owe money, this last for many other reasons, but especially because it is necessary, they say, for him who owes money, also sometimes to tell lies: and whosoever of the men of the city has leprosy or whiteness of skin, he does not come into a city nor mingle with the other persians; and they say that he has these diseases because he has offended in some way against the sun: but a stranger who is taken by these diseases, in many regions they drive out of the country altogether, and also white doves, alleging against them the same cause. and into a river they neither make water nor spit, neither do they wash their hands in it, nor allow any other to do these things, but they reverence rivers very greatly. . this moreover also has chanced to them, which the persians have themselves failed to notice but i have not failed to do so:�their names, which are formed to correspond with their bodily shapes or their magnificence of station, end all with the same letter, that letter which the dorians call san and the ionians sigma; with this you will find, if you examine the matter, that all the persian names end, not some with this and others with other letters, but all alike. . so much i am able to say for certain from my own knowledge about them: but what follows is reported about their dead as a secret mystery and not with clearness, namely that the body of a persian man is not buried until it has been torn by a bird or a dog. (the magians i know for a certainty have this practice, for they do it openly.) however that may be, the persians cover the body with wax and then bury it in the earth. now the magians are distinguished in many ways from other men, as also from the priests in egypt: for these last esteem it a matter of purity to kill no living creature except the animals which they sacrifice; but the magians kill with their own hands all creatures except dogs and men, and they even make this a great end to aim at, killing both ants and serpents and all other creeping and flying things. about this custom then be it as it was from the first established; and i now to the former narrative. . the ionians and aiolians, as soon as the lydians had been subdued by the persians, sent messengers to cyrus at sardis, desiring to be his subjects on the same terms as they had been subjects of croesus. and when he heard that which they proposed to him, he spoke to them a fable, saying that a certain player on the pipe saw fishes in the sea and played on his pipe, supposing that they would come out to land; but being deceived in his expectation, he took a casting-net and enclosed a great multitude of the fishes and drew them forth from the water: and when he saw them leaping about, he said to the fishes: "stop dancing i pray you now, seeing that ye would not come out and dance before when i piped." cyrus spoke this fable to the ionians and aiolians for this reason, because the ionians had refused to comply before, when cyrus himself by a messenger requested them to revolt from croesus, while now when the conquest had been made they were ready to submit to cyrus. thus he said to them in anger, and the ionians, when they heard this answer brought back to their cities, put walls round about them severally, and gathered together to the panionion, all except the men of miletos, for with these alone cyrus had sworn an agreement on the same terms as the lydians had granted. the rest of the ionians resolved by common consent to send messengers to sparta, to ask the spartans to help the ionians. . these ionians to whom belongs the panionion had the fortune to build their cities in the most favourable position for climate and seasons of any men whom we know: for neither the regions above ionia nor those below, neither those towards the east nor those towards the west, produce the same results as ionia itself, the regions in the one direction being oppressed by cold and moisture, and those in the other by heat and drought. and these do not use all the same speech, but have four different variations of language. first of their cities on the side of the south lies miletos, and next to it myus and priene. these are settlements made in caria, and speak the same language with one another; and the following are in lydia,�ephesos, colophon, lebedos, teos, clazomenai, phocaia: these cities resemble not at all those mentioned before in the speech which they use, but they agree one with another. there remain besides three ionian cities, of which two are established in the islands of samos and chios, and one is built upon the mainland, namely erythrai: now the men of chios and of erythrai use the same form of language, but the samians have one for themselves alone. thus there result four separate forms of language. . of these ionians then those of miletos were sheltered from danger, since they had sworn an agreement; and those of them who lived in islands had no cause for fear, for the phenicians were not yet subjects of the persians and the persians themselves were not sea-men. now these were parted off from the other ionians for no other reason than this:�the whole hellenic nation was at that time weak, but of all its races the ionian was much the weakest and of least account: except athens, indeed, it had no considerable city. now the other ionians, and among them the athenians, avoided the name, not wishing to be called ionians, nay even now i perceive that the greater number of them are ashamed of the name: but these twelve cities not only prided themselves on the name but established a temple of their own, to which they gave the name of panionion, and they made resolution not to grant a share in it to any other ionians (nor indeed did any ask to share it except those of smyrna); , just as the dorians of that district which is now called the five cities but was formerly called the six cities, take care not to admit any of the neighbouring dorians to the temple of triopion, and even exclude from sharing in it those of their own body who commit any offence as regards the temple. for example, in the games of the triopian apollo they used formerly to set bronze tripods as prizes for the victors, and the rule was that those who received them should not carry them out of the temple but dedicate them then and there to the god. there was a man then of halicarnassos, whose name was agasicles, who being a victor paid no regard to this rule, but carried away the tripod to his own house and hung it up there upon a nail. on this ground the other five cities, lindos, ialysos and cameiros, cos and cnidos, excluded the sixth city halicarnassos from sharing in the temple. . upon these they laid this penalty: but as for the ionians, i think that the reason why they made of themselves twelve cities and would not receive any more into their body, was because when they dwelt in peloponnesus there were of them twelve divisions, just as now there are twelve divisions of the achaians who drove the ionians out: for first, (beginning from the side of sikyon) comes pellene, then aigeira and aigai, in which last is the river crathis with a perpetual flow (whence the river of the same name in italy received its name), and bura and helike, to which the ionians fled for refuge when they were worsted by the achaians in fight, and aigion and rhypes and patreis and phareis and olenos, where is the great river peiros, and dyme and tritaieis, of which the last alone has an inland position. these form now twelve divisions of the achaians, and in former times they were divisions of the ionians. . for this reason then the ionians also made for themselves twelve cities; for at any rate to say that these are any more ionians than the other ionians, or have at all a nobler descent, is mere folly, considering that a large part of them are abantians from euboea, who have no share even in the name of ionia, and minyai of orchomenos have been mingled with them, and cadmeians and dryopians and phokians who seceded from their native state and molossians and pelasgians of arcadia and dorians of epidauros and many other races have been mingled with them; and those of them who set forth to their settlements from the city hall of athens and who esteem themselves the most noble by descent of the ionians, these, i say, brought no women with them to their settlement, but took carian women, whose parents they slew: and on account of this slaughter these women laid down for themselves a rule, imposing oaths on one another, and handed it on to their daughters, that they should never eat with their husbands, nor should a wife call her own husband by name, for this reason, because the ionians had slain their fathers and husbands and children and then having done this had them to wife. this happened at miletos. . moreover some of them set lykian kings over them, descendants of glaucos and hippolochos, while others were ruled by cauconians of pylos, descendants of codros the son of melanthos, and others again by princes of the two races combined. since however these hold on to the name more than the other ionians, let them be called, if they will, the ionians of truly pure descent; but in fact all are ionians who have their descent from athens and who keep the feast of apaturia; and this all keep except the men of ephesos and colophon: for these alone of all the ionians do not keep the apaturia, and that on the ground of some murder committed. . now the panionion is a sacred place on the north side of mycale, set apart by common agreement of the ionians for poseidon of helike ; and this mycale is a promontory of the mainland running out westwards towards samos, where the ionians gathering together from their cities used to hold a festival which they called the panionia. (and not only the feasts of the ionians but also those of all the hellenes equally are subject to this rule, that their names all end in the same letter, just like the names of the persians.) these then are the ionian cities: , and those of aiolia are as follows:�kyme, which is called phriconis, larisai, neon-teichos, temnos, killa, notion, aigiroëssa, pitane, aigaiai, myrina, gryneia; these are the ancient cities of the aiolians, eleven in number, since one, smyrna, was severed from them by the ionians; for these cities, that is those on the mainland, used also formerly to be twelve in number. and these aiolians had the fortune to settle in a land which is more fertile than that of the ionians but in respect of climate less favoured. . now the aiolians lost smyrna in the following manner:�certain men of colophon, who had been worsted in party strife and had been driven from their native city, were received there for refuge: and after this the colophonian exiles watched for a time when the men of smyrna were celebrating a festival to dionysos outside the walls, and then they closed the gates against them and got possession of the city. after this, when the whole body of aiolians came to the rescue, they made an agreement that the ionians should give up the movable goods, and that on this condition the aiolians should abandon smyrna. when the men of smyrna had done this, the remaining eleven cities divided them amongst themselves and made them their own citizens. . these then are the aiolian cities upon the mainland, with the exception of those situated on mount ida, for these are separate from the rest. and of those which are in the islands, there are five in lesbos, for the sixth which was situated in lesbos, namely arisba, was enslaved by the men of methymna, though its citizens were of the same race as they; and in tenedos there is one city, and another in what are called the "hundred isles." now the lesbians and the men of tenedos, like those ionians who dwelt in the islands, had no cause for fear; but the remaining cities came to a common agreement to follow the ionians whithersoever they should lead. . now when the messengers from the ionians and aiolians came to sparta (for this business was carried out with speed), they chose before all others to speak for them the phocaian, whose name was pythermos. he then put upon him a purple cloak, in order that as many as possible of the spartans might hear of it and come together, and having been introduced before the assembly he spoke at length, asking the spartans to help them. the lacedemonians however would not listen to him, but resolved on the contrary not to help the ionians. so they departed, and the lacedemonians, having dismissed the messengers of the ionians, sent men notwithstanding in a ship of fifty oars, to find out, as i imagine, about the affairs of cyrus and about ionia. these when they came to phocaia sent to sardis the man of most repute among them, whose name was lacrines, to report to cyrus the saying of the lacedemonians, bidding him do hurt to no city of the hellas, since they would not permit it. . when the herald had spoken thus, cyrus is said to have asked those of the hellenes whom he had with him, what men the lacedemonians were and how many in number, that they made this proclamation to him; and hearing their answer he said to the spartan herald: "never yet did i fear men such as these, who have a place appointed in the midst of their city where they gather together and deceive one another by false oaths: and if i continue in good health, not the misfortunes of the ionians will be for them a subject of talk, but rather their own." these words cyrus threw out scornfully with reference to the hellenes in general, because they have got for themselves markets and practise buying and selling there; for the persians themselves are not wont to use markets nor have they any market-place at all. after this he entrusted sardis to tabalos a persian, and the gold both of croesus and of the other lydians he gave to pactyas a lydian to take charge of, and himself marched away to agbatana, taking with him croesus and making for the present no account of the ionians. for babylon stood in his way still, as also the bactrian nation and the sacans and the egyptians; and against these he meant to make expeditions himself, while sending some other commander about the ionians. . but when cyrus had marched away from sardis, pactyas caused the lydians to revolt from tabalos and from cyrus. this man went down to the sea, and having in his possession all the gold that there had been in sardis, he hired for himself mercenaries and persuaded the men of the sea-coast to join his expedition. so he marched on sardis and besieged tabalos, having shut himself up in the citadel. . hearing this on his way, cyrus said to croesus as follows: "croesus, what end shall i find of these things which are coming to pass? the lydians will not cease as it seems, from giving trouble to me and from having it themselves. i doubt me if it were not best to sell them all as slaves; for as it is, i see that i have done in like manner as if one should slay the father and then spare his sons: just so i took prisoner and am carrying away thee, who wert much more than the father of the lydians, while to the lydians themselves i delivered up their city; and can i feel surprise after this that they have revolted from me?" thus he said what was in his mind, but croesus answered him as follows, fearing lest he should destroy sardis: "o king, that which thou hast said is not without reason; but do not thou altogether give vent to thy wrath, nor destroy an ancient city which is guiltless both of the former things and also of those which have come to pass now: for as to the former things it was i who did them and i bear the consequences heaped upon my head; and as for what is now being done, since the wrongdoer is pactyas to whom thou didst entrust the charge of sardis, let him pay the penalty. but the lydians i pray thee pardon, and lay upon them commands as follows, in order that they may not revolt nor be a cause of danger to thee:�send to them and forbid them to possess weapons of war, but bid them on the other hand put on tunics under their outer garments and be shod with buskins, and proclaim to them that they train their sons to play the lyre and the harp and to be retail-dealers; and soon thou shalt see, o king, that they have become women instead of men, so that there will be no fear that they will revolt from thee." . croesus, i say, suggested to him this, perceiving that this was better for the lydians than to be reduced to slavery and sold; for he knew that if he did not offer a sufficient reason, he would not persuade cyrus to change his mind, and he feared lest at some future time, if they should escape the present danger, the lydians might revolt from the persians and be destroyed. and cyrus was greatly pleased with the suggestion made and slackened from his wrath, saying that he agreed with his advice. then he called mazares a mede, and laid charge upon him to proclaim to the lydians that which croesus suggested, and moreover to sell into slavery all the rest who had joined with the lydians in the expedition to sardis, and finally by all means to bring pactyas himself alive to cyrus. . having given this charge upon the road, he continued his march to the native land of the persians; but pactyas hearing that an army was approaching to fight against him was struck with fear and fled away forthwith to kyme. then mazares the mede marched upon sardis with a certain portion of the army of cyrus, and as he did not find pactyas or his followers any longer at sardis, he first compelled the lydians to perform the commands of cyrus, and by his commands the lydians changed the whole manner of their life. after this mazares proceeded to send messengers to kyme bidding them give up pactyas: and the men of kyme resolved to refer to the god at branchidai the question what counsel they should follow. for there was there an oracle established of old time, which all the ionians and aiolians were wont to consult; and this place is in the territory of miletos above the port of panormos. . so the men of kyme sent messengers to the branchidai to inquire of the god, and they asked what course they should take about pactyas so as to do that which was pleasing to the gods. when they thus inquired, the answer was given them that they should deliver up pactyas to the persians: and the men of kyme, having heard this answer reported, were disposed to give him up. then when the mass of the people were thus disposed, aristodicos the son of heracleides, a man of repute among the citizens, stopped the men of kyme from doing so, having distrust of the answer and thinking that those sent to inquire were not speaking the truth; until at last other messengers were sent to the oracle to ask a second time about pactyas, and of them aristodicos was one. . when these came to branchidai, aristodicos stood forth from the rest and consulted the oracle, asking as follows: lord, there came to us a suppliant for protection pactyas the lydian, flying from a violent death at the hands of the persians, and they demand him from us, bidding the men of kyme give him up. but we, though we fear the power of the persians, yet have not ventured up to this time to deliver to them the suppliant, until thy counsel shall be clearly manifested to us, saying which of the two things we ought to do." he thus inquired, but the god again declared to them the same answer, bidding them deliver up pactyas to the persians. upon this aristodicos with deliberate purpose did as follows:�he went all round the temple destroying the nests of the sparrows and of all the other kinds of birds which had been hatched on the temple: and while he was doing this, it is said that a voice came from the inner shrine directed to aristodicos and speaking thus: "thou most impious of men, why dost thou dare to do this? dost thou carry away by force from my temple the suppliants for my protection?" and aristodicos, it is said, not being at all at a loss replied to this: "lord, dost thou thus come to the assistance of thy suppliants, and yet biddest the men of kyme deliver up theirs?" and the god answered him again thus: "yea, i bid you do so, that ye may perish the more quickly for your impiety; so that ye may not at any future time come to the oracle to ask about delivering up of suppliants." . when the men of kyme heard this saying reported, not wishing either to be destroyed by giving him up or to be besieged by keeping him with them, they sent him away to mytilene. those of mytilene however, when mazares sent messages to them, were preparing to deliver up pactyas for a price, but what the price was i cannot say for certain, since the bargain was never completed; for the men of kyme, when they learnt that this was being done by the mytilenians, sent a vessel to lesbos and conveyed away pactyas to chios. after this he was dragged forcibly from the temple of athene poliuchos by the chians and delivered up: and the chians delivered him up receiving atarneus in , (now this atarneus is a region of mysia opposition lesbos). so the persians having received pactyas kept him under guard, meaning to produce him before cyrus. and a long time elapsed during which none of the chians either used barley-meal grown in this region of atarneus, for pouring out in sacrifice to any god, or baked cakes for offering of the corn which grew there, but all the produce of this land was excluded from every kind of sacred service. . the men of chios had then delivered up pactyas; and after this mazares made expedition against those who had joined in besieging tabalos: and first he reduced to slavery those of priene, then he overran the whole plain of the maiander making spoil of it for his army, and magnesia in the same manner: and straightway after this he fell sick and died. . after he was dead, harpagos came down to take his place in command, being also a mede by race (this was the man whom the king of the medes astyages feasted with the unlawful banquet, and who helped to give the kingdom to cyrus). this man, being appointed commander then by cyrus, came to ionia and proceeded to take the cities by throwing up mounds against them: for when he had enclosed any people within their walls, then he threw up mounds against the walls and took their city by storm; and the first city of ionia upon which he made an attempt was phocaia. . now these phocaians were the first of the hellenes who made long voyages, and these are they who discovered the adriatic and tyrsenia and iberia and tartessos: and they made voyages not in round ships, but in vessels of fifty oars. these came to tartessos and became friends with the king of the tartessians whose name was arganthonios: he was ruler of the tartessians for eighty years and lived in all one hundred and twenty. with this man, i say, the phocaians became so exceedingly friendly, that first he bade them leave ionia and dwell wherever they desired in his own land; and as he did not prevail upon the phocaians to do this, afterwards, hearing from them of the mede how his power was increasing, he gave them money to build a wall about their city: and he did this without sparing, for the circuit of the wall is many furlongs in extent, and it is built all of large stones closely fitted together. . the wall of the phocaians was made in this manner: and harpagos having marched his army against them began to besiege them, at the same time holding forth to them proposals and saying that it was enough to satisfy him if the phocaians were willing to throw down one battlement of their wall and dedicate one single house. but the phocaians, being very greatly grieved at the thought of subjection, said that they wished to deliberate about the matter for one day and after that they would give their answer; and they asked him to withdraw his army from the wall while they were deliberating. harpagos said that he knew very well what they were meaning to do, nevertheless he was willing to allow them to deliberate. so in the time that followed, when harpagos had withdrawn his army from the wall, the phocaians drew down their fifty-oared galleys to the sea, put into them their children and women and all their movable goods, and besides them the images out of the temples and the other votive offerings except such as were made of bronze or stone or consisted of paintings, all the rest, i say, they put into the ships, and having embarked themselves they sailed towards chios; and the persians obtained possession of phocaia, the city being deserted of the inhabitants. . but as for the phocaians, since the men of chios would not sell them at their request the islands called oinussai, from the fear lest these islands might be made a seat of trade and their island might be shut out, therefore they set out for kyrnos: for in kyrnos twenty years before this they had established a city named alalia, in accordance with an oracle, (now arganthonios by that time was dead). and when they were setting out for kyrnos they first sailed to phocaia and slaughtered the persian garrison, to whose charge harpagos had delivered the city; then after they had achieved this they made solemn imprecations on any one of them who should be left behind from their voyage, and moreover they sank a mass of iron in the sea and swore that not until that mass should appear again on the surface would they to phocaia. however as they were setting forth to kyrnos, more than half of the citizens were seized with yearning and regret for their city and for their native land, and they proved false to their oath and sailed back to phocaia. but those of them who kept the oath still, weighed anchor from the islands of oinussai and sailed. . when these came to kyrnos, for five years they dwelt together with those who had come thither before, and they founded temples there. then, since they plundered the property of all their neighbours, the tyrsenians and carthaginians made expedition against them by agreement with one another, each with sixty ships. and the phocaians also manned their vessels, sixty in number, and came to meet the enemy in that which is called the sardinian sea: and when they encountered one another in the sea-fight the phocaians won a kind of cadmean victory, for forty of their ships were destroyed and the remaining twenty were disabled, having had their prows bent aside. so they sailed in to alalia and took up their children and their women and their other possessions as much as their ships proved capable of carrying, and then they left kyrnos behind them and sailed to rhegion. . but as for the crews of the ships that were destroyed, the carthaginians and tyrsenians obtained much the greater number of them, and these they brought to land and killed by stoning. after this the men of agylla found that everything which passed by the spot where the phocaians were laid after being stoned, became either distorted, or crippled, or paralysed, both small cattle and beasts of burden and human creatures: so the men of agylla sent to delphi desiring to purge themselves of the offence; and the pythian prophetess bade them do that which the men of agylla still continue to perform, that is to say, they make great sacrifices in honour of the dead, and hold at the place a contest of athletics and horse-racing. these then of the phocaians had the fate which i have said; but those of them who took refuge at rhegion started from thence and took possession of that city in the land of oinotria which now is called hyele. this they founded having learnt from a man of poseidonia that the pythian prophetess by her answer meant them to found a temple to kyrnos, who was a hero, and not to found a settlement in the island of kyrnos. . about phocaia in ionia it happened thus, and nearly the same thing also was done by the men of teos: for as soon as harpagos took their wall with a mound, they embarked in their ships and sailed straightway for thrace; and there they founded the city of abdera, which before them timesios of clazomenai founded and had no profit therefrom, but was driven out by the thracians; and now he is honoured as a hero by the teïans in abdera. . these alone of all the ionians left their native cities because they would not endure subjection: but the other ionians except the milesians did indeed contend in arms with harpagos like those who left their homes, and proved themselves brave men, fighting each for his own native city; but when they were defeated and captured they remained all in their own place and performed that which was laid upon them: but the milesians, as i have also said before, had made a sworn agreement with cyrus himself and kept still. thus for the second time ionia had been reduced to subjection. and when harpagos had conquered the ionians on the mainland, then the ionians who dwelt in the islands, being struck with fear by these things, gave themselves over to cyrus. . when the ionians had been thus evilly entreated but were continuing still to hold their gatherings as before at the panionion, bias a man of priene set forth to the ionians, as i am informed, a most profitable counsel, by following which they might have been the most prosperous of all the hellenes. he urged that the ionians should set forth in one common expedition and sail to sardinia, and after that found a single city for all the ionians: and thus they would escape subjection and would be prosperous, inhabiting the largest of all islands and being rulers over others; whereas, if they remained in ionia, he did not perceive, he said, that freedom would any longer exist for them. this was the counsel given by bias of priene after the ionians had been ruined; but a good counsel too was given before the ruin of ionia by thales a man of miletos, who was by descent of phenician race. he advised the ionians to have one single seat of government, and that this should be at teos (for teos, he said, was in the centre of ionia), and that the other cities should be inhabited as before, but accounted just as if they were demes. these men set forth to them counsels of the kind which i have said: . but harpagos, after subduing ionia, proceeded to march against the carians and caunians and lykians, taking also ionians and aiolians to help him. of these the carians came to the mainland from the islands; for being of old time subjects of minos and being called leleges, they used to dwell in the islands, paying no tribute, so far back as i am able to arrive by hearsay, but whenever minos required it, they used to supply his ships with seamen: and as minos subdued much land and was fortunate in his fighting, the carian nation was of all nations by much the most famous at that time together with him. and they produced three inventions of which the hellenes adopted the use; that is to say, the carians were those who first set the fashion of fastening crests on helmets, and of making the devices which are put onto shields, and these also were the first who made handles for their shields, whereas up to that time all who were wont to use shields carried them without handles and with leathern straps to guide them, having them hung about their necks and their left shoulders. then after the lapse of a long time the dorians and ionians drove the carians out of the islands, and so they came to the mainland. with respect to the carians the cretans relate that it happened thus; the carians themselves however do not agree with this account, but suppose that they are dwellers on the mainland from the beginning, and that they went always by the same name which they have now: and they point as evidence of this to an ancient temple of carian zeus at mylasa, in which the mysians and lydians share as being brother races of the carians, for they say that lydos and mysos were brothers of car; these share in it, but those who being of another race have come to speak the same language as the carians, these have no share in it. . it seems to me however that the caunians are dwellers there from the beginning, though they say themselves that they came from crete: but they have been assimilated to the carian race in language, or else the carians to the caunian race, i cannot with certainty determine which. they have customs however in which they differ very much from all other men as well as from the carians; for example the fairest thing in their estimation is to meet together in numbers for drinking, according to equality of age or friendship, both men, women, and children; and again when they had founded temples for foreign deities, afterwards they changed their purpose and resolved to worship only their own native gods, and the whole body of caunian young men put on their armour and made pursuit as far as the borders of the calyndians, beating the air with their spears; and they said that they were casting the foreign gods out of the land. such are the customs which these have. . the lykians however have sprung originally from crete (for in old time the whole of crete was possessed by barbarians): and when the sons of europa, sarpedon and minos, came to be at variance in crete about the kingdom, minos having got the better in the strife of parties drove out both sarpedon himself and those of his party: and they having been expelled came to the land of milyas in asia, for the land which now the lykians inhabit was anciently called milyas, and the milyans were then called solymoi. now while sarpedon reigned over them, they were called by the name which they had when they came thither, and by which the lykians are even now called by the neighbouring tribes, namely termilai; but when from athens lycos the son of pandion came to the land of the termilai and to sarpedon, he too having been driven out by his brother namely aigeus, then by the name taken from lycos they were called after a time lykians. the customs which these have are partly cretan and partly carian; but one custom they have which is peculiar to them, and in which they agree with no other people, that is they call themselves by their mothers and not by their fathers; and if one asks his neighbour who he is, he will state his parentage on the mother's side and enumerate his mother's female ascendants: and if a woman who is a citizen marry a slave, the children are accounted to be of gentle birth; but if a man who is a citizen, though he were the first man among them, have a slave for wife or concubine, the children are without civil rights. . now the carians were reduced to subjection by harpagos without any brilliant deed displayed either by the carians themselves or by those of the hellenes who dwell in this land. of these last there are besides others the men of cnidos, settlers from lacedemon, whose land runs out into the sea, being in fact the region which is called triopion, beginning from the peninsula of bybassos: and since all the land of cnidos except a small part is washed by the sea (for the part of it which looks towards the north is bounded by the gulf of keramos, and that which looks to the south by the sea off syme and rhodes), therefore the men of cnidos began to dig through this small part, which is about five furlongs across, while harpagos was subduing ionia, desiring to make their land an island: and within the isthmus all was theirs, for where the territory of cnidos ends in the direction of the mainland, here is the isthmus which they were digging across. and while the cnidians were working at it with a great number of men, it was perceived that the men who worked suffered injury much more than might have been expected and in a more supernatural manner, both in other parts of their bodies and especially in their eyes, when the rock was being broken up; so they sent men to ask the oracle at delphi what the cause of the difficulty was. and the pythian prophetess, as the men of cnidos themselves report, gave them this reply in trimeter verse:� "fence not the place with towers, nor dig the isthmus through; zeus would have made your land an island, had he willed." when the pythian prophetess had given this oracle, the men of cnidos not only ceased from their digging but delivered themselves to harpagos without resistance, when he came against them with his army. . there were also the pedasians, who dwelt in the inland country above halicarnassos; and among these, whenever anything hurtful is about to happen either to themselves or to their neighbours, the priestess of athene has a great beard: this befell them three times. these of all about caria were the only men who held out for any time against harpagos, and they gave him trouble more than any other people, having fortified a mountain called lide. . after a time the pedasians were conquered; and the lykians, when harpagos marched his army into the plain of xanthos, came out against him and fought, few against many, and displayed proofs of valour; but being defeated and confined within their city, they gathered together into the citadel their wives and their children, their property and their servants, and after that they set fire to this citadel, so that it was all in flames, and having done so and sworn terrible oaths with one another, they went forth against the enemy and were slain in fight, that is to say all the men of xanthos: and of the xanthians who now claim to be lykians the greater number have come in from abroad, except only eighty households; but these eighty households happened at that time to be away from their native place, and so they escaped destruction. thus harpagos obtained possession of caunos, for the men of caunos imitated in most respects the behaviour of the lykians. . so harpagos was conquering the coast regions of asia; and cyrus himself meanwhile was doing the same in the upper parts of it, subduing every nation and passing over none. now most of these actions i shall pass over in silence, but the undertakings which gave him trouble more than the rest and which are the most worthy of note, of these i shall make mention. . cyrus, so soon as he had made subject to himself all other parts of the mainland, proceeded to attack the assyrians. now assyria has doubtless many other great cities, but the most famous and the strongest, and the place where the seat of their monarchy had been established after nineveh was destroyed, was babylon; which was a city such as i shall say.�it lies in a great plain, and in size it is such that each face measures one hundred and twenty furlongs, the shape of the whole being square; thus the furlongs of the circuit of the city amount in all to four hundred and eighty. such is the size of the city of babylon, and it had a magnificence greater than all other cities of which we have knowledge. first there runs round it a trench deep and broad and full of water; then a wall fifty royal cubits in thickness and two hundred cubits in height: now the royal cubit is larger by three fingers than the common cubit. . i must also tell in addition to this for what purpose the earth was used, which was taken out of the trench, and in what manner the wall was made. as they dug the trench they made the earth which was carried out of the excavation into bricks, and having moulded enough bricks they baked them in kilns; and then afterwards, using hot asphalt for mortar and inserting reed mats at every thirty courses of brickwork, they built up first the edges of the trench and then the wall itself in the same manner: and at the top of the wall along the edges they built chambers of one story facing one another; and between the rows of chambers they left space to drive a four-horse chariot. in the circuit of the wall there are set a hundred gates made of bronze throughout, and the gate-posts and lintels likewise. now there is another city distant from babylon a space of eight days' journey, of which the name is is; and there is a river there of no great size, and the name of the river is also is, and it sends its stream into the river euphrates. this river is throws up together with its water lumps of asphalt in great abundance, and thence was brought the asphalt for the wall of babylon. . babylon then was walled in this manner; and there are two divisions of the city; for a river whose name is euphrates parts it in the middle. this flows from the land of the armenians and is large and deep and swift, and it flows out into the erythraian sea. the wall then on each side has its bends carried down to the river, and from this point the walls stretch along each bank of the stream in the form of a rampart of baked bricks: and the city itself is full of houses of three and four stories, and the roads by which it is cut up run in straight lines, including the cross roads which lead to the river; and opposite to each road there were set gates in the rampart which ran along the river, in many in number as the ways, and these also were of bronze and led like the ways to the river itself. . this wall then which i have mentioned is as it were a cuirass for the town, and another wall runs round within it, not much weaker for defence than the first but enclosing a smaller space. and in each division of the city was a building in the midst, in the one the king's palace of great extent and strongly fortified round, and in the other the temple of zeus belos with bronze gates, and this exists still up to my time and measures two furlongs each way, being of a square shape: and in the midst of the temple is built a solid tower measuring a furlong both in length and in breadth, and on this tower another tower has been erected, and another again upon this, and so on up to the number of eight towers. an ascent to these has been built running outside round about all the towers; and when one reaches about the middle of the ascent one finds a stopping-place and seats to rest upon, on which those who ascend sit down and rest: and on the top of the last tower there is a large cell, and in the cell a large couch is laid, well covered, and by it is placed a golden table: and there is no image there set up nor does any human being spend the night there except only one woman of the natives of the place, whomsoever the god shall choose from all the woman, as say the chaldeans who are the priests of this god. . these same men say also, but i do not believe them, that the god himself comes often to the cell and rests upon the couch, as happens likewise in the egyptian thebes according to the report of the egyptians, for there also a woman sleeps in the temple of the theban zeus (and both these women are said to abstain from commerce with men), and as happens also with the prophetess of the god in patara of lykia, whenever there is one, for there is not always an oracle there, but whenever there is one, then she is shut up during the nights in the temple within the cell. . there is moreover in the temple at babylon another cell below, wherein is a great image of zeus sitting, made of gold, and by it is placed a large table of gold, and his footstool and seat are of gold also; and, as the chaldeans reported, the weight of the gold of which these things are made is eight hundred talents. outside this cell is an altar of gold; and there is also another altar of great size, where full-grown animals are sacrificed, whereas on the golden altar it is not lawful to sacrifice any but young sucklings only: and also on the larger altar the chaldeans offer one thousand talents of frankincense every year at the time when they celebrate the feast in honour of this god. there was moreover in these precincts still remaining at the time of cyrus, a statue twelve cubits high, of gold and solid. this i did not myself see, but that which is related by the chaldeans i relate. against this statue dareios the son of hystaspes formed a design, but he did not venture to take it: it was taken however by xerxes the son of dareios, who also killed the priest when he forbade him to meddle with the statue. this temple, then, is thus adorned with magnificence, and there are also many private votive-offerings. . of this babylon, besides many other rulers, of whom i shall make mention in the assyrian history, and who added improvement to the walls and temples, there were also two who were women. of these, the one who ruled first, named semiramis, who lived five generations before the other, produced banks of earth in the plain which are a sight worth seeing; and before this the river used to flood like a sea over the whole plain. . the queen who lived after her time, named nitocris, was wiser than she who had reigned before; and in the first place she left behind her monuments which i shall tell of; then secondly, seeing that the monarchy of the medes was great and not apt to remain still, but that besides other cities even nineveh had been captured by it, she made provision against it in so far as she was able. first, as regards the river euphrates which flows through the midst of their city, whereas before this it flowed straight, she by digging channels above made it so winding that it actually comes three times in its course to one of the villages in assyria; and the name of the village to which the euphrates comes is ardericca; and at this day those who travel from this sea of ours to babylon, in their voyage down the river euphrates arrive three times at this same village and on three separate days. this she did thus; and she also piled up a mound along each bank of the river, which is worthy to cause wonder for its size and height: and at a great distance above babylon, she dug a basin for a lake, which she caused to extend along at a very small distance from the river, excavating it everywhere of such depth as to come to water, and making the extent such that the circuit of it measured four hundred and twenty furlongs: and the earth which was dug out of this excavation she used up by piling it in mounds along the banks of the river: and when this had been dug by her she brought stones and set them all round it as a facing wall. both these two things she did, that is she made the river to have a winding course, and she made the place which was dug out all into a swamp, in order that the river might run more slowly, having its force broken by going round many bends, and that the voyages might be winding to babylon, and after the voyages there might succeed a long circuit of the pool. these works she carried out in that part where the entrance to the country was, and the shortest way to it from media, so that the medes might not have dealings with her kingdom and learn of her affairs. . these defences she cast round her city from the depth; and she made the following addition which was dependent upon them:�the city was in two divisions, and the river occupied the space between; and in the time of the former rulers, when any one wished to pass over from the one division to the other, he had to pass over in a boat, and that, as i imagine, was troublesome: she however made provision also for this; for when she was digging the basin for the lake she left this other monument of herself derived from the same work, that is, she caused stones to be cut of very great length, and when the stones were prepared for her and the place had been dug out, she turned aside the whole stream of the river into the place which she had been digging; and while this was being filled with water, the ancient bed of the river being dried up in the meantime, she both built up with baked bricks after the same fashion as the wall the edges of the river, where it flows through the city, and the places of descent leading from the small gateways to the river; and also about the middle of the city, as i judge, with the stones which she had caused to be dug out she proceeded to build a bridge, binding together the stones with iron and lead: and upon the top she laid squared timbers across, to remain there while it was daytime, over which the people of babylon made the passage across; but at night they used to take away these timbers for this reason, namely that they might not go backwards and forwards by night and steal from one another: and when the place dug out had been made into a lake full of water by the river, and at the same time the bridge had been completed, then she conducted the euphrates back into its ancient channel from the lake, and so the place dug out being made into a swamp was thought to have served a good purpose, and there had been a bridge set up for the men of the city. . this same queen also contrived a snare of the following kind:�over that gate of the city through which the greatest number of people passed she set up for herself a tomb above the very gate itself. and on the tomb she engraved writing which said thus: "if any of the kings of babylon who come after me shall be in want of wealth, let him open my tomb and take as much as he desires; but let him not open it for any other cause, if he be not in want; for that will not be well." this tomb was undisturbed until the kingdom came to dareios; but to dareios it seemed that it was a monstrous thing not to make any use of this gate, and also, when there was money lying there, not to take it, considering that the money itself invited him to do so. now the reason why he would not make any use of this gate was because the corpse would have been above his head as he drove through. he then, i say, opened the tomb and found not indeed money but the corpse, with writing which said thus: "if thou hadst not been insatiable of wealth and basely covetous, thou wouldest not have opened the resting-places of the dead." . this queen then is reported to have been such as i have described: and it was the son of this woman, bearing the same name as his father, labynetos, and being ruler over the assyrians, against whom cyrus was marching. now the great king makes his marches not only well furnished from home with provisions for his table and with cattle, but also taking with him water from the river choaspes, which flows by susa, of which alone and of no other river the king drinks: and of this water of the choaspes boiled, a very great number of waggons, four-wheeled and drawn by mules, carry a supply in silver vessels, and go with him wherever he may march at any time. . now when cyrus on his way towards babylon arrived at the river gyndes,�of which river the springs are in the mountains of the matienians, and it flows through the dardanians and runs into another river, the tigris, which flowing by the city of opis runs out into the erythraian sea,�when cyrus, i say, was endeavouring to cross this river gyndes, which is a navigable stream, then one of his sacred white horses in high spirit and wantonness went into the river and endeavoured to cross, but the stream swept it under water and carried it off forthwith. and cyrus was greatly moved with anger against the river for having done thus insolently, and he threatened to make it so feeble that for the future even women could cross it easily without wetting the knee. so after this threat he ceased from his march against babylon and divided his army into two parts; and having divided it he stretched lines and marked out straight channels, one hundred and eighty on each bank of the gyndes, directed every way, and having disposed his army along them he commanded them to dig: so, as a great multitude was working, the work was completed indeed, but they spent the whole summer season at this spot working. . when cyrus had taken vengeance on the river gyndes by dividing it into three hundred and sixty channels, and when the next spring was just beginning, then at length he continued his advance upon babylon: and the men of babylon had marched forth out of their city and were awaiting him. so when in his advance he came near to the city, the babylonians joined battle with him, and having been worsted in the fight they were shut up close within their city. but knowing well even before this that cyrus was not apt to remain still, and seeing him lay hands on every nation equally, they had brought in provisions beforehand for very many years. so while these made no account of the siege, cyrus was in straits what to do, for much time went by and his affairs made no progress onwards. . therefore, whether it was some other man who suggested it to him when he was in a strait what to do, or whether he of himself perceived what he ought to do, he did as follows:�the main body of his army he posted at the place where the river runs into the city, and then again behind the city he set others, where the river issues forth from the city; and he proclaimed to his army that so soon as they should see that the stream had become passable, they should enter by this way into the city. having thus set them in their places and in this manner exhorted them he marched away himself with that part of his army which was not fit for fighting: and when he came to the lake, cyrus also did the same things which the queen of the babylonians had done as regards the river and the lake; that is to say, he conducted the river by a channel into the lake, which was at that time a swamp, and so made the former course of the river passable by the sinking of the stream. when this had been done in such a manner, the persians who had been posted for this very purpose entered by the bed of the river euphrates into babylon, the stream having sunk so far that it reached about to the middle of a man's thigh. now if the babylonians had had knowledge of it beforehand or had perceived that which was being done by cyrus, they would have allowed the persians to enter the city and then destroyed them miserably; for if they had closed all the gates that led to the river and mounted themselves upon the ramparts which were carried along the banks of the stream, they would have caught them as it were in a fish-wheal: but as it was, the persians came upon them unexpectedly; and owing to the size of the city (so it is said by those who dwell there) after those about the extremities of the city had suffered capture, those babylonians who dwelt in the middle did not know that they had been captured; but as they chanced to be holding a festival, they went on dancing and rejoicing during this time until they learnt the truth only too well. babylon then had thus been taken for the first time: , and as to the resources of the babylonians how great they are, i shall show by many other proofs and among them also by this:�for the support of the great king and his army, apart from the regular tribute the whole land of which he is ruler has been distributed into portions. now whereas twelve months go to make up the year, for four of these he has his support from the territory of babylon, and for the remaining eight months from the whole of the rest of asia; thus the assyrian land is in regard to resources the third part of all asia: and the government, or satrapy as it is called by the persians, of this territory is of all the governments by far the best; seeing that when tritantaichmes son of artabazos had this province from the king, there came in to him every day an artab full of silver coin (now the artab is a persian measure and holds more than the medimnos of attica by three attic choinikes); and of horses he had in this province as his private property, apart from the horses for use in war, eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares, for each of these stallions served twenty mares: of indian hounds moreover such a vast number were kept that four large villages in the plain, being free from other contributions, had been appointed to provide food for the hounds. . such was the wealth which belonged to the ruler of babylon. now the land of the assyrians has but little rain; and this little gives nourishment to the root of the corn, but the crop is ripened and the ear comes on by the help of watering from the river, not as in egypt by the coming up of the river itself over the fields, but the crop is watered by hand or with swing-buckets. for the whole babylonian territory like the egyptian is cut up into channels, and the largest of the channels is navigable for ships and runs in the direction of the sunrising in winter from the euphrates to another river, namely the tigris, along the bank of which lay the city of nineveh. this territory is of all that we know the best by far for producing corn: as to trees, it does not even attempt to bear them, either fig or vine or olive, but for producing corn it is so good that it s as much as two-hundred-fold for the average, and when it bears at its best it produces three-hundred-fold. the leaves of the wheat and barley there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed how large a tree grows, i know myself but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited the babylonian land. they use no oil of olives, but only that which they make of sesame seed; and they have date-palms growing over all the plain, most of them fruit-bearing, of which they make both solid food and wine and honey; and to these they attend in the same manner as to fig-trees, and in particular they take the fruit of those palms which the hellenes call male-palms, and tie them upon the date-bearing palms, so that their gall-fly may enter into the date and ripen it and that the fruit of the palm may not fall off: for the male-palm produces gall-flies in its fruit just as the wild-fig does. . but the greatest marvel of all the things in the land after the city itself, to my mind is this which i am about to tell: their boats, those i mean which go down the river to babylon, are round and all of leather: for they make ribs for them of willow which they cut in the land of the armenians who dwell above the assyrians, and round these they stretch hides which serve as a covering outside by way of hull, not making broad the stern nor gathering in the prow to a point, but making the boats round like a shield: and after that they stow the whole boat with straw and suffer it to be carried down the stream full of cargo; and for the most part these boats bring down casks of palm-wood filled with wine. the boat is kept straight by two steering-oars and two men standing upright, and the man inside pulls his oar while the man outside pushes. these vessels are made both of very large size and also smaller, the largest of them having a burden of as much as five thousand talents' weight; and in each one there is a live ass, and in those of larger size several. so when they have arrived at babylon in their voyage and have disposed of their cargo, they sell by auction the ribs of the boat and all the straw, but they pack the hides upon their asses and drive them off to armenia: for up the stream of the river it is not possible by any means to sail, owing to the swiftness of the current; and for this reason they make their boats not of timber but of hides. then when they have come back to the land of the armenians, driving their asses with them, they make other boats in the same manner. . such are their boats; and the following is the manner of dress which they use, namely a linen tunic reaching to the feet, and over this they put on another of wool, and then a white mantle thrown round, while they have shoes of a native fashion rather like the boeotian slippers. they wear their hair long and bind their heads round with fillets, and they are anointed over the whole of their body with perfumes. each man has a seal and a staff carved by hand, and on each staff is carved either an apple or a rose or a lily or an eagle or some other device, for it is not their custom to have a staff without a device upon it. . such is the equipment of their bodies: and the customs which are established among them are as follows, the wisest in our opinion being this, which i am informed that the enetoi in illyria also have. in every village once in each year it was done as follows:�when the maidens grew to the age for marriage, they gathered these all together and brought them in a body to one place, and round them stood a company of men: and the crier caused each one severally to stand up, and proceeded to sell them, first the most comely of all, and afterwards, when she had been sold and had fetched a large sum of money, he would put up another who was the most comely after her: and they were sold for marriage. now all the wealthy men of the babylonians who were ready to marry vied with one another in bidding for the most beautiful maidens; those however of the common sort who were ready to marry did not require a fine form, but they would accept money together with less comely maidens. for when the crier had made an end of selling the most comely of the maidens, then he would cause to stand up that one who was least shapely, or any one of them who might be crippled in any way, and he would make proclamation of her, asking who was willing for least gold to have her in marriage, until she was assigned to him who was willing to accept least: and the gold would be got from the sale of the comely maidens, and so those of beautiful form provided dowries for those which were unshapely or crippled; but to give in marriage one's own daughter to whomsoever each man would, was not allowed, nor to carry off the maiden after buying her without a surety; for it was necessary for the man to provide sureties that he would marry her, before he took her away; and if they did not agree well together, the law was laid down that he should pay back the money. it was allowed also for any one who wished it to come from another village and buy. this then was their most honourable custom; it does not however still exist at the present time, but they have found out of late another way, in order that the men may not ill-treat them or take them to another city: for since the time when being conquered they were oppressed and ruined, each one of the common people when he is in want of livelihood prostitutes his female children. . next in wisdom to that, is this other custom which was established among them:�they bear out the sick into the market-place; for of physicians they make no use. so people come up to the sick man and give advice about his disease, if any one himself has ever suffered anything like that which the sick man has, or saw any other who had suffered it; and coming near they advise and recommend those means by which they themselves got rid of a like disease or seen some other get rid of it: and to pass by the sick man in silence is not permitted to them, nor until one has asked what disease he has. . they bury their dead in honey, and their modes of lamentation are similar to those used in egypt. and whenever a babylonian man has intercourse with his wife, he sits by incense offered, and his wife does the same on the other side, and when it is morning they wash themselves, both of them, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed themselves: and the arabians do likewise in this matter. . now the most shameful of the customs of the babylonians is as follows: every woman of the country must sit down in the precincts of aphrodite once in her life and have commerce with a man who is a stranger: and many women who do not deign to mingle with the rest, because they are made arrogant by wealth, drive to the temple with pairs of horses in covered carriages, and so take their place, and a large number of attendants follow after them; but the greater number do thus,�in the sacred enclosure of aphrodite sit great numbers of women with a wreath of cord about their heads; some come and others go; and there are passages in straight lines going between the women in every direction, through which the strangers pass by and make their choice. here when a woman takes her seat she does not depart again to her house until one of the strangers has thrown a silver coin into her lap and has had commerce with her outside the temple, and after throwing it he must say these words only: "i demand thee in the name of the goddess mylitta": now mylitta is the name given by the assyrians to aphrodite: and the silver coin may be of any value; whatever it is she will not refuse it, for that is not lawful for her, seeing that this coin is made sacred by the act: and she follows the man who has first thrown and does not reject any: and after that she departs to her house, having acquitted herself of her duty to the goddess , nor will you be able thenceforth to give any gift so great as to win her. so then as many as have attained to beauty and stature are speedily released, but those of them who are unshapely remain there much time, not being able to fulfil the law; for some of them remain even as much as three or four years: and in some parts of cyprus too there is a custom similar to this. . these customs then are established among the babylonians: and there are of them three tribes which eat nothing but fish only: and when they have caught them and dried them in the sun they do thus,�they throw them into brine, and then pound them with pestles and strain them through muslin; and they have them for food either kneaded into a soft cake, or baked like bread, according to their liking. . when this nation also had been subdued by cyrus, he had a desire to bring the massagetai into subjection to himself. this nation is reputed to be both great and warlike, and to dwell towards the east and the sunrising, beyond the river araxes and over against the issedonians: and some also say that this nation is of scythian race. . now the araxes is said by some to be larger and by others to be smaller than the ister: and they say that there are many islands in it about equal in size to lesbos, and in them people dwelling who feed in the summer upon roots of all kinds which they dig up and certain fruits from trees, which have been discovered by them for food, they store up, it is said, in the season when they are ripe and feed upon them in the winter. moreover it is said that other trees have been discovered by them which yield fruit of such a kind that when they have assembled together in companies in the same place and lighted a fire, they sit round in a circle and throw some of it into the fire, and they smell the fruit which is thrown on, as it burns, and are intoxicated by the scent as the hellenes are with wine, and when more of the fruit is thrown on they become more intoxicated, until at last they rise up to dance and begin to sing. this is said to be their manner of living: and as to the river araxes, it flows from the land of the matienians, whence flows the gyndes which cyrus divided into the three hundred and sixty channels, and it discharges itself by forty branches, of which all except one end in swamps and shallow pools; and among them they say that men dwell who feed on fish eaten raw, and who are wont to use as clothing the skins of seals: but the one remaining branch of the araxes flows with unimpeded course into the caspian sea. . now the caspian sea is apart by itself, not having connection with the other sea: for all that sea which the hellenes navigate, and the sea beyond the pillars, which is called atlantis, and the erythraian sea are in fact all one, but the caspian is separate and lies apart by itself. in length it is a voyage of fifteen days if one uses oars, and in breadth, where it is broadest, a voyage of eight days. on the side towards the west of this sea the caucasus runs along by it, which is of all mountain-ranges both the greatest in extent and the loftiest: and the caucasus has many various races of men dwelling in it, living for the most part on the wild produce of the forests; and among them there are said to be trees which produce leaves of such a kind that by pounding them and mixing water with them they paint figures upon their garments, and the figures do not wash out, but grow old with the woollen stuff as if they had been woven into it at the first: and men say that the sexual intercourse of these people is open like that of cattle. . on the west then of this sea which is called caspian the caucasus is the boundary, while towards the east and the rising sun a plain succeeds which is of limitless extent to the view. of this great plain then the massagetai occupy a large part, against whom cyrus had become eager to march; for there were many strong reasons which incited him to it and urged him onwards,�first the manner of his birth, that is to say the opinion held of him that he was more than a mere mortal man, and next the success which he had met with in his wars, for whithersoever cyrus directed his march, it was impossible for that nation to escape. . now the ruler of the massagetai was a woman, who was queen after the death of her husband, and her name was tomyris. to her cyrus sent and wooed her, pretending that he desired to have her for his wife: but tomyris understanding that he was wooing not herself but rather the kingdom of the massagetai, rejected his approaches: and cyrus after this, as he made no progress by craft, marched to the araxes, and proceeded to make an expedition openly against the massagetai, forming bridges of boats over the river for his army to cross, and building towers upon the vessels which gave them passage across the river. . while he was busied about this labour, tomyris sent a herald and said thus: "o king of the medes, cease to press forward the work which thou art now pressing forward; for thou canst not tell whether these things will be in the end for thy advantage or no; cease to do so, i say, and be king over thine own people, and endure to see us ruling those whom we rule. since however i know that thou wilt not be willing to receive this counsel, but dost choose anything rather than to be at rest, therefore if thou art greatly anxious to make trial of the massagetai in fight, come now, leave that labour which thou hast in yoking together the banks of the river, and cross over into our land, when we have first withdrawn three days' journey from the river: or if thou desirest rather to receive us into your land, do thou this same thing thyself." having heard this cyrus called together the first men among the persians, and having gathered these together he laid the matter before them for discussion, asking their advice as to which of the two things he should do: and their opinions all agreed in one, bidding him receive tomyris and her army into his country. . but croesus the lydian, being present and finding fault with this opinion, declared an opinion opposite to that which had been set forth, saying as follows: "o king, i told thee in former time also, that since zeus had given me over to thee, i would avert according to my power whatever occasion of falling i might see coming near thy house: and now my sufferings, which have been bitter, have proved to be lessons of wisdom to me. if thou dost suppose that thou art immortal and that thou dost command an army which is also immortal, it will be of no use for me to declare to thee my judgment; but if thou hast perceived that thou art a mortal man thyself and dost command others who are so likewise, then learn this first, that for the affairs of men there is a revolving wheel, and that this in its revolution suffers not the same persons always to have good fortune. i therefore now have an opinion about the matter laid before us, which is opposite to that of these men: for if we shall consent to receive the enemy into our land, there is for thee this danger in so doing:�if thou shalt be worsted thou wilt lose in addition all thy realm, for it is evident that if the massagetai are victors they will not turn back and fly, but will march upon the provinces of thy realm; and on the other hand if thou shalt be the victor, thou wilt not be victor so fully as if thou shouldest overcome the massagetai after crossing over into their land and shouldest pursue them when they fled. for against that which i said before i will set the same again here, and say that thou, when thou hast conquered, wilt march straight against the realm of tomyris. moreover besides that which has been said, it is a disgrace and not to be endured that cyrus the son of cambyses should yield to a woman and so withdraw from her land. now therefore it seems good to me that we should cross over and go forward from the crossing as far as they go in their retreat, and endeavour to get the better of them by doing as follows:�the massagetai, as i am informed, are without experience of persian good things, and have never enjoyed any great luxuries. cut up therefore cattle without stint and dress the meat and set out for these men a banquet in our camp: moreover also provide without stint bowls of unmixed wine and provisions of every kind; and having so done, leave behind the most worthless part of thy army and let the rest begin to retreat from the camp towards the river: for if i am not mistaken in my judgment, they when they see a quantity of good things will fall to the feast, and after that it remains for us to display great deeds." . these were the conflicting opinions; and cyrus, letting go the former opinion and choosing that of croesus, gave notice to tomyris to retire, as he was intending to cross over to her. she then proceeded to retire, as she had at first engaged to do, but cyrus delivered croesus into the hands of his son cambyses, to whom he meant to give the kingdom, and gave him charge earnestly to honour him and to treat him well, if the crossing over to go against the massagetai should not be prosperous. having thus charged him and sent these away to the land of the persians, he crossed over the river both himself and his army. . and when he had passed over the araxes, night having come on he saw a vision in his sleep in the land of the massagetai, as follows:�in his sleep it seemed to cyrus that he saw the eldest of the sons of hystaspes having upon his shoulders wings, and that with the one of these he overshadowed asia and with the other europe. now of hystaspes the son of arsames, who was a man of the achaimenid clan, the eldest son was dareios, who was then, i suppose, a youth of about twenty years of age, and he had been left behind in the land of the persians, for he was not yet of full age to go out to the wars. so then when cyrus awoke he considered with himself concerning the vision: and as the vision seemed to him to be of great import, he called hystaspes, and having taken him apart by himself he said: "hystaspes, thy son has been found plotting against me and against my throne: and how i know this for certain i will declare to thee:�the gods have a care of me and show me beforehand all the evils that threaten me. so in the night that is past while sleeping i saw the eldest of thy sons having upon his shoulders wings, and with the one of these he overshadowed asia and with the other europe. to judge by this vision then, it cannot be but that he is plotting against me. do thou therefore go by the quickest way back to persia and take care that, when i thither after having subdued these regions, thou set thy son before me to be examined." . cyrus said thus supposing that dareios was plotting against him; but in fact the divine powers were showing him beforehand that he was destined to find his end there and that his kingdom was coming about to dareios. to this then hystaspes replied as follows: "o king, heaven forbid that there should be any man of persian race who would plot against thee, and if there be any, i pray that he perish as quickly as may be; seeing that thou didst make the persians to be free instead of slaves, and to rule all nations instead of being ruled by others. and if any vision announces to thee that my son is planning rebellion against thee, i deliver him over to thee to do with him whatsoever thou wilt." . hystaspes then, having made answer with these words and having crossed over the araxes, was going his way to the persian land to keep watch over his son dareios for cyrus; and cyrus meanwhile went forward and made a march of one day from the araxes according to the suggestion of croesus. after this when cyrus and the best part of the army of the persians had marched back to the araxes, and those who were unfit for fighting had been left behind, then a third part of the army of the massagetai came to the attack and proceeded to slay, not without resistance, those who were left behind of the army of cyrus; and seeing the feast that was set forth, when they had overcome their enemies they lay down and feasted, and being satiated with food and wine they went to sleep. then the persians came upon them and slew many of them, and took alive many more even than they slew, and among these the son of the queen tomyris, who was leading the army of the massagetai; and his name was spargapises. . she then, when she heard that which had come to pass concerning the army and also the things concerning her son, sent a herald to cyrus and said as follows: "cyrus, insatiable of blood, be not elated with pride by this which has come to pass, namely because with that fruit of the vine, with which ye fill yourselves and become so mad that as the wine descends into your bodies, evil words float up upon its stream,�because setting a snare, i say, with such a drug as this thou didst overcome my son, and not by valour in fight. now therefore receive the word which i utter, giving thee good advice:�restore to me my son and depart from this land without penalty, triumphant over a third part of the army of the massagetai: but if thou shalt not do so, i swear to thee by the sun, who is lord of the massagetai, that surely i will give thee thy fill of blood, insatiable as thou art." . when these words were reported to him cyrus made no account of them; and the son of the queen tomyris, spargapises, when the wine left him and he learnt in what evil case he was, entreated cyrus that he might be loosed from his chains and gained his request, and then so soon as he was loosed and had got power over his hands he put himself to death. . he then ended his life in this manner; but tomyris, as cyrus did not listen to her, gathered together all her power and joined battle with cyrus. this battle of all the battles fought by barbarians i judge to have been the fiercest, and i am informed that it happened thus:�first, it is said, they stood apart and shot at one another, and afterwards when their arrows were all shot away, they fell upon one another and engaged in close combat with their spears and daggers; and so they continued to be in conflict with one another for a long time, and neither side would flee; but at last the massagetai got the better in the fight: and the greater part of the persian army was destroyed there on the spot, and cyrus himself brought his life to an end there, after he had reigned in all thirty years wanting one. then tomyris filled a skin with human blood and had search made among the persian dead for the corpse of cyrus: and when she found it, she let his head down into the skin and doing outrage to the corpse she said at the same time this: "though i yet live and have overcome thee in fight, nevertheless thou didst undo me by taking my son with craft: but i according to my threat will give thee thy fill of blood." now as regards the end of the life of cyrus there are many tales told, but this which i have related is to my mind the most worthy of belief. . as to the massagetai, they wear a dress which is similar to that of the scythians, and they have a manner of life which is also like theirs; and there are of them horsemen and also men who do not ride on horses (for they have both fashions), and moreover there are both archers and spearmen, and their custom it is to carry battle-axes; and for everything they use either gold or bronze, for in all that has to do with spear-points or arrow-heads or battle-axes they use bronze, but for head-dresses and girdles and belts round the arm-pits they employ gold as ornament: and in like manner as regards their horses, they put breast-plates of bronze about their chests, but on their bridles and bits and cheek-pieces they employ gold. iron however and silver they use not at all, for they have them not in their land, but gold and bronze in abundance. . these are the customs which they have:�each marries a wife, but they have their wives in common; for that which the hellenes say that the scythians do, is not in fact done by the scythians but by the massagetai, that is to say, whatever woman a man of the massagetai may desire he hangs up his quiver in front of the waggon and has commerce with her freely. they have no precise limit of age laid down for their life, but when a man becomes very old, his nearest of kin come together and slaughter him solemnly and cattle also with him; and then after that they boil the flesh and banquet upon it. this is considered by them the happiest lot; but him who has ended his life by disease they do not eat, but cover him up in the earth, counting it a misfortune that he did not attain to being slaughtered. they sow no crops but live on cattle and on fish, which last they get in abundance from the river araxes; moreover they are drinkers of milk. of gods they reverence the sun alone, and to him they sacrifice horses: and the rule of the sacrifice is this:�to the swiftest of the gods they assign the swiftest of all mortal things. ����� notes to book i [ {'erodotou 'alikarnesseos istories apodexis ede, os k.t.l.} the meaning of the word {istorie} passes gradually from "research" or "inquiry" to "narrative," "history"; cp. vii. . aristotle in quoting these words writes {thouriou} for {'alikarnesseos} ("herodotus of thurii"), and we know from plutarch that this reading existed in his time as a variation.] [ probably {erga} may here mean enduring monuments like the pyramids and the works at samos, cp. i. , ii. , etc.; in that case {ta te alla} refers back to {ta genomena}, though the verb {epolemesan} derives its subject from the mention of hellenes and barbarians in the preceding clause.] [ many editors have "with the phenicians," on the authority of some inferior mss. and of the aldine edition.] [ {arpages}.] [ "thus or in some other particular way."] [ {surion}, see ch. . herodotus perhaps meant to distinguish {surioi} from {suroi}, and to use the first name for the cappadokians and the second for the people of palestine, cp. ii. ; but they are naturally confused in the mss.] [ {ex epidromes arpage}.] [ {tes anoigomenes thures}, "the door that is opened."] [ or "because she was ashamed."] [ {phoitan}.] [ {upeisdus}: stein adopts the conjecture {upekdus}, "slipping out of his hiding-place."] [ this last sentence is by many regarded as an interpolation. the line referred to is {ou moi ta gugeo tou polukhrosou melei}.] [ see v. .] [ i.e. like other kings of lydia who came after him.] [ {kolophonos to astu}, as opposed apparently to the acropolis, cp. viii. .] [ see ch. .] [ {o kai esballon tenikauta es ten milesien ten stratien}: an allusion apparently to the invasions of the milesian land at harvest time, which are described above. all the operations mentioned in the last chapter have been loosely described to alyattes, and a correction is here added to inform the reader that they belong equally to his father. it will hardly mend matters much if we take {o audos} in ch. to include both father and son.] [ {didaxanta}.] [ this name is applied by herodotus to the southern part of the peninsula only.] [ tarentum.] [ {en toisi edolioisi}: properly "benches," but probably here the raised deck at the stern.] [ {ou mega}: many of the mss. have {mega}.] [ {stadioi}: furlongs of about english feet.] [ {to epilogo}.] [ this list of nations is by some suspected as an interpolation; see stein's note on the passage.] [ {sophistai}: cp. ii. , and iv. .] [ {etheto}.] [ {olbiotaton}.] [ {stadious}.] [ {romen}: many of the mss. have {gnomen}, "good disposition."] [ i.e. their mother: but some understand it to mean the goddess.] [ {en telei touto eskhonto}.] [ {anolbioi}.] [ {eutukhees}.] [ {aperos}: the mss. have {apeiros}.] [ {aikhme sideree blethenta}.] [ "in the house of croesus."] [ {'epistion}.] [ {'etaireion}.] [ {suggrapsamenous}, i.e. have it written down by the {propsetes} (see vii. and viii. ), who interpreted and put into regular verse the inspired utterances of the prophetess {promantis}.] [ {es to megaron}.] [ {oida d' ego}: oracles often have a word of connection such as {de} or {alla} at the beginning (cp. ch. , , etc.), which may indicate that they are part of a larger connected utterance.] [ cp. vii. and ix. ("i accept the omen.")] [ see viii. .] [ {kai touton}, i.e. amphiaraos: many editors retain the readings of the aldine edition, {kai touto}, "that in this too he had found a true oracle."] [ {emiplinthia}, the plinth being supposed to be square.] [ {exapalaiota}, the palm being about three inches, cp. ii. .] [ {apephthou khrusou}, "refined gold."] [ {triton emitalanton}: the mss. have {tria emitalanta}, which has been corrected partly on the authority of valla's translation.] [ "white gold."] [ arranged evidently in stages, of which the highest consisted of the half-plinths of pure gold, the second of half-plinths, the third of , the fourth of , making in all: see stein's note.] [ {elkon stathmon einaton emitalanton kai eti duodeka mneas}. the {mnea} (mina) is . oz., and of them go to a talent.] [ {epi tou proneiou tes gonies}, cp. viii. : the use of {epi} seems to suggest some kind of raised corner-stone upon which the offerings stood.] [ the {amphoreus} is about gallons.] [ cp. iii. .] [ {perirranteria}.] [ {kheumata}, which some translate "jugs" or "bowls."] [ {umin}, as if both oracles were being addressed together.] [ i.e. delphi.] [ {enephoreeto}, "he filled himself with it."] [ {krestona}: niebuhr would read {krotona} (croton or cortona in etruria), partly on the authority of dionysius: see stein's note. two of the best mss. are defective in this part of the book.] [ see ii. and vi. .] [ {auxetai es plethos ton ethneon pollon}: "has increased to a multitude of its races, which are many." stein and abicht both venture to adopt the conjecture {pelasgon} for {pollon}, "pelasgians especially being added to them, and also many other barbarian nations."] [ {pros de on emoige dokeei}: the mss. have {emoi te}. some editors read {os de on} (stein {prosthe de on}) for {pros de on}. this whole passage is probably in some way corrupt, but it can hardly be successfully emended.] [ i.e. as it is of the hellenic race before it parted from the pelasgian and ceased to be barbarian.] [ {katekhomenon te kai diespasmenon... upo peisistratou}. peisistratos was in part at least the cause of the divisions.] [ {paralon}.] [ {uperakrion}.] [ {toutous}: some read by conjecture {triekosious}, "three hundred," the number which he actually had according to polyænus, i. .] [ {doruphoroi}, the usual word for a body-guard.] [ {perielaunomenos de te stasi}: stein says "harassed by attacks of his own party," but the passage to which he refers in ch. , {katallasseto ten ekhthren toisi stasiotesi}, may be referred to in the quarrel made with his party by megacles when he joined peisistratos.] [ more literally, "since from ancient time the hellenic race had been marked off from the barbarians as being more skilful and more freed from foolish simplicity, (and) since at that time among the athenians, who are accounted the first of the hellenes in ability, these men devised a trick as follows."] [ the cubit is reckoned as finger-breadths, i.e. about inches.] [ so rawlinson.] [ see v. .] [ {dia endekatou eteos}. not quite the same as {dia evdeka eteon} ("after an interval of eleven years"); rather "in the eleventh year" (i.e. "after an interval of ten years").] [ {thein pompe khreomenos}.] [ for {'akarnan} it has been suggested to read {'akharneus}, because this man is referred to as an athenian by various writers. however acarnanians were celebrated for prophetic power, and he might be called an athenian as resident with peisistratos at athens.] [ or "for that part of the land from which the temple could be seen," but cp. thuc. iii. . in either case the meaning is the same.] [ {enomotias kai triekadas kai sussitia}. the {enomotia} was the primary division of the spartan army: of the {triekas} nothing is known for certain.] [ {kibdelo}, properly "counterfeit": cp. ch. .] [ {skhoino diametresamenoi}: whether actually, for the purpose of distributing the work among them, or because the rope which fastened them together lay on the ground like a measuring-tape, is left uncertain.] [ cp. ix. .] [ {epitarrothos}. elsewhere (that is in homer) the word always means "helper," and stein translates it so here, "thou shalt be protector and patron of tegea" (in the place of orestes). mr. woods explains it by the parallel of such phrases as {danaoisi makhes epitarrothoi}, to mean "thou shalt be a helper (of the lacedemonians) in the matter of tegea," but this perhaps would be a form of address too personal to the envoy, who is usually addressed in the second person, but only as representative of those who sent him. the conjectural reading {epitarrothon exeis}, "thou shalt have him as a helper against tegea," is tempting.] [ {agathoergon}.] [ this was to enable him the better to gain his ends at tegea.] [ cp. ch. , note.] [ see ch. .] [ {euzono andri}: cp. ch. and ii. . the word {euzonos} is used of light-armed troops; hesychius says, {euzonos, me ekhon phortion}.] [ {orgen ouk akros}: this is the reading of all the best mss., and it is sufficiently supported by the parallel of v. , {psukhen ouk akros}. most editors however have adopted the reading {orgen akros}, as equivalent to {akrakholos}, "quick-tempered."] [ it has been suggested by some that this clause is not genuine. it should not, however, be taken to refer to the battle which was interrupted by the eclipse, for ( ) that did not occur in the period here spoken of; ( ) the next clause is introduced by {de} (which can hardly here stand for {gar}); ( ) when the eclipse occurred the fighting ceased, therefore it was no more a {nuktomakhin} than any other battle which is interrupted by darkness coming on.] [ see ch. . nabunita was his true name.] [ see ch. ff.] [ not "somewhere near the city of sinope," for it must have been at a considerable distance and probably far inland. sinope itself is at least fifty miles to the west of the halys. i take it to mean that pteria was nearly due south of sinope, i.e. that the nearest road from pteria to the sea led to sinope. pteria no doubt was the name of a region as well as of a city.] [ {anastatous epoiese}.] [ this is the son of the man mentioned in ch. .] [ {us en autou xeinikos}. stein translates "so much of it as was mercenary," but it may be doubted if this is possible. mr. woods, "which army of his was a foreign one."] [ {metros dindumenes}, i.e. kybele: the mountain is dindymos in phrygia.] [ i.e. the whole strip of territory to the west of the peninsula of argolis, which includes thyrea and extends southwards to malea: "westwards as far as malea" would be absurd.] [ {outos}: a conjectural emendation of {autos}.] [ {autos}: some mss. read {o autos}, "this same man."] [ {aneneikamenon}, nearly equivalent to {anastemaxanta} (cp. hom. il. xix. ), {mnesamenos d' adinos aneneikato phonesen te}. some translate it here, "he recovered himself," cp. ch. , {aneneikhtheis}.] [ {ubristai}.] [ {proesousi}: a conjectural emendation of {poiesousi}, adopted in most of the modern editions.] [ {touto oneidisai}: or {touton oneidisai}, "to reproach the god with these things." the best mss. have {touto}.] [ {to kai... eipe ta eipe loxias k.t.l.}: various emendations have been proposed. if any one is to be adopted, the boldest would perhaps be the best, {to de kai... eipe loxias}.] [ {oia te kai alle khore}, "such as other lands have."] [ {stadioi ex kai duo plethra}.] [ {plethra tria kai deka}.] [ {gugaie}.] [ or "tyrrhenia."] [ or "umbrians."] [ {tes ano 'asies}, i.e. the parts which are removed from the mediterranean.] [ i.e. nature would not be likely to supply so many regularly ascending circles. stein alters the text so that the sentence runs thus, "and whereas there are seven circles of all, within the last is the royal palace," etc.] [ i.e. "to laugh or to spit is unseemly for those in presence of the king, and this last for all, whether in the presence of the king or not." cp. xen. cyrop. i. . , {aiskhron men gar eti kai nun esti persais kai to apoptuein kai to apomuttesthai}, (quoted by stein, who however gives a different interpretation).] [ {tauta de peri eouton esemnune}: the translation given is that of mr. woods.] [ {allos mentoi eouton eu ekontes}: the translation is partly due to mr. woods.] [ i.e. east of the halys: see note on ch. .] [ see iv. .] [ cp. ch. .] [ {ten katuperthe odon}, i.e. further away from the euxine eastwards.] [ {o theos}.] [ {khoris men gar phoron}: many editors substitute {phoron} for {phoron}, but {phoron} may stand if taken not with {khoris} but with {to ekastoisi epeballon}.] [ cp. ch. , "the assyrian history."] [ {uperthemenos}, a conjectural emendation of {upothemenos}, cp. ch. where the mss. give {uperthemenos}, (the medicean with {upo} written above as a correction).] [ or "expose me to risk," "stake my safety."] [ or "thou wilt suffer the most evil kind of death": cp. ch. .] [ {tas aggelias pherein}, i.e. to have the office of {aggeliephoros} (ch. ) or {esaggeleus} (iii. ), the chamberlain through whom communications passed.] [ {dialabein}. so translated by mr. woods.] [ {es tas anagkas}, "to the necessity," mentioned above.] [ or "to celebrate good fortune."] [ {akreon kheiron te kai podon}: cp. ii. (e), {apotamonta en to omo ten kheira}.] [ {esti te o pais kai periesti}. so translated by mr. woods.] [ {erkhe}: a few inferior mss. have {eikhe}, which is adopted by several editors.] [ {para smikra... kekhoreke}, "have come out equal to trifles."] [ {kuon}: cp. ch. .] [ {su nun}, answering to {se gar theoi eporeousi}: the mss. and some editors read {su nun}.] [ i.e. of the race of perses: see vii. .] [ "how his change from a throne to slavery was as compared with that feast, etc.," i.e. what did he think of it as a retribution.] [ see ch. . the actual duration of the median supremacy would be therefore a hundred years.] [ this is by some altered to "alilat," by comparison of iii. .] [ {stemmasi}, i.e. the chaplets wound round with wool which were worn at hellenic sacrifices.] [ {oulesi}.] [ cp. vii. .] [ {sitoisi}: perhaps "plain dishes."] [ {proskuneei}, i.e. kisses his feet or the ground.] [ {ton legomenon}, a correction of {to legomeno}. (the medicean ms. has {toi legomenoi} like the rest, not {toi legomeno}, as stated by stein.)] [ {ekhomenon, kata ton auton de logon}: the mss. and most editors have {ekhomenon}. {kata ton auton de logon}; "and this same rule the persians observe in giving honour." this, however, makes it difficult (though not impossible) to refer {to ethnos} in the next clause to the medes, and it can hardly be referred to the persians, who certainly had not the same system of government. perhaps however we may translate thus, "for each race extended forward thus their rule or their deputed authority."] [ cp. vii. .] [ {polloi}: omitted, or corrected variously, by editors. there is, perhaps, something wrong about the text in the next clause also, for it seems clear that white doves were not objected to by the persians. see stein's note.] [ see ch. .] [ these words, "neither those towards the east nor those towards the west" have perhaps been interpolated as an explanation of {ta ano} and {ta kato}. as an explanation they can hardly be correct, but the whole passage is vaguely expressed.] [ {tropous tesseras paragogeon}.] [ i.e. the asiatic ionians who had formed a separate confederacy. some understand it to mean the milesians, but this would give no satisfactory connection with what follows.] [ {pentapolios}.] [ {exapolios}.] [ {mesogaioi}. several of the other cities are at some distance from the coast, but the region is meant in each case rather than the city (hence such forms as {tritaiees}).] [ {'elikonio}.] [ this is condemned as an interpolation by some editors.] [ {oreon de ekousan ouk omoios}.] [ {katastas}: cp. iii. .] [ {ktesamenoi}: stein reads {stesamenoi} by conjecture: cp. vi. .] [ {phrontizo me ariston e}. the translation is rawlinson's.] [ {kephale anamaxas}: cp. hom. od. xix. .] [ {es tous bragkhidas}, i.e. the priests of the temple. the name of the place {bragkhidai} is feminine, cp. ch. .] [ {onax}, addressing apollo.] [ {exaipee tous strouthous k.t.l.} the verb is one which is commonly used of the destruction and depopulation of cities, cp. ch. . (stein.)] [ {tou de 'atarneos toutou esti khoros tes musies}.] [ {ouk oligoi stadioi}.] [ {katirosai}, i.e. dedicate it to the king as a token of submission.] [ i.e. corsica.] [ {anaphanenai}: the mss. have {anaphenai}, which can only be translated by supplying {ton ponton} from {katepontosan}, "till the sea produced it again," but this is hardly satisfactory.] [ {karkhedonioi}.] [ {elakhon te auton pollo pleious}. several editors suppose that words have been lost or that the text is corrupt. i understand it to mean that many more of them fell into the hands of the enemy than were rescued by their own side. some translate "divided most of them by lot"; but this would be {dielakhon}, and the proceeding would have no object if the prisoners were to be put to death at once. for {pleious} stein reads {pleistous}.] [ {ton kurnon... ktisai eron eonta, all' ou ten neson}.] [ {bouleuterion}.] [ {outoi}: the mss. have {outo}.] [ {autokhthonas epeirotas}.] [ many editors insert {oi} before {tes khores tes spheteres} and alter the punctuation accordingly.] [ or "all their land came within the isthmus."] [ {epexiontes}: the mss. have {upexiontes}, which mr. woods explains to mean "coming forth suddenly."] [ {epexelthontes}: the mss. have {upexelthontes}.] [ {stadion}, and so throughout.] [ the "royal cubit" appears to have measured about twenty-one inches.] [ {tous agkhonas}, the walls on the north and south of the city, called so because built at an angle with the side walls.] [ {laurai}, "lanes."] [ {kai autai}, but perhaps the text is not sound.] [ {thorex}, as opposed to the inner wall, which would be the {kithon} (cp. vii. ).] [ {steinoteron}: mr. woods says "of less thickness," the top of the wall being regarded as a road.] [ {duo stadion pante}, i.e. yards square.] [ {tou irou}, i.e. the sacred precincts; cp. {en to temenei touto}.] [ {neos}, the inner house of the temple.] [ {promantis}.] [ {ta telea ton probaton}.] [ "at that time."] [ {katapleontes ton euphreten}: the mss. have {katapleontes es ton e}. (it is not true, as stated by abicht, that the medicean ms. omits {es}.)] [ {oligon ti parateinousa apo tou potamou}.] [ {ou gar ameinon}, an epic phrase, cp. iii. and .] [ {eskeuasmenos}, a conjectural emendation of {eskeuasmenoisi}, "with provisions well prepared."] [ {kateteine skhoinoteneas upodexas diorukhas}. stein understands {kateteine ten stratien} (resumed afterwards by {diataxas}), "he extended his army, having first marked out channels straight by lines."] [ {proesaxanto}, from {proesago}: it may be however from {prosatto}, "they had heaped together provisions for themselves beforehand."] [ {ten stratien apasan}. stein thinks that some correction is needed.] [ {oi d' an perudontes k.t.l.}: the mss. have {oud' an perudontes}, "they would not even have allowed them to enter the city (from the river)," but the negative is awkward referring to the participle alone, and the admission of the enemy to the river-bed within the city would have been an essential part of the scheme, not to be omitted in the description.] [ the attic medimnos (= choinikes) was rather less than gallons.] [ {ton tes demetros karpon}.] [ stein supposes that words have fallen out before {ta gar de alla dendrea}, chiefly because some mention of the palm-trees might have been expected here.] [ {phoinikeious}: some editors (following valla) have altered this to {phoinikeiou} ("casks of palm-wine"), but it is not likely that palm-wine would have been thus imported, see ch. .] [ {kai o men eso elkei to plektron o de exo otheei}. i take it to mean that there is one steering-oar on each side, and the "inside" is the side nearer to the bank of the river. the current would naturally run faster on the "outside" and consequently would tend to turn the boat round, and therefore the inside oarsman pulls his oar constantly towards himself and the outside man pushes his oar from himself (i.e. backs water), to keep the boat straight. various explanations are given. stein takes {eso, exo} with the verbs, "one draws the boat towards himself, the other pushes it from himself." mr. woods understands that only one oar is used at a time and by two men looking different ways, of whom {o men eso} is he who stands nearest to the side of the boat.] [ if the talents meant are euboic, this would be about tons.] [ {mitresi}: cp. vii. .] [ {os an ai parthenoi ginoiato}, equivalent to {osai aei parthenoi ginoiato}, which stein suggests as a correction.] [ this sentence, "in order that�city," is thought by stein to be either interpolated or misplaced.] [ {katestekee}: some editors adopt the correction {katesteke}, "is established."] [ {iron}, afterwards called {temenos}.] [ {panta tropon odon}: some mss. have {odon} for {odon}, and {odon ekhousi} might perhaps mean "afford a passage." (the reading of the medicean ms. is {odon}.)] [ "i call upon mylitta against thee"; or perhaps, "i call upon mylitta to be favourable to thee."] [ {aposiosamene te theo}.] [ {eideos te epammenai eisi kai megatheos}.] [ {patriai}.] [ {antion}.] [ that is perhaps, "if one rows as well as sails," using oars when the wind is not favourable, cp. ii. .] [ {genomene}, or {ginomene}, "which he met with."] [ {eonta akharita}: most of the mss. have {ta eonta akharita}, with which reading the sentence would be, "the sufferings which i have, have proved bitter lessons of wisdom to me."] [ {me eie}.] [ {tou katharou stratou}, perhaps "the effective part," without the encumbrances, cp. iv. .] [ {alexomenous}.] [ {sagaris nomizontes ekhein}: cp. iv. .] [ {maskhalisteras}.] [ {thuousi}.] [ {nomos}: the conjecture {noos}, "meaning," which is adopted by many editors, may be right; but {nomos} seems to mean the "customary rule" which determines this form of sacrifice, the rule namely of "swift to the swift."] book ii. the second book of the histories, called euterpe . when cyrus had brought his life to an end, cambyses received the royal power in succession, being the son of cyrus and of cassandane the daughter of pharnaspes, for whose death, which came about before his own, cyrus had made great mourning himself and also had proclaimed to all those over whom he bore rule that they should make mourning for her: cambyses, i say, being the son of this woman and of cyrus, regarded the ionians and aiolians as slaves inherited from his father; and he proceeded to march an army against egypt, taking with him as helpers not only the other nations of which he was the ruler, but also those of the hellenes over whom he had power besides. . now the egyptians, before the time when psammetichos became king over them, were wont to suppose that they had come into being first of all men; but since the time when psammetichos having become king desired to know what men had come into being first, they suppose that the phrygians came into being before themselves, but they themselves before all other men. now psammetichos, when he was not able by inquiry to find out any means of knowing who had come into being first of all men, contrived a device of the following kind:�taking two new-born children belonging to persons of the common sort he gave them to a shepherd to bring up at the place where his flocks were, with a manner of bringing up such as i shall say, charging him namely that no man should utter any word in their presence, and that they should be placed by themselves in a room where none might come, and at the proper time he should bring to them she-goats, and when he had satisfied them with milk he should do for them whatever else was needed. these things psammetichos did and gave him this charge wishing to hear what word the children would let break forth first, after they had ceased from wailings without sense. and accordingly so it came to pass; for after a space of two years had gone by, during which the shepherd went on acting so, at length, when he opened the door and entered, both the children fell before him in entreaty and uttered the word bekos, stretching forth their hands. at first when he heard this the shepherd kept silence; but since this word was often repeated, as he visited them constantly and attended to them, at last he declared the matter to his master, and at his command he brought the children before his face. then psammetichos having himself also heard it, began to inquire about what nation of men named anything bekos, and inquiring he found that the phrygians had this name for bread. in this manner and guided by an indication such as this, the egyptians were brought to allow that the phrygians were a more ancient people than themselves. . that so it came to pass i heard from the priests of that hephaistos who dwells at memphis; but the hellenes relate, besides many other idle tales, that psammetichos cut out the tongues of certain women, and then caused the children to live with these women. with regard then to the rearing of the children they related so much as i have said: and i heard also other things at memphis when i had speech with the priests of hephaistos. moreover i visited both thebes and heliopolis for this very cause, namely because i wished to know whether the priests at these places would agree in their accounts with those at memphis; for the men of heliopolis are said to be the most learned in records of the egyptians. those of their narrations which i heard with regard to the gods i am not earnest to relate in full, but i shall name them only, because i consider that all men are equally ignorant of these matters: and whatever things of them i may record, i shall record only because i am compelled by the course of the story. . but as to those matters which concern men, the priests agreed with one another in saying that the egyptians were the first of all men on earth to find out the course of the year, having divided the seasons into twelve parts to make up the whole; and this they said they found out from the stars: and they reckon to this extent more wisely than the hellenes, as it seems to me, inasmuch as the hellenes throw in an intercalated month every other year, to make the seasons right, whereas the egyptians, reckoning the twelve months at thirty days each, bring in also every year five days beyond the number, and thus the circle of their seasons is completed and comes round to the same point whence it set out. they said moreover that the egyptians were the first who brought into use appellations for the twelve gods and the hellenes took up the use from them; and that they were the first who assigned altars and images and temples to the gods, and who engraved figures on stones; and with regard to the greater number of these things they showed me by actual facts that they had happened so. they said also that the first man who became king of egypt was min; and that in his time all egypt except the district of thebes was a swamp, and none of the regions were then above water which now lie below the lake of moiris, to which lake it is a voyage of seven days up the river from the sea: , and i thought that they said well about the land; for it is manifest in truth even to a person who has not heard it beforehand but has only seen, at least if he have understanding, that the egypt to which the hellenes come in ships is a land which has been won by the egyptians as an addition, and that it is a gift of the river: moreover the regions which lie above this lake also for a distance of three days' sail, about which they did not go on to say anything of this kind, are nevertheless another instance of the same thing: for the nature of the land of egypt is as follows:�first when you are still approaching it in a ship and are distant a day's run from the land, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud and will find yourself in eleven fathoms. this then so far shows that there is a silting forward of the land. . then secondly, as to egypt itself, the extent of it along the sea is sixty schoines, according to our definition of egypt as extending from the gulf of plinthine to the serbonian lake, along which stretches mount casion; from this lake then the sixty schoines are reckoned: for those of men who are poor in land have their country measured by fathoms, those who are less poor by furlongs, those who have much land by parasangs, and those who have land in very great abundance by schoines: now the parasang is equal to thirty furlongs, and each schoine, which is an egyptian measure, is equal to sixty furlongs. so there would be an extent of three thousand six hundred furlongs for the coast-land of egypt. . from thence and as far as heliopolis inland egypt is broad, and the land is all flat and without springs of water and formed of mud: and the road as one goes inland from the sea to heliopolis is about the same in length as that which leads from the altar of the twelve gods at athens to pisa and the temple of olympian zeus: reckoning up you would find the difference very small by which these roads fail of being equal in length, not more indeed than fifteen furlongs; for the road from athens to pisa wants fifteen furlongs of being fifteen hundred, while the road to heliopolis from the sea reaches that number completely. . from heliopolis however, as you go up, egypt is narrow; for on the one side a mountain-range belonging to arabia stretches along by the side of it, going in a direction from north towards the midday and the south wind, tending upwards without a break to that which is called the erythraian sea, in which range are the stone-quarries which were used in cutting stone for the pyramids at memphis. on this side then the mountain ends where i have said, and then takes a turn back; and where it is widest, as i was informed, it is a journey of two months across from east to west; and the borders of it which turn towards the east are said to produce frankincense. such then is the nature of this mountain-range; and on the side of egypt towards libya another range extends, rocky and enveloped in sand: in this are the pyramids, and it runs in the same direction as those parts of the arabian mountains which go towards the midday. so then, i say, from heliopolis the land has no longer a great extent so far as it belongs to egypt, and for about four days' sail up the river egypt properly so called is narrow: and the space between the mountain-ranges which have been mentioned is plain-land, but where it is narrowest it did not seem to me to exceed two hundred furlongs from the arabian mountains to those which are called the libyan. after this again egypt is broad. . such is the nature of this land: and from heliopolis to thebes is a voyage up the river of nine days, and the distance of the journey in furlongs is four thousand eight hundred and sixty, the number of the schoines being eighty-one. if these measures of egypt in furlongs be put together the result is as follows:�i have already before this shown that the distance along the sea amounts to three thousand six hundred furlongs, and i will now declare what the distance is inland from the sea to thebes, namely six thousand one hundred and twenty furlongs: and again the distance from thebes to the city called elephantine is one thousand eight hundred furlongs. . of this land then, concerning which i have spoken, it seemed to myself also, according as the priests said, that the greater part had been won as an addition by the egyptians; for it was evident to me that the space between the aforesaid mountain-ranges, which lie above the city of memphis, once was a gulf of the sea, like the regions about ilion and teuthrania and ephesos and the plain of the maiander, if it be permitted to compare small things with great; and small these are in comparison, for of the rivers which heaped up the soil in those regions none is worthy to be compared in volume with a single one of the mouths of the nile, which has five mouths. moreover there are other rivers also, not in size at all equal to the nile, which have performed great feats; of which i can mention the names of several, and especially the acheloös, which flowing through acarnania and so issuing out into the sea has already made half of the echinades from islands into mainland. . now there is in the land of arabia, not far from egypt, a gulf of the sea running in from that which is called the erythraian sea, very long and narrow, as i am about to tell. with respect to the length of the voyage along it, one who set out from the innermost point to sail out through it into the open sea, would spend forty days upon the voyage, using oars; and with respect to breadth, where the gulf is broadest it is half a day's sail across: and there is in it an ebb and flow of tide every day. just such another gulf i suppose that egypt was, and that the one ran in towards ethiopia from the northern sea, and the other, the arabian, of which i am about to speak, tended from the south towards syria, the gulfs boring in so as almost to meet at their extreme points, and passing by one another with but a small space left between. if then the stream of the nile should turn aside into this arabian gulf, what would hinder that gulf from being filled up with silt as the river continued to flow, at all events within a period of twenty thousand years? indeed for my part i am of opinion that it would be filled up even within ten thousand years. how, then, in all the time that has elapsed before i came into being should not a gulf be filled up even of much greater size than this by a river so great and so active? . as regards egypt then, i both believe those who say that things are so, and for myself also i am strongly of opinion that they are so; because i have observed that egypt runs out into the sea further than the adjoining land, and that shells are found upon the mountains of it, and an efflorescence of salt forms upon the surface, so that even the pyramids are being eaten away by it, and moreover that of all the mountains of egypt, the range which lies above memphis is the only one which has sand: besides which i notice that egypt resembles neither the land of arabia, which borders upon it, nor libya, nor yet syria (for they are syrians who dwell in the parts of arabia lying along the sea), but that it has soil which is black and easily breaks up, seeing that it is in truth mud and silt brought down from ethiopia by the river: but the soil of libya, we know, is reddish in colour and rather sandy, while that of arabia and syria is somewhat clayey and rocky. . the priests also gave me a strong proof concerning this land as follows, namely that in the reign of king moiris, whenever the river reached a height of at least eight cubits it watered egypt below memphis; and not yet nine hundred years had gone by since the death of moiris, when i heard these things from the priests: now however, unless the river rises to sixteen cubits, or fifteen at the least, it does not go over the land. i think too that those egyptians who dwell below the lake of moiris and especially in that region which is called the delta, if that land continues to grow in height according to this proportion and to increase similarly in extent, will suffer for all remaining time, from the nile not overflowing their land, that same thing which they themselves said that the hellenes would at some time suffer: for hearing that the whole land of the hellenes has rain and is not watered by rivers as theirs is, they said that the hellenes would at some time be disappointed of a great hope and would suffer the ills of famine. this saying means that if the god shall not send them rain, but shall allow drought to prevail for a long time, the hellenes will be destroyed by hunger; for they have in fact no other supply of water to save them except from zeus alone. . this has been rightly said by the egyptians with reference to the hellenes: but now let me tell how matters are with the egyptians themselves in their turn. if, in accordance with what i before said, their land below memphis (for this is that which is increasing) shall continue to increase in height according to the same proportion as in past time, assuredly those egyptians who dwell here will suffer famine, if their land shall not have rain nor the river be able to go over their fields. it is certain however that now they gather in fruit from the earth with less labour than any other men and also with less than the other egyptians; for they have no labour in breaking up furrows with a plough nor in hoeing nor in any other of those labours which other men have about a crop; but when the river has come up of itself and watered their fields and after watering has left them again, then each man sows his own field and turns into it swine, and when he has trodden the seed into the ground by means of the swine, after that he waits for the harvest; and when he has threshed the corn by means of the swine, then he gathers it in. . if we desire to follow the opinions of the ionians as regards egypt, who say that the delta alone is egypt, reckoning its sea-coast to be from the watch-tower called of perseus to the fish-curing houses of pelusion, a distance of forty schoines, and counting it to extend inland as far as the city of kercasoros, where the nile divides and runs to pelusion and canobos, while as for the rest of egypt, they assign it partly to libya and partly to arabia,�if, i say, we should follow this account, we should thereby declare that in former times the egyptians had no land to live in; for, as we have seen, their delta at any rate is alluvial, and has appeared (so to speak) lately, as the egyptians themselves say and as my opinion is. if then at the first there was no land for them to live in, why did they waste their labour to prove that they had come into being before all other men? they needed not to have made trial of the children to see what language they would first utter. however i am not of opinion that the egyptians came into being at the same time as that which is called by the ionians the delta, but that they existed always ever since the human race came into being, and that as their land advanced forwards, many of them were left in their first abodes and many came down gradually to the lower parts. at least it is certain that in old times thebes had the name of egypt, and of this the circumference measures six thousand one hundred and twenty furlongs. . if then we judge aright of these matters, the opinion of the ionians about egypt is not sound: but if the judgment of the ionians is right, i declare that neither the hellenes nor the ionians themselves know how to reckon since they say that the whole earth is made up of three divisions, europe, asia, and libya: for they ought to count in addition to these the delta of egypt, since it belongs neither to asia nor to libya; for at least it cannot be the river nile by this reckoning which divides asia from libya, but the nile is cleft at the point of this delta so as to flow round it, and the result is that this land would come between asia and libya. . we dismiss then the opinion of the ionians, and express a judgment of our own in this matter also, that egypt is all that land which is inhabited by egyptians, just as kilikia is that which is inhabited by kilikians and assyria that which is inhabited by assyrians, and we know of no boundary properly speaking between asia and libya except the borders of egypt. if however we shall adopt the opinion which is commonly held by the hellenes, we shall suppose that the whole of egypt, beginning from the cataract and the city of elephantine, is divided into two parts and that it thus partakes of both the names, since one side will thus belong to libya and the other to asia; for the nile from the cataract onwards flows to the sea cutting egypt through the midst; and as far as the city of kercasoros the nile flows in one single stream, but from this city onwards it is parted into three ways; and one, which is called the pelusian mouth, turns towards the east; the second of the ways goes towards the west, and this is called the canobic mouth; but that one of the ways which is straight runs thus,�when the river in its course downwards comes to the point of the delta, then it cuts the delta through the midst and so issues out to the sea. in this we have a portion of the water of the river which is not the smallest nor the least famous, and it is called the sebennytic mouth. there are also two other mouths which part off from the sebennytic and go to the sea, and these are called, one the saïtic, the other the mendesian mouth. the bolbitinitic and bucolic mouths, on the other hand, are not natural but made by digging. . moreover also the answer given by the oracle of ammon bears witness in support of my opinion that egypt is of the extent which i declare it to be in my account; and of this answer i heard after i had formed my own opinion about egypt. for those of the city of marea and of apis, dwelling in the parts of egypt which border on libya, being of opinion themselves that they were libyans and not egyptians, and also being burdened by the rules of religious service, because they desired not to be debarred from the use of cows' flesh, sent to ammon saying that they had nought in common with the egyptians, for they dwelt outside the delta and agreed with them in nothing; and they said they desired that it might be lawful for them to eat everything without distinction. the god however did not permit them to do so, but said that that land which was egypt which the nile came over and watered, and that those were egyptians who dwelling below the city of elephantine drank of that river. thus it was answered to them by the oracle about this: , and the nile, when it is in flood, goes over not only the delta but also of the land which is called libyan and of that which is called arabian sometimes as much as two days' journey on each side, and at times even more than this or at times less. as regards the nature of the river, neither from the priests nor yet from any other man was i able to obtain any knowledge: and i was desirous especially to learn from them about these matters, namely why the nile comes down increasing in volume from the summer solstice onwards for a hundred days, and then, when it has reached the number of these days, turns and goes back, failing in its stream, so that through the whole winter season it continues to be low, and until the summer solstice returns. of none of these things was i able to receive any account from the egyptians, when i inquired of them what power the nile has whereby it is of a nature opposite to that of other rivers. and i made inquiry, desiring to know both this which i say and also why, unlike all other rivers, it does not give rise to any breezes blowing from it. . however some of the hellenes who desired to gain distinction for cleverness have given an account of this water in three different ways: two of these i do not think it worth while even to speak of except only to indicate their nature; of which the one says that the etesian winds are the cause that makes the river rise, by preventing the nile from flowing out into the sea. but often the etesian winds fail and yet the nile does the same work as it is wont to do; and moreover, if these were the cause, all the other rivers also which flow in a direction opposed to the etesian winds ought to have been affected in the same way as the nile, and even more, in as much as they are smaller and present to them a feebler flow of stream: but there are many of these rivers in syria and many also in libya, and they are affected in no such manner as the nile. . the second way shows more ignorance than that which has been mentioned, and it is more marvellous to tell; for it says that the river produces these effects because it flows from the ocean, and that the ocean flows round the whole earth. . the third of the ways is much the most specious, but nevertheless it is the most mistaken of all: for indeed this way has no more truth in it than the rest, alleging as it does that the nile flows from melting snow; whereas it flows out of libya through the midst of the ethiopians, and so comes out into egypt. how then should it flow from snow, when it flows from the hottest parts to those which are cooler? and indeed most of the facts are such as to convince a man (one at least who is capable of reasoning about such matters), that it is not at all likely that it flows from snow. the first and greatest evidence is afforded by the winds, which blow hot from these regions; the second is that the land is rainless always and without frost, whereas after snow has fallen rain must necessarily come within five days, so that if it snowed in those parts rain would fall there; the third evidence is afforded by the people dwelling there, who are of a black colour by reason of the burning heat. moreover kites and swallows remain there through the year and do not leave the land; and cranes flying from the cold weather which comes on in the region of scythia come regularly to these parts for wintering: if then it snowed ever so little in that land through which the nile flows and in which it has its rise, none of these things would take place, as necessity compels us to admit. . as for him who talked about the ocean, he carried his tale into the region of the unknown, and so he need not be refuted; since i for my part know of no river ocean existing, but i think that homer or one of the poets who were before him invented the name and introduced it into his verse. . if however after i have found fault with the opinions proposed, i am bound to declare an opinion of my own about the matters which are in doubt, i will tell what to my mind is the reason why the nile increases in the summer. in the winter season the sun, being driven away from his former path through the heaven by the stormy winds, comes to the upper parts of libya. if one would set forth the matter in the shortest way, all has now been said; for whatever region this god approaches most and stands directly above, this it may reasonably be supposed is most in want of water, and its native streams of rivers are dried up most. . however, to set it forth at greater length, thus it is:�the sun passing in his course by the upper parts of libya, does thus, that is to say, since at all times the air in those parts is clear and the country is warm, because there are no cold winds, in passing through it the sun does just as he was wont to do in the summer, when going through the midst of the heaven, that is he draws to himself the water, and having drawn it he drives it away to the upper parts of the country, and the winds take it up and scattering it abroad melt it into rain; so it is natural that the winds which blow from this region, namely the south and south-west winds, should be much the most rainy of all the winds. i think however that the sun does not send away from himself all the water of the nile of each year, but that he also lets some remain behind with himself. then when the winter becomes milder, the sun returns back again to the midst of the heaven, and from that time onwards he draws equally from all rivers; but in the meanwhile they flow in large volume, since water of rain mingles with them in great quantity, because their country receives rain then and is filled with torrent streams. in summer however they are weak, since not only the showers of rain fail then, but also they are drawn by the sun. the nile however, alone of all rivers, not having rain and being drawn by the sun, naturally flows during this time of winter in much less than its proper volume, that is much less than in summer; for then it is drawn equally with all the other waters, but in winter it bears the burden alone. thus i suppose the sun to be the cause of these things. . he is also the cause in my opinion that the air in these parts is dry, since he makes it so by scorching up his path through the heaven: thus summer prevails always in the upper parts of libya. if however the station of the seasons had been changed, and where now in the heaven are placed the north wind and winter, there was the station of the south wind and of the midday, and where now is placed the south wind, there was the north, if this had been so, the sun being driven from the midst of the heaven by the winter and the north wind would go to the upper parts of europe, just as now he comes to the upper parts of libya, and passing in his course throughout the whole of europe i suppose that he would do to the ister that which he now works upon the nile. . as to the breeze, why none blows from the river, my opinion is that from very hot places it is not natural that anything should blow, and that a breeze is wont to blow from something cold. . let these matters then be as they are and as they were at the first: but as to the sources of the nile, not one either of the egyptians or of the libyans or of the hellenes, who came to speech with me, professed to know anything, except the scribe of the sacred treasury of athene at the city of saïs in egypt. to me however this man seemed not to be speaking seriously when he said that he had certain knowledge of it; and he said as follows, namely that there were two mountains of which the tops ran up to a sharp point, situated between the city of syene, which is in the district of thebes, and elephantine, and the names of the mountains were, of the one crophi and of the other mophi. from the middle between these two mountains flowed (he said) the sources of the nile, which were fathomless in depth, and half of the water flowed to egypt and towards the north wind, the other half to ethiopia and the south wind. as for the fathomless depth of the source, he said that psammetichos king of egypt came to a trial of this matter; for he had a rope twisted of many thousands of fathoms and let it down in this place, and it found no bottom. by this the scribe (if this which he told me was really as he said) gave me to understand that there were certain strong eddies there and a backward flow, and that since the water dashed against the mountains, therefore the sounding-line could not come to any bottom when it was let down. . from no other person was i able to learn anything about this matter; but for the rest i learnt so much as here follows by the most diligent inquiry; for i went myself as an eye-witness as far as the city of elephantine and from that point onwards i gathered knowledge by report. from the city of elephantine as one goes up the river there is country which slopes steeply; so that here one must attach ropes to the vessel on both sides, as one fastens an ox, and so make one's way onward; and if the rope break, the vessel is gone at once, carried away by the violence of the stream. through this country it is a voyage of about four days in length, and in this part the nile is winding like the river maiander, and the distance amounts to twelve schoines, which one must traverse in this manner. then you will come to a level plain, in which the nile flows round an island named tachompso. (now in the regions above elephantine there dwell ethiopians at once succeeding, who also occupy half of the island, and egyptians the other half.) adjoining this island there is a great lake, round which dwell ethiopian nomad tribes; and when you have sailed through this you will come to the stream of the nile again, which flows into this lake. after this you will disembark and make a journey by land of forty days; for in the nile sharp rocks stand forth out of the water, and there are many reefs, by which it is not possible for a vessel to pass. then after having passed through this country in the forty days which i have said, you will embark again in another vessel and sail for twelve days; and after this you will come to a great city called meroe. this city is said to be the mother-city of all the other ethiopians: and they who dwell in it reverence of the gods zeus and dionysos alone, and these they greatly honour; and they have an oracle of zeus established, and make warlike marches whensoever this god commands them by prophesyings and to whatsoever place he commands. . sailing from this city you will come to the "deserters" in another period of time equal to that in which you came from elephantine to the mother-city of the ethiopians. now the name of these "deserters" is asmach, and this word signifies, when translated into the tongue of the hellenes, "those who stand on the left hand of the king." these were two hundred and forty thousand egyptians of the warrior class, who revolted and went over to the ethiopians for the following cause:�in the reign of psammetichos garrisons were set, one towards the ethiopians at the city of elephantine, another towards the arabians and assyrians at daphnai of pelusion, and another towards libya at marea: and even in my own time the garrisons of the persians too are ordered in the same manner as these were in the reign of psammetichos, for both at elephantine and at daphnai the persians have outposts. the egyptians then of whom i speak had served as outposts for three years and no one relieved them from their guard; accordingly they took counsel together, and adopting a common plan they all in a body revolted from psammetichos and set out for ethiopia. hearing this psammetichos set forth in pursuit, and when he came up with them he entreated them much and endeavoured to persuade them not to desert the gods of their country and their children and wives: upon which it is said that one of them pointed to his privy member and said that wherever this was, there would they have both children and wives. when these came to ethiopia they gave themselves over to the king of the ethiopians; and he rewarded them as follows:�there were certain of the ethiopians who had come to be at variance with him; and he bade them drive these out and dwell in their land. so since these men settled in the land of the ethiopians, the ethiopians have come to be of milder manners, from having learnt the customs of the egyptians. . the nile then, besides that part of its course which is in egypt, is known as far as a four months' journey by river and land: for that is the number of months which are found by reckoning to be spent in going from elephantine to these "deserters": and the river runs from the west and the setting of the sun. but what comes after that no one can clearly say; for this land is desert by reason of the burning heat. . thus much however i heard from men of kyrene, who told me that they had been to the oracle of ammon, and had come to speech with etearchos king of the ammonians: and it happened that after speaking of other matters they fell to discourse about the nile and how no one knew the sources of it; and etearchos said that once there had come to him men of the nasamonians (this is a libyan race which dwells in the syrtis, and also in the land to the east of the syrtis reaching to no great distance), and when the nasamonians came and were asked by him whether they were able to tell him anything more than he knew about the desert parts of libya, they said that there had been among them certain sons of chief men, who were of unruly disposition; and these when they grew up to be men had devised various other extravagant things and also they had told off by lot five of themselves to go to see the desert parts of libya and to try whether they could discover more than those who had previously explored furthest: for in those parts of libya which are by the northern sea, beginning from egypt and going as far as the headland of soloeis, which is the extreme point of libya, libyans (and of them many races) extend along the whole coast, except so much as the hellenes and phenicians hold; but in the upper parts, which lie above the sea-coast and above those people whose land comes down to the sea, libya is full of wild beasts; and in the parts above the land of wild beasts it is full of sand, terribly waterless and utterly desert. these young men then (said they), being sent out by their companions well furnished with supplies of water and provisions, went first through the inhabited country, and after they had passed through this they came to the country of wild beasts, and after this they passed through the desert, making their journey towards the west wind; and having passed through a great tract of sand in many days, they saw at last trees growing in a level place; and having come up to them, they were beginning to pluck the fruit which was upon the trees: but as they began to pluck it, there came upon them small men, of less stature than men of the common size, and these seized them and carried them away; and neither could the nasamonians understand anything of their speech nor could those who were carrying them off understand anything of the speech of the nasamonians: and they led them (so it was said) through very great swamps, and after passing through these they came to a city in which all the men were in size like those who carried them off and in colour of skin black; and by the city ran a great river, which ran from the west towards the sunrising, and in it were seen crocodiles. . of the account given by etearchos the ammonian let so much suffice as is here said, except that, as the men of kyrene told me, he alleged that the nasamonians returned safe home, and that the people to whom they had come were all wizards. now this river which ran by the city, etearchos conjectured to be the nile, and moreover reason compels us to think so; for the nile flows from libya and cuts libya through in the midst, and as i conjecture, judging of what is not known by that which is evident to the view, it starts at a distance from its mouth equal to that of the ister: for the river ister begins from the keltoi and the city of pyrene and so runs that it divides europe in the midst (now the keltoi are outside the pillars of heracles and border upon the kynesians, who dwell furthest towards the sunset of all those who have their dwelling in europe); and the ister ends, having its course through the whole of europe, by flowing into the euxine sea at the place where the milesians have their settlement of istria. . now the ister, since it flows through land which is inhabited, is known by the reports of many; but of the sources of the nile no one can give an account, for the part of libya through which it flows is uninhabited and desert. about its course however so much as it was possible to learn by the most diligent inquiry has been told; and it runs out into egypt. now egypt lies nearly opposite to the mountain districts of kilikia; and from thence to sinope, which lies upon the euxine sea, is a journey in the same straight line of five days for a man without encumbrance; and sinope lies opposite to the place where the ister runs out into the sea: thus i think that the nile passes through the whole of libya and is of equal measure with the ister. of the nile then let so much suffice as has been said. . of egypt however i shall make my report at length, because it has wonders more in number than any other land, and works too it has to show as much as any land, which are beyond expression great: for this reason then more shall be said concerning it. the egyptians in agreement with their climate, which is unlike any other, and with the river, which shows a nature different from all other rivers, established for themselves manners and customs in a way opposite to other men in almost all matters: for among them the women frequent the market and carry on trade, while the men remain at home and weave; and whereas others weave pushing the woof upwards, the egyptians push it downwards: the men carry their burdens upon their heads and the women upon their shoulders: the women make water standing up and the men crouching down: they ease themselves in their houses and they eat without in the streets, alleging as reason for this that it is right to do secretly the things that are unseemly though necessary, but those which are not unseemly, in public: no woman is a minister either of male or female divinity, but men of all, both male and female: to support their parents the sons are in no way compelled, if they do not desire to do so, but the daughters are forced to do so, be they never so unwilling. . the priests of the gods in other lands wear long hair, but in egypt they shave their heads: among other men the custom is that in mourning those whom the matter concerns most nearly have their hair cut short, but the egyptians, when deaths occur, let their hair grow long, both that on the head and that on the chin, having before been close shaven: other men have their daily living separated from beasts, but the egyptians have theirs together with beasts: other men live on wheat and barley, but to any one of the egyptians who makes his living on these it is a great reproach; they make their bread of maize, which some call spelt; they knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands, with which also they gather up dung: and whereas other men, except such as have learnt otherwise from the egyptians, have their members as nature made them, the egyptians practise circumcision: as to garments, the men wear two each and the women but one: and whereas others make fast the rings and ropes of the sails outside the ship, the egyptians do this inside: finally in the writing of characters and reckoning with pebbles, while the hellenes carry the hand from the left to the right, the egyptians do this from the right to the left; and doing so they say that they do it themselves rightwise and the hellenes leftwise: and they use two kinds of characters for writing, of which the one kind is called sacred and the other common. . they are religious excessively beyond all other men, and with regard to this they have customs as follows:�they drink from cups of bronze and rinse them out every day, and not some only do this but all: they wear garments of linen always newly washed, and this they make a special point of practice: they circumcise themselves for the sake of cleanliness, preferring to be clean rather than comely. the priests shave themselves all over their body every other day, so that no lice or any other foul thing may come to be upon them when they minister to the gods; and the priests wear garments of linen only and sandals of papyrus, and any other garment they may not take nor other sandals; these wash themselves in cold water twice in the day and twice again in the night; and other religious services they perform (one may almost say) of infinite number. they enjoy also good things not a few, for they do not consume or spend anything of their own substance, but there is sacred bread baked for them and they have each great quantity of flesh of oxen and geese coming in to them each day, and also wine of grapes is given to them; but it is not permitted to them to taste of fish: beans moreover the egyptians do not at all sow in their land, and those which grow they neither eat raw nor boil for food; nay the priests do not endure even to look upon them, thinking this to be an unclean kind of pulse: and there is not one priest only for each of the gods but many, and of them one is chief-priest, and whenever a priest dies his son is appointed to his place. . the males of the ox kind they consider to belong to epaphos, and on account of him they test them in the following manner:�if the priest sees one single black hair upon the beast he counts it not clean for sacrifice; and one of the priests who is appointed for the purpose makes investigation of these matters, both when the beast is standing upright and when it is lying on its back, drawing out its tongue moreover, to see if it is clean in respect of the appointed signs, which i shall tell of in another part of the history: he looks also at the hairs of the tail to see if it has them growing in the natural manner: and if it be clean in respect of all these things, he marks it with a piece of papyrus, rolling this round the horns, and then when he has plastered sealing-earth over it he sets upon it the seal of his signet-ring, and after that they take the animal away. but for one who sacrifices a beast not sealed the penalty appointed is death. . in this way then the beast is tested; and their appointed manner of sacrifice is as follows:�they lead the sealed beast to the altar where they happen to be sacrificing and then kindle a fire: after that, having poured libations of wine over the altar so that it runs down upon the victim and having called upon the god, they cut its throat, and having cut its throat they sever the head from the body. the body then of the beast they flay, but upon the head they make many imprecations first, and then they who have a market and hellenes sojourning among them for trade, these carry it to the market-place and sell it, while they who have no hellenes among them cast it away into the river: and this is the form of imprecation which they utter upon the heads, praying that if any evil be about to befall either themselves who are offering sacrifice or the land of egypt in general, it may come rather upon this head. now as regards the heads of the beasts which are sacrificed and the pouring over them of the wine, all the egyptians have the same customs equally for all their sacrifices; and by reason of this custom none of the egyptians eat of the head either of this or of any other kind of animal: , but the manner of disembowelling the victims and of burning them is appointed among them differently for different sacrifices; i shall speak however of the sacrifices to that goddess whom they regard as the greatest of all, and to whom they celebrate the greatest feast.�when they have flayed the bullock and made imprecation, they take out the whole of its lower entrails but leave in the body the upper entrails and the fat; and they sever from it the legs and the end of the loin and the shoulders and the neck: and this done, they fill the rest of the body of the animal with consecrated loaves and honey and raisins and figs and frankincense and myrrh and every other kind of spices, and having filled it with these they offer it, pouring over it great abundance of oil. they make their sacrifice after fasting, and while the offerings are being burnt, they all beat themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburnt of the sacrifice. . the clean males then of the ox kind, both full-grown animals and calves, are sacrificed by all the egyptians; the females however they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to isis; for the figure of isis is in the form of a woman with cow's horns, just as the hellenes present io in pictures, and all the egyptians without distinction reverence cows far more than any other kind of cattle; for which reason neither man nor woman of egyptian race would kiss a man who is a hellene on the mouth, nor will they use a knife or roasting-spits or a caldron belonging to a hellene, nor taste of the flesh even of a clean animal if it has been cut with the knife of a hellene. and the cattle of this kind which die they bury in the following manner:�the females they cast into the river, but the males they bury, each people in the suburb of their town, with one of the horns, or sometimes both, protruding to mark the place; and when the bodies have rotted away and the appointed time comes on, then to each city comes a boat from that which is called the island of prosopitis (this is in the delta, and the extent of its circuit is nine schoines). in this island of prosopitis is situated, besides many other cities, that one from which the boats come to take up the bones of the oxen, and the name of the city is atarbechis, and in it there is set up a holy temple of aphrodite. from this city many go abroad in various directions, some to one city and others to another, and when they have dug up the bones of the oxen they carry them off, and coming together they bury them in one single place. in the same manner as they bury the oxen they bury also their other cattle when they die; for about them also they have the same law laid down, and these also they abstain from killing. . now all who have a temple set up to the theban zeus or who are of the district of thebes, these, i say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from sheep: for not all the egyptians equally reverence the same gods, except only isis and osiris (who they say is dionysos), these they all reverence alike: but they who have a temple of mendes or belong to the mendesian district, these abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep. now the men of thebes and those who after their example abstain from sheep, say that this custom was established among them for the cause which follows:�heracles (they say) had an earnest desire to see zeus, and zeus did not desire to be seen of him; and at last when heracles was urgent in entreaty zeus contrived this device, that is to say, he flayed a ram and held in front of him the head of the ram which he had cut off, and he put on over him the fleece and then showed himself to him. hence the egyptians make the image of zeus into the face of a ram; and the ammonians do so also after their example, being settlers both from the egyptians and from the ethiopians, and using a language which is a medley of both tongues: and in my opinion it is from this god that the ammonians took the name which they have, for the egyptians call zeus amun. the thebans then do not sacrifice rams but hold them sacred for this reason; on one day however in the year, on the feast of zeus, they cut up in the same manner and flay one single ram and cover with its skin the image of zeus, and then they bring up to it another image of heracles. this done, all who are in the temple beat themselves in lamentation for the ram, and then they bury it in a sacred tomb. . about heracles i heard the account given that he was of the number of the twelve gods; but of the other heracles whom the hellenes know i was not able to hear in any part of egypt: and moreover to prove that the egyptians did not take the name of heracles from the hellenes, but rather the hellenes from the egyptians,�that is to say those of the hellenes who gave the name heracles to the son of amphitryon,�of that, i say, besides many other evidences there is chiefly this, namely that the parents of this heracles, amphitryon and alcmene, were both of egypt by descent, and also that the egyptians say that they do not know the names either of poseidon or of the dioscuroi, nor have these been accepted by them as gods among the other gods; whereas if they had received from the hellenes the name of any divinity, they would naturally have preserved the memory of these most of all, assuming that in those times as now some of the hellenes were wont to make voyages and were sea-faring folk, as i suppose and as my judgment compels me to think; so that the egyptians would have learnt the names of these gods even more than that of heracles. in fact however heracles is a very ancient egyptian god; and (as they say themselves) it is seventeen thousand years to the beginning of the reign of amasis from the time when the twelve gods, of whom they count that heracles is one, were begotten of the eight gods. . i moreover, desiring to know something certain of these matters so far as might be, made a voyage also to tyre of phenicia, hearing that in that place there was a holy temple of heracles; and i saw that it was richly furnished with many votive offerings besides, and especially there were in it two pillars, the one of pure gold and the other of an emerald stone of such size as to shine by night: and having come to speech with the priests of the god, i asked them how long time it was since their temple had been set up: and these also i found to be at variance with the hellenes, for they said that at the same time when tyre was founded, the temple of the god also had been set up, and that it was a period of two thousand three hundred years since their people began to dwell at tyre. i saw also at tyre another temple of heracles, with the surname thasian; and i came to thasos also and there i found a temple of heracles set up by the phenicians, who had sailed out to seek for europa and had colonised thasos; and these things happened full five generations of men before heracles the son of amphitryon was born in hellas. so then my inquiries show clearly that heracles is an ancient god, and those of the hellenes seem to me to act most rightly who have two temples of heracles set up, and who sacrifice to the one as an immortal god and with the title olympian, and make offerings of the dead to the other as a hero. . moreover, besides many other stories which the hellenes tell without due consideration, this tale is especially foolish which they tell about heracles, namely that when he came to egypt, the egyptians put on him wreaths and led him forth in procession to sacrifice him to zeus; and he for some time kept quiet, but when they were beginning the sacrifice of him at the altar, he betook himself to prowess and slew them all. i for my part am of opinion that the hellenes when they tell this tale are altogether without knowledge of the nature and customs of the egyptians; for how should they for whom it is not lawful to sacrifice even beasts, except swine and the males of oxen and calves (such of them as are clean) and geese, how should these sacrifice human beings? besides this, how is it in nature possible that heracles, being one person only and moreover a man (as they assert), should slay many myriads? having said so much of these matters, we pray that we may have grace from both the gods and the heroes for our speech. . now the reason why those of the egyptians whom i have mentioned do not sacrifice goats, female or male, is this:�the mendesians count pan to be one of the eight gods (now these eight gods they say came into being before the twelve gods), and the painters and image-makers represent in painting and in sculpture the figure of pan, just as the hellenes do, with goat's face and legs, not supposing him to be really like this but to resemble the other gods; the cause however why they represent him in this form i prefer not to say. the mendesians then reverence all goats and the males more than the females (and the goatherds too have greater honour than other herdsmen), but of the goats one especially is reverenced, and when he dies there is great mourning in all the mendesian district: and both the goat and pan are called in the egyptian tongue mendes. moreover in my lifetime there happened in that district this marvel, that is to say a he-goat had intercourse with a woman publicly, and this was so done that all men might have evidence of it. . the pig is accounted by the egyptians an abominable animal; and first, if any of them in passing by touch a pig, he goes into the river and dips himself forthwith in the water together with his garments; and then too swineherds, though they be native egyptians, unlike all others do not enter any of the temples in egypt, nor is anyone willing to give his daughter in marriage to one of them or to take a wife from among them; but the swineherds both give in marriage to one another and take from one another. now to the other gods the egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice swine; but to the moon and to dionysos alone at the same time and on the same full-moon they sacrifice swine, and then eat their flesh: and as to the reason why, when they abominate swine at all their other feasts, they sacrifice them at this, there is a story told by the egyptians; and this story i know, but it is not a seemly one for me to tell. now the sacrifice of the swine to the moon is performed as follows:�when the priest has slain the victim, he puts together the end of the tail and the spleen and the caul, and covers them up with the whole of the fat of the animal which is about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire; and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which they have held the sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they offer these as a sacrifice. . then for dionysos on the eve of the festival each one kills a pig by cutting its throat before his own doors, and after that he gives the pig to the swineherd who sold it to him, to carry away again; and the rest of the feast of dionysos is celebrated by the egyptians in the same way as by the hellenes in almost all things except choral dances, but instead of the phallos they have invented another contrivance, namely figures of about a cubit in height worked by strings, which women carry about the villages, with the privy member made to move and not much less in size than the rest of the body: and a flute goes before and they follow singing the praises of dionysos. as to the reason why the figure has this member larger than is natural and moves it, though it moves no other part of the body, about this there is a sacred story told. . now i think that melampus the son of amytheon was not without knowledge of these rites of sacrifice, but was acquainted with them: for melampus is he who first set forth to the hellenes the name of dionysos and the manner of sacrifice and the procession of the phallos. strictly speaking indeed, he when he made it known did not take in the whole, but those wise men who came after him made it known more at large. melampus then is he who taught of the phallos which is carried in procession for dionysos, and from him the hellenes learnt to do that which they do. i say then that melampus being a man of ability contrived for himself an art of divination, and having learnt from egypt he taught the hellenes many things, and among them those that concern dionysos, making changes in some few points of them: for i shall not say that that which is done in worship of the god in egypt came accidentally to be the same with that which is done among the hellenes, for then these rites would have been in character with the hellenic worship and not lately brought in; nor certainly shall i say that the egyptians took from the hellenes either this or any other customary observance: but i think it most probable that melampus learnt the matters concerning dionysos from cadmos the tyrian and from those who came with him from phenicia to the land which we now call boeotia. . moreover the naming of almost all the gods has come to hellas from egypt: for that it has come from the barbarians i find by inquiry is true, and i am of opinion that most probably it has come from egypt, because, except in the case of poseidon and the dioscuroi (in accordance with that which i have said before), and also of hera and hestia and themis and the charites and nereïds, the egyptians have had the names of all the other gods in their country for all time. what i say here is that which the egyptians think themselves: but as for the gods whose names they profess that they do not know, these i think received their naming from the pelasgians, except poseidon; but about this god the hellenes learnt from the libyans, for no people except the libyans have had the name of poseidon from the first and have paid honour to this god always. nor, it may be added, have the egyptians any custom of worshipping heroes. . these observances then, and others besides these which i shall mention, the hellenes have adopted from the egyptians; but to make, as they do, the images of hermes with the phallos they have learnt not from the egyptians but from the pelasgians, the custom having been received by the athenians first of all the hellenes and from these by the rest; for just at the time when the athenians were beginning to rank among the hellenes, the pelasgians became dwellers with them in their land, and from this very cause it was that they began to be counted as hellenes. whosoever has been initiated in the mysteries of the cabeiroi, which the samothrakians perform having received them from the pelasgians, that man knows the meaning of my speech; for these very pelasgians who became dwellers with the athenians used to dwell before that time in samothrake, and from them the samothrakians received their mysteries. so then the athenians were the first of the hellenes who made the images of hermes with the phallos, having learnt from the pelasgians; and the pelasgians told a sacred story about it, which is set forth in the mysteries in samothrake. . now the pelasgians formerly were wont to make all their sacrifices calling upon the gods in prayer, as i know from that which i heard at dodona, but they gave no title or name to any of them, for they had not yet heard any, but they called them gods ({theous}) from some such notion as this, that they had set ({thentes}) in order all things and so had the distribution of everything. afterwards, when much time had elapsed, they learnt from egypt the names of the gods, all except dionysos, for his name they learnt long afterwards; and after a time the pelasgians consulted the oracle at dodona about the names, for this prophetic seat is accounted to be the most ancient of the oracles which are among the hellenes, and at that time it was the only one. so when the pelasgians asked the oracle at dodona whether they should adopt the names which had come from the barbarians, the oracle in reply bade them make use of the names. from this time they sacrificed using the names of the gods, and from the pelasgians the hellenes afterwards received them: , but whence the several gods had their birth, or whether they all were from the beginning, and of what form they are, they did not learn till yesterday, as it were, or the day before: for hesiod and homer i suppose were four hundred years before my time and not more, and these are they who made a theogony for the hellenes and gave the titles to the gods and distributed to them honours and arts, and set forth their forms: but the poets who are said to have been before these men were really in my opinion after them. of these things the first are said by the priestesses of dodona, and the latter things, those namely which have regard to hesiod and homer, by myself. . as regards the oracles both that among the hellenes and that in libya, the egyptians tell the following tale. the priests of the theban zeus told me that two women in the service of the temple had been carried away from thebes by phenicians, and that they had heard that one of them had been sold to go into libya and the other to the hellenes; and these women, they said, were they who first founded the prophetic seats among the nations which have been named: and when i inquired whence they knew so perfectly of this tale which they told, they said in reply that a great search had been made by the priests after these women, and that they had not been able to find them, but they had heard afterwards this tale about them which they were telling. . this i heard from the priests at thebes, and what follows is said by the prophetesses of dodona. they say that two black doves flew from thebes to egypt, and came one of them to libya and the other to their land. and this latter settled upon an oak-tree and spoke with human voice, saying that it was necessary that a prophetic seat of zeus should be established in that place; and they supposed that that was of the gods which was announced to them, and made one accordingly: and the dove which went away to the libyans, they say, bade the libyans to make an oracle of ammon; and this also is of zeus. the priestesses of dodona told me these things, of whom the eldest was named promeneia, the next after her timarete, and the youngest nicandra; and the other people of dodona who were engaged about the temple gave accounts agreeing with theirs. . i however have an opinion about the matter as follows:�if the phenicians did in truth carry away the consecrated women and sold one of them into libya and the other into hellas, i suppose that in the country now called hellas, which was formerly called pelasgia, this woman was sold into the land of the thesprotians; and then being a slave there she set up a sanctuary of zeus under a real oak-tree; as indeed it was natural that being an attendant of the sanctuary of zeus at thebes, she should there, in the place to which she had come, have a memory of him; and after this, when she got understanding of the hellenic tongue, she established an oracle, and she reported, i suppose, that her sister had been sold in libya by the same phenicians by whom she herself had been sold. . moreover, i think that the women were called doves by the people of dodona for the reason that they were barbarians and because it seemed to them that they uttered voice like birds; but after a time (they say) the dove spoke with human voice, that is when the woman began to speak so that they could understand; but so long as she spoke a barbarian tongue she seemed to them to be uttering voice like a bird: for had it been really a dove, how could it speak with human voice? and in saying that the dove was black, they indicate that the woman was egyptian. the ways of delivering oracles too at thebes in egypt and at dodona closely resemble one another, as it happens, and also the method of divination by victims has come from egypt. . moreover, it is true also that the egyptians were the first of men who made solemn assemblies and processions and approaches to the temples, and from them the hellenes have learnt them, and my evidence for this is that the egyptian celebrations of these have been held from a very ancient time, whereas the hellenic were introduced but lately. . the egyptians hold their solemn assemblies not once in the year but often, especially and with the greatest zeal and devotion at the city of bubastis for artemis, and next at busiris for isis; for in this last-named city there is a very great temple of isis, and this city stands in the middle of the delta of egypt; now isis is in the tongue of the hellenes demeter: thirdly, they have a solemn assembly at the city of saïs for athene, fourthly at heliopolis for the sun (helios), fifthly at the city of buto in honour of leto, and sixthly at the city of papremis for ares. . now, when they are coming to the city of bubastis they do as follows:�they sail men and women together, and a great multitude of each sex in every boat; and some of the women have rattles and rattle with them, while some of the men play the flute during the whole time of the voyage, and the rest, both women and men, sing and clap their hands; and when as they sail they come opposite to any city on the way they bring the boat to land, and some of the women continue to do as i have said, others cry aloud and jeer at the women in that city, some dance, and some stand up and pull up their garments. this they do by every city along the river-bank; and when they come to bubastis they hold festival celebrating great sacrifices, and more wine of grapes is consumed upon that festival than during the whole of the rest of the year. to this place (so say the natives) they come together year by year even to the number of seventy myriads of men and women, besides children. . thus it is done here; and how they celebrate the festival in honour of isis at the city of busiris has been told by me before: for, as i said, they beat themselves in mourning after the sacrifice, all of them both men and women, very many myriads of people; but for whom they beat themselves it is not permitted to me by religion to say: and so many as there are of the carians dwelling in egypt do this even more than the egyptians themselves, inasmuch as they cut their foreheads also with knives; and by this it is manifested that they are strangers and not egyptians. . at the times when they gather together at the city of saïs for their sacrifices, on a certain night they all kindle lamps many in number in the open air round about the houses; now the lamps are saucers full of salt and oil mixed, and the wick floats by itself on the surface, and this burns during the whole night; and to the festival is given the name lychnocaia (the lighting of the lamps). moreover those of the egyptians who have not come to this solemn assembly observe the night of the festival and themselves also light lamps all of them, and thus not in saïs alone are they lighted, but over all egypt: and as to the reason why light and honour are allotted to this night, about this there is a sacred story told. . to heliopolis and buto they go year by year and do sacrifice only: but at papremis they do sacrifice and worship as elsewhere, and besides that, when the sun begins to go down, while some few of the priests are occupied with the image of the god, the greater number of them stand in the entrance of the temple with wooden clubs, and other persons to the number of more than a thousand men with purpose to perform a vow, these also having all of them staves of wood, stand in a body opposite to those: and the image, which is in a small shrine of wood covered over with gold, they take out on the day before to another sacred building. the few then who have been left about the image, draw a wain with four wheels, which bears the shrine and the image that is within the shrine, and the other priests standing in the gateway try to prevent it from entering, and the men who are under a vow come to the assistance of the god and strike them, while the others defend themselves. then there comes to be a hard fight with staves, and they break one another's heads, and i am of opinion that many even die of the wounds they receive; the egyptians however told me that no one died. this solemn assembly the people of the place say that they established for the following reason:�the mother of ares, they say, used to dwell in this temple, and ares, having been brought up away from her, when he grew up came thither desiring to visit his mother, and the attendants of his mother's temple, not having seen him before, did not permit him to pass in, but kept him away; and he brought men to help him from another city and handled roughly the attendants of the temple, and entered to visit his mother. hence, they say, this exchange of blows has become the custom in honour of ares upon his festival. . the egyptians were the first who made it a point of religion not to lie with women in temples, nor to enter into temples after going away from women without first bathing: for almost all other men except the egyptians and the hellenes lie with women in temples and enter into a temple after going away from women without bathing, since they hold that there is no difference in this respect between men and beasts: for they say that they see beasts and the various kinds of birds coupling together both in the temples and in the sacred enclosures of the gods; if then this were not pleasing to the god, the beasts would not do so. . thus do these defend that which they do, which by me is disallowed: but the egyptians are excessively careful in their observances, both in other matters which concern the sacred rites and also in those which follow:�egypt, though it borders upon libya, does not very much abound in wild animals, but such as they have are one and all accounted by them sacred, some of them living with men and others not. but if i should say for what reasons the sacred animals have been thus dedicated, i should fall into discourse of matters pertaining to the gods, of which i most desire not to speak; and what i have actually said touching slightly upon them, i said because i was constrained by necessity. about these animals there is a custom of this kind:�persons have been appointed of the egyptians, both men and women, to provide the food for each kind of beast separately, and their office goes down from father to son; and those who dwell in the various cities perform vows to them thus, that is, when they make a vow to the god to whom the animal belongs, they shave the head of their children either the whole or the half or the third part of it, and then set the hair in the balance against silver, and whatever it weighs, this the man gives to the person who provides for the animals, and she cuts up fish of equal value and gives it for food to the animals. thus food for their support has been appointed: and if any one kill any of these animals, the penalty, if he do it with his own will, is death, and if against his will, such penalty as the priests may appoint: but whosoever shall kill an ibis or a hawk, whether it be with his will or against his will, must die. . of the animals that live with men there are great numbers, and would be many more but for the accidents which befall the cats. for when the females have produced young they are no longer in the habit of going to the males, and these seeking to be united with them are not able. to this end then they contrive as follows,�they either take away by force or remove secretly the young from the females and kill them (but after killing they do not eat them), and the females being deprived of their young and desiring more, therefore come to the males, for it is a creature that is fond of its young. moreover when a fire occurs, the cats seem to be divinely possessed; for while the egyptians stand at intervals and look after the cats, not taking any care to extinguish the fire, the cats slipping through or leaping over the men, jump into the fire; and when this happens, great mourning comes upon the egyptians. and in whatever houses a cat has died by a natural death, all those who dwell in this house shave their eyebrows only, but those in whose houses a dog has died shave their whole body and also their head. . the cats when they are dead are carried away to sacred buildings in the city of bubastis, where after being embalmed they are buried; but the dogs they bury each people in their own city in sacred tombs; and the ichneumons are buried just in the same way as the dogs. the shrew-mice however and the hawks they carry away to the city of buto, and the ibises to hermopolis; the bears (which are not commonly seen) and the wolves, not much larger in size than foxes, they bury on the spot where they are found lying. . of the crocodile the nature is as follows:�during the four most wintry months this creature eats nothing: she has four feet and is an animal belonging to the land and the water both; for she produces and hatches eggs on the land, and the most part of the day she remains upon dry land, but the whole of the night in the river, for the water in truth is warmer than the unclouded open air and the dew. of all the mortal creatures of which we have knowledge this grows to the greatest bulk from the smallest beginning; for the eggs which she produces are not much larger than those of geese and the newly-hatched young one is in proportion to the egg, but as he grows he becomes as much as seventeen cubits long and sometimes yet larger. he has eyes like those of a pig and teeth large and tusky, in proportion to the size of his body; but unlike all other beasts he grows no tongue, neither does he move his lower jaw, but brings the upper jaw towards the lower, being in this too unlike all other beasts. he has moreover strong claws and a scaly hide upon his back which cannot be pierced; and he is blind in the water, but in the air he is of very keen sight. since he has his living in the water he keeps his mouth all full within of leeches; and whereas all other birds and beasts fly from him, the trochilus is a creature which is at peace with him, seeing that from her he receives benefit; for the crocodile having come out of the water to the land and then having opened his mouth (this he is wont to do generally towards the west wind), the trochilus upon that enters into his mouth and swallows down the leeches, and he being benefited is pleased and does no harm to the trochilus. . now for some of the egyptians the crocodiles are sacred animals, and for others not so, but they treat them on the contrary as enemies: those however who dwell about thebes and about the lake of moiris hold them to be most sacred, and each of these two peoples keeps one crocodile selected from the whole number, which has been trained to tameness, and they put hanging ornaments of molten stone and of gold into the ears of these and anklets round the front feet, and they give them food appointed and victims of sacrifices and treat them as well as possible while they live, and after they are dead they bury them in sacred tombs, embalming them: but those who dwell about the city of elephantine even eat them, not holding them to be sacred. they are called not crocodiles but champsai, and the ionians gave them the name of crocodile, comparing their form to that of the crocodiles (lizards) which appear in their country in the stone walls. . there are many ways in use of catching them and of various kinds: i shall describe that which to me seems the most worthy of being told. a man puts the back of a pig upon a hook as bait, and lets it go into the middle of the river, while he himself upon the bank of the river has a young live pig, which he beats; and the crocodile hearing its cries makes for the direction of the sound, and when he finds the pig's back he swallows it down: then they pull, and when he is drawn out to land, first of all the hunter forthwith plasters up his eyes with mud, and having so done he very easily gets the mastery of him, but if he does not do so he has much trouble. . the river-horse is sacred in the district of papremis, but for the other egyptians he is not sacred; and this is the appearance which he presents: he is four-footed, cloven-hoofed like an ox, flat-nosed, with a mane like a horse and showing teeth like tusks, with a tail and voice like a horse, and in size as large as the largest ox; and his hide is so exceedingly thick that when it has been dried shafts of javelins are made of it. . there are moreover otters in the river, which they consider to be sacred; and of fish also they esteem that which is called the lepidotos to be sacred, and also the eel; and these they say are sacred to the nile: and of birds the fox-goose. . there is also another sacred bird called the phoenix which i did not myself see except in painting, for in truth he comes to them very rarely, at intervals, as the people of heliopolis say, of five hundred years; and these say that he comes regularly when his father dies; and if he be like the painting, he is of this size and nature, that is to say, some of his feathers are of gold colour and others red, and in outline and size he is as nearly as possible like an eagle. this bird they say (but i cannot believe the story) contrives as follows:�setting forth from arabia he conveys his father, they say, to the temple of the sun (helios) plastered up in myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the sun; and he conveys him thus:�he forms first an egg of myrrh as large as he is able to carry, and then he makes trial of carrying it, and when he has made trial sufficiently, then he hollows out the egg and places his father within it and plasters over with other myrrh that part of the egg where he hollowed it out to put his father in, and when his father is laid in it, it proves (they say) to be of the same weight as it was; and after he has plastered it up, he conveys the whole to egypt to the temple of the sun. thus they say that this bird does. . there are also about thebes sacred serpents, not at all harmful to men, which are small in size and have two horns growing from the top of the head: these they bury when they die in the temple of zeus, for to this god they say that they are sacred. . there is a region moreover in arabia, situated nearly over against the city of buto, to which place i came to inquire about the winged serpents: and when i came thither i saw bones of serpents and spines in quantity so great that it is impossible to make report of the number, and there were heaps of spines, some heaps large and others less large and others smaller still than these, and these heaps were many in number. this region in which the spines are scattered upon the ground is of the nature of an entrance from a narrow mountain pass to a great plain, which plain adjoins the plain of egypt; and the story goes that at the beginning of spring winged serpents from arabia fly towards egypt, and the birds called ibises meet them at the entrance to this country and do not suffer the serpents to go by but kill them. on account of this deed it is (say the arabians) that the ibis has come to be greatly honoured by the egyptians, and the egyptians also agree that it is for this reason that they honour these birds. . the outward form of the ibis is this:�it is a deep black all over, and has legs like those of a crane and a very curved beak, and in size it is about equal to a rail: this is the appearance of the black kind which fight with the serpents, but of those which most crowd round men's feet (for there are two several kinds of ibises) the head is bare and also the whole of the throat, and it is white in feathering except the head and neck and the extremities of the wings and the rump (in all these parts of which i have spoken it is a deep black), while in legs and in the form of the head it resembles the other. as for the serpent its form is like that of the watersnake; and it has wings not feathered but most nearly resembling the wings of the bat. let so much suffice as has been said now concerning sacred animals. . of the egyptians themselves, those who dwell in the part of egypt which is sown for crops practise memory more than any other men and are the most learned in history by far of all those of whom i have had experience: and their manner of life is as follows:�for three successive days in each month they purge, hunting after health with emetics and clysters, and they think that all the diseases which exist are produced in men by the food on which they live; for the egyptians are from other causes also the most healthy of all men next after the libyans (in my opinion on account of the seasons, because the seasons do not change, for by the changes of things generally, and especially of the seasons, diseases are most apt to be produced in men), and as to their diet, it is as follows:�they eat bread, making loaves of maize, which they call kyllestis, and they use habitually a wine made out of barley, for vines they have not in their land. of their fish some they dry in the sun and then eat them without cooking, others they eat cured in brine. of birds they eat quails and ducks and small birds without cooking, after first curing them; and everything else which they have belonging to the class of birds or fishes, except such as have been set apart by them as sacred, they eat roasted or boiled. . in the entertainments of the rich among them, when they have finished eating, a man bears round a wooden figure of a dead body in a coffin, made as like the reality as may be both by painting and carving, and measuring about a cubit or two cubits each way; and this he shows to each of those who are drinking together, saying: "when thou lookest upon this, drink and be merry, for thou shalt be such as this when thou art dead." thus they do at their carousals. . the customs which they practise are derived from their fathers and they do not acquire others in addition; but besides other customary things among them which are worthy of mention, they have one song, that of linos, the same who is sung of both in phenicia and in cyprus and elsewhere, having however a name different according to the various nations. this song agrees exactly with that which the hellenes sing calling on the name of linos, so that besides many other things about which i wonder among those matters which concern egypt, i wonder especially about this, namely whence they got the song of linos. it is evident however that they have sung this song from immemorial time, and in the egyptian tongue linos is called maneros. the egyptians told me that he was the only son of him who first became king of egypt, and that he died before his time and was honoured with these lamentations by the egyptians, and that this was their first and only song. . in another respect the egyptians are in agreement with some of the hellenes, namely with the lacedemonians, but not with the rest, that is to say, the younger of them when they meet the elder give way and move out of the path, and when their elders approach they rise out of their seat. in this which follows however they are not in agreement with any of the hellenes,�instead of addressing one another in the roads they do reverence, lowering their hand down to their knee. . they wear tunics of linen about their legs with fringes, which they call calasiris; above these they have garments of white wool thrown over: woollen garments however are not taken into the temples, nor are they buried with them, for this is not permitted by religion. in these points they are in agreement with the observances called orphic and bacchic (which are really egyptian), and also with those of the pythagoreans, for one who takes part in these mysteries is also forbidden by religious rule to be buried in woollen garments; and about this there is a sacred story told. . besides these things the egyptians have found out also to what god each month and each day belongs, and what fortunes a man will meet with who is born on any particular day, and how he will die, and what kind of a man he will be: and these inventions were taken up by those of the hellenes who occupied themselves about poesy. portents too have been found out by them more than by all other men besides; for when a portent has happened, they observe and write down the event which comes of it, and if ever afterwards anything resembling this happens, they believe that the event which comes of it will be similar. . their divination is ordered thus:�the art is assigned not to any man, but to certain of the gods, for there are in their land oracles of heracles, of apollo, of athene, of artemis, of ares, and of zeus, and moreover that which they hold most in honour of all, namely the oracle of leto which is in the city of buto. the manner of divination however is not yet established among them according to the same fashion everywhere, but is different in different places. . the art of medicine among them is distributed thus:�each physician is a physician of one disease and of no more; and the whole country is full of physicians, for some profess themselves to be physicians of the eyes, others of the head, others of the teeth, others of the affections of the stomach, and others of the more obscure ailments. . their fashions of mourning and of burial are these:�whenever any household has lost a man who is of any regard amongst them, the whole number of women of that house forthwith plaster over their heads or even their faces with mud. then leaving the corpse within the house they go themselves to and fro about the city and beat themselves, with their garments bound up by a girdle and their breasts exposed, and with them go all the women who are related to the dead man, and on the other side the men beat themselves, they too having their garments bound up by a girdle; and when they have done this, they then convey the body to the embalming. . in this occupation certain persons employ themselves regularly and inherit this as a craft. these, whenever a corpse is conveyed to them, show to those who brought it wooden models of corpses made like reality by painting, and the best of the ways of embalming they say is that of him whose name i think it impiety to mention when speaking of a matter of such a kind; the second which they show is less good than this and also less expensive; and the third is the least expensive of all. having told them about this, they inquire of them in which way they desire the corpse of their friend to be prepared. then they after they have agreed for a certain price depart out of the way, and the others being left behind in the buildings embalm according to the best of these ways thus:�first with a crooked iron tool they draw out the brain through the nostrils, extracting it partly thus and partly by pouring in drugs; and after this with a sharp stone of ethiopia they make a cut along the side and take out the whole contents of the belly, and when they have cleared out the cavity and cleansed it with palm-wine they cleanse it again with spices pounded up: then they fill the belly with pure myrrh pounded up and with cassia and other spices except frankincense, and sew it together again. having so done they keep it for embalming covered up in natron for seventy days, but for a longer time than this it is not permitted to embalm it; and when the seventy days are past, they wash the corpse and roll its whole body up in fine linen cut into bands, smearing these beneath with gum, which the egyptians use generally instead of glue. then the kinsfolk receive it from them and have a wooden figure made in the shape of a man, and when they have had this made they enclose the corpse, and having shut it up within, they store it then in a sepulchral chamber, setting it to stand upright against the wall. . thus they deal with the corpses which are prepared in the most costly way; but for those who desire the middle way and wish to avoid great cost they prepare the corpse as follows:�having filled their syringes with the oil which is got from cedar-wood, with this they forthwith fill the belly of the corpse, and this they do without having either cut it open or taken out the bowels, but they inject the oil by the breech, and having stopped the drench from returning back they keep it then the appointed number of days for embalming, and on the last of the days they let the cedar oil come out from the belly, which they before put in; and it has such power that it brings out with it the bowels and interior organs of the body dissolved; and the natron dissolves the flesh, so that there is left of the corpse only the skin and the bones. when they have done this they give back the corpse at once in that condition without working upon it any more. . the third kind of embalming, by which are prepared the bodies of those who have less means, is as follows:�they cleanse out the belly with a purge and then keep the body for embalming during the seventy days, and at once after that they give it back to the bringers to carry away. . the wives of men of rank when they die are not given at once to be embalmed, nor such women as are very beautiful or of greater regard than others, but on the third or fourth day after their death (and not before) they are delivered to the embalmers. they do so about this matter in order that the embalmers may not abuse their women, for they say that one of them was taken once doing so to the corpse of a woman lately dead, and his fellow-craftsman gave information. . whenever any one, either of the egyptians themselves or of strangers, is found to have been carried off by a crocodile or brought to his death by the river itself, the people of any city by which he may have been cast up on land must embalm him and lay him out in the fairest way they can and bury him in a sacred burial-place, nor may any of his relations or friends besides touch him, but the priests of the nile themselves handle the corpse and bury it as that of one who was something more than man. . hellenic usages they will by no means follow, and to speak generally they follow those of no other men whatever. this rule is observed by most of the egyptians; but there is a large city named chemmis in the theban district near neapolis, and in this city there is a temple of perseus the son of danae which is of a square shape, and round it grow date-palms: the gateway of the temple is built of stone and of very great size, and at the entrance of it stand two great statues of stone. within this enclosure is a temple-house and in it stands an image of perseus. these people of chemmis say that perseus is wont often to appear in their land and often within the temple, and that a sandal which has been worn by him is found sometimes, being in length two cubits, and whenever this appears all egypt prospers. this they say, and they do in honour of perseus after hellenic fashion thus,�they hold an athletic contest, which includes the whole list of games, and they offer in prizes cattle and cloaks and skins: and when i inquired why to them alone perseus was wont to appear, and wherefore they were separated from all the other egyptians in that they held an athletic contest, they said that perseus had been born of their city, for danaos and lynkeus were men of chemmis and had sailed to hellas, and from them they traced a descent and came down to perseus: and they told me that he had come to egypt for the reason which the hellenes also say, namely to bring from libya the gorgon's head, and had then visited them also and recognised all his kinsfolk, and they said that he had well learnt the name of chemmis before he came to egypt, since he had heard it from his mother, and that they celebrated an athletic contest for him by his own command. . all these are customs practised by the egyptians who dwell above the fens: and those who are settled in the fen-land have the same customs for the most part as the other egyptians, both in other matters and also in that they live each with one wife only, as do the hellenes; but for economy in respect of food they have invented these things besides:�when the river has become full and the plains have been flooded, there grow in the water great numbers of lilies, which the egyptians call lotos; these they cut with a sickle and dry in the sun, and then they pound that which grows in the middle of the lotos and which is like the head of a poppy, and they make of it loaves baked with fire. the root also of this lotos is edible and has a rather sweet taste: it is round in shape and about the size of an apple. there are other lilies too, in flower resembling roses, which also grow in the river, and from them the fruit is produced in a separate vessel springing from the root by the side of the plant itself, and very nearly resembles a wasp's comb: in this there grow edible seeds in great numbers of the size of an olive-stone, and they are eaten either fresh or dried. besides this they pull up from the fens the papyrus which grows every year, and the upper parts of it they cut off and turn to other uses, but that which is left below for about a cubit in length they eat or sell: and those who desire to have the papyrus at its very best bake it in an oven heated red-hot, and then eat it. some too of these people live on fish alone, which they dry in the sun after having caught them and taken out the entrails, and then when they are dry, they use them for food. . fish which swim in shoals are not much produced in the rivers, but are bred in the lakes, and they do as follows:�when there comes upon them the desire to breed, they swim out in shoals towards the sea; and the males lead the way shedding forth their milt as they go, while the females, coming after and swallowing it up, from it become impregnated: and when they have become full of young in the sea they swim up back again, each shoal to its own haunts. the same however no longer lead the way as before, but the lead comes now to the females, and they leading the way in shoals do just as the males did, that is to say they shed forth their eggs by a few grains at a time, and the males coming after swallow them up. now these grains are fish, and from the grains which survive and are not swallowed, the fish grow which afterwards are bred up. now those of the fish which are caught as they swim out to sea are found to be rubbed on the left side of the head, but those which are caught as they swim up again are rubbed on the right side. this happens to them because as they swim down to the sea they keep close to the land on the left side of the river, and again as they swim up they keep to the same side, approaching and touching the bank as much as they can, for fear doubtless of straying from their course by reason of the stream. when the nile begins to swell, the hollow places of the land and the depressions by the side of the river first begin to fill, as the water soaks through from the river, and so soon as they become full of water, at once they are all filled with little fishes; and whence these are in all likelihood produced, i think that i perceive. in the preceding year, when the nile goes down, the fish first lay eggs in the mud and then retire with the last of the retreating waters; and when the time comes round again, and the water once more comes over the land, from these eggs forthwith are produced the fishes of which i speak. . thus it is as regards the fish. and for anointing those of the egyptians who dwell in the fens use oil from the castor-berry, which oil the egyptians call kiki, and thus they do:�they sow along the banks of the rivers and pools these plants, which in a wild form grow of themselves in the land of the hellenes; these are sown in egypt and produce berries in great quantity but of an evil smell; and when they have gathered these, some cut them up and press the oil from them, others again roast them first and then boil them down and collect that which runs away from them. the oil is fat and not less suitable for burning than olive-oil, but it gives forth a disagreeable smell. . against the gnats, which are very abundant, they have contrived as follows:�those who dwell above the fen-land are helped by the towers, to which they ascend when they go to rest; for the gnats by reason of the winds are not able to fly up high: but those who dwell in the fen-land have contrived another way instead of the towers, and this is it:�every man of them has got a casting net, with which by day he catches fish, but in the night he uses it for this purpose, that is to say he puts the casting-net round about the bed in which he sleeps, and then creeps in under it and goes to sleep: and the gnats, if he sleeps rolled up in a garment or a linen sheet, bite through these, but through the net they do not even attempt to bite. . their boats with which they carry cargoes are made of the thorny acacia, of which the form is very like that of the kyrenian lotos, and that which exudes from it is gum. from this tree they cut pieces of wood about two cubits in length and arrange them like bricks, fastening the boat together by running a great number of long bolts through the two-cubit pieces; and when they have thus fastened the boat together, they lay cross-pieces over the top, using no ribs for the sides; and within they caulk the seams with papyrus. they make one steering-oar for it, which is passed through the bottom of the boat; and they have a mast of acacia and sails of papyrus. these boats cannot sail up the river unless there be a very fresh wind blowing, but are towed from the shore: down-stream however they travel as follows:�they have a door-shaped crate made of tamarisk wood and reed mats sewn together, and also a stone of about two talents weight bored with a hole; and of these the boatman lets the crate float on in front of the boat, fastened with a rope, and the stone drag behind by another rope. the crate then, as the force of the stream presses upon it, goes on swiftly and draws on the baris (for so these boats are called), while the stone dragging after it behind and sunk deep in the water keeps its course straight. these boats they have in great numbers and some of them carry many thousands of talents' burden. . when the nile comes over the land, the cities alone are seen rising above the water, resembling more nearly than anything else the islands in the egean sea; for the rest of egypt becomes a sea and the cities alone rise above water. accordingly, whenever this happens, they pass by water not now by the channels of the river but over the midst of the plain: for example, as one sails up from naucratis to memphis the passage is then close by the pyramids, whereas the usual passage is not the same even here, but goes by the point of the delta and the city of kercasoros; while if you sail over the plain to naucratis from the sea and from canobos, you will go by anthylla and the city called after archander. . of these anthylla is a city of note and is especially assigned to the wife of him who reigns over egypt, to supply her with sandals, (this is the case since the time when egypt came to be under the persians): the other city seems to me to have its name from archander the son-in-law of danaos, who was the son of phthios, the son of achaios; for it is called the city of archander. there might indeed be another archander, but in any case the name is not egyptian. . hitherto my own observation and judgment and inquiry are the vouchers for that which i have said; but from this point onwards i am about to tell the history of egypt according to that which i heard, to which will be added also something of that which i have myself seen. of min, who first became king of egypt, the priests said that on the one hand he banked off the site of memphis from the river: for the whole stream of the river used to flow along by the sandy mountain-range on the side of libya, but min formed by embankments that bend of the river which lies to the south about a hundred furlongs above memphis, and thus he dried up the old stream and conducted the river so that it flowed in the middle between the mountains: and even now this bend of the nile is by the persians kept under very careful watch, that it may flow in the channel to which it is confined, and the bank is repaired every year; for if the river should break through and overflow in this direction, memphis would be in danger of being overwhelmed by flood. when this min, who first became king, had made into dry land the part which was dammed off, on the one hand, i say, he founded in it that city which is now called memphis; for memphis too is in the narrow part of egypt; and outside the city he dug round it on the north and west a lake communicating with the river, for the side towards the east is barred by the nile itself. then secondly he established in the city the temple of hephaistos a great work and most worthy of mention. . after this man the priests enumerated to me from a papyrus roll the names of other kings, three hundred and thirty in number; and in all these generations of men eighteen were ethiopians, one was a woman, a native egyptian, and the rest were men and of egyptian race: and the name of the woman who reigned was the same as that of the babylonian queen, namely nitocris. of her they said that desiring to take vengeance for her brother, whom the egyptians had slain when he was their king and then, after having slain him, had given his kingdom to her,�desiring, i say, to take vengeance for him, she destroyed by craft many of the egyptians. for she caused to be constructed a very large chamber under ground, and making as though she would handsel it but in her mind devising other things, she invited those of the egyptians whom she knew to have had most part in the murder, and gave a great banquet. then while they were feasting, she let in the river upon them by a secret conduit of large size. of her they told no more than this, except that, when this had been accomplished, she threw herself into a room full of embers, in order that she might escape vengeance. . as for the other kings, they could tell me of no great works which had been produced by them, and they said that they had no renown except only the last of them, moris: he (they said) produced as a memorial of himself the gateway of the temple of hephaistos which is turned towards the north wind, and dug a lake, about which i shall set forth afterwards how many furlongs of circuit it has, and in it built pyramids of the size which i shall mention at the same time when i speak of the lake itself. he, they said, produced these works, but of the rest none produced any. . therefore passing these by i shall make mention of the king who came after these, whose name was sesostris. he (the priests said) first of all set out with ships of war from the arabian gulf and subdued those who dwelt by the shores of the erythraian sea, until as he sailed he came to a sea which could no further be navigated by reason of shoals: then secondly, after he had returned to egypt, according to the report of the priests he took a great army and marched over the continent, subduing every nation which stood in his way: and those of them whom he found valiant and fighting desperately for their freedom, in their lands he set up pillars which told by inscriptions his own name and the name of his country, and how he had subdued them by his power; but as to those of whose cities he obtained possession without fighting or with ease, on their pillars he inscribed words after the same tenor as he did for the nations which had shown themselves courageous, and in addition he drew upon them the hidden parts of a woman, desiring to signify by this that the people were cowards and effeminate. . thus doing he traversed the continent, until at last he passed over to europe from asia and subdued the scythians and also the thracians. these, i am of opinion, were the furthest people to which the egyptian army came, for in their country the pillars are found to have been set up, but in the land beyond this they are no longer found. from this point he turned and began to go back; and when he came to the river phasis, what happened then i cannot say for certain, whether the king sesostris himself divided off a certain portion of his army and left the men there as settlers in the land, or whether some of his soldiers were wearied by his distant marches and remained by the river phasis. . for the people of colchis are evidently egyptian, and this i perceived for myself before i heard it from others. so when i had come to consider the matter i asked them both; and the colchians had remembrance of the egyptians more than the egyptians of the colchians; but the egyptians said they believed that the colchians were a portion of the army of sesostris. that this was so i conjectured myself not only because they are dark-skinned and have curly hair (this of itself amounts to nothing, for there are other races which are so), but also still more because the colchians, egyptians, and ethiopians alone of all the races of men have practised circumcision from the first. the phenicians and the syrians who dwell in palestine confess themselves that they have learnt it from the egyptians, and the syrians about the river thermodon and the river parthenios, and the macronians, who are their neighbours, say that they have learnt it lately from the colchians. these are the only races of men who practise circumcision, and these evidently practise it in the same manner as the egyptians. of the egyptians themselves however and the ethiopians, i am not able to say which learnt from the other, for undoubtedly it is a most ancient custom; but that the other nations learnt it by intercourse with the egyptians, this among others is to me a strong proof, namely that those of the phenicians who have intercourse with hellas cease to follow the example of the egyptians in this matter, and do not circumcise their children. . now let me tell another thing about the colchians to show how they resemble the egyptians:�they alone work flax in the same fashion as the egyptians, and the two nations are like one another in their whole manner of living and also in their language: now the linen of colchis is called by the hellenes sardonic, whereas that from egypt is called egyptian. . the pillars which sesostris of egypt set up in the various countries are for the most part no longer to be seen extant; but in syria palestine i myself saw them existing with the inscription upon them which i have mentioned and the emblem. moreover in ionia there are two figures of this man carved upon rocks, one on the road by which one goes from the land of ephesos to phocaia, and the other on the road from sardis to smyrna. in each place there is a figure of a man cut in the rock, of four cubits and a span in height, holding in his right hand a spear and in his left a bow and arrows, and the other equipment which he has is similar to this, for it is both egyptian and ethiopian: and from the one shoulder to the other across the breast runs an inscription carved in sacred egyptian characters, saying thus, "this land with my shoulders i won for myself." but who he is and from whence, he does not declare in these places, though in other places he has declared this. some of those who have seen these carvings conjecture that the figure is that of memnon, but herein they are very far from the truth. . as this egyptian sesostris was returning and bringing back many men of the nations whose lands he had subdued, when he came (said the priests) to daphnai in the district of pelusion on his journey home, his brother to whom sesostris had entrusted the charge of egypt invited him and with him his sons to a feast; and then he piled the house round with brushwood and set it on fire: and sesostris when he discovered this forthwith took counsel with his wife, for he was bringing with him (they said) his wife also; and she counselled him to lay out upon the pyre two of his sons, which were six in number, and so to make a bridge over the burning mass, and that they passing over their bodies should thus escape. this, they said, sesostris did, and two of his sons were burnt to death in this manner, but the rest got away safe with their father. . then sesostris, having returned to egypt and having taken vengeance on his brother, employed the multitude which he had brought in of those whose lands he had subdued, as follows:�these were they who drew the stones which in the reign of this king were brought to the temple of hephaistos, being of very great size; and also these were compelled to dig all the channels which now are in egypt; and thus (having no such purpose) they caused egypt, which before was all fit for riding and driving, to be no longer fit for this from thenceforth: for from that time forward egypt, though it is plain land, has become all unfit for riding and driving, and the cause has been these channels, which are many and run in all directions. but the reason why the king cut up the land was this, namely because those of the egyptians who had their cities not on the river but in the middle of the country, being in want of water when the river went down from them, found their drink brackish because they had it from wells. . for this reason egypt was cut up; and they said that this king distributed the land to all the egyptians, giving an equal square portion to each man, and from this he made his revenue, having appointed them to pay a certain rent every year: and if the river should take away anything from any man's portion, he would come to the king and declare that which had happened, and the king used to send men to examine and to find out by measurement how much less the piece of land had become, in order that for the future the man might pay less, in proportion to the rent appointed: and i think that thus the art of geometry was found out and afterwards came into hellas also. for as touching the sun-dial and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day, they were learnt by the hellenes from the babylonians. . he moreover alone of all the egyptian kings had rule over ethiopia; and he left as memorials of himself in front of the temple of hephaistos two stone statues of thirty cubits each, representing himself and his wife, and others of twenty cubits each representing his four sons: and long afterwards the priest of hephaistos refused to permit dareios the persian to set up a statue of himself in front of them, saying that deeds had not been done by him equal to those which were done by sesostris the egyptian; for sesostris had subdued other nations besides, not fewer than he, and also the scythians; but dareios had not been able to conquer the scythians: wherefore it was not just that he should set up a statue in front of those which sesostris had dedicated, if he did not surpass him in his deeds. which speech, they say, dareios took in good part. . now after sesostris had brought his life to an end, his son pheros, they told me, received in succession the kingdom, and he made no warlike expedition, and moreover it chanced to him to become blind by reason of the following accident:�when the river had come down in flood rising to a height of eighteen cubits, higher than ever before that time, and had gone over the fields, a wind fell upon it and the river became agitated by waves: and this king (they say) moved by presumptuous folly took a spear and cast it into the midst of the eddies of the stream; and immediately upon this he had a disease of the eyes and was by it made blind. for ten years then he was blind, and in the eleventh year there came to him an oracle from the city of buto saying that the time of his punishment had expired, and that he should see again if he washed his eyes with the water of a woman who had accompanied with her own husband only and had not knowledge of other men: and first he made trial of his own wife, and then, as he continued blind, he went on to try all the women in turn; and when he had at last regained his sight he gathered together all the women of whom he had made trial, excepting her by whose means he had regained his sight, to one city which now is named erythrabolos, and having gathered them to this he consumed them all by fire, as well as the city itself; but as for her by whose means he had regained his sight, he had her himself to wife. then after he had escaped the malady of his eyes he dedicated offerings at each one of the temples which were of renown, and especially (to mention only that which is most worthy of mention) he dedicated at the temple of the sun works which are worth seeing, namely two obelisks of stone, each of a single block, measuring in length a hundred cubits each one and in breadth eight cubits. . after him, they said, there succeeded to the throne a man of memphis, whose name in the tongue of the hellenes was proteus; for whom there is now a sacred enclosure at memphis, very fair and well ordered, lying on that side of the temple of hephaistos which faces the north wind. round about this enclosure dwell phenicians of tyre, and this whole region is called the camp of the tyrians. within the enclosure of proteus there is a temple called the temple of the "foreign aphrodite," which temple i conjecture to be one of helen the daughter of tyndareus, not only because i have heard the tale how helen dwelt with proteus, but also especially because it is called by the name of the "foreign aphrodite," for the other temples of aphrodite which there are have none of them the addition of the word "foreign" to the name. . and the priests told me, when i inquired, that the things concerning helen happened thus:�alexander having carried off helen was sailing away from sparta to his own land, and when he had come to the egean sea contrary winds drove him from his course to the sea of egypt; and after that, since the blasts did not cease to blow, he came to egypt itself, and in egypt to that which is now named the canobic mouth of the nile and to taricheiai. now there was upon the shore, as still there is now, a temple of heracles, in which if any man's slave take refuge and have the sacred marks set upon him, giving himself over to the god, it is not lawful to lay hands upon him; and this custom has continued still unchanged from the beginning down to my own time. accordingly the attendants of alexander, having heard of the custom which existed about the temple, ran away from him, and sitting down as suppliants of the god, accused alexander, because they desired to do him hurt, telling the whole tale how things were about helen and about the wrong done to menelaos; and this accusation they made not only to the priests but also to the warden of this river-mouth, whose name was thonis. . thonis then having heard their tale sent forthwith a message to proteus at memphis, which said as follows: "there hath come a stranger, a teucrian by race, who hath done in hellas an unholy deed; for he hath deceived the wife of his own host, and is come hither bringing with him this woman herself and very much wealth, having been carried out of his way by winds to thy land. shall we then allow him to sail out unharmed, or shall we first take away from him that which he brought with him?" in reply to this proteus sent back a messenger who said thus: "seize this man, whosoever he may be, who has done impiety to his own host, and bring him away into my presence, that i may know what he will find to say." . hearing this, thonis seized alexander and detained his ships, and after that he brought the man himself up to memphis and with him helen and the wealth he had, and also in addition to them the suppliants. so when all had been conveyed up thither, proteus began to ask alexander who he was and from whence he was voyaging; and he both recounted to him his descent and told him the name of his native land, and moreover related of his voyage, from whence he was sailing. after this proteus asked him whence he had taken helen; and when alexander went astray in his account and did not speak the truth, those who had become suppliants convicted him of falsehood, relating in full the whole tale of the wrong done. at length proteus declared to them this sentence, saying, "were it not that i count it a matter of great moment not to slay any of those strangers who being driven from their course by winds have come to my land hitherto, i should have taken vengeance on thee on behalf of the man of hellas, seeing that thou, most base of men, having received from him hospitality, didst work against him a most impious deed. for thou didst go in to the wife of thine own host; and even this was not enough for thee, but thou didst stir her up with desire and hast gone away with her like a thief. moreover not even this by itself was enough for thee, but thou art come hither with plunder taken from the house of thy host. now therefore depart, seeing that i have counted it of great moment not to be a slayer of strangers. this woman indeed and the wealth which thou hast i will not allow thee to carry away, but i shall keep them safe for the hellene who was thy host, until he come himself and desire to carry them off to his home; to thyself however and thy fellow-voyagers i proclaim that ye depart from your anchoring within three days and go from my land to some other; and if not, that ye will be dealt with as enemies." . this the priests said was the manner of helen's coming to proteus; and i suppose that homer also had heard this story, but since it was not so suitable to the composition of his poem as the other which he followed, he dismissed it finally, making it clear at the same time that he was acquainted with that story also: and according to the manner in which he described the wanderings of alexander in the iliad (nor did he elsewhere retract that which he had said) it is clear that when he brought helen he was carried out of his course, wandering to various lands, and that he came among other places to sidon in phenicia. of this the poet has made mention in the "prowess of diomede," and the verses run this: "there she had robes many-coloured, the works of women of sidon, those whom her son himself the god-like of form alexander carried from sidon, what time the broad sea-path he sailed over bringing back helene home, of a noble father begotten." and in the odyssey also he has made mention of it in these verses: "such had the daughter of zeus, such drugs of exquisite cunning, good, which to her the wife of thon, polydamna, had given, dwelling in egypt, the land where the bountiful meadow produces drugs more than all lands else, many good being mixed, many evil." and thus too menelaos says to telemachos: "still the gods stayed me in egypt, to come back hither desiring, stayed me from voyaging home, since sacrifice was due i performed not." in these lines he makes it clear that he knew of the wandering of alexander to egypt, for syria borders upon egypt and the phenicians, of whom is sidon, dwell in syria. . by these lines and by this passage it is also most clearly shown that the "cyprian epic" was not written by homer but by some other man: for in this it is said that on the third day after leaving sparta alexander came to ilion bringing with him helen, having had a "gently-blowing wind and a smooth sea," whereas in the iliad it says that he wandered from his course when he brought her. . let us now leave homer and the "cyprian" epic; but this i will say, namely that i asked the priests whether it is but an idle tale which the hellenes tell of that which they say happened about ilion; and they answered me thus, saying that they had their knowledge by inquiries from menelaos himself. after the rape of helen there came indeed, they said, to the teucrian land a large army of hellenes to help menelaos; and when the army had come out of the ships to land and had pitched its camp there, they sent messengers to ilion, with whom went also menelaos himself; and when these entered within the wall they demanded back helen and the wealth which alexander had stolen from menelaos and had taken away; and moreover they demanded satisfaction for the wrongs done: and the teucrians told the same tale then and afterwards, both with oath and without oath, namely that in deed and in truth they had not helen nor the wealth for which demand was made, but that both were in egypt; and that they could not justly be compelled to give satisfaction for that which proteus the king of egypt had. the hellenes however thought that they were being mocked by them and besieged the city, until at last they took it; and when they had taken the wall and did not find helen, but heard the same tale as before, then they believed the former tale and sent menelaos himself to proteus. . and menelaos having come to egypt and having sailed up to memphis, told the truth of these matters, and not only found great entertainment, but also received helen unhurt, and all his own wealth besides. then however, after he had been thus dealt with, menelaos showed himself ungrateful to the egyptians; for when he set forth to sail away, contrary winds detained him, and as this condition of things lasted long, he devised an impious deed; for he took two children of natives and made sacrifice of them. after this, when it was known that he had done so, he became abhorred, and being pursued he escaped and got away in his ships to libya; but whither he went besides after this, the egyptians were not able to tell. of these things they said that they found out part by inquiries, and the rest, namely that which happened in their own land, they related from sure and certain knowledge. . thus the priests of the egyptians told me; and i myself also agree with the story which was told of helen, adding this consideration, namely that if helen had been in ilion she would have been given up to the hellenes, whether alexander consented or no; for priam assuredly was not so mad, nor yet the others of his house, that they were desirous to run risk of ruin for themselves and their children and their city, in order that alexander might have helen as his wife: and even supposing that during the first part of the time they had been so inclined, yet when many others of the trojans besides were losing their lives as often as they fought with the hellenes, and of the sons of priam himself always two or three or even more were slain when a battle took place (if one may trust at all to the epic poets),�when, i say, things were coming thus to pass, i consider that even if priam himself had had helen as his wife, he would have given her back to the achaians, if at least by so doing he might be freed from the evils which oppressed him. nor even was the kingdom coming to alexander next, so that when priam was old the government was in his hands; but hector, who was both older and more of a man than he, would have received it after the death of priam; and him it behoved not to allow his brother to go on with his wrong-doing, considering that great evils were coming to pass on his account both to himself privately and in general to the other trojans. in truth however they lacked the power to give helen back; and the hellenes did not believe them, though they spoke the truth; because, as i declare my opinion, the divine power was purposing to cause them utterly to perish, and so make it evident to men that for great wrongs great also are the chastisements which come from the gods. and thus have i delivered my opinion concerning these matters. . after proteus, they told me, rhampsinitos received in succession the kingdom, who left as a memorial of himself that gateway to the temple of hephaistos which is turned towards the west, and in front of the gateway he set up two statues, in height five-and-twenty cubits, of which the one which stands on the north side is called by the egyptians summer and the one on the south side winter; and to that one which they call summer they do reverence and make offerings, while to the other which is called winter they do the opposite of these things. (a) this king, they said, got great wealth of silver, which none of the kings born after him could surpass or even come near to; and wishing to store his wealth in safety he caused to be built a chamber of stone, one of the walls whereof was towards the outside of his palace: and the builder of this, having a design against it, contrived as follows, that is, he disposed one of the stones in such a manner that it could be taken out easily from the wall either by two men or even by one. so when the chamber was finished, the king stored his money in it, and after some time the builder, being near the end of his life, called to him his sons (for he had two) and to them he related how he had contrived in building the treasury of the king, and all in forethought for them, that they might have ample means of living. and when he had clearly set forth to them everything concerning the taking out of the stone, he gave them the measurements, saying that if they paid heed to this matter they would be stewards of the king's treasury. so he ended his life, and his sons made no long delay in setting to work, but went to the palace by night, and having found the stone in the wall of the chamber they dealt with it easily and carried forth for themselves great quantity of the wealth within. (b) and the king happening to open the chamber, he marvelled when he saw the vessels falling short of the full amount, and he did not know on whom he should lay the blame, since the seals were unbroken and the chamber had been close shut; but when upon his opening the chamber a second and a third time the money was each time seen to be diminished, for the thieves did not slacken in their assaults upon it, he did as follows:�having ordered traps to be made he set these round about the vessels in which the money was; and when the thieves had come as at former times and one of them had entered, then so soon as he came near to one of the vessels he was straightway caught in the trap: and when he perceived in what evil case he was, straightway calling his brother he showed him what the matter was, and bade him enter as quickly as possible and cut off his head, for fear lest being seen and known he might bring about the destruction of his brother also. and to the other it seemed that he spoke well, and he was persuaded and did so; and fitting the stone into its place he departed home bearing with him the head of his brother. (c) now when it became day, the king entered into the chamber and was very greatly amazed, seeing the body of the thief held in the trap without his head, and the chamber unbroken, with no way to come in or go out: and being at a loss he hung up the dead body of the thief upon the wall and set guards there, with charge if they saw any one weeping or bewailing himself to seize him and bring him before the king. and when the dead body had been hung up, the mother was greatly grieved, and speaking with the son who survived she enjoined him, in whatever way he could, to contrive means by which he might take down and bring home the body of his dead brother; and if he should neglect to do this, she earnestly threatened that she would go and give information to the king that he had the money. (d) so as the mother dealt hardly with the surviving son, and he though saying many things to her did not persuade her, he contrived for his purpose a device as follows:�providing himself with asses he filled some skins with wine and laid them upon the asses, and after that he drove them along: and when he came opposite to those who were guarding the corpse hung up, he drew towards him two or three of the necks of the skins and loosened the cords with which they were tied. then when the wine was running out, he began to beat his head and cry out loudly, as if he did not know to which of the asses he should first turn; and when the guards saw the wine flowing out in streams, they ran together to the road with drinking vessels in their hands and collected the wine that was poured out, counting it so much gain; and he abused them all violently, making as if he were angry, but when the guards tried to appease him, after a time he feigned to be pacified and to abate his anger, and at length he drove his asses out of the road and began to set their loads right. then more talk arose among them, and one or two of them made jests at him and brought him to laugh with them; and in the end he made them a present of one of the skins in addition to what they had. upon that they lay down there without more ado, being minded to drink, and they took him into their company and invited him to remain with them and join them in their drinking: so he (as may be supposed) was persuaded and stayed. then as they in their drinking bade him welcome in a friendly manner, he made a present to them also of another of the skins; and so at length having drunk liberally the guards became completely intoxicated; and being overcome by sleep they went to bed on the spot where they had been drinking. he then, as it was now far on in the night, first took down the body of his brother, and then in mockery shaved the right cheeks of all the guards; and after that he put the dead body upon the asses and drove them away home, having accomplished that which was enjoined him by his mother. (e) upon this the king, when it was reported to him that the dead body of the thief had been stolen away, displayed great anger; and desiring by all means that it should be found out who it might be who devised these things, did this (so at least they said, but i do not believe the account),�he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and enjoined her to receive all equally, and before having commerce with any one to compel him to tell her what was the most cunning and what the most unholy deed which had been done by him in all his life-time; and whosoever should relate that which had happened about the thief, him she must seize and not let him go out. then as she was doing that which was enjoined by her father, the thief, hearing for what purpose this was done and having a desire to get the better of the king in resource, did thus:�from the body of one lately dead he cut off the arm at the shoulder and went with it under his mantle: and having gone in to the daughter of the king, and being asked that which the others also were asked, he related that he had done the most unholy deed when he cut off the head of his brother, who had been caught in a trap in the king's treasure-chamber, and the most cunning deed in that he made drunk the guards and took down the dead body of his brother hanging up; and she when she heard it tried to take hold of him, but the thief held out to her in the darkness the arm of the corpse, which she grasped and held, thinking that she was holding the arm of the man himself; but the thief left it in her hands and departed, escaping through the door. (f) now when this also was reported to the king, he was at first amazed at the ready invention and daring of the fellow, and then afterwards he sent round to all the cities and made proclamation granting a free pardon to the thief, and also promising a great reward if he would come into his presence. the thief accordingly trusting to the proclamation came to the king, and rhampsinitos greatly marvelled at him, and gave him this daughter of his to wife, counting him to be the most knowing of all men; for as the egyptians were distinguished from all other men, so was he from the other egyptians. . after these things they said this king went down alive to that place which by the hellenes is called hades, and there played at dice with demeter, and in some throws he overcame her and in others he was overcome by her; and he came back again having as a gift from her a handkerchief of gold: and they told me that because of the going down of rhampsinitos the egyptians after he came back celebrated a feast, which i know of my own knowledge also that they still observe even to my time; but whether it is for this cause that they keep the feast or for some other, i am not able to say. however, the priests weave a robe completely on the very day of the feast, and forthwith they bind up the eyes of one of them with a fillet, and having led him with the robe to the way by which one goes to the temple of demeter, they depart back again themselves. this priest, they say, with his eyes bound up is led by two wolves to the temple of demeter, which is distant from the city twenty furlongs, and then afterwards the wolves lead him back again from the temple to the same spot. . now as to the tales told by the egyptians, any man may accept them to whom such things appear credible; as for me, it is to be understood throughout the whole of the history that i write by hearsay that which is reported by the people in each place. the egyptians say that demeter and dionysos are rulers of the world below; and the egyptians are also the first who reported the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body dies, the soul enters into another creature which chances then to be coming to the birth, and when it has gone the round of all the creatures of land and sea and of the air, it enters again into a human body as it comes to the birth; and that it makes this round in a period of three thousand years. this doctrine certain hellenes adopted, some earlier and some later, as if it were of their own invention, and of these men i know the names but i abstain from recording them. . down to the time when rhampsinitos was king, they told me there was in egypt nothing but orderly rule, and egypt prospered greatly; but after him cheops became king over them and brought them to every kind of evil: for he shut up all the temples, and having first kept them from sacrificing there, he then bade all the egyptians work for him. so some were appointed to draw stones from the stone-quarries in the arabian mountains to the nile, and others he ordered to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those which are called the libyan mountains; and they worked by a hundred thousand men at a time, for each three months continually. of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it is five furlongs and the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it is highest, eight fathoms, and it is made of stone smoothed and with figures carved upon it. for this, they said, the ten years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the nile. for the making of the pyramid itself there passed a period of twenty years; and the pyramid is square, each side measuring eight hundred feet, and the height of it is the same. it is built of stone smoothed and fitted together in the most perfect manner, not one of the stones being less than thirty feet in length. . this pyramid was made after the manner of steps, which some call "rows" and others "bases": and when they had first made it thus, they raised the remaining stones with machines made of short pieces of timber, raising them first from the ground to the first stage of the steps, and when the stone got up to this it was placed upon another machine standing on the first stage, and so from this it was drawn to the second upon another machine; for as many as were the courses of the steps, so many machines there were also, or perhaps they transferred one and the same machine, made so as easily to be carried, to each stage successively, in order that they might take up the stones; for let it be told in both ways, according as it is reported. however that may be, the highest parts of it were finished first, and afterwards they proceeded to finish that which came next to them, and lastly they finished the parts of it near the ground and the lowest ranges. on the pyramid it is declared in egyptian writing how much was spent on radishes and onions and leeks for the workmen, and if i rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of one thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent; and if this is so, how much besides is likely to have been expended upon the iron with which they worked, and upon bread and clothing for the workmen, seeing that they were building the works for the time which has been mentioned and were occupied for no small time besides, as i suppose, in the cutting and bringing of the stones and in working at the excavation under the ground? . cheops moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of money he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and ordered her to obtain from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was they did not tell me); but she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father, but also she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and she requested each man who came in to her to give her one stone upon her building: and of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, each side being one hundred and fifty feet in length. . this cheops, the egyptians said, reigned fifty years; and after he was dead his brother chephren succeeded to the kingdom. this king followed the same manner as the other, both in all the rest and also in that he made a pyramid, not indeed attaining to the measurements of that which was built by the former (this i know, having myself also measured it), and moreover there are no underground chambers beneath nor does a channel come from the nile flowing to this one as to the other, in which the water coming through a conduit built for it flows round an island within, where they say that cheops himself is laid: but for a basement he built the first course of ethiopian stone of divers colours; and this pyramid he made forty feet lower than the other as regards size, building it close to the great pyramid. these stand both upon the same hill, which is about a hundred feet high. and chephren they said reigned fifty and six years. . here then they reckon one hundred and six years, during which they say that there was nothing but evil for the egyptians, and the temples were kept closed and not opened during all that time. these kings the egyptians by reason of their hatred of them are not very willing to name; nay, they even call the pyramids after the name of philitis the shepherd, who at that time pastured flocks in those regions. . after him, they said, mykerinos became king over egypt, who was the son of cheops; and to him his father's deeds were displeasing, and he both opened the temples and gave liberty to the people, who were ground down to the last extremity of evil, to return to their own business and to their sacrifices;: also he gave decisions of their causes juster than those of all the other kings besides. in regard to this then they commend this king more than all the other kings who had arisen in egypt before him; for he not only gave good decisions, but also when a man complained of the decision, he gave him recompense from his own goods and thus satisfied his desire. but while mykerinos was acting mercifully to his subjects and practising this conduct which has been said, calamities befell him, of which the first was this, namely that his daughter died, the only child whom he had in his house: and being above measure grieved by that which had befallen him, and desiring to bury his daughter in a manner more remarkable than others, he made a cow of wood, which he covered over with gold, and then within it he buried this daughter who, as i said, had died. . this cow was not covered up in the ground, but it might be seen even down to my own time in the city of saïs, placed within the royal palace in a chamber which was greatly adorned; and they offer incense of all kinds before it every day, and each night a lamp burns beside it all through the night. near this cow in another chamber stand images of the concubines of mykerinos, as the priests at saïs told me; for there are in fact colossal wooden statues, in number about twenty, made with naked bodies; but who they are i am not able to say, except only that which is reported. . some however tell about this cow and the colossal statues the following tale, namely that mykerinos was enamoured of his own daughter and afterwards ravished her; and upon this they say that the girl strangled herself for grief, and he buried her in this cow; and her mother cut off the hands of the maids who had betrayed the daughter to her father; wherefore now the images of them have suffered that which the maids suffered in their life. in thus saying they speak idly, as it seems to me, especially in what they say about the hands of the statues; for as to this, even we ourselves saw that their hands had dropped off from lapse of time, and they were to be seen still lying at their feet even down to my time. . the cow is covered up with a crimson robe, except only the head and the neck, which are seen, overlaid with gold very thickly; and between the horns there is the disc of the sun figured in gold. the cow is not standing up but kneeling, and in size it is equal to a large living cow. every year it is carried forth from the chamber, at those times, i say, the egyptians beat themselves for that god whom i will not name upon occasion of such a matter; at these times, i say, they also carry forth the cow to the light of day, for they say that she asked of her father mykerinos, when she was dying, that she might look upon the sun once in the year. . after the misfortune of his daughter it happened, they said, secondly to this king as follows:�an oracle came to him from the city of buto, saying that he was destined to live but six years more, in the seventh year to end his life: and he being indignant at it sent to the oracle a reproach against the god, making complaint in reply that whereas his father and uncle, who had shut up the temples and had not only not remembered the gods, but also had been destroyers of men, had lived for a long time, he himself, who practised piety, was destined to end his life so soon: and from the oracle there came a second message, which said that it was for this very cause that he was bringing his life to a swift close; for he had not done that which it was appointed for him to do, since it was destined that egypt should suffer evils for a hundred and fifty years, and the two kings who had risen before him had perceived this, but he had not. mykerinos having heard this, and considering that this sentence had been passed upon him beyond recall, procured many lamps, and whenever night came on he lighted these and began to drink and take his pleasure, ceasing neither by day nor by night; and he went about to the fen-country and to the woods and wherever he heard there were the most suitable places for enjoyment. this he devised (having a mind to prove that the oracle spoke falsely) in order that he might have twelve years of life instead of six, the nights being turned into days. . this king also left behind him a pyramid, much smaller than that of his father, of a square shape and measuring on each side three hundred feet lacking twenty, built moreover of ethiopian stone up to half the height. this pyramid some of the hellenes say was built by the courtesan rhodopis, not therein speaking rightly: and besides this it is evident to me that they who speak thus do not even know who rhodopis was, for otherwise they would not have attributed to her the building of a pyramid like this, on which have been spent (so to speak) innumerable thousands of talents: moreover they do not know that rhodopis flourished in the reign of amasis, and not in this king's reign; for rhodopis lived very many years later than the kings who left behind the pyramids. by descent she was of thrace, and she was a slave of iadmon the son of hephaistopolis a samian, and a fellow-slave of esop the maker of fables; for he too was once the slave of iadmon, as was proved especially in this fact, namely that when the people of delphi repeatedly made proclamation in accordance with an oracle, to find some one who would take up the blood-money for the death of esop, no one else appeared, but at length the grandson of iadmon, called iadmon also, took it up; and thus it is shown that esop too was the slave of iadmon. . as for rhodopis, she came to egypt brought by xanthes the samian, and having come thither to exercise her calling she was redeemed from slavery for a great sum by a man of mytilene, charaxos son of scamandronymos and brother of sappho the lyric poet. thus was rhodopis set free, and she remained in egypt and by her beauty won so much liking that she made great gain of money for one like rhodopis, though not enough to suffice for the cost of such a pyramid as this. in truth there is no need to ascribe to her very great riches, considering that the tithe of her wealth may still be seen even to this time by any one who desires it: for rhodopis wished to leave behind her a memorial of herself in hellas, namely to cause a thing to be made such as happens not to have been thought of or dedicated in a temple by any besides, and to dedicate this at delphi as a memorial of herself. accordingly with the tithe of her wealth she caused to be made spits of iron of size large enough to pierce a whole ox, and many in number, going as far therein as her tithe allowed her, and she sent them to delphi: these are even at the present time lying there, heaped all together behind the altar which the chians dedicated, and just opposite to the cell of the temple. now at naucratis, as it happens, the courtesans are rather apt to win credit; for this woman first, about whom the story to which i refer is told, became so famous that all the hellenes without exception come to know the name of rhodopis, and then after her one whose name was archidiche became a subject of song over all hellas, though she was less talked of than the other. as for charaxos, when after redeeming rhodopis he returned back to mytilene, sappho in an ode violently abused him. of rhodopis then i shall say no more. . after mykerinos the priests said asychis became king of egypt, and he made for hephaistos the temple gateway which is towards the sunrising, by far the most beautiful and the largest of the gateways; for while they all have figures carved upon them and innumerable ornaments of building besides, this has them very much more than the rest. in this king's reign they told me that, as the circulation of money was very slow, a law was made for the egyptians that a man might have that money lent to him which he needed, by offering as security the dead body of his father; and there was added moreover to this law another, namely that he who lent the money should have a claim also to the whole sepulchral chamber belonging to him who received it, and that the man who offered that security should be subject to this penalty, if he refused to pay back the debt, namely that neither the man himself should be allowed to have burial when he died, either in that family burial-place or in any other, nor should he be allowed to bury any one of his kinsmen whom he lost by death. this king desiring to surpass the kings of egypt who had arisen before him left as a memorial of himself a pyramid which he made of bricks, and on it there is an inscription carved in stone and saying thus: "despise not me in comparison with the pyramids of stone, seeing that i excel them as much as zeus excels the other gods; for with a pole they struck into the lake, and whatever of the mud attached itself to the pole, this they gathered up and made bricks, and in such manner they finished me." such were the deeds which this king performed; , and after him reigned a blind man of the city of anysis, whose name was anysis. in his reign the ethiopians and sabacos the king of the ethiopians marched upon egypt with a great host of men; so this blind man departed, flying to the fen-country, and the ethiopian was king over egypt for fifty years, during which he performed deeds as follows:�whenever any man of the egyptians committed any transgression, he would never put him to death, but he gave sentence upon each man according to the greatness of the wrong-doing, appointing them work at throwing up an embankment before that city from whence each man came of those who committed wrong. thus the cities were made higher still than before; for they were embanked first by those who dug the channels in the reign of sesostris, and then secondly in the reign of the ethiopian, and thus they were made very high: and while other cities in egypt also stood high, i think in the town at bubastis especially the earth was piled up. in this city there is a temple very well worthy of mention, for though there are other temples which are larger and built with more cost, none more than this is a pleasure to the eyes. now bubastis in the hellenic tongue is artemis, , and her temple is ordered thus:�except the entrance it is completely surrounded by water; for channels come in from the nile, not joining one another, but each extending as far as the entrance of the temple, one flowing round on the one side and the other on the other side, each a hundred feet broad and shaded over with trees; and the gateway has a height of ten fathoms, and it is adorned with figures six cubits high, very noteworthy. this temple is in the middle of the city and is looked down upon from all sides as one goes round, for since the city has been banked up to a height, while the temple has not been moved from the place where it was at the first built, it is possible to look down into it: and round it runs a stone wall with figures carved upon it, while within it there is a grove of very large trees planted round a large temple-house, within which is the image of the goddess: and the breadth and length of the temple is a furlong every way. opposite the entrance there is a road paved with stone for about three furlongs, which leads through the market-place towards the east, with a breadth of about four hundred feet; and on this side and on that grow trees of height reaching to heaven: and the road leads to the temple of hermes. this temple then is thus ordered. . the final deliverance from the ethiopian came about (they said) as follows:�he fled away because he had seen in his sleep a vision, in which it seemed to him that a man came and stood by him and counselled him to gather together all the priests of egypt and cut them asunder in the midst. having seen this dream, he said that it seemed to him that the gods were foreshowing him this to furnish an occasion against him, in order that he might do an impious deed with respect to religion, and so receive some evil either from the gods or from men: he would not however do so, but in truth (he said) the time had expired, during which it had been prophesied to him that he should rule egypt before he departed thence. for when he was in ethiopia the oracles which the ethiopians consult had told him that it was fated for him to rule egypt fifty years: since then this time was now expiring, and the vision of the dream also disturbed him, sabacos departed out of egypt of his own free will. . then when the ethiopian had gone away out of egypt, the blind man came back from the fen-country and began to rule again, having lived there during fifty years upon an island which he had made by heaping up ashes and earth: for whenever any of the egyptians visited him bringing food, according as it had been appointed to them severally to do without the knowledge of the ethiopian, he bade them bring also some ashes for their gift. this island none was able to find before amyrtaios; that is, for more than seven hundred years the kings who arose before amyrtaios were not able to find it. now the name of this island is elbo, and its size is ten furlongs each way. . after him there came to the throne the priest of hephaistos, whose name was sethos. this man, they said, neglected and held in no regard the warrior class of the egyptians, considering that he would have no need of them; and besides other slights which he put upon them, he also took from them the yokes of corn-land which had been given to them as a special gift in the reigns of the former kings, twelve yokes to each man. after this, sanacharib king of the arabians and of the assyrians marched a great host against egypt. then the warriors of the egyptians refused to come to the rescue, and the priest, being driven into a strait, entered into the sanctuary of the temple and bewailed to the image of the god the danger which was impending over him; and as he was thus lamenting, sleep came upon him, and it seemed to him in his vision that the god came and stood by him and encouraged him, saying that he should suffer no evil if he went forth to meet the army of the arabians; for he himself would send him helpers. trusting in these things seen in sleep, he took with him, they said, those of the egyptians who were willing to follow him, and encamped in pelusion, for by this way the invasion came: and not one of the warrior class followed him, but shop-keepers and artisans and men of the market. then after they came, there swarmed by night upon their enemies mice of the fields, and ate up their quivers and their bows, and moreover the handles of their shields, so that on the next day they fled, and being without defence of arms great numbers fell. and at the present time this king stands in the temple of hephaistos in stone, holding upon his hand a mouse, and by letters inscribed he says these words: "let him who looks upon me learn to fear the gods." . so far in the story the egyptians and the priests were they who made the report, declaring that from the first king down to this priest of hephaistos who reigned last, there had been three hundred and forty-one generations of men, and that in them there had been the same number of chief-priests and of kings: but three hundred generations of men are equal to ten thousand years, for a hundred years is three generations of men; and in the one-and-forty generations which remain, those i mean which were added to the three hundred, there are one thousand three hundred and forty years. thus in the period of eleven thousand three hundred and forty years they said that there had arisen no god in human form; nor even before that time or afterwards among the remaining kings who arose in egypt, did they report that anything of that kind had come to pass. in this time they said that the sun had moved four times from his accustomed place of rising, and where he now sets he had thence twice had his rising, and in the place from whence he now rises he had twice had his setting; and in the meantime nothing in egypt had been changed from its usual state, neither that which comes from the earth nor that which comes to them from the river nor that which concerns diseases or deaths. . and formerly when hecataios the historian was in thebes, and had traced his descent and connected his family with a god in the sixteenth generation before, the priests of zeus did for him much the same as they did for me (though i had not traced my descent). they led me into the sanctuary of the temple, which is of great size, and they counted up the number, showing colossal wooden statues in number the same as they said; for each chief-priest there sets up in his lifetime an image of himself: accordingly the priests, counting and showing me these, declared to me that each one of them was a son succeeding his own father, and they went up through the series of images from the image of the one who had died last, until they had declared this of the whole number. and when hecataios had traced his descent and connected his family with a god in the sixteenth generation, they traced a descent in opposition to this, besides their numbering, not accepting it from him that a man had been born from a god; and they traced their counter-descent thus, saying that each one of the statues had been piromis son of piromis, until they had declared this of the whole three hundred and forty-five statues, each one being surnamed piromis; and neither with a god nor a hero did they connect their descent. now piromis means in the tongue of hellas "honourable and good man." . from their declaration then it followed, that they of whom the images were had been of form like this, and far removed from being gods: but in the time before these men they said that gods were the rulers in egypt, not mingling with men, and that of these always one had power at a time; and the last of them who was king over egypt was oros the son of osiris, whom the hellenes call apollo: he was king over egypt last, having deposed typhon. now osiris in the tongue of hellas is dionysos. . among the hellenes heracles and dionysos and pan are accounted the latest-born of the gods; but with the egyptians pan is a very ancient god, and he is one of those which are called the eight gods, while heracles is of the second rank, who are called the twelve gods, and dionysos is of the third rank, namely of those who were born of the twelve gods. now as to heracles i have shown already how many years old he is according to the egyptians themselves, reckoning down to the reign of amasis, and pan is said to have existed for yet more years than these, and dionysos for the smallest number of years as compared with the others; and even for this last they reckon down to the reign of amasis fifteen thousand years. this the egyptians say that they know for a certainty, since they always kept a reckoning and wrote down the years as they came. now the dionysos who is said to have been born of semele the daughter of cadmos, was born about sixteen hundred years before my time, and heracles who was the son of alcmene, about nine hundred years, and that pan who was born of penelope, for of her and of hermes pan is said by the hellenes to have been born, came into being later than the wars of troy, about eight hundred years before my time. . of these two accounts every man may adopt that one which he shall find the more credible when he hears it. i however, for my part, have already declared my opinion about them. for if these also, like heracles the son of amphitryon, had appeared before all men's eyes and had lived their lives to old age in hellas, i mean dionysos the son of semele and pan the son of penelope, then one would have said that these also had been born mere men, having the names of those gods who had come into being long before: but as it is, with regard to dionysos the hellenes say that as soon as he was born zeus sewed him up in his thigh and carried him to nysa, which is above egypt in the land of ethiopia; and as to pan, they cannot say whither he went after he was born. hence it has become clear to me that the hellenes learnt the names of these gods later than those of the other gods, and trace their descent as if their birth occurred at the time when they first learnt their names. thus far then the history is told by the egyptians themselves; , but i will now recount that which other nations also tell, and the egyptians in agreement with the others, of that which happened in this land: and there will be added to this also something of that which i have myself seen. being set free after the reign of the priest of hephaistos, the egyptians, since they could not live any time without a king, set up over them twelve kings, having divided all egypt into twelve parts. these made intermarriages with one another and reigned, making agreement that they would not put down one another by force, nor seek to get an advantage over one another, but would live in perfect friendship: and the reason why they made these agreements, guarding them very strongly from violation, was this, namely that an oracle had been given to them at first when they began to exercise their rule, that he of them who should pour a libation with a bronze cup in the temple of hephaistos, should be king of all egypt (for they used to assemble together in all the temples). . moreover they resolved to join all together and leave a memorial of themselves; and having so resolved they caused to be made a labyrinth, situated a little above the lake of moiris and nearly opposite to that which is called the city of crocodiles. this i saw myself, and i found it greater than words can say. for if one should put together and reckon up all the buildings and all the great works produced by the hellenes, they would prove to be inferior in labour and expense to this labyrinth, though it is true that both the temple at ephesos and that at samos are works worthy of note. the pyramids also were greater than words can say, and each one of them is equal to many works of the hellenes, great as they may be; but the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids. it has twelve courts covered in, with gates facing one another, six upon the north side and six upon the south, joining on one to another, and the same wall surrounds them all outside; and there are in it two kinds of chambers, the one kind below the ground and the other above upon these, three thousand in number, of each kind fifteen hundred. the upper set of chambers we ourselves saw, going through them, and we tell of them having looked upon them with our own eyes; but the chambers under ground we heard about only; for the egyptians who had charge of them were not willing on any account to show them, saying that here were the sepulchres of the kings who had first built this labyrinth and of the sacred crocodiles. accordingly we speak of the chambers below by what we received from hearsay, while those above we saw ourselves and found them to be works of more than human greatness. for the passages through the chambers, and the goings this way and that way through the courts, which were admirably adorned, afforded endless matter for marvel, as we went through from a court to the chambers beyond it, and from the chambers to colonnades, and from the colonnades to other rooms, and then from the chambers again to other courts. over the whole of these is a roof made of stone like the walls; and the walls are covered with figures carved upon them, each court being surrounded with pillars of white stone fitted together most perfectly; and at the end of the labyrinth, by the corner of it, there is a pyramid of forty fathoms, upon which large figures are carved, and to this there is a way made under ground. . such is this labyrinth; but a cause for marvel even greater than this is afforded by the lake, which is called the lake of moiris, along the side of which this labyrinth is built. the measure of its circuit is three thousand six hundred furlongs (being sixty schoines), and this is the same number of furlongs as the extent of egypt itself along the sea. the lake lies extended lengthwise from north to south, and in depth where it is deepest it is fifty fathoms. that this lake is artificial and formed by digging is self-evident, for about in the middle of the lake stand two pyramids, each rising above the water to a height of fifty fathoms, the part which is built below the water being of just the same height; and upon each is placed a colossal statue of stone sitting upon a chair. thus the pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and these hundred fathoms are equal to a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom being measured as six feet or four cubits, the feet being four palms each, and the cubits six. the water in the lake does not come from the place where it is, for the country there is very deficient in water, but it has been brought thither from the nile by a canal: and for six months the water flows into the lake, and for six months out into the nile again; and whenever it flows out, then for the six months it brings into the royal treasury a talent of silver a day from the fish which are caught, and twenty pounds when the water comes in. . the natives of the place moreover said that this lake had an outlet under ground to the syrtis which is in libya, turning towards the interior of the continent upon the western side and running along by the mountain which is above memphis. now since i did not see anywhere existing the earth dug out of this excavation (for that was a matter which drew my attention), i asked those who dwelt nearest to the lake where the earth was which had been dug out. these told me to what place it had been carried away; and i readily believed them, for i knew by report that a similar thing had been done at nineveh, the city of the assyrians. there certain thieves formed a design once to carry away the wealth of sardanapallos son of ninos, the king, which wealth was very great and was kept in treasure-houses under the earth. accordingly they began from their own dwelling, and making estimate of their direction they dug under ground towards the king's palace; and the earth which was brought out of the excavation they used to carry away, when night came on, to the river tigris which flows by the city of nineveh, until at last they accomplished that which they desired. similarly, as i heard, the digging of the lake in egypt was effected, except that it was done not by night but during the day; for as they dug the egyptians carried to the nile the earth which was dug out; and the river, when it received it, would naturally bear it away and disperse it. thus is this lake said to have been dug out. . now the twelve kings continued to rule justly, but in course of time it happened thus:�after sacrifice in the temple of hephaistos they were about to make libation on the last day of the feast, and the chief-priest, in bringing out for them the golden cups with which they had been wont to pour libations, missed his reckoning and brought eleven only for the twelve kings. then that one of them who was standing last in order, namely psammetichos, since he had no cup took off from his head his helmet, which was of bronze, and having held it out to receive the wine he proceeded to make libation: likewise all the other kings were wont to wear helmets and they happened to have them then. now psammetichos held out his helmet with no treacherous meaning; but they taking note of that which had been done by psammetichos and of the oracle, namely how it had been declared to them that whosoever of them should make libation with a bronze cup should be sole king of egypt, recollecting, i say, the saying of the oracle, they did not indeed deem it right to slay psammetichos, since they found by examination that he had not done it with any forethought, but they determined to strip him of almost all his power and to drive him away into the fen-country, and that from the fen-country he should not hold any dealings with the rest of egypt. . this psammetichos had formerly been a fugitive from the ethiopian sabacos who had killed his father necos, from him, i say, he had then been a fugitive in syria; and when the ethiopian had departed in consequence of the vision of the dream, the egyptians who were of the district of saïs brought him back to his own country. then afterwards, when he was king, it was his fate to be a fugitive a second time on account of the helmet, being driven by the eleven kings into the fen-country. so then holding that he had been grievously wronged by them, he thought how he might take vengeance on those who had driven him out: and when he had sent to the oracle of leto in the city of buto, where the egyptians have their most truthful oracle, there was given to him the reply that vengeance would come when men of bronze appeared from the sea. and he was strongly disposed not to believe that bronze men would come to help him; but after no long time had passed, certain ionians and carians who had sailed forth for plunder were compelled to come to shore in egypt, and they having landed and being clad in bronze armour, one of the egyptians, not having before seen men clad in bronze armour, came to the fen-land and brought a report to psammetichos that bronze men had come from the sea and were plundering the plain. so he, perceiving that the saying of the oracle was coming to pass, dealt in a friendly manner with the ionians and carians, and with large promises he persuaded them to take his part. then when he had persuaded them, with the help of those egyptians who favoured his cause and of these foreign mercenaries he overthrew the kings. . having thus got power over all egypt, psammetichos made for hephaistos that gateway of the temple at memphis which is turned towards the south wind; and he built a court for apis, in which apis is kept when he appears, opposite to the gateway of the temple, surrounded all with pillars and covered with figures; and instead of columns there stand to support the roof of the court colossal statues twelve cubits high. now apis is in the tongue of the hellenes epaphos. . to the ionians and to the carians who had helped him psammetichos granted portions of land to dwell in, opposite to one another with the river nile between, and these were called "encampments": these portions of land he gave them, and he paid them besides all that he had promised: moreover he placed with them egyptian boys to have them taught the hellenic tongue; and from these, who learnt the language thoroughly, are descended the present class of interpreters in egypt. now the ionians and carians occupied these portions of land for a long time, and they are towards the sea a little below the city of bubastis, on that which is called the pelusian mouth of the nile. these men king amasis afterwards removed from thence and established them at memphis, making them into a guard for himself against the egyptians: and they being settled in egypt, we who are hellenes know by intercourse with them the certainty of all that which happened in egypt beginning from king psammetichos and afterwards; for these were the first men of foreign tongue who settled in egypt: and in the land from which they were removed there still remained down to my time the sheds where their ships were drawn up and the ruins of their houses. thus then psammetichos obtained egypt: , and of the oracle which is in egypt i have made mention often before this, and now i will give an account of it, seeing that it is worthy to be described. this oracle which is in egypt is sacred to leto, and it is established in a great city near that mouth of the nile which is called sebennytic, as one sails up the river from the sea; and the name of this city where the oracle is found is buto, as i have said before in mentioning it. in this buto there is a temple of apollo and artemis; and the temple-house of leto, in which the oracle is, is both great in itself and has a gateway of the height of ten fathoms: but that which caused me most to marvel of the things to be seen there, i will now tell. there is in this sacred enclosure a house of leto made of one single stone as regards both height and length, and of which all the walls are in these two directions equal, each being forty cubits; and for the covering in of the roof there lies another stone upon the top, the cornice measuring four cubits. . this house then of all the things that were to be seen by me in that temple is the most marvellous, and among those which come next is the island called chemmis. this is situated in a deep and broad lake by the side of the temple at buto, and it is said by the egyptians that this island is a floating island. i myself did not see it either floating about or moved from its place, and i feel surprise at hearing of it, wondering if it be indeed a floating island. in this island of which i speak there is a great temple-house of apollo, and three several altars are set up within, and there are planted in the island many palm-trees and other trees, both bearing fruit and not bearing fruit. and the egyptians, when they say that it is floating, add this story, namely that in this island, which formerly was not floating, leto, being one of the eight gods who came into existence first, and dwelling in the city of buto where she has this oracle, received apollo from isis as a charge and preserved him, concealing him in the island which is said now to be a floating island, at that time when typhon came after him seeking everywhere and desiring to find the son of osiris. now they say that apollo and artemis are children of dionysos and of isis, and that leto became their nurse and preserver; and in the egyptian tongue apollo is oros, demeter is isis, and artemis is bubastis. from this story and from no other Æschylus the son of euphorion took this which i shall say, wherein he differs from all the preceding poets; he represented namely that artemis was the daughter of demeter. for this reason then, they say, it became a floating island. such is the story which they tell; , but as for psammetichos, he was king over egypt for four-and-fifty years, of which for thirty years save one he was sitting before azotos, a great city of syria, besieging it, until at last he took it: and this azotos of all cities about which we have knowledge held out for the longest time under a siege. . the son of psammetichos was necos, and he became king of egypt. this man was the first who attempted the channel leading to the erythraian sea, which dareios the persian afterwards completed: the length of this is a voyage of four days, and in breadth it was so dug that two triremes could go side by side driven by oars; and the water is brought into it from the nile. the channel is conducted a little above the city of bubastis by patumos the arabian city, and runs into the erythraian sea: and it is dug first along those parts of the plain of egypt which lie towards arabia, just above which run the mountains which extend opposite memphis, where are the stone-quarries,�along the base of these mountains the channel is conducted from west to east for a great way; and after that it is directed towards a break in the hills and tends from these mountains towards the noon-day and the south wind to the arabian gulf. now in the place where the journey is least and shortest from the northern to the southern sea (which is also called erythraian), that is from mount casion, which is the boundary between egypt and syria, the distance is exactly a thousand furlongs to the arabian gulf; but the channel is much longer, since it is more winding; and in the reign of necos there perished while digging it twelve myriads of the egyptians. now necos ceased in the midst of his digging, because the utterance of an oracle impeded him, which was to the effect that he was working for the barbarian: and the egyptians call all men barbarians who do not agree with them in speech. . thus having ceased from the work of the channel, necos betook himself to waging wars, and triremes were built by him, some for the northern sea and others in the arabian gulf for the erythraian sea; and of these the sheds are still to be seen. these ships he used when he needed them; and also on land necos engaged battle at magdolos with the syrians, and conquered them; and after this he took cadytis, which is a great city of syria: and the dress which he wore when he made these conquests he dedicated to apollo, sending it to branchidai of the milesians. after this, having reigned in all sixteen years, he brought his life to an end, and handed on the kingdom to psammis his son. . while this psammis was king of egypt, there came to him men sent by the eleians, who boasted that they ordered the contest at olympia in the most just and honourable manner possible and thought that not even the egyptians, the wisest of men, could find out anything besides, to be added to their rules. now when the eleians came to egypt and said that for which they had come, then this king called together those of the egyptians who were reputed the wisest, and when the egyptians had come together they heard the eleians tell of all that which it was their part to do in regard to the contest; and when they had related everything, they said that they had come to learn in addition anything which the egyptians might be able to find out besides, which was juster than this. they then having consulted together asked the eleians whether their own citizens took part in the contest; and they said that it was permitted to any one who desired it, both of their own people and of the other hellenes equally, to take part in the contest: upon which the egyptians said that in so ordering the games they had wholly missed the mark of justice; for it could not be but that they would take part with the man of their own state, if he was contending, and so act unfairly to the stranger: but if they really desired, as they said, to order the games justly, and if this was the cause for which they had come to egypt, they advised them to order the contest so as to be for strangers alone to contend in, and that no eleian should be permitted to contend. such was the suggestion made by the egyptians to the eleians. . when psammis had been king of egypt for only six years and had made an expedition to ethiopia and immediately afterwards had ended his life, apries the son of psammis received the kingdom in succession. this man came to be the most prosperous of all the kings up to that time except only his forefather psammetichos; and he reigned five-and-twenty years, during which he led an army against sidon and fought a sea-fight with the king of tyre. since however it was fated that evil should come upon him, it came by occasion of a matter which i shall relate at greater length in the libyan history, and at present but shortly. apries having sent a great expedition against the kyrenians, met with correspondingly great disaster; and the egyptians considering him to blame for this revolted from him, supposing that apries had with forethought sent them out to evident calamity, in order (as they said) that there might be a slaughter of them, and he might the more securely rule over the other egyptians. being indignant at this, both these men who had returned from the expedition and also the friends of those who had perished made revolt openly. . hearing this apries sent to them amasis, to cause them to cease by persuasion; and when he had come and was seeking to restrain the egyptians, as he was speaking and telling them not to do so, one of the egyptians stood up behind him and put a helmet upon his head, saying as he did so that he put it on to crown him king. and to him this that was done was in some degree not unwelcome, as he proved by his behaviour; for as soon as the revolted egyptians had set him up as king, he prepared to march against apries: and apries hearing this sent to amasis one of the egyptians who were about his own person, a man of reputation, whose name was patarbemis, enjoining him to bring amasis alive into his presence. when this patarbemis came and summoned amasis, the latter, who happened to be sitting on horseback, lifted up his leg and behaved in an unseemly manner, bidding him take that back to apries. nevertheless, they say, patarbemis made demand of him that he should go to the king, seeing that the king had sent to summon him; and he answered him that he had for some time past been preparing to do so, and that apries would have no occasion to find fault with him. then patarbemis both perceiving his intention from that which he said, and also seeing his preparations, departed in haste, desiring to make known as quickly as possible to the king the things which were being done: and when he came back to apries not bringing amasis, the king paying no regard to that which he said, but being moved by violent anger, ordered his ears and his nose to be cut off. and the rest of the egyptians who still remained on his side, when they saw the man of most repute among them thus suffering shameful outrage, waited no longer but joined the others in revolt, and delivered themselves over to amasis. . then apries having heard this also, armed his foreign mercenaries and marched against the egyptians: now he had about him carian and ionian mercenaries to the number of thirty thousand; and his royal palace was in the city of saïs, of great size and worthy to be seen. so apries and his army were going against the egyptians, and amasis and those with him were going against the mercenaries; and both sides came to the city of momemphis and were about to make trial of one another in fight. . now of the egyptians there are seven classes, and of these one class is called that of the priests, and another that of the warriors, while the others are the cowherds, swineherds, shopkeepers, interpreters, and boatmen. this is the number of the classes of the egyptians, and their names are given them from the occupations which they follow. of them the warriors are called calasirians and hermotybians, and they are of the following districts, �for all egypt is divided into districts. . the districts of the hermotybians are those of busiris, saïs, chemmis, papremis, the island called prosopitis, and the half of natho,�of these districts are the hermotybians, who reached when most numerous the number of sixteen myriads. of these not one has learnt anything of handicraft, but they are given up to war entirely. . again the districts of the calasirians are those of thebes, bubastis, aphthis, tanis, mendes, sebennytos, athribis, pharbaithos, thmuïs onuphis, anytis, myecphoris,�this last is on an island opposite to the city of bubastis. these are the districts of the calasirians; and they reached, when most numerous, to the number of five-and-twenty myriads of men; nor is it lawful for these, any more than for the others, to practise any craft; but they practise that which has to do with war only, handing down the tradition from father to son. . now whether the hellenes have learnt this also from the egyptians, i am not able to say for certain, since i see that the thracians also and scythians and persians and lydians and almost all the barbarians esteem those of their citizens who learn the arts, and the descendants of them, as less honourable than the rest; while those who have got free from all practice of manual arts are accounted noble, and especially those who are devoted to war: however that may be, the hellenes have all learnt this, and especially the lacedemonians; but the corinthians least of all cast slight upon those who practise handicrafts. . the following privilege was specially granted to this class and to none others of the egyptians except the priests, that is to say, each man had twelve yokes of land specially granted to him free from imposts: now the yoke of land measures a hundred egyptian cubits every way, and the egyptian cubit is, as it happens, equal to that of samos. this, i say, was a special privilege granted to all, and they also had certain advantages in turn and not the same men twice; that is to say, a thousand of the calasirians and a thousand of the hermotybians acted as body-guard to the king during each year; and these had besides their yokes of land an allowance given them for each day of five pounds weight of bread to each man, and two pounds of beef, and four half-pints of wine. this was the allowance given to those who were serving as the king's bodyguard for the time being. . so when apries leading his foreign mercenaries, and amasis at the head of the whole body of the egyptians, in their approach to one another had come to the city of momemphis, they engaged battle: and although the foreign troops fought well, yet being much inferior in number they were worsted by reason of this. but apries is said to have supposed that not even a god would be able to cause him to cease from his rule, so firmly did he think that it was established. in that battle then, i say, he was worsted, and being taken alive was brought away to the city of saïs, to that which had formerly been his own dwelling but from thenceforth was the palace of amasis. there for some time he was kept in the palace, and amasis dealt well with him; but at last, since the egyptians blamed him, saying that he acted not rightly in keeping alive him who was the greatest foe both to themselves and to him, therefore he delivered apries over to the egyptians; and they strangled him, and after that buried him in the burial-place of his fathers: this is in the temple of athene, close to the sanctuary, on the left hand as you enter. now the men of saïs buried all those of this district who had been kings, within the temple; for the tomb of amasis also, though it is further from the sanctuary than that of apries and his forefathers, yet this too is within the court of the temple, and it consists of a colonnade of stone of great size, with pillars carved to imitate date-palms, and otherwise sumptuously adorned; and within the colonnade are double-doors, and inside the doors a sepulchral chamber. . also at saïs there is the burial-place of him whom i account it not pious to name in connexion with such a matter, which is in the temple of athene behind the house of the goddess, stretching along the whole wall of it; and in the sacred enclosure stand great obelisks of stone, and near them is a lake adorned with an edging of stone and fairly made in a circle, being in size, as it seemed to me, equal to that which is called the "round pool" in delos. . on this lake they perform by night the show of his sufferings, and this the egyptians call mysteries. of these things i know more fully in detail how they take place, but i shall leave this unspoken; and of the mystic rites of demeter, which the hellenes call thesmophoria, of these also, although i know, i shall leave unspoken all except so much as piety permits me to tell. the daughters of danaos were they who brought this rite out of egypt and taught it to the women of the pelasgians; then afterwards when all the inhabitants of peloponnese were driven out by the dorians, the rite was lost, and only those who were left behind of the peloponnesians and not driven out, that is to say the arcadians, preserved it. . apries having thus been overthrown, amasis became king, being of the district of saïs, and the name of the city whence he was is siuph. now at the first the egyptians despised amasis and held him in no great regard, because he had been a man of the people and was of no distinguished family; but afterwards amasis won them over to himself by wisdom and not wilfulness. among innumerable other things of price which he had, there was a foot-basin of gold in which both amasis himself and all his guests were wont always to wash their feet. this he broke up, and of it he caused to be made the image of a god, and set it up in the city, where it was most convenient; and the egyptians went continually to visit the image and did great reverence to it. then amasis, having learnt that which was done by the men of the city, called together the egyptians and made known to them the matter, saying that the image had been produced from the foot-basin, into which formerly the egyptians used to vomit and make water, and in which they washed their feet, whereas now they did to it great reverence; and just so, he continued, had he himself now fared, as the foot-basin; for though formerly he was a man of the people, yet now he was their king, and he bade them accordingly honour him and have regard for him. . in such manner he won the egyptians to himself, so that they consented to be his subjects; and his ordering of affairs was thus:�in the early morning, and until the time of the filling of the market he did with a good will the business which was brought before him; but after this he passed the time in drinking and in jesting at his boon-companions, and was frivolous and playful. and his friends being troubled at it admonished him in some such words as these: "o king, thou dost not rightly govern thyself in thus letting thyself descend to behaviour so trifling; for thou oughtest rather to have been sitting throughout the day stately upon a stately throne and administering thy business; and so the egyptians would have been assured that they were ruled by a great man, and thou wouldest have had a better report: but as it is, thou art acting by no means in a kingly fashion." and he answered them thus: "they who have bows stretch them at such time as they wish to use them, and when they have finished using them they loose them again; for if they were stretched tight always they would break, so that the men would not be able to use them when they needed them. so also is the state of man: if he should always be in earnest and not relax himself for sport at the due time, he would either go mad or be struck with stupor before he was aware; and knowing this well, i distribute a portion of the time to each of the two ways of living." thus he replied to his friends. . it is said however that amasis, even when he was in a private station, was a lover of drinking and of jesting, and not at all seriously disposed; and whenever his means of livelihood failed him through his drinking and luxurious living, he would go about and steal; and they from whom he stole would charge him with having their property, and when he denied it would bring him before the judgment of an oracle, whenever there was one in their place; and many times he was convicted by the oracles and many times he was absolved: and then when finally he became king he did as follows:�as many of the gods as had absolved him and pronounced him not to be a thief, to their temples he paid no regard, nor gave anything for the further adornment of them, nor even visited them to offer sacrifice, considering them to be worth nothing and to possess lying oracles; but as many as had convicted him of being a thief, to these he paid very great regard, considering them to be truly gods, and to present oracles which did not lie. . first in saïs he built and completed for athene a temple-gateway which is a great marvel, and he far surpassed herein all who had done the like before, both in regard to height and greatness, so large are the stones and of such quality. then secondly he dedicated great colossal statues and man-headed sphinxes very large, and for restoration he brought other stones of monstrous size. some of these he caused to be brought from the stone-quarries which are opposite memphis, others of very great size from the city of elephantine, distant a voyage of not less than twenty days from saïs: and of them all i marvel most at this, namely a monolith chamber which he brought from the city of elephantine; and they were three years engaged in bringing this, and two thousand men were appointed to convey it, who all were of the class of boatmen. of this house the length outside is one-and-twenty cubits, the breadth is fourteen cubits, and the height eight. these are the measures of the monolith house outside; but the length inside is eighteen cubits and five-sixths of a cubit, the breadth twelve cubits, and the height five cubits. this lies by the side of the entrance to the temple; for within the temple they did not draw it, because, as it said, while the house was being drawn along, the chief artificer of it groaned aloud, seeing that much time had been spent and he was wearied by the work; and amasis took it to heart as a warning and did not allow them to draw it further onwards. some say on the other hand that a man was killed by it, of those who were heaving it with levers, and that it was not drawn in for that reason. . amasis also dedicated in all the other temples which were of repute, works which are worth seeing for their size, and among them also at memphis the colossal statue which lies on its back in front of the temple of hephaistos, whose length is five-and-seventy feet; and on the same base made of the same stone are set two colossal statues, each of twenty feet in length, one on this side and the other on that side of the large statue. there is also another of stone of the same size in saïs, lying in the same manner as that at memphis. moreover amasis was he who built and finished for isis her temple at memphis, which is of great size and very worthy to be seen. . in the reign of amasis it is said that egypt became more prosperous than at any other time before, both in regard to that which comes to the land from the river and in regard to that which comes from the land to its inhabitants, and that at this time the inhabited towns in it numbered in all twenty thousand. it was amasis too who established the law that every year each one of the egyptians should declare to the ruler of his district, from what source he got his livelihood, and if any man did not do this or did not make declaration of an honest way of living, he should be punished with death. now solon the athenian received from egypt this law and had it enacted for the athenians, and they have continued to observe it, since it is a law with which none can find fault. . moreover amasis became a lover of the hellenes; and besides other proofs of friendship which he gave to several among them, he also granted the city of naucratis for those of them who came to egypt to dwell in; and to those who did not desire to stay, but who made voyages thither, he granted portions of land to set up altars and make sacred enclosures for their gods. their greatest enclosure and that one which has most name and is most frequented is called the hellenion, and this was established by the following cities in common:�of the ionians chios, teos, phocaia, clazomenai, of the dorians rhodes, cnidos, halicarnassos, phaselis, and of the aiolians mytilene alone. to these belongs this enclosure and these are the cities which appoint superintendents of the port; and all other cities which claim a share in it, are making a claim without any right. besides this the eginetans established on their own account a sacred enclosure dedicated to zeus, the samians one to hera, and the milesians one to apollo. . now in old times naucratis alone was an open trading-place, and no other place in egypt: and if any one came to any other of the nile mouths, he was compelled to swear that he came not thither of his own will, and when he had thus sworn his innocence he had to sail with his ship to the canobic mouth, or if it were not possible to sail by reason of contrary winds, then he had to carry his cargo round the head of the delta in boats to naucratis: thus highly was naucratis privileged. . moreover when the amphictyons had let out the contract for building the temple which now exists at delphi, agreeing to pay a sum of three hundred talents, (for the temple which formerly stood there had been burnt down of itself), it fell to the share of the people of delphi to provide the fourth part of the payment; and accordingly the delphians went about to various cities and collected contributions. and when they did this they got from egypt as much as from any place, for amasis gave them a thousand talents' weight of alum, while the hellenes who dwelt in egypt gave them twenty pounds of silver. . also with the people of kyrene amasis made an agreement for friendship and alliance; and he resolved too to marry a wife from thence, whether because he desired to have a wife of hellenic race, or apart from that, on account of friendship for the people of kyrene: however that may be, he married, some say the daughter of battos, others of arkesilaos, and others of critobulos, a man of repute among the citizens; and her name was ladike. now whenever amasis lay with her he found himself unable to have intercourse, but with his other wives he associated as he was wont; and as this happened repeatedly, amasis said to his wife, whose name was ladike: "woman, thou hast given me drugs, and thou shalt surely perish more miserably than any other woman." then ladike, when by her denials amasis was not at all appeased in his anger against her, made a vow in her soul to aphrodite, that if amasis on that night had intercourse with her (seeing that this was the remedy for her danger), she would send an image to be dedicated to her at kyrene; and after the vow immediately amasis had intercourse, and from thenceforth whenever amasis came in to her he had intercourse with her; and after this he became very greatly attached to her. and ladike paid the vow that she had made to the goddess; for she had an image made and sent it to kyrene, and it was still preserved even to my own time, standing with its face turned away from the city of the kyrenians. this ladike cambyses, having conquered egypt and heard from her who she was, sent back unharmed to kyrene. . amasis also dedicated offerings in hellas, first at kyrene an image of athene covered over with gold and a figure of himself made like by painting; then in the temple of athene at lindson two images of stone and a corslet of linen worthy to be seen; and also at samos two wooden figures of himself dedicated to hera, which were standing even to my own time in the great temple, behind the doors. now at samos he dedicated offerings because of the guest-friendship between himself and polycrates the son of aiakes; at lindos for no guest-friendship but because the temple of athene at lindos is said to have been founded by the daughters of danaos, who had touched land there at the time when they were fleeing from the sons of aigyptos. these offerings were dedicated by amasis; and he was the first of men who conquered cyprus and subdued it so that it paid him tribute. ����� notes to book ii [ some write "psammitichos" with less authority.] [ {tou en memphi}: many editors read {en memphi}, "i heard at memphis from the priests of hephaistos," but with less authority.] [ {'eliou polin} or {'elioupolin}, cp. {'elioupolitai} below.] [ {exo e ta ounamata auton mounon}. some understand "them" to mean "the gods"; rather perhaps the meaning is that accounts of such things will not be related in full, but only touched upon.] [ {ison peri auton epistasthai}.] [ {anthropon}, emphatic, for the rulers before him were gods (ch. ).] [ {mina}: others read {mena}, but the authority of the mss. is strong for {mina} both here and in ch. .] [ {tou thebaikou nomou}, cp. ch. .] [ {tautes on apo}: some mss. omit {apo}, "this then is the land for which the sixty schoines are reckoned."] [ for the measures of length cp. ch. . the furlong ({stadion}) is equal to fathoms ({orguiai}), i.e. feet inches.] [ or "without rain": the word {anudros} is altered by some editors to {enudros} or {euudros}, "well watered."] [ i have followed stein in taking {es ta eiretai} with {legon}, meaning "at the erythraian sea," {taute men} being a repetition of {te men} above. the bend back would make the range double, and hence partly its great breadth. others translate, "here (at the quarries) the range stops, and bends round to the parts mentioned (i.e. the erythraian sea)."] [ {os einai aiguptou}: cp. iv. . others translate, "considering that it belongs to egypt" (a country so vast), i.e. "as measures go in egypt." in any case {aiguptos eousa} just below seems to repeat the same meaning.] [ some editors alter this to "fourteen."] [ {pentastomou}: some less good mss. have {eptastomou}, "which has seven mouths."] [ see note on i. .] [ {ton erkhomai lexon}: these words are by many editors marked as spurious, and they certainly seem to be out of place here.] [ {kou ge de}: "where then would not a gulf be filled up?"] [ {katarregnumenen}: some editors read {katerregmenen} ("broken up by cracks") from {katerregnumenen}, which is given by many mss.] [ or possibly "with rock below," in which case perhaps {upopsammoteren} would mean "rather sandy underneath."] [ we do not know whether these measurements are in the larger egyptian cubit of inches or the smaller (equal to the ordinary hellenic cubit) of ½ inches, cp. i. .] [ {kai to omoion apodido es auxesin}, "and to yield the like return as regards increased extent." (mr. woods); but the clause may be only a repetition of the preceding one.] [ i.e. zeus.] [ i.e. of the district of thebes, the thebaïs.] [ {te libue}.] [ the meaning seems to be this: "the ionians say that egypt is the delta, and at the same time they divide the world into three parts, europe, asia, and libya, the last two being divided from one another by the nile. thus they have left out egypt altogether; and either they must add the delta as a fourth part of the world, or they must give up the nile as a boundary. if the name egypt be extended, as it is by the other hellenes, to the upper course of the nile, it is then possible to retain the nile as a boundary, saying that half of egypt belongs to asia and half to libya, and disregarding the delta (ch. ). this also would be an error of reckoning, but less serious than to omit egypt together." the reasoning is obscure because it alludes to theories (of hecataios and other writers) which are presumed to be already known to the reader.] [ {katadoupon}, i.e. the first cataract.] [ "and it gives us here, etc." ({parekhomenos}).] [ {logo de eipein thoumasiotere}. or perhaps, "and it is more marvellous, so to speak."] [ {ton ta polla esti andri ke k.t.l.} i take {ton} to refer to the nature of the country, as mentioned above; but the use of {os} can hardly be paralleled, and the passage probably requires correction. some editors read {ton tekmeria polla esti k.t.l.} "wherein there are many evidences to prove, etc." stein omits {ton} and alters the punctuation, so that the clauses run thus, "when it flows from the hottest parts to those which for the most part are cooler? for a man who is capable of reasoning about such matters the first and greatest evidence to prove that it is not likely to flow from snow, is afforded by the winds, etc."] [ {ouk ekhei elegkhon}, "cannot be refuted" (because we cannot argue with him), cp. thuc. iii. , {ta de pseude elegkhon ekhei}. some translate, "does not prove his case."] [ {tes arkhaies diexodou}, "his original (normal) course."] [ {ouk eonton anemon psukhron}: the best mss. read {kai anemon psukhron} ("and there are cold winds"), which stein retains, explaining that the cold north winds would assist evaporation.] [ {autos eoutou peei pollo upodeesteros e tou thereos}.] [ {diakaion ten diexodon auto}, i.e. {to reri}. some editors read {autou} (with inferior mss.) or alter the word to {eoutou}.] [ "set forth, so far as i understood."] [ {epi makrotaton}, "carrying the inquiry as far as possible," cp. ch. .] [ i have little doubt that this means the island of elephantine; for at this point only would such a mixture of races be found. to this the writer here goes back parenthetically, and then resumes the account of the journey upwards from tachompso. this view is confirmed by the fact that strabo relates the same thing with regard to the island of philai just above elephantine.] [ cp. i. , note .] [ {oleureon}.] [ {zeias}.] [ i.e. the hieratic and the demotic characters.] [ {murias, os eipein logo}.] [ referring apparently to iii. , where the marks of apis are given. perhaps no animal could be sacrificed which had any of these marks.] [ {kephale keine}, "that head," cp. {koilien keinen} in the next chapter.] [ {katharon}.] [ {baris}, cp. ch. .] [ or, "descended from aigyptos."] [ or, "assuming that in those days as now, they were wont to make voyages, and that some of the hellenes were seafaring folk."] [ {stelai}, "upright blocks."] [ {lampontos tas nuktas megathos}: some editors alter {megathos} to {megalos} or {mega phos}.] [ {enagizousi}.] [ {uon}: some editors read {oion} "sheep," on the authority of one ms.] [ {ta ounamata}, which means here rather the forms of personification than the actual names.] [ {ai pramanteis}.] [ {phegon}.] [ {upo phego pephukuie}, i.e. the oak-tree of the legend was a real growing tree, though the dove was symbolical.] [ {panegurias}.] [ {prosagogas}, with the idea of bringing offerings or introducing persons.] [ {epoiethesan}, "were first celebrated."] [ so b.r.] [ {sumphoiteousi}.] [ i.e. , .] [ see ch. .] [ {tesi thusiesi, en tini nukti}: some mss. give {en te nukti}: hence several editors read {tes thusies en te nukti}, "on the night of the sacrifice."] [ or, "for what end this night is held solemn by lighting of lamps" (b.r.), making {phos kai timen} one idea.] [ {alexomenous}: this, which is adopted by most editors, is the reading of some less good mss.; the rest have {alexomenoi}, "strike them and defend themselves."] [ {eousa e aiguptos k.t.l.}: the mss. have {eousa de aiguptos}: stein reads {eousa gar aiguptos}.] [ {theia pregmata katalambanei tous aielourous}, which may mean only, "a marvellous thing happens to the cats."] [ {es 'ermeo polin}.] [ {dikhelon, oplai boos}, "he is cloven-footed, and his foot is that of an ox." the words {oplai boos} are marked as spurious by stein.] [ i.e. above the marshes, cp. ch. .] [ {pante}, which by some is translated "taken all together," "at most." perhaps there is some corruption of text, and the writer meant to say that it measured two cubits by one cubit.] [ the reading of the medicean ms. is {en esti}, not {enesti} as hitherto reported.] [ or, "calling the song linos."] [ {ton linon okothen elabon}: the mss. have {to ounoma} after {elabon}, but this is omitted by almost all editors except stein, who justifies it by a reference to ch. , and understands it to mean "the person of linos." no doubt the song and the person are here spoken off indiscriminately, but this explanation would require the reading {tou linou}, as indeed stein partly admits by suggesting the alteration.] [ the words "and bacchic (which are really egyptian)," are omitted by several of the best mss.] [ {epezosmenai}.] [ in connexion with death apparently, cp. ch. , . osiris is meant.] [ {sindonos bussines}.] [ {to kommi}.] [ {nros}.] [ or, "a pleasant sweet taste."] [ {apala}, "soft."] [ {kat oligous ton kegkhron}.] [ {apo ton sillikuprion tou karpou}.] [ {zuga}, to tie the sides and serve as a partial deck.] [ {esti de oud' outos}: a few mss. have {ouk} instead of {oud'}, and most editors follow them. the meaning however seems to be that even here the course in time of flood is different, and much more in the lower parts.] [ {os apergmenos ree}: the mss. mostly have {os apergmenos reei}, in place of which i have adopted the correction of stein. most other editors read {os apergmenos peei} (following a few inferior mss.), "the bend of the nile which flows thus confined."] [ not therefore in the delta, to which in ch. was assigned a later origin than this.] [ {kat' ouden einai lamprotetos}: stein reads {kai} for {kat'}, thus making the whole chapter parenthetical, with {ou gar elegon} answered by {parameipsamenos on}, a conjecture which is ingenious but not quite convincing.] [ {stratien pollen labon}: most of the mss. have {ton} after {pollen}, which perhaps indicates that some words are lost.] [ {kai prosotata}: many mss. have {kai ou prosotata}, which is defended by some editors in the sense of a comparative, "and not further."] [ {suroi} in the better mss.; see note in i. .] [ {surioi}.] [ {kata tauta}: the better mss. have {kai kata tauta}, which might be taken with what follows, punctuating after {ergazontai} (as in the medicean ms.): "they and the egyptians alone of all nations work flax; and so likewise they resemble one another in their whole manner of living."] [ {polon}, i.e. the concave sun-dial, in shape like the vault of heaven.] [ the gnomon would be an upright staff or an obelisk for observation of the length of the shadow.] [ i.e. red clod.] [ {turion stratopedon}, i.e. "the tyrian quarter" of the town: cp. ch. .] [ {ten sen}, or {tauten}, "this land."] [ {es o meteke auton}, "until at last he dismissed it"; but the construction is very irregular, and there is probably some corruption of text. stein reads {ekon} by conjecture for {es o}.] [ {delon de kata per epoiese}: a conjectural emendation of {delon de' kata gar epoiese}, which some editors retain, translating thus, "and this is clear; for according to the manner in which homer described the wanderings of alexander, etc., it is clear how, etc."] [ il. vi. . the sixth book is not ordinarily included in the {diomedeos aristeia}.] [ od. iv. . these references to the odyssey are by some thought to be interpolations, because they refer only to the visit of menelaos to egypt after the fall of troy; but herodotus is arguing that homer, while rejecting the legend of helen's stay in egypt during the war, yet has traces of it left in this later visit to egypt of menelaos and helen, as well as in the visit of paris and helen to sidon.] [ od. iv. .] [ {kai tode to khorion}: probably {to khorion} ought to be struck out: "this also is evident."] [ {podeonas}, being the feet of the animals whose skins they were.] [ cp. vii. .] [ {elasai}, which may be intransitive, "rushed into every kind of evil."] [ {stadioi}.] [ {krossas}.] [ {bomidas}.] [ i.e. the three small pyramids just to the east of the great pyramid.] [ {oute gar k.t.l.}, "for there are no underground chambers," etc. something which was in the mind of the writer has been omitted either by himself or his copyists, "and inferior to it also in other respects, for," etc. unless, as stein supposes, we have here a later addition thrown in without regard to the connexion.] [ {touto megathos}, "as regards attaining the same size," but probably the text is corrupt. stein reads {to megathos} in his later editions.] [ or, "philition."] [ {to theo}, the goddess leto, cp. i. .] [ {suntakhunein auton ton bion}: some mss. and editors read {auto} for {auton}, "that heaven was shortening his life."] [ more literally, "bidding him take up the blood-money, who would." the people of delphi are said to have put esop to death and to have been ordered by the oracle to make compensation.] [ {os an einai 'podopin}: so the mss. some editors read {'podopios}, others {'podopi}.] [ {antion de autout tou neou}.] [ {epaphroditoi ginesthai}.] [ {katekertomese min}: athenæus says that sappho attacked the mistress of charaxos; but here {min} can hardly refer to any one but charaxos himself, who doubtless would be included in the same condemnation.] [ {propulaia}.] [ "innumerable sights of buildings."] [ {tassomenon}, "posted," like an army; but the text is probably unsound: so also in the next line, where the better mss. have {men boubasti poli}, others {e en boubasti polis}. stein reads {e en boubasti poli}, "the earth at the city of bubastis." perhaps {e en boubasti polis} might mean the town as opposed to the temple, as mr. woods suggests.] [ cp. ch. , {egeneto apo prophasios, ton k.t.l.} perhaps however {prophasin} is here from {prophaino} (cp. soph. trach. ), and it means merely "that the gods were foreshowing him this in order that," etc. so stein.] [ i.e. for their customary gift or tribute to him as king.] [ the chronology is inconsistent, and some propose, without authority, to read "three hundred years."] [ {tas arouras}, cp. ch. , where the {aroura} is defined as a hundred egyptian units square, about three-quarters of an acre.] [ {es to megaron}.] [ not on two single occasions, but for two separate periods of time it was stated that the sun had risen in the west and set in the east; i.e. from east to west, then from west to east, then again from east to west, and finally back to east again. this seems to be the meaning attached by herodotus to something which he was told about astronomical cycles.] [ {ouk eontas}: this is the reading of all the best mss., and also fits in best with the argument, which was that in egypt gods were quite distinct from men. most editors however read {oikeontas} on the authority of a few mss., "dwelling with men." (the reading of the medicean ms. is {ouk eontas}, not {oukeontas} as stated by stein.)] [ i.e. that the hellenes borrowed these divinities from egypt, see ch. ff. this refers to all the three gods above mentioned and not (as stein contended) to pan and dionysos only.] [ {kai toutous allous}, i.e. as well as heracles; but it may mean "that these also, distinct from the gods, had been born," etc. the connexion seems to be this: "i expressed my opinion on all these cases when i spoke of the case of heracles; for though the statement there about heracles was in one respect inapplicable to the rest, yet in the main conclusion that gods are not born of men it applies to all."] [ {stadioi}.] [ {mneas}, of which go to the talent.] [ cp. ch. .] [ {neos}.] [ i understand that each wall consisted of a single stone, which gave the dimensions each way: "as regards height and length" therefore it was made of a single stone. that it should have been a monolith, except the roof, is almost impossible, not only because of the size mentioned (which in any case is suspicious), but because no one would so hollow out a monolith that it would be necessary afterwards to put on another stone for the roof. the monolith chamber mentioned in ch. , which it took three years to convey from elephantine, measured only cubits by by . the {parorophis} or "cornice" is not an "eave projecting four cubits," but (as the word is explained by pollux) a cornice between ceiling and roof, measuring in this instance four cubits in height and formed by the thickness of the single stone: see letronne, recherches pour servir, etc. p. (quoted by bähr).] [ {erpase}, "took as plunder."] [ {aparti}: this word is not found in any ms. but was read here by the greek grammarians.] [ i.e. , .] [ cp. iv. .] [ {kuneen}, perhaps the royal helmet or pschent, cp. ch. .] [ {apemataise}, euphemism for breaking wind.] [ {oudena logon auto donta}: many editors change {auto} to {eouto}, in which case it means "taking no time to consider the matter," as elsewhere in herodotus; but cp. iii. {istoreonti logon audena edidou}.] [ {nomon}, and so throughout the passage.] [ i.e. , .] [ i.e. , .] [ {arourai}, cp. ch. .] [ {ekaston}: if {ekastoi} be read (for which there is more ms. authority) the meaning will be that "a thousand calasirians and a thousand hermotybians acted as guards alternately, each for a year," the number at a time being not .] [ {pente mneai}.] [ {arusteres},={kotulai}.] [ {tou neou}.] [ {e trokhoiedes kaleomene}, "the wheel."] [ the last words, "and when�again," are not found in the best mss., and are omitted by stein. however their meaning, if not expressed, is implied.] [ {pugonos}.] [ {tou autou eontes lithou}: some mss. and many editors have {aithiopikou} for {tou autou}, "of ethiopian stone." for {eontes} the mss. have {eontos}, which may be right, referring to {tou bathrou} understood, "the base being made of," etc.] [ {tou megalou}, a conjecture founded upon valla's version, which has been confirmed by a ms. the other mss. have {tou megarou}, which is retained by some editors, "on each side of the sanctuary."] [ "are claiming a share when no part in it belongs to them."] [ or possibly of alum: but the gift seems a very small one in any case. some propose to read {eikosi mneas khrusou}.] [ or, according to a few mss., "battos the son of arkesilaos."] [ "thou hast surely perished."] book iii. the third book of the histories, called thaleia . against this amasis then cambyses the son of cyrus was making his march, taking with him not only other nations of which he was ruler, but also hellenes, both ionians and aiolians: and the cause of the expedition was as follows:�cambyses sent an envoy to egypt and asked amasis to give him his daughter; and he made the request by counsel of an egyptian, who brought this upon amasis having a quarrel with him for the following reason:�at the time when cyrus sent to amasis and asked him for a physician of the eyes, whosoever was the best of those in egypt, amasis had selected him from all the physicians in egypt and had torn him away from his wife and children and delivered him up to persia. having, i say, this cause of quarrel, the egyptian urged cambyses on by his counsel bidding him ask amasis for his daughter, in order that he might either be grieved if he gave her, or if he refused to give her, might offend cambyses. so amasis, who was vexed by the power of the persians and afraid of it, knew neither how to give nor how to refuse: for he was well assured that cambyses did not intend to have her as his wife but as a concubine. so making account of the matter thus, he did as follows:�there was a daughter of apries the former king, very tall and comely of form and the only person left of his house, and her name was nitetis. this girl amasis adorned with raiment and with gold, and sent her away to persia as his own daughter: but after a time, when cambyses saluted her calling her by the name of her father, the girl said to him: "o king, thou dost not perceive how thou hast been deceived by amasis; for he adorned me with ornaments and sent me away giving me to thee as his own daughter, whereas in truth i am the daughter of apries against whom amasis rose up with the egyptians and murdered him, who was his lord and master." these words uttered and this occasion having arisen, led cambyses the son of cyrus against egypt, moved to very great anger. . such is the report made by the persians; but as for the egyptians they claim cambyses as one of themselves, saying that he was born of this very daughter of apries; for they say that cyrus was he who sent to amasis for his daughter, and not cambyses. in saying this however they say not rightly; nor can they have failed to observe (for the egyptians fully as well as any other people are acquainted with the laws and customs of the persians), first that it is not customary among them for a bastard to become king, when there is a son born of a true marriage, and secondly that cambyses was the son of cassandane the daughter of pharnaspes, a man of the achaimenid family, and not the son of the egyptian woman: but they pervert the truth of history, claiming to be kindred with the house of cyrus. thus it is with these matters; , and the following story is also told, which for my part i do not believe, namely that one of the persian women came in to the wives of cyrus, and when she saw standing by the side of cassandane children comely of form and tall, she was loud in her praises of them, expressing great admiration; and cassandane, who was the wife of cyrus, spoke as follows: "nevertheless, though i am the mother of such children of these, cyrus treats me with dishonour and holds in honour her whom he has brought in from egypt." thus she spoke, they say, being vexed by nitetis, and upon that cambyses the elder of her sons said: "for this cause, mother, when i am grown to be a man, i will make that which is above in egypt to be below, and that which is below above." this he is reported to have said when he was perhaps about ten years old, and the women were astonished by it: and he, they say, kept it ever in mind, and so at last when he had become a man and had obtained the royal power, he made the expedition against egypt. . another thing also contributed to this expedition, which was as follows:�there was among the foreign mercenaries of amasis a man who was by race of halicarnassos, and his name was phanes, one who was both capable in judgment and valiant in that which pertained to war. this phanes, having (as we may suppose) some quarrel with amasis, fled away from egypt in a ship, desiring to come to speech with cambyses: and as he was of no small repute among the mercenaries and was very closely acquainted with all the affairs of egypt, amasis pursued him and considered it a matter of some moment to capture him: and he pursued by sending after him the most trusted of his eunuchs with a trireme, who captured him in lykia; but having captured him he did not bring him back to egypt, since phanes got the better of him by cunning; for he made his guards drunk and escaped to persia. so when cambyses had made his resolve to march upon egypt, and was in difficulty about the march, as to how he should get safely through the waterless region, this man came to him and besides informing of the other matters of amasis, he instructed him also as to the march, advising him to send to the king of the arabians and ask that he would give him safety of passage through this region. . now by this way only is there a known entrance to egypt: for from phenicia to the borders of the city of cadytis belongs to the syrians who are called of palestine, and from cadytis, which is a city i suppose not much less than sardis, from this city the trading stations on the sea-coast as far as the city of ienysos belong to the king of arabia, and then from ienysos again the country belongs to the syrians as far as the serbonian lake, along the side of which mount casion extends towards the sea. after that, from the serbonian lake, in which the story goes that typhon is concealed, from this point onwards the land is egypt. now the region which lies between the city of ienysos on the one hand and mount casion and the serbonian lake on the other, which is of no small extent but as much as a three days' journey, is grievously destitute of water. . and one thing i shall tell of, which few of those who go in ships to egypt have observed, and it is this:�into egypt from all parts of hellas and also from phenicia are brought twice every year earthenware jars full of wine, and yet it may almost be said that you cannot see there one single empty wine-jar. . in what manner, then, it will be asked, are they used up? this also i will tell. the head-man of each place must collect all the earthenware jars from his own town and convey them to memphis, and those at memphis must fill them with water and convey them to these same waterless regions of syria: this the jars which come regularly to egypt and are emptied there, are carried to syria to be added to that which has come before. it was the persians who thus prepared this approach to egypt, furnishing it with water in the manner which has been said, from the time when they first took possession of egypt: but at the time of which i speak, seeing that water was not yet provided, cambyses, in accordance with what he was told by his halicarnassian guest, sent envoys to the arabian king and from him asked and obtained the safe passage, having given him pledges of friendship and received them from him in return. . now the arabians have respect for pledges of friendship as much as those men in all the world who regard them most; and they give them in the following manner:�a man different from those who desire to give the pledges to one another, standing in the midst between the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inner parts of the hands, along by the thumbs, of those who are giving the pledges to one another, and then he takes a thread from the cloak of each one and smears with the blood seven stones laid in the midst between them; and as he does this he calls upon dionysos and urania. when the man has completed these ceremonies, he who has given the pledges commends to the care of his friends the stranger (or the fellow-tribesman, if he is giving the pledges to one who is a member of his tribe), and the friends think it right that they also should have regard for the pledges given. of gods they believe in dionysos and urania alone: moreover they say that the cutting of their hair is done after the same fashion as that of dionysos himself; and they cut their hair in a circle round, shaving away the hair of the temples. now they call dionysos orotalt and urania they call alilat. . so then when the arabian king had given the pledge of friendship to the men who had come to him from cambyses, he contrived as follows:�he took skins of camels and filled them with water and loaded them upon the backs of all the living camels that he had; and having so done he drove them to the waterless region and there awaited the army of cambyses. this which has been related is the more credible of the accounts given, but the less credible must also be related, since it is a current account. there is a great river in arabia called corys, and this runs out into the sea which is called erythraian. from this river then it is said that the king of the arabians, having got a conduit pipe made by sewing together raw ox-hides and other skins, of such a length as to reach to the waterless region, conducted the water through these forsooth, and had great cisterns dug in the waterless region, that they might receive the water and preserve it. now it is a journey of twelve days from the river to this waterless region; and moreover the story says that he conducted the water by three conduit-pipes to three different parts of it. . meanwhile psammenitos the son of amasis was encamped at the pelusian mouth of the nile waiting for the coming of cambyses: for cambyses did not find amasis yet living when he marched upon egypt, but amasis had died after having reigned forty and four years during which no great misfortune had befallen him: and when he had died and had been embalmed he was buried in the burial-place in the temple, which he had built for himself. now when psammenitos son of amasis was reigning as king, there happened to the egyptians a prodigy, the greatest that had ever happened: for rain fell at thebes in egypt, where never before had rain fallen nor afterwards down to my time, as the thebans themselves say; for in the upper parts of egypt no rain falls at all: but at the time of which i speak rain fell at thebes in a drizzling shower. . now when the persians had marched quite through the waterless region and were encamped near the egyptians with design to engage battle, then the foreign mercenaries of the egyptian king, who were hellenes and carians, having a quarrel with phanes because he had brought against egypt an army of foreign speech, contrived against him as follows:�phanes had children whom he had left behind in egypt: these they brought to their camp and into the sight of their father, and they set up a mixing-bowl between the two camps, and after that they brought up the children one by one and cut their throats so that the blood ran into the bowl. then when they had gone through the whole number of the children, they brought and poured into the bowl both wine and water, and not until the mercenaries had all drunk of the blood, did they engage battle. then after a battle had been fought with great stubbornness, and very many had fallen of both the armies, the egyptians at length turned to flight. . i was witness moreover of a great marvel, being informed of it by the natives of the place; for of the bones scattered about of those who fell in this fight, each side separately, since the bones of the persians were lying apart on one side according as they were divided at first, and those of the egyptians on the other, the skulls of the persians are so weak that if you shall hit them only with a pebble you will make a hole in them, while those of the egyptians are so exceedingly strong that you would hardly break them if you struck them with a large stone. the cause of it, they say, was this, and i for my part readily believe them, namely that the egyptians beginning from their early childhood shave their heads, and the bone is thickened by exposure to the sun: and this is also the cause of their not becoming bald-headed; for among the egyptians you see fewer bald-headed men than among any other race. this then is the reason why these have their skulls strong; and the reason why the persians have theirs weak is that they keep them delicately in the shade from the first by wearing tiaras, that is felt caps. so far of this: and i saw also a similar thing to this at papremis, in the case of those who were slain together with achaimenes the son of dareios, by inaros the libyan. . the egyptians when they turned to flight from the battle fled in disorder: and they being shut up in memphis, cambyses sent a ship of mytilene up the river bearing a persian herald, to summon the egyptians to make terms of surrender; but they, when they saw the ship had entered into memphis, pouring forth in a body from the fortress both destroyed the ship and also tore the men in it limb from limb, and so bore them into the fortress. after this the egyptians being besieged, in course of time surrendered themselves; and the libyans who dwell on the borders of egypt, being struck with terror by that which had happened to egypt, delivered themselves up without resistance, and they both laid on themselves a tribute and sent presents: likewise also those of kyrene and barca, being struck with terror equally with the libyans, acted in a similar manner: and cambyses accepted graciously the gifts which came from the libyans, but as for those which came from the men of kyrene, finding fault with them, as i suppose, because they were too small in amount (for the kyrenians sent in fact five hundred pounds' weight of silver), he took the silver by handfuls and scattered it with his own hand among his soldiers. . on the tenth day after that on which he received the surrender of the fortress of memphis, cambyses set the king of the egyptians psammenitos, who had been king for six months, to sit in the suburb of the city, to do him dishonour,�him i say with other egyptians he set there, and he proceeded to make trial of his spirit as follows:�having arrayed his daughter in the clothing of a slave, he sent her forth with a pitcher to fetch water, and with her he sent also other maidens chosen from the daughters of the chief men, arrayed as was the daughter of the king: and as the maidens were passing by their fathers with cries and lamentation, the other men all began to cry out and lament aloud, seeing that their children had been evilly entreated, but psammenitos when he saw it before his eyes and perceived it bent himself down to the earth. then when the water-bearers had passed by, next cambyses sent his son with two thousand egyptians besides who were of the same age, with ropes bound round their necks and bits placed in their mouths; and these were being led away to execution to avenge the death of the mytilenians who had been destroyed at memphis with their ship: for the royal judges had decided that for each man ten of the noblest egyptians should lose their lives in retaliation. he then, when he saw them passing out by him and perceived that his son was leading the way to die, did the same as he had done with respect to his daughter, while the other egyptians who sat round him were lamenting and showing signs of grief. when these also had passed by, it chanced that a man of his table companions, advanced in years, who had been deprived of all his possessions and had nothing except such things as a beggar possesses, and was asking alms from the soldiers, passed by psammenitos the son of amasis and the egyptians who were sitting in the suburb of the city: and when psammenitos saw him he uttered a great cry of lamentation, and he called his companion by name and beat himself upon the head. now there was, it seems, men set to watch him, who made known to cambyses all that he did on the occasion of each going forth: and cambyses marvelled at that which he did, and he sent a messenger and asked him thus: "psammenitos, thy master cambyses asks thee for what reason, when thou sawest thy daughter evilly entreated and thy son going to death, thou didst not cry aloud nor lament for them, whereas thou didst honour with these signs of grief the beggar who, as he hears from others, is not in any way related to thee?" thus he asked, and the other answered as follows: "o son of cyrus, my own troubles were too great for me to lament them aloud, but the trouble of my companion was such as called for tears, seeing that he has been deprived of great wealth, and has come to beggary upon the threshold of old age." when this saying was reported by the messenger, it seemed to them that it was well spoken; and, as is reported by the egyptians, croesus shed tears (for he also, as fortune would have it, had accompanied cambyses to egypt) and the persians who were present shed tears also; and there entered some pity into cambyses himself, and forthwith he bade them save the life of the son of psammenitos from among those who were being put to death, and also he bade them raise psammenitos himself from his place in the suburb of the city and bring him into his own presence. . as for the son, those who went for him found that he was no longer alive, but had been cut down first of all, but psammenitos himself they raised from his place and brought him into the presence of cambyses, with whom he continued to live for the rest of his time without suffering any violence; and if he had known how to keep himself from meddling with mischief, he would have received egypt so as to be ruler of it, since the persians are wont to honour the sons of kings, and even if the kings have revolted from them, they give back the power into the hands of their sons. of this, namely that it is their established rule to act so, one may judge by many instances besides and especially by the case of thannyras the son of inaros, who received back the power which his father had, and by that of pausiris the son of amyrtaios, for he too received back the power of his father: yet it is certain that no men ever up to this time did more evil to the persians than inaros and amyrtaios. as it was, however, psammenitos devised evil and received the due reward: for he was found to be inciting the egyptians to revolt; and when this became known to cambyses, psammenitos drank bull's blood and died forthwith. thus he came to his end. . from memphis cambyses came to the city of saïs with the purpose of doing that which in fact he did: for when he had entered into the palace of amasis, he forthwith gave command to bring the corpse of amasis forth out of his burial-place; and when this had been accomplished, he gave command to scourge it and pluck out the hair and stab it, and to do to it dishonour in every possible way besides: and when they had done this too until they were wearied out, for the corpse being embalmed held out against the violence and did not fall to pieces in any part, cambyses gave command to consume it with fire, enjoining thereby a thing which was not permitted by religion: for the persians hold fire to be a god. to consume corpses with fire then is by no means according to the custom of either people, of the persians for the reason which has been mentioned, since they say that it is not right to give the dead body of a man to a god; while the egyptians have the belief established that fire is a living wild beast, and that it devours everything which it catches, and when it is satiated with the food it dies itself together with that which it devours: but it is by no means their custom to give the corpse of a man to wild beasts, for which reason they embalm it, that it may not be eaten by worms as it lies in the tomb. thus then cambyses was enjoining them to do that which is not permitted by the customs of either people. however, the egyptians say that it was not amasis who suffered this outrage, but another of the egyptians who was of the same stature of body as amasis; and that to him the persians did outrage, thinking that they were doing it to amasis: for they say that amasis learnt from an oracle that which was about to happen with regard to himself after his death; and accordingly, to avert the evil which threatened to come upon him, he buried the dead body of this man who was scourged within his own sepulchral chamber near the doors, and enjoined his son to lay his own body as much as possible in the inner recess of the chamber. these injunctions, said to have been given by amasis with regard to his burial and with regard to the man mentioned, were not in my opinion really given at all, but i think that the egyptians make pretence of it from pride and with no good ground. . after this cambyses planned three several expeditions, one against the carthaginians, another against the ammonians, and a third against the "long-lived" ethiopians, who dwell in that part of libya which is by the southern sea: and in forming these designs he resolved to send his naval force against the carthaginians, and a body chosen from his land-army against the ammonians; and to the ethiopians to send spies first, both to see whether the table of the sun existed really, which is said to exist among these ethiopians, and in addition to this to spy out all else, but pretending to be bearers of gifts for their king. . now the table of the sun is said to be as follows:�there is a meadow in the suburb of their city full of flesh-meat boiled of all four-footed creatures; and in this, it is said, those of the citizens who are in authority at the time place the flesh by night, managing the matter carefully, and by day any man who wishes comes there and feasts himself; and the natives (it is reported) say that the earth of herself produces these things continually. . of such nature is the so-called table of the sun said to be. so when cambyses had resolved to send the spies, forthwith he sent for those men of the ichthyophagoi who understood the ethiopian tongue, to come from the city of elephantine: and while they were going to fetch these men, he gave command to the fleet to sail against carthage: but the phenicians said that they would not do so, for they were bound not to do so by solemn vows, and they would not be acting piously if they made expedition against their own sons: and as the phenicians were not willing, the rest were rendered unequal to the attempt. thus then the carthaginians escaped being enslaved by the persians; for cambyses did not think it right to apply force to compel the phenicians, both because they had delivered themselves over to the persians of their own accord and because the whole naval force was dependent upon the phenicians. now the men of cyprus also had delivered themselves over to the persians, and were joining in the expedition against egypt. . then as soon as the ichthyophagoi came to cambyses from elephantine, he sent them to the ethiopians, enjoining them what they should say and giving them gifts to bear with them, that is to say a purple garment, and a collar of twisted gold with bracelets, and an alabaster box of perfumed ointment, and a jar of palm-wine. now these ethiopians to whom cambyses was sending are said to be the tallest and the most beautiful of all men; and besides other customs which they are reported to have different from other men, there is especially this, it is said, with regard to their regal power,�whomsoever of the men of their nation they judge to be the tallest and to have strength in proportion to his stature, this man they appoint to reign over them. . so when the ichthyophagoi had come to this people they presented their gifts to the king who ruled over them, and at the same time they said as follows: "the king of the persians cambyses, desiring to become a friend and guest to thee, sent us with command to come to speech with thee, and he gives thee for gifts these things which he himself most delights to use." the ethiopian however, perceiving that they had come as spies, spoke to them as follows: "neither did the king of the persians send you bearing gifts because he thought it a matter of great moment to become my guest-friend, nor do ye speak true things (for ye have come as spies of my kingdom), nor again is he a righteous man; for if he had been righteous he would not have coveted a land other than his own, nor would he be leading away into slavery men at whose hands he has received no wrong. now however give him this bow and speak to him these words: the king of the ethiopians gives this counsel to the king of the persians, that when the persians draw their bows (of equal size to mine) as easily as i do this, then he should march against the long-lived ethiopians, provided that he be superior in numbers; but until that time he should feel gratitude to the gods that they do not put it into the mind of the sons of the ethiopians to acquire another land in addition to their own." . having thus said and having unbent the bow, he delivered it to those who had come. then he took the garment of purple and asked what it was and how it had been made: and when the ichthyophagoi had told him the truth about the purple-fish and the dyeing of the tissue, he said that the men were deceitful and deceitful also were their garments. then secondly he asked concerning the twisted gold of the collar and the bracelets; and when the ichthyophagoi were setting forth to him the manner in which it was fashioned, the king broke into a laugh and said, supposing them to be fetters, that they had stronger fetters than those in their country. thirdly he asked about the perfumed ointment, and when they had told him of the manner of its making and of the anointing with it, he said the same as he had said before about the garment. then when he came to the wine, and had learned about the manner of its making, being exceedingly delighted with the taste of the drink he asked besides what food the king ate, and what was the longest time that a persian man lived. they told him that he ate bread, explaining to him first the manner of growing the wheat, and they said that eighty years was the longest term of life appointed for a persian man. in answer to this the ethiopian said that he did not wonder that they lived but a few years, when they fed upon dung; for indeed they would not be able to live even so many years as this, if they did not renew their vigour with the drink, indicating to the ichthyophagoi the wine; for in regard to this, he said, his people were much behind the persians. . then when the ichthyophagoi asked the king in return about the length of days and the manner of life of his people, he answered that the greater number of them reached the age of a hundred and twenty years, and some surpassed even this; and their food was boiled flesh and their drink was milk. and when the spies marvelled at the number of years, he conducted them to a certain spring, in the water of which they washed and became more sleek of skin, as if it were a spring of oil; and from it there came a scent as it were of violets: and the water of this spring, said the spies, was so exceedingly weak that it was not possible for anything to float upon it, either wood or any of those things which are lighter than wood, but they all went to the bottom. if this water which they have be really such as it is said to be, it would doubtless be the cause why the people are long-lived, as making use of it for all the purposes of life. then when they departed from this spring, he led them to a prison-house for men, and there all were bound in fetters of gold. now among these ethiopians bronze is the rarest and most precious of all things. then when they had seen the prison-house they saw also the so-called table of the sun: , and after this they saw last of all their receptacles of dead bodies, which are said to be made of crystal in the following manner:�when they have dried the corpse, whether it be after the egyptian fashion or in some other way, they cover it over completely with plaster and then adorn it with painting, making the figure as far as possible like the living man. after this they put about it a block of crystal hollowed out; for this they dig up in great quantity and it is very easy to work: and the dead body being in the middle of the block is visible through it, but produces no unpleasant smell nor any other effect which is unseemly, and it has all its parts visible like the dead body itself. for a year then they who are most nearly related to the man keep the block in their house, giving to the dead man the first share of everything and offering to him sacrifices: and after this period they carry it out and set it up round about the city. . after they had seen all, the spies departed to go back; and when they reported these things, forthwith cambyses was enraged and proceeded to march his army against the ethiopians, not having ordered any provision of food nor considered with himself that he was intending to march an army to the furthest extremities of the earth; but as one who is mad and not in his right senses, when he heard the report of the ichthyophagoi he began the march, ordering those of the hellenes who were present to remain behind in egypt, and taking with him his whole land force: and when in the course of his march he had arrived at thebes, he divided off about fifty thousand of his army, and these he enjoined to make slaves of the ammonians and to set fire to the seat of the oracle of zeus, but he himself with the remainder of his army went on against the ethiopians. but before the army had passed over the fifth part of the way, all that they had of provisions came to an end completely; and then after the provisions the beasts of burden also were eaten up and came to an end. now if cambyses when he perceived this had changed his plan and led his army back, he would have been a wise man in spite of his first mistake; as it was, however, he paid no regard, but went on forward without stopping. the soldiers accordingly, so long as they were able to get anything from the ground, prolonged their lives by eating grass; but when they came to the sand, some did a fearful deed, that is to say, out of each company of ten they selected by lot one of themselves and devoured him: and cambyses, when he heard it, being alarmed by this eating of one another gave up the expedition against the ethiopians and set forth to go back again; and he arrived at thebes having suffered loss of a great number of his army. then from thebes he came down to memphis and allowed the hellenes to sail away home. . thus fared the expedition against the ethiopians: and those of the persians who had been sent to march against the ammonians set forth from thebes and went on their way with guides; and it is known that they arrived at the city of oasis, which is inhabited by samians said to be of the aischrionian tribe, and is distant seven days' journey from thebes over sandy desert: now this place is called in the speech of the hellenes the "isle of the blessed." it is said that the army reached this place, but from that point onwards, except the ammonians themselves and those who have heard the account from them, no man is able to say anything about them; for they neither reached the ammonians nor returned back. this however is added to the story by the ammonians themselves:�they say that as the army was going from this oasis through the sandy desert to attack them, and had got to a point about mid-way between them and the oasis, while they were taking their morning meal a violent south wind blew upon them, and bearing with it heaps of the desert sand it buried them under it, and so they disappeared and were seen no more. thus the ammonians say that it came to pass with regard to this army. . when cambyses arrived at memphis, apis appeared to the egyptians, whom the hellenes call epaphos: and when he had appeared, forthwith the egyptians began to wear their fairest garments and to have festivities. cambyses accordingly seeing the egyptians doing thus, and supposing that they were certainly acting so by way of rejoicing because he had fared ill, called for the officers who had charge of memphis; and when they had come into his presence, he asked them why when he was at memphis on the former occasion, the egyptians were doing nothing of this kind, but only now, when he came there after losing a large part of his army. they said that a god had appeared to them, who was wont to appear at intervals of long time, and that whenever he appeared, then all the egyptians rejoiced and kept festival. hearing this cambyses said that they were lying, and as liars he condemned them to death. . having put these to death, next he called the priests into his presence; and when the priests answered him after the same manner, he said that it should not be without his knowledge if a tame god had come to the egyptians; and having so said he bade the priests bring apis away into his presence: so they went to bring him. now this apis-epaphos is a calf born of a cow who after this is not permitted to conceive any other offspring; and the egyptians say that a flash of light comes down from heaven upon this cow, and of this she produces apis. this calf which is called apis is black and has the following signs, namely a white square upon the forehead, and on the back the likeness of an eagle, and in the tail the hairs are double, and on the tongue there is a mark like a beetle. . when the priests had brought apis, cambyses being somewhat affected with madness drew his dagger, and aiming at the belly of apis, struck his thigh: then he laughed and said to the priests: "o ye wretched creatures, are gods born such as this, with blood and flesh, and sensible of the stroke of iron weapons? worthy indeed of egyptians is such a god as this. ye however at least shall not escape without punishment for making a mock of me." having thus spoken he ordered those whose duty it was to do such things, to scourge the priests without mercy, and to put to death any one of the other egyptians whom they should find keeping the festival. thus the festival of the egyptians had been brought to an end, and the priests were being chastised, and apis wounded by the stroke in his thigh lay dying in the temple. . him, when he had brought his life to an end by reason of the wound, the priests buried without the knowledge of cambyses: but cambyses, as the egyptians say, immediately after this evil deed became absolutely mad, not having been really in his right senses even before that time: and the first of his evil deeds was that he put to death his brother smerdis, who was of the same father and the same mother as himself. this brother he had sent away from egypt to persia in envy, because alone of all the persians he had been able to draw the bow which the ichthyophagoi brought from the ethiopian king, to an extent of about two finger-breadths; while of the other persians not one had proved able to do this. then when smerdis had gone away to persia, cambyses saw a vision in his sleep of this kind:�it seemed to him that a messenger came from persia and reported that smerdis sitting upon the royal throne had touched the heaven with his head. fearing therefore with regard to this lest his brother might slay him and reign in his stead, he sent prexaspes to persia, the man whom of all the persians he trusted most, with command to slay him. he accordingly went up to susa and slew smerdis; and some say that he took him out of the chase and so slew him, others that he brought him to the erythraian sea and drowned him. . this they say was the first beginning of the evil deeds of cambyses; and next after this he put to death his sister, who had accompanied him to egypt, to whom also he was married, she being his sister by both parents. now he took her to wife in the following manner (for before this the persians had not been wont at all to marry their sisters):�cambyses fell in love with one of his sisters, and desired to take her to wife; so since he had it in mind to do that which was not customary, he called the royal judges and asked them whether there existed any law which permitted him who desired it to marry his sister. now the royal judges are men chosen out from among the persians, and hold their office until they die or until some injustice is found in them, so long and no longer. these pronounce decisions for the persians and are the expounders of the ordinances of their fathers, and all matters are referred to them. so when cambyses asked them, they gave him an answer which was both upright and safe, saying that they found no law which permitted a brother to marry his sister, but apart from that they had found a law to the effect that the king of the persians might do whatsoever he desired. thus on the one hand they did not tamper with the law for fear of cambyses, and at the same time, that they might not perish themselves in maintaining the law, they found another law beside that which was asked for, which was in favour of him who wished to marry his sisters. so cambyses at that time took to wife her with whom he was in love, but after no long time he took another sister. of these it was the younger whom he put to death, she having accompanied him to egypt. . about her death, as about the death of smerdis, two different stories are told. the hellenes say that cambyses had matched a lion's cub in fight with a dog's whelp, and this wife of his was also a spectator of it; and when the whelp was being overcome, another whelp, its brother, broke its chain and came to help it; and having become two instead of one, the whelps then got the better of the cub: and cambyses was pleased at the sight, but she sitting by him began to weep; and cambyses perceived it and asked wherefore she wept; and she said that she had wept when she saw that the whelp had come to the assistance of its brother, because she remembered smerdis and perceived that there was no one who would come to his assistance. the hellenes say that it was for this saying that she was killed by cambyses: but the egyptians say that as they were sitting round at table, the wife took a lettuce and pulled off the leaves all round, and then asked her husband whether the lettuce was fairer when thus plucked round or when covered with leaves, and he said "when covered with leaves": she then spoke thus: "nevertheless thou didst once produce the likeness of this lettuce, when thou didst strip bare the house of cyrus." and he moved to anger leapt upon her, being with child, and she miscarried and died. . these were the acts of madness done by cambyses towards those of his own family, whether the madness was produced really on account of apis or from some other cause, as many ills are wont to seize upon men; for it is said moreover that cambyses had from his birth a certain grievous malady, that which is called by some the "sacred" disease: and it was certainly nothing strange that when the body was suffering from a grievous malady, the mind should not be sound either. . the following also are acts of madness which he did to the other persians:�to prexaspes, the man whom he honoured most and who used to bear his messages (his son also was cup-bearer to cambyses, and this too was no small honour),�to him it is said that he spoke as follows: "prexaspes, what kind of a man do the persians esteem me to be, and what speech do they hold concerning me?" and he said: "master, in all other respects thou art greatly commended, but they say that thou art overmuch given to love of wine." thus he spoke concerning the persians; and upon that cambyses was roused to anger, and answered thus: "it appears then that the persians say i am given to wine, and that therefore i am beside myself and not in my right mind; and their former speech then was not sincere." for before this time, it seems, when the persians and croesus were sitting with him in council, cambyses asked what kind of a man they thought he was as compared with his father cyrus; and they answered that he was better than his father, for he not only possessed all that his father had possessed, but also in addition to this had acquired egypt and the sea. thus the persians spoke; but croesus, who was present and was not satisfied with their judgment, spoke thus to cambyses: "to me, o son of cyrus, thou dost not appear to be equal to thy father, for not yet hast thou a son such as he left behind him in you." hearing this cambyses was pleased, and commended the judgment of croesus. . so calling to mind this, he said in anger to prexaspes: "learn then now for thyself whether the persians speak truly, or whether when they say this they are themselves out of their senses: for if i, shooting at thy son there standing before the entrance of the chamber, hit him in the very middle of the heart, the persians will be proved to be speaking falsely, but if i miss, then thou mayest say that the persians are speaking the truth and that i am not in my right mind." having thus said he drew his bow and hit the boy; and when the boy had fallen down, it is said that he ordered them to cut open his body and examine the place where he was hit; and as the arrow was found to be sticking in the heart, he laughed and was delighted, and said to the father of the boy: "prexaspes, it has now been made evident, as thou seest, that i am not mad, but that it is the persians who are out of their senses; and now tell me, whom of all men didst thou ever see before this time hit the mark so well in shooting?" then prexaspes, seeing that the man was not in his right senses and fearing for himself, said: "master, i think that not even god himself could have hit the mark so fairly." thus he did at that time: and at another time he condemned twelve of the persians, men equal to the best, on a charge of no moment, and buried them alive with the head downwards. . when he was doing these things, croesus the lydian judged it right to admonish him in the following words: "o king, do not thou indulge the heat of thy youth and passion in all things, but retain and hold thyself back: it is a good thing to be prudent, and forethought is wise. thou however are putting to death men who are of thine own people, condemning them on charges of no moment, and thou art putting to death men's sons also. if thou do many such things, beware lest the persians make revolt from thee. as for me, thy father cyrus gave me charge, earnestly bidding me to admonish thee, and suggest to thee that which i should find to be good." thus he counselled him, manifesting goodwill towards him; but cambyses answered: "dost thou venture to counsel me, who excellently well didst rule thine own country, and well didst counsel my father, bidding him pass over the river araxes and go against the massagetai, when they were willing to pass over into our land, and so didst utterly ruin thyself by ill government of thine own land, and didst utterly ruin cyrus, who followed thy counsel. however thou shalt not escape punishment now, for know that before this i had very long been desiring to find some occasion against thee." thus having said he took his bow meaning to shoot him, but croesus started up and ran out: and so since he could not shoot him, he gave orders to his attendants to take and slay him. the attendants however, knowing his moods, concealed croesus, with the intention that if cambyses should change his mind and seek to have croesus again, they might produce him and receive gifts as the price of saving his life; but if he did not change his mind nor feel desire to have him back, then they might kill him. not long afterwards cambyses did in fact desire to have croesus again, and the attendants perceiving this reported to him that he was still alive: and cambyses said that he rejoiced with croesus that he was still alive, but that they who had preserved him should not get off free, but he would put them to death: and thus he did. . many such acts of madness did he both to persians and allies, remaining at memphis and opening ancient tombs and examining the dead bodies. likewise also he entered into the temple of hephaistos and very much derided the image of the god: for the image of hephaistos very nearly resembles the phenician pataicoi, which the phenicians carry about on the prows of their triremes; and for him who has not seen these, i will indicate its nature,�it is the likeness of a dwarfish man. he entered also into the temple of the cabeiroi, into which it is not lawful for any one to enter except the priest only, and the images there he even set on fire, after much mockery of them. now these also are like the images of hephaistos, and it is said that they are the children of that god. . it is clear to me therefore by every kind of proof that cambyses was mad exceedingly; for otherwise he would not have attempted to deride religious rites and customary observances. for if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best: and so it is not likely that any but a madman would make a jest of such things. now of the fact that all men are thus wont to think about their customs, we may judge by many other proofs and more specially by this which follows:�dareios in the course of his reign summoned those of the hellenes who were present in his land, and asked them for what price they would consent to eat up their fathers when they died; and they answered that for no price would they do so. after this dareios summoned those indians who are called callatians, who eat their parents, and asked them in presence of the hellenes, who understood what they said by help of an interpreter, for what payment they would consent to consume with fire the bodies of their fathers when they died; and they cried out aloud and bade him keep silence from such words. thus then these things are established by usage, and i think that pindar spoke rightly in his verse, when he said that "of all things law is king." . now while cambyses was marching upon egypt, the lacedemonians also had made an expedition against samos and against polycrates the son of aiakes, who had risen against the government and obtained rule over samos. at first he had divided the state into three parts and had given a share to his brothers pantagnotos and syloson; but afterwards he put to death one of these, and the younger, namely syloson, he drove out, and so obtained possession of the whole of samos. then, being in possession, he made a guest-friendship with amasis the king of egypt, sending him gifts and receiving gifts in return from him. after this straightway within a short period of time the power of polycrates increased rapidly, and there was much fame of it not only in ionia, but also over the rest of hellas: for to whatever part he directed his forces, everything went fortunately for him: and he had got for himself a hundred fifty-oared galleys and a thousand archers, and he plundered from all, making no distinction of any; for it was his wont to say that he would win more gratitude from his friend by giving back to him that which he had taken, than by not taking at all. so he had conquered many of the islands and also many cities of the continent, and besides other things he gained the victory in a sea-fight over the lesbians, as they were coming to help the milesians with their forces, and conquered them: these men dug the whole trench round the wall of the city of samos working in chains. . now amasis, as may be supposed, did not fail to perceive that polycrates was very greatly fortunate, and it was to him an object of concern; and as much more good fortune yet continued to come to polycrates, he wrote upon a paper these words and sent them to samos: "amasis to polycrates thus saith:�it is a pleasant thing indeed to hear that one who is a friend and guest is faring well; yet to me thy great good fortune is not pleasing, since i know that the divinity is jealous; and i think that i desire, both for myself and for those about whom i have care, that in some of our affairs we should be prosperous and in others should fail, and thus go through life alternately faring well and ill, rather than that we should be prosperous in all things: for never yet did i hear tell of any one who was prosperous in all things and did not come to an utterly evil end at the last. now therefore do thou follow my counsel and act as i shall say with respect to thy prosperous fortunes. take thought and consider, and that which thou findest to be the most valued by thee, and for the loss of which thou wilt most be vexed in thy soul, that take and cast away in such a manner that it shall never again come to the sight of men; and if in future from that time forward good fortune does not befall thee in alternation with calamities, apply remedies in the manner by me suggested." . polycrates, having read this and having perceived by reflection that amasis suggested to him good counsel, sought to find which one of his treasures he would be most afflicted in his soul to lose; and seeking he found this which i shall say:�he had a signet which he used to wear, enchased in gold and made of an emerald stone; and it was the work of theodoros the son of telecles of samos. seeing then that he thought it good to cast this away, he did thus:�he manned a fifty-oared galley with sailors and went on board of it himself; and then he bade them put out into the deep sea. and when he had got to a distance from the island, he took off the signet-ring, and in the sight of all who were with him in the ship he threw it into the sea. thus having done he sailed home; and when he came to his house he mourned for his loss. . but on the fifth or sixth day after these things it happened to him as follows:�a fisherman having caught a large and beautiful fish, thought it right that this should be given as a gift to polycrates. he bore it therefore to the door of the palace and said that he desired to come into the presence of polycrates, and when he had obtained this he gave him the fish, saying: "o king, having taken this fish i did not think fit to bear it to the market, although i am one who lives by the labour of his hands; but it seemed to me that it was worthy of thee and of thy monarchy: therefore i bring it and present it to thee." he then, being pleased at the words spoken, answered thus: "thou didst exceedingly well, and double thanks are due to thee, for thy words and also for thy gift; and we invite thee to come to dinner." the fisherman then, thinking this a great thing, went away to this house; and the servants as they were cutting up the fish found in its belly the signet-ring of polycrates. then as soon as they had seen it and taken it up, they bore it rejoicing to polycrates, and giving him the signet-ring they told him in what manner it had been found: and he perceiving that the matter was of god, wrote upon paper all that he had done and all that had happened to him, and having written he despatched it to egypt. . then amasis, when he had read the paper which had come from polycrates, perceived that it was impossible for man to rescue man from the event which was to come to pass, and that polycrates was destined not to have a good end, being prosperous in all things, seeing that he found again even that which he cast away. therefore he sent an envoy to him in samos and said that he broke off the guest-friendship; and this he did lest when a fearful and great mishap befell polycrates, he might himself be grieved in his soul as for a man who was his guest. . it was this polycrates then, prosperous in all things, against whom the lacedemonians were making an expedition, being invited by those samians who afterwards settled at kydonia in crete, to come to their assistance. now polycrates had sent an envoy to cambyses the son of cyrus without the knowledge of the samians, as he was gathering an army to go against egypt, and had asked him to send to him in samos and to ask for an armed force. so cambyses hearing this very readily sent to samos to ask polycrates to send a naval force with him against egypt: and polycrates selected of the citizens those whom he most suspected of desiring to rise against him and sent them away in forty triremes, charging cambyses not to send them back. . now some say that those of the samians who were sent away by polycrates never reached egypt, but when they arrived on their voyage at carpathos, they considered with themselves, and resolved not to sail on any further: others say that they reached egypt and being kept under guard there, they made their escape from thence. then, as they were sailing in to samos, polycrates encountered them with ships and engaged battle with them; and those who were returning home had the better and landed in the island; but having fought a land-battle in the island, they were worsted, and so sailed to lacedemon. some however say that those from egypt defeated polycrates in the battle; but this in my opinion is not correct, for there would have been no need for them to invite the assistance of the lacedemonians if they had been able by themselves to bring polycrates to terms. moreover, it is not reasonable either, seeing that he had foreign mercenaries and native archers very many in number, to suppose that he was worsted by the returning samians, who were but few. then polycrates gathered together the children and wives of his subjects and confined them in the ship-sheds, keeping them ready so that, if it should prove that his subjects deserted to the side of the returning exiles, he might burn them with the sheds. . when those of the samians who had been driven out by polycrates reached sparta, they were introduced before the magistrates and spoke at length, being urgent in their request. the magistrates however at the first introduction replied that they had forgotten the things which had been spoken at the beginning, and did not understand those which were spoken at the end. after this they were introduced a second time, and bringing with them a bag they said nothing else but this, namely that the bag was in want of meal; to which the others replied that they had overdone it with the bag. however, they resolved to help them. . then the lacedemonians prepared a force and made expedition to samos, in repayment of former services, as the samians say, because the samians had first helped them with ships against the messenians; but the lacedemonians say that they made the expedition not so much from desire to help the samians at their request, as to take vengeance on their own behalf for the robbery of the mixing-bowl which they had been bearing as a gift to croesus, and of the corslet which amasis the king of egypt had sent as a gift to them; for the samians had carried off the corslet also in the year before they took the bowl; and it was of linen with many figures woven into it and embroidered with gold and with cotton; and each thread of this corslet is worthy of admiration, for that being itself fine it has in it three hundred and sixty fibres, all plain to view. such another as this moreover is that which amasis dedicated as an offering to athene at lindos. . the corinthians also took part with zeal in this expedition against samos, that it might be carried out; for there had been an offence perpetrated against them also by the samians a generation before the time of this expedition and about the same time as the robbery of the bowl. periander the son of kypselos had despatched three hundred sons of the chief men of corcyra to alyattes at sardis to be made eunuchs; and when the corinthians who were conducting the boys had put in to samos, the samians, being informed of the story and for what purpose they were being conducted to sardis, first instructed the boys to lay hold of the temple of artemis, and then they refused to permit the corinthians to drag the suppliants away from the temple: and as the corinthians cut the boys off from supplies of food, the samians made a festival, which they celebrate even to the present time in the same manner: for when night came on, as long as the boys were suppliants they arranged dances of maidens and youths, and in arranging the dances they made it a rule of the festival that sweet cakes of sesame and honey should be carried, in order that the corcyrean boys might snatch them and so have support; and this went on so long that at last the corinthians who had charge of the boys departed and went away; and as for the boys, the samians carried them back to corcyra. . now, if after the death of periander the corinthians had been on friendly terms with the corcyreans, they would not have joined in the expedition against samos for the cause which has been mentioned; but as it is, they have been ever at variance with one another since they first colonised the island. this then was the cause why the corinthians had a grudge against the samians. . now periander had chosen out the sons of the chief men of corcyra and was sending them to sardis to be made eunuchs, in order that he might have revenge; since the corcyreans had first begun the offence and had done to him a deed of reckless wrong. for after periander had killed his wife melissa, it chanced to him to experience another misfortune in addition to that which had happened to him already, and this was as follows:�he had by melissa two sons, the one of seventeen and the other of eighteen years. these sons their mother's father procles, who was despot of epidauros, sent for to himself and kindly entertained, as was to be expected seeing that they were the sons of his own daughter; and when he was sending them back, he said in taking leave of them: "do ye know, boys, who it was that killed your mother?" of this saying the elder of them took no account, but the younger, whose name was lycophron, was grieved so greatly at hearing it, that when he reached corinth again he would neither address his father, nor speak to him when his father would have conversed with him, nor give any reply when he asked questions, regarding him as the murderer of his mother. at length periander being enraged with his son drove him forth out of his house. . and having driven him forth, he asked of the elder son what his mother's father had said to them in his conversation. he then related how procles had received them in a kindly manner, but of the saying which he had uttered when he parted from them he had no remembrance, since he had taken no note of it. so periander said that it could not be but that he had suggested to them something, and urged him further with questions; and he after that remembered, and told of this also. then periander taking note of it and not desiring to show any indulgence, sent a messenger to those with whom the son who had been driven forth was living at that time, and forbade them to receive him into their houses; and whenever having been driven away from one house he came to another, he was driven away also from this, since periander threatened those who received him, and commanded them to exclude him; and so being driven away again he would go to another house, where persons lived who were his friends, and they perhaps received him because he was the son of periander, notwithstanding that they feared. . at last periander made a proclamation that whosoever should either receive him into their houses or converse with him should be bound to pay a fine to apollo, stating the amount that it should be. accordingly, by reason of this proclamation no one was willing either to converse with him or to receive him into their house; and moreover even he himself did not think it fit to attempt it, since it had been forbidden, but he lay about in the porticoes enduring exposure: and on the fourth day after this, periander seeing him fallen into squalid misery and starvation felt pity for him; and abating his anger he approached him and began to say: "son, which of these two is to be preferred, the fortune which thou dost now experience and possess, or to inherit the power and wealth which i possess now, by being submissive to thy father's will? thou however, being my son and the prince of wealthy corinth, didst choose nevertheless the life of a vagabond by making opposition and displaying anger against him with whom it behoved thee least to deal so; for if any misfortune happened in those matters, for which cause thou hast suspicion against me, this has happened to me first, and i am sharer in the misfortune more than others, inasmuch as i did the deed myself. do thou however, having learnt by how much to be envied is better than to be pitied, and at the same time what a grievous thing it is to be angry against thy parents and against those who are stronger than thou, come back now to the house." periander with these words endeavoured to restrain him; but he answered nothing else to his father, but said only that he ought to pay a fine to the god for having come to speech with him. then periander, perceiving that the malady of his son was hopeless and could not be overcome, despatched a ship to corcyra, and so sent him away out of his sight, for he was ruler also of that island; and having sent him away, periander proceeded to make war against his father-in-law procles, esteeming him most to blame for the condition in which he was; and he took epidauros and took also procles himself and made him a prisoner. . when however, as time went on, periander had passed his prime and perceived within himself that he was no longer able to overlook and manage the government of the state, he sent to corcyra and summoned lycophron to come back and take the supreme power; for in the elder of his sons he did not see the required capacity, but perceived clearly that he was of wits too dull. lycophron however did not deign even to give an answer to the bearer of his message. then periander, clinging still in affection to the youth, sent to him next his own daughter, the sister of lycophron, supposing that he would yield to her persuasion more than to that of others; and she arrived there and spoke to him thus: "boy, dost thou desire that both the despotism should fall to others, and also the substance of thy father, carried off as plunder, rather than that thou shouldest return back and possess them? come back to thy home: cease to torment thyself. pride is a mischievous possession. heal not evil with evil. many prefer that which is reasonable to that which is strictly just; and many ere now in seeking the things of their mother have lost the things of their father. despotism is an insecure thing, and many desire it: moreover he is now an old man and past his prime. give not thy good things unto others." she thus said to him the most persuasive things, having been before instructed by her father: but he in answer said, that he would never come to corinth so long as he heard that his father was yet alive. when she had reported this, periander the third time sent an envoy, and said that he desired himself to come to corcyra, exhorting lycophron at the same time to come back to corinth and to be his successor on the throne. the son having agreed to return on these terms, periander was preparing to sail to corcyra and his son to corinth; but the corcyreans, having learnt all that had taken place, put the young man to death, in order that periander might not come to their land. for this cause it was that periander took vengeance on those of corcyra. . the lacedemonians then had come with a great armament and were besieging samos; and having made an attack upon the wall, they occupied the tower which stands by the sea in the suburb of the city, but afterwards when polycrates came up to the rescue with a large body they were driven away from it. meanwhile by the upper tower which is upon the ridge of the mountain there had come out to the fight the foreign mercenaries and many of the samians themselves, and these stood their ground against the lacedemonians for a short while and then began to fly backwards; and the lacedemonians followed and were slaying them. . now if the lacedemonians there present had all been equal on that day to archias and lycopas, samos would have been captured; for archias and lycopas alone rushed within the wall together with the flying samians, and being shut off from retreat were slain within the city of the samians. i myself moreover had converse in pitane (for to that deme he belonged) with the third in descent from this archias, another archias the son of samios the son of archias, who honoured the samians of all strangers most; and not only so, but he said that his own father had been called samios because his father archias had died by a glorious death in samos; and he said that he honoured samians because his grandfather had been granted a public funeral by the samians. . the lacedemonians then, when they had been besieging samos for forty days and their affairs made no progress, set forth to return to peloponnesus. but according to the less credible account which has been put abroad of these matters polycrates struck in lead a quantity of a certain native coin, and having gilded the coins over, gave them to the lacedemonians, and they received them and upon that set forth to depart. this was the first expedition which the lacedemonians (being dorians) made into asia. . those of the samians who had made the expedition against polycrates themselves also sailed away, when the lacedemonians were about to desert them, and came to siphnos: for they were in want of money, and the people of siphnos were then at their greatest height of prosperity and possessed wealth more than all the other islanders, since they had in their island mines of gold and silver, so that there is a treasury dedicated at delphi with the tithe of the money which came in from these mines, and furnished in a manner equal to the wealthiest of these treasuries: and the people used to divide among themselves the money which came in from the mines every year. so when they were establishing the treasury, they consulted the oracle as to whether their present prosperity was capable of remaining with them for a long time, and the pythian prophetess gave them this reply: "but when with white shall be shining the hall of the city in siphnos, and when the market is white of brow, one wary is needed then, to beware of an army of wood and a red-coloured herald." now just at that time the market-place and city hall of the siphnians had been decorated with parian marble. . this oracle they were not able to understand either then at first or when the samians had arrived: for as soon as the samians were putting in to siphnos they sent one of their ships to bear envoys to the city: now in old times all ships were painted with red, and this was that which the pythian prophetess was declaring beforehand to the siphnians, bidding them guard against the "army of wood" and the "red-coloured herald." the messengers accordingly came and asked the siphnians to lend them ten talents; and as they refused to lend to them, the samians began to lay waste their lands: so when they were informed of it, forthwith the siphnians came to the rescue, and having engaged battle with them were defeated, and many of them were cut off by the samians and shut out of the city; and the samians after this imposed upon them a payment of a hundred talents. . then from the men of hermion they received by payment of money the island of hydrea, which is near the coast of peloponnese, and they gave it in charge to the troizenians, but they themselves settled at kydonia which is in crete, not sailing thither for that purpose but in order to drive the zakynthians out of the island. here they remained and were prosperous for five years, so much so that they were the builders of the temples which are now existing in kydonia, and also of the house of dictyna. in the sixth year however the eginetans together with the cretans conquered them in a sea-fight and brought them to slavery; and they cut off the prows of their ships, which were shaped like boars, and dedicated them in the temple of athene in egina. this the eginetans did because they had a grudge against the samians; for the samians had first made expedition against egina, when amphicrates was king in samos, and had done much hurt to the eginetans and suffered much hurt also from them. such was the cause of this event: , and about the samians i have spoken at greater length, because they have three works which are greater than any others that have been made by hellenes: first a passage beginning from below and open at both ends, dug through a mountain not less than a hundred and fifty fathoms in height; the length of the passage is seven furlongs and the height and breadth each eight feet, and throughout the whole of it another passage has been dug twenty cubits in depth and three feet in breadth, through which the water is conducted and comes by the pipes to the city, brought from an abundant spring: and the designer of this work was a megarian, eupalinos the son of naustrophos. this is one of the three; and the second is a mole in the sea about the harbour, going down to a depth of as much as twenty fathoms; and the length of the mole is more than two furlongs. the third work which they have executed is a temple larger than all the other temples of which we know. of this the first designer was rhoicos the son of philes, a native of samos. for this reason i have spoken at greater length of the samians. . now while cambyses the son of cyrus was spending a long time in egypt and had gone out of his right mind, there rose up against him two brothers, magians, of whom the one had been left behind by cambyses as caretaker of his household. this man, i say, rose up against him perceiving that the occurrence of the death of smerdis was being kept secret, and that there were but few of the persians who were aware of it, while the greater number believed without doubt that he was still alive. therefore he endeavoured to obtain the kingdom, and he formed his plan as follows:�he had a brother (that one who, as i said, rose up with him against cambyses), and this man in form very closely resembled smerdis the son of cyrus, whom cambyses had slain, being his own brother. he was like smerdis, i say, in form, and not only so but he had the same name, smerdis. having persuaded this man that he would manage everything for him, the magian patizeithes brought him and seated him upon the royal throne: and having so done he sent heralds about to the various provinces, and among others one to the army in egypt, to proclaim to them that they must obey smerdis the son of cyrus for the future instead of cambyses. . so then the other heralds made this proclamation, and also the one who was appointed to go to egypt, finding cambyses and his army at agbatana in syria, stood in the midst and began to proclaim that which had been commanded to him by the magian. hearing this from the herald, and supposing that the herald was speaking the truth and that he had himself been betrayed by prexaspes, that is to say, that when prexaspes was sent to kill smerdis he had not done so, cambyses looked upon prexaspes and said: "prexaspes, was it thus that thou didst perform for me the thing which i gave over to thee to do?" and he said: "master, the saying is not true that smerdis thy brother has risen up against thee, nor that thou wilt have any contention arising from him, either great or small: for i myself, having done that which thou didst command me to do, buried him with my own hands. if therefore the dead have risen again to life, then thou mayest expect that astyages also the mede will rise up against thee; but if it is as it was beforetime, there is no fear now that any trouble shall spring up for you, at least from him. now therefore i think it well that some should pursue after the herald and examine him, asking from whom he has come to proclaim to us that we are to obey smerdis as king." . when prexaspes had thus spoken, cambyses was pleased with the advice, and accordingly the herald was pursued forthwith and returned. then when he had come back, prexaspes asked him as follows: "man, thou sayest that thou art come as a messenger from smerdis the son of cyrus: now therefore speak the truth and go away in peace. i ask thee whether smerdis himself appeared before thine eyes and charged thee to say this, or some one of those who serve him." he said: "smerdis the son of cyrus i have never yet seen, since the day that king cambyses marched to egypt: but the magian whom cambyses appointed to be guardian of his household, he, i say, gave me this charge, saying that smerdis the son of cyrus was he who laid the command upon me to speak these things to you." thus he spoke to them, adding no falsehoods to the first, and cambyses said: "prexaspes, thou hast done that which was commanded thee like an honest man, and hast escaped censure; but who of the persians may this be who has risen up against me and usurped the name of smerdis?" he said: "i seem to myself, o king, to have understanding of this which has come to pass: the magians have risen against thee, patizeithes namely, whom thou didst leave as caretaker of thy household, and his brother smerdis." . then cambyses, when he heard the name of smerdis, perceived at once the true meaning of this report and of the dream, for he thought in his sleep that some one had reported to him that smerdis was sitting upon the royal throne and had touched the heaven with his head: and perceiving that he had slain his brother without need, he began to lament for smerdis; and having lamented for him and sorrowed greatly for the whole mishap, he was leaping upon his horse, meaning as quickly as possible to march his army to susa against the magian; and as he leapt upon his horse, the cap of his sword-sheath fell off, and the sword being left bare struck his thigh. having been wounded then in the same part where he had formerly struck apis the god of the egyptians, and believing that he had been struck with a mortal blow, cambyses asked what was the name of that town, and they said "agbatana." now even before this he had been informed by the oracle at the city of buto that in agbatana he should bring his life to an end: and he supposed that he should die of old age in agbatana in media, where was his chief seat of power; but the oracle, it appeared, meant in agbatana of syria. so when by questioning now he learnt the name of the town, being struck with fear both by the calamity caused by the magian and at the same time by the wound, he came to his right mind, and understanding the meaning of the oracle he said: "here it is fated that cambyses the son of cyrus shall end his life." . so much only he said at that time; but about twenty days afterwards he sent for the most honourable of the persians who were with him, and said to them as follows: "persians, it has become necessary for me to make known to you the thing which i was wont to keep concealed beyond all other things. being in egypt i saw a vision in my sleep, which i would i had never seen, and it seemed to me that a messenger came from home and reported to me that smerdis was sitting upon the royal throne and had touched the heaven with his head. fearing then lest i should be deprived of my power by my brother, i acted quickly rather than wisely; for it seems that it is not possible for man to avert that which is destined to come to pass. i therefore, fool that i was, sent away prexaspes to susa to kill smerdis; and when this great evil had been done, i lived in security, never considering the danger that some other man might at some time rise up against me, now that smerdis had been removed: and altogether missing the mark of that which was about to happen, i have both made myself the murderer of my brother, when there was no need, and i have been deprived none the less of the kingdom; for it was in fact smerdis the magian of whom the divine power declared to me beforehand in the vision that he should rise up against me. so then, as i say, this deed has been done by me, and ye must imagine that ye no longer have smerdis the son of cyrus alive: but it is in truth the magians who are masters of your kingdom, he whom i left as guardian of my household and his brother smerdis. the man then who ought above all others to have taken vengeance on my behalf for the dishonour which i have suffered from the magians, has ended his life by an unholy death received from the hands of those who were his nearest of kin; and since he is no more, it becomes most needful for me, as the thing next best of those which remain, to charge you, o persians, with that which dying i desire should be done for me. this then i lay upon you, calling upon the gods of the royal house to witness it,�upon you and most of all upon those of the achaemenidai who are present here,�that ye do not permit the return of the chief power to the medes, but that if they have acquired it by craft, by craft they be deprived of it by you, or if they have conquered it by any kind of force, by force and by a strong hand ye recover it. and if ye do this, may the earth bring forth her produce and may your wives and your cattle be fruitful, while ye remain free for ever; but if ye do not recover the power nor attempt to recover it, i pray that curses the contrary of these blessings may come upon you, and moreover that each man of the persians may have an end to his life like that which has come upon me." then as soon as he had finished speaking these things, cambyses began to bewail and make lamentation for all his fortunes. . and the persians, when they saw that the king had begun to bewail himself, both rent the garments which they wore and made lamentation without stint. after this, when the bone had become diseased and the thigh had mortified, cambyses the son of cyrus was carried off by the wound, having reigned in all seven years and five months, and being absolutely childless both of male and female offspring. the persians meanwhile who were present there were very little disposed to believe that the power was in the hands of the magians: on the contrary, they were surely convinced that cambyses had said that which he said about the death of smerdis to deceive them, in order that all the persians might be moved to war against him. these then were surely convinced that smerdis the son of cyrus was established to be king; for prexaspes also very strongly denied that he had slain smerdis, since it was not safe, now that cambyses was dead, for him to say that he had destroyed with his own hand the son of cyrus. . thus when cambyses had brought his life to an end, the magian became king without disturbance, usurping the place of his namesake smerdis the son of cyrus; and he reigned during the seven months which were wanting yet to cambyses for the completion of the eight years: and during them he performed acts of great benefit to all his subjects, so that after his death all those in asia except the persians themselves mourned for his loss: for the magian sent messengers abroad to every nation over which he ruled, and proclaimed freedom from military service and from tribute for three years. . this proclamation, i say, he made at once when he established himself upon the throne: but in the eighth month it was discovered who he was in the following manner:�there was one otanes the son of pharnaspes, in birth and in wealth not inferior to any of the persians. this otanes was the first who had had suspicion of the magian, that he was not smerdis the son of cyrus but the person that he really was, drawing his inference from these facts, namely that he never went abroad out of the fortress, and that he did not summon into his presence any of the honourable men among the persians: and having formed a suspicion of him, he proceeded to do as follows:�cambyses had taken to wife his daughter, whose name was phaidyme; and this same daughter the magian at that time was keeping as his wife and living with her as with all the rest also of the wives of cambyses. otanes therefore sent a message to this daughter and asked her who the man was by whose side she slept, whether smerdis the son of cyrus or some other. she sent back word to him saying that she did not know, for she had never seen smerdis the son of cyrus, nor did she know otherwise who he was who lived with her. otanes then sent a second time and said: "if thou dost not thyself know smerdis the son of cyrus, then do thou ask of atossa who this man is, with whom both she and thou live as wives; for assuredly it must be that she knows her own brother." . to this the daughter sent back word: "i am not able either to come to speech with atossa or to see any other of the women who live here with me; for as soon as this man, whosoever he may be, succeeded to the kingdom, he separated us and placed us in different apartments by ourselves." when otanes heard this, the matter became more and more clear to him, and he sent another message in to her, which said: "daughter, it is right for thee, nobly born as thou art, to undertake any risk which thy father bids thee take upon thee: for if in truth this is not smerdis the son of cyrus but the man whom i suppose, he ought not to escape with impunity either for taking thee to his bed or for holding the dominion of persians, but he must pay the penalty. now therefore do as i say. when he sleeps by thee and thou perceivest that he is sound asleep, feel his ears; and if it prove that he has ears, then believe that thou art living with smerdis the son of cyrus, but if not, believe that it is with the magian smerdis." to this phaidyme sent an answer saying that, if she should do so, she would run a great risk; for supposing that he should chance not to have his ears, and she were detected feeling for them, she was well assured that he would put her to death; but nevertheless she would do this. so she undertook to do this for her father: but as for this magian smerdis, he had had his ears cut off by cyrus the son of cambyses when he was king, for some grave offence. this phaidyme then, the daughter of otanes, proceeding to perform all that she had undertaken for her father, when her turn came to go to the magian (for the wives of the persians go in to them regularly each in her turn), came and lay down beside him: and when the magian was in deep sleep, she felt his ears; and perceiving not with difficulty but easily that her husband had no ears, so soon as it became day she sent and informed her father of that which had taken place. . then otanes took to him aspathines and gobryas, who were leading men among the persians and also his own most trusted friends, and related to them the whole matter: and they, as it then appeared, had suspicions also themselves that it was so; and when otanes reported this to them, they readily accepted his proposals. then it was resolved by them that each one should associate with himself that man of the persians whom he trusted most; so otanes brought in intaphrenes, gobryas brought in megabyzos, and aspathines brought in hydarnes. when they had thus become six, dareios the son of hystaspes arrived at susa, having come from the land of persia, for of this his father was governor. accordingly when he came, the six men of the persians resolved to associate dareios also with themselves. . these then having come together, being seven in number, gave pledges of faith to one another and deliberated together; and when it came to dareios to declare his opinion, he spoke to them as follows: "i thought that i alone knew this, namely that it was the magian who was reigning as king and that smerdis the son of cyrus had brought his life to an end; and for this very reason i am come with earnest purpose to contrive death for the magian. since however it has come to pass that ye also know and not i alone, i think it well to act at once and not to put the matter off, for that is not the better way." to this replied otanes: "son of hystaspes, thou art the scion of a noble stock, and thou art showing thyself, as it seems, in no way inferior to thy father: do not however hasten this enterprise so much without consideration, but take it up more prudently; for we must first become more in numbers, and then undertake the matter." in answer to this dareios said: "men who are here present, if ye shall follow the way suggested by otanes, know that ye will perish miserably; for some one will carry word to the magian, getting gain thereby privately for himself. your best way would have been to do this action upon your own risk alone; but since it seemed good to you to refer the matter to a greater number, and ye communicated it to me, either let us do the deed to-day, or be ye assured that if this present day shall pass by, none other shall prevent me as your accuser, but i will myself tell these things to the magian." . to this otanes, when he saw dareios in violent haste, replied: "since thou dost compel us to hasten the matter and dost not permit us to delay, come expound to us thyself in what manner we shall pass into the palace and lay hands upon them: for that there are guards set in various parts, thou knowest probably thyself as well as we, if not from sight at least from hearsay; and in what manner shall we pass through these?" dareios made reply with these words: "otanes, there are many things in sooth which it is not possible to set forth in speech, but only in deed; and other things there are which in speech can be set forth, but from them comes no famous deed. know ye however that the guards which are set are not difficult to pass: for in the first place, we being what we are, there is no one who will not let us go by, partly, as may be supposed, from having respect for us, and partly also perhaps from fear; and secondly i have myself a most specious pretext by means of which we may pass by; for i shall say that i am just now come from the persian land and desire to declare to the king a certain message from my father: for where it is necessary that a lie be spoken, let it be spoken; seeing that we all aim at the same object, both they who lie and they who always speak the truth; those lie whenever they are likely to gain anything by persuading with their lies, and these tell the truth in order that they may draw to themselves gain by the truth, and that things may be entrusted to them more readily. thus, while practising different ways, we aim all at the same thing. if however they were not likely to make any gain by it, the truth-teller would lie and the liar would speak the truth, with indifference. whosoever then of the door-keepers shall let us pass by of his own free will, for him it shall be the better afterwards; but whosoever shall endeavour to oppose our passage, let him then and there be marked as our enemy, and after that let us push in and set about our work." . then said gobryas: "friends, at what time will there be a fairer opportunity for us either to recover our rule, or, if we are not able to get it again, to die? seeing that we being persians on the one hand lie under the rule of a mede, a magian, and that too a man whose ears have been cut off. moreover all those of you who stood by the side of cambyses when he was sick remember assuredly what he laid upon the persians as he was bringing his life to an end, if they should not attempt to win back the power; and this we did not accept then, but supposed that cambyses had spoken in order to deceive us. now therefore i give my vote that we follow the opinion of dareios, and that we do not depart from this assembly to go anywhither else but straight to attack the magian." thus spoke gobryas, and they all approved of this proposal. . now while these were thus taking counsel together, it was coming to pass by coincidence as follows:�the magians taking counsel together had resolved to join prexaspes with themselves as a friend, both because he had suffered grievous wrong from cambyses, who had killed his son by shooting him, and because he alone knew for a certainty of the death of smerdis the son of cyrus, having killed him with his own hands, and finally because prexaspes was in very great repute among the persians. for these reasons they summoned him and endeavoured to win him to be their friend, engaging him by pledge and with oaths, that he would assuredly keep to himself and not reveal to any man the deception which had been practised by them upon the persians, and promising to give him things innumerable in return. after prexaspes had promised to do this, the magians, having persuaded him so far, proposed to him a second thing, and said that they would call together all the persians to come up to the wall of the palace, and bade him go up upon a tower and address them, saying that they were living under the rule of smerdis the son of cyrus and no other. this they so enjoined because they supposed that he had the greatest credit among the persians, and because he had frequently declared the opinion that smerdis the son of cyrus was still alive, and had denied that he had slain him. . when prexaspes said that he was ready to do this also, the magians having called together the persians caused him to go up upon a tower and bade him address them. then he chose to forget those things which they asked of him, and beginning with achaimenes he traced the descent of cyrus on the father's side, and then, when he came down to cyrus, he related at last what great benefits he had conferred upon the persians; and having gone through this recital he proceeded to declare the truth, saying that formerly he kept it secret, since it was not safe for him to tell of that which had been done, but at the present time he was compelled to make it known. he proceeded to say how he had himself slain smerdis the son of cyrus, being compelled by cambyses, and that it was the magians who were now ruling. then he made imprecation of many evils on the persians, if they did not win back again the power and take vengeance upon the magians, and upon that he let himself fall down from the tower head foremost. thus prexaspes ended his life, having been throughout his time a man of repute. . now the seven of the persians, when they had resolved forthwith to lay hands upon the magians and not to delay, made prayer to the gods and went, knowing nothing of that which had been done with regard to prexaspes: and as they were going and were in the middle of their course, they heard that which had happened about prexaspes. upon that they retired out of the way and again considered with themselves, otanes and his supporters strongly urging that they should delay and not set to the work when things were thus disturbed, while dareios and those of his party urged that they should go forthwith and do that which had been resolved, and not delay. then while they were contending, there appeared seven pairs of hawks pursuing two pairs of vultures, plucking out their feathers and tearing them. seeing this the seven all approved the opinion of dareios and thereupon they went to the king's palace, encouraged by the sight of the birds. . when they appeared at the gates, it happened nearly as dareios supposed, for the guards, having respect for men who were chief among the persians, and not suspecting that anything would be done by them of the kind proposed, allowed them to pass in under the guiding of heaven, and none asked them any question. then when they had passed into the court, they met the eunuchs who bore in the messages to the king; and these inquired of them for what purpose they had come, and at the same time they threatened with punishment the keepers of the gates for having let them pass in, and tried to stop the seven when they attempted to go forward. then they gave the word to one another and drawing their daggers stabbed these men there upon the spot, who tried to stop them, and themselves went running on towards the chamber of the men. . now the magians happened both of them to be there within, consulting about that which had been done by prexaspes. so when they saw that the eunuchs had been attacked and were crying aloud, they ran back both of them, and perceiving that which was being done they turned to self-defence: and one of them got down his bow and arrows before he was attacked, while the other had recourse to his spear. then they engaged in combat with one another; and that one of them who had taken up his bow and arrows found them of no use, since his enemies were close at hand and pressed hard upon him, but the other defended himself with his spear, and first he struck aspathines in the thigh, and then intaphrenes in the eye; and intaphrenes lost his eye by reason of the wound, but his life he did not lose. these then were wounded by one of the magians, but the other, when his bow and arrows proved useless to him, fled into a bedchamber which opened into the chamber of the men, intending to close the door; and with him there rushed in two of the seven, dareios and gobryas. and when gobryas was locked together in combat with the magian, dareios stood by and was at a loss what to do, because it was dark, and he was afraid lest he should strike gobryas. then seeing him standing by idle, gobryas asked why he did not use his hands, and he said: "because i am afraid lest i may strike thee": and gobryas answered: "thrust with thy sword even though it stab through us both." so dareios was persuaded, and he thrust with his danger and happened to hit the magian. . so when they had slain the magians and cut off their heads, they left behind those of their number who were wounded, both because they were unable to go, and also in order that they might take charge of the fortress, and the five others taking with them the heads of the magians ran with shouting and clashing of arms and called upon the other persians to join them, telling them of that which had been done and showing the heads, and at the same time they proceeded to slay every one of the magians who crossed their path. so the persians when they heard of that which had been brought to pass by the seven and of the deceit of the magians, thought good themselves also to do the same, and drawing their daggers they killed the magians wherever they found one; so that if night had not come on and stopped them, they would not have left a single magian alive. this day the persians celebrate in common more than all other days, and upon it they keep a great festival which is called by the persians the festival of the slaughter of the magians, on which no magian is permitted to appear abroad, but the magians keep themselves within their houses throughout that day. . when the tumult had subsided and more than five days had elapsed, those who had risen against the magians began to take counsel about the general state, and there were spoken speeches which some of the hellenes do not believe were really uttered, but spoken they were nevertheless. on the one hand otanes urged that they should resign the government into the hands of the whole body of the persians, and his words were as follows: "to me it seems best that no single one of us should henceforth be ruler, for that is neither pleasant nor profitable. ye saw the insolent temper of cambyses, to what lengths it went, and ye have had experience also of the insolence of the magian: and how should the rule of one alone be a well-ordered thing, seeing that the monarch may do what he desires without rendering any account of his acts? even the best of all men, if he were placed in this disposition, would be caused by it to change from his wonted disposition: for insolence is engendered in him by the good things which he possesses, and envy is implanted in man from the beginning; and having these two things, he has all vice: for he does many deeds of reckless wrong, partly moved by insolence proceeding from satiety, and partly by envy. and yet a despot at least ought to have been free from envy, seeing that he has all manner of good things. he is however naturally in just the opposite temper towards his subjects; for he grudges to the nobles that they should survive and live, but delights in the basest of citizens, and he is more ready than any other man to receive calumnies. then of all things he is the most inconsistent; for if you express admiration of him moderately, he is offended that no very great court is paid to him, whereas if you pay court to him extravagantly, he is offended with you for being a flatterer. and the most important matter of all is that which i am about to say:�he disturbs the customs handed down from our fathers, he is a ravisher of women, and he puts men to death without trial. on the other hand the rule of many has first a name attaching to it which is the fairest of all names, that is to say 'equality'; next, the multitude does none of those things which the monarch does: offices of state are exercised by lot, and the magistrates are compelled to render account of their action: and finally all matters of deliberation are referred to the public assembly. i therefore give as my opinion that we let monarchy go and increase the power of the multitude; for in the many is contained everything." . this was the opinion expressed by otanes; but megabyzos urged that they should entrust matters to the rule of a few, saying these words: "that which otanes said in opposition to a tyranny, let it be counted as said for me also, but in that which he said urging that we should make over the power to the multitude, he has missed the best counsel: for nothing is more senseless or insolent than a worthless crowd; and for men flying from the insolence of a despot to fall into that of unrestrained popular power, is by no means to be endured: for he, if he does anything, does it knowing what he does, but the people cannot even know; for how can that know which has neither been taught anything noble by others nor perceived anything of itself, but pushes on matters with violent impulse and without understanding, like a torrent stream? rule of the people then let them adopt who are foes to the persians; but let us choose a company of the best men, and to them attach the chief power; for in the number of these we shall ourselves also be, and it is likely that the resolutions taken by the best men will be the best." . this was the opinion expressed by megabyzos; and thirdly dareios proceeded to declare his opinion, saying: "to me it seems that in those things which megabyzos said with regard to the multitude he spoke rightly, but in those which he said with regard to the rule of a few, not rightly: for whereas there are three things set before us, and each is supposed to be the best in its own kind, that is to say a good popular government, and the rule of a few, and thirdly the rule of one, i say that this last is by far superior to the others; for nothing better can be found than the rule of an individual man of the best kind; seeing that using the best judgment he would be guardian of the multitude without reproach; and resolutions directed against enemies would so best be kept secret. in an oligarchy however it happens often that many, while practising virtue with regard to the commonwealth, have strong private enmities arising among themselves; for as each man desires to be himself the leader and to prevail in counsels, they come to great enmities with one another, whence arise factions among them, and out of the factions comes murder, and from murder results the rule of one man; and thus it is shown in this instance by how much that is the best. again, when the people rules, it is impossible that corruption should not arise, and when corruption arises in the commonwealth, there arise among the corrupt men not enmities but strong ties of friendship: for they who are acting corruptly to the injury of the commonwealth put their heads together secretly to do so. and this continues so until at last some one takes the leadership of the people and stops the course of such men. by reason of this the man of whom i speak is admired by the people, and being so admired he suddenly appears as monarch. thus he too furnishes herein an example to prove that the rule of one is the best thing. finally, to sum up all in a single word, whence arose the liberty which we possess, and who gave it to us? was it a gift of the people or of an oligarchy or of a monarch? i therefore am of opinion that we, having been set free by one man, should preserve that form of rule, and in other respects also that we should not annul the customs of our fathers which are ordered well; for that is not the better way." . these three opinions then had been proposed, and the other four men of the seven gave their assent to the last. so when otanes, who was desirous to give equality to the persians, found his opinion defeated, he spoke to those assembled thus: "partisans, it is clear that some one of us must become king, selected either by casting lots, or by entrusting the decision to the multitude of the persians and taking him whom it shall choose, or by some other means. i therefore shall not be a competitor with you, for i do not desire either to rule or to be ruled; and on this condition i withdraw from my claim to rule, namely that i shall not be ruled by any of you, either i myself or my descendants in future time." when he had said this, the six made agreement with him on those terms, and he was no longer a competitor with them, but withdrew from the assembly; and at the present time this house remains free alone of all the persian houses, and submits to rule only so far as it wills to do so itself, not transgressing the laws of the persians. . the rest however of the seven continued to deliberate how they should establish a king in the most just manner; and it was resolved by them that to otanes and his descendants in succession, if the kingdom should come to any other of the seven, there should be given as special gifts a median dress every year and all those presents which are esteemed among the persians to be the most valuable: and the reason why they determined that these things should be given to him, was because he first suggested to them the matter and combined them together. these were special gifts for otanes; and this they also determined for all in common, namely that any one of the seven who wished might pass in to the royal palaces without any to bear in a message, unless the king happened to be sleeping with his wife; and that it should not be lawful for the king to marry from any other family, but only from those of the men who had made insurrection with him: and about the kingdom they determined this, namely that the man whose horse should first neigh at sunrise in the suburb of the city when they were mounted upon their horses, he should have the kingdom. . now dareios had a clever horse-keeper, whose name was oibares. to this man, when they had left their assembly, dareios spoke these words: "oibares, we have resolved to do about the kingdom thus, namely that the man whose horse first neighs at sunrise, when we are mounted upon our horses he shall be king. now therefore, if thou hast any cleverness, contrive that we may obtain this prize, and not any other man." oibares replied thus: "if, my master, it depends in truth upon this whether thou be king or no, have confidence so far as concerns this and keep a good heart, for none other shall be king before thee; such charms have i at my command." then dareios said: "if then thou hast any such trick, it is time to devise it and not to put things off, for our trial is to-morrow." oibares therefore hearing this did as follows:�when night was coming on he took one of the mares, namely that one which the horse of dareios preferred, and this he led into the suburb of the city and tied her up: then he brought to her the horse of dareios, and having for some time led him round her, making him go so close by so as to touch the mare, at last he let the horse mount. . now at dawn of day the six came to the place as they had agreed, riding upon their horses; and as they rode through by the suburb of the city, when they came near the place where the mare had been tied up on the former night, the horse of dareios ran up to the place and neighed; and just when the horse had done this, there came lightning and thunder from a clear sky: and the happening of these things to dareios consummated his claim, for they seemed to have come to pass by some design, and the others leapt down from their horses and did obeisance to dareios. . some say that the contrivance of oibares was this, but others say as follows (for the story is told by the persians in both ways), namely that he touched with his hands the parts of this mare and kept his hand hidden in his trousers; and when at sunrise they were about to let the horses go, this oibares pulled out his hand and applied it to the nostrils of the horse of dareios; and the horse, perceiving the smell, snorted and neighed. . so dareios the son of hystaspes had been declared king; and in asia all except the arabians were his subjects, having been subdued by cyrus and again afterwards by cambyses. the arabians however were never obedient to the persians under conditions of subjection, but had become guest-friends when they let cambyses pass by to egypt: for against the will of the arabians the persians would not be able to invade egypt. moreover dareios made the most noble marriages possible in the estimation of the persians; for he married two daughters of cyrus, atossa and artystone, of whom the one, arossa, had before been the wife of cambyses her brother and then afterwards of the magian, while artystone was a virgin; and besides them he married the daughter of smerdis the son of cyrus, whose name was parmys; and he also took to wife the daughter of otanes, he who had discovered the magian; and all things became filled with his power. and first he caused to be a carving in stone, and set it up; and in it there was the figure of a man on horseback, and he wrote upon it writing to this effect: "dareios son of hystaspes by the excellence of his horse," mentioning the name of it, "and of his horse-keeper oibares obtained the kingdom of the persians." . having so done in persia, he established twenty provinces, which the persians themselves call satrapies; and having established the provinces and set over them rulers, he appointed tribute to come to him from them according to races, joining also to the chief races those who dwelt on their borders, or passing beyond the immediate neighbours and assigning to various races those which lay more distant. he divided the provinces and the yearly payment of tribute as follows: and those of them who brought in silver were commanded to pay by the standard of the babylonian talent, but those who brought in gold by the euboïc talent; now the babylonian talent is equal to eight-and-seventy euboïc pounds. for in the reign of cyrus, and again of cambyses, nothing was fixed about tribute, but they used to bring gifts: and on account of this appointing of tribute and other things like this, the persians say that dareios was a shopkeeper, cambyses a master, and cyrus a father; the one because he dealt with all his affairs like a shopkeeper, the second because he was harsh and had little regard for any one, and the other because he was gentle and contrived for them all things good. . from the ionians and the magnesians who dwell in asia and the aiolians, carians, lykians, milyans and pamphylians (for one single sum was appointed by him as tribute for all these) there came in four hundred talents of silver. this was appointed by him to be the first division. from the mysians and lydians and lasonians and cabalians and hytennians there came in five hundred talents: this is the second division. from the hellespontians who dwell on the right as one sails in and the phrygians and the thracians who dwell in asia and the paphlagonians and mariandynoi and syrians the tribute was three hundred and sixty talents: this is the third division. from the kilikians, besides three hundred and sixty white horses, one for every day in the year, there came also five hundred talents of silver; of these one hundred and forty talents were spent upon the horsemen which served as a guard to the kilikian land, and the remaining three hundred and sixty came in year by year to dareios: this is the fourth division. . from that division which begins with the city of posideion, founded by amphilochos the son of amphiaraos on the borders of the kilikians and the syrians, and extends as far as egypt, not including the territory of the arabians (for this was free from payment), the amount was three hundred and fifty talents; and in this division are the whole of phenicia and syria which is called palestine and cyprus: this is the fifth division. from egypt and the libyans bordering upon egypt, and from kyrene and barca, for these were so ordered as to belong to the egyptian division, there came in seven hundred talents, without reckoning the money produced by the lake of moiris, that is to say from the fish; without reckoning this, i say, or the corn which was contributed in addition by measure, there came in seven hundred talents; for as regards the corn, they contribute by measure one hundred and twenty thousand bushels for the use of those persians who are established in the "white fortress" at memphis, and for their foreign mercenaries: this is the sixth division. the sattagydai and gandarians and dadicans and aparytai, being joined together, brought in one hundred and seventy talents: this is the seventh division. from susa and the rest of the land of the kissians there came in three hundred: this is the eighth division. . from babylon and from the rest of assyria there came in to him a thousand talents of silver and five hundred boys for eunuchs: this is the ninth division. from agbatana and from the rest of media and the paricanians and orthocorybantians, four hundred and fifty talents: this is the tenth division. the caspians and pausicans and pantimathoi and dareitai, contributing together, brought in two hundred talents: this is the eleventh division. from the bactrians as far as the aigloi the tribute was three hundred and sixty talents: this is the twelfth division. . from pactyïke and the armenians and the people bordering upon them as far as the euxine, four hundred talents: this is the thirteenth division. from the sagartians and sarangians and thamanaians and utians and mycans and those who dwell in the islands of the erythraian sea, where the king settles those who are called the "removed," from all these together a tribute was produced of six hundred talents: this is the fourteenth division. the sacans and the caspians brought in two hundred and fifty talents: this is the fifteenth division. the parthians and chorasmians and sogdians and areians three hundred talents: this is the sixteenth division. . the paricanians and ethiopians in asia brought in four hundred talents: this is the seventeenth division. to the matienians and saspeirians and alarodians was appointed a tribute of two hundred talents: this is the eighteenth division. to the moschoi and tibarenians and macronians and mossynoicoi and mares three hundred talents were ordered: this is the nineteenth division. of the indians the number is far greater than that of any other race of men of whom we know; and they brought in a tribute larger than all the rest, that is to say three hundred and sixty talents of gold-dust: this is the twentieth division. . now if we compare babylonian with euboïc talents, the silver is found to amount to nine thousand eight hundred and eighty talents; and if we reckon the gold at thirteen times the value of silver, weight for weight, the gold-dust is found to amount to four thousand six hundred and eighty euboïc talents. these being all added together, the total which was collected as yearly tribute for dareios amounts to fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty euboïc talents: the sums which are less than these i pass over and do not mention. . this was the tribute which came in to dareios from asia and from a small part of libya: but as time went on, other tribute came in also from the islands and from those who dwell in europe as far as thessaly. this tribute the king stores up in his treasury in the following manner:�he melts it down and pours it into jars of earthenware, and when he has filled the jars he takes off the earthenware jar from the metal; and when he wants money he cuts off so much as he needs on each occasion. . these were the provinces and the assessments of tribute: and the persian land alone has not been mentioned by me as paying a contribution, for the persians have their land to dwell in free from payment. the following moreover had no tribute fixed for them to pay, but brought gifts, namely the ethiopians who border upon egypt, whom cambyses subdued as he marched against the long-lived ethiopians, those who dwell about nysa, which is called "sacred," and who celebrate the festivals in honour of dionysos: these ethiopians and those who dwell near them have the same kind of seed as the callantian indians, and they have underground dwellings. these both together brought every other year, and continue to bring even to my own time, two quart measures of unmelted gold and two hundred blocks of ebony and five ethiopian boys and twenty large elephant tusks. the colchians also had set themselves among those who brought gifts, and with them those who border upon them extending as far as the range of the caucasus (for the persian rule extends as far as these mountains, but those who dwell in the parts beyond caucasus toward the north wind regard the persians no longer),�these, i say, continued to bring the gifts which they had fixed for themselves every four years even down to my own time, that is to say, a hundred boys and a hundred maidens. finally, the arabians brought a thousand talents of frankincense every year. such were the gifts which these brought to the king apart from the tribute. . now this great quantity of gold, out of which the indians bring in to the king the gold-dust which has been mentioned, is obtained by them in a manner which i shall tell:�that part of the indian land which is towards the rising sun is sand; for of all the peoples in asia of which we know or about which any certain report is given, the indians dwell furthest away towards the east and the sunrising; seeing that the country to the east of the indians is desert on account of the sand. now there are many tribes of indians, and they do not agree with one another in language; and some of them are pastoral and others not so, and some dwell in the swamps of the river and feed upon raw fish, which they catch by fishing from boats made of cane; and each boat is made of one joint of cane. these indians of which i speak wear clothing made of rushes: they gather and cut the rushes from the river and then weave them together into a kind of mat and put it on like a corslet. . others of the indians, dwelling to the east of these, are pastoral and eat raw flesh: these are called padaians, and they practise the following customs:�whenever any of their tribe falls ill, whether it be a woman or a man, if a man then the men who are his nearest associates put him to death, saying that he is wasting away with the disease and his flesh is being spoilt for them: and meanwhile he denies stoutly and says that he is not ill, but they do not agree with him; and after they have killed him they feast upon his flesh: but if it be a woman who falls ill, the women who are her greatest intimates do to her in the same manner as the men do in the other case. for in fact even if a man has come to old age they slay him and feast upon him; but very few of them come to be reckoned as old, for they kill every one who falls into sickness, before he reaches old age. . other indians have on the contrary a manner of life as follows:�they neither kill any living thing nor do they sow any crops nor is it their custom to possess houses; but they feed on herbs, and they have a grain of the size of millet, in a sheath, which grows of itself from the ground; this they gather and boil with the sheath, and make it their food: and whenever any of them falls into sickness, he goes to the desert country and lies there, and none of them pay any attention either to one who is dead or to one who is sick. . the sexual intercourse of all these indians of whom i have spoken is open like that of cattle, and they have all one colour of skin, resembling that of the ethiopians: moreover the seed which they emit is not white like that of other races, but black like their skin; and the ethiopians also are similar in this respect. these tribes of indians dwell further off than the persian power extends, and towards the south wind, and they never became subjects of dareios. . others however of the indians are on the borders of the city of caspatyros and the country of pactyïke, dwelling towards the north of the other indians; and they have a manner of living nearly the same as that of the bactrians: these are the most warlike of the indians, and these are they who make expeditions for the gold. for in the parts where they live it is desert on account of the sand; and in this desert and sandy tract are produced ants, which are in size smaller than dogs but larger than foxes, for there are some of them kept at the residence of the king of persia, which are caught here. these ants then make their dwelling under ground and carry up the sand just in the same manner as the ants found in the land of the hellenes, which they themselves also very much resemble in form; and the sand which is brought up contains gold. to obtain this sand the indians make expeditions into the desert, each one having yoked together three camels, placing a female in the middle and a male like a trace-horse to draw by each side. on this female he mounts himself, having arranged carefully that she shall be taken to be yoked from young ones, the more lately born the better. for their female camels are not inferior to horses in speed, and moreover they are much more capable of bearing weights. . as to the form of the camel, i do not here describe it, since the hellenes for whom i write are already acquainted with it, but i shall tell that which is not commonly known about it, which is this:�the camel has in the hind legs four thighs and four knees, and its organs of generation are between the hind legs, turned towards the tail. . the indians, i say, ride out to get the gold in the manner and with the kind of yoking which i have described, making calculations so that they may be engaged in carrying it off at the time when the greatest heat prevails; for the heat causes the ants to disappear underground. now among these nations the sun is hottest in the morning hours, not at midday as with others, but from sunrise to the time of closing the market: and during this time it produces much greater heat than at midday in hellas, so that it is said that then they drench themselves with water. midday however has about equal degree of heat with the indians as with other men, while after midday their sun becomes like the morning sun with other men, and after this, as it goes further away, it produces still greater coolness, until at last at sunset it makes the air very cool indeed. . when the indians have come to the place with bags, they fill them with the sand and ride away back as quickly as they can, for forthwith the ants, perceiving, as the persians allege, by the smell, begin to pursue them: and this animal, they say, is superior to every other creature in swiftness, so that unless the indians got a start in their course, while the ants were gathering together, not one of them would escape. so then the male camels, for they are inferior in speed of running to the females, if they drag behind are even let loose from the side of the female, one after the other; the females however, remembering the young which they left behind, do not show any slackness in their course. thus it is that the indians get most part of the gold, as the persians say; there is however other gold also in their land obtained by digging, but in smaller quantities. . it seems indeed that the extremities of the inhabited world had allotted to them by nature the fairest things, just as it was the lot of hellas to have its seasons far more fairly tempered than other lands: for first, india is the most distant of inhabited lands towards the east, as i have said a little above, and in this land not only the animals, birds as well as four-footed beasts, are much larger than in other places (except the horses, which are surpassed by those of media called nessaian), but also there is gold in abundance there, some got by digging, some brought down by rivers, and some carried off as i explained just now: and there also the trees which grow wild produce wool which surpasses in beauty and excellence that from sheep, and the indians wear clothing obtained from these trees. . then again arabia is the furthest of inhabited lands in the direction of the midday, and in it alone of all lands grow frankincense and myrrh and cassia and cinnamon and gum-mastich. all these except myrrh are got with difficulty by the arabians. frankincense they collect by burning the storax, which is brought thence to the hellenes by the phenicians, by burning this, i say, so as to produce smoke they take it; for these trees which produce frankincense are guarded by winged serpents, small in size and of various colours, which watch in great numbers about each tree, of the same kind as those which attempt to invade egypt: and they cannot be driven away from the trees by any other thing but only the smoke of storax. . the arabians say also that all the world would have been by this time filled with these serpents, if that did not happen with regard to them which i knew happened with regard to vipers: and it seems that the divine providence, as indeed was to be expected, seeing that it is wise, has made all those animals prolific which are of cowardly spirit and good for food, in order that they may not be all eaten up and their race fail, whereas it has made those which are bold and noxious to have small progeny. for example, because the hare is hunted by every beast and bird as well as by man, therefore it is so very prolific as it is: and this is the only one of all beasts which becomes pregnant again before the former young are born, and has in its womb some of its young covered with fur and others bare; and while one is just being shaped in the matrix, another is being conceived. thus it is in this case; whereas the lioness, which is the strongest and most courageous of creatures, produces one cub once only in her life; for when she produces young she casts out her womb together with her young; and the cause of it is this:�when the cub being within the mother begins to move about, then having claws by far sharper than those of any other beast he tears the womb, and as he grows larger he proceeds much further in his scratching: at last the time of birth approaches and there is now nothing at all left of it in a sound condition. . just so also, if vipers and the winged serpents of the arabians were produced in the ordinary course of their nature, man would not be able to live upon the earth; but as it is, when they couple with one another and the male is in the act of generation, as he lets go from him the seed, the female seizes hold of his neck, and fastening on to it does not relax her hold till she has eaten it through. the male then dies in the manner which i have said, but the female pays the penalty of retribution for the male in this manner:�the young while they are still in the womb take vengeance for their father by eating through their mother, and having eaten through her belly they thus make their way out for themselves. other serpents however, which are not hurtful to man, produce eggs and hatch from them a very large number of offspring. now vipers are distributed over all the earth; but the others, which are winged, are found in great numbers together in arabia and in no other land: therefore it is that they appear to be numerous. . this frankincense then is obtained thus by the arabians; and cassia is obtained as follows:�they bind up in cows'-hide and other kinds of skins all their body and their face except only the eyes, and then go to get the cassia. this grows in a pool not very deep, and round the pool and in it lodge, it seems, winged beasts nearly resembling bats, and they squeak horribly and are courageous in fight. these they must keep off from their eyes, and so cut the cassia. . cinnamon they collect in a yet more marvellous manner than this: for where it grows and what land produces it they are not able to tell, except only that some say (and it is a probable account) that it grows in those regions where dionysos was brought up; and they say that large birds carry those dried sticks which we have learnt from the phenicians to call cinnamon, carry them, i say, to nests which are made of clay and stuck on to precipitous sides of mountains, which man can find no means of scaling. with regard to this then the arabians practise the following contrivance:�they divide up the limbs of the oxen and asses that die and of their other beasts of burden, into pieces as large as convenient, and convey them to these places, and when they have laid them down not far from the nests, they withdraw to a distance from them: and the birds fly down and carry the limbs of the beasts of burden off to their nests; and these are not able to bear them, but break down and fall to the earth; and the men come up to them and collect the cinnamon. thus cinnamon is collected and comes from this nation to the other countries of the world. . gum-mastich however, which the arabians call ladanon, comes in a still more extraordinary manner; for though it is the most sweet-scented of all things, it comes in the most evil-scented thing, since it is found in the beards of he-goats, produced there like resin from wood: this is of use for the making of many perfumes, and the arabians use it more than anything else as incense. . let what we have said suffice with regard to spices; and from the land of arabia there blows a scent of them most marvellously sweet. they have also two kinds of sheep which are worthy of admiration and are not found in any other land: the one kind has the tail long, not less than three cubits in length; and if one should allow these to drag these after them, they would have sores from their tails being worn away against the ground; but as it is, every one of the shepherds knows enough of carpentering to make little cars, which they tie under the tails, fastening the tail of each animal to a separate little car. the other kind of sheep has the tail broad, even as much as a cubit in breadth. . as one passes beyond the place of the midday, the ethiopian land is that which extends furthest of all inhabited lands towards the sunset. this produces both gold in abundance and huge elephants and trees of all kinds growing wild and ebony, and men who are of all men the tallest, the most beautiful and the most long-lived. . these are the extremities in asia and in libya; but as to the extremities of europe towards the west, i am not able to speak with certainty: for neither do i accept the tale that there is a river called in barbarian tongue eridanos, flowing into the sea which lies towards the north wind, whence it is said that amber comes; nor do i know of the real existence of "tin islands" from which tin comes to us: for first the name eridanos itself declares that it is hellenic and that it does not belong to a barbarian speech, but was invented by some poet; and secondly i am not able to hear from any one who has been an eye-witness, though i took pains to discover this, that there is a sea on the other side of europe. however that may be, tin and amber certainly come to us from the extremity of europe. . then again towards the north of europe, there is evidently a quantity of gold by far larger than in any other land: as to how it is got, here again i am not able to say for certain, but it is said to be carried off from the griffins by arimaspians, a one-eyed race of men. but i do not believe this tale either, that nature produces one-eyed men which in all other respects are like other men. however, it would seem that the extremities which bound the rest of the world on every side and enclose it in the midst, possess the things which by us are thought to be the most beautiful and the most rare. . now there is a plain in asia bounded by mountains on all sides, and through the mountains there are five clefts. this plain belonged once to the chorasmians, and it lies on the borders of the chorasmians themselves, the hyrcanians, parthians, sarangians, and thamanaians; but from the time that the persians began to bear rule it belongs to the king. from this enclosing mountain of which i speak there flows a great river, and its name is akes. this formerly watered the lands of these nations which have been mentioned, being divided into five streams and conducted through a separate cleft in the mountains to each separate nation; but from the time that they have come to be under the persians they have suffered as follows:�the king built up the clefts in the mountains and set gates at each cleft; and so, since the water has been shut off from its outlet, the plain within the mountains is made into a sea, because the river runs into it and has no way out in any direction. those therefore who in former times had been wont to make use of the water, not being able now to make use of it are in great trouble: for during the winter they have rain from heaven, as also other men have, but in the summer they desire to use the water when they sow millet and sesame seed. so then, the water not being granted to them, they come to the persians both themselves and their wives, and standing at the gates of the king's court they cry and howl; and the king orders that for those who need it most, the gates which lead to their land shall be opened; and when their land has become satiated with drinking in the water, these gates are closed, and he orders the gates to be opened for others, that is to say those most needing it of the rest who remain: and, as i have heard, he exacts large sums of money for opening them, besides the regular tribute. . thus it is with these matters: but of the seven men who had risen against the magian, it happened to one, namely intaphrenes, to be put to death immediately after their insurrection for an outrage which i shall relate. he desired to enter into the king's palace and confer with the king; for the law was in fact so, that those who had risen up against the magian were permitted to go in to the king's presence without any one to announce them, unless the king happened to be lying with his wife. accordingly intaphrenes did not think it fit that any one should announce his coming; but as he was one of the seven, he desired to enter. the gatekeeper however and the bearer of messages endeavoured to prevent him, saying that the king was lying with his wife: but intaphrenes believing that they were not speaking the truth, drew his sword and cut off their ears and their noses, and stringing these upon his horse's bridle he tied them round their necks and so let them go. . upon this they showed themselves to the king and told the cause for which they had suffered this; and dareios, fearing that the six might have done this by common design, sent for each one separately and made trial of his inclinations, as to whether he approved of that which had been done: and when he was fully assured that intaphrenes had not done this in combination with them, he took both intaphrenes himself and his sons and all his kinsmen, being much disposed to believe that he was plotting insurrection against him with the help of his relations; and having seized them he put them in bonds as for execution. then the wife of intaphrenes, coming constantly to the doors of the king's court, wept and bewailed herself; and by doing this continually after the same manner she moved dareios to pity her. accordingly he sent a messenger and said to her: "woman, king dareios grants to thee to save from death one of thy kinsmen who are lying in bonds, whomsoever thou desirest of them all." she then, having considered with herself, answered thus: "if in truth the king grants me the life of one, i choose of them all my brother." dareios being informed of this, and marvelling at her speech, sent and addressed her thus: "woman, the king asks thee what was in thy mind, that thou didst leave thy husband and thy children to die, and didst choose thy brother to survive, seeing that he is surely less near to thee in blood than thy children, and less dear to thee than thy husband." she made answer: "o king, i might, if heaven willed, have another husband and other children, if i should lose these; but another brother i could by no means have, seeing that my father and my mother are no longer alive. this was in my mind when i said those words." to dareios then it seemed that the woman had spoken well, and he let go not only him for whose life she asked, but also the eldest of her sons because he was pleased with her: but all the others he slew. one therefore of the seven had perished immediately in the manner which has been related. . now about the time of the sickness of cambyses it had come to pass as follows:�there was one oroites, a persian, who had been appointed by cyrus to be governor of the province of sardis. this man had set his desire upon an unholy thing; for though from polycrates the samian he had never suffered anything nor heard any offensive word nor even seen him before that time, he desired to take him and put him to death for a reason of this kind, as most who report the matter say:�while oroites and another persian whose name was mitrobates, ruler of the province of daskyleion, were sitting at the door of the king's court, they came from words to strife with one another; and as they debated their several claims to excellence, mitrobates taunting oroites said: "dost thou count thyself a man, who didst never yet win for the king the island of samos, which lies close to thy province, when it is so exceedingly easy of conquest that one of the natives of it rose up against the government with fifteen men-at-arms and got possession of the island, and is now despot of it?" some say that because he heard this and was stung by the reproach, he formed the desire, not so much to take vengeance on him who said this, as to bring polycrates to destruction at all costs, since by reason of him he was ill spoken of: , the lesser number however of those who tell the tale say that oroites sent a herald to samos to ask for something or other, but what it was is not mentioned; and polycrates happened to be lying down in the men's chamber of his palace, and anacreon also of teos was present with him: and somehow, whether it was by intention and because he made no account of the business of oroites, or whether some chance occurred to bring it about, it happened that the envoy of oroites came into his presence and spoke with him, and polycrates, who chanced to be turned away towards the wall, neither turned round at all nor made any answer. . the cause then of the death of polycrates is reported in these two different ways, and we may believe whichever of them we please. oroites however, having his residence at that magnesia which is situated upon the river maiander, sent myrsos the son of gyges, a lydian, to samos bearing a message, since he had perceived the designs of polycrates. for polycrates was the first of the hellenes of whom we have any knowledge, who set his mind upon having command of the sea, excepting minos the cnossian and any other who may have had command of the sea before his time. of that which we call mortal race polycrates was the first; and he had great expectation of becoming ruler of ionia and of the islands. oroites accordingly, having perceived that he had this design, sent a message to him and said thus: "oroites to polycrates saith as follows: i hear that thou art making plans to get great power, and that thou hast not wealth according to thy high thoughts. now therefore if thou shalt do as i shall say, thou wilt do well for thyself on the one hand, and also save me from destruction: for king cambyses is planning death for me, and this is reported to me so that i cannot doubt it. do thou then carry away out of danger both myself and with me my wealth; and of this keep a part for thyself and a part let me keep, and then so far as wealth may bring it about, thou shalt be ruler of all hellas. and if thou dost not believe that which i say about the money, send some one, whosoever happens to be most trusted by thee, and to him i will show it." . polycrates having heard this rejoiced, and was disposed to agree; and as he had a great desire, it seems, for wealth, he first sent maiandrios the son of maiandrios, a native of samos who was his secretary, to see it: this man was the same who not long after these events dedicated all the ornaments of the men's chamber in the palace of polycrates, ornaments well worth seeing, as an offering to the temple of hera. oroites accordingly, having heard that the person sent to examine might be expected soon to come, did as follows, that is to say, he filled eight chests with stones except a small depth at the very top of each, and laid gold above upon the stones; then he tied up the chests and kept them in readiness. so maiandrios came and looked at them and brought back word to polycrates: , and he upon that prepared to set out thither, although the diviners and also his friends strongly dissuaded him from it, and in spite moreover of a vision which his daughter had seen in sleep of this kind,�it seemed to her that her father was raised up on high and was bathed by zeus and anointed by the sun. having seen this vision, she used every kind of endeavour to dissuade polycrates from leaving his land to go to oroites, and besides that, as he was going to his fifty-oared galley she accompanied his departure with prophetic words: and he threatened her that if he should return safe, she should remain unmarried for long; but she prayed that this might come to pass, for she desired rather, she said, to be unmarried for long than to be an orphan, having lost her father. . polycrates however neglected every counsel and set sail to go to oroites, taking with him, besides many others of his friends, demokedes also the son of calliphon, a man of croton, who was a physician and practised his art better than any other man of his time. then when he arrived at magnesia, polycrates was miserably put to death in a manner unworthy both of himself and of his high ambition: for excepting those who become despots of the syracusans, not one besides of the hellenic despots is worthy to be compared with polycrates in magnificence. and when he had killed him in a manner not fit to be told, oroites impaled his body: and of those who accompanied him, as many as were samians he released, bidding them be grateful to him that they were free men; but all those of his company who were either allies or servants, he held in the estimation of slaves and kept them. polycrates then being hung up accomplished wholly the vision of his daughter, for he was bathed by zeus whenever it rained, and anointed by the sun, giving forth moisture himself from his body. . to this end came the great prosperity of polycrates, as amasis the king of egypt had foretold to him: but not long afterwards retribution overtook oroites in his turn for the murder of polycrates. for after the death of cambyses and the reign of the magians oroites remained at sardis and did no service to the persians, when they had been deprived of their empire by the medes; moreover during this time of disturbance he slew mitrobates the governor in daskyleion, who had brought up against him the matter of polycrates as a reproach; and he slew also cranaspes the son of mitrobates, both men of repute among the persians: and besides other various deeds of insolence, once when a bearer of messages had come to him from dareios, not being pleased with the message which he brought he slew him as he was returning, having set men to lie in wait for him by the way; and having slain him he made away with the bodies both of the man and of his horse. . dareios accordingly, when he had come to the throne, was desirous of taking vengeance upon oroites for all his wrongdoings and especially for the murder of mitrobates and his son. however he did not think it good to act openly and to send an army against him, since his own affairs were still in a disturbed state and he had only lately come to the throne, while he heard that the strength of oroites was great, seeing that he had a bodyguard of a thousand persian spearmen and was in possession of the divisions of phrygia and lydia and ionia. therefore dareios contrived as follows:�having called together those of the persians who were of most repute, he said to them: "persians, which of you all will undertake to perform this matter for me with wisdom, and not by force or with tumult? for where wisdom is wanted, there is no need of force. which of you, i say, will either bring oroites alive to me or slay him? for he never yet did any service to the persians, and on the other hand he has done to them great evil. first he destroyed two of us, mitrobates and his son; then he slays the men who go to summon him, sent by me, displaying insolence not to be endured. before therefore he shall accomplish any other evil against the persians, we must check his course by death." . thus dareios asked, and thirty men undertook the matter, each one separately desiring to do it himself; and dareios stopped their contention and bade them cast lots: so when they cast lots, bagaios the son of artontes obtained the lot from among them all. bagaios accordingly, having obtained the lot, did thus:�he wrote many papers dealing with various matters and on them set the seal of dareios, and with them he went to sardis. when he arrived there and came into the presence of oroites, he took the covers off the papers one after another and gave them to the royal secretary to read; for all the governors of provinces have royal secretaries. now bagaios thus gave the papers in order to make trial of the spearmen of the guard, whether they would accept the motion to revolt from oroites; and seeing that they paid great reverence to the papers and still more to the words which were recited from them, he gave another paper in which were contained these words: "persians, king dareios forbids you to serve as guards to oroites": and they hearing this lowered to him the points of their spears. then bagaios, seeing that in this they were obedient to the paper, took courage upon that and gave the last of the papers to the secretary; and in it was written: "king dareios commands the persians who are in sardis to slay oroites." so the spearmen of the guard, when they heard this, drew their swords and slew him forthwith. thus did retribution for the murder of polycrates the samian overtake oroites. . when the wealth of oroites had come or had been carried up to susa, it happened not long after, that king dareios while engaged in hunting wild beasts twisted his foot in leaping off his horse, and it was twisted, as it seems, rather violently, for the ball of his ankle-joint was put out of the socket. now he had been accustomed to keep about him those of the egyptians who were accounted the first in the art of medicine, and he made use of their assistance then: but these by wrenching and forcing the foot made the evil continually greater. for seven days then and seven nights dareios was sleepless owing to the pain which he suffered; and at last on the eighth day, when he was in a wretched state, some one who had heard talk before while yet at sardis of the skill of demokedes of croton, reported this to dareios; and he bade them bring him forthwith into his presence. so having found him somewhere unnoticed among the slaves of oroites, they brought him forth into the midst dragging fetters after him and clothed in rags. . when he had been placed in the midst of them, dareios asked him whether he understood the art; but he would not admit it, fearing lest, if he declared himself to be what he was, he might lose for ever the hope of returning to hellas: and it was clear to dareios that he understood that art but was practising another, and he commanded those who had brought him thither to produce scourges and pricks. accordingly upon that he spoke out, saying that he did not understand it precisely, but that he had kept company with a physician and had some poor knowledge of the art. then after this, when dareios had committed the case to him, by using hellenic drugs and applying mild remedies after the former violent means, he caused him to get sleep, and in a short time made him perfectly well, though he had never hoped to be sound of foot again. upon this dareios presented him with two pairs of golden fetters; and he asked him whether it was by design that he had given to him a double share of his suffering, because he had made him well. being pleased by this saying, dareios sent him to visit his wives, and the eunuchs in bringing him in said to the women that this was he who had restored to the king his life. then each one of them plunged a cup into the gold-chest and presented demokedes with so abundant a gift that his servant, whose name was skiton, following and gathering up the coins which fell from the cups, collected for himself a very large sum of gold. . this demokedes came from croton, and became the associate of polycrates in the following manner:�at croton he lived in strife with his father, who was of a harsh temper, and when he could no longer endure him, he departed and came to egina. being established there he surpassed in the first year all the other physicians, although he was without appliances and had none of the instruments which are used in the art. in the next year the eginetan state engaged him for a payment of one talent, in the third year he was engaged by the athenians for a hundred pounds weight of silver, and in the fourth by polycrates for two talents. thus he arrived in samos; and it was by reason of this man more than anything else that the physicians of croton got their reputation: for this event happened at the time when the physicians of croton began to be spoken of as the first in hellas, while the kyrenians were reputed to have the second place. about this same time also the argives had the reputation of being the first musicians in hellas. . then demokedes having healed king dareios had a very great house in susa, and had been made a table-companion of the king; and except the one thing of returning to the land of the hellenes, he had everything. and first as regards the egyptian physicians who tried to heal the king before him, when they were about to be impaled because they had proved inferior to a physician who was a hellene, he asked their lives of the king and rescued them from death: then secondly, he rescued an eleian prophet, who had accompanied polycrates and had remained unnoticed among the slaves. in short demokedes was very great in the favour of the king. . not long time after this another thing came to pass which was this:�atossa the daughter of cyrus and wife of dareios had a tumour upon her breast, which afterwards burst and then was spreading further: and so long as it was not large, she concealed it and said nothing to anybody, because she was ashamed; but afterwards when she was in evil case, she sent for demokedes and showed it to him: and he said that he would make her well, and caused her to swear that she would surely do for him in return that which he should ask of her; and he would ask, he said, none of such things as are shameful. . so when after this by his treatment he had made her well, then atossa instructed by demokedes uttered to dareios in his bedchamber some such words as these: "o king, though thou hast such great power, thou dost sit still, and dost not win in addition any nation or power for the persians: and yet it is reasonable that a man who is both young and master of much wealth should be seen to perform some great deed, in order that the persians may know surely that he is a man by whom they are ruled. it is expedient indeed in two ways that thou shouldest do so, both in order that the persians may know that their ruler is a man, and in order that they may be worn down by war and not have leisure to plot against thee. for now thou mightest display some great deed, while thou art still young; seeing that as the body grows the spirit grows old also with it, and is blunted for every kind of action." thus she spoke according to instructions received, and he answered thus: "woman, thou hast said all the things which i myself have in mind to do; for i have made the plan to yoke together a bridge from this continent to the other and to make expedition against the scythians, and these designs will be by way of being fulfilled within a little time." then atossa said: "look now,�forbear to go first against the scythians, for these will be in thy power whenever thou desirest: but do thou, i pray thee, make an expedition against hellas; for i am desirous to have lacedemonian women and argive and athenian and corinthian, for attendants, because i hear of them by report: and thou hast the man who of all men is most fitted to show thee all things which relate to hellas and to be thy guide, that man, i mean, who healed thy foot." dareios made answer: "woman, since it seems good to thee that we should first make trial of hellas, i think it better to send first to them men of the persians together with him of whom thou speakest, to make investigation, that when these have learnt and seen, they may report each several thing to us; and then i shall go to attack them with full knowledge of all." . thus he said, and he proceeded to do the deed as he spoke the word: for as soon as day dawned, he summoned fifteen persians, men of repute, and bade them pass through the coasts of hellas in company with demokedes, and take care not to let demokedes escape from them, but bring him back at all costs. having thus commanded them, next he summoned demokedes himself and asked him to act as a guide for the whole of hellas and show it to the persians, and then return back: and he bade him take all his movable goods and carry them as gifts to his father and his brothers, saying that he would give him in their place many times as much; and besides this, he said, he would contribute to the gifts a merchant ship filled with all manner of goods, which should sail with him. dareios, as it seems to me, promised him these things with no crafty design; but demokedes was afraid that dareios was making trial of him, and did not make haste to accept all that was offered, but said that he would leave his own things where they were, so that he might have them when he came back; he said however that he accepted the merchant ship which dareios promised him for the presents to his brothers. dareios then, having thus given command to him also, sent them away to the sea. . so these, when they had gone down to phenicia and in phenicia to the city of sidon, forthwith manned two triremes, and besides them they also filled a large ship of burden with all manner of goods. then when they had made all things ready they set sail for hellas, and touching at various places they saw the coast regions of it and wrote down a description, until at last, when they had seen the greater number of the famous places, they came to taras in italy. there from complaisance to demokedes aristophilides the king of the tarentines unfastened and removed the steering-oars of the median ships, and also confined the persians in prison, because, as he alleged, they came as spies. while they were being thus dealt with, demokedes went away and reached croton; and when he had now reached his own native place, aristophilides set the persians free and gave back to them those parts of their ships which he had taken away. . the persians then sailing thence and pursuing demokedes reached croton, and finding him in the market-place they laid hands upon him; and some of the men of croton fearing the persian power were willing to let him go, but others took hold of him and struck with their staves at the persians, who pleaded for themselves in these words: "men of croton, take care what ye are about: ye are rescuing a man who was a slave of king dareios and who ran away from him. how, think you, will king dareios be content to receive such an insult; and how shall this which ye do be well for you, if ye take him away from us? against what city, think you, shall we make expedition sooner than against this, and what city before this shall we endeavour to reduce to slavery?" thus saying they did not however persuade the men of croton, but having had demokedes rescued from them and the ship of burden which they were bringing with them taken away, they set sail to go back to asia, and did not endeavour to visit any more parts of hellas or to find out about them, being now deprived of their guide. this much however demokedes gave them as a charge when they were putting forth to sea, bidding them say to dareios that demokedes was betrothed to the daughter of milon: for the wrestler milon had a great name at the king's court; and i suppose that demokedes was urgent for this marriage, spending much money to further it, in order that dareios might see that he was held in honour also in his own country. . the persians however, after they had put out from croton, were cast away with their ships in iapygia; and as they were remaining there as slaves, gillos a tarentine exile rescued them and brought them back to king dareios. in return for this dareios offered to give him whatsoever thing he should desire; and gillos chose that he might have the power of returning to taras, narrating first the story of his misfortune: and in order that he might not disturb all hellas, as would be the case if on his account a great armament should sail to invade italy, he said it was enough for him that the men of cnidos should be those who brought him back, without any others; because he supposed that by these, who were friends with the tarentines, his return from exile would most easily be effected. dareios accordingly having promised proceeded to perform; for he sent a message to cnidos and bade them being back gillos to taras: and the men of cnidos obeyed dareios, but nevertheless they did not persuade the tarentines, and they were not strong enough to apply force. thus then it happened with regard to these things; and these were the first persians who came from asia to hellas, and for the reason which has been mentioned these were sent as spies. . after this king dareios took samos before all other cities, whether of hellenes or barbarians, and for a cause which was as follows:�when cambyses the son of cyrus was marching upon egypt, many hellenes arrived in egypt, some, as might be expected, joining in the campaign to make profit, and some also coming to see the land itself; and among these was syoloson the son of aiakes and brother of polycrates, an exile from samos. to this syloson a fortunate chance occurred, which was this:�he had taken and put upon him a flame-coloured mantle, and was about the market-place in memphis; and dareios, who was then one of the spearmen of cambyses and not yet held in any great estimation, seeing him had a desire for the mantle, and going up to him offered to buy it. then syloson, seeing that dareios very greatly desired the mantle, by some divine inspiration said: "i will not sell this for any sum, but i will give it thee for nothing, if, as it appears, it must be thine at all costs." to this dareios agreed and received from him the garment. . now syloson supposed without any doubt that he had altogether lost this by easy simplicity; but when in course of time cambyses was dead, and the seven persians had risen up against the magian, and of the seven dareios had obtained the kingdom, syloson heard that the kingdom had come about to that man to whom once in egypt he had given the garment at his request: accordingly he went up to susa and sat down at the entrance of the king's palace, and said that he was a benefactor of dareios. the keeper of the door hearing this reported it to the king; and he marvelled at it and said to him: "who then of the hellenes is my benefactor, to whom i am bound by gratitude? seeing that it is now but a short time that i possess the kingdom, and as yet scarcely one of them has come up to our court; and i may almost say that i have no debt owing to a hellene. nevertheless bring him in before me, that i may know what he means when he says these things." then the keeper of the door brought syloson before him, and when he had been set in the midst, the interpreters asked him who he was and what he had done, that he called himself the benefactor of the king. syloson accordingly told all that had happened about the mantle, and how he was the man who had given it; to which dareios made answer: "o most noble of men, thou art he who when as yet i had no power gavest me a gift, small it may be, but nevertheless the kindness is counted with me to be as great as if i should now receive some great thing from some one. therefore i will give thee in return gold and silver in abundance, that thou mayest not ever repent that thou didst render a service to dareios the son of hystaspes." to this syloson replied: "to me, o king, give neither gold nor silver, but recover and give to me my fatherland samos, which now that my brother polycrates has been slain by oroites is possessed by our slave. this give to me without bloodshed or selling into slavery." . dareios having heard this prepared to send an expedition with otanes as commander of it, who had been one of the seven, charging him to accomplish for syloson all that which he had requested. otanes then went down to the sea-coast and was preparing the expedition. . now maiandrios the son of maiandrios was holding the rule over samos, having received the government as a trust from polycrates; and he, though desiring to show himself the most righteous of men, did not succeed in so doing: for when the death of polycrates was reported to him, he did as follows:�first he founded an altar to zeus the liberator and marked out a sacred enclosure round it, namely that which exists still in the suburb of the city: then after he had done this he gathered together an assembly of all the citizens and spoke these words: "to me, as ye know as well as i, has been entrusted the sceptre of polycrates and all his power; and now it is open to me to be your ruler; but that for the doing of which i find fault with my neighbour, i will myself refrain from doing, so far as i may: for as i did not approve of polycrates acting as master of men who were not inferior to himself, so neither do i approve of any other who does such things. now polycrates for his part fulfilled his own appointed destiny, and i now give the power into the hands of the people, and proclaim to you equality. these privileges however i think it right to have assigned to me, namely that from the wealth of polycrates six talents should be taken out and given to me as a special gift; and in addition to this i choose for myself and for my descendants in succession the priesthood of zeus the liberator, to whom i myself founded a temple, while i bestow liberty upon you." he, as i say, made these offers to the samians; but one of them rose up and said: "nay, but unworthy too art thou to be our ruler, seeing that thou art of mean birth and a pestilent fellow besides. rather take care that thou give an account of the money which thou hadst to deal with." . thus said one who was a man of repute among the citizens, whose name was telesarchos; and maiandrios perceiving that if he resigned the power, some other would be set up as despot instead of himself, did not keep the purpose at all of resigning it; but having retired to the fortress he sent for each man separately, pretending that he was going to give an account of the money, and so seized them and put them in bonds. these then had been put in bonds; but maiandrios after this was overtaken by sickness, and his brother, whose name was lycaretos, expecting that he would die, put all the prisoners to death, in order that he might himself more easily get possession of the power over samos: and all this happened because, as it appears, they did not choose to be free. . so when the persians arrived at samos bringing syloson home from exile, no one raised a hand against them, and moreover the party of maiandrios and maiandrios himself said that they were ready to retire out of the island under a truce. otanes therefore having agreed on these terms and having made a treaty, the most honourable of the persians had seats placed for them in front of the fortress and were sitting there. . now the despot maiandrios had a brother who was somewhat mad, and his name was charilaos. this man for some offence which he had been committed had been confined in an underground dungeon, and at this time of which i speak, having heard what was being done and having put his head through out of the dungeon, when he saw the persians peacefully sitting there he began to cry out and said that he desired to come to speech with maiandrios. so maiandrios hearing his voice bade them loose him and bring him into his presence; and as soon as he was brought he began to abuse and revile him, trying to persuade him to attack the persians, and saying thus: "thou basest of men, didst thou put me in bonds and judge me worthy of the dungeon under ground, who am thine own brother and did no wrong worthy of bonds, and when thou seest the persians casting thee forth from the land and making thee homeless, dost thou not dare to take any revenge, though they are so exceedingly easy to be overcome? nay, but if in truth thou art afraid of them, give me thy mercenaries and i will take vengeance on them for their coming here; and thyself i am willing to let go out of the island." . thus spoke charilaos, and maiandrios accepted that which he said, not, as i think, because he had reached such a height of folly as to suppose that his own power would overcome that of the king, but rather because he grudged syloson that he should receive from him the state without trouble, and with no injury inflicted upon it. therefore he desired to provoke the persians to anger and make the samian power as feeble as possible before he gave it up to him, being well assured that the persians, when they had suffered evil, would be likely to be as bitter against the samians as well as against those who did the wrong, and knowing also that he had a safe way of escape from the island whenever he desired: for he had had a secret passage made under ground, leading from the fortress to the sea. maiandrios then himself sailed out from samos; but charilaos armed all the mercenaries, and opening wide the gates sent them out upon the persians, who were not expecting any such thing, but supposed that all had been arranged: and the mercenaries falling upon them began to slay those of the persians who had seats carried for them and were of most account. while these were thus engaged, the rest of the persian force came to the rescue, and the mercenaries were hard pressed and forced to retire to the fortress. . then otanes the persian commander, seeing that the persians had suffered greatly, purposely forgot the commands which dareios gave him when he sent him forth, not to kill any one of the samians nor to sell any into slavery, but to restore the island to syloson free from all suffering of calamity,�these commands, i say, he purposely forgot, and gave the word to his army to slay every one whom they should take, man or boy, without distinction. so while some of the army were besieging the fortress, others were slaying every one who came in their way, in sanctuary or out of sanctuary equally. . meanwhile maiandrios had escaped from samos and was sailing to lacedemon; and having come thither and caused to be brought up to the city the things which he had taken with him when he departed, he did as follows:�first, he would set out his cups of silver and of gold, and then while the servants were cleaning them, he would be engaged in conversation with cleomenes the son of anaxandrides, then king of sparta, and would bring him on to his house; and when cleomenes saw the cups he marvelled and was astonished at them, and maiandrios would bid him take away with him as many of them as he pleased. maiandrios said this twice or three times, but cleomenes herein showed himself the most upright of men; for he not only did not think fit to take that which was offered, but perceiving that maiandrios would make presents to others of the citizens, and so obtain assistance for himself, he went to the ephors and said that it was better for sparta that the stranger of samos should depart from peloponnesus, lest he might persuade either himself or some other man of the spartans to act basely. they accordingly accepted his counsel, and expelled maiandrios by proclamation. . as to samos, the persians, after sweeping the population off it, delivered it to syloson stripped of men. afterwards however the commander otanes even joined in settling people there, moved by a vision of a dream and by a disease which seized him, so that he was diseased in the genital organs. . after a naval force had thus gone against samos, the babylonians made revolt, being for this exceedingly well prepared; for during all the time of the reign of the magian and of the insurrection of the seven, during all this time and the attendant confusion they were preparing themselves for the siege of their city: and it chanced by some means that they were not observed to be doing this. then when they made open revolt, they did as follows:�after setting apart their mothers first, each man set apart also for himself one woman, whosoever he wished of his own household, and all the remainder they gathered together and killed by suffocation. each man set apart the one who has been mentioned to serve as a maker of bread, and they suffocated the rest in order that they might not consume their provisions. . dareios being informed of this and having gathered together all his power, made expedition against them, and when he had marched his army up to babylon he began to besiege them; but they cared nothing about the siege, for the babylonians used to go up to the battlements of the wall and show contempt of dareios and of his army by gestures and by words; and one of them uttered this saying: "why, o persians, do ye remain sitting here, and not depart? for then only shall ye capture us, when mules shall bring forth young." this was said by one of the babylonians, not supposing that a mule would ever bring forth young. . so when a year and seven months had now passed by, dareios began to be vexed and his whole army with him, not being able to conquer the babylonians. and yet dareios had used against them every kind of device and every possible means, but not even so could he conquer them, though besides other devices he had attempted it by that also with which cyrus conquered them; but the babylonians were terribly on their guard and he was not able to conquer them. . then in the twentieth month there happened to zopyros the son of that megabyzos who had been of the seven men who slew the magian, to this zopyros, i say, son of megabyzos there happened a prodigy,�one of the mules which served as bearers of provisions for him produced young: and when this was reported to him, and zopyros had himself seen the foal, because he did not believe the report, he charged those who had seen it not to tell that which had happened to any one, and he considered with himself what to do. and having regard to the words spoken by the babylonian, who had said at first that when mules should produce young, then the wall would be taken, having regard (i say) to this ominous saying, it seemed to zopyros that babylon could be taken: for he thought that both the man had spoken and his mule had produced young by divine dispensation. . since then it seemed to him that it was now fated that babylon should be captured, he went to dareios and inquired of him whether he thought it a matter of very great moment to conquer babylon; and hearing in answer that he thought it of great consequence, he considered again how he might be the man to take it and how the work might be his own: for among the persians benefits are accounted worthy of a very high degree of honour. he considered accordingly that he was not able to make conquest of it by any other means, but only if he should maltreat himself and desert to their side. so, making light esteem of himself, he maltreated his own body in a manner which could not be cured; for he cut off his nose and his ears, and shaved his hair round in an unseemly way, and scourged himself, and so went into the presence of dareios. . and dareios was exceedingly troubled when he saw the man of most repute with him thus maltreated; and leaping up from his seat he cried aloud and asked him who was the person who had maltreated him, and for what deed. he replied: "that man does not exist, excepting thee, who has so great power as to bring me into this condition; and not any stranger, o king, has done this, but i myself to myself, accounting it a very grievous thing that the assyrians should make a mock of the persians." he made answer: "thou most reckless of men, thou didst set the fairest name to the foulest deed when thou saidest that on account of those who are besieged thou didst bring thyself into a condition which cannot be cured. how, o thou senseless one, will the enemy surrender to us more quickly, because thou hast maltreated thyself? surely thou didst wander out of thy senses in thus destroying thyself." and he said, "if i had communicated to thee that which i was about to do, thou wouldst not have permitted me to do it; but as it was, i did it on my own account. now therefore, unless something is wanting on thy part, we shall conquer babylon: for i shall go straightway as a deserter to the wall; and i shall say to them that i suffered this treatment at thy hands: and i think that when i have convinced them that this is so, i shall obtain the command of a part of their forces. do thou then on the tenth day from that on which i shall enter within the wall take of those troops about which thou wilt have no concern if they be destroyed,�of these, i say, get a thousand by the gate of the city which is called the gate of semiramis; and after this again on the seventh day after the tenth set, i pray thee, two thousand by the gate which is called the gate of the ninevites; and after this seventh day let twenty days elapse, and then lead other four thousand and place them by the gate called the gate of the chaldeans: and let neither the former men nor these have any weapons to defend them except daggers, but this weapon let them have. then after the twentieth day at once bid the rest of the army make an attack on the wall all round, and set the persians, i pray thee, by those gates which are called the gate of belos and the gate of kissia: for, as i think, when i have displayed great deeds of prowess, the babylonians will entrust to me, besides their other things, also the keys which draw the bolts of the gates. then after that it shall be the care of myself and the persians to do that which ought to be done." . having thus enjoined he proceeded to go to the gate of the city, turning to look behind him as he went, as if he were in truth a deserter; and those who were set in that part of the wall, seeing him from the towers ran down, and slightly opening one wing of the gate asked who he was, and for what purpose he had come. and he addressed them and said that he was zopyros, and that he came as a deserter to them. the gate-keepers accordingly when they heard this led him to the public assembly of the babylonians; and being introduced before it he began to lament his fortunes, saying that he had in fact suffered at his own hands, and that he had suffered this because he had counselled the king to withdraw his army, since in truth there seemed to be no means of taking the town: "and now," he went on to say, "i am come for very great good to you, o babylonians, but for very great evil to dareios and his army, and to the persians, for he shall surely not escape with impunity for having thus maltreated me; and i know all the courses of his counsels." . thus he spoke, and the babylonians, when they saw the man of most reputation among the persians deprived of nose and ears and smeared over with blood from scourging, supposing assuredly that he was speaking the truth and had come to be their helper, were ready to put in his power that for which he asked them, and he asked them that he might command a certain force. then when he had obtained this from them, he did that which he had agreed with dareios that he would do; for he led out on the tenth day the army of the babylonians, and having surrounded the thousand men whom he had enjoined dareios first to set there, he slew them. the babylonians accordingly, perceiving that the deeds which he displayed were in accordance with his words, were very greatly rejoiced and were ready to serve him in all things: and after the lapse of the days which had been agreed upon, he again chose men of the babylonians and led them out and slew the two thousand men of the troops of dareios. seeing this deed also, the babylonians all had the name of zopyros upon their tongues, and were loud in his praise. he then again, after the lapse of the days which had been agreed upon, led them out to the place appointed, and surrounded the four thousand and slew them. when this also had been done, zopyros was everything among the babylonians, and he was appointed both commander of their army and guardian of their walls. . but when dareios made an attack according to the agreement on every side of the wall, then zopyros discovered all his craft: for while the babylonians, having gone up on the wall, were defending themselves against the attacks of the army of dareios, zopyros opened the gates called the gates of kissia and of belos, and let in the persians within the wall. and of the babylonians those who saw that which was done fled to the temple of zeus belos, but those who did not see remained each in his own appointed place, until at last they also learnt that they had been betrayed. . thus was babylon conquered for the second time: and dareios when he had overcome the babylonians, first took away the wall from round their city and pulled down all the gates; for when cyrus took babylon before him, he did neither of these things: and secondly dareios impaled the leading men to the number of about three thousand, but to the rest of the babylonians he gave back their city to dwell in: and to provide that the babylonians should have wives, in order that their race might be propagated, dareios did as follows (for their own wives, as has been declared at the beginning, the babylonians had suffocated, in provident care for their store of food):�he ordered the nations who dwelt round to bring women to babylon, fixing a certain number for each nation, so that the sum total of fifty thousand women was brought together, and from these women the present babylonians are descended. . as for zopyros, in the judgment of dareios no one of the persians surpassed him in good service, either of those who came after or of those who had gone before, excepting cyrus alone; for to cyrus no man of the persians ever yet ventured to compare himself: and dareios is said to have declared often that he would rather that zopyros were free from the injury than that he should have twenty babylons added to his possession in addition to that one which he had. moreover he gave him great honours; for not only did he give him every year those things which by the persians are accounted the most honourable, but also he granted him babylon to rule free from tribute, so long as he should live; and he added many other gifts. the son of this zopyros was megabyzos, who was made commander in egypt against the athenians and their allies; and the son of this megabyzos was zopyros, who went over to athens as a deserter from the persians. ����� notes to book iii [ see ii. .] [ {'amasin}. this accusative must be taken with {eprexe}. some editors adopt the conjecture {'amasi}, to be taken with {memphomenos} as in ch. , "did this because he had a quarrel with amasis."] [ see ii. , .] [ {suron}: see ii. .] [ {keinon}: most mss. and many editions have {keimenon}, "laid up."] [ {demarkhon}.] [ {exaireomenos}: explained by some "disembarked" or "unloaded."] [ or "orotal."] [ {dia de touton}.] [ {trion}: omitted by some good mss.] [ see ii. .] [ {alla kai tote uathesan ai thebai psakadi}.] [ the so-called {leukon teikhon} on the south side of memphis: cp. ch. .] [ {omoios kai} omitting {a}.] [ {pentakosias mneas}.] [ {aneklaion}: perhaps {anteklaion}, which has most ms. authority, may be right, "answer their lamentations."] [ see ch. .] [ {egeomenon}: some editors adopt the conjecture {agomenon}, "was being led."] [ {sphi}: so in the mss.: some editions (following the aldine) have {oi}.] [ {to te}: a correction for {tode}: some editors read {tode, to}, "by this, namely by the case of," etc.] [ "gypsum."] [ {epi}, lit. "after."] [ {leukon tetragonon}: so the mss. some editors, in order to bring the statement of herodotus into agreement with the fact, read {leukon ti trigonon}, "a kind of white triangle": so stein.] [ {epi}: this is altered unnecessarily by most recent editors to {upo}, on the authority of eusebius and pliny, who say that the mark was under the tongue.] [ {ekeino}: some understand this to refer to cambyses, "that there was no one now who would come to the assistance of cambyses, if he were in trouble," an office which would properly have belonged to smerdis, cp. ch. : but the other reference seems more natural.] [ epilepsy or something similar.] [ cp. note on i. .] [ {pros ton patera [telesai] kuron}: the word {telesai} seems to be corrupt. stein suggests {eikasai}, "as compared with." some editors omit the word.] [ {nomon panton basilea pheras einai}: but {nomos} in this fragment of pindar is rather the natural law by which the strong prevail over the weak.] [ {iakhon}: stein reads by conjecture {skhon}, "having obtained possession."] [ {mede}: abicht reads {meden} by conjecture.] [ {alla}, under the influence of the preceding negative.] [ {prosson} refers grammatically only to {autos}, and marks the reference as being chiefly to himself throughout the sentence.] [ {prorrizos}, "by the roots."] [ {toi tesi pathesi}: the mss. mostly have {toi autaisi} or {toiautaisi}.] [ see i. .] [ {es aigupton epetheke}, "delivered it (to a messenger to convey) to egypt."] [ the island of carpathos, the modern scarpanto.] [ {to thulako periergasthai}: which is susceptible of a variety of meanings. in a similar story told of the chians the spartans are made to say that it would have been enough to show the empty bag without saying anything. (sext. empir. ii. .) probably the meaning here is that if they were going to say so much, they need not have shown the bag, for the words were enough without the sight of the bag: or it may be only that the words {o thulakos} were unnecessary in the sentence {o thulakos alphiton deitai}.] [ see i. .] [ {genee}. to save the chronology some insert {trite} before {genee}, but this will be useless unless the clause {kata de ton auton khronon tou kreteros te arpage} be omitted, as it is also proposed to do. periander is thought to have died about b.c.; but see v. .] [ the mss. add {eontes eoutoisi}, and apparently something has been lost. stein and others follow valckenär in adding {suggenees}, "are ever at variance with one another in spite of their kinship."] [ {noo labon}: the mss. have {now labon kai touto}.] [ {iren zemien}.] [ {tauta ta nun ekhon presseis}: the form of sentence is determined by its antithesis to {ta agatha ta nun ego ekho}.] [ {basileus}, because already destined as his father's successor.] [ {sphea}: the mss. have {sphe} here, and in the middle of the next chapter.] [ the lacedemonians who were not dorians had of course taken part in the trojan war.] [ {leuka genetai}.] [ {prutaneia}.] [ {lokhon}.] [ {prosiskhon}: some read {proseskhon}, "had put in."] [ {kai ton tes diktunes neon}: omitted by some editors.] [ {orguias}.] [ {stadioi}.] [ {kai}: the mss. have {kata}.] [ {en te gar anthropeie phusi ouk enen ara}.] [ or possibly, "the most necessary of those things which remain to be done, is this."] [ {apistie polle upekekhuto}, cp. ii. .] [ or perhaps phaidymia.] [ {gobrues} or {gobrues}.] [ {'intaphrenea}: this form, which is given by at least one ms. throughout, seems preferable, as being closer to the persian name which it represents, "vindafrana," cp. v. . most of the mss. have {'intaphernea}.] [ {phthas emeu}.] [ {ti}: some mss. have {tis}, "in order that persons may trust (themselves) to them more."] [ i.e. "let him be killed on the spot."] [ {ta panta muria}, "ten thousand of every possible thing," (or, "of all the usual gifts"; cp. ch. {ten pasan doreen}).] [ {dethen}.] [ {oideonton ton pregmaton}: "while things were swelling," cp. ch. : perhaps here, "before things came to a head."] [ {andreona}, as in ch. .] [ {ana te edramon palin}, i.e. they ran back into the room out of which they had come to see what was the matter; with this communicated a bedchamber which had its light only by the open door of communication.] [ {magophonia}.] [ or, "after it had lasted more than five days," taking {thorubos} as the subject of {egeneto}. the reason for mentioning the particular number five seems to be contained in the passage quoted by stein from sextus empiricus, {enteuphen kai oi person kharientes nomon ekhousi, basileos par' autois teleutesantos pente tas ephexes emeras anomian agein}.] [ see vi. .] [ {isonomie}, "equal distribution," i.e. of civil rights.] [ {ouden oikeion}: the mss. have {ouden oud' oikeion}, which might be translated "anything of its own either."] [ {to lego}: the mss. have {ton lego}, "each of the things about which i speak being best in its own kind." the reading {to logo}, which certainly gives a more satisfactory meaning, is found in stobæus, who quotes the passage.] [ {kakoteta}, as opposed to the {arete} practised by the members of an aristocracy.] [ {okto kaiebdomekonta mneas}: the mss. have {ebdomekonta mneas} only, and this reading seems to have existed as early as the second century of our era: nevertheless the correction is required, not only by the facts of the case, but also by comparison with ch. .] [ {nomos}, and so throughout.] [ or "hygennians."] [ i.e. the cappadokians, see i. .] [ see ii. .] [ {muriadas}: the mss. have {muriasi}. with {muriadas} we must supply {medimnon}. the {medimnos} is really about a bushel and a half.] [ {pausikai}: some mss. have {pausoi}.] [ {tous anaspastous kaleomenous}.] [ {kaspioi}: some read by conjecture {kaspeiroi}, others {kasioi}.] [ {ogdokonta kai oktakosia kai einakiskhilia}: the mss. have {tesserakonta kai pentakosia kai einakiskhilia} ( ), which is irreconcilable with the total sum given below, and also with the sum obtained by adding up the separate items given in babylonian talents, whether we reduce them by the proportion : given by the mss. in ch. , or by the true proportion : . on the other hand the total sum given below is precisely the sum of the separate items (after subtracting the talents used for the defence of kilikia), reduced in the proportion : ; and this proves the necessity of the emendation here ({thop} for {thphm}) as well as supplying a strong confirmation of that adopted in ch. .] [ the reckoning throughout is in round numbers, nothing less than the tens being mentioned.] [ {oi peri te nusen}: perhaps this should be corrected to {oi te peri nusen}, because the {sunamphoteroi} which follows seem to refer to two separate peoples.] [ the passage "these ethiopians�dwellings" is marked by stein as doubtful on internal grounds. the callantian indians mentioned seem to be the same as the callantians mentioned in ch. .] [ {khoinikas}.] [ {dia penteteridos}.] [ i.e. the indus.] [ either {auton tekomenon} is to be taken absolutely, equivalent to {autou tekomenou}, and {ta krea} is the subject of {diaphtheiresthai}; or {auton} is the subject and {ta krea} is accusative of definition, "wasting away in his flesh." some mss. have {diaphtheirein}, "that he is spoiling his flesh for them."] [ {gar}: some would read {de}, but the meaning seems to be, "this is done universally, for in the case of weakness arising from old age, the same takes place."] [ {pros arktou te kai boreo anemou}.] [ this clause indicates the manner in which the size is so exactly known.] [ {autoi}, i.e. in themselves as well as in their habits. some mss. read {to} for {autoi}, which is adopted by several editors; others adopt the conjecture {autois}.] [ i.e. two in each hind-leg.] [ {kai paraluesthai}: {kai} is omitted in some mss. and by some editors.] [ {ouk omou}: some editors omit {ouk}: the meaning seems to be that in case of necessity they are thrown off one after another to delay the pursuing animals.] [ the meaning of the passage is doubtful: possibly it should be translated (omitting {kai}) "the male camels, being inferior in speed to the females, flag in their course and are dragged along, first one and then the other."] [ see ii. .] [ {metri}: the mss. have {metre}, "womb," but for this herod. seems to use the plural.] [ {metera}: most mss. have {metran}.] [ most of the mss. have {auton} before {ta melea}, which by some editors is omitted, and by others altered to {autika}. if {auton} is to stand it must be taken with {katapetomenas}, "flying down upon them," and so it is punctuated in the medicean ms.] [ {elkea}. there is a play upon the words {epelkein} and {elkea} which can hardly be reproduced in translation.] [ {kassiteridas}.] [ {o kassiteros}.] [ cp. iv. .] [ {akinakea}.] [ this is the second of the satrapies mentioned in the list, see ch. , named from its chief town. oroites also possessed himself of the first satrapy, of which the chief town was magnesia (ch. ), and then of the third (see ch. ).] [ the satrapy of daskyleion is the third in the list, see ch. .] [ {su gar en andron logo}.] [ or, "banqueting hall," cp. iv. .] [ {apestrammenon}: most of the mss. have {epestrammenon}, "turned towards (the wall)."] [ "whenever he (i.e. zeus) rained."] [ this clause, "as amasis the king of egypt had foretold to him," is omitted in some mss. and by some editors.] [ {oideonton eti ton pregmaton}: cp. ch. .] [ i.e. satrapies: see ch. , .] [ {apikomenon kai anakomisthenton}: the first perhaps referring to the slaves and the other to the rest of the property.] [ i.e. the art of evasion.] [ {es tou khrosou ten theken}: {es} is not in the mss., which have generally {tou khrusou sun theke}: one only has {tou khrusou ten theken}.] [ {stateras}: i.e. the {stater dareikos} "daric," worth about £ ; cp. note on vii. .] [ {ekaton mneon}, "a hundred minae," of which sixty go to the talent.] [ this passage, from "for this event happened" to the end of the chapter, is suspected as an interpolation by some editors, on internal grounds.] [ tarentum. italy means for herodotus the southern part of the peninsula only.] [ {restones}: so one inferior ms., probably by conjectural emendation: the rest have {krestones}. the ionic form however of {rastone} would be {reistone}. some would read {khrestones}, a word which is not found, but might mean the same as {kresmosunes} (ix. ), "in consequence of the request of demokedes."] [ {kat' emporien strateuomenoi}: some mss. read {kat' emporien, oi de strateuomenoi}, "some for trade, others serving in the army."] [ {prothura}.] [ {e tis e oudeis}.] [ {isonomien}: see ch. , note.] [ {all' oud' axios eis su ge}. maiandrios can claim no credit or reward for giving up that of which by his own unworthiness he would in any case have been deprived.] [ {ou de ti}: some read {oud' eti} or {ou de eti}, "no longer kept the purpose."] [ {en gorgure}: the word also means a "sewer" or "conduit."] [ {prosempikraneesthai emellon toisi samioisi}.] [ {tous diphrophoreumenous}: a doubtful word: it seems to be a sort of title belonging to persians of a certain rank, perhaps those who were accompanied by men to carry seats for them, the same as the {thronoi} mentioned in ch. ; or, "those who were borne in litters."] [ {sageneusantes}: see vi. . the word is thought by stein to have been interpolated here.] [ or, "are very highly accounted and tend to advancement."] [ "opposite to."] [ the words "and to the persians" are omitted in some mss.] book iv. the fourth book of the histories, called melpomene . after babylon had been taken, the march of dareios himself against the scythians took place: for now that asia was flourishing in respect of population, and large sums were being gathered in as revenue, dareios formed the desire to take vengeance upon the scythians, because they had first invaded the median land and had overcome in fight those who opposed them; and thus they had been the beginners of wrong. the scythians in truth, as i have before said, had ruled over upper asia for eight-and-twenty years; for they had invaded asia in their pursuit of the kimmerians, and they had deposed the medes from their rule, who had rule over asia before the scythians came. now when the scythians had been absent from their own land for eight-and-twenty years, as they were returning to it after that interval of time, they were met by a contest not less severe than that which they had had with the medes, since they found an army of no mean size opposing them. for the wives of the scythians, because their husbands were absent from them for a long time, had associated with the slaves. . now the scythians put out the eyes of all their slaves because of the milk which they drink; and they do as follows:�they take blow-pipes of bone just like flutes, and these they insert into the vagina of the mare and blow with their mouths, and others milk while they blow: and they say that they do this because the veins of the mare are thus filled, being blown out, and so the udder is let down. when they had drawn the milk they pour it into wooden vessels hollowed out, and they set the blind slaves in order about the vessels and agitate the milk. then that which comes to the top they skim off, considering it the more valuable part, whereas they esteem that which settles down to be less good than the other. for this reason the scythians put out the eyes of all whom they catch; for they are not tillers of the soil but nomads. . from these their slaves then, i say, and from their wives had been born and bred up a generation of young men, who having learnt the manner of their birth set themselves to oppose the scythians as they were returning from the medes. and first they cut off their land by digging a broad trench extending from the tauric mountains to the maiotian lake, at the point where this is broadest; then afterwards when the scythians attempted to invade the land, they took up a position against them and fought; and as they fought many times, and the scythians were not able to get any advantage in the fighting, one of them said: "what a thing is this that we are doing, scythians! we are fighting against our own slaves, and we are not only becoming fewer in number ourselves by being slain in battle, but also we are killing them, and so we shall have fewer to rule over in future. now therefore to me it seems good that we leave spears and bows and that each one take his horse-whip and so go up close to them: for so long as they saw us with arms in our hands, they thought themselves equal to us and of equal birth; but when they shall see that we have whips instead of arms, they will perceive that they are our slaves, and having acknowledged this they will not await our onset." . when they heard this, the scythians proceeded to do that which he said, and the others being panic-stricken by that which was done forgot their fighting and fled. thus the scythians had ruled over asia; and in such manner, when they were driven out again by the medes, they had returned to their own land. for this dareios wished to take vengeance upon them, and was gathering together an army to go against them. . now the scythians say that their nation is the youngest of all nations, and that this came to pass as follows:�the first man who ever existed in this region, which then was desert, was one named targitaos: and of this targitaos they say, though i do not believe it for my part, however they say the parents were zeus and the daughter of the river borysthenes. targitaos, they report, was produced from some such origin as this, and of him were begotten three sons, lipoxaïs and arpoxaïs and the youngest colaxaïs. in the reign of these there came down from heaven certain things wrought of gold, a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a cup, and fell in the scythian land: and first the eldest saw and came near them, desiring to take them, but the gold blazed with fire when he approached it: then when he had gone away from it, the second approached, and again it did the same thing. these then the gold repelled by blazing with fire; but when the third and youngest came up to it, the flame was quenched, and he carried them to his own house. the elder brothers then, acknowledging the significance of this thing, delivered the whole of the kingly power to the youngest. . from lixopaïs, they say, are descended those scythians who are called the race of the auchatai; from the middle brother arpoxaïs those who are called catiaroi and traspians, and from the youngest of them the "royal" tribe, who are called paralatai: and the whole together are called, they say, scolotoi, after the name of their king; but the hellenes gave them the name of scythians. . thus the scythians say they were produced; and from the time of their origin, that is to say from the first king targitaos, to the passing over of dareios against them, they say that there is a period of a thousand years and no more. now this sacred gold is guarded by the kings with the utmost care, and they visit it every year with solemn sacrifices of propitiation: moreover if any one goes to sleep while watching in the open air over this gold during the festival, the scythians say that he does not live out the year; and there is given him for this so much land as he shall ride round himself on his horse in one day. now as the land was large, colaxaïs, they say, established three kingdoms for his sons; and of these he made one larger than the rest, and in this the gold is kept. but as to the upper parts which lie on the north side of those who dwell above this land, they say one can neither see nor pass through any further by reason of feathers which are poured down; for both the earth and the air are full of feathers, and this is that which shuts off the view. . thus say the scythians about themselves and about the region above them; but the hellenes who dwell about the pontus say as follows:�heracles driving the cattle of geryones came to this land, then desert, which the scythians now inhabit; and geryones, says the tale, dwelt away from the region of the pontus, living in the island called by the hellenes erytheia, near gadeira which is outside the pillars of heracles by the ocean.�as to the ocean, they say indeed that it flows round the whole earth beginning from the place of the sunrising, but they do not prove this by facts.�from thence heracles came to the land now called scythia; and as a storm came upon him together with icy cold, he drew over him his lion's skin and went to sleep. meanwhile the mares harnessed in his chariot disappeared by a miraculous chance, as they were feeding. . then when heracles woke he sought for them; and having gone over the whole land, at last he came to the region which is called hylaia; and there he found in a cave a kind of twofold creature formed by the union of a maiden and a serpent, whose upper parts from the buttocks upwards were those of a woman, but her lower parts were those of a snake. having seen her and marvelled at her, he asked her then whether she had seen any mares straying anywhere; and she said that she had them herself and would not give them up until he lay with her; and heracles lay with her on condition of receiving them. she then tried to put off the giving back of the mares, desiring to have heracles with her as long as possible, while he on the other hand desired to get the mares and depart; and at last she gave them back and said: "these mares when they came hither i saved for thee, and thou didst give me reward for saving them; for i have by thee three sons. tell me then, what must i do with these when they shall be grown to manhood, whether i shall settle them here, for over this land i have power alone, or send them away to thee?" she thus asked of him, and he, they say, replied: "when thou seest that the boys are grown to men, do this and thou shalt not fail of doing right:�whichsoever of them thou seest able to stretch this bow as i do now, and to be girded with this girdle, him cause to be the settler of this land; but whosoever of them fails in the deeds which i enjoin, send him forth out of the land: and if thou shalt do thus, thou wilt both have delight thyself and perform that which has been enjoined to thee." . upon this he drew one of his bows (for up to that time heracles, they say, was wont to carry two) and showed her the girdle, and then he delivered to her both the bow and the girdle, which had at the end of its clasp a golden cup; and having given them he departed. she then, when her sons had been born and had grown to be men, gave them names first, calling one of them agathyrsos and the next gelonos and the youngest skythes; then bearing in mind the charge given to her, she did that which was enjoined. and two of her sons, agathyrsos and gelonos, not having proved themselves able to attain to the task set before them, departed from the land, being cast out by her who bore them; but skythes the youngest of them performed the task and remained in the land: and from skythes the son of heracles were descended, they say, the succeeding kings of the scythians (skythians): and they say moreover that it is by reason of the cup that the scythians still even to this day wear cups attached to their girdles: and this alone his mother contrived for skythes. such is the story told by the hellenes who dwell about the pontus. . there is however also another story, which is as follows, and to this i am most inclined myself. it is to the effect that the nomad scythians dwelling in asia, being hard pressed in war by the massagetai, left their abode and crossing the river araxes came towards the kimmerian land (for the land which now is occupied by the scythians is said to have been in former times the land of the kimmerians); and the kimmerians, when the scythians were coming against them, took counsel together, seeing that a great host was coming to fight against them; and it proved that their opinions were divided, both opinions being vehemently maintained, but the better being that of their kings: for the opinion of the people was that it was necessary to depart and that they ought not to run the risk of fighting against so many, but that of the kings was to fight for their land with those who came against them: and as neither the people were willing by means to agree to the counsel of the kings nor the kings to that of the people, the people planned to depart without fighting and to deliver up the land to the invaders, while the kings resolved to die and to be laid in their own land, and not to flee with the mass of the people, considering the many goods of fortune which they had enjoyed, and the many evils which it might be supposed would come upon them, if they fled from their native land. having resolved upon this, they parted into two bodies, and making their numbers equal they fought with one another: and when these had all been killed by one another's hands, then the people of the kimmerians buried them by the bank of the river tyras (where their burial-place is still to be seen), and having buried them, then they made their way out from the land, and the scythians when they came upon it found the land deserted of its inhabitants. . and there are at the present time in the land of scythia kimmerian walls, and a kimmerian ferry; and there is also a region which is called kimmeria, and the so-called kimmerian bosphorus. it is known moreover that the kimmerians, in their flight to asia from the scythians, also made a settlement on that peninsula on which now stands the hellenic city of sinope; and it is known too that the scythians pursued them and invaded the land of media, having missed their way; for while the kimmerians kept ever along by the sea in their flight, the scythians pursued them keeping caucasus on their right hand, until at last they invaded media, directing their course inland. this then which has been told is another story, and it is common both to hellenes and barbarians. . aristeas however the son of caÿstrobios, a man of proconnesos, said in the verses which he composed, that he came to the land of the issedonians being possessed by phoebus, and that beyond the issedonians dwelt arimaspians, a one-eyed race, and beyond these the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond them the hyperboreans extending as far as the sea: and all these except the hyperboreans, beginning with the arimaspians, were continually making war on their neighbours, and the issedonians were gradually driven out of their country by the arimaspians and the scythians by the issedonians, and so the kimmerians, who dwelt on the southern sea, being pressed by the scythians left their land. thus neither does he agree in regard to this land with the report of the scythians. . as to aristeas who composed this, i have said already whence he was; and i will tell also the tale which i heard about him in proconnesos and kyzicos. they say that aristeas, who was in birth inferior to none of the citizens, entered into a fuller's shop in proconnesos and there died; and the fuller closed his workshop and went away to report the matter to those who were related to the dead man. and when the news had been spread abroad about the city that aristeas was dead, a man of kyzicos who had come from the town of artake entered into controversy with those who said so, and declared that he had met him going towards kyzicos and had spoken with him: and while he was vehement in dispute, those who were related to the dead man came to the fuller's shop with the things proper in order to take up the corpse for burial; and when the house was opened, aristeas was not found there either dead or alive. in the seventh year after this he appeared at proconnesos and composed those verses which are now called by the hellenes the arimaspeia, and having composed them he disappeared the second time. . so much is told by these cities; and what follows i know happened to the people of metapontion in italy two hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of aristeas, as i found by putting together the evidence at proconnesos and metapontion. the people of metapontion say that aristeas himself appeared in their land and bade them set up an altar of apollo and place by its side a statue bearing the name of aristeas of proconnesos; for he told them that to their land alone of all the italiotes apollo had come, and he, who now was aristeas, was accompanying him, being then a raven when he accompanied the god. having said this he disappeared; and the metapontines say that they sent to delphi and asked the god what the apparition of the man meant: and the pythian prophetess bade them obey the command of the apparition, and told them that if they obeyed, it would be the better for them. they therefore accepted this answer and performed the commands; and there stands a statue now bearing the name of aristeas close by the side of the altar dedicated to apollo, and round it stand laurel trees; and the altar is set up in the market-place. let this suffice which has been said about aristeas. . now of the land about which this account has been begun, no one knows precisely what lies beyond it: for i am not able to hear of any one who alleges that he knows as an eye-witness; and even aristeas, the man of whom i was making mention just now, even he, i say, did not allege, although he was composing verse, that he went further than the issedonians; but that which is beyond them he spoke of by hearsay, and reported that it was the issedonians who said these things. so far however as we were able to arrive at certainty by hearsay, carrying inquiries as far as possible, all this shall be told. . beginning with the trading station of the borysthenites,�for of the parts along the sea this is the central point of all scythia,�beginning with this, the first regions are occupied by the callipidai, who are hellenic scythians; and above these is another race, who are called alazonians. these last and the callipidai in all other respects have the same customs as the scythians, but they both sow corn and use it as food, and also onions, leeks, lentils and millet. above the alazonians dwell scythians who till the ground, and these sow their corn not for food but to sell. .beyond them dwell the neuroi; and beyond the neuroi towards the north wind is a region without inhabitants, as far as we know. these races are along the river hypanis to the west of the borysthenes; but after crossing the borysthenes, first from the sea-coast is hylaia, and beyond this as one goes up the river dwell agricultural scythians, whom the hellenes who live upon the river hypanis call borysthenites, calling themselves at the same time citizens of olbia. these agricultural scythians occupy the region which extends eastwards for a distance of three days' journey, reaching to a river which is called panticapes, and northwards for a distance of eleven days' sail up the borysthenes. then immediately beyond these begins the desert and extends for a great distance; and on the other side of the desert dwell the androphagoi, a race apart by themselves and having no connection with the scythians. beyond them begins a region which is really desert and has no race of men in it, as far as we know. . the region which lies to the east of these agricultural scythians, after one has crossed the river panticapes, is occupied by nomad scythians, who neither sow anything nor plough the earth; and this whole region is bare of trees except hylaia. these nomads occupy a country which extends to the river gerros, a distance of fourteen days' journey eastwards. . then on the other side of the gerros we have those parts which are called the "royal" lands and those scythians who are the bravest and most numerous and who esteem the other scythians their slaves. these reach southwards to the tauric land, and eastwards to the trench which those who were begotten of the blind slaves dug, and to the trading station which is called cremnoi upon the maiotian lake; and some parts of their country reach to the river tanaïs. beyond the royal scythians towards the north wind dwell the melanchlainoi, of a different race and not scythian. the region beyond the melanchlainoi is marshy and not inhabited by any, so far as we know. . after one has crossed the river tanaïs the country is no longer scythia, but the first of the divisions belongs to the sauromatai, who beginning at the corner of the maiotian lake occupy land extending towards the north wind fifteen days' journey, and wholly bare of trees both cultivated and wild. above these, holding the next division of land, dwell the budinoi, who occupy a land wholly overgrown with forest consisting of all kinds of trees. . then beyond the budinoi towards the north, first there is desert for seven days' journey; and after the desert turning aside somewhat more towards the east wind we come to land occupied by the thyssagetai, a numerous people and of separate race from the others. these live by hunting; and bordering upon them there are settled also in these same regions men who are called irycai, who also live by hunting, which they practise in the following manner:�the hunter climbs up a tree and lies in wait there for his game (now trees are abundant in all this country), and each has a horse at hand, which has been taught to lie down upon its belly in order that it may make itself low, and also a dog: and when he sees the wild animal from the tree, he first shoots his arrow and then mounts upon his horse and pursues it, and the dog seizes hold of it. above these in a direction towards the east dwell other scythians, who have revolted from the royal scythians and so have come to this region. . as far as the country of these scythians the whole land which has been described is level plain and has a deep soil; but after this point it is stony and rugged. then when one has passed through a great extent of this rugged country, there dwell in the skirts of lofty mountains men who are said to be all bald-headed from their birth, male and female equally, and who have flat noses and large chins and speak a language of their own, using the scythian manner of dress, and living on the produce of trees. the tree on the fruit of which they live is called the pontic tree, and it is about the size of a fig-tree: this bears a fruit the size of a bean, containing a stone. when the fruit has ripened, they strain it through cloths and there flows from it a thick black juice, and this juice which flows from it is called as-chy. this they either lick up or drink mixed with milk, and from its lees, that is the solid part, they make cakes and use them for food; for they have not many cattle, since the pastures there are by no means good. each man has his dwelling under a tree, in winter covering the tree all round with close white felt-cloth, and in summer without it. these are injured by no men, for they are said to be sacred, and they possess no weapon of war. these are they also who decide the disputes rising among their neighbours; and besides this, whatever fugitive takes refuge with them is injured by no one: and they are called argippaians. . now as far as these bald-headed men there is abundantly clear information about the land and about the nations on this side of them; for not only do certain of the scythians go to them, from whom it is not difficult to get information, but also some of the hellenes who are at the trading-station of the borysthenes and the other trading-places of the pontic coast: and those of the scythians who go to them transact their business through seven interpreters and in seven different languages. . so far as these, i say, the land is known; but concerning the region to the north of the bald-headed men no one can speak with certainty, for lofty and impassable mountains divide it off, and no one passes over them. however these bald-headed men say (though i do not believe it) that the mountains are inhabited by men with goats' feet; and that after one has passed beyond these, others are found who sleep through six months of the year. this i do not admit at all as true. however, the country to the east of the bald-headed men is known with certainty, being inhabited by the issedonians, but that which lies beyond both the bald-headed men and the issedonians towards the north wind is unknown, except so far as we know it from the accounts given by these nations which have just been mentioned. . the issedonians are said to have these customs:�when a man's father is dead, all the relations bring cattle to the house, and then having slain them and cut up the flesh, they cut up also the dead body of the father of their entertainer, and mixing all the flesh together they set forth a banquet. his skull however they strip of the flesh and clean it out and then gild it over, and after that they deal with it as a sacred thing and perform for the dead man great sacrifices every year. this each son does for his father, just as the hellenes keep the day of memorial for the dead. in other respects however this race also is said to live righteously, and their women have equal rights with the men. . these then also are known; but as to the region beyond them, it is the issedonians who report that there are there one-eyed men and gold-guarding griffins; and the scythians report this having received it from them, and from the scythians we, that is the rest of mankind, have got our belief; and we call them in scythian language arimaspians, for the scythians call the number one arima and the eye spu. . this whole land which has been described is so exceedingly severe in climate, that for eight months of the year there is frost so hard as to be intolerable; and during these if you pour out water you will not be able to make mud, but only if you kindle a fire can you make it; and the sea is frozen and the whole of the kimmerian bosphorus, so that the scythians who are settled within the trench make expeditions and drive their waggons over into the country of the sindians. thus it continues to be winter for eight months, and even for the remaining four it is cold in those parts. this winter is distinguished in its character from all the winters which come in other parts of the world; for in it there is no rain to speak of at the usual season for rain, whereas in summer it rains continually; and thunder does not come at the time when it comes in other countries, but is very frequent, in the summer; and if thunder comes in winter, it is marvelled at as a prodigy: just so, if an earthquake happens, whether in summer or in winter, it is accounted a prodigy in scythia. horses are able to endure this winter, but neither mules nor asses can endure it at all, whereas in other countries horses if they stand in frost lose their limbs by mortification, while asses and mules endure it. . i think also that it is for this reason that the hornless breed of oxen in that country have no horns growing; and there is a verse of homer in the odyssey supporting my opinion, which runs this:� "also the libyan land, where the sheep very quickly grow hornèd," for it is rightly said that in hot regions the horns come quickly, whereas in extreme cold the animals either have no horns growing at all, or hardly any. . in that land then this takes place on account of the cold; but (since my history proceeded from the first seeking occasions for digression) i feel wonder that in the whole land of elis mules cannot be bred, though that region is not cold, nor is there any other evident cause. the eleians themselves say that in consequence of some curse mules are not begotten in their land; but when the time approaches for the mares to conceive, they drive them out into the neighbouring lands and there in the land of their neighbours they admit to them the he-asses until the mares are pregnant, and then they drive them back. . as to the feathers of which the scythians say that the air is full, and that by reason of them they are not able either to see or to pass through the further parts of the continent, the opinion which i have is this:�in the parts beyond this land it snows continually, though less in summer than in winter, as might be supposed. now whomsoever has seen close at hand snow falling thickly, knows what i mean without further explanation, for the snow is like feathers: and on account of this wintry weather, being such as i have said, the northern parts of this continent are uninhabitable. i think therefore that by the feathers the scythians and those who dwell near them mean symbolically the snow. this then which has been said goes to the furthest extent of the accounts given. . about a hyperborean people the scythians report nothing, nor do any of those who dwell in this region, unless it be the issedonians: but in my opinion neither do these report anything; for if they did the scythians also would report it, as they do about the one-eyed people. hesiod however has spoken of hyperboreans, and so also has homer in the poem of the "epigonoi," at least if homer was really the composer of that epic. . but much more about them is reported by the people of delos than by any others. for these say that sacred offerings bound up in wheat straw are carried from the land of the hyperboreans and come to the scythians, and then from the scythians the neighbouring nations in succession receive them and convey them westwards, finally as far as the adriatic: thence they are sent forward towards the south, and the people of dodona receive them first of all the hellenes, and from these they come down to the malian gulf and are passed over to euboea, where city sends them on to city till they come to carystos. after this andros is left out, for the carystians are those who bring them to tenos, and the tenians to delos. thus they say that these sacred offerings come to delos; but at first, they say, the hyperboreans sent two maidens bearing the sacred offerings, whose names, say the delians, were hyperoche and laodike, and with them for their protection the hyperboreans sent five men of their nation to attend them, those namely who are now called perphereës and have great honours paid to them in delos. since however the hyperboreans found that those who were sent away did not return back, they were troubled to think that it would always befall them to send out and not to receive back; and so they bore the offerings to the borders of their land bound up in wheat straw, and laid a charge upon their neighbours, bidding them send these forward from themselves to another nation. these things then, they say, come to delos being thus sent forward; and i know of my own knowledge that a thing is done which has resemblance to these offerings, namely that the women of thrace and paionia, when they sacrifice to artemis "the queen," do not make their offerings without wheat straw. . these i know do as i have said; and for those maidens from the hyperboreans, who died in delos, both the girls and the boys of the delians cut off their hair: the former before marriage cut off a lock and having wound it round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the temple of artemis, and over it grows an olive-tree), and all the boys of the delians wind some of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place it upon the tomb. . the maidens, i say, have this honour paid them by the dwellers in delos: and the same people say that arge and opis also, being maidens, came to delos, passing from the hyperboreans by the same nations which have been mentioned, even before hyperoche and laodike. these last, they say, came bearing for eileithuia the tribute which they had laid upon themselves for the speedy birth, but arge and opis came with the divinities themselves, and other honours have been assigned to them by the people of delos: for the women, they say, collect for them, naming them by their names in the hymn which olen a man of lykia composed in their honour; and both the natives of the other islands and the ionians have learnt from them to sing hymns naming opis and arge and collecting:�now this olen came from lukia and composed also the other ancient hymns which are sung in delos:�and moreover they say that when the thighs of the victim are consumed upon the altar, the ashes of them are used to cast upon the grave of opis and arge. now their grave is behind the temple of artemis, turned towards the east, close to the banqueting hall of the keïeans. . let this suffice which has been said of the hyperboreans; for the tale of abaris, who is reported to have been a hyperborean, i do not tell, namely how he carried the arrow about all over the earth, eating no food. if however there are any hyperboreans, it follows that there are also hypernotians; and i laugh when i see that, though many before this have drawn maps of the earth, yet no one has set the matter forth in an intelligent way; seeing that they draw ocean flowing round the earth, which is circular exactly as if drawn with compasses, and they make asia equal in size to europe. in a few words i shall declare the size of each division and of what nature it is as regards outline. . the persians inhabit asia extending to the southern sea, which is called the erythraian; and above these towards the north wind dwell the medes, and above the medes the saspeirians, and above the saspeirians the colchians, extending to the northern sea, into which the river phasis runs. these four nations inhabit from sea to sea. . from them westwards two peninsulas stretch out from asia into the sea, and these i will describe. the first peninsula on the one of its sides, that is the northern, stretches along beginning from the phasis and extending to the sea, going along the pontus and the hellespont as far as sigeion in the land of troy; and on the southern side the same peninsula stretches from the myriandrian gulf, which lies near phenicia, in the direction of the sea as far as the headland triopion; and in this peninsula dwell thirty races of men. . this then is one of the peninsulas, and the other beginning from the land of the persians stretches along to the erythraian sea, including persia and next after it assyria, and arabia after assyria: and this ends, or rather is commonly supposed to end, at the arabian gulf, into which dareios conducted a channel from the nile. now in the line stretching to phenicia from the land of the persians the land is broad and the space abundant, but after phenicia this peninsula goes by the shore of our sea along palestine, syria, and egypt, where it ends; and in it there are three nations only. . these are the parts of asia which tend towards the west from the persian land; but as to those which lie beyond the persians and medes and saspeirians and colchians towards the east and the sunrising, on one side the erythraian sea runs along by them, and on the north both the caspian sea and the river araxes, which flows towards the rising sun: and asia is inhabited as far as the indian land; but from this onwards towards the east it becomes desert, nor can any one say what manner of land it is. . such and so large is asia: and libya is included in the second peninsula; for after egypt libya succeeds at once. now about egypt this peninsula is narrow, for from our sea to the erythraian sea is a distance there of ten myriads of fathoms, which would amount to a thousand furlongs; but after this narrow part, the portion of the peninsula which is called libya is, as it chances, extremely broad. . i wonder then at those who have parted off and divided the world into libya, asia, and europe, since the difference between these is not small; for in length europe extends along by both, while in breadth it is clear to me that it is beyond comparison larger; for libya furnishes proofs about itself that it is surrounded by sea, except so much of it as borders upon asia; and this fact was shown by necos king of the egyptians first of all those about whom we have knowledge. he when he had ceased digging the channel which goes through from the nile to the arabian gulf, sent phenicians with ships, bidding them sail and come back through the pillars of heracles to the northern sea and so to egypt. the phenicians therefore set forth from the erythraian sea and sailed through the southern sea; and when autumn came, they would put to shore and sow the land, wherever in libya they might happen to be as they sailed, and then they waited for the harvest: and having reaped the corn they would sail on, so that after two years had elapsed, in the third year they turned through the pillars of heracles and arrived again in egypt. and they reported a thing which i cannot believe, but another man may, namely that in sailing round libya they had the sun on their right hand. . thus was this country first known to be what it is, and after this it is the carthaginians who make report of it; for as to sataspes the son of teaspis the achaimenid, he did not sail round libya, though he was sent for this very purpose, but was struck with fear by the length of the voyage and the desolate nature of the land, and so returned back and did not accomplish the task which his mother laid upon him. for this man had outraged a daughter of zopyros the son of megabyzos, a virgin; and then when he was about to be impaled by order of king xerxes for this offence, the mother of sataspes, who was a sister of dareios, entreated for his life, saying that she would herself lay upon him a greater penalty than xerxes; for he should be compelled (she said) to sail round libya, until in sailing round it he came to the arabian gulf. so then xerxes having agreed upon these terms, sataspes went to egypt, and obtaining a ship and sailors from the egyptians, he sailed to the pillars of heracles; and having sailed through them and turned the point of libya which is called the promontory of soloeis, he sailed on towards the south. then after he had passed over much sea in many months, as there was needed ever more and more voyaging, he turned about and sailed back again to egypt: and having come from thence into the presence of king xerxes, he reported saying that at the furthest point which he reached he was sailing by dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm-tree, and who, whenever they came to land with their ship, left their towns and fled away to the mountains: and they, he said, did no injury when they entered into the towns, but took food from them only. and the cause, he said, why he had not completely sailed round libya was that the ship could not advance any further but stuck fast. xerxes however did not believe that he was speaking the truth, and since he had not performed the appointed task, he impaled him, inflicting upon him the penalty pronounced before. a eunuch belonging to this sataspes ran away to samos as soon as he heard that his master was dead, carrying with him large sums of money; and of this a man of samos took possession, whose name i know, but i purposely pass it over without mention. . of asia the greater part was explored by dareios, who desiring to know of the river indus, which is a second river producing crocodiles of all the rivers in the world,�to know, i say, of this river where it runs out into the sea, sent with ships, besides others whom he trusted to speak the truth, skylax also, a man of caryanda. these starting from the city of caspatyros and the land of pactyïke, sailed down the river towards the east and the sunrising to the sea; and then sailing over the sea westwards they came in the thirtieth month to that place from whence the king of the egyptians had sent out the phenicians of whom i spoke before, to sail round libya. after these had made their voyage round the coast, dareios both subdued the indians and made use of this sea. thus asia also, excepting the parts of it which are towards the rising sun, has been found to be similar to libya. . as to europe, however, it is clearly not known by any, either as regards the parts which are towards the rising sun or those towards the north, whether it be surrounded by sea: but in length it is known to stretch along by both the other divisions. and i am not able to understand for what reason it is that to the earth, which is one, three different names are given derived from women, and why there were set as boundaries to divide it the river nile of egypt and the phasis in colchis (or as some say the maiotian river tanaïs and the kimmerian ferry); nor can i learn who those persons were who made the boundaries, or for what reason they gave the names. libya indeed is said by most of the hellenes to have its name from libya a woman of that country, and asia from the wife of prometheus: but this last name is claimed by the lydians, who say that asia has been called after asias the son of cotys the son of manes, and not from asia the wife of prometheus; and from him too they say the asian tribe in sardis has its name. as to europe however, it is neither known by any man whether it is surrounded by sea, nor does it appear whence it got this name or who he was who gave it, unless we shall say that the land received its name from europa the tyrian; and if so, it would appear that before this it was nameless like the rest. she however evidently belongs to asia and did not come to this land which is now called by the hellenes europe, but only from phenicia to crete, and from crete to lykia. let this suffice now which has been said about these matters; for we will adopt those which are commonly accepted of the accounts. . now the region of the euxine upon which dareios was preparing to march has, apart from the scythian race, the most ignorant nations within it of all lands: for we can neither put forward any nation of those who dwell within the region of pontus as eminent in ability, nor do we know of any man of learning having arisen there, apart from the scythian nation and anacharsis. by the scythian race one thing which is the most important of all human things has been found out more cleverly than by any other men of whom we know; but in other respects i have no great admiration for them: and that most important thing which they have discovered is such that none can escape again who has come to attack them, and if they do not desire to be found, it is not possible to catch them: for they who have neither cities founded nor walls built, but all carry their houses with them and are mounted archers, living not by the plough but by cattle, and whose dwellings are upon cars, these assuredly are invincible and impossible to approach. . this they have found out, seeing that their land is suitable to it and at the same time the rivers are their allies: for first this land is plain land and is grassy and well watered, and then there are rivers flowing through it not much less in number than the channels in egypt. of these as many as are noteworthy and also can be navigated from the sea, i will name: there is ister with five mouths, and after this tyras, hypanis, borysthenes, panticapes, kypakyris, gerros and tanaïs. these flow as i shall now describe. . the ister, which is the greatest of all the rivers which we know, flows always with equal volume in summer and winter alike. it is the first towards the west of all the scythian rivers, and it has become the greatest of all rivers because other rivers flow into it. and these are they which make it great: �five in number are those which flow through the scythian land, namely that which the scythians call porata and the hellenes pyretos, and besides this, tiarantos and araros and naparis and ordessos. the first-mentioned of these is a great river lying towards the east, and there it joins waters with the ister, the second tiarantos is more to the west and smaller, and the araros and naparis and ordessos flow into the ister going between these two. . these are the native scythian rivers which join to swell its stream, while from the agathyrsians flows the maris and joins the ister, and from the summits of haimos flow three other great rivers towards the north wind and fall into it, namely atlas and auras and tibisis. through thrace and the thracian crobyzians flow the rivers athrys and noes and artanes, running into the ister; and from the paionians and mount rhodope the river kios, cutting through haimos in the midst, runs into it also. from the illyrians the river angros flows northwards and runs out into the triballian plain and into the river brongos, and the brongos flows into the ister; thus the ister receives both these, being great rivers. from the region which is above the ombricans, the river carpis and another river, the alpis, flow also towards the north wind and run into it; for the ister flows in fact through the whole of europe, beginning in the land of the keltoi, who after the kynesians dwell furthest towards the sun-setting of all the peoples of europe; and thus flowing through all europe it falls into the sea by the side of scythia. . so then it is because these which have been named and many others join their waters together, that ister becomes the greatest of rivers; since if we compare the single streams, the nile is superior in volume of water; for into this no river or spring flows, to contribute to its volume. and the ister flows at an equal level always both in summer and in winter for some such cause as this, as i suppose:�in winter it is of the natural size, or becomes only a little larger than its nature, seeing that this land receives very little rain in winter, but constantly has snow; whereas in summer the snow which fell in the winter, in quantity abundant, melts and runs from all parts into the ister. this snow of which i speak, running into the river helps to swell its volume, and with it also many and violent showers of rain, for it rains during the summer: and thus the waters which mingle with the ister are more copious in summer than they are in winter by about as much as the water which the sun draws to himself in summer exceeds that which he draws in winter; and by the setting of these things against one another there is produced a balance; so that the river is seen to be of equal volume always. . one, i say, of the rivers which the scythians have is the ister; and after it the tyras, which starts from the north and begins its course from a large lake which is the boundary between the land of the scythians and that of the neuroi. at its mouth are settled those hellenes who are called tyritai. . the third river is the hypanis, which starts from scythia and flows from a great lake round which feed white wild horses; and this lake is rightly called "mother of hypanis." from this then the river hypanis takes its rise and for a distance of five days' sail it flows shallow and with sweet water still; but from this point on towards the sea for four days' sail it is very bitter, for there flows into it the water of a bitter spring, which is so exceedingly bitter that, small as it is, it changes the water of the hypanis by mingling with it, though that is a river to which few are equal in greatness. this spring is on the border between the lands of the agricultural scythians and of the alazonians, and the name of the spring and of the place from which it flows is in scythian exampaios, and in the hellenic tongue hierai hodoi. now the tyras and the hypanis approach one another in their windings in the land of the alazonians, but after this each turns off and widens the space between them as they flow. . fourth is the river borysthenes, which is both the largest of these after the ister, and also in our opinion the most serviceable not only of the scythian rivers but also of all the rivers of the world besides, excepting only the nile of egypt, for to this it is not possible to compare any other river: of the rest however the borysthenes is the most serviceable, seeing that it provides both pastures which are the fairest and the richest for cattle, and fish which are better by far and more numerous than those of any other river, and also it is the sweetest water to drink, and flows with clear stream, though others beside it are turbid, and along its banks crops are produced better than elsewhere, while in parts where it is not sown, grass grows deeper. moreover at its mouth salt forms of itself in abundance, and it produces also huge fish without spines, which they call antacaioi, to be used for salting, and many other things also worthy of wonder. now as far as the region of the gerrians, to which it is a voyage of forty days, the borysthenes is known as flowing from the north wind; but above this none can tell through what nations it flows: it is certain however that it runs through desert to the land of the agricultural scythians; for these scythians dwell along its banks for a distance of ten days' sail. of this river alone and of the nile i cannot tell where the sources are, nor, i think, can any of the hellenes. when the borysthenes comes near the sea in its course, the hypanis mingles with it, running out into the same marsh; and the space between these two rivers, which is as it were a beak of land, is called the point of hippoles, and in it is placed a temple of the mother, and opposite the temple upon the river hypanis are settled the borysthenites. . this is that which has to do with these rivers; and after these there is a fifth river besides, called panticapes. this also flows both from the north and from a lake, and in the space between this river and the borysthenes dwell the agricultural scythians: it runs out into the region of hylaia, and having passed by this it mingles with the borysthenes. . sixth comes the river hypakyris, which starts from a lake, and flowing through the midst of the nomad scythians runs out into the sea by the city of carkinitis, skirting on its right bank the region of hylaia and the so-called racecourse of achilles. . seventh is the gerros, which parts off from the borysthenes near about that part of the country where the borysthenes ceases to be known,�it parts off, i say, in this region and has the same name which this region itself has, namely gerros; and as it flows to the sea it borders the country of the nomad and that of the royal scythians, and runs out into the hypakyris. . the eighth is the river tanaïs, which starts in its flow at first from a large lake, and runs out into a still larger lake called maiotis, which is the boundary between the royal scythians and the sauromatai. into this tanaïs falls another river, whose name is hyrgis. . so many are the rivers of note with which the scythians are provided: and for cattle the grass which comes up in the land of scythia is the most productive of bile of any grass which we know; and that this is so you may judge when you open the bodies of the cattle. . thus abundant supply have they of that which is most important; and as for the rest their customs are as follows. the gods whom they propitiate by worship are these only:�hestia most of all, then zeus and the earth, supposing that earth is the wife of zeus, and after these apollo, and aphrodite urania, and heracles, and ares. of these all the scythians have the worship established, and the so-called royal scythians sacrifice also to poseidon. now hestia is called in scythian tabiti, and zeus, being most rightly named in my opinion, is called papaios, and earth api, and apollo oitosyros, and aphrodite urania is called argimpasa, and poseidon thagimasidas. it is not their custom however to make images, altars or temples to any except ares, but to him it is their custom to make them. . they have all the same manner of sacrifice established for all their religious rites equally, and it is thus performed:�the victim stands with its fore-feet tied, and the sacrificing priest stands behind the victim, and by pulling the end of the cord he throws the beast down; and as the victim falls, he calls upon the god to whom he is sacrificing, and then at once throws a noose round its neck, and putting a small stick into it he turns it round and so strangles the animal, without either lighting a fire or making any first offering from the victim or pouring any libation over it: and when he has strangled it and flayed off the skin, he proceeds to boil it. . now as the land of scythia is exceedingly ill wooded, this contrivance has been invented for the boiling of the flesh:�having flayed the victims, they strip the flesh off the bones and then put it into caldrons, if they happen to have any, of native make, which very much resemble lesbian mixing-bowls except that they are much larger,�into these they put the flesh and boil it by lighting under it the bones of the victim: if however thy have not at hand the caldron, they put all the flesh into the stomachs of the victims and adding water they light the bones under them; and these blaze up beautifully, and the stomachs easily hold the flesh when it has been stripped off the bones: thus an ox is made to boil itself, and the other kinds of victims each boil themselves also. then when the flesh is boiled, the sacrificer takes a first offering of the flesh and of the vital organs and casts it in front of him. and they sacrifice various kinds of cattle, but especially horses. . to the others of the gods they sacrifice thus and these kinds of beasts, but to ares as follows:�in each district of the several governments they have a temple of ares set up in this way:�bundles of brushwood are heaped up for about three furlongs in length and in breadth, but less in height; and on the top of this there is a level square made, and three of the sides rise sheer but by the remaining one side the pile may be ascended. every year they pile on a hundred and fifty waggon-loads of brushwood, for it is constantly settling down by reason of the weather. upon this pile of which i speak each people has an ancient iron sword set up, and this is the sacred symbol of ares. to this sword they bring yearly offerings of cattle and of horses; and they have the following sacrifice in addition, beyond what they make to the other gods, that is to say, of all the enemies whom they take captive in war they sacrifice one man in every hundred, not in the same manner as they sacrifice cattle, but in a different manner: for they first pour wine over their heads, and after that they cut the throats of the men, so that the blood runs into a bowl; and then they carry this up to the top of the pile of brushwood and pour the blood over the sword. this, i say, they carry up; and meanwhile below by the side of the temple they are doing thus:�they cut off all the right arms of the slaughtered men with the hands and throw them up into the air, and then when they have finished offering the other victims, they go away; and the arm lies wheresoever it has chanced to fall, and the corpse apart from it. . such are the sacrifices which are established among them; but of swine these make no use, nor indeed are they wont to keep them at all in their land. . that which relates to war is thus ordered with them:�when a scythian has slain his first man, he drinks some of his blood: and of all those whom he slays in the battle he bears the heads to the king; for if he has brought a head he shares in the spoil which they have taken, but otherwise not. and he takes off the skin of the head by cutting it round about the ears and then taking hold of the scalp and shaking it off; afterwards he scrapes off the flesh with the rib of an ox, and works the skin about with his hands; and when he has thus tempered it, he keeps it as a napkin to wipe the hands upon, and hangs it from the bridle of the horse on which he himself rides, and takes pride in it; for whosoever has the greatest number of skins to wipe the hands upon, he is judged to be the bravest man. many also make cloaks to wear of the skins stripped off, sewing them together like shepherds' cloaks of skins; and many take the skin together with the finger-nails off the right hands of their enemies when they are dead, and make them into covers for their quivers: now human skin it seems is both thick and glossy in appearance, more brilliantly white than any other skin. many also take the skins off the whole bodies of men and stretch them on pieces of wood and carry them about on their horses. . such are their established customs about these things; and to the skulls themselves, not of all but of their greatest enemies, they do thus:�the man saws off all below the eyebrows and clears out the inside; and if he is a poor man he only stretches ox-hide round it and then makes use of it; but if he be rich, besides stretching the ox-hide he gilds it over within, and makes use of it as a drinking-cup. they do this also if any of their own family have been at variance with them and the man gets the better of his adversary in trial before the king; and when strangers come to him whom he highly esteems, he sets these skulls before them, and adds the comment that they being of his own family had made war against him, and that he had got the better of them; and this they hold to be a proof of manly virtue. . once every year each ruler of a district mixes in his own district a bowl of wine, from which those of the scythians drink by whom enemies have been slain; but those by whom this has not been done do not taste of the wine, but sit apart dishonoured; and this is the greatest of all disgraces among them: but those of them who have slain a very great number of men, drink with two cups together at the same time. . diviners there are many among the scythians, and they divine with a number of willow rods in the following manner:�they bring large bundles of rods, and having laid them on the ground they unroll them, and setting each rod by itself apart they prophesy; and while speaking thus, they roll the rods together again, and after that they place them in order a second time one by one. this manner of divination they have from their fathers: but the enareës or "man-women" say that aphrodite gave them the gift of divination, and they divine accordingly with the bark of the linden-tree. having divided the linden-bark into three strips, the man twists them together in his fingers and untwists them again, and as he does this he utters the oracle. . when the king of the scythians is sick, he sends for three of the diviners, namely those who are most in repute, who divine in the manner which has been said: and these say for the most part something like this, namely that so and so has sworn falsely by the hearth of the king, and they name one of the citizens, whosoever it may happen to be: now it is the prevailing custom of the scythians to swear by the hearth of the king at the times when they desire to swear the most solemn oath. he then who they say has sworn falsely, is brought forthwith held fast on both sides; and when he has come the diviners charge him with this, that he is shown by their divination to have sworn falsely by the hearth of the king, and that for this reason the king is suffering pain: and he denies and says that he did not swear falsely, and complains indignantly: and when he denies it, the king sends for other diviners twice as many in number, and if these also by looking into their divination pronounce him guilty of having sworn falsely, at once they cut off the man's head, and the diviners who came first part his goods among them by lot; but if the diviners who came in afterwards acquit him, other diviners come in, and again others after them. if then the greater number acquit the man, the sentence is that the first diviners shall themselves be put to death. . they put them to death accordingly in the following manner:�first they fill a waggon with brushwood and yoke oxen to it; then having bound the feet of the diviners and tied their hands behind them and stopped their mouths with gags, they fasten them down in the middle of the brushwood, and having set fire to it they scare the oxen and let them go: and often the oxen are burnt to death together with the diviners, and often they escape after being scorched, when the pole to which they are fastened has been burnt: and they burn the diviners in the manner described for other causes also, calling them false prophets. now when the king puts any to death, he does not leave alive their sons either, but he puts to death all the males, not doing any hurt to the females. . in the following manner the scythians make oaths to whomsoever they make them:�they pour wine into a great earthenware cup and mingle with it blood of those who are taking the oath to one another, either making a prick with an awl or cutting with a dagger a little way into their body, and then they dip into the cup a sword and arrows and a battle-axe and a javelin; and having done this, they invoke many curses on the breaker of the oath, and afterwards they drink it off, both they who are making the oath and the most honourable of their company. . the burial-place of the kings is in the land of the gerrians, the place up to which the borysthenes is navigable. in this place, when their king has died, they make a large square excavation in the earth; and when they have made this ready, they take up the corpse (the body being covered over with wax and the belly ripped up and cleansed, and then sewn together again, after it has been filled with kyperos cut up and spices and parsley-seed and anise), and they convey it in a waggon to another nation. then those who receive the corpse thus conveyed to them do the same as the royal scythians, that is they cut off a part of their ear and shave their hair round about and cut themselves all over the arms and tear their forehead and nose and pass arrows through their left hand. thence they convey in the waggon the corpse of the king to another of the nations over whom they rule; and they to whom they came before accompany them: and when they have gone round to all conveying the corpse, then they are in the land of the gerrians, who have their settlements furthest away of all the nations over whom they rule, and they have reached the spot where the burial place is. after that, having placed the corpse in the tomb upon a bed of leaves, they stick spears along on this side and that of the corpse and stretch pieces of wood over them, and then they cover the place in with matting. then they strangle and bury in the remaining space of the tomb one of the king's mistresses, his cup-bearer, his cook, his horse-keeper, his attendant, and his bearer of messages, and also horses, and a first portion of all things else, and cups of gold; for silver they do not use at all, nor yet bronze. having thus done they all join together to pile up a great mound, vying with one another and zealously endeavouring to make it as large as possible. . afterwards, when the year comes round again, they do as follows:�they take the most capable of the remaining servants,�and these are native scythians, for those serve him whom the king himself commands to do so, and his servants are not bought for money,�of these attendants then they strangle fifty and also fifty of the finest horses; and when they have taken out their bowels and cleansed the belly, they fill it with chaff and sew it together again. then they set the half of a wheel upon two stakes with the hollow side upwards, and the other half of the wheel upon other two stakes, and in this manner they fix a number of these; and after this they run thick stakes through the length of the horses as far as the necks, and they mount them upon the wheels; and the front pieces of wheel support the shoulders of the horses, while those behind bear up their bellies, going by the side of the thighs; and both front and hind legs hang in the air. on the horses they put bridles and bits, and stretch the bridles tight in front of them and then tie them up to pegs: and of the fifty young men who have been strangled they mount each one upon his horse, having first run a straight stake through each body along by the spine up to the neck; and a part of this stake projects below, which they fasten into a socket made in the other stake that runs through the horse. having set horsemen such as i have described in a circle round the tomb, they then ride away. . thus they bury their kings; but as for the other scythians, when they die their nearest relations carry them round laid in waggons to their friends in succession; and of them each one when he receives the body entertains those who accompany it, and before the corpse they serve up of all things about the same quantity as before the others. thus private persons are carried about for forty days, and then they are buried: and after burying them the scythians cleanse themselves in the following way:�they soap their heads and wash them well, and then, for their body, they set up three stakes leaning towards one another and about them they stretch woollen felt coverings, and when they have closed them as much as possible they throw stones heated red-hot into a basin placed in the middle of the stakes and the felt coverings. . now they have hemp growing in their land, which is very like flax except in thickness and in height, for in these respects the hemp is much superior. this grows both of itself and with cultivation; and of it the thracians even make garments, which are very like those made of flaxen thread, so that he who was not specially conversant with it would not be able to decide whether the garments were of flax or of hemp; and he who had not before seen stuff woven of hemp would suppose that the garment was made of flax. . the scythians then take the seed of this hemp and creep under the felt coverings, and then they throw the seed upon the stones which have been heated red-hot: and it burns like incense and produces a vapour so thick that no vapour-bath in hellas would surpass it: and the scythians being delighted with the vapour-bath howl like wolves. this is to them instead of washing, for in fact they do not wash their bodies at all in water. their women however pound with a rough stone the wood of the cypress and cedar and frankincense tree, pouring in water with it, and then with this pounded stuff, which is thick, they plaster over all their body and also their face; and not only does a sweet smell attach to them by reason of this, but also when they take off the plaster on the next day, their skin is clean and shining. . this nation also is very averse to adopting strange customs, rejecting even those of other tribes among themselves, but especially those of the hellenes, as the history of anacharsis and also afterwards of skyles proved. for as to anacharsis first, when he was returning to the abodes of the scythians, after having visited many lands and displayed in them much wisdom, as he sailed through the hellespont he put in to kyzicos: and since he found the people of kyzicos celebrating a festival very magnificently in honour of the mother of the gods, anacharsis vowed to the mother that if he should return safe and sound to his own land, he would both sacrifice to her with the same rites as he saw the men of kyzicos do, and also hold a night festival. so when he came to scythia he went down into the region called hylaia (this is along by the side of the racecourse of achilles and is quite full, as it happens, of trees of all kinds),�into this, i say, anacharsis went down, and proceeded to perform all the ceremonies of the festival in honour of the goddess, with a kettle-drum and with images hung about himself. and one of the scythians perceived him doing this and declared it to saulios the king; and the king came himself also, and when he saw anacharsis doing this, he shot him with an arrow and killed him. accordingly at the present time if one asks about anacharsis, the scythians say that they do not know him, and for this reason, because he went out of his own country to hellas and adopted foreign customs. and as i heard from tymnes the steward of ariapeithes, he was the uncle on the father's side of idanthyrsos king of the scythians, and the son of gnuros, the son of lycos, the son of spargapeithes. if then anacharsis was of this house, let him know that he died by the hand of his brother, for idanthyrsos was the son of saulios, and saulios was he who killed anacharsis. . however i have heard also another story, told by the peloponnesians, that anacharsis was sent out by the king of the scythians, and so made himself a disciple of hellas; and that when he returned back he said to him that had sent him forth, that the hellenes were all busied about every kind of cleverness except the lacedemonians; but these alone knew how to exchange speech sensibly. this story however has been invented without any ground by the hellenes themselves; and however that may be, the man was slain in the way that was related above. . this man then fared thus badly by reason of foreign customs and communication with hellenes; and very many years afterwards skyles the son of ariapeithes suffered nearly the same fate as he. for ariapeithes the king of the scythians with other sons had skyles born to him: and he was born of a woman who was of istria, and certainly not a native of scythia; and this mother taught him the language and letters of hellas. afterwards in course of time ariapeithes was brought to his end by treachery at the hands of spargapeithes the king of the agathyrsians, and skyles succeeded to the kingdom; and he took not only that but also the wife of his father, whose name was opoia: this opoia was a native scythian and from her was born oricos to ariapeithes. now when skyles was king of the scythians, he was by no means satisfied with the scythian manner of life, but was much more inclined towards hellenic ways because of the training with which he had been brought up, and he used to do somewhat as follows:�when he came with the scythians in arms to the city of the borysthenites (now these borysthenites say that they are of miletos),�when skyles came to these, he would leave his band in the suburbs of the city and go himself within the walls and close the gates. after that he would lay aside his scythian equipments and take hellenic garments, and wearing them he would go about in the market-place with no guards or any other man accompanying him (and they watched the gates meanwhile, that none of the scythians might see him wearing this dress): and while in other respects too he adopted hellenic manners of life, he used also to perform worship to the gods according to the customs of the hellenes. then having stayed a month or more than that, he would put on the scythian dress and depart. this he did many times, and he both built for himself a house in borysthenes and also took to it a woman of the place as his wife. . since however it was fated that evil should happen to him, it happened by an occasion of this kind:�he formed a desire to be initiated in the rites of bacchus-dionysos, and as he was just about to receive the initiation, there happened a very great portent. he had in the city of the borysthenites a house of great size and built with large expense, of which also i made mention a little before this, and round it were placed sphinxes and griffins of white stone: on this house zeus caused a bolt to fall; and the house was altogether burnt down, but skyles none the less for this completed his initiation. now the scythians make the rites of bacchus a reproach against the hellenes, for they say that it is not fitting to invent a god like this, who impels men to frenzy. so when skyles had been initiated into the rites of bacchus, one of the borysthenites went off to the scythians and said: "whereas ye laugh at us, o scythians, because we perform the rite of bacchus and because the god seizes us, now this divinity has seized also your king; and he is both joining in the rite of bacchus and maddened by the influence of the god. and if ye disbelieve me, follow and i will show you." the chief men of the scythians followed him, and the borysthenite led them secretly into the town and set them upon a tower. so when skyles passed by with the company of revellers, and the scythians saw him joining in the rite of bacchus, they were exceedingly grieved at it, and they went out and declared to the whole band that which they had seen. . after this when skyles was riding out again to his own abode, the scythians took his brother octamasades for their leader, who was a son of the daughter of teres, and made insurrection against skyles. he then when he perceived that which was being done to his hurt and for what reason it was being done, fled for refuge to thrace; and octamasades being informed of this, proceeded to march upon thrace. so when he had arrived at the river ister, the thracians met him; and as they were about to engage battle, sitalkes sent a messenger to octamasades and said: "why must we make trial of one another in fight? thou art my sister's son and thou hast in thy power my brother. do thou give him back to me, and i will deliver to thee thy brother skyles: and let us not either of us set our armies in peril, either thou or i." thus sitalkes proposed to him by a herald; for there was with octamasades a brother of sitalkes, who had gone into exile for fear of him. and octamasades agreed to this, and by giving up his own mother's brother to sitalkes he received his brother skyles in exchange: and sitalkes when he received his brother led him away as a prisoner, but octamasades cut off the head of skyles there upon the spot. thus do the scythians carefully guard their own customary observances, and such are the penalties which they inflict upon those who acquire foreign customs besides their own. . how many the scythians are i was not able to ascertain precisely, but i heard various reports of the number: for reports say both that they are very many in number and also that they are few, at least as regards the true scythians. thus far however they gave me evidence of my own eyesight:�there is between the river borysthenes and the hypanis a place called exampaios, of which also i made mention somewhat before this, saying that there was in it a spring of bitter water, from which the water flows and makes the river hypanis unfit to drink. in this place there is set a bronze bowl, in size at least six times as large as the mixing-bowl at the entrance of the pontus, which pausanias the son of cleombrotos dedicated: and for him who has never seen that, i will make the matter clear by saying that the bowl in scythia holds easily six hundred amphors, and the thickness of this scythian bowl is six fingers. this then the natives of the place told me had been made of arrow-heads: for their king, they said, whose name was ariantas, wishing to know how many the scythians were, ordered all the scythians to bring one arrow-head, each from his own arrow, and whosoever should not bring one, he threatened with death. so a great multitude of arrow-heads was brought, and he resolved to make of them a memorial and to leave it behind him: from these then, they said, he made this bronze bowl and dedicated it in this place exampaios. . this is what i heard about the number of the scythians. now this land has no marvellous things except that it has rivers which are by far larger and more numerous than those of any other land. one thing however shall be mentioned which it has to show, and which is worthy of wonder even besides the rivers and the greatness of the plain, that is to say, they point out a footprint of heracles in the rock by the bank of the river tyras, which in shape is like the mark of a man's foot but in size is two cubits long. this then is such as i have said; and i will go back now to the history which i was about to tell at first. . while dareios was preparing to go against the scythians and was sending messengers to appoint to some the furnishing of a land-army, to others that of ships, and to others the bridging over of the thracian bosphorus, artabanos, the son of hystaspes and brother of dareios, urged him by no means to make the march against the scythians, telling him how difficult the scythians were to deal with. since however he did not persuade him, though he gave him good counsel, he ceased to urge; and dareios, when all his preparations had been made, began to march his army forth from susa. . then one of the persians, oiobazos, made request to dareios that as he had three sons and all were serving in the expedition, one might be left behind for him: and dareios said that as he was a friend and made a reasonable request, he would leave behind all the sons. so oiobazos was greatly rejoiced, supposing that his sons had been freed from service, but dareios commanded those who had the charge of such things to put to death all the sons of oiobazos. . these then were left, having been slain upon the spot where they were: and dareios meanwhile set forth from susa and arrived at the place on the bosphorus where the bridge of ships had been made, in the territory of chalcedon; and there he embarked in a ship and sailed to the so-called kyanean rocks, which the hellenes say formerly moved backwards and forwards; and taking his seat at the temple he gazed upon the pontus, which is a sight well worth seeing. of all seas indeed it is the most marvellous in its nature. the length of it is eleven thousand one hundred furlongs, and the breadth, where it is broadest, three thousand three hundred: and of this great sea the mouth is but four furlongs broad, and the length of the mouth, that is of the neck of water which is called bosphorus, where, as i said, the bridge of ships had been made, is not less than a hundred and twenty furlongs. this bosphorus extends to the propontis; and the propontis, being in breadth five hundred furlongs and in length one thousand four hundred, has its outlet into the hellespont, which is but seven furlongs broad at the narrowest place, though it is four hundred furlongs in length: and the hellespont runs out into that expanse of sea which is called the egean. . these measurements i have made as follows:�a ship completes on an average in a long day a distance of seventy thousand fathoms, and in a night sixty thousand. now we know that to the river phasis from the mouth of the sea (for it is here that the pontus is longest) is a voyage of nine days and eight nights, which amounts to one hundred and eleven myriads of fathoms; and these fathoms are eleven thousand one hundred furlongs. then from the land of the sindians to themiskyra on the river thermodon (for here is the broadest part of the pontus) it is a voyage of three days and two nights, which amounts to thirty-three myriads of fathoms or three thousand three hundred furlongs. this pontus then and also the bosphorus and the hellespont have been measured by me thus, and their nature is such as has been said: and this pontus also has a lake which has its outlet into it, which lake is not much less in size than the pontus itself, and it is called maiotis and "mother of the pontus." . dareios then having gazed upon the pontus sailed back to the bridge, of which mandrocles a samian had been chief constructor; and having gazed upon the bosphorus also, he set up two pillars by it of white stone with characters cut upon them, on the one assyrian and on the other hellenic, being the names of all the nations which he was leading with him: and he was leading with him all over whom he was ruler. the whole number of them without the naval force was reckoned to be seventy myriads including cavalry, and ships had been gathered together to the number of six hundred. these pillars the byzantians conveyed to their city after the events of which i speak, and used them for the altar of artemis orthosia, excepting one stone, which was left standing by the side of the temple of dionysos in byzantion, covered over with assyrian characters. now the place on the bosphorus where dareios made his bridge is, as i conclude, midway between byzantion and the temple at the mouth of the pontus. . after this dareios being pleased with the floating bridge rewarded the chief constructor of it, mandrocles the samian, with gifts tenfold; and as an offering from these mandrocles had a painting made of figures to present the whole scene of the bridge over the bosphorus and king dareios sitting in a prominent seat and his army crossing over; this he caused to be painted and dedicated it as an offering in the temple of hera, with the following inscription: "bosphorus having bridged over, the straits fish-abounding, to hera mandrocleës dedicates this, of his work to record; a crown on himself he set, and he brought to the samians glory, and for dareios performed everything after his mind." . this memorial was made of him who constructed the bridge: and dareios, after he had rewarded mandrocles with gifts, passed over into europe, having first commanded the ionians to sail into the pontus as far as the river ister, and when they arrived at the ister, there to wait for him, making a bridge meanwhile over the river; for the chief of his naval force were the ionians, the aiolians and the hellespontians. so the fleet sailed through between the kyanean rocks and made straight for the ister; and then they sailed up the river a two days' voyage from the sea and proceeded to make a bridge across the neck, as it were, of the river, where the mouths of the ister part off. dareios meanwhile, having crossed the bosphorus on the floating bridge, was advancing through thrace, and when he came to the sources of the river tearos he encamped for three days. . now the tearos is said by those who dwell near it to be the best of all rivers, both in other respects which tend to healing and especially for curing diseases of the skin both in men and in horses: and its springs are thirty-eight in number, flowing all from the same rock, of which some are cold and others warm. the way to them is of equal length from the city of heraion near perinthos and from apollonia upon the euxine sea, that is to say two days' journey by each road. this tearos runs into the river contadesdos and the contadesdos into the agrianes and the agrianes into the hebros, which flows into the sea by the city of ainos. . dareios then, having come to this river and having encamped there, was pleased with the river and set up a pillar there also, with an inscription as follows: "the head-springs of the river tearos give the best and fairest water of all rivers; and to them came leading an army against the scythians the best and fairest of all men, dareios the son of hystaspes, of the persians and of all the continent king." these were the words which were there written. . dareios then set out from thence and came to another river whose name is artescos, which flows through the land of the odrysians. having come to this river he did as follows:�he appointed a place for his army and bade every man as he passed out by it place one stone in this appointed place: and when the army had performed this, then he marched away his army leaving behind great mounds of these stones. . but before he came to the ister he conquered first the getai, who believe in immortality: for the thracians who occupy salmydessos and are settled above the cities of apollonian and mesambria, called the kyrmianai and the nipsaioi, delivered themselves over to dareios without fighting; but the getai, who are the bravest and the most upright in their dealings of all the thracians, having betaken themselves to obstinacy were forthwith subdued. . and their belief in immortality is of this kind, that is to say, they hold that they do not die, but that he who is killed goes to salmoxis, a divinity, whom some of them call gebeleizis; and at intervals of four years they send one of themselves, whomsoever the lot may select, as a messenger to salmoxis, charging him with such requests as they have to make on each occasion; and they send him thus:�certain of them who are appointed for this have three javelins, and others meanwhile take hold on both sides of him who is being sent to salmoxis, both by his hands and his feet, and first they swing him up, then throw him into the air so as to fall upon the spear-points: and if when he is pierced through he is killed, they think that the god is favourable to them; but if he is not killed, they find fault with the messenger himself, calling him a worthless man, and then having found fault with him they send another: and they give him the charge beforehand, while he is yet alive. these same thracians also shoot arrows up towards the sky when thunder and lightning come, and use threats to the god, not believing that there exists any other god except their own. . this salmoxis i hear from the hellenes who dwell about the hellespont and the pontus, was a man, and he became a slave in samos, and was in fact a slave of pythagoras the son of mnesarchos. then having become free he gained great wealth, and afterwards returned to his own land: and as the thracians both live hardly and are rather simple-minded, this salmoxis, being acquainted with the ionian way of living and with manners more cultivated than the thracians were used to see, since he had associated with hellenes (and not only that but with pythagoras, not the least able philosopher of the hellenes), prepared a banqueting-hall, where he received and feasted the chief men of the tribe and instructed them meanwhile that neither he himself nor his guests nor their descendants in succession after them would die; but that they would come to a place where they would live for ever and have all things good. while he was doing that which has been mentioned and was saying these things, he was making for himself meanwhile a chamber under the ground; and when his chamber was finished, he disappeared from among the thracians and went down into the underground chamber, where he continued to live for three years: and they grieved for his loss and mourned for him as dead. then in the fourth year he appeared to the thracians, and in this way the things which salmoxis said became credible to them. . thus they say that he did; but as to this matter and the chamber under ground, i neither disbelieve it nor do i very strongly believe, but i think that this salmoxis lived many years before pythagoras. however, whether there ever lived a man salmoxis, or whether he is simply a native deity of the getai, let us bid farewell to him now. . these, i say, having such manners as i have said, were subdued by the persians and accompanied the rest of the army: and when dareios and with him the land-army arrived at the ister, then after all had passed over, dareios commanded the ionians to break up the floating bridge and to accompany him by land, as well as the rest of the troops which were in the ships: and when the ionians were just about to break it up and to do that which he commanded, coës the son of erxander, who was commander of the mytilenians, said thus to dareios, having first inquired whether he was disposed to listen to an opinion from one who desired to declare it: "o king, seeing that thou art about to march upon a land where no cultivated ground will be seen nor any inhabited town, do thou therefore let this bridge remain where it is, leaving to guard it those same men who constructed it. then, if we find the scythians and fare as we desire, we have a way of return; and also even if we shall not be able to find them, at least our way of return is secured: for that we should be worsted by the scythians in fight i never feared yet, but rather that we might not be able to find them, and might suffer some disaster in wandering about. perhaps some one will say that in speaking thus i am speaking for my own advantage, in order that i may remain behind; but in truth i am bringing forward, o king, the opinion which i found best for thee, and i myself will accompany thee and not be left behind." with this opinion dareios was very greatly pleased and made answer to him in these words: "friend from lesbos, when i have returned safe to my house, be sure that thou appear before me, in order that i may requite thee with good deeds for good counsel." . having thus said and having tied sixty knots in a thong, he called the despots of the ionians to speak with him and said as follows: "men of ionia, know that i have given up the opinion which i formerly declared with regard to the bridge; and do ye keep this thong and do as i shall say:�so soon as ye shall have seen me go forward against the scythians, from that time begin, and untie a knot on each day: and if within this time i am not here, and ye find that the days marked by the knots have passed by, then sail away to your own lands. till then, since our resolve has thus been changed, guard the floating bridge, showing all diligence to keep it safe and to guard it. and thus acting, ye will do for me a very acceptable service." thus said dareios and hastened on his march forwards. . now in front of scythia in the direction towards the sea lies thrace; and where a bay is formed in this land, there begins scythia, into which the ister flows out, the mouth of the river being turned towards the south-east wind. beginning at the ister then i am about to describe the coast land of the true scythia, with regard to measurement. at once from the ister begins this original land of scythia, and it lies towards the midday and the south wind, extending as far as the city called carkinitis. after this the part which lies on the coast of the same sea still, a country which is mountainous and runs out in the direction of the pontus, is occupied by the tauric race, as far as the peninsula which is called the "rugged chersonese"; and this extends to the sea which lies towards the east wind: for two sides of the scythian boundaries lie along by the sea, one by the sea on the south, and the other by that on the east, just as it is with attica: and in truth the tauroi occupy a part of scythia which has much resemblance to attica; it is as if in attica another race and not the athenians occupied the hill region of sunion, supposing it to project more at the point into the sea, that region namely which is cut off by a line from thoricos to anaphlystos. such i say, if we may be allowed to compare small things such as this with great, is the form of the tauric land. for him however who has not sailed along this part of the coast of attica i will make it clear by another comparison:�it is as if in iapygia another race and not the iapygians had cut off for themselves and were holding that extremity of the land which is bounded by a line beginning at the harbour of brentesion and running to taras. and in mentioning these two similar cases i am suggesting many other things also to which the tauric land has resemblance. . after the tauric land immediately come scythians again, occupying the parts above the tauroi and the coasts of the eastern sea, that is to say the parts to the west of the kimmerian bosphorus and of the maiotian lake, as far as the river tanaïs, which runs into the corner of this lake. in the upper parts which tend inland scythia is bounded (as we know) by the agathyrsians first, beginning from the ister, and then by the neuroi, afterwards by the androphagoi, and lastly by the melanchlainoi. . scythia then being looked upon as a four-sided figure with two of its sides bordered by the sea, has its border lines equal to one another in each direction, that which tends inland and that which runs along by the sea: for from ister to the borysthenes is ten days' journey, and from the borysthenes to the maiotian lake ten days' more; and the distance inland to the melanchlainoi, who are settled above the scythians, is a journey of twenty days. now i have reckoned the day's journey at two hundred furlongs: and by this reckoning the cross lines of scythia would be four thousand furlongs in length, and the perpendiculars which tend inland would be the same number of furlongs. such is the size of this land. . the scythians meanwhile having considered with themselves that they were not able to repel the army of dareios alone by a pitched battle, proceeded to send messengers to those who dwelt near them: and already the kings of these nations had come together and were taking counsel with one another, since so great an army was marching towards them. now those who had come together were the kings of the tauroi, agathyrsians, neuroi, androphagoi, melanchlainoi, gelonians, budinoi and sauromatai. . of these the tauroi have the following customs:�they sacrifice to the "maiden" both ship-wrecked persons and also those hellenes whom they can capture by putting out to sea against them; and their manner of sacrifice is this:�when they have made the first offering from the victim they strike his head with a club: and some say that they push the body down from the top of the cliff (for it is upon a cliff that the temple is placed) and set the head up on a stake; but others, while agreeing as to the heads, say nevertheless that the body is not pushed down from the top of the cliff, but buried in the earth. this divinity to whom they sacrifice, the tauroi themselves say is iphigeneia the daughter of agamemnon. whatsoever enemies they have conquered they treat in this fashion:�each man cuts off a head and bears it away to his house; then he impales it on a long stake and sets it up above his house raised to a great height, generally above the chimney; and they say that these are suspended above as guards to preserve the whole house. this people has its living by plunder and war. . the agathyrsians are the most luxurious of men and wear gold ornaments for the most part: also they have promiscuous intercourse with their women, in order that they may be brethren to one another and being all nearly related may not feel envy or malice one against another. in their other customs they have come to resemble the thracians. . the neuroi practise the scythian customs: and one generation before the expedition of dareios it so befell them that they were forced to quit their land altogether by reason of serpents: for their land produced serpents in vast numbers, and they fell upon them in still larger numbers from the desert country above their borders; until at last being hard pressed they left their own land and settled among the budinoi. these men it would seem are wizards; for it is said of them by the scythians and by the hellenes who are settled in the scythian land that once in every year each of the neuroi becomes a wolf for a few days and then returns again to his original form. for my part i do not believe them when they say this, but they say it nevertheless, and swear it moreover. . the androphagoi have the most savage manners of all human beings, and they neither acknowledge any rule of right nor observe any customary law. they are nomads and wear clothing like that of the scythians, but have a language of their own; and alone of all these nations they are man-eaters. . the melanchlainoi wear all of them black clothing, whence also they have their name; and they practise the customs of the scythians. . the budinoi are a very great and numerous race, and are all very blue-eyed and fair of skin: and in their land is built a city of wood, the name of which is gelonos, and each side of the wall is thirty furlongs in length and lofty at the same time, all being of wood; and the houses are of wood also and the temples; for there are in it temples of hellenic gods furnished after hellenic fashion with sacred images and altars and cells, all of wood; and they keep festivals every other year to dionysos and celebrate the rites of bacchus: for the gelonians are originally hellenes, and they removed from the trading stations on the coast and settled among the budinoi; and they use partly the scythian language and partly the hellenic. the budinoi however do not use the same language as the gelonians, nor is their manner of living the same: , for the budinoi are natives of the soil and a nomad people, and alone of the nations in these parts feed on fir-cones; but the gelonians are tillers of the ground and feed on corn and have gardens, and resemble them not at all either in appearance or in complexion of skin. however by the hellenes the budinoi also are called gelonians, not being rightly so called. their land is all thickly overgrown with forests of all kinds of trees, and in the thickest forest there is a large and deep lake, and round it marshy ground and reeds. in this are caught otters and beavers and certainly other wild animals with square-shaped faces. the fur of these is sewn as a fringe round their coats of skin, and the testicles are made use of by them for curing diseases of the womb. . about the sauromatai the following tale is told:�when the hellenes had fought with the amazons,�now the amazons are called by the scythians oiorpata, which name means in the hellenic tongue "slayers of men," for "man" they call oior, and pata means "to slay,"�then, as the story goes, the hellenes, having conquered them in the battle at the thermodon, were sailing away and conveying with them in three ships as many amazons as they were able to take prisoners. these in the open sea set upon the men and cast them out of the ships; but they knew nothing about ships, nor how to use rudders or sails or oars, and after they had cast out the men they were driven about by wave and wind and came to that part of the maiotian lake where cremnoi stands; now cremnoi is in the land of the free scythians. there the amazons disembarked from their ships and made their way into the country, and having met first with a troop of horses feeding they seized them, and mounted upon these they plundered the property of the scythians. . the scythians meanwhile were not able to understand the matter, for they did not know either their speech or their dress or the race to which they belonged, but were in wonder as to whence they had come and thought that they were men, of an age corresponding to their appearance: and finally they fought a battle against them, and after the battle the scythians got possession of the bodies of the dead, and thus they discovered that they were women. they took counsel therefore and resolved by no means to go on trying to kill them, but to send against them the youngest men from among themselves, making conjecture of the number so as to send just as many men as there were women. these were told to encamp near them, and do whatsoever they should do; if however the women should come after them, they were not to fight but to retire before them, and when the women stopped, they were to approach near and encamp. this plan was adopted by the scythians because they desired to have children born from them. . the young men accordingly were sent out and did that which had been commanded them: and when the amazons perceived that they had not come to do them any harm, they let them alone; and the two camps approached nearer to one another every day: and the young men, like the amazons, had nothing except their arms and their horses, and got their living, as the amazons did, by hunting and by taking booty. . now the amazons at midday used to scatter abroad either one by one or by two together, dispersing to a distance from one another to ease themselves; and the scythians also having perceived this did the same thing: and one of the scythians came near to one of those amazons who were apart by themselves, and she did not repulse him but allowed him to lie with her: and she could not speak to him, for they did not understand one another's speech, but she made signs to him with her hand to come on the following day to the same place and to bring another with him, signifying to him that there should be two of them, and that she would bring another with her. the young man therefore, when he returned, reported this to the others; and on the next day he came himself to the place and also brought another, and he found the amazon awaiting him with another in her company. then hearing this the rest of the young men also in their turn tamed for themselves the remainder of the amazons; , and after this they joined their camps and lived together, each man having for his wife her with whom he had had dealings at first; and the men were not able to learn the speech of the women, but the women came to comprehend that of the men. so when they understood one another, the men spoke to the amazons as follows: "we have parents and we have possessions; now therefore let us no longer lead a life of this kind, but let us go away to the main body of our people and dwell with them; and we will have you for wives and no others." they however spoke thus in reply: "we should not be able to live with your women, for we and they have not the same customs. we shoot with bows and hurl javelins and ride horses, but the works of women we never learnt; whereas your women do none of these things which we said, but stay in the waggons and work at the works of women, neither going out to the chase nor anywhither else. we therefore should not be able to live in agreement with them: but if ye desire to keep us for your wives and to be thought honest men, go to your parents and obtain from them your share of the goods, and then let us go and dwell by ourselves." . the young men agreed and did this; and when they had obtained the share of the goods which belonged to them and had returned back to the amazons, the women spoke to them as follows: "we are possessed by fear and trembling to think that we must dwell in this place, having not only separated you from your fathers, but also done great damage to your land. since then ye think it right to have us as your wives, do this together with us,�come and let us remove from this land and pass over the river tanaïs and there dwell." . the young men agreed to this also, and they crossed over the tanaïs and made their way towards the rising sun for three days' journey from tanaïs, and also towards the north wind for three days' journey from the maiotian lake: and having arrived at the place where they are now settled, they took up their abode there: and from thenceforward the women of the sauromatai practise their ancient way of living, going out regularly on horseback to the chase both in company with the men and apart from them, and going regularly to war, and wearing the same dress as the men. . and the sauromatai make use of the scythian tongue, speaking it barbarously however from the first, since the amazons did not learn it thoroughly well. as regards marriages their rule is this, that no maiden is married until she has slain a man of their enemies; and some of them even grow old and die before they are married, because they are not able to fulfil the requirement of the law. . to the kings of these nations then, which have been mentioned in order, the messengers of the scythians came, finding them gathered together, and spoke declaring to them how the persian king, after having subdued all things to himself in the other continent, had laid a bridge over the neck of the bosphorus and had crossed over to that continent, and having crossed over and subdued the thracians, was making a bridge over the river ister, desiring to bring under his power all these regions also. "do ye therefore," they said, "by no means stand aloof and allow us to be destroyed, but let us become all of one mind and oppose him who is coming against us. if ye shall not do so, we on our part shall either be forced by necessity to leave our land, or we shall stay in it and make a treaty with the invader; for what else can we do if ye are not willing to help us? and for you after this it will be in no respect easier; for the persian has come not at all less against you than against us, nor will it content him to subdue us and abstain from you. and of the truth of that which we say we will mention a strong evidence: if the persian had been making his expedition against us alone, because he desired to take vengeance for the former servitude, he ought to have abstained from all the rest and to have come at once to invade our land, and he would thus have made it clear to all that he was marching to fight against the scythians and not against the rest. in fact however, ever since he crossed over to this continent, he has compelled all who came in his way to submit to him, and he holds under him now not only the other thracians but also the getai, who are our nearest neighbours." . when the scythians proposed this, the kings who had come from the various nations took counsel together, and their opinions were divided. the kings of the gelonians, of the budinoi and of the sauromatai agreed together and accepted the proposal that they should help the scythians, but those of the agathyrsians, neuroi, androphagoi, melanchlainoi and tauroi returned answer to the scythians as follows: "if ye had not been the first to do wrong to the persians and to begin war, then we should have surely thought that ye were speaking justly in asking for those things for which ye now ask, and we should have yielded to your request and shared your fortunes. as it is however, ye on the one hand made invasion without us into their land, and bare rule over the persians for so long a time as god permitted you; and they in their turn, since the same god stirs them up, are repaying you with the like. as for us however, neither at that time did we do any wrong to these men nor now shall we attempt to do any wrong to them unprovoked: if however the persians shall come against our land also, and do wrong first to us, we also shall refuse to submit : but until we shall see this, we shall remain by ourselves, for we are of opinion that the persians have come not against us, but against those who were the authors of the wrong." . when the scythians heard this answer reported, they planned not to fight a pitched battle openly, since these did not join them as allies, but to retire before the persians and to drive away their cattle from before them, choking up with earth the wells and the springs of water by which they passed and destroying the grass from off the ground, having parted themselves for this into two bodies; and they resolved that the sauromatai should be added to one of their divisions, namely that over which scopasis was king, and that these should move on, if the persians turned in that direction, straight towards the river tanaïs, retreating before him by the shore of the maiotian lake; and when the persian marched back again, they should come after and pursue him. this was one division of their kingdom, appointed to go by the way which has been said; and the other two of the kingdoms, the large one over which idanthyrsos was king, and the third of which taxakis was king, were to join together in one, with the gelonians and the budinoi added to them, and they also were to retire before the persians one day's march in front of them, going on out of their way and doing that which had been planned. first they were to move on straight for the countries which had refused to give their alliance, in order that they might involve these also in the war, and though these had not voluntarily undertaken the war with the persians, they were to involve them in it nevertheless against their will; and after that they were to return to their own land and attack the enemy, if it should seem good to them in council so to do. . having formed this plan the scythians went to meet the army of dareios, sending off the best of their horsemen before them as scouts; but all the waggons in which their children and their women lived they sent on, and with them all their cattle (leaving only so much as was sufficient to supply them with food), and charged them that they should proceed continually towards the north wind. these, i say, were being carried on before: , but when the scouts who went in front of the scythians discovered the persians distant about three days' march from ister, then the scythians having discovered them continued to pitch their camp one day's march in front, destroying utterly that which grew from the ground: and when the persians saw that the horsemen of the scythians had made their appearance, they came after them following in their track, while the scythians continually moved on. after this, since they had directed their march towards the first of the divisions, the persians continued to pursue towards the east and the river tanaïs; and when the scythians crossed over the river tanaïs, the persians crossed over after them and continued still to pursue, until they had passed quite through the land of the sauromatai and had come to that of the budinoi. . now so long as the persians were passing through scythia and the land of the sauromatai, they had nothing to destroy, seeing that the land was bare, but when they invaded the land of the budinoi, then they fell in with the wooden wall, which had been deserted by the budinoi and left wholly unoccupied, and this they destroyed by fire. having done so they continued to follow on further in the tracks of the enemy, until they had passed through the whole of this land and had arrived at the desert. this desert region is occupied by no men, and it lies above the land of the budinoi, extending for a seven days' journey; and above this desert dwell the thyssagetai, and four large rivers flow from them through the land of the maiotians and run into that which is called the maiotian lake, their names being as follows,�lycos, oaros, tanaïs, syrgis. . when therefore dareios came to the desert region, he ceased from his course and halted his army upon the river oaros. having so done he began to build eight large fortifications at equal distances from one another, that is to say about sixty furlongs, of which the ruins still existed down to my time; and while he was occupied in this, the scythians whom he was pursuing came round by the upper parts and returned back to scythia. accordingly, since these had altogether disappeared and were no longer seen by the persians at all, dareios left those fortifications half finished, and turning back himself began to go towards the west, supposing that these were the whole body of the scythians and that they were flying towards the west. . and marching his army as quickly as possible, when he came to scythia he met with the two divisions of the scythians together, and having fallen in with these he continued to pursue them, while they retired out of his way one day's journey in advance: and as dareios did not cease to come after them, the scythians according to the plan which they had made continued to retire before him towards the land of those who had refused to give their alliance, and first towards that of the melanchlainoi; and when scythians and persians both together had invaded and disturbed these, the scythians led the way to the country of the androphagoi; and when these had also been disturbed, they proceeded to the land of the neuroi; and while these too were being disturbed, the scythians went on retiring before the enemy to the agathyrsians. the agathyrsians however, seeing that their next neighbours also were flying from the scythians and had been disturbed, sent a herald before the scythians invaded their land and proclaimed to the scythians not to set foot upon their confines, warning them that if they should attempt to invade the country, they would first have to fight with them. the agathyrsians then having given this warning came out in arms to their borders, meaning to drive off those who were coming upon them; but the melanchlainoi and androphagoi and neuroi, when the persians and scythians together invaded them, did not betake themselves to brave defence but forgot their former threat and fled in confusion ever further towards the north to the desert region. the scythians however, when the agathyrsians had warned them off, did not attempt any more to come to these, but led the persians from the country of the neuroi back to their own land. . now as this went on for a long time and did not cease, dareios sent a horseman to idanthyrsos king of the scythians and said as follows: "thou most wondrous man, why dost thou fly for ever, when thou mightest do of these two things one?�if thou thinkest thyself able to make opposition to my power, stand thou still and cease from wandering abroad, and fight; but if thou dost acknowledge thyself too weak, cease then in that case also from thy course, and come to speech with thy master, bringing to him gifts of earth and water." . to this the king of the scythians idanthyrsos made answer thus: "my case, o persian, stands thus:�never yet did i fly because i was afraid, either before this time from any other man, or now from thee; nor have i done anything different now from that which i was wont to do also in time of peace: and as to the cause why i do not fight with thee at once, this also i will declare to thee. we have neither cities nor land sown with crops, about which we should fear lest they should be captured or laid waste, and so join battle more speedily with you; but if it be necessary by all means to come to this speedily, know that we have sepulchres in which our fathers are buried; therefore come now, find out these and attempt to destroy them, and ye shall know then whether we shall fight with you for the sepulchres or whether we shall not fight. before that however, unless the motion comes upon us, we shall not join battle with thee. about fighting let so much as has been said suffice; but as to masters, i acknowledge none over me but zeus my ancestor and hestia the queen of the scythians. to thee then in place of gifts of earth and water i shall send such things as it is fitting that thou shouldest receive; and in return for thy saying that thou art my master, for that i say, woe betide thee." this is the proverbial "saying of the scythians." . the herald then had departed to report this to dareios; and the kings of the scythians, having heard mention of subjection to a master, were filled with wrath. they sent accordingly the division which was appointed to be joined with the sauromatai, that division of which scopasis was in command, bidding them come to speech with the ionians, namely those who were guarding the bridge of the ister, and meanwhile they who were left behind resolved not to lead the persians wandering about any more, but to attack them constantly as they were getting provisions. therefore they observed the soldiers of dareios as they got provisions, and did that which they had determined: and the cavalry of the scythians always routed that of the enemy, but the persian horsemen as they fled fell back upon the men on foot, and these would come up to their assistance; and meanwhile the scythians when they had driven in the cavalry turned back, fearing the men on foot. also by night the scythians used to make similar attacks: , and the thing which, strange to say, most helped the persians and hindered the scythians in their attacks upon the camp of dareios, i will mention, namely the voice of the asses and the appearance of the mules; for scythia produces neither ass nor mule, as i have declared before, nor is there at all in the scythian country either ass or mule on account of the cold. the asses accordingly by riotously braying used to throw into confusion the cavalry of the scythians; and often, as they were in the middle of riding against the persians, when the horses heard the voice of the asses they turned back in confusion and were possessed with wonder, pricking up their ears, because they had never heard such a voice nor seen the form of the creature before. . so far then the persians had the advantage for a small part of the war. but the scythians, whenever they saw that the persians were disquieted, then in order that they might remain a longer time in scythia and in remaining might suffer by being in want of everything, would leave some of their own cattle behind with the herdsmen, while they themselves rode out of the way to another place, and the persians would come upon the cattle and take them, and having taken them they were elated at what they had done. . as this happened often, at length dareios began to be in straits; and the kings of the scythians perceiving this sent a herald bearing as gifts to dareios a bird and a mouse and a frog and five arrows. the persians accordingly asked the bearer of the gifts as to the meaning of the gifts which were offered; but he said that nothing more had been commanded to him but to give them and get away as speedily as possible; and he bade the persians find out for themselves, if they had wisdom, that which the gifts were meant to express. . having heard this the persians took counsel with one another; and the opinion of dareios was that the scythians were giving to him both themselves and also earth and water, making his conjecture by this, namely that a mouse is produced in the earth and feeds on the same produce of the earth as man, and a frog in the water, while a bird has great resemblance to a horse; and moreover that in giving the arrows they were delivering up their own might in battle. this was the opinion expressed by dareios; but the opinion of gobryas, one of the seven men who killed the magian, was at variance with it, for he conjectured that the gifts expressed this: "unless ye become birds and fly up into the heaven, o persians, or become mice and sink down under the earth, or become frogs and leap into the lakes, ye shall not return back home, but shall be smitten by these arrows." . the persians then, i say, were making conjecture of the gifts: and meanwhile the single division of the scythians, that which had been appointed at first to keep guard along the maiotian lake and then to go to the ister and come to speech with the ionians, when they arrived at the bridge spoke as follows: "ionians, we have come bringing you freedom, if at least ye are willing to listen to us; for we are informed that dareios gave you command to guard the bridge for sixty days only, and then, if he had not arrived within that time, to get you away to your own land. now therefore, if ye do as we say, ye will be without blame from his part and without blame also from ours: stay the appointed days and then after that get you away." they then, when the ionians had engaged themselves to do this, hastened back again by the quickest way: , and meanwhile, after the coming of the gifts to dareios, the scythians who were left had arrayed themselves against the persians with both foot and horse, meaning to engage battle. now when the scythians had been placed in battle-array, a hare darted through them into the space between the two armies, and each company of them, as they saw the hare, began to run after it. when the scythians were thus thrown into disorder and were raising loud cries, dareios asked what was this clamour arising from the enemy; and hearing that they were running after the hare, he said to those men to whom he was wont to say things at other times: "these men have very slight regard for us, and i perceive now that gobryas spoke rightly about the scythian gifts. seeing then that now i myself too think that things are so, we have need of good counsel, in order that our retreat homewards may be safely made." to this replied gobryas and said: "o king, even by report i was almost assured of the difficulty of dealing with these men; and when i came i learnt it still more thoroughly, since i saw that they were mocking us. now therefore my opinion is, that as soon as night comes on, we kindle the camp-fires as we are wont to do at other times also, and deceive with a false tale those of our men who are weakest to endure hardships, and tie up all the asses and get us away, before either the scythians make for the ister to destroy the bridge or something be resolved by the ionians which may be our ruin." . thus gobryas advised; and after this, when night came on, dareios acted on this opinion. those of his men who were weakened by fatigue and whose loss was of least account, these he left behind in the camp, and the asses also tied up: and for the following reasons he left behind the asses and the weaker men of his army,�the asses in order that they might make a noise which should be heard, and the men really because of their weakness, but on a pretence stated openly that he was about to attack the scythians with the effective part of the army, and that they meanwhile were to be defenders of the camp. having thus instructed those who were left behind, and having kindled camp-fires, dareios hastened by the quickest way towards the ister: and the asses, having no longer about them the usual throng, very much more for that reason caused their voice to be heard; so the scythians, hearing the asses, supposed surely that the persians were remaining in their former place. . but when it was day, those who were left behind perceived that they had been betrayed by dareios, and they held out their hands in submission to the scythians, telling them what their case was; and the scythians, when they heard this, joined together as quickly as possible, that is to say the two combined divisions of the scythians and the single division, and also the sauromatai, budinoi, and gelonians, and began to pursue the persians, making straight for the ister: but as the persian army for the most part consisted of men on foot, and was not acquainted with the roads (the roads not being marked with tracks), while the scythian army consisted of horsemen and was acquainted with the shortest cuts along the way, they missed one another and the scythians arrived at the bridge much before the persians. then having learnt that the persians had not yet arrived, they said to the ionians who were in the ships: "ionians, the days of your number are past, and ye are not acting uprightly in that ye yet remain waiting: but as ye stayed before from fear, so now break up the passage as quickly as ye may, and depart free and unhurt, feeling thankfulness both to the gods and to the scythians: and him who was formerly your master we will so convince, that he shall never again march with an army upon any nation." . upon this the ionians took counsel together; and miltiades the athenian on the one hand, who was commander and despot of the men of the chersonese in hellespont, was of opinion that they should follow the advice of the scythians and set ionia free: but histiaios the milesian was of the opposite opinion to this; for he said that at the present time it was by means of dareios that each one of them was ruling as despot over a city; and if the power of dareios should be destroyed, neither he himself would be able to bear rule over the milesians, nor would any other of them be able to bear rule over any other city; for each of the cities would choose to have popular rather than despotic rule. when histiaios declared his opinion thus, forthwith all turned to this opinion, whereas at the first they were adopting that of miltiades. . now these were they who gave the vote between the two opinions, and were men of consequence in the eyes of the king, �first the despots of the hellespontians, daphnis of abydos, hippoclos of lampsacos, herophantos of parion, metrodoros of proconnesos, aristagoras of kyzicos, and ariston of byzantion, these were those from the hellespont; and from ionia, strattis of chios, aiakes of samos, laodamas of phocaia, and histiaios of miletos, whose opinion had been proposed in opposition to that of miltiades; and of the aiolians the only man of consequence there present was aristagoras of kyme. . when these adopted the opinion of histiaios, they resolved to add to it deeds and words as follows, namely to break up that part of the bridge which was on the side towards the scythians, to break it up, i say, for a distance equal to the range of an arrow, both in order that they might be thought to be doing something, though in fact they were doing nothing, and for fear that the scythians might make an attempt using force and desiring to cross the ister by the bridge: and in breaking up that part of the bridge which was towards scythia they resolved to say that they would do all that which the scythians desired. this they added to the opinion proposed, and then histiaios coming forth from among them made answer to the scythians as follows: "scythians, ye are come bringing good news, and it is a timely haste that ye make to bring it; and ye on your part give us good guidance, while we on ours render to you suitable service. for, as ye see, we are breaking up the passage, and we shall show all zeal in our desire to be free: and while we are breaking up the bridge, it is fitting that ye should be seeking for those of whom ye speak, and when ye have found them, that ye should take vengeance on them on behalf of us as well as of yourselves in such manner as they deserve." . the scythians then, believing for the second time that the ionians were speaking the truth, turned back to make search for the persians, but they missed altogether their line of march through the land. of this the scythians themselves were the cause, since they had destroyed the pastures for horses in that region and had choked up with earth the springs of water; for if they had not done this, it would have been possible for them easily, if they desired it, to discover the persians: but as it was, by those things wherein they thought they had taken their measures best, they failed of success. the scythians then on their part were passing through those regions of their own land where there was grass for the horses and springs of water, and were seeking for the enemy there, thinking that they too were taking a course in their retreat through such country as this; while the persians in fact marched keeping carefully to the track which they had made before, and so they found the passage of the river, though with difficulty: and as they arrived by night and found the bridge broken up, they were brought to the extreme of fear, lest the ionians should have deserted them. . now there was with dareios an egyptian who had a voice louder than that of any other man on earth, and this man dareios ordered to take his stand upon the bank of the ister and to call histiaios of miletos. he accordingly proceeded to do so; and histiaios, hearing the first hail, produced all the ships to carry the army over and also put together the bridge. . thus the persians escaped, and the scythians in their search missed the persians the second time also: and their judgment of the ionians is that on the one hand, if they be regarded as free men, they are the most worthless and cowardly of all men, but on the other hand, if regarded as slaves, they are the most attached to their master and the least disposed to run away of all slaves. this is the reproach which is cast against the ionians by the scythians. . dareios then marching through thrace arrived at sestos in the chersonese; and from that place, he passed over himself in his ships to asia, but to command his army in europe he left megabazos a persian, to whom dareios once gave honour by uttering in the land of persia this saying:�dareios was beginning to eat pomegranates, and at once when he opened the first of them, artabanos his brother asked him of what he would desire to have as many as there were seeds in the pomegranate: and dareios said that he would desire to have men like megabazos as many as that in number, rather than to have hellas subject to him. in persia, i say, he honoured him by saying these words, and at this time he left him in command with eight myriads of his army. . this megabazos uttered one saying whereby he left of himself an imperishable memory with the peoples of hellespont: for being once at byzantion he heard that the men of calchedon had settled in that region seventeen years before the byzantians, and having heard it he said that those of calchedon at that time chanced to be blind; for assuredly they would not have chosen the worse place, when they might have settled in that which was better, if they had not been blind. this megabazos it was who was left in command at that time in the land of the hellespontians, and he proceeded to subdue all who did not take the side of the medes. . he then was doing thus; and at this very same time a great expedition was being made also against libya, on an occasion which i shall relate when i have first related this which follows.�the children's children of those who voyaged in the argo, having been driven forth by those pelasgians who carried away at brauron the women of the athenians,�having been driven forth i say by these from lemnos, had departed and sailed to lacedemon, and sitting down on mount taÿgetos they kindled a fire. the lacedemonians seeing this sent a messenger to inquire who they were and from whence; and they answered the question of the messenger saying that they were minyai and children of heroes who sailed in the argo, for these, they said, had put in to lemnos and propagated the race of which they sprang. the lacedemonians having heard the story of the descent of the minyai, sent a second time and asked for what purpose they had come into the country and were causing a fire to blaze. they said that they had been cast out by the pelasgians, and were come now to the land of their fathers, for most just it was that this should so be done; and they said that their request was to be permitted to dwell with these, having a share of civil rights and a portion allotted to them of the land. and the lacedemonians were content to receive the minyai upon the terms which they themselves desired, being most of all impelled to do this by the fact that the sons of tyndareus were voyagers in the argo. so having received the minyai they gave them a share of land and distributed them in the tribes; and they forthwith made marriages, and gave in marriage to others the women whom they brought with them from lemnos. . however, when no very long time had passed, the minyai forthwith broke out into insolence, asking for a share of the royal power and also doing other impious things: therefore the lacedemonians resolved to put them to death; and having seized them they cast them into a prison. now the lacedemonians put to death by night all those whom they put to death, but no man by day. when therefore they were just about to kill them, the wives of the minyai, being native spartans and daughters of the first citizens of sparta, entreated to be allowed to enter the prison and come to speech every one with her own husband: and they let them pass in, not supposing that any craft would be practised by them. they however, when they had entered, delivered to their husbands all the garments which they were wearing, and themselves received those of their husbands: thus the minyai having put on the women's clothes went forth out of prison as women, and having escaped in this manner they went again to taÿgetos and sat down there. . now at this very same time theras the son of autesion, the son of tisamenos, the son of thersander, the son of polyneikes, was preparing to set forth from lacedemon to found a settlement. this theras, who was of the race of cadmos, was mother's brother to the sons of aristodemos, eurysthenes and procles; and while these sons were yet children, theras as their guardian held the royal power in sparta. when however his nephews were grown and had taken the power into their hands, then theras, being grieved that he should be ruled by others after he had tasted of rule himself, said that he would not remain in lacedemon, but would sail away to his kinsmen. now there were in the island which is now called thera, but formerly was called callista, descendants of membliaros the son of poikiles, a phenician: for cadmos the son of agenor in his search for europa put in to land at the island which is now called thera; and, whether it was that the country pleased him when he had put to land, or whether he chose to do so for any other reason, he left in this island, besides other phenicians, membliaros also, of his own kinsmen. these occupied the island called callista for eight generations of men, before theras came from lacedemon. . to these then, i say, theras was preparing to set forth, taking with him people from the tribes, and intending to settle together with those who have been mentioned, not with any design to drive them out, but on the contrary claiming them very strongly as kinfolk. and when the minyai after having escaped from the prison went and sat down on taÿgetos, theras entreated of the lacedemonians, as they were proposing to put them to death, that no slaughter might take place, and at the same time he engaged himself to take them forth out of the land. the lacedemonians having agreed to this proposal, he sailed away with three thirty-oared galleys to the descendants of membliaros, not taking with him by any means all the minyai, but a few only; for the greater number of them turned towards the land of the paroreatai and caucones, and having driven these out of their country, they parted themselves into six divisions and founded in their territory the following towns,�lepreon, makistos, phrixai, pyrgos, epion, nudion; of these the eleians sacked the greater number within my own lifetime. the island meanwhile got its name of thera after theras who led the settlement. . and since his son said that he would not sail with him, therefore he said that he would leave him behind as a sheep among wolves; and in accordance with that saying this young man got the name of oiolycos, and it chanced that this name prevailed over his former name: then from oiolycos was begotten aigeus, after whom are called the aigeidai, a powerful clan in sparta: and the men of this tribe, since their children did not live to grow up, established by the suggestion of an oracle a temple to the avenging deities of laïos and oedipus, and after this the same thing was continued in thera by the descendants of these men. . up to this point of the story the lacedemonians agree in their report with the men of thera; but in what is to come it is those of thera alone who report that it happened as follows. grinnos the son of aisanios, a descendant of the theras who has been mentioned, and king of the island of thera, came to delphi bringing the offering of a hecatomb from his state; and there were accompanying him, besides others of the citizens, also battos the son of polymnestos, who was by descent of the family of euphemos of the race of the minyai. now when grinnos the king of the theraians was consulting the oracle about other matters, the pythian prophetess gave answer bidding him found a city in libya; and he made reply saying: "lord, i am by this time somewhat old and heavy to stir, but do thou bid some one of these younger ones do this." as he thus said he pointed towards battos. so far at that time: but afterwards when he had come away they were in difficulty about the saying of the oracle, neither having any knowledge of libya, in what part of the earth it was, nor venturing to send a colony to the unknown. . then after this for seven years there was no rain in thera, and in these years all the trees in their island were withered up excepting one: and when the theraians consulted the oracle, the pythian prophetess alleged this matter of colonising libya to be the cause. as then they had no remedy for their evil, they sent messengers to crete, to find out whether any of the cretans or of the sojourners in crete had ever come to libya. these as they wandered round about the country came also the city of itanos, and there they met with a fisher for purple named corobios, who said that he had been carried away by winds and had come to libya, and in libya to the island of platea. this man they persuaded by payment of money and took him to thera, and from thera there set sail men to explore, at first not many in number; and corobios having guided them to this same island of platea, they left corobios there, leaving behind with him provisions for a certain number of months, and sailed themselves as quickly as possible to make report about the island to the men of thera. . since however these stayed away longer than the time appointed, corobios found himself destitute; and after this a ship of samos, of which the master was colaios, while sailing to egypt was carried out of its course and came to this island of platea; and the samians hearing from corobios the whole story left him provisions for a year. they themselves then put out to sea from the island and sailed on, endeavouring to reach egypt but carried away continually by the east wind; and as the wind did not cease to blow, they passed through the pillars of heracles and came to tartessos, guided by divine providence. now this trading-place was at that time untouched by any, so that when these returned back home they made profit from their cargo greater than any other hellenes of whom we have certain knowledge, with the exception at least of sostratos the son of laodamas the eginetan, for with him it is not possible for any other man to contend. and the samians set apart six talents, the tenth part of their gains, and had a bronze vessel made like an argolic mixing-bowl with round it heads of griffins projecting in a row; and this they dedicated as an offering in the temple of hera, setting as supports under it three colossal statues of bronze seven cubits in height, resting upon their knees. by reason first of this deed great friendship was formed by those of kyrene and thera with the samians. . the theraians meanwhile, when they arrived at thera after having left corobios in the island, reported that they had colonised an island on the coast of libya: and the men of thera resolved to send one of every two brothers selected by lot and men besides taken from all the regions of the island, which are seven in number; and further that battos should be both their leader and their king. thus then they sent forth two fifty-oared galleys to platea. . this is the report of the theraians; and for the remainder of the account from this point onwards the theraians are in agreement with the men of kyrene: from this point onwards, i say, since in what concerns battos the kyrenians tell by no means the same tale as those of thera; for their account is this:�there is in crete a city called oäxos in which one etearchos became king, who when he had a daughter, whose mother was dead, named phronime, took to wife another woman notwithstanding. she having come in afterwards, thought fit to be a stepmother to phronime in deed as well as in name, giving her evil treatment and devising everything possible to her hurt; and at last she brings against her a charge of lewdness and persuades her husband that the truth is so. he then being convinced by his wife, devised an unholy deed against the daughter: for there was in oäxos one themison, a merchant of thera, whom etearchos took to himself as a guest-friend and caused him to swear that he would surely serve him in whatsoever he should require: and when he had caused him to swear this, he brought and delivered to him his daughter and bade him take her away and cast her into the sea. themison then was very greatly vexed at the deceit practised in the matter of the oath, and he dissolved his guest-friendship and did as follows, that is to say, he received the girl and sailed away, and when he got out into the open sea, to free himself from blame as regards the oath which etearchos had made him swear, he tied her on each side with ropes and let her down into the sea, and then drew her up and came to thera. . after that, polymnestos, a man of repute among the theraians, received phronime from him and kept her as his concubine; and in course of time there was born to him from her a son with an impediment in his voice and lisping, to whom, as both theraians and kyrenians say, was given the name battos, but i think that some other name was then given, and he was named battos instead of this after he came to libya, taking for himself this surname from the oracle which was given to him at delphi and from the rank which he had obtained; for the libyans call a king battos: and for this reason, i think, the pythian prophetess in her prophesying called him so, using the libyan tongue, because she knew that he would be a king in libya. for when he had grown to be a man, he came to delphi to inquire about his voice; and when he asked, the prophetess thus answered him: "for a voice thou camest, o battos, but thee lord phoebus apollo sendeth as settler forth to the libyan land sheep-abounding," just as if she should say using the hellenic tongue, "for a voice thou camest, o king." he thus made answer: "lord, i came to thee to inquire concerning my voice, but thou answerest me other things which are not possible, bidding me go as a settler to libya; but with what power, or with what force of men should i go?" thus saying he did not at all persuade her to give him any other reply; and as she was prophesying to him again the same things as before, battos departed while she was yet speaking, and went away to thera. . after this there came evil fortune both to himself and to the other men of thera; and the theraians, not understanding that which befell them, sent to delphi to inquire about the evils which they were suffering: and the pythian prophetess gave them reply that if they joined with battos in founding kyrene in libya, they would fare the better. after this the theraians sent battos with two fifty-oared galleys; and these sailed to libya, and then came away back to thera, for they did not know what else to do: and the theraians pelted them with missiles when they endeavoured to land, and would not allow them to put to shore, but bade them sail back again. they accordingly being compelled sailed away back, and they made a settlement in an island lying near the coast of libya, called, as was said before, platea. this island is said to be of the same size as the now existing city of kyrene. . in this they continued to dwell two years; but as they had no prosperity, they left one of their number behind and all the rest sailed away to delphi, and having come to the oracle they consulted it, saying that they were dwelling in libya and that, though they were dwelling there, they fared none the better: and the pythian prophetess made answer to them thus: "better than i if thou knowest the libyan land sheep-abounding, not having been there than i who have been, at thy wisdom i wonder." having heard this battos and his companions sailed away back again; for in fact the god would not let them off from the task of settlement till they had come to libya itself: and having arrived at the island and taken up him whom they had left, they made a settlement in libya itself at a spot opposite the island, called aziris, which is enclosed by most fair woods on both sides and a river flows by it on one side. . in this spot they dwelt for six years; and in the seventh year the libyans persuaded them to leave it, making request and saying that they would conduct them to a better region. so the libyans led them from that place making them start towards evening; and in order that the hellenes might not see the fairest of all the regions as they passed through it, they led them past it by night, having calculated the time of daylight: and this region is called irasa. then having conducted them to the so-called spring of apollo, they said, "hellenes, here is a fit place for you to dwell, for here the heaven is pierced with holes." . now during the lifetime of the first settler battos, who reigned forty years, and of his son arkesilaos, who reigned sixteen years, the kyrenians continued to dwell there with the same number as when they first set forth to the colony; but in the time of the third king, called battos the prosperous, the pythian prophetess gave an oracle wherein she urged the hellenes in general to sail and join with the kyrenians in colonising libya. for the kyrenians invited them, giving promise of a division of land; and the oracle which she uttered was as follows: "who to the land much desirèd, to libya, afterwards cometh, after the land be divided, i say he shall some day repent it." then great numbers were gathered at kyrene, and the libyans who dwelt round had much land cut off from their possessions; therefore they with their king whose name was adicran, as they were not only deprived of their country but also were dealt with very insolently by the kyrenians, sent to egypt and delivered themselves over to apries king of egypt. he then having gathered a great army of egyptians, sent it against kyrene; and the men of kyrene marched out to the region of irasa and to the spring theste, and there both joined battle with the egyptians and defeated them in the battle: for since the egyptians had not before made trial of the hellenes in fight and therefore despised them, they were so slaughtered that but few of them returned back to egypt. in consequence of this and because they laid the blame of it upon apries, the egyptians revolted from him. . this battos had a son called arkesilaos, who first when he became king made a quarrel with his own brothers, until they finally departed to another region of libya, and making the venture for themselves founded that city which was then and is now called barca; and at the same time as they founded this, they induced the libyans to revolt from the kyrenians. after this, arkesilaos made an expedition against those libyans who had received them and who had also revolted from kyrene, and the libyans fearing him departed and fled towards the eastern tribes of libyans: and arkesilaos followed after them as they fled, until he arrived in his pursuit at leucon in libya, and there the libyans resolved to attack him. accordingly they engaged battle and defeated the kyrenians so utterly that seven thousand hoplites of the kyrenians fell there. after this disaster arkesilaos, being sick and having swallowed a potion, was strangled by his brother haliarchos, and haliarchos was killed treacherously by the wife of arkesilaos, whose name was eryxo. . then battos the son of arkesilaos succeeded to the kingdom, who was lame and not sound in his feet: and the kyrenians with a view to the misfortune which had befallen them sent men to delphi to ask what form of rule they should adopt, in order to live in the best way possible; and the pythian prophetess bade them take to themselves a reformer of their state from mantineia of the arcadians. the men of kyrene accordingly made request, and those of mantineia gave them the man of most repute among their citizens, whose name was demonax. this man therefore having come to kyrene and having ascertained all things exactly, in the first place caused them to have three tribes, distributing them thus:�one division he made of the theraians and their dependants, another of the peloponnesians and cretans, and a third of all the islanders. then secondly for the king battos he set apart domains of land and priesthoods, but all the other powers which the kings used to possess before, he assigned as of public right to the people. . during the reign of this battos things continued to be thus, but in the reign of his son arkesilaos there arose much disturbance about the offices of the state: for arkesilaos son of battos the lame and of pheretime said that he would not suffer it to be according as the mantineian demonax had arranged, but asked to have back the royal rights of his forefathers. after this, stirring up strife he was worsted and went as an exile to samos, and his mother to salamis in cyprus. now at that time the ruler of salamis was euelthon, the same who dedicated as an offering the censer at delphi, a work well worth seeing, which is placed in the treasury of the corinthians. to him having come, pheretime asked him for an army to restore herself and her son to kyrene. euelthon however was ready to give her anything else rather than that; and she when she received that which he gave her said that this too was a fair gift, but fairer still would be that other gift of an army for which she was asking. as she kept saying this to every thing which was given, at last euelthon sent out to her a present of a golden spindle and distaff, with wool also upon it: and when pheretime uttered again the same saying about this present, euelthon said that such things as this were given as gifts to women and not an army. . arkesilaos meanwhile, being in samos, was gathering every one together by a promise of dividing land; and while a great host was being collected, arkesilaos set out to delphi to inquire of the oracle about returning from exile: and the pythian prophetess gave him this answer: "for four named battos and four named arkesilaos, eight generations of men, loxias grants to you to be kings of kyrene, but beyond this he counsels you not even to attempt it. thou however must keep quiet when thou hast come back to thy land; and if thou findest the furnace full of jars, heat not the jars fiercely, but let them go with a fair wind: if however thou heat the furnace fiercely, enter not thou into the place flowed round by water; for if thou dost thou shalt die, both thou and the bull which is fairer than all the rest." . thus the pythian prophetess gave answer to arkesilaos; and he, having taken to him those in samos, made his return to kyrene; and when he had got possession of the power, he did not remember the saying of the oracle but endeavoured to exact penalties from those of the opposite faction for having driven him out. of these some escaped out of the country altogether, but some arkesilaos got into his power and sent them away to cyprus to be put to death. these were driven out of their course to cnidos, and the men of cnidos rescued them and sent them away to thera. some others however of the kyrenians fled to a great tower belonging to aglomachos a private citizen, and arkesilaos burnt them by piling up brushwood round. then after he had done the deed he perceived that the oracle meant this, in that the pythian prophetess forbade him, if he found the jars in the furnace, to heat them fiercely; and he voluntarily kept away from the city of the kyrenians, fearing the death which had been prophesied by the oracle and supposing that kyrene was flowed round by water. now he had to wife a kinswoman of his own, the daughter of the king of barca whose name was alazeir: to him he came, and men of barca together with certain of the exiles from kyrene, perceiving him going about in the market-place, killed him, and also besides him his father-in-law alazeir. arkesilaos accordingly, having missed the meaning of the oracle, whether with his will or against his will, fulfilled his own destiny. . his mother pheretime meanwhile, so long as arkesilaos having worked evil for himself dwelt at barca, herself held the royal power of her son at kyrene, both exercising his other rights and also sitting in council: but when she heard that her son had been slain in barca, she departed and fled to egypt: for she had on her side services done for cambyses the son of cyrus by arkesilaos, since this was the arkesilaos who had given over kyrene to cambyses and had laid a tribute upon himself. pheretime then having come to egypt sat down as a suppliant of aryandes, bidding him help her, and alleging as a reason that it was on account of his inclination to the side of the medes that her son had been slain. . now this aryandes had been appointed ruler of the province of egypt by cambyses; and after the time of these events he lost his life because he would measure himself with dareios. for having heard and seen that dareios desired to leave behind him as a memorial of himself a thing which had not been made by any other king, he imitated him, until at last he received his reward: for whereas dareios refined gold and made it as pure as possible, and of this caused coins to be struck, aryandes, being ruler of egypt, did the same thing with silver; and even now the purest silver is that which is called aryandic. dareios then having learnt that he was doing this put him to death, bringing against him another charge of attempting rebellion. . now at the time of which i speak this aryandes had compassion on pheretime and gave her all the troops that were in egypt, both the land and the sea forces, appointing amasis a maraphian to command the land-army and badres, of the race of the pasargadai, to command the fleet: but before he sent away the army, aryandes despatched a herald to barca and asked who it was who had killed arkesilaos; and the men of barca all took it upon themselves, for they said they suffered formerly many great evils at his hands. having heard this, aryandes at last sent away the army together with pheretime. this charge then was the pretext alleged; but in fact the army was being sent out (as i believe) for the purpose of subduing libya: for of the libyans there are many nations of nations of various kinds, and but few of them are subject to the king, while the greater number paid no regard to dareios. . now the libyans have their dwelling as follows:�beginning from egypt, first of the libyans are settled the adyrmachidai, who practise for the most part the same customs as the egyptians, but wear clothing similar to that of the other libyans. their women wear a bronze ring upon each leg, and they have long hair on their heads, and when they catch their lice, each one bites her own in retaliation and then throws them away. these are the only people of the lybians who do this; and they alone display to the king their maidens when they are about to be married, and whosoever of them proves to be pleasing to the king is deflowered by him. these adyrmachidai extend along the coast from egypt as far as the port which is called plynos. . next after these come the giligamai, occupying the country towards the west as far as the island of aphrodisias. in the space within this limit lies off the coast the island of platea, where the kyrenians made their settlement; and on the coast of the mainland there is port menelaos, and aziris, where the kyrenians used to dwell. from this point begins the silphion and it extends along the coast from the island of platea as far as the entrance of the syrtis. this nation practises customs nearly resembling those of the rest. . next to the giligamai on the west are the asbystai: these dwell above kyrene, and the asbystai do not reach down the sea, for the region along the sea is occupied by kyrenians. these most of all the libyans are drivers of four-horse chariots, and in the greater number of their customs they endeavour to imitate the kyrenians. . next after the asbystai on the west come the auchisai: these dwell above barca and reach down to the sea by euesperides: and in the middle of the country of the auchisai dwell the bacales, a small tribe, who reach down to the sea by the city of taucheira in the territory of barca: these practise the same customs as those above kyrene. . next after these auschisai towards the west come the nasamonians, a numerous race, who in the summer leave their flocks behind by the sea and go up to the region of augila to gather the fruit of the date-palms, which grow in great numbers and very large and are all fruit-bearing: these hunt the wingless locusts, and they dry them in the sun and then pound them up, and after that they sprinkle them upon milk and drink them. their custom is for each man to have many wives, and they make their intercourse with them common in nearly the same manner as the massagetai, that is they set up a staff in front of the door and so have intercourse. when a nasamonian man marries his first wife, the custom is for the bride on the first night to go through the whole number of the guests having intercourse with them, and each man when he has lain with her gives a gift, whatsoever he has brought with him from his house. the forms of oath and of divination which they use are as follows:�they swear by the men among themselves who are reported to have been the most righteous and brave, by these, i say, laying hands upon their tombs; and they divine by visiting the sepulchral mounds of their ancestors and lying down to sleep upon them after having prayed; and whatsoever thing the man sees in his dream, this he accepts. they practise also the exchange of pledges in the following manner, that is to say, one gives the other to drink from his hand, and drinks himself from the hand of the other; and if they have no liquid, they take of the dust from the ground and lick it. . adjoining the nasamonians is the country of the psylloi. these have perished utterly in the following manner:�the south wind blowing upon them dried up all their cisterns of water, and their land was waterless, lying all within the syrtis. they then having taken a resolve by common consent, marched in arms against the south wind (i report that which is reported by the libyans), and when they had arrived at the sandy tract, the south wind blew and buried them in the sand. these then having utterly perished, the nasamonians from that time forward possess their land. . above these towards the south wind in the region of wild beasts dwell the garamantians, who fly from every man and avoid the company of all; and they neither possess any weapon of war, nor know how to defend themselves against enemies. . these dwell above the nasamonians; and next to the nasamonians along the sea coast towards the west come the macai, who shave their hair so as to leave tufts, letting the middle of their hair grow long, but round this on all sides shaving it close to the skin; and for fighting they carry shields made of ostrich skins. through their land the river kinyps runs out into the sea, flowing from a hill called the "hill of the charites." this hill of the charites is overgrown thickly with wood, while the rest of libya which has been spoken of before is bare of trees; and the distance from the sea to this hill is two hundred furlongs. . next to these macai are the gindanes, whose women wear each of them a number of anklets made of the skins of animals, for the following reason, as it is said:�for every man who has commerce with her she binds on an anklet, and the woman who has most is esteemed the best, since she has been loved by the greatest number of men. . in a peninsula which stands out into the sea from the land of these gindanes dwell the lotophagoi, who live by eating the fruit of the lotos only. now the fruit of the lotos is in size like that of the mastich-tree, and in flavour it resembles that of the date-palm. of this fruit the lotophagoi even make for themselves wine. . next after the lotophagoi along the sea-coast are the machlyans, who also make use of the lotos, but less than those above mentioned. these extend to a great river named the river triton, and this runs out into a great lake called tritonis, in which there is an island named phla. about this island they say there was an oracle given to the lacedemonians that they should make a settlement in it. . the following moreover is also told, namely that jason, when the argo had been completed by him under mount pelion, put into it a hecatomb and with it also a tripod of bronze, and sailed round pelopponese, desiring to come to delphi; and when in sailing he got near malea, a north wind seized his ship and carried it off to libya, and before he caught sight of land he had come to be in the shoals of the lake tritonis. then as he was at a loss how he should bring his ship forth, the story goes that triton appeared to him and bade jason give him the tripod, saying that he would show them the right course and let them go away without hurt: and when jason consented to it, then triton showed them the passage out between the shoals and set the tripod in his own temple, after having first uttered a prophecy over the tripod and having declared to jason and his company the whole matter, namely that whensoever one of the descendants of those who sailed with him in the argo should carry away this tripod, then it was determined by fate that a hundred cities of hellenes should be established about the lake tritonis. having heard this the native libyans concealed the tripod. . next to these machlyans are the auseans. these and the machlyans dwell round the lake tritonis, and the river triton is the boundary between them: and while the machlyans grow their hair long at the back of the head, the auseans do so in front. at a yearly festival of athene their maidens take their stand in two parties and fight against one another with stones and staves, and they say that in doing so they are fulfilling the rites handed down by their fathers for the divinity who was sprung from that land, whom we call athene: and those of the maidens who die of the wounds received they call "false-maidens." but before they let them begin the fight they do this:�all join together and equip the maiden who is judged to be the fairest on each occasion, with a corinthian helmet and with full hellenic armour, and then causing her to go up into a chariot they conduct her round the lake. now i cannot tell with what they equipped the maidens in old time, before the hellenes were settled near them; but i suppose that they used to be equipped with egyptian armour, for it is from egypt that both the shield and the helmet have come to the hellenes, as i affirm. they say moreover that athene is the daughter of poseidon and of the lake tritonis, and that she had some cause of complaint against her father and therefore gave herself to zeus, and zeus made her his own daughter. such is the story which these tell; and they have their intercourse with women in common, not marrying but having intercourse like cattle: and when the child of any woman has grown big, he is brought before a meeting of the men held within three months of that time, and whomsoever of the men the child resembles, his son he is accounted to be. . thus then have been mentioned those nomad libyans who live along the sea-coast: and above these inland is the region of libya which has wild beasts; and above the wild-beast region there stretches a raised belt of sand, extending from thebes of the egyptians to the pillars of heracles. in this belt at intervals of about ten days' journey there are fragments of salt in great lumps forming hills, and at the top of each hill there shoots up from the middle of the salt a spring of water cold and sweet; and about the spring dwell men, at the furthest limit towards the desert, and above the wild-beast region. first, at a distance of ten days' journey from thebes, are the ammonians, whose temple is derived from that of the theban zeus, for the image of zeus in thebes also, as i have said before, has the head of a ram. these, as it chances, have also other water of a spring, which in the early morning is warm; at the time when the market fills, cooler; when midday comes, it is quite cold, and then they water their gardens; but as the day declines, it abates from its coldness, until at last, when the sun sets, the water is warm; and it continues to increase in heat still more until it reaches midnight, when it boils and throws up bubbles; and when midnight passes, it becomes cooler gradually till dawn of day. this spring is called the fountain of the sun. . after the ammonians, as you go on along the belt of sand, at an interval again of ten days' journey there is a hill of salt like that of the ammonians, and a spring of water, with men dwelling about it; and the name of this place is augila. to this the nasamonians come year by year to gather the fruit of the date-palms. . from augila at a distance again of ten days' journey there is another hill of salt and spring of water and a great number of fruit-bearing date-palms, as there are also in the other places: and men dwell here who are called the garmantians, a very great nation, who carry earth to lay over the salt and then sow crops. from this point is the shortest way to the lotophagoi, for from these it is a journey of thirty days to the country of the garmantians. among them also are produced the cattle which feed backwards; and they feed backwards for this reason, because they have their horns bent down forwards, and therefore they walk backwards as they feed; for forwards they cannot go, because the horns run into the ground in front of them; but in nothing else do they differ from other cattle except in this and in the thickness and firmness to the touch of their hide. these garamantians of whom i speak hunt the "cave-dwelling" ethiopians with their four-horse chariots, for the cave-dwelling ethiopians are the swiftest of foot of all men about whom we hear report made: and the cave-dwellers feed upon serpents and lizards and such creeping things, and they use a language which resembles no other, for in it they squeak just like bats. . from the garmantians at a distance again of ten days' journey there is another hill of salt and spring of water, and men dwell round it called atarantians, who alone of all men about whom we know are nameless; for while all taken together have the name atarantians, each separate man of them has no name given to him. these utter curses against the sun when he is at his height, and moreover revile him with all manner of foul terms, because he oppresses them by his burning heat, both themselves and their land. after this at a distance of ten days' journey there is another hill of salt and spring of water, and men dwell round it. near this salt hill is a mountain named atlas, which is small in circuit and rounded on every side; and so exceedingly lofty is it said to be, that it is not possible to see its summits, for clouds never leave them either in the summer or in the winter. this the natives say is the pillar of the heaven. after this mountain these men got their name, for they are called atlantians; and it is said that they neither eat anything that has life nor have any dreams. . as far as these atlantians i am able to mention in order the names of those who are settled in the belt of sand; but for the parts beyond these i can do so no more. however, the belt extends as far as the pillars of heracles and also in the parts outside them: and there is a mine of salt in it at a distance of ten days' journey from the atlantians, and men dwelling there; and these all have their houses built of the lumps of salt, since these parts of libya which we have now reached are without rain; for if it rained, the walls being made of salt would not be able to last: and the salt is dug up there both white and purple in colour. above the sand-belt, in the parts which are in the direction of the south wind and towards the interior of libya, the country is uninhabited, without water and without wild beasts, rainless and treeless, and there is no trace of moisture in it. . i have said that from egypt as far as the lake tritonis libyans dwell who are nomads, eating flesh and drinking milk; and these do not taste at all of the flesh of cows, for the same reason as the egyptians also abstain from it, nor do they keep swine. moreover the women of the kyrenians too think it not right to eat cows' flesh, because of the egyptian isis, and they even keep fasts and celebrate festivals for her; and the women of barca, in addition from cows' flesh, do not taste of swine either. . thus it is with these matters: but in the region to the west of lake tritonis the libyans cease to be nomads, and they do not practise the same customs, nor do to their children anything like that which the nomads are wont to do; for the nomad libyans, whether all of them i cannot say for certain, but many of them, do as follows:�when their children are four years old, they burn with a greasy piece of sheep's wool the veins in the crowns of their heads, and some of them burn the veins of the temples, so that for all their lives to come the cold humour may not run down from their heads and do them hurt: and for this reason it is (they say) that they are so healthy; for the libyans are in truth the most healthy of all races concerning which we have knowledge, whether for this reason or not i cannot say for certain, but the most healthy they certainly are: and if, when they burn the children, a convulsion comes on, they have found out a remedy for this; for they pour upon them the water of a he-goat and so save them. i report that which is reported by the libyans themselves. . the following is the manner of sacrifice which the nomads have:�they cut off a part of the animal's ear as a first offering and throw it over the house, and having done this they twist its neck. they sacrifice only to the sun and the moon; that is to say, to these all the libyans sacrifice, but those who dwell round the lake tritonis sacrifice most of all to athene, and next to triton and poseidon. . it would appear also that the hellenes made the dress and the aigis of the images of athene after the model of the libyan women; for except that the dress of the libyan women is of leather, and the tassels which hang from their aigis are not formed of serpents but of leather thongs, in all other respects athene is dressed like them. moreover the name too declares that the dress of the figures of pallas has come from libya, for the libyan women wear over their other garments bare goat-skins (aigeas) with tasselled fringes and coloured over with red madder, and from the name of these goat-skins the hellenes formed the name aigis. i think also that in these regions first arose the practice of crying aloud during the performance of sacred rites, for the libyan women do this very well. the hellenes learnt from the libyans also the yoking together of four horses. . the nomads bury those who die just in the same manner as the hellenes, except only the nasamonians: these bury bodies in a sitting posture, taking care at the moment when the man expires to place him sitting and not to let him die lying down on his back. they have dwellings composed of the stems of asphodel entwined with rushes, and so made that they can be carried about. such are the customs followed by these tribes. . on the west of the river triton next after the auseans come libyans who are tillers of the soil, and whose custom it is to possess fixed habitations; and they are called maxyans. they grow their hair long on the right side of their heads and cut it short upon the left, and smear their bodies over with red ochre. these say that they are of the men who came from troy. this country and the rest of libya which is towards the west is both much more frequented by wild beasts and much more thickly wooded than the country of the nomads: for whereas the part of libya which is situated towards the east, where the nomads dwell, is low-lying and sandy up to the river triton, that which succeeds it towards the west, the country of those who till the soil, is exceedingly mountainous and thickly-wooded and full of wild beasts: for in the land of these are found both the monstrous serpent and the lion and the elephant, and bears and venomous snakes and horned asses, besides the dog-headed men, and the headless men with their eyes set in their breasts (at least so say the libyans about them), and the wild men and wild women, and a great multitude of other beasts which are not fabulous like these. . in the land of the nomads however there exist none of these, but other animals as follows:�white-rump antelopes, gazelles, buffaloes, asses, not the horned kind but others which go without water (for in fact these never drink), oryes, whose horns are made into the sides of the phenician lyre (this animal is in size about equal to an ox), small foxes, hyenas, porcupines, wild rams, wolves, jackals, panthers, boryes, land-crocodiles about three cubits in length and very much resembling lizards, ostriches, and small snakes, each with one horn: these wild animals there are in this country, as well as those which exist elsewhere, except the stag and the wild-boar; but libya has no stags nor wild boars at all. also there are in this country three kinds of mice, one is called the "two-legged" mouse, another the zegeris (a name which is libyan and signifies in the hellenic tongue a "hill"), and a third the "prickly" mouse. there are also weasels produced in the silphion, which are very like those of tartessos. such are the wild animals which the land of the libyans possesses, so far as we were able to discover by inquiries extended as much as possible. . next to the maxyan libyans are the zauekes, whose women drive their chariots for them to war. . next to these are the gyzantes, among whom honey is made in great quantity by bees, but in much greater quantity still it is said to be made by men, who work at it as a trade. however that may be, these all smear themselves over with red ochre and eat monkeys, which are produced in very great numbers upon their mountains. . opposite these, as the carthaginians say, there lies an island called kyrauis, two hundred furlongs in length but narrow, to which one may walk over from the mainland; and it is full of olives and vines. in it they say there is a pool, from which the native girls with birds' feathers smeared over with pitch bring up gold-dust out of the mud. whether this is really so i do not know, but i write that which is reported; and nothing is impossible, for even in zakynthos i saw myself pitch brought up out of a pool of water. there are there several pools, and the largest of them measures seventy feet each way and is two fathoms in depth. into this they plunge a pole with a myrtle-branch bound to it, and then with the branch of the myrtle they bring up pitch, which has the smell of asphalt, but in other respects it is superior to the pitch of pieria. this they pour into a pit dug near the pool; and when they have collected a large quantity, then they pour it into the jars from the pit: and whatever thing falls into the pool goes under ground and reappears in the sea, which is distant about four furlongs from the pool. thus then the report about the island lying near the coast of libya is also probably enough true. . the carthaginians say also this, namely that there is a place in libya and men dwelling there, outside the pillars of heracles, to whom when they have come and have taken the merchandise forth from their ships, they set it in order along the beach and embark again in their ships, and after that they raise a smoke; and the natives of the country seeing the smoke come to the sea, and then they lay down gold as an equivalent for the merchandise and retire to a distance away from the merchandise. the carthaginians upon that disembark and examine it, and if the gold is in their opinion sufficient for the value of the merchandise, they take it up and go their way; but if not, they embark again in their ships and sit there; and the others approach and straightway add more gold to the former, until they satisfy them: and they say that neither party wrongs the other; for neither do the carthaginians lay hands on the gold until it is made equal to the value of their merchandise, nor do the others lay hands on the merchandise until the carthaginians have taken the gold. . these are the libyan tribes whom we are able to name; and of these the greater number neither now pay any regard to the king of the medes nor did they then. thus much also i have to say about this land, namely that it is occupied by four races and no more, so far as we know; and of these races two are natives of the soil and the other two not so; for the libyans and the ethiopians are natives, the one race dwelling in the northern parts of libya and the other in the southern, while the phenicians and the hellenes are strangers. . i think moreover that (besides other things) in goodness of soil libya does not very greatly excel as compared with asia or europe, except only the region of kinyps, for the same name is given to the land as to the river. this region is equal to the best of lands in bringing forth the fruit of demeter, nor does it at all resemble the rest of libya; for it has black soil and is watered by springs, and neither has it fear of drought nor is it hurt by drinking too abundantly of rain; for rain there is in this part of libya. of the produce of the crops the same measures hold good here as for the babylonian land. and that is good land also which the euesperites occupy, for when it bears best it produces a hundred-fold, but the land in the region of kinyps produces sometimes as much as three-hundred-fold. . moreover the land of kyrene, which is the highest land of the part of libya which is occupied by nomads, has within its confines three seasons of harvest, at which we may marvel: for the parts by the sea-coasts first have their fruits ripe for reaping and for gathering the vintage; and when these have been gathered in, the parts which lie above the sea-side places, those situated in the middle, which they call the hills, are ripe for the gathering in; and as soon as this middle crop has been gathered in, that in the highest part of the land comes to perfection and is ripe; so that by the time the first crop has been eaten and drunk up, the last is just coming in. thus the harvest for the kyrenians lasts eight months. let so much as has been said suffice for these things. . now when the persian helpers of pheretime, having been sent from egypt by aryandes, had arrived at barca, they laid siege to the city, proposing to the inhabitants that they should give up those who were guilty of the murder of arkesilaos: but as all their people had taken a share in the guilt, they did not accept the proposals. then they besieged barca for nine months, both digging underground passages which led to the wall and making vigorous attacks upon it. now the passages dug were discovered by a worker of bronze with a shield covered over with bronze, who had thought of a plan as follows:�carrying it round within the wall he applied it to the ground in the city, and whereas the other places to which he applied it were noiseless, at those places where digging was going on the bronze of the shield gave a sound; and the men of barca would make a countermine there and slay the persians who were digging mines. this then was discovered as i have said, and the attacks were repulsed by the men of barca. . then as they were suffering hardship for a long time and many were falling on both sides, and especially on that of the persians, amasis the commander of the land-army contrived as follows:�perceiving that the barcaians were not to be conquered by force but might be conquered by guile, he dug by night a broad trench and over it he laid timber of no great strength, and brought earth and laid it above on the top of the timber, making it level with the rest of the ground: then at daybreak he invited the men of barca to a parley; and they gladly consented, and at last they agreed to make a treaty: and the treaty they made with one another was taken over the hidden trench, namely that so long as this earth should continue to be as it was, so long the oath should remain firm, and that the men of barca should promise to pay tribute of due amount to the king, and the persians should do no further violence to the men of barca. after the oath the men of barca trusting to these engagements both went forth themselves from their city and let any who desired it of the enemy pass within their walls, having opened all the gates; but the persians first broke down the concealed bridge and then began to run inside the city wall. and the reason why they broke down the bridge which they had made was that they might keep their oaths, since they had sworn to the men of barca that the oath should remain firm continually for so long time as the earth should remain as it then was, but after that they had broken it down, the oath no longer remained firm. . now the most guilty of the barcaians, when they were delivered to her by the persians, pheretime impaled in a ring round about the wall; and she cut off the breasts of their wives and set the wall round with these also in order: but the rest of the men of barca she bade the persians carry off as spoil, except so many of them as were of the house of battos and not sharers in the guilt of the murder; and to these pheretime gave the city in charge. . so the persians having made slaves of the rest of the barcaians departed to go back: and when they appeared at the gates of the city of kyrene, the kyrenians let them go through their town in order to avoid neglect of some oracle. then as the army was going through, badres the commander of the fleet urged that they should capture the city, but amasis the commander of the land-army would not consent to it; for he said that they had been sent against no other city of the hellenes except barca. when however they had passed through and were encamping on the hill of zeus lycaios, they repented of not having taken possession of kyrene; and they endeavoured again to pass into it, but the men of kyrene would not allow them. then upon the persians, although no one fought against them, there fell a sudden panic, and they ran away for about sixty furlongs and then encamped. and when the camp had been placed here, there came to it a messenger from aryandes summoning them back; so the persians asked the kyrenians to give them provisions for their march and obtained their request; and having received these, they departed to go to egypt. after this the libyans took them up, and killed for the sake of their clothes and equipment those of them who at any time were left or straggled behind, until at last they came to egypt. . this army of the persians reached euesperides, and this was their furthest point in libya: and those of the barcaians whom they had reduced to slavery they removed again from egypt and brought them to the king, and king dareios gave them a village in the land of bactria in which to make a settlement. to this village they gave the name of barca, and it still continued to be inhabited by them even down to my own time, in the land of bactria. . pheretime however did not bring her life happily to an end any more than they: for as soon as she had returned from libya to egypt after having avenged herself on the barcaians, she died an evil death, having become suddenly full of worms while yet alive: for, as it seems, too severe punishments inflicted by men prove displeasing to the gods. such and so great was the punishment inflicted by pheretime the wife of battos on the men of barca. ����� notes to book iv. [ some enterprises had been entrusted to others, e.g. the attack on samos; but this had not been the case with the capture of babylon, therefore some editors have proposed corrections, e.g. {au tou} (schweighäuser), and {autika} (stein).] [ see i. .] [ {tes ano 'asies}: this means eastern asia as distinguished from the coasts of asia minor; see i. and .] [ {katapausantes}: the expression is awkward if meant to be equivalent to {kai katepausan}, but it is hardly improved by the alteration to {katapausontes}. perhaps the clause is out of place.] [ {ponos}.] [ {peristixantes}: so the two best mss.; others have {peristesantes} or {peristexantes}. the word {peristixantes} would be from {peristikho}, equivalent to {peristikhizo}, and is acknowledged in this sense by hesychius.] [ the connexion is not clear either at the beginning of the chapter or here. this clause would seem to be a repetition of that at the beginning of the chapter, and that which comes between should be an explanation of the reason why the slaves are blinded. as it stands, however, we can only refer it to the clause which follows, {ou gar arotai eisi alla nomades}, and even so there is no real solution of the difficulty, for it is not explained why nomads should have blinded slaves. perhaps the best resource is to suppose that some part of the explanation, in connexion with the manner of dealing with the milk, has been lost.] [ {te per}: a conjectural emendation for {e per}, "which is a very great lake".] [ {epi touton arkhonton}: the word {arkhonton} is omitted in some mss. and by some editors.] [ {sagarin}.] [ {tous basileious}: so wesseling. the mss. have {tous basileas}, "the kings," which may perhaps be used here as equivalent to {tous basileious}: some editors, including stein, adopt the conjecture {tou basileos}, "from the youngest of them who, was king, those who," etc.] [ {tou basileos}: some editors read by conjecture {skolotou basileos}, "after their king scolotos".] [ {katazonnumenon}: or {kata tade zonnumenon}, "girded in this manner".] [ {mekhanesasthai ten metera skuthe}: the better mss. read {mekhanasthai} and {skuthen}: the meaning seems doubtful, and some editors would omit the clause as an interpolation.] [ {pros pollous deomenon}: the better mss. read {pro pollou deomena}. the passage has been emended in various ways, e.g. {pros pollous deoi menontas} (buttmann), {pros pollous menontas} (bredow), {pro spodou deomenon} (stein).] [ {poiesas}: some authorities have {eipas}.] [ italy means for herodotus only the southern part of the peninsula.] [ {diekosioisi}: so the best authorities; others have {priekosioisi}.] [ {'italioteon}, i.e. hellenic settlers in italy.] [ {to agalmati to 'apollonos}: {agalma} is used for anything dedicated to a god, most commonly the sacred image.] [ {katuperthe}: "above," i.e. beyond them towards the north. similarly when dealing with libya the writer uses the same word of those further from the coast towards the south; see ch. .] [ {en autoisi toisi epesi poieon}: "even in the verses which he composed," in which he might be expected as a poet to go somewhat beyond the literal truth.] [ or, "alizonians".] [ {'olbiopolitas}.] [ see ch. , where the day's journey is reckoned at stades ( english miles).] [ the meaning of {eremos} here is not waste and barren land, but land without settled inhabitants.] [ i.e. "man-eaters".] [ this is the reading of the mss., but it is not consistent with the distance given in ch. , nor with the actual facts: some editors therefore read "four" instead of "fourteen".] [ i.e. "cliffs".] [ i.e. "black-cloaks".] [ {'argippaioi}: it is not certain that this is the form which ought to be read here: latin writers make the name "arimphaei," and in some mss. it is given here as {'orgempaioi}.] [ {agalmati}.] [ {ta genesia}.] [ or, "violent".] [ od. iv. .] [ {e phuonta phuein mogis}.] [ {prosthekas}, "additions".] [ i.e. of apollo and artemis.] [ omitting {legon}.] [ the word "asia" is not contained in the mss. and need not be inserted in the text, but it is implied, if not expressed; see chap. .] [ {aktai}.] [ {ou legousa ei me nomo}.] [ i.e. , fathoms, equivalent to stades; see ii. , note .] [ {oude sumballein axie}.] [ ii. .] [ {brota}: some mss. have {probata} "cattle".] [ {omoia parekhomene}: the construction is confused, but the meaning is that all but the eastern parts are known to be surrounded by sea.] [ {logion}: some mss. have {logimon}, "of reputation".] [ stein reads {eisi de} for {eisi de}, and punctuates so that the meaning is, "it has become the greatest of all rivers in the following manner:�besides other rivers which flow into it, those which especially make it great are as follows".] [ {pente men oi}: this perhaps requires emendation, but the corrections proposed are hardly satisfactory, e.g. {pente megaloi} or {pente monoi}.] [ or "skios": called by thucydides "oskios" (ii. ).] [ {eti}: most of the mss. give {esti}, which is adopted by some editors.] [ "sacred ways".] [ {gerreon}: in some mss. {gerrou}, "the region called gerros".] [ {tesserakonta}: some editors have altered this number, but without authority or sufficient reason.] [ {di eremou}: see note on ch. . the region here spoken of is that between the gerrians and the agricultural scythians.] [ {es touto elos}: i.e. the dneiper-liman. (the medicean and florentine mss. read {es to elos}, not {es to telos}, as hitherto reported.)] [ {eon embolon tes khores}.] [ {metros}: i.e. the mother of the gods, kybele, cp. ch. ; some less good authorities have {demetros}.] [ {reei de}: most mss. have {reei men gar}.] [ or, "apia".] [ or, "goitosyros".] [ the mss. have also "arippasa" and "artimpasa".] [ the authorities have also "thagimasa" and "thamimasidas".] [ {ton arkheion}: some read by conjecture {en to arkheio}, "at the seat of government," or "in the public place".] [ {eson t' epi stadious treis}.] [ {upo ton kheimonon}.] [ {akinakes}.] [ {agalma}: see note on ch. .] [ {kata per baitas}.] [ or, "and put them together in one bundle".] [ see i. .] [ {kuperou}: it is not clear what plant is meant.] [ i.e. for this purpose. the general use of bronze is attested by ch. .] [ {ode anabibazontes, epean k.t.l}: the reference of {ode} is directly to the clause {epean��trakhelou}, though in sense it refers equally to the following, {katothen de k.t.l}. some editors punctuate thus, {ode anabibazontes epean} and omit {de} after {katothen}, making the reference of {ode} to the latter clause alone.] [ {oruontai}, as in iii. , but here they howl for pleasure.] [ like the egyptians for example, cp. ii. .] [ {mete ge on allelon}: the mss. have {me ti ge on allelon}. most editors read {allon} for {allelon} and alter the other words in various ways ({me toi ge on, me toigaron} etc.), taking {me} as in {me oti} (ne dicam aliorum). the reading which i have adopted is based on that of stein, who reads {mete teon allon} and quotes vii. , {oute ge alloisi 'ellenon oudamoisi, umin de de kai dia panton ekista}. with {allon} the meaning is, "rejecting those of other nations and especially those of the hellenes". for the use of {me} after {pheugein} cp. ii. .] [ or, according to some mss., "as they proved in the case of anacharsis and afterwards of skyles".] [ {gen pollen}.] [ {epitropou}.] [ {peplastai}: some authorities give {pepaistai}, "has been invented as a jest".] [ {es kheiras agesthai}.] [ {o theos}.] [ {diepresteuse}: this or {epresteuse} is the reading of most of the mss. the meaning is uncertain, since the word does not occur elsewhere. stein suggests that it may mean "scoffed (at the scythians)". various conjectures have been tried, e.g. {diedresteuse}, {diedrepeteuse}, etc.] [ {os skuthas einai}: cp. ii. . some (e.g. dindorf and bähr) translate "considering that they are scythians," i.e. for a nation so famous and so widely extended.] [ i.e. about gallons.] [ {epi to iro}: the mss. mostly have {epi iro}, and stein adopts the conjecture {epi rio}, "on a projecting point". the temple would be that of {zeus ourios} mentioned in ch. . (in the medicean ms. the omitted {i} is inserted above the line beforethe {r}, not directly over it, as represented by stein, and the accent is not omitted.)] [ {stadioi}, and so throughout.] [ i.e. , , .] [ i.e. , .] [ {stelas}, i.e. "square blocks"; so also in ch. .] [ i.e. , .] [ {os emoi dokeei sumballomeno}, "putting the evidence together".] [ {pasi deka}: probably a loose expression like {ta panta muria}, iii. .] [ {psoren}, "mange".] [ or (less probably) "skyrmiadai".] [ {salmoxin}: some inferior mss. have {zalmoxin}, or {zamolxin}, and the spelling in other writers varies between these forms.] [ {daimona}, sometimes used for deified men as distinguished from gods, cp. ch. .] [ {dia penteteridos}.] [ {bathutera}.] [ {ou to asthenestato sophiste}. no depreciation seems to be intended here.] [ {andreona}.] [ i.e. the mediterranean: or the passage may mean simply, "thrace runs out further into the sea than scythia".] [ {gounon}.] [ more literally, "i say this, so far as it is allowed to compare, etc. such is the form of the tauric land".] [ {ede}. the agathyrsians however have not been mentioned before in this connection.] [ {stadia}.] [ {tes skuthikes ta epikarsia}, i.e. the lines running from west to east.] [ {epanakhthentes}: so the medicean ms. and another: the rest have {epanakhthentas}. some editors read by conjecture {apeneikhthentas}, "cast away on their coast".] [ {neoisi}.] [ {trieteridas}.] [ or, "were driven out".] [ {phtheirotrageousi}.] [ or, "aiorpata," and "aior" below.] [ i.e. the royal scythians: see ch. .] [ {epi touto}, the reading of the aldine edition. the mss. have {epi touto}. stein suggests {dia touto}.] [ {ou peisometha}: some mss. read {ouk oisometha}. editors have emended by conjecture in various ways, e.g. {ou periopsometha}, "we shall not allow it"; {oi epoisometha} or {oi epeisometha}, "we shall go out to attack him"; {aposometha}, "we shall repel him".] [ {paras}, or {pasai}, belonging to {gunaikes}.] [ {khersou}, "dry".] [ perhaps the same as the "hyrgis" mentioned in ch. . some editors read "hyrgis" in this passage.] [ see ch. .] [ {klaiein lego}.] [ {touto esti e apo skutheon resis}: this refers to the last words, {klaiein lego}. most editors have doubts about the genuineness of the sentence, regarding it a marginal gloss which has crept into the text; but perhaps without sufficient reason.] [ or, "with some slight effect on the course of the war".] [ see i. .] [ {eremothentes tou omilou}.] [ {iesan tes phones}.] [ {e mia kai sauromatai}: some editors read {e meta sauromateon}. the mss. give {e mia sauromatai} (some {sauromateon}). stein inserts {kai}.] [ {khairontes eleutheroi}.] [ the list includes only those who voted in favour of the proposal of histiaios (i.e. miltiades is not included in it): hence perhaps stein is right in suggesting some change in the text, e.g. {oi diapherontes te ten psephon basileos kai eontes logou pleistou}. the absence of the name of coës is remarked by several commentators, who forget that he had accompanied dareios: see ch. .] [ or, "and even so they found the passage of the river with difficulty".] [ {en persesi}.] [ i.e. , .] [ {gar}: some mss. read {de}; so stein and other editors.] [ i.e. castor and polydeukes the sons of tyndareus, who were among the argonauts.] [ {phera} (genitive).] [ from {ois} "sheep" and {lukos} "wolf" ({oin en lukoisi}).] [ {phule}, the word being here apparently used loosely.] [ {'erinuon}.] [ {meta touto upemeine touto touto}: some editors mark a lacuna after {upemeine}, or supply some words like {sunebe de}: "after this the children survived, and the same thing happened also in thera, etc".] [ or, "grinos".] [ {euphemides}: the mss. have {euthumides}: the correction is from pindar, pyth. iv. .] [ {onax}, the usual form of address to apollo; so in ch. .] [ or, "axos".] [ i.e. aristoteles, pind. pyth. v. .] [ {metaxu apolipon}.] [ or, "it happened both to himself and to the other men of thera according to their former evil fortune"; but this would presuppose the truth of the story told in ch. , and {paligkotos} may mean simply "adverse" or "hostile".] [ {eontes tosoutoi osoi k.t.l.} they could hardly have failed to increase in number, but no new settlers had been added.] [ {usteron elthe gas anadaiomenes}, "too late for the division of land".] [ or, "thestis".] [ the mss. give also "aliarchos" and "learchos".] [ {mathon ekasta}.] [ {ton terioikon}: i.e. conquered libyans.] [ {nesioteon panton}: i.e. the natives of the cyclades, cp. vi. .] [ {amphirruton ten kurenen einai}: some editors read by conjecture {ten amphirruton kurenen einai} (or {kurenen ten amph, einai}), "that kyrene was the place flowed round by water".] [ {pselion}.] [ or, "giligammai".] [ i.e. the plant so called, figured on the coins of kyrene and barca.] [ or, "asbytai".] [ i.e. further from the coast, so {katuperthe}, ch. etc., cp. ch. .] [ or "cabales".] [ see i. .] [ distinct from the people of the same name mentioned in ch. : those here mentioned are called "gamphasantes" by pliny.] [ {glukuteta}, "sweetness".] [ {allen te ekatomben kai de kai}.] [ {epithespisanta to tripodi}, which can hardly mean "prophesied sitting upon the tripod".] [ lit. "the men come together regularly to one place within three months," which seems to mean that meetings are held every three months, before one of which the child is brought.] [ see ii. .] [ i.e. in the middle of the morning.] [ {tripsin}: the "feel" to the touch: hence it might mean either hardness or softness according to the context.] [ {troglodutas}: "troglodytes".] [ {uperballonti}: "when his heat is greatest".] [ {ede}.] [ or "red".] [ {domon}: reiske reads {omon} by conjecture, "over his shoulder".] [ or (according to some mss.), "practise this much and do it well".] [ {akatapseusta}. several editors have adopted the conjecture {katapseusta}, "other fabulous beasts".] [ {orues}: perhaps for {oruges} from {orux}, a kind of antelope.] [ {diktues}: the meaning is uncertain.] [ {ekhinees}, "urchins".] [ or "zabykes".] [ or "zygantes".] [ {eie d' an pan}: cp. v. . some translate, "and this might well be so".] [ {oud' areten einai tis e libue spoudaie}.] [ i.e. corn; cp. i. .] [ {bounous}.] [ see ch. .] [ {meden allo neokhmoun kata barkaious}: cp. v. .] [ {paralabontes}.] [ {epiphthonoi}.]    anne soulard, charles franks, robert fite, and the online distributed proofreading team. early european history by hutton webster, ph.d. "there is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world." --samuel johnson, _rasselas_. preface this book aims to furnish a concise and connected account of human progress during ancient, medieval, and early modern times. it should meet the requirements of those high schools and preparatory schools where ancient history, as a separate discipline, is being supplanted by a more extended course introductory to the study of recent times and contemporary problems. such a course was first outlined by the regents of the university of the state of new york in their _syllabus for secondary schools_, issued in . since the appearance of the regents' _syllabus_ the committee of five of the american historical association has made its _report_ ( ), suggesting a rearrangement of the curriculum which would permit a year's work in english and continental history. still more recently the committee on social studies of the commission on the reorganization of secondary education, in its _report_ ( ) to the national education association has definitely recommended the division of european history into two parts, of which the first should include ancient and oriental civilization, english and continental history to approximately the end of the seventeenth century, and the period of american exploration. the first twelve chapters of the present work are based upon the author's _ancient history_, published four years ago. in spite of many omissions, it has been possible to follow without essential modification the plan of the earlier volume. a number of new maps and illustrations have been added to these chapters. the selection of collateral reading, always a difficult problem in the secondary school, is doubly difficult when so much ground must be covered in a single course. the author ventures, therefore, to call attention to his _readings in ancient history_. its purpose, in the words of the preface, is "to provide immature pupils with a variety of extended, unified, and interesting extracts on matters which a textbook treats with necessary, though none the less deplorable, condensation." a companion volume, entitled _readings in medieval and modern history_, will be published shortly. references to both books are inserted in footnotes. at the end of what has been a long and engrossing task, it becomes a pleasant duty to acknowledge the help which has been received from teachers in school and college. various chapters, either in manuscript or in the proofs, have been read by professor james m. leake of bryn mawr college; professor j. c. hildt of smith college; very rev. patrick j. healy, professor of church history in the catholic university of america; professor e. f. humphrey of trinity college; dr. james sullivan, director of the division of archives and history, state dept. of education of new york; constantine e. mcguire, assistant secretary general, international high commission, washington; miss margaret e. mcgill, of the newton (mass.) high school; and miss mabel chesley, of the erasmus hall high school, brooklyn. the author would also express appreciation of the labors of the cartographers, artists, and printers, to whose accuracy and skill every page of the book bears witness. hutton webster lincoln, nebraska, february, [illustration: ancient and medieval gems. steatite from crete, two lions with forefeet on a pedestal, above a sun sardonyx from elis, a goddess holding up a goat by the horns rock crystal a bearded triton carnelian, a youth playing a trigonon chalcedony from athens, a bacchante sard, a woman reading a manuscript roll, before her a lyre carnelian, theseus chalcedony, portrait head, hellenistic age aquamarine, portrait of julia daughter of the emperor titus chalcedony, portrait head, hellenistic age carnelian, bust portrait of the roman emperor decius beryl, portrait of julia domna wife of the emperor septimius severus sapphire, head of the madonna carnelian, the judgment of paris, renaissance work rock crystal, madonna with jesus and st. joseph, probably norman sicilian work] contents list of illustrations list of maps list of plates suggestions for further study chapter i. the ages before history. . the study of history . prehistoric peoples . domestication of animals and plants . writing and the alphabet . primitive science and art . historic peoples ii. the lands and peoples of the east to about b.c. . physical asia . babylonia and egypt . the babylonians and the egyptians . the phoenicians and the hebrews . the assyrians . the world empire of persia iii. oriental civilization. . social classes . economic conditions . commerce and trade routes . law and morality . religion . literature and art . science and education iv. the lands of the west and the rise of greece to about b.c. . physical europe . greece and the aegean . the aegean age (to about b.c.) . the homeric age (about - b.c.) . early greek religion . religious institutions--oracles and games . the greek city-state . the growth of sparta (to b.c.) . the growth of athens (to b.c.) . colonial expansion of greece (about - b.c.) . bonds of union among the greeks v. the great age of the greek republics to b.c. . the perils of hellas . expeditions of darius against greece . xerxes and the great persian war . athens under themistocles, aristides, and cimon . athens under pericles . the peloponnesian war, - b.c. . the spartan and theban supremacies, - b.c. . decline of the city-state vi. mingling of east and west after b.c. . philip and the rise of macedonia . demosthenes and the end of greek freedom . alexander the great . conquest of persia and the far east, - b.c. . the work of alexander . hellenistic kingdoms and cities . the hellenistic age . the graeco-oriental world vii. the rise of rome to b.c. . italy and sicily . the peoples of italy . the romans . early roman society . roman religion . the roman city state . expansion of rome over italy, (?)- b.c. . italy under roman rule . the roman army viii. the great age of the roman republic, - b.c. . the rivals rome and carthage, - b.c. . hannibal and the great punic war, - b.c. . roman supremacy in the west and in the east, - b.c. . the mediterranean world under roman rule . the gracchi . marius and sulla . pompey and caesar . the work of caesar . antony and octavian . the end of an epoch ix. the early empire: the world under roman rule, b.c.-l a.d. . augustus, b.c.-l a.d. . the successors of augustus, - a.d. . the "good emperors," - a.d. . the provinces of the roman empire . the roman law and the latin language . the municipalities of the roman empire . economic and social conditions in the first and second centuries . the graeco-roman world x. the later empire: christianity in the roman world, - a.d. . the "soldier emperors," - a.d. . the "absolute emperors," - a.d. . economic and social conditions in the third and fourth centuries . the preparation for christianity . rise and spread of christianity . the persecutions . triumph of christianity . christian influence on society xi. the germans to a.d. . germany and the germans . breaking of the danube barrier . breaking of the rhine barrier . inroads of the huns . end of the roman empire in the west, a.d. . germanic influence on society xii. classical civilization. . the classical city . education and the condition of children . marriage and the position of women . the home and private life . amusements . slavery . greek literature . greek philosophy . roman literature . greek architecture . greek sculpture . roman architecture and sculpture . artistic athens . artistic rome xiii. western europe during the early middle ages, - a.d. . the ostrogoths in italy, - a.d. . the lombards in italy, - a.d. . the franks under clovis and his successors . the franks under charles martel and pepin the short . the reign of charlemagne, - a.d. . charlemagne and the revival of the roman empire, a.d. . disruption of charlemagne's empire, - a.d. . germany under saxon kings, - a.d. . otto the great and the restoration of the roman empire, a.d. . the anglo-saxons in britain, - a.d. . christianity in the british isles . the fusion of germans and romans xiv. eastern europe during the early middle ages, - a.d. . the roman empire in the east . the reign of justinian, - a.d. . the empire and its asiatic foes . the empire and its foes in europe . byzantine civilization . constantinople xv. the christian church in the east and in the west to a.d. . development of the christian church . eastern christianity . western christianity: rise of the papacy . growth of the papacy . monasticism . life and work of the monks . spread of christianity over europe . separation of eastern and western christianity . the greek church . the roman church xvi. the orient against the occident: rise and spread of islam, - a.d. . arabia and the arabs . mohammed: prophet and statesman, - a.d. . islam and the koran . expansion of islam in asia and egypt . expansion of islam in north africa and spain . the caliphate and its disruption, - a.d. . arabian civilization . the influence of islam xvii. the northmen and the normans to a.d. . scandinavia and the northmen . the viking age . scandinavian heathenism . the northmen in the west . the northmen in the east . normandy and the normans . conquest of england by the danes; alfred the great . norman conquest of england; william the conqueror . results of the norman conquest . norman conquest of southern italy and sicily . the normans in european history xviii. feudalism . rise of feudalism . feudalism as a system of local government . feudal justice . feudal warfare . the castle and life of the nobles . knighthood and chivalry . feudalism as a system of local industry . the village and life of the peasants . serfdom . decline of feudalism xix the papacy and the holy roman empire, - a.d. . characteristics of the medieval church . church doctrine and worship . church jurisdiction . the secular clergy . the regular clergy . the friars . power of the papacy . popes and emperors, - a.d. . popes and emperors, - a.d. . significance of the medieval church xx. the occident against the orient, the crusades, - a.d. . causes of the crusades . first crusade, - a.d. . crusaders' states in syria . second crusade, - a.d., and third crusade, - a.d. . fourth crusade and the latin empire of constantinople, - a.d. . results of the crusades xxi the mongols and the ottoman turks to a.d. . the mongols . conquests of the mongols, - a.d. . the mongols in china and india . the mongols in eastern europe . the ottoman turks and their conquests, - a.d. . the ottoman turks in southeastern europe xxii. european nations during the later middle ages . growth of the nations . england under william the conqueror, - a.d., the norman kingship . england under henry ii, - a.d., royal justice and the common law . the great charter, a.d. . parliament during the thirteenth century . expansion of england under edward i, - a.d. . unification of france, - a.d. . the hundred years' war between england and france, - a.d. . the unification of spain (to a.d.) . austria and the swiss confederation, - a.d. . expansion of germany xxiii. european cities during the later middle ages . growth of the cities . city life . civic industry--the guilds . trade and commerce . money and banking . italian cities . german cities, the hanseatic league . the cities of flanders xxiv. medieval civilization . formation of national languages . development of national literatures . romanesque and gothic architecture, the cathedrals . education, the universities . scholasticism . science and magic . popular superstitions . popular amusements and festivals . manners and customs xxv. the renaissance . meaning of the renaissance . revival of learning in italy . paper and printing . revival of art in italy . revival of learning and art beyond italy . the renaissance in literature . the renaissance in education . the scientific renaissance . the economic renaissance xxvi. geographical discovery and colonization . medieval geography . aids to exploration . to the indies eastward--prince henry and da gama . the portuguese colonial empire . to the indies westward: columbus and magellan . the indians . spanish explorations and conquests in america . the spanish colonial empire . french and english explorations in america . the old world and the new xxvii. the reformation and the religious wars, - a.d. . decline of the papacy . heresies and heretics . martin luther and the beginning of the reformation in germany, - a.d. . charles v and the spread of the german reformation, - a.d. . the reformation in switzerland: zwingli and calvin . the english reformation, - a.d. . the protestant sects . the catholic counter reformation . spain under philip ii, - a.d. . revolt of the netherlands . england under elizabeth, - a.d. . the huguenot wars in france . the thirty years' war, - a.d. xxviii. absolutism in france and england, - a.d. . the divine right of kings . the absolutism of louis xiv, - a.d. . france under louis xiv . the wars of louis xiv . the absolutism of the stuarts, - a.d. . oliver cromwell and the civil war, - a.d. . the commonwealth and the protectorate, - a.d. . the restoration and the "glorious revolution," - a.d. . england in the seventeenth century appendix--table of events and dates index and pronouncing vocabulary list of illustrations disk of phaestus. a papyrus manuscript. a prehistoric egyptian grave. a hatchet of the early stone age. arrowheads of the later stone age. early roman bar money. various signs of symbolic picture writing. mexican rebus. chinese picture writing and later conventional characters. cretan writing. egyptian and babylonian writing. the moabite stone (louvre, paris). head of a girl (musée s. germain, paris). sketch of mammoth on a tusk found in a cave in france. bison painted on the wall of a cave. cave bear drawn on a pebble. wild horse on the wall of a cave in spain. a dolmen. carved menhir. race portraiture of the egyptians. the great wall of china. philae. top of monument containing the code of hammurabi (british museum, london). khufu (cheops), builder of the great pyramid. menephtah, the supposed pharaoh of the exodus. head of mummy of rameses ii (museum of gizeh). the great pyramid. the great sphinx. a phoenician war galley. an assyrian. an assyrian relief (british museum, london). the ishtar gate, babylon. the tomb of cyrus the great. darius with his attendants. rock sepulchers of the persian kings. a royal name in hieroglyphics (rosetta stone). an egyptian court scene. plowing and sowing in ancient egypt. transport of an assyrian colossus. egyptian weighing cow gold. babylonian contract tablet. an egyptian scarab. amenhotep iv. mummy and cover of coffin (u.s. national museum, washington). the judgment of the dead. the deluge tablet (british museum, london). an egyptian temple (restored). an egyptian wooden statue (museum of gizeh). an assyrian palace (restored). an assyrian winged human headed bull. an assyrian hunting scene (british museum, london). a babylonian map of the world. an egyptian scribe (louvre, paris). excavations at nippur. excavations at troy. lions' gate, mycenae. silver fragment from mycenae (national museum, athens). a cretan girl (museum of candia, crete). aegean snake goddess (museum of fine arts, boston). a cretan cupbearer (museum of candia, crete). the françois vase (archaeological museum, florence). consulting the oracle at delphi. the discus thrower (lancelotti palace, rome). athlete using the strigil (vatican gallery, rome). "temple of neptune," paestum. croesus on the pyre. persian archers (louvre, paris). gravestone of aristion (national museum, athens). greek soldiers in arms. the mound at marathon. a themistocles ostrakon (british museum, london). an athenian trireme (reconstruction). "theseum". pericles (british museum, london). an athenian inscription. the "mourning athena" (acropolis museum, athens). a silver coin of syracuse. philip ii. demosthenes (vatican museum, rome). alexander (glyptothek, munich). the alexander mosaic (naples museum). a greek cameo (museum, vienna). the dying gaul (capitoline museum, rome). a graeco-etruscan chariot (metropolitan museum of art, new york). an etruscan arch. characters of the etruscan alphabet. an early roman coin. a roman farmer's calendar. cinerary urns in terra cotta (vatican museum, rome). a vestal virgin. suovetaurilia (louvre, paris). an etruscan augur. coop with sacred chickens. curule chair and fasces. the appian way. a roman legionary. a roman standard bearer (bonn museum). column of duilius (restored). a carthaginian or roman helmet (british museum, london). a testudo. storming a city (reconstruction). gnaeus pompeius magnus (spada palace, rome). marcus tullius cicero (vatican museum, rome). gaius julius caesar (british museum, london). a roman coin with the head of julius caesar. augustus (vatican museum, rome). monumentum ancyranum. pompeii. nerva (vatican museum, rome). column of trajan. the pantheon. the tomb of hadrian. marcus aurelius in his triumphal car (palace of the conservatori, rome). wall of hadrian in britain. roman baths, at bath, england. a roman freight ship. a roman villa. a roman temple. the amphitheater at arles. a megalith at baalbec the wall of rome a mithraic monument modern jerusalem and the mount of olives madonna and child christ the good shepherd (imperial museum, constantinople) interior of the catacombs the labarum arch of constantine runic alphabet a page of the gothic gospels (reduced) an athenian school (royal museum, berlin) a roman school scene youth reading a papyrus roll house of the vettii at pompeii (restored) atrium of a pompeian house pompeian floor mosaic peristyle of a pompeian house a greek banquet a roman litter theater of dionysus, athens a dancing girl the circus maximus (restoration) gladiators a slave's collar sophocles (lateran museum, rome) socrates (vatican museum, rome) corner of a doric façade corner of an ionic façade corinthian capital composite capital tuscan capital interior view of the ulpian basilica (restoration) a roman aqueduct the colosseum (exterior) the colosseum (interior) a roman cameo tomb of theodoric at ravenna charlemagne (lateran museum rome) the iron crown of lombardy cathedral at aix la chapelle ring seal of otto the great anglo saxon drinking horn st. martin's church, canterbury canterbury cathedral a mosaic of justinian the three existing monuments of the hippodrome, constantinople religious music the nestorian monument papal arms st. daniel the stylite on his column abbey of saint germain des prés, paris a monk copyist mecca a letter of mohammed a passage from the koran naval battle showing use of "greek fire" interior of the mosque of cordova capitals and arabesques from the alhambra swedish rock carving a runic stone a viking ship norse metal work (museum, copenhagen) alfred the great alfred's jewel (ashmolean museum, oxford) a scene from the bayeux tapestry (museum of bayeux, normandy) trial by combat mounted knight pierrefonds château gaillard (restored) king and jester falconry farm work in the fourteenth century pilgrims to canterbury a bishop ordaining a priest st. francis blessing the birds the spiritual and the temporal power henry iv, countess matilda, and gregory vii contest between crusaders and moslems "mosque of omar," jerusalem effigy of a knight templar richard i in prison hut-wagon of the mongols (reconstruction) tomb of timur at samarkand mohammed ii the "white tower" a passage from domesday book windsor castle extract from the great charter coronation chair, westminster abbey a queen eleanor cross royal arms of edward iii english archer walls of carcassonne a scene in rothenburg house of the butchers' guild, hildesheim, germany baptistery, cathedral, and "leaning tower" of pisa venice and the grand canal belfry of bruges town hall of louvain, belgium geoffrey chaucer roland at roncesvalles cross section of amiens cathedral gargoyles on the cathedral of notre dame, paris view of new college, oxford tower of magdalen college, oxford roger bacon magician rescued from the devil the witches' sabbath chess pieces of charlemagne bear baiting mummers a miracle play at coventry, england manor house in shropshire, england interior of an english manor house costumes of ladies during the later middle ages dante alighieri petrarch an early printing press facsimile of part of caxton's "aeneid" (reduced) desiderius erasmus (louvre, paris) cervantes william shakespeare shakespeare's birthplace, stratford-on-avon richard ii geographical monsters an astrolabe vasco da gama christopher columbus (biblioteca nacional, madrid) isabella ship of a.d. the name "america" ferdinand magellan aztec sacrificial knife aztec sacrificial stone cabot memorial tower john wycliffe martin luther charles v john calvin henry viii ruins of melrose abbey chained bible st. ignatius loyola philip ii the escorial william the silent elizabeth crown of elizabeth's reign london bridge in the time of elizabeth the spanish armada in the english channel cardinal richelieu (louvre, paris.) gustavus adolphus cardinal mazarin louis xiv versailles medal of louis xiv marlborough gold coin of james i a puritan family charles i execution of the earl of strafford oliver cromwell interior of westminster hall great seal of england under the commonwealth (reduced) boys' sports silver crown of charles ii a london bellman coach and sedan chair death mask of sir isaac newton list of maps distribution of semitic and indo-european peoples. physical map of asia. egyptian empire (about b.c.) canaan as divided among the tribes. solomon's kingdom. assyrian empire (about b.c.) lydia, media, babylonia, and egypt (about b.c.) persian empire at its greatest extent (about b.c.) ancient trade routes phœnician and greek colonies. physical map of europe. ancient greece and the aegean. aegean civilization. greek conquests and migrations. the world according to homer, b.c. greece at the opening of the persian wars, b.c. vicinity of athens. greece at the opening of the peloponnesian war. route of the ten thousand. empire of alexander the great (about b.c.) kingdoms of alexander's successors (about b.c.) the world according to eratosthenes, b.c. the world according to ptolemy, a.d. ancient italy and sicily. vicinity of rome. expansion of roman dominions in italy, - b.c. colonies and military roads in italy. expansion of roman dominions, - b.c. expansion of roman dominions, - b.c. expansion of roman dominions, b.c.- a.d. plan of jerusalem and its environs. roman britain. roman empire (about a.d.) palestine. growth of christianity to the end of the fourth century. germanic migrations to a.d. europe at the deposition of romulus augustulus, a.d. plan of the ulpian basilica plan of ancient athens plan of the parthenon plan of ancient rome europe at the death of theodoric, a.d. europe at the death of justinian, a.d. growth of the frankish dominions, - a.d. europe in the age of charlemagne, a.d. the frankish dominions as divided by the treaties of verdun ( a.d.) and mersen ( a.d.) europe in the age of otto the great, a.d. anglo-saxon britain peoples of europe at the beginning of the tenth century the roman empire in the east during the tenth and eleventh centuries vicinity of constantinople plan of constantinople plan of kirkstall abbey, yorkshire growth of christianity from the fifth to the fifteenth century expansion of islam discoveries of the northmen in the west england under alfred the great dominions of william the conqueror plan of château gaillard plan of hitchin manor, hertfordshire germany and italy during the interregnum, - a.d. mediterranean lands after the fourth crusade, - a.d. the mongol empire russia at the end of the middle ages empire of the ottoman turks at the fall of constantinople, a.d. dominions of the plantagenets in england and france scotland in the thirteenth century unification of france during the middle ages unification of spain during the middle ages growth of the hapsburg possessions the swiss confederation, - a.d. german expansion eastward during the middle ages trade routes between northern and southern europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries medieval trade routes plan of salisbury cathedral, england the world according to cosmas indicopleustes, a.d. the hereford map, a.d. behaim's globe portuguese and spanish colonial empires in the sixteenth century the west indies an early map of the new world ( a.d.) the great schism, - a.d. europe at the beginning of the reformation, a.d. extent of the reformation, - a.d. the netherlands in the sixteenth century western europe in the time of elizabeth europe at the end of the thirty years' war, a.d. acquisitions of louis xiv and louis xv europe after the peace of utrecht, a.d. england and wales--the civil wars of the seventeenth century ireland in the sixteenth century list of plates ancient and medieval gems stonehenge the rosetta stone (british museum, london) the vaphio gold cups (national museum, athens) greek gods and goddesses: zeus, hera, apollo, aphrodite aphrodite of melos (louvre, paris) hermes and dionysus (museum of olympia) sarcophagus from sidon (imperial ottoman museum, constantinople) laocoön and his children (vatican museum, rome) victory of samothrace (louvre, paris) oriental, greek, and roman coins a scene in sicily bay of naples and vesuvius relief on the arch of titus the parthenon views of pediment and frieze of parthenon acropolis of athens (restoration) acropolis of athens from the southwest roman forum and surrounding buildings (restored) roman forum at the present time sancta sophia, constantinople fountain of lions in the alhambra the taj mahal, agra campanile and doge's palace, venice illuminated manuscript reims cathedral cologne cathedral interior of king's college chapel, cambridge ghiberti's bronze doors at florence st. peter's, rome italian paintings of the renaissance flemish, spanish, and dutch paintings of the renaissance suggestions for further study periodicals all serious students of history should have access to the _american historical review_ (n. y., to date, quarterly, $ . a year). this journal, the organ of the american historical association, contains articles by scholars, critical reviews of all important works, and notes and news. the _history teacher's magazine_ is edited under the supervision of a committee of the american historical association (philadelphia, to date, monthly, $ . a year). every well-equipped school library should contain the files of the _national geographic magazine_ (washington, to date, monthly, $ . a year) and of _art and archeology_ (washington, to date, monthly, $ . a year). these two periodicals make a special feature of illustrations. works on the study and teaching of history useful books for the teacher's library include h. e. bourne, _the teaching of history and civics in the elementary and the secondary school_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ), henry johnson, _the teaching of history_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ), h. b. george, _historical evidence_ (n.y., , oxford university press, american branch, cents), frederic harrison, _the meaning of history and other historical pieces_ (new ed., n.y., , macmillan, $ . ), j. h. robinson, _the new history_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ), and h. b. george, _the relations of history and geography_ ( th ed., n. y., , oxford university press, american branch, $ . ). the following reports are indispensable: _the study of history in schools_. report to the american historical association by the committee of seven (n. y., , macmillan, cents). _the study of history in secondary schools_. report to the american historical association by a committee of five (n. y., , macmillan, cents). _historical sources in schools._ report to the new england history teachers' association by a select committee (n. y., , macmillan, out of print). _a history syllabus for secondary schools_. report by a special committee of the new england history teachers' association (n. y., , heath, $ . ). _a bibliography of history for schools and libraries._ published under the auspices of the association of history teachers of the middle states and maryland ( d ed., n. y., , longmans, green, and co., cents). dictionaries and encyclopedias the most useful dictionaries of classical antiquities are h. b. walters, _a classical dictionary_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ) and h. t. peck, _harper's dictionary of classical literature and antiquities_ (n. y., , american book co., $ . ). cambridge university, england, has published _a companion to greek studies_, edited by l. whibley ( d ed., n. y., , putnam, $ . ), and _a companion to latin studies_, edited by j. e. sandys (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). these two volumes treat every phase of ancient life in separate essays by distinguished scholars. for chronology, genealogies, lists of sovereigns, and other data the most valuable works are arthur hassall, _european history, - _ (new ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ), g. p. putnam, _tabular views of universal history_ (new ed., n. y., , putnam, $ . ), and karl j. ploetz, _a handbook of universal history_, translated by w. h. tillinghast (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). syllabi the _illustrated topics for ancient history_, arranged by d. c. knowlton (philadelphia, mckinley publishing co., cents), contain much valuable material in the shape of a syllabus, source quotations, outline maps, pictures, and other aids. the following syllabi have been prepared for collegiate instruction: botsford, g. w. _a syllabus of roman history_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). munro, d. c., and sellery, g. c. _a syllabus of medieval history, - _ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). richardson, o. h. _syllabus of continental european history from the fall of rome to _ (boston, , ginn, boards, cents). stephenson, andrew. _syllabus of lectures on european history_ (terre haute, ind., , inland publishing co., $ . ). thompson, j. w. _reference studies in medieval history_ ( d ed., chicago, , university of chicago press, $ . ). a rich collection of classified references. atlases an admirable collection of maps for school use is w. r. shepherd, _historical atlas_ (n. y., , holt, $ . ), with about two hundred and fifty maps covering the historical field. the latest and one of the best of the classical atlases is _murray's small classical atlas_, edited by g. b. grundy (n. y., , oxford university press, american branch, $ . ). a special feature of this work is the adoption of the system of colored contours to indicate configuration. the _atlas of ancient and classical geography_ in "everyman's library" (n. y., , dutton, cents) might well be purchased by every student. other valuable works are e. w. dow, _atlas of european history_ (n. y., , holt, $ . ) and ramsay muir, _a new school atlas of modern history_ (n. y., , holt, $ . ). much use can be made of the inexpensive and handy _literary and historical atlas of europe_ by j. g. bartholomew in "everyman's library" (n. y., , dutton, cents). wall maps and charts kiepert's _new wall maps of ancient history_ (chicago, rand, mcnally, and co.) and johnston's _classical series_ (chicago, a. j. nystrom and co.) may be obtained singly, mounted on common rollers, or by sets in a case with spring rollers. the text is in latin. the spruner-bretschneider _historical maps_ are ten in number, size x inches, and cover the period from a.d. to . the text is in german (chicago, nystrom, each $ . ; rand, mcnally, and co., each $ . ). johnston's _maps of english and european history_ are sixteen in number, size x inches, and include four maps of ancient history (chicago, nystrom, each $ . ). a new series of _european history maps_, thirty-nine in number, size x inches, has been prepared for the study of ancient history by professors j. h. breasted and c. f. huth, and for medieval and modern history by professor s. b. harding (chicago, denoyer-geppert co., complete set with tripod stand, $ . ; in two spring roller cases, $ . ). these maps may also be had separately. the maps in this admirable series omit all irrelevant detail, present place names in the modern english form, and in choice of subject matter emphasize the american viewpoint. the school should also possess good physical wall maps such as the sydow-habenicht or the kiepert series, both to be obtained from rand, mcnally, and co. the text is in german. phillips's _model test maps_ and johnston's _new series of physical wall maps_ are obtainable from a. j. nystrom and co. the only large charts available are those prepared by maccoun for his _historical geography charts of europe_. the two sections, "ancient and classical" and "medieval and modern," are sold separately (n. y., silver, burdett, and co., $ . ). a helpful series of _blackboard outline maps_ is issued by j. l. engle, beaver, penn. these are wall maps, printed with paint on blackboard cloth, for use with an ordinary crayon. such maps are also sold by the denoyer-geppert co., chicago. outline maps the "studies" following each chapter of this book include various exercises for which small outline maps are required. such maps are sold by d. c. heath and co., boston, new york, chicago. useful atlases of outline maps are also to be had of the mckinley publishing co., philadelphia, atkinson, mentzer and grover, chicago, w. b. harison, new york city, and of other publishers. illustrations the best photographs of ancient works of art must usually be obtained from the foreign publishers in naples, florence, rome, munich, paris, athens, and london, or from their american agents. such photographs, in the usual size, x inches, sell, unmounted, at from to francs a dozen. all dealers in lantern slides issue descriptive catalogues of a great variety of archaeological subjects. in addition to photographs and lantern slides, a collection of stereoscopic views is very helpful in giving vividness and interest to instruction in ancient history. an admirable series of photographs for the stereoscope, including egypt, palestine, greece, and italy, is issued by underwood and underwood, new york city. the same firm supplies convenient maps and handbooks for use in this connection. the keystone stereographs, prepared by the keystone view company, meadville, penn., may also be cordially recommended. the architecture, costumes, amusements, and occupations of the middle ages in england are shown in _longmans' historical illustrations_ (six portfolios, each containing twelve plates in black-and-white, longmans, green, and co., cents, each portfolio). the same firm issues _longmans' historical wall pictures_, consisting of twelve colored pictures from original paintings illustrating english history (each picture, separately, cents; in a portfolio, $ . ). other notable collections are lehmann's _geographical pictures, historical pictures_, and _types of nations_, and cybulski's _historical pictures_ (chicago, denoyer-geppert co.; each picture separately mounted on rollers, $ . to $ . ). the new england history teachers' association publishes a series of _authentic pictures for class room use_, size x inches, price cents each. the _catalogue of the collection of historical material at simmons college_, prepared by the new england history teachers' association ( d ed., boston, , houghton mifflin co., cents), contains an extensive list of pictures, slides, models, and other aids to history teaching. among the more useful collections in book form of photographic reproductions and drawings are the following: fechneimer, hedwig. _die plastik der Ägypter_ ( d. ed., berlin, , b. cassirer, marks). plates of egyptian sculpture. fougères, gustvae. _la vie publique et privée des grecs et des romains_ ( d ed., paris, , hachette, francs). an album of pictures. furtwängler, adolf. _masterpieces of greek sculpture_ (n. y., scribner, $ . ). hekler, anton. _greek and roman portraits_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). plates, with comment and bibliography. hill, g. f. _illustrations of school classics_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). muzik, h., and perschinka, f. _kunst und leben im altertum_ (vienna, , f. tempsky; leipzig, g. freytag, . marks). osborne, duffield. _engraved gems_ (n. y., , holt, $ . ). parmentier, a. _album historique_ (paris, - , colin, vols., each francs). illustrations covering the medieval and modern periods, with descriptive text in french. rheinhard, hermann. _album des klassischen altertums_ (stuttgart, , hoffman, marks). pictures in colors. rouse, w. h. d. _atlas of classical portraits._ greek section, roman section (london, , dent, vols., each _s_. _d_.). small, half-tone engravings, accompanied by brief biographies. schreiber, theodor. _atlas of classical antiquities_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). works of travel to vitalize the study of geography and history there is nothing better than the reading of modern books of travel. among these may be mentioned: allinson, f. g. and allinson, anne c. e. _greek lands and letters_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). an entertaining work of mingled history and geography. barrows, s. j. _the isles and shrines of greece_ (boston, , little, brown, and co., $ . ). clark, f. e. _the holy land of asia minor_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). popular sketches. dunning, h. w. _to-day on the nile_ (n. y., , pott, $ . ). ------ _to-day in palestine_ (n. y., , pott, $ . ). dwight, h. g. _constantinople, old and new_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). edwards, amelia b. _a thousand miles up the nile_ ( d ed., n. y., , dutton, $ . ). forman, h. j. _the ideal italian tour_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). a brief and attractive volume covering all italy. hay, john. _castilian days_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). hutton, edward, _rome_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). jackson, a. v. w. _persia, past and present_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). lucas, e. v. _a wanderer in florence_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). manatt, j. i. _aegean days_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). describes the most important islands of the aegean. marden, p. s. _greece and the aegean islands_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). paton, w. a. _picturesque sicily_ ( d ed., n. y., , harper, $ . ). richardson, r. b. _vacation days in greece_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). warner, c. d. _in the levant_ (n. y., , harper, $ . ). historical fiction the following works of historical fiction comprise only a selection from a very large number of books suitable for supplementary reading. for extended bibliographies see e. a. baker, _a guide to historical fiction_ (new ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ) and jonathan nield, _a guide to the best historical novels and tales_ ( d ed., n. y., , putnam, $ . ). an excellent list of historical stories, especially designed for children, will be found in the _bibliography of history for schools and libraries_, parts viii-ix. bulwer-lytton, edward. _the last days of pompeii_ (boston, , little, brown, and co., $ . ). champney, elizabeth w. _the romance of imperial rome_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). church, a. j. _roman life in the days of cicero_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). ------ _stories of charlemagne and the twelve peers of france_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). cox, g. w. _tales of ancient greece_ (chicago, , mcclurg, $ . ). dahn, felix, _felicitas_ (chicago, , mcclurg, cents). rome, a.d. doyle, a. c. _the white company_ (boston, , caldwell, cents). the english in france and castile, - a.d. ebers, georg, _uarda_ (n. y., , appleton, vols., $ . ). egypt, fourteenth century b.c. eliot, george. _romola_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). florence and savonarola in the latter part of the fifteenth century. fénelon, françois. _adventures of telemachus_, translated by dr. hawkesworth (boston, houghton mifflin co., $ . ). hale, e. e. _in his name_ (boston, , little, brown, and co., $ . ). the waldenses about a.d. hardy, a. s. _passe rose_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). franks and saxons of charlemagne's time. hawthorne, nathaniel. _the scarlet letter_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). massachusetts in the seventeenth century. henty, g. a. _the young carthaginian_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). second punic war. hugo, victor. _notre dame_ (n. y. , dutton, cents). paris, late fifteenth century. irving, washington. _the alhambra_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). sketches of the moors and spaniards. jacobs, joseph (editor). _the most delectable history of reynard the fox_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). kingsley, charles s. _hypatia_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). alexandria, a.d. ------ _westward ho!_ (n. y., , button, cents). voyages of elizabethan seamen and the struggle with spain. kipling, rudyard. _puck of pooks hill_ (n. y., , doubleday, page, and co., $ . ). roman occupation of britain. lang, andrew. _the monk of fife_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). the maid of orleans and the hundred years' war. lane, e. w. (translator). _the arabian nights' entertainments_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, cents). london, jack. _before adam_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). prehistoric life. manzoni, alessandro. _the betrothed_ (n. y., , macmillan, vols., cents). milan under spanish rule, - a.d. mason, eugene (translator). _aucassin and nicolette and other medieval romances, and legends_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). newman, j. h. _callista_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). persecution of christians in north africa, a.d. reade, charles. _the cloister and the hearth_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). eve of the reformation. scheffel, j. von. _ekkehard_, translated by helena easson (n. y., , dutton, cents). germany in the tenth century. scott, (sir) walter. _the talisman_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). reign of richard i, a.d. ------ ivanhoe (n. y., heath, cents). richard i, a.d. sienkiewicz, henryk. _quo vadis?_ (boston, , little, brown, and co., $ . ). reign of nero. stevenson, r. l. _the black arrow_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). war of the roses. "twain, mark." _a connecticut yankee at the court of king arthur_ (n. y., , harper, $ . ). wallace, lew. _ben-hur; a tale of the christ_ (n. y., , harper, $ . ). waterloo, stanley. _the story of ab_ ( d ed., n. y., , doubleday, page, and co., $ . ). prehistoric life. historical poetry it is unnecessary to emphasize the value, as collateral reading, of historical poems and plays. to the brief list which follows should be added the material in katharine lee bates and katharine coman, _english history told by english poets_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). browning, robert. _echetlos and pheidippides._ burns, robert. _the battle of bannockburn._ byron (lord). _song of saul before his last battle, the destruction of sennacherib, belshazzar's feast, prometheus,_ "greece" (_the corsair_, canto iii, lines - ), "modern greece" (_childe harold_, canto ii, stanzas - ), "the death of greece" (_the giaour_, lines - ), "the isles of greece" (_don juan_, canto in), and "the colosseum" (_childe harold_, canto iv, stanzas - ). clough, a. h. _columbus_. coleridge, s. t. _kubla khan_. domett, alfred. _a christmas hymn_ drayton, michael. _the battle of agincourt._ dryden, john. _alexander's feast._ jonson, ben. _hymn to diana._ keats, john. _ode on a grecian urn._ kingsley, charles. _andromeda and the red king._ landor, w. s. _orpheus and eurydice._ longfellow, h. w. "the saga of king olaf" (_tales of a wayside inn_) and _the skeleton in armor._ lowell, j. r. _rhoecus_ and _the shepherd of king admetus._ macaulay, t. b. _lays of ancient rome_ ("horatius," "virginia," "the battle of lake regillus," and "the prophecy of capys"), _the armada_, and _the battle of ivry._ miller, joaquin. _columbus._ milton, john. _ode on the morning of christ's nativity._ praed, w. m. _arminius._ rossetti, d. g. _the white ship._ schiller, friedrich. _the maid of orleans, william tell, maria stuart_, and _wallenstein._ scott, (sir) walter. "flodden field" (_marmion_, canto vi, stanzas - , - ). shakespeare, william. _coriolanus, julius caesar, antony and cleopatra, king john, richard the second, henry the fourth,_ parts i and ii, _henry the fifth, henry the sixth_, parts i, ii, and iii, _richard the third, henry the eighth_, and _the merchant of venice._ shelley, p. b. _to the nile, ozymandias, hymn of apollo, arethusa_, and _song of proserpine._ tennyson, alfred. _ulysses, oenone, the death of oenone, demeter and persephone, the lotus-eaters, boadicea, st. telemachus, st. simeon stylites, sir galahad_, and _the revenge: a ballad of the fleet._ thackeray, w. m. _king canute._ wordsworth, william. _laodamia._ sources full information regarding the best translations of the sources of ancient, medieval, and modern history is to be found in one of the reports previously cited--_historical sources in schools_, parts ii-iv. the use of the following collections of extracts from the sources will go far toward remedying the lack of library facilities. botsford, g. w., and botsford, lillie s. _source book of ancient history_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). davis, w. s. _readings in ancient history_ (boston, , allyn and bacon, vols., $ . ). duncalf, frederic, and krey, a. c. _parallel source problems in medieval history_ (n. y., , harper, $ . ). fling, f. m. _a source book of greek history_ (n. y., , heath, $ . ). munro, d. c. _a source book of roman history_ (n. y., , heath, $ . ). ogg, f. a. _a source book of medieval history_ (n. y., , american book co., $ . ). robinson, j. h. _readings in european history_ (abridged ed., boston, , ginn, $ . ). thallon, ida c. _readings in greek history_ (boston, , ginn, $ . ). thatcher, o. j., and mcneal, e. h. _a source book for medieval history_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). webster, hutton. _readings in ancient history_ (n. y., , heath, $ . ). ------ _readings in medieval and modern history_ (n. y., , heath, $ . ). _translations and reprints from the original sources of european history_ (n. y., - , longmans, green, and co., vols., each $ . ). modern works most of the books in the following list are inexpensive, easily procured, and well adapted in style and choice of topics to the needs of immature pupils. a few more elaborate and costly volumes, especially valuable for their illustrations, are indicated by an asterisk (*). for detailed bibliographies, often accompanied by critical estimates, see c. k. adams, _a manual of historical literature_ ( d ed., n. y., , harper, $ . ), and the _bibliography of history for schools and libraries_, parts iii-v. general works carlyle, thomas. _on heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). creasy, e. s. _the fifteen decisive battles of the world from marathon to waterloo_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). gibbins, h. de b. _the history of commerce in europe_ ( . ed., n. y., , macmillan, cents). herbertson, a. j., and herbertson, f. d. _man and his work_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, cents). an introduction to the study of human geography. jacobs, joseph. _the story of geographical discovery_ (n. y., , appleton, cents). jenks, edward. _a history of politics_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). a very illuminating essay. keane, john. _the evolution of geography_ (london, , stanford, s.). helpfully illustrated. myres, j. l. _the dawn of history_ (n. y., , holt, cents). pattison, r. p. b. _leading figures in european history_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). biographical sketches of european statesmen from charlemagne to bismarck. reinach, salomon. _apollo; an illustrated manual of the history of art throughout the ages_, translated by florence simmonds (last ed., n. y., , scribner, $ . ). the best brief work on the subject. seignobos, charles. _history of ancient civilization_, edited by j. a. james (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). ------ _history of medieval and of modern civilization_, edited by j. a. james (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). prehistoric times clodd, edward. _the story of primitive man_ (n y., , appleton, cents). generally accurate and always interesting. ------ _the childhood of the world_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). elliott, g. f. s. _prehistoric man and his story_ (philadelphia, , lippincott, $ . ). holbrook, florence. _cave, mound, and lake dwellers_ (n. y., , heath, cents). mason, o. t, _woman's share in primitive culture_ (n. y., , d. appleton, $ . ). the only work on the subject; by a competent anthropologist. * osborn, h. f. _men of the old stone age_ (n. y., scribners, $ . ). an authoritative, interesting, and amply illustrated work. * spearing, h. g. _the childhood of art_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). deals with primitive and greek art; richly illustrated. starr, frederick. _some first steps in human progress_ (chautauqua, n. y., , chautauqua press, $ . ). a popular introduction to anthropology. tylor, (sir) e. b. _anthropology_ (n. y., , appleton, $ . ). incorporates the results of the author's extensive studies and still remains the best introduction to the entire field. oriental history baikie, james. _the story of the pharaohs_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). a popular work; well illustrated. * ball, c. j. _light from the east_ (london, , eyre and spottiswoode, s.). an account of oriental archaeology, with special reference to the old testament. banks, e. g. _the bible and the spade_ (n. y., , association press, $ . ). a popular presentation of oriental archaeology. * breasted, j. h. _a history of egypt from the earliest times to the persian conquest_ ( d ed., n. y., , scribner, $ . ). the standard work on egyptian history. clay, a. t. _light on the east from babel_ ( th ed., philadelphia, , sunday school times co., $ . ). * erman, asolf. _life in ancient egypt_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). * handcock, p. s. p. _mesopotamian archaeology_ (n. y. , putnam, $ . ). hogarth, d. g. _the ancient east_ (n. y., , holt, cents). "home university library." * jastrow, morris, jr. _the civilization of babylonia and assyria_ (philadelphia, , lippincott, $ . ). a finely illustrated work by a great scholar. macalister, r. a. s. _a history of civilization in palestine_ (n. y., , putnam, cents). "cambridge manuals." maspero, (sir) gaston. _life in ancient egypt and assyria_ (n.y., , appleton, $ . ). fascinating and authoritative. ragozin, zénaïde a. _earliest peoples_ (n. y., , harison, cents). a well-written, fully-illustrated account of prehistoric man and the beginnings of history in babylonia. ------ _early egypt_ (n. y., , harison, cents). greek and roman history abbott, evelyn. _pericles and the golden age of athens_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." baikie, james. _the sea-kings of crete_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). a clear and vivid summary of cretan archaeology. blümner, hugo. _the home life of the ancient greeks_, translated by alice zimmern ( d ed., n. y., , funk and wagnalls co., $ . ). bulley, margaret h. _ancient and medieval art_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). an elementary treatment, particularly designed for schools. church, a. j., and gilman, arthur. _the story of carthage_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "story of the nations" davis, w. s. _the influence of wealth in imperial rome_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). an interesting treatment of an important theme. ------ _a day in old athens_ (boston, , allyn and bacon, $ . ). ------ _an outline history of the roman empire_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). covers the period b.c.- a.d. * dennie, john. _rome of to-day and yesterday; the pagan city_ ( th ed., n. y., , putnam, $ . ). fowler, w. w. _rome_ (n. y., , holt, cents). ------ _the city-state of the greeks and romans_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). the only constitutional history of the classical peoples intelligible to elementary students. ------ _social life at rome in the age of cicero_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). in every way admirable. ------ _julius caesar and the foundation of the roman imperial system_ ( d ed., n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." * gardner, e. a. _ancient athens_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). gayley, c. m. _the classic myths in english literature and in art_ ( d ed., boston, , ginn, $ . ). of special importance for the illustrations. goodyear, w. h. _roman and medieval art_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). grant, a. j. _greece in the age of pericles_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). gulick, c. b. _the life of the ancient greeks_ (n. y., , appleton, $ . ). * hall, h. r. _aegean archeology_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). a well- written and well-illustrated volume. hawes, c. h., and hawes, harriet b. _crete, the forerunner of greece_ (n. y., , harper, cents). how, w. w. _hannibal and the great war between rome and carthage_ (london, , seeley, _s_.). jones, h. s. _the roman empire, b.c. -a.d. _ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "story of the nations." * lanciani, rudolfo. _the ruins and excavations of ancient rome_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). mahaffy, j. p. _old greek life_ (n. y., , american book co., cents). ------ _what have the greeks done for modern civilization?_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). mahaffy, j. p., and gilman, arthur. _the story of alexander's empire_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). the only concise narrative of the hellenistic period. * mau, august. _pompeii: its life and art_, translated by f. w. kelsey (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). morris, w. o'c. _hannibal and the crisis of the struggle between carthage and rome_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." oman, charles. _seven roman statesmen of the later republic_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). a biographical presentation of roman history. pellison, maurice. _roman life in pliny's time_, translated by maud wilkinson (philadelphia, , jacobs, $ . ). pickard-cambridge, a. w. _demosthenes and the last days of greek freedom_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." powers, h. h. _the message of greek art_ (n. y., , macmillan, cents). preston, harriet w., and dodge, louise. _the private life of the romans_ (n. y., , sanborn, $ . ). robinson, c. e. _the days of alcibiades_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ), a picture of greek life and culture in the age of pericles. * seymour, t. d. _life in the homeric age_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). * stobart, j. c. _the glory that was greece: a survey of hellenic culture and civilization_ (philadelphia, , lippincott, $ . ). ------ _the grandeur that was rome: a survey of roman culture and civilization_ (philadelphia, , lippincott, $ . ). strachan-davidson, j. s. _cicero and the fall of the roman republic_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." tarbell, f. b. _a history of greek art_ ( d ed., n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). tozer, h. f. _classical geography_ (n. y., , american book co., cents). a standard manual. tucker, t. g. _life in ancient athens_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). the most attractive treatment of the subject. ------ _life in the roman world of nero and st. paul_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). * walters, h. b. _the art of the greeks_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). * ------ _the art of the romans_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). * weller, c. h. _athens and its monuments_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). wheeler, b.i. _alexander the great and the merging of east and west into universal history_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." wilkins, a. s. _roman antiquities_ (n. y., , american book co., cents). medieval history adams, g. b. _the growth of the french nation_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). the best short history of france. archer, t. a., and kingsford, c. l. _the crusades_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). baring-gould, sabine. _curious myths of the middle ages_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). bateson, mary. _medieval england_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). deals with social and economic life. "story of the nations." cheyney, e. p. _an introduction to the industrial and social history of england_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). the best brief work on the subject. church, r. w. _the beginning of the middle ages_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). cutts, e. l. _scenes and characters of the middle ages_ (london, , de la more press, s. d.). an almost indispensable book; illustrated. davis, h. w. c. medieval europe (n. y., , holt, cents). ------ _charlemagne, the hero of two nations_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). "heroes of the nations." emerton, ephraim. _an introduction to the study of the middle ages_ (boston, , ginn, $ . ). the most satisfactory short account, and of special value to beginners. foord, edward. _the byzantine empire_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). the most convenient short treatment; lavishly illustrated. * gibbon, edward. _the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire_, edited by j. b. bury (n. y., , macmillan, vols., $ . ). the best edition, illustrated and provided with maps, of this standard work. * green, j. r. _short history of the english people_, edited by mrs. j. r. green and miss kate norgate (n. y., - , harper, vols., $ . ). a beautifully illustrated edition of this standard work. guerber, h. a. _legends of the middle ages_ (n. y., , american book co., $ . ). haskins, c. h. _the normans in european history_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). hodgkin, thomas. _the dynasty of theodosius_ (n. y., , oxford university press, american branch, $ . ). popular lectures summarizing the author's extensive studies. jessopp, augustus. _the coming of the friars, and other historic essays_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). a book of great interest. * lacroix, paul. _science and literature in the middle ages and at the period of the renaissance_ (london, , bickers and son, out of print). lawrence, w. w. _medieval story_ (n. y., , columbia university press, $i. ). discusses the great literary productions of the middle ages. mawer, allen. _the vikings_ (n. y, , putnam, cents). munro, d. c., and sellery, g. c _medieval civilization_ ( d ed., n. y., , century co., $ . ). translated selections from standard works by french and german scholars. rait, r. s. _life in the medieval university_ (n. y., , putnam, cents). "cambridge manuals." synge, m. b. _a short history of social life in england_ (n. y., , barnes, $ . ). tappan, eva m. _when knights were bold_ (boston, , houghton mifflin co., $ . ). an economic and social study of the feudal age; charmingly written. tickner, f. w. _a social and industrial history of england_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., $ . ). very simply written and well illustrated. * wright, thomas. _the homes of other days_ (london, , trübner, out of print). valuable for both text and illustrations. transition to modern times cheyney, e. p. _european background of american history, - _ (n. y., , harper, $ . ). creighton, mandell. _the age of elizabeth_ ( th ed., n. y., , scribner, $ . ). "epochs of modern history." fiske, john. _the discovery and colonization of north america_ (boston, , ginn, cents). gardiner, s. r. _the thirty years' war_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). goodyear, w. h. _renaissance and modern art_ (n. y., , macmillan, $ . ). hudson, w. h. _the story of the renaissance_ (n. y., , cassell, $ . ). a well-written volume. hulme, e. m. _the renaissance, the protestant revolution, and the catholic reformation in continental europe_ (rev. ed., n. y., , century co., $ . ). the best work on the subject by an american scholar. * joyce, t. a. _mexican archaeology_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). ------ _south american archaeology_ (n. y., , putnam, $ . ). kerr, p. h., and kerr, a. c. _the growth of the british empire_ (n. y., , longmans, green, and co., cents). oldham, j. b. _the renaissance_ (n. y., , dutton, cents). seebohm, frederic. _the era of the protestant revolution_ (n. y., , scribner, $ . ). "epochs of modern history." chapter i the ages before history . the study of history subject matter of history history is the narrative of what civilized man has done. it deals with those social groups called states and nations. just as biography describes the life of individuals, so history relates the rise, progress, and decline of human societies. manuscripts and books history cannot go back of written records. these alone will preserve a full and accurate account of man's achievements. manuscripts and books form one class of written records. the old babylonians used tablets of soft clay, on which signs were impressed with a metal instrument. the tablets were then baked hard in an oven. the egyptians made a kind of paper out of the papyrus, a plant native to the nile valley. the greeks and romans at first used papyrus, but later they employed the more lasting parchment prepared from sheepskin. paper seems to have been a chinese invention. it was introduced into europe by the arabs during the twelfth century of our era. [illustration: the disk of phaestus found in a.d. in the palace at phaestus, crete. the disk is of refined clay on which the figures were stamped in relief with punches. both sides of the disk are covered with characters. the side seen in the illustration contains sign groups ( signs) separated from one another by incised lines. the other side contains sign groups ( signs). the inscription dates from about b.c.] [illustration: a papyrus manuscript the pith of the papyrus, a plant native to the nile valley, was cut into slices, which were then pressed together and dried in the sun. several of the paper sheets thus formed were glued together at their edges to form a roll. from _papyros_ and _byblos_, the two greek names of this plant, have come our own words, "paper" and "bible." the illustration shows a manuscript discovered in egypt in a.d. it is supposed to be a treatise, hitherto lost, on the athenian constitution by the greek philosopher aristotle.] inscriptions and remains a second class of written records consists of inscriptions. these are usually cut in stone, but sometimes we find them painted over the surface of a wall, stamped on coins, or impressed upon metal tablets. the historian also makes use of remains, such as statues, ornaments, weapons, tools, and utensils. monuments of various sorts, including palaces, tombs, fortresses, bridges, temples, and churches, form a very important class of remains. beginnings of history history, based on written records, begins in different countries at varying dates. a few manuscripts and inscriptions found in egypt date back three or four thousand years before christ. the annals of babylonia are scarcely less ancient. trustworthy records in china and india do not extend beyond b.c. for the greeks and romans the commencement of the historic period must be placed about b.c. the inhabitants of northern europe did not come into the light of history until about the opening of the christian era. . prehistoric peoples the prehistoric period in studying the historic period our chief concern is with those peoples whose ideas or whose deeds have aided human progress and the spread of civilization. six-sevenths of the earth's inhabitants now belong to civilized countries, and these countries include the best and largest regions of the globe. at the beginning of historic times, however, civilization was confined within a narrow area--the river valleys of western asia and egypt. the uncounted centuries before the dawn of history make up the prehistoric period, when savagery and barbarism prevailed throughout the world. our knowledge of it is derived from the examination of the objects found in caves, refuse mounds, graves, and other sites. various european countries, including england, france, denmark, switzerland, and italy, are particularly rich in prehistoric remains. [illustration: a prehistoric egyptian grave the skeleton lay on the left side, with knees drawn up and hands raised to the head. about it were various articles of food and vessels of pottery.] the two ages the prehistoric period is commonly divided, according to the character of the materials used for tools and weapons, into the age of stone and the age of metals. the one is the age of savagery; the other is the age of barbarism or semicivilization. the stone age man's earliest implements were those that lay ready to his hand. a branch from a tree served as a spear; a thick stick in his strong arms became a powerful club. later, perhaps, came the use of a hard stone such as flint, which could be chipped into the forms of arrowheads, axes, and spear tips. the first stone implements were so rude in shape that it is difficult to believe them of human workmanship. they may have been made several hundred thousand years ago. after countless centuries of slow advance, savages learned to fasten wooden handles to their stone tools and weapons and also to use such materials as jade and granite, which could be ground and polished into a variety of forms. stone implements continued to be made during the greater part of the prehistoric period. every region of the world has had a stone age. [ ] its length is reckoned, not by centuries, but by milleniums. [illustration: a hatchet of the early stone age a hatchet of flint, probably used without a helve and intended to fit the hand. similar implements have been found all over the world, except in australia.] [illustration: arrowheads of the later stone age different forms from europe, africa, and north america.] the age of metals the age of metals, compared with its predecessor, covers a brief expanse of time. the use of metals came in not much before the dawn of history. the earliest civilized peoples, the babylonians and egyptians, when we first become acquainted with them, appear to be passing from the use of stone implements to those of metal. copper copper was the first metal in common use. the credit for the invention of copper tools seems to belong to the egyptians. at a very early date they were working the copper mines on the peninsula of sinai. the babylonians probably obtained their copper from the same region. another source of this metal was the island of cyprus in the eastern mediterranean. the greek name of the island means "copper." bronze but copper tools were soft and would not keep an edge. some ancient smith, more ingenious than his fellows, discovered that the addition of a small part of tin to the copper produced a new metal--bronze--harder than the old, yet capable of being molded into a variety of forms. at least as early as b.c. we find bronze taking the place of copper in both egypt and babylonia. somewhat later bronze was introduced into the island of crete, then along the eastern coast of greece, and afterwards into other european countries. iron the introduction of iron occurred in comparatively recent times. at first it was a scarce, and therefore a very precious, metal. the egyptians seem to have made little use of iron before b.c. they called it "the metal of heaven," as if they obtained it from meteorites. in the greek homeric poems, composed about b.c. or later, we find iron considered so valuable that a lump of it is one of the chief prizes at athletic games. in the first five books of the bible iron is mentioned only thirteen times, though copper and bronze are referred to forty-four times. iron is more difficult to work than either copper or bronze, but it is vastly superior to those metals in hardness and durability. hence it gradually displaced them throughout the greater part of the old world. [ ] first steps toward civilization during the prehistoric period early man came to be widely scattered throughout the world. here and there, slowly, and with utmost difficulty, he began to take the first steps toward civilization. the tools and weapons which he left behind him afford some evidence of his advance. we may now single out some of his other great achievements and follow their development to the dawn of history. . domestication of animals and plants hunting and fishing stage prehistoric man lived at first chiefly on wild berries, nuts, roots, and herbs. as his implements improved and his skill increased, he became hunter, trapper, and fisher. a tribe of hunters, however, requires an extensive territory and a constant supply of game. when the wild animals are all killed or seriously reduced in number, privation and hardship result. it was a forward step, therefore, when man began to tame animals as well as to kill them. domestication of the dog the dog was man's first conquest over the animal kingdom. as early as the age of metals various breeds appear, such as deerhounds, sheep dogs, and mastiffs. the dog soon showed how useful he could be. he tracked game, guarded the camp, and later, in the pastoral stage, protected flocks and herds against their enemies. the cow the cow also was domesticated at a remote period. no other animal has been more useful to mankind. the cow's flesh and milk supply food: the skin provides clothing; the sinews, bones, and horns yield materials for implements. the ox was early trained to bear the yoke and draw the plow, as we may learn from ancient egyptian paintings. [ ] cattle have also been commonly used as a kind of money. the early greeks, whose wealth consisted chiefly of their herds, priced a slave at twenty oxen, a suit of armor at one hundred oxen, and so on. the early romans reckoned values in cattle (one ox being equivalent to ten sheep). our english word "pecuniary" goes back to the latin _pecus_, or "herd" of cattle. [illustration: early roman bar money a bar of copper marked with the figure of a bull. dates from the fourth century b.c.] the horse the domestication of the horse came much later than that of the cow. in the early stone age the horse ran wild over western europe and formed an important source of food for primitive men. this prehistoric horse, as some ancient drawings show, [ ] was a small animal with a shaggy mane and tail. it resembled the wild pony still found on the steppes of mongolia. the domesticated horse does not appear in egypt and western asia much before b.c. for a long time after the horse was tamed, the more manageable ox continued to be used as the beast of burden. the horse was kept for chariots of war, as among the egyptians, or ridden bareback in races, as by the early greeks. other animals domesticated at the close of prehistoric times in the old world nearly all the domestic animals of to-day were known. besides those just mentioned, the goat, sheep, ass, and hog had become man's useful servants. [ ] pastoral stage the domestication of animals made possible an advance from the hunting and fishing stage to the pastoral stage. herds of cattle and sheep would now furnish more certain and abundant supplies of food than the chase could ever yield. we find in some parts of the world, as on the great asiatic plains, the herdsman succeeding the hunter and fisher. but even in this stage much land for grazing is required. with the exhaustion of the pasturage the sheep or cattle must be driven to new fields. hence pastoral peoples, as well as hunting and fishing folk, remained nomads without fixed homes. before permanent settlements were possible, another onward step became necessary. this was the domestication of plants. agricultural stage the domestication of plants marked almost as wonderful an advance as the domestication of animals. when wild seedgrasses and plants had been transformed into the great cereals--wheat, oats, barley, and rice--people could raise them for food, and so could pass from the life of wandering hunters or shepherds to the life of settled farmers. there is evidence that during the stone age some of the inhabitants of europe were familiar with various cultivated plants, but agriculture on a large scale seems to have begun in the fertile regions of egypt and western asia. [ ] here first arose populous communities with leisure to develop the arts of life. here, as has been already seen, [ ] we must look for the beginnings of history. . writing and the alphabet picture writing though history is always based on written records, the first steps toward writing are prehistoric. we start with the pictures or rough drawings which have been found among the remains of the early stone age. [ ] primitive man, however, could not rest satisfied with portraying objects. [illustration: various signs of symbolic picture writing , "war" (dakota indian); , "morning" (ojibwa indian); , "nothing" (ojibwa indian); and , "to eat" (indian, mexican, egyptian, etc.).] he wanted to record thoughts and actions, and so his pictures tended to become symbols of ideas. the figure of an arrow might be made to represent, not a real object, but the idea of an "enemy." a "fight" could then be shown simply by drawing two arrows directed against each other. many uncivilized tribes still employ picture writing of this sort. the american indians developed it in most elaborate fashion. on rolls of birch bark or the skins of animals they wrote messages, hunting stories, and songs, and even preserved tribal annals extending over a century. sound writing; the rebus a new stage in the development of writing was reached when the picture represented, not an actual object or an idea, but a sound of the human voice. this difficult but all-important step appears to have been taken through the use of the rebus, that is, writing words by pictures of objects which stand for sounds. such rebuses are found in prehistoric egyptian writing; for example, the egyptian words for "sun" and "goose" were so nearly alike that the royal title, "son of the sun," could be suggested by grouping the pictures of the sun and a goose. rebus making is still a common game among children, but to primitive men it must have been a serious occupation. [illustration: mexican rebus the latin _pater noster,_ "our father," is written by a flag _(pan)_, a stone _(te)_, a prickly pear _(noch)_, and another stone _(te)_.] [illustration: chinese picture writing and later conventional characters] words and syllables in the simplest form of sound writing each separate picture or symbol stands for the sound of an entire word. this method was employed by the chinese, who have never given it up. a more developed form of sound writing occurs when signs are used for the sounds, not of entire words, but of separate syllables. since the number of different syllables which the voice can utter is limited, it now becomes possible to write all the words of a language with a few hundred signs. the japanese, who borrowed some of the chinese symbols, used them to denote syllables, instead of entire words. the babylonians possessed, in their cuneiform [ ] characters, signs for about five hundred syllables. the prehistoric inhabitants of crete appear to have been acquainted with a somewhat similar system. [ ] letters the final step in the development of writing is taken when the separate sounds of the voice are analyzed and each is represented by a single sign or letter. with alphabets of a few score letters every word in a language may easily be written. [illustration: cretan writing a large tablet with linear script found in the palace at gnossus, crete there are eight lines of writing, with a total of about twenty words notice the upright lines, which appear to mark the termination of each group of signs.] egyptian hieroglyphics the egyptians early developed such an alphabet. unfortunately they never gave up their older methods of writing and learned to rely upon alphabetic signs alone. egyptian hieroglyphics [ ] are a curious jumble of object- pictures, symbols of ideas, and signs for entire words, separate syllables, and letters. the writing is a museum of all the steps in the development from the picture to the letter. phoenician alphabet as early, apparently, as the tenth century b.c. we find the phoenicians of western asia in possession of an alphabet. it consisted of twenty-two letters, each representing a consonant. the phoenicians do not seem to have invented their alphabetic signs. it is generally believed that they borrowed them from the egyptians, but recent discoveries in crete perhaps point to that island as the source of the phoenician alphabet. [illustration: egyptian and babylonian writing below the pictured hieroglyphics in the first line is the same text in a simpler writing known as hieratic. the two systems, however, were not distinct; they were as identical as our own printed and written characters. the third line illustrates old babylonian cuneiform, in which the characters, like the hieroglyphics, are rude and broken-down pictures of objects. derived from them is the later cuneiform shown in lines four and five.] diffusion of the phoenician alphabet if they did not originate the alphabet now in use, the phoenicians did most to spread a knowledge of it in other lands. they were bold sailors and traders who bought and sold throughout the mediterranean. wherever they went, they took their alphabet. from the phoenicians the greeks learned their letters. then the greeks taught them to the romans, from whom other european peoples borrowed them. [ ] [illustration: the moabite stone, (louvre, paris) found in a.d. at diban east of the dead sea. the monument records the victory of mesha king of moab, over the united armies of israel and judah about b.c. the inscription, consisting of lines is one of the most ancient examples of phoenician writing.] . primitive science and art foundations of scientific knowledge we have already seen that prehistoric men in their struggle for existence had gathered an extensive fund of information. they could make useful and artistic implements of stone. they could work many metals into a variety of tools and weapons. they were practical botanists, able to distinguish different plants and to cultivate them for food. they were close students of animal life and expert hunters and fishers. they knew how to produce fire and preserve it, how to cook, how to fashion pottery and baskets, how to spin and weave, how to build boats and houses. after writing came into general use, all this knowledge served as the foundation of science. counting and measuring we can still distinguish some of the first steps in scientific knowledge. thus, counting began with calculations on one's fingers, a method still familiar to children. finger counting explains the origin of the decimal system. the simplest, and probably the earliest, measures of length are those based on various parts of the body. some of our indian tribes, for instance, employed the double arm's length, the single arm's length, the hand width, and the finger width. old english standards, such as the span, the ell, and the hand, go back to this very obvious method of measuring on the body. calculation of time; the calendar it is interesting to trace the beginnings of time reckoning and of that most important institution, the calendar. most primitive tribes reckon time by the lunar month, the interval between two new moons (about twenty- nine days, twelve hours). twelve lunar months give us the lunar year of about three hundred and fifty-four days. in order to adapt such a year to the different seasons, the practice arose of inserting a thirteenth month from time to time. such awkward calendars were used in antiquity by the babylonians, jews, and greeks; in modern times by the arabs and chinese. the egyptians were the only people in the old world to frame a solar year. from the egyptians it has come down, through the romans, to us. [ ] [illustration: stonehenge on salisbury plain in the south of england: appears to date from the close of the new stone age or the beginning of the bronze age. the outer circle measures feet in circumference; the inner circle, feet. the tallest stones reach feet in height. this monument was probably a tomb, or group of tombs, of prehistoric chieftains.] early drawing and painting the study of prehistoric art takes us back to the early stone age. the men of that age in western europe lived among animals such as the mammoth, cave bear, and woolly-haired rhinoceros, which have since disappeared, and among many others, such as the lion and hippopotamus, which now exist only in warmer climates. armed with clubs, flint axes, and horn daggers, primitive hunters killed these fierce beasts and on fragments of their bones, or on cavern walls, drew pictures of them. some of these earliest works of art are remarkably lifelike. [illustration: head of a girl (musée s. germain, paris) a small head of a young girl carved from mammoth ivory. found at brassempouy, france, in cave deposits belonging to the early stone age. the hair is arranged somewhat after the early egyptian fashion. of the features the mouth alone is wanting.] [illustration: prehistoric art sketch of mammoth on a tusk found in a cave in france cave bear drawn on a pebble bison painted on the wall of a cave wild horse on the wall of a cave in spain. later he pictured an aurochs--later he pictured a bear-- pictured the sabre toothed tiger dragging a man to his lair-- pictured the mountainous mammoth hairy abhorrent alone-- out of the love that he bore them scribing them clearly on bone-- kipling.] early architecture a still later period of the stone age witnessed the beginnings of architecture. men had begun to raise huge dolmens which are found in various parts of the old world from england to india. they also erected enormous stone pillars, known as menhirs. carved in the semblance of a human face and figure, the menhir became a statue, perhaps the first ever made. as we approach historic times, we note a steady improvement in the various forms of art. recent discoveries in egypt, greece, italy, and other lands indicate that their early inhabitants were able architects, often building on a colossal scale. [illustration: a dolmen department of morbihan, brittany. a dolmen was a single chambered tomb formed by laying one long stone over several other stones set upright in the ground. most if not all dolmens were originally covered with earth.] [illustration: carved menhir from saint sernin in aveyron, a department of southern france.] significance of prehistoric art their paintings and sculptures prepared the way for the work of later artists. our survey of the origins of art shows us that in this field, as elsewhere, we must start with the things accomplished by prehistoric men. . historic peoples races of man at the dawn of history the various regions of the world were already in the possession of many different peoples. such physical characteristics as the shape of the skull, the features, stature, or complexion may serve to distinguish one people from another. other grounds for distinction are found in language, customs beliefs, and general intelligence. classification of races if we take complexion or color as the basis of classification, it is possible to distinguish a few large racial groups. each of these groups occupies, roughly speaking, its separate area of the globe. the most familiar classification is that which recognizes the black or negro race dwelling in africa, the yellow or mongolian race whose home is in central and eastern asia, and the white or caucasian race of western asia and europe. sometimes two additional divisions are made by including, as the red race, the american indians, and as the brown race, the natives of the pacific islands. the white race these separate racial groups have made very unequal progress in culture. the peoples belonging to the black, red, and brown races are still either savages or barbarians, as were the men of prehistoric times. the chinese and japanese are the only representatives of the yellow race that have been able to form civilized states. in the present, as in the past, it is chiefly the members of the white race who are developing civilization and making history. indo-europeans and semites because of differences in language, scholars have divided the white or caucasian race into two main groups, called indo-europeans and semites. [ ] this classification is often helpful, but the student should remember that indo-european and semitic peoples are not always to be sharply distinguished because they have different types of language. there is no very clear distinction in physical characteristics between the two groups. a clear skin, an oval face, wavy or curly hair, and regular features separate them from both the negro and the mongolian. principal indo-european peoples the indo-europeans in antiquity included the hindus of india, the medes and persians dwelling on the plateau of iran, the greeks and italians, and most of the inhabitants of central and western europe. all these peoples spoke related languages which are believed to be offshoots from one common tongue. likeness in language does not imply that all indo-europeans were closely related in blood. men often adopt a foreign tongue and pass it on to their children. principal semitic peoples the various semitic nations dwelling in western asia and arabia were more closely connected with one another. they spoke much the same type of language, and in physical traits and habits of life they appear to have been akin. the semites in antiquity included the babylonians and assyrians, the hebrews, phoenicians, and arabs. [illustration: race portraiture of the egyptians paintings on the walls of royal tombs. the egyptians were painted red, the semites yellow, the negroes black, and the libyans white, with blue eyes and fair beards. each racial type is distinguished by peculiar dress and characteristic features.] [illustration: map. distribution of semitic and indo-european peoples] peoples of uncertain relationship at the opening of the historic period still other parts of the world were the homes of various peoples who cannot be classed with certainty as either indo-europeans or semites. among these were the egyptians and some of the inhabitants of asia minor. we must remember that, during the long prehistoric ages, repeated conquests and migrations mingled the blood of many different communities. history, in fact, deals with no unmixed peoples. studies . on an outline map indicate the areas occupied in antiquity by semites and indo-europeans. . find definitions for the following terms: society, nation, state, government, institution, culture, and civilization. . explain the abbreviations b.c. and a.d. in what century was the year b.c.? the year a.d.? . look up the derivation of the words "paper" and "bible." . distinguish between the three stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, and give examples of existing peoples in each stage. . can you name any savages still living in the stone age? . what stone implements have you ever seen? who made them? where were they? . why should the discovery of fire be regarded as of more significance than the discovery of steam? . why has the invention of the bow-and-arrow been of greater importance than the invention of gunpowder? . how does the presence of few tameable animals in the new world help to account for its tardier development as compared with the old world? . what examples of pastoral and agricultural life among the north american indians are familiar to you? . give examples of peoples widely different in blood who nevertheless speak the same language. . in the classification of mankind, where do the arabs belong? the persians? the germans? the inhabitants of the united states? . enumerate the most important contributions to civilization made in prehistoric times. footnotes [ ] there are still some savage peoples, for instance, the australians, who continue to make stone implements very similar to those of prehistoric men. other primitive peoples, such as the natives of the pacific islands, passed directly from the use of stone to that of iron, after this part of the world was opened up to european trade in the nineteenth century. [ ] iron was unknown to the inhabitants of north america and south america before the coming of the europeans. the natives used many stone implements, besides those of copper and bronze. the indians got most of their copper from the mines in the lake superior region, whence it was carried far and wide. [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] in the new world, the only important domestic animal was the llama of the andes. the natives used it as a beast of burden, ate its flesh, and clothed themselves with its wool. [ ] the plants domesticated in the new world were not numerous. the most important were the potato of peru and ecuador, indian corn or maize, tobacco, the tomato, and manioc. from the roots of the latter, the starch called tapioca is derived. [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] latin cuneus, "a wedge". [ ] see page . [ ] from the greek words hieros, "holy," and glyphein, "to carve" the egyptians regarded their signs as sacred. [ ] our word "alphabet" comes from the names of the first two letters of the greek alphabet, _alpha_ (a) and _beta_ (b). [ ] see page and note . [ ] the old testament (_genesis_, x - ) represents shem (or sem), son of noah, as the ancestor of the semitic peoples. the title "indo- europeans" tells us that the members of that group now dwell in india and in europe. indo-european peoples are popularly called "aryans," from a word in sanskrit (the old hindu language) meaning "noble." chapter ii the lands and peoples of the east to about b.c. [ ] . physical asia grand divisions of asia ancient history begins in the east--in asia and in that part of africa called egypt, which the peoples of antiquity always regarded as belonging to asia. if we look at a physical map of asia, we see at once that it consists of two very unequal divisions separated by an almost continuous mass of mountains and deserts. these two divisions are farther and nearer, or eastern and western, asia. [illustration: map, physical map of asia.] farther asia farther asia begins at the center of the continent with a series of elevated table-lands which rise into the lofty plateaus, known as the "roof of the world." here two tremendous mountain chains diverge. the altai range runs out to the northeast and reaches the shores of the pacific near bering strait. the himalaya range extends southeast to the malay peninsula. in the angle formed by their intersection lies the cold and barren region of east turkestan and tibet, the height of which, in some places, is ten thousand feet above the sea. from these mountains and plateaus the ground sinks gradually toward the north into the lowlands of west turkestan and siberia, toward the east and south into the plains of china and india. china the fertile territory of central china, watered by the two streams, yangtse and hoangho, was settled at a remote period by barbarous tribes. the civilization which they slowly developed in antiquity has endured with little change until the present day. the inhabitants of neighboring countries, korea, japan, and indo-china, owe much to this civilization. it has exerted slight influence on the other peoples of asia because the chinese have always occupied a distant corner of the continent, cut off by deserts and mountains from the lands on the west. as if these barriers were not enough, they raised the great wall to protect their country from invasion. [illustration: the great wall of china the wall extends for about fifteen hundred miles along the northern frontier of china. in ad it was traversed for its entire length by an american mr. w. e. geil. he found many parts of the fortification still in good repair, though built twenty one centuries ago.] behind this mighty rampart the chinese have lived secluded and aloof from the progress of our western world. in ancient times china was a land of mystery. india india was better known than china, especially its two great rivers, the indus and the ganges, which flow to the southwest and southeast, respectively, and make this part of the peninsula one of the most fertile territories on the globe. such a land attracted immigrants. the region now known as the punjab, where the indus receives the waters of five great streams, was settled by light-skinned indo-europeans [ ] perhaps as early as b.c. then they occupied the valley of the ganges and so brought all northern india under their control. india and the west india did not remain entirely isolated from the rest of asia, the punjab was twice conquered by invaders from the west; by the persians in the sixth century b.c., [ ] and about two hundred years later by the greeks. [ ] after the end of foreign rule india continued to be of importance through its commerce, which introduced such luxuries as precious stones, spices, and ivory among the western peoples. nearer asia nearer, or western asia, the smaller of the two grand divisions of the asiatic continent, is bounded by the black and caspian seas on the north, by the red sea, persian gulf, and indian ocean on the south, eastward by the indus river, and westward by the mediterranean and the nile. almost all the countries within this area played a part in the ancient history of the orient. countries of nearer asia the lofty plateaus of central asia decline on the west into the lower but still elevated region of iran. the western part of iran was occupied in antiquity by the kindred people known as medes and persians. armenia, a wild and mountainous region, is an extension to the northwest of the iranian table-land. beyond armenia we cross into the peninsula of asia minor, a natural link between asia and europe. southward from asia minor we pass along the mediterranean coast through syria to arabia. the arabian peninsula may be regarded as the link between asia and africa. influence of geographical conditions these five countries of nearer asia were not well fitted to become centers of early civilization. they possessed no great rivers which help to bring people together, and no broad, fertile plains which support a large population. armenia, asia minor, and syria were broken up into small districts by chains of mountains. iran and arabia were chiefly barren deserts. but two other divisions of nearer asia resembled distant india and china in the possession of a warm climate, a fruitful soil, and an extensive river system. these lands were babylonia and egypt, the first homes of civilized man. . babylonia and egypt the tigris and the euphrates two famous rivers rise in the remote fastnesses of armenia--the tigris and the euphrates. as they flow southward, the twin streams approach each other to form a common valley, and then proceed in parallel channels for the greater part of their course. in antiquity each river emptied into the persian gulf by a separate mouth. this tigris-euphrates valley was called by the greeks mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers." productions of babylonia babylonia is a remarkably productive country. the annual inundation of the rivers has covered its once rocky bottom with deposits of rich silt. crops planted in such a soil, under the influence of a blazing sun, ripen with great rapidity and yield abundant harvests. "of all the countries that we know," says an old greek traveler, "there is no other so fruitful in grain." [ ] wheat and barley were perhaps first domesticated in this part of the world. [ ] wheat still grows wild there. though babylonia possessed no forests, it had the date palm, which needed scarcely any cultivation. if the alluvial soil yielded little stone, clay, on the other hand, was everywhere. molded into brick and afterwards dried in the sun, the clay became _adobe_, the cheapest building material imaginable. babylonia an early center of civilization in babylonia nature seems to have done her utmost to make it easy for people to gain a living. we can understand, therefore, why from prehistoric times men have been attracted to this region, and why it is here that we must look for one of the earliest seats of civilization. [ ] lower and upper egypt egypt may be described as the valley of the nile. rising in the nyanza lakes of central africa, that mighty stream, before entering egypt, receives the waters of the blue nile near the modern town of khartum. from this point the course of the river is broken by a series of five rocky rapids, misnamed cataracts, which can be shot by boats. the cataracts cease near the island of philae, and upper egypt begins. this is a strip of fertile territory, about five hundred miles in length but averaging only eight miles in width. not far from modern cairo the hills inclosing the valley fall away, the nile divides into numerous branches, and lower egypt, or the delta, begins. the sluggish stream passes through a region of mingled swamp and plain, and at length by three principal mouths empties its waters into the mediterranean. [illustration: philae the island was originally only a heap of granite bowlders. retaining walls were built around it, and the space within when filled with rich nile mud, became beautiful with groves of palms and mimosas. as the result of the construction of the assuan dam, philae and its exquisite temples are now submerged during the winter months, when the reservoir is full.] egypt the gift of the nile egypt owes her existence to the nile. all lower egypt is a creation of the river by the gradual accumulation of sediment at its mouths. upper egypt has been dug out of the desert sand and underlying rock by a process of erosion centuries long. once the nile filled all the space between the hills that line its sides. now it flows through a thick layer of alluvial mud deposited by the yearly inundation. annual inundation of the nile the nile begins to rise in june, when the snow melts on the abyssinian mountains. high-water mark, some thirty feet above the ordinary level, is reached in september. the inhabitants then make haste to cut the confining dikes and to spread the fertilizing water over their fields. egypt takes on the appearance of a turbid lake, dotted here and there with island villages and crossed in every direction by highways elevated above the flood. late in october the river begins to subside and by december has returned to its normal level. as the water recedes, it deposits that dressing of fertile vegetable mold which makes the soil of egypt perhaps the richest in the world. [ ] egypt an early center of civilization it was by no accident that egypt, like babylonia, became one of the first homes of civilized men. here, as there, every condition made it easy for people to live and thrive. food was cheap, for it was easily produced. the peasant needed only to spread his seed broadcast over the muddy fields to be sure of an abundant return. the warm, dry climate enabled him to get along with little shelter and clothing. hence the inhabitants of this favored region rapidly increased in number and gathered in populous towns and cities. at a time when most of their neighbors were still in the darkness of the prehistoric age, the egyptians had entered the light of history. . the babylonians and the egyptians inhabitants of babylonia the earliest inhabitants of babylonia of whom we know anything were a people called sumerians. they entered the babylonian plain through the passes of the eastern mountains, three or four thousand years before the christian era. here they formed a number of independent states, each with its capital city, its patron god, and its king. after them came semitic tribes from the deserts of northern arabia. the semites mingled with the sumerians and adopted sumerian civilization. hammurabi, king of babylonia, about b.c. of all the early babylonian kings the most famous was hammurabi. some inscriptions still remain to tell how he freed his country from foreign invaders and made his native babylon the capital of the entire land. this city became henceforth the real center of the euphrates valley, to which, indeed, it gave its name. hammurabi was also an able statesman, who sought to develop the territories his sword had won. he dug great canals to distribute the waters of the euphrates and built huge granaries to store the wheat against a time of famine. in babylon he raised splendid temples and palaces. for all his kingdom he published a code of laws, the oldest in the world. [ ] thus hammurabi, by making babylonia so strong and flourishing, was able to extend her influence in every direction. her only important rival was egypt. [illustration: top of monument containing the code of hammurabi (british museum, london) a block of black diorite nearly feet high, on which the code is chiseled in columns and over lines. the relief at the top of the monument shows the babylonian king receiving the laws from the sun god who is seated at the right.] the origin of the egyptians is not known with certainty. in physical characteristics they resembled the native tribes of northern and inhabitants eastern africa. their language, however, shows of egypt close kinship to the semitic tongues of western asia and arabia. it is probable that the egyptians, like the babylonians, arose from the mingling of several peoples. menes, king of egypt, about b.c. the history of egypt commences with the union of the two kingdoms of upper and lower egypt under menes. an ancient tradition made him the builder of memphis, near the head of the delta, and the founder of the egyptian monarchy. scholars once doubted these exploits and even regarded menes himself as mythical. recently, however, his tomb has been discovered. in the gray dawn of history menes appears as a real personage, the first of that line of kings, or "pharaohs," who for nearly three thousand years ruled over egypt. [illustration: map, egyptian empire about b.c.] the pyramid kings, about - b.c. several centuries after menes we reach the age of the kings who raised the pyramids. probably no other rulers have ever stamped their memory so indelibly on the pages of history as the builders of these mighty structures. the most celebrated monarch of this line was the pharaoh whom the greeks called cheops. the great pyramid near memphis, erected for his tomb, remains a lasting witness to his power. [illustration: two famous pharaohs khufu (cheops) builder of the great pyramid menephtah the supposed pharaoh of the exodus] [illustration: the great pyramid the pyramid when completed had a height of feet. it is now feet high. its base covers about thirteen acres. some of the blocks of white limestone used in construction weigh fifty tons. the facing of polished stone was gradually removed for building purposes by the arabs. on the northern side of the pyramid a narrow entrance once carefully concealed, opens into tortuous passages which lead to the central vault. here the sarcophagus of the king was placed. this chamber was long since entered and its contents rifled.] [illustration: the great sphinx this colossal figure, human headed and lion bodied, is hewn from the natural rock. the body is about feet long, the paws feet, the head feet. the height from the base to the top of the head is feet. except for its head and shoulders the figure has been buried for centuries in the desert sand. the eyes, nose and beard have been mutilated by the arabs. the face is probably that of one of the pyramid kings.] after the pyramid kings for a long time after the epoch of the pyramid kings the annals of egypt furnish a record of quiet and peaceful progress. the old city of memphis gradually declined in importance and thebes in upper egypt became the capital. the vigorous civilization growing up in egypt was destined, however, to suffer a sudden eclipse. about b.c. barbarous tribes from western asia burst into the country, through the isthmus of suez, and settled in the delta. the hyksos, as they are usually called, extended their sway over all egypt. at first they ruled harshly, plundering the cities and enslaving the inhabitants, but in course of time the invaders adopted egyptian culture and their kings reigned like native pharaohs. the hyksos are said to have introduced the horse and military chariot into egypt. a successful revolt at length expelled the intruders and set a new line of theban monarchs on the throne. the egyptian empire the overthrow of the hyksos marked a new era in the history of egypt. from a home-loving and peaceful people the egyptians became a warlike race, ambitious for glory. the pharaohs raised powerful armies and by extensive conquests created an egyptian empire, reaching from the nile to the euphrates. imperial splendor of egypt this period of the imperial greatness of egypt is the most splendid in its history. an extensive trade with cyprus, crete, and other mediterranean islands introduced many foreign luxuries. the conquered territories in syria paid a heavy tribute of the precious metals, merchandise, and slaves. the forced labor of thousands of war captives enabled the pharaohs to build public works in every part on their realm. even the ruins of these stupendous structures are enough to indicate the majesty and power of ancient egypt. rameses ii, about - b.c. of all the conquering pharaohs none won more fame than rameses ii, who ruled for nearly seventy years. his campaigns in syria were mainly against the hittites, a warlike people who had moved southward from their home in asia minor and sought to establish themselves in the syrian lands. rameses does not appear to have been entirely successful against his foes. we find him at length entering into an alliance with "the great king of the hittites," by which their dominion over northern syria was recognized. in the arts of peace rameses achieved a more enduring renown. he erected many statues and temples in various parts of egypt and made thebes, his capital, the most magnificent city of the age. [illustration: head of mummy of rameses ii (museum of gizeh) the mummy was discovered in ad in an underground chamber near the site of thebes. with it were the coffins and bodies of more than a score of royal personages. rameses ii was over ninety years of age at the time of his death. in spite of the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification, the face of this famous pharaoh still wears an aspect of majesty and pride.] decline of the egyptian power rameses ii was the last of the great pharaohs. after his death the empire steadily declined in strength. the asiatic possessions fell away, never to be recovered. by b.c. egypt had been restricted to her former boundaries in the nile valley. the persians, in the sixth century, brought the country within their own vast empire. . the phoenicians and the hebrews the phoenicians the phoenicians were the first syrian people to assume importance. their country was a narrow stretch of coast, about one hundred and twenty miles in length, seldom more than twelve miles in width, between the lebanon mountains and the sea. this tiny land could not support a large population. as the phoenicians increased in numbers, they were obliged to betake themselves to the sea. the lebanon cedars furnished soft, white wood for shipbuilding, and the deeply indented coast offered excellent harbors. thus the phoenicians became preeminently a race of sailors. their great cities, sidon and tyre, established colonies throughout the mediterranean and had an extensive commerce with every region of the known world. the hebrews the hebrews lived south of phoenicia in the land of canaan, west of the jordan river their history begins with the emigration of twelve hebrew tribes (called israelites) from northern arabia to canaan. in their new home the israelites gave up the life of wandering shepherds and became farmers. they learned from the canaanites to till the soil and to dwell in towns and cities. period of the judges the thorough conquest of canaan proved to be no easy task. at first the twelve israelitish tribes formed only a loose and weak confederacy without a common head. "in those days there was no king in israel, every man did what was right in his own eyes." [ ] the sole authority was that held by valiant chieftains and law-givers, such as samson, gideon, and samuel, who served as judges between the tribes and often led them in successful attacks upon their foes. among these were the warlike philistines, who occupied the southwestern coast of canaan. to resist the philistines with success it was necessary to have a king who could bring all the scattered tribes under his firm, well-ordered rule. reigns of saul and david in saul, "a young man and a goodly," the warriors of israel found a leader to unite them against their enemies. his reign was passed in constant struggles with the philistines. david, who followed him, utterly destroyed the philistine power and by further conquests extended the boundaries of the new state. for a capital city he selected the ancient fortress of jerusalem. here david built himself a royal palace and here he fixed the ark, the sanctuary of jehovah. jerusalem became to the israelites their dearest possession and the center of their national life. [illustration: map, canaan as divided among the tribes] reign of solomon, about - b.c. the reign of solomon, the son and successor of david, was the most splendid period in hebrew history. his kingdom stretched from the red sea and the peninsula of sinai northward to the lebanon mountains and the euphrates. with the surrounding peoples solomon was on terms of friendship and alliance. he married an egyptian princess, a daughter of the reigning pharaoh. he joined with hiram, king of tyre, in trading expeditions on the red sea and indian ocean. the same phoenician monarch supplied him with the "cedars of lebanon," with which he erected at jerusalem a famous temple for the worship of jehovah. a great builder, a wise administrator and governor, solomon takes his place as a typical oriental despot, the most powerful monarch of the age. [illustration: a phoenician war galley from a slab found at nineveh in the palace of the assyrian king, sennacherib. the vessel shown is a bireme with two decks. on the upper deck are soldiers with their shields hanging over the side. the oarsmen sit on the lower deck, eight at each side. the crab catching the fish is a humorous touch.] secession of the ten tribes, about b.c. but the political greatness of the hebrews was not destined to endure. the people were not ready to bear the burdens of empire. they objected to the standing army, to the forced labor on public buildings, and especially to the heavy taxes. the ten northern tribes seceded shortly after solomon's death and established the independent kingdom of israel, with its capital at samaria. the two southern tribes, judah and benjamin, formed the kingdom of judea, and remained loyal to the successors of solomon. [illustration: map, solomon's kingdom] decline of the hebrew power the two small hebrew kingdoms could not resist their powerful neighbors. about two centuries after the secession of the ten tribes, the assyrians overran israel. judea was subsequently conquered by the babylonians. both countries in the end became a part of the persian empire. . the assyrians greatness of assyria, - b.c. assyria, lying east of the tigris river, was colonized at an early date by emigrants from babylonia. after the assyrians freed themselves from babylonian control, they entered upon a series of sweeping conquests. every asiatic state felt their heavy hand. the assyrian kings created a huge empire stretching from the caspian sea to the persian gulf, the mediterranean, and the nile. for the first time in oriental history mesopotamia and egypt, with the intervening territory, were brought under one government. character of assyrian rule this unification of the orient was accomplished only at a fearful cost. the records of assyria are full of terrible deeds--of towns and cities without number given to the flames, of the devastation of fertile fields and orchards, of the slaughter of men, women, and children, of the enslavement of entire nations. assyrian monarchs, in numerous inscriptions, boast of the wreck and ruin they brought to many flourishing lands. [illustration: an assyrian from a nineveh bas-relief. the original is colored.] sargon ii, - b.c. the treatment of conquered peoples by the assyrian rulers is well illustrated by their dealings with the hebrews. one of the mightiest monarchs was an usurper, who ascended the throne as sargon ii. shortly after his succession he turned his attention to the kingdom of israel, which had revolted. sargon in punishment took its capital city of samaria ( b.c.) and led away many thousands of the leading citizens into a lifelong captivity in distant assyria. the ten tribes mingled with the population of that region and henceforth disappeared from history. [illustration: ancient oriental empires map, the assyrian empire about b.c. map, lydia, media, babylonia and egypt about b.c.] sennacherib, - b.c. sargon's son, sennacherib, though not the greatest, is the best known of assyrian kings. his name is familiar from the many references to him in old testament writings. an inscription by sennacherib describes an expedition against hezekiah, king of judea, who was shut up "like a caged bird in his royal city of jerusalem." sennacherib, however, did not capture the place. his troops were swept away by a pestilence. the ancient hebrew writer conceives it as the visitation of a destroying angel: "it came to pass that night that the angel of jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp of the assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies." [ ] so sennacherib departed, and returned with a shattered army to nineveh, his capital. [illustration: an assyrian relief (british museum, london) the relief represents the siege and capture of lachish, a city of the canaanites, by sennacherib's troops. notice the total absence of perspective in this work.] downfall of assyria, b.c. although assyria recovered from this disaster, its empire rested on unstable foundations. the subject races were attached to their oppressive masters by no ties save those of force. when assyria grew exhausted by its career of conquest, they were quick to strike a blow for freedom. by the middle of the seventh century egypt had secured her independence, and many other provinces were ready to revolt. meanwhile, beyond the eastern mountains, the medes were gathering ominously on the assyrian frontier. the storm broke when the median monarch, in alliance with the king of babylon, moved upon nineveh and captured it. the city was utterly destroyed. [illustration: the ishtar gate, babylon explorations on the site of babylon have been conducted since a.d. by the german oriental society. large parts of the temple area, as well as sections of the royal palaces, have been uncovered. the most important structure found is the ishtar gate. the towers which flank it are adorned with figures of dragons and bulls in brilliantly colored glazed tile.] partition of assyria after the conquest of the assyrian empire the victors proceeded to divide the spoils. the share of media was assyria itself, together with the long stretch of mountain country extending from the persian gulf to asia minor. babylonia obtained the western half of the assyrian domains, including the euphrates valley and syria. under its famous king, nebuchadnezzar ( - b.c.), babylonia became a great power in the orient. it was nebuchadnezzar who brought the kingdom of judea to an end. he captured jerusalem in b.c., burned the temple, and carried away many jews into captivity. the day of their deliverance, when babylon itself should bow to a foreign foe, was still far distant. . the world empire of persia cyrus the great, - b.c. not much earlier than the break-up of the assyrian empire, we find a new and vigorous people pressing into western iran. they were the persians, near kinsmen of the medes. subjects at first of assyria, and then of media, they regained their independence and secured imperial power under a conquering king whom history knows as cyrus the great. in b.c. cyrus revolted against the median monarch and three years later captured the royal city of ecbatana. the medes and persians formed henceforth a united people. [illustration: the tomb of cyrus the great the mausoleum is built of immense marble blocks joined together without cement. its total height including the seven steps is about thirty five feet. a solitary pillar near the tomb still bears the inscription 'i am cyrus, the king, the achaemenian.'] conquest of lydia by cyrus, b.c. the conquest of media was soon followed by a war with the lydians, who had been allies of the medes. the throne of lydia, a state in the western part of asia minor, was at this time held by croesus, the last and most famous of his line. the king grew so wealthy from the tribute paid by lydian subjects and from his gold mines that his name has passed into the proverb, "rich as croesus." he viewed with alarm the rising power of cyrus and rashly offered battle to the persian monarch. defeated in the open field, croesus shut himself up in sardis, his capital. the city was soon taken, however, and with its capture the lydian kingdom came to an end. capture of babylon, b.c. the downfall of lydia prepared the way for a persian attack on babylonia. the conquest of that country proved unexpectedly easy. in b.c. the great city of babylon opened its gates to the persian host. shortly afterwards cyrus issued a decree allowing the jewish exiles there to return to jerusalem and rebuild the temple, which nebuchadnezzar had destroyed. with the surrender of babylon the last semitic empire in the east came to an end. the medes and persians, an indo-european people, henceforth ruled over a wider realm than ever before had been formed in oriental lands. cambyses, - b.c. cyrus was followed by his son, cambyses, a cruel but stronghanded despot. cambyses determined to add egypt to the persian dominions. his land army was supported by a powerful fleet, to which the phoenicians and the greeks of cyprus contributed ships. a single battle sufficed to overthrow the egyptian power and to bring the long rule of the pharaohs to a close. [ ] darius the great, - b.c. the reign of darius, the successor of cambyses, was marked by further extensions of the frontiers. an expedition to the distant east added to the empire the region of the punjab, [ ] along the upper waters of the indus. another expedition against the wild scythian tribes along the danube led to conquests in europe and brought the persian dominions close to those of the greeks. not without reason could darius describe himself in an inscription which still survives, as "the great king, king of kings, king of countries, king of all men." [illustration: darius with his attendants bas-relief at persepolis. the monarch's right hand grasps a staff or scepter, his left hand, a bunch of flowers. his head is surmounted by a crown, his body is enveloped in the long median mantle. above the king is a representation of the divinity which guarded and guided him. in the rear are two persian nobles, one carrying the royal fan, the other the royal parasol.] [illustration: rock sepulchers of the persian kings the tombs are those of darius, xerxes, and two of their successors. they are near persepolis.] organization of the persian empire it was the work of darius to provide for his dominions a stable government which should preserve what the sword had won. the problem was difficult. the empire was a collection of many peoples widely different in race, language, customs, and religion. darius did not attempt to weld the conquered nations into unity. as long as the subjects of persia paid tribute and furnished troops for the royal army, they were allowed to conduct their own affairs with little interference from the great king. the satrapal system the entire empire, excluding persia proper, was divided into twenty satrapies, or provinces, each one with its civil governor, or satrap. the satraps carried out the laws and collected the heavy tribute annually levied throughout the empire. in most of the provinces there were also military governors who commanded the army and reported directly to the king. this device of intrusting the civil and military functions to separate officials lessened the danger of revolts against the persian authority. as an additional precaution darius provided special agents whose business it was to travel from province to province and investigate the conduct of his officials. it became a proverb that "the king has many eyes and many ears." persian roads darius also established a system of military roads throughout the persian dominions. the roads were provided at frequent intervals with inns, where postmen stood always in readiness to take up a letter and carry it to the next station. the royal road from susa, the persian capital, to sardis in lydia was over fifteen hundred miles long; but government couriers, using relays of fresh horses, could cover the distance within a week. an old greek writer declares with admiration that "there is nothing mortal more swift than these messengers." [ ] union of the east under persia the political history of the east fitly ends with the three persian conquerors, cyrus, cambyses, and darius, who thus brought into their huge empire every great state of oriental antiquity. medes and persians, babylonians and assyrians, lydians, syrians, and egyptians--all were at length united under a single dominion. in the reign of darius this united orient first comes into contact with the rising power of the greek states of europe. so we may leave its history here, resuming our narrative when we discuss the momentous conflict between persia and greece, which was to affect the course, not alone of persian or greek, but of all european history. [ ] [illustration: map, the persian empire at its greatest extent (about b. c.)] studies . on the map physical map of asia, section . physical asia, topic grand divisions of asia, see what regions of asia are less than feet above sea level; less than feet; less than feet; less than , feet; over , feet. . on an outline map of the orient indicate eight important rivers, two gulfs, three inland seas, the great plateaus and plains, the principal mountain ranges, two important passes, and the various countries and cities mentioned in this chapter. . on an outline map draw the boundaries of the persian empire under darius, showing what parts were conquered by cyrus, cambyses, and darius, respectively. . for what were the following places noted: jerusalem; thebes; tyre; nineveh; and babylon? . for what were the following persons famous: hammurabi; rameses ii; solomon; cyrus; nebuchadnezzar; and darius? . define and illustrate these terms: empire, kingdom, province, tributary state, satrapy. . identity these dates: b.c.; b.c.; and b.c. . why was india better known in ancient times than china? . what modern countries are included within the limits of ancient iran? . why was a canal through the isthmus of suez less needed in ancient times than to-day? . can you suggest any reasons why the sources of the nile remained unknown until late in the nineteenth century? . what is the origin of the name _delta_ applied to such a region as lower egypt? . comment on the statement: "egypt as a geographical expression is two things--the desert and the nile. as a habitable country it is only one thing--the nile." . why did the greek traveler, herodotus, call egypt "the gift of the nile"? . distinguish between syria and assyria. . what is the exact meaning of the words, _hebrew_, _israelite_, and _jew_? describe some features of assyrian warfare (illustration, page ). . what modern countries are included within the limits of the persian empire under darius? . trace on the map facing page the course of the royal road, noting the countries through which it passed. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter ii, "the founders of the persian empire: cyrus, cambyses, and darius." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] herodotus, i, . [ ] see page . [ ] it is interesting to note that hebrew tradition (_genesis_, ii, - ) places paradise, the garden of god and original home of man, in southern babylonia. the ancient name for this district was edin (eden). [ ] the problem of regulating the nile inundation so as to distribute the water for irrigation when and where it is most needed has been solved by the building of the assuan dam. it lies across the head of the first cataract for a distance of a mile and a quarter, and creates a lake two hundred and forty miles in length. this great work was completed in a.d. by the british officials who now control egypt. [ ] see page . [ ] judges, xvii, . [ ] _kings_, xix, . see byron's poem, _the destruction of sennacherib_. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] herodotus, viii, . [ ] see chapter v. chapter iii oriental civilization [ ] . social classes rediscovery of the orient our present knowledge of the orient has been gained within recent times. less than a century ago no one could read the written records of the egyptians and babylonians. the decipherment of the rosetta stone, which contained an inscription in both greek and hieroglyphics, led to the understanding of egyptian writing. scholars later succeeded in interpreting the babylonian cuneiform script. modern excavations in the valleys of the nile and the euphrates have now provided them with abundant material for study in the shape of books and inscriptions. as these are gradually deciphered, new light is being thrown on all features of ancient oriental civilization. [illustration: a royal name in hieroglyphics (rosetta stone) the cut shows the symbols contained in one of the oval rings, or _cartouches_, for ptolemaios, the greek name of king ptolemy. each symbol represents the initial letter of the egyptian name for the object pictured. the objects in order are: a mat, a half-circle, a noose, a lion, a hole, two reeds, and a chair-back. the entire hieroglyph is read from left to right, as we read words in english.] [illustration: the rosetta stone. british museum, london. a block of black basalt, three feet seven inches in height, found in a.d., near the rosetta mouth of the nile.] the king as autocrat the oriental peoples, when their history opens, were living under the monarchical form of government. the king, to his subjects, was the earthly representative of the god. often, indeed, he was himself regarded as divine. the belief in the king's divine origin made obedience to him a religious obligation for his subjects. every oriental monarch was an autocrat. every oriental monarchy was a despotism. the king's duties the king had many duties. he was judge, commander, and high priest, all in one. in time of war, he led his troops and faced the dangers of the battle field. during intervals of peace, he was occupied with a constant round of sacrifices, prayers, and processions, which could not be neglected without exciting the anger of the gods. to his courtiers he gave frequent audience, hearing complaints, settling disputes, and issuing commands. a conscientious monarch, such as hammurabi, who describes himself as "a real father to his people," must have been a very busy man. [illustration: an egyptian court scene wall painting from a tomb at thebes. shows a pharaoh receiving asiatic envoys bearing tribute. they are introduced by white robed egyptian officials. the asiatics may be distinguished by their gay clothes and black, sharp pointed beards.] nobles and priests besides the monarch and the royal family there was generally in oriental countries an upper class of landowners. in egypt the pharaoh was regarded as sole owner of the land. some of it he worked through his slaves, but the larger part he granted to his favorites, as hereditary estates. such persons may be called the nobles. the different priesthoods also had much land, the revenues from which kept up the temples where they ministered. in babylonia, likewise, we find a priesthood and nobility supported by the income from landed property. the middle class the middle class included professional men, shopkeepers independent farmers, and skilled craftsmen. though regarded as inferiors, still they had a chance to rise in the world. if they became rich, they might hope to enter the upper class as priests or government officials. workmen and peasants no such hopes encouraged the day laborer in the fields or shops. his lot was bitter poverty and a life of unending toil. if he was an unskilled workman, his wages were only enough to keep him and his family. he toiled under overseers who carried sticks and used them freely. "man has a back," says an egyptian proverb, "and only obeys when it is beaten." if the laborer was a peasant, he could be sure that the nobles from whom he rented the land and the tax collectors of the king would leave him scarcely more than a bare living. slaves at the very bottom of the social ladder were the slaves. every ancient people possessed them. at first they were prisoners of war, who, instead of being slaughtered, were made to labor for their masters. at a later period people unable to pay their debts often became slaves. the treatment of slaves depended on the character of the master. a cruel and overbearing owner might make life a burden for his bondmen. escape was rarely possible. slaves were branded like cattle to prevent their running away. hammurabi's code [ ] imposed the death penalty on anybody who aided or concealed the fugitives. there was plenty of work for the slaves to perform--repairing dikes, digging irrigation canals, and erecting vast palaces and temples. the servile class in egypt was not as numerous as in babylonia, and slavery itself seems to have assumed there a somewhat milder form. [illustration: transport of an assyrian colossus a slab from a gallery of sennacherib's palace at nineveh. the immense block is being pulled forward by slaves, who work under the lash.] . economic conditions farming such fruitful, well-watered valleys as those of the nile and the euphrates encouraged agricultural life. farming was the chief occupation. working people, whether slaves or freemen, were generally cultivators of the soil. all the methods of agriculture are pictured for us on the monuments. we mark the peasant as he breaks up the earth with a hoe or plows a shallow furrow with a sharp-pointed stick. we see the sheep being driven across sown fields to trample the seed into the moist soil. we watch the patient laborers as with hand sickles they gather in the harvest and then with heavy flails separate the chaff from the grain. although their methods were very clumsy, ancient farmers raised immense crops of wheat and barley. the soil of egypt and babylonia not only supported a dense population, but also supplied food for neighboring peoples. these two lands were the granaries of the east. [illustration: plowing and sowing in ancient egypt] manufacturing many industries of to-day were known in ancient egypt and babylonia. there were blacksmiths, carpenters, stonecutters, workers in ivory, silver, and gold, weavers, potters, and glass blowers. the creations of these ancient craftsmen often exhibit remarkable skill. egyptian linens were so wonderfully fine and transparent as to merit the name of "woven air." babylonian tapestries, carpets, and rugs enjoyed a high reputation for beauty of design and color. egyptian glass with its waving lines of different hues was much prized. precious stones were made into beads, necklaces, charms, and seals. the precious metals were employed for a great variety of ornaments. egyptian paintings show the goldsmiths at work with blowpipe and forceps, fashioning bracelets, rings, and diadems, inlaying objects of stone and wood, or covering their surfaces with fine gold leaf. the manufacture of tiles and glazed pottery was everywhere carried on. babylonia is believed to be the original home of porcelain. enameled bricks found there are unsurpassed by the best products of the present day. trade the development of the arts and crafts brought a new industrial class into existence. there was now need of merchants and shopkeepers to collect manufactured products where they could be readily bought and sold. the cities of babylonia, in particular, became thriving markets. partnerships between tradesmen were numerous. we even hear of commercial companies. business life in ancient babylonia wore, indeed, quite a modern look. money metallic money first circulated in the form of rings and bars. the egyptians had small pieces of gold--"cow gold"--each of which was simply the value of a full-grown cow. [ ] it was necessary to weigh the metal whenever a purchase took place. a common picture on the egyptian monuments is that of the weigher with his balance and scales. then the practice arose of stamping each piece of money with its true value and weight. the next step was coinage proper, where the government guarantees, not only the weight, but also the genuineness of the metal. [illustration: egyptian weighing "cow gold"] coinage the honor of the invention of coinage is generally given to the lydians, whose country was well supplied with the precious metals. as early as the eighth century b.c. the lydian monarchs began to strike coins of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. the famous croesus,[ ] whose name is still a synonym for riches, was the first to issue coins of pure gold and silver. the greek neighbors of lydia quickly adopted the art of coinage and so introduced it into europe. [ ] banking the use of money as a medium of exchange led naturally to a system of banking. in babylonia, for instance, the bankers formed an important and influential class. one great banking house, established at babylon before the age of sennacherib, carried on operations for several centuries. hundreds of legal documents belonging to this firm have been discovered in the huge earthenware jars which served as safes. the babylonian temples also received money on deposit and loaned it out again, as do our modern banks. knowledge of the principles of banking passed from babylonia to greece and thence to ancient italy and rome. . commerce and trade routes asiatic commerce the use of the precious metals as money greatly aided the exchange of commodities between different countries. the cities of the tigris- euphrates valley were admirably situated for commerce, both by sea and land. they enjoyed a central position between eastern and western asia. the shortest way by water from india skirted the southern coast of iran and, passing up the persian gulf, gained the valley of the two great rivers. even more important were the overland roads from china and india which met at babylon and nineveh. along these routes traveled long lines of caravans laden with the products of the distant east--gold and ivory, jewels and silks, tapestries, spices, and fine woods. still other avenues of commerce radiated to the west and entered asia minor, syria, and egypt. many of these trade routes are in use even to-day. [illustration: map, ancient trade routes] commerce with europe while the inhabitants of babylonia and assyria were able to control the caravan routes of asia, it was reserved for a syrian people, the phoenicians, to become the pioneers of commerce with europe. as early as b.c. the rich copper mines of cyprus attracted phoenician colonists to this island. [ ] from cyprus these bold mariners and keen business men passed to crete, thence along the shores of asia minor to the greek mainland, and possibly to the black sea. some centuries later the phoenicians were driven from these regions by the rising power of the greek states. then they sailed farther westward and established their trading posts in sicily, africa, and spain. at length they passed through the strait of gibraltar into the atlantic and visited the shores of western europe and africa. [illustration: map, phoenician and greek colonies] phoenician imports and exports the phoenicians obtained a great variety of products from their widely scattered settlements. the mines of spain yielded tin, lead, and silver. the tin was especially valuable because of its use in the manufacture of bronze. [ ] from africa came ivory, ostrich feathers, and gold; from arabia, incense, perfumes, and costly spices. the phoenicians found a ready sale for these commodities throughout the east. still other products were brought directly to phoenicia to provide the raw materials for her flourishing manufactures. the fine carpets and glassware, the artistic works in silver and bronze, and the beautiful purple cloths [ ] produced by phoenician factories were exported to every region of the known world. phoenician voyages of exploration the phoenicians were the boldest sailors of antiquity. some of their long voyages are still on record. we learn from the bible that they made cruises on the red sea and indian ocean and brought the gold of ophir-- "four hundred and twenty talents"--to solomon. [ ] there is even a story of certain phoenicians who, by direction of an egyptian king, explored the eastern coast of africa, rounded the cape of good hope, and after three years' absence returned to egypt through the strait of gibraltar. a much more probable narrative is that of the voyage of hanno, a carthaginian admiral. we still possess a greek translation of his interesting log book. it describes an expedition made about b.c. along the western coast of africa. the explorers seem to have sailed as far as the country now called sierra leone. nearly two thousand years elapsed before a similar voyage along the african coast was undertaken. phoenician settlements wherever the phoenicians journeyed, they established settlements. most of these were merely trading posts which contained the warehouses for the storage of their goods. here the shy natives came to barter their raw materials for the finished products--cloths, tools, weapons, wine, and oil--which the strangers from the east had brought with them. phoenician settlements sometimes grew to be large and flourishing cities. the colony of gades in southern spain, mentioned in the old testament as tarshish, [ ] survives to this day as cadiz. the city of carthage, founded in north africa by colonists from tyre, became the commercial mistress of the mediterranean. carthaginian history has many points of contact with that of the greeks and romans. . law and morality babylonian contracts it is clear that societies so highly organized as phoenicia, egypt, and babylonia must have been held together by the firm bonds of law. the ancient babylonians, especially, were a legal-minded people. when a man sold his wheat, bought a slave, married a wife, or made a will, the transaction was duly noted on a contract tablet, which was then filed away in the public archives. instead of writing his name, a babylonian stamped his seal on the wet clay of the tablet. every man who owned property had to have a seal. code of hammurabi the earliest laws were, of course, unwritten. they were no more than the long-established customs of the community. as civilization advanced, the usages that generally prevailed were written out and made into legal codes. a recent discovery has given to us the almost complete text of the laws which hammurabi, the babylonian king, ordered to be engraved on stone monuments and set up in all the chief cities of his realm. [ ] subject matter of hammurabi's code the code of hammurabi shows, in general, a high sense of justice. a man who tries to bribe a witness or a judge is to be severely punished. a farmer who is careless with his dikes and allows the water to run through flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. the owner of a vicious ox which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. a builder who puts up a shaky house which afterwards collapses and kills the tenant is himself to be put to death. on the other hand, the code has some rude features. punishments were severe. for injuries to the body there was the simple rule of retaliation: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb. a son who had struck his father was to have his hands cut off. the nature of the punishment depended, moreover, on the rank of the aggrieved party. a person who had caused the loss of a "gentleman's" eye was to have his own plucked out; but if the injury was done to a poor man, the culprit had only to pay a fine. [illustration: babylonian contract tablet the actual tablet is on the right, on the left is a hollow clay case or envelope.] importance of hammurabi's code hammurabi's laws thus present a vivid picture of oriental society two thousand years before christ. they always remained the basis of the babylonian and assyrian legal system. they were destined, also, to exert considerable influence upon hebrew legislation. centuries after hammurabi the enactments of the old babylonian king were reproduced in some of the familiar regulations of the laws of moses. in this way they became the heritage of the hebrews and, through them, of our modern world. the mosaic code the laws which we find in the earlier books of the bible were ascribed by the hebrews to moses. these laws covered a wide range of topics. they fixed all religious ceremonies, required the observance every seventh day of the sabbath, dealt with marriage and the family, stated the penalties for wrongdoing, gave elaborate rules for sacrifices, and even indicated what foods must be avoided as "unclean." no other ancient people possessed so elaborate a code. the jews throughout the world obey, to this day, its precepts. and modern christendom still recites the ten commandments, the noblest summary of the rules of right living that has come down to us from the ancient world. . religion nature worship oriental ideas of religion, even more than of law and morality, were the gradual outgrowth of beliefs held by the asiatic peoples in prehistoric times. everywhere nature worship prevailed. the vault of heaven, earth and ocean, sun, moon, and stars were all regarded either as themselves divine or as the abode of divinities. the sun was an object of especial adoration. we find a sun god, under different names, in every oriental country. babylonian belief in evil spirits another inheritance from prehistoric times was the belief in evil spirits. in babylonia and assyria this superstition became a prominent feature of the popular religion. men supposed themselves to be constantly surrounded by a host of demons which caused insanity, sickness, disease, and death-- all the ills of life. people lived in constant fear of offending these malignant beings. magic to cope with evil spirits the babylonian used magic. he put up a small image of a protecting god at the entrance to his house and wore charms upon his person. if he felt ill, he went to a priest, who recited a long incantation supposed to drive out the "devil" afflicting the patient. the reputation of the babylonian priests was so widespread that in time the name "chaldean" [ ] came to mean one who is a magician. some of their magical rites were borrowed by the jews, and later by the romans, from whom they entered christian europe. another babylonian practice which spread westward was that of divination, particularly by inspecting the entrails of animals slain in sacrifice. this was a very common method of divination among the greeks and romans. [ ] [illustration: egyptian scarab the beetle, as a symbol of birth and resurrection, and hence of immortality, enjoyed much reverence in ancient egypt. a scarab, or image of the beetle, was often worn as a charm and was placed in the mummy as an artificial heart.] astrology astrology received much attention. it was believed that the five planets, comets, and eclipses of the sun and moon exerted an influence for good or evil on the life of man. babylonian astrology likewise extended to western lands and became popular among the greeks and romans. some of it survives to the present time. when we name the days saturday, sunday, and monday, we are unconscious astrologers, for in old belief the first day belonged to the planet saturn, the second to the sun, and the third to the moon. [ ] superstitious people who try to read their fate in the stars are really practicing an art of babylonian origin. egyptian animal worship less influential in later times was the animal worship of the egyptians. this, too, formed a heritage from the prehistoric past. many common animals of egypt--the cat, hawk, the jackal, the bull, the ram, the crocodile--were highly reverenced. some received worship because deities were supposed to dwell in them. the larger number, however, were not worshiped for themselves, but as symbols of different gods. monotheism in persia in the midst of such an assemblage of nature deities, spirits, and sacred animals, it was remarkable that the belief in one god should ever have arisen. the medes and persians accepted the teachings of zoroaster, a great prophet who lived perhaps as early as b.c. according to zoroaster, ahuramazda, the heaven-deity, is the maker and upholder of the universe. he is a god of light and order, of truth and purity. against him stands ahriman, the personification of darkness and evil. ahuramazda in the end will overcome ahriman and will reign supreme in a righteous world. zoroastrianism was the only monotheistic religion developed by an indo- european people. [ ] [illustration: amenhotep iv a striking likeness of an egyptian king (reigned about - b.c.) who endeavored to introduce monotheism in egypt by abolishing the worship of all gods except the sun god. this religious revolution ended in failure for after the king's death the old deities were restored to honor.] hebrew monotheism the hebrews, alone among the semitic peoples of antiquity, were to develop the worship of their god, jehovah, into a lasting monotheism. this was a long and gradual process jehovah was at first regarded as the peculiar divinity of the hebrews. his worshipers did not deny the existence of the gods of other nations. from the eighth century onward this narrow conception of jehovah was transformed by the labors of the hebrew prophets. they taught that jehovah was the creator and ruler of the world and the loving father of all mankind. on hebrew monotheism two world religions have been founded--mohammedanism and christianity. egyptian ideas of the future life we do not find among the early hebrews or any other oriental people very clear ideas about the life after death. the egyptians long believed that the soul of the dead man resided in or near the tomb, closely associated with the body. this notion seems to have first led to the practice of embalming the corpse, so that it might never suffer decay. if the body was not preserved, the soul might die, or it might become a wandering ghost, restless and dangerous to the living. later egyptian thought regarded the future state as a place of rewards and punishments. one of the chapters of the work called the _book of the dead_ describes the judgment of the soul in the spirit world. if a man in the earthly life had not murdered, stolen, coveted the property of others, blasphemed the gods, borne false witness, ill treated his parents, or committed certain other wrongs, his soul would enjoy a blissful immortality. [illustration: mummy and cover of coffin (u.s. national museum, washington)] babylonian and hebrew ideas of the future life some oriental peoples kept the primitive belief that after death all men, good and bad alike, suffered the same fate. the babylonians supposed that the souls of the departed passed a cheerless existence in a gloomy and hebrew underworld. the early hebrew idea of sheol, "the land of darkness and the shadow of death," [ ] was very similar. such thoughts of the future life left nothing for either fear or hope. in later times, however, the hebrews came to believe in the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment, conceptions afterwards adopted by christianity. . literature and art the egyptian book of the dead religion inspired the largest part of ancient literature. each oriental people possessed sacred writings. the egyptian _book of the dead_ was already venerable in b.c. it was a collection of hymns, prayers, and magical phrases to be recited by the soul on its journey beyond the grave and in the spirit world. a chapter from this work usually covered the inner side of the mummy case. [illustration: the judgment of the dead from a papyrus containing the _book of the dead_. the illustration shows a man and his wife (at the left) entering the hall in the spirit world, where sits the god of the dead with forty two jurors (seen above) as his assistants. the heart of the man, symbolized by a jar, is being weighed in balances by a jackal-headed god against a feather, the symbol of truth. the monster in the right hand corner stands ready to devour the soul, if the heart is found lighter than the feather.] the babylonian epics much more interesting are the two babylonian epics, fragments of which were found on clay tablets in a royal library at nineveh. the epic of the creation tells how the god marduk overcame a terrible dragon, the symbol of primeval chaos, and thus established order in the universe. then with half the body of the dead dragon he made a covering for the heavens and set therein the stars. next he caused the new moon to shine and made it the ruler of the night. his last work was the creation of man, in order that the service and worship of the gods might be established forever. the second epic contains an account of a flood, sent by the gods to punish sinful men. the rain fell for six days and nights and covered the entire earth. all men were drowned except the babylonian noah, his family, and his relatives, who safely rode the waters in an ark. this ancient narrative so closely resembles the bible story in _genesis_ that we must trace them both to a common source. [illustration: the deluge tablet (british museum london) contains the narrative of the flood as pieced together and published by george smith in a.d. there are sixteen fragments in the restoration.] [illustration: an egyptian temple (restored) the building extended along the nile for nearly eight hundred feet. a double line of sphinxes led to the only entrance, in front of which were two obelisks and four colossal statues of rameses ii. behind the first gateway, or pylon came an open court surrounded by a portico upheld by pillars. the second and third pylons were connected by a covered passage leading into another open court. lower rooms at the rear of the temple contained the sanctuary of the god, which only the king and priests could enter.] the hebrew bible all these writings are so ancient that their very authors are forgotten. the interest they excite is historical rather than literary. from oriental antiquity only one great work has reached us that still has power to move the hearts of men--the hebrew bible. egyptian architecture architecture, in egypt, was the leading art. the egyptians were the first people who learned to raise buildings with vast halls supported by ponderous columns. their wealth and skill, however, were not lavished in the erection of fine private mansions or splendid public buildings. the characteristic works of egyptian architecture are the tombs of the kings and the temples of the gods. the picture of the great structure at thebes, which rameses ii completed, [ ] will give some idea of an egyptian temple with its gateways, open courts, obelisks, and statues. [illustration: an egyptian wooden statue, (museum of gizeh) found in a tomb near memphis. the statue, which belongs to the age of the pyramid kings, represents a bustling, active, middle-class official.] architecture in babylonia and assyria the architecture of babylonia and assyria was totally unlike that of egypt, because brick, and not stone, formed the chief building and assyria material. in babylonia the temple was a solid, square tower, built on a broad platform. it consisted usually of seven stages, which arose one above the other to the top, where the shrine of the deity was placed. the different stages were connected by an inclined ascent. the four sides of the temple faced the cardinal points, and the several stages were dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets. in assyria the characteristic building was the palace. but the sun-dried bricks, of which both temples and palaces were composed, lacked the durability of stone and have long since dissolved into shapeless mounds. egyptian sculpture the surviving examples of egyptian sculpture consist of bas-reliefs and figures in the round, carved from limestone and granite or cast in bronze. many of the statues appear to our eyes very stiff and ungraceful. the sculptor never learned how to pose his figures easily or how to arrange them in an artistic group. in spite of these defects some egyptian statues are wonderfully lifelike. [ ] [illustration: an assyrian palace (restored) the royal residence of sargon ii near nineveh was placed upon a high platform of brick masonry the top of which was gained by stairs and an inclined roadway. the palace consisted of a series of one storied rectangular halls and long corridors surrounding inner courts. they were provided with imposing entrances flanked by colossal human headed bulls representing guardian spirits. the entire building covered more than twenty three acres and contained two hundred apartments. in the rear is seen a temple tower.] sculpture in babylonia and assyria few examples have reached us of babylonian and assyrian sculpture in the round. as in egypt, the figures seem rigid and out of proportion. the assyrian bas-reliefs show a higher development of the artistic sense, especially in the rendering of animals. the sculptures that deal with the exploits of the kings in war and hunting often tell their story in so graphic a way as to make up for the absence of written records. oriental painting painting in the ancient east did not reach the dignity of an independent art. it was employed solely for decorative purposes. bas-reliefs and wall surfaces were often brightly colored, the artist had no knowledge of perspective and drew all his figures in profile, without any distinction of light and shade. indeed, oriental painting, as well as oriental sculpture, made small pretense to the beautiful. beauty was born into the world with the art of the greeks. [illustration: an assyrian winged human headed bull] [illustration: an assyrian hunting scene (british museum, london) a bas relief from a slab found at nineveh.] . science and education arithmetic and geometry conspicuous advance took place in the exact sciences. the leading operations of arithmetic were known. a babylonian tablet gives a table of squares and cubes correctly calculated from to . the number was the basis of all reckonings. the division of the circle into degrees, minutes, and seconds ( °, ', ") was an invention of the babylonians which illustrates this duodecimal system a start was made in geometry. one of the oldest of egyptian books contains a dozen geometrical problems. this knowledge was afterwards developed into a true science by the greeks. astronomy in both egypt and babylonia the cloudless skies and still, warm nights early led to astronomical research. at a remote period, perhaps before b.c., the egyptians framed a solar calendar, [ ] consisting of twelve months, each thirty days in length, with five extra days at the end of the year. this calendar was taken over by the romans, [ ] who added the system of leap years. the babylonians made noteworthy progress in some branches of astronomy. they were able to trace the course of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac and to distinguish five of the planets from the fixed stars. the successful prediction of eclipses formed another babylonian achievement. such astronomical discoveries must have required much patient and accurate observation. geography geographical ideas for a long time were very crude. an ancient map, scratched on clay, indicates that about eight centuries before christ the babylonians had gained some knowledge, not only of their own land, but even of regions beyond the mediterranean. the chief increase in man's knowledge of the world in ancient times was due to the phoenicians. [ ] practical sciences the skill of oriental peoples as mechanics and engineers is proved by their success as builders. the great pyramids exactly face the points of the compass. the principle of the round arch was known in babylonia at a remote period the transportation of colossal stone monuments exhibits a knowledge of the lever, pulley, and inclined plane. [ ] babylonian inventions were the sundial and the water clock, the one to register the passage of the hours by day, the other by night. the egyptians and babylonians also made some progress in the practice of medicine. [illustration: a babylonian map of the world a tablet of dark brown clay, much injured, dating from the th or th century b.c. the two large concentric circles indicate the ocean or, as it is called in the cuneiform writing between the circles, the 'briny flood.' beyond the ocean are seven successive projections of land, represented by triangles. perhaps they refer to the countries existing beyond the black sea and the red sea. the two parallel lines within the inner circle represent the euphrates. the little rings stand for the babylonian cities in this region.] the temple school the schools, in both egypt and babylonia, were attached to the temples and were conducted by the priests. writing was the chief subject of instruction. it took many years of patient study to master the cuneiform symbols or the even more difficult hieroglyphics. "he who would excel in the school of the scribes," ran an ancient maxim, "must rise with the dawn." writing was learned by imitating the examples supplied in copy- books. some of the model letters studied by egyptian boys of the twentieth century b.c. have come down to us. reading, too, was an art not easy to learn. dictionaries and grammars were written to aid the beginner. a little instruction was also provided in counting and calculating. [illustration: an egyptian scribe (louvre, paris)] the scribes having learned to read and write, the pupil was ready to enter on the coveted career of a scribe. in a community where nearly every one was illiterate, the scribes naturally held an honorable place. they conducted the correspondence of the time. when a man wished to send a letter, he had a scribe write it, signing it himself by affixing his seal. when he received a letter, he usually employed a scribe to read it to him. the scribes were also kept busy copying books on the papyrus paper or clay tablets which served as writing materials. the temple library every large city of babylonia possessed a collection of books. several of the larger libraries have been discovered. at nippur, in babylonia, thirty thousand clay tablets were found. another great collection of books was unearthed in a royal palace at nineveh. this assyrian library seems to have been open for the general use of the king's subjects. the egyptians also had their libraries, usually as adjuncts to the temples, and hence under priestly control. widespread popular ignorance learning and education were so closely limited to a few individuals that the mass of the people were sunk in deepest ignorance. men could not pursue knowledge for themselves, but had to accept every thing on authority. hence the inhabitants of oriental lands remained a conservative folk, slow to abandon their time-honored beliefs and very unwilling to adopt a new custom even when clearly better than the old. this absence of popular education, more than anything else, made oriental civilization unprogressive. [illustration: excavation at nippur nippur was the ancient "calneh in the land of shinar" (_genesis_, x, ) excavations here were conducted by the university of pennsylvania during - a.d. the city contained an imposing temple, a library, a school, and even a little museum of antiquities.] studies . what was the origin of the "divine right" of kings? . explain what is meant by _despotism_; by _autocracy_. . what european state comes nearest to being a pure despotism? what european monarch styles himself as an autocrat? . what do the illustrations on pages , tell about the pomp of oriental kings? . why did the existence of numerous slaves in egypt and babylonia tend to keep low the wages of free workmen? why is it true that civilization may be said to have begun "with the cracking of the slave whip"? . what light is thrown on the beginnings of money in ancient egypt by the illustration on page ? . name some objects which, in place of the metals, are used by primitive peoples as money. . interest in babylonia was usually at the rate of % a year. why is it so much lower in modern countries? . on the map, page , indicate the trade routes between eastern and western asia which met in mesopotamia. . the phoenicians have been called "the english of antiquity." can you give any reason for this characterization? . why should the phoenicians have been called the "colossal peddlers" of the ancient world? . what books of the bible contain the laws of israel? . what reasons can you suggest for the universal worship of the sun? . define _polytheism_ and _monotheism_, giving examples of each. . describe the egyptian conception of the judgment of the dead (illustration, page ). . how many "books" are there in the old testament? . what is the apocrypha? . how are the pyramids proof of an advanced civilization among the egyptians? . what is a bas-relief? select some examples from the illustrations. . from what oriental peoples do we get the oldest true arch? the first coined money? the earliest legal code? the most ancient book? . enumerate the most important contributions to civilization made in oriental antiquity. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter , "three oriental peoples as described by herodotus." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] for illustrations of oriental coins see the plate facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] "tyrian purple" was a dye secured from a species of shellfish found along the phoenician coast and in greek waters. [ ] see i _kings_, ix, - . the site of ophir is not known, though probably it was in southern arabia. [ ] see _ezekiel_, xxvii, , . [ ] a monument containing the code of hammurabi was found on the site of susa in - a.d. see the illustration, page . [ ] chaldea was another name for babylonia. [ ] see page . [ ] the names of four other week days come from the names of old teutonic deities. tuesday is the day of tyr, wednesday of woden (odin), thursday of thunor (thor), and friday of the goddess frigga. see page . [ ] zoroastrians are still to be found in the east in persia, now a mohammedan country, there is a little band of devoted followers of zoroaster, who keep up to this day the tenets of their ancient faith. in india the parsees of bombay are the descendants of those persians who fled from persia at the time of the mohammedan conquest (page ), rather than surrender their cherished beliefs and embrace a new religion. [ ] _job_, x, . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustrations, pages , , , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . chapter iv the lands of the west and the rise of greece to about b.c. [ ] . physical europe europe a peninsula of asia the continent of asia, projecting its huge bulk southwestward between the seas, gradually narrows into the smaller continent of europe. the boundary between the two regions is not well defined. ancient geographers found a convenient dividing line north of the black sea in the course of the river don. modern map makers usually place the division at the ural mountains, the caspian sea, and the caucasus. each of these boundaries is more or less arbitrary. in a geographical sense europe is only the largest of the great asiatic peninsulas. physical features of europe but in physical features the two continents disclose the most striking contrasts. the sea, which washes only the remote edges of asia, penetrates deeply into europe and forms an extremely irregular coast line with numerous bays and harbors. the mountains of europe, seldom very high and provided with easy passes, present no such barriers to intercourse as the mightier ranges of asia. we miss in europe the extensive deserts and barren table-lands which form such a feature of asiatic geography. with the exception of russia the surface, generally, is distributed into plains, hills, and valleys of moderate size. instead of a few large rivers, such as are found in asia, europe is well supplied with numerous streams that make it possible to travel readily from one district to another. central and northern europe the almost unbroken mountain chain formed by the pyrenees, the alps, and the balkans, sharply separates the central land mass of europe from the regions to the south. central europe consists, in general, of lowlands, which widen eastward into the vast russian plain. northern europe includes the british isles, physically an extension of europe, and the peninsulas of scandinavia and finland, between the baltic sea and the arctic ocean. twenty centuries ago central and northern europe was a land of forests and marshes, of desolate steppes and icebound hills. the peoples who inhabited it--celts in the west, teutons or germans in the north, slavs in the east --were men of indo-european [ ] race and speech. they were still barbarians. during ancient times we hear little of them, except as their occasional migrations southward brought them into contact with the greeks and the romans. southern europe southern europe comprises the three peninsulas of spain, italy, and the balkans, which reach far south into the mediterranean. this great inland sea is divided into two parts near the center, where africa and the island of sicily almost touch each other across a narrow strait. the eastern part contains several minor seas, of which the one called the aegean had most importance in greek history. . greece and the aegean the aegean sea the aegean is an almost landlocked body of water. the balkan peninsula, narrowing toward the mediterranean into the smaller peninsula of greece, confines it on the west. on the east it meets a boundary in asia minor. the southern boundary is formed by a chain of islands, while the only opening northward is found in the narrow passage leading to the black sea. the coasts and islands of the aegean thus make up a little world set off by itself. [illustration: map, physical map of europe] continental greece continental greece is a tiny country. its greatest length is scarcely more than two hundred and fifty miles; its greatest breadth is only one hundred and eighty miles. mountain ridges, offshoots of the balkans, compose the greater part of its area. into the valleys and deep gorges of the interior the impetuous sea has everywhere forced a channel. the coast line, accordingly, is most irregular--a constant succession of sharp promontories and curving bays. the mountains, crossing the peninsula in confused masses, break it up into numberless valleys and glens which seldom widen into plains. the rivers are not navigable. the few lakes, hemmed in by the hills, have no outlets except in underground channels. in this land of the greeks no place is more than fifty miles from a mountain range, or more than forty miles from some long arm of the mediterranean. the aegean islands from the greek mainland to the coast of asia minor the traveler follows a route thickly studded with rocky islands. they are near enough together to permit the passage from one to another without losing sight of land. the aegean islands thus served as "stepping-stones" between greece and asia minor. [ ] western asia minor western asia minor resembles continental greece in its deeply indented coast, variety of scenery, and mild climate. the fertile river valleys of this region early attracted greek colonists. they built here many flourishing cities, especially along the central coast, which came to be known as ionia. influence of geographical conditions greek history well illustrates the influence of geographical conditions on the life of a people. in the first place, mountain ranges cut up continental greece into many small states, separated from one another by natural ramparts. hence the greeks loved most of all their own local independence and always refused to unite into one nation under a single government. in the second place, the near presence of the sea made sailors of the greeks and led them to devote much energy to foreign commerce. they early felt, in consequence, the stimulating effects of intercourse with other peoples. finally, the location of greece at the threshold of asia, with its best harbors and most numerous islands on the eastern coast, enabled the country to receive and profit by all the culture of the orient. greece faced the civilized east. . the aegean age (to about b.c.) a prehistoric civilization the greeks of historic times knew very little about their prehistoric period. instead of accurate knowledge they had only the beautiful legends preserved in ancient poems, such as the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_. within our own day, however, remarkable excavations have disclosed the remains of a widespread and flourishing civilization in times so distant that the historic greeks had lost all sight of it. as in the orient, [ ] the labors of modern scholars are yearly adding to our knowledge of ancient life. [illustration: map, aegean civilization] [illustration: excavations at troy the great northeast tower of the sixth city. the stairs at the right belong to the eighth city.] schliemann's excavations at troy the man who did most to reveal the prehistoric civilization of greece was a wealthy german merchant named heinrich schliemann. an enthusiastic lover of homer, he believed that the stories of the trojan war related in the _iliad_ were not idle fancies, but real facts. in a.d. he started to test his beliefs by excavations at a hill called hissarlik, on the northwestern coast of asia minor. here tradition had always fixed the site of ancient troy. schliemann's discoveries and those of later explorers proved that at hissarlik at least nine successive cities had come into existence, flourished, and passed away. excavations completed in a.d. have shown that the sixth city in order from the bottom was the one described in the homeric poems. it had powerful walls defended by towers, well-fortified gates, and palaces of stone. the marks of fire throughout the ruins indicate that the city must have been destroyed by a disastrous conflagration. schliemann's excavations at mycenae and tiryns the remarkable disclosures at troy encouraged schliemann to excavate other homeric sites. at mycenae, a prehistoric city of argolis in greece, he laid bare six rock-hewn graves, containing the skeletons of nineteen persons, men, women, and children. the faces of the dead had been covered with thin masks of gold, and their bodies had been decked with gold diadems, bracelets, and pendants. the other funeral offerings include gold rings, silver vases, and a variety of bronze weapons. at tiryns, once the capital of argolis, he uncovered the ruins of an extensive structure with gateways, open courts, and closed apartments. characteristic of this edifice were the separate quarters occupied by men and women, the series of storerooms for provisions, and such a modern convenience as a bathroom with pipes and drains. in short, the palace at tiryns gives us a clear and detailed picture of the home of a homeric prince. [illustration: lions' gate, mycenae the stone relief, of triangular shape, represents two lions (or lionesses) facing each other on opposite sides of a pillar. the heads of the animals have been lost.] evans's excavations at gnossus but the fame of even schliemann's discoveries has been somewhat dimmed by the excavations made since a.d. on the site of gnossus, the ancient capital of the island of crete. at gnossus an englishman, sir arthur evans, has found the remains of an enormous palace, with numerous courts, passages, and rooms. here is the royal council chamber with the throne on which the king once sat. here are the royal magazines, still filled with huge earthenware jars for the storage of provisions. a great number of brilliant pictures--hunting scenes, landscapes, portraits of men and women--cover the palace walls. buried in some of the chambers were thousands of clay tablets with inscriptions which, if ever read, will add new chapters to ancient history. [ ] [illustration: the vaphio gold cups (national museum, athens) these beautiful objects were found in within a "bee-hive" tomb at vaphio in laconia. the two cups are of beaten gold, ornamented with designs in _repoussé_ work. the first scene represents a wild-bull hunt. the companion piece pictures four tame bulls under the care of a herdsman.] [illustration: silver fragment from mycenae (national museum, athens) a siege scene showing the bows, slings, and huge shields of mycenaean warriors. in the background are seen the masonry of the city wall and the flat-roofed houses.] antiquity of aegean civilization these discoveries in the aegean enable us to place another venerable center of civilized life by the side of babylonia and egypt. as early as b.c. the primitive inhabitants of the aegean were giving up the use of stone tools and weapons for those of metal. bronze soon came into general use, as is shown by the excavations. the five centuries between and b.c. appear to have been the time when the civilization of the aegean age reached its highest development. the fine arts remarkable progress took place during aegean times in some of the fine arts. we find imposing palaces, often splendidly adorned and arranged for a life of comfort. wall paintings, plaster reliefs, and fine carvings in stone excite our admiration. aegean artists made beautiful pottery of many shapes and cleverly decorated it with plant and animal forms. they carved ivory, engraved gems, and excelled in the working of metals. some of their productions in gold, silver, and bronze were scarcely surpassed by greek artists a thousand years later. [ ] commerce there was much intercourse throughout the mediterranean during this period. products of aegean art have been found as far west as sicily, italy, and spain, aegean pottery has frequently been discovered in egyptian tombs. some objects unearthed in babylonia are apparently of aegean workmanship. in those ancient days crete was mistress of the seas. cretan merchants preceded the phoenicians as carriers between asia and europe. [ ] trade and commerce thus opened up the mediterranean world to all the cultural influences of the orient. [illustration: a cretan girl (museum of candia, crete) a fresco painting from the palace of gnossus. the girl's face is so astonishingly modern in treatment that one can scarcely believe that the picture belongs to the sixteenth century b.c.] downfall of aegean civilization aegean civilization did not penetrate beyond the shores of asia minor, the islands, and the coasts of continental greece. the interior regions of the greek peninsula remained the home of barbarous tribes, which had not yet learned to build cities, to create beautiful objects of art, or to traffic on the seas. by b.c. their destructive inroads brought the aegean age to an end. . the homeric age (about - b.c.) coming of the northern barbarians the barbarians who overthrew aegean civilization seem to have entered greece from the north, perhaps from the region the danube river. they pushed gradually southward, sometimes exterminating or enslaving the earlier inhabitants of the country, but more often settling peaceably in their new homes. conquerors and conquered slowly intermingled and so produced the one greek people which is found at the dawn of history. these greeks, as we shall call them henceforth, also occupied the islands of the aegean sea and the coast of asia minor. the entire basin of the aegean thus became a greek world. [illustration: aegean snake goddess (museum of fine arts, boston) a gold and ivory statuette found in crete. dates from the sixteenth century b.c. the goddess wears the characteristic cretan dress, with low- cut jacket and full skirt with five plaited flounces. on her head is an elaborate crown.] the homeric epics the period between the end of the aegean age and the opening of historic times in greece is usually called the homeric age, because many features of its civilization are reflected in two epic poems called the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_. the former deals with the story of a greek expedition against troy; the latter describes the wanderings of the hero odysseus on his return from troy. the two epics were probably composed in ionia, and by the greeks were attributed to a blind bard named homer. many modern scholars, however, consider them the work of several generations of poets. the references in the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_ to industry, social life, law, government, and religion give us some idea of the culture which the historic greeks received as their inheritance. industry the greeks as described in the homeric epics were in a transitional stage between the life of shepherds and that of farmers. wealth consisted chiefly of flocks and herds, though nearly every freeman owned a little plot of land on which he cultivated grain and cared for his orchard and vineyard. there were few skilled workmen, for almost everything was made at home. a separate class of traders had not yet arisen. commerce was little followed. the greeks depended on phoenician sailors to bring to their shores the commodities which they could not produce themselves. iron was known and used, for instance, in the manufacture of farm tools. during homeric times, however, that metal had not yet displaced copper and bronze. [ ] social life social life was very simple. princes tended flocks and built houses; princesses carried water and washed clothes. agamemnon, odysseus, and other heroes were not ashamed to be their own butchers and cooks. the homeric knights did not ride on horseback, but fought from chariots. they sat at table instead of reclining at meals, as did the later greeks. coined money was unknown. trade was by barter, values being reckoned in oxen or in lumps of gold and silver. men bought their wives by making gifts of cattle to the parents. the art of writing is mentioned only once in the homeric poems, and doubtless was little used. [illustration: a cretan cupbearer (museum of candia, crete) a fresco painting from the palace of gnossus. the youth carries a silver cup ornamented with gold. his waist is tightly drawn in by a girdle, his hair is dark and curly, his profile is almost classically greek.] law and morality the times were rude. wars, though petty, were numerous and cruel. the vanquished suffered death or slavery. piracy, flourishing upon the unprotected seas, ranked as an honorable occupation. it was no insult to inquire of a seafaring stranger whether he was pirate or merchant. murders were frequent. the murderer had to dread, not a public trial and punishment, but rather the personal vengeance of the kinsmen of his victim. the homeric greeks, in fact, exhibited the usual defects and vices of barbarous peoples. homeric geography the _iliad_ and _odyssey_ disclose a considerable acquaintance with peninsular greece and the coasts of asia minor. cyprus, egypt, and sicily are also known in part. the poet imagines the earth as a sort of flat shield, with greece lying in the center. [ ] the mediterranean, "the sea," as it is called by homer, and its continuation, the euxine, [ ] divided the world into two equal parts. surrounding the earth was "the great strength of the stream of ocean," [ ] a river, broad and deep, beyond which lay the dark and misty realm of the mythical cimmerians. the underworld of hades, home of the dead, was beneath the surface of the earth. [illustration: map, the world according to homer ( b.c.)] [illustration: map, greek conquests and migrations] . early greek religion the olympian council we may learn from the homeric poems what were the religious ideas held by the early greeks. the greater gods and goddesses were not numerous. less than a score everywhere received worship under the same names and in all the temples. twelve of the chief deities formed a select council, which was supposed to meet on the top of snow-crowned olympus. the greeks, however, did not agree as to what gods and goddesses should be included in this august assemblage. attributes of the deities many of the olympian deities appear to have been simply personifications of natural phenomena. zeus, "father of gods and men," as homer calls him, was a heaven god, who gathered the clouds in storms and hurled the lightning bolt. apollo, a mighty god of light, who warded off darkness and evil, became the ideal of manly beauty and the patron of music, poetry, and healing. dionysus was worshiped as the god of sprouting and budding vegetation. poseidon, brother of zeus, ruled the sea. hera, the wife of zeus, represented the female principle in nature. hence she presided over the life of women and especially over the sacred rites of marriage. athena, who sprang full-grown from the forehead of zeus, embodied the idea of wisdom and all womanly virtues. aphrodite, who arose from the foam of the sea, was the goddess of love and beauty. demeter, the great earth- mother, watched over seed-time and harvest. each deity thus had a kingdom and a function of its own. [illustration: greek gods and goddesses zeus otricoli, vatican gallery, rome hera, ludovisi villa, rome apollo of the belvedere, vatican gallery, rome aphrodite of cnidus, glyptothek, munich] [illustration: the aphrodite of melos (louvre, paris) more commonly known as the "venus of milo." the statue was discovered in a.d. on the island of melos. it consists of two principal pieces joined together across the folds of the drapery. most art critics date this work about b.c. the strong serene figure of the goddess sets forth the greek ideal of female loveliness.] conceptions of the deities the greeks made their gods and goddesses after themselves. the olympian divinities are really magnified men and women, subject to all human passions and appetites, but possessed of more than human power and endowed with immortality. they enjoy the banquet, where they feast on nectar and ambrosia; they take part in the struggles of the battle field; they marry and are given in marriage. the gods, morally, were no better than their worshipers. they might be represented as deceitful, dissolute, and cruel, but they could also be regarded as upholders of truth and virtue. even homer could say, "verily the blessed gods love not evil deeds, but they reverence justice and the righteous acts of men." [ ] [illustration: the franÇois vase (archaeological museum, florence) found in an etruscan grave in a.d. a black-figured terra cotta vase of about b.c. it is nearly three feet in height and two an one half feet in diameter. the figures on the vase depict scenes from greek mythology. calydonian boar hunt games at the funeral of patroclus peleus thetis and the gods pursuit of troilus by achilles animal scenes, sphinxes, etc.] ideas of the other world greek ideas of the other world were dismal to an extreme. the after-life in hades was believed to be a shadowy, joyless copy of the earthly existence. in hades the shade of great achilles exclaims sorrowfully, "nay, speak not comfortably to me of death. rather would i live on earth as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead." [ ] it was not until several centuries after homer that happier notions of the future life were taught, or at least suggested, in the eleusinian mysteries. [ ] . religious institutions: oracles and games oracle of apollo at delphi the greeks believed that communications from the gods were received from certain inspired persons at places called oracles. the oracle of apollo at delphi in phocis enjoyed the utmost veneration. it lay within a deep cave on the rocky side of mount parnassus. out of a chasm rose a volcanic vapor which had a certain intoxicating power. the pythia, or prophetess of apollo, sat on a tripod over the steaming cleft and inhaled the gas. the words she uttered in delirium were supposed to come from the god. they were taken down by the attendant priests, written out in verse, and delivered to the suppliants. inquiries at the oracle the fame of apollo as the patron of inspiration and prophecy spread throughout greece and penetrated to foreign lands. every year thousands of visitors made their way to apollo's shrine. sick men prayed for health, childless men prayed for offspring. statesmen wished to learn the fate of their political schemes; ambassadors sent by kings and cities sought advice as to weighty matters of peace and war. above all, colonists came to delphi in order to obtain directions as to the best country in which to settle. some of the noblest cities of the greek world, cyrene and byzantium, for example, [ ] had their sites fixed by apollo's guidance. [illustration: consulting the oracle at delphi] character of the responses the priests who managed the oracle and its responses were usually able to give good advice to their inquirers, because news of every sort streamed into delphi. when the priests were doubtful what answer to give, the prophecy of the god was sometimes expressed in such ambiguous fashion that, whatever the outcome, neither apollo nor his servants could be charged with deceit. for instance, when croesus, the lydian king, was about to attack cyrus, he learned from the oracle that "if he warred with the persians he would overthrow a mighty empire" [ ]--but the mighty empire proved to be his own. [ ] the olympian games athletic games were held in different parts of greece from a remote period. the most famous games were those in honor of zeus at olympia in elis. they took place every fourth year, in midsummer. [ ] a sacred truce was proclaimed for an entire month, in order that the thousands of spectators from every part of greece might arrive and depart in safety. no one not of greek blood and no one convicted of crime or of the sin of impiety might participate in the contests. the candidates had also to prove that they were qualified for the severe tests by a long and hard training. once accepted as competitors, they could not withdraw. the man who shrank back when the hour of trial arrived was considered a coward and was punished with a heavy fine. the contests the games occupied five days, beginning with the contests in running. there was a short-distance dash through the length of the stadium, a quarter-mile race, and also a longer race, probably for two or three miles. then followed a contest consisting of five events: the long jump, hurling the discus, throwing the javelin, running, and wrestling. it is not known how victory in these five events taken together was decided. in the long jump, weights like dumb-bells were held in the hands, the swing of the weights being used to assist the spring. the discus, which weighed about twelve pounds, was sometimes hurled more than one hundred feet. the javelin was thrown either by the hand alone or with the help of a thong wound about the shaft and held in the fingers. in wrestling, three falls were necessary for a victory. the contestants were free to get their grip as best they could. other contests included boxing, horse races, and chariot races. women were apparently excluded from the games, yet they were allowed to enter horses for the races and to set up statues in honor of the victors. [illustration: the discus thrower (discobolus) (lancelotti palace, rome) marble copy of the bronze original by myron, a sculptor of the fifth century b.c. found in a.d. on the esquiline hill, rome. the statue represents a young man, perhaps an athlete at the olympian games, who is bending forward to hurl the discus. his body is thrown violently to the left with a twisting action that brings every muscle into play.] the victor's reward the olympian festival was profoundly religious, because the display of manly strength was thought to be a spectacle most pleasing to the gods. the winning athlete received only a wreath of wild olive at olympia, but at home he enjoyed the gifts and veneration of his fellow-citizens. poets celebrated his victories in noble odes. sculptors reproduced his triumphs in stone and bronze. to the end of his days he remained a distinguished man. [illustration: hermes and dionysus (museum of olympia) an original statue by the great sculptor, praxiteles. it was found in a.d. at olympia. hermes is represented carrying the child dionysus, whom zeus had intrusted to his care. the symmetrical body of hermes is faultlessly modeled; the poise of his head is full of dignity; his expression is refined and thoughtful. manly strength and beauty have never been better embodied than in this work.] [illustration: athlete using the strigil (apoxyomenus) (vatican gallery, rome) marble copy of the bronze original by lysippus, a sculptor of the fourth century b.c. the statue represents an athlete rubbing his arm with a flesh scraper to remove the oil and sand of the palestra, or exercising ground. his slender form suggests quickness and agility rather than great strength.] significance of the games there were few greeks who at least once in their lives did not attend the festival. the crowds that gathered before and after the games turned the camp into a great fair, at which merchants set up their shops and money changers their tables. poets recited their lines before admiring audiences and artists exhibited their masterpieces to intending purchasers. heralds read treaties recently formed between greek cities, in order to have them widely known. orators addressed the multitude on subjects of general interest. the games thus helped to preserve a sense of fellowship among greek communities. . the greek city-state nature of the city state the greeks in homeric times had already begun to live in towns and cities. a greek city, being independent and self-governing, is properly called a city-state. just as a modern nation, it could declare war, arrange treaties, and make alliances with its neighbors. such a city-state included not only the territory within its walls, but also the surrounding district where many of the citizens lived. the citizens the members of a greek city-state were very closely associated. the citizens believed themselves to be descended from a common ancestor and so to be all related. they were united, also, in the worship of the patron god or hero who had them under his protection. these ties of supposed kinship and common religion were of the utmost importance. they made citizenship a privilege which came to a person only by birth, a privilege which he lost by removal to another city. elsewhere he was only a foreigner without legal rights--a man without a country. government of the city-state the homeric poems, which give us our first view of the greek city-state, also contain the most ancient account of its government. each city-state had a king, "the shepherd of the people" [ ] as homer calls him. the king did not possess absolute authority. he was surrounded by a council of nobles, chiefly the great landowners of the community. they helped him in judgment and sacrifice, followed him to war, and filled the principal offices. both king and nobles were obliged to consult the common people on matters of great importance. for this purpose the ruler would summon the citizens to the market place to hear the deliberations of his council and to settle such questions as making war or declaring peace. all men of free birth could attend the assembly, where they shouted assent to the decision of their leaders or showed disapproval by silence. this public assembly had little importance in the homeric age, but later it became the center of greek democracy. political development of the city-state after the middle of the eighth century b.c., when historic times began in greece, some interesting changes took place in the government of the city- states. in some of them, for example, thebes and corinth, the nobles became strong enough to abolish the kingship altogether. monarchy, the rule of one, thus gave away to aristocracy, [ ] the rule of the nobles. in other states, for instance, sparta and argos, the kings were not driven out, but their power was much weakened. some states came under the control of usurpers whom the greeks called "tyrants." a tyrant was a man who gained supreme power by force and governed for his own benefit without regard to the laws. there were many tyrannies in the greek world during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. still other states went through an entire cycle of changes from kingship to aristocracy, from aristocracy to tyranny, and from tyranny to democracy or popular rule. sparta and athens as types of the city-state the isolated and independent greek communities thus developed at an early period many different kinds of government. to study them all would be a long task. it is better to fix our attention on the two city-states which held the principal place in greek history and at the same time presented the most striking contrasts in government and social life. these were sparta and athens. . the growth of sparta (to b.c.) sparta and the peloponnesian league the greek invaders who entered southern greece, or the peloponnesus, [ ] were known as dorians. they founded the city of sparta, in the district of laconia. by the close of the sixth century b.c. the spartans were able to conquer their immediate neighbors and to organize some of the city-states of the peloponnesus into a strong confederacy called the peloponnesian league. the members of the league did not pay tribute, but they furnished troops to serve in war under spartan leaders, and they looked to sparta for guidance and protection. thus this single city became the foremost power in southern greece. sparta a military camp it is clear that the spartans must have been an extremely vigorous and warlike people. their city, in fact, formed a military camp, garrisoned by soldiers whose whole life was passed in war and in preparation for war. the spartans were able to devote themselves to martial pursuits because they possessed a large number of serfs, called helots. the helots tilled the lands of the spartans and gave up to their masters the entire product of their labor, except what was necessary for a bare subsistence. government of sparta spartan government also had a military character. in form the state was a kingdom, but since there were always two kings reigning at once and enjoying equal authority, neither of them could become very powerful. the real management of public affairs lay in the hands of five men, known as ephors, who were elected every year by the popular assembly. the ephors accompanied the kings in war and directed their actions; guided the deliberations of the council of nobles and the assembly of freemen; superintended the education of children; and exercised a general oversight of the private life of citizens. the ephors had such absolute control over the lives and property of the spartans that we may describe their rule as socialistic and select sparta as an example of ancient state socialism. nowhere else in the greek world was the welfare of the individual man so thoroughly subordinated to the interests of the society of which he formed a unit. the spartan boy spartan education had a single purpose--to produce good soldiers and obedient citizens. a sound body formed the first essential. a father was required to submit his son, soon after birth, to an inspection by the elders of his tribe. if they found the child puny or ill-shaped, they ordered it to be left on the mountain side, to perish from exposure. at the age of seven a boy was taken from his parents' home and placed in a military school. here he was trained in marching, sham fighting, and gymnastics. he learned to sing warlike songs and in conversation to express himself in the fewest possible words. spartan brevity of speech became proverbial. above all he learned to endure hardship without complaint. he went barefoot and wore only a single garment, winter and summer. he slept on a bed of rushes. every year he and his comrades had to submit to a flogging before the altar of the goddess artemis, and the hero was the lad who could bear the whipping longest without giving a sign of pain. it is said that boys sometimes died under the lash rather than utter a cry. such ordeals are still a feature of savage life to-day. the adult spartan on reaching the age of twenty the youth was considered a warrior. he did not live at home, but passed his time in barracks, as a member of a military mess to which he contributed his proper share of food, wine, and money. at the age of thirty years the young spartan became a full citizen and a member of the popular assembly. he was then compelled to marry in order to raise children for the state. but marriage did not free him from attendance at the public meals, the drill ground, and the gymnasium. a spartan, in fact, enjoyed little home life until his sixtieth year, when he became an elder and retired from actual service. excellence of the spartan soldiery this exclusive devotion to military pursuits accomplished its object. the spartans became the finest soldiers of antiquity. "all the rest of the greeks," says an ancient writer, "are amateurs; the spartans are professionals in the conduct of war." [ ] though sparta never produced great thinkers, poets or artists, her military strength made her the bulwark of greece against foreign foes. the time was to come when greece, to retain her liberties, would need this disciplined spartan soldiery. [ ] . the growth of athens (to b.c.) athens as a city-state the district of attica, though smaller than our smallest american commonwealth, was early filled with a number of independent city-states. it was a great step in advance when, long before the dawn of greek history, these tiny communities were united with athens. the inhabitants of the attic towns and villages gave up their separate governments and became members of the one city-state of athens. henceforth a man was a athenian citizen, no matter in what part of attica he lived. oppressive rule of the nobles at an earlier period, perhaps, than elsewhere in greece, monarchy at athens disappeared before the rising power of the nobles. the rule of the nobility bore harshly on the common people. popular discontent was especially excited at the administration of justice. there were at first no written laws, but only the long-established customs of the community. since all the judges were nobles, they were tempted to decide legal cases in favor of their own class. the people, at length, began to clamor for a written code. they could then know just what the laws were. draco's code, b.c. after much agitation an athenian named draco was employed to write out a code for the state. the laws, as published, were very severe. the penalty for most offenses, even the smallest theft, was death. the athenians used to declare that the draconian code had been written, "not in ink, but in blood." its publication, however, was a popular triumph and the first step toward the establishment of athenian democracy. legislation of solon, - b.c. the second step was the legislation of solon. this celebrated athenian was accounted among the wisest men of his age. the people held him in high honor and gave him power to make much-needed reforms. at this time the condition of the attic peasants was deplorable. many of them had failed to pay their rent to the wealthy landowners, and according to the old custom were being sold into slavery. solon abolished the custom and restored to freedom all those who had been enslaved for debt. he also limited the amount of land which a noble might hold. by still another law he admitted even the poorest citizens to the popular assembly, where they could vote for magistrates and judge of their conduct after their year of office was over. by giving the common people a greater share in the government, solon helped forward the democratic movement at athens. tyranny of pisistratus, - b.c. solon's reforms satisfied neither the nobility nor the commons. the two classes continued their rivalry until the disorder of the times enabled an ambitious politician to gain supreme power as a tyrant. [ ] he was solon's own nephew, a noble named pisistratus. the tyrant ruled with moderation and did much to develop the athenian city-state. he fostered agriculture by dividing the lands of banished nobles among the peasants. his alliances with neighboring cities encouraged the rising commerce of athens. the city itself was adorned with handsome buildings by architects and sculptors whom pisistratus invited to his court from all parts of greece. reforms of clisthenes, - b.c. pisistratus was succeeded by his two sons, but the athenians did not take kindly to their rule. before long the tyranny came to an end. the athenians now found a leader in a noble named clisthenes, who proved to be an able statesman. he carried still further the democratic movement begun by draco and solon. one of his reforms extended athenian citizenship to many foreigners and emancipated slaves ("freedmen") then living in attica. this liberal measure swelled the number of citizens and helped to make the athenians a more progressive people. clisthenes, it is said, also established the curious arrangement known as ostracism. every year, if necessary, the citizens were to meet in assembly and to vote against any persons whom they thought dangerous to the state. if as many as six thousand votes were cast, the man who received the highest number of votes had to go into honorable exile for ten years. [ ] though ostracism was intended as a precaution against tyrants, before long it came to be used to remove unpopular politicians. athens a democratic state there were still some steps to be taken before the rule of the people was completely secured at athens. but, in the main, the athenians by b.c. had established a truly democratic government, the first in the history of the world. the hour was now rapidly approaching when this young and vigorous democracy was to show forth its worth before the eyes of all greece. . colonial expansion of greece (about - b.c.) the great age of colonization while athens, sparta, and their sister states were working out the problems of government, another significant movement was going on in the greek world. the greeks, about the middle of the eighth century b.c., began to plant numerous colonies along the shores of the mediterranean and of the black sea. the great age of colonization covered more than two hundred years. [ ] reasons for founding colonies several reasons led to the founding of colonies. trade was an important motive. the greeks, like the phoenicians, [ ] could realize large profits by exchanging their manufactured goods for the food and raw materials of other countries. land hunger was another motive. the poor soil of greece could not support many inhabitants and, when population increased, emigration afforded the only means of relieving the pressure of numbers. a third motive was political and social unrest. greek cities at this period contained many men of adventurous disposition who were ready to seek in foreign countries a refuge from the oppression of nobles or tyrants. they hoped to find in their new settlements more freedom than they had at home. character of the greek colony a greek colony was not simply a trading post; it was a center of greek life. the colonists continued to be greeks in customs, language, and religion. though quite independent of the parent state, they always regarded it with reverence and affection: they called themselves "men away from home." mother city and daughter colony traded with each other and in time of danger helped each other. a symbol of this unity was the sacred fire carried from the public hearth of the old community to the new settlement. colonization in the north and east the greeks planted many colonies on the coast of the northern aegean and on both sides of the long passage between the mediterranean and the black sea. their most important colony was byzantium, upon the site where constantinople now stands. they also made settlements along the shores of the black sea. the cities founded here were centers from which the greeks drew their supplies of fish, wood, wool, grain, metals, and slaves. the immense profits to be gained by trade made the greeks willing to live in a cold country so unlike their own and among barbarous peoples. colonization in the west the western lands furnished far more attractive sites for colonization. the greeks could feel at home in southern italy, where the genial climate, pure air, and sparkling sea recalled their native land. at a very early date they founded cumae, on the coast just north of the bay of naples. emigrants from cumae, in turn, founded the city of neapolis (naples), which in roman times formed a home of greek culture and even to-day possesses a large greek population. to secure the approaches from greece to these remote colonies, two strongholds were established on the strait of messina: regium (modern reggio) on the italian shore and messana (modern messina) on that of sicily. another important colony in southern italy was tarentum (modern taranto). [illustration: "temple of neptune," paestum paestum, the greek poseidonia, was a colony of sybaris the malarial atmosphere of the place led to its desertion in the ninth century of our era. hence the buildings there were not used as quarries for later structures. the so called "temple of neptune" at paestum is one of the best preserved monuments of antiquity.] the sicilian colonies greek settlements in sicily were mainly along the coast. expansion over the entire island was checked by the carthaginians, who had numerous possessions at its western extremity. the most celebrated colony in sicily was syracuse, established by emigrants from corinth. it became the largest of greek cities. other mediterranean colonies in corsica, sardinia, and on the coast of spain carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the greeks to gain much of a foothold. the city of massilia (marseilles), at the mouth of the rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient gaul. two colonies on the southern shore of the mediterranean were cyrene, west of egypt, and naucratis, in the delta of the nile. from this time many greek travelers visited egypt to see the wonders of that strange old country. results of colonization energetic greeks, the greatest colonizers of antiquity, thus founded settlements from the black sea to the atlantic ocean. "all the greek colonies" says an ancient writer, "are washed by the waves of the sea, and, so to speak, a fringe of greek earth is woven on to foreign lands." [ ] to distinguish themselves from the foreigners, or "barbarians," [ ] about them, the greeks began to call themselves by the common name of hellenes. hellas, their country, came to include all the territory possessed by hellenic peoples. the life of the greeks, henceforth, was confined no longer within the narrow limits of the aegean. wherever rose a greek city, there was a scene of greek history. . bonds of union among the greeks language as a unifying force the greek colonies, as we have seen, were free and independent. in greece itself the little city-states were just as jealous of their liberties. nevertheless ties existed, not of common government, but of common interests and ideals, which helped to unite the scattered sections of the greek world. the strongest bond of union was, of course, the one greek speech. everywhere the people used the same beautiful and expressive language. it is not a "dead" language, for it still lives in modified form on the lips of nearly three million people in the greek peninsula, throughout the mediterranean, and even in remote america. literature as unifying force; homer greek literature, likewise, made for unity. the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_ were recited in every greek village for centuries. they formed the principal textbook in the schools; an athenian philosopher calls homer the "educator of hellas." it has been well said that these two epics were at once the bible and the shakespeare of the greek people. religion as a unifying force; amphictyonies religion formed another bond of union. everywhere the greeks worshiped the same gods and performed the same sacred rites. religious influences were sometimes strong enough to bring about federations known as amphictyonies, or leagues of neighbors. the people living around a famous sanctuary would meet to observe their festivals in common and to guard the shrine of their divinity. the delphic amphictyony was the most noteworthy of these local unions. it included twelve tribes and cities of central greece and thessaly. they established a council, which took the shrine of apollo under its protection and superintended the athletic games at delphi. a new age the seventh and sixth centuries before christ form a noteworthy epoch in greek history. commerce and colonization were bringing their educating influence to bear upon the greeks. hellenic cities were rising everywhere along the mediterranean shores. a common language, literature, and religion were making the people more and more conscious of their unity as opposed to the "barbarians" about them. the greek world, b.c. greek history has now been traced from its beginnings to about b.c. it is the history of a people, not of one country or of a united nation. yet the time was drawing near when all the greek communities were to be brought together in closer bonds of union than they had ever before known. studies . on the map facing page see what regions of europe are less than feet above sea level; less than feet; over feet. . why was europe better fitted than asia to develop the highest civilization? why not so well fitted as asia to originate civilization? . "the tendency of mountains is to separate, of rivers to unite, adjacent peoples." how can you justify this statement by a study of european geography? . why has the mediterranean been called a "highway of nations"? . locate on the map several of the natural entrances into the basin of the mediterranean. . at what points is it probable that southern europe and northern africa were once united? . compare the position of crete in relation to egypt with that of sicily in relation to the north african coast. . why was the island of cyprus a natural meeting place of egyptian, syrian, and greek peoples? . what modern countries are included within the limits of the balkan peninsula? . describe the island routes across the aegean (map between pages - ). . what american states lie in about the same latitude as greece? . compare the boundaries of ancient greece with those of the modern kingdom. . what european countries in physical features closely resemble greece? what state of our union? . why is greece in its physical aspects "the most european of european lands"? . what countries of greece did not touch the sea? . tell the story of the _iliad_ and of the _odyssey_. . explain the following terms: oracle; amphictyony; helot; hellas; olympiad; and ephors. . give the meaning of our english words "ostracism" and "oracular." . explain the present meaning and historical origin of the following expressions: "a delphic response"; "draconian severity"; "a laconic speech." . what is the date of the first recorded olympiad? of the expulsion of the last tyrant of athens? . describe the lions' gate (illustration, page ) and the françois vase (illustration, page ). . compare greek ideas of the future life with those of the babylonians. . why has the delphic oracle been called "the common hearth of hellas"? . what resemblances do you discover between the olympian festival and one of our great international expositions? . define and illustrate these terms: monarchy; aristocracy; tyranny; democracy. . why are the earliest laws always unwritten? . what differences existed between phoenician and greek colonization? . why did the colonies, as a rule, advance more rapidly than the mother country in wealth and population? . what is the origin of the modern city of constantinople? of marseilles? of naples? of syracuse in sicily? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter iii, "early greek society as pictured in the homeric poems"; chapter iv, "stories from greek mythology"; chapter v, "some greek tyrants"; chapter vi, "spartan education and life." [ ] see pages - . [ ] for the island routes see the map between pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] the greek name of the black sea. [ ] _iliad_, xviii, . [ ] _odyssey_, xiv, - . [ ] _odyssey_, xi, - . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] herodotus, i, . [ ] see page . [ ] the first recorded celebration occurred in b.c. the four-year period between the games, called an olympiad, became the greek unit for determining dates. events were reckoned as taking place in the first, second, third, or fourth year of a given olympiad. [ ] _iliad_, ii, . [ ] _aristocracy_ means, literally, the "government of the best." the greeks also used the word _oligarchy_--"rule of the few"--to describe a government by citizens who belong to the wealthy class. [ ] "pelops's island," a name derived from a legendary hero who settled in southern greece. [ ] xenophon, _polity of the lacedaemonians_, . [ ] the spartans believed that their military organization was the work of a great reformer and law-giver named lycurgus. he was supposed to have lived early in the ninth century b.c. we do not know anything about lycurgus, but we do know that some existing primitive tribes, for instance, the masai of east africa, have customs almost the same as those of ancient sparta. hence we may say that the rude, even barbarous, spartans only carried over into the historic age the habits of life which they had formed in prehistoric times. [ ] see page . [ ] the name of an individual voted against was written on a piece of pottery (greek _ostrakon_), whence the term _ostracism_. see the illustration, page . [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] cicero, _de republica_, ii, . [ ] greek _barbaroi_, "men of confused speech." chapter v the great age of the greek republics to b.c. [ ] . the perils of hellas asiatic greeks conquered by croesus the history of the greeks for many centuries had been uneventful--a history of their uninterrupted expansion over barbarian lands. but now the time was approaching when the independent and isolated greek communities must meet the attack of the great despotic empires of asia. the greek cities of asia minor were the first part of the hellenic world to be involved. their conquest by the lydian king, croesus, about the middle of the sixth century b.c., showed how grave was the danger to greek independence from the ambitious designs of oriental monarchs. conquests of cyrus and cambyses as we have already learned, croesus himself soon had to submit to a foreign overlord, in the person of cyrus the great. the subjugation of lydia and the greek seaboard by cyrus extended the persian empire to the mediterranean. the conquest of phoenicia and cyprus by cambyses added the phoenician navy to the resources of the mighty empire. persia had now become a sea power, able to cope with the greeks on their own element. the subjection of egypt by the same king led naturally to the annexation of the greek colonies on the north african shore. the entire coast of the eastern mediterranean had now come under the control of a new, powerful, and hostile state. [illustration: croesus on the pyre painting on an athenian vase of about b.c. according to the legend cyrus the great, having made croesus prisoner, intended to burn him on a pyre. but the god apollo, to whose oracle at delphi croesus had sent rich gifts, put out the blaze by a sudden shower of rain. the vase painting represents the lydian king sitting enthroned upon the pyre, with a laurel wreath on his head and a scepter in one hand. with the other hand he pours a libation. he seems to be performing a religious rite, not to be suffering an ignominious death.] [illustration: persian archers (louvre, paris) a frieze of enameled brick from the royal palace at susa. it is a masterpiece of persian art and shows the influence of both assyrian and greek design. each archer carries a spear, in addition to the bow over the left shoulder and the quiver on the back. these soldiers probably served as palace guards, hence the fine robes worn by them.] conquests of darius the accession of darius to the persian throne only increased the dangers that overshadowed hellas. he aimed to complete the work of cyrus and cambyses by extending the empire wherever a natural frontier had not been reached. accordingly, about b.c., darius invaded europe with a large army, annexed the greek colonies on the hellespont (the modern dardanelles), and subdued the wild tribes of thrace and macedonia. the persian dominions now touched those of the greeks. [ ] [illustration: map, greece at opening of the persian wars b.c.] the ionian revolt, - b.c. not long after this european expedition of darius, the ionian cities of asia minor revolted against the persians. unable to face their foes single-handed, they sought aid from sparta, then the chief military power of greece. the spartans refused to take part in the war, but the athenians, who realized the menace to greece in the persian advance, sent ships and men to fight for the ionians. even with this help the ionian cities could not hold out against the vast resources of the persians. one by one they fell again into the hands of the great king. . expeditions of darius against greece first expedition, b.c. no sooner was quiet restored in asia minor than darius began preparations to punish athens for her part in the ionian revolt. the first expedition under the command of mardonius, the son-in-law of the persian monarch, was a failure. mardonius never reached greece, because the persian fleet, on which his army depended for provisions, was wrecked off the promontory of mount athos. second expedition, b.c. darius did not abandon his designs, in consequence of the disaster. two years later a second fleet, bearing a force of perhaps sixty thousand men, set out from ionia for greece. datis and artaphernes, the persian leaders, sailed straight across the aegean and landed on the plain of marathon, twenty-six miles from athens. [illustration: gravestone of ariston (national museum, athens) found near marathon in a.d. belongs to the late sixth century b.c. incorrectly called the "warrior of marathon"] battle of marathon, b.c. the situation of the athenians seemed desperate. they had scarcely ten thousand men with whom to face an army far larger and hitherto invincible. the spartans promised support, but delayed sending troops at the critical moment. better, perhaps, than a spartan army was the genius of miltiades, one of the athenian generals. relying on greek discipline and greek valor to win the day, he decided to take the offensive. his heavy armed soldiers made a smashing charge on the persians and drove them in confusion to their ships. datis and artaphernes then sailed back to asia with their errand of vengeance unfulfilled. [illustration: greek soldiers in arms painting on a greek vase] policies of aristides and themistocles after the battle of marathon the athenians began to make preparations to resist another persian invasion. one of their leaders, the eminent aristides, thought that they should increase their army and meet the enemy on land. his rival, themistocles, urged a different policy. he would sacrifice the army to the navy and make athens the strongest sea power in greece. the safety of athens, he argued, lay in her ships. in order to settle the question the opposing statesmen were put to the test of ostracism. [ ] the vote went against aristides, who was obliged to withdraw into exile. themistocles, now master of the situation, persuaded the citizens to use the revenues from some silver mines in attica for the upbuilding of a fleet. when the persians came, the athenians were able to oppose them with nearly two hundred triremes [ ]--the largest navy in greece. . xerxes and the great persian war preparations of persia "ten years after marathon," says a greek historian, "the 'barbarians' returned with the vast armament which was to enslave hellas." [ ] darius was now dead, but his son xerxes had determined to complete his task. vast quantities of provisions were collected; the hellespont was bridged with boats; and the rocky promontory of mount athos, where a previous fleet had suffered shipwreck, was pierced with a canal. an army of several hundred thousand men was brought together from all parts of the great king's domain. he evidently intended to crush the greeks by sheer weight of numbers. [illustration: a themistocles ostrakon (british museum, london) a fragment of a potsherd found in a.d., near the acropolis of athens. this ostrakon was used to vote for the ostracism of themistocles, either in b.c. when he was victorious against aristides, or some ten years later, when themistocles was himself defeated and forced into exile.] greek preparations xerxes did not have to attack a united greece. his mighty preparations frightened many of the greek states into yielding, when persian heralds came to demand "earth and water," the customary symbols of submission. some of the other states, such as thebes, which was jealous of athens, and argos, equally jealous of sparta, did nothing to help the loyal greeks throughout the struggle. but athens and sparta with their allies remained joined for resistance to the end. upon the suggestion of themistocles a congress of representatives from the patriotic states assembled at the isthmus of corinth in b.c. measures of defense were taken, and sparta was put in command of the allied fleet and army. battle of thermopylae, b.c. the campaigns of the great persian war have been described, once for all, in the glowing pages of the greek historian, herodotus. [ ] early in the year b.c. the persian host moved out of sardis, crossed the hellespont, and advanced to the pass of thermopylae, commanding the entrance to central greece. this position, one of great natural strength, was held by a few thousand greeks under the spartan king, leonidas. for two days xerxes hurled his best soldiers against the defenders of thermopylae, only to find that numbers did not count in that narrow defile. there is no telling how long the handful of greeks might have kept back the persian hordes, had not treachery come to the aid of the enemy. a traitor greek revealed to xerxes the existence of an unfrequented path, leading over the mountain in the rear of the pass. a persian detachment marched over the trail by night and took up a position behind the greeks. the latter still had time to escape, but three hundred spartans and perhaps two thousand allies refused to desert their post. while persian officers provided with whips lashed their unwilling troops to battle, leonidas and his men fought till spears and swords were broken, and hands and teeth alone remained as weapons. xerxes at length gained the pass--but only over the bodies of its heroic defenders. years later a monument to their memory was raised on the field of battle. it bore the simple inscription: "stranger, go tell the spartans that we lie here in obedience to their commands." [ ] after thermopylae after the disaster at thermopylae nearly all the states of central greece submitted to the persians. they marched rapidly through boeotia and attica to athens, but found a deserted city. upon the advice of themistocles the non-combatants had withdrawn to places of safety, and the entire fighting force of athens had embarked on the ships. the athenian fleet took up a position in the strait separating the island of salamis from attica and awaited the enemy. [ ] battle of salamis, b.c. the battle of salamis affords an interesting example of naval tactics in antiquity. the trireme was regarded as a missile to be hurled with sudden violence against the opposing ship, in order to disable or sink it. a sea fight became a series of maneuvers; and victory depended as much on the skill of the rowers and steersmen as on the bravery of the soldiers. the persians at salamis had many more ships than the greeks, but themistocles rightly believed that in the narrow strait their numbers would be a real disadvantage to them. such proved to be the case. the persians fought well, but their vessels, crowded together, could not navigate properly and even wrecked one another by collision. after an all-day contest what remained of their fleet withdrew from the strait. [illustration: an athenian trireme (reconstruction) a trireme is supposed to have had three tiers or banks of oars, placed one above the other. each tier thus required an oar about a yard longer than the one immediately beneath it. there were about two hundred rowers on a trireme.] after salamis the victory at salamis had important results. it so crippled the persians that henceforth they lost command of the sea. xerxes found it difficult to keep his men supplied with provisions and at once withdrew with the larger part of his force to asia. the great king himself had no heart for further fighting, but he left mardonius, with a strong body of picked troops, to subjugate the greeks on land. so the real crisis of the war was yet to come. battles of plataea and mycale, b.c. mardonius passed the winter quietly in thessaly, preparing for the spring campaign. the greeks in their turn made a final effort. a strong spartan army, supported by the athenians and their allies, met the persians near the little town of plataea in boeotia. here the heavy-armed greek soldiers, with their long spears, huge shields, and powerful swords, easily overcame the enormous masses of the enemy. the success at plataea showed how superior to the persians were the greeks in equipment, leadership, and fighting power. at the same time as this battle the remainder of the persian fleet suffered a crushing defeat at mycale, a promontory off the ionian coast. these two battles really ended the war. never again was persia to make a serious effort to secure dominion over continental greece. victorius hellas the great persian war was much more than a conflict between two rival states. it was a struggle between east and west; between oriental despotism and occidental individualism. on the one side were all the populous, centralized countries of asia; on the other side, the small, disunited states of greece. in the east was the boundless wealth, in men and money, of a world-wide empire. in the west were the feeble resources of a few petty communities. nevertheless greece won. the story of her victory forms an imperishable record in the annals of human freedom. . athens under themistocles, aristides, and cimon themistocles and the fortifications of athens after the battle of plataea the athenians, with their wives and children, returned to attica and began the restoration of their city, which the persians had burned. their first care was to raise a wall so high and strong athens in future would be impregnable to attack. upon the suggestion of themistocles it was decided to include within the fortifications a wide area where all the country people, in case of another invasion, could find a refuge. themistocles also persuaded the athenians to build a massive wall on the land side of piraeus, the port of athens. that harbor town now became the center of athenian industry and commerce. aristides and the delian league, b.c. while the athenians were rebuilding their city, important events were taking place in the aegean. after the battle of mycale the greek states in asia minor and on the islands once more rose in revolt against the persians. aided by sparta and athens, they gained several successes and removed the immediate danger of another persian attack. it was clearly necessary, however, for the greek cities in asia minor and the aegean to remain in close alliance with the continental greeks, if they were to preserve their independence. under the guidance of aristides, the old rival of themistocles, [ ] the allies formed a union known as the delian league. [illustration: "theseum" an athenian temple formerly supposed to have been constructed by cimon to receive the bones of the hero theseus. it is now believed to have been a temple of hephaestus and athena erected about b.c. the 'theseum' owes its almost perfect preservation to the fact that during the middle ages it was used as a church.] constitution of the league the larger cities in the league agreed to provide ships and crews for a fleet, while the smaller cities were to make their contributions in money. athens assumed the presidency of the league, and athenian officials collected the revenues, which were placed in a treasury on the island of delos. as head of this new federation athens now had a position of supremacy in the aegean like that which sparta enjoyed in the peloponnesus. [ ] cimon and the war against persia the man who succeeded themistocles and aristides in leadership of the athenians was cimon, son of miltiades, the hero of marathon. while yet a youth his gallantry at the battle of salamis gained him a great reputation, and when aristides introduced him to public life the citizens welcomed him gladly. he soon became the head of the aristocratic or conservative party in the athenian city. to cimon the delian league entrusted the continuation of the war with persia. the choice was fortunate, for cimon had inherited his father's military genius. no man did more than he to humble the pride of persia. as the outcome of cimon's successful campaigns the southern coast of asia minor was added to the delian league, and the greek cities at the mouth of the black sea were freed from the persian yoke. thus, with cimon as its leader, the confederacy completed the liberation of the asiatic greeks. the delian league becomes subject to athens, about b.c. while the greeks were gaining these victories, the character of the delian league was being transformed. many of the cities, instead of furnishing ships, had taken the easier course of making all their contributions in money. the change really played into the hands of athens, for the tribute enabled the athenians to build the ships themselves and add them to their own navy. they soon had a fleet powerful enough to coerce any city that failed to pay its assessments or tried to withdraw from the league. eventually the common treasure was transferred from delos to athens. the date of this event ( b.c.) may be taken as marking the formal establishment of the athenian naval empire. decline of cimon's influence sparta and her peloponnesian allies viewed with growing jealousy the rapid rise of athens. as long, however, as cimon remained at the head of athenian affairs, there was little danger of a break with sparta. he desired his city to keep on good terms with her powerful neighbor: athens should be mistress of the seas, and sparta should be mistress on the mainland. a contest between them, cimon foresaw, would work lasting injury to all greece. cimon's pro-spartan attitude brought him, however, into disfavor at athens, and he was ostracized. new men and new policies henceforth prevailed in the athenian state. . athens under pericles pericles the ostracism of cimon deprived the aristocrats of their most prominent representative. it was possible for the democratic or liberal party to assume complete control of public affairs. pericles, their leader and champion, was a man of studious habits. he never appeared on the streets except when walking between his house and the popular assembly or the market place, kept rigidly away from dinners and drinking bouts, and ruled his household with strict economy that he might escape the suspicion of enriching himself at the public expense. he did not speak often before the people, but came forward only on special occasions; and the rarity of his utterances gave them added weight. pericles was a thorough democrat, but he used none of the arts of the demagogue. he scorned to flatter the populace. his power over the people rested on his majestic eloquence, on his calm dignity of demeanor, and above all on his unselfish devotion to the welfare of athens. [illustration: pericles (british museum, london) the bust is probably a good copy of a portrait statue set up during the lifetime of pericles on the athenian acropolis. the helmet possibly indicates the office of general held by pericles.] age of pericles, - b.c. the period, about thirty years in length, between the ostracism of cimon and the death of pericles, forms the most brilliant epoch in greek history. under the guidance of pericles the athenian naval empire reached its widest extent. through his direction athens became a complete democracy. inspired by him the athenians came to manifest that love of knowledge, poetry, art, and all beautiful things which, even more than their empire or their democracy, has made them famous in the annals of mankind. the age of pericles affords, therefore, a convenient opportunity to set forth the leading features of athenian civilization in the days of its greatest glory. athenian imperialism athens under pericles ruled more than two hundred towns and cities in asia minor and the islands of the aegean sea. [ ] the subjects of athens, in return for the protection that she gave them against persia, owed many obligations. they paid an annual tribute and furnished soldiers in time of war. in all legal cases of importance the citizens had to go to athens for trial by athenian courts. the delian communities, in some instances, were forced to endure the presence of athenian garrisons and officers. to the greeks at large all this seemed nothing less than high-handed tyranny. athens, men felt, had built up an empire on the ruins of hellenic liberty. nature of the athenian democracy if the athenians possessed an empire, they themselves were citizens of a state more democratic than any other that has existed, before or since, in the history of the world. they had now learned how unjust was the rule of a tyrant or of a privileged class of nobles. they tried, instead, to afford every one an opportunity to make the laws, to hold office, and to administer justice. hence the athenian popular assembly and law courts were open to all respectable citizens. the offices, also, were made very numerous--fourteen hundred in all--so that they might be distributed as widely as possible. most of them were annual, and some could not be held twice by the same person. election to office was usually by lot. this arrangement did away with favoritism and helped to give the poor man a chance in politics, as well as the man of wealth or noble birth. the assembly the center of athenian democracy was the assembly. its membership included every citizen who had reached twenty years of age. rarely, however, did the attendance number more than five thousand, since most of the citizens lived outside the walls in the country districts of attica. forty regular meetings were held every year. these took place on the slopes of the hill called the pnyx. a speaker before the assembly faced a difficult audience. it was ready to yell its disapproval of his advice, to mock him if he mispronounced a word, or to drown his voice with shouts and whistles. naturally, the debates became a training school for orators. no one could make his mark in the assembly who was not a clear and interesting speaker. voting was by show of hands, except in cases affecting individuals, such as ostracism, when the ballot was used. whatever the decision of the assembly, it was final. this great popular gathering settled questions of war and peace, sent out military and naval expeditions, voted public expenditures, and had general control over the affairs of athens and the empire. [illustration: an athenian inscription a decree of the assembly, dating from about b.c.] the ten generals the assembly was assisted in the conduct of public business by many officers and magistrates, among whom the ten generals held the leading place. it was their duty to guide the deliberations of the assembly and to execute the orders of that body. the jury courts there was also a system of popular jury courts composed of citizens selected by lot from the candidates who presented themselves. the number of jurors varied; as many as a thousand might serve at an important trial. a court was both judge and jury, it decided by majority vote; and from its decision lay no appeal. before these courts public officers accused of wrong-doing were tried; disputes between different cities of the empire and other important cases were settled; and all ordinary legal business affecting the athenians themselves was transacted. thus, even in matters of law, the athenian government was completely democratic. strength and weakness of the athenian democracy democracy then, reached its height in ancient athens. the people ruled, and they ruled directly. every citizen had some active part in politics. such a system worked well in the management of a small city-state like athens. but if the athenians could govern themselves, they proved unable to govern an empire with justice and wisdom. there was no such thing as representation in their constitution. the subject cities had no one to speak for them in the assembly or before the jury courts. we shall notice the same absence of a representative system in republican rome. [ ] system of state pay a large number of athenians were relieved from the necessity of working for themselves through the system of state pay introduced by pericles. jurors, soldiers, and sailors received money for their services. later, in the fourth century, citizens accepted fees for attending the assembly. these payments, though small, enabled poor citizens to devote much time to public duties. industrial athens athens contained many skilled workmen whose daily tasks gave them scant opportunity to engage in the exciting game of politics. the average rate of wages was very low. in spite of cheap food and modest requirements for clothing and shelter, it must have been difficult for the laborer to keep body and soul together. outside of athens, in the country districts of attica, lived the peasants whose little farms produced the olives, grapes, and figs for which attica was celebrated. slavery there were many thousands of slaves in athens and attica at this period. their number was so great and their labor so cheap that we may think of them as taking the place of modern machines. it was the slaves who did most of the work on the large estates owned by wealthy men, who toiled in the mines and quarries, and who served as oarsmen on the ships. the system of slavery enabled many an athenian to live a life of leisure, but it lowered the dignity of labor and tended to prevent the rise of the poorer citizens to positions of responsibility. in greece, as in the orient, [ ] slavery cast its blight over free industry. commercial athens the athenian city was now the chief center of greek commerce. [ ] "the fruits of the whole earth," said pericles, "flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other commercial countries as freely as of our own." [ ] exports of athens wine and olive oil, pottery, metal wares, and objects of art were sent out from piraeus [ ] to every region of the mediterranean. the imports from the black sea region, thrace, and the aegean included such commodities as salt, dried fish, wool, timber, hides, and, above all, great quantities of wheat. very much as modern england, athens was able to feed all her people only by bringing in food from abroad. to make sure that in time of war there should be no interruption of food supplies, the athenians built the celebrated long walls, between the city and its port of piraeus. (see the map below) henceforth they felt secure from attack, as long as their navy ruled the aegean. [illustration: map, the vicinity of athens] artistic and intellectual athens in the days of her prosperity athens began to make herself not only a strong, but also a beautiful, city. the temples and other structures which were raised on the acropolis during the age of pericles still excite, even in their ruins, the envy and wonder of mankind. [ ] athens at this time was also the center of greek intellectual life. in no other period of similar length have so many admirable books been produced. no other epoch has given birth to so many men of varied and delightful genius. the greatest poets, historians, and philosophers of greece were athenians, either by birth or training. as pericles himself said in a noble speech, athens was "the school of hellas." [ ] . the peloponnesian war, - b.c. inevitableness of the war the brilliant age of pericles had not come to an end before the two chief powers in the hellenic world became involved in a deadly war. it would seem that athens and sparta, the one supreme upon the sea, the other at the head of the peloponnesus, might have avoided a struggle which was sure to be long and costly. but greek cities were always ready to fight one another. when athens and sparta found themselves rivals for the leadership of greece, it was easy for the smouldering fires of distrust and jealousy to flame forth into open conflict. "and at that time," says thucydides, the athenian historian who described the struggle, "the youth of sparta and the youth of athens were numerous; they had never seen war, and were therefore very willing to take up arms." [ ] [illustration: map, greece at opening of the peloponnesian war b.c.] [illustration: the "mourning athena" (acropolis museum, athens) a tablet of pentelic marble. athena, leaning on her spear, is gazing with downcast head at a grave monument.] origin of the war the conflict was brought on by corinth, one of the leading members of the peloponnesian league and, next to athens, the most important commercial power in greece. she had already seen her once-profitable trade in the aegean monopolized by athens. that energetic city was now reaching out for corinthian commerce in italian and sicilian waters. when the athenians went so far as to interfere in a quarrel between corinth and her colony of corcyra, even allying themselves with the latter city, the corinthians felt justly resentful and appealed to sparta for aid. the spartans listened to their appeal and, with the apparent approval of the delphic oracle which assured them "that they would conquer if they fought with all their might," [ ] declared war. resources of the contestants the two antagonists were fairly matched. the one was strong where the other was weak. sparta, mainly a continental power, commanded all the peloponnesian states except argos and achaea, besides some of the smaller states of central greece. athens, mainly a maritime power, ruled all the subject cities of the aegean. the spartans possessed the most formidable army then in the world, but lacked money and ships. the athenians had a magnificent navy, an overflowing treasury, and a city impregnable to direct attack. it seemed, in fact, as if neither side could seriously injure the other. first stage of the war, - b.c. the war began in b.c. its first stage was indecisive. the athenians avoided a conflict in the open field with the stronger peloponnesian army, which ravaged attica. they were crippled almost at the outset of the struggle by a terrible plague among the refugees from attica, crowded behind the long walls. the pestilence slew at least one-fourth of the inhabitants of athens, including pericles himself. after ten years of fighting both sides grew weary of the war and made a treaty of peace to last for fifty years. the sicilian expedition, l - l b.c. not long after the conclusion of peace the athenians were persuaded by a brilliant and ambitious politician, named alcibiades, to undertake an expedition against syracuse in sicily. this city was a colony of corinth, and hence was a natural ally of the peloponnesian states. the athenians, by conquering it, expected to establish their power in sicily. but the siege of syracuse ended in a complete failure. the athenians failed to capture the city, and in a great naval battle they lost their fleet. then they tried to retreat by land, but soon had to surrender. many of the prisoners were sold as slaves; many were thrown by their inhuman captors into the stone quarries near syracuse, where they perished from exposure and starvation. the athenians, says thucydides, "were absolutely annihilated--both army and fleet--and of the many thousands who went away only a handful ever saw their homes again." [ ] [illustration: a silver coin of syracuse the profile of the nymph arethusa has been styled the most exquisite greek head known to us.] last stage of the war - b.c. athens never recovered from this terrible blow. the spartans quickly renewed the contest, now with the highest hopes of success. the athenians had to guard their city against the invader night and day; their slaves deserted to the enemy; and they themselves could do no farming except under the walls of the city. for supplies they had to depend entirely on their ships. for nearly ten years, however, the athenians kept up the struggle. at length the spartans captured an athenian fleet near aegospotami on the hellespont. soon afterwards they blockaded piraeus and their army encamped before the walls of athens. bitter famine compelled the athenians to sue for peace. the spartans imposed harsh terms. the athenians were obliged to destroy their long walls and the fortifications of piraeus, to surrender all but twelve of their warships, and to acknowledge the supremacy of sparta. . the spartan and theban supremacies, - b.c. spartan despotism sparta was now the undisputed leader of continental greece and of the aegean. as the representative of the liberty-loving greeks she had humbled the pride and power of "tyrant" athens. a great opportunity lay before her to reorganize the hellenic world and to end the struggles for supremacy between rival cities. but sparta entered upon no such glorious career. she had always stood as the champion of aristocracy against democracy, and now in her hour of triumph she began to overturn every democratic government that still existed in greece. the greek cities soon found they had exchanged the mild sway of athens for the brutal despotism of sparta. the freeing of thebes b.c. but spartan despotism provoked resistance. it was the boeotian city of thebes which raised the standard of revolt. some of the liberty-loving thebans, headed by pelopidas, a patriotic noble, formed a conspiracy to drive the spartans out of the city. disguised as huntsmen, pelopidas and his followers entered thebes at nightfall, killed the tyrants whom sparta had set over the people, and forced the spartan garrison to surrender. battle of leuctra, b.c. the thebans had now recovered their independence. eight years later they totally defeated a superior peloponnesian force at the battle of leuctra and brought the supremacy of sparta to an end. this engagement from a military standpoint is one of the most interesting in ancient history. epaminondas, the skilful theban commander, massed his best troops in a solid column, fifty men deep, and hurled it with terrific force against the spartan ranks. the enemy, drawn up twelve men deep in the customary formation, could not withstand the impact of the theban column; their lines gave way, and the fight was soon won. the battle destroyed once for all the legend of spartan invincibility. pelopidas and epaminondas the sudden rise of thebes to the position of the first city in greece was the work of two men whose names are always linked together in the annals of the time. in pelopidas and epaminondas, bosom friends and colleagues, thebes found the heroes of her struggle for independence. pelopidas was a fiery warrior whose bravery and daring won the hearts of his soldiers. epaminondas was both an able general and an eminent statesman. no other greek, save perhaps pericles, can be compared with him. even pericles worked for athens alone and showed no regard for the rest of greece. epaminondas had nobler ideals and sought the general good of the hellenic race. he fought less to destroy sparta than to curb that city's power of doing harm. he aimed not so much to make thebes mistress of an empire as to give her a proper place among greek cities. the thebans, indeed, sometimes complained that epaminondas loved hellas more than his native city. battle of mantinea, b.c. by crippling sparta, epaminondas raised thebes to a position of supremacy. had he been spared for a longer service, epaminondas might have realized his dream of bringing unity and order into the troubled politics of his time. but circumstances were too strong for him. the greek states, which had accepted the leadership of athens and sparta, were unwilling to admit the claims of thebes to a position of equal power and importance. the period of theban rule was filled, therefore, with perpetual conflict. nine years after leuctra epaminondas himself fell in battle at mantinea in the peloponnesus, and with his death ended the brief glory of thebes. . decline of the city-state weakness of city-states the battle of mantinea proved that no single city--athens, sparta, or thebes--was strong enough to rule greece. by the middle of the fourth century b.c. it had become evident that a great hellenic power could the not be created out of the little, independent city-states of greece. a record of almost ceaseless conflict the history of continental hellas for more than a century after the close of the persian war had been a record of almost ceaseless conflict. we have seen how greece came to be split up into two great alliances, the one a naval league ruled by athens, the other a confederacy of peloponnesian cities under the leadership of sparta. how the delian league became the athenian empire; how sparta began a long war with athens to secure the independence of the subject states and ended it by reducing them to her own supremacy; how the rough-handed sway of sparta led to the revolt of her allies and dependencies and the sudden rise of thebes to supremacy; how thebes herself established an empire on the ruins of spartan rule-- this is a story of fruitless and exhausting struggles which sounded the knell of greek liberty and the end of the city-state. the future far away in the north, remote from the noisy conflicts of greek political life, a new power was slowly rising to imperial greatness--no insignificant city-state, but an extensive territorial state like those of modern times. three years after the battle of mantinea philip ii ascended the throne of macedonia. he established hellenic unity by bringing the hellenic people within a widespread empire. alexander the great, the son of this king, carried macedonian dominion and greek culture to the ends of the known world. to this new period of ancient history we now turn. studies . on an outline map indicate the principal places mentioned in this chapter. . on an outline map indicate the athenian allies and dependencies and those of sparta at the opening of the peloponnesian war. . what do you understand by a "decisive" battle? why has marathon been considered such a battle? . why did xerxes take the longer route through thrace, instead of the shorter route followed by datis and artaphernes? . what was the importance of the phoenician fleet in the persian invasions? . what reasons can be given for the greek victory in the struggle against persia? . distinguish between a confederacy and an empire. . compare the relations of the delian subject cities to athens with those of british colonies, such as canada and australia, to england. . what do you understand by representative government? . if the athenian empire could have rested on a representative basis, why would it have been more likely to endure? . how far can the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" be applied to the athenian democracy? . did the popular assembly of athens have any resemblance to a new england town meeting? . compare the athenian jury system with that of england and the united states. . the athenian democracy of the time of pericles has been described as a _pure_ democracy and not, like the american, as a _representative_ democracy. in what lies the difference? . can you suggest any objections to the system of state pay introduced by pericles? to what extent do we employ the same system under our government? . what conditions of the time help to explain the contempt of the greeks for money-making? . trace on the map, page , the long walls of athens. . why has the peloponnesian war been called an "irrepressible conflict"? why has it been called the "suicide of greece"? . what states of the greek mainland were neutral in the peloponnesian war (map facing page )? . contrast the resources of the contending parties. where was each side weak and where strong? . why was the tyranny of sparta more oppressive than that of athens? . what were the reasons for the failure of the athenian, spartan, and theban attempts at empire? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter vii, "xerxes and the persian invasion of greece"; chapter viii, "episodes from the peloponnesian war"; chapter ix, "alcibiades the athenian"; chapter x, "the expedition of the ten thousand"; chapter xi, "the trial and death of socrates." [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] thucydides, i, . [ ] see page . [ ] herodotus, vii, . [ ] see the map on page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the commercial importance of athens is indicated by the general adoption of her monetary standard by the other greek states. (for illustrations of greek coins see the plate facing page .) [ ] thucydides, ii, . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] for a description of ancient athens, see pages - . [ ] thucydides, ii, . [ ] thucydides, ii, . [ ] thucydides, i, . [ ] thucydides, vii, . chapter vi mingling of east and west after b.c. [ ] . philip and the rise of macedonia macedonia and the macedonians the land of macedonia, lying to the north of greece, for a long time had been an inconspicuous part of the ancient world. its people, though only partially civilized, were greeks in blood and language. no doubt they formed an offshoot of those northern invaders who had entered the balkan peninsula before the dawn of history. the macedonian kings, from the era of the persian wars, seized every opportunity of spreading greek culture throughout their realm. by the middle of the fourth century b.c., when philip ii ascended the throne, the macedonians were ready to take a leading place in the greek world. [illustration: philip ii from a gold medallion struck by alexander] philip's aims philip of macedonia, one of the most remarkable men of antiquity, was endowed with a vigorous body, a keen mind, and a resolute will. he was no stranger to greece and its ways. part of his boyhood had been passed as a hostage at thebes in the days of theban glory. his residence there gave him an insight into greek politics and taught him the art of war as it had been perfected by epaminondas. in the distracted condition of greece, worn out by the rivalries of contending cities, philip saw the opportunity of his own country. he aimed to secure for macedonia the position of supremacy which neither athens, sparta, nor thebes had been able to maintain. the macedonian army philip's most important achievement was the creation of the macedonian army, which he led to the conquest of greece and which his son was to lead to the conquest of the world. taking a hint from the tactics of epaminondas, philip trained his infantry to fight by columns, but with sufficient intervals between the files to permit quick and easy movements. each man bore an enormous lance, eighteen feet in length. when this heavy phalanx was set in array, the weapons carried by the soldiers in the first five ranks presented a bristling thicket of lance-points, which no onset, however determined, could penetrate. the business of the phalanx was to keep the front of the foe engaged, while horsemen rode into the enemy's flanks. this reliance on masses of cavalry to win a victory was something new in warfare. another novel feature consisted in the use of engines called catapults, able to throw darts and huge stones three hundred yards, and of battering rams with force enough to hurl down the walls of cities. all these different arms working together made a war machine of tremendous power--the most formidable in the ancient world until the days of the roman legion. conquests of philip philip commanded a fine army; he ruled with absolute sway a territory larger than any other hellenic state; and he himself possessed a genius for both war and diplomacy, with such advantages the macedonian king entered on the subjugation of disunited greece. his first great success was won in western thrace. here he founded the city of philippi [ ] and seized some rich gold mines, the income from which enabled him to keep his soldiers always under arms, to fit out a fleet, and, by means of liberal bribes, to hire a crowd of agents in nearly every greek city. philip next made macedonia a maritime state by subduing the greek cities on the peninsula of chalcidice. [ ] he also appeared in thessaly, occupied its principal fortresses, and brought the frontier of macedonia as far south as the pass of thermopylae. . demosthenes and the end of greek freedom demosthenes, - b.c. philip for many years had been steadily extending his sway over greece. in the face of his encroachments would athens, sparta, and thebes, so long the leading cities, submit tamely to this macedonian conqueror? there was one man, at least, who realized the menace to greek freedom from philip's onward march. in demosthenes greece found a champion of her threatened liberties. [illustration: demosthenes (vatican museum, rome) a marble statue, probably a copy of the bronze original by the sculptor polyeuctus. the work, when found, was considerably mutilated and has been restored in numerous parts. both forearms and the hands holding the scroll are modern additions. it seems likely that the original athenian statue showed demosthenes with tightly clasped hands, which, with his furrowed visage and contracted brows, were expressive of the orator's earnestness and concentration of thought.] demosthenes as an orator and a patriot demosthenes was the last, as well as the most famous, of the great athenian orators. when he first began to speak, the citizens laughed at his long, involved sentences, over-rapid delivery, and awkward bearing. friends encouraged him to persist, assuring him that, if the manner of his speeches was bad, their matter was worthy of pericles. numerous stories are told of the efforts made by demosthenes to overcome his natural defects. he practiced gesturing before a mirror and, to correct a stammering pronunciation, recited verses with pebbles in his mouth. he would go down to the seashore during storms and strive to make his voice heard above the roar of wind and waves, in order the better to face the boisterous assembly. before long he came to be regarded as the prince of speakers even in the city of orators. demosthenes was a man cast in the old heroic mold. his patriotic imagination had been fired by the great deeds once accomplished by free greeks. athens he loved with passionate devotion. let her remember her ancient glories, he urged, and, by withstanding philip, become the leader of hellas in a second war for liberty. last struggle of the greeks the stirring appeals of the great orator at first had little effect. there were many friends of philip in the greek states, even in athens itself. when, however, philip entered central greece and threatened the independence of its cities, the eloquence of demosthenes met a readier response. in the presence of the common danger thebes and athens gave up their ancient rivalry and formed a defensive alliance against philip. had it been joined by sparta and the other peloponnesian states, it is possible that their united power might have hurled back the invader. but they held aloof. battle of chaeronea, b.c. the decisive battle was fought at chaeronea in boeotia. on that fatal field the well-drilled and seasoned troops of macedonia, headed by a master of the art of war, overcame the citizen levies of greece. the greeks fought bravely, as of old, and their defeat was not inglorious. near the modern town of chaeronea the traveler can still see the tomb where the fallen heroes were laid, and the marble lion set up as a memorial to their dauntless struggle. philip's policy as a conqueror chaeronea gave philip the undisputed control of greece. but now that victory was assured, he had no intention of playing the tyrant. he compelled thebes to admit a macedonian garrison to her citadel, but treated athens so mildly that the citizens were glad to conclude with him a peace which left their possessions untouched. philip entered the peloponnesus as a liberator. its towns and cities welcomed an alliance with so powerful a protector against sparta. congress at corinth, b.c. having completely realized his design of establishing macedonian rule over greece, philip's restless energy drove him forward to the next step in his ambitious program. he determined to carry out the plans, so long cherished by the greeks, for an invasion of asia minor and, perhaps, of persia itself. in the year b.c. a congress of all the hellenic states met at corinth under philip's presidency. the delegates voted to supply ships and men for the great undertaking and placed philip in command of the allied forces. a macedonian king was to be the captain-general of hellas. death of philip, b.c. but philip was destined never to lead an army across the hellespont. less than two years after chaeronea he was killed by an assassin, and the scepter passed to his young son, alexander. [illustration: alexander (glyptothek, munich) probably an authentic portrait of the youthful alexander about b.c.] . alexander the great the youthful alexander alexander was only twenty years of age when he became ruler of macedonia. from his father he inherited the powerful frame, the kingly figure, the masterful will, which made so deep an impression on all his contemporaries. his mother, a proud and ambitious woman, told him that the blood of achilles ran in his veins, and bade him emulate the deeds of that national hero. we know that he learned the _iliad_ by heart and always carried a copy of it on his campaigns. as he came to manhood, alexander developed into a splendid athlete, skillful in all the sports of his rough-riding companions, and trained in every warlike exercise. education of alexander by aristotle philip believed that in alexander he had a worthy son, for he persuaded aristotle, [ ] the most learned man in greece, to become the tutor of the young prince. the influence of that philosopher remained with alexander throughout life. aristotle taught him to love greek art and science, and instilled into his receptive mind an admiration for all things grecian. alexander used to say that, while he owed his life to his father, he owed to aristotle the knowledge of how to live worthily. alexander crushes rebellion the situation which alexander faced on his accession might well have dismayed a less dauntless spirit. philip had not lived long enough to unite firmly his wide dominions. his unexpected death proved the signal for uprisings and disorder. the barbarous thracians broke out in widespread rebellion, and the greeks made ready to answer the call of demosthenes to arms. but alexander soon set his kingdom in order. after crushing the tribes of thrace, he descended on greece and besieged thebes, which had risen against its macedonian garrison. the city was soon captured; its inhabitants were slaughtered or sold into slavery; and the place itself was destroyed. the terrible fate of thebes induced the other states to submit without further resistance. seeming strength of the persian empire with greece pacified, alexander could proceed to the invasion of persia. since the days of darius the great the empire had remained almost intact-- a huge, loosely-knit collection of many different peoples, whose sole bond of union was their common allegiance to the great king. [ ] its resources were enormous. there were millions of men for the armies and untold wealth in the royal treasuries. yet the empire was a hollow shell. expedition of the "ten thousand," - b.c. some seventy years before alexander set forth on his expedition the greeks had witnessed a remarkable disclosure of the military weakness of persia. one of those rare revolts which troubled the security of the persian empire broke out in asia minor. it was headed by cyrus the younger, a brother of the persian monarch. cyrus gathered a large body of native troops and also hired about ten thousand greek soldiers. he led this mixed force into the heart of the persian dominions, only to fall in battle at cunaxa, near babylon. the greeks easily routed the enemy arrayed against them, but the death of cyrus made their victory fruitless. in spite of their desperate situation the greeks refused to surrender and started to return homewards. the persians dogged their footsteps, yet never ventured on a pitched battle. after months of wandering in assyria and armenia the little band of intrepid soldiers finally reached trapezus, (modern trebizond) a greek city on the black sea. [illustration: map, route of the ten thousand] significance of the expedition the story of this invasion of persia and the subsequent retreat was written by the athenian xenophon [ ] in his _anabasis_. it is one of the most interesting books that have come down to us from antiquity. we can judge from it how vivid was the impression which the adventures of the "ten thousand" made on the greeks of xenophon's time. a small army had marched to the center of the persian dominions, had overcome a host many times its size, and had returned to greece in safety. it was clear proof that the persian power, however imposing on the outside, could offer no effective resistance to an attack by a strong force of disciplined greek soldiers. henceforth the greeks never abandoned the idea of an invasion of persia. alexander's invasion the gigantic task fell, however, to alexander, as the champion of hellas against the "barbarians." with an army of less than forty thousand men alexander destroyed an empire before which, for two centuries, all asia had been wont to tremble. history, ancient or modern, contains no other record of conquests so widespread, so thorough, so amazingly rapid. . conquest of persia and the far east, - b.c. battle of the granicus, b.c. alexander crossed the hellespont in the spring of the year b.c. he landed not far from the historic plain of troy and at once began his march along the coast. near the little river granicus the satraps of asia minor had gathered an army to dispute his passage. alexander at once led his cavalry across the river in an impetuous charge, which soon sent the persian troops in headlong flight. the victory cost the macedonians scarcely a hundred men; but it was complete. as alexander passed southward, town after town opened its gates--first sardis, next ephesus, then all the other cities of ionia. they were glad enough to be free of persian control. within a year asia minor was a macedonian possession. battle of issus, b.c. in the meantime darius iii, the persian king, had been making extensive preparations to meet the invader. he commanded half a million men, but he followed alexander too hastily and had to fight in a narrow defile on the syrian coast between the mountains and the sea. in such cramped quarters numbers did not count. the battle became a massacre, and only the approach of night stayed the swords of the victorious macedonians. a great quantity of booty, including the mother, wife, and children of darius, fell into alexander's hands. he treated his royal captives kindly, but refused to make peace with the persian king. [illustration: the alexander mosaic (naples museum) this splendid mosaic composed of pieces of colored glass formed the pavement of a roman house at pompeii in italy. it represents the charge of alexander (on horseback at the left) against the persian king in his chariot, at the battle of issus.] capture of tyre, b.c. the next step was to subdue the phoenician city of tyre, the headquarters of persia's naval power. the city lay on a rocky island, half a mile from the shore. its fortifications rose one hundred feet above the waves. although the place seemed impregnable, alexander was able to capture it after he had built a mole, or causeway, between the shore and the island. powerful siege engines then breached the walls, the macedonians poured in, and tyre fell by storm. thousands of its inhabitants perished and thousands more were sold into slavery. the great emporium of the east became a heap of ruins. alexander in egypt from tyre alexander led his ever-victorious army through syria into egypt. the persian forces here offered little resistance, and the egyptians themselves welcomed alexander as a deliverer. the conqueror entered memphis in triumph and then sailed down the nile to its western mouth, where he laid the foundations of alexandria, a city which later became the metropolis of the orient. alexander in libya another march brought alexander to the borders of libya, here he received the submission of cyrene, the most important greek colony in africa. [ ] alexander's dominions were thus extended to the border of the carthaginian possessions. it was at this time that alexander visited a celebrated temple of the god amon, located in an oasis of the libyan desert. the priests were ready enough to hail him as a son of amon, as one before whom his egyptian subjects might bow down and adore. but after alexander's death his worship spread widely over the world, and even the roman senate gave him a place among the gods of olympus. battle of arbela, b.c. the time had now come to strike directly at the persian king. following the ancient trade routes through northern mesopotamia, alexander crossed the euphrates and the tigris and, on a broad plain not far from the ruins of ancient nineveh, [ ] found himself confronted by the persian host. darius held an excellent position and hoped to crush his foe by sheer weight of numbers. but nothing could stop the macedonian onset; once more darius fled away, and once more the persians, deserted by their king, broke up in hopeless rout. end of the persian empire the battle of arbela decided the fate of the persian empire. it remained only to gather the fruits of victory. the city of babylon surrendered without a struggle. susa, with its enormous treasure, fell into the conqueror's hands. persepolis, the old persian capital, was given up to fire and sword. [ ] darius himself, as he retreated eastward, was murdered by his own men. with the death of darius the national war of greece against persia came to an end. conquest of iran the macedonians had now overrun all the persian provinces except distant iran and india. these countries were peopled of by warlike tribes of a very different stamp from the effeminate persians. alexander might well have been content to leave them undisturbed, but the man could never rest while there were still conquests to be made. long marches and much hard fighting were necessary to subdue the tribes about the caspian and the inhabitants of the countries now known as afghanistan and turkestan. [illustration: map, empire of alexander the great about b.c.] conquest of india crossing the lofty barrier of the hindu-kush, alexander led his weary soldiers into northwestern india, where a single battle added the persian province of the punjab [ ] to the macedonian possessions. alexander then pressed forward to the conquest of the ganges valley, but in the full tide of victory his troops refused to go any farther. they had had their fill of war and martial glory; they would conquer no more lands for their ambitious king. alexander gave with reluctance the order for the homeward march. alexander's return to babylon alexander was of too adventurous a disposition to return by the way he had come. he resolved to reach babylon by a new route. he built a navy on the indus and had it accompany the army down the river. at the mouth of the indus alexander dispatched the fleet under his admiral, nearchus, to explore the indian ocean and to discover, if possible, a sea route between india and the west. he himself led the army, by a long and toilsome march through the deserts of southern iran, to babylon. that city now became the capital of the macedonian empire. death of alexander, b.c. scarcely two years after his return, while he was planning yet more extensive conquests in arabia, africa, and western europe, he was smitten by the deadly babylonian fever. in b.c., after several days of illness, the conqueror of the world passed away, being not quite thirty- three years of age. . the work of alexander alexander as warrior and statesman alexander the great was one of the foremost, perhaps the first, of the great captains of antiquity. but he was more than a world-conqueror; he was a statesman of the highest order. had he been spared for an ordinary lifetime, there is no telling how much he might have accomplished. in eleven years he had been able to subdue the east and to leave an impress upon it which was to endure for centuries. and yet his work had only begun. there were still lands to conquer, cities to build, untrodden regions to explore. above all, it was still his task to shape his possessions into a well-knit, unified empire, which would not fall to pieces in the hands of his successors. his early death was a calamity, for it prevented the complete realization of his splendid ambitions. hellenizing of the orient the immediate result of alexander's conquests was the disappearance of the barriers which had so long shut in the orient. the east, until his day, was an almost unknown land. now it lay open to the spread of greek civilization. in the wake of the macedonian armies followed greek philosophers and scientists, greek architects and artists, greek colonists, merchants, and artisans. everywhere into that huge, inert, unprogressive oriental world came the active and enterprising men of hellas. they brought their arts and culture and became the teachers of those whom they had called "barbarians." fusion of east and west the ultimate result of alexander's conquests was the fusion of east and west. he realized that his new empire must contain a place for oriental, as well as for greek and east and macedonian, subjects. it was alexander's aim, therefore, to build up a new state in which the distinction between the european and the asiatic should gradually pass away. he welcomed persian nobles to his court and placed them in positions of trust. he organized the government of his provinces on a system resembling that of darius the great. [ ] he trained thousands of persian soldiers to replace the worn-out veterans in his armies. he encouraged by liberal dowries mixed marriages between macedonians and orientals, and himself wedded the daughter of the last persian king. to hold his dominions together and provide a meeting place for both classes of his subjects, he founded no less than seventy cities in different parts of the empire. such measures as these show that alexander had a mind of wide, even cosmopolitan, sympathies. they indicate the loss which ancient civilization suffered by his untimely end. [illustration: sarcophagus from sidon (imperial ottoman museum, constantinople.) one of eighteen splendid sarcophagi discovered in a.d. in an ancient cemetery at sidon. the sculptures on the longer sides represent two scenes from the life of alexander--the one a battle, the other a lion hunt. the figures, in almost full relief, are delicately painted. ] . hellenistic kingdoms and cities the three great kingdoms the half century following alexander's death is a confused and troubled period in ancient history. the king had left no legitimate son--no one with an undisputed title to the succession. on his deathbed alexander had himself declared that the realm should go "to the strongest." [ ] it was certain, under these circumstances, that his possessions would become the prey of the leading macedonian generals. the unwieldy empire at length broke in pieces. out of the fragments arose three great states, namely, macedonia, egypt, and syria. the kingdom of egypt was ruled by ptolemy, one of alexander's generals. seleucus, another of his generals, established the kingdom of syria. it comprised nearly all western asia. these kingdoms remained independent until the era of roman conquest in the east. [illustration: a greek cameo (museum, vienna) cut in sardonyx. represents ptolemy philadelphus, king of egypt, and his wife arsinoë.] minor independent states several small states also arose from the break-up of alexander's empire. [ ] each had its royal dynasty, its capital city, and its own national life. thus the conquests of alexander, instead of establishing a world- power under one ruler, led to the destruction of the unity of government which persia had given to the east. city life in the orient more significant for the history of civilization than these kingdoms were the hellenistic [ ] cities, which from the time of alexander arose in every part of the eastern world. some were only garrison towns in the heart of remote provinces or outposts along the frontiers. many more, however, formed busy centers of trade and industry, and became seats of greek influence in the orient. such cities were quite unlike the old greek city-states. [ ] they were not free and independent, but made a part of the kingdom in which they were situated. the inhabitants consisted of greeks and macedonians, comprising the governing class, together with native artisans and merchants who had abandoned their village homes for life in a metropolis. in appearance, also, these cities contrasted with those of old greece. they had broad streets, well paved and sometimes lighted at night, enjoyed a good water supply, and possessed baths, theaters, and parks. alexandria in the third century b.c. the foremost hellenistic city was alexandria. it lay on a strip of flat, sandy land separating lake mareotis from the mediterranean. on the one side was the lake-harbor, connected with the nile; on the other side were two sea-harbors, sheltered from the open sea by the long and narrow island of pharos. [ ] the city possessed a magnificent site for commerce. it occupied the most central position that could be found in the ancient world with respect to the three continents, africa, asia, and europe. the prosperity which this port has enjoyed for more than two thousand years is ample evidence of the wisdom which led to its foundation. antioch the chief city in the kingdom of syria was splendid and luxurious antioch. it lay in the narrow valley of the orontes river, so close to both the euphrates and the mediterranean that it soon became an important commercial center. the city must have been a most delightful residence, with its fine climate, its location on a clear and rapid stream, and the near presence of the syrian hills. in the sixth century a.d. repeated earthquakes laid antioch in ruins. the city never recovered its prosperity, though a modern town, antakia, still marks the site of the once famous capital. [illustration: map, the kingdoms of alexander's successors (about b.c.), before the roman macedonian wars] [illustration: the dying gaul (capitoline museum, rome) the statue represents a gaul who in battle has fallen on his sword to avoid a shameful captivity. overcome by the faintness of death he sinks upon his shield, his head dropping heavily forward. though realistic the statue shows nothing violent or revolting. it is a tragedy in stone.] pergamum asia minor, during this period, contained many hellenistic cities. one of the most important was pergamum, the capital of a small but independent kingdom of the same name. its rulers earned the gratitude of all the greeks by their resistance to the terrible gauls. about fifty years after alexander's death this barbarous people, pouring down from central europe, had ravaged greece and invaded asia minor. the kings of pergamum celebrated their victories over the gauls with so many works of architecture and sculpture that their city became the artistic rival of athens. rhodes one other great hellenistic center existed in the island city of rhodes. founded during the closing years of the peloponnesian war, rhodes soon distanced athens in the race for commercial supremacy. the merchants of rhodes framed admirable laws, especially for business affairs, and many of these were incorporated in the roman code. rhodes was celebrated for art. no less than three thousand statues adorned the streets and public buildings. it was also a favorite place of education for promising orators and writers. during roman days many eminent men, cicero and julius caesar among them, studied oratory at rhodes. . the hellenistic age hellenistic literature these splendid cities in the orient were the centers of much literary activity. their inhabitants, whether hellenic or "barbarian," used greek as a common language. during this period greek literature took on a cosmopolitan character. it no longer centered in athens. writers found their audiences in all lands where greeks had settled. at the same time literature became more and more an affair of the study. the authors were usually professional bookmen writing for a bookish public. they produced many works of literary criticism, prepared excellent grammars and dictionaries, but wrote very little poetry or prose of enduring value. the museum at alexandria the hellenistic age was distinguished as an age of learning. particularly was this true at alexandria, where the museum, founded by the first macedonian king of egypt, became a real university. it contained galleries of art, an astronomical observatory, and even zoological and botanical gardens. the museum formed a resort for men of learning, who had the leisure necessary for scholarly research. the beautiful gardens, with their shady walks, statues, and fountains, were the haunt of thousands of students whom the fame of alexandria attracted from all parts of the civilized world. the alexandrian library in addition to the museum there was a splendid library, which at one time contained over five hundred thousand manuscripts--almost everything that had been written in antiquity. the chief librarian ransacked private collections and purchased all the books he could find. every book that entered egypt was brought to the library, where slaves transcribed the manuscript and gave a copy to the owner in place of the original. before this time the manuscripts of celebrated works were often scarce and always in danger of being lost. henceforth it was known where to look for them. [illustration: laocoon and his children (vatican museum rome) a product of the art school of rhodes (about b.c.). the statue represents the punishment inflicted on laocoon a trojan priest together with his two sons. a pair of large serpents sent by the offended gods have seized the unhappy victims.] [illustration: victory of samothrace (louvre, paris) commemorates a naval battle fought in b.c. the statue, which is considerably above life-size, stood on a pedestal having the form of a ship's prow. the goddess of victory was probably represented holding a trumpet to her lips with her right hand. the fresh ocean breeze has blown her garments back into tumultuous folds.] scientific discoveries the hellenistic age was remarkable for the rapid advance of scientific knowledge. most of the mathematical works of the greeks date from this epoch. euclid wrote a treatise on geometry which still holds its place in the schools. archimedes of syracuse, who had once studied at alexandria, made many discoveries in engineering. a water screw of his device is still in use. he has the credit for finding out the laws of the lever. "give me a fulcrum on which to rest," he said, "and i will move the earth." the hellenistic scholars also made remarkable progress in medicine. the medical school of alexandria was well equipped with charts, models, and dissecting rooms for the study of the human body. during the second century of our era all the medical knowledge of antiquity was gathered up in the writings of galen (born about a.d.). for more than a thousand years galen of pergamum remained the supreme authority in medicine. ancient and modern science compared in scientific work it seems as if the greeks had done almost all that could be accomplished by sheer brain power aided only by rude instruments. they had no real telescopes or microscopes, no mariner's compass or chronometer, and no very delicate balances. without such inventions the greeks could hardly proceed much farther with their researches. modern scientists are perhaps no better thinkers than were those of antiquity, but they have infinitely better apparatus and can make careful experiments where the greeks had to rely on shrewd guesses. extension of geographical knowledge during the hellenistic age men began to gain more accurate ideas regarding the shape and size of the habitable globe. such events as the expedition of the "ten thousand" [ ] and alexander's conquests in central asia and india brought new information about the countries and peoples of the orient. during alexander's lifetime a greek named pytheas, starting from massilia, [ ] made an adventurous voyage along the shores of spain and gaul and spent some time in britain. he was probably the first greek to visit that island. eratosthenes, about - b.c. all this new knowledge of east and west was soon gathered together by eratosthenes, the learned librarian of alexandria. he was the founder of scientific geography. before his time some students had already concluded that the earth is spherical and not flat, as had been taught in the homeric poems. [ ] guesses had even been made of the size of the earth. eratosthenes by careful measurements came within a few thousand miles of its actual circumference. having estimated the size of the earth, eratosthenes went on to determine how large was its habitable area. he reached the conclusion that the distance from the strait of gibraltar to the east of india was about one-third of the earth's circumference. the remaining two-thirds, he thought, was covered by the sea. and with what seems a prophecy he remarked that, if it was not for the vast extent of the atlantic ocean, one might almost sail from spain to india along the same parallel of latitude. [illustration: progress of geographical knowledge in antiquity map, the world according to eratosthenes, b.c. map, the world according to ptolemy, a.d.] ptolemy the next two centuries after eratosthenes saw the spread of roman rule over greeks and carthaginians in the mediterranean and over the barbarous inhabitants of gaul, britain, and germany. the new knowledge thus gained was summed up in the greek _geography_ by ptolemy [ ] of alexandria. his famous map shows how near he came to the real outlines both of europe and asia. the ptolemaic system ptolemy was likewise an eminent astronomer. he believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun, planets, and fixed stars all revolved around it. this ptolemaic system was not overthrown until the grand discovery of copernicus in the sixteenth century of our era. . the graeco-oriental world the new luxury the hellenistic age was characterized by a general increase in wealth. the old greeks and macedonians, as a rule, had been content to live plainly. now kings, nobles, and rich men began to build splendid palaces and to fill them with the products of ancient art--marbles from asia minor, vases from athens, italian bronzes, and babylonian tapestries. they kept up great households with endless lords in waiting, ladies of honor, pages, guards, and servants. soft couches and clothes of delicate fabric replaced the simple coverlets and coarse cloaks of an earlier time. they possessed rich carpets and hangings, splendid armor and jewelry, and gold and silver vessels for the table. the greeks thus began to imitate the luxurious lives of persian nobles. the sea route to india these new luxuries flowed in from all parts of the ancient world. many came from the far east in consequence of the rediscovery of the sea route to india, by alexander's admiral, nearchus. [ ] the voyage of nearchus was one of the most important results of alexander's eastern conquests. it established the fact, which had long been forgotten, that one could reach india by a water route much shorter and safer than the caravan roads through central asia. [ ] somewhat later a greek sailor, named harpalus, found that by using the monsoons, the periodic winds which blow over the indian ocean, he could sail direct from arabia to india without laboriously following the coast. the greeks, in consequence, gave his name to the monsoons. oriental influence on the greeks all this sudden increase of wealth, all the thousand new enjoyments with which life was now adorned and enriched, did not work wholly for good. with luxury there went, as always, laxity in morals. contact with the vice and effeminacy of the east tended to lessen the manly vigor of the greeks, both in asia and in europe. hellas became corrupt, and she in turn corrupted rome. greek influence on the orient yet the most interesting, as well as the most important, feature of the age is the diffusion of hellenic culture--the "hellenizing" of the orient. it was, indeed, a changed world in which men were now living. greek cities, founded by alexander and his successors, stretched from the nile to the indus, dotted the shores of the black sea and caspian, and arose amid the wilds of central asia. the greek language, once the tongue of a petty people, grew to be a universal language of culture, spoken even by "barbarian" lips. and the art, the science, the literature, the principles of politics and philosophy, developed in isolation by the greek mind, henceforth became the heritage of many nations. the new cosmopolitanism thus, in the period after alexander the long struggle between east and west reached a peaceful conclusion. the distinction between greek and barbarian gradually faded away, and the ancient world became ever more unified in sympathies and aspirations. it was this mingled civilization of orient and occident with which the romans were now to come in contact, as they pushed their conquering arms beyond italy into the eastern mediterranean. [illustration: oriental, greek, and roman coins . lydian coin of about b.c.; the material is electrum, a compound of gold and silver. . gold _daric_; a persian coin worth about $ . . hebrew silver _shekel_. . athenian silver _tetradrachm_ showing athena, her olive branch and sacred owl. . roman bronze _as_ ( cents) of about b.c.; the symbols are the head of janus and the prow of a ship. . bronze _sestertius_ ( cents) struck in nero's reign; the emperor, who carries a spear, is followed by a second horseman bearing a banner. . silver _denarius_ ( cents) of about b.c.; it shows a bust of roma and three citizens voting. . gold _solidus_ ($ ) of honorius about a.d.; the emperor wears a diadem and carries a scepter.] studies . on an outline map indicate the routes of alexander, marking the principal battle fields and the most important cities founded by him. note, also, the voyage of nearchus. . on an outline map indicate the principal hellenistic kingdoms about b.c. . give the proper dates for (a) accession of alexander; (b) battle of issus; (c) battle of arbela; and (d) death of alexander. . in what sense was chaeronea a decisive battle? . how is it true that the expedition of the ten thousand forms "an epilogue to the invasion of xerxes and a prologue to the conquests of alexander"? . how much can you see and describe in the alexander mosaic (illustration, page )? . compare alexander's invasion of persia with the invasion of greece by xerxes. . distinguish between the immediate and the ultimate results of alexander's conquests. . comment on the following statement: "no single personality, excepting the carpenter's son of nazareth, has done so much to make the world we live in what it is as alexander of macedon." . how did the macedonian empire compare in size with that of persia? with that of assyria? . what modern countries are included within the macedonian empire under alexander? . how did the founding of the hellenistic cities continue the earlier colonial expansion of greece? . why were the hellenistic cities the real "backbone" of hellenism? . why do great cities rarely develop without the aid of commerce? were all the great cities in alexander's empire of commercial importance? . show how alexandria has always been one of the meeting points between orient and occident. . how did the opening of the suez canal in a.d. affect the commercial importance of alexandria? . name some of the great scientists of the alexandrian age. . what were their contributions to knowledge? . using the maps on pages and , trace the growth of geographical knowledge from homer's time to that of ptolemy. . what parts of the world are most correctly outlined on ptolemy's map? . "the seed-ground of european civilization is neither greece nor the orient, but a world joined of the two." comment on this statement. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xii, "demosthenes and the struggle against philip"; chapter xiii, "exploits of alexander the great." [ ] philippi became noted afterwards as the first city in europe where christianity was preached. see _acts_, xvi, . [ ] see the map between pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see john dryden's splendid ode, _alexander's feast_. [ ] see pages and . [ ] see pages - . [ ] arrian, _anabasis of alexander_, vii, . [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] the term "hellenic" refers to purely greek culture; the term "hellenistic," to greek culture as modified by contact with oriental life and customs. [ ] see page . [ ] the lighthouse on the island of pharos was considered one of the "seven wonders" of the ancient world. the others were the hanging gardens and walls of babylon, the pyramids, the colossus of rhodes, the temple of artemis at ephesus, the mausoleum at halicarnassus, and the statue of zeus at olympia. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] not to be confused with king ptolemy (page ). [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter vii the rise of rome to b.c. [ ] . italy and sicily the apennines the shape of italy is determined by the course of the apennines. branching off from the alps at the gulf of genoa, these mountains cross the peninsula in an easterly direction, almost to the adriatic. here they turn sharply to the southeast and follow the coast for a considerable distance. the plains of central italy, in consequence, are all on the western slope of the apennines. in the lower part of the peninsula the range swerves suddenly to the southwest, so that the level land is there on the eastern side of the mountains. near the southern extremity of italy the apennines separate into two branches, which penetrate the "heel and toe" of the peninsula. divisions of italy italy may be conveniently divided into a northern, a central, and a southern section. these divisions, however, are determined by the direction of the mountains and not, as in greece, chiefly by inlets of the sea. northern italy contains the important region known in ancient times as cisalpine gaul. this is a perfectly level plain two hundred miles in length, watered by the po (_padus_), which the romans called the "king of rivers," because of its length and many tributary streams. central italy, lying south of the apennines, includes seven districts, of which the three on the western coast--etruria, latium, and campania--were most conspicuous in ancient history. southern italy, because of its warm climate and deeply indented coast, early attracted many greek colonists. their colonies here came to be known as magna graecia, or great greece. [illustration: map, ancient italy and sicily.] sicily the triangular-shaped island of sicily is separated from italy by the strait of messina, a channel which, at the narrowest part, is only two miles wide. at one time sicily must have been joined to the mainland. its mountains, which rise at their highest point in the majestic volcano of aetna, nearly eleven thousand feet above sea level, are a continuation of those of italy. the greater part of sicily is remarkably productive, containing rich grainfields and hillsides green with the olive and the vine. lying in the center of the mediterranean and in the direct route of merchants and colonists from every direction, sicily has always been a meeting place of nations. in antiquity greeks, carthaginians, and romans contended for the possession of this beautiful island. influence of geographical conditions on italian history, as on that of greece, [ ] we are able to trace the profound influence of geographical conditions. in the first place, the peninsula of italy is not cut up by a tangle of mountains into many small districts. hence it was easier for the italians, than for the greeks, to establish one large and united state. in the second place, italy, which has few good harbors but possesses fine mountain pastures and rich lowland plains, was better adapted to cattle raising and agriculture than was greece. the italian peoples, in consequence, instead of putting to sea, remained a conservative, home-staying folk, who were slow to adopt the customs of other nations. finally, the location of italy, with its best harbors and most numerous islands on the western coast, brought that country into closer touch with gaul, spain, and northwestern africa than with greece and the orient. italy fronted the barbarous west. . the peoples of italy neighbors of the romans long before the romans built their city by the tiber every part of italy had become the home of wandering peoples, attracted by the mild climate and rich soil of this favored land. two of these peoples were neighbors of the romans--etruscans on the north and greeks on the south. the etruscans the ancestors of the historic etruscans were probably aegean sea-rovers who settled in the italian peninsula before the beginning of the eighth century b.c. the immigrants mingled with the natives and by conquest and colonization founded a strong power in the country to which they gave their name--etruria. at one time the etruscans appear to have ruled over campania and also in the po valley as far as the alps. their colonies occupied the shores of sardinia and corsica. their fleets swept the tyrrhenian sea. the etruscans for several centuries were the leading nation in italy. [illustration: a graeco-etruscan chariot (metropolitan museum of art, new york) the chariot was discovered in a.d. in an etruscan cemetery near rome. it dates from perhaps b.c. almost every part of the vehicle is covered with thin plates of bronze, elaborately decorated. the wheels are only two feet in diameter. since the chariot is too small and delicate for use in warfare, we may believe it to have been intended for ceremonial purposes only.] etruscan civilization these etruscans, like the hittites of asia minor, [ ] are a mysterious race. no one as yet has been able to read their language, which is quite unlike any indo-european tongue. the words, however, are written in an alphabet borrowed from greek settlers in italy. many other civilizing arts besides the alphabet came to the etruscans from abroad. babylonia gave to them the principle of the round arch and the practice of divination. [ ] etruscan graves contain egyptian seals adorned with hieroglyphics and beautiful vases bearing designs from greek mythology. the etruscans were skillful workers in iron, bronze, and gold. they built their cities with massive walls, arched gates, paved streets, and underground drains. in the course of time a great part of this etruscan civilization was absorbed in that of rome. [illustration: an etruscan arch the italian city of volterra still preserves in the porta dell' arco an interesting relic of etruscan times. the archway, one of the original gates of the ancient town, is about twenty feet in height and twelve feet in width. on the keystone and imposts are three curious heads, probably representing the guardian deities of the place.] [illustration: characters of the etruscan alphabet about eight thousand etruscan inscriptions are known, almost all being short epitaphs on gravestones. in a.d. an etruscan manuscript which had been used to pack an egyptian mummy, was published, but the language could not be deciphered.] the greeks as teachers of the romans the etruscans were followed by the greeks. about the middle of the eighth century b.c. hellenic colonies began to occupy the coasts of sicily and southern italy. the earliest greek settlement was cumae, near the bay of naples. [ ] it was a city as old as rome itself, and a center from which greek culture, including the greek alphabet, spread to latium. a glance at the map [ ] shows that the chief greek colonies were all on or near the sea, from campania to the gulf of tarentum. north of the "heel" of italy extends an almost harborless coast, where nothing tempted the greeks to settle. north of campania, again, they found the good harbors already occupied by the etruscans. the greeks, in consequence, were never able to make italy a completely hellenic land. room was left for the native italian peoples, under the leadership of rome, to build up their own power in the peninsula. the italian highlanders the italians were an indo-european people who spoke a language closely related, on the one side, to greek and, on the other side, to the celtic tongues of western europe. they entered italy through the alpine passes, long before the dawn of history, and gradually pushed southward until they occupied the interior of the peninsula. at the beginning of historic times they had separated into two main branches. the eastern and central parts of italy formed the home of the highlanders, grouped in various tribes. among them were the umbrians in the northeast, the sabines in the upper valley of the tiber, and the samnites in the south. still other italian peoples occupied the peninsula as far as magna graecia. the latins the western italians were known as latins. they dwelt in latium, the "flat land" extending south of the tiber between the apennines and the tyrrhenian sea. residence in the lowlands, where they bordered on the etruscans, helped to make the latins a civilized people. their village communities grew into larger settlements, until the whole of latium became filled with a number of independent city-states. the ties of kinship and the necessity of defense against etruscan and sabine foes bound them together. at a very early period they had united in the latin league, under the headship of alba longa. another city in this league was rome. . the romans founding of rome rome sprang from a settlement of latin shepherds, farmers, and traders on the palatine mount. [ ] this was the central eminence in a group of low hills south of the tiber, about fifteen miles by water from the river's mouth. opposite the palatine community there arose on the quirinal hill another settlement, which seems to have been an outpost of the sabines. after much hard fighting the rival hill towns united on equal terms into one state. the low marshy land between the palatine and quirinal became the forum, or common market place, and the steep rock, known as the capitoline, formed the common citadel. [ ] [illustration: map, vicinity of rome.] union of the seven hills the union of the palatine and quirinal settlements greatly increased the area and population of the roman city. in course of time settlements were made on the neighboring hills and these, too, cast in their lot with rome. then a fortification, the so-called "wall of servius," was built to bring them all within the boundaries of the enlarged community. rome came into existence as the city of the seven hills. myths of early rome long after the foundation of rome, when that city had grown rich and powerful, her poets and historians delighted to relate the many myths which clustered about the earlier stages of her career. according to these myths rome began as a colony of alba longa, the capital of latium. the founder of this city was ascanius, son of the trojan prince aeneas, who had escaped from troy on its capture by the greeks and after long wanderings had reached the coast of italy. many generations afterwards, when numitor sat on the throne of alba longa, his younger brother, amulius, plotted against him and drove him into exile. he had numitor's son put to death, and forced the daughter, rhea silvia, to take the vows of a vestal virgin. [ ] [illustration: an early roman coin shows the twins, romulus and remus as infants suckled by a wolf.] romulus and remus but rhea silvia, beloved by mars, the god of war, gave birth to twin boys of more than human size and beauty. the wicked amulius ordered the children to be set adrift in a basket on the tiber. heaven, however, guarded these offspring of a god; the river cast them ashore near mount palatine, and a she-wolf came and nursed them. there they were discovered by a shepherd, who reared them in his own household. when the twins, romulus and remus, reached manhood, they killed amulius and restored their grandfather to his kingdom. with other young men from alba longa, they then set forth to build a new city on the palatine, where they had been rescued. as they scanned the sky to learn the will of the gods, six vultures, birds of jupiter, appeared to remus; but twelve were seen by romulus. so romulus marked out the boundary of the city on the palatine, and remus, who in derision leaped over the half-finished wall, he slew in anger. romulus thus became the sole founder of rome and its first king. successors of romulus romulus was followed by a sabine, numa pompilius, who taught the romans the arts of peace and the worship of the gods. another king destroyed alba longa and brought the inhabitants to rome. the last of rome's seven kings was an etruscan named tarquin the proud. his tyranny finally provoked an uprising, and rome became a republic. significance of the myths these famous tales have become a part of the world's literature and still possess value to the student. they show us what the romans themselves believed about the foundation and early fortunes of their city. sometimes they refer to what seem to be facts, such as the first settlement on the palatine, the union with the sabines on the quirinal, the conquest of alba longa, and etruscan rule at rome. the myths also contain so many references to customs and beliefs that they are a great help in understanding the social life and religion of the early romans. . early roman society the romans an agricultural people agriculture was the chief occupation of the roman people. "when our forefathers," said an ancient writer, "would praise a worthy man, they praised him as a good farmer and a good landlord; and they believed that an praise could go no further." [ ] roman farmers raised large crops of grain--the staple product of ancient italy. cattle-breeding, also, must have been an important pursuit, since in early times prices were estimated in oxen and sheep. [ ] [illustration: a roman farmer's calendar a marble cube, two feet high, of about - b.c. the month of may, xxxi days, the nones fall on the th day. the day has - / hours. the night has - / hours the sun is in the sign of taurus the month is under the protection of apollo. the corn is weeded the sheep are shorn the wool is washed young steers are put under the yoke. the vetch of the meadows is cut. the lustration of the crops is made. sacrifices to mercury and flora.] economic conditions in such a community of peasants no great inequalities of wealth existed. few citizens were very rich; few were very poor. the members of each household made their own clothing from flax or wool, and fashioned out of wood and clay what utensils were needed for their simple life. for a long time the romans had no coined money whatever. when copper came into use as currency, it passed from hand to hand in shapeless lumps that required frequent weighing. it was not until the fourth century that a regular coinage began. [ ] this use of copper as money indicates that gold and silver were rare among the romans, and luxury almost unknown. moral character of the early romans hard-working, god-fearing peasants are likely to lead clean and sober lives. this was certainly true of the early romans. they were a manly breed, abstemious in food and drink, iron-willed, vigorous, and strong. deep down in the roman's heart was the proud conviction that rome should rule over all her neighbors. for this he freely shed his blood; for this he bore hardship, however severe, without complaint. before everything else, he was a dutiful citizen and a true patriot. such were the sturdy men who on their farms in latium formed the backbone of the roman state. their character has set its mark on history for all time. the roman family the family formed the unit of roman society. its most marked feature was the unlimited authority of the father. in his house he reigned an absolute king. his wife had no legal rights: he could sell her into slavery or divorce her at will. nevertheless, no ancient people honored women more highly than the romans. a roman wife was the mistress of the home, as her husband was its master. though her education was not carried far, we often find the roman matron taking a lively interest in affairs of state, and aiding her husband both in politics and business. it was the women, as well as the men, who helped to make rome great among the nations. over his unmarried daughters and his sons, the roman father ruled as supreme as over his wife. he brought up his children to be sober, silent, modest in their bearing, and, above all, obedient. their misdeeds he might punish with penalties as severe as banishment, slavery, or death. as head of the family he could claim all their earnings; everything they had was his. the father's great authority ceased only with his death. then his sons, in turn, became lords over their families. [illustration: cinerary urns in terra cotta (vatican museum, rome) these receptacles for the ashes of the dead were found in an old cemetery at alba longa they show two forms of the primitive roman hut.] . roman religion worship of ancestors the romans, like the ancient greeks and the modern chinese, paid special veneration to the souls of the dead. these were known by the flattering name of _manes_, the "pure" or "good ones." the romans always regarded the _manes_ as members of the household to which they had belonged on earth. the living and the dead were thus bound together by the closest ties. the idea of the family triumphed even over the grave. the household deities the ancient roman house had only one large room, the _atrium_, where all members of the family lived together. it was entered by a single door, which was sacred to the god janus. on the hearth, opposite the doorway, the housewife prepared the meals. the fire that ever blazed upon it gave warmth and nourishment to the inmates. here dwelt vesta, the spirit of the kindling flame. the cupboard where the food was kept came under the charge of the penates, who blessed the family store. the house as a whole had its protecting spirits, called lares. worship of the household deities the daily worship of these deities took place at the family meal. the table would be placed at the side of the hearth, and when the father and his family sat down to it, a little food would be thrown into the flames and a portion of wine poured out, as an offering to the gods. the images of the lares and penates would also be fetched from the shrine and placed on the table in token of their presence at the meal. this religion of the family lasted with little change throughout the entire period of roman history. [illustration: a vestal virgin portrait from a statue discovered in the ruins of the temple of vesta in the roman forum.] janus and vesta the early roman state was only an enlarged family, and hence the religion of the state was modeled after that of the family. some of the divinities, such as janus and vesta, were taken over with little change from the domestic worship. the entrance to the forum formed a shrine of janus, [ ] which numa himself was said to have built. the door, or gateway, stood open in time of war, but shut when rome was at peace. at the south end of the forum stood the round temple of vesta, containing the sacred hearth of the city. here vesta was served by six virgins of free birth, whose duty it was to keep the fire always blazing on the altar. if by accident the fire went out, it must be relighted from a "pure flame," either by striking a spark with flint or by rubbing together two dry sticks. such methods of kindling fire were those familiar to the prehistoric romans. [illustration: suovetaurilia (louvre, paris) the relief pictures an ancient italian sacrifice of a bull, a ram and a boar offered to mars to secure purification from sin. note the sacred laurel trees, the two altars, and the officiating magistrate whose head is covered with the toga. he is sprinkling incense from a box held by an attendant. another attendant carries a ewer with the libation. in the rear is the sacrificer with his ax.] jupiter and mars the romans worshiped various gods connected with their lives as shepherds, farmers, and warriors. the chief divinity was jupiter, who ruled the heavens and sent rain and sunshine to nourish the crops. the war god mars reflected the military character of the romans. his sacred animal was the fierce, cruel wolf, his symbols were spears and shields; his altar was the campus martius (field of mars) outside the city walls, where the army assembled in battle array. march, the first month of the old roman year, was named in his honor. some other gods were borrowed from the greeks, together with many of the beautiful greek myths. divination the romans took many precautions, before beginning any enterprise, to find out what was the will of the gods and how their favor might first be gained. they did not have oracles, but they paid much attention to omens of all sorts. a sudden flash of lightning, an eclipse of the sun, a blazing comet, or an earthquake shock was an omen which awakened superstitious fear. it indicated the disapproval of the gods. from the etruscans the romans learned to divine the future by examining the entrails of animal victims. they also borrowed from their northern neighbors the practice of looking for signs in the number, flight, and action of birds. to consult such signs was called "taking the auspices." [ ] [illustration: an etruscan augur wall painting from a tomb at tarquinii in etruria.] [illustration: coop with sacred chickens the relief represents the chickens in the act of feeding. the most favorable omen was secured when the fowls greedily picked up more of the corn than they could swallow at one time. their refusal to eat at all was an omen of disaster.] priesthoods roman priests, who conducted the state religion, did not form a separate class, as in some oriental countries. they were chosen, like other magistrates, from the general body of citizens. a board, or "college," of six priests had charge of the public auspices. another board, that of the pontiffs, regulated the calendar, kept the public annals, and regulated weights and measures. they were experts in all matters of religious ceremonial and hence were very important officials. [ ] importance of the state religion this old roman faith was something very different from what we understand by religion. it had little direct influence on morality. it did not promise rewards or threaten punishments in a future world. roman religion busied itself with the everyday life of man. just as the household was bound together by the tie of common worship, so all the citizens were united in a common reverence for the deities which guarded the state. the religion of rome made and held together a nation. . the roman city-state early roman government we find in early rome, as in homeric greece, [ ] a city-state with its king, council, and assembly. the king was the father of his people, having over them the same absolute authority that the house-father held within the family. the king was assisted by a council of elders, or senate (latin _senes_, "old men"). its members were chosen by the king and held office for life. the most influential heads of families belonged to the senate. the common people at first took little part in the government, for it was only on rare occasions that the king summoned them to deliberate with him in an assembly. the republican consuls toward the close of the sixth century, as we have already learned, [ ] the ancient monarchy disappeared from rome. in place of the lifelong king two magistrates, named consuls, were elected every year. each consul had to share his honor and authority with a colleague who enjoyed the same power as himself. unless both agreed, there could be no action. like the spartan kings, [ ] the consuls served as checks, the one on the other. neither could safely use his position to aim at unlawful rule. the dictator this divided power of the consuls might work very well in times of peace. during dangerous wars or insurrections it was likely to prove disastrous. a remedy was found in the temporary revival of the old kingship under a new name. when occasion required, one of the consuls, on the advice of the senate, appointed a dictator. the consuls then gave up their authority and the people put their property and lives entirely at the dictator's disposal. during his term of office, which could not exceed six months, the state was under martial law. throughout roman history there were many occasions when a dictatorship was created to meet a sudden emergency. patricians and plebeians the roman state, during the regal age, seems to have been divided between an aristocracy and a commons. the nobles were called patricians, [ ] and the common people were known as plebeians. [ ] the patricians occupied a privileged position, since they alone sat in the senate and served as priests, judges, and magistrates. in fact, they controlled society, and the common people found themselves excluded from much of the religious, legal, and political life of the roman city. under these circumstances it was natural for the plebeians to agitate against the patrician monopoly of government. the struggle between the two orders of society lasted about two centuries. the tribunes a few years after the establishment of the republic the plebeians compelled the patricians to allow them to have officers of their own, called tribunes, as a means of protection. there were ten tribunes, elected annually by the plebeians. any tribune could veto, that is, forbid, the act of a magistrate which seemed to bear harshly on a citizen. to make sure that a tribune's orders would be respected, his person was made sacred and a solemn curse was pronounced upon the man who injured him or interrupted him in the performance of his duties. the tribune's authority, however, extended only within the city and a mile beyond its walls. he was quite powerless against the consul in the field. the twelve tables, b.c. we next find the plebeians struggling for equality before the law. just as in ancient athens, [ ] the early roman laws had never been written down or published. about half a century after the plebeians had obtained the tribunes, they forced the patricians to give them written laws. a board of ten men, known as decemvirs, was appointed to frame a legal code, binding equally on both patricians and plebeians. the story goes that this commission studied the legislation of the greek states of southern italy, and even went to athens to examine some of solon's laws which were still in force. the laws framed by the decemvirs were engraved on twelve bronze tablets and set up in the forum. a few sentences from this famous code have come down to us in rude, unpolished latin. they mark the beginning of what was to be rome's greatest gift to civilization--her legal system. [illustration: curule chair and fasces a consul sat on the curule chair. the _fasces_ (axes in a bundle of rods) symbolized his power to flog and behead offenders.] final triumph of the plebeians the hardest task of the plebeians was to secure the right of holding the great offices of state. eventually, however, they gained entrance to senate and became eligible to the consulship and other magistracies and to the priesthoods. by the middle of the third century the plebeians and patricians, equal before the law and with equal privileges, formed one compact body of citizens in the roman state. rome as a republic the roman state called itself a republic--_respublica_--"a thing of the people." roman citizens made the laws and elected public officers. though the people in their gatherings had now become supreme, their power was really much limited by the fact that very little discussion of a proposed measure was allowed. this formed a striking contrast to the vigorous debating which went on in the athenian assembly. [ ] roman citizens could not frame, criticize, or amend public measures; they could only vote "yes" or "no" to proposals made to them by a magistrate. magistrates rome had many magistrates. besides the two consuls and an occasional dictator there were the ten tribunes, the praetors, who served as judges, and the quaestors, or keepers of the treasury. the two censors were also very important officers. it was their business to make an enumeration or census of the citizens and to assess property for taxation. the censors almost always were reverend seniors who had held the consulship and enjoyed a reputation for justice and wisdom. their office grew steadily in importance, especially after the censors began to exercise an oversight of the private life of the romans. they could expel a senator from his seat for immorality and could deprive any citizen of his vote. the word "censorious," meaning faultfinding, is derived from the name of these ancient officials. membership of the senate the authority of the magistrates was much limited by the senate. this body contained about three hundred members, who held their seats generally for life. when vacancies occurred, they were filled, as a rule, by those who had previously held one or more of the higher magistracies. there sat in the senate every man who, as statesman, general, or diplomatist, had served his country well. powers exercised by the senate the senate furnished an admirable school for debate. any senator could speak as long and as often as he chose. the opportunities for discussion were numerous, for all weighty matters came before this august assemblage. it managed finances and public works. it looked after the state religion. it declared and conducted war, received ambassadors from foreign countries, made alliances, and administered conquered territories. the senate formed the real governing body of the republic. "an assembly of kings" the senate proved not unworthy of its high position. for two centuries, while rome was winning dominion over italy and the mediterranean, that body held the wisest and noblest romans of the time. to these men office meant a public trust--an opportunity to serve their country with distinction and honor. the senate, in its best days, was a splendid example of the foresight, energy, and wisdom of republican rome. an admiring foreigner called it "an assembly of kings." [ ] [illustration: a scene in sicily taormina, on the sicilian coast, thirty one miles southwest of messina. the ruins are those of a theater, founded by the greeks, but much altered in roman times. the view of aetna from this site is especially fine.] [illustration: bay of naples and vesuvius] . expansion of rome over italy, (?)- b.c. rome supreme in latium, b.c. the first centuries of the republic were filled with constant warfare. the romans needed all their skill, bravery, and patriotism to keep back the etruscans on the north, and the wild tribes of the apennines. about b.c. the state was brought near to destruction by an invasion of the gauls. [ ] these barbarians, whose huge bulk and enormous weapons struck terror to the hearts of their adversaries, poured through the alpine passes and ravaged far and wide. at the river allia, only a few miles from rome, they annihilated a roman army and then captured and burned the city itself. but the gallic tide receded as swiftly as it had come, and rome rose from her ashes mightier than ever. half a century after the gallic invasion she was able to subdue her former allies, the latins, and to destroy their league. the latin war, as it is called, ended in b.c., the year of the fateful battle of chaeronea in greece. [ ] by this time rome ruled in latium and southern etruria and had begun to extend her sway over campania. there remained only one italian people to contest with her the supremacy of the peninsula--the samnites. rome supreme in central itlay, b.c. the samnites were the most vigorous and warlike race of central italy. while the romans were winning their way in latium, the samnites were also entering on a career of conquest. they coveted the fertile campanian plain with its luxurious cities, cumae and neapolis, which the greeks had founded. the romans had also fixed their eyes on the same region, and so a contest between the two peoples became inevitable. in numbers, courage, and military skill romans and samnites were well matched. nearly half a century of hard fighting was required before rome gained the upper hand. the close of the samnite wars found rome supreme in central italy. her authority was now recognized from the upper apennines to the foot of the peninsula. rome supreme in southern italy, b.c. the wealthy cities of southern italy offered a tempting prize to roman greed. before long many of them received roman garrisons and accepted the rule of the great latin republic. tarentum, [ ] however, the most important of the greek colonies, held jealously to her independence. unable single-handed to face the romans, tarentum turned to greece for aid. she called on pyrrhus, king of epirus, the finest soldier of his age. pyrrhus led twenty-five thousand mercenary soldiers into italy, an army almost as large as alexander's. the romans could not break the bristling ranks of the greek phalanx, and they shrank back in terror before the huge war elephants which pyrrhus had brought with him. the invader won the first battle, but lost many of his best troops. he then offered peace on condition that the romans should give up their possessions in southern italy. the senate returned the proud reply that rome would not treat with the enemy while he stood on italian soil. a second battle was so bitterly contested that pyrrhus declared, "another such victory, and i am lost." [ ] weary of the struggle, pyrrhus now crossed over to sicily to aid his countrymen against the carthaginians. the rapid progress of the roman arms called him back, only to meet a severe defeat. pyrrhus then withdrew in disgust to greece; tarentum fell; and rome established her rule over southern italy. political situation in b.c. the triumph over pyrrhus and the conquest of magna graecia mark a decisive moment in the history of rome. had pyrrhus won italy, as well as asia and egypt, might have become a greek land, ruled by hellenistic kings. now it was clear that rome, having met the invader so bravely, was to remain supreme in the italian peninsula. she was the undisputed mistress of italy from the strait of messina northward to the arnus and the rubicon. etruscans, latins, samnites, and greeks acknowledged her sway. the central city of the peninsula had become the center of a united italy. [ ] [illustration: map, the expansion of roman dominions in italy, - b.c.] . italy under roman rule the roman citizens italy did not form a single state under roman rule. about one-third of italy composed the strictly roman territory occupied by roman citizens. since ancient rome knew nothing of the great principle of representative government, [ ] it was necessary that citizens who wished to vote or to stand for office should visit in person the capital city. few men, of course, would journey many miles to rome in order to exercise their political rights. the elections, moreover, were not all held on one day, as with us, but consuls, praetors, and other magistrates were chosen on different days, while meetings of the assemblies might be held at any time of the year. a country peasant who really tried to fulfill his duties as a citizen would have had little time for anything else. in practice, therefore, the city populace at rome had the controlling voice in ordinary legislation. the romans were never able to remedy this grave defect in their political system. we shall see later what evils government without representation brought in its train. the italians over against this body of roman citizens were the italian peoples. rome was not yet ready to grant them citizenship, but she did not treat them as complete subjects. the italians were called the "allies and friends" of the roman people. they lost the right of declaring war on one another, of making treaties, and of coining money. rome otherwise allowed them to govern themselves, never calling on them for tribute and only requiring that they should furnish soldiers for the roman army in time of war. these allies occupied a large part of the italian peninsula. the latin colonies the romans very early began to establish what were called latin colonies [ ] in various parts of italy. the colonists were usually veteran soldiers or poor plebeians colonies who wanted farms of their own. when the list of colonists was made up, they all marched forth in military array to lake possession of their new homes and build their city. the latin colonies were really offshoots of rome and hence were always faithful to her interests. scattered everywhere in italy they formed so many permanent camps or garrisons to keep the conquered peoples in subjection. at the same time they helped mightily in spreading the latin language, law, and civilization throughout the peninsula. roman roads all the colonies were united with one another and with rome by an extensive system of roads. the first great road, called the appian way, was made during the period of the samnite wars. it united the city of rome with capua and secured the hold of rome on campania. the appian way was afterwards carried across the apennines to brundisium on the adriatic, whence travelers embarked for the coast of greece. other trunk lines were soon built in italy, and from them a network of smaller highways was extended to every part of the peninsula. [illustration: map, colonies and military roads in italy] [illustration: the appian way a view in the neighborhood of rome. the ancient construction of the road and its massive paving blocks of lava have been laid bare by modern excavations. the width of the roadway proper was only fifteen feet. the arches, seen in the background, belong to the aqueduct built by the emperor claudius in a.d.] uses of roman roads roman roads had a military origin. like the old persian roads [ ] they were intended to facilitate the rapid dispatch of troops, supplies, and official messages into every corner of italy. hence the roads ran, as much as possible, in straight lines and on easy grades. nothing was allowed to obstruct their course. engineers cut through or tunneled the hills, bridged rivers and gorges, and spanned low, swampy lands with viaducts of stone. so carefully were these roads constructed that some stretches of them are still in good condition. these magnificent highways were free to the public. they naturally became avenues of trade and travel and so served to bring the italian peoples into close touch with rome. romanization of italy rome thus began in italy that wonderful process of romanization which she was to extend later to spain, gaul, and britain. she began to make, the italian peoples like herself in blood, speech, customs, and manners. more and more the italians, under rome's leadership, came to look upon themselves as one people--the people who wore the gown, or _toga_, as contrasted with the barbarous and trousers-wearing gauls. [illustration: a roman legionary from a monument of the imperial age. the soldier wears a metal helmet, a leather doublet with shoulder-pieces, a metal-plated belt, and a sword hanging from a strap thrown over the left shoulder. his left hand holds a large shield, his right, a heavy javelin.] . the roman army the legion while the romans were conquering italy, they were making many improvements in their army. all citizens between the ages of seventeen and forty-six were liable to active service. these men were mainly landowners--hardy, intelligent peasants--who knew how to fight and how to obey orders. an army in the field consisted of one or more legions. a legion included about three thousand heavy-armed footmen, twelve hundred light infantry, and three hundred horsemen. after the conquest of italy the states allied with rome had to furnish soldiers, chiefly archers and cavalry. these auxiliaries, as they were called, were at least as numerous as legionaries. the romans, in carrying on war, employed not only their citizens but also their subjects. method of fighting the legion offered a sharp contrast to the unwieldy phalanx. [ ] roman soldiers usually fought in an open order, with the heavy-armed infantry arranged in three lines: first, the younger men; next, the more experienced warriors; and lastly the veterans. a battle began with skirmishing by the light troops, which moved to the front and discharged their darts to harass the enemy. the companies of the first line next flung their javelins at a distance of from ten to twenty paces and then, wielding their terrible short swords, came at once to close quarters with the foe. it was like a volley of musketry followed by a fierce bayonet charge. if the attack proved unsuccessful, the wearied soldiers withdrew to the rear through the gaps in the line behind. the second line now marched forward to the attack; if it was repulsed, there was still the third line of steady veterans for the last and decisive blow. [illustration: a roman standard bearer (bonn museum) from a gravestone of the first century a.d. the standard consists of a spear crowned with a wreath, below which is a crossbar bearing pendant acorns then follow, in order, a metal disk, jupiter's eagle standing on a thunderbolt, a crescent moon, an amulet, and a large tassel.] fortified camps a very remarkable part of the roman military system consisted in the use of fortified camps. every time the army halted, if only for a single night, the legionaries intrenched themselves within a square inclosure. it was protected by a ditch, an earthen mound, and a palisade of stakes. this camp formed a little city with its streets, its four gates, a forum, and the headquarters of the general. behind the walls of such a fortress an army was always at liberty to accept or decline a battle. as a proverb said, the romans often conquered by "sitting still." discipline: rewards and honors roman soldiers lived under the strictest discipline. to their general they owed absolute, unquestioning obedience. he could condemn them to death without trial. the sentinel who slept on his watch, the legionary who disobeyed an order or threw away his arms on the field of battle, might be scourged with rods and then beheaded. the men were encouraged to deeds of valor by various marks of distinction, which the general presented to them in the presence of the entire army. the highest reward was the civic crown of oak leaves, granted to one who had saved the life of a fellow-soldier on the battle field. the triumph the state sometimes bestowed on a victorious general the honor of a triumph. this was a grand parade and procession in the city of rome. first came the magistrates and senators, wagons laden with booty, and captives in chains. then followed the conqueror himself, clad in a gorgeous robe and riding in a four-horse chariot. behind him marched the soldiers, who sang a triumphal hymn. the long procession passed through the streets to the forum and mounted the capitoline hill. there the general laid his laurel crown upon the knees of the statue of jupiter, as a thank offering for victory. meanwhile, the captives who had just appeared in the procession were strangled in the underground prison of the capitol. it was a day of mingled joy and tragedy. military genius of the romans the romans, it has been said, were sometimes vanquished in battle, but they were always victorious in war. with the short swords of her disciplined soldiers, her flexible legion, and her fortified camps, rome won dominion in italy and began the conquest of the world. studies . on an outline map indicate the roman dominions in b.c.; in b.c.; in b.c. . make a list of the roman magistrates mentioned in this chapter, and of the powers exercised by each. . give the meaning of our english words "patrician," "plebeian," "censor," "dictator," "tribune," "augury," "auspices," and "veto." . connect the proper events with the following dates: b.c.; b.c.; and b.c. . why have sicily, sardinia, and corsica been called the "suburbs of italy"? . "italy and greece may be described as standing back to back to each other." explain this statement. . what is the origin of our names of the two months, january and march? . compare the early roman with the early greek religion as to (a) likenesses; (b) differences. . why have the consuls been called "joint kings for one year"? . what do you understand by "martial law"? under what circumstances is it sometimes declared in the united states? . compare the position of the roman patricians with that of the athenian nobles before the legislation of draco and solon. . what officers in american cities perform some of the duties of the censors, praetors, and aediles? . in the roman and spartan constitutions contrast: (a) consuls and kings; (b) censors and ephors; and (c) the two senates. . compare the roman senate and the senate of the united states as to size, term of office of members, conditions of membership, procedure, functions, and importance. . how far can the phrase, "government of the people, by the people, for the people," be applied to the roman republic at this period? . what conditions made it easy for the romans to conquer magna graecia and difficult for them to subdue the samnites? . what is a "pyrrhic victory"? . compare the nature of roman rule over italy with that of athens over the delian league. . trace on the map, page , the appian and flaminian ways, noting some of the cities along the routes and the terminal points of each road. . explain: "all roads lead to rome." . contrast the legion and the phalanx as to arrangement, armament, and method of fighting. . "rome seems greater than her greatest men." comment on this statement. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xiv, "legends of early rome." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] naples, the ancient neapolis, was a colony of cumae. see page . [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] the romans believed that their city was founded in b.c., from which year all roman dates were reckoned. [ ] see the map, page . [ ] see page . [ ] cato, _de agricultura_, i. [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] since a door (_janua_) had two sides, janus, the door god, was represented with the curious double face which appears on roman coins (see the plate facing page ) the month of january in the julian calendar was named for him. [ ] latin _auspicium_, from _auspex_, a bird seer. [ ] the title of the president of the pontiffs, _pontifex maximus_ (supreme pontiff), is still that of the pope. see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] from the latin _patres_, "fathers." [ ] latin _plebs_, "the crowd." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the four letters inscribed on roman military standards indicate the important place held by the senate. they are _s. p. q. r._, standing for _senatus populusque romanus_, "the senate and the people of rome." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] plutarch, _pyrrhus_, . [ ] it should be noticed, however, that as yet rome controlled only the central and southern parts of what is the modern kingdom of italy. two large divisions of that kingdom, which every italian now regards as essential to its unity, were in other hands--the po valley and the island of sicily. [ ] see page . [ ] latin colonists did not have the right of voting in the assemblies at rome. this privilege was enjoyed, however, by members of the "roman" colonies, which were planted mainly along the coast. see the map, page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter viii the great age of the roman republic, - b.c. [ ] . the rivals: rome and carthage, - b.c. the punic wars the conquest of italy made rome one of the five leading states of the mediterranean world. in the east there were the kingdoms of macedonia, syria, and egypt, which had inherited the dominions of alexander the great. in the west there were carthage and rome, once in friendly alliance, but now to become the bitterest foes. rome had scarcely reached the headship of united italy before she was involved in a life-and-death struggle with this rival power. the three wars between them are known as the punic wars; they are the most famous contests that ancient history records; and they ended in the complete destruction of carthage. foundation of carthage more than a century before the traditional date at which rome rose upon her seven hills, phoenician colonists laid the foundations of a second tyre. the new city occupied an admirable site, for it bordered on rich farming land and had the largest harbor of the north african coast. a position at the junction of the eastern and western basins of the mediterranean gave it unsurpassed opportunities for trade. at the same time carthage was far enough away to be out of the reach of persian or macedonian conquerors. commercial empire of carthage by the middle of the third century b.c. the carthaginians had formed an imposing commercial empire. their african dominions included the strip of coast from cyrene westward to the strait of gibraltar. their colonies covered the shores of sicily, sardinia, corsica, and southern spain. the western half of the mediterranean had become a carthaginian lake. carthaginian civilization before the opening of the punic wars carthage had been much enlarged by emigrants from tyre, after the capture of that city by alexander. [ ] the phoenician colonists kept their own language, customs, and beliefs and did not mingle with the native african peoples. carthage in form was a republic, but the real power lay in the hands of one hundred men, selected from the great merchant families. it was a government by capitalists who cared very little for the welfare of the poor freemen and slaves over whom they ruled. the wealth of carthage enabled her to raise huge armies of mercenary soldiers and to build warships which in size, number, and equipment surpassed those of any other mediterranean state. mistress of a wide realm, strong both by land and sea, carthage was now to prove herself rome's most dangerous foe. [illustration: column of duilius (restored) the roman admiral, duilius, who won a great victory in b.c., was honored by a triumphal column set up in the forum. the monument was adorned with the brazen beaks of the captured carthaginian vessels. part of the inscription, reciting the achievements of the roman fleet, has been preserved.] origin of the first punic war the first punic war was a contest for sicily. the carthaginians aimed to establish their rule over that island, which from its situation seems to belong almost as much to africa as to italy. but rome, having become supreme in italy, also cast envious eyes on sicily. she believed, too, that the carthaginians, if they should conquer sicily, would sooner or later invade southern italy. the fear for her possessions, as well as the desire to gain new ones, led rome to fling down the gage of battle. course and results of the war, - b.c. the contest between the two rival states began in b.c. and lasted nearly twenty-four years. the romans overran sicily and even made an unsuccessful invasion of africa, but the main struggle was on the sea. here at first the romans were at a disadvantage, for they had no ships as large and powerful as those of the carthaginians. with characteristic energy, however, they built several great war fleets and finally won a complete victory over the enemy. the treaty of peace provided that carthage should abandon sicily, return all prisoners without ransom, and pay a heavy indemnity. the interval of preparation, - b.c. carthage, though beaten, had not been humbled. she had lost sicily and the commercial monopoly of the mediterranean. but she was not ready to abandon all hope of recovering her former supremacy. the peace amounted to no more than an armed truce. both parties were well aware that the real conflict was yet to come. the war, however, was delayed for nearly a quarter of a century. during this interval rome strengthened her military position by seizing the islands of sardinia and corsica from carthage and by conquering the gauls in the po valley. the carthaginians, meanwhile, began to create a new empire in spain, whose silver mines would supply fresh means for another contest and whose hardy tribes would furnish soldiers as good as the roman legionaries. . hannibal and the great punic war, - b.c. beginning of the second punic war, b.c. the steady advance of the carthaginian arms in spain caused much uneasiness in rome and at length led that city to declare war. carthage herself was not unwilling for a second trial of strength. her leading general, hannibal, who had been winning renown in spain, believed that the carthaginians were now in a position to wage an aggressive war against their mighty rival. and so the two great mediterranean powers, each confident of success, renewed the struggle for supremacy. hannibal at the opening of the conflict hannibal was not quite twenty-seven years of age. while yet a mere child, so the story went, his father had led him to the altar, and bade him swear by the carthaginian gods eternal enmity to rome. he followed his father to spain and there learned all the duties of a soldier. as a master of the art of war, he ranks with alexander the great. the macedonian king conquered the world for the glory of conquest; hannibal, burning with patriotism, fought to destroy the power which had humbled his native land. he failed; and his failure left carthage weaker than he found her. few men have possessed a more dazzling genius than hannibal, but his genius was not employed for the lasting good of humanity. hannibal's invasion of italy the romans planned to conduct the war in spain and africa, at a distance from their own shores. hannibal's bold movements totally upset these calculations. the carthaginian general had determined that the conflict should take place in the italian peninsula itself. since roman fleets now controlled the mediterranean, it was necessary for hannibal to lead his army, with its supplies, equipment, and beasts of burden, by the long and dangerous land route from spain to italy. in the summer of b.c. hannibal set out from spain with a large force of infantry and cavalry, besides a number of elephants. beyond the river ebro he found himself in hostile territory, through which the soldiers had to fight their way. to force the passage of the pyrenees and the alps cost him more than half his original army. when, after a five months' march he stood on the soil of italy, hannibal had scarcely twenty-five thousand troops with which to meet the immense power of rome--a power that, given time, could muster to her defense more than half a million disciplined soldiers. first victories of hannibal the romans were surprised by the boldness and rapidity of hannibal's movements. they had expected to conduct the war far away in foreign lands; they now knew that they must fight for their own homes and firesides. the first battles were complete victories for the carthaginians and opened the road to rome. hannibal's plans, however, did not include a siege of the capital. he would not shatter his victorious army in an assault on a fortified town. hannibal's real object was to bring the italians over to his side, to ruin rome through the revolts of her allies. but now he learned, apparently for the first time, that italy was studded with latin colonies, [ ] each a miniature rome, each prepared to resist to the bitter end. not a single city opened its gates to the invader. on such solid foundations rested roman rule in italy. a dictatorship the senate faced the crisis with characteristic energy. new forces were raised and intrusted to a dictator, [ ] quintus fabius maximus. he refused to meet hannibal in a pitched battle, but followed doggedly his enemy's footsteps, meanwhile drilling his soldiers to become a match for the carthaginian veterans. this strategy was little to the taste of the roman populace, who nicknamed fabius _cunctator_, "the laggard." however, it gave rome a brief breathing space, until her preparations to crush the invader should be completed. [illustration: a carthaginan or roman helmet (british museum, london) found on the battle field of cannae.] battle of cannae, b.c. after the term of fabius as dictator had expired, new consuls were chosen. they commanded the largest army rome had ever put in the field. the opposing forces met at cannae in apulia. the carthaginians numbered less than fifty thousand men; the romans had more than eighty thousand troops. hannibal's sole superiority lay in his cavalry, which was posted on the wings with the infantry occupying the space between. hannibal's center was weak and gave way before the romans, who fought this time massed in solid columns. the arrangement was a poor one, for it destroyed the mobility of the legions. the roman soldiers, having pierced the enemy's lines, now found themselves exposed on both flanks to the african infantry and taken in the rear by hannibal's splendid cavalry. the battle ended in a hideous butchery. one of the consuls died fighting bravely to the last; the other escaped from the field and with the wreck of his army fled to rome. a punic commander who survived such a disaster would have perished on the cross; the roman commander received the thanks of the senate "for not despairing of the republic." [ ] after cannae the battle of cannae marks the summit of hannibal's career. he maintained himself in italy for thirteen years thereafter, but the romans, taught by bitter experience, refused another engagement with their foe. hannibal's army was too small and too poorly equipped with siege engines for a successful attack on rome. his brother, hasdrubal, led strong reinforcements from spain to italy, but these were caught and destroyed before they could effect a junction with hannibal's troops. meanwhile the brilliant roman commander, publius scipio, drove the carthaginians from spain and invaded africa. hannibal was summoned from italy to face this new adversary. he came, and on the field of zama ( b.c.) met his first and only defeat. scipio, the victor, received the proud surname, _africanus_. peace in b.c. exhausted carthage could now do no more than sue for peace on any terms that rome was willing to grant. in the hour of defeat she still trusted her mighty soldier, and it was hannibal who conducted the final negotiations. the conditions of peace were severe enough. the carthaginians gave up spain and all their ships except ten triremes. they were saddled with a huge indemnity and bound to engage in no war without the consent of rome. carthage thus became a dependent ally of the roman city. victorious rome in describing the course and outcome of the second punic war our sympathies naturally go out to the heroic figure of hannibal, who fought so long and so bravely for his native land. it is clear, however, that rome's victory in the gigantic struggle was essential to the continued progress of classical civilization. the triumph of carthage in the third century, like that of persia in the fifth century, [ ] must have resulted in the spread of oriental ideas and customs throughout the mediterranean. from this fate rome saved europe. . roman supremacy in the west and in the east, - b.c. third punic war begun, b.c. carthage had been humbled, but not destroyed. she still enjoyed the advantages of her magnificent situation and continued to be a competitor of rome for the trade of the mediterranean. the romans watched with jealousy the reviving strength of the punic city and at last determined to blot it out of existence. in b.c. a large army was landed in africa, and the inhabitants of carthage were ordered to remove ten miles from the sea. they resolved to perish in the ruins of their capital, rather than obey such a cruel command. [illustration: a testudo a relief from the column of trajan, rome. the name _testudo_ a tortoise (shell) was applied to the covering made by a body of soldiers who placed their shields over their heads the shields fitted so closely together that men could walk on them and even horses and chariots could be driven over them.] [illustration: map, the expansion of roman dominions - b. c.] destruction of carthage, b.c. carthage held out for three years. the doubtful honor of its capture belonged to scipio aemilianus, grandson, by adoption, of the victor of zama. for seven days the legionaries fought their way, street by street, house by house, until only fifty thousand inhabitants were left to surrender to the tender mercies of the romans. the senate ordered that the city should be burned and that its site should be plowed up and dedicated to the infernal gods. such was the end of the most formidable rival rome ever met in her career of conquest. [ ] sicily the two european countries, sicily and spain, which rome had taken from carthage, presented to the conqueror very different problems. sicily had been long accustomed to foreign masters. its civilized and peace-loving inhabitants were as ready to accept roman rule as, in the past, they had accepted the rule of greeks and carthaginians. every year the island became more and more a part of italy and of rome. spain spain, on the contrary, gave the romans some hard fighting. the wild spanish tribes loved their liberty, and in their mountain fastnesses long kept up a desperate struggle for independence. it was not until the romans sent scipio aemilianus to spain that the spanish resistance was finally overcome ( b.c.). romanization of spain all spain, except the inaccessible mountain district in the northwest, now became roman territory. many colonists settled there; traders and speculators flocked to seaports; even the legionaries, quartered in spain for long periods, married spanish wives and, on retiring from active service, made their homes in the peninsula. rome thus continued in spain the process of romanization which she had begun in italy. [ ] she was to repeat this process in gaul and britain. [ ] her way was prepared by the sword; but after the sword came civilization. rome and macedonia while rome was subduing the west, she was also extending her influence over the highly civilized peoples of the east. roman interference in the affairs of macedonia found an excuse in the attempt of that country, during the second punic war, to give aid to hannibal. it was a fateful moment when, for the second time, the legion faced the phalanx. the easy victory over macedonia showed that this hellenistic kingdom was no match for the italian republic. macedonia was finally made into a subject state or province of rome. thus disappeared a great power, which philip had founded and which alexander had led to the conquest of the world. [illustration: storming a city (reconstruction)] rome and greece having subdued macedonia, rome proclaimed greece a free state. but this "freedom" really meant subjection, as was amply proved when some of the greek cities rose in revolt against roman domination. the heavy hand of roman vengeance especially descended on corinth, at this time one of the most beautiful cities of the world. in b.c., the same year in which the destruction of carthage occurred, corinth was sacked and burned to the ground. [ ] the fall of corinth may be said to mark the final extinction of greek liberty. though the hellenic cities and states were allowed to rule themselves, they paid tribute and thus acknowledged the supremacy of rome. a century later, greece became in name, as well as in fact, a province of the roman empire. [ ] rome and syria rome, in the meantime, was drawn into a conflict with the kingdom of syria. that asiatic power proved to be no more capable than macedonia of checking the roman advance. the syrian king had to give up the greater part of his possessions in asia minor. the western part of the peninsula, together with the greek cities on the coast, was formed in b.c. into the province of asia. thus the same year that witnessed the complete establishment of roman rule in spain saw rome gain her first possessions at the opposite end of the mediterranean. political situation in b.c. roman supremacy over the mediterranean world was now all but complete. in b.c. rome had been only one of the five great mediterranean states. in b.c. no other power existed to match its strength with that of rome. to her had fallen in the west the heritage of carthage, in the east the heritage of alexander. rome had built up this mighty empire at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. let us see what use she was to make of it. . the mediterranean world under roman rule creation of the provincial system rome's dealings with the new dependencies across the sea did not follow the methods that had proved so successful in italy. the italian peoples had been treated with great liberality. rome regarded them as allies, exempted them from certain taxes, and in many instances gave them roman citizenship. it did not seem possible to extend this wise policy to remote and often barbarous lands beyond the borders of italy. rome adopted, instead, much the same system of imperial rule that had been previously followed by persia and by athens. [ ] she treated the foreign peoples from spain to asia as subjects and made her conquered territories into provinces. [ ] their inhabitants were compelled to pay tribute and to accept the oversight of roman officials. evils of the provincial system as the romans came more and more to relish the opportunities for plunder afforded by a wealthy province, its inhabitants were often wretchedly misgoverned. many governors of the conquered lands were corrupt and grasping men. they tried to wring all the money they could from their helpless subjects. to the extortions of the governors must be added those of the tax collectors, whose very name of "publican" [ ] became a byword for all that was rapacious and greedy. in this first effort to manage the world she had won, rome had certainly made a failure. a city-state could not rule, with justice and efficiency, an empire. the profits of conquest in the old days, before rome entered on a career of foreign conquest, her citizens were famous among men for their love of country, their simple lives, and their conservative, old-fashioned ways. they worked hard on their little farms, fought bravely in the legions, and kept up with careful piety all the ceremonies of their religion. but now the roman republic was an imperial power with all the privileges of universal rule. her foreign wars proved to be immensely profitable. at the end of a successful campaign the soldiers received large gifts from their general, besides the booty taken from the enemy. the roman state itself profited from the sale of enslaved prisoners and their property. large sums of money were sometimes seized and taken to rome. when once peace had been made, the roman governors and tax collectors followed in the wake of the armies and squeezed the provincials at every turn. the romans, indeed, seem to have conquered the world less for glory than for profit. growth of luxury so much wealth poured into rome from every side that there could scarcely fail to be a sudden growth of luxurious tastes. rich nobles quickly developed a relish for all sorts of reckless display. they built fine houses adorned with statues, costly paintings, and furnishings. they surrounded themselves with troops of slaves. instead of plain linen clothes they and their wives wore garments of silk and gold. at their banquets they spread embroidered carpets, purple coverings, and dishes of gilt plate. pomp and splendor replaced the rude simplicity of an earlier age. disappearance of the peasantry but if the rich were becoming richer, it seems that the poor were also becoming poorer. after rome became mistress of the mediterranean, her markets were flooded with the cheap wheat raised in the provinces, especially in those granaries, sicily and africa. the price of wheat fell so low that roman peasants could not raise enough to support their families and pay their taxes. when agriculture became unprofitable, the farmer was no longer able to remain on the soil. he had to sell out, often at a ruinous sacrifice. his land was bought by capitalists, who turned many small fields into vast sheep pastures and cattle ranches. gangs of slaves, laboring under the lash, gradually took the place of the old roman peasantry, the very strength of the state. not unjust was the famous remark, "great domains ruined italy." [ ] the exodus of the cities the decline of agriculture and the disappearance of the small farmer under the stress of foreign competition may be studied in modern england as well as in ancient italy. nowadays an english farmer, under the same circumstances, will often emigrate to america or to australia, where land is cheap and it is easy to make a living. but these roman peasants did not care to go abroad and settle on better soil in spain or in africa. they thronged, instead, to the cities, to rome especially, where they labored for a small wage, fared plainly on wheat bread, and dwelt in huge lodging houses, three or four stories high. the city mob we know very little about this poorer population of rome. they must have lived from hand to mouth. since their votes controlled elections, [ ] they were courted by candidates for office and kept from grumbling by being fed and amused. such poor citizens, too lazy for steady work, too intelligent to starve, formed, with the other riffraff of a great city, the elements of a dangerous mob. and the mob, henceforth, plays an ever- larger part in the history of the times. hellenic influence at rome we must not imagine, however, that all the changes in roman life worked for evil. if the romans were becoming more luxurious, they were likewise gaining in culture. the conquests which brought rome in touch, first with magna graecia and sicily, then with greece itself and the hellenic east, prepared the way for the entrance of hellenism. roman soldiers and traders carried back to italy an acquaintance with greek customs and ideas. thousands of cultivated greeks, some as slaves, others as freemen, settled in the capital as actors, physicians, artists, and writers. there they introduced the greek language, as well as the religion, literature, and art of their native land. roman nobles of the better type began to take an interest in other things than simply farming, commerce, or war. they imitated greek fashions in dress and manners, collected greek books, and filled their homes with the productions of greek artists. henceforth every aspect of roman society felt the quickening influence of the older, richer culture of the hellenic world. it was a roman poet who wrote, "captive greece captured her conqueror rude." [ ] . the gracchi tiberius and gaius gracchus in b.c., a year otherwise made memorable by the final subjugation of spain and the acquisition of asia, efforts began rome to remedy some of the disorders which were now seen to be sapping the strength of roman society. the first persons to undertake the work of reform were the two brothers, tiberius and gaius gracchus. the gracchi belonged to the highest nobility of rome. their father had filled a consulship and a censorship and had celebrated triumphs. cornelia, their mother, was a daughter of scipio africanus, the conqueror of hannibal. a fine type of the roman matron, she called her boys her "jewels," more precious than gold, and brought them up to love their country better than their own lives. tiberius, the elder brother, was only thirty years of age when he became a tribune and began his career in roman politics. agrarian law of tiberius gracchus tiberius signalized his election to the tribunate by bringing forward his celebrated agrarian law. he proposed that the public lands of rome, then largely occupied by wealthy men who alone had the money necessary to work them with cattle and slaves, should be reclaimed by the state, divided into small tracts, and given to the poorer citizens. by getting the people back again on the soil, tiberius hoped to revive the declining agriculture of italy. defects of the agrarian law this agrarian law, though well intentioned, did not go to the root of the real difficulty--foreign competition. no legislation could have helped the farming class, except import duties to keep out the cheap grain from abroad. but the idle mob at rome, controlling the assemblies, would never have voted in favor of taxing their food, thus making it more expensive. at the same time the proposal to take away part of the public domains from its possessors roused a hornet's nest about the reformer's ears. rich people had occupied the public land for so long that they had come to look upon it as really their own. they would be very sure to oppose such a measure. poor people, of course, welcomed a scheme which promised to give them farms for nothing. tiberius even wished to use the public funds to stock the farms of his new peasantry. this would have been a mischievous act of state philanthropy. failure and death of tiberius, b.c. in spite of these defects in his measure, tiberius urged its passage with fiery eloquence. but the great landowners in the senate got another tribune, devoted to their interests, to place his veto [ ] on the proposed legislation. the impatient tiberius at once took a revolutionary step. though a magistrate could not legally be removed from office, tiberius had the offending tribune deposed and dragged from his seat. the law was then passed without further opposition. this action of tiberius placed him clearly in the wrong. the aristocrats threatened to punish him as soon as his term of office was over. to avoid impeachment tiberius sought reelection to the tribunate for the following year. this, again, was contrary to custom, since no one might hold office for two successive terms. on the day appointed for the election, while voting was in progress, a crowd of angry senators burst into the forum and killed tiberius, together with three hundred of his followers. both sides had now begun to display an utter disregard for law. force and bloodshed, henceforth, were to help decide political disputes. gaius gracchus becomes tribune, b.c. tiberius gracchus, in his efforts to secure economic reform, had unwittingly provoked a conflict between the senate and the assemblies. ten years after his death, his brother, gaius gracchus, came to the front. gaius quickly made himself a popular leader with the set purpose of remodeling the government of rome. he found in the tribunate an office from which to work against the senate. after the death of tiberius a law had been passed permitting a man to hold the position of tribune year after year. gaius intended to be a sort of perpetual tribune, and to rule the roman assemblies very much as pericles had ruled the people at athens. [ ] one of his first measures was a law permitting the sale of grain from the public storehouses to roman citizens at about half the market price. this measure, of course, won over the city mob, but it must be regarded as very unwise. it saddled the treasury with a heavy burden, and later the government had to furnish the grain for nothing. indiscriminate charity of this sort increased, rather than lessened, the number of paupers. measures of gaius to relieve the poor having won popular support, gaius was able to secure the additional legislation which he deemed necessary to carry out his brother's work. he reenacted the land laws for the benefit of the peasantry and furnished work for the unemployed by building roads throughout italy. he also began to establish colonies of poor citizens, both in italy and in the provinces. this was a wise policy. had it been allowed to continue, such state-assisted emigration, by providing the landless poor of italy with farms abroad, would have relieved the economic distress of the peninsula. an effort to extend roman citizenship gaius now came forward with another measure which marked him as an able and prudent statesman. he proposed to bestow the right of voting in the roman assemblies upon the inhabitants of the latin colonies. [ ] he thought, also, that the italian allies should be allowed to intermarry with romans and hold property under the protection of the roman law. no doubt gaius believed that the time might come when all the italian peoples would be citizens of rome. this time did come, thirty years later, but only after a terrible war that nearly ruined rome. failure and death of gaius, b.c. the effort by gaius to extend roman citizenship cost the reformer all his hard-won popularity. it aroused the jealousy of the selfish city mob, which believed that the entrance of so many new citizens would mean the loss of its privileges. there would not be so many free shows and so much cheap grain. so the people rejected the measure and, turning from their former favorite, failed to reëlect him to the tribunate. when gaius was no longer protected by the sanctity of the tribune's office, [ ] he fell an easy victim to senatorial hatred. another bloody tumult broke out, in which gaius and three thousand of his followers perished. the consul who quelled the disturbance erected at the head of the forum a temple to harmony (_concordia_). the gracchi begin the revolution the pathetic career of the gracchi had much significance in roman history. they were the unconscious sponsors of a revolutionary movement which did not end until the republic had come under the rule of one man. they failed because they put their trust in the support of the roman mob. future agitators were to appear with the legionaries at their heels. . marius and sulla marius and the jugurthine war, - b.c. although rome now ruled throughout the mediterranean, she was constantly engaged in border wars in one corner or another of her wide dominions. these wars brought to the front new military leaders, of whom the first was gaius marius. he was a peasant's son, a coarse, rude soldier, but an honest, courageous, and able man. marius rose to prominence in the so- called jugurthine war, which the romans were waging against jugurtha, king of numidia. that wily african had discovered that it was easier to bribe the roman commanders than to fight them; and the contest dragged on in disgraceful fashion year after year. marius at last persuaded the people to elect him consul and intrust him with the conduct of the war. by generalship and good fortune he speedily concluded the struggle and brought jugurtha in chains to rome. marius and the war with the germans, - b.c. a few years later marius had another opportunity to win distinction. he became the defender of rome and italy against a dangerous invasion of germanic barbarians, who were ravaging transalpine gaul and the po valley. the decisive victories which marius gained over them removed a grave danger which threatened the roman world. the time had not yet come for ancient civilization to be submerged under a wave of barbarism. sulla and the social war, - b.c. the second military leader whom this troubled period brought forth was lucius cornelius sulla. he was a man of noble birth, and with his social gifts, his appreciation of art and letters, his knowledge of men and the world, presented a sharp contrast to marius. sulla's great abilities quickly brought him into public notice; he rose rapidly from one office to another; and in the social war showed his skill as a commander. this struggle was the consequence of rome's refusal to grant the rights of citizenship to her italian allies. the strength of the rebellion lay among the samnites and other peoples of central and southern italy. the war came to an end only when rome promised the franchise to all italians who returned to their allegiance. before many years had passed, the inhabitants of nearly all the italian towns south of the rubicon river received roman citizenship. it was this same wise policy of making conquered peoples equal with herself that afterwards led rome to grant citizenship to the inhabitants of the provinces. [ ] sulla and the mithradatic war, - b.c. what military honors were gained in the struggle belonged to sulla. his reward was the consulship and an appointment as general in still another conflict which distracted rome had to face. while that city had been busy with civil enemies and barbarian foes, a powerful state, known as pontus, had been growing up in asia minor. its king, mithradates, overran the roman provinces in the orient and threatened to annex them to his own kingdom. but sulla, with greatly inferior forces, compelled mithradates to abandon his conquests, surrender his fleet, and pay a large indemnity. if marius had the honor of repelling the barbarian invasion of the west, sulla had the honor of preserving rome's possessions in the east. rivalry of marius and sulla marius and sulla were rivals not only in war but also in politics. sulla naturally espoused the aristocratic cause and stood as the champion of the senate. marius just as naturally became the head of the democratic party. the rivalry between the two leaders finally led to civil war. during sulla's absence in the east the democrats got the upper hand at rome and revenged themselves by murdering their political foes among the aristocrats. the reign of terror ended only with the sudden death of marius, just after he had been elected to his seventh consulship. a few years later sulla returned to italy with his army and defeated the democrats in a great battle outside the colline gate of rome. sulla signalized his victory by ordering the assassination of every prominent man in the democratic party. sulla as "perpetual dictator" sulla regarded this legalized butchery as a necessary step in his self- appointed task of putting the roman government once more to rights. he now received the title of "perpetual dictator," with complete authority to govern the state until the new order of things should be established. rome thus came under the rule of one man for the first time since the expulsion of the kings. sulla's death, b.c. the various measures by which sulla intrenched the senate in power did not long survive his death and hence had no lasting influence on roman politics. after a rule of three years sulla voluntarily gave up the dictatorship and retired to his villa on the bay of naples. he died a few months later. the senate honored him with a public funeral, the most splendid that rome had ever seen. his monument bore an inscription which the dictator himself is said to have composed: "no friend ever did him a kindness and no enemy, a wrong, without being fully repaid." [ ] that was one epitaph which told the truth. . pompey and caesar rise of pompey the struggle between marius and sulla, decided as it was by the sword, marks a stage in the decline of the roman republic. the careers of these two men showed how easily the state could be ruled by a successful commander who had his soldiers behind him. after sulla's death his friend pompey became the leading figure in roman politics. pompey's first service was in spain, where the adherents of marius sought to humble the senate and the aristocratic party by encouraging the spaniards to rise against roman rule. having crushed this rebellion, pompey returned to italy in time to take part in putting down a formidable insurrection of slaves, outlaws, and ruined peasants. he was next intrusted with the war against the pirates, who swarmed in the mediterranean, preyed on commerce, and plundered wealthy cities near the coast. brilliant success in clearing the seas of these marauders led to his being sent to the east to end the war with mithradates, who was once more in arms against rome. pompey drove the pontic monarch from his kingdom and then annexed syria to the roman dominions. when pompey returned to rome in b.c., he brought with him a reputation as the most successful general of his time. [illustration: gnaeus pompeius magnus (spada palace, rome)] marcus tullius cicero we have seen how steadily since the days of the gracchi the roman state had been moving toward the rule of one man. marius, sulla, and pompey each represent a step in the direction of monarchy. yet there were still able and patriotic leaders at rome who believed in the old order of things and tried their best to uphold the fast-perishing republic. no republican statesman was more devoted to the constitution than cicero. a native of arpinum, the same italian town which had already given birth to marius, cicero came to rome a youth without wealth or family influence. he made his way into roman society by his social and conversational powers and by his capacity for friendship. his mind had been carefully trained under the influence of hellenic culture; he had traveled and studied in greece; and throughout life he loved to steal away from the tumult of the forum and the law courts and enjoy the companionship of his books. though the proud nobles were inclined to look down on him as a "new man," cicero's splendid eloquence soon gave him prominence in politics. he ranks in fame as the second orator of antiquity, inferior only to demosthenes. [illustration: marcus tullius cicero (vatican museum, rome)] impeachment of verres, b.c. cicero rose to prominence through his prosecution of verres, a thieving governor of sicily. verres had powerful friends among the nobles at rome and counted on his influence and wealth to escape punishment. he openly boasted that he had plunder enough to live in luxury, even though he had to surrender two-thirds of it as fees to his lawyers and bribes to the jury. but verres had not reckoned with the brilliant young advocate who took up the cause of the oppressed provincials. cicero hurried to sicily and there collected such an overwhelming mass of evidence that the bare statement of the facts was enough to condemn the criminal. verres went into exile. cicero became the head of the roman bar. seven years later he was elected consul. conspiracy of catiline, b.c. the year of cicero's consulship was marked by an event which throws a lurid light on the conditions of the time. lucius catiline, a young noble of ability, but bankrupt in character and purse, organized a conspiracy to seize rome, murder the magistrates, and plunder the rich. he gathered about himself outlaws of every description, slaves, and starving peasants --all the discontented and needy classes throughout italy. he and his associates were desperate anarchists who sought to restore their own broken fortunes by overturning the government. the spread of the insurrection was checked by cicero's vigorous measures. in a series of famous speeches he exposed catiline's plans to the astounded senate. catiline then fled to his camp in etruria and shortly afterwards perished in battle, together with three thousand of his followers. cicero now gained fresh popularity and honor. the grateful citizens called him "father of his country" (_pater patriae_). rise of caesar rome at this time held another prominent leader in politics, namely, gaius julius caesar. he belonged to a noble family, but his father had favored the democratic cause and his aunt had married marius. after sulla's death caesar threw himself with energy into the game of politics at the capital city. in these early years the future statesman seems to have been a demagogue of the usual type, who sought through the favor of the people a rapid rise to power. he won the ear of the multitude by his fiery harangues, his bribes of money, and his gifts of food and public shows. caesar's expenditures for such purposes were enormous. before he was twenty-four he had spent all his private fortune. henceforth he was "financed" by the millionaire crassus, who lent him the money so necessary for a successful career as a politician. the first triumvirate, b.c. caesar and crassus, the two leaders of the democratic party at rome, now joined with pompey in what is called the first triumvirate. to this "ring" pompey contributed his military reputation, crassus, his wealth, and caesar, his influence over the roman mob. supported both by the people and by the army, these three men were really masters of rome. an immediate result of the first triumvirate was the appointment of caesar as governor of cisalpine and transalpine gaul. [illustration: gaius julius caesar (british museum, london)] caesar's campaigns in gaul, - b.c. the story of his career in gaul has been related by caesar himself in the famous _commentaries_. this book describes a series of military successes which have given the author a place among the world's generals. caesar overran transalpine gaul, twice bridged the rhine and invaded germany, made two expeditions to britain, and brought within the roman dominions all the territory bounded by the pyrenees, the alps, the rhine, and the atlantic ocean. romanization of gaul caesar's conquests in gaul are more than a chapter in the history of the art of war. they belong to the history of civilization. henceforth the frontier of prehistoric europe retreated rapidly to the north. the map of the ancient civilized world widened from the mediterranean basin to the shores of the atlantic. into the conquered lands came the latin language, the roman law, and the customs and institutions of rome. gaul speedily became one of the most flourishing parts of the roman world. "let the alps sink," exclaimed cicero, "the gods raised them to shelter italy from the barbarians, but now they are no longer needed." defeat and death of crassus, b.c. during caesar's long absence in gaul the first triumvirate was suddenly ended by the death of one of its members. it had been a part of their bargain in dividing the roman world that crassus should have the government of syria. but this unlucky general, while aspiring to rival caesar's exploits by new conquests beyond the euphrates, lost his army and his life in battle with the parthians. besides checking the extension of the roman arms in the remote east, the disaster had its effect on roman politics. it dissolved the triumvirate and prepared the way for that rivalry between caesar and pompey which formed the next step in the downward course of the republic. growing opposition between pompey and caesar the two men were now rapidly drawing apart. pompey grew more and more jealous of caesar and more and more fearful that the latter was aiming at despotic power. he himself had no desire to be king or dictator. he was equally determined that caesar should not gain such a position. in this attitude he had the full support of cicero and the other members of the senate. they saw clearly that the real danger to the state was caesar, not pompey. caesar declares war in the republic, b.c. caesar's command in gaul was to expire in b.c. the senatorial party desired that he should return to rome without an army. his opponents intended to prosecute him when he became a private citizen. caesar had no inclination to trust himself to their tender mercies and refused to disband his legions unless his rival did the same. finally the senate, conscious of pompey's support, ordered him to lay down his arms on pain of outlawry. caesar replied to this challenge of the senate by leading his troops across the rubicon, the little stream that separated cisalpine gaul from italy. as he plunged into the river, he exclaimed, "the die is cast." [ ] he had now declared war on the republic. caesar master of the west caesar's bold movement caught the senatorial party unawares. pompey could not gather his legions before his audacious foe reached rome. finding it impossible to make a stand in italy, pompey, with the consuls and many senators, withdrew to greece. caesar did not follow him at once. he hurried to spain and, after a brilliant campaign only six weeks in length, broke down the republican resistance in that peninsula. having now secured italy and spain, caesar was free to turn his forces against pompey in the east. [illustration: map, the expansion of roman dominions - b.c.] battle of pharsalus, b.c. the final battle took place on the plain of pharsalus in thessaly. pompey's troops, though nearly twice as numerous as caesar's, were defeated after a severe struggle. their great leader then fled to egypt, only to be foully murdered. pompey's head was sent to caesar, but he turned from it with horror. such was the end of an able general and an honest man, one who should have lived two hundred years earlier, when rome was still a free state. caesar in egypt, asia minor, and africa, - b.c. after pharsalus there still remained several years of fighting before caesar's victory was complete. he made cleopatra, the beautiful queen of egypt, secure in the possession of the throne and brought that country into dependence on rome. he passed through asia minor and in one swift campaign crushed a revolt headed by the son of mithridates. the conqueror sent tidings of his victory in a laconic dispatch: "i came, i saw, i conquered." [ ] after subduing the remnants of the senatorial party in africa, caesar returned home to crown his exploits by a series of splendid triumphs and to enjoy less than two years of untrammeled power. . the work of caesar authority and position of caesar the new government which caesar brought into being was a monarchy in all except name. he became dictator for life and held other republican offices, such as the consulship and censorship. he refused the title of king, but accepted as a civil magistrate the name of _imperator_, [ ] with which the soldiers had been wont to salute a victorious general. though he abolished none of the old republican forms, the senate became simply his advisory council, the assemblies, his submissive agents the consuls, praetors and tribunes, his pliant tools. the laurel wreath, the triumphal dress, the conqueror's scepter--all proclaimed the autocrat. [illustration: a roman coin with the head of julius caesar] character of caesar's rule caesar used his power wisely and well. no massacres or confiscations sullied his victory. he treated his former foes with clemency and even with kindness. no sooner was domestic tranquillity assured than, with restless energy, he entered on a series of far-reaching reforms. reforms at rome and in italy caesar's measures sought to remove the economic evils which a century of discord had made so manifest. by restricting the monthly distribution of grain to those actually in need, he tried to discourage the public charity which was making the capital city a paradise for the idle and the shiftless. by planning great colonies beyond the sea, notably at corinth and carthage, he sought to provide farms for the landless citizens of italy. his active mind even found time for such matters as the codification of roman law, the construction of great public works, and the improvement of the coinage and the calendar. [ ] reformation of the provincial system caesar's reforms in the provinces had an epoch-making character. he reduced taxes, lessened the burden of their collection, and took into his own hands the appointment of provincial magistrates. henceforth oppressive governors and swindling publicans had to expect swift, stern punishment from one whose interests included the welfare of both citizens and subjects. by granting roman citizenship to communities in gaul and sicily, he indicated his purpose, as rapidly as possible, to convert the provincials into romans. it was caesar's aim to break down the barriers between rome and her provinces, to wipe out the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered. assassination of caesar, b.c. caesar did not live to complete his task. like that other colossal figure, alexander the great, he perished before his work as a statesman had hardly more than begun. on the ides of march, b.c., he was struck down in the senate-house by the daggers of a group of envious and irreconcilable nobles, headed by cassius and brutus. he fell at the foot of pompey's statue, pierced with no less than twenty-three wounds. his body was burnt on a pyre in the forum, and his friend, antony, pronounced the funeral eulogy. consequences of caesar's death in the light of all the possibilities of beneficent government which caesar was revealing, his cowardly murder becomes one of the most stupendous follies recorded in history. caesar's death could not restore the republic. it served only to prolong disorder and strife within the roman state. as cicero himself said, hearing the news, "the tyrant is dead; the tyranny still lives." . antony and octavian antony becomes caesar's successor the murderers of caesar called themselves the "liberators" of the republic. they thought that all rome would applaud their deed, but the contrary was true. the senatorial order remained lukewarm. the people, instead of flocking to their support, mourned the loss of a friend and benefactor. soon the conspirators found themselves in great peril. caesar's friend and lieutenant, antony, who became sole consul after caesar's death, quickly made himself master of the situation. brutus and cassius were forced to withdraw to the provinces which had been previously assigned to them by caesar, leaving antony to rule rome as his successor. a rival in the young octavian antony's hope of reigning supreme was soon disturbed by the appearance of a new rival. caesar, in his will, had made his grandnephew, octavian, [ ] his heir. he now came to rome to claim the inheritance. in that sickly, studious youth people did not at first recognize the masterful personality he was soon to exhibit. they rather reëchoed cicero's sentiment that "the young man was to be praised, complimented, and got rid of." [ ] but octavian easily made himself a power, winning the populace by paying caesar's legacies to them and conciliating the senatorial party by siding with it against antony. men now began to talk of octavian as the destined restorer of the republic. the second triumvirate, b.c. octavian, however, entertained other designs. he had never been sincere in his support of the senate, and the distrustful policy of that body soon converted him into an active foe. from fighting antony, octavian turned to alliance with him. the two antagonists made up their differences, and with lepidus, one of caesar's lieutenants, as a third ally, marched on rome at the head of their legions. the city fell again under military rule. the three men then united in the second triumvirate with full authority to govern and reorganize the state. the advent of this new tyranny was signalized by a butchery almost as bloody as sulla's. cicero, who had incurred the hatred of antony by his fiery speeches against him, was the most illustrious victim. more than two thousand persons, mainly men of high rank, were slain. the triumvirs by this massacre firmly established their rule at rome and in the west. battles of philippi, b.c. in the east, where brutus and cassius had gathered a formidable force, the triumvirs were not to win without a struggle. it took place on the plain of philippi in macedonia. the two battles fought there ended in the suicide of the republican leaders and the dispersal of their troops. this was the last attempt to restore the republic by force of arms. division of the roman world though the republic had been overthrown, it remained to be seen who would be master of the new empire, antony or octavian. the triumvirate lasted for more than ten years, but during this period the incompetent lepidus was set aside by his stronger colleagues. the two remaining members then divided between them the roman world. octavian took italy and the west; antony took the east, with alexandria as his capital. octavian in the west in the western half of the empire octavian ruled quietly and with success. men were already congratulating themselves on the return of peace under a second caesar. in a few years octavian, from an obscure boy of eighteen, had grown to be one of the most powerful personalities of his age. antony in the east in the eastern half of the empire things did not go so well. antony was clever, but fond of luxury and vice. he had married a sister of octavian, but he soon grew tired of her and put her away for the fascinating cleopatra. [ ] the roman world was startled by tidings that she had been proclaimed "queen of kings," and that to her and her sons had been given the richest provinces in the east. it was even rumored that cleopatra, having enslaved antony with her charms, planned to be enthroned as queen at rome. battle of actium, b.c. antony's disgraceful conduct aroused the roman people. they willingly followed octavian to a war against one who seemed a national enemy. a naval battle in the bay of actium, on the coast of epirus, decided the issue. the fight had hardly begun before cleopatra and antony sailed away, leaving their fleet to take care of itself. octavian pursued the infatuated pair into egypt. antony committed suicide, and cleopatra, rather than be led a captive in a roman triumph, followed his example. with the death of cleopatra the dynasty of the ptolemies [ ] came to an end. egypt henceforth formed a province of the roman empire. the triumph of octavian octavian, on his return to rome, enjoyed the honors of a three days' triumph. [ ] as the grand parade moved along the sacred way through the forum, and thence to the temple of jupiter on the capitoline, men noted that the magistrates, instead of heading the procession as was the custom, followed in the conqueror's train. it was a significant change. octavian, not the magistrates of rome, now ruled the roman world. . the end of an epoch doom of the republic the republic, indeed, was doomed. a hundred years of dissension and civil warfare proclaimed clearly enough the failure of the old order. rome was a city-state suddenly called to the responsibilities of universal rule. both the machinery of her government and the morals of her people were inadequate for so huge a task. the gradual revolution which changed this roman city-state into imperial rome, judged by its results, is perhaps the most momentous movement in the annals of mankind. let us summarize its course. a century of revolution in b.c. roman society had been corrupted and enfeebled as the result of foreign conquests. the supreme power in the state more and more tended to fall into the hands of a narrow oligarchy--the senatorial nobility. its dishonesty and weakness soon led to efforts at reform. the attempts of the gracchi to overthrow the senate's position and restore popular sovereignty ended in disaster. then, in quick succession, arose a series of military leaders who aimed to secure by the sword what was no longer to be obtained through constitutional and legal means. marius, a great general but no politician, could only break down and destroy. sulla, a sincere but narrow-minded statesman, could do no more than prop up the structure-- already tottering--of senatorial rule. pompey soon undid that work and left the constitution to become again the sport of rival soldiers. caesar, triumphing over pompey, gained a position of unchallenged supremacy. after caesar's death, imperial power was permanently restored in the person of octavian. the battle of actium in b.c. made octavian master of the roman world. the future but the romans were not yet an old and worn-out people. on the ruins of the old republican order it was still possible to build up a new imperial system in which good government, peace, and prosperity should prevail for more than two centuries. during this period rome performed her real, her enduring, work for civilization. studies . write a summary account ( words) of roman expansion - b.c. . on outline maps indicate the possessions of carthage and rome at the beginning of the first punic war; at the beginning of the second punic war; at the end of the second punic war. . on outline maps indicate the boundaries of the roman world in b.c. and in b.c. and the division into provinces at these dates. . what events are connected with the following places: zama; cannae; actium; pharsalus, and philippi? . who were quintus fabius maximus, mithradates, catiline, and cleopatra? . identify the following dates: b.c.; b.c.; b.c.; b.c.; b.c.; and b.c. . why has carthage been called the "london" of the ancient world? . what is meant by the statement that carthage is a "dumb actor on the stage of history"? . was rome wise in adopting her new policy of expansion beyond the limits of italy? . give some examples in modern times of war indemnities paid by defeated nations. . why did the romans call the second punic war the "war of hannibal"? . what is a "fabian policy"? do you know why washington was called the "american fabius"? . what reasons can you give for hannibal's early successes and final failure? . show the signal importance to rome of her control of the sea during the second punic war. . comment on this statement: "as the rise of rome was central in history, the second punic war was central in the rise of rome." . what provinces had been formed by b.c. (map facing page )? . what parts of the world belonged to rome in b.c. but were not yet provinces? . might rome have extended her federal policy to her territories outside of italy? was a provincial system really necessary? . compare a persian satrapy with a roman province. . would import duties on foreign grain have revived italian agriculture? . why did the cattle breeder in italy have no reason to fear foreign competition? . compare the athenian practice of state pay with the roman "bread and the games of the circus." . had the italians triumphed in the social war, is it likely they would have established a better government than that of rome? . was marius or was sulla more to blame for the civil war? . explain the real meaning of sulla's "perpetual dictatorship." . why was the rule of the senate, unsatisfactory though it was, to be preferred to that of the roman populace? . why is the first triumvirate described as a "ring"? did it have an official character? . why does the first triumvirate mark a distinct step toward the establishment of the empire? . why can wars with barbarous and savage peoples be justified as "the most ultimately righteous of all wars"? . can you suggest why caesar's conquest of gaul had even greater importance than pompey's conquests in the east? . was caesar justified in leading his army against rome? . had pompey triumphed over caesar, is it probable that the republic would have been restored? . what contrasts can you draw between caesar and alexander? . justify the aphorism, "in the midst of arms the laws are silent," by the statements in this chapter. . how do you account for the failure of the republican institutions of rome? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xv, "hannibal and the great punic war"; chapter xvi, "cato the censor: a roman of the old school"; chapter xvii, "cicero the orator"; chapter xviii, "the conquest of gaul, related by caesar"; chapter xix, "the makers of imperial rome: character sketches by suetonius." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] livy, xxii, . [ ] see page . [ ] in b.c., one hundred and seventeen years after the destruction of carthage at the end of the punic wars, a new town was founded near the old site by the emperor augustus. it became in time the third city of the roman empire. it was destroyed by the arabs in a.d. [ ] see page . [ ] see pages and . [ ] corinth offered too good a site to remain long in ruins. resettled in b.c. as a roman colony, it soon became one of the great cities in the empire. it was to the corinthians that st paul wrote two of his _epistles_. [ ] the greeks were not again a free people until the nineteenth century of our era. in a.d. they rose against their turkish masters in a glorious struggle for liberty. eight years later the powers of europe forced the sultan to recognize the freedom of greece. that country then became an independent kingdom, with its capital at athens. [ ] see pages - and . [ ] in b.c. there were eight provinces--sicily, sardinia and corsica, hither spain, farther spain, illyricum, africa, macedonia, and asia. see the map facing page . [ ] in the new testament "publicans and sinners" are mentioned side by side. see _matthew_, ix, . [ ] _latifundia perdidere italiam_ (pliny, _natural history_, xviii, ). [ ] see page . [ ] horace, _epistles_, ii, , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] plutarch, sulla, . [ ] suetonius, _julius caesar_, . [ ] _veni, vidi, vici_ (suetonius, _julius caesar_, ). [ ] hence our word "emperor." [ ] before caesar's reform ( b.c.) the roman year consisted of months and days. as this lunar year, like that of the greeks, was shorter than the solar year, it had been necessary to intercalate an additional month, of varying length, in every alternate year. caesar adopted the more accurate egyptian calendar of days and instituted the system of leap years. his rearrangement made the year minutes, seconds too long. by a.d. this difference had amounted to nearly days. pope gregory xiii modified the "julian calendar" by calling oct. , , oct. , and continuing the count days in advance. this "gregorian calendar" was adopted by great britain in a.d. and subsequently by other protestant countries. it has not won acceptance in russia and greece. the difference between the two systems--the old style and the new style--is now about days. [ ] his name was octavius, but after his adoption by caesar he called himself gaius julius caesar octavianus. [ ] cicero, _letters_, xix, . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter ix the early empire: the world under roman rule, b.c.-l a.d. [ ] . augustus, b.c.-l a.d. [illustration: augustus (vatican museum, rome)] the early empire, b.c.- a.d. the period of two hundred and eleven years, between the accession of augustus and the death of marcus aurelius, is known as the early empire. as we shall now learn, it was a time of settled government and of internal tranquillity. except for a brief period of anarchy at the close of the reign of nero, it was also a time of regular succession to the throne. nearly all the emperors were vigorous and capable rulers. the peace and prosperity which they gave to the roman world amply justify--if justification be needed--the change from republic to empire. the new ruler few persons have set their stamp more indelibly on the pages of history than octavian, whom we may now call by his more familiar name _augustus_ ("majestic"). augustus was no military genius to dazzle the world with his achievements. he was a cool and passionless statesman who took advantage of a memorable opportunity to remake the roman state, and who succeeded in the attempt. absolute power, which destroys weaker men, with augustus brought out the nobler elements of character. from the successful leader of a party he became the wise and impartial ruler of an empire. the new government augustus had almost unlimited power. his position was that of a king, as supreme as julius caesar had ever been. better, however, than julius caesar, augustus realized that an undisguised autocracy would only alienate public opinion and invite fresh plots and rebellions, augustus intended to be the real master, but he would also be careful to conceal his authority under republican forms. the emperor was neither king, dictator, nor triumvir. he called himself a republican magistrate-- _princeps_ [ ]--the "first citizen" of the state. powers enjoyed by augustus augustus gave up the externals, only to keep the essentials, of royalty. he held the proconsular authority, which extended over the frontier provinces and their legions. he held the tribunician authority, which made his person sacred. as perpetual tribune he could preside over the popular assemblies, manage the senate and change its membership at pleasure, and veto the acts of almost any magistrate. in the provinces and at home in the capital city the emperor was supreme. the empire under augustus augustus ruled a vast realm. in it all the dreams of world dominion which alexander had cherished were more than realized. the empire included nearly the entire circle of the mediterranean lands. on the west and south it found natural barriers in the atlantic ocean and the african desert. on the east the euphrates river had formed, since the defeat of crassus, [ ] the dividing line between rome and parthia. the northern frontier, beyond which lay the germanic barbarians, required, however, additional conquests for its protection. [illustration: map, the expansion of roman dominions b.c.- a.d.] the danube boundary the danube river made an admirable boundary for much of the roman territory between the black sea and the rhine. augustus annexed the district south of the lower course of this river and formed it into the province of moesia (modern serbia and bulgaria). the line of the upper danube was later secured by the creation of three new provinces on the northern slopes of the alps. [ ] henceforth the balkan peninsula and italy on the northeast, where the alpine passes are low and comparatively easy, were shielded from attack. the rhine boundary after the conquests of julius caesar in gaul the rhine had become the frontier between that country and germany. augustus repeatedly sent the legions into western germany on punitive expeditions to strike terror into its warlike tribes and to inspire respect for roman power. it is doubtful, however, whether he ever intended to conquer germany and to convert it into another province. his failure to do so meant that the germans were not to be romanized as were their neighbors, the celts of gaul. the rhine continued to be the dividing-line between roman civilization and germanic barbarism. the augustan age the clash of arms on the distant frontiers scarcely disturbed the serenity of the roman world. within the boundaries of the empire the augustan age was an age of peace and prosperity. the emperor, with unwearied devotion, turned to the task of ruling wisely and well his vast dominions. he followed the example of julius caesar in his insistence on just government of the provincials. [ ] in italy he put down brigandage, repaired the public highways, and planted many colonies in unsettled districts. in rome he established a regular police service, organized the supply of grain and water, and continued, on a larger scale than ever, the public games. so many were his buildings in the capital city that he could boast he had "found rome of brick and left it of marble." [ ] augustus was also very successful as a religious reformer. he restored numerous temples that had fallen into decay, revived the ancient sacrifices, and celebrated with pomp and majesty the festivals that had been neglected. these reforms gave new vigor to the roman state religion. [illustration: monumentum ancyranum an inscription on the walls of a ruined temple at ancyra (modern angora) in asia minor. it is a copy of the record descriptive of the reign of augustus which that emperor in his will decreed to be inscribed on bronze tablets and placed before his mausoleum at rome.] deification of augustus even during the lifetime of augustus worship had been offered to him by the provincials. after his death the senate gave him divine honors and enrolled his name among the gods. temples rose in every province to the deified augustus, and altars smoked with sacrifices to him. emperor worship spread rapidly over the ancient world and helped to unite all classes in allegiance to the new government. it provided a universal religion for a universal empire. yet just at the time when this new cult was taking root, and in the midst of the happy reign of augustus, there was born in bethlehem of judea the christ whose religion was to overcome the worship of the emperors and with it all other faiths of pagan antiquity. [ ] . the successors of augustus, - a.d. julian and claudian caesars, - a.d. for more than half a century following the death of augustus his place was filled by emperors who, either by descent or adoption, claimed kinship with himself and the mighty julius. they are known as the julian and claudian caesars. [ ] though none of these four princes had the political ability of augustus, two of them (tiberius and claudius) were excellent rulers, who ably maintained the standards set by that great emperor. the other two (caligula and nero) were vicious tyrants, the recital of whose follies and crimes occupies much space in the works of ancient historians. their doings and misdoings fortunately exerted little influence outside the circle of the imperial court and the capital city. rome itself might be disturbed by conspiracy and bloodshed, but italy and the provinces kept their prosperity. conquest of britain begun, a.d. the reign of claudius was marked by the beginning of the extension of the empire over britain. for nearly a hundred years after caesar's expeditions no further attempt had been made to annex that island. but its nearness to gaul, already thoroughly romanized, brought the country within the sphere of roman influence. the thorough conquest of britain proved to be no easy task. it was not until the close of the first century that the island, as far north as the scottish highlands, was brought under roman sway. the province of britannia remained a part of the empire for more than three hundred years. burning of rome, a.d. during nero's reign half of rome was laid in ashes by a great fire, which raged for a week. but a new rome speedily arose. it was a much finer city than the old, with wide, straight streets instead of narrow alleys, and with houses of good stone in place of wooden hovels. except for the loss of the temples and public buildings, the fire was a blessing in disguise. flavian caesars, - a.d. after the death of nero the dynasty that traced its descent from julius and augustus became extinct. there was no one who could legally claim the vacant throne. the senate, which in theory had the appointment of a successor, was too weak to exercise its powers. the imperial guard and the legions on the frontiers placed their own candidates in the field. the roman world fell into anarchy, and italy became once more the seat of civil war. the throne was finally seized by the able general, flavius vespasianus, supported by the armies of the east. he and his two sons, titus and domitian, are called the flavian caesars. [illustration: pompeii] capture of jerusalem, a.d. during the reign of vespasian a revolt of the jews was crushed, and jerusalem was captured by titus, vespasian's son. it is said, doubtless with exaggeration, that one million jews perished in the siege, the most awful that history records. the holy city, together with the temple, was destroyed, and a roman camp was pitched upon the spot. we may still see in rome the splendid arch that commemorates this tragic event. [ ] [illustration: plan of jerusalem and its environs.] [illustration: a relief on the arch of titus the relief shows roman soldiers bearing the spoils of the temple at jerusalem. among these are two trumpets, the table of the shewbread, and the seven-branched golden candlestick.] eruption of vesuvius, a.d. the reign of titus is chiefly memorable for the destruction of pompeii and herculaneum, two cites on the bay of naples. after long inactivity the volcano of vesuvius suddenly belched forth torrents of liquid lava and mud, followed by a rain of ashes. pompeii was covered to a depth of about fifteen feet by the falling cinders. herculaneum was overwhelmed in a sea of sulphurous mud and lava to a depth of eighty feet in many places. the cities were completely entombed, and in time even their location was forgotten. modern excavations have disclosed a large part of pompeii, with its streets, shops, baths, temples, and theaters. the visitor there gains a vivid impression of roman life during the first century of our era. [ ] . the "good emperors," - a.d. the antonine caesars the five rulers--nerva, trajan, hadrian, antoninus pius, and marcus aurelius--whose reigns cover the greater part of the second century, are sometimes called the antonine caesars, because two of them bore the name antoninus. they are better known as the "good emperors," a title which well describes them. under their just and beneficent government the empire reached its greatest prosperity. [illustration: nerva (vatican museum, rome) a remarkably fine example of roman portrait statuary.] trajan the conqueror the emperor trajan rivaled julius caesar in military ability and enlarged the roman world to the widest limits it was ever to attain. his first conquests were in europe and resulted in the annexation of dacia, an extensive territory north of the danube. thousands of colonists settled in dacia and spread everywhere the language and arts of rome. its modern name (rumania) bears witness to rome's abiding influence there. trajan's campaigns in asia had less importance, though in appearance they were more splendid. he drove the parthians from armenia and conquered the tigris- euphrates valley. to hold in subjection such distant regions only increased the difficulty of guarding the frontiers. trajan's successor, hadrian, at once abandoned them. [illustration: column of trajan a bronze statue of trajan formerly occupying the top of the monument has been replaced by a figure of st peter. the column is decorated with a continuous spiral relief representing scenes from the dacian war. about twenty five hundred separate designs are included in this remarkable collection.] hadrian the administrator hadrian distinguished himself as an administrator. he may be compared with augustus in his love of peace and in his care for the interests of the provincials. hadrian made two long journeys throughout the roman world. on the frontiers he built fortresses and walls, in the provinces he raised baths, aqueducts, theaters, and temples. scarcely a city throughout the empire lacked some monument to his generosity. hadrian left behind him the memory of a prince whose life was devoted to the public welfare--the first servant of the state. [illustration: wall of hadrian in britain the wall extended between the tyne and the solway a distance of seventy miles. it was built of concrete faced with square blocks. the height is nearly twenty feet, the thickness about eight feet. along the wall were numerous towers and gates and a little to the north of it stretched an earthen rampart protected by a deep ditch. a broad road, lined with seventeen military camps, ran between the two fortifications.] marcus aurelius, the philosopher on the throne the last of the "good emperors," marcus aurelius, was a thinker and a student, but he enjoyed little opportunity for meditation. his reign was filled with an almost uninterrupted series of campaigns against the parthians on the euphrates and the germans on the danube and the rhine. these wars revealed the weakness of the frontiers and rapidly growing strength of the barbarians. after the death of marcus aurelius the empire entered on its downward course. but before passing to this period of our study, we may take a survey of the world under roman rule, during the two centuries between augustus and marcus aurelius. [illustration: marcus aurelius in his triumphal car (palace of the conservatori, rome) a panel from an arch erected by the emperor.] . the provinces of the roman empire the standing army the roman empire, at its widest extent in the second century, included forty-three provinces. they were protected against germans, parthians and other foes by twenty-five legions, numbering with the auxiliary forces, about three hundred thousand men. this standing army was one of rome's most important agencies for the spread of her civilization over barbarian lands. its membership was drawn largely from the border provinces, often from the very countries where the soldiers' camps were fixed. though the army became less and less roman in blood, it always kept in character and spirit the best traditions of rome. the long intervals of peace were not passed by the soldiers in idleness. they built the great highways that penetrated every region of the empire, spanned the streams with bridges, raised dikes and aqueducts, and taught the border races the arts of civilization. it was due, finally, to the labors of the legionaries, that the most exposed parts of the frontiers were provided with an extensive system of walls and ramparts. [illustration: the pantheon the original building was the work of agrippa, a minister of augustus. the temple was reconstructed by hadrian who left the greek portico unchanged but added the rotunda and the dome. this great dome, the largest in the world, is made of solid concrete. during the middle ages, the pantheon was converted into a church. it is now the burial place of the kings of italy.] the roman roads the roman system of roads received its great extension during the imperial age. the principal trunk lines began at the gates of rome and radiated thence to every province. along these highways sped the couriers of the caesars, carrying dispatches and making, by means of relays of horses, as much as one hundred and fifty miles a day. the roads resounded to the tramp of the legionaries passing to their stations on the distant frontier. travelers by foot, horseback, or litter journeyed on them from land to land, employing maps which described routes and distances. traders used them for the transport of merchandise. roman roads, in short, were the railways of antiquity. [ ] [illustration: the tomb of hadrian the building was formerly topped by another of smaller size which bore a statue of the emperor. in medieval times this stately tomb was converted into a castle. it is now used as a museum. the bridge across the tiber was built by hadrian.] [illustration: map, roman britain showing chief roman roads] the pax romana in her roads and fortifications, in the living rampart of her legions, rome long found security. except for the districts conquered by trajan but abandoned by hadrian, [ ] the empire during this period did not lose a province. for more than two hundred years, throughout an area as large as the united states, the civilized world rested under what an ancient writer calls "the immense majesty of the roman peace." [ ] extension of roman citizenship the grant of roman citizenship to all italians after the social war [ ] only increased for a time the contrast between italy and the provinces. but even before the fall of the republic caesar's legislation had begun the work of uniting the roman and the provincial. [ ] more and more the emperors followed in his footsteps. the extension of roman citizenship was a gradual process covering two centuries. it was left for the emperor caracalla, early in the third century, to take the final step. in a.d. he issued an edict which bestowed citizenship on all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. this famous edict completed the work, begun so many centuries before, of romanizing the ancient world. privileges of roman citizens the grant of citizenship, though it increased the burden of taxation, brought no slight advantage to those who possessed it. a roman citizen could not be maltreated with impunity or punished without a legal trial before roman courts. if accused in a capital case, he could always protect himself against an unjust decision by an "appeal to caesar", that is, to the emperor at rome. st. paul did this on one occasion when on trial for his life. [ ] wherever he lived, a roman citizen enjoyed, both for his person and his property, the protection of roman law. . the roman law and the latin language improvement of roman law the romans were the most legal-minded people of antiquity. it was their mission to give laws to the world. almost at the beginning of the republic they framed the code of the twelve tables, [ ] which long remained the basis of their jurisprudence. this code, however, was so harsh, technical, and brief that it could not meet the needs of a progressive state. the romans gradually improved their legal system, especially after they began to rule over conquered nations. the disputes which arose between citizens and subjects were decided by the praetors or provincial governors in accordance with what seemed to them to be principles of justice and equity. these principles gradually found a place in roman law, together with many rules and observances of foreign peoples. roman law in this way tended to take over and absorb all that was best in ancient jurisprudence. character of roman law thus, as the extension of the citizenship carried the principles and practice of roman law to every quarter of the empire, the spirit of that law underwent an entire change. it became exact, impartial, liberal, humane. it limited the use of torture to force confession from persons accused of crime. it protected the child against a father's tyranny. it provided that a master who killed a slave should be punished as a murderer, and even taught that all men are originally free by the law of nature and therefore that slavery is contrary to natural right. justice it defined as "the steady and abiding purpose to give every man that which is his own." [ ] roman law, which began as the rude code of a primitive people, ended as the most refined and admirable system of jurisprudence ever framed by man. this law, as we shall see later, has passed from ancient rome to modern europe. [ ] latin in italy the conquest by latin of the languages of the world is almost as interesting and important a story as the conquest by rome of the nations of the world. at the beginning of latin in roman history latin was the speech of only the italy people of latium. beyond the limits of latium latin came into contact with the many different languages spoken in early italy. some of them, such as greek and etruscan, soon disappeared from italy after roman expansion, but those used by native italian peoples showed more power of resistance. it was not until the last century b.c. that latin was thoroughly established in the central and southern parts of the peninsula. after the social war the italian peoples became citizens of rome, and with roman citizenship went the use of the latin tongue. latin in the western provinces the romans carried their language to the barbarian peoples of the west, as they had carried it to italy. their missionaries were colonists, merchants, soldiers, and public officials. the latin spoken by them was eagerly taken up by the rude, unlettered natives, who tried to make themselves as roman as possible in dress, customs, and speech. this provincial latin was not simply the language of the upper classes; the common people themselves used it freely, as we know from thousands of inscriptions found in western and central europe. in the countries which now make up spain, france, switzerland, southern austria, england, and north africa, the old national tongues were abandoned for the latin of rome. romance languages the decline of the roman empire did not bring about the downfall of the latin language in the west. it became the basis of the so-called romance languages--french, italian, spanish, portuguese, and rumanian--which arose in the middle ages out of the spoken latin of the common people. even our english language, which comes to us from the speech of the germanic invaders of britain, contains so many words of latin origin that we can scarcely utter a sentence without using some of them. the rule of rome has passed away; the language of rome still remains to enrich the intellectual life of mankind. . the municipalities of the roman empire prevalence of city life the world under roman rule was a world of cities. some had earlier been native settlements, such as those in gaul before the roman conquest. others were the splendid hellenistic cities in the east. [ ] many more were of roman origin, arising from the colonies and fortified camps in which citizens and soldiers had settled. [ ] where rome did not find cities, she created them. some important cities not only were the cities numerous, but many of them, even when judged by modern standards, reached great size. rome was the largest, her population being estimated at from one to two millions. alexandria came next with more than half a million people. syracuse was the third metropolis of the empire. italy contained such important towns as verona, milan, and ravenna. in gaul were marseilles, nîmes, bordeaux, lyons--all cities with a continuous existence to the present day. in britain york and london were seats of commerce, chester and lincoln were military colonies, and bath was celebrated then, as now, for its medicinal waters. carthage and corinth had risen in new splendor from their ashes. athens was still the home of greek art and greek culture. asia included such ancient and important centers as pergamum, smyrna, ephesus, rhodes, and antioch. the student who reads in his new testament the _acts of the apostles_ will get a vivid impression of some of these great capitals. [illustration: roman baths, at bath, england bath, the ancient aquae sulis, was famous in roman times for its hot springs. here are very interesting remains, including a large pool, eighty-three by forty feet in size, and lined at the bottom with the roman lead, besides smaller bathing chambers and portions of the ancient pipes and conduits. the building and statues are modern restorations.] appearance of the cities every municipality was a rome in miniature. it had its forum and senate- house, its temples, theaters, and baths, its circus for racing, and its amphitheater for gladiatorial combats. most of the municipalities enjoyed an abundant supply of water, and some had good sewer systems. the larger towns had well-paved, though narrow, streets. pompeii, a small place of scarcely thirty thousand inhabitants, still exists to give us an idea of the appearance of one of these ancient cities. and what we find at pompeii was repeated on a more splendid scale in hundreds of places from the danube to the nile, from britain to arabia. city government the municipalities of roman origin copied the government of rome itself. [ ] each city had a council, or senate, and a popular assembly which chose the magistrates. these officials were generally rich men; they received no salary, and in fact had to pay a large sum on entering office. local politics excited the keenest interest. many of the inscriptions found on the walls of pompeii are election placards recommending particular candidates for office. women sometimes took part in political contests. distributions of grain, oil, and money were made to needy citizens, in imitation of the bad roman practice. there were public banquets, imposing festivals, wild-beast hunts, and bloody contests of gladiators, like those at rome. survival of the roman municipal system the busy, throbbing life in these countless centers of the roman world has long since been stilled. the cities themselves, in many instances, have utterly disappeared. yet the forms of municipal government, together with the roman idea of a free, self-governing city, never wholly died out. some of the most important cities which flourished in southern and western europe during the later middle ages preserved clear traces of their ancient roman origin. . economic and social conditions in the first and second centuries promotion of commerce the first two centuries of our era formed the golden age of roman commerce. the emperors fostered it in many ways. augustus and his successors kept the mediterranean free from pirates, built lighthouses and improved harbors, policed the highways, and made travel by land both speedy and safe. an imperial currency [ ] replaced the various national coinages with their limited circulation. the vexatious import and export duties, levied by different countries and cities on foreign produce, were swept away. free trade flourished between the cities and provinces of the roman world. principal trade routes roman commerce followed, in general, the routes which phoenicians had discovered centuries before. after the annexation of gaul the rivers of that country became channels of trade between western europe and italy. the conquest of the districts north and south of the danube opened up an important route between central europe and the mediterranean. imports from the far eastern countries came by caravan through asia to ports on the black sea. the water routes led by way of the persian gulf to the great syrian cities of antioch and palmyra and, by way of the red sea, to alexandria on the nile. from these thriving commercial centers products were shipped to every region of the empire. [ ] [illustration: a roman freight ship the ship lies beside the wharf at ostia. in the after-part of the vessel is a cabin with two windows. notice the figure of victory on the top of the single mast and the decoration of the mainsail with the wolf and twins. the ship is steered by a pair of huge paddles.] local trading at rome the importation and disposal of foreign goods at rome furnished employment for many thousands of traders. there were great wholesale merchants whose warehouses stored grain and all kinds of merchandise. there were also many retail shopkeepers. they might be sometimes the slaves or freedmen of a wealthy noble who preferred to keep in the background. sometimes they were men of free birth. the feeling that petty trade was unworthy of a citizen, though strong in republican days, tended to disappear under the empire. free laborers at rome the slaves at rome, like those at athens, [ ] carried on many industrial tasks. we must not imagine, however, that all the manual labor of the city was performed by bondmen. the number of slaves even tended to decline, when there were no more border wars to yield captives for the slave markets. the growing custom of emancipation worked in the same direction. we find in this period a large body of free laborers, not only in the capital city, but in all parts of the empire. the guilds the workmen engaged in a particular calling frequently formed clubs, or guilds. [ ] there were guilds of weavers, shoe-makers, jewelers, painters, musicians, and even of gladiators. these associations were not organized for the purpose of securing higher wages and shorter hours by strikes or threat of strikes. they seem to have existed chiefly for social and religious purposes. each guild had its clubhouse for official meetings and banquets. each guild had its special deity, such as vesta, the fire goddess, for bakers, and bacchus, the wine god, for innkeepers. every year the guildsmen held a festival, in honor of their patron, and marched through the streets with banners and the emblems of their trade. nearly all the guilds had as one main object the provision of a proper funeral and tomb for deceased members. the humble laborer found some consolation in the thought that he belonged to a club of friends and fellow workers, who after death would give him decent burial and keep his memory green. life of the working classes free workingmen throughout the roman world appear to have led reasonably happy lives. they were not driven or enslaved by their employers or forced to labor for long hours in grimy, unwholesome factories. slums existed, but no sweatshops. if wages were low, so also was the cost of living. wine, oil, and wheat flour were cheap. the mild climate made heavy clothing unnecessary and permitted an outdoor life. the public baths-- great clubhouses--stood open to every one who could pay a trifling fee. [ ] numerous holidays, celebrated with games and shows, brightened existence. on the whole we may conclude that working people at rome and in the provinces enjoyed greater comfort during this period than had ever been their lot in previous ages. [illustration: a roman villa wall painting, pompeii.] great fortunes it was an age of millionaires. there had been rich men, such as crassus, [ ] during the last century of the republic; their numbers increased and their fortunes rose during the first century of the empire. the philosopher seneca, a tutor of nero, is said to have made twelve million dollars within four years by the emperor's favor. narcissus, the secretary of claudius, made sixteen million dollars--the largest roman fortune on record. this sum must be multiplied four or five times to find its modern equivalent, since in antiquity interest rates were higher and the purchasing power of money was greater than to-day. such private fortunes are surpassed only by those of the present age. luxury and extravagance the heaping-up of riches in the hands of a few brought its natural consequence in luxury and extravagance. the palaces of the wealthy, with their gardens, baths, picture galleries, and other features, were costly to build and costly to keep up. the money not lavished by a noble on his town house could be easily sunk on his villas in the country. all italy, from the bay of naples, to the foot of the alps, was dotted with elegant residences, having flower gardens, game preserves, fishponds, and artificial lakes. much senseless waste occurred at banquets and entertainments. vast sums were spent on vessels of gold and silver, jewelry, clothing, and house furnishings. even funerals and tombs required heavy outlays. a capitalist of imperial rome could get rid of a fortune in selfish indulgences almost as readily as any modern millionaire not blessed with a refined taste or with public spirit. some social evils some of the customs of the time appear especially shocking. the brutal gladiatorial games [ ] were a passion with every one, from the emperor to his lowest subject. infanticide was a general practice. marriage grew to be a mere civil contract, easily made and easily broken. common as divorce had become, the married state was regarded as undesirable. augustus vainly made laws to encourage matrimony and discourage celibacy. suicide, especially among the upper classes, was astonishingly frequent. no one questioned another's right to leave this life at pleasure. the decline of the earlier paganism left many men without a deep religious faith to combat the growing doubt and worldliness of the age. brighter aspects of roman society yet this dark picture needs correction at many points. it may be questioned whether the vice, luxury, and wickedness of ancient rome, antioch, or alexandria much exceeded what our great modern capitals can show, during this period, moreover, many remarkable improvements took place in social life and manners. there was an increasing kindliness and charity. the weak and the infirm were better treated. the education of the poor was encouraged by the founding of free schools. wealthy citizens of the various towns lavished their fortunes on such public works as baths, aqueducts, and temples, for the benefit of all classes. even the slaves were much better treated. imperial laws aimed to check the abuses of cruelty, overwork, and neglect, and philosophers recommended to masters the exercise of gentleness and mercy toward slaves. in fact, the first and second centuries of our era were marked by a great growth of the humanitarian spirit. . the graeco-roman world the new cosmopolitanism just as the conquests of alexander, by uniting the orient to greece, produced a graeco-oriental civilization, so now the expansion of rome over the mediterranean formed another world-wide culture, in which both greek and roman elements met and mingled. a new sense of cosmopolitanism arose in place of the old civic or national patriotism. roman elements met and mingled. a new sense of cosmopolitanism arose in place of the old civic or national patriotism. [illustration: a roman temple the best preserved of roman temples. located at nîmes in southern france, where it is known as la maison carrée ("the square house"). the structure is now used as a museum of antiquities.] unifying and civilizing forces this cosmopolitan feeling was the outcome of those unifying and civilizing forces which the imperial system set at work. the extension of roman citizenship broke down the old distinction between the citizens and the subjects of rome. the development of roman law carried its principles of justice and equity to the remotest regions. the spread of the latin language provided the western half of the empire with a speech as universal there as greek was in the east. trade and travel united the provinces with one another and with rome. the worship of the caesars dimmed the luster of all local worships and kept constantly before men's minds the idea of rome and of her mighty emperors. last, but not least important, was the fusion of alien peoples through intermarriage with roman soldiers and colonists. "how many settlements," exclaims the philosopher seneca, "have been planted in every province! wherever the roman conquers, there he dwells." [ ] [illustration: the amphitheater at arles the amphitheater at arles in southern france was used during the middle ages as a fortress then as a prison and finally became the resort of criminals and paupers. the illustration shows it before the removal of the buildings about a.d. bullfights still continue in the arena, where, in roman times, animal baitings and gladiatorial games took place.] monuments of roman rule the best evidence of rome's imperial rule is found in the monuments she raised in every quarter of the ancient world. some of the grandest ruins of antiquity are not in the capital city itself, or even in italy, but in spain, france, england, greece, switzerland, asia minor, syria, and north africa. among these are hadrian's wall in britain, the splendid aqueduct known as the pont du gard near nîmes in southern france, the beautiful temple called la maison carrée in the same city, the olympieum at athens, and the temple of the sun at baalbec in syria thus the lonely hilltops, the desolate desert sands, the mountain fastnesses of three continents bear witness even now to the widespreading sway of rome. [illustration: a megalith at baalbec a block of stone feet long feet high and weighing about tons. it is still attached to its bed in the quarry not far from the ruins of baalbec in syria. the temples of baalbec seen in the distance were built by the romans in the third century a.d. the majestic temple of the sun contains three megaliths almost as huge as the one represented in the illustration. they are the largest blocks known to have been used in any structure. for a long time they were supposed to be relics of giant builders.] romanization of east and west the civilized world took on the stamp and impress of rome. the east, indeed, remained greek in language and feeling, but even there roman law and government prevailed, roman roads traced their unerring course, and roman architects erected majestic monuments. the west became completely roman. north africa, spain, gaul, distant dacia, and britain were the seats of populous cities, where the latin language was spoken and roman customs were followed. from them came the emperors. they furnished some of the most eminent men of letters. their schools of grammar and rhetoric attracted students from rome itself. thus unconsciously, but none the less surely, local habits and manners, national religions and tongues, provincial institutions and ways of thinking disappeared from the ancient world. studies . on an outline map indicate the additions to roman territory: during the reign of augustus, b.c.- a.d.; during the period - a.d. . on an outline map indicate ten important cities of the roman empire. . connect the proper events with the following dates: a.d.; a.d.; and a.d. . whom do you consider the greater man, julius caesar or augustus? give reasons for your answer. . compare the augustan age at rome with the age of pericles at athens. . what is the _monumentum ancyranum_ and its historic importance (illustration monumentum ancyranum, section . augustus, b.c.-l a.d., topic the augustan age)? . how did the worship of the caesars connect itself with ancestor worship? . in the reign of what roman emperor was jesus born? in whose reign was he crucified? . how did the "year of anarchy" after nero's death exhibit a weakness in the imperial system? . how many provinces existed under trajan? . what modern countries are included within the limits of the roman empire in the age of trajan? . compare the extent of the roman empire under trajan with (a) the empire of alexander; and (b) the empire of darius. . give the roman names of spain, italy, gaul, germany, britain, scotland, and ireland. . contrast the roman armies under the empire with the standing armies of modern europe. . trace on the map, page , the roman roads in britain. . "to the roman city the empire was political death; to the provinces it was the beginning of new life." comment on this statement. . why should rome have made a greater success of her imperial policy than either athens or sparta? . compare roman liberality in extending the franchise with the similar policy displayed by the united states. . compare the freedom of trade between the provinces of the roman empire with that between the states of the american union. . on the map, page , trace the trade routes during imperial times. . compare as civilizing forces the roman and the persian empires. . what was the _pax romana_? what is the _pax britannica_? . compare the romanization of the ancient world with that process of americanization which is going on in the united states to-day. . explain this statement: "the roman empire is the lake in which all the streams of ancient history lose themselves and which all the streams of modern history flow out of." . "republican rome had little to do, either by precept or example, with the modern life of europe, imperial rome everything." can you justify this statement? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xix, "the makers of imperial rome: character sketches by suetonius"; chapter xx, "nero, a roman emperor." [ ] hence our word "prince". [ ] see page . [ ] the provinces of pannonia, noricum, and raetia. see the map facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] for a description of ancient rome see pages - . [ ] jesus was born probably in b.c., the last year of the reign of herod, whom the triumvirs, antony and octavian, had placed on the throne of judea in b.c. [ ] a roman emperor was generally called "caesar" by the provincials. see, for example, _matthew_, xxii, - , or _acts_, xxv, - . this title survives in the german _kaiser_ and perhaps in the russian _tsar_ or _czar_. [ ] in a.d., during the reign of the emperor hadrian, the jews once more broke out in revolt. jerusalem, which had risen from its ruins, was again destroyed by the romans, and the plow was passed over the foundations of the temple. from roman times to the present the jews have been a people without a country. [ ] see bulwer-lytton's novel, _the last days of pompeii_. [ ] see the map on page for the system of roman roads in britain. [ ] see page . [ ] pliny, _natural history_, xxvii, . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see _acts_, xxv, - . [ ] see page . [ ] _institutes_, bk. i, tit. i. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] several english cities, such as lancaster, leicester, manchester, and chester, betray in their names their origin in the roman castra, or camp. [ ] see page . [ ] for illustrations of roman coins see the plate facing page . [ ] see the map on page . [ ] see page . [ ] latin _collegia_, whence our "college." [ ] see pages and . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] seneca, _minor dialogues_, xi, . chapter x the later empire: christianity in the roman world, - a.d. . the "soldier emperors," - a.d. the later empire, - a.d. the period called the later empire covers the two hundred and fifteen years from the accession of commodus to the final division of the roman world at the death of theodosius. it formed, in general, a period of decline. the very existence of the empire was threatened, both from within and from without. the armies on the frontiers often set up their favorite leaders as contestants for the throne, thus provoking civil war. ambitious governors of distant provinces sometimes revolted against a weak or unpopular emperor and tried to establish independent states. the germans took advantage of the unsettled condition of affairs to make constant inroads. about the middle of the third century it became necessary to surrender to them the great province of dacia, which trajan had won. [ ] a serious danger also appeared in the distant east. here the persians, having overcome the parthians, [ ] endeavored to recover from roman hands the asiatic provinces which had once belonged to the old persian realm. though the persians failed to make any permanent conquest of roman territory, their constant attacks weakened the empire at the very time when the northern barbarians had again become a menace. "imperial phantoms" the rulers who occupied the throne during the first half of this troubled period are commonly known as the "soldier emperors," because so many of them owed their position to the swords of the legionaries. emperor after emperor followed in quick succession, to enjoy a brief reign and then to perish in some sudden insurrection. within a single year ( - a.d.) six rulers were chosen, worshiped, and then murdered by their troops "you little know," said one of these imperial phantoms, "what a poor thing it is to be an emperor." [ ] political situation in a.d. the close of the third century thus found the empire engaged in a struggle for existence. no part of the roman world had escaped the ravages of war. the fortification of the capital city by the emperor aurelian was itself a testimony to the altered condition of affairs. the situation was desperate, yet not hopeless. under an able ruler, such as aurelian, rome proved to be still strong enough to repel her foes. it was the work of the even more capable diocletian to establish the empire on so solid a foundation that it endured with almost undiminished strength for another hundred years. [illustration: the wall of rome constructed by aurelian and rebuilt by honorius. the material is concrete faced with brick, thickness feet, greatest height feet. this is still the wall of the modern city, although at present no effort is made to keep it in repair.] . the "absolute emperors," - a.d. reign of diocletian, - a.d. diocletian, whose reign is one of the most illustrious in roman history, entered the army as a common soldier, rose to high command, and fought his way to the throne. a strong, ambitious man, diocletian resolutely set himself to the task of remaking the roman government. his success in this undertaking entitles him to rank, as a statesman and administrator, with augustus. weaknesses in the imperial system the reforms of diocletian were meant to remedy those weaknesses in the imperial system disclosed by the disasters of the preceding century. in the first place, experience showed that the empire was unwieldy. there were the distant frontiers on the rhine, danube, and euphrates to be guarded; there were all the provinces to be governed. a single ruler, however able and energetic, had more than he could do. in the second place, the succession to the imperial throne was uncertain. now an emperor named his successor, now the senate elected him, and now the swords of the legionaries raised him to the purple. such an unsettled state of affairs constantly invited those struggles between rival pretenders which had so nearly brought the empire to destruction. diocletian's reforms diocletian began his reforms by adopting a scheme for "partnership emperors." he shared the roman world with a trusted lieutenant named maximian. each was to be an augustus, with all the honors of an emperor. diocletian ruled the east; maximian ruled the west. further partnership soon seemed advisable, and so each _augustus_ chose a younger associate, or _caesar_, to aid him in the government and at his death or abdication to become his heir. diocletian also remodeled the provincial system. the entire empire, including italy, was divided into more than one hundred provinces. they were grouped into thirteen dioceses and these, in turn, into four prefectures. [ ] this reform much lessened the authority of the provincial governor, who now ruled over a small district and had to obey the vicar of his diocese. the new absolutism the emperors, from diocletian onward, were autocrats. they bore the proud title of _dominus_ ("lord"). they were treated as gods. everything that touched their persons was sacred. they wore a diadem of pearls and gorgeous robes of silk and gold, like those of asiatic monarchs. they filled their palaces with a crowd of fawning, flattering nobles, and busied themselves with an endless round of stately and impressive ceremonials. hitherto a roman emperor had been an _imperator_, [ ] the head of an army. now he became a king, to be greeted, not with the old military salute, but with the bent knee and the prostrate form of adoration. such pomps and vanities, which former romans would have thought degrading, helped to inspire reverence among the servile subjects of a later age. if it was the aim of augustus to disguise, it was the aim of diocletian to display, the unbounded power of a roman emperor. constantine, sole emperor, - a.d. there can be little doubt that diocletian's reforms helped to prolong the existence of the empire. in one respect, however, they must be pronounced a failure. they did not end the disputes about the succession. only two years after the abdication of diocletian there were six rival pretenders for the title of _augustus_. their dreary struggles continued, until at length two emperors were left--constantine in the west, licinius in the east. after a few years of joint rule another civil war made constantine supreme. the roman world again had a single master. reign of constantine constantine was an able general and a wise statesman. two events of lasting importance have made his reign memorable. it was constantine who recognized christianity as one of the religions of the empire and thus paved the way for the triumph of that faith over the ancient paganism. his work in this connection will be discussed presently. it was constantine, also, who established a new capital for the roman world at byzantium [ ] on the bosporus. he christened it "new rome," but it soon took the emperor's name as constantinople, the "city of constantine." [ ] foundation of constantinople several good reasons could be urged for the removal of the world's metropolis from the tiber to the bosporus. the roman empire was ceasing to be one empire. constantine wanted a great city for the eastern half to balance rome in the western half. again, constantinople, far more than rome, was the military center of the empire. rome lay too far from the vulnerable frontiers; constantinople occupied a position about equidistant from the germans on the lower danube and the persians on the euphrates. finally, constantine believed that christianity, which he wished to become the prevailing religion, would encounter less opposition and criticism in his new city than at rome, with its pagan atmosphere and traditions. constantinople was to be not simply a new seat of government but also distinctively a christian capital. such it remained for more than eleven centuries. [ ] after constantine, - a.d. after the death of constantine the roman world again entered on a period of disorder. the inroads of the germans across the danube and the rhine threatened the european provinces of the empire with dissolution. the outlook in the asiatic provinces, overrun by the persians, was no less gloomy. meanwhile the eastern and western halves of the empire tended more and more to grow apart. the separation between the two had become well marked by the close of the fourth century. after the death of the emperor theodosius ( a.d.) there came to be in fact, if not in name, a roman empire in the east and a roman empire in the west. political situation in a.d. more than four hundred years had now elapsed since the battle of actium made octavian supreme in the roman world. if we except the abandonment of trajan's conquests beyond the danube and the euphrates, [ ] no part of the huge empire had as yet succumbed to its enemies. the subject peoples, during these four centuries, had not tried to overthrow the empire or to withdraw from its protection. the roman state, men believed, would endure forever. yet the times were drawing nigh when the old order of things was to be broken up; when barbarian invaders were to seize the fairest provinces as their own; and when new kingdoms, ruled by men of germanic speech, were to arise in lands that once obeyed rome. . economic and social conditions in the third and fourth centuries the "fall" of rome rome, it has been said, was not built in a day; the rule of rome was not destroyed in a day. when we speak of the "fall" of rome, we have in mind, not a violent catastrophe which suddenly plunged the civilized world into ruin, but rather the slow and gradual decay of ancient society throughout the basin of the mediterranean. this decay set in long before the germans and the persians became a serious danger to the empire. it would have continued, doubtless, had there been no germans and persians to break through the frontiers and destroy. the truth seems to be that, during the third and fourth centuries of our era, classical civilization, like an overtrained athlete, had grown "stale." depopulation due to the slave system it is not possible to set forth all the forces which century after century had been sapping the strength of the state. the most obvious element of weakness was the want of men to fill the armies and to cultivate the fields. the slave system seems to have been partly responsible for this depopulation. the peasant on his little homestead could not compete with the wealthy noble whose vast estates were worked by gangs of slaves. the artisan could not support himself and his family on the pittance that kept his slave competitor alive. peasants and artisans gradually drifted into the cities, where the public distributions of grain, wine, and oil assured them of a living with little expense and almost without exertion. in both italy and the provinces there was a serious decline in the number of free farmers and free workingmen. "race suicide" but slavery was not the only cause of depopulation. there was a great deal of what has been called "race suicide" in the old roman world. well-to-do people, who could easily support large families, often refused to be burdened with them. childlessness, however, was not confined to the wealthy, since the poorer classes, crowded in the huge lodging houses of the cities, had no real family life. roman emperors, who saw how difficult it was to get a sufficient number of recruits for the army, and how whole districts were going to waste for lack of people to cultivate them, tried to repopulate the empire by force of law. they imposed penalties for the childlessness and celibacy of the rich, and founded institutions for the rearing of children, that the poor might not fear to raise large families. such measures were scarcely successful. "race suicide" continued during pagan times and even during the christian age. loss of revenues the next most obvious element of weakness was the shrinkage of the revenues. the empire suffered from want of money, as well as from want of men. to meet the heavy cost of the luxurious court, to pay the salaries of the swarms of public officials, to support the idle populace in the great cities required a vast annual income. but just when public expenditures were rising by leaps and bounds, it became harder and harder to secure sufficient revenue. smaller numbers meant fewer taxpayers. fewer taxpayers meant a heavier burden on those who survived to pay. economic ruin these two forces--the decline in population and the decline in wealth-- worked together to produce economic ruin. it is no wonder, therefore, that in province after province large tracts of land went out of cultivation, that the towns decayed, and that commerce and manufactures suffered an appalling decline. "hard times" settled on the roman world. influence of christianity doubtless still other forces were at work to weaken the state and make it incapable of further resistance to the barbarians. among such forces we must reckon christianity itself. by the close of the fourth century christianity had become the religion of the empire. the new faith, as we shall soon see, helped, not to support, but rather to undermine, pagan society. . the preparation for christianity decline of paganism several centuries before the rise of christianity many greek thinkers began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with the crude faith that had come down to them from prehistoric times. they found it more and more difficult to believe in the olympian deities, who were fashioned like themselves and had all the faults of mortal men. [ ] an adulterous zeus, a bloodthirsty ares, and a scolding hera, as homer represents them, were hardly divinities that a cultured greek could love and worship. for educated romans, also, the rites and ceremonies of the ancient religion came gradually to lose their meaning. the worship of the roman gods had never appealed to the emotions. now it tended to pass into the mere mechanical repetition of prayers and sacrifices. even the worship of the caesars, [ ] which did much to hold the empire together, failed to satisfy the spiritual wants of mankind. it made no appeal to the moral nature; it brought no message, either of fear or hope, about a future world and a life beyond the grave. stoicism during these centuries a system of greek philosophy, called stoicism, gained many adherents among the romans. any one who will read the stoic writings, such as those of the noble emperor, marcus aurelius, [ ] will see how nearly christian was the stoic faith. it urged men to forgive injuries--to "bear and forbear." it preached the brotherhood of man. it expressed a humble and unfaltering reliance on a divine providence. to many persons of refinement stoicism became a real religion. but since stoic philosophy could reach and influence only the educated classes, it could not become a religion for all sorts and conditions of men. the eleusinian mysteries many greeks found a partial satisfaction of their religious longings in secret rites called mysteries. of these the most important grew up at eleusis, [ ] a little attic town thirteen miles from athens. they were connected with the worship of demeter, goddess of vegetation and of the life of nature. the celebration of the eleusinian mysteries came in september and lasted nine days. when the candidates for admission to the secret rites were worked up to a state of religious excitement, they entered a brilliantly lighted hall and witnessed a passion play dealing with the legend of demeter. they seem to have had no direct moral instruction but saw, instead, living pictures and pantomimes which represented the life beyond the grave and held out to them the promise of a blessed lot in another world. as an athenian orator said, "those who have shared this initiation possess sweeter hopes about death and about the whole of life." [ ] influence of the mysteries the eleusinian mysteries, though unknown in the homeric age, were already popular before the epoch of the persian wars. they became a panhellenic festival open to all greeks, women as well as men, slaves as well as freemen. the privilege of membership was later extended to romans. during the first centuries of our era the influence of the mysteries increased, as faith in the olympian religion declined. they formed one of the last strongholds of paganism and endured till the triumph of christianity in the roman world. oriental religions in the roman empire the asiatic conquests of alexander, followed in later centuries by the extension of roman rule over the eastern coasts of the mediterranean, brought the classical peoples into contact with new religions which had arisen in the orient. slaves, soldiers, traders, and travelers carried the eastern faiths to the west, where they speedily won many followers. even before the downfall of the republic the deities of asia minor, egypt, and persia had found a home at rome. under the empire many men and women were attracted to their worship. mithra perhaps the most remarkable of the asiatic religions was mithraism. mithra first appears as a persian sun god, the leader of ahuramazda's hosts in the ceaseless struggle against the forces of darkness and evil. [ ] as a god of light mithra was also a god of truth and purity. his worship, spreading over the length and breadth of the roman empire, became the noblest of all pagan faiths. men saw in mithra a lord and giver of life, who protected the weak and miserable, cleansed the sinner, conquered death, and procured for his faithful followers the crown of immortality. [illustration: a mithraic monument a bas relief discovered in a.d. in a cave near heidelberg, germany. the central group represents mithra slaying the bull. the smaller reliefs show scenes from the life of mithra, including his birth from the rock and his ascent to ahuramazda.] the worship of mithra the mithraic worship took the form of a mystery with seven grades, or degrees, through which candidates passed by ordeals of initiation. the rites included a kind of baptism with holy water, a sacrificial meal of bread and wine, and daily litanies to the sun. mithra was represented as a youthful hero miraculously born from a rock at the dawn of day; for this reason his worship was always conducted underground in natural or artificial caves, or in cellars. at the back of one of these subterranean temples would be often a picture of mithra slaying a bull, and an inscription: "to the unconquerable sun, to mithra." [ ] significance of the oriental religions the new oriental religions all appealed to the emotions. they helped to satisfy the spiritual wants of men and women, by dwelling on the need of purification from sin and by holding forth the prospect of a happier life beyond the tomb. it is not strange, therefore, that they penetrated every province of the roman empire and flourished as late as the fourth century of our era. christianity had no more dangerous antagonists than the followers of mithra and other eastern divinities. . rise and spread of christianity christianity among the jews christianity rose among the jews, for jesus was a jew and his disciples were jews. at the time of the death of jesus [ ] his immediate followers numbered scarcely a christianity hundred persons. the catastrophe of the crucifixion struck them with sorrow and dismay. when, however, the disciples came to believe in the resurrection of their master, a wonderful impetus was given to the growth of the new religion. they now asserted that jesus was the true messiah, or christ, who by rising from the dead had sealed the truth of his teachings. for several years after the crucifixion, the disciples remained at jerusalem, preaching and making converts. the new doctrines met so much opposition on the part of jewish leaders in the capital city that the followers of jesus withdrew to samaria, damascus, and antioch. in all these places there were large jewish communities, among whom peter and his fellow apostles labored zealously. [illustration: map, palestine in the time of christ] [illustration: modern jerusalem and the mount of olives] missionary labors of paul up to this time the new faith had been spread only among the jews. the first christians did not neglect to keep up all the customs of the jewish religion. it was even doubted for a while whether any but jews could properly be allowed within the christian fold. a new convert, saul of tarsus, afterwards the apostle paul, did most to admit the gentiles, or pagans, to the privileges of the new religion. though born a jew, paul had been trained in the schools of tarsus, a city of asia minor which was a great center of greek learning. he possessed a knowledge of greek philosophy, and particularly of stoicism. this broad education helped to make him an acceptable missionary to greek-speaking peoples. during more than thirty years of unceasing activity paul established churches in asia minor, greece, macedonia, and italy. to many of these churches he wrote the letters (epistles), which have found a place in the new testament. so large a part of the doctrines of christianity has been derived from paul's writings that we may well speak of him as the second founder of the christian faith. [illustration: madonna and child the earliest known representation of mary and the infant jesus. the prophet isaiah is shown pointing to the new star. the picture dates from about a.d. and comes from the catacombs of st. priscilla.] christianity among the gentiles christianity advanced with marvelous rapidity over the roman world. at the close of the first century there were christians everywhere in asia minor. the second century saw the establishment of flourishing churches in almost every province of the empire. a hundred years later there were missionaries along the rhine, on the danube frontier, and in distant britain. "we are but of yesterday," says a christian writer, with pardonable exaggeration, "yet we have filled all your places of resort-- cities, islands, fortresses, towns, markets, the camp itself, the tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, and the forum, we have left to you only the temples of your gods." [ ] conditions favoring the spread of christianity certain circumstances contributed to the success of this gigantic missionary enterprise. alexander's conquests in the east and those of rome in the west had done much to remove the barriers to intercourse between nations. the spread of greek and latin as the common languages of the mediterranean world furnished a medium in which christian speakers and writers could be easily understood. the scattering of the jews after the destruction of jerusalem [ ] provided the christians with an audience in many cities of the empire. the early missionaries, such as paul himself, were often roman citizens who enjoyed the protection of the roman law and profited by the ease of travel which the imperial rule had made possible. at no other period in ancient history were conditions so favorable for the rapid spread of a new religion. organization of early christianity while christianity was conquering the world, the believers in its doctrines were grouping themselves into communities or churches. every city had a congregation of christian worshipers. [ ] they met, not in synagogues as did the jews, but in private houses, where they sang hymns, listened to readings from the holy scriptures, and partook of a sacrificial meal in memory of the last supper of jesus with his disciples. certain officers called presbyters, [ ] or elders, were chosen to conduct the services and instruct the converts. the chief presbyter received the name of "overseer," or bishop. [ ] each church had also one or more deacons, who visited the sick and relieved the wants of the poor. every christian community thus formed a little brotherhood of earnest men and women, united by common beliefs and common hopes. [illustration: christ, the good shepherd (imperial museum, constantinople) this quaint, rude figure, found in an early christian tomb in asia minor, dates probably from the beginning of the third century. it is the oldest known statue of christ. he wears the coarse garb of an oriental peasant; his countenance is gentle and thoughtful; on his broad shoulders rests a lamb.] . the persecutions hostility toward the christians the new religion from the start met popular disapproval. the early christians, who tried to keep themselves free from idolatry, were regarded as very unsociable persons. they never appeared at public feasts and entertainments. they would not join in the amusements of the circus or the amphitheater. they refused to send their children to the schools. the ordinary citizen could not understand such people. it is not surprising, therefore, that they gained the evil name of "haters of mankind." superstitious fear of the christians if the multitude despised the christians, they sometimes feared them as well. strange stories circulated about the secret meetings of the christians, who at their sacrificial meal were declared to feast on children. the christians, too, were often looked upon as magicians who caused all sorts of disasters. it was not difficult to excite the vicious crowds of the larger cities to riots and disorders, in which many followers of the new religion lost their lives. antagonism of the roman government such outbursts of mob hatred were only occasional. there would have been no organized, persistent attack, if the imperial government had not taken a hand. rome, which had treated so many other foreign faiths with careless indifference or even with favor, which had tolerated the jews and granted to them special privileges of worship, made a deliberate effort to crush christianity. attitude of the christians toward paganism rome entered on the persecutions because it saw in christianity that which threatened its own existence. the christians declined to support the state religion; they even condemned it unsparingly as sinful and idolatrous. the christians, moreover, would not worship the _genius_, or guardian spirit of the emperor, and would not burn incense before his statue, which stood in every town. such a refusal to take what was really an oath of allegiance was regarded as an act of rebellion. these feelings of hostility to the christians were strengthened by their unwillingness to serve in the army and to swear by the pagan gods in courts of law. in short, the members of this new sect must have appeared very unruly subjects who, if allowed to become numerous enough, would endanger the security of the government. diocletian's persecution, - a.d. as early as the beginning of the second century roman officials began to search out and punish christians, wherever they were found. during the third century the entire power of the imperial government was directed against this outlawed sect. the persecution which began under diocletian was the last and most severe. with some interruptions it continued for eight years. only gaul and britain seem to have escaped its ravages. the government began by burning the holy books of the christians, by destroying their churches, and by taking away their property. members of the hated faith lost their privileges as full roman citizens. then sterner measures followed. the prisons were crowded with christians. those who refused to recant and sacrifice to the emperor were thrown to wild animals in the arena, stretched on the rack, or burned over a slow fire. every refinement of torture was practiced. paganism, fighting for its existence, left no means untried to root out a sect both despised and feared. the martyrs the christians joyfully suffered for their religion. they welcomed the torture and death which would gain for them a heavenly crown. those who perished were called martyrs, that is, "witnesses." even now the festal day of a martyr is the day of his death. [illustration: interior of the catacombs the catacombs of rome are underground cemeteries in which the christians buried their dead. the bodies were laid in recesses in the walls of the galleries or underneath the pavement. several tiers of galleries (in one instance as many as seven) lie one below the other. their total length has been estimated at no less than six hundred miles. the illustration shows a small chamber, or cubiculum. the graves have been opened and the bodies taken away.] . triumph of christianity christianity becomes a tolerated religion diocletian's persecution, which continued for several years after his abdication, came to an end in a.d. in that year galerius, the ruler in the east, published an edict which permitted the christians to rebuild their churches and worship undisturbed. it remained for the emperor constantine to take the next significant step. in a.d. constantine and his colleague, licinius, issued the edict of milan, which proclaimed for the first time in history the noble principle of religious toleration. it gave absolute freedom to every man to choose and follow the religion which he deemed best suited to his needs. this edict placed the christian faith on an equality with paganism. constantine's conversion the conversion of constantine is one of the most important events in ancient history. a roman emperor, himself a god to the subjects of rome, became the worshiper of a crucified provincial of his empire. constantine favored the christians throughput his reign. he surrounded himself with christian bishops, freed the clergy from taxation, and spent large sums in building churches. one of his laws abolished the use of the cross as an instrument of punishment. another enactment required that magistrates, city people, and artisans were to rest on sunday. this was the first "sunday law." [ ] [illustration: the labarum the sacred military standard of the early christian roman emperors. first adopted by constantine. it consisted of a staff or lance with a purple banner on a cross-bar. the two greek letters xp (chr) make a monogram of the word christ (greek _christos_).] church council at nicaea, a.d. significant of the emperor's attitude toward christianity was his action in summoning all the bishops in the different provinces to a gathering at nicaea in asia minor. it was the first general council of the church. the principal work of the council of nicaea was the settlement of a great dispute which had arisen over the nature of christ. some theologians headed by arius, a priest of alexandria, maintained that christ the son, having been created by god the father, was necessarily inferior to him athanasius, another alexandrian priest, opposed this view and held that christ was not a created being, but was in all ways equal to god. the council accepted the arguments of athanasius, condemned arius as a heretic, and framed the nicene creed, which is still the accepted summary of christian doctrine. though thrust out of the church, arianism lived to flourish anew among the germanic tribes, of which the majority were converted to christianity by arian missionaries. [illustration: arch of constantine erected at rome in a.d. to commemorate the victory of constantine over maxentius. the monument consists of a central gateway and two smaller arches flanked by detached columns in the corinthian style. the arch is decorated with four large statues in front of the upper story and also with numerous sculptures in relief.] christianity becomes the state religion under theodosius, - a.d. the recognition given to christianity by constantine helped immensely to spread the new faith. the emperor theodosius, whose services to the church won him the title of "the great," made christianity the state religion. sacrifices to the pagan gods were forbidden, the temples were closed, and their property was taken away. those strongholds of the old paganism, the delphic oracle, the olympian games, and the eleusinian mysteries, were abolished. even the private worship of the household lares and penates [ ] was prohibited. though paganism lingered for a century or more in the country districts, it became extinct as a state religion by the end of the fourth century. [illustration: map, the growth of christianity to the end of the fourth century.] . christian influence on society moral teachings of christianity the new religion certainly helped to soften and refine manners by the stress which it laid upon such "christian" virtues as humility, tenderness, and gentleness. by dwelling on the sanctity of human life, christianity did its best to repress the very common practice of suicide as well as the frightful evil of infanticide. [ ] it set its face sternly against the obscenities of the theater and the cruelties of the gladiatorial shows. [ ] in these and other respects christianity had much to do with the improvement of ancient morals. social teachings of christianity perhaps even more original contributions of christianity to civilization lay in its social teachings. the belief in the fatherhood of god implied a corresponding belief in the brotherhood of man. this doctrine of the equality of men had been expressed before by ancient philosophers, but christianity translated the precept into practice. in this way it helped to improve the condition of slaves and, by favoring emancipation, even tended to decrease slavery. [ ] christianity also laid much emphasis on the virtue of charity and the duty of supporting all institutions which aimed to relieve the lot of the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden. christianity and the germans at the close of the fourth century the germanic tribes living nearest the frontiers had been visited by missionaries and had become converts to christianity. the fact that both romans and germans were christians tended to lessen the terrors of the invasions and to bring about a peaceful fusion of the conquerors and the conquered. studies . on an outline map indicate the territories of the roman empire and their division, a d. . what is the date of the accession of the emperor commodus? of the accession of diocletian? of the death of theodosius? of the edict of milan? of the council of nicaea? . what elements of weakness in the imperial system had been disclosed during the century - a.d.? . explain diocletian's plan of "partnership emperors." . define the terms _absolutism_ and _centralization_. give an example of a european country under a centralized administration; of a european country under an absolute government. . what are the advantages of local self-government over a centralized government? . "the emperor of the first century was a _prince_, that is, 'first citizen'; the emperor of the fourth century was a _sultan_." comment on this statement. . what arguments might have been made for and against the removal of the capital to constantinople? . enumerate the causes of the decline of population in imperial times. . show how an unwise system of taxation may work great economic injury. . give reasons for the decline of greek and roman paganism. . why should mithraism have proved "the most formidable foe which christianity had to overcome"? . were any of the ancient religions missionary faiths? . when and where was jesus born? who was king of judea at the time? were the jews independent of rome during the lifetime of jesus? . locate on the map, facing page , the three divisions of palestine at the time of christ. . to what cities of asia minor did paul write his epistles, or letters? to what other cities in the roman empire? . what was the original meaning of the words "presbyter," "bishop," and "deacon"? . what is meant by calling the church an episcopal organization? . how can you explain the persecution of the christians by an emperor so great and good as marcus aurelius? . what is the meaning of the word "martyr"? . "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." explain. . describe the _labarum_ (illustration, page ). . what reasons suggest themselves as helping to explain the conversion of the civilized world to christianity? footnotes [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] vopiscus, _saturninus_, . [ ] the number and arrangement of these divisions varied somewhat during the fourth century. see the map, between pages - , for the system as it existed about a.d. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] until the capture of the city by the ottoman turks in a.d. [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] isocrates, _panegyricus_, . [ ] see page . [ ] _soli invicto mithrae._ an interesting survival of mithra worship is the date of our festival of christmas. the th of december was the day of the great annual celebration in memory of the persian deity. in a.d. the emperor aurelian raised a gorgeous temple to the sun god in the campus martius, dedicating it on the th of december, "the birthday of the unconquerable sun." after the triumph of christianity the day was still honored, but henceforth as the anniversary of the birth of christ. [ ] the exact date of the crucifixion is unknown. it took place during the reign of tiberius, when pontius pilatus was procurator of judea. [ ] tertullian, _apology_, . [ ] see page , note . [ ] the meeting was called _ecclesia_ from the greek word for "popular assembly." hence comes our word "ecclesiastical." [ ] whence the word "priest." [ ] the word "bishop" comes from the greek _episkopos_ and means, literally, an "overseer." [ ] it is highly doubtful, however, whether this legislation had any reference to christianity. more probably, constantine was only adding the day of the sun, the worship of which was then firmly established in the empire (see page , note ) to the other holy days of the roman calendar. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xi the germans to a.d. [ ] . germany and the germans physical features of germany the germans were an indo-european people, as were their neighbors, the celts of gaul and britain. they had lived for many centuries in the wild districts of central europe north of the alps and beyond the danube and the rhine. this home land of the germans in ancient times was cheerless and unhealthy. dense forests or extensive marshes covered the ground. the atmosphere was heavy and humid; in summer clouds and mists brooded over the country; and in winter it was covered with snow and ice. in such a region everything was opposed to civilization. hence the germans, though a gifted race, had not advanced as rapidly as the greek and italian peoples. the germans described by the romans our earliest notice of the germans is found in the _commentaries_ by julius caesar, who twice invaded their country. about a century and a half later the roman historian, tacitus, wrote a little book called germany, which gives an account of the people as they were before coming under the influence of rome and christianity. tacitus describes the germans as barbarians with many of the usual marks of barbarism. he speaks of their giant size, their fierce, blue eyes, and their blonde or ruddy hair. these physical traits made them seem especially terrible to the smaller and darker romans. he mentions their love of warfare, the fury of their onset in battle, and the contempt which they had for wounds and even death itself. when not fighting, they passed much of their time in the chase, and still more time in sleep and gluttonous feasts. they were hard drinkers, too, and so passionately fond of gambling that, when a man's wealth was gone, he would even stake his liberty on a single game. in some of these respects the germans resembled our own indian tribes. german morals on the other hand, the germans had certain attractive qualities not always found even among civilized peoples. they were hospitable to the stranger, they respected their sworn word, they loved liberty and hated restraint. their chiefs, we are told, ruled rather by persuasion than by authority. above all, the germans had a pure family life. "almost alone among barbarians," writes tacitus, "they are content with one wife. no one in germany laughs at vice, nor is it the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted. good habits are here more effectual than good laws elsewhere." [ ] the germans, then, were strong and brave, hardy, chaste, and free. progress of the germans the germans, during the three centuries between the time of tacitus and the beginning of the invasions, had advanced somewhat in civilization. they were learning to live in towns instead of in rude villages, to read and write, to make better weapons and clothes, to use money, and to enjoy many roman luxuries, such as wine, spices, and ornaments. they were likewise uniting in great confederations of tribes, ruled by kings who were able to lead them in migrations to other lands. [illustration: runic alphabet the word "rune" comes from a gothic word meaning a secret thing, a mystery. to the primitive germans it seemed a mysterious thing that letters could be used to express thought. the art of writing with an alphabet appears to have been introduced into germanic europe during the first centuries of our era. most runic inscriptions have been found in denmark and the scandinavian peninsula.] reasons for the germanic migrations during this same period, also, the germans increased rapidly in numbers. consequently it was a difficult matter for them to live by hunting and fishing, or by such rude agriculture as their country allowed. they could find additional land only in the fertile and well cultivated territories of the romans. it was this hunger for land, together with the love of fighting and the desire for booty and adventure, which led to their migrations. growing weakness of rome the german inroads were neither sudden, nor unexpected, nor new. since the days of marius and of julius caesar not a century had passed without witnessing some dangerous movement of the northern barbarians. until the close of the fourth century rome had always held their swarming hordes at bay. nor were the invasions which at length destroyed the empire much more formidable than those which had been repulsed many times before. rome fell because she could no longer resist with her earlier power. if the barbarians were not growing stronger, the romans themselves were steadily growing weaker. the form of the empire was still the same, but it had lost its vigor and its vitality. [ ] . breaking of the danube barrier the goths north of the danube lived, near the close of the fourth century, a german people called visigoths, or west goths. their kinsmen, the ostrogoths, or east goths, held the land north of the black sea between the danube and the don. these two nations had been among the most dangerous enemies of rome. in the third century they made so many expeditions against the eastern territories of the empire that aurelian at last surrendered to the visigoths the great province of dacia. [ ] the barbarians now came in contact with roman civilization and began to lead more settled lives. some of them even accepted christianity from bishop ulfilas, who translated the bible into the gothic tongue. the visigoths cross the danube, a.d. the peaceful fusion of goth and roman might have gone on indefinitely but for the sudden appearance in europe of the huns. they were a nomadic people from central asia. entering europe north of the caspian sea, the huns quickly subdued the ostrogoths and compelled them to unite in an attack upon their german kinsmen. then the entire nation of visigoths crowded the banks of the danube and begged the roman authorities to allow them to cross that river and place its broad waters between them and their terrible foes. in an evil hour for rome their prayer was granted. at length two hundred thousand gothic warriors, with their wives and children, found a home on roman soil. battle of adrianople, a.d. the settlement of such a host of barbarians within the frontier of the empire was in itself a dangerous thing. the danger was increased by the ill treatment which the immigrants received. the roman officials robbed them of their possessions, withheld the promised supplies of food, and even tried to murder their leaders at a banquet. finally, the germans broke out in open revolt. the emperor valens misjudged their strength and rashly gave them battle near adrianople in thrace. the once invincible legions fell an easy prey to their foes, and the emperor himself perished. [illustration: a page of the gothic gospels (reduced) a manuscript of ulfilas's translation of the bible forms one of the treasures of the library of the university of upsala, sweden. it is beautifully written in letters of gold and silver on parchment of a rich purple dye. in making his version ulfilas, who was himself a converted visigoth, generally indicated the gothic sounds by means of the greek alphabet. he added, however, a few signs from the runic alphabet, with which the germans were familiar.] results of the battle the defeat at adrianople is considered one of the few really decisive battles in the world's history. it showed the barbarians that they could face the romans in open fight and beat them. and it broke, once for all, the danube barrier. swarms of fighting men, ostrogoths as well as visigoths, overran the provinces south of the danube. the great ruler, theodosius, [ ] saved the empire for a time by granting lands to the germans and by enrolling them in the army under the high-sounding title of "allies." until his death the goths remained quiet--but it was only the lull before the storm. alaric the visigoth theodosius, "the friend of the goths," died in a.d., leaving the defense of the roman world to his weakling sons, arcadius and honorius. in the same year the visigoths raised one of their young nobles, named alaric, upon a shield and with joyful shouts acclaimed him as their king. the visigothic leader despised the service of rome. his people, he thought, should be masters, not servants. alaric determined to lead them into the very heart of the empire, where they might find fertile lands and settle once for all. alaric in greece and italy alaric at first fixed his attention on constantinople. realizing, at length, how hopeless would be the siege of that great city, he turned toward the west and descended upon greece. the germans marched unopposed through the pass of thermopylae and devastated central greece, as the persians had done nearly nine centuries before. [ ] then the barbarians entered the peloponnesus, but were soon driven out by stilicho, a german chieftain who had risen to the command of the army of honorius. alaric gave up greece only to invade italy. before long the goths crossed the julian alps and entered the rich and defenseless valley of the po. to meet the crisis the legions were hastily called in, even from the distant frontiers. stilicho formed them into a powerful army, beat back the enemy, and captured the visigothic camp, filled with the spoil of greek cities. in the eyes of the romans stilicho seemed a second marius, who had arisen in an hour of peril to save italy from its barbarian foes. [ ] the visigoths before rome alaric and his goths had been repulsed; they had not been destroyed. beyond the alps they were regaining their shattered strength and biding their time. their opportunity came soon enough, when honorius caused stilicho to be put to death on a charge of plotting to seize the throne. the accusation may have been true, but in killing stilicho the emperor had cut off his right hand with his left. now that stilicho was out of the way, alaric no longer feared to descend again on italy. the goths advanced rapidly southward past ravenna, where honorius had shut himself up in terror, and made straight for rome. in a.d., just eight hundred years after the sack of the city by the gauls, [ ] rome found the germans within her gates. sack of rome by the visigoths, a.d. the city for three days and nights was given up to pillage. alaric, who was a christian, ordered his followers to respect the churches and their property and to refrain from bloodshed. though the city did not greatly suffer, the moral effect of the disaster was immense. rome the eternal, the unconquerable, she who had taken captive all the world, was now herself a captive. the pagans saw in this calamity the vengeance of the ancient deities, who had been dishonored and driven from their shrines. the christians believed that god had sent a judgment on the romans to punish them for their sins. in either case the spell of rome was forever broken. kingdom of the visigoths, - a.d. from rome alaric led his hosts, laden with plunder, into southern italy. he may have intended to cross the mediterranean and bring africa under his rule. the plan was never carried out, for the youthful chieftain died suddenly, a victim to the italian fever. after alaric's death, the barbarians made their way northward through italy and settled in southern gaul and spain. in these lands they founded an independent visigothic kingdom, the first to be created on roman soil. [illustration: map, the germanic migrations to a.d.] romanization of the visigoths the possessions of the visigoths in gaul were seized by their neighbors, the franks, in less than a century; [ ] but the gothic kingdom in spain had three hundred years of prosperous life. [ ] the barbarian rulers sought to preserve the institutions of rome and to respect the rights of their roman subjects. conquerors and conquered gradually blended into one people, out of whom have grown the spaniards of modern times. . breaking of the rhine barrier the germans cross the rhine, a.d. after the departure of the visigoths rome and italy remained undisturbed for nearly forty years. the western provinces were not so fortunate. at the time of alaric's first attack on italy the legions along the rhine had been withdrawn to meet him, leaving the frontier unguarded. in a.d., four years before alaric's sack of rome, a vast company of germans crossed the rhine and swept almost unopposed through gaul. some of these peoples succeeded in establishing kingdoms for themselves on the ruins of the empire. kingdom of the burgundians, - a.d. the burgundians settled on the upper rhine and in the fertile valley of the rhone, in southeastern gaul. alter less than a century of independence they were conquered by the franks. [ ] their name, however, survives in modern burgundy. vandal kingdom in north africa, - a.d. the vandals settled first in spain. the territory now called andalusia still preserves the memory of these barbarians. after the visigothic invasion of spain the vandals passed over to north africa. they made themselves masters of carthage and soon conquered all the roman province of africa. their kingdom here lasted about one hundred years. [ ] the franks in northern gaul while the visigoths were finding a home in the districts north and south of the pyrenees, the burgundians in the rhone valley, and the vandals in africa, still another germanic people began to spread over northern gaul. they were the franks, who had long held lands on both sides of the lower rhine. the franks, unlike the other germans, were not of a roving disposition. they contented themselves with a gradual advance into roman territory. it was not until near the close of the fifth century that they overthrew the roman power in northern gaul and began to form the frankish kingdom, out of which modern france has grown. the angles and saxons in britain, from a.d. the troubled years of the fifth century saw also the beginning of the germanic conquest of britain. the withdrawal of the legions from that island left it defenseless, for the celtic inhabitants were too weak to defend themselves. bands of savage picts from scotland swarmed over hadrian's wall, attacking the britons in the rear. ireland sent forth the no less savage scots. the eastern coasts, at the same time, were constantly exposed to raids by german pirates. the britons, in their extremity, adopted the old roman practice of getting the barbarians to fight for them. bands of jutes were invited over from denmark in a.d. the jutes forced back the picts and then settled in britain as conquerors. fresh swarms of invaders followed them, chiefly angles from what is now schleswig-holstein and saxons from the neighborhood of the rivers elbe and weser in northern germany. the invaders subdued nearly all that part of britain that rome had previously conquered. in this way the angles and saxons became ancestors of the english people, and engleland became england. [ ] political situation in a.d. by the middle of the fifth century the larger part of the roman empire in the west had come under barbarian control. the germans ruled in africa, spain, britain, and parts of gaul. but now the new germanic kingdoms, together with what remained of the old empire, were threatened by a common foe--the terrible huns. . inroads of the huns the huns we know very little about the huns, except that they were not related to the germans or to any other european people. some scholars believe them to have belonged to the mongolian race. but the huns, to the excited imagination of roman writers, were demons rather than men. their olive skins, little, turned-up noses, and black, beady eyes must have given them a very frightful appearance. they spent most of their time on horseback, sweeping over the country like a whirlwind and leaving destruction and death in their wake. attila the hun the huns did not become dangerous to rome for more than half a century after their first appearance in europe. [ ] during this time they moved into the danube region and settled in the lands now known as austria and hungary. at last the huns found a national leader in attila, "a man born into the world to agitate the nations, the fear of all lands," [ ] one whose boast it was that the grass never grew again where his horse's hoofs had trod. he quickly built up a great military power obeyed by many barbarous nations from the caspian to the rhine. invasion of gaul by attila attila, from his capital on the danube, could threaten both the east and the west. the emperors at constantinople bought him off with lavish gifts, and so the robber-ruler turned to the western provinces for his prey. in a.d. he led his motley host, said to number half a million men, across the rhine. many a noble municipality with its still active roman life was visited by the huns with fire and sword. paris, it is worthy of note, escaped destruction. that now famous city was then only a little village on an island in the seine. battle of chÂlons, a.d. in this hour of danger romans and germans gave up quarreling and united against the common foe. visigoths under their native king hastened from spain; burgundians and franks joined their ranks; to these forces a german general, named aëtius, added the last roman army in the west. opposed to them attila had his huns, the conquered ostrogoths, and many other barbarian peoples. the battle of châlons has well been called a struggle of the nations. it was one of the fiercest conflicts recorded in history. on both sides thousands perished, but so many more of attila's men fell that he dared not risk a fresh encounter on the following day. he drew his shattered forces together and retreated beyond the rhine. attila invades italy, a.d. in spite of this setback attila did not abandon the hope of conquest. the next year he led his still formidable army over the julian alps and burned or plundered many towns of northern italy. a few trembling fugitives sought shelter on the islands at the head of the adriatic. out of their rude huts grew up in the middle ages splendid and famous venice, a city that in later centuries was to help defend europe against those kinsmen of the huns, the turks. death of attila, a.d. the fiery hun did not long survive this italian expedition. within a year he was dead, dying suddenly, it was said, in a drunken sleep. the great confederacy which he had formed broke up after his death. the german subjects gained their freedom, and the huns themselves either withdrew to their asiatic wilds or mingled with the peoples they had conquered. europe breathed again; the nightmare was over. . end of the roman empire in the west, a.d. vandal pirates rome escaped a visitation by the huns only to fall a victim, three years later, to the vandals. after the capture of carthage,[ ] these barbarians made that city the seat of a pirate empire. putting out in their long, light vessels, they swept the seas and raided many a populous city on the mediterranean coast. so terrible were their inroads that the word "vandalism" has come to mean the wanton destruction of property. sack of rome by the vandals, a.d. in a.d. the ships of the vandals, led by their king, gaiseric, appeared at the mouth of the tiber. the romans could offer no resistance. only the noble bishop leo went out with his clergy to meet the invader and intercede for the city. gaiseric promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants and not to destroy the public buildings. these were the best terms he would grant. the vandals spent fourteen days stripping rome of her wealth. besides shiploads of booty the vandals took away thousands of romans as slaves, including the widow and two daughters of an emperor. the roman empire in the west, - a.d. after the vandal sack of rome the imperial throne became the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. a german commander, named ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. he was, in fact, the real ruler of italy at this time. after his death orestes, another german general, went a step beyond ricimer's policy and placed his own son on the throne of the caesars. by a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of romulus, legendary founder of rome, and the nickname of augustulus ("the little augustus"). the boy emperor reigned less than a year. the german troops clamored for a third of the lands of italy and, when their demand was refused, proclaimed odoacer king. the poor little emperor, romulus augustulus, was sent to a villa near naples, where he disappears from history. [illustration: map, europe at the deposition of romulus augustulus a.d.] political situation in a.d. there was now no emperor in the west. to the men of that time it seemed that east and west had been once more joined under a single ruler, as in the days of constantine. the emperors who reigned at constantinople did not relinquish their claims to be regarded as the rightful sovereigns in italy and rome. nevertheless, as an actual fact, roman rule in the west was now all but extinct. odoacer, the head of the barbarians in italy, ruled a kingdom as independent as that of the vandals in africa or that of the visigoths in spain and gaul. the date a.d. may therefore be chosen as marking, better than any other, the overthrow of the roman empire in the west by the germans. . germanic influence on society significance of the germanic invasions classical civilization suffered a great shock when the germans descended on the empire and from its provinces carved out their kingdoms. these barbarians were rude in manners, were very ignorant, and had little taste for anything except fighting and bodily enjoyments. they were unlike the romans in dress and habits of life. they lived under different laws, spoke different languages, obeyed different rulers. their invasions naturally ushered in a long period of confusion and disorder, during which the new race slowly raised itself to a level of culture somewhat approaching that which the greeks and the romans had attained. retrogressive forces the germans in many ways did injury to classical civilization. they sometimes destroyed roman cities and killed or enslaved the inhabitants. even when the invaders settled peaceably in the empire, they took possession of the land and set up their own tribal governments in place of the roman. they allowed aqueducts, bridges, and roads to go without repairs, and theaters, baths, and other public buildings to sink into ruins. having no appreciation of education, the germans failed to keep up the schools, universities, and libraries. being devoted chiefly to agriculture, they had no need for foreign wares or costly articles of luxury, and hence they permitted industry and commerce to languish. in short, large parts of western europe, particularly gaul, spain, and britain, fell backward into a condition of ignorance, superstition, and even barbarism. progressive forces but in closing our survey of the germanic invasions we need to dwell on the forces that made for progress, rather than on those that made for decline. classical civilization, we have already found reason to believe, [ ] had begun to decay long before the germans broke up the empire. the germans came, as christianity had come, only to hasten the process of decay. each of these influences, in turn, worked to build up the fabric of a new society on the ruins of the old. first christianity infused the pagan world with its quickening spirit and gave a new religion to mankind. later followed the germans, who accepted christianity, who adopted much of graeco-roman culture, and then contributed their fresh blood and youthful minds and their own vigorous life. studies . on an outline map indicate the extent of germany in the time of tacitus. . make a list of all the germanic nations mentioned in this chapter, and give a short account of each. give dates for the following: battle of châlons; sack of rome by alaric; battle of adrianople; and end of the roman empire in the west. . what resemblances existed between the culture of the germans and that of the early greeks? . why did the germans progress more slowly in civilization than the greeks and the romans? . comment on this statement: "the germans had stolen their way into the very citadel of the empire long before its distant outworks were stormed." . why is modern civilization, unlike that of antiquity, in little danger from barbarians? . why has the battle of adrianople been called "the cannae of the fourth century"? . why has alaric been styled "the moses of the visigoths"? . what is the origin of the geographical names andalusia, burgundy, england, and france? . why was attila called the "scourge of god"? . can you suggest a reason why some historians do not regard châlons as one of the world's decisive battles? . in what sense does the date, a.d., mark the "fall" of the roman empire? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xxiii, "the germans as described by tacitus." [ ] tacitus, _germania_, . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the invasion of britain by the anglo-saxons was followed by the migration across the channel of large numbers of the defeated islanders. the district in france where they settled is called after them, brittany. [ ] see page . [ ] jordanes, _de rebus geticis_, . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xii classical civilization [ ] . the classical city the center of classical life the history of the greeks and romans ought not to be studied only in their political development and the biographies of their great statesmen and warriors. we must also know something of ancient literature, philosophy, and art. especially do we need to learn about the private life of the classical peoples--their manners, customs, occupations, and amusements. this life centered in the city. origin of the city a greek or a roman city usually grew up about a hill of refuge (_acropolis, capitolium_), to which the people of the surrounding district could flee in time of danger. the hill would be crowned with a fortress and the temples of the gods. not far away was the market place (_agora, forum_), where the people gathered to conduct their business and to enjoy social intercourse. about the citadel and market place were grouped the narrow streets and low houses of the town. general appearance of an ancient city the largest and most beautiful buildings in an ancient city were always the temples, colonnades, and other public structures. the houses of private individuals, for the most part, had few pretensions to beauty. they were insignificant in appearance and were often built with only one story. from a distance, however, their whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs, shining brightly under the warm sun, must have made an attractive picture. life in the city to the free-born inhabitant of athens or of rome his city was at once his country and his church, his club and his home. he shared in its government; he took part in the stately ceremonies that honored its patron god; in the city he could indulge his taste for talking and for politics; here he found both safety and society. no wonder that an athenian or a roman learned, from early childhood, to love his city with passionate devotion. . education and the condition of children importance of male children the coming of a child, to parents in antiquity as to parents now, was usually a very happy event. especially welcome was the birth of a son. the father felt assured that through the boy his old age would be cared for and that the family name and the worship of the family ancestors would be kept up after his own death. "male children," said an ancient poet, "are the pillars of the house." [ ] the city, as well, had an interest in the matter, for a male child meant another citizen able to take the father's place in the army and the public assembly. to have no children was regarded as one of the greatest calamities that could befall a greek or a roman. infanticide the ancient attitude toward children was in one respect very unlike our own. the law allowed a father to do whatever he pleased with a newly born child. if he was very poor, or if his child was deformed, he could expose it in some desert spot, where it soon died. an infant was sometimes placed secretly in a temple, where possibly some kind-hearted person might rescue it. the child, in this case, became the slave of its adopter. this custom of exposure, an inheritance from prehistoric savagery, tended to grow less common with advancing culture. the complete abolition of infanticide was due to the spread of christian teachings about the sacredness of human life. [ ] names a greek boy generally had but one name. the favorite name for the eldest son was that of his paternal grandfather. a father, however, might give him his own name or that of an intimate friend. the romans at first seem to have used only the one name, then two were given; and later we have the familiar three-fold name, representing the individual, the clan, and the family. [ ] greek education greek education consisted of three main branches, known as gymnastics, music, and grammar. by gymnastics the greeks meant the physical training in the palestra, an open stretch of ground on the outskirts of the city. here a private teacher gave instruction in the various athletic sports which were so popular at the national games. the training in music was intended to improve the moral nature of young men and to fit them for pleasant social intercourse. they were taught to play a stringed instrument, called the lyre, and at the same time to sing to their own accompaniment. grammar, the third branch of education, included instruction in writing and the reading of the national literature. after a boy had learned to write and to read, the schoolmaster took up with him the works of the epic poets, especially homer, besides _aesop's fables_ and other popular compositions. the student learned by heart much of the poetry and at so early an age that he always remembered it. not a few athenians, it is said, could recite the entire _iliad_ and _odyssey_. [illustration: an athenian school (royal museum, berlin) a painting by duris on a drinking-cup, or cylix. the picture is divided by the two handles. in the upper half, beginning at the left: a youth playing the double flute as a lesson to the boy before him; a teacher holding a tablet and stylus and correcting a composition; a slave (_paedagogus_), who accompanied the children to and from school. in the lower half: a master teaching his pupil to play the lyre; a teacher holding a half- opened roll, listening to a recitation by the student before him; a bearded _paedagogus_. the inner picture, badly damaged, represents a youth in a bath.] roman education a roman boy began his school days at about the age of seven. he learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning board, or abacus. he received a little instruction in singing and memorized all sorts of proverbs and maxims, besides the laws of the twelve tables. [ ] his studying went on under the watchful eyes of a harsh schoolmaster, who did not hesitate to use the rod. after rome began to come into close contact with greece, the curriculum was enlarged by the study of literature. the romans were the first people who made the learning of a foreign tongue an essential part of education. schools now arose in which the greek language and literature formed the chief subject of instruction. as latin literature came into being, its productions, especially the orations of cicero and the poems of vergil and horace, were also used as texts for study. [illustration: a roman school scene wall painting, herculaneum.] [illustration: youth reading a papyrus roll relief on a sarcophagus. the papyrus roll was sometimes very long. the entire _iliad_ or _odyssey_ might be contained in a single manuscript measuring one hundred and fifty feet in length. in the third century a.d. the unwieldy roll began to give way to the tablet, composed of a number of leaves held together by a ring. about this time, also, the use of vellum, or parchment made of sheepskin, became common.] travel and study abroad persons of wealth or noble birth might follow their school training by a university course at a greek city, such as athens, alexandria, or rhodes. here the roman youth would listen to lectures on philosophy, delivered by the deep thinkers whom greece still produced, and would profit by the treasures of art and science preserved in these ancient capitals. many famous romans thus passed several years abroad in graduate study. during the imperial age, as we have already seen, [ ] schools of grammar and rhetoric arose in the west, particularly in gaul and spain, and attracted students from all parts of the empire. . marriage and the position of women engagements a young man in athens or in rome did not, as a rule, marry immediately on coming of age. he might remain a bachelor for several years, sometimes till he was thirty or over. the young man's father had most to do with the selection of a wife. he tried to secure for his son some daughter of a friend who possessed rank and property equal to his own. the parents of the two parties would then enter into a contract which, among other things, usually stated how large a dowry the bride's father was to settle on his daughter. an engagement was usually very little a matter of romance and very much a matter of business. wedding customs the wedding customs of the greeks and romans presented many likenesses. marriage, among both peoples, was a religious ceremony. on the appointed day the principals and their guests, dressed in holiday attire, met at the house of the bride. in the case of a roman wedding the auspices [ ] were then taken, and the words of the nuptial contract were pronounced in the presence of witnesses. after a solemn sacrifice to the gods of marriage, the guests partook of the wedding banquet. when night came on, the husband brought his wife to her new abode, escorted by a procession of torchbearers, musicians, and friends, who sang the happy wedding song. position of women an athenian wife, during her younger years, always remained more or less a prisoner. she could not go out except by permission. she took no part in the banquets and entertainments which her husband gave. she lived a life of confinement in that quarter of the house assigned to the women for their special abode. married women at rome enjoyed a far more honorable position. although early custom placed the wife, together with her children, in the power of the husband, [ ] still she possessed many privileges. she did not remain all the time at home, but mingled freely in society. she was the friend and confidante of her husband, as well as his housekeeper. during the great days of roman history the women showed themselves virtuous and dignified, loving wives and excellent companions. . the home and private life clothing there were no great differences between the dress of the two classical peoples. both wore the long, loosely flowing robes that contrast so sharply with our tight-fitting garments. [ ] athenian male attire consisted of but two articles, the tunic and the mantle. the tunic was an undergarment of wool or linen, without sleeves. over this was thrown a large woolen mantle, so wrapped about the figure as to leave free only the right shoulder and head. in the house a man wore only his tunic; out of doors and on the street he usually wore the mantle over it. very similar to the two main articles of greek clothing were the roman _tunica_ and _toga_. [ ] covering for the head and feet on a journey or out in the country broad-brimmed hats were used to shield the head from the sun. in rainy weather the mantle, pulled up over the head, furnished protection. sandals, merely flat soles of wood or leather fastened by thongs, were worn indoors, but even these were laid aside at a dinner party. outside the house leather shoes of various shapes and colors were used. they cannot have been very comfortable, since stockings were not known in antiquity. exterior of the house the ancient house lay close to the street line. the exterior was plain and simple to an extreme. the owner was satisfied if his mansion shut out the noise and dust of the highway. he built it, therefore, round one or more open courts, which took the place of windows supplying light and air. except for the doorway the front of the house presented a bare, blank surface, only relieved by narrow slits or lattices in the wall of the upper story. the street side of the house wall received a coating of whitewash or of fine marble stucco. the roof of the house was covered with clay tiles. this style of domestic architecture is still common in eastern lands. [illustration: house of the vettii at pompeii (restored) notice the large area of blank wall both on the front and on the side. the front windows are very small and evidently of less importance for admitting light than the openings of the two _atria_. at the back is seen the large, well-lighted peristyle.] [illustration: atrium of pompeian house the view shows the _atrium_ with the basin for rainwater, in the center the _tabinum_ with its wall paintings, and the peristyle at the rear.] interior of the house in contrast with its unpretentious exterior a classical dwelling indoors had a most attractive appearance. we cannot exactly determine just what were the arrangements of a greek interior. but the better class of roman houses, such as some of those excavated at pompeii, [ ] followed greek designs in many respects. the pompeian remains, therefore, will give some idea of the sort of residence occupied by a well-to-do citizen of athens or rome. [illustration: pompeian floor mosaic] the atrium the visitor at one of these ancient houses first entered a small vestibule, from which a narrow passage led to the heavy oaken door. a dog was sometimes kept chained in this hallway; in pompeii there is a picture of one worked in mosaic on the floor with the warning beneath it, "beware of the dog." having made known his presence by using the knocker, the guest was ushered into the reception room, or _atrium_. this was a large apartment covered with a roof, except for a hole in the center admitting light and air. a marble basin directly underneath caught the rain water which came through the opening. the _atrium_ represents the single room of the primitive roman house without windows or chimney. [ ] the peristyle a corridor from the _atrium_ led into the _peristyle_, the second of the two main sections of a roman house. it was a spacious court, open to the sky and inclosed by a colonnade or portico. this delightful spot, rather than the formal _atrium_, served as the center of family life. about it were grouped the bedchambers, bathrooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and other apartments of a comfortable mansion. still other rooms occupied the upper stories of the dwelling. business of the forenoon the ancient athenian was no sluggard. at sunrise, or even before, he rose from his couch, washed his face and hands, put on his scanty garments, and was soon ready for the street. before leaving the house, he broke his fast with a meal as simple as the european "rolls and coffee"--in this case merely a few mouthfuls of bread dipped in wine. after breakfast he might call on his friends or perhaps ride into the country and visit his estates. about ten o'clock (which the athenians called "full market"), he would be pretty sure to find his way to the agora. the shops at this time were crowded with purchasers, and every sociable citizen of athens was to be found in them or in the neighboring colonnades which lined the market place. [illustration: peristyle of a pompeian house house of the vettii pompeii. the peristyle, excavated in - a.d. has been carefully restored. the garden, fountains, tables, and marble colonnades are all modern] occupations in the afternoon the public resorts were deserted at noon, when the athenian returned home to enjoy a light meal and a rest during the heat. as the day grew cooler, men again went out and visited a gymnasium, such as the lyceum or the academy, in the city suburbs. [ ] here were grounds for running, wrestling, discus-throwing, and other sports, as well as rooms for bathing and anointing. while the younger men busied themselves in such active exercises, those of maturer years might be content with less vigorous games or with conversation on political or philosophical themes. the evening meal the principal meal of the day came about sunset. the master of the house, if he had no guests, shared the repast with his wife and children. for a man of moderate means the ordinary fare was very much what it is now in greece--bread, olives, figs, cheese, and a little meat as an occasional luxury. at the end of the meal the diners refreshed themselves with wine mixed with water. the greeks appear to have been usually as temperate in their drink as they were frugal in their food. the remainder of the evening would be devoted to conversation and music and possibly a little reading. as a rule the athenian went early to bed. [illustration: a greek banquet from a vase painting by duns.] morning round of a roman noble a roman of the higher class, who lived in late republican or early imperial times, passed through much the same daily routine as an athenian citizen in the days of pericles. he rose at an early hour and after a light breakfast dispatched his private business with the help of his steward and manager. he then took his place in the _atrium_ to meet the crowd of poor dependents who came to pay their respects to their patron and to receive their usual morning alms--either food or sufficient money to buy a modest dinner. having greeted his visitors and perhaps helped them in legal or business matters, the noble entered his litter and was carried down to the forum. here he might attend the law courts to plead a case for himself or for his clients. if he were a member of the senate, he would take part in the deliberations of that body. at eleven o'clock, when the ordinary duties of the morning were over, he would return home to eat his luncheon and enjoy the midday rest, or siesta. the practice of having a nap in the heat of the day became so general that at noon the streets of a roman city had the same deserted appearance as at midnight. [illustration: a roman litter the litter consists of an ordinary couch with four posts and a pair of poles. curtains fastened to the rod above the canopy shielded the occupant from observation.] the afternoon exercise and bath after an hour of refreshing sleep it was time for the regular exercise out of doors in the campus martius or indoors at one of the large city baths. then came one of the chief pleasures of a roman's existence--the daily bath. it was taken ordinarily in one of the public bathing establishments, or _thermae_, to be found in every roman town. [ ] a roman bath was a luxurious affair. after undressing, the bathers entered a warm anteroom and sat for a time on benches, in order to perspire freely. this was a precaution against the danger of passing too suddenly into the hot bath, which was taken in a large tank of water sunk in the middle of the floor. then came an exhilarating cold plunge and anointing with perfumed oil. afterwards the bathers rested on the couches with which the resort was supplied and passed the time in reading or conversation until the hour for dinner. the late dinner the late dinner, with the romans as with the greeks, formed the principal meal of the day. it was usually a social function. the host and his guests reclined on couches arranged about a table. the romans borrowed from the greeks the custom of ending a banquet with a symposium, or drinking-bout. the tables were cleared of dishes, and the guests were anointed with perfumes and crowned with garlands. during the banquet and the symposium it was customary for professional performers to entertain the guests with music, dancing, pantomimes, and feats of jugglery. . amusements athenian religious festivals the athenians celebrated many religious festivals. one of the most important was the great panathenaea, [ ] held every fourth year in the month of july. athletic contests and poetical recitations, sacrifices, feasts, and processions honored the goddess athena, who presided over the athenian city. even more interesting, perhaps, were the dramatic performances held in midwinter and in spring, at the festivals of dionysus. the tragedies and comedies composed for these entertainments took their place among the masterpieces of greek literature. [illustration: theater of dionysus, athens the theater of dionysus where dramatic exhibitions were held lay close to the south eastern angle of the acropolis. the audience at first sat upon wooden benches rising tier after tier on the adjacent hillside. about the middle of the fourth century b.c. these were replaced by the stone seats which are still to be seen. sixteen thousand people could be accommodated in this open air theater.] features of a greek play there is very little likeness between the ancient and the modern drama. greek plays were performed out of doors in the bright sunlight. until late roman times it is unlikely that a raised stage existed. the three actors and the members of the chorus appeared together in the dancing ring, or orchestra. the performers were all men. each actor might play several parts. there was no elaborate scenery; the spectator had to rely chiefly on his own imagination for the setting of the piece. the actors indulged in few lively movements or gestures. they must have looked from a distance like a group of majestic statues. all wore elaborate costumes, and tragic actors, in addition, were made to appear larger than human with masks, padding, and thick-soled boots, or buskins. the performances occupied the three days of the dionysiac festivals, beginning early in the morning and lasting till night. all this time was necessary because they formed contests for a prize which the people awarded to the poet and chorus whose presentation was judged of highest excellence. [illustration: a dancing girl a greek bronze statuette found in a sunken galley off the coast of tunis. the galley had been wrecked while on its way to rome carrying a load of art objects to decorate the villas of wealthy nobles. this statuette was doubtless a life-like copy of some well-known entertainer. the dancer's pose suggests the american "cakewalk" and her costume, the modern "hobble skirt."] pantomime and vaudeville at rome pantomimes formed the staple amusement of the roman theater. in these performances a single dancer, by movements and gestures, represented mythological scenes and love stories. the actor took several characters in succession and a chorus accompanied him with songs. there were also "vaudeville" entertainments, with all manner of jugglers, ropedancers, acrobats, and clowns, to amuse a people who found no pleasure in the refined productions of the greek stage. chariot races far more popular than even pantomime and vaudeville were the "games of the circus." at rome these were held chiefly in the circus maximus. chariot races formed the principal attraction of the circus. there were usually four horses to a chariot, though sometimes the drivers showed their skill by handling as many as six or seven horses. the contestants whirled seven times around the low wall, or _spina_, which divided the race course. the shortness of the stretches and the sharp turns about the _spina_ must have prevented the attainment of great speed. a race, nevertheless, was a most exciting sport. what we should call "fouling" was permitted and even encouraged. the driver might turn his team against another or might endeavor to upset a rival's car. it was a very tame contest that did not have its accompaniment of broken chariots, fallen horses, and killed or injured drivers. [illustration: the circus maximus (restoration)] animal baitings the circus maximus was often used for a variety of animal shows. fierce wild beasts, brought from every quarter of the empire, were turned loose to slaughter one another, or to tear to pieces condemned criminals. [ ] more popular still were the contests between savage animals and men. such amusements did something to satisfy the lust for blood in the roman populace--a lust which was more completely satisfied by the gladiatorial combats. [illustration: gladiators from a stucco relief on the tomb of scaurus, pompeii. beginning at the left are two fully armed horsemen fighting with lances. behind them are two gladiators, one of whom is appealing to the people. then follows a combat in which the defeated party raises his hand in supplication for mercy. the lower part of the relief represents fights with various wild beasts.] gladiatorial shows exhibitions of gladiators were known in italy long before they became popular at rome. the combats probably started from the savage practice of sacrificing prisoners or slaves at the funeral of their master. then the custom arose of allowing the victims a chance for their lives by having them fight one another, the conquerors being spared for future battles. from this it was but a step to keeping trained slaves as gladiators. during the imperial epoch the number of such exhibitions increased greatly. the emperor trajan, for example, to celebrate his victories over the dacians, [ ] exhibited no less than ten thousand men within the space of four months. the gladiators belonged to various classes, according to the defensive armor they wore and the style of fighting they employed. when a man was wounded and unable to continue the struggle, he might appeal to the spectators. he lifted his finger to plead for release; if he had fought well, the people indicated their willingness to spare him by waving their handkerchiefs. if the spectators were in a cruel mood, they turned down their thumbs as the signal for his deathblow. these hideous exhibitions continued in different parts of the roman empire until the fifth century of our era. "bread and the games of the circus." gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and dramatic shows were free performances. for the lower classes in the roman city they became the chief pleasure of life. the days of their celebration were public holidays, which in the fourth century numbered no less than one hundred and seventy-five. the once-sovereign people of rome became a lazy, worthless rabble, fed by the state and amused with the games. it was well said by an ancient satirist that the romans wanted only two things to make them happy--"bread and the games of the circus." [ ] . slavery place of slavery in classical life the private life of the greeks and romans, as described in the preceding pages, would have been impossible without the existence of a large servile class. slaves did much of the heavy and disagreeable work in the ancient world, thus allowing the free citizen to engage in more honorable employment or to pass his days in dignified leisure. sources of slaves the greeks seem sometimes to have thought that only barbarians should be degraded to the condition of servitude. most greek slaves, as a matter of fact, were purchased from foreign countries. but after the romans had subdued the mediterranean world, their captives included not only members of inferior races, but also the cultivated inhabitants of greece, egypt, and asia minor. we hear of slaves at rome who served as clerks, secretaries, librarians, actors, and musicians. their education was often superior to that of the coarse and brutal masters who owned them. number and cheapness of slaves the number of slaves, though great enough in athens and other greek cities, reached almost incredible figures during the later period of roman history. every victorious battle swelled the troops of captives sent to the slave markets at rome. ordinary slaves became as cheap as beasts of burden are now. the roman poet horace tells us that at least ten slaves were necessary for a gentleman in even moderate circumstances. wealthy individuals, given to excessive luxury, might number their city slaves by the hundreds, besides many more on their country estates. slaves' tasks slaves engaged in a great variety of occupations. they were domestic servants, farm laborers, miners, artisans, factory hands, and even shopkeepers. household slaves at rome were employed in every conceivable way. each part of a rich man's residence had its special staff of servants. the possession of a fine troop of slaves, dressed in handsome liveries, was a favorite method of showing one's wealth and luxury. treatment of slaves it is difficult for us to realize the attitude of ancient peoples toward their slaves. they were regarded as part of the chattels of the house--as on a level with domestic animals rather than human beings. though athenian law forbade owners to kill their slaves or to treat them cruelly, it permitted the corporal punishment of slaves for slight offenses. at rome, until the imperial epoch, [ ] no restraints whatever existed upon the master's power. a slave was part of his property with which he could do exactly as he pleased. the terrible punishments, the beating with scourges which followed the slightest misconduct or neglect of duty, the branding with a hot iron which a runaway slave received, the fearful penalty of crucifixion which followed an attempt upon the owner's life--all these tortures show how hard was the lot of the bondman in pagan rome. possibilities of freedom a slave, under some circumstances, could gain his freedom. in greece, where many little states constantly at war bordered one another, a slave could often run away to liberty. in a great empire like rome, where no boundary lines existed, this was usually impossible. freedom, however, was sometimes voluntarily granted. a master in his will might liberate his favorite slave, as a reward for the faithful service of a lifetime. a more common practice permitted the slave to keep a part of his earnings until he had saved enough to purchase his freedom. [illustration: a slave's collar a runaway slave, if recaptured, was sometimes compelled to wear a metal collar riveted about his neck. one of these collars, still preserved at rome, bears the inscription: _servus sum dom(i)ni mei scholastici v(iri) sp(ectabüis). tene me ne fugiam de domo._--"i am the slave of my master scholasticus, a gentleman of importance. hold me, lest i flee from home."] permanence of slavery slavery in greece and italy had existed from the earliest times. it never was more flourishing than in the great age of classical history. nor did it pass away when the roman world became christian. the spread of christianity certainly helped to improve the lot of the slave and to encourage his liberation. the church, nevertheless, recognized slavery from the beginning. not until long after ancient civilization had perished did the curse of slavery finally disappear from european lands. [ ] . greek literature epic poetry the literature of greece begins with epic poetry. an epic may be defined as a long narrative in verse, dealing with some large and noble theme. the earliest epic poetry of the greeks was inseparable from music. wandering minstrels sang at feasts in the palaces of kings and accompanied their lays with the music of the clear-toned lyre. in time, as his verse reached a more artistic character, the singer was able to give up the lyre and to depend for effect solely on the poetic power of his narrative. finally, the scattered lays were combined into long poems. the most famous are the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_, works which the greeks attributed to homer. [ ] lyric poetry several centuries after homer the greeks began to create a new form of poetic expression--lyric poetry. in short poems, accompanied by the flute or the lyre, they found a medium for the expression of personal feelings which was not furnished by the long and cumbrous epic. the greatest lyric poet was pindar. we still possess forty-four of his odes, which were written in honor of victorious athletes at the olympian and other national games. [ ] pindar's verses were so popular that he became, as it were, the "poet laureate" of greece. when alexander the great destroyed thebes, [ ] the native town of pindar, he spared that poet's birthplace from the general ruin. [illustration: sophocles (lateran museum, rome) this marble statue is possibly a copy of the bronze original which the athenians set up in the theater of dionysus. the feet and the box of manuscript rolls are modern restorations.] athenian tragedy the three great masters of the tragic drama [ ] lived and wrote in athens during the splendid half century between the persian and the peloponnesian wars. such was the fertility of their genius that they are said to have written altogether nearly three hundred plays. only thirty-two have come down to us. aeschylus, the first of the tragic poets, had fought at marathon and salamis. one of his works, the _persians_, is a magnificent song of triumph for the victory of hellas. sophocles, while yet a young man, gained the prize in a dramatic contest with aeschylus. his plays mark the perfection of greek tragedy. after the death of sophocles the athenians revered him as a hero and honored his memory with yearly sacrifices. euripides was the third of the athenian dramatists and the most generally popular. his fame reached far beyond his native city. we are told that the sicilians were so fond of his verses that they granted freedom to every one of the athenian prisoners captured at syracuse who could recite the poet's lines. athenian comedy athenian comedy during the fifth century b.c. is represented by the plays of aristophanes. he was both a great poet and a great satirist. in one comedy aristophanes attacks the demagogue cleon, who was prominent in athenian politics after the death of pericles. in other comedies he ridicules the philosophers, makes fun of the ordinary citizen's delight in sitting on jury courts and trying cases, and criticizes those responsible for the unfortunate expedition to sicily. the plays of aristophanes were performed before admiring audiences of thousands of citizens and hence must have had much influence on public opinion. history the "father of history," herodotus, flourished about the middle of the fifth century b.c. though a native of asia minor, herodotus spent some of the best years of his life at athens, mingling in its brilliant society and coming under the influences, literary and artistic, of that city. he traveled widely in the greek world and in the east, as a preparation for his great task of writing an account of the rise of the oriental nations and the struggle between greece and persia. herodotus was not a critical historian, diligently sifting truth from fable. where he can he gives us facts. where facts are lacking, he tells interesting stories in a most winning style. a much more scientific writer was thucydides, an athenian who lived during the epoch of the peloponnesian war and became the historian of that contest. an athenian contemporary of thucydides, xenophon, is best known from his _anabasis_, which describes the famous expedition of the "ten thousand" greeks against persia. [ ] biography of the later prose writers of greece it is sufficient to name only one-- the immortal plutarch. he was a native of chaeronea in boeotia and lived during the first century of our era. greece at that time was only a province of the roman empire; the days of her greatness had long since passed away. plutarch thus had rather a melancholy task in writing his _parallel lives_. in this work he relates, first the life of an eminent greek, then of a famous roman who in some way resembled him; and ends the account with a short comparison of the two men. plutarch had a wonderful gift of sympathy for his heroes and a keen eye for what was dramatic in their careers. it is not surprising, therefore, that plutarch has always been a favorite author. no other ancient writer gives us so vivid and intimate a picture of the classical world. originality of greek literature from the foregoing survey it is clear that the greeks were pioneers in many forms of literature. they first composed artistic epic poems. they invented lyric and dramatic poetry. they were the first to write histories and biographies. in oratory, as has been seen, they also rose to eminence. [ ] we shall now find that the greek intellect was no less fertile and original in the study of philosophy. . greek philosophy the sophists the greek philosophy took its rise in the seventh century b.c., when a few bold students began to search out the mysteries of the universe. their theories were so many and so contradictory, however, that after a time philosophers gave up the study of nature and proposed in turn to study man himself. these later thinkers were called sophists. they traveled throughout greece, gathering the young men about them and lecturing for pay on subjects of practical interest. among other things they taught the rhetoric and oratory which were needed for success in a public career. socrates one of the founders of greek philosophy and the greatest teacher of his age was socrates the athenian. he lived and taught during the period of the peloponnesian war. socrates resembled the sophists in his possession of an inquiring, skeptical mind which questioned every common belief and superstition. but he went beyond the sophists in his emphasis on problems of every-day morality. though socrates wrote nothing, his teaching and personality made a deep impression on his contemporaries. the delphic oracle declared that no one in the world was wiser than socrates. yet he lived through a long life at athens, a poor man who would neither work at his trade of sculptor, nor (as did the sophists) accept money for his instruction. he walked the streets, barefoot and half-clad, and engaged in animated conversation with anyone who was willing to discuss intellectual subjects with him. socrates must have been a familiar figure to the athenians. his short body, large, bald head, and homely features hardly presented the ideal of a philosopher. even aristophanes in a comedy laughs at him. [illustration: socrates (vatican gallery, rome)] condemnation and death of socrates late in life socrates was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth of athens with his doctrines. as a matter of fact he was a deeply religious man. if he objected to the crude mythology of homer, he often spoke of one god, who ruled the world, and of a divine spirit or conscience within his own breast. a jury court found him guilty, however, and condemned him to death. he refused to escape from prison when opportunity offered and passed his last days in eager conversation on the immortality of the soul. when the hour of departure arrived, he bade his disciples farewell and calmly drained the cup of hemlock, a poison that caused a painless death. although socrates gave his life for his philosophy, this did not perish with him. plato one of the members of the socratic circle was plato, a wealthy noble who abandoned a public career for the attractions of philosophy. after the death of socrates, plato traveled widely in the greek world and even visited egypt, where he interviewed the learned priests. on his return to athens plato began teaching in the garden and gymnasium called the academy. [ ] his writings, known as _dialogues_, are cast in the form of question and answer that socrates had used. in most of them plato makes socrates the chief speaker. plato's works are both profound in thought and admirable in style. the athenians used to say that if zeus had spoken greek he would have spoken it as did plato. aristotle as great a philosopher as plato, but a far less attractive writer, was aristotle. he was not an athenian by birth, but he passed many years in athens, first as a pupil of plato, who called him the "mind" of the school, and then as a teacher in the athenian city. aristotle seems to have taken all knowledge for his province. he investigated the ideas underlying the arts of rhetoric and poetry; he gathered the constitutions of many greek states and drew from them some general principles of politics; he studied collections of strange plants and animals to learn their structure and habits; he examined the acts and beliefs of men in order to write books on ethics. in all this investigation aristotle was not content to accept what previous men had written or to spin a pleasing theory out of his own brain. everywhere he sought for facts; everything he tried to bring to the test of personal observation. aristotle, then, was as much a scientist as a philosopher. his books were reverently studied for centuries after his death and are still used in our universities. epicureanism the system of philosophy called epicureanism was founded by a greek named epicurus. he taught in athens during the earlier part of the third century b.c. epicurus believed that pleasure is the sole good, pain, the sole evil. he meant by pleasure not so much the passing enjoyments of the hour as the permanent happiness of a lifetime. in order to be happy men should not trouble themselves with useless luxuries, but should lead the "simple life." they must be virtuous, for virtue will bring more real satisfaction than vice. above all, men ought to free themselves from idle hopes and fears about a future existence. the belief in the immortality of the soul, said epicurus, is only a delusion, for both soul and body are material things which death dissolves into the atoms making up the universe. and if there are any gods, he declared, they do not concern themselves with human affairs. some of the followers of epicurus seemed to find in his philosophic system justification for free indulgence in every appetite and passion. even to-day, when we call a person an "epicurean," we think of him as a selfish pleasure seeker. stoicism the noblest of all pagan philosophies was stoicism, founded by zeno, a contemporary of epicurus. virtue, said the stoic, consists in living "according to nature," that is, according to the universal reason or divine providence that rules the world. the followers of this philosophy tried, therefore, to ignore the feelings and exalt the reason as a guide to conduct. they practiced self-denial, despised the pomps and vanities of the world, and sought to rise above such emotions as grief, fear, hope, and joy. the doctrines of stoicism gained many adherents among the romans [ ] and through them became a real moral force in the ancient world. stoicism is even now no outworn creed. our very word "stoical" is a synonym for calm indifference to pleasure or to pain. . roman literature rise of roman literature the beginnings of roman literature go back to the third century b.c., when some knowledge of the greek language became increasingly common in rome. the earlier writers--chiefly poets and dramatists--did little original work, and usually were content to translate and adapt the productions of greek authors for roman audiences. during this period the romans gradually discovered the capabilities of their language for prose composition. the republican institutions of rome, like those of athens, were highly favorable to the art of public speaking. it was the development of oratory which did most to mold the latin language into fitness for the varied forms of prose. cicero cicero, the greatest of roman orators, created a style for latin prose composition which has been admired and imitated by men of letters even to our own day. latin, in his hands, became a magnificent instrument for the expression of human thought. cicero's qualities as an author are shown, not only by his _orations_, but also by the numerous _epistles_ which he wrote to friends and correspondents in all parts of the roman world. besides their historical interest cicero's letters are models of what good letters ought to be--the expression of the writer's real thoughts and feelings in simple, unstilted language. cicero also composed a number of _dialogues_, chiefly on philosophical themes. if not very profound, they are delightfully written, and long served as textbooks in the schools. caesar another eminent statesman--julius caesar--won success in literature. as an orator he was admitted by his contemporaries to stand second to cicero. none of his speeches have survived. we possess, however, his invaluable _commentaries_ on the gallic and civil wars. these works, though brief and in most parts rather dull, are highly praised for their simple, concise style and their mastery of the art of rapid narration. vergil and horace the half century included within the augustan age marks a real epoch in the history of latin literature. the most famous poet of this period was vergil. the _aeneid_, which he undertook at the suggestion of augustus, is his best-known work. in form the poem is a narrative of the adventures of the trojan hero, aeneas, [ ] but its real theme is the growth of rome under the fostering care of the gods. the _aeneid_, though unfinished at the author's death, became at once what it has always remained--the only ancient epic worthy of comparison with the _iliad_ or with the _odyssey._ another member of the augustan circle was vergil's friend and fellow- worker, horace. an imitative poet, horace reproduced in latin verse the forms, and sometimes even the substance, of his greek models. but, like vergil, what horace borrowed he made his own by the added beauty which he gave to it. his _odes_ are perhaps the most admirable examples of literary art to be found in any language. livy the most famous prose writer of the augustan age was livy. his _history of rome_, beginning with romulus and extending to augustus, traced the rise and growth of the roman state during eight centuries of triumphal progress. it did in prose what vergil's _aeneid_ had done in verse. tacitus the period of the "good emperors" saw the rise of several important authors, of whom one, the historian tacitus, was a man of genius. the crowning labor of his life was a history of rome from tiberius to domitian. of this work, issued under the two titles of _histories_ and _annals_, only about one-half is extant. survival of roman literature less than two hundred years separate cicero and tacitus. during this period latin authors, writing under the influence of old greece, accomplished much valuable work. some of their productions are scarcely inferior to the greek masterpieces. in later centuries, when greek literature was either neglected or forgotten in the west, the literature of rome was still read and enjoyed. even to-day a knowledge of it forms an essential part of a "classical" education. . greek architecture characteristics of greek architecture the existing monuments of greek architecture--chiefly ruined temples-- afford some idea of its leading characteristics. the building materials were limestone and white marble. the blocks of stone were not bound together by cement, but by metal clamps which held them in a firm grip. it was usual to color the ornamental parts of a temple and the open spaces that served as a background for sculpture. the greeks did not employ the principle of the arch, in order to cover large spaces with a vaulted ceiling. their temples and other public buildings had only flat ceilings, resting on long rows of columns. the column probably developed from the wooden post or tree trunk used in timber construction. the capital at the top of the column originated in the square wooden slab which supported the heavy beam of the roof. [illustration: corner of a doric faÇade] [illustration: corner of an ionic faÇade] the doric column the two greek orders of architecture, doric and ionic, [ ] are distinguished mainly by differences in the treatment of the column. the doric column has no base of its own. the sturdy shaft is grooved lengthwise with some twenty flutings. the capital is a circular band of stone capped by a square block, all without decoration. the mainland of greece was the especial home of the doric order. this was also the characteristic style of southern italy and sicily. the ionic column. the ionic column rests upon a base. its shaft is tall and slender. the beautifully carved capital swells outward into two spiral rolls, the ends of which are curled under to form the "volutes." the ionic order flourished particularly in asia minor. it was well known, too, at athens. [illustration: capitals the highly decorative corinthian capital, modeled on acanthus leaves, came into fashion in alexandrian and roman times. the composite capital, as its name indicates, combined details from the ionic and corinthian into one ornate whole. this and the plain tuscan capital were quite generally employed by the romans.] nature of the greek temple the temple formed the chief structure in a greek city. it was very simple in outline--merely a rectangular building provided with doors, but without windows. around it was a single or a double row of columns. above them rose the architrave, a plain band of massive stones which reached from one column to another. then came the frieze, adorned with sculptured reliefs, then the horizontal cornice, and at the ends of the building the triangular pediments formed by the sloping roof. the pediments were sometimes decorated with statues. since the temple was not intended to hold a congregation of worshipers, but only to contain the image of the god, the interior usually had little ornamentation. [illustration: the parthenon restoration present condition after serving as a temple for about nine centuries the parthenon was turned into a christian church and later into a mohammedan mosque. in a.d. the venetians bombarded athens and sent a shell into the center of the building which the turks had used as a powder magazine. the result was an explosion that threw down the side walls and many of the columns.] [illustration: figures from the pediment of the parthenon] [illustration: from the parthenon frieze] [illustration: corner of the parthenon (restored)] [illustration: caryatid porch of the erechtheum] uniqueness of the greek temple greek temples were not very large, for hugeness was no object to the builders. they were not even lavishly decorated. their beauty lies, most of all, in their harmonious proportions and perfect symmetry. in the best examples of the greek temple there are, for instance, no straight lines. the columns are not set at equal intervals, but closer together near the corners of the building. the shafts of the columns, instead of tapering upward at a uniform rate, swell slightly toward the center. the artistic eyes of the greeks delighted in such subtle curves. these characteristics make a classical temple unique of its kind. [ ] . greek sculpture the greek genius in sculpture the greatest achievement of the greeks in art was their sculpture. roman artists surpassed them in the creation of massive architectural works; modern artists have surpassed them in painting. in sculpture the greeks still remain unexcelled. loss of the masterpieces the existing remains of greek sculpture are very scanty. the statues of gold and ivory vanished long ago. the bronze statues, formerly numbered by thousands, have nearly all gone into the melting pot. sculptures in marble were turned into mortar or used as building materials. those which escaped such a fate were often ruined by wanton mutilation and centuries of neglect. the statues which we still possess are mainly marble copies, made in roman times from greek originals. it is as if the paintings by the old masters of europe, four centuries ago, were now known only in the reproductions by modern artists of inferior powers. materials the greek sculptor worked with a variety of materials. wood was in common use during primitive times. terra cotta was employed at all periods for statuettes a few inches in height. productions in gold and ivory, from the costliness of these objects, were extremely rare. bronze was the favorite material of some of the most eminent artists. the greek sculptor especially relied on the beautiful marbles in which his country abounded. technical processes the methods employed by the ancient sculptor differed in some respects from those followed by his modern successors. a greek marble statue was usually built up out of several parts. the joining was accomplished with such skill as to escape ordinary observation. the preliminary work of hewing out from the rough was done by means of chisels. the surface of the marble afterwards received a careful polishing with the file, and also with sand. marble statues were always more or less painted. the coloring seems to have been done sparingly, being applied, as a rule, only to the features and draperies. still, it is worth while to remember that the pure white statues of modern sculptors would not have satisfied greek artists of the classical age. varieties of greek scuplture greek sculpture existed in the two forms of bas-reliefs and statuary in the round. reliefs were chiefly used for temple pediments and friezes, and also for the many grave monuments. statues consisted of the images of the gods set up in their shrines, the sculptures dedicated as offerings to divinities, and the figures of statesmen, generals, and victorious athletes raised in public places and sanctuaries. importance of the sculptor's art this list will show how many were the opportunities which the ancient sculptor enjoyed. the service of religion created a constant demand for his genius. the numerous athletic contests and the daily sports of the gymnasium gave him a chance to study living models in the handsome, finely-shaped bodies of the contestants. with such inspiration it is not remarkable that sculpture reached so high a development in ancient greece. [ ] . roman architecture and sculpture the arch and dome in roman buildings in architecture the romans achieved preëminence. the temples and other public works of greece seem almost insignificant beside the stupendous edifices raised by roman genius in every province of the empire. the ability of the romans to build on so large a scale arose from their use of vaulted constructions. knowledge of the round arch passed over from the orient to the etruscans and from them to the romans. [ ] at first the arch was employed mainly for gates, drainage sewers, aqueducts, and bridges. in imperial times this device was adopted to permit the construction of vast buildings with overarching domes. the principle of the dome has inspired some of the finest creations of ancient and modern architecture. roman use of concrete and rubble the romans for many of their buildings made much use of concrete. its chief ingredient was _pozzolana_, a sand found in great abundance near rome and other sites. when mixed with lime, it formed a very strong cement. this material was poured in a fluid state into timber casings, where it quickly set and hardened. small pieces of stone, called rubble, were also forced down into the cement to give it additional stability. buildings of this sort were usually faced with brick, which in turn might be covered with thin slabs of marble, thus producing an attractive appearance. temples the triumphs of roman architecture were not confined chiefly to sacred edifices. roman temples, indeed, are mostly copies from the greek. in comparison with their originals, they lack grace and refinement. there is less accuracy in the masonry fitting and far less careful attention to details of construction. a frequent departure from greek models is found in the restriction of the rows of pillars to the front of the building, while the sides and rear are lined with "engaged" columns to give the idea of a colonnade. [ ] more characteristically roman are vaulted temples, such as the pantheon, [ ] where the circular dome is faced with a greek portico. basilicas roman basilicas, of which only the ruins are now in existence, were once found in every city. these were large, lofty buildings for the use of judges and merchants. the chief feature of a basilica was the spacious central hall flanked by a single or double row of columns, forming aisles and supporting the flat roof. at one end of the hall was a semicircular recess--the apse--where the judges held court. this arrangement of the interior bears a close resemblance to the plan of the early christian church with its nave, choir (or chancel) and columned aisles. the christians, in fact, seem to have taken the familiar basilicas as the models for their places of worship. [illustration: plan of the ulpian basilica the hall measured feet in length and feet in width.] [illustration: interior view of the ulpian basilica (restoration) built by the emperor trajan in connection with his forum at rome.] aqueducts perhaps the most imposing, and certainly among the most useful, of roman structures were aqueducts. [ ] there were sixty-eight in italy and the provinces. no less than fourteen supplied the capital city with water. the aqueducts usually ran under the surface of the ground, as do our water pipes. they were carried on arches only across depressions and valleys. the claudian aqueduct ran for thirty-six miles underground and for nine and a half miles on arches. though these monuments were intended simply as engineering works, their heavy masses of rough masonry produce an inspiring sense of power. [illustration: a roman aqueduct the pont du gard near nîmes (ancient nemausus) in southern france. built by the emperor antoninus pius. the bridge spans two hilltops nearly a thousand feet apart. it carries an aqueduct with three tiers of massive stone arches at a height of feet above the stream. this is the finest and best preserved aqueduct in existence.] thermae the abundant water supply furnished by the aqueducts was connected with a system of great public baths, or _thermae_. [ ] scarcely a town or village throughout the empire lacked one or more such buildings. those at rome were constructed on a scale of magnificence of which we can form but a slight conception from the ruins now in existence. in addition to many elaborate arrangements for the bathers, the _thermae_ included lounging and reading rooms, libraries, gymnasia, and even museums and galleries of art. the baths, indeed, were splendid clubhouses, open at little or no expense to every citizen of the metropolis. [illustration: the colosseum] triumphal arches and columns a very characteristic example of roman building is found in the triumphal arches. [ ] their sides were adorned with bas-reliefs, which pictured the principal scenes of a successful campaign. memorial structures, called columns of victory, [ ] were also set up in rome and other cities. both arch and column have been frequently imitated by modern architects. [illustration: a roman cameo portrait of a youth cut in sardonyx. probably of the first century a.d.] circuses, theaters, and amphitheaters the palaces of roman emperors and nobles, together with their luxurious country houses, or villas, have all disappeared. a like fate has befallen the enormous circuses, such as the circus maximus [ ] at rome and the hippodrome [ ] at constantinople. the roman theaters that still survive reproduce, in most respects, the familiar outlines of the greek structures. in the amphitheaters, where animal shows and gladiatorial combats were exhibited, we have a genuinely roman invention. the gigantic edifice, called the colosseum, in its way as truly typifies roman architectural genius as the parthenon represents at its best that of the greeks. roman sculpture roman sculpture owed much to greek models. however, the portrait statues and bas-reliefs show originality and illustrate the tendency of the romans toward realism in art. the sculptor tried to represent an historic person as he really looked or an historic event, for example, a battle or a triumphal procession, as it actually happened. the portrait statues of roman emperors and the bas-reliefs from the arch of titus impress us at once with a sense of their reality. wall paintings our knowledge of roman painting is almost wholly confined to the wall paintings found at rome, herculaneum, and pompeii. what has survived is apparently the work of ordinary craftsmen, who, if not greeks, were deeply affected by the greek spirit. most of the scenes they depict are taken from classical mythology. the coloring is very rich; and the peculiar shade of red used is known to-day by the name of "pompeian red." the practice of mural painting passed over from the romans to european artists, who have employed it in the frescoes of medieval and modern churches. . artistic athens art centers of antiquity athens and rome were the artistic centers of the classical world. architects, sculptors, and painters lavished their finest efforts on the adornment of these two capitals. here there are still to be seen some of the most beautiful and impressive monuments of antiquity. roads and suburbs of athens athens lies in the center of the attic plain, about four miles from the sea. [ ] the city commands a magnificent view of purple-hued mountains and the shining waters of the aegean. roads approached the ancient city from all parts of attica. among these were the highway from piraeus, running between the long walls, [ ] and the sacred way from eleusis, where the famous mysteries were yearly celebrated. [ ] the suburbs of athens included the outer ceramicus, part of which was used as a national cemetery, and a pleasure ground and gymnasium on the banks of the cephissus, called the academy. another resort, known as the lyceum, bordered the little stream of the ilissus. walls of athens the traveler who passed through these suburbs came at length to the great wall, nearly five miles in circumference, raised by themistocles to surround the settlement at the foot of the acropolis. [ ] the area included within this wall made up old athens. about six centuries after themistocles the roman emperor hadrian, by building additional fortifications on the east, brought an extensive quarter, called new athens, inside the city limits. hills of athens the region within the walls was broken up by a number of rocky eminences which have a prominent place in the topography of athens. near the center the acropolis rises more than two hundred feet above the plain, its summit crowned with monuments of the periclean age. not far away is the hill called the areopagus. here the council of the areopagus, a court of justice in trials for murder, held its deliberations in the open air. beyond this height is the hill of the pnyx. this was the meeting place of the athenian assembly until the fourth century b.c., when the sessions were transferred to the theater of dionysus. [illustration: map, athens] the agora the business and social center of an ancient city was the agora or market place. the athenian agora lay in the hollow north of the areopagus and acropolis. the square was shaded by rows of plane trees and lined with covered colonnades. in the great days of the city, when the agora was filled with countless altars and shrines, it presented a most varied and attractive scene. public buildings not all the splendid structures in athens were confined to the agora and the acropolis. on a slight eminence not far from the agora, rose the so- called "theseum," [ ] a marble temple in the doric order. another famous temple, the colossal edifice known as the olympieum, lay at some distance from the acropolis on the southeast. fifteen of the lofty columns with their corinthian capitals are still standing. the theater of dionysus [ ] is in a fair state of preservation. beyond this are the remains of the odeum, or "hall of song," used for musical contests and declamations. the original building was raised by pericles, in imitation, it is said, of the tent of xerxes. the present ruins are those of the structure erected in the second century a.d. by a public-spirited benefactor of athens. the acropolis the adornment of the acropolis formed perhaps the most memorable achievement of pericles. [ ] this rocky mount was approached on the western side by a flight of sixty marble steps. to the right of the stairway rose a small but very beautiful ionic temple dedicated to athena. having mounted the steps, the visitor passed through the superb entrance gate, or propylaea, which was constructed to resemble the front of a temple with columns and pediment. just beyond the propylaea stood a great bronze statue of the guardian athena, a masterpiece of the sculptor phidias. [illustration: the acropolis of athens (restoration)] [illustration: acropolis of athens from the southwest] the erechtheum the erechtheum, a temple which occupies part of the acropolis, is in the ionic style. it may be regarded as the best existing example of this light and graceful order. perhaps the most interesting feature is the porch of the caryatides, with a marble roof supported by six pillars carved in the semblance of maidens. [ ] this curious but striking device has been often copied by modern architects. architecture of the parthenon the other temple on the acropolis is the world-famed edifice known as the parthenon, the shrine of the virgin of the athena. [ ] the parthenon illustrates the extreme simplicity of a greek temple. it had no great size or height and included only two chambers. the rear room stored sacred vessels and furniture used in worship, state treasure, and the more valuable offerings intrusted to the goddess for safekeeping. the second and larger room contained a colossal gold and ivory statue of athena, the work of phidias. it faced the eastern entrance so that it might be bathed in the rays of the rising sun. apart from the large doors a certain amount of light reached the interior through the semi-transparent marble tiles of the roof. the doric columns surrounding the building are marvels of fine workmanship. the parthenon, because of its perfection of construction and admirable proportions, is justly regarded as a masterpiece of architecture. [illustration: plan of the parthenon the larger room (cella) measured exactly one hundred feet in length.] sculptures of the parthenon the parthenon was also remarkable for its sculptures [ ] executed under the superintendence of phidias. the subjects of the pediment sculptures are taken from the mythic history of athena. the frieze of the parthenon consists of a series of sculptured slabs, over five hundred feet in length. the subject was the procession of the great panathenaea, [ ] the principal festival in honor of athena. at this time the sacred robe of the goddess, woven anew for each occasion, was brought to adorn her statue. the procession is thought of as starting from the western front, where athenian youths dash forward on their spirited steeds. then comes a brilliant array of maidens, matrons, soldiers, and luteplayers. near the center of the eastern front they meet a group of divinities, who are represented as spectators of the imposing scene. this part of the frieze is still in excellent condition. the glory of athens it was, indeed, a splendid group of buildings that rose on the acropolis height. if to-day they have lost much of their glory, we can still understand how they were the precious possession of the athenians and the wonder of all the ancient world. "o shining, violet-crowned city of song, great athens, bulwark of hellas, walls divine!" the words are those of an old greek poet, [ ] but they are reëchoed by all who have come under the magic spell of the literature and art of the athenian city. . artistic rome destruction of ancient rome the monuments of rome, unlike those of athens, cannot lay claim to great antiquity. the destruction wrought by the gauls in b.c. and the great fire under nero in a.d. removed nearly all traces of the regal and republican city. many buildings erected in the imperial age have also disappeared, because in medieval and modern times the inhabitants of rome used the ancient edifices as quarries. the existing monuments give only a faint idea of the former magnificence of the capital city. hills of rome the city of rome lies on the tiber. where the river approaches rome it makes two sharp turns, first to the west and then to the east. on the western, or etruscan, bank stood the two hills called vatican and janiculum. they were higher than the famous seven which rose on the eastern side, where the ancient city was built. two of these seven hills possess particular interest. the earliest settlement, as we have seen, [ ] probably occupied the palatine. it became in later days the favorite site for the town houses of roman nobles. in the imperial age the splendid palaces of the caesars were located here. the capitoline, steepest of the seven hills, was divided into two peaks. on one of these rose the most famous of all roman temples, dedicated to jupiter and his companion deities, juno and minerva. the other peak was occupied by a large temple of juno moneta ("the adviser"), which served as the mint. the altars, shrines, and statues which once covered this height were so numerous that the capitoline, like the athenian acropolis, became a museum of art. [illustration: map, rome] walls and open spaces rome in early times was surrounded by a wall which bore the name of its legendary builder, servius tullius. the present fortifications were not constructed until the reign of the emperor aurelian. [ ] the ancient city was closely built up, with only two great open spaces, in addition to the forum. these were the circus maximus, in the hollow between the palatine mount and the aventine, and the campus martius, stretching along the tiber to the northwest of the capitoline hill. public buildings following the map of ancient rome under the empire we may note the more important monuments which still exist in something like their original condition. across the tiber and beyond the campus martius stands the mausoleum of hadrian. [ ] the most notable structure in the campus martius is the pantheon. [ ] it is the one ancient building in the entire roman world which still survives, inside and out, in a fair state of preservation. the depression between the caelian and esquiline hills contains the flavian amphitheater, better known as the colosseum. [ ] it was begun by vespasian and probably completed by titus. no less than eighty entrances admitted the forty-five thousand spectators who could be accommodated in this huge structure. despite the enormous mass of the present ruins probably two-thirds of the original materials have been carried away to be used in other buildings. close to the colosseum stands the arch [ ] erected by the senate in honor of the victory of constantine over his rival maxentius. from this event is dated the triumph of christianity in the roman state. the ruins of the huge baths of caracalla lie about half a mile from the colosseum. near the center of the city are the remains of the forum added by trajan to the accommodations of the original forum. it contains the column of trajan [ ] under which that emperor was buried. the forum the forum lies in the valley north of the palatine hill. it was the business and social center of the roman city. during the middle ages the site was buried in ruins and rubbish, in some places to a depth of forty feet or more. recent excavations have restored the ancient level and uncovered the remains of the ancient structures. [illustration: the roman forum and the surrounding buildings (restored)] [illustration: the roman forum at the present time] approach to the forum the forum could be approached from the east by one of the most famous streets in the world, the roman sacred way. the illustration of the forum at the present time gives a view, looking eastward from the capitoline mount, and shows several of the buildings on or near the sacred way. at the left are seen the ruins of the basilica of constantine. farther in the distance the colosseum looms up. directly ahead is the arch of titus, which commemorates the capture of jerusalem in a.d. [ ] the ruins of the palaces of the caesars occupy the slopes of the palatine. the forum to-day the only well-preserved monument in the forum is the beautiful arch erected by the emperor septimius severus. beyond it are three columns which once formed part of the temple of castor. they date from the time of tiberius. in front are the foundations of the basilica julia, built by augustus. next come eight ionic columns, all that remain of the temple of saturn. near it and in the foreground are several columns in the corinthian style, belonging to a temple built by vespasian. the forum in antiquity these ruined monuments, these empty foundations and lonely pillars, afford little idea of all the wealth of architecture that once adorned this spot. here stood the circular shrine of vesta, [ ] guarding the altar and its ever-blazing fire. here was the temple of concord, famous in roman history. [ ] the senate-house was here, and just before it, the rostra, a platform adorned with the beaks (_rostra_) of captured ships. from this place roman orators addressed their assembled fellow-citizens. the grandeur of rome how splendid a scene must have greeted an observer in ancient times who, from the height of the capitol, gazed at the city before him. the forum was then one radiant avenue of temples, triumphal arches, columns, and shrines. and beyond the forum stretched a magnificent array of theaters and amphitheaters, enormous baths, colossal sepulchers, and statues in stone and bronze. so prodigious an accumulation of objects beautiful, costly, and rare has never before or since been found on earth. studies . what is the origin of our words _pedagogue_, _symposium_, _circus_, and _academy_? . make a list of such roman names as you have met in your reading. . write a letter describing an imaginary visit to the theater of dionysus during the performance of a tragedy. . what did civic patriotism mean to the greek and to the roman? . have we anything to learn from the greeks about the importance of training in music? . what were the schoolbooks of greek boys? . what features of athenian education are noted in the illustration, page ? . how did the position of women at athens differ from their position in homeric greece? . why does classical literature contain almost no "love stories," or novels? . what contrasts exist between the ancient and the modern house? . describe a roman litter (illustration, page ). . what differences exist between an ancient and a modern theatre? . what features of our "circus" recall the proceedings at the roman games? . how many holidays (including sundays) are there in your state? how do they compare in number with those at rome in the reign of marcus aurelius? . describe the theater of dionysus (illustration, page ). . what is the "socratic method" of teaching? . how did the greeks manage to build solidly without the use of mortar? . discuss the appropriateness of the terms: _severe_ doric; _graceful_ ionic; _ornate_ corinthian. . can you find examples of any of the greek orders in public buildings familiar to you? . how do you explain the almost total loss of original greek sculptures? . by reference to the illustrations, page , explain the following terms: _shaft_; _capital_; _architrave_; _frieze;_ and _cornice._ . explain the "greek profile" seen in the aphrodite of cnidus and the apollo of the belvedere (plate facing page ). . name five famous works of greek sculpture which exist to-day only in roman copies. . what is your favorite greek statue? why do you like it? . "the dome, with the round arch out of which it sprang, is the most fertile conception in the whole history of building." justify this statement. . what famous examples of domed churches and public buildings are familiar to you? . what artistic objections to the use of "engaged columns" can you mention? . discuss the revival of cement construction in modern times. what are its special advantages? . what examples of triumphal arches in the united states and france are known to you? . do you know of any modern columns of victory? . why is it likely that the bust of nerva (illustration, page ) is a more faithful likeness than that of pericles (illustration, page )? . write a brief essay describing an imaginary walk on the athenian acropolis in the age of pericles. . enumerate the most important contributions to civilization made in classical antiquity. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in ancient history_, chapter xxi, "roman life as seen in pliny's letters"; chapter xxii, "a satirist of roman society." [ ] euripides, _iphigenia in tauris_, . [ ] see page . [ ] in "marcus tullius cicero," "marcus," the _praenomen_, corresponds to our "given" name; "tullius," the _nomen_, marks the clan, or _gens;_ "cicero," the _cognomen_, indicates the family. [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustrations, pages , . [ ] the corresponding names of women's garments were _stola_ and _pallet_. [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] panathenaic means 'belonging to all the athenians.' see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] _panem et circenses_ (juvenal x, - ). [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the so-called corinthian order differs from the ionic only in its capital. [ ] for illustrations of greek temples, see pages , . [ ] for illustrations of greek statues see pages , , , , , , and the plates facing pages , , , , . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustrations, pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustrations, pages , . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] pindar, _fragments_, . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xiii western europe during the early middle ages, - a.d. [ ] . the ostrogoths in italy, - a.d. transition to the middle ages we are not to suppose that the settlement of germans within the roman empire ended with the deposition of romulus augustulus, near the close of the fifth century. the following centuries witnessed fresh invasions and the establishment of new germanic states. the study of these troubled times leads us from the classical world to the world of medieval europe, from the history of antiquity to the history of the middle ages. the ostrogoths under theodoric the kingdom which odoacer established on italian soil did not long endure. it was soon overthrown by the ostrogoths. at the time of the "fall" of rome in a.d. they occupied a district south of the middle danube, which the government at constantinople had hired them to defend. the ostrogoths proved to be expensive and dangerous allies. when, therefore, their chieftain, theodoric, offered to lead his people into italy and against odoacer, the roman emperor gladly sanctioned the undertaking. ostrogothic invasion of italy, - a.d. theodoric led the ostrogoths--women and children as well as warriors-- across the alps and came down to meet odoacer and his soldiers in battle. after suffering several defeats, odoacer shut himself up in the strong fortress of ravenna. theodoric could not capture the place and at last agreed to share with odoacer the government of italy, if the latter would surrender. the agreement was never carried into effect. when theodoric entered ravenna, he invited odoacer to a great feast and at its conclusion slew him in cold blood. theodoric had now no rival in italy. theodoric king of italy, - a.d. though theodoric gained the throne by violence and treachery, he soon showed himself to be, as a ruler, wise, broad-minded, and humane. he had lived as a youth in the imperial court at constantinople and there had become well acquainted with roman ideas of law and order. roman civilization impressed him; and he wished not to destroy but to preserve it. theodoric reigned in italy for thirty-three years, and during this time the country enjoyed unbroken peace and prosperity. [illustration: tomb of theodoric at ravenna a two storied marble building erected by theodoric in imitation of a roman tomb. the roof is a single block of marble feet in diameter and weighing more than tons. theodoric's body was subsequently removed from its resting place, and the mausoleum was converted into a church.] theodoric's rule in italy. the enlightened policy of theodoric was exhibited in many ways. he governed ostrogoths and romans with equal consideration. he kept all the old offices, such as the senatorship and the consulate, and by preference filled them with men of roman birth. his chief counselors were romans. a legal code, which he drew up for the use of ostrogoths and romans alike, contained only selections from roman law. he was remarkably tolerant and, in spite of the fact that the ostrogoths were arians, [ ] was always ready to extend protection to catholic christians. theodoric patronized literature and gave high positions to roman writers. he restored the cities of italy, had the roads and aqueducts repaired, and so improved the condition of agriculture that italy, from a wheat-importing, became a wheat-exporting, country. at ravenna, the ostrogothic capital, theodoric erected many notable buildings, including a palace, a mausoleum, and several churches. the remains of these structures are still to be seen. theodoric's foreign policy the influence of theodoric reached far beyond italy. he allied himself by marriage with most of the germanic rulers of the west. his second wife was a frankish foreign princess, his sister was the wife of a vandal chieftain, one of his daughters married a king of the visigoths, and another daughter wedded a burgundian king. theodoric by these alliances brought about friendly relations between the various barbarian peoples. it seemed, in fact, as if the roman dominions in the west might again be united under a single ruler; as if the ostrogoths might be the germanic people to carry on the civilizing work of rome. but no such good fortune was in store for europe. end of the ostrogothic kingdom, a.d. theodoric died in a.d. the year after his death, a great emperor, justinian, came to the throne at constantinople. justinian had no intention of abandoning to the ostrogothic germans the rich provinces of sicily and italy. although the ostrogoths made a stubborn resistance to his armies, in the end they were so completely overcome that they agreed to withdraw from the italian peninsula. the feeble remnant of their nation filed sadly through the passes of the alps and, mingling with other barbarian tribes, disappeared from history. . the lombards in italy, - a.d. invasion of italy by the lombards the destruction of the ostrogothic kingdom did not free italy of the germans. soon after justinian's death the country was again overrun, this time by the lombards. the name of these invaders (in latin, _langobardi_) may have been derived from the long beards that gave them such a ferocious aspect. the lombards were the last of the germanic peoples to quit their northern wilderness and seek new homes in sunny italy. they seized the territory north of the river po--a region ever since known as lombardy-- and established their capital at pavia. the lombards afterwards made many settlements in central and southern italy, but never succeeded in subduing the entire peninsula. [illustration: map, europe in the sixth century] lombard rule in italy the rule of the lombards at first bore hardly on italy, which they treated as a conquered land. in character they seem to been far less attractive than their predecessors the visigoths and ostrogoths. many of them were still heathen when they entered italy and others were converts to the arian [ ] form of christianity. in course of time, however, the lombards accepted roman catholicism and adopted the customs of their subjects. they even forgot their germanic language and learned to speak latin. the lombard kingdom lasted over two centuries, until it was overthrown by the franks. [ ] results of the lombard invasion the failure of the lombards to conquer all italy had important results in later history. sicily and the extreme southern part of the italian peninsula, besides large districts containing the cities of naples, rome, genoa, venice, and ravenna, continued to belong to the roman empire in the east. the rulers at constantinople could not exercise effective control over their italian possessions, now that these were separated from one another by the lombard territories. the consequence was that italy broke up into a number of small and practically independent states, which never combined into one kingdom until our own time. the ideal of a united italy waited thirteen hundred years for its realization. [ ] . the franks under clovis and his successors clovis, king of the franks, - a.d. we have already met the franks in their home on the lower rhine, from which they pushed gradually into roman territory. [ ] in a.d., just ten years after the deposition of romulus augustulus, the franks went forth to conquer under clovis, [ ] one of their chieftains. by overcoming the governor of roman gaul, in a battle near soissons, clovis destroyed the last vestige of imperial rule in the west and extended the frankish dominions to the river loire. clovis then turned against his german neighbors. east of the franks, in the region now known as alsace, lived the alamanni, a people whose name still survives in the french name of germany. [ ] the alamanni were defeated in a great battle near strassburg ( a.d.), and much of their territory was added to that of the franks. clovis subsequently conquered the visigothic possessions between the loire and the pyrenees, and compelled the burgundians to pay tribute. thus clovis made himself supreme over nearly the whole of gaul and even extended his authority to the other side of the rhine. this great work entitles him to be called the founder of the french nation. the franks and the gallo-romans clovis reigned in western europe as an independent king, but he acknowledged a sort of allegiance to the roman emperor by accepting the title of honorary consul. henceforth to the gallo-romans he represented the distant ruler at constantinople. the roman inhabitants of gaul were not oppressed; their cities were preserved; and their language and laws were undisturbed. clovis, as a statesman, may be compared with his eminent contemporary, theodoric the ostrogoth. christianization of the franks, a.d. the franks were still a heathen people, when they began their career of conquest. clovis, however, had married a burgundian princess, clotilda, who was a devout catholic and an ardent advocate of christianity. the story is told how, when clovis was hard-pressed by the alamanni at the battle of strassburg, he vowed that if clotilda's god gave him victory he would become a christian. the franks won, and clovis, faithful to his vow, had himself baptized by st. remi, bishop of reims. "bow down thy head," spoke the bishop, as the frankish king approached the font, "adore what thou hast burned, burn what thou has adored." [ ] with clovis were baptized on that same day three thousand of his warriors. [illustration: map, growth of the frankish dominions, - a.d.] significance of clovis's conversion the conversion of clovis was an event of the first importance. he and his franks naturally embraced the orthodox catholic faith, which was that of his wife, instead of the arian form of christianity, which had been accepted by almost all the other germanic invaders. thus, by what seems the merest accident, catholicism, instead of arianism, became the religion of a large part of western europe. more than this, the conversion of clovis gained for the frankish king and his successors the support of conversion the roman church. the friendship between the popes and the franks afterwards ripened into a close alliance which greatly influenced european history. the earlier merovingian kings the descendants of clovis are called merovingians. [ ] they occupied the throne of the franks for nearly two hundred and fifty years. the annals of their reigns form an unpleasant catalogue of bloody wars, horrible murders, and deeds of treachery without number. nevertheless, the earlier merovingians were strong men, under whose direction the frankish territory continued to expand, until it included nearly all of what is now france, belgium, and holland, besides a considerable part of germany. character of the frankish conquests the frankish conquests differed in two important respects from those of the other germanic peoples. in the first place, the franks did not cut themselves off completely from their original homes. they kept permanently their territory in germany, drawing from it continual reinforcements of fresh german blood. in the second place, the franks steadily added new german lands to their possessions. they built up in this way what was the largest and the most permanent of all the barbarian states founded on the ruins of the roman empire. . the franks under charles martel and pepin the short the later merovingian kings after the middle of the seventh century the frankish rulers, worn out by violence and excesses, degenerated into weaklings, who reigned but did not rule. the actual management of the state passed into the hands of officers, called "mayors of the palace." they left to the kings little more than their title, their long hair,--the badge of royalty among the franks,--and a scanty allowance for their support. the later merovingians, accordingly, are often known as the "do-nothing kings." charles martel the most illustrious of these mayors was charles, surnamed martel, "the hammer," from the terrible defeat which he administered to the mohammedans near tours, in central france. [ ] charles martel was virtually a king, but he never ventured to set aside the merovingian ruler and himself ascend the throne. this step was taken, however, by charles's son, pepin the short. pepin the short becomes king of the franks, a.d. before dethroning the last feeble "do-nothing," pepin sought the approval of the bishop of rome. the pope, without hesitation, declared that it was only right that the man who had the real authority in the state should have the royal title also. pepin, accordingly, caused himself to be crowned king of the franks, thus founding the carolingian [ ] dynasty. ( a.d.). three years later pope stephen ii came to pepin's court and solemnly anointed the new ruler with holy oil, in accordance with ancient jewish custom. the rite of anointing, something unknown to the germans, gave to pepin's coronation the sanction of the roman church. henceforth the frankish sovereigns called themselves "kings by the grade of god." "donation of pepin," a.d. pepin was soon able to repay his great obligation to the roman church by becoming its protector against the lombards. these barbarians, who were trying to extend their rule in italy, threatened to capture rome and the territory in the vicinity of that city, then under the control of the pope. pepin twice entered italy with his army, defeated the lombards, and forced them to cede to pope stephen an extensive district lying between rome and ravenna. pepin might have returned this district to the emperor at constantinople, to whom it belonged, but the frankish king declared that he had not fought for the advantage of any man but for the welfare of his own soul. he decided, therefore, to bestow his conquests on st. peter's representative, the pope. before this time the bishops of rome had owned much land in italy and had acted as virtual sovereigns in rome and its neighborhood. pepin's gift, known as the "donation of pepin," greatly increased their possessions, which came to be called the states of the church. they remained in the hands of the popes until late in the nineteenth century. [ ] . the reign of charlemagne, - a.d. charlemagne the man pepin was succeeded in a.d. by his two sons, one of whom, charlemagne, three years later became sole king of the franks. charlemagne reigned for nearly half a century, and during this time he set his stamp on all later european history. his character and personality are familiar to us from a brief biography, written by his secretary, einhard. charlemagne, we learn, was a tall, square-shouldered, strongly built man, with bright, keen eyes, and an expression at once cheerful and dignified. riding, hunting, and swimming were his favorite sports. he was simple in his tastes and very temperate in both food and drink. except when in rome, he wore the old frankish costume, with high-laced boots, linen tunic, blue cloak, and sword girt at his side. he was a clear, fluent speaker, used latin as readily as his native tongue, and understood greek when it was spoken. "he also tried to learn to write and often kept his tablets and writing book under the pillow of his couch, that, when he had leisure, he might practice his hand in forming letters; but he made little progress in this task, too long deferred and begun too late in life." [ ] for the times, however, charlemagne was a well-educated man--by no means a barbarian. [illustration: charlemagne (lateran museum, rome) a mosaic picture, made during the lifetime of charlemagne and probably a fair likeness of him.] conquest and conversion of the saxons, - a.d. much of charlemagne's long life, almost to its close, was filled with warfare. he fought chiefly against the still-heathen peoples on the frontiers of the frankish realm. the subjugation of the saxons, who lived in the forests and marshes of northwestern germany, took many years. charlemagne at the head of a great army would invade their territory, beat them in battle, and receive their submission, only to find his work undone by a sudden rising of the liberty-loving natives, after the withdrawal of the franks. once when charlemagne was exasperated by a fresh revolt, he ordered forty-five hundred prisoners to be executed. this savage massacre was followed by equally severe laws, which threatened with death all saxons who refused baptism or observed the old heathen rites. by such harsh means charlemagne at length broke down the spirit of resistance among the people. all saxony, from the rhine to the elbe, became a christian land and a permanent part of the frankish realm. [illustration: the iron crown of lombardy a fillet of iron, which, according to pious legend, had been beaten out of one of the nails of the true cross. it came to the lombards as a gift from pope gregory i. as a reward for their conversion to roman catholicism. during the middle ages it was used to crown the german emperors kings of italy. this precious relic is now kept in a church at monza in northern italy.] conquest of the lombards, a.d. shortly after the beginning of the saxon wars the king of the franks received an urgent summons from the pope, who was again being threatened by his old enemies, the lombards. charlemagne led a mighty host across the alps, captured pavia, where the lombard ruler had taken refuge, and added his possessions to those of the franks. thus passed away one more of the germanic states which had arisen on the ruins of the roman empire. charlemagne now placed on his own head the famous "iron crown," and assumed the title of "king of the franks and lombards, and patrician of the romans." charlemagne's other conquests charlemagne's conquests were not confined to germanic peoples. he forced the wild avars, who had advanced from the caspian into the danube valley, to acknowledge his supremacy. he compelled various slavic tribes, including the bohemians, to pay tribute. he also invaded spain and wrested from the moslems the district between the ebro river and the pyrenees. by this last conquest charlemagne may be said to have begun the recovery of the spanish peninsula from mohammedan rule. [ ] [illustration: map, europe in the age of charlemagne, a.d.] charlemagne's government charlemagne was a statesman, as well as a warrior. he divided his wide dominions into counties, each one ruled by a count, who was expected to keep order and administer justice. the border districts, which lay exposed to invasion, were organized into "marks," under the military supervision of counts of the mark, or margraves (marquises). these officials had so much power and lived so far from the royal court that it was necessary for charlemagne to appoint special agents, called _missi dominici_ ("the lord's messengers"), to maintain control over them. the _missi_ were usually sent out in pairs, a layman and a bishop or abbot, in order that the one might serve as a check upon the other. they traveled from county to county, bearing the orders of their royal master and making sure that these orders were promptly obeyed. in this way charlemagne kept well informed as to the condition of affairs throughout his kingdom. revival of learning under charlemagne charlemagne made a serious effort to revive classical culture in the west from the low state into which it had fallen during the period of the invasions. we still possess a number of laws issued by this frankish king for the promotion of education. he founded schools in the monasteries and cathedrals, where not only the clergy but also the common people might receive some training. he formed his whole court into a palace school, in which learned men from italy, spain, and england gave instruction to his own children and those of his nobles. the king himself often studied with them, under the direction of his good friend, alcuin, an englishman and the foremost scholar in western europe. he had the manuscripts of latin authors collected and copied, so that the knowledge preserved in books should not be forgotten. all this civilizing work, together with the peace and order which he maintained throughout a wide territory, made his reign the most brilliant period of the early middle ages. [illustration: cathedral at aix-la-chapelle aix-la-chapelle (aachen) was the capital city and favorite residence of charlemagne. the church which he built here was almost entirely destroyed by the northmen in the tenth century. the octagonal building surmounted by a dome which forms the central part of the present cathedral is a restoration of the original structure. the marble columns pavements and mosaics of charlemagne's church were brought by him from ravenna.] . charlemagne and the revival of the roman empire, a.d. coronation of charlemagne, a.d. charlemagne, the champion of christendom and the foremost ruler in europe, seemed to the men of his day the rightful successor of the roman emperors. he had their power, and now he was to have their name. in the year a.d. the frankish king visited rome to investigate certain accusations made against the pope, leo iii, by his enemies in the city. charlemagne absolved leo of all wrong-doing and restored him to his office. afterwards, on christmas day charlemagne went to old st. peter's church, where the pope was saying mass. as the king, dressed in the rich robes of a roman patrician, knelt in prayer before the high altar, the pope suddenly placed on his head a golden crown, while all the people cried out with one voice, "long life and victory to charles augustus, the great and pacific emperor of the romans, crowned by god!" reasons for the coronation although charlemagne appears to have been surprised by the pope's act, we know that he wished to become emperor. the imperial title would confer upon him greater dignity and honor, though not greater power, than he possessed as king of the franks and of the lombards. the pope, in turn, was glad to reward the man who had protected the church and had done so much to spread the catholic faith among the heathen. the roman people also welcomed the coronation, because they felt that the time had come for rome to assume her old place as the capital of the world. to reject the eastern ruler, in favor of the great frankish king, was an emphatic method of asserting rome's independence of constantinople. significance of the coronation the coronation of charlemagne was one of the most important events in medieval history. it might be thought a small matter that he should take the imperial title, when he already exercised imperial sway throughout western europe. but charlemagne's contemporaries believed that the old roman empire had now been revived, and a german king now sat on the throne once occupied by augustus and constantine. henceforth there was established in the west a line of roman emperors which lasted until the opening of the nineteenth century. [ ] charlemagne's empire charlemagne's empire was not in any true sense a continuation of the roman empire. it did not include the dominions over which the emperors at constantinople were to reign for centuries. moreover, charlemagne and his successors on the throne had little in common with the old rulers of rome, who spoke latin, administered roman law, and regarded the germans as among their most dangerous enemies. charlemagne's empire was, in fact, largely a new creation. . disruption of charlemagne's empire, - a.d. after charlemagne the empire of charlemagne did not long remain intact. so vast was its extent and so unlike were its inhabitants in race, language, and customs that it could be managed only by a ruler of the greatest energy and strength of will. unfortunately, the successors of charlemagne proved to be too weak for the task of maintaining peace and order. western europe now entered on a long period of confusion and violence, during which charlemagne's possessions broke up into separate and warring kingdoms. treaty of verdun, a.d. charlemagne's son, louis the pious, who became emperor in a.d., was a well-meaning but feeble ruler, better fitted for the quiet life of a monastery than for the throne. he could not control his rebellious sons, who, even during his lifetime, fought bitterly over their inheritance. the unnatural strife, which continued after his death, was temporarily settled by a treaty concluded at the city of verdun. according to its terms lothair, the eldest brother, received italy and the imperial title, together with a narrow stretch of land along the valleys of the rhine and the rhone, between the north sea and the mediterranean. louis and charles, the other brothers, received kingdoms lying to the east and west, respectively, of lothair's territory. the treaty of verdun may be said to mark the first stage in the dissolution of the carolingian empire. treaty of mersen, a.d. a second treaty, made at mersen in holland, was entered into by louis and charles, after the death of their brother lothair. they divided between themselves lothair's kingdom north of the alps, leaving to his young son the possession of italy and the empty title of "emperor." the treaty of mersen may be said to mark the second stage in the dissolution of the carolingian empire. that empire, as such, had now ceased to exist. [illustration: map, the frankish dominions as divided by the treaties of verdun ( a.d.) and mersen ( a.d.)] importance of the two treaties the territorial arrangements made by the treaties of verdun and mersen foreshadowed the future map of western europe. the east frankish kingdom of louis, inhabited almost entirely by germanic peoples, was to develop into modern germany. the west frankish kingdom of charles, inhabited mainly by descendants of romanized gauls, was to become modern france. lothair's kingdom, separated into two parts by the alps, never became a national state. italy, indeed, might be united under one government, but the long, narrow strip north of the alps had no unity of race, no common language, and no national boundaries. it was fated to be broken into fragments and to be fought over for centuries by its stronger neighbors. part of this territory now forms the small countries of belgium, holland, and switzerland, and another part, known as alsace and lorraine, [ ] still remains a bone of contention between france and germany. renewed barbarian invasions even had charlemagne been followed by strong and able rulers, it would have been a difficult matter to hold the empire together in the face of the fresh series of barbarian inroads which began immediately after his death. the mohammedans, though checked by the franks at the battle of tours, [ ] continued to be dangerous enemies. they ravaged southern france, sicily, and parts of italy. the piratical northmen from denmark and norway harried the coast of france and made inroads far beyond paris. they also penetrated into western germany, sailing up the rhine in their black ships and destroying such important towns as cologne and aix-la- chapelle. meanwhile, eastern germany lay exposed to the attacks of the slavs, whom charlemagne had defeated but not subdued. the magyars, or hungarians, were also dreaded foes. their wild horsemen entered europe from the plains of asia and, like the huns and avars to whom they were probably related, spread devastation far and wide. a great part of europe thus suffered from invasions almost as destructive as those which had brought ruin to the old roman world. . germany under the saxon kings, - a.d. the german stem-duchies the tenth century saw another movement toward the restoration of law and order. the civilizing work of charlemagne was taken up by german kings, not of the old prankish stock, but belonging to that saxon people which had opposed charlemagne so long and bitterly. saxony was one of the five great territorial states, or stem-duchies, as they are usually called, into which germany was then divided. [ ] germany at that time extended only as far east as the river elbe, beyond which lay the territory occupied by half-civilized slavic tribes. elective kingship of germany the rulers of the stem-duchies enjoyed practical independence, though they had recognized some king of germany ever since the treaty of verdun. early in the tenth century the carolingian dynasty died out in germany, and the german nobles then proceeded to elect their own kings. their choice fell first upon conrad, duke of franconia, but he had little authority outside his own duchy. a stronger man was required to keep the peace among the turbulent nobles and to repel the invaders of germany. such a man appeared in the person of henry, duke of saxony, who, after conrad's death, was chosen king. reign of henry the fowler, - a.d. henry i, called the fowler, because he was fond of hunting birds, spent the greater part of his reign in wars against the slavs, magyars, and other invaders. he conquered from the slavs the territory afterwards known as brandenburg. this country was to furnish germany, in later centuries, with its present dynasty--the hohenzollerns. [ ] he occupied the southern part of denmark (schleswig) and christianized it. he also recovered for germany lorraine, a district which remained in german hands until the eighteenth century. reign of otto the great, - a.d. henry the fowler was succeeded by his son, otto i, whom history knows as otto the great. he well deserved the title. like charlemagne, otto presented the aspect of a born ruler. he is described as being tall and commanding in presence, strong and vigorous of body, and gifted with great charm of manner. in his bronzed face shone clear and sparkling eyes, and down his breast hung a long, thick beard. though subject to violent outbursts of temper, he was liberal to his friends and just to his foes. otto was a man of immense energy and ambition, with a high conception of his duties as a sovereign. his reign forms one of the most notable epochs in german history. [illustration: ring seal of otto the great the inscription reads _oddo rex_.] otto and the magyars otto continued henry's work of defending germany from the foes which threatened to overrun that country. he won his most conspicuous success against the magyars, who suffered a crushing defeat on the banks of the river lech in bavaria ( a.d.). these barbarians now ceased their raids and retired to the lands on the middle danube which they had seized from the slavs. here they settled down, accepted christianity from the roman church, and laid the foundations of the kingdom of hungary. [ ] as a protection against future magyar inroads otto established the east mark. this region afterwards rose to great importance under the name of austria. otto and the stem-dukes otto was an excellent ruler of germany. he made it his business to strengthen the royal authority by weakening that of the stem-dukes. he had to fight against them on more than one occasion, for they regarded themselves almost as independent kings. otto was able to keep them in check, but the rulers who followed him were less successful in this respect. the struggle between the kings and their powerful nobles formed a constant feature of the medieval history of germany. . otto the great and the restoration of the roman empire, a.d. condition of italy otto the great is not to be remembered only as a german king. his reign was also noteworthy in the history of italy. the country at this time was hopelessly divided between rival and contending peoples. the emperor at constantinople controlled the southern extremity of the peninsula. the mohammedans held sicily and some cities on the mainland. the pope ruled at rome and in the states of the church. a so-called king of italy still reigned in lombardy, but he could not manage the powerful counts, dukes, and marquises, who were virtually independent within their own domains. even the imperial title died out, and now there was no longer a roman emperor in the west. coronation of otto the great, a.d. the deplorable condition of italy invited interference from abroad. following in the footsteps of charlemagne, otto the great led two expeditions across the alps, assumed the "iron crown" [ ] of lombardy, and then proceeded to rome, where he secured the pope (john xii) against the latter's enemies in that city. otto's reward was the same as charlemagne's. on candlemas day, (february d) a.d., the grateful pope crowned him roman emperor. meaning of the coronation the coronation of otto the great seemed to his contemporaries a necessary and beneficial act. they still believed that the roman empire was suspended, not extinct; and that now, one hundred and fifty years after charlemagne, the occasion was opportune to revive the name and power associated with the golden age of the first frankish emperor. otto's ardent spirit, one may well believe, was fired with this vision of imperial sway and the renewal of a title around which clustered so many memories of success and glory. [illustration: map, europe in the age of otto the great, a.d.] ultimate results of the coronation but the outcome of otto's restoration of the roman empire was good neither for italy nor for germany. it became the rule, henceforth, that the man whom the german nobles chose as their king had a claim, also, to the italian crown and the imperial title. the efforts of the german kings to make good this claim led to their constant interference in the affairs of italy. they treated that country as a conquered province which had no right to a national life and an independent government under its own rulers. at the same time they neglected germany and failed to keep their powerful territorial lords in subjection. neither italy nor germany, in consequence, could become a unified, centralized state, such as was formed in france and england during the later middle ages. the holy roman empire the empire of charlemagne, restored by otto the great, came to be called in later centuries the "holy roman empire." the title points to the idea of a world monarchy--the roman empire--and a world religion--roman christianity--united in one institution. this magnificent idea was never fully realized. the popes and emperors, instead of being bound to each other by the closest ties, were more generally enemies than friends. a large part of medieval history was to turn on this conflict between the empire and the papacy. [ ] . the anglo-saxons in britain, - a.d. anglo-saxon conquest of britain from the history of continental europe we now turn to the history of britain. that island had been overrun by the germanic barbarians after the middle of the fifth century. [ ] they are commonly known as anglo-saxons, from the names of their two principal peoples, the angles and saxons. the anglo-saxon conquest of britain was a slow process, which lasted at least one hundred and fifty years. the invaders followed the rivers into the interior and gradually subdued more than a half of what is now england, comprising the fertile plain district in the southern and eastern parts of the island. nature of the conquest though the anglo-saxons probably destroyed many flourishing cities and towns of the romanized britons, it seems likely that the conquerors spared the women, with whom they intermarried, and the agricultural laborers, whom they made slaves. other natives took refuge in the hill regions of western and northern britain, and here their descendants still keep up the celtic language and traditions. the anglo-saxons regarded the britons with contempt, naming them welsh, a word which means one who talks gibberish. the antagonism between the two peoples died out in the course of centuries, conquerors and conquered intermingled, and an english nation, partly celtic and partly germanic, came into being. [illustration: anglo-saxon drinking horn horn of ulphus (wulf) in the cathedral of york. the old english were heavy drinkers chiefly of ale and mead. the evening meal usually ended with a drinking bout.] the seven kingdoms in britain the anglo-saxons started to fight one another before they ceased fighting their common enemy, the britons. throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, the anglo-saxon states were engaged in almost constant struggles, either for increase of territory or for supremacy. the kingdoms farthest east--kent, sussex, essex, and east anglia--found their expansion checked by other kingdoms--northumbria, mercia, and wessex--which grew up in the interior of the island. each of these three stronger states gained in turn the leading place. egbert and the supremacy of wessex, - a.d. the beginning of the supremacy of wessex dates from the reign of egbert. he had lived for some years as an exile at the court of charlemagne, from whom he must have learned valuable lessons of war and statesmanship. after returning from the continent, egbert became king of wessex and gradually forced the rulers of the other states to acknowledge him as overlord. though egbert was never directly king of all england, he began the work of uniting the anglo-saxons under one government. his descendants have occupied the english throne to the present day. anglo-saxon britain when the germans along the rhine and the danube crossed the frontiers and entered the western provinces, they had already been partially romanized. they understood enough of roman civilization to appreciate it and to desire to preserve it. the situation was quite different with the anglo- saxons. their original home lay in a part of germany far beyond the borders of the roman empire and remote from the cultural influences of rome. coming to britain as barbarians, they naturally introduced their own language, laws, and customs wherever they settled. much of what the anglo- saxons brought with them still lives in england, and from that country has spread to the united states and the vast english colonies beyond the seas. the english language is less indebted to latin than any of the romance languages, [ ] and the common law of england owes much less to roman law than do the legal systems of continental europe. england, indeed, looks to the anglo-saxons for some of the most characteristic and important elements of her civilization. [illustration: map, anglo-saxon britain] . christianity in the british isles preparation for christianity the anglo-saxons also brought to britain their heathen faith. christianity did not come to them until the close the sixth century. at this time more or less intercourse had sprung up between the people of kent, lying nearest to the continent, and the franks in gaul. ethelbert, the king of kent, had even married the frankish princess, bertha. he allowed his christian wife to bring a bishop to her new home and gave her the deserted church of st. martin at canterbury as a place of worship. queen bertha's fervent desire for the conversion of her husband and his people prepared the way for an event of first importance in english history--the mission of augustine. mission of augustine, a.d. the pope at this time was gregory i, better known, from his services to the roman church, as gregory the great. [ ] the kingdom of kent, with its christian queen, must have seemed to him a promising field for missionary enterprise. gregory, accordingly, sent out the monk augustine with forty companions to carry the gospel to the heathen english. the king of kent, already well disposed toward the christian faith, greeted the missionaries kindly and told them that they were free to convert whom they would. before long he and his court embraced christianity, and the people of kent soon followed the royal example. the monks were assigned a residence in canterbury, a city which has ever since remained the religious capital of england. from kent christianity in its roman form gradually spread into the other anglo-saxon kingdoms. [illustration: st. martin's church, canterbury the present church, dating from the thirteenth century occupies the site of a chapel built before the arrival of augustine, the walls still contain some of the roman bricks used in the original structure. st martin's church was the scene of the earliest work of augustine in canterbury.] celtic christianity augustine and his monks were not the first missionaries to britain. roman soldiers, merchants, and officials had introduced christianity among the britons as early as second century. during the fifth century the famous st. patrick had carried christianity to the heathen irish. the anglo-saxon invasion of britain drove many christians to ireland, and that island in the sixth and seventh centuries became a center from which devoted monks went forth to labor in western scotland and northern britain [ ] here they came in contact with the roman missionaries. differences between celtic and roman christianity the celtic christians followed some customs which differed from those observed by roman christians. they computed the date on which easter fell according to a system unlike that of the romans. they permitted their priests to marry; the romans forbade the practice. their monks shaved the front of the head from ear to ear as a tonsure, while roman monks shaved the top of the head, leaving a "crown of thorns." these differences may not seem very important, but they were enough to prevent the cooperation of celtic and roman missionaries for the conversion of the heathen. [illustration: canterbury cathedral the choir dates from the twelfth century, the nave, transepts, and central tower, from the fifteenth century. one of the two towers at the west front was built in - a.d. the beautiful stained glass in the windows of the choir belongs to the thirteenth century.] synod of whitby, a.d. the rivalry between celtic and roman christians was finally settled at a church gathering, or synod, called by the king of northumbria at whitby. the main controversy at this synod concerned the proper date for easter. in the course of the debate it was asserted that the roman custom had the sanction of st. peter, to whom christ had intrusted the keys of heaven. this statement was enough for the northumbrian king, who thereupon decided in favor of the roman claim, declaring that he would not oppose st. peter, "lest when i come before the gates of the kingdom of heaven, he who holds the keys should not open to me." [ ] the representatives of the celtic church then withdrew from england, leaving the field clear for roman missionaries. the british isles became roman catholic the decision of the synod of whitby in favor of rome meant that all england henceforth would recognize the pope's authority in religious matters. it remained a roman catholic country until the time of the reformation, nearly nine hundred years later. [ ] the celtic christians in ireland and scotland also in the course of time became the devoted children of the roman church. . the fusion of germans and romans the germanic kingdoms we have now followed the fortunes of the germans for five centuries from the end of the roman empire in the west. most of their kingdoms, it has been seen, were not permanent. the visigothic and burgundian dominions in gaul yielded to the franks, and those of the visigoths in spain, to the mohammedan arabs. [ ] the vandal possessions in north africa were regained by the emperors at constantinople. [ ] the rule of the ostrogoths in italy endured for only sixty years and that of the lombards passed away after two centuries. the kingdoms established by the franks and the anglo-saxons alone developed into lasting states. hindrances to the fusion of germans and romans but even where the germans did not found permanent kingdoms, they mingled with the subject provincials and adopted much of the old roman civilization. the fusion of the two peoples naturally required a long time, being scarcely completed before the middle of the tenth century. it was hindered, in the first place, by the desire of the germans to secure the lands of the romans. wherever the barbarians settled, they appropriated a large part of the agricultural soil. how much they took varied in different countries. the ostrogoths seem to have seized one- third of the land in italy; the visigoths, two-thirds of that in gaul and spain; the anglo-saxons, perhaps all the tillable soil of britain. it could not but be galling to the romans to surrender their farms to the barbarians. in the second place, the germans often assessed heavy taxes on the romans, which they themselves refused to pay. tax-paying seemed to the germans a mark of servitude. in the third place, a barrier between the two peoples arose from the circumstance that each had its particular law. for several centuries following the invasions there was one law for the romans--that which they had enjoyed under the empire--and another law for the germans--their old tribal customs. after the germans had lived for some time in contact with the romans they wrote out their laws in the latin language. these "laws of the barbarians" still survive and throw much light on their early beliefs and manners. conditions favoring fusion in spite of the hindrances to fusion, it seems true that the germans and the romans felt no great dislike for each other and that, as a rule, they freely intermingled. certain conditions directly favored this result. first, many germans had found their way within the empire as hired soldiers, colonists, and slaves, long before the invasions began. second, the germanic invaders came in relatively small numbers. third, the germans entered the roman world not as destroyers, but as homeseekers. they felt a real reverence for roman civilization. and fourth, some of the principal germanic nations, including the visigoths, burgundians, and vandals, were already christians at the time of their invasions, while other nations, such as the franks and the anglo-saxons, were afterwards converted to christianity. as long, however, as most of the germans remained arian christians [ ] their belief stood in the way of friendly intercourse with the roman provincials, who had accepted the catholic faith. [illustration: map, the peoples of europe at the beginning of the tenth century.] contrast between east and west if western europe during the early middle ages presented a scene of violence and confusion while the germans were settling in their new homes, a different picture was afforded by eastern europe. here the roman empire still survived and continued to uphold for centuries the roman tradition of law and order. the history of that empire forms the theme of the following chapter. studies . on an outline map indicate the boundaries of the empire of charlemagne, distinguishing his hereditary possessions from those which he acquired by conquest. . on an outline map indicate the boundaries of the empire of otto the great. . what events are connected with the following places: soissons; mersen; whitby; reims; verdun; canterbury; and strassburg? . what is the historical importance of augustine, henry the fowler, pepin the short, charles martel, egbert, and ethelbert? . give dates for the following events: battle of tours; crowning of charlemagne as emperor; crowning of otto the great as emperor; deposition of romulus augustulus; augustine's mission to england; and the treaty of verdun. . explain the following expressions: "do-nothing kings"; _missi dominici_; holy roman empire; and "donation of pepin." . why was the extinction of the ostrogothic kingdom a misfortune for italy? . why did italy remain for so many centuries after the lombard invasion merely "a geographical expression"? . what difference did it make whether clovis became an arian or a catholic? . what events in the lives of clovis and pepin the short contributed to the alliance between the franks and the popes? . what provinces of the roman empire in the west were not included within the limits of charlemagne's empire? . what countries of modern europe are included within the limits of charlemagne's empire? . compare the _missi dominici_ with the "eyes and ears" of persian kings. . what is the origin of the word "emperor"? as a title distinguish it from that of "king." . why has lothair's kingdom north of the alps been called the "strip of trouble"? . in what parts of the british isles are celtic languages still spoken? . how did the four english counties, sussex, essex, norfolk, and suffolk, receive their names? . what was the importance of the synod of whitby? . set forth the conditions which hindered, and those which favored, the fusion of germans and romans. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter i, "stories of the lombard kings"; chapter ii, "charlemagne." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the modern kingdom of italy dates from - a.d. [ ] see page . [ ] his name is properly spelled chlodweg, which later became ludwig, and in french, louis. [ ] _allemagne_. on the other hand, the inhabitants of gaul came to call their country _france_ and themselves _français_ after their conquerors, the germanic franks. [ ] gregory of tours, _historia francorum_, ii, . [ ] from merovech, grandfather of clovis. [ ] see page . [ ] so called from pepin's son, charles the great (in latin, _carolus magnus_). the french form of his name is charlemagne. [ ] in a.d. the states of the church were added to the newly formed kingdom of italy. [ ] einhard, _vita caroli magni_, . [ ] the rearguard of charlemagne's army, when returning from spain, was attacked and overwhelmed by the mountaineers of the pyrenees. the incident gave rise to the famous french epic known as the _song of roland_. [ ] the title of "holy roman emperor," assumed by the later successors of charlemagne, was kept by them till a.d. [ ] the french name lorraine and the german name lothringen are both derived from the latin title of lothair's kingdom--_lotharii regnum_. [ ] see page . [ ] the others were franconia, swabia, bavaria, and lorraine. [ ] the hohenzollerns became electors of brandenburg in a.d., kings of prussia in , and emperors of germany in . [ ] the magyar settlement in central europe had the important result of dividing the slavic peoples into three groups. those who remained south of the danube (serbians, croatians, etc.) were henceforth separated from the northwestern slavs (bohemians, moravians, and poles) and from the eastern slavs (russians). see the map facing page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the enthusiasm of the celtic christians reached such proportions that it swept back upon the continent. in the seventh and eighth centuries irish missionaries worked among the heathen germans and founded monasteries in burgundy, lombardy, and southern germany (now switzerland). [ ] bede, _historia ecclesiastica_, iii, . [ ] the separation from rome occurred in a.d., during the reign of henry viii. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xiv eastern europe during the early middle ages, - a.d. . the roman empire in the east survival of the roman empire in the east the roman empire in the west moved rapidly to its "fall" in a.d., at the hands of the germanic invaders. the roman empire in the east, though threatened by enemies from without and weakened by civil conflicts from within, endured for more than a thousand years. until the middle of the eleventh century it was the strongest state in europe, except during the reign of charlemagne, when the frankish kingdom eclipsed it. until the middle of the fifteenth century it preserved the name, the civilization, and some part of the dominions, of ancient rome. [ ] causes of the survival the long life of the roman empire in the east is one of the marvels of history. its great and constant vitality appears the more remarkable, when one considers that it had no easily defensible frontiers, contained many different races with little in common, and on all sides faced hostile states. the empire survived so long, because of its vast wealth and resources, its despotic, centralized government, the strength of its army, and the almost impregnable position occupied by constantinople, the capital city. character of the empire the changing fortunes of the empire during the middle ages are reflected in some of the names by which it is often known. the term "greek empire" expresses the fact that the state became more and more greek in character, owing to the loss, first of the western provinces in the fifth century, and then of syria and egypt in the seventh century. another term-- "byzantine empire"--appropriately describes the condition of the state in still later times, when its possessions were reduced to constantinople (ancient byzantium) and the territory in the neighborhood of that city. but through all this period the rulers at constantinople regarded themselves as the true successors of augustus, diocletian, and constantine. they never admitted the right of charlemagne and otto the great to establish a rival roman empire in western europe. [ ] they claimed to be the only legitimate heirs of old rome. . the reign of justinian, - a.d. successors of theodosius, - a.d. the history of the roman empire in the east, for more than one hundred years after the death of theodosius, is uneventful. his successors, though unable to prevent the germans from seizing italy and the other western provinces, managed to keep their own dominions intact. the eastern provinces escaped the fate of those in the west, because they were more populous and offered greater obstacles to the barbarian invaders, who followed the line of least resistance. the gradual recovery of the empire in strength and warlike energy prepared the way for a really eminent ruler--justinian. justinian and theodora justinian is described as a man of noble bearing, simple in his habits, affable in speech, and easy of approach to all his subjects. historians have often drawn attention to his wonderful activity of mind and power of steady industry. so great was his zeal for work that one of his courtiers called him "the emperor who never sleeps." possessed of large ideas and inspired by the majesty of rome, justinian aimed to be a great conqueror, a great lawgiver, and a great restorer of civilization. his success in whatever he undertook must be ascribed in part to his wife, theodora, whom he associated with himself on the throne. theodora, strong of mind and wise in counsel, made a worthy helpmate for justinian, who more than once declared that in affairs of state he had consulted his "revered wife." conquests of justinian it was the ambition of justinian to conquer the germanic kingdoms which had been formed out of the mediterranean provinces. in this task he relied chiefly on the military genius of belisarius, one of the world's foremost commanders. belisarius was able in one short campaign to destroy the vandal kingdom in north africa. [ ] the vandals by this time had lost their early vigor; they made but a feeble resistance; and their roman subjects welcomed belisarius as a deliverer. justinian awarded a triumph to his victorious general, an honor which for five centuries emperors alone had enjoyed. the conquest of north africa, together with the islands of sardinia and corsica, was followed by the overthrow of the ostrogothic kingdom in sicily and italy. [ ] justinian also recovered from the visigoths [ ] the southeastern part of spain. he could now say with truth that the mediterranean was once more a roman sea. [ ] [illustration: a mosaic of justinian a mosaic dating from a.d., in the church of san vitale, ravenna. it shows the emperor (in the center) with a bishop, his suite and imperial guards. the picture probably gives us a fair idea of justinian's appearance, though it represents him as somewhat younger than he was at the time.] codification of roman law the conquests of justinian proved to be less enduring than his work as a lawgiver. until his reign the sources of roman law, including the legislation of the popular assemblies, the decrees of the senate, the edicts of the of roman praetors and emperors, and the decisions of learned lawyers, had never been completely collected and arranged in scientific form. justinian appointed a commission of legal scholars to perform this task. the result of their labors, in which the emperor himself assisted, was the publication of the _corpus juris civilis_, the "body of civil law." under this form the roman principles of jurisprudence have become the foundation of the legal systems of modern italy, spain, france, germany, and other european countries. these principles even influenced the common law of england, which has been adopted by the united states. [ ] the _corpus juris civilis_, because of this widespread influence, is justly regarded as one of rome's most important gifts to the world. civilizing work of justinian justinian's claim to the title of "great" rests also on his civilizing work. he wished to restore the prosperity, as well as the provinces, of the empire. during his reign roads, bridges, and aqueducts were repaired, and commerce and agriculture were encouraged. it was at this time that two christian missionaries brought from china the eggs of the silkworm, and introduced the manufacture of silk in europe. as a builder justinian gained special fame. the edifices which he caused to be raised throughout his dominions included massive fortifications on the exposed frontiers, splendid palaces, and many monasteries and churches. the most noteworthy monument to his piety is the church of sancta sophia [ ] at constantinople, now used as a mohammedan mosque. by his conquests, his laws, and his buildings, justinian revived for a time the waning glory of imperial rome. . the empire and its asiatic foes after justinian the roman empire in the east did not long remain at the pinnacle of greatness to which justinian had raised it. his conquests, indeed, weakened rather than strengthened the empire, since now there were much more extensive frontiers to defend. within half a century after his death it was attacked both in europe and in asia. the lombards [ ] soon seized italy, and in the east the persians renewed their contest against the roman power. [illustration: map, the roman empire in the east during the tenth and eleventh centuries] persians the struggle with the persians was an inheritance from earlier times. [ ] under an ambitious king, chosroes ii, the persians overran all the asiatic provinces of the empire. a savior arose, however, in the person of the roman emperor, heraclius ( - a.d.). his brilliant campaigns against chosroes partook of the nature of a crusade, or "holy war," for the persians had violated the holy sepulcher at jerusalem and had stolen away the true cross, the most sacred relic of christendom. heraclius recovered all his provinces, but only at the cost of a bloody struggle which drained them of men and money and helped to make them fall easy victims to foes still more terrible than the persians. these were the arabs. arabs heraclius had not closed his reign before he saw all his victories undone by the advance of the arabs. the first wave of invasion tore away syria and egypt from the empire, penetrated asia minor, and reached the shores of the bosporus. repulsed before the walls of constantinople, the arabs carried their arms to the west and seized north africa, spain, part of southern italy, and the mediterranean islands. asia minor and the balkan peninsula still held out, however, and during the tenth century a line of able rulers at constantinople succeeded in winning back some of their lost provinces. seljuk turks during the eleventh century the empire had to face new enemies. these were the seljuk turks, [ ] fierce nomads from the steppes beyond the caspian. after their conversion to mohammedanism, they swept with irresistible force through the east and conquered nearly all asia minor. the ruin of this country, in earlier ages one of the most populous and flourishing regions of the world, dates from its occupation by the seljuks. to resist their further advance the roman emperor sought in a.d. the help of the christians of europe. his appeals for aid resulted in the first crusade, with which a new chapter of medieval history began. (see chapter xx.) work of the empire in asia thus, for more than five centuries after justinian, the roman empire in the east was engaged in a long struggle with the foes--persians, arabs, and seljuk turks--which successively attacked its dominions. by its stubborn resistance of the advance of the invaders the old empire protected the young states of europe from attack, until they grew strong enough to meet and repulse the hordes of asia. this service to civilization was not less important than that which had been performed by greece and rome in their contests with the persians and the carthaginians. . the empire and its foes in europe slavs the troubled years after justinian's death also witnessed the beginning of the slavic [ ] settlements in southeastern europe. the slavs belonged to the indo-european race, but had not progressed in civilization as far as the germans. their cradle land seems to have been in western russia, whence they slowly spread to the baltic, the elbe, and the danube. we have already mentioned the campaigns which charlemagne and henry the fowler waged against them. [ ] the emperors at constantinople were less successful in resisting that branch of the slavs which tried to occupy the balkan peninsula. after crossing the danube, the slavs pressed on farther and farther, until they reached the southern extremity of ancient greece. they avoided the cities, but formed peasant communities in the open country, where they readily mingled with the inhabitants. their descendants have remained in the balkan peninsula to this day. the inhabitants of modern serbia [ ] are slavs, and even in the greeks there is a considerable strain of slavic blood. bulgarians the bulgarians, a people akin to the huns and avars, made their appearance south of the lower danube in the seventh century. for more than three hundred years these barbarians, brutal, fierce, and cruel, were a menace to the empire. at one time they threatened constantinople and even killed a roman emperor, whose skull was converted into a drinking cup to grace their feasts. the bulgarians settled in the region which now bears their name and gradually adopted the speech and customs of the slavs. modern bulgaria is essentially a slavic state. russians the empire was attacked in southeastern europe by still other barbarians, among whom were the russians. this slavic people, led by chieftains from sweden, descended the dnieper and dniester rivers and, crossing the black sea, appeared before the walls of constantinople. already, in the tenth century, that city formed the goal of russian ambitions. the invaders are said to have made four attempts to plunder its treasures. though unsuccessful, they compelled the emperors from time to time to pay them tribute. work of the empire in europe christianity reached the invaders of the balkan peninsula from constantinople. the serbians, bulgarians, and russians were converted in the ninth and tenth centuries. with christianity they received the use of letters and some knowledge of roman law and methods of government. constantinople was to them, henceforth, such a center of religion and culture as rome was to the germans. by becoming the teacher of the vast slavic peoples of the balkan peninsula and european russia, the empire performed another important service to civilization. . byzantine civilization strength and wealth of the empire the roman empire in the east, though often menaced by barbarian foes, long continued to be the leading european power. its highest degree of prosperity was reached between the middle of the ninth and the middle of the eleventh century. the provinces in asia minor and the balkan peninsula produced a vast annual revenue, much of which went for defense. it was necessary to maintain a large, well-disciplined army, great fleets and engines of war, and the extensive fortifications of constantinople and the frontier cities. confronted by so many dangers, the empire could hope to survive only by making itself a strong military state. commerce and industry the merchant ships of constantinople, during the earlier part of the middle ages, carried on most of the commerce of the mediterranean and the black sea. the products of byzantine industry, including silks, embroideries, mosaics, enamels, and metal work, were exchanged at that city for the spices, drugs, and precious stones of the east. byzantine wares also found their way into italy and france and, by way of the russian rivers, reached the heart of eastern europe. russia, in turn, furnished constantinople with large quantities of honey, wax, fur, wool, grain, and slaves. a traveler of the twelfth century well described the city as a metropolis "common to all the world, without distinction of country or religion." character of byzantine art many of the roman emperors from justinian onward were great builders. byzantine architecture, seen especially in the churches, became a leading form of art. its most striking feature is the dome, which replaces the flat, wooden roof used in the basilican [ ] churches of italy. the exterior of a byzantine church is plain and unimposing, but the interior is adorned on a magnificent scale. the eyes of the worshiper are dazzled by the walls faced with marble slabs of variegated colors, by the columns of polished marble, jasper, and porphyry, and by the brilliant mosaic pictures of gilded glass. the entire impression is one of richness and splendor. byzantine artists, though mediocre painters and sculptors, excelled in all kinds of decorative work. their carvings in wood, ivory, and metal, together with their embroideries, enamels, and miniatures, enjoyed a high reputation throughout medieval europe. influence of byzantine art byzantine art, from the sixth century to the present time, has exerted a wide influence. sicily, southern italy, rome, ravenna, and venice contain many examples of byzantine churches. italian painting in the middle ages seems to have been derived directly from the mosaic pictures of the artists of constantinople. russia received not only its religion but also its art from constantinople. the great russian churches of moscow and petrograd follow byzantine models. even the arabs, in spite of their hostility to christianity, borrowed byzantine artists and profited by their services. the mohammedan mosques of damascus, cairo, and cordova, both in methods of construction and in details of ornamentation, reproduce byzantine styles. literature and learning the libraries and museums of constantinople preserved classical learning. in the flourishing schools of that city the wisest men of the day taught philosophy, law, medicine, and science to thousands of students. the professors figured among the important persons of the court: official documents mention the "prince of the rhetoricians" and the "consul of the philosophers." many of the emperors showed a taste for scholarship; one of them was said to have been so devoted to study that he almost forgot to reign. when kings in western europe were so ignorant that they could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and composed poetry. it is true that byzantine scholars were erudite rather than original. impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. most students were content to make huge collections of extracts and notes from the books which antiquity had bequeathed to them. even this task was useful, however, for their encyclopedias preserved much information which otherwise would have been lost. during the middle ages the east cherished the productions of classical learning, until the time came when the west was ready to receive them and to profit by them. . constantinople position of constantinople the heart of byzantine civilization was constantinople. the city lies on a peninsula between the sea of marmora and the spacious harbor called the golden horn. washed on three sides by the water and, like rome, enthroned upon seven hills, constantinople occupies a site justly celebrated as the noblest in the world. it stands in europe, looks on asia, and commands the entrance to both the mediterranean and the black sea. as a sixteenth century writer pointed out, constantinople "is a city which nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world." [illustration: map, vicinity of constantinople] constantinople as a natural citadel the position of constantinople made it difficult to attack but easy to defend. to surround the city an enemy would have to be strong upon both land and sea. a hostile army, advancing through asia minor, found its further advance arrested by the long, winding channel which the bosporus, the sea of marmora, and the dardanelles combine to form. a hostile fleet, coming by way of the mediterranean or the black sea, faced grave difficulties in attempting to penetrate the narrow strait into which this waterway contracts at each extremity. on the landward side the line of defense was so short--about four miles in width--that it could be strongly fortified and held by a small force against large numbers. during the middle ages the rear of the city was protected by two huge walls, the remains of which are still visible. constantinople, in fact, was all but impregnable. though each new century brought a fresh horde of enemies, it resisted siege after siege and long continued to be the capital of what was left of the roman empire. [ ] monuments of constantinople constantine had laid out his new city on an imposing scale and adorned it with the choicest treasures of art from greece, italy, and the orient. fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, eight public baths, and several triumphal arches are assigned to the founder of the city. his most stately building was the hippodrome, an immense structure devoted to chariot races and all sorts of popular gatherings. there new emperors, after their consecration in sancta sophia, were greeted by their subjects; there civic festivals were held; and there the last roman triumphs were celebrated. theodosius the great built the principal gate of constantinople, the "golden gate," as it was called, by which the emperors made their solemn entry into the city. but it was justinian who, after constantine, did most to adorn the new capital by the bosporus. he is said to have erected more than twenty-five churches in constantinople and its suburbs. of these, the most beautiful is the world-famed cathedral dedicated by justinian to "holy wisdom." on its completion the emperor declared that he had surpassed solomon's temple. though nearly fourteen hundred years old and now defaced by vandal hands, it remains perhaps the supreme achievement of christian architecture. [illustration: sancta sophia, constantinople built by justinian and dedicated on christmas day, a.d. the main building is roofed over by a great central dome feet in diameter and feet in height. after the ottoman turks turned the church into a mosque, a minaret was erected at each of the four exterior angles. the outside of sancta sophia is somewhat disappointing, but the interior, with its walls and columns of polished marble granite and porphyry, is magnificent. the crystal balustrades, pulpits, and large metal disks are turkish.] [illustration: the three existing monuments of the hippodrome, constantinople. these three monuments preserve for us the exact line of the low wall or _spina_, which divided the race course and around which the charioteers drove their furious steeds. the obelisk was transported from egypt by constantine. between it and the crumbling tower beyond is a pillar of three brazen serpents, originally set up at delphi by the greeks, after the battle of plataea. on this trophy were engraved the names of the various states that sent soldiers to fight the persians.] [illustration: map, constantinople] historic significance of constantinople excepting athens and rome, no other european city can lay claim to so long and so important a history as constantinople. her day came after theirs was done. throughout the middle ages constantinople remained the most important city in europe. when london, paris, and vienna were small and mean towns, constantinople was a large and flourishing metropolis. the renown of the city penetrated even into barbarian lands. the scandinavians called it micklegarth, the "great city"; the russians knew of it as tsarigrad, the "city of the caesars." but its own people best described it as the "city guarded by god." here, for more than eleven centuries, was the capital of the roman empire and the center of eastern christendom. studies . compare the area of the roman empire in the east in a.d. with its area in a.d. (maps between pages - and facing page ). . compare the respective areas in a.d. of the roman empire in the east and charlemagne's empire. . on the map, page , locate adrianople, gallipoli, nicaea, the bosporus, sea of marmora, and dardanelles. . who were belisarius, chosroes ii, and heraclius? . in your opinion which of the two rival imperial lines after a.d. had the better title to represent ancient rome? . why has justinian been called the "lawgiver of civilization"? . why was it necessary to codify roman law? is the english common law codified? . compare the work of alexandrian and byzantine scholars in preserving learning. . "the byzantines were the teachers of the slavs, as the romans were of the germans." comment on this statement. . the byzantine empire was once called "a gigantic mass of mould, a thousand years old." does this seem a fair description? . "the history of medieval civilization is, in large measure, the history of the roman empire in the east." comment on this statement. . show that constantinople formed "a natural citadel." . on the map, page , trace the successive walls of constantinople. footnotes [ ] the fall of the empire came in a.d., when constantinople was captured by the ottoman turks. [ ] see pages - , - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] roman law still prevails in the province of quebec and the state of louisiana, territories formerly under french control, and in all the spanish-american countries. [ ] in greek, _hagia sophia_, "holy wisdom." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] so named from one of their leaders. [ ] the word _slova_ means "speech"; the slavs are those who speak the same language. [ ] see pages , . [ ] a more accurate designation than servia. originally, all slavic peoples called themselves serbs. [ ] see page . [ ] of the eight sieges to which constantinople was subjected in medieval times, only two succeeded. in a.d. it was captured by the venetians and in a.d., by the ottoman turks. see pages and . chapter xv the christian church in the east and in the west to a.d. [ ] . development of the christian church the catholic church a preceding chapter has traced the early history of christianity. we there saw how the new religion appeared in the orient, how it spread rapidly over the roman empire, how it engaged with the imperial government in the long conflict called the persecutions, how the emperor constantine, after his conversion, placed it on an equality with paganism, and how at the end of the fourth century the emperor theodosius made it the state religion. by this time the church had become a great and powerful organization, with fixed laws, with a graded system of officers, and with councils attended by clergy from all parts of the roman world. to this organization the word catholic, that is, "universal," came to be applied. membership in the catholic church, secured only by baptism, was believed to be essential to salvation. as st. cyprian, bishop of carthage, had said, "he can no longer have god for his father who has not the church for his mother." the episcopate the first three centuries of christianity witnessed the development of the episcopal system in the church. each provincial city had its bishop, assisted by priests and deacons. an archbishop (sometimes called a metropolitan) presided over the bishops of each province, and a patriarch had jurisdiction, in turn, over metropolitans. this graded arrangement of ecclesiastical officers, from the lowest to the highest, helped to make the church centralized and strong. it appears to have been modeled, almost unconsciously, on the government of the roman empire. [ ] the patriarchs the development of the patriarchate calls for special notice. at the time of the council of nicaea [ ] there were three patriarchs, namely, the bishops of rome, antioch, and alexandria. these cities ranked among the most important in the roman world. it was only natural, therefore, that the churches established in them should be singled out for preëminence. some years after the removal of the capital to constantinople, the bishop of that imperial city was recognized as a patriarch at a general council of the church. in the fifth century the bishop of jerusalem received the same dignity. henceforth there were five patriarchs--four in the east but only one in the west. clergy and laity the christian church was a very democratic organization. patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons were drawn from all ranks of life. no special training at first was considered necessary to fit them for their duties, though the more celebrated ministers were often highly educated. to eke out their salaries the clergy sometimes carried on business as farmers and shopkeepers. where, however, a church had sufficient funds to support its bishop, his engagement in secular affairs was discouraged and finally prohibited. in the fourth century, as earlier, priests and bishops were generally married men. the sentiment in favor of celibacy for the clergy became very pronounced during the early middle ages, especially in the west, and led at length to the general abandonment of priestly marriage in those parts of europe where papal influence prevailed. distinctive garments for clergymen did not begin to come into use until the fifth century, when some of them began to don clothing of a more sober hue than was fashionable at the time. clerical vestments were developed from two pieces of ancient roman dress--the tunic and the toga. [ ] thus the clergy were gradually separated from the people, or laity, by differences in dress, by their celibate lives, and by their abstention from worldly occupations. heresies while the church was perfecting her organization, she was also elaborating her doctrines. theologians engaged in many controversies upon such subjects as the connection of christ with god and the nature of the trinity. in order to obtain an authoritative expression of christian opinion, councils of the higher clergy were held, at which the opposing views were debated and a decision was reached. the council of nicaea, which condemned arianism, formed the first, and one of the most important, of these general gatherings of the church. after the church had once expressed itself on any matter of christian belief, it was regarded as unlawful to maintain a contrary opinion. those who did so were called heretics, and their teachings, heresies. the emperor theodosius, whose severe laws finally shattered the ancient paganism, [ ] devoted even more attention to stamping out heresies among his christian subjects. he prohibited meetings of heretics, burned their books, and threatened them with death if they persisted in their peculiar doctrines. during his reign a spanish bishop and six of his partisans were executed for holding unorthodox beliefs. this was the beginning of the persecutions for heresy. worship as soon as christianity had triumphed in the roman empire, thus becoming the religion of the rich and powerful as well as the religion of the poor and lowly, more attention was devoted to the conduct of worship. magnificent church buildings were often erected. their architects seem to have followed as models the basilicas, or public halls, which formed so familiar a sight in roman cities. [ ] church interiors were adorned with paintings, mosaic pictures, images of saints and martyrs, and the figure of the cross. lighted candles on the altars and the burning of fragrant incense lent an additional impressiveness to worship. beautiful prayers and hymns were composed. some of the early christian hymns, such as the _gloria in excelsis_ and the _te deum laudamus_, are still sung in our churches. organs did not come into use until the seventh century, and then only in the west, but church bells, summoning the worshiper to divine service, early became attached to christian edifices. [illustration: religious music from a window of the cathedral of bourges, a city in central france. shows a pipe organ and chimes.] sunday the christians from the start appear to have observed "the first day of the week" [ ] in memory of christ's resurrection. they attended public worship on the lord's day, but otherwise did not rigidly abstain from worldly business and amusements. the jewish element in some churches, and especially in the east, was strong enough to secure an additional observance of saturday as a weekly festival. saturday long continued to be marked by religious assemblies and feasting, though not by any compulsory cessation of the ordinary occupations. during the fourth century sunday, as the lord's day was now generally called, came more and more to be kept as a day of obligatory rest. constantine's sunday law [ ] formed the first of a long series of imperial edicts imposing the observance of that day as a legal duty. in this manner sunday, like the jewish sabbath on the seventh day of the week, was dedicated wholly to the exercises of religion. festivals the great yearly festivals of the church gradually took shape during the early christian centuries. the most important anniversary to be observed was easter, in memory of the resurrection of christ. a period of fasting (lent), which finally lasted forty days, preceded the festival. whitsunday, or pentecost, was celebrated on the fiftieth day after easter. [ ] two other festivals of later adoption were christmas, the celebration of which was finally assigned to the th of december, [ ] and epiphany (january ), commemorating the baptism of christ. in course of time many other feasts and fasts, together with numerous saints' days, were added to the calendar of the "christian year." . eastern christianity expansion of christianity in the east by the time of constantine, christianity had spread widely throughout the eastern half of the roman empire. asia minor was then largely christian. thrace, macedonia, epirus, and greece were all ecclesiastical provinces with their own metropolitans. many christians were found in syria and egypt. churches also existed in mesopotamia and arabia, and even beyond the boundaries of the empire in armenia and persia. between the time of constantine and that of justinian, christianity continued to expand in the east, until the gospel had been carried to such distant regions as abyssinia and india. union of church and state most of the christian communities in the orient owed allegiance to the patriarchs of constantinople, jerusalem, antioch, and alexandria. the roman emperor, however, was the supreme religious authority in the east. he felt it as much his duty to maintain the doctrines and organization of christianity as to preserve the imperial dominions against foreign foes. since he presided over the church, there could be no real independence for its officers. bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs were in every respect subordinate to his will. this union of church and state formed one of the most characteristic features of christianity in the east. theological disputes; heresies eastern christians, far more than those in the west, devoted themselves to theological speculations. constantinople and the great hellenistic cities of antioch and alexandria contained many learned scholars who had prolonged and heated arguments over subtle questions of belief. after the arian controversy had been settled in the fourth century, other disputes concerning the true nature of christ broke out. these gave rise to many heresies. nestorianism the heresy known as nestorianism, from nestorius, a patriarch of constantinople, spread widely in the east. nestorian missionaries even penetrated to india, china, and mongolia. the churches which they established were numerous and influential during the middle ages, but since then most of them have been destroyed by the mohammedans. members of this sect are still to be found, however, in eastern lands. [ ] [illustration: the nestorian monument evidence of nestorian missions in china is afforded by the famous monument at chang-an, province of shensi. the stone, which was set up in a.d., commemorates by an inscription in chinese characters and the figure of a cross the introduction of christianity into northwestern china. a replica of the nestorian monument was taken to the united states in a.d. and was deposited in the metropolitan museum of art, new york.] orthodoxy after the formation of the nestorian and other heretical sects, the orthodox faith was preserved in the east only by the greeks of asia minor and europe. the greek church, which calls itself the "holy orthodox church," for a time remained in unity with the roman church in the west. the final separation of these two churches occurred in the eleventh century. [ ] . western christianity: rise of the papacy the papacy christianity in the west presented two sharp contrasts to eastern christianity. in the first place, the great heresies which divided the east scarcely affected the west. in the second place, no union of church and state existed among western christians. instead of acknowledging the religious supremacy of the emperor at constantinople, they yielded obedience to the bishop of rome, the head of the roman church. he is known to us as the pope, and his office is called the papacy. we shall now inquire how the popes secured their unchallenged authority over western christendom. [illustration: papal arms according to the well-known passage in _matthew_ (xvi, ), christ gave to st. peter the "keys of the kingdom of heaven," with the power "to bind and to loose." these keys are always represented in the papal arms, together with the tiara or headdress, worn by the popes on certain occasions.] rome an apostolic church a church in rome must have been established at an early date, for it was to roman christians that st. paul addressed one of the _epistles_ now preserved in the new testament. st. paul visited rome, as we know from the _acts of the apostles_, and there he is said to have suffered martyrdom. christian tradition, very ancient and very generally received, declares that st. peter also labored in rome, where he met a martyr's death, perhaps during the reign of the emperor nero. to the early christians, therefore, the roman church must have seemed in the highest degree sacred, for it had been founded by the two greatest apostles and had been nourished by their blood. rome a "mother-church" another circumstance helped to give the roman church a superior position in the west. it was a vigorous missionary church. rome, the largest and most flourishing city in the empire and the seat of the imperial government, naturally became the center from which christianity spread over the western provinces. many of the early christian communities planted in spain, gaul, and africa owed their start to the missionary zeal of the roman church. to rome, as the great "mother-church," her daughters in western europe would turn henceforth with reverence and affection; they would readily acknowledge her leading place among the churches; and they would seek her advice on disputed points of christian belief or worship. the roman church independent the independence of the roman church also furthered its development. the bishop of rome was the sole patriarch in the west, while in the east there were two, and later four patriarchs, each exercising authority in religious matters. furthermore, the removal of the capital from rome to constantinople helped to free the roman bishop from the close oversight of the imperial government. he was able, henceforth, to promote the interests of the church under his control without much interference on the part of the eastern emperor. the roman church orthodox finally, it must be noted how much the development of the roman church was aided by its attitude on disputed questions of belief. while eastern christendom was torn by theological controversies, the church of rome stood firmly by the nicene creed. [ ] after the arian, nestorian, and other heresies were finally condemned, orthodox christians felt indebted to the roman church for its unwavering championship of "the faith once delivered to the saints." they were all the more ready, therefore, to defer to that church in matters of doctrine and to accept without question its spiritual authority. the petrine supremacy the claim of the roman bishops to supremacy over the christian world had a double basis. certain passages in the new testament, where st. peter is represented as the rock on which the church is built, the pastor of the sheep and lambs of the lord, and the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, appear to indicate that he was regarded by christ as the chief of the apostles. furthermore, a well-established tradition made st. peter the founder of the roman church and its first bishop. it was then argued that he passed to his successors, the popes, all his rights and dignity. as st. peter was the first among the apostles, so the popes were to be the first among bishops. such was the doctrine of the petrine supremacy, expressed as far back as the second century, strongly asserted by many popes during the middle ages, and maintained to-day by the roman church. . growth of the papacy pontificate of leo i, - a.d. up to the middle of the fifth century about forty-five bishops had occupied st. peter's chair at rome. the most eminent these was leo the great. when he became bishop, the germans were overrunning the western provinces of the empire. the invaders professed the arian faith, as we have seen, and often persecuted the orthodox christians among whom they settled. at such a time, when the imperial power was growing weaker, faithful catholics in the west naturally turned for support to the bishop of rome. leo became their champion against the barbarians. tradition declares that he succeeded in diverting attila from an attack on rome, and when the vandals sacked the city leo also intervened to prevent its destruction. [ ] pontificate of gregory i, - a.d. after leo, no important name occurs in the list of popes until we come to gregory the great. gregory, as the son of a rich and distinguished roman senator, enjoyed a good education in all the learning of the time. he entered public life and at an early age became prefect of rome. but now, almost at the outset of his career, gregory laid aside earthly ambition. he gave up his honorable position and spent the fortune, inherited from his father, in the foundation of monasteries and the relief of the poor. he himself became a monk, turned his palace at rome into a monastery, and almost ruined his health by too great devotion to fasts and midnight vigils. gregory's conspicuous talents, however, soon called him from retirement and led to his election as pope. temporal power of gregory the work of gregory lay principally in two directions. as a statesman he did much to make the popes virtual sovereigns at rome and in italy. at this time the italian peninsula, overrun by the lombards and neglected by the eastern emperor, was in a deplorable condition. the bishop of rome seemed to be the only man who could protect the people and maintain order. gregory had very great success in this task. he appointed governors of cities, issued orders to generals, drilled the romans for military defense, and sent ambassadors to treat with the king of the lombards. it was largely owing to gregory's efforts that these barbarians were prevented from conquering central italy. gregory's spiritual authority gregory was no less eminent as a churchman. his writings and his personal influence greatly furthered the advancement of the roman church in the west. we find him sternly repressing heresies wherever they arose, aiding the conversion of arian visigoths in spain and arian lombards in italy, and sending out monks as missionaries to distant britain. [ ] he well deserved by these labors the title "servant of the servants of god," [ ] which he assumed, and which the popes after him have retained. the admiration felt for his character and abilities raised him, in later ages, to the rank of a saint. position of the papacy when gregory the great closed his remarkable career, the papacy had reached a commanding place in western christendom. to their spiritual authority the popes had now begun to add some measure of temporal power as rulers at rome and in italy. during the eighth century, as we have already learned, [ ] the alliance of the popes and the franks helped further to establish the papacy as an ecclesiastical monarchy, ruling over both the souls and bodies of men. henceforth it was to go forward from strength to strength. . monasticism the monastic spirit the papacy during the middle ages found its strongest supporters among the monks. by the time of gregory the great monasticism [ ] was well established in the christian church. its origin must be sought in the need, often felt by spiritually-minded men, of withdrawing from the world --from its temptations and its transitory pleasures--to a life of solitude, prayer, and religious contemplation. joined to this feeling has been the conviction that the soul may be purified by subduing the desires and passions of the body. men, influenced by the monastic spirit, sought a closer approach to god. early christian monasticism the monastic spirit in christianity owed much to the example of its founder, who was himself unmarried, poor, and without a place "where to lay his head." some of christ's teachings, taken literally, also helped to exalt the worth of the monastic life. at a very early period there were christian men and women who abstained from marriage, flesh meat, and the use of wine, and gave themselves up to prayer, religious exercises, and works of charity. this they did in their homes, without abandoning their families and human society. the hermits another monastic movement began about the middle of the third century, when many christians in egypt withdrew into the desert to live as hermits. st. anthony, who has been called the first christian hermit, passed twenty years in a deserted fort on the east bank of the nile. during all this time he never saw a human face. some of the hermits, believing that pain and suffering had a spiritual value, went to extremes of self- mortification. they dwelt in wells, tombs, and on the summits of pillars, deprived themselves of necessary food and sleep, wore no clothing, and neglected to bathe or to care for the body in any way. other hermits, who did not practice such austerities, spent all day or all night in prayer. the examples of these recluses found many imitators in syria and other eastern lands. [ ] [illustration: st. daniel the stylite on his column from a byzantine miniature in the vatican.] rule of st. basil a life shut off from all contact with one's fellows is difficult and beyond the strength of ordinary men. the mere human need for social intercourse gradually brought the hermits together, at first in small groups and then in larger communities, or monasteries. the next step was to give the scattered monasteries a common organization and government. those in the east gradually adopted the regulations which st. basil, a leading churchman of the fourth century, drew up for the guidance of the monks under his direction. st. basil's rule, as it is called, has remained to the present time the basis of monasticism in the greek church. st. benedict the monastic system, which early gained an entrance into western christendom, looked to st. benedict as its organizer. while yet a young man, st. benedict had sought to escape from the vice about him by retiring to a cave in the sabine hills near rome. here he lived for three years as a hermit, shutting himself off from all human intercourse, wearing a hair shirt, and rolling in beds of thistles to subdue "the flesh." st. benedict's experience of the hermit's life convinced him that there was a surer and better road to religious peace of mind. his fame as a holy man had attracted to him many disciples, and these he now began to group in monastic communities under his own supervision. st. benedict's most important monastery was at monte cassino, midway between rome and naples. it became the capital of monasticism in the west. [illustration: plan of kirkstall abbey, yorkshire] rule of st. benedict, (?) a.d. to control the monks of monte cassino st. benedict framed a rule, or constitution, which was modeled in some respects upon the earlier rule of st. basil. the monks formed a sort of corporation, presided over by an abbot, [ ] who held office for life. to the abbot every candidate for admission took the vow of obedience. any man, rich or poor, noble or peasant, might enter the monastery, after a year's probation; having once joined, however, he must remain a monk for the rest of his days. the monks were to live under strict discipline. they could not own any property; they could not go beyond the monastery walls without the abbot's consent; they could not even receive letters from home; and they were sent to bed early. a violation of the regulations brought punishment in the shape of private admonitions, exclusion from common prayer, and, in extreme cases, expulsion. spread of the benedictine rule the rule of st. benedict came to have the same wide influence in the west which that of st. basil exerted in the east. gregory the great established it in many places in italy, sicily, and england. during charlemagne's reign it was made the only form of monasticism throughout his dominions. by the tenth century the rule prevailed everywhere in western europe. [ ] . life and work of the monks a monastic community st. benedict sought to draw a sharp line between the monastic life and that of the outside world. hence he required that, as far as possible, each monastery should form an independent, self-supporting community whose members had no need of going beyond its limits for anything. in course of time, as a monastery increased in wealth and number of inmates, it might come to form an enormous establishment, covering many acres and presenting within its massive walls the appearance of a fortified town. the monastery buildings the principal buildings of a benedictine monastery of the larger sort were grouped around an inner court, called a cloister. these included a church, a refectory, or dining room, with the kitchen and buttery near it, a dormitory, where the monks slept, and a chapter house, where they transacted business. there was also a library, a school, a hospital, and a guest house for the reception of strangers, besides barns, bakeries, laundries, workshops, and storerooms for provisions. beyond these buildings lay vegetable gardens, orchards, grain fields, and often a mill, if the monastery was built on a stream. the high wall and ditch, usually surrounding a monastery, shut it off from outsiders and in time of danger protected it against attack. [illustration: abbey of saint germain des prÉs, paris this celebrated monastery was founded in the sixth century. of the original buildings only the abbey church remains. the illustration shows the monastery as it was in a.d., with walls, towers, drawbridge, and moat. adjoining the church were the cloister, the refectory, and the dormitory.] monastic occupations st. benedict defined a monastery as "a school for the service of the lord." the monks under his rule occupied themselves with a regular round of worship, reading, and manual labor. each day was divided into seven sacred offices, beginning and ending with services in the monastery church. the first service came usually about two o'clock in the morning; the last, just as evening set in, before the monks retired to rest. in addition to their attendance at church, the monks spent several hours in reading from the bible, private prayer, and meditation. for most of the day, however, they worked hard with their hands, doing the necessary washing and cooking for the monastery, raising the necessary supplies of vegetables and grain, and performing all the other tasks required to maintain a large establishment. this emphasis on labor, as a religious duty, was a characteristic feature of western monasticism. "to labor is to pray" became a favorite motto of the benedictines. [ ] [illustration: a monk copyist from a manuscript in the british museum, london.] attractiveness of the monastic life it is clear that life in a benedictine monastery appealed to many different kinds of people in the middle ages. those of a spiritual turn of mind found in the monastic life the opportunity of giving themselves wholly to god. studious and thoughtful persons, with no disposition for an active career in the world, naturally turned to the monastery as a secure retreat. the friendless and the disgraced often took refuge within its walls. many a troubled soul, to whom the trials of this world seemed unendurable, sought to escape from them by seeking the peaceful shelter of the cloister. the monks as civilizers the civilizing influence of the benedictine monks during the early middle ages can scarcely be over-emphasized. a monastery was often at once a model farm, an inn, a hospital, a school, and a library. by the careful cultivation of their lands the monks set an example of good farming wherever they settled. they entertained pilgrims and travelers, at a period when western europe was almost destitute of inns. they performed many works of charity, feeding the hungry, healing the sick who were brought to their doors, and distributing their medicines freely to those who needed them. in their schools they trained both boys who wished to become priests and those who intended to lead active lives in the world. the monks, too, were the only scholars of the age. by copying the manuscripts of classical authors, they preserved valuable books that would otherwise have been lost. by keeping records of the most striking events of their time, they acted as chroniclers of medieval history. to all these services must be added the work of the monks as missionaries to the heathen peoples of europe. . spread of christianity over europe the roman church and the barbarians almost all europe had been won to christianity by the end of the eleventh century. in the direction of this great missionary campaign the roman church took the leading part. [ ] the officers of her armies were zealous popes, bishops, and abbots; her private soldiers were equally zealous monks, priests, and laymen. pagan rome had never succeeded in making a complete and permanent conquest of the barbarians. christian rome, however, was able to bring them all under her spiritual sway. reconversion of the arian germans christianity first reached the germanic invaders in its arian [ ] form. visigoths, ostrogoths, vandals, burgundians, and lombards were all arians. the roman church regarded them as heretics and labored with success to reconvert them. this work was at last completed when the lombards, in the seventh century, accepted the catholic faith. franks and anglo-saxons converted to roman catholicism the franks and the anglo-saxons, whose kingdoms were to develop into the chief states of medieval europe, adopted from the outset the catholic form of christianity. the conversion of the franks provided the roman church with its strongest and most faithful adherents among the germanic tribes. [ ] the conversion of anglo-saxon britain by augustine and his monks, followed later by the spread of roman catholicism in ireland and scotland, firmly united the british isles to the papacy. [ ] thus rome during the middle ages came to be the one center of church life for the peoples of western europe. st. boniface and the conversion of the germans an anglo-saxon monk, st. boniface, did more than any other missionary to carry christianity to the remote tribes of germany. like augustine in england, st. boniface was sent by the pope, who created him missionary bishop and ordered him to "carry the word of god to unbelievers." st. boniface also enjoyed the support of the frankish rulers, charles martel and pepin the short. thanks to their assistance this intrepid monk was able to penetrate into the heart of germany. here he labored for nearly forty years, preaching, baptizing, and founding numerous churches, monasteries, and schools. his boldness in attacking heathenism is illustrated by the story of how he cut down with his own hands a certain oak tree, much reverenced by the natives of hesse as sacred to the god woden, and out of its wood built a chapel dedicated to st. peter. st. boniface crowned a lifetime of missionary labor with a martyr's death, probably in a.d. his work was continued by charlemagne, who forced the saxons to accept christianity at the point of the sword. [ ] all germany at length became a christian land, devoted to the papacy. conversion of the slavs roman catholicism not only spread to celtic and germanic peoples, but it also gained a foothold among the slavs. both henry the fowler and otto the great attempted to christianize the slavic tribes between the elbe of the slavs and the vistula, by locating bishoprics in their territory. the work of conversion encountered many setbacks and did not reach completion until the middle of the twelfth century. the most eminent missionaries to the slavs were cyril and methodius. these brother-monks were sent from constantinople in a.d. to convert the moravians, who formed a kingdom on the eastern boundary of germany. seeing their great success as missionaries, the pope invited them to rome and secured their consent to an arrangement which brought the moravian christians under the control of the papacy. [ ] from moravia christianity penetrated into bohemia and poland. these countries still remain strongholds of the roman church. the serbians and russians, as we have learned, [ ] received christianity by way of constantinople and so became adherents of the greek church. final extension of roman catholicism roman catholicism gradually spread to most of the remaining peoples of europe. the conversion of the norwegians and swedes was well advanced by the middle of the eleventh century. the magyars, or hungarians, accepted christianity at about the same date. the king of hungary was such a devout catholic that in the year a.d. the pope sent to him a golden crown and saluted him as "his apostolic majesty." the last parts of heathen europe to receive the message of the gospel were the districts south and east of the baltic, occupied by the prussians, lithuanians, and finns. their conversion took place between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. . separation of eastern and western christianity divergence of east and west before the christian conquest of europe was finished, christianity had divided into two great communions--the greek church and the roman church. their separation was a long, slow process, arising from the deep-seated differences between east and west. though rome had carried her conquering arms throughout the mediterranean basin, all the region east of the adriatic was imperfectly romanized. [ ] it remained greek in language and culture, and tended, as time went on, to grow more and more unlike the west, which was truly roman. the founding of constantinople and the transference of the capital from the banks of the tiber to the shores of the bosporus still further widened the breach between the two halves of the roman world. after the germans established their kingdoms in italy, spain, gaul, and britain, western europe was practically independent of the rulers at constantinople. the coronation of charlemagne in a.d. marked the final severance of east and west. the papacy and the eastern emperors the division of the roman empire led naturally to a grouping of the christian church about rome and constantinople, the two chief centers of government. the popes, it has been seen, had always enjoyed spiritual leadership in the west. in temporal matters they acknowledged the authority of the eastern emperors, until the failure of the latter to protect rome and italy from the barbarians showed clearly that the popes must rely on their own efforts to defend christian civilization. we have already learned how well such men as leo the great and gregory the great performed this task. then in the eighth century came the alliance with the frankish king, pepin the short, which gave the papacy a powerful and generous protector beyond the alps. finally, by crowning charlemagne, the pope definitely broke with the emperor at constantinople and transferred his allegiance to the newly created western emperor. rise of the patriarchate of constantinople the patriarch of constantinople, as bishop of the capital city, enjoyed an excellent position from which to assert his preeminence over the bishops of the other churches in the east. justinian in a.d. conferred on him the privilege of receiving appeals from the other patriarchs, and a few years later that dignitary assumed the high-sounding title of "universal archbishop." the authority of the patriarch of constantinople was immensely strengthened when the mohammedans, having conquered syria and egypt, practically extinguished the three patriarchates of antioch, jerusalem, and alexandria. [ ] the church in the east now had a single patriarch, just as that in the west had the one bishop of rome. rivalry between them was inevitable. rivalry between pope and patriarch one source of strife between pope and patriarch was the controversy, arising in the eighth century, over the use of images in the churches. these images seem to have been, not statues, but pictures (icons) of the apostles, saints, and martyrs. many eastern christians sought to strip the churches of icons, on the ground that by the ignorant they were venerated almost as idols. the iconoclasts ("image-breakers") gained no support in the west. the papacy took the view that images were a help to true devotion and might, therefore, be allowed. when a roman emperor issued a decree for the destruction of all images, the pope refused to obey the order in the churches under his direction, and went so far as to exclude the iconoclasts from christian fellowship. although the iconoclastic movement failed in the east, after a violent controversy, it helped still further to sharpen the antagonism between the two branches of christendom. other causes of dispute arose in later times, chiefly concerning fine points of doctrine on which neither side would yield. the final rupture, a.d. the final rupture of christendom was delayed until the middle of the eleventh century. in a.d. the pope sent his legates to constantinople to demand obedience to the papacy. this being refused, they laid upon the high altar of sancta sophia the pope's bill of excommunication. against the patriarch and his followers they pronounced a solemn curse, or anathema, devoting them "to the eternal society of the devil and his angels." then, we are told, they strode out of sancta sophia, shaking the dust from their feet and crying, "let god see and judge." the two branches of the christian church, thus torn apart, were never afterward reunited. [ ] . the greek church the greek and roman church compared the greek and roman churches, in some respects, are nearer together than roman catholicism and protestantism. both recognize three orders for the ministry, namely, bishops, priests, and deacons. priests of the greek church may marry, but this privilege is not extended to bishops, who, therefore, are chosen from the monks. baptism, by both churches, is administered to infants, but by the greek church under the form of total immersion. confirmation in the greek church follows immediately after baptism; in the roman church it is postponed to the age of reason. in the communion service the greek church gives leavened bread, dipped in wine. the roman church withholds wine from the laity and uses only a dry, unleavened wafer. while the services of the roman church are conducted in latin, for those of the greek church the national languages (greek, russian, etc.) of the communicants are used. its festivals do not coincide in time of celebration with those of the roman church, since the "julian calendar" followed in the east is now thirteen days behind the "gregorian calendar." [ ] spread of the greek church the greek church has not lacked missionary zeal. through her agency the barbarians who entered southeastern europe during the early middle ages were converted to christianity. at the present time nearly all the peoples of the balkan peninsula, including greeks, montenegrins, serbians, bulgarians, and rumanians, belong to the greek church. [ ] its greatest victory was won toward the close of the tenth century, when the russians were induced to accept the greek form of christianity. outlying branches of the greek church are found also in the turkish empire. it now includes about one hundred and thirty-five million adherents in european lands. present organization of the greek church the patriarch of constantinople is the spiritual head of the greek church. he enjoys, however, no such wide authority over eastern christians as that exercised by the pope over all roman catholics. there are as many as sixteen branches of the greek church, each self-governing and under its own officers. despite the local independence of its branches, the greek church remains unified in doctrine. it claims to be the only "orthodox" church and clings with almost oriental conservatism to the traditions of earlier ages. nevertheless, as the official church of russia, the largest and most swiftly growing of european countries, the greek church has before it a future of great importance. . the roman church the roman church progressive the separation of eastern and western christianity naturally increased the importance of the papacy. the popes henceforth had a free hand to guide the destinies of the roman church. that church under their direction was to show itself vigorous and progressive, with a wonderful power of adaptation to new and changed conditions. the roman church survives the empire the roman empire in the west had gone down before the assaults of the germanic barbarians, but in its place had arisen a new creation--the roman church. the chief city of the old empire became the capital of the papacy. the pope took, and has since retained, the title of supreme pontiff (_pontifex maximus_), once given to the head of the roman state religion. [ ] latin has continued to be the official language of roman catholicism. the roman genius for law and government found a new expression in the creation of the papal power. the true successors of the ancient roman statesmen were the popes of the middle ages. the idea of rome, of her universality and of her eternity, lived on in the roman church. work of the roman church the roman church, as the successor of the roman empire in the west, formed the chief center of civilization during the earlier part of the middle ages. she stood between the conquering germans and the romanized provincials and helped to join them both in lasting union. to the heathen she sent out her missionaries, preaching a religion of love and charity and introducing a higher morality than the barbarians had ever known before. she multiplied hospitals, orphanages, and asylums. her bishops were the only protectors of the weak and the oppressed. she fostered education, art, and learning within the walls of churches and monasteries. her priests and monks were the only teachers in an ignorant age. in an age of bloodshed and violence, when might made right, she proclaimed the superiority of the spirit to mere brute force. to sum up: the roman church was an indispensable agent in the making of medieval europe. the menace to christendom christianity in its greek and roman forms was not the only great religion of the middle ages. in the seventh century, before the separation of the two churches had been completed and before all europe had become christian, another religion arose. it grew with marvelous rapidity, stripped the church of much territory in western asia, northern africa, and spain, and promised for a time to become the dominant faith of the world. this was islam, or mohammedanism, the religion of the arabs. studies . in what different senses is the word "church" often used? . "the eastern patriarch was the shadow of the emperor, cast on the spiritual world." explain this statement. . why did heresies develop in the east rather than in the west? . look up in the new testament the following texts relating to the primacy of st. peter: _matthew_, xvi, - ; _luke_, xxii, - ; and _john_, xxi, - . . what is "the power of the keys" which the popes claim to possess? . what reasons for the growth of the papacy have been set forth in this chapter? . in what non-christian religions is monasticism an established institution? . look up in the new testament the following texts quoted as favorable to monasticism: _matthew_, xix, ; _mark_, x, - ; and _luke_, xiv, . . what is the origin of the words "monk," "hermit," "anchorite," and "abbot"? . summarize the principal benefits which the monastic system conferred on europe. . give reasons for the rapid conversion of the germans to christianity. . in what sense is it true that "half europe owes its christianity to women"? . who was the "apostle to the germans"? . who were the "apostles to the slavs"? . comment on the significance to european civilization of the missionary activity of the christian church in the middle ages. . why has the separation of the greek and roman churches been described as "the most momentous fact in the history of christendom during the middle ages"? . why could not such an institution as the papacy develop in the east? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter iii, "the benedictine rule"; chapter iv, "the reestablishment of christianity in britain"; chapter v, "st. boniface, apostle to the germans." [ ] the correspondence may be indicated as follows: the roman empire the christian church city--municipal officials. bishop. province--governor. archbishop, or metropolitan. diocese--vicar. patriarch. prefecture--prefect. (no corresponding division.) [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] _john_, xx, i, ; compare i _corinthians_, xvi, . [ ] see page and note . [ ] see _acts_, ii, - . [ ] see page , note . [ ] in modern india (malabar) there are no less than , syrian christians who owe their religion to nestorian missionaries. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] _servus servorum dei_. [ ] see pages - . [ ] from a greek word which means "living alone." [ ] see tennyson's poem, _st. simeon stylites_. [ ] from a syrian word, abba, meaning "father." hence a monastery was often called an abbey. [ ] other monastic orders arose during the later middle ages (see pages , ), but the benedictines still exist, chiefly in austria and italy. their order was introduced into the united states during the nineteenth century. [ ] _laborare est orare._ [ ] for the missionary work of celtic christians see page and note . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] cyril and methodius were canonized by pope leo xiii in a.d. a millenial celebration of the two apostles was held in a.d. by the people of moravia and bohemia. [ ] see page . the bulgarians also got their christianity from constantinople in the ninth century. [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] unsuccessful attempts to heal the schism between the two churches took place in the middle ages. the latest movement in this direction was made by pope leo xiii in a.d., but his efforts were not crowned with success. [ ] see page , note . [ ] many roman catholics are found in croatia-slavonia, bosnia, dalmatia, and albania. [ ] see page , note . chapter xvi the orient against the occident: rise and spread of islam, - a.d. [ ] . arabia and the arabs the arabian peninsula arabia, a vast peninsula between the persian gulf, the indian ocean, and the red sea, forms the link between asia and africa. it is connected with asia by the arid plains extending northward to the euphrates; with africa, by the equally arid isthmus of suez. though the country is more than one- third the size of the united states (excluding alaska), it has never supported a large population. the interior, except for occasional oases, is a desert, inhabited only by wandering tribes. along the southern and western coasts, between the mountains and the sea, the soil is generally fertile, the climate temperate, and the rainfall sufficient. here the chief cities and towns are located. inhabitants of arabia the original home of the semites is believed to have been arabia. some semitic peoples appear to have migrated northward to babylonia and syria, while others crossed the red sea to abyssinia. physically, the arabs are an attractive people, with well-shaped, muscular figures, handsome, bronzed faces, brilliant, black eyes, and all the organs of sense exquisitely acute. simple and abstemious in their habits, they lead healthy lives and often reach an extreme yet vigorous old age. the bedouins of the desert the bedouin arabs, by which name the nomadic inhabitants of the desert are known, claim ishmael, the son of abraham and half-brother of isaac, as their ancestor. the life which they lead in the arabian wilderness closely resembles that of the hebrew patriarchs, as described in the old testament. the bedouins are shepherds and herdsmen, continually moving with their sheep and camels from one pasturage and water-hole to another. their virtues--hospitality to the stranger, generosity, faithfulness to the ties of kinship--are those of a nomadic, barbarian people. such also are their vices--love of fighting and plunder, revengefulness, and impatience of restraint. nothing like a settled government is known to them. the only tribal authority is that of the chief, or "sheik," who, because of his birth, courage, or wealth, has been chosen to the leadership. this description of the bedouins to-day applies equally well to them in the age of mohammed, during the sixth century. [illustration: mecca the chief sanctuary of mecca is the building called the kaaba, which lies in the center of a vast courtyard surrounded by a colonnade. the kaaba is here seen covered with a heavy black cloth renewed each year. pilgrims enter the courtyard, walk slowly around the kaaba seven times--seven is a holy number in islam--and kiss the sacred black stone fixed in the walls of the structure. the stone is now broken into pieces, which are kept together by a silver setting. the kaaba has been rebuilt several times since the days of mohammed, but it still preserves the old form of a heathen temple.] the sedentary arabs the arabs who settled along the southern and western coasts of the peninsula had reached in the sixth century a considerable degree of civilization. they practiced agriculture and carried on a flourishing trade across the red sea and even to distant india. between these sedentary arabs and the bedouins raged constant feuds, leading to much petty warfare. nevertheless the hundreds of tribes throughout the peninsula preserved a feeling of national unity, which was greatly strengthened by mohammed's appearance on the scene. arabian heathenism the city of mecca, located about fifty miles from the red sea, was a commercial metropolis and the center of arabian heathenism. every year the arab tribes ceased fighting for four months, and went up to mecca to buy and sell and visit the famous sanctuary called the kaaba. here were three hundred and sixty idols and a small, black stone (probably a meteorite), which legend declared had been brought from heaven. the stone was originally white, but the sins of the people who touched it had blackened it. although most of the arabs were idolaters, yet some of them recognized the "unknown god" of the semites, allah, the creator of all things. arabia at this time contained many jews, zoroastrians, and christians, who helped to spread abroad the conception of one god and thus to prepare the way for a prophet of a new religion. . mohammed: prophet and statesman, - a.d. early life of mohammed mohammed, [ ] born at mecca about a.d., belonged to the tribe of the koreish, who had long been guardians of the sacred kaaba. left an orphan at an early age, the future prophet was obliged to earn his own living. he served first as a shepherd on the hillsides of mecca. this occupation, though lowly, gave him the love of solitude, and helped to nourish in his soul that appreciation of nature which later found expression in so many of his utterances. while still a youth he became a camel-driver and twice crossed the deserts with caravans to syria. doubtless he made many acquaintances on these journeys and picked up much useful information. mohammed, however, did not receive a regular education; it is doubtful whether he could read or write. his marriage, when about twenty-five years of age, to a rich widow, named khadija, brought him wealth and consideration. for some time, henceforth, he led the life of a prosperous merchant of mecca. [illustration: a letter of mohammed a letter, probably in the handwriting of mohammed's secretary, addressed to the governor of alexandria. the seal is inscribed "mohammed, the prophet of god."] mohammed's visions mohammed seems always to have been a deeply religious man. as he grew older, his thoughts more and more centered on spiritual themes. he could not reconcile the gross idolatry of the arabs with that belief in the unity of god which he himself had reached. in his distress he would withdraw into the wilderness, where he spent much time in fasting and solitary vigils, practices perhaps suggested to him by the example of christian hermits. [ ] during these lonely hours in the desert strange scenes passed before his eyes and strange voices sounded in his ears. at first mohammed thought that evil spirits possessed him, but khadija encouraged him to believe that his visions were a revelation from another world. one day, so he declared, god's messenger, the archangel gabriel, appeared to him and bade him preach a new religion to the arabs. it was very simple, but in its simplicity lay its strength: "there is no god but god, and mohammed is the prophet of god." the hegira, a.d. the prophet made his first converts in his wife, his children, and the friends who knew him best. then, becoming bolder, he began to preach publicly in mecca. in spite of mohammed's eloquence, obvious sincerity, and attractive personality, he met a discouraging reception. a few slaves and poor freemen became his followers, but most of the citizens of mecca regarded him as a madman. mohammed's disciples, called moslems, [ ] were bitterly persecuted by the koreish, who resented the prophet's attacks on idolatry and feared the loss of their privileges at the kaaba. finally mohammed and his converts took refuge in medina, where some of the inhabitants had already accepted his teachings. this was the famous hegira (flight of the prophet). [ ] later life of mohammed at medina mohammed occupied a position of high honor and influence. the people welcomed him gladly and made him their chief magistrate. as his adherents increased in number, mohammed began to combine fighting with preaching. his military expeditions against the arab tribes proved to be very successful. many of the conquered bedouins enlisted under his banner and in a.d. captured mecca for the prophet. he treated its inhabitants leniently, but threw down all the idols in the kaaba, after the submission of mecca most of the arabs abandoned idolatry and accepted the new religion. death of mohammed, a.d. mohammed did not long enjoy his position as uncrowned king of arabia. he died in a.d., at medina, where he was buried and where his tomb is still visited by pious moslems. his followers could scarcely believe that their great prophet had gone away from them forever. they were ready to worship him as a god, until old abu bekr, mohammed's father-in-law, rebuked them with the memorable words: "whoso worshipeth mohammed, let him know that mohammed is dead; but whoso worshipeth god, let him know that god liveth and dieth not." mohammed's character the character of mohammed has been variously estimated. moslem writers make him a saint; christian writers, until mohammed's recent times, have called him an "impostor." we know that he was a man of simple habits, who, even in the days of his prosperity, lived on dates, barley bread, and water, mended his woolen garments, and attended to his own wants. he was mild and gentle, a lover of children, devoted to his friends, and forgiving toward his foes. he seems to have won the admiration of all with whom he came in contact. we know, too, that mohammed was so deeply impressed with the consciousness of his religious mission that he was ready to give up wealth and an honorable position and face for years the ridicule and hatred of the people of mecca. his faults--deceitfulness, superstitiousness, sensuality--were those of the arabs of his time. their existence in mohammed's character should not prevent our recognition of his real greatness as a prophet and as a statesman. . islam and the koran formation of the koran the religion which mohammed preached is called islam, an arabic word meaning "surrender," or "resignation." this religion has its sacred book, the koran ("thing read" or "thing recited"). it contains the speeches, prayers, and other utterances of mohammed at various times during his career. some parts of the koran were dictated by the prophet to his disciples and by them were written out on skins, leaves of palm trees, bones, and bits of parchment. many other parts remained at first only in the memory of mohammed's followers. soon after his death all the scattered passages were collected into one book. since the middle of the seventh century the koran, every word of which the moslems consider holy, has remained unchanged. [illustration: a passage from the koran from a manuscript in the bodleian library, oxford.] religious teachings of the koran the doctrines found in the koran show many adaptations from the jewish and christian religions. like them islam emphasizes the unity of god. the moslem cry--"_allah akbar!_" "god is great!"--forms its cardinal principle. like them, also, islam recognizes the existence of prophets, including abraham, moses, and jesus, but insists that mohammed was the last and greatest of the prophets. the existence of angels and demons is recognized. the chief of the demons, iblis, bears some resemblance to the jewish satan and the christian devil. the account of the creation and fall of man is taken, with variations, from the old testament. the description of the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, and the division of the future world into paradise and hell, the former for believers in islam, the latter for those who have refused to accept it, seems to have been based on persian and jewish ideas. these borrowings from other religions facilitated the spread of islam among eastern peoples. observances of islam the koran imposes on the faithful moslem five great obligations. first, he must recite, at least once in his life, aloud, correctly, and with full understanding, the short creed: "there is no god but god, and mohammed is the prophet of god." second, he must pray five times a day: at dawn, just after noon, before sunset, just after sunset, and at the end of the day. in every mohammedan city the hour of prayer is announced from the tall minaret of the mosque by a crier (_muezzin_). before engaging in prayer the worshiper washes face, hands, and feet; during the prayer he turns toward mecca and bows his head to the ground. third, he must observe a strict fast, from morning to night, during every day of _ramadan_, the ninth month of the mohammedan year. [ ] in this month god presented the koran to gabriel for revelation to the prophet. fourth, he must give alms to the poor. fifth, he must, "if he is able," undertake at least one pilgrimage to mecca. the annual visit of thousands of pilgrims to the holy city helps to preserve the feeling of brotherhood among moslems all over the world. these five obligations are the "pillars" of islam. organization of islam as a religious system islam is exceedingly simple. it does not provide any elaborate ceremonies of worship and permits no altars, pictures, or images in the mosque. islam even lacks a priesthood. every moslem acts as his own priest. there is, however, an official, who on friday, the mohammedan sabbath, offers up public prayers in the mosque and delivers a sermon to the assembled worshipers. all work is suspended during this service, but at its close secular activities are resumed. moral teachings of the koran the koran furnishes a moral code for the adherents of islam. it contains a few important prohibitions. the moslem is not to make images, to engage in games of chance, to eat pork, or to drink wine. this last prohibition has saved the mohammedan world from the degradation and misery which alcohol has introduced into christian lands. to mohammed strong drink was "the mother of all evil," and drunkenness, a sin. the koran also inculcates many active virtues, including reverence toward parents, protection of widows and orphans, charity toward the poor, kindness to slaves, and gentle treatment of the lower animals. on the whole it must be admitted that the laws of the koran did much to restrain the vices of the arabs and to provide them with higher standards of right and wrong. islam marked a great advance over arabian heathenism. . expansion of islam in asia and egypt islam spread by the sword mohammed, as we have learned, did not scruple to use the sword as a means of spreading his new religion among the idolatrous arab tribes. by thus following up preaching with force, he subdued the greater part of arabia. the prophet's methods were adopted by his successors. within a century after mohammed's death, they carried the doctrines of islam over a large part of the civilized world and founded an arabian empire. islam as a religion of conquest islam was a religion of conquest. it proclaimed the righteousness of a "holy war," or _jihad_, against unbelievers. it promised rich booty for those who fought and won, and paradise for those who fell. the arab soldier, dying on the battlefield, expected to be carried away by bright- eyed maidens to a garden of delight, where, reclining on soft cushions and rugs, he was to enjoy forever an existence of sensual ease. "whosoever falls in battle," so runs a passage in the koran, "his sins are forgiven, and at the day of judgment his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim." islam as a political force the sudden creation of the arabian power must not be understood, however, as solely a religious movement. pride and greed, as well as fanaticism, drove the arabs forward on their conquering career. long before mohammed's time arabia had been in a state of unrest. its warlike tribes, feeling a sense of their superiority to other peoples, were eager to overrun the rich districts of western asia, much as the germans had overrun western europe. islam strengthened the racial pride of the arabs, united them into one nation, and gave them an effective organization for world-wide rule. arab conquests in the east, - a.d. the most extensive conquests of the arabs were made within ten years after mohammed's death. during this time the moslem warriors, though poorly armed, ill-disciplined, and in every battle greatly outnumbered, attacked with success the two strongest military powers then in the world--rome and persia. from the roman empire in the east they seized the provinces of syria and palestine, with the famous cities of damascus, antioch, and jerusalem. [ ] they took mesopotamia from the persians and then, invading iran, overthrew the persian power. [ ] egypt also was subjugated by these irresistible soldiers of the crescent. treatment of the conquered peoples according to the strict teaching of the koran, those who refused to accept islam were either to be killed or to be reduced to slavery. as a matter of fact, the arabs treated their new subjects with marked liberality. no massacres and no persecutions occurred. the conquered peoples were allowed to retain their own religions, on condition of paying ample tribute. in course of time, however, many of the christians in syria and egypt and most of the zoroastrians [ ] in persia adopted islam, in order that they might acquire the rights and privileges of moslem citizens. later arab conquests the sweeping conquests of the decade - a.d. were followed in later years by a further extension of the boundaries of the arabian empire. in the remote east the arabs sent their victorious armies beyond the oxus and indus rivers to central asia and india. they captured the island of cyprus, annexed parts of armenia and asia minor, and at length threatened to take constantinople. had that city fallen, all eastern europe would have been laid open to invasion. [illustration: map, expansion of islam] siege of constantinople, - a.d. the first attempts on constantinople were made by sea and were repulsed, but during the years - a.d. the city had to face a combined attack by a moslem navy and army. the eastern emperor, leo the isaurian, conducted a heroic defense, using with much effectiveness the celebrated mixture known as "greek fire." this combustible, probably composed of sulphur, naphtha, and quicklime, was poured or hurled on the enemy's ships in order to burn them. "greek fire," the rigors of an uncommonly severe winter, and timely aid from the bulgarians at length compelled the arabs to beat a retreat. their failure to take constantinople gave the roman empire in the east another long lease of life. [illustration: naval battle showing use of "greek fire" from a byzantine manuscript of the fourteenth century at madrid. "greek fire" in marine warfare was most commonly propelled through long tubes of copper which were placed on the prow of a ship and managed by a gunner. combustibles might also be kept in tubes flung by hand and exploded on board the enemy's vessel.] . expansion of islam in north africa and spain north africa subdued though repulsed before the impregnable walls of constantinople, the arabs continued to win new dominions in other north africa parts of the christian world. after their occupation of egypt, they began to overrun north africa, which justinian, little more than a century earlier, had reconquered from the vandals. [ ] the romanized provincials, groaning under the burdensome taxes imposed on them by the eastern emperors, made only a slight resistance to the moslem armies. a few of the great cities held out for a time, but after the capture and destruction of carthage [ ] in a.d., arab rule was soon established over the whole extent of the mediterranean coast from egypt to the atlantic. arabs and berbers islam made in north africa one of its most permanent conquests. after the coming of the arabs many of the christian inhabitants appear to have withdrawn to spain and sicily, leaving the field clear for the introduction of arabian civilization. the arabs who settled in north africa gave their religion and government to the berbers, as the natives of the country were called, and to some extent intermingled with them. arabs and berbers still comprise the population of north africa, though their once independent states have now been absorbed by european powers. [ ] subjugation of spain begun, a.d. with north africa in their hands the moslems did not long delay the invasion of spain. in a.d. an army of arabs and berbers, under their leader tarik, crossed the strait which still bears his name [ ] and for the first time confronted the germans. the visigothic kingdom, [ ] already much enfeebled, proved to be an easy prey. a single battle made the invaders masters of half of spain. within a few years their hosts swept northward to the pyrenees. only small districts in the northern part of the spanish peninsula remained unconquered. the moslem advance in gaul the moslems were not stopped by the pyrenees. crossing these mountains, they captured many of the old roman cities in the south of gaul and then advanced to the north, attracted, apparently, by the booty to be found in christian monasteries and churches. in the vicinity of tours they encountered the great army which charles martel, the chief minister of the frankish king, [ ] had collected to oppose their advance. battle of tours, a.d. the battle of tours seems to have continued for several days. of its details we know nothing, though a spanish chronicler tells us that the heavy infantry of the franks stood "immovable as a wall, inflexible as a block of ice" against the desperate assaults of the moslem horsemen. when the franks, after the last day's fighting, wished to renew the struggle, they found that the enemy had fled, leaving a camp filled with the spoils of war. this engagement, though famous in history, was scarcely decisive. for some time afterward the moslems maintained themselves in southern gaul. it was the frankish ruler, pepin the short, who annexed their possessions there and drove them back across the pyrenees to spain. [ ] . the caliphate and its disruption, - a.d. the four "orthodox" caliphs, - a.d. only eighteen years after the battle of tours, the arabian empire was divided into two rival and more or less hostile parts, which came to be called the eastern and western caliphates. the title of caliph, meaning "successor" or "representative," had first been assumed by mohammed's father-in-law, abu bekr, who was chosen to succeed the prophet as the civil and religious head of the moslem world. after him followed omar, who had been one of mohammed's most faithful adherents, and then othman and ali, both sons-in-law of mohammed. these four rulers are sometimes known as the "orthodox" caliphs, because their right to the succession was universally acknowledged by moslems. ommiad caliphs at damascus, - a.d. after ali's death the governor of syria, moawiya by name, succeeded in making himself caliph of the moslem world. this usurper converted the caliphate into a hereditary, instead of an elective, office, and established the dynasty of the ommiads. [ ] their capital was no longer medina in arabia, but the syrian city of damascus. the descendants of mohammed's family refused, however, to recognize the ommiads as legitimate caliphs. in a.d. a sudden revolt, headed by the party of the abbasids, [ ] established a new dynasty. the abbasids treacherously murdered nearly all the members of the ommiad family, but one survivor escaped to spain, where he founded at cordova an independent ommiad dynasty. [ ] north africa, also, before long separated itself from abbasid rule. thus the once united caliphate, like the old roman empire, split in twain. the abbasid caliphs, - a.d. the abbasids continued to reign over the moslems in asia for more than three hundred years. the most celebrated of abbasid caliphs was harun-al- rashid (aaron the just), a contemporary of charlemagne, to whom the arab ruler sent several presents, including an elephant and a water-clock which struck the hours. the tales of harun-al-rashid's magnificence, his gold and silver, his silks and gems, his rugs and tapestries, reflect the luxurious life of the abbasid rulers. gradually, however, their power declined, and in a.d. the seljuk turks, [ ] recent converts to islam, deprived them of their power. a turkish chieftain, with the title of "king of the east and west," then took the place of the arabian caliph, though the latter remained the religious head of islam. he lost even this spiritual authority, just two centuries later, when the mongols from central asia overran the turkish dominions. [ ] bagdad the abbasids removed their capital from damascus to bagdad on the banks of the middle euphrates. the new city, under the fostering care of the caliphs, grew with great rapidity. its population in the ninth century is said to have reached two millions. for a time it was the largest and richest city in the moslem world. how its splendor impressed the imagination may be seen from the stories of the _thousand and one nights_. [ ] after the extinction of the abbasid caliphate, its importance as the religious and political center of islam declined. but memories of the former grandeur of bagdad still cling to it, and even to-day it is referred to in turkish official documents as the "glorious city." extinction of the arabian empire a misfortune it was a very great misfortune for the eastern world when the arabian empire passed under the control of rude asiatic peoples. the turks accepted islam, but they did little to preserve and extend arabian civilization. the stagnant, non-progressive condition of the east at the present time is largely due to the misgovernment of its turkish conquerors. . arabian civilization the arabs as absorbers of civilization the great moslem cities of bagdad, damascus, cairo, and cordova were not only seats of government for the different divisions of the arabian empire; they were also the centers of arabian civilization. the conquests of the arabs had brought them into contact with highly developed peoples whose culture they absorbed and to some extent improved. they owed most to persia and, after persia, to greece, through the empire at constantinople, in their hands there was somewhat the same fusion of east and west as alexander the great had sought to accomplish. [ ] greek science and philosophy mingled with the arts of persia and other oriental lands. arabian civilization, for about four centuries under the ommiad and abbasid caliphs, far surpassed anything to be found in western europe. agriculture many improvements in agriculture were due to the arabs. they had a good system of irrigation, practiced rotation of crops, employed fertilizers, and understood how to graft and produce new varieties of plants and fruits. from the arabs we have received cotton, flax, hemp, buckwheat, rice, sugar cane, and coffee, various vegetables, including asparagus, artichokes, and beans, and such fruits as melons, oranges, lemons, apricots, and plums. manufacturing the arabs excelled in various manufactures. damascus was famous for its brocades, tapestries, and blades of tempered steel. the moorish cities in spain had also their special productions: cordova, leather; toledo, armor; and granada, rich silks. arab craftsmen taught the venetians to make crystal and plate glass. the work of arab potters and weavers was at once the admiration and despair of its imitators in western europe. the arabs knew the secrets of dyeing and they made a kind of paper. their textile fabrics and articles of metal were distinguished for beauty of design and perfection of workmanship. european peoples during the early middle ages received the greater part of their manufactured articles of luxury through the arabs. [ ] commerce the products of arab farms and workshops were carried far and wide throughout medieval lands. the arabs were keen merchants, and mohammed had expressly encouraged commerce by declaring it agreeable to god. the arabs traded with india, china, the east indies (java and sumatra), the interior of africa, russia, and even with the baltic lands. bagdad, which commanded both land and water routes, was the chief center of this commerce, but other cities of western asia, north africa, and spain shared in its advantages. the bazaar, or merchants' quarter, was found in every moslem city. geographical knowledge the trade of the arabs, their wide conquests, and their religious pilgrimages to mecca vastly increased their knowledge of the world. they were the best geographers of the middle ages. an abbasid caliph, the son of harun-al-rashid, had the greek _geography_ of ptolemy [ ] translated into arabic and enriched the work with illuminated maps. arab scholars compiled encyclopedias describing foreign countries and peoples, constructed celestial spheres, and measured closely the arc of the meridian in order to calculate the size of the earth. there is some reason to believe that the mariner's compass was first introduced into europe by the arabs. the geographical knowledge of christian peoples during the middle ages owed much, indeed, to their moslem forerunners. education schools and universities flourished in moslem lands when christian europe was still in the "dark ages." the largest institution of learning was at cairo, where the lectures of the professors were attended by thousands of students. famous universities also existed in bagdad and cordova. moslem scholars especially delighted in the study of philosophy. arabic translations of aristotle's [ ] writings made the ideas of that great thinker familiar to the students of western europe, where the knowledge of greek had all but died out. the arabs also formed extensive libraries of many thousands of manuscripts, all carefully arranged and catalogued. their libraries and universities, especially in spain, were visited by many christians, who thus became acquainted with moslem learning and helped to introduce it into europe. chemistry and medicine the arabs have been considered to be the founders of modern experimental science. they were relatively skillful chemists, for they discovered a number of new compounds (such as alcohol, aqua regia, nitric acid, and corrosive sublimate) and understood the preparation of mercury and of various oxides of metals. in medicine the arabs based their investigations on those of the greeks, [ ] but made many additional contributions to the art of healing. they studied physiology and hygiene, dissected the human body, performed difficult surgical operations, used anaesthetics, and wrote treatises on such diseases as measles and smallpox. arab medicine and surgery were studied by the christian peoples of europe throughout the later period of the middle ages. [illustration: interior of the mosque of cordova the great mosque of cordova, begun in the eighth century, was gradually enlarged during the following centuries to its present dimensions, by feet. the building, one of the largest in the world, has now been turned into a cathedral. the most striking feature of the interior is the forest of porphyry, jasper, and marble pillars supporting open moorish arches. originally there were of these pillars, but many have been destroyed.] mathematics and astronomy the arabs had a strong taste for mathematics. here again they carried further the old greek investigations. in arithmetic they used the so- called "arabic" figures, which were probably borrowed from india. the arabic numerals gradually supplanted in western europe the awkward roman numerals. in geometry the arabs added little to euclid, but algebra is practically their creation. an arabic treatise on algebra long formed the textbook of the subject in the universities of christian europe. spherical trigonometry and conic sections are arabic inventions. this mathematical knowledge enabled the arabs to make considerable progress in astronomy. observatories at bagdad and damascus were erected as early as the ninth century. some of the astronomical instruments which they constructed, including the sextant and the gnomon, are still in use. [ ] romance and poetry in prose and verse there are two moslem productions which have attained wide popularity in european lands. the first work is the _thousand and one nights_, a collection of tales written in arabic and describing life and manners at the court of the abbasids. the book, as we now have it, seems to have been composed as late as the fifteenth century, but it borrows much from earlier arabic sources. many of the tales are of indian or persian origin, but all have a thoroughly moslem coloring. the second work is the _rubáiyát_ of the astronomer-poet of persia, omar khayyam, who wrote about the beginning of the twelfth century. his _rubáiyát_ is a little volume of quatrains, about five hundred in all, distinguished for wit, satirical power, and a vein of melancholy, sometimes pensive, sometimes passionate. these characteristics of omar's poetry have made it widely known in the western world. [ ] architecture painting and sculpture owe little to the arabs, but their architecture, based in part on byzantine and persian models, reached a high level of excellence. swelling domes, vaulted roofs, arched porches, tall and graceful minarets, and the exquisite decorative patterns known as "arabesques" make many arab buildings miracles of beauty. glazed tiles, mosaics, and jeweled glass were extensively used for ornamentation. from the first the arab builders adopted the pointed arch; they introduced it into western europe; and it became a characteristic feature of gothic cathedrals. [ ] among the best-known of arab buildings are the so-called "mosque of omar" at jerusalem, [ ] the great mosque of cordova, and that architectural gem, the alhambra at granada. many features of moorish art were taken over by the spaniards, who reproduced them in the cathedrals and missions of mexico and california. [illustration: capitals and arabesques from the alhambra one of mohammed's laws forbidding the use of idols was subsequently expanded by religious teachers into a prohibition of all imitations of human or animal forms in art. sculptors who observed this prohibition relied for ornamentation on intricate geometrical designs known as arabesques. these were carved in stone or molded in plaster.] . the influence of islam growth of islam the division of the arabian empire into rival caliphates did not check the spread of islam. the turks and mongols during the middle ages carried it to the uttermost regions of asia and throughout southeastern europe. some parts of the territory thus gained by it have since been lost. spain and the balkan peninsula are once more christian lands. in other parts of the world, and notably in africa and india, the religion of mohammed is spreading faster than any other creed. islam to-day claims about two hundred million adherents. [illustration: the fountain of the lions in the alhambra the most remarkable feature of the alhambra is the court of the lions. it measures feet in length by feet in breadth. a gallery supported on marble columns surrounds the court. in the center is the fountain of lions, an alabaster basin resting on the backs of marble lions.] the benefits of islam the growth of islam is evidence that it meets the needs of asiatic and african peoples. its simple creed--the unity of god, man's immortal soul, and material rewards and penalties in a future life--adapt it to the understanding of half-civilized peoples. as a religion it is immeasurably superior to the rude nature worship and idolatry which it has supplanted. the same is true of islam as a system of morality. the practice of the virtues recommended by the koran and the avoidance of the vices which that book condemns tend to raise its adherents in the moral scale. treatment of women from the moral standpoint one of the least satisfactory features of islam is its attitude toward women. the ancient arabs, like many other peoples, seem to have set no limit to the number of wives a man might possess. women were regarded by them as mere chattels, and female infants were frequently put to death. mohammed recognized polygamy, but limited the number of legitimate wives to four. at the same time mohammed sought to improve the condition of women by forbidding female infanticide, by restricting the facilities for divorce, and by insisting on kind treatment of wives by their husbands. "the best of you," he said, "is he who behaves best to his wives." according to eastern custom moslem women are secluded in a separate part of the house, called the _harem_. [ ] they never appear in public, except when closely veiled from the eyes of strangers. their education is also much neglected. slavery slavery, like polygamy, was a custom which mohammed found fully established among the arabs. he disliked slavery and tried in several ways to lessen its evils. he declared that the emancipation of moslem slaves was an act of special merit, and ordered that in a war between moslems the prisoners were not to be enslaved. mohammed also insisted on kind treatment of slaves by their masters. "feed your slaves," he directed, "with food of that which you eat and clothe them with such clothing as you wear, and command them not to do that which they are unable to do." the condition of moslem slaves does not appear to be intolerable, though the slave traffic which still exists in some parts of africa is a disgrace to islam. studies . on an outline map indicate the arabian empire at its widest extent. locate the more important cities, including mecca, medina, jerusalem, damascus, bagdad, cairo, alexandria, granada, cordova, and seville. . define the following: kaaba; islam; koran; and caliph. . how did the geographical situation of arabia preserve it from being conquered by persians, macedonians, or romans? . why had the arabs, until the time of mohammed, played so inconspicuous a part in the history of the world? . mohammed "began as a mule driver and ended as both a pope and a king." explain this statement. . how does mohammed's career in mecca illustrate the saying that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country"? . what resemblances may be traced between islam on the one side and judaism and christianity on the other side? . did religion have anything to do with the migrations of the germans? how was it with the arabs? . contrast the methods of propagating christianity in europe with those of spreading islam in asia. . why is the defeat of the moslems before constantinople regarded as more significant than their defeat at the battle of tours? . compare the eastern limits of the arabian empire with those of alexander's empire (maps facing pages , ). . show that the arabian empire, because of its geographical position, was less easily defended than the roman empire. . locate on the map facing page the following commercial cities in the arabian empire: samarkand; cabul; bokhara; mosul; kairwan; fez; seville; and toledo. . can you suggest any reason why the arabs did little in painting and sculpture? . what are some of the best-known stories in the _thousand and one nights_? . discuss the justice of this statement: "if our ideas and our arts go back to antiquity, all the inventions which make life easy and agreeable come to us from the arabs." . "from the eighth to the twelfth century the world knew but two civilizations, that of byzantium and that of the arabs." comment on this statement. . show that islam was an heir to the graeco-oriental civilization. . can you suggest any reasons why islam to-day spreads among the african negroes more rapidly than christianity? . how does islam, by sanctioning polygamy and slavery, hinder the rise of women and of the working classes? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter vi, "the teachings of mohammed." [ ] the earlier spelling was mahomet. [ ] see page . [ ] from the arabic _muslim_, "one who surrenders himself" (to god's will). during the middle ages the moslems to their christian enemies were commonly known as saracens, a term which is still in use. [ ] the year a.d., in which the hegira occurred, marks the beginning of the mohammedan era. the christian year a.d. nearly corresponds to the mohammedan year a.h. (_anno hegirae_). [ ] feasting during the nights of this month is allowable. [ ] see page . [ ] see page , . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] morocco, algeria, and tunis belong to france; tripoli, to italy. [ ] gibraltar = _gibal al tarik_, "the mountain of tarik." [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] for charlemagne's spanish conquests, see page . [ ] so called from a leading family of mecca, to which moawiya belonged. [ ] so called from abbas, an uncle of mohammed. [ ] this was at first known as the emirate of cordova, but in a.d. it became the caliphate of cordova. see the map facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . descendants of the abbasids subsequently took up their abode in egypt. through them the claim to the caliphate passed in a.d. to the ottoman turks. the sultan at constantinople still calls himself caliph of the moslem world. however, in a.d. the grand sherif of mecca, a descendant of mohammed, led a revolt against the turks, captured mecca and medina, and proclaimed arab independence. should the european war end in favor of the allies, the caliphate will undoubtedly go back to the arabs. [ ] popularly called the _arabian nights_. [ ] see page . [ ] the european names of some common articles reveal the arabic sources from which they were first derived. thus, _damask_ comes from damascus, _muslin_ from mosul, _gauze_ from gaza, _cordovan_ (a kind of leather) from cordova, and _morocco_ leather from north africa. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] many words in european languages beginning with the prefix _al_ (the definite article in arabic) show how indebted was europe to the arabs for scientific knowledge. in english these words include _alchemy_ (whence _chemistry_), _alcohol_, _alembic_, _algebra_, _alkali_, _almanac_, _aldebaran_ (the star), etc. [ ] the translation of the _rubáiyát_ by edward fitzgerald is almost an english classic. [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] the athenians had a similar practice. see page . chapter xvii the northmen and the normans to a.d. [ ] . scandinavia and the northmen a new series of migrations from the east we return once more to the west, from asia to europe, from arabia to scandinavia. we have now to deal with the raids and settlements of the norsemen or northmen. like the arabs the northmen quitted a sterile peninsula and went forth to find better homes in distant lands. their invasions, beginning toward the close of the eighth century, lasted about three hundred years. a teutonic movement the northmen belonged to the teutonic family of peoples. they were kinsmen of the germans, the anglo-saxons, and the dutch. their migrations may be regarded, therefore, as the last wave of that great teutonic movement which in earlier times had inundated western europe and overwhelmed the roman empire. scandinavia the northmen lived, as their descendants still live, in denmark, sweden, and norway. the name scandinavia is sometimes applied to all three countries, but more commonly it is restricted to the peninsula comprising sweden and norway. [illustration: swedish rock carving shows a man plowing.] sweden sweden, with the exception of the northern highlands, is mostly a level region, watered by copious streams, dotted with many lakes, and sinking down gradually to the baltic sea and the gulf of bothnia. the fact that sweden faces these inland waters determined the course of her development as a nation. she never has had any aspirations to become a great oceanic power. her whole historic life has centered about the baltic. [illustration: a runic stone a stone, twelve feet high and six feet wide, in the churchyard of rok, ostergotland, sweden. the runic inscription, which contains more than letters, is the longest known.] norway norway, in contrast to sweden, faces the atlantic. the country is little more than a strip of rugged seacoast reaching northward to well within the arctic circle. were it not for the influence of the "gulf stream drift," much of norway would be a frozen waste for the greater part of the year. vast forests of fir, pine, and birch still cover the greater part of the country, and the land which can be used for farming and grazing does not exceed eleven per cent of the entire area. but norway, like greece, [ ] has an extent of shore-line out of all proportion to its superficial area. so numerous are the fiords, or inlets of the sea, that the total length of the coast approximates twelve thousand miles. slight wonder that the vikings, [ ] as they called themselves, should feel the lure of the ocean and should put forth their frail barks upon the "pathway of the swans" in search of booty and adventure. prehistoric times in scandinavia the swedes and norwegians, together with their kinsmen, the danes, probably settled in scandinavia long before the beginning of the christian era. during the earlier part of the prehistoric period the inhabitants were still in the stone age, but the use of bronze, and then of iron, was gradually introduced. excavations in ancient grave mounds have revealed implements of the finest polished stone, beautiful bronze swords, and coats of iron ring mail, besides gold and silver ornaments which may have been imported from southern europe. the ancient scandinavians have left to us curious records of the past in their picture writing chiseled on the flat surface of rocks. the objects represented include boats with as many as thirty men in them, horses drawing two-wheeled carts, spans of oxen, farmers engaged in ploughing, and warriors on horseback. by the close of the prehistoric period the northern peoples were also familiar with a form of the greek alphabet (the "runes" [ ]) and with the art of writing. . the viking age dawn of history in scandinavia the viking age, with which historic times begin in northern europe, extends from about a.d. to the introduction of christianity in the tenth and eleventh centuries. this was the period when the northmen, or vikings, realizing that the sea offered the quickest road to wealth and conquest, began to make long voyages to foreign lands. in part they went as traders and exchanged the furs, wool, and fish of scandinavia for the clothing, ornaments, and other articles of luxury found in neighboring countries. but it was no far cry from merchant to freebooter, and, in fact, expeditions for the sake of plunder seem to have been even more popular with the northmen than peaceful commerce. the northmen as sailors whether the northmen engaged in trade or in warfare, good ships and good seamanship were indispensable to them. they became the boldest sailors of the early middle ages. no longer hugging the coast, as timid mariners had always done before them, the northmen pushed out into the uncharted main and steered their course only by observation of the sun and stars. in this way the northmen were led to make those remarkable explorations in the atlantic ocean and the polar seas which added so greatly to geographical knowledge. ships of the northmen it was not uncommon for a viking chieftain, after his days of sea-roving had ended, to be buried in his ship, over which a grave chamber, covered with earth, would be erected. the discovery of several of these burial ships enables us to form a good idea of viking vessels. the largest of them might reach a length of seventy feet and hold as many as one hundred and twenty men. a fleet of the northmen, carrying several thousand warriors, mail-clad and armed with spears, swords, and battle-axes, was indeed formidable. during this period the northmen were the masters of the sea, as far as western europe was concerned. this fact largely explains their successful campaigns. [illustration: a viking ship the gokstad vessel is of oak, twenty-eight feet long and sixteen feet broad in the center. it has seats for sixteen pairs of rowers, a mast for a single sail, and a rudder on the right or starboard side. the gunwale was decorated with a series of shields, painted alternately black and gold. this ship, which probably dates from about a.d., was found on the shore of christiania fiord. a still larger ship, of about the same date, was taken in a.d. from the grave of a norwegian queen at oseberg. with the queen had been buried a four-wheeled wagon, three sleighs, three beds, two chests, a chair, a large loom, and various kitchen utensils, in fact everything needed for her comfort in the other world.] the sagas a very important source of information for the viking age consists of the writings called sagas. [ ] these narratives are in prose, but they were based, in many instances, on the songs which the minstrels (_skalds_) sang to appreciative audiences assembled at the banqueting board of a viking chieftain. it was not until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the sagas were committed to writing. this was done chiefly in iceland, and so it happens that we must look to that distant island for the beginnings of scandinavian literature. subject matter of the sagas the sagas belong to different classes. the oldest of them relate the deeds of viking heroes and their families. others deal with the lives of norwegian kings. some of the most important sagas describe the explorations and settlements of the northmen and hence possess considerable value as historical records. the northmen as seen in the sagas the sagas throw much light on the character of the northmen. love of adventure and contempt for the quiet joys of home comes out in the description of viking chiefs, who "never sought refuge under a roof nor emptied their drinking-horns by a hearth." an immense love of fighting breathes in the accounts of viking warriors, "who are glad when they have hopes of a battle; they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes." the undaunted spirit of viking sailors, braving the storms of the northern ocean, expresses itself in their sea songs: "the force of the tempest assists the arms of our oarsmen; the hurricane is our servant, it drives us whithersoever we wish to go." the sagas also reveal other characteristics of the northmen: a cruelty and faithlessness which made them a terror to their foes; an almost barbaric love of gay clothing and ornament; a strong sense of public order, giving rise to an elaborate legal system; and even a feeling for the romantic beauty of their northern home, with its snow-clad mountains, dark forests of pine, sparkling waterfalls, and deep, blue fiords. eddaic poems it is to the viking age also that we owe the composition of the poems going by the name of the _elder edda_. these poems, as well as the prose sagas, were collected and arranged in iceland during the later middle ages. the _elder edda_ is a storehouse of old norse mythology. it forms our chief source of knowledge concerning scandinavian heathenism before the introduction of christianity. . scandinavian heathenism the god odin the religion of the northmen bore a close resemblance to that of the other teutonic peoples. the leading deity was odin (german _woden_), whose exploits are celebrated in many of the songs of the _elder edda_. odin was represented as a tall, gray-bearded chieftain, carrying a shield and a spear which never missed its mark. though a god of battle, odin was also a lover of wisdom. he discovered the runes which gave him secret knowledge of all things. legend told how odin killed a mighty giant, whose body was cut into pieces to form the world: the earth was his flesh, the water his blood, the rocks his bones, and the heavens his skull. having created the world and peopled it with human beings, odin retired to the sacred city of asgard, where he reigned in company with his children. the god thor enthroned beside odin sat his oldest son, thor (german _thunor_), god of thunder and lightning. his weapon, the thunderbolt, was imagined as a hammer, and was especially used by him to protect gods and men against the giants. the hammer, when thrown, returned to his hand of its own accord. thor also possessed a belt of strength, which, when girded about him, doubled his power. thor's deeds of strength many stories were told of thor's adventures, when visiting jötunheim, the abode of the giants. in a drinking-match he tried to drain a horn of liquor, not knowing that one end of the horn reached the sea, which was appreciably lowered by the god's huge draughts. he sought to lift from the ground a large, gray cat, but struggle as he might, could raise only one of the animal's feet. what thor took for a cat, however, was really the midgard serpent, which, with its tail in its mouth, encircled the earth. in the last trial of strength thor wrestled with an old woman, and after a violent contest was thrown down upon one knee. but the hag was in truth relentless old age, who sooner or later lays low all men. myth of balder most beautiful and best beloved of the scandinavian divinities was odin's son, balder. he was represented as a gentle deity of innocence and righteousness. as long as he lived, evil could gain no real control in the world and the power of the gods would remain unshaken. to preserve balder from all danger his mother frigga required everything on earth to swear never to harm her son. only a single plant, the mistletoe, did not take the oath. then the traitor loki gathered the mistletoe and came to an assembly where the gods were hurling all kinds of missiles at balder, to show that nothing could hurt him. loki asked the blind höder to throw the plant at balder. höder did so, and balder fell dead. the gods tried to recover him from hel, the gloomy underworld, but hel demanded as his ransom a tear from every living creature. gods, men, and even things inanimate wept for balder, except one cruel giantess--loki in disguise-- who would not give a single tear. she said, "neither living nor dead was balder of any use to me. let hel keep what it has." "twilight of the gods" disasters followed balder's death. an immense fire burned up the world and the human race. the giants invaded asgard and slaughtered its inhabitants. odin fell a victim to the mighty wolf fenris. thor, having killed the midgard serpent, was suffocated with the venom which the dying monster cast over him. the end of all things arrived. this was the catastrophe which had been predicted of old--the "twilight of the gods." valhalla besides the conception of hel, the northmen also framed the idea of valhalla, [ ] the abode to which odin received the souls of those who had died, not ingloriously in their beds, but on the field of battle. a troop of divine maidens, the valkyries, [ ] rode through the air on odin's service to determine the issue of battles and to select brave warriors for valhalla. there on the broad plains they fought with one another by day, but at evening the slayer and the slain returned to odin's hall to feast mightily on boar's flesh and drink deep draughts of mead. supernatural beings as with most heathen religions that of the northmen was full of terrors. their lively imagination peopled the world with many strange figures. fiends and monsters inhabited the marshes, giants lived in the dark forest, evil spirits haunted all solitary places, and ghosts stalked over the land by night. the use of charms and spells to guard against such creatures passed over into christian times. their memory also survives in folk tales, which are full of allusions to giants, dwarfs, goblins, and other supernatural beings. christianization of the northmen christianity first gained a foothold in denmark through the work of roman catholic missionaries sent out by charlemagne's son, louis the pious. [ ] two centuries elapsed before the danes were completely converted. from denmark the new faith spread to sweden. norway owed its conversion largely to the crusading work of king olaf ( - a.d.), whose zeal for christianity won him the title of olaf the saint. the norwegians carried christianity to iceland, where it supplanted the old heathenism in the year a.d. with the general adoption of the christian religion in scandinavian lands, the viking age drew to an end. [illustration: norse metal work (museum, copenhagen) a door from a church in iceland; date, tenth or eleventh century. the iron knob is inlaid with silver. the slaying of a dragon is represented above and below is shown the midgard serpent.] . the northmen in the west causes of the viking movement the northmen were still heathen when they set forth on their expeditions of plunder and conquest. doubtless the principal cause of this viking movement is to be sought in the same hunger for land which prompted the germanic invasions and, in fact, has led to colonial expansion in all ages. by the ninth century scandinavia could no longer support its rapidly growing population, and enforced emigration was the natural consequence. the political condition of scandinavia at this time also helps to explain the viking expansion. denmark and norway had now become strong kingdoms, whose rulers forced all who would not submit to their sway to leave the country. thus it resulted that the numbers of the emigrants were swelled by exiles, outlaws, and other adventurers who turned to the sea in hope of gain. raids of the northmen the northmen started out as pirates and fell on the coasts of england, france, and germany. in their shallow boats they also found it easy to ascend the rivers and reach places lying far inland. the northmen directed their attacks especially against the churches and monasteries, which were full of treasure and less easily defended than fortified towns. their raids inspired such great terror that a special prayer was inserted in the church services: "from the fury of the northmen, good lord, deliver us." the northmen in ireland, scotland, and the islands at first the incursions of the northmen took place only in summer, but before long they began to winter in the lands which they visited. year by year their fleets became larger, and their attacks changed from mere forays of pirates to well-organized expeditions of conquest and colonization. early in the ninth century we find them making permanent settlements in ireland, and for a time bringing a considerable part of that country under their control. the first cities on irish soil, including dublin and limerick, were founded by the northmen. almost simultaneously with the attacks on ireland came those on the western coast of scotland. in the course of their westward expeditions the northmen had already discovered the faroe islands, the orkneys, the shetlands and the hebrides. these barren and inhospitable islands received large numbers of norse immigrants and long remained under scandinavian control. [illustration: map, discoveries of the northmen in the west] the northmen in iceland the northmen soon discovered iceland, where irish monks had previously settled. colonization began in a.d. [ ] one of the most valuable of the sagas--the "book of the land-taking"--describes the emigration to the island and enumerates the viking chiefs who took part in the movement. iceland soon became almost a second norway in language, literature, and customs. it remains to-day an outpost of scandinavian civilization. the northmen in greenland the first settlement of greenland was the work of an icelander, eric the red, who reached the island toward the end of the tenth century. he called the country greenland, not because it was green, but because, as he said, "there is nothing like a good name to attract settlers." intercourse between greenland and iceland was often dangerous, and at times was entirely interrupted by ice. leif ericsson, the son of eric the red, established a new route of commerce and travel by sailing from greenland to norway by way of the hebrides. this was the first voyage made directly across the atlantic. norway and greenland continued to enjoy a flourishing trade for several centuries. after the connection with norway had been severed, the greenlanders joined the eskimos and mingled with that primitive people. the northmen in america two of the sagas give accounts of a voyage which leif ericsson about a.d. made to regions lying southward from greenland. in the sagas they are called helluland (stone-land), markland (wood-land), and vinland. just what part of the coast of north america these countries occupied is an unsolved problem. leif ericsson and the greenlanders who followed him seem to have reached at least the shores of labrador, newfoundland, and nova scotia. they may have gone even farther southward, for the sagas describe regions where the climate was mild enough for wild vines and wild wheat to grow. the northmen, however, did not follow up their explorations by lasting settlements. before long all memory of the far western lands faded from the minds of men. the curtain fell on the new world, not again to rise until the time of columbus and cabot. . the northmen in the east arctic explorations of the northmen in the viking movement westward across the atlantic the norwegians took the leading part. they also sailed far northward, rounding the north cape and reaching the mouth of the dwina river in the white sea. viking sailors, therefore, have the credit for undertaking the first voyages of exploration into the arctic. the northmen in finland the swedes, on account of their geographical position, were naturally the most active in expeditions to eastern lands. at a very early date they crossed the gulf of bothnia and paid frequent visits to finland. its rude inhabitants, the finns, were related in language, and doubtless in blood also, to the huns, magyars, and other asiatic peoples. sweden ruled finland throughout the middle ages. russia obtained control of the country during the eighteenth century, but swedish influence has made it largely scandinavian in civilization. the northmen in russia the activities of the swedes also led them to establish settlements on the southern shore of the baltic and far inland along the waterways leading into russia. an old russian chronicler declares that in a.d. the slavs sent an embassy to the swedes, whom they called "rus," saying, "our country is large and rich, but there is no order in it; come and rule over us." the swedes were not slow to accept the invitation. their leader, ruric, established a dynasty which reigned in russia for more than seven hundred years. [ ] novgorod and kiev the first russian state centered in the city of novgorod, near lake ilmen, where ruric built a strong fortress. [ ] novgorod during the middle ages was an important station on the trade route between constantinople and the baltic. some of ruric's followers, passing southward along the dnieper river, took possession of the small town of kiev. it subsequently became the capital of the scandinavian possessions in russia. scandinavian influence in russia the northmen in russia maintained close intercourse with their mother country for about two centuries. during this period they did much to open up northeastern europe to the forces of civilization and progress. colonies were founded, cities were built, commerce was fostered, and a stable government was established. russia under the sway of the northmen became for the first time a truly european state. the northmen and the roman empire in the east having penetrated the wilds of russia, it was comparatively easy for the northmen to sail down the russian rivers to the black sea and thence to constantinople. some of them went as raiders and several times devastated the neighborhood of constantinople, until bought off by the payment of tribute. [ ] many northmen also joined the bodyguard of the eastern emperor and saw service under his standard in different parts of the mediterranean. christianity in russia, a.d. during the reign of vladimir, a descendant of ruric, the christian religion gained its first foothold in russia. we are told that vladimir, having made up his mind to embrace a new faith, sent commissioners to rome and constantinople, and also to the adherents of islam and judaism. his envoys reported in favor of the greek church, for their barbarian imagination had been so impressed by the majesty of the ceremonies performed in sancta sophia that "they did not know whether they were on earth or in heaven." vladimir accepted their report, ordered the idols of kiev to be thrown into the dnieper, and had himself and his people baptized according to the rites of the greek church. at the same time he married a sister of the reigning emperor at constantinople. importance of the conversion of russia vladimir's decision to adopt the greek form of christianity is justly regarded as one of the formative influences in russian history. it meant that the slavs were to come under the religious influence of constantinople, instead of under that of rome. furthermore, it meant that byzantine civilization, then incomparably superior to the rude culture of the western peoples, would henceforth gain an entrance into russia. the country profited by this rich civilization and during the early part of the middle ages took a foremost place in europe. charlemagne and the northmen no part of western europe suffered more severely from the northmen than france. they first appeared on the french coast toward the end of charlemagne's reign. a well-known legend relates that the emperor, from window of his palace once saw the dark sails of the vikings and wept at the thought of the misery which these daring pirates would some day inflict upon his realm. the northmen in france after charlemagne's death the wars of his grandsons left the empire defenseless, and the northmen in consequence redoubled their attacks. they sailed far up the seine, the loire, and the garonne to plunder and murder. paris, then a small but important city, lay in the path of the invaders and more than once suffered at their hands. the destruction by the northmen of many monasteries was a loss to civilization, for the monastic establishments at this time were the chief centers of learning and culture. [ ] the northmen in germany the heavy hand of the northmen also descended on germany. the rivers scheldt, meuse, rhine, and elbe enabled them to proceed at will into the heart of the country. liège, cologne, strassburg, hamburg, and other great frankish cities fell before them. viking raiders even plundered aachen and stabled their horses in the church which charlemagne had built there. [ ] thus the ancient homeland of the franks was laid completely waste. rollo and the grant of normandy, a.d. the history of the northmen in france began in a.d., when the carolingian king granted to a viking chieftain, rollo, dominion over the region about the lower seine. rollo on his part agreed to accept christianity and to acknowledge the french ruler as his lord. it is said, however, that he would not kneel and kiss the king's foot as a mark of homage, and that the follower who performed the unwelcome duty did it so awkwardly as to overturn the king, to the great amusement of the assembled northmen. the story illustrates the viking sense of independence. duchy of normandy the district ceded to rollo developed into what in later times was known as the duchy of normandy. its scandinavian settlers, henceforth called normans, [ ] soon became french in language and culture. it was amazing to see how quickly the descendants of wild sea-rovers put off their heathen ways and made their new home a christian land, noted for its churches, monasteries, and schools. normandy remained practically independent till the beginning of the thirteenth century, when a french king added it to his possessions. [ ] the normans and hugh capet, a.d. the normans helped to found the medieval french monarchy. during the tenth century the old carolingian line of rulers, which had already died out in germany and italy, [ ] came also to an end in france. a new dynasty was then founded by a nobleman named hugh capet, who secured the aid of the powerful norman dukes in his efforts to gain the throne. the accession of hugh capet took place in a.d. his descendants reigned over france for almost exactly eight hundred years. [ ] * * * * * . conquest of england by the danes; alfred the great england overrun by the danes even before egbert of wessex succeeded in uniting all the anglo-saxon kingdoms, [ ] bands of vikings, chiefly from denmark, had made occasional forays on the english coast. egbert kept the danes at bay, but he died in a.d., and from that time the real invasion of england began. the danes came over in large numbers, made permanent settlements, and soon controlled all england north of the thames. [illustration: alfred the great a lofty bronze statue by h. thorneycraft set up at winchester alfred's ancient capital. it was dedicated in a.d. on the thousandth anniversary of his death. the inscription reads: "alfred found learning dead, and he restored it, education neglected and he revived it, the laws powerless and he gave them force, the church debased, and he raised it, the land ravaged by a fearful enemy from which he delivered it."] king alfred and the danes wessex before long experienced the full force of the danish attack. the country at this time was ruled by alfred, the grandson of egbert. alfred came to the throne in a.d., when he was only about twenty-three years old. in spite of his youth, he showed himself the right sort of leader for the hard-pressed west saxons. for several years fortune favored the danes. then the tide turned. issuing from the marshes of somersetshire, where he had rallied his dispirited troops, alfred suddenly fell on the enemy and gained a signal success. the beaten danes agreed to make peace and to accept the religion of their conquerors. the danelaw alfred's victory did not end the war. indeed, almost to the end of his reign, the heroic king had to face the vikings, but he always drove them off and even recovered some of the territory north of the thames. the english and danes finally agreed to a treaty dividing the country between them. the eastern part of england, where the invaders were firmly established, came to be called the danelaw, because here the danish, and not the anglo-saxon, law prevailed. in the danelaw the danes have left memorials of themselves in local names [ ] and in the bold, adventurous character of the inhabitants. [illustration: map, england under alfred the great] civilizing activities of alfred it was a well-nigh ruined country which alfred had now to rule over and build up again. his work of restoration invites comparison with that of charlemagne. alfred's first care was to organize a fighting force always ready at his call to repel invasion. he also created an efficient fleet, which patrolled the coast and engaged the vikings on their own element. he had the laws of the anglo-saxons collected and reduced to writing, taking pains at the same time to see that justice was done between man and man. he did much to rebuild the ruined churches and monasteries. alfred labored with especial diligence to revive education among the english folk. his court at winchester became a literary center where learned men wrote and taught. the king himself mastered latin, in order that he might translate latin books into the english tongue. so great were alfred's services in this direction that he has been called "the father of english prose." [illustration: alfred's jewel (ashmolean museum, oxford) a jewel of blue enamel inclosed in a setting of gold, with the words around it "alfred had me wrought." found at athelney in the seventeenth century.] alfred's character alfred alone of english rulers bears the title of "the great." he well deserves it, not only for what he did but for what he was. through the mists of ten centuries his figure still looms large. it is the figure of a brave, patient, and modest man, who wore himself out in the service of his people. the oft-quoted words which he added to one of his translations form a fitting epitaph to this noble king: "my wish was to live worthily as long as i lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works." his wish has been fulfilled. from alfred to the norman conquest, - a.d. about seventy-five years after alfred's death the danes renewed their invasions. it then became necessary to buy them off with an annual tribute called the danegeld. early in the eleventh century canute, the son of a danish king, succeeded in establishing himself on the english throne ( - a.d.). his dynasty did not last long, however, and at length the old west-saxon line was restored in the person of edward the confessor (or "the saint"). edward had spent most of his early life in normandy, and on coming to england brought with him a large following of normans, whom he placed in high positions. during his reign ( - a.d.) norman nobles and churchmen gained a foothold in england, thus preparing the way for the norman conquest of the country. . norman conquest of england; william the conqueror harold and william edward the confessor having left no direct heirs, the choice of his successor fell lawfully upon the witenagemot, [ ] as the national assembly of noblemen and higher clergy was called. this body chose as king, harold, earl of wessex, the leading man in england. harold's right to the succession was disputed by william, duke of normandy, who declared that the crown had been promised to him by his cousin, the confessor. william also asserted that harold had once sworn a solemn oath, over a chest of sacred relics, to support his claim to the throne on edward's death. when word came of harold's election, william wrathfully denounced him as a usurper and began to prepare a fleet and an army for the invasion of england. william's preparations normandy under duke william had become a powerful, well-organized state. norman knights, attracted by promises of wide lands and rich booty, if they should conquer, formed the core of william's forces. adventurers from every part of france, and even from spain and italy, also entered his service. the pope blessed the enterprise and sent to william a ring containing a hair from st. peter's head and a consecrated banner. when all was ready in the late fall of a.d., a large fleet, bearing five or six thousand archers, foot soldiers, and horsemen, crossed the channel and landed in england. [illustration: a scene from the bayeux tapestry (museum of bayeux, normandy) the bayeux tapestry, which almost certainly belongs to the time of the norman conquest, is a strip of coarse linen cloth, about feet long by inches wide, embroidered in worsted thread of eight different colors. there are seventy-two scenes picturing various events in the history of the norman conquest. the illustration given above represents an attack of norman cavalry on the english shield wall at the battle of hastings.] battle of hastings, a.d. william at first met no resistance. harold was far away in the north fighting against the norwegians, who had seized the opportunity to make another descent on the english coast. harold defeated them decisively and then hurried southward to face his new foe. the two armies met near hastings on the road to london. all day they fought. the stout english infantry, behind their wall of shields, threw back one charge after another of the norman knights. again and again the duke rallied his men and led them where the foe was thickest. a cry arose that he was slain. "i live," shouted william, tearing off his helmet that all might see his face, "and by god's help will conquer yet." at last, with the approach of evening, harold was killed by an arrow; his household guard died about him; and the rest of the english took to flight. william pitched his camp on the field of victory, and "sat down to eat and drink among the dead." [illustration: map, dominions of william the conqueror] william becomes king the battle of hastings settled the fate of england. following up his victory with relentless energy, william pressed on to london. that city, now practically the capital of the country, opened its gates to him. the witenagemot, meeting in london offered the throne to william. on christmas day, a.d., in westminster abbey the duke of normandy was crowned king of england. william's personality what manner of man was william the conqueror? tall of stature, endowed with tremendous strength, and brave even to desperation, he seemed an embodiment of the old viking spirit. "no knight under heaven," men said truly, "was william's peer." a savage temper and a harsh, forbidding countenance made him a terror even to his closest followers. "so stern and wrathful was he," wrote an english chronicler, "that none durst do anything against his will." though william never shrank from force or fraud, from bloodshed or oppression, to carry out his ends, he yet showed himself throughout his reign a patron of learning, a sincere supporter of the church, and a statesman of remarkable insight. he has left a lasting impress on english history. . results of the norman conquest norman element in the english people the coming of the normans to england formed the third and last installment of the teutonic invasion. norman merchants and artisans followed norman soldiers and settled particularly in the southern and eastern parts of the island. they seem to have emigrated in considerable numbers and doubtless added an important element to the english population. the normans thus completed the work of the anglo-saxons and danes in making england a teutonic country. norman element in the english language it must be remembered, however, that the normans in normandy had received a considerable intermixture of french blood and had learned to speak a form of the french language (norman-french). in england norman-french naturally was used by the upper and ruling classes--by the court, the nobility, and the clergy. the english held fast to their own homely language, but could not fail to pick up many french expressions, as they mingled with their conquerors in churches, markets, and other places of public resort. it took about three hundred years for french words and phrases to soak thoroughly into their speech. the result was a very large addition to the vocabulary of english. [ ] union of england and normandy until the norman conquest england, because of its insular position, had remained out of touch with continental europe. william the conqueror and his immediate successors were, however, not only rulers of england, but also dukes of normandy and subjects of the french kings. hence, the union of england with normandy brought it at once into the full current of european affairs. the country became for a time almost a part of france and profited by the more advanced civilization which had arisen on french soil. the nobility, the higher clergy, and the officers of government were normans. the architects of the castles and churches, the lawyers, and the men of letters came from normandy. even the commercial and industrial classes were largely recruited from across the channel. england and the papacy the norman conquest much increased the pope's authority over england. the english church, as has been shown, [ ] was the child of rome, but during the anglo-saxon period it had become more independent of the papacy than the churches on the continent. william the conqueror, whose invasion of england took place with the pope's approval, repaid his obligation by bringing the country into closer dependence on the roman pontiff. fusion of english and norman although the normans settled in england as conquerors, yet after all they were near kinsmen of the english and did not long keep separate from them. in normandy a century and a half had been enough to turn the northmen into frenchmen. so in england, at the end of a like period, the normans became englishmen. some of the qualities that have helped to make the modern english a great people--their love of the sea and fondness for adventure, their vigor, self-reliance, and unconquerable spirit--are doubtless derived in good part from the normans. . norman conquest of southern italy and sicily norman expansion southward the conquest of england, judged by its results, proved to be the most important undertaking of the normans. but during this same eleventh century they found another field in which to display their energy and daring. they turned southward to the mediterranean and created a norman state in italy and sicily. conquests of robert guiscard the unsettled condition of italy [ ] gave the normans an opportunity for interference in the affairs of the country. the founding of norman power there was largely the work of a noble named robert guiscard ("the crafty"), a man almost as celebrated as william the conqueror. he had set out from his home in normandy with only a single follower, but his valor and shrewdness soon brought him to the front. robert united the scattered bands of normans in italy, who were fighting for pay or plunder, and wrested from the roman empire in the east its last territories in the peninsula. before his death ( a.d.) most of southern italy had passed under norman rule. roger guiscard's conquests robert's brother, roger, crossed the strait of messina and began the subjugation of sicily, then a moslem possession. its recovery from the hands of "infidels" was considered by the normans a work both pleasing to god and profitable to themselves. by the close of the eleventh century they had finally established their rule in the island. kingdom of the two sicilies the conquests of the normans in southern italy and sicily were united into a single state, which came to be known as the kingdom of the two sicilies. the normans governed it for only about one hundred and fifty years, but under other rulers it lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the present kingdom of italy came into existence. norman culture in the south the kingdom of the two sicilies was well-governed, rich, and strong. art and learning flourished in the cities of naples, salerno, and palermo. southern italy and sicily under the normans became a meeting-point of byzantine and arabic civilization. the norman kingdom formed an important channel through which the wisdom of the east flowed to the north and to the west. . the normans in european history norman faculty of adaptation the conquests of the normans in england, italy, and sicily were effected after they had become a christian and a french-speaking people. in these lands they were the armed missionaries of a civilization not their own. the normans, indeed, invented little and borrowed much. but, like the arabs, they were more than simple imitators. in language, literature, art, religion, and law what they took from others they improved and then spread abroad throughout their settlements. assimilation of the normans it seems at first sight remarkable that a people who occupied so much of western europe should have passed away. normans as normans no longer exist. they lost themselves in the kingdoms which they founded and among the peoples whom they subdued. their rapid assimilation was chiefly the consequence of their small numbers: outside of normandy they were too few long to maintain their identity. normal influence if the normans themselves soon disappeared, their influence was more lasting. their mission, it has been well said, was to be leaders and energizers of society--"the little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump." the peoples of medieval europe owed much to the courage and martial spirit, the genius for government, and the reverence for law, of the normans. in one of the most significant movements of the middle ages--the crusades--they took a prominent part. hence we shall meet them again. studies . what events are associated with the following dates: a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; and a.d.? . what was the origin of the geographical names russia, greenland, finland, and normandy? . mention some of the striking physical contrasts between the arabian and scandinavian peninsulas. . why has the baltic sea been called a "secondary mediterranean"? . how does it happen that the gulf of finland is often frozen over in winter, while even the northernmost of the norse fiords remain open? . why is an acquaintance with scandinavian mythology, literature, and history especially desirable for english-speaking peoples? . what is meant by the "berserker's rage"? . what names of our weekdays are derived from the names of scandinavian deities? . compare the arab and scandinavian conceptions of the future state of departed warriors. . what is meant by "sea-power"? what people possessed it during the ninth and tenth centuries? . compare the invasions of the northmen with those of the germans as to (a) causes, (b) area covered, and (c) results. . what was the significance of the fact that the northmen were not christians at the time when they began their expeditions? . show how the voyages of the northmen vastly increased geographical knowledge. . show that the russian people have received from constantinople their writing, religion, and art. . mention three conquests of england by foreign peoples before a.d. give for each conquest the results and the approximate date. . on the map, page , trace the boundary line between alfred's possessions and those of the danes. . compare alfred and charlemagne as civilizing kings. . compare alfred's cession of the danelaw with the cession of normandy to rollo. . why is hastings included among "decisive" battles? . "we english are not ourselves but somebody else." comment on this statement. . what is meant by the "norman graft upon the sturdy saxon tree"? . what settlements of the northmen most influenced european history? . compare the norman faculty of adaptation with that of the arabs. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter vii, "the saga of a viking"; chapter viii, "alfred the great"; chapter ix, "william the conqueror and the normans in england." [ ] see page . [ ] the word perhaps comes from the old norse _vik_, a bay, and means "one who dwells by a bay or fiord." another meaning assigned to viking is "warrior." [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] the word is derived from old norse _segya_, "to say"; compare german _sagen_. [ ] "hall of the slain." [ ] "choosers of the slain." [ ] see page . [ ] the icelanders in a.d. celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the scandinavian settlement of their island. [ ] russia in a.d. celebrated the millenary of her foundation by ruric. [ ] the norse word for "fort" is preserved in the gorod of novgorod. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] "norman" is a softened form of "northman." [ ] in a.d. normandy celebrated in the ancient capital of rouen the thousandth anniversary of its existence. [ ] see pages , . [ ] the abolition of the french monarchy dates from a.d., when louis xvi was deposed from the throne. [ ] see page . [ ] the east of england contains more than six hundred names of towns ending in _by_ (danish "town"), compare _by-law_, originally a law for a special town. [ ] "meeting of wise men." the word _gemot_ or _moot_ was used for any kind of formal meeting. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xviii feudalism . rise of feudalism a dark age the ninth century in western europe was, as we have learned, [ ] a period of violence, disorder, and even anarchy. charlemagne for a time had arrested the disintegration of society which resulted from the invasions of the germans, and had united their warring tribes under something like a centralized government. but his work, it has been well said, was only a desperate rally in the midst of confusion. after his death the carolingian empire, attacked by the northmen and other invaders and weakened by civil conflicts, broke up into separate kingdoms. decline of royal authority charlemagne's successors in france, germany, and italy enjoyed little real authority. they reigned, but did not rule. under the conditions of the age, it was impossible for a king to govern with a strong hand. the absence of good roads or of other easy means of communication made it difficult for him to move troops quickly from one district to another, in order to quell revolts. even had good roads existed, the lack of ready money would have prevented him from maintaining a strong army devoted to his interests. moreover, the king's subjects, as yet not welded into a nation, felt toward him no sentiments of loyalty and affection. they cared far less for their king, of whom they knew little, than for their own local lords who dwelt near them. increased power of the nobles the decline of the royal authority, from the ninth century onward, meant that the chief functions of government would be more and more performed by the nobles, who were the great landowners of the kingdom. under charlemagne these men had been the king's officials, appointed by him and holding office at his pleasure. under his successors they tended to become almost independent princes. in proportion as this change was accomplished during the middle ages, european society entered upon the stage of feudalism. [ ] parallels to european feudalism feudalism in medieval europe was not a unique development. parallels to it may be found in other parts of the world. whenever the state becomes incapable of protecting life and property, powerful men in each locality will themselves undertake this duty; they will assume the burden of their own defense and of those weaker men who seek their aid. such was the situation in ancient egypt for several hundred years, in medieval persia, and in modern japan until about two generations ago. extent of european feudalism european feudalism arose and flourished in the three countries which had formed the carolingian empire, that is, in france, germany, and northern italy. it also spread to bohemia, hungary, and the christian states of spain. toward the close of the eleventh century the normans transplanted it into england, southern italy, and sicily. during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the crusaders introduced it into the kingdoms which they founded in the east. [ ] still later, in the fourteenth century, the scandinavian countries became acquainted with feudalism. throughout this wide area the institution, though varying endlessly in details, presented certain common features. . feudalism as a system of local government feudal sovereignty the basis of feudal society was usually the landed estate. here lived the feudal noble, surrounded by dependents over whom he exercised the rights of a petty sovereign. he could tax them; he could require them to give him military assistance; he could try them in his courts. a great noble, the possessor of many estates, even enjoyed the privilege of declaring war, making treaties, and coining money. how, it will be asked, did these rights and privileges arise? feudal tenure of land owing to the decay of commerce and industry, land had become practically the only form of wealth in the early middle ages. the king, who in theory was absolute owner of the soil, would pay his officials for their services by giving them the use of a certain amount of land. in the same way one who had received large estates would parcel them out among his followers, in return for their support. sometimes an unscrupulous noble might seize the lands of his neighbors and compel them to become his tenants. sometimes, too, those who owned land in their own right might surrender the title to it in favor of a noble, who then became their protector. the fief an estate in land which a person held of a superior lord, on condition of performing some "honorable" service, was called a fief. at first the tenant received the fief only for a specified term of years or for his lifetime; but in the end it became inheritable. on the death of the tenant his eldest son succeeded him in possession. this right of the first-born son to the whole of the father's estate was known as primogeniture. [ ] if a man had no legal heir, the fief went back to its lord. vassalage the tie which bound the tenant who accepted a fief to the lord who granted it was called vassalage. every holder of land was the vassal of some lord. at the apex of the feudal pyramid stood the king, the supreme landlord, who was supposed to hold his land from god; below the king stood the greater lords (dukes, marquises, counts, and barons), with large estates; and below them stood the lesser lords, or knights, whose possessions were too small for further subdivision. personal services of the vassal the vassal, first of all, owed various services to the lord. in time of war he did garrison duty at the lord's castle and joined him in military expeditions. in time of peace the vassal attended the lord on ceremonial occasions, gave him the benefit of his advice, when required, and helped him as a judge in trying cases. the vassal's money payments under certain circumstances the vassal was also compelled to make money payments. when a new heir succeeded to the fief, the lord received from him a sum usually money equivalent to one year's revenue of the estate. this payment was called a "relief." again, if a man sold his fief, the lord demanded another large sum from the purchaser, before giving his consent to the transaction. vassals were also expected to raise money for the lord's ransom, in case he was made prisoner of war, to meet the expenses connected with the knighting of his eldest son, and to provide a dowry for his eldest daughter. such exceptional payments went by the name of "aids." the lord's duty to the vassal the vassal, in return for his services and payments, looked to the lord for the protection of life and property. the lord agreed to secure him in the enjoyment of his fief, to guard him against his enemies, and to see that in all matters he received just treatment. this was no slight undertaking. homage the ceremony of homage [ ] symbolized the whole feudal relationship. one who proposed to become a vassal and hold a fief came into the lord's presence, bareheaded and unarmed, knelt down, placed his hands between those of the lord, and promised henceforth to become his "man." the lord then kissed him and raised him to his feet. after the ceremony the vassal placed his hand upon the bible or upon sacred relics and swore to remain faithful to his lord. this was the oath of "fealty." the lord then gave the vassal some object--a stick, a clod of earth, a lance, or a glove--in token of the fief with the possession of which he was now "invested." feudal government a substitute for anarchy it is clear that the feudal method of land tenure, coupled with the custom of vassalage, made in some degree for security and order. each noble was attached to the lord above him by the bond of personal service and the oath of fidelity. to his vassals beneath him he was at once protector, benefactor, and friend. unfortunately, feudal obligations were far less strictly observed in practice than in theory. both lords and vassals often broke their engagements, when it seemed profitable to do so. hence they had many quarrels and indulged in constant warfare. but feudalism, despite its defects, was better than anarchy. the feudal lords drove back the pirates and hanged the brigands and enforced the laws, as no feeble king could do. they provided a rude form of local government for a rude society. . feudal justice feudalism as a system of local justice feudalism was not only a system of local government; it was also a system of local justice. knights, barons, counts, and dukes had their separate courts, and the king had his court above all. cases arising on the lord's estate were tried before him and the vassals whom he called to his assistance in giving justice. since most wrongs could be atoned for by the payment of a fine, the conduct of justice on a large fief produced a considerable income. the nobles, accordingly, regarded their judicial rights as a valuable property, which they were loath to surrender to the state. judicial administration the law followed in a feudal court was largely based on old germanic customs. the court did not act in the public interest, as with us, but waited until the plaintiff requested service. moreover, until the case had been decided, the accuser and the accused received the same treatment. both were imprisoned; and the plaintiff who lost his case suffered the same penalty which the defendant, had he been found guilty, would have undergone. the oath unlike a modern court, again, the feudal court did not require the accuser to prove his case by calling witnesses and having them give testimony. the burden of proof lay on the accused, who had to clear himself of the charge, if he could do so. in one form of trial it was enough for him to declare his innocence under oath, and then to bring in several "oath- helpers," sometimes relatives, but more often neighbors, who swore that they believed him to be telling the truth. the number of these "oath- helpers" varied according to the seriousness of the crime and the rank of the accused. this method was hardly as unsatisfactory as it seems to be, for a person of evil reputation might not be able to secure the required number of friends who would commit perjury on his behalf. to take an oath was a very solemn proceeding; it was an appeal to god, by which a man called down on himself divine punishment if he swore falsely. ordeals the consequences of a false oath were not apparent at once. ordeals, however, formed a method of appealing to god, the results of which could be immediately observed. a common form of ordeal was by fire. the accused walked barefoot over live brands, or stuck his hand into a flame, or carried a piece of red-hot iron for a certain distance. in the ordeal by hot water he plunged his arm into boiling water. a man established his innocence through one of these tests, if the wound healed properly after three days. the ordeal by cold water rested on the belief that pure water would reject the criminal. hence the accused was thrown bound into a stream: if he floated he was guilty; if he sank he was innocent and had to be rescued. though a crude method of securing justice, ordeals were doubtless useful in many instances. the real culprit would often prefer to confess, rather than incur the anger of god by submitting to the test. the judicial duel a form of trial which especially appealed to the warlike nobles was the judicial duel. [ ] the accuser and the accused fought with each other; and the conqueror won the case. god, it was believed, would give victory to the innocent party, because he had right on his side. when one of the adversaries could not fight, he secured a champion to take his place. though the judicial duel finally went out of use in the law courts, it still continued to be employed privately, as a means of settling disputes which involved a man's honor. the practice of dueling is only now dying out in civilized communities. [illustration: trial by combat from a manuscript of the fifteenth century.] feudal and roman law oaths, ordeals, and duels formed an inheritance from germanic antiquity. [ ] they offered a sharp contrast to roman law, which acted in the public interest, balanced evidence, and sought only to get at the truth. after the middle of the twelfth century the revival of the study of roman law, as embodied in justinian's code, [ ] led gradually to the abandonment of most forms of appeal to the judgment of god. at the same time the kings grew powerful enough to take into their own hands the administration of justice. . feudal warfare feudalism as a system of local defense feudalism, once more, was a system of local defense. the knight must guard his small estate, the baron his barony, the count his county, the duke his duchy. at the lord's bidding the vassal had to follow him to war, either alone or with a certain number of men, according to the size of the fief. but this assistance was limited. a vassal served only for a definite period (varying from one month to three in the year), and then only within a reasonable distance from the lands for which he did homage. these restrictions made it difficult to conduct a lengthy campaign, or one far removed from the vassal's fief, unless mercenary soldiers were employed. the feudal army the feudal army, as a rule, consisted entirely of cavalry. such swiftly moving assailants as the northmen and the magyars could best be dealt with by mounted men who could bring them to bay, compel them to fight, and overwhelm them by the shock of the charge. in this way the foot soldiers of charlemagne's time came to be replaced by the mailed horsemen who for four centuries or more dominated european battlefields. [illustration: mounted knight seal of robert fitzwalter, showing a mounted knight in complete mail armor; date about a.d.] arms and armor the armor used in the middle ages was gradually perfected, until at length the knight became a living fortress. [ ] in the early feudal period he wore a cloth or leather tunic covered with iron rings or scales, and an iron cap with a nose guard. about the beginning of the twelfth century he adopted chain mail, with a hood of the same material for the head. during the fourteenth century the knight began to wear heavy plate armor, weighing fifty pounds or more, and a helmet with a visor which could be raised or lowered. thus completely incased in metal, provided with shield, lance, straight sword or battle-ax, and mounted on a powerful horse, the knight could ride down almost any number of poorly armed peasants. not till the development of missile weapons--the longbow, and later the musket--did the foot soldier resume his importance in warfare. the feudal age by this time was drawing to a close. prevalence of private war the nobles regarded the right of waging war on one another as their most cherished privilege. fighting became almost a form of business enterprise, which enriched the lords and their retainers through the sack of castles, the plunder of villages, and the ransom of prisoners. every hill became a stronghold and every plain a battlefield. such neighborhood warfare, though rarely very bloody, spread terrible havoc throughout the land. the peace and truce of god the church, to its great honor, lifted a protesting voice against this evil. it proclaimed a "peace of god" and forbade attacks on all defenseless people, including priests, monks, pilgrims, merchants, peasants, and women. but it was found impossible to prevent the feudal lords from warring with each other, even though they were threatened with the eternal torments of hell; and so the church tried to restrict what it could not altogether abolish. a "truce of god" was established. all men were to cease fighting from wednesday evening to monday morning of each week, during lent, and on various holy days. the truce would have given christendom peace for about two hundred and forty days each year; but it seems never to have been strictly observed except in limited areas. abolition of private warfare as the power of the kings increased in western europe, they naturally sought to put an end to the constant fighting between their subjects. the norman rulers of normandy, england, and sicily restrained their turbulent nobles with a strong hand. peace came later in most parts of the continent; in germany, "fist right" (the rule of the strongest) prevailed until the end of the fifteenth century. the abolition of private war was the first step in europe toward universal peace. the second step--the abolition of public war between nations--is yet to be taken. . the castle and life of the nobles development of the castle the outward mark of feudalism was the castle, [ ] where the lord resided and from which he ruled his fief. in its earliest form the castle was simply a wooden blockhouse placed on a mound and surrounded by a stockade. about the beginning of the twelfth century the nobles began to build in stone, which would better resist fire and the assaults of besiegers. a stone castle consisted at first of a single tower, square or round, with thick walls, few windows, and often with only one room to each story. [ ] as engineering skill increased, several towers were built and were then connected by outer and inner walls. the castle thus became a group of fortifications, which might cover a wide area. [illustration: plan of chÂteau gaillard the plan is intended to represent that of a typical castle, as the plan of kirkstall abbey represents that of a typical monastery.] [illustration: pierrefonds a castle near paris built about a.d. by a brother of the king of france. it was dismantled in a.d., but was carefully restored in the nineteenth century by order of napoleon iii. the exterior faithfully reproduces the appearance of a medieval fortress.] the castle as a fortress defense formed the primary purpose of the castle. until the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, the only siege engines employed were those known in ancient times. they included machines for hurling heavy stones and iron bolts, battering rams, and movable towers, from which the besiegers crossed over to the walls. such engines could best be used on firm, level ground. consequently, a castle would often be erected on a high cliff or hill, or on an island, or in the center of a swamp. a castle without such natural defenses would be surrounded by a deep ditch (the "moat"), usually filled with water. if the besiegers could not batter down or undermine the massive walls, they adopted the slower method of a blockade and tried to starve the garrison into surrendering. but ordinarily a well-built, well- provisioned castle was impregnable. behind its frowning battlements even a petty lord could defy a royal army. [illustration: chÂteau gaillard (restored) the finest of all medieval castles. located on a high hill overlooking the seine about twenty miles from rouen. built by richard the lion hearted within a twelvemonth ( - ad) and by him called saucy castle. it was captured a few years later by the french king philip augustus and was dismantled early in the seventeenth century. the castle consisted of three distinct series of fortifications, besides the keep which in this case was merely a strong tower.] a castle described a visitor to a medieval castle crossed the drawbridge over the moat and approached the narrow doorway, which was protected by a tower on each side. if he was admitted, the iron grating ("portcullis") rose slowly on its creaking pulleys, the heavy, wooden doors swung open, and he found himself in the courtyard commanded by the great central tower ("keep"), where the lord and his family lived, especially in time of war. at the summit of the keep rose a platform whence the sentinel surveyed the country far and wide; below, two stories underground, lay the prison, dark, damp, and dirty. as the visitor walked about the court-yard, he came upon the hall, used as the lord's residence in time of peace, the armory, the chapel, the kitchens, and the stables. a spacious castle might contain, in fact, all the buildings necessary for the support of the lord's servants and soldiers. [illustration: king and jester from a manuscript of the early fifteenth century.] the castle as a residence the medieval castle formed a good fortress, but a poor home. its small rooms, lighted only by narrow windows, heated only by fireplaces, badly ventilated, and provided with little furniture, must have been indeed cheerless. toward the close of the feudal period, when life became more luxurious, the castle began to look less like a dungeon. windows were widened and provided with panes of painted glass, walls were hung with costly tapestries, and floors were covered with thick oriental rugs. the nobles became attached to their castle homes and often took their names from those of their estates. amusements of the nobles life within the castle was very dull. there were some games, especially chess, which the nobles learned from the moslems. banqueting, however, formed the chief indoor amusement. the lord and his retainers sat down to a gluttonous feast and, as they ate and drank, watched the pranks of a professional jester or listened to the songs and music of ministrels or, it may be, heard with wonder the tales of far-off countries brought by some returning traveler. outside castle walls a common sport was hunting in the forests and game preserves attached to every estate. deer, bears, and wild boars were hunted with hounds; for smaller animals trained hawks, or falcons, were employed. but the nobles, as we have just seen, found in fighting their chief outdoor occupation and pastime. "to play a great game" was their description of a battle. [illustration: falconry from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the bibliothèque nationale, paris.] . knighthood and chivalry apprenticeship of the knight the prevalence of warfare in feudal times made the use of arms a profession requiring special training. a nobleman's son served for a number of years, first as a page, then as a squire, in his father's castle or in that of some other lord. he learned to manage a horse, to climb a scaling ladder, to wield sword, battle-ax, and lance. he also waited on the lord's table, assisted him at his toilet, followed him in the chase, and attended him in battle. this apprenticeship usually lasted from five to seven years. conferring of knighthood when the young noble became of age, he might be made a knight, if he deserved the honor and could afford the expense. the ceremony of conferring knighthood was often most elaborate. the candidate fasted, took a bath--the symbol of purification--and passed the eve of his admission in prayer. next morning he confessed his sins, went to mass, and listened to a sermon on the duties of knighthood. this ended, his father, or the noble who had brought him up, girded him with a sword and gave him the "accolade," that is, a blow on the neck or shoulder, at the same time saying, "be thou a good knight." then the youth, clad in shining armor and wearing golden spurs, mounted his horse and exhibited his skill in warlike exercises. if a squire for valorous conduct received knighthood on the battlefield, the accolade by stroke of the sword formed the only ceremony. chivalry in course of time, as manners softened and christian teachings began to affect feudal society, knighthood developed into chivalry. the church, which opposed the warlike excesses of feudalism, took the knight under her wing and bade him be always a true soldier of christ. to the rude virtues of fidelity to one's lord and bravery in battle, the church added others. the "good knight" was he who respected his sworn word, who never took an unfair advantage of another, who defended women, widows, and orphans against their oppressors, and who sought to make justice and right prevail in the world. chivalry thus marked the union of pagan and christian virtues, of christianity and the profession of arms. the chivalric code needless to say, the "good knight" appears rather in romance than in sober history. such a one was sir lancelot, in the stories of king arthur and the round table. [ ] as sir lancelot lies in death, a former companion addresses him in words which sum up the best in the chivalric code: "'thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou wert the truest lover among sinful men that ever loved woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man, and the gentlest, that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.'" [ ] jousts and tournaments the all-absorbing passion for fighting led to the invention of mimic warfare in the shape of jousts and tournaments. [ ] these exercises formed the medieval equivalent of the greek athletic games and the roman gladiatorial shows. the joust was a contest between two knights; the tournament, between two bands of knights. the contests took place in a railed-off space, called the "lists," about which the spectators gathered. each knight wore upon his helmet the scarf or color of his lady and fought with her eyes upon him. victory went to the one who unhorsed his opponent or broke in the proper manner the greatest number of lances. the beaten knight forfeited horse and armor and had to pay a ransom to the conqueror. sometimes he lost his life, especially when the participants fought with real weapons and not with blunted lances and pointless swords. the church now and then tried to stop these performances, but they remained universally popular until the close of the middle ages. influence of chivalry chivalry arose with feudalism, formed, in fact, the religion of feudalism, and passed away only when the changed conditions of society made feudalism an anachronism. [ ] while chivalry lasted, it produced some improvement in manners, particularly by insisting on the notion of personal honor and by fostering greater regard for women (though only for those of the upper class). our modern notion of the conduct befitting a "gentleman" goes back to the old chivalric code. chivalry expressed, however, simply the sentiments of the warlike nobles. it was an aristocratic ideal. the knight despised and did his best to keep in subjection the toiling peasantry, upon whose backs rested the real burden of feudal society. . feudalism as a system of local industry decline of urban life under the roman empire western europe had been filled with flourishing cities. [ ] the germanic invasions led to a gradual decay of trade and manufacturing, and hence of the cities in which these activities centered. as urban life declined, the mass of the population came to live more and more in isolated rural communities. this was the great economic feature of the early middle ages. feudalism and rural life the introduction of feudalism fostered the movement from town to country, for feudalism, as has been shown, rested on the soil as its basis. the lord, his family, his servants, and his retainers were supported by the income from landed property. the country estate of a lord was known as a manor. the manor a manor naturally varied in size, according to the wealth of its lord. in england perhaps six hundred acres represented the extent of an average estate. every noble had at least one manor; great nobles might have several manors, usually scattered throughout the country; and even the king depended on his many manors for the food supply of the court. england, during the period following the norman conquest, contained more than nine thousand of these manorial estates. [ ] common cultivation of the arable land of the arable land of the manor the lord reserved as much as needful for his own use. the lord's land was called his "demesne," or domain. the rest of the land he allotted to the peasants who were his tenants, they cultivated their holdings in common. a farmer, instead of having his land in one compact mass, had it split up into a large number of small strips (usually about half an acre each) scattered over the manor, and separated, not by fences or hedges, but by banks of unplowed turf. the appearance of a manor, when under cultivation, has been likened to a vast checkerboard or a patchwork quilt. [ ] the reason for the intermixture of strips seems to have been to make sure that each farmer had a portion both of the good land and of the bad. it is obvious that this arrangement compelled all the peasants to labor according to a common plan. a man had to sow the same kinds of crops as his neighbors, and to till and reap them at the same time. agriculture, under such circumstances, could not fail to be unprogressive. [illustration: farm work in the fourteenth century plowing, harrowing, cutting weeds, reaping.] farming methods in other ways, too, agriculture was very backward. farmers did not know how to enrich the soil by the use of fertilizers or how to provide for a proper rotation of crops. hence each year they cultivated only two-thirds of the land, letting the other third lie "fallow" (uncultivated), that it might recover its fertility. it is said that eight or nine bushels of grain represented the average yield of an acre. farm animals were small, for scientific breeding had not yet begun. a full-grown ox reached a size scarcely larger than a calf of to-day, and the fleece of a sheep often weighed less than two ounces. farm implements were few and clumsy. the wooden ploughs only scratched the ground. harrowing was done with a hand implement little better than a large rake. grain was cut with a sickle, and grass was mown with a scythe. it took five men a day to reap and bind the harvest of two acres. common use of the non-arable land besides his holding of farm land, which in england averaged about thirty acres, each peasant had certain rights over the non-arable land of the manor. he could cut a limited amount of hay from the meadow. he could turn so many farm animals--cattle, geese, swine--on the waste. he also enjoyed the privilege of taking so much wood from the forest for fuel and building purposes. a peasant's holding, which also included a house in the village, thus formed a complete outfit. . the village and life of the peasants a village described the peasants on a manor lived close together in one or more villages. their small, thatch-roofed, and one-roomed houses would be grouped about an open space (the "green"), or on both sides of a single, narrow street. the only important buildings were the parish church, the parsonage, a mill, if a stream ran through the manor, and possibly a blacksmith's shop. the population of one of these villages often did not exceed one hundred souls. a village as self-sufficing perhaps the most striking feature of a medieval village was its self- sufficiency. the inhabitants tried to produce at home everything they required, in order to avoid the uncertainty and expense of trade. the land gave them their food; the forest provided them with wood for houses and furniture. they made their own clothes of flax, wool, and leather. their meal and flour were ground at the village mill, and at the village smithy their farm implements were manufactured. the chief articles which needed to be brought from some distant market were salt, used to salt down farm animals killed in autumn, iron for various tools, and millstones. cattle, horses, and surplus grain also formed common objects of exchange between manors. hard lot of the peasantry life in a medieval village was rude and rough. the peasants labored from sunrise to sunset, ate coarse fare, lived in huts, and suffered from frequent pestilences. they were often the helpless prey of the feudal nobles. if their lord happened to be a quarrelsome man, given to fighting with his neighbors, they might see their lands ravaged, their cattle driven off, their village burned, and might themselves be slain. even under peaceful conditions the narrow, shut-in life of the manor could not be otherwise than degrading. alleviations of the peasant's lot yet there is another side to the picture. if the peasants had a just and generous lord, they probably led a fairly comfortable existence. except when crops failed, they had an abundance of food, and possibly wine or cider drink. they shared a common life in the work of the fields, in the sports of the village green, and in the services of the parish church. they enjoyed many holidays; it has been estimated that, besides sundays, about eight weeks in every year were free from work. festivities at christmas, easter, and may day, at the end of ploughing and the completion of harvest, relieved the monotony of the daily round of labor. [ ] perhaps these medieval peasants were not much worse off than the agricultural laborers in most countries of modern europe. [illustration: plan of hitchin manor, hertfordshire lord's demesne, diagonal lines. meadow and pasture lands, dotted areas. normal holding of a peasant, black strips.] . serfdom freemen, slaves, and serfs a medieval village usually contained several classes of laborers. there might be a number of freemen, who paid a fixed rent, either in money or produce, for the use of their land. then there might also be a few slaves in the lord's household or at work on his domain. by this time, however, slavery had about died out in western europe. most of the peasants were serfs. nature of serfdom serfdom represented a stage between slavery and freedom. a slave belonged to his master; he was bought and sold like other chattels. a serf had a higher position, for he could not be sold apart from the land nor could his holding be taken from him. he was fixed to the soil. on the other hand a serf ranked lower than a freeman, because he could not change his abode, nor marry outside the manor, nor bequeath his goods, without the permission of his lord. obligations of the serf the serf did not receive his land as a free gift; for the use of it he owed certain duties to his master. these took chiefly the form of personal services. he must labor on the lord's domain for two or three days each week, and at specially busy seasons, such as ploughing and harvesting, he must do extra work. at least half his time was usually demanded by the lord. the serf had also to make certain payments, either in money or more often in grain, honey, eggs, or other produce. when he ground the wheat or pressed the grapes which grew on his land, he must use the lord's mill, the lord's wine-press, and pay the customary charge. in theory the lord could tax his serfs as heavily and make them work as hard as he pleased, but the fear of losing his tenants doubtless in most cases prevented him from imposing too great burdens on them. origin of serfdom serfdom developed during the later centuries of the roman empire and in the early middle ages. it was well established by the time of charlemagne. most serfs seem to have been the descendants, or at least the successors, of roman slaves, whose condition had gradually improved. the serf class was also recruited from the ranks of freemen, who by conquest or because of the desire to gain the protection of a lord, became subject to him. serfdom, however, was destined to be merely a transitory condition. by the close of medieval times, the serfs in most parts of western europe had secured their freedom. [ ] . decline of feudalism duration of feudalism feudalism had a vigorous life for about five hundred years. taking definite form early in the ninth century, it flourished throughout the later middle ages, but became decadent by the opening of the fourteenth century. forces opposed to feudalism: the kings as a system of local government, feudalism tended to pass away when the rulers in england, france, and spain, and later in germany and italy, became powerful enough to put down private warfare, execute justice, and maintain order everywhere in their dominions. the kings were always anti- feudal. we shall study in a later chapter (chapter xxii) the rise of strong governments and centralized states in western europe. forces opposed to feudalism: the cities as a system of local industry, feudalism could not survive the great changes of the later middle ages, when reviving trade, commerce, and manufactures had begun to lead to the increase of wealth, the growth of markets, and the substitution of money payments for those in produce or services. flourishing cities arose, as in the days of the roman empire, freed themselves from the control of the nobles, and became the homes of liberty and democracy. the cities, like the kings, were always anti- feudal. we shall deal with their development in a subsequent chapter (chapter xxiii). the church and feudalism there was still another anti-feudal force, namely, the roman church. it is true that many of the higher clergy were feudal lords, and that even the monasteries owned vast estates which were parceled out among tenants. nevertheless, the roman church as a universal organization, including men of all ranks and classes, was necessarily opposed to feudalism, a local and an aristocratic system. the work and influence of this church will now engage our attention. studies . write a brief essay on feudal society, using the following words: lord; vassal; castle; keep; dungeon; chivalry; tournament; manor; and serf. . explain the following terms: vassal; fief; serf; "aid"; homage; squire; investiture; and "relief." . look up the origin of the words homage, castle, dungeon, and chivalry. . "the real heirs of charlemagne were from the first neither the kings of france nor those of italy or germany; but the feudal lords." comment on this statement. . why was the feudal system not found in the roman empire in the east during the middle ages? . why has feudalism been called "confusion roughly organized"? . contrast feudalism as a political system with (a) the classical city- states, (b) the roman empire, and (c) modern national states. . what was the effect of feudalism on the sentiment of patriotism? . what are some of the advantages and disadvantages of primogeniture as the rule of inheritance? . explain these phrases: "to be in hot water;" "to go through fire and water;" and "to haul over the coals." . compare the oaths administered to witnesses in modern courts with medieval oaths. . why was war the usual condition of feudal society? . compare the "peace of god" with the earlier "roman peace" (_pax romana_). . mention some modern comforts and luxuries which were unknown in feudal castles. . what is the present meaning of the word "chivalrous"? how did it get that meaning? . why has chivalry been called "the blossom of feudalism"? . contrast the ideal of a chivalry with that of monasticism. . show that the serf was not a slave or a "hired man" or a tenant-farmer paying rent. footnotes [ ] see page . [ ] the word has nothing to do with "feuds," though these were common enough in feudal times. it comes from the medieval latin _feudum_, from which are desired the french _fief_ and the english _fee_. [ ] see pages , . [ ] the practice of primogeniture has now been abolished by the laws of the various european countries and is not recognized in the united states. it still prevails, however, in england. [ ] latin _homo_, "man." [ ] sir walter scott's novel, _ivanhoe_ (chapter xliii), contains an account of a judicial duel. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the illustrations, pages , , , . [ ] the french form of the word is _château_. [ ] a good example is the "white tower," which forms a part of the tower of london. it was built by william the conqueror. see the illustration, page . [ ] see page . [ ] malory, _morte d'arthur_, xxi, . see also tennyson's poem, _sir galahad_, for a beautiful presentation of the ideal knight. [ ] sir walter scott's novel, _ivanhoe_ (chapter xii), contains a description of a tournament. [ ] _don quixote_, by the spanish writer, cervantes ( - a.d.), is a famous satire on chivalry. our american "mark twain" also stripped off the gilt and tinsel of chivalry in his amusing story entitled _a connecticut yankee at the court of king arthur_. [ ] see page . [ ] according to domesday book (see page ) there were manors, of which william the conqueror possessed . his manors lay in about thirty counties. [ ] this "open field" system of agriculture, as it is usually called, still survives in some parts of europe. see the plan of hitchin manor, page . [ ] see page - . [ ] see page . chapter xix the papacy and the holy roman empire, - a.d. [ ] . characteristics of the medieval church the roman church a preceding chapter dealt with the christian church in the east and west during the early middle ages. we learned something about its organization, belief, and worship, about the rise and growth of the papacy, about monasticism, and about that missionary campaign which won all europe to christianity. our narrative extended to the middle of the eleventh century, when the quarrel between pope and patriarch led at length to the disruption of christendom. we have now to consider the work and influence of the roman church during later centuries of the middle ages. territorial extent of the church the church at the height of its power held spiritual sway over all western europe. italy and sicily, the larger part of spain, france, germany, hungary, poland, british isles, denmark, sweden, norway, and iceland yielded obedience to the pope of rome. the church as universal membership in the church was not a matter of free choice. all people, except jews, were required to belong to it. a person joined the church by baptism, a rite usually performed in infancy, and remained in it as long as he lived. every one was expected to conform, at least outwardly, to the doctrines and practices of the church, and anyone attacking its authority was liable to punishment by the state. the church as international the presence of one church throughout the western world furnished a bond of union between european peoples during the age of feudalism. the church took no heed of political boundaries, for men of all nationalities entered the ranks of the priesthood and joined the monastic orders. priests and monks were subjects of no country, but were "citizens of heaven," as they sometimes called themselves. even difference of language counted for little in the church, since latin was the universal speech of the educated classes. one must think, then, of the church as a great international state, in form a monarchy, presided over by the pope, and with its capital at rome. twofold duties of the church the church in the middle ages performed a double task. on the one hand it gave the people religious instruction and watched over their morals; on the other hand it played an important part in european politics and provided a means of government. because the church thus combined ecclesiastical and civil functions, it was quite unlike all modern churches, whether greek, roman, or protestant. both sides of its activities deserve, therefore, to be considered. . church doctrine and worship "the gate of heaven." in medieval times every loyal member of the church accepted without question its authority in religious matters. the church taught a belief in a personal god, all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, to know whom was the highest goal of life. the avenue to this knowledge lay through faith in the revelation of god, as found in the scriptures. since the unaided human reason could not properly interpret the scriptures, it was necessary for the church, through her officers, to declare their meaning and set forth what doctrines were essential to salvation. the church thus appeared as the sole repository of religious knowledge, as "the gate of heaven." the sacramental system salvation did not depend only on the acceptance of certain beliefs. there were also certain acts, called "sacraments," in which the faithful christian must participate, if he was not to be cut off eternally from god. these acts formed channels of heavenly grace; they saved man from the consequences of his sinful nature and filled him with "the fullness of divine life." since priests alone could administer the sacraments, [ ] the church presented itself as the necessary mediator between god and man. baptism, confirmation, matrimony, and extreme unction by the thirteenth century seven sacraments were generally recognized. four of these marked critical stages in human life, from the cradle to the grave. baptism cleansed the child from the taint of original sin and admitted him into the christian community. confirmation gave him full church fellowship. matrimony united husband and wife in holy bonds which might never be broken. extreme unction, the anointing with oil of one mortally ill, purified the soul and endowed it with strength to meet death. penance penance held an especially important place in the sacramental system. at least once a year the christian must confess his sins to a priest. if he seemed to be truly repentant, the priest pronounced the solemn words of absolution and then required him to accept some punishment, which varied according to the nature of the offense. there was a regular code of penalties for such sins as drunkenness, avarice, perjury, murder, and heresy. penances often consisted in fasting, reciting prayers, abstaining from one's ordinary amusements, or beating oneself with bundles of rods. a man who had sinned grievously might be ordered to engage in charitable work, to make a contribution in money for the support of the church, or to go on a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine. the more distant and difficult a pilgrimage, the more meritorious it was, especially if it led to some very holy place, such as rome or jerusalem. people might also become monks in order to atone for evil-doing. this system of penitential punishment referred only to the earthly life; it was not supposed to cleanse the soul for eternity. holy eucharist the sacrament of the holy eucharist, generally known as the mass, formed the central feature of worship. it was more than a common meal in commemoration of the last supper of christ with the apostles. it was a solemn ceremony, by which the christian believed himself to receive the body and blood of christ, under the form of bread and wine. [ ] the right of the priest to withhold the eucharist from any person, for good cause, gave the church great power, because the failure to partake of this sacrament imperiled one's chances of future salvation. it was also supposed that the benefits of the ceremony in purifying from sin might be enjoyed by the dead in purgatory; hence masses were often said for the repose of their souls. ordination the seventh and last sacrament, that of ordination, or "holy orders," admitted persons to the priesthood. according to the view of the church the rite had been instituted by christ, when he chose the apostles and sent them forth to preach the gospel. from the apostles, who ordained their successors, the clergy in all later times received their exalted authority. [ ] ordination conferred spiritual power and set such an indelible mark on the character that one who had been ordained could never become a simple layman again. [illustration: pilgrims to canterbury from a medieval manuscript. canterbury with its cathedral appears in the background. the shrine of thomas becket, archbishop of canterbury, formed a celebrated resort for medieval pilgrims. the archbishop had been murdered in the church ( a.d.), if not at the instigation, at any rate without the opposition of king henry ii, whose policies he opposed. becket, who was regarded as a martyr, soon received canonization. miracles were said to be worked at his grave and at the well in which his bloody garments had been washed. he remained the most popular saint in england until the protestant reformation in the sixteenth century, when his shrine was destroyed.] reverence for saints the church did not rely solely on the sacramental system as a means to salvation. it was believed that holy persons, called saints, [ ] who had died and gone to heaven, offered to god their prayers for men. hence the practice arose of invoking the aid of the saints in all the concerns of life. the earliest saints were christian martyrs, [ ] who had sealed their faith with their blood. in course of time many other persons, renowned for pious deeds, were exalted to sainthood. the making of a new saint, after a rigid inquiry into the merits of the person whom it is proposed to honor, is now a privilege reserved to the pope. devotion to the virgin high above all the saints stood the virgin mary, the mother of god. devotion to her as the "queen of heaven" increased rapidly in the church after the time of gregory the great. the popularity of her cult owed not a little to the influence of chivalry, [ ] for the knight, who vowed to cherish womanhood, saw in the virgin the ideal woman. everywhere churches arose in her honor, and no cathedral or abbey lacked a chapel dedicated to our lady. relics the growing reverence for saints led to an increased interest in relics. these included the bones of a saint and shreds of his garments, besides such objects as the wood or nails of the cross on which christ suffered. relics were not simply mementos; they were supposed to possess miraculous power which passed into them through contact with holy persons. this belief explains the use of relics to heal diseases, to ward off danger, and, in general, to bring good fortune. an oath taken upon relics was especially sacred. [ ] every church building contained a collection of relics, sometimes amounting to thousands in number, and even private persons often owned them. purgatory the church also taught a belief in purgatory as a state or place of probation. [ ] here dwelt the souls of those who were guilty of no mortal sins which would condemn them to hell, but yet were burdened with imperfections which prevented them from entering heaven. such imperfections, it was held, might be removed by the prayers of the living, and hence the practice arose of praying for the dead. . church jurisdiction church courts the church had regular courts and a special system of law [ ] for the trial of offenders against its regulations. many cases, which to-day would be decided according to the civil or criminal law of the state, in the middle ages came before the ecclesiastical courts. since marriage was considered a sacrament, the church took upon itself to decide what marriages were lawful. it forbade the union of first cousins, of second cousins, and of godparents and godchildren. it refused to sanction divorce, for whatever cause, if both parties at the time of marriage had been baptized christians. the church dealt with inheritance under wills, for a man could not make a legal will until he had confessed, and confession formed part of the sacrament of penance. all contracts made binding by oaths came under church jurisdiction, because an oath was an appeal to god. [ ] the church tried those who were charged with any sin against religion, including heresy, blasphemy, the taking of interest (usury), and the practice of witchcraft. widows, orphans, and the families of pilgrims or crusaders also enjoyed the special protection of church courts. "benefit of clergy" the church claimed the privilege of judging all cases which involved clergymen. no layman, it was declared, ought to interfere with one who, by the sacrament of ordination, had been dedicated to god. this demand of the church to try its own officers, according to its own mild and intelligent laws, seems not unreasonable, when we remember how rude were the methods of feudal justice. but "benefit of clergy," as the privilege was called, might be abused. many persons who had no intention of acting as priests or monks became clergymen, in order to shield themselves behind the church in case their misdeeds were exposed. right of "sanctuary." an interesting illustration of the power of the church is afforded by the right of "sanctuary." any lawbreaker who fled to a church building enjoyed, for a limited time, the privilege of safe refuge. it was considered a sin against god to drag even the most wicked criminal from the altar. the most that could be done was to deny the refugee food, so that he might come forth voluntarily. this privilege of seeking sanctuary was not without social usefulness, for it gave time for angry passions to cool, thus permitting an investigation of the charges against an offender. excommunication disobedience to the regulations of the church might be followed by excommunication. it was a punishment which cut off the offender from all christian fellowship. he could not attend religious services nor enjoy the sacraments so necessary to salvation. if he died excommunicate, his body could not be buried in consecrated ground. by the law of the state he lost all civil rights and forfeited all his property. no one might speak to him, feed him, or shelter him. this terrible penalty, it is well to point out, was usually imposed only after the sinner had received a fair trial and had spurned all entreaties to repent. [ ] interdict the interdict, another form of punishment, was directed against a particular locality, for the fault of some of the inhabitants who could not be reached directly. in time of interdict the priests closed the churches and neither married the living nor buried the dead. of the sacraments only baptism, confirmation, and penance were permitted. all the inhabitants of the afflicted district were ordered to fast, as in lent, and to let their hair grow long in sign of mourning. the interdict also stopped the wheels of government, for courts of justice were shut, wills could not be made, and public officials were forbidden to perform their duties. in some cases the church went so far as to lay an interdict upon an entire kingdom, whose ruler had refused to obey her mandate. [ ] the interdict has now passed out of use, but excommunication still retains its place among the spiritual weapons of the church. . the secular clergy the secular and regular clergy some one has said that in the middle ages there were just three classes of society: the nobles who fought; the peasants who worked; and the clergy who prayed. the latter class was divided into the secular [ ] clergy, including deacons, priests, and bishops, who lived active lives in the world, and the regular [ ] clergy, or monks, who passed their days in seclusion behind monastery walls. position of the clergy it has been already pointed out how early both secular and regular clergy came to be distinguished from the laity by abstention from money-making activities, differences in dress, and the obligation of celibacy. [ ] being unmarried, the clergy had no family cares; being free from the necessity of earning their own living, they could devote all their time and energy to the service of the church. the sacrament of ordination, which was believed to endow the clergy with divine power, also helped to strengthen their influence. they appeared as a distinct order, in whose charge was the care of souls and in whose hands were the keys of heaven. parish priests an account of the secular clergy naturally begins with the parish priest, who had charge of a parish, the smallest division of christendom. no one could act as a priest without the approval of the bishop, but the nobleman who supported the parish had the privilege of nominating candidates for the position. the priest derived his income from lands belonging to the parish, from tithes, [ ] and from voluntary contributions, but as a rule he received little more than a bare living. the parish priest was the only church officer who came continually into touch with the common people. he baptized, married, and buried his parishioners. for them he celebrated mass at least once a week, heard confessions, and granted absolution. he watched over all their deeds on earth and prepared them for the life to come. and if he preached little, he seldom failed to set in his own person an example of right living. the parish church the church, with its spire which could be seen afar off and its bells which called the faithful to worship, formed the social center of the parish. here on sundays and holy days the people assembled for the morning and evening services. during the interval between religious exercises they often enjoyed games and other amusements in the adjoining churchyard. as a place of public gathering the parish church held an important place in the life of the middle ages. bishops a group of parishes formed a diocese, over which a bishop presided. it was his business to look after the property belonging to the diocese, to hold the ecclesiastical courts, to visit the clergy, and to see that they did their duty. the bishop alone could administer the sacraments of confirmation and ordination. he also performed the ceremonies at the consecration of a new church edifice or shrine. since the church held vast estates on feudal tenure, the bishop was usually a territorial lord, owing a vassal's obligations to the king or to some powerful noble for his land and himself ruling over vassals in different parts of the country. as symbols of his power and dignity the bishop wore on his head the miter and carried the pastoral staff, or crosier. [ ] [illustration: a bishop ordaining a priest from an english manuscript of the twelfth century. the bishop wears a miter and holds in his left hand the pastoral staff, or crosier. his right hand is extended in blessing over the priest's head.] archbishops above the bishop in rank stood the archbishop. in england, for example, there were two archbishops, one residing at york and the other at canterbury. the latter, as "primate of all england," was the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in the land. an archbishop's distinctive vestment consisted of the _pallium_, a narrow band of white wool, worn around the neck. the pope alone could confer the right to wear the _pallium_. the cathedral the church which contained the official seat or throne [ ] of a bishop or archbishop was called a cathedral. it was ordinarily the largest and most magnificent church in the diocese. [ ] . the regular clergy decline of monasticism the regular clergy, or monks, during the early middle ages belonged to the benedictine order. by the tenth century, however, st. benedict's rule had lost much of its force. as the monasteries increased in wealth through gifts of land and goods, they sometimes became centers of idleness, luxury, and corruption. the monks forgot their vows of poverty; and, instead of themselves laboring as farmers, craftsmen, and students, they employed laymen to work for them. at the same time powerful feudal lords frequently obtained control of the monastic estates by appointing as abbots their children or their retainers. grave danger existed that the monasteries would pass out of church control and decline into mere fiefs ruled by worldly men. the cluniac revival a great revival of monasticism began in a.d., with the foundation of the monastery of cluny in eastern france. the monks of cluny led lives of the utmost self-denial and followed the benedictine rule in all its strictness. their enthusiasm and devotion were contagious; before long cluny became a center from which a reformatory movement spread over france and then over all western europe. by the middle of the twelfth century more than three hundred monasteries looked to cluny for inspiration and guidance. the "congregation of cluny" each of the earlier benedictine monasteries had been an isolated community, independent and self-governing. consequently, when discipline grew lax or when the abbot proved to be an incapable ruler, it was difficult to correct the evils which arose. in the cluniac system, however, all the monasteries formed parts of one organization, the "congregation of cluny." the abbot of cluny appointed their "priors," or heads, and required every monk to pass several years of his monastic life at cluny itself. this monarchical arrangement helps to explain why for two hundred years the abbot of cluny was, next to the pope, the most important churchman in western europe. the cistercian order other monastic orders arose in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. of these, the most important was the cistercian, founded in a.d. at citeaux, not far from cluny. the keynote of cistercian life was the return to a literal obedience of st. benedict's rule. hence the members of the order lived in the utmost simplicity, cooking their own meager repasts and wearing coarse woolen garments woven from the fleeces of their own sheep. the cistercians especially emphasized the need for manual labor. they were the best farmers and cattle breeders of the middle ages. western europe owes even more to them than to the benedictines for their work as pioneers in the wilderness. "the cistercians," declared a medieval writer, "are a model to all monks, a mirror for the diligent, a spur to the indolent." st. bernard, - a.d. the whole spirit of medieval monasticism found expression in st. bernard, a burgundian of noble birth. while still a young man he resolved to leave the world and seek the repose of the monastic life. he entered citeaux, carrying with him thirty companions. mothers are said to have hid their sons from him, and wives their husbands, lest they should be converted to monasticism by his persuasive words. after a few years at citeaux st. bernard established the monastery of clairvaux, over which he ruled as abbot till his death. his ascetic life, piety, eloquence, and ability as an executive soon brought him into prominence. people visited clairvaux from far and near to listen to his preaching and to receive his counsels. the monastery flourished under his direction and became the parent of no less than sixty-five cistercian houses which were planted in the wilderness. st. bernard's activities widened, till he came to be the most influential man in western christendom. it was st. bernard who acted as an adviser of the popes, at one time deciding between two rival candidates for the papacy, who combated most vigorously the heresies of the day, and who by his fiery appeals set in motion one of the crusades. [ ] the charm of his character is revealed to us in his sermons and letters, while some of the latin hymns commonly attributed to him are still sung in many churches, both roman catholic and protestant. . the friars coming of the friars the history of christian monasticism exhibits an ever-widening social outlook. the early hermits [ ] had devoted themselves, as they believed, to the service of god by retiring desert for prayer, meditation, and bodily mortification. st. benedict's wise rule, as followed by the medieval monastic orders, marked a change for the better. it did away with extreme forms of self-denial, brought the monks together in a common house, and required them to engage in daily manual labor. yet even the benedictine system had its limitations. the monks lived apart from the world and sought chiefly the salvation of their own souls. a new conception of the monastic life arose early in the thirteenth century, with the coming of the friars. [ ] the aim of the friars was social service. they lived active lives in the world and devoted themselves entirely to the salvation of others. the foundation of the orders of friars was the work of two men, st. francis in italy and st. dominic in spain. st. francis, (?)- a.d. twenty-eight years after the death of st. bernard, st. francis was born at assisi. as the son of a rich and prominent merchant st. francis had before him the prospect of a fine career in the world. but he put away all thoughts of fame and wealth, deserted his gay companions, and, choosing "lady poverty" as his bride, started out to minister to lepers and social outcasts. one day, while attending mass, the call came to him to preach the gospel, as christ had preached it, among the poor and lowly. the man's earnestness and charm of manner soon drew about him devoted followers. after some years st. francis went to rome and obtained pope innocent iii's sanction of his work. the franciscan order spread so rapidly that even in the founder's lifetime there were several thousand members in italy and other european countries. [illustration: st. francis blessing the birds from a painting by the italian artist giotto.] st. francis, the man st. francis is one of the most attractive figures in all history. perhaps no other man has ever tried so seriously to imitate in his own life the life of christ. st. francis went about doing good. he resembled, in some respects, the social workers and revivalist preachers of to-day. in other respects he was a true child of the middle ages. an ascetic, he fasted, wore a hair-cloth shirt, mixed ashes with his food to make it disagreeable, wept daily, so that his eyesight was nearly destroyed, and every night flogged himself with iron chains. a mystic, he lived so close to god and nature that he could include within the bonds of his love not only men and women, but also animals, trees, and flowers. he preached a sermon to the birds and once wrote a hymn to praise god for his "brothers," sun, wind, and fire, and for his "sisters," moon, water, and earth. when told that he had but a short time to live, he exclaimed, "welcome, sister death!" he died at the age of forty-five, worn out by his exertions and self-denial. two years later the pope made him a saint. st. dominic, - a.d. st. dominic, unlike st. francis, was a clergyman and a student of theology. after being ordained he went to southern france and labored there for ten years among a heretical sect known as the albigenses. the order of dominicans grew out of the little band of volunteers who assisted him in the mission. st. dominic sent his followers--at first only sixteen in number--out into the world to combat heresy. they met with great success, and at the founder's death the dominicans had as many as sixty friaries in various european cities. characteristics of the friars the franciscans and dominicans resembled each other in many ways. they were "itinerant," going on foot from place to place, and wearing coarse robes tied round the waist with a rope. they were "mendicants," [ ] who possessed no property but lived on the alms of the charitable. they were also preachers, who spoke to the people, not in latin, but in the common language of each country which they visited. the franciscans worked especially in the "slums" of the cities; the dominicans addressed themselves rather to educated people and the upper classes. as time went on, both orders relaxed the rule of poverty and became very wealthy. they still survive, scattered all over the world and employed in teaching and missionary activity. [ ] the friars and the papacy the friars by their preaching and ministrations did a great deal to call forth a religious revival in europe during the thirteenth century. in particular they helped to strengthen the papal authority. both orders received the sanction of the pope; both enjoyed many privileges at his hands; and both looked to him for direction. the pope employed them to raise money, to preach crusades, and to impose excommunications and interdicts. the franciscans and dominicans formed, in fact, the agents of the papacy. . power of the papacy the pope's exalted position the name "pope" [ ] seems at first to have been applied to all priests as a title of respect and affection. the greek church still continues this use of the word. in the west it gradually came to be reserved to the bishop of rome as his official title. the pope was addressed in speaking as "your holiness." his exalted position was further indicated by the tiara, or headdress with triple crowns, worn by him in processions. [ ] he went to solemn ceremonies sitting in a chair supported on the shoulders of his guard. he gave audience from an elevated throne, and all who approached him kissed his feet in reverence. as "christ's vicar" he claimed to be the representative on earth of the almighty. the pope as the head of western christendom the pope was the supreme lawgiver of the church. his decrees might not be set aside by any other person. he made new laws in the form of "bulls" [ ] and by his "dispensations" could in particular cases set aside old laws, such as those forbidding cousins to marry or monks to obtain release from their vows. the pope was also the supreme judge of the church, for all appeals from the lower ecclesiastical courts came before him for decision. finally, the pope was the supreme administrator of the church. he confirmed the election of bishops, deposed them, when necessary, or transferred them from one diocese to another. no archbishop might perform the functions of his office until he had received the _pallium_ from the pope's hands. the pope also exercised control over the monastic orders and called general councils of the church. the papal legates the authority of the pope was commonly exercised by the "legates," [ ] whom he sent out as his representatives at the various european courts. these officers kept the pope in close touch with the condition of the church in every part of western europe. a similar function is performed in modern times by the papal ambassadors known as "nuncios." the cardinals for assistance in government the pope made use of the cardinals, [ ] who formed a board, or "college." at first they were chosen only from the clergy of rome and the vicinity, but in course of time the pope opened the cardinalate to prominent churchmen in all countries. the number of cardinals is now fixed at seventy, but the college is never full, and there are always ten or more "vacant hats," as the saying goes. the cardinals, in the eleventh century, received the right of choosing a new pope. a cardinal ranks above all other church officers. his dignity is indicated by the red hat and scarlet robe which he wears and by the title of "eminence" applied to him. income of the papacy to support the business of the papacy and to maintain the splendor of the papal court required a large annual income. this came partly from the states of the church in italy, partly from the gifts of the faithful, and partly from the payments made by abbots, bishops, and archbishops when the pope confirmed their election to office. still another source of revenue consisted of "peter's pence," a tax of a penny on each hearth. it was collected every year in england and in some continental countries until the reformation. the modern "peter's pence" is a voluntary contribution made by roman catholics in all countries. the capital of the papacy the eternal city, from which in ancient times the known world had been ruled, formed in the middle ages the capital of the papacy. hither every year came tens of thousands of pilgrims to worship at the shrine of the prince of the apostles. few traces now remain of the medieval city. old st. peter's church, where charlemagne was crowned emperor, [ ] gave way in the sixteenth century to the world-famous structure that now occupies its site. [ ] the lateran palace, which for more than a thousand years served as the residence of the popes, has also disappeared, its place being taken by a new and smaller building. the popes now live in the splendid palace of the vatican, adjoining st. peter's. the papacy and the empire the powers exercised by the popes during the later middle ages were not secured without a struggle. as a matter of fact the concentration of authority in papal hands was a gradual development covering several hundred years. the pope reached his exalted position only after a long contest with the holy roman emperor. this contest forms one of the most noteworthy episodes in medieval history. . popes and emperors, - a.d. relations between pope and emperor in theory one might suppose that there could be no interference between pope and emperor, since they seemed to have separate spheres of action. it was said that god had made the pope, as the successor of st. peter, supreme in spiritual matters and the emperor, as heir of the roman caesars, supreme in temporal matters. the former ruled men's souls, the latter, men's bodies. the two sovereigns thus divided on equal terms the government of the world. their relations in practice the difficulty with this theory was that it did not work. no one could decide in advance where the authority the pope ended and where that of the emperor began. when the pope claimed certain powers which were also claimed by the emperor, a conflict between the two rulers became inevitable. [illustration: the spiritual and temporal power a tenth-century mosaic in the church of st. john, rome. it represents christ giving to st. peter the keys of heaven, and to constantine the banner symbolic of earthly dominion.] otto the great and the papacy in a.d. otto the great, as we have learned, [ ] restored imperial rule in the west, thus founding what in later centuries the came to be known as the holy roman empire. otto as emperor possessed the rights of making the city of rome the imperial capital, of approving the election of the pope, and, in general, of exerting much influence in papal affairs. all these rights had been exercised by charlemagne. but otto did what charlemagne had never done when he deposed a pope who proved disobedient to his wishes and on his own authority appointed a successor. at the same time otto exacted from the people of rome an oath that they would never recognize any pope to whose election the emperor had not consented. the papacy and otto's successors the emperors who followed otto repeatedly interfered in elections to the papacy. one strong ruler, henry iii ( - a.d.), has been called the "pope-maker." early in his reign he set aside three rival claimants to the papacy, creating a german bishop pope, and on three subsequent occasions filled the papal throne by fresh appointments. it was clear that if this situation continued much longer the papacy would become simply an imperial office; it would be merged in the empire. papal election by the cardinals the death of henry iii, which left the empire in weak hands, gave the papacy a chance to escape the control of the secular power. in a.d. a church council held at the lateran palace decreed that henceforth the right of choosing the supreme pontiff should belong exclusively to the cardinals, who represented the clergy of rome. this arrangement has tended to prevent any interference with the election of popes, either by the roman people or by foreign sovereigns. feudalizing of the church now that the papacy had become independent, it began to deal with a grave problem which affected the church at large. according to ecclesiastical rule bishops ought to be chosen by the clergy of their diocese and abbots of by their monks. with the growth of feudalism, however, many of these high dignitaries had become vassals, holding their lands as fiefs of princes, kings, and emperors, and owing the usual feudal dues. their lords expected them to perform the ceremony of homage, [ ] before "investing" them with the lands attached to the bishopric or monastery. one can readily see that in practice the lords really chose the bishops and abbots, since they could always refuse to "invest" those who were displeasing to them. lay investiture from the church standpoint to the reformers in the church lay investiture appeared intolerable. how could the church keep itself unspotted from the world when its highest officers were chosen by laymen and were compelled to perform unpriestly duties? in the act of investiture the reformers also saw the sin of simony [ ]--the sale of sacred powers--because there was such a temptation before the candidate for a bishopric or abbacy to buy the position with promises or with money. lay investiture as viewed by the secular authority the lords, on the other hand, believed that as long as bishops and abbots held vast estates on feudal tenure they should continue to perform the obligations of vassalage. to forbid lay investiture was to deprive the lords of all control over church dignitaries. the real difficulty of the situation existed, of course, in the fact that the bishops and abbots were both spiritual officers and temporal rulers, were servants of both the church and the state. they found it very difficult to serve two masters. pontificate of gregory vii, - a.d. in a.d. there came to the throne of st. peter one of the most remarkable of the popes. this was hildebrand, who, on becoming pope, took the name of gregory vii. of obscure italian birth, he received his education in a benedictine monastery at rome and rose rapidly to a position of great influence in papal affairs. he is described as a small man, ungainly in appearance and with a weak voice, but energetic, forceful, and of imperious will. gregory's aims gregory devoted all his talents to the advancement of the papacy. a contemporary document, [ ] which may have been of gregory's own composition and at any rate expresses his ideas, contains the following statements: "the roman pontiff alone is properly called universal. he alone may depose bishops and restore them to office. he is the only person whose feet are kissed by all princes. he may depose emperors. he may be judged by no one. he may absolve from their allegiance the subjects of the wicked. the roman church never has erred, and never can err, as the scriptures testify." gregory did not originate these doctrines, but he was the first pope who ventured to make a practical application of them. decree against lay investiture, a.d. two years after gregory became pope he issued a decree against lay investiture. it declared that no emperor, king, duke, marquis, count, or any other lay person should presume to grant investiture, under pain of excommunication. this decree was a general one, applying to all states of western europe, but circumstances were such that it mainly affected germany. henry iv and gregory vii henry iv, the ruler of germany at this time, did not refuse the papal challenge. he wrote a famous letter to gregory, calling him "no pope but false monk," telling him christ had never called him to the priesthood, and bidding him "come down;" "come down" from st. peter's throne. gregory, in reply, deposed henry as emperor, excommunicated him, and freed his subjects from their allegiance. canossa, a.d. this severe sentence made a profound impression in germany. henry's adherents fell away, and it seemed probable that the german nobles would elect another ruler in his stead. henry then decided on abject submission. he hastened across the alps and found the pope at the castle of canossa, on the northern slopes of the apennines. it was january, and the snow lay deep on the ground. for three days the emperor stood shivering outside the castle gate, barefoot and clad in a coarse woolen shirt, the garb of a penitent. at last, upon the entreaties of the countess matilda of tuscany, gregory admitted henry and granted absolution. it was a strange and moving spectacle, one which well expressed the tremendous power which the church in the middle ages exercised over the minds of men. [illustration: henry iv, countess matilda, and gregory vii from a manuscript of the twelfth century now in the vatican library at rome.] concordat of worms, a.d. the dramatic scene at canossa did not end the investiture conflict. it dragged on for half a century, being continued after gregory's death by the popes who succeeded him. at last in a.d. the opposing parties agreed to what is known as the concordat of worms, from the old german city where it was signed. terms of the concordat the concordat drew a distinction between spiritual and lay investiture. the emperor renounced investiture by the ring and crosier--the emblems of spiritual authority--and permitted bishops and abbots to be elected by the clergy and confirmed in office by the pope. on the other hand the pope recognized the emperor's right to be present at all elections and to invest bishops and abbots by the scepter for whatever lands they held within his domains. this reasonable compromise worked well for a time. but it was a truce, not a peace. it did not settle the more fundamental issue, whether the papacy or the holy roman empire should be supreme. . popes and emperors, - a.d. frederick i, emperor, - thirty years after the signing of the concordat of worms the emperor frederick i, called barbarossa from his red beard, succeeded to the throne. frederick, the second emperor, of the hohenstaufen dynasty [ ] was capable, imaginative, and ambitious. he took charlemagne and otto the great as his models and aspired like them to rule christian europe and the church. his reign is the story of many attempts, ending at length in failure, to unite all italy into a single state under german sway. frederick and the papacy frederick's italian policy brought him at once into conflict with two powerful enemies. the popes, who feared that his success would imperil the independence of the papacy, opposed him at every step. the great cities of northern italy, which were also threatened by frederick's soaring schemes, united in the lombard league to defend their freedom. the popes gave the league their support, and in a.d. frederick was badly beaten at the battle of legnano. the haughty emperor confessed himself conquered, and sought reconciliation with the pope, alexander iii. in the presence of a vast throng assembled before st. mark's cathedral in venice, frederick knelt before the pope and humbly kissed his feet. just a century had passed since the humiliation of henry iv at canossa. pontificate of innocent iii, - a.d. the papacy reached the height of its power under innocent iii. the eighteen years of his pontificate were one long effort, for the most part successful, to make the pope the arbiter of europe. innocent announced the claims of the papacy in the most uncompromising manner. "as the moon," he declared, "receives its light from the sun, and is inferior to the sun, so do kings receive all their glory and dignity from the holy see." this meant, according to innocent, that the pope has the right to interfere in all secular matters and in the quarrels of rulers. "god," he continued, "has set the prince of the apostles over kings and kingdoms, with a mission to tear up, plant, destroy, scatter, and rebuild." innocent and king philip of france that innocent's claims were not idle boasts is shown by what he accomplished. when philip augustus, king of france, divorced his wife and made another marriage, innocent declared the divorce void and ordered him to take back his discarded queen. philip refused, and innocent, through his legate, put france under an interdict. from that hour all religious rites ceased. the church doors were barred; the church bells were silent, the sick died unshriven, the dead lay unburied. philip, deserted by his retainers, was compelled to submit. innocent and king john of england on another occasion innocent ordered john, the english king, to accept as archbishop of canterbury a man of his own choosing. when john declared that he would never allow the pope's appointee to set foot on english soil, innocent replied by excommunicating him and laying his kingdom under an interdict. john also had to yield and went so far as to surrender england and ireland to the pope, receiving them back again as fiefs, for which he promised to pay a yearly rent. this tribute money was actually paid, though irregularly, for about a century and a half. frederick ii, emperor, - a.d. innocent further exhibited his power by elevating to the imperial throne frederick ii, grandson of frederick barbarossa. the young man, after innocent's death, proved to be a most determined opponent of the papacy. he passed much of his long reign in italy, warring vainly against the popes and the lombard cities. frederick died in a.d., and with him the holy roman empire really ceased to exist. [ ] none of the succeeding holders of the imperial title exercised any authority outside of germany. interregnum, - a.d. the death of frederick ii's son in a.d. ended the hohenstaufen dynasty. there now ensued what is called the interregnum, a period of nineteen years, during which germany was without a ruler. at length the pope sent word to the german electors that if they did not choose an emperor, he would himself do so. the electors then chose rudolf of hapsburg [ ] ( a.d.). rudolf gained papal support by resigning all claims on italy, but recompensed himself through the conquest of austria. [ ] ever since this time the hapsburg dynasty has filled the austrian throne. outcome of the conflict the conflict between popes and emperors was now ended. its results were momentous. germany, so long neglected by its rightful rulers, who pursued the will-o'-the-wisp in italy, broke up into a mass of duchies, counties, archbishoprics, and free cities. the map of the country at this time shows how numerous were these small feudal states. they did not combine into a strong government till the nineteenth century. [ ] italy likewise remained disunited and lacked even a common monarch. the real victor was the papacy, which had crushed the empire and had prevented the union of italy and germany. [illustration: map, germany and italy during the interregnum - a.d.] . significance of the medieval church the church and warfare medieval society, we have now learned, owed much to the church, both as a teacher of religion and morals and as an agency of government. it remains to ask what was the attitude of the church toward the great social problems of the middle ages. in regard to warfare, the prevalence of which formed one of the worst evils of the time, the church, in general, cast its influence on the side of peace. it deserves credit for establishing the peace and the truce of god and for many efforts to heal strife between princes and nobles. yet, as will be shown, the church did not carry the advocacy of peace so far as to condemn warfare against heretics and infidels. christians believed that it was a religious duty to exterminate these enemies of god. the church and charity the church was distinguished for charitable work. the clergy received large sums for distribution to the needy. from the doors of the monasteries, the poor, the sick, and the infirm of every sort were never turned away. medieval charity, however, was very often injudicious. the problem of removing the causes of poverty seems never to have been raised; and the indiscriminate giving multiplied, rather than reduced, the number of beggars. the church and slavery and serfdom neither slavery nor serfdom, into which slavery gradually passed, [ ] was ever pronounced unlawful by pope or church council. the church condemned slavery only when it was the servitude of a christian in bondage to a jew or an infidel. abbots, bishops, and popes possessed slaves and serfs. the serfs of some wealthy monasteries were counted by thousands. the church, however, encouraged the freeing of bondmen as a meritorious act and always preached the duty of kindness and forbearance toward them. democracy of the church the church also helped to promote the cause of human freedom by insisting on the natural equality of all men in the sight of god. "the creator," wrote one of the popes, "distributes his gifts without regard to social classes. in his eyes there are neither nobles nor serfs." it was not necessary to be of noble birth to become a bishop, a cardinal, or a pope. even serfs succeeded to the chair of st. peter. naturally enough, the church attracted the keenest minds of the age, a fact which largely explains the influence exerted by the clergy. the clergy as the only educated class the influence of the clergy in medieval europe was also due to the fact that they were almost the only persons of education. few except churchmen were able to read or write. so generally was this the case that an offender could prove himself a clergyman, thus securing "benefit of clergy," [ ] if he showed his ability to read a single line. it is interesting, also, to note that the word "clerk," which comes from the latin _clericus_, was originally limited to churchmen, since they alone could keep accounts, write letters, and perform other secretarial duties. importance of the clergy it is clear that priests and monks had much importance quite aside from their religious duties. they controlled the schools, wrote the books, framed the laws, and, in general, acted as leaders and molders of public opinion. a most conspicuous instance of the authority wielded by them is seen in the crusades. these holy wars of christendom against islam must now be considered. studies . explain the following terms: abbot; prior; archbishop; parish; diocese; regular clergy; secular clergy; friar; excommunication; simony; interdict; sacrament; "benefit of clergy"; right of "sanctuary"; crosier; miter; tiara; papal indulgence; bull; dispensation; tithes; and "peter's pence." . mention some respects in which the roman church in the middle ages differed from any religious society of the present day. . "medieval europe was a camp with a church in the background." comment on this statement. . explain the statement that "the church, throughout the middle ages, was a government as well as an ecclesiastical organization." . distinguish between the _faith_ of the church, the _organization_ of the church, and the church as a _force_ in history. . how did the belief in purgatory strengthen the hold of the church upon men's minds? . name several historic characters who have been made saints. . why has the roman church always refused to sanction divorce? . compare the social effects of excommunication with those of a modern "boycott." . what reasons have led the church to insist upon celibacy of the clergy? . name four famous monks and four famous monasteries. . could monks enter the secular clergy and thus become parish priests and bishops? . mention two famous popes who had been monks. . what justification was found in the new testament (_matthew_, x - ) for the organization of the orders of friars? . how did the franciscans and dominicans supplement each other's work? . "the monks and the friars were the militia of the church." comment on this statement. . who is the present pope? when and by whom was he elected? in what city does he reside? what is his residence called? . why has the medieval papacy been called the "ghost" of the roman empire? . in what sense is it true that the holy roman empire was "neither holy nor roman, nor an empire"? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter x, "monastic life in the twelfth century"; chapter xi, "st. francis and the franciscans." [ ] in case of necessity baptism might be performed by any lay person of adult years and sound mind. [ ] this doctrine is known as transubstantiation. in the roman church, as has been noted (page ), wine is not administered to the laity. [ ] hence the term "apostolical succession." [ ] latin sanctus, "holy." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] the belief in purgatory is not held by protestants or by members of the greek church. [ ] the so-called "canon law." see page . [ ] see page . [ ] for two instances of the use of excommunication see pages and . [ ] for two instances of this sort see page . [ ] latin _saeculum_, used in the sense of "the world." [ ] latin _regula_, a "rule", referring to the rule or constitution of a monastic order. [ ] see page . [ ] the tithe was a tenth part of the yearly income from land, stock, and personal industry. [ ] see illustration, page . [ ] latin _cathedra_. [ ] for the architecture of a medieval cathedral see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] latin _frater_, "brother." [ ] latin _mendicare_, "to beg." [ ] in england the franciscans, from the color of their robes, were called gray friars, the dominicans, black friars. [ ] latin _papa_, "father." [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] so called from the lead seal (latin _bulla_) attached to papal documents. [ ] latin _legatus_, "deputy." [ ] latin _cardinalus_, "principal." [ ] see page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] a name derived from simon magus, who offered money to the apostle peter for the power to confer the holy spirit. see _acts_, viii, - . [ ] the so-called _dictatus papae_. [ ] the name of this german family comes from that of their castle in southwestern swabia. [ ] it survived in name until a.d., when the austrian ruler, francis ii, laid down the imperial crown and the venerable title of "holy roman emperor." [ ] hapsburg as the name of a castle in northern switzerland. [ ] see page . [ ] the modern german empire dates from a.d. [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . chapter xx the occident against the orient; the crusades, - a.d. [ ] . causes of the crusades place of the crusades in history the series of military expeditions, undertaken by the christians of europe for the purpose of recovering the holy land from the moslems, have received the name of crusades. in their widest aspect the crusades may be regarded as a renewal of the age-long contest between east and west, in which the struggle of greeks and persians and of romans and carthaginians formed the earlier episodes. the contest assumed a new character when europe had become christian and asia mohammedan. it was not only two contrasting types of civilization but also two rival world religions which in the eighth century faced each other under the walls of constantinople and on the battlefield of tours. now, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were to meet again. number of the crusades seven or eight chief crusades are usually enumerated. to number them, however, obscures the fact that for nearly two hundred years europe and asia were engaged in almost constant warfare. throughout this period there was a continuous movement of crusaders to and from the moslem possessions in asia minor, syria, and egypt. pilgrimages to the holy land the crusades were first and foremost a spiritual enterprise. they sprang from the pilgrimages which christians had long been accustomed to make to the scenes of christ's life on earth. men considered it a wonderful privilege to see the cave in which he was born, to kiss the spot where he died, and to kneel in prayer at his tomb. the eleventh century saw an increased zeal for pilgrimages, and from this time travelers to the holy land were very numerous. for greater security they often joined themselves in companies and marched under arms. it needed little to transform such pilgrims into crusaders. [illustration: combat between crusaders and moslems a picture in an eleventh-century window, formerly in the church of st. denis, near paris.] abuse of pilgrims by the turks the arab conquest of the holy land had not interrupted the stream of pilgrims, for the early caliphs were more tolerant of unbelievers than christian emperors of heretics. but after the coming of the seljuk turks into the east, pilgrimages became more difficult and dangerous. the turks were a ruder people than the arabs whom they displaced, and in their fanatic zeal for islam were not inclined to treat the christians with consideration. many tales floated back to europe of the outrages committed on the pilgrims and on the sacred shrines venerated by all christendom. such stories, which lost nothing in the telling, aroused a storm of indignation throughout europe and awakened the desire to rescue the holy land from the grasp of the "infidel." the crusades and the upper classes but the crusades were not simply an expression of the simple faith of the middle ages. something more than religious enthusiasm sent an unending procession of crusaders along the highways of europe and over the trackless wastes of asia minor to jerusalem. the crusades, in fact, appealed strongly to the warlike instincts of the feudal nobles. they saw in an expedition against the east an unequaled opportunity for acquiring fame, riches, lands, and power. the normans were especially stirred by the prospect of adventure and plunder which the crusading movement opened up. by the end of the eleventh century they had established themselves in southern italy and sicily, from which they now looked across the mediterranean for further lands to conquer. [ ] norman knights formed a very large element in several of the crusaders' armies. the lower classes and the crusades the crusades also attracted the lower classes. so great was the misery of the common people in medieval europe that for them it seemed not a hardship, but rather a relief, to leave their homes in order to better themselves abroad. famine and pestilence, poverty and oppression, drove them to emigrate hopefully to the golden east. privileges of crusaders the church, in order to foster the crusades, promised both religious and secular benefits to those who took part in them. a warrior of the cross was to enjoy forgiveness of all his past sins. if he died fighting for the faith, he was assured of an immediate entrance to the joys of paradise. the church also freed him from paying interest on his debts and threatened with excommunication anyone who molested his wife, his children, or his property. . first crusade, - a.d. occasion of the first crusade the signal for the first crusade was given by the conquests of the seljuk turks. [ ] these barbarians, at first the mercenaries and then the masters of the abbasid caliphs, infused fresh energy into islam. they began a new era of mohammedan expansion by winning almost the whole of asia minor from the roman empire in the east. one of their leaders established himself at nicaea, the scene of the first church council, [ ] and founded the sultanate of rum (rome). appeal of emperor to pope the presence of the turks so close to constantinople was a standing menace to all europe. the able emperor, alexius i, on succeeding to the throne toward the close of the eleventh century, took steps to expel the invaders. he could not draw on the hardy tribes of asia minor for the soldiers he needed, but with reinforcements from the west he hoped to recover the lost provinces of the empire. accordingly, in a.d., alexius sent an embassy to pope urban ii, the successor of gregory vii, requesting aid. the fact that the emperor appealed to the pope, rather than to any king, shows what a high place the papacy then held in the affairs of europe. council of clermont, a.d. to the appeal of alexius, urban lent a willing ear. he summoned a great council of clergy and nobles to meet at clermont in france. here, in an address which, measured by its results, was the most momentous recorded in history, pope urban preached the first crusade. he said little about the dangers which threatened the roman empire in the east from the turks, but dwelt chiefly on the wretched condition of the holy land, with its churches polluted by unbelievers and its christian inhabitants tortured and enslaved. then, turning to the proud knights who stood by, urban called upon them to abandon their wicked practice of private warfare and take up arms, instead, against the infidel. "christ himself," he cried, "will be your leader, when, like the israelites of old, you fight for jerusalem.... start upon the way to the holy sepulcher; wrench the land from the accursed race, and subdue it yourselves. thus shall you spoil your foes of their wealth and return home victorious, or, purpled with your own blood, receive an everlasting reward." "god wills it!" urban's trumpet call to action met an instant response. from the assembled host there went up, as it were, a single shout: "god wills it! god wills it!" "it is, in truth, his will," answered urban, "and let these words be your war cry when you unsheath your swords against the enemy." then man after man pressed forward to receive the badge of a crusader, a cross of red cloth. [ ] it was to be worn on the breast, when the crusader went forth, and on the back, when he returned. prelude to the first crusade the months which followed the council of clermont were marked by an epidemic of religious excitement in western europe. popular preachers everywhere took up the cry "god wills it!" and urged their hearers to start for jerusalem. a monk named peter the hermit aroused large parts of france with his passionate eloquence, as he rode from town to town, carrying a huge cross before him and preaching to vast crowds. without waiting for the main body of nobles, which was to assemble at constantinople in the summer of a.d., a horde of poor men, women, and children set out, unorganized and almost unarmed, on the road to the holy land. one of these crusading bands, led by peter the hermit, managed to reach constantinople, after suffering terrible hardships. the emperor alexius sent his ragged allies as quickly as possible to asia minor, where most of them were slaughtered by the turks. the main crusade meanwhile real armies were gathering in the west. recruits came in greater numbers from france than from any other country, a circumstance which resulted in the crusaders being generally called "franks" by their moslem foes. they had no single commander, but each contingent set out for constantinople by its own route and at its own time. [ ] leaders of the crusade the crusaders included among their leaders some of the most distinguished representatives of european knighthood. count raymond of toulouse headed a band of volunteers from provence in southern france. godfrey of bouillon and his brother baldwin commanded a force of french and germans from the rhinelands. normandy sent robert, william the conqueror's eldest son. the normans from italy and sicily were led by bohemond, a son of robert guiscard, [ ] and his nephew tancred. the crusaders in asia minor and syria though the crusaders probably did not number more than fifty thousand fighting men, the disunion which prevailed among the turks favored the success of their enterprise. with some assistance from the eastern emperor they captured nicaea, overran asia minor, and at length reached antioch, the key to northern syria. the city fell after a siege of seven months, but the crusaders were scarcely within the walls before they found themselves besieged by a large turkish army. the crusaders were now in a desperate plight: famine wasted their ranks; many soldiers deserted; and alexius disappointed all hope of rescue. but the news of the discovery in an antioch church of the holy lance which had pierced the savior's side restored their drooping spirits. the whole army issued forth from the city, bearing the relic as a standard, and drove the turks in headlong flight. this victory opened the road to jerusalem. [illustration: "mosque of omar," jerusalem more correctly called the dome of the rock. it was erected in a.d., but many restorations have taken place since that date. the walls enclosing the entire structure were built in the ninth century, and the dome is attributed to saladin ( a.d.). this building, with its brilliant tiles covering the walls and its beautiful stained glass, is a fine example of mohammedan architecture.] capture of jerusalem, a.d. reduced now to perhaps one-fourth of their original numbers, the crusaders advanced slowly to the city which formed the goal of all their efforts. before attacking it they marched barefoot in religious procession around the walls, with peter the hermit at their head. then came the grand assault. godfrey of bouillon and tancred were among the first to mount the ramparts. once inside the city, the crusaders massacred their enemies without mercy. afterwards, we are told, they went "rejoicing, nay for excess of joy weeping, to the tomb of our savior to adore and give thanks." . crusaders' states in syria latin kingdom of jerusalem after the capture of jerusalem the crusaders met to elect a king. their choice fell upon godfrey of bouillon. he refused to wear a crown of gold in the city where christ had worn a crown of thorns and accepted, instead, the modest title of "protector of the holy sepulcher." [ ] godfrey died the next year and his brother baldwin, who succeeded him, being less scrupulous, was crowned king at bethlehem. the new kingdom contained nearly a score of fiefs, whose lords made war, administered justice, and coined money, like independent rulers. the main features of european feudalism were thus transplanted to asiatic soil. other crusaders' states the winning of jerusalem and the district about it formed hardly more than a preliminary stage in the conquest of syria. much fighting was still necessary before the crusaders could establish themselves firmly in the country. instead of founding one strong power in syria, they split up their possessions into the three principalities of tripoli, antioch, and edessa. these small states owed allegiance to the latin kingdom of jerusalem. military-religious orders the ability of the crusaders' states to maintain themselves for many years in syria was largely due to the foundation of two military-religious orders. the members were both monks and knights; that is, to the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience they added a fourth vow, which bound them to protect pilgrims and fight the infidels. such a combination of religion and warfare made a strong appeal to the medieval mind. hospitalers and templars the hospitalers, the first of these orders, grew out of a brotherhood for the care of sick pilgrims in a hospital at jerusalem. many knights joined the organization, which soon proved to be very useful in defending the holy land. even more important were the templars, so called because their headquarters in jerusalem lay near the site of solomon's temple. both orders built many castles in syria, the remains of which still impress the beholder. they established numerous branches in europe and, by presents and legacies, acquired vast wealth. the templars were disbanded in the fourteenth century, but the hospitalers continued to fight valiantly against the turks long after the close of the crusading movement. [ ] [illustration: effigy of a knight templar temple church, london. shows the kind of armor worn between and a.d.] christian and infidel in the holy land the depleted ranks of the crusaders were constantly filled by fresh bands of pilgrim knights who visited palestine to pray at the holy sepulcher and cross swords with the infidel. in spite of constant border warfare much trade and friendly intercourse prevailed between christians and moslems. they learned to respect one another both as foes and neighbors. the crusaders' states in syria became, like spain [ ] and sicily, [ ] a meeting-place of east and west. . second crusade, - a.d., and third crusade, - a.d. origin of the second crusade the success of the christians in the first crusade had been largely due to the disunion among their enemies. but the moslems learned in time the value of united action, and in a.d. succeeded in capturing edessa, one of the principal christian outposts in the east. the fall of the city, followed by the loss of the entire county of edessa, aroused western europe to the danger which threatened the latin kingdom of jerusalem and led to another crusading enterprise. preaching of st. bernard the apostle of the second crusade was the great abbot of clairvaux, st. bernard. [ ] scenes of the wildest enthusiasm marked his preaching. when the churches were not large enough to hold the crowds which flocked to hear him, he spoke from platforms erected in the fields. st. bernard's eloquence induced two monarchs, louis vii of france and conrad iii of germany, to take the blood-red cross of a crusader. failure of the second crusade the second crusade, though begun under the most favorable auspices, had an unhappy ending. of the great host that set out from europe, only a few thousands escaped annihilation in asia minor at the hands of the turks. louis and conrad, with the remnants of their armies, made a joint attack on damascus, but had to raise the siege after a few days. this closed the crusade. as a chronicler of the expedition remarked, "having practically accomplished nothing, the inglorious ones returned home." saladin not many years after the second crusade, the moslem world found in the famous saladin a leader for a holy war against the christians. saladin in character was a typical mohammedan, very devout in prayers and fasting, fiercely hostile toward unbelievers, and full of the pride of race. to these qualities he added a kindliness and humanity not surpassed, if equaled, by any of his christian foes. he lives in eastern history and legend as the hero who stemmed once for all the tide of european conquest in asia. capture of jerusalem by saladin, a.d. having made himself sultan of egypt, saladin united the moslems of syria under his sway and then advanced against the latin kingdom of jerusalem. the christians met him in a great battle near the lake of galilee. it ended in the rout of their army and the capture of their king. even the holy cross, which they had carried in the midst of the fight, became the spoil of the conqueror. saladin quickly reaped the fruits of victory. the christian cities of syria opened their gates to him, and at last jerusalem itself surrendered after a short siege. little now remained of the possessions which the crusaders had won in the east. third crusade organized, a.d. the news of the taking of jerusalem spread consternation throughout western christendom. the cry for another crusade arose on all sides. once more thousands of men sewed the cross in gold, or silk, or cloth upon their garments and set out for the holy land. when the three greatest rulers of europe--philip augustus, [ ] king of france, richard i, king of england, and the german emperor, frederick barbarossa [ ]--assumed the cross, it seemed that nothing could prevent the restoration of christian supremacy in syria. death of frederick barbarossa, a.d. the germans under frederick barbarossa were the first to start. this great emperor was now nearly seventy years old, yet age had not lessened his crusading zeal. he took the overland route and after much hard fighting reached southern asia minor. here, however, he was drowned, while trying to cross a swollen stream. many of his discouraged followers at once returned to germany; a few of them, however, pressed on and joined the other crusaders before the walls of acre. [illustration: richard i in prison from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century. king richard on his return from the holy land was shipwrecked off the coast of the adriatic. attempting to travel through austria in disguise, he was captured by the duke of austria, whom he had offended at the siege of acre. the king regained his liberty only by paying a ransom equivalent to more than twice the annual revenues of england.] acre captured by philip and richard, a.d. the expedition of the french and english achieved little. philip and richard, who came by sea, captured acre after a hard siege, but their quarrels prevented them from following up this initial success. philip soon went home, leaving the further conduct of the crusade in richard's hands. richard in the holy land, - a.d. the english king remained for fourteen months longer in the holy land. his campaigns during this time gained for him the title of "lion-hearted," [ ] by which he is always known. he had many adventures and performed knightly exploits without number, but could not capture jerusalem. tradition declares that when, during a truce, some crusaders went up to jerusalem, richard refused to accompany them, saying that he would not enter as a pilgrim the city which he could not rescue as a conqueror. he and saladin finally concluded a treaty by the terms of which christians were permitted to visit jerusalem without paying tribute. richard then set sail for england, and with his departure from the holy land the third crusade came to an end. . fourth crusade and the latin empire of constantinople, - a.d. innocent iii and the fourth crusade the real author of the fourth crusade was the famous pope, innocent iii. [ ] young, enthusiastic, and ambitious for the glory of the papacy, he revived the plans of urban ii and sought once more to unite the forces of christendom against islam. no emperor or king answered his summons, but a number of knights (chiefly french) took the crusader's vow. the crusaders and the venetians the leaders of the crusade decided to make egypt their objective point, since this country was then the center of the moslem power. accordingly, the crusaders proceeded to venice, for the purpose of securing transportation across the mediterranean. the venetians agreed to furnish the necessary ships only on condition that the crusaders first seized zara on the eastern coast of the adriatic. zara was a christian city, but it was also a naval and commercial rival of venice. in spite of the pope's protests the crusaders besieged and captured the city. even then they did not proceed against the moslems. the venetians persuaded them to turn their arms against constantinople. the possession of that great capital would greatly increase venetian trade and influence in the east; for the crusading nobles it held out endless opportunities of acquiring wealth and power. thus it happened that these soldiers of the cross, pledged to war with the moslems, attacked a christian city, which for centuries had formed the chief bulwark of europe against the arab and the turk. sack of constantinople, a.d. the crusaders--now better styled the invaders--took constantinople by storm. no "infidels" could have treated in worse fashion this home of ancient civilization. they burned down a great part of it; they slaughtered the inhabitants; they wantonly destroyed monuments, statues, paintings, and manuscripts--the accumulation of a thousand years. much of the movable wealth they carried away. never, declared an eye-witness of the scene, had there been such plunder since the world began. the latin empire of constantinople, - a.d. the victors hastened to divide between them the lands of the roman empire in the east. venice gained some districts in greece, together with nearly all the aegean islands. the chief crusaders formed part of the remaining territory into the latin empire of constantinople. it was organized in fiefs, after the feudal manner. there was a prince of achaia, a duke of athens, a marquis of corinth, and a count of thebes. large districts, both in europe and asia, did not acknowledge, however, these "latin" rulers. the new empire lived less than sixty years. at the end of this time the greeks returned to power. disastrous consequences of the fourth crusade constantinople, after the fourth crusade, declined in strength and could no longer cope with the barbarians menacing it. two centuries later the city fell an easy victim to the turks. [ ] the responsibility for the disaster which gave the turks a foothold in europe rests on the heads of the venetians and the french nobles. their greed and lust for power turned the fourth crusade into a political adventure. the children's crusade, a.d. the so-called children's crusade illustrates at once the religious enthusiasm and misdirected zeal which marked the whole crusading movement. during the year a.d. thousands of french children assembled in bands and marched through the towns and villages, carrying banners, candles, and crosses and singing, "lord god, exalt christianity. lord god, restore to us the true cross." the children could not be restrained at first, but finally hunger compelled them to return home. in germany, during the same year, a lad named nicholas really did succeed in launching a crusade. he led a mixed multitude of men and women, boys and girls over the alps into italy, where they expected to take ship for palestine. but many perished of hardships, many were sold into slavery, and only a few ever saw their homes again. "these children," pope innocent iii declared, "put us to shame; while we sleep they rush to recover the holy land." end of the crusades the crusading movement came to an end by the close of the thirteenth century. the emperor frederick ii [ ] for a short time recovered jerusalem by a treaty, but in a.d. the holy city became again a possession of the moslems. they have never since relinquished it. acre, the last christian post in syria, fell in a.d., and with this event the latin kingdom of jerusalem ceased to exist. the hospitalers, or knights of st. john, still kept possession of the important islands of cyprus and rhodes, which long served as a barrier to moslem expansion over the mediterranean. . results of the crusades failure of the crusades the crusades, judged by what they set out to accomplish, must be accounted an inglorious failure. after two hundred years of conflict, after a vast expenditure of wealth and human lives, the holy land remained in moslem hands. it is true that the first crusade did help, by the conquest of syria, to check the advance of the turks toward constantinople. but even this benefit was more than undone by the weakening of the roman empire in the east as a result of the fourth crusade. why the crusades failed of the many reasons for the failure of the crusades, three require special consideration. in the first place, there was the inability of eastern and western europe to cooperate in supporting the holy wars. a united christendom might well have been invincible. but the bitter antagonism between the greek and roman churches [ ] effectually prevented all unity of action. the emperors at constantinople, after the first crusade, rarely assisted the crusaders and often secretly hindered them. in the second place, the lack of sea-power, as seen in the earlier crusades, worked against their success. instead of being able to go by water directly to syria, it was necessary to follow the long, overland route from france or germany through hungary, bulgaria, the territory of the roman empire in the east, and the deserts and mountains of asia minor. the armies that reached their destination after this toilsome march were in no condition for effective campaigning. in the third place, the crusaders were never numerous enough to colonize so large a country as syria and absorb its moslem population. they conquered part of syria in the first crusade, but could not hold it permanently in the face of determined resistance. why the crusades ceased in spite of these and other reasons the christians of europe might have continued much longer their efforts to recover the holy land, had they not lost faith in the movement. but after two centuries the old crusading enthusiasm died out, the old ideal of the crusade as "the way of god" lost its spell. men had begun to think less of winning future salvation by visits to distant shrines and to think more of their present duties to the world about them. they came to believe that jerusalem could best be won as christ and the apostles had won it--"by love, by prayers, and by the shedding of tears." influence of the crusades on feudalism the crusades could not fail to affect in many ways the life of western europe. for instance, they helped to undermine feudalism. thousands of barons and knights mortgaged or sold their lands in order to raise money for a crusading expedition. thousands more perished in syria and their estates, through failure of heirs, reverted to the crown. moreover, private warfare, that curse of the middle ages, [ ] also tended to die out with the departure for the holy land of so many turbulent feudal lords. their decline in both numbers and influence, and the corresponding growth of the royal authority, may best be traced in the changes that came about in france, the original home of the crusading movement. the crusades and commerce one of the most important effects of the crusades was on commerce. they created a constant demand for the transportation of men and supplies, encouraged ship-building, and extended the market for eastern wares in europe. the products of damascus, mosul, alexandria, cairo, and other great cities were carried across the mediterranean to the italian seaports, whence they found their way into all european lands. the elegance of the orient, with its silks, tapestries, precious stones, perfumes, spices, pearls, and ivory, was so enchanting that an enthusiastic crusader called it "the vestibule of paradise." the crusades and intellectual life finally, it must be noted how much the crusades contributed to intellectual and social progress. they brought the inhabitants of western europe into close relations with one another, with their fellow christians of the roman empire in the east, and with the natives of asia minor, syria, and egypt. the intercourse between christians and moslems was particularly stimulating, because the east at this time surpassed the west in civilization. the crusaders enjoyed the advantages which come from travel in strange lands and among unfamiliar peoples. they went out from their castles or villages to see great cities, marble palaces, superb dresses, and elegant manners; they returned with finer tastes, broader ideas, and wider sympathies. like the conquests of alexander the great, the crusades opened up a new world. significance of the crusades when all is said, the crusades remain one of the most remarkable movements in history. they exhibited the nations of western europe for the first time making a united effort for a common end. the crusaders were not hired soldiers, but volunteers, who, while the religious fervor lasted, gladly abandoned their homes and faced hardship and death in pursuit of a spiritual ideal. they failed to accomplish their purpose, yet humanity is the richer for the memory of their heroism and chivalry. studies . on an outline map indicate europe and the mediterranean lands by religions, about a.d. . on an outline map indicate the routes of the first and the third crusades. . locate on the map the following places: clermont; acre; antioch; zara; edessa; and damascus. . identify the following dates: a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; a.d. . write a short essay describing the imaginary experiences of a crusader to the holy land. . mention some instances which illustrate the religious enthusiasm of the crusaders. . compare the mohammedan pilgrimage to mecca with the pilgrimages of christians to jerusalem in the middle ages. . compare the christian crusade with the mohammedan _jihad_, or holy war. . how did the expression, a "red-cross knight," arise? . why is the second crusade often called "st. bernard's crusade"? . why has the third crusade been called "the most interesting international expedition of the middle ages"? . would the crusaders in a.d. have attacked constantinople, if the schism of a.d. had not occurred? . "mixture, or at least contact of races, is essential to progress." how do the crusades illustrate the truth of this statement? . were the crusades the only means by which western europe was brought in contact with moslem civilization? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xii, "richard the lion-hearted and the third crusade"; chapter xiii, "the fourth crusade and the capture of constantinople." [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] hence the name "crusades," from latin _crux_, old french _crois_, a "cross". [ ] for the routes followed by the crusaders see the map between pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] the emperor constantine caused a stately church to be erected on the supposed site of christ's tomb. this church of the holy sepulcher was practically destroyed by the moslems, early in the eleventh century. the crusaders restored and enlarged the structure, which still stands. [ ] the order of hospitalers, now known as the "knights of malta," still survives in several european countries. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] in french _coeur-de-lion_. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . chapter xxi the mongols and the ottoman turks to a.d. . the mongols the asiatic counter-attack the extensive steppes in the middle and north of asia have formed, for thousands of years, the abode of nomadic peoples belonging to the yellow race. in prehistoric times they spread over northern europe, but they were gradually supplanted by white-skinned indo-europeans, until now only remnants of them exist, such as the finns and lapps. in later ages history records how the huns, the bulgarians, and the magyars have poured into europe, spreading terror and destruction in their path. [ ] these invaders were followed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the even more terrible mongols and ottoman turks. their inroads might well be described as asia's reply to the crusades, as an asiatic counter-attack upon europe. mongolia the mongols, who have given their name to the entire race of yellow- skinned peoples, now chiefly occupy the high plateau bounded on the north by siberia, on the south by china, on the east by manchuria, and on the west by turkestan. [ ] although the greater part of this area consists of the gobi desert, there are many oases and pastures available at different seasons of the year to the inhabitants. hence the principal occupation of the mongols has always been cattle breeding, and their horses, oxen, sheep, and camels have always furnished them with food and clothing. mongol life and character like most nomads the mongols dwell in tents, each family often by itself. severe simplicity is the rule of life, for property consists of little more than one's flocks and herds, clothes, and weapons. the modern mongols are a peaceable, kindly folk, who have adopted from tibet a debased form of buddhism, but the mongols of the thirteenth century in religion and morals were scarcely above the level of american indians. to ruthless cruelty and passion for plunder they added an efficiency in warfare which enabled them, within fifty years, to overrun much of asia and the eastern part of europe. [illustration: hut-wagon of the mongols (reconstruction) on the wagon was placed a sort of hut or pavilion made of wands bound together with narrow thongs. the structure was then covered with felt or cloth and provided with latticed windows. hut-wagons, being very light, were sometimes of enormous size.] military prowess of the mongols the daily life of the mongols was a training school for war. constant practice in riding, scouting, and the use of arms made every man a soldier. the words with which an ancient greek historian described the savage scythians applied perfectly to the mongols: "having neither cities nor forts, and carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, moreover, one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by husbandry but on their cattle, their wagons the only houses that they possess, how can they fail of being irresistible?" [ ] . conquests of the mongols, - a.d. jenghiz khan for ages the mongols had dwelt in scattered tribes throughout their asiatic wilderness, engaged in petty struggles with one another for cattle and pasture lands. it was the celebrated jenghiz khan, [ ] chief of one of the tribes, who brought them all under his authority and then led them to the conquest of the world. of him it may be said with truth that he had the most victorious of military careers, and that he constructed the most extensive empire known to history. if jenghiz had possessed the ability of a statesman, he would have taken a place by the side of alexander the great and julius caesar. mongol empire under jenghiz, - a.d. jenghiz first sent the mongol armies, which contained many turkish allies, over the great wall [ ] and into the fertile plains of china. all the northern half of the country was quickly overrun. then jenghiz turned westward and invaded turkestan and persia. seven centuries have not sufficed to repair the damage which the mongols wrought in this once- prosperous land. the great cities of bokhara, samarkand, merv, and herat, [ ] long centers of moslem culture, were pillaged and burned, and their inhabitants were put to the sword. like the huns the mongols seemed a scourge sent by god. still further conquests enlarged the empire, which at the death of jenghiz in a.d. stretched from the dnieper river to the china sea. mongol empire under the successors of jenghiz the mongol dominions in the thirteenth century were increased by the addition of korea, southern china, and mesopotamia, as well as the greater part of asia minor and russia. japan, indeed, repulsed the mongol hordes, but at the other extremity of asia they captured bagdad, sacked the city, and brought the caliphate to an end. [ ] the mongol realm was very loosely organized, however, and during the fourteenth century it fell apart into a number of independent states, or khanates. [illustration: map, the mongol empire] timur the lame, died a.d. it was reserved for another renowned oriental monarch, timur the lame, [ ] to restore the empire of jenghiz khan. his biographers traced his descent from that famous mongol, but timur was a turk and an adherent of islam. he has come down to us as perhaps the most terrible personification in history of the evil spirit of conquest. such distant regions as india, syria, armenia, asia minor, and russia were traversed by timur's soldiers, who left behind them only the smoking ruins of a thousand cities and abominable trophies in the shape of columns or pyramids of human heads. timur died in his seventieth year, while leading his troops against china, and the extensive empire which he had built up in asia soon crumbled to pieces. [illustration: tomb of timur at samarkand samarkand in russian central asia became timur's capital in ad. the city was once a center of mohammedan wealth and culture, famous for its beautiful mosques, palaces, and colleges. the gur-amir, or tomb of timur, consists of a chapel, crowned by a dome and enclosed by a wall. time and earthquakes have greatly injured this fine building. the remains of timur lie here under a huge block of jade.] . the mongols in china and india mongol sway in china the mongols ruled over china for about one hundred and fifty years. during this period they became thoroughly imbued with chinese culture. "china," said an old writer, "is a sea that salts all the rivers flowing into it." the most eminent of the mongol emperors was jenghiz khan's grandson, kublai ( - a.d.). he built a new capital, which in medieval times was known as cambaluc and is now called peking. while kublai was on the throne, the venetian traveler, marco polo, [ ] visited china, and he describes in glowing colors the virtues and glories of the "great khan." there appears to have been considerable trade between europe and china at this time, and franciscan missionaries and papal legates penetrated to the remote east. after the downfall of the mongol dynasty in a.d. china again shut her doors to foreign peoples. all intercourse with europe ceased until the arrival of the portuguese in the sixteenth century. [ ] timur and baber in india northern india, which in earlier ages had witnessed the coming of persian, macedonian, and arabian conquerors, did not escape visitations by fresh asiatic hordes. timur the lame, at the head of an innumerable host, rushed down upon the banks of the indus and the ganges and sacked delhi, making there a full display of his unrivaled ferocity. timur's invasion left no permanent impress on the history of india, but its memory fired the imagination of another turkish chieftain, baber, a remote descendant of timur. in a.d. he invaded india and speedily made himself master of the northern part of the country. empire of the moguls the empire which baber established in india is known as that of the moguls, an arabic form of the word mongol. the moguls, however, were turkish in blood and mohammedans in religion. the mogul emperors reigned in great splendor from their capitals at delhi and agra, until the decline of their power in the eighteenth century opened the way for the british conquest of india. . the mongols in eastern europe mongol conquest of russia, - a.d. the location of russia [ ] on the border of asia exposed that country to the full force of the mongol attack. jenghiz khan's successors, entering europe north of the caspian, swept resistlessly over the russian plain. moscow and kiev fell in quick succession, and before long the greater part of russia was in the hands of the mongols. wholesale massacres marked their progress. "no eye remained open to weep for the dead." [illustration: the taj mahal, agra erected by the mogul emperor, shah jehan, as a tomb for his favorite wife, muntaz mahal. it was begun in a.d. and was completed in twenty-two years. the material is pure white marble, inlaid with jasper, agate and other precious stones. the building rests on a marble terrace, at each corner of which rises a tall graceful minaret. the extreme delicacy of the taj mahal and the richness of its ornamentation make it a masterpiece of architecture.] invasion of poland and hungary by the mongols, a.d. still the invaders pressed on. they devastated hungary, driving the magyar king in panic flight from his realm. they overran poland. at a great battle in silesia they destroyed the knighthood of germany and filled nine sacks with the right ears of slaughtered enemies. the european peoples, taken completely by surprise, could offer no effective resistance to these asiatics, who combined superiority in numbers with surpassing generalship. since the arab attack in the eighth century christendom had never been in graver peril. but the wave of mongol invasion, which threatened to engulf europe in barbarism, receded as quickly as it came. the mongols soon abandoned poland and hungary and retired to their possessions in russia. [illustration: map, russia at the end of the middle ages] the "golden horde" the ruler of the "golden horde," as the western section of the mongol empire was called, continued to be the lord of russia for about two hundred and fifty years. russia, throughout this period, was little more than a dependency of asia. the conquered people were obliged to pay a heavy tribute and to furnish soldiers for the mongol armies. their princes, also, became vassals of the great khan. mongol influence on russia the mongols, or "tartars" [ ] are usually said to have orientalized russia. it seems clear, however, that they did not interfere with the language, religion, and laws of their subjects. the chief result of the mongol supremacy was to cut off russia from western europe, just at the time when england, france, germany, and italy were emerging from the darkness of the early middle ages. rise of muscovy the invasion of the mongols proved to be, indirectly, the making of the russian state. before they came the country was a patchwork of rival, and often warring, principalities. the need of union against the common enemy welded them together. the principality of muscovy, so named from the capital city of moscow, conquered its neighbors, annexed the important city of novgorod, whose vast possessions stretched from lapland to the urals, and finally became powerful enough to shake off the mongol yoke. reign of ivan iii, the great, - a.d. the final deliverance of russia from the mongols was accomplished by ivan iii, surnamed the great. this ruler is also regarded as the founder of russian autocracy, that is, of a personal, absolute, and arbitrary government. with a view to strengthening his claim to be the political heir of the eastern emperors, ivan married a niece of the last ruler at constantinople, who in a.d. had fallen in the defense of his capital against the ottoman turks. henceforth the russian ruler described himself as "the new tsar [ ] constantine in the new city of constantine, moscow." . the ottoman turks and their conquests, - a.d. rise of the ottomans the first appearance of the ottoman turks in history dates from a.d., the year of jenghiz khan's death. in that year a small turkish horde, driven westward from their central asian homes by the mongol advance, settled in asia minor. there they enjoyed the protection of their kinsmen, the seljuk turks, and from them accepted islam. as the seljuk power declined, that of the ottomans rose in its stead. about a.d. their chieftain, othman, [ ] declared his independence and became the founder of the ottoman empire. ottoman expansion the growth of the ottoman power was almost as rapid as that of the arabs or of the mongols. during the first half of the fourteenth century they firmly established themselves in northwestern asia minor, along the beautiful shores washed by the bosporus, the sea of marmora, and the dardanelles. the second half of the same century found them in europe, wresting province after province from the feeble hands of the eastern emperors. first came the seizure of gallipoli on the dardanelles, which long remained the principal turkish naval station. then followed the capture of adrianople, where in earlier centuries the visigoths had destroyed a roman army. [ ] by a.d. all that remained of the roman empire in the east was constantinople and a small district in the vicinity of that city. the janizaries the turks owed much of their success to the famous body of troops known as janizaries. [ ] these were recruited for the most part from christian children surrendered by their parents as tribute. the janizaries received an education in the moslem faith and careful instruction in the use of arms. their discipline and fanatic zeal made them irresistible on the field of battle. [illustration: mohammed ii a medal showing the strong face of the conqueror of constantinople] constantinople besieged constantinople had never recovered from the blow inflicted upon it by the freebooters of the fourth crusade. [ ] it was isolated from western europe by the advance of the turks. frantic appeals for help brought only a few ships and men from genoa and venice. when in a.d. the sultan mohammed ii, commanding a large army amply supplied with artillery, appeared before the walls, all men knew that constantinople was doomed. capture of the city the defense of the city forms one of the most stirring episodes in history. the christians, not more than eight thousand in number, were a mere handful compared to the ottoman hordes. yet they held out for nearly two months against every assault. when at length the end drew near, the roman emperor, constantine palaeologus, a hero worthy of the name he bore, went with his followers at midnight to sancta sophia and there in that solemn fane received a last communion. before sunrise on the following day the turks were within the walls. the emperor, refusing to survive the city which he could not save, fell in the onrush of the janizaries. constantinople endured a sack of three days, during which many works of art, previously spared by the crusaders, were destroyed. mohammed ii then made a triumphal entry into the city and in sancta sophia, now stripped of its crosses, images, and other christian emblems, proclaimed the faith of the prophet. and so the "turkish night," as slavic poets named it, descended on this ancient home of civilization. an epoch-making event the capture of constantinople is rightly regarded as an epoch-making event. it meant the end, once for all, of the empire which had served so long as the rearguard of christian civilization, as the bulwark of the west against the east. europe stood aghast at a calamity which she had done so little to prevent. the christian powers of the west have been paying dearly, even to our own time, for their failure to save new rome from infidel hands. . the ottoman turks in southeastern europe continued ottoman expansion turkey was now a european state. after the occupation of constantinople the ottoman territories continued to expand, and at the death of mohammed ii they included what are now bulgaria, rumania, serbia, albania, and greece. of all the balkan states only tiny montenegro, protected by mountain ramparts, preserved its independence. nature of turkish rule the turks form a small minority among the inhabitants of the balkans. at the present time there are said to be less than one million turks in southeastern europe. even about constantinople the greeks far outnumber them. the turks from the outset have been, not a nation in the proper sense of the word, but rather an army of occupation, holding down by force their far more numerous christian subjects. the turks a mixed people the people who thus acquired dominion over all southeastern europe had become, even at the middle of the fifteenth century, greatly mixed in blood. their ancestors were natives of central asia, but in europe they intermarried freely with their christian captives and with converts from christianity to islam. so far has this admixture proceeded that the modern turks are almost entirely european in physique. [illustration: map, empire of the ottoman turks at the fall of constantinople, a.d.] isolation of the turks the bulgarians, who came out of asia to devastate europe, at length turned christian, adopted a slavic speech, and entered the family of european nations. the magyars, who followed them, also made their way into the fellowship of christendom. quite the opposite has been the case with the turks. preserving their asiatic language and moslem faith, they have remained in southeastern europe, not a transitory scourge, but an abiding oppressor of christian lands. every century since a.d. has widened the gulf between them and their subjects. turkish influence in southeastern europe the isolation of the turks has prevented them from assimilating the higher culture of the peoples whom they conquered. they have never created anything in science, art, literature, commerce, or industry. conquest has been the turks' one business in the world, and when they ceased conquering their decline set in. but it was not till the end of the seventeenth century that the turkish empire entered on that downward road which is now fast leading to its extinction as a european power. studies . locate these cities: bokhara; samarkand; merv; herat; bagdad; peking; delhi; kiev; moscow; and adrianople. . who were baber, kublai khan, othman, mohammed ii, constantine palaeologus, and ivan the great? . why should the steppes of central and northern asia have been a nursery of warlike peoples? . what parts of asia were not included in the mongol empire at its greatest extent? . trace on the map on page the further expansion of the mongol empire after the death of jenghiz khan. . "scratch a russian and you will find a tartar." what does this mean? . why did the mongol conquest of russia tend to strengthen the sentiment of nationality in the russian people? . how did the tsars come to regard themselves as the successors of the eastern emperors? . compare the janizaries with the christian military-religious orders. . how was "the victory of the crescent secured by the children of the cross"? . why were the invasions of the mongols and ottoman turks more destructive to civilization than those of the germans, the arabs, and the northmen? . enumerate the more important services of the roman empire in the east to civilization. . on an outline map indicate the extent of the ottoman empire in a.d. footnotes [ ] see pages , , , , . [ ] mongolia has long been a part of the chinese empire, but in a.d., when china because a republic, mongolia declared its independence. [ ] herodotus, iv, . [ ] "the very mighty king." [ ] see page . [ ] for the location of these cities see the map on page . [ ] see page . [ ] commonly known as tamerlane. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] for the early history of russia see page . [ ] the name tartar (more correctly, tatar) was originally applied to both mongol and turkish tribes that entered russia. there are still over three millions of these "tartars" in the russian empire. [ ] the title tsar, or czar, is supposed to be a contraction of the word caesar. [ ] whence the name ottoman applied to this branch of the turks. [ ] see page . [ ] a name derived from the turkish _yeni cheri_, "new troops." [ ] see page . chapter xxii european nations during the later middle ages [ ] . growth of the nations the new nationalism the map of western europe, that is, of europe west of the great russian plain and the balkan peninsula, shows this part of the continent at present divided into no less than thirteen separate and independent nations. most of them arose during the latter part of the middle ages. they have existed so long that we now think of the national state as the highest type of human association, forgetting that it has been preceded by other forms of political organization, such as the greek republic, the roman empire, and the feudal state, and that it may be followed some day by an international or universal state composed of all civilized peoples. the national state and feudalism these national states were the successors of feudalism. the establishment of the feudal system in any country meant, as has been seen, its division into numerous small communities, each with a law court, treasury, and army. this system of local government helped to keep order in an age of confusion, but it did not meet the needs of a progressive society. in most parts of europe the feudal states gradually gave way to centralized governments ruled by despotic kings. the new monarchies a feudal king was often little more than a figurehead, equaled, or perhaps surpassed, in power by some of his own vassals. but in england, france, spain, and other countries a series of astute and energetic sovereigns were able to strengthen their authority at the expense of the nobles. they formed permanent armies by insisting that all military service should be rendered to themselves and not to the feudal lords. they got into their own hands the administration of justice. they developed a revenue system, with the taxes collected by royal officers and deposited in the royal treasury. the kings thus succeeded in creating in each country one power which all the inhabitants feared, respected, and obeyed. the sentiment of nationality a national state in modern times is keenly conscious of its separate existence. all its people usually speak the same language and have for their "fatherland" the warmest feelings of patriotic devotion. in the middle ages, however, patriotism was commonly confounded with loyalty to the sovereign, while the differences between nations were obscured by the existence of an international church and by the use of latin as the common language of all cultivated persons. the sentiment of nationality arose earlier in england than on the continent, partly owing to the insular position of that country, but nowhere did it become a very strong influence before the end of the fifteenth century. . england under william the conqueror, - a.d.; the norman kingship the last invasion of england the normans were the last invaders of england. since a.d. the english channel, not more than twenty-one miles wide between dover and calais, has formed a watery barrier against continental domination. the english people, for eight and a half centuries, have been free to develop their ideals, customs, and methods of government in their own way. we shall now learn how they established a strong monarchy and at the same time laid deep and firm the foundations of constitutional liberty. william's despotic rule william the conqueror had won england by force of arms. he ruled it as a despot. those who resisted him he treated as rebels, confiscating their land and giving it to norman followers. to prevent uprisings he built a castle in every important town and garrisoned it with his own soldiers. the tower of london still stands as an impressive memorial of the days of the conquest. but william did not rely on force alone. he sought with success to attach the english to himself by retaining most of their old customs and by giving them an enlightened administration of the law. "good peace he made in this land," said the old anglo-saxon chronicler, "so that a man might travel over the kingdom with his bosom full of gold without molestation, and no man durst kill another, however great the injury he might have received from him." william and feudalism the feudal system on the continent permitted a powerful noble to gather his vassals and make war on the king, whenever he chose to do so. william had been familiar with this evil side of feudalism, both in france and in his own duchy of normandy, and he determined to prevent its introduction into england. william established the principle that a vassal owed his first duty to the king and not to his immediate lord. if a noble rebelled and his men followed him, they were to be treated as traitors. rebellion proved to be an especially difficult matter in england, since the estates which a great lord possessed were not all in any one place but were scattered about the kingdom. a noble who planned to revolt could be put down before he was able to collect his retainers from the most distant parts of the country. [illustration: the "white tower" forms part of the tower of london. built by william the conqueror] domesday book, a.d. the extent of william's authority is illustrated by the survey which he caused to have made of the taxable property of the kingdom. royal commissioners went throughout the length and breadth of england to find out how much farm land there was in every county, how many landowners there were, and what each man possessed, to the last ox or cow or pig. the reports were set down in the famous domesday book, perhaps so called because one could no more appeal from it than from the last judgment. a similar census of population and property had never before been taken in the middle ages. [illustration: a passage from domesday book beginning of the entry for oxford. the handwriting is the beautiful carolingian minuscule which the norman conquest introduced into england. the two volumes of this compilation and the chest in which they were formerly preserved may be seen in the public record office, london.] the salisbury oath, a.d. almost at the close of his reign william is said to have summoned all the landowning men in england to a great meeting on salisbury plain. they assembled there to the number, as it is reported, of sixty thousand and promised "that they would be faithful to him against all other men." the salisbury oath was a national act of homage and allegiance to the king. . england under henry ii, - a.d.; royal justice and the common law henry ii, plantagenet henry ii, who ascended the english throne in a.d., was a grandson of william the conqueror and the first of the famous plantagenet [ ] family, henry spent more than half of his reign abroad, looking after his extensive possessions in france but this fact did not prevent him from giving england good government. three things in which all englishmen take special pride--the courts, the jury system, and the common law--began to take shape during henry's reign. the king's court henry, first of all, developed the royal court of justice. this had been, at first, simply the court of the king's chief vassals, corresponding to the local feudal courts. [ ] henry transformed it from an occasional assembly of warlike nobles into a regular body of trained lawyers, and at the same time opened its doors to all except serfs. in the king's court any freeman could find a justice that was cheaper and speedier than that dispensed by the feudal lords. the higher courts of england have sprung from this institution. circuit judges henry also took measures to bring the king's justice directly to the people. he sent members of the royal court on circuit throughout the kingdom. at least once a year a judge was to hold an assembly in each county and try such cases as were brought before him. this system of circuit judges helped to make the law uniform in all parts of england. trial by "petty jury" the king's court owed much of its popularity to the fact that it employed a better form of trying cases than the old ordeal, oath-swearing, or judicial duel. henry introduced a method of jury trial which had long been in use in normandy. when a case came before the king's judges on circuit, they were to select twelve knights, usually neighbors of the parties engaged in the dispute, to make an investigation and give a "verdict" [ ] as to which side was in the right. these selected men bore the name of "jurors," [ ] because they swore to tell the truth. in henry's time this method of securing justice applied only to civil cases, that is, to cases affecting land and other forms of property, but later it was extended to persons charged with criminal offenses. thus arose the "petty jury," an institution which nearly all european peoples have borrowed from england. [illustration: windsor castle the town of windsor lies on the west bank of the thames about twenty-one miles from london. its famous castle has been the chief residence of english sovereigns from the time of william the conqueror. the massive round tower which forms the most conspicuous feature of the castle was built by henry iii about a.d. but edward iii wholly reconstructed it about a.d. the state apartments of the castle include the throne room, a guard room with medieval armor a reception room adorned with tapestries picture galleries and the royal library.] accusation by the "grand jury" another of henry's innovations developed into the "grand jury." before his time many offenders went unpunished, especially if they were so powerful that no private individual dared accuse them. henry provided that when the king's justices came to a county court a number of selected men should be put upon their oath and required to give the names of any persons whom they knew or believed to be guilty of crimes. such persons were then to be arrested and tried. this "grand jury," as it came to be called, thus had the public duty of making accusations, whether its members felt any personal interest in the matter or not. the common law the decisions handed down by the legal experts who composed the royal court formed the basis of the english system of jurisprudence. it received the name common law because it grew out of such customs as were common to the realm, as distinguished from those which were merely local. this law, from henry's ii's time, became so widespread and so firmly established that it could not be supplanted by the roman law followed on the continent. carried by english colonists across the seas, it has now come to prevail throughout a great part of the world. . the great charter, a.d. richard i and john, - a.d. the great henry, from whose legal reforms english-speaking peoples receive benefit even to-day, was followed by his son, richard, the lion-hearted crusader. [ ] after a short reign richard was succeeded by his brother, john, a man so cruel, tyrannical, and wicked that he is usually regarded as the worst of english kings. in a war with the french ruler, philip augustus, john lost normandy and some of the other english possessions on the continent. [ ] in a dispute with innocent iii he ended by making an abject submission to the papacy. [ ] finally, john's oppressive government provoked a revolt, and he was forced to grant the charter of privileges known as magna carta. [illustration: map, dominions of the plantagenets in england and france] winning of magna carta, a.d. the norman conquest had made the king so strong that his authority could be resisted only by a union of all classes of the people. the feudal lords were obliged to unite with the clergy and the commons, [ ] in order to save their honor, their estates, and their heads. matters came to a crisis in a.d., when the nobles, supported by the archbishop of canterbury, placed their demands for reform in writing before the king. john swore furiously that they were "idle dreams without a shadow of reason" and refused to make any concessions. thereupon the nobles formed the "army of god and the holy church," as it was called, and occupied london, thus ranging the townspeople on their side. deserted by all except the hired troops which he had brought from the continent, john was compelled to yield. at runnimede on the thames, not far from windsor, he set his seal to the great charter. [illustration: extract from the great charter facsimile of the opening lines. four copies of magna carta, sealed with the great seal of king john, as well as several unsealed copies, are in existence. the british museum possesses two of the sealed copies; the other two belong to the cathedrals of lincoln and salisbury, respectively.] character of magna carta magna carta does not profess to be a charter of liberties for all englishmen. most of its sixty-three clauses merely guarantee to each member of the coalition against john--nobles, clergy, and commons--those special privileges which the norman rulers had tried to take away. very little is said in this long document about the serfs, who composed probably five-sixths of the population of england in the thirteenth century. significance of magna carta but there are three clauses of magna carta which came to have a most important part in the history of english freedom. the first declared that no taxes were to be levied on the nobles--besides the three recognized feudal aids [ ]--except by consent of the great council of the realm. [ ] by this clause the nobles compelled the king to secure their consent before imposing any taxation. the second set forth that no one was to be arrested, imprisoned, or punished in any way, except after a trial by his equals and in accordance with the law of the land. the third said simply that to no one should justice be sold, denied, or delayed. these last two clauses contained the germ of great legal principles on which the english people relied for protection against despotic kings. they form a part of our american inheritance from england and have passed into the laws of all our states. . parliament during the thirteenth century henry iii, - a.d. the thirteenth century, which opened so auspiciously with the winning of the great charter, is also memorable as the time when england developed her parliament [ ] into something like its present form. the first steps in parliamentary government were taken during the reign of john's son, henry iii. the witenagemot and the great council it had long been the custom in england that in all important matters a ruler ought not to act without the advice and consent of his leading men. the anglo-saxon kings sought the advice and consent of their witenagemot, [ ] a body of nobles, royal officers, bishops, and abbots. it approved laws, served as a court of final appeal, elected a new monarch, and at times deposed him. the witenagemot did not disappear after the norman conquest. under the name of the great council it continued to meet from time to time for consultation with the king. this assembly was now to be transformed from a feudal body into a parliament representing the entire nation. simon de montfort's parliament, a.d. the great council, which by one of the provisions of magna carta had been required to give its consent to the levying of feudal dues, met quite frequently during henry iii's reign. on one occasion, when henry was in urgent need of money and the bishops and lords refused to grant it, the king took the significant step of calling to the council two knights from each county to declare what aid they would give him. these knights, so ran henry's summons, were to come "in the stead of each and all," in other words, they were to act as representatives of the counties. then in a.d., when the nobles were at war with the king, a second and even more significant step was taken. their leader, simon de montfort, summoned to the council not only two knights from each county, but also two citizens from each of the more important towns. the representative system the custom of selecting certain men to act in the name and on the behalf of the community had existed during anglo-saxon times in local government. representatives of the counties had been employed by the norman kings to act as assessors in levying taxes. as we have just learned, the "juries" of henry ii also consisted of such representatives. the english people, in fact, were quite familiar with the idea of representation long before it was applied on a larger scale to parliament. "model parliament" of edward i, a.d. simon de montfort's parliament included only his own supporters, and hence was not a truly national body. but it made a precedent for the future. thirty years later edward i called together at westminster, now a part of london, a parliament which included all classes of the people. here were present archbishops, bishops, and abbots, earls and barons, two knights from every county, and two townsmen to represent each town in that county. after this time all these classes were regularly summoned to meet in assembly at westminster. house of lords and house of commons the separation of parliament into two chambers came in the fourteenth century. the house of lords included the nobles and higher clergy, the house of commons, the representatives from counties and cities. this bicameral arrangement, as it is called, has been followed in the parliaments of most modern countries. powers of parliament the early english parliament was not a law-making but a tax-voting body. the king would call the two houses in session only when he needed their sanction for raising money. parliament in its turn would refuse to grant supplies until the king had corrected abuses in the administration or had removed unpopular officials. this control of the public purse in time enabled parliament to grasp other powers. it became an accepted principle that royal officials were responsible to parliament for their actions, that the king himself might be deposed for good cause, and that bills, when passed by parliament and signed by the king, were the law of the land. england thus worked out in the middle ages a system of parliamentary government which nearly all civilized nations have held worthy of imitation. . expansion of england under edward i, - a.d. the british isles our narrative has been confined until now to england, which forms, together with wales and scotland, the island known as great britain. ireland is the only other important division of the united kingdom. it was almost inevitable that in process of time the british isles should have come under a single government, but political unity has not yet fused english, scotch, welsh, and irish into a single people. wales the conquest of britain by the anglo-saxons drove many of the welsh, [ ] as the invaders called the britons, into the western part of the island. this district, henceforth known as wales, was one of the last strongholds of the celts. even to-day a variety of the old celtic language, called cymric, is still spoken by the welsh people. conquest of wales in their wild and mountainous country the welsh long resisted all attempts to subjugate them. harold exerted some authority over wales, william the conqueror entered part of it, and henry ii induced the local rulers to acknowledge him as overlord, but it was edward i who first brought all wales under english sway. edward fostered the building of towns in his new possession, divided it into counties or shires, after the system that prevailed in england, and introduced the common law. he called his son, edward ii, who was born in the country, the "prince of wales," and this title has ever since been borne by the heir apparent to the english throne. the work of uniting wales to england went on slowly, and two centuries elapsed before wales was granted representation in the house of commons. [illustration: coronation chair, westminster abbey every english ruler since edward i has been crowned in this oak chair. under the seat is the "stone of scone," said to have been once used by the patriarch jacob. edward i brought it to london in a.d., as a token of the subjection of scotland.] scotland scotland derives its name from the scots, who came over from ireland early in the fifth century. [ ] the northern highlands, a nest of rugged mountains washed by cold and stormy seas, have always been occupied in historic times by a celtic-speaking people, whose language, called gaelic, is not yet extinct there. this part of scotland, like wales, was a home of freedom. the romans did not attempt to annex the highlands, and the anglo- saxons and danes never penetrated their fastnesses. on the other hand the southern lowlands, which include only about one-third of scotland, were subdued by the teutonic invaders, and so this district became thoroughly english in language and culture. [ ] [illustration: map, scotland in the th century] the scottosh kingdom one might suppose that the lowlands, geographically only an extension of northern england and inhabited by an english-speaking people, would have early united with the southern kingdom. but matters turned out otherwise. the lowlands and the highlands came together under a line of celtic kings, who fixed their residence at edinburgh and long maintained their independence. scotland annexed by edward i edward i, having conquered wales, took advantage of the disturbed conditions which prevailed in scotland to interfere in the affairs of that country. the scotch offered a brave but futile resistance under william wallace. this heroic leader, who held out after most of his countrymen submitted, was finally captured and executed. his head, according to the barbarous practice of the time, was set upon a pole on london bridge. the english king now annexed scotland without further opposition. [illustration: a queen eleanor cross after the death of his wife eleanor, edward i caused a memorial cross to be set up at each place where her funeral procession had stopped on its way to london. there were originally seven crosses. of the three that still exist, the geddington cross is the best preserved. it consists of three stories and stands on a platform of eight steps.] robert bruce and bannockburn, a.d. but william wallace by his life and still more by his death had lit a fire which might never be quenched. soon the scotch found another champion in the person of robert bruce. edward i, now old and broken, marched against him, but died before reaching the border. the weakness of his son, edward ii, permitted the scotch, ably led by bruce, to win the signal victory of bannockburn, near stirling castle. here the scottish spearmen drove the english knighthood into ignominious flight and freed their country from its foreign overlords. scottish independence the battle of bannockburn made a nation. a few years afterwards the english formally recognized the independence of the northern kingdom. so the great design of edward i to unite all the peoples of britain under one government had to be postponed for centuries. [ ] ireland no one kingdom ever arose in ireland out of the numerous tribes into which the celtic-speaking inhabitants were divided. the island was not troubled, however, by foreign invaders till the coming of the northmen in the ninth century. [ ] the english, who first entered ireland during the reign of henry ii, did not complete its conquest till the seventeenth century. ireland by its situation could scarcely fail to become an appanage of great britain, but the dividing sea has combined with differences in race, language, and religion, and with english misgovernment, to prevent anything like a genuine union of the conquerors and the conquered. . unification of france, - a.d. physical france nature seems to have intended that france should play a leading part in european affairs. the geographical unity of the country is obvious. mountains and seas form its permanent boundaries, except on the north-east where the frontier is not well defined. the western coast of france opens on the atlantic, now the greatest highway of the world's commerce, while on the southeast france touches the mediterranean, the home of classical civilization. this intermediate position between two seas helps us to understand why french history should form, as it were, a connecting link between ancient and modern times. racial france but the greatness of france has been due, also, to the qualities of the french people. many racial elements have contributed to the population. the blood of prehistoric tribes, whose monuments and grave mounds are scattered over the land, still flows in the veins of frenchmen. at the opening of historic times france was chiefly occupied by the celts, whom julius caesar found there and subdued. the celts, or gauls, have formed in later ages the main stock of the french nation, but their language gave place to latin after the roman conquest. in the course of five hundred years the gauls were so thoroughly romanized that they may best be described as gallo-romans. the burgundians, franks, and northmen afterwards added a teutonic element to the population, as well as some infusion of teutonic laws and customs. the capetian dynasty france, again, became a great nation because of the greatness of its rulers. hugh capet, who became the french king in a.d., [ ] was fortunate in his descendants. the capetian dynasty was long lived, and for more than three centuries son followed father on the throne without a break in the succession. [ ] during this time the french sovereigns worked steadily to exalt the royal power and to unite the feudal states of medieval france into a real nation under a common government. their success in this task made them, at the close of the middle ages, the strongest monarchs in europe. france and its fiefs hugh capet's duchy--the original france--included only a small stretch of inland country centering about paris on the seine and orléans on the loire. his election to the kingship did not increase his power over the great lords who ruled in normandy, brittany, aquitaine, burgundy, and other parts of the country. they did homage to the king for their fiefs and performed the usual feudal services, but otherwise regarded themselves as independent in their own territories. [illustration: map, unification of france during the middle ages] philip ii, augustus, - a.d. the most considerable additions to the royal domains were made by philip ii, called augustus. we have already referred to his contest with pope innocent iii and to his participation in the third crusade. [ ] the english king, john, was philip's vassal for normandy and other provinces in france. a quarrel between the two rulers gave philip an opportunity to declare john's fiefs forfeited by feudal law. philip then seized all the english possessions north of the river loire. the loss of these possessions abroad had the result of separating england almost completely from continental interests; for france it meant a great increase in territory and population. philip made paris his chief residence, and that city henceforth became the capital of france. louis ix, the saint, - a.d. during the long reign of philip's grandson, louis ix, rich districts to the west of the rhone were added to the royal domains. this king, whose christian virtues led to his canonization, distinguished himself as an administrator. his work in unifying france may be compared with that of henry ii in england. he decreed that only the king's money was to circulate in the provinces owned directly by himself, thus limiting the right of coinage enjoyed by feudal lords. he restricted very greatly the right of private war and forbade the use of judicial duels. louis also provided that important cases could be appealed from feudal courts to the king's judges, who sat in paris and followed in their decisions the principles of roman law. in these and other ways he laid the foundations of absolute monarchy in france. philip iv, the fair, - a.d. the grandson of st. louis, philip iv, did much to organize a financial system for france. now that the kingdom had become so large and powerful, the old feudal dues were insufficient to pay the salaries of the royal officials and support a standing army. philip resorted to new methods of raising revenue by imposing various taxes and by requiring the feudal lords to substitute payments in money for the military service due from them. the estates-general philip also called into existence the estates-general, an assembly in which the clergy, the nobles, and representatives from the commons (the "third estate") met as separate bodies and voted grants of money. the estates-general arose almost at the same time as the english parliament, to which it corresponded, but it never secured the extensive authority of that body. after a time the kings of france became so powerful that they managed to reign without once summoning the nation in council. the french did not succeed, as the english had done, in founding political liberty upon the vote and control of taxation. . the hundred years' war between france and england, - a.d. pretext for the war the task of unifying france was interrupted by a deplorable war between that country and england. it continued, including periods of truce, for over a century. the pretext for the war was found in a disputed succession. in a.d. the last of the three sons of philip iv passed away, and the direct line of the house of capet, which had reigned over france for more than three hundred years, came to an end. the english ruler, edward iii, whose mother was the daughter of philip iv, considered himself the next lineal heir. the french nobles were naturally unwilling to receive a foreigner as king, and gave the throne, instead, to a nephew of philip iv. this decision was afterwards justified on the ground that, by the old law of the salian franks, women could neither inherit estates nor transmit them to a son. [ ] [illustration: royal arms of edward iii edward iii, having in a.d. set up a claim to the throne of france, proceeded to add the french lilies (_fleurs-de-lis_) to his coat of arms. he also took as his motto _dieu et mon droit_ ("god and my right"). the lilies of france remained in the royal arms till a.d.; the motto is still retained.] reasons for the war edward iii at first accepted the situation. philip vi, however, irritated edward by constant encroachments on the territories which the english still kept in france. philip also allied himself with the scotch and interfered with english trade interests in the county of flanders. [ ] this attitude of hostility provoked retaliation. edward now reasserted his claim to the crown of france and prepared by force of arms to make it good. [illustration: english archer from an old manuscript.] battles of crÉcy, a.d., and poitiers, a.d. in a.d. edward led his troops across the channel and at crécy gained a complete victory over the knighthood of france. ten years later the english at poitiers almost annihilated another french force much superior in numbers. these two battles were mainly won by foot soldiers armed with the long bow, in the use of which the english excelled. ordinary iron mail could not resist the heavy, yard-long arrows, which fell with murderous effect upon the bodies of men and horses alike. henceforth infantry, when properly armed and led, were to prove themselves on many a bloody field more than a match for feudal cavalry. the long bow, followed later by the musket, struck a deadly blow at feudalism. the "black prince" edward's son, the prince of wales, when only sixteen years of age, won his spurs by distinguished conduct at crécy. it was the "black prince," [ ] also, who gained the day at poitiers, where he took prisoner the french king, john. toward his royal captive he behaved in chivalrous fashion. at supper, on the evening of the battle, he stood behind john's chair and waited on him, praising the king's brave deeds. but this "flower of knighthood," who regarded warfare as only a tournament on a larger scale, could be ruthless in his treatment of the common people. on one occasion he caused three thousand inhabitants of a captured town--men, women and children--to be butchered before his eyes. the incident shows how far apart in the middle ages were chivalry and humanity. renewal of the war the english, in spite of their victories, could not conquer france. the french refused to fight more pitched battles and retired to their castles and fortified towns. the war almost ceased for many years after the death of edward iii. it began again early in the fifteenth century, and the english this time met with more success. they gained possession of almost all france north of the loire, except the important city of orléans. had the english taken it, french resistance must have collapsed. that they did not take it was due to one of the most remarkable women in history--joan of arc. [ ] the "maid of orlÉans," a.d. joan was a peasant girl, a native of the little village of domremy. always a devout and imaginative child, she early began to see visions of saints and angels and to hear mysterious voices. at the time of the siege of orléans the archangel michael appeared to her, so she declared, and bade her go forth and save france. joan obeyed, and though barely seventeen years of age made her way to the court of the french king. there her piety, simplicity, and evident faith in her mission overcame all doubts. clad in armor, girt with an ancient sword, and with a white banner borne before her, joan was allowed to accompany an army for the relief of orléans. she inspired the french with such enthusiasm that they quickly compelled the english to raise the siege. then joan led her king to reims and stood beside him at his coronation in the cathedral. end of the war though joan was soon afterwards captured by the english, who, to their lasting dishonor, burned her as a witch, her example nerved the french to further resistance. the english gradually lost ground and in a.d., the year of the fall of constantinople, abandoned the effort to conquer a land much larger than their own. they retained of the french territories only the port of calais and the channel islands. [ ] effects of the war few wars have had less to justify them, either in their causes or in their consequences, than this long struggle between england and france. it was a calamity to both lands. for england it meant the dissipation abroad of the energies which would have been better employed at home. for france it resulted in widespread destruction of property, untold suffering, famines, and terrible loss of life. from this time dates that traditional hostility between the two countries which was to involve them in future conflicts. one beneficial effect the war did have. it helped to make the two nations conscious of their separate existence. the growth of a national feeling, the awakening of a sentiment of patriotism, was especially marked in france, which had fought so long for independence. england after the hundred years' war shortly after the conclusion of the hundred years' war the two branches of the english royal family became involved in desperate struggle for the crown. it was known as the war of the roses, because the house of york took as its badge a white rose and the house of lancaster, a red rose. the contest lasted a.d., when the lancastrians conquered, and their leader, henry tudor, ascended the throne as henry vii. he married a yorkist wife, thus uniting the two factions, and founded the tudor dynasty. the war of the roses arrested the progress of english freedom. it created a demand for a strong monarchy which could keep order and prevent civil strife between the nobles. the tudors met that demand and ruled as absolute sovereigns. it was more than a century before parliament, representing the people, could begin to win back free government. it did this only at the cost of a revolution. france after the hundred years' war france also issued from the hundred years' war with an absolute government. strengthened by victory over the english, the french kings were able to reduce both the nobility and the commons to impotence. during the reign of louis xi ( - a.d.) the royal domains were enlarged by the addition of anjou, provence, and the duchy of burgundy. his son, charles viii ( - a.d.), made brittany a possession of the french crown. the unification of france was now almost complete. . unification of spain (to a.d.) the spanish peninsula the spanish peninsula, known to the romans as hispania, is sharply separated from the rest of europe by the pyrenees mountains. at the same time the nearness of the peninsula to africa has always brought it into intimate relations with that continent. just as russia has formed a link between asia and europe, so spain has served as a natural highway from africa to europe. the spanish people the first settlers in spain, of whom we know anything, were the iberians. they may have emigrated from northern africa. after them came the celts, who overran a large part of the peninsula and appear to have mingled with the iberians, thus forming the mixed people known as celtiberians. in historic times spain was conquered by the carthaginians, who left few traces of their occupation, by the romans, who thoroughly romanized the country, by the visigoths, who founded a germanic kingdom, and lastly by the moors, who introduced arabian culture and the faith of islam. [ ] these invaders were not numerous enough greatly to affect the population, in which the celtiberian strain is still predominant. christian states of spain the moors never wholly conquered a fringe of mountain territory in the extreme north of spain. here a number of small christian states, including león, castile, navarre, and aragon, came into being. in the west there also arose the christian state of portugal. geographically, portugal belongs to spain, from which it is separated only by artificial frontiers, but the country has usually managed to maintain its independence. recovery of spain from the moors acting sometimes singly and sometimes in concert, the christian states fought steadily to enlarge their boundaries at the expense of their moslem neighbors. the contest had the nature of a crusade, for it was blessed by the pope and supported by the chivalry of europe. periods of victory alternated with periods of defeat, but by the close of the thirteenth century mohammedan spain had been reduced to the kingdom of granada at the southern extremity of the peninsula. the cid the long struggle with the moors made the spanish a patriotic people, keenly conscious of their national unity. the achievements of christian warriors were recited in countless ballads, and especially in the fine _poem of the cid_. it deals with the exploits of rodrigo diaz, better known by the title of the cid (lord) given to him by the moors. the cid of romance was the embodiment of every knightly virtue; the real cid was a bandit, who fought sometimes for the christians, sometimes against them, but always in his own interest. the cid's evil deeds were forgotten, however, and after his death in a.d. he became the national hero of spain. union of castile and aragon, a.d. meanwhile the separate spanish kingdoms were coming together to form a nation. león and castile in a.d. combined into the one kingdom of castile, so named because its frontiers bristled with castles against the moors. but the most important step in the making of spain was the marriage of ferdinand of aragon to isabella of castile, leading in a.d. to the union of these two kingdoms. about the same time the castilian language began to crowd out the other spanish dialects and to become the national speech. [illustration: map, unification of spain during the middle ages] conquest of granada, a.d. the new sovereigns of spain aimed to continue the unification of the peninsula by the conquest of granada. no effort was made by the turks, who shortly before had captured constantinople, to defend this last stronghold of islam in the west. the moors, though thrown upon their own resources, made a gallant resistance. at least once ferdinand wearied of the struggle, but isabella's determination never wavered. in a.d. granada surrendered, and the silver cross of the crusading army was raised on the highest tower of the city. moslem rule in spain, after an existence of almost eight centuries, now came to an end. rule of ferdinand and isabella ferdinand and isabella belong in the front rank of european sovereigns. like their contemporaries, henry vii and louis xi, they labored with success to build up an absolute monarchy. spain had found, as england and france had found, that feudalism spelled disorder, and that only a strong central government could keep the peace, repress crime, and foster trade and commerce. ferdinand and isabella firmly established the supremacy of the crown. by the end of the fifteenth century spain had become a leading european power. its importance in the councils of europe was soon to be increased by the marriage of a daughter of ferdinand and isabella to the heir of the austrian house of hapsburg. . austria and the swiss confederation, - a.d. rise of austria the name austria--in german oesterreich--means simply the eastern part of any kingdom. it came to be applied particularly to the territory on the danube east of bavaria, which otto the great had formed into a mark or border province for defense against the magyars. [ ] this mark, soon to be known as austria, gained an important place among german states. the frontiers were pushed down the danube valley and the capital was finally located at vienna, once a roman city. frederick barbarossa raised austria to the rank of a duchy. rudolf of hapsburg, who became emperor in a.d., first brought the country into the hands of the hapsburg family. [ ] growth of austria under the hapsburgs the hapsburgs founded the power of the present austrian monarchy. at the end of the fourteenth century their dominions included a large part of eastern germany, [ ] reaching from beyond the danube southward to the adriatic. early in the sixteenth century they secured bohemia, a slavic land thrust like a wedge into german territory, as well as part of the magyar land of hungary. the possession of these two kingdoms gave austria its special character of a state formed by the union under one ruler of several wholly distinct nations. meanwhile the right of election as holy roman emperor became hereditary in the hapsburg family. [illustration: map, growth of the hapsburg possessions] switzerland switzerland, during the earlier period of the middle ages, formed a part of the german duchy of swabia and belonged to the holy roman empire. [ ] about two-thirds of the population of switzerland remain german in speech and feeling, though now the country includes districts in which french or italian are spoken. all swiss laws are still proclaimed in the three languages. switzerland and austria swiss history is closely bound up with that of austria. the little mountain communities of schwyz, [ ] uri, and unterwalden, on the shores of beautiful lake lucerne, were possessions of the counts of hapsburg. in a.d., the year when rudolf of hapsburg died, these three "forest cantons" formed a confederation for resistance to their hapsburg overlords. additional cantons joined the league, which now entered upon a long struggle, dear to all lovers of liberty, against austrian rule. nowhere did the old methods of feudal warfare break down more conspicuously than in the battles gained by swiss pikemen over the haughty knights of austria. the struggle closed in a.d., when switzerland became practically a free state. [ ] [illustration: map, the swiss confederation, - a.d.] william tell and arnold von winkelried switzerland has two heroes of her war for independence. william tell is a wholly mythical character, for the story of a skillful marksman who succeeds in striking off some small object placed on a child's head is found in england, norway, denmark, and other countries. the swiss have localized it in uri. another popular hero has a better claim to historical existence. it is said that at a critical moment in the battle of sempach, when the swiss with their short weapons failed to break the austrian ranks, arnold von winkelried, a man of unterwalden, came to the rescue. rushing single-handed upon the enemy, he seized all the spears within reach and turned them into his own body. he thus opened a gap in the line, through which the swiss pressed on to victory. winkelried's deed might well have been performed, though the evidence for it is very scanty. the swiss confederation little switzerland, lying in the heart of the alps and surrounded by powerful neighbors, is one of the most interesting states in europe. the twenty-two communities, or cantons, which make up the swiss confederation, differ among themselves in language, religion (roman catholic or protestant), and customs, according to their nearness to germany, france, or italy. nevertheless the swiss form a patriotic and united nation. it is remarkable that a people whose chief bond of union was common hostility to the austrian hapsburgs, should have established a federal government so strong and enduring. . expansion of germany lines of german expansion an examination of the map shows how deficient germany is in good natural boundaries. the valley of the danube affords an easy road to the southeast, a road which the early rulers of austria followed as far as vienna and the hungarian frontier. eastward along the baltic no break occurs in the great plain stretching from the north sea to the ural mountains. it was in this direction that german conquests and colonization during the middle ages laid the foundation of modern prussia. the german and the slav the germans, in descending upon the roman empire, had abandoned much of their former territories to the slavs. in the reign of charlemagne all the region between the elbe and the vistula belonged to slavic tribes. to win it back for germany required several centuries of hard fighting. the slavs were heathen and barbarous, so that warfare with them seemed to be a kind of crusade. in the main, however, german expansion eastward was a business venture, due to the need for free land. it was the same need which in the nineteenth century carried the frontiers of the united states from the alleghanies to the pacific. brandenburg and pomerania german expansion began early in the tenth century, when henry the fowler annexed brandenburg between the elbe and the oder. [ ] subsequently much of the territory between the oder and the vistula, including pomerania on the southern coast of the baltic, came under german control. the slavic inhabitants were exterminated or reduced to slavery. their place was taken by thousands of german colonists, who introduced christianity, built churches and monasteries, cleared the woods, drained the marshes, and founded many cities destined to become centers of german trade and culture. prussia between the vistula and the niemen lay the lands of the prussians, a non- teutonic people closely related to the slavs. the prussian language and religion have disappeared, the prussians themselves have been completely absorbed by the germans who settled in their country, but the prussian name is borne to-day by one of the great states of modern europe. the teutonic order the conquest and conversion of the prussians was accomplished by the famous order of teutonic knights. it had been founded in palestine as a military-religious order, at the time of the third crusade. [ ] the decline of the crusading movement left the knights with no duties to perform, and so they transferred their activities to the prussian frontier, where there was still a chance to engage in a holy war. throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the teutonic order flourished, until its grand master ruled over the entire baltic coast from the vistula to the gulf of finland. the knights later had to relinquish much of this region to the slavs, but they sowed there the seeds of civilization. russia's baltic provinces [ ] are to-day the richest and most advanced in the empire. political germany germany at the close of the middle ages was not a united, intensely national state, such as had been established in england, france, and spain. it had split into hundreds of principalities, none large, some extremely small, and all practically independent of the feeble german kings. [ ] this weakness of the central power condemned germany to a minor part in the affairs of europe, as late as the nineteenth century. yet germany found some compensation for political backwardness in the splendid city life which it developed during the later middle ages. the german cities, together with those of italy and other european lands, now call for our attention. [illustration: map, german expansion eastward during the middle ages] studies . on an outline map indicate (a) william the conqueror's french dominions and (b) additional dominions of the plantagenet kings in france. . prepare a chart showing the leading rulers mentioned in this chapter. arrange your material in parallel columns with dates, one column for england, one for france, and one for the other european countries. . locate the following places: crécy; calais; poitiers; salisbury; stirling; edinburgh; orléans; and granada. . what happened in a.d.? in a.d.? in a.d.? in a.d.? in a.d.? in a.d.? in a.d.? . distinguish between a nation, a government, and a state. . are unity of race, a common language, a common religion, and geographical unity of themselves sufficient to make a nation? may a nation arise where these bonds are lacking? . "the thirteenth century gave europe the nations as we now know them." comment on this statement. . account for the rise of national feeling in france, spain, scotland, and switzerland. . "good government in the middle ages was only another name for a public- spirited and powerful monarchy." comment on this statement. . what advantages has trial by jury over the older forms of trial, such as oaths, ordeals, and the judicial duel? . explain the difference between a grand jury and a trial, or petty jury. . compare the extent of territory in which roman law now prevails with that which follows the common law. . why was the parliament of a.d. named the "model parliament"? . why has england been called "the mother of parliaments"? . distinguish between england and great britain. between great britain and the united kingdom. . what were the roman names of england, scotland, and ireland? . "islands seem dedicated by nature to freedom." how does the history of ireland illustrate this statement? . trace on the map the main water routes in france between the mediterranean and the atlantic. . show that paris occupies an exceptionally good location for a capital city. . what french kings did most to form the french nation? . why have queens never ruled in france? . compare the hundred years' war and the peloponnesian war as needless conflicts. . compare joan of arc's visions with those of mohammed. . "beyond the pyrenees begins africa." what does this statement mean? . why was spain inconspicuous in european politics before the opening of the sixteenth century? . look up in an encyclopedia the story of william tell and prepare an oral report upon it. . why was the german system of elective rulers politically less advantageous than the settled hereditary succession which prevailed in england and france? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history,_ chapter xiv, "st. louis"; chapter xv, "episodes of the hundred years' war"; chapter xvi, "memoirs of a french courtier." [ ] the name comes from that of the broom plant (latin _planta genesta_), a sprig of which henry's father used to wear in his hat. the family is also called angevin, because henry on his father's side descended from the counts of anjou in france. [ ] see page . [ ] latin _verum dictum_, "a true statement." [ ] latin _juro_, "i take an oath." [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] a term which refers to all freemen in town and country below the rank of nobles. [ ] see page . [ ] made up of the chief lords and bishops. [ ] the word "parliament," from french _parler,_ "to speak," originally meant a talk or conference. later, the word came to be applied to the body of persons assembled for conference. [ ] see page and note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see the map, page . [ ] in a.d. james vi of scotland ascended the throne of england as james i. in a.d. the two countries adopted a plan of union which gave them a common parliament and one flag. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] from a.d. to a.d. france had only fourteen kings. the average length of their reigns was, therefore, something more than twenty- four years. [ ] see pages , . [ ] hence the name "salic law" applied to the rule excluding women from succession to the french throne. [ ] see page . [ ] probably so called from the black armor which he wore. it may still be seen above his tomb in canterbury cathedral. [ ] in french, jeanne d'arc. [ ] calais went back to the french in a.d. the channel islands are still english possessions. [ ] see pages , , , . the arabs and berbers who settled in spain are generally called moors. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the duchies of upper and lower austria, styria, carinthia, and carniola, and the county of tyrol. [ ] see the map facing page . [ ] from schwyz comes the name switzerland. [ ] the independence of the country was not formally recognized till a.d. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] courland, livonia, and esthonia. [ ] see pages , . chapter xxiii european cities during the later middle ages . growth of the cities the civic revival civilization has always had its home in the city. [ ] the statement applies as well to medieval times as to the present day. nothing marks more strongly the backwardness of the early middle ages than the absence of large and flourishing cities throughout western europe. the growth of trade in the later middle ages led, however, to a civic revival beginning in the eleventh century. this change from rural to urban life was scarcely less significant for european history than the change from the feudal to the national state. cities of roman origin a number of medieval cities stood on the sites, and even within the walls, of roman municipalities. particularly in italy, southern france, and spain, and also in the rhine and danube regions, it seems that some ancient _municipia_ had never been entirely destroyed during the germanic invasions. they preserved their roman names, their streets, aqueducts, amphitheaters, and churches, and possibly vestiges of their roman institutions. among them were such important centers as milan, florence, venice, lyons, marseilles, paris, vienna, cologne, london, and york. origin of the other cities many medieval cities were new foundations. some rose to importance because of advantages of situation. a place where a river could be forded, where two roads met, or where a good harbor existed, would naturally become the resort of traders. some, again, started as fortresses, behind whose ramparts the peasants took refuge when danger threatened. a third group of cities developed from villages on the manors. a thriving settlement was pretty sure to arise near a monastery or castle, which offered both protection and employment to the common people. the city and feudalism the city at first formed part of the feudal system. it grew upon the territory of a feudal lord and naturally owed obedience to him. the citizens ranked not much higher than serfs, though they were traders and artisans instead of farmers. they enjoyed no political rights, for their lord collected the taxes, appointed officials, kept order, and punished offenders. in short, the city was not free. [illustration: walls of carcassonne the fortifications of carcassonne an ancient city of southwestern france are probably unique in europe for completeness and strength. they consist of a double line of ramparts protected by towers and pierced by only two gates. a part of the fortifications is attributed to the visigoths in the sixth century, the remainder, including the castle, was raised during the middle ages (eleventh to thirteenth centuries)] revolt of the cities but the city from the first was the decided enemy of feudalism. [ ] as its inhabitants increased in number and wealth, they became revolt of conscious of their strength and refused to submit the cities to oppression. sometimes they won their freedom by hard fighting, more often they purchased it, perhaps from some noble who needed money to go on a crusade. in france, england, and spain, where the royal power was strong, the cities obtained exemption from their feudal burdens, but did not become entirely self-governing. in germany and italy, on the other hand, the weakness of the central government permitted many cities to secure complete independence. they became true republics, like the old greek city-states. [ ] charters the contract which the citizens extorted from their lord was known as a charter. it specified what taxes they should be required to pay and usually granted to them various privileges, such as those of holding assemblies, electing magistrates, and raising militia for local defense. the revolt of the cities gradually extended over all western europe, so that at the end of the fourteenth century hardly any of them lacked a charter. civic freedom the free city had no room for either slaves or serfs. all servile conditions ceased inside its walls. the rule prevailed that anyone who had lived in a city for the term of a year and a day could no longer be claimed by a lord as his serf. this rule found expression in the famous saying: "town air renders free." rise of the "third estate" the freedom of the cities naturally attracted many immigrants to them. there came into existence a middle class of city people, between the nobles and clergy on the one side and the peasants on the other side--what the french call the _bourgeoisie._ [ ] as we have [ ] learned, the kings of england and france soon began to summon representatives of this middle class to sit in assemblies as the "third estate," by the side of the nobles and the clergy, who formed the first two estates. henceforth the middle class, the _bourgeoisie,_ the "third estate," distinguished as it was for wealth, intelligence, and enterprise, exerted an ever-greater influence on european affairs. * * * * * . city life a city from without the visitor approaching a medieval city through miles of open fields saw it clear in the sunlight, unobscured by coal smoke. from without it looked like a fortress, with walls, towers, gateways, drawbridges, and moat. beyond the fortifications he would see, huddled together against the sky, the spires of the churches and the cathedral, the roofs of the larger houses, and the dark, frowning mass of the castle. the general impression would be one of wealth and strength and beauty. a city from within once within the walls the visitor would not find things so attractive. the streets were narrow, crooked, and ill-paved, dark during the day because of the overhanging houses, and without illumination at night. there were no open spaces or parks except a small market place. the whole city was cramped by its walls, which shut out light, air, and view, and prevented expansion into the neighboring country. medieval london, for instance, covered an area of less than one square mile. [ ] [illustration: a scene in rothenburg] unsanitary conditions a city in the middle ages lacked all sanitary arrangements. the only water supply came from polluted streams and wells. there were no sewers and no sidewalks. people piled up their refuse in the backyard or flung it into the street, to be devoured by the dogs and pigs which served as scavengers. the holes in the pavement collected all manner of filth, and the unpaved lanes, in wet weather, became deep pits of mud. we can understand why the townspeople wore overshoes when they went out, and why even the saints in the pictures were represented with them on. the living were crowded together in many-storied houses, airless and gloomy; the dead were buried close at hand in crowded churchyards. such unsanitary conditions must have been responsible for much of the sickness that was prevalent. the high death rate could only be offset by a birth rate correspondingly high, and by the constant influx of country people. civic regulations numerous petty regulations restricted the private life of the townspeople. the municipal authorities sometimes decided how many guests might be invited to weddings, how much might be spent on wedding presents, what different garments might be owned and worn by a citizen, and even the number of trees that might be planted in his garden. each citizen had to serve his turn as watchman on the walls or in the streets at night. when the great bell in the belfry rang the "curfew," [ ] at eight or nine o'clock, this was the signal for every one to extinguish lights and fires and go to bed. it was a useful precaution, since conflagrations were common enough in the densely packed wooden houses. after curfew the streets became deserted, except for the night watch making their rounds and the presence of occasional pedestrians carrying lanterns. the municipal government spent little or nothing on police protection, so that street brawls, and even robbery and murder, were not infrequent. public buildings the inhabitants of the city took a just pride in their public buildings. the market place, where traders assembled, often contained a beautiful cross and sometimes a market hall to shelter goods from the weather. not far away rose the city hall, [ ] for the transaction of public business and the holding of civic feasts. the hall might be crowned by a high belfry with an alarm bell to summon citizens to mass meeting. then there would be a number of churches and abbeys and, if the city was the capital of a bishop's diocese, an imposing cathedral. municipal government the small size of medieval cities--few included as many as ten thousand inhabitants--simplified the problem of governing them. the leading merchants usually formed a council presided over by a head magistrate, the burgomaster [ ] or mayor, [ ] who was assisted by aldermen. [ ] in some places the guilds chose the officials and managed civic affairs. these associations had many functions and held a most important place in city life. . civic industry: the guilds formation of guilds the anglo-saxon word "guild," which means "to pay," came to be applied to a club or society whose members made contributions for some common purpose. this form of association is very old. some of the guilds in imperial rome had been established in the age of the kings, while not a few of those which flourish to-day in china and india were founded before the christian era. guilds existed in continental europe as early as the time of charlemagne, but they did not become prominent till after the crusades. merchant guilds a guild of merchants grew up when those who bought and sold goods in any place united to protect their own interests. the membership included many artisans, as well as professional traders, for in medieval times a man often sold in the front room of his shop the goods which he made in the back rooms. he was often both shopkeeper and workman in one. commercial monopoly the chief duty of a merchant guild was to preserve to its own members the monopoly of trade within a town. strangers and non-guildsmen could not buy or sell there except under the conditions imposed by the guild. they must pay the town tolls, confine their dealings to guildsmen, and as a rule sell only at wholesale. they were forbidden to purchase wares which the townspeople wanted for themselves or to set up shops for retail trade. they enjoyed more freedom at fairs, which were intended to attract outsiders. [illustration: house of the butchers' guild, hildesheim, germany hildesheim, near hanover, is perhaps the richest of all german towns in fine wooden-framed houses. the house of the butchers' guild has recently been restored, with all its original coloring carefully reproduced.] craft guilds after a time the traders and artisans engaged in a particular occupation began to form an association of their own. thus arose the craft guilds, composed of weavers, shoemakers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, and so on, until almost every form of industry had its separate organization. the names of the various occupations came to be used as the surnames of those engaged in them, so that to-day we have such common family names as smith, cooper, fuller, potter, chandler, and many others. the number of craft guilds in an important city might be very large. london and paris at one time each had more than one hundred, and cologne in germany had as many as eighty. the members of a particular guild usually lived in the same street or quarter of the city, not only for companionship but also for better supervision of their labor. [ ] industrial monopoly just as the merchant guild regulated town trade, so the craft guilds had charge of town industry. no one could engage in any craft without becoming a member of the guild which controlled it and submitting to the guild regulations. a man's hours of labor and the prices at which he sold his goods were fixed for him by the guild. he might not work elsewhere than in his shop, because of the difficulty of supervising him, nor might he work by artificial light, lest he turn out badly finished goods. everything made by him was carefully inspected to see if it contained shoddy materials or showed poor workmanship. failure to meet the test meant a heavy fine or perhaps expulsion from the guild. thus the industrial monopoly possessed by the craft guild gave some protection to both producer and consumer. organization of craft guilds full membership in a guild was reached only by degrees. a boy started as an apprentice, that is, a learner. he paid a sum of money to his master and agreed to serve him for a fixed period, usually seven years. the master, in turn, promised to provide the apprentice with food, lodging, and clothing, and to teach him all the secrets of the craft. at the end of the seven years the apprentice had to pass an examination by the guild. if he was found fit, he then became a journeyman and worked for daily wages. as soon as he had saved enough money, he might set up as a master in his own shop. a master was at once workman and employer, laborer and capitalist. activities of craft guilds like the old roman guilds, those of the middle ages had their charitable and religious aspects. each guild raised large benefit funds for the relief of members or their widows and orphans. each guild had its private altar in the cathedral, or often its own chapel, where masses were said for the repose of the souls of deceased members, and where on the day of its patron saint religious services were held. the guild was also a social organization, with frequent meetings for a feast in its hall or in some inn. the guilds in some cities entertained the people with an annual play or procession. [ ] it is clear that the members of a medieval craft guild had common interests and shared a common life. dissolution of craft guilds as the craft guilds prospered and increased in wealth, they tended to become exclusive organizations. membership fees were raised so high that few could afford to pay them, while the number of apprentices that a master might take was strictly limited. it also became increasingly difficult for journeymen to rise to the station of masters; they often remained wage-earners for life. the mass of workmen could no longer participate in the benefits of the guild system. in the eighteenth century most of the guilds lost their monopoly of industry, and in the nineteenth century they gave way to trade unions. . trade and commerce markets nearly every town of any consequence had a weekly or semiweekly market, which was held in the market place or in the churchyard. marketing often occurred on sunday, in spite of many laws against this desecration of the day. outsiders who brought cattle and farm produce for sale in the market were required to pay tolls, either to the town authorities or sometimes to a neighboring nobleman. these market dues still survive in the "octroi" collected at the gates of some european cities. "just price" people in the middle ages did not believe in unrestricted competition. it was thought wrong for anyone to purchase goods outside of the regular market ("forestalling") or to purchase them in larger quantities than necessary ("engrossing"). a man ought not to charge for a thing more than it was worth, or to buy a thing cheap and sell it dear. the idea prevailed that goods should be sold at their "just price" which was not determined by supply and demand but by an estimate of the cost of the materials and the labor that went into their manufacture. laws were often passed fixing this "just price," but it was as difficult then as now to prevent the "cornering of the market" by shrewd and unscrupulous traders. fairs besides markets at frequent intervals, many towns held fairs once or twice a year. the fairs often lasted for a month or more. they were especially necessary in medieval europe, because merchants did not keep large quantities or many kinds of goods on their shelves, nor could intending purchasers afford to travel far in search of what they wanted. the more important english fairs included those at stourbridge near cambridge, winchester, st. ives, and boston. on the continent fairs were numerous and in some places, such as leipzig in germany and nijni-novgorod in russia, they are still kept up. fairs and commerce a fair gave opportunity for the sale of commodities brought from the most distant regions. stourbridge fair, for instance, attracted venetians and genoese with silk, pepper, and spices of the east, flemings with fine cloths and linens, spaniards with iron and wine, norwegians with tar and pitch from their forests, and baltic merchants with furs, amber, and salted fish. the fairs, by fostering commerce, helped to make the various european peoples better acquainted with one another. [illustration: map, trade routes between northern and southern europe in the th and th centuries] decline of commerce in the middle ages commerce in western europe had almost disappeared as a result of the germanic invasions and the establishment of feudalism. what little commercial intercourse there was encountered many obstacles. a merchant who went by land from country to country might expect to find bad roads, few bridges, and poor inns. goods were transported on pack-horses instead of in wagons. highway robbery was so common that travelers always carried arms and often united in bands for better protection. the feudal lords, often themselves not much more than highwaymen, demanded tolls at every bridge and ford and on every road. if the merchant proceeded by water, he must face, in addition to the ordinary hazards of wind and wave, the danger from the ill-lighted coasts and from attacks by pirates. no wonder commerce languished in the early middle ages and for a long time lay chiefly in the hands of byzantines [ ] and arabs. [ ] commercial revival after the crusades even during the dark centuries that followed the end of the roman empire, some trade with the orient had been carried on by the cities of italy and southern france. the crusades, which brought east and west face to face, greatly increased this trade. the mediterranean lands first felt the stimulating effects of intercourse with the orient, but before long the commercial revival extended to the rest of europe. asiatic trade routes before the discovery of the cape of good hope the spices, drugs, incense, carpets, tapestries, porcelains, and gems of india, china, and the east indies reached the west by three main routes. all had been used in ancient times. [ ] the central and most important route led up the persian gulf and tigris river to bagdad, from which city goods went by caravan to antioch or damascus. the southern route reached cairo and alexandria by way of the red sea and the nile. by taking advantage of the monsoons, a merchant ship could make the voyage from india to egypt in about three months. the northern route, entirely overland, led to ports on the black sea and thence to constantinople. it traversed high mountain passes and long stretches of desert, and could profitably be used only for the transport of valuable articles small in bulk. the conquests of the ottoman turks greatly interfered with the use of this route by christians after the middle of the fifteenth century. european trade routes oriental goods, upon reaching the mediterranean, could be transported by water to northern europe. every year the venetians sent a fleet loaded with eastern products to bruges in flanders, a city which was the most important depot of trade with germany, england, and scandinavia. bruges also formed the terminus of the main overland route leading from venice over the alps and down the rhine. but as the map indicates, many other commercial highways linked the mediterranean with the north sea and the baltic. commercial relations it is important to note that until late in the middle ages trade existed, not between nations, but between cities. a merchant of london was almost as much a foreigner in any other english city as he would have been in bruges, paris, or cologne. consequently, each city needed to make commercial treaties with its neighbors, stipulating what were the privileges and obligations of its merchants, wherever they went. it was not until the kings grew strong in western europe that merchants could rely on the central government, rather than on local authorities, for protection. [illustration: map, medieval trade routes land routes water routes marco polo's route] . money and banking small scale of business enterprise we have seen that business in the middle ages was chiefly of a retail character and was conducted in markets and fairs. the artisan who manufactured the goods he sold and the peddler who carried his goods about from place to place were the leading types of medieval traders. little wholesale business existed, and the merchant prince who owned warehouses and large stocks of goods was an exceptional figure. lack of money one reason for the small scale of business enterprise is found in the inadequate supply of money. from the beginning of the christian era to the twelfth century there seems to have been a steady decrease in the amount of specie in circulation, partly because so much moved to the orient in payment for luxuries, and partly because the few mines in western europe went out of use during the period of the invasions. the scarcity of money, as has been shown, [ ] helped directly to build up the feudal system, since salaries, wages, and rents could be paid only in personal services or in produce. the money supply increased during the latter part of the middle ages, but it did not become sufficient for the needs of business till the discovery of the new world enabled the spaniards to tap the wealth of the silver mines in mexico and peru. [ ] faults of medieval currency medieval currency was not only small in amount but also faulty in character. many great nobles enjoyed the privilege of keeping a mint and issuing coins. since this feudal money passed at its full value only in the locality where it was minted, a merchant had to be constantly changing his money, as he went from one fief to another, and always at a loss. kings and nobles for their own profit would often debase the currency by putting silver into the gold coins and copper into the silver coins. every debasement, as it left the coins with less pure metal, lowered their purchasing power and so raised prices unexpectedly. even in countries like england, where debasement was exceptional, much counterfeit money circulated, to the constant impediment of trade. "usury" laws the prejudice against "usury," as any lending of money at interest was called, made another hindrance to business enterprise. it seemed wrong for a person to receive interest, since he lost nothing by the loan of his money. numerous church laws condemned the receipt of interest as unchristian. if, however, the lender could show that he had suffered any loss, or had been prevented from making any gain, through not having his money, he might charge something for its use. in time people began to distinguish between interest moderate in amount and an excessive charge for the use of money. the latter alone was henceforth prohibited as usurious. most modern states still have usury laws which fix the legal rate of interest. the jews as money lenders the business of money lending, denied to christians, fell into the hands of the jews. in nearly all european countries popular prejudice forbade the jews to engage in agriculture, while the guild regulations barred them from industry. they turned to trade and finance for a livelihood and became the chief capitalists of medieval times. but the law gave the jews no protection, and kings and nobles constantly extorted large sums from them. the persecutions of the jews date from the era of the crusades, when it was as easy to excite fanatical hatred against them as against the moslems. edward i drove the jews from england and ferdinand and isabella expelled them from spain. they are still excluded from the spanish peninsula, and in russia and austria they are not granted all the privileges which christians enjoy. italian banking the jews were least persecuted in the commercial cities of northern italy. florence, genoa, and venice in the thirteenth century were the money centers of europe. the banking companies in these cities received deposits and then loaned the money to foreign governments and great nobles. it was the florentine bankers, for instance, who provided the english king, edward iii, with the funds to carry on his wars against france. the italian banking houses had branches in the principal cities of europe. [ ] it became possible, therefore, to introduce the use of bills of exchange as a means of balancing debts between countries, without the necessity of sending the actual money. this system of international credit was doubly important at a time when so many risks attended the transportation of the precious metals. another florentine invention was bookkeeping by double-entry. [ ] . italian cities the city republics the cities of northern italy owed their prosperity, as we have learned, to the commerce with the orient. it was this which gave them the means and the strength to keep up a long struggle for freedom against the german emperors.[ ] the end of the struggle, at the middle of the thirteenth century, saw all north italy divided into the dominions of various independent cities. among them were milan, pisa, florence, genoa, and venice. milan milan, a city of roman origin, lay in the fertile valley of the po, at a point where the trade routes through several alpine passes converged. milan early rose to importance, and it still remains the commercial metropolis of italy. manufacturing also flourished there. milanese armor was once celebrated throughout europe. the city is rich in works of art, the best known being the cathedral, which, after st. peter's at rome and the cathedral of seville, is the largest church in europe. though the milanese were able to throw off the imperial authority, their government fell into the hands of the local nobles, who ruled as despots. almost all the italian cities, except venice, lost their freedom in this manner. pisa pisa, like milan, was an old roman city which profited by the disorders of the barbarian invasions to assert its independence. the situation of pisa on the arno river, seven miles from the sea, made it a maritime state, and the pisan navy gained distinction in warfare against the moslems in the mediterranean. the pisans joined in the first crusade and showed their valor at the capture of jerusalem. they profited greatly by the crusading movement and soon possessed banks, warehouses, and trading privileges in every eastern port. but pisa had bitter rivals in florence and genoa, and the conflicts with these two cities finally brought about the destruction of its power. [illustration: baptistery, cathedral, and "leaning tower" of pisa these three buildings in the piazza of pisa form one of the most interesting architectural groups in italy. the baptistery, completed in a.d., is a circular structure, feet in diameter and covered with a high dome. the cathedral was consecrated in a.d. the finest part of the building is the west front with its four open arcades. the campanile, or bell tower, reaches a height of feet. owing to the sinking of the foundations, it leans from the perpendicular to a striking extent (now about / feet).] florence florence, pisa's neighbor on the arno, was renowned for manufactures. the fine wool, silk cloths, golden brocades, jewelry, and metal work of florence were imported into all european countries. the craft guilds were very strong there, and even the neighboring nobles, who wished to become citizens, had first to enroll themselves in some guild. it was from banking, however, that florence gained most wealth. in the fifteenth century the city contained eighty great banking houses, in addition to numerous branches outside of italy. with their commercial spirit the florentines combined a remarkable taste for art and literature. their city, whose population never exceeded seventy thousand, gave birth to some of the most illustrious poets, prose writers, architects, sculptors, and painters of medieval times. it was the athens of italy. [ ] genoa genoa, located on the gulf of the same name, possessed a safe and spacious harbor. during the era of the crusades the city carried on a flourishing trade in both the mediterranean and the atlantic. after the fall of the latin empire of constantinople [ ] the genoese almost monopolized oriental commerce along the black sea route. the closing of this route by the ottoman turks was a heavy blow to their prosperity, which also suffered from the active competition of venice. situation of venice almost alone among italian cities venice was not of roman origin. its beginning is traced back to the period of barbarian inroads, when fugitives from the mainland sought a new home on the islands at the head of the adriatic. [ ] these islands, which lie about five miles from the coast, are protected from the outer sea by a long sand bar. they are little more than mud-banks, barely rising above the shallow water of the lagoons. the oozy soil afforded no support for buildings, except when strengthened by piles; there was scarcely any land fit for farming or cattle-raising; and the only drinking water had to be stored from the rainfall. yet on this unpromising site arose one of the most splendid of european cities. venetian commerce the early inhabitants of venice got their living from the sale of sea salt and fish, two commodities for which a constant demand existed in the middle ages. large quantities of salt were needed for preserving meat in the winter months, while fish was eaten by all christians on the numerous fast days and in lent. the venetians exchanged these commodities for the productions of the mainland and so built up a thriving trade. from fishermen they became merchants, with commercial relations which gradually extended to the orient. the crusades vastly increased the wealth of venice, for she provided the ships in which troops and supplies went to the holy land and she secured the largest share of the new eastern trade. venice became the great emporium of the mediterranean. as a commercial center the city was the successor of ancient tyre, carthage, athens, and alexandria. [illustration: venice and the grand canal] [illustration: the campanile and doge's palace, venice the famous campanile or bell tower of st. mark's cathedral collapsed in a.d. a new tower, faithfully copying the old monument, was completed nine years later. the doge's palace, a magnificent structure of brick and marble, is especially remarkable for the graceful arched colonnades forming the two lower stories. the blank walls of the upper story are broken by a few large and richly ornamented windows.] venetian possessions venice also used the crusading movement for her political advantage. the capture of constantinople in the fourth crusade extended venetian control over the peloponnesus, [ ] crete, rhodes, cyprus, and many smaller islands in the eastern mediterranean. even before this time venice had begun to gain possessions upon the italian mainland and along the adriatic coast. at the height of her power about a.d. she ruled a real empire. [ ] venetian sea power the commerce and possessions of venice made it necessary for her to maintain a powerful fleet. she is said to have had at one time over three thousand merchant vessels, besides forty-five war galleys. her ships went out in squadrons, with men-of-war acting as a convoy against pirates. one fleet traded with the ports of western europe, another proceeded to the black sea, while others visited syria and egypt to meet the caravans from the far east. venetian sea power humbled genoa and for a long time held the mediterranean against the ottoman turks. the "queen of the adriatic" the greatness of venice was celebrated by the annual ceremony of "the wedding of the sea." the doge, (that is, "duke.") or chief magistrate, standing in the bows of the state barge, cast a ring of gold into the adriatic with the proud words, "we have wedded thee, o sea, in token of our rightful and perpetual dominion." venice described the visitor to modern venice can still gain a good impression of what the city must have looked like in the fourteenth century, when ships of every nation crowded its quays and strangers of every country thronged its squares or sped in light gondolas over the canals which take the place of streets. the main highway is still the grand canal, nearly two miles long and lined with palaces and churches. the grand canal leads to st. mark's cathedral, brilliant with mosaic pictures, the campanile, or bell tower, and the doge's palace. the "bridge of sighs" connects the ducal palace with the state prisons. the rialto in the business heart of venice is another famous bridge. but these are only a few of the historic and beautiful buildings of the island city. . german cities: the hanseatic league cities of southern and central germany the important trade routes from venice and genoa through the alpine passes into the valleys of the rhine and danube were responsible for the prosperity of many fine cities in southern and central germany. among them were augsburg, which rivaled florence as a financial center, nuremberg, famous for artistic metal work, ulm, strassburg, and cologne. the feeble rule of the german kings compelled the cities to form several confederacies for the purpose of resisting the extortionate tolls and downright robberies of feudal lords. cities of northern germany it was the baltic commerce which brought the cities of northern germany into a firm union. from the baltic region came large quantities of dried and salted fish, especially herring, wax candles for church services, skins, tallow, and lumber. furs were also in great demand. every one wore them during the winter, on account of the poorly heated houses. the german cities which shared in this commerce early formed the celebrated hanseatic [ ] league for protection against pirates and feudal lords. membership of the hanseatic league the league seems to have begun with an alliance of hamburg and lübeck to safeguard the traffic on the elbe. the growth of the league was rapid. at the period of its greatest power, about a.d., there were upwards of eighty hanseatic cities along the baltic coast and in the inland districts of northern germany. hanseatic "factories" the commercial importance of the league extended far beyond the borders of germany. its trading posts, or "factories," at bergen in norway and novgorod in russia controlled the export trade of those two countries. similar establishments existed at london, on the thames just above london bridge, and at bruges in flanders. each factory served as a fortress where merchants could be safe from attack, as a storehouse for goods, and as a general market. influence of the hanseatic league the hanseatic league ruled over the baltic sea very much as venice ruled over the adriatic. in spite of its monopolistic tendencies, so opposed to the spirit of free intercourse between nations, the league did much useful work by suppressing piracy and by encouraging the art of navigation. modern germans look back to it as proof that their country can play a great part on the seas. the hanseatic merchants were also pioneers in the half-barbarous lands of northern and eastern europe, where they founded towns, fostered industry, and introduced comforts and luxuries previously unknown. such services in advancing civilization were comparable to those performed by the teutonic knights. [ ] decline of the hanseatic league after several centuries of usefulness the league lost its monopoly of the baltic trade and began to decline. moreover the baltic, like the mediterranean, sank to minor importance as a commercial center, after the portuguese had discovered the sea route to india and the spaniards had opened up the new world. [ ] city after city gradually withdrew from the league, till only hamburg, lübeck, and bremen remained. they are still called free and independent cities, though now they form a part of the german empire. . the cities of flanders county of flanders in the middle ages the netherlands, or "low countries," now divided between holland and belgium, consisted of a number of feudal states, nominally under the control of german and french kings, but really quite independent. among them was the county of flanders. it included the coast region from calais to the mouth of the scheldt, as well as a considerable district in what is now northwestern france. the inhabitants of flanders were partly of teutonic extraction (the flemings) and partly akin to the french (the walloons). flanders as a commercial and industrial center flanders enjoyed a good situation for commerce. the country formed a convenient stopping place for merchants who went by sea between the mediterranean and the baltic, while important land routes led thither from all parts of western europe. flanders was also an industrial center. its middle classes early discovered the fact that by devotion to manufacturing even a small and sterile region may become rich and populous. flemish wool trade the leading industry of flanders was weaving. england in the middle ages raised great flocks of sheep, but lacking skilled workmen to manufacture the wool into fine cloth, sent it across the channel to flanders. a medieval writer declared that the whole world was clothed in english wool manufactured by the flemings. the taxes that were laid on the export of wool helped to pay the expenses of english kings in their wars with the welsh, the scotch, and the irish. the wool trade also made flanders the ally of england in the hundred years' war, thus beginning that historic friendship between the two countries which still endures. [illustration: belfry of bruges bruges, the capital of west flanders, contains many fine monuments of the middle ages among these is the belfry, which rises in the center of the façade of the market hall. it dates from the end of the thirteenth century. its height is feet. the belfry consists of three stories, the two lower ones square, and the upper one, octagonal.] [illustration: town hall of louvain, belgium one of the richest and most ornate examples of gothic architecture erected in the fifteenth century the building consists of three stories above which rises the lofty roof crowned with graceful towers. the interior decoration and arrangements are commonplace.] bruges, ghent and ypres among the thriving communities of flanders three held an exceptional position. bruges was the mart where the trade of southern europe, in the hands of the venetians, and the trade of northern europe, in the hands of the hanseatic merchants, came together. ghent, with forty thousand workshops, and ypres, which counted two hundred thousand workmen within its walls and suburbs, were scarcely less prosperous. when these cities declined in wealth, antwerp became the commercial metropolis of the netherlands. flanders and france during the fourteenth century flanders was annexed by france. the flemish cities resisted bravely, and on more than one occasion their citizen levies, who could handle sword and ax, as well as the loom, defeated the french armies, thus demonstrating again that foot soldiers were a match for mailed cavalry. had the cities been able to form a lasting league, they might have established an independent flanders, but the bitter rivalry of ghent and bruges led to foreign domination, lasting into the nineteenth century. [ ] the cities and civilization the great cities of flanders, germany, and italy, not to speak of those in france, spain, and england, were much more than centers of trade, industry, and finance. within their walls learning and art flourished to an extent which had never been possible in earlier times, when rural life prevailed throughout western europe. we shall now see what the cities of the middle ages contributed to civilization. studies . indicate on the map some great commercial cities of the middle ages as follows: four in italy; three in the netherlands; and six in germany. . why does an american city have a charter? where is it obtained? what privileges does it confer? . who comprised the "third estate" in the middle ages? what class corresponds to it at the present time? . why has the medieval city been called the "birthplace of modern democracy"? . compare the merchant guild with the modern chamber of commerce, and craft guilds with modern trade unions. . look up the origin of the words "apprentice," "journeyman," and "master." . why was there no antagonism between labor and capital under the guild system? . compare the medieval abhorrence of "engrossing" with the modern idea that "combinations in restraint of trade" are wrong. . why were fairs a necessity in the middle ages? why are they not so useful now? where are they still found? . compare a medieval fair with a modern exposition. . what would be the effect on trade within an american state if tolls were levied on the border of every county? . what is meant by a "robber baron"? . how did the names "damask" linen, "chinaware," "japanned" ware, and "cashmere" shawls originate? . why was the purchasing power of money much greater in the middle ages than it is now? . why are modern coins always made perfectly round and with "milled" edges? . are modern coins "debased" to any considerable extent? what is the use of alloys? . why was the money-changer so necessary a figure in medieval business? . how is it easy to evade laws forbidding usury? . look up in an encyclopedia the legend of the "wandering jew." how does it illustrate the medieval attitude toward jews? . write out the english equivalents of the italian words mentioned in footnote . . compare the italian despots with the greek tyrants. . show that venice in medieval times was the seaport nearest the heart of commercial europe. . compare the venetian and athenian sea-empires in respect to (a) extent, (b) duration, and (c) commercial policy. . why was venice called the "bride of the sea"? footnotes [ ] the word "city" comes through the french from the latin _civilitas_, meaning citizenship, state. the word "town" (from anglo-saxon _tun_), which is now often used as a synonym of city, originally meant a village (french _ville_, latin _villa_). [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] from french _bourg,_ "town." [ ] see pages , . [ ] the visitor to chester in england or rothenburg in germany finds the old ramparts still standing and gains an excellent idea of the cramped quarters of a medieval city. nuremburg in southern germany is another city which has preserved its medieval monuments. [ ] french _couvre feu_, "cover fire." [ ] in french _hôtel de ville_; in german _rathhaus_. [ ] german _bürgermeister_, from _burg_, "castle." [ ] french _maire_, from latin _major_, "greater." [ ] anglo-saxon _ealdorman_ (_eald_ means "old"). [ ] a map of london still shows such names as shoe lane, distaff lane, cornhill, and many other similar designations of streets. [ ] the civic procession in london on lord mayor's day is the last survival in england of these yearly shows. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] lombard street in london, the financial center of england, received its name from the italian bankers who established themselves in this part of the city. [ ] among the italian words having to do with commerce and banking which have come into general use are _conto, disconto, risico, netto, deposito, folio_, and _bilanza_. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] known in the middle ages as the morea. [ ] for the venetian possessions in a.d. see the map, page . [ ] from the old german _hansa_, a "confederacy." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] in a.d. the two provinces of east flanders and west flanders became part of the modern kingdom of belgium. chapter xxiv medieval civilization [ ] . formation of national languages the th and th centuries the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which in western europe saw the rise of national states out of the chaos of feudalism and the development of cities, may be regarded as the central period of the middle ages. during this time there flourished a civilization which is properly described as "medieval," to distinguish it from classical civilization on the one side and modern civilization on the other side. the various european languages then began to assume something like their present form. a large body of literature, in both poetry and prose, appeared. architecture revived, and flowered in majestic cathedrals. education also revived, especially in the universities with their thousands of students. these and other aspects of medieval life will now engage our attention. latin as an international language throughout the middle ages latin continued to be an international language. the roman church used it for papal bulls and other documents. prayers were recited, hymns were sung, and sometimes sermons were preached in latin. it was also the language of men of culture everywhere in western christendom. university professors lectured in latin, students spoke latin, lawyers addressed judges in latin, and the merchants in different countries wrote latin letters to one another. all learned books were composed in latin until the close of the sixteenth century. this practice has not yet been entirely abandoned by european scholars. the romance languages each european country during the middle ages had also its own national tongue. the so-called romance languages, [ ] including modern french, italian, spanish, portuguese, and rumanian, were derived from the latin spoken by the romanized inhabitants of the lands now known as france, italy, spain, portugal, and rumania. their colloquial latin naturally lacked the elegance of the literary latin used by caesar, cicero, vergil, and other classical authors. the difference between the written and spoken forms of the language became more marked from the fifth century onward, in consequence of the barbarian invasions, which brought about the decline of learning. gradually in each country new and vigorous tongues arose, related to, yet different from, the old classical latin in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. french the indebtedness of the romance languages to latin is well illustrated by the case of french. it contains less than a thousand words introduced by the german invaders of gaul. even fewer in number are the words of celtic origin. nearly all the rest are derived from latin. development of french the popular latin of the gallo-romans gave rise to two quite independent languages in medieval france. the first was used in the southern part of the country; it was called provençal (from provence). the second was spoken in the north, particularly in the region about paris. the unification of the french kingdom under hugh capet and his successors gradually extended the speech of northern france over the entire country. even to-day, however, one may hear in the south of france the soft and harmonious provençal. the teutonic languages the barbarians who poured from the wilds of central europe into the roman world brought their languages with them. but the speech of the goths, vandals, burgundians, and lombards disappeared, while that of the franks in gaul, after their conversion to christianity, gradually gave way to the popular latin of their subjects. the teutonic peoples who remained outside what had been the limits of the roman world continued to use their native tongues during the middle ages. from them have come modern german, dutch, flemish, [ ] and the various scandinavian languages (danish, norwegian, swedish, and icelandic [ ]). in their earliest known forms all these languages show unmistakable traces of a common origin. anglo-saxon britain was the only roman province in the west of europe where a teutonic language took root and maintained itself. here the rough, guttural speech of the anglo-saxons so completely drove out the popular latin that only six words were left behind by the romans, when they abandoned the island early in the fifth century. more celtic words remained, words like _cradle, crock, mop_, and _pillow_, which were names of household objects, and the names of rivers, mountains, and lakes, which were not easily changed by the invaders. [ ] but with such slight exceptions anglo-saxon was thoroughly teutonic in vocabulary, as well as in grammar. changes in anglo-saxon in course of time anglo-saxon underwent various changes. christian missionaries, from the seventh century onward, introduced many new latin terms for church offices, services, and observances. the danes, besides contributing some place-names, gave us that most useful word _are_, and also the habit of using _to_ before an infinitive. the coming of the normans deeply affected anglo-saxon. norman-french influence helped to make the language simpler, by ridding it of the cumbersome declensions and conjugations which it had in common with all teutonic tongues. many new norman-french words also crept in, as the hostility of the english people toward their conquerors disappeared. development of english by the middle of the thirteenth century anglo-saxon, or english, as it may now be called, had taken on a somewhat familiar appearance, as in these opening words of the lord's prayer: "fadir ur, that es in heven, halud thi nam to nevene, thou do as thi rich rike, thi will on erd be wrought, eek as it is wrought in heven ay." in the poems of geoffrey chaucer (about - a.d.), especially in his _canterbury tales_, english wears quite a modern aspect, though the reader is often troubled by the old spelling and by certain words not now in use. the changes in the grammar of english have been so extremely small since a..d.--the beginning of the reign of henry vii [ ]--that any englishman of ordinary education can read without difficulty a book written more than four hundred years ago. [illustration: geoffrey chaucer from an old manuscript in the british museum, london. the only existing portrait of chaucer.] [illustration: illuminated manuscript from an old manuscript now in the possession of the british museum. the shrine of thomas becket, archbishop of canterbury, was a celebrated resort for (proofer's note: remainder of text unavailable)] english as a world-language what in medieval times was the speech of a few millions of englishmen on a single small island is now spoken by at least one hundred and fifty millions of people all over the world. english is well fitted for the role of a universal language, because of its absence of inflections and its simple sentence-order. the great number of one-syllabled words in the language also makes for ease in understanding it. furthermore, english has been, and still is, extremely hospitable to new words, so that its vocabulary has grown very fast by the adoption of terms from latin, french, and other languages. these have immensely increased the expressiveness of english, while giving it a position midway between the very different romance and teutonic languages. . development of national literatures latin hymns medieval literature, though inferior in quality to that of greece and rome, nevertheless includes many notable productions. in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries latin hymns reached their perfection. the sublime _dies irae_ ("day of wrath") presents a picture of the final judgment of the wicked. the pathetic _stabat mater_, which describes the sorrows of mary at the foot of the cross, has been often translated and set to music. these two works were written by a companion and biographer of st. francis of assisi. st. bernard's _jesu dulcis memoria_ ("jesus, the very thought of thee") forms part of a beautiful hymn nearly two hundred lines in length. part of another hymn, composed by a monk of cluny, has been rendered into english as "jerusalem the golden." latin hymns made use of rhyme, then something of a novelty, and thus helped to popularize this poetic device. latin students' songs very unlike the hymns in character were the latin songs composed by students who went from one university to another in search of knowledge and adventure. far from home, careless and pleasure-seeking, light of purse and light of heart the wandering scholars of the middle ages frequented taverns, as well as lecture rooms, and knew the wine-bowl even better than books. their songs of love, of dancing, drinking, and gaming, reflect the jovial side of medieval life. songs of the troubadours still another glimpse of gay society is afforded by the songs of the troubadours. these professional poets flourished in the south of france, but many of them traveled from court to court in other countries. their verses, composed in the provençal language, were always sung to the accompaniment of some musical instrument, generally the lute. romantic love and deeds of chivalry were the two themes which most inspired the troubadours. they, too, took up the use of rhyme, using it so skillfully as to become the teachers of europe in lyric poetry. the french epic if southern france was the native home of the lyric, northern france gave birth to epic or narrative verse. here arose many poems, describing the exploits of mythical heroes or historic kings. for a long time the poems remained unwritten and were recited by minstrels, who did not hesitate to modify and enlarge them at will. it was not until late in the eleventh century that any epics were written down. they enjoyed high esteem in aristocratic circles and penetrated all countries where feudalism prevailed. the charlemagne legend many of the french epics centered about the commanding personality of charlemagne. after his death he became a figure of legend. he was said to have reigned one hundred and twenty-five years, to have made a pilgrimage to jerusalem, and to have risen from the dead to lead the first crusade. angels inspired his actions. his sword contained the point of the lance which pierced the savior's side. his standard was the banner of st. peter. though history shows that charlemagne had little contact with the moslems, in the popular mind he stood forth as the great champion of christianity against islam. song of roland the oldest, and at the same time the finest, epic connected with charlemagne is the song of roland. [ ] the poem centers around roland, one of the twelve peers of france. when leading the rearguard of charlemagne's army out of spain, roland is suddenly attacked by the treacherous moors. he slays the enemy in heaps with his good sword, durendal, and only after nearly all the franks have perished sounds his magic horn to summon aid. charlemagne, fifteen leagues distant, hears its notes and returns quickly. but before help arrives, roland has fallen. he dies on the field of battle, with his face to the foe, and a prayer on his lips that "sweet france" may never be dishonored. this stirring poem appealed strongly to the martial normans. a medieval chronicler relates that just before the battle of hastings a norman minstrel rode out between the lines, tossing his sword in air and catching it again, as he chanted the song "of roland and of charlemagne, of oliver and many a brave vassal who lost his life at roncesvalles." [illustration: roland at roncesvalles from a thirteenth-century window of stained glass in chartres cathedral. at the right, roland sounding his horn; at the left roland endeavoring to break his sword durendal.] the arthurian romances king arthur and the knights of the round table were also important figures in medieval legend. arthur was said to have reigned in britain early in the sixth century and to have fought against the anglo-saxons. whether he ever lived or not we do not know. in the arthurian romances this celtic king stands forth as the model knight, the ideal of noble chivalry. the norman conquerors of england carried the romances to france, and here, where feudalism was so deeply rooted, they found a hearty welcome. sir thomas malory's _morte d' arthur_, one of the first books to be printed in england, contains many of the narratives from which tennyson, in his _idylls of the king_, and other modern poets have drawn their inspiration. the nibelingenlied the greatest epic composed in germany during the middle ages is the _nibelungenlied_. the poem begins in burgundy, where three kings hold court at worms, on the rhine. thither comes the hero, siegfried, ruler of the netherlands. he had slain the mysterious nibelungs and seized their treasure, together with the magic cloud-cloak which rendered its wearer invisible to human eyes. he had also killed a dragon and by bathing in its blood had become invulnerable, except in one place where a linden leaf touched his body. siegfried marries kriemhild, a beautiful burgundian princess, and with her lives most happily. but a curse attached to the nibelung treasure, and siegfried's enemy, the "grim hagen," treacherously slays him by a spear thrust in the one spot where he could be hurt. many years afterwards kriemhild marries attila, king of the huns, on condition that he help her to vengeance. hagen and his burgundians are invited to hunland, where kriemhild causes them all to be put to death. the name of the poet who compiled and probably wrote much of the _nibelungenlied_ remains unknown, but his work has a place among the classics of german literature. reynard the fox no account of medieval literature ought to omit a reference to _reynard the fox_. this is a long poem, first written in latin, and then turned into the chief languages of europe. the characters are animals: reynard, cunning and audacious, who outwits all his foes; chanticleer the cock; bruin the bear; isengrim the wolf; and many others. but they are animals in name only. we see them worship like christians, go to mass, ride on horseback, debate in councils, and amuse themselves with hawking and hunting. satire often creeps in, as when the villainous fox confesses his sins to the badger or vows that he will go to the holy land on a pilgrimage. the special interest of this work lies in the fact that it expressed the feelings of the common people, groaning under the oppression of feudal lords. the robin hood ballads the same democratic spirit breathes in the old english ballads of the outlaw robin hood. according to some accounts he flourished in the second half of the twelfth century, when henry ii and richard the lion-hearted reigned over england. robin hood, with his merry men, leads an adventurous life in sherwood forest, engaging in feats of strength and hunting the king's tall deer. bishops, sheriffs, and gamekeepers are his only enemies. for the common people he has the greatest pity, and robs the rich to endow the poor. courtesy, generosity, and love of fair play are some of the characteristics which made him a popular hero. if king arthur was the ideal knight, robin hood was the ideal yeoman. the ballads about him were sung by country folk for hundreds of years. . romanesque and gothic architecture; the cathedrals two architectural styles the genius of the middle ages found its highest expression, not in books, but in buildings. for several hundred years after the barbarian invasions architecture had made little progress in western europe, outside of italy, which was subject to byzantine influence, [ ] and spain, which was a center of mohammedan culture. [ ] beginning about a.d. came a revival, and the adoption of an architectural style called romanesque, because it went back to roman principles of construction. romanesque architecture arose in northern italy and southern france and gradually spread to other european countries. it was followed about a d. by the gothic style of architecture, which prevailed during the next four centuries. [illustration: plan of salisbury cathedral, england note the double transepts.] the romanesque church the church of the early christians seems to have been modeled upon the roman basilica, with its arrangement of nave and aisles, its circular arched recess (apse) at one end, and its flat, wooden ceiling supported by columns. [ ] the romanesque church departed from the basilican plan by the introduction of transepts, thus giving the building the form of a latin cross. a dome, which might be covered by a pointed roof, was generally raised over the junction of the nave and transepts. at the same time the apse was enlarged so as to form the choir, a place reserved for the clergy. [illustration: reims cathedral the cathedral of notre dame at reims in northwestern france stands on the site where clovis was baptized by st remi. here most of the french kings were consecrated with holy oil by the archbishops of reims. except the west front, which was built in the fourteenth century, the cathedral was completed by the end of the thirteenth century. the towers, feet high, were originally designed to reach feet. the facade, with its three arched portals exquisite rose window, and "gallery of the kings," is justly celebrated. the cathedral--walls, roof, statues, and windows--has been terribly damaged by the german bombardment during the late war.] [illustration: cologne cathedral the cathedral, or dom, one of the finest monuments of gothic architecture in europe, was begun in the thirteenth century. the work of building proceeded slowly and at the time of the reformation it ceased altogether. the structure was finally completed during the nineteenth century, and in ad it was opened in the presence of the emperor, william i. the cathedral, which is in the form of a cross, measures feet in length and feet in breadth. each of the towers reaches the height of feet. the very numerous and richly-colored windows add greatly to the imposing effect of the interior.] vaulting and the round arch the romanesque church also differed from a basilica in the use of vaulting to take the place of a flat ceiling. the old romans had constructed their vaulted roofs and domes in concrete, which forms a rigid mass and rests securely upon the walls like the lid of a box. [ ] medieval architects, however, built in stone, which exerts an outward thrust and tends to force the walls apart. consequently they found it necessary to make the walls very thick and to strengthen them by piers, or buttresses, on the outside of the edifice. it was also necessary to reduce the width of the vaulted spaces. the vaulting, windows, and doorways had the form of the round arch, that is, a semicircle, as in the ancient roman monuments. [ ] the gothic style gothic architecture arose in france in the country around paris, at a time when the french kingdom was taking the lead in european affairs. later it spread to england, germany, the netherlands, and even to southern europe. as an old chronicler wrote, "it was as if the whole world had thrown off the rags of its ancient time, and had arrayed itself in the white robes of the churches." the term gothic was applied contemptuously to this architectural style by writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who regarded everything non-classical as barbarous. they believed it to be an invention of the barbarian goths, and so they called it gothic. the name has stuck, as bad names have a habit of doing, but nowadays every one recognizes the greatness of this medieval art. the most beautiful buildings of the middle ages are of gothic architecture. ribbed vaulting and the flying buttress the gothic style formed a natural development of the romanesque style. the architects of a gothic church wished to retain the vaulted ceiling but at the same time to do away with thick, solid walls, which had so little window space as to leave the interior of the building dark gloomy. they solved this problem, in the first place, by using a great number of stone ribs, which gathered up the weight of the ceiling and rested on pillars. ribbed vaulting made possible higher ceilings, spanning wider areas, than in romanesque churches. [ ] in the second place, the pillars supporting the ribs were themselves connected by means of flying buttresses with stout piers of masonry outside the walls of the church. [ ] these walls, relieved from the pressure of the ceiling, now became a mere screen to keep out the weather. they could be built of light materials and opened up with high, wide windows. the pointed arch ribbed vaulting and the flying buttress are the distinctive features of gothic architecture. a third feature, noteworthy but not so important, is the use of the pointed arch. it was not christian in origin, for it had long been known to the arabs in the east and the moslem conquerors of sicily. [ ] the semicircular or round arch can be only half as high as it is wide, but the pointed arch may vary greatly in its proportions. the use of this device enabled the gothic builder to bridge over different widths at any required height. it is also lighter and more graceful than the round arch. [ ] [illustration: cross section of amiens cathedral a, vaulting; b, ribs; c, flying buttresses; d, buttresses; e, low windows; f, clerestory.] gothic ornament the labors of the gothic architect were admirably seconded by those of other artists. the sculptor cut figures of men, animals, and plants in the utmost profusion. the painter covered vacant wall spaces with brilliant mosaics and frescoes. the wood-carver made exquisite choir stalls, pulpits, altars, and screens. master workmen filled the stone tracery of the windows with stained glass unequaled in coloring by the finest modern work. some rigorous churchmen like st. bernard condemned the expense of these magnificent cathedrals, but most men found in their beauty an additional reason to praise god. [illustration: gargoyles on the cathedral of notre dame, paris strange grotesque figures and faces of stone used as ornaments of gothic buildings and as spouts to carry off rain water. they represent beasts, demons, and other creations of medieval fancy.] the cathedral as a religious edifice the gothic cathedral, in fact, perfectly expressed the religious spirit of the middle ages. for its erection kings and nobles offered costly gifts. the common people, when they had no money to give, contributed their labor, each man doing what he could to carry upward the walls and towers and to perfect every part of god's dwelling. the interior of such a cathedral, with its vast nave rising in swelling arches to the vaulted roof, its clustered columns, its glowing windows, and infinite variety of ornamentation, forms the most awe-inspiring sanctuary ever raised by man. it is a prayer, a hymn, a sermon in stone. the secular gothic gothic architecture, though at first confined to churches, came to be used for other buildings. among the monuments of the secular gothic are beautiful town halls, guild halls, markets, and charming private houses. [ ] but the cathedral remained the best expression of the gothic style. . education; the universities common schools not less important than the gothic cathedrals for the understanding of medieval civilization were the universities. they grew out of the monastic and cathedral schools where boys were trained to become monks or priests. such schools had been created or restored by charlemagne. [ ] the teaching, which lay entirely in the hands of the clergy, was elementary in character. pupils learned enough latin grammar to read religious books, if not always to understand them, and enough music to follow the services of the church. they also studied arithmetic by means of the awkward roman notation, received a smattering of astronomy, and sometimes gained a little knowledge of such subjects as geography, law, and philosophy. besides these monastic and cathedral schools, others were maintained by the guilds. boys who had no regular schooling often received instruction from the parish priest of the village or town. illiteracy was common enough in medieval times, but the mass of the people were by no means entirely uneducated. rise of universities between and a.d. at least eighty universities were established in western europe. some speedily became extinct, but there are still about fifty european institutions of learning which started in the middle ages. the earliest universities did not look to the state or to some princely benefactor for their foundation. they arose, as it were, spontaneously. in the eleventh and twelfth centuries europe felt the thrill of a great intellectual revival. it was stimulated by intercourse with the highly cultivated arabs in spain, sicily, and the east, and with the greek scholars of constantinople during the crusades. the desire for instruction became so general that the common schools could not satisfy it. other schools were then opened in the cities and to them flocked eager learners from every quarter. peter abelard - a.d. how easily a university might grow up about the personality of some eminent teacher is shown by the career of abelard. the eldest son of a noble family in brittany, abelard would naturally have entered upon a military career, but he chose instead the life of a scholar and the contests of debate. when still a young man he came to paris and attended the lectures given by a master of the cathedral school of notre dame. before long he had overcome his instructor in discussion, thus establishing his own reputation. at the early age of twenty-two abelard himself set up as a lecturer. few teachers have ever attracted so large and so devoted a following. his lecture room under the shadow of the great cathedral was filled with a crowd of youths and men drawn from all countries. university of paris the fame of abelard led to an increase of masters and students at paris and so paved the way for the establishment of the university there, later in the twelfth century. paris soon became such a center of learning, particularly in theology and philosophy, that a medieval writer referred to it as "the mill where the world's corn is ground, and the hearth where its bread is baked." the university of paris, in the time of its greatest prosperity, had over five thousand students. it furnished the model for the english university of oxford, as well as for the learned institutions of scotland, denmark, sweden, and germany. university of bologna the institutions of learning in southern europe were modeled, more or less, upon the university of bologna. at this italian city, in the middle of the twelfth century, a celebrated teacher named irnerius gathered about him thousands of pupils for the study of the justinian code. [ ] the university developed out of his law school. bologna was the center from which the roman system of jurisprudence made its way into france, germany, and other continental countries. from bologna, also, came the monk gratian, who drew up the accepted text-book of canon law, as followed in all church courts. [ ] what roman law was to the empire canon law was to the papacy. university organization the word "university" [ ] meant at first simply a union or association. in the middle ages all artisans were organized in guilds, [ ] and when masters and pupils associated themselves for teaching and study they naturally copied the guild form. this was the more necessary since the student body included so many foreigners, who found protection against annoyances only as members of a guild. degrees like a craft guild a university consisted of masters (the professors), who had the right to teach, and students, both elementary and advanced, who corresponded to apprentices and journeymen. after several years of study a student who had passed part of his examination became a "bachelor of arts" and might teach certain elementary subjects to those beneath him. upon the completion of the full course--usually six years in length--the bachelor took his final examinations and, if he passed them, received the coveted degree of "master of arts." but as is the case to-day, many who attended the universities never took a degree at all. the teachers a university of the middle ages did not need an expensive collection of libraries, laboratories, and museums. its only necessary equipment consisted in lecture rooms for the professors. not even benches or chairs were required. students often sat on the straw-strewn floors. the high price of manuscripts compelled professors to give all instruction by lectures. this method of teaching has been retained in modern universities, since even the printed book is a poor substitute for a scholar's inspiring words. the students the universities being under the protection of the church, it was natural that those who attended them should possess some of the privileges of clergymen. students were not required to pay taxes or to serve in the army. they also enjoyed the right of trial in their own courts. this was an especially valuable privilege, for medieval students were constantly getting into trouble with the city authorities. the sober annals of many a university are relieved by tales of truly homeric conflicts between town and gown. when the students were dissatisfied with their treatment in one place, it was always easy for them to go to another university. sometimes masters and scholars made off in a body. oxford appears to have owed its existence to a large migration of english students from paris, cambridge arose as the result of a migration from oxford, and the german university of leipzig sprang from that of prague in bohemia. [illustration: view of new college, oxford new college, despite its name, is one of the oldest of the oxford collegiate foundations. it was established in a.d. by william of wykeham. the illustration shows the chapel, the cloisters consecrated in a.d., and the detached tower, a tall, massive structure on the line of the city wall.] colleges the members of a university usually lived in a number of colleges. these seem to have been at first little more than lodging-houses, where poor students were cared for at the expense of some benefactor. in time, however, as the colleges increased in wealth, through the gifts made to them, they became centers of instruction under the direction of masters. at oxford and cambridge, where the collegiate system has been retained to the present time, each college has its separate buildings and enjoys the privilege of self-government. faculties the studies in a medieval university were grouped under the four faculties of arts, theology, law, and medicine. the first-named faculty taught the "seven liberal arts," that is, grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. they formed a legacy from old roman education. theology, law, and medicine then, as now, were professional studies, taken up after the completion of the arts course. owing to the constant movement of students from one university to another, each institution tended to specialize in one or more subjects. thus, paris came to be noted for theology, montpellier, padua, and salerno for medicine, and orléans, bologna, and salamanca for law. [illustration: tower of magdalen college, oxford magdalen (pronounced maudlin) is perhaps the most beautiful college in oxford. the bell tower stands on high street, the principal thoroughfare of oxford, and adjoins magdalen bridge, built across the cherwell. begun in a.d.; completed in a.d. from its summit a latin hymn is sung every year on the morning of may day. this graceful tower has been several times imitated in american collegiate structures.] . scholasticism theological study theology formed the chief subject of instruction in most medieval universities. nearly all the celebrated scholars of the age were theologians. they sought to arrange the doctrines of the church in systematic and reasonable form, in order to answer those great questions concerning the nature of god and of the soul which have always occupied the human mind. for this purpose it was necessary to call in the aid of philosophy. the union of theology and philosophy produced what is known as scholasticism. [ ] [illustration: interior of king's college chapel, cambridge. the chief architectural ornament of king's college, founded by king henry vi, is the chapel in the gothic perpendicular style.* this building was begun in a.d., but was not completed until nearly seventy years later. the finest features of the interior are the fan vaulting which extends throughout the chapel, the stained-glass windows, and the wooden organ screen.] abelard and freedom of thought the scholastics were loyal children of the church and did not presume to question her teaching in matters of religion. they held that faith precedes reason. "the christian," it was said, "ought to advance to knowledge through faith, not come to faith through knowledge." the brilliant abelard, with his keenly critical mind, found what he considered a flaw in this position: on many subjects the authorities themselves disagreed. to show this he wrote a little book called _sic et non_ ("yes and no"), setting forth the conflicting opinions of the church fathers on one hundred and fifty-eight points of theology. in such cases how could truth be reached unless one reasoned it out for oneself? "constant questioning," he declared, "is the key to wisdom.... through doubting we come to inquiry and through inquiry we perceive the truth." but this reliance on the unaided human reason as a means of obtaining knowledge did not meet with approval, and abelard's views were condemned as unsound. abelard, indeed, was a man in advance of his age. freedom of thought had to wait many centuries before its rights should be acknowledged. study of aristotle the philosophy on which the scholastics relied was chiefly that of aristotle. [ ] christian europe read him at first in latin translations from the arabic, but versions were later made from greek copies found in constantinople and elsewhere in the east. this revival of aristotle, though it broadened men's minds by acquainting them with the ideas of the greatest of greek thinkers, had serious drawbacks. it discouraged rather than favored the search for fresh truth. many scholastics were satisfied to appeal to aristotle's authority, rather than take the trouble of finding out things for themselves. the story is told of a medieval student who, having detected spots in the sun, announced his discovery to a learned man. "my son," said the latter, "i have read aristotle many times, and i assure you there is nothing of the kind mentioned by him. be certain that the spots which you have seen are in your eyes and not in the sun." st. thomas aquinas, - a.d. there were many famous scholastics, or "schoolmen," but easily the foremost among them was the italian monk, thomas aquinas. he taught at paris, cologne, rome, and bologna, and became so celebrated for learning as to be known as the "angelic doctor." though aquinas died at an early age, he left behind him no less than eighteen folio volumes. his _summa theologiae_ ("compendium of theology"), as the name indicates, gathered up all that the middle ages believed of the relations between god and man. the roman church has placed him among her saints and still recommends the study of his writings as the foundation of all sound theology. the scholastic method enough has been said to show that the method of study in medieval universities was not that which generally obtains to-day. there was almost no original research. law students memorized the justinian code. medical students learned anatomy and physiology from old greek books, instead of in the dissecting room. theologians and philosophers went to the bible, the church fathers, or aristotle for the solution of all problems. they often debated the most subtle questions, for instance, "can god ever know more than he knows that he knows?" mental gymnastics of this sort furnished a good training in logic, but added nothing to the sum of human knowledge. scholasticism, accordingly, fell into disrepute, in proportion as men began to substitute scientific observation and experiment for speculation. . science and magic scientific inventions not all medieval learning took the form of scholasticism. the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were marked by a healthy interest in science. long encyclopedias, written in latin, collected all available information about the natural world. the study of physics made conspicuous progress, partly as a result of arab influence. various scientific inventions, including magnifying glasses and clocks, were worked out. the mariner's compass, perhaps derived from the arabs, also came into general use. [ ] roger bacon, about - a.d. as representative of this scientific interest we may take the englishman, roger bacon. he studied at paris, where his attainments secured for him the title of the "wonderful doctor," and lectured at oxford. at a period when aristotle's influence was unbounded, bacon turned away from scholastic philosophy to mathematics and the sciences. no great discoveries were made by him, but it is interesting to read a passage in one of his works where some modern inventions are distinctly foreseen. in time, he wrote, ships will be moved without rowers, and carriages will be propelled without animals to draw them. machines for flying will also be constructed, "wherein a man sits revolving some engine by which artificial wings are made to beat the air like a flying bird." even in bacon's day it would appear that men were trying to make steamboats, automobiles, and aëroplanes. [illustration: roger bacon] gunpowder the discovery of gunpowder, a compound of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur, has often been attributed to bacon, probably incorrectly. bacon and other men of his time seem to have been familiar with the composition of gunpowder, but they regarded it as merely a sort of firework, producing a sudden and brilliant flame. they little suspected that in a confined space the expansive power of its gases could be used to hurl projectiles. gunpowder was occasionally manufactured during the fourteenth century, but for a long time it made more noise than it did harm. small brass cannon, throwing stone balls, began at length to displace the medieval siege weapons, and still later muskets took the place of the bow, the cross-bow, and the pike. the revolution in the art of warfare introduced by gunpowder had vast importance. it destroyed the usefulness of the castle and enabled the peasant to fight the mailed knight on equal terms. gunpowder, accordingly, must be included among the forces which brought about the downfall of feudalism. chemistry and alchemy the study of chemistry also engaged the attention of medieval investigators. it was, however, much mixed up with alchemy, a false science which the middle ages had received from the greeks, and they, in turn, from the egyptians. the alchemists believed that minerals possessed a real life of their own and that they were continually developing in the ground toward the state of gold, the perfect metal. it was necessary, therefore, to discover the "philosopher's stone," which would turn all metals into gold. the alchemists never found it, but they learned a good deal about the various metals and discovered a number of compounds and colors. in this way alchemy contributed to the advance of chemistry. astronomy and astrology astronomy in the middle ages was the most advanced of any natural science, though the telescope and the copernican theory [ ] were as yet in the future. astronomy, the wise mother, had a foolish daughter, astrology, the origin of which can be traced back to babylonia. [ ] medieval students no longer regarded the stars as divine, but they believed that the natural world and the life of men were controlled by celestial influences. hence astrologers professed to predict the fate of a person from the position of the planets at the time of his birth. astrological rules were also drawn from the signs of the zodiac. a child born under the sign of the lion will be courageous; one born under the crab will not go forward well in life; one born under the waterman will probably be drowned, and so forth. such fancies seem absurd enough, but in the middle ages educated people entertained them. medieval credulity alchemy and astrology were not the only instances of medieval credulity. the most improbable stories found ready acceptance. roger bacon, for instance, thought that "flying dragons" still existed in europe and that eating their flesh lengthened human life. works on natural history soberly described the lizard-like salamander, which dwelt in fire, and the phoenix, a bird which, after living for five hundred years, burned itself to death and then rose again full grown from the ashes. another fabulous creature was the unicorn, with the head and body of a horse, the hind legs of an antelope, the beard of a goat, and a long, sharp horn set in the middle of the forehead. various plants and minerals were also credited with marvelous powers. thus, the nasturtium, used as a liniment, would keep one's hair from falling out, and the sapphire, when powdered and mixed with milk, would heal ulcers and cure headache. such quaint beliefs linger to-day among uneducated people, even in civilized lands. [illustration: magician rescued from the devil miniature in a thirteenth-century manuscript in the bibliothèque nationale, paris. the devil, attempting to seize a magician who had formed a pact with him, is prevented by a lay brother.] magicians magicians of every sort flourished in the middle ages. oneiromancers [ ] took omens from dreams. palmists read fortunes in the lines and irregularities of the hand. necromancers [ ] professed to reveal the future by pretended communications with departed spirits. other magicians made talismans or lucky objects to be worn on the person, mirrors in which the images of the dead or the absent were reflected, and various powders which, when mixed with food or drink, would inspire hatred or affection in the one consuming them. indeed, it would be easy to draw up a long list of the devices by which practitioners of magic made a living at the expense of the ignorant and the superstitious. . popular superstitions folk tales many medieval superstitions are preserved in folk tales, or "fairy stories." every child now reads these tales in books, but until the nineteenth century very few of them had been collected and written down. [ ] they lived on the lips of the people, being told by mothers and nurses to children and by young and old about the firesides during the long winter evenings. story-telling formed one of the chief amusements of the middle ages. fairies the fairies who appear so commonly in folk tales are known by different names. they are bogies, brownies, goblins, pixies, kobolds (in germany), trolls (in denmark), and so on. the celts, especially, had a lively faith in fairies, and it was from wales, scotland, and ireland that many stories about them became current in europe after the tenth century. some students have explained the belief in fairies as due to memories of an ancient pygmy people dwelling in underground homes. but most of these supernatural beings seem to be the descendants of the spirits and demons which in savage fancy haunt the world. characteristics of fairies a comparison of european folk tales shows that fairies have certain characteristics in common. they live in palaces underneath the ground, from which they emerge at twilight to dance in mystic circles. they are ruled by kings and queens and are possessed of great wealth. though usually invisible, they may sometimes be seen, especially by people who have the faculty of perceiving spirits. to mortals the fairies are generally hostile, leading wanderers astray, often blighting crops and cattle, and shooting arrows which carry disease and death. they are constantly on the watch to carry off human beings to their realm. a prisoner must be released at the end of a certain time, unless he tastes fairy food, in which event he can never return. children in cradles are frequently snatched away by the fairies, who leave, instead, imps of their own called "changelings." a changeling may always be recognized by its peevishness and backwardness in learning to walk and speak. if well treated, the fairies will sometimes show their gratitude by bestowing on their favorites health, wealth, and long life. lucky the child who can count on a "fairy god-mother." giants and ogres stories of giants are common in folk tales. giants are often represented as not only big but also stupid, and as easily overcome by keen-witted human foes like "jack the giant-killer." it may be that traditions of pre- historic peoples have sometimes given birth to legends of giants. another source of stories concerning them has been the discovery of huge fossil bones, such as those of the mammoth or mastodon, which were formerly supposed to be bones of gigantic men. the ogres, who sometimes figure in folk tales, are giants with a taste for human flesh. they recall the cannibals of the savage world. werewolves werewolves were persons who, by natural gift or magic art, were thought to have the power of turning themselves for a time into wild beasts (generally wolves or bears). in this animal shape they ravaged flocks and devoured young children. a werewolf was said to sleep only two nights in the month and to spend the rest of the time roaming the woods and fields. trials of persons accused of being werewolves were held in france as late as the end of the sixteenth century. even now the belief is found in out- of-the-way parts of europe. the evil eye another medieval superstition was that of the evil eye. according to this belief, certain persons could bewitch, injure, and kill by a glance. children and domestic animals were thought to be particularly susceptible to the effects of "fascination." in order to guard against it charms of various sorts, including texts from the bible, were carried about. the belief in the evil eye came into europe from pagan antiquity. it survived the middle ages and lingers yet among uneducated people. witchcraft the superstitions relating to werewolves and the evil eye are particular forms of the belief in witchcraft, or "black magic." the middle ages could not escape this delusion, which was firmly held by the greeks and romans and other ancient peoples. witchcraft had, indeed, a prehistoric origin and the belief in it still prevails in savage society. [illustration: the witches' sabbath.] features of european witchcraft witches and wizards were supposed to have sold themselves to the devil, receiving in return the power to work magic. they could change themselves or others into animals, they had charms against the hurt of weapons, they could raise storms and destroy crops, and they could convey thorns, pins, and other objects into their victims' bodies, thus causing sickness and death. at night they rode on broomsticks through the air and assembled in some lonely place for feasts, dances, and wild revels. at these "witches' sabbaths," as they were called, the devil himself attended and taught his followers their diabolic arts. there were various tests for the discovery of witches and wizards, the most usual being the ordeal by water. [ ] witchcraft persecutions the numerous trials and executions for witchcraft form a dark page in history. thousands of harmless old men and women were put to death on the charge of being leagued with the devil. even the most intelligent and humane people believed in the reality of witchcraft and found a justification for its punishment in the scriptural command, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." [ ] the witch epidemic which broke out in america during the seventeenth century, reaching its height at salem, massachusetts, was simply a reflection of the european fear and hatred of witches. unlucky days the middle ages inherited from antiquity the observance of unlucky days. they went under the name of "egyptian days," so called because it was held that on one of them the plagues had been sent to devastate the land of egypt and on another pharaoh and his host had been swallowed up in the red sea. at least twenty-four days in the year were regarded as very unlucky. at such times one ought not to buy and sell, to build a house, to plant a field, to travel or, in fact, to undertake anything at all important. after the sixteenth century the belief in unlucky days declined, but there still exists a prejudice against fishermen starting out to fish, or seamen to take a voyage, or landsmen a journey, or domestic servants to enter a new place, on a friday. . popular amusements and festivals indoor games it is pleasant to turn from the superstitions of the middle ages to the games, sports, and festivals which helped to make life agreeable alike for rich and poor, for nobles and peasants. some indoor games are of eastern origin. thus chess, with which european peoples seem to have become acquainted as early as the tenth century [ ] arose in india as a war game. on each side a king and his general, with chariots, cavalry, elephants, and infantry, met in battle array. these survive in the rooks, knights, bishops, and pawns of the modern game. checkers is a sort of simplified chess, in which the pieces are all pawns, till they get across the board and become kings. playing cards are another oriental invention. they were introduced into europe in the fourteenth century, either by the arabs or the gypsies. their first use seems to have been for telling fortunes. [illustration: chess pieces of charlemagne bibliothèque nationale, paris. the figures are carved in ivory.] outdoor games many outdoor games are derived from those played in medieval times. how one kind of game may become the parent of many others is seen in the case of the ball-play. the ancients tossed and caught balls as children do now. they also had a game in which each side tried to secure the ball and throw it over the adversary's goal line. this game lasted on into the middle ages, and from it football has descended. the ancients seem never to have used a stick or bat in their ball-play. the persians, however, began to play ball on horseback, using a long mallet for the purpose, and introduced their new sport throughout asia. under the tibetan name of _pulu_ ("ball") it found its way into europe. when once the mallet had been invented for use on horseback, it could be easily used on foot, and so polo gave rise to the various games in which balls are hit with bats, including tennis, hockey, golf, cricket, and croquet. baiting the difference between our ideas of what constitutes "sport" and those of our ancestors is shown by the popularity of baiting. in the twelfth century bulls, bears, and even horses were baited. cock-fighting formed another common amusement. it was not till the nineteenth century that an english society for the prevention of cruelty to animals succeeded in getting a law passed which forbade these cruel sports. most other european countries have now followed england's example. festivals no account of life in the middle ages can well omit some reference to the celebration of festivals. for the peasant and artisan they provided relief from physical exertion, and for all classes of society the pageants, processions, sports, feasts, and merry-makings which accompanied them furnished welcome diversion. medieval festivals included not only those of the christian year, [ ] but also others which had come down from pre- christian times. [illustration: bear baiting. from the luttrell psalter.] seasonal festivals many festivals not of christian origin were derived from the ceremonies with which the heathen peoples of europe had been accustomed to mark the changes of the seasons. thus, april fool's day formed a relic of festivities held at the vernal equinox. may day, another festival of spring, honored the spirits of trees and of all budding vegetation. the persons who acted as may kings and may queens represented these spirits. according to the original custom a new may tree was cut down in the forest every year, but later a permanent may pole was set up on the village common. on midsummer eve (june ), which marked the summer solstice, came the fire festival, when people built bonfires and leaped over them, walked in procession with torches round the fields, and rolled burning wheels down the hillsides. these curious rites may have been once connected with sun worship. hallow eve, so called from being the eve of all saints' day (november ), also seems to have been a survival of a heathen celebration. on this night witches and fairies were supposed to assemble. hallow eve does not appear to have been a season for pranks and jokes, as is its present degenerate form. even the festival of christmas, coming at the winter solstice, kept some heathen features, such as the use of mistletoe with which celtic priests once decked the altars of their gods. the christmas tree, however, is not a relic of heathenism. it seems to have come into use as late as the seventeenth century. the morris dance young and old took part in the dances which accompanied village festivals. very popular in medieval england was the morris dance. the name, a corruption of moorish, refers to its origin in spain. the morris dance was especially associated with may day and was danced round a may pole to a lively and capering step. the performers represented robin hood, maid marian, his wife, tom the piper, and other traditional characters. on their garments they wore bells tuned to different notes, so as to sound in harmony. mumming mumming had a particular association with christmas. mummers were bands of men and women who disguised themselves in masks and skins of animals and then serenaded people outside their houses. oftentimes the mummers acted out little plays in which father christmas, old king cole, and st. george were familiar figures. [illustration: mummers from a manuscript now in the bodleian library, oxford. it was written and illuminated in the reign of edward iii.] miracle plays besides these village amusements, many plays of a religious character came into vogue during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. the earliest were the miracle plays. they presented in dramatic form scenes from the bible and stories of the saints or martyrs. the actors at first were priests, and the stage was the church itself or the churchyard. this religious setting did not prevent the introduction of clowns and buffoons. after a time the miracle play passed from the clergy to the guilds. all the guilds of a town usually gave an exhibition once a year. each guild presented a single scene in the story. an exhibition might last for several days and have as many as fifty scenes, beginning at creation and ending with doomsday. [ ] [illustration: a miracle play at coventry, england the rude platform on wheels which served as a stage, was drawn by apprentices to the market place. each guild had its own stage.] morality plays the miracle plays were followed by the "moralities." they dealt with the struggle between good and evil, rather than with theology. characters such as charity, faith, prudence, riches, confession, and death appeared and enacted a story intended to teach moral lessons. [ ] out of the rude "morality" and its predecessor, the miracle play, has grown the drama of modern times. . manners and customs dwellings a previous chapter (chapter xviii.) described some features of domestic life in castle and village during the age of feudalism. in england, where the norman kings discouraged castle building, the manor house formed the ordinary residence of the nobility. even in continental europe many castles were gradually made over into manor houses after the cessation of feudal warfare. a manor house, however, was only less bare and inconvenient than a castle. it was still poorly lighted, ill-ventilated, and in winter scarcely warmed by the open wood fires. among the improvements of the fourteenth century were the building of a fireplace at one or both ends of the manor hall, instead of in the center, and the substitution of glass windows for wooden shutters or oiled paper. [illustration: manor house in shropshire, england built in the twelfth century.] furniture people in the middle ages, even the well-to-do, got along with little furniture. the great hall of a manor house contained a long dining table, with benches used at meals, and a few stools. the family beds often occupied curtained recesses in the walls, but guests might have to sleep on the floor of the manor hall. servants often slept in the stables. few persons could afford rugs to cover the floor; the poor had to put up with rushes. utensils were not numerous, and articles of glass and silver were practically unknown, except in the houses of the rich. entries in wills show the high value set upon a single spoon. [illustration: interior of an english manor house shows the great hall of a manor house at penshurst, kent. the screen with the minstrels' gallery over it is seen at the end of the hall, and in the center, the brazier for fire. built about a.d.] costume the pictures in old manuscripts give us a good idea of medieval dress. naturally it varied with time and place, and according to the social position of the wearer. sometimes laws were passed, without much result, to regulate the quality, shape, and cost of the costumes to be worn by different orders of society. the moralists of the age were shocked, then as now, when tightly fitting garments, which showed the outlines of the body, became fashionable. the inconvenience of putting them on led to the use of buttons and buttonholes. women's headdresses were often of extraordinary height and shape. not less remarkable were the pointed shoes worn by men. the points finally got so long that they hindered walking, unless tied by a ribbon to the knees. [illustration: costumes of ladies during the later middle ages] beards the medieval noble of the twelfth century as a rule went clean shaven. to wear a beard was regarded as a sign of effeminacy in a man. the bayeux tapestry, [ ] for instance, shows the normans mostly clean-shaven, while the english wear only moustaches. the introduction of long beards seems to have been due to contact with the east during the crusading period. baths and bathing regular bathing was not by any means neglected during the later middle ages. in the country districts river, lake, or pool met the needs of people used to outdoor life. the hot air and vapor baths of the byzantines were adopted by the moslems and later, through the moors and crusaders, were made known to western europe. after the beginning of the thirteenth century few large cities lacked public bathing places. food medieval cookbooks show that people of means had all sorts of elaborate and expensive dishes. dinner at a nobleman's house might include as many as ten or twelve courses, mostly meats and game. such things as hedgehogs, peacocks, sparrows, and porpoises, which would hardly tempt the modern palate, were relished. much use was made of spices in preparing meats and gravies, and also for flavoring wines. over-eating was a common vice in the middle ages, but the open-air life and constant exercise enabled men and women to digest the huge quantities of food they consumed. table etiquette people in medieval times had no knives or forks and consequently ate with their fingers. daggers also were employed to convey food to the mouth. forks date from the end of the thirteenth century, but were adopted only slowly. as late as the sixteenth century german preachers condemned their use, for, said they, the lord would not have given us fingers if he had wanted us to rely on forks. napkins were another table convenience unknown in the middle ages. drinking in the absence of tea and coffee, ale and beer formed the drink of the common people. the upper classes regaled themselves on costly wines. drunkenness was as common and as little reprobated as gluttony. the monotony of life in medieval europe, when the nobles had little to do but hunt and fight, may partly account for the prevailing inebriety. but doubtless in large measure it was a teutonic characteristic. the northmen were hard drinkers, and of the ancient germans a roman writer states that "to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one." [ ] this habit of intoxication survived in medieval germany, and the anglo-saxons and danes introduced it into england. central period of the middle ages our survey of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has now shown us that these two hundred years deserve to be called the central period of the middle ages. when the arabs had brought the culture of the orient to spain and sicily, when the northmen after their wonderful expansion had settled down in normandy, england, and other countries, and when the peoples of western europe, whether as peaceful pilgrims or as warlike crusaders, had visited constantinople and the holy land, men's minds received a wonderful stimulus. the intellectual life of europe was "speeded up," and the way was prepared for the even more rapid advance of knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as the middle ages passed into modern times. studies . look up on the map between pages - the following places where gothic cathedrals are found: canterbury, york, salisbury, reims, amiens, chartres, cologne, strassburg, burgos, toledo, and milan. . look up on the map facing page the location of the following medieval universities: oxford, montpellier, paris, orléans, cologne, leipzig, prague, naples, and salamanca. . explain the following terms: scholasticism; canon law; alchemy; troubadours; provençal language; transept; choir; flying buttress; werewolf; and mumming. . who were st. thomas aquinas, abelard, gratian, irnerius, and roger bacon? . show how latin served as an international language in the middle ages. name two artificial languages which have been invented as a substitute for latin. . what is meant by saying that "french is a mere _patois_ of latin"? . in what parts of the world is english now the prevailing speech? . why has siegfried, the hero of the _nibelungenlied_, been called the "achilles of teutonic legend"? . what productions of medieval literature reflect aristocratic and democratic ideals, respectively? . distinguish between the romanesque and gothic styles of architecture. what is the origin of each term? . compare the ground plans of a greek temple (page ), a roman basilica (page ), and a gothic cathedral (page ). . contrast a gothic cathedral with a greek temple, particularly in regard to size, height, support of the roof, windows, and decorative features. . why is there some excuse for describing a gothic building as "a wall of glass with a roof of stone"? . do you see any resemblance in structural features between a gothic cathedral and a modern "sky-scraper"? . mention some likenesses between medieval and modern universities. . mention some important subjects of instruction in modern universities which were not treated in those of the middle ages. . why has scholasticism been called "a sort of aristotelian christianity"? . look up the original meaning of the words "jovial," "saturnine," "mercurial," "disastrous," "contemplate," and "consider." . show the indebtedness of chemistry to alchemy and of astronomy to astrology. . mention some common folk tales which illustrate medieval superstitions. . why was friday regarded as a specially unlucky day? . enumerate the most important contributions to civilization made during the middle ages. footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xvii, "medieval tales"; chapter xviii, "three medieval epics." [ ] see pages , . [ ] the language spoken by the natives of flanders. the country is now divided between france, belgium, and holland. see page . [ ] icelandic is the oldest and purest form of scandinavian. danish and norwegian are practically the same, in fact, their literary or book- language is one. [ ] two names for rivers--_avon_ and _ex_--which in one form or another are found in every part of england, are celtic words meaning "water." [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] the cathedral, baptistery, and campanile of pisa form an interesting example of romanesque architecture. see the illustration, page . [ ] the interior of king's college chapel, cambridge, shows the ribs and the beautiful tracery of the ceiling of a gothic building. see the plate facin page . [ ] the flying buttress is well shown in the view of canterbury cathedral (page ). [ ] see page . [ ] for the pointed arch see the view of melrose abbey (page ). [ ] see the illustrations, pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages , . [ ] see page . [ ] latin _universitas_. [ ] see page . [ ] the method of the school (latin _schola_). [ ] see pages and . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages and . [ ] see page . [ ] greek _oneiros_, "dream." [ ] greek _nekros_, "corpse." [ ] charles perrault's _tales of passed times_ appeared at paris in a.d. it included the now-familiar stories of "bluebeard," "cinderella," "sleeping beauty," and "little red riding hood." in a.d. the brothers grimm published their _household tales_, a collection of stories current in germany. [ ] see page . [ ] _exodus_, xxii, . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the great passion play at ober ammergau in germany is the modern survival and representative of this medieval religious drama. [ ] _everyman_, one of the best of the morality plays, has recently been revived before large audiences. [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] tacitus, _germania_, . chapter xxv the renaissance [ ] . meaning of the renaissance later period of the middle ages the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, covering the later period of the middle ages, are commonly known as those of the renaissance. this french word means rebirth or revival. it is a convenient term for all the changes in society, law, and government, in science, philosophy, and religion, in literature and art which gradually transformed medieval civilization into that of modern times. limits of the renaissance the renaissance, just because of its transitional character, cannot be exactly dated. some renaissance movements started before a.d. for instance, the study of roman law, as a substitute for germanic customs, began toward the close of the eleventh century. the rise of european cities, with all that they meant for industry and commerce, belonged to about the same time. other renaissance movements, again, extended beyond a.d. among these were the expansion of geographical knowledge, resulting from the discovery of the new world, and the revolt against the papacy, known as the protestant reformation. the middle ages, in fact, came to an end at different times in different fields of human activity. original home of the renaissance the name renaissance applied, at first, only to the rebirth or revival of men's interest in the literature and art of classical antiquity. italy was the original home of this renaissance. there it first appeared, there it found widest acceptance, and there it reached its highest development. from italy the renaissance gradually spread beyond the alps, until it had made the round of western europe. italian cities of the renaissance italy, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a land particularly favorable to the growth of learning and the arts. in northern italy the great cities of milan, pisa, genoa, florence, venice, and many others had early succeeded in throwing off their feudal burdens and had become independent, self-governing communities. democracy flourished in them, as in the old greek city-states. noble birth counted for little; a man of ability and ambition might rise to any place. the fierce party conflicts within their walls stimulated mental activity and helped to make life full, varied, and intense. their widespread trade and thriving manufactures made them prosperous. wealth brought leisure, bred a taste for luxury and the refinements of life, and gave means for the gratification of that taste. people wanted to have about them beautiful pictures, statuary, furniture, palaces, and churches; and they rewarded richly the artists who could produce such things. it is not without significance that the birthplace of the italian renaissance was democratic, industrial, and wealthy florence. [ ] influence of the classic tradition italy enjoyed another advantage over the other european countries in its nearness to rome. admiration for the ancient roman civilization, as expressed in literature, art, and law, was felt by all italians. wherever they looked, they were reminded of the great past which once had been theirs. nor was the inheritance of greece wholly lost. greek traders and the descendants of greek colonists in italy still used their ancient language; all through the medieval centuries there were italians who studied greek. the classic tradition thus survived in italy and defied oblivion. byzantine, arabic, and norman influence in the middle ages italy formed a meeting place of several civilizations. byzantine influence was felt both in the north and in the south. the conquest of sicily by the arabs made the italians familiar with the science, art, and poetry of this cultivated people. after the normans had established themselves in southern italy and sicily, they in turn developed a brilliant civilization. [ ] from all these sources flowed streams of cultural influence which united in the renaissance. [illustration: ghiberti's bronze doors at florence the second or northern pair of bronze doors of the baptistery at florence. completed by lorenzo ghiberti in a.d. after twenty seven years of labor the ten panels represent scenes from old testament history. michelangelo pronounced these magnificent creations worthy to be the gates of paradise.] [illustration: st. peter's, rome st peter's, begun in a.d., was completed in , according to the designs of bramante, raphael, michelangelo, and other celebrated architects. it is the largest church in the world. the central aisle, nave, and choir measure about feet in length, the great dome, feet in diameter, rises to a height of more than feet. a double colonnade encircles the piazza in front of the church. the vatican is seen to the right of st peter's.] . revival of learning in italy the classics in the middle ages the literature of greece and rome did not entirely disappear in western europe after the germanic invasions. the monastery and cathedral schools of the middle ages had nourished devoted students of ancient books. the benedictine monks labored zealously in copying the works of pagan as well as christian authors. the rise of universities made it possible for the student to pursue a fairly extended course in latin literature at more than one institution of learning. greek literature, however, was little known in the west. the poems of homer were read only in a brief latin summary, and even aristotle's writings were studied in latin translations. dante alighieri - a.d. reverence for the classics finds constant expression in the writings of the italian poet dante. he was a native of florence, but passed much of his life in exile. dante's most famous work, the _divine comedy_, describes an imaginary visit to the other world. vergil guides him through the realms of hell and purgatory until he meets his lady beatrice, the personification of love and purity, who conducts him through paradise. the _divine comedy_ gives in artistic verse an epitome of all that medieval men knew and hoped and felt: it is a mirror of the middle ages. at the same time it drew much of its inspiration from graeco-roman sources. athens, for dante, is the "hearth from which all knowledge glows"; homer is the "loftiest of poets", and aristotle is the "master of those who know." this feeling for classical antiquity entitles dante to rank as a prophet of the renaissance. [illustration: dante alighieri from a fresco, somewhat restored, ascribed to the contemporary artist, giotto. in the national museum, florence.] dante and the italian league dante exerted a noteworthy influence on the italian language. he wrote the _divine comedy_, not in latin, but in the vernacular italian as spoken in florence. the popularity of this work helped to give currency to the florentine dialect, and in time it became the literary language of italy. italian was the first of the romance tongues to assume a national character. petrarch, - a.d. petrarch, a younger contemporary of dante, and like him a native of florence, has been called the first modern scholar and man of letters. he devoted himself with tireless energy to classical studies. writing to a friend, petrarch declares that he has read vergil, horace, livy, and cicero, "not once, but a thousand times, not cursorily but studiously and intently, bringing to them the best powers of my mind. i tasted in the morning and digested at night. i quaffed as a boy, to ruminate as an old man. these works have become so familiar to me that they cling not to my memory merely, but to the very marrow of my bones." [illustration: petrarch from a miniature in the laurentian library, florence] petrarch as a latin revivalist petrarch himself composed many latin works and did much to spread a knowledge of latin authors. he traveled widely in italy, france, and other countries, searching everywhere for ancient manuscripts. when he found in one place two lost orations of cicero and in another place a collection of cicero's letters, he was transported with delight. he kept copyists in his house, at times as many as four, busily making transcripts of the manuscripts that he had discovered or borrowed. petrarch knew almost no greek. his copy of homer, it is said, he often kissed, though he could not read it. boccaccio, - a.d. petrarch's friend and disciple, boccaccio, was the first to bring to italy manuscripts of the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_. having learned some greek, he wrote out a translation of those epic poems. but boccaccio's fame to- day rests on the _decameron_. it is a collection of one hundred stories written in italian. they are supposed to be told by a merry company of men and women, who, during a plague at florence, have retired to a villa in the country. the _decameron_ is the first important work in italian prose. many english writers, notably chaucer in his _canterbury tales_ [ ] have gone to it for ideas and plots. the modern short story may be said to date from boccaccio. study of greek in italy the renewed interest in latin literature, due to petrarch, boccaccio, and others, was followed in the fifteenth century by the revival of greek literature. in a.d. chrysoloras, a scholar from constantinople, began to lecture on greek in the university of florence. he afterwards taught in other italian cities and further aided the growth of hellenic studies by preparing a greek grammar--the first book of its kind. from this time, and especially after the fall of constantinople in a.d., many learned greeks came to italy, thus transplanting in the west the culture of the east. "greece had not perished, but had emigrated to italy." humanism to the scholars of the fifteenth century the classics opened up a new world of thought and fancy. they were delighted by the fresh, original, and human ideas which they discovered in the pages of homer, plato, cicero, horace, and tacitus. their new enthusiasm for the classics came to be known as humanism, [ ] or culture. the greek and latin languages and literatures were henceforth the "humanities," as distinguished from the old scholastic philosophy and theology. spread of humanism in italy from florence, as from a second athens, humanism spread throughout italy. at milan and venice, at rome and naples, men fell to poring over the classics. a special feature of the age was the recovery of ancient manuscripts from monasteries and cathedrals, where they had often lain neglected and blackened with the dust of ages. nearly all the latin works now extant were brought to light by the middle of the fifteenth century. but it was not enough to recover the manuscripts: they had to be safely stored and made accessible to students. so libraries were established, professorships of the ancient languages were endowed, and scholars were given opportunities to pursue their researches. even the popes shared in this zeal for humanism. one of them founded the vatican library at rome, which has the most valuable collection of manuscripts in the world. at florence the wealthy family of the medici vied with the popes in the patronage of the new learning. . paper and printing printed books the revival of learning was greatly hastened when printed books took the place of manuscripts laboriously copied by hand. printing is a complicated process, and many centuries were required to bring it to perfection. both paper and movable type had to be invented. introduction of paper the chinese at a remote period made paper from some fibrous material. the arabs seem to have been the first to make linen paper out of flax and rags. the manufacture of paper in europe was first established by the moors in spain. the arab occupation of sicily introduced the art into italy. paper found a ready sale in europe, because papyrus and parchment, which the ancients had used as writing materials, were both expensive and heavy. men now had a material moderate in price, durable, and one that would easily receive the impression of movable type. development of movable type the first step in the development of printing was the use of engraved blocks. single letters, separate words, and sometimes entire pages of text were cut in hard wood or copper. when inked and applied to writing material, they left a clear impression. the second step was to cast the letters in separate pieces of metal, all of the same height and thickness. these could then be arranged in any desired way for printing. gutenberg movable type had been used for centuries by the chinese, japanese, and koreans in the east, and in europe several printers have been credited with their invention. a german, johann gutenberg of mainz, set up the first printing press with movable type about a.d., and from it issued the first printed book. this was a latin translation of the bible. [illustration: an early printing press enlarged from the printer's mark of i. b. ascensius. used on the title pages of books printed by him, - a.d.] aldus and caxton the new art quickly spread throughout christian europe. it met an especially warm welcome in italy, where people felt so keen a desire for reading and instruction. by the end of the fifteenth century venice alone had more than two hundred printing presses. here aldus manutius maintained a famous establishment for printing greek and latin classics. in a.d. the english printer, william caxton, set up his wooden presses within the precincts of westminster abbey. to him we owe editions of chaucer's poems, sir thomas malory's _morte d'arthur_, [ ] _aesop's fables_, and many other works. incunabula the books printed in the fifteenth century go by the name of _incunabula_. [ ] of the seven or eight million volumes which appeared before a.d., about thirty thousand are believed to be still in existence. many of these earliest books were printed in heavy, "black letter" type, an imitation of the characters used in monkish manuscripts. it is still retained for most books printed in germany. the clearer and neater "roman" characters, resembling the letters employed for ancient roman inscriptions, came into use in southern europe and england. the aldine press at venice also devised "italic" type, said to be modeled after petrarch's handwriting, to enable the publisher to crowd more words on a page. [illustration: facsimile of part of caxton's "aeneid" (reduced) with the same passage in modern type: thenne beganne agayne the bataylle of the one parte/and of the other eneas ascryed to theym and sayd. lordes why doo ye fyghte/ ye knowe well that the couuenante ys deuysed and made/that turnus and i shall fyghte for you alle/] importance of printing the invention of printing has been called the greatest event in history. the statement is hardly too strong. it is easy to see that printing immensely increased the supply of books. a hardworking copyist might produce, at the most, only a few volumes a year; a printing press could strike them off by the thousands. not only more books, but also more accurate books, could be produced by printing. the old-time copyist, however skilful, was sure to make mistakes, sometimes of a serious character. no two copies of any manuscript were exactly alike. when, however, an entire edition was printed from the same type, mistakes in the different copies might be entirely eliminated. furthermore, the invention of printing destroyed the monopoly of learning possessed by the universities and people of wealth. books were now the possession of the many, not the luxury of the few. anyone who could read had opened to him the gateway of knowledge; he became a citizen, henceforth, of the republic of letters. printing, which made possible popular education, public libraries, and ultimately cheap newspapers, ranks with gunpowder [ ] as an emancipating force. . revival of art in italy architecture gothic architecture, with its pointed arches, flying buttresses, and traceried windows, never struck deep roots in italy. the architects of the renaissance went back to greek temples and roman domed buildings for their models, just as the humanists went back to greek and latin literature. long rows of ionic or corinthian columns, spanned by round arches, became again the prevailing architectural style. perhaps the most important accomplishment of renaissance builders was the adoption of the dome, instead of the vault, for the roofs of churches. the majestic cupola of st. peter's at rome, [ ] which is modeled after the pantheon, [ ] has become the parent of many domed structures in the old and new world. [ ] architects, however, did not limit themselves to churches. the magnificent palaces of florence, as well as some of those in venice, are among the monuments of the renaissance era. henceforth architecture became more and more a secular art. sculpture the development of architecture naturally stimulated the other arts. italian sculptors began to copy the ancient bas-reliefs and statues preserved in rome and other cities. at this time glazed terra cotta came to be used by sculptors. another renaissance art was the casting of bronze doors, with panels which represented scenes from the bible. the beautiful doors of the baptistery of florence were described as "worthy of being placed at the entrance of paradise." michelangelo, - a.d. the greatest of renaissance sculptors was michelangelo. though a florentine by birth, he lived in rome and made that city a center of italian art. a colossal statue of david, who looks like a greek athlete, and another of moses, seated and holding the table of the law, are among his best-known works. michelangelo also won fame in architecture and painting. the dome of st. peter's was finished after his designs. having been commissioned by one of the popes to decorate the ceiling of the sistine chapel [ ] in the vatican, he painted a series of scenes which presented the biblical story from the creation to the flood. these frescoes are unequaled for sublimity and power. on the end wall of the same chapel michelangelo produced his fresco of the "last judgment," one of the most famous paintings in the world. rise of italian painting the early italian painters contented themselves, at first, with imitating byzantine mosaics and enamels. [ ] their work exhibited little knowledge of human anatomy: faces might be lifelike, but bodies were too slender and out of proportion. the figures of men and women were posed in stiff and conventional attitudes. the perspective also was false: objects which the painter wished to represent in the background were as near as those which he wished to represent in the foreground. in the fourteenth century, however, italian painting abandoned the byzantine style; achieved beauty of form, design, and color to an extent hitherto unknown; and became at length the supreme art of the renaissance. characteristics of italian painting italian painting began in the service of the church and always remained religious in character. artists usually chose subjects from the bible or the lives of the saints. they did not trouble themselves to secure correctness of costume, but represented ancient jews, greeks, and romans in the garb of italian gentlemen. many of their pictures were frescoes, that is, the colors were mixed with water and applied to the plaster walls of churches and palaces. after the process of mixing oils with the colors was discovered, pictures on wood or canvas (easel paintings) became common. renaissance painters excelled in portraiture. they were less successful with landscapes. the "old masters" among the "old masters" of italian painting four, besides michelangelo, stand out with special prominence. leonardo da vinci ( - a.d.) was architect, sculptor, musician, and engineer, as well as painter. his finest work, the "last supper," a fresco painting at milan, is much damaged, but fortunately good copies of it exist. paris has the best of his easel pictures--the "monna lisa." leonardo spent four years on it and then declared that he could not finish it to his satisfaction. leonardo's contemporary, raphael ( - a.d.), died before he was forty, but not before he had produced the "sistine madonna," now at dresden, the "transfiguration," in the vatican gallery at rome, and many other famous compositions. in raphael italian painting reached its zenith. all his works are masterpieces. another artist, the venetian titian ( ?- a.d.), painted portraits unsurpassed for glowing color. his "assumption of the virgin" ranks among the greatest pictures in the world. lastly must be noted the exquisite paintings of correggio ( - a.d.), among them the "holy night" and the "marriage of st. catherine." [illustration: italian paintings of the renaissance assumption of the virgin--titian sistine madonna--raphael the last supper--leonardo da vinci marriage of st. catherine--correggio monna lisa gioconda--leonardo da vinci] [illustration: flemish, dutch and spanish paintings of the renaissance the nightwatch--rembrandt descent from the cross--rubens the immaculate conception--murillo] music another modern art, that of music, arose in italy during the renaissance. in the sixteenth century the three-stringed rebeck received a fourth string and became the violin, the most expressive of all musical instruments. a forerunner of the pianoforte also appeared in the harpsichord. a papal organist and choir-master, palestrina ( - a.d.), was the first of the great composers. he gave music its fitting place in worship by composing melodious hymns and masses still sung in roman catholic churches. the oratorio, a religious drama set to music but without action, scenery, or costume, had its beginning at this time. the opera, however, was little developed until the eighteenth century. . revival of learning and art beyond italy spread of humanism in europe about the middle of the fifteenth century fire from the italian altar was carried across the alps, and a revival of learning began in northern lands. italy had led the way by recovering the long-buried treasures of the classics and by providing means for their study. scholars in germany, france, and england, who now had the aid of the printing press, continued the intellectual movement and gave it widespread currency. desiderius erasmus (?)- a.d. the foremost humanist of the age was desiderius erasmus. though a native of rotterdam in holland, he lived for a time in germany, france, england, and italy, and died at basel in switzerland. his travels and extensive correspondence brought him in contact with most of the leading scholars of the day. erasmus wrote in latin many works which were read and enjoyed by educated men. he might be called the first really popular author in europe. like petrarch, he did much to encourage the humanistic movement by his precepts and his example. "when i have money," said this devotee of the classics, "i will first buy greek books and then clothes." greek testament of erasmus erasmus performed his most important service as a biblical critic. in a.d. he published the new testament in the original greek, with a latin translation and a dedication to the pope. up to this time the only accessible edition of the new testament was the old latin version known as the vulgate, which st. jerome had made near the close of the fourth century. by preparing a new and more accurate translation, erasmus revealed the fact that the vulgate contained many errors. by printing the greek text, together with notes which helped to make the meaning clear, erasmus enabled scholars to discover for themselves just what the new testament writers had actually said. [ ] humanism and the reformation erasmus as a student of the new testament carried humanism over into the religious field. his friends and associates, especially in germany, continued his work. "we are all learning greek now," said luther, "in order to understand the bible." humanism, by becoming the handmaid of religion, thus passed insensibly into the reformation. [illustration: desiderius erasmus (louvre, paris) a portrait by the german artist, hans holbein the younger ( - a.d.). probably an excellent likeness of erasmus.] the artistic revival in europe italian architects found a cordial reception in france, spain, the netherlands, and other countries, where they introduced renaissance styles of building and ornamentation. the celebrated palace of the louvre in paris, which is used to-day as an art gallery and museum, dates from the sixteenth century. at this time the french nobles began to replace their somber feudal dwellings by elegant country houses. renaissance sculpture also spread beyond italy throughout europe. painters in northern countries at first followed italian models, but afterwards produced masterpieces of their own. [ ] . the renaissance in literature humanism and the vernacular the renewed interest in classical studies for a time retarded the development of national languages and literatures in europe. to the humanists only latin and greek seemed worthy of notice. petrarch, for instance, composed in italian beautiful sonnets which are still much admired, but he himself expected to gain literary immortality through his latin works. another italian humanist went so far as to call dante "a poet for bakers and cobblers," and the _divine comedy_ was indeed translated into latin a few years after the author's death. the vernacular revival but a return to the vernacular was bound to come. the common people understood little latin, and greek not at all. yet they had learned to read and they now had the printing press. before long many books composed in italian, spanish, french, english, and other national languages made their appearance. this revival of the vernacular meant that henceforth european literature would be more creative and original than was possible when writers merely imitated or translated the classics. the models provided by greece and rome still continued, however, to furnish inspiration to men of letters. machiavelli, - a.d. the florentine historian and diplomat, machiavelli, by his book, _the prince_, did much to found the modern science of politics. machiavelli, as a patriotic italian, felt infinite distress at the divided condition of italy, where numerous petty states were constantly at war. in _the prince_ he tried to show how a strong, despotic ruler might set up a national state in the peninsula. he thought that such a ruler ought not to be bound by the ordinary rules of morality. he must often act "against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion." the end would justify the means. success was everything; morality, nothing. this dangerous doctrine has received the name of "machiavellism"; it is not yet dead in european statecraft. cervantes, - a.d. spain during the sixteenth century gave to the world in cervantes the only spanish writer who has achieved a great reputation outside his own country. cervantes's masterpiece, _don quixote_, seems to have been intended as a burlesque upon the romances of chivalry once so popular in europe. the hero, don quixote, attended by his shrewd and faithful squire, sancho panza, rides forth to perform deeds of knight-errantry, but meets, instead, the most absurd adventures. the work is a vivid picture of spanish life. nobles, priests, monks, traders, farmers, innkeepers, muleteers, barbers, beggars--all these pass before our eyes as in a panorama. _don quixote_ immediately became popular, and it is even more read to-day than it was three centuries ago. [illustration: cervantes] froissart, (?)- a.d. the flemish writer, froissart, deserves notice as a historian and as one of the founders of french prose. his _chronicles_ present an account of the fourteenth century, when the age of feudalism was fast drawing to an end. he admired chivalry and painted it in glowing colors. he liked to describe tournaments, battles, sieges, and feats of arms. kings and nobles, knights and squires, are the actors on his stage. froissart traveled in many countries and got much of his information at first hand from those who had made history. out of what he learned he composed a picturesque and romantic story, which still captivates the imagination. montaigne, - a.d. a very different sort of writer was the frenchman, montaigne. he lives to- day as the author of one hundred and seven essays, very delightful in style and full of wit and wisdom. montaigne really invented the essay, a form of literature in which he has had many imitators. chaucer, (?)- a.d. geoffrey chaucer, who has been called the "morning star" of the english renaissance, was a story-teller in verse. his _canterbury tales_ are supposed to be told by a company of pilgrims, as they journey from london to the shrine of thomas becket at canterbury. [ ] chaucer describes freshly and with unfailing good spirits the life of the middle and upper classes. he does not reveal, any more than his contemporary froissart, the labor and sorrows of the down-trodden peasantry. but chaucer was a true poet, and his name stands high in england's long roll of men of letters. shakespeare, - a.d. this survey of the national authors of the renaissance may fitly close with william shakespeare, whose genius transcended national boundaries and made him a citizen of all the world. his life is known to us only in barest outline. born at stratford-on-avon, of humble parentage, he attended the village grammar school, where he learned "small latin and less greek", went to london as a youth, and became an actor and a playwright. he prospered, made money both from his acting and the sale of his plays, and at the age of forty-four retired to stratford for the rest of his life. here he died eight years later, and here his grave may still be seen in the village church. [ ] during his residence in london he wrote, in whole or in part, thirty-six or thirty-seven dramas, both tragedies and comedies. they were not collected and published until several years after his death. shakespeare's plays were read and praised by his contemporaries, but it has remained for modern men to see in him one who ranks with homer, vergil, dante, and goethe among the great poets of the world. [illustration: william shakespeare from the copper plate engraved by martin droeshout as frontispiece to the first folio edition of shakespeare's works in a.d. in this engraving the head is far too large for the body and the dress is out of perspective. the only other authentic likeness of shakespeare is the bust over his grave in holy trinity church, stratford on avon] [illustration: shakespeare's birthplace, stratford-on-avon the house in which shakespeare was born has been much altered in exterior appearance since the poet's day. the timber framework, the floors, most of the interior walls, and the cellars remain, however, substantially unchanged. the illustration shows the appearance of the house before the restoration made in a.d.] personality in renaissance literature renaissance poets and prose writers revealed themselves in their books. in the same way the sculptors and painters of the renaissance worked out their own ideas and emotions in their masterpieces. this personal note affords a sharp contrast to the anonymity of the middle ages. we do not know the authors of the _song of roland_, the _nibelungenlied_, and _reynard the fox_, any more than we know the builders of the gothic cathedrals. medieval literature subordinated the individual; that of the renaissance expressed the sense of individuality and man's interest in himself. it was truly "humanistic." . the renaissance in education humanism and education the universities of the middle ages emphasized scholastic philosophy, though in some institutions law and medicine also received much attention. greek, of course, was not taught, the vernacular languages of europe were not studied, and neither science nor history enjoyed the esteem of the learned. the renaissance brought about a partial change in this curriculum. the classical languages and literatures, after some opposition, gained an entrance into university courses and displaced scholastic philosophy as the chief subject of instruction. from the universities the study of the "humanities" descended to the lower schools, where they still hold a leading place. vittorino da feltre, - a.d. an italian humanist, vittorino da feltre, was the pioneer of renaissance education. in his private school at mantua, the "house of delight," as it was called, vittorino aimed to develop at the same time the body, mind, and character of his pupils, so as to fit them to "serve god in church and state." accordingly, he gave much attention to religious instruction and also set a high value on athletics. the sixty or seventy young men under his care were taught to hunt and fish, to run and jump, to wrestle and fence, to walk gracefully, and above all things to be temperate. for intellectual training he depended on the latin classics as the best means of introducing students to the literature, art, and philosophy of ancient times. vittorino's name is not widely known to-day; he left no writings, preferring, as he said, to live in the lives of his pupils; but there is scarcely a modern teacher who does not consciously or unconsciously follow his methods. more than anyone else, he is responsible for the educational system which has prevailed in europe almost to the present day. a "classical education" it cannot be said that the influence of humanism on education was wholly good. henceforth the greek and latin languages and literatures became the chief instruments of culture. educators neglected the great world of nature and of human life which lay outside the writings of the ancients. this "bookishness" formed a real defect of renaissance systems of training. comenius, - a.d. a moravian bishop named comenius, who gave his long life almost wholly to teaching, stands for a reaction against humanistic education. he proposed that the vernacular tongues, as well as the classics, should be made subjects of study. for this purpose he prepared a reading book, which was translated into a dozen european languages, and even into arabic, persian, and turkish. comenius also believed that the curriculum should include the study of geography, world history, and government, and the practice of the manual arts. he was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science. perhaps his most notable idea was that of a national system of education, reaching from primary grades to the university. "not only," he writes, "are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn to school, but all alike, rich and poor, boys and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages." the influence of this slavic teacher is more and more felt in modern systems of education. . the scientific renaissance humanism and science the middle ages were not by any means ignorant of science, [ ] but its study naturally received a great impetus when the renaissance brought before educated men all that the greeks and romans had done in mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine, and other subjects. the invention of printing also fostered the scientific revival by making it easy to spread knowledge abroad in every land. the pioneers of renaissance science were italians, but students in france, england, germany, and other countries soon took up the work of enlightenment. copernicus - a.d. the names of some renaissance scientists stand as landmarks in the history of thought. the first place must be given to copernicus, the founder of modern astronomy. he was a pole, but lived many years in italy. patient study and calculation led him to the conclusion that the earth turns upon its own axis, and, together with the planets, revolves around the sun. the book in which he announced this conclusion did not appear until the very end of his life. a copy of it reached him on his deathbed. the copernican theory medieval astronomers had generally accepted the ptolemaic system. [ ] some students before copernicus had indeed suggested that the earth and planets might rotate about a central sun, but he first gave reasons for such a belief. the new theory met much opposition, not only in the universities, which clung to the time-honored ptolemaic system, but also among theologians, who thought that it contradicted many statements in the bible. moreover, people could not easily reconcile themselves to the idea that the earth, instead of being the center of the universe, is only one member of the solar system, that it is, in fact, only a mere speck of cosmic dust. galileo, - a.d. an italian scientist, galileo, made one of the first telescopes--it was about as powerful as an opera glass--and turned it on the heavenly bodies with wonderful results. he found the sun moving unmistakably on its axis, venus showing phases according to her position in relation to the sun, jupiter accompanied by revolving moons, or satellites, and the milky way composed of a multitude of separate stars. galileo rightly believed that these discoveries confirmed the theory of copernicus. kepler, - a.d. another man of genius, the german kepler, worked out the mathematical laws which govern the movements of the planets. he made it clear that the planets revolve around sun in elliptical instead of circular orbits. kepler's investigations afterwards led to the discovery of the principle of gravitation. vesalius, - a.d., and harvey, - a.d. two other scientists did epochal work in a field far removed from astronomy. vesalius, a fleming, who studied in italian medical schools, gave to the world the first careful description of the human body based on actual dissection. he was thus the founder of human anatomy. harvey, an englishman, after observing living animals, announced the discovery of the circulation of the blood. he thereby founded human physiology. the scientific method copernicus, galileo, kepler, vesalius, harvey, and their fellow workers built up the scientific method. in the middle ages students had mostly been satisfied to accept what aristotle and other philosophers had said, without trying to prove their statements. [ ] kepler, for instance, was the first to disprove the aristotelian idea that, as all perfect motion is circular, therefore the heavenly bodies must move in circular orbits. similarly, the world had to wait many centuries before harvey showed aristotle's error in supposing that the blood arose in the liver, went thence to the heart, and by the veins was conducted over the body. the new scientific method rested on observation and experiment. students learned at length to take nothing for granted, to set aside all authority, and to go straight to nature for their facts. as lord bacon, [ ] one of shakespeare's contemporaries and a severe critic of the old scholasticism, declared, "all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature, and so receiving their images simply as they are, for god forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world." modern science, to which we owe so much, is a product of the renaissance. . the economic renaissance an economic change thus far the renaissance has been studied as an intellectual and artistic movement, which did much to liberate the human mind and brought the middle ages to an end in literature, in art, and in science. it is necessary, however, to consider the renaissance era from another point of view. during this time an economic change of vast significance was taking place in rural life all over western europe. we refer to the decline and ultimate extinction of medieval serfdom. decline of serfdom serfdom imposed a burden only less heavy than the slavery which it had displaced. the serf, as has been shown, [ ] might not leave the manor in which he was born, he might not sell his holdings of land, and, finally, he had to give up a large part of his time to work without pay for the lord of the manor. this system of forced labor was at once unprofitable to the lord and irksome to his serfs. after the revival of trade and industry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had brought more money into circulation, [ ] the lord discovered how much better it was to hire men to work for him, as he needed them, instead of depending on serfs who shirked their tasks as far as possible. the latter, in turn, were glad to pay the lord a fixed sum for the use of land, since now they could devote themselves entirely to its cultivation. both parties gained by an arrangement which converted the manorial lord into a landlord and the serf into a free tenant-farmer paying rent. the "black death" the emancipation of the peasantry was hastened, strangely enough, as the result of perhaps the most terrible calamity that has ever afflicted mankind. about the middle of the fourteenth century a pestilence of asiatic origin, now known to have been the bubonic plague, reached the west. [ ] the "black death" so called because among its symptoms were dark patches all over the body, moved steadily across europe. the way for its ravages had been prepared by the unhealthful conditions of ventilation and drainage in towns and cities. after attacking greece, sicily, italy, spain, france, and germany, the plague entered england in a.d. and within less than two years swept away probably half the population of that country. the mortality elsewhere was enormous, one estimate setting it as high as twenty-five millions for all europe. effects of the "black death" the pestilence in england, as in other countries, caused a great scarcity of labor. for want of hands to bring in the harvest, crops rotted on the ground, while sheep and cattle, with no one to care for them, strayed through the deserted fields. the free peasants who survived demanded and received higher wages. even the serfs, whose labor was now more valued, found themselves in a better position. the lord of a manor, in order to keep his laborers, would often allow them to substitute money payments for personal services. when the serfs got no concessions, they frequently took to flight and hired themselves to the highest bidder. first statute of laborers, a.d. the governing classes of england, who at this time were mainly landowners, believed that the workers were taking an unfair advantage of the situation. so in a.d. parliament passed a law fixing the maximum wage in different occupations and punishing with imprisonment those who refused to accept work when it was offered to them. the fact that parliament had to reenact this law thirteen times within the next century shows that it did not succeed in preventing a general rise of wages. it only exasperated the working classes. the peasants' rebellion, a.d. a few years after the first statute of laborers the restlessness and discontent among the masses led to a serious outbreak. it was one of the few attempts at violent revolution which the english working people have made. one of the inspirers of the rebellion was a wandering priest named john ball. he went about preaching that all goods should be held in common and the distinction between lords and serfs wiped away. "when adam delved and eve span, who was then the gentleman?" asked john ball. uprisings occurred in nearly every part of england, but the one in kent had most importance. the rioters marched on london and presented their demands to the youthful king, richard ii. he promised to abolish serfdom and to give them a free pardon. as soon, however, as richard had gathered an army, he put down the revolt by force and hanged john ball and about a hundred of his followers. the jacquerie, a.d. the rebellion in england may be compared with the far more terrible jacquerie [ ] in france, a few years earlier. the french peasants, who suffered from feudal oppression and the effects of the hundred years' war, raged through the land, burning the castles and murdering their feudal lords. the movement had scarcely any reasonable purpose; it was an outburst of blind passion. the nobles avenged themselves by slaughtering the peasants in great numbers. [illustration: richard ii after an engraving based on the original in westminster abbey. probably the oldest authentic portrait in england.] extinction of serfdom though these first great struggles of labor against capital were failures, the emancipation of the peasantry went steadily on throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. by a.d. serfdom had virtually disappeared in italy, in most parts of france, and in england. some less- favored countries retained serfdom much longer. prussian, austrian, and russian serfs did not receive their freedom until the nineteenth century. condition of the peasantry the extinction of serfdom was, of course, a forward step in human freedom, but the lot of the english and continental peasantry long remained wretched. the poem of _piers plowman_, written in the time of chaucer, shows the misery of the age and reveals a very different picture than that of the gay, holiday-making, merry england seen in the _canterbury tales_. one hundred and fifty years later, the english humanist, sir thomas more, a friend of erasmus, published his _utopia_ as a protest against social abuses. _utopia_, or "nowhere," is an imaginary country whose inhabitants choose their own rulers, hold all property in common, and work only nine hours a day. in utopia a public system of education prevails, cruel punishments are unknown, and every one enjoys complete freedom to worship god. this remarkable book, though it pictures an ideal commonwealth, really anticipates many social reforms of the present time. studies . prepare a chronological chart showing the leading men of letters, artists, scientists, and educators mentioned in this chapter. . for what were the following persons noted: chrysoloras; vittorino da feltre; gutenberg; boccaccio; machiavelli; harvey; and galileo? . how did the words "machiavellism" and "utopian" get their present meanings? . distinguish and define the three terms, "renaissance," "revival of learning," and "humanism." . "next to the discovery of the new world, the recovery of the ancient world is the second landmark that divides us from the middle ages and marks the transition to modern life." comment on this statement. . why did the renaissance begin as "an italian event"? . "city-states have always proved favorable to culture." illustrate this remark. . why was the revival of greek more important in the history of civilization than the revival of latin? . show that printing was an "emancipating force." . with what paintings by the "old masters" are you familiar? . how does the opera differ from the oratorio? . why has froissart been styled the "french herodotus"? . how many of shakespeare's plays can you name? how many have you read? . can you mention any of shakespeare's plays which are founded on italian stories or whose scenes are laid in italy? . why did the classical scholar come to be regarded as the only educated man? . in what respects is the american system of education a realization of the ideals of comenius? . did the medieval interest in astrology retard or further astronomical research? . how did the discoveries of galileo and kepler confirm the copernican theory? . what is meant by the "emancipation of the peasantry"? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xix, "a scholar of the renaissance"; chapter xx, "renaissance artists." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] latin _humanitas,_ from _homo_, "man." [ ] see page . [ ] a latin word meaning "cradle" or "birthplace," and so the beginning of anything. [ ] see page . [ ] see the plate facing page . [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] for instance, the invalides in paris, st. paul's in london, and the capitol at washington. [ ] in this chapel the election of a new pope takes place. [ ] see page . [ ] the so-called _complutensian polyglott_, issued at alcalá in spain by cardinal jimenes, did even more for the advance of biblical scholarship. this was the first printed text of the greek new testament, but it was not actually published till a.d., six years after the appearance of the edition by erasmus. [ ] a list of the great european painters would include at least the following names: durer ( - a.d.) and hans holbein the younger ( - a.d.) in germany; rubens ( - a.d.) and van dyck ( - a.d.) in flanders; rembrandt ( - a.d.) in holland; claude lorraine ( - a.d.) in france; and velásquez ( - a.d.) and murillo ( - a.d.) in spain. [ ] see the illustration, page . [ ] the three-hundredth anniversary of shakespeare's death was appropriately observed in a.d. throughout the world. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] not to be confused with his countryman, roger bacon, who lived in the thirteenth century. see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] a similar plague devastated the roman world during the reign of justinian. [ ] from _jacques_, a common french name for a peasant. chapter xxvi geographical discovery and colonization [ ] . medieval geography the geographical renaissance there was also a geographical renaissance. the revival of the exploring spirit led to the discovery of ocean routes to the far east and the americas. in consequence, commerce was vastly stimulated, and two continents, hitherto unknown, were opened up to civilization. the geographical renaissance, which gave man a new world, thus cooperated with the other movements of the age in bringing about the transition from medieval to modern times. medieval ignorance of geography the greeks and romans had become familiar with a large part of europe and asia, but much of their learning was either forgotten or perverted during the early middle ages. even the wonderful discoveries of the northmen in the north atlantic gradually faded from memory. the arabs, whose conquests and commerce extended over so much of the orient, far surpassed the christian peoples of europe in knowledge of the world. geographical myths the alliance of medieval geography with theology led to curious results. map makers, relying on a passage in the old testament, [ ] usually placed jerusalem in the center of the world. a scriptural reference to the "four corners of the earth" [ ] was sometimes thought to imply the existence of a rectangular world. from classical sources came stories of monstrous men, one-eyed, headless, or dog-headed, who were supposed to inhabit remote regions. equally monstrous animals, such as the unicorn and dragon, [ ] kept them company. sailors' "yarns" must have been responsible for the belief that the ocean boiled at the equator and that in the atlantic--the "sea of darkness"--lurked serpents huge enough to sink ships. to the real danger of travel by land and water people thus added imaginary terrors. the cosmas map many maps prepared in the middle ages sum up the prevailing knowledge, or rather ignorance, of the world. one of the earliest specimens that has come down to us was made in the sixth century, by cosmas, an alexandrian monk. it exhibits the earth as a rectangle surrounded by an ocean with four deep gulfs. beyond this ocean lies another world, the seat of paradise and the place "where men dwelt before the flood." the rivers which flow from the lakes of paradise are also shown. figures holding trumpets represent the four winds. [illustration: geographical monsters from an early edition of sir john mandeville's _travels_. shakespeare (_othello_, i, iii, - ) refers to: "the anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."] the hereford map a map made about seven hundred years later, and now preserved in hereford cathedral, shows the earth as a circular disk with the ocean surrounding it. in the extreme east--that is, at the top--lies paradise, jerusalem occupies the center, and below it comes the mediterranean, liberally supplied with islands. the black sea appears as a narrow body of water, and even the british isles are strangely distorted to fit the circle. such a map could have been of little use to travelers; it simply satisfied a natural curiosity about the wonders of the world. opening up of asia the crusades, more than anything else, first extended geographical knowledge. as a religious movement they led to pilgrimages and missions in oriental lands. with the pilgrims and missionaries went hard-headed traders, who brought back to europe the wealth of the east. the result, by a.d., was to open up countries beyond the euphrates which had remained sealed to europe for centuries. this discovery of the interior of asia had only less importance than that of the new world two centuries later. legend of prester john what specially drew explorers eastward was the belief that somewhere in the center of asia existed a great christian kingdom which, if allied to european christendom, might attack the moslems from the rear. according to one form of the story the kingdom consisted of the ten tribes of israel, [ ] who had been converted to christianity by nestorian missionaries. [ ] over them reigned a priest-king named prester (or presbyter) john. the popes made several attempts to communicate with this mythical ruler. in the thirteenth century, however, franciscan friars did penetrate to the heart of asia. they returned to europe with marvelous tales of the wealth and splendor of the east under the mongol emperors. the polos in the east, - a.d. the most famous of all medieval travelers were nicolo and maffeo polo, and nicolo's son, marco. these venetian merchants set out for asia in a.d., and after an adventurous journey reached the court of kublai khan at peking. [ ] the mongol ruler, who seems to have been anxious to introduce christianity and european culture among his people, received them in a friendly manner, and they amassed much wealth by trade. marco entered the khan's service and went on several expeditions to distant parts of the mongol realm. many years passed before kublai would allow his useful guests to return to europe. they sailed at length from zaitun, a chinese seaport, skirted the coast of southeastern asia and india, and then made their way overland to the mediterranean. when the travelers reached venice after an absence of twenty-four years, their relatives were slow to recognize in them the long-lost polos. [illustration: geographical knowledge during the middle ages the world according to cosmas indicopleustes, a.d. the hereford map, a.d.] marco polo's book the story of the polos, as written down at marco's dictation, became one of the most popular works of the middle ages. in this book europe read of far cathay (china), with its wealth, its huge cities, and swarming population, of mysterious and secluded tibet, of burma, siam, and cochin- china, with their palaces and pagodas, of the east indies, famed for spices, of ceylon, abounding in pearls, and of india, little known since the days of alexander the great. even cipango (japan) marco described from hearsay as an island whose people were white, civilized, and so rich in gold that the royal palace was roofed and paved with that metal. the accounts of these countries naturally made europeans more eager than ever to reach the east. . aids to exploration the compass the new knowledge gained by european peoples about the land routes of asia was accompanied by much progress in the art of ocean navigation. first in importance came the compass to guide explorers across the waters of the world. the chinese appear to have discovered that a needle, when rubbed with a lodestone, has the mysterious power of pointing to the north. the arabs may have introduced this rude form of the compass among mediterranean sailors. the instrument, improved by being balanced on a pivot so that it would not be affected by choppy seas, seems to have been generally used by europeans as early as the thirteenth century. it greatly aided sailors by enabling them to find their bearings in murky weather and on starless nights. the compass, though useful, was not indispensable; without its help the northmen had made their distant expeditions in the atlantic. nautical instruments the astrolabe, which the greeks had invented and used for astronomical purposes, also came into europe through the arabs. it was employed to calculate latitudes by observation of the height of the sun above the horizon. other instruments that found a place on shipboard were the hour- glass, minute-glass, and sun-dial. a rude form of the log was used as a means of estimating the speed of a vessel, and so of finding roughly the longitude. [illustration: an astrolabe] other improvements in navigation during the last centuries of the middle ages the charting of coasts became a science. a sailor might rely on the "handy maps" (_portolani_) which outlined with some approach to accuracy the bays, islands, and headlands of the mediterranean and adjacent waters. manuals were prepared telling the manner about the tides, currents, and other features of the route he intended to follow. the increase in size of ships made navigation safer and permitted the storage of bulky cargoes. for long voyages the sailing vessel replaced the medieval galley rowed by oars. as the result of all these improvements navigators no longer found it necessary to keep close to the shore, but could push out dauntlessly into the open sea. motives for exploration many motives prompted exploration. scientific curiosity, bred of the renaissance spirit of free inquiry, led men to set forth on voyages of discovery. the crusading spirit, which had not died out in europe, thrilled at the thought of spreading christianity among heathen peoples. and in this age, as in all epochs of exploration, adventurers sought in distant lands opportunities to acquire wealth and fame and power. the commercial motive commerce formed perhaps the most powerful motive for exploration. eastern spices--cinnamon, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger--were used more freely in medieval times than now, when people lived on salt meat during the winter and salt fish during lent. even wine, ale, and medicines had a seasoning of spices. when john ball [ ] wished to contrast the easy life of the lords with the peasants' hard lot, he said, "they have wines, spices, and fine bread, while we have only rye and the refuse of the straw." [ ] besides spices, all kinds of precious stones, drugs, perfumes, gums, dyes, and fragrant woods came from the east. since the time of the crusades these luxuries, after having been brought overland by water to mediterranean ports, had been distributed by venetian and genoese merchants throughout europe. [ ] but now in the fifteenth century two other european peoples--the portuguese and spaniards--appeared as competitors for this oriental trade. their efforts to break through the monopoly enjoyed by the italian cities led to the discovery of the sea routes to the indies. the portuguese were first in the field. . to the indies eastward: prince henry and da gama prince henry the navigator, - a.d. in the history of the fifteenth century few names rank higher than that of prince henry, commonly called the navigator, because of his services to the cause of exploration. the son of a portuguese king, he devoted himself during more than forty years to organizing scientific discovery. under his direction better maps were made, the astrolabe was improved, the compass was placed on vessels, and seamen were instructed in all the nautical learning of the time. the problem which prince henry studied and which portuguese sailors finally solved was the possibility of a maritime route around africa to the indies. exploration of the african coast the expeditions sent out by prince henry began by rediscovering the madeira and azores islands, first visited by europeans in the fourteenth century. then the portuguese turned southward along the unchartered african coast. in a.d. they got as far as cape verde, or "green cape," so called because of its luxuriant vegetation. the discovery was important, for it disposed of the idea that the sahara desert extended indefinitely to the south. sierra leone, which the carthaginian hanno [ ] had probably visited, was reached in a.d., two years after prince henry's death. soon portuguese sailors found the great bend of the african coast formed by the gulf of guinea. in a.d. they crossed the equator, without the scorching that some had feared. in a.d. they were at the mouth of the congo. six years later bartholomew diaz rounded the southern extremity of africa. the story goes that he named it the cape of storms, and that the king of portugal, recognizing its importance as a stage on the route to the east, rechristened it the cape of good hope. da gama's voyage, - a.d. a daring mariner, vasco da gama, opened the sea-gates to the indies. with four tiny ships he set sail from lisbon in july, a.d., and after leaving the cape verde islands made a wide sweep into the south atlantic. five months passed before africa was seen again. having doubled the cape of good hope in safety, da gama skirted the eastern shores of africa and at length secured the services of a moslem pilot to guide him across the indian ocean. in may, a.d., he reached calicut, [ ] an important commercial city on the southwest coast of india. when da gama returned to lisbon, after an absence of over two years, he brought back a cargo which repaid sixty times the cost of the expedition. the portuguese king received him with high honor and created him admiral of the indies. [illustration: vasco da gama from a manuscript in the british museum.] camoens, - a.d., and the lusiads the story of da gama's memorable voyage was sung by the portuguese poet, camoens, in the _lusiads_. it is the most successful of all modern epics. the popularity of the _lusiads_ has done much to keep alive the sense of nationality among the portuguese, and even to-day it forms a bond of union between portugal and her daughter-nation across the atlantic--brazil. significance of the maritime route the discovery of an ocean passage to the east came at the right moment. just at this time the ottoman turks were beginning to block up the old trade routes. [ ] their conquests in asia minor and southeastern europe, during the fifteenth century, shut out the italians from the northern route through the aegean and the black sea. after syria and egypt were conquered, early in the sixteenth century, the central and southern routes also passed under turkish control. the ottoman advance struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of the italian cities, which had so long monopolized oriental trade. but the misfortune of venice and genoa was the opportunity of portugal. . the portuguese colonial empire portuguese ascendancy in the east after da gama's voyage the portuguese made haste to appropriate the wealth of the indies. fleet after fleet was sent out to establish trading stations upon the coasts of africa and asia. the great viceroy, albuquerque, captured the city of goa and made it the center of the portuguese dominions in india. goa still belongs to portugal. albuquerque also seized malacca, at the end of the malay peninsula, and ormuz, at the entrance to the persian gulf. the possession of these strategic points enabled the portuguese to control the commerce of the indian ocean. they also established trading relations with china, through the port of macao, and with japan, which was accidentally discovered in a.d. by the middle of the sixteenth century they had acquired almost complete ascendancy throughout southern asia and the adjacent islands. [ ] portuguese trade monopoly the portuguese came to the east as the successors of the arabs, who for centuries had carried on an extensive trade in the indian ocean. having dispossessed the arabs, the portuguese took care to shut out all european trade competitors. only their own merchants were allowed to bring goods from the indies to europe by the cape route. for a time this policy made portugal very prosperous. lisbon, the capital, formed the chief depot for spices and other eastern commodities. the french, english, and dutch came there to buy them and took the place of italian merchants in distributing them throughout europe. collapse of the portuguese empire but the triumph of portugal was short-lived. this small country, with a population of not more than a million, lacked the strength to defend her claims to a monopoly of the oriental trade. during the seventeenth century the french and english broke the power of the portuguese in india, while the dutch drove them from ceylon and the east indies. though the portuguese lost most of their possessions so soon, they deserve a tribute of admiration for the energy, enthusiasm, and real heroism with which they built up the first of modern colonial empires. europe in asia the new world in the east, thus entered by the portuguese and later by other european peoples, was really an old world--rich, populous, and civilized. it held out alluring possibilities, not only for trade, but also as a field for missionary enterprise. da gama and albuquerque began a movement, which still continues, to "westernize" asia by opening it up to european influence. it remains to be seen, however, whether india, china, and japan will allow their ancient culture to be extinguished by that of europe. . to the indies westward: columbus and magellan the globular theory six years before vasco da gama cast anchor in the harbor of calicut, another intrepid sailor, seeking the indies by a western route, accidentally discovered america. it does not detract from the glory of columbus to show that the way for his discovery had been long in preparation. in the first place, the theory that the earth was round had been familiar to the greeks and romans, and to some learned men even in the darkest period of the middle ages. by the opening of the thirteenth century it must have been commonly known, for roger bacon [ ] refers to it, and dante, in the _divine comedy_, [ ] plans his inferno on the supposition of a spherical world. the awakening of interest in greek science, as a result of the renaissance, naturally called renewed attention to the statements by ancient geographers. eratosthenes, [ ] for instance, had clearly recognized the possibility of reaching india by sailing westward on the same parallel of latitude. especially after the revival of ptolemy's [ ] works in the fifteenth century, scholars accepted the globular theory; and they even went so far as to calculate the circumference of the earth. myth of atlantis in the second place, men had long believed that west of europe, beyond the strait of gibraltar, lay mysterious lands. this notion first appears in the writings of the greek philosopher, plato, [ ] who repeats an old tradition concerning atlantis. according to plato, atlantis had been an island continental in size, but more than nine thousand years before his time it had sunk beneath the sea. medieval writers accepted this account as true and found support for it in traditions of other western islands, such as the isles of the blest, where greek heroes went after death, and the welsh avalon, whither king arthur, [ ] after his last battle, was borne to heal his wounds. a widespread legend of the middle ages also described the visit made by st. brandan, an irish monk, to the "promised land of the saints," an earthly paradise far out in the atlantic. st. brandan's island was marked on early maps, and voyages in search of it were sometimes undertaken. behaim's globe the ideas of european geographers in the period just preceding the discovery of america are represented on a map, or rather a globe, which dates from a.d. it was made by a german navigator, martin behaim, for his native city of nuremberg, where it is still preserved. behaim shows the mythical island of st. brandan, lying in mid-ocean, and beyond it japan (cipango) and the east indies. it is clear that he greatly underestimated the distance westward between europe and asia. the error was natural enough, for ptolemy had reckoned the earth's circumference to be about one-sixth less than it is, and marco polo had given an exaggerated idea of the distance to which asia extended on the east. when columbus set out on his voyage, he firmly believed that a journey of four thousand miles would bring him to cipango. [illustration: behaim's globe the outlines of north america and south america do not appear on the original globe.] columbus, (?)- a.d. christopher columbus was a native of genoa, where his father followed the humble trade of a weaver. he seems to have obtained some knowledge of astronomy and geography as a student in the university of pavia, but at an early age he became a sailor. columbus knew the mediterranean by heart; he once went to the guinea coast; and he may have visited iceland. he settled at lisbon as a map-maker and married a daughter of one of prince henry's sea-captains. as columbus pored over his maps and charts and talked with seamen about their voyages, the idea came to him that much of the world remained undiscovered and that the distant east could be reached by a shorter route than that which led around africa. [illustration: christopher columbus, (biblioteca nacional, madrid) the oldest known portrait of columbus.] researches of columbus columbus was a well-read man, and in aristotle, ptolemy, and other ancient authorities he found apparent confirmation of his grand idea. columbus also owned a printed copy of marco polo's book, and from his comments, written on the margin, we know how interested he was in polo's statements referring to cathay and cipango. furthermore, columbus brought together all the information he could get about the fabled islands of the atlantic. if he ever went to iceland, some vague traditions may have reached him there of norse voyages to greenland and vinland. such hints and rumors strengthened his purpose to sail toward the setting sun in quest of the indies. [illustration: isabella] first voyage of columbus, a.d. all know the story. how columbus first laid his plans before the king of portugal, only to meet with rebuffs; how he then went to spain and after many discouragements found a patron in queen isabella; how with three small ships he set out from palos, august , a.d.; how after leaving the canaries he sailed week after week over an unknown sea; and how at last, on the early morning of october , he sighted in the moonlight the glittering coral strand of one of the bahama islands. [ ] it was the new world. [illustration: ship of a.d.] subsequent voyages of columbus columbus made three other voyages to the new world, in the course of which he explored the caribbean sea, the mouth of the orinoco river, and the eastern coast of central america. he lived and died in the belief that he had actually reached the mainland of asia and the realms of the great khan of cathay. the name west indies still remains as a testimony to this error. naming of america the new world was named for a florentine navigator, amerigo vespucci. [ ] while in the spanish service he made several western voyages and printed an account of his discovery of the mainland of america in a.d. scholars now generally reject his statements, but they found acceptance at the time, and it was soon suggested that the new continent should be called america, "because americus discovered it." the name applied at first only to south america. after it became certain that south america joined another continent to the north, the name spread over the whole new world. [illustration: the name "america" facsimile of the passage in the _cosmographiae introductio_ ( ), by martin waldseemuller, in which the name "america" is proposed for the new world.] the demarcation line, a.d. shortly after the return of columbus from his first voyage, pope alexander vi, in response to a request by ferdinand and isabella, issued a bull granting these sovereigns exclusive rights over the newly discovered lands. in order that the spanish possessions should be clearly marked off from the portuguese, the pope laid down an imaginary line of demarcation in the atlantic, three hundred miles west of the azores. all new discoveries west of the line were to belong to spain; all those east of it, to portugal. [ ] but this arrangement, which excluded france, england, and other european countries from the new world, could not be long maintained. [illustration: map, portuguese and spanish colonial empires in the sixteenth century] ferdinand magellan, (?)- a.d. the demarcation line had a good deal to do in bringing about the first voyage around the globe. so far no one had yet realized the dream of columbus to reach the lands of spice and silk by sailing westward. ferdinand magellan, formerly one of albuquerque's lieutenants but now in the service of spain, believed that the spice islands lay within the spanish sphere of influence and that an all-spanish route, leading to them through some strait at the southern end of south america, could be discovered. circumnavigation of the globe, - a.d. the spanish ruler, charles v, grandson of the isabella who had supported columbus, looked with favor upon magellan's ideas and gave him a fleet of five vessels for the undertaking. after exploring the east coast of south america, magellan came at length to the strait which bears his name. through this channel he sailed boldly and found himself upon an ocean which he called the pacific, because of its peaceful aspect. magellan's sailors now begged him to return, for food was getting scarce, but the navigator replied that he would go on, "if he had to eat the leather off the rigging." he did go on, for ninety-eight days, until he reached the ladrone islands. [ ] by a curious chance, in all this long trip across the pacific, magellan came upon only two islands, both of them uninhabited. he then proceeded to the philippines, where he was killed in a fight with the natives. his men, however, managed to reach the spice islands, the goal of the journey. afterwards a single ship, the _victoria_, carried back to spain the few sailors who had survived the hardships of a voyage lasting nearly three years. [illustration: ferdinand magellan from a portrait formerly in the versailles gallery, paris.] meaning of the circumnavigation magellan's voyage forms a landmark in the history of geography. it proved that america, at least on the south, had no connection with asia; it showed the enormous extent of the pacific ocean; and it led to the discovery of many large islands in the east indies. henceforth men knew of a certainty that the earth was round and in the distance covered by magellan they had a rough estimate of its size. the circumnavigation of the globe ranks with the discovery of america among the most significant events in history. in the company of great explorers magellan stands beside columbus. . the indians peopling of america the first inhabitants of america probably came from the old world. at a remote epoch a land-bridge connected northwest europe with greenland, and iceland still remains a witness to its former existence. over this bridge animals and men may have found their way into the new world. another prehistoric route may have led from asia. only a narrow strait now separates alaska from siberia, and the aleutian islands form an almost complete series of stepping-stones across the most northerly part of the pacific. the american aborigines the natives of america, whom columbus called indians, certainly resemble asiatics in some physical features, such as the reddish-brown complexion, the hair, uniformly black and lank, the high cheek-bones, and short stature of many tribes. on the other hand, the large, aquiline nose, the straight eyes, never oblique, and the tall stature of some tribes are european traits. it seems safe to conclude that the american aborigines, whatever their origin, became thoroughly fused into a composite race during long centuries of isolation from the rest of mankind. indian culture because of their isolation the indians had to work out by themselves many arts, inventions, and discoveries. they spoke over a thousand languages and dialects; and not one has yet been traced outside of america. their implements consisted of polished stone, occasionally of unsmelted copper, and in mexico and peru, of bronze. they cultivated indian corn, or maize, but lacked the other great cereals. they domesticated the dog and the llama of the andes. they lived in clans and tribes, ruled by headmen or chiefs. their religion probably did not involve a belief in a "great spirit," as is so often said, but rather recognized in all nature the abode of spiritual powers, mysterious and wonderful, whom man ought to conciliate by prayers and sacrifices. in short, most of the american indians were not savages, but barbarians well advanced in culture. the mayas indian culture attained its highest development in mexico and central america, especially among the mayas of yucatan, guatemala, and honduras. the remains of their cities--the ninevehs and babylons of the new world-- lie buried in the tropical jungle, where europeans first saw them, four hundred years ago. the temples, shrines, altars, and statues in these ancient cities show that the mayas had made much progress in the fine arts. they knew enough astronomy to frame a solar calendar of three hundred and sixty-five days, and enough mathematics to employ numbers exceeding a million. the writing of the mayas had reached the rebus [ ] stage and promised to become alphabetic. when their hieroglyphics have been completely deciphered, we shall learn much more about this gifted people. the aztecs several centuries before the arrival of europeans in america, the so- called aztecs came down from the north and established themselves on the mexican plateau. here they formed a confederacy of many tribes, ruled over by a sort of king, whose capital was tenochtitlan, on the site of the present city of mexico. [illustration: aztec sacrificial knife british museum, london. length, twelve inches. the blade is of yellow, opalescent chalcedony, beautifully chipped and polished. the handle is of light-colored wood carved in the form of a man masked with a bird skin. brilliant mosaic settings of turquoise, malachite, and shell embellish the figure.] [illustration: aztec sacrificial stone now in the national museum in the city of mexico.] aztec culture the aztecs appear to have borrowed much of their art, science, and knowledge of writing from their maya neighbors. they built houses and temples of stone or sundried brick, constructed aqueducts, roads, and bridges, excelled in the dyeing, weaving, and spinning of cotton, and made most beautiful ornaments of silver and gold. they worshiped many gods, to which the priests offered prisoners of war as human sacrifices. in spite of these bloody rites, the aztecs were a kind-hearted, honest people, respectful of the rights of property, brave in battle, and obedient to their native rulers. aztec culture in some ways was scarcely inferior to that of the ancient egyptians. the incas the lofty table-lands of the andes were also the seat of an advanced indian culture. at the time of the spanish conquest the greater part of what is now ecuador, peru, bolivia, and northern chile had come under the sway of the incas, the "people of the sun". the inca power centered in the peruvian city of cuzco and on the shores of lake titicaca, which lies twelve thousand feet above sea-level. in this region of magnificent scenery the traveler views with astonishment the ruins of vast edifices, apparently never completed, which were raised either by the incas or the indians whom they conquered and displaced. though the culture of the incas resembled in many ways that of the aztecs, the two peoples probably never had any intercourse and hence remained totally unaware of each other's existence. [illustration: map, west indies] . spanish explorations and conquests in america objects of the spaniards the discoverers of the new world were naturally the pioneers in its exploration. the first object of the spaniards had been trade with the indies, and for a number of years, until magellan's voyage, they sought vainly for a passage through the mainland to the spice islands. when, however, the spaniards learned that america was rich in deposits of gold and silver, these metals formed the principal objects of their expeditions. ponce de leÓn and balboa, a.d. the spaniards at first had confined their settlements to the greater antilles in the west indies, [ ] but after the gold of these islands was exhausted, they began to penetrate the mainland. in a.d. ponce de león, who had been with columbus on his second voyage, discovered the country which he named florida. it became the first spanish possession in north america. in the same year vasco nuñez de balboa, from the isthmus of panama, sighted the pacific. he entered its waters, sword in hand, and took formal possession in the name of the king of spain. [illustration: map, an early map of the new world ( a.d.)] conquest of mexico - a.d. and peru - a.d. the overthrow of the aztec power was accomplished by hernando cortés, with the aid of indian allies. many large towns and half a thousand villages, together with immense quantities of treasure, fell into the hands of the conquerors. henceforth mexico, or "new spain," became the most important spanish possession in america. francisco pizarro, who invaded peru with a handful of soldiers, succeeded in overthrowing the incas. pizarro founded in peru the city of lima. it replaced cuzco as the capital of the country and formed the seat of the spanish government in south america. el dorado the spaniards, during the earlier part of the sixteenth century, heard much of a fabled king whom they called el dorado. [ ] this king, it was said, used to smear himself with gold dust at an annual religious ceremony. in time the idea arose that somewhere in south america existed a fabled country marvelously rich in precious metals and gems. these stories stirred the imagination of the spaniards, who fitted out many expeditions to find the gilded man and his gilded realm. the quest for el dorado opened up the valleys of the amazon and orinoco and the extensive forest region east of the andes. spanish explorers also tried to find el dorado in north america. de soto's expedition led to the discovery of the mississippi in a.d., and coronado's search for the "seven cities of cibola" not only added greatly to geographical knowledge of the southwest, but also resulted in the extension of spanish dominion over this part of the american continent. about a.d. the spaniards founded santa fé and made it the capital of their government in new mexico. * * * * * . the spanish colonial empire spain in the new world the wonderful exploits of the _conquistadores_ (conquerors) laid the foundations of the spanish colonial empire. it included florida, new mexico, california, mexico, central america, the west indies, and all south america except brazil. [ ] the rule of spain over these dominions lasted nearly three hundred years. during this time she gave her language, her government, and her religion to half the new world. intermarriage of spaniards and indians the spaniards brought few women with them and hence had to find their wives among the indians. intermarriage of the two peoples early became common. the result was the mixed race which one still finds throughout the greater part of spanish america. in this race the indian strain predominates, because almost everywhere the aborigines were far more numerous than the white settlers. treatment of the indians the spaniards treated the indians of the west indies most harshly and forced them to work in gold mines and on sugar plantations. the hard labor, to which the indians were unaccustomed, broke down their health, and almost the entire native population disappeared within a few years after the coming of the whites. this terrible tragedy was not repeated on the mainland, for the spanish government stepped in to preserve the aborigines from destruction. it prohibited their enslavement and gave them the protection of humane laws. though these laws were not always well enforced, the indians of mexico and peru increased in numbers under spanish rule and often became prosperous traders, farmers, and artisans. conversion of the indians the spaniards succeeded in winning many of the indians to christianity. devoted monks penetrated deep into the wilderness and brought to the aborigines, not only the christian religion, but also european civilization. in many places the natives were gathered into permanent villages, or "missions," each one with its church and school. converts who learned to read and write often became priests or entered the monastic orders. the monks also took much interest in the material welfare of the indians and taught them how to farm, how to build houses, and how to spin and weave and cook by better methods than their own. the california missions the most familiar examples of the spanish missions are those in the state of california. during the last quarter of the eighteenth century franciscan friars missions erected no less than eighteen mission stations along the pacific coast from san diego to san francisco. the stations were connected by the "king's road" [ ] which still remains the principal highway of the state. some of the mission buildings now lie in ruins and others have entirely disappeared. but such a well-preserved structure as the mission of santa barbara recalls a benedictine monastery, [ ] with its shady cloisters, secluded courtyard, and timbered roof covered with red tiles. it is a bit of the old world transplanted to the new. spanish american civilization the civilizing work of spain in the new world is sometimes forgotten. here were the earliest american hospitals and asylums, for the use of indians and negroes as well as of spaniards. here were the earliest american schools and colleges. twelve institutions of higher learning, all modeled upon the university of salamanca, arose in spanish america during the colonial period. eight of these came into existence before the creation in a.d. of harvard university, the oldest in the united states. the pioneer printing press in the western hemisphere was set up at mexico city in a.d.; no printing press reached the english colonies till more than one hundred years later. to the valuable books by spanish scholars we owe much of our knowledge of the mayas, aztecs, and other indian tribes. the first american newspaper was published at mexico city in a.d. the fine arts also flourished in the spanish colonies, and architects of the united states have now begun to copy the beautiful churches and public buildings of mexico and peru. spanish colonial policy the government of spain administered its colonial dominions in the spirit of monopoly. as far as possible it excluded french, english, and other foreigners from trading with spanish america. it also discouraged ship- building, manufacturing, and even the cultivation of the vine and the olive, lest the colonists should compete with home industries. the colonies were regarded only as a workshop for the production of the precious metals and raw materials. this unwise policy very largely accounts for the economic backwardness of mexico, peru, and other spanish- american countries at the present day. their rich natural resources have as yet scarcely begun to be utilized. . english and french explorations in america the cabot voyages, - a.d. the english based their claim to the right to colonize north america on the discoveries of john cabot, an italian mariner in the service of the tudor king, henry vii. [ ] in a.d. cabot sailed from bristol across the northern atlantic and made land somewhere between labrador and nova scotia. the following year he seems to have undertaken a second voyage and to have explored the coast of north america nearly as far as florida. cabot, like columbus, believed he had reached cathay and the dominions of the great khan. because cabot found neither gold nor opportunities for profitable trade, his expeditions were considered a failure, and for a long time the english took no further interest in exploring the new world. [illustration: cabot memorial tower erected at bristol, england, in memory of john cabot and his sons. the foundation stone was laid on june , a.d., the four-hundredth anniversary of john cabot's first sight of the continent of north america.] cartier's voyages, - a.d. the discovery by magellan of a strait leading into the pacific aroused hope that a similar passage, beyond the regions controlled by spain, might exist in north america. in a.d. the french king, francis i, sent jacques cartier to look for it. cartier found the gulf and river which he named after st. lawrence, and also tried to establish a settlement near where quebec now stands. the venture was not successful, and the french did not undertake the colonization of canada till the first decade of the seventeenth century. the northwest passage english sailors also sought a road to india by the so-called northwest passage. it was soon found to be an impossible route, for during half the year the seas were frozen and during the other half they were filled with icebergs. however, the search for the northwest passage added much to geographical knowledge. the names frobisher bay, davis strait, and baffin land still preserve the memory of the navigators who first explored the channels leading into the arctic ocean. the english "sea dogs" when the english realized how little profit was to be gained by voyages to the cold and desolate north, they turned southward to warmer waters. here, of course, they came upon the spaniards, who had no disposition to share with foreigners the profitable trade of the new world. though england and spain were not at war, the english "sea dogs," as they called themselves, did not scruple to ravage the spanish colonies and to capture the huge, clumsy treasure-ships carrying gold and silver to spain. the most famous of the "sea dogs," sir francis drake, was the first englishman to sail round the world ( - a.d.). the raleigh colonies, - a.d. four years after drake had completed his voyage, another english seaman, sir walter raleigh, sent out an expedition to find a good site for a settlement in north america. the explorers reached the coast of north carolina and returned with glowing accounts of the country, which was named virginia, in honor of elizabeth, the "virgin queen." but raleigh's colonies in virginia failed miserably, and the english made no further attempt to settle there till the reign of james i, early in the seventeenth century. . the old world and the new expansion of europe the new world contained two virgin continents, full of natural resources and capable in a high degree of colonization. the native peoples, comparatively few in number and barbarian in culture, could not offer much resistance to the explorers, missionaries, traders, and colonists from the old world. the spanish and portuguese in the sixteenth century, followed by the french, english, and dutch in the seventeenth century, repeopled america and brought to it european civilization. europe expanded into a greater europe beyond the ocean. shifting of trade routes in the middle ages the mediterranean and the baltic had been the principal highways of commerce. the discovery of america, followed immediately by the opening of the cape route to the indies, shifted commercial activity from these enclosed seas to the atlantic ocean. venice, genoa, hamburg, lübeck, and bruges gradually gave way, as trading centers, to lisbon and cadiz, bordeaux and cherbourg, antwerp and amsterdam, london and liverpool. one may say, therefore, that the year a.d. inaugurated the atlantic period of european history. the time may come, perhaps even now it is dawning, when the center of gravity of the commercial world will shift still farther westward to the pacific. increased production of the precious metals the discovery of america revealed to europeans a new source of the precious metals. the spaniards soon secured large quantities of gold by plundering the indians of mexico and peru of their stored-up wealth. after the discovery in a.d. of the wonderfully rich silver mines of potosi in bolivia, the output of silver much exceeded that of gold. it is estimated that by the end of the sixteenth century the american mines had produced at least three times as much gold and silver as had been current in europe at the beginning of the century. consequences of the enlarged money supply the spaniards could not keep this new treasure. having few industries themselves, they were obliged to send it out, as fast as they received it, in payment for their imports of european goods. spain acted as a huge sieve through which the gold and silver of america entered all the countries of europe. money, now more plentiful, purchased far less than in former times; in other words, the prices of all commodities rose, wages advanced, and manufacturers and traders had additional capital to use in their undertakings. the middle ages had suffered from the lack of sufficient money with which to do business; [ ] from the beginning of modern times the world has been better supplied with the indispensable medium of exchange. new commodities imported but america was much more than a treasury of the precious metals. many commodities, hitherto unknown, soon found their way from the new world to the old. among these were maize, the potato, which, when cultivated in europe, became the "bread of the poor," chocolate and cocoa made from the seeds of the cacao tree, peruvian bark, or quinine, so useful in malarial fevers, cochineal, the dye-woods of brazil, and the mahogany of the west indies. america also sent large supplies of cane-sugar, molasses, fish, whale-oil, and furs. the use of tobacco, which columbus first observed among the indians, spread rapidly over europe and thence extended to the rest of the world. all these new american products became common articles of consumption and so raised the standard of living in european countries. political effects of the discoveries to the economic effects of the discoveries must be added their effects on politics. the atlantic ocean now formed, not only the commercial, but also the political center of the world. the atlantic-facing countries, first portugal and spain, then holland, france, and england, became the great powers of europe. their trade rivalries and contests for colonial possessions have been potent causes of european wars for the last four hundred years. effects of the discoveries on thought the sudden disclosure of oceans, islands, and continents, covering one- third of the globe, worked a revolution in geographical ideas. the earth was found to be far larger than men had supposed it to be, and the imagination was stirred by the thought of other amazing discoveries which might be made. from the sixteenth century to the twentieth the work of exploration has continued, till now few regions of the world yet remain unmapped. at the same time came acquaintance with many strange plants, animals, and peoples, and so scientific knowledge replaced the quaint fancies of the middle ages. effects of the discoveries upon religion the sixteenth century in europe was the age of that revolt against the roman church called the protestant reformation. during this period, however, the church won her victories over the american aborigines. what she lost of territory, wealth, and influence in europe was more than offset by what she gained in america. furthermore, the region now occupied by the united states furnished in the seventeenth century an asylum from religious persecution, as was proved when puritans settled in new england, roman catholics in maryland, and quakers in pennsylvania. the vacant spaces of america offered plenty of room for all who would worship god in their own way. thus the new world became a refuge from the intolerance of the old. studies . on an outline map indicate those parts of the world known in the time of columbus (before a.d.). . on an outline map indicate the voyages of discovery of vasco da gama, columbus (first voyage), john cabot, and magellan. . what particular discoveries were made by cartier, drake, balboa, de soto, ponce de león, and coronado? . compare the cosmas map (page ) with the map of the world according to homer (page ). . compare the hereford map (page ) with the map of the world according to ptolemy (page ). . why has marco polo been called the "columbus of the east indies"? . "cape verde not only juts out into the atlantic, but stands forth as a promontory in human history." comment on this statement. . how did vasco da gama complete the work of prince henry the navigator? . show that lisbon in the sixteenth century was the commercial successor of venice. . "had columbus perished in mid-ocean, it is doubtful whether america would have remained long undiscovered." comment on this statement. . why did no one suggest that the new world be called after columbus? . show that magellan achieved what columbus planned. . why did balboa call the pacific the "south sea"? . why is roman law followed in all spanish-american countries? . in what parts of the world is spanish still the common language? . why did the germans fail to take part in the work of discovery and colonization? . show that the three words "gospel, glory, and gold" sum up the principal motives of european colonization in the sixteenth century. . compare the motives which led to the colonization of the new world with those which led to greek colonization. . "the opening of the atlantic to continuous exploration is the most momentous step in the history of man's occupation of the earth." does this statement seem to be justified? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xxi, "the travels of marco polo"; chapter xxii, "the aborigines of the new world." [ ] _ezekiel_, v, . [ ] _isaiah_, x, . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] froissart, _chronicles_, ii, . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] not calcutta. [ ] see page . [ ] the portuguese colonial empire included ormuz, the west coast of india, ceylon, malacca, and various possessions in the malay archipelago (sumatra, java, celebes, the moluccas, or spice islands, and new guinea). the portuguese also had many trading posts on the african coast, besides brazil, which one of their mariners discovered in a.d. see the map between pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] a latin translation of ptolemy's _geography_, accompanied by maps, was printed for the first time probably in a.d. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] named san salvador by columbus and usually identified with watling island. [ ] in latin, americus vespucius. [ ] in a.d., the demarcation line was shifted about eight hundred miles farther to the west. six years later, when the portuguese discovered brazil, the country was found to lie within their sphere of influence. [ ] also known as the mariannes. magellan called them the ladrones (spanish _ladrón_, a robber), because of the thievish habits of the natives. [ ] see page . [ ] cuba, hispaniola (now divided between the republics of haiti and santo domingo), porto rico, and jamaica. [ ] spanish for the "gilded one." [ ] see the map between pages - . the philippines, discovered by magellan in a.d., also belonged to spain, though by the demarcation line these islands lay within the portuguese sphere of influence. [ ] in spanish _el camino real_. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . chapter xxvii the reformation and the religious wars, - a.d. [ ] . decline of the papacy the papacy in the thirteenth century the papacy, victorious in the long struggle with the holy roman empire, reached during the thirteenth century the height of its temporal power. the popes at this time were the greatest sovereigns in europe. they ruled a large part of italy, had great influence in the affairs of france, england, spain, and other countries, and in germany named and deposed emperors. from their capital at rome they sent forth their legates to every european court and issued the laws binding on western christendom. friction between church and state the universal dominion of the church proved useful and even necessary in feudal times, when kings were weak and nobles were strong. the church of the early middle ages served as the chief unifying force in europe. when, however, the kings had repressed feudalism, they took steps to extend their authority over the church as well. they tried, therefore, to restrict the privileges of ecclesiastical courts, to impose taxes on the clergy, as on their own subjects, and to dictate the appointment of bishops and abbots to office. this policy naturally led to much friction between popes and kings, between church and state. pontificate of boniface viii, - a.d. the papacy put forth its most extensive claims under boniface viii. the character of these claims is shown by two bulls which he issued. the first forbade all laymen, under penalty of excommunication, to collect taxes on church lands, and all clergymen to pay them. the second announced in unmistakable terms both the spiritual and the temporal supremacy of the popes. "submission to the roman pontiff," declared boniface, "is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature". boniface and philip the fair boniface had employed the exalted language of gregory vii in dealing with henry iv, but he found an opponent in a monarch more resolute and resourceful than any holy roman emperor. this was philip the fair, [ ] king of france. philip answered the first bull by refusing to allow any gold and silver to be exported from france to italy. the pope, thus deprived of valuable revenues, gave way and acknowledged that the french ruler had a limited right to tax the clergy. another dispute soon arose, however, as the result of philip's imprisonment and trial of an obnoxious papal legate. angered by this action, boniface prepared to excommunicate the king and depose him from the throne. philip retaliated by calling together the estates-general and asking their support for the preservation of the "ancient liberty of france." the nobles, the clergy, and the "third estate" rallied around philip, accused the pope of heresy and tyranny, and declared that the french king was subject to god alone. anagni, a.d. the last act of the drama was soon played. philip sent his emissaries into italy to arrest the pope and bring him to trial before a general council in france. at anagni, near rome, a band of hireling soldiers stormed the papal palace and made boniface a prisoner. the citizens of anagni soon freed him, but the shock of the humiliation broke the old man's spirit and he died soon afterwards. the poet dante, in the _divine comedy_, [ ] speaks with awe of the outrage: "christ had been again crucified among robbers; and the vinegar and gall had been again pressed to his lips". [ ] the historian sees in this event the end of the temporal power of the papacy. the "babylonion captivity," - a.d. soon after the death of boniface, philip succeeded in having the archbishop of bordeaux chosen as head of the church. the new pope removed the papal court to avignon, a town just outside the french frontier of those days. the popes lived in avignon for nearly seventy years. this period is usually described as the "babylonian captivity" of the church, a name which recalls the exile of the jews from their native land. [ ] the long absence of the popes from rome lessened their power, and the suspicion that they were the mere vassals of the french crown seriously impaired the respect in which they had been held. the "great schism," - a.d. following the "babylonian captivity" came the "great schism." shortly after the return of the papal court to rome, an italian was elected pope as urban vi. the cardinals in the french interest refused to accept him, declared his election void, and named clement vii as pope. clement withdrew to avignon, while urban remained in rome. western christendom could not decide which one to obey. some countries declared for urban, while other countries accepted clement. the spectacle of two rival popes, each holding himself out as the only true successor of st. peter, continued for about forty years and injured the papacy more than anything else that had happened to it. council of constance, - a.d. the schism in western christendom was finally healed at the council of constance. there were three "phantom popes" at this time, but they were all deposed in favor of a new pontiff, martin v. the catholic world now had a single head, but it was not easy to revive the old, unquestioning loyalty to him as god's vicar on earth. the renaissance popes from the time of martin v the papacy became more and more an italian power. the popes neglected european politics and gave their chief attention to the states of the church. a number of the popes took much interest in the renaissance movement and became its enthusiastic patrons. [ ] they kept up splendid courts, collected manuscripts, paintings, and statues, and erected magnificent palaces and churches in rome. some european peoples, especially in germany, looked askance at such luxury and begrudged the heavy taxes which were necessary to support it. this feeling against the papacy also helped to provoke the reformation. [illustration: map, the great schism, - a.d.] complaints against the clergy the worldliness of some of the popes was too often reflected in the lives of the lesser clergy. throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the church encountered much criticism from reformers. thus, the famous humanist, erasmus, [ ] wrote his _praise of folly_ to expose the vices and temporal ambitions of bishops and monks, the foolish speculations of theologians, and the excessive reliance which common people had on pilgrimages, festivals, relics, and other aids to devotion. so great was the demand for this work that it went through twenty-seven large editions during the author's lifetime. erasmus and others like him were loyal sons of the church, but they believed they could best serve her interests by effecting her reform. some men went further, however, and demanded wholesale changes in catholic belief and worship. these men were the heretics. . heresies and heretics persecution of heretics during the first centuries of our era, when the christians had formed a forbidden sect, they claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief is voluntary and not something which can be enforced by law. this view changed after christianity triumphed in the roman empire and enjoyed the support, instead of the opposition, of the government. the church, backed by the state, no longer advocated freedom of conscience, but began to persecute people who held heretical beliefs. medieval attitude toward heresy it is difficult for those who live in an age of religious toleration to understand the horror which heresy inspired in the middle ages. a heretic was a traitor to the church, for he denied the doctrines believed to be essential to salvation. it seemed a christian duty to compel the heretic to recant, lest he imperil his eternal welfare. if he persisted in his impious course, then the earth ought to be rid of one who was a source of danger to the faithful and an enemy of the almighty. punishment of heresy although executions for heresy had occurred as early as the fourth century, [ ] for a long time milder penalties were usually inflicted. the heretic might be exiled, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property and his rights as a citizen. the death penalty was seldom invoked by the church before the thirteenth century. since ecclesiastical law forbade the church to shed blood, the state stepped in to seize the heretic and put him to death, most often by fire. we must remember that in medieval times cruel punishments were imposed for even slight offenses, and hence men saw nothing wrong in inflicting the worst of punishments for what was believed to be the worst of crimes. the albigenses in spite of all measures of repression heretics were not uncommon during the later middle ages. some heretical movements spread over entire communities. the most important was that of the albigenses, so called from the town of albi in southern france, where many of them lived. their doctrines are not well known, but they seem to have believed in the existence of two gods--one good (whose son was christ), the other evil (whose son was satan). the albigenses even set up a rival church, with its priests, bishops, and councils. crusade against the albigenses, - a.d. the failure of attempts to convert the albigenses by peaceful means led the pope, innocent iii, [ ] to preach a crusade against them. those who entered upon it were promised the usual privileges of crusaders. [ ] a series of bloody wars now followed, in the course of which thousands of men, women, and children perished. but the albigensian sect did not entirely disappear for more than a century, and then only after numberless trials and executions for heresy. the waldenses the followers of peter waldo, who lived in the twelfth century, made no effort to set up a new religion in europe. they objected, however, to certain practices of the church, such as masses for the dead and the adoration of saints. they also condemned the luxury of the clergy and urged that christians should live like the apostles, charitable and poor. to the waldenses the bible was a sufficient guide to the religious life, and so they translated parts of the scriptures and allowed everyone to preach, without distinction of age, or rank, or sex. the waldenses spread through many european countries, but being poor and lowly men they did not exert much influence as reformers. the sect survived severe persecution and now forms a branch of the protestant church in italy. john wycliffe, - a.d. beliefs very similar to those of the waldenses were entertained by john wycliffe, (or wyclif) master of an oxford college and a popular preacher. he, too, appealed from the authority of the church to the authority of the bible. with the assistance of two friends wycliffe produced the first english translation of the scriptures. manuscript copies of the work had a large circulation, until the government suppressed it. wycliffe was not molested in life, but the council of constance denounced his teaching and ordered that his bones should be dug up, burned, and cast into a stream. [illustration: john wycliffe after an old print.] the lollards wycliffe had organized bands of "poor priests" to spread the simple truths of the bible through all england. they went out, staff in hand and clad in long, russet gowns, and preached to the common people in the english language, wherever an audience could be found. the lollards, as wycliffe's followers were known, not only attacked many beliefs and practices of the church, but also demanded social reforms. for instance, they declared that all wars were sinful and were but plundering and murdering the poor to win glory for kings. the lollards had to endure much persecution for heresy. nevertheless their work lived on and sowed in england and scotland the seeds of the reformation. john huss, (?)- a.d. the doctrines of wycliffe found favor with anne of bohemia, wife of king richard ii, [ ] and through her they reached that country. here they attracted the attention of john huss, (or hus) a distinguished scholar in the university of prague. wycliffe's writings confirmed huss in his criticism of many doctrines of the church. he attacked the clergy in sermons and pamphlets and also objected to the supremacy of the pope. the sentence of excommunication pronounced against him did not shake his reforming zeal. finally huss was cited to appear before the council of constance, then in session. relying on the safe conduct given him by the german emperor, huss appeared before the council, only to be declared guilty of teaching "many things evil, scandalous, seditious, and dangerously heretical." the emperor then violated the safe conduct--no promise made to a heretic was considered binding--and allowed huss to be burnt outside the walls of constance. thus perished the man who, more than all others, is regarded as the forerunner of luther and the reformation. the hussite wars the flames which burned huss set all bohemia afire. the bohemians, a slavic people, regarded him as a national hero and made his martyrdom an excuse for rebelling against the holy roman empire. the hussite wars, which followed, thus formed a political rather than a religious struggle. the bohemians did not gain freedom, and their country still remains a hapsburg possession. but the sense of nationalism is not extinct there, and bohemia may some day become an independent state. . martin luther and the beginning of the reformation in germany, - a.d. martin luther, - a.d. though there were many reformers before the reformation, the beginning of that movement is rightly associated with the name of martin luther. he was the son of a german peasant, who, by industry and frugality, had won a small competence. thanks to his father's self-sacrifice, luther enjoyed a good education in scholastic philosophy at the university of erfurt. having taken the degrees of bachelor and master of arts, luther began to study law, but an acute sense of his sinfulness and a desire to save his soul soon drove him into a monastery. there he read the bible and the writings of the church fathers and found at last the peace of mind he sought. a few years later luther paid a visit to rome, which opened his eyes to the worldliness and general laxity of life in the capital of the papacy. he returned to germany and became a professor of theology in the university of wittenberg, newly founded by frederick the wise, elector of saxony. luther's sermons and lectures attracted large audiences, students began to flock to wittenberg; and the elector grew proud of the rising young teacher who was making his university famous. [illustration: martin luther after a portrait by hans holbein the younger.] tetzel and indulgences but luther was soon to emerge from his academic retirement and to become, quite unintentionally, a reformer. in a.d. there came into the neighborhood of wittenberg a dominican friar named tetzel, granting indulgences for the erection of the new st. peter's at rome. [ ] an indulgence, according to the teaching of the church, formed a remission of the temporal punishment, or penance [ ] due to sin, if the sinner had expressed his repentance and had promised to atone for his misdeeds. it was also supposed to free the person who received it from some or all of his punishment after death in purgatory. [ ] indulgences were granted for participation in crusades, pilgrimages, and other good works. later on they were granted for money, which was expected to be applied to some pious purpose. many of the german princes opposed this method of raising funds for the church, because it took so much money out of their dominions. their sale had also been condemned on religious grounds by huss and erasmus. posting of the ninety-five theses, a.d. luther began his reforming career by an attack upon indulgences. he did not deny their usefulness altogether, but pointed out that they lent themselves to grave abuses. common people, who could not understand the latin in which they were written, often thought that they wiped away the penalties of sin, even without true repentance. these criticisms luther set forth in ninety-five theses or propositions, which he offered to defend against all opponents. in accordance with the custom of medieval scholars, luther posted his theses on the door of the church at wittenberg, where all might see them. they were composed in latin, but were at once translated into german, printed, and spread broadcast over germany. their effect was so great that before long the sale of indulgences in that country almost ceased. burning of the papal bull, a.d. the scholarly critic of indulgences soon passed into an open foe of the papacy. luther found that his theological views bore a close resemblance to those of wycliffe and john huss, yet he refused to give them up as heretical. instead, he wrote three bold pamphlets, in one of which he appealed to the "christian nobility of the german nation" to rally together against rome. the pope, at first, had paid little attention to the controversy about indulgences, declaring it "a mere squabble of monks," but he now issued a bull against luther, ordering him to recant within sixty days or be excommunicated. the papal bull did not frighten luther or withdraw from him popular support. he burnt it in the market square of wittenberg, in the presence of a concourse of students and townsfolk. this dramatic answer to the pope deeply stirred all germany. diet of worms, a.d. the next scene of the reformation was staged at worms, at an important assembly, or diet, of the holy roman empire. the diet summoned luther to appear before it for examination, and the emperor, charles v, gave him a safe conduct. luther's friends, remembering the treatment of huss, advised him not to accept the summons, but he declared that he would enter worms "in the face of the gates of hell and the powers of the air." in the great hall of the diet luther bravely faced the princes, nobles, and clergy of germany. he refused to retract anything he had written, unless his statements could be shown to contradict the bible. "it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience," luther said. "god help me. amen." luther at the wartburg, - a.d. only one thing remained to do with luther. he was ordered to return to wittenberg and there await the imperial edict declaring him a heretic and outlaw. but the elector of saxony, who feared for luther's safety, had him carried off secretly to the castle of wartburg. here luther remained for nearly a year, engaged in translating the new testament into german. there had been many earlier translations into german, but luther's was the first from the greek original. his version, simple, forcible, and easy to understand, enjoyed wide popularity and helped to fix for germans the form of their literary language. luther afterwards completed a translation of the entire bible, which the printing press multiplied in thousands of copies throughout germany. luther's leadership though still under the ban of the empire, luther left the wartburg in a.d. and returned to wittenberg. he lived here, unmolested, until his death, twenty-four years later. during this time he flooded the country with pamphlets, wrote innumerable letters, composed many fine hymns, [ ] and prepared a catechism, "a right bible," said he, "for the laity." thus luther became the guide and patron of the reformatory movement which he had started. . charles v and the spread of the german reformation, - a.d. charles v, emperor, - a.d. the young man who as holy roman emperor presided at the diet of worms had assumed the imperial crown only two years previously. a namesake of charlemagne, charles v held sway over dominions even more extensive than those which had belonged to the frankish king. through his mother, a daughter of ferdinand and isabella, [ ] he inherited spain, naples, sicily, and the spanish possessions in the new world. through his father, a son of the emperor maximilian i, he became ruler of burgundy and the netherlands and also succeeded to the austrian territories of the hapsburgs. charles was thus the most powerful monarch in europe. charles v and the lutherans charles, as a devout roman catholic, had no sympathy for the reformation. at worms, on the day following luther's refusal to recant, the emperor had expressed his determination to stake "all his dominions, his friends, his body and blood, his life and soul" upon the extinction of the lutheran heresy. this might have been an easy task, had charles undertaken it at once. but a revolt in spain, wars with the french king, francis i, and conflicts with the ottoman turks led to his long absence from germany and kept him from proceeding effectively against the lutherans, until it was too late. [illustration: map, europe at the beginning of the reformation, a.d.] the "reformed religion" the reformation in germany appealed to many classes. to patriotic germans it seemed a revolt against a foreign power--the italian papacy. to men of pious mind it offered the attractions of a simple faith which took the bible as the rule of life. worldly-minded princes saw in it an opportunity to despoil the church of lands and revenues. for these reasons luther's teachings found ready acceptance. priests married, luther himself setting the example, monks left their monasteries, and the "reformed religion" took the place of roman catholicism in most parts of northern and central germany. south germany, however, did not fall away from the pope and has remained roman catholic to the present time. [illustration: charles v a portrait of the emperor at the age of , by the venetian painter titian.] the protestants, a.d. though germany had now divided into two religious parties, the legal position of lutheranism remained for a long time in doubt. a diet held in a.d. tried to shelve the question by allowing each german state to conduct its religious affairs as it saw fit. but at the next diet, three years later, a majority of the assembled princes decided that the edict of worms against luther and his followers should be enforced. the lutheran princes at once issued a vigorous protest against such action. because of this protest those who separated from the roman church came to be called protestants. peace of augsburg, a.d. it was not till a.d., the year of luther's death, that charles v felt his hands free to suppress the rising tide of protestantism. by this time the lutheran princes had formed a league for mutual protection. charles brought spanish troops into germany and tried to break up the league by force. civil war raged till a.d., when both sides agreed to the peace of augsburg. it was a compromise. the ruler of each state--germany then contained over three hundred states--was to decide whether his subjects should be lutherans or catholics. thus the peace by no means established religious toleration, since all germans had to believe as their prince believed. however, it recognized lutheranism as a legal religion and ended the attempts to crush the german reformation. lutheranism in scandinavia meanwhile luther's doctrines spread into scandinavian lands. the rulers of denmark, norway, and sweden closed the monasteries and compelled the roman catholic bishops to surrender ecclesiastical property to the crown. lutheranism became henceforth the official religion of these three countries. . the reformation in switzerland; zwingli and calvin huldreich zwingli, - a.d. the reformation in switzerland began with the work of zwingli. he was the contemporary but not the disciple of luther. from his pulpit in the cathedral of zurich, zwingli proclaimed the scriptures as the sole guide of faith and denied the supremacy of the pope. many of the swiss cantons accepted his teaching and broke away from obedience to rome. civil war soon followed between protestants and roman catholics, and zwingli fell in the struggle. after his death the two parties made a peace which allowed each canton to determine its own religion. switzerland has continued to this day to be part roman catholic and part protestant. john calvin - a.d. the protestants in switzerland did not remain long without a leader. to geneva came in a.d. a young frenchman named calvin. he had just published his _institutes of the christian religion_, a work which set forth in an orderly, logical manner the main principles of protestant theology. calvin also translated the bible into french and wrote valuable commentaries on nearly all the scriptural books. calvin at geneva calvin at geneva was sometimes called the protestant pope. during his long residence there he governed the people with a rod of iron. there were no more festivals, no more theaters, no more dancing, music, and masquerades. all the citizens had to attend two sermons on sunday and to yield at least a lip-assent to the reformer's doctrines. on a few occasions calvin proceeded to terrible extremities, as when he caused the spanish physician, michael servetus, to be burned to death, because of heretical views concerning the trinity. nevertheless, geneva prospered under calvin's rule and became a christian commonwealth, sober and industrious. the city still reveres the memory of the man who founded her university and made her, as it were, the sanctuary of the reformation. [illustration: john calvin, after an old print.] diffusion of calvinism calvin's influence was not confined to geneva or even to switzerland. the men whom he trained and on whom he set the stamp of his stern, earnest, god-fearing character spread calvinism over a great part of europe. in holland and scotland it became the prevailing type of protestantism, and in france and england it deeply affected the national life. during the seventeenth century the puritans carried calvinism across the sea to new england, where it formed the dominant faith in colonial times. . the english reformation, - a.d. henry viii, king, - a.d. the reformation in germany and switzerland started as a national and popular movement; in england it began as the act of a despotic sovereign, henry viii. this second tudor [ ] was handsome, athletic, finely educated, and very able, but he was also selfish, sensual, and cruel. his father had created a strong monarchy in england by humbling both parliament and the nobles. when henry viii came to the throne, the only serious obstacle in the way of royal absolutism was the roman church. [illustration: henry viii after a portrait by hans holbein the younger.] henry's early loyalty to the papacy henry showed himself at first a devoted catholic. he took an amateur's interest in theology and wrote with his own royal pen a book attacking luther. the pope rewarded him with the title of "defender of the faith," a title which english sovereigns still bear. henry at this time did not question the authority of the papacy. he even made his chief adviser cardinal wolsey, the most conspicuous churchman in the kingdom. preparation for the english reformation at the beginning of henry's reign the church was still strong in england. probably most of the people were sincerely attached to it. still, the labors of wycliffe and the lollards had weakened the hold of the church upon the masses, while erasmus and the oxford scholars who worked with him, by their criticism of ecclesiastical abuses, had done much to undermine its influence with the intellectual classes. in england, as on the continent, the worldliness of the church prepared the way for the reformation. henry and catherine of aragon the actual separation from rome arose out of henry's matrimonial difficulties. he had married a spanish princess, catherine of aragon, the aunt of the emperor charles v and widow of henry's older brother. the marriage required a dispensation [ ] from the pope, because canon law forbade a man to wed his brother's widow. after living happily with catherine for eighteen years, henry suddenly announced his conviction that the union was sinful. this, of course, formed simply a pretext for the divorce which henry desired. of his children by catherine only a daughter survived, but henry wished to have a son succeed him on the throne. moreover, he had grown tired of catherine and had fallen in love with anne boleyn, a pretty maid-in-waiting at the court. the divorce, a.d. at first henry tried to secure the pope's consent to the divorce. the pope did not like to set aside the dispensation granted by his predecessor, nor did he wish to offend the mighty emperor charles v. failing to get the papal sanction, henry obtained his divorce from an english court presided over by thomas cranmer, archbishop of canterbury. anne boleyn was then proclaimed queen, in defiance of the papal bull of excommunication. act of supremacy, a.d. henry's next step was to procure from his subservient parliament a series of laws which abolished the pope's authority in england. of these, the most important was the act of supremacy. it declared the english king to be "the only supreme head on earth of the church of england." at the same time a new treason act imposed the death penalty on anyone who called the king a "heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper." the great majority of the english people seem to have accepted this new legislation without much objection; those who refused to do so perished on the scaffold. the most eminent victim was sir thomas more, [ ] formerly henry's lord chancellor and distinguished for eloquence and profound learning. his execution sent a thrill of horror through christendom. the monasteries suppressed the suppression of the monasteries soon followed the separation from rome. henry declared to parliament that they deserved to be abolished, because of the "slothful and ungodly lives" led by the inmates. in some instances this accusation may have been true, but the real reason for henry's action was his desire to crush the monastic orders, which supported the pope, and to seize their extensive possessions. the beautiful monasteries were torn down and the lands attached to them were sold for the benefit of the crown or granted to henry's favorites. the nobles who accepted this monastic wealth naturally became zealous advocates of henry's anti-papal policy. [illustration: ruins of melrose abbey the little town of melrose in scotland contains the ruins of a very beautiful monastery church built about the middle of the fifteenth century. the principal part of the present remains is the choir, with slender shafts, richly-carved capitals, and windows of exquisite stone- tracery. the beautiful sculptures throughout the church were defaced at the time of the reformation. the heart of robert bruce is interred near the site of the high altar.] progress of the reformation under edward vi, - a.d. though henry viii had broken with the papacy, he remained roman catholic in doctrine to the day of his death. under his successor, edward vi, the reformation made rapid progress in england. the young king's guardian allowed reformers from the continent to come to england, and the doctrines of luther, zwingli, and calvin were freely preached there. at this time all paintings, statuary, wood carvings, and stained glass were removed from church edifices. the use of tapers, incense, and holy water was also discontinued. in order that religious services might be conducted in the language of the people, archbishop cranmer and his co-workers prepared the _book of common prayer_. it consisted of translations into noble english of various parts of the old latin service books. with some changes, it is still used in the church of england and the protestant episcopal church of the united states. the catholic reaction under mary tudor, - a.d. the short reign of mary tudor, daughter of catherine of aragon, was marked by a temporary setback to the protestant cause. the queen prevailed on parliament to secure a reconciliation with rome. she also married her roman catholic cousin, philip of spain, the son of charles v. mary now began a severe persecution of the protestants. it gained for her the epithet of "bloody," but it did not succeed in stamping out heresy. many eminent reformers perished, among them cranmer, the former archbishop. mary died childless, after ruling about five years, and the crown passed to anne boleyn's daughter, elizabeth. under elizabeth anglicanism again replaced roman catholicism as the religion of england. . the protestant sects extent of protestantism the reformation was practically completed before the close of the sixteenth century. in a.d. the roman church embraced all europe west of russia and the balkan peninsula. by a.d. nearly half of its former subjects had renounced their allegiance. the greater part of germany and switzerland and all of denmark, norway, sweden, holland, england, and scotland became independent of the papacy. the unity of western christendom, which had been preserved throughout the middle ages, thus disappeared and has not since been revived. [illustration: map, extent of the reformation, - a.d.] common features of protestantism the reformers agreed in substituting for the authority of popes and church councils the authority of the bible. they went back fifteen hundred years to the time of the apostles and tried to restore what they believed to be apostolic christianity. hence they rejected such doctrines and practices as were supposed to have developed during the middle ages. the reformation also abolished the monastic system and priestly celibacy. the sharp distinction between clergy and laity disappeared, for priests married, lived among the people, and no longer formed a separate class. in general, protestantism affirmed the ability of every man to find salvation without the aid of ecclesiastics. the church was no longer the only "gate of heaven." [illustration: chained bible in the church of st. crux, york.] divisions among protestants but the protestant idea of authority led inevitably to differences of opinion among the reformers. there were various ways of interpreting that bible to which they appealed as the rule of faith and conduct. consequently, protestantism split up into many sects or denominations, and these have gone on multiplying to the present day. nearly all, however, are offshoots from the three main varieties of protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth century. lutheranism and anglicanism lutheranism and anglicanism presented some features in common. both were state churches, supported by the government; both had a book of common prayer; and both recognized the sacraments of baptism, the eucharist, and confirmation. the church of england also kept the sacrament of ordination. the lutheran churches in denmark, norway, and sweden, as well as the church of england, likewise retained the episcopate. calvinism calvinism departed much more widely from roman catholicism. it did away with the episcopate and had only one order of clergy--the presbyters. [ ] it provided for a very simple form of worship. in a calvinistic church the service consisted of bible reading, a sermon, extemporaneous prayers, and hymns sung by the congregation. the calvinists kept only two sacraments, baptism and the eucharist. they regarded the first, however, as a simple undertaking to bring up the child in a christian manner, and the second as merely a commemoration of the last supper. the reformation and freedom the break with rome did not introduce religious liberty into europe. nothing was further from the minds of luther, calvin, and other reformers than the toleration of reformation beliefs unlike their own. the early protestant sects punished dissenters as zealously as the roman church punished heretics. lutherans burned the followers of zwingli in germany, calvin put servetus to death, and the english government, in the time of henry viii and elizabeth, executed many roman catholics. complete freedom of conscience and the right of private judgment in religion have been secured in most european countries only within the last hundred years. the reformation and morals the reformation, however, did deepen the moral life of european peoples. the faithful protestant or roman catholic vied with his neighbor in trying to show that his particular belief made for better living than any other. the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in consequence, were more earnest and serious, if also more bigoted, than the centuries of the renaissance. . the catholic counter reformation the reforming popes the rapid spread of protestantism soon brought about a catholic counter reformation in those parts of europe which remained faithful to rome. the popes now turned from the cultivation of renaissance art and literature to the defense of their threatened faith. they made needed changes in the papal court and appointed to ecclesiastical offices men distinguished for virtue and learning. this reform of the papacy dates from the time of paul iii, who became pope in a.d. he opened the college of cardinals to roman catholic reformers, even offering a seat in it to erasmus. still more important was his support of the famous society of jesus, which had been established in the year of his accession to the papal throne. st. ignatius loyola, - a.d. the founder of the new society was a spanish nobleman, ignatius loyola. he had seen a good deal of service in the wars of charles v against the french. while in a hospital recovering from a wound loyola read devotional books, and these produced a profound change within him. he now decided to abandon the career of arms and to become, instead, the knight of christ. so loyola donned a beggar's robe, practiced all the kinds of asceticism which his books described, and went on a pilgrimage to jerusalem. the turning-point of his career came with his visit to paris to study theology. here loyola met the six devout and talented men who became the first members of his society. they intended to work as missionaries among the moslems, but, when this plan fell through, they visited rome and placed their energy and enthusiasm at the disposal of the pope. [illustration: st. ignatius loyola] the society of jesus loyola's military training deeply affected the character of the new order. the jesuits, as their protestant opponents styled them, were to be an army of spiritual soldiers, living under the strictest obedience to their head, or general. like soldiers, again, they were to remain in the world, and there fight manfully for the church and against heretics. the society grew rapidly; before loyola's death it included over a thousand members; and in the seventeenth century it became the most influential of all the religious orders. [ ] the activity of the jesuits as preachers, confessors, teachers, and missionaries did much to roll back the rising tide of protestantism in europe. jesuit schools the jesuits gave special attention to education, for they realized the importance of winning over the young people to the church. their schools were so good that even protestant children often attended them. the popularity of jesuit teachers arose partly from the fact that they always tried to lead, not drive their pupils. light punishments, short lessons, many holidays, and a liberal use of prizes and other distinctions formed some of the attractive features of their system of training. it is not surprising that the jesuits became the instructors of the roman catholic world. they called their colleges the "fortresses of the faith." jesuit missions the missions of the jesuits were not less important than their schools. the jesuits worked in poland, hungary, bohemia, and other countries where protestantism threatened to become dominant. then they invaded all the lands which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to european enterprise. in india, china, the east indies, japan, the philippines, africa, and the two americas their converts from heathenism were numbered by hundreds of thousands. st. francis xavier, - a.d. the most eminent of all jesuit missionaries, st. francis xavier, had belonged to loyola's original band. he was a little, blue-eyed man, an engaging preacher, an excellent organizer, and possessed of so attractive a personality that even the ruffians and pirates with whom he had to associate on his voyages became his friends. xavier labored with such devotion and success in the portuguese colonies of the far east as to gain the title of "apostle to the indies." he also introduced christianity in japan, where it flourished until a persecuting emperor extinguished it with fire and sword. council of trent, - a.d. another agency in the counter reformation was the great church council summoned by pope paul iii. the council met at trent, on the borders of germany and italy. it continued, with intermissions, for nearly twenty years. the protestants, though invited to participate, did not attend, and hence nothing could be done to bring them back within the roman catholic fold. this was the last general council of the church for over three hundred years. [ ] work of the council the council of trent made no essential changes in the roman catholic doctrines, which remained as st. thomas aquinas [ ] and other theologians had set them forth in the middle ages. in opposition to the protestant view, it declared that the tradition of the church possessed equal authority with the bible. it reaffirmed the supremacy of the pope over christendom. the council also passed important decrees forbidding the sale of ecclesiastical offices and requiring bishops and other prelates to attend strictly to their duties. since the council of trent the roman church has been distinctly a religious organization, instead of both a secular and religious body, as was the church in the middle ages. [ ] the index the council, before adjourning, authorized the pope to draw up a list, or index, of works which roman catholics might not read. this action did not form an innovation. the church from an early day had condemned and destroyed heretical writings. however, the invention of printing, by giving greater currency to new and dangerous ideas, increased the necessity for the regulation of thought. the "index of prohibited books" still exists, and additions to the list are made from time to time. it was matched by the strict censorship of printing long maintained in protestant countries. the inquisition still another agency of the counter reformation consisted of the inquisition. this was a system of church courts for the discovery and punishment of heretics. such courts had been set up in the middle ages, for instance, to suppress the albigensian heresy. after the council of trent they redoubled their activity, especially in italy, the netherlands, and spain. influence of the inquisition the inquisition probably contributed to the disappearance of protestantism in italy. in the netherlands, where it worked with great severity, it only aroused exasperation and hatred and helped to provoke a successful revolt of the dutch people. the spaniards, on the other hand, approved of the methods of the inquisition and welcomed its extermination of moors and jews, as well as protestant heretics. the spanish inquisition was not abolished till the nineteenth century. . spain under philip ii, - a.d. abdication of charles v, - a.d. in a.d., the year of the peace of augsburg, [ ] charles v determined to abdicate his many crowns and seek the repose of a monastery. the plan was duly carried into effect. his brother ferdinand i succeeded to the title of holy roman emperor and the austrian territories, while his son, philip ii, [ ] received the spanish possessions in italy, the netherlands, and america. there were now two branches of the hapsburg family--one in austria and one in spain. philip ii the new king of spain was a man of unflagging energy, strong will, and deep attachment to the roman church. as a ruler he had two great ideals: to make spain the foremost state in the world and to secure the triumph of the roman catholic faith over protestantism. his efforts to realize these ideals largely determined european history during the second half of the sixteenth century. [illustration: philip ii after the portrait by titian.] battle of lepanto, a.d. the spanish monarch won renown by becoming the champion of christendom against the ottoman turks. at this time the turks had a strong navy, by means of which they captured cyprus from the venetians and ravaged sicily and southern italy. grave danger existed that they would soon control all the mediterranean. to stay their further progress one of the popes preached what was really the last crusade. the fleets of genoa and venice united with those of spain and under don john of austria, philip's half- brother, totally defeated the turkish squadron in the gulf of lepanto, off the western coast of greece. the battle gave a blow to the sea-power of the turks from which they never recovered and ended their aggressive warfare in the mediterranean. lepanto is one of the proud names in the history of spain. annexation of portugal, a.d. philip had inherited an extensive realm. he further widened it by the annexation of portugal, thus completing the unification of the spanish peninsula. the portuguese colonies in africa, asia, and america also passed into spanish hands. the union of spain and portugal under one crown never commanded any affection among the portuguese, who were proud of their nationality and of their achievements as explorers and empire- builders. portugal separated from spain in a.d. and has since remained an independent state. [illustration: the escorial this remarkable edifice, at once a convent, a church, a palace, and a royal mausoleum, is situated in a sterile and gloomy wilderness about twenty-seven miles from madrid. it was begun by philip ii in a.d. and was completed twenty-one years later. the escorial is dedicated to st. lawrence, that saint's day (august , ) being the day when the spanish king won a great victory over the french at the battle of st. quentin. the huge dimensions of the escorial may be inferred from the fact that it includes eighty-six staircases, eighty-nine fountains, fifteen cloisters, , doors, , windows, and miles of corridors. the building material is a granite-like stone obtained in the neighborhood. the escorial contains a library of rare books and manuscripts and a collection of valuable paintings. in the royal mausoleum under the altar of the church lie the remains of charles v, philip ii, and many of their successors.] philip's failures but the successes of philip were more than offset by his failures. though he had vast possessions, enormous revenues, mighty fleets, and armies reputed the best of the age, he could not dominate western europe. his attempt to conquer england, a stronghold of protestantism under elizabeth, resulted in disaster. not less disastrous was his life-long struggle with the netherlands. . revolt of the netherlands the netherlands the seventeen provinces of the netherlands occupied the flat, low country along the north sea--the holland, belgium, and northern france of the present day. during the fifteenth century they became hapsburg possessions and thus belonged to the holy roman empire. as we have learned, charles v received them as a part of his inheritance, and he, in turn, transmitted them to philip ii. condition of the netherlands the inhabitants of the netherlands were not racially united. in the southernmost provinces celtic blood and romance speech prevailed, while farther north dwelt peoples of teutonic extraction, who spoke flemish and dutch. each province likewise kept its own government and customs. the prosperity which had marked the flemish cities during the middle ages [ ] extended in the sixteenth century to the dutch cities also. rotterdam, leyden, utrecht, and amsterdam profited by the geographical discoveries and became centers of extensive commerce with asia and america. the rise of the dutch power, in a country so exposed to destructive inundations of both sea and rivers, is a striking instance of what can be accomplished by a frugal, industrious population. protestantism in the netherlands the netherlands were too near germany not to be affected by the reformation. lutheranism soon appeared there, only to encounter the hostility of charles v, who introduced the terrors of the inquisition. many heretics were burned at the stake, or beheaded, or buried alive. but there is no seed like martyr's blood. the number of protestants swelled, rather than lessened, especially after calvinism entered the netherlands. as a jesuit historian remarked, "nor did the rhine from germany or the meuse from france send more water into the low countries than by the one the contagion of luther, and by the other that of calvin, were imported into these provinces." policy of philip ii in spite of the cruel treatment of heretics by charles v, both flemish and dutch remained loyal to the emperor, because he had been born and reared among them and always considered their country as his own. but philip ii, a spaniard by birth and sympathies, seemed to them only a foreign master. the new ruler did nothing to conciliate the people. he never visited the netherlands after a.d., but governed them despotically through spanish officials supported by spanish garrisons. arbitrary taxes were levied, cities and nobles were deprived of their cherished privileges, and the activity of the inquisition was redoubled. philip intended to exercise in the netherlands the same absolute power which he enjoyed in spain. alva sent to the netherlands, a.d. the religious persecution which by philip's orders raged through the netherlands everywhere aroused intense indignation. the result was rioting by mobs of protestants, who wrecked churches and monasteries and carried off the treasure they found in them. philip replied to these acts by sending his best army, under the duke of alva, his best general, to reduce the turbulent provinces into submission. outbreak of the revolt alva carried out with thoroughness the policy of his royal master. a tribunal, popularly known as the "council of blood," was set up for the punishment of treason and heresy. hundreds, and probably thousands, perished; tens of thousands fled to germany and england. alva, as governor-general, also raised enormous taxes, which threatened to destroy the trade and manufactures of the netherlands. under these circumstances roman catholics and protestants, nobles and townsfolk, united against their spanish oppressors. a revolt began which spain could never quell. william the silent, - a.d. the netherlands found a leader in william, prince of orange, later known as william the silent, because of his customary discreetness. he was of german birth, a convert to protestantism, and the owner of large estates in the netherlands. william had fair ability as a general, a statesmanlike grasp of the situation, and above all a stout, courageous heart which never wavered in moments of danger and defeat. to rescue the netherlands from spain he sacrificed his high position, his wealth, and eventually his life. [illustration: william the silent] separation of the netherlands the ten southern provinces of the netherlands, mainly roman catholic in population, soon effected a reconciliation with philip and returned to their allegiance. they remained in hapsburg hands for over two centuries. modern belgium has grown out of them. the seven northern provinces, where dutch was the language and protestantism the religion, formed in a.d. the union of utrecht. two years later they declared their independence of spain. thus the republic of the united netherlands, often known as holland, the most important of the seven provinces, came into being. [illustration: map, the netherlands in the sixteenth century] course of the revolt the struggle of the dutch for freedom forms one of the most notable episodes in history. at first they were no match for the disciplined spanish soldiery, but they fought bravely behind the walls of their cities and on more than one occasion repelled the enemy by cutting the dikes and letting in the sea. though william the silent perished in a dark hour by an assassin's bullet, the contest continued. england now came to the aid of the hard-pressed republic with money and a small army. philip turned upon his new antagonist and sent against england the great fleet called the "invincible armada." its destruction interfered with further attempts to subjugate the dutch, but the spanish monarch, stubborn to the last, refused to acknowledge their independence. his successor, in a.d., consented to a twelve years' truce with the revolted provinces. their freedom was recognized officially by spain at the close of the thirty years' war in a.d. the dutch republic the long struggle bound the dutch together and made them one nation. during the seventeenth century they took a prominent part in european affairs. the republic which they founded ought to be of special interest to americans, for many features of our national government are dutch in origin. to holland we owe the idea of a declaration of independence, of a written constitution, of religious toleration, and of a comprehensive school system supported by taxation. in these and other matters the dutch were pioneers of modern democracy. . england under elizabeth, - a.d. elizabeth queen elizabeth, who reigned over england during the period of the dutch revolt, came to the throne when about twenty-five years old. she was tall and commanding in presence and endowed with great physical vigor and endurance. after hunting all day or dancing all night she could still attend unremittingly to public business. elizabeth had received an excellent education; she spoke latin and several modern languages; knew a little greek; and displayed some skill in music. to her father, henry viii, she doubtless owed her tactfulness and charm of manner, as well as her imperious will; she resembled her mother, anne boleyn, in her vanity and love of display. as a ruler elizabeth was shrewd, far-sighted, a good judge of character, and willing to be guided by the able counselors who surrounded her. above all, elizabeth was an ardent patriot. she understood and loved her people, and they, in turn, felt a chivalrous devotion to the "virgin queen," to "good queen bess". protestantism in england the daughter of anne boleyn had been born under the ban of the pope, so that opposition to rome was the natural course for her to pursue. two acts of parliament now separated england once more from the papacy and gave the english church practically the form and doctrines which it retains to-day. the church was intended to include everyone in england, and hence all persons were required to attend religious exercises on sundays and holy days. refusal to do so exposed the offender to a fine. [illustration: elizabeth] treatment of roman catholics the great body of the people soon conformed to the state church, but roman catholics could not conscientiously attend its services. the laws against them do not seem to have been strictly enforced at first, but in the later years of elizabeth's reign real or suspected plots by roman catholics against her throne led to a policy of repression. those who said or heard mass were heavily fined and imprisoned; those who brought papal bulls into england or converted protestants to roman catholicism were executed as traitors. several hundred priests, mostly jesuits, suffered death, and many more languished in jail. this persecution, however necessary it may have seemed to elizabeth and her advisers, is a blot on her reign. protestantism in ireland the reformation made little progress in ireland. henry viii, who had extended english sway over most of the island, suppressed the monasteries, demolished shrines, relics, and images, and placed english-speaking priests in charge of the churches. the irish people, who remained loyal to rome, regarded these measures as the tyrannical acts of a foreign government. during elizabeth's reign there were several dangerous revolts, which her generals suppressed with great cruelty. the result was to widen the breach between england and ireland. henceforth to most irishmen patriotism became identified with roman catholicism. [illustration: silver crown of elizabeth's reign] elizabeth and mary queen of scots many of the plots against elizabeth centered about mary stuart, the ill- starred queen of scots. she was a granddaughter of henry vii, and extreme roman catholics claimed that she had a better right to the english throne than elizabeth, because the pope had declared the marriage of henry viii and anne boleyn null and void. mary, a fervent roman catholic, did not please her scotch subjects, who had adopted calvinistic doctrines. she also discredited herself by marrying the man who had murdered her former husband. an uprising of the scottish nobles compelled mary to abdicate the throne in favor of her infant son [ ] and to take refuge in england. elizabeth kept her rival in captivity for nearly twenty years. in a.d., the former queen was found guilty of conspiring against elizabeth's life and was beheaded. [illustration: map, western europe in the time of elizabeth] [illustration: london bridge in the time of elizabeth the old structure was completed early in the thirteenth century. it measured feet in length and had narrow arches. note the rows of houses and shops on the bridge, the chapel in the center and the gate above which the heads of traitors were exhibited on pikes. the present london bridge was completed in a.d.] elizabeth and philip ii philip ii, the king of spain, also threatened elizabeth's security. at the outset of her reign philip had made her an offer of marriage, but she refused to give herself, or england, a spanish master. as time went on, philip turned into an open enemy of the protestant queen and did his best to stir up sedition among her roman catholic subjects. it must be admitted that philip could plead strong justification for his attitude. elizabeth allowed the english "sea dogs" [ ] to plunder spanish colonies and seize spanish vessels laden with the treasure of the new world. moreover, she aided the rebellious dutch, at first secretly and at length openly, in their struggle against spain. philip put up with these aggressions for many years, but finally came to the conclusion that he could never subdue the netherlands or end the piracy and smuggling in spanish america without first conquering england. the execution of mary stuart removed his last doubts, for mary had left him her claims to the english throne. he at once made ready to invade england. philip seems to have believed that as soon as a spanish army landed in the island, the roman catholics would rally to his cause. but the spanish king never had a chance to verify his belief; the decisive battle took place on the sea. the "invincible armada," a.d. philip had not completed his preparations before sir francis drake sailed into cadiz harbor and destroyed a vast amount of naval stores and shipping. this exploit, which drake called "singeing the king of spain's beard," delayed the expedition for a year. the "invincible armada" [ ] set out at last in a.d. the spanish vessels, though somewhat larger than those of the english, were inferior in number, speed, and gunnery to their adversaries, while the spanish officers, mostly unused to the sea, were no match for men like drake, frobisher, and raleigh, the best mariners of the age. the armada suffered severely in a nine-days fight in the channel, and many vessels which escaped the english guns met shipwreck off the scotch and irish coasts. less than half of the armada returned in safety to spain. [illustration: the spanish armada in the english channel. after an engraving by the society of antiquarians following a tapestry in the house of lords.] english sea-power england in the later middle ages had been an important naval power, as her ability to carry on the hundred years' war in france amply proved. but in the sixteenth century she was greatly over-matched by spain, especially after the annexation of portugal added the naval forces of that country to the spanish fleets. the defeat of the armada not only did great harm to the navy and commerce of spain; it also showed that a new people had arisen to claim the supremacy of the ocean. henceforth the english began to build up what was to be a sea-power greater than any other known to history. . the huguenot wars in france france under francis i, - a.d. by a.d. france had become a centralized state under a strong monarchy. [ ] francis i, who reigned in the first half of the sixteenth century, still further exalted the royal power. he had many wars with charles v, whose extensive dominions nearly surrounded the french kingdom. these wars prevented the emperor from making france a mere dependency of spain. as we have learned, [ ] they also interfered with the efforts of charles v to crush the protestants in germany. the huguenots protestantism in france dates from the time of francis i. the huguenots, [ ] as the french protestants were called, naturally accepted the doctrines of calvin, who was himself a frenchman and whose books were written in the french language. though bitterly persecuted by francis i and by his son henry ii ( - a.d.), the huguenots gained a large following, especially among the prosperous middle class of the towns--the _bourgeoisie_. many nobles also became huguenots, sometimes because of religious conviction, but often because the new movement offered them an opportunity to recover their feudal independence and to plunder the estates of the church. in france, as well as in germany, the reformation had its worldly side. civil war in france during most of the second half of the sixteenth century fierce conflicts raged in france between the roman catholics and the huguenots. philip ii aided the former and queen elizabeth gave some assistance to the latter. france suffered terribly in the struggle, not only from the constant fighting, which cost the lives, it is said, of more than a million people, but also from the pillage, burnings, and other barbarities in which both sides indulged. the wealth and prosperity of the country visibly declined, and all patriotic feeling disappeared in the hatreds engendered by a civil war. massacre of st. bartholomew's day, a.d. the episode known as the massacre of st. bartholomew's day illustrates the extremes to which political ambition and religious bigotry could lead. the massacre was an attempt to extirpate the huguenots, root and branch, at a time when peace prevailed between them and their opponents. the person primarily responsible for it was catherine de' medici, mother of charles ix ( - a.d.), the youthful king of france. charles had begun to cast off the sway of his mother and to come under the influence of admiral de coligny, the most eminent of the huguenots. to regain her power catherine first tried to have coligny murdered. when the plot failed, she invented the story of a great huguenot uprising and induced her weak- minded son to authorize a wholesale butchery of huguenots. it began in paris in the early morning of august , a.d. (st. bartholomew's day), and extended to the provinces, where it continued for several weeks. probably ten thousand huguenots were slain, including coligny himself. but the deed was a blunder as well as a crime. the huguenots took up arms to defend themselves, and france again experienced all the horrors of internecine strife. henry iv the death of coligny transferred the leadership of the huguenots to henry bourbon, king of navarre. [ ] seventeen years after the massacre of st. bartholomew's day, he inherited the french crown as henry iv. the roman catholics would not accept a protestant ruler and continued the conflict. henry soon realized that only his conversion to the faith of the majority of his subjects would bring a lasting peace. religious opinions had always sat lightly upon him, and he found no great difficulty in becoming a roman catholic. "paris," said henry, "was well worth a mass." opposition to the king soon collapsed, and the huguenot wars came to an end. edict of nantes, a.d. though now a roman catholic, henry did not break with the huguenots. in a.d. he issued in their interest the celebrated edict of nantes. by its terms the huguenots were to enjoy freedom of private worship everywhere in france, and freedom to worship publicly in a large number of villages and towns. only roman catholic services, however, might be held in paris and at the royal court. though the edict did not grant complete religious liberty, it marked an important step in that direction. a great european state now for the first time recognized the principle that two rival faiths might exist side by side within its borders. the edict was thus the most important act of toleration since the age of constantine. [ ] france under henry iv, - a.d. having settled the religious difficulties, henry could take up the work of restoring prosperity to distracted france. his interest in the welfare of his subjects gained for him the name of "good king henry." with the help of sully, his chief minister, the king reformed the finances and extinguished the public debt. he opened roads, built bridges, and dug canals, thus aiding the restoration of agriculture. he also encouraged commerce by means of royal bounties for shipbuilding. the french at this time began to have a navy and to compete with the dutch and english for trade on the high seas. henry's work of renovation was cut short in a.d. by an assassin's dagger. under his son louis xiii ( - a.d.), a long period of disorder followed, until an able minister, cardinal richelieu, assumed the guidance of public affairs. richelieu for many years was the real ruler of france. his foreign policy led to the intervention of that country in the international conflict known as the thirty years' war. [illustration: cardinal richelieu (louvre, paris.) after the portrait by the belgian artist, philippe de champaigne.] . the thirty years' war, - a.d. religious antagonisms the peace of augsburg [ ] gave repose to germany for more than sixty years, but it did not form a complete settlement of the religious question in that country. there was still room for bitter disputes, especially over the ownership of church property which had been secularized in the course of the reformation. furthermore, the peace recognized only roman catholics and lutherans and gave no rights whatever to the large body of calvinists. the failure of lutherans and calvinists to cooperate weakened german protestantism just at the period when the counter reformation inspired roman catholicism with fresh energy and enthusiasm. political friction politics, as well as religion, also helped to bring about the great conflagration. the roman catholic party relied for support on the hapsburg emperors, who wished to unite the german states under their control, thus restoring the holy roman empire to its former proud position in the affairs of europe. the protestant princes, on the other hand, wanted to become independent sovereigns. hence they resented all efforts to extend the imperial authority over them. the bohemian revolt the thirty years' war was not so much a single conflict as a series of conflicts, which ultimately involved nearly all western europe. it began in bohemia, where protestantism had not been extinguished by the hussite wars. [ ] the bohemian nobles, many of whom were calvinists, revolted against hapsburg rule and proclaimed the independence of bohemia. the german lutherans gave them no aid, however, and the emperor, ferdinand ii, easily put down the insurrection. many thousands of protestants were now driven into exile. those who remained in bohemia were obliged to accept roman catholicism. thus one more country was lost to protestantism. danish intervention the failure of the bohemian revolt aroused the greatest alarm in germany. ferdinand threatened to follow in the footsteps of charles v and to crush protestantism in the land of its birth. when, therefore, the king of denmark, who as duke of holstein had great interest in german affairs, decided to intervene, both lutherans and calvinists supported him. but wallenstein, the emperor's able general, proved more than a match for the danish king, who at length withdrew from the contest. edict of restitution, a.d. so far the roman catholic and imperial party had triumphed. ferdinand's success led him to issue the edict of restitution, which compelled the protestants to restore all the church property which they had taken since the peace of augsburg. the enforcement of the edict brought about renewed resistance on the part of the protestants. gustavus adolphus and the intervention of sweden there now appeared the single heroic figure on the stage of the thirty years' war. this was gustavus adolphus, king of sweden, and a man of military genius. he had the deepest sympathy for his fellow-protestants in germany and regarded himself as their divinely appointed deliverer. by taking part in the war gustavus also hoped to conquer the coast of northern germany. the baltic would then become a swedish lake, for sweden already possessed finland and what are now the russian provinces on the baltic. [illustration: gustavus adolphus after the portrait by the flemish artist, sir anthony van dyck.] gustavus adolphus in germany, - a.d. gustavus entered germany with a strong force of disciplined soldiers and tried to form alliances with the protestant princes. they received him coolly at first, for the swedish king seemed to them only a foreign invader. just at this time the imperialists captured magdeburg, the largest and most prosperous city in northern germany. at least twenty thousand of the inhabitants perished miserably amid the smoking ruins of their homes. this massacre turned protestant sentiment toward gustavus as the "lion of the north" who had come to preserve germany from destruction. with the help of his allies gustavus reconquered most of germany for the protestants, but he fell at the battle of lützen in the moment of victory. his work, however, was done. the swedish king had saved the cause of protestantism in germany. richelieu and the intervention of france after the death of gustavus the war assumed more and more a political character. the german protestants found an ally, strangely enough, in cardinal richelieu, the all-powerful minister of the french king. richelieu entered the struggle in order to humble the austrian hapsburgs and extend the boundaries of france toward the rhine, at the expense of the holy roman empire. since the spanish hapsburgs were aiding their austrian kinsmen, richelieu naturally fought against spain also. the war thus became a great international conflict in which religion played only a minor part. the holy roman emperor had to yield at last and consented to the treaties of peace signed at two cities in the province of westphalia. [illustration: map, europe at the end of the thirty years' war, a.d.] peace of westphalia, a.d. the peace of westphalia ended the long series of wars which followed the reformation. it practically settled the religious question, for it allowed calvinists in germany to enjoy the same privileges as lutherans and also withdrew the edict of restitution. nothing was said in the treaties about liberty of conscience, but from this time the idea that religious differences should be settled by force gradually passed away from the minds of men. territorial readjustments the political clauses of the peace were numerous. france received nearly all of alsace along the rhine. sweden gained possessions in north germany. brandenburg--the future kingdom of prussia--secured additional territory on the baltic sea. the independence of switzerland [ ] and of the united netherlands [ ] was also recognized. disruption of germany the peace of westphalia left germany more divided than ever. each one of the larger states was free to coin money, raise armies, make war, and negotiate treaties without consulting the emperor. in fact, the holy roman empire had become a mere phantom. the hapsburgs from now on devoted themselves to their austrian dominions, which included more magyars and slavs than germans. the failure of the hapsburgs in the thirty years' war long postponed the unification of germany. exhaustion of germany during the thirty years' war germany had seen most of the fighting. she suffered from it to the point of exhaustion. the population dwindled from about sixteen million to one-half, or, as some believe, to one-third that number. the loss of life was partly due to the fearful epidemics, such as typhus fever and the bubonic plague, which spread over the land in the wake of the invading armies. hundreds of villages were destroyed or were abandoned by their inhabitants. much of the soil went out of cultivation, while trade and manufacturing nearly disappeared. added to all this was the decline of education, literature, and art, and the brutalizing of the people in mind and morals. it took germany at least one hundred years to recover from the injury inflicted by the thirty years' war; complete recovery, indeed, came only in the nineteenth century. rise of international law the savagery displayed by all participants in the thirty years' war could not but impress thinking men with the necessity of formulating rules to protect noncombatants, to care for prisoners, and to do away with pillage and massacre. the worst horrors of the war had not taken place, before a dutch jurist, named hugo grotius, published at paris in a.d. a work _on the laws of war and peace_. it may be said to have founded international law. the success of the book was remarkable. gustavus adolphus carried a copy about with him during his campaigns, and its leading doctrines were recognized and acted upon in the peace of westphalia. the european state system the great principle on which grotius based his recommendations was the independence of sovereign states. he gave up the medieval conception of a temporal and spiritual head of christendom. the nations now recognized no common superior, whether emperor or pope, but all were equal in the sight of international law. the book of grotius thus marked the profound change which had come over europe since the middle ages. studies . on an outline map indicate the european countries ruled by charles v. . on an outline map indicate the principal territorial changes made by the peace of westphalia. . identify the following dates: a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; a.d.; and a.d. . locate the following places: avignon; constance; augsburg; zurich; worms; magdeburg; and utrecht. . for what were the following persons noted: cardinal wolsey; admiral de coligny; duke of alva; richelieu; st. ignatius loyola; boniface viii; frederick the wise; gustavus adolphus; and mary queen of scots? . compare the scene at anagni with the scene at canossa. . on the map, page , trace the geographical extent of the "great schism." . name three important reasons for the lessened influence of the roman church at the opening of the sixteenth century. . explain the difference between heresy and schism. . why has wycliffe been called the "morning star of the reformation"? . compare luther's work in fixing the form of the german language with dante's service to italian through the _divine comedy_. . what is the origin of the name "protestant"? . why was mary naturally a catholic and elizabeth naturally a protestant? . on the map, page , trace the geographical extent of the reformation in the sixteenth century. . why did the reformers in each country take special pains to translate the bible into the vernacular? . what is the chief difference in mode of government between presbyterian and congregational churches? . "the heroes of the reformation, judged by modern standards, were reactionaries." what does this statement mean? . why is the council of trent generally considered the most important church council since that of nicaea? . mention some differences between the society of jesus and earlier monastic orders. . compare the edict of nantes with the peace of augsburg. . show how political, as well as religious, motives affected the revolt of the netherlands, the huguenot wars, and the thirty years' war. . compare the effects of the thirty years' war on germany with the effects of the hundred years' war on france. . what would you say of holbein's success as a portrait painter (illustrations pages , )? footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xxiii, "martin luther and the beginning of the reformation"; chapter xxiv, "england in the age of elizabeth." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] _purgatorio_, xx, - . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] his hymn _ein feste burg ist unser gott_ ("a mighty fortress is our god") has been called "the marseillaise of the reformation." [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] churches governed by assemblies of presbyters were called presbyterian; those which allowed each congregation to rule itself were called congregational. [ ] in a.d. the pope suppressed the society, on the ground that it had outgrown its usefulness. it was revived in many european countries during the nineteenth century. [ ] until the vatican council, held at rome in - a d. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see pages - . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] armada was a spanish name for any armed fleet. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the origin of the name is not known with certainty. [ ] navarre originally formed a small kingdom on both sides of the pyrenees. the part south of these mountains was acquired by spain in a.d. see the map on page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . chapter xxviii absolutism in france and england - a.d. [ ] . the divine right of kings absolutism most european nations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accepted the principle of absolutism in government. absolutism was as popular then as democracy is to-day. the rulers of france, spain, portugal, austria, scandinavia, and other countries, having triumphed over the feudal nobles, proceeded to revive the autocratic traditions of imperial rome. like diocletian, constantine, and later emperors, they posed as absolute sovereigns, who held their power, not from the choice or consent of their subjects, but from god. divinity of kings royal absolutism formed a natural development of the old belief in the divinity of kings. many primitive peoples regard their headmen and chiefs as holy and give to them the control of peace and war, of life and death. oriental rulers in antiquity bore a sacred character. even in the lifetime of an egyptian pharaoh temples were erected to him and offerings were made to his sacred majesty. the hebrew monarch was the lord's anointed, and his person was holy. the hellenistic kings of the east and the roman emperors received divine honors from their adoring subjects. an element of sanctity also attached to medieval sovereigns, who, at their coronation, were anointed with a magic oil, girt with a sacred sword, and given a supernatural banner. even shakespeare could speak of the divinity which "doth hedge a king." [ ] "not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king; the breath of worldly men cannot depose the deputy elected by the lord." [ ] divine right after the reformation the reformation tended to emphasize the sacred character of kingship. the reformers set up the authority of the state against the authority of the church, which they rejected and condemned. providence, they argued, had never sanctioned the papacy, but providence had really ordained the state and had placed over it a king whom it was a religious duty to obey. even those who were not reformers distorted the christian idea that government has a divine basis to represent kings as god's vicegerents upon earth, as in fact earthly deities. bossuet on divine right the theory of divine right received its fullest expression in a famous book [ ] written by bossuet, a learned french bishop of the seventeenth century. a hereditary monarchy, declared bossuet, is the most ancient and natural, the strongest and most efficient, of all forms of government. royal power emanates from god; hence the person of the king is sacred and it is sacrilege to conspire against him. his authority is absolute and autocratic. no man may rightfully resist the king's commands; his subjects owe him obedience in all matters. to the violence of a king the people can oppose only respectful remonstrances and prayers for his conversion. a king, to be sure, ought not to be a tyrant, but he can be one in perfect security. "as in god are united all perfection and every virtue, so all the power of all the individuals in a community is united in the person of the king." . the absolutism of louis xiv, - a.d. cardinal richelieu france in the seventeenth century furnished the best example of an absolute monarchy supported by pretensions to divine right. french absolutism owed most of all to cardinal richelieu, [ ] the chief minister of louis xiii. though a man of poor physique and in weak health, he possessed such strength of will, together with such thorough understanding of politics, that he was able to dominate the king and through the king to govern france for eighteen years ( - a.d.). policies of richelieu richelieu's foreign policy led to his intervention on the side of the protestants at a decisive moment in the thirty years' war. the great cardinal, however, did not live to see the triumph of his measures in the peace of westphalia, which humiliated the hapsburgs and raised france to the first place among the states of western europe. richelieu's domestic policy--to make the french king supreme--was equally successful. though the nobles were still rich and influential, richelieu beat down their opposition by forbidding the practice of duelling, that last remnant of private warfare, by ordering many castles to be blown up with gunpowder, and by bringing rebellious dukes and counts to the scaffold. henceforth the nobles were no longer feudal lords but only courtiers. cardinal mazarin richelieu died in a.d., and the next year louis xiii, the master whom he had served so faithfully, also passed away. the new ruler, louis xiv, was only a child, and the management of affairs for a second period of eighteen years passed into the hands of cardinal mazarin. though an italian by birth, he became a naturalized frenchman and carried out richelieu's policies. against the hapsburgs mazarin continued the great war which richelieu had begun and brought it to a satisfactory conclusion. the peace of westphalia was mazarin's greatest triumph. he also crushed a formidable uprising against the crown, on the part of discontented nobles. having achieved all this, the cardinal could truly say that "if his language was not french, his heart was," his death in a.d. found the royal authority more firmly established than ever before. [illustration: cardinal mazarin a miniature by petitot, in the south kensington museum, london.] louis xiv, the man louis xiv, who now in his twenty-third year took up the reins of government, ranks among the ablest of french monarchs. he was a man of handsome presence, slightly below the middle height, with a prominent nose and abundant hair, which he allowed to fall over his shoulders. in manner he was dignified, reserved, courteous, and as majestic, it is said, in his dressing-gown as in his robes of state. a contemporary wrote that he would have been every inch a king, "even if he had been born under the roof of a beggar." louis possessed much natural intelligence, a retentive memory, and great capacity for work. it must be added, however, that his general education had been much neglected, and that throughout his life he remained ignorant and superstitious. vanity formed a striking trait in the character of louis. he accepted the most fulsome compliments and delighted to be known as the "grand monarch" and the "sun-king." [illustration: louis xiv a portrait by j. gale, in the sutherland collection, london.] court of louis xiv at versailles louis gathered around him a magnificent court, which he located at versailles, near paris. here a whole royal city, with palaces, parks, groves, and fountains, sprang into being at his fiat. here the "grand monarch" lived surrounded by crowds of fawning courtiers. the french nobles now spent little time on their country estates; they preferred to remain at versailles in attendance on the king, to whose favor they owed offices, pensions, and honors. the king's countenance, it was said, is the courtier's supreme felicity; "he passes his life looking on it and within sight of it." [illustration: versailles the view shows the rear of the palace a part of the gardens and the grand stairway leading to the fountain of latona. the palace now forms a magnificent picture gallery of french historical scenes and personages while the park with its many fine fountains is a place of holiday resort for parisians. it is estimated that louis xiv spent one hundred million dollars on the buildings and grounds of versailles.] louis xiv, the king louis taught and put into practice the doctrine of divine right. in his memoirs he declares that the king is god's representative and for his actions is answerable to god alone. the famous saying, "i am the state," [ ] though not uttered by louis, accurately expressed his conviction that in him was embodied the power and greatness of france. few monarchs have tried harder to justify their despotic rule. he was fond of gaiety and sport, but he never permitted himself to be turned away from the punctual discharge of his royal duties. until the close of his reign--the longest in the annals of europe--louis devoted from five to nine hours a day to what he called the "trade of a king." absolutism in france conditions in france made possible the despotism of louis. richelieu and mazarin had labored with great success to strengthen the crown at the expense of the nobles and the commons. the nation had no parliament to represent it and voice its demands, for the estates-general [ ] had not been summoned since a.d. it did not meet again till a.d., just before the outbreak of the french revolution. in france there was no magna carta to protect the liberties of the people by limiting the right of a ruler to impose taxes at will. the french, furthermore, lacked independent law courts which could interfere with the king's power of exiling, imprisoning, or executing his subjects. thus absolute monarchy became so firmly rooted in france that a revolution was necessary to overthrow it. . france under louis xiv colbert no absolute ruler, however conscientious and painstaking, can shoulder the entire burden of government. louis xiv necessarily had to rely very much on his ministers, of whom colbert was the most eminent. colbert, until his death in a.d., gave france the best administration it had ever known. his reforming hand was especially felt in the finances. he made many improvements in the methods of tax-collection and turned the annual deficit in the revenues into a surplus. one of colbert's innovations, now adopted by all european states, was the budget system. before his time expenditures had been made at random, without consulting the treasury receipts. colbert drew up careful estimates, one year in advance, of the probable revenues and expenditures, so that outlay would never exceed income. colbert's economic measures although the science of economics or political economy was little developed in the seventeenth century, colbert realized that the chief object of a minister of finance should be the increase of the national wealth. hence he tried in every way to foster manufactures and commerce. among other measures colbert placed heavy duties on the importation of foreign products, as a means of protecting the "infant industries" of france. this was the inauguration of the protective system, since followed by many european countries and from europe introduced into america. colbert regarded protectionism as only a temporary device, however, and spoke of tariffs as crutches by the help of which manufacturers might learn to walk and then throw them away. [illustration: medal of louis xiv commemorates the revocation of the edict of nantes. the obverse bears a representation of 'louis the great the most christian king' the reverse contains a legend meaning "heresy extinguished."] colbert and colonial expansion colbert shared the erroneous views of most economists of his age in supposing that the wealth of a country is measured by the amount of gold and silver which it possesses. he wished, therefore, to provide the french with colonies, where they could obtain the products which they had previously been obliged to purchase from the spaniards, dutch, and english. at this time many islands in the west indies were acquired, canada was developed, and louisiana, the vast territory drained by the mississippi, was opened up to settlement. france, under colbert, became one of the leading colonial powers of europe. revocation of the edict of nantes, a.d. as long as colbert lived, he kept on good terms with the huguenots, who formed such useful and industrious subjects. but louis hated them as heretics and suspected them of little love for absolute monarchy. to louis religious unity in the state seemed as necessary as political unity. accordingly, he revoked in a.d. the edict of nantes, [ ] after the french for almost a century had enjoyed religious toleration. the huguenots were allowed to keep their protestant faith, but their freedom of worship was taken away and was not restored till the time of the french revolution. the protestants in france to-day are about as numerous, in proportion to the roman catholic population, as they were under louis xiv. emigration of the huguenots the revocation of the edict of nantes resulted in a considerable emigration of huguenots from france. what was a loss to that country was a gain to england and holland, where the huguenots settled and where they introduced their arts and trades. prussia, also, profited by the emigration of the huguenots. many of them went to berlin, and that capital owed the beginning of its importance to its huguenot population. louis by his bigotry thus strengthened the chief protestant foes of france. art under louis xiv louis was a generous patron of art. french painters and sculptors led the world at this time. one of his architects, mansard, invented the mansard roof, which has been largely used in france and other european countries. this architectural device makes it possible to provide extra rooms at a small expense, without adding an additional story to the building. among the monuments of louis's reign are the hôtel des invalides, [ ] now the tomb of napoleon, additions to the louvre, [ ] perhaps the masterpiece of all modern architecture, and the huge palace of versailles. louis also founded the gobelins manufactory, so celebrated for fine carpets, furniture, and metal work. literature under louis xiv the long list of french authors who flourished during the reign of louis includes molière, the greatest of french dramatists, la fontaine, whose fables are still popular, perrault, now remembered for his fairy tales, and madame de sévigné, whose letters are regarded as models of french prose. probably the most famous work composed at this time is the _memoirs_ of saint-simon. it presents an intimate and not very flattering picture of the "grand monarch" and his court. learning under louis xiv louis and his ministers believed that the government should encourage research and the diffusion of knowledge. richelieu founded and colbert fostered the french academy. its forty members, sometimes called the "immortals," are chosen for their eminent contributions to language and literature. the great dictionary of the french language, on which they have labored for more than two centuries, is still unfinished. the academy now forms a section of the institute of france. the patronage of colbert also did much to enrich the national library at paris. it contains the largest collection of books in the world. the age of louis xiv the brilliant reign of the french king cast its spell upon the rest of europe. kings and princes looked to louis as the model of what a king should be and set themselves to imitate the splendor of his court. during this period the french language, manners, dress, art, literature, and science became the accepted standards of good society in all civilized lands. france still retains in large measure the preeminent position which she secured under the "grand monarch." . the wars of louis xiv ambitious designs of louis xiv how unwise it may be to concentrate all authority in the hands of one man is shown by the melancholy record of the wars of louis xiv. to aggrandize france and gain fame for himself, louis plunged his country into a series of struggles from which it emerged completely exhausted. like philip ii, louis dreamed of dominating all western europe, but, as in philip's case, his aggressions provoked against him a constantly increasing body of allies, who in the end proved too strong even for the king's able generals and fine armies. the balance of power the union of the smaller and weaker countries of europe against france illustrates the principle of the balance of power. according to this principle no state ought to become so strong as to overshadow the rest. in such a case all the others must combine against it and treat it as a common enemy. the maintenance of the balance of power has been a leading object of european diplomacy from the time of the thirty years' war to the present day. french militarism louis himself lacked military talent and did not take a prominent part in any campaign. he was served, however, by very able commanders, including condé and turenne. vauban, an eminent engineer, especially developed the art of siege craft. it was said of vauban that he never besieged a fortress without taking it and never lost one which he defended. louvois, the war minister of the king, recruited, equipped, and provisioned larger bodies of troops than ever before had appeared on european battlefields. it was louvois who introduced the use of distinctive uniforms for soldiers and the custom of marching in step. he also established field hospitals and ambulances and placed camp life on a sanitary basis. the labors of these men gave louis the best standing army of the age. the rhine boundary of the four great wars which filled a large part of louis's reign, all but the last were designed to extend the dominions of france on the east and northeast to the rhine. that river in ancient times had separated gaul and germany, and louis, as well as richelieu and mazarin before him, regarded it as a natural boundary of france. a beginning in this direction had already been made at the close of the thirty years' war, when france gained nearly all of alsace and secured the recognition of her old claims to the bishoprics of metz, toul, and verdun in lorraine. a treaty which mazarin negotiated with spain in a.d. also gave france most of artois, as well as part of flanders. louis thus had a good basis of further advance through lorraine and the netherlands to the rhine. two wars for the rhine, - a.d. the french king began his aggressions by an effort to annex the belgian or spanish netherlands, which then belonged to spain. [ ] a triple alliance of holland, england, and sweden forced him to relinquish all his conquests, except a few frontier towns ( a.d.). louis blamed the dutch for his setback, and determined to punish them. moreover, the dutch represented everything to which he was opposed, for holland was a republic, the keen rival of france in trade, and protestant in religion. by skillful diplomacy he persuaded england and sweden to stand aloof, while his armies entered holland and drew near to amsterdam at this critical moment william, prince of orange, became the dutch leader. he was a descendant of that william the silent, who, a century before, had saved the dutch out of the hands of spain. when urged to submit, seeing that his country was surely lost, william replied, "i know one way of never seeing it, and that way is to die on the last dike." by william's orders the dutch cut the dikes and interposed a watery barrier to further advance by the french. then he formed another continental coalition, which carried on the war till louis signified his desire for peace. the dutch did not lose a foot of territory, but spain was obliged to cede to france the important province of franche comté ( a.d.). [illustration: map, acquisitions of louis xiv and louis xv] a third war, - a.d. ten years later louis again sought to gain additional territory along the rhine, but again an alliance of spain, holland, england, and the holy roman empire compelled - him to sue for peace ( a.d.). [ ] during the course of the war the french inflicted a frightful devastation on the rhenish palatinate, so that it might not support armies for the invasion of france. twelve hundred towns and villages were destroyed, and the countryside was laid waste. the responsibility for this barbarous act rests upon louvois who advised it and louis who allowed it. the spanish succession thus far the european balance of power had been preserved, but it was now threatened in another direction. charles ii, the king of spain, lay dying, and as he was without children or brothers to succeed him, all europe wondered what would be the fate of his vast possessions in europe and america. louis had married one of his sisters, and the holy roman emperor another, so both the bourbons and the austrian hapsburgs could put forth claims to the spanish throne. when charles died, it was found that he had left his entire dominions to philip of anjou, one of louis's grandsons, in the hope that the power of france might be great enough to keep them undivided. though louis knew that acceptance of the inheritance would involve a war with austria and probably with england, whose king was now louis's old foe, william of orange, [ ] ambition triumphed over fear and the desire for glory over consideration for the welfare of france. at versailles louis proudly presented his grandson to the court, saying, "gentlemen, behold the king of spain." war of the spanish succession, - a.d. in the war of the spanish succession france and spain faced the grand alliance, which included england, holland, austria, several of the german states, and portugal. europe had never known a war that concerned so many countries and peoples. the english ruler, william iii, died shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, leaving the continuance of the contest as a legacy to his sister-in-law, queen anne. [ ] england supplied the coalition with funds, a fleet, and also with the ablest commander of the age, the duke of marlborough. in eugène, prince of savoy, the allies had another skillful and daring general. the great victory gained by them at blenheim in a.d. was the first of a series of successes which finally drove the french out of germany and italy and opened the road to paris. but dissensions among the allies and the heroic resistance of france and spain enabled louis to hold the enemy at bay, until the exhaustion of both sides led to the conclusion of the peace of utrecht. peace of utrecht, a.d. this peace ranks with that of westphalia among the most important diplomatic arrangements of modern times. first, louis's grandson, philip v, was recognized as king of spain and her colonies, on condition that the spanish and french crowns should never be united. since this time bourbon sovereigns have continued to rule in spain. next, the austrian hapsburgs gained most of the spanish dominions in italy, as well as the belgian or spanish netherlands (henceforth for a century called the austrian netherlands). finally, england obtained from france possessions in north america, and from spain the island of minorca and the rock of gibraltar, commanding the narrow entrance to the mediterranean. england has never since relaxed her hold upon gibraltar. brandenburg and prussia two of the smaller members of the grand alliance likewise profited by the peace of utrecht. the right of the elector of brandenburg to enjoy the title of king of prussia was acknowledged. this formed an important step in the fortunes of the hohenzollern [ ] dynasty, which to-day rules over germany. the duchy of savoy also became a kingdom and received the island of sicily (shortly afterwards exchanged for sardinia). the house of savoy in the nineteenth century provided italy with its present reigning family. position of france france lost far less by the war than at one time seemed probable. louis gave up his dream of dominating europe, but he kept all the continental acquisitions made earlier in his reign. and yet the price of the king's warlike policy had been a heavy one. france paid it in the shape of famine and pestilence, excessive taxes, heavy debts, and the impoverishment of the people. louis, now a very old man, survived the peace of utrecht only two years. as he lay on his deathbed, the king turned to his little heir [ ] and said, "try to keep peace with your neighbors. i have been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that, nor in my too great expenditure." these words of the dying king showed an appreciation of the errors which robbed his long reign of much of its glory. [illustration: marlborough a miniature in the possession of the duke of buccleugh.] [illustration: map, europe after the peace of utrecht, a.d.]. . the absolutism of the stuarts, - a.d. tudor absolutism during the same century which saw the triumph of absolutism and divine right in france, a successful struggle took place in england against the unlimited power of kings. absolutism in england dated from the time of the tudors. henry vii humbled the nobles, while henry viii and elizabeth brought the church into dependence on the crown. [ ] these three sovereigns were strong and forceful, but they were also excellent rulers and popular with the influential middle class in town and country. the tudors gave england order and prosperity, if not political liberty. parliament under the tudors the english parliament in the thirteenth century had become a body representative of all classes of the people, and in the fourteenth century it had separated into the two houses of lords and commons. [ ] parliament enjoyed considerable authority at this time. the kings, who were in continual need of money, summoned it frequently, sought its advice upon important questions, and readily listened to its requests. the despotic tudors, on the other hand, made parliament their servant. henry vii called it together on only five occasions during his reign; henry viii persuaded or frightened it into doing anything he pleased; and elizabeth seldom consulted it. parliament under the tudors did not abandon its old claims to a share in the government, but it had little chance to exercise them. james i, king, - a.d. the death of elizabeth in a.d. ended the tudor dynasty and placed the stuarts on the english throne in the person of james i. [ ] england and scotland were now joined in a personal union, though each country retained its own parliament, laws, and state church. the new king was well described by a contemporary as the "wisest fool in christendom." he had a good mind and abundant learning, but throughout his reign he showed an utter inability to win either the esteem or the affection of his subjects. this was a misfortune, for the english had now grown weary of despotism and wanted more freedom. they were not prepared to tolerate in james, an alien, many things which they had overlooked in "good queen bess." james i on divine right one of the most fruitful sources of discord between james and the english people was his exalted conception of monarchy. the tudors, indeed, claimed to rule by divine right, but james went further than they in arguing for divine _hereditary_ right. providence, james declared, had chosen the principle of heredity in order to fix the succession to the throne. this principle, being divine, lay beyond the power of man to alter. whether the king was fit or unfit to rule, parliament might not change the succession, depose a sovereign, or limit his authority in any way. james rather neatly summarized his views in a latin epigram, _a deo rex, a rege lex_--"the king is from god and law is from the king." [illustration: gold coin of james i. the first coin to bear the legend "great britain".] james i and parliament naturally enough, the extreme pretensions of james encountered much opposition from parliament. that body felt little sympathy for a ruler who proclaimed himself the source of all law. when james, always extravagant and a poor financier, came before it for money, parliament insisted on its right to withhold supplies until grievances were redressed. james would not yield, and got along as best he could by levying customs duties, selling titles of nobility, and imposing excessive fines, in spite of the protests of parliament. this situation continued to the end of the king's reign. james i and puritanism a religious controversy helped to embitter the dispute between james and parliament. the king, who was puritanism a devout anglican, made himself very unpopular with the puritans, as the reformers within the church of england were called. the puritans had no intention of separating from the national or established church, but they wished to "purify" it of certain customs which they described as "romish" or "papist." among these were the use of the surplice, of the ring in the marriage service, and of the sign of the cross in baptism. some puritans wanted to get rid of the _book of common prayer_ altogether. the puritans were distinguished by their austere lives. they looked with disfavor on may day and christmas festivities, observed the jewish sabbath in all its rigor, and condemned the anglicans who played games and danced upon the village green on sundays. as the puritans had a large majority in the house of commons, it was inevitable that the parliamentary struggle against stuart absolutism would assume in part a religious character. [illustration: a puritan family illustration in an edition of the _psalms_ published in a.d.] charles i, king, - a.d. the political and religious difficulties which marked the reign of james i did not disappear when his son, charles i, came to the throne. charles was a true stuart in his devotion to absolutism and divine right. almost immediately he began to quarrel with parliament. when that body withheld supplies, charles resorted to forced loans from the wealthy and even imprisoned a number of persons who refused to contribute. such arbitrary acts showed plainly that charles would play the tyrant if he could. petition of right, a.d. the king's attitude at last led parliament to a bold assertion of its authority. it now presented to charles the celebrated petition of right. one of the most important clauses provided that forced loans without parliamentary sanction should be considered illegal. another clause declared that no one should be arrested or imprisoned except according to the law of the land. the petition thus repeated and reinforced two of the leading principles of magna carta. [ ] the people of england, speaking this time through their elected representatives, asserted once more their right to limit the power of kings. personal rule of charles i, - a.d. charles signed the petition, as the only means of securing parliamentary consent to taxation; but he had no intention of observing it. for the next eleven years he managed to govern without calling parliament in session. the conduct of affairs during this period lay largely in the hands of sir thomas wentworth, afterwards earl of strafford, and william laud, who later became archbishop of canterbury. the king made these two men his principal advisers and through them carried on his despotic rule. arbitrary courts, which tried cases without a jury, punished those who resisted the royal will. a rigid censorship of the press prevented any expression of popular discontent. public meetings were suppressed as seditious riots. even private gatherings were dangerous, for the king had swarms of spies to report any disloyal acts or utterances. john hampden and "ship-money" since charles ruled without a parliament, he had to adopt all sorts of devices to fill his treasury. one of these was the levying of "ship- money." according to an old custom, seaboard towns and counties had been required to provide ships or money for the royal navy. charles revived this custom and extended it to towns and counties lying inland. it seemed clear that the king meant to impose a permanent tax on all england without the assent of parliament. the demand for "ship-money" aroused much opposition, and john hampden, a wealthy squire of buckinghamshire, refused to pay the twenty shillings levied on his estate. hampden was tried before a court of the royal judges and was convicted by a bare majority. he became, however, the hero of the hour. the england people recognized in him one who had dared, for the sake of principle, to protest against the king's despotic rule. [illustration: charles i a painting by daniel mytens in the national portrait gallery. london] laud's ecclesiastical policy archbishop laud, the king's chief agent in ecclesiastical matters, detested puritanism and aimed to root it out from the church of england. he put no puritans to death, but he sanctioned cruel punishments of those who would not conform to the established church. all that the dungeon and the pillory, mutilation and loss of position, could do to break their will was done. while the restrictions on puritans were increased, those affecting roman catholics were relaxed. many people thought that charles, through laud and the bishops, was preparing to lead the church of england back to rome. they therefore opposed the king on religious grounds, as well as for political reasons. [illustration: execution of the earl of strafford after a contemporary print. the tower of london is seen in the background.] the long parliament, a.d. but the personal rule of charles was now drawing to an end. in a.d. the king, supported by archbishop laud, tried the long to introduce a modified form of the english prayer book into scotland. the scotch, presbyterian [ ] to the core, drew up a national oath, or covenant, by which they bound themselves to resist any attempt to change their religion. rebellion quickly passed into open war, and the covenanters invaded northern england. charles, helpless, with a seditious army and an empty treasury, had to summon parliament in session. it met in a.d. and did not formally dissolve till twenty years later. hence it has received the name of the long parliament. [illustration: map, england and wales--the civil wars of the th century] reforms of the long parliament the long parliament no sooner assembled than it assumed the conduct of government. the leaders, including john hampden, john pym, and oliver cromwell, openly declared that the house of commons, and not the king, possessed supreme authority in the state. parliament began by executing strafford and subsequently laud, thus emphasizing the responsibility of ministers to parliament. next, it abolished star chamber and other special courts, which had become engines of royal oppression. it forbade the levying of "ship-money" and other irregular taxes. it took away the king's right of dissolving parliament at his pleasure and ordered that at least one parliamentary session should be held every three years. these measures stripped the crown of the despotic powers acquired by the tudors and the stuarts. . oliver cromwell and the civil war, - a.d. outbreak of the great rebellion, a.d. thus far, the long parliament had acted along the line of reformation rather than revolution. had charles been content to accept the new arrangements, there would have been little more trouble. but the proud and imperious king was only watching his chance to strike a blow at parliament. taking advantage of some differences in opinion among its members, charles summoned his soldiers, marched to westminister, and demanded the surrender of five leaders, including pym and hampden. warned in time, they made their escape, and charles did not find them in the chamber of the commons. "well, i see all the birds are flown," he exclaimed, and walked out baffled. the king's attempt to intimidate the commons was a great blunder. it showed beyond doubt that he would resort to force, rather than bend his neck to parliament. both charles and parliament now began to gather troops and prepare for the inevitable conflict. "cavaliers" and "round-heads" the opposing parties seemed to be very evenly matched. around the king rallied nearly all of the nobles, the anglican clergy, the roman catholics, a majority of the "squires," or country gentry, and the members of the universities. the royalists received the name of "cavaliers." the parliamentarians, or "roundheads," [ ] were mostly recruited from the trading classes in the towns and the small landowners in the country. the working people remained as a rule indifferent and took little part in the struggle. [illustration: oliver cromwell a painting by robert walker, in the national portrait gallery, london.] oliver cromwell, - a.d. both pym and hampden died in the second year of the war, and henceforth the leadership of the parliamentary party fell to oliver cromwell. he was a country gentleman from the east of england, and hampden's cousin. cromwell represented the university of cambridge in the long parliament and displayed there great audacity in opposing the government. an unfriendly critic at this time describes "his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervor." though a zealous puritan, who believed himself in all sincerity to be the chosen agent of the lord, cromwell was not an ascetic. he hunted, hawked, played bowls, and other games, had an ear for music, and valued art and learning. in public life he showed himself a statesman of much insight and a military genius. the "ironsides" and the "new model" at the outset of the war fortune favored the royalists, until cromwell took the field. to him was due the formation of a cavalry regiment of "honest, sober christians," whose watchwords were texts from scripture and who charged in battle while singing psalms. these "ironsides," as cromwell said, "had the fear of god before them and made some conscience of what they did." they were so successful that parliament permitted cromwell to reorganize a large part of the army into the "new model," a body of professional, highly disciplined soldiers. the "new model" defeated charles decisively at the battle of naseby, near the center of england ( a.d.). charles then surrendered to the scotch, who soon turned him over to parliament. presybterians and independents the surrender of the king ended the great rebellion, but left the political situation in doubt. by this time the puritans had divided into two rival parties. the presbyterians wished to make the church of england, like that of scotland, presbyterian in faith and worship. through their control of parliament, they were able to pass acts doing away with bishops, forbidding the use of the _book of common prayer_, and requiring every one to accept presbyterian doctrines. the other puritan party, known as the independents, [ ] felt that religious beliefs should not be a matter of compulsion. they rejected both anglicanism and presbyterianism and desired to set up churches of their own, where they might worship as seemed to them right. the independents had the powerful backing of cromwell and the "new model," so that the stage was set for a quarrel between parliament and the army. "pride's purge," a.d. king charles, though a prisoner in the hands of his enemies, hoped to find profit in their divisions. the presbyterian majority in the house of commons was willing to restore the king, provided he would give his assent to the establishment of presbyterianism in england. but the army wanted no reconciliation with the captive monarch and at length took matters into its own hand. a party of soldiers, under the command of a colonel pride, excluded the presbyterian members from the floor of the house, leaving the independents alone to conduct the government. this action is known as "pride's purge." cromwell approved of it, and from this time he became the real ruler of england. [illustration: interior of westminster hall next to the tower and the abbey westminster hall adjoining the houses of parliament, is the most historic building in london. the hall was begun by william rufus in a.d. and was enlarged by his successors. richard ii in a.d. added the great oak roof, which has lasted to this day here were held the trials of stafford and charles i.] execution of charles i, a.d. the "rump parliament," as the remnant of the house of commons was called, immediately brought the king before a high court of justice composed of his bitterest enemies. he refused to acknowledge the right of the court to try him and made no defense whatever. charles was speedily convicted and sentenced to be beheaded, "as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good of the people." he met death with quiet dignity and courage on a scaffold erected in front of whitehall palace in london. the king's execution went far beyond the wishes of most englishmen; "cruel necessity" formed its only justification; but it established once for all in england the principle that rulers are responsible to their subjects. . the commonwealth and the protectorate, - a.d. england a republic shortly after the execution of charles i the "rump parliament" abolished the house of lords and the office of king. it named a council of state, most of whose members were chosen from the house of commons, to carry on the government. england now became a commonwealth, or national republic, the first in the history of the world. it is clear that this republic was the creation of a minority. the anglicans, the presbyterians, and the roman catholics were willing to restore the monarchy, but as long as the power lay with the army, the small sect of independents could impose its will on the great majority of the english people. subjection of ireland besides confusion and discontent at home, many dangers confronted the commonwealth abroad. in both ireland and scotland prince charles, the oldest son of the dead sovereign, had been proclaimed king. but cromwell rose to the emergency. invading ireland with his trained soldiers, he captured town after town, slaughtered many royalists, and shipped many more to the west indies as slaves. this time ireland was completely subdued, at a cost, from fighting, famine, and pestilence, of the lives of a third of its population. cromwell confiscated the land of those who had supported the royalist cause and planted colonies of english protestants in ulster, leinster, and munster. the roman catholic gentry were compelled to remove beyond the shannon river to unfruitful connaught. even there the public exercise of their religion was forbidden them. cromwell's harsh measures brought peace to ireland, but only intensified the hatred felt by irish roman catholics for protestant england. [ ] scotland subdued while cromwell was still in ireland, prince charles, who had been living as an exile at the french court, came to scotland. on his promise to be a presbyterian king the whole nation agreed to support him. cromwell, in two pitched battles, broke up the scotch armies and compelled prince charles to seek safety in flight. after thrilling adventures the prince managed to reach his asylum in france. cromwell treated the scotch with leniency, but took away their parliament and united their country with england in a single state. [illustration: map, ireland in the th century] dissolution of the "rump parliament," a.d. meanwhile, the "rump parliament" had become more and more unpopular. the army, which had saved england from stuart despotism, did not relish the spectacle of a small group of men, many of them selfish and corrupt, presuming to govern the country cromwell found them "horridly arbitrary" and at last resolved to have done with them. he entered the house of commons with a band of musketeers and ordered the members home. "come, come," he cried, "i will put an end to your prating. you are no parliament, i say you are no parliament. i will put an end to your sitting." another parliament, chosen by cromwell and the army, proved equally incapable. after a few months' rule it resigned its authority into the hands of cromwell. [illustration: great seal of england under the commonwealth (reduced) the reverse represents the house of commons in session.] the instrument of government by force of circumstances cromwell had become a virtual dictator, but he had no love of absolute power. he therefore accepted a so-called instrument of government, drawn up by some of his officers. it provided that cromwell should be lord protector for life, with the assistance of a council and a parliament. the instrument is notable as the first written constitution of a modern nation. it is the only one which england has ever had. cromwell as lord protector, - a.d. as lord protector in name, though a king in fact, cromwell ruled england for five years. he got along with parliament no better than the stuarts had done, but his successful conduct of foreign affairs gave england an importance in the councils of europe which it had not enjoyed since the time of elizabeth. cromwell died in a.d. two years later the nation, weary of military rule, restored charles ii to the throne of his ancestors. the puritan revolution it seemed, indeed, as if the puritan revolution had been a complete failure. but this was hardly true. the revolution arrested the growth of absolutism in england. it created among englishmen a lasting hostility to absolute power, whether exercised by king, parliament, protector, or army. and, furthermore, it sent forth into the world ideas of political liberty, which, during the eighteenth century, helped to produce the american and french revolutions. . the restoration and the "glorious revolution," - a.d. reign of charles ii, - a.d. charles ii, on mounting the throne, pledged himself to maintain magna carta, the petition of right, and other statutes limiting the royal power. the people of england wished to be governed by the king, but they also wished that the king should govern by the advice of parliament. charles, less obstinate and more astute than his father, recognized this fact, and, when a conflict threatened with his ministers or parliament, always avoided it by timely concessions. whatever happened, he used to say, he was resolved "never to set on his travels again." charles's charm of manner, wit, and genial humor made him a popular monarch, in spite of his grave faults of character. one of his own courtiers well described him as a king who "never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one." reaction against puritanism the period of the restoration was characterized by a reaction against the austere scheme of life which the puritans had imposed on society. puritanism not only deprived the people of evil pleasures, such as bear- baiting, cock-fighting, and tippling, but it also prohibited the sunday dances and games, the village festivals, and the popular drama. when puritanism disappeared, the people went to the opposite extreme and cast off all restraint. in this the king, who had lived long at the gay court of louis xiv, set the example. england was nevermore merry and never less moral than under its "merry monarch." [illustration: boys' sports from a book of a.d.] the dissenters the restoration brought back the church of england, together with the stuarts. parliament, more intolerant than the king, passed an act of uniformity, which made the use of the _book of common prayer_ compulsory and required all ministers to express their consent to everything contained in it. nearly two thousand clergymen resigned their positions rather than obey the act. among them were found presbyterians, independents (or congregationalists), baptists, and quakers. these puritans, since they did not accept the national church, were henceforth classed as dissenters. [ ] they might not hold meetings for worship, or teach in schools, or accept any public office. for many years the dissenters had to endure harsh persecution. habeas corpus act, a.d. one of the most important events belonging to the reign of charles ii was the passage by parliament of the habeas corpus act. the writ of _habeas corpus_ [ ] is an order, issued by a judge, requiring a person held in custody to be brought before the court. if upon examination there appears to be good reason for keeping the prisoner, he is to be remanded for trial; otherwise he is to be freed or released on bail. this writ had been long used in england, and one of the clauses of magna carta expressly provided against arbitrary imprisonment. it had always been possible, however, for the king or his ministers to order the arrest of a person considered dangerous to the state, without making any formal charge against him. the habeas corpus act established the principle that every man, not charged with or convicted of a known crime, is entitled to personal freedom. most of the british possessions where the common law prevails have accepted the act, and it has been adopted by the federal and state legislatures of the united states. [illustration: silver crown of charles ii] whigs and tories the reign of charles ii also saw the beginning of the modern party system in parliament. two opposing parties took shape, very largely out of a religious controversy. the king, from his long life in france, had become partial to roman catholicism, though he did not formally embrace that faith until at the moment of death. his brother james, the heir to the throne, became an open roman catholic, however, much to the disgust of many members of parliament. a bill was now brought forward to exclude prince james from the succession, because of his conversion. its supporters received the nickname of whigs, while those who opposed it were called tories. [ ] the bill did not pass the house of lords, but the two parties in parliament continued to divide on other questions. they survive to-day as the liberals and the conservatives, and still dispute the government of england between them. reign of james ii, - a.d. james ii was without the attractive personality which had made his brother a popular ruler; moreover, he was an avowed roman catholic and a staunch believer in the divine right of kings. during his three years' reign, james managed to make enemies of most of his protestant subjects. he "suspended" the laws against roman catholics and appointed them to positions of authority and influence. james also dismissed parliament and supported himself with subsidies from louis xiv. at last a number of whig and tory leaders, representing both parties in parliament, invited that sturdy protestant, william of orange, [ ] to rescue england from stuart absolutism. accession of william and mary, a.d. william landed in england with a small army and marched unopposed to london. the wretched king, deserted by his courtiers and his soldiers, soon found himself harness alone. he fled to france, where he lived the remainder of his days as a pensioner at the court of louis xiv. parliament granted the throne conjointly to william and mary, william to rule during his lifetime and mary to have the succession, should she survive him. the bill of rights in settling the crown on william and mary, parliament took care to safeguard its own authority and the of protestant religion. it enacted the bill of rights, which has a place by the side of magna carta and the petition of right among the great documents of english constitutional history. this act decreed that the sovereign must henceforth be a member of the anglican church. it forbade the sovereign to "suspend" the operation of the laws, or to levy money or maintain a standing army except by consent of parliament. it also declared that election of members of parliament ought to be free; that they ought to enjoy freedom of speech and action within the two houses; and that excessive bail ought not to be required, or excessive fines imposed, or cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. finally, it affirmed the right of subjects to petition the sovereign and ordered the holding of frequent parliaments. these were not new principles of political liberty, but now the english people were strong enough not only to assert, but also to uphold them. they reappear in the first ten amendments to the constitution of the united states. the toleration act at this time, also, england took an important step in the direction of religious liberty. parliament passed a toleration act, conceding to the dissenters the right of worship, though not the right of holding any civil or military office. the dissenters might now serve their god as they pleased, without fear of persecution. unitarians and roman catholics, as well as jews, were expressly excluded from the benefits of the act. the passage of this measure did much to remove religion from english politics as a vital issue. the "glorious revolution" the revolution of - a.d. thus struck a final blow at absolutism and divine right in england. an english king became henceforth the servant of parliament, holding office only on good behavior. an act of parliament had made him and an act of parliament might depose him. it is well to remember, however, that the revolution was not a popular movement. it was a successful struggle for parliamentary supremacy on the part of the upper and middle classes--the nobles, squires, merchants, and clergy. england now had a "limited" or "constitutional" monarchy controlled by the aristocracy. not till the nineteenth century did the common people succeed in establishing a really democratic government in england. . england in the seventeenth century social england the population of england at the close of the seventeenth century exceeded five millions, of whom at least two-thirds lived in the country. except for london there were only four towns of more than ten thousand inhabitants. london counted half a million people within its limits and had become the largest city in europe. town life still wore a medieval look, but the increase of wealth gradually introduced many new comforts and luxuries. coal came into use instead of charcoal; tea, coffee, and chocolate competed with wine, ale, and beer as beverages; the first newspapers appeared, generally in weekly editions; amusements multiplied; and passenger coaches began to ply between london and the provincial centers. the highways, however, were wretched and infested with robbers. the traveler found some recompense for the hardships of a journey in the country inns, famous for their plenty and good cheer. the transport of goods was chiefly by means of pack horses, because of the poor roads and the absence of canals. postal arrangements also remained very primitive, and in remote country districts letters were not delivered more than once a week. the difficulties of travel and communication naturally made for isolation; and country people, except the wealthy, rarely visited the metropolis. [illustration: a london bellman title-page of a tract published in a.d. it was part of the duties of a bellman, or night-watchman, to call out the hours, the state of the weather, and other information as he passed by.] economic england as the population of england increased, old industries developed and new ones sprang up. the chief manufacture was that of wool, while that of silk flourished after the influx of huguenots which followed the revocation [ ] of the edict of nantes. the absence of large textile mills made it necessary to carry on spinning and weaving in the homes of the operatives. the vast mineral deposits, which in later times became the main source of england's prosperity, were then little worked. farming and the raising of sheep and cattle still remained the principal occupations. but agriculture was retarded by the old system of common tillage and open fields, just as industry was fettered by the trade monopoly of the craft guilds. these survivals of the middle ages had not yet disappeared. [illustration: coach and sedan chair title-page of a tract published in a.d.] scientific progress the seventeenth century in england saw a notable advance in science. at this time harvey revealed the circulation of the blood. [ ] napier, a scotchman, invented logarithms, which lie at the basis of the higher mathematics. boyle, an irishman, has been called the "father of modern chemistry," so many were his researches in that field of knowledge. far greater than any of these men was sir isaac newton, who discovered the law of gravitation and the differential calculus. during the civil war a group of students interested in the natural world began to hold meetings in london and oxford, and shortly after the restoration they obtained a charter under the name of the royal society. it still exists and enrolls among its members the most distinguished scientists of england. the royal observatory at greenwich also dates from the period of the restoration. altogether much was being done to uncover the secrets of nature. [illustration: death mask of sir isaac newton. in the possession of the royal society of london.] progress of art seventeenth century england produced no very eminent painters or sculptors, though foreign artists, such as rubens and van dyck, were welcomed there. among architects the most famous was sir christopher wren, who did much to popularize the renaissance style of building. [ ] a great fire which destroyed most of old london during the reign of charles ii gave wren an opportunity to rebuild about fifty parish churches, as well as st. paul's cathedral. his tomb in the crypt of the cathedral bears the famous inscription: _si monumentum requieris, circumspice_: "if you seek his monument, look around you." literature english literature in the seventeenth century covered many fields. shakespeare and bacon, the two chief literary ornaments of the elizabethan age, did some of their best work during the reign of james i. in a.d. appeared the authorized version of the bible, sometimes called the king james version because it was dedicated to that monarch. the simplicity, dignity, and eloquence of this translation have never been excelled, and it still remains in ordinary use among protestants throughout the english- speaking world. [ ] the puritan poet, john milton, composed his epic of _paradise lost_ during the reign of charles ii. about the same time another puritan, john bunyan, wrote the immortal _pilgrim's progress_, a book which gives an equal though different pleasure to children and adults, to the ignorant and the learned. but these are only a few of the eminent poets and prose writers of the age. position of england thus, aside from its political importance, the seventeenth century formed a noteworthy period in english history. england until this time had been, on the whole, a follower rather than a leader of europe. the defeat of the spanish armada, the overthrow of stuart absolutism, and the check administered to the aggressive designs of louis xiv were so many indications that england had risen to a place of first importance in european affairs. during this century, too, the american colonies of england began to lay the basis for anglo-saxon predominance in the new world. studies . give dates for (a) peace of utrecht, (b) execution of charles i, (c) the "glorious revolution," and (d) revocation of the edict of nantes. . for what were the following men notable: pym; bossuet; duke of marlborough; louvois; hampden; mazarin; william iii; and colbert? . explain and illustrate the following terms: (a) balance of power; (b) budget system; (c) absolutism; (d) writ of _habeas corpus_; (e) militarism; (f) "ship money," and (g) star chamber. . compare the theory of the divine right of kings with the medieval theory of the papal supremacy. . in what european countries do kings still rule by divine right? . what is the essential distinction between a "limited" or "constitutional" monarchy and an "absolute" or "autocratic" monarchy? . why is it very desirable for the united states to adopt the budget system? . after what french king was louisiana named? . why did the french language in the seventeenth century become the language of fashion and diplomacy? is this still the case? . "the age of louis xiv in france is worthy to stand by the side of the age of pericles in greece and of augustus in italy." does this statement appear to be justified? . how does the preservation of the balance of power help to explain the great european war? . by reference to the map on page show how far the "natural boundaries" of france were attained during the reign of louis xiv. . how did the condition of germany after a.d. facilitate the efforts of louis xiv to extend the french frontiers to the rhine? . show that in the peace of utrecht nearly all the contestants profited at the expense of spain. . explain: "rump parliament"; "pride's purge"; the "new model"; the "ironsides"; "cavalier"; and "roundhead." . what circumstances gave rise to (a) the petition of right; (b) the institute of government; (c) the habeas corpus act; and (d) the bill of rights? . why were the reformers within the church of england called "puritans"? . contrast the commonwealth as a national republic with the athenian and roman city-states, the medieval italian cities, the swiss confederation, and the united netherlands. . under what circumstances does the constitution of the united states provide for the suspension of the writ of _habeas corpus_? . why has the bill of rights been called the "third great charter of english liberty"? . show that the revolution of a.d. was a "preserving" and not a "destroying" revolution. . how did the revolution of a.d. affect the fortunes of louis xiv? . why did it prove more difficult to establish a despotic monarchy in england than in france during the seventeenth century? . what is the present population of england? of "greater london?" footnotes [ ] webster, _readings in medieval and modern history_, chapter xxv, "characters and episodes of the great rebellion"; chapter xxvi, "oliver cromwell"; chapter xxvii, "english life and manners under the restoration"; chapter xxviii, "louis xiv and his court." [ ] _hamlet_, iv, y, . [ ] _king richard the second_, in, ii, - . [ ] _politics as derived from the very words of the holy scriptures_. this work was prepared for the use of the young son of louis xiv, the french king. [ ] see pages , . [ ] "_l'État, c'est moi._" [ ] see page , . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] in america the war was known as "king william's war." [ ] in a.d. he ascended the english throne as william iii. see page . [ ] in america the war was known as "queen anne's war." [ ] see page , note [ ] his great-grandson, then a child of five years. the reign of louis xv covered the period - a.d. [ ] see pages - , , - . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , note , and note . [ ] see page . [ ] see page , , note , . [ ] so called, because some of them wore closely cropped hair, in contrast to the flowing locks of the "cavaliers." [ ] also called separatists, and later known as congregationalists. [ ] see pages , . [ ] or noncomformists. this name is still applied to english protestants not members of the anglican church. [ ] a latin phrase meaning "you may have the body." [ ] whig had originally been applied to rebellious presbyterians in scotland; tory had designated roman catholic outlaws in ireland. [ ] see page . william had married james's eldest daughter, mary. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] many important corrections were embodied in the revised version, published in - a.d. by a committee of english scholars. appendix table of events and dates before b.c., and in some instances even later, nearly all dates must be regarded as merely approximate. (specially important dates are in italics) the orient b.c. _menes, king of egypt_ - the pyramid kings _hammurabi, king of babylonia_ - rule of the hyksos in egypt - rameses ii, king of egypt - the undivided hebrew monarchy saul, - david, - solomon, - - kingdom of israel - kingdom of judea - sargon ii, king of assyria - sennacherib, king of assyria _destruction of nineveh_ - nebuchadnezzar, king of babylonia - persian kings cyrus the great, - cambyses, - darius i, - xerxes i, - _capture of babylon by cyrus the great_ greece b.c. - the aegean age - homeric age _first recorded olympiad_ - period of colonial expansion - reforms of solon - tyranny of pisistratus - reforms of clisthenes - ionian revolt _battle of marathon_ _battles of thermopylae and salamis_ _battles of plataea and mycale_ - delian league - age of pericles - _the peloponnesian war_ - spartan supremacy - _expedition of the "ten thousand"_ - supremacy of thebes _battle of leuctra_ battle of mantinea - philip ii, king of macedonia _battle of chaeronea_ - reign of alexander the great destruction of thebes battle of the granicus battle of issus siege of tyre; founding of alexandria _battle of arbela_ _death of alexander_ the roman republic b.c. (?) _founding of rome_ (?)- (?) legendary roman kings (?) establishment of the republic laws of the twelve tables (?) _battle of the allia; capture of rome by the gauls_ - latin war; dissolution of the latin league - samnite wars - war between rome and tarentum; invasion of pyrrhus - _first punic war_ - _second punic war_ battle of cannae _battle of zama_ peace between rome and carthage macedonia becomes a dependent ally of rome syria becomes a dependent ally of rome - third punic war _destruction of carthage and corinth; africa and macedonia become roman provinces_ acquisition of the province of asia; final subjugation of spain tribunate of tiberius gracchus - tribunate of gaius gracchus - jugurthine war - invasion of the germans - the social war - war with mithridates - civil war between marius and sulla - dictatorship of sulla impeachment of verres pompey and the war with the pirates _conspiracy of catiline_ - first triumvirate: pompey, crassus, and caesar - conquest of gaul by caesar defeat of crassus by the parthians at carrhae battle of pharsalus _assassination of caesar_ second triumvirate: lepidus, antony, and octavian battles of philippi _battle of actium_ the roman empire b.c.- a.d. the julian and claudian caesars augustus, b.c.-i a.d. tiberius, - gaius (caligula), - claudius, - nero - octavian receives the title _augustus_ (?) birth of christ a.d. - conquest of britain the great fire in rome; nero's persecution of the christians - the year of military revolution; galba, otho, and vitellius emperors - the flavian caesars vespasian, - titus, - domitian, - capture of jerusalem by titus _destruction of pompeii and herculaneum_ - the "good emperors" nerva, - trajan, - hadrian, - antoninus pius, - marcus aurelius, - - conquest of dacia by trajan - the "soldier emperors" commodus, - septimius severus, - aurelian, - _edict of caracalla_ rise of the sassanian or new persian empire _reorganization of the roman empire by diocletian_ - the "absolute emperors" /diocletian, - \maximian, - constantine i, - (sole emperor, - ) julian, - theodosius i (east), - edict of galerius battle of the milvian bridge _edict of milan_ _council of nicaea_ removal of the capital to constantinople the visigoths cross the danube battle of adrianople _death of theodosius i_ _capture of rome by alaric_ - visigothic kingdom in spain (in gaul, - ) - vandal kingdom in africa - kingdom of the burgundians invasion of britain by the anglo-saxons _battle of châlons_ sack of rome by the vandals _deposition of romulus angustulus_ the middle ages clovis defeats the romans at soissons - ostrogothic kingdom in italy _clovis accepts christianity_ - justinian, roman emperor in the east (?) rule of st. benedict - lombards in italy - pontificate of gregory the great augustine's mission to the anglo-saxons - heraclius, roman emperor in the east _the hegira_ - the "orthodox caliphs" - the ommiad caliphs arabs and berbers invade spain - siege of constantinople by the arabs _battle of tours_ - the abbassid caliphs - reign of charlemagne _charlemagne crowned emperor of the romans_ england united under egbert treaty of verdun (?) northmen under ruric settle in russia treaty of mersen - (?) reign of alfred the great northmen settle in northwestern france (normandy) _otto the great crowned holy roman emperor_ greenland discovered - reign of hugh capet christianity introduced into russia (?) vinland discovered england conquered by canute final rupture of greek and roman churches _battle of hastings; norman conquest of england_ - william i, the conqueror, king of england - pontificate of gregory vii humiliation of henry iv at canossa - st. bernard - the crusades _council of clermont_ capture of jerusalem - second crusade - third crusade - fourth crusade; sack of constantinople - latin empire of constantinople _fall of acre; end of the crusades_ concordat of worms - reign of frederick i, barbarossa - henry ii, king of england - philip ii, augustus, king of france (?)- st. francis of assisi - pontificate of innocent iii - mongol conquests under jenghiz khan _magna carta_ - louis ix, the saint, king of france union of léon and castile - mongol conquest of russia - the interregnum fall of latin empire of constantinople - travels of marco polo - edward i, king of england _rudolf of hapsburg becomes holy roman emperor_ - philip iv, the fair, king of france first swiss confederation "model parliament" of edward i - "babylonian captivity" of the papacy battle of bannockburn - hundred years' war battle of crécy battle of poitiers joan of arc appears - black death in europe - the "great schism" peasants' revolt in england greek first taught at florence death of timur the lame john huss burned transition to modern times _constantinople captured by the ottoman turks_ - war of the roses - louis xi, king of france - ivan iii, the great, tsar of russia caxton's printing press set up in england castile and aragon united under ferdinand and isabella - henry vii, king of england cape of good hope rounded by diaz _america discovered by columbus_ north america rediscovered by john cabot _vasco da gama reaches india_ discovery of the pacific by balboa - reformation in germany _the ninety-five theses_ burning of the papal bull edict of worms peace of augsburg - mexico conquered by cortés - magellan's circumnavigation of the globe - reign of charles v - peru conquered by pizarro - reformation in england jesuit order founded by loyola - council of trent - reign of philip ii - elizabeth, queen of england - revolt of the netherlands battle of lepanto massacre of st. bartholomew union of utrecht _defeat of the spanish armada_ - henry iv, king of france _edict of nantes_ english east india company chartered - reign of james i colonization of virginia; jamestown founded authorized version of the bible - thirty years' war - reign of charles i the petition of right - puritan exodus to massachusetts meeting of the long parliament - the great rebellion - louis xiv, king of france _peace of westphalia_ execution of charles i - the commonwealth and the protectorate first navigation act restoration of charles ii - _the "glorious revolution"_ salem witchcraft persecution - war of the spanish succession _peace of utrecht_ - "king george's war" - "french and indian war" _peace of paris_ lord's lectures beacon lights of history, volume ii jewish heroes and prophets. by john lord, ll.d., author of "the old roman world," "modern europe," etc., etc. contents. abraham. religious faith. abraham the spiritual father of nations general forgetfulness of god when abraham arose civilization in his age ancestors of abram his settlement in haran his moral courage the call of abram his migrations the canaanites abram in egypt separation between abram and lot melchizedek abram covenants with god the mission of the hebrews the faith of abram its peculiarities trials of faith god's covenant with abram the sacrifice of isaac paternal rights among oriental nations universality of sacrifice had abram a right to sacrifice isaac? supreme test of his faith his obedience to god his righteousness supremacy of religious faith abraham's defects the most favored of mortals the boons he bestowed joseph. israel in egypt. early days of joseph envy of his brethren sale of joseph its providential results fortunes of joseph in egypt the imprisonment of joseph favor with the king joseph prime minister the shepherd kings the service of joseph to the king famine in egypt power of pharaoh power of the priests character of the priests knowledge of the priests teachings of the priests egyptian gods antiquity of sacrifices civilization of egypt initiation of joseph in egyptian knowledge austerity to his brethren grief of jacob severity of the famine in canaan jacob allows the departure of benjamin joseph's partiality to benjamin his continued austerity to his brethren joseph at length reveals himself the kindness of pharaoh israel in egypt prosperity of the israelites old age of jacob his blessing to joseph's sons jacob's predictions death of jacob death of joseph character of joseph condition of the israelites in egypt rameses the great acquisitions of the israelites in egypt influence of egyptian civilization on the israelites moses. jewish jurisprudence exalted mission of moses his appearance at a great crisis his early advantages and education his premature ambition his retirement to the wilderness description of the land of midian studies and meditations of moses the book of genesis call of moses and return to egypt appearance before pharaoh miraculous deliverance of the israelites their sojourn in the wilderness the labors of moses his moral code universality of the obligations general acceptance of the ten commandments the foundation of the ritualistic laws utility of ritualism in certain states of society immortality seemingly ignored the possible reason of moses its relation to the religion of egypt the civil code of moses reasons for the isolation of the israelites the wisdom of the civil code source of the wisdom of moses the divine legation of moses logical consequences of its denial general character of moses his last days his influence samuel. israel under judges. condition of the israelites on the death of joshua the judges birth and youth of samuel the jewish theocracy eli and his sons samuel called to be judge his efforts to rekindle religious life the school of the prophets the people want a king views of samuel as to a change of government he tells the people the consequences persistency of the israelites condition of the nation saul privately anointed king clothed with regal power mistakes and wars of saul spares agag rebuked by samuel samuel withdraws into retirement seeks a successor to saul jehovah indicates the selection of david saul becomes proud and jealous his wars with the philistines great victory at michmash death of samuel universal mourning his character as prophet his moral greatness his transcendent influence david. israelitish conquests. david as an historical study early days of david his accomplishments his connection with saul his love for jonathan death of saul david becomes king death of abner david generally recognized as king makes jerusalem his capital alliance with hiram transfer of the sacred ark folly of david's wife organization of the kingdom joab commander-in-chief of the army the court of david his polygamy war with moab war with the ammonites conquest of the edomites bathsheba david's shame and repentance edward irving on david's fall its causes census of the people why this was a folly wickedness of david's children amnon alienation of david's subjects the famine in judah revolt of sheba adonijah seeks to steal the sceptre troubles and trials of david preparation for building the temple david's wealth his premature old age absalom's rebellion and death david's final labors his character as a man and a monarch why he was a man after god's own heart david's services his psalms their mighty influence solomon. glory of the monarchy. early years of solomon his first acts as monarch the prosperity of his kingdom glory of solomon his mistakes his marriage with an egyptian princess his harem building of the temple its magnificence the treasures accumulated in it its dedication the sacrifices in its honor extraordinary celebration of the festivals the royal palace in jerusalem the royal palace on mount lebanon excessive taxation of the people forced labor change of habits and pursuits solomon's effeminacy and luxury his unpopularity his latter days of shame his death character influence of his reign his writings their great value the canticles the proverbs praises of wisdom and knowledge ecclesiastes contrasted with proverbs cynicism of ecclesiastes hidden meaning of the book the writing of solomon rich in moral wisdom his wisdom confirmed by experience lessons to be learned by the career of solomon elijah. division of the kingdom. evil days fall on israel division of the kingdom under rehoboam jeroboam of israel sets up golden calves other innovations egypt attacks jerusalem city saved only by immense contribution interest centres in the northern kingdom ruled by bad kings given to idolatry under ahab influence of jezebel the priests of baal the apostasy of israel the prophet elijah his extraordinary appearance appears before ahab announces calamities flight of elijah the drought the woman of zarephath shields and feeds elijah he restores her son to life miseries of the drought elijah confronts ahab assembly of the people at mount carmel presentation of choice between jehovah and baal elijah mocks the priests of baal triumphs, and slays them elijah promises rain the tempest ahab seeks jezebel she threatens elijah in her wrath second flight of elijah his weakness and fear the still small voice selection of elisha to be prophet he becomes the companion of elijah character and appearance of elisha war between ahab and benhadad naboth and his vineyard chagrin and melancholy of ahab wickedness and cunning of jezebel murder of naboth dreadful rebuke of elijah despair of ahab athaliah and jehoshaphat death of ahab regency of jezebel ahaziah and elijah fall of ramoth-gilead reaction to idolatry jehu death of jezebel death of ahaziah the massacres and reforms of jehu extermination of idolatry last days of elijah his translation isaiah. national degeneracy. superiority of judah to israel a succession of virtuous princes syrian wars the prophet joel outward prosperity of the kingdom of judah internal decay assyrian conquests tiglath-pilneser fall of damascus fall of samaria demoralization of jerusalem birth of isaiah his exalted character invasion of judah by the assyrians hezekiah submits to sennacherib rebels anew renewed invasion of judah signal deliverance the warnings and preaching of isaiah his terrible denunciations of sin retribution the spirit of his preaching holding out hope by repentance absence of art in his writings national wickedness ending in calamities god's moral government isaiah's predictions fulfilled woes denounced on judah fall of babylon foretold predicted woes of moab woes denounced on egypt calamities of tyre general predictions of woe on other nations end and purpose of chastisements isaiah the prophet of hope the promised glories of the chosen people messianic promises exultation of isaiah his catholicity the promised reign of peace the future glories of the righteous glad tidings declared to the whole world messianic triumphs jeremiah. fall of jerusalem. sadness and greatness of jeremiah second as a prophet only to isaiah jeremiah the prophet of despair evil days in which he was born national misfortunes predicted idolatry the crying sin of the times discovery of the book of deuteronomy renewed study of the law the reforms of josiah the greatness of josiah inability to stem prevailing wickedness incompleteness of josiah's reforms necho ii. extends his conquests death of josiah lamentations on the death of josiah rapid decline of the kingdom the voice of jeremiah drowned invasion of assyria by necho shallum succeeds josiah eliakim succeeds shallum his follies judah's relapse into idolatry neglect of the sabbath jeremiah announces approaching calamity his voice unheeded his despondency fall of nineveh defeat and retreat of necho greatness of nebuchadnezzar appears before jerusalem fall of jerusalem, but destruction delayed folly and infatuation of the people of jerusalem revolt of the city zedekiah the king temporizes expostulations of jeremiah nebuchadnezzar loses patience second fall of jerusalem the captivity weeping by the river of babylon judas maccabaeus. restoration of the jewish commonwealth. eventful career of judas maccabaeus condition of the jews after their return from babylon condition of jerusalem fanatical hatred of idolatry severe morality of the jews after the captivity the pharisees the sadducees synagogues, their number and popularity the jewish sanhedrim advance in sacred literature apocryphal books isolation of the jews dark age of jewish history power of the high priests the persian empire judaea a province of the persian empire jews at alexandria judaea the battle-ground of egyptians and syrians the syrian kings antiochus epiphanes his persecution of the jews helplessness of the jews sack of jerusalem desecration of the temple mattathias his piety and bravery revolt of mattathias slaughter of the jews death of mattathias his gallant sons judas maccabaeus his military genius the syrian generals wrath of antiochus desolation of jerusalem judas defeats the syrian general judas cleanses and dedicates the temple fortifies jerusalem the feast of dedication renewed hostilities successes of judas death of antiochus deliverance of the jews rivalry between lysias and philip death of eleazer bacchides embassy to rome death of judas maccabaeus judas succeeded by his brother jonathan heroism of jonathan his death by treachery jonathan succeeded by his brother simon simon's military successes his prosperous administration succeeded by john hyrcanus the great talents and success of john hyrcanus the asmonean princes pompey takes jerusalem accession of herod the great he destroys the asmonean princes his prosperous reign foundation of caesarea latter days of herod loathsome death of herod birth of jesus, the christ saint paul. the spread of christianity. birth and early days of saul his phariseeism his persecution of the christians his wonderful conversion his leading idea saul a preacher at damascus saul's visit to jerusalem saul in tarsus saul and barnabas at antioch description of antioch contribution of the churches for jerusalem saul and barnabas at jerusalem labors and discouragements saul and barnabas at cyprus saul smites elymas the sorcerer missionary travels of paul paul converts timothy paul at lystra and derbe return of paul to antioch controversy about circumcision bigotry of the jewish converts paul again visits jerusalem paul and barnabas quarrel paul chooses silas for a companion paul and silas visit the infant churches tact of paul paul and luke the missionaries at philippi paul and silas at thessalonica paul at athens character of the athenians the success of paul at athens paul goes to corinth paul led before gallio mistake of gallio paul's epistle to the thessalonians paul at ephesus the temple of diana excessive labors of paul at ephesus paul's first epistle to the corinthians popularity of apollos second epistle to the corinthians paul again at corinth epistles to the galatians and to the romans the pauline theology paul's last visit to jerusalem his cold reception his arrest and imprisonment the trial of paul before felix character of felix paul kept a prisoner by felix paul's defence before festus paul appeals to caesar paul preaches before agrippa his voyage to italy paul's life at rome character of paul his magnificent services his triumphant death list of illustrations volume ii. the wailing wall of the jews _after the painting by j.l. gerome_. abraham and hagar _after the painting by adrian van der werff_. joseph sold by his brethren. _after the painting by h.f. schopin_. erection of public building in the time of rameses _after the painting by sir edward j. poynter_. pharaoh pursues the israelites across the red sea _after the painting by f.a. bridgman_. moses _from the statue by michael angelo, rome_. david kills goliath _after the painting by w.l. dodge_. david _from the statue by michael angelo, florence_. elijah's sacrifice consumed by fire from heaven _after the painting by c.g. pfannschmidt_. isaiah _from the fresco in the sistine chapel, by michael angelo_. a sacrifice to baal _after the painting by henri motte_. the jews led into babylonian captivity _after the painting by e. bendeman_. st. paul preaching at the foot of the acropolis _after the painting by gebhart fügel_. abraham. religious faith. from a religious point of view, abraham appears to us, after the lapse of nearly four thousand years, as the most august character in history. he may not have had the genius and learning of moses, nor his executive ability; but as a religious thinker, inspired to restore faith in the world and the worship of the one god, it would be difficult to find a man more favored or more successful. he is the spiritual father equally of jews, christians, and mohammedans, in their warfare with idolatry. in this sense, he is the spiritual progenitor of all those nations, tribes, and peoples who now acknowledge, or who may hereafter acknowledge, a personal god, supreme and eternal in the universe which he created. abraham is the religious father of all those who associate with this personal and supreme deity a providential oversight of this world,--a being whom all are required to worship, and alone to worship, as the only true god whose right it is to reign, and who does reign, and will reign forever and ever over everything that exists, animate or inanimate, visible or invisible, known or unknown, in the mighty universe of whose glory and grandeur we have such overwhelming yet indefinite conceptions. when abraham appeared, whether four thousand or five thousand years ago, for chronologists differ in their calculations, it would seem that the nations then existing had forgotten or ignored this great cardinal and fundamental truth, and were more or less given to idolatry, worshipping the heavenly bodies, or the forces of nature, or animals, or heroes, or graven images, or their own ancestors. there were but few and feeble remains of the primitive revelation,--that is, the faith cherished by the patriarchs before the flood, and which it would be natural to suppose noah himself had taught to his children. there was even then, however, a remarkable material civilization, especially in egypt, palestine, and babylon; for some of the pyramids had been built, the use of the metals, of weights and measures, and of textile fabrics was known. there were also cities and fortresses, cornfields and vineyards, agricultural implements and weapons of war, commerce and arts, musical instruments, golden vessels, ornaments for the person, purple dyes, spices, hand-made pottery, stone-engravings, sundials, and glass-work, and even the use of letters, or something similar, possibly transmitted from the antediluvian civilization. even the art of printing was almost discovered, as we may infer from the stamping of letters on tiles. with all this material progress, however, there had been a steady decline in spiritual religion as well as in morals,--from which fact we infer that men if left to themselves, whatever truth they may receive from ancestors, will, without supernatural influences, constantly decline in those virtues on which the strength of man is built, and without which the proudest triumphs of the intellect avail nothing. the grandest civilization, in its material aspects, may coexist with the utmost debasement of morals,--as seen among the greeks and romans, and in the wicked capitals of modern europe. "there is no god!" or "let there be no god!" has been the cry in all ages of the world, whenever and wherever an impious pride or a low morality has defied or silenced conscience. tell me, ye rationalists and agnostics! with your pagan sympathies, what mean ye by laws of development, and by the _necessary_ progress of the human race, except in the triumphs of that kind of knowledge which is entirely disconnected with virtue, and which has proved powerless to prevent the decline and fall of nations? why did not art, science, philosophy, and literature save the most lauded nations of the ancient world? why so rapid a degeneracy among people favored not only with a primitive revelation, but by splendid triumphs of reason and knowledge? why did gross superstition so speedily obscure the intellect, and infamous vices so soon undermine the moral health, if man can elevate himself by his unaided strength? why did error seemingly prove as vital as truth in all the varied forms of civilization in the ancient world? why did even tradition fail to keep alive the knowledge of god, at least among the people? now, among pagans and idolaters abram (as he was originally called) lived until he was seventy-five. his father, terah, was a descendant of shem, of the eleventh generation, and the original seat of his tribe was among the mountains of southern armenia, north of assyria. from thence terah migrated to the plains of mesopotamia, probably with the desire to share the rich pastures of the lowlands, and settled in ur of the chaldeans. ur was one of the most ancient of the chaldean cities and one of the most splendid, where arts and sciences were cultivated, where astronomers watched the heavens, poets composed hymns, and scribes stamped on clay tablets books which, according to geikie, have in part come down to our own times. it was in this pagan city that abram was born, and lived until the "call." his father was a worshipper of the tutelary gods of his tribe, of which he was the head; but his idolatry was not so degrading as that of the chaldeans, who belonged to a different race from his own, being the descendants of ham, among whom the arts and sciences had made considerable progress,--as was natural, since what we call civilization arose, it is generally supposed, in the powerful monarchies founded by assyrian and egyptian warriors, although it is claimed that both china and india were also great empires at this period. with the growth of cities and the power of kings idolatry increased, and the knowledge of the true god declined. from such influences it was necessary that abram should be removed if he was to found a nation with a monotheistic belief. so, in obedience to a call from god, he left the city of his birthplace, and went toward the land of canaan and settled in haran, where he remained until the death of his father, who it seems had accompanied him in his wanderings, but was probably too infirm to continue the fatiguing journey. abram, now the head of his tribe and doubtless a powerful chieftain, received another call, and with it the promise that he should be the founder of a great nation, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed. what was that call, coupled with such a magnificent and cheering promise? it was the voice of god commanding abram to leave country and kindred and go to a country utterly unknown to him, not even indicated to him, but which in due time should be revealed to him. he is not called to repudiate idolatry, but by divine command to go to an unknown country. he must have been already a believer in the one supreme god, or he would not have felt the command to be imperative. unless his belief had been monotheistic, we must attribute to him a marvellous genius and striking originality of mind, together with an independence of character still more remarkable; for it requires not only original genius to soar beyond popular superstitions, but also great force of will and lofty intrepidity to break away from them,--as when buddha renounced brahmanism, or socrates ridiculed the sophists of attica. nothing requires more moral courage than the renunciation of a popular and generally received religious belief. it was a hard struggle for luther to give up the ideas of the middle ages in reference to self-expiation. it is exceedingly rare for any one to be emancipated from the tyranny of prevailing dogmas. so, if abram was not divinely instructed in a way that implies supernatural illumination, he must have been the most remarkable sage of all antiquity to found a religion never abrogated by succeeding revelations, which has lasted from his time to ours, and is to-day embraced by so large a part of the human race, including christians, mohammedans, and jews. abram must have been more gifted than the whole school of ionian philosophers united, from thales downward, since after three hundred years of speculation and lofty inquiries they only arrived at the truth that the being who controls the universe must be intelligent. even socrates, plato, and cicero--the most gifted men of classical antiquity--had very indefinite notions of the unity and personality of god, while abram distinctly recognized this great truth even amid universal idolatry and a degrading polytheism. yet the bible recognizes in abram moral rather than intellectual greatness. he was distinguished for his faith, and a faith so exalted and pure that it was accounted unto him for righteousness. his faith in god was so profound that it was followed by unhesitating obedience to god's commands. he was ready to go wherever he was sent, instantly, without conditions or remonstrance. in obedience to the divine voice then, abram, after the death of his father terah, passed through the land of canaan unto sichem, or shechem, afterward a city of samaria. he then went still farther south, and pitched his tent on a mountain having bethel on the west and hai on the east, and there he built an altar unto the lord. after this it would appear that he proceeded still farther to the south, probably near the northern part of idumaea. wherever abram journeyed he found the canaanites--descendants of ham--petty tribes or nations, governed by kings no more powerful than himself. they are supposed in their invasions to have conquered the aboriginal inhabitants, whose remote origin is veiled in impenetrable obscurity, but who retained some principles of the primitive religion. it is even possible that melchizedek, the unconquered king of salem, who blessed abram, belonged to those original people who were of semitic origin. nevertheless the canaanites, or hametic tribes, were at this time the dominant inhabitants. of these tribes or nations the sidonians, or phoenicians, were the most powerful. next to them, according to ewald, "were three nations living toward the south,--the hittites, the jebusites, and the amorites; then two in the most northerly country conquered by israel,--the girgashites and the hivites; then four in phoenicia; and lastly, the most northern of all, the well known kingdom of hamath on the orontes." the jebusites occupied the country around jerusalem; the amorites also dwelt in the mountainous regions, and were warlike and savage, like the ancient highlanders of scotland. they entrenched themselves in strong castles. the hittites, or children of heth, were on the contrary peaceful, having no fortified cities, but dwelling in the valleys, and living in well-ordered communities. the hivites dwelt in the middle of the country, and were also peaceful, having reached a considerable civilization, and being in the possession of the most flourishing inland cities. the philistines entered the land at a period subsequent to the other canaanites, probably after abram, coming it is supposed from crete. it would appear that abram was not molested by these various petty canaanitish nations, that he was hospitably received by them, that he had pleasant relations with them, and even entered into their battles as an ally or protector. nor did abram seek to conquer territory. powerful as he was, he was still a pilgrim and a wanderer, journeying with his servants and flocks wherever the lord called him; and hence he excited no jealousy and provoked no hostilities. he had not long been settled quietly with his flocks and herds before a famine arose in the land, and he was forced to seek subsistence in egypt, then governed by the shepherd kings called hyksos, who had driven the proud native monarch reigning at memphis to the southern part of the kingdom, in the vicinity of thebes. abram was well received at the court of the pharaohs, until he was detected in a falsehood in regard to his wife, whom he passed as his sister. he was then sent away with all that he had, together with his nephew lot. returning to the land of canaan, abram came to the place where he had before pitched his tent, between bethel and hai, unto the altar which he had some time before erected, and called upon the name of the lord. but the land was not rich enough to support the flocks and herds of both abram and lot, and there arose a strife between their respective herdsmen; so the patriarch and his nephew separated, lot choosing for his residence the fertile plain of the jordan, and abram remaining in the land of canaan. it was while sojourning at bethel that the lord appeared again unto abram, and promised to him the whole land as a future possession of his posterity. after that he removed his tent to the plain of mamre, near or in hebron, and again erected an altar to his god. here abram remained in true patriarchal dignity without further migrations, abounding in wealth and power, and able to rescue his nephew lot from the hands of chedorlaomer the king of elam, and from the other oriental monarchs who joined his forces, pursuing them even to damascus. for this signal act of heroism abram was blessed by melchizedek, in the name of their common lord the most high god. who was this prince of salem? was he an earthly potentate ruling an unconquered city of the aboriginal inhabitants; or was he a mysterious personage, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning nor end of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the son of god, an incarnation of the deity, to repeat the blessing which the patriarch had already received? the history of abram until his supreme trial seems principally to have been repeated covenants with god, and the promises held out of the future greatness of his descendants. the greatness of the israelitish nation, however, was not to be in political ascendancy, nor in great attainments in the arts and sciences, nor in cities and fortresses and chariots and horses, nor in that outward splendor which would attract the gaze of the world, and thus provoke conquests and political combinations and grand alliances and colonial settlements, by which the capital on zion's hill would become another rome, or tyre, or carthage, or athens, or alexandria,--but quite another kind of greatness. it was to be moral and spiritual rather than material or intellectual, the centre of a new religious life, from which theistic doctrines were to go forth and spread for the healing of the nations,--all to culminate, when the proper time should come, in the mission of jesus christ, and in his teachings as narrated and propagated by his disciples. this was the grand destiny of the hebrew race; and for the fulfilment of this end they were located in a favored country, separated from other nations by mountains, deserts, and seas, and yet capable by cultivation of sustaining a great population, while they were governed by a polity tending to keep them a distinct, isolated, and peculiar people. to the descendants of ham and japhet were given cities, political power, material civilization; but in the tents of shem religion was to dwell. "from first to last," says geikie, "the intellect of the hebrew dwelt supremely on the matters of his faith. the triumphs of the pencil or the chisel he left with contemptuous indifference to egypt, or assyria, or greece. nor had the jew any such interest in religious philosophy as has marked other people. the aryan nations, both east and west, might throw themselves with ardor into those high questions of metaphysics, but he contented himself with the utterances of revelation. the world may have inherited no advances in political science from the hebrew, no great epic, no school of architecture, no high lessons in philosophy, no wide extension of human thought or knowledge in any secular direction; but he has given it his religion. to other races we owe the splendid inheritance of modern civilization and secular culture, but the religious education of mankind has been the gift of the jew alone." for this end abram was called to the land of canaan. from this point of view alone we see the blessing and the promise which were given to him. in this light chiefly he became a great benefactor. he gave a religion to the world; at least he established its fundamental principle,--the worship of the only true god. "if we were asked," says max müller, "how it was that abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the divinity, as he has revealed himself to all mankind, but passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the one god, we are content to answer that it was by a _special divine revelation_." [ ] [footnote : chips from a german workshop, vol. i. p. .] if the greatness of the jewish race was spiritual rather than temporal, so the real greatness of abraham was in his faith. faith is a sentiment or a principle not easily defined. but be it intuition, or induction, or deduction,--supported by reason, or without reason,--whatever it is, we know what it means. the faith of abraham, which saint paul so urgently commends, the same in substance as his own faith in jesus christ, stands out in history as so bright and perfect that it is represented as the foundation of religion itself, without which it is impossible to please god, and with which one is assured of divine favor, with its attendant blessings. if i were to analyze it, i should say that it is a perfect trust in god, allied with obedience to his commands. with this sentiment as the supreme rule of life, abraham is always prepared to go wherever the way is indicated. he has no doubts, no questionings, no scepticism. he simply adores the lord almighty, as the object of his supreme worship, and is ready to obey his commands, whether he can comprehend the reason of them or not. he needs no arguments to confirm his trust or stimulate his obedience. and this is faith,--an ultimate principle that no reasonings can shake or strengthen. this faith, so sublime and elevated, needs no confirmation, and is not made more intelligent by any definitions. if the _cogito, ergo sum_, is an elemental and ultimate principle of philosophy, so the faith of abraham is the fundamental basis of all religion, which is weakened rather than strengthened by attempts to define it. all definitions of an ultimate principle are vain, since everybody understands what is meant by it. no truly immortal man, no great benefactor, can go through life without trials and temptations, either to test his faith or to establish his integrity. even jesus christ himself was subjected for forty days to the snares of the devil. abram was no exception to this moral discipline. he had two great trials to pass through before he could earn the title of "father of the faithful,"--first, in reference to the promise that he should have legitimate children; and secondly, in reference to the sacrifice of isaac. as to the first, it seemed impossible that abram should have issue through his wife sarah, she being ninety years of age, and he ninety-nine or one hundred. the very idea of so strange a thing caused sarah to laugh incredulously, and it is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of genesis that abram also fell on his face and laughed, saying in his heart, "shall a son be born unto him that is one hundred years old?" evidently he at first received the promise with some incredulity. he could leave ur of the chaldees by divine command,--this was an act of obedience; but he did not fully believe in what seemed to be against natural law, which would be a sort of faith without evidence, blind, against reason. he requires some sign from god. "whereby," said he, "shall i _know_ that i shall inherit it,"--that is canaan,--"and that my seed shall be in number as the stars of heaven?" then followed the renewal of the covenant; and, according to the frequent custom of the times, when covenants were made between individual men, abram took a new name: "and god talked with him, saying, as for me, behold my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. neither shall thy name be any more abram [father of elevation] but thy name shall be abraham [father of a multitude], for a father of many nations have i made thee." we observe that the covenant was repeatedly renewed; in connection with which was the rite of circumcision, which abraham and his posterity, and even his servants, were required scrupulously to observe, and which it would appear he unreluctantly did observe as an important condition of the covenant. why this rite was so imperatively commanded we do not know, neither can we understand why it was so indissolubly connected with the covenant between god and abraham. we only know that it was piously kept, not only by abraham himself, but by his descendants from generation to generation, and became one of the distinctive marks and peculiarities of the jewish nation,--the sign of the promise that in abraham all the families of the earth should be blessed,--a promise fulfilled even in the patriarchal monotheism of arabia, the distant tribes of which, under mohammed, accepted the one supreme god. a still more serious test of the faith of abraham was the sacrifice of isaac, on whose life all his hopes naturally rested. we are told that god "tempted," or tested, the obedient faith of abraham, by suggesting to him that it was his duty to sacrifice that only son as a burnt-offering, to prove how utterly he trusted the lord's promise; for if isaac were cut off, where was another legitimate heir to be found? abraham was then one hundred and twenty years old, and his wife was one hundred and ten. moreover, on principles of reason why should such a sacrifice be demanded? it was not only apparently against reason, but against nature, against every sacred instinct, against humanity, even an act of cruelty,--yea, more, a crime, since it was homicide, without any seeming necessity. besides, everybody has a right to his own life, unless he has forfeited it by crime against society. isaac was a gentle, harmless, interesting youth of twenty, and what right, by any human standard, had abraham to take his life? it is true that by patriarchal customs and laws isaac belonged to abraham as much as if he were a slave or an animal. he had the oriental right to do with his son as he pleased. the head of a family had not only absolute control over wife and children, but the power of life and death. and this absolute power was not exercised alone by semitic races, but also by the aryan in their original settlements, in greece and italy, as well as in northern india. all the early institutions of society recognized this paternal right. hence the moral sense of abraham was not apparently shocked at the command of god, since his son was his absolute property. even isaac made no resistance, since he knew that abraham had a right to his life. moreover, we should remember that sacrifices to all objects of worship formed the basis of all the religious rites of the ancient world, in all periods of its history. human sacrifices were offered in india at the very period when abraham was a wanderer in palestine; and though human nature ultimately revolted from this cruelty, the sacrifice of substitute-animals continued from generation to generation as oblations to the gods, and is still continued by brahminical priests. in china, in egypt, in assyria, in greece, no religious rites were perfected without sacrifices. even in the mosaic ritual, sacrifices by the priests formed no inconsiderable part of worship. not until the time of isaiah was it said that god took no delight in burnt offerings,--that the real sacrifices which he requires are a broken and a contrite heart. nor were the jews finally emancipated from sacrificial rites until christ himself made his own body an offering for the sins of the world, and in god's providence the romans destroyed their temple and scattered their nation. in antiquity there was no objective worship of the deity without sacrificial rites, and when these were omitted or despised there was atheism,--as in the case of buddha, who taught morals rather than religion. perhaps the oldest and most prevalent religious idea of antiquity was the necessity of propitiatory sacrifice,--generally of animals, though in remotest ages the offering of the fruits of the earth.[ ] [footnote : dr. trumbull has made a learned and ingenious argument in his "blood covenant" to show that sacrifices were not to propitiate the deity, but to bring about a closer spiritual union between the soul and god; that the blood covenant was a covenant of friendship and love among all primitive peoples.] the inquiry might here arise, whether in our times anything would justify a man in committing a homicide on an innocent person. would he not be called a fanatic? if so, we may infer that morality--the proper conduct of men as regards one another in social relations--is better understood among us than it was among the patriarchs four thousand years ago; and hence, that as nations advance in civilization they have a more enlightened sense of duty, and practically a higher morality. men in patriarchal times may have committed what we regard as crimes, while their ordinary lives were more virtuous than ours. and if so, should we not be lenient to immoralities and crimes committed in darker ages, if the ordinary current of men's lives was lofty and religious? on this principle we should be slow to denounce christian people who formerly held slaves without remorse, when this sin did not shock the age in which they lived, and was not discrepant with prevailing ideas as to right and wrong. it is clear that in patriarchal times men had, according to universally accepted ideas, the power of life and death over their families, which it would be absurd and wicked to claim in our day, with our increased light as to moral distinctions. hence, on the command of god to slay his son, abraham had no scruples on the ground of morality; that is, he did not feel that it was wrong to take his son's life if god commanded him to do so, any more than it would be wrong, if required, to slay a slave or an animal, since both were alike his property. had he entertained more enlightened views as to the sacredness of life, he might have felt differently. with his views, god's command did not clash with his conscience. still, the sacrifice of isaac was a terrible shock to abraham's paternal affection. the anguish of his soul was none the less, whether he had the right of life and death or not. he was required to part with the dearest thing he had on earth, in whom was bound up his earthly happiness. what had he to live for, but isaac? he doubtless loved this child of his old age with exceeding tenderness, devotion, and intensity; and what was perhaps still more weighty, in that day of polygamous households, than mere paternal affection, with isaac were identified all the hopes and promises which had been held out to abraham by god himself of becoming the father of a mighty and favored race. his affection as a father was strained to its utmost tension, but yet more was his faith in being the progenitor of offspring that should inherit the land of canaan. nevertheless, at god's command he was willing to make the sacrifice, "accounting that god is able to raise up, even from the dead." was there ever such a supreme act of obedience in the history of our race? has there ever been from his time to ours such a transcendent manifestation of faith? by reason abraham saw the foundation of his hopes utterly swept away; and yet his faith towers above reason, and he feels that the divine promises in some way will be fulfilled. did any man of genius ever conceive such an illustration of blended piety and obedience? has dramatic poetry ever created such a display of conflicting emotions? is it possible for a human being to transcend so mighty a sacrifice, and all by the power of faith? let those philosophers and theologians who aspire to define faith, and vainly try to reconcile it with reason, learn modesty and wisdom from the lesson of abraham, who is its great exponent, and be content with the definition of paul, himself, that it is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen;" that reason was in abraham's case subordinate to a loftier and grander principle,--even a firm conviction, which nothing could shake, of the accomplishment of an end against all probabilities and mortal calculations, resting solely on a divine promise. another remarkable thing about that memorable sacrifice is, that abraham does not expostulate or hesitate, but calmly and resolutely prepares for the slaughter of the innocent and unresisting victim, suppressing all the while his feelings as a father in obedience and love to the sovereign of heaven and earth, whose will is his supreme law. "and abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon isaac his son," who was compelled as it were to bear his own cross. and he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and isaac said, "behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" yet suffered himself to be bound by his father on the altar. and abraham then stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. at this supreme moment of his trial, he heard the angel of the lord calling upon him out of heaven and saying, "abraham! abraham! lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now i know that thou fearest god, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.... and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering instead of his son. and the angel of the lord called unto abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself have i sworn, saith the lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing i will bless thee, and in multiplying i will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand upon the seashore, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." there are no more recorded promises to abraham, no more trials of his faith. his righteousness was established, and he was justified before god. his subsequent life was that of peace, prosperity, and exaltation. he lives to the end in transcendent repose with his family and vast possessions. his only remaining solicitude is for a suitable wife for isaac, concerning whom there is nothing remarkable in gifts or fortunes, but who maintains the faith of his father, and lives like him in patriarchal dignity and opulence. the great interest we feel in abraham is as "the father of the faithful," as a model of that exalted sentiment which is best defined and interpreted by his own trials and experiences; and hence i shall not dwell on the well known incidents of his life outside the varied calls and promises by which he became the most favored man in human annals. it was his faith which made him immortal, and with which his name is forever associated. it is his religious faith looming up, after four thousand years, for our admiration and veneration which is the true subject of our meditation. this, i think, is distinct from our ordinary conception of faith, such as a belief in the operation of natural laws, in the return of the seasons, in the rewards of virtue, in the assurance of prosperity with due regard to the conditions of success. faith in a friend, in a nation's future, in the triumphs of a good cause, in our own energies and resources _is_, i grant, necessarily connected with reason, with wide observation and experience, with induction, with laws of nature and of mind. but religious faith is supreme trust in an unseen god and supreme obedience to his commands, without any other exercise of reason than the intuitive conviction that what he orders is right because he orders it, whether we can fathom his wisdom or not. "canst thou by searching find out him?" yet notwithstanding the exalted faith of abraham, by which all religious faith is tested, an eternal pattern and example for our reverence and imitation, the grand old man deceived both pharaoh and abimelech, and if he did not tell positive lies, he uttered only half truths, for sarah was a half sister; and thus he put expediency and policy above moral rectitude,--to be palliated indeed in his case by the desire to preserve his wife from pollution. yet this is the only blot on his otherwise reproachless character, marked by so many noble traits that he may be regarded as almost perfect. his righteousness was as memorable as his faith, living in the fear of god. how noble was his disinterestedness in giving to lot the choice of lands for his family and his flocks and his cattle! how brave was he in rescuing his kinsman from the hands of conquering kings! how lofty in refusing any remuneration for his services! how fervent were his intercessions with the almighty for the preservation of the cities of the plain! how hospitable his mode of life, as when he entertained angels unawares! how kind he was to hagar when she had incurred the jealousy of sarah! how serene and dignified and generous he was, the model of courtesy and kindness! with abraham we associate the supremest happiness which an old man can attain unto and enjoy. he was prosperous, rich, powerful, and favored in every way; but the chief source of his happiness was the superb consciousness that he was to be the progenitor of a mighty and numerous progeny, through whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. how far his faith was connected with temporal prosperity we cannot tell. prosperity seems to have been the blessing of the old testament, as adversity was the blessing of the new. but he was certain of this,--that his descendants would possess ultimately the land of canaan, and would be as numerous as the stars of heaven. he was certain that in some mysterious way there would come from his race something that would be a blessing to mankind. was it revealed to his exultant soul what this blessing should be? did this old patriarch cast a prophetic eye beyond the ages, and see that the promise made to him was spiritual rather than material, pertaining to the final triumph of truth and righteousness?--that the unity of god, which he taught to isaac and perhaps to ishmael, was to be upheld by his race alone among prevailing idolatries, until the saviour should come to reveal a new dispensation and finally draw all men unto him? did abraham fully realize what a magnificent nation the israelites should become,--not merely the rulers of western asia under david and solomon, but that even after their final dispersion they should furnish ministers to kings, scholars to universities, and dictators to legislative halls,--an unconquerable race, powerful even after the vicissitudes and humiliations of four thousand years? did he realize fully that from his descendants should arise the religious teachers of mankind,--not only the prophets and sages of the old testament, but the apostles and martyrs of the new,--planting in every land the seeds of the everlasting gospel, which should finally uproot all brahminical self-expiations, all buddhistic reveries, all the speculations of greek philosophers, all the countless forms of idolatry, polytheism, pantheism, and pharisaism on this earth, until every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that jesus christ is lord, to the glory of god the father? yet such were the boons granted to abraham, as the reward of faith and obedience to the one true god,--the vital principle without which religion dies into superstition, with which his descendants were inspired not only to nationality and civil coherence, but to the highest and noblest teachings the world has received from any people, and by which his name is forever linked with the spiritual progress and happiness of mankind. joseph. israel in egypt. no one in his senses would dream of adding anything to the story of joseph, as narrated in genesis, whether it came from the pen of moses or from some subsequent writer. it is a masterpiece of historical composition, unequalled in any literature sacred or profane, in ancient or modern times, for its simplicity, its pathos, its dramatic power, and its sustained interest. nor shall i attempt to paraphrase or re-tell it, save by way of annotation and illustration of subjects connected with it, having reference to the subsequent development of the jewish nation and character. joseph, the great-grandson of abraham, was born at haran in mesopotamia, probably during the xviii. century b.c., when his father jacob was in the service of laban the syrian. there was nothing remarkable in his career until he was sold as a slave by his unnatural and jealous brothers. he was the favorite son of the patriarch jacob, by his beloved rachel, being the youngest, except benjamin, of a large family of twelve sons,--a beautiful and promising youth, with qualities which peculiarly called out the paternal affections. in the inordinate love and partiality of jacob for this youth he gave to him, by way of distinction, a decorated tunic, such as was worn only by the sons of princes. the half-brothers of joseph were filled with envy in view of this unwise step on the part of their common father,--a proceeding difficult to be reconciled with his politic and crafty nature; and their envy ripened into hostility when joseph, with the frankness of youth, narrated his dreams, which signified his future pre-eminence and the humiliation of his brothers. nor were his dreams altogether pleasing to his father, who rebuked him with this indignant outburst of feeling: "shall i and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee on the earth?" but while the father pondered, the brothers were consumed with hatred, for envy is one of the most powerful passions that move the human soul, and is malignant in its developments. strange to say, it is most common in large families and among those who pass for friends. we do not envy prosperous enemies with the virulence we feel for prosperous relatives, who theoretically are our equals. nor does envy cease until inequality has become so great as to make rivalry preposterous: a subject does not envy his king, or his generally acknowledged superior. envy may even give place to respect and deference when the object of it has achieved fame and conceded power. relatives who begin with jealousy sometimes end as worshippers, but not until extraordinary merit, vast wealth, or overtopping influence are universally conceded. conceive of napoleon's brothers envying the great emperor, or webster's the great statesman, or grant's the great general, although the passion may have lurked in the bosoms of political rivals and military chieftains. but one thing certainly extinguishes envy; and that is death. hence the envy of joseph's brothers, after they had sold him to a caravan of ishmaelite merchants, was succeeded by remorse and shame. their murmurings passed into lies. they could not tell their broken-hearted father of their crime; they never told him. jacob was led to suppose that his favorite son was devoured by wild beasts; they added deceit and cowardice to a depraved heartlessness, and nearly brought down the gray hairs of their father to the grave. no subsequent humiliation or punishment could be too severe for such wickedness. although they were destined to become the heads of powerful tribes, even of the chosen people of god, these men have incurred the condemnation of all ages. but judah and reuben do not come in for unlimited censure, since these sons of leah sought to save their brother from a violent death; and subsequently in egypt judah looms up as a magnanimous character, whom we admire almost as much as we do joseph himself. what can be more eloquent than his defence of benjamin, and his appeal to what seemed to him to be an egyptian potentate! the sale of joseph as a slave is one of the most signal instances of the providence of god working by natural laws recorded in all history,--more marked even than the elevation of esther and mordecai. in it we see permission of evil and its counteraction,--its conversion into good; victory over evil, over conspiracy, treachery, and murderous intent. and so marked is this lesson of a superintending providence over all human action, that a wise and good man can see wars and revolutions and revolting crimes with almost philosophical complacency, knowing that out of destruction proceeds creation; that the wrath of man is always overruled; that the love of god is the brightest and clearest and most consoling thing in the universe. we cannot interpret history without the recognition of this fundamental truth. we cannot be unmoved amid the prevalence of evil without this feeling, that god is more powerful than all the combined forces of his enemies both on earth and in hell; and that no matter what the evil is, it will surely be made to praise him who sitteth in the heavens. this is a sublime revelation of the omnipotence and benevolence of a personal god, of his constant oversight of the world which he has made. the protection and elevation of joseph, seemingly a natural event in view of his genius and character, is in some respects a type of that great sacrifice by which a sinful world has been redeemed. little did the jews suspect when they crucified jesus that he would arise from his tomb and overturn the idolatries of nations, and found a religion which should go on from conquering to conquer. little did the gifted burke see in the atrocities of the french revolution the overturning of a system of injustices which for centuries had cried to heaven for vengeance. still less did the proud and conservative citizens of new england recognize in the cruelties of southern slaveholders a crime which would provoke one of the bloodiest wars of modern times, and lead to the constitutional and political equality of the whites and blacks. evil appeared to triumph, but ended in the humiliation of millions and the enfranchisement of humanity, when the cause of the right seemed utterly hopeless. so let every one write upon all walls and houses and chambers, upon his conscience and his intellect, "the lord god omnipotent reigneth, and will bring good out of the severest tribulation!" and this great truth applies not to nations alone, but to the humblest individual, as he bows down in grief or wrath or penitence to unlooked-for chastisement,--like job upon his heap of ashes, or the broken-hearted mother when afflicted with disease or poverty, or the misconduct or death of children. there is no wisdom, no sound philosophy, no religion, and no happiness until this truth is recognized in all the changes and relations of life. the history of joseph in egypt in all his varied fortunes is, as i have said, a most memorable illustration of this cardinal and fundamental truth. a favorite of fortune, he is sold as a slave for less than twenty dollars of our money, and is brought to a foreign country,--a land oppressed by kings and priests, yet in which is a high civilization, in spite of social and political degradation. he is resold to a high official of the egyptian court, probably on account of his beauty and intelligence. he rises in the service of this official,--captain of the royal guard, or, as the critics tell us, superintendent of the police and prisons,--for he has extraordinary abilities and great integrity, character as well as natural genius, until he is unjustly accused of a meditated crime by a wicked woman. it is evident that potiphar, his master, only half believes in joseph's guilt, in spite of the protestations of his artful and profligate wife, since instead of summarily executing him, as ahasuerus did haman, he simply sends him to a mild and temporary imprisonment in the prison adjacent to his palace. here joseph wins the favor of his jailers and of his brother prisoners, as paul did nearly two thousand years later, and shows remarkable gifts, even to the interpretation of dreams,--a wonderful faculty to superstitious people like the egyptians, and in which he exceeds even their magicians and priests. the fame of his rare gifts, the most prized in egypt, reaches at last the ears of pharaoh, who is troubled by a singular dream which no one of his learned men can interpret. the hebrew slave interprets it, and is magnificently rewarded, becoming the prime minister of an absolute monarch. the king gives him his signet ring, emblem of power, and a collar or chain of gold, the emblem of the highest rank; clothes him in a vestment of fine linen, makes him ride in his second chariot, and appoints him ruler over the land, second only to the king in power and rank. and, further, he gives to him in marriage the daughter of the high priest of on, by which he becomes connected with the priesthood. joseph deserves all the honor and influence he receives, for he saves the kingdom from a great calamity. he predicts seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and points out the remedy. according to tradition, the monarch whom he served was apepi, the last shepherd king, during whose reign slaves were very numerous. the king himself had a vast number, as well as the nobles. foreign slaves were preferred to native ones, and wars were carried on for the chief purpose of capturing and selling captives. the sacred narrative says but little of the government of egypt by a hebrew slave, or of his abilities as a ruler,--virtually supreme in the land, since pharaoh delegates to him his own authority, persuaded both of his fidelity and his abilities. it is difficult to understand how joseph arose at a single bound to such dignity and power, under a proud and despotic king, and in the face of all the prejudices of the egyptian priesthood and nobility, except through the custom of all oriental despots to gratify the whim of the moment,--like the one who made his horse prime minister. but nothing short of transcendent talents and transcendent services can account for his retention of office and his marked success. joseph was then thirty years of age, having served potiphar ten years, and spent two or three years in prison. this all took place, as some now suppose, shortly after b.c., under the dynasty of the hyksos or shepherd kings, who had conquered the kingdom about three hundred years before. their capital was memphis, near the pyramids, which had been erected several centuries earlier by the older and native dynasties. rawlinson supposes that tanis on the delta was the seat of their court. conquered by the hyksos, the old kings retreated to their other capital, thebes, and were probably made tributary to the conquerors. it was by the earlier and later dynasties that the magnificent temples and palaces were built, whose ruins have so long been the wonder of travellers. the shepherd kings were warlike, and led their armies from scythia,--that land of roving and emigrant warriors,--or, as ewald thinks, from the land of canaan: aramaean chieftains, who sought the spoil of the richest monarchy in the world. hence there was more affinity between these people and the hebrews than between them and the ancient egyptians, who were the descendants of ham. abraham, when he visited egypt, found it ruled by these scythian or aramaean warriors, which accounts for the kind and generous treatment he received. it is not probable that a monarch of the ancient dynasties would have been so courteous to abraham, or would have elevated joseph to such an exalted rank, for they were jealous of strangers, and hated a pastoral people. it was only under the rule of the hyksos that the hebrews could have been tolerated and encouraged; for as soon as the shepherd kings were expelled by the pharaohs who reigned at thebes, as the moors were expelled from spain by the old castilian princes, it fared ill with the descendants of jacob, and they were bitterly and cruelly oppressed until the exodus under moses. prosperity probably led the hyksos conquerors to that fatal degeneracy which is unfavorable to war, while adversity strengthened the souls of the descendants of the ancient kings, and enabled them to subdue and drive away their invaders and conquerors. and yet the hyksos could not have ruled egypt had they not adapted themselves to the habits, religion, and prejudices of the people they subdued. the pharaoh who reigned at the time of joseph belonged like his predecessors to the sacerdotal caste, and worshipped the gods of the egyptians. but he was not jealous of the hebrews, and fully appreciated the genius of joseph. the wisdom of joseph as ruler of the land destined to a seven years' famine was marked by foresight as well as promptness in action. he personally visited the various provinces, advising the people to husband their harvests. but as all people are thoughtless and improvident, he himself gathered up and stored all the grain which could be spared, and in such vast quantities that he ceased to measure it. at last the predicted famine came, as the nile had not risen to its usual height; but the royal granaries were full, since all the surplus wheat--about a fifth of the annual produce--had been stored away; not purchased by joseph, but exacted as a tax. nor was this exaction unreasonable in view of the emergency. under the bourbon kings of france more than one half of the produce of the land was taken by the government and the feudal proprietors without compensation, and that not in provision for coming national trouble, but for the fattening of the royal purse. joseph exacted only a fifth as a sort of special tax, less than the present italian government exacts from all landowners. very soon the famine pressed upon the egyptian people, for they had no corn in reserve; the reserve was in the hands of the government. but this reserve joseph did not deal out gratuitously, as the roman government, under the emperors, dealt out food to the citizens. he made the people pay for their bread, and took their money and deposited it in the royal treasury. when after two years their money was all spent, it was necessary to resort to barter, and cattle were given in exchange for corn, by which means the king became possessed of all the personal property of his subjects. as famine pressed, the people next surrendered their land to avoid starvation,--all but the priests. pharaoh thus became absolute proprietor of the whole country; of money, cattle, and land,--an unprecedented surrender, which would have produced a wide-spread disaffection and revolt, had it not been that joseph, after the famine was past and the earth yielded its accustomed harvest, exacted only one-fifth of the produce of the land for the support of the government, which could not be regarded as oppressive. as the king thus became absolute proprietor of egypt by consent of the people, whom he had saved from starvation through the wisdom and energy of his prime minister, it is probable that later a new division of land took place, it being distributed among the people generally in small farms, for which they paid as rent a fifth of their produce. the gratitude of the people was marked: "thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the eyes of my lord, and we will be pharaoh's slaves." since the time of christ there have been two similar famines recorded,--one in the eleventh century, lasting, like joseph's, seven years; and the other in the twelfth century, of which the most distressing details are given, even to the extreme desperation of cannibalism. the same cause originated both,--the failure of the nile overflow. out of the sacred river came up for egypt its fat kine and its lean,--its blessings and its curses. the price exacted by joseph for the people's salvation made the king more absolute than before, since all were thus made dependent on the government. this absolute rule of the kings, however, was somewhat modified by ancient customs, and by the vast influence of the priesthood, to which the king himself belonged. the priests of egypt, under all the dynasties, formed the most powerful caste ever seen among the nations of the earth, if we except the brahmanical caste of india. at the head of it was the king himself, who was chief of the religion and of the state. he regulated the sacrifices of the temples, and had the peculiar right of offering them to the gods upon grand occasions. he superintended the feasts and festivals in honor of the deities. the priests enjoyed privileges which extended to their whole family. they were exempt from taxes, and possessed one-third of the landed property, which was entailed upon them, and of which they could not be deprived. among them there were great distinctions of rank, but the high-priests held the most honorable station; they were devoted to the service of the presiding deities of the cities in which they lived,--such as the worship of ammon at thebes, of phtha at memphis, and of ra at on, or heliopolis. one of the principal grades of the priesthood was that of prophets, who were particularly versed in all matters pertaining to religion. they presided over the temple and the sacred rites, and directed the management of the priestly revenues; they bore a distinguished part in solemn processions, carrying the holy vase. the priests not only regulated all spiritual matters and superintended the worship of the gods, but they were esteemed for their superior knowledge. they acquired an ascendency over the people by their supposed understanding of the sacred mysteries, only those priests being initiated in the higher secrets of religion who had proved themselves virtuous and discerning. "the honor of ascending from the less to the greater mysteries was as highly esteemed as it was difficult to obtain. the aspirant was required to go through the most severe ordeal, and show the greatest moral resignation." those who aspired to know the profoundest secrets, imposed upon themselves duties more severe than those required by any other class. it was seldom that the priests were objects of scandal; they were reserved and discreet, practising the strictest purification of body and mind. their life was so full of minute details that they rarely appeared in public. they thus obtained the sincere respect of the people, and ruled by the power of learning and sanctity as well as by privilege. they are most censured for concealing and withholding knowledge from the people. how deep and profound was the knowledge of the egyptian priests it is difficult to settle, since it was so carefully guarded. pythagoras made great efforts and sacrifices to be initiated in their higher mysteries; but these, it is thought, were withheld, since he was a foreigner. what he did learn, however, formed a foundation of what is most valuable in grecian philosophy. herodotus declares that he knew the mysteries, but should not divulge them. moses was skilled in all the knowledge of the sacred schools of egypt, and perhaps incorporated in his jurisprudence some of its most valued truths. possibly plato obtained from the egyptian priests his idea of the immortality of the soul, since this was one of their doctrines. it is even thought by wilkinson that they believed in the unity, the eternal existence, and invisible power of god, but there is no definite knowledge on that point. ammon, the concealed god, seems to have corresponded with the zeus of the greeks, as sovereign lord of heaven. the priests certainly taught a state of future rewards and punishments, for the great doctrine of metempsychosis is based upon it,--the transmission of the soul after death into the bodies of various animals as an expiation for sin. but however lofty were the esoteric doctrines which the more learned of the initiated believed, they were carefully concealed from the people, who were deemed too ignorant to understand them; and hence the immense difference between the priests and people, and the universal prevalence of degrading superstitions and the vile polytheism which everywhere existed,--even the worship of the powers of nature in those animals which were held sacred. among all the ancient nations, however complicated were their theogonies, and however degraded the forms of worship assumed,--of men, or animals, or plants,--it was heat or light (the sun as the visible promoter of blessings) which was regarded as the _animus mundi_, to be worshipped as the highest manifestation of divine power and goodness. the sun, among all the ancient polytheists, was worshipped under various names, and was one of the supremest deities. the priestly city of on, a sort of university town, was consecrated to the worship of ra, the sun. baal was the sun-god among the polytheistic canaanites, as bel was among the assyrians. the egyptian pantheon, except perhaps that of rome, was the most extensive among the ancient nations, and the most degraded, although that people were the most religious as well as superstitious of ancient pagans. the worship of the deity, in some form, was as devout as it was universal, however degrading were the rites; and no expense was spared in sacrifices to propitiate the favor of the peculiar deity who presided over each of the various cities, for almost every city had a different deity. notwithstanding the degrading fetichism--the lowest kind of nature-worship, including the worship of animals--which formed the basis of the egyptian religion, there were traces in it of pure monotheism, as in that of babylonia and of ancient india. the distinguishing peculiarity of the egyptian religion was the adoration of sacred animals as emblems of the gods, the chief of which were the bull, the cat, and the beetle. the gods of the egyptian pantheon were almost innumerable, since they represented every form and power of nature, and all the passions which move the human soul; but the most remarkable of the popular deities was osiris, who was regarded as the personification of good. isis, the consort of osiris, who with him presided at the judgment of the dead, was scarcely less venerated. set, or typhon, the brother of osiris, was the personification of evil. between osiris and set, therefore, was perpetual antagonism. this belief, divested of names and titles and technicalities and fables, seems to have resembled, in this respect, the religion of the persians,--the eternal conflict between good and evil. the esoteric doctrines of the priests initiated into the higher mysteries probably were the primeval truths, too abstract for the ignorant and sensual people to comprehend, and which were represented to them in visible forms that appealed to their senses, and which they worshipped with degrading rites. the oldest of all the rites of the ancient pagans was in the form of sacrifice, to propitiate the deity. abraham and jacob offered sacrifices, but without degrading ceremonies, and both abhorred the representation of the deity in the form of animals; but there was scarcely an animal or reptile in egypt that the people did not hold sacred, in fear or reverence. moral evil was represented by the serpent, showing that something was retained, though in a distorted form, of the primitive revelation. the most celebrated forms of animal worship were the bulls at memphis, sacred to osiris, or, as some think, to the sun; the cat to phtha, and the beetle to re. the origin of these superstitions cannot be traced; they are shrouded in impenetrable mystery. all that we know is that they existed from the remotest period of which we have cognizance, long before the pyramids were built. in spite, however, of the despotism of the kings, the privileges of the priests, and the degrading superstitions of the people, which introduced the most revolting form of religious worship ever seen on earth, there was in egypt a high civilization in comparison with that of other nations, dating back to a mythical period. more than two thousand years before the christian era, and six hundred before letters were introduced into greece, one thousand years before the trojan war, twelve hundred years before buddha, and fifteen hundred years before rome was founded, great architectural works existed in egypt, the remains of which still astonish travellers for their vastness and grandeur. in the time of joseph, before the eighteenth dynasty, there was in egypt an estimated population of seven millions, with twenty thousand cities. the civilization of that country four thousand years ago was as high as that of the chinese of the present day; and their literary and scientific accomplishments, their proficiency in the industrial and fine arts, remain to-day the wonder of history. but one thing is very remarkable,--that while there seems to have been no great progress for two thousand years, there was not any marked decline, thus indicating virtuous habits of life among the great body of the people from generation to generation. they were preserved from degeneracy by their simple habits and peaceful pursuits. though the armies of the king numbered four hundred thousand men, there were comparatively few wars, and these mostly of a defensive character. such was the egypt which joseph governed with signal ability for more than half a century, nearly four thousand years ago,--the mother of inventions, the pioneer in literature and science, the home of learned men, the teacher of nations, communicating a knowledge which was never lost, making the first great stride in the civilization of the world. no one knows whether this civilization was indigenous, or derived from unknown races, or the remains of a primitive revelation, since it cannot be traced beyond egypt itself, whose early inhabitants were more asiatic than african, and apparently allied with phoenicians and assyrians, but the civilization of egypt is too extensive a subject to be entered upon in this connection. i hope to treat it more at length in subsequent volumes. i can only say now that in some things the egyptians were never surpassed. their architecture, as seen in the pyramids and the ruins of temples, was marvellous; while their industrial arts would not be disdained even in the th century. over this fertile, favored, and civilized nation joseph reigned,--with delegated power indeed, but with power that was absolute,--when his starving brothers came to egypt to buy corn, for the famine extended probably over western asia. he is to be viewed, not as a prophet, or preacher, or reformer, or even a warrior like moses, but as a merely executive ruler. as the son-in-law of the high-priest of hieropolis, and delegated governor of the land, in the highest favor with the king, and himself a priest, it is probable that joseph was initiated into the esoteric wisdom of the priesthood. he was undoubtedly stern, resolute, and inflexible in his relations with men, as great executive chieftains necessarily must be, whatever their private sympathies and friendships. to all appearance he was a born egyptian, as he spoke the language of egypt, had adopted its habits, and was clothed with the insignia of egyptian power. so that when the sons of jacob, who during the years of famine in canaan had come down to egypt to buy corn, were ushered into his presence, and bowed down to him, as had been predicted, he was harsh to them, although at once recognizing them. "whence come ye?" he said roughly to them. they replied, "from the land of canaan to buy corn," "nay," continued he, "ye are spies." "not so, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come. we are all one man's sons; we are true men; thy servants are not spies." "nay," he said, "to see the nakedness of the land are ye come,"--for famine also prevailed in egypt, and its governor naturally would not wish its weakness to be known, for fear of a hostile invasion. they replied, "thy servants are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of canaan; the youngest is this day with our father, and one is not." but joseph still persisted that they were spies, and put them in prison for three days; after which he demanded as the condition of their release that the younger brother should also appear before him. "if ye be true men," said he, "let one of your brothers be bound in the house of your prison, while you carry corn for the famine of your house; but bring your youngest brother unto me, and ye shall not die." there was apparently no alternative but to perish, or to bring benjamin into egypt; and the sons of jacob were compelled to accept the condition. then their consciences were moved, and they saw a punishment for their crime in selling joseph fifteen years before. even reuben accused them, and in the very presence of joseph reminded them of their unnatural cruelty, not supposing that he understood them, since joseph had spoken through an interpreter. this was too much for the stern governor; he turned aside and wept, but speedily returned and took from them simeon and bound him before their eyes, and retained him for a surety. then he caused their sacks to be filled with corn, putting also their money therein, and gave them in addition food for their return journey. but as one of them on that journey opened his sack to give his ass provender, he espied the money; and they were all filled with fear at this unlooked-for incident. they made haste to reach their home and report the strange intelligence to their father, including the demand for the appearance of benjamin, which filled him with the most violent grief. "joseph is not," cried he, "and simeon is not, and ye will take benjamin away!" reuben here expostulated with frantic eloquence. jacob, however, persisted: "my son shall not go down with you; if mischief befall him, ye will bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave." meanwhile the famine pressed, as joseph knew full well it would, and jacob's family had eaten all their corn, and it became necessary to get a new supply from egypt. but judah refused to go without benjamin. "the man," said he, "did solemnly protest unto us, saying, ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you." then jacob upbraided judah for revealing the number and condition of his family; but judah excused himself on account of the searching cross-examination of the austere governor which no one could resist, and persisted in the absolute necessity of benjamin's appearance in egypt, unless they all should yield to starvation. moreover, he promised to be surety for his brother, that no harm should come to him. jacob at last saw the necessity of allowing benjamin to go, and reluctantly gave his consent; but in order to appease the terrible man of egypt he ordered his sons to take with them a present of spices and balm and almonds, luxuries then in great demand, and a double amount of money in their sacks to repay what they had received. then in pious resignation he said, "if i am bereaved of my children, i am bereaved," and hurried away his sons. in due time they all safely arrived in egypt, and with benjamin stood before joseph, and made obeisance, and then excused themselves to joseph's steward, because of the money which had been returned in their sacks. the steward encouraged them, and brought simeon to them, and led them into joseph's house, where a feast was prepared by his orders. with great difficulty joseph restrained his feelings at the sight of benjamin, who was his own full brother, but asked kindly about the father. at last his pent-up affections gave way, and he sought his chamber and wept there in secret. he then sat down to the banquet with his attendants at a separate table,--for the egyptian would not eat with foreigners,--still unrevealed to his brethren, but showed his partiality to benjamin by sending him a mess five times greater than to the rest. they marvelled greatly that they were seated at the table according to their seniority, and questioned among themselves how the austere governor could know the ages of strangers. not yet did joseph declare himself. his brothers were not yet sufficiently humbled; a severe trial was still in store for them. as before, he ordered his steward to fill the sacks as full as they could carry, with every man's money in them, for he would not take his father's money; and further ordered that his silver drinking-cup should be put in benjamin's sack. the brothers had scarcely left the city when they were overtaken by the steward on a charge of theft, and upbraided for stealing the silver cup. of course they felt their innocence and protested it; but it was of no avail, although they declared that if the cup should be found in any one of their sacks, he in whose sack it might be should die for the offence. the steward took them at their word, proceeded to search the sacks, and lo! what was their surprise and grief to see that the cup was found in benjamin's sack! they rent their clothes in utter despair, and returned to the city. joseph received them austerely, and declared that benjamin should be retained in egypt as his servant, or slave. then judah, forgetting in whose presence he was, cast aside all fear, and made the most eloquent and plaintive speech recorded in the bible, offering to remain in benjamin's place as a slave, for how could he face his father, who would surely die of grief at the loss of his favorite child. joseph could refrain his feelings no longer. he made every attendant leave his presence, and then declared himself to his brothers, whom god had sent to egypt to be the means of saving their lives. the brothers, conscience stricken and ashamed, completely humbled and afraid, could not answer his questions. then joseph tenderly, in their own language, begged them to come near, and explained to them that it was not they who sent him to egypt, but god, to work out a great deliverance to their posterity, and to be a father to pharaoh himself, inasmuch as the famine was to continue five years longer. "haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him that god hath made me lord of all egypt: come down unto me, and thou shalt dwell in the land of goshen near unto me, thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and all that thou hast, and there will i nourish thee. and ye shall tell my father of all my glory in egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste, and bring down my father hither." and he fell on benjamin's neck and wept, and kissed all his brothers. they then talked with him without further reserve. the news that joseph's brethren had come to egypt pleased pharaoh, so grateful was the king for the preservation of his kingdom. he could not do enough for such a benefactor. "say to thy brethren, lade your beasts and go, and take your father and your households, and come unto me; and i will give you the good of the land of egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land." and the king commanded them to take his wagons to transport their families and goods. joseph also gave to each one of them changes of raiment, and to benjamin three hundred pieces of silver and five changes of raiment, and ten asses laden with the good things of egypt for their father, and ten she-asses laden with corn. as they departed, he archly said unto them, "see that ye fall not out by the way!" and when they arrived at canaan, and told their father all that had happened and all that they had seen, he fainted. the news was too good to be true; he would not believe them. but when he saw the wagons his spirit revived, and he said, "it is enough. joseph my son is yet alive. i will go and see him before i die." the old man is again young in spirit. he is for going immediately; he could leap,--yea, fly. to egypt, then, israel with his sons and his cattle and all his wealth hastened. his sons are astonished at the providence of god, so clearly and impressively demonstrated on their behalf. the reconciliation of the family is complete. all envy is buried in the unbounded prosperity of joseph. he is now too great for envy. he is to be venerated as the instrument of god in saving his father's house and the land of egypt. they all now bow down to him, father and sons alike, and the only strife now is who shall render him the most honor. he is the pride and glory of his family, as he is of the land of egypt, and of the household of pharaoh. in the hospitality of the king, and his absence of jealousy of the nomadic people whom he settled in the most fertile of his provinces, we see additional confirmation of the fact that he was one of the shepherd kings. the pharaoh of joseph's time seems to have affiliated with the israelites as natural friends,--to assist him in case of war. all the souls that came into egypt with jacob were seventy in number, although some historians think there was a much larger number. rawlinson estimates it at two thousand, and dean payne smith at three thousand. jacob was one hundred and thirty years of age when he came to dwell in the land of goshen, and he lived seventeen years in egypt. when he died, joseph was about fifty years old, and was still in power. it was the dying wish of the old patriarch to be buried with his fathers, and he made joseph promise to carry his bones to the land of canaan and bury them in the sepulchre which abraham had bought,--even the cave of machpelah. before jacob died, joseph brought his two sons to him to receive his blessing,--manasseh and ephraim, born in egypt, whose grandfather was the high-priest of on, the city of the sun. as manasseh was the oldest, he placed him at the right hand of jacob, but the old man wittingly and designedly laid his right hand on ephraim, which displeased joseph. but jacob, without giving his reason, persisted. while he prophesied that manasseh should be great, ephraim he said should be greater,--verified in the fact that the tribe of ephraim was the largest of all the tribes, and the most powerful until the captivity. it was nearly as large as all the rest together, although in the time of moses the tribe of manasseh had become more numerous. we cannot penetrate the reason why ephraim the younger son was preferred to the older, any more than why jacob was preferred to esau. after jacob had blessed the sons of joseph, he called his other sons around his dying bed to predict the future of their descendants. reuben the oldest was told that he would not excel, because he had loved his father's concubine and committed a grievous sin. simeon and levi were the most active in seeking to compass the death of joseph, and a curse was sent upon them. judah was exalted above them all, for he had sought to save joseph, and was eloquent in pleading for benjamin,--the most magnanimous of the sons. so from him it was predicted that the sceptre should not depart from his house until shiloh should come,--the messiah, to whose appearance all the patriarchs looked. and all that jacob predicted about his sons to their remote descendants came to pass; but the highest blessing was accorded to joseph, as was realized in the future ascendency of ephraim. when jacob had made an end of his blessings and predictions he gathered up his feet into his bed and gave up the ghost, and joseph caused him to be embalmed, as was the custom in egypt. when the days of public mourning were over (seventy days), joseph obtained leave from pharaoh to absent himself from the kingdom and his government, to bury his father according to his wish. and he departed in great pomp, with chariots and horses, together with his brothers and a great number, and deposited the remains of jacob in the cave of the field of machpelah, where abraham himself was buried, and then returned to his duties in egypt. it is not mentioned in the scriptures how long joseph retained his power as prime minister of pharaoh, but probably until a new dynasty succeeded the throne,--the eighteenth as it is supposed, for we are told that a new king arose who knew not joseph. he lived to be one hundred and ten years of age, and when he died his body was embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus, and ultimately was carried to canaan and buried with his fathers, according to the oath or promise he exacted of his brothers. his last recorded words were a prediction that god would bring the children of israel out of egypt to the land which he sware unto abraham, isaac, and jacob. on his deathbed he becomes, like his father, a prophet. he had foretold his own future elevation when only a youth of seventeen, though only in the form of a dream, the full purport of which he did not comprehend; as an old man, about to die, he predicts the greatest blessing which could happen to his kindred,--their restoration to the land promised unto abraham. joseph is one of the most interesting characters of the bible, one of the most fortunate, and one of the most faultless. he resisted the most powerful temptations, and there is no recorded act which sullies his memory. although most of his life was spent among idolaters, and he married a pagan woman, he retained his allegiance to the god of his fathers. he ever felt that he was a stranger in a strange land, although its supreme governor, and looked to canaan as the future and beloved home of his family and race. he regarded his residence in egypt only as a means of preserving the lives of his kindred, and himself as an instrument to benefit both his family and the country which he ruled. his life was one of extraordinary usefulness. he had great executive talents, which he exercised for the good of others. though stern and even hard in his official duties, he had unquenchable natural affections. his heart went out to his old father, his brother benjamin, and to all his kindred with inexpressible tenderness. he was as free from guile as he was from false pride. in giving instructions to his brothers how they should appear before the king, and what they should say when questioned as to their occupations, he advised the utmost frankness,--to say that they were shepherds, although the occupation of a shepherd was an abomination to an egyptian. he had exceeding tact in confronting the prejudices of the king and the priesthood. he took no pains to conceal his birth and lineage in the most aristocratic country of the world. considering that he was only second in power and dignity to an absolute monarch, his life was unostentatious and his habits simple. if we seek a parallel to him among modern statesmen, he most resembles colbert as the minister of louis xiv.; or prince metternich, who in great simplicity ruled continental europe for a quarter of a century. nothing is said of his palaces, or pleasures, or wealth. he had not the austere and unbending pride of mordecai, whose career as an instrument of providence for the welfare of his countrymen was as remarkable as joseph's. he was more like daniel in his private life than any of those jews who have arisen to great power in foreign lands, though he had not daniel's exalted piety or prophetic gifts. he was faithful to the interests of his sovereign, and greatly increased the royal authority. he got possession of the whole property of the nation for the benefit of his master, but exacted only a fifth part of the produce of the land for the support of the government. he was a priest of a grossly polytheistic religion, but acknowledged only the one supreme god, whose instrument he felt himself to be. his services to the state were transcendent, but his supremest mission was to preserve the hebrew nation. the condition of the israelites in egypt after the death of joseph, and during the period of their sojourn, it is difficult to determine. there is a doubt among the critics as to the length of this sojourn,--the bible in several places asserting that it lasted four hundred and thirty years, which, if true, would bring the exodus to the end of the nineteenth dynasty. some suppose that the residence in egypt was only two hundred and fifteen years. the territory assigned to the israelites was a small one, and hence must have been densely populated, if, as it is reckoned, two millions of people left the country under the leadership of moses and aaron. it is supposed that the reigning sovereign at that time was menephtah, successor of rameses ii. it is, then, the great rameses, who was the king from whom moses fled,--the most distinguished of all the egyptian monarchs as warrior and builder of monuments. he was the second king of the eighteenth dynasty, and reigned in conjunction with his father seti for sixty years. among his principal works was the completion of the city of rameses (raamses, or tanis, or zoan), one of the principal cities of egypt, begun by his father and made a royal residence. he also, it appears from the monuments, built pithon and other important towns, by the forced labor of the israelites. rameses and pithon were called treasure-cities, the site of the latter having been lately discovered, to the east of tanis. they were located in the midst of a fertile country, now dreary and desolate, which was the object of great panegyric. an egyptian poet, quoted by dr. charles s. robinson, paints the vicinity of zoan, where pharaoh resided at the time of the exodus, as full of loveliness and fertility. "her fields are verdant with excellent herbage; her bowers bloom with garlands; her pools are prolific in fish; and in the ponds are ducks. each garden is perfumed with the smell of honey; the granaries are full of wheat and barley; vegetables and reeds and herbs are growing in the parks; flowers and nosegays are in the houses; lemons, citrons, and figs are in the orchards." such was the field of zoan in ancient times, near rameses, which the israelites had built without straw to make their bricks, and from which place they set out for the general rendezvous at succoth, under moses. it will be noted that if rameses, or tanis, was the residence of the court when moses made his demands on menephtah, it was in the midst of the settlements of the israelites, in the land of goshen, which the last of the shepherd kings had assigned to them. it is impossible to tell what advance in civilization was made by the israelites in consequence of their sojourn in egypt; but they must have learned many useful arts, and many principles of jurisprudence, and acquired a better knowledge of agriculture. they learned to be patient under oppression and wrong, to be frugal and industrious in their habits, and obedient to the voice of their leaders. but unfortunately they acquired a love of idolatrous worship, which they did not lose until their captivity in babylon. the golden calves of the wilderness were another form of the worship of the sacred bulls of memphis. they were easily led to worship the sun under the egyptian and canaanitish names. had the children of israel remained in the promised land, in the early part of their history, they would probably have perished by famine, or have been absorbed by their powerful canaanitish neighbors. in egypt they were well fed, rapidly increased in number, and became a nation to be feared even while in bondage. in the land of canaan they would have been only a pastoral or nomadic people, unable to defend themselves in war, and unacquainted with the use of military weapons. they might have been exterminated, without constant miracles and perpetual supernatural aid,--which is not the order of providence. in egypt, it is true, the israelites lost their political independence; but even under slavery there is much to be learned from civilized masters. how rapid and marvellous the progress of the african races in the southern states in their two hundred years of bondage! when before in the history of the world has there been such a progress among mere barbarians, with fetichism for their native religion? races have advanced in every element of civilization, and in those virtues which give permanent strength to character, under all the benumbing and degrading influences of slavery, while nations with wealth, freedom, and prosperity have declined and perished. the slavery of the israelites in egypt may have been a blessing in disguise, from which they emerged when they were able to take care of themselves. moses led them out of bondage; but moses also incorporated in his institutions the "wisdom of the egyptians." he was indeed inspired to declare certain fundamental truths, but he also taught the lessons of experience which a great nation had acquired by two thousand years of prosperity. who can tell, who can measure, the civilization which the israelites must have carried out of egypt, with the wealth of which they despoiled their masters? where else at that period could they have found such teachers? the persians at that time were shepherds like themselves in canaan, the assyrians were hunters, and the greeks had no historical existence. only the discipline of forty years in the wilderness, under moses, was necessary to make them a nation of conquerors, for they had already learned the arts of agriculture, and knew how to protect themselves in walled cities. a nomadic people were they no longer, as in the time of jacob, but small farmers, who had learned to irrigate their barren hills and till their fertile valleys; and they became a powerful though peaceful nation, unconquered by invaders for a thousand years, and unconquerable for all time in their traditions, habits, and mental characteristics. from one man--the patriarch jacob--did this great nation rise, and did not lose its national unity and independence until from the tribe of judah a deliverer arose who redeemed the human race. surely, how favored was joseph, in being the instrument under providence of preserving this nation in its infancy, and placing its people in a rich and fertile country where they could grow and multiply, and learn principles of civilization which would make them a permanent power in the progress of humanity! moses. - b.c. [usher]. hebrew jurisprudence. among the great actors in the world's history must surely be presented the man who gave the first recorded impulse to civilization, and who is the most august character of antiquity. i think moses and his legislation should be considered from the standpoint of the scriptures rather than from that of science and criticism. it is very true that the legislation and ritualism we have been accustomed to ascribe to moses are thought by many great modern critics, including ewald, to be the work of writers whose names are unknown, in the time of hezekiah and even later, as jewish literature was developed. but i remain unconvinced by the modern theories, plausible as they are, and weighty as is their authority; and hence i have presented the greatest man in the history of the jews as our fathers regarded him, and as the bible represents him. nor is there any subject which bears more directly on the elemental principles of theological belief and practical morality, or is more closely connected with the progress of modern religious and social thought, than a consideration of the mosaic writings. whether as a "man of god," or as a meditative sage, or as a sacred historian, or as an inspired prophet, or as an heroic liberator and leader of a favored nation, or as a profound and original legislator, moses alike stands out as a wonderful man, not to the eyes of jews merely, but to all enlightened nations and ages. he was evidently raised up for a remarkable and exalted mission,--not only to deliver a debased and superstitious people from bondage, but to impress his mind and character upon them and upon all other nations, and to link his name with the progress of the human race. he arose at a great crisis, when a new dynasty reigned in egypt,--not friendly, as the preceding one had been, to the children of israel; but a dynasty which had expelled the shepherd kings, and looked with fear and jealousy upon this alien race, already powerful, in sympathy with the old régime, located in the most fertile sections of the land, and acquainted not merely with agriculture, but with the arts of the egyptians,--a population of over two millions of souls; so that the reigning monarch, probably a son of the sesostris of the greeks, bitterly exclaimed to his courtiers, "the children of israel are more and mightier than we!" and the consequence of this jealousy was a persecution based on the elemental principle of all persecution,--that of fear blended with envy, carried out with remorseless severity; for in case of war (and the new dynasty scarcely felt secure on the throne) it was feared the hebrews might side with enemies. so the new pharaoh (rameses ii., as is thought by rawlinson) attempted to crush their spirit by hard toils and unjust exactions. and as they still continued to multiply, there came forth the dreadful edict that every male child of the hebrews should be destroyed as soon as born. it was then that moses, descended from a family of the tribe of levi, was born,-- b.c., according to usher. i need not relate in detail the beautiful story of his concealment for three months by his mother jochebed, his exposure in a basket of papyrus on the banks of the nile, his rescue by the daughter of pharaoh, at that time regent of the kingdom in the absence of her father,--or, as wilberforce thinks, the wife of the king of lower egypt,--his adoption by this powerful princess, his education in the royal household among those learned priests to whose caste even the king belonged. moses himself, a great master of historical composition, has in six verses told that story, with singular pathos and beauty; yet he directly relates nothing further of his life until, at the age of forty, he killed an egyptian overseer who was smiting one of his oppressed brethren, and buried him in the sands,--thereby showing that he was indignant at injustice, or clung in his heart to his race of slaves. but what a history might have been written of those forty years of luxury, study, power, and honor!--since josephus speaks of his successful and brilliant exploits as a conqueror of the ethiopians. what a career did the son of the hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of memphis, sitting at the monarch's table, fêted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes of a supreme god,--the esoteric wisdom from which even a pythagoras drew his inspiration; possibly tasting, with generals and nobles, all the pleasures of sin. but whether in pleasure or honor, the soul of moses, fortified by the maternal instructions of his early days,--for his mother was doubtless a good as well as a brave woman,--soars beyond his circumstances, and he seeks to avenge the wrongs of his brethren. not wisely, however, for he slays a government official, and is forced to flee,--a necessity which we can hardly comprehend in view of his rank and power, unless it revealed all at once to the astonished king his hebrew birth, and his dangerous sympathies with an oppressed people, the act showing that he may have sought, in his earnest soul, to break their intolerable bonds. certainly moses aspires prematurely to be a deliverer. he is not yet prepared for such a mighty task. he is too impulsive and inexperienced. it must need be that he pass through a period of preparation, learn patience, mature his knowledge, and gain moral force, which preparation could be best made in severe contemplation; for it is in retirement and study that great men forge the weapons which demolish principalities and powers, and master those _principia_ which are the foundation of thrones and empires. so he retires to the deserts of midian, among a scattered pastoral people, on the eastern shore of the red sea, and is received by jethro, a priest of midian, whose flocks he tends, and whose daughter he marries. the land of midian, to which he fled, is not fertile like egypt, nor rich in unnumbered monuments of pride and splendor, with pyramids for mausoleums, and colossal statues to perpetuate kingly memories. it is not scented with flowers and variegated with landscapes of beauty and fertility, but is for the most part, with here and there a patch of verdure, a land of utter barrenness and dreariness, and, as hamilton paints it, "a great and terrible wilderness, where no soft features mitigated the unbroken horror, but dark and brown ridges, red peaks like pyramids of fire; no rounded hillocks or soft mountain curves, but monstrous and misshapen cliffs, rising tier above tier, and serrated for miles into rugged grandeur, and grooved by the winter torrents cutting into the veins of the fiery rock: a land dreary and desolate, yet sublime in its boldness and ruggedness,--a labyrinth of wild and blasted mountains, a terrific and howling desolation." it is here that moses seeks safety, and finds it in the home of a priest, where his affections may be cultivated, and where he may indulge in lofty speculations and commune with the elohim whom he adores; isolated yet social, active in body but more active in mind, still fresh in all the learning of the schools of egypt, and wise in all the experiences of forty years. and the result of his studies and inspirations was, it is supposed, the book of genesis, in which he narrates more important events, and reveals more lofty truths than all the historians of greece unfolded in their collective volumes,--a marvel of historic art, a model of composition, an immortal work of genius, the oldest and the greatest written history of which we have record. and surely what poetry, pathos, and eloquence, what simplicity and beauty, what rich and varied lessons of human experience, what treasures of moral wisdom, are revealed in that little book! how sublimely the poet-prophet narrates the misery of the fall, and the promised glories of the restoration! how concisely the historian compresses the incidents of patriarchal life, the rise of empires, the fall of cities, the certitudes of faith, of friendship, and of love! all that is vital in the history of thousands of years is condensed into a few chapters,--not dry and barren annals, but descriptions of character, and the unfolding of emotions and sensibilities, and insight into those principles of moral government which indicate a superintending power, creating faith in a world of sin, and consolation amid the wreck of matter. thus when forty more years are passed in study, in literary composition, in religious meditation, and active duties, in sight of grand and barren mountains, amid affections and simplicities,--years which must have familiarized him with every road and cattle-drive and sheep-track, every hill and peak, every wady and watercourse, every timber-belt and oasis in the sinaitic wilderness, through which his providentially trained military instincts were to safely conduct a vast multitude,--moses, still strong and laborious, is fitted for his exalted mission as a deliverer. and now he is directly called by the voice of god himself, amid the wonders of the burning bush,--him whom, thus far, he had, like abraham, adored as the elohim, the god almighty, but whom henceforth he recognizes as jehovah (jahveh) in his special relations to the jewish nation, rather than as the general deity who unites the attributes ascribed to him as the ruler of the universe. moses quakes before that awful voice out of the midst of the bush, which commissions him to deliver his brethren. he is no longer bold, impetuous, impatient, but timid and modest. long study and retirement from the busy haunts of men have made him self-distrustful. he replies to the great _i am_, "who am i, that _i_ should bring forth the children of israel out of egypt? behold, i am not eloquent; they will not believe me, nor hearken to my voice." in spite of the miracle of the rod, moses obeys reluctantly, and aaron, his elder brother, is appointed as his spokesman. armed with the mysterious wonder-working rod, at length moses and aaron, as representatives of the jewish people, appear in the presence of pharaoh, and in the name of jehovah request permission for israel to go and hold a feast in the wilderness. they do not demand emancipation or emigration, which would of course be denied. i cannot dwell on the haughty scepticism and obdurate hardness of the king--"who is jehovah, that i should obey _his_ voice?"--the renewed persecution of the hebrews, the successive plagues and calamities sent upon egypt, which the magicians could not explain, and the final extorted and unwilling consent of pharaoh to permit israel to worship the god of moses in the wilderness, lest greater evils should befall him than the destruction of the first-born throughout the land. the deliverance of a nation of slaves is at last, it would seem, miraculously effected; and then begins the third period of the life of moses, as the leader and governor of these superstitious, sensual, idolatrous, degraded slaves. then begin the real labors and trials of moses; for the people murmur, and are consumed with fears as soon as they have crossed the sea, and find themselves in the wilderness. and their unbelief and impatience are scarcely lessened by the tremendous miracle of the submersion of the pursuing host, and all successive miracles,--the mysterious manna, the pillar of cloud and of fire, the smitten rock at horeb, and the still more impressive and awful wonders of sinai. the guidance of the israelites during these forty years in the wilderness is marked by transcendent ability on the part of moses, and by the most disgraceful conduct on the part of the israelites. they are forgetful of mercies, ungrateful, rebellious, childish in their hankerings for a country where they had been more oppressed than spartan helots, idolatrous, and superstitious. they murmur for flesh to eat; they make golden calves to worship; they seek a new leader when moses is longer on the mount than they expect. when any new danger threatens they lay the blame on moses; they even foolishly regret that they had not died in egypt. obviously such a people were not fit for freedom, or even for the conquest of the promised land. they were as timid and cowardly as they were rebellious. even the picked men sent out to explore canaan, with the exception of caleb and joshua, reported nations of giants impossible to subdue. a new generation must arise, disciplined by forty years' experience, made hardy and strong by exposure and suffering. yet what nation, in the world's history, ever improved so much in forty years? what ruler ever did so much for a people in a single reign? this abject race of slaves in forty years was transformed into a nation of valiant warriors, made subject to law and familiar with the fundamental principles of civilization. what a marvellous change, effected by the genius and wisdom of one man, in communion with almighty power! but the distinguishing labor of moses during these forty years, by which he linked his name with all subsequent ages, and became the greatest benefactor of mind the world has seen until christ, was his system of jurisprudence. it is this which especially demands our notice, and hence will form the main subject of this lecture. in reviewing the mosaic legislation, we notice both those ordinances which are based on immutable truth for the rule of all nations to the end of time, and those prescribed for the peculiar situation and exigencies of the jews as a theocratic state, isolated from other nations. the moral code of moses, by far the most important and universally accepted, rests on the fundamental principles of theology and morality. how lofty, how impressive, how solemn this code! how it appeals at once to the consciousness of all minds in every age and nation, producing convictions that no sophistry can weaken, binding the conscience with irresistible and terrific bonds,--those immortal ten commandments, engraven on the two tables of stone, and preserved in the holy and innermost sanctuary of the jews, yet reappearing in all their literature, accepted and reaffirmed by christ, entering into the religious system of every nation that has received them, and forming the cardinal principles of all theological belief! yet it was by moses that these commandments came. he is the first, the favored man, commissioned by god to declare to the world, clearly and authoritatively, his supreme power and majesty, whom alone all nations and tribes and people are to worship to remotest generations. in it he fearfully exposes the sin of idolatry, to which all nations are prone,--the one sin which the almighty visits with such dreadful penalties, since this involves, and implies logically, rebellion against him, the supreme ruler of the universe, and disloyalty to him as a personal sovereign, in whatever form this idolatry may appear, whether in graven images of tutelary deities, or in the worship of nature (ever blind and indefinite), or in the exaltation of self, in the varied search for pleasure, ambition, or wealth, to which the debased soul bows down with grovelling instincts, and in the pursuit of which the soul forgets its higher destiny and its paramount obligations. moses is the first to expose with terrific force and solemn earnestness this universal tendency to the oblivion of the one god amid the temptations, the pleasures, and the glories of the world, and the certain displeasure of the universal sovereign which must follow, as seen in the fall of empires and the misery of individuals from his time to ours, the uniform doom of people and nations, whatever the special form of idolatry, whenever it reaches a peculiar fulness and development,--the ultimate law of all decline and ruin, from which there is no escape, "for the lord god is a jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." so sacred and awful is this controlling deity, that it is made a cardinal sin even to utter his name in vain, in levity or blasphemy. in order also to keep him before the minds of men, a day is especially appointed--one in seven--which it is the bounden duty as well as privilege of all generations to keep with peculiar sanctity,--a day of rest from labor as well as of adoration; an entirely new institution, which no pagan nation, and no other ancient nation, ever recognized. after thus laying solemn injunctions upon all men to render supreme allegiance to this personal god,--for we can find no better word, although matthew arnold calls it "the power which maketh for righteousness,"--moses presents the duties of men to each other, chiefly those which pertain to the abstaining from injuries they are most tempted to commit, extending to the innermost feelings of the heart, for "thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's;" thus covering, in a few sentences, the primal obligations of mankind to god and to society, afterward expanded by a greater teacher into the more comprehensive law of love, which is to bind together mortals on earth, as it binds together immortals in heaven. all christian nations have accepted these ten commandments, even mohammedan nations, as appealing to the universal conscience,--not a mere jewish code, but a primary law, susceptible of boundless obligation, never to be abrogated; a direct injunction of the almighty to the end of time. the ten commandments seem to be the foundation of the subsequent and more minute code which moses gave to the jews; and it is interesting to see how its great principles have entered, more or less, into the laws of christian nations from the decline of the roman empire, into the theodosian code, the laws of charlemagne, of ina, of alfred, and especially into the institutions of the puritans, and of all other sects and parties wherever the bible is studied and revered. they seem to be designed not merely for jews, but for gentiles also, since there is no escape from their obligation. they may seem severe in some of their applications, but never unjust; and as long as the world endures, the relations between man and man are to be settled on lofty moral grounds. an elevated morality is the professed aim of all enlightened lawgivers; and the prosperity of nations is built upon it, for it is righteousness which exalteth them. culture is desirable; but the welfare of nations is based on morals rather than on aesthetics. on this point moses, or even epictetus, is a greater authority than goethe. all the ordinances of moses tend to this end. they are the publication of natural religion,--that god is a rewarder of virtuous actions, and punishes wicked deeds. moses, from first to last, insists imperatively on the doctrine of personal responsibility to god, which doctrine is the logical sequence of belief in him as the moral governor of the world. and in enforcing this cardinal truth he is dogmatic and dictatorial, as a prophet and ambassador of the most high should be. it is a waste of time to use arguments in the teaching of the primal principles which appeal to consciousness; and i am not certain but that elaborate and metaphysical reasoning on the nature and attributes of god weakens rather than strengthens the belief in him, since he is a power made known by revelation, and received and accepted by the soul at once, if received at all. among the earliest noticeable corruptions of the church was the introduction of greek philosophy to harmonize and reconcile with it the truths of the gospel, which to a certain class ever have been, and ever will be, foolishness. the speculations and metaphysics of theologians, i verily believe, have done more harm than good,--from athanasius to jonathan edwards,--whenever they have brought the aid of finite reason to support the ultimate truths declared by an infinite and almighty mind. moses does not reason, nor speculate, nor refine; he affirms, and appeals to the law written on the heart,--to the consciousness of mankind. what he declares to be duties are not even to be discussed. they are to be obeyed with unhesitating obedience, since no discussion or argument can make them clearer or more imperative. the obligation to obey them is seen and felt at once, as soon as they are declared. what he says in regard to the relations of master and servant; to injuries inflicted on the body; to the respect due to parents; to the protection of the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate; to delicacy in the treatment of women; to unjust judgments; to bribery and corruption; to revenge, hatred, and covetousness; to falsehood and tale-bearing; to unchastity, theft, murder, and adultery,--can never be gainsaid, and would have been accepted by roman jurists as readily as by modern legislators; yea, they would not be disputed by savages, if they acknowledged a god at all. the elevated morality of the ethical code of moses is its most striking feature, since it appeals to the universal heart, and does not conflict with some of the ethical teachings of those great lights of the pagan world to whose consciousness god has been revealed. moses differs from them only in the completion and scope and elevation of his system, and in its freedom from the puerilities and superstitions which they blended with their truths, and from which he was emancipated by inspiration. brahma and confucius and socrates taught some great truths which moses would accept, but they taught errors likewise. he taught no errors, though he permitted some sins which in the beginning did not exist,--such, for instance, as polygamy. christ came not to destroy his law, but to fulfil it and complete it. in two things especially, how emphatic his teaching and how permanent his influence!--in respect to the observance of the sabbath and the relations of the sexes. to him, more than to any man in the world's history, do we owe the elevation of woman, and the sanctity and blessing of a day of rest. in the awful sacredness of the person, and in the regular resort to the sanctuary of god, we see his immortal authority and his permanent influence. the other laws which moses promulgated are more special and minute, and seem to be intended to preserve the jews from idolatry, the peculiar sin of the surrounding nations; and also, more directly, to keep alive the recognition of a theocratic government. thus the ceremonial or ritualistic law--an important part of the mosaic code--constantly points to jehovah as the king of the jews, as well as their supreme deity, for whose worship the rites and ceremonies are devised with great minuteness, to keep his _personality_ constantly before their minds. moreover, all their rites and ceremonies were typical and emblematical of the promised saviour who was to arise; in a more emphatic sense their king, and not merely their own messiah, but the redeemer of the whole race, who should reign finally as king of kings and lord of lords. and hence these rites and sacrifices, typical of him who should offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, are not supposed to be binding on other nations after the great sacrifice has been made, and the law of moses has been fulfilled by jesus and the new dispensation has been established. we see a complicated and imposing service, with psalms and hymns, and beautiful robes, and smoking altars,--all that could inspire awe and reverence. we behold a blazing tabernacle of gold and silver and precious woods and gorgeous tapestries, with inner and secret recesses to contain the ark and the tables of stone, the mysterious rod, the urn of manna, the book of the covenant, the golden throne over-canopied by cherubs with outstretched wings, and the mercy-seat for the shekinah who sat between the cherubim. the sacred and costly vessels, the candlesticks of pure and beaten gold, the lamps, the brazen sea, the embroidered vestments of the priests, the breastplate of precious stones, the golden chains, the emblematic rings, the ephods and mitres and girdles, the various altars for sacrifice, the burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, meat-offerings, and sin-offerings, the consecrated cakes and animals for sacrifice, the rites for cleansing leprosy and all uncleanliness, the grand atonements and solemn fasts and festivals,--all were calculated to make a strong impression on a superstitious people. the rites and ceremonies of the jews were so attractive that they made up for all other amusements and spectacles; they answered the purpose of the gothic churches and cathedrals of europe in the middle ages, when these were the chief attractions of the period. there is nothing absurd in ritualism among ignorant and superstitious people, who are ever most easily impressed through their senses and imagination. it was the wisdom of the middle ages,--the device of popes and bishops and abbots to attract and influence the people. but ritualism--useful in certain ages and circumstances, certainly in its most imposing forms, if i may say it--does not seem to be one of the peculiarities of enlightened ages; even the ritualism of the wilderness lost much of its hold upon the jews themselves after their captivity, and still more when greek and roman civilization had penetrated to jerusalem. the people who listened to peter and paul could no longer be moved by imposing rites, even as the european nations--under the preaching of luther, knox, and latimer--lost all relish for the ceremonies of the middle ages. what, then, are we to think of the revival of observances which lost their force three hundred years ago, unless connected with artistic music? it is music which vitalizes ritualistic worship in our times, as it did in the times of david and solomon. the vitality of the jewish ritual, when the nation had emerged from barbarism, was in its connections with a magnificent psalmody. the psalms of david appeal to the heart and not to the senses. the ritualism of the wilderness appealed to the senses and not to the heart; and this was necessary when the people had scarcely emerged from barbarism, even as it was deemed necessary amid the turbulence and ignorance of the tenth century. in the ritualism which moses established there was the absence of everything which would recall the superstitions and rites, or even the doctrines, of the egyptians. in view of this, we account partially for the almost studied reticence in respect to a future state, upon which hinged many of the peculiarities of egyptian worship. it would have been difficult for moses to have recognized the future state, in the degrading ignorance and sensualism of the jews, without associating with it the tutelary deities of the egyptians and all the absurdities connected with the doctrine of metempsychosis, which consigned the victims of future punishment to enter the forms of disgusting and hideous animals, thereby blending with the sublime doctrine of a future state the most degrading superstitions. bishop warburton seizes on the silence of moses respecting a future state to prove, by a learned yet sophistical argument, his divine legation, _because_ he ignored what so essentially entered into the religion of egypt. but whether moses purposely ignored this great truth for fear it would be perverted, or because it was a part of the egyptian economy which he wished his people to forget, still it is also possible that this doctrine of immortality was so deeply engraved on the minds of the people that there was no need to recognize it while giving a system of ritualistic observances. the comparative silence of the old testament concerning immortality is one of its most impressive mysteries. however dimly shadowed by job and david and isaiah, it seems to have been brought to light only by the gospel. there is more in the writings of plato and cicero about immortality than in the whole of the old testament, and this fact is so remarkable, that some trace to the sages of greece and egypt the doctrine itself, as ordinarily understood; that is, a _necessary_ existence of the soul after death. and they fortify themselves with those declarations of the apostles which represent a happy immortality as the special gift of god,--not a necessary existence, but given only to those who obey his laws. if immortality be not a gift, but a necessary existence, as socrates supposed, it seems strange that heathen philosophers should have speculated more profoundly than the patriarchs of the east on this mysterious subject. we cannot suppose that plato was more profoundly instructed on such a subject than abraham and moses. it is to be noted, however, that god seems to have chosen different races for various missions in the education of his children. as saint paul puts it, "there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit,... diversities of workings, but the same god who worketh in all." the hebrew genius was that of discerning and declaring moral and spiritual truth; while that of the greeks was essentially philosophic and speculative, searching into the reasons and causes of existing phenomena. and it is possible, after all, that the loftiest of the greek philosophers derived their opinions from those who had been admitted to the secret schools of egypt, where it is probable that the traditions of primitive ages were preserved, and only communicated to a chosen few; for the ancient schools were esoteric and not popular. the great masters of knowledge believed one thing and the people another. the popular religion was always held in contempt by the wise in all countries, although upheld by them in external rites and emblems and sacrifices, from patriotic purposes. the last act of socrates was to sacrifice a cock to esculapius, with a different meaning from that which was understood by the people. the social and civil code of moses seems to have had primary reference to the necessary isolation of the jews, to keep them from the abominations of other nations, and especially idolatry, and even to make them repulsive and disagreeable to foreigners, in order to keep them a peculiar people. the jew wore an uncouth dress. when he visited strangers he abstained from their customs, and even meats. when a stranger visited the jew he was compelled to submit to jewish restraints. so that the jew ever seems uncourteous, narrow, obstinate, and grotesque: even as others appeared to him to be pagan and unclean. moses lays down laws best calculated to keep the nation separated and esoteric; but there is marvellous wisdom in those which were directed to the development of national resources and general prosperity in an isolated state. the nation was made strong for defence, not for aggression. it must depend upon its militia, and not on horses and chariots, which are designed for distant expeditions, for the pomp of kings, for offensive war, and military aggrandizement. the legislation of moses recognized the peaceful virtues rather than the warlike,--agricultural industry, the network of trades and professions, manufacturing skill, production, not waste and destruction. he discouraged commerce, not because it was in itself demoralizing, but because it brought the jews too much in contact with corrupt nations. and he closely defined political power, and divided it among different magistrates, instituting a wise balance which would do credit to modern legislation. he gave dignity to the people by making them the ultimate source of authority, next to the authority of god. he instituted legislative assemblies to discuss peace and war, and elect the great officers of state. while he made the church support the state, and the state the church, yet he separated civil power from the religious, as calvin did at geneva. the functions of the priest and the functions of the magistrate were made forever distinct,--a radical change from the polity of egypt, where kings were priests, and priests were civil rulers as well as a literary class; a predominating power to whom all vital interests were intrusted. the kingly power among the jews was checked and hedged by other powers, so that an overgrown tyranny was difficult and unusual. but above all kingly and priestly power was the power of the invisible king, to whom the judges and monarchs and supreme magistrates were responsible, as simply his delegates and vicegerents. upon him alone the jews were to rely in all crises of danger; in him alone was help. and it is remarkable that whenever jewish rulers relied on chariots and horses and foreign allies, they were delivered into the hands of their enemies. it was only when they fell back upon the protecting arms of their eternal lord that they were rescued and saved. the mightiest monarch ruled only with delegated powers from him; and it was the memorable loyalty of david to his king which kept him on the throne, as it was self-reliance--the exhibition of independent power--which caused the sceptre to depart from saul. i cannot dwell on the humanity and wisdom which marked the social economy of the jews, as given by moses,--in the treatment of slaves (emancipated every fifty years), in the sanctity of human life, in the liberation of debtors every seven years, in kindness to the poor (who were allowed to glean the fields), in the education of the people, in the division of inherited property, in the inalienation of paternal inheritances, in the discouragement of all luxury and extravagance, in those regulations which made disproportionate fortunes difficult, the vast accumulation of which was one of the main causes of the decline of the roman empire, and is now one of the most threatening evils of modern civilization. all the civil and social laws of the jewish commonwealth tended to the elevation of woman and the cultivation of domestic life. what virtues were gradually developed among those sensual slaves whom moses led through the desert! in what ancient nation were seen such respect to parents, such fidelity to husbands, such charming delights of home, such beautiful simplicities, such ardent loves, such glorious friendships, such regard to the happiness of others! such, in brief, was the great work which moses performed, the marvellous legislation which he gave to the israelites, involving principles accepted by the christian world in every age of its history. now, whence had this man this wisdom? was it the result of his studies and reflections and experiences, or was it a wisdom supernaturally taught him by the almighty? on the solution of this inquiry into the divine legation of moses hang momentous issues. it is too grand and important an inquiry to be disregarded by any one who studies the writings of moses; it is too suggestive a subject to be passed over even in a literary discourse, for this age is grappling with it in most earnest struggles. no matter whether or not moses was gifted in a most extraordinary degree to write his code. nobody doubts his transcendent genius; nobody doubts his wonderful preparation. if any uninspired man could have written it, doubtless it was he. it was the most learned and accomplished of the apostles who was selected to be the expounder of the gospel among the gentiles; so it was the ablest man born among the jews who was chosen to give them a national polity. nor does it detract from his fame as a man of genius that he did not originate the most profound of his declarations. it was fame enough to be the oracle and prophet of jehovah. i would not dishonor the source of all wisdom, even to magnify the abilities of a great man, fond as critics are of exalting the wisdom of moses as a triumph of human genius. it is natural to worship strength, human or divine. we adore mind; we glorify oracles. but neither written history nor philosophy will support the work of moses as a wonder of mere human intellect, without ignoring the declarations of moses himself and the settled belief of all christian ages. it is not my object to make an argument in defence of the divine legation of moses; nor is it my design to reply to the learned criticisms of those who doubt or deny his statements. i would not run a-tilt against modern science, which may hereafter explain and accept what it now rejects. science--whether physical or metaphysical--has its great truths, and so has revelation; the realm of each is distinct while yet their processes are incomplete: and it is the hope and firm belief of many god-fearing scientists that the patient, reverent searching of to-day into god's works, of matter and of mind, as it collects the myriad facts and classifies them into such orderly sequences as indicate the laws of their being, will confirm to men's reason their faith in the revealed word. certainly this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. i am not scientist enough to judge of its probability, but it is within my province to present a few deductions which can be fairly drawn from the denial of the inspiration of the mosaic code. i wish to show to what conclusions this denial logically leads. we must remember that moses himself most distinctly and most emphatically affirms his own divine legation; for is not almost every chapter prefaced with these remarkable words, "and the lord spake unto moses"? jehovah himself, in some incomprehensible way, amid the lightnings and the wonders of the sacred mount, communicated his wisdom. now, if we disbelieve this direct and impressive affirmation made by moses,--that jehovah directed him what to say to the people he was called to govern,--why should we believe his other statements, which involve supernatural agency or influence pertaining to the early history of the race? where, then, is his authority? what is it worth? he has indeed no authority at all, except so far as his statements harmonize with our own definite knowledge, and perhaps with scientific speculations. we then make our own reason and knowledge, not the declarations of moses, the ultimate authority. as a divine oracle to us, his voice is silent; ay, his august voice is drowned by the discordant and contradictory opinions that are ever blended with the speculations of the schools. he tells us, in language of the most impressive simplicity and grandeur, that he _was_ directly instructed and commissioned by jehovah to communicate moral truths,--truths, we should remember, which no one before him is known to have uttered, and truths so important that the prosperity of nations is identified with them, and will be so identified as long as men shall speculate and dream. if we deny this testimony, then his narration of other facts, which we accept, is not to be fully credited; like other ancient histories, it may be and it may not be true,--but there is no certainty. however we may interpret his detailed narration of the genesis of our world and our race,--whether as chronicle or as symbolic poem,--its central theme and thought, the direct creative agency of jehovah, which it was his privilege to announce, stands forth clear and unmistakable. yet if we deny the supernaturalism of the code, we may also deny the supernaturalism of the creation, in so far as both rest on the authority of moses. and, further, if moses was not inspired directly from god to write his code, then it follows that he--a man pre-eminent for wisdom, piety, and knowledge--was an impostor, or at least, like mohammed and george fox, a self-deceived and visionary man, since he himself affirms his divine legation, and traces to the direct agency of jehovah not merely his code, but even the various deliverances of the israelites. and not only was moses mistaken, but the jewish nation, and christ and the apostles, and the greatest lights of the church from augustine to bossuet. hence it follows necessarily that all the miracles by which the divine legation of moses is supported and credited, have no firm foundation, and a belief in them is superstitious,--as indeed it is in all other miracles recorded in the scriptures, since they rest on testimony no more firmly believed than that believed by christ and the apostles respecting moses. sweep away his authority as an inspiration, and you undermine the whole authority of the bible; you bring it down to the level of all other books; you make it valuable only as a thesaurus of interesting stories and impressive moral truths, which we accept as we do all other kinds of knowledge, leaving us free to reject what we cannot understand or appreciate, or even what we dislike. then what follows? is it not the rejection of many of the most precious revelations of the bible, to which we _wish_ to cling, and without a belief in which there would be the old despair of paganism, the dreary unsettlement of all religious opinions, even a disbelief in an intelligent first cause of the universe, certainly of a personal god,--and thus a gradual drifting away to the dismal shores of that godless epicureanism which socrates derided, and paul and augustine combated? do you ask for a confirmation of the truths thus deduced from the denial of the supernaturalism of the mosaic code? i ask you to look around. i call no names; i invoke no theological hatreds; i seek to inflame no prejudices. i appeal to facts as incontrovertible as the phenomena of the heavens. i stand on the platform of truth itself, which we all seek to know and are proud to confess. look to the developments of modern thought, to some of the speculations of modern science, to the spirit which animates much of our popular literature, not in our country but in all countries, even in the schools of the prophets and among men who are "more advanced," as they think, in learning, and if you do not see a tendency to the revival of an attractive but exploded philosophy,--the philosophy of democritus; the philosophy of epicurus,--then i am in an error as to the signs of the times. but if i am correct in this position,--if scepticism, or rationalism, or pantheism, or even science, in the audacity of its denials, or all these combined, are in conflict with the supernaturalism which shines and glows in every book of the bible, and are bringing back for our acceptance what our fathers scorned,--then we must be allowed to show the practical results, the results on life, which of necessity followed the triumph of the speculative opinions of the popular idols of the ancient world in the realm of thought. oh, what a life was that! what a poor exchange for the certitudes of faith and the simplicities of patriarchal times! i do not know whether an epicurean philosophy grows out of an epicurean life, or the life from the philosophy; but both are indissolubly and logically connected. the triumph of one is the triumph of the other, and the triumph of both is equally pointed out in the writings of paul as a degeneracy, a misfortune,--yea, a sin to be wiped out only by the destruction of nations, or some terrible and unexpected catastrophe, and the obscuration of all that is glorious and proud among the works of men. i make these, as i conceive, necessary digressions, because a discourse on moses would be pointless without them; at best only a survey of that marvellous and favored legislator from the standpoint of secular history. i would not pull him down from the lofty pedestal whence he has given laws to all successive generations; a man, indeed, but shrouded in those awful mysteries which the great soul of michael angelo loved to ponder, and which gave to his creations the power of supernal majesty. thus did moses, instructed by god,--for this is the great fact revealed in his testimony,--lead the inconstant israelites through a forty years' pilgrimage, securing their veneration to the last. thus did he keep them from the idolatries for which they hankered, and preserved among them allegiance to an invisible king. thus did he impress his own mind and character upon them, and shape their institutions with matchless wisdom. thus did he give them a system of laws--moral, ceremonial, and civil--which kept them a powerful and peculiar people for more than a thousand years, and secured a prosperity which culminated in the glorious reigns of david and solomon and a political power unsurpassed in western asia, to see which the queen of sheba came from the uttermost part of the earth,--nay, more, which first formulated for that little corner of the world principles and precepts concerning the relations of men to god and to one another which have been an inspiration to all mankind for thousands of years. thus did this good and great man fulfil his task and deliver his message, with no other drawbacks on his part than occasional bursts of anger at the unparalleled folly and wickedness of his people. what disinterestedness marks his whole career, from the time when he flies from pharaoh to the appointment of his successor, relinquishing without regret the virtual government of egypt, accepting cheerfully the austerities and privations of the land of midian, never elevating his own family to power, never complaining in his herculean tasks! with what eloquence does he plead for his people when the anger of the lord is kindled against them, ever regarding them as mere children who know no self-control! how patient he is in the performance of his duties, accepting counsel from jethro and listening to the voice of aaron! with what stern and awful majesty does he lay down the law! what inspiration gilds his features as he descends the mount with the tables in his hands! how terrible he is amid the thunders and lightnings of sinai, at the rock of horeb, at the dances around the golden calf, at the rebellion of korah and dathan, at the waters of meribah, at the burning of nadab and abihu! how efficient he is in the administration of justice, in the assemblies of the people, in the great councils of rulers and princes, and in all the crises of the state; and yet how gentle, forgiving, tender, and accessible! how sad he is when the people weary of manna and seek flesh to eat! how nobly does he plead with the king of edom for a passage through his territories! how humbly does he call on god for help amid perplexing cares! never was a man armed with such authority so patient and so self-distrustful. never was so experienced and learned a man so little conscious of his greatness. "this was the truest warrior that ever buckled sword; this the most gifted poet that ever breathed a word: and never earth's philosopher traced with his golden pen, on the deathless page, truths half so sage, as he wrote down for men." at length--at one hundred and twenty years of age, with undimmed eye and unabated strength, after having done more for his nation and for posterity than any ruler or king in the world's history, and won a fame which shall last through all the generations of men, growing brighter and brighter as his vast labors and genius are appreciated--the time comes to lay down his burdens. so he assembles together the princes and elders of israel, recapitulates his laws, enumerates the mercies of the god to whom he has ever been loyal, and gives his final instructions. he appoints joshua as his successor, adds words of encouragement to the people, whom he so fervently loves, sings his final song, and ascends the mountain above the plains of moab, from which he is permitted to see, but not to enter, the promised land; not pensive and sad like godfrey, because he cannot enter jerusalem, but full of joyous visions of the future glories of his nation, and breaking out in the language of exultation, "who is like unto thee, o people saved by jehovah, the shield of thy help and the sword of thy excellency!" so moses, the like of whom no prophet has since arisen (except that later one whom he himself foretold), the greatest man in jewish annals, passes away from mortal sight, and jehovah buries him in a valley of the land of moab, and no man knoweth his sepulchre until this day. "that was the grandest funeral that ever passed on earth; but no one heard the trampling, or saw the train go forth,-- perchance the bald old eagle on gray bethpeor's height, out of his lonely eyrie looked on the wondrous sight." * * * * * "and had he not high honor-- the hillside for a pall-- to lie in state, while angels wait with stars for tapers tall; and the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, over his bier to wave, and god's own hand, in that lonely land, to lay him in the grave?" * * * * * "o lonely grave in moab's land! o dark bethpeor's hill! speak to these curious hearts of ours, and teach them to be still! god hath his mysteries of grace, ways that we cannot tell; he hides them deep, like the hidden sleep of him he loved so well." samuel. b.c. the hebrew theocracy, under judges. after moses, and until david arose, it would be difficult to select any man who rendered greater services to the israelitish nation than samuel. he does not stand out in history as a man of dazzling intellectual qualities; but during a long life he efficiently labored to give to the nation political unity and power, and to reclaim it from idolatries. he was both a political and moral reformer,--an organizer of new forces, a man of great executive ability, a judge and a prophet. he made no mistakes, and committed no crimes. in view of his wisdom and sanctity it is evident that he would have adorned the office of high-priest; but as he did not belong to the family of aaron, this great dignity could not be conferred on him. his character was reproachless. he was, indeed, one of the best men that ever lived, universally revered while living, and equally mourned when he died. he ruled the nation in a great crisis, and his influence was irresistible, because favored alike by god and man. samuel lived in one of the most tumultuous and unsettled periods of jewish history, when the nation was in a transition state from anarchy to law, from political slavery to national independence. when he appeared, there was no settled government; the surrounding nations were still unconquered, and had reduced the israelites to humiliating dependence. deliverers had arisen occasionally from the time of joshua,--like gideon, jephthah, and samson,--but their victories were not decisive or permanent. midianites, amorites, and philistines successively oppressed israel, from generation to generation; they even succeeded in taking away their weapons of war. resistance to this tyranny was apparently hopeless, and the nation would have sunk into despair but for occasional providential aid. the sacred ark was for a time in the hands of enemies, and shiloh, the religious capital,--abode of the tabernacle and the ark,--had been burned. every smith's forge where a sword or a spear-head could be rudely made was shut up, and the people were forced to go to the forges of their oppressors to get even their ploughshares sharpened. on the death of joshua (about b.c.), who had succeeded moses and led the israelites into canaan, "nearly the whole of the sea-coast, all the strongholds in the rich plain of esdraelon, and, in the heart of the country, the invincible fortress of jebus [later site of jerusalem], were still in the hands of the unbelievers." the conquest therefore was yet imperfect, like that of the christianized saxons in the time of alfred over the pagan danes in england. the times were full of peril and fear. they developed the military energies of the israelites, but bred license, robbery, and crime,--a wild spirit of personal independence unfavorable to law and order. in those days "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." it was a period of utter disorder, anarchy, and lawlessness, like the condition of germany and italy in the middle ages. the persons who bore rule permanently were the princes or heads of the several tribes, the judges, and the high-priest; and in that primitive state of society these dignitaries rode on asses, and lived in tents. the virtues of the people were rough, and their habits warlike. their great men were fighters. samson was a sort of hercules, and jephthah an idomeneus,--a lawless freebooter. the house of micah was like a feudal castle; the benjamite war was like the strife of highland clans. jael was a hebrew boadicea; gideon, at the head of his three hundred men, might have been a hero of mediaeval romance. the saddest thing among these social and political evils was a great decline of religious life. the priesthood was disgraced by the prevailing vices of the times. the mosaic rites may have been technically observed, but the officiating priests were sensual and worldly, while gross darkness covered the land. the high-priests exercised but a feeble influence; and even eli could not, or did not, restrain the glaring immoralities of his own sons. in those evil days there were no revelations from jehovah, and there was no divine vision among the prophets. never did a nation have greater need of a deliverer. it was then that samuel arose, and he first appears as a pious boy, consecrated to priestly duties by a remarkable mother. his childhood was passed in the sacred tent of shiloh, as an attendant, or servant, of the aged high-priest, or what would be called by the catholic church an acolyte. he belonged to the great tribe of ephraim, being the son of elkanah, of whom nothing is worthy of notice except that he was a polygamist. his mother hannah (or anna), however, was a hebrew saint theresa, almost a nazarite in her asceticism and a prophetess in her gifts; her song of thanksgiving on the birth of samuel, for a special answer to her prayer, is one of the most beautiful remains of hebrew poetry. from his infancy samuel was especially dedicated to the service of god. he was not a priest, since he did not belong to the priestly caste; but the lord was with him, and raised him up to be more than priest,--even a prophet and a judge. when a mere child, it was he who declared to eli the ruin of his house, since he had not restrained the wickedness and cruelty of his sons. from that time the prophetic character of samuel was established, and his influence constantly increased until he became the foremost man of his nation, second to no one in power and dignity since the time of moses. but there is not much recorded of him until twenty years after the death of eli, who lived to be ninety. it was during this period that the philistines had carried away the sacred ark from shiloh, and had overrun the country and oppressed the hebrews, who it seems had fallen into idolatry, worshipping ashtaroth and other strange gods. it was samuel, already recognized as a great prophet and judge, who aroused the nation from its idolatry and delivered it from the hand of the philistines at mizpeh, where a great battle was fought, so that these terrible foes were subdued, and came no more into the borders of israel during the days of samuel; and all the cities they had taken, from ekron unto gath, were restored. the subjection of the philistines was followed by the undisputed rule of samuel, under the name of judge, during his life, even after the consecration of saul. the israelitish judge seems to have been a sort of dictator, called to power by the will of the people in times of great emergency and peril, as among the romans. "the theocracy," says ewald, "by pronouncing any human ruler unnecessary as a permanent element of the state, lapsed into anarchy and weakness. when a nation is without a government strong enough to repress lawlessness within and to protect from foes without, the whole people very soon divides once more into the two ranks of master and servant. in deborah's songs all israel, so far as lay in her circle of vision, was divided into princes and people. hence the nation consisted of innumerable self-constituted and self-sustained kingdoms, formed whenever some chieftain elevated himself whom individuals or the body of citizens in a town were willing to serve. gaal, son of zobah, entered shechem with troops raised by himself, just like a condottiere in italy in the middle ages. as it became evident that the nation could not permanently dispense with an earthly government, it was forced to rally round some powerful leader; and as the theocracy was still acknowledged by the best of the nation, these leaders, who owed their power to circumstances, could not easily be transformed into regular kings, but to exceptional dictators the state offered no strong resistance." and yet these rulers arose not solely by force of individual prowess, but were expressly raised up by god as deliverers of the nation in times of peculiar peril. and further, the spirit of jehovah came upon them, as it did upon deborah the prophetess, and as it did still more remarkably upon moses himself. the last and greatest of these extemporized leaders called judges, was samuel. in him the people learned to put their trust; and the national assembly which he summoned was completely guided by him. no one of the judges, it would seem, had his seat of government in any central city, but where he happened to live. so the residence of samuel was at his native town of ramah, where he married. it would seem that he travelled from city to city to administer justice, like the judges of england on their circuits; but, unlike them, on his own supreme authority,--not with power delegated by a king, but acknowledging no superior except god himself, from whom he received his commission. we know not at what time and whom he married; but his two sons, who in his old age shared power with him, did not discharge their delegated functions more honorably than the sons of eli, who had been a disgrace to their office, to their father, and to the nation. one of the greatest mysteries of human life is the seeming inability of pious fathers to check the vices of their children, who often go astray under an apparently irresistible impulse or innate depravity, in spite of parental precept and example,--thus seeming to show that neither virtue nor vice can be surely transmitted, and that every human being stands on his individual responsibility, with peculiar temptations to combat, and peculiar circumstances to influence him. the son of a saint becomes mysteriously a drunkard or a fraud, and the son of a sensualist becomes an ascetic. this does not uniformly occur: in fact, the sons of good men are more likely to be an honor to their families than the sons of the wicked; but why are exceptions so common as to be proverbial? it was no light work which was imposed on the shoulders of samuel,--to establish law and order among the demoralized tribes of the jews, and to prepare them for political independence; and it was a still greater labor to effect a moral reformation and reintroduce the worship of jehovah. both of these objects he seems to have accomplished; and his success places him in the list of great reformers, like mohammed and luther,--but greater and better than either, since he did not attempt, like the former, to bring about a good end by bad means; nor was he stained by personal defects, like the latter. "it was his object to re-enkindle the national life of the nation, so as to combat successfully its enemies in the field, which could be attained by rousing a common religious feeling;" for he saw that there could be no true enthusiasm without a sense of dependence on the god of battles, and that heroism could be stimulated only by exalted sentiments, both of patriotism and religion. but how was samuel to rekindle a fervent religious life among the degenerate israelites in such unsettled times? only by rousing the people by his teachings and his eloquence. he was a preacher of righteousness, and in all probability went from city to city and village to village,--as saint bernard did when he preached a crusade against the infidels, as john the baptist did when he preached repentance, as whitefield did when he sought to kindle religious enthusiasm in england. so he set himself to educate his countrymen in the great truths which appealed to the inner life,--to the heart and conscience. this he did, first, by rousing the slumbering spirits of the elders of tribes when they sought his counsel as a prophet, the like of whom had not appeared since moses, so gifted and so earnest; and secondly, by founding a school for the education of young men who should go with his instructions wherever he chose to send them, like the early missionaries, to hamlets and villages which he was unable to visit in person. the first "school of the prophets" was a seminary of missionaries, animated by the spirit of a teacher whom they feared and admired as no prophet had been revered in the whole history of the nation since moses. samuel communicated his own burning spirit wherever he went, and the burden of his eloquence was zeal and loyalty for jehovah. before his time the prophets had been known as seers; but samuel superadded the duties of a religious teacher,--the spokesman of the almighty. the number of his disciples, whom he doubtless commissioned as evangelists, must have been very large. they lived in communities and ate in common, like the primitive monks. they probably resembled the early dominican and franciscan friars of the middle ages, who were kindled to enthusiasm by such teachers as thomas aquinas and bonaventura. like them they were ascetics in their habits and dress, wearing sheepskins, and living on locusts and wild honey,--on the fruits which grew spontaneously in the rich valleys of their well-watered country. it did not require much learning to arouse the common people to new duties and a higher religious life. the bible does not inform us as to the details by which samuel made his influence felt, but there can be no doubt that by some means he kindled a religious life before unknown among his countrymen. he infused courage and hope into their despairing hearts, and laid the foundation of military enthusiasm by combining with it religious ardor; so that by the discipline of forty years,--the same period employed by moses in transmuting a horde of slaves into a national host of warriors; a period long enough to drop out the corrupted elements and replace them with the better trained rising generation,--the nation was prepared for accomplishing the victories of saul and david. but for samuel no great captains would have arisen to lead the scattered and dispirited hosts of israel against the philistines and other enemies. he was thus a political leader as well as a religious teacher, combining the offices of judge and prophet. everybody felt that he was directly commissioned by god, and his words had the force of inspiration. he reigned with as much power as a king over all the tribes, though clad in the garments of humility. who in all israel was greater than he, even after he had anointed saul to the kingly office? the great outward event in the life of samuel was the transition of the israelites from a theocratic to a monarchical government. it was a political revolution, and like all revolutions was fraught with both good and evil, yet seemingly demanded by the spirit of the times,--in one sense an advance in civilization, in another a retrogression in primeval virtues. it resulted in a great progress in material arts, culture, and power, but also in a decline in those simplicities that favor a religious life, on which the strength of man is apparently built,--that is, a state of society in which man in his ordinary life draws nearest to his maker, to his kindred, and his home; to which luxury and demoralizing pleasures are unknown; a life free from temptations and intellectual snares, from political ambition and social unrest, from recognized injustice and stinging inequalities. the historian with his theory of development might call this revolution the change from national youth to manhood, the emerging from the dark ages of hebrew history to a period of national aggrandizement and growth in civilization,--one of the necessary changes which must take place if a nation would become strong, powerful, and cultivated. to the eye of the contemplative, conservative, and god-fearing samuel this change of government seemed full of perils and dangers, for which the nation was not fully prepared. he felt it to be a change which might wean the israelites from their new sense of dependence on god, the only hope of nations, and which might favor another lapse to pagan idolatries and a decline in household virtues, such as had been illustrated in the life of ruth and boaz,--and hence might prove a mere exchange of that rugged life which elevates the soul, for those gilded glories which adorn and pamper the mortal body. he certainly foresaw and knew that the change in government would produce tyranny, oppression, and injustice, from which there could be no escape and for which there could be no redress, for he told the people in detail just what they should suffer at the hands of any king whom they might have; and these were in his eyes evils which nothing could compensate,--the loss of liberty, the extinction of personal independence, and a probable rebellion against the supreme jehovah in the degrading worship of the gods of idolatrous nations. when the people, therefore, under the guidance of so-called "progressive leaders," hankered for a government which would make them like other nations, and demanded a king, the prophet was greatly moved and sore displeased; and this displeasure was heightened by a bitter humiliation when the elders reproached him because of the misgovernment of his own sons. he could not at first say a word, in view of a demand apparently justified by the conduct of the existing rulers. there was a just cause of complaint. if his own sons would take bribes in rendering judgment, who could be trusted? civilization would say that there was needed a stronger arm to punish crime and enforce the laws. so samuel, perplexed and disheartened, fearing that the political changes would be evil rather than good, and yet feeling unable to combat the popular voice, sought wisdom in prayer. "and the lord said, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that i should reign over them. now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them." the almighty would not take away the free-will of the people; but samuel is required to show them the perversity of their will, and that if they should choose evil the consequences would be on their heads and the heads of their children, from generation to generation. samuel therefore spake unto the people,--probably the elders and leading men, for the aristocratic element of society prevailed, as in the middle ages of feudal europe, when even royal power was merely nominal, and barons and bishops ruled,--and said: "this will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he shall take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots; and he shall appoint captains over thousands and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear [plough] his ground and reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. and he will take your daughters to be confectioners [or perfumers] and cooks and bakers. and he will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants; and he will take the tenth of your seed and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his servants. and he will take your men-servants and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. and he will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. and ye will cry out in that day because of your king which ye have chosen you, and the lord will not hear you in that day." nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of samuel; and they said, "nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." it would thus appear that the monarchy which the people sought would necessarily become nearly absolute, limited only by the will of god as interpreted by priests and prophets,--for the theocracy was not to be destroyed, but still maintained as even superior to the royal authority. the future king was to be supreme in affairs of state, in the direction of armies, in the appointment of captains and commanders, in the general superintendence of the realm in worldly matters; but he could not go contrary to the divine commands as they would be revealed to him, without incurring a fearful penalty. he could not interfere with the functions of the priesthood under any pretence whatever; and further, he was required to rule on principles of equity and immutable justice. he could not repel the divine voice, whether it spake to his consciousness or was revealed to him by divinely commissioned prophets, without the certainty of divine chastisement. thus was his power limited, even by invisible forces superior to his own; for jehovah had not withdrawn his special jurisdiction over the chosen people for whom he was preparing a splendid destiny,--that is, through them, the redemption of the world. whether the people of israel did not believe the predictions of the prophet, or wished to have a kingly government in spite of its evils, in order to become more powerful as a nation, we do not know. all that we know is that they persisted in their demand, and that god granted their request. with all the memories and traditions of their slavery in the land of egypt, and the grinding despotism incident to an absolute monarchy of which their ancestors bore witness, they preferred despotism with its evils to the independence they had enjoyed under the judges; for nationality, to which the jewish people were casting longing eyes, demands law and order as the first condition of society. in obedience to this same principle the grinding monarchy of louis xiv. seemed preferable to the turbulence and anarchy of the middle ages, since unarmed and obscure citizens felt safe in their humble avocations. in like manner, after the license of the french revolution the people said, "give us a king once more!" and seated napoleon on the throne of the bourbons,--a ruler who took one man out of every five adults to recruit his armies and consolidate his power, which he called the glory of france. thus kings have reigned by the will of the people,--or, as they call it, by the grace of god,--from saul and david to our own times, except in those few countries where liberty is preferred to material power and military laurels. the peculiar situation of the israelites in a narrow strip of territory which was the highway between syria and egypt, likely to be overrun by aramaeans, assyrians, babylonians, and egyptians, to say nothing of the hostile nations which surrounded them, such as moabites and philistines, necessarily made them a warlike people (like the inhabitants of the swiss cantons five or six hundred years ago), and they were hence led to put a high estimate on military qualities, especially on the general who led them to battle. they accordingly desired a greater centralized power than the judges wielded, which could be exercised only by a king, intrenched in a strong capital. their desire for a king was natural, and almost excusable if they were willing to pay the inevitable price. they simply wished to surrender liberty for protection and political safety. they did not repudiate the fundamental doctrine of their religion; they simply wanted a change of government,--a more efficient administration. the selection of a king did not rest with the people, however, but with the great prophet who had ruled them with so much wisdom and ability, and who was regarded as the interpreter of the will of god. samuel, by the direction of god, did not go into the powerful tribe of ephraim, which possessed one half of the israelitish territory, to select a sovereign, but to the smallest of the tribes, that of benjamin,--the most warlike, however,--and to one of the least of the families of that tribe, dwelling in very humble life. kish, the benjamite, had sent out his son saul in quest of three asses which had strayed away from the farm,--a man so poor that he had no money to give to the seer who should direct his search, as was customary, and was obliged to borrow a quarter of a shekel from his servant when they went together to seek the counsel of samuel. but this obscure youth was "a choice young man, and a goodly." he had a commanding presence, was very beautiful, and was head and shoulders taller than any other man of his tribe,--a man every way likely to succeed in war. samuel no sooner saw the commanding figure and intelligent countenance of saul than he was assured that this was the man whom the lord had chosen to be the future captain and champion of israel. he at once treated him with distinguished honor, and made him sit at his own table, much to the amazement of the thirty nobles who also were bidden to a banquet. the prophet took the young man aside, conducted him to the top of his house, anointed him with the sacred oil, kissed him (a form of allegiance), and communicated to him the will of god. but saul was only privately consecrated, and with rare discretion told no man of his good fortune,--for he had not yet distinguished himself in any way, and would have been laughed to scorn by his relatives, as joseph was by his brothers, had he revealed his destiny. nor did samuel dare to tell the people of the man whom the lord had chosen to rule over them, but assembled all the tribes, that the choice might be publicly indicated. probably to their astonishment the little tribe of benjamin was "taken,"--that is pointed out, presumably by lot, as was their custom when appealing for divine direction; and out of the tribe of benjamin the family of matri was chosen, and saul the son of kish was selected. but saul could not be found. with rare modesty and humility he had hidden himself. when at length they brought him from his hiding-place samuel said unto the people, "see ye him whom the lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people!" and such was the authority of samuel that the people shouted, saying, "god save the king!"--a circumstance interesting as being the first recorded utterance of a cry that has been echoed the world over by many a loyal people. not yet, however, was saul clothed with full power as a king. samuel still remained the acknowledged ruler until saul should distinguish himself in battle. this soon took place. with heroic valor he delivered jabesh-gilead from the hosts of the ammonites when that city was about to fall into their hands, and silenced the envy of his enemies. in a burst of popular enthusiasm samuel collected the people in gilgal, and there formally installed saul as king of israel. samuel was now an old man, and was glad to lay down his heavy burden and put it on the shoulders of saul. yet he did not retire from the active government without making a memorable speech to the assembled nation, in which with transcendent dignity he appealed to the people in attestation of his incorruptible integrity as a judge and ruler. "behold, here i am! witness against me before the lord, and before his anointed. whose ox have i taken, or whose ass have i taken, or whom have i defrauded? or of whose hand have i received any bribe to blind my eyes therewith? and they said, thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us; neither hast thou taken aught of any man's hand." then samuel closed his address with an injunction to both king and people to obey the commandments of god, and denouncing the penalty of disobedience: "only fear the lord, and serve him in truth and with all your heart, for consider what great things he hath done for you; but if ye shall do wickedly, ye shall be consumed,--both ye and your king." saul for a time gave no offence worthy of rebuke, but was a valiant captain, smiting the philistines, who were the most powerful enemies that the israelites had yet encountered. but in an evil day he forgot his true vocation, and took upon himself the function of a priest by offering burnt sacrifices, which was not lawful but for the priest alone. for this he was rebuked by samuel. "thou hast done foolishly," he said to the king; "for which thy kingdom shall not continue. the lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the lord commanded thee." we here see the blending of the theocratic with the kingly rule. nevertheless saul was prospered in his wars. he fought successfully the moabites, the ammonites, the edomites, the amalekites, and the philistines, aided by his cousin abner, whom he made captain of his host. he did much to establish the kingdom; but he was rather a great captain than a great man. he did not fully perceive his mission, which was to fight, but meddled with affairs which belonged to the priests. nor was he always true to his mission as a warrior. he weakly spared agag, king of the amalekites, which again called forth the displeasure and denunciation of samuel, who regarded the conduct of the king as direct rebellion against god, since he was commanded to spare none of that people, they having shown an uncompromising hostility to the israelites in their days of weakness, when first entering canaan. this, and similar commands laid upon the israelites at various times, to "utterly destroy" certain tribes or individuals and all of their possessions, have been justified on the ground of the bestial grossness and corruption of those pagan idolaters and the vileness of their religious rites and social customs, which unfortunately always found a temptable side on the part of the israelites, and repeatedly brought to nought the efforts of jehovah's prophets to bring up their people in the fear of the lord, to recognize him, only, as god. it was not easy for that sensual race to stand on the height of moses, and "endure as seeing him who is invisible." they too easily fell into idolatry; hence the necessity of the extermination of some of the nests of iniquity in canaan. whether saul spared agag because of his personal beauty, to grace his royal triumph, or whatever the motive, it was a direct disobedience; and when the king attempted to exculpate himself, inasmuch as he had made a sacrifice of the spoil to the lord, samuel replied: "hath the lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice?... behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,--for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." the prophet here sets forth, as did isaiah in later times, the great principles of moral obligation as paramount over all ceremonial observances. he strikes a blow at all pharisaism and all self-righteousness, and inculcates obedience to direct commands as the highest duty of man. saul, perceiving that he had sinned, confessed his transgression, but palliated it by saying that he feared the people. but this policy of expediency had no weight with the prophet, although saul repented and sought pardon. samuel continued his stern rebuke, and uttered his fearful message, saying, "jehovah hath rent the kingdom of israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou." furthermore samuel demanded that agag, whom saul had spared, should be brought before him; and he took upon himself with his aged hand the work of executioner, and hewed the king of the amalekites in pieces in gilgal. he then finally departed from saul, and mournfully went to his own house in ramah, and saul saw him no more. as the king was the "lord's anointed," samuel could not openly rebel against kingly authority, but he would henceforth have nothing to do with the headstrong ruler. he withdrew from him all spiritual guidance, and left him to his follies and madness; for the inextinguishable jealousy of saul, that now began to appear, was a species of insanity, which poisoned his whole subsequent life. the people continued loyal to a king whom god had selected, but samuel "came no more to see saul until the day of his death." to be deserted by such a counsellor as samuel, was no small calamity. meanwhile, in obedience to instructions from god, samuel proceeded to bethlehem, to the humble abode of jesse, of the tribe of judah, one of whose sons he was required to anoint as the future king of israel. he naturally was about to select the largest and finest looking of the seven sons; but god looketh on the heart rather than the outward appearance, and david, a mere youth, and the youngest of the family, was the one indicated by jehovah, and was privately anointed by the prophet. saul, of course, did not know on whom the choice had fallen as his successor, but from that day on which he was warned of the penalty of his disobedience divine favor departed from him, and he became jealous, fitful, and cruel. he presented a striking contrast to the character he had shown in his early days,--being no longer modest and humble, but proud and tyrannical. prosperity and power had turned his head, and developed all that was evil in him. nero was not more unreasonable and bloodthirsty than was saul in his latter days. prosperity developed in solomon a love of magnificence, in nebuchadnezzar a towering vanity, but in saul a malignant envy of all extraordinary merit, and a sullen determination to destroy the persons it adorned. the last person in his kingdom of whom apparently he had reason to be jealous, was the ruddy and beardless youth whom he had sent for to drive away his melancholy by his songs and music. nor was it until david killed goliath that saul became jealous; before this he had no cause of envy, for kings do not envy musicians, but reward them. david's reward was as extravagant as that which russian emperors shower upon singers and dancers: he was made armor-bearer to the king,--an office bestowed only upon favorites and those who were implicitly trusted and beloved. little did the moody and jealous king imagine that the youth whom he had brought from obscurity to amuse his melancholy hours by his music, and probably his wit and humor, would so soon, by his own sanction, become the champion of israel, and ultimately his successor on the throne. in the latter part of the reign of saul the enemies with whom he had to contend were the various canaanitish nations that had remained unconquered during the hard struggle of four hundred years after the hebrews had been led by joshua to the promised land. the most powerful of these nations were the philistines. "strong in their military organization, fierce in their warlike spirit, and rich by their position and commercial instincts, they even threatened the ancient supremacy of the phoenicians of the north. their cities were the restless centres of every form of activity. ashdod and gaza, as the keys of egypt, commanded the carrying trade to and from the nile, and formed the great depots for its imports and exports. all the cities, moreover, traded in slaves with edom and southern arabia, and their commerce in other directions flourished so greatly as to gain for the people at large the name of canaanites,--which was synonymous with 'merchant,' even the word 'palestine' is derived from the philistines. their skill as smiths and armorers was noted; the strength of their cities attest their strength as builders, and their idols and golden mice and emerods show their respect for the arts of peace." it is supposed that they had settled in canaan about the time of abraham, and were originally a pastoral people in the neighborhood of gesar, or emigrants from crete. when the israelites under joshua arrived, they were in full possession of the southern part of palestine, and had formed a confederacy of five powerful cities,--gaza, ashdod, askelon, gath, and ekron. in the time of the judges they had become so prosperous and powerful that they held the israelites in partial subjection, broken at intervals by heroes like shamgar and samson. under eli there was an organized but unsuccessful resistance to these prosperous and warlike heathen. under samuel the tide of success was turned in israel's favor at the battle of mizpeh, when the israelites erected their pillar at ebenezer as a token of victory. the battle of michmash, gained by saul and jonathan after an immense slaughter of their foes, was so decisive that for twenty-five years the israelites were unmolested. in the latter part of the reign of saul the philistines attempted to regain their ascendency, but on the death of goliath at the hand of david they were driven to their own territories. the battle of gilboa, where saul and jonathan were slain, again turned the scale in favor of the philistines. under david the israelites resumed the aggressive, took gath, and completely broke forever the ascendency of their powerful foes. under solomon it would appear that the whole of philistia was incorporated with the hebrew monarchy, and remained so until the calamities of the jews gave philistia to the assyrian conquerors of jerusalem, and finally it fell into the hands of the romans. the philistines were zealous idolaters, and in times of great religious apostasy they succeeded in introducing the worship of their gods among the israelites, especially that of baal and ashtaroth. samuel did not live to see the complete humiliation of his nation which succeeded the bloody battle when saul was slain; but he lived to a good old age, and never lost his influence over the israelites, whom he had rescued from idolatry and to whom he had given political unity. although saul was king, we are told that samuel judged israel all the days of his life. he died universally lamented. there is no record in the scriptures of a death attended with such profound and general mourning. all israel mourned for him. they mourned because he was a good man, unstained by crime or folly; they mourned because their judge and oracle and friend had passed away; they mourned because he had been their intercessor with god himself, and the interpreter of the divine will. his like would never appear again in israel. "he represents the independence of the moral law, as distinct from regal and sacerdotal enactments. if a levite, he was not a priest. he was a prophet, the first in the regular succession of prophets. he was also the founder of the first regular institutions of religious instruction, and communities for the purposes of education. from these institutions were developed the universities of christendom." in a spiritual and religious sense the prophet takes the highest rank in the kingdom of god on earth. among the hebrews he was the interpreter of the divine will; he predicted future events. he was a preacher of righteousness; he was the counsellor of kings and princes; he was a sage and oracle among the people. he was a reformer, teaching the highest truths and restoring the worship of god when nations were sunk in idolatry; he was the mouth-piece of the eternal, for warning, for rebuke, for encouragement, for chastisement. he was divinely inspired, armed with supernatural powers,--a man whom the people feared and obeyed, sometimes honored, sometimes stoned; one who bore heavy responsibilities, and of whom were demanded disagreeable duties. we associate with the idea of a prophet both wisdom and virtue, great gifts and great personal piety. we think of him as a man who lived a secluded life of meditation and prayer, in constant communion with god and removed from all worldly rewards,--a man indifferent to ordinary pleasures, to outward pomp and show, free from personal vanity, lofty in his bearing, independent in his mode of life, spiritual in his aims, fervent and earnest in his exhortations, living above the world in the higher regions of faith and love, disdaining praises and honors, soft raiment and luxurious food, and maintaining a proud equality with the greatest personages; a man not to be bought, and not to be deterred from his purpose by threatenings or intimidation or flatteries, commanding reverence, and exalted as a favorite of heaven. it was not necessary that the prophet should be a priest or even a levite. he was greater than any impersonation of sacerdotalism, sacred in his person and awful in his utterances, unassisted by ritualistic forms, declaring truths which appealed to consciousness,--a kind of spiritual dictator who inspired awe and reverence. in one sense or another most of the august characters of the old testament were prophets,--abraham, moses, joseph, david, elijah, daniel, isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel. they either foretold the future, or rebuked kings as messengers of omnipotence, or taught the people great truths, or uttered inspired melodies, or interpreted dreams, or in some way revealed the ways and will of god. among them were patriarchs, kings, and priests, and sages uninvested with official functions. some lived in cities and others in villages, and others again in the wilderness and desert places; some reigned in the palaces of pride, and others in the huts of poverty,--yet all alike exercised a tremendous moral power. they were the national poets and historians of judaea, preachers of patriotism as well as of religion and morals, exercising political as well as spiritual power. those who stand out pre-eminently in the sacred writings were gifted with the power of revealing the future destinies of nations, and above all other things the peculiarities of the messianic reign. samuel was not called to declare those profound truths which relate to the appearance and reign of christ as the saviour of mankind, nor the fate of idolatrous nations, nor even the future vicissitudes connected with the hebrew nation, but to found a school of religious teachers, to revive the worship of jehovah, guide the conduct of princes, and direct the general affairs of the nation as commanded by god. he was the first and most favored of the great prophets, and exercised an influence as a prophet never equalled by any who succeeded him. he was a great prophet, since for forty years he ruled israel by direct divine illumination,--a holy man who communed with god, great in speech and great in action. he did not rise to the lofty eloquence of isaiah, nor foresee the fate of nations like daniel and ezekiel; but he was consulted and obeyed as a man who knew the divine will, gifted beyond any other man of his age in spiritual insight, and trusted implicitly for his wisdom and sanctity. these were the excellences which made him one of the most extraordinary men in jewish history, rendering services to his nation which cannot easily be exaggerated. david. - b.c. israelitish conquests. considering how much has been written about david in all the nations of christendom, and how familiar christian people are with his life and writings, it would seem presumptuous to attempt a lecture on this remarkable man, especially since it is impossible to add anything essentially new to the subject. the utmost that i can do is to select, condense, and rearrange from the enormous quantity of matter which learned and eloquent writers have already furnished. the warrior-king who conquered the enemies of israel in a dark and desponding period; the sagacious statesman who gave unity to its various tribes, and formed them into a powerful monarchy; the matchless poet who bequeathed to all ages a lofty and beautiful psalmody; the saint, who with all his backslidings and inconsistencies was a man after god's own heart,--is well worthy of our study. david was the most illustrious of all the kings of whom the jewish nation was proud, and was a striking type of a good man occasionally enslaved by sin, yet breaking its bonds and rising above subsequent temptations to a higher plane of goodness. a man so elevated, with almost every virtue which makes a man beloved, and yet with defects which will forever stain his memory, cannot easily be portrayed. what character in history presents such wide contradictions? what career was ever more varied? what recorded experiences are more interesting and instructive?--a life of heroism, of adventures, of triumphs, of humiliations, of outward and inward conflicts. who ever loved and hated with more intensity than david?--tender yet fierce, brave yet weak, magnanimous yet unrelenting, exultant yet sad, committing crimes yet triumphantly rising after disgraceful falls by the force of a piety so ardent that even his backslidings now appear but as spots upon a sun. his varied experiences call out our sympathy and admiration more than the life of any secular hero whom poetry and history have immortalized. he was an achilles and a ulysses, a marcus aurelius and a theodosius, an alfred and a saint louis combined; equally great in war and in peace, in action and in meditation; creating an empire, yet transmitting to posterity a collection of poems identified forever with the spiritual life of individuals and nations. interesting to us as are the events of david's memorable career, and the sentiments and sorrows which extort our sympathy, yet it is the relation of a sinful soul with its maker, by which he infuses his inner life into all other souls, and furnishes materials of thought for all generations. david was the youngest and seventh son of jesse, a prominent man of the tribe of judah, whose great-grandmother was ruth, the interesting wife of boaz the jew. he was born in bethlehem, near jerusalem,--a town rendered afterward so illustrious as the birthplace of our lord, who was himself of the house and lineage of david. he first appears in history at the sacrificial feast which his townspeople periodically held, presided over by his father, when the prophet samuel unexpectedly appeared at the festival to select from the sons of jesse a successor to saul. he was not tall and commanding like the benjamite hero, but was ruddy of countenance, with auburn hair, beautiful eyes, and graceful figure, equally remarkable for strength and agility. he had the charge of his father's sheep,--not the most honorable employment in the eyes of his brothers, who, according to ewald, treated him with little consideration; but even as a shepherd boy he had already proved his strength and courage by an encounter with a bear and a lion. until david was thirty years of age his life was identified with the fading glories of the reign of saul, who laid the foundation of the military power of his successors,--a man who lacked only the one quality imperative on the vicegerent of a supreme but invisible power, that of unquestioning obedience to the divine directions as interpreted by the voice of prophets. had saul been loyal in his heart, as david was, to the god of israel, the sceptre might not have departed from his house,--for he showed some of the highest qualities of a general and a ruler, until his jealousy was excited by the brilliant exploits of the son of jesse. on these exploits and subsequent adventures, which invest david's early career with the fascinations of a knight of chivalry, i need not dwell. all are familiar with his encounter with goliath, and with his slaughter of the philistines after he had slain the giant, which called out the admiration of the haughty daughter of the king, the love of the heir-apparent to the throne, and the applause of the whole nation. i need not speak of his musical melodies, which drove the fatal demon of melancholy from the royal palace; of his jealous expulsion by the king, his hairbreadth escapes, his trials and difficulties as a wanderer and exile, as a fugitive retreating to solitudes and caves of the earth, parched with heat and thirst, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, surrounded with increasing dangers,--yet all the while forgiving and magnanimous, sparing the life of his deadly enemy, unstained by a single vice or weakness, and soothing his stricken soul with bursts of pious song unequalled for pathos and loftiness in the whole realm of lyric poetry. he is never so interesting as amid caverns and blasted desolations and serrated rocks and dried-up rivulets, when his life is in constant danger. but he knows that he is the anointed of the lord, and has faith that in due time he will be called to the throne. it was not until the bloody battle with the philistines, which terminated the lives of both saul and jonathan, that david's reign began in about his thirtieth year,[ ]--first at hebron, where he reigned seven and one half years over his own tribe of judah,--but not without the deepest lamentations for the disaster which had caused his own elevation. to the grief of david for the death of saul and jonathan we owe one of the finest odes in hebrew poetry. at this crisis in national affairs, david had sought shelter with achish, king of gath, in whose territory he, with the famous band of six hundred warriors whom he had collected in his wanderings, dwelt in safety and peace. this apparent alliance with the deadly enemy of the israelites had displeased the people. notwithstanding all his victories and exploits, his anointment at the hand of samuel, his noble lyrics, his marriage with the daughter of saul, and the death of both saul and jonathan, there had been at first no popular movement in david's behalf. the taking of decisive action, however, was one of his striking peculiarities from youth to old age, and he promptly decided, after consulting the urim and thummim, to go at once to hebron, the ancient sacred city of the tribe of judah, and there await the course of events. his faithful band of six hundred devoted men formed the nucleus of an army; and a reaction in his favor having set in, he was chosen king. but he was king only of the tribe to which he belonged. northern and central palestine were in the hands of the philistines,--ten of the tribes still adhering to the house of saul, under the leadership of abner, the cousin of saul, who proclaimed ishbosheth king. this prince, the youngest of saul's four sons, chose for his capital mahanaim, on the east of the jordan. [footnote : authorities differ as to the precise date of david's accession.] ishbosheth was, however, a weak prince, and little more than a puppet in the hands of abner, the most famous general of the day, who, organizing what forces remained after the fatal battle of gilboa, was quite a match for david. for five years civil war raged between the rivals for the ascendency, but success gradually secured for david the promised throne of united israel. abner, seeing how hopeless was the contest, and wishing to prevent further slaughter, made overtures to david and the elders of judah and benjamin. the generous monarch received him graciously, and promised his friendship; but, out of jealousy,--or perhaps in revenge for the death of his brother asahel, whom abner had slain in battle,--joab, the captain of the king's chosen band, treacherously murdered him. david's grief at the foul deed was profound and sincere, but he could not afford to punish the general on whom he chiefly relied. "know ye," said david to his intimate friends, "that a great prince in israel has fallen to-day; but i am too weak to avenge him, for i am not yet anointed king over the tribes." he secretly disliked joab from this time, and waited for god himself to repay the evil-doer according to his wickedness. the fate of the unhappy and abandoned ishbosheth could not now long be delayed. he also was murdered by two of his body-guard, who hoped to be rewarded by david for their treachery; but instead of gaining a reward, they were summarily ordered to execution. the sole surviving member of saul's family was now mephibosheth, the only son of jonathan,--a boy of twelve, impotent, and lame. this prince, to the honor of david, was protected and kindly cared for. david's magnanimity appears in that he made special search, asking "is there any that is left of the house of saul, that i may show him the kindness of god for jonathan's sake?" the memory of the triumphant conqueror was still tender and loyal to the covenant of friendship he had made in youth, with the son of the man who for long years had pursued him with the hate of a lifetime. david was at this time thirty-eight years of age, in the prime of his manhood, and his dearest wish was now accomplished; for on the burial of ishbosheth "came all the tribes of israel to david unto hebron," formally reminded him of his early anointing to succeed saul, and tendered their allegiance. he was solemnly consecrated king, more than eight thousand priests joining in the ceremony; and, thus far without a stain on his character, he began his reign over united israel. the kingdom over which he was called to reign was the most powerful in palestine. assyria, egypt, china, and india were already empires; but greece was in its infancy, and homer and buddha were unborn. the first great act of david after his second anointment was to transfer his capital from hebron to jerusalem, then a strong fortress in the hands of the jebusites. it was nearer the centre of his new kingdom than hebron, and yet still within the limits of the tribe of judah, he took it by assault, in which joab so greatly distinguished himself that he was made captain-general of the king's forces. from that time "david went on growing great, and the lord god of hosts was with him." after fortifying his strong position, he built a palace worthy of his capital, with the aid of phoenician workmen whom hiram, king of tyre, wisely furnished him. the philistines looked with jealousy on this impregnable stronghold, and declared war; but after two invasions they were so badly beaten that gath, the old capital of achish, passed into the hands of the king of israel, and the power of these formidable enemies was broken forever. the next important event in the reign of david was the transfer of the sacred ark from kirjath-jearim, where it had remained from the time of samuel, to jerusalem. it was a proud day when the royal hero, enthroned in his new palace on that rocky summit from which he could survey both judah and samaria, received the symbol of divine holiness amid all the demonstrations which popular enthusiasm could express. "and as the long and imposing procession, headed by nobles, priests, and generals, passed through the gates of the city, with shouts of praise and songs and sacred dances and sacrificial rites and symbolic ceremonies and bands of exciting music, the exultant soul of david burst out in the most rapturous of his songs: 'lift up your heads, o ye gates; and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in!'"--thus reiterating the fundamental truth which moses taught, that the king of glory is the lord jehovah, to be forever worshipped both as a personal god and the real captain of the hosts of israel. "one heart alone," says stanley, "amid the festivities which attended this joyful and magnificent occasion, seemed to be unmoved. whether she failed to enter into its spirit, or was disgusted with the mystic dances in which her husband shared, the stately daughter of saul assailed david on his return to his palace--not clad in his royal robes, but in the linen ephod of the priests--with these bitter and disdainful words: 'how glorious was the king of israel to-day, as he uncovered himself in the eyes of his handmaidens!'--an insult which forever afterward rankled in his soul, and undermined his love." thus was the most glorious day which david ever saw, clouded by a domestic quarrel; and the proud princess retired, until her death, to the neglected apartments of a dishonored home. how one word of bitter scorn or harsh reproach will sometimes sunder the closest ties between man and woman, and cause an alienation which never can be healed, and which may perchance end in a domestic ruin! david had now passed from the obscurity of a chief of a wandering and exiled band of followers to the dignity of an oriental monarch, and turned his attention to the organization of his kingdom and the development of its resources. his army was raised to two hundred and eighty thousand regular soldiers. his intimate friends and best-tried supporters were made generals, governors, and ministers. joab was commander-in-chief; and benaiah, son of the high-priest, was captain of his body-guard,--composed chiefly of foreigners, after the custom of princes in most ages. his most trusted counsellors were the prophets gad and nathan. zadok and abiathar were the high-priests, who also superintended the music, to which david gave special attention. singing men and women celebrated his victories. the royal household was regulated by different grades of officers. but david departed from the stern simplicity of saul, and surrounded himself with pomps and guards. none were admitted to his presence without announcement or without obeisance, while he himself was seated on a throne, with a golden sceptre in his hands and a jewelled crown upon his brow, clothed in robes of purple and gold. he made alliances with powerful chieftains and kings, and imitated their fashion of instituting a harem for his wives and concubines,--becoming in every sense an oriental monarch, except that his power was limited by the constitution which had been given by moses. he reigned, it would seem, in justice and equity, and in obedience to the commands of jehovah, whose servant he felt himself to be. nor did he violate any known laws of morality, unless it were the practice of polygamy, in accordance with the custom of all eastern potentates, permitted to them if not to their ordinary subjects. we infer from all incidental notices of the habits of the israelites at this period that they were a remarkably virtuous people, with primitive tastes and love of domestic life, among whom female chastity was esteemed the highest virtue; and it is a matter of surprise that the loose habits of the king in regard to women provoked so little comment among his subjects, and called out so few rebukes from his advisers. but he did not surrender himself to the inglorious luxury in which oriental monarchs lived. he retained his warlike habits, and in great national crises he headed his own troops in battle. it would seem that he was not much molested by external enemies for twenty years after making jerusalem his capital, but reigned in peace, devoting himself to the welfare of his subjects, and collecting materials for the future building of the temple,--its actual erection being denied to him as a man of blood. everything favored the national prosperity of the israelites. there was no great power in western asia to prevent them founding a permanent monarchy; assyria had been humbled; and egypt, under the last kings of the twentieth dynasty, had lost its ancient prestige; the philistines were driven to a narrow portion of their old dominion, and the king of tyre sought friendly alliance with david. in the course of time, however, war broke out with moab, followed by other wars, which required all the resources of the jewish kingdom, and taxed to the utmost the energies of its bravest generals. moab, lying east of the dead sea, had at one time given refuge to david when pursued by saul, and he was even allied by blood to some of its people,--being descended from ruth, a moabitish woman. the sacred writings shed but little light on this war, or on its causes; but it was carried on with unusual severity, only a third part of the people being spared alive, and they reduced to slavery. a more important contest took place with the kingdom of ammon on the north, on the confines of syria, caused by the insults heaped on the ambassadors of david, whom he sent on a friendly message to hanun the king. the campaign was conducted by joab, who gained brilliant victories, without however crushing the ammonites, who again rallied with a vast array of mercenaries gathered in their support. david himself took the field with the whole force of his kingdom, and achieved a series of splendid successes by which he extended his empire to the euphrates, including damascus, besides securing invaluable spoils from the cities of syria,--among them chariots and horses, for which syria was celebrated. among these spoils also were a thousand shields overlaid with gold, and great quantities of brass afterward used by solomon in the construction of the temple. yet even these conquests, which now made david the most powerful monarch of western asia, did not secure peace. the edomites, south of the dead sea, alarmed in view of the increasing greatness of israel, rose against david, but were routed by abishai, who penetrated to petra and became master of the country, the inhabitants of which were put to the sword with unrelenting vengeance. this war of the edomites took place simultaneously with that of the ammonites, who, deprived of their allies, retreated with desperation to their strong capital,--rabbah ammon, twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea, and twenty miles east of the jordan,--where they made a memorable but unsuccessful resistance. it was during the siege of this stronghold, which lasted a year, that david, no longer young, oppressed with cares, and unable personally to bear the fatigues of war, forgot his duties as a king and as a man. for fifty years he had borne an unsullied name; for more than thirty years he had been a model of reproachless chivalry. if polygamy and ferocity in war are not drawbacks to our admiration, certain it is that no recorded crime or folly that called out divine censure can be laid to his charge. but in an hour of temptation, or from strange infatuation, he added murder to adultery,--covering up a great crime by one of still greater enormity, evincing meanness and treachery as well as ungoverned passion, and creating a scandal which was considered disgraceful even in an oriental palace. "we read," says south in one of his most brilliant paragraphs, "of nothing like adultery in a persecuted david in the wilderness, when he fled hither and thither like a chased doe upon the mountains; but when the delicacies of his palace softened and ungirt his spirit, then it was that this great hero fell by a glance, and buried his glories in nocturnal shame, giving to his name a lasting stain, and to his conscience a fearful wound." nor did he come to himself until a child was born, and the prophet nathan had ingeniously pointed out to him his flagrant sin. he manifested no wrath against his accuser, as some despots would have done, but sank to the ground in the greatest anguish and grief. then it was that david's repentance was more marvellous than his transgression, offering the most memorable instance of contrition recorded in history,--surpassing in moral sublimity, a thousand times over, the grief of theodosius under the rebuke of ambrose, or the sorrow of the haughty plantagenet for the murder of becket. his repentance was so profound, so sincere, so remarkable, that it is embalmed forever in the heart of a sinful world. its wondrous depth and intensity almost make us forget the crime itself, which nevertheless pursued him into the immensity of eternal night, and was visited upon the third and fourth generation in treason, rebellion, and wars. "be sure your sin will find you out," is a natural law as well as a divine decree. it was not only because david added bathsheba to the catalogue of his wives; it was not only because he coveted, like ahab, that which was not his own,--but because he violated the most sacred of all laws, and treacherously stained his hands in the blood of an innocent, confiding, and loyal subject, that his soul was filled with shame and anguish. it was this blood-guiltiness which was the burden of his confession and his agonized grief, as an offence not merely against society and all moral laws, but also against his maker, in whose pure eyes he had committed his crimes of lust, deceit, and murder. "against thee, thee only, have i sinned, and have done this evil in thy sight!" what a volume of theological truth blazes from this single expression, so difficult for reason to fathom, that it was against god that the royal penitent felt that he had sinned, even more than against uriah himself, whose life and property, in a certain sense, belonged to an oriental king. "nor do we charge ourselves," says edward irving, "with the defence of those backslidings which david more keenly scrutinized and more bitterly lamented than any of his censors, because they were necessary, in a measure, that he might be the full-orbed man to utter every form of spiritual feeling. and if the penitential psalms discover the deepest hell of agony, and if they bow the head which utters them, then let us keep those records of the psalmist's grief and despondency as the most precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed by every man who essayeth to lead a spiritual life; for it is not until a man, however pure, honest, and honorable he may have thought himself, and have been thought by others, discovereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled, and sinful before god,--not until he can, for expression of utter worthlessness, seek those psalms in which david describes his self-abasement, that he will realize the first beginning of spiritual life in his own soul." should we seek for the cause of david's fall, for that easy descent in the path of rectitude,--may we not find it in that fatal custom of eastern kings to have more wives than was divinely instituted in the garden of eden,--an indulgence which weakened the moral sense and unchained the passions? polygamy, under any circumstances, is the folly and weakness of kings, as well as the misfortune and curse of nations. it divided and distracted the household of david, and gave rise to incessant intrigues and conspiracies in his palace, which embittered his latter days and even undermined his throne. we read of no further backslidings which seemed to call forth the divine displeasure, unless it were the census, or numbering of the people, even against the expostulations of joab. why this census, in which we can see no harm, should have been followed by so dire a calamity as a pestilence in which seventy thousand persons perished in four days, we cannot see by the light of reason, unless it indicated the purpose of establishing an absolute monarchy for personal aggrandizement, or the extension of unnecessary conquests, and hence an infringement of the theocratic character of the hebrew commonwealth. the conquests of david had thus far been so brilliant, and his kingdom was so prosperous, that had he been a pagan monarch he might have meditated the establishment of a military monarchy, or have laid the foundation of an empire, like cyrus in after-times. from a less beginning than the jewish commonwealth at the time of david, the greeks and romans advanced to sovereignty over both neighboring and distant states. the numbering of the israelitish nation seemed to indicate a desire for extended empire against the plain indications of the divine will. but whatever was the nature of that sin, it seems to have been one of no ordinary magnitude; and in view of its consequences, david's heart was profoundly touched. "o god!" he cried, in a generous burst of penitence, "i have sinned. but these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand be upon me, i pray thee, and upon my father's house!" if david committed no more sins which we are forced to condemn, and which were not irreconcilable with his piety, he was subject to great trials and misfortunes. the wickedness of his children, especially of his eldest son amnon, must have nearly broken his heart. amnon's offence was not only a terrible scandal, but cost the life of the heir to the throne. it would be hard to conceive how david's latter days could have been more embittered than by the crime of his eldest son,--a crime he could neither pardon nor punish, and which disgraced his family in the eyes of the nation. as to absalom, it must have been exceedingly painful and humiliating to the aged and pious king to be a witness of the pride, insolence, extravagance, and folly of his favorite son, who had nothing to commend him to the people but his good looks; and still harder to bear was his rebellion, and his reckless attempt to steal his father's sceptre. what a pathetic sight to see the old warrior driven from his capital, and forced to flee for his life beyond the jordan! how humiliating to witness also the alienation of his subjects, and their willingness to accept a brainless youth as his successor, after all the glorious victories he had won, and the services he had rendered to the nation! david's history reveals the sorrows and burdens of all kings and rulers. outward grandeur and power, after all, are a poor compensation for the incessant cares, vexations, and humiliations which even the most favored monarchs are compelled to accept,--troubles, disappointments, and burdens which oppress both soul and body, and induce fears, suspicions, jealousies, and animosities. who would envy a tiberius or a louis xiv. if he were obliged to carry their load, knowing well what that burden was? then again the kingdom of david was afflicted with a grievous famine, which lasted three years, decimating the people, and giving a check to the national prosperity; and the philistines, too, whom he thought he had finally subdued, renewed their ancient warfare. but these calamities were not all that the old king had to endure. a new rebellion more dangerous even than that of absalom broke out under sheba, a benjamite, who sounded the trumpet of defiance from the mountains of ephraim, and who rallied under his standard ten of the tribes. to amasa, it seems, was intrusted the honor and the task of defending david and the tribe of judah, to which he belonged,--the king being alienated from joab for the slaying of absalom, although it had ended that undutiful son's rebellion. the bloodthirsty joab, as implacable as achilles, who had rendered such signal services to his sovereign, was consumed with jealousy at this new appointment, and going up to the new general-in-chief as if to salute him, treacherously stabbed him with his sword,--but continued, however, to support david. he succeeded in suppressing the rebellion by intrigue, and on the promise that the city should be spared, the head of the rebel was thrown over the wall of the fortress to which he had retired. even this rebellion did not end the trials of david, since adonijah, the heir presumptive after the death of absalom, conspired to steal the royal sceptre, which david had sworn to bathsheba he would bequeath to her son solomon. joab even favored the succession of adonijah; but the astute monarch, amid the infirmities of age, still possessed a large measure of the intellect and decision of his heroic days, and secured, by a rapid movement, the transfer of his kingdom to solomon, who was crowned in the lifetime of his father. in all these foul treacheries and crimes within his own household may be seen the distinct fulfilment of the punishment foretold by nathan the prophet, as prepared for david's own "great transgression." god's providence is unerring, and men indeed prepare for themselves the retribution which, in spite of sincere repentance, is the inevitable consequence of their own violations of law,--physical, moral, and spiritual. god gave david the new heart he longed for; but the evil seeds sown bore nevertheless evil fruit for him and his children. aside from these troubles, we know but little of the latter days of david. after the death of absalom, it would seem that he reigned ten years, on the whole tranquilly, turning his attention to the development of the resources of his kingdom, and collecting treasure for the temple, which he was not to build. he was able to set aside, as we read in the twenty-second chapter of the chronicles, a hundred thousand talents of gold and a million talents of silver,--an almost incredible sum. if a talent of silver is, as estimated, about £ , or $ , it would seem that the silver accumulated by david would have amounted to nearly two billion dollars, and the gold to a like sum,--altogether four billions, which is plainly impossible. probably there is a mistake in the figures. we read in the twenty-ninth chapter of chronicles that david gave to solomon, out of his own private property, three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of silver,--together, nearly $ , , . his nobles added what would be equal to $ , , in gold and silver alone, besides brass and iron,--altogether about $ , , , which is not incredible when we bear in mind that a single family in new york has accumulated a larger sum in two generations. but even this sum,--nearly two hundred million dollars,--would have more than built all the temples of athens, or st. peter's church at rome. whether the author of the chronicles has exaggerated the amount of the national contribution for the building of the temple or not, we yet are impressed with the vast wealth which was accumulated in the lifetime of david; and hence we infer that the wealth of his kingdom was enormous. and it was perhaps the excessive taxation of the people to raise this money, outside of the spoils of successful wars, that alienated them in the latter days of david, and induced them to rally under the standards of usurpers. certain it is that he became unpopular in the feebleness of old age, and was forced to abdicate his throne. david's premature old age presented a sad contrast to the vigor of his early days. he was not a very old man when he died,--younger than many monarchs and statesmen who in our times have retained their vigor, their popularity, and their power. but the intense labors and sorrows of forty years may have proved too great a strain on his nervous energies, and made him as timid as he once was bold. the man who had slain goliath ran away from absalom. he was completely under the domination of an intriguing wife. he showed a singular weakness in reference to the crimes of his favorite son, so as to merit the bitter reproaches of his captain-general. "thou hast shamed this day," said joab, "the faces of all thy servants; for i perceive had absalom lived, and all of us had died this day, then it had pleased thee well." in david's case, his last days do not seem to have been his best days, although he retained his piety and had conquered all his enemies. his glorious sun set in clouds after a reign of thirty-three years over united israel, and the nation hailed the accession of a boy whose character was undeveloped. the final years of this great monarch present an impressive lesson of the vanity even of a successful life, whatever services a man may have rendered to his country and to civilization. few kings have ever accomplished more than david; but his glory was succeeded, if not by shame, at least by clouds and darkness. and this eclipse is all the more mournful when we remember not only his services but his exalted virtues. he was the most successful and the most admired of all the monarchs who reigned at jerusalem. he was one of the greatest and best men who ever lived in any nation or at any period. "when, before or since, has there lived an outlaw who did not despoil his country?" where has there reigned a king whose head was less giddy on a throne, or who retained more humility in the midst of riches and glories, unless it were marcus aurelius or alfred the great? david had an inborn aptitude for government, and a power like julius caesar of fascinating every one who came in contact with him. his self-denial and devotion to the interests of the nation were marvellous. we do not read that he took any time for pleasure or recreation; the heavy load of responsibility and care never for a moment was thrown from his shoulders. his penetration of character was so remarkable that all stood in fear of him; yet fear gave place to admiration. never had a monarch more devoted servants and followers than david in his palmy days; he was the nation's idol and pride for thirty years. in every successive vicissitude he was great; and were it not for his cruelty in war and severity to his enemies, and his one great lapse into criminal self-indulgence, his reign would have been faultless. contrast david with the other conquerors of the world; compare him with classical and mediaeval heroes,--how far do they fall beneath him in deeds of magnanimity and self-sacrifice! what monarch has transmitted to posterity such inestimable treasures of thought and language? it is consoling to feel that david, whether exultant in riches and honors, or bowed down to the earth with grief and wrath, both in the years of adversity and in his prosperous manhood, in strength and in weakness, with unfailing constancy and loyalty turned his thoughts to god as the source of all hope and consolation. "as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, o god!" he has no doubts, no scepticism, no forgetfulness. his piety has the seal of an all-pervading sense of the constant presence and aid of a personal god whom it is his supremest glory to acknowledge,--his staff, his rock, his fortress, his shield, his deliverer, his friend; the one with whom he sought to commune, both day and night, on the field of battle and in the guarded recesses of his palace. in the very depths of humiliation he never sinks into despair. his piety is both tender and exultant. in the ecstasy of his raptures he calls even upon inanimate nature to utter god's praises,--upon the sun and moon, the mountains and valleys, fire and hail, storms and winds, yea, upon the stars of night. "bless ye the lord, o my soul! for his mercy endureth forever." and this is why he was a man after god's own heart. let cynics and critics, and unbelievers like bayle, delight to pick flaws in david's life. who denies his faults? he was loved because his soul was permeated with exalted loyalty, because he hungered and thirsted after righteousness, because he could not find words to express sufficiently his sense of sin and his longing for forgiveness, his consciousness of littleness and unworthiness when contrasted with the majesty of jehovah. let not our eyes be fixed upon his defects, but upon the general tenor of his life. it is true he is in war merciless and cruel; he hurls anathemas on his enemies. his wrath is as supernal as his love; he is inspired with the fiercest resentments; he exhibits the mighty anger of homer's heroes; he never could forgive joab for the slaughter of abner and absalom. but the abiding sentiments of his heart are gentleness and magnanimity. how affectionately his soul clung to jonathan! what a power of self-denial, when he was faint and thirsty, in refusing the water which his brave companions brought him at the risk of their lives! how generously he spared the life of saul! how patiently he bore the rebukes of nathan! how nobly he treated the aged barzillai! his impulses were all generous. he was affectionate to weakness. he had no egotistic ends. he forgot his own sorrows in the sufferings of his people. he had no pride in all the pomp of power, although he never forgot that he was the lord's anointed. when we pass from david's personal character to the services he rendered, how exalted his record! he laid the foundation of the prosperity of his nation. where would have been the glories of solomon but for the genius and deeds of david? but more than any material greatness are the imperishable lyrics he bequeathed to all ages and nations, in which are unfolded the varied experiences of a good man in his warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil,--those priceless utterances which portray every passion that can move the human soul. he has left bare to the contemplation of all ages all that a lofty soul can suffer or enjoy, all that can be learned from folly and sin, all that can stimulate religious life, all that can console in sorrow and affliction. these experiences and aspirations he has embodied in lyric poetry, on the whole the most exquisite in the hebrew language, creating a new world of religious thought and feeling, and furnishing the foundation for christian psalmody, to be sung from age to age throughout the world. his kingdom passed away, but his psalms remain,--a realm which no civilization can afford to lose. as moses lives in his jurisprudence, solomon in his proverbs, isaiah in his prophecies, and paul in his epistles, so david lives in those poems that are still the most expressive of all the forms in which the public worship of god is still continued. such poetry could not have been written, had not the author experienced in his own life every variety of suffering and joy. the literary excellence of the psalms cannot be measured by the standard of greek and roman lyrics. it is not seen in any of our present forms of metrical composition. it is the mighty soaring of an exalted soul which makes the psalms so dear to us, and not their artificial structure. they were made to reveal the ways of god to man and the life of the human soul, not to immortalize heroes or dignify a human love. we may not be able to appreciate in english form their original metrical skill; but it is impossible that a people so musical as the hebrews were kindled into passionate admiration of them, had they not possessed great rhythmic beauty. we may not comprehend the force of the melodic forms, but we can appreciate the tenderness, the pathos, the sublimity, and the intensity of the sentiments expressed. "in pathetic dirges, in songs of jubilee, in outbursts of praise, in prophetic announcements, in the agonies of contrition, in bursts of adoration, in the beatitudes of holy bliss, in the enchanting calmness of christian life," no one has ever surpassed david, so that he was called "the sweet singer of israel." there is nothing pathetic in national difficulties, or endearing in family relations, or profound in inward experience, or triumphant over the fall of wickedness, or beatific in divine worship, which he does not intensify. he raises mortals to the skies, though he brings no angels down. never does he introduce dogmas, yet his songs are permeated with fundamental truths, and are a perpetual rebuke to pharisaism, rationalism, epicureanism, and every form of infidel speculation that with "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god." as the psalter was held to be the most inspiring poetry in the palmy days of the hebrew commonwealth, so it proved the most impressive part of the ritual of the mediaeval church, and is still the most valued of all the lyrics which protestantism has appropriated in the worship of god. and how potent, how lasting, how valued is a good song! the psalmody of the church will last longer than its sermons; and when a song stimulates the loftiest sentiments of which men are capable, how priceless it is, how permanently it is embalmed in the heart of the world! "thus have his songs become the treasured property of mankind, resounding in the anthems of different creeds, and carrying into every land that same voice which on mount zion was raised in sorrowful longings or ecstatic praise." what a mighty power the songs of the son of jesse still wield over the affections of mankind! we lose sight at times of moses, of solomon, and of isaiah; but we never lose sight of david. such is the tribute which all nations bring, o warrior, prophet, bard, and sainted king, from distant ages to thy hallowed name, transcending far all greek and roman fame! no pagan gods thy sacred songs invoke, no loves degrading do thy strains provoke. thy soul to heaven in holy rapture mounts, and joys seraphic in its bliss recounts. o thou sweet singer of a favored race, what vast results to thy pure songs we trace! how varied and how rich are all thy lays on nature's glories and jehovah's ways! in loftiest flight thy kindling soul surveys the promised glories of the latter days, when peace and love this fallen world shall bind, and richest blessings all the race shall find. solomon. the glory of the monarchy. about - b.c. we associate with solomon the culmination of the jewish monarchy, and a reign of unexampled prosperity and glory. he not only surpassed all his predecessors and successors in those things which strike the imagination as brilliant and imposing, but he had such extraordinary intellectual gifts that he has passed into history as the wisest of ancient kings, and one of the most favored of mortals. amid the evils which saddened the latter days of his father david, this remarkable man grew up. his interests were protected by his mother bathsheba, an intriguing, ambitious, and beautiful woman, and his education was directed by the prophet nathan. he was ten years of age when his elder brother absalom rebelled, and a youth of fifteen to twenty when he was placed upon the throne, during the lifetime of his father and with his sanction, aided by the cabals of his mother, the connivance of the high-priest zadok, the spiritual authority of nathan, and the political ascendency of benaiah, the most valiant of the captains of israel after joab. he became king in a great national crisis, when unfilial rebellion had undermined the throne of david, and adonijah, next in age to absalom, had sought to steal the royal sceptre, supported by the veteran joab and abiathar, the elder high-priest. solomon's first acts as monarch were to remove the great enemies of his father and the various heads of faction, not sparing even joab, the most successful general that ever brought lustre on the jewish arms. with abiathar, who died in exile, expired the last glory of the house of eli; and with shimei, who was slain with adonijah, passed away the last representative of the royal family of saul. soon after solomon repaired to the heights of gibeon, six miles from jerusalem,--a lofty eminence which overlooks judaea, and where stood the tabernacle of the congregation, the original tent of the wanderings, in front of which was the brazen altar on which the young king, as a royal holocaust, offered the sacrifice of one thousand victims. it was on the night of that sacrificial offering that, in a dream, a divine voice offered to the youthful king whatsoever his heart should crave. he prayed for wisdom, which was granted,--the first evidence of which was his celebrated judgment between the two women who claimed the living child, which made a powerful impression on the whole nation, and doubtless strengthened his throne. the kingdom which solomon inherited was probably at that time the most powerful in western asia, the fruit of the conquests of saul and david, of abner and joab. it was bounded by lebanon on the north, the euphrates on the east, egypt on the south, and the mediterranean on the west. its territorial extent was small compared with the assyrian or persian empire; but it had already defeated the surrounding nations,--the philistines, the edomites, the syrians, and the ammonites. it hemmed in phoenicia on the sea-coast, and controlled the great trade-routes to the east, which made it politic for the king of tyre to cultivate the friendship of both david and solomon. if palestine was small in extent, it was then exceedingly fertile, and sustained a large population. its hills were crested with fortresses, and covered with cedars and oaks. the land was favorable to both tillage and pasture, abounding in grapes, figs, olives, dates, and every species of grain; the numerous springs and streams favored a perfect system of irrigation, so that the country presented a picture in striking contrast to its present blasted and dreary desolation. the nation was also enriched by commerce as well as by agriculture. caravans brought from eastern cities the most valuable of their manufactures. from tarshish in spain ships brought gold and silver; egypt sent chariots and fine linen; syria sold her purple cloths and robes of varied colors; arabia furnished horses and costly trappings. all the luxuries and riches which tyre had collected in her warehouses found their way to jerusalem. even silver was as plenty as the stones in the streets. long voyages to the mouth of the indus resulted in a vast accumulation of treasure,--gold, ivory, spices, gums, perfumes, and precious stones. the nations and tribes subject to solomon from the river of egypt to the euphrates, and from syria to the red sea, paid a fixed tribute, while their kings and princes sent rich presents,--vessels of gold and silver, costly arms and armor, rich garments and robes, horses and mules, perfumes and spices. but the prosperity of the realm was not altogether inherited; it was firmly and prudently promoted by the young king. solomon made alliances with egypt and syria, as well as with phoenicia, and peace and plenty enriched all classes, so that every man sat under his own vine and fig-tree in perfect security. never was such prosperity seen in israel before or since. strong fortresses were built on lebanon to protect the caravans, and tadmor in the wilderness to the east became a great centre of trade, and ultimately a splendid city under zenobia. the royal stables contained forty thousand horses and fourteen hundred chariots. the royal palace glistened with plates of gold, and the parks and gardens were watered from immense reservoirs. "when the youthful monarch repaired to these gardens in his gorgeous chariot, he was attended," says stanley, "by nobles whose robes of purple floated in the wind, and whose long black hair, powdered with gold dust, glistened in the sun, while he himself, clothed in white, blazing with jewels, scented with perfumes, wearing both crown and sceptre, presented a scene of gladness and glory. when he travelled, he was borne on a splendid litter of precious woods, inlaid with gold and hung with purple curtains, preceded by mounted guards, with princes for his companions, and women for his idolaters, so that all israel rejoiced in him." we infer that solomon reigned for several years in justice and equity, without striking faults,--a wise and benevolent prince, who feared god and sought from him wisdom, which was bestowed in such a remarkable degree that princes came from remote countries to see him, including the famous queen of sheba, who was both dazzled and enchanted. yet while he was, on the whole, loyal to the god of his fathers, and was the pride and admiration of his subjects, especially for his wisdom and knowledge, solomon was not exempted from grave mistakes. he was scarcely seated on his throne before he married an egyptian princess, doubtless with the view of strengthening his political power. but while this splendid alliance brought wealth and influence, and secured chariots and horses, it violated one of the settled principles of the jewish commonwealth, and prevented that isolation which was so necessary to keep uncorrupted the manners and habits of the people. the alliance doubtless favored commerce, and in one sense enlarged the minds of his subjects, removing from them many prejudices; but the nation was not intended by the divine founder to be politically or commercially great, but rather to preserve the worship of jehovah. moreover, the daughter of pharaoh was an idolater, and her influence, so far as it went, tended to wean the king from his religious duties,--at least to make him tolerant of false gods. the enlargement of the king's harem was another mistake, for although polygamy was not condemned, and was practised even by david, it made solomon prominent among eastern monarchs for an absurd ostentation, allied with enervating effeminacy, and thus gradually undermined the healthy tone of his character. it may have prepared the way for the apostasy of his later years, and certainly led to a great increase of the royal expenses. the support of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines must have been a scandal and a burden for which the nation was not prepared. the pomp in which he lived presupposes a change in the government itself, even to an absolute monarchy and a grinding despotism, fatal to the liberties which the israelites had enjoyed under saul and david. the predictions and warnings of samuel were realized for the first time in the reign of solomon, so that wealth, prosperity, and luxury were but a poor exchange for that ancient religious ardor and intense patriotism which had led the hebrew nation to victory over surrounding idolatrous nations. the heroic ages of jewish history passed away when ships navigated by phoenician sailors brought gold from ophir and silver from tarshish, and did not return until the maccabees rallied the hunted and decimated tribes of israel against the armies of the syrian kings. solomon's peaceful and prosperous reign of forty years was, however, favorable to one grand enterprise which david had longed to accomplish, but to whom it was denied. this was the building of the temple, for so long a time identified with the glory of jerusalem, and common interest in which might have bound the twelve tribes together but for the excessive taxation which the extravagance and ostentation of the monarch had rendered necessary. we can form but an inadequate idea of the magnificence of this temple from its description in the sacred annals. an edifice which taxed the mighty resources of solomon and consumed the spoils of forty years' successful warfare, must have been in that age without a parallel in splendor and beauty. if the figures are not exaggerated, it required the constant labors of ten thousand men in the mountains of lebanon alone to cut down and hew the timber, and this for a period of eleven years. of ordinary laborers there were seventy thousand; and of those who worked in the quarries and squared the stones there were eighty thousand more, besides overseers. it took three years to prepare the foundations. as mount moriah, on which the temple was built, did not furnish level space enough, a wall of solid masonry was erected on the eastern and southern sides nearly three hundred feet in height, the stones of which, in some instances, were more than twenty feet long and six feet thick, so perfectly squared that no mortar was required. the buried foundations for the courts of the temple and the vast treasure-houses still remain to attest the strength and solidity of the work, seemingly as indestructible as are the pyramids of egypt, and only paralleled by the uncovered ruins of the palaces of the caesars on the palatine hill at rome, which fill all travellers with astonishment. vast cisterns also had to be hewn in the rocks to supply water for the sacrifices, capable of holding ten millions of gallons. the temple proper was small compared with the egyptian temples, or with mediaeval cathedrals; but the courts which surrounded it were vast, enclosing a quadrangle larger than the area on which st. peter's church at rome is built. it was, however, the richness of the decorations and of the sacred vessels and the altars for sacrifice, which consumed immense quantities of gold, silver, and brass, that made the temple especially remarkable. the treasures alone which david collected were so enormous that we think there must be errors in the calculation,--thirteen million pounds troy of gold, and one hundred and twenty-seven million pounds of silver,--an amount not easy to estimate. but the plates of gold which overlaid the building, and the cherubim or symbolical winged figures, the precious woods, the rich hangings and curtains of crimson and purple, the brazen altars, the lamps, the sacred vessels of solid gold and silver, the elaborate carvings and castings, the rare gems,--these all together must have required a greater expenditure than is seen in the most famous temples of greece or asia minor, whose value and beauty chiefly consisted in their exquisite proportions and their marble pillars and figures of men or animals. but no representation of man, no statue to the deity, was seen in the temple of solomon; no idol or sacred animal profaned it. there was no symbol to indicate even the presence of jehovah, whose dwelling-place was in the heavens, and whom the heaven of heavens could not contain. there were rites and sacrifices, but these were offered to an unseen divinity, whose presence was everywhere, and who alone reigned as king of kings and lord of lords, forever and forever. the temple, however, with its courts and porticos, its vast foundations of stones squared in distant quarries, and the immense treasures everywhere displayed, impressed both the senses and the imagination of a people never distinguished for art or science. and not only so, but fergusson says: "the whole mohammedan world look to it as the foundation of all architectural knowledge, and the jews still recall its glories, and sigh over their loss with a constant tenacity unmatched by that of any other people to any other building of the ancient world." whether or not we are able to explain the architecture of the temple, or are in error respecting its size, or the amount of gold and silver expended, or the number of men employed, we know that it was the pride and glory of that age, and was large enough, with its enclosures, to contain a representation of five millions of people, the heads of all the families and tribes of the nation, such as were collected together at its dedication. as the great event of david's reign was the removal of the ark to jerusalem, so the culminating glory of solomon was the dedication of the temple he had built to the worship of jehovah. the ceremony equalled in brilliancy the glories of a roman triumph, and infinitely surpassed them in popular enthusiasm. the whole population of the kingdom,--some four or five millions,--or their picked representatives, came to jerusalem to witness or to take part in it. "and as the long array of dignitaries, with thousands of musicians clothed in white, and the monarch himself arrayed in pontifical robes, and the royal household in embroidered mantles, and the guards with their golden shields, and the priests bearing the sacred but tattered tabernacle, with the ark and the cherubim, and the altar of sacrifice, and the golden candlesticks and table of shew bread, and the brazen serpent of the wilderness and the venerated tables of stone on which were engraved by the hand of god himself the ten commandments,"--as this splendid procession swept along the road, strewed with flowers and fragrant with incense, how must the hearts of the people have been lifted up! then the royal pontiff arose from the brazen scaffold on which he had seated himself, and amid clouds of incense and the smoke of burning sacrifice offered unto god the tribute of national praise, and implored his divine protection. and then, rising from his knees, with hands outstretched to heaven, he blessed the congregation, saying with a loud voice, "let the lord our god be with us as he was with our fathers, so that all the earth may know that jehovah is god and that there is none else!" then followed the sacrifices for this grand occasion,--twenty thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and goats were offered up on successive days. only a portion of these animals was actually consumed on the altar by the officiating priests: the greater part furnished meat for the assembled multitude. the festival of the dedication lasted a week, and this was succeeded by the feast of the tabernacles; and from that time the temple became the pride and glory of the nation. to see it periodically and worship in its courts became the intensest desire of every hebrew. three times a year some great festival was held, attended by a vast concourse of the people. the command was that every male israelite should "appear before the lord" and make his offering; but this of course had its necessary exceptions, as multitudes of women and children could not go, and had to be cared for at home. we cannot easily understand how on any other supposition they were all accommodated, spacious as were the various courts of the temple; and we conclude that only a large representation of the tribes and families took place, for how could four or five millions of people assemble together at any festival? contemporaneous with the building of the temple, or immediately after it was dedicated, were other gigantic works, including the royal palace, which it took thirteen years to complete, and upon which, as upon the sacred house, syrian artists and workmen were employed. the principal building was only one hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five broad, and forty-five feet high, in three stories, with a grand porch supported on lofty pillars; but connected with the palace were other edifices to support the magnificence in which the king lived with his court and his harem. around the tower of the house of david were hung the famous golden shields, one thousand in number, which had been made for the body-guard, with other glittering ornaments, which were likened by the poets to the neck of a bride decked with rays of golden coins. in the great judgment hall, built of cedar and squared stone, was the throne of the monarch, made of ivory, inlaid with gold. a special mansion was erected for solomon's egyptian queen, of squared stones twelve to fifteen feet in length. connected with these various palaces were extensive gardens constructed at great expense, filled with all the triumphs of horticultural art, and watered by streams from vast reservoirs. in these the luxurious king and court could wander among beds of spices and flowers and fruits. but these did not content the royal family. a summer palace was erected on the heights of mount lebanon, having gardens filled with everything which could delight the eye or captivate the senses. here, surrounded with learned men, women, and courtiers, with bands of music, costly litters, horses and chariots, and every luxury which unbounded means could command, the magnificent monarch beguiled his leisure hours, abandoned equally to pleasure and study,--for his inquiring mind sought to master all the knowledge that was known, especially in the realm of natural history, since "he was wiser than all men, and spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is on lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." we can get some idea of the expenses of his household, in the fact that it daily consumed sixty measures of flour and meal and thirty oxen and one hundred sheep, besides venison, game, and fatted fowls. the king never appeared in public except with crown and sceptre, in royal robes redolent of the richest perfumes of india and arabia, and sparkling with gold and gems. he lived in a constant blaze of splendor, whether travelling in his gorgeous litter, surrounded with his guards, or seated on his throne to dispense justice and equity, or feasting with his nobles to the sound of joyous music. to keep up this regal splendor, to support seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines on the fattest of the land, and deck them all in robes of purple and gold; to build magnificent palaces, to dig canals, and construct gigantic reservoirs for parks and gardens; to maintain a large standing army in time of peace; to erect strong fortresses wherever caravans were in danger of pillage; to found cities in the wilderness; to level mountains and fill up valleys,--to accomplish all this even the resources of solomon were insufficient. what were six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold, yearly received (thirty-five million dollars), besides the taxes on all merchants and travellers, and the vast gifts which flowed from kings and princes, when that constant drain on the royal treasury is considered! even a louis xiv. was impoverished by his court and palace building, though he controlled the fortunes of twenty-five millions of people. king solomon, in all his glory, became embarrassed, and was obliged to make forced contributions,--to levy a heavy tribute on his own subjects from dan to beersheba, and make bondmen of all the people that were left of the amorites, hittites, perizites, hivites, and jebusites. the people were virtually enslaved to aggrandize a single person. the burdens laid on all classes and the excessive taxation at last alienated the nation. "the division of the whole country into twelve revenue districts was a serious grievance,--especially as the high official over each could make large profits from the excess of contributions demanded." a poll-tax, from which the nation in the olden times was freed, was levied on israelite and canaanite alike. the virtual slave-labor by which the great public improvements were made, sapped the loyalty of the people and produced discontent. this forced labor was as fatal as war to the real property of the nation, for wealth is ever based on private industry, on farms and vineyards, rather than on the palaces of kings. moreover, the friendly relations which solomon established with the neighboring heathen nations disgusted the old religious leaders, while the tendency to oriental luxury which outward prosperity favored alarmed the more thoughtful. it was not a pleasant sight for the princes of israel to see the whole land overrun with phoenicians, arabs, babylonians, egyptians, caravan drivers, strangers and travellers, camels and dromedaries from midian and sheba, traders to the fairs, pedlers with their foreign cloths and trinkets, all spreading immorality and heresy, and filling the cities with strange customs and degrading dances. nor was there, in that absolute monarchy which solomon centralized around his throne, any remedy for all this, save assassination or revolution. the king had become debauched and effeminate. the love of pomp and extravagance was followed by worldliness, luxury, and folly. from agricultural pursuits the people had passed to commercial; the israelites had become merchants and traders, and the foul idolatries of phoenicians and syrians had overspread the land. the king having lost the respect and affection of the nation, the rebellion of jeroboam was a logical sequence. i have not read of any king who so belied the promises of his early days, and on whom prosperity produced so fatal an apostasy as solomon. with all his wisdom and early piety, he became an egotist, a sensualist, and a tyrant. what vanity he displayed before the queen of sheba! what a slave he became to wicked women! how disgraceful was his toleration of the gods of phoenicia and egypt! how hard was the bondage to which he subjected his subjects! how different was his ordinary life from that of his illustrious father, with no repentance, no remorse, no self-abasement! he was a nebuchadnezzar and a sardanapalus combined, going from bad to worse. and he was not only a sensualist and a tyrant, an egotist, and to some extent an idolater, but he was a cynic, sceptical of all good, and of the very attainments which had made him famous. we read of no illustrious name whose glory passed through so dark an eclipse. the satiated, disenchanted, disappointed monarch, prematurely old, and worn out by self-indulgence, passed away without honor or regret, at the age of sixty, and was buried in the city of david; and rehoboam, his son, reigned in his stead. the christian fathers and many subsequent theological writers have puzzled their brains with unsatisfactory speculations whether solomon finally repented or not; but the scriptures are silent on that point. we have no means of knowing at what period of his life his heart was weaned from the religion of david, or when he entered upon a life of pleasure. there are some passages in the book of ecclesiastes which lead us to suppose that before he died he came to himself, and was a preacher of righteousness. this is the more charitable and humane view to take; yet even so, his moral teachings and warnings are not imbued with the personal contrition that endeared david's soul to god; they are unimpassioned, cold-hearted, intellectual, impersonal. moreover, it may be that even in the midst of his follies he retained the perception of moral distinctions. his will was probably enslaved, so that he had not the power to restrain his passions, and his head may have become giddy in his high elevation. how few men could have resisted such powerful temptations as assailed solomon on every side! the heart of the christian world cannot but feel that so gifted a man, endowed with every intellectual attraction, who reigned for a time with so much wisdom, who recognized jehovah as the guide and lord of israel, as especially appears at the dedication of the temple, and who wrote such profound lessons of moral wisdom, would not be suffered to descend to the grave without the divine forgiveness. all that we know is that he was wise, and favored beyond all precedent, but that he adopted the habits and fell in with the vices of oriental kings, and lost the affections of his people. he was exalted to the highest pinnacle of glory; he descended to an abyss of shame,--a sad example of the infirmity of human nature which all ages will lament. in one sense solomon left nothing to his nation but monuments of despotic power, and trophies of a material civilization which implied the decay of primitive virtues. he did not perpetuate his greatness; he did not even enlarge the boundaries of his kingdom. like louis xiv. he simply squandered a great inheritance. he did not leave his kingdom morally so strong as it was under david; it was even dismembered under his legitimate successor. the grand temple indeed remained the pride of every jew, but david had bequeathed the treasures to build it. the national resources had been wasted in palaces and in court festivities; and although these had contributed to a material civilization, especially the sums expended on fortresses, aqueducts, reservoirs, and roads for the caravans, this civilization, so highly and justly prized in our age, may--under the peculiar circumstances of the jews, and the end for which, by the mosaic dispensation, they were intended to be kept isolated--have weakened those simpler habits and sentiments which favored the establishment of their religion. it must never be lost sight of that the isolation of the hebrew race, unfavorable to such developments of civilization as commerce and the arts, was providentially designed (as is evidenced by the fact of accomplishment in spite of all obstacles) to keep alive the worship of jehovah until the fulness of time should come,--until the messiah should appear to establish a new dispensation. the glory and grandeur of solomon did not contribute to this end, but on the other hand favored idolatrous rites and corrupting foreign customs; and this is proved by the rapid decline of the jews in religious life, patriotic ardor, and primitive virtues under the succeeding kings, both of judah and israel, which led ultimately to their captivity. politically, solomon may have added to the temporary power of the nation, but spiritually, and so fundamentally, he caused an eclipse of glory. and this is why his kingdom departed from his house, and he left a sullied name. nevertheless, in many important respects solomon rendered great services to humanity, which redeemed his memory from shame and made him a truly immortal man, and even a great benefactor. he left writings which are still among the most treasured inheritances of his nation and of mankind. it is recorded that he spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. only a small portion of these have descended to us in the sacred writings, but they doubtless entered into the literature of the jews. enough remains, whenever they were compiled and collected, to establish his fame as one of the wisest and most gifted of mortals. and these writings, whatever may have been his backslidings, are pervaded with moral wisdom. whether written in youth or in old age, on the summit of human glory or in the depths of despair, they are generally accepted as among the most precious gems of the old testament. his profound experience, conveyed to us in proverbs and songs, remains as a guide in life through all generations. the dignity of intellect shines triumphantly through all the obscuration of virtues. thus do poets live even when buried in ignominious graves; thus do philosophers instruct the world even though, like seneca, and possibly bacon, their lives present a sad contrast to their precepts. great thoughts emancipate the soul, from age to age, while he who uttered them may have been enslaved by vices. who knows what the private life of shakspeare and goethe may have been, but who would part with the writings they have left us? how soon the personal peculiarities of coleridge and carlyle will be forgotten, yet how permanent and healthy their utterances! it is truth, rather than man, that lives and conquers and triumphs. man is nothing, except as the instrument of almighty power. of the writings ascribed to solomon, there are three books, each of which corresponds to the different periods of his life,--to his pious youth, to his prosperous manhood, and to his later years of cynicism and despair. they all alike blaze with moral truth, and appeal to universal experience. they present different features of human life, at different periods, and suggest sentiments which most people have realized at some time or another. and if in some cases they are apparently contradictory, like the proverbs and ecclesiastes, they are equally striking and convincing, and are not more inconsistent than the man himself. who does not change, and yet remain individually the same? is there not a change between youth and old age? do not most great men utter sentiments hard to be reconciled with one another, yet with equal sincerity? webster enforces free-trade at one time and a high tariff at another, as light or circumstances change. gladstone was in youth and middle age a pillar of the aristocracy; later he was the oracle of the masses, yet a lofty realism underlay all his utterances. the writings of solomon present life in different aspects, and yet they are alike true. they are not divine revelations, like the commandments given to moses amid the lightnings of sinai, or like the visions of the prophets respecting the future glories of the church. they do not exalt the soul into inspiring ecstasies like the psalms of david, or kindle a holy awe like the lofty meditations of job; but they are yet such impressive truths pertaining to human life that we invest them with more than human wisdom. the song of songs, long ascribed to king solomon, has been attended with some difficulty of explanation. it is a poem liable to be perverted by an unsanctified soul, since it is foreign to our modes of expression. for two hundred years it has been variously interpreted. it was the delight of saint bernard the ascetic, and a stumbling-block to ewald the critic. to many german scholars, who have rendered great services by their learning and genius, it is only the expression of physical love, like the amatory songs of greece. to others of more piety yet equal scholarship, like origen, grotius, and bossuet, it is symbolic of the love which exists between christ and the church. it seems, at least, to be a contrast with the impure love of the heathen world. but whether it describes the ardent affection which solomon bore to his young egyptian bride; or the still more beautiful love of the innocent shulamite maiden for her betrothed shepherd feeding his flock among the lilies, unseduced by all the influences of the royal court, and triumphant over the seductions of rank and power; or whether it is the rapt soul of the believer bursting out in holy transports of joy, like a saint theresa in the anticipated union with her divine spouse,--it is still a noble tribute to what is most enchanting of the great certitudes on earth or in heaven; and it is expressed in language of exquisite and incomparable elegance. "arise, my fair one, and come away! for the winter is past and gone, and the flowers appear upon the earth, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. make haste, my beloved! be thou like a roe on the mountains of spices, for many waters cannot quench love, nor the floods drown it; yea, were a man to offer all that he hath for it, it would be utterly despised." how tender, how innocent, how fervent, how beautiful, is this description of a lofty love, at rest in its happiness, in the society of the charmer, exultant in the certainty of that glorious sentiment which nothing can corrupt and nothing can destroy! if this unique and beautiful song was the work of solomon in his early days of innocence and piety, the book of proverbs seems to be the result of his profound observations when he was still uncorrupted by prosperity, ruling his kingdom with sagacity and amazing the world with his wisdom. how many of those acute sayings were uttered by solomon we know not, but probably most of them are his, collected, it is supposed, during the reign of hezekiah. they are written on almost every subject pertaining to ethics, to nature, to science, and to society. some are allusions to god, and others to the duties between man and man. many are devoted to the duties of women, applicable to the sex in all times. they are not on a level of the psalms in piety, nor of the prophecies in grandeur, but they recognize the immutable principles of moral obligation. in some cases they seem to be worldly-wise,--such as we might suppose to fall from the mouth of benjamin franklin or cobbett,--recognizing worldly prosperity as the greatest of blessings. sometimes they are witty, again ironical, but always forcible. in some of them there is awful solemnity. there are no more terrific warnings and exhortations in the sacred writings than are found in the proverbs of solomon. the sins of idleness, of anger, of covetousness, of gossip, of falsehood, of oppression, of injustice, of intemperance, of unchastity, are uniformly denounced as leading to destruction; while prudence, temperance, chastity, obedience to parents, and loyalty to truth are enjoined with the earnestness of a man who believes in personal accountability to god. the ethics of the proverbs are based on everlasting righteousness, and are imbued with the spirit of divine philosophy; their great peculiarity is the constant exhortation to wisdom and knowledge, to which young men are especially exhorted. like socrates, solomon never separates wisdom from virtue, but makes one the foundation of the other. he shows the connection between virtue and happiness, vice and misery. the proverbs are inexhaustible in moral force, and have universal application. there is nothing cynical or gloomy in them. they form a fitting study for youth and old age, an incentive to virtue and a terror to evil-doers, a thesaurus of moral wisdom; they speak in every line a lofty and comprehensive intellect, acquainted with all the experiences of life. such moral wisdom would be imperishable in any literature. such utterances go far to redeem all personal defects; they show how unclouded is a mind trained in equity, even when the will is enslaved by iniquity. what is still more remarkable, the proverbs never apologize for the force of temptation, and never blend error with truth; they uniformly exalt wisdom, and declare that the beginning of it is the fear of the lord. there is not one of them which seeks to cover up vice with sophistical excuses; they show that the author or authors of them love moral beauty and truth, and exalt the same,--as many great men, with questionable morals, give their testimony to the truths of christianity, and utterly abhor those who poison the soul by plausible sophistries,--as lord brougham detested rousseau. the famous writings of our modern times which nearest approach the proverbs in love of truth and moral wisdom are those of bacon and shakspeare. in striking contrast with the praises of knowledge which permeate the proverbs, is the book of ecclesiastes, supposed to have been written in the decline of solomon's life, when the pleasures of sin had saddened his soul, and filled his mind with cynicism. unless the book of ecclesiastes is to be interpreted as ironical, nothing can be more dreary than many of its declarations. it even seems to pour contempt on all knowledge and all enjoyments. "in much knowledge is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.... what profit hath a man of all his labor?... there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool.... there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink.... a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast; all go to the same place.... what hath the wise man more than the fool?... there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in wickedness.... one man among a thousand have i found, but a woman among all those have i not found.... the race is not to the swift, the battle to the strong; neither bread to the wise, nor riches to the man of understanding.... on all things is written vanity." such are some of the dismal and cynical utterances of solomon in his old age. the ecclesiastes contrasted with the proverbs is discouraging and sad, although there is great seriousness and even loftiness in many of its sayings. it seems to be the record of a disenchanted old man, to whom all things are a folly and vanity. there is a suppressed contempt expressed for what young men and the worldly regard as desirable, equalled only by a sort of proud disdain of success and fame. there is great bitterness in reference to women. some of the sayings are as mournful jeremiads as any uttered by carlyle, showing great scorn of what ninety-nine in one hundred are vain of, and pursue after, as all ending in vanity and vexation of spirit. we can understand how riches may prove a snare, how pleasure-seeking ends in disappointment, how the smiles of a deceitful woman may lead to the chamber of death, how little the treasures of wickedness profit, how sins will find out the transgressor, how the heart may be sad in the midst of laughter, how wine is a mocker, how ambition is babel-building, how he who pursueth evil pursueth it to his death; we can understand how abundance will produce satiety, and satiety lead to disgust,--how disappointment attends our most cherished plans, and how all mortal pursuits fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal soul. but why does the favored and princely solomon, in sadness and bitterness, pronounce knowledge also to be a vanity like power and riches, especially when in his earlier writings he so highly commends it? is it true that in much wisdom is much grief, and that the increase of knowledge is the increase of sorrow? can it be that the book of ecclesiastes is the mere record of the miserable experiences of an embittered and disappointed sensualist, or is it the profound and searching exposition of the vanities of this world as they appear to a lofty searcher after truth and god, measured by the realities of a future and endless life, which the soul emancipated from pollution pants and aspires after with all the intensity of a renovated nature? when i bear in mind the impressive lessons that are declared at the close of this remarkable book, the earnest exhortation to remember god before the dust shall return to the earth as it was, i cannot but feel that there are great moral truths underlying the sarcasm and irony in which the writer indulged. and these come with increased force from the mouth of a man who had tasted every mortal good, and found it all, when not properly used, a confirmation of the impossibility of earth to satisfy the soul of man. the writer calls himself "the preacher," and surely a great preacher he was,--not to a throng of "fashionable worshippers" or a crowd of listless pleasure-seekers, but to all ages and nations. and if he really was a living speaker to the young men who caught the inspiration of his voice, how terribly eloquent he must have been! i fancy that i can see that unhappy old man, worn out, saddened, embittered, yet at last rising above the decrepitude of age and the infirmities which sin had hastened, and speaking in tones that could never be forgotten. "behold, ye young men! i have tasted every enjoyment of this earth; i have indulged in every pleasure forbidden or permitted. i have explored the world of thought and the realm of nature. i have been favored beyond any mortal that ever lived; i have been flattered and honored beyond all precedent; i have consumed the treasures of kings and princes. i builded me houses, i planted me vineyards; i made me gardens and orchards, i made me pools of water; i got me servants and maidens, i gathered me also silver and gold; i got me men-singers and women-singers and musical instruments; whatsoever my eyes desired i kept not from them; i withheld not my heart from any joy,--and now, lo! i solemnly declare unto you, with my fading strength and my eyes suffused with tears and my knees trembling with weakness, and in view of that future and higher life which i neglected to seek amid the dazzling glories of my throne, and the bewilderment of fascinating joys,--i now most earnestly declare unto you that all these things which men seek and prize are a vanity, a delusion, and a snare; that there is no wisdom but in the fear of god." so this saddest of books closes with lofty exhortations, and recognizes moral obligations which are in harmony with the great principle enforced in the proverbs,--that there is no escape from the penalty of sin and folly; that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. the last recorded words of the preacher are concerning the vanity of life,--that is, the hopeless failure of worldly pleasures and egotistical pursuits in themselves alone to secure happiness; the impossibility of lasting good disconnected with righteousness; the fact that even knowledge, the greatest possession and the highest joy which a man can have, does not satisfy the soul. these final utterances of solomon are not dogmas nor speculations, they are experiences,--the experiences of one of the most favored mortals who has lived upon our earth, and one of the wisest. if, measured by the eternal standards, his glory was less than that of the flower which withers in a day, what hope have ordinary men in the pursuit of pleasure, or gain, or honor? utter vanity and vexation of spirit! nothing brings a true reward but virtue,--unselfish labors for others, supreme loyalty to conscience, obedience to god. hence, such profound experience so frankly published, such sad confessions uttered from the depths of the heart, and the summing up of the whole question of human life, enforced with the earnestness and eloquence of an old man soon to die, have peculiar force, and are among the greatest treasures of the old testament. the fundamental truth to be deduced from the book of ecclesiastes is that whatsoever is born of vanity must end in vanity. if vanity is the seed, so vanity is the fruit. it is, in fact, one of the most impressive of all the truths that appeal either to consciousness or experience. if a man builds a house from vanity, or makes a party from vanity, or gives a present from vanity, or writes a book from vanity, or seeks an office from vanity,--then, as certainly as the bite of an asp will poison the body, will the expected good be turned into a bitter disappointment. self-love cannot be the basis of human action without alienation from god, without weariness, disgust, and ultimate sorrow. the soul can be fed only by divine certitudes; it can be enlarged only by walking according to the divine commandments. confucius, socrates, epictetus, and marcus aurelius declared the same truths, but not so impressively. not for one's self, not for friends, not even for children alone must one live. there is a higher law still which speaks to the universal conscience, asking, what is your duty? with this is identified all that is precious in life, on earth or in heaven, for time and eternity. anything in this world which is sought as a good, whose end is selfish, is an impressive failure; so that self-aggrandizement becomes as absurd and fatal as self-indulgence. one can no more escape from the operation of this law than he can take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea. the commonest experiences of every-day life confirm the wisdom which solomon uttered out of his lonely and saddened soul. if ye will not hear him, be instructed by your own broken friendships, your own dispelled illusions, your own fallen idols; by the heartlessness which too often lurks in the smiles of beauty, by the poison concealed in polished flatteries, by the deceitfulness hidden, beneath the warmest praises, by the demons of envy, jealousy, and pride which take from success itself its promised joys. who is happy with any amount of wealth? who is free from corroding cares? who can escape anxiety and fear? how hard to shake off the burdens which even a rich man is compelled to bear? there is a fly in every ointment, a skeleton in every closet, solitude in the midst of crowds, isolation in the joy of festivals. the wrecks of happiness are strewn in every path that the world has envied. read the lives of illustrious men; how melancholy often are the latter days of those who have climbed the highest! caesar is stabbed when he has conquered the world. diocletian retires in disgust from the government of an empire. godfrey languishes in grief when he has taken jerusalem. charles v. shuts himself up in a convent. galileo, whose spirit has roamed the heavens, is a prisoner of the inquisition. napoleon masters a continent, and expires on a rock in the ocean. mirabeau dies of despair when he has kindled the torch of revolution. the poetic soul of burns passes away in poverty and moral eclipse. madness overtakes the cool satirist swift, and mental degeneracy is the final condition of the fertile-minded scott. the high-souled hamilton perishes in a petty quarrel, and curses overwhelm webster in the halls of his early triumphs. what a confirmation of the experience of solomon! "vanity of vanities" write on all walls, in all the chambers of pleasure, in all the palaces of pride! this is the burden of the preaching of solomon; but it is also the lesson which is taught by all the records of the past, and all the experiences of mankind. yet it is not sad when one considers the dignity of the soul and its immortal destinies. it is sad only when the disenchantment of illusions is not followed by that holy fear which is the beginning of wisdom,--that exalted realism which we believe at last sustained the soul of the preacher as he was hastening to that country from whose bourn no traveller returns. elijah. ninth century b.c. division of the jewish kingdom. evil days fell upon the israelites after the death of solomon. in the first place their country was rent by political divisions, disorders, and civil wars. ten of the tribes, or three quarters of the population, revolted from rehoboam, solomon's son and successor, and took for their king jeroboam,--a valiant man, who had been living for several years at the court of shishak, king of egypt, exiled by solomon for his too great ambition. jeroboam had been an industrious, active-minded, strong-natured youth, whom solomon had promoted and made much of. the prophet ahijah had privately foretold to him that, on account of the idolatries tolerated by solomon, ten of the tribes should be rent away from, the royal house and given to him. the lord promised him the kingdom of israel, and (if he would be loyal to the faith) the establishment of a dynasty,--"a sure house." jeroboam made choice of shechem for his capital; and from political reasons,--for fear that the people should, according to their custom, go up to jerusalem to worship at the great festivals of the nation, and perhaps return to their allegiance to the house of david, while perhaps also to compromise with their already corrupted and unspiritualized religious sense,--he made two golden calves and set them up for religious worship: one in bethel, at the southern end of the kingdom; the other in dan, at the far north. it does not appear that the people of israel as yet ignored jehovah as god; but they worshipped him in the form of the same egyptian symbol that aaron had set up in the wilderness,--a grave offence, although not an utter apostasy. moreover, this was the act of the king rather than of the priests or his own subjects. stanley makes a significant comment on this act of the new king, which the sacred narrative refers to as "the sin of jeroboam, the son of nebat, who made israel to sin." he says: "the golden image was doubtless intended as a likeness of the one true god. but the mere fact of setting up such a likeness broke down the sacred awe which had hitherto marked the divine presence, and accustomed the minds of the israelites to the very sin against which the new form was intended to be a safeguard. from worshipping god under a false and unauthorized form they gradually learned to worship other gods altogether.... 'the sin of jeroboam, the son of nebat,' is the sin again and again repeated in the policy--half-worldly, half-religious--which has prevailed through large tracts of ecclesiastical history.... for the sake of supporting the faith of the multitude, lest they should fall away to rival sects, ... false arguments have been used in support of religious truths, false miracles promulgated or tolerated, false readings in the sacred text defended. and so the faith of mankind has been undermined by the very means intended to preserve it." for priests, jeroboam selected the lowest of the people,--whoever could be induced to offer idolatrous sacrifices in the high places,--since the old priests and levites remained with the tribe of judah at jerusalem. these abominations and political rivalries caused incessant war between the two kingdoms for several reigns. the northern kingdom, including the great tribe of ephraim or joseph, was the richest, most fertile, and most powerful; but the southern kingdom was the most strongly fortified. and yet even in the fifth year of the reign of rehoboam, the king of egypt, probably incited by jeroboam, invaded judah with an immense army, including sixty thousand cavalry and twelve hundred chariots, and invested jerusalem. the city escaped capture only by submitting to the most humiliating conditions. the vast wealth which was stored in the temple,--the famous gold shields which david had taken from the syrians, and those also made by solomon for his body-guard, together with the treasures of the royal palace,--became spoil for the egyptians. this disaster happened when solomon had been dead but five years. the solitary tribe left to his son, despoiled by egypt and overrun by other enemies, became of but little account politically for several generations, although it still possessed the temple and was proud of its traditions. after this great humiliation, the proud king of judah, it seems, became a better man; and his descendants for a hundred years were, on the whole, worthy sovereigns, and did good in the sight of the lord. political interest now centres in the larger kingdom, called israel. judah for a time passes out of sight, but is gradually enriched under the reigns of virtuous princes, who preserved the worship of the true god at jerusalem. nations, like individuals, seldom grow in real strength except in adversity. the prosperity of solomon undermined his throne. the little kingdom of judah lasted one hundred and fifty years after the ten tribes were carried into captivity. yet what remained of power and wealth among the jews after the rebellion under jeroboam, was to be found in the northern kingdom. it was still exceedingly fertile, and was well watered. it was "a land of brooks of water, of fountains, of barley and wheat, of vines and fig-trees, of olives and honey." it boasted of numerous fortified cities, and had a population as dense as that in belgium at the present time. the nobles were powerful and warlike; while the army was well organized, and included chariots and horses. the monarchy was purely military, and was surrounded by powerful nations, whom it was necessary to conciliate. among these were the phoenicians on the west, and the syrians on the north. from the first the army was the great power of the state, its chief being more powerful than joab was in the undivided kingdom of david. he stood next after the king, and was the channel of royal favor. the history of the northern kingdom which has come down to us is very meagre. from jeroboam to ahab--a period of sixty-six years--there were six kings, three of whom were assassinated. there was a succession of usurpers, who destroyed all the members of the preceding reigning family. they were all idolaters, violent and bloodthirsty men, whom the army had raised to the throne. no one of them was marked by signal ability, unless it were omri, who built the city of samaria on a high hill, and so strongly fortified it that it remained the capital until the fall of the kingdom. he also made a close alliance with tyre, the great centre of commerce in that age, and one of the wealthiest cities of antiquity. to cement this political alliance, omri married his son ahab--the heir-apparent to the throne--to a daughter of the tyrian king, afterward so infamous as a religious fanatic and persecutor, under the name of jezebel,--one of the worst women in history. on the accession of ahab, nine hundred and nineteen years before christ, the kingdom of israel was rapidly tending to idolatry. jeroboam had set up golden calves chiefly for a political end, but ahab built a temple to baal, the sun-god, the chief divinity of the phoenicians, and erected an altar therein for pagan sacrifices, thus abjuring jehovah as the supreme and only god. the established religion was now idolatry in its worst form; it was simply the worship of the powers of nature, under the auspices of a foreign woman stained with every vice, who controlled her husband. for ahab himself was bad enough, but he was not the wickedest of the monarchs of israel, nor was he insignificant as a man. it was his misfortune to be completely under the influence of his phoenician bride, as many stronger men than he have been enslaved by women before and since his day. ahab, bad as he was, was brave in battle, patriotic in his aims, and magnificent in his tastes. to please his wife he added to his royal residences a summer retreat called jezreel, which was of great beauty, and contained within its grounds an ivory palace of great splendor. amid its gardens and parks and all the luxuries then known, the youthful monarch with his queen and attendant nobles abandoned themselves to pleasure and folly, as oriental monarchs are wont to do. it would seem that he was unusually licentious in his habits, since he left seventy children,--afterward to be massacred. the ascendency of a wicked woman over this luxurious monarch has made her infamous. she was an incarnation of pride, sensuality, and cruelty; and with all her other vices she was a religious persecutor who has had no equal. we may perhaps give to her, as to many other tiger-like persecutors in the cause of what they call their "religion," the meagre credit of conscientious devotion in their cruelty; for she feasted at her own table at jezreel four hundred priests of baal, besides four hundred and fifty others at samaria, while she erected two great sanctuaries for the phoenician deities, at which the officiating priests were clad in splendid vestments. the few remaining prophets of jehovah in the kingdom hid themselves in caves and deserts to escape the murderous fury of the idolatrous queen. we infer that she was distinguished for her beauty, and was bewitching in her manners like catherine de' medici, that italian bigot whom her courtiers likened both to aurora and venus. jezebel, like the florentine princess, is an illustration of the wickedness which is so often concealed by enchanting smiles, especially when armed with power. the priests of baal undoubtedly regarded their great protectress as one of the most fascinating women that ever adorned a royal palace, and in the blaze of her beauty and the magnificence of her bounty were blind to her innumerable sorceries and the wild license of her life. the fearful apostasy of israel, which had been increasing for sixty years under wicked kings, had now reached a point which called for special divine intervention. there were only seven thousand men in the whole kingdom who had not bowed the knee to baal, and god sent a prophet,--a prophet such as had not appeared in israel since samuel; more august, more terrible even than he; indeed, the most unique and imposing character in jewish history. almost nothing is known of the early history of elijah. the bible simply speaks of him as "the tishbite,"--one of the inhabitants of gilead, at the east of the jordan. he evidently was a man accustomed to a wild and solitary life. his stature was large, and his features were fierce and stern. his long hair flowed upon his brawny shoulders, and he was clothed with a mantle of sheepskin or hair-cloth, and carried in his hand a rugged staff. he was probably unlearned, being rude and rough in both manners and speech. his first appearance was marked and extraordinary. he suddenly and unannounced stood before ahab, and abruptly delivered his awful message. he was an apparition calculated to strike with terror the boldest of kings in that superstitious age. he makes no set speech, he offers no apology, he disdains all forms and ceremonies; he does not even render the customary homage. he utters only a few words, preceded by an oath: "as jehovah the god of israel liveth, there shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word." what arrogance before a king! elijah, an utterly unknown man, in a sheepskin mantle, apparently a peasant, dares to utter a curse on the land without even deigning to give a reason, although the conscience of ahab must have told him that he could not with impunity introduce idolatry into israel. elijah doubtless attacked the king in the presence of his wife and court. to the cynical and haughty queen, born in idolatry, he probably seemed a madman of the desert,--shaggy, unwashed, fierce, repulsive. to the israelitish king, however, with better knowledge of the ways of god, the prophet appeared armed with supernal powers, whom he both feared and hated, and desired to put out of the way. but elijah mysteriously disappears from the royal presence as suddenly as he had entered it, and no one knows whither he has fled. he cannot be found. the royal emissaries go into every land, but are utterly baffled in their search. the whole power of the realm was doubtless put forth to discover his retreat, and had he been found, no mercy would have been shown him; he would have been summarily executed, not only as a prophet of the detested religion, but as one who had insulted the royal station. he was forced to flee and hide after delivering his unwelcome message. and whither did the prophet fly? he fled with the swiftness of a bedouin, accustomed to traverse barren rocks and scorching sands, to a retired valley of one of the streams that emptied into the jordan near samaria. amid the clefts of the rocks which marked the deep valley, did the man of god hide himself from his furious and numerous persecutors. he does not escape to his native deserts, where he would most probably have been hunted like a wild beast, but remains near the capital in which ahab reigns, in a deeply secluded spot, where he quenches his thirst from the waters of the brook, and eats the food which the ravens deposit amid the steep cliffs he knows how to climb. the bravest and most undaunted man in israel, shielded and protected by god, was probably warned by the divine voice to make his escape, since his life was needful to the execution of providential purposes. he was the only one of all the prophets of his day who dared to give utterance to his convictions. some four or five hundred there were in the kingdom, all believers in jehovah; but all sought to please the reigning power, or timidly concealed themselves. they had been trained in the schools which samuel had established, and were probably teachers of the people on theological subjects, and hence an antagonistic force to idolatrous kings. their great defect in the time of ahab was timidity. there was needed some one who under all circumstances would be undaunted, and would not hesitate to tell the truth even to the king and queen, however unpleasant it might be. so this rough, fierce, unlettered man of few words was sent by god, armed with terrible powers. it was now the rainy season, when rain was confidently expected by the people throughout palestine. yet strangely no rain fell, though sixty inches were the usual quantity in the course of the year. the streams from the mountains were dried up; the land, long parched by the summer sun, became like dust and ashes; the hills presented a blasted and dreary desolation; the very trees were withered and discolored. at last even the sheltered brook failed from which elijah drank, and it became necessary for the man of god to seek another retreat. the lord therefore sent him to the last place in which his enemies would naturally search for him, even to a city of phoenicia, where the worship of baal was the only religion of the land. as in his tattered and strange apparel he approached sarepta, or zarephath, a town between tyre and sidon, worn out with fatigue, parched with thirst, and overcome with hunger,--everything around him being depressed and forlorn, the rivers and brooks showing only beds of stone, the trees and grass withered, the sky lurid, and of unnatural brightness like that of brass, and the sun burning and scorching every remnant of vegetation,--he beheld a woman issuing from the town to gather sticks, in order to cook what she supposed would be her last meal. to this sad and discouraged woman, doubtless a worshipper of baal, the prophet thus spoke: "fetch me, i pray you, a little water in a vessel that i may drink;" and as she turned sympathetically to look upon him, he added, "bring me, i pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand." this was no small request to make of a woman who was herself on the borders of starvation, and of a pagan woman too. but there was a mysterious affinity between these two suffering souls. a common woman would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant before her. only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in the tones of his voice, and in his lofty bearing, despite all his rags and dirt, an unusual and marked character. she probably belonged to a respectable class, reduced to poverty by the famine, and her keen intelligence recognized at once in the hungry and needy stranger a superior person,--even as the humble friar of palos saw in columbus a nobleman by nature, when, wearied and disappointed, he sought food and shelter. she took the prophet by the hand, conducted him to her home, gave him the best chamber in her house, and in a strange devotion of generosity divided with him the last remnant of her meal and oil. it is probable that a lasting friendship sprang up between the pagan woman and the solemn man of god, such as bound together the no less austere jerome and his disciple paula. for two or three years the prophet dwelt in peace and safety in the heathen town, protected by an admiring woman,--for his soul was great, if his body was emaciated and his dress repulsive. in return for her hospitality he miraculously caused her meal and oil to be daily renewed; and more than this, he restored her only son to life, when he had succumbed to a dangerous illness,--the first recorded instance of such a miracle. the german critics would probably say that the boy was only seemingly dead, even as they would deny the miracle of the meal and oil. it is not my purpose to discuss this matter, but to narrate the recorded incidents that filled the soul of the woman of sarepta with gratitude, with wonder, and with boundless devotion. "verily, i say unto you," said a greater than elijah, "whosoever shall give a cup of cold water in the name of a prophet, shall in no way lose his reward." her reward was immeasurably greater than she had dared to hope. she received both spiritual and temporal blessings, and doubtless became a convert to the true faith. tradition asserts that her boy, whom elijah saved,--whether by natural or supernatural means, it is alike indifferent,--became in after years the prophet jonah, who was sent to nineveh. in all great friendships the favors are reciprocal. a noble-hearted woman was saved from starvation, and the life of a great man was preserved for future usefulness. austerity and tenderness met together and became a cord of love; and when the land was perishing from famine, the favored members of a retired household were shielded from harm, and had all that was necessary for comfort. meanwhile the abnormal drought and consequent famine continued. the northern kingdom was reduced to despair. so dried up were the wells and exhausted the cisterns and reservoirs that even the king's household began to suffer, and it was feared that the horses of the royal stables would perish. in this dire extremity the king himself set forth from his palace to seek patches of vegetation and pools of water in the valleys, while his prime minister obadiah--a secret worshipper of jehovah--was sent in an opposite direction for a like purpose. on his way, in the almost hopeless search for grass and water, obadiah met elijah, who had been sent from his retreat once more to confront ahab, and this time to promise rain. as the most diligent search had been made in every direction, but in vain, to find elijah, with a view to his destruction as the man who "troubled israel," obadiah did not believe that the hunted prophet would voluntarily put himself again in the power of an angry and hostile tyrant. yet the prime minister, having encountered the prophet, was desirous that he should keep his word to appear before the king, and promise to remove the calamity which even in a pagan land was felt to be a divine judgment. elijah having reassured him of his sincerity, the minister informed his master that the man he sought to destroy was near at hand, and demanded an interview. the wrathful and puzzled king went out to meet the prophet, not to take vengeance, but to secure relief from a sore calamity,--for ahab reasoned that if elijah had power, as the messenger of omnipotence, to send a drought, he also had the power to remove it. moreover, had he not said that there should be neither rain nor dew but according to his word? so ahab addressed the prophet as the author of national calamities, but without threats or insults. "art thou he who troubleth israel?" elijah loftily, fearlessly, and reproachfully replied: "i have not troubled israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that thou hast forsaken the commandments of jehovah, and hast followed baalim." he then assumes the haughty attitude of a messenger of divine omnipotence, and orders the king to assemble all his people, together with the eight hundred and fifty priests of baal, at mount carmel,--a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs. he gives no reasons,--he sternly commands; and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious voice of the divine ambassador. the representatives of the whole nation are now assembled at mount carmel, with their idolatrous priests. the prophet appears in their midst as a preacher armed with irresistible power. he addresses the people, who seemed to have no firm convictions, but were swayed to and fro by changing circumstances, being not yet hopelessly sunk into the idolatry of their rulers. "how long," cried the preacher, with a loud voice and fierce aspect, "halt ye between two opinions? if jehovah be god, _follow_ him; but if baal be god, then follow _him_." the undecided, crestfallen, intimidated people did not answer a word. then elijah stoops to argument. he reminds the people, among whom probably were many influential men, that he stood alone in opposition to eight hundred and fifty idolatrous priests protected by the king and queen. he proposes to test their claims in comparison with his as ministers of the true god. this seems reasonable, and the king makes no objection. the test is to be supernatural, even to bring down fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial bullock on the altar. the priests of baal select their bullock, cut it in pieces, put it on the wood, and invoke their supreme deity to send fire to consume the sacrifice. with all their arts and incantations and magical sorceries, the fire does not descend. they then perform their wild and fantastic dances, screaming aloud, from early morn to noon, "o baal, hear us!" we do not read whether ahab was present or not, but if he were he must have quaked with blended sentiments of curiosity and fear. his anxiety must have been terrible. elijah alone is calm; but he is also stern. he mocks them with provoking irony, and ridicules their want of success. his grim sarcasms become more and more bitter. "cry with a loud voice!" said he, "yea, louder and yet louder! for ye cry to a god; either he is talking, or he is hunting, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awakened." and they cried aloud, and cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and spears, till the blood gushed out upon them. then elijah, when midday was past, and the priests continued to call unto their god until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, and there was neither voice nor answer, assembled the people around him, as he stood alone by the ruins of an ancient altar. with his own hands he gathered twelve stones, piled them together to represent the twelve tribes, cut a bullock in pieces, laid it on the wood, made a trench around the rude altar, which he filled with water from an adjacent well, and then offered up this prayer to the god of his fathers: "o jehovah, god of abraham, isaac, and jacob, hear me! and let all the people know that thou art the god of israel, and that i am thy servant, and that i have done all these things at thy word. hear me, jehovah, hear me! that this people may know that thou, jehovah, art god, and that thou hast turned their hearts back again." then immediately the fire of jehovah fell and consumed the bullock and the wood, even melted the very stones, and licked up the water in the trench. and when the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and cried aloud, "jehovah, he is the god! jehovah, he is the god!" elijah then commanded to take the prophets of baal, all of them, so that not even one of them should escape. and they took them, by the direction of elijah, down the mountain side to the brook kishon, and slew them there. his triumph was complete. he had asserted the majesty and proved the power of jehovah. the prophet then turned to the king, who seems to have been completely subjected by this tremendous proof of the prophetic authority, and said: "get thee up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of abundance of rain." and ahab ascended the hill, to eat and drink with his nobles at the sacrificial feast,--a venerable symbol by which, from the most primitive antiquity to our own day, by so universal an impulse that it would seem to be divinely imparted, every form of religion known to man has sought to typify the human desire to commune with deity. elijah also went to the top of carmel, not to the symbolic feast, but in spirit and in truth to commune with god, reverentially hiding his face between his knees. he felt the approach of the coming storm, even when the sky was clear, and not a cloud was to be seen over the blue waters of the mediterranean. so he said to his servant: "go up now, and look toward the sea." and the servant went to still higher ground and looked, and reported that nothing was to be seen. six times the order was impatiently repeated and obeyed; but at the seventh time, the youthful servant--as some think, the very boy he had saved--reported a cloud in the distant horizon, no bigger seemingly than a man's hand. at once elijah sent word to ahab to prepare for the coming tempest; and both he and the king began to descend the hill, for the clouds rapidly gathered in the heavens, and that mighty wind arose which in eastern countries precedes a furious storm. with incredible rapidity the tempest spread, and the king hastened for his life to his chariot at the foot of the hill, to cross the brook before it became a flood; and elijah, remembering that he was king, ran before his chariot more rapidly than the arab steeds. as the servant of jehovah, he performs his mission with dignity and without fear; as a subject, he renders due respect to rank and power. ahab has now witnessed with his own eyes the impotency of the prophets of baal, and the marvellous power of the messenger of jehovah. the desire of the nation was to be gratified; the rains were falling, the cisterns and reservoirs were filling, and the fields once more would soon rejoice in their wonted beauty, and the famine would soon be at an end. in view of the great deliverance, and awe-stricken by the supernatural gifts of the prophet, one would suppose that the king would have taken elijah to his confidence and loaded him with favors, and been guided by his counsels. but, no. he had been subjected to deep humiliation before his own people; his religion had been brought into contempt, and he was afraid of his cruel and inexorable wife, who had incited him to debasing idolatries. so he hastens to his palace in jezreel and acquaints jezebel of the wonderful things he had seen, and which he could not prevent. she was transported with fury and vengeance, and vowing a tremendous oath, she sent a messenger to the prophet with these terrible words: "as surely as thou art elijah and i am jezebel, so may god do to me and more also, if i make not thy life to-morrow, about this time, as the life of one of them." in her unbounded rage she forgot all policy, for she should have struck the blow without giving her enemy time to escape. it may also be noted that she is no atheist, but believes in god according to phoenician notions. she reflects that eight hundred and fifty of baal's prophets had been slain, and that the nation might return to their allegiance to the god of their fathers, who had wrought the greatest calamity her proud heart could endure. unlike her husband, she knows no fear, and is as unscrupulous as she is fanatical. elijah, she resolved, should surely die. and how did the prophet receive her message? he had not feared to encounter ahab and all the priests of baal, yet he quailed before the wrath of this terrible woman,--this incarnate fiend, who cared neither for jehovah nor his prophet. even such a hero as elijah felt that he must now flee for his life, and, attended only by his boy-servant, he did not halt until he had crossed the kingdom of judah, and reached the utmost southern bounds of the holy land. at beersheba he left his faithful attendant, and sought refuge in the desert,--the ancient wilderness of sinai, with its rocky wastes. under the shade of a solitary tree, exhausted and faint, he lay down to die. "it is enough, o jehovah! now take away my life, for i am no better than my fathers." he had outstripped all pursuers, and was apparently safe, yet he wished to die. it was the reaction of a mighty excitement, the lassitude produced by a rapid and weary flight. he was physically exhausted, and with this exhaustion came despondency. he was a strong man unnerved, and his will succumbed to unspeakable weariness. he lay down and slept, and when he awoke he was fed and comforted by an angelic visitor, who commanded him to arise and penetrate still farther into the dreary wilderness. for forty days and nights he journeyed, until he reached the awful solitudes of sinai and horeb, and sought shelter in a cave. enclosed between granite rocks, he entered upon a new crisis of his career. it does not appear that the future destinies of samaria and jerusalem were revealed to elijah, nor the fate of the surrounding nations, as seen by isaiah, jeremiah, and daniel. he was not called to foretell the retribution which would surely be inflicted on degenerate and idolatrous nations, nor even to declare those impressive truths which should instruct all future generations. he therefore does not soar in his dreary solitude to those lofty regions of thought which marked the meditations of moses. he is not a man of genius; he is no poet; he has no eloquence or learning; he commits no precious truths to writing for the instruction of distant generations. he is a man of intensely earnest convictions, gifted with extraordinary powers resulting from that peculiar combination of physical and spiritual qualities known as the prophetic temperament. the instruments of the divine will on earth are selected with unerring judgment. elijah was sent by the almighty to deliver special messages of reproof and correction to wicked rulers; he was a reformer. but his character was august, his person was weird and remarkable, his words were earnest and delivered with an indomitable courage, a terrific force. he was just the man to make a strong impression on a superstitious and weak king; but he had done more than that,--he had roused a whole nation from their foul debasement, and left them quaking in terror before their offended deity. but the phase of exaltation and potent energy had passed for the time, and we now see him faint and despondent, yet, with the sure instinct of mighty spiritual natures, seeking recuperation in solitary companionship with the all-present spirit. we do not know how long elijah remained in his dismal cavern,--long enough, however, to recover his physical energies and his moral courage. as he wanders to and fro amid the hoary rocks and impenetrable solitudes of horeb, he seeks to commune with god. he listens for some manifestation of the deity; he is ready to do his bidding. he hears the sound of a rushing hurricane; but god is not in the wind. the mountain then is shaken by a fearful earthquake; but jehovah is not in the earthquake. again the mountain seems to flash with fire; but the signs he seeks are not in the fire. at last, after the uproar of contending physical forces had died away, in the profound silence of the solitude he hears the whisper of a still small voice in gentle accents; and by this voice in the soul jehovah speaks: "what doest thou here, elijah?" was this voice reproachful? had the prophet been told to flee? had he acted with the courage of a man sure of divine protection? had he not been faint-hearted when he wished to die? how does he reply to the mysterious voice? he justifies himself. but strengthened, comforted, uplifted by the exaltation of the consciousness of god's presence, elijah feels his resilient powers again upspringing. his courage returns; his perceptions grow sharp again; the inspiration of a new line of action opens up to him. he hears the word of the lord: "go, return on thy way to the wilderness of damascus; and when thou comest, anoint hazael to be king over syria, and jehu the son of nimshi to be king over israel, and elisha the son of shaphat to be prophet in thy room. and it shall come to pass that him who escapeth the sword of hazael shall jehu destroy, and him that escapeth the sword of jehu shall elisha slay. yet i have left me seven thousand in israel, who have not bowed the knee unto baal." elijah still knows that his life is in peril, but is ready, nevertheless, to obey his master's call. he is not designated as the power to effect the great revolution which should root out idolatry and destroy the house of omri; but jehu, an unscrupulous yet jealous warrior, was to found a new dynasty, and the king of syria was to punish and afflict the ten tribes, and elisha was to be the mouth-piece of the almighty in the court of kings. it would appear that elijah did not himself anoint either the general of benhadad or of ahab as future kings,--instruments of punishment on idolatrous israel,--but on elisha did his mantle fall. elisha was the son of a farmer, and, according to ewald, when elijah selected him for his companion and servant, had just been ploughing his twelve yoke of land (not of oxen), and was at work on the twelfth and last. passing by the place, elijah, without stopping, took off his shaggy mantle of skins, and cast it upon elisha. the young man, who doubtless was familiar with the appearance of the great prophet, recognized and accepted this significant call, and without remonstrance, even as others in later days devoted themselves to a greater prophet, "left all and followed" the one who had chosen him. he became elijah's constant companion and pupil and ministrant, until the great man's departure. he belonged to "the sons of the prophets," among whom elijah sojourned in his latter days,--a community of young men, for the most part poor, and compelled to combine manual labor with theological studies. very few of these prophets seem to have been favored with especial gifts or messages from god, in the sense that samuel and elijah were. they were teachers and preachers rather than prophets, performing duties not dissimilar to those of franciscan friars in the middle ages. they were ascetics like the monks, abstaining from wine and luxuries, as samson and the nazarites and rechabites did. religious asceticism goes back to a period that we cannot trace. after elijah had gone from the scenes of his earthly labors, elisha became a man of the city, and had a house in samaria. his dress was that of ordinary life, and he was bland in manners. his nature, unlike that of elijah, was gentle and affectionate. he became a man of great influence, and was the friend of three kings. jehoshaphat consulted him in war; joram sought his advice, and benhadad in sickness sent to him to be healed, for he exercised miraculous powers. he cured naaman of leprosy and performed many wonderful deeds, chiefly beneficent in character. elisha took no part in the revolutions of the palace, but he anointed jehu to be king over israel, and predicted to hazael his future elevation. his chief business was as president of a school of the prophets. his career as prophet lasted fifty-five years. he lived to a good old age, and when he died, was buried with great pomp as a man of rank, in favor with the court, for it was through him that jehu subsequently reigned. during the life of elijah, however, elisha was his companion and coadjutor. more is said in jewish history of elisha than of elijah, though the former was not so lofty and original a character as the latter. we are told that though elisha inherited the mantle of his master, he received only two-thirds of his master's spirit. but he was regarded as a great prophet for over fifty years, even beyond the limits of israel. unlike elijah, elisha preferred the companionship of men rather than life in a desert. he fixed his residence in samaria, and was highly honored and revered by all classes; he exercised a great influence on the king of israel, and carried on the work which elijah began. he was statesman as well as prophet, and the trusted adviser of the king; but his distinguished career did not begin till after elijah had ascended to heaven. after the consecration of elisha there is nothing said about elijah for some years, during which ahab was involved in war with benhadad, king of damascus. after that unfortunate contest it would seem that ahab had resigned himself to pleasure, and amused himself with his gardens at jezreel. during this time elijah had probably lived in retirement; but was again summoned to declare the judgment of god on ahab for a most atrocious murder. in his desire to improve his grounds ahab cast his eyes on a fertile vineyard belonging to a distinguished and wealthy citizen named naboth, which had been in the possession of his family even since the conquest. the king at first offered a large price for this vineyard, which he wished to convert into a garden of flowers, but naboth refused to sell it for any price. "god forbid," said he, with religious scruples blended with the pride of ancestry, "that i should give to thee the inheritance of my fathers." powerful and despotic as was the king, he knew he could not obtain this coveted vineyard except by gross injustice and an act of violence, which even he dared not commit. it would be an open violation of the jewish constitution. by the laws of moses the lands of the israelites, from the conquest, were inalienable. even if they were sold for debt, after fifty years they would return to the family. the pride of ownership in real estate was one of the peculiarities of the hebrews until after their final dispersion. after the fall of jerusalem by titus, personal property came to be more valued than real estate, and the jews became the money lenders and the bankers of the world. they might be oppressed and robbed, but they could hide away their treasures. a scrap of paper, they soon discovered, was enough to transfer in safety the largest sums. a jew had only to give a letter of credit on another jewish house, and a king could find ready money, if he gave sufficient security, for any enterprise. thus rare jewels pledged for gold accumulated among the hebrew merchants at an early date. ahab, disappointed in not being able without a crime to get possession of naboth's vineyard, abandoned himself to melancholy. in his deep chagrin he laid himself down on his bed, turned his face to the wall, and refused to eat. this seems strange to us, since he had more than enough, and there was no check on his ordinary pleasures. but covetous men never are satisfied. ahab was miserable with all his possessions so long as naboth was resolved to retain his paternal acres. it seems that it did not occur even to this unprincipled king that he could get possession of the coveted vineyard if he resorted to craft and violence. but his clever and unscrupulous wife came to his assistance. in her active brain she devised the means of success. she saw only the end; she cared nothing for the means. it is probable, indeed, that jezebel hankered even more than ahab for a garden of flowers. yet even she dared not openly seize the vineyard. such an outrage might have caused a rebellion; it would, at least, have created a great scandal and injured her popularity, of which this artful woman was as tenacious as the jew was of his property. moreover, naboth was a very influential and wealthy citizen, and had friends to support him. how could she remove the grievous eye-sore? she pondered and consulted the doctors of the law, as henry viii. made use of cranmer when he wished to marry anne boleyn. they told her that if it could be proved that any one, however high his rank, had blasphemed god and the king, he could legally be executed, and that his property would revert to the crown. so she suborned false witnesses, who swore at the trial of naboth, already seized for high treason, that he had blasphemed god and the king. sentence, according to law, was passed upon the innocent man, and according to law he was stoned to death, and the vineyard according to law became the property of the crown. jezebel, who had managed the whole affair, did not undertake the prosecution in her own name; as a woman, she had not the legal power. so she stole the king's ring, and sealed the indictment with the royal seal. thus by force and fraud under skilful technicalities, and by usurpation of the royal authority, the crime was consummated, and had the sanction of the law. oh, what crimes have been perpetrated in every age and country under cover of the law! the holy inquisition was according to law; the early christian persecutions were according to law; usurpers and murderers have reigned according to law; the quakers were put in prison, and witches were burned according to law. slavery was sustained by legal enactments; the rum shops are all under the protection of the law. there is scarcely a public scandal and wrong in any civilized country which the law does not somehow countenance or sustain. all public robbers appeal to legal technicalities. how could city officials steal princely revenues, how could lawyers collect exorbitant fees, if it were not for the law? neither ahab nor jezebel would have ventured to seize naboth's vineyard except under legal pretences; false witnesses swore to a lie, and the law condemned the accused. ahab in this instance was not as bad as his wife. he may not even have known by what diabolical craft the vineyard became his. but such crimes, striking at the root of justice, cry to heaven for vengeance. on ahab as king rested the responsibility, and he as well as his more guilty partner was made to pay the penalty. god in his providence avenged the death of naboth. the whole affair was widely known. as naboth's reputed offence was unusual, and the gravest known to the jewish laws, there was so great a sensation that a fast was proclaimed. the false trial and murderous execution were accomplished "before all the people." but this very ostentation of legal form made the outrage notorious. it reached the ears of elijah. the prophet's keen sense of right detected such an outrageous combination of hypocrisy, covetousness, fraud, usurpation, cruelty, robbery, and murder, that he once more heard the divine voice which summoned him from his retirement and sent him to the court with an awful message. suddenly, unannounced and unexpected, the man of god appeared before the king in his newly acquired possession, surrounded by his gardeners and artificers, and accompanied by two of his officers,--bidkar, and jehu the son of nimshi,--destined to be both instrument and witness of the retribution. with unwonted austerity, without preface or waste of words, elijah broke forth: "thus saith jehovah!"--how the monarch must have quaked at this awful name: "in the place where dogs licked the blood of naboth, shall dogs also lick thine, even thine." the conscience-stricken, affrighted monarch could only say, "hast thou found me, oh mine enemy!" and terrible was the response: "yes, i have found thee! and because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the lord, behold, i will take away thy posterity, and will make thy house like the house of jeroboam, who made israel to sin. and as to thy wife also, saith jehovah, the dogs shall eat jezebel by the wall of jezreel. him that dieth of ahab in the city shall the dogs eat, and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat." when and where, in the annals of the great, has such a dreadful imprecation been uttered? it was more awful than the doom pronounced on belshazzar. the blood of ahab and his wife was to be licked up by dogs, their dynasty to be overthrown, and their whole house destroyed. this dire punishment was inflicted probably not only on account of the crime pertaining to naboth, but for a whole life devoted to idolatry. the sentence was not to be executed immediately,--possibly a time was given for repentance; but it would surely be inflicted at last. this ahab knew better than any man in his kingdom. he was thrown into the depths of the most abject despair. he rent his clothes; he put ashes on his head and sackcloth on his flesh, and refused to eat or drink. he repented after the fashion of criminals, and humbled himself, as nebuchadnezzar did, before the most high god. god in mercy delayed, but did not annul, the punishment ahab lived long enough to fight the king of syria successfully, so that for three years there was peace in israel. but ramoth in gilead, belonging to the northern kingdom, remained in the hands of the syrians. in the mean time jehoshaphat, king of judah, whose son jehoram had married athaliah, daughter of ahab, and who was therefore in friendly social and political relations with ahab, came to visit him. they naturally talked about the war, and lamented the fall of ramoth-gilead. ahab proposed a united expedition to recover it, to which jehoshaphat was consenting; but before embarking in an offensive war against a powerful state, the two monarchs consulted the prophets. it is not to be supposed that they were the priests of baal, but ordinary prophets who wished to please. false prophets and false friends are very much alike,--they give advice according to the inclinations and wishes of those who consult them. they are afraid of incurring displeasure, knowing well that no one likes to have his plans opposed by candid advisers. therefore they all gave their voices for war, foretelling a grand success. but one prophet, more honest and bold--perhaps more gifted--than the rest, micaiah by name, took a different view of the matter. he was constrained to speak his honest convictions, and prophesied evil, and was thrown into prison for his honesty and boldness. nevertheless ahab in his heart was afraid, and had sad forebodings. knowing his peril, and alarmed at the words of a true prophet, he disguised himself for the battle; but a chance arrow, shot at a venture, penetrated through the joints of his armor, and he was mortally wounded. his blood ran from his wound into the chariot, and when the chariot was washed in the pool of samaria, after ahab had expired, the dogs licked up his blood, as elijah had predicted. the death of ahab put an end to the fighting; nor was jehoshaphat injured, although he wore his royal robes. the syrian general had given orders to slay only the king of israel. at one time, however, the king of judah was in great peril, being mistaken for ahab; but when his pursuers discovered their mistake, they turned from the pursuit. it seems that jezebel survived her husband fourteen years, and virtually ruled the kingdom, for she was a woman of ability. she exercised the same influence over her son ahaziah that she had over her husband, so that the son like the father served baal and made israel to sin. to this young king was elijah also sent. ahaziah had been seriously injured by an accidental fall from his upper chamber, through the lattice, to the court yard below. he sent to the priests of baal, to inquire whether he should recover or not. but elijah by command of god had intercepted the king's messengers, and suddenly appearing before them, as was his custom, confronted them with these words: "is there no god in israel, that ye go to inquire of baalzebub, the god of ekron? now, therefore, say unto the king, thou shalt not come down from the bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die." on their return to ahaziah, without delivering their message to the god of the phoenicians or philistines, the king said: "why are ye now turned back?" they repeated the words of the strange man who had turned them back; and the king said: "what manner of man was he who came up to meet you?" they answered, "he was a hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather around his loins." the king cried, "it is elijah the tishbite." again his enemy had found him! whereupon ahaziah sent a band of fifty chosen soldiers to arrest the prophet, who had retired to the top of a steep and rugged hill, probably carmel. the captain of the troop approached, and commanded him in the name of the king to come down, addressing him as the man of god. "if i am a man of god," said elijah, "let fire come down from heaven and consume thee and thy fifty." the fire came down and consumed them. again the king sent another band of fifty with their captain, who met with the same fate. again the king sent another band of fifty men, the captain of which came and fell on his knees before elijah and besought him, saying, "o man of god! i pray thee let my life and the lives of these fifty thy servants be precious in thy sight." and the angel of the lord said unto elijah, "go down with him; be not afraid of him." and he arose and went with the soldiers to the king, repeating to him the words he had sent before, that he should not recover, but should surely die. so ahaziah died, as elijah prophesied, and jehoram (or joram) reigned in his stead,--a brother of the late king, who did not personally worship baal, but who allowed the queen-mother to continue to protect idolatry. the war which had been begun by ahab against the syrians still continued, to recover ramoth-gilead, and the stronghold was finally taken by the united efforts of judah and israel; but joram was wounded, and returned to jezreel to be cured. with the advent of elijah a reaction against idolatry had set in. the people were awed by his terrible power, and also by the influence of elisha, on whom his mantle fell. it does not appear that the people had utterly abandoned the religion of their fathers, for they had not hesitated to slay the eight hundred and fifty priests of baal at the command of elijah. the introduction of idolatry had been the work of princes, chiefly through the influence of jezebel; and as the establishment of a false religion still continued to be the policy of the court, the prophets now favored the revolution which should overturn the house of ahab, and exterminate it root and branch. the instrument of the almighty who was selected for this work was jehu, one of the prominent generals of the army; and his task was made comparatively easy from the popular disaffection. that a woman, a foreigner, a pagan, and a female demon should control the government during two reigns was intolerable. only a spark was needed to kindle a general revolt, and restore the religion of jehovah. this was the appearance of a young prophet at ramoth-gilead, whom elisha had sent with an important message. forcing his way to the house where jehu and his brother officers were sitting in council, he called jehu apart, led him to an innermost chamber of the house, took out a small horn of sacred oil, and poured it on jehu's head, telling him that god had anointed him king to cut off the whole house of ahab, and destroy idolatry. on his return to the room where the generals were sitting, jehu communicated to them the message he had received. as the discontent of the nation had spread to the army, it was regarded as a favorable time to revolt from joram, who lay sick at jezreel. the army, following the chief officers, at once hailed jehu as king. it was supremely necessary that no time should be lost, and that the news of the rebellion should not reach the king until jehu himself should appear with a portion of the army. jehu was just the man for such an occasion,--rapid in his movements, unscrupulous, yet zealous to uphold the law of moses. so mounting his chariot, and taking with him a detachment of his most reliable troops, he furiously drove toward jezreel, turning everybody back on the road. it was a drive of about fifty miles. when within six miles of jezreel the sentinels on the towers of the walls noticed an unusual cloud of dust, and a rider was at once despatched to know the meaning of the approach of chariots and horses. the rider, as he approached, was ordered to fall back in the rear of jehu's force. another rider was sent, with the same result. but joram, discovering that the one who drove so rapidly must be his own impetuous captain of the host, and suspecting no treachery from him, ordered out his own chariot to meet jehu, accompanied by his uncle ahaziah, king of judah. he expected stirring news from the army, and was eager to learn it. he supposed that hazael, then king of damascus, who had murdered benhadad, had proposed peace. so as he approached jehu--the frightful irony of fate halting him for the interview in the very vineyard of naboth--he cried out, "is it peace, jehu?" "peace!" replied jehu; "what peace can be made so long as jezebel bears rule?" in an instant the king understood the ominous words of his general, turned back his chariot, and fled toward his palace, crying, "there is treachery, o ahaziah!" an arrow from jehu pierced the monarch in the back, and he sank dead in his chariot. ahaziah also was mortally wounded by another arrow from jehu, but he succeeded in reaching megiddo, where he died. jehu spoke to bidkar, his captain, and recalling the dread prophecy of elijah, commanded the body of ahab's son to be cast out into the dearly-bought field of naboth. in the mean time, jezebel from her palace window at jezreel had seen the murder of her son. she was then sixty years of age. the first thing she did was to paint her eyelids, and put on her most attractive apparel, to appear as beautiful as possible, with the hope doubtless of attracting jehu,--as cleopatra, after the death of antony, sought to win augustus. will a flattered woman, once beautiful, ever admit that her charms have passed away? but if the painted and bedizened queen anticipated her fate, she determined to die as she had lived,--without fear, imperious, and disdainful. so from her open window she tauntingly accosted jehu as he approached: "what came of zimri, who murdered his master as thou hast done?" "are there any on my side?" was the only reply he deigned to make, as he looked up to a window of the palace, which was a part of the wall of the city. two or three eunuchs, looking out from behind her, answered the summons, for the wicked and haughty queen had no real friends. "throw her down!" ordered jehu; and in a moment the blood from her mangled body splashed upon the walls and upon the horses. in another instant the wheels of the chariot passed over her lifeless remains. jehu would have permitted a decent burial, "for," said he, "she is a king's daughter;" but before her mangled corpse could be collected, in the general confusion, the dogs of the city had devoured all that remained of her but the skull, the feet, and hands. so perished the most infamous woman that ever wore a royal diadem, as had been predicted. with her also perished the seventy sons of ahab, all indeed that survived of the royal house of omri. and the work of destruction did not end until the courtiers of the late king and all connected with them, even the palace priests, were killed. then followed the massacre of the other priests of baal, the destruction of the idolatrous temples, and the restoration of the worship of jehovah, not only at samaria, but at jerusalem, for the revolution extended far and wide on the death of ahaziah as of joram. athaliah, the daughter of jezebel, who reigned over judah, also perished in those revolutionary times. it is not to be supposed that the relentless and savage jehu was altogether moved by a zeal for jehovah in these revolting slaughters. he was an ambitious and successful rebel; but like all notable forces, he may be regarded as an instrument of providence, whose ways are "mysterious," because men are not large enough and wise enough to trace effects to their causes under his immutable laws. jehu was a necessary consequence of ahab and jezebel. jehovah, as the national deity of the jews, was the natural and necessary rallying cry of the revolt against phoenician idolatry and foulness. the missionary sermons of those crude days were preached with the sword and the strong arm. god's revelations of himself and his purposes to man have always been through men, and by his laws the medium always colors the light which it transmits. the splendor of the noonday sun cannot shine clearly through rough, imperfect glass; and so the conceptions of deity and of the divine will, as delivered by the prophets, in every case show the nature of the man receiving and delivering the inspired message. and yet, through all the turmoil of those times, and the startling contrast between the conceptions presented by the "jehovah" of elijah and the "father" of jesus, the one grand central truth which the seed of abraham were chosen to conserve stands out distinctly from first to last,--the unity and purity of god. however obscured by human passions and interests, that principle always retained a vital hold upon some--if only a "remnant"--of the hebrew race. the influence of elijah, then, acting personally through him and his successor elisha, had caused the extermination of the worship of baal. but the golden calves still remained; and there was no improvement in the political affairs of the kingdom. it was steadily declining as a political power, whether on account of the degeneracy which succeeded prosperity, or the warlike enterprises of the empires and states which were hostile equally to judah and israel. jehu was forced to pay tribute to assyria to secure protection against syria; and after his death israel was reduced to the lowest depression by hazael, and had not the power of syria soon after been broken by assyria, the northern kingdom would have been utterly destroyed. it was not given to elijah to foresee the future calamities of the jews, or to declare them, as isaiah and jeremiah did. it was his mission, and also elisha's, to destroy the worship of baal and punish the apostate kings who had introduced it. he was the messenger and instrument of jehovah to remove idolatry, not to predict the future destiny of his nation. he is to be viewed, like elisha, as a reformer, as a man of action, armed with supernatural gifts to awe kings and influence the people, rather than as a seer or a poet, or even as a writer to instruct future generations. his mission seems to have ended shortly after he had thrown his mantle on a man more accomplished than himself in knowledge of the world. but his last days are associated with unspeakable grandeur as well as pathetic interest. elijah seems to have known that the day of his departure was at hand. so, departing from gilgal in company with his beloved companion, he proceeded toward bethel. as he approached the city he besought elisha to leave him alone; but elisha refused to part with the master whom he both loved and revered. onward they proceeded from bethel to jericho, and from jericho to the jordan. it was a mournful journey to elisha, for he knew as well as the sons of the prophets at jericho that he and his master, and friend more than master, were to part for the last time on earth. the waters of the jordan happened to be swollen, and the two prophets, and the fifty sons of the prophets--their pupils, who came to say farewell--could not pass over. but the sacred narrative tells us that elijah, wrapping his mantle together like a staff, smote the waters, so that they were divided, and the two passed over to the eastern bank, in view of the disciples. in loving intercourse elijah promises to give to his companion as token of his love whatever elisha may choose. elisha asks simply for a double portion of his master's spirit, which elijah grants in case elisha shall see him distinctly when taken away. "and it came to pass, as they still went on and talked, that behold there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder. and elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. and elisha saw it, and he cried, 'my father, my father! the chariot of israel, and the horsemen thereof !'"--thou art the chariot of israel; thou hast been its horsemen! and then there fell from elijah, as he vanished from human sight, the mantle by which he had been so well known; and it became the sign of that fulness of divine favor which was given to his successor in his arduous labors to restore the worship of jehovah, "and to prepare the way for him in whom all prophecy is fulfilled." isaiah. prophesied - b.c. national degeneracy. to understand the mission of isaiah, one should be familiar with the history of the kingdom of judah from the time of jeroboam, founder of the separate kingdom of israel, to that of uzziah, in whose reign isaiah was born, b.c. judah had doubtless degenerated in virtue and spiritual life, but this degeneracy was not so marked as that of the northern kingdom,--called israel. judah had been favored by a succession of kings, most of whom were able and good men. out of nine kings, five of them "did right in the sight of the lord;" and during the two hundred and sixteen years when these monarchs reigned, one hundred and eighty-seven were years when the worship of jehovah was maintained by virtuous princes, all of whom were of the house of david. the reigns of those kings who did evil in the sight of the lord were short. during this period there were nineteen kings of israel, most of whom did evil. they introduced idolatry; many of them were usurpers, and died violent deaths. if the northern kingdom was larger and more fertile than the southern, it was more afflicted with disastrous wars and divine judgments for the sins into which it had fallen. it was to the wicked kings of israel, throned in the samarian shechem, that elijah and elisha were sent; and the interest we feel in their reigns is chiefly directed to the acts and sayings of those two great prophets. the kingdom of judah, blessed on the whole with virtuous rulers, and comparatively free from idolatry, continually increased in wealth and political power. rehoboam, the son of solomon, after the rebellion of the ten tribes, seems to have changed somewhat his course of life, although the high places and graven images were not removed; but his grandson asa destroyed the idols, and made fortunate alliances. asa's son jehoshaphat terminated the civil wars that had raged between judah and israel from the accession of rehoboam, and almost rivalled solomon in his outward prosperity. jerusalem became the strongest fortress in western asia; the temple service was continued in its former splendor; all that was vital in the strength of nations pertained to the smaller kingdom. the dark spot in the history of judah for nearly two hundred years was the ascendency gained by athaliah, the daughter of jezebel, over her husband jehoram, who introduced the gods of phoenicia. she seems to have exercised the same malign influence in jerusalem that jezebel did in samaria, and was as unscrupulous as her pagan mother. she even succeeded in usurping the throne, and in destroying the whole race of david, with the exception of joash, an infant, whom jehoiada the high-priest contrived to hide until the unscrupulous athaliah was slain, having reigned as queen six years,--the first instance in jewish history of a female sovereign. both judah and israel in these years had the danger of a syrian war constantly threatening them. under hazael, who reigned at damascus, great conquests were made by the syrians of jewish territory, and the capture of jerusalem was averted only by buying off the enemy, to whom were surrendered the gifts to the temple accumulating since the days of jehoshaphat. the whole land was overrun and pillaged. nor were calamities confined to the miseries of war. a long drouth burned the fields; seed rotted under the clods; the cattle moaned in the barren and dried-up pastures; while locusts devoured what the drouth had spared. says stanley: "the purple vine, the green fig-tree, the gray olive, the scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, the fragrant citron, vanished before them, and the trunks and branches were left bare and white by their devouring teeth,"--a brilliant sentence, by the way, which geikie quotes without acknowledgment, as well as many others, which lays him open to the charge of plagiarism. both stanley and geikie, however, seem to be indebted to ewald for all that is striking and original in their histories,--so true is solomon's saying that there is nothing new under the sun. the rarest thing in literature is a truly original history. in this mournful crisis the prophet joel, who was a priest at jerusalem, demanded a solemn fast, which the entire kingdom devoutly celebrated, the whole body of the priests crying aloud before the gates of the temple, "spare thy people, o lord! give not thine heritage to reproach, lest the heathen make us a by-word, and ask, where is now thy god?" but joel, the oldest, and in many respects the most eloquent, hebrew prophet whose utterances have come down to us, did not speak in vain, and a great religious revival followed, attended naturally by renewed prosperity,--for among the jews a "revival of religion" meant a practical return from vice to virtue, personal holiness, and the just and wholesome requirements of their law; so that "under amaziah, uzziah, and jotham, judah rose once more to a pitch of honor and glory which almost recalled the golden age of david." a greater power than that of syria threatened the peace and welfare of the kingdom of judah, as it also did that of israel; and this was the empire of assyria. during the reigns of david and solomon this empire was passing through so many disasters that it was not regarded as dangerous, and both of the jewish kingdoms were left free to avail themselves of every facility afforded for national development. ewald notices emphatically this outward prosperity, which introduced luxury and pride throughout the kingdom. it was the golden age of merchants, usurers, and money-mongers. then appeared that extraordinary greed for riches which never afterward left the nation, even in seasons of calamity, and which is the most striking peculiarity of the modern hebrew. this was a period not only of prosperity and luxury, but of vanity and ostentation, especially among women. the insidious influences of wealth more than balanced the good effected by a long succession of virtuous and gifted princes. i read of no country that, on the whole, was ever favored by a more remarkable constellation of absolute kings than that of judah. most of them had long reigns, took prophets and wise men for their counsellors, developed the resources of their kingdoms, strengthened jerusalem, avoided entangling wars, and enjoyed the love and veneration of the people. most of them, unlike the kings of israel, were true to their exalted mission, were loyal to jehovah, and discouraged idolatry, if they did not root out the scandal by persecuting violence. some of these kings were poets, and others were saints, like their great ancestor david; and yet, in spite of all their efforts, corruption, and infidelity gained ground, and ultimately undermined the state and prepared the way for babylonian conquests. though jerusalem survived the fall of samaria for nearly five generations, divine judgment was delayed, but not withdrawn. the chastisement was sent at last at the hands of warriors whom no nation could successfully resist. the old enemies who had in the early days overwhelmed the hebrews with calamities under the judges had been conquered by saul and david,--the moabites, the edomites, the hittites, the jebusites, and the philistines,--and they never afterward seriously menaced the kingdom, although there were occasional wars. but in the eighth century before christ the assyrian empire, whose capital was nineveh, had become very formidable under warlike sovereigns, who aimed to extend their dominion to the mediterranean and to egypt. in the reign of jehoash, the son of athaliah, an assyrian monarch had exacted tribute from tyre and sidon, and syria was overrun. when pul, or tiglath-pileser, seized the throne of nineveh, he pushed his conquests to the caspian sea on the north and the indus on the east, to the frontier of egypt and the deserts of sinai on the west and south. in b.c. he appeared in syria to break up a confederation which uzziah of judah had formed to resist him, and succeeded in destroying the power of syria, and carrying its people as captives to assyria. menahem, king of samaria, submitted to the enormous tribute of one thousand talents of silver. in b.c. this great conqueror again invaded syria, beheaded rezin its king, took damascus, reduced five hundred and eighteen cities and towns to ashes, and carried back to nineveh an immense spoil. in b.c. shalmanezer iv. appeared in palestine, and invested samaria. the city made an heroic defence; but after a siege of three years it yielded to sargon, who carried away into captivity the ten tribes of israel, from which they never returned. judah survived by reason of its greater military skill and its strong fortresses, with which asa, jehoshaphat, and uzziah had fortified the country, especially jerusalem. but the fate of western asia was sealed when rezin of damascus, menahem of samaria, hiram of tyre, and the king of hamath moodily consented to pay tribute to the king of assyria; the downfall of the sturdy judah was in preparation. greater evils than those of war threatened the stability of the state. in judah as in ephraim drunkenness was a national vice, and the nobles abandoned themselves to disgraceful debauchery. there was a general demoralization of the people more fearful in its consequences than even idolatry. judah was no exception to the ordinary fate of nations; the everlasting sequence--pertaining to institutions as well as nations, to religious as well as merely political communities--was here seen,--"inwardness, outwardness, worldliness, and rottenness." it was in this state of political danger and a general decline in morals, with a tendency to idolatry, that isaiah--preacher, statesman, historian, poet, and prophet--was born. less is said of the personal history of this great man than of moses or david, of daniel or elisha, and it is only in his writings that we see the solemn grandeur of his character. we infer that he was allied with the royal family of david; he certainly held a high position in the courts of jotham, ahaz, and hezekiah. he was a man of great dignity, experience, and wisdom, but ascetic in his habits and dress. although he associated with the great in courts and palaces, a cell was his delight. he was a retiring, contemplative, rapt, austere man, severe on passing follies, and not sparing in his rebukes of sin in high places,--something like savonarola at florence, both as preacher and prophet,--and exercising a commanding influence on political affairs and on the people directly, especially during the reigns of ahaz and hezekiah. he denounced woes and calamities, yet escaped persecution from the grandeur of his character and the importance of his utterances. he was a favorite of king hezekiah, and was contemporary with the prophets hosea, amos, and jonah. he lived in jerusalem, not far from the temple, and had a wife and two sons. he wrote the life of uzziah, and died at the age of eighty-four, in the reign of manasseh. it is generally supposed that although isaiah had lived in honor during the reigns of four kings, he suffered martyrdom at last. it is the fate of prophets to be stoned when they are in antagonism with men in power, or with popular sentiments. his prophetic ministry extended over a period of about fifty years, and he was continually consulted by the reigning monarchs. the great outward events that took place during isaiah's public career were the invasion of judah by the combined forces of israel and syria in the reign of ahaz, and the great assyrian invasion in the reign of hezekiah. in regard to the first, it was disastrous to judah. the weak king, the twelfth from david, was inclined to the idolatries of the surrounding nations, but was not signally bad like ahab. yet he was no match for pekah, who reigned at samaria, or for rezin, who reigned at damascus. their combined armies slew in one day one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of ahaz, and carried away into captivity two hundred thousand women and children, with immense spoil. the conqueror then advanced to the siege of jerusalem. in his distress ahaz invoked the aid of pul, or tiglath-pileser ii., one of the most warlike of the assyrian kings, whose kingdom stretched from the armenian mountains on the north to bagdad on the south, and from the zagros chain on the east to the euphrates on the west. earnestly did the prophet-statesman expostulate with ahaz, telling him that the king of assyria would prove "a razor to shave but too clean his desolate land." the inspired advice was rejected; and the result of the alliance was that judah, like israel, fell to the rank of a subject nation, and became tributary to assyria, and ahaz, a mere vassal of tiglath-pileser. the whole of palestine became the border-land of the assyrian empire, easy to be invaded and liable to be conquered. the consequences which isaiah feared, took place in the time of hezekiah, in the actual invasion of judah by the assyrian hosts under sennacherib. not the splendid prosperity of hezekiah, little short of that enjoyed by solomon,--not his allegiance to jehovah, nor his grand reforms and magnificent feasts averted the calamities which were the legitimate result of the blindness of his father ahaz. sennacherib, the most powerful of all the assyrian kings, after suppressing a revolt in babylon and conquering various eastern states, turned his eyes and steps to palestine, which had revolted. hezekiah, in mortal fear, made humble submission, and consented to a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, and the loss of two hundred thousand of his people as captives, and a cession of a part of his territory,--as great a calamity as france suffered in the war ( - ) with prussia. considering the prosperity of the kingdom of judah under hezekiah, it is a difficult thing to be explained that the king could raise but three hundred talents of silver and thirty of gold, although david had contributed out of his private fortune, for the future erection of the temple, three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of silver, besides the one million talents of silver and one hundred thousand talents of gold which he collected as sovereign. it would seem probable that an error has crept into the estimates of the wealth of the kingdom under solomon and under the subsequent kings; either that of solomon is exaggerated, or that of hezekiah is underrated. notwithstanding his former defeat and losses, hezekiah again revolted, and again was judah invaded by a still greater assyrian force. the king of judah in this emergency showed extraordinary energy, stopped the supply of water outside his capital, strengthened his defences, gathered together his fighting men, and encouraged them with the assurance that help would come from the lord, in whom they trusted, and whom sennacherib boastfully defied. for the ringing words of isaiah roused and animated the hearts of both king and people to a noble courage, announcing the aid of jehovah and the overthrow of the heathen invader. as we have seen, the men of judah showed their faith in the divine help by preparing to help themselves. but from an unexpected quarter the assistance came, as isaiah had predicted. a pestilence destroyed in a single night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the assyrian warriors,--the most signal overthrow of the enemies of israel since pharaoh and his host were swallowed up by the waters of the red sea, and also the most signal deliverance which jerusalem ever had. the calamity created such a fearful demoralization among the invaders that the over-confident assyrian monarch retired to his capital with utter loss of prestige, and soon after was assassinated by his own sons. no assyrian king after this invaded judah, and nineveh itself in a few years was conquered by babylon. the fall of jerusalem at the hands of the babylonians was delayed one hundred years. but such were the moral and social evils of the times succeeding the ninevite invasion that isaiah saw that retribution would come sooner or later, unless the nation repented and a radical reform should take place. he saw the people stricken with judicial blindness; so he clothed himself in sackcloth and cried aloud, with fervid eloquence, upon the people to repent. he is now the popular preacher, and his theme is repentance. in his earnest exhortations he foreshadows john the baptist: "unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." it would seem that savonarola makes him the model of his own eloquence. "thy crimes, o florence! thy crimes, o rome! thy crimes, o italy! are the causes of these chastisements. o rome! thou shalt be put to the sword, since thou wilt not be converted! o harlot church! i will stretch forth mine hand upon thee, saith the lord." the burden of the soul of the florentine monk is sin, especially sin in high places. he sees only degeneracy in life, and alarms the people by threats of divine vengeance. so isaiah cries aloud upon the people to seek the lord while he may be found. he does not invoke divine wrath, as david did upon his enemies; but he shows that this wrath will surely overtake the sinner. in no respect does he glory in this retribution: he is sad; he is oppressed; he is filled with grief, especially in view of the prevailing infatuation. "my people," said he, "do not consider." he denounces all classes alike, and spares not even women. in sarcastic language he rebukes their love of dress, their abandonment to vanities, their finery, their very gait and mincing attitude. still more contemptuously does the preacher speak of the men, over whom the women rule and children oppress. he is severe on corrupt judges, on usurers; on all who are conceited in their own eyes; on those who are mighty to drink wine; on those who join house to house and field to field; on those whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; on those who call good evil and evil good, that put darkness for light, that take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. his terrible denunciation and enumeration of evil indicate a very lax morality in every quarter, added to hypocrisy and pharisaism. he shows what a poor thing is sacrifice unaccompanied with virtue. "to what purpose," said he, "is the multitude of sacrifices? bring no more vain oblations. incense is an abomination to me, saith the lord. therefore wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." isaiah does not preach dogmas, still less metaphysical distinctions; he preaches against sin and demands repentance, and predicts calamity. there are two points in his preaching which stand out with great vividness,--the certain judgments of god in view of sin, retribution on all offenders; and secondly, the mercy and forgiveness of god in case of repentance. retribution, however, is not in isaiah usually presented as the penalty of transgression according to natural law; not, as in the proverbs, as the inevitable sequence of sin,--"whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap,"--but as direct punishment from god. jehovah's awful personality is everywhere recognized,--a being who rules the universe as "the living god," who loves and abhors, who punishes and rewards, who gives power to the faint, who judges among the nations, who takes away from judah and jerusalem the stay and the staff of bread and water. "to whom then will ye liken god? have ye not known, have ye not heard, hath it not been told you from the beginning? it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, that bringeth the princes to nothing. hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting god, the lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? he giveth power to the faint and weary, so that they who wait upon him shall renew their strength, mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint." can stronger or more comforting language be made use of to assert the personality and providence of god? and where in the whole circuit of hebrew poetry is there more sublimity of language, greater eloquence, or more profound conviction of the evil and punishment of sin? isaiah, the greatest of all the prophets in his spiritual discernment, in his profound insight of the future, is not behind the author of job in majestic and sublime description. whatever may be the severity of language with which isaiah denounces sin, and awful the judgments he pronounces in view of it, as coming directly from god, yet he seldom closes one of his dreadful sentences without holding out the hope of divine forgiveness in case of repentance, and the peace and comfort which will follow. in his view the mercy of the lord is more impressive than his judgments. isaiah is anything but a prophet of wrath; his soul overflows with tender sentiments and loving exhortation. "ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters! come ye, buy and eat! yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!... let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our god, for he will abundantly pardon...behold, the lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear...though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." according to modern standards, we are struck with the absence of what we call art, in the writings of isaiah. history, woes, promises, hopes, aspirations, and exultations are all mingled together in scarcely logical sequence. he exhorts, he threatens, he reproaches, he promises, often in the same chapter. the transition between preacher and prophet is very sudden. but it is as prophet that isaiah is most frequently spoken of; and he is the prophet of hope and consolation, although he denounces woes upon the nations of the earth. in his prophetic office he predicts the future of all the people known to the hebrews. he does not preach to _them_: they do not hear his voice; they do not know what tribulations shall be sent upon them. he commits his prophecies to writing for the benefit of future ages, in which he gives reasons for the judgments to be sent upon wicked nations, so that the great principles seen in the moral government of god may remain of perpetual significance. these principles centre around the great truth that national wickedness will certainly be followed by national calamities, which is also one of the most impressive truths that all history teaches; and so uniform is the operation of this great law that it is safe to make deductions from it for the guidance of statesmen and the teachings of moralists. national effeminacy which follows luxury, great injustices which cry to heaven for vengeance, and practical atheism and idolatry are certain to call forth divine judgments,--sometimes in the form of destructive wars, sometimes in pestilence and famine, and at other times in the gradual wasting away of national resources and political power. in conformity with this settled law in the moral government of god, we read the fate of nineveh, of babylon, of tyre, of jerusalem, of carthage, of antioch, of corinth, of athens, of rome; and i would even add of venice, of turkey, of spain. nor is there anything which can save modern cities and countries, however magnificent their civilization, from a like visitation of almighty power, if they continue in the iniquity which all the world perceives, and sometimes deplores. it must have seemed as absurd to the readers of isaiah's predictions twenty-five hundred years ago that babylon and tyre should fall, as it would to the people of our day should one predict the future ruin of paris or london or new york, if the vices which now flourish in these cities should reach an overwhelming preponderance, but which we hope may be wholly overcome by the influence of christianity and the spirit and interference of god himself; for he governs the world by the same principles that he did two thousand years ago,--a fact which seldom is ignored by any profound and religious inquirer. i have no faith in the permanence of any form of civilization, or of any government, where a certain depth of infamy and depravity is reached; because the impressive lesson of history is that righteousness exalteth a nation, and iniquity brings it low. isaiah predicted woes which came to pass, since the cities and peoples against whom he denounced them remained obstinately perverse in their iniquity and atheism. their doom was certain, without that repentance which would lead to a radical change of life and opinions. he held out no hope unless they turned to the lord; nor did any of the prophets. jeremiah was sad because he knew they would not repent, even as christ himself wept over jerusalem. no maledictions came from the pen or voice of isaiah such as david breathed against his enemies, only the expression of the sad and solemn conviction that unless the people and the nation repented, they would all equally and surely perish, in accordance with the stern laws written on the two tables of moses,--for "i, thy god, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation;"--yea, written before moses, and to be read unto this day in the very constitution of man, physical, mental, spiritual, and social. the prophet first announces the calamities which both judah and ephraim--the southern and the northern kingdoms--shall suffer from assyrian invasions. "the lord shall shave judah with a razor, not only the head, but the beard,"--thus declaring that the land would be not only depopulated, but become a desert, and that men should no longer live by agriculture, or by trade and commerce, but by grazing alone. "woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower; it shall be trodden under foot." the sins of pride and drunkenness are especially enumerated as the cause of their chastisement. "woe to ariel [that is jerusalem]! i will camp against thee round about, and lay siege against thee with a mount, and i will raise forts against thee, and thou shalt be brought down.... forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with lips do they honor me, but have removed their heart far from me,"--hereby showing that hypocrisy at jerusalem was as prevalent as drunkenness in samaria, and as difficult to be removed. isaiah also reproves judah for relying on the aid of egypt in the threatened assyrian invasion, instead of putting confidence in god, but declares that the evil day will be deferred in case that judah repents; however, he holds out no hope that her people may escape the final captivity to babylon. all that the prophet predicted in reference to the desolation of palestine by syrians, assyrians, and babylonians, as instruments of punishment, came to pass. from the calamities which both judah and israel should suffer for their pride, hypocrisy, drunkenness, and idolatry, isaiah turns to predict the fall of other nations. "wherefore it shall come to pass that when the lord hath performed his whole work upon jerusalem, i will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of assyria, and the glory of his high looks.... for he saith, by the strength of my hand i have done it, and by my wisdom; for i am prudent, and i have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: and as i have gathered all the earth, as one gathereth eggs, therefore shall the lord of hosts send among his fat ones leanness, and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire." in the inscriptions which have recently been deciphered on the broken and decayed monuments of nineveh nothing is more remarkable than the boastful spirit, pride, and arrogance of the assyrian kings and conquerors. the fall of still prouder babylon is next predicted. "since thou hast said in thine heart, i will ascend into heaven, i will exalt my throne above the stars of god, thou shalt be brought down to hell.... babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the chaldean excellency, shall be as when god overthrew sodom and gomorrah. it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the arabians pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there; but wild beasts of the deserts shall lie there, and the owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there." both nineveh and babylon arose to glory and power by unscrupulous conquests, for their kings and people were military in their tastes and habits; and with dominion cruelly and wickedly obtained came arrogance and pride unbounded, and with these luxury and sensuality. the wickedest city of antiquity meets with the most terrible punishment that is recorded of any city in the world's history. not only were pride and cruelty the peculiar vices of its kings and princes, but a gross and degrading idolatry, allied with all the vices that we call infamous, marked the inhabitants of the doomed capital; so that the hebrew language was exhausted to find a word sufficiently expressive to mark its foul depravity, or sufficiently exultant to rejoice over its predicted \fall. most cities have recovered more or less from their calamities,--jerusalem, athens, rome,--but babylon was utterly destroyed, as by fire from heaven, and never has been rebuilt or again inhabited, except by wild beasts. its very ruins, the remains of walls three hundred and fifty feet in height, and of hanging gardens, and of palaces a mile in circuit, and of majestic temples, are now with difficulty determined. truly has that wicked city been swept with the besom of destruction, as isaiah predicted. the prophet then predicts the desolation of moab on account of its pride, which seems to have been its peculiar offence. it is to be noted that the sin of pride has ever called forth a severe judgment. "it goeth before destruction." pride was one of the peculiarities of both nineveh and babylon. but that which is exalted shall be brought low. a bitter humiliation, at least, has ever been visited upon those who have arrogated a lofty superiority. it presupposes an independence utterly inconsistent with the real condition of men in the eyes of the omnipotent; in the eyes of men, even, it is offensive in the extreme, and ends in isolation. we can tolerate certain great defects and weaknesses, but no one ever got reconciled to pride. it led to the ruin of napoleon, as well as of caesar; it creates innumerable enemies, even in the most retired village; it separates and alienates families; and when the punishment for it comes, everybody rejoices. people say contemptuously, "is this the man that made the earth to tremble?" there is seldom pity for a fallen greatness that rejoiced in its strength, and despised the weakness of the unfortunate. if anything is foreign to the spirit of christianity it is boastful pride, and yet it is one of those things which it is difficult for conscience to reach, as it is generally baptized with the name of self-respect. the next woe which isaiah denounced was on egypt, which had played so great a part in the history of ancient nations. the judgments sent on this civilized country were severe, but were not so appalling as those to be visited upon babylon. with egypt was included ethiopia. civil war should desolate both nations, and it should rage so fiercely that "every one should fight against his brother, and every one against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." moreover, the famed wisdom of egypt should fail; the people in their distress should seek to gain direction from wizards and charmers and soothsayers. it always was a country of magicians, from the time that aaron's rod swallowed up the rods of those boastful enchanters who sought to repeat his miracles; it was a country of soothsayers and sorcerers when finally conquered by the romans; it was the fruitful land of religious superstitions in every age. it was governed in the earliest times by pagan priests; the early kings were priests,--even moses and joseph were initiated into the occult arts of the priests. it was not wholly given to idolatry, since it is supposed that there was an esoteric wisdom among the higher priests which held to the one supreme god and the immortality of the soul, as well as to future rewards and punishments. nevertheless, the disgusting ceremonies connected with the worship of animals were far below the level of true religion, and the sorceries and magical incantations and superstitious rites which kept the people in ignorance, bondage, and degradation called loudly for rebuke. by reason of these things the nation was to be still farther subjected to the grinding rule of tyrants. it was a fertile and fruitful land, in which all the arts known to antiquity flourished; but the rains of ethiopia were to be withheld, and such should be the unusual and abnormal drouth that the nile should be dried up, and the reeds upon its banks should wither and decay. the river was stocked with fish, but the fishermen should cast their hooks and arrange their nets in vain. even the workers in flax (one great source of egyptian wealth and luxury) should be confounded. the princes were to become fools; there was to be general confusion, and no work was to be done in manufactures. even judah should become a terror to egypt, and fear should overspread the land. to these calamities there was to be some palliation. five cities should speak the language of canaan, and swear by the lord of hosts; and an altar should be erected in the middle of the land which should be a witness unto the lord of hosts, to whom the people should cry amid their oppressions and miseries; and jehovah should be known in egypt. "he shall smite it, but he also shall heal it." and when we remember what a refuge the jews found in alexandria and other cities in the no very distant future, keeping alive there the worship of the true god, and what a hold christianity itself took in the second and third centuries in that old country of priests and sorcerers, producing a clement, a cyprian, a tertullian, an athanasius, and an augustine; yea, that when conquered by the mohammedans, the worship of the one true god was everywhere maintained from that time to the present,--we feel that the mercy of god followed close upon his justice. isaiah predicted even the divine blessing on the land, which it should share with palestine: "blessed be egypt my people, and israel mine inheritance." it is not to be supposed that tyre would escape from the calamities which were to be sent on the various heathen nations. tyre was the great commercial centre of the world at that time, as babylon was the centre of imperial power. babylon ruled over the land, and tyre over the sea; the one was the capital of a vast empire, the other was a maritime power, whose ships were to be seen in every part of the mediterranean. tyre, by its wealth and commerce, gained the supremacy in phoenicia, although sidon was an older city, five miles distant. but tyre was defiled by the worship of baal and astarte; it was a city of exceeding dissoluteness. it was not only proud and luxurious, but abominably licentious; it was a city of harlots. and what was to be its fate? it was to be destroyed, and its merchandise was to be scattered. "howl, ye ships of tarshish! for your strength is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in.... the lord of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of glory, and bring to contempt all the honorable of the earth." the inhabitants of the city who sought escape from death were compelled to take refuge in the colonies at cyprus, carthage, and tartessus in spain. the destruction of tyre has been complete. there are no remains of its former grandeur; its palaces are indistinguishable ruins. its traffic was transferred to carthage. yet how strong must have been a city which took nebuchadnezzar thirteen years to subdue! it arose from its ashes, but was reduced again by alexander. isaiah condenses his judgment in reference to the other wicked nations of his time in a few rapid, vigorous, and comprehensive clauses. "behold, jehovah emptieth the earth, and layeth it waste, and scattereth its inhabitants. and it happeneth, as to the people, so to the priest; as to the servant, so to the master; as to the maid, so to her mistress; as to the buyer, so to the seller; as to the lender, so to the borrower; as to the creditor, so to the debtor. the earth has become wicked among its inhabitants, therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they who dwelt in it make expiation." we observe that these severe calamities are not uttered in wrath. they are not maledictions; they are simply divine revelations to the gifted prophet, or logical deductions which the inspired statesman declares from incontrovertible facts. in this latter sense, all profound observations on the tendency of passing events partake of the nature of prophecy. a sage is necessarily a prophet. men even prophesy rain or heat or cold from natural phenomena, and their predictions often come to pass. much more to be relied on is the prophetic wisdom which is seen among great thinkers and writers, like burke, webster, and carlyle, since they rely on the operation of unchanging laws, both moral and physical. when a nation is wholly given over to lying and cheating in trade, or to hypocritical observances in religion, or to practical atheism, or to gross superstitions, or abominable dissoluteness in morals, or to the rule of feeble kings controlled by hypocritical priests and harlots, is it presumptuous to predict the consequences? is it difficult to predict the ultimate effect on a nation of overwhelming standing armies eating up the resources of kings, or of the general prevalence of luxury, effeminacy, and vice? isaiah having declared the judgment of god on apostate, idolatrous, and wicked nations; having emphasized the great principle of retribution, even on nations that in his day were prosperous and powerful; having rebuked the sins of the people among whom he dwelt, and exposed hypocrisy and dead-letter piety,--lays down the fundamental law that chastisements are sent to lead men to repentance, and that where there is repentance there is forgiveness. severe as are his denunciations of sin, and certain as is the punishment of it, yet his soul dwells on the mercy and love of god more than even on his justice. he never loses sight of reconciliation, although he holds out but little hope for people wedded to their idols. there is no hope for babylon or tyre; they are doomed. nor is there much encouragement for ephraim, which composed so large a part of the kingdom of israel; its people were to be dispersed, to become captives, and never were to return to their native hills. but he holds out great hope for judah. it will be conquered, and its people carried away in slavery to babylon,--that is their chastisement for apostasy; but a remnant of them shall return. they had not utterly forgotten god, therefore a part of the nation shall be rescued from captivity. so full of hope is isaiah that the nation shall not utterly be destroyed, that he names his son shear-jashub,--"a remnant shall return." this is his watchword. certain is it that the lord will have mercy on jacob whom he hath chosen; his promises will not fail. judah shall be chastised; but a part of judah shall return to jerusalem, purified, wiser, and shall again in due time flourish as a nation. isaiah is the prophet of hope, of forgiveness, and of love. not only on judah shall a blessing be bestowed, but upon the whole world. forgiveness is unbounded if there is repentance, no matter what the sin may be. he almost anticipates the message of jesus by saying, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." god's mercy is past finding out. "ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!" so full is he of the boundless love of god, extended to all created things, that he calls on the hills and the mountains to rejoice. here he soars beyond the jew; he takes in the whole world in his rapturous expectation of deliverance. he comforts all good people under chastisement. he is as cheerful as jeremiah is sad. having laid down the conditions of forgiveness, and expatiated on the divine benevolence, isaiah now sings another song, and ascends to loftier heights. he is jubilant over the promised glories of god's people; he speaks of the redemption of both jew and gentile. his prophetic mission is now more distinctly unfolded. he blends the forgiveness of sins with the promised deliverer; he unfolds the advent of the messiah. he even foretells in what form he shall come; he predicts the main facts of his personal history. not only shall there "come forth a rod out of the stem of jesse, and a branch out of its roots," but he shall be "a man despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; who shall be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, brought as a lamb to the slaughter, cut off from the living, making his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; yet bruised because it pleased the lord, and because he made his soul an offering for sin, and made intercession with the transgressors." who is this stricken, persecuted, martyred personage, bearing the iniquity of the race, and thus providing a way for future salvation? isaiah, with transcendent majesty of style, clear and luminous as it is poetical, declares that this person who is still unborn, this light which shall appear in galilee, is no less than he on whose shoulders shall be the government, "whose name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty god, the everlasting father, the prince of peace; of the increase of whose kingdom and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of david and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and justice forever." only in some of the messianic psalms do we meet with kindred passages, indicating the reign of the christ upon the earth, expressed with such emphatic clearness. how marvellous and wonderful this prophecy! seven hundred years before its fulfilment, it is expressed with such minuteness, that, had the prophet lived in the apostolic age, he could not have described the messiah more accurately. the devout jew, especially after the captivity, believed in a future deliverer, who should arise from the seed of david, establish a great empire, and reign as a temporal monarch; but he had no lofty and spiritual views of this predicted reign. to isaiah, more even than to abraham or david or any other person in jewish history, was it revealed that the reign of the christ was to be spiritual; that he was not to be a temporal deliverer, but a saviour redeeming mankind from the curse of sin. hence isaiah is quoted more than all the other prophets combined, especially by the writers of the new testament. having announced this glorious prediction of the advent into our world of a divine redeemer in the form of a man, by whose life and suffering and death the world should be saved, the prophet-poet breaks out in rhapsodies. he cannot contain his exultation. he loses sight of the judgments he had declared, in his unbounded rejoicings that there was to be a deliverance; that not only a remnant would return to jerusalem and become a renewed power, but that the messiah should ultimately reign over all the nations of the earth, should establish a reign of peace, so that warriors "should beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." heretofore the history of kings had been a history of wars,--of oppression, of injustice, of cruelty. miseries overspread the earth from this scourge more than from all other causes combined. the world was decimated by war, producing not only wholesale slaughter, but captivity and slavery, the utter extinction of nations. isaiah had himself dwelt upon the woes to be visited on mankind by war more than any other prophet who had preceded him. all the leading nations and capitals were to be utterly destroyed or severely punished; calamity and misery should be nearly universal; only "a remnant should be saved." now, however, he takes the most cheerful and joyous views. so marked is the contrast between the first and latter parts of the book of isaiah, that many great critics suppose that they were written by different persons and at different times. but whether there were two persons or one, the most comforting and cheering doctrines to be found in the scriptures, before the sermon on the mount was preached, are declared by isaiah. the breadth and catholicity of them are amazing from the pen of a jew. the whole world was to share with him in the promises of a saviour; the whole world was to be finally redeemed. as recipients of divine privileges there was to be no difference between jew and gentile. paul himself shows no greater mental illumination. "the glory of the lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it." in view of this glorious reign of peace and universal redemption, isaiah calls upon the earth to be joyful and all the mountains to break forth in singing, and zion to awake, and jerusalem to put on her beautiful garments, and all waste places to break forth in joy; for the glory of the lord is risen upon the city of david. how rapturously does the prophet, in the most glowing and lofty flights of poetry, dwell upon the time when the redeemed of the lord shall return to zion with songs and thanksgivings, no more to be called "forsaken," but a city to be renewed in beauties and glories, and in which kings shall be nursing fathers to its sons and daughters, and queens nursing mothers. these are the tidings which the prophet brings, and which the poet sings in matchless lyrics. to the zion of the holy one of israel shall the gentiles come with their precious offerings. "violence shall no more be heard in thy land," saith the poet, "wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise.... thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the day of thy mourning shall be ended.... thy people shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that i may be glorified. a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: i the lord will hasten it in its time." salvation, peace, the glory of zion!--these are the words which isaiah reiterates. with these are identified the spiritual kingdom of christ, which is to spread over the whole earth. the prophet does not specify when that time shall come, when peace shall be universal, and when all the people shall be righteous; that part of the prophecy remains unfulfilled, as well as the renewed glories of jerusalem. yet a thousand years with the lord are as one day. no believing christian doubts that it will be fulfilled, as certainly as that babylon should be destroyed, or that a messiah should appear among the jews. the day of deliverance began to dawn when christianity was proclaimed among the gentiles. from that time a great progress has been seen among the nations. first, wars began to cease in the roman world. they were renewed when the empire of the caesars fell, but their ferocity and cruelty diminished; conquered people were not carried away as slaves, nor were women and children put to death, except in extraordinary cases, which called out universal grief, compassion, and indignation. with all the progress of truth and civilization, it is amazing that christian nations should still be armed to the teeth, and that wars are still so frequent. we fear that they will not cease until those who govern shall be conscientious christians. but that the time will come when rulers shall be righteous and nations learn war no more, is a truth which christians everywhere accept. when, how,--by the gradual spread of knowledge, or by supernatural intervention,--who can tell? "zion shall arise and shine.... the gentiles shall come to its light, and kings to the brightness of its rising.... violence shall no more be heard in the land, nor wasting and destruction within its borders.... they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the lord.... and it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the lord." this is the sublime faith of christendom set forth by the most sublime of the prophets, from the most gifted and eloquent of the poets. on this faith rests the consolation of the righteous in view of the prevalence of iniquity. this prophecy is full of encouragement and joy amid afflictions and sorrows. it proclaims liberty to captives, and the opening of the prison to those that are bound; it preaches glad tidings to the meek, and binds up the broken-hearted; it gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. this prediction has inspired the religious poets of all nations; on this is based the beauty and glory of the lyrical stanzas we sing in our churches. the hymns and melodies of the church, the most immortal of human writings, are inspired with this cheering anticipation. the psalmody of the church is rapturous, like isaiah, over the triumphant and peaceful reign of christ, coming sooner perhaps than we dream when we see the triumphal career of wicked men. in the temporal fall of a monstrous despotism, in the decline of wicked cities and empires, in the light which is penetrating all lands, in the shaking of mohammedan thrones, in the opening of the most distant east, in the arbitration of national difficulties, in the terrible inventions which make nations fear to go to war, in the wonderful network of philanthropic enterprises, in the renewed interest in sacred literature, in the recognition of law and order as the first condition of civilized society, in that general love of truth which science has stimulated and rarely mocked, and which casts its searching eye into all creeds and all hypocrisies and all false philosophy,--we share the exultant spirit of the prophet, and in the language of one of our great poets we repeat the promised joy:-- "rise, crowned with light, imperial salem, rise! exalt thy towering head and lift thine eyes! see a long race thy spacious courts adorn, see future sons and daughters yet unborn! see barbarous nations at thy gates attend, walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend! see thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, and heaped with products of sabaean springs! no more the rising sun shall gild the morn, nor evening cynthia fill her silver horn; but lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, one tide of glory, one unclouded blaze o'erflow thy courts; the light himself shall shine revealed, and god's eternal day be thine! the seas shall waste, the skies to smoke decay, rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away; but fixed his word, his saving power remains: thy realm forever lasts; thy own messiah reigns!" jeremiah. about - b.c. the fall of jerusalem. jeremiah is a study to those who would know the history of the latter days of the jewish monarchy, before it finally succumbed to the babylonian conqueror. he was a sad and isolated man, who uttered his prophetic warnings to a perverse and scornful generation; persecuted because he was truthful, yet not entirely neglected or disregarded, since he was consulted in great national dangers by the monarchs with whom he was contemporary. so important were his utterances, it is matter of great satisfaction that they were committed to writing, for the benefit of future generations,--not of jews only, but of the gentiles,--on account of the fundamental truths contained in them. next to isaiah, jeremiah was the most prominent of the prophets who were commissioned to declare the will and judgments of jehovah on a degenerate and backsliding people. he was a preacher of righteousness, as well as a prophet of impending woes. as a reformer he was unsuccessful, since the hebrew nation was incorrigibly joined to its idols. his public career extended over a period of forty years. he was neither popular with the people, nor a favorite of kings and princes; the nation was against him and the times were against him. he exasperated alike the priests, the nobles, and the populace by his rebukes. as a prophet he had no honor in his native place. he uniformly opposed the current of popular prejudices, and denounced every form of selfishness and superstition; but all his protests and rebukes were in vain. there were very few to encourage him or comfort him. like noah, he was alone amidst universal derision and scorn, so that he was sad beyond measure, more filled with grief than with indignation. jeremiah was not bold and stern, like elijah, but retiring, plaintive, mournful, tender. as he surveyed the downward descent of judah, which nothing apparently could arrest, he exclaimed: "oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that i might weep day and night for the daughter of my people!" is it possible for language to express a deeper despondency, or a more tender grief? pathos and unselfishness are blended with his despair. it is not for himself that he is overwhelmed with gloom, but for the sins of the people. it is because the people would not hear, would not consider, and would persist in their folly and wickedness, that grief pierces his soul. he weeps for them, as christ wept over jerusalem. yet at times he is stung into bitter imprecations, he becomes fierce and impatient; and then again he rises over the gloom which envelops him, in the conviction that there will be a new covenant between god and man, after the punishment for sin shall have been inflicted. but his prevailing feelings are grief and despair, since he has no hopes of national reform. so he predicts woes and calamities at no distant day, which are to be so overwhelming that his soul is crushed in the anticipation of them. he cannot laugh, he cannot rejoice, he cannot sing, he cannot eat and drink like other men. he seeks solitude; he longs for the desert; he abstains from marriage, he is ascetic in all his ways; he sits alone and keeps silence, and communes only with his god; and when forced into the streets and courts of the city, it is only with the faint hope that he may find an honest man. no persons command his respect save the arabian rechabites, who have the austere habits of the wilderness, like those of the early syrian monks. yet his gloom is different from theirs: they seek to avert divine wrath for their own sins; he sees this wrath about to descend for the sins of others, and overwhelm the whole nation in misery and shame. jeremiah was born in the little ecclesiastical town of anathoth, about three miles from jerusalem, and was the son of a priest. we do not know the exact year of his birth, but he was a very young man when he received his divine commission as a prophet, about six hundred and twenty-seven years before christ. josiah had then been on the throne of judah twelve years. the kingdom was apparently prosperous, and was unmolested by external enemies. for seventy-five years assyria had given but little trouble, and egypt was occupied with the siege of ashdod, which had been going on for twenty-nine years, so strong was that philistine city. but in the absence of external dangers corruption, following wealth, was making fearful strides among the people, and impiety was nearly universal. every one was bent on pleasure or gain, and prophet and priest were worldly and deceitful. from the time when jeremiah was first called to the prophetic office until the fall of jerusalem there was an unbroken series of national misfortunes, gradually darkening into utter ruin and exile. he may have shrunk from the perils and mortifications which attended him for forty years, as his nature was sensitive and tender; but during this long ministry he was incessant in his labors, lifting up his voice in the courts of the temple, in the palace of the king, in prison, in private houses, in the country around jerusalem. the burden of his utterances was a denunciation of idolatry, and a lamentation over its consequences. "my people, saith jehovah, have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out for themselves underground cisterns, full of rents, that can hold no water.... behold, o judah! thou shalt be brought to shame by thy new alliance with egypt, as thou wast in the past by thy old alliance with assyria." in this denunciation by the prophet we see that he mingled in political affairs, and opposed the alliance which judah made with egypt, which ever proved a broken reed. egypt was a vain support against the new power that was rising on the euphrates, carrying all before it, even to the destruction of nineveh, and was threatening damascus and tyre as well as jerusalem. the power which judah had now to fear was babylon, not assyria. if any alliance was to be formed, it was better to conciliate babylon than egypt. roused by the earnest eloquence of jeremiah, and of those of the group of earnest followers of jehovah who stood with him,--huldah the prophetess, shallum her husband, keeper of the royal wardrobe, hilkiah the high-priest, and shaphan the scribe, or secretary,--the youthful king josiah, in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he was himself but twenty-six years old, set about reforms, which the nobles and priests bitterly opposed. idolatry had been the fashionable religion for nearly seventy years, and the law was nearly forgotten. the corruption of the priesthood and of the great body of the prophets kept pace with the degeneracy of the people. the temple was dilapidated, and its gold and bronze decorations had been despoiled. the king undertook a thorough repair of the great sanctuary, and during its progress a discovery was made by the high-priest hilkiah of a copy of the law, hidden amid the rubbish of one of the cells or chambers of the temple. it is generally supposed to have been the book of deuteronomy. when it was lost, and how, it is not easy to ascertain,--probably during the reign of some one of the idolatrous kings. it seems to have been entirely forgotten,--a proof of the general apostasy of the nation. but the discovery of the book was hailed by josiah as a very important event; and its effect was to give a renewed impetus to his reforms, and a renewed study of patriarchal history. he forthwith assembled the leading men of the nation,--prophets, priests, levites, nobles, and heads of tribes. he read to them the details of the ancient covenant, and solemnly declared his purpose to keep the commandments and statutes of jehovah as laid down in the precious book. the assembled elders and priests gave their eager concurrence to the act of the king, and judah once more, outwardly at least, became the people of god. nor can it be questioned that the renewed study of the law, as brought about by josiah, produced a great influence on the future of the hebrew nation, especially in the renunciation of idolatry. yet this reform, great as it was, did not prevent the fall of jerusalem and the exile of the leading people among the hebrews to the land of the chaldeans, whence abraham their great progenitor had emigrated. josiah, who was thoroughly aroused by "the words of the book," and its denunciations of the wrath of jehovah upon the people if they should forsake his ways, in spite of the secret opposition of the nobles and priests, zealously pursued the work of reform. the "high places," on which were heathen altars, were levelled with the ground; the images of the gods were overthrown; the temple was purified, and the abominations which had disgraced it were removed. his reforms extended even to the scattered population of samaria whom the assyrians had spared, and all the buildings connected with the worship of baal and astaroth at bethel were destroyed. their very stones were broken in pieces, under the eyes of josiah himself. the skeletons of the pagan priests were dragged from their burial places and burned. an elaborate celebration of the feast of the passover followed soon after the discovery of the copy of the law, whether confined to deuteronomy or including other additional writings ascribed to moses, we know not. this great passover was the leading internal event of the reign of josiah. having "taken away all the abominations out of all the countries that belonged to the children of israel," even as the earlier keepers of the law cleansed their premises, especially of all remains of leaven,--the symbol of corruption,--the king commanded a celebration of the feast of deliverance. priests and levites were sent throughout the country to instruct the people in the preparations demanded for the passover. the sacred ark, hidden during the reigns of manasseh and amon, was restored to its old place in the temple, where it remained until the temple was destroyed. on the approach of the festival, which was to be held with unusual solemnities, great multitudes from all parts of palestine assembled at jerusalem, and three thousand bullocks and thirty thousand lambs were provided by the king for the seven days' feast which followed the passover. the princes also added eight hundred oxen and seven thousand six hundred small cattle as a gift to priests and people. after the priests in their white robes, with bare feet and uncovered heads, and the levites at their side according to the king's commandment, had "killed the passover" and "sprinkled the blood from their hands," each levite having first washed himself in the temple laver, the part of the animal required for the burnt-offering was laid on the altar flames, and the remainder was cooked by the levites for the people, either baked, roasted, or boiled. and this continued for seven days; during all the while the services of the temple choir were conducted by the singers, chanting the psalms of david and of asaph. such a passover had not been held since the days of samuel. no king, not even david or solomon, had celebrated the festival on so grand a scale. the minutest details of the requirements of the law were attended to. the festival proclaimed the full restoration of the worship of jehovah, and kindled enthusiasm for his service. so great was this event that ezekiel dates the opening of his prophecies from it. "it seems probable that we have in the eighty-fifth psalm a relic of this great solemnity.... its tone is sad amidst all the great public rejoicings; it bewails the stubborn ungodliness of the people as a whole." after the great passover, which took place in the year , when josiah was twenty-six years of age, little is said of the pious king, who reigned twelve years after this memorable event. one of the best, though not one of the wisest, kings of judah, he did his best to eradicate every trace of idolatry; but the hearts of the people responded faintly to his efforts. reform was only outward and superficial,--an illustration of the inability even of an absolute monarch to remove evils to which the people cling in their hearts. to the eyes of jeremiah, there was no hope while the hearts of the people were unchanged. "can the ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" he mournfully exclaims. "much less can those who are accustomed to do evil learn to do well." he had no illusions; he saw the true state of affairs, and was not misled by mere outward and enforced reforms, which partook of the nature of religious persecution, and irritated the people rather than led to a true religious life among them. there was nothing left to him but to declare woes and approaching calamities, to which the people were insensible. they mocked and reviled him. his lofty position secured him a hearing, but he preached to stones. the people believed nothing but lies; many were indifferent and some were secretly hostile, and he must have been pained and disappointed in view of the incompleteness of his work through the secret opposition of the popular leaders. josiah was the most virtuous monarch of judah. it was a great public misfortune that his life was cut short prematurely at the age of thirty-eight, and in consequence of his own imprudence. he undertook to oppose the encroachments of necho ii, king of egypt, an able, warlike, and enterprising monarch, distinguished for his naval expeditions, whose ships doubled the cape of good hope, and returned to egypt in safety, after a three years' voyage. necho was not so successful in digging a canal across the isthmus of suez, in which enterprise one hundred and twenty thousand men perished from hunger, fatigue, and disease. but his great aim was to extend his empire to the limits reached by rameses ii., the sesostris of the greeks. the great assyrian empire was then breaking up, and nineveh was about to fall before the babylonians; so he seized the opportunity to invade syria, a province of the assyrian empire. he must of course pass through palestine, the great highway between egypt and the east. josiah opposed his enterprise, fearing that if the egyptian king conquered syria, he himself would become the vassal of egypt. jeremiah earnestly endeavored to dissuade his sovereign from embarking in so doubtful a war; even necho tried to convince him through his envoys that he made war on nineveh, not on jerusalem, invoking--as most intensely earnest men did in those days of tremendous impulse--the sacred name of deity as his authentication. said he: "what have i to do with thee, thou king of judah? i come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith i have war; for god commanded me to make haste. forbear thee from meddling with god, who is with me, that he destroy thee not." but nothing could induce josiah to give up his warlike enterprise. he had the piety of saint louis, and also his patriotic and chivalric heroism. he marched his forces to the plain of esdraelon, the great battle field where rameses ii. had triumphed over the hittites centuries before. the battle was fought at megiddo. although josiah took the precaution to disguise himself, he was mortally wounded by the egyptian archers, and was driven back in his splendid chariot toward jerusalem, which he did not live to reach. the lamentations for this brave and pious monarch remind us of the universal grief of the hebrew nation on the death of samuel. he was buried in a tomb which he had prepared for himself, amid universal mourning. a funeral oration was composed by jeremiah, or rather an elegy, afterward sung by the nation on the anniversary of the battle. nor did the nation ever forget a king so virtuous in his life and so zealous for the law. long after the return from captivity the singers of israel sang his praises, and popular veneration for him increased with the lapse of time; for in virtues and piety, and uninterrupted zeal for jehovah, josiah never had an equal among the kings of judah. the services of this good king were long remembered. to him may be traced the unyielding devotion of the jews, after the captivity, for the rites and forms and ceremonies which are found in the books of the law. the legalisms of the scribes may be traced to him. he reigned but twelve years after his great reformation,--not long enough to root out the heathenism which had prevailed unchecked for nearly seventy years. with him perished the hopes of the kingdom. after his death the decline was rapid. a great reaction set in, and faction was accompanied with violence. the heathen party triumphed over the orthodox party. the passions which had been suppressed since the death of manasseh burst out with all the frenzy and savage hatred which have ever marked the jews in their religious contentions, and these were unrestrained by the four kings who succeeded josiah. the people were devoured by religious animosities, and split up into hostile factions. had the nation been united, it is possible that later it might have successfully resisted the armies of nebuchadnezzar. jeremiah gave vent to his despairing sentiments, and held out no hope. when elijah had appealed to the people to choose between jehovah and baal, he was successful, because they were then undecided and wavering in their belief, and it required only an evidence of superior power to bring them back to their allegiance. but when jeremiah appeared, idolatry was the popular religion. it had become so firmly established by a succession of wicked kings, added to the universal degeneracy, that even josiah could work but a temporary reform. hence the voice of jeremiah was drowned. even the prophets of his day had become men of the world. they fawned on the rich and powerful whose favor they sought, and prophesied "smooth things" to them. they were the optimists of a decaying nation and a godless, pleasure-seeking generation. they were to jerusalem what the sophists were to athens when demosthenes thundered his disregarded warnings. there were, indeed, a few prophets left who labored for the truth; but their words fell on listless ears. nor could the priests arrest the ruin, for they were as corrupt as the people. the most learned among them were zealous only for the letter of the law, and fostered among the people a hypocritical formalism. true religious life had departed; and the noble jeremiah, the only great statesman as well as prophet who remained, saw his influence progressively declining, until at last he was utterly disregarded. yet he maintained his dignity, and fearlessly declared his message. in the meantime the triumphant necho, after the defeat and dispersion of josiah's army, pursued his way toward damascus, which he at once overpowered. from thence he invaded assyria, and stripped nineveh of its most fertile provinces. the capital itself was besieged by nabopolassar and cyaxares the mede, and necho was left for a time in possession of his newly-acquired dominion. josiah was succeeded by his son shallum, who assumed the crown under the name of jehoaz, which event it seems gave umbrage to the king of egypt. so he despatched an army to jerusalem, which yielded at once, and king jehoaz was sent as a captive to the banks of the nile. his elder brother eliakim was appointed king in his place, under the name of jehoiakim, who thus became the vassal of necho. he was a young man of twenty-five, self-indulgent, proud, despotic, and extravagant. there could be no more impressive comment on the infatuation and folly of the times than the embellishment of jerusalem with palaces and public buildings, with the view to imitate the glory of solomon. in everything the king differed from his father josiah, especially in his treatment of jeremiah, whom he would have killed. he headed the movement to restore paganism; altars were erected on every hill to heathen deities, so that there were more gods in judah than there were towns. even the sacred animals of egypt were worshipped in the dark chambers beneath the temple. in the most sacred places of the temple itself idolatrous priests worshipped the rising sun, and the obscene rites of phoenician idolatry were performed in private houses. the decline in morals kept pace with the decline of spiritual religion. there was no vice which was not rampant throughout the land,--adultery, oppression of foreigners, venality in judges, falsehood, dishonesty in trade, usury, cruelty to debtors, robbery and murder, the loosing of the ties of kindred, general suspicion of neighbors,--all the crimes enumerated by the apostle paul among the romans. judah in reality had become an idolatrous nation like tyre and syria and egypt, with only here and there a witness to the truth, like jeremiah, the prophetess huldah, and baruch the scribe. this relapse into heathenism filled the soul of jeremiah with grief and indignation, but gave to him a courage foreign to his timid and shrinking nature. in the presence of the king, the princes, and priests he was defiant, immovable, and fearless, uttering his solemn warnings from day to day with noble fidelity. all classes turned against him; the nobles were furious at his exposure of their license and robberies, the priests hated him for his denunciation of hypocrisy, and the people for his gloomy prophecies that the temple should be destroyed, jerusalem reduced to ashes, and they themselves led into captivity. not only were crime and idolatry rampant, but the death of josiah was followed by droughts and famine. in vain were the prayers of jeremiah to avert calamity. jehovah replied to him: "pray not for this people! though they fast, i will not hear their cry; though they offer sacrifice i have no pleasure in them, but will consume them by the sword, by famine, and pestilence." jeremiah piteously gives way to despairing lamentations. "hast thou, o lord, utterly rejected judah? is thy soul tired of zion? why hast thou smitten us so that there is no healing for us?" jehovah replies: "if moses and samuel stood pleading before me, my soul could not be toward this people. i appoint four destroyers,--the sword to slay, the dogs to tear and fight over the corpse, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, o jerusalem? thou hast rejected me. i am weary of relenting. i will scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff on the threshing-floor." such, amid general depravity and derision, were some of the utterances of the prophet, during the reign of jehoiakim. among other evils which he denounced was the neglect of the sabbath, so faithfully observed in earlier and better times. at the gates of the city he cried aloud against the general profanation of the sacred day, which instead of being a day of rest was the busiest day of the week, when the city was like a great fair and holiday. on this day the people of the neighboring villages brought for sale their figs and grapes and wine and vegetables; on this day the wine-presses were trodden in the country, and the harvest was carried to the threshing-floors. the preacher made himself especially odious for his rebuke for the violation of the sabbath. "come," said his enemies to the crowd, "let us lay a plot against him; let us smite him with the tongue by reporting his words to the king, and bearing false witness against him." on this renewed persecution the prophet does not as usual give way to lamentation, but hurls his maledictions. "o jehovah! give thou their sons to hunger, deliver them to the sword; let their wives be made childless and widows; let their strong men be given over to death, and their young men be smitten with the sword." and to consummate, as it were, his threats of divine punishment so soon to be visited on the degenerate city, jeremiah is directed to buy an earthenware bottle, such as was used by the peasants to hold their drinking-water, and to summon the elders and priests of jerusalem to the southwestern corner of the city, and to throw before their feet the bottle and shiver it in pieces, as a significant symbol of the approaching fall of the city, to be destroyed as utterly as the shattered jar. "and i will empty out in the dust, says jehovah, the counsels of judah and jerusalem, as this water is now poured from the bottle. and i will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those that seek their lives; and i will give their corpses for meat to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and i will make this city an astonishment and a scoffing. every one that passes by it will be astonished and hiss at its misfortunes. even so will i shatter this people and this city, as this bottle, which cannot be made whole again, has been shattered." nor was jeremiah contented to utter these fearful maledictions to the priests and elders; he made his way to the temple, and taking his stand among the people, he reiterated, amid a storm of hisses, mockeries, and threats, what he had just declared to a smaller audience in reference to jerusalem. such an appalling announcement of calamities, and in such strong and plain language, must have transported his hearers with fear or with wrath. he was either the ambassador of heaven, before whose voice the people in the time of elijah would have quaked with unutterable anguish, or a madman who was no longer to be endured. we have no record of any prophet or any preacher who ever used language so terrible or so daring. even luther never hurled such maledictions on the church which he called the "scarlet mother." jeremiah uttered no vague generalities, but brought the matter home with awful directness. among his auditors was pashur, the chief governor of the temple, and a priest by birth. he at once ordered the temple police to seize the bold and outspoken prophet, who was forthwith punished for his plain speaking by the bastinado, and then hurried bleeding to the stocks, into which his head and feet and hands were rudely thrust, to spend the night amid the jeers of the crowd and the cold dews of the season. in the morning he was set free, his enemies thinking that he now would hold his tongue; but jeremiah, so far from keeping silence, renewed his threats of divine vengeance. "for thus saith jehovah, i will give all judah into the hands of the king of babylon, and he shall carry them captive to babylon, and slay them with the sword." and then turning to pashur, before the astonished attendants, he exclaimed: "and thou, pashur, and all that dwell in thy house, will be dragged off into captivity; and thou wilt come to babylon, and thou wilt die and be buried there,--thou and all thy partisans to whom thou hast prophesied lies." we observe in these angry words of jeremiah great directness and great minuteness, so that his meaning could not be mistaken; also that the instrument of punishment on the degenerate and godless city was to be the king of babylon, a new power from whom judah as yet had received no harm. the old enemies of the hebrews were the assyrians and egyptians, not the babylonians and medes. whatever may have been the malignant animosity of pashur, he was evidently afraid to molest the awful prophet and preacher any further, for jeremiah was no insignificant person at jerusalem. he was not only recognized as a prophet of jehovah, but he had been the friend and counsellor of king josiah, and was the leading statesman of the day in the ranks of the opposition. but distinguished as he was, his voice was disregarded, and he was probably looked upon as an old croaker, whose gloomy views had no reason to sustain them. was not jerusalem strong in her defences, and impregnable in the eyes of the people; and was she not regarded as under the special protection of the deity? suppose some austere priest--say such a man as the abbé lacordaire--had risen from the pulpit of notre dame or the madeleine, a year before the battle of sedan, and announced to the fashionable congregation assembled to hear his eloquence, and among them the ministers of louis napoleon, that in a short time paris would be surrounded by conquering armies, and would endure all the horrors of a siege, and that the famine would be so great that the city would surrender and be at the entire mercy of the conquerors,--would he have been believed? would not the people have regarded him as a madman, great as was his eloquence, or as the most gloomy of pessimists, for whom they would have felt contempt or bitter wrath? and had he added to his predictions of ruin, utterly inconceivable by the giddy, pleasure-seeking, atheistic people, the most scathing denunciations of the prevailing sins of that godless city, all the more powerful because they were true, addressed to all classes alike, positive, direct, bold, without favor and without fear,--would they not have been stirred to violence, and subjected him to any chastisement in their power? if socrates, by provoking questions and fearless irony, drove the athenians to such wrath that they took his life, even when everybody knew that he was the greatest and best man at athens, how much more savage and malignant must have been the narrow-minded jews when jeremiah laid bare to them their sins and the impotency of their gods, and the certainty of retribution! yet vehement, or direct, or plain as were jeremiah's denunciations to the idol-worshippers of jerusalem in the seventh century before it was finally destroyed by titus, he was no more severe than when jesus denounced the hypocrisy of the scribes and pharisees, no more mournful than when he lamented over the approaching ruin of the temple. therefore they sought to kill him, as the princes and priests of judah would have sacrificed the greatest prophet that had appeared since elisha, the greatest statesman since samuel, the greatest poet since david, if isaiah alone be excepted. no wonder he was driven to a state of despondency and grief that reminds us of job upon his ash-heap. "cursed be the day," he exclaims, in his lonely chamber, "on which i was born! cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, a man-child is born to thee, making him very glad! why did i come forth from the womb that my days might be spent in shame?" a great and good man may be urged by the sense of duty to declare truths which he knows will lead to martyrdom; but no martyr was ever insensible to suffering or shame. all the glories of his future crown cannot sweeten the bitterness of the cup he is compelled to drain; even the greatest of martyrs prayed in his agony that the cup might pass from him. how could a man help being sad and even bitter, if ever so exalted in soul, when he saw that his warnings were utterly disregarded, and that no mortal influence or power could avert the doom he was compelled to pronounce as an ambassador of god? and when in addition to his grief as a patriot he was unjustly made to suffer reproach, scourgings, imprisonment, and probable death, how can we wonder that his patience was exhausted? he felt as if a burning fire consumed his very bones, and he could refrain no longer. he cried aloud in the intensity of his grief and pain, and jehovah, in whom he trusted, appeared to him as a mighty champion and an everlasting support. jeremiah at this time, during the early years of the reign of jehoiakim, the period of the most active part of his ministry, was about forty-five years of age. great events were then taking place. nineveh was besieged by one of its former generals,--nabopolassar, now king of babylon. the siege lasted two years, and the city fell in the year b.c., when jehoiakim had been about four years on the throne. the fall of this great capital enabled the son of the king of babylonia, nebuchadnezzar, to advance against necho, the king of egypt, who had taken carchemish about three years before. near that ancient capital of the hittites, on the banks of the euphrates, one of the most important battles of antiquity was fought,--and necho, whose armies a few years before had so successfully invaded the assyrian empire, was forced to retreat to egypt. the battle of carchemish put an end to egyptian conquests in the east, and enabled the young sovereign of babylonia to attain a power and elevation such as no oriental monarch had ever before enjoyed. babylon became the centre of a new empire, which embraced the countries that had bowed down to the assyrian yoke. nebuchadnezzar in the pride of victory now meditated the conquest of egypt, and must needs pass through palestine. but jehoiakim was a vassal of egypt, and had probably furnished troops for necho at the fatal battle of carchemish. of course the babylonian monarch would invade judah on his way to egypt, and punish its king, whom he could only look upon as an enemy. it was then that jeremiah, sad and desponding over the fate of jerusalem, which he knew was doomed, committed his precious utterances to writing by the assistance of his friend and companion baruch. he had lately been living in retirement, feeling that his message was delivered; possibly he feared that the king would put him to death as he had the prophet urijah. but he wished to make one more attempt to call the people to repentance, as the only way to escape impending calamities; and he prevailed upon his secretary to read the scroll, containing all his verbal utterances, to the assembled people in the temple, who, in view of their political dangers, were celebrating a solemn fast. the priests and people alike, clad in black hair-cloth mantles, with ashes on their heads, lay prostrate on the ground, and by numerous sacrifices hoped to propitiate the deity. but not by sacrifices and fasts were they to be saved from nebuchadnezzar's army, as jeremiah had foretold years before. the recital by baruch of the calamities he had predicted made a profound impression on the crowd. a young man, awed by what he had heard, hastened to the hall in which the princes were assembled, and told them what had been read from the prophet's scroll. they in their turn were alarmed, and commanded baruch to read the contents to them also. so intense was the excitement that the matter was laid before the king, who ordered the roll to be read to him: he would hear the words that jeremiah had caused to be written down. but scarcely had the reading of the roll begun before he flew into a violent rage, and seizing the manuscript he cut it to pieces with the scribe's knife, and burned it upon a brazier of coals. orders were instantly given to arrest both jeremiah and baruch; but they had been warned and fled, and the place of their concealment could not be found. jehoiakim thus rejected the last offer of mercy with scorn and anger, although many of his officers were filled with fear. his heart was hardened, like that of pharaoh before moses. jeremiah having learned the fate of the roll, dictated its contents anew to his faithful secretary, and a second roll was preserved, not, however, without contriving to send to the king this awful message. "thus saith jehovah of thee jehoiakim: he shall have no son to sit on the throne of david, and his dead body will be cast out to lie in the heat by day and the frost by night; and no one shall raise a lament for him when he dies. he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn out of jerusalem, and cast down from its gates." no wonder that we lose sight of jeremiah during the remainder of the reign of jehoiakim; it was not safe for him to appear anywhere in public. for a time his voice was not heard; yet his predictions had such weight that the king dared not defy nebuchadnezzar when he demanded the submission of jerusalem. he was forced to become the vassal of the king of babylonia, and furnish a contingent to his army. but this vassalage bore heavily on the arrogant soul of jehoiakim, and he seized the first occasion to rebel, especially as necho promised him protection. this rebellion was suicidal and fatal, since babylon was the stronger power. nebuchadnezzar, after the three years of forced submission, appeared before the gates of jerusalem with an irresistible army. there was no resistance, as resistance was folly. jehoiakim was put in chains, and avoided being carried captive to babylon only by the most abject submission to the conqueror. all that was valuable in the temple and the palaces was seized as spoil. jerusalem was spared for a while; and in the mean time jehoiakim died, and so intensely was he hated and despised that no dirge was sung over his remains, while his dishonored body was thrown outside the walls of his capital like that of a dead ass, as jeremiah had foretold. on his death, b.c. , after a reign of eight years, his son jehoiachin, at the age of eighteen, ascended his nominal throne. he also, like his father, followed the lead of the heathen party. the bitterness of the babylonian rule, united with the intrigues of egypt, led to a fresh revolt, and jerusalem was invested by a powerful chaldean army. jeremiah now appears again upon the stage, but only to reaffirm the calamities which impended over his nation,--all of which he traced to the decay of religion and morality. the mission and the work of the jews were to keep alive the worship of the one god amid universal idolatry. outside of this, they were nothing as a nation. they numbered only four or five millions of people, and lived in a country not much larger than one of the northern counties of england and smaller than the state of new hampshire or vermont; they gave no impulse to art or science. yet as the guardians of the central theme of the only true religion and of the sacred literature of the bible, their history is an important link in the world's history. take away the only thing which made them an object of divine favor, and they were of no more account than hittites, or moabites, or philistines. the chosen people had become idolatrous like the surrounding nations, hopelessly degenerate and wicked, and they were to receive a dreadful chastisement as the only way by which they would return to the one god, and thus act their appointed part in the great drama of humanity. jeremiah predicted this chastisement. the chosen people were to suffer a seventy years' captivity, and then city and temple were to be destroyed. but jeremiah, sad as he was over the fate of his nation, and terribly severe as he was in his denunciations of the national sins, knew that his people would repent by the river of babylon, and be finally restored to their old inheritance. yet nothing could avert their punishment. in less than three months after jehoiachin became king of judah, its capital was unconditionally surrendered to the chaldean hosts, since resistance was vain. no pity was shown to the rebels, though the king and nobles had appeared before nebuchadnezzar with every mark and emblem of humiliation and submission. the king and his court and his wives, and all the principal people of the nation, were sent to babylon as captives and slaves. the prompt capitulation saved the city for a time from complete destruction; but its glory was turned to shame and grief. all that was of any value in the temple and city was carried to the banks of the euphrates, nearly one hundred and fifty years after samaria had fallen from a protracted siege, and its inhabitants finally dispersed among the nations that were subject to nineveh. one would suppose that after so great a calamity the few remaining people in jerusalem and in the desolate villages of judah would have given no further molestation to their powerful and triumphant enemies. the land was exhausted; the towns were stripped of their fighting population, and only the shadow of a kingdom remained. instead of appointing a governor from his own court over the conquered province, nebuchadnezzar gave the government into the hands of mattaniah, the third son of josiah, a youth of twenty, changing his name to zedekiah. he was for a time faithful to his allegiance, and took much pains to quiet the mind of the powerful sovereign who ruled the eastern world, and even made a journey to babylon to pay his homage. he was a weak prince, however, alternately swayed by the different parties,--those that counselled resistance to babylon, and those, like jeremiah, that advised submission. this long-headed statesman saw clearly that rebellion against nebuchadnezzar, flushed with victory, and with the whole eastern world at his feet, was absurd; but that the time would come when babylon in turn should be humbled, and then the captive hebrews would probably return to their own land, made wiser by their captivity of seventy years. the other party, leagued with moabites, tyrians, egyptians, and other nations, thought themselves strong enough to break their allegiance to nebuchadnezzar; and bitter were the contentions of these parties. jeremiah had great influence with the king, who was weak rather than wicked, and had his counsels been consistently followed, jerusalem would probably have been spared, and the temple would, have remained. he preferred vassalage to utter ruin. with babylon pressing on one side and egypt on the other,--both great monarchies,--vassalage to one or the other of these powers was inevitable. indeed, vassalage had been the unhappy condition of judah since the death of josiah. of the two powers jeremiah preferred the chaldean rule, and persistently advised submission to it, as the only way to save jerusalem from utter destruction. unfortunately zedekiah temporized; he courted all parties in turn, and listened to the schemes of rebellion,--for all the nations of palestine were either conquered or invaded by the chaldeans, and wished to shake off the yoke. nebuchadnezzar lost faith in zedekiah; and being irritated by his intrigues, he resolved to attack jerusalem while he was conducting the siege of tyre and fighting with egypt, a rival power. jerusalem was in his way. it was a small city, but it gave him annoyance, and he resolved to crush it. it was to him what tyre became to alexander in his conquests. it lay between him and egypt, and might be dangerous by its alliances. it was a strong citadel which he had unwisely spared, but determined to spare no longer. the suspicions of the king of babylonia were probably increased by the disaffection of the jewish exiles themselves, who believed in the overthrow of nebuchadnezzar and their own speedy return to their native hills. a joint embassy was sent from edom, from moab, the ammonites, and the kings of tyre and sidon, to jerusalem, with the hope that zedekiah would unite with them in shaking off the babylonian yoke; and these intrigues were encouraged by egypt. jeremiah, who foresaw the consequences of all this, earnestly protested. and to make his protest more forcible, he procured a number of common ox-yokes, and having put one on his own neck while the embassy was in the city, he sent one to each of the envoys, with the following message to their masters: "thus saith jehovah, the god of israel. i have made the earth and man and the beasts on the face of the earth by my great power, and i give it to whom i see fit. and now i have given all these lands into the hands of nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, to serve him. and all nations shall serve him, till the time of his own land comes; and then many nations and great kings shall make him their servant. and the nation and people that will not serve him, and that does not give its own neck to the yoke, that nation i will punish with sword, famine, and pestilence, till i have consumed them by his hand." a similar message he sent to zedekiah and the princes who seemed to have influenced him. "bring your necks under the yoke of the king of babylon, and serve him, and ye shall live. do not listen to the words of the prophets who say to you, ye shall not serve the king of babylon. they prophesy a lie to you." the same message in substance he sent to the priests and people, urging them not to listen to the voice of the false prophets, who based their opinions on the anticipated interference of god to save jerusalem from destruction; for that destruction would surely come if its people did not serve the king of babylonia until the appointed time should come, when babylon itself should fall into the hands of enemies more powerful than itself, even the medes and persians. jeremiah, thus brought into direct opposition to the false prophets, was exposed to their bitterest wrath. but he was undaunted, although alone, and thus boldly addressed hananiah, one of their leaders and himself a priest: "hear the words that i speak in your ears. not i alone, but all the prophets who have been before me, have prophesied long ago war, captivity, and pestilence, while you prophesy peace." on this, hananiah snatched the ox-yoke from the neck of jeremiah, and broke it, saying, "thus saith jehovah, even so will i break the yoke of nebuchadnezzar from the neck of all nations within two years." jeremiah in reply said to this false prophet that he had broken a wooden yoke only to prepare an iron one for the people; for thus saith jehovah: "i have put a yoke of iron on the neck of all these nations, that they shall serve the king of babylon.... and further, hear this, o hananiah! jehovah has not sent thee, but thou makest this people trust in a lie; therefore thou shalt die this very year, because thou hast spoken rebellion against jehovah." in two months the lying prophet was dead. zedekiah, now awe-struck by the death of his counsellor, made up his mind to resist the egyptian party and remain true to nebuchadnezzar, and resolved to send an embassy to babylon to vindicate himself from any suspicion of disloyalty; and further, he sought to win the favor of jeremiah by a special gift to the temple of a set of silver vessels to replace the golden ones that had been carried to babylon. jeremiah entered into his views, and sent with the embassy a letter to the exiles to warn them of the hopelessness of their cause. it was not well received, and created great excitement and indignation, since it seemed to exhort them to settle down contentedly in their slavery. the words of jeremiah were, however, indorsed by the prophet ezekiel, and he addressed the exiles from the place where he lived in chaldaea, confirming the destruction which jeremiah prophesied to unwilling ears. "behold the day! see, it comes! the fierceness of chaldaea has shot up into a rod to punish the wickedness of the people of judah. nothing shall remain of them. the time is come! forge the chains to lead off the people captive. destruction comes; calamity will follow calamity!" meanwhile, in spite of all these warnings from both jeremiah and ezekiel, things were passing at jerusalem from bad to worse, until nebuchadnezzar resolved on taking final vengeance on a rebellious city and people that refused to look on things as they were. never was there a more infatuated people. one would suppose that a city already decimated, and its principal people already in bondage in babylon, would not dare to resist the mightiest monarch who ever reigned in the east before the time of cyrus. but "whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad." every preparation was made to defend the city. the general of nebuchadnezzar with a great force surrounded it, and erected towers against the walls. but so strong were the fortifications that the inhabitants were able to stand a siege of eighteen months. at the end of this time they were driven to desperation, and fought with the energy of despair. they could resist battering rams, but they could not resist famine and pestilence. after dreadful sufferings, the besieged found the soldiers of chaldaea within their temple, a breach in the walls having been made, and the stubborn city was taken by assault. the few who were spared were carried away captive to babylon with what spoil could be found, and the temple and the walls were levelled to the ground. the predictions of the prophets were fulfilled,--the holy city was a heap of desolation. zedekiah, with his wives and children, had escaped through a passage made in the wall, at a corner of the city which the chaldeans had not been able to invest, and made his way toward jericho, but was overtaken and carried in chains to riblah, where nebuchadnezzar was encamped. as he had broken a solemn oath to remain faithful, a severe judgment was pronounced upon him. his courtiers and his sons were executed in his sight, his own eyes were put out, and then he was taken to babylon, where he was made to work like a slave in a mill. thus ended the dynasty of david, in the year b.c., about the time that draco gave laws to athens, and tarquinius priscus was king of rome. as for jeremiah, during the siege of the city he fell into the power of the nobles, who beat him and imprisoned him in a dungeon. the king was not able to release him, so low had the royal power sunk in that disastrous age; but he secretly befriended him, and asked his counsel. the princes insisted on his removal to a place where no succor could reach him, and he was cast into a deep well from which the water was dried up, having at the bottom only slime and mud. from this pit of misery he was rescued by one of the royal guards, and once again he had a secret interview with zedekiah, and remained secluded in the palace until the city fell. he was spared by the conqueror in view of his fidelity and his earnest efforts to prevent the rebellion, and perhaps also for his lofty character, the last of the great statesmen of judah and the most distinguished man of the city. nebuchadnezzar gave him the choice, to accompany him to babylon with the promise of high favor at his court, or remain at home among the few that were not deemed of sufficient importance to carry away. jeremiah preferred to remain amid the ruins of his country; for although jerusalem was destroyed, the mountains and valleys remained, and the humble classes--the peasants--were left to cultivate the neglected vineyards and cornfields. from mizpeh, the city which he had selected as his last resting-place, jeremiah was carried into egypt, and his subsequent history is unknown. according to tradition he was stoned to death by his fellow-exiles in egypt. he died as he had lived, a martyr for the truth, but left behind a great name and fame. none of the prophets was more venerated in after-ages. and no one more than he resembled, in his sufferings and life, that greater prophet and sage who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, that the world through him might be saved. judas maccabaeus. died, b.c. restoration of the jewish commonwealth. after the heroic ages of joshua, gideon, and david, no warriors appeared in jewish history equal to judas maccabaeus and his brothers in bravery, in patriotism, and in noble deeds. they delivered the hebrew nation when it had sunk to abject submission under the kings of syria, and when its glory and strength alike had departed. the conquests of judas especially were marvellous, considering the weakness of the jewish nation and the strength of its enemies. no hero that chivalry has produced surpassed him in courage and ability; his exploits would be fabulous and incredible if not so well attested. he is not a familiar character, since the apocrypha, from which our chief knowledge of his deeds is derived, is now rarely read. jewish history resembles that of europe in the middle ages in the sentiments which are born of danger, oppression, and trial. as a point of mere historical interest, the dark ages that preceded the coming of the messiah furnish reproachless models of chivalry, courage, and magnanimity, and also the foundation of many of those institutions that cannot be traced to the laws of moses. but before i present the wonderful career of judas maccabaeus, we must look to the circumstances which made that career remarkable and eventful. on the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity there was among them only the nucleus of a nation: more remained in persia and assyria than returned to judaea. we see an infant colony rather than a developed state; it was so feeble as scarcely to attract the notice of the surrounding monarchies. in all probability the population of judaea did not number a quarter as many as those whom moses led out of egypt; it did not furnish a tenth part as many fighting men as were enrolled in the armies of saul; it existed only under the protection afforded by the persian monarchs. the temple as rebuilt by nehemiah bore but a feeble resemblance to that which nebuchadnezzar destroyed; it had neither costly vessels nor golden ornaments nor precious woods to remind the scattered and impoverished people of the glory of solomon. although the walls of jerusalem were partially restored, its streets were filled with the débris and ruins of ancient palaces. the city was indeed fortified, but the strong walls and lofty towers which made it almost impregnable were not again restored as in the times of the old monarchy. it took no great force to capture the city and demolish the fortifications. the vast and unnumbered treasures which david, solomon, and hezekiah had accumulated in the temple and the palaces formed no inconsiderable part of the gold and silver that finally enriched babylonian and persian kings. the wealth of one of the richest countries of antiquity had been dispersed and re-collected at babylon, susa, ecbatana, and other cities, to be again seized by alexander in his conquest of the east, then again to be hoarded or spent by the syrian and egyptian kings who descended from alexander's generals, and finally to be deposited in the treasuries of the romans and the byzantine greeks. whatever ruin warriors may make, whatever temples and palaces they may destroy, they always spare and seize the precious metals, and keep them until they spend them, or are robbed of them in their turn. not only was the holy city a desolation on the return of the jews, but the rich vineyards and olive-grounds and wheat-fields had run to waste, and there were but few to till and improve them. the few who returned felt their helpless condition, and were quiet and peaceable. moreover, they had learned during their seventy years' exile to have an intense hatred of everything like idolatry,--a hatred amounting to fanatical fierceness, such as the puritan colonists of new england had toward catholicism. in their dreary and humiliating captivity they at length perceived that idolatry was the great cause of all their calamities; that no national prosperity was possible for them, as the chosen people, except by sincere allegiance to jehovah. at no period of their history were they more truly religious and loyal to their invisible king than for two hundred years after their return to the land of their ancestors. the terrible lesson of exile and sorrow was not lost on them. it is true that they were only a "remnant" of the nation, as isaiah had predicted, but they believed that they were selected and saved for a great end. this end they seemed to appreciate now more than ever, and the idea that a great deliverer was to arise among them, whose reign was to be permanent and glorious, was henceforth devoutly cherished. a severe morality was practised among these returned exiles, as marked as their faith in god. they were especially tenacious of the laws and ceremonies that moses had commanded. they kept the sabbath with a strictness unknown to their ancestors. they preserved the traditions of their fathers, and conformed to them with scrupulous exactness; they even went beyond the requirements of moses in outward ceremonials. thus there gradually arose among them a sect ultimately known as the pharisees, whose leading peculiarity was a slavish and fanatical observance of all the technicalities of the law, both mosaic and traditional; a sect exceedingly narrow, but popular and powerful. they multiplied fasts and ritualistic observances as the superstitious monks of the middle ages did after them; they extended the payment of tithes (tenths) to the most minute and unimportant things, like the herbs which grew in their gardens; they began the sabbath on friday evening, and kept it so rigorously that no one was permitted to walk beyond one thousand steps from his own door. a natural reaction to this severity in keeping minute ordinances, alike narrow, fanatical, and unreasonable, produced another sect called the sadducees,--a revolutionary party with a more progressive spirit, which embraced the more cultivated and liberal part of the nation; a minority indeed,--a small party as far as numbers went,--but influential from the men of wealth, talent, and learning that belonged to it, containing as it did the nobility and gentry. the members of this party refused to acknowledge any oral law transmitted from moses, and held themselves bound only by the written law; they were indifferent to dogmas that had not reason or scriptures to support them. the writings of moses have scarcely any recognition of a future life, and hence the sadducees disbelieved in the resurrection of the dead,--for which reason the pharisees accused them of looseness in religious opinions. they were more courteous and interesting than the great body of the people who favored the pharisees, but were more luxurious in their habits of life. they had more social but less religious pride than their rivals, among whom pride took the form of a gloomy austerity and a self-satisfied righteousness. another thing pertaining to divine worship which marked the jews on their return from captivity was the establishment of synagogues, in which the law was expounded by the scribes, whose business it was to study tradition, as embodied in the talmud. the pharisees were the great patrons and teachers of these meetings, which became exceedingly numerous, especially in the cities. there were at one time four hundred synagogues in jerusalem alone. to these the great body of the people resorted on the sabbath, rather than to the temple. the synagogue, popular, convenient, and social, almost supplanted the temple, except on grand occasions and festivals. the temple was for great ceremonies and celebrations, like a mediaeval cathedral,--an object of pride and awe, adorned and glorious; the synagogue was a sort of church, humble and modest, for the use of the people in ordinary worship,--a place of religious instruction, where decent strangers were allowed to address the meetings, and where social congratulations and inquiries were exchanged. hence, the synagogue represented the democratic element in judaism, while it did not ignore the temple. nearly contemporaneous with the synagogue was the sanhedrim, or grand council, composed of seventy-one members, made up of elders, scribes, and priests,--men learned in the law, both pharisees and sadducees. it was the business of this aristocratic court to settle disputed texts of scripture; also questions relating to marriage, inheritance, and contracts. it met in one of the buildings connected with the temple. it was presided over by the high-priest, and was a dignified and powerful body, its decisions being binding on the jews outside palestine. it was not unlike a great council in the early christian church for the settlement of theological questions, except that it was not temporary but permanent; and it was more ecclesiastical than civil. jesus was summoned before it for assuming to be the messiah; peter and john, for teaching false doctrine; and paul, for transgressing the rules of the temple. thus in one hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the jews returned to their own country, we see the rise of institutions adapted to their circumstances as a religious people, small in numbers, poor but free,--for they were protected by the persian monarchs against their powerful neighbors. the largest part of the nation was still scattered in every city of the world, especially at alexandria, where there was a very large jewish colony, plying their various occupations unmolested by the civil power. in this period ewald thinks there was a great stride made in sacred literature, especially in recasting ancient books that we accept as canonical. some of the most beautiful of the psalms were supposed to have been written at this time; also apocalypses, books of combined history and revelatory prophecy,--like daniel, and simple histories like esther,--written by gifted, lofty, and spiritual men whose names have perished, embodying vivid conceptions of the agency of jehovah in the affairs of men, so popular, so interesting, and so religious that they soon took their place among the canonical books. the most noted point in the history of the jews in the dark ages of their history, for two hundred years after their return from babylon and persia, was the external peace and tranquillity of the country, favorable to a quiet and uneventful growth, like that of puritan new england for one hundred and fifty years after the settlement at plymouth,--making no history outside of their own peaceful and prosperous life. they had no intercourse with surrounding nations, but were contented to resettle ancient villages, and devote themselves to agricultural pursuits. they were thus trained by labor and poverty--possibly by dangers--to manly energies and heroic courage. they formed a material from which armies could be extemporized on any sudden emergencies. there was no standing army as in the times of david and solomon, but the whole people were trained to the use of military weapons. thus the hardy and pious agriculturists of palestine grew imperceptibly in numbers and wealth, so as to become once more a nation. in all probability this unhistorical period, of which we know almost nothing, was the most fruitful period in jewish history for the development of great virtues. if they had no heathen literature, they could still discuss theological dogmas; if they had no amusements, they could meet together in their synagogues; if they had no king, they accepted the government of the high-priest; if they had no powerful nobles, they had the aristocratic sanhedrim, which represented their leading men; if they were disposed to contention, as so many persons are, they could dispute about the unimportant shibboleths which their religious parties set up as matters of difference,--and the more minute, technical, and insoluble these questions were, the fiercer probably grew their contests. such was the hebrew commonwealth in the dark ages of its history, under the protection of the persian kings. it formed a part of the province of syria, but the internal government was administered by the high-priests. after the return from exile joshua, joachim, and eliashib successively filled the pontifical office. the government thus was not unlike that of the popes, abating their claims to universal spiritual dominion, although the office of high-priest was hereditary. jehoiada, son of eliashib, reigned from to , and he was succeeded by his son johanan, under whose administration important changes took place during the reign of artaxerxes iii., called ochus, the last but two of the persian monarchs before the conquest of persia by alexander. the persians had in the mean time greatly degenerated in their religious faith and observances. magian rites became mingled with the purer religion of zoroaster, and even the worship of venus was not uncommon. under cyrus and darius there was nothing peculiarly offensive to the jews in the theism of ormuzd, which was the old religion of the persians; but when images of ancient divinities were set up by royal authority in persepolis, susa, babylon, and damascus, the allegiance of the jews was weakened, and repugnance took the place of sympathy. moreover, a creature of artaxerxes iii., by the name of bagoses, became satrap of syria, and presumed to appoint as the high-priest at jerusalem joshua, another son of jehoiada, and severely taxed the jews, and even forced his way into the holy of holies, the innermost sanctuary of the temple,--a sacrilege hard to be endured. this bagoses poisoned his master, and in the year b.c. elevated to the throne of persia his son arses, who had a brief reign, being dethroned and murdered by his father. in darius iii. became king, under whom the persian monarchy collapsed before the victories of alexander. judaea now came under the dominion of this great conqueror, who favored the jews, and on his death, b.c., it fell to the possession of laomedon, one of his generals; while egypt was assigned to ptolemy soter, son of lagus. between these princes a war soon broke out, and laomedon was defeated by nicanor, one of ptolemy's generals; and palestine refusing to submit to the king of egypt, ptolemy invaded judaea, besieged jerusalem, and took it by assault on the sabbath, when the jews refused to fight. a large number of jews were sent to alexandria, and the jewish colony ultimately formed no small part of the population of the new capital. some eighty thousand jews, it is said, were settled in alexandria when palestine was governed by greek generals and princes. but judaea was wrested from ptolemy lagus by antigonus, and again recovered by ptolemy after the battle of ipsus, in b.c. under ptolemy egypt became a powerful kingdom, and still more so under his son philadelphus, who made alexandria the second capital of the world,--commercially, indeed, the first. it became also a great intellectual centre, and its famous library was the largest ever collected in classical antiquity. this city was the home of scholars and philosophers from all parts of the world. under the auspices of an enlightened monarch, the hebrew scriptures were translated into greek, the version being called the septuagint,--an immense service to sacred literature. the jews enjoyed great prosperity under this grecian prince, and palestine was at peace with powerful neighbors, protected by the great king who favored the jews as the persian monarchs had done. under his successor, ptolemy euergetes, a still more powerful king, the empire reached its culminating glory, and was extended as far as antioch and babylon. under the next ptolemy,--philopater,--degeneracy set in; but the empire was not diminished, and the syrian monarch antiochus iii., called the great, was defeated at the battle of raphia, . under the successor of the enervated egyptian king, ptolemy v., a child five years old, antiochus the great retrieved the disaster at raphia, and in won a victory over scopas the egyptian general, in consequence of which judaea, with phoenicia and coele-syria, passed from the ptolemies to the seleucidae. judaea now became the battle-ground for the contending syrian and egyptian armies, and after two hundred years of peace and prosperity her calamities began afresh. she was cruelly deceived and oppressed by the syrian kings and their generals, for the "kings of the north" were more hostile to the jews than the "kings of the south." in consequence of the incessant wars between syria and egypt, many jews emigrated, and became merchants, bankers, and artisans in all the great cities of the world, especially in syria, asia minor, greece, italy, and egypt, where all departments of industry were freely opened to them. in the time of philo, there were more than a million of jews in these various countries; but they remained jews, and tenaciously kept the laws and traditions of their nation. in every large city were jewish synagogues. it was under the reign of antiochus iv., called epiphanes, when judaea was tributary to syria, that those calamities and miseries befell the jews which rendered it necessary for a deliverer to arise. though enlightened and a lover of art, this monarch was one of the most cruel, rapacious, and tyrannical princes that have achieved an infamous immortality. he began his reign with usurpation and treachery. being unsuccessful in his egyptian campaigns, he vented his wrath upon the jews, as if he were mad. onias iii. was the high-priest at the time. antiochus dispossessed him of his great office and gave it to his brother jason, a hellenized jew, who erected in jerusalem a gymnasium after the greek style. but the king, a zealot in paganism, bitterly and scornfully detested the jewish religion, and resolved to root it out. his general, apollonius, had orders to massacre the people in the observance of their rites, to abolish the temple service and the sabbath, to destroy the sacred books, and introduce idol worship. the altar on mount moriah was especially desecrated, and afterward dedicated to jupiter. a herd of swine were driven into the temple, and there sacrificed. this outrage was to the jews "the abomination of desolation," which could never be forgotten or forgiven. the nation rallied and defied the power of a king who could thus wantonly trample on what was most sacred and venerable. two hundred years earlier, resistance would have been hopeless; but in the mean time the population had quietly increased, and in the practice of those virtues and labors which agricultural life called out, the people had been strengthened and prepared to rally and defend their lives and liberties. they were still unwarlike, without organization or military habits; but they were brave, hardy, and patriotic. compared, however, with the forces which could be arrayed against them by the syrian monarch, who was supreme in western asia, they were numerically insignificant; and they were also despised and undervalued. they seemed to be as sheep among wolves,--easy to be intimidated and even exterminated. the outrage in the temple was the consummation of a series of humiliations and crimes; for in addition to the desecration of the jewish religion, antiochus had taken jerusalem with a great army, had entered into the temple, where the national treasures were deposited (for it was the custom even among greeks and romans to deposit the public money in the temples), and had taken away to his capital the golden candlesticks, the altar of incense, the table of shew bread, and the various vessels and censers and crowns which were used in the service of god,--treasures that amounted to one thousand eight hundred talents, spared by alexander. so that there came great mourning upon israel throughout the land, both for the desecration of sacred places, the plunder of the temple, and the massacre of the people. jerusalem was sacked and burned, women and children were carried away as captives, and a great fortress was erected on an eminence that overlooked the temple and city, in which was placed a strong garrison. the plundered inhabitants fled from jerusalem, which became the habitation of strangers, with all its glory gone. "her sanctuary was laid waste, her feasts were turned into mourning, her sabbath into a reproach, and her honor into contempt." many even of the jews became apostate, profaned the sabbath, and sacrificed to idols, rather than lose their lives; for the persecution was the most unrelenting in the annals of martyrdom, even to the destruction of women and children. the insulted and decimated jews now rallied under mattathias, the founder of the asmonean dynasty. the immediate occasion of the jewish uprising, which was ultimately to end in national independence and in the rule of a line of native princes, was as unpremeditated as the throwing out of the window at the council chamber at prague those deputies who supported the emperor of germany in his persecution of the protestants, which led to the thirty years' war and the establishment of religious liberty in germany. at this crisis among the jews, a hero arose in their midst as marvellous as gustavus adolphus. in modin, or modein, a town near the sea, but the site of which is now unknown, there lived an old man of a priestly family named asmon, who was rich and influential. his name was mattathias, and he had five grown-up sons, each distinguished for bravery, piety, and patriotism. he was so prominent in his little city for fidelity to the faith of his fathers, as well as for social position, that when an officer of antiochus came to modin to enforce the decrees of his royal master, he made splendid offers to mattathias to induce him to favor the crusade against his countrymen. mattathias not only contemptuously rejected these overtures, but he openly proclaimed his resolution to adhere to his religion,--a man who could not be bribed, and who could not be intimidated. "be it far from us," he said, "to forsake law and ordinances. we will not hearken to the king's words, to turn aside to the right hand or to the left." when he had thus given noble attestation of his resolution to adhere to the faith of his fathers, there came forward an apostate jew to sacrifice on the heathen altar, which it seems was erected by royal command in all the cities and towns of judaea. this so inflamed the indignation of the brave old man that he ran and slew the jew upon the altar, together with the king's commissioner, and pulled down the altar. for this, mattathias was obliged to flee, and he escaped to the mountains, taking with him his five sons and all who would join his standard of revolt, crying with a loud voice, "let every one zealous for the law follow me!" a considerable multitude fled with him to the wilderness of judaea, on the west of the dead sea, taking with them their wives and children and cattle. but this flight from persecution speedily became known to the troops that were quartered on mount zion, a strong fortress which controlled the temple and city, and a detachment was sent in pursuit. the fugitives, zealous for the law, refused to defend themselves on the sabbath day, and the result was that they all perished, with their wives and children. their fate made such a powerful impression on mattathias, that it was resolved henceforth to fight on the sabbath day, if attacked. the patriots had to choose between two alternatives,--to be utterly rooted out, or to defend themselves on the sabbath, and thus violate the letter of the law. mattathias was sufficiently enlightened to perceive that fighting on the sabbath, if attacked, was a supreme necessity, remembering doubtless that moses recognized the right of necessary work even on the sacred day of rest. the law of self-defence is an ultimate one, and appeals to the consciousness of universal humanity. strange as it may seem, the sabbath has ever been a favorite day with generals to fight grand battles in every christian country. mattathias, although a very old man, now put forth superhuman energies, raised an army, drove the persecuting soldiers out of the country, pulled down the heathen altars, and restored the law; and when the time came for him to die, at the age of one hundred and forty-five years,--if we may credit the history, for josephus and the apocrypha are here our chief authorities,--he collected around him his five sons, all wise and valiant men, and enjoined them to be united among themselves, and to be faithful to the law,--calling to their minds the noted examples from the hebrew scriptures, abraham, joseph, joshua, david, elijah, who were obedient to the commandments of god. he did not speak of patriotism, although an intense lover of his country. he exhorted his sons to be simply obedient to the law,--not, probably, in the restricted and literal sense of the word, but in the idea of being faithful to god, even as abraham was obedient before the law was given. the glory which he assured them they would thus win was not the _éclat_ of victory, or even of national deliverance, but the imperishable renown which comes from righteousness. he promised a glorious immortality to those who fell in battle in defence of the truth and of their liberties, reminding us of the promises which mohammed made to his followers. but the great incentive to bravery which he urged was the ultimate reward of virtue, which runs through the scriptures, even the favor of god. the heroes of chivalry fought for the favor of ladies, the praises of knights, and the friendship of princes; the reward of modern generals is exaltation in popular estimation, the increase of political power, the accumulation of wealth, and sometimes the consciousness of rendering important services to their country,--an exalted patriotism, such as marked washington and cromwell. but the reward which the jewish hero promised was loftier,--even that of the divine favor. the aged mattathias, having thus given his last counsels to his sons, recommended the second one, simon, or simeon, as the future head of the family, to whose wisdom the other brothers were to defer,--a man whose counsel would be invaluable. the third brother, judas, a mighty warrior from his youth, was appointed as the leader of the forces to fight the battles of the people,--the peculiar vocations of saul and of david, for which they were selected to be kings. on the death of mattathias, mourned by all israel as samuel was mourned, at the age of one hundred and forty-five, and buried in the sepulchre of his fathers at modin, judas, called "the maccabaeus" ("the hammer," as some suppose), rose up in his stead; and all his brothers helped him, and all his father's friends, and he fought with cheerfulness the battles of israel. he put on armor as a hero, and was like a lion in his acts, and like a lion's whelp roaring for prey. he pursued and punished the jewish transgressors of the law, so that they lost courage, and all the workers of inquity were thrown into disorder, and the work of deliverance prospered in his hands. like josiah he went through the cities of judah, destroying the heathen and the ungodly. the fame of his exploits rapidly spread through the land, and apollonius, military governor of samaria, collected an army and marched against a man who with his small forces set at defiance the sovereignty of a mighty monarchy. judas attacked apollonius, slew him, and dispersed his army. ever afterward he was girded with the sword of the syrian,--a weapon probably adorned with jewels, and tempered like the famous damascus blades. seron, a general of higher rank, the commander-in-chief of the syrian forces in palestine, irritated at the defeat and death of apollonius, the following year marched with a still larger army against judas. the latter had with him only a small company, who were despondent in view of the great array of their heathen enemies, and moreover faint from having not eaten anything that day. but the heroic leader encouraged his men, and, undaunted in the midst of overwhelming danger, resolved to fight, trusting for aid from the god of battles; for "victory," said he, "is not through the multitude of an army, but from heaven cometh the strength." this resolution to fight against overwhelming odds would be audacity in modern warfare, which is perfected machinery, making one man with reliable weapons as good as another, and success to be chiefly determined by numbers skilfully posted and manoeuvred according to strategic science; but in ancient times personal bravery, directed by military genius and aided by fortunate circumstances, frequently prevailed over the force of multitudes, especially if the latter were undisciplined or intimidated by superstitious omens,--as evinced by alexander's victories, and those of charles martel and the black prince in the middle ages. the desperate valor of judas and his small band was crowned with complete success. seron was defeated with great loss, his army fled, and the fame of judas spread far and wide. his name became a terror to the nations. king antiochus now saw that the subjection of this valiant jew was no easy matter; and filled with wrath and vengeance he gathered together all the forces of his kingdom, opened his treasury, paid his soldiers a year in advance, and resolved to root out the rebellious nation by a war of extermination. crippled, however, in resources, and in great need of money, he concluded to go in person to persia and collect tribute from the various provinces, and seize the treasures which were supposed to be deposited in royal cities beyond the euphrates. he left behind, as regent or lieutenant, lysias, a man of royal descent, with orders to prosecute the war against the jews with the utmost severity, while with half his forces he proceeded in person to persia. lysias chose ptolemy, nicanor, and gorgias, experienced generals, to conduct the war, with forty thousand foot and seven thousand horsemen, besides elephants, with orders to exterminate the rebels, take possession of their lands, and settle heathen aliens in their place. so confident were these generals of success that merchants accompanied the army with gold and silver to purchase the jews from the conquerors, and fetters in which to make them slaves. a large force from the land of the philistines also joined the attacking army. jerusalem at this time was a forsaken city, uninhabited, like a wilderness; the sanctuary was trodden down, and heathen foreigners occupied the citadel on mount zion. it was a time of general mourning and desolation, and the sound of the harp and the pipe ceased throughout the land. but judas was not discouraged; and the warriors with him were bent upon redeeming the land from desolation. they however put on sackcloth, and prayed to the god of their fathers, and made every effort to rally their forces, feeling that it was better to die in battle than see the pollution of the sanctuary and the evils which overspread the land. judas succeeded in collecting altogether three thousand men, who however were poorly armed, and intrenched himself among the mountains, about twenty miles from jerusalem. learning this, gorgias took five thousand men, one thousand horsemen, under guides from the castle on mount zion, and departed from his camp at emmaus by night, with a view of surprising and capturing the jewish force. but judas was on the alert, and obtained information of the intended attack. so he broke up his own camp, and resolved to attack the main force of the enemy, weakened by the absence of gorgias and his chosen band. after reminding his soldiers of god's mercies in times of old, he ordered the trumpets to sound, and unexpectedly rushed upon the unsuspecting and unprepared syrians, totally routed them, pursued them as far as to the plains of idumaea, killed about three thousand men, took immense spoil,--gold and silver, purple garments and military weapons,--and returned in triumph to the forsaken camp, singing songs and blessing heaven for the great victory. many of the syrians that escaped came and told lysias all that had happened, and he on hearing it was confounded and discouraged. but in the year following he collected an army of sixty thousand chosen footmen and five thousand horsemen to renew the attack, and marched to the idumaean border. here judas met him at bethsura, near to jerusalem, with ten thousand men, now inspirited by victory, and again defeated the syrian forces, with a loss to the enemy of five thousand men. lysias, who commanded this army in person, returned to antioch and made preparations to raise a still greater force, while the victorious jews took possession of the capital. judas had now leisure to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it. when his army saw the desolation of their holy city,--trees growing in the very courts of the temple as in a forest, the altars profaned, the gates burned,--they were filled with grief, and rent their garments and cried aloud to heaven. but judas proceeded with his sacred work, pulled down the defiled altar of burnt sacrifice and rebuilt it, cleansed the sanctuary, hallowed the desecrated courts, made new holy vessels, decked the front of the temple with crowns and shields of gold, and restored the gates and chambers. judas also fortified the temple with high walls and towers, and placed in it a strong garrison, for the syrians still held possession of the tower,--a strong fortress near the mount of the temple. when all was cleansed and renewed, a solemn service of reconsecration was celebrated; the sacred fire was kindled afresh on the altar, thousands of lamps were lighted, the sacrifices were offered, the people thronged the courts of jehovah, and with psalms of praise, festive dances, harps, lutes, and cymbals made a joyful noise unto the lord. this triumphant restoration was celebrated three years, to the very day, from the day of desecration; it was forever after--as long as the temple stood--held a sacred yearly festival, and called the feast of the dedication, or sometimes, from its peculiar ceremonies, the feast of lights. the successes of judas and the restoration of the temple worship inflamed with renewed anger the heathen population of the countries in the near vicinity of judaea; and there seems to have been a general confederacy of idumaeans,--descendants of esau,--with sundry of the bedouin tribes, and of the heathen settled east of the jordan in the land of gilead, and of phoenicians and heathen strangers in galilee, to recover what the syrians had lost, and to restore idol worship. judas had now an army of eleven thousand men, which he divided between himself and his brother simon, and they marched in different directions to the attack of their numerous enemies. they were both eminently successful, gaining bloody battles, capturing cities and fortresses, taking immense spoils, mingling the sound of trumpets with prayers to almighty god,--heroes as religious as they were brave, an unexampled band of warriors, rivalling joshua, saul, and david in the brilliancy of their victories. all the jews who remained true to their faith in the districts which he overran and desolated, judas brought back with him to jerusalem for greater safety. only one misfortune sullied the glory of these exploits. judas had left behind him at jerusalem, when he and simon went forth to fight the idolaters, a garrison of two thousand men under the command of joseph and azarias, leaders of the people, with the strict command to remain in the city until he should return. but these popular leaders, dazzled by the victories of judas and simon, and wishing to earn a fame like theirs, issued from their stronghold with two thousand men to attack jamnia, and were met by gorgias the syrian general and completely annihilated,--a just punishment for military disobedience. the loss of two thousand men was a calamity, but judas pursued his victories, finally turning against the philistines, who at this point disappear from sacred history. in the meantime king antiochus, who, as already stated, had gone on a plundering expedition to persia, was defeated in the attempt, and returned in great grief and disappointment to ecbatana. here he heard that his armies under lysias had been disgracefully beaten, and that judaea was in a fair way to achieve its independence under the heroic judas; and, worse still, that all the pagan temples and altars which he had set up in jerusalem were removed and destroyed. this especially filled him with rage, for he was a fanatic in his religion, and utterly detested the monotheism of the jews. so oppressed with grief was this heathen persecutor that he took to his bed; and in addition to his humiliation he was afflicted with a loathsome disease, called elephantiasis, so that he was avoided and neglected by his own servants. he now saw that he must die, and calling for his friend philip, made him regent of his kingdom during the minority of his son, whom he had left at antioch. the jews were thus delivered from the worst enemy that had afflicted them since the babylonian captivity. neither assyrians nor egyptians nor persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,--namely, the enslavement and spoliation of the people; they did not pollute the sacred places like the syrian persecutor. by the rivers of babylon the jews had sat down and wept when they remembered zion, but their sad wailing was over the fact that they were captives in a strange land. ground down to the dust by antiochus, however, they bewailed not only their external misfortunes, but far more bitterly the desecration of their sanctuary and the attempt to root out their religion, which was their life. the death of antiochus epiphanes was therefore a great relief and rejoicing to the struggling jews. he left as heir to his throne a boy nine years of age; but though he had made his friend philip guardian of his son and regent of his kingdom, his lieutenant at antioch, lysias, also claimed the guardianship and the regency. these rival claims of course led to civil wars between lysias and philip, in consequence of which the jews were comparatively unmolested, and had leisure to organize their forces, fortify their strongholds, and prepare for complete independence. among other things, judas maccabaeus attacked the citadel or tower on mount zion, overlooking the temple, in which a large garrison of the enemy had long been stationed, and which was a perpetual menace. the attack or siege of this strong fortress alarmed the heathen, who made complaint to the young king, called eupator, or more probably to the regent lysias, who sent an overwhelming army into judaea, consisting of one hundred thousand foot, twenty thousand horse, and thirty-two elephants. but judas did not hesitate to give battle to this great force, and again gained a victory. it was won, however, at the expense of his brother eleazer. seeing one of the elephants armed with royal armor, he supposed that it carried the king himself; and heroically forcing his way through the ranks of the enemy, he slipped under the elephant, and gave the beast a mortal wound, so that it fell to the ground, crushing to death the courageous maccabaeus,--for the brothers of judas, worthy compatriots and fellow-soldiers with him, were also called by his special name; and although the family name was asmon, they are famous as "the maccabees." this battle however was not decisive. lysias advanced to jerusalem and laid siege to it. but hearing that philip had succeeded in gaining authority at antioch, he made peace with judas, and hastily returned to his capital, where he found philip master of the city. although he recovered his capital, it was only for a short time, since demetrius, son of seleucus, who had been sojourning at rome, returned to the palace of his ancestors, and slaying both lysias and the young king, reigned in their stead. with this king the jews were soon involved in war. evil-minded men, hostile to judas (for in such unsettled times treachery was everywhere), went to antioch with their complaints, headed by alcimus, who wished to be high-priest, and inflamed the anger of king demetrius. the new monarch sent one of his ablest generals, called bacchides, with an army to chastise the jews and reinstate alcimus, who had been ejected from his high office. this wicked high-priest overran the country with the forces of bacchides, who had returned to antioch, but did not prevail; so the king sent nicanor, already experienced in this jewish war, with a still larger army against judas. the gallant maccabaeus, however, gained a great victory, and slew nicanor himself. this battle gave another rest for a time to the afflicted land of judah. meanwhile judas, fearing that the syrian forces would ultimately overpower him, sent an embassy to rome to invoke protection. it was a long journey in those times. a century and a half later it took saint paul six months to make it. the conquests of the romans were known throughout the east, and better known than the policy they pursued of devouring the countries that sought their protection when it suited their convenience. at this time, b.c., italy was subdued, spain had been added to the empire, macedonia was conquered, syria was threatened, and carthage was soon to fall. the senate was then the ruling power at rome, and was in the height of its dignity, not controlled by either generals or demagogues. the senate received with favor the jewish ambassadors, and promised their protection. had judas known what that protection meant, he would have been the last man to seek it. nor did the treaty of alliance with rome save judaea from the continued hostilities of syria. demetrius sent bacchides with another army, which encamped against jerusalem, where judas had only eight hundred men to resist an army of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse. we infer that his forces had dwindled away by perpetual contests. his heart of hope was now well-nigh broken, but his lion courage remained. against the solicitation of his companions in war he resolved to fight; gallantly and stubbornly contested the field from morning to night, and at last, hemmed in between two wings of the syrian foe, fell in the battle. the heroic career of judas maccabaeus was ended. he had done marvellous things. he had for six years resisted and often defeated overwhelming forces; he had fought more battles than david; he had kept the enemy at bay while his prostrate country arose from the dust; he had put to flight and slain tens of thousands of the heathen; he had recovered and fortified jerusalem, and restored the temple worship; he had trained his people to be warlike and heroic. at last he was slain only when his followers were scattered by successive calamities. he bore the brunt of six years' successful war against the most powerful monarchy in asia, bent on the extermination of his countrymen. and amid all his labors he had kept the law, being revered for his virtues as much as for his heroism. not a single crime sullied his glorious name. and when he fell at last, exhausted, the nation lamented him as david mourned for jonathan, saying, "how is the valiant fallen!" a greater hero than he never adorned an age of heroism. judas was not only a mighty captain, but a wise statesman,--so revered, that, according to josephus, in his closing years he was made high-priest also, thus uniting in his person both spiritual and temporal authority. it was a very small country that he ruled, but it is in small countries that genius is often most fully developed, either for war or for peace. we know but little of his private life. he had no time for what the world calls pleasures; his life was rough, full of dangers and embarrassments. his only aim seems to have been to shake off the syrian yoke that oppressed his native land, to redeem the holy places of the nation from the pollutions of the obscene rites of heathenism, and to restore the worship of jehovah according to the consecrated ritual established in the mosaic law. the death of judas was of course followed by great disorders and universal despondency. his mantle fell on his brother jonathan, who became the leader of the scattered forces of the jews. he also prevailed over bacchides in several engagements, so that the syrian leader returned to antioch, and the jews had rest for two years. jonathan was now clothed with honor and dignity, wore a purple garment and other emblems of high rank, and was almost an acknowledged sovereign. he improved his opportunities and fortified jerusalem. but his prosperous career was cut short by treachery. he was enticed by the syrian general, even when he had an army of forty thousand men,--so largely had the forces of judaea increased,--into ptolemais with a few followers, under blandishing promises, and slain. simon was now the only remaining son of mattathias; and on him devolved the high-priesthood, as well as the executive duties of supreme ruler. he wisely devoted himself to the internal affairs of the state which he ruled. he fortified joppa, the only port of judaea, reduced hostile cities, and made himself master of the famous fortress of mount zion, so long held in threatening vicinity by the syrians, which he not only levelled with the ground, but also razed the summit of the hill on which it stood, so that it should no longer overlook the temple area. the temple became not only the sanctuary, but also one of the strongest fortresses in the world. at a later period it held out for some time against the army of titus, even after jerusalem itself had fallen. simon executed the laws with rigorous impartiality, repaired the temple, restored the sacred vessels, and secured general peace, order, and security. even the lands desolated by the wasting wars with several successive syrian monarchs again rejoiced in fertility. every man sat under his own vine and fig-tree in safety. the friendly alliance with rome was renewed by a present to that greedy republic of a golden shield, weighing one thousand pounds, and worth fifty talents, thus showing how much wealth had increased under judas and his brothers. even the ambassadors of the syrian monarch were astonished at the splendor of simon's palace, and at the riches of the temple, again restored, not in the glory of solomon, but in a magnifience of which few temples could boast,--the pride once more of the now prosperous jews, who had by their persistent bravery earned their independence. in the year b.c., the jews began a new epoch in their history, after twenty-three years of almost incessant warfare. yet simon was destined, like his brothers, to end his days by violence. he also, together with two of his sons, was treacherously murdered by his son-in-law ptolemy, who aspired to the exalted office of high-priest, leaving his son john hyrcanus to reign in his stead, in the year b.c. the rule of the maccabees,--the five sons of mattathias,--lasted thirty years. they were the founders of the asmonean princes, who ruled both as kings and high-priests. with the death of simon, the last remaining son of mattathias, this lecture properly should end; yet a rapid glance at the jewish nation, under the rule of the asmonean princes and the idumaean herod, may not be uninteresting. john hyrcanus, the first of the asmonean kings, was an able sovereign, and reigned twenty-nine years. he threw off the syrian yoke, and the jewish kingdom maintained its independence until it fell under the roman sway. his most memorable feat was the destruction of the samaritan temple on mount gerizim, which had been an eye-sore to the people of jerusalem for two hundred years. he then subdued idumaea, and compelled the people of that country to adopt the jewish religion. he maintained a strict alliance with the romans, and became master of samaria and of galilee, which were incorporated with his kingdom, so that the ancient limits of the kingdom of david were nearly restored. he built the castle of baris on a rock within the fortifications that surrounded the hill of the temple, which afterward was known as the tower of antonia. on his death, b.c., hyrcanus was succeeded by his son aristobulus,--a weak and wicked prince, who assassinated his brother, and starved to death his mother in a dungeon. the next king of the asmonean line, alexander jannaeus, was brave, but unsuccessful, and died after an unquiet and turbulent reign of twenty-seven years, b.c. his widow, alexandra, ruled as regent with great tact and energy for nine years, and was succeeded by her son hyrcanus ii. this feeble and unfortunate prince had to contend with the intrigues and violence of his more able but unscrupulous brother, aristobulus, who sought to steal his sceptre, and who at one time even drove him from his kingdom. hyrcanus put himself under the protection of the romans. they came as arbiters; they remained as masters. it was when judaea was under the nominal rule of hyrcanus ii., driven hither and thither by his enemies, and when his capital was in their hands, that pompey, triumphant over the armies of the east, took jerusalem after a desperate resistance, entered the temple, and even penetrated to the holy of holies. to his credit he left untouched the treasures accumulated in the temple, but he demolished the walls of the city and imposed a tribute. judaea was now virtually under the dominion of the romans, although the sovereignty of hyrcanus was not completely taken away. on the fall of pompey, crassus the triumvir plundered the temple of ten thousand talents, as was estimated, and the fate of judaea, during the memorable civil war of which caesar was the hero and victor, hung in trembling suspense. i will not enumerate the contentions, the deeds of violence, the acts of treachery, and the strife of rival parties which marked the tumultuous period in judaea while caesar and pompey were contending for the sovereignty of the world. these came to an end at last by the dethronement of the last of the asmonean princes, and the accession of the idumaean herod by the aid of antony ( b.c.). herod, called the great, was the last independent sovereign of palestine. he was the son of antipater, a noble idumaean, who had ingratiated himself in the favor of hyrcanus ii., high-priest and sovereign, and who ruled as the prime minister of this feeble and incapable prince. by rendering some service to caesar, antipater was made procurator of judaea, and appointed his son herod to the government of galilee, where he developed remarkable administrative talents. soon after, he was raised by sextus caesar to the military command of coele-syria. after the battle of philippi, herod secured the favor of antony by an enormous bribe, as he had that of cassius on the death of caesar, and was made one of the tetrarchs of the province. in the meantime his father, alexander, was poisoned at jerusalem, and antigonus, son of aristobulus, who had gained ascendency, cut off the ears of hyrcanus, and not only deprived him of the office of high-priest, but usurped his authority. herod himself proceeded to rome, and was successful in his intrigues, being by the favor of antony made king of judaea. but a severe contest was before him, since antigonus was resolved to defend his crown. with the aid of the romans, herod, after a war of three years, subdued his rival and put him to death, together with every member of the sanhedrim but two. his power was cemented by his marriage with mariamne, the beautiful sister of aristobulus, whom he made high-priest. the asmonean princes were now, by the death of antigonus, reduced to aristobulus and the aged hyrcanus, both of whom were murdered by the suspicious tyrant who had triumphed over so many enemies. in a fit of jealousy herod even caused the execution of his beautiful wife, whom he passionately loved, as he had already destroyed her grandfather, father, brother, and uncle. supported by augustus, whom he had managed to conciliate after the death of antony, herod reigned with undisputed authority over even an increase of territory. he doubtless reigned with great ability, tyrant and murderer as he was, and detested by the jews as an idumaean. he reigned in a state of magnificence unknown to the asmonean princes. he built a new and magnificent palace on the hill of zion, and rebuilt the fortress of baris, which he called antonia in honor of his friend and patron, antony. he also erected strong citadels in different cities of his kingdom, and rebuilt samaria; he founded caesarea and colonized it with greeks, so that it became a great maritime city, rivalling tyre in magnificence and strength. but herod's greatest work, by which he hoped to ingratiate himself in the favor of the jews, was the rebuilding of the temple on a scale of unexampled magnificence. he was also very liberal in the distribution of corn during a severe famine. he was in such high favor with augustus by his presents and his devotion to the imperial interests, that, next to agrippa, he was the emperor's greatest favorite. his two sons by mariamne were educated at rome with great care, and were lodged in the palace of the emperor. herod's latter days however were clouded by the intrigues of his court, by treason and conspiracies, in consequence of which his sons, favorites with the people on account of their accomplishments and their asmonean blood, were executed by the suspicious and savage despot. antipater, another son, by his first wife, whom he had chosen as his successor, conspired against his life, and the proof of his guilt was so clear that he also was summarily executed. in addition to these troubles herod was tormented by remorse for the execution of the murdered mariamne. he was the victim of jealousy, suspicion, and wrath. one of his last acts was the order to destroy the infants in the vicinity of jerusalem in the vain hope of destroying the predicted messiah,--him who should be "born king of the jews." he died of a loathsome and excruciating disease, in his seventieth year, having reigned nearly forty years. his kingdom, by his will, was divided between the children of his later wife, a samaritan woman,--the eldest of whom, archelaus, became monarch of judea; and the second, antipas, became tetrarch of galilee. the former married the widow of his half-brother alexander, who was executed; and the latter married herodias, wife of philip, also his half-brother. archelaus ruled judaea with such injustice and cruelty, that, after nine years, he was summoned to rome and exiled to vienne in gaul, and judaea became a roman province under the prefecture of syria. the supreme judicial authority was exercised by the jewish sanhedrim, the great ecclesiastical and civil council, composed of seventy-one persons presided over by the high-priest. the sanhedrim, under the name of chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people, now took the lead in all public transactions pertaining to the internal administration of the province, being inferior only to the tribunal of the governor, who resided in caesarea. meanwhile the long expectation of the jews, especially during the reign of herod, of a promised deliverer, was fulfilled, and one claiming to be the messiah appeared,--not a temporal prince and mighty hero of war, a greater judas maccabaeus, as the jews had supposed, but a helpless infant, born in a manger, and brought up as a peasant-carpenter. yet he it was who should found a spiritual kingdom never to be destroyed, going on from conquering to conquer, until the whole world shall be subdued. with the advent of jesus of nazareth, in which we see the fulfilment of all the promises made to the chosen people from abraham to isaiah, jewish history loses its chief interest. the mission of the hebrew nation seems to stand accomplished; the conception of one, holy, spiritual god was kept alive in the world until, in "the fulness of time," the mighty romans subdued and united all lands under one rule, drawing them nearer together by great highroads; the flexible greek language gave all peoples a common tongue, in which already the hebrew scriptures had been familiarized among scholars; the life and teachings of jesus entered with vital power into the heart and brain of those devoted followers who recognized him as the christ,--the revelator of the universal fatherhood of the one true god; and thenceforward christianity becomes the great spiritual power of the world. saint paul. died, about a.d. the spread of christianity. the scriptures say but little of the life of saul from the time he was a student, at the age of fifteen, at the feet of gamaliel, one of the most learned rabbis of the jewish sanhedrim at jerusalem, until he appeared at the martyrdom of stephen, when about thirty years of age. saul, as he was originally named, was born at tarsus, a city of cilicia, about the fourth year of our era. his father was a jew, a pharisee, and a man of respectable social position. in some way not explained, he was able to transmit to his son the rights of roman citizenship,--a valuable inheritance, as it proved. he took great pains in the education of his gifted son, who early gave promise of great talents and attainments in rabbinical lore, and who gained also some knowledge, although probably not a very deep one, of the greek language and literature. saul's great peculiarity as a young man was his extreme pharisaism,--devotion to the jewish law in all its minuteness of ceremonial rites. we gather from his own confessions that at that period, when he was engrossed in the study of the jewish scriptures and religious institutions, he was narrow and intolerant, and zealous almost to fanaticism to perpetuate ritualistic conventionalities and the exclusiveness of his sect. he was austere and conscientious, but his conscience was unenlightened. he exhibited nothing of that large-hearted charity and breadth of mind for which he was afterward distinguished; he was in fact a bitter persecutor of those who professed the religion of jesus, which he detested as an innovation. his morality being always irreproachable, and his character and zeal giving him great influence, he was sent to damascus, with authority to bring to jerusalem for trial or punishment those who had embraced the new faith. he is supposed to have been absent from jerusalem during the ministry of our lord, and probably never saw him who was despised and rejected of men. we are told that saul, in the virulence of his persecuting spirit, consented to the death of stephen, who was no ignorant galilean, but a learned hellenist; nor is there evidence that the bitter and relentless young pharisee was touched either by the eloquence or blameless life or terrible sufferings of the distinguished martyr. the next memorable event in the life of saul--at that time probably a member of the jewish sanhedrim--was his conversion to christianity, as sudden and unexpected as it was profound and lasting, while on his way to damascus on the errand already mentioned. the sudden light from heaven which exceeded in brilliancy the torrid midday sun, the voice of jesus which came to the trembling persecutor as he lay prostrate on the ground, the blindness which came upon him--all point to the supernatural; for he was no inquirer after truth like luther and augustine, but bent on a persistent course of cruel persecution. at once he is a changed man in his spirit, in his aims, in his entire attitude toward the followers of the nazarene. the proud man becomes as docile and humble as a child; the intolerant zealot for the law becomes broad and charitable; and only one purpose animates his whole subsequent life,--which is to spend his strength, amid perils and difficult labors, in defence of the doctrines he had spurned. his leading idea now is to preach salvation, not by pharisaical works by which no man can be justified, but by faith in the crucified one who was sent into the world to save it by new teachings and by his death upon the cross. he will go anywhere in his sublime enthusiasm, among jews or among gentiles, to plant the precious seeds of the new faith in every pagan city which he can reach. it is thought by conybeare and howson, farrar and others that the new convert spent three years in retirement in arabia, in profound meditation and communion with god, before the serious labors of his life began as a preacher and missionary. after his conversion it would seem that saul preached the divinity of christ with so much zeal that the jews in damascus were filled with wrath, and sought to take his life, and even guarded the gates of the city for fear that he might escape. the conspiracy being detected, the friends of saul put him into a basket made of ropes, and let him down from a window in a house built upon the city wall, so that he escaped, and thereupon proceeded to jerusalem to be indorsed as a christian brother. he was especially desirous to see peter, as the foremost man among the christians, though james had greater dignity. peter received him kindly, though not enthusiastically, for the remembrance of his relentless persecutions was still fresh in the minds of the christians. it was impossible, however, that two such warmhearted, honest, and enthusiastic men should not love each other, when the common leading principle of their lives was mutually understood. among the disciples, however, it was only peter who took saul cordially by the hand. the other leaders held aloof; not one so much as spoke to him. he was regarded with general mistrust; even james, the lord's brother, the first bishop of jerusalem, would hold no communion with him. at length joseph, a levite of cyprus, afterward called barnabas,--a man of large heart, who sold his possessions to give to the poor,--recognizing saul's sincerity and superior talents, extended to him the right hand of fellowship, and later became his companion in the missionary journeys which he undertook. he used his great influence in removing the prejudices of the brethren, and saul henceforth was admitted to their friendship and confidence. saul at first did not venture to preach in hebrew synagogues, but sought the synagogue of the hellenists, in which the voice of stephen had first been heard. but his preaching was again cut short by a conspiracy to murder him, so fierce was the animosity which his conversion had created among the jews, and he was compelled to flee. the brethren conducted him to the little coast village of caesarea, whence he sailed for his native city tarsus, in cilicia. how long saul remained in tarsus, and what he did there, we do not know. not long, probably, for he was sought out by barnabas as his associate for missionary work in antioch. it would seem that on the persecution which succeeded stephen's death, many of the disciples fled to various cities; and among others, to that great capital of the east,--the third city of the roman empire. thither barnabas had gone as their spiritual guide; but he soon found out that among the greeks of that luxurious and elegant city there were demanded greater learning, wisdom, and culture than he himself possessed. he turned his eyes upon saul, then living quietly at tarsus, whose superior tact and trained skill in disputation, large and liberal mind, and indefatigable zeal marked him out as the fittest man he could find as a coadjutor in his laborious work. thus saul came to antioch to assist barnabas. no city could have been chosen more suitable for the peculiar talents of saul than this great eastern emporium, containing a population of five hundred thousand. i need not speak of its works of art,--its palaces, its baths, its aqueducts, its bridges, its basilicas, its theatres, which called out even the admiration of the citizens of the imperial capital. these were nothing to saul, who thought only of the souls he could convert to the religion of jesus; but they indicate the importance and wealth of the population. in this pagan city were half a million people steeped in all the vices of the oriental world,--a great influx of heterogeneous races, mostly debased by various superstitions and degrading habits, whose religion, so far as they had any, was a crude form of nature-worship. and yet among them were wits, philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, and satirists, as was to be expected in a city where greek was the prevailing language. but these were not the people who listened to saul and barnabas. the apostles found hearers chiefly among the poor and despised,--artisans, servants, soldiers, sailors,--although occasionally persons of moderate independence became converts, especially women of the middle ranks. poor as they were, the christians at antioch found means to send a large contribution in money to their brethren at jerusalem, who were suffering from a grievous famine. a year was spent by barnabas and saul at antioch in founding a christian community, or congregation, or "church," as it was called. and it was in this city that the new followers of christ were first called "christians," mostly made up as they were of gentiles. the missionaries had not much success with the jews, although it was their custom first to preach in the jewish synagogues on the sabbath. it was only the common people of antioch who heard the word gladly, for it was to them tidings of joy, which raised them above their degradation and misery. with the contributions which the christians of antioch, and probably of other cities, made to their poorer and afflicted brethren, barnabas and saul set out for jerusalem, soon returning however to antioch, not to resume their labors, but to make preparations for an extended missionary tour. saul was then thirty-seven years of age, and had been a christian seven years. in spite of many disadvantages, such as ill-health, a mean personal appearance, and a nervous temperament, without a ready utterance, saul had a tolerable mastery of greek, familiarity with the habits of different classes, and a profound knowledge of human nature. as a widower and childless, he was unincumbered by domestic ties and duties; and although physically weak, he had great endurance and patience. he was courteous in his address, liberal in his views, charitable to faults, abounding in love, adapting himself to people's weaknesses and prejudices,--a man of infinite tact, the loftiest, most courageous, most magnanimous of missionaries, setting an example to the xaviers and judsons of modern times. he doubtless felt that to preach the gospel to the heathen was his peculiar mission; so that his duty coincided with his inclination, for he seems to have been very fond of travelling. he made his journeys on foot, accompanied by a congenial companion, when he could not go by water, which was attended with less discomfort, and was freer from perils and dangers than a land journey. the first missionary journey of barnabas and saul, accompanied by mark, was to the isle of cyprus. they embarked at seleucia, the port of antioch, and landed at salamis, where they remained awhile, preaching in the jewish synagogue, and then traversed the whole island, which is about one hundred miles in length. whenever they made a lengthened stay, saul worked at his trade as a sail and tent maker, so as not to be burdensome to any one. his life was very simple and inexpensive, thus enabling him to maintain that independence so essential to self-respect. no notable incident occurred to the three missionaries until they reached the town of nea-paphos, celebrated for the worship of venus, the residence of the roman proconsul, sergius paulus,--a man of illustrious birth, who amused himself with the popular superstitions of the country. he sought, probably from curiosity, to hear barnabas and saul preach; but the missionaries were bitterly opposed by a jewish sorcerer called elymas, who was stricken with blindness by saul, the miracle producing such an effect on the governor that he became a convert to the new faith. there is no evidence that he was baptized, but he was respected and beloved as a good man. from that time the apostle assumed the name of paul; and he also assumed the control of the mission, barnabas gracefully yielding the first rank, which till then he had himself enjoyed. he had been the patron of saul, but now became his subordinate; for genius ever will work its way to ascendency. there are no outward advantages which can long compete with intellectual supremacy. from cyprus the missionaries went to perga, in pamphylia, one of the provinces of asia minor. in this city, famed for the worship of diana, their stay was short. here mark separated from his companions and returned to jerusalem, much to the mortification of his cousin barnabas and the grief of paul, since we have a right to infer that this brilliant young man was appalled by the dangers of the journey, or had more sympathy with his brethren at jerusalem than with the liberal yet overbearing spirit of paul. from perga the two travellers proceeded to antioch in pisidia, in the heart of the high table-lands of the peninsula, and, according to their custom, went on saturday to the jewish synagogue. paul, invited to address the meeting, set forth the mystery of jesus, his death, his resurrection, and the salvation which he promised to believers. but the address raised a storm, and paul retired from the synagogue to preach to the gentile population, many of whom were favorably disposed, and became converted. the same thing subsequently took place at philippi, at alexandria, at troas, and in general throughout the roman colonies. but the influence of the jews was sufficient to secure the expulsion of paul and barnabas from the city; and they departed, shaking off the dust from their feet, and turning their steps to iconium, a city of lycaonia, where a church was organized. here the apostles tarried some time, until forced to leave by the orthodox jews, who stirred up the heathen population against them. the little city of lystra was the scene of their next labors, and as there were but few jews there the missionaries not only had rest, but were very successful. the sojourn at lystra was marked by the miraculous cure of a cripple, which so impressed the people that they took the missionaries for divinities, calling barnabas jupiter, and paul mercury; and a priest of the city absolutely would have offered up sacrifices to the supposed deities, had he not been severely rebuked by paul for his superstition. at lystra a great addition was made to the christian ranks by the conversion of timothy, a youth of fifteen, and of his excellent mother eunice; but the report of these conversions reached iconium and antioch of pisidia, which so enraged the jews of these cities that they sent emissaries to lystra, zealous fanatics, who made such a disturbance that paul was stoned, and left for dead. his wounds, however, were not so serious as were supposed, and the next day he departed with barnabas for derbe, where he made a long stay. the two churches of lystra and derbe were composed almost wholly of heathen. from derbe the apostles retraced their steps, a.d. , to antioch, by the way they had come,--a journey of one hundred and twenty miles, and full of perils,--instead of crossing mount taurus through the famous pass of the cilician gates, and then through tarsus to antioch, an easier journey. one of the noticeable things which marked this first missionary journey of paul, was the opposition of the jews wherever he went. he was forced to turn to the gentiles, and it was among them that converts were chiefly made. it is true that his custom was first to address the jewish synagogues on saturday, but the jews opposed and hated and persecuted him the moment he announced the grand principle which animated his life,--salvation through jesus christ, instead of through obedience to the venerated law of moses. on his return to antioch with his beloved companion, paul continued for a time in the peaceful ministration of apostolic duties, until it became necessary for him to go to jerusalem to consult with the other apostles in reference to a controversy which began seriously to threaten the welfare of their common cause. this controversy was in reference to the rite of circumcision,--a rite ever held in supreme importance by the jews. the jewish converts to christianity had all been previously circumcised according to the mosaic law, and they insisted on the circumcision of the gentile converts also, as a mark of christian fraternity. paul, emancipated from jewish prejudices and customs, regarded this rite as unessential; he believed that it was abrogated by christ, with other technical observances of the law, and that it was not consistent with the liberty of the gospel to impose rites exclusively jewish on the pagan converts. the elders at jerusalem, good men as they were, did not take this view; they could not bear to receive into complete christian fellowship men who offended their prejudices in regard to matters which they regarded as sacred and obligatory as baptism itself. they would measure christianity by their traditions; and the smaller the point of difference seemed to the enlightened paul, the bitterer were the contests,--even as many of the schisms which subsequently divided the church originated in questions that appear to us to be absolutely frivolous. the question very early arose, whether christianity should be a formal and ritualistic religion,--a religion of ablutions and purifications, of distinctions between ceremonially pure and impure things,--or, rather, a religion of the spirit; whether it should be a sect or a universal religion. paul took the latter view; declared circumcision to be useless, and freely admitted heathen converts into the church without it, in opposition to those who virtually insisted on a gentile becoming a jew before he could become a christian. so, to settle this miserable dispute, paul went to jerusalem, taking with him barnabas and titus, who had never been circumcised,--eighteen years after the death of jesus, when the apostles were old men, and when peter, james, and john, having remained at jerusalem, were the real leaders of the jewish church. james in particular, called the just, was a strenuous observer of the law of circumcision,--a severe and ascetic man, and very narrow in his prejudices, but held in great veneration for his piety. before the question was brought up in a general assembly of the brethren for discussion, paul separately visited peter, james, and john, and argued with them in his broad and catholic spirit, and won them over to his cause; so that through their influence it was decided that it was not essential for a gentile to be circumcised on admission to the church, only that he must abstain from meats offered to idols, and from eating the meat of any animal containing the blood (forbidden by moses),--a sort of compromise, a measure by which most quarrels are finally settled; and the title of paul as "apostle to the gentiles" was officially confirmed. the controversy being settled amicably by the leaders of the infant church, paul and barnabas returned to antioch, and for a while longer continued their labors there, as the most important centre of missionary operations. but the ardent soul of paul could not bear repose. he set about forming new plans; and the result was his second and more important missionary tour. the relations between paul and barnabas had been thus far of the most intimate and affectionate kind. but now the two apostles disagreed,--barnabas wishing to associate with them his cousin mark, and paul determining that the young man, however estimable, should not accompany them, because he had turned back on the former journey. it must be confessed that paul was not very amiable and conciliatory in this matter; but his nature was earnest and stern, and he was resolved not to have a companion under his trying circumstances who had once put his hand to the plough and looked back. neither apostle would yield, and they were obliged to separate,--reluctantly, doubtless,--paul choosing silas as his future companion, while barnabas took mark. both were probably in the right, and both in the wrong; for the best of men have faults, and the strongest characters the most. perhaps paul thought that as he was now recognized as the leading apostle to the gentiles, barnabas should yield to him; and perhaps barnabas felt aggrieved at the haughty dictation of one who was once his inferior in standing. the choice of paul, however, was admirable. silas was a broad and liberal man, who had great influence at jerusalem, and was entirely devoted to his superior. "the first object of paul was to confirm the churches he had already founded; and accordingly he began his mission by visiting the churches of syria and cilicia," crossing the taurus range by the famous cilician gates,--one of the most frightful mountain passes in the world,--penetrating thus into lycaonia, and reaching derbe, lystra, and iconium. at lystra he found timothy, whom he greatly loved, modest and timid, and made him his deacon and secretary, although he had never been circumcised. to prevent giving offence to jewish christians, paul himself circumcised timothy, in accordance with his custom of yielding to prejudices when no vital principles were involved,--which concession laid him open to the charge of inconsistency on the part of his enemies. expediency was not disdained by paul when the means were unobjectionable, but he did not use bad means to accomplish good ends. he always had tenderness and charity for the weaknesses of his brethren, especially intellectual weakness. what would have been intolerable to some was patiently submitted to by him, if by any means he could win even the feeble; so that he seemed to be all things to all men. no one ever exceeded him in tact. after paul had finished his visit to the principal cities of galatia, he resolved to explore new lands. we next find him, after a long journey through mysia of three hundred miles, travelling to the south of mount olympus, at troas, near the ancient city of troy. here he fell in with luke, a physician, who had received a careful hellenic and jewish education. like timothy, the future historian of the acts of the apostles was admirably fitted to be the companion of paul. he was gentle, sympathetic, submissive, and devoted to his superior. through luke's suggestion, renan thinks, paul determined to go to macedonia. so, without making a long stay at troas, the four missionaries--paul, silas, luke, and timothy--took ship and landed at neapolis, the seaport of philippi on the borders of thrace at the extreme northern shores of the aegean sea. they were now on european ground,--the most healthy region of the ancient world, where the people, largely of celtic origin, were honest, earnest, and primitive in their habits. the travellers proceeded at once to philippi, a city more latin than grecian, and began their work; making converts, chiefly women, among whom lydia was the most distinguished, a wealthy woman who traded in purple. she and her whole household were baptized, and it was from her that paul consented against his custom to accept pecuniary aid. while the work of conversion was going on favorably, an incident occurred which hastened the departure of the missionaries. paul exorcised a poor female slave, who brought, by her divinations and ventriloquism, great gain to her masters; and because of this destruction of the source of their income they brought suit against paul and silas before the magistrates, who condemned them to be beaten in the presence of the superstitious people, and then sent them to prison and put their feet fast in the stocks. the jailer and the duumvirs, however, ascertaining that the prisoners were roman citizens and hence exempt from corporal punishment, released them, and hurried them out of the city. leaving timothy and luke at philippi, paul and silas proceeded to thessalonica, the largest and most important city of macedonia, where there was a jewish synagogue in which paul preached for three consecutive sabbaths. a few jews were converted, but the converts were chiefly greeks, of whom the larger part were women belonging to the best society of the city. by these converts the apostles were treated with extraordinary deference and devotion, and the church of thessalonica soon rivalled that of philippi in the piety and unity of its converts, becoming a model christian church. as usual, however, the jews stirred up animosities, and paul and silas were obliged to leave, spending several days at berea and preaching successfully among the greeks. these conquests were the most brilliant that paul had yet made,--not among enervated asiatics, but bright, elegant, and intelligent europeans, where women were less degraded than in the orient. leaving timothy and silas behind him, paul, accompanied by some faithful bereans, embarked for athens,--the centre of philosophy and art, whose wonderful prestige had induced its roman conquerors to preserve its ancient glories. but in the first century athens was neither the fascinating capital of the time of cicero, nor of the age of chrysostom. its temples and statues remained intact, but its schools could not then boast of a single man of genius. there remained only dilettante philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians, pedagogues, and pedants, puffed up with conceit and arrogance, with very few real inquirers after truth, such as marked the times of socrates and plato. paul, like luther, cared nothing for art; and the thousands of statues which ornamented every part of the city seemed to him to be nothing but idols. still, he was not mistaken in the intense paganism of the city, the absence of all earnestness of character and true religious life. he was disappointed, as afterward augustine was when he went to rome. he expected to find intellectual life at least, but the pretenders to superior knowledge in that degenerate university town merely traded on the achievements of their ancestors, repeating with dead lips the echo of the old philosophies. they were marked only by levity, mockery, sneers, and contemptuous arrogance; idlers were they, in quest of some new amusement. the utter absence of sympathy among all classes given over to frivolities made paul exceedingly lonely in athens, and he wrote to timothy and silas to join him with all haste. he wandered about the streets distressed and miserable. there was no field for his labors. who would listen to him? what ear could he reach? he was as forlorn and unheeded as a temperance lecturer would be on the boulevards of paris. his work among the jews was next to nothing, for where trade did not flourish there were but few jews. still, amid all this discouragement, it would seem that paul attracted sufficient notice, from his conversation with the idlers and chatterers of the agora, to be invited to address the athenians at the areopagus. they listened with courtesy so long as they thought he was praising their religious habits, or was making a philosophical argument against the doctrines of rival sects; but when he began to tell them of that cross which was to them foolishness, and of that resurrection from the dead which was alien to all their various beliefs, they were filled with scorn or relapsed into indifference. paul's masterly discourse on mars hill was an obvious failure, so far as any immediate impression was concerned. the pagans did not persecute him,--they let him alone; they killed him with indifference. he could stand opposition, but to be laughed at as a fanatic and neglected by bright and intellectual people was more than even paul could stand. he left athens a lonely man, without founding a church. it was the last city in the world to receive his doctrines,--that city of grammarians, of pedants, of gymnasts, of fencing masters, of play-goers, and babblers about words. "as well might a humanitarian socialist declaim against english prejudices to the proud and exclusive fellows of oxford and cambridge." paul, disappointed and disgusted, without waiting for timothy, then set out for corinth,--a much wickeder and more luxurious city than athens, but not puffed up with intellectual pride. here there were sailors and artisans, and slaves bearing heavy burdens, who would gladly hear the tidings of a salvation preached to the poor and miserable. not yet was the alliance to be formed between philosophy and christianity. not to the intellect was the apostolic appeal to be made, but to the conscience and the heart of those who knew and owned that they were sinners in need of forgiveness. paul instinctively perceived that corinth, with its gross and shameless immoralities, was the place for him to work in. he therefore decided on a long stay, and went to live with aquila and priscilla, converted jews, who followed the same trade as himself, that of tent and sail making,--a very humble calling, but one which was well patronized in that busy mart of commerce. timothy soon joined him, with silas. as usual, paul preached to the jews until they repulsed him with insults and blasphemy, when he turned to the heathen, among whom he had great success, converting the common people, including some whose names have been preserved,--titus, justius, crispus, chloe, and phoebe. he remained in corinth eighteen months, not without difficulties and impediments. the jews, unable to vent their wrath upon him as fully as they wished in a city under the roman government, appealed to the governor of the province of which corinth was the capital. this governor is best known to us as gallio,--a man of fine intellect, and a friend of scholars. when sosthenes, chief of the synagogue, led paul before gallio's tribunal, accusing him of preaching a religion against the law, the proconsul interrupted him with this admirable reply: "if it were a matter of wrong, or moral outrage, it would be reasonable in me to hear you; but if it be a question of words and names and of your law, look ye to it, for i will be no judge of such matters." he thus summarily and contemptuously dismissed the complaint, without however taking any notice of paul. the mistake of gallio was that he did not comprehend that christianity was a subject infinitely greater than a mere jewish sect, with which, in common with educated romans, he confounded it. in his indifference however he was not unlike other roman governors, of whom he was one of the justest and most enlightened. in reference to the whole scene, canon farrar forcibly remarks that this distinguished and cultivated gallio "flung away the greatest opportunity of his life, when he closed the lips of the haggard jewish prisoner whom his decision had rescued from the clutches of his countrymen;" for paul was prepared with a speech which would have been more valued, and would have been more memorable, than all the acts of gallio's whole government. while paul was pursuing his humble labors with the poor converts of corinth, about the year a.d., a memorable event took place in his career, which has had an immeasurable influence on the christian world. being unable personally to visit, as he desired, the churches he had founded, paul began to write to them letters to instruct and confirm them in the faith. the apostle's first epistle was to his beloved brethren, in thessalonica,--the first of that remarkable series of theological essays which in all subsequent ages have held their position as fundamentally important in the establishment of christian doctrine. they are luminous, profound, original, remarkable alike for vigor of style and depth of spiritual significance. they are not moral essays like those of confucius, nor mystic and obscure speculations like those of buddha, but grand treatises on revealed truth, written, as it were, with his heart's blood, and vivid as fire in a dark night. in these epistles we see also paul's intense personality, his frank egotism, his devotion to his work, his sincerity and earnestness, his affectionate nature, his tolerant and catholic spirit, and also his power of sarcasm, his warm passions, and his unbending will. he enjoins the necessity of faith, which is a gift, with the practice of virtues that appeal to consciousness and emanate from love and purity of heart. these letters are exhortations to a lofty life and childlike acceptance of revealed truths. the apostle warns his little flock against the evils that surrounded them, and which so easily beset them,--especially unchastity and drunkenness, and strifes, bickerings, slanders, and retaliations. he exhorts them to unceasing prayer, the feeling of constant dependence, and hence the supreme need of divine grace to keep them from falling, and to enable them to grow in spiritual strength. he promises as the fruit of spiritual victories immeasurable joys, not only amid present evils, but in the glorious future when the mortal shall put on immortality. especially and repeatedly does he urge them to "have also that mind which was in christ jesus," showing itself in humility, willingness to serve others, unselfish consideration of others, even the preference of others' interests before their own,--a combination of the homely practical with the divinely ideal, such as the world had never learned from any earlier philosophy of life. paul at last felt that he must revisit the earlier churches, especially those of syria. it was three years since he had left antioch. but more than all, he wished to consult with his brethren in jerusalem, and to be present at the feast of the passover. bidding an affectionate adieu to his christian friends, he set out for the little seaport of cenchrea, accompanied by aquila and his wife priscilla, and then set sail for ephesus, on his way to jerusalem. in his haste to reach the end of his journey he did not tarry at ephesus, but took another vessel, and arrived at caesarea without any recorded accident. nor did he make a long visit at jerusalem, probably to avoid a rupture with james, the head of the church in that city, whose views about jewish ceremonials, as already noted, differed from his. paul returned again to ephesus, where he made a sojourn of three years, following his trade for a living, while he founded a church in that city of necromancers, sorcerers, magicians, courtesans, mimics, flute-players,--a city abandoned to asiatic sensualities and superstitious rites; an exceedingly wicked and luxurious city, yet famous for arts, especially for the grandest temple ever erected by the greeks, one of the seven wonders of the world. it was in the most abandoned capitals, with mixed populations, that the greatest triumphs of christianity were achieved. antioch, corinth, and ephesus were more favorable to the establishment of christian churches than jerusalem and athens. but the trials of paul in ephesus, the capital of asia minor, the most celebrated of all the ionian cities,--"more hellenic than antioch, more oriental than corinth, more wealthy than thessalonica, more populous than athens,"--were incessant and discouraging, since it was the headquarters of pagan superstitions, and of all forms of magical imposture. as usual, he was reviled and slandered by the jews; but he was also at this time an object of intense hatred to the priests and image-makers of the temple of diana, troubled in mind by evil reports concerning the converts he had made in other cities, physically weak and depressed by repeated attacks of sickness, oppressed by cares and labors, exposed to constant dangers, his life an incessant mortification and suffering, "killed all the day long," carrying about him wherever he went "the deadness of the crucified christ." paul's labors in ephesus were nevertheless successful. he made many converts and exercised an extraordinary influence,--among other things causing magicians voluntarily to burn their own costly books, as savonarola afterward made a bonfire of vanities at florence. his sojourn was cut short at length by the riot which was made by the various persons who were directly or indirectly supported by the revenues of the temple,--a mongrel mob, brought to terms by the tact of the town clerk, who reminded the howling dervishes and angry silversmiths of the punishment which might be inflicted on them by the roman proconsul for raising a disturbance and breaking the law. yet paul with difficulty escaped from ephesus and departed again for greece, not however until he had written his extraordinary epistles to the corinthians, who had sadly departed from his teachings both in morals and doctrine, either through ignorance, or in consequence of the depravity which they had but imperfectly conquered. the infant churches were deplorably split into factions, "the result of the visits from various teachers who succeeded paul, and who built on his foundations very dubious materials by way of superstructure,"--even apollos himself, an alexandrian jew baptized by the apostle john, the most eloquent and attractive preacher of the day, who turned everybody's head. in the churches women rose to give their opinions without being veiled, as if they were greek courtesans; the agapae, or love-feasts, had degenerated into luxurious banquets; and unchastity, the peculiar vice of the corinthians, went unrebuked. these evils paul rebukes, and lays down rules for the faithful in reference to marriage, to the position of women, to the observance of the lord's supper, and sundry other things, enjoining forbearance and love. his chapter in reference to charity is justly regarded by all writers and commentators as the nearest approach in christian literature to the sermon on the mount. scarcely less remarkable is the chapter on death and the resurrection, shedding more light on that great subject than all other writers combined in heathen and christian annals,--one of the profoundest treatises ever written by mortal man, and which can be explained only as the result of a supernatural revelation. paul's second sojourn in macedonia lasted only six months; this time he spent in going from city to city confirming the infant churches, remaining longest in thessalonica and philippi, where his most faithful converts were found. here titus joined him, bringing good news from corinth. still, there were dissensions and evils in that troublesome church which called for a second letter. in this letter he sets forth, not in the spirit of egotism, the various sufferings and perils he had endured, few of which are alluded to by luke: "of the jews five times received i forty stripes save one; thrice was i beaten with rods; once was i stoned; thrice i suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have i spent in the deep; in journeyings often; in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own race, in perils from the gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in toil and weariness, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often; besides anxiety for all the churches." it was probably at the close of the year a.d. that paul set out for corinth, with titus, timothy, sosthenes, and other companions. during the three months he remained in that city he probably wrote his epistle to the galatians and his epistle to the romans,--the latter the most profound of all his writings, setting forth the sum and substance of his theology, in which the great doctrine of justification by faith is severely elaborated. the whole epistle is a war on pagan philosophy, the insufficiency of good works without faith,--the lever by which in later times wyclif, huss, luther, calvin, knox, and saint cyran overthrew a pharisaic system of outward righteousness. in the epistle to the galatians paul speaks with unusual boldness and earnestness, severely rebuking them for their departure from the truth, and reiterating with dogmatic ardor the inutility of circumcision as of the law abrogated by christ, with whom, in the liberty which he proclaimed, there is neither jew nor greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in him. and paul reminds them,--a bitter pill to the jews,--that this is taught in the promise made to abraham four hundred and fifty years before the law was declared by moses, by which promise all races and tribes and people are to be blessed to remotest generations. this epistle not only breathes the largest christian liberty,--the equality of all men before god,--but it asserts, as in the epistle to the romans, with terrible distinctness, that salvation is by faith in christ and not by deeds of the law, which is only a schoolmaster to prepare the way for the ascendency of jesus. i need not dwell on these two great epistles, which embody the substance of the pauline theology received by the church for eighteen hundred years, and which can never be abrogated so long as paul is regarded as an authority in christian doctrine. i return to a brief notice of paul's last visit to jerusalem, which was made against the expostulations of his friends and disciples in ephesus, who gathered around him weeping, knowing well that they never would see his face again. but he was inflexible in his resolution, declaring that he had no fear of chains, and was ready to die at jerusalem for the name of jesus. why he should have persisted in his resolution, so full of danger; why he should again have thrown himself into the hands of his bitterest enemies, thirsty for his blood,--we do not know, for he had no new truth to declare. but the brethren were forced to yield to his strong will, and all they could do was to provide him with a sufficient escort to shield him from ordinary dangers on the way. the long voyage from ephesus was prosperous but tedious, and on the last day before the pentecostal feast, in may, in the year a.d., paul for the fifth time entered jerusalem. his meeting with the elders, under the presidency of james,--"the stern, white-robed, ascetic, mysterious prophet,"--was cold. his personal friends in jerusalem were few, and his enemies were numerous, powerful, and bitter; for he had not only emancipated himself from the jewish law, with all its rites and ceremonies, but had made it of no account in all the churches he had founded. what had he naturally to expect from the zealots for that law but a renewed persecution? even the jewish christians gave no thanks for the splendid contribution which paul had gathered in asia for the relief of their poor. nor was there any exultation among them when paul narrated his successful labors among the gentiles. they pretended to rejoice, but added, "you observe, brother, how many myriads of the jews there are that have embraced the faith, and they are all zealots for the law. and we are informed that thou teachest all the jews that are among the gentiles to forsake moses." there was no cordiality among the jewish elders of the christian community, and deadly hostility among the unconverted jews, for they had doubtless heard of paul's marvellous career. jerusalem was then full of strangers, and the jews of asia recognizing paul in the temple, raised a disturbance, pretending that he was a profaner of the sacred edifice. the crowd of fanatics seized him, dragged him out of the temple, and set about to kill him. but the roman authorities interfered, and rescuing him from the hands of the infuriated mob, bore him to the castle, the tower of antonia. when they arrived at the stairs of the tower, paul begged the tribune to be allowed to speak to the angry and demented crowd. the request was granted, and he made a speech in hebrew, narrating his early history and conversion; but when he came to his mission to the gentiles, the uproar was renewed, the people shouting, "away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live!" and paul would have been bound and scourged, had he not proclaimed that he was a roman citizen. on the next day the roman magistrate summoned the chief priests and the sanhedrim, to give paul an opportunity to make his defence in the matter of which he was accused. ananias the high-priest presided, and the roman tribune was present at the proceedings, which were tumultuous and angry. paul seeing that the assembly was made up of pharisees, sadducees, and hostile parties, made no elaborate defence, and the tribune dissolved the assembly; but forty of the most hostile and fanatical formed a conspiracy, and took a solemn oath not to eat or drink until they had assassinated him. the plot reached the ears of a nephew of paul, who revealed it to the tribune. the officer listened attentively to all the details, and at once took his resolution to send paul to caesarea, both to get him out of the hands of the jews, and to have him judged by the procurator felix. accordingly, accompanied by an escort of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen of the guard, paul was sent by night, secretly, to the roman capital of the province. he entered the city in the course of the next day, and was at once led to the presence of the governor. felix, as procurator, ruled over judaea with the power of a king. he had been a freedman of the emperor claudius, and was allied by marriage to claudius himself,--an ambitious, extortionate, and infamous governor. felix was obliged to give paul a fair trial, and after five days the indomitable missionary was confronted with accusers, among whom appeared the high-priest ananias. they associated with them a lawyer called tertullus, of oratorical gifts, who conducted the case. the principal charges made against paul were that he was a public pest and leader of seditions; that he was a ringleader of the nazarenes (the contemptuous name which the jews gave to the christians); and that he had attempted to profane the temple, which was a capital offence according to the jewish law. paul easily refuted these charges, and had felix been an upright judge he would have dismissed the case; but supposing the apostle to be rich because of the handsome contributions he had brought from asia minor for the poor converts at jerusalem, felix retained paul in the hope of a bribe. a few days after, drusilla, a young woman of great beauty and accomplishments, who had eloped from her husband to be married to felix, was desirous to hear so famous a man as paul explain his faith; and felix, to gratify her curiosity, summoned his distinguished prisoner to discourse before them. paul eagerly embraced the opportunity; but instead of explaining the christian mysteries, he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and retribution,--moral truths which even intelligent heathen accepted, and as to which the consciences of both, his hearers must have tingled; indeed, he discoursed with such matchless boldness and power that felix trembled with fear as he remembered the arts by which he had risen from the condition of a slave, and the extortions and cruelties by which he had become enriched, to say nothing of the lusts and abominations which had disgraced his career. however, he did not set paul free, but kept him a prisoner for two years, in order to gain favor with the jews, or to receive a bribe. porcius festus, the successor of felix, was a just and inflexible man, who arrived at caesarea in the year a.d., when paul was fifty-eight years of age. immediately the enemies of paul, especially the sadducees, renewed their demands to have him again tried; and festus, wishing to be just, ordered the second trial. again paul defended himself with masterly ability, proving that he had done nothing against the jewish law or temple, or against the roman emperor. festus, probably not seeing the aim of the conspirators, was disposed to send paul back to jerusalem to be tried by a jewish court. to prevent this, as at jerusalem condemnation and death would be certain, paul, remembering that he was a roman citizen, fell back on his privilege, and at once appealed to caesar himself. the governor, at first surprised by such an unexpected demand, consulted with his assistants for a moment, and then replied: "thou hast appealed unto caesar, and unto caesar shalt thou go." thus ended the trial of paul; and thus providentially was the way open to him, without expense to himself, to go to rome, which of all cities he wished to visit, and where he hoped to continue, even under bonds and restrictions, his missionary labors. in the meantime, before a ship could be got in readiness to transport him and other prisoners to rome, herod agrippa ii., with his sister bernice, came to caesarea to pay a visit to the new governor. conversation naturally turned upon the late extraordinary trial, and agrippa expressed a desire to hear the prisoner speak, for he had heard much about him. festus willingly acceded to this wish, and the next day paul was again summoned before the king and the procurator. agrippa and bernice appeared in great pomp with their attendants; all the officers of the army and the principal men of the city were also present. it was the most splendid audience that paul had ever addressed. he was equal to the occasion, and delivered a discourse on his familiar topics,--his own miraculous conversion and his mission to the gentiles to preach the crucified and risen christ,--things new to festus, who thought that paul was visionary, and had lost his balance from excess of learning. agrippa, however, familiar with jewish law and the prophecies concerning the messiah, was much impressed with paul's eloquence, and exclaimed: "almost thou persuadest me to be a christian!" when the assembly broke up, agrippa said, "this man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto caesar." paul, however, did not wish to be set at liberty among bitter and howling enemies; he preferred to go to rome, and would not withdraw his appeal. so in due time he embarked for italy under the charge of a centurion, accompanied with other prisoners and his friends timothy, luke, and aristarchus of thessalonica. the voyage from caesarea to italy was a long one, and in the autumn was a dangerous one, as in paul's case it unfortunately proved. the following spring, however, after shipwreck and divers perils and manifold fatigues, paul arrived at rome, in the year a.d., in the seventh year of the emperor nero. here the centurion handed paul over to the prefect of the praetorian guards, by whom he was subjected to a merely nominal custody, although, according to roman custom, he was chained to a soldier. but he was treated with great lenity, was allowed to have lodgings, to receive his friends freely, and to hold christian meetings in his own house; and no one molested him. for two years paul remained at rome, a fettered prisoner it is true, but cheered by friendly visits, and attended by luke, his "beloved physician" and biographer, by timothy and other devoted disciples. during this second imprisonment paul could see very little outside the praetorian barracks, but his friends brought him the news, and he had ample time to write letters. he had no intercourse with gifted and fortunate romans; his acquaintance was probably confined to the praetorian soldiers, and some of the humbler classes who sought christian instruction. but from this period we date many of his epistles, on which his fame and influence largely rest as a theologian and man of genius. among those which he wrote from rome were the epistles to the colossians, the ephesians, and many pastoral letters like those written to philemon, titus, and timothy. we know but little of the life of paul after his arrival at rome, for at this point saint luke closes his narrative, and all after this is conjecture and tradition.[ ] but the main part of paul's work was accomplished when he was first sent to rome as a prisoner to be tried in the imperial courts; and there is but little doubt that he finally met the death he so heroically contemplated, at the hands of the monster nero, who martyred such a vast multitude of paul's fellow-christians. [footnote : there has been much doubt as to whether paul was martyred during the three years of this imprisonment, or whether he was acquitted, left rome, visited his beloved churches in macedonia and asia minor, went to preach the gospel in spain, and was again arrested, taken to rome, and there beheaded. the earliest authorities seem to have been agreed upon the second hypothesis; and this is based chiefly upon a statement made by paul's disciple clement to the effect that the apostle had preached in "the extremity of the west" (an expression of roman writers to denote spain), and also on the impossibility of placing certain facts mentioned in the second letter to timothy and the one to titus in the period of the first imprisonment. he was certainly tried, defended himself, and he may have been at first acquitted.] at jerusalem and at antioch he had vindicated the freedom of the gentile from the yoke of the levitical law; in his letters to the romans and galatians he had proclaimed both to jew and gentile that they were not under the law, but under grace. during the space of twenty years paul had preached the gospel of jesus as the christ in the chief cities of the world, and had formulated the truths of christianity. what marvellous labors! but it does not appear that this apostle's extraordinary work was fully appreciated in his day, certainly not by the jewish christians at jerusalem; nor does it appear even that his pre-eminence among the apostles was conceded until the third and fourth centuries. he himself was often sad and discouraged in not seeing a larger success, yet recognized himself as a layer of foundations. like our modern missionaries, paul simply sowed the seed; the fruit was not to be gathered in until centuries after his death. before he died, as is seen in his second letter to timothy, many of his friends and disciples deserted him, and he was left almost alone. he had to defend himself single-handed against the capricious tyrant who ruled the world, and who wished to cast on the christians the stain of his greatest crime, the conflagration of his capital. as we have said, all details pertaining to the life of paul after his arrival at rome are simply conjectural, and although interesting, they cannot give us the satisfaction of certainty. but in closing, after enumerating the labors and writings of this great apostle, it is not inopportune to say a few words about his remarkable character, although i have now and again alluded to his personal traits in the course of this narrative. paul is the most prominent figure of all the great men who have adorned, or advanced the interest of, the christian church. great pulpit orators, renowned theologians, profound philosophers, immortal poets, successful reformers, and enlightened monarchs have never disputed his intellectual ascendency; to all alike he has been a model and a marvel. the grand old missionary stands out in history as a matchless example of christian living, a sure guide in christian doctrine. no more favored mortal is ever likely to appear; he is the counterpart of moses as a divine teacher to all generations. the popes may exalt saint peter as the founder of their spiritual empire, but when their empire as an institution shall crumble away, as all institutions must which are not founded on the "rock" which it was the mission of apostles to proclaim, paul will stand out the most illustrious of all christian teachers. as a man paul had his faults, but his virtues were transcendent; and these virtues he himself traced to divine grace, enabling him to conquer his infirmities and prejudices, and to perform astonishing labors, and to endure no less marvellous sufferings. his humanity was never lost in his discouraging warfare; he sympathized with human sorrows and afflictions; he was tolerant, after his conversion, of human infirmities, while enjoining a severe morality. he was a man of native genius, with profound insight into spiritual truth. trained in philosophy and disputation, his gentleness and tact in dealing with those who opposed him are a lesson to all controversialists. his voluntary sufferings have endeared him to the heart of the world, since they were consecrated to the welfare of the world he sought to enlighten. as an encouragement to others, he enumerates the calamities which happened to him from his zeal to serve mankind, but he never complains of them or regards them as a mystery, or as anything but the natural result of unappreciated devotion. he was more cheerful than confucius, who felt that his life had been a failure; more serene than plato when surrounded by admiring followers. he regarded every christian man as a brother and a friend. he associated freely with women, without even calling out a sneer or a reproach. he taught principles of self-control rather than rules of specific asceticism, and hence recommended wine to timothy and encouraged friendship between men and women, when intemperance and unchastity were the scandal and disgrace of the age; although so far as himself was concerned, he would not eat meat, if thereby he should give offence to the weakest of his weak-minded brethren. he enjoined filial piety, obedience to rulers, and kindness to servants as among the highest duties of life. he was frugal, but independent and hospitable; he had but few wants, and submitted patiently to every inconvenience. he was the impersonation of gentleness, sympathy, and love, although a man of iron will and indomitable resolution. he claimed nothing but the right to speak his honest opinions, and the privilege to be judged according to the laws. he magnified his office, but only the more easily to win men to his noble cause. to this great cause he was devoted heart and soul, without ever losing courage, or turning back for a moment in despondency or fear. he was as courageous as he was faithful; as indifferent to reproach as he was eager for friendship. as a martyr he was peerless, since his life was a protracted martyrdom. he was a hero, always gallantly fighting for the truth whatever may have been the array and howling of his foes; and when wounded and battered by his enemies he returned to the fight for his principles with all the earnestness, but without the wrath, of a knight of chivalry. he never indulged in angry recriminations or used unseemly epithets, but was unsparing in his denunciation of sin,--as seen in his memorable description of the vices of the romans. self-sacrifice was the law of his life. his faith was unshaken in every crisis and in every danger. it was this which especially fitted him, as well as his ceaseless energies and superb intellect, to be a leader of mankind. to paul, and to paul more than to any other apostle, was given the exalted privilege of being the recognized interpreter of christian doctrine for both philosophers and the people, for all coming ages; and at the close of his career, worn out with labor and suffering, yet conscious of the services which he had rendered and of the victories he had won, and possibly in view of approaching martyrdom, he was enabled triumphantly to say: "i have fought a good fight; i have finished my course; i have kept the faith. henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." lord's lectures beacon lights of history, volume i the old pagan civilizations. by john lord, ll.d., author of "the old roman world," "modern europe," etc., etc. to the memory of mary porter lord, whose friendship and appreciation as a devoted wife encouraged me to a long life of historical labors, this work is gratefully and affectionately dedicated by the author. publishers' note. in preparing a new edition of dr. lord's great work, the "beacon lights of history," it has been necessary to make some rearrangement of lectures and volumes. dr. lord began with his volume on classic "antiquity," and not until he had completed five volumes did he return to the remoter times of "old pagan civilizations" (reaching back to assyria and egypt) and the "jewish heroes and prophets." these issued, he took up again the line of great men and movements, and brought it down to modern days. the "old pagan civilizations," of course, stretch thousands of years before the hebrews, and the volume so entitled would naturally be the first. then follows the volume on "jewish heroes and prophets," ending with st. paul and the christian era. after this volume, which in any position, dealing with the unique race of the jews, must stand by itself, we return to the brilliant picture of the pagan centuries, in "ancient achievements" and "imperial antiquity," the latter coming down to the fall of rome in the fourth century a.d., which ends the era of "antiquity" and begins the "middle ages." new york, september , . author's preface. it has been my object in these lectures to give the substance of accepted knowledge pertaining to the leading events and characters of history; and in treating such a variety of subjects, extending over a period of more than six thousand years, each of which might fill a volume, i have sought to present what is true rather than what is new. although most of these lectures have been delivered, in some form, during the last forty years, in most of the cities and in many of the literary institutions of this country, i have carefully revised them within the last few years, in order to avail myself of the latest light shed on the topics and times of which they treat. the revived and wide-spread attention given to the study of the bible, under the stimulus of recent oriental travels and investigations, not only as a volume of religious guidance, but as an authentic record of most interesting and important events, has encouraged me to include a series of lectures on some of the remarkable men identified with jewish history. of course i have not aimed at an exhaustive criticism in these biblical studies, since the topics cannot be exhausted even by the most learned scholars; but i have sought to interest intelligent christians by a continuous narrative, interweaving with it the latest accessible knowledge bearing on the main subjects. if i have persisted in adhering to the truths that have been generally accepted for nearly two thousand years, i have not disregarded the light which has been recently shed on important points by the great critics of the progressive schools. i have not aimed to be exhaustive, or to give minute criticism on comparatively unimportant points; but the passions and interests which have agitated nations, the ideas which great men have declared, and the institutions which have grown out of them, have not, i trust, been uncandidly described, nor deductions from them illogically made. inasmuch as the interest in the development of those great ideas and movements which we call civilization centres in no slight degree in the men who were identified with them, i have endeavored to give a faithful picture of their lives in connection with the eras and institutions which they represent, whether they were philosophers, ecclesiastics, or men of action. and that we may not lose sight of the precious boons which illustrious benefactors have been instrumental in bestowing upon mankind, it has been my chief object to present their services, whatever may have been their defects; since it is for _services_ that most great men are ultimately judged, especially kings and rulers. these services, certainly, constitute the gist of history, and it is these which i have aspired to show. john lord. vol. i. the old pagan civilizations. contents. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. ancient religions christianity not progressive jewish monotheism religion of egypt its great antiquity its essential features complexity of egyptian polytheism egyptian deities the worship of the sun the priestly caste of egypt power of the priests future rewards and punishments morals of the egyptians functions of the priests egyptian ritual of worship transmigration of souls animal worship effect of egyptian polytheism on the jews assyrian deities phoenician deities worship of the sun oblations and sacrifices idolatry the sequence of polytheism religion of the persians character of the early iranians comparative purity of the persian religion zoroaster magism zend-avesta dualism authorities religions of india. brahmanism and buddhism. religions of india antiquity of brahmanism sanskrit literature the aryan races original religion of the aryans aryan migrations the vedas ancient deities of india laws of menu hindu pantheism corruption of brahmanism the brahmanical caste character of the brahmans rise of buddhism gautama experiences of gautama travels of buddha his religious system spread of his doctrine buddhism a reaction against brahmanism nirvana gloominess of buddhism buddhism as a reform of morals sayings of siddârtha his rules failure of buddhism in india authorities religion of the greeks and romans. classic mythology. religion of the greeks and romans greek myths greek priests greek divinities greek polytheism greek mythology adoption of oriental fables greek deities the creation of poets peculiarities of the greek gods the olympian deities the minor deities the greeks indifferent to a future state augustine view of heathen deities artists vie with poets in conceptions of divine temple of zeus in olympia greek festivals no sacred books among the greeks a religion without deities roman divinities peculiarities of roman worship ritualism and hypocrisy character of the roman authorities confucius. sage and moralist. early condition of china youth of confucius his public life his reforms his fame his wanderings his old age his writings his philosophy his definition of a superior man his ethics his views of government his veneration for antiquity his beautiful character his encouragement of learning his character as statesman his exaltation of filial piety his exaltation of friendship the supremacy of the state necessity of good men in office peaceful policy of confucius veneration for his writings his posthumous influence lao-tse authorities ancient philosophy. seeking after truth. intellectual superiority of the greeks early progress of philosophy the greek philosophy the ionian sophoi thales and his principles anaximenes diogenes of apollonia heraclitus of ephesus anaxagoras anaximander pythagoras and his school xenophanes zeno of elea empedocles and the eleatics loftiness of the greek philosopher progress of scepticism the sophists socrates his exposure of error socrates as moralist the method of socrates his services to philosophy his disciples plato ideas of plato archer butler on plato aristotle his services the syllogism the epicureans sir james mackintosh on epicurus the stoics zeno principles of the stoical philosophy philosophy among the romans cicero epictetus authorities socrates. greek philosophy. mission of socrates era of his birth; view of his times his personal appearance and peculiarities his lofty moral character his sarcasm and ridicule of opponents the sophists neglect of his family his friendship with distinguished people his philosophic method his questions and definitions his contempt of theories imperfection of contemporaneous physical science the ionian philosophers socrates bases truth on consciousness uncertainty of physical inquiries in his day superiority of moral truth happiness, virtue, knowledge,--the socratic trinity the "daemon" of socrates his idea of god and immortality socrates a witness and agent of god socrates compared with buddha and marcus aurelius his resemblance to christ in life and teachings unjust charges of his enemies his unpopularity his trial and defence his audacity his condemnation the dignity of his last hours his easy death tardy repentance of the athenians; statue by lysippus posthumous influence authorities phidias. greek art. general popular interest in art principles on which it is based phidias taken merely as a text not much known of his personal history his most famous statues; minerva and olympian jove his peculiar excellences as a sculptor definitions of the word "art" its representation of ideas of beauty and grace the glory and dignity of art the connection of plastic with literary art architecture, the first expression of art peculiarities of egyptian and assyrian architecture ancient temples, tombs, pyramids, and palaces general features of grecian architecture the doric, ionic, and corinthian orders simplicity and beauty of their proportions... the horizontal lines of greek and the vertical lines of gothic architecture assyrian, egyptian, and indian sculpture superiority of greek sculpture ornamentation of temples with statues of gods, heroes, and distinguished men the great sculptors of antiquity their ideal excellence antiquity of painting in babylon and egypt its gradual development in greece famous grecian painters decline of art among the romans art as seen in literature literature not permanent without art artists as a class art a refining influence rather than a moral power authorities literary genius. the greek and roman classics. richness of greek classic poetry homer greek lyrical poetry pindar dramatic poetry aeschylus, sophocles, and euripides greek comedy: aristophanes roman poetry naevius, plautus, terence roman epic poetry: virgil lyrical poetry: horace, catullus didactic poetry: lucretius elegiac poetry: ovid, tibullus satire: horace, martial, juvenal perfection of greek prose writers history: herodotus thucydides, xenophon roman historians julius caesar livy tacitus orators pericles demosthenes aeschines cicero learned men: varro seneca quintilian lucian authorities list of illustrations. volume i. agapè, or love feast among the early christians _frontispiece_ _after the painting by j.a. mazerolle_. procession of the sacred bull apis-osiris _after the painting by e.f. bridgman_. driving sacrificial victims into the fiery mouth of baal _after the painting by henri motte_. apollo belvedere _from a photograph of the statue in the vatican, rome._ confucian temple, forbidden city, pekin _from a photograph_. the school of plato _after the painting by o. knille_. socrates instructing alcibiades _after the painting by h.f. schopin_. socrates _from the bust in the national museum, naples_. pericles and aspasia in the studio of phidias _after the painting by hector le roux_. zeuxis choosing models from among the beauties of kroton for his picture of helen _after the painting by e. pagliano_. homer _from the bust in the national museum, naples_. demosthenes _from the statue in the vatican, rome_. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. beacon lights of history. ancient religions: egyptian, assyrian, babylonian, and persian. it is my object in this book on the old pagan civilizations to present the salient points only, since an exhaustive work is impossible within the limits of these volumes. the practical end which i have in view is to collate a sufficient number of acknowledged facts from which to draw sound inferences in reference to the progress of the human race, and the comparative welfare of nations in ancient and modern times. the first inquiry we naturally make is in regard to the various religious systems which were accepted by the ancient nations, since religion, in some form or other, is the most universal of institutions, and has had the earliest and the greatest influence on the condition and life of peoples--that is to say, on their civilizations--in every period of the world. and, necessarily, considering what is the object in religion, when we undertake to examine any particular form of it which has obtained among any people or at any period of time, we must ask, how far did its priests and sages teach exalted ideas of deity, of the soul, and of immortality? how far did they arrive at lofty and immutable principles of morality? how far did religion, such as was taught, practically affect the lives of those who professed it, and lead them to just and reasonable treatment of one another, or to holy contemplation, or noble deeds, or sublime repose in anticipation of a higher and endless life? and how did the various religions compare with what we believe to be the true religion--christianity--in its pure and ennobling truths, its inspiring promises, and its quiet influence in changing and developing character? i assume that there is no such thing as a progressive christianity, except in so far as mankind grow in the realization of its lofty principles; that there has not been and will not be any improvement on the ethics and spiritual truths revealed by jesus the christ, but that they will remain forever the standard of faith and practice. i assume also that christianity has elements which are not to be found in any other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and sublime truths. i know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain that improvements on the christian system are both possible and probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which christ and his apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion, when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. this notion i repudiate. i believe that systems of religion are perfect or imperfect, true or false, just so far as they agree or disagree with christianity; and that to the end of time all systems are to be measured by the christian standard, and not christianity by any other system. the oldest religion of which we have clear and authentic account is probably the pure monotheism held by the jews. some nations have claimed a higher antiquity for their religion--like the egyptians and chinese--than that which the sacred writings of the hebrews show to have been communicated to abraham, and to earlier men of god treated of in those scriptures; but their claims are not entitled to our full credence. we are in doubt about them. the origin of religions is enshrouded in mystical darkness, and is a mere speculation. authentic history does not go back far enough to settle this point. the primitive religion of mankind i believe to have been revealed to inspired men, who, like shem, walked with god. adam, in paradise, knew who god was, for he heard his voice; and so did enoch and noah, and, more clearly than all, abraham. they believed in a personal god, maker of heaven and earth, infinite in power, supreme in goodness, without beginning and without end, who exercises a providential oversight of the world which he made. it is certainly not unreasonable to claim the greatest purity and loftiness in the monotheistic faith of the hebrew patriarchs, as handed down to his children by abraham, over that of all other founders of ancient religious systems, not only since that faith was, as we believe, supernaturally communicated, but since the fruit of that stock, especially in its christian development, is superior to all others. this sublime monotheism was ever maintained by the hebrew race, in all their wanderings, misfortunes, and triumphs, except on occasions when they partially adopted the gods of those nations with whom they came in contact, and by whom they were corrupted or enslaved. but it is not my purpose to discuss the religion of the jews in this connection, since it is treated in other volumes of this series, and since everybody has access to the bible, the earlier portions of which give the true account not only of the hebrews and their special progenitor abraham, but of the origin of the earth and of mankind; and most intelligent persons are familiar with its details. i begin my description of ancient religions with those systems with which the jews were more or less familiar, and by which they were more or less influenced. and whether these religions were, as i think, themselves corrupted forms of the primitive revelation to primitive man, or, as is held by some philosophers of to-day, natural developments out of an original worship of the powers of nature, of ghosts of ancestral heroes, of tutelar deities of household, family, tribe, nation, and so forth, it will not affect their relation to my plan of considering this background of history in its effects upon modern times, through judaism and christianity. * * * * * the first which naturally claims our attention is the religion of ancient egypt. but i can show only the main features and characteristics of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and their perplexing names as much as possible. i wish to present what is ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure. the religion of egypt is very old,--how old we cannot tell with certainty. we know that it existed before abraham, and with but few changes, for at least two thousand years. mariette places the era of the first egyptian dynasty under menes at b.c. it is supposed that the earliest form of the egyptian religion was monotheistic, such as was known later, however, only to a few of the higher priesthood. what the esoteric wisdom really was we can only conjecture, since there are no sacred books or writings that have come down to us, like the indian vedas and the persian zend-avesta. herodotus affirms that he knew the mysteries, but he did not reveal them. but monotheism was lost sight of in egypt at an earlier period than the beginning of authentic history. it is the fate of all institutions to become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. the reason of this is not difficult to explain. the bible and human experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. hence, before abraham's visit to egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the interest of the priesthood to perpetuate. the egyptian religion was the worship of the powers of nature,--the sun, the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a mysterious influence over human destiny. there was doubtless an indefinite sense of awe in view of the wonders of the material universe, extending to a vague fear of some almighty supremacy over all that could be seen or known. to these powers of nature the egyptians gave names, and made them divinities. the egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. what it lost in logical sequence it gained in variety. wilkinson enumerates seventy-three principal divinities, and birch sixty-three; but there were some hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and presiding over different localities. every town had its guardian deity, to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. the more complicated the religious rites the more firmly cemented was the power of the priestly caste, and the more indispensable were priestly services for the offerings and propitiations. of these egyptian deities there were eight of the first rank; but the list of them differs according to different writers, since in the great cities different deities were worshipped. these were ammon--the concealed god,--the sovereign over all (corresponding to the jupiter of the romans), whose sacred city was thebes. at a later date this god was identified with ammon ra, the physical sun. ra was the sun-god, especially worshipped at heliopolis,--the symbol of light and heat. kneph was the spirit of god moving over the face of the waters, whose principal seat of worship was in upper egypt. phtha was a sort of artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city was memphis. khem was the generative principle presiding over the vegetable world,--the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. these deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and form,--a process of divine incarnation. but the most popular deity was osiris. his image is found standing on the oldest monument, a form of ra, the light of the lower world, and king and judge of hades. his worship was universal throughout egypt, but his chief temples were at abydos and philae. he was regarded as mild, beneficent, and good. in opposition to him were set, malignant and evil, and bes, the god of death. isis, the wife and sister of osiris, was a sort of sun goddess, representing the productive power of nature. khons was the moon god. maut, the consort of ammon, represented nature. sati, the wife of kneph, bore a resemblance to juno. nut was the goddess of the firmament; ma was the goddess of truth; horus was the mediator between creation and destruction. but in spite of the multiplicity of deities, the egyptian worship centred in some form upon heat or fire, generally the sun, the most powerful and brilliant of the forces of nature. among all the ancient pagan nations the sun, the moon, and the planets, under different names, whether impersonated or not, were the principal objects of worship for the people. to these temples were erected, statues raised, and sacrifices made. no ancient nation was more devout, or more constant to the service of its gods, than were the egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in india. we see, chiefly in india and egypt, the power of caste,--tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,--and powerful in proportion to the belief in a future state. take away the belief in future existence and future rewards and punishments, and there is not much religion left. there may be philosophy and morality, but not religion, which is based on the fear and love of god, and the destiny of the soul after death. saint augustine, in his "city of god," his greatest work, ridicules all gods who are not able to save the soul, and all religions where future existence is not recognized as the most important thing which can occupy the mind of man. we cannot then utterly despise the religion of egypt, in spite of the absurdities mingled with it,--the multiplicity of gods and the doctrine of metempsychosis,--since it included a distinct recognition of a future state of rewards and punishments "according to the deeds done in the body." on this belief rested the power of the priests, who were supposed to intercede with the deities, and who alone were appointed to offer to them sacrifices, in order to gain their favor or deprecate their wrath. the idea of death and judgment was ever present to the thoughts of the egyptians, from the highest to the lowest, and must have modified their conduct, stimulating them to virtue, and restraining them from vice; for virtue and vice are not revelations,--they are instincts implanted in the soul. no ancient teacher enjoined the duties based on an immutable morality with more force than confucius, buddha, and epictetus. who in any land or age has ignored the duties of filial obedience, respect to rulers, kindness to the miserable, protection to the weak, honesty, benevolence, sincerity, and truthfulness? with the discharge of these duties, written on the heart, have been associated the favor of the gods, and happiness in the future world, whatever errors may have crept into theological dogmas and speculations. believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient egyptians were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. all writers admit their industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty to priests and rulers. hence there was permanence to their institutions, for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. they were not warlike, although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings. generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific. military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar sins of egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national industries and resources. the occupation of the people was in agriculture and the useful arts, which last they carried to considerable perfection, especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and ornamental jewelry. their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but temples and mausoleums. even the pyramids may have been built to preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of the people. the priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and ceremonies to the various gods of the egyptians, were extremely numerous. they held the highest social rank, and were exempt from taxes. they were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously clean. they washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the head, and wore no beard. they practised circumcision, which rite was of extreme antiquity, existing in egypt two thousand four hundred years before christ, and at least four hundred years before abraham, and has been found among primitive peoples all over the world. they did not make a show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the brahmans. they were married, and were allowed to drink wine and to eat meat, but not fish nor beans, which disturbed digestion. the son of a priest was generally a priest also. there were grades of rank among the priesthood; but not more so than in the roman catholic church. the high-priest was a great dignitary, and generally belonged to the royal family. the king himself was a priest. the egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals, and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology. "religious observances," says freeman clarke, "were so numerous and so imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation." there were more religious festivals than among any other ancient nation. the land was covered with temples; and every temple consecrated to a single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred, supported a large body of priests. the authorities on egyptian history, especially wilkinson, speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the priesthood, and of their arduous and gloomy life of superintending ceremonies, sacrifices, processions, and funerals. their life was so full of minute duties and restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and their aspect as well as influence was austere and sacerdotal. one of the most distinctive features of the egyptian religion was the idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. osiris was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be judged. if evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies. hence it was the great object of the egyptians to preserve their mortal bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. it is difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in egypt. if a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one thousand dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. the embalmed bodies of kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and hidden in gigantic monuments. the most repulsive thing in the egyptian religion was animal-worship. to each deity some animal was sacred. thus apis, the sacred bull of memphis, was the representative of osiris; the cow was sacred to isis, and to athor her mother. sheep were sacred to kneph, as well as the asp. hawks were sacred to ra; lions were emblems of horus, wolves of anubis, hippopotami of set. each town was jealous of the honor of its special favorites among the gods. "the worst form of this animal worship," says rawlinson, "was the belief that a deity absolutely became incarnate in an individual animal, and so remained until the animal's death. such were the apis bulls, of which a succession was maintained at memphis in the temple of phtha, or, according to others, of osiris. these beasts, maintained at the cost of the priestly communities in the great temples of their respective cities, were perpetually adored and prayed to by thousands during their lives, and at their deaths were entombed with the utmost care in huge sarcophagi, while all egypt went into mourning on their decease." such was the religion of egypt as known to the jews,--a complicated polytheism, embracing the worship of animals as well as the powers of nature; the belief in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism which carried ritualistic ceremonies to the greatest extent known to antiquity, combined with the exaltation of the priesthood to such a degree as to make priests the real rulers of the land, reminding us of the spiritual despotism of the middle ages. the priests of egypt ruled by appealing to the fears of men, thus favoring a degrading superstition. how far they taught that the various objects of worship were symbols merely of a supreme power, which they themselves perhaps accepted in their esoteric schools, we do not know. but the priests believed in a future state of rewards and punishments, and thus recognized the soul to be of more importance than the material body, and made its welfare paramount over all other interests. this recognition doubtless contributed to elevate the morals of the people, and to make them religious, despite their false and degraded views of god, and their disgusting superstitions. the jews could not have lived in egypt four hundred years without being influenced by the popular belief. hence in the wilderness, and in the days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy submission to the rule of priests. in one very important thing, however, the jews escaped a degrading superstition,--that of the transmigration of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by moses of this belief that made him so remarkably silent as to a future state. it is seemingly ignored in the old testament, and hence many have been led to suppose that the jews did not believe in it. certainly the most cultivated and aristocratic sect--the sadducees--repudiated it altogether; while the pharisees held to it. they, however, were products of a later age, and had learned many things--good and bad--from surrounding nations or in their captivities, which moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls that escaped from egypt. * * * * * of the other religions with which the jews came in contact, and which more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any, have not come down to us. our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments, on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of nature, and the kings and priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. from these we learn or infer that among the assyrians, babylonians, and phoenicians religion was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a system as prevailed in egypt. only about twenty deities are alluded to in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers, to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the oversight of this world. they presided over cities and the elements of nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water. some abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the earth. of all these graven images existed, carved by men's hands,--some in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of nineveh. in the very earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was a development as men became wicked and sensual. the knowledge of the one god was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as lord of lords. this deity in assyria was asshur. he is recognized by most authorities as asshur, a son of shem and grandson of noah, who was probably the hero and leader of one of the early migrations, and, as founder of the assyrian empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified by his warlike descendants. assyria was the oldest of the great empires, occupying mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the tigris and euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east. its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of babylonia or chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although after many wars freed from the subjection of assyria, the institutions of babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as those of the elder empire. in babylonia the chief god was called el, or il. in babylon, although bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special temple for his worship. the assyrian asshur placed kings upon their thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. in speaking of him it was "asshur, my lord." he was also called "king of kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the "father of the gods." his position in the celestial hierarchy corresponds with the zeus of the greeks, and with the jupiter of the romans. he was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of ubiquity and eternity. this emblem was also the accompaniment of assyrian royalty. these assyrian and babylonian deities had a direct influence on the jews in later centuries, because traders on the tigris pushed their adventurous expeditions from the head of the persian gulf, either around the great peninsula of arabia, or by land across the deserts, and settled in canaan, calling themselves phoenicians; and it was from the descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the children of israel, returning from egypt, received the most pertinacious influences of idolatrous corruption. in phoenicia the chief deity was also called bel, or baal, meaning "lord," the epithet of the one divine being who rules the world, or the lord of heaven. the deity of the egyptian pantheon, with whom baal most nearly corresponds, was ammon, addressed as the supreme god. ranking after el in babylon, asshur in assyria, and baal in phoenicia,--all shadows of the same supreme god,--we notice among these mesopotamians a triad of the great gods, called anu, bel, and hea. anu, the primordial chaos; hea, life and intelligence animating matter; and bel, the organizing and creative spirit,--or, as rawlinson thinks, "the original gods of the earth, the heavens, and the waters, corresponding in the main with the classical pluto, jupiter, and neptune, who divided between them the dominion over the visible creation." the god bel, in the pantheon of the babylonians and assyrians, is the god of gods, and father of gods, who made the earth and heaven. his title expresses dominion. in succession to the gods of this first trio,--anu, bel, and hea,--was another trio, named siu, shamas, and vul, representing the moon, the sun, and the atmosphere. "in assyria and babylon the moon-god took precedence of the sun-god, since night was more agreeable to the inhabitants of those hot countries than the day." hence, siu was the more popular deity; but shamas, the sun, as having most direct reference to physical nature, "the lord of fire," "the ruler of the day," was the god of battles, going forth with the armies of the king triumphant over enemies. the worship of this deity was universal, and the kings regarded him as affording them especial help in war. vul, the third of this trinity, was the god of the atmosphere, the god of tempests,--the god who caused the flood which the assyrian legends recognize. he corresponds with the jupiter tonans of the romans,--"the prince of the power of the air," destroyer of crops, the scatterer of the harvest, represented with a flaming sword; but as god of the atmosphere, the giver of rain, of abundance, "the lord of fecundity," he was beneficent as well as destructive. all these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the greek mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or pursuing them with their anger. and here one cannot resist the impression that the earliest forms of the greek mythology were derived from the babylonians and phoenicians, and that the greek poets, availing themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion of greece. it is a mooted question whether the greek civilization is chiefly derived from egypt, or from assyria and phoenicia,--probably more from these old monarchies combined than from the original seat of the aryan race east of the caspian sea. all these ancient monarchies had run out and were old when the greeks began their settlements and conquests. there was still another and inferior class of deities among the assyrians and babylonians who were objects of worship, and were supposed to have great influence on human affairs. these deities were the planets under different names. the early study of astronomy among the dwellers on the plains of babylon and in mesopotamia gave an astral feature to their religion which was not prominent in egypt. these astral deities were nin, or bar (the saturn of the romans); and merodach (jupiter), the august god, "the eldest son of heaven," the lord of battles. this was the favorite god of nebuchadnezzar, and epithets of the highest honor were conferred upon him, as "king of heaven and earth," the "lord of all beings," etc. nergal (mars) was a war god, his name signifying "the great hero," "the king of battles." he goes before kings in their military expeditions, and lends them assistance in the chase. his emblem is the human-headed winged lion seen at the entrance of royal palaces. ista (venus) was the goddess of beauty, presiding over the loves of both men and animals, and was worshipped with unchaste rites. nebo (mercury) had the charge over learning and culture,--the god of wisdom, who "teaches and instructs." there were other deities in the assyrian and babylonian pantheon whom i need not name, since they played a comparatively unimportant part in human affairs, like the inferior deities of the romans, presiding over dreams, over feasts, over marriage, and the like. the phoenicians, like the assyrians, had their goddesses. astoreth, or astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as baal did the male. it was originally a name for the energy of god, on a par with baal. in one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly she was the representative of the female principle in nature, and was connected more or less with voluptuous rites,--the equivalent of aphrodite, or venus. tanith also was a noted female deity, and was worshipped at carthage and cyprus by the phoenician settlers. the name is associated, according to gesenius, with the egyptian goddess nut, and with the grecian artemis the huntress. an important thing to be observed of these various deities is that they do not uniformly represent the same power. thus baal, the phoenician sun-god, was made by the greeks and romans equivalent to zeus, or jupiter, the god of thunder and storms. apollo, the sun-god of the greeks, was not so powerful as zeus, the god of the atmosphere; while in assyria and phoenicia the sun-god was the greater deity. in babylonia, shamas was a sun-god as well as bel; and bel again was the god of the heavens, like zeus. while zeus was the supreme deity in the greek mythology, rather than apollo the sun, it seems that on the whole the sun was the prominent and the most commonly worshipped deity of all the oriental nations, as being the most powerful force in nature. behind the sun, however, there was supposed to be an indefinite creative power, whose form was not represented, worshipped in no particular temple by the esoteric few who were his votaries, and called the "father of all the gods," "the ancient of days," reigning supreme over them all. this indefinite conception of the jehovah of the hebrews seems to me the last flickering light of the primitive revelation, shining in the souls of the most enlightened of the pagan worshippers, including perhaps the greatest of the monarchs, who were priests as well as kings. the most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of antiquity, whether among egyptians, or assyrians, or babylonians, or phoenicians, or greeks, or romans, is that of oblations and sacrifices. it was even a peculiarity of the old jewish religion, as well as that of china and india. these oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin, of which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his supposed wrath or vengeance. the oblations were usually in the form of wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in greece. the sacrifices were generally of oxen, sheep, and goats, the most valued and precious of human property in primitive times, for those old heathen never offered to their deities that which cost them nothing, but rather that which was dearest to them. sometimes, especially in phoenicia, human beings were offered in sacrifice, the most repulsive peculiarity of polytheism. but the instincts of humanity generally kept men from rites so revolting. christianity, as one of its distinguishing features, abolished all forms of outward sacrifice, as superstitious and useless. the sacrifices pleasing to god are a broken spirit, as revealed to david and isaiah amid all the ceremonies and ritualism of jewish worship, and still more to paul and peter when the new dispensation was fully declared. the only sacrifice which christ enjoined was self-sacrifice, supreme devotion to a spiritual and unseen and supreme god, and to his children: as the christ took upon himself the form of a man, suffering evil all his days, and finally even an ignominious death, in obedience to his father's will, that the world might be saved by his own self-sacrifice. with sacrifices as an essential feature of all the ancient religions, if we except that of persia in the time of zoroaster, there was need of an officiating priesthood. the priests in all countries sought to gain power and influence, and made themselves an exclusive caste, more or less powerful as circumstances favored their usurpations. the priestly caste became a terrible power in egypt and india, where the people, it would seem, were most susceptible to religious impressions, were most docile and most ignorant, and had in constant view the future welfare of their souls. in china, where there was scarcely any religion at all, this priestly power was unknown; and it was especially weak among the greeks, who had no fear of the future, and who worshipped beauty and grace rather than a spiritual god. sacerdotalism entered into christianity when it became corrupted by the lust of dominion and power, and with great force ruled the christian world in times of ignorance and superstition. it is sad to think that the decline of sacerdotalism is associated with the growth of infidelity and religious indifference, showing how few worship god in spirit and in truth even in christian countries. yet even that reaction is humanly natural; and as it so surely follows upon epochs of priestcraft, it may be a part of the divine process of arousing men to the evils of superstition. among all nations where polytheism prevailed, idolatry became a natural sequence,--that is, the worship of animals and of graven images, at first as symbols of the deities that were worshipped, generally the sun, moon, and stars, and the elements of nature, like fire, water, and air. but the symbols of divine power, as degeneracy increased and ignorance set in, were in succession worshipped as deities, as in india and africa at the present day. this is the lowest form of religion, and the most repulsive and degraded which has prevailed in the world,--showing the enormous difference between the primitive faiths and the worship which succeeded, growing more and more hideous with the progress of ages, until the fulness of time arrived when god sent reformers among the debased people, more or less supernaturally inspired, to declare new truth, and even to revive the knowledge of the old in danger of being utterly lost. it is a pleasant thing to remember that the religions thus far treated, as known to the jews, and by which they were more or less contaminated, have all passed away with the fall of empires and the spread of divine truth; and they never again can be revived in the countries where they nourished. mohammedanism, a monotheistic religion, has taken their place, and driven the ancient idols to the moles and the bats; and where mohammedanism has failed to extirpate ancient idolatries, christianity in some form has come in and dethroned them forever. * * * * * there was one form of religion with which the jews came in contact which was comparatively pure; and this was the religion of persia, the loftiest form of all pagan beliefs. the persians were an important branch of the iranian family. "the iranians were the dominant race throughout the entire tract lying between the suliman mountains and the pamir steppe on the one hand, and the great mesopotamian valley on the other." it was a region of great extremes of temperature,--the summers being hot, and the winters piercingly cold. a great part of this region is an arid and frightful desert; but the more favored portions are extremely fertile. in this country the iranians settled at a very early period, probably b.c., about the time the hindus emigrated from central asia to the banks of the indus. both iranians and hindus belonged to the great aryan or indo-european race, whose original settlements were on the high table-lands northeast of samarkand, in the modern bokhara, watered by the oxus, or amon river. from these rugged regions east of the caspian sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the aryans emigrated to india on the southeast, to iran on the southwest, to europe on the west,--all speaking substantially the same language. of those who settled in iran, the persians were the most prominent,--a brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral in their conduct. they were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and gloried in their horses and cattle. they had great skill as archers and horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. they lived in fixed habitations, and their houses had windows and fireplaces; but they were doomed to a perpetual struggle with a severe and uncertain climate, and a soil which required ceaseless diligence. "the whole plateau of iran," says johnson, "was suggestive of the war of elements,--a country of great contrasts of fertility and desolation,--snowy ranges of mountains, salt deserts, and fields of beauty lying in close proximity." the early persians are represented as having oval faces, raised features, well-arched eyebrows, and large dark eyes, now soft as the gazelle's, now flashing with quick insight. such a people were extremely receptive of modes and fashions,--the aptest learners as well as the boldest adventurers; not patient in study nor skilful to invent, but swift to seize and appropriate, terrible breakers-up of old religious spells. they dissolved the old material civilization of cushite and turanian origin. what passion for vast conquests! "these rugged tribes, devoted to their chiefs, led by cyrus from their herds and hunting-grounds to startle the pampered lydians with their spare diet and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition, loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving counsel to the king even while submissive to his person, esteeming prowess before praying; their strong ambition, scorning those who scorned toil." artaxerxes wore upon his person the worth of twelve thousand talents, yet shared the hardships of his army in the march, carrying quiver and shield, leading the way to the steepest places, and stimulating the hearts of his soldiers by walking twenty-five miles a day. there was much that is interesting about the ancient persians. all the old authorities, especially herodotus, testify to the comparative purity of their lives, to their love of truth, to their heroism in war, to the simplicity of their habits, to their industry and thrift in battling sterility of soil and the elements of nature, to their love of agricultural pursuits, to kindness towards women and slaves, and above all other things to a strong personality of character which implied a powerful will. the early persians chose the bravest and most capable of their nobles for kings, and these kings were mild and merciful. xenophon makes cyrus the ideal of a king,--the incarnation of sweetness and light, conducting war with a magnanimity unknown to the ancient nations, dismissing prisoners, forgiving foes, freeing slaves, and winning all hearts by a true nobility of nature. he was a reformer of barbarous methods of war, and as pure in morals as he was powerful in war. in short, he had all those qualities which we admire in the chivalric heroes of the middle ages. there was developed among this primitive and virtuous people a religion essentially different from that of assyria and egypt, with which is associated the name of zoroaster, or zarathushtra. who this extraordinary personage was, and when he lived, it is not easy to determine. some suppose that he did not live at all. it is most probable that he lived in bactria from to b.c.; but all about him is involved in hopeless obscurity. the zend-avesta, or the sacred books of the persians, are mostly hymns, prayers, and invocations addressed to various deities, among whom ormazd was regarded as supreme. these poems were first made known to european scholars by anquetil du perron, an enthusiastic traveller, a little more than one hundred years ago, and before the laws of menu were translated by sir william jones. what we know about the religion of persia is chiefly derived from the zend-avesta. _zend_ is the interpretation of the avesta. the oldest part of these poems is called the gâthâs, supposed to have been composed by zoroaster about the time of moses. as all information about zoroaster personally is unsatisfactory, i proceed to speak of the religion which he is supposed to have given to the iranians, according to dr. martin haug, the great authority on this subject. its peculiar feature was dualism,--two original uncreated principles; one good, the other evil. both principles were real persons, possessed of will, intelligence, power, consciousness, engaged from all eternity in perpetual contest. the good power was called ahura-mazda, and the evil power was called angro-mainyus. ahura-mazda means the "much-knowing spirit," or the all-wise, the all-bountiful, who stood at the head of all that is beneficent in the universe,--"the creator of life," who made the celestial bodies and the earth, and from whom came all good to man and everlasting happiness. angro-mainyus means the black or dark intelligence, the creator of all that is evil, both moral and physical. he had power to blast the earth with barrenness, to produce earthquakes and storms, to inflict disease and death, destroy flocks and the fruits of the earth, excite wars and tumults; in short, to send every form of evil on mankind. ahura-mazda had no control over this power of evil; all he could do was to baffle him. these two deities who divided the universe between them had each subordinate spirits or genii, who did their will, and assisted in the government of the universe,--corresponding to our idea of angels and demons. neither of these supreme deities was represented by the early iranians under material forms; but in process of time corruption set in, and magism, or the worship of the elements of nature, became general. the elements which were worshipped were fire, air, earth, and water. personal gods, temples, shrines, and images were rejected. but the most common form of worship was that of fire, in mithra, the genius of light, early identified with the sun. hence, practically, the supreme god of the persians was the same that was worshipped in assyria and egypt and india,--the sun, under various names; with this difference, that in persia there were no temples erected to him, nor were there graven images of him. with the sun was associated a supreme power that presided over the universe, benignant and eternal. fire itself in its pure universality was more to the iranians than any form. "from the sun," says the avesta, "are all things sought that can be desired." to fire, the persian kings addressed their prayers. fire, or the sun, was in the early times a symbol of the supreme power, rather than the power itself, since the sun was created by ahura-mazda (ormazd). it was to him that zoroaster addressed his prayers, as recorded in the gâthâs. "i worship," said he, "the creator of all things, ahura-mazda, full of light.... teach thou me, ahura-mazda, out of thyself, from heaven by thy mouth, whereby the world first arose." again, from the khorda-avesta we read: "in the name of god, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, praise be to the name of ormazd, who always was, always is, and always will be; from whom alone is derived rule." from these and other passages we infer that the religion of the iranians was monotheistic. and yet the sun also was worshipped under the name of mithra. says zoroaster: "i invoke mithra, the lofty, the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the eye of ormazd." it would seem from this that the sun was identified with the supreme being. there was no other power than the sun which was worshipped. there was no multitude of gods, nothing like polytheism, such as existed in egypt. the iranians believed in one supreme, eternal god, who created all things, beneficent and all-wise; yet this supreme power was worshipped under the symbol of the sun, although the sun was created by him. this confounding the sun with a supreme and intelligent being makes the iranian religion indefinite, and hard to be comprehended; but compared with the polytheism of egypt and babylon, it is much higher and purer. we see in it no degrading rites, no offensive sacerdotalism, no caste, no worship of animals or images; all is spiritual and elevated, but little inferior to the religion of the hebrews. in the zend-avesta we find no doctrines; but we do find prayers and praises and supplication to a supreme being. in the vedas--the hindu books--the powers of nature are gods; in the avesta they are spirits, or servants of the supreme. "the main difference between the vedic and avestan religions is that in the latter the vedic worship of natural powers and phenomena is superseded by a more ethical and personal interest. ahura-mazda (ormazd), the living wisdom, replaces indra, the lightning-god. in iran there grew up, what india never saw, a consciousness of world-purpose, ethical and spiritual; a reference of the ideal to the future rather than the present; a promise of progress; and the idea that the law of the universe means the final deliverance of good from evil, and its eternal triumph." [ ] [footnote : samuel johnson's religion of persia.] the loftiness which modern scholars like haug, lenormant, and spiegel see in the zend-avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of these sacred writings, attributable to zoroaster, called the gâthâs. but in the course of time the avesta was subjected to many additions and interpretations, called the zend, which show degeneracy. a world of myth and legend is crowded into liturgical fragments. the old bactrian tongue in which the avesta was composed became practically a dead language. there entered into the avesta old chaldaean traditions. it would be strange if the pure faith of zoroaster should not be corrupted after persia had conquered babylon, and even after its alliance with media, where the magi had great reputation for knowledge. and yet even with the corrupting influence of the superstitions of babylon, to say nothing of media, the persian conquerors did not wholly forget the god of their fathers in their old bactrian home. and it is probable that one reason why cyrus and darius treated the jews with so much kindness and generosity was the sympathy they felt for the monotheism of the jewish religion in contrast with the polytheism and idolatry of the conquered babylonians. it is not unreasonable to suppose that both the persians and jews worshipped substantially the one god who made the heaven and the earth, notwithstanding the dualism which entered into the persian religion, and the symbolic worship of fire which is the most powerful agent in nature; and it is considered by many that from the persians the jews received, during their captivity, their ideas concerning a personal devil, or power of evil, of which no hint appears in the law or the earlier prophets. it would certainly seem to be due to that monotheism which modern scholars see behind the dualism of persia, as an elemental principle of the old religion of iran, that the persians were the noblest people of pagan antiquity, and practised the highest morality known in the ancient world. virtue and heroism went hand in hand; and both virtue and heroism were the result of their religion. but when the persians became intoxicated with the wealth and power they acquired on the fall of babylon, then their degeneracy was rapid, and their faith became obscured. had it been the will of providence that the greeks should have contended with the persians under the leadership of cyrus,--the greatest oriental conqueror known in history,--rather than under xerxes, then even an alexander might have been baffled. the great mistake of the persian monarchs in their degeneracy was in trusting to the magnitude of their armies rather than in their ancient discipline and national heroism. the consequence was a panic, which would not have taken place under cyrus, whenever they met the greeks in battle. it was a panic which dispersed the persian hosts in the fatal battle of arbela, and made alexander the master of western asia. but degenerate as the persians became, they rallied under succeeding dynasties, and in artaxerxes ii. and chosroes the romans found, in their declining glories, their most formidable enemies. though the brightness of the old religion of zoroaster ceased to shine after the persian conquests, and religious rites fell into the hands of the magi, yet it is the only oriental religion which entered into christianity after its magnificent triumph, unless we trace early monasticism to the priests of india. christianity had a hard battle with gnosticism and manichaeism,--both of persian origin,--and did not come out unscathed. no grecian system of philosophy, except platonism, entered into the christian system so influentially as the disastrous manichaean heresy, which augustine combated. the splendid mythology of the greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of egypt, assyria, and phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but persian speculations remained. even origen, the greatest scholar of christian antiquity, was tainted with them. and the mighty myths of the origin of evil, which perplexed zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both christians and the disciples of the bactrian sage. * * * * * authorities. rawlinson's egypt and babylon; history of babylonia, by a.h. sayce; smith's dictionary of the bible; rawlinson's herodotus; george smith's history of babylonia; lenormant's manuel d'histoire ancienne; layard's nineveh and babylon; journal of royal asiatic society; heeren's asiatic nations; dr. pusey's lectures on daniel; birch's egypt from the earliest times; brugsch's history of egypt; records of the past; rawlinson's history of ancient egypt; wilkinson's ancient egyptians; sayce's ancient empires of the east; rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; james freeman clarke's ten great religions; religion of ancient egypt, by p. le page renouf; moffat's comparative history of religions; bunsen's egypt's place in history; persia, from the earliest period, by w. s. w. vaux; johnson's oriental religions; haug's essays; spiegel's avesta. the above are the more prominent authorities; but the number of books on ancient religions is very large. religions of india. brahmanism and buddhism. that form of ancient religion which has of late excited the most interest is buddhism. an inquiry into its characteristics is especially interesting, since so large a part of the human race--nearly five hundred millions out of the thirteen hundred millions--still profess to embrace the doctrines which were taught by buddha, although his religion has become so corrupted that his original teachings are nearly lost sight of. the same may be said of the doctrines of confucius. the religions of ancient egypt, assyria, and greece have utterly passed away, and what we have had to say of these is chiefly a matter of historic interest, as revealing the forms assumed by the human search for a supernatural ruler when moulded by human ambitions, powers, and indulgence in the "lust of the eye and the pride of life," rather than by aspirations toward the pure and the spiritual. buddha was the great reformer of the religious system of the hindus, although he lived nearly fifteen hundred or two thousand years after the earliest brahmanical ascendency. but before we can appreciate his work and mission, we must examine the system he attempted to reform, even as it is impossible to present the protestant reformation without first considering mediaeval catholicism before the time of luther. it was the object of buddha to break the yoke of the brahmans, and to release his countrymen from the austerities, the sacrifices, and the rigid sacerdotalism which these ancient priests imposed, without essentially subverting ancient religious ideas. he was a moralist and reformer, rather than the founder of a religion. brahmanism is one of the oldest religions of the world. it was flourishing in india at a period before history was written. it was coeval with the religion of egypt in the time of abraham, and perhaps at a still earlier date. but of its earliest form and extent we know nothing, except from the sacred poems of the hindus called the vedas, written in sanskrit probably fifteen hundred years before christ,--for even the date of the earliest of the vedas is unknown. fifty years ago we could not have understood the ancient religions of india. but sir william jones in the latter part of the last century, a man of immense erudition and genius for the acquisition of languages, at that time an english judge in india, prepared the way for the study of sanskrit, the literary language of ancient india, by the translation and publication of the laws of menu. he was followed in his labors by the schlegels of germany, and by numerous scholars and missionaries. within fifty years this ancient and beautiful language has been so perseveringly studied that we know something of the people by whom it was once spoken,--even as egyptologists have revealed something of ancient egypt by interpreting the hieroglyphics; and chaldaean investigators have found stores of knowledge in the babylonian bricks. the sanskrit, as now interpreted, reveals to us the meaning of those poems called vedas, by which we are enabled to understand the early laws and religion of the hindus. it is poetry, not history, which makes this revelation, for the hindus have no history farther back than five or six hundred years before christ. it is from homer and hesiod that we get an idea of the gods of greece, not from herodotus or xenophon. from comparative philology, a new science, of which prof. max müller is one of the greatest expounders, we learn that the roots of various european languages, as well as of the latin and greek, are substantially the same as those of the sanskrit spoken by the hindus thirty-five hundred years ago, from which it is inferred that the hindus were a people of like remote origin with the greeks, the italic races (romans, italians, french), the slavic races (russian, polish, bohemian), the teutonic races of england and the continent, and the keltic races. these are hence alike called the indo-european races; and as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the zend-avesta, we infer that the ancient persians, or inhabitants of iran, belonged to the same great aryan race. the original seat of this race, it is supposed, was in the high table-lands of central asia, in or near bactria, east of the caspian sea, and north and west of the himalaya mountains. this country was so cold and sterile and unpropitious that winter predominated, and it was difficult to support life. but the people, inured to hardship and privation, were bold, hardy, adventurous, and enterprising. it is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists, which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their various modifications in different living languages, to see how the lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple aryan roots. and there, getting at the meanings of the things or thoughts the words originally expressed, we see revealed, in the reconstruction of a language that no longer exists, the material objects and habits of thought and life of a people who passed away before history began,--so imperishable are the unconscious embodiments of mind, even in the airy and unsubstantial forms of unwritten speech! by this process, then, we learn that the aryans were a nomadic people, and had made some advance in civilization. they lived in houses which were roofed, which had windows and doors. their common cereal was barley, the grain of cold climates. their wealth was in cattle, and they had domesticated the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and the dog. they used yokes, axes, and ploughs. they wrought in various metals; they spun and wove, navigated rivers in sailboats, and fought with bows, lances, and swords. they had clear perceptions of the rights of property, which were based on land. their morals were simple and pure, and they had strong natural affections. polygamy was unknown among them. they had no established sacerdotal priesthood. they worshipped the powers of nature, especially fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their dreary land. authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others again pantheistic. most of the ancient nations were controlled more or less by priests, who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their influence. whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to have been a pure theism, directly revealed by god,--which is my own conviction,--it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the sun and moon and planets. i believe this to have been a corruption of original theism; many think it to have been a stage of upward growth in the religious sense of primitive man. in all the ancient nations the sun-god was a prominent deity, as the giver of heat and light, and hence of fertility to the earth. the emblem of the sun was fire, and hence fire was deified, especially among the hindus, under the name of agni,--the latin _ignis_. fire, caloric, or heat in some form was, among the ancient nations, supposed to be the _animus mundi_. in egypt, as we have seen, osiris, the principal deity, was a form of ra, the sun-god. in assyria, asshur, the substitute for ra, was the supreme deity. in india we find mitra, and in persia mithra, the sun-god, among the prominent deities, as helios was among the greeks, and phoebus apollo among the romans. the sun was not always the supreme divinity, but invariably held one of the highest places in the pagan pantheon. it is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the hindus, persians, greeks, romans, kelts, teutons, and slavs, in their hard and sterile home in central asia, was a worship of the powers of nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the vedas representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and intelligence--god--as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and sacrifices were devoutly offered. freeman clarke quotes from müller's "ancient sanskrit literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of god is most distinctly recognized:-- "in the beginning there arose the source of golden light. he was the only lord of all that is. he established the earth and sky. who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifices? it is he who giveth life, who giveth strength, who governeth all men; through whom heaven was established, and the earth created." but if the supreme god whom we adore was recognized by this ancient people, he was soon lost sight of in the multiplied manifestations of his power, so that rawlinson thinks[ ] that when the aryan race separated in their various migrations, which resulted in what we call the indo-european group of races, there was no conception of a single supreme power, from whom man and nature have alike their origin, but nature-worship, ending in an extensive polytheism,--as among the assyrians and egyptians. [footnote : religions of the ancient world, p. .] as to these aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed the himalaya mountains, and settled on the banks of the indus, but probably it was at least two thousand years before christ. northern india had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval home. india was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and every kind of birds; a land of precious stones and minerals, of hills and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate and a sunny sky. these aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal inhabitants, who were chiefly mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading vassalage. the conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes of indian caste. it was some time after the settlement of the aryans on the banks of the indus and the ganges before the vedas were composed by the poets, who as usual gave form to religious belief, as they did in persia and greece. these poems, or hymns, are pantheistic. "there is no recognition," says monier williams, "of a supreme god disconnected with the worship of nature." there was a vague and indefinite worship of the infinite under various names, such as the sun, the sky, the air, the dawn, the winds, the storms, the waters, the rivers, which alike charmed and terrified, and seemed to be instinct with life and power. god was in all things, and all things in god; but there was no idea of providential agency or of personality. in the vedic hymns the number of gods is not numerous, only thirty-three. the chief of these were varuna, the sky; mitra, the sun; and indra, the storm: after these, agni, fire; and soma, the moon. the worship of these divinities was originally simple, consisting of prayer, praise, and offerings. there were no temples and no imposing sacerdotalism, although the priests were numerous. "the prayers and praises describe the wisdom, power, and goodness of the deity addressed," [ ] and when the customary offerings had been made, the worshipper prayed for food, life, health, posterity, wealth, protection, happiness, whatever the object was,--generally for outward prosperity rather than for improvement in character, or for forgiveness of sin, peace of mind, or power to resist temptation. the offerings to the gods were propitiatory, in the form of victims, or libations of some juice. nor did these early hindus take much thought of a future life. there is nothing in the rig-veda of a belief in the transmigration of souls[ ], although the vedic bards seem to have had some hope of immortality. "he who gives alms," says one poet, "goes to the highest place in heaven: he goes to the gods[ ].... where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed,--in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, o soma! ... where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasures reside, where the desires of our heart are attained, there make me immortal." [footnote : rawlinson, p. .] [footnote : wilson: rig-veda, vol. iii. p. .] [footnote : müller: chips from a german workshop, vol. i. p. .] in the oldest vedic poems there were great simplicity and joyousness, without allusion to those rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices which formed so prominent a part of the religion of india at a later period. four hundred years after the rig-veda was composed we come to the brahmanic age, when the laws of menu were written, when the aryans were living in the valley of the ganges, and the caste system had become national. the supreme deity is no longer one of the powers of nature, like mitra or indra, but according to menu he is brahm, or brahma,--"an eternal, unchangeable, absolute being, the soul of all beings, who, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, created the waters and placed in them a productive seed. the seed became an egg, and in that egg he was born, but sat inactive for a year, when he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above, and the earth beneath. from the supreme soul brahma drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by the senses; and before mind, the reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the internal monitor; and before them both he produced the great principle of the soul.... the soul is, in its substance, from brahma himself, and is destined finally to be resolved into him. the soul, then, is simply an emanation from brahma; but it will not return unto him at death necessarily, but must migrate from body to body, until it is purified by profound abstraction and emancipated from all desires." this is the substance of the hindu pantheism as taught by the laws of menu. it accepts god, but without personality or interference with the world's affairs,--not a god to be loved, scarcely to be feared, but a mere abstraction of the mind. the theology which is thus taught in the brahmanical vedas, it would seem, is the result of lofty questionings and profound meditation on the part of the indian sages or priests, rather than the creation of poets. in the laws of menu, intended to exalt the brahmanical caste, we read, as translated by sir william jones:-- "to a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the vedas, nor liberality, nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious austerities, ever procure felicity.... let not a man be proud of his rigorous devotion; let him not, having sacrificed, utter a falsehood; having made a donation, let him never proclaim it.... by falsehood the sacrifice becomes vain; by pride the merit of devotion is lost.... single is each man born, single he dies, single he receives the reward of the good, and single the punishment of his evil, deeds.... by forgiveness of injuries the learned are purified; by liberality, those who have neglected their duty; by pious meditation, those who have secret thoughts; by devout austerity, those who best know the vedas.... bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge.... a faithful wife who wishes to attain in heaven the mansion of her husband, must do nothing unkind to him, be he living or dead; let her not, when her lord is deceased, even pronounce the name of another man; let her continue till death, forgiving all injuries, performing harsh duties, avoiding every sensual pleasure, and cheerfully practising the incomparable rules of virtue.... the soul itself is its own witness, the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of man, ... o friend to virtue, the supreme spirit, which is the same as thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness or wickedness." such were the truths uttered on the banks of the ganges one thousand years before christ. but with these views there is an exaltation of the brahmanical or sacerdotal life, hard to be distinguished from the recognition of divine qualities. "from his high birth," says menu, "a brahman is an object of veneration, even to deities." hence, great things are expected of him; his food must be roots and fruit, his clothing of bark fibres; he must spend his time in reading the vedas; he is to practise austerities by exposing himself to heat and cold; he is to beg food but once a day; he must be careful not to destroy the life of the smallest insect; he must not taste intoxicating liquors. a brahman who has thus mortified his body by these modes is exalted into the divine essence. this was the early creed of the brahman before corruption set in. and in these things we see a striking resemblance to the doctrines of buddha. had there been no corruption of brahmanism, there would have been no buddhism; for the principles of buddhism, were those of early brahmanism. but brahmanism became corrupted. like the mosaic law, under the sedulous care of the sacerdotal orders it ripened into a most burdensome ritualism. the brahmanical caste became tyrannical, exacting, and oppressive. with the supposed sacredness of his person, and with the laws made in his favor, the brahman became intolerable to the people, who were ground down by sacrifices, expiatory offerings, and wearisome and minute ceremonies of worship. caste destroyed all ideas of human brotherhood; it robbed the soul of its affections and its aspirations. like the pharisees in the time of jesus, the brahmans became oppressors of the people. as in pagan egypt and in christian mediaeval europe, the priests held the keys of heaven and hell; their power was more than druidical. but the brahman, when true to the laws of menu, led in one sense a lofty life. nor can we despise a religion which recognized the value and immortality of the soul, a state of future rewards and punishments, though its worship was encumbered by rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices. it was spiritual in its essential peculiarities, having reference to another world rather than to this, which is more than we can say of the religion of the greeks; it was not worldly in its ends, seeking to save the soul rather than to pamper the body; it had aspirations after a higher life; it was profoundly reverential, recognizing a supreme intelligence and power, indefinitely indeed, but sincerely,--not an incarnated deity like the zeus of the greeks, but an infinite spirit, pervading the universe. the pantheism of the brahmans was better than the godless materialism of the chinese. it aspired to rise to a knowledge of god as the supremest wisdom and grandest attainment of mortal man. it made too much of sacrifices; but sacrifices were common to all the ancient religions except the persian. "he who through knowledge or religious acts henceforth attains to immortality, shall first present his body, death, to thee." whether human sacrifices were offered in india when the vedas were composed we do not know, but it is believed to be probable. the oldest form of sacrifice was the offering of food to the deity. dr. h. c. trumbull, in his work on "the blood covenant," thinks that the origin of animal sacrifices was like that of circumcision,--a pouring out of blood (the universal, ancient symbol of _life_) as a sign of devotion to the deity; and the substitution of animals was a natural and necessary mode of making this act of consecration a frequent and continuing one. this presents a nobler view of the whole sacrificial system than the common one. yet doubtless the latter soon prevailed; for following upon the devoted life-offerings to the divine friend, came propitiatory rites to appease divine anger or gain divine favor. then came in the natural human self-seeking of the sacerdotal class, for the multiplication of sacrifices tended to exalt the priesthood, and thus to perpetuate caste. again, the brahmans, if practising austerities to weaken sensual desires, like the monks of syria and upper egypt, were meditative and intellectual; they evolved out of their brains whatever was lofty in their system of religion and philosophy. constant and profound meditation on the soul, on god, and on immortality was not without its natural results. they explored the world of metaphysical speculation. there is scarcely an hypothesis advanced by philosophers in ancient or modern times, which may not be found in the brahmanical writings. "we find in the writings of these hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism, pyrrhonism, idealism. they anticipated plato, kant, and hegel. they could boast of their spinozas and their humes long before alexander dreamed of crossing the indus. from them the pythagoreans borrowed a great part of their mystical philosophy, of their doctrine of transmigration of souls, and the unlawfulness of eating animal food. from them aristotle learned the syllogism.... in india the human mind exhausted itself in attempting to detect the laws which regulate its operation, before the philosophers of greece were beginning to enter the precincts of metaphysical inquiry." this intellectual subtlety, acumen, and logical power the brahmans never lost. to-day the christian missionary finds them his superiors in the sports of logical tournaments, whenever the brahman condescends to put forth his powers of reasoning. brahmanism carried idealism to the extent of denying any reality to sense or matter, declaring that sense is a delusion. it sought to leave the soul emancipated from desire, from a material body, in a state which according to indian metaphysics is _being_, but not _existence_. desire, anger, ignorance, evil thoughts are consumed by the fire of knowledge. but i will not attempt to explain the ideal pantheism which brahmanical philosophers substituted for the nature-worship taught in the earlier vedas. this proved too abstract for the people; and the brahmans, in the true spirit of modern jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,--who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,--multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism. gradually piety was divorced from morality. siva and vishnu became worshipped, as well as brahma and a host of other gods unknown to the earlier vedas. in the sixth century before christ, the corruption of society had become so flagrant under the teachings and government of the brahmans, that a reform was imperatively needed. "the pride of race had put an impassable barrier between the aryan-hindus and the conquered aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable barrier between the different classes among the aryan people themselves." the old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the vedas, had died away. a funereal gloom hung over the land; and the gloomiest people of all were the brahmans themselves, devoted to a complicated ritual of ceremonial observances, to needless and cruel sacrifices, and a repulsive theology. the worship of nature had degenerated into the worship of impure divinities. the priests were inflated with a puerile but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste. under these circumstances buddhism arose as a protest against brahmanism. but it was rather an ethical than a religious movement; it was an attempt to remove misery from the world, and to elevate ordinary life by a reform of morals. it was effected by a prince who goes by the name of buddha,--the "enlightened,"--who was supposed by his later followers to be an incarnation of deity, miraculously conceived, and sent into the world to save men. he was nearly contemporary with confucius, although the buddhistic doctrines were not introduced into china until about two hundred years before the christian era. he is supposed to have belonged to a warlike tribe called sâkyas, of great reputed virtue, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who had entered northern india and made a permanent settlement several hundred years before. the name by which the reformer is generally known is gautama, borrowed by the sâkyas after their settlement in india from one of the ancient vedic bard-families. the foundation of our knowledge of sâkya buddha is from a life of him by asvaghosha, in the first century of our era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed after any indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north of india. the life of buddha by asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten thousand lines. it relates the miraculous conception of the indian sage, by the descent of a spirit on his mother, maya,--a woman of great purity of mind. the child was called siddârtha, or "the perfection of all things." his father ruled a considerable territory, and was careful to conceal from the boy, as he grew up, all knowledge of the wickedness and misery of the world. he was therefore carefully educated within the walls of the palace, and surrounded with every luxury, but not allowed even to walk or drive in the royal gardens for fear he might see misery and sorrow. a beautiful girl was given to him in marriage, full of dignity and grace, with whom he lived in supreme happiness. at length, as his mind developed and his curiosity increased to see and know things and people beyond the narrow circle to which he was confined, he obtained permission to see the gardens which surrounded the palace. his father took care to remove everything in his way which could suggest misery and sorrow; but a _deva_, or angel, assumed the form of an aged man, and stood beside his path, apparently struggling for life, weak and oppressed. this was a new sight to the prince, who inquired of his charioteer what kind of a man it was. forced to reply, the charioteer told him that this infirm old man had once been young, sportive, beautiful, and full of every enjoyment. on hearing this, the prince sank into profound meditation, and returned to the palace sad and reflective; for he had learned that the common lot of man is sad,--that no matter how beautiful, strong, and sportive a boy is, the time will come, in the course of nature, when this boy will be wrinkled, infirm, and helpless. he became so miserable and dejected on this discovery that his father, to divert his mind, arranged other excursions for him; but on each occasion a _deva_ contrived to appear before him in the form of some disease or misery. at last he saw a dead man carried to his grave, which still more deeply agitated him, for he had not known that this calamity was the common lot of all men. the same painful impression was made on him by the death of animals, and by the hard labors and privations of poor people. the more he saw of life as it was, the more he was overcome by the sight of sorrow and hardship on every side. he became aware that youth, vigor, and strength of life in the end fulfilled the law of ultimate destruction. while meditating on this sad reality beneath a flowering jambu tree, where he was seated in the profoundest contemplation, a _deva_, transformed into a religious ascetic, came to him and said, "i am a shaman. depressed and sad at the thought of age, disease, and death, i have left my home to seek some way of rescue; yet everywhere i find these evils,--all things hasten to decay. therefore i seek that happiness which is only to be found in that which never perishes, that never knew a beginning, that looks with equal mind on enemy and friend, that heeds not wealth nor beauty,--the happiness to be found in solitude, in some dell free from molestation, all thought about the world destroyed." this embodies the soul of buddhism, its elemental principle,--to escape from a world of misery and death; to hide oneself in contemplation in some lonely spot, where indifference to passing events is gradually acquired, where life becomes one grand negation, and where the thoughts are fixed on what is eternal and imperishable, instead of on the mortal and transient. the prince, who was now about thirty years of age, after this interview with the supposed ascetic, firmly resolved himself to become a hermit, and thus attain to a higher life, and rise above the misery which he saw around him on every hand. so he clandestinely and secretly escapes from his guarded palace; lays aside his princely habits and ornaments; dismisses all attendants, and even his horse; seeks the companionship of brahmans, and learns all their penances and tortures. finding a patient trial of this of no avail for his purpose, he leaves the brahmans, and repairs to a quiet spot by the banks of a river, and for six years practises the most severe fasting and profound meditation. this was the form which piety had assumed in india from time immemorial, under the guidance of the brahmans; for siddârtha as yet is not the "enlightened,"--he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of disease and death. siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of saving truth. his body is wasted, and his strength fails; he is near unto death. the conviction fastens on his lofty and inquiring mind that to arrive at the end he seeks he must enter by some other door than that of painful and useless austerities, and hence that the teachings of the brahmans are fundamentally wrong. he discovers that no amount of austerities will extinguish desire, or produce ecstatic contemplation. in consequence of these reflections a great change comes over him, which is the turning-point of his history. he resolves to quit his self-inflicted torments as of no avail. he meets a shepherd's daughter, who offers him food out of compassion for his emaciated and miserable condition. the rich rice milk, sweet and perfumed, restores his strength. he renounces asceticism, and wanders to a spot more congenial to his changed views and condition. siddârtha's full enlightenment, however, has not yet come. under the shade of the bôdhi tree he devotes himself again to religious contemplation, and falls into rapt ecstasies. he remains a while in peaceful quiet; the morning sunbeams, the dispersing mists, and lovely flowers seem to pay tribute to him. he passes through successive stages of ecstasy, and suddenly upon his opened mind bursts the knowledge of his previous births in different forms; of the causes of re-birth,--ignorance (the root of evil) and unsatisfied desires; and of the way to extinguish desires by right thinking, speaking, and living, not by outward observance of forms and ceremonies. he is emancipated from the thraldom of those austerities which have formed the basis of religious life for generations unknown, and he resolves to teach. buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of benares, converting by the way even brahmans themselves. he claims to have reached perfect wisdom. he is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding. while he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a middle path between penance and pleasures, even _temperance_,---the use, but not abuse, of the good things of earth. in his first sermon he declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to get rid of self. the means to this end is to forget self in deeds of mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live in the realm of devout contemplation. the active life of buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and poor. he even allows women to enter it. he thus matures his system, which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race, and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential followers, who see in him an incarnation of the deity. thus buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld on every side. he attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow would be forgotten. he could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age, disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and regulations. it is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,--from india to china, from china to japan and ceylon, until eastern asia was filled with pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some eighty-five thousand existed in china alone. buddha probably had as many converts in china as confucius himself. the buddhists from time to time were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of china, in which their sacred books were destroyed; and in india the brahmans at last regained their power, and expelled buddhism from the country. in the year a.d. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to return to secular life in china, being regarded as mere drones,--lazy and useless members of the community. but the policy of persecution was reversed by succeeding emperors. in the thirteenth century there were in china nearly fifty thousand buddhist temples and two hundred and thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the professed adherents of the religion. under the present dynasty the buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish. now, what has given to the religion of buddha such an extraordinary attraction for the people of eastern asia? buddhism has a twofold aspect,--_practical_ and _speculative_. in its most definite form it was a moral and philanthropic movement,--the reaction against brahmanism, which had no humanity, and which was as repulsive and oppressive as roman catholicism was when loaded down with ritualism and sacerdotal rites, when europe was governed by priests, when churches were damp, gloomy crypts, before the tall cathedrals arose in their artistic beauty. from a religious and philosophical point of view, buddhism at first did not materially differ from brahmanism. the same dreamy pietism, the same belief in the transmigration of souls, the same pantheistic ideas of god and nature, the same desire for rest and final absorption in the divine essence characterized both. in both there was a certain principle of faith, which was a feeling of reverence rather than the recognition of the unity and personality and providence of god. the prayer of the buddhist was a yearning for deliverance from sorrow, a hope of final rest; but this was not to be attained until desires and passions were utterly suppressed in the soul, which could be effected only by prayer, devout meditations, and a rigorous self-discipline. in order to be purified and fitted for nirvana the soul, it was supposed, must pass through successive stages of existence in mortal forms, without conscious recollection,--innumerable births and deaths, with sorrow and disease. and the final state of supreme blessedness, the ending of the long and weary transmigration, would be attained only with the extinction of all desires, even the instinctive desire for existence. buddha had no definite ideas of the deity, and the worship of a personal god is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the charge of atheism. he even supposed that gods were subject to death, and must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in nirvana. nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor death, where there is no sorrow or disease,--an impassive state of existence, absorption in the spirit of the universe. in the buddhist catechism nirvana is defined as the "total cessation of changes; a perfect rest; the absence of desire, illusion, and sorrow; the total obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man." this theory of re-births, or transmigration of souls, is very strange and unnatural to our less imaginative and subtile occidental minds; but to the speculative orientals it is an attractive and reasonable belief. they make the "spirit" the immortal part of man, the "soul" being its emotional embodiment, its "spiritual body," whose unsatisfied desires cause its birth and re-birth into the fleshly form of the physical "body,"--a very brief and temporary incarnation. when by the progressive enlightenment of the spirit its longings and desires have been gradually conquered, it no longer needs or has embodiment either of soul or of body; so that, to quote elliott coues in olcott's "buddhist catechism," "a spirit in a state of conscious formlessness, subject to no further modification by embodiment, yet in full knowledge of its experiences [during its various incarnations], is nirvanic." buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy religion. it is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease, misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided intellect to arrive at a knowledge of god and immortal bliss. it would thus seem that the true idea of god, or even that of immortality, is not an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain no clearer or more inspiring notions of the being of infinite love and power, or of the happiness which he is able and willing to impart? what a feeble conception of god is a being without the oversight of the worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or anything corresponding to our notion of personality! what a poor conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy companionship,--only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease, misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness! what is nirvana but an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no life,--a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a dreamless rest? what a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final achievement of exalted virtue! but if buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true knowledge of god and the destiny of the soul,--the forgiveness and remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality, all which i take to be revelations rather than intuitions,--yet there were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to consciousness,--certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all ages and nations. these were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity, purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love. the human mind arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about god and immortality has failed. the idea of god may be lost, but not that of moral obligation,--the mutual social duties of mankind. there is a sense of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true admiration of virtue. no sage that i ever read of enjoined immorality. no ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty. everybody detests a liar and despises a thief. thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,--these are laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of moses. obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations. hence the prince siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests, and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of deity. in all this he showed an enlightened mind, governed by wisdom and truth, and even a bold and original genius,--like abraham when he disowned the gods of his fathers. having thus himself gained the security of the heights, buddha longed to help others up, and turned his attention to the moral instruction of the people of india. he was emphatically a missionary of ethics, an apostle of righteousness, a reformer of abuses, as well as a tender and compassionate man, moved to tears in view of human sorrows and sufferings. he gave up metaphysical speculations for practical philanthropy. he wandered from city to city and village to village to relieve misery and teach duties rather than theological philosophies. he did not know that god is love, but he did know that peace and rest are the result of virtuous thoughts and acts. "let us then," said he, "live happily, not hating those who hate us; free from greed among the greedy.... proclaim mercy freely to all men; it is as large as the spaces of heaven.... whoever loves will feel the longing to save not himself alone, but all others." he compares himself to a father who rescues his children from a burning house, to a physician who cures the blind. he teaches the equality of the sexes as well as the injustice of castes. he enjoins kindness to servants and emancipation of slaves. "as a mother, as long as she lives, watches over her child, so among all beings," said gautama, "let boundless good-will prevail.... overcome evil with good, the avaricious with generosity, the false with truth.... never forget thy own duty for the sake of another's.... if a man speaks or acts with evil thoughts pain follows, as the wheel the foot of him who draws the carriage.... he who lives seeking pleasure, and uncontrolled, the tempter will overcome.... the true sage dwells on earth, as the bee gathers sweetness with his mouth and wings.... one may conquer a thousand men in battle, but he who conquers himself alone is the greatest victor.... let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his heart, 'it cannot overtake me.'... let a man make himself what he preaches to others.... he who holds back rising anger as one might a rolling chariot, him, indeed, i call a driver; others may hold the reins.... a man who foolishly does me wrong, i will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me." these are some of the sayings of the indian reformer, which i quote from extracts of his writings as translated by sanskrit scholars. some of these sayings rise to a height of moral beauty surpassed only by the precepts of the great teacher, whom many are too fond of likening to buddha himself. the religion of buddha is founded on a correct and virtuous life, as the only way to avoid sorrow and reach nirvana. its essence, theologically, is "quietism," without firm belief in anything reached by metaphysic speculation; yet morally and practically it inculcates ennobling, active duties. among the rules that buddha laid down for his disciples were--to keep the body pure; not to enter upon affairs of trade; to have no lands and cattle, or houses, or money; to abhor all hypocrisy and dissimulation; to be kind to everything that lives; never to take the life of any living being; to control the passions; to eat food only to satisfy hunger; not to feel resentment from injuries; to be patient and forgiving; to avoid covetousness, and never to tire of self-reflection. his fundamental principles are purity of mind, chastity of life, truthfulness, temperance, abstention from the wanton destruction of animal life, from vain pleasures, from envy, hatred, and malice. he does not enjoin sacrifices, for he knows no god to whom they can be offered; but "he proclaimed the brotherhood of man, if he did not reveal the fatherhood of god." he insisted on the natural equality of all men,--thus giving to caste a mortal wound, which offended the brahmans, and finally led to the expulsion of his followers from india. he protested against all absolute authority, even that of the vedas. nor did he claim, any more than confucius, originality of doctrines, only the revival of forgotten or neglected truths. he taught that nirvana was not attained by brahmanical rites, but by individual virtues; and that punishment is the inevitable result of evil deeds by the inexorable law of cause and effect. buddhism is essentially rationalistic and ethical, while brahmanism is a pantheistic tendency to polytheism, and ritualistic even to the most offensive sacerdotalism. the brahman reminds me of a dunstan,--the buddhist of a benedict; the former of the gloomy, spiritual despotism of the middle ages,--the latter of self-denying monasticism in its best ages. the brahman is like thomas aquinas with his dogmas and metaphysics; the buddhist is more like a mediaeval freethinker, stigmatized as an atheist. the brahman was so absorbed with his theological speculation that he took no account of the sufferings of humanity; the buddhist was so absorbed with the miseries of man that the greatest blessing seemed to be entire and endless rest, the cessation of existence itself,--since existence brought desire, desire sin, and sin misery. as a religion buddhism is an absurdity; in fact, it is no religion at all, only a system of moral philosophy. its weak points, practically, are the abuse of philanthropy, its system of organized idleness and mendicancy, the indifference to thrift and industry, the multiplication of lazy fraternities and useless retreats, reminding us of monastic institutions in the days of chaucer and luther. the buddhist priest is a mendicant and a pauper, clothed in rags, begging his living from door to door, in which he sees no disgrace and no impropriety. buddhism failed to ennoble the daily occupations of life, and produced drones and idlers and religious vagabonds. in its corruption it lent itself to idolatry, for the buddhist temples are filled with hideous images of all sorts of repulsive deities, although buddha himself did not hold to idol worship any more than to the belief in a personal god. "buddhism," says the author of its accepted catechism, "teaches goodness without a god, existence without a soul, immortality without life, happiness without a heaven, salvation without a saviour, redemption without a redeemer, and worship without rites." the failure of buddhism, both as a philosophy and a religion, is a confirmation of the great historical fact, that in the ancient pagan world no efforts of reason enabled man unaided to arrive at a true--that is, a helpful and practically elevating--knowledge of deity. even buddha, one of the most gifted and excellent of all the sages who have enlightened the world, despaired of solving the great mysteries of existence, and turned his attention to those practical duties of life which seemed to promise a way of escaping its miseries. he appealed to human consciousness; but lacking the inspiration and aid which come from a sense of personal divine influence, buddhism has failed, on the large scale, to raise its votaries to higher planes of ethical accomplishment. and hence the necessity of that new revelation which jesus declared amid the moral ruins of a crumbling world, by which alone can the debasing superstitions of india and the godless materialism of china be replaced with a vital spirituality,--even as the elaborate mythology of greece and rome gave way before the fervent earnestness of christian apostles and martyrs. it does not belong to my subject to present the condition of buddhism as it exists to-day in thibet, in siam, in china, in japan, in burmah, in ceylon, and in various other eastern countries. it spread by reason of its sympathy with the poor and miserable, by virtue of its being a great system of philanthropy and morals which appealed to the consciousness of the lower classes. though a proselyting religion it was never a persecuting one, and is still distinguished, in all its corruption, for its toleration. authorities. the chief authorities that i would recommend for this chapter are max müller's history of ancient sanskrit literature; rev. s. seal's buddhism in china; buddhism, by t. w. rhys-davids; monier williams's sákoontalá; i. muir's sanskrit texts; burnouf's essai sur la vêda; sir william jones's works; colebrook's miscellaneous essays; joseph muller's religious aspects of hindu philosophy; manual of buddhism, by r. spence hardy; dr. h. clay trumbull's the blood covenant; orthodox buddhist catechism, by h. s. olcott, edited by prof. elliott c. coues. i have derived some instruction from samuel johnson's bulky and diffuse books, but more from james freeman clarke's ten great religions^ and rawlinson's religions of the ancient world. religion of the greeks and romans. classic mythology. religion among the lively and imaginative greeks took a different form from that of the aryan race in india or persia. however the ideas of their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. they were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. they love, they hate, they eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures. it was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world, but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind. the religion of greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology. yet in some respects the gods of greece resembled those of phoenicia and egypt, being the powers of nature, and named after the sun, moon, and planets. their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in india and egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices. they taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they held in extraordinary reverence. they were not ascetics or enthusiasts; among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal class of the jews or the hindus. they had even no sacred books, and claimed no esoteric knowledge. nor was their office hereditary. they were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people themselves; they imposed no restraints on the conscience, and apparently cared little for morals, leaving the people to an unbounded freedom to act and think for themselves, so far as they did not interfere with prescribed usages and laws. the real objects of greek worship were beauty, grace, and heroic strength. the people worshipped no supreme creator, no providential governor, no ultimate judge of human actions. they had no aspirations for heaven and no fear of hell. they did not feel accountable for their deeds or thoughts or words to an irresistible power working for righteousness or truth. they had no religious sense, apart from wonder or admiration of the glories of nature, or the good or evil which might result from the favor or hatred of the divinities they accepted. these divinities, moreover, were not manifestations of supreme power and intelligence, but were creations of the fancy, as they came from popular legends, or the brains of poets, or the hands of artists, or the speculations of philosophers. and as everything in greece was beautiful and radiant,--the sea, the sky, the mountains, and the valleys,--so was religion cheerful, seen in all the festivals which took the place of the sabbaths and holy-days of more spiritually minded peoples. the worshippers of the gods danced and played and sported to the sounds of musical instruments, and revelled in joyous libations, in feasts and imposing processions,--in whatever would amuse the mind or intoxicate the senses. the gods were rather unseen companions in pleasures, in sports, in athletic contests and warlike enterprises, than beings to be adored for moral excellence or supernal knowledge. "heaven was so near at hand that their own heroes climbed to it and became demigods." every grove, every fountain, every river, every beautiful spot, had its presiding deity; while every wonder of nature,--the sun, the moon, the stars, the tempest, the thunder, the lightning,--was impersonated as an awful power for good or evil. to them temples were erected, within which were their shrines and images in human shape, glistening with gold and gems, and wrought in every form of grace or strength or beauty, and by artists of marvellous excellence. this polytheism of greece was exceedingly complicated, but was not so degrading as that of egypt, since the gods were not represented by the forms of hideous animals, and the worship of them was not attended by revolting ceremonies; and yet it was divested of all spiritual aspirations, and had but little effect on personal struggles for truth or holiness. it was human and worldly, not lofty nor even reverential, except among the few who had deep religious wants. one of its characteristic features was the acknowledged impotence of the gods to secure future happiness. in fact, the future was generally ignored, and even immortality was but a dream of philosophers. men lived not in view of future rewards and punishments, or future existence at all, but for the enjoyment of the present; and the gods themselves set the example of an immoral life. even zeus, "the father of gods and men," to whom absolute supremacy was ascribed, the work of creation, and all majesty and serenity, took but little interest in human affairs, and lived on olympian heights like a sovereign surrounded with the instruments of his will, freely indulging in those pleasures which all lofty moral codes have forbidden, and taking part in the quarrels, jealousies, and enmities of his divine associates. greek mythology had its source in the legends of a remote antiquity,--probably among the pelasgians, the early inhabitants of greece, which they brought with them in their migration from their original settlement, or perhaps from egypt and phoenicia. herodotus--and he is not often wrong--ascribes a great part of the mythology which the greek poets elaborated to a phoenician or egyptian source. the legends have also some similarity to the poetic creations of the ancient persians, who delighted in fairies and genii and extravagant exploits, like the labors of hercules the faults and foibles of deified mortals were transmitted to posterity and incorporated with the attributes of the supreme divinity, and hence the mixture of the mighty and the mean which marks the characters of the iliad and odyssey. the greeks adopted oriental fables, and accommodated them to those heroes who figured in their own country in the earliest times. "the labors of hercules originated in egypt, and relate to the annual progress of the sun in the zodiac. the rape of proserpine, the wanderings of ceres, the eleusinian mysteries, and the orgies of bacchus were all imported from egypt or phoenicia, while the wars between the gods and the giants were celebrated in the romantic annals of persia. the oracle of dodona was copied from that of ammon in thebes, and the oracle of apollo at delphos has a similar source." behind the oriental legends which form the basis of grecian mythology there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the pelasgians were known as ionians and the hellenes as dorians, a mystical and indefinite idea of supreme power,--as among the persians, the hindus, and the esoteric priests of egypt. in all the ancient religions the farther back we go the purer and loftier do we find the popular religion. belief in supreme deity underlies all the eastern theogonies, which belief, however, was soon perverted or lost sight of. there is great difference of opinion among philosophers as to the origin of myths,--whether they began in fable and came to be regarded as history, or began as human history and were poetized into fable. my belief is that in the earliest ages of the world there were no mythologies. fables were the creations of those who sought to amuse or control the people, who have ever delighted in the marvellous. as the magnificent, the vast, the sublime, which was seen in nature, impressed itself on the imagination of the orientals and ended in legends, so did allegory in process of time multiply fictions and fables to an indefinite extent; and what were symbols among eastern nations became impersonations in the poetry of greece. grecian mythology was a vast system of impersonated forces, beginning with the legends of heroes and ending with the personification of the faculties of the mind and the manifestations of nature, in deities who presided over festivals, cities, groves, and mountains, with all the infirmities of human nature, and without calling out exalted sentiments of love or reverence. they are all creations of the imagination, invested with human traits and adapted to the genius of the people, who were far from being religious in the sense that the hindus and egyptians were. it was the natural and not the supernatural that filled their souls. it was art they worshipped, and not the god who created the heavens and the earth, and who exacts of his creatures obedience and faith. in regard to the gods and goddesses of the grecian pantheon, we observe that most of them were immoral; at least they had the usual infirmities of men. they are thus represented by the poets, probably to please the people, who like all other peoples had to make their own conceptions of god; for even a miraculous revelation of deity must be interpreted by those who receive it, according to their own understanding of the qualities revealed. the ancient romans, themselves stern, earnest, practical, had an almost oriental reverence for their gods, so that their jupiter (father of heaven) was a majestic, powerful, all-seeing, severely just national deity, regarded by them much as the jehovah of the hebrews was by that nation. when in later times the conquest of eastern countries and of macedon and greece brought in luxury, works of art, foreign literature, and all the delightful but enervating influences of aestheticism, the romans became corrupted, and gradually began to identify their own more noble deities with the beautiful but unprincipled, self-indulgent, and tricky set of gods and goddesses of the greek mythology. the greek zeus, with whom were associated majesty and dominion, and who reigned supreme in the celestial hierarchy,--who as the chief god of the skies, the god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, was the favorite deity of the aryan race, the indra of the hindus, the jupiter of the romans,--was in his grecian presentment a rebellious son, a faithless husband, and sometimes an unkind father. his character was a combination of weakness and strength,--anything but a pattern to be imitated, or even to be reverenced. he was the impersonation of power and dignity, represented by the poets as having such immense strength that if he had hold of one end of a chain, and all the gods held the other, with the earth fastened to it, he would be able to move them all. poseidon (roman neptune), the brother of zeus, was represented as the god of the ocean, and was worshipped chiefly in maritime states. his morality was no higher than that of zeus; moreover, he was rough, boisterous, and vindictive. he was hostile to troy, and yet persecuted ulysses. apollo, the next great personage of the olympian divinities, was more respectable morally than his father. he was the sun-god of the greeks, and was the embodiment of divine prescience, of healing skill, of musical and poetical productiveness, and hence the favorite of the poets. he had a form of ideal beauty, grace, and vigor, inspired by unerring wisdom and insight into futurity. he was obedient to the will of zeus, to whom he was not much inferior in power. temples were erected to this favorite deity in every part of greece, and he was supposed to deliver oracular responses in several cities, especially at delphos. hephaestus (roman vulcan), the god of fire, was a sort of jester at the olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and lameness. he forged the thunderbolts for zeus, and was the armorer of heaven. it accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy blacksmith the husband of aphrodite, the queen of beauty and of love. ares (roman mars), the god of war, was represented as cruel, lawless, and greedy of blood, and as occupying a subordinate position, receiving orders from apollo and athene. hermes (roman mercury) was the impersonation of commercial dealings, and of course was full of tricks and thievery,--the olympian man of business, industrious, inventive, untruthful, and dishonest. he was also the god of eloquence. besides these six great male divinities there were six goddesses, the most important of whom was hera (roman juno), wife of zeus, and hence the queen of heaven. she exercised her husband's prerogatives, and thundered and shook olympus; but she was proud, vindictive, jealous, unscrupulous, and cruel,--a poor model for women to imitate. the greek poets, however, had a poor opinion of the female sex, and hence represent this deity without those elements of character which we most admire in woman,--gentleness, softness, tenderness, and patience. she scolded her august husband so perpetually that he gave way to complaints before the assembled deities, and that too with a bitterness hardly to be reconciled with our notions of dignity. the roman juno, before the identification of the two goddesses, was a nobler character, being the queen of heaven, the protectress of virgins and of matrons, and was also the celestial housewife of the nation, watching over its revenues and its expenses. she was the especial goddess of chastity, and loose women were forbidden to touch her altars. athene (roman minerva) however, the goddess of wisdom, had a character without a flaw, and ranked with apollo in wisdom. she even expostulated with zeus himself when he was wrong. but on the other hand she had few attractive feminine qualities, and no amiable weaknesses. artemis (roman diana) was "a shadowy divinity, a pale reflection of her brother apollo." she presided over the pleasures of the chase, in which the greeks delighted,--a masculine female who took but little interest in anything intellectual. aphrodite (roman venus) was the impersonation of all that was weak and erring in the nature of woman,--the goddess of sensual desire, of mere physical beauty, silly, childish, and vain, utterly odious in a moral point of view, and mentally contemptible. this goddess was represented as exerting a great influence even when despised, fascinating yet revolting, admired and yet corrupting. she was not of much importance among the romans,--who were far from being sentimental or passionate,--until the growth of the legend of their trojan origin. then, as mother of aeneas, their progenitor, she took a high rank, and the greek poets furnished her character. hestia (roman vesta) presided over the private hearths and homesteads of the greeks, and imparted to them a sacred character. her personality was vague, but she represented the purity which among both greeks and romans is attached to home and domestic life. demeter (roman ceres) represented mother earth, and thus was closely associated with agriculture and all operations of tillage and bread-making. as agriculture is the primitive and most important of all human vocations, this deity presided over civilization and law-giving, and occupied an important position in the eleusinian mysteries. these were the twelve olympian divinities, or greater gods; but they represent only a small part of the grecian pantheon. there was dionysus (roman bacchus), the god of drunkenness. this deity presided over vineyards, and his worship was attended with disgraceful orgies,--with wild dances, noisy revels, exciting music, and frenzied demonstrations. leto (roman latona), another wife of zeus, and mother of apollo and diana, was a very different personage from hera, being the impersonation of all those womanly qualities which are valued in woman,--silent, unobtrusive, condescending, chaste, kindly, ready to help and tend, and subordinating herself to her children. persephone (roman proserpina) was the queen of the dead, ruling the infernal realm even more distinctly than her husband pluto, severely pure as she was awful and terrible; but there were no temples erected to her, as the greeks did not trouble themselves much about the future state. the minor deities of the greeks were innumerable, and were identified with every separate thing which occupied their thoughts,--with mountains, rivers, capes, towns, fountains, rocks; with domestic animals, with monsters of the deep, with demons and departed heroes, with water-nymphs and wood-nymphs, with the qualities of mind and attributes of the body; with sleep and death, old age and pain, strife and victory; with hunger, grief, ridicule, wisdom, deceit, grace; with night and day, the hours, the thunder the rainbow,---in short, all the wonders of nature, all the affections of the soul, and all the qualities of the mind; everything they saw, everything they talked about, everything they felt. all these wonders and sentiments they impersonated; and these impersonations were supposed to preside over the things they represented, and to a certain extent were worshipped. if a man wished the winds to be propitious, he prayed to zeus; if he wished to be prospered in his bargains, he invoked hermes; if he wished to be successful in war, he prayed to ares. he never prayed to a supreme and eternal deity, but to some special manifestation of deity, fancied or real; and hence his religion was essentially pantheistic, though outwardly polytheistic. the divinities whom he invoked he celebrated with rites corresponding with those traits which they represented. thus, aphrodite was celebrated with lascivious dances, and dionysus with drunken revels. each deity represented the grecian ideal,--of majesty or grace or beauty or strength or virtue or wisdom or madness or folly. the character of hera was what the poets supposed should be the attributes of the queen of heaven; that of leto, what should distinguish a disinterested housewife; that of hestia, what should mark the guardian of the fireside; that of demeter, what should show supreme benevolence and thrift; that of athene, what would naturally be associated with wisdom, and that of aphrodite, what would be expected from a sensual beauty. in the main, zeus was serene, majestic, and benignant, as became the king of the gods, although he was occasionally faithless to his wife; poseidon was boisterous, as became the monarch of the seas; apollo was a devoted son and a bright companion, which one would expect in a gifted poet and wise prophet, beautiful and graceful as a sun-god should be; hephaestus, the god of fire and smiths, showed naturally the awkwardness to which manual labor leads; ares was cruel and bloodthirsty, as the god of war should be; hermes, as the god of trade and business, would of course be sharp and tricky; and dionysus, the father of the vine, would naturally become noisy and rollicking in his intoxication. thus, whatever defects are associated with the principal deities, these are all natural and consistent with the characters they represent, or the duties and business in which they engage. drunkenness is not associated with zeus, or unchastity with hera or athene. the poets make each deity consistent with himself, and in harmony with the interests he represents. hence the mythology of the poets is elaborate and interesting. who has not devoured the classical dictionary before he has learned to scan the lines of homer or of virgil? as varied and romantic as the "arabian nights," it shines in the beauty of nature. in the grecian creations of gods and goddesses there is no insult to the understanding, because these creations are in harmony with nature, are consistent with humanity. there is no hatred and no love, no jealousy and no fear, which has not a natural cause. the poets proved themselves to be great artists in the very characters they gave to their divinities. they did not aim to excite reverence or stimulate to duty or point out the higher life, but to amuse a worldly, pleasure-seeking, good-natured, joyous, art-loving, poetic people, who lived in the present and for themselves alone. as a future state of rewards and punishments seldom entered into the minds of the greeks, so the gods are never represented as conferring future salvation. the welfare of the soul was rarely thought of where there was no settled belief in immortality. the gods themselves were fed on nectar and ambrosia, that they might not die like ordinary mortals. they might prolong their own existence indefinitely, but they were impotent to confer eternal life upon their worshippers; and as eternal life is essential to perfect happiness, they could not confer even happiness in its highest sense. on this fact saint augustine erected the grand fabric of his theological system. in his most celebrated work, "the city of god," he holds up to derision the gods of antiquity, and with blended logic and irony makes them contemptible as objects of worship, since they were impotent to save the soul. in his view the grand and distinguishing feature of christianity, in contrast with paganism, is the gift of eternal life and happiness. it is not the morality which christ and his apostles taught, which gave to christianity its immeasurable superiority over all other religions, but the promise of a future felicity in heaven. and it was this promise which gave such comfort to the miserable people of the old pagan world, ground down by oppression, injustice, cruelty, and poverty. it was this promise which filled the converts to christianity with joy, enthusiasm, and hope,--yea, more than this, even boundless love that salvation was the gift of god through the self-sacrifice of christ. immortality was brought to light by the gospel alone, and to miserable people the idea of eternal bliss after the trials of mortal life were passed was the source of immeasurable joy. no sooner was this sublime expectation of happiness planted firmly in the minds of pagans, than they threw their idols to the moles and the bats. but even in regard to morality, augustine showed that the gods were no examples to follow. he ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. he shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld by the state; so that philosophers like varro could pour contempt on players with impunity, while he dared not ridicule priests for doing in the temples the same things. no wonder that the popular religion at last was held in contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty sentiments. a religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but yield to what was better. if we ascribe to the poets the creation of the elaborate mythology of the greeks,--that is, a system of gods made by men, rather than men made by gods,--whether as symbols or objects of worship, whether the religion was pantheistic or idolatrous, we find that artists even surpassed the poets in their conceptions of divine power, goodness, and beauty, and thus riveted the chains which the poets forged. the temple of zeus at olympia in elis, where the intellect and the culture of greece assembled every four years to witness the games instituted in honor of the father of the gods, was itself calculated to impose on the senses of the worshippers by its grandeur and beauty. the image of the god himself, sixty feet high, made of ivory, gold, and gems by the greatest of all the sculptors of antiquity, must have impressed spectators with ideas of strength and majesty even more than any poetical descriptions could do. if it was art which the greeks worshipped rather than an unseen deity who controlled their destinies, and to whom supreme homage was due, how nobly did the image before them represent the highest conceptions of the attributes to be ascribed to the king of heaven! seated on his throne, with the emblems of sovereignty in his hands and attendant deities around him, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions, and his face expressive of majesty and sweetness, power in repose, benevolence blended with strength,--the image of the olympian deity conveyed to the minds of his worshippers everything that could inspire awe, wonder, and goodness, as well as power. no fear was blended with admiration, since his favor could be won by the magnificent rites and ceremonies which were instituted in his honor. clarke alludes to the sculptured apollo belvedere as giving a still more elevated idea of the sun-god than the poets themselves,--a figure expressive of the highest thoughts of the hellenic mind,--and quotes milman in support of his admiration:-- "all, all divine! no struggling muscle glows, through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows; but, animate with deity alone, in deathless glory lives the breathing stone." if a christian poet can see divinity in the chiselled stone, why should we wonder at the worship of art by the pagan greeks? the same could be said of the statues of artemis, of pallas-athene, of aphrodite, and other "divine" productions of grecian artists, since they represented the highest ideal the world has seen of beauty, grace, loveliness, and majesty, which the greeks adored. hence, though the statues of the gods are in human shape, it was not men that the greeks worshipped, but those qualities of mind and those forms of beauty to which the cultivated intellect instinctively gave the highest praise. no one can object to this boundless admiration which the greeks had for art in its highest forms, in so far as that admiration became worship. it was the divorce of art from morals which called out the indignation and censure of the christian fathers, and even undermined the religion of philosophers so far as it had been directed to the worship of the popular deities, which were simply creations of poets and artists. it is difficult to conceive how the worship of the gods could have been kept up for so long a time, had it not been for the festivals. this wise provision for providing interest and recreation for the people was also availed of by the mosaic ritual among the hebrews, and has been a part of most well-organized religious systems. the festivals were celebrated in honor not merely of deities, but of useful inventions, of the seasons of the year, of great national victories,--all which were religious in the pagan sense, and constituted the highest pleasures of grecian life. they were observed with great pomp and splendor in the open air in front of temples, in sacred groves, wherever the people could conveniently assemble to join in jocund dances, in athletic sports, and whatever could animate the soul with festivity and joy. hence the religious worship of the greeks was cheerful, and adapted itself to the tastes and pleasures of the people; it was, however, essentially worldly, and sometimes degrading. it was similar in its effects to the rural sports of the yeomanry of the middle ages, and to the theatrical representations sometimes held in mediaeval churches,--certainly to the processions and pomps which the catholic clergy instituted for the amusement of the people. hence the sneering but acute remark of gibbon, that all religions were equally true to the people, equally false to philosophers, and equally useful to rulers. the state encouraged and paid for sacrifices, rites, processions, and scenic dances on the same principle that they gave corn to the people to make them contented in their miseries, and severely punished those who ridiculed the popular religion when it was performed in temples, even though it winked at the ridicule of the same performances in the theatres. among the greeks there were no sacred books like the hindu vedas or hebrew scriptures, in which the people could learn duties and religious truths. the priests taught nothing; they merely officiated at rites and ceremonies. it is difficult to find out what were the means and forms of religious instruction, so far as pertained to the heart and conscience. duties were certainly not learned from the ministers of religion. from what source did the people learn the necessity of obedience to parents, of conjugal fidelity, of truthfulness, of chastity, of honesty? it is difficult to tell. the poets and artists taught ideas of beauty, of grace, of strength; and nature in her grandeur and loveliness taught the same things. hence a severe taste was cultivated, which excluded vulgarity and grossness in the intercourse of life. it was the rule to be courteous, affable, gentlemanly, for all this was in harmony with the severity of art. the comic poets ridiculed pretension, arrogance, quackery, and lies. patriotism, which was learned from the dangers of the state, amid warlike and unscrupulous neighbors, called out many manly virtues, like courage, fortitude, heroism, and self-sacrifice. a hard and rocky soil necessitated industry, thrift, and severe punishment on those who stole the fruits of labor, even as miners in the rocky mountains sacredly abstain from appropriating the gold of their fellow-laborers. self-interest and self-preservation dictated many laws which secured the welfare of society. the natural sacredness of home guarded the virtue of wives and children; the natural sense of justice raised indignation against cheating and tricks in trade. men and women cannot live together in peace and safety without observing certain conditions, which may be ranked with virtues even among savages and barbarians,--much more so in cultivated and refined communities. the graces and amenities of life can exist without reference to future rewards and punishments. the ultimate law of self-preservation will protect men in ordinary times against murder and violence, and will lead to public and social enactments which bad men fear to violate. a traveller ordinarily feels as safe in a highly-civilized pagan community as in a christian city. the "heathen chinee" fears the officers of the law as much as does a citizen of london. the great difference between a pagan and a christian people is in the power of conscience, in the sense of a moral accountability to a spiritual deity, in the hopes or fears of a future state,--motives which have a powerful influence on the elevation of individual character and the development of higher types of social organization. but whatever laws are necessary for the maintenance of order, the repression of violence, of crimes against person and the state and the general material welfare of society, are found in pagan as well as in christian states; and the natural affections,--of paternal and filial love, friendship, patriotism, generosity, etc.,--while strengthened by christianity, are also an inalienable part of the god-given heritage of all mankind. we see many heroic traits, many manly virtues, many domestic amenities, and many exalted sentiments in pagan greece, even if these were not taught by priests or sages. every man instinctively clings to life, to property, to home, to parents, to wife and children; and hence these are guarded in every community, and the violation of these rights is ever punished with greater or less severity for the sake of general security and public welfare, even if there be no belief in god. religion, loftily considered, has but little to do with the temporal interests of men. governments and laws take these under their protection, and it is men who make governments and laws. they are made from the instinct of self-preservation, from patriotic aspirations, from the necessities of civilization. religion, from the christian standpoint, is unworldly, having reference to the life which is to come, to the enlightenment of the conscience, to restraint from sins not punishable by the laws, and to the inspiration of virtues which have no worldly reward. this kind of religion was not taught by grecian priests or poets or artists, and did not exist in greece, with all its refinements and glories, until partially communicated by those philosophers who meditated on the secrets of nature, the mighty mysteries of life, and the duties which reason and reflection reveal. and it may be noticed that the philosophers themselves, who began with speculations on the origin of the universe, the nature of the gods, the operations of the mind, and the laws of matter, ended at last with ethical inquiries and injunctions. we see this illustrated in socrates and zeno. they seemed to despair of finding out god, of explaining the wonders of his universe, and came down to practical life in its sad realities,--like solomon himself when he said, "fear god and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." in ethical teachings and inquiries some of these philosophers reached a height almost equal to that which christian sages aspired to climb; and had the world practised the virtues which they taught, there would scarcely have been need of a new revelation, so far as the observance of rules to promote happiness on earth is concerned. but these pagan sages did not hold out hopes beyond the grave. they even doubted whether the soul was mortal or immortal. they did teach many ennobling and lofty truths for the enlightenment of thinkers; but they held out no divine help, nor any hope of completing in a future life the failures of this one; and hence they failed in saving society from a persistent degradation, and in elevating ordinary men to those glorious heights reached by the christian converts. that was the point to which augustine directed his vast genius and his unrivalled logic. he admitted that arts might civilize, and that the elaborate mythology which he ridiculed was interesting to the people, and was, as a creation of the poets, ingenious and beautiful; but he showed that it did not reveal a future state, that it did not promise eternal happiness, that it did not restrain men from those sins which human laws could not punish, and that it did not exalt the soul to lofty communion with the deity, or kindle a truly spiritual life, and therefore was worthless as a religion, imbecile to save, and only to be classed with those myths which delight an ignorant or sensuous people, and with those rites which are shrouded in mystery and gloom. nor did he, in his matchless argument against the gods of greece and rome, take for his attack those deities whose rites were most degrading and senseless, and which the thinking world despised, but the most lofty forms of pagan religion, such as were accepted by moralists and philosophers like seneca and plato. and thus he reached the intelligence of the age, and gave a final blow to all the gods of antiquity. it would be instructive to show that the religion of greece, as embraced by the people, did not prevent or even condemn those social evils that are the greatest blot on enlightened civilization. it did not discourage slavery, the direst evil which ever afflicted humanity; it did not elevate woman to her true position at home or in public; it ridiculed those passive virtues that are declared and commended in the sermon on the mount; it did not pronounce against the wickedness of war, or the vanity of military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show that the love of money is a root of all evil. it made sensual pleasure and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable deities was without god in the world,--which was no religion at all, but a fable, a delusion, and a superstition, as paul argued before the assembled intellect of the most fastidious and cultivated city of the world. and yet we see among those who worshipped the gods of greece a sense of dependence on supernatural power; and this dependence stands out, both in the iliad and the odyssey, among the boldest heroes. they seem to be reverential to the powers above them, however indefinite their views. in the best ages of greece the worship of the various deities was sincere and universal, and was attended with sacrifices to propitiate favor or avert their displeasure. it does not appear that these sacrifices were always offered by priests. warriors, kings, and heroes themselves sacrificed oxen, sheep, and goats, and poured out libations to the gods. homer's heroes were very strenuous in the exercise of these duties; and they generally traced their calamities and misfortunes to the neglect of sacrifices, which was a great offence to the deities, from zeus down to inferior gods. we read, too, that the gods were supplicated in fervent prayer. there was universally felt, in earlier times, a need of divine protection. if the gods did not confer eternal life, they conferred, it was supposed, temporal and worldly good. people prayed for the same blessings that the ancient jews sought from jehovah. in this sense the early greeks were religious. irreverence toward the gods was extremely rare. the people, however, did not pray for divine guidance in the discharge of duty, but for the blessings which would give them health and prosperity. we seldom see a proud self-reliance even among the heroes of the iliad, but great solicitude to secure aid from the deities they worshipped. * * * * * the religion of the romans differed in some respects from that of the greeks, inasmuch as it was emphatically a state religion. it was more of a ritual and a ceremony. it included most of the deities of the greek pantheon, but was more comprehensive. it accepted the gods of all the nations that composed the empire, and placed them in the pantheon,--even mithra, the persian sun-god, and the isis and osiris of the egyptians, to whom sacrifices were made by those who worshipped them at home. it was also a purer mythology, and rejected many of the blasphemous myths concerning the loves and quarrels of the grecian deities. it was more practical and less poetical. every roman god had something to do, some useful office to perform. several divinities presided over the birth and nursing of an infant, and they were worshipped for some fancied good, for the benefits which they were supposed to bestow. there was an elaborate "division of labor" among them. a divinity presided over bakers, another over ovens,--every vocation and every household transaction had its presiding deities. there were more superstitious rites practised by the romans than by the greeks,--such as examining the entrails of beasts and birds for good or bad omens. great attention was given to dreams and rites of divination. the roman household gods were of great account, since there was a more defined and general worship of ancestors than among the greeks. these were the _penates_, or familiar household gods, the guardians of the home, whose fire on the sacred hearth was perpetually burning, and to whom every meal was esteemed a sacrifice. these included a _lar_, or ancestral family divinity, in each house. there were vestal virgins to guard the most sacred places. there was a college of pontiffs to regulate worship and perform the higher ceremonies, which were complicated and minute. the pontiffs were presided over by one called pontifex maximus,--a title shrewdly assumed by caesar to gain control of the popular worship, and still surviving in the title of the pope of rome with his college of cardinals. there were augurs and haruspices to discover the will of the gods, according to entrails and the flight of birds. the festivals were more numerous in rome than in greece, and perhaps were more piously observed. about one day in four was set apart for the worship of particular gods, celebrated by feasts and games and sacrifices. the principal feast days were in honor of janus, the great god of the sabines, the god of beginnings, celebrated on the first of january, to which month he gave his name; also the feasts in honor of the penates, of mars, of vesta, of minerva, of venus, of ceres, of juno, of jupiter, and of saturn. the saturnalia, december , in honor of saturn, the annual thanksgiving, lasted seven days, when the rich kept open house and slaves had their liberty,--the most joyous of the festivals. the feast of minerva lasted five days, when offerings were made by all mechanics, artists, and scholars. the feast of cybele, analogous to that of ceres in greece and isis in egypt, lasted six days. these various feasts imposed great contributions on the people, and were managed by the pontiffs with the most minute observances and legalities. the principal roman divinities were the olympic gods under latin names, like jupiter, juno, mars, minerva, neptune, vesta, apollo, venus, ceres, and diana; but the secondary deities were almost innumerable. some of the deities were of etruscan, some of sabine, and some of latin origin; but most of them were imported from greece or corresponded with those of the greek mythology. many were manufactured by the pontiffs for utilitarian purposes, and were mere abstractions, like hope, fear, concord, justice, clemency, etc., to which temples were erected. the powers of nature were also worshipped, like the sun, the moon, and stars. the best side of roman life was represented in the worship of vesta, who presided over the household fire and home, and was associated with the lares and penates. of these household gods the head of the family was the officiating minister who offered prayers and sacrifices. the vestal virgins received especial honor, and were appointed by the pontifex maximus. thus the romans accounted themselves very religious, and doubtless are to be so accounted, certainly in the same sense as were the athenians by the apostle paul, since altars, statues, and temples in honor of gods were everywhere present to the eye, and rites and ceremonies were most systematically and mechanically observed according to strict rules laid down by the pontiffs. they were grave and decorous in their devotions, and seemed anxious to learn from their augurs and haruspices the will of the gods; and their funeral ceremonies were held with great pomp and ceremony. as faith in the gods declined, ceremonies and pomps were multiplied, and the ice of ritualism accumulated on the banks of piety. superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. worship in the temples was most imposing when the amours and follies of the gods were most ridiculed in the theatres; and as the state was rigorous in its religious observances, hypocrisy became the vice of the most prominent and influential citizens. what sincerity was there in julius caesar when he discharged the duties of high-priest of the republic? it was impossible for an educated roman who read plato and zeno to believe in janus and juno. it was all very well for the people so to believe, he said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of the human race. if the romans were more devoted to mere external and ritualistic services than the greeks,--more outwardly religious,--they were also more hypocritical. if they were not professed freethinkers,--for the state did not tolerate opposition or ridicule of those things which it instituted or patronized,--religion had but little practical effect on their lives. the romans were more immoral yet more observant of religious ceremonies than the greeks, who acted and thought as they pleased. intellectual independence was not one of the characteristics of the roman citizen. he professed to think as the state prescribed, for the masters of the world were the slaves of the state in religion as in war. the romans were more gross in their vices as they were more pharisaical in their profession than the greeks, whom they conquered and imitated. neither the sincere worship of ancestors, nor the ceremonies and rites which they observed in honor of their innumerable divinities, softened the severity of their character, or weakened their passion for war and bloody sports. their hard and rigid wills were rarely moved by the cries of agony or the shrieks of despair. their slavery was more cruel than among any nation of antiquity. butchery and legalized murder were the delight of romans in their conquering days, as were inhuman sports in the days of their political decline. where was the spirit of religion, as it was even in india and egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure was the universal pursuit; when feastings and banquets were riotous and expensive, and violence and rapine were restrained only by the strong arm of law dictated by instincts of self-preservation? where was the ennobling influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in them? how powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring as to call out the terrible invective of paul, the cosmopolitan traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted christian missionary, indicting not a few, but a whole people: "who exchanged the truth of god for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of god, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections, unmerciful." an awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the roman writers of that day as certainly no worse than the hideous reality. if this was the outcome of the most exquisitely poetical and art-inspiring mythology the world has ever known, what wonder that the pure spirituality of jesus the christ, shining into that blackness of darkness, should have been hailed by perishing millions as the "light of the world"! * * * * * authorities. rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; grote's history of greece; thirlwall's history of greece; homer's iliad and odyssey; max müller's chips from a german workshop; curtius's history of greece; mr. gladstone's homer and the homeric age; rawlinson's herodotus; döllinger's jew and gentile; fenton's lectures on ancient and modern greece; smith's dictionary of greek and roman mythology; clarke's ten great religions; dwight's mythology; saint augustine's city of god. confucius. sage and moralist. - b.c. about one hundred years after the great religious movement in india under buddha, a man was born in china who inaugurated a somewhat similar movement there, and who impressed his character and principles on three hundred millions of people. it cannot be said that he was the founder of a new religion, since he aimed only to revive what was ancient. to quote his own words, he was "a transmitter, and not a maker." but he was, nevertheless, a very extraordinary character; and if greatness is to be measured by results, i know of no heathen teacher whose work has been so permanent. in genius, in creative power, he was inferior to many; but in influence he has had no equal among the sages of the world. "confucius" is a latin name given him by jesuit missionaries in china; his real name was k'ung-foo-tseu. he was born about b.c., in the province of loo, and was the contemporary of belshazzar, of cyrus, of croesus, and of pisistratus. it is claimed that confucius was a descendant of one of the early emperors of china, of the chow dynasty, b.c.; but he was simply of an upper-class family of the state of loo, one of the provinces of the empire,--his father and grandfather having been prime ministers to the reigning princes or dukes of loo, which state resembled a feudal province of france in the middle ages, acknowledging only a nominal fealty to the emperor. we know but little of the early condition of china. the earliest record of events which can be called history takes us back to about b.c., when yaou was emperor,--an intelligent and benignant prince, uniting under his sway the different states of china, which had even then reached a considerable civilization, for the legendary or mythical history of the country dates back about five thousand years. yaou's son shun was an equally remarkable man, wise and accomplished, who lived only to advance the happiness of his subjects. at that period the religion of china was probably monotheistic. the supreme being was called shang-te, to whom sacrifices were made, a deity who exercised a superintending care of the universe; but corruptions rapidly crept in, and a worship of the powers of nature and of the spirits of departed ancestors, who were supposed to guard the welfare of their descendants, became the prevailing religion. during the reigns of these good emperors the standard of morality was high throughout the empire. but morals declined,--the old story in all the states of the ancient world. in addition to the decline in morals, there were political discords and endless wars between the petty princes of the empire. to remedy the political and moral evils of his time was the great desire and endeavor of confucius. the most marked feature in the religion of the chinese, before his time, was the worship of ancestors, and this worship he did not seek to change. "confucius taught three thousand disciples, of whom the more eminent became influential authors. like plato and xenophon, they recorded the sayings of their master, and his maxims and arguments preserved in their works were afterward added to the national collection of the sacred books called the 'nim classes.'" confucius was a mere boy when his father died, and we know next to nothing of his early years. at fifteen years of age, however, we are told that he devoted himself to learning, pursuing his studies under considerable difficulties, his family being poor. he married when he was nineteen years of age; and in the following year was born his son le, his only child, of whose descendants eleven thousand males were living one hundred and fifty years ago, constituting the only hereditary nobility of china,--a class who for seventy generations were the recipients of the highest honors and privileges. on the birth of le, the duke ch'aou of loo sent confucius a present of a carp, which seems to indicate that he was already distinguished for his attainments. at twenty years of age confucius entered upon political duties, being the superintendent of cattle, from which, for his fidelity and ability, he was promoted to the higher office of distributer of grain, having attracted the attention of his sovereign. at twenty-two he began his labors as a public teacher, and his house became the resort of enthusiastic youth who wished to learn the doctrines of antiquity. these were all that the sage undertook to teach,--not new and original doctrines of morality or political economy, but only such as were established from a remote antiquity, going back two thousand years before he was born. there is no improbability in this alleged antiquity of the chinese empire, for egypt at this time was a flourishing state. at twenty-nine years of age confucius gave his attention to music, which he studied under a famous master; and to this art he devoted no small part of his life, writing books and treatises upon it. six years afterward, at thirty-five, he had a great desire to travel; and the reigning duke, in whose service he was as a high officer of state, put at his disposal a carriage and two horses, to visit the court of the emperor, whose sovereignty, however, was only nominal. it does not appear that confucius was received with much distinction, nor did he have much intercourse with the court or the ministers. he was a mere seeker of knowledge, an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the founder of the dynasty of chow, an observer of customs, like herodotus. he wandered for eight years among the various provinces of china, teaching as he went, but without making a great impression. moreover, he was regarded with jealousy by the different ministers of princes; one of them, however, struck with his wisdom and knowledge, wished to retain him in his service. on the return of confucius to loo, he remained fifteen years without official employment, his native province being in a state of anarchy. but he was better employed than in serving princes, prosecuting his researches into poetry, history, ceremonies, and music,--a born scholar, with insatiable desire of knowledge. his great gifts and learning, however, did not allow him to remain without public employment. he was made governor of an important city. as chief magistrate of this city, he made a marvellous change in the manners of the people. the duke, surprised at what he saw, asked if his rules could be employed to govern a whole state; and confucius told him that they could be applied to the government of the empire. on this the duke appointed him assistant superintendent of public works,--a great office, held only by members of the ducal family. so many improvements did confucius make in agriculture that he was made minister of justice; and so wonderful was his management, that soon there was no necessity to put the penal laws in execution, since no offenders could be found. confucius held his high office as minister of justice for two years longer, and some suppose he was made prime minister. his authority certainly continued to increase. he exalted the sovereign, depressed the ministers, and weakened private families,--just as richelieu did in france, strengthening the throne at the expense of the nobility. it would thus seem that his political reforms were in the direction of absolute monarchy, a needed force in times of anarchy and demoralization. so great was his fame as a statesman that strangers came from other states to see him. these reforms in the state of loo gave annoyance to the neighboring princes; and to undermine the influence of confucius with the duke, these princes sent the duke a present of eighty beautiful girls, possessing musical and dancing accomplishments, and also one hundred and twenty splendid horses. as the duke soon came to think more of his girls and horses than of his reforms, confucius became disgusted, resigned his office, and retired to private life. then followed thirteen years of homeless wandering. he was now fifty-six years of age, depressed and melancholy in view of his failure with princes. he was accompanied in his travels by some of his favorite disciples, to whom he communicated his wisdom. but his fame preceded him wherever he journeyed, and such was the respect for his character and teachings that he was loaded with presents by the people, and was left unmolested to do as he pleased. the dissoluteness of courts filled him with indignation and disgust; and he was heard to exclaim on one occasion, "i have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty,"--meaning the beauty of women. the love of the beautiful, in an artistic sense, is a greek and not an oriental idea. in the meantime confucius continued his wanderings from city to city and state to state, with a chosen band of disciples, all of whom became famous. he travelled for the pursuit of knowledge, and to impress the people with his doctrines. a certain one of his followers was questioned by a prince as to the merits and peculiarities of his master, but was afraid to give a true answer. the sage hearing of it, said, "you should have told him, he is simply a man who in his eager pursuit of knowledge forgets his food, who in the joy of his attainments forgets his sorrows, and who does not perceive that old age is coming on." how seldom is it that any man reaches such a height! in a single sentence the philosopher describes himself truly and impressively. at last, in the year b.c., a new sovereign reigned in loo, and with costly presents invited confucius to return to his native state. the philosopher was now sixty-nine years of age, and notwithstanding the respect in which he was held, the world cannot be said to have dealt kindly with him. it is the fate of prophets and sages to be rejected. the world will not bear rebukes. even a friend, if discreet, will rarely venture to tell another friend his faults. confucius told the truth when pressed, but he does not seem to have courted martyrdom; and his manners and speech were too bland, too proper, too unobtrusive to give much offence. luther was aided in his reforms by his very roughness and boldness, but he was surrounded by a different class of people from those whom confucius sought to influence. conventional, polite, considerate, and a great respecter of persons in authority was the chinese sage. a rude, abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks; whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same as they are at the present day,--a people governed by the laws of propriety alone. the few remaining years of confucius' life were spent in revising his writings; but his latter days were made melancholy by dwelling on the evils of the world that he could not remove. disappointment also had made him cynical and bitter, like solomon of old, although from different causes. he survived his son and his most beloved disciples. as he approached the dark valley he uttered no prayer, and betrayed no apprehension. death to him was a rest. he died at the age of seventy-three. in the tenth book of his analects we get a glimpse of the habits of the philosopher. he was a man of rule and ceremony.-he was particular about his dress and appearance. he was no ascetic, but moderate and temperate. he lived chiefly on rice, like the rest of his countrymen, but required to have his rice cooked nicely, and his meat cut properly. he drank wine freely, but was never known to have obscured his faculties by this indulgence. i do not read that tea was then in use. he was charitable and hospitable, but not ostentatious. he generally travelled in a carriage with two horses, driven by one of his disciples; but a carriage in those days was like one of our carts. in his village, it is said, he looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was grave, but self-possessed. when eating he did not converse; when in bed he did not speak. if his mat were not straight he did not sit on it. when a friend sent him a present he did not bow; the only present for which he bowed was that of the flesh of sacrifice. he was capable of excessive grief, with all his placidity. when his favorite pupil died, he exclaimed, "heaven is destroying me!" his disciples on this said, "sir, your grief is excessive." "it is excessive," he replied. "if i am not to mourn bitterly for this man, for whom should i mourn?" the reigning prince of loo caused a temple to be erected over the remains of confucius, and the number of his disciples continually increased. the emperors of the falling dynasty of chow had neither the intelligence nor the will to do honor to the departed philosopher, but the emperors of the succeeding dynasties did all they could to perpetuate his memory. during his life confucius found ready acceptance for his doctrines, and was everywhere revered among the people, though not uniformly appreciated by the rulers, nor able permanently to establish the reforms he inaugurated. after his death, however, no honor was too great to be rendered him. the most splendid temple in china was built over his grave, and he received a homage little removed from worship. his writings became a sacred rule of faith and practice; schools were based upon them, and scholars devoted themselves to their interpretation. for two thousand years confucius has reigned supreme,--the undisputed teacher of a population of three or four hundred millions. confucius must be regarded as a man of great humility, conscious of infirmities and faults, but striving after virtue and perfection. he said of himself, "i have striven to become a man of perfect virtue, and to teach others without weariness; but the character of the superior man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what i have not attained to. i am not one born in the possession of knowledge, but i am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. i am a transmitter, and not a maker." if he did not lay claim to divine illumination, he felt that he was born into the world for a special purpose; not to declare new truths, not to initiate any new ceremony, but to confirm what he felt was in danger of being lost,--the most conservative of all known reformers. confucius left behind voluminous writings, of which his analects, his book of poetry, his book of history, and his rules of propriety are the most important. it is these which are now taught, and have been taught for two thousand years, in the schools and colleges of china. the chinese think that no man so great and perfect as he has ever lived. his writings are held in the same veneration that christians attach to their own sacred literature. there is this one fundamental difference between the authors of the bible and the chinese sage,--that he did not like to talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of philosophy or theology. he had no taste or capacity for such inquiries. hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the ionian philosophers, on the creation or end of things. he was not troubled about the origin or destiny of man. he meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics, but he earnestly and consistently strove to bring to light and to enforce those principles which had made remote generations wise and virtuous. he confined his attention to outward phenomena,--to the world of sense and matter; to forms, precedents, ceremonies, proprieties, rules of conduct, filial duties, and duties to the state; enjoining temperance, honesty, and sincerity as the cardinal and fundamental laws of private and national prosperity. he was no prophet of wrath, though living in a corrupt age. he utters no anathemas on princes, and no woes on peoples. nor does he glow with exalted hopes of a millennium of bliss, or of the beatitudes of a future state. he was not stern and indignant like elijah, but more like the courtier and counsellor elisha. he was a man of the world, and all his teachings have reference to respectability in the world's regard. he doubted more than he believed. and yet in many of his sayings confucius rises to an exalted height, considering his age and circumstances. some of them remind us of some of the best proverbs of solomon. in general, we should say that to his mind filial piety and fraternal submission were the foundation of all virtuous practices, and absolute obedience to rulers the primal principle of government. he was eminently a peace man, discouraging wars and violence. he was liberal and tolerant in his views. he said that the "superior man is catholic and no partisan." duke gae asked, "what should be done to secure the submission of the people?" the sage replied, "advance the upright, and set aside the crooked; then the people will submit. but advance the crooked, and set aside the upright, and the people will not submit." again he said, "it is virtuous manners which constitute the excellence of a neighborhood; therefore fix your residence where virtuous manners prevail." the following sayings remind me of epictetus: "a scholar whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with. a man should say, 'i am not concerned that i have no place,--i am concerned how i may fit myself for one. i am not concerned that i am not known; i seek to be worthy to be known.'" here confucius looks to the essence of things, not to popular desires. in the following, on the other hand, he shows his prudence and policy: "in serving a prince, frequent remonstrances lead to disgrace; between friends, frequent reproofs make the friendship distant." thus he talks like solomon. "tsae-yu, one of his disciples, being asleep in the day-time, the master said, 'rotten wood cannot be carved. this yu--what is the use of my reproving him?'" of a virtuous prince, he said: "in his conduct of himself, he was humble; in serving his superiors, he was respectful; in nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he was just." it was discussed among his followers what it is to be distinguished. one said: "it is to be heard of through the family and state." the master replied: "that is notoriety, not distinction." again he said: "though a man may be able to recite three hundred odes, yet if when intrusted with office he does not know how to act, of what practical use is his poetical knowledge?" again, "if a minister cannot rectify himself, what has he to do with rectifying others?" there is great force in this saying: "the superior man is easy to serve and difficult to please, since you cannot please him in any way which is not accordant with right; but the mean man is difficult to serve and easy to please. the superior man has a dignified ease without pride; the mean man has pride without a dignified ease." a disciple asked him what qualities a man must possess to entitle him to be called a scholar. the master said: "he must be earnest, urgent, and bland,--among his friends earnest and urgent, among his brethren bland." and, "the scholar who cherishes a love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." "if a man," he said, "take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand." and again, "he who requires much from himself and little from others, he will keep himself from being an object of resentment." these proverbs remind us of bacon: "specious words confound virtue." "want of forbearance in small matters confound great plans." "virtue," the master said, "is more to man than either fire or water. i have seen men die from treading on water or fire, but i have never seen a man die from treading the course of virtue." this is a lofty sentiment, but i think it is not in accordance with the records of martyrdom. "there are three things," he continued, "which the superior man guards against: in youth he guards against his passions, in manhood against quarrelsomeness, and in old age against covetousness." i do not find anything in the sayings of confucius that can be called cynical, such as we find in some of the proverbs of solomon, even in reference to women, where women were, as in most oriental countries, despised. the most that approaches cynicism is in such a remark as this: "i have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly accuse himself." his definition of perfect virtue is above that of paley: "the man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a secondary consideration." throughout his writings there is no praise of success without virtue, and no disparagement of want of success with virtue. nor have i found in his sayings a sentiment which may be called demoralizing. he always takes the higher ground, and with all his ceremony ever exalts inward purity above all external appearances. there is a quaint common-sense in some of his writings which reminds one of the sayings of abraham lincoln. for instance: one of his disciples asked, "if you had the conduct of armies, whom would you have to act with you?" the master replied: "i would not have him to act with me who will unarmed attack a tiger, or cross a river without a boat." here something like wit and irony break out: "a man of the village said, 'great is k'ung the philosopher; his learning is extensive, and yet he does not render his name famous by any particular thing.' the master heard this observation, and said to his disciples: 'what shall i practise, charioteering or archery? i will practise charioteering.'" when the duke of loo asked about government, the master said: "good government exists when those who are near are made happy, and when those who are far off are attracted." when the duke questioned him again on the same subject, he replied: "go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.... pardon small faults, and raise to office men of virtue and talents." "but how shall i know the men of virtue?" asked the duke. "raise to office those whom you do know," the key to his political philosophy seems to be this: "a man who knows how to govern himself, knows how to govern others; and he who knows how to govern other men, knows how to govern an empire." "the art of government," he said, "is to keep its affairs before the mind without weariness, and to practise them with undeviating constancy.... to govern means to rectify. if you lead on the people with correctness, who will not dare to be correct?" this is one of his favorite principles; namely, the force of a good example,--as when the reigning prince asked him how to do away with thieves, he replied: "if you, sir, were not covetous, although you should reward them to do it, they would not steal." this was not intended as a rebuke to the prince, but an illustration of the force of a great example. confucius rarely openly rebuked any one, especially a prince, whom it was his duty to venerate for his office. he contented himself with enforcing principles. here his moderation and great courtesy are seen. confucius sometimes soared to the highest morality known to the pagan world. chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. the master said: "it is when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest, to have no murmuring against you in the country and family, and not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself.... the superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. let him never fail reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant of propriety; then all within the four seas will be brothers.... hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles, and be moving continually to what is right." fan-chi asked about benevolence; the master said: "it is to love all men." another asked about friendship. confucius replied: "faithfully admonish your friend, and kindly try to lead him. if you find him impracticable, stop. do not disgrace yourself." this saying reminds us of that of our great master: "cast not your pearls before swine." there is no greater folly than in making oneself disagreeable without any probability of reformation. some one asked: "what do you say about the treatment of injuries?" the master answered: "recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness." here again he was not far from the greater teacher on the mount "when a man's knowledge is sufficient to attain and his virtue is not sufficient to hold, whatever he may have gained he will lose again." one of the favorite doctrines of confucius was the superiority of the ancients to the men of his day. said he: "the high-mindedness of antiquity showed itself in a disregard of small things; that of the present day shows itself in license. the stern dignity of antiquity showed itself in grave reserve; that of the present shows itself in quarrelsome perverseness. the policy of antiquity showed itself in straightforwardness; that of the present in deceit." the following is a saying worthy of montaigne: "of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult to behave to. if you are familiar with them, they lose their humility; if you maintain reserve to them, they are discontented." such are some of the sayings of confucius, on account of which he was regarded as the wisest of his countrymen; and as his conduct was in harmony with his principles, he was justly revered as a pattern of morality. the greatest virtues which he enjoined were sincerity, truthfulness, and obedience to duty whatever may be the sacrifice; to do right because it is right and not because it is expedient; filial piety extending to absolute reverence; and an equal reverence for rulers. he had no theology; he confounded god with heaven and earth. he says nothing about divine providence; he believed in nothing supernatural. he thought little and said less about a future state of rewards and punishments. his morality was elevated, but not supernal. we infer from his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have already said, his reproofs were gentle. blandness of speech and manners was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to characterize his nation,--whether learned from him, or whether an inborn national peculiarity, i do not know. he went through great trials most creditably, but he was no martyr. he constantly complained that his teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but he never flagged in his labors to improve his generation. he had no egotism, but great self-respect, reminding us of michael angelo. he was humble but full of dignity, serene though distressed, cheerful but not hilarious. were he to live among us now, we should call him a perfect gentleman, with aristocratic sympathies, but more autocratic in his views of government and society than aristocratic. he seems to have loved the people, and was kind, even respectful, to everybody. when he visited a school, it is said that he arose in quiet deference to speak to the children, since some of the boys, he thought, would probably be distinguished and powerful at no distant day. he was also remarkably charitable, and put a greater value on virtues and abilities than upon riches and honors. though courted by princes he would not serve them in violation of his self-respect, asked no favors, and returned their presents. if he did not live above the world, he adorned the world. we cannot compare his teachings with those of christ; they are immeasurably inferior in loftiness and spirituality; but they are worldly wise and decorous, and are on an equality with those of solomon in moral wisdom. they are wonderfully adapted to a people who are conservative of their institutions, and who have more respect for tradition than for progress. the worship of ancestors is closely connected with veneration for parental authority; and with absolute obedience to parents is allied absolute obedience to the emperor as head of the state. hence, the writings of confucius have tended to cement the chinese imperial power,--in which fact we may perhaps find the secret of his extraordinary posthumous influence. no wonder that emperors and rulers have revered and honored his memory, and used the power of the state to establish his doctrines. moreover, his exaltation of learning as a necessity for rulers has tended to put all the offices of the realm into the hands of scholars. there never was a country where scholars have been and still are so generally employed by government. and as men of learning are conservative in their sympathies, so they generally are fond of peace and detest war. hence, under the influence of scholars the policy of the chinese government has always been mild and pacific. it is even paternal. it has more similarity to the governments of a remote antiquity than that of any existing nation. thus is the influence of confucius seen in the stability of government and of conservative institutions, as well as in decency in the affairs of life, and gentleness and courtesy of manners. above all is his influence seen in the employment of men of learning and character in the affairs of state and in all the offices of government, as the truest guardians of whatever tends to exalt a state and make it respectable and stable, if not powerful for war or daring in deeds of violence. confucius was essentially a statesman as well as a moralist; but his political career was an apparent failure, since few princes listened to his instructions. yet if he was lost to his contemporaries, he has been preserved by posterity. perhaps there never lived a man so worshipped by posterity who had so slight a following by the men of his own time,--unless we liken him to that greatest of all prophets, who, being despised and rejected, is, and is to be, the "headstone of the corner" in the rebuilding of humanity. confucius says so little about the subjects that interested the people of china that some suppose he had no religion at all. nor did he mention but once in his writings shang-te, the supreme deity of his remote ancestors; and he deduced nothing from the worship of him. and yet there are expressions in his sayings which seem to show that he believed in a supreme power. he often spoke of heaven, and loved to walk in the heavenly way. heaven to him was destiny, by the power of which the world was created. by heaven the virtuous are rewarded, and the guilty are punished. out of love for the people, heaven appoints rulers to protect and instruct them. prayer is unnecessary, because heaven does not actively interfere with the soul of man. confucius was philosophical and consistent in the all-pervading principle by which he insisted upon the common source of power in government,--of the state, of the family, and of one's self. self-knowledge and self-control he maintained to be the fountain of all personal virtue and attainment in performance of the moral duties owed to others, whether above or below in social standing. he supposed that all men are born equally good, but that the temptations of the world at length destroy the original rectitude. the "superior man," who next to the "sage" holds the highest place in the confucian humanity, conquers the evil in the world, though subject to infirmities; his acts are guided by the laws of propriety, and are marked by strict sincerity. confucius admitted that he himself had failed to reach the level of the superior man. this admission may have been the result of his extraordinary humility and modesty. in "the great learning" confucius lays down the rules to enable one to become a superior man. the foundation of his rules is in the investigation of things, or _knowledge_, with which virtue is indissolubly connected,--as in the ethics of socrates. he maintained that no attainment can be made, and no virtue can remain untainted, without learning. "without this, benevolence becomes folly, sincerity recklessness, straightforwardness rudeness, and firmness foolishness." but mere accumulation of facts was not knowledge, for "learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous." complete wisdom was to be found only among the ancient sages; by no mental endeavor could any man hope to equal the supreme wisdom of yaou and of shun. the object of learning, he said, should be truth; and the combination of learning with a firm will, will surely lead a man to virtue. virtue must be free from all hypocrisy and guile. the next step towards perfection is the _cultivation of the person_,--which must begin with introspection, and ends in harmonious outward expression. every man must guard his thoughts, words, and actions; and conduct must agree with words. by words the superior man directs others; but in order to do this his words must be sincere. it by no means follows, however, that virtue is the invariable concomitant of plausible speech. the height of virtue is _filial piety_; for this is connected indissolubly with loyalty to the sovereign, who is the father of his people and the preserver of the state. loyalty to the sovereign is synonymous with duty, and is outwardly shown by obedience. next to parents, all superiors should be the object of reverence. this reverence, it is true, should be reciprocal; a sovereign forfeits all right to reverence and obedience when he ceases to be a minister of good. but then, only the man who has developed virtues in himself is considered competent to rule a family or a state; for the same virtues which enable a man to rule the one, will enable him to rule the other. no man can teach others who cannot teach his own family. the greatest stress, as we have seen, is laid by confucius on filial piety, which consists in obedience to authority,--in serving parents according to propriety, that is, with the deepest affection, and the father of the state with loyalty. but while it is incumbent on a son to obey the wishes of his parents, it is also a part of his duty to remonstrate with them should they act contrary to the rules of propriety. all remonstrances, however, must be made humbly. should these remonstrances fail, the son must mourn in silence the obduracy of the parents. he carried the obligations of filial piety so far as to teach that a son should conceal the immorality of a father, forgetting the distinction of right and wrong. brotherly love is the sequel of filial piety. "happy," says he, "is the union with wife and children; it is like the music of lutes and harps. the love which binds brother to brother is second only to that which is due from children to parents. it consists in mutual friendship, joyful harmony, and dutiful obedience on the part of the younger to the elder brothers." while obedience is exacted to an elder brother and to parents, confucius said but little respecting the ties which should bind husband and wife. he had but little respect for woman, and was divorced from his wife after living with her for a year. he looked on women as every way inferior to men, and only to be endured as necessary evils. it was not until a woman became a mother, that she was treated with respect in china. hence, according to confucius, the great object of marriage is to increase the family, especially to give birth to sons. women could be lawfully and properly divorced who had no children,--which put women completely in the power of men, and reduced them to the condition of slaves. the failure to recognize the sanctity of marriage is the great blot on the system of confucius as a scheme of morals. but the sage exalts friendship. everybody, from the emperor downward, must have friends; and the best friends are those allied by ties of blood. "friends," said he, "are wealth to the poor, strength to the weak, and medicine to the sick." one of the strongest bonds to friendship is literature and literary exertion. men are enjoined by confucius to make friends among the most virtuous of scholars, even as they are enjoined to take service under the most worthy of great officers. in the intercourse of friends, the most unbounded sincerity and frankness is imperatively enjoined. "he who is not trusted by his friends will not gain the confidence of the sovereign, and he who is not obedient to parents will not be trusted by friends." everything is subordinated to the state; but, on the other hand, the family, friends, culture, virtue,--the good of the people,--is the main object of good government. "no virtue," said emperor kuh, b.c., "is higher than love to all men, and there is no loftier aim in government than to profit all men." when he was asked what should be done for the people, he replied, "enrich them;" and when asked what more should be done, he replied, "teach them." on these two principles the whole philosophy of the sage rested,--the temporal welfare of the people, and their education. he laid great stress on knowledge, as leading to virtue; and on virtue, as leading to prosperity. he made the profession of a teacher the most honorable calling to which a citizen could aspire. he himself was a teacher. all sages are teachers, though all teachers are not sages. confucius enlarged upon the necessity of having good men in office. the officials of his day excited his contempt, and reciprocally scorned his teachings. it was in contrast to these officials that he painted the ideal times of kings wan and woo. the two motive-powers of government, according to confucius, are righteousness and the observance of ceremonies. righteousness is the law of the world, as ceremonies form a rule to the heart. what he meant by ceremonies was rules of propriety, intended to keep all unruly passions in check, and produce a reverential manner among all classes. doubtless he over-estimated the force of example, since there are men in every country and community who will be lawless and reckless, in spite of the best models of character and conduct. the ruling desire of confucius was to make the whole empire peaceful and happy. the welfare of the people, the right government of the state, and the prosperity of the empire were the main objects of his solicitude. as conducive to these, he touched on many other things incidentally,--such as the encouragement of music, of which he was very fond. he himself summed up the outcome of his rules for conduct in this prohibitive form: "do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you." here we have the negative side of the positive "golden rule." reciprocity, and that alone, was his law of life. he does not inculcate forgiveness of injuries, but exacts a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye. as to his own personal character, it was nearly faultless. his humility and patience were alike remarkable, and his sincerity and candor were as marked as his humility. he was the most learned man in the empire, yet lamented the deficiency of his knowledge. he even disclaimed the qualities of the superior man, much more those of the sage. "i am," said he, "not virtuous enough to be free from cares, nor wise enough to be free from anxieties, nor bold enough to be free from fear." he was always ready to serve his sovereign or the state; but he neither grasped office, nor put forward his own merits, nor sought to advance his own interests. he was grave, generous, tolerant, and sincere. he carried into practice all the rules he taught. poverty was his lot in life, but he never repined at the absence of wealth, or lost the severe dignity which is ever to be associated with wisdom and the force of personal character. indeed, his greatness was in his character rather than in his genius; and yet i think his genius has been underrated. his greatness is seen in the profound devotion of his followers to him, however lofty their merits or exalted their rank. no one ever disputed his influence and fame; and his moral excellence shines all the brighter in view of the troublous times in which he lived, when warriors occupied the stage, and men of letters were driven behind the scenes. the literary labors of confucius were very great, since he made the whole classical literature of china accessible to his countrymen. the fame of all preceding writers is merged in his own renown. his works have had the highest authority for more than two thousand years. they have been regarded as the exponents of supreme wisdom, and adopted as text-books by all scholars and in all schools in that vast empire, which includes one-fourth of the human race. to all educated men the "book of changes" (yin-king), the "book of poetry" (she-king), the "book of history" (shoo-king), the "book of rites" (le-king), the "great learning" (ta-heo), showing the parental essence of all government, the "doctrine of the mean" (chung-yung), teaching the "golden mean" of conduct, and the "confucian analects" (lun-yu), recording his conversations, are supreme authorities; to which must be added the works of mencius, the greatest of his disciples. there is no record of any books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the works of confucius, except the koran of the mohammedans, the book of the law among the hebrews, and the bible among the christians. what an influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no claim to divinity or even originality,--recognized as a man, worshipped as a god! no sooner had the sun of confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than his memory and principles were duly honored. but it was not until the accession of the han dynasty, b.c., that the reigning emperor collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power to secure the study of them throughout the schools of china. it must be borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had ordered the books of confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground. succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage, and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the ming dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in china,--"the perfect sage, the ancient teacher, confucius." no higher title could be conferred upon him in a land where to be "ancient" is to be revered. for more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor, and his worship has been universal throughout the empire. his maxims of morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the han dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom. they were especially adapted to the chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual. moreover, as we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines, from the constant exhortations to loyalty which confucius enjoined. and yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal merit,--thus opening every office in the state to the learned, whatever their original social rank. the great political truth that the welfare of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any nation's history. this essay on the religion of the chinese would be incomplete without some allusion to one of the contemporaries of confucius, who spiritually and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even confucius paid extraordinary deference. this man was called lao-tse, a recluse and philosopher, who was already an old man when confucius began his travels. he was the founder of tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at present has millions of adherents in china. this old philosopher did not receive confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages, while he himself was a great awakener of thought. he was, like confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations existed. he held that man's nature was good, and that primitive pleasures and virtues were better than worldly wisdom. he maintained that spiritual weapons cannot be formed by laws and regulations, and that prohibiting enactments tended to increase the evils they were meant to avert. while this great and profound man was in some respects superior to confucius, his influence has been most seen on the inferior people of china. taoism rivals buddhism as the religion of the lower classes, and taoism combined with buddhism has more adherents than confucianism. but the wise, the mighty, and the noble still cling to confucius as the greatest man whom china has produced. of spiritual religion, indeed, the lower millions of chinese have now but little conception; their nearest approach to any supernaturalism is the worship of deceased ancestors, and their religious observances are the grossest formalism. but as a practical system of morals in the days of its early establishment, the religion of confucius ranks very high among the best developments of paganism. certainly no man ever had a deeper knowledge of his countrymen than he, or adapted his doctrines to the peculiar needs of their social organism with such amazing tact. it is a remarkable thing that all the religions of antiquity have practically passed away, with their cities and empires, except among the hindus and chinese; and it is doubtful if these religions can withstand the changes which foreign conquest and christian missionary enterprise and civilization are producing. in the east the old religions gave place to mohamedanism, as in the west they disappeared before the power of christianity. and these conquering religions retain and extend their hold upon the human mind and human affections by reason of their fundamental principles,--the fatherhood of a personal god, and the brotherhood of universal man. with the ideas prevalent among all sects that god is not only supreme in power, but benevolent in his providence, and that every man has claims and rights which cannot be set aside by kings or rulers or priests,--nations must indefinitely advance in virtue and happiness, as they receive and live by the inspiration of this elevating faith. * * * * * authorities. religion in china, by joseph edkins, d.d.; rawlinson's religions of the ancient world; freeman clarke's ten great religions; johnson's oriental religions; davis's chinese; nevins's china and the chinese; giles's chinese sketches; lenormant's ancient history of the east; hue's christianity in china; legge's prolegomena to the shoo-king; lecomte's china; dr. s. wells williams's middle kingdom; china, by professor douglas; the religions of china, by james legge. ancient philosophy. seeking after truth. whatever may be said of the inferiority of the ancients to the moderns in natural and mechanical science, which no one is disposed to question, or even in the realm of literature, which may be questioned, there was one department of knowledge to which we have added nothing of consequence. in the realm of art they were our equals, and probably our superiors; in philosophy, they carried logical deduction to its utmost limit. they advanced from a few crude speculations on material phenomena to an analysis of all the powers of the mind, and finally to the establishment of ethical principles which even christianity did not supersede. the progress of philosophy from thales to plato is the most stupendous triumph of the human intellect. the reason of man soared to the loftiest flights that it has ever attained. it cast its searching eye into the most abstruse inquiries which ever tasked the famous minds of the world. it exhausted all the subjects which dialectical subtlety ever raised. it originated and carried out the boldest speculations respecting the nature of the soul and its future existence. it established important psychological truths and created a method for the solution of abstruse questions. it went on from point to point, until all the faculties of the mind were severely analyzed, and all its operations were subjected to a rigid method. the romans never added a single principle to the philosophy which the greeks elaborated; the ingenious scholastics of the middle ages merely reproduced greek ideas; and even the profound and patient germans have gone round in the same circles that plato and aristotle marked out more than two thousand years ago. only the brahmans of india have equalled them in intellectual subtilty and acumen. it was greek philosophy in which noble roman youths were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a cicero, a marcus aurelius, and an epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the romans as it was of the greeks themselves, after grecian liberties were swept away and greek cities became a part of the roman empire. the romans learned what the greeks created and taught; and philosophy, as well as art, became identified with the civilization which extended from the rhine and the po to the nile and the tigris. greek philosophy was one of the distinctive features of ancient civilization long after the greeks had ceased to speculate on the laws of mind or the nature of the soul, on the existence of god or future rewards and punishments. although it was purely grecian in its origin and development, it became one of the grand ornaments of the roman schools. the romans did not originate medicine, but galen was one of its greatest lights; they did not invent the hexameter verse, but virgil sang to its measure; they did not create ionic capitals, but their cities were ornamented with marble temples on the same principles as those which called out the admiration of pericles. so, if they did not originate philosophy, and generally had but little taste for it, still its truths were systematized and explained by cicero, and formed no small accession to the treasures with which cultivated intellects sought everywhere to be enriched. it formed an essential part of the intellectual wealth of the civilized world, when civilization could not prevent the world from falling into decay and ruin. and as it was the noblest triumph which the human mind, under pagan influences, ever achieved, so it was followed by the most degrading imbecility into which man, in civilized countries, was ever allowed to fall. philosophy, like art, like literature, like science, arose, shone, grew dim, and passed away, leaving the world in night. why was so bright a glory followed by so dismal a shame? what a comment is this on the greatness and littleness of man! in all probability the development of greek philosophy originated with the ionian sophoi, though many suppose it was derived from the east. it is questionable whether the oriental nations had any philosophy distinct from religion. the germans are fond of tracing resemblances in the early speculations of the greeks to the systems which prevailed in asia from a very remote antiquity. gladish sees in the pythagorean system an adoption of chinese doctrines; in the heraclitic system, the influence of persia; in the empedoclean, egyptian speculations; and in the anaxagorean, the jewish creeds. but the orientals had theogonies, not philosophies. the indian speculations aim at an exposition of ancient revelation. they profess to liberate the soul from the evils of mortal life,--to arrive at eternal beatitudes. but the state of perfectibility could be reached only by religious ceremonial observances and devout contemplation. the indian systems do not disdain logical discussions, or a search after the principles of which the universe is composed; and hence we find great refinements in sophistry, and a wonderful subtilty of logical discussion, though these are directed to unattainable ends,--to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the supreme with nature. nothing seemed to come out of these speculations but an occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. the greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series of inquiries, elevating themselves above matter, above experience, even to the loftiest abstractions, until they classified the laws of thought. it is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of intellectual phenomena. philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those who observed nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. philosophy and mathematics seem to have been allied with the worship of art among the same men, and it is difficult to say which more distinguished them,--aesthetic culture or power of abstruse reasoning. we do not read of any remarkable philosophical inquirer until thales arose, the first of the ionian school. he was born at miletus, a greek colony in asia minor, about the year b.c., when ancus martius was king of rome, and josiah reigned at jerusalem. he has left no writings behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of greece on account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. i do not here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great, and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,--as, for instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. "and he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars which beam in charles's wain, and guide the bark of the phoenecian sailor o'er the sea." he is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "know thyself," is one of his remarkable sayings. the chief claim of thales to a lofty rank among sages, however, is that he was the first who attempted a logical solution of material phenomena, without resorting to mythical representations. thales felt that there was a grand question to be answered relative to the _beginning of things._ "philosophy," it has been well said, "maybe a history of _errors_^ but not of _follies_". it was not a folly, in a rude age, to speculate on the first or fundamental principle of things. thales looked around him upon nature, upon the sea and earth and sky, and concluded that water or moisture was the vital principle. he felt it in the air, he saw it in the clouds above and in the ground beneath his feet. he saw that plants were sustained by rain and by the dew, that neither animal nor man could live without water, and that to fishes it was the native element. what more important or vital than water? it was the _prima materia_, the [greek: archae] the beginning of all things,--the origin of the world. how so crude a speculation could have been maintained by so wise a man it is difficult to conjecture. it is not, however, the cause which he assigns for the beginning of things which is noteworthy, so much as the fact that his mind was directed to any solution of questions pertaining to the origin of the universe. it was these questions, and the solution of them, which marked the ionian philosophers, and which showed the inquiring nature of their minds. what is the great first cause of all things? thales saw it in one of the four elements of nature as the ancients divided them; and this is the earliest recorded theory among the greeks of the origin of the world. it is an induction from one of the phenomena of animated nature,--the nutrition and production of a seed. he regarded the entire world in the light of a living being gradually maturing and forming itself from an imperfect seed-state, which was of a moist nature. this moisture endues the universe with vitality. the world, he thought, was full of gods, but they had their origin in water. he had no conception of god as _intelligence_, or as a _creative_ power. he had a great and inquiring mind, but it gave him no knowledge of a spiritual, controlling, and personal deity. anaximenes, the disciple of thales, pursued his master's inquiries and adopted his method. he also was born in miletus, but at what time is unknown,--probably b.c. like thales, he held to the eternity of matter. like him, he disbelieved in the existence of anything immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. he, too, speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that _air_, not water, was the primal cause. this element seems to be universal. we breathe it; all things are sustained by it. it is life,--that is, pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. all things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal motion. thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our own living existence,--which he took to be air,--an imperishable principle of life. he thus advanced a step beyond thales, since he regarded the world not after the analogy of an imperfect seed-state, but after that of the highest condition of life,--the human soul. and he attempted to refer to one general law all the transformations of the first simple substance into its successive states, in that the cause of change is the eternal motion of the air. diogenes of apollonia, in crete, one of the disciples of anaximenes, born b.c., also believed that air was the principle of the universe, but he imputed to it an intellectual energy, yet without recognizing any distinction between mind and matter. he made air and the soul identical. "for," says he, "man and all other animals breathe and live by means of the air, and therein consists their soul." and as it is the primary being from which all is derived, it is necessarily an eternal and imperishable body; but as _soul_ it is also endued with consciousness. diogenes thus refers the origin of the world to an intelligent being,--to a soul which knows and vivifies. anaximenes regarded air as having life; diogenes saw in it also intelligence. thus philosophy advanced step by step, though still groping in the dark; for the origin of all things, according to diogenes, must exist in _intelligence_. according to diogenes laertius, he said: "it appears to me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about which there can be no dispute." heraclitus of ephesus, classed by ritter among the ionian philosophers, was born b.c. like others of his school, he sought a physical ground for all phenomena. the elemental principle he regarded as _fire_, since all things are convertible into it. in one of its modifications this fire, or fluid, self-kindled, permeating everything as the soul or principle of life, is endowed with intelligence and powers of ceaseless activity. "if anaximenes," says maurice, not very clearly, "discovered that he had within him a power and principle which ruled over all the acts and functions of his bodily frame, heraclitus found that there was life within him which he could not call his own, and yet it was, in the very highest sense, _himself_, so that without it he would have been a poor, helpless, isolated creature,--a universal life which connected him with his fellow-men, with the absolute source and original fountain of life.... he proclaimed the absolute vitality of nature, the endless change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual things in contrast with the eternal being,--the supreme harmony which rules over all." to trace the divine energy of life in all things was the general problem of the philosophy of heraclitus, and this spirit was akin to the pantheism of the east. but he was one of the greatest speculative intellects that preceded plato, and of all the physical theorists arrived nearest to spiritual truth. he taught the germs of what was afterward more completely developed. "from his theory of perpetual fluxion," says archer butler, "plato derived the necessity of seeking a stable basis for the universal system in his world of ideas." heraclitus was, however, an obscure writer, and moreover cynical and arrogant. anaxagoras, the most famous of the ionian philosophers, was born b.c., and belonged to a rich and noble family. regarding philosophy as the noblest pursuit of earth, he abandoned his inheritance for the study of nature. he went to athens in the most brilliant period of her history, and had pericles, euripides, and socrates for pupils. he taught that the great moving force of nature was intellect ([greek: nous]). intelligence was the cause of the world and of order, and mind was the principle of motion; yet this intelligence was not a moral intelligence, but simply the _primum mobile_,--the all-knowing motive force by which the order of nature is effected. he thus laid the foundation of a new system, under which the attic philosophers sought to explain nature, by regarding as the cause of all things, not _matter_ in its different elements, but rather _mind_, thought, intelligence, which both knows and acts,--a grand conception, unrivalled in ancient speculation. this explanation of material phenomena by intellectual causes was the peculiar merit of anaxagoras, and places him in a very high rank among the thinkers of the world. moreover, he recognized the reason as the only faculty by which we become cognizant of truth, the senses being too weak to discover the real component particles of things. like all the great inquirers, he was impressed with the limited degree of positive knowledge compared with what there is to be learned. "nothing," says he, "can be known; nothing is certain; sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short,"--the complaint, not of a sceptic, but of a man overwhelmed with the sense of his incapacity to solve the problems which arose before his active mind. anaxagoras thought that this spirit ([greek: nous]) gave to all those material atoms which in the beginning of the world lay in disorder the impulse by which they took the forms of individual things, and that this impulse was given in a circular direction. hence that the sun, moon, and stars, and even the air, are constantly moving in a circle. in the mean time another sect of philosophers had arisen, who, like the ionians, sought to explain nature, but by a different method. anaximander, born b.c., was one of the original mathematicians of greece, yet, like pythagoras and thales, speculated on the beginning of things. his principle was that _the infinite_ is the origin of all things. he used the word _[greek: archae] (beginning)_ to denote the material out of which all things were formed, as the everlasting, the divine. the idea of elevating an abstraction into a great first cause was certainly a long stride in philosophic generalization to be taken at that age of the world, following as it did so immediately upon such partial and childish ideas as that any single one of the familiar "elements" could be the primal cause of all things. it seems almost like the speculations of our own time, when philosophers seek to find the first cause in impersonal force, or infinite energy. yet it is not really easy to understand anaximander's meaning, other than that the abstract has a higher significance than the concrete. the speculations of thales had tended toward discovering the material constitution of the universe upon an _induction_ from observed facts, and thus made water to be the origin of all things. anaximander, accustomed to view things in the abstract, could not accept so concrete a thing as water; his speculations tended toward mathematics, to the science of pure _deduction_. the primary being is a unity, one in all, comprising within itself the multiplicity of elements from which all mundane things are composed. it is only in infinity that the perpetual changes of things can take place. thus anaximander, an original but vague thinker, prepared the way for pythagoras. this later philosopher and mathematician, born about the year b.c., stands as one of the great names of antiquity; but his life is shrouded in dim magnificence. the old historians paint him as "clothed in robes of white, his head covered with gold, his aspect grave and majestic, rapt in the contemplation of the mysteries of existence, listening to the music of homer and hesiod, or to the harmony of the spheres." pythagoras was supposed to be a native of samos. when quite young, being devoted to learning, he quitted his country and went to egypt, where he learned its language and all the secret mysteries of the priests. he then returned to samos, but finding the island under the dominion of a tyrant he fled to crotona, in italy, where he gained great reputation for wisdom, and made laws for the italians. his pupils were about three hundred in number. he wrote three books, which were extant in the time of diogenes laertius,--one on education, one on politics, and one on natural philosophy. he also wrote an epic poem on the universe, to which he gave the name of _kosmos_. among the ethical principles which pythagoras taught was that men ought not to pray for anything in particular, since they do not know what is good for them; that drunkenness was identical with ruin; that no one should exceed the proper quantity of meat and drink; that the property of friends is common; that men should never say or do anything in anger. he forbade his disciples to offer victims to the gods, ordering them to worship only at those altars which were unstained with blood. pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights among the greeks. but it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our attention. his main principle was that _number_ is the essence of things,--probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to law. the order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom. he attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. assuming that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws which are regular and harmonious in their operations. hence the necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. the infinite of anaximander became the one of pythagoras. he believed that the soul is incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation. hence the tendency of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law and order,--of a supreme intelligence reigning in justice and truth. justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and sought as the end of life. "it is impossible not to see in these lofty speculations the effect of the greek mind, according to its own genius, seeking after god, if haply it might find him." we now approach the second stage of greek philosophy. the ionic philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the elements, and the pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying an intelligent creator. the eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source of truth is independent of the senses. here they were forestalled by the hindu sages. the founder of this school was xenophanes, born in colophon, an ionian city of asia minor, from which being expelled he wandered over sicily as a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest truths, and at last, about the year b.c., came to elea, where he settled. the principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,--the great first cause, the supreme intelligence of the universe. from the principle _ex nihilo nihil fit_ he concluded that nothing could pass from non-existence to existence. all things that exist are created by supreme intelligence, who is eternal and immutable. from this truth that god must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity. a plurality of gods is impossible. with these sublime views,--the unity and eternity and omnipotence of god,--xenophanes boldly attacked the popular errors of his day. he denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed against homer and hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration of souls. thus he sings,-- "such things of the gods are related by homer and hesiod as would be shame and abiding disgrace to mankind,-- promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other." and again, respecting anthropomorphic representations of the deity,-- "but men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are, and have too a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure; but there's but one god alone, the greatest of gods and of mortals, neither in body to mankind resembling, neither in ideas." such were the sublime meditations of xenophanes. he believed in the _one_, which is god; but this all-pervading, unmoved, undivided being was not a personal god, nor a moral governor, but deity pervading all space. he could not separate god from the world, nor could he admit the existence of world which is not god. he was a monotheist, but his monotheism was pantheism. he saw god in all the manifestations of nature. this did not satisfy him nor resolve his doubts, and he therefore confessed that reason could not compass the exalted aims of philosophy. but there was no cynicism in his doubt. it was the soul-sickening consciousness that reason was incapable of solving the mighty questions that he burned to know. there was no way to arrive at the truth, "for," said he, "error is spread over all things." it was not disdain of knowledge, it was the combat of contradictory opinions that oppressed him. he could not solve the questions pertaining to god. what uninstructed reason can? "canst thou by searching find out god? canst thou know the almighty unto perfection?" what was impossible to job was not possible to xenophanes. but he had attained a recognition of the unity and perfections of god; and this conviction he would spread abroad, and tear down the superstitions which hid the face of truth. i have great admiration for this philosopher, so sad, so earnest, so enthusiastic, wandering from city to city, indifferent to money, comfort, friends, fame, that he might kindle the knowledge of god. this was a lofty aim indeed for philosophy in that age. it was a higher mission than that of homer, great as his was, though not so successful. parmenides of elea, born about the year b.c., followed out the system of xenophanes, the central idea of which was the existence of god. with parmenides the main thought was the notion of _being_. being is uncreated and unchangeable; the fulness of all being is _thought_; the _all_ is thought and intelligence. he maintained the uncertainty of knowledge, meaning the knowledge derived through the senses. he did not deny the certainty of reason. he was the first who drew a distinction between knowledge obtained by the senses and that obtained through the reason; and thus he anticipated the doctrine of innate ideas. from the uncertainty of knowledge derived through the senses, he deduced the twofold system of true and apparent knowledge. zeno of elea, the friend and pupil of parmenides, born b.c., brought nothing new to the system, but invented _dialectics_, the art of disputation,--that department of logic which afterward became so powerful in the hands of plato and aristotle, and so generally admired among the schoolmen. it seeks to establish truth by refuting error through the _reductio ad absurdum_. while parmenides sought to establish the doctrine of the _one_, zeno proved the non-existence of the _many_. he did not deny existences, but denied that appearances were real existences. it was the mission of zeno to establish the doctrines of his master. but in order to convince his listeners, he was obliged to use a new method of argument. so he carried on his argumentation by question and answer, and was therefore the first who used dialogue, which he called dialectics, as a medium of philosophical communication. empedocles, born b.c., like others of the eleatics, complained of the imperfection of the senses, and looked for truth only in reason. he regarded truth as a perfect unity, ruled by love,--the only true force, the one moving cause of all things,--the first creative power by which or whom the world was formed. thus "god is love" is a sublime doctrine which philosophy revealed to the greeks, and the emphatic and continuous and assured declaration of which was the central theme of the revelation made by jesus, the christ, who resolved all the law and the gospel into the element of love,--fatherly on the part of god, filial and fraternal on the part of men. thus did the eleatic philosophers speculate almost contemporaneously with the ionians on the beginning of things and the origin of knowledge, taking different grounds, and attempting to correct the representations of sense by the notions of reason. but both schools, although they did not establish many truths, raised an inquisitive spirit, and awakened freedom of thought and inquiry. they raised up workmen for more enlightened times, even as scholastic inquirers in the middle ages prepared the way for the revival of philosophy on sounder principles. they were all men of remarkable elevation of character as well as genius. they hated superstitions, and attacked the anthropomorphism of their day. they handled gods and goddesses with allegorizing boldness, and hence were often persecuted by the people. they did not establish moral truths by scientific processes, but they set examples of lofty disdain of wealth and factitious advantages, and devoted themselves with holy enthusiasm to the solution of the great questions which pertain to god and nature. thales won the respect of his countrymen by devotion to studies. pythagoras spent twenty-two years in egypt to learn its science. xenophanes wandered over sicily as a rhapsodist of truth. parmenides, born to wealth and splendor, forsook the feverish pursuit of sensual enjoyments that he might "behold the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." zeno declined all worldly honors in order that he might diffuse the doctrines of his master. heraclitus refused the chief magistracy of ephesus that he might have leisure to explore the depths of his own nature. anaxagoras allowed his patrimony to run to waste in order to solve problems. "to philosophy," said he, "i owe my worldly ruin, and my soul's prosperity." all these men were, without exception, the greatest and best men of their times. they laid the foundation of the beautiful temple which was constructed after they were dead, in which both physics and psychology reached the dignity of science. they too were prophets, although unconscious of their divine mission,--prophets of that day when the science which explores and illustrates the works of god shall enlarge, enrich, and beautify man's conceptions of the great creative father. nevertheless, these great men, lofty as were their inquiries and blameless their lives, had not established any system, nor any theories which were incontrovertible. they had simply speculated, and the world ridiculed their speculations. their ideas were one-sided, and when pushed out to their extreme logical sequence were antagonistic to one another; which had a tendency to produce doubt and scepticism. men denied the existence of the gods, and the grounds of certainty fell away from the human mind. this spirit of scepticism was favored by the tide of worldliness and prosperity which followed the persian war. athens became a great centre of art, of taste, of elegance, and of wealth. politics absorbed the minds of the people. glory and splendor were followed by corruption of morals and the pursuit of material pleasures. philosophy went out of fashion, since it brought no outward and tangible good. more scientific studies were pursued,--those which could be applied to purposes of utility and material gains; even as in our day geology, chemistry, mechanics, engineering, having reference to the practical wants of men, command talent, and lead to certain reward. in athens, rhetoric, mathematics, and natural history supplanted rhapsodies and speculations on god and providence. renown and wealth could be secured only by readiness and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought immediate recompense, like eloquence. men began to practise eloquence as an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. they made special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any expense of law and justice. hence they taught that nothing was immutably right, but only so by convention. they undermined all confidence in truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. they denied to men even the capability of arriving at truth. they practically affirmed the cold and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink. _cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. who will show us any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in athens when art and eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth century before christ, and when the elegant pericles was the leader of fashion and of political power. these men were the sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men, trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later philosophers. they were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult missions. they were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw ridicule upon profound inquiries. they taught also mathematics, astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. they were polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. and some of them were men of great learning and talent, like democritus, leucippus, and gorgias. they were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. they taught the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. they thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by the ionians, the pythagoreans, or the eleatics, since they showed the vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scientific. they had no doctrines in common. they were the barristers of their age, _paid_ to make the "worse appear the better reason;" yet not teachers of immorality any more than the lawyers of our day,--men of talents, the intellectual leaders of society. if they did not advance positive truths, they were useful in the method they created. they had no hostility to truth, as such; they only doubted whether it could be reached in the realm of psychological inquiries, and sought to apply knowledge to their own purposes, or rather to distort it in order to gain a case. they are not a class of men whom i admire, as i do the old sages they ridiculed, but they were not without their use in the development of philosophy. the sophists also rendered a service to literature by giving definiteness to language, and creating style in prose writing. protagoras investigated the principles of accurate composition; prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the significance of words; gorgias, like voltaire, gloried in a captivating style, and gave symmetry to the structure of sentences. the ridicule and scepticism of the sophists brought out the great powers of socrates, to whom philosophy is probably more indebted than to any man who ever lived, not so much for a perfect system as for the impulse he gave to philosophical inquiries, and for his successful exposure of error. he inaugurated a new era. born in athens in the year b.c., the son of a poor sculptor, he devoted his life to the search after truth for its own sake, and sought to base it on immutable foundations. he was the mortal enemy of the sophists, whom he encountered, as pascal did the jesuits, with wit, irony, puzzling questions, and remorseless logic. it is true that socrates and his great successors plato and aristotle were called "sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise men were so called. the sophists as a class had incurred the odium of being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they imparted. the philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. the sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the philosophers, or _lovers_ of wisdom. like the earlier philosophers, socrates disdained wealth, ease, and comfort,--but with greater devotion than they, since he lived in a more corrupt age, when poverty was a disgrace and misfortune a crime, when success was the standard of merit, and every man was supposed to be the arbiter of his own fortune, ignoring that providence who so often refuses the race to the swift, and the battle to the strong. he was what in our time would be called eccentric. he walked barefooted, meanly clad, and withal not over cleanly, seeking public places, disputing with everybody willing to talk with him, making everybody ridiculous, especially if one assumed airs of wisdom or knowledge,--an exasperating opponent, since he wove a web around a man from which he could not be extricated, and then exposed him to ridicule in the wittiest city of the world. he attacked everybody, and yet was generally respected, since it was _errors_ rather than persons, _opinions_ rather than vices, that he attacked; and this he did with bewitching eloquence and irresistible fascination, so that though he was poor and barefooted, a silenus in appearance, with thick lips, upturned nose, projecting eyes, unwieldy belly, he was sought by alcibiades and admired by aspasia. even xanthippe, a beautiful young woman, very much younger than he, a woman fond of the comforts and pleasures of life, was willing to marry him, although it is said that she turned out a "scolding wife" after the _res angusta domi_ had disenchanted her from the music of his voice and the divinity of his nature. "i have heard pericles," said the most dissipated and voluptuous man in athens, "and other excellent orators, but was not moved by them; while this marsyas--this satyr--so affects me that the life i lead is hardly worth living, and i stop my ears as from the sirens, and flee as fast as possible, that i may not sit down and grow old in listening to his talk." socrates learned his philosophy from no one, and struck out an entirely new path. he declared his own ignorance, and sought to convince other people of theirs. he did not seek to reveal truth so much as to expose error. and yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral obligations. he proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the immutability of justice. he sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. his great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. moral certitude was the lofty platform from which he surveyed the world, and upon which, as a rock, he rested in the storms of life. thus he was a reformer and a moralist. it was his ethical doctrines which were most antagonistic to the age and the least appreciated. he was a profoundly religious man, recognized providence, and believed in the immortality of the soul. he did not presume to inquire into the divine essence, yet he believed that the gods were omniscient and omnipresent, that they ruled by the law of goodness, and that in spite of their multiplicity there was unity,--a supreme intelligence that governed the world. hence he was hated by the sophists, who denied the certainty of arriving at any knowledge of god. from the comparative worthlessness of the body he deduced the immortality of the soul. with him the end of life was reason and intelligence. he deduced the existence of god from the order and harmony of nature, belief in which was irresistible. he endeavored to connect the moral with the religious consciousness, and thus to promote the practical welfare of society. in this light socrates stands out the grandest personage of pagan antiquity,--as a moralist, as a teacher of ethics, as a man who recognized the divine. so far as he was concerned in the development of greek philosophy proper, he was inferior to some of his disciples, yet he gave a turning-point to a new period when he awakened the _idea_ of knowledge, and was the founder of the method of scientific inquiry, since he pointed out the legitimate bounds of inquiry, and was thus the precursor of bacon and pascal. he did not attempt to make physics explain metaphysics, nor metaphysics the phenomena of the natural world; and he reasoned only from what was generally assumed to be true and invariable. he was a great pioneer of philosophy, since he resorted to inductive methods of proof, and gave general definiteness to ideas. although he employed induction, it was his aim to withdraw the mind from the contemplation of nature, and to fix it on its own phenomena,--to look inward rather than outward; a method carried out admirably by his pupil plato. the previous philosophers had given their attention to external nature; socrates gave up speculations about material phenomena, and directed his inquiries solely to the nature of knowledge. and as he considered knowledge to be identical with virtue, he speculated on ethical questions mainly, and the method which he taught was that by which alone man could become better and wiser. to know one's self,--in other words, that "the proper study of mankind is man,"--he proclaimed with thales. cicero said of him, "socrates brought down philosophy from the heavens to the earth." he did not disdain the subjects which chiefly interested the sophists,--astronomy, rhetoric, physics,--but he chiefly discussed moral questions, such as, what is piety? what is the just and the unjust? what is temperance? what is courage? what is the character fit for a citizen?--and other ethical points, involving practical human relationships. these questions were discussed by socrates in a striking manner, and by a method peculiarly his own. "professing ignorance, he put perhaps this question: what is law? it was familiar, and was answered offhand. socrates, having got the answer, then put fresh questions applicable to specific cases, to which the respondent was compelled to give an answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. the respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original inquiry which had at first appeared so easy." thus, by this system of cross-examination, he showed the intimate connection between the dialectic method and the logical distribution of particulars into species and genera. the discussion first turns upon the meaning of some generic term; the queries bring the answers into collision with various particulars which it ought not to comprehend, or which it ought to comprehend, but does not. socrates broke up the one into many by his analytical string of questions, which was a mode of argument by which he separated _real_ knowledge from the _conceit_ of knowledge, and led to precision in the use of definitions. it was thus that he exposed the false, without aiming even to teach the true; for he generally professed ignorance on his part, and put himself in the attitude of a learner, while by his cross-examinations he made the man from whom he apparently sought knowledge to appear as ignorant as himself, or, still worse, absolutely ridiculous. thus socrates pulled away all the foundations on which a false science had been erected, and indicated the mode by which alone the true could be established. here he was not unlike bacon, who pointed out the way whereby science could be advanced, without founding any school or advocating any system; but the athenian was unlike bacon in the object of his inquiries. bacon was disgusted with ineffective _logical_ speculations, and socrates with ineffective _physical_ researches. he never suffered a general term to remain undetermined, but applied it at once to particulars, and by questions the purport of which was not comprehended. it was not by positive teaching, but by exciting scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical faculties, that socrates manifested originality. it was his aim to force the seekers after truth into the path of inductive generalization, whereby alone trustworthy conclusions could be formed. he thus struck out from his own and other minds that fire which sets light to original thought and stimulates analytical inquiry. he was a religious and intellectual missionary, preparing the way for the platos and aristotles of the succeeding age by his severe dialectics. this was his mission, and he declared it by talking. he did not lecture; he conversed. for more than thirty years he discoursed on the principles of morality, until he arrayed against himself enemies who caused him to be put to death, for his teachings had undermined the popular system which the sophists accepted and practised. he probably might have been acquitted if he had chosen to be, but he did not wish to live after his powers of usefulness had passed away. the services which socrates rendered to philosophy, as enumerated by tennemann, "are twofold,--negative and positive. _negative_, inasmuch as he avoided all vain discussions; combated mere speculative reasoning on substantial grounds; and had the wisdom to acknowledge ignorance when necessary, but without attempting to determine accurately what is capable and what is not of being accurately known. _positive_, inasmuch as he examined with great ability the ground directly submitted to our understanding, and of which man is the centre." socrates cannot be said to have founded a school, like xenophanes. he did not bequeath a system of doctrines. he had however his disciples, who followed in the path which he suggested. among these were aristippus, antisthenes, euclid of megara, phaedo of elis, and plato, all of whom were pupils of socrates and founders of schools. some only partially adopted his method, and each differed from the other. nor can it be said that all of them advanced science. aristippus, the founder of the cyreniac school, was a sort of philosophic voluptuary, teaching that pleasure is the end of life. antisthenes, the founder of the cynics, was both virtuous and arrogant, placing the supreme good in virtue, but despising speculative science, and maintaining that no man can refute the opinions of another. he made it a virtue to be ragged, hungry, and cold, like the ancient monks; an austere, stern, bitter, reproachful man, who affected to despise all pleasures,--like his own disciple diogenes, who lived in a tub, and carried on a war between the mind and body, brutal, scornful, proud. to men who maintained that science was impossible, philosophy is not much indebted, although they were disciples of socrates. euclid--not the mathematician, who was about a century later--merely gave a new edition of the eleatic doctrines, and phaedo speculated on the oneness of "the good." it was not till plato arose that a more complete system of philosophy was founded. he was born of noble athenian parents, b.c., the year that pericles died, and the second year of the peloponnesian war,--the most active period of grecian thought. he had a severe education, studying mathematics, poetry, music, rhetoric, and blending these with philosophy. he was only twenty when he found out socrates, with whom he remained ten years, and from whom he was separated only by death. he then went on his travels, visiting everything worth seeing in his day, especially in egypt. when he returned he began to teach the doctrines of his master, which he did, like him, gratuitously, in a garden near athens, planted with lofty plane-trees and adorned with temples and statues. this was called the academy, and gave a name to his system of philosophy. it is this only with which we have to do. it is not the calm, serious, meditative, isolated man that i would present, but _his contribution_ to the developments of philosophy on the principles of his master. surely no man ever made a richer contribution to this department of human inquiry than plato. he may not have had the originality or keenness of socrates, but he was more profound. he was pre-eminently a great thinker, a great logician, skilled in dialectics; and his "dialogues" are such perfect exercises of dialectical method that the ancients were divided as to whether he was a sceptic or a dogmatist. he adopted the socratic method and enlarged it. says lewes:-- "analysis, as insisted on by plato, is the decomposition of the whole into its separate parts,--is seeing the one in many.... the individual thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. only concerning the latter could philosophy occupy itself. socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had no conception of the classification of those definitions which must constitute philosophy. plato, by the introduction of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and society, which exclusively occupied socrates, to that of dialectics." plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. dionysius of halicarnassus classes him with herodotus and demosthenes in the perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and rhythm, as well as by a rich variety of elegant metaphors. plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or abstract ideas. general terms were synonymous with real existences, and these were the only objects of philosophy. these were called _ideas_; and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject-matter of dialectics. he maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has a real and independent existence; nay, that the mental power of conceiving and combining ideas, as contrasted with the mere impressions received from matter and external phenomena, is the only real and permanent existence. hence his writings became the great fountain-head of the ideal philosophy. in his assertion of the real existence of so abstract and supersensuous a thing as an idea, he probably was indebted to pythagoras, for plato was a master of the whole realm of philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ as the essence of being is a great advance on that philosopher's conception of _numbers_. he was taught by socrates that beyond this world of sense there is the world of eternal truth, and that there are certain principles concerning which there can be no dispute. the soul apprehends the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. it is in the celestial world that we are to find the realm of ideas. now, god is the supreme idea. to know god, then, should be the great aim of life. we know him through the desire which like feels for like. the divinity within feels its affinity with the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. the longing of the soul for beauty is _love_. love, then, is the bond which unites the human with the divine. beauty is not revealed by harmonious outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity. beauty, truth, love, these are god, whom it is the supreme desire of the soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul sustains itself. knowledge of god is the great end of life; and this knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can correct knowledge come. but man, immersed in the flux of sensualities, can never fully attain this knowledge of god, the object of all rational inquiry. hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. the supreme good is attainable; it is not attained. god is the immutable good, and justice the rule of the universe. "the vital principle of plato's philosophy," says ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by which he is in his origin connected." to quote from ritter again:-- "when we review the doctrines of plato, it is impossible to deny that they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. this is the noble thought which inspired him to say that god is the constant and immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be consummated. in his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy disciple of socrates.... while he adopted many of the opinions of his predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of unity. he may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it." that plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can be no reasonable doubt. nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries and his belief in god and immortality make him, in an ethical point of view, the most worthy of the disciples of socrates. he was to the greeks what kant was to the germans; and these two great thinkers resemble each other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society. the ablest part of the lectures of archer butler, of dublin, is devoted to the platonic philosophy. it is at once a criticism and a eulogium. no modern writer has written more enthusiastically of what he considers the crowning excellence of the greek philosophy. the dialectics of plato, his ideal theory, his physics, his psychology, and his ethics are most ably discussed, and in the spirit of a loving and eloquent disciple. butler represents the philosophy which he so much admires as a contemplation of, and a tendency to, the absolute and eternal good. as the admirers of ralph waldo emerson claim that he, more than any other man of our times, entered into the spirit of the platonic philosophy, i introduce some of his most striking paragraphs of subdued but earnest admiration of the greatest intellect of the ancient pagan world, hoping that they may be clearer to others than they are to me:-- these sentences [of plato] contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. a discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. there never was such a range of speculation. out of plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. great havoc makes he among our originalities. we have reached the mountain from which all these drift-bowlders were detached.... plato, in egypt and in eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one deity, in which all things are absorbed. the unity of asia and the detail of europe, the infinitude of the asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going europe plato came to join, and by contact to enhance the energy of each. the excellence of europe and asia is in his brain. metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of europe; he substricts the religion of asia as the base. in short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements.... the physical philosophers had sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit,--theories mechanical and chemical in their genius. plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the world, but bare inventories and lists. to the study of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma,--'let us declare the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose the universe. he was good; ... he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself.'... plato ... represents the privilege of the intellect,--the power, namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so disclosing in every fact a germ of expansion.... these expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon falls on our natural vision, and by this second sight discovering the long lines of law which shoot in every direction.... his definition of ideas as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era in the world. the great disciple of plato was aristotle, and he carried on the philosophical movement which socrates had started to the highest limit that it ever reached in the ancient world. he was born at stagira, b.c., and early evinced an insatiable thirst for knowledge. when plato returned from sicily aristotle joined his disciples at athens, and was his pupil for seventeen years. on the death of plato, he went on his travels and became the tutor of alexander the great, and in b.c. returned to athens after an absence of twelve years, and set up a school in the lyceum. he taught while walking up and down the shady paths which surrounded it, from which habit he obtained the name of the peripatetic, which has clung to his name and philosophy. his school had a great celebrity, and from it proceeded illustrious philosophers, statesmen, historians, and orators. aristotle taught for thirteen years, during which time he composed most of his greater works. he not only wrote on dialectics and logic, but also on physics in its various departments. his work on "the history of animals" was deemed so important that his royal pupil alexander presented him with eight hundred talents--an enormous sum--for the collection of materials. he also wrote on ethics and politics, history and rhetoric,--pouring out letters, poems, and speeches, three-fourths of which are lost. he was one of the most voluminous writers of antiquity, and probably is the most learned man whose writings have come down to us. nor has any one of the ancients exercised upon the thinking of succeeding ages so wide an influence. he was an oracle until the revival of learning. hegel says:-- "aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him their separation and commencement." he is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by the earlier philosophers. says adolph stahr:-- "plato made the external world the region of the incomplete and bad, of the contradictory and the false, and recognized absolute truth only in the eternal immutable ideas. aristotle laid down the proposition that the idea, which cannot of itself fashion itself into reality, is powerless, and has only a potential existence; and that it becomes a living reality only by realizing itself in a creative manner by means of its own energy." there can be no doubt as to aristotle's marvellous power of systematizing. collecting together all the results of ancient speculation, he so combined them into a co-ordinate system that for a thousand years he reigned supreme in the schools. from a literary point of view, plato was doubtless his superior; but plato was a poet, making philosophy divine and musical, while aristotle's investigations spread over a far wider range. he differed from plato chiefly in relation to the doctrine of ideas, without however resolving the difficulty which divided them. as he made matter to be the eternal ground of phenomena, he reduced the notion of it to a precision it never before enjoyed, and established thereby a necessary element in human science. but being bound to matter, he did not soar, as plato did, into the higher regions of speculation; nor did he entertain as lofty views of god or of immortality. neither did he have as high an ideal of human life; his definition of the highest good was a perfect practical activity in a perfect life. with aristotle closed the great socratic movement in the history of speculation. when socrates appeared there was a general prevalence of scepticism, arising from the unsatisfactory speculations respecting nature. he removed this scepticism by inventing a new method of investigation, and by withdrawing the mind from the contemplation of nature to the study of man himself. he bade men to look inward. plato accepted his method, but applied it more universally. like socrates, however, ethics were the great subject of his inquiries, to which physics were only subordinate. the problem he sought to solve was the way to live like the deity; he would contemplate truth as the great aim of life. with aristotle, ethics formed only one branch of attention; his main inquiries were in reference to physics and metaphysics. he thus, by bringing these into the region of inquiry, paved the way for a new epoch of scepticism. both plato and aristotle taught that reason alone can form science; but, as we have said, aristotle differed from his master respecting the theory of ideas. he did not deny to ideas a _subjective_ existence, but he did deny that they have an objective existence. he maintained that individual things alone _exist_; and if individuals alone exist, they can be known only by _sensation_. sensation thus becomes the basis of knowledge. plato made _reason_ the basis of knowledge, but aristotle made _experience_ that basis. plato directed man to the contemplation of ideas; aristotle, to the observation of nature. instead of proceeding synthetically and dialectically like plato, he pursues an analytic course. his method is hence inductive,--the derivation of certain principles from a sum of given facts and phenomena. it would seem that positive science began with aristotle, since he maintained that experience furnishes the principles of every science; but while his conception was just, there was not at that time a sufficient amount of experience from which to generalize with effect. it is only a most extensive and exhaustive examination of the accuracy of a proposition which will warrant secure reasoning upon it. aristotle reasoned without sufficient certainty of the major premise of his syllogisms. aristotle was the father of logic, and hegel and kant think there has been no improvement upon it since his day. this became to him the real organon of science. "he supposed it was not merely the instrument of thought, but the instrument of investigation." hence it was futile for purposes of discovery, although important to aid processes of thought. induction and syllogism are the two great features of his system of logic. the one sets out from particulars already known to arrive at a conclusion; the other sets out from some general principle to arrive at particulars. the latter more particularly characterized his logic, which he presented in sixteen forms, the whole evincing much ingenuity and skill in construction, and presenting at the same time a useful dialectical exercise. this syllogistic process of reasoning would be incontrovertible, if the _general_ were better known than the _particular_; but it is only by induction, which proceeds from the world of experience, that we reach the higher world of cognition. thus aristotle made speculation subordinate to logical distinctions, and his system, when carried out by the mediaeval schoolmen, led to a spirit of useless quibbling. instead of interrogating nature they interrogated their own minds, and no great discoveries were made. from want of proper knowledge of the conditions of scientific inquiry, the method of aristotle became fruitless for him; but it was the key by which future investigators were enabled to classify and utilize their vastly greater collection of facts and materials. though aristotle wrote in a methodical manner, his writings exhibit great parsimony of language. there is no fascination in his style. it is without ornament, and very condensed. his merit consisted in great logical precision and scrupulous exactness in the employment of terms. philosophy, as a great system of dialectics, as an analysis of the power and faculties of the mind, as a method to pursue inquiries, culminated in aristotle. he completed the great fabric of which thales laid the foundation. the subsequent schools of philosophy directed attention to ethical and practical questions, rather than to intellectual phenomena. the sceptics, like pyrrho, had only negative doctrines, and held in disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence. they did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility. they pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving to comprehend them. the epicureans despised the investigations of philosophy, since in their view these did not contribute to happiness. the subject of their inquiries was happiness, not truth. what will promote this? was the subject of their speculation. epicurus, born b.c., contended that pleasure was happiness; that pleasure should be sought not for its own sake, but with a view to the happiness of life obtained by it. he taught that happiness was inseparable from virtue, and that its enjoyments should be limited. he was averse to costly pleasures, and regarded contentedness with a little to be a great good. he placed wealth not in great possessions, but in few wants. he sought to widen the domain of pleasure and narrow that of pain, and regarded a passionless state of life as the highest. nor did he dread death, which was deliverance from misery, as the buddhists think. epicurus has been much misunderstood, and his doctrines were subsequently perverted, especially when the arts of life were brought into the service of luxury, and a gross materialism was the great feature of society. epicurus had much of the spirit of a practical philosopher, although very little of the earnest cravings of a religious man. he himself led a virtuous life, because he thought it was wiser and better and more productive of happiness to be virtuous, not because it was his duty. his writings were very voluminous, and in his tranquil garden he led a peaceful life of study and enjoyment. his followers, and they were numerous, were led into luxury and effeminacy,--as was to be expected from a sceptical and irreligious philosophy, the great principle of which was that whatever is pleasant should be the object of existence. sir james mackintosh says:-- "to epicurus we owe the general concurrence of reflecting men in succeeding times in the important truth that men cannot be happy without a virtuous frame of mind and course of life,--a truth of inestimable value, not peculiar to the epicureans, but placed by their exaggerations in a stronger light; a truth, it must be added, of less importance as a motive to right conduct than to the completeness of moral theory, which, however, it is very far from solely constituting. with that truth the epicureans blended another position,--that because virtue promotes happiness, every act of virtue must be done in order to promote the happiness of the agent. although, therefore, he has the merit of having more strongly inculcated the connection of virtue with happiness, yet his doctrine is justly charged with indisposing the mind to those exalted and generous sentiments without which no pure, elevated, bold, or tender virtues can exist." the stoics were a large and celebrated sect of philosophers; but they added nothing to the domain of thought,--they created no system, they invented no new method, they were led into no new psychological inquiries. their inquiries were chiefly ethical; and since ethics are a great part of the system of greek philosophy, the stoics are well worthy of attention. some of the greatest men of antiquity are numbered among them,--like seneca, epictetus, and marcus aurelius. the philosophy they taught was morality, and this was eminently practical and also elevated. the founder of this sect, zeno, was born, it is supposed, on the island of cyprus, about the year b.c. he was the son of wealthy parents, but was reduced to poverty by misfortune. he was so good a man, and so profoundly revered by the athenians, that they intrusted to him the keys of their citadel. he lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of grecian society, when greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land. deeply impressed with the prevailing laxity of morals and the absence of religion, he lifted up his voice more as a reformer than as an inquirer after truth, and taught for more than fifty years in a place called the _stoa_, "the porch," which had once been the resort of the poets. hence the name of his school. he was chiefly absorbed with ethical questions, although he studied profoundly the systems of the old philosophers. "the sceptics had attacked both perception and reason. they had shown that perception is after all based upon appearance, and appearance is not a certainty; and they showed that reason is unable to distinguish between appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." then they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. but zeno, taking a stand on common-sense, fought for morality, as did buddha before him, and long after him reid and beattie, when they combated the scepticism of hume. philosophy, according to zeno and other stoics, was intimately connected with the duties of practical life. the contemplation, meditation, and thought recommended by plato and aristotle seemed only a covert recommendation of selfish enjoyment. the wisdom which it should be the aim of life to attain is virtue; and virtue is to live harmoniously with nature. to live harmoniously with nature is to exclude all personal ends; hence pleasure is to be disregarded, and pain is to be despised. and as all moral action must be in harmony with nature the law of destiny is supreme, and all things move according to immutable fate. with the predominant tendency to the universal which characterized their system, the stoics taught that the sage ought to regard himself as a citizen of the world rather than of any particular city or state. they made four things to be indispensable to virtue,--a knowledge of _good_ and _evil_, which is the province of the reason; _temperance_, a knowledge of the due regulation of the sensual passions; _fortitude_, a conviction that it is good to suffer what is necessary; and _justice_, or acquaintance with what ought to be to every individual. they made _perfection_ necessary to virtue; hence the severity of their system. the perfect sage, according to them, is raised above all influence of external events; he submits to the law of destiny; he is exempt from desire and fear, joy or sorrow; he is not governed even by what he is exposed to necessarily, like sorrow and pain; he is free from the restraints of passion; he is like a god in his mental placidity. nor must the sage live only for himself, but for others also; he is a member of the whole body of mankind. he ought to marry, and to take part in public affairs; but he is to attack error and vice with uncompromising sternness, and will never weakly give way to compassion or forgiveness. yet with this ideal the stoics were forced to admit that virtue, like true knowledge, although theoretically attainable is practically beyond the reach of man. they were discontented with themselves and with all around them, and looked upon all institutions as corrupt. they had a profound contempt for their age, and for what modern society calls "success in life;" but it cannot be denied that they practised a lofty and stern virtue in their degenerate times. their god was made subject to fate; and he was a material god, synonymous with nature. thus their system was pantheistic. but they maintained the dignity of reason, and sought to attain to virtues which it is not in the power of man fully to reach. zeno lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight, although his constitution was not strong. he retained his powers by great abstemiousness, living chiefly on figs, honey, and bread. he was a modest and retiring man, seldom mingling with a crowd, or admitting the society of more than two or three friends at a time. he was as plain in his dress as he was frugal in his habits,--a man of great decorum and propriety of manners, resembling noticeably in his life and doctrines the chinese sage confucius. and yet this good man, a pattern to the loftiest characters of his age, strangled himself. suicide was not deemed a crime by his followers, among whom were some of the most faultless men of antiquity, especially among the romans. the doctrines of zeno were never popular, and were confined to a small though influential party. with the stoics ended among the greeks all inquiry of a philosophical nature worthy of especial mention, until centuries later, when philosophy was revived in the christian schools of alexandria, where the hebrew element of faith was united with the greek ideal of reason. the struggles of so many great thinkers, from thales to aristotle, all ended in doubt and in despair. it was discovered that all of them were wrong, or rather partial; and their error was without a remedy, until "the fulness of time" should reveal more clearly the plan of the great temple of truth, in which they were laying foundation stones. the bright and glorious period of greek philosophy was from socrates to aristotle. philosophical inquiries began about the origin of things, and ended with an elaborate systematization of the forms of thought, which was the most magnificent triumph that the unaided intellect of man ever achieved. socrates does not found a school, nor elaborate a system. he reveals most precious truths, and stimulates the youth who listen to his instructions by the doctrine that it is the duty of man to pursue a knowledge of himself, which is to be sought in that divine reason which dwells within him, and which also rules the world. he believes in science; he loves truth for its own sake; he loves virtue, which consists in the knowledge of the good. plato seizes the weapons of his great master, and is imbued with his spirit. he is full of hope for science and humanity. with soaring boldness he directs his inquiries to futurity, dissatisfied with the present, and cherishing a fond hope of a better existence. he speculates on god and the soul. he is not much interested in physical phenomena; he does not, like thales, strive to find out the beginning of all things, but the highest good, by which his immortal soul may be refreshed and prepared for the future life, in which he firmly believes. the sensible is an impenetrable empire; but ideas are certitudes, and upon these he dwells with rapt and mystical enthusiasm,--a great poetical rhapsodist, severe dialectician as he is, believing in truth and beauty and goodness. then aristotle, following out the method of his teachers, attempts to exhaust experience, and directs his inquiries into the outward world of sense and observation, but all with the view of discovering from phenomena the unconditional truth, in which he too believes. but everything in this world is fleeting and transitory, and therefore it is not easy to arrive at truth. a cold doubt creeps into the experimental mind of aristotle, with all his learning and his logic. the epicureans arise. misreading or corrupting the purer teaching of their founder, they place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. they despair of truth. but the world will not be abandoned to despair. the stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on virtue. yet it is unattainable virtue, while their god is not a moral governor, but subject to necessity. thus did those old giants grope about, for they did not know the god who was revealed unto the more spiritual sense of abraham, moses, david, and isaiah. and yet with all their errors they were the greatest benefactors of the ancient world. they gave dignity to intellectual inquiries, while by their lives they set examples of a pure morality. * * * * * the romans added absolutely nothing to the philosophy of the greeks. nor were they much interested in any speculative inquiries. it was only the ethical views of the old sages which had attraction or force to them. they were too material to love pure subjective inquiries. they had conquered the land; they disdained the empire of the air. there were doubtless students of the greek philosophy among the romans, perhaps as early as cato the censor. but there were only two persons of note in rome who wrote philosophy, till the time of cicero,--aurafanius and rubinus,--and these were epicureans. cicero was the first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so greatly to his intellectual culture, but even he added nothing; he was only a commentator and expositor. nor did he seek to found a system or a school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. those subjects which had the greatest attraction for the grecian schools cicero regarded as beyond the power of human cognition, and therefore looked upon the practical as the proper domain of human inquiry. yet he held logic in great esteem, as furnishing rules for methodical investigation. he adopted the doctrine of socrates as to the pursuit of moral good, and regarded the duties which grow out of the relations of human society as preferable to those of pursuing scientific researches. he had a great contempt for knowledge which could lead neither to the clear apprehension of certitude nor to practical applications. he thought it impossible to arrive at a knowledge of god, or the nature of the soul, or the origin of the world; and thus he was led to look upon the sensible and the present as of more importance than inconclusive inductions, or deductions from a truth not satisfactorily established. cicero was an eclectic, seizing on what was true and clear in the ancient systems, and disregarding what was simply a matter of speculation. this is especially seen in his treatise "de finibus bonorum et malorum," in which the opinions of all the grecian schools concerning the supreme good are expounded and compared. nor does he hesitate to declare that the highest happiness consists in the knowledge of nature and science, which is the true source of pleasure both to gods and men. yet these are but hopes, in which it does not become us to indulge. it is the actual, the real, the practical, which pre-eminently claims attention,--in other words, the knowledge which will furnish man with a guide and rule of life. even in the consideration of moral questions cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in this department he is most at home. the points he is most anxious to establish are the doctrines of god and the soul. these are most fully treated in his essay "de natura deorum," in which he submits the doctrines of the epicureans and the stoics to the objections of the academy. he admits that man is unable to form true conceptions of god, but acknowledges the necessity of assuming one supreme god as the creator and ruler of all things, moving all things, remote from all mortal mixture, and endued with eternal motion in himself. he seems to believe in a divine providence ordering good to man, in the soul's immortality, in free-will, in the dignity of human nature, in the dominion of reason, in the restraint of the passions as necessary to virtue, in a life of public utility, in an immutable morality, in the imitation of the divine. thus there is little of original thought in the moral theories of cicero, which are the result of observation rather than of any philosophical principle. we might enumerate his various opinions, and show what an enlightened mind he possessed; but this would not be the development of philosophy. his views, interesting as they are, and generally wise and lofty, do not indicate any progress of the science. he merely repeats earlier doctrines. these were not without their utility, since they had great influence on the latin fathers of the christian church. he was esteemed for his general enlightenment. he softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day, and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. he was a critic of philosophy, an expositor whom we can scarcely spare. if anybody advanced philosophy among the romans it was epictetus, and even he only in the realm of ethics. quintius sextius, in the time of augustus, had revived the pythagorean doctrines. seneca had recommended the severe morality of the stoics, but added nothing that was not previously known. the greatest light among the romans was the phrygian slave epictetus, who was born about fifty years after the birth of jesus christ, and taught in the time of the emperor domitian. though he did not leave any written treatises, his doctrines were preserved and handed down by his disciple arrian, who had for him the reverence that plato had for socrates. the loftiness of his recorded views has made some to think that he must have been indebted to christianity, for no one before him revealed precepts so much in accordance with its spirit. he was a stoic, but he held in the highest estimation socrates and plato. it is not for the solution of metaphysical questions that he was remarkable. he was not a dialectician, but a moralist, and as such takes the highest ground of all the old inquirers after truth. with him, as to cicero and seneca, philosophy is the wisdom of life. he sets no value on logic, nor much on physics; but he reveals sentiments of great simplicity and grandeur. his great idea is the purification of the soul. he believes in the severest self-denial; he would guard against the siren spells of pleasure; he would make men feel that in order to be good they must first feel that they are evil. he condemns suicide, although it had been defended by the stoics. he would complain of no one, not even as to injustice; he would not injure his enemies; he would pardon all offences; he would feel universal compassion, since men sin from ignorance; he would not easily blame, since we have none to condemn but ourselves. he would not strive after honor or office, since we put ourselves in subjection to that we seek or prize; he would constantly bear in mind that all things are transitory, and that they are not our own. he would bear evils with patience, even as he would practise self-denial of pleasure. he would, in short, be calm, free, keep in subjection his passions, avoid self-indulgence, and practise a broad charity and benevolence. he felt that he owed all to god,--that all was his gift, and that we should thus live in accordance with his will; that we should be grateful not only for our bodies, but for our souls and reason, by which we attain to greatness. and if god has given us such a priceless gift, we should be contented, and not even seek to alter our external relations, which are doubtless for the best. we should wish, indeed, for only what god wills and sends, and we should avoid pride and haughtiness as well as discontent, and seek to fulfil our allotted part. such were the moral precepts of epictetus, in which we see the nearest approach to christianity that had been made in the ancient world, although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of christ or the christians. and these sublime truths had a great influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the roman emperors, marcus aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had learned from the slave, and whose "thoughts" are still held in admiration. thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of life, until in spirit they had, with epictetus, harmonized with many of the revealed truths which christ and his apostles laid down for the regeneration of the world. who cannot see in the inquiries of the old philosopher,--whether into nature, or the operations of mind, or the existence of god, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as has been exhibited in no other department of human science? nay, who does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that divine teacher, that holy spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth? we regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a marvellous reach of the human understanding. modern researches have discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the time of aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the grecian schools have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still unsettled. if any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in human culture. * * * * * authorities. for original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter, read diogenes laertius's lives of the philosophers; the writings of plato and aristotle; cicero, de natura deorum, de oratore, de officiis, de divinatione, de finibus, tusculanae disputationes; xenophon, memorabilia; boethius, de consolatione philosophiae; lucretius. the great modern authorities are the germans, and these are very numerous. among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are brucker, hegel, brandis, i.g. buhle, tennemann, hitter, plessing, schwegler, hermann, meiners, stallbaum, and spiegel. the history of ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive. tennemann, translated by morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. in connection with the writings of the germans, the great work of the french cousin should be consulted. the english historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the germans. the work of enfield is based on brucker, or is rather an abridgment. archer butler's lectures are suggestive and able, but discursive and vague. grote has written learnedly on socrates and the other great lights. lewes's biographical history of philosophy has the merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. see also thomas stanley's history of philosophy, and the articles in smith's dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. j. w. donaldson's continuation of k. o. müller's history of the literature of ancient greece is learned, and should be consulted with thompson's notes on archer butler. schleiermacher, on socrates, translated by bishop thirlwall, is well worth attention. there are also fine articles in the encyclopaedias britannica and metropolitana. socrates. - b.c. greek philosophy. to socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. in either light he is one of the august names of history. he has been venerated for more than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the truths he taught. he did not commit his precious thoughts to writing; that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been published by them, especially by plato and xenophon. and if the greek philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles by which only it could be advanced. as a system-maker, both plato and aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably their superior, and in important respects he was their master. as a good man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example. he was born about or years b.c., and therefore may be said to belong to that brilliant age of grecian literature and art when prodicus was teaching rhetoric, and democritus was speculating about the doctrine of atoms, and phidias was ornamenting temples, and alcibiades was giving banquets, and aristophanes was writing comedies, and euripides was composing tragedies, and aspasia was setting fashions, and cimon was fighting battles, and pericles was making athens the centre of grecian civilization. but he died thirty years after pericles; so that what is most interesting in his great career took place during and after the peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as the one which immediately preceded it. it was the age of the sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished, but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective truth or the wants of the soul. they were paid teachers, and sought pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being protagoras, gorgias, hippias, and prodicus; men who travelled from city to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and really improving the public speaking of popular orators. they also taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of arithmetic and geometry. in loftiness of character they were not equal to those ionian philosophers, who, prior to socrates, in the fifth century b.c., speculated on the great problems of the material universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great intellectual force. it was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great cultivation, especially in arts, that socrates arose, whose "appearance," says grote, "was a moral phenomenon." he was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. his family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient attic _gens_. socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. he was twenty when he conversed with parmenides and zeno; he was twenty-eight when phidias adorned the parthenon; he was forty when he fought at potidaea and rescued alcibiades. at this period he was most distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming intoxicated, than anybody in athens. his powerful physique and sensual nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain both appetites and passions. his physiognomy was ugly and his person repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. he spent his time chiefly in the market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he lived in "good society." the ancient pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. socrates never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly acted as if he were well known and prominent. he was listened to because he was eloquent. his conversation is said to have been charming, and even fascinating. he was an original and ingenious man, different from everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character." but there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. though lofty in his inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a jewish prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. he looked rather like a silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to make people laugh. he enjoined no austerities or penances. he was very attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he gave the best advice. he was the most human of teachers. alcibiades was completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions. his great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. he sought to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and shams appear ridiculous. his irony was tremendous; nobody could stand before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. he asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. his process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. hence he drew upon himself the wrath of the sophists. he had no intellectual arrogance, since he professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own intellectual superiority. he was contented to show that others knew no more than he. he had no passion for admiration, no political ambition, no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. although poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. he seemed to despise riches, since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. he did not live in a cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. he must have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small, even for athens. he was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in lofty contemplations. he was always talking with such as the skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his illustrations, and uttering plain truths. yet he was equally at home with poets and philosophers and statesmen. he did not take much interest in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world. though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not utilitarian. science had no charm to him, since it was directed to utilitarian ends and was uncertain. his sayings had such a lofty, hidden wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "to the mentally proud and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." most people probably thought him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred, and contemptuous of all conventionalities. so severely dialectical was he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. the very sophists, whose ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler; although there were some--so severely trained was the grecian mind--who saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. probably there are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one of the orations of demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator. and yet there were defects in socrates. he was most provokingly sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. he was not quite just to the sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. and if they loved applause and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize, they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. and then socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. he was too much carried away by the fascinations of aspasia, when he knew that she was not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "menexenus" (by many ascribed to plato) he is made to recite at length one of her long orations, and in the "symposium" he is made to appear absolutely indelicate in his conduct with alcibiades, and to make what would be abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest control of the passions. to me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical, provoking man could have won and retained the love of xanthippe, especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to provide for the wants of the household. i do not wonder that she scolded him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades, he only provokingly laughed at her. a modern christian woman of society would have left him. but perhaps in pagan athens she could not have got a divorce. it is only in these enlightened and progressive times that women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in society,--into which it would seem that socrates was received, even the best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts alone. think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in paris, london, or new york, with his repulsive appearance, and tantalizing and provoking irony. but in artistic athens, at one time, he was all the fashion. everybody liked to hear him talk. everybody was both amused and instructed. he provoked no envy, since he affected modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information, and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. though he provoked animosities, he had many friends. if his language was sarcastic, his affections were kind. he was always surrounded by the most gifted men of his time. the wealthy crito constantly attended him; plato and xenophon were enthusiastic pupils; even alcibiades was charmed by his conversation; apollodorus and antisthenes rarely quitted his side; cebes and simonides came from thebes to hear him; isocrates and aristippus followed in his train; euclid of megara sought his society, at the risk of his life; the tyrant critias, and even the sophist protagoras, acknowledged his marvellous power. but i cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities. more important things demand our attention. i propose briefly to show his contributions to philosophy and ethics. in regard to the first, i will not dwell on his method, which is both subtle and dialectical. we are not greeks. yet it was his method which revolutionized philosophy. that was original. he saw this,--that the theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of the ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the sophists were mere words. he despised both dreams and words. speculations ended in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. neither dreams nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a philosophical system. so he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. their conclusions broke down their assumptions. they stood convicted of ignorance, to which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his aim to prove. he showed that they did not know what they affirmed. he proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and partly false, which produce confusion in argument. he would be precise and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. every definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise, people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced into absurdities. thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in greek philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. after demonstrating what is not, socrates advanced to the demonstration of what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism, courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. he wanted only positive truth,--something to build upon,--like bacon and all great inquirers. having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. unless knowledge is certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon. uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical research than poetry or dreams or speculations. how far the "definitions" of socrates led to the solution of the great problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as plato and aristotle, i will not attempt to enter upon here; but this i think i am warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of socrates, as a teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths, concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore could not be overthrown. if i were teaching metaphysics, it would be necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and definitions by which socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy. but for my present purpose i do not care so much what his _method_ was as what his _aim_ was. the aim of socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is called physical science. and no wonder, since science in his day was very imperfect. there were not facts enough known on which to base sound inductions: better, deductions from established principles. what is deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge in his day. scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. it was all speculation. democritus might resolve the material universe--the earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion of atoms. but whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them motion? the proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the universe, is convicted of ignorance. much, has been said in praise of the ionian philosophers; and justly, so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. but what did they discover? what truths did they arrive at to serve as foundation-stones of science? they were among the greatest intellects of antiquity. but their method was a wrong one. their philosophy was based on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they settled nothing. their science was based on inductions which were not reliable, because of a lack of facts. they drew conclusions as to the origin of the universe from material phenomena. thales, seeing that plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first beginning of things. anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air, thought that air was the great primal cause. then diogenes of crete, making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy. heraclitus of ephesus substituted fire for air. none of the illustrious ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things must be intelligent. the speculations of succeeding philosophers, living in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they could see with their eyes. and in close connection with speculations about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the soul alone was of any account. so atheism, and the disbelief of the existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism. without god and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no foundation for anything. they said, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism. socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world within, and "for physics substituted morals." he knew the uncertainty of physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. he knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage. like job, he reposed on consciousness. he turned his attention to what afterwards gave immortality to descartes. to the scepticism of the sophists he opposed self-evident truths. he proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "moral certitude was the platform from which he would survey the universe." it was the ladder by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of happiness. "though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his ends." he was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and retaining the true. it was his mission to separate truth from error. he taught the world how to weigh evidence. he would discard any doctrine which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. instead of turning his attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either god or consciousness reveals. instead of the creation, he dwelt on the creator. it was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. not wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure, but the peace and harmony of the soul. the inquiry should be, not what we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with god?--for there is a god, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul will expand and be happy forever. thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics. but it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. the teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. as a living christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. the dissection of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions. the moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the intellect. the "thoughts" of pascal are all the more read because the religious life of pascal is known to have been lofty. augustine was the oracle of the middle ages, from the radiance of his character as much as from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. bernard swayed society more by his sanctity than by his learning. the useful life of socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day, but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. he found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul. no writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as plato, his chosen disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective knowledge. his longings after love were scarcely exceeded by augustine or st. theresa,--not for a divine spouse, but for the harmony of the soul. with longings after love were, united longings after immortality, when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of dantean heaven. virtue became the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. he discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the fashion of solomon in his proverbs. happiness, virtue, knowledge: this was the socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and mundane interests. but human nature is frail. the soul is fettered and bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination, to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "this inspiration, he was persuaded, was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions of an internal voice which he called [greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or supernatural voice." from youth he was accustomed to obey this prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on his trial. the fathers of the church regarded this daemon as a devil, probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the "divine grace" of st. augustine and of all men famed for christian experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly or sin. socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things, with most pagans. happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul; pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. happiness is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and comes from what is perishable. hence but little account should be made of pain and suffering, or even of death. the life is more than meat, and virtue is its own reward. there is no reward of virtue in mere outward and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity. one must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. a good citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. a wise man, and therefore a good man, will be temperate. he must neither eat nor drink to excess. but temperance is not abstinence. socrates not only enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. he was a model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes. while he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not extend beyond mortal life. he would show, by teaching and example, that he valued future good beyond any transient joy. hence he accepted poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. he did not lacerate the body, like brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent of it. he was a greek, and a practical man,--anything but visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or love. hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty. he approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or austerities. passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. the law of temperance, therefore, is self-control. courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. life is subordinate to patriotism. it was of but little consequence whether a man died or not, in the discharge of duty. to do right was the main thing, because it was right. "like george fox, he would do right if the world were blotted out." the weak point, to my mind, in the socratic philosophy, considered in its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and making them identical. socrates could probably have explained this difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to st. paul, "the evil that i would not, that i do." men often commit sin when the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. the knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing what he knows will end in grief and shame. the restraint comes, not from knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what socrates meant by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power. "est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo." but this is not exactly the knowledge which socrates meant, or solomon. alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it; but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which socrates called an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." yet socrates himself, with passions and appetites as great as alcibiades, restrained them,--was assisted to do so by that divine power which he recognized, and probably adored. how far he felt his personal responsibility to this power i do not know. the sense of personal responsibility to god is one of the highest manifestations of christian life, and implies a recognition of god as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. many have a vague idea of providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of personal responsibility to him; in other words, without a "fear" of him, such as moses taught, and which is represented by david as "the beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is wrong, but also because it is displeasing to him who can both punish and reward. i do not believe that socrates had this idea of god; but i do believe that he recognized his existence and providence. most people in greece and rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "god almighty" whom moses taught. the existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. and the people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers, to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of minos and rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible. paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number, representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties, and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. they had imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their existence and their power. socrates emancipated himself from these degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of god than the people, or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from the popular belief; although there is one thing which i cannot understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the sacrifice of a cock to aesculapius. but whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of god and immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his conceptions of providence and of duty. he was a reformer and a missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there lived in india, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they called buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to christ than did socrates or marcus aurelius. very possibly. have we any reason to adduce that god has ever been without his witnesses on earth, or ever will be? why could he not have imparted wisdom both to buddha and socrates, as he did to abraham, moses, and paul? i look upon socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of almighty power on this earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. he himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission. think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." you see a man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of morals. you see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. who gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? who gave to him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? who, in this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the christian paley? who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man than the gifted john stuart mill, who seems to have been a candid searcher after truth? in the wisdom of socrates you see some higher force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. how much this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! how much he did to present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light! what a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the epicureanism which was pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! who cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater teacher who was the friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the pharisees and the speculations of the sadducees; who scorned the riches and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to _his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "who shall show us any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" it very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution, especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are popular, or prevailing follies and sins. as the scribes and pharisees, who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by our lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the sophists and tyrants of athens headed the fanatical persecution of socrates because he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. his elevated morality and lofty spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. if he had let persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions, they would probably have let him alone. galileo aroused the wrath of the inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he ridiculed the dominican and jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the middle ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the scriptures and of the church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. the church did not persecute kepler or pascal. the athenians may have condemned xenophanes and anaxagoras, yet not the other ionian philosophers, nor the lofty speculations of plato; but they murdered socrates because they hated him. it was not pleasant to the gay leaders of athenian society to hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing severity, nor was it pleasant to the sophists and rhetoricians to see their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers and shallow pretenders. no one likes to see himself held up to scorn and mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. the people of athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the logical sequence of the teachings of socrates was to undermine the popular religion. it was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. it was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption, those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their children, should not see in socrates their uncompromising foe; and when he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the way. my wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was seventy years of age. men less offensive than he have been burned alive, and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in the amphitheatre. it is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered, or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been killed. no matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished. so socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves disliked and hated. first the great comic poet aristophanes, in his comedy called the "clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. he is made to utter a thousand impieties and impertinences. he is made to talk like a man of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on everybody else. it is not probable that the poet entered into any formal conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and mockery, since socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral teachings, for being declared by the oracle of delphi the wisest man in the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the athenians above all men justly execrated,--critias, the chief of the thirty tyrants whom lysander had imposed, or at least consented to, after the peloponnesian war; and alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a traitor to his country. public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought to trial before the dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges, leading citizens of athens. one of his chief accusers was anytus,--a rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to socrates because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in the expulsion of the thirty tyrants. the more formidable accuser was meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by socrates' terrible cross-examinations. the principal charges against him were, that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he corrupted the youth of athens. in regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. his lofty realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically carried out. as to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul but the tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. in a narrow and technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience. considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an able defence; he might have done better. it appeared as if he did not wish to be acquitted. he took no thought of what he should say; he made no preparation for so great an occasion. he made no appeal to the passions and feelings of his judges. he refused the assistance of lysias, the greatest orator of the day. he brought neither his wife nor children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears. his discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and without art. his unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate defence. he even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate them. on the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. he might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority (only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. and then he irritated his judges unnecessarily. according to the laws he had the privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. for a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance. we cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted. he wished to die. the time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the world in a more impressive form. he knew the moral greatness of a martyr's death. he reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered great services, of having made important revelations. he never had an ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. so he was perfectly resigned to his fate. most willingly he accepted the penalty of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no indignant denials. had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not have fulfilled his mission. he acted with amazing foresight; he took the only course which would secure a lasting influence. he knew that his death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the civilized world. it was a public disappointment that he did not defend himself with more earnestness. but he was not seeking applause for his genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by martyrdom. so he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but lofty conversations with his disciples. he unhesitatingly refused to escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. his last hours were of immortal beauty. his friends were dissolved in tears, but he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. he died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor. his death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. it was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining ever since in the "memorabilia" of xenophon and the "dialogues" of plato. too late the athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty. they erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by lysippus. his character and his ideas are alike immortal. the schools of athens properly date from his death, about the year b.c., and these schools redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. the socratic philosophy, as expounded by plato, survived the wrecks of material greatness. it entered even into the christian schools, especially at alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world, and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of europe and america. "no man has ever been found," says grote, "strong enough to bend the bow of socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original thinker of antiquity." his teachings gave an immense impulse to civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an epicurean life. nor was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. it never will be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which they love. but it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric few,--the witnesses of truth whom god chooses, to keep alive the virtues and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces of evil. * * * * * authorities. the direct sources are chiefly plato (jowett's translation) and xenophon. indirect sources: chiefly aristotle, metaphysics; diogenes laertius's lives of philosophers; grote's history of greece; brandis's plato, in smith's dictionary; ralph waldo emerson's representative men; cicero on immortality; j. martineau, essay on plato; thirlwall's history of greece. see also the late work of curtius; ritter's history of philosophy; f.d. maurice's history of moral philosophy; g. h. lewes' biographical history of philosophy; hampden's fathers of greek philosophy; j.s. blackie's wise men of greece; starr king's lecture on socrates; smith's biographical dictionary; ueberweg's history of philosophy; w.a. butler's history of ancient philosophy; grote's aristotle. phidias - b.c. greek art. i suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated people in favored circumstances more than art. they travel in europe, they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know what they are talking about or not. in short, the contemplation of art is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed opinions. artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who patronize them have no severity of discrimination. we see bad pictures on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be, the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or emotion in those who view them. and yet there is great enjoyment, to some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. the ideas of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and the favored classes. so, in high civilizations, especially material, art is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme of general criticism and constant conversation. it is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather than critically. my criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more than those of thousands of other people. as a public teacher to those who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, i presume to offer only reflections on art as it existed among the greeks, and to show its developments in an historical point of view. the reader may be surprised that i should venture to present phidias as one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him, or can be known about him. so far as the man is concerned, i might as well lecture on melchizedek, or pharaoh, or one of the dukes of edom. there are no materials to construct a personal history which would be interesting, such as abound in reference to michael angelo or raphael. thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. the development of art is an important part of the history of civilization. the influence of art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. ancient grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. any man who largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor. now, history says this much of phidias: that he lived in the time of pericles,--in the culminating period of grecian glory,--and ornamented the parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which parthenon was to athens what solomon's temple was to jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory. his great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its present value. all antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue, and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the grandeur and majesty of its proportions. another of the famous works of phidias was the bronze statue of minerva, which was the glory of the acropolis, this was sixty feet in height. but even this yielded to the colossal statue of zeus or jupiter in his great temple at olympia, representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. in this statue the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as michael angelo did in his statue of moses. so famous was this majestic statue, that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and repose among the ancients. this statue, removed to constantinople by theodosius the great, remained undestroyed until the year a.d. phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their grace and majesty of form. the great master himself was probably vastly superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age, having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power, unless it be michael angelo. his distinguished excellence was simplicity and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what aeschylus was to tragic poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, though his works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. his fame is immortal, though we know so little about him. it is based on the admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations extorted even from the severest critics in an age of art, when the best energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which make men rich and comfortable. it would be interesting to know the private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but this is mere speculation. we may presume that he was rich, flattered, and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals; not a persecuted man like dante, but honored like raphael; one of the fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in his day. but it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively art itself in the ancient world--to which i would call your attention, especially the expression of art in buildings, in statues, and in pictures. "art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. we speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or an artistic writer like voltaire or macaulay; of an artistic preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. eternal ideas which the mind conceives are the foundation of art, as they are of philosophy. art claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the genius of a poet. however material the creation, the spirit which gives beauty to it is of the mind and soul. imagination is tasked to its utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes the deepest impression. the marble bust becomes animated, and even the temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to admiration and awe. these feelings belong to every one by nature, and are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. art is therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live in the great ideas on which it is based. the peasant stands awe-struck before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all thrones and empires, and even civilizations. they are as imperishable as stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. whenever, then, man creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. he impresses, to a greater or less degree, every order and class of men. he becomes a benefactor, since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure. he is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in praises and honors. like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of the deity he worships his highest reward. michael angelo worked preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced old age, even as dante lived in the visions to which his imagination gave form and reality. art is therefore not only self-sustained, but lofty and unselfish. it is indeed the exalted soul going forth triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the realm of deities and angels. the accidents-of earth are no more to the true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the beatitudes of love. and it is only when there is this soul longing to reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have been produced. when art has been prostituted to pander to perverted tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works only have been created. fra angelico lived secluded in a convent when he painted his exquisite madonnas. it was the exhaustion of the nervous energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed raphael at thirty-seven. the artists of greece did not live for utilities any more than did the ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which were their chosen joy. whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of man was attained by them. they represented all that the mind can conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of architectural proportions, in the realm of beauty and grace modern civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists of pagan antiquity. grecian artists have been the teachers of all nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. how far they were themselves original we cannot tell. we do not know how much they were indebted to egyptians, phoenicians, and assyrians, but in real excellence they have never been surpassed. in some respects, their works still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. hence we have a right to infer that art can flourish under pagan as well as christian influences. it was a comparatively pagan age in italy when the great artists arose who succeeded da vinci, especially under the patronage of the medici and the medicean popes. christianity has only modified art by purifying it from sensual attractions. christianity added very little to art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their saints and madonnas the seraphic sentiments of christian love and angelic purity. art even declined in the roman world from the second century after christ, in spite of all the efforts of christian emperors. in fact neither christianity nor paganism creates it; it seems to be independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and circumstances of an age. make art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown its great masters with olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the people are christian or pagan. so that art seems to be a human creation, rather than a divine inspiration. it is the result of genius, stimulated by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence. much has been written on those principles upon which art is supposed to be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and ingenuity have been displayed. it is difficult to conceive of beauty or grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "metaphysics, mathematics, music, and philosophy," says cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define, demonstrate, or generalize," great critics, like burke, alison, and stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "plato represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. leibnitz maintained that it consists in perfection. diderot referred beauty to the idea of relation. blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. leigh speaks of it as the music of the age." these definitions do not much assist us. we fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as probably did phidias, although art in greece could hardly have attained such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy alike afforded. art can flourish only as the taste of the people becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge. the mere contemplation of nature is not enough. savages have no art at all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the ever-changing sea. when phidias was asked how he conceived his olympian jove, he referred to homer's poems. michael angelo was enabled to paint the saints and sibyls of the sistine chapel from familiarity with the writings of the jewish prophets. isaiah inspired him as truly as homer inspired phidias. the artists of the age of phidias were encouraged and assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in the sunshine of pericles, even as the great men in the court of elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious appreciation. great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. they all mutually assist each other. when rome lost her great men, art declined. when the egotism of louis xiv. extinguished genius, the great lights in all departments disappeared. so art is indebted not merely to the contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas permeating society,--such as when the age of phidias was kindled with the great thoughts of socrates, democritus, thucydides, euripides, aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of augustan or elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the same people. now, in reference to the history or development of ancient art, until it culminated in the age of pericles, we observe that its first expression was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished for intellectual life. then arose the temples of egypt, of assyria, of india. they are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful. they arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably erected before the palaces of kings, and in egypt by the dynasty that builded the older pyramids. even those ambitious and prodigious monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but only of permanence. they do not indicate civilization, but despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. but this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. it is difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes, acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical forces, for herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on the great pyramid during forty years. what for? surely it is hard to suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king, since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even any hieroglyphics. the mystery seems impenetrable. but the temples are not mysteries. they were built also by sacerdotal monarchs, in honor of the deity. they must have been enormous, perhaps the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of karnac--a temple designated by the greeks as that of jupiter ammon---with its large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and surrounded with courts and colonnades, like solomon's temple, to accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. but these enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation. they may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. the emotion they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace or harmony, which require both taste and genius. the same is probably true of solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when art had been advanced somewhat by the phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems he was much indebted. we cannot conceive how that famous structure should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven years, and have cost what would now be equal to $ , , , from any description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and money rather than architectural genius. after the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings, equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of art. yet even these were in imitation of the temples. and as kings became proud and secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the palaces of nebuchadnezzar and rameses the great and the persian monarchs at susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient in beauty and grace. it was not until the greeks applied their wonderful genius to architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization. and, as among egyptians, art in greece is first seen in temples; for the earlier greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make. the dorians, who descended from the mountains of northern greece, eighty years after the fall of troy, were the first who added substantially to the architectural art of asiatic nations, by giving simplicity and harmony to their temples. we see great thickness of columns, a fitting proportion to the capitals, and a beautiful entablature. the horizontal lines of the architrave and cornice predominate over the vertical lines of the columns. the temple arises in the severity of geometrical forms. the doric column was not entirely a new creation, but was an improvement on the egyptian model,--less massive, more elegant, fluted, increasing gradually towards the base, with a slight convexed swelling downward, about six diameters in height, superimposed by capitals. "so regular was the plan of the temple, that if the dimensions of a single column and the proportion the entablature should bear to it were given to two individuals acquainted with this style, with directions to compose a temple, they would produce designs exactly similar in size, arrangement, and general proportions." and yet while the style of all the doric temples is the same, there are hardly two temples alike, being varied by the different proportions of the _column_, which is the peculiar mark of grecian architecture, even as the _arch_ is the feature of gothic architecture. the later doric was less massive than the earlier, but more rich in sculptured ornaments. the pedestal was from two thirds to a whole diameter of a column in height, built in three courses, forming as it were steps to the platform on which the pillar rested. the pillar had twenty flutes, with a capital of half a diameter, supporting the entablature. this again, two diameters in height, was divided into architrave, frieze, and cornice. but the great beauty of the temple was the portico in front,--a forest of columns, supporting the pediment above, which had at the base an angle of about fourteen degrees. from the pediment the beautiful cornice projects with various mouldings, while at the base and at the apex are sculptured monuments representing both men and animals. the graceful outline of the columns, and the variety of light and shade arising from the arrangement of mouldings and capitals, produced an effect exceedingly beautiful. all the glories of this order of architecture culminated in the parthenon,--built of pentelic marble, resting on a basement of limestone, surrounded with forty-eight fluted columns of six feet and two inches diameter at the base and thirty-four feet in height, the frieze and pediment elaborately ornamented with reliefs and statues, while within the cella or interior was the statue of minerva, forty feet high, built of gold and ivory. the walls were decorated with the rarest paintings, and the cella itself contained countless treasures. this unrivalled temple was not so large as some of the cathedrals of the middle ages, but it covered twelve times the ground of the temple of solomon, and from the summit of the acropolis it shone as a wonder and a glory. the marbles have crumbled and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the most beautiful buildings of the world, from the quirinus at rome to the madeleine at paris, stimulating alike the genius of michael angelo and christopher wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. who has copied the flavian amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or for the rostrum of an orator? who has not copied the parthenon as the severest in its proportions for public buildings for civic purposes? the ionic architecture is only a modification of the doric,--its columns more slender and with a greater number of flutes, and capitals more elaborate, formed with volutes or spiral scrolls, while its pediment, the triangular facing of the portico, is formed with a less angle from the base,--the whole being more suggestive of grace than strength. vitruvius, the greatest authority among the ancients, says that "the greeks, in inventing these two kinds of columns, imitated in the one the naked simplicity and aspects of a man, and in the other the delicacy and ornaments of a woman, whose ringlets appear in the volutes of the capital." the corinthian order, which was the most copied by the romans, was still more ornamented, with foliated capitals, greater height, and a more decorated entablature. but the principles of all these three orders are substantially the same,--their beauty consisting in the column and horizontal lines, even as vertical lines marked the gothic. we see the lintel and not the arch; huge blocks of stone perfectly squared, and not small stones irregularly laid; external rather than internal pillars, the cella receiving light from the open roof above, rather than from windows; a simple outline uninterrupted,--generally in the form of a parallelogram,--rather than broken by projections. there is no great variety; but the harmony, the severity, and beauty of proportion will eternally be admired, and can never be improved,--a temple of humanity, cheerful, useful, complete, not aspiring to reach what on earth can never be obtained, with no gloomy vaults speaking of maceration and grief, no lofty towers and spires soaring to the sky, no emblems typical of consecrated sentiments and of immortality beyond the grave, but rich in ornaments drawn from the living world,--of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace of form. as the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the architecture of the greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores, libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring, we see the restoration of the gothic in churches, cathedrals, schools,--for philosophy and art did all they could to civilize the world before christianity was sent to redeem it and prepare mankind for the life above. such was the temple of the greeks, reappearing in all the architectures of nations, from the romans to our own times,--so perfect that no improvements have subsequently been made, no new principles discovered which were not known to vitruvius. what a creation, to last in its simple beauty for more than two thousand years, and forever to remain a perfect model of its kind! ah, that was a triumph of art, the praises of which have been sung for more than sixty generations, and will be sung for hundreds yet to come. but how hidden and forgotten the great artists who invented all this, showing the littleness of man and the greatness of art itself. how true that old greek saying, "life is short, but art is long." but the genius displayed in sculpture was equally remarkable, and was carried to the same perfection. the greeks did not originate sculpture. we read of sculptured images from remotest antiquity. assyria, egypt, and india are full of relics. but these are rude, unformed, without grace, without expression, though often colossal and grand. there are but few traces of emotion, or passion, or intellectual force. everything which has come down from the ancient monarchies is calm, impassive, imperturbable. nor is there a severe beauty of form. there is no grace, no loveliness, that we should desire them. nature was not severely studied. we see no aspiration after what is ideal. sometimes the sculptures are grotesque, unnatural, and impure. they are emblematic of strange deities, or are rude monuments of heroes and kings. they are curious, but they do not inspire us. we do not copy them; we turn away from them. they do not live, and they are not reproduced. art could spare them all, except as illustrations of its progress. they are merely historical monuments, to show despotism and superstition, and the degradation of the people. but this cannot be said of the statues which the greeks created, or improved from ancient models. in the sculptures of the greeks we see the utmost perfection of the human form, both of man and woman, learned by the constant study of anatomy and of nude figures of the greatest beauty. a famous statue represented the combined excellences of perhaps one hundred different persons. the study of the human figure became a noble object of ambition, and led to conceptions of ideal grace and loveliness such as no one human being perhaps ever possessed in all respects. and not merely grace and beauty were thus represented in marble or bronze, but dignity, repose, majesty. we see in those figures which have survived the ravages of time suggestions of motion, rest, grace, grandeur,--every attitude, every posture, every variety of form. we see also every passion which moves the human soul,--grief, rage, agony, shame, joy, peace. but it is the perfection of form which is most wonderful and striking. nor did the artists work to please the vulgar rich, but to realize their own highest conceptions, and to represent sentiments in which the whole nation shared. they sought to instruct; they appealed to the highest intelligence. "some sought to represent tender beauty, others daring power, and others again heroic grandeur." grecian statuary began with ideal representations of deities; then it produced the figures of gods and goddesses in mortal forms; then the portrait-statues of distinguished men. this art was later in its development than architecture, since it was directed to ornamenting what had already nearly reached perfection. thus phidias ornamented the parthenon in the time of pericles, when sculpture was purest and most ideal in some points of view it declined after phidias, but in other respects it continued to improve until it culminated in lysippus, who was contemporaneous with alexander. he is said to have executed fifteen hundred statues, and to have displayed great energy of execution. he idealized human beauty, and imitated nature to the minutest details. he alone was selected to make the statue of alexander, which is lost. none of his works, which were chiefly in bronze, are extant; but it is supposed that the famous _hercules_ and the _torso belvedere_ are copies from his works, since his favorite subject was hercules. we only can judge of his great merits from his transcendent reputation and the criticism of classic writers, and also from the works that have come down to us which are supposed to be imitations of his masterpieces. it was his scholars who sculptured the _colossus of rhodes_, the _laocoön_, and the _dying gladiator_. after him plastic art rapidly degenerated, since it appealed to passion, especially under praxiteles, who was famous for his undraped venuses and the expression of sensual charms. the decline of art was rapid as men became rich, and epicurean life was sought as the highest good. skill of execution did not decline, but ideal beauty was lost sight of, until the art itself was prostituted--as among the romans--to please perverted tastes or to flatter senatorial pride. but our present theme is not the history of decline, but of the original creations of genius, which have been copied in every succeeding age, and which probably will never be surpassed, except in some inferior respects,--in mere mechanical skill. the _olympian jove_ of phidias lives perhaps in the _moses_ of michael angelo, great as was his original genius, even as the _venus_ of praxiteles may have been reproduced in powers's _greek slave_. the great masters had innumerable imitators, not merely in the representation of man but of animals. what a study did these artists excite, especially in their own age, and how honorable did they make their noble profession even in degenerate times! they were the school-masters of thousands and tens of thousands, perpetuating their ideas to remotest generations. their instructions were not lost, and never can be lost in a realm which constitutes one of the proudest features of our own civilization. it is true that christianity does not teach aesthetic culture, but it teaches the duties which prevent the eclipse of art. in this way it comes to the rescue of art when in danger of being perverted. grecian art was consecrated to paganism,--but, revived, it may indirectly be made tributary to christianity, like music and eloquence. it will not conserve christianity, but may be purified by it, even if able to flourish without it. i can now only glance at the third development of grecian art, as seen in painting. it is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in sculpture and architecture. we have no means of forming incontrovertible opinions. most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring, do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures of the great masters of modern times. but we have the testimony of the ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of pictures as they were of statues. and since their taste was severe, and their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the greeks. we read of celebrated schools,--like the modern schools of florence, rome, bologna, venice, and naples. the schools of sicyon, corinth, athens, and rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern schools to which i have alluded. painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected. but painting is very ancient. the walls of babylon, it is asserted by the ancient historians, were covered with paintings. many survive amid the ruins of egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude, without regard to light and shade, like chinese pictures. nor do they represent passions and emotions. they aimed to perpetuate historical events, not ideas. the first paintings of the greeks simply marked out the outline of figures. next appeared the inner markings, as we see in ancient vases, on a white ground. the effects of light and shade were then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with nature. cimon of cleonae, in the eightieth olympiad, invented the art of "fore-shortening," and hence was the first painter of perspective. polygnotus, a contemporary of phidias, was nearly as famous for painting as he was for sculpture. he was the first who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. he gave to the cheek the blush and to his draperies gracefulness. he is said to have been a great epic painter, as phidias was an epic sculptor and homer an epic poet. he expressed, like them, ideal beauty. but his pictures had no elaborate grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art. his figures were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze. he took his subjects from epic poetry. he is celebrated for his accurate drawing, and for the charm and grace of his female figures. he also gave great grandeur to his figures, like michael angelo. contemporary with him was dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and micon, who was skilled in painting horses. with apollodorus of athens, who flourished toward the close of the fifth century before christ, there was a new development,--that of dramatic effect. his aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the appearance of reality. he painted men and things as they appeared. he also improved coloring, invented _chiaroscuro_ (or the art of relief by a proper distribution of the lights and shadows), and thus obtained what is called "tone." he prepared the way for zeuxis, who surpassed him in the power to give beauty to forms. the _helen_ of zeuxis was painted from five of the most beautiful women of croton. he aimed at complete illusion of the senses, as in the instance recorded of his grape picture. his style was modified by the contemplation of the sculptures of phidias, and he taught the true method of grouping. his marked excellence was in the contrast of light and shade. he did not paint ideal excellence; he was not sufficiently elevated in his own moral sentiments to elevate the feelings of others: he painted sensuous beauty as it appeared in the models which he used. but he was greatly extolled, and accumulated a great fortune, like rubens, and lived ostentatiously, as rich and fortunate men ever have lived who do not possess elevation of sentiment. his headquarters were not at athens, but at ephesus,--a city which also produced parrhasins, to whom zeuxis himself gave the palm, since he deceived the painter by his curtain, while zeuxis only deceived birds by his grapes. parrhasius established the rule of proportions, which was followed by succeeding artists. he was a very luxurious and arrogant man, and fancied he had reached the perfection of his art. but if that was ever reached among the ancients it was by apelles,--the titian of that day,--who united the rich coloring of the ionian school with the scientific severity of the school of sicyonia. he alone was permitted to paint the figure of alexander, as lysippus only was allowed to represent him in bronze. he invented ivory black, and was the first to cover his pictures with a coating of varnish, to bring out the colors and preserve them. his distinguishing excellency was grace,--"that artless balance of motion and repose," says fuseli, "springing from character and founded on propriety." others may have equalled him in perspective, accuracy, and finish, but he added a refinement of taste which placed him on the throne which is now given to raphael. no artists could complete his unfinished pictures. he courted the severest criticism, and, like michael angelo, had no jealousy of the fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own self-consciousness. he must have made enormous sums of money, since one of his pictures--a venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in cos, and afterwards removed by augustus to rome--cost one hundred talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum, i apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture, certainly in view of the relative value of gold. in this picture female grace was impersonated. after apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished artists for several centuries. they generally flocked to rome, where there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to vanity and a vitiated taste. the masterpieces of the old artists brought enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were brought to rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of italy and spain and flanders were brought to paris by napoleon. so rome gradually possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius expired with grecian liberties and glories. rome multiplied and rewarded painters, but none of them were famous. pictures were as common as statues. even varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred portraits. pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and palaces, as were statues. we are forced, therefore, to believe that the greeks carried painting to the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises of critics like cicero and pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm which the painters created and the enormous prices they received. whether polygnotus was equal to michael angelo, zeuxis to titian, and apelles to raphael, we cannot tell. their works have perished. what remains to us, in the mural decorations of pompeii and the designs on vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. we cannot conceive how the greek painters could have equalled the great italian masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture we call "encaustic." yet it is not the perfection of colors or of design, or mechanical aids, or exact imitations, or perspective skill, which constitute the highest excellence of the painter, but his power of creation,--the power of giving ideal beauty and grandeur and grace, inspired by the contemplation of eternal ideas, an excellence which appears in all the masterworks of the greeks, and such as has not been surpassed by the moderns. but art was not confined to architecture, sculpture, and painting alone. it equally appears in all the literature of greece. the greek poets were artists, as also the orators and historians, in the highest sense. they were the creators of _style_ in writing, which we do not see in the literature of the jews or other oriental nations, marvellous and profound as were their thoughts. the greeks had the power of putting things so as to make the greatest impression on the mind. this especially appears among such poets as sophocles and euripides, such orators as pericles and demosthenes, such historians as xenophon and thucydides, such philosophers as plato and aristotle. we see in their finished productions no repetitions, no useless expressions, no superfluity or redundancy, no careless arrangement, no words even in bad taste, save in the abusive epithets in which the orators indulged. all is as harmonious in their literary style as in plastic art; while we read, unexpected pleasures arise in the mind, based on beauty and harmony, somewhat similar to the enjoyment of artistic music, or as when we read voltaire, rousseau, or macaulay. we perceive art in the arrangement of sentences, in the rhythm, in the symmetry of construction. we see means adapted to an end. the latin races are most marked for artistic writing, especially the french, who seem to be copyists of greek and roman models. we see very little of this artistic writing among the germans, who seem to disdain it as much as an english lawyer or statesman does rhetoric. it is in rhetoric and poetry that art most strikingly appears in the writings of the greeks, and this was perfected by the athenian sophists. but all the greeks, and after them the romans, especially in the time of cicero, sought the graces and fascinations of style. style is an art, and all art is eternal. it is probable also that art was manifested to a high degree in the conversation of the greeks, as they were brilliant talkers,--like brougham, mackintosh, madame de staël, and macaulay, in our times. but i may not follow out, as i could wish, this department of art,--generally overlooked, certainly not dwelt upon like pictures and statues. an interesting and captivating writer or speaker is as much an artist as a sculptor or musician; and unless authors possess art their works are apt to perish, like those of varro, the most learned of the romans. it is the exquisite art seen in all the writings of cicero which makes them classic; it is the style rather than the ideas. the same may be said of horace: it is his elegance of style and language which makes him immortal. it is this singular fascination of language and style which keeps hume on the list of standard and classic writers, like pascal, goldsmith, voltaire, and fénelon. it is on account of these excellences that the classical writers of antiquity will never lose their popularity, and for which they will be imitated, and by which they have exerted their vast influence. art, therefore, in every department, was carried to high excellence by the greeks, and they thus became the teachers of all succeeding races and ages. artists are great exponents of civilization. they are generally learned men, appreciated by the cultivated classes, and usually associating with the rich and proud. the popes rewarded artists while they crushed reformers. i never read of an artist who was persecuted. men do not turn with disdain or anger in disputing with them, as they do from great moral teachers; artists provoke no opposition and stir up no hostile passions. it is the men who propound agitating ideas and who revolutionize the character of nations, that are persecuted. artists create no revolutions, not even of thought. savonarola kindled a greater fire in florence than all the artists whom the medici ever patronized. but if the artists cannot wear the crown of apostles and reformers and sages,--the men who save nations, men like socrates, luther, bacon, descartes, burke,--yet they have fewer evils to contend with in their progress, and they still leave a mighty impression behind them, not like that of moses and paul, but still an influence; they kindle the enthusiasm of a class that cannot be kindled by ideas, and furnish inexhaustible themes of conversation to cultivated people and make life itself graceful and beautiful, enriching our houses and adorning our consecrated temples and elevating our better sentiments. the great artist is himself immortal, even if he contributes very little to save the world. art seeks only the perfection of outward form; it is mundane in its labors; it does not aspire to those beatitudes which shine beyond the grave. and yet it is a great and invaluable assistance to those who would communicate great truths, since it puts them in attractive forms and increases the impression of the truths themselves. to the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet, a knowledge of the principles of art is as important as to the architect, the sculptor, and the painter; and these principles are learned only by study and labor, while they cannot be even conceived of by ordinary men. thus it would appear that in all departments and in all the developments of art the greeks were the teachers of the modern european nations, as well of the ancient romans; and their teachings will be invaluable to all the nations which are yet to arise, since no great improvement has been made on the models which have come down to us, and no new principles have been discovered which were not known to them. in everything which pertains to art they were benefactors of the human race, and gave a great impulse to civilization. authorities. müller's de phidias vita, vitruvius, aristotle. pliny, ovid, martial, lucian, and cicero have made criticisms on ancient art. the modern writers are very numerous, especially among the germans and the french. from these may be selected winckelmann's history of ancient art; müller's remains of ancient art; donaldson's antiquities of athens; sir w. gill's pompeiana; montfançon's antiquité expliquée en figures; ancient marbles of the british museum, by taylor combe; mayer's kunstgechicte; cleghorn's ancient and modern art; wilkinson's topography of thebes; dodwell's classical tour; wilkinson's ancient egyptians; flaxman's lectures on sculpture; fuseli's lectures; sir joshua reynolds's lectures; also see five articles on painting, sculpture, and architecture, in the encyclopaedia britannica, and in smith's dictionary. literary genius: the greek and roman classics. we know but little of the literature of antiquity until the greeks applied to it the principles of art. the sanskrit language has revealed the ancient literature of the hindus, which is chiefly confined to mystical religious poetry, and which has already been mentioned in the chapter on "ancient religions." there was no history worthy the name in india. the egyptians and babylonians recorded the triumphs of warriors and domestic events, but those were mere annals without literary value. it is true that the literary remains of egypt show a reading and writing people as early as three thousand years before christ, and in their various styles of pen-language reveal a remarkable variety of departments and topics treated,--books of religion, of theology, of ethics, of medicine, of astronomy, of magic, of mythic poetry, of fiction, of personal correspondence, etc. the difficulties of deciphering them, however, and their many peculiarities and formalisms of style, render them rather of curious historical and archaeological than of literary interest. the chinese annals also extend back to a remote period, for confucius wrote history as well as ethics; but chinese literature has comparatively little interest for us, as also that of all oriental nations, except the hindu vedas and the persian zend-avesta, and a few other poems showing great fertility of the imagination, with a peculiar tenderness and pathos. accordingly, as i wish to show chiefly the triumphs of ancient genius when directed to literature generally, and especially such as has had a direct influence upon our modern literature, i confine myself to that of greece and rome. even our present civilization delights in the masterpieces of the classical poets, historians, orators, and essayists, and seeks to rival them. long before christianity became a power the great literary artists of greece had reached perfection in style and language, especially in athens, to which city youths were sent to be educated, as to a sort of university town where the highest culture was known. educated romans were as familiar with the greek classics as they were with those of their own country, and could talk greek as the modern cultivated germans talk french. without the aid of greece, rome could never have reached the civilization to which she attained. how rich in poetry was classical antiquity, whether sung in the greek or latin language! in all those qualities which give immortality classical poetry has never been surpassed, whether in simplicity, in passion, in fervor, in fidelity to nature, in wit, or in imagination. it existed from the early times of greek civilization, and continued to within a brief period of the fall of the roman empire. with the rich accumulation of ages the romans were familiar. they knew nothing indeed of the solitary grandeur of the jewish muse, or the nature-myths of the ante-homeric singers; but they possessed the iliad and the odyssey, with their wonderful truthfulness, their clear portraiture of character, their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their good sense and healthful sentiments, withal so original that the germ of almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be found in them. we see in homer a poet of the first class, holding the same place in literature that plato holds in philosophy or newton in science, and exercising a mighty influence on all the ages which have succeeded him. he was born, probably, at smyrna, an ionian city; the dates attributed to him range from the seventh to the twelfth century before christ. herodotus puts him at b.c. for nearly three thousand years his immortal creations have been the delight and the inspiration of men of genius; and they are as marvellous to us as they were to the athenians, since they are exponents of the learning as well as of the consecrated sentiments of the heroic ages. we find in them no pomp of words, no far-fetched thoughts, no theatrical turgidity, no ambitious speculations, no indefinite longings; but we see the manners and customs of the primitive nations, the sights and wonders of the external world, the marvellously interesting traits of human nature as it was and is; and with these we have lessons of moral wisdom,--all recorded with singular simplicity yet astonishing artistic skill. we find in the homeric narrative accuracy, delicacy, naturalness, with grandeur, sentiment, and beauty, such as phidias represented in his statues of zeus. no poems have ever been more popular, and none have extorted greater admiration from critics. like shakspeare, homer is a kind of bible to both the learned and unlearned among all peoples and ages, --one of the prodigies of the world. his poems form the basis of greek literature, and are the best understood and the most widely popular of all grecian compositions. the unconscious simplicity of the homeric narrative, its high moral tone, its vivid pictures, its graphic details, and its religious spirit create an enthusiasm such as few works of genius can claim. moreover it presents a painting of society, with its simplicity and ferocity, its good and evil passions, its tenderness and its fierceness, such as no other poem affords. its influence on the popular mythology of the greeks has been already alluded to. if homer did not create the grecian theogony, he gave form and fascination to it. nor is it necessary to speak of any other grecian epic, when the iliad and the odyssey attest the perfection which was attained one hundred and twenty years before hesiod was born. grote thinks that the iliad and the odyssey were produced at some period between b.c. and b.c. in lyrical poetry the greeks were no less remarkable; indeed they attained to what may be called absolute perfection, owing to the intimate connection between poetry and music, and the wonderful elasticity and adaptiveness of their language. who has surpassed pindar in artistic skill? his triumphal odes are paeans, in which piety breaks out in expressions of the deepest awe and the most elevated sentiments of moral wisdom. they alone of all his writings have descended to us, but these, made up as they are of odic fragments, songs, dirges, and panegyrics, show the great excellence to which he attained. he was so celebrated that he was employed by the different states and princes of greece to compose choral songs for special occasions, especially for the public games. although a theban, he was held in the highest estimation by the athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. born in thebes b.c., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary with aeschylus and the battle of marathon. we possess also fragments of sappho, simonides, anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the lyrical poetry of greece be recovered, we should probably possess the richest collection that the world has produced. greek dramatic poetry was still more varied and remarkable. even the great masterpieces of sophocles and euripides now extant were regarded by their contemporaries as inferior to many other greek tragedies utterly unknown to us. the great creator of the greek drama was aeschylus, born at eleusis b.c. it was not till the age of forty-one that he gained his first prize. sixteen years afterward, defeated by sophocles, he quitted athens in disgust and went to the court of hiero, king of syracuse. but he was always held, even at athens, in the highest honor, and his pieces were frequently reproduced upon the stage. it was not so much the object of aeschylus to amuse an audience as to instruct and elevate it. he combined religious feeling with lofty moral sentiment, and had unrivalled power over the realm of astonishment and terror. "at his summons," says sir walter scott, "the mysterious and tremendous volume of destiny, in which is inscribed the doom of gods and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal voices of deities, titans, and departed heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who struck horror into the gods themselves." his imagination dwells in the loftiest regions of the old mythology of greece; his tone is always pure and moral, though stern and harsh; he appeals to the most violent passions, and is full of the boldest metaphors. in sublimity aeschylus has never been surpassed. he was in poetry what phidias and michael angelo were in art. the critics say that his sublimity of diction is sometimes carried to an extreme, so that his language becomes inflated. his characters, like his sentiments, were sublime,--they were gods and heroes of colossal magnitude. his religious views were homeric, and he sought to animate his countrymen to deeds of glory, as it became one of the generals who fought at marathon to do. he was an unconscious genius, and worked like homer without a knowledge of artistic laws. he was proud and impatient, and his poetry was religious rather than moral. he wrote seventy plays, of which only seven are extant; but these are immortal, among the greatest creations of human genius, like the dramas of shakspeare. he died in sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. the fame of sophocles is scarcely less than that of aeschylus. he was twenty-seven years of age when he publicly appeared as a poet. he was born in colonus, in the suburbs of athens, b.c., and was the contemporary of herodotus, of pericles, of pindar, of phidias, of socrates, of cimon, of euripides,--the era of great men, the period of the peloponnesian war, when everything that was elegant and intellectual culminated at athens. sophocles had every element of character and person to fascinate the greeks,--beauty of face, symmetry of form, skill in gymnastics, calmness and dignity of manner, a cheerful and amiable temper, a ready wit, a meditative piety, a spontaneity of genius, an affectionate admiration for talent, and patriotic devotion to his country. his tragedies, by the universal consent of the best critics, are the perfection of the greek drama; and they moreover maintain that he has no rival, aeschylus and shakspeare alone excepted, in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. it was the peculiarity of sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. he loved to paint forlorn heroes. he was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so religious as aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but more perfect in art. his sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable destiny, but of their own follies. nor does he even excite emotion apart from a moral end. he lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "oedipus at colonus." sophocles wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. his "antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when euripides had already gained a prize. only seven of his tragedies have survived, but these are priceless treasures. euripides, the last of the great triumvirate of the greek tragic poets, was born at athens, b.c. he had not the sublimity of aeschylus, nor the touching pathos of sophocles, nor the stern simplicity of either, but in seductive beauty and successful appeal to passion was superior to both. in his tragedies the passion of love predominates, but it does not breathe the purity of sentiment which marked the tragedies of aeschylus and sophocles; it approaches rather to the tone of the modern drama. he paints the weakness and corruptions of society, and brings his subjects to the level of common life. he was the pet of the sophists, and was pantheistic in his views. he does not attempt to show ideal excellence, and his characters represent men not as they ought to be, but as they are, especially in corrupt states of society. euripides wrote ninety-five plays, of which eighteen are extant. whatever objection may be urged to his dramas on the score of morality, nobody can question their transcendent art or their great originality. with the exception of shakspeare, all succeeding dramatists have copied the three great greek tragic poets whom we have just named,--especially racine, who took sophocles for his model,--even as the great epic poets of all ages have been indebted to homer. the greeks were no less distinguished for comedy than for tragedy. both tragedy and comedy sprang from feasts in honor of bacchus; and as the jests and frolics were found misplaced when introduced into grave scenes, a separate province of the drama was formed, and comedy arose. at first it did not derogate from the religious purposes which were at the foundation of the greek drama; it turned upon parodies in which the adventures of the gods were introduced by way of sport,--as in describing the appetite of hercules or the cowardice of bacchus. the comic authors entertained spectators by fantastic and gross displays, by the exhibition of buffoonery and pantomime. but the taste of the athenians was too severe to relish such entertainments, and comedy passed into ridicule of public men and measures and the fashions of the day. the people loved to see their great men brought down to their own level. comedy, however, did not flourish until the morals of society were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon wherewith to assail prevailing follies. in modern times, comedy reached its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the most intellectual,--as in france, when molière pointed his envenomed shafts against popular vices. in greece it flourished in the age of socrates and the sophists, when there was great bitterness in political parties and an irrepressible desire for novelties. comedy first made itself felt as a great power in cratinus, who espoused the side of cimon against pericles with great bitterness and vehemence. many were the comic writers of that age of wickedness and genius, but all yielded precedence to aristophanes, of whose writings only his plays have reached us. never were libels on persons of authority and influence uttered with such terrible license. he attacked the gods, the politicians, the philosophers, and the poets of athens; even private citizens did not escape from his shafts, and women were the subjects of his irony. socrates was made the butt of his ridicule when most revered, cleon in the height of his power, and euripides when he had gained the highest prizes. aristophanes has furnished jests for rabelais, hints to swift, and humor for molière. in satire, in derision, in invective, and bitter scorn he has never been surpassed. no modern capital would tolerate such unbounded license; yet no plays in their day were ever more popular, or more fully exposed follies which could not otherwise be reached. aristophanes is called the father of comedy, and his comedies are of great historical importance, although his descriptions are doubtless caricatures. he was patriotic in his intentions, even setting up as a reformer. his peculiar genius shines out in his "clouds," the greatest of his pieces, in which he attacks the sophists. he wrote fifty-four plays. he was born b.c., and died b.c. thus it would appear that in the three great departments of poetry,--the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,--the old greeks were great masters, and have been the teachers of all subsequent nations and ages. the romans in these departments were not the equals of the greeks, but they were very successful copyists, and will bear comparison with modern nations. if the romans did not produce a homer, they can boast of a virgil; if they had no pindar, they furnished a horace; and in satire they transcended the greeks. the romans produced no poetry worthy of notice until the greek language and literature were introduced among them. it was not till the fall of tarentum that we read of a roman poet. livius andronicus, a greek slave, b.c., rudely translated the odyssey into latin, and was the author of various plays, all of which have perished, and none of which, according to cicero, were worth a second perusal. still, andronicus was the first to substitute the greek drama for the old lyrical stage poetry. one year after the first punic war, he exhibited the first roman play. as the creator of the drama he deserves historical notice, though he has no claim to originality, but, like a schoolmaster as he was, pedantically labored to imitate the culture of the greeks. his plays formed the commencement of roman translation-literature, and naturalized the greek metres in latium, even though they were curiosities rather than works of art. naevius, b.c., produced a play at rome, and wrote both epic and dramatic poetry, but so little has survived that no judgment can be formed of his merits. he was banished for his invectives against the aristocracy, who did not relish severity of comedy. mommsen regards naevius as the first of the romans who deserves to be ranked among the poets. his language was free from stiffness and affectation, and his verses had a graceful flow. in metres he closely adhered to andronicus. plautus was perhaps the first great dramatic poet whom the romans produced, and his comedies are still admired by critics as both original and fresh. he was born in umbria, b.c., and was contemporaneous with publius and cneius scipio. he died b.c. the first development of roman genius in the field of poetry seems to have been the dramatic, in which still the greek authors were copied. plautus might be mistaken for a greek, were it not for the painting of roman manners, for his garb is essentially greek. plautus wrote one hundred and thirty plays, not always for the stage, but for the reading public. he lived about the time of the second punic war, before the theatre was fairly established at rome. his characters, although founded on greek models, act, speak, and joke like romans. he enjoyed great popularity down to the latest times of the empire, while the purity of his language, as well as the felicity of his wit, was celebrated by the ancient critics. cicero places his wit on a par with the old attic comedy; while jerome spent much time in reading his comedies, even though they afterward cost him tears of bitter regret. modern dramatists owe much to plautus. molière has imitated him in his "avare," and shakspeare in his "comedy of errors." lessing pronounces the "captivi" to be the finest comedy ever brought upon the stage; he translated this play into german, and it has also been admirably translated into english. the great excellence of plautus was the masterly handling of language, and the adjusting the parts for dramatic effect. his humor, broad and fresh, produced irresistible comic effects. no one ever surpassed him in his vocabulary of nicknames and his happy jokes. hence he maintained his popularity in spite of his vulgarity. terence shares with plautus the throne of roman comedy. he was a carthaginian slave, born b.c., but was educated by a wealthy roman into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best society and travelled extensively in greece. he was greatly inferior to plautus in originality, and has not exerted a like lasting influence; but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, which have been translated into all modern languages. terence, whom mommsen regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy, closely copied the greek menander. unlike plautus, he drew his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. plautus wrote for the multitude, terence for the few; plautus delighted in noisy dialogue and slang expressions; terence confined himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by cicero and quintilian and other great critics. he aspired to the approval of the cultivated, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted the more original productions of plautus in the later years of the republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age. the "thyestes" of varius was regarded in its day as equal to greek tragedies. ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was regarded by the romans as the parent of their literature, although most of his works have perished. virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and was regarded as the prince of roman song in the time of cicero. the latin language is greatly indebted to him. pacuvius imitated aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. from the times before the augustan age no tragic production has reached us, although quintilian speaks highly of accius, especially of the vigor of his style; but he merely imitated the greeks. the only tragedy of the romans which has reached us was written by seneca the philosopher. in epic poetry the romans accomplished more, though even here they are still inferior to the greeks. the aeneid of virgil has certainly survived the material glories of rome. it may not have come up to the exalted ideal of its author; it may be defaced by political flatteries; it may not have the force and originality of the iliad,--but it is superior in art, and delineates the passion of love with more delicacy than can be found in any greek author. in soundness of judgment, in tenderness of feeling, in chastened fancy, in picturesque description, in delineation of character, in matchless beauty of diction, and in splendor of versification, it has never been surpassed by any poem in any language, and proudly takes its place among the imperishable works of genius. henry thompson, in his "history of roman literature," says:-- "availing himself of the pride and superstition of the roman people, the poet traces the origin and establishment of the 'eternal city' to those heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and ordinary to excite the sympathies of his countrymen, intermingled with persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character to awaken their admiration and awe. no subject could have been more happily chosen. it has been admired also for its perfect unity of action; for while the episodes command the richest variety of description, they are always subordinate to the main object of the poem, which is to impress the divine authority under which aeneas first settled in italy. the wrath of juno, upon which the whole fate of aeneas seems to turn, is at once that of a woman and a goddess; the passion of dido and her general character bring us nearer to the present world,--but the poet is continually introducing higher and more effectual influences, until, by the intervention of gods and men, the trojan name is to be continued in the roman, and thus heaven and earth are appeased." probably no one work of man has had such a wide and profound influence as this poem of virgil,--a textbook in all schools since the revival of learning, the model of the carlovingian poets, the guide of dante, the oracle of tasso. virgil was born seventy years before christ, and was seven years older than augustus. his parentage was humble, but his facilities of education were great. he was a most fortunate man, enjoying the friendship of augustus and maecenas, fame in his own lifetime, leisure to prosecute his studies, and ample rewards for his labors. he died at brundusium at the age of fifty. in lyrical poetry, the romans can boast of one of the greatest masters of any age or nation. the odes of horace have never been transcended, and will probably remain through all ages the delight of scholars. they may not have the deep religious sentiment and unity of imagination and passion which belong to the greek lyrical poets, but as works of art, of exquisite felicity of expression, of agreeable images, they are unrivalled. even in the time of juvenal his poems were the common school-books of roman youth. horace, born b.c., like virgil was also a favored man, enjoying the friendship of the great, and possessing ease, fame, and fortune; but his longings for retirement and his disgust at the frivolities around him are a sad commentary on satisfied desires. his odes composed but a small part of his writings. his epistles are the most perfect of his productions, and rank with the "georgics" of virgil and the "satires" of juvenal as the most perfect form of roman verse. his satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and lofty indignation that characterized those of juvenal. it is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which horace describes with such playful skill and such keenness of observation. he was the first to mould the latin tongue to the greek lyric measures. quintilian's criticism is indorsed by all scholars,--_lyricorum horatius fere solus legi dignus, in verbis felicissime audax_. no poetry was ever more severely elaborated than that of horace, and the melody of the language imparts to it a peculiar fascination. if inferior to pindar in passion and loftiness, it glows with a more genial humanity and with purer wit. it cannot be enjoyed fully except by those versed in the experiences of life, who perceive in it a calm wisdom, a penetrating sagacity, a sober enthusiasm, and a refined taste, which are unusual even among the masters of human thought. it is the fashion to depreciate the original merits of this poet, as well as those of virgil, plautus, and terence, because they derived so much assistance from the greeks. but the greeks also borrowed from one another. pure originality is impossible. it is the mission of art to add to its stores, without hoping to monopolize the whole realm. even shakspeare, the most original of modern poets, was vastly indebted to those who went before him, and he has not escaped the hypercriticism of minute observers. in this mention of lyrical poetry i have not spoken of catullus, unrivalled in tender lyric, the greatest poet before the augustan era. he was born b.c., and enjoyed the friendship of the most celebrated characters. one hundred and sixteen of his poems have come down to us, most of which are short, and many of them defiled by great coarseness and sensuality. critics say, however, that whatever he touched he adorned; that his vigorous simplicity, pungent wit, startling invective, and felicity of expression make him one of the great poets of the latin language. in didactic poetry lucretius was pre-eminent, and is regarded by schlegel as the first of roman poets in native genius. he was born b.c., and died at the age of forty-two by his own hand. his principal poem "de rerum natura" is a delineation of the epicurean philosophy, and treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was conversant. somewhat resembling pope's "essay on man" in style and subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. it is a lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the great phenomena of the outward world. as a painter and worshipper of nature, lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. his skill in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of poetic genius are matchless in power and beauty. into all subjects he casts a fearless eye, and writes with sustained enthusiasm. but he was not fully appreciated by his countrymen, although no other poet has so fully brought out the power of the latin language. professor ramsay, while alluding to the melancholy tenderness of tibullus, the exquisite ingenuity of ovid, the inimitable felicity and taste of horace, the gentleness and splendor of virgil, and the vehement declamation of juvenal, thinks that had the verse of lucretius perished we should never have known that the latin could give utterance to the grandest conceptions, with all that self-sustained majesty and harmonious swell in which the grecian muse rolls forth her loftiest outpourings. the eulogium of ovid is-- "carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura lucretî, exitio terras quum dabit una dies." elegiac poetry has an honorable place in roman literature. to this school belongs ovid, born b.c., died a.d., whose "tristia," a doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the romans. his most famous work was his "metamorphoses," mythologic legends involving transformations,--a most poetical and imaginative production. he, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares that his poem would be proof against sword, fire, thunder, and time,--a prediction, says bayle, which has not yet proved false. niebuhr thinks that ovid next to catullus was the most poetical of his countrymen. milton thinks he might have surpassed virgil, had he attempted epic poetry. he was nearest to the romantic school of all the classical authors; and chaucer, ariosto, and spenser owe to him great obligations. like pope, his verses flowed spontaneously. his "tristia" were more highly praised than his "amores" or his "metamorphoses," a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. his poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. he had great advantages, but was banished by augustus for his description of licentious love. nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished like cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart. but few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the scene of their glories, and without the stimulus of high society. chrysostom is one of the few exceptions. ovid, as an immoral writer, was justly punished. tibullus, also a famous elegiac poet, was born the same year as ovid, and was the friend of the poet horace. he lived in retirement, and was both gentle and amiable. at his beautiful country-seat he soothed his soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country. niebuhr pronounces the elegies of tibullus to be doleful, but merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours.... his spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. he alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing despondency while beholding the subjugation of his country." propertius, the contemporary of tibullus, born b.c., was on the contrary the most eager of all the flatterers of augustus,--a man of wit and pleasure, whose object of idolatry was cynthia, a poetess and a courtesan. he was an imitator of the greeks, but had a great contemporary fame. he showed much warmth of passion, but never soared into the sublime heights of poetry, like his rival. such were among the great elegiac poets of rome, who were generally devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. the older english poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have risen to such lofty heights as the later ones,--for instance, wordsworth and tennyson. it is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in imagination. the grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed rather in epic and dramatic poetry. in satire the romans transcended both the greeks and the moderns. satire arose with lucilius, b.c., in the time of marius, an age when freedom of speech was tolerated. horace was the first to gain immortality in this department. next persius comes, born a.d., the friend of lucian and seneca in the time of nero, who painted the vices of his age as it was passing to that degradation which marked the reign of domitian, when juvenal appeared. the latter, disdaining fear, boldly set forth the abominations of the times, and struck without distinction all who departed from duty and conscience. there is nothing in any language which equals the fire, the intensity, and the bitterness of juvenal, not even the invectives of swift and pope. but he flourished during the decline of literature, and had neither the taste nor the elegance of the augustan writers. he was born a.d., the son of a freedman, and was the contemporary of martial. he was banished by domitian on account of a lampoon against a favorite dancer, but under the reign of nerva he returned to rome, and the imperial tyranny was the subject of his bitterest denunciation next to the degradation of public morals. his great rival in satire was horace, who laughed at follies; but juvenal, more austere, exaggerated and denounced them. his sarcasms on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope that they were unjust. from an historical point of view, as a delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the epigrams of martial. this uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. he discoursed on the vanity of human wishes with the moral wisdom of dr. johnson, and urged self-improvement like socrates and epictetus. i might speak of other celebrated poets,--of lucan, of martial, of petronius; but i only wish to show that the great poets of antiquity, both greek and roman, have never been surpassed in genius, in taste, and in art, and that few were ever more honored in their lifetime by appreciating admirers,--showing the advanced state of civilization which was reached in those classic countries in everything pertaining to the realm of thought and art. the genius of the ancients was displayed in prose composition as well as in poetry, although perfection was not so soon attained. the poets were the great creators of the languages of antiquity. it was not until they had produced their immortal works that the languages were sufficiently softened and refined to admit of great beauty in prose. but prose requires art as well as poetry. there is an artistic rhythm in the writings of the classical authors--like those of cicero, herodotus, and thucydides--as marked as in the beautiful measure of homer and virgil. plato did not write poetry, but his prose is as "musical as apollo's lyre." burke and macaulay are as great artists in style as tennyson himself. and it is seldom that men, either in ancient or modern times, have been distinguished for both kinds of composition, although voltaire, schiller, milton, swift, and scott are among the exceptions. cicero, the greatest prose writer of antiquity, produced in poetry only a single inferior work, which was laughed at by his contemporaries. bacon, with all his affluence of thought, vigor of imagination, and command of language, could not write poetry any easier than pope could write prose,--although it is asserted by some modern writers, of no great reputation, that bacon wrote shakspeare's plays. all sorts of prose compositions were carried to perfection by both greeks and romans, in history, in criticism, in philosophy, in oratory, in epistles. the earliest great prose writer among the greeks was herodotus, b.c., from which we may infer that history was the first form of prose composition to attain development. but herodotus was not born until aeschylus had gained a prize for tragedy, nor for more than two hundred years after simonides the lyric poet nourished, and probably five or six hundred years after homer sang his immortal epics; yet though two thousand years and more have passed since he wrote, the style of this great "father of history" is admired by every critic, while his history as a work of art is still a study and a marvel. it is difficult to understand why no work in prose anterior to herodotus is worthy of note, since the greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years before he appeared, and the language had reached a high point of development under homer for more than five hundred years. the history of herodotus was probably written in the decline of life, when his mind was enriched with great attainments in all the varied learning of his age, and when he had conversed with most of the celebrated men of the various countries he had visited. it pertains chiefly to the wars of the greeks with the persians; but in his frequent episodes, which do not impair the unity of the work, he is led to speak of the manners and customs of the oriental nations. it was once the fashion to speak of herodotus as a credulous man, who embodied the most improbable though interesting stories. but now it is believed that no historian was ever more profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations confirm his sagacity and impartiality. he was one of the most accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,--an enlightened and curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge, familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his day; acquainted with all the great men of greece and at the courts of asiatic princes; the friend of sophocles, of pericles, of thucydides, of aspasia, of socrates, of damon, of zeno, of phidias, of protagoras, of euripides, of polygnotus, of anaxagoras, of xenophon, of alcibiades, of lysias, of aristophanes,--the most brilliant constellation of men of genius who were ever found together within the walls of a grecian city,--respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were inferior to him in knowledge. thus was he fitted for his task by travel, by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his original genius. the greatest prose work which had yet appeared in greece was produced by herodotus,--a prose epic, severe in taste, perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected, and beautiful, like the narratives of the bible, amusing yet instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries of human research,--a model for all subsequent historians. so highly was this historic composition valued by the athenians when their city was at the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents (about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it. he even went from city to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting his history,--an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of humboldt, having mastered everything. and he wrote, not for fame, but to communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at dodona, at delphi, at samos, at athens, at corinth, at thebes, at tyre; he even travelled into egypt, scythia, asia minor, palestine, babylonia, italy, and the islands of the sea. his episode on egypt is worth more, from an historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended to us from antiquity. herodotus was the first to give dignity to history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been surpassed. his very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste. the translation of this great history by rawlinson, with notes, is invaluable. to thucydides, as an historian, the modern world also assigns a proud pre-eminence. he was born b.c., and lived twenty years in exile on account of a military failure. he treated only of a short period, during the peloponnesian war; but the various facts connected with that great event could be known only by the most minute and careful inquiries. he devoted twenty-seven years to the composition of his narrative, and weighed his evidence with the most scrupulous care. his style has not the fascination of herodotus, but it is more concise. in a single volume thucydides relates what could scarcely be compressed into eight volumes of a modern history. as a work of art, of its kind it is unrivalled. in his description of the plague of athens this writer is as minute as he is simple. he abounds with rich moral reflections, and has a keen perception of human character. his pictures are striking and tragic. he is vigorous and intense, and every word he uses has a meaning, but some of his sentences are not always easily understood. one of the greatest tributes which can be paid to him is the estimate of an able critic, george long, that we have a more exact history of a protracted and eventful period by thucydides than we have of any period in modern history equally extended and eventful; and all this is compressed into a volume. xenophon is the last of the trio of the greek historians whose writings are classic and inimitable. he was born probably about b.c. he is characterized by great simplicity and absence of affectation. his "anabasis," in which he describes the expedition of the younger cyrus and the retreat of the ten thousand greeks, is his most famous book. but his "cyropaedia," in which the history of cyrus is the subject, although still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of its style, has no value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories of his hero without sufficient investigation. xenophon wrote a variety of treatises and dialogues, but his "memorabilia" of socrates is the most valuable. all antiquity and all modern writers unite in ascribing to xenophon great merit as a writer and great moral elevation as a man. if we pass from the greek to the latin historians,--to those who were as famous as the greek, and whose merit has scarcely been transcended in our modern times, if indeed it has been equalled,--the great names of sallust, of caesar, of livy, of tacitus rise up before us, together with a host of other names we have not room or disposition to present, since we only aim to show that the ancients were at least our equals in this great department of prose composition. the first great masters of the greek language in prose were the historians, so far as we can judge by the writings that have descended to us, although it is probable that the orators may have shaped the language before them, and given it flexibility and refinement the first great prose writers of rome were the orators; nor was the latin language fully developed and polished until cicero appeared. but we do not here write a history of the language; we speak only of those who wrote immortal works in the various departments of learning. as herodotus did not arise until the greek language had been already formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the romans for a considerable time after plautus, terence, ennius, and lucretius flourished. the first great historian was sallust, the contemporary of cicero, born b.c., the year that marius died. q. fabius pictor, m. portius cato, and l. cal. piso had already written works which are mentioned with respect by latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the middle ages, and had no claim as artists. sallust made thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated sentiment. he was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his profligacy. afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of numidia, and lived in magnificence on the quirinal,--one of the most profligate of the literary men of antiquity. we possess but a small portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show peculiar merit. he sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. the style of sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and lively, but rhetorical. like voltaire, who inaugurated modern history, sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts. he was a party man, and never soared beyond his party. he aped the moralist, but exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and honored talent disconnected with virtue. like carlyle, sallust exalted _strong_ men, and _because_ they were strong. he was not comprehensive like cicero, or philosophical like thucydides, although he affected philosophy as he did morality. he was the first who deviated from the strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes. he wrote for _éclat_. julius caesar, born or b.c., as an historian ranks higher than sallust, and no roman ever wrote purer latin. yet his historical works, however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius of the most august name of antiquity. he was mathematician, architect, poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator. in eloquence he was second only to cicero. the great value of caesar's history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the customs, and the political conditions of gaul, britain, and germany. his observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the description of his military career is only a studied apology for his crimes,--even as the bulletins of napoleon were set forth to show his victories in the most favorable light. caesar's fame rests on his victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an historian,--even as louis napoleon will live in history for his deeds rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype. caesar's "commentaries" resemble the history of herodotus more than any other latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected, precise and elegant, plain and without pretension. the augustan age which followed, though it produced a constellation of poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of louis xiv., still was unfavorable to prose composition,--to history as well as eloquence. of the historians of that age, livy, born b.c., is the only one whose writings are known to us, in the shape of some fragments of his history. he was a man of distinction at court, and had a great literary reputation,--so great that a spaniard travelled from cadiz on purpose to see him. most of the great historians of the world have occupied places of honor and rank, which were given to them not as prizes for literary successes, but for the experience, knowledge, and culture which high social position and ample means secure. herodotus lived in courts; thucydides was a great general, as also was xenophon; caesar was the first man of his times; sallust was praetor and governor; livy was tutor to claudius; tacitus was praetor and consul; eusebius was bishop and favorite of constantine; ammianus was the friend of the emperor julian; gregory of tours was one of the leading prelates of the west; froissart attended in person, as a man of rank, the military expeditions of his day; clarendon was lord chancellor; burnet was a bishop and favorite of william iii.; thiers and guizot both were prime ministers; while gibbon, hume, robertson, macaulay, grote, milman, froude, neander, niebuhr, müller, dahlman, buckle, prescott, irving, bancroft, motley, have all been men of wealth or position. nor do i remember a single illustrious historian who has been poor and neglected. the ancients regarded livy as the greatest of historians,--an opinion not indorsed by modern critics, on account of his inaccuracies. but his narrative is always interesting, and his language pure. he did not sift evidence like grote, nor generalize like gibbon; but like voltaire and macaulay, he was an artist in style, and possessed undoubted genius. his annals are comprised in one hundred and forty-two books, extending from the foundation of the city to the death of drusus, b.c., of which only thirty-five have come down to us,--an impressive commentary on the vandalism of the middle ages and the ignorance of the monks who could not preserve so great a treasure. "his story flows in a calm, clear, sparkling current, with every charm which simplicity and ease can give." he delineates character with great clearness and power; his speeches are noble rhetorical compositions; his sentences are rhythmical cadences. livy was not a critical historian like herodotus, for he took his materials second-hand, and was ignorant of geography, nor did he write with the exalted ideal of thucydides; but as a painter of beautiful forms, which only a rich imagination could conjure, he is unrivalled in the history of literature. moreover, he was honest and sound in heart, and was just and impartial in reference to those facts with which he was conversant. in the estimation of modern critics the highest rank as an historian is assigned to tacitus, and it would indeed be difficult to find his superior in any age or country. he was born a.d., about forty-three years after the death of augustus. he belonged to the equestrian rank, and was a man of consular dignity. he had every facility for literary labors that leisure, wealth, friends, and social position could give, and lived under a reign when truth might be told. the extant works of this great writer are the "life of agricola," his father-in-law; his "annales," which begin with the death of augustus, a.d., and close with the death of nero, a.d.; the "historiae," which comprise the period from the second consulate of galba, a.d., to the death of domitian; and a treatise on the germans. his histories describe rome in the fulness of imperial glory, when the will of one man was the supreme law of the empire. he also wrote of events that occurred when liberty had fled, and the yoke of despotism was nearly insupportable. he describes a period of great moral degradation, nor does he hesitate to lift the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself. he fearlessly exposes the cruelties and iniquities of the early emperors, and writes with judicial impartiality respecting all the great characters he describes. no ancient writer shows greater moral dignity and integrity of purpose than tacitus. in point of artistic unity he is superior to livy and equal to thucydides, whom he resembles in conciseness of style. his distinguishing excellence as an historian is his sagacity and impartiality. nothing escapes his penetrating eye; and he inflicts merited chastisement on the tyrants who revelled in the prostrated liberties of his country, while he immortalizes those few who were faithful to duty and conscience in a degenerate age. but the writings of tacitus were not so popular as those of livy, since neither princes nor people relished his intellectual independence and moral elevation. he does not satisfy dr. arnold, who thinks he ought to have been better versed in the history of the jews, and who dislikes his speeches because they were fictitious. neither the latin nor greek historians are admired by those dry critics who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths of natural science. history can never be other than an approximation to the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own age. history does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. we know that caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or less so than pompey, nor do we know how far he was justified in his usurpation. a great history must have other merits besides accuracy, antiquarian research, and presentation of authorities and notes. it must be a work of art; and art has reference to style and language, to grouping of details and richness of illustration, to eloquence and poetry and beauty. a dry history, however learned, will never be read; it will only be consulted, like a law-book, or mosheim's "commentaries." we require _life_ in history, and it is for their vividness that the writings of livy and tacitus will be perpetuated. voltaire and schiller have no great merit as historians in a technical sense, but the "life of charles xii." and the "thirty years' war" are still classics. neander has written one of the most searching and recondite histories of modern times; but it is too dry, too deficient in art, to be cherished, and may pass away like the voluminous writings of varro, the most learned of the romans. it is the _art_ which is immortal in a book,--not the knowledge, nor even the thoughts. what keeps alive the "provincial letters" of pascal? it is the style, the irony, the elegance that characterize them. the exquisite delineation of character, the moral wisdom, the purity and force of language, the artistic arrangement, and the lively and interesting narrative appealing to all minds, like the "arabian nights" or froissart's "chronicles," are the elements which give immortality to the classic authors. we will not let them perish, because they amuse and interest and inspire us. a remarkable example is that of plutarch, who, although born a greek and writing in the greek language, was a contemporary of tacitus, lived long in rome, and was one of the "immortals" of the imperial age. a teacher of philosophy during his early manhood, he spent his last years as archon and priest of apollo in his native town. his most famous work is his "parallel lives" of forty-six historic greeks and romans, arranged in pairs, depicted with marvellous art and all the fascination of anecdote and social wit, while presenting such clear conceptions of characters and careers, and the whole so restrained within the bounds of good taste and harmonious proportion, as to have been even to this day regarded as forming a model for the ideal biography. but it is taking a narrow view of history to make all writers after the same pattern, even as it would be bigoted to make all christians belong to the same sect. some will be remarkable for style, others for learning, and others again for moral and philosophical wisdom; some will be minute, and others generalizing; some will dig out a multiplicity of facts without apparent object, and others induce from those facts; some will make essays, and others chronicles. we have need of all styles and all kinds of excellence. a great and original thinker may not have the time or opportunity or taste for a minute and searching criticism of original authorities; but he may be able to generalize previously established facts so as to draw most valuable moral instruction from them for the benefit of his readers. history is a boundless field of inquiry; no man can master it in all its departments and periods. it will not do to lay great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art of generalization. if an historian attempts to embody too much learning, he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything, he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation. moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to instruct. if all men were to write history according to dr. arnold's views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars. the ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style. the ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of learning paraded in foot-notes. thus the great historians whom i have mentioned, both greek and latin, have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that are most to be admired. they were not pedants, but men of immense genius and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,--men universally popular among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the language in which they wrote. rome can boast of no great historian after tacitus, who should have belonged to the ciceronian epoch. suetonius, born about the year a.d., shortly after nero's death, was rather a biographer than an historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank. his "lives of the caesars," like diogenes laertius's "lives of the philosophers," are rather anecdotical than historical. l. anneus florus, who flourished during the reign of trajan, has left a series of sketches of the different wars from the days of romulus to those of augustus. frontinus epitomized the large histories of pompeius. ammianus marcellinus wrote a history from nerva to valens, and is often quoted by gibbon. but none wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except sallust, caesar, livy, plutarch, and tacitus. * * * * * there is another field of prose composition in which the greeks and romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any nation of modern times,--that of eloquence. it is true, we have not a rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe that both greeks and romans were most severely trained in the art of public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and munificently rewarded. it began with democratic institutions, and flourished as long as the people were a great power in the state; it declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule. eloquence and liberty flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom of debate. in the fifth century before christ--the first century of democracy--great orators arose, for without the power and the opportunity of defending himself against accusation no man could hold an ascendent position. socrates insisted upon the gift of oratory for a general in the army as well as for a leader in political life. in athens the courts of justice were numerous, and those who could not defend themselves were obliged to secure the services of those who were trained in the use of public speaking. thus arose the lawyers, among whom eloquence was more in demand and more richly paid than in any other class. rhetoric became connected with dialectics, and in greece, sicily, and italy both were extensively cultivated. empedocles was distinguished as much for rhetoric as for philosophy. it was not, however, in the courts of law that eloquence displayed the greatest fire and passion, but in political assemblies. these could only coexist with liberty; for a democracy is more favorable than an aristocracy to large assemblies of citizens. in the grecian republics eloquence as an art may be said to have been born. it was nursed and fed by political agitation, by the strife of parties. it arose from appeals to the people as a source of power: when the people were not cultivated, it addressed chiefly popular passions and prejudices; when they were enlightened, it addressed interests. it was in athens, where there existed the purest form of democratic institutions, that eloquence rose to the loftiest heights in the ancient world, so far as eloquence appeals to popular passions. pericles, the greatest statesman of greece, b.c., was celebrated for his eloquence, although no specimens remain to us. it was conceded by the ancient authors that his oratory was of the highest kind, and the epithet of "olympian" was given him, as carrying the weapons of zeus upon his tongue. his voice was sweet, and his utterance distinct and rapid. peisistratus was also famous for his eloquence, although he was a usurper and a tyrant. isocrates, b.c., was a professed rhetorician, and endeavored to base his art upon sound moral principles, and rescue it from the influence of the sophists. he was the great teacher of the most eminent statesmen of his day. twenty-one of his orations have come down to us, and they are excessively polished and elaborated; but they were written to be read, they were not extemporary. his language is the purest and most refined attic dialect. lysias, b.c., was a fertile writer of orations also, and he is reputed to have produced as many as four hundred and twenty-five; of these only thirty-five are extant. they are characterized by peculiar gracefulness and elegance, which did not interfere with strength. so able were these orations that only two were unsuccessful. they were so pure that they were regarded as the best canon of the attic idiom. but all the orators of greece--and greece was the land of orators--gave way to demosthenes, born b.c. he received a good education, and is said to have been instructed in philosophy by plato and in eloquence by isocrates; but it is more probable that he privately prepared himself for his brilliant career. as soon as he attained his majority, he brought suits against the men whom his father had appointed his guardians, for their waste of property, and after two years was successful, conducting the prosecution himself. it was not until the age of thirty that he appeared as a speaker in the public assembly on political matters, where he rapidly attained universal respect, and became one of the leading statesmen of athens. henceforth he took an active part in every question that concerned the state. he especially distinguished himself in his speeches against macedonian aggrandizements, and his philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of his orations. but the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the battle of cheronaea, b.c., put an end to the independence of greece, and philip of macedon was all-powerful. for this catastrophe demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his countrymen. accused by aeschines, he delivered his famous oration on the crown. afterward, during the supremacy of alexander, demosthenes was again accused, and suffered exile. recalled from exile on the death of alexander, he roused himself for the deliverance of greece, without success; and hunted by his enemies he took poison in the sixty-third year of his age, having vainly contended for the freedom of his country,---one of the noblest spirits of antiquity, and lofty in his private life. as an orator demosthenes has not probably been equalled by any man of any country. by his contemporaries he was regarded as faultless in this respect; and when it is remembered that he struggled against physical difficulties which in the early part of his career would have utterly discouraged any ordinary man, we feel that he deserves the highest commendation. he never spoke without preparation, and most of his orations were severely elaborated. he never trusted to the impulse of the occasion; he did not believe in extemporary eloquence any more than daniel webster, who said there is no such thing. all the orations of demosthenes exhibit him as a pure and noble patriot, and are full of the loftiest sentiments. he was a great artist, and his oratorical successes were greatly owing to the arrangement of his speeches and the application of the strongest arguments in their proper places. added to this moral and intellectual superiority was the "magic power of his language, majestic and simple at the same time, rich yet not bombastic, strange and yet familiar, solemn and not too ornate, grave and yet pleasing, concise and yet fluent, sweet and yet impressive, which altogether carried away the minds of his hearers." his orations were most highly prized by the ancients, who wrote innumerable commentaries on them, most of which are lost. sixty of the great productions of his genius have come down to us. demosthenes, like other orators, first became known as the composer of speeches for litigants; but his fame was based on the orations he pronounced in great political emergencies. his rival was aeschines, who was vastly inferior to demosthenes, although bold, vigorous, and brilliant. indeed, the opinions of mankind for two thousand years have been unanimous in ascribing to demosthenes the highest position as an orator among all the men of ancient and modern times. david hume says of him that "could his manner be copied, its success would be infallible over a modern audience." says lord brougham, "it is rapid harmony exactly adjusted to the sense. it is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art. it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom involved in a continual stream of argument; so that of all human productions his orations present to us the models which approach the nearest to perfection." it is probable that the romans were behind the athenians in all the arts of rhetoric; yet in the days of the republic celebrated orators arose among the lawyers and politicians. it was in forensic eloquence that latin prose first appeared as a cultivated language; for the forum was to the romans what libraries are to us. the art of public speaking in rome was early developed. cato, laelius, carbo, and the gracchi are said to have been majestic and harmonious in speech, yet excelled by antonius, crassus, cotta, sulpitius, and hortensius. the last had a very brilliant career as an orator, though his orations were too florid to be read. caesar was also distinguished for his eloquence, its characteristics being force and purity. "coelius was noted for lofty sentiment, brutus for philosophical wisdom, calidius for a delicate and harmonious style, and calvus for sententious force." but all the roman orators yielded to cicero, as the greeks did to demosthenes. these two men are always coupled together when allusion is made to eloquence. they were pre-eminent in the ancient world, and have never been equalled in the modern. cicero, b.c., was probably not equal to his great grecian rival in vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in learning, in culture, and in breadth. cicero distinguished himself very early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the prosecution of verres for corruption. although verres was defended by hortensius and backed by the whole influence of the metelli and other powerful families, cicero gained his cause,--more fortunate than burke in his prosecution of warren hastings, who also was sustained by powerful interests and families. the speech on the manilian law, when cicero appeared as a political orator, greatly contributed to his popularity. i need not describe his memorable career,--his successive elections to all the highest offices of state, his detection of catiline's conspiracy, his opposition to turbulent and ambitious partisans, his alienations and friendships, his brilliant career as a statesman, his misfortunes and sorrows, his exile and recall, his splendid services to the state, his greatness and his defects, his virtues and weaknesses, his triumphs and martyrdom. these are foreign to my purpose. no man of heathen antiquity is better known to us, and no man by pure genius ever won more glorious laurels. his life and labors are immortal. his virtues and services are embalmed in the heart of the world. few men ever performed greater literary labors, and in so many of its departments. next to aristotle and varro, cicero was the most learned man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than either, since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but also as a statesman, being the most conspicuous man in rome after pompey and caesar. he may not have had the moral greatness of socrates, nor the philosophical genius of plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. even civil law, the great science of the romans, became interesting in his hands, and was divested of its dryness and technicality. he popularized history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage; he made the romans conversant with the philosophy of greece, and systematized the various speculations. he may not have added to philosophy, but no roman after him understood so well the practical bearing of all its various systems. his glory is purely intellectual, and it was by sheer genius that he rose to his exalted position and influence. but it was in forensic eloquence that cicero was pre-eminent, in which he had but one equal in ancient times. roman eloquence culminated in him. he composed about eighty orations, of which fifty-nine are preserved. some were delivered from the rostrum to the people, and some in the senate; some were mere philippics, as severe in denunciation as those of demosthenes; some were laudatory; some were judicial; but all were severely logical, full of historical allusion, profound in philosophical wisdom, and pervaded with the spirit of patriotism. francis w. newman, in his "regal rome," thus describes cicero's eloquence:-- "he goes round and round his object, surveys it in every light, examines it in all its parts, retires and then advances, compares and contrasts it, illustrates, confirms, and enforces it, till the hearer feels ashamed of doubting a position which seems built on a foundation so strictly argumentative. and having established his case, he opens upon his opponent a discharge of raillery so delicate and good-natured that it is impossible for the latter to maintain his ground against it; or, when the subject is too grave, he colors his exaggerations with all the bitterness of irony and vehemence of passion." critics have uniformly admired cicero's style as peculiarly suited to the latin language, which, being scanty and unmusical, requires more redundancy than the greek. the simplicity of the attic writers would make latin composition bald and tame. to be perspicuous, the latin must be full. thus arnold thinks that what tacitus gained in energy he lost in elegance and perspicuity. but cicero, dealing with a barren and unphilosophical language, enriched it with circumlocutions and metaphors, while he freed it of harsh and uncouth expressions, and thus became the greatest master of composition the world has seen. he was a great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the times. the courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs; nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political questions, as in reference to the manilian and agrarian laws. it is in his political discourses that cicero rises to the highest ranks. in his speeches against verres, catiline, and antony he kindles in his countrymen lofty feelings for the honor of his country, and abhorrence of tyranny and corruption. indeed, he hated bloodshed, injustice, and strife, and beheld the downfall of liberty with indescribable sorrow. thus in oratory as in history the ancients can boast of most illustrious examples, never even equalled. still, we cannot tell the comparative merits of the great classical orators of antiquity with the more distinguished of our times; indeed only mirabeau, pitt, fox, burke, brougham, webster, and clay can even be compared with them. in power of moving the people, some of our modern reformers and agitators may be mentioned favorably; but their harangues are comparatively tame when read. in philosophy the greeks and romans distinguished themselves more even than in poetry, or history, or eloquence. their speculations pertained to the loftiest subjects that ever tasked the intellect of man. but this great department has already been presented. there were respectable writers in various other departments of literature, but no very great names whose writings have descended to us. contemporaries had an exalted opinion of varro, who was considered the most learned of the romans, as well as their most voluminous author. he was born ten years before cicero, and is highly commended by augustine. he was entirely devoted to literature, took no interest in passing events, and lived to a good old age. saint augustine says of him that "he wrote so much that one wonders how he had time to read; and he read so much, we are astonished how he found time to write." he composed four hundred and ninety books. of these only one has descended to us entire,--"de re rustica," written at the age of eighty; but it is the best treatise which has come down from antiquity on ancient agriculture. we have parts of his other books, and we know of still others that have entirely perished which for their information would be invaluable, especially his "divine antiquities," in sixteen books,--his great work, from which saint augustine drew materials for his "city of god." varro wrote treatises on language, on the poets, on philosophy, on geography, and on various other subjects; he also wrote satire and criticism. but although his writings were learned, his style was so bad that the ages have failed to preserve him. the truly immortal books are most valued for their artistic excellences. no man, however great his genius, can afford to be dull. style is to written composition what delivery is to a public speaker. the multitude do not go to hear the man of thoughts, but to hear the man of words, being repelled or attracted by _manner_. seneca was another great writer among the romans, but he belongs to the domain of philosophy, although it is his ethical works which have given him immortality,--as may be truly said of socrates and epictetus, although they are usually classed among the philosophers. seneca was a spaniard, born but a few years before the christian era; he was a lawyer and a rhetorician, also a teacher and minister of nero. it was his misfortune to know one of the most detestable princes that ever scandalized humanity, and it is not to his credit to have accumulated in four years one of the largest fortunes in rome while serving such a master; but since he lived to experience nero's ingratitude, seneca is more commonly regarded as a martyr. had he lived in the republican period, he would have been a great orator. he wrote voluminously, on many subjects, and was devoted to a literary life. he rejected the superstitions of his country, and looked upon the ritualism of religion as a mere fashion. in his own belief he was a deist; but though he wrote fine ethical treatises, he dishonored his own virtues by a compliance with the vices of others. he saw much of life, and died at fifty-three. what is remarkable in seneca's writings, which are clear but labored, is that under pagan influences and imperial tyranny he should have presented such lofty moral truth; and it is a mark of almost transcendent talent that he should, unaided by christianity, have soared so high in the realm of ethical inquiry. nor is it easy to find any modern author who has treated great questions in so attractive a way. quintilian is a latin classic, and belongs to the class of rhetoricians. he should have been mentioned among the orators, yet, like lysias the greek, quintilian was a teacher of eloquence rather than an orator. he was born a.d., and taught the younger pliny, also two nephews of domitian, receiving a regular salary from the imperial treasury. his great work is a complete system of rhetoric. "institutiones oratoriae" is one of the clearest and fullest of all rhetorical manuals ever written in any language, although, as a literary production, it is inferior to the "de oratore" of cicero. it is very practical and sensible, and a complete compendium of every topic likely to be useful in the education of an aspirant for the honors of eloquence. in systematic arrangement it falls short of a similar work by aristotle; but it is celebrated for its sound judgment and keen discrimination, showing great reading and reflection. quintilian should be viewed as a critic rather than as a rhetorician, since he entered into the merits and defects of the great masters of greek and roman literature. in his peculiar province he has had no superior. like cicero or demosthenes or plato or thucydides or tacitus, quintilian would be a great man if he lived in our times, and could proudly challenge the modern world to produce a better teacher than he in the art of public speaking. there were other classical writers of immense fame, but they do not represent any particular class in the field of literature which can be compared with the modern. i can only draw attention to lucian,--a witty and voluminous greek author, who lived in the reign of commodus, and who wrote rhetorical, critical, and biographical works, and even romances which have given hints to modern authors. his fame rests on his "dialogues," intended to ridicule the heathen philosophy and religion, and which show him to have been one of the great masters of ancient satire and mockery. his style of dialogue--a combination of plato and aristophanes--is not much used by modern writers, and his peculiar kind of ridicule is reserved now for the stage. yet he cannot be called a writer of comedy, like molière. he resembles rabelais and swift more than any other modern writers, having their indignant wit, indecent jokes, and pungent sarcasms. like juvenal, lucian paints the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fashion and power. his dialogues have been imitated by fontanelle and lord lyttleton, but these authors do not possess his humor or pungency. lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself with ridiculing those who have proclaimed them, and in his cold cynicism depreciates human knowledge and all the great moral teachers of mankind. he is even shallow and flippant upon socrates; but he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. in wit and sarcasm he may be compared with voltaire, and his object was the same,--to demolish and pull down without substituting anything instead. his scepticism was universal, and extended to religion, to philosophy, and to everything venerated and ancient. his purity of style was admired by erasmus, and his works have been translated into most european languages. in strong contrast to the "dialogues" of lucian is the "city of god" by saint augustine, in which he demolishes with keener ridicule all the gods of antiquity, but substitutes instead the knowledge of the true god. thus the romans, as well as greeks, produced works in all departments of literature that will bear comparison with the masterpieces of modern times. and where would have been the literature of the early church, or of the age of the reformation, or of modern nations, had not the great original writers of athens and rome been our school-masters? when we further remember that their glorious literature was created by native genius, without the aid of christianity, we are filled with amazement, and may almost be excused if we deify the reason of man. nor, indeed, have greater triumphs of intellect been witnessed in these our christian times than are produced among that class which is the least influenced by christian ideas. some of the proudest trophies of genius have been won by infidels, or by men stigmatized as such. witness voltaire, rousseau, diderot, hegel, fichte, gibbon, hume, buckle. may there not be the greatest practical infidelity with the most artistic beauty and native reach of thought? milton ascribes the most sublime intelligence to satan and his angels on the point of rebellion against the majesty of heaven. a great genius may be kindled even by the fires of discontent and ambition, which may quicken the intellectual faculties while consuming the soul, and spread their devastating influence on the homes and hopes of man. since, then, we are assured that literature as well as art may flourish under pagan influences, it seems certain that christianity has a higher mission than the culture of the mind. religious scepticism cannot be disarmed if we appeal to christianity as the test of intellectual culture. the realm of reason has no fairer fields than those that are adorned by pagan achievements. * * * * * authorities. there are no better authorities than the classical authors themselves, and their works must be studied in order to comprehend the spirit of ancient literature. modern historians of roman literature are merely critics, like dalhmann, schlegel, niebuhr, muller, mommsen, mure, arnold, dunlap, and thompson. nor do i know of an exhaustive history of roman literature in the english language; yet nearly every great writer has occasional criticisms upon the subject which are entitled to respect. the germans, in this department, have no equals. ancient man the beginning of civilizations by hendrik willem van loon dedication to hansje and willem. my darling boys, you are twelve and eight years old. soon you will be grown up. you will leave home and begin your own lives. i have been thinking about that day, wondering what i could do to help you. at last, i have had an idea. the best compass is a thorough understanding of the growth and the experience of the human race. why should i not write a special history for you? so i took my faithful corona and five bottles of ink and a box of matches and a bale of paper and began to work upon the first volume. if all goes well there will be eight more and they will tell you what you ought to know of the last six thousand years. but before you start to read let me explain what i intend to do. i am not going to present you with a textbook. neither will it be a volume of pictures. it will not even be a regular history in the accepted sense of the word. i shall just take both of you by the hand and together we shall wander forth to explore the intricate wilderness of the bygone ages. i shall show you mysterious rivers which seem to come from nowhere and which are doomed to reach no ultimate destination. i shall bring you close to dangerous abysses, hidden carefully beneath a thick overgrowth of pleasant but deceiving romance. here and there we shall leave the beaten track to scale a solitary and lonely peak, towering high above the surrounding country. unless we are very lucky we shall sometimes lose ourselves in a sudden and dense fog of ignorance. wherever we go we must carry our warm cloak of human sympathy and understanding for vast tracts of land will prove to be a sterile desert--swept by icy storms of popular prejudice and personal greed and unless we come well prepared we shall forsake our faith in humanity and that, dear boys, would be the worst thing that could happen to any of us. i shall not pretend to be an infallible guide. whenever you have a chance, take counsel with other travelers who have passed along the same route before. compare their observations with mine and if this leads you to different conclusions, i shall certainly not be angry with you. i have never preached to you in times gone by. i am not going to preach to you today. you know what the world expects of you--that you shall do your share of the common task and shall do it bravely and cheerfully. if these books can help you, so much the better. and with all my love i dedicate these histories to you and to the boys and girls who shall keep you company on the voyage through life. hendrik willem van loon. _barrow street, new york city. may , xx_. contents chapter i. prehistoric man ii. the world grows cold iii. end of the stone age iv. the earliest school of the human race v. the key of stone vi. the land of the living and the land of the dead vii. the making of a state viii. the rise and fall of egypt ix. mesopotamia--the country between the rivers x. the sumerian nail writers xi. assyria and babylonia--the great semitic melting-pot xii. the story of moses xiii. jerusalem--the city of the law xiv. damascus--the city of trade xv. the phoenicians who sailed beyond the horizon xvi. the alphabet follows the trade xvii. the end of the ancient world prehistoric man it took columbus more than four weeks to sail from spain to the west indian islands. we on the other hand cross the ocean in sixteen hours in a flying machine. five hundred years ago, three or four years were necessary to copy a book by hand. we possess linotype machines and rotary presses and we can print a new book in a couple of days. we understand a great deal about anatomy and chemistry and mineralogy and we are familiar with a thousand different branches of science of which the very name was unknown to the people of the past. in one respect, however, we are quite as ignorant as the most primitive of men--we do not know where we came from. we do not know how or why or when the human race began its career upon this earth. with a million facts at our disposal we are still obliged to follow the example of the fairy-stories and begin in the old way: "once upon a time there was a man." this man lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. what did he look like? we do not know. we never saw his picture. deep in the clay of an ancient soil we have sometimes found a few pieces of his skeleton. they were hidden amidst masses of bones of animals that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth. we have taken these bones and they allow us to reconstruct the strange creature who happens to be our ancestor. the great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very ugly and unattractive mammal. he was quite small. the heat of the sun and the biting wind of the cold winter had colored his skin a dark brown. his head and most of his body were covered with long hair. he had very thin but strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey. his forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. [illustration: prehistoric man.] he wore no clothes. he had seen no fire except the flames of the rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke and their lava. he lived in the damp blackness of vast forests. when he felt the pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or he stole the eggs from the nest of an angry bird. once in a while, after a long and patient chase, he managed to catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a rabbit these he would eat raw, for prehistoric man did not know that food could be cooked. his teeth were large and looked like the teeth of many of our own animals. during the hours of day this primitive human being went about in search of food for himself and his wife and his young. at night, frightened by the noise of the beasts, who were in search of prey, he would creep into a hollow tree or he would hide himself behind a few big boulders, covered with moss and great, big spiders. in summer he was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun. during the winter he froze with cold. when he hurt himself (and hunting animals are for ever breaking their bones or spraining their ankles) he had no one to take care of him. he had learned how to make certain sounds to warn his fellow-beings whenever danger threatened. in this he resembled a dog who barks when a stranger approaches. in many other respects he was far less attractive than a well-bred house pet. altogether, early man was a miserable creature who lived in a world of fright and hunger, who was surrounded by a thousand enemies and who was for ever haunted by the vision of friends and relatives who had been eaten up by wolves and bears and the terrible sabre-toothed tiger. of the earliest history of this man we know nothing. he had no tools and he built no homes. he lived and died and left no traces of his existence. we keep track of him through his bones and they tell us that he lived more than two thousand centuries ago. the rest is darkness. until we reach the time of the famous stone age, when man learned the first rudimentary principles of what we call civilization. of this stone age i must tell you in some detail. the world grows cold something was the matter with the weather. early man did not know what "time" meant. he kept no records of birthdays and wedding-anniversaries or the hour of death. he had no idea of days or weeks or years. when the sun arose in the morning he did not say "behold another day." he said "it is light" and he used the rays of the early sun to gather food for his family. when it grew dark, he returned to his wife and children, gave them part of the day's catch (some berries and a few birds), stuffed himself full with raw meat and went to sleep. in a very general way he kept track of the seasons. long experience had taught him that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be plucked and eaten. the summer ended when gusts of wind swept the leaves from the trees and when a number of animals crept into their holes to make ready for the long hibernal sleep. [illustration: the glacial period.] it had always been that way. early man accepted these useful changes of cold and warm but asked no questions. he lived and that was enough to satisfy him. suddenly, however, something happened that worried him greatly. the warm days of summer had come very late. the fruits had not ripened at all. the tops of the mountains which used to be covered with grass lay deeply hidden under a heavy burden of snow. then one morning quite a number of wild people, different from the other inhabitants of his valley had approached from the region of the high peaks. they muttered sounds which no one could understand. they looked lean and appeared to be starving. hunger and cold seemed to have driven them from their former homes. there was not enough food in the valley for both the old inhabitants and the newcomers. when they tried to stay more than a few days there was a terrible fight and whole families were killed. the others fled into the woods and were not seen again. for a long time nothing occurred of any importance. but all the while, the days grew shorter and the nights were colder than they ought to have been. finally, in a gap between the two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of greenish ice. it increased in size as the years went by. very slowly a gigantic glacier was sliding down the slopes of the mountain ridge. huge stones were being pushed into the valley. with the noise of a dozen thunderstorms they suddenly tumbled among the frightened people and killed them while they slept. century-old trees were crushed into kindling wood by the high walls of ice that knew of no mercy to either man or beast. at last, it began to snow. it snowed for months and months and months. [illustration: the cave-man.] all the plants died. the animals fled in search of the southern sun. the valley became uninhabitable. man hoisted his children upon his back, took the few pieces of stone which he had used as a weapon and went forth to find a new home. why the world should have grown cold at that particular moment, we do not know. we can not even guess at the cause. the gradual lowering of the temperature, however, made a great difference to the human race. for a time it looked as if every one would die. but in the end this period of suffering proved a real blessing. it killed all the weaker people and forced the survivors to sharpen their wits lest they perish, too. placed before the choice of hard thinking or quick dying the same brain that had first turned a stone into a hatchet now solved difficulties which had never faced the older generations. in the first place, there was the question of clothing. it had grown much too cold to do without some sort of artificial covering. bears and bisons and other animals who live in northern regions are protected against snow and ice by a heavy coat of fur. man possessed no such coat. his skin was very delicate and he suffered greatly. he solved his problem in a very simple fashion. he dug a hole and he covered it with branches and leaves and a little grass. a bear came by and fell into this artificial cave. man waited until the creature was weak from lack of food and then killed him with many blows of a big stone. with a sharp piece of flint he cut the fur of the animal's back. then he dried it in the sparse rays of the sun, put it around his own shoulders and enjoyed the same warmth that had formerly kept the bear happy and comfortable. then there was the housing problem. many animals were in the habit of sleeping in a dark cave. man followed their example and searched until he found an empty grotto. he shared it with bats and all sorts of creeping insects but this he did not mind. his new home kept him warm and that was enough. often, during a thunderstorm a tree had been hit by lightning. sometimes the entire forest had been set on fire. man had seen these forest-fires. when he had come too near he had been driven away by the heat. he now remembered that fire gave warmth. thus far, fire had been an enemy. now it became a friend. a dead tree, dragged into a cave and lighted by means of smouldering branches from a burning forest filled the room with unusual but very pleasant heat. perhaps you will laugh. all these things seem so very simple. they are very simple to us because some one, ages and ages ago, was clever enough to think of them. but the first cave that was made comfortable by the fire of an old log attracted more attention than the first house that ever was lighted by electricity. when at last, a specially brilliant fellow hit upon the idea of throwing raw meat into the hot ashes before eating it, he added something to the sum total of human knowledge which made the cave-man feel that the height of civilization had been reached. nowadays, when we hear of another marvelous invention we are very proud. "what more," we ask, "can the human brain accomplish?" and we smile contentedly for we live in the most remarkable of all ages and no one has ever performed such miracles as our engineers and our chemists. forty thousand years ago when the world was on the point of freezing to death, an unkempt and unwashed cave-man, pulling the feathers out of a half-dead chicken with the help of his brown fingers and his big white teeth--throwing the feathers and the bones upon the same floor that served him and his family as a bed, felt just as happy and just as proud when he was taught how the hot cinders of a fire would change raw meat into a delicious meal. "what a wonderful age," he would exclaim and he would lie down amidst the decaying skeletons of the animals which had served him as his dinner and he would dream of his own perfection while bats, as large as small dogs, flew restlessly through the cave and while rats, as big as small cats, rummaged among the left overs. quite often the cave gave way to the pressure of the surrounding rock. then man was hurled amidst the bones of his own victims. thousands of years later the anthropologist (ask your father what that means) comes along with his little spade and his wheelbarrow. he digs and he digs and at last he uncovers this age-old tragedy and makes it possible for me to tell you all about it. the end of the stone age the struggle to keep alive during the cold period was terrible. many races of men and animals, whose bones we have found, disappeared from the face of the earth. whole tribes and clans were wiped out by hunger and cold and want. first the children would die and then the parents. the old people were left to the mercy of the wild animals who hastened to occupy the undefended cave. until another change in the climate or the slowly decreasing moisture of the air made life impossible for these wild invaders and forced them to find a retreat in the heart of the african jungle where they have lived ever since. this part of my history is very difficult because the changes which i must describe were so very slow and so very gradual. nature is never in a hurry. she has all eternity in which to accomplish her task and she can afford to bring about the necessary changes with deliberate care. prehistoric man lived through at least four definite eras when the ice descended far down into the valleys and covered the greater part of the european continent. the last one of these periods came to an end almost thirty thousand years ago. from that moment on man left behind him concrete evidence of his existence in the form of tools and arms and pictures and in a general way we can say that history begins when the last cold period had become a thing of the past. the endless struggle for life had taught the survivors many things. stone and wooden implements had become as common as steel tools are in our own days. gradually the rudely chipped flint axe had been replaced by one of polished flint which was infinitely more practical. it allowed man to attack many animals at whose mercy he had been since the beginning of time. the mammoth was no longer seen. the musk-ox had retreated to the polar circle. the tiger had left europe for good. the cave-bear no longer ate little children. the powerful brain of the weakest and most helpless of all living creatures--man--had devised such terrible instruments of destruction that he was now the master of all the other animals. the first great victory over nature had been gained but many others were to follow. equipped with a full set of tools both for hunting and fishing, the cave-dweller looked for new living quarters. the shores of rivers and lakes offered the best opportunity for a regular livelihood. the old caves were deserted and the human race moved toward the water. now that man could handle heavy axes, the felling of trees no longer offered any great difficulties. for countless ages birds had been constructing comfortable houses out of chips of wood and grass amidst the branches of trees. man followed their example. he, too, built himself a nest and called it his "home." he did not, except in a few parts of asia, take to the trees which were a bit too small and unsteady for his purpose. he cut down a number of logs. these he drove firmly into the soft bottom of a shallow lake. on top of them he constructed a wooden platform and upon this platform he erected his first wooden house. it offered many advantages over the old cave. no wild animals could break into it and robbers could not enter it. the lake itself was an inexhaustible store-room containing an endless supply of fresh fish. these houses built on piles were much healthier than the old caves and they gave the children a chance to grow up into strong men. the population increased steadily and man began to occupy vast tracts of wilderness which had been unoccupied since the beginning of time. and all the time new inventions were made which made life more comfortable and less dangerous. often enough these innovations were not due to the cleverness of man's brain. he simply copied the animals. you know of course that there are a large number of beasties who prepare for the long winter by burying nuts and acorns and other food which is abundant during the summer. just think of the squirrels who are for ever filling their larder in gardens and parks with supplies for the winter and the early spring. early man, less intelligent in many respects than the squirrels, had not known how to preserve anything for the future. he ate until his hunger was stilled, but what he did not need right away he allowed to rot. as a result he often went without his meals during the cold period and many of his children died from hunger and want. until he followed the example of the animals and prepared for the future by laying in sufficient stores when the harvest had been good and there was an abundance of wheat and grain. we do not know which genius first discovered the use of pottery but he deserves a statue. very likely it was a woman who had got tired of the eternal chores of the kitchen and wanted to make her household duties a little less exacting. she noticed that chunks of clay, when exposed to the rays of the sun, got baked into a hard substance. if a flat piece of clay could be transformed into a brick, a slightly curved piece of the same material must produce a similar result. and behold, the brick grew into a piece of pottery and the human race was able to save for the day of tomorrow. if you think that my praises of this invention are exaggerated, look at the breakfast table and see what pottery, in one form and the other, means in your own life. your oatmeal is served in a dish. the cream is served from a pitcher. your eggs are carried from the kitchen to the dining-room table on a plate. your milk is brought to you in a china mug. then go to the store-room (if there is no store-room in your house go to the nearest delicatessen store). you will see how all the things which we are supposed to eat tomorrow and next week and next year have been put away in jars and cans and other artificial containers which nature did not provide for us but which man was forced to invent and perfect before he could be assured of his regular meals all the year around. even a gas-tank is nothing but a large pitcher, made of iron because iron does not break as easily as china and is less porous than clay. so are barrels and bottles and pots and pans. they all serve the same purpose--of providing us in the future with those things of which we happen to have an abundance at the present moment. and because he could preserve eatable things for the day of need, man began to raise vegetables and grain and saved the surplus for future consumption. this explains why, during the late stone age, we find the first wheat-fields and the first gardens, grouped around the settlements of the early pile-dwellers. it also tells us why man gave up his habit of wandering and settled down in one fixed spot where he raised his children until the day of his death when he was decently buried among his own people. [illustration: prehistoric man is discovered.] it is safe to say that these earliest ancestors of ours would have given up the ways of savages of their own accord if they had been left to their fate. but suddenly there was an end to their isolation. prehistoric man was discovered. a traveler from the unknown south-land who had dared to cross the turbulent sea and the forbidding mountain passes had found his way to the wild people of central europe. on his back he carried a pack. when he had spread his wares before the gaping curiosity of the bewildered natives, their eyes beheld wonders of which their minds had never dared to dream. they saw bronze hammers and axes and tools made of iron and helmets made of copper and beautiful ornaments consisting of a strangely colored substance which the foreign visitor called "glass." and overnight the age of stone came to an end. it was replaced by a new civilization which had discarded wooden and stone implements centuries before and had laid the foundations for that "age of metal" which has endured until our own day. it is of this new civilization that i shall tell you in the rest of my book and if you do not mind, we shall leave the northern continent for a couple of thousand years and pay a visit to egypt and to western asia. "but," you will say, "this is not fair. you promise to tell us about prehistoric man and then, just when the story is going to be interesting, you close the chapter and you jump to another part of the world and we must jump with you whether we like it or not." i know. it does not seem the right thing to do. unfortunately, history is not at all like mathematics. when you solve a sum you go from "a" to "b" and from "b" to "c" and from "c" to "d" and so on. history on the other hand jumps from "a" to "z" and then back to "f" and next to "m" without any apparent respect for neatness and order. there is a good reason for this. history is not exactly a science. it tells the story of the human race and most people, however much we may try to change their nature, refuse to behave with the regularity and the precision of the tables of multiplication. no two men ever do precisely the same thing. no two human brains ever reach exactly the same conclusion. you will notice that for yourself when you grow up. it was not different a few hundred centuries ago. prehistoric man, as i just told you, was on a fair way to progress. he had managed to survive the ice and the snow and the wild animals and that in itself, was a great deal. he had invented many useful things. suddenly, however, other people in a different part of the world entered the race. they rushed forward at a terrible speed and within a very short space of time they reached a height of civilization which had never before been seen upon our planet. then they set forth to teach what they knew to the others who had been less intelligent than themselves. now that i have explained this to you, does it not seem just to give the egyptians and the people of western asia their full share of the chapters of this book? the earliest school of the human race we are the children of a practical age. we travel from place to place in our own little locomotives which we call automobiles. when we wish to speak to a friend whose home is a thousand miles away, we say "hello" into a rubber tube and ask for a certain telephone number in chicago. at night when the room grows dark we push a button and there is light. if we happen to be cold we push another button and the electric stove spreads its pleasant glow through our study. on the other hand in summer when it is hot the same electric current will start a small artificial storm (an electric fan) which keeps us cool and comfortable. we seem to be the masters of all the forces of nature and we make them work for us as if they were our very obedient slaves. but do not forget one thing when you pride yourself upon our splendid achievements. we have constructed the edifice of our modern civilization upon the fundament of wisdom that had been built at great pains by the people of the ancient world. do not be afraid of their strange names which you will meet upon every page of the coming chapters. babylonians and egyptians and chaldeans and sumerians are all dead and gone, but they continue to influence our own lives in everything we do, in the letters we write, in the language we use, in the complicated mathematical problems which we must solve before we can build a bridge or a skyscraper. and they deserve our grateful respect as long as our planet continues to race through the wide space of the high heavens. these ancient people of whom i shall now tell you lived in three definite spots. two of these were found along the banks of vast rivers. the third was situated on the shores of the mediterranean. the oldest center of civilization developed in the valley of the nile, in a country which was called egypt. the second was located in the fertile plains between two big rivers of western asia, to which the ancients gave the name of mesopotamia. the third one which you will find along the shore of the mediterranean, was inhabited by the phoenicians, the earliest of all colonizers and by the jews who bestowed upon the rest of the world the main principles of their moral laws. this third center of civilization is known by its ancient babylonian name of suri, or as we pronounce it, syria. the history of the people who lived in these regions covers more than five thousand years. it is a very, very complicated story. i can not give you many details. i shall try and weave their adventures into a single fabric, which will look like one of those marvelous rugs of which you read in the tales which scheherazade told to harun the just. the key of stone fifty years before the birth of christ, the romans conquered the land along the eastern shores of the mediterranean and among this newly acquired territory was a country called egypt. the romans, who are to play such a great role in our history, were a race of practical men. they built bridges, they constructed roads, and with a small but highly trained army of soldiers and civil officers, they managed to rule the greater part of europe, of eastern africa and western asia. as for art and the sciences, these did not interest them very much. they regarded with suspicion a man who could play the lute or who could write a poem about spring and only thought him little better than the clever fellow who could walk the tightrope or who had trained his poodle dog to stand on its hind legs. they left such things to the greeks and to the orientals, both of whom they despised, while they themselves spent their days and nights keeping order among the thousand and one nations of their vast empire. when they first set foot in egypt that country was already terribly old. more than six thousand and five hundred years had gone by since the history of the egyptian people had begun. long before any one had dreamed of building a city amidst the swamps of the river tiber, the kings of egypt had ruled far and wide and had made their court the center of all civilization. while the romans were still savages who chased wolves and bears with clumsy stone axes, the egyptians were writing books, performing intricate medical operations and teaching their children the tables of multiplication. this great progress they owed chiefly to one very wonderful invention, to the art of preserving their spoken words and their ideas for the benefit of their children and grandchildren. we call this the art of writing. we are so familiar with writing that we can not understand how people ever managed to live without books and newspapers and magazines. but they did and it was the main reason why they made such slow progress during the first million years of their stay upon this planet. they were like cats and dogs who can only teach their puppies and their kittens a few simple things (barking at a stranger and climbing trees and such things) and who, because they can not write, possess no way in which they can use the experience of their countless ancestors. this sounds almost funny, doesn't it? and why make such a fuss about so simple a matter? but did you ever stop to think what happens when you write a letter? suppose that you are taking a trip in the mountains and you have seen a deer. you want to tell this to your father who is in the city. what do you do? you put a lot of dots and dashes upon a piece of paper--you add a few more dots and dashes upon an envelope and you carry your epistle to the mailbox together with a two-cent stamp. what have you really been doing? you have changed a number of spoken words into a number of pothooks and scrawls. but how did you know how to make your curlycues in such a fashion that both the postman and your father could retranslate them into spoken words? you knew, because some one had taught you how to draw the precise figures which represented the sound of your spoken words. just take a few letters and see the way this game is played. we make a guttural noise and write down a "g." we let the air pass through our closed teeth and we write down "s." we open our mouth wide and make a noise like a steam engine and the sound is written down "h." it took the human race hundreds of thousands of years to discover this and the credit for it goes to the egyptians. of course they did not use the letters which have been used to print this book. they had a system of their own. it was much prettier than ours but not quite so simple. it consisted of little figures and images of things around the house and around the farm, of knives and plows and birds and pots and pans. these little figures their scribes scratched and painted upon the wall of the temples, upon the coffins of their dead kings and upon the dried leaves of the papyrus plant which has given its name to our "paper." but when the romans entered this vast library they showed neither enthusiasm nor interest. they possessed a system of writing of their own which they thought vastly superior. [illustration: the key of stone] they did not know that the greeks (from whom they had learned their alphabet) had in turn obtained theirs from the phoenicians who had again borrowed with great success from the old egyptians. they did not know and they did not care. in their schools the roman alphabet was taught exclusively and what was good enough for the roman children was good enough for everybody else. you will understand that the egyptian language did not long survive the indifference and the opposition of the roman governors. it was forgotten. it died just as the languages of most of our indian tribes have become a thing of the past. the arabs and the turks who succeeded the romans as the rulers of egypt abhorred all writing that was not connected with their holy book, the koran. at last in the middle of the sixteenth century a few western visitors came to egypt and showed a mild interest in these strange pictures. but there was no one to explain their meaning and these first europeans were as wise as the romans and the turks had been before them. now it happened, late in the eighteenth century that a certain french general by the name of buonaparte visited egypt. he did not go there to study ancient history. he wanted to use the country as a starting point for a military expedition against the british colonies in india. this expedition failed completely but it helped solve the mysterious problem of the ancient egyptian writing. among the soldiers of napoleon buonaparte there was a young officer by the name of broussard. he was stationed at the fortress of st. julien on the western mouth of the nile which is called the rosetta river. broussard liked to rummage among the ruins of the lower nile and one day he found a stone which greatly puzzled him. like everything else in that neighborhood, it was covered with picture writing. but this slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered. it carried three inscriptions and one of these (oh joy!) was in greek. the greek language was known. as it was almost certain that the egyptian part contained a translation of the greek (or vice versa), the key to ancient egyptian seemed to have been discovered. but it took more than thirty years of very hard work before the key had been made to fit the lock. then the mysterious door was opened and the ancient treasure house of egypt was forced to surrender its secrets. the man who gave his life to the task of deciphering this language was jean francois champollion--usually called champollion junior to distinguish him from his older brother who was also a very learned man. champollion junior was a baby when the french revolution broke out and therefore he escaped serving in the armies of the general buonaparte. while his countrymen were marching from one glorious victory to another (and back again as such imperial armies are apt to do) champollion studied the language of the copts, the native christians of egypt. at the age of nineteen he was appointed a professor of history at one of the smaller french universities and there he began his great work of translating the pictures of the old egyptian language. for this purpose he used the famous black stone of rosetta which broussard had discovered among the ruins near the mouth of the nile. the original stone was still in egypt. napoleon had been forced to vacate the country in a hurry and he had left this curiosity behind. when the english retook alexandria in the year they found the stone and carried it to london, where you may see it this very day in the british museum. the inscriptions however had been copied and had been taken to france, where they were used by champollion. the greek text was quite clear. it contained the story of ptolemy v and his wife cleopatra, the grandmother of that other cleopatra about whom shakespeare wrote. the other two inscriptions, however, refused to surrender their secrets. one of them was in hieroglyphics, the name we give to the oldest known egyptian writing. the word hieroglyphic is greek and means "sacred carving." it is a very good name for it fully describes the purpose and nature of this script. the priests who had invented this art did not want the common people to become too familiar with the deep mysteries of preserving speech. they made writing a sacred business. they surrounded it with much mystery and decreed that the carving of hieroglyphics be regarded as a sacred art and forbade the people to practice it for such a common purpose as business or commerce. they could enforce this rule with success so long as the country was inhabited by simple farmers who lived at home and grew everything they needed upon their own fields. but gradually egypt became a land of traders and these traders needed a means of communication beyond the spoken word. so they boldly took the little figures of the priests and simplified them for their own purposes. thereafter they wrote their business letters in the new script which became known as the "popular language" and which we call by its greek name, the "demotic language." the rosetta stone carried both the sacred and the popular translations of the greek text and upon these two champollion centered his attack. he collected every piece of egyptian script which he could get and together with the rosetta stone he compared and studied them until after twenty years of patient drudgery he understood the meaning of fourteen little figures. that means that he spent more than a whole year to decipher each single picture. finally he went to egypt and in the year he printed the first scientific book upon the subject of the ancient hieroglyphics. nine years later he died from overwork, as a true martyr to the great task which he had set himself as a boy. his work, however, lived after him. others continued his studies and today egyptologists can read hieroglyphics as easily as we can read the printed pages of our newspapers. fourteen pictures in twenty years seems very slow work. but let me tell you something of champollion's difficulties. then you will understand, and understanding, you will admire his courage. the old egyptians did not use a simple sign language. they had passed beyond that stage. of course, you know what sign language is. every indian story has a chapter about queer messages, written in the form of little pictures. hardly a boy but at some stage or other of his life, as a buffalo hunter or an indian fighter, has invented a sign language of his own, and all boy scouts are familiar with it. but egyptian was something quite different and i must try and make this clear to you with a few pictures. suppose that you were champollion and that you were reading an old papyrus which told the story of a farmer who lived somewhere along the banks of the river nile. suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw. [illustration: saw] "very well," you said, "that means, of course, that the farmer went out and cut a tree down." most likely you had guessed correctly. next you took another page of hieroglyphics. they told the story of a queen who had lived to be eighty-two years old. right in the middle of the text the same picture occurred. that was very puzzling, to say the least. queens do not go about cutting down trees. they let other people do it for them. a young queen may saw wood for the sake of exercise, but a queen of eighty-two stays at home with her cat and her spinning wheel. yet, the picture was there. the ancient priest who drew it must have placed it there for a definite purpose. what could he have meant? that was the riddle which champollion finally solved. he discovered that the egyptians were the first people to use what we call "phonetic writing." like most other words which express a scientific idea, the word "phonetic" is of greek origin. it means the "science of the sound which is made by our speech." you have seen the greek word "phone," which means the voice, before. it occurs in our word "telephone," the machine which carries the voice to a distant point. ancient egyptian was "phonetic" and it set man free from the narrow limits of that sign language which in some primitive form had been used ever since the cave-dweller began to scratch pictures of wild animals upon the walls of his home. now let us return for a moment to the little fellow with his saw who suddenly appeared in the story of the old queen. evidently he had something to do with a saw. a "saw" is either a tool which you find in a carpenter shop or it means the past tense of the verb "to see." this is what had happened to the word during the course of many centuries. first of all it had meant a man with a saw. then it came to mean the sound which we reproduce by the three modern letters, s, a and w. in the end the original meaning of carpentering was lost entirely and the picture indicated the past tense of "to see." a modern english sentence done into the images of ancient egypt will show you what i mean. [illustration: eye bee leaf eye saw giraffe] the [illustration: eye] means either these two round objects in your head which allow you to see, or it means "i," the person who is talking or writing. a [illustration: bee] is either an animal which gathers honey and pricks you in the finger when you try to catch it, or it represents to verb "to be," which is pronounced the same way and which means to "exist." again it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have." in this case the bee is followed by a [illustration: leaf] which represents the sound which we find in the word "leave" or "leaf." put your "bee" and your "leaf" together and you have the two sounds which make the verb "bee-leave" or "believe" as we write it nowadays. the "eye" you know all about. finally you get a picture which looks like a giraffe. [illustration: giraffe] it is a giraffe, and it is part of the old sign language, which has been continued wherever it seemed most convenient. therefore you get the following sentence, "i believe i saw a giraffe." this system, once invented, was developed during thousands of years. gradually the most important figures came to mean single letters or short sounds like "fu" or "em" or "dee" or "zee," or as we write them, f and m and d and z. and with the help of these, the egyptians could write anything they wanted upon every conceivable subject, and could preserve the experience of one generation for the benefit of the next without the slightest difficulty. that, in a very general way, is what champollion taught us after the exhausting search which killed him when he was a young man. that too, is the reason why today we know egyptian history better than that of any other ancient country. the land of the living and the land of the dead the history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food. wherever food was plentiful and easily gathered, thither man travelled to make his home. the fame of the nile valley must have spread at an early date. from far and wide, wild people flocked to the banks of the river. surrounded on all sides by desert or sea, it was not easy to reach these fertile fields and only the hardiest men and women survived. we do not know who they were. some came from the interior of africa and had woolly hair and thick lips. others, with a yellowish skin, came from the desert of arabia and the broad rivers of western asia. they fought each other for the possession of this wonderful land. they built villages which their neighbors destroyed and they rebuilt them with the bricks they had taken from other neighbors whom they in turn had vanquished. gradually a new race developed. they called themselves "remi," which means simply "the men." there was a touch of pride in this name and they used it in the same sense that we refer to america as "god's own country." part of the year, during the annual flood of the nile, they lived on small islands within a country which itself was cut off from the rest of the world by the sea and the desert. no wonder that these people were what we call "insular," and had the habits of villagers who rarely come in contact with their neighbors. they liked their own ways best. they thought their own habits and customs just a trifle better than those of anybody else. in the same way, their own gods were considered more powerful than the gods of other nations. they did not exactly despise foreigners, but they felt a mild pity for them and if possible they kept them outside of the egyptian domains, lest their own people be corrupted by "foreign notions." they were kind-hearted and rarely did anything that was cruel. they were patient and in business dealings they were rather indifferent life came as an easy gift and they never became stingy and mean like northern people who have to struggle for mere existence. when the sun arose above the blood-red horizon of the distant desert, they went forth to till their fields. when the last rays of light had disappeared beyond the mountain ridges, they went to bed. they worked hard, they plodded and they bore whatever happened with stolid unconcern and profound patience. they believed that this life was but a short preface to a new existence which began the moment death had entered the house. until at last, the life of the future came to be regarded as more important than the life of the present and the people of egypt turned their teeming land into one vast shrine for the worship of the dead. [illustration: the land of the dead.] and as most of the papyrus-rolls of the ancient valley tell stories of a religious nature we know with great accuracy just what gods the egyptians revered and how they tried to assure all possible happiness and comfort to those who had entered upon the eternal sleep. in the beginning each little village had possessed a god of its own. often this god was supposed to reside in a queerly shaped stone or in the branch of a particularly large tree. it was well to be good friends with him for he could do great harm and destroy the harvest and prolong the period of drought until the people and the cattle had all died of thirst. therefore the villages made him presents--offered him things to eat or a bunch of flowers. when the egyptians went forth to fight their enemies the god must needs be taken along, until he became a sort of battle flag around which the people rallied in time of danger. but when the country grew older and better roads had been built and the egyptians had begun to travel, the old "fetishes," as such chunks of stone and wood were called, lost their importance and were thrown away or were left in a neglected corner or were used as doorsteps or chairs. their place was taken by new gods who were more powerful than the old ones had been and who represented those forces of nature which influenced the lives of the egyptians of the entire valley. first among these was the sun which makes all things grow. next came the river nile which tempered the heat of the day and brought rich deposits of clay to refresh the fields and make them fertile. then there was the kindly moon which at night rowed her little boat across the arch of heaven and there was thunder and there was lightning and there were any number of things which could make life happy or miserable according to their pleasure and desire. ancient man, entirely at the mercy of these forces of nature, could not get rid of them as easily as we do when we plant lightning rods upon our houses or build reservoirs which keep us alive during the summer months when there is no rain. on the contrary they formed an intimate part of his daily life--they accompanied him from the moment he was put into his cradle until the day that his body was prepared for eternal rest. neither could he imagine that such vast and powerful phenomena as a bolt of lightning or the flood of a river were mere impersonal things. some one--somewhere--must be their master and must direct them as the engineer directs his engine or a captain steers his ship. a god-in-chief was therefore created, like the commanding general of an army. a number of lower officers were placed at his disposal. within their own territory each one could act independently. in grave matters, however, which affected the happiness of all the people, they must take orders from their master. the supreme divine ruler of the land of egypt was called osiris, and all the little egyptian children knew the story of his wonderful life. once upon a time, in the valley of the nile, there lived a king called osiris. he was a good man who taught his subjects how to till their fields and who gave his country just laws. but he had a bad brother whose name was seth. now seth envied osiris because he was so virtuous and one day he invited him to dinner and afterwards he said that he would like to show him something. curious osiris asked what it was and seth said that it was a funnily shaped coffin which fitted one like a suit of clothes. osiris said that he would like to try it. so he lay down in the coffin but no sooner was he inside when bang!--seth shut the lid. then he called for his servants and ordered them to throw the coffin into the nile. soon the news of his terrible deed spread throughout the land. isis, the wife of osiris, who had loved her husband very dearly, went at once to the banks of the nile, and after a short while the waves threw the coffin upon the shore. then she went forth to tell her son horus, who ruled in another land, but no sooner had she left than seth, the wicked brother, broke into the palace and cut the body of osiris into fourteen pieces. [illustration: a pyramid.] when isis returned, she discovered what seth had done. she took the fourteen pieces of the dead body and sewed them together and then osiris came back to life and reigned for ever and ever as king of the lower world to which the souls of men must travel after they have left the body. as for seth, the evil one, he tried to escape, but horus, the son of osiris and isis, who had been warned by his mother, caught him and slew him. this story of a faithful wife and a wicked brother and a dutiful son who avenged his father and the final victory of virtue over wickedness formed the basis of the religious life of the people of egypt. osiris was regarded as the god of all living things which seemingly die in the winter and yet return to renewed existence the next spring. as ruler of the life hereafter, he was the final judge of the acts of men, and woe unto him who had been cruel and unjust and had oppressed the weak. as for the world of the departed souls, it was situated beyond the high mountains of the west (which was also the home of the young nile) and when an egyptian wanted to say that someone had died, he said that he "had gone west." isis shared the honors and the duties of osiris with him. their son horus, who was worshipped as the god of the sun (hence the word "horizon," the place where the sun sets) became the first of a new line of egyptian kings and all the pharaohs of egypt had horus as their middle name. of course, each little city and every small village continued to worship a few divinities of their own. but generally speaking, all the people recognized the sublime power of osiris and tried to gain his favor. this was no easy task, and led to many strange customs. in the first place, the egyptians came to believe that no soul could enter into the realm of osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place of residence in this world. [illustration: how the pyramids grew.] whatever happened, the body must be preserved after death, and it must be given a permanent and suitable home. therefore as soon as a man had died, his corpse was embalmed. this was a difficult and complicated operation which was performed by an official who was half doctor and half priest, with the help of an assistant whose duty it was to make the incision through which the chest could be filled with cedar-tree pitch and myrrh and cassia. this assistant belonged to a special class of people who were counted among the most despised of men. the egyptians thought it a terrible thing to commit acts of violence upon a human being, whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be hired to perform this unpopular task. afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of ten weeks he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron which was brought for this purpose from the distant desert of libya. then the body had become a "mummy" because it was filled with "mumiai" or pitch. it was wrapped in yards and yards of specially prepared linen and it was placed in a beautifully decorated wooden coffin, ready to be removed to its final home in the western desert. the grave itself was a little stone room in the sand of the desert or a cave in a hill-side. after the coffin had been placed in the center the little room was well supplied with cooking utensils and weapons and statues (of clay or wood) representing bakers and butchers who were expected to wait upon their dead master in case he needed anything. flutes and fiddles were added to give the occupant of the grave a chance to while away the long hours which he must spend in this "house of eternity." then the roof was covered with sand and the dead egyptian was left to the peaceful rest of eternal sleep. but the desert is full of wild creatures, hyenas and wolves, and they dug their way through the wooden roof and the sand and ate up the mummy. this was a terrible thing, for then the soul was doomed to wander forever and suffer agonies of a man without a home. to assure the corpse all possible safety a low wall of brick was built around the grave and the open space was filled with sand and gravel. in this way a low artificial hill was made which protected the mummy against wild animals and robbers. then one day, an egyptian who had just buried his mother, of whom he had been particularly fond, decided to give her a monument that should surpass anything that had ever been built in the valley of the nile. he gathered his serfs and made them build an artificial mountain that could be seen for miles around. the sides of this hill he covered with a layer of bricks that the sand might not be blown away. people liked the novelty of the idea. soon they were trying to outdo each other and the graves rose twenty and thirty and forty feet above the ground. at last a rich nobleman ordered a burial chamber made of solid stone. on top of the actual grave where the mummy rested, he constructed a pile of bricks which rose several hundred feet into the air. a small passage-way gave entrance to the vault and when this passage was closed with a heavy slab of granite the mummy was safe from all intrusion. the king of course could not allow one of his subjects to outdo him in such a matter. he was the most powerful man of all egypt who lived in the biggest house and therefore he was entitled to the best grave. what others had done in brick he could do with the help of more costly materials. pharaoh sent his officers far and wide to gather workmen. he constructed roads. he built barracks in which the workmen could live and sleep (you may see those barracks this very day). then he set to work and made himself a grave which was to endure for all time. we call this great pile of masonry a "pyramid." the origin of the word is a curious one. when the greeks visited egypt the pyramids were already several thousand years old. [illustration: the mummy] of course the egyptians took their guests into the desert to see these wondrous sights just as we take foreigners to gaze at the wool-worth tower and brooklyn bridge. the greek guest, lost in admiration, waved his hands and asked what the strange mountains might be. his guide thought that he referred to the extraordinary height and said "yes, they are very high indeed." the egyptian word for height was "pir-em-us." the greek must have thought that this was the name of the whole structure and giving it a greek ending he called it a "pyramis." we have changed the "s" into a "d" but we still use the same egyptian word when we talk of the stone graves along the banks of the nile. the biggest of these many pyramids, which was built fifty centuries ago, was five hundred feet high. at the base it was seven hundred and fifty-five feet wide. it covered more than thirteen acres of desert, which is three times as much space as that occupied by the church of saint peter, the largest edifice of the christian world. during twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were used to carry the stones from the distant peninsula of sinai--to ferry them across the nile (how they ever managed to do this we do not understand)--to drag them halfway across the desert and finally hoist them into their correct position. but so well did pharaoh's architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the pyramid has never yet been pushed out of shape by the terrific weight of those thousands and thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides. the making of a state nowadays we all are members of a "state." we may be frenchmen or chinamen or russians; we may live in the furthest corner of indonesia (do you know where that is?), but in some way or other we belong to that curious combination of people which is called the "state." it does not matter whether we recognize a king or an emperor or a president as our ruler. we are born and we die as a small part of this large whole and no one can escape this fate. the "state," as a matter of fact, is quite a recent invention. the earliest inhabitants of the world did not know what it was. every family lived and hunted and worked and died for and by itself. sometimes it happened that a few of these families, for the sake of greater protection against the wild animals and against other wild people, formed a loose alliance which was called a tribe or a clan. but as soon as the danger was past, these groups of people acted again by and for themselves and if the weak could not defend their own cave, they were left to the mercies of the hyena and the tiger and nobody was very sorry if they were killed. in short, each person was a nation unto himself and he felt no responsibility for the happiness and safety of his neighbor. very, very slowly this was changed and egypt was the first country where the people were organized into a well-regulated empire. the nile was directly responsible for this useful development. i have told you how in the summer of each year the greater part of the nile valley and the nile delta is turned into a vast inland sea. to derive the greatest benefit from this water and yet survive the flood, it had been necessary at certain points to build dykes and small islands which would offer shelter for man and beast during the months of august and september. the construction of these little artificial islands however had not been simple. [illustration: the young nile.] a single man or a single family or even a small tribe could not construct a river-dam without the help of others. however much a farmer might dislike his neighbors he disliked getting drowned even more and he was obliged to call upon the entire country-side when the water of the river began to rise and threatened him and his wife and his children and his cattle with destruction. necessity forced the people to forget their small differences and soon the entire valley of the nile was covered with little combinations of people who constantly worked together for a common purpose and who depended upon each other for life and prosperity. out of such small beginnings grew the first powerful state. it was a great step forward along the road of progress. it made the land of egypt a truly inhabitable place. it meant the end of lawless murder. it assured the people greater safety than ever before and gave the weaker members of the tribe a chance to survive. nowadays, when conditions of absolute disorder exist only in the jungles of africa, it is hard to imagine a world without laws and policemen and judges and health officers and hospitals and schools. but five thousand years ago, egypt stood alone as an organized state and was greatly envied by those of her neighbors who were obliged to face the difficulties of life single-handedly. a state, however, is not only composed of citizens. there must be a few men who execute the laws and who, in case of an emergency, take command of the entire community. therefore no country has ever been able to endure without a single head, be he called a king or an emperor or a shah (as in persia) or a president, as he is called in our own land. [illustration: the fertile valley.] in ancient egypt, every village recognized the authority of the village-elders, who were old men and possessed greater experience than the young ones. these elders selected a strong man to command their soldiers in case of war and to tell them what to do when there was a flood. they gave him a title which distinguished him from the others. they called him a king or a prince and obeyed his orders for their own common benefit. therefore in the oldest days of egyptian history, we find the following division among the people: the majority are peasants. all of them are equally rich and equally poor. they are ruled by a powerful man who is the commander-in-chief of their armies and who appoints their judges and causes roads to be built for the common benefit and comfort. he also is the chief of the police force and catches the thieves. in return for these valuable services he receives a certain amount of everybody's money which is called a tax. the greater part of these taxes, however, do not belong to the king personally. they are money entrusted to him to be used for the common good. but after a short while a new class of people, neither peasants nor king, begins to develop. this new class, commonly called the nobles, stands between the ruler and his subjects. since those early days it has made its appearance in the history of every country and it has played a great role in the development of every nation. i must try and explain to you how this class of nobles developed out of the most commonplace circumstances of everyday life and why it has maintained itself to this very day, against every form of opposition. to make my story quite clear, i have drawn a picture. it shows you five egyptian farms. the original owners of these farms had moved into egypt years and years ago. each had taken a piece of unoccupied land and had settled down upon it to raise grain and cows and pigs and do whatever was necessary to keep themselves and their children alive. apparently they had the same chance in life. how then did it happen that one became the ruler of his neighbors and got hold of all their fields and barns without breaking a single law? [illustration: the origins of the feudal system.] one day after the harvest, mr. fish (you see his name in hieroglyphics on the map) sent his boat loaded with grain to the town of memphis to sell the cargo to the inhabitants of central egypt. it happened to have been a good year for the farmer and fish got a great deal of money for his wheat. after ten days the boat returned to the homestead and the captain handed the money which he had received to his employer. a few weeks later, mr. sparrow, whose farm was next to that of fish, sent his wheat to the nearest market. poor sparrow had not been very lucky for the last few years. but he hoped to make up for his recent losses by a profitable sale of his grain. therefore he had waited until the price of wheat in memphis should have gone a little higher. that morning a rumor had reached the village of a famine in the island of crete. as a result the grain in the egyptian markets had greatly increased in value. sparrow hoped to profit through this unexpected turn of the market and he bade his skipper to hurry. the skipper handled the rudder of his craft so clumsily that the boat struck a rock and sank, drowning the mate who was caught under the sail. sparrow not only lost all his grain and his ship but he was also forced to pay the widow of his drowned mate ten pieces of gold to make up for the loss of her husband. these disasters occurred at the very moment when sparrow could not afford another loss. winter was near and he had no money to buy cloaks for his children. he had put off buying new hoes and spades for such a long time that the old ones were completely worn out. he had no seeds for his fields. he was in a desperate plight. he did not like his neighbor, mr. fish, any too well but there was no way out. he must go and humbly he must ask for the loan of a small sum of money. he called on fish. the latter said that he would gladly let him have whatever he needed but could sparrow put up any sort of guaranty? sparrow said, "yes." he would offer his own farm as a pledge of good faith. unfortunately fish knew all about that farm. it had belonged to the sparrow family for many generations. but the father of the present owner had allowed himself to be terribly cheated by a phoenician trader who had sold him a couple of "phrygian oxen" (nobody knew what the name meant) which were said to be of a very fine breed, which needed little food and performed twice as much labor as the common egyptian oxen. the old farmer had believed the solemn words of the impostor. he had bought the wonderful beasts, greatly envied by all his neighbors. they had not proved a success. they were very stupid and very slow and exceedingly lazy and within three weeks they had died from a mysterious disease. the old farmer was so angry that he suffered a stroke and the management of his estate was left to the son, who worked hard but without much result. the loss of his grain and his vessel were the last straw. young sparrow must either starve or ask his neighbor to help him with a loan. fish who was familiar with the lives of all his neighbors (he was that kind of person, not because he loved gossip but one never knew how such information might come in handy) and who knew to a penny the state of affairs in the sparrow household, felt strong enough to insist upon certain terms. sparrow could have all the money he needed upon the following condition. he must promise to work for fish six weeks of every year and he must allow him free access to his grounds at all times. sparrow did not like these terms, but the days were growing shorter and winter was coming on fast and his family were without food. he was forced to accept and from that time on, he and his sons and daughters were no longer quite as free as they had been before. they did not exactly become the servants or the slaves of their neighbor, but they were dependent upon his kindness for their own livelihood. when they met fish in the road they stepped aside and said "good morning, sir." and he answered them--or not--as the case might be. he now owned a great deal of water-front, twice as much as before. he had more land and more laborers and he could raise more grain than in the past years. the nearby villagers talked of the new house he was building and in a general way, he was regarded as a man of growing wealth and importance. late that summer an unheard-of-thing happened. it rained. the oldest inhabitants could not remember such a thing, but it rained hard and steadily for two whole days. a little brook, the existence of which everybody had forgotten, was suddenly turned into a wild torrent. in the middle of the night it came thundering down from the mountains and destroyed the harvest of the farmer who occupied the rocky ground at the foot of the hills. his name was cup and he too had inherited his land from a hundred other cups who had gone before. the damage was almost irreparable. cup needed new seed grain and he needed it at once. he had heard sparrow's story. he too hated to ask a favor of fish who was known far and wide as a shrewd dealer. but in the end, he found his way to the fishs' homestead and humbly begged for the loan of a few bushels of wheat. he got them but not until he had agreed to work two whole months of each year on the farm of fish. fish was now doing very well. his new house was ready and he thought the time had come to establish himself as the head of a household. just across the way, there lived a farmer who had a young daughter. the name of this farmer was knife. he was a happy-go-lucky person and he could not give his child a large dowry. fish called on knife and told him that he did not care for money. he was rich and he was willing to take the daughter without a single penny. knife, however, must promise to leave his land to his son-in-law in case he died. this was done. the will was duly drawn up before a notary, the wedding took place and fish now possessed (or was about to possess) the greater part of four farms. it is true there was a fifth farm situated right in between the others. but its owner, by the name of sickle, could not carry his wheat to the market without crossing the lands over which fish held sway. besides, sickle was not very energetic and he willingly hired himself out to fish on condition that he and his old wife be given a room and food and clothes for the rest of their days. they had no children and this settlement assured them a peaceful old age. when sickle died, a distant nephew appeared who claimed a right to his uncle's farm. fish had the dogs turned loose on him and the fellow was never seen again. these transactions had covered a period of twenty years. the younger generations of the cup and sickle and sparrow families accepted their situation in life without questioning. they knew old fish as "the squire" upon whose good-will they were more or less dependent if they wanted to succeed in life. when the old man died he left his son many wide acres and a position of great influence among his immediate neighbors. young fish resembled his father. he was very able and had a great deal of ambition. when the king of upper egypt went to war against the wild berber tribes, he volunteered his services. he fought so bravely that the king appointed him collector of the royal revenue for three hundred villages. often it happened that certain farmers could not pay their tax. then young fish offered to give them a small loan. before they knew it, they were working for the royal tax gatherer, to repay both the money which they had borrowed and the interest on the loan. the years went by and the fish family reigned supreme in the land of their birth. the old home was no longer good enough for such important people. a noble hall was built (after the pattern of the royal banqueting hall of thebes). a high wall was erected to keep the crowd at a respectful distance and fish never went out without a bodyguard of armed soldiers. twice a year he travelled to thebes to be with his king, who lived in the largest palace of all egypt and who was therefore known as "pharaoh," the owner of the "big house." upon one of his visits, he took fish the third, grandson of the founder of the family, who was a handsome young fellow. the daughter of pharaoh saw the youth and desired him for her husband. the wedding cost fish most of his fortune, but he was still collector of the royal revenue and by treating the people without mercy he was able to fill his strong-box in less than three years. when he died he was buried in a small pyramid, just as if he had been a member of the royal family, and a daughter of pharaoh wept over his grave. that is my story which begins somewhere along the banks of the nile and which in the course of three generations lifts a farmer from the ranks of his own humble ancestors and drops him outside the gate but near the throne-room of the king's palace. what happened to fish, happened to a large number of equally energetic and resourceful men. they formed a class apart. they married each other's daughters and in this way they kept the family fortunes in the hands of a small number of people. they served the king faithfully as officers in his army and as collectors of his taxes. they looked after the safety of the roads and the waterways. they performed many useful tasks and among themselves they obeyed the laws of a very strict code of honor. if the kings were bad, the nobles were apt to be bad too. when the kings were weak the nobles often managed to get hold of the state. then it often happened that the people arose in their wrath and destroyed those who oppressed them. many of the old nobles were killed and a new division of the land took place which gave everybody an equal chance. but after a short while the old story repeated itself. this time it was perhaps a member of the sparrow family who used his greater shrewdness and industry to make himself master of the countryside while the descendants of fish (of glorious memory!) were reduced to poverty. otherwise very little was changed. the faithful peasants continued to work and pay taxes. the equally faithful tax gatherers continued to gather wealth. but the old nile, indifferent to the ambitions of men, flowed as placidly as ever between its age-worn banks and bestowed its fertile blessings upon the poor and upon the rich with the impartial justice which is found only in the forces of nature. the rise and fall of egypt we often hear it said that "civilization travels westward." what we mean is that hardy pioneers have crossed the atlantic ocean and settled along the shores of new england and new netherland--that their children have crossed the vast prairies--that their great-grandchildren have moved into california--and that the present generation hopes to turn the vast pacific into the most important sea of the ages. as a matter of fact, "civilization" never remains long in the same spot. it is always going somewhere but it does not always move westward by any means. sometimes its course points towards the east or the south. often it zigzags across the map. but it keeps moving. after two or three hundred years, civilization seems to say, "well, i have been keeping company with these particular people long enough," and it packs its books and its science and its art and its music, and wanders forth in search of new domains. but no one knows whither it is bound, and that is what makes life so interesting. [illustration: the soil of the fertile valley.] in the case of egypt, the center of civilization moved northward and southward, along the banks of the nile. first of all, as i told you, people from all over africa and western asia moved into the valley and settled down. thereupon they formed small villages and townships and accepted the rule of a commander-in-chief, who was called pharaoh, and who had his capital in memphis, in the lower part of egypt. after a couple of thousand years, the rulers of this ancient house became too weak to maintain themselves. a new family from the town of thebes, miles towards the south in upper egypt, tried to make itself master of the entire valley. in the year b.c. they succeeded. as rulers of both upper and lower egypt, they set forth to conquer the rest of the world. they marched towards the sources of the nile (which they never reached) and conquered black ethiopia. next they crossed the desert of sinai and invaded syria where they made their name feared by the babylonians and assyrians. the possession of these outlying districts assured the safety of egypt and they could set to work to turn the valley into a happy home, for as many of the people as could find room there. they built many new dikes and dams and a vast reservoir in the desert which they filled with water from the nile to be kept and used in case of a prolonged drought. they encouraged people to devote themselves to the study of mathematics and astronomy so that they might determine the time when the floods of the nile were to be expected. since for this purpose it was necessary to have a handy method by which time could be measured, they established the year of days, which they divided into twelve months. contrary to the old tradition which made the egyptians keep away from all things foreign, they allowed the exchange of egyptian merchandise for goods which had been carried to their harbors from elsewhere. they traded with the greeks of crete and with the arabs of western asia and they got spices from the indies and they imported gold and silk from china. but all human institutions are subject to certain definite laws of progress and decline and a state or a dynasty is no exception. after four hundred years of prosperity, these mighty kings showed signs of growing tired. rather than ride a camel at the head of their army, the rulers of the great egyptian empire stayed within the gates of their palace and listened to the music of the harp or the flute. one day there came rumors to the town of thebes that wild tribes of horsemen had been pillaging along the frontiers. an army was sent to drive them away. this army moved into the desert. to the last man it was killed by the fierce arabs, who now marched towards the nile, bringing their flocks of sheep and their household goods. another army was told to stop their progress. the battle was disastrous for the egyptians and the valley of the nile was open to the invaders. they rode fleet horses and they used bows and arrows. within a short time they had made themselves master of the entire country. for five centuries they ruled the land of egypt. they removed the old capital to the delta of the nile. they oppressed the egyptian peasants. they treated the men cruelly and they killed the children and they were rude to the ancient gods. they did not like to live in the cities but stayed with their flocks in the open fields and therefore they were called the hyksos, which means the shepherd kings. at last their rule grew unbearable. a noble family from the city of thebes placed itself at the head of a national revolution against the foreign usurpers. it was a desperate fight but the egyptians won. the hyksos were driven out of the country, and they went back to the desert whence they had come. the experience had been a warning to the egyptian people. their five hundred years of foreign slavery had been a terrible experience. such a thing must never happen again. the frontier of the fatherland must be made so strong that no one dare to attack the holy soil. a new theban king, called tethmosis, invaded asia and never stopped until he reached the plains of mesopotamia. he watered his oxen in the river euphrates, and babylon and nineveh trembled at the mention of his name. wherever he went, he built strong fortresses, which were connected by excellent roads. tethmosis, having built a barrier against future invasions, went home and died. but his daughter, hatshepsut, continued his good work. she rebuilt the temples which the hyksos had destroyed and she founded a strong state in which soldiers and merchants worked together for a common purpose and which was called the new empire, and lasted from to b.c. military nations, however, never last very long. the larger the empire, the more men are needed for its defense and the more men there are in the army, the fewer can stay at home to work the farms and attend to the demands of trade. within a few years, the egyptian state had become top-heavy and the army, which was meant to be a bulwark against foreign invasion, dragged the country into ruin from sheer lack of both men and money. without interruption, wild people from asia were attacking those strong walls behind which egypt was hoarding the riches of the entire civilized world. at first the egyptian garrisons could hold their own. one day, however, in distant mesopotamia, there arose a new military empire which was called assyria. it cared for neither art nor science, but it could fight. the assyrians marched against the egyptians and defeated them in battle. for more than twenty years they ruled the land of the nile. to egypt this meant the beginning of the end. a few times, for short periods, the people managed to regain their independence. but they were an old race, and they were worn out by centuries of hard work. the time had come for them to disappear from the stage of history and surrender their leadership as the most civilized people of the world. greek merchants were swarming down upon the cities at the mouth of the nile. a new capital was built at sais, near the mouth of the nile, and egypt became a purely commercial state, the half-way house for the trade between western asia and eastern europe. after the greeks came the persians, who conquered all of northern africa. two centuries later, alexander the great turned the ancient land of the pharaoh? into a greek province. when he died, one of his generals, ptolemy by name, established himself as the independent king of a new egyptian state. the ptolemy family continued to rule for two hundred years. in the year b.c., cleopatra, the last of the ptolemys, killed herself, rather than become a prisoner of the victorious roman general, octavianus. that was the end. egypt became part of the roman empire and her life as an independent state ceased for all time. mesopotamia, the country between the rivers i am going to take you to the top of the highest pyramid. it is a good deal of a climb. the casing of fine stones which in the beginning covered the rough granite blocks which were used to construct this artificial mountain, has long since worn off or has been stolen to help build new roman cities. a goat would have a fine time scaling this strange peak. but with the help of a few arab boys, we can get to the top after a few hours of hard work, and there we can rest and look far into the next chapter of the history of the human race. way, way off, in the distance, far beyond the yellow sands of the vast desert, through which the old nile had cut herself a way to the sea, you will (if you have the eyes of a hawk), see something shimmering and green. it is a valley situated between two big rivers. it is the most interesting spot of the ancient map. it is the paradise of the old testament. it is the old land of mystery and wonder which the greeks called mesopotamia. the word "mesos" means "middle" or "in between" and "potomos" is the greek expression for river. (just think of the hippopotamus, the horse or "hippos" that lives in the rivers.) mesopotamia, therefore, meant a stretch of land "between the rivers." the two rivers in this case were the euphrates which the babylonians called the "purattu" and the tigris, which the babylonians called the "diklat." you will see them both upon the map. they begin their course amidst the snows of the northern mountains of armenia and slowly they flow through the southern plain until they reach the muddy banks of the persian gulf. but before they have lost themselves amidst the waves of this branch of the indian ocean, they have performed a great and useful task. they have turned an otherwise arid and dry region into the only fertile spot of western asia. that fact will explain to you why mesopotamia was so very popular with the inhabitants of the northern mountains and the southern desert. it is a well-known fact that all living beings like to be comfortable. when it rains, the cat hastens to a place of shelter. when it is cold, the dog finds a spot in front of the stove. when a certain part of the sea becomes more salty than it has been before (or less, for that matter) myriads of little fishes swim hastily to another part of the wide ocean. as for the birds, a great many of them move from one place to another regularly once a year. when the cold weather sets in, the geese depart, and when the first swallow returns, we know that summer is about to smile upon us. man is no exception to this rule. he likes the warm stove much better than the cold wind. whenever he has the choice between a good dinner and a crust of bread, he prefers the dinner. he will live in the desert or in the snow of the arctic zone if it is absolutely necessary. but offer him a more agreeable place of residence and he will accept without a moment's hesitation. this desire to improve his condition, which really means a desire to make life more comfortable and less wearisome, has been a very good thing for the progress of the world. it has driven the white people of europe to the ends of the earth. it has populated the mountains and the plains of our own country. it has made many millions of men travel ceaselessly from east to west and from south to north until they have found the climate and the living conditions which suit them best. in the western part of asia this instinct which compels living beings to seek the greatest amount of comfort possible with the smallest expenditure of labor forced both the inhabitants of the cold and inhospitable mountains and the people of the parched desert to look for a new dwelling place in the happy valley of mesopotamia. it caused them to fight for the sole possession of this paradise upon earth. it forced them to exercise their highest power of inventiveness and their noblest courage to defend their homes and farms and their wives and children against the newcomers, who century after century were attracted by the fame of this pleasant spot. this constant rivalry was the cause of an everlasting struggle between the old and established tribes and the others who clamored for their share of the soil. those who were weak and those who did not have a great deal of energy had little chance of success. only the most intelligent and the bravest survived. that will explain to you why mesopotamia became the home of a strong race of men, capable of creating that state of civilization which was to be of such enormous benefit to all later generations. the sumerian nail writers in the year , a short time before columbus discovered america, a certain venetian, by the name of josaphat barbaro, traveling through persia, crossed the hills near shiraz and saw something which puzzled him. the hills of shiraz were covered with old temples which had been cut into the rock of the mountainside. the ancient worshippers had disappeared centuries before and the temples were in a state of great decay. but clearly visible upon their walls, barbara noticed long legends written in a curious script which looked like a series of scratches made by a sharp nail. when he returned he mentioned his discovery to his fellow-townsmen, but just then the turks were threatening europe with an invasion and people were too busy to bother about a new and unknown alphabet, somewhere in the heart of western asia. the persian inscriptions therefore were promptly forgotten. two and a half centuries later, a noble young roman by the name of pietro della valle visited the same hillsides of shiraz which barbaro had passed two hundred years before. he, too, was puzzled by the strange inscriptions on the ruins and being a painstaking young fellow, he copied them carefully and sent his report together with some remarks about the trip to a friend of his, doctor schipano, who practiced medicine in naples and who besides took an interest in matters of learning. schipano copied the funny little figures and brought them to the attention of other scientific men. unfortunately europe was again occupied with other matters. the terrible wars between the protestants and catholics had broken out and people were busily killing those who disagreed with them upon certain points of a religious nature. another century was to pass before the study of the wedge-shaped inscriptions could be taken up seriously. the eighteenth century--a delightful age for people of an active and curious mind--loved scientific puzzles. therefore when king frederick v of denmark asked for men of learning to join an expedition which he was going to send to western asia, he found no end of volunteers. his expedition, which left copenhagen in , lasted six years. during this period all of the members died except one, by the name of karsten niebuhr, who had begun life as a german peasant and could stand greater hardships than the professors who had spent their days amidst the stuffy books of their libraries. this niebuhr, who was a surveyor by profession, was a young man who deserves our admiration. he continued his voyage all alone until he reached the ruins of persepolis where he spent a month copying every inscription that was to be found upon the walls of the ruined palaces and temples. after his return to denmark he published his discoveries for the benefit of the scientific world and seriously tried to read some meaning into his own texts. he was not successful. but this does not astonish us when we understand the difficulties which he was obliged to solve. when champollion tackled the ancient egyptian hieroglyphics he was able to make his studies from little pictures. the writing of persepolis did not show any pictures at all. they consisted of v-shaped figures that were repeated endlessly and suggested nothing at all to the european eye. nowadays, when the puzzle has been solved we know that the original script of the sumerians had been a picture-language, quite as much as that of the egyptians. but whereas the egyptians at a very early date had discovered the papyrus plant and had been able to paint their images upon a smooth surface, the inhabitants of mesopotamia had been forced to carve their words into the hard rock of a mountain side or into a soft brick of clay. [illustration: the rocks of behistun.] driven by necessity they had gradually simplified the original pictures until they devised a system of more than five hundred different letter-combinations which were necessary for their needs. let me give you a few examples. in the beginning, a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows. [illustration: star] but after a time the star shape was discarded as being too cumbersome and the figure was given this shape. [illustration: asterisk] after a while the meaning of "heaven" was added to that of "star," and the picture was simplified in this way [illustration: odd cross] which made it still more of a puzzle. in the same way an ox changed from [illustration: ox head] into [illustration: pattern] a fish changed from [illustration: fish] into [illustration: fish scales] the sun, which was originally a plain circle, became [illustration: diamond] and if we were using the sumerian script today we would make an [illustration: bike] look like this [illustration: pattern]. you will understand how difficult it was to guess at the meaning of these figures but the patient labors of a german schoolmaster by the name of grotefend was at last rewarded and thirty years after the first publication of niebuhr's texts and three centuries after the first discovery of the wedge-formed pictures, four letters had been deciphered. these four letters were the d, the a, the r and the sh. they formed the name of darheush the king, whom we call darius. then occurred one of those events which were only possible in those happy days before the telegraph-wire and the mail-steamer had turned the entire world into one large city. while patient european professors were burning the midnight candles in their attempt to solve the new asiatic mystery, young henry rawlinson was serving his time as a cadet of the british east indian company. he used his spare hours to learn persian and when the shah of persia asked the english government for the loan of a few officers to train his native army, rawlinson was ordered to go to teheran. he travelled all over persia and one day he happened to visit the village of behistun. the persians called it bagistana which means the "dwellingplace of the gods." centuries before the main road from mesopotamia to iran (the early home of the persians) had run through this village and the persian king darius had used the steep walls of the high cliffs to tell all the world what a great man he was. high above the roadside he had engraved an account of his glorious deeds. the inscription had been made in the persian language, in babylonian and in the dialect of the city of susa. to make the story plain to those who could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had been added showing the king of persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body of gaumata, the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the legitimate rulers. for good measure a dozen followers of gaumata had been added. they stood in the background. their hands were tied and they were to be executed in a few moments. the picture and the three texts were several hundred feet above the road but rawlinson scaled the walls of the rock at great danger to life and limb and copied the entire text. his discovery was of the greatest importance. the rock of behistun became as famous as the stone of rosetta and rawlinson shared the honors of deciphering the old nail-writing with grotefend. although they had never seen each other or heard each other's names, the german schoolmaster and the british officer worked together for a common purpose as all good scientific men should do. their copies of the old text were reprinted in every land and by the middle of the nineteenth century, the cuneiform language (so called because the letters were wedge-shaped and "cuneus" is the latin name for wedge) had given up its secrets. another human mystery had been solved. [illustration: a tower of babel.] but about the people who had invented this clever way of writing, we have never been able to learn very much. they were a white race and they were called the sumerians. they lived in a land which we call shomer and which they themselves called kengi, which means the "country of the reeds" and which shows us that they had dwelt among the marshy parts of the mesopotamian valley. originally the sumerians had been mountaineers, but the fertile fields had tempted them away from the hills. but while they had left their ancient homes amidst the peaks of western asia they had not given up their old habits and one of these is of particular interest to us. living amidst the peaks of western asia, they had worshipped their gods upon altars erected on the tops of rocks. in their new home, among the flat plains, there were no such rocks and it was impossible to construct their shrines in the old fashion. the sumerians did not like this. all asiatic people have a deep respect for tradition and the sumerian tradition demanded that an altar be plainly visible for miles around. to overcome this difficulty and keep their peace with the gods of their fathers, the sumerians had built a number of low towers (resembling little hills) on the top of which they had lighted their sacred fires in honor of the old divinities. when the jews visited the town of bab-illi (which we call babylon) many centuries after the last of the sumerians had died, they had been much impressed by the strange-looking towers which stood high amidst the green fields of mesopotamia. the tower of babel of which we hear so much in the old testament was nothing but the ruin of an artificial peak, built hundreds of years before by a band of devout sumerians. it was a curious contraption. the sumerians had not known how to construct stairs. they had surrounded their tower with a sloping gallery which slowly carried people from the bottom to the top. a few years ago it was found necessary to build a new railroad station in the heart of new york city in such a way that thousands of travelers could be brought from the lower to the higher levels at the same moment. it was not thought safe to use a staircase for in case of a rush or a panic people might have tumbled and that would have meant a terrible catastrophe. to solve their problem the engineers borrowed an idea from the sumerians. and the grand central station is provided with the same ascending galleries which had first been introduced into the plains of mesopotamia, three thousand years ago. assyria and babylonia--the great semitic melting-pot we often call america the "melting-pot." when we use this term we mean that many races from all over the earth have gathered along the banks of the atlantic and the pacific oceans to find a new home and begin a new career amidst more favorable surroundings than were to be found in the country of their birth. it is true, mesopotamia was much smaller than our own country. but the fertile valley was the most extraordinary "melting-pot" the world has ever seen and it continued to absorb new tribes for almost two thousand years. the story of each new people, clamoring for homesteads along the banks of the tigris and the euphrates is interesting in itself but we can give you only a very short record of their adventures. [illustration: hammurapi.] the sumerians whom we met in the previous chapter, scratching their history upon rocks and bits of clay (and who did not belong to the semitic race) had been the first nomads to wander into mesopotamia. nomads are people who have no settled homes and no grain fields and no vegetable gardens but who live in tents and keep sheep and goats and cows and who move from pasture to pasture, taking their flocks and their tents wherever the grass is green and the water abundant. far and wide their mud huts had covered the plains. they were good fighters and for a long time they were able to hold their own against all invaders. but four thousand years ago a tribe of semitic desert people called the akkadians left arabia, defeated the sumerians and conquered mesopotamia. the most famous king of these akkadians was called sargon. he taught his people how to write their own semitic language in the alphabet of the sumerians whose territory they had just occupied. he ruled so wisely that soon the differences between the original settlers and the invaders disappeared and they became fast friends and lived together in peace and harmony. the fame of his empire spread rapidly throughout western asia and others, hearing of this success, were tempted to try their own luck. a new tribe of desert nomads, called the amorites, broke up camp and moved northward. thereupon the valley was the scene of a great turmoil until an amorite chieftain by the name of hammurapi (or hammurabi, as you please) established himself in the town of bab-illi (which means the gate of the god) and made himself the ruler of a great bab-illian or babylonian empire. this hammurapi, who lived twenty-one centuries before the birth of christ, was a very interesting man. he made babylon the most important town of the ancient world, where learned priests administered the laws which their great ruler had received from the sun god himself and where the merchant loved to trade because he was treated fairly and honorably. indeed if it were not for the lack of space (these laws of hammurapi would cover fully forty of these pages if i were to give them to you in detail) i would be able to show you that this ancient babylonian state was in many respects better managed and that the people were happier and that law and order was maintained more carefully and that there was greater freedom of speech and thought than in many of our modern countries. but our world was never meant to be too perfect and soon other hordes of rough and murderous men descended from the northern mountains and destroyed the work of hammurapi's genius. the name of these new invaders was the hittites. of these hittites i can tell you even less than of the sumerians. the bible mentions them. ruins of their civilization have been found far and wide. they used a strange sort of hieroglyphics but no one has as yet been able to decipher these and read their meaning. they were not greatly gifted as administrators. they ruled only a few years and then their domains fell to pieces. of all their glory there remains nothing but a mysterious name and the reputation of having destroyed many things which other people had built up with great pain and care. then came another invasion which was of a very different nature. a fierce tribe of desert wanderers, who murdered and pillaged in the name of their great god assur, left arabia and marched northward until they reached the slopes of the mountains. then they turned eastward and along the banks of the euphrates they built a city which they called ninua, a name which has come down to us in the greek form of nineveh. at once these new-comers, who are generally known as the assyrians, began a slow but terrible warfare upon all the other inhabitants of mesopotamia. in the twelfth century before christ they made a first attempt to destroy babylon but after a first success on the part of their king, tiglath pileser, they were defeated and forced to return to their own country. five hundred years later they tried again. an adventurous general by the name of bulu made himself master of the assyrian throne. he assumed the name of old tiglath pileser, who was considered the national hero of the assyrians and announced his intention of conquering the whole world. [illustration: nineveh.] he was as good as his word. asia minor and armenia and egypt and northern arabia and western persia and babylonia became assyrian provinces. they were ruled by assyrian governors, who collected the taxes and forced all the young men to serve as soldiers in the assyrian armies and who made themselves thoroughly hated and despised both for their greed and their cruelty. fortunately the assyrian empire at its greatest height did not last very long. it was like a ship with too many masts and sails and too small a hull. there were too many soldiers and not enough farmers--too many generals and not enough business men. the king and the nobles grew very rich but the masses lived in squalor and poverty. never for a moment was the country at peace. it was for ever fighting someone, somewhere, for causes which did not interest the subjects at all. until, through this continuous and exhausting warfare, most of the assyrian soldiers had been killed or maimed and it became necessary to allow foreigners to enter the army. these foreigners had little love for their brutal masters who had destroyed their homes and had stolen their children and therefore they fought badly. life along the assyrian frontier was no longer safe. strange new tribes were constantly attacking the northern boundaries. one of these was called the cimmerians. the cimmerians, when we first hear of them, inhabited the vast plain beyond the northern mountains. homer describes their country in his account of the voyage of odysseus and he tells us that it was a place "for ever steeped in darkness." they were a race of white men and they had been driven out of their former homes by still another group of asiatic wanderers, the scythians. the scythians were the ancestors of the modern cossacks, and even in those remote days they were famous for their horsemanship. [illustration: nineveh destroyed.] the cimmerians, hard pressed by the scythians, crossed from europe into asia and conquered the land of the hittites. then they left the mountains of asia minor and descended into the valley of mesopotamia, where they wrought terrible havoc among the impoverished people of the assyrian empire. nineveh called for volunteers to stop this invasion. her worn-out regiments marched northward when news came of a more immediate and formidable danger. for many years a small tribe of semitic nomads, called the chaldeans, had been living peacefully in the south-eastern part of the fertile valley, in the country called ur. suddenly these chaldeans had gone upon the war-path and had begun a regular campaign against the assyrians. attacked from all sides, the assyrian state, which had never gained the good-will of a single neighbor, was doomed to perish. when nineveh fell and this forbidding treasure house, filled with the plunder of centuries, was at last destroyed, there was joy in every hut and hamlet from the persian gulf to the nile. and when the greeks visited the euphrates a few generations later and asked what these vast ruins, covered with shrubs and trees might be, there was no one to tell them. the people had hastened to forget the very name of the city that had been such a cruel master and had so miserably oppressed them. babylon, on the other hand, which had ruled its subjects in a very different way, came back to life. during the long reign of the wise king nebuchadnezzar the ancient temples were rebuilt. vast palaces were erected within a short space of time. new canals were dug all over the valley to help irrigate the fields. quarrelsome neighbors were severely punished. egypt was reduced to a mere frontier-province and jerusalem, the capital of the jews, was destroyed. the holy books of moses were taken to babylon and several thousand jews were forced to follow the babylonian king to his capital as hostages for the good behavior of those who remained behind in palestine. but babylon was made into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. trees were planted along the banks of the euphrates. flowers were made to grow upon the many walls of the city and after a few years it seemed that a thousand gardens were hanging from the roofs of the ancient town. as soon as the chaldeans had made their capital the show-place of the world they devoted their attention to matters of the mind and of the spirit. like all desert folk they were deeply interested in the stars which at night had guided them safely through the trackless desert. they studied the heavens and named the twelve signs of the zodiak. they made maps of the sky and they discovered the first five planets. to these they gave the names of their gods. when the romans conquered mesopotamia they translated the chaldean names into latin and that explains why today we talk of jupiter and venus and mars and mercury and saturn. they divided the equator into three hundred and sixty degrees and they divided the day into twenty-four hours and the hour into sixty minutes and no modern man has ever been able to improve upon this old babylonian invention. they possessed no watches but they measured time by the shadow of the sun-dial. they learned to use both the decimal and the duodecimal systems (nowadays we use only the decimal system, which is a great pity). the duodecimal system (ask your father what the word means), accounts for the sixty minutes and the sixty seconds and the twenty-four hours which seem to have so little in common with our modern world which would have divided day and night into twenty hours and the hour into fifty minutes and the minute into fifty seconds according to the rules of the restricted decimal system. the chaldeans also were the first people to recognize the necessity of a regular day of rest. when they divided the year into weeks they ordered that six days of labor should be followed by one day, devoted to the "peace of the soul." [illustration: the chaldeans.] it was a great pity that the center of so much intelligence and industry could not exist for ever. but not even the genius of a number of very wise kings could save the ancient people of mesopotamia from their ultimate fate. the semitic world was growing old. it was time for a new race of men. in the fifth century before christ, an indo-european people called the persians (i shall tell you about them later) left its pastures amidst the high mountains of iran and conquered the fertile valley. the city of babylon was captured without a struggle. nabonidus, the last babylonian king, who had been more interested in religious problems than in defending his own country, fled. a few days later his small son, who had remained behind, died. cyrus, the persian king, buried the child with great honor and then proclaimed himself the legitimate successor of the old rulers of babylonia. mesopotamia ceased to be an independent state. it became a persian province ruled by a persian "satrap" or governor. as for babylon, when the kings no longer used the city as their residence it soon lost all importance and became a mere country village. in the fourth century before christ it enjoyed another spell of glory. it was in the year b.c. that alexander the great, the young greek who had just conquered persia and india and egypt and every other place, visited the ancient city of sacred memories. he wanted to use the old city as a background for his own newly-acquired glory. he began to rebuild the palace and ordered that the rubbish be removed from the temples. unfortunately he died quite suddenly in the banqueting hall of nebuchadnezzar and after that nothing on earth could save babylon from her ruin. as soon as one of alexander's generals, seleucus nicator, had perfected the plans for a new city at the mouth of the great canal which united the tigris and the euphrates, the fate of babylon was sealed. a tablet of the year b.c. tells us how the last of the babylonians were forced to leave their home and move into this new settlement which had been called seleucia. even then, a few of the faithful continued to visit the holy places which were now inhabited by wolves and jackals. the majority of the people, little interested in those half-forgotten divinities of a bygone age, made a more practical use of their former home. they used it as a stone-quarry. for almost thirty centuries babylon had been the great spiritual and intellectual center of the semitic world and a hundred generations had regarded the city as the most perfect expression of their people's genius. it was the paris and london and new york of the ancient world. at present three large mounds show us where the ruins lie buried beneath the sand of the ever-encroaching desert. this is the story of moses high above the thin line of the distant horizon there appeared a small cloud of dust. the babylonian peasant, working his poor farm on the outskirts of the fertile lands, noticed it. "another tribe is trying to break into our land," he said to himself. "they will not get far. the king's soldiers will drive them away." he was right. the frontier guards welcomed the new arrivals with drawn swords and bade them try their luck elsewhere. they moved westward following the borders of the land of babylon and they wandered until they reached the shores of the mediterranean. there they settled down and tended their flocks and lived the simple lives of their earliest ancestors who had dwelt in the land of ur. then there came a time when the rain ceased to fall and there was not enough to eat for man or beast and it became necessary to look for new pastures or perish on the spot. once more the shepherds (who were called the hebrews) moved their families into a new home which they found along the banks of the red sea near the land of egypt. but hunger and want had followed them upon their voyage and they were forced to go to the egyptian officials and beg for food that they might not starve. the egyptians had long expected a famine. they had built large store-houses and these were all filled with the surplus wheat of the last seven years. this wheat was now being distributed among the people and a food-dictator had been appointed to deal it out equally to the rich and to the poor. his name was joseph and he belonged to the tribe of the hebrews. as a mere boy he had run away from his own family. it was said that he had escaped to save himself from the anger of his brethren who envied him because he was the favorite of their father. whatever the truth, joseph had gone to egypt and he had found favor in the eyes of the hyksos kings who had just conquered the country and who used this bright young man to assist them in administering their new possessions. as soon as the hungry hebrews appeared before joseph with their request for help, joseph recognized his relatives. but he was a generous man and all meanness of spirit was foreign to his soul. he did not revenge himself upon those who had wronged him but he gave them wheat and allowed them to settle in the land of egypt, they and their children and their flocks--and be happy. for many years the hebrews (who are more commonly known as the jews) lived in the eastern part of their adopted country and all was well with them. then a great change took place. a sudden revolution deprived the hyksos kings of their power and forced them to leave the country. once more the egyptians were masters within their own house. they had never liked foreigners any too well. three hundred years of oppression by a band of arab shepherds had greatly increased this feeling of loathing for everything that was alien. [illustration: moses.] the jews on the other hand had been on friendly terms with the hyksos who were related to them by blood and by race. this was enough to make them traitors in the eyes of the egyptians. joseph no longer lived to protect his people. after a short struggle they were taken away from their old homes, they were driven into the heart of the country and they were treated like slaves. for many years they performed the dreary tasks of common laborers, carrying stones for the building of pyramids, making bricks for public buildings, constructing roads, and digging canals to carry the water of the nile to the distant egyptian farms. their suffering was great but they never lost courage and help was near. there lived a certain young man whose name was moses. he was very intelligent and he had received a good education because the egyptians had decided that he should enter the service of pharaoh. if nothing had happened to arouse his anger, moses would have ended his days peacefully as the governor of a small province or the collector of taxes of an outlying district. but the egyptians, as i have told you before, despised those who did not look like themselves nor dress in true egyptian fashion and they were apt to insult such people because they were "different." and because the foreigners were in the minority they could not well defend themselves. nor did it serve any good purpose to carry their complaints before a tribunal for the judge did not smile upon the grievances of a man who refused to worship the egyptian gods and who pleaded his case with a strong foreign accent. now it occurred one day that moses was taking a walk with a few of his egyptian friends and one of these said something particularly disagreeable about the jews and even threatened to lay hands on them. moses, who was a hot-headed youth hit him. the blow was a bit too severe and the egyptian fell down dead. to kill a native was a terrible thing and the egyptian laws were not as wise as those of hammurapi, the good babylonian king, who recognized the difference between a premeditated murder and the killing of a man whose insults had brought his opponent to a point of unreasoning rage. moses fled. he escaped into the land of his ancestors, into the midian desert, along the eastern bank of the red sea, where his tribe had tended their sheep several hundred years before. a kind priest by the name of jethro received him in his house and gave him one of his seven daughters, zipporah, as his wife. there moses lived for a long time and there he pondered upon many deep subjects. he had left the luxury and the comfort of the palace of pharaoh to share the rough and simple life of a desert priest. in the olden days, before the jewish people had moved into egypt, they too had been wanderers among the endless plains of arabia. they had lived in tents and they had eaten plain food, but they had been honest men and faithful women, contented with few possessions but proud of the righteousness of their mind. all this had been changed after they had become exposed to the civilization of egypt. they had taken to the ways of the comfort-loving egyptians. they had allowed another race to rule them and they had not cared to fight for their independence. instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had begun to worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering splendors of the dark egyptian temples. moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people from their fate and bring them back to the simple truth of the olden days. and so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that they leave the land of slavery and join him in the desert. but the egyptians heard of this and guarded the jews more carefully than ever before. it seemed that the plans of moses were doomed to failure when suddenly an epidemic broke out among the people of the nile valley. the jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of health (which they had learned in the hardy days of their desert life) escaped the disease while the weaker egyptians died by the hundreds of thousands. amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this silent death, the jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from the land which had promised them so much and which had given them so little. as soon as the flight became known the egyptians tried to follow them with their armies but their soldiers met with disaster and the jews escaped. they were safe and they were free and they moved eastward into the waste spaces which are situated at the foot of mount sinai, the peak which has been called after sin, the babylonian god of the moon. there moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and commenced upon his great task of reform. in those days, the jews, like all other people, worshipped many gods. during their stay in egypt they had even learned to do homage to those animals which the egyptians held in such high honor that they built holy shrines for their special benefit. moses on the other hand, during his long and lonely life amidst the sandy hills of the peninsula, had learned to revere the strength and the power of the great god of the storm and the thunder, who ruled the high heavens and upon whose good-will the wanderer in the desert depended for life and light and breath. this god was called jehovah and he was a mighty being who was held in trembling respect by all the semitic people of western asia. through the teaching of moses he was to become the sole master of the jewish race. one day moses disappeared from the camp of the hebrews. he took with him two tablets of rough-hewn stone. it was whispered that he had gone to seek the solitude of mount sinai's highest peak. that afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight. the darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man. but when moses returned, behold! ... there stood engraved upon the tablets the words which jehovah himself had spoken amidst the crash of his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning. from that moment on, no jew dared to question the authority of moses. when he told his people that jehovah commanded them to continue their wanderings, they obeyed with eagerness. for many years they lived amidst the trackless hills of the desert. they suffered great hardships and almost perished from lack of food and water. but moses kept high their hopes of a promised land which would offer a lasting home to the true followers of jehovah. at last they reached a more fertile region. they crossed the river jordan and, carrying the holy tablets of law, they made ready to occupy the pastures which stretch from dan to beersheba. as for moses, he was no longer their leader. he had grown old and he was very tired. he had been allowed to see the distant ridges of the palestine mountains among which the jews were to find a fatherland. then he had closed his wise eyes for all time. he had accomplished the task which he had set himself in his youth. he had led his people out of foreign slavery into the new freedom of an independent life. he had united them and he had made them the first of all nations to worship a single god. jerusalem--the city of the law palestine is a small strip of land between the mountains of syria and the green waters of the mediterranean. it has been inhabited since time immemorial, but we do not know very much about the first settlers, although we have given them the name of canaanites. the canaanites belonged to the semitic race. their ancestors, like those of the jews and the babylonians, had been a desert folk. but when the jews entered palestine, the canaanites lived in towns and villages. they were no longer shepherds but traders. indeed, in the jewish language, canaanite and merchant came to mean the same thing. they had built themselves strong cities, surrounded by high walls and they did not allow the jews to enter their gates, but they forced them to keep to the open country and make their home amidst the grassy lands of the valleys. after a time, however, the jews and the canaanites became friends. this was not so very difficult for they both belonged to the same race. besides they feared a common enemy and only their united strength could defend their country against these dangerous neighbors, who were called the philistines and who belonged to an entirely different race. the philistines really had no business in asia. they were europeans, and their earliest home had been in the isle of crete. at what age they had settled along the shores of the mediterranean is quite uncertain because we do not know when the indo-european invaders had driven them from their island home. but even the egyptians, who called them purasati, had feared them greatly and when the philistines (who wore a headdress of feathers just like our indians) went upon the war-path, all the people of western asia sent large armies to protect their frontiers. [illustration: jerusalem.] as for the war between the philistines and the jews, it never came to an end. for although david slew goliath (who wore a suit of armor which was a great curiosity in those days and had been no doubt imported from the island of cyprus where the copper mines of the ancient world were found) and although samson killed the philistines wholesale when he buried himself and his enemies beneath the temple of dagon, the philistines always proved themselves more than a match for the jews and never allowed the hebrew people to get hold of any of the harbors of the mediterranean. the jews therefore were obliged by fate to content themselves with the valleys of eastern palestine and there, on the top of a barren hill, they erected their capital. the name of this city was jerusalem and for thirty centuries it has been one of the most holy spots of the western world. in the dim ages of the unknown past, jerusalem, the home of peace, had been a little fortified outpost of the egyptians who had built many small fortifications and castles along the mountain ridges of palestine, to defend their outlying frontier against attacks from the east. after the downfall of the egyptian empire, a native tribe, the jebusites, had moved into the deserted city. then came the jews who captured the town after a long struggle and made it the residence of their king david. at last, after many years of wandering the tables of the law seemed to have reached a place of enduring rest. solomon, the wise, decided to provide them with a magnificent home. far and wide his messengers travelled to ransack the world for rare woods and precious metals. the entire nation was asked to offer its wealth to make the house of god worthy of its holy name. higher and higher the walls of the temple arose guarding the sacred laws of jehovah for all the ages. alas, the expected eternity proved to be of short duration. themselves intruders among hostile neighbors, surrounded by enemies on all sides, harassed by the philistines, the jews did not maintain their independence for very long. they fought well and bravely. but their little state, weakened by petty jealousies, was easily overpowered by the assyrians and the egyptians and the chaldeans and when nebuchadnezzar, the king of babylon, took jerusalem in the year before the birth of christ, he destroyed the city and the temple, and the tablets of stone went up in the general conflagration. at once the jews set to work to rebuild their holy shrine. but the days of solomon's glory were gone. the jews were the subjects of a foreign race and money was scarce. it took seventy years to reconstruct the old edifice. it stood securely for three hundred years but then a second invasion took place and once more the red flames of the burning temple brightened the skies of palestine. when it was rebuilt for the third time, it was surrounded by two high walls with narrow gates and several inner courts were added to make sudden invasion in the future an impossibility. but ill-luck pursued the city of jerusalem. in the sixty-fifth year before the birth of christ, the romans under their general pompey took possession of the jewish capital. their practical sense did not take kindly to an old city with crooked and dark streets and many unhealthy alley-ways. they cleaned up this old rubbish (as they considered it) and built new barracks and large public buildings and swimming-pools and athletic parks and they forced their modern improvements upon an unwilling populace. the temple which served no practical purposes (as far as they could see) was neglected until the days of herod, who was king of the jews by the grace of the roman sword and whose vanity wished to renew the ancient splendor of the bygone ages. in a half-hearted manner the oppressed people set to work to obey the orders of a master who was not of their own choosing. when the last stone had been placed in its proper position another revolution broke out against the merciless roman tax gatherers. the temple was the first victim of this rioting. the soldiers of the emperor titus promptly set fire to this center of the old jewish faith. but the city of jerusalem was spared. palestine however continued to be the scene of unrest. the romans who were familiar with all sorts of races of men and who ruled countries where a thousand different divinities were worshipped did not know how to handle the jews. they did not understand the jewish character at all. extreme tolerance (based upon indifference) was the foundation upon which rome had constructed her very successful empire. roman governors never interfered with the religious belief of subject tribes. they demanded that a picture or a statue of the emperor be placed in the temples of the people who inhabited the outlying parts of the roman domains. this was a mere formality and it did not have any deep significance. but to the jews such a thing seemed highly sacrilegious and they would not desecrate their holiest of holies by the carven image of a roman potentate. they refused. the romans insisted. in itself a matter of small importance, a misunderstanding of this sort was bound to grow and cause further ill-feeling. fifty-two years after the revolt under the emperor titus the jews once more rebelled. this time the romans decided to be thorough in their work of destruction. jerusalem was destroyed. the temple was burned down. a new roman city, called aelia capitolina was erected upon the ruins of the old city of solomon. a heathenish temple devoted to the worship of jupiter was built upon the site where the faithful had worshipped jehovah for almost a thousand years. the jews themselves were expelled from their capital and thousands of them were driven away from the home of their ancestors. from that moment on they became wanderers upon the face of the earth. but the holy laws no longer needed the safe shelter of a royal shrine. their influence had long since passed beyond the narrow confines of the land of judah. they had become a living symbol of justice wherever honorable people tried to live a righteous life. damascus--the city of trade the old cities of egypt have disappeared from the face of the earth. nineveh and babylon are deserted mounds of dust and brick. the ancient temple of jerusalem lies buried beneath the blackened ruins of its own glory. one city alone has survived the ages. it is called damascus. within its four great gates and its strong walls a busy people has followed its daily occupations for five thousand consecutive years and the "street called straight" which is the city's main artery of commerce, has seen the coming and going of one hundred and fifty generations. humbly damascus began its career as a fortified frontier town of the amorites, those famous desert folk who had given birth to the great king hammurapi. when the amorites moved further eastward into the valley of mesopotamia to found the kingdom of babylon, damascus had been continued as a trading post with the wild hittites who inhabited the mountains of asia minor. in due course of time the earliest inhabitants had been absorbed by another semitic tribe, called the aramaeans. the city itself however had not changed its character. it remained throughout these many changes an important center of commerce. it was situated upon the main road from egypt to mesopotamia and it was within a week's distance from the harbors on the mediterranean. it produced no great generals and statesmen and no famous kings. it did not conquer a single mile of neighboring territory. it traded with all the world and offered a safe home to the merchant and to the artisan. incidentally it bestowed its language upon the greater part of western asia. commerce has always demanded quick and practical ways of communication between different nations. the elaborate system of nail-writing of the ancient sumerians was too involved for the aramaean business man. he invented a new alphabet which could be written much faster than the old wedge-shaped figures of babylon. the spoken language of the aramaeans followed their business correspondence. aramaean became the english of the ancient world. in most parts of mesopotamia it was understood as readily as the native tongue. in some countries it actually took the place of the old tribal dialect. and when christ preached to the multitudes, he did not use the ancient jewish speech in which moses had explained the laws unto his fellow wanderers. he spoke in aramaean, the language of the merchant, which had become the language of the simple people of the old mediterranean world. the phoenicians who sailed beyond the horizon a pioneer is a brave fellow, with the courage of his own curiosity. perhaps he lives at the foot of a high mountain. so do thousands of other people. they are quite contented to leave the mountain alone. but the pioneer feels unhappy. he wants to know what mysteries this mountain hides from his eyes. is there another mountain behind it, or a plain? does it suddenly arise with its steep cliffs from the dark waves of the ocean or does it overlook a desert? one fine day the true pioneer leaves his family and the safe comfort of his home to go and find out. perhaps he will come back and tell his experience to his indifferent relatives. or he will be killed by falling stones or a treacherous blizzard. in that case he does not return at all and the good neighbors shake their heads and say, "he got what he deserved. why did he not stay at home like the rest of us?" [illustration: the distant horizon] but the world needs such men and after they have been dead for many years and others have reaped the benefits of their discoveries, they always receive a statue with a fitting inscription. more terrifying than the highest mountain is the thin line of the distant horizon. it seems to be the end of the world itself. heaven have mercy upon those who pass beyond this meeting-place of sky and water, where all is black despair and death. and for centuries and centuries after man had built his first clumsy boats, he remained within the pleasant sight of one familiar shore and kept away from the horizon. then came the phoenicians who knew no such fears. they passed beyond the sight of land. suddenly the forbidding ocean was turned into a peaceful highway of commerce and the dangerous menace of the horizon became a myth. these phoenician navigators were semites. their ancestors had lived in the desert of arabia together with the babylonians, the jews and all the others. but when the jews occupied palestine, the cities of the phoenicians were already old with the age of many centuries. there were two phoenician centers of trade. one was called tyre and the other was called sidon. they were built upon high cliffs and rumor had it that no enemy could take them. far and wide their ships sailed to gather the products of the mediterranean for the benefit of the people of mesopotamia. at first the sailors only visited the distant shores of france and spain to barter with the natives and hastened home with their grain and metal. later they had built fortified trading posts along the coasts of spain and italy and greece and the far-off scilly islands where the valuable tin was found. [illustration: the phoenicians.] to the uncivilized savages of europe, such a trading post appeared as a dream of beauty and luxury. they asked to be allowed to live close to its walls, to see the wonderful sights when the boats of many sails entered the harbor, carrying the much-desired merchandise of the unknown east. gradually they left their huts to build themselves small wooden houses around the phoenician fortresses. in this way many a trading post had grown into a market place for all the people of the entire neighborhood. today such big cities as marseilles and cadiz are proud of their phoenician origin, but their ancient mothers, tyre and sidon, have been dead and forgotten for over two thousand years and of the phoenicians themselves, none have survived. this is a sad fate but it was fully deserved. the phoenicians had grown rich without great effort, but they had not known how to use their wealth wisely. they had never cared for books or learning. they had only cared for money. they had bought and sold slaves all over the world. they had forced the foreign immigrants to work in their factories. they cheated their neighbors whenever they had a chance and they had made themselves detested by all the other people of the mediterranean. they were brave and energetic navigators, but they showed themselves cowards whenever they were obliged to choose between honorable dealing and an immediate profit, obtained through fraudulent and shrewd trading. as long as they had been the only sailors in the world who could handle large ships, all other nations had been in need of their services. as soon as the others too had learned how to handle a rudder and a set of sails, they at once got rid of the tricky phoenician merchant. from that moment on, tyre and sidon had lost their old hold upon the commercial world of asia. they had never encouraged art or science. they had known how to explore the seven seas and turn their ventures into profitable investments. no state, however, can be safely built upon material possessions alone. the land of phoenicia had always been a counting-house without a soul. it perished because it had honored a well-filled treasure chest as the highest ideal of civic pride. the alphabet follows the trade i have told you how the egyptians preserved speech by means of little figures. i have described the wedge-shaped signs which served the people of mesopotamia as a handy means of transacting business at home and abroad. but how about our own alphabet? from whence came those compact little letters which follow us throughout our life, from the date on our birth certificate to the last word of our funeral notice? are they egyptian or babylonian or aramaic or are they something entirely different? they are a little bit of everything, as i shall now tell you. our modern alphabet is not a very satisfactory instrument for the purpose of reproducing our speech. some day a genius will invent a new system of writing which shall give each one of our sounds a little picture of its own. but with all its many imperfections the letters of our modern alphabet perform their daily task quite nicely and fully as well as their very accurate and precise cousins, the numerals, who wandered into europe from distant india, almost ten centuries after the first invasion of the alphabet. the earliest history of these letters, however, is a deep mystery and it will take many years of painstaking investigation before we can solve it. this much we know--that our alphabet was not suddenly invented by a bright young scribe. it developed and grew during hundreds of years out of a number of older and more complicated systems. in my last chapter i have told you of the language of the intelligent aramaean traders which spread throughout western asia, as an international means of communication. the language of the phoenicians was never very popular among their neighbors. except for a very few words we do not know what sort of tongue it was. their system of writing, however, was carried into every corner of the vast mediterranean and every phoenician colony became a center for its further distribution. it remains to be explained why the phoenicians, who did nothing to further either art or science, hit upon such a compact and handy system of writing, while other and superior nations remained faithful to the old clumsy scribbling. the phoenicians, before all else, were practical business men. they did not travel abroad to admire the scenery. they went upon their perilous voyages to distant parts of europe and more distant parts of africa in search of wealth. time was money in tyre and sidon and commercial documents written in hieroglyphics or sumerian wasted useful hours of busy clerks who might be employed upon more useful errands. when our modern business world decided that the old-fashioned way of dictating letters was too slow for the hurry of modern life, a clever man devised a simple system of dots and dashes which could follow the spoken word as closely as a hound follows a hare. this system we call "shorthand." the phoenician traders did the same thing. they borrowed a few pictures from the egyptian hieroglyphics and simplified a number of wedge-shaped figures from the babylonians. they sacrificed the pretty looks of the older system for the benefit of speed and they reduced the thousands of images of the ancient world to a short and handy alphabet of only twenty-two letters. they tried it out at home and when it proved a success, they carried it abroad. among the egyptians and the babylonians, writing had been a very serious affair--something almost holy. many improvements had been proposed but these had been invariably discarded as sacrilegious innovations. the phoenicians who were not interested in piety succeeded where the others had failed. they could not introduce their script into mesopotamia and egypt, but among the people of the mediterranean, who were totally ignorant of the art of writing, the phoenician alphabet was a great success and in all nooks and corners of that vast sea we find vases and pillars and ruins covered with phoenician inscriptions. the indo-european greeks who had migrated to the many islands of the aegean sea at once applied this foreign alphabet to their own language. certain greek sounds, unknown to the ears of the semitic phoenicians, needed letters of their own. these were invented and added to the others. but the greeks did not stop at this. they improved the whole system of speech-recording. all the systems of writing of the ancient people of asia had one thing in common. the consonants were reproduced but the reader was forced to guess at the vowels. this is not as difficult as it seems. we often omit the vowels in advertisements and in announcements which are printed in our newspapers. journalists and telegraph operators, too, are apt to invent languages of their own which do away with all the superfluous vowels and use only such consonants as are necessary to provide a skeleton around which the vowels can be draped when the story is rewritten. but such an imperfect scheme of writing can never become popular, and the greeks, with their sense of order, added a number of extra signs to reproduce the "a" and the "e" and the "i" and the "o" and the "u." when this had been done, they possessed an alphabet which allowed them to write everything in almost every language. five centuries before the birth of christ these letters crossed the adriatic and wandered from athens to rome. the roman soldiers carried them to the furthest corners of western europe and taught our own ancestors the use of the little phoenician signs. twelve centuries later, the missionaries of byzantine took the alphabet into the dreary wilderness of the dark russian plain. today more than half of the people of the world use this asiatic alphabet to keep a record of their thoughts and to preserve a record of their knowledge for the benefit of their children and their grandchildren. the end of the ancient world so far, the story of ancient man has been the record of a wonderful achievement. along the banks of the river nile, in mesopotamia and on the shores of the mediterranean, people had accomplished great things and wise rulers had performed mighty deeds. there, for the first time in history, man had ceased to be a roving animal. he had built himself houses and villages and vast cities. he had formed states. he had learned the art of constructing and navigating swift-sailing boats. he had explored the heavens and within his own soul he had discovered certain great moral laws which made him akin to the divinities which he worshipped. he had laid the foundations for all our further knowledge and our science and our art and those things that tend to make life sublime beyond the mere grubbing for food and lodging. most important of all he had devised a system of recording sound which gave unto his children and unto his children's children the benefit of their ancestors' experience and allowed them to accumulate such a store of information that they could make themselves the masters of the forces of nature. but together with these many virtues, ancient man had one great failing. he was too much a slave of tradition. he did not ask enough questions. he reasoned "my father did such and such a thing before me and my grandfather did it before my father and they both fared well and therefore this thing ought to be good for me too and i must not change it." he forgot that this patient acceptance of facts would never have lifted us above the common herd of animals. once upon a time there must have been a man of genius who refused any longer to swing from tree to tree with the help of his long, curly tail (as all his people had done before him) and who began to walk on his feet. but ancient man had lost sight of this fact and continued to use the wooden plow of his earliest ancestors and continued to believe in the same gods that had been worshipped ten thousand years before and taught his children to do likewise. instead of going forward he stood still and this was fatal. for a new and more energetic race appeared upon the horizon and the ancient world was doomed. we call these new people the indo-europeans. they were white men like you and me, and they spoke a language which was the common ancestor of all our european languages with the exception of hungarian, finnish and the basque of northern spain. when we first hear of them they had for many centuries made their home along the banks of the caspian sea. but one day (for reasons which are totally unknown to us) they packed their belongings on the backs of the horses which they had trained and they gathered their cows and dogs and goats and began to wander in search of distant happiness and food. some of them moved into the mountains of central asia and for a long time they lived amidst the peaks of the plateau of iran, whence they are called the iranians or aryans. others slowly followed the setting sun and took possession of the vast plains of western europe. they were almost as uncivilized as those prehistoric men who made their appearance within the first pages of this book. but they were a hardy race and good fighters and without difficulty they seem to have occupied the hunting grounds and the pastures of the men of the stone age. they were as yet quite ignorant but thanks to a happy fate they were curious. the wisdom of the ancient world, which was carried to them by the traders of the mediterranean, they very soon made their own. but the age-old learning of egypt and babylonia and chaldea they merely used as a stepping-stone to something higher and better. for "tradition," as such, meant nothing to them and they considered that the universe was theirs to explore and to exploit as they saw fit and that it was their duty to submit all experience to the acid test of human intelligence. [illustration: a colony.] soon therefore they passed beyond those boundaries which the ancient world had accepted as impassable barriers--a sort of spiritual mountains of the moon. then they turned against their former masters and within a short time a new and vigorous civilization replaced the out-worn structure of the ancient asiatic world. but of these indo-europeans and their adventures i give you a detailed account in "the story of mankind," which tells you about the greeks and the romans and all the other races in the world. a few dates connected with the people of the ancient world i can not give you any positive dates connected with prehistoric man. the early europeans who appear in the first chapters of this book began their career about fifty thousand years ago. the egyptians the earliest civilization in the nile valley developed forty centuries before the birth of christ. b.c. the old egyptian empire is founded. memphis is the capital. -- b.c. the pyramids are built. b.c. the old empire is destroyed by the arab shepherds, called the "hyksos." b.c. thebes delivers egypt from the hyksos and becomes the center of the new egyptian empire. b.c. king rameses conquers eastern asia. b.c. the jews leave egypt. b.c. egypt begins to decline. b.c. egypt becomes an assyrian province. b.c. egypt regains her independence and a new state is founded with sais in the delta as its capital. foreigners, especially greeks, begin to dominate the country. b.c. egypt becomes a persian province. b.c. egypt becomes an independent kingdom ruled by one of alexander the great's generals, called ptolemy. b.c. cleopatra, the last princess of the ptolemy dynasty, kills herself and egypt becomes part of the roman empire. the jews b.c. abraham moves away from the land of ur in eastern babylonia and looks for a new home in the western part of asia. b.c. the jews occupy the land of goshen in egypt. b.c. moses leads the jews out of egypt and gives them the law. b.c. the jews have crossed the river jordan and have occupied palestine. b.c. saul is king of the jews. b.c. david is king of a powerful jewish state. b.c. solomon builds the great temple of jerusalem. b.c. the jewish state divided into two kingdoms, that of judah and that of israel. - b.c. the age of the great prophets. b.c. the assyrians conquer palestine. b.c. nebuchadnezzar conquers palestine. the babylonian captivity. b.c. cyrus, king of the persians, allows the jews to return to palestine. - b.c. last period of jewish independence under the maccabees. b.c. pompeius makes palestine part of the roman empire. b.c. herod king of the jews. a.d. the emperor titus destroys jerusalem. mesopotamia b.c. the sumerians take possession of the land between the tigris and the euphrates. b.c. hammurapi, king of babylon, gives his people a famous code of law. b.c. beginning of the assyrian state, with nineveh as its capital. - b.c. assyria becomes the master of western asia. b.c. sargon, the ruler of the assyrians, conquers palestine, egypt and arabia. b.c. the medes revolt against the assyrian rule. b.c. the scythians attack assyria. there are revolutions all over the kingdom. b.c. nineveh is destroyed. assyria disappears from the map. - b.c. the chaldeans reestablish the babylonian kingdom. - b.c. nebuchadnezzar destroys jerusalem, takes phoenicia and makes babylon the center of civilization. b.c. mesopotamia becomes a persian province. b.c. alexander the great conquers mesopotamia. the phoenicians - b.c. the city of sklon is the chief phoenician center of trade. - b.c. tyre becomes the commercial center of phoenicia. - b.c. development of the phoenician colonial empire. b.c. carthage is founded. - b.c. siege of tyre by nebuchadnezzar. the city is captured and destroyed. b.c. phoenicia becomes a persian province. b.c. phoenicia becomes part of the roman empire. [illustration: a persian altar] the persians at an unknown date the indo-european people began their march into europe and into india. the year b.c. is usually given for zarathustra, the great teacher of the persians, who gave an excellent moral law. -b.c. the indo-european medes found a state along the eastern boundaries of babylonia. - b.c. the kingdom of the persians. beginning of the struggle between indo-europeans and semites. - .c. cambyses, king of the persians, takes egypt. - b.c. rule of darius, king of the persians, who conquers babylon and attacks greece. - b.c. rule of king xerxes, who tries to establish himself in eastern europe but fails. b.c. the greek, alexander the great, conquers all of western asia and egypt and persia becomes a greek province. the ancient world which was dominated by semitic peoples lasted almost forty centuries. in the fourth century before the birth of christ it died of old age. western asia and egypt had been the teachers of the indo-europeans who had occupied europe at an unknown date. in the fourth century before christ, the indo-european pupils had so far surpassed their teachers that they could begin their conquest of the world. the famous expedition of alexander the great in b.c. made an end to the civilizations of egypt and mesopotamia and established the supremacy of greek (that is european) culture. proofreading team early israel and the surrounding nations by the rev. a.h. sayce professor of assyriology at oxford author of "the early history of the hebrews," &c london service & paton henrietta street covent garden introduction one of the first facts which strike the traveller in palestine is the smallness of a country which has nevertheless occupied so large a space in the history of civilised mankind. it is scarcely larger than an english county, and a considerable portion of it is occupied by rocky mountains and barren defiles where cultivation is impossible. its population could never have been great, and though cities and villages were crowded together on the plains and in the valleys, and perched at times on almost inaccessible crags, the difficulty of finding sustenance for their inhabitants prevented them from rivalling in size the european or american towns of to-day. like the country in which they dwelt, the people of palestine were necessarily but a small population when compared with the nations of our modern age. and yet it was just this scanty population which has left so deep an impress on the thoughts and religion of mankind, and the narrow strip of territory they inhabited which formed the battle-ground of the ancient empires of the world. israel was few in numbers, and the canaan it conquered was limited in extent; but they became as it were the centre round which the forces of civilisation revolved, and towards which they all pointed. palestine, in fact, was for the eastern world what athens was for the western world; athens and attica were alike insignificant in area and the athenians were but a handful of men, but we derive from them the principles of our art and philosophic speculation just as we derive from israel and canaan the principles of our religion. palestine has been the mother-land of the religion of civilised man. the geographical position of palestine had much to do with this result. it was the outpost of western asia on the side of the mediterranean, as england is the outpost of europe on the side of the atlantic; and just as the atlantic is the highroad of commerce and trade for us of to-day, so the mediterranean was the seat of maritime enterprise and the source of maritime wealth for the generations of the past. palestine, moreover, was the meeting-place of asia and africa. not only was the way open for its merchants by sea to the harbours and products of europe, but the desert which formed its southern boundary sloped away to the frontiers of egypt, while to the north and east it was in touch with the great kingdoms of western asia, with babylonia and assyria, mesopotamia and the hittites of the north. in days of which we are just beginning to have a glimpse it had been a province of the babylonian empire, and when egypt threw off the yoke of its asiatic conquerors and prepared to win an empire for itself, canaan was the earliest of its spoils. in a later age assyrians, babylonians, and egyptians again contended for the mastery on the plains of palestine; the possession of jerusalem allowed the assyrian king to march unopposed into egypt, and the battle of megiddo placed all asia west of the euphrates at the feet of the egyptian pharaoh. palestine is thus a centre of ancient oriental history. its occupation by babylonians or egyptians marks the shifting of the balance of power between asia and africa. the fortunes of the great empires of the eastern world are to a large extent reflected in its history. the rise of the one meant the loss of palestine to the other. the people, too, were fitted by nature and circumstances for the part they were destined to play. they were semites with the inborn religious spirit which is characteristic of the semite, and they were also a mixed race. the highlands of canaan had been peopled by the amorites, a tall fair race, akin probably to the berbers of northern africa and the kelts of our own islands; the lowlands were in the hands of the canaanites, a people of semitic blood and speech, who devoted themselves to the pursuit of trade. here and there were settlements of other tribes or races, notably the hittites, who had descended from the mountain-ranges of the taurus and spread over northern syria. upon all these varied elements the israelites flung themselves, at first in hostile invasion, afterwards in friendly admixture. the israelitish conquest of palestine was a slow process, and it was only in its earlier stages that it was accompanied by the storming of cities and the massacre of their inhabitants. as time went on the invaders intermingled with the older population of the land, and the heads of the captives which surmount the names of the places captured by the egyptian pharaoh shishak in the kingdom of judah all show the amorite and not the jewish type of countenance. the main bulk of the population, in fact, must have continued unchanged by the israelitish conquest, and conquerors and conquered intermarried together. the genealogies given by the hebrew writers prove how extensive this intermingling of racial elements must have been; even david counted a moabitess among his ancestors, and surrounded himself with guards of foreign nationality. solomon's successor, the first king of judah, was the son of an ammonite mother, and we have only to read a few pages of the book of judges to learn how soon after the invasion of canaan the israelites adopted the gods and religious practices of the older population, and paid homage to the old canaanite shrines. a mixed race is always superior to one of purer descent. it possesses more enterprise and energy, more originality of thought and purpose. the virtues and failings of the different elements it embodies are alike intensified in it. we shall probably not go far wrong if we ascribe to this mixed character of the israelitish people the originality which marks their history and finds its expression in the rise of prophecy. they were a race, moreover, which was moulded in different directions by the nature of the country in which it lived. palestine was partly mountainous; the great block of limestone known as the mountains of ephraim formed its backbone, and was that part of it which was first occupied by the invading israelites. but besides mountains there were fertile plains and valleys, while on the sea-coast there were harbours, ill adapted, it is true, to the requirements of modern ships, but sufficient for the needs of ancient navigation. the israelites were thus trained on the one hand to the habits of hardy warriors, living a life of independence and individual freedom in the fastnesses of the hills, and on the other hand were tempted to become agriculturists and shepherds wherever their lot was cast in the lowlands. the sea-coast was left to the older population, and to the philistines, who had settled upon it about the time of the hebrew exodus from egypt; but the philistines eventually became the subject-vassals of the jewish kings, and friendly intercourse with the phoenicians towards the north not only brought about the rise of a mixed people, partly canaanite and partly israelitish, but also introduced among the israelites the phoenician love of trade. alike, therefore, by its geographical position, by the characteristics of its population, and by the part it played in the history of the civilised east, palestine was so closely connected with the countries and nations which surrounded it that its history cannot be properly understood apart from theirs. isolated and alone, its history is in large measure unintelligible or open to misconception. the keenest criticism is powerless to discover the principles which underlie it, to detect the motives of the policy it describes, or to estimate the credibility of the narratives in which it is contained, unless it is assisted by testimony from without. it is like a dark jungle where the discovery of a path is impossible until the sun penetrates through the foliage and the daylight streams in through the branches of the trees. less than a century ago it seemed useless even to hope that such external testimony would ever be forthcoming. there were a few scraps of information to be gleaned from the classical authors of greece and rome, which had been so sifted and tortured as to yield almost any sense that was required; but even these scraps were self-contradictory, and, as we now know, were for the most part little else than fables. it was impossible to distinguish between the true and the false; to determine whether the chaldæan fragments of berossos were to be preferred to the second and third hand accounts of herodotus, or whether the egyptian chronology of manetho was to be accepted in all its startling magnitude. and when all was said and done, there was little that threw light on the old testament story, much less that supplemented it. but the latter part of the nineteenth century has witnessed discoveries which have revolutionised our conceptions of ancient oriental history, and illuminated the pages of the biblical narrative. while scholars and critics were disputing over a few doubtful texts, the libraries of the old civilised world of the east were lying underground, waiting to be disinterred by the excavator and interpreted by the decipherer. egypt, assyria, and babylonia have yielded up their dead; arabia, syria, and asia minor are preparing to do the same. the tombs and temples of egypt, and the papyri which have been preserved in the sandy soil of a land where frost and rain are hardly known, have made the old world of the egyptians live again before our eyes, while the clay books of babylonia and assyria are giving us a knowledge of the people who wrote and read them fully equal to that which we have of greece or rome. and yet we are but at the beginning of discoveries. what has been found is but an earnest of the harvest that is yet in store. it is but two years since that the french excavator, de sarzec, discovered a library of , tablets at tello in southern chaldæa, which had already been formed when gudea ruled over the city in b.c. , and was arranged in shelves one above the other. at niffer, in the north of babylonia, the american excavators have found an even larger number of tablets, some of which go back to the age of sargon of akkad, or years ago, while fresh tablets come pouring into the museums of europe and america from other libraries found by the arabs at bersippa and babylon, at sippara and larsa. the babylonia of the age of amraphel, the contemporary of abraham, has, thanks to the recent finds, become as well known to us as the athens of periklês; the daily life of the people can be traced in all its outlines, and we even possess the autograph letters written by amraphel himself. the culture and civilisation of babylonia were already immensely old. the contracts for the lease and sale of houses or other estate, the documents relating to the property of women, the reports of the law cases that were tried before the official judges, all set before us a state of society which changed but little down to the persian era. behind it lie centuries of slow development and progress in the arts of life. the age of amraphel, indeed, is in certain respects an age of decline. the heyday of babylonian art lay nearly two thousand years before it, in the epoch of sargon and his son naram-sin. it was then that the babylonian empire was established throughout western asia as far as the mediterranean, that a postal service was organised along the highroads which led from one city of the empire to another, and that babylonian art reached its climax. it was then, too, that the babylonian system of writing practically took its final form. the civilisation of western asia is, as has been said, immensely old. that is the net result of modern discovery and research. as far back as excavation can carry us there is still culture and art. we look in vain for the beginnings of civilised life. even the pictures out of which the written systems of the ancient east were developed belong to a past of which we have but glimpses. of savagery or barbarism on the banks of the lower euphrates there is not a trace. so far as our materials enable us to judge, civilised man existed from the beginning in "the land of shinar." the great temples of babylonia were already erected, the overflow of the rivers controlled, and written characters imprinted on tablets of clay. civilisation seems to spring up suddenly out of a night of darkness, like athena from the head of zeus. this is one of the chief lessons that have been taught us by oriental archaeology. culture and civilisation are no new thing, at all events in the east; long before the days of classical greece, long before the days even of abraham, man was living in ease and comfort, surrounded by objects of art and industry, acquainted with the art of writing, and carrying on intercourse with distant lands. we must rid ourselves once for all of the starveling ideas of chronology which a classical training once encouraged, and of the belief that history, in the true sense of the word, hardly goes back beyond the age of darius or periklês. the civilisations of babylonia and egypt were already decrepid when the ancestors of periklês were still barbarians. another lesson is the danger of forming conclusions from imperfect evidence. apart from the earlier records of the old testament, there was no literature which claimed a greater antiquity than the homeric poems of ancient greece; no history of older date than that of hellas, unless indeed the annals of china were to be included, which lay altogether outside the stream of european history. criticism, accordingly, deemed itself competent to decide dogmatically on the character and credibility of the literature and history of which it was in possession; to measure the statements of the old testament writings by the rules of greek and latin literature, and to argue from the history of europe to that of the east. uncontrolled by external testimony, critical scepticism played havoc with the historical narratives that had descended to it, and starting from the assumption that the world of antiquity was illiterate, refused to credit such records of the past as dwarfed the proportions of greek history, or could not be harmonised with the canons of the critic himself. it was quite sufficient for a fact to go back to the second millennium b.c. for it to be peremptorily ruled out of court. the discoveries of oriental archaeology have come with a rude shock to disturb both the conclusions of this imperfectly-equipped criticism and the principles on which they rest. discovery has followed discovery, each more marvellous than the last, and re-establishing the truth of some historical narrative in which we had been called upon to disbelieve. dr. schliemann and the excavators who have come after him have revealed to an incredulous world that troy of priam which had been relegated to cloudland, and have proved that the traditions of mykenæan glory, of agamemnon and menelaos, and even of voyages to the coast of egypt, were not fables but veritable facts. even more striking have been the discoveries which have restored credit to the narratives of the old testament, and shown that they rest on contemporaneous evidence. it was not so long ago that the account of the campaign of chedor-laomer and his allies in canaan was unhesitatingly rejected as a mere reflection into the past of the campaigns of later assyrian kings. even the names of the canaanite princes who opposed him were resolved into etymological puns. but the tablets of babylonia have come to their rescue. we now know that long before the days of abraham not only did babylonian armies march to the shores of the mediterranean, but that canaan was a babylonian province, and that amraphel, the ally of chedor-laomer, actually entitles himself king of it in one of his inscriptions. we now know also that the political condition of babylonia described in the narrative is scrupulously exact. babylonia was for a time under the domination of the elamites, and while amraphel or khammurabi was allowed to rule at babylon as a vassal-prince, an elamite of the name of eri-aku or arioch governed larsa in the south. nay more; tablets have recently been found which show that the name of the elamite monarch was kudur-laghghamar, and that among his vassal allies was tudkhula or tidal, who seems to have been king of the manda, or "nations" of kurdistan. khammurabi, whose name is also written ammurapi, has left us autograph letters, in one of which he refers to his defeat of kudur-laghghamar in the decisive battle which at last delivered babylonia from the elamite yoke. the story of chedor-laomer's campaign preserved in genesis has thus found complete verification. the political situation presupposed in it--however unlikely it seemed to the historian but a few years ago--has turned out to be in strict harmony with fact; the names of the chief actors in it have come down to us with scarcely any alteration, and a fragment of old-world history, which could not be fitted into the scheme of the modern historian, has proved to be part of a larger story which the clay books of babylonia are gradually unfolding before our eyes. it is no longer safe to reject a narrative as "unhistorical" simply on the ground of the imperfection of our own knowledge. or let us take another instance from the later days of assyrian history, the period which immediately precedes the first intercourse between greece and the east. we are told in the books of the chronicles that manasseh of judah rebelled against his assyrian master and was in consequence carried in chains to babylon, where he was pardoned and restored to his ancestral throne. the story seemed at first sight of doubtful authenticity. it is not even alluded to in the books of the kings; nineveh and not babylon was the capital of the assyrian empire, and the assyrian monarchs were not in the habit of forgiving their revolted vassals, much less of sending them back to their own kingdoms. and yet the cuneiform inscriptions have smoothed away all these objections. esar-haddon mentions manasseh among the subject princes of the west, and it was just esar-haddon who rebuilt babylon after its destruction by his father, and made it his residence during a part of the year. moreover, other instances are known in which a revolted prince was reinstated in his former power. thus assur-bani-pal forgave the egyptian prince of sais when, like manasseh, he had been sent in chains to assyria after an unsuccessful rebellion, and restored him to his old principality. what was done by assur-bani-pal might well have been done by the more merciful esar-haddon, who showed himself throughout his reign anxious to conciliate the conquered populations. it is even possible that assur-bani-pal himself was the sovereign against whom manasseh rebelled and before whom he was brought. in this case manasseh's revolt would have been part of that general revolt of the assyrian provinces under the leadership of babylon, which shook the empire to its foundations, and in which the assyrian king expressly tells us palestine joined. the jewish king would thus have been carried to babylon after the capture of that city by the assyrian forces of assur-bani-pal. but the recent history of oriental archaeology is strewn with instances of the danger of historical scepticism where the evidence is defective, and a single discovery may at any moment throw new and unexpected light on the materials we possess. who, for instance, could have supposed that the name of the israelites would ever be found on an egyptian monument? they were but a small and despised body of public slaves, settled in goshen, on the extreme skirts of the egyptian territory. and yet in a granite stela was found by professor flinders petrie containing a hymn of victory in honour of meneptah the son of ramses ii., and declaring how, among other triumphs, "the israelites" had been left "without seed." the names of all the other vanquished or subject peoples mentioned in the hymn have attached to them the determinative of place; the israelites alone are without it; they alone have no fixed habitation, no definite locality of their own, so far at least as the writer knew. it would seem that they had already escaped into the desert, and been lost to sight in its recesses. who could ever have imagined that in such a case an egyptian poet would have judged it worth his while even to allude to the vanished serfs? still more recently the tomb of menes, the founder of the united egyptian monarchy, and the leader of the first historical dynasty, has been discovered by m. de morgan at negada, north of thebes. it was only a few months previously that the voice of historical criticism had authoritatively declared him to be "fabulous" and "mythical." the "fabulous" menes, nevertheless, has now proved to be a very historical personage indeed; some of his bones are in the museum of cairo, and the objects disinterred in his tomb show that he belonged to an age of culture and intercourse with distant lands. the hieroglyphic system of writing was already complete, and fragments of obsidian vases turned on the lathe indicate commercial relations with the Ægean sea. if we turn to babylonia the story is the same. hardly had the critic pronounced sargon of akkad to be a creature of myth, when at niffer and telloh monuments both of himself and of his son were brought to light, which, as in the case of menes, proved that this "creature of myth" lived in an age of advanced culture and in the full blaze of history. at niffer he and his son naram-sin built a platform of huge bricks, each stamped with their names, and at telloh clay _bullæ_ have been discovered, bearing the seals and addresses of the letters which were conveyed during their reigns by a highly organised postal service along the highroads of the kingdom. numberless contract-tablets exist, dated in the year when sargon "conquered the land of the amorites," as syria and canaan were called, or accomplished some other achievement; and a cadastral survey of the district in which telloh was situated, made for the purpose of taxation, incidentally refers to "the governor" who was appointed over "the amorites." perhaps, however, the discovery which above all others has revolutionised our conceptions of early oriental history, and reversed the critical judgments which had prevailed in regard to it, was that of the cuneiform tablets of tel el-amarna. the discovery was made in at tel el-amarna on the eastern bank of the nile, midway between the modern towns of minia and siût. here is the site of the city built by khu-n-aten, the "heretic" pharaoh, when the dissensions between himself and the theban priesthood became too acute to allow him to remain any longer in the capital of his fathers. he migrated northward, accordingly, with his court and the adherents of the new creed which he sought to impose upon his subjects, carrying with him the archives of the kingdom and the foreign correspondence of the empire. it was this foreign correspondence which was embodied in the cuneiform tablets. they make it clear that even under egyptian rule the babylonian language and the babylonian system of writing continued to be the official language and script of western asia, and that the egyptian government itself was forced to keep babylonian secretaries who understood them. the fact proves the long and permanent influence of babylonian culture from the banks of the euphrates to the shores of the mediterranean, and is intelligible only in the light of the further fact that the empire of sargon of akkad had been founded more than two thousand years before. nothing but a prodigiously long lapse of time could explain the firm hold thus obtained by a foreign language, and a system of writing the most complex and difficult to learn that has ever been invented. the tablets further prove the existence throughout the oriental world of schools and libraries where the babylonian language and characters could be taught and learned and its voluminous literature stored and studied. the age of khu-n-aten, which is also the age of moses, was essentially a literary age; a knowledge of reading and writing was widely spread, and an active correspondence was being constantly carried on from one part of the civilised world to the other. even the bedâwin shêkhs, who acted as free-lances in palestine, sent letters to the pharaoh and read his replies. the archive-chambers of the cities of canaan contained numberless documents contemporaneous with the events they recorded, and the libraries were filled with the treasures of babylonian literature, with legends and stories of the gods, and the earlier history of the east. doubtless, as in babylonia, so too in palestine there were also in them contracts and inventories of property, dated in the babylonian fashion by the events which characterised the years of a king's reign. the scribes and upper classes could read and write, and therefore had access to all these stores of literature and historical materials. there is no longer any reason, therefore, for doubting that moses and his contemporaries could have read and written books, or that the hebrew legislator was learned in "all the wisdom of the egyptians." if we are to reject the historical trustworthiness of the pentateuch, it must be on other grounds than the assumption of the illiterateness of the age or the impossibility of compiling at the time an accurate register of facts. the tel el-amarna tablets have made it impossible to return to the old critical point of view; the probabilities henceforward are in favour of the early date and historical truth of the old testament narratives, and not against them. accurately-dated history and a reading public existed in babylonia long before the days of abraham; in the age of moses the whole eastern world from the nile to the euphrates was knit together in the bonds of literary intercourse, and all who were in contact with the great nations of the east--with egypt, with babylonia, or with assyria--came of necessity under its influence and held the book and its author in the highest reverence. but besides thus revolutionising our ideas of the age that preceded the hebrew exodus, the tel el-amarna letters have thrown a welcome light on the political causes of the exodus itself. they have made it clear that the reaction against the reforms and government of "the heretic king" khu-n-aten was as much national as religious. it was directed quite as much against the foreigner who had usurped the chief offices of state, as against the religion which the foreigner was believed to have brought with him. the rise of the nineteenth dynasty marks the triumph of the national uprising and the overthrow of asiatic influence. the movement of which it was the result resembled the revolt of arabi in our own days. but there was no england at hand to prevent the banishment of the stranger and his religion; the semites who had practically governed egypt under khu-n-aten were expelled or slain, and hard measure was dealt out to such of their kinsfolk as still remained in the land. the free-born sons of israel in the district of goshen were turned into public serfs, and compelled to work at the buildings with which ramses ii. was covering the soil of egypt, and their "seed" was still further diminished by the destruction of their male offspring, lest they should join the enemies of egypt in any future invasion of the country, or assist another attempt from within to subvert the old faith of the people and the political supremacy of the theban priests. that the fear was not without justification is shown by the words of meneptah, the son of ramses, at the time when the very existence of the egyptian monarchy was threatened by the libyan invasion from the west and the sea-robbers who attacked it from the greek seas. the asiatic settlers, he tells us, had pitched "their tents before pi-bailos" (or belbeis) at the western extremity of the land of goshen, and the egyptian "kings found themselves cut off in the midst of their cities, and surrounded by earthworks, for they had no mercenaries to oppose to" the foe. it would seem that the israelites effected their escape under cover of the libyan invasion in the fifth year of meneptah's reign, and on this account it is that their name is introduced into the pæan wherein the destruction of the libyan host is celebrated and the pharaoh is declared to have restored peace to the whole world. if the history of israel thus receives light and explanation on the one side from the revelations of oriental archaeology, on the other side it sometimes clears up difficulties in the history of the great nations of oriental antiquity. the egyptologist, for instance, is confronted by a fact towards the explanation of which the monuments furnish no help. this is the curious change that passed over the tenure of land in egypt during the period of hyksos rule. when the fourteenth dynasty fell, a large part of the soil of egypt was in the hands of private holders, many of whom were great feudal landowners whose acknowledgment of the royal supremacy was at times little more than nominal. when, however, the hyksos were at last driven back to asia, and ahmes succeeded in founding the eighteenth dynasty, these landowners had disappeared. all the landed estate of the country had passed into the possession of the pharaoh and the priests, and the old feudal aristocracy had been replaced by a bureaucracy, the members of which owed their power and position to the king. the history of joseph accounts for this, and it is the only explanation of the fact which is at present forthcoming. famine compelled the people to sell their lands to the king and his minister, and a hyksos pharaoh and his hebrew vizier thus succeeded in destroying the older aristocracy and despoiling the natives of their estates. it was probably at this period also that the public granaries, of which we hear so much in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, were first established in egypt, in imitation of those of babylonia, where they had long been an institution, and a superintendent was appointed over them who, as in babylonia, virtually held the power of life and death in his hands. one of the main results, then, of recent discovery in the east has been to teach us the solidarity of ancient oriental history, and the impossibility of forming a correct judgment in regard to any one part of it without reference to the rest. hebrew history is unintelligible as long as it stands alone, and the attempt to interpret it apart and by itself has led to little else than false and one-sided conclusions; it is only when read in the light of the history of the great empires which flourished beside it that it can be properly understood. israel and the nations around it formed a whole, so far as the historian is concerned, which, like the elements of a picture, cannot be torn asunder. if we would know the history of the one, we must know the history of the other also. and each year is adding to our knowledge; new monuments are being excavated, new inscriptions being read, and the revelations of to-day are surpassed by those of to-morrow. we have already learnt much, but it is only a commencement; egypt is only now beginning to be scientifically explored, a few only of the multitudinous libraries of babylonia have been brought to light, and the soil of assyria has been little more than touched. elsewhere, in elam, in mesopotamia, in asia minor, in palestine itself, everything still remains to be done. the harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few. we have, however, learnt some needful lessons. the historian has been warned against arguing from the imperfection of his own knowledge, and rejecting an ancient narrative merely because it seems unsupported by other testimony. he has been warned, too, against making his own prepossessions and assumptions the test of historical truth, of laying down that a reported fact could not have happened because it runs counter to what he assumes to have been the state of society in some particular age. above all, the lesson of modesty has been impressed upon him, modesty in regard to the extent of his own knowledge and the fallibility of his own conclusions. it does not follow that what we imagine ought to have happened has happened in reality; on the contrary, the course of oriental history has usually been very different from that dreamed of by the european scholar in the quietude of his study. if oriental archæology has taught us nothing else, it has at least taught us how little we know. contents introduction i. the israelites ii. canaan iii. the nations of the south-east iv. the nations of the north-east v. egypt vi. babylonia and assyria vii. conclusion appendices chapter i the israelites israel traced its origin to babylonia. it was from "ur of the chaldees" that abraham "the hebrew" had come, the rock out of which it was hewn. here on the western bank of the euphrates was the earliest home of the hebrews, of whom the israelites claimed to be a part. but they were not the only nation of the ancient oriental world which derived its ancestry from abraham. he was the father not only of the israelites, but of the inhabitants of northern and central arabia as well. the ishmaelites who were settled in the north of the arabian peninsula, the descendants of keturah who colonised midian and the western coast, were also his children. moab and ammon, moreover, traced their pedigree to his nephew, while edom was the elder brother of israel. israel, in fact, was united by the closest ties of blood to all the populations which in the historic age dwelt between the borders of palestine and the mountain-ranges of south-eastern arabia. they formed a single family which claimed descent from a common ancestor. israel was the latest of them to appear on the scene of history. moab and ammon had subjugated or absorbed the old amorite population on the eastern side of the jordan, ishmael and the keturites had made themselves a home in arabia, edom had possessed itself of the mountain-fastnesses of the horite and the amalekite, long before the israelites had escaped from their bondage in egypt, or formed themselves into a nation in the desert. they were the youngest member of the hebrew family, though but for them the names of their brethren would have remained forgotten and unknown. israel needed the discipline of a long preparation for the part it was destined to play in the future history of the world. the hebrews belonged to the semitic race. the race is distinguished by certain common characteristics, but more especially by the possession of a common type of language, which is markedly different from the other languages of mankind. its words are built on what is termed the principle of triliteralism; the skeleton, as it were, of each of them consisting of three consonants, while the vowels, which give flesh and life to the skeleton, vary according to the grammatical signification of the word. the relations of grammar are thus expressed for the most part by changes of vocalic sound, just as in english the plural of "man" is denoted by a change in the vowel. the verb is but imperfectly developed; it is, in fact, rather a noun than a verb, expressing relation rather than time. compound words, moreover, are rare, the compounds of our european languages being replaced in the semitic dialects by separate words. perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics of the semitic family of speech is its conservatism and resistance to change. as compared with the other languages of the world, its grammar and vocabulary have alike undergone but little alteration in the course of the centuries during which we can trace its existence. the very words which were used by the babylonians four or five thousand years ago, can still be heard, with the same meaning attached to them, in the streets of cairo. _kelb_ is "dog" in modern arabic as _kalbu_ was in ancient babylonian, and the modern arabic _tayyîb_, "good," is the babylonian _tâbu_. one of the results of this unchangeableness of semitic speech is the close similarity and relationship that exist between the various languages that represent it. they are dialects rather than distinct languages, more closely resembling one another than is the case even with the romanic languages of modern europe, which are descended from latin. most of the semitic languages--or dialects if we like so to call them--are now dead, swallowed up by the arabic of mohammed and the qorân. the assyrian which was spoken in assyria and babylonia is extinct; so, too, are the ethiopic of abyssinia, and the hebrew language itself. what we term hebrew was originally "the language of canaan," spoken by the semitic canaanites long before the israelitish conquest of the country, and found as late as the roman age on the monuments of phoenicia and carthage. the minæan and the sabæan dialects of southern arabia still survive in modern forms; arabic, which has now overflowed the rest of the semitic world, was the language of central arabia alone. in northern arabia, as well as in mesopotamia and syria, aramaic dialects were used, the miserable relics of which are preserved to-day among a few villagers of the lebanon and lake urumîyeh. these aramaic dialects, it is now believed, arose from a mixture of arabic with "the language of canaan." on the physical side, the semitic race is not so homogeneous as it is on the linguistic side. but this is due to intermarriage with other races, and where it is purest it displays the same general characteristics. thick and fleshy lips, arched nose, black hair and eyes, and white complexion, distinguish the pure-blooded semite. intellectually he is clever and able, quick to learn and remember, with an innate capacity for trade and finance. morally he is intense but sensuous, strong in his hate and in his affections, full of a profound belief in a personal god as well as in himself. when abraham was born in ur of the chaldees the power and influence of babylonia had been firmly established for centuries throughout the length and breadth of western asia. from the mountains of elam to the coast of the mediterranean the babylonian language was understood, the babylonian system of writing was taught and learned, babylonian literature was studied, babylonian trade was carried on, and babylonian law was in force. from time to time syria and canaan had obeyed the rule of the babylonian kings, and been formed into a babylonian province. in fact, babylonian rule did not come to an end in the west till after the death of abraham; khammurabi, the amraphel of genesis, entitles himself king of "the land of the amorites," as palestine was called by the babylonians, and his fourth successor still gives himself the same title. the loss of canaan and the fall of the babylonian empire seem to have been due to the conquest of babylon by a tribe of elamite mountaineers. the babylonians of abraham's age were semites, and the language they spoke was not more dissimilar from canaanitish or hebrew than italian is from spanish. but the population of the country had not always been of the semitic stock. its first settlers--those who had founded its cities, who had invented the cuneiform system of writing and originated its culture--were of a wholly different race, and spoke an agglutinative language which had no resemblance to that of the semites. they had, however, been conquered and their culture absorbed by the semitic babylonians and assyrians of later history, and the civilisation and culture which had spread throughout western asia was a semitic modification and development of the older culture of chaldæa. its elements, indeed, were foreign, but long before it had been communicated to the nations of the west it had become almost completely semitic in character. the babylonian conquerors of canaan were semites, and the art and trade, the law and literature they brought with them were semitic also. in passing, therefore, from babylonia to canaan, abraham was but passing from one part of the babylonian empire to another. he was not migrating into a strange country, where the government and civilisation were alike unknown, and the manners and customs those of another world. the road he traversed had been trodden for centuries by soldiers and traders and civil officials, by babylonians making their way to canaan, and by canaanites intending to settle in babylonia for the sake of trade. harran, the first stage on his journey, bore a babylonian name, and its great temple of the moon-god had been founded by babylonian princes after the model of the temple of the moon-god at ur, the birthplace of the patriarch. even in canaan itself the deities of babylonia were worshipped or identified with the native gods. anu the god of the sky, rimmon the god of the air, nebo the interpreter and prophet of bel-merodach, were all adored in palestine, and their names were preserved to later times in the geography of the country. even ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to be merged, was of babylonian origin. abraham took with him to the west the traditions and philosophy of babylonia, and found there a people already well acquainted with the literature, the law, and the religion of his fatherland. the fact is an important one; it is one of the most striking results of modern discovery, and it has a direct bearing on our estimate of the credibility of the narratives contained in the book of genesis. written and contemporaneous history in babylonia went back to an age long anterior to that of abraham--his age, indeed, marks the beginning of the decline of the babylonian power and influence; and consequently, there is no longer any reason to treat as unhistorical the narratives connected with his name, or the statements that are made in regard to himself and his posterity. his birth in ur, his migration to harran and palestine, have been lifted out of the region of doubt into that of history, and we may therefore accept without further questioning all that we are told of his relationship to lot or to the tribes of north-western arabia. in canaan, however, abraham was but a sojourner. though he came there as a babylonian prince, as an ally of its amoritish chieftains, as a leader of armed troops, even as the conqueror of a babylonian army, his only possession in it was the burial-place of machpelah. here, in the close neighbourhood of the later hebron, he bought a plot of ground in the sloping cliff, wherein a twofold chamber had been excavated in the rock for the purposes of burial. the sepulchre of machpelah was the sole possession in the land of his adoption which he could bequeath to his descendants. of these, however, ishmael and the sons of keturah moved southward into the desert, out of the reach of the cultured canaanites and the domination of babylonia. isaac, too, the son of his babylonian wife, seemed bent upon following their example. he established himself on the skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the borders of palestine, nor on the other from the block of mountains within which was the desert sanctuary of kadesh-barnea. his sons esau and jacob shared the desert and the cultivated land between them. esau planted himself among the barren heights of mount seir, subjugating or assimilating its horite and amalekite inhabitants, and securing the road which carried the trade of syria to the red sea; while jacob sought his wives among the settled aramæans of harran, and, like abraham, pitched his tent in canaan. at shechem, in the heart of canaan, he purchased a field, not, as in the case of abraham, for the sake of burial, but in order that he might live upon it in tent or house, and secure a spring of water for his own possession. in jacob the israelites saw their peculiar ancestor. his twelve sons became the fathers and representatives of the twelve tribes of israel, and his own name was changed to that of israel. the inscribed tablets of early babylonia have taught us that both israel and ishmael were the names of individuals in the patriarchal age, not the names of tribes or peoples, and consequently the israelites, like the ishmaelites, of a later day must have been the descendants of an individual israel and ishmael as the old testament records assert. already in the reign of the babylonian king ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of amraphel, the contemporary of abraham, a high-priest in the district of northern chaldasa assigned to "amorite" settlers from canaan, bore the name of sar-ilu or israel.[ ] the fuller and older form of jacob is jacob-el. we find it in contracts drawn up in babylonia in the time of abraham; we also find it as the name of an egyptian king in the period when egypt was ruled by asiatic conquerors. the latter fact is curious, taken in connection with the further fact, that the son of the biblical jacob--the progenitor of the israelites--was the viceroy of an egyptian pharaoh, and that his father died in the egyptian land of goshen. goshen was the district which extends from tel el-maskhuta or pithom near ismailîya to belbeis and zagazig, and includes the modern wadi tumilât; the traveller on the railway passes through it on his way from ismailîya to cairo. it lay outside the delta proper, and, as the egyptian inscriptions tell us, had from early times been handed over to the nomad bedâwin and their flocks. here they lived, separate from the native agriculturists, herding their flocks and cattle, and in touch with their kinsmen of the desert. here, too, the children of israel were established, and here they multiplied and became a people. the growth of a family into a tribe or people is in accordance with arab rule. there are numerous historical instances of a single individual becoming the forefather of a tribe or a collection of tribes which under favourable conditions may develop into a nation. the tribe or people is known as the "sons" of their ancestor; his name is handed down from generation to generation, and the names of his leading descendants, the representatives of the tribe, are handed down at the same time. where we speak of the population of a country, the arab speaks of the "children" of a certain man. such a mode of expression is in harmony with semitic habits of thought. the genealogical method prevails alike in history and geography; a colony is the "daughter" or "son" of its mother-city, and the town of sidon is the "first-born" of canaan. jacob had twelve sons, and his descendants were accordingly divided into twelve tribes. but the division was an artificial one; it never at any time corresponded exactly with historical reality. levi was not a tribe in the same sense as the rest of his brethren; no territory was assigned to him apart from the so-called levitical cities; and he represented the priestly order wherever it might be found and from whatever ancestors it might be derived. simeon and dan hardly existed as separate tribes except in name; their territories were absorbed into that of judah, and it was only in the city of laish in the far north that the memory of dan survived. the tribe of joseph was split into two halves, ephraim and manasseh, while judah was a mixture of various elements--of hebrews who traced their origin alike to judah, to simeon, and to dan; of kenites and jerahmeelites from the desert of arabia; and of kenizzites from edom. benjamin or ben-oni was, as a tribe, merely the southern portion of the house of joseph, which had settled around the sanctuary of beth-on or beth-el. benjamin means the "southerner," and ben-oni "the inhabitant of beth-on." it is even questionable whether the son of jacob from whom the tribe was held to be descended bore the name of benjamin. had the name of esau not been preserved we should not have known the true name of the founder of edom, and it may be that the name of the tribe of benjamin has been reflected back upon its ancestor. in goshen, at all events, the tribes of israel would have been distinguished by the names of their actual forefathers. they would have been "the sons" of reuben or judah, of simeon or gad. but they were all families within a single family. they were all "israelites" or "sons of israel," and in an inscription of the egyptian king meneptah they are accordingly called _israelu_, "israelites," without any territorial adjunct. they lived in goshen, like the bedâwin of to-day, and their social organisation was that of arabia. the immediate occasion of the settlement of israel on the outskirts of egypt was that which has brought so many bedâwin herdsmen to the valley of the nile both before and since. the very district of goshen in which they settled was occupied again, shortly after their desertion of it, by nomads from edom who had besought the pharaoh for meadow-land on which to feed their flocks. the need of pasturage from time immemorial has urged the pastoral tribes of the desert towards the fertile land of the nile. when want of rain has brought drought upon canaan, parching the grass and destroying the corn, the nomad has invariably set his face toward the country which is dependent for its fertility, not upon the rains of heaven, but upon the annual overflow of its river. it was a famine in canaan, produced by the absence of rain, which made jacob and his sons "go down into egypt." but besides this immediate cause there was yet another. they were assured of a welcome in the kingdom of the nile and the gift of a district in which they might live. one of the sons of jacob had become the vizier of the egyptian pharaoh. joseph, the hebrew slave who had been sold into bondage by his brothers, had risen to be the first minister of the king and the favourite of his sovereign. he had foretold the coming years of plenty and dearth; but he had done more--he had pointed out how to anticipate the famine and make it subserve the interests of despotism. he was not a seer only, he was a skilful administrator as well. he had taken advantage of the years of scarcity to effect a revolution in the social and political constitution of egypt. the people had been obliged to sell their lands and even themselves to the king for bread, and become from henceforth a population of royal slaves. the lands of egypt were divided between the king and the priests; the peasantry tilled them for the state and for the temples, while the upper classes owed their wealth and position to the offices which they received at court. it would seem that the israelites entered egypt when the country was governed by the last of those foreign dynasties from asia which had conquered the kingdom of the pharaoh, and are known by the name of the hyksos or shepherd kings. the egyptian monuments have shown us that during their dominion its internal constitution underwent precisely the change which is described in the history of joseph. before the hyksos conquest there was a great feudal aristocracy, rich in landed estates and influence, which served as a check upon the monarch, and at times even refused to obey his authority. when the hyksos conquerors are finally expelled, we find that this feudal aristocracy has disappeared, and its place has been taken by a civil and military bureaucracy. the king has become a supreme autocrat, by the side of whom the priests alone retain any power. the land has passed out of the hands of the people; high and low alike are dependent for what they have on the favour of the king. the hyksos dynasties were allied in race and sympathies with the settlers from asia. joseph must have died before their expulsion, but it is probable that he saw the outbreak of the war which ended in it, and which after five generations of conflict restored the egyptians to independence. the eighteenth dynasty was founded by the native princes of thebes, and the war against the asiatic stranger which had begun in egypt was carried into asia itself. canaan was made an egyptian province, and the egyptian empire was extended to the banks of the euphrates. but the conquest of asia brought with it the introduction of asiatic influences into the country of the conqueror. the pharaohs married asiatic wives, and their courts became gradually asiatised. at length amenophis iv., under the tutelage of his mother, attempted to abolish the national religion of egypt, and to substitute for it a sort of pantheistic monotheism, based on the worship of the asiatic baal as represented by the solar disk. the pharaoh transferred his capital from thebes to a new site farther north, now known as tel el-amarna, changed his own name to khu-n-aten, "the glory of the solar disk," and filled his court with asiatic officials and the adherents of the new cult. the reaction, however, soon came. the native egyptians rose in revolt; the foreigner fled from the valley of the nile, and the capital of khu-n-aten fell into ruin. a new dynasty, the nineteenth, arose under ramses i., whose grandson, ramses ii., reigned for sixty-seven years, and crowded egypt with his buildings and monuments. one of the cities he built has been shown by the excavations of dr. naville to have been pa-tum, the pithom of the old testament. ramses ii., therefore, must have been the pharaoh of the oppression. the picture set before us in the first chapter of exodus fits in exactly with the character of his reign. the dynasty to which he belonged represented the reaction against the domination and influence of the foreigner from asia, and the oppression of the israelites would naturally have been part of its policy. such of the asiatics as still remained in egypt were turned into public serfs, and measures were taken to prevent them from multiplying so as to be dangerous to their masters. the free spirit of the bedâwin was broken by servitude, and every care was used that they should be unable to help their brethren from asia in case of another "hyksos" invasion. the incessant building operations of ramses needed a constant supply of workmen, and financial as well as political interests thus suggested that merciless _corvée_ of the israelites which rendered them at once politically harmless and serviceable to the state. in spite of all repression, however, the oppressed people continued to multiply, and eventually escaped from their "house of bondage." the stela of meneptah, on which the name of "israelites" occurs, implies that they had already been lost to sight in the desert. the other nationalities over whom meneptah is said to have triumphed all have the term "country" attached to their names; the "israelites" alone are without local habitation. egyptian legend, as reported by the native historian manetho, placed the exodus in the reign of meneptah, and as meneptah was the son and successor of ramses ii., the correctness of the statement is antecedently probable. it was in the fifth year of his reign that the delta was attacked by a formidable combination of foes. the libyans threatened it on the west: on the north, bands of sea-pirates from the coasts of asia minor and the islands of the mediterranean attacked it by sea and land. a mutilated inscription of meneptah tells us how the tents of the invaders had been pitched on the outskirts of the land of goshen, within reach of the bedâwin shepherds who fed their flocks there, and how the troops of the pharaoh, pressed at once by the enemy and by the disaffected population of goshen, had been cooped up within the walls of the great cities, afraid to venture forth. the fate of the invasion was sealed, however, by a decisive battle in which the egyptians almost annihilated their foes. but the land of goshen was left empty and desolate; the foreign tribes who had dwelt in it fled into the wilderness under the cover of the libyan invasion. the pressure of the invasion had forced the pharaoh to allow his serfs a free passage out of egypt, quite as much as the "signs and wonders" which were wrought by the hand of moses. egypt was protected on its eastern side by a line of fortifications, and through these permission was given that the israelites should pass. but the permission was hardly given before it was recalled. a small body of cavalry, not move than six hundred in number, was sent in pursuit of the fugitives, who were loaded with the plunder they had carried away from the egyptians. they were a disorganised and unwarlike multitude, consisting partly of serfs, partly of women and children, partly of stragglers from the armies of the libyan and mediterranean invaders. six hundred men were deemed sufficient either to destroy them or to reduce them once more to captivity. but the fugitives escaped as it were by miracle. a violent wind from the east drove back the shallow waters at the head of the gulf of suez, by the side of which they were encamped, and the israelites passed dryshod over the bed of "the sea." before their pursuers could overtake them, the wind had veered, and the waters returned on the egyptian chariots. the slaves were free at last, once more in the wilderness in which isaac had tended his flocks, and in contact with their kinsmen of edom and midian. moses had led them out of egypt, and moses now became their lawgiver. the laws which he gave them formed them into a nation, and laid the foundations of the national faith. henceforth they were to be a separate people, bound together by the worship of one god, who had revealed himself to them under the name of yahveh. first at sinai, among the mountains of seir and paran, and then at kadesh-barnea, the modern 'ain qadîs, the mosaic legislation was promulgated. the first code was compiled under the shadow of mount sinai; its provisions were subsequently enlarged or modified by the waters of en-mishat, "the spring of judgment." the israelites lay hidden, as it were, in the desert for many long years, preparing themselves for the part they were afterwards to play in the history of mankind. but from the moment of their departure from egypt their goal had been canaan. they were not mere bedâwin; they belonged to that portion of the semitic race which had made settlements and founded kingdoms in moab and ammon and edom, and their residence in the cultured land of the nile had made it impossible for them ever to degenerate into the lawless robbers of the wilderness. they were settled bedâwin, not bedâwin proper; not bedâwin by blood and descent, but semites who had adopted the wandering and pastoral habits of the bedâwin tribes. they were like their brethren of edom, who, though they came to egypt seeking pasturage for their cattle, had nevertheless founded at home an elective monarchy. the true bedâwin of the old testament are the amalekites, and between the israelite and the amalekite there was the difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. the fact is important, and the forgetfulness of it has led more than one historian astray. the first attempt to invade canaan failed. it was made from the south, from the shelter of the block of mountains within which stood the sanctuary of kadesh-barnea. the israelitish forces were disastrously defeated at zephath, the hormah of later days, and the invasion of the promised land was postponed. the desert life had still to continue for a while. in the fastness of 'ain qadîs the forces of israel grew and matured, and a long series of legislative enactments organised it into a homogeneous whole. at length the time came when the israelites felt strong enough once more to face an enemy and to win by the sword a country of their own. it was from the east that they made their second attack. aaron the high-priest was dead, but his brother moses was still their leader. the edomites refused them a passage along the high-road of trade which led northward from the gulf of aqaba; skirting edom accordingly, they marched through a waterless desert to the green wadis of moab, and there pitched their camp. the amorite kingdoms of sihon and og fell before their assault. the northern part of moab, which sihon had conquered, was occupied by the invaders, and the plateau of bashan, over which og had ruled, fell into israelitish hands. the invaders now prepared to cross the jordan and advance into the highlands of canaan. moses died on the summit of a moabite mountain and his place was taken by joshua. joshua was a general and not a legislator. he could win battles and destroy cities, but he could not restore what he had destroyed, or organise his followers into a state. jericho, which commanded the ford across the jordan, fell into his hands; the confederate kings of southern canaan were overthrown in battle, and the tribe of ephraim, to which joshua belonged, was established in the mountainous region which afterwards bore its name. henceforward the mountains of ephraim formed the centre and the stronghold of israelitish power in palestine, from whence the invading tribes could issue forth to conquest, or to which they could retreat for shelter in case of need. beyond leading his people into canaan and establishing them too firmly in its midst to be ever dislodged, joshua personally did but little. the conquest of canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the days of the monarchy. jerusalem was not captured till the reign of david, gezer was the dowry received by solomon along with his egyptian wife. at first the canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity. their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the spoil divided among the conquerors. but a time soon came when tribute was accepted in place of extermination, when leagues were made with the canaanitish cities, and the israelites intermarried with the older population of the country. as in britain after the saxon conquest, the invaders settled in the country rather than in the towns, so that while the peasantry was israelite the townsfolk either remained canaanite or were a mixture of the two races. the mixture introduced among the israelites the religion and the beliefs, the manners and the immoralities, of the canaanitish people. the mosaic legislation was forgotten; the institutions prescribed in the wilderness were ignored. alone at shiloh, in the heart of ephraim, was a memory of the past observed; here the descendants of aaron served in the tabernacle, and kept alive a recollection of the mosaic code. here alone no image stood in the sanctuary of the temple; the ark of the covenant was the symbol of the national god. but the influence of shiloh did not extend far. the age that succeeded the entrance into canaan, was one of anarchy and constant war. hardly had the last effort of the canaanites against their invaders been overthrown on the banks of the kishon, when a new enemy appeared in the south. the philistines, who had planted themselves on the sea-coast shortly before the israelites had invaded the inland, now turned their arms against the new-comers, and contended with them for the possession of the country. the descendants of jacob were already exhausted by struggle after struggle with the populations which surrounded them. moabites and midianites, ammonites and bedâwin, even the king of distant mesopotamia, had sacked their villages, had overrun their fields, and exacted tribute from the israelitish tribes. the tribes themselves had lost coherence; they had ranged themselves under different "judges" or "deliverers," had forgotten their common origin and common faith, and had even plunged into interfraternal war. joshua was scarcely dead before the tribe of benjamin was almost exterminated by its brethren; and a few generations later, the warriors of ephraim, the stalwart champion of israel, were massacred by the israelites east of the jordan. in the south, a new tribe, judah, had arisen out of various elements--hebrew, kenite, and edomite; and it was not long before there was added to the cleavage between the tribes on the two banks of the jordan, the further and more lasting cleavage between judah and the tribes of the north. israel was a house divided against itself, and planted in the midst of foes. it needed a head, a leader who should bring its discordant elements into peace and order, and lead its united forces against the common enemy. monarchy alone could save it from destruction. the theocracy had failed, the authority of the high-priests and of the law they administered was hardly felt beyond shiloh; an age of war and anarchy required military rather than religious control. the israelites were passing through the same experience as other kindred members of the semitic race. in assyria the high-priests of assur had been succeeded by kings; in southern arabia the high-priest had similarly been superseded by the king, and the kings of edom had but recently taken the place of _alûphîm_ or "dukes." the first attempt to found a monarchy was made by the northern tribes. jerubbaal, the conqueror of the midianites, established his power among the mixed hebrew and canaanite inhabitants of ophrah and shechem, and his son abimelech by a canaanitish wife received the title of king. but the attempt was premature. the kingdom of manasseh passed away with abimelech; the other tribes were not yet ready to acknowledge the supremacy of a chieftain who was not sprung from themselves, and abimelech, moreover, was half-canaanitish by descent. the pressure of philistine conquest at last forced the israelites with a common voice to "demand a king." reinforced by bodies of their kinsfolk from krete and the islands of the greek seas, the philistines poured over the frontier of judah, plundering and destroying as they went. at first they were contented with raids; but the raids gradually passed into a continuous warfare and a settled purpose to conquer canaan, and reduce it to tribute from one end to the other. the israelitish forces were annihilated in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant was taken by the heathen, and the two sons of the high-priest perished on the field of battle. the philistine army marched northward into the heart of the mountains of ephraim, the sanctuary of shiloh was destroyed and its priesthood dispersed. it was not long before the philistine domination was acknowledged throughout the israelitish territory on the western side of the jordan, and canaan became palestine, "the land of the philistines." in the more inaccessible parts of benjamin, indeed, a few israelites still maintained a fitful independence, and samuel, the representative of the traditions of shiloh, was allowed to judge his own people, and preside over a naioth or "monastery" of dervish-like prophets under the eye of a philistine garrison. israel seemed about to disappear from among the nations of the world. but it had not yet wholly forgotten that it was a single people, the descendants of a common forefather, sharers in a common history, and above all, worshippers of the same god. in their extremity the israelites called for a king. saul, the benjamite of gibeah, was elected, and events soon proved the wisdom of the choice. jabesh-gilead was rescued from the ammonite king, the philistine garrisons were driven out of the centre of the country, and, for a time at least, a large part of the israelitish territory was cleared of its enemies. saul was able to turn his arms against the amalekite marauders of the desert, as well as the princes of zobah to the north-east of ammon. but the philistine war still continued. saul had incorporated in his body-guard a young shepherd of beth-lehem in judah of the name of david. david showed himself a brave and skilful soldier, and quickly rose to high command in the hebrew army, and to be the son-in-law of saul. his victories over the philistines were celebrated in popular songs, and the king began to suspect him of aiming at the throne. he was forced to fly for his life, and to hide among the mountain fastnesses of judah, where his boyhood had been spent. here he became a brigand-chief, outlaws and adventurers gathering around him, and exacting food from the richer landowners. saul pursued him in vain; david slipped out of his hands time after time, thanks to the nature of the country in which he had taken refuge; and the only result of the pursuit was to open the road once more to philistine invasion. meanwhile david and his followers had left the israelitish territory, and offered their services to achish of gath; the philistine prince enrolled them in his body-guard and settled them in the town of ziklag. saul and the priests were now at open war. samuel, perhaps naturally, had quarrelled with the king who had superseded his authority, and had espoused the cause of david. we are told, indeed, that he had anointed david as king in the place of saul. when, therefore, david escaped from the court, saul accused the shilonite priests who were established at nob of intentionally aiding the rebel. the high-priest vainly protested their innocence, but the furious king refused to listen, and the priests were massacred in cold blood. abiathar, the son of the murdered high-priest, alone escaped to david to tell the tale. he carried with him the sacred ephod through which the will of yahveh was made known, and from henceforth the influence of the priesthood was thrown against the king. saul had lost his best general, who had gone over to the enemy; he had employed his troops in hunting a possible rival through the judæan wilds when they ought to have been guarding the frontier against the national foe, and the whole force of israelitish religion had been turned against him. there was little cause for wonder, therefore, that the philistine armies again marched into the israelitish kingdom, and made their way northward along the coast into the plain of jezreel. a battle on the slopes of jezreel decided the fate of israel. the hebrew army was cut to pieces, and saul and his sons were slain. one only survived, esh-baal, too young or too feeble to take part in the fight. esh-baal was carried across the jordan by abner and the relics of the israelitish forces, and there proclaimed king at mahanaim. the philistines became undisputed masters of israel west of the jordan, while their tributary vassal, david, was proclaimed king of judah at hebron. his nephew joab was made commander-in-chief. war soon broke out between david and esh-baal. esh-baal grew continually weaker, and his general abner intrigued with david to betray him into the hands of the jewish king. abner, however, was slain by joab while in the act of carrying out his treason, but esh-baal was murdered shortly afterwards by two of his servants. david declared himself his successor, and claimed rule over all israel. this brought him into conflict with his philistine overlords. it was equivalent to revolt, and the philistine army swept the lowlands of judah. david fled from hebron and took refuge in his old retreat. here he organised his forces; the philistines were defeated in battle after battle, and david not only succeeded in driving them out of judah and israel, but in carrying the war into their own country. the philistine cities were conquered, and soldiers from gath, where david had himself once served as a mercenary, were drafted into the body-guard of the hebrew sovereign. before the philistine war was over, jerusalem had fallen into david's hands. the stronghold of the jebusites was one of the last of the canaanitish cities to surrender to the israelites. its older inhabitants were allowed to live in it side by side with colonists from judah and benjamin. the city itself was made the capital of the kingdom. its central position, its natural strength, and its independence of the history of any special tribe, all combined to justify the choice. here david built his palace, and planned the erection of a temple to yahveh. meanwhile the kingdom of israel was passing into an empire. joab and his veterans gained victory after victory, and the hebrew army became what the assyrian army was in later days, the most highly disciplined and irresistible force in western asia. moab and ammon were subdued; the aramaic kinglets to the north-east were made tributaries, and the kingdom of zobah, which had risen on the ruins of the hittite power, was overthrown. the limits of david's rule were extended to the banks of the euphrates, and the syrians on either side of the river were utterly crushed. even edom, which had successfully defied the pharaohs in the days of egyptian greatness, was compelled to submit to the jewish conqueror; its male population was mercilessly massacred, and its ports on the gulf of suez fell into israelitish hands. in the north hamath made alliance with the new power that had arisen in the oriental world, while hiram of tyre was glad to call himself the friend of the israelitish king, and to furnish him with skilled workmen and articles of luxury. the latter years of david were troubled by revolts which had their origin partly in the polygamy in which he had indulged, partly in the discontent of a people still imperfectly welded together, and restless under military conscription. his son solomon secured his throne by putting to death all possible rivals or opponents, including the grey-haired joab. solomon was cultured and well-educated, but his culture was selfish, and his extravagance knew no bounds. palaces were built at jerusalem in imitation of those of phoenicia or egypt, and phoenician architects and artisans erected there a sumptuous temple in honour of the national god. trade was encouraged and developed: the possession of the edomite seaports gave solomon the command of the arabian trade, while his alliance with hiram opened to him the harbours of the mediterranean coast. but the wealth which david had accumulated, the tribute of the conquered provinces, and the trading monopolies of the king himself did not suffice for the extravagance of his expenditure, and heavy fiscal burdens had to be laid on the israelitish tribes. disaffection grew up everywhere except in judah, where the king resided, and where the wealth raised elsewhere was spent. revolts broke out in edom and the north. garrisons, indeed, were planted in zobah, which secured the caravan road through tadmor or palmyra to the euphrates; but damascus was lost, and became in a few years a formidable adversary of israel. the death of solomon was the signal for a revolt in palestine itself. the northern tribes under jeroboam separated from judah and established a kingdom of their own, while judah and benjamin remained faithful to the house of david and to the capital, which lay on the frontier of both. the levites also naturally attached themselves to the kingdom which contained the great national sanctuary, and to the royal family whose chapel it was. the disruption of the monarchy necessarily brought with it the fall of the empire; moab, however, continued to be tributary to the northern kingdom and edom to that of judah. five years after the accession of rehoboam, the son of solomon, the kingdom of judah seemed in danger of perishing altogether. shishak, the egyptian pharaoh, invaded the country and sacked jerusalem itself. but jeroboam lost the opportunity thus afforded him of extending his rule over the south; his own territories had been partially overrun by the egyptians, and he was probably not in a position to commence a war. judah had time to recover; the walls of jerusalem were rebuilt, and the arabian trade soon supplied it with fresh resources. the long and prosperous reign of asa, the grandson of rehoboam, placed the line of david on a solid foundation. the jewish kingdom was compact; its capital was central, and was not only a strongly-fortified fortress, but also an ancient and venerable sanctuary. as time went on feelings of respect and affection gathered round the royal house; the people of judah identified it with themselves, and looked back with pride and regret to the glorious days of david and solomon. religion, moreover, lent its sanction to the davidic dynasty. the levitical priesthood had its centre in the temple which had been built by solomon, and was, as it were, the private chapel of his descendants; here were preserved the rites and traditions of the mosaic law, and the ark of the covenant between israel and its god. the northern kingdom, on the contrary, had none of these elements of stability. the first king was a rebel, who had no glorious past behind him, no established priesthood to support his throne, no capital even, around which all his subjects could rally. the sword had given him his crown, and the sword was henceforth the arbiter of his kingdom. the conservative forces which were strong in judah were absent in the north; there the army became more and more powerful, and its generals dethroned princes and established short-lived dynasties. northern israel, moreover, was not homogeneous; the tribes on the two sides of the jordan were never welded together like the inhabitants of judah, and the divergence of interests that had once existed between them was never wholly forgotten. israel perished while judah survived. dynasty after dynasty had arisen in it; its capital had been shifted from time to time; it did not even possess a religious centre. before a line of kings had time to win the loyalty of the people they were swept away by revolution, and the army became the dominating power in the state. there was no body of priests to preserve the memory of the mosaic law and insist upon its observance, and the prophets who took their place protested in vain against the national apostasy. alliance with the neighbouring kingdom of phoenicia brought with it the worship of the phoenician baal, and yahveh was forsaken for a foreign god. in b.c. samaria, the later capital of the country, was taken by the assyrian king sargon, and northern israel ceased to be a nation. judah, on the other hand, successfully defied the assyrian power. the invasion of sennacherib was rolled back from the walls of jerusalem, and though the jewish kings paid tribute to nineveh, they were left in possession of their territories. edom, indeed, had long since been lost, and with it the trade with the arabian seas, but the philistines continued to acknowledge the supremacy of judah, and commercial relations were kept up with egypt. it was not until the babylonian empire of nebuchadrezzar had arisen on the ruins of that of assyria that jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and the davidic dynasty passed away. but they had accomplished their work; a nation had been created which through exile and disaster still maintained its religion and its characteristics, and was prepared, when happier days should come, to return again to its old home, to rebuild the temple, and carry out all the ordinances of its faith. from henceforth judah realised its mission as a peculiar people, separated from the rest of the world, whose instructor in religion it was to be. more and more it ceased to be a nation and became a race--a race, moreover, which had its roots in a common religious history, a common faith, and a common hope. israel according to the flesh became israel according to the spirit. [footnote : see pinches in the _journal_ of the royal asiatic society, july . in a tablet belonging to a period long before that of abraham, isma-ilu or ishmael is given as the name of an "amorite" slave from palestine (thureau-dangin, _tablettes chaldéennes inédites_, p. ).] chapter ii canaan canaan was the inheritance which the israelites won for themselves by the sword. their ancestors had already settled in it in patriarchal days. abraham "the hebrew" from babylonia had bought in it a burying-place near hebron; jacob had purchased a field near shechem, where he could water his flocks from his own spring. it was the "promised land" to which the serfs of the pharaoh in goshen looked forward when they should again become free men and find a new home for themselves. canaan had ever been the refuge of the asiatic population of egypt, the goal at which they aimed when driven out of the land of the nile. the hyksos conquerors from asia had retreated to jerusalem when the native egyptians recovered their independence and had expelled them from their seats in the delta. though moses had assured the pharaoh that all the israelites needed was to go a short journey of three days into the wilderness, and there sacrifice to their god, it was well understood that the desert was not to be the end of their pilgrimage. canaan, and canaan only, was the destined country they had in view. in the early inscriptions of babylonia, canaan is included in the rest of syria under the general title of "the land of the amorites." the amorites were at the time the dominant population on the mediterranean coast of western asia, and after them accordingly the whole country received its name. the "land of the amorites" had been overrun by the armies of babylonia at a very remote period, and had thus come under the influence of babylonian culture. as far back as the reigns of sargon of akkad and his son naram-sin (b.c. ), three campaigns had laid it at the feet of the chaldæan monarch, and palestine and syria became a province of the babylonian empire. sargon erected an image of himself by the shore of the sea, and seems even to have received tribute from cyprus. colonies of "amorite" or canaanitish merchants settled in babylonia for the purposes of trade, and there obtained various rights and privileges; and a cadastral survey of southern babylonia made at the time mentions "the governor of the land of the amorites." the amorites, however, though they were the dominant people of syria, were not its original inhabitants; nor, it is probable, did they even form the largest part of its population. they were essentially the inhabitants of the mountains, as we are told in the book of numbers (xiii. ), and appear to have come from the west. we have learnt a good deal about them from the egyptian monuments, where the "amurru" or amorites are depicted with that fidelity to nature which characterised the art of ancient egypt. they belonged to the white race, and, like other members of the white race, were tall in stature and impatient of the damp heat of the plains. their beard and eye-brows are painted red, their hair a light red-brown, while their eyes are blue. the skin is a sunburnt white, the nose straight and regular, the forehead high, and the lips thin. they wore whiskers and a pointed beard, and dressed in long robes furnished with a sort of cape. their physical characteristics are those of the libyan neighbours of the egyptians on the west, the forefathers of the fair-skinned and blue-eyed kabyles or berbers who inhabit the mountains of northern africa to-day. anthropologists connect these libyans with the kelts of our own islands. at one time, it would seem, a kelto-libyan race existed, which spread along the northern coast of africa to western europe and the british isles. the amorites would appear to have been an eastern offshoot of the same race. wherever they went, the members of the race buried their dead in rude stone cairns or cromlechs, the dolmens of the french antiquarians. we find them in britain and france, in the spanish peninsula, and the north of africa. they are also found in palestine, more especially in that portion of it which was the home of the amorites. the skulls found in the cairns are for the most part of the dolichocephalic or long-headed type; this too is the shape of skull characteristic of the modern kabyle, and it has been portrayed for us by the egyptian artists in the pictures of their amorite foes. in the days of the egyptian artists--the age of the eighteenth and two following dynasties (b.c. - )--the special seat of the amorites was the mountainous district immediately to the north of palestine. but amorite kingdoms were established elsewhere on both sides of the jordan. not long before the israelitish invasion, the amorite king sihon had robbed moab of its territory and founded his power on the ruins of that of the egyptian empire. farther north, in the plateau of bashan, another amorite king, og, had his capital, while amorite tribes were settled on the western side of the jordan, in the mountains of southern canaan, where the tribe of judah subsequently established itself. we even hear of amorites in the mountain-block of kadesh-barnea, in the desert south of canaan; and the amorite type of face, as it has been depicted for us on the monuments of egypt, may still be often observed among the arab tribes of the district between egypt and palestine. jerusalem, ezekiel tells us, had an amorite as well as a hittite parentage, and jacob declares that he had taken his heritage at shechem out of the hand of the amorite with his sword and bow. it must be remembered, however, that the term "amorite" is sometimes used in the old testament in its babylonian sense, as denoting an inhabitant of canaan, whatever might be the race to which he belonged; we cannot always infer from it the nationality or race of those to whom it is applied. moreover, individual branches of the amorite stock had names of their own. in the north they were known as hivites, at hebron they were called anakim, at jerusalem they were jebusites. the amorite kings of bashan are described as rephaim, a word which the authorised version translates "giants." it was only on the northern frontier of palestine and in the kingdom of sihon that the name of "amorite" alone was used. the babylonian conquests introduced into canaan the government and law, the writing and literature, of babylonian civilisation. the babylonian language even made its way to the west, and was taught, along with the script, in the schools which were established in imitation of those of chaldæa. babylonian generals and officials lived in palestine and administered its affairs, and an active trade was carried on between the euphrates and the mediterranean coast. the trade-road ran through mesopotamia past the city of harran, and formed a link between the mediterranean and the persian gulf. from an early date libraries had existed in babylonia stored with the literature of the country. similarly, libraries now grew up in "the land of the amorites," and the clay tablets with which they were filled made known to the west the legends and records of chaldæa. amorite culture was modelled on that of babylonia. babylonian influence lasted for centuries in western asia. in the age of abraham the amorites still obeyed the suzerainty of the babylonian kings. khammurabi, the amraphel of the book of genesis, calls himself king of the country of the amorites as well as of babylon, and his great-grandson does the same. at a later date babylonia itself was conquered by a foreign line of kings, and canaan recovered its independence. but this was of no long duration. thothmes iii., of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty (b.c. - ), made it a province of egypt, and the amorites were governed by egyptian prefects and commissioners. the cuneiform tablets found at tel el-amarna in upper egypt give us a vivid picture of its condition at the close of the eighteenth dynasty. the egyptian power was falling to pieces, and palestine was threatened by hittite invaders from the north. the native governors were fighting with one another or intriguing with the enemies of egypt, while all the time protesting their loyalty to the pharaoh. ebed-asherah and his son aziru governed the amorites in the north, and the prefect of phoenicia sends bitter complaints to the egyptian court of their hostility to himself and their royal master. aziru, however, was an able ruler. he succeeded in clearing himself from the charge of complicity with the hittites against whom he had been sent, as well as in getting the better of his phoenician rival. the latter disappears from history, while the amorites are allowed to settle undisturbed in zemar and other cities of inland phoenicia. under ramses ii. of the nineteenth dynasty, canaan still yielded a reluctant obedience to egypt. in the troubles which had followed the fall of the eighteenth dynasty, it had shaken itself free from foreign authority, but had been reconquered by seti i., the father of ramses. egyptian authority was re-established even on the eastern side of the jordan; but it did not continue for long. ramses was hardly dead before egypt was invaded by libyans from the west and robber hordes from the greek seas, and though the invasion was ultimately beaten back, its strength had been exhausted in the struggle. the egyptian empire in canaan passed away for ever, and the canaanites were left free to govern themselves. the kingdom of sihon was one of the results of this ending of egyptian rule. the amorites became a power once more. a few years later egypt was again attacked by armed invaders from the north. the assailants poured into it both by sea and land. fleets of ships filled with philistines and achæans and other northern tribes entered the mouths of the nile, while a vast army simultaneously attacked it by land. the army, we are told, had encamped in "the land of the amorites," and they carried with them on their farther march recruits from the countries through which they passed. the amorite "chief" himself was among those who followed the barbarians to egypt, eager for the spoils of the wealthiest country in the ancient world. ramses iii. of the twentieth dynasty was now on the throne. he succeeded in rolling back the wave of invasion, in gaining a decisive victory over the combined military and naval forces of the enemy, and in pursuing them to the frontiers of asia itself. gaza, the key to the military road which ran along the sea-board of palestine, fell once more into egyptian hands; and the egyptian troops overran the future judah, occupying the districts of jerusalem and hebron, and even crossing the jordan. but no permanent conquest was effected; ramses retired again to egypt, and for more than two centuries no more egyptian armies found their way into canaan. gaza and the neighbouring cities became the strongholds of the philistine pirates, and effectually barred the road to asia. the campaign of ramses iii. in southern palestine must have taken place when the israelites were still in the desert. between the two invasions of egypt by the barbarians of the north, there was no great interval of time. the exodus, which had been due in part to the pressure of the first of them in the reign of meneptah, was separated by only a few years from the capture of hebron by caleb, which must have occurred after its evacuation by the egyptian troops. the great movement which brought the populations of asia minor and the greek islands upon canaan and the nile, and which began in the age of the exodus, was over before the children of israel had emerged from the wilds of the desert. in the old testament the amorites are constantly associated with another people, the hittites. when ezekiel ascribes an amorite parentage to jerusalem, he ascribes to it at the same time a hittite parentage as well. the same interlocking of amorite and hittite that meets us in the bible, meets us also on the monuments of egypt. here, too, we are told that kadesh on the orontes, the hittite capital, was "in the land of the amorites." it was, in fact, on the shores of the lake of homs, in the midst of the district over which the amorites claimed rule. the hittites were intruders from the north. the egyptian monuments have shown us what they were like. their skin was yellow, their eyes and hair were black, their faces were beardless. square and prominent cheeks, a protrusive nose, with retreating chin and forehead and lozenge-shaped eyes, gave them a mongoloid appearance. they were not handsome to look upon, but the accuracy of their portraiture by the artists of egypt is confirmed by their own monuments. the heads represented on the egyptian monuments are repeated, feature by feature, in the hittite sculptures. ugly as they were, they were not the caricatures of an enemy, but the truthful portraits of a people whose physical characteristics are still found, according to sir charles wilson, in the modern population of cappadocia. the hittites wore their hair in three plaits, which fell over the back like the pigtail of a chinaman. they dressed in short tunics over which a long robe was worn, which in walking left one leg bare. their feet were shod with boots with turned-up ends, a sure indication of their northern origin. such boots, in fact, are snow-shoes, admirably adapted to the inhabitants of the mountain-ranges of asia minor, but wholly unsuited for the hot plains of syria. when, therefore, on the walls of the ramesseum we find the theban artists depicting the defenders of kadesh on the orontes with them, we may conclude that the latter had come from the colder north just as certainly as we may conclude, from the use of similar shoes among the turks, that they also have come from a northern home. in the hittite system of hieroglyphic writing, the boot with upturned end occupies a prominent place. when the tel el-amarna tablets were written (b.c. ), the hittites were advancing on the egyptian province of syria. tunip, or tennib, near aleppo, had fallen, and both amorites and canaanites were intriguing with the invader. the highlands of cappadocia and the ranges of the taurus seem to have been the cradle of the hittite race. here they first came into contact with babylonian culture, which they adopted and modified, and from hence they poured down upon the aramæan cities of the south. carche-mish, now jerablûs, which commanded the chief ford across the euphrates, fell into their hands, and for many centuries remained one of their capitals. but it was not until the stormy period which signalised the overthrow of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, that the hittites succeeded in establishing themselves as far south as kadesh on the orontes. the long war, however, waged with them by ramses ii. prevented them from advancing farther; when peace was made at last between them and the egyptians, both sides had been exhausted by the struggle, and the southern limit of hittite power had been fixed. the kings of kadesh had, however, been at the head of a veritable empire; they were able to summon allies and vassals from asia minor, and it is probable that their rule extended to the banks of the halys in cappadocia, where hittite remains have been found. military roads connected the hittite cities of cappadocia with the rest of asia minor, and monuments of hittite conquest or invasion have been met with as far west as the neighbourhood of smyrna. these monuments are all alike distinguished by the same peculiar style of art, and by the same system of pictorial writing. the writing, unfortunately, has not yet been deciphered, but as the same groups of characters occur wherever an inscription in it is found, we may infer that the language concealed beneath it is everywhere one and the same. when the assyrians first became acquainted with the west, the hittites were the ruling people in syria. as, therefore, the babylonians had included all the inhabitants of syria and palestine, whatever might be their origin, under the general name of amorites, the assyrians included them under the name of hittites. even the israelites and ammonites are called "hittites" by an assyrian king. it is possible that traces of this vague and comprehensive use of the name are to be met with in the old testament; indeed, it has been suggested that the hittites, or "sons of heth," from whom abraham bought the cave of machpelah, owed their name to this cause. in the later books of the hebrew scriptures the hittites are described as a northern population, in conformity with the egyptian and assyrian accounts. the hittites of hebron, however, may really have been an offshoot of the hittite nations of the north. the "king of the hittites" accompanied the northern barbarians when they invaded egypt in the reign of ramses iii., and hittite bands may similarly have followed the hyksos conquerors of egypt several centuries before. one of these bands may easily have settled on its way at hebron, which, as we are told, was built seven years before zoan, the hyksos capital. at karnak, moreover, an egyptian artist has represented the people of ashkelon with faces of a hittite type, while ezekiel bears witness to the presence of a hittite element in the founders of jerusalem. but the fact that thothmes iii. in the century before moses calls the hittite land of the north "the greater," is the best proof we can have that there was a hittite colony elsewhere, which was well known to the egyptian scribes. the "greater" implies the less, and the only lesser hittite land with which we are acquainted is that of which the book of genesis speaks. so far as we can judge from the evidence of proper names, the hittites belonged to a race which was spread from the halys in asia minor to the shores of lake urumiyeh. the early inhabitants of armenia, who have left us inscriptions in the cuneiform character, also belonged to it. so also did the people of comagênê, and it seems probable that the ruling class in northern mesopotamia did the same. here there existed a kingdom which at one time exercised a considerable amount of power, and whose princesses were married to the pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. this was the kingdom of aram naharaim, called naharina in the egyptian texts, mitanni by its own inhabitants. the language of mitanni was of a very peculiar type, as we learn from the tablets of tel el-amarna, one or two of which are written in it. like the hittites in syria, the mitannians appear to have descended from the north upon the cities of the semites, and to have established themselves in them. mitanni was at the height of its influence in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries before our era; its armies made their way even into canaan, and the canaanite princes intrigued from time to time against their egyptian masters, not only with the babylonians and hittites, but also with the kings of mitanni. before the time of david the power and almost the name of mitanni had passed away. the hittite empire also had been broken up, and henceforth we hear only of "the kings of the hittites" who ruled over a number of small states. the semites of syria had succeeded in rolling back the wave of hittite conquest, and in absorbing their hittite conquerors. the capture of carchemish by sargon of assyria in b.c. marks the end of hittite dominion south of the taurus. but the hittite invasion had produced lasting results. it had severed the semites of assyria and babylonia from those of the west, and planted the barrier of a foreign population on the highroad that ran from nineveh to the mediterranean. the tradition of babylonian culture in western asia was broken; new influences began to work there, and the cuneiform system of writing to be disused. room was given for the introduction of a new form of script, and the phoenician alphabet, in which the books of the old testament were written, made its way into canaan. when joshua crosses the jordan there is no longer any trace in palestine of either babylonian or egyptian domination. like the amorites and the amorite tribe of jebusites at jerusalem, the hittites were mountaineers.[ ] the hot river-valleys and the sea-coast were inhabited by canaanites. canaan is supposed to mean "the lowlands" of the mediterranean shore; here the canaanites had built their cities, and ventured in trading ships on the sea. but they had also settled in the inland plains, and more especially in the valley of the jordan. the plain of jezreel formed, as it were, the centre of the canaanitish kingdoms. the canaanites were semites in speech, if not in blood. the language of canaan is what we term hebrew, and must have been adopted either by the israelites or by the patriarchs their forefathers. between the dialect of the phoenician inscriptions and that of the old testament the difference is but slight, and the tablets of tel el-amarna carry back the record of this canaanitish speech to the century before the exodus. in person, as we learn from the egyptian monuments, the canaanites resembled their descendants, the modern inhabitants of palestine. they belonged to the white race, but had black hair and eyes. they dressed in brilliantly-coloured garments, stained with that purple or scarlet dye in search of which they explored the coasts of the greek seas, and which was extracted from the shell of the murex. on their feet they wore high-laced sandals; their hair was bound with a fillet. their skill as sailors was famous throughout the oriental world; the cities of the phoenician coast already possessed fleets of ships in the age of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, and their merchants carried on a maritime trade with the islands of the Ægean and the coast of africa. before the time of solomon their vessels had found their way to tartessus in spain, perhaps even to cadiz, and the alliance between hiram and the israelitish king enabled the tyrians to import gold and other precious things from africa and arabia through the ports of southern edom. the tel el-amarna letters refer to the riches of tyre, and excavations on the site of lachish have brought to light amber beads ef the same age, which indicate intercourse with the baltic. it is possible that the tin which was needed in such large quantities for the bronze tools and weapons of the ancient east was derived from cornwall; if so, it would have been brought, like the amber, across europe along the road which ended at the extremity of the adriatic gulf. the wealth of the canaanitish merchants was great. the spoils carried away to egypt by thothmes iii. after his conquest of palestine are truly astonishing. beautiful vases of gold and silver, artistically moulded bronzes, furniture carved out of ebony and cedar and inlaid with ivory and precious stones, were among the booty. iron, which was found in the hills, was freely used, and made into armour, weapons, and chariots. it was "the chariots of iron" which prevented the israelites from capturing and sacking the cities of the plains. wealth brought with it a corresponding amount of luxury, which to the simpler hebrews of the desert seemed extravagant and sinful. it was associated with a licentiousness which canaanitish religion encouraged rather than repressed. the religion was a nature-worship. the supreme deity was addressed as baal or "lord," and was adored in the form of the sun. and as the sun can be baleful as well as beneficent, parching up the soil and blasting the seed as well as warming it into life, so too baal was regarded sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood. in times of national or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the anger of their god. by the side of baal was his colourless wife, a mere reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of dependence towards him as the woman stood to the man. it was only the unmarried goddess, ashêrah as she was called by the canaanites, who had a personality of her own. and since ashêrah came in time to be superseded by ashtoreth, who was herself of babylonian origin, it is probable that the idea of separate individuality connected with ashêrah. was due to the influence of babylonian culture. ashêrah was the goddess of fertility, and though the fertility of the earth depends upon the sun, it was easy to conceive of it as an independent principle. the name baal was merely a title. it was applied to the supreme deity of each city or tribe, by whatever special name he might otherwise be known. there were as many baals or baalim as there were states or cults. wherever a high-place was erected, a baal was worshipped. his power did not extend beyond the district in which he was adored and to which he was territorially attached. the baal of lebanon was distinct from the baal of tyre or sidon, though in every case the general conception that was formed of him was the same. it was the attributes of particular baalim which differed; baal was everywhere the sun-god, but in one place he showed himself under one shape, in another place under another. the goddesses followed the analogy of the gods. over against the baalim or baals stood the ashtaroth or ashtoreths. the canaanitish goddess manifested herself in a multitude of forms. as the firstborn was sacrificed to the god, so chastity was sacrificed to the goddess. the temples of ashtoreth were crowded with religious prostitutes, and the great festivals of canaan were orgies of licentious sin. it was a combination of nature-worship with the luxury that was born of wealth. the canaanites of phoenicia believed that they had originally migrated from the persian gulf. in canaan, at all events, according to the book of genesis, the "fishers" city of sidon was the first that was built. but tyre also, a few miles to the north of it, claimed considerable antiquity. the temple of melkarth or melek-kiryath, "the king of the city," the name under which the baal of tyre was worshipped, had been built on the island-rock twenty-three centuries before the time of herodotus, or b.c. . gebal or byblos, still farther to the north, had been renowned for its sanctity from immemorial times. here stood the sanctuary of baalith, the "lady" of gebal, of whom we hear in the tablets of tel el-amarna. still farther north were other cities, of which the most famous was arvad, with its harbour and fleet. southward were dor and joppa, the modern jaffa, while inland were zemar and arqa, mentioned in the book of genesis and the tel el-amarna correspondence, but which ceased to be remembered after the age of the exodus. before the israelites entered canaan they had been captured by the amorites, and had passed into insignificance. between the canaanites of the coast and the canaanites of the interior a difference grew up in the course of centuries. this was caused by the sea-trade in which the cities on the coast engaged. the "phoenicians," as they were termed, on the coast became sailors and merchants, while their brethren farther inland were content to live on the products of agriculture and import from abroad the luxuries they required. while tyre and sidon were centres of manufacture and maritime trade, megiddo and hazor remained agricultural. after the hebrew invasion the difference between them became greater: phoenicia continued independent; the canaanites of the interior were extirpated by the israelites or paid tribute to their conquerors. little by little the latter amalgamated with the conquered race; towns like shechem contained a mixed population, partly hebrew and partly native; and the israelites adopted the manners and religion of the canaanites, worshipping at the old high-places of the country, and adoring the baalim and ashtaroth. the amorite heads depicted at karnak above the names of the places captured by shishak in judah show how little the population of southern palestine had changed up to the time of solomon's death. canaan was ruined by its want of union. the canaanitish cities were perpetually fighting with one another; even the strong hand of the pharaoh in the days of egyptian supremacy could not keep them at peace. now and again, indeed, they united, generally under a foreign leader, but the union was brought about by the pressure of foreign attack, and was never more than temporary. there was no lack of patriotism among them, it is true; but the patriotism was confined to the particular city or state to which those who were inspired by it belonged. the political condition of canaan resembled its religious condition; as each district had its separate baal, so too it had its separate political existence. if there were many baals, there were also many kinglets. the fourteenth century b.c. was a turning-point in the history of canaan. it witnessed the fall of the egyptian supremacy which had succeeded the supremacy of babylonia; it also witnessed the severance of western asia from the kingdoms on the euphrates and tigris, and the consequent end of the direct influence of babylonian culture. the hittites established themselves in syria "in the land of the amorites," while at the same time other invaders threatened canaan itself. the israelites made their way across the jordan; the philistines seized the southern portion of the coast. the philistine invasion preceded that of the israelites by a few years. the philistines were sea-robbers, probably from the island of krete. zephaniah calls them "the nation of the cherethites" or kretans, and their features, as represented on the egyptian monuments, are of a greek or aryan type. they have the straight nose, high forehead, and thin lips of the european. on their heads they wear a curious kind of pleated cap, fastened round the chin by a strap. they are clad in a pair of drawers and a cuirass of leather, while their arms consist of a small round shield with two handles, a spear, and a short but broad sword of bronze. greaves of bronze, like those of the homeric heroes, protected their legs in battle. the philistines formed part of the host which invaded egypt in the reign of ramses iii. along with their kinsfolk, the zakkal, they had already made themselves formidable to the coast of the delta and of southern canaan. the sea had long been infested by their ships, bent on plunder and piracy; the zakkal had attacked egypt in the time of meneptah, and the road from egypt to asia which skirted the sea had long been known as "the way of the philistines." when ramses iii. overran southern canaan, gaza still belonged to egypt, as it had done for the three preceding centuries; but it is probable that the philistines were already settled in its neighbourhood. at all events, it was not long before they made themselves masters of gaza, and thus closed for egypt the way to asia. henceforward gaza and its four companion cities became the strongholds of the philistines (b.c. ). the southern coast as far north as mount carmel fell into their hands: the zakkal established themselves at dor, and the port of joppa was lost to the phoenicians. hardly were the israelites planted in the promised land before they were confronted by the philistines. shamgar, we are told, one of the earliest of the judges, slew six hundred of them "with an ox-goad." but it was not until the close of the period of the judges that they became really formidable to israel. judah had become a distinct and powerful tribe, formed out of hebrew, kenite, and edomite elements, and its frontier adjoined philistia. at first there was desultory warfare; the philistines made raids into judæan territory, and the jews retaliated whenever the opportunity occurred. but the philistines were a nation of warriors, and their forces were recruited from time to time by fresh arrivals from krete or other parts of the eastern mediterranean. year by year, therefore, the philistine attack became more formidable; the raids of the enemy were no longer confined to judah, but extended into benjamin and mount ephraim. the philistines began to dream of conquering the whole of canaan, which was henceforth to bear the name of palestine, "the land of the philistines." the israelitish army was shattered in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant between israel and its national god was taken by the heathen, and the priests of shiloh, the central sanctuary, were slain. the victors marched unresisted through the country, burning and spoiling, and securing the passes by means of permanent garrisons. shiloh and its temple were destroyed, and its priesthood scattered abroad. the philistine supremacy lasted for several years. a few outlaws maintained a guerilla warfare in the mountains of benjamin, and the prophet samuel, the representative of shiloh, was allowed to declare the oracles of yahveh to his countrymen. but the vanquished population was deprived of the means for revolt. the israelites were forbidden the use of arms, and no itinerant smith was permitted to enter their territory. the hebrew who wished to sharpen his ploughshare or axe was forced to go to a philistine city. the condition of israel became intolerable. there was but one remedy: the people needed a leader who should organise them into an army and a nation, and lead them forth against their foes. saul was elected king, and the choice was soon justified by the results. the philistines were driven out of the country, and saul set up his court in the very spot where a philistine garrison had stood. but the philistines were not yet subdued. civil war broke out in israel between saul and his son-in-law david; the troops which should have been employed in resisting the common enemy were used in pursuing david, and david himself took service as a mercenary under achish, king of gath. saul and his sons fell in battle on mount gilboa; the relics of the israelitish army fled across the jordan, and the philistine again ruled supreme on the western side of the jordan. david was allowed to govern judah as a tributary vassal of the philistine "lords." the murder of the feeble scion of saul's house who had the name of king on the eastern side of the jordan put an end to all this. david threw off his allegiance to the philistines, and was crowned king of israel. this act of open defiance was speedily followed by the invasion of judah. at first the war went against the israelitish king; he was forced to fly from his capital, hebron, and take refuge in an inaccessible cavern. here he organised his forces, and at last ventured into the field. the philistine forces were defeated in battle after battle; the war was carried into their own territory, and their cities were compelled to surrender. philistia thus became a part of the israelitish kingdom, and never again made any serious attempt to recover its independence. at the division of the israelitish kingdom it fell to judah, and its vassal princes duly paid their tribute to the jewish kings. it would seem from the assyrian inscriptions that they were played off one against the other, and that signs of disaffection in any one of them were speedily followed by his imprisonment in jerusalem. at all events, the philistine cities remained in the possession of judah down to the time of the overthrow of the monarchy, and the most devoted of david's body-guard were the philistines of gath. it has been said above that judah was a mixture of hebrew, kenite, and edomite elements. kenite means "smith," and the tribe furnished those itinerant smiths who provided canaan with its tools and arms. reference is made to one of them in the _travels of a mohar_, a sarcastic description of a tourist's misadventures in palestine which was written by an egyptian author in the reign of ramses ii., and of which a copy on papyrus has been preserved to us. the horses of the hero of the story, we are told, ran away and broke his carriage to pieces; he had accordingly to betake himself to "the iron-workers" and have it repaired. similar itinerant ironsmiths wandered through europe in the middle ages, handing down from father to son the secrets of their craft. the kenites came from the desert, and were apparently of midianitish descent. balaam had looked down upon their rocky strongholds from the heights of moab; and they had accompanied their hebrew comrades of judah from their first camping-ground near jericho to the wilderness south of arad. here they lived among the amalekite bedâwin down to the days of saul. to the last they maintained their nomadic habits, and the kenite family of rechab still dwelt in tents and avoided wine in that later age when the kingdom of judah was about to fall.[ ] the edomite element in judah was stronger than the kenite. it consisted of the two clans of jerahmeel and kenaz, or the house of caleb as it was called in the time of david.[ ] kenaz was a grandson of esau, and the fact that the kenizzites shared with the israelitish tribes in the conquest of canaan throws light on the law of deuteronomy[ ] which gave the edomite of "the third generation" all the rights and privileges of a jew. caleb, the conqueror of hebron, was a kenizzite; so also was othniel, the first of the judges of israel. edomites, rather than hebrews, were the founders of the future judah. this accounts for the comparatively late appearance of judah as a separate tribe in the history of israel, as well as for the antagonism which existed between it and the more pure-blooded tribes of the north. in the song of deborah and barak, judah is not mentioned; ephraim and benjamin, and not judah, are still regarded as forming the bulwark of israel against the amalekite marauders of the southern wilderness. it was the philistine wars which first created the judah of later days. they forced hebrews, edomites, and kenites to unite against the common enemy, and welded them into a single whole. though the three peoples still continued to be spoken of separately, this was but a survival of ancient modes of speech, and after the accession of david all distinction between them disappears. from this time forward the kingdom of judah is one undivided community. but the amalekites were ever on its borders. the amalekite of the old testament is the bedâwi of to-day. now, as ever, he is the scourge of his more settled neighbours, whose fields he harries and whose families he murders. he lives by robbery and theft; too idle to work himself, he plunders those who do. a strong government forces him to hide himself in the depth of the wilderness; when the countries that skirt the desert fall into decay he emerges from his retreat like a swarm of flies. the ancient oriental world saw in amalek "the firstborn of nations;" he was for them the representative of the primitive savage who had survived in the wilds of the desert. untamed and untamable, his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him. before babylonian culture had been brought to the west, amalek already existed. he was older than the oldest of the civilised kingdoms of the earth. but civilisation had raised a barrier against him which he was ever on the watch to break through. he never lost the opportunity of raiding the inhabitants of the cultivated lands, and escaping again into the desert with his booty before he could be overtaken and punished. the desert between palestine and egypt was his chief camping-ground. he had occupied the wadis of mount seir before the edomites had entered them, and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent from a mixture of the bedâwi with the edomite. the egyptians had many names for the bedâwin hordes. sometimes they were the herusha or "lords of the sands," sometimes the shasu or "plunderers," sometimes again the sutê or "archers." the third name was borrowed from the babylonians; in return, as we learn from the tablets of tel el-amarna, the babylonians adopted the second. hardly had the israelites escaped from egypt when they were called upon to dispute with the amalekites the possession of the desert. at rephidim the bedâwin robbers fell upon the israelitish camp. but they were beaten off with slaughter, and never again ventured to molest the people of yahveh during their wanderings in the wilderness. the attack, however, was never forgotten, and vengeance was exacted for it in the reign of saul. then the amalekites were pursued into their desert domain and mercilessly slaughtered. they had their home, it is said, in the desert which extended from shur to havilah. shur was the line of fortification which defended the eastern frontier of egypt, and ran pretty much where the suez canal has been dug to-day; havilah was the "sandy" desert of northern arabia. here was the "city" of tents of which agag was shêkh, and which the troops of the israelitish king burnt and spoiled. but the remembrance of the expedition did not last long. when civil war had weakened the power of saul, and the march of the philistine army to the north had left the south of canaan without defenders, an amalekite tribe again poured into judah and sacked the philistine town of ziklag. the wives and property of david and his followers were carried off into the wilderness. but the marauders were overtaken by the israelites they had robbed, and summary vengeance taken upon them. men, women, and children were alike put to the sword; four hundred only escaped through the fleetness of their camels. in the tel el-amarna tablets we find the bedâwin and their shêkhs playing a part in the politics of canaan. their services were hired by the rival princes of palestine, and from time to time we hear of their seizing or plundering its cities on their own account. they have never ceased indeed to infest the land. amalekite bands joined with the midianites in devastating the villages of central israel in the days of gideon, and the amalekite who brought to david the news of saul's death was one of those who had hovered on the skirts of the contending armies, eager when the fight was over to murder the wounded and strip the slain. in a later age the "arabs" who, according to the inscriptions of sennacherib, formed the body-guard of hezekiah were probably bedâwin, and geshem the arabian in the time of nehemiah seems to have represented the amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. the bedâwin still haunt the plains and unfrequented paths of palestine, waylaying the traveller and robbing the peasant of his flocks. the peasantry or fellahin are the perizzites of the hebrew scriptures. "perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive title rather than the name of a people or a race. it denotes the agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. another word of similar signification is hivite. if any distinction is to be drawn between them, it is that the term perizzite was specially applied to the fellahin of southern canaan, while the term hivite was restricted to the inhabitants of the north. in two passages, it is true, "hivite" seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. esau is said in one of them to have married the granddaughter of "zibeon the hivite," while in the other we read of "the hivite" who dwelt under mount hermon. but a comparison of the first passage with the later verses of the same chapter shows that "hivite" must be corrected into "horite," and in the second passage it is probable that "hittite" instead of "hivite" should be read. amorite and hittite, canaanite and philistine, were all alike emigrants from other lands. the hittites had come from the mountains of asia minor, the amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of africa, the canaanites traced their ancestry to the persian gulf, the philistines had sailed from the harbours of the greek seas. canaan had been inhabited, however, before any of them had found their way to it, and this prehistoric population of the country was known to the hebrews by the name of rephaim. in the english translation of the bible the word is usually rendered "giants;" it seems, however, to have been a proper name, which survived in the name of one of the cities of bashan. doubtless it often included other elements besides that to which it was properly applied. at times it was extended to the amorites, whose occupation of palestine went back to a remote past, just as in the babylonian inscriptions the name of amorite itself was extended to the aboriginal population. among the philistines this older population was called avvim, the people of "the ruins." such then were the races who lived in canaan, and with whom the invading israelites had to contend. there was firstly the primitive population of the country, whose rude rock-sculptures may still be seen in the wadi el-qana near tyre. then there were the intrusive amorites and canaanites, the amorites with their fair skins and blue eyes who made themselves a home in the mountains, and the semitic canaanites who settled on the coast and in the plains. the amorite migration went back to an epoch long before that of the first babylonian conquests in the west; the canaanitish migration may have been coeval with the latter event. next came the hittites, to whom the jebusites of jerusalem may have belonged; then the philistines, who seized the southern coast but a few years previously to the israelitish invasion. canaan was a land of many races and many peoples, who had taken shelter in its highlands, or had found their further progress barred by the sea. small as it was, it was the link between asia and africa, the battle-ground of the great kingdoms which arose on the euphrates and the nile. it formed, in fact, the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the mixture of races within it was due in great measure to its central position. the culture of babylonia and egypt met there and coalesced. [footnote : numb. xiii. .] [footnote : chr. ii. ; jer. xxxv. - .] [footnote : sam. xxx. .] [footnote : deut. xxiii .] chapter iii the nations of the south-east israel was cut in two by the jordan. the districts east of the jordan were those that had first been conquered; it was from thence that the followers of joshua had gone forth to possess themselves of canaan. but this division of the territory was a source of weakness. the interests of the tribes on the two sides of the river were never quite the same; at times indeed they were violently antagonistic. when the disruption of the monarchy came after the death of solomon, judah was the stronger for the fact that the eastern tribes followed those of the north. the eastern tribes were the first to lose their independence; they were carried into assyrian captivity twelve years before the fall of samaria itself. the eastern side of jordan, in fact, belonged of right to the kinsfolk of the israelites, the children of lot. ammon and moab derived their origin from the nephew of abraham, not from the patriarch himself, the ancestor of ammon being ben-ammi, "the son of ammi," the national god of the race. it was said that the two peoples were the offspring of incest, and the cave was pointed out where they had been born. ammon occupied the country to the north which in earlier days had been the home of the aboriginal zuzini or zamzummim. but they had been treated as the canaanites were treated by the israelites in later days; their cities were captured by the invading ammonites, and they themselves massacred or absorbed into the conquerors. to the north the territory of ammon was bounded by the plateau of bashan and the aramaic kingdoms of gilead. southward it extended towards the frontier of moab, if indeed the borders of the two nations did not at one time coincide. when the israelitish invasion, however, took place, the amorites under sihon had thrust themselves between, and had carved for themselves a kingdom out of the northern half of moab. the land north of the arnon became amorite; but the ammonite frontier was too well defended to be broken through. the kingdom of ammon maintained itself down to the time of david. at one time, in the days of the judges, the ammonites had made the israelitish tribes on the eastern side of the jordan tributary to them, and had even crossed the river and raided the highlands of ephraim. under saul, ammon and israel were at constant feud. saul had begun his reign by rescuing jabesh in gilead from the ammonite king nahash, who had threatened to treat its inhabitants with innate semitic barbarity. when civil war broke out in israel, nahash naturally befriended david, and the alliance continued after david's accession to the throne. common interests brought them together. esh-baal, the successor of saul in gilead, was the enemy of both: his frontier adjoined that of ammon, while between him and the king of judah there was perpetual war. david had strengthened himself by marrying the daughter of the king of the aramaic district of geshur, which bounded gilead on the north, and ammonites and aramæans were in close alliance with each other. as long as nahash lived, there was peace between him and david. but with the accession of his son hanun came a change. the king of judah had become king of israel, and his general, joab, had subdued the neighbouring kingdom of moab, and was looking out for a fresh field of fame. hanun determined to forestall the war which he believed to be inevitable, and, in alliance with the aramæans, to crush the rising power of david. family quarrels also probably conspired to bring about this resolution. in the after days of absalom's rebellion we find david entertained in gilead by shobi the brother of hanun;[ ] it may be, therefore, that hanun had had a rival in his brother, who had received shelter and protection at david's court. at all events the israelitish ambassadors were grossly insulted, and a long war with ammon began. campaign followed upon campaign; the city of waters, rabbah, the "capital" of ammon, was closely invested, and the aramaic allies of hanun were put to flight. rabbah fell at last; its defenders were tortured and slain, and the kingdom of ammon annexed to the israelitish empire. when it recovered its independence we do not know. in the days of assyrian conquest in the west it was already again governed by its own kings. one of them, baasha, the son of rehob, was, like ahab of samaria, an ally of damascus against the assyrian invader, and we hear of two others, one of whom bears the same name as "shinab, king of admah." the storm of babylonian conquest which overwhelmed judah spared ammon; after the destruction of jerusalem baalis was still king of the ammonites, and ready to extend his power over the desolated fields of judah.[ ] the language of ammon, if we may argue from the proper names, was, like that of moab, a mere dialectal variety of that of israel. the "language of canaan" must have been adopted by the ammonites and moabites just as it was by the israelitish tribes. the moabite stone has proved this conclusively. moabite and ammonite, phoenician and hebrew, were all alike dialects of one language, which differed from one another merely as one english dialect differs from another. hebrew had retained a few "arabisms," a few traces of its ancient contact with arabic-speaking tribes; that was all. in other respects it was the same as "the language of canaan" on either side of the jordan. the ammonites believed themselves to be the children of the national god ammi. but ammi was usually worshipped under the title of malcham or milcom, "the king." it was to milcom that solomon erected an altar at jerusalem, in honour of that ammonite wife whose son rehoboam succeeded him on the throne, and it was from the head of his image at kabbah that his crown of gold and precious stones, pounds in weight, was removed to grace the triumph of david.[ ] moab was more exposed to the inroads of its nomadic neighbours from the wilderness than its sister-kingdom of ammon. it lay along the eastern shores of the dead sea, and was a land of lofty mountains and fertile river-plains. its wadis were coveted by the tribes of the desert; the well-watered valley of the arnon attracted more powerful foes. when the israelites encamped in "the plain of moab," balak, the moabite king, sent in terror to balaam, the seer of pethor. he had indeed cause for alarm. the amorites had already robbed him of the fairest portion of his dominions; moab north of the arnon had fallen into their hands. the amorite song of triumph has been preserved in the book of numbers. "come unto heshbon," it said; "let the city of sihon be built and fortified. for a fire has gone forth from heshbon, a flame from the city of sihon; it hath consumed ar of moab, and the baalim of the high-places of arnon. woe to thee, moab! thou art undone, o people of chemosh: [chemosh] hath given his sons that escaped [the battle], and his daughters, into captivity unto sihon, king of the amorites."[ ] moab was avenged by israel. the amorites were crushed by the israelitish forces, though the lands they had taken from moab were not restored to their original owners. the conquerors settled in them, and a mixed israelitish and moabite population was the result. the moabites, in fact, were powerless to resist. the southern portion of the kingdom had been overrun by midianite hordes; the enemy with whom the israelites had to contend on moabite soil was midianite and not moabite. those who corrupted israel on the high-place of peor were midianites in race. the midianites seem to have continued in occupation of moabite territory for several generations. reuben was enabled to pasture his flocks in peace in its valleys, and it is probable that it was not till hadad, the king of edom, "smote midian in the plain of moab" that midianitish supremacy came finally to an end. it may be that gideon's success against the midianite oppressors of gilead was one of the results of their overthrow by the edomite prince. at the same time, midianitish supremacy did not mean the destruction of the moabite kingdom. moab was still governed by its own kings, tributary vassals though they were to the foreigner. one of them, eglon, made himself master of southern palestine shortly after the israelitish conquest of the country, and was murdered by the benjamite ehud. between moab and judah there was, as might be expected from their geographical position, constant intercourse. a moabitess was the ancestress of david, and it was to the court of the king of moab that david entrusted his parents when hard pressed by saul. possibly the moabite prince was not ill pleased to befriend the enemy of his own enemy, the king of israel. it had been better for the moabites, however, had david never lived to succeed saul. the conquest of the philistines by his troops was followed by the conquest of moab. the vanquished people were decimated, every second man being mercilessly slain. so thoroughly was the country subdued that it was more than a century before it ventured to break away from its israelitish master. after the disruption of solomon's heritage it fell to the share of the northern kingdom, though native kings once more sat upon its throne. now and again they revolted, to be brought back to obedience, however, when israel recovered its strength. such was the case when omri founded his dynasty at samaria; moab again became a dependency of the israelitish monarch, and its ruler was forced to pay tribute and homage to his over-lord. the tribute consisted in sheep, or rather in their skins, which were tanned by the israelites into leather, while the fleeces upon them were woven into cloth. in the time of ahab, mesha, the son of chemosh-melech, sent each year , lambs and , rams. mesha subsequently succeeded in shaking off the foreign yoke. he has left us a record of his victories, the so-called moabite stone, which was discovered among the ruins of his capital, dibon. the country north of the arnon was wrested from israelitish hands, and the king of israel, in spite of help from judah and edom, failed to recover it. moab was permanently lost to the kingdom of samaria. the assyrian texts mention some of its later rulers. one of them was shalman, who may be the spoiler of beth-arbel referred to by hosea;[ ] another was chemosh-nadab, the contemporary of hezekiah. chemosh-nadab signifies "chemosh is noble." chemosh was the national god of moab, as milcom or ammi was of ammon. like yahveh of israel, he stood alone, with no wife to share his divinity. so entirely, in fact, had the conception of a goddess vanished from the mind of the moabite, that, as we learn from the moabite stone, the babylonian istar, the ashtoreth of canaan, had been transformed into a male deity, and identified with chemosh. it was to ashtar-chemosh, mesha tells us, and not to ashtoreth, that he devoted the captive women of israel. the older population, expelled or enslaved by the conquering moabites, went by the name of emim. it is probable that they belonged to the same stock as the zamzummim or zuzim whose country had been seized by the ammonites. we may gather from the narrative in genesis that the invaders forced their way eastward and northward from the valley of the jordan and the shores of the dead sea. south of moab were the rugged and barren mountains of seir, the seat of the kingdom of edom. in prehistoric days they had been the home of the horites, whose name may denote that they were of the "white" amorite race or that they were dwellers in "caves." to the egyptians it was known as "the red land," along with the desert that stretched westward; "edom" is merely the hebrew or canaanitish translation of the egyptian title. the title was one which well befitted the red cliffs of seir. through the centre of the mountains a rift extended from the dead sea to the gulf of aqaba. in geological times it had been the channel of the jordan; now it is called the wadi el-araba. it was this rift which brought wealth to edom; through it passed the highroad of commerce which connected syria with the harbours at the head of the gulf. the spices of arabia, the gold of africa, were unshipped at elath and ezion-gaber, and carried from thence on the backs of camels to the nations of the north. the tolls levied on the merchandise made the kingdom of edom wealthy, and at the same time an object of envy to its poorer neighbours. in conquering edom, david doubtless desired to secure the trade with the red sea and the ports through which the trade passed. edom was the elder brother of israel. the two nations never forgot that they were of one blood and one parentage. their languages were the same, as we may gather from the edomite proper names; indeed, it would seem that the dialect of edom agreed with hebrew in those arabising peculiarities which marked it off from the language of the canaanites. edomites took part in the israelitish conquest of palestine, and both caleb and othniel were kenizzites by race. the edomite occupation of seir was long subsequent to the settlement of the ammonites and moabites in the regions which bore their names, though it preceded the israelitish settlement in canaan. while israel was herding its flocks in egypt, edom was establishing itself in the mountains of seir. esau, the brother of jacob, had already gathered around him a body of followers, and had married into the family of a horite chief. his descendants, partly by conquest, partly by absorption, planted themselves securely in the country which was henceforth to be called edom. horite and amalekite bedâwin were alike absorbed into the new-comers, whose position in edom resembled that of the israelites in canaan. how long the work of conquest and settlement lasted we do not know. it resulted in the formation of numerous tribes, each under its chieftain, the _alûph_ or "duke" as he was termed. these "dukes" corresponded with the "princes" of the tribes of israel. but whereas the "princes" of the israelitish tribes did not survive the life in the desert, the "dukes" of edom give way only to kings. for this there was a good reason. the invasion of canaan and the promulgation of the mosaic law changed the whole organisation of the hebrew people. on the one hand, the israelites required a leader who should lead them in the first instance against the canaanites, in the second against the foreign oppressors who enslaved them from time to time. on the other hand, the high-priests at shiloh exercised many of the functions which would naturally have belonged to the head of the tribe. neither "judge" nor high-priest was needed in edom. there the native population was weak and uncivilised; it possessed neither cities nor chariots of iron, and its subjugation was no difficult task. once in possession of the fastnesses of seir, the edomites were comparatively safe from external attack. it was a land of dangerous defiles and barren mountains, surrounded on all sides by the desert. there was no central sanctuary, no levitical priesthood, no mosaic law. the "duke" consequently had no rival; the history of edom knows nothing of judges or high-priests. the law of evolution, however, which governed other semitic communities prevailed also in edom. the dukes had to give place to a king. the tribes were united under a single leader, and the loosely federated clans became a kingdom. as in israel, so too in edom the kingdom was elective. but, unlike israel, it remained elective; there was no pressure of philistine conquest, no commanding genius like david, no central capital like jerusalem to make it centralised and hereditary. several generations had to pass before the edomites were called upon to fight for their independence against a foreign invader, and when they did so the struggle ended in their subjugation. the elective principle and the want of a common centre and feeling of unity that resulted from it had much to do with the victory of david. the song of triumph with which the israelitish fugitives celebrated the overthrow of their egyptian enemies mentions the _alûphím_ or "dukes" of edom. but before the israelites had emerged from the wilderness the dukes had been supplanted by a king. it was a king who refused a passage through his dominions to moses and his followers, and in this king some scholars have seen the aramæan seer balaam the son of beor. at all events, the first edomite king is said to have been bela or balaam the son of beor, and the name of the city of din-habah, from which he came, has a close resemblance to that of dunip in northern syria. a list of the kings of edom is given in the thirty-sixth chapter of genesis, extracted from the state annals of the country. it seems to be brought down to the time when saul was elected king over israel. the chronicles of edom were probably taken to jerusalem at the time of its conquest by david; at any rate, they would then have become accessible to an israelitish writer. the conquest was very thorough, all the male population being put to the sword, and a few only escaping to egypt. among these was a member of the royal house, hadad by name, who grew up at the egyptian court, and, after marrying the sister-in-law of the pharaoh, returned to his native mountains, where he played the part of a bandit chief. the caravans which passed from the gulf of aqaba to the north were attacked and plundered, and solomon up to the end of his reign failed to suppress the brigands. with the disruption of the israelitish monarchy, edom, as was natural, fell to the lot of judah, and for many years was governed by a viceroy. it was not until after the death of jehoshaphat that the edomites succeeded in revolting from their masters, and in recovering their ancient independence. three of their rulers are mentioned in the assyrian inscriptions, from which we learn that there was a city of edom, as well as a country of that name. of the religion of the edomites we know but little. the supreme baal was the sun-god hadad; another god worshipped by them was qaus or kos. of goddesses we hear nothing. the israelites, however, recognised in the edomites brethren of their own, whose religion was not far removed from that of the descendants of jacob. an edomite of the third generation could enter "into the congregation of the lord," and we hear of no rival deity in edom to yahveh of israel. indeed, in the old poetry of israel yahveh was said to have risen up "from seir," and the charge brought against edom by the prophet obadiah is not that of idolatry or the worship of a "strange god," but of standing on the side of the "foreigners" on the day that jerusalem was destroyed. the southern part of edom was known as teman; it was to the east of teman that the kadmonites or "children of the east" pitched their tents. we first hear of them in an egyptian papyrus of the age of the twelfth dynasty (b.c. ). then they received with hospitality a political fugitive from egypt; he married one of their princesses and became one of their chiefs. their wisdom was celebrated in palestine like that of their edomite neighbours of teman, and the highest praise that could be bestowed on solomon was that his "wisdom excelled all the wisdom of the children of the east." not far from the camping-places of the kadmonites was the land of uz, famous as the home of job. uz, in fact, was a province of edom; edomite colonists, so we are told in the book of lamentations,[ ] inhabited it. indeed, it has been suggested that the difficulties presented by the language of the book of job are due to the fact that it is the language of edom rather than of the jews, differing from the latter only as an english dialect may differ from that of a neighbouring county. at all events, job was as much a hero of hebrew as of edomite tradition, while the last chapter of the book of proverbs contains the wise sayings of a king whose territory adjoined the land of edom. lemuel, according to the hebrew text, which is mistranslated in the authorised version, ruled over massa, and massa, the mash of genesis, is described in the assyrian inscriptions as that part of northern arabia which spread eastward from edom. the hebrew of palestine doubtless included it in the country of "the children of the east." the larger part of northern arabia, however, was the home of the ishmaelites. they lived, it is said, "from havilah unto shur," like the amalekites or bedâwin. but whereas the amalekites were the wild, untamable natives of the desert, the ishmaelites came of a cultured ancestry, half babylonian, half egyptian, and the traditions of it were never forgotten. they lived a settled life in fenced villages and fortified castles, as their descendants still do to-day. like the israelites, they were divided into twelve tribes, the eldest and most important of which were the nabatheans, who spread from the frontiers of babylonia to petra in the far west. kedar was another powerful tribe; in the days of the later assyrian empire its kings contended in battle with the armies of nineveh. the name of ishmael is met with in babylonian contracts of the age of abraham. it is a name which belongs to canaan rather than to babylonia or arabia. the ishmaelite tribes, in fact, spoke dialects in which canaanitish and arabic elements were mingled together. they are the dialects we term aramaic, and represent a mixture of arabic with canaanitish or hebrew. as we go northwards into syria the canaanitish element predominates; southward the arabic element is the more pronounced. the ishmaelites were merchants and traders. they lived on the caravan-road which brought the spices of southern arabia to canaan and egypt, and the trade was largely in their hands. in the history of joseph we hear of them carrying the balm of gilead and the myrrh of the south on their camels to egypt, and in the second century before the christian era the merchant princes of petra made their capital one of the wealthiest of oriental cities. it was not until a.d. that the nabathean state was conquered by rome, and the ishmaelites of northern arabia transformed into roman subjects. they have left their tombs and inscriptions among the rocks of petra, while the cliffs of the sinaitic peninsula are covered with the scrawls of nabathean travellers. southward of the ishmaelites came the midianites. midianites and ishmaelites were alike of the same blood. both traced their descent from abraham; it was only on the side of the mother that their origin was different. while the ishmaelites claimed connection with egypt, the midianites were more purely arabic in race. the name of keturah their ancestress means "incense," and points to the incense-bearing lands of the south. midian was properly the district which stretched along the western coast of the gulf of aqaba towards mecca, if not towards yemen. but midianite tribes had also pushed northwards and mingled with the descendants of ishmael. "ishmaelites" and "midianites" seem convertible terms in the story of joseph, and the midianites who swarmed into the north of israel in the days of gideon, along with the amalekites and "the children of the east," must have been as much ishmaelite as midianite in descent. between the midianites and the israelitish fugitives from egypt there had been close affinity. moses had found a refuge in midian, and his wife and children were midianite in race. his father-in-law, "the priest of midian," had visited him under the shadow of sinai, and had given him his first lessons in political organisation. a midianite remained to guide the israelites through the wilderness, and the kenites, who took part with the tribe of judah in the conquest of canaan, appear to have migrated from midian. it was not until just before the invasion of palestine that the old bonds of friendship and mixture between israel and midian were broken asunder. midianite hosts had overrun the land of moab as at a later time they overran the land of israel, and the israelites had forsaken yahveh for the worship of the midianite baal-peor. this was the result of intermarriage; the israelites had taken midianite wives and conformed to the licentious rites of a midianite god. israel, however, was saved by its levite priests. they rallied round yahveh and moses, and in the struggle that ensued the forces on the side of the national god proved the stronger. the midianitish faction was annihilated, its leaders put to death, and the midianites themselves attacked and despoiled. among the slain was the seer of pethor, balaam the son of beor. the moabites must have hailed the israelites as saviours. they had delivered them from their two assailants, the amorites on the north, the midianites on the east. but the midianite power was broken only for a time. we hear at a subsequent date of the edomite king hadad "who smote midian in the field of moab," and a time came when midianite shêkhs overran gilead, and penetrated into the valleys and villages of manasseh on the western side of the jordan. after their defeat by gideon, however, we hear of them no more. they passed out of the israelitish horizon; henceforth their raiding bands never approached the frontiers of israel. the land of midian alone is mentioned as adjoining edom; the midianites who had traversed the desert and carried terror to the inhabitants of canaan become merely a name. midian was originally governed by high-priests. this was the case among other semitic peoples as well. in assyria the kings were preceded by the high-priests of assur, and recently-discovered inscriptions show that in southern arabia, in the land of sheba, the high-priest came before the king. jethro, "the priest of midian," represented a peculiarly arabian institution. the name of "arab" was applied to certain tribes only of northern arabia. we hear of them in the old testament as well as in the assyrian inscriptions. in the old testament the name seems to include the ishmaelite clans to the east of edom. their "kings," it is said, brought tribute to solomon; a colony of them was established at gur-baal in the south of judah. we learn from the assyrian texts that they could be governed by queens; two of their queens indeed are mentioned by name. it was also a "queen of the south," it will be remembered, who came to hear the wisdom of solomon. sheba, the saba of classical antiquity, was an important kingdom of south-western arabia, which had grown wealthy through its trade in spicery. from time immemorial egypt had imported frankincense from the southern coasts of the arabian peninsula, and the precious spices had been carried by merchants to the far north. the caravan-road of trade ran northward to midian and edom, touching on the one side on the frontier of egypt, on the other on that of palestine. the road and the country through which it passed were in the hands of the south arabian kings. their inscriptions have been discovered at teima, the tema of the old testament, not far inland from el-wej, and in the days of tiglath-pileser the kings of saba claimed rule as far as the euphrates. it was no strange thing, therefore, for a queen of sheba to have heard of the power of solomon, or to have sought alliance with so wealthy and luxurious a neighbour. his province of edom adjoined her own possessions; his ports on the gulf of aqaba were open to her merchants, and the frankincense which grew in her dominions was needed for the temple at jerusalem. the people of sheba belonged to the south arabian stock. in both blood and language they differed considerably from the semites of the north. physically they bore some resemblance to the egyptians, and it has been suggested that the egyptians were originally emigrants from their shores. they lived in lofty castles, and terraced the slopes of the mountains for the purpose of cultivation, as they still do to-day. civilisation among them was old; it was derived, at least in part, from babylonia, and the dynasty which reigned over babylon in the age of abraham was of south arabian descent. some of them crossed the red sea and founded colonies in africa, in the modern abyssinia, where they built cities and introduced the culture of their former homes. like the egyptians and the babylonians, they were a literary people; their inscriptions are still scattered thickly among the ruins of their towns, written in the letters of the alphabet which is usually termed phoenician. but it is becoming a question whether it was not from south arabia that phoenicia first borrowed it, and whether it would not be more truthfully called arabian. the religion of southern arabia was highly polytheistic. each district and tribe had its special god or gods, and the goddesses were almost as numerous as the gods. along with babylonian culture had come the adoption of several babylonian divinities;--sin, the moon-god, for instance, or atthar, the ashtoreth of canaan. how far westward the worship of sin was carried may be judged from the fact that sinai, the sacred mountain whereon the law of israel was promulgated, took its name from that of the old babylonian god. in the tenth chapter of genesis sheba is one of the sons of joktan, the ancestor of the south arabian tribes. foremost among them is hazarmaveth, the hadhramaut of to-day; another is ophir, the port to which the gold of africa was brought. but the same chapter also assigns to sheba a different origin. it couples him with dedan, and sees in him a descendant of ham, a kinsman of egypt and canaan. both genealogies are right. they are geographical, not ethnic, and denote, in accordance with semitic idiom, the geographical relationships of the races and nations of the ancient world. sheba belonged not only to south arabia but to northern arabia as well. the rule of the sabæan princes extended to the borders of egypt and canaan, and sheba was the brother of hazarmaveth and of dedan alike. for dedan was a north arabian tribe, whose home was near tema, and whose name may have had a connection with that sometimes given by the babylonians to the whole of the west. such, then, was arabia in the days of the hebrew writers. the south was occupied by a cultured population, whose rule, at all events after the time of solomon, was acknowledged throughout the peninsula. the people of the north and the centre differed from this population in both race and language, though all alike belonged to the same semitic stock. the midianites on the western coast perhaps partook of the characteristics of both. but the ishmaelites were wholly northern; they were the kinsmen of the edomites and israelites, and their language was that aramaic which represents a mixture of arabic and canaanitish elements. wandering tribes of savage bedâwin pitched their tents in the desert, or robbed their more settled neighbours, as they do to-day; these were the amalekites of the old testament, who were believed to be the first created of mankind, and the aboriginal inhabitants of arabia. apart from them, however, the peninsula was the seat of a considerable culture. the culture had spread from the spice-bearing lands of the south, where it had been in contact with the civilisations of babylonia on the one side and of egypt on the other, and where wealthy and prosperous kingdoms had arisen, and powerful dynasties of kings had held sway. it is to arabia, in all probability, that we must look for the origin of the alphabet--in itself a proof of the culture of those who used it; and it was from arabia that babylonia received that line of monarchs which first made babylon a capital, and was ruling there in the days of abraham. we must cease to regard arabia as a land of deserts and barbarism; it was, on the contrary, a trading centre of the ancient world, and the moslems who went forth from it to conquer christendom and found empires, were but the successors of those who, in earlier times, had exercised a profound influence upon the destinies of the east. [footnote : sam. xvii. .] [footnote : jer. xl. .] [footnote : rehoboam is an ammonite name, compounded with that of the god am or ammi. rehob, which is the first element in it, was also an ammonite name, as we learn from the assyrian inscriptions.] [footnote : numb. xxi. - .] [footnote : x. .] [footnote : iv. .] chapter iv the nations of the north-east canaan is but the southern continuation of syria, which shades off, as it were, into the waterless wilderness. the name of syria is usually supposed to be an abbreviation of assyria, but it is more probable that it comes from suri, the name by which the babylonians denoted mesopotamia and syria of the north, and in which assyria itself was sometimes included. as we have seen, the syria of our own maps, and more especially the southern half of it, was commonly known to the babylonians as the land of the amorites; in the later inscriptions of assyria the place of the amorites is taken by the hittites. when assyria appeared upon the scene of history the hittites had become the dominant people in the west. the main part of the population of syria and mesopotamia was aramæan--that is to say, it consisted of semites from arabia who spoke aramaic dialects. but it was exposed to constant attacks from the north, and from time to time passed under the yoke of a northern conqueror. at one time it was the hittites who poured down the slopes of mount taurus and occupied the fertile plains and cities of northern syria. at another time a kindred people from the highlands of armenia established a kingdom in mesopotamia known as that of mitanni to its own subjects, as that of aram-naharaim to the hebrews. the northern invaders sundered the semites of the west from those of the east. the kings of mitanni held guard over the fords of the euphrates, and intrigued in palestine against the egyptian pharaohs. but this did not prevent them from marrying into the pharaoh's family, while their daughters were sent to the harem of the egyptian king. towards the end of the eighteenth dynasty the sacred blood of the pharaohs became contaminated by these foreign alliances. for two generations in succession the queen-mother was a mitannian princess, and a king finally sat upon the pharaohs' throne who attempted to supplant the religion of which he was the official head by a foreign cult, and thereby brought about the fall of his house and empire. the power of mitanni or aram-naharaim--aram of the two rivers--does not seem to have long survived this event. chushan-rishathaim, we learn from the book of judges, held palestine in subjection for eight years, until he was driven out by the kenizzite othniel, and about the same time ramses iii. of egypt records his victory over the mesopotamian king. after this we hear no more of a king of aram-naharaim in canaan or on the frontier of egypt, and when the name of mitanni is met with a little later in the assyrian inscriptions it is that of a small and insignificant state. the hittites had grown at the expense of mitanni, but their glory too was of no long duration. in the days of ramses ii., the pharaoh of the oppression, their power was at its height. from their southern capital at kadesh on the orontes their armies had gone forth to contend on equal terms with the forces of the nile, and after twenty-one years of warfare, peace was made between the two combatants, neither side having gained an advantage in the long struggle. the text of the treaty is engraved on the walls of karnak. there we may read how the two rivals swore henceforth to be friends and allies, how the existing boundaries of their respective territories in syria were to remain unchanged for ever, and how a general amnesty was to be granted to the political fugitives on either side. it was only the criminal to whom the right of asylum in the dominions of the other was denied. in the war they had waged with egypt the hittite princes of kadesh had summoned their vassal allies from the distant coasts of asia minor. lycians and dardanians had come from the far west; and were joined by the troops of aram-naharaim from the east. the extension of hittite supremacy to the shores of the Ægean sea is testified by the monuments it has left behind. hittite inscriptions have been found near smyrna engraved on the rocks, as well as the figures of hittite warriors guarding the westernmost pass of the ancient road. the summer residences of the hittite princes were on the eastern bank of the halys. here the roads of asia minor converged, and here we still see the sculptured bas-reliefs of a hittite palace and long rows of hittite deities. the hittite empire broke up into a multitude of small principalities. of these carchemish, now jerablûs, on the euphrates, was perhaps the most important. it commanded the ford across the river, and the high-road of commerce from east to west. its merchants grew rich, and "the mina of carchemish" became a standard of value in the ancient world. its capture by sargon destroyed a rival of assyrian trade, and opened the road to the mediterranean to the armies of assyria. the decay of the hittite and mitannian power meant the revival of the older aramæan population of the country. the foreigner was expelled or absorbed; syria and mesopotamia became more and more semitic. aramæan kingdoms arose on all sides, and a feeling of common kinship and interests arose among them at the same time. to the north of the gulf of antioch, in the very heart of the hittite territory, german excavators have lately found the earliest known monuments of aramæan art. the art, as is natural, is based on that of their hittite predecessors; even the inscriptions in the alphabet of phoenicia are cut in relief like the older hieroglyphs of the hittites. but they prove that the triumph of the aramæan was complete. the foreigner and his works were swept away; no trace has been discovered of a hittite text, barely even of a hittite name. the gods are all semitic--hadad the sun-god and shahr the moon-god, the baal of harran, and rekeb-el, "the chariot of god." hittite inscriptions have been found at hamath on the orontes. but they must belong to a period earlier than that of david. the rulers of hamath who made alliance with david bear semitic names. the crown-prince came himself to jerusalem, bringing with him costly vessels of gold and silver and bronze. his name was hadoram, "hadad is exalted;" but out of compliment to the israelitish king, the name of hadad was changed into that of the god of israel, and he became known to history as joram. a common enmity united hamath and israel. the war with ammon had brought david into conflict with zobah, an aramaic kingdom which under hadad-ezer was aiming at the conquest of the whole of syria. in the reign of saul, zobah was divided into a number of separate clans or states; these had been welded together by hadad-ezer, who had added to his empire the smaller aramaic principalities of central syria. geshur, maachah, damascus all acknowledged his authority. he had secured the caravan-road which led across the desert, past the future palmyra, to the euphrates, and eastward of that river the aramæan states sent him help in war. like the pharaohs of a former generation, he had erected a monument of his victory on the banks of the great river, marking the farthest limit of his dominions. hamath was threatened by the growing power of hadad-ezer, when a new force entered the field. joab, the commander of the israelitish army, was a consummate general, and the veterans he led had been trained to conquer. ammon was easily crushed, and while its capital was closely invested the israelitish troops fell upon the aramæans in campaign after campaign. victory followed victory; the forces of zobah and its allies were annihilated, and the aramæan states as far as hamath and even the euphrates became the tributaries of david. wealth flowed into the royal treasury at jerusalem; the cities of northern syria were plundered of their bronze, and the yearly tribute of the subject states, as well as the proceeds of the desert trade, yielded an unfailing revenue to the conqueror. the attempt of hadad-ezer to found an aramæan empire had failed. but the empire of david was hardly longer lived. the murder of joab, and the unwarlike character and extravagance of solomon, brought about its downfall. damascus revolted under rezon; and though in the war that ensued solomon succeeded in keeping the cities of zobah which kept guard over the caravan road, it never returned to israelitish rule. when the disruption of the israelitish kingdom came after solomon's death, the aramæans rallied round the successors of rezon. damascus increased in strength, and at times laid northern israel under tribute. between the two kingdoms there was indeed constant intercourse, sometimes peaceful, sometimes hostile. syrian merchants had bazaars in samaria, where they could buy and sell, undisturbed by tolls and exactions, and israelitish traders had similar quarters assigned to them by treaty in damascus. "damask couches" were already famous, and ahab sent a contingent of , men and chariots to the help of ben-hadad ii. in his war against assyria. this ben-hadad is called hadad-idri or hadad-ezer in the assyrian texts; ben-hadad, in fact, was a god, who was worshipped by the syrians by the side of his father hadad. in the struggle with assyria the aramæan forces were led by hamath. most of the states of western asia contributed troops; even the "arabs" took part in the conflict. but the confederates were overthrown with great slaughter at karkar on the orontes in b.c. , and immediately afterwards we find ahab at war with his late ally. hadad-idri lived only a few years longer. in b.c. he was murdered by hazael, who seized the throne. but hazael, like his predecessor, was soon called upon to face an assyrian army. year after year the assyrians invaded the territories of damascus, and though they never succeeded in capturing the capital, the country was devastated, and a countless amount of booty carried away. the syrian kingdom was utterly exhausted, and in no condition to resist the attacks of the israelitish kings jehoash and jeroboam ii. jehoash, we are told, gained three victories over his hereditary enemy, while jeroboam occupied its cities. when an assyrian army once more appeared at the gates of damascus in b.c. , its king mariha was glad to purchase peace by rich presents and the offer of homage. gold and silver, bronze and iron in large quantities were yielded up to the conqueror, and damascus for a while was the vassal of nineveh. but a respite was granted it in which to recover its strength. civil war sapped the strength of the kingdom of israel, and assyria fell into decay. freed from its enemies, damascus again amassed wealth through the trade across the desert, and was recognised as the head of the smaller aramæan states. in conjunction with the israelitish king pekah, rezon ii. proposed to overthrow judah and supplant the davidic dynasty by a syrian vassal-prince. the fall of judah would have meant the fall also of edom and the submission of the philistines, as well as that of moab and ammon. the strength of its capital made judah the champion and protector of southern canaan; with jerusalem in their hands, the confederate rulers of damascus and samaria could do as they chose. ahaz of judah turned in his despair to the assyrians, who had once more appeared on the scene. tiglath-pileser iii. had overthrown the older assyrian dynasty and put new life into the kingdom. in the interests of the merchants of nineveh he aimed at incorporating the whole of western asia and its commerce into his empire, and the appeal of ahaz gave him an excuse for interfering in the affairs of palestine. ahaz became his vassal; pekah was put to death, and an assyrian nominee made king in his place, while rezon was shut up in his capital and closely besieged. for two years the siege continued; then damascus was taken, its last king slain, and its territory placed under an assyrian satrap. hamath had already fallen. a portion of its population had been transported to the north, and their places filled with settlers from babylonia. its king had become an assyrian vassal, who along with the other subject princes of asia attended the court held by tiglath-pileser at damascus after its capture, there to pay homage to the conqueror and swell his triumph. a few years later, on the accession of sargon, hamath made a final effort to recover its freedom. but the effort was ruthlessly crushed, and henceforward the last of the aramæan kingdoms was made an assyrian province. when an aramæan tribe again played a part in history it was in the far south, among the rocky cliffs of petra and the desert fortress of the nabathean merchants. in the book of genesis, mesopotamia, the country between the euphrates and tigris, is called not only aram-naharaim, "aram of the two rivers," but also padan-aram, "the acre of aram." padan, as we learn from the assyrian inscriptions, originally signified as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough; then it came to denote the "cultivated land" or "acre" itself. the word still survives in modern arabic. in the egypt of to-day land is measured by _feddans_, the _feddan_ (or _paddmi_) being the equivalent of our acre. _paddan_ was used in the same sense in the babylonia of the age of abraham. numerous contracts have been found for the lease or sale of estates in which the "acreage" or number of _paddani_ is carefully stated. the application of the name to the plain of mesopotamia was doubtless clue to the babylonians. an early babylonian king claims rule over the "land of padan," and elsewhere we are told that it lay in front of the country of the arman or aramæans. it was in western padan that the kingdom of mitanni was established. its founders, as we have seen, came from the north. from the river halys in asia minor to lake urumiyeh, east of armenia, there was a multitude of tribes, most of whom seem to have belonged to the same race and to have spoken dialects of the same language. the hittites of cappadocia and the ranges of the taurus have already been described. east of them came the meshech and tubal of the bible as well as the kingdom of comagênê, of which we often hear in the assyrian texts. but of all these northern populations the most important--at all events in the later old testament age--were the inhabitants of a country called biainas, but to which its neighbours gave the name of ararat. ararat corresponded to southern armenia, biainas being the modern van, and the mount ararat of modern geography lying considerably to the north of it. in the ninth century before our era a powerful dynasty arose at van, which extended its conquests far and wide, and at one time threatened to destroy even the assyrian empire. it signalised its accession to power by borrowing the cuneiform writing of nineveh, and numerous inscriptions exist recording the names and victories of its sovereigns, the buildings they erected, and the gods they served. the language of the inscriptions is strange and peculiar; it seems to be distantly related to modern georgian, and may be akin to the dialects of the hittites or of mitanni. if we may trust the representations of the assyrian artists, the people of ararat did not all belong to the same race. two ethnic types have been handed down to us--one with beardless faces, resembling that of the hittites, the other of a people with high fore-heads, curved and pointed noses, thin lips, and well-formed chin. both, however, wear the same dress. on the head is a crested helmet like that of the greeks, on the feet the hittite boot with upturned end; the body is clad in a tunic which reaches to the knee, and a small round target is used in battle. for many centuries the semites and the people of the north contended for the possession of the syrian plains. horde after horde descended from the northern mountains, capturing the aramæan cities and setting up kingdoms in their midst. at one time it seemed as if the semites of the east and west were to be permanently sundered from one another. the decay of babylonia and egypt enabled the mitannians and hittites to establish themselves in mesopotamia and syria, and to gain possession of the fords of the euphrates and the great lines of trade. but the northerner was not suited by nature for the hot and enervating climate of the south. his force diminished, his numbers lessened, and the subjugated semite increased in strength. mitanni perished like the hittite empire, and with the rise of the second assyrian empire the intruding nations of the north found themselves compelled to struggle for bare existence. ararat had become the leader among them, and in the latter days of the older assyrian dynasty had wrested territory from the assyrians themselves, and had imposed its dominion from the borders of cappadocia to the shores of lake urumiyeh. but on a sudden all was changed. tiglath-pileser swept the land of ararat to the very gates of its capital, destroying and plundering as he went, and a war began between north and south which ended in the triumph of assyria. ararat indeed remained, though reduced to its original dimensions in the neighbourhood of lake van; but its allies in comagênê and cappadocia, in cilicia and among the hittites, were subjugated and dispersed. the tribes of meshech and tubal retreated to the coasts of the black sea, and ararat and its sister-kingdom of minni were too exhausted to withstand the invasion of a new race from new quarters of the world. the aryan kimmerians from russia poured through them, settling on their way in minni; while other aryans from phrygia made themselves masters of ararat, which henceforth took the name of armenia. the aramæan was avenged: the invaders who in days before the exodus had already robbed him of his lands were themselves pursued to their northern retreats. the south proved to them a land of decay and destruction; gog and his host were given, "on the mountains of israel," to the vulture and the beast of prey. chapter v egypt egypt had been the bondhouse of israel. it was there that israel had grown from a family into a people, which the desert was to transform into a nation. the exodus out of egypt was the beginning of israelitish history, the era from which it dated. down to the last the kingdom of the pharaohs exercised upon it an influence more or less profound; the extravagant splendour of solomon was modelled after that of the egyptian monarchs, his merchants found their best market on the banks of the nile, and the last canaanitish city which passed into israelitish hands was the gift to him of the pharaoh. the invasion of the egyptian king prevented rehoboam from attempting to reconquer the revolted tribes, and in the days of assyrian ascendancy it was egypt that was played off against the assyrian invader by the princes and statesmen of the west. the defeat of necho at carchemish handed palestine over to the babylonians, and indirectly brought about the destruction of jerusalem; even in the age of the ptolemies egypt still influenced the history of israel, and the jews of alexandria prepared the way for the christian church. for centuries palestine was the battle-ground of the nations; but it was so because it lay between the two great powers of the ancient east, between egypt on the one side and assyria and babylonia on the other. egypt is the creation of the nile. outside the delta and the strip of land which can be watered from the river there is only desert. when the annual inundation covers the fields the land of egypt exists no more; it becomes a watery plain, out of which emerge the villages and towns and the raised banks which serve as roads. for more than miles the nile flows without an affluent; in the spring it falls so low that its channel becomes almost unnavigable; but in the late summer, its waters, swollen by the rains and melted snows of central africa, and laden with the fertilising silt of the abyssinian mountains, spread over the cultivated country, and bring fertility wherever they go. the waters of the inundation must have been confined by dykes, and made to flow where the cultivator needed them, at a very remote date. recent discoveries have thrown light on the early history of the country. we find it inhabited by at least one race, possibly of libyan origin, which for the present we must term pre-historic. its burial-places are met with in various localities in upper egypt. the members of the race were not acquainted with the use of metals, but they were expert artificers in stone and clay. stone was skilfully carved into vessels of different forms, and vases of clay were fashioned, with brightly polished surfaces. sometimes the vases were simply coloured red and black, or adorned with patterns and pictures in incised white lines; at other times, and more especially in the later tombs, they were artistically decorated with representations of men and animals, boats, and geometrical patterns in red upon a pale drab ground. the pre-historic race or races had already reached a fair level of civilisation--neolithic in type though it may have been--when a new people appeared upon the scene, bringing with them the elements of a high culture and a knowledge of working in metals. these were the pharaonic egyptians, who seem to have come from babylonia and the coasts of southern arabia. cities were built and kingdoms were founded on the banks of the nile, and the older population was forced to become the serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the nile within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works which have made the valley of the nile what it is to-day. the pharaonic egyptians are the egyptians of history. they were acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation. the gods they worshipped were beneficent deities, forms of the sun-god from whom their kings derived their descent. it was a religion which easily passed into a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it was associated with a morality which is almost christian in its character. a belief in a future world and a resurrection of the flesh formed an integral part of it; hence came the practice of embalming the body that it might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own good works, but through the intercession of the sun-god horus as well. horus was addressed as "the redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his father osiris upon his enemy set, the lord of evil, and through faith in him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. horus, however, and osiris were but forms of the same deity. horus was the sun-god when he rises in the morning; osiris the sun-god as he journeys at night through a world of darkness; and both were identical with tum, the sun-god of the evening. the gods who watched over the great cities of egypt, some of which had been the capitals of principalities, were identified with the sun-god in these his various forms. thus ptah of memphis became one with osiris; so also did ra, the sun-god of heliopolis, while in those later days when thebes rose to sovereign power its local god amon was united with ra. along with this higher and spiritual religion went--at least in historical times--a worship of sacred animals. the anomaly can be explained only by that mixture of races of which archaeology has assured us. beast-worship must have been the religion of the pre-historic inhabitants of egypt, and just as brahmanism has thrown its protection over the superstitions of the aboriginal tribes of india and identified the idols of the populace with its own gods, so too in ancient egypt a fusion of race must have brought about a fusion of ideas. the sacred animals of the older cult were associated with the deities of the new-comers; in the eyes of the upper classes they were but symbols; the lower classes continued to see in them what their fathers had seen, the gods themselves. while the pharaonic egyptian adored horus, the older race knew of horus only as a hawk. if we may trust manetho, the egyptian historian, it was not till the beginning of the second historical dynasty that the sacred animals of popular worship were received into the official cult. the pharaonic egyptian resembled in body and character the typical native of central egypt to-day. he was long-headed, with a high and intellectual forehead, straight nose, and massive lower jaw. his limbs were well-proportioned and muscular, his feet and hands were small. he belonged to the white race, but his hair and eyes were black, the hair being also straight. his artistic and intellectual faculties were highly developed, he was singularly good-tempered and light-hearted, averse to cruelty, though subject at times to fits of fanatical excitement and ferocity. at once obstinate and industrious, he never failed to carry out what he had once taken in hand. the nile valley was reclaimed for the use of man, and swamp and jungle, the home of wild beasts and venomous serpents, were turned by his labours into a fruitful paradise. by the side of the long-headed egyptian of the ruling classes we find in the age of the earlier dynasties a wholly different type, of which the famous wooden statue now in the cairo museum, and commonly known as the "shêkh el-beled," may be taken as an illustration. here the skull is round instead of long, the lips and nostrils are thick and fleshy, the expression good-humoured rather than intellectual. the type is that of a portion of the lower classes, and disappears from the monuments after the fall of the sixth dynasty. after that epoch the races which inhabited egypt were more completely fused together, and the rounded skull became rare. egyptian history begins with menes, the founder of the united monarchy, and of the first historical dynasty. our glimpses of the age that preceded him--the age of the followers of horus, as the egyptians termed it--are few and scanty. egypt was divided into several kingdoms, which were gradually unified into two only, those of the north and the south. the northern kingdom was symbolised by the snake and papyrus, the southern kingdom by the vulture and aloe. the vulture was the emblem of nekheb, the goddess of the great fortress whose ruins are now called el-kab; and it is probable that the city of nekhen, which stood opposite it on the western bank of the nile, was once the capital of the south. however this may be, when menes mounted the throne he was hereditary ruler of this, a city which adjoined the sacred burial-place of osiris at abydos, and of which girgeh is the modern successor. menes made himself master of the north, and so united all egypt under one rule. he then undertook and carried through a vast engineering work, one of the greatest the world has ever seen. the nile was turned aside out of its old channel under the libyan cliffs into a new channel to the east. the dyke which forced the river from its old course still remains, and two or three thousand years before the bed of the valley had risen to its present level the destruction of the dyke would have meant the return of the nile to its former path. north of the dyke english engineers have found that the alluvial soil bears witness to interference with the natural course of the river of a far-reaching kind, and its long straight course resembles that of a canal rather than of the naturally winding stream of the nile. on the embankment thus won from the waters menes built his capital, which bore the two names of men-nefer or memphis, "the beautiful place," and hâ-ka-ptah or Ægyptos, "the temple of the double of ptah." on the north side of it, in fact, stood the temple of ptah, the local god, the scanty remains of which are still visited by the tourist. in front of the shrine was the sacred lake across which, on days of festival, the image of the god was ferried, and which now serves as a village pond. menes was followed by six dynasties of kings, who reigned in all years. the tombs of the two first dynasties have been found at abydos. menes himself was buried on the edge of the desert near negada, about twenty miles to the north of thebes. his sepulchre was built in rectangular form, of crude bricks, and filled with numerous chambers, in the innermost and largest of which the corpse of the king was laid. then wood was heaped about the walls and the whole set on fire, so that the royal body and the objects that were buried with it were half consumed by the heat. the mode of burial was peculiar to babylonia. here, in an alluvial plain, where stone was not procurable, and where the cemeteries of the dead adjoined the houses of the living, brick was needful instead of stone, and sanitary considerations made cremation necessary. but in the desert of egypt, at the foot of rocky cliffs, such customs were out of place; their existence can be explained only by their importation from abroad. the use of seal-cylinders of babylonian pattern, and of clay as a writing material, in the age of menes and his successors, confirms the conclusion to which the mode of burial points. the culture of pharaonic egypt must have been derived from the banks of the euphrates. that menes should have been buried at negada, and not, like the rest of his dynasty, in the sacred necropolis of his mother-city, is strange. but we are told that he was slain by a hippopotamus, the egyptian symbol of a foe. it may be, therefore, that he fell fighting in battle, and that his sepulchre was erected near the scene of his death. however that may be, the other monarchs of the first two dynasties were entombed at abydos, the mode of burial was the same as in the case of menes. the objects found in the tombs of menes and his successors prove that the culture of egypt was already far advanced. the hieroglyphic system of writing was fully developed, tools and weapons of bronze were used in large quantities, the hardest stones of the red sea coast were carved into exquisitely-shaped vases, plaques of ivory were engraved with high artistic finish, and even obsidian was worked into vases by means of the lathe. as the nearest source of obsidian to egypt that is known are the islands of santorin and melos in the Ægean sea, there must have already been a maritime trade with the greek seas. art had already reached maturity; a small dog carved out of ivory and discovered in the tomb of menes is equal to the best work of later days. finally, the titles assumed by the pharaohs are already placed above the double name of the king, and the symbols employed to denote them are the same as those which continued in use down to the end of the egyptian monarchy. the first six dynasties are known to egyptologists as the old empire. kings of the fourth dynasty, khufu, khafra, and menkaura, built the great pyramids of giza, the largest of which is still one of the wonders of the world. its huge granite blocks are planed with mathematical exactitude, and, according to professor flinders petrie, have been worked by means of tubular drills fitted with the points of emeralds or some equally hard stone. it was left for the nineteenth century to re-discover the instrument when the mont cenis tunnel was half completed. the copper for the bronze tools employed by the workmen was brought from the mines of sinai, where the egyptian kings had kept an armed garrison for many generations; the tin mixed with the copper must have come from india and the malayan peninsula, or else from spain and britain. while the fifth and sixth dynasties were reigning, exploring expeditions were sent into the lands of the upper nile. the two dynasties had sprung from the island of elephantinê, opposite assuan; it was, therefore, perhaps natural that they should take an interest in the country to the south. one expedition made its way into the land of punt, to the north of abyssinia, and brought back a danga dwarf, whose tribal name still survives under the form of dongo. later expeditions explored the banks of the nile as far south as the country of the dwarfs, as well as the oases of libya. the old empire was followed by a period of decline. egypt was overrun by barbarians, its kings lost their power, and the whole land suffered decay. the pyramid tombs of the old empire were entered and despoiled; the bodies of the monarchs within them were torn to pieces, and the precious objects that had been buried with them were carried away. as the power of the kings diminished, that of the great landowners and nobles increased; a feudal aristocracy grew up, which divided egypt between its members, and treated the royal authority with only nominal respect. memphis ceased to be the capital, and a new dynasty, the ninth, was founded by the feudal prince of herakleopolis, now ahnas, south of the fayyûm. for a time the tenth dynasty succeeded in reducing its rebellious vassals to obedience, but the princes of thebes steadily grew in strength, and at length one of them seized the throne of the pharaohs and established the eleventh dynasty. thebes became the capital of the kingdom, and under the twelfth dynasty was the capital of an empire. once more egypt revived. the power of the aristocracy was broken, and the local princes became court officials. temples were built, and engineering works undertaken all over the country. the ancient temple of ra at heliopolis was restored, and two obelisks, one of which is still standing, were planted in front of it. the depression west of the nile, now known as the fayyûm, was drained of its waters, and by means of embankments transformed from a pestiferous marsh into fertile fields. the nile was brought to it by a river-like canal, and the supply of water regulated by locks. fresh exploring expeditions were sent to the somali coast and elsewhere. the gold-mines of hammamât were worked in the eastern desert, and egypt became the california or australia of the ancient world. the eastern frontier was defended against the asiatic tribes, while campaign after campaign was carried on in the south, resulting in the conquest of the sudan. the thirteenth dynasty came to an end in the midst of internal troubles. the short reigns of the kings of the dynasty that followed show that the line of the pharaohs was again becoming feeble. it closed in disaster and overthrow. hordes of invaders poured into egypt from asia and overran the whole country. they are known as the hyksos or shepherds, and the greater part of them were of semitic descent. for years they ruled the valley of the nile in three dynasties, and the recollection of their hated sway never faded from the egyptian mind. at first they burned and plundered, then they established themselves in memphis and zoan, and from thence governed the rest of the country. but they soon submitted to the influence of egyptian culture. the conquered people took their conquerors captive, and the hyksos kings became veritable pharaohs. the manners and customs, the writing and titles of the native monarchs were adopted, and, in course of time, even the language also. the court was filled with native officials, the cities and temples were restored, and egyptian learning was patronised. one of the few egyptian treatises on mathematics that have come down to us is dedicated to a hyksos sovereign. it was only in religion that the new rulers of egypt remained foreign. they continued to worship a form of the semitic baal, who was invoked under the hittite name of sutekh. an attempt to impose his worship upon the native egyptians led to the war of independence which ended in the expulsion of the stranger. apophis iii., of the seventeenth dynasty, sent messengers to skenen-ra, the prince of thebes, bidding him renounce amon of thebes for the god of his suzerain. skenen-ra resisted, and a long war followed, which, after lasting through five generations, resulted in the complete triumph of the egyptians. the hyksos were driven back into asia, and the prince of thebes was acknowledged the pharaoh of an united egypt (b.c. ). it was while the hyksos kings were reigning that abraham visited the delta. their court was held at zoan, now sân, close to the asiatic frontier, and on the frontier itself stood their fortress of avaris, which served at once to bar the way from asia and to overawe the conquered egyptians. the pharaoh of joseph was probably apophis iii. if so, the hebrew vizier would have witnessed the outbreak of the war of independence towards the close of the long reign of the hyksos king. it may be that the policy which transferred the soil of egypt from the people to the king and the priests gave its first impulse to the movement. the eighteenth dynasty founded an egyptian empire. its kings carried the war into asia, and planted the boundaries of egyptian dominion on the banks of the euphrates. thothmes iii. (b.c. - ) made canaan an egyptian province, dividing it into districts, each under a governor or a vassal prince, who was visited from time to time by a royal commissioner. carriage roads were constructed, with posting inns at intervals along them where food and lodging could be procured. the country east of the jordan equally obeyed egyptian rule. the plateau of bashan was governed by a single prefect; ammon and moab were tributary; edom alone retained its independence, thanks to its barren mountains, and inaccessible ravines. thebes, the capital of the dynasty, was adorned with splendid buildings, and all the wealth and luxury of asia was poured into it. thothmes established zoological and botanical gardens, where the strange plants, birds, and animals he had collected in his campaigns could be preserved. his immediate predecessor, queen hatshepsu, had already revived the exploring expeditions of earlier centuries. an exploring fleet had been sent by her to punt, the land of frankincense, and it returned home with rarities of all kinds, including apes and giraffes. the history of the expedition and the treasures it brought back were depicted on the walls of the temple built by the queen at dêr el-bâhari, after the design of the architect sen-mut. the authority of egypt was not extended to the euphrates only. cyprus sent tribute to the pharaoh, the coasts of asia minor, perhaps also of greece, were harried, and the sudan was conquered as far south as berber, if not khartûm. under amen-hotep iii., the grandson of thothmes iii., the empire underwent still farther extension. egyptian temples were erected on the banks of the upper nile, and napata, the future capital of ethiopia, was built at gebel barkal, beyond dongola. in asia, mitanni was the first neighbour of egypt that had maintained its independence. assyria and the mesopotamian prince of singar or shinar had paid tribute to thothmes iii.; so, too, had the hittite king, and even babylonia had been forced to acquiesce sullenly in the annexation by egypt of her old province of canaan, and to beg for gifts of gold from the egyptian mines. but mitanni was too powerful to be attacked. her royal family accordingly married into the solar race of egypt. one of her princesses was the mother of amen-hotep iii.; another was probably the mother of his son and successor, amen-hotep iv. amen-hotep iv. was one of the most remarkable monarchs that have ever sat upon a throne. his father died while he was still a boy, and he was brought up under the asiatic influences of his mother teie. but he was a philosopher by nature rather than a king. the purpose of his life was to reform the religion of egypt, to replace it, in fact, by a pantheistic monotheism, the visible symbol of which was the solar disk. for the first time in history a religious persecution was entered on; the worship of amon, the god of thebes, was proscribed, and his very name erased from the monuments. amen-hotep changed his own name to khu-n-aten, "the glory of the solar disk," and every effort was made to extirpate the state religion, of which he was himself the official head. but the ancient priesthood of thebes proved too strong for the king. he left the city of his fathers, and built a new capital farther north, where its ruins are now known as tel el-amarna. here he lived with the adherents of the new creed, and here he erected a temple to the god of his worship and a stately palace for himself. along with the reformation in religion had gone a reformation in art. the old conventionalised art of egypt was cast aside, and an attempt was made to imitate nature, exactly, even to the verge of caricature. the wall and floor paintings that have been discovered at tel el-amarna are marvels of realistic art. plants and animals and birds are alike represented in them with a spirit and faithfulness to nature which is indeed astonishing. like the houses of his followers, the palace of the king was adorned with similar frescoes. but it was also decorated with a lavish profusion of precious materials; its walls and columns were inlaid with gold and bronze and precious stones, statues almost greek in their type stood within it, and even its stuccoed floors were covered with costly paintings. roads were made in the desert eastward of the city, where its wealthier inhabitants took their morning drives, and the king occupied the earlier part of the clay in giving lectures or sermons on the articles of his faith. the archives of the empire had been transferred from thebes to the new capital. among them was the foreign correspondence, written upon clay tablets in the cuneiform characters, and (for the most part) in the language of babylonia. we have learnt from it that the babylonian language and script were the common means of intercommunication from the euphrates to the nile in the century before the exodus. it proves how long and how profound must have been the influence and rule of babylonia in western asia. throughout the civilised world of asia the educated classes were compelled to learn a foreign writing and language, and when the empire passed from babylonia to egypt, egypt itself, whose script and literature went back to immemorial times, was forced to do the same. the correspondence was active and far-reaching. there are letters in it from the kings of babylonia and assyria, of mitanni and cappadocia, as well as from the egyptian governors in canaan. even bedâwin shêkhs take part in it, and the letters are sometimes on the most trivial of subjects. it is clear that schools and libraries must have existed throughout the civilised east, where the babylonian characters could be taught and learned, and where babylonian literature and official correspondence could be stored up. among the tablets found at tel el-amarna are some fragments of babylonian literature, one of which has served as a lesson-book, and traces of dictionaries have also been discovered there. the religious reforms of khu-n-aten resulted in the fall of the dynasty and the egyptian empire. the letters from canaan, more especially those from the vassal-king of jerusalem, show that the power of egypt in asia was on the wane. the hittites were advancing from the north, mitanni and babylonia were intriguing with disaffected canaanites, and the canaanitish governors themselves were at war with one another. the pharaoh is entreated to send help speedily; if his troops do not come at once, it is reputed, they will come too late. but it would seem that the troops could not be spared at home. there, too, civil war was breaking out, and though khu-n-aten died before the end came, his sepulchre was profaned, his mummy rent to pieces, and the city he had built destroyed. the stones of the temple of his god were sent to thebes, there to be used in the service of the victorious amon; and the tombs prepared for his mother and his followers remained empty. in the national reaction against the asiatised court and religion of khu-n-aten, the canaanitish foreigners who had usurped the highest offices were either put to death or driven into exile, and a new dynasty, the nineteenth, arose, whose policy was "egypt for the egyptians." ramses i. was regarded as the founder of the nineteenth dynasty. his reign was short, and he was followed by his son seti i., who once more led his armies into asia and subdued the coast-land of syria. seti was succeeded by his son ramses ii., who died at a great age after a reign of sixty-seven years (b.c. - ), and whose mummy, like that of his father, is now in the cairo museum. he set himself to restore the asiatic empire of thothmes. but the hittites barred his way. they had established themselves at kadesh on the orontes, and a long war of twenty-one years ended at last in a treaty of peace in which the two combatants agreed to respect from henceforth the existing boundaries of egypt and kadesh. egypt was left with palestine on both sides of the jordan, a possession, however, which it lost soon after ramses' death. the treaty was cemented by the marriage of the hittite princess with the pharaoh. ramses ii. was the great builder of egypt. go where we will, we find the remains of the temples he erected or restored, of the cities he founded, and of the statues he set up. his architectural conceptions were colossal; the temple of abu-simbel, hewn out of a mountain, and the shattered image of himself at thebes, are a proof of this. but he attempted too much for the compass of a single reign, however long. much of his work is pretentious but poor, and indicative of the feverish haste with which it was executed. among the cities he built in the delta were ramses and pithom. pithom, or pa-tum, is now marked by the mounds of tel el-maskhuta, on the line of railway between ismailîa and zagazig; it lay at the eastern extremity of qoshem or goshen, in the district of succoth. like ramses, it had been built by israelitish labour, for the free-born israelites of goshen had been turned into royal serfs. none had suffered more from the revolution which overthrew the asiatised court of the eighteenth dynasty and brought in a "new king which knew not joseph." they had been settled in the strip of pasture-land which borders the freshwater canal of to-day, and is still a place of resort for the bedâwin from the east. it lay apart from the cultivated lands of the egyptian peasantry, it adjoined the desert which led to asia, and it was near the hyksos capital of zoan. meneptah, the son and successor of ramses ii., tells us that from of old it had been given by the pharaohs to the nomad shepherds of asia; and after the departure of the israelitish tribes the same king is informed in a letter from one of his officials that the deserted district had been again handed over to bedâwin from edom. this was in the eighth year of the king's reign, three years later than that in which the exodus must have taken place. for years the israelites had been "afflicted" by the egyptians. but while the eighteenth dynasty was in power their lot could not have been hard. they still remained the free herdsmen of the pharaoh, feeding their flocks and cattle on the royal demesne. during the reign of khu-n-aten, indeed, their own semitic kinsmen from canaan held the chief offices of state, and the pharaoh was endeavouring to force upon his subjects a form of monotheism which had much in common with that of israel. the language of the hymns engraved on the walls of the tombs at tel el-amarna reads not unfrequently like the verses of a hebrew psalm. the national reaction which found its expression in the rise of the eighteenth dynasty swept away the power and influence of asia, and brought back the gods and religion of egypt. the semites who had absorbed the government of the country were expelled or slain; their weaker brethren, the israelites in goshen, were enslaved. egypt became for them a house of bondage, and they had to toil under the lash of the taskmaster at the cities and temples which the pharaoh built. ramses held his court at zoan, like the hyksos of old days, but it was to keep guard over the asiatic frontier, not to be in touch with a kindred people in canaan. canaan itself was conquered afresh, and the canaanitish captives--the "mixed multitude" of the bible--assisted the israelites in erecting the monuments of their conqueror. nevertheless, the people multiplied. the memory of the hyksos invasion had not passed away, and the pharaoh and his subjects alike feared the possibility of other invaders from asia being joined by their disaffected kinsfolk in egypt itself. that their fears were justified is shown by what happened less than a century later. when the nineteenth dynasty fell in the midst of civil war, a canaanite, arisu by name, seized the throne and made himself master of egypt. ramses determined to prevent such a catastrophe by destroying as many as possible of the male children of the hebrews. the men were worn down in body and mind by constant labour, the children were not allowed to live. egyptian testimony confirms the statement of scripture that this policy was actually carried out. a hymn of victory addressed to meneptah alludes to "the israelites" to whom "no seed" had been left. but the policy was ineffectual. the opportunity came at last when the serfs could fly from their enforced labour and escape into the wilderness. it was in the fifth year of meneptah (b.c. ). egypt was threatened by formidable enemies. the libyans advanced against it by land, the nations of the greek seas attacked it by water. achæans came from the north, lycians from asia minor, sardinians and sicilians from the islands of the west. the delta was overrun by swarms of barbarians, who pitched their tents in front of belbeis at the western end of the land of goshen. plague after plague descended upon the egyptians, and the freedom of his serfs was wrung from the pharaoh. they fled by night, carrying with them the spoil they had taken from their masters, only to find that the gate of the great line of fortification which protected the eastern frontier of egypt was closed against them. meneptah had repented of his act, and a squadron of six hundred chariots was sent in pursuit of the fugitives. but a violent wind drove back the sea from the shallows at the southern extremity of the forts, and enabled the israelites to cross them. while their pursuers were following in their footsteps, the dropping of the wind caused the waters to return upon them, and chariots, horses, and men were alike overwhelmed. the israelites were saved as it were by miracle, and the pharaoh lost his bondsmen. but egypt also succeeded in repelling the storm of invasion which had fallen upon it. the libyans and their northern allies were annihilated in a decisive battle, their king, murai, fled from the field, and a countless amount of booty and prisoners fell into the hands of the victorious egyptians. canaan, however, was lost, with the exception of gaza, which defended the road from egypt, and was still garrisoned by egyptian troops. but gaza, the calais of egypt, was not destined to remain long in their power. already the coast-road was made dangerous by the attacks of philistine pirates from crete; and it was not long before the pirates took permanent possession of the southern corner of palestine, and established themselves in its five chief towns. the egyptian domination in asia had passed away for ever. after meneptah's death the nineteenth dynasty soon came to an inglorious end. civil war distracted the country, and for a time it obeyed the rule of a foreign chief. then came the rise of the twentieth dynasty, and a third ramses restored the prestige and prosperity of his kingdom. but once more the foreign invader was upon its soil. the nations of the north had again poured southward, partly by land, partly by sea, greedy for the wealth that was stored in the cultured lands of the oriental world, and eager to find new settlements for an expanding population. greek traditions spoke of the movement as a consequence of the trojan war, and delighted to dwell on the voyages of its heroes into unknown seas, of the piratical descents to which it led, and of the colonies which were planted by it. the philistine occupation of southern palestine was one of its results. as in the time of meneptah, the libyans took part with the northern tribes in the assault upon egypt, and sardinians and sicilians followed behind them. but the main bulk of the invaders came from the greek seas. the danaans take the place of the achæans, and the philistines are among their allies. the invaders had swept through western asia, plundering and destroying as they marched, and bringing in their train contingents from the countries through which they passed. hittites, mitannians, and amorites all followed with them, and the motley host of men and ships finally reached the egyptian frontier. here, however, they were met by the pharaoh. the battle raged by sea and land, and ended in a triumph of the egyptians. the invaders were utterly overthrown, their ships burned, their kings and leaders made captive. egypt was once more saved from destruction, and ramses iii. was free to develop its resources and repair the damage that had been done. first came a campaign in canaan and syria, the object of which was not to acquire territory, but to teach the asiatic that there was once more an army in egypt. the egyptian forces seem to have gone as far as hamath; at all events, they occupied southern palestine, capturing gaza, hebron, and jerusalem, and made their way across the jordan into moab. another campaign carried the egyptian troops into edom, where they burned the "tents" of the bedâwin, and for the first and last time in history planted the egyptian standard on the slopes of mount seir. ramses now turned to the internal administration of his country, and the copper-mines of sinai, like the gold-mines of the eastern desert, were worked with fresh vigour. the spoil won from the northern invaders made the pharaoh the richest monarch of the age. temples were built, and endowed with lavish generosity, and the priesthood must have grieved when he died at last after a reign of thirty-three years. he was followed by a line of feeble princes. the high-priests of amon at thebes usurped their power, and finally dispossessed the last of them of the throne. a new dynasty arose in the delta. in the south the government was practically in the hands of the theban high-priests. with a divided kingdom the strength of egypt passed away. it was restored by a foreigner, shishak i., the captain of the libyan mercenaries. the pharaoh whose daughter was married by solomon must have been the last king of the old dynasty. perhaps he sought to strengthen himself against his enemies in egypt by an alliance with his powerful neighbour. at all events, the king of israel allowed his army to march through palestine as far as gezer. the egyptians flattered themselves that they had thereby asserted their old claim to sovereignty over palestine, but the substantial gainer was the israelitish monarch. he won the last independent canaanite city without effort or expenditure, and was allowed to marry into the solar race. shishak had no need of israelitish alliances. on the contrary, solomon was connected by marriage with the dethroned dynasty, and the power of israel, if unchecked, was a menace to his own kingdom. but while solomon lived he was afraid to move. he kept at his court, however, an israelitish rebel, who might prove useful when the time came. hardly was solomon dead when jeroboam returned to his native country, and the kingdom of david was sundered in twain. shishak seized the opportunity of striking a blow at what remained of it. with contemptuous impartiality he overran the territories of both judah and the revolted tribes, but it was judah which suffered the most. the unfinished fortifications of jerusalem were stormed, the treasures accumulated by solomon carried to the nile, and the king of judah compelled to acknowledge himself the vassal of shishak. judah never recovered from the blow: had it not been for the egyptian invasion, and the consequent loss of its hoarded wealth, it might have been able to suppress the rebellion of jeroboam, and to reduce all the tribes of israel once more under one sceptre. the names of the captured cities of palestine are still to be read on the walls of the temple of karnak. shishak's successors of the twenty-second dynasty did not inherit his military vigour and skill. the central authority grew gradually weaker, and egypt again fell back into the condition from which he had rescued it. the tribes of the sûdan could no longer be hindered from attacking the enfeebled land, and ethiopian princes made their way to memphis, carrying back with them to their capital of napata the spoil and tribute of a defeated and disunited people. at last the ethiopian raids changed into permanent conquest, and a negro dynasty--the twenty-fifth--sat on the throne of menes. but the kings who belonged to it, shabaka and taharka, were vigorous, and for a short while there was peace in the valley of the nile. assyria, however, had already arisen in its strength, and was claiming the empire over western asia which had belonged to babylon in the dawn of history. the states of palestine endeavoured in vain to play off assyria against egypt. again and again the egyptian armies were defeated on the borders of canaan, and taharka was saved from invasion only by the disaster which befell sennacherib during his siege of jerusalem. but the respite was only momentary. asia at last submitted to the dominion of nineveh, the king of judah became an assyrian vassal, and esar-haddon, the successor of sennacherib, was now ready to march against the land of the nile. in b.c. he entered the delta and scattered the forces of the ethiopians. but two more campaigns were needed before the country was thoroughly subdued. at last, in june b.c. , he drove the egyptian forces before him in fifteen days from the frontier to memphis, twice defeating them with heavy loss and wounding taharka himself. three days later memphis opened its gates, and taharka fled to egypt, leaving egypt in the hands of the assyrian. it was divided among twenty satraps, most of whom were egyptians by birth. two years, however, were hardly past when it revolted, and while on the march to subdue it esar-haddon fell ill, and died on the th of marchesvan or october. but the revolt was quickly suppressed by his successor assur-bani-pal, and the twenty satrapies restored. it was not long, however, before the satraps quarrelled with one another, intrigued with taharka, and rebelled against their suzerain. headed by necho of sais, they invited the ethiopians to return; but the plot was discovered, and necho and his fellow-conspirators sent in chains to nineveh. sais, mendes, and other cities of northern egypt were sacked, and taharka, who had advanced as far as thebes and even memphis, fled to ethiopia and there died. meanwhile necho had been pardoned and loaded with honours by the assyrian king; his son, who took an assyrian name, was made satrap of athribis, near the modern benha, and the satraps of the delta henceforward remained faithful to their assyrian master. but another ethiopian prince, tuant-amon, made a last attempt to recover the dominion of his fathers. thebes received him with acclamation, and memphis was taken without difficulty. there the satrap of goshen came to pay him homage on behalf of his brother-governors in the north. his triumph, however, was short-lived. assur-bani-pal determined to inflict a terrible punishment on the rebel country, and to reduce it to subjection once for all. thebes had been the centre of disaffection; its priesthood looked with impatience on the rule of the asiatic, and were connected by religion and tradition with ethiopia; on thebes and its priesthood, therefore, the punishment had to fall. the ethiopian army retreated to nubia without striking a blow, and egypt was left defenceless at the mercy of the assyrian. the assyrian army entered thebes, the no or "city" of amon, bent on the work of destruction. its temple-strongholds were plundered and overthrown, its inhabitants carried into slavery, and two obelisks, seventy tons in weight, were sent as trophies to nineveh. the sack of thebes made a deep impression on the oriental world; we find it referred to in the prophecies of nahum (iii. ). egypt now enjoyed peace, but it was the peace of exhaustion and powerlessness. psammetikhos had succeeded his father necho, who had been put to death by tuant-amon. he was a man of vigour and ability, and he aimed at nothing less than sovereignty over an united and independent egypt. his opportunity came in b.c. . the assyrian empire was shaken to its foundations by a revolt of which babylonia was the centre and which had spread to its other provinces. for a time it was called on to struggle for bare existence. while the assyrian armies were employed elsewhere, psammetikhos shook himself free of its authority, and, with the help of greek and karian mercenaries from lydia, overcame his rival satraps and mounted the throne of the pharaohs. once more, under the twenty-sixth dynasty, egypt enjoyed rest and prosperity; the administration was re-organised, the cities and temples restored, and art underwent an antiquarian revival. psammetikhos even dreamed of recovering the old supremacy of egypt in asia; the assyrian empire was falling into decay, and egypt was endeavouring to model its life after the pattern of the past. after a long siege ashdod was taken, and the control of the road into palestine was thus secured. but the power of the twenty-sixth dynasty rested upon its greek mercenaries. the kings themselves were, it is probable, libyans by descent, and the feelings of the native priesthood towards them do not seem to have been cordial. their policy and ideas were european rather than egyptian. necho, the son and successor of psammetikhos, cleared out the old canal which united the red sea with the nile, and did all that he could to encourage trade with the mediterranean. an exploring fleet was even sent under phoenician pilots to circumnavigate africa. three years were spent on the voyage, and the ships finally returned through the straits of gibraltar to the mouths of the nile. meanwhile, the pharaoh had marched into palestine. gaza was captured, and the jewish king, josiah, slain in his attempt to bar the way of his unexpected enemy. jerusalem surrendered, and a nominee of the egyptians was placed upon its throne. the asiatic empire of the eighteenth dynasty was thus restored. but it lasted barely three years. in b.c. the egyptians were defeated by nebuchadrezzar under the walls of carchemish on the euphrates, and asia passed into the possession of the babylonians. once more palestine became a shuttlecock between the kingdoms of the nile and the euphrates. trusting to the support of egypt, zedekiah of judah revolted from his babylonian master. his policy at first seemed successful. the babylonian army which was besieging jerusalem retired on the approach of psammetikhos ii., who had succeeded his father necho, and the jewish statesmen again breathed freely. but the respite lasted for only six years. the babylonian troops returned with increased strength; the egyptians retreated to their own country, and jerusalem fell in b.c. , one year after the death of the egyptian king. his son hophra or apries had made a vain attempt to rescue zedekiah. his fleet had held the sea, while his army marched along the coast of palestine and occupied tyre and sidon. but the fall of jerusalem obliged it to retire. the dream of an asiatic empire was over, and the pharaoh had more than enough to do to defend himself against his own subjects. they saw with growing impatience that the power and wealth of the greek mercenaries continually increased. the native army had already deserted to ethiopia; now the priests complained that the revenues of the temples were sacrilegiously confiscated for the support of the foreigner. in b.c. discontent reached a head; civil war broke out between hophra and his brother-in-law ahmes or amasis, which ended in the defeat of hophra and his loss of the crown. but amasis found the greeks more indispensable than ever, and they were loaded with favours even more than before. they were moved to memphis that they might be close to the king, and at the same time overawe the native egyptians, and amasis himself married a greek wife. the invasion of egypt by nebuchadrezzar in b.c. showed that the policy of amasis had been a wise one. the babylonians were unable to penetrate beyond the eastern part of the delta; the greek troops fought too well. the limits of the babylonian empire were permanently fixed at the frontiers of palestine. that empire, however, was overthrown by cyrus, and it was easy to see that the conqueror who had proved so irresistible in asia would not allow egypt to remain at peace. amasis prepared himself accordingly for the coming storm. cyprus was occupied, and therewith the command of the sea was assured. the maritime policy of the twenty-sixth dynasty was an indication of greek influence; in older days the sea had been to the egyptian a thing abhorred. kambyses carried out the invasion which his father, cyrus, had planned. unfortunately for the egyptians, amasis died while the persian army was on its march, and the task of opposing it fell to his young and inexperienced son. the greek mercenaries fought bravely, but to no purpose: the battle of pelusium gave egypt to the invader, memphis was taken, and the pharaoh put to death. in the long struggle between asia and egypt, asia had been finally the victor. the egyptians did not submit tamely to the persian yoke. kambyses indeed seemed inclined to change himself into an egyptian pharaoh; he took up his residence at memphis and sent an expedition to conquer the sudân. but under darius and his successors, whose zoroastrian monotheism was of a sterner description, there was but little sympathy between the conquered and their conquerors. time after time the egyptians broke into revolt, once against xerxes, once again against artaxerxes i., and a third time against artaxerxes ii. the last insurrection was more successful than those which had preceded it, and egypt remained independent for sixty-five years. then the crimes and incompetence of its last native king, nektanebo ii., opened the way to the persian, and the valley of the nile once more bowed its neck under the persian yoke. its temples were ruined, the sacred apis slain, and an ass set up in mockery in its place. a few years later egypt welcomed the macedonian alexander as a deliverer, and recognised him as a god. the line of the pharaohs, the incarnations of the sun-god, had returned in him to the earth. it was not the first time that the egyptian and the greek had stood side by side against the common persian foe. greek troops had disputed the passage of kambyses into egypt. the first revolt of egypt had saved greece from the impending invasion of darius, and postponed it to the reign of his feebler son, and during its second revolt athenian ships had sailed up the nile and assisted the egyptians in the contest with the persians. if egypt could not be free, it was better that its master should be a greek. alexander was followed by the ptolemies. they were the ablest of his successors, the earlier of them being equally great in war and in peace. alexandria, founded by alexander on the site of the village of rakotis, became the commercial and literary centre of the world; thousands of books were collected in its library, and learned professors lectured in the halls of its museum. an elaborate fiscal system was devised and carefully superintended, and enormous revenues poured into the treasury of the king. as time passed on, the ptolemies identified themselves more and more with their subjects; the temples were rebuilt or restored, and the greek king assumed the attributes of a pharaoh. the jews flocked into the country, where special privileges were granted to them, and where many of them were raised to offices of state. a rival temple to that of jerusalem was built at onion near heliopolis, the modern tel el-yahudîya, or "mound of the jews," and the books of the hebrew scriptures were translated into greek. a copy of the septuagint, as the greek translation was called, was needed for the alexandrine library. egypt, once the house of bondage, thus became a second house of israel. it gave the world a new version of the hebrew bible which largely influenced the writers of the new testament; it gave it also a new canon which was adopted by the early christian church. the prophecy of isaiah was fulfilled: "the lord shall be known to egypt, and the egyptians shall know the lord." in the course of centuries, however, the monotheistic element in egyptian religion had grown clearer and more pronounced in the minds of the educated classes. the gods of the official cult ceased to be regarded as different forms of the same deity; they became mere manifestations of a single all-pervading power. as m. grébaut puts it: they were "the names received by a single being in his various attributes and workings.... as the eternal, who existed before all worlds, then as organiser of the universe, and finally as the providence who each day watches over his work, he is always the same being, reuniting in his essence all the attributes of divinity." it was the hidden god who was adored under the name whatever the latter might be, the god who is described in the texts as "without form" and "whose name is a mystery," and of whom it is said that he is the one god, "beside whom there is no other." in ptah of memphis or amon of thebes or ra of heliopolis, the more educated egyptian recognised but a name and symbol for the deity which underlay them all. along with this growth in a spiritual conception of religion went, as was natural, a growth in scepticism. there was a sceptical as well as a believing school, such as finds its expression in the festal dirge of king antef of the eleventh dynasty. here we read in canon rawnsley's versified translation-- "what is fortune? say the wise. vanished are the hearths and homes, what he does or thinks, who dies, none to tell us comes. eat and drink in peace to-day, when you go, your goods remain; he who fares the last, long way, comes not back again." a curious work of much later date that has come down to us is in the form of a discussion between an ethiopian cat and the unbelieving jackal kufi, in which the arguments of a sceptical philosophy are urged with such force and sympathy as to show that they were the author's own. but such scepticism was confined to the few; the egyptian enjoys this life too much, as a rule, to be troubled by doubts about another, and he has always been distinguished by an intensity of religious belief. with his religion there were associated ideas and beliefs some of which have a strangely christian ring. he was a believer in the resurrection of the body; hence the care that was taken from the time of the third dynasty onwards to preserve it by embalmment, and to place above the heart the scarab beetle, the symbol of evolution, which by its magical powers would cause it to beat again. hence, too, the long texts from the ritual of the dead which enabled the deceased to pass in safety through the perils that encompassed the entrance to the next world, as well as the endeavour to place the corpse where it should not be found and injured. the egyptian believed also in a messiah. thus, in a papyrus of the time of thothmes iii., we read that "a king will come from the south, ameni the truth-declaring by name.... he will assume the crown of upper egypt, and will lift up the red crown of lower egypt.... the people of the age of the son of man will rejoice, and establish his name for all eternity. they will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him. the asiatics will fall before his blows, and the libyans before his flame." even the conception of a son who is born of a virgin and a god is met with in the temples of hatshepsu at dêr el-bâhari, and of amenophis iii. at luxor. here amon-ra is said to have "gone to" the queen, "that he might be a father through her. he made her behold him in his divine form, so that she might bear a child at the sight of his divine beauty. his charms penetrated her flesh, filling it with the odours of punt." and the god is finally made to declare to her: "amen-hotep shall be the name of the son that is in thy womb. he shall grow up according to the words that proceed out of thy mouth. he shall exercise sovereignty and righteousness in this land unto its very end. my soul is in him, and he shall wear the twofold crown of royalty, ruling the two lands like the sun for ever." religious dogmas did not weaken the firm hold the egyptian had upon morality. his moral code was very high. even faith in horus the "redeemer" did not suffice by itself to ensure an entrance for the dead man into the fields of alu, the egyptian paradise. his deeds were weighed in the balance, and if they were found wanting, he was condemned to the fiery pains of hell. each man, after death, was called upon to make the "negative confession," to prove that he had not sinned against his fellows, that he had not oppressed or taken bribes, had not judged wrongfully, had not injured a slave or overtasked the poor man, had not murdered or stolen, lied or committed adultery, had not given short weight or robbed the gods and the dead, had made none to "hunger" or "weep." only when all the questions of the awful judges in the underworld had been answered satisfactorily was he allowed to pass into the presence of osiris and to cultivate the fields of alu with his own hands. this was the last trial demanded from the justified egyptian, and it was a hard one for the rich and noble who had done no peasants' work in this present life. accordingly, small images of labourers were buried with the dead, and it was supposed that their "doubles" or shadows would assist him in his labours. the supposition rested on a theory which ascribed to all things, whether animate or inanimate, a double or reflection which corresponded to the thing itself in every particular. it was like a shadow, except that it was invisible to mortal eyes, and did not perish with the object which had projected it. the "double" was called _ka_, and the _ka_ of a man was his exact representation in the other world, a spiritual representation, it is true, but nevertheless one which had the same feelings, the same needs, and the same moral nature as himself. it thus differed from the _ba_ or "soul," which flew away to the gods on the dissolution of the body. it was, in fact, the personality of the man. from the outset the pharaonic egyptians were a nation of readers and writers. nothing is more astonishing than the way in which the simplest articles of daily use are covered with inscriptions. even the rocks on the river-bank are scribbled over by the generations who once passed beside them. already in the time of menes the hieroglyphic system of writing was fully developed, and before the end of the third dynasty a "hieratic" or running hand had been formed out of it. the more cumbrous and picturesque hieroglyphics were reserved for engraving on wood or stone or metal, or for the sacred texts; the ordinary book was written in hieratic. the papyrus which grew in the marshes of the delta was the writing material, and in spite of its apparently fragile character, it has been found to last as long as paper. when its use was at last discontinued in the tenth century of our era, the cultivation of the papyrus ceased also, and it became extinct in its ancient home. tradition, however, asserted that leather had been employed by the scribe before papyrus, and in the time of pepi of the sixth dynasty a description of the plan of the temple of dendera was discovered inscribed on parchment. even in later ages leather was sometimes employed. egyptian literature covered a wide field. two of the oldest books that have come down to us are the wise sayings of qaqemna and ptah-hotep, the first of whom lived under the third, the second under the fifth dynasty. they are moral treatises like the proverbs of solomon or the discourses of confucius. ptah-hotep already laments that men were not as they had been. he had reached the age of a hundred and ten years, and had fallen upon degenerate days. perhaps he was right, for it would seem that the examination system had already been introduced for the disposal of official posts. ptah-hotep's style, too, is involved and elaborate; he writes for a _blasé_ circle of readers who can no longer appreciate simplicity. the historical novel was an egyptian invention. several of the works that have survived are examples of it. but light literature of every kind was much in fashion. a tale written for seti ii. when he was crown-prince contains an episode which closely resembles the history of joseph and potiphar's wife, and the reign of ramses ii. produced a sarcastic account of the misadventures of a tourist in canaan, the object of which was to ridicule the style and matter of another writer. poetry--heroic, lyrical, and religious--flourished, and a sort of egyptian iliad was constructed by the poet pentaur out of a deed of personal prowess on the part of ramses ii. during the war with the hittites. reference has already been made to the work on mathematics that was composed when the hyksos were ruling egypt. a century or two later a work on medicine was written, a copy of which is known as the ebers papyrus. it shows that medicine has not advanced very rapidly since the age of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty. diseases were already carefully diagnosed and treated, much as they are to-day. the medical prescriptions read like those of a modern doctor; we have the same formulæ, the same admixture of various drugs. the egyptians were not only a people of scribes and readers, they were also a people of artists. they had the same power as the japanese of expressing in a few outlines the form and spirit of an object; their drawing is accurate, and at the same time spirited. it is true that their canon of perspective was not the same as our own, but the greater difficulties it presented to the artist were successfully overcome. their portraits of foreign races are marvellously true to life, and their caricatures are as excellent as their more serious drawings. it was in statuary, however, that the egyptian artist was at his best. the hardest of stones were carved into living likenesses, or invested with a dignity and pathos which it is difficult to match. such at least was the case with the statuary of the old empire, before the conventionalised art of a later day had placed restrictions on the sculptor and stifled his originality. the great statue of king khaf-ra of the fourth dynasty, seated on his throne with the imperial hawk behind his head, is carved out of diorite, and nevertheless the sculptor has thrown an idealised divinity over the face, which we yet feel to be a speaking likeness of the man. the seated scribe in the museum of cairo, with his high forehead, sparkling eyes, and long straight hair divided in the middle, has a countenance that is the very ideal of intellectuality, and in the wooden figure of the "shêkh el-beled," we have an inimitable portrait of the sleek and wealthy _bourgeois_ as he walks about his farm. all these statues are older than the sixth dynasty. in disposition the egyptian was remarkably kindly. he was affectionate to his family, fond of society, and, alone among the nations of antiquity, humane to others. his laws aimed at saving life and reclaiming the criminal. diodoros states that punishments were inflicted not merely as a deterrent, but also with a view towards reforming the evil-doer, and wilkinson notices that at medinet habu, where the artist is depicting the great naval battle which saved egypt from the barbarians in the reign of ramses iii., he has represented egyptian soldiers rescuing the drowning crew of an enemy's ship. the pharaoh derived his title from the per-âa or "great house" in which he lived, and where he dispensed justice. the title thus resembles that of the "sublime porte." next to him, the priests were the most powerful body in the kingdom; indeed, after the close of the struggle between khu-n-aten and the priesthood of thebes the latter obtained more and more power, until under the kings of the twentieth dynasty they were the virtual rulers of the state. they stood between the labouring classes and the great army of bureaucracy which from the days of the eighteenth dynasty onward carried on the administration of the kingdom. the labouring classes, however, knew how to defend their own interests; the artisans formed unions and "went on strike." curious accounts have been preserved of strikes among them at thebes in the time of ramses iii. the free labouring population must be distinguished from the slaves, who were partly negroes, partly captives taken in war. the greater part of the latter were employed on the public works. the mines and quarries were worked by criminals. at home the well-to-do egyptian was artistic in his tastes. the walls and columns of his house were frescoed with pictures, and his furniture was at once comfortable and tasteful. chairs and tables are of patterns which might well be imitated to-day, and the smallest and commonest articles of toilet were aesthetically and carefully made. nothing can exceed the beauty of the jewellery found at dahshur, and belonging to princesses of the twelfth dynasty. precious stones are so exquisitely inlaid in gold as to look like enamel, and are formed into the most beautiful of designs; small forget-me-nots, for example, alternate with plain gold crosses on one of the coronets, and the workmanship of the pectoral ornaments could hardly be equalled at the present day. in dress, however, the egyptian was simple; his limbs were not overloaded with jewellery, and he preferred light and muslin-like linen, which was kept as scrupulously clean as his own person. but he was fond of social entertainments, and egyptian cookery and confectionery were famous throughout the world. table and guests alike were adorned with fragrant flowers, and musicians and singers were called in to complete the banquet. the house was surrounded by a garden, if possible, near the river. it was open to the air and sun. the egyptian loved the country, with its fresh air and sunshine, as well as its outdoor amusements--hunting and fishing, fowling and playing at ball. like his descendants to-day, he was an agriculturist at heart. the wealth and very existence of egypt depended on its peasantry, and though the scribes professed to despise them and to hold the literary life alone worth living, the bulk of the nation was well aware of the fact. even the walls of the tombs are covered with agricultural scenes. in one of them--that of pa-heri, at el-kab--the songs of the labourers have been preserved. thus the ploughmen sing at the plough: "'tis a fine day, we are cool, and the oxen are drawing the plough; the sky is doing as we would; let us work for our master!" and of the reapers we read: "in answering chant they say: 'tis a good day, come out to the country, the north wind blows, the sky is all we desire, let us work and take heart." the best known, however, of the songs, is that sung by the driver of the oxen who tread out the corn, which was first deciphered by champollion-- "thresh away, oxen, thresh away faster, the straw for yourselves, and the grain for your master!" such were the egyptians and such was egypt where the childhood of israel was passed. it was a land of culture, it was a land of wealth and abundance, but it was also a land of popular superstition and idolatry, and the idolatry and culture were too closely associated in the minds of the israelites to be torn apart. in turning their backs on the egyptian idols, it was necessary that they should turn them on egyptian civilisation as well. hence it was that intercourse with egypt was forbidden, and the king of israel who began by marrying an egyptian princess and importing horses from the valley of the nile, ended by building shrines to the gods of the heathen. hence, too, it was that the distinctive beliefs and practices of egypt are ignored or disallowed. even the doctrine of the resurrection is passed over in silence; the pentateuch keeps the eyes of the israelite fixed on the present life, where he will meet with his punishment or reward. the doctrine of the resurrection was part of the faith in osiris, isis, and horus, and yahveh of israel would have no other god beside himself. moreover, the israelites saw but little of the better side of the egyptians. they lived in goshen, on the outskirts of northern egypt, where the native population was largely mixed with foreign elements. when they first settled there the pharaoh and his court were asiatic or of asiatic descent. and in later days the rise of a purely native government meant for them a bitter bondage and the murder of their children. between the israelite and the egyptian there was hostility from the first; joseph began by confiscating the lands of both peasant and noble; the natives revenged themselves by reducing his kinsfolk to a condition of serfdom, and the last act in the drama of the exodus was the "spoiling of the egyptians." chapter vi babylonia and assyria while the influence of egypt upon israel may be described as negative, that of babylonia was positive. abraham was a babylonian by birth; the asiatic world through which he wandered was babylonian in civilisation and government, and the babylonian exile was the final turning-point in the religious history of judah. the semitic babylonians were allied in race and language to the hebrews; they had common ideas and common points of view. though egyptian influence is markedly absent from the mosaic code, we find in it old semitic institutions and beliefs which equally characterised babylonia. but the semites were not the first occupants of babylonia. the civilisation of the country had been founded by a race which spoke an agglutinative language, like that of the modern finns or turks, and which scholars have now agreed to call sumerian. the sumerians had been the builders of the cities, the reclaimers of the marshy plain, the inventors of the picture-writing which developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, and the pioneers of a culture which profoundly affected the whole of western asia. the semites entered upon the inheritance, adopting, modifying, and improving upon it. the babylonian civilisation, with which we are best acquainted, was the result of this amalgamation of sumerian and semitic elements. out of this mixture of sumerians and semites there arose a mixed people, a mixed language, and a mixed religion. the language and race of babylonia were thus like those of england, probably also like those of egypt. mixed races are invariably the best; it is the more pure-blooded peoples who fall behind in the struggle for existence. recent excavations have thrown light on the early beginnings of babylonia. the country itself was an alluvial plain, formed by the silt deposited each year by the tigris and euphrates. the land grows at the rate of about ninety feet a year, or less than two miles in a century; since the age of alexander the great the waters of the persian gulf have receded more than forty-six miles from the shore. when the sumerians first settled by the banks of the euphrates it must have been on the sandy plateau to the west of the river where the city of ur, the modern mugheir, was afterwards built. at that time the future babylonia was a pestiferous marsh, inundated by the unchecked overflow of the rivers which flowed through it. the reclamation of the marsh was the first work of the new-comers. the rivers were banked out and the inundation regulated by means of canals. all this demanded no little engineering skill; in fact, the creation of babylonia was the birth of the science of engineering. settlements were made in the fertile plain which had thus been won, and which, along with the adjoining desert, was called by the sumerians the _edin_, or "plain." on the southern edge of this plain, and on what was then the coast-line of the persian gulf, the town of eridu was built, which soon became a centre of maritime trade. its site is now marked by the mounds of abu shahrein or nowâwis, nearly miles from the sea; its foundation, therefore, must go back to about years, or b.c. ur, a little to the north-west, with its temple of the moon-god, was a colony of eridu. in the plain itself many cities were erected, which rose around the temples of the gods. in the north was nippur, now niffer, whose great temple of mul-lil or el-lil, the lord of the ghost-world, was a centre of babylonian religion for unnumbered centuries. after the semitic conquest mul-lil came to be addressed as bel or "lord," and when the rise of babylon caused the worship of its patron-deity bel-merodach to spread throughout the country, the bel of nippur became known as the "older bel." nippur was watered by the canal kabaru, the chebar of ezekiel, and to the south of it was the city of lagas, now tello, where french excavators have brought to light an early seat of sumerian power. a little to the west of lagas was larsa, the modern senkereh, famous for its ancient temple of the sun-god, a few miles to the north-west of which stood erech, now warka, dedicated to the sky-god anu and his daughter istar. northward of nippur was bab-ili or babylon, "the gate of god," a semitic translation of its original sumerian name, ka-dimirra. it was a double city, built on either side of the euphrates, and adjoining its suburb of borsippa, once an independent town. babylon seems to have been a colony of eridu, and its god, bel-merodach, called by the sumerians "asari who does good to man," was held to be the son of ea, the culture-god of eridu. e-saggil, the great temple of bel-merodach, rose in the midst of babylon; the temple of nebo, his "prophet" and interpreter, rose hard by in borsippa. its ruins are now known as the birs-i-nimrûd, in which travellers have seen the tower of babel. in the neighbourhood of babylon were kish (_el-hymar_) and kutha (_tel-ibrahim_); somewhat to the north of it, and on the banks of the euphrates, was sippara or sepharvaim, whose temple, dedicated to the sun-god, has been found in the mounds of abu-habba. sippara was the northern fortress of the babylonian plain; it stood where the tigris and euphrates approached most nearly one another, and where, therefore, the plain itself came practically to an end. upi or opis, on the tigris, still farther to the north, lay outside the boundaries of primæval chaldæa. east of babylonia were the mountains of elam, inhabited by non-semitic tribes. among them were the kassi or kossæeans, who maintained a rude independence in their mountain fastnesses, and who, at one time, overran babylonia and founded a dynasty there which lasted for several centuries. the capital of elam was susa or shushan, the seat of an early monarchy, whose civilisation was derived from the babylonians. in the south the tigris and euphrates made their way to the region of salt-marshes, called marratu in the inscriptions, merathaim by the prophet jeremiah. they were inhabited by the semitic tribe of the kaldâ, whose princes owned an unwilling obedience to the babylonian kings. one of them, merodach-baladan, succeeded in making himself master of babylonia, and from that time forward the kaldâ became so integral a part of the population as eventually to give their name to the whole of it. for the writers of greece and rome the babylonians are chaldæans. it is probable that nebuchadrezzar was of kaldâ origin; if so, this would have been a further reason for the extension of the tribal name to the whole country. the settlement of the kaldâ in the marshes was of comparatively late date. indeed, in the early age of babylonian history these marshes did not as yet exist; it was not until eridu had ceased to be a seaport that they were reclaimed from the sea. the kaldâ were the advance-guard of the nabatheans and other aramaic tribes of northern arabia, who migrated into babylonia and pitched their tents on the banks of the euphrates, first of all as herdsmen, afterwards as traders. after the fall of the babylonian monarchy their numbers and importance increased, and the aramaic they spoke--the so-called "chaldee"--came more and more to supersede the language of babylonia. when first we get a glimpse of babylonian history, the country is divided into a number of small principalities. they are all sumerian, and among them the principality of kish occupies a leading place. the temple of mul-lil at nippur is the central sanctuary, to which they bring their offerings, and from which a civilising influence emanates. it is an influence, however, which reflects the darker side of life. mul-lil was the lord of the dead; his priests were sorcerers and magicians, and their sacred lore consisted of spells and incantations. supplementing the influence of nippur, and in strong contrast with it, was the influence of eridu. ea or oannes, the god of eridu, was a god who benefited mankind. he was the lord of wisdom, and his wisdom displayed itself in delivering men from the evils that surrounded them, and in teaching them the arts of life. but he was lord also of the water, and it was told of him how he had arisen, morning after morning, from the depths of the persian gulf, and had instructed the people of chaldæa in all the elements of civilisation. eridu was the home of the hymns that were sung to the gods of light and life, and which came to be looked upon as divinely inspired. it is clear that the myth of cannes points to foreign intercourse as the ultimate cause of babylonian culture. it is natural that such should have been the case. commerce is still the great civiliser, and the traders and sailors of eridu created tastes and needs which they sought to satisfy. the small states of babylonia were constantly at war with each other, even though they shared in a common civilisation, worshipped the same gods, and presented their offerings to the same sanctuary of nippur. southern babylonia--or kengi, "the land of canals and reeds," as it was often named--was already divided against the north. at times it exercised supremacy as far as nippur. en-sakkus-ana of kengi conquered kis, like one of his predecessors who had dedicated the statue, the store of silver, and the furniture of the conquered prince to mul-lil. kis claimed sovereignty over the bedâwin "archers," who had their home in the district now called jokha. but kis eventually revenged itself. one of its rulers made himself master of nippur, and the kingdom of kengi passed away. the final blow was struck by lugal-zaggi-si, the son of the high-priest of the city of opis. lugal-zaggi-si not only conquered babylonia, he also created an empire. on the vases of delicately-carved stone which he dedicated to the god of nippur, a long inscription of one hundred and thirty-two lines describes his deeds, and tells how he had extended his dominion from the persian gulf to the mediterranean sea. it may be that at this time the culture of babylonia was first brought to the west, and that his conquests first communicated a knowledge of the sumerian language and writing to the nations of western asia. with the spoils of his victories the walls of ur were raised "high as heaven," and the temple of the sun-god at larsa was enlarged. erech was made his capital, and doubtless now received its sumerian title of "the city" _par excellence_. the dynasty of erech was supplanted by the first dynasty of ur. erech was captured by lugal-kigub-nidudu of ur, and took the second rank in the new kingdom. the position of ur on the western bank of the euphrates exposed it to the attacks of the semitic tribes of northern arabia, and thus accustomed its inhabitants to the use of arms, while at the same time its proximity to eridu made it a centre of trade. in abrahamic days it had long been a place of resort and settlement by arabian and canaanite merchants. how long the supremacy of ur lasted we do not know. nor do we know whether it preceded or was followed by the supremacy of lagas. the kings of lagas had succeeded in overcoming their hereditary enemies to the north. the so-called "stela of the vultures," now in the louvre, commemorates the overthrow of the forces of the land of upe or opis, and depicts the bodies of the slain as they lie on the battlefield devoured by the birds of prey. e-ana-gin, the king of lagas who erected it, never rested until he had subjected the rest of southern babylonia to his sway. the whole of "sumer" was subdued, and the memory of a time when a king of kis, mesa by name, had subjected lagas to his rule, was finally wiped out. high-priests now took the place of kings in kis and the country of opis. but a time came when the same change occurred also at lagas. doubtless in consequence of its conquest by some superior power. one of the monuments discovered at tello, the ancient lagas, describes the victories of the "high-priest" entemena over the ancestral foe, and the appointment of a certain ili as "high-priest" of the land of opis. from henceforward kis and opis disappear from history. a new power had meanwhile appeared on the scene. while the sumerian princes were engaged in mutual war, the semites were occupying northern babylonia, and establishing their power in the city of agadê or akkad, not far from sippara. here, in b.c. , arose the empire of sargani-sar-ali, better known to posterity as "sargon" of akkad. he became the hero of the semitic race in babylonia. legends told how he had been hidden by his royal mother in an ark of bulrushes daubed with pitch, and intrusted to the waters of the euphrates, how he had been found and adopted as a son by akki the irrigator, and how the goddess istar had loved him and restored him to his kingly estate. at all events, the career of sargon was a career of victories. babylonia was united under his rule, elam was subjugated, and three campaigns sufficed to make "the land of the amorites," syria and canaan, obedient to his sway. he caused an image of himself to be carved on the shores of the mediterranean, and demanded tribute from cyprus, uru-malik or urimelech being appointed governor of syria, as we learn from a cadastral survey of the district of lagas. a revolt of the sumerian states, however, called him home, and for a time fortune seemed against him. he was besieged in akkad, but a successful sally drove back the rebels, and they were soon utterly crushed. then sargon marched into suri or mesopotamia, subduing that country as well as the future assyria. it was the last, however, of his exploits. his son naram-sin succeeded him shortly afterwards (b.c. ), and continued the conquests of his father, canaan was already a babylonian province, and naram-sin now carried his arms against magan, or the sinaitic peninsula, where he secured the precious mines of copper and turquoise. building stone from magan had already been imported to babylonia by ur-nina, a king of lagas, and grandfather of e-ana-gin, but it must have been brought in the ships of eridu. naram-sin's son was bingani-sar-ali. a queen, ellat-gula, seems to have sat on the throne not many years later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end. at any rate, the empire of akkad is heard of no more. but it left behind it a profound and abiding impression on western asia. henceforward the culture and art of the west was babylonian,--semitic babylonian, however, and no longer sumerian babylonian as in the days of lugal-zaggi-si. sargon was a patron of literature as well as a warrior. standard works on astronomy and astrology and the science of omens were compiled for the great library he established at akkad, where numerous scribes were kept constantly at work. sumerian books were brought from the cities of the south and translated into semitic; commentaries were written on the older literature of the country, and dictionaries and grammars compiled. it was now that that mixed language arose, or at least was admitted into the literary dialect, which made babylonian so much resemble modern english. the lexicon was filled with sumerian words which had put on a semitic form, and semitic lips expressed themselves in sumerian idioms. art, too, reached a high perfection. the seal-cylinders of the reign of sargon of akkad represent the highest efforts of the gem-cutter's skill in ancient babylonia, and a bas-relief of naram-sin, found at diarbekr in northern mesopotamia, while presenting close analogies to the egyptian art of the old empire, is superior to anything of the kind as yet discovered in babylonia of either an earlier or a later date. as in egypt, so too in babylonia, the sculpture of later times shows retrogression rather than advance. it is impossible not to believe that between the art of egypt in the age of the old empire and that of babylonia in the reigns of sargon and naram-sin there was an intimate connection. the mines of the sinaitic peninsula were coveted by both countries. sumerian princes still continued to rule in sumer or southern babylonia, but after the era of sargon their power grew less and less. a second sumerian dynasty, however, arose at ur, and claimed sovereignty over the rest of chaldæa. one of its kings, ur-bau, was a great builder and restorer of the temples, and under his son and successor dungi (b.c. ), a high-priest of the name of gudea governed lagas, the monuments of which have given us an insight into the condition of the country in his age. his statues of hard diorite from the peninsula of sinai are now in the louvre; one of them is that of the architect of his palace, with a copy of its plan upon his lap divided according to scale. gudea, though owning allegiance to dungi, carried on wars on his own behalf, and boasts of having conquered "ansan of elam." the materials for his numerous buildings were brought from far. hewn stones were imported from the "land of the amorites," limestone and alabaster from the lebanon, gold-dust and acacia-wood from the desert to the south of palestine, copper from northern arabia, and various sorts of wood from the armenian mountains. other trees came from dilmun in the persian gulf, from gozan in mesopotamia, and from gubin, which is possibly gebal. the bitumen was derived from "madga in the mountains of the river gurruda," in which some scholars have seen the name of the jordan, and the naphtha springs of the vale of siddim. the library of gudea has been found entire, with its , tablets or books arranged in order on its shelves, and filled with information which it will take years of labour to examine thoroughly. not long after his death, the second dynasty of ur gave way to a third, this time of semitic origin. its kings still claimed that sovereignty over syria and palestine which had been won by sargon. one of them, inê-sin, carried his arms to the west, and married his daughters to the "high-priests" of ansan in elam, and of mer'ash in northern syria. his grandson, gimil-sin, marched to the ranges of the lebanon and overran the land of zamzali, which seems to be the zamzummim of scripture. but with gimil-sin the strength of the dynasty seems to have come to an end. babylonia was given over to the stranger, and a dynasty of kings from southern arabia fixed its seat at babylon. the language they spoke and the names they bore were common to canaan and the south of arabia, and sounded strangely in babylonian ears. the founder of the dynasty was sumu-abi, "shem is my father," a name in which we cannot fail to recognise the shem of the old testament. his descendants, however, had some difficulty in extending and maintaining their authority. the native princes of southern babylonia resisted it, and the elamites harried the country with fire and sword. in b.c. kudur-nankhundi, the elamite king, sacked erech and carried away the image of its goddess, and not long afterwards we find another elamite king, kudur-laghghamar or chedor-laomer, claiming lordship over the whole of chaldsea. the western provinces of babylonia shared in the fate of the sovereign power, and an elamite prince, kudur-mabug by name, was made "father" or "governor of the land of the amorites." his son eri-aku, the arioch of genesis, was given the title of king in southern babylonia, with larsa as his capital. larsa had been taken by storm by the elamite forces, and its native king, sin-idinnam, driven out. he fled for refuge to the court of the king of babylon, who still preserved a semblance of authority. khammurabi or amraphel, the fifth successor of sumu-abi, was now on the throne of babylon. his long reign of fifty-five years marked an epoch in babylonian history. at first he was the vassal of kudur-laghghamar, and along with his brother vassals, eri-aku of larsa and tudghula or tidal of kurdistan, had to serve in the campaigns of his suzerain lord in canaan. but an opportunity came at last for revolt, it may be in consequence of the disaster which had befallen the army of the invaders in syria at the hands of abram and his amorite allies. the war lasted long, and at the beginning went against the king of babylon. babylon itself was captured by the enemy, and its great temple laid in ruins. but soon afterwards the tide turned. eri-aku and his elamite supporters were defeated in a decisive battle. larsa was retaken, and khammurabi ruled once more over an independent and united babylonia. sin-idinnam was restored to his principality, and we now possess several of the letters written to him by khammurabi, in which his bravery is praised on "the day of kudur-laghghamar's defeat," and he is told to send back the images of certain elamite goddesses to their original seats. they had doubtless been carried to larsa when it fell into the hands of the elamite invaders. as soon as babylonia was cleared of its enemies, khammurabi set himself to the work of fortifying its cities, of restoring and building its temples and walls, and of clearing and digging canals. the great canal known as that of "the king," in the northern part of the country, was either made or re-excavated by him, and at kilmad, near the modern bagdad, a palace was erected. art and learning were encouraged, and a literary revival took place which brought back the old glories of the age of sargon. once more new editions were made of standard works, poets arose to celebrate the deeds of the monarch, and books became multiplied. among the literary products of the period was the great chaldæan epic in twelve books, recording the adventures of the hero gilgames, and embodying the chaldæan story of the deluge. the supremacy over western asia passed to khammurabi, along with sovereignty over babylonia, and he assumed the title of "king of the land of the amorites." so too did his great-grandson, ammi-ditana. two generations later, with samas-ditana the first dynasty of babylon came to an end. it had made babylon the capital of the country--a position which it never subsequently lost. it had raised bel-merodach, the god of babylon, to the head of the pantheon, and it had lasted for years. it was followed by a sumerian dynasty from the south, which governed the country for years, but of which we know little more than the names of the kings composing it and the length of their several reigns. it fell before the avalanche of an invasion from the mountains of elam. the kassites poured into the babylonian plain, and kassite kings ruled at babylon for years and a half. during their domination the map of western asia underwent a change. the kassite conquest destroyed the babylonian empire; canaan was lost to it for ever, and eventually became a province of egypt. the high-priests of assur, now kaleh sherghat, near the confluence of the tigris and lower zab, made themselves independent and founded the kingdom of assyria, which soon extended northward into the angle formed by the tigris and upper zab, where the cities of nineveh and calah afterwards arose. the whole country had previously been included by the babylonians in gutium or kurdistan. the population of assyria seems to have been more purely semitic than that of babylonia. such at least was the case with the ruling classes. it was a population of free peasants, of soldiers, and of traders. its culture was derived from babylonia; even its gods, with the exception of assur, were of babylonian origin. we look in vain among the assyrians for the peace-loving tendencies of the babylonians; they were, on the contrary, the romans of the east. they were great in war, and in the time of the second assyrian empire great also in law and administration. but they were not a literary people; education among them was confined to the scribes and officials, rather than generally spread as in babylonia. war and commerce were their two trades. the kassite conquerors of babylonia soon submitted to the influences of babylonian civilisation. like the hyksos in egypt, they adopted the manners and customs, the writing and language, of the conquered people, sometimes even their names. the army, however, continued to be mainly composed of kassite troops, and the native babylonians began to forget the art of fighting. the old claims to sovereignty in the west, however, were never resigned; but the kassite kings had to content themselves with intriguing against the egyptian government in palestine, either with disaffected canaanites, or with the hittites and mitannians, while at the same time they professed to be the firm friends of the egyptian pharaoh. burna-buryas in b.c. writes affectionately to his "brother" of egypt, begging for some of the gold which in egypt he declares is as abundant "as the dust," and which he needs for his buildings at home. he tells the egyptian king how his father kuri-galzu had refused to listen to the canaanites when they had offered to betray their country to him, and he calls khu-n-aten to account for treating the assyrians as an independent nation and not as the vassals of babylonia. the assyrians, however, did not take the same view as the babylonian king. they had been steadily growing in power, and had intermarried into the royal family of babylonia. assur-yuballidh, one of whose letters to the pharaoh has been found at tel el-amarna, had married his daughter to the uncle and predecessor of burna-buryas, and his grandson became king of babylon. a revolt on the part of the kassite troops gave the assyrians an excuse for interfering in the affairs of babylonia, and from this time forward their eyes were turned covetously towards the kingdom of the south. as assyria grew stronger, babylonia became weaker. calah, now _nimrud_, was founded about b.c. by shalmaneser i., and his son and successor tiglath-ninip threw off all disguise and marched boldly into babylonia in the fifth year of his reign. babylon was taken, the treasures of its temple sent to assur, and assyrian governors set over the country, while a special seal was made for the use of the conqueror. for seven years the assyrian domination lasted. then tiglath-ninip was driven back to assyria, where he was imprisoned and murdered by his son, and the old line of kassite princes was restored in the person of rimmon-sum-uzur. but it continued only four reigns longer. a new dynasty from the town of isin seized the throne, and ruled for years and six months. it was while this dynasty was reigning that a fresh line of energetic monarchs mounted the assyrian throne. rimmon-nirari i., the father of shalmaneser i. (b.c. - ) had already extended the frontiers of assyria to the khabur in the west and the kurdish mountains in the north, and his son settled an assyrian colony at the head-waters of the tigris, which served to garrison the country. but after the successful revolt of the babylonians against tiglath-ninip the assyrian power decayed. more than a century later assur-ris-isi entered again on a career of conquest and reduced the kurds to obedience. his son, tiglath-pileser i., was one of the great conquerors of history. he carried his arms far and wide. kurdistan and armenia, mesopotamia and comagênê, were all alike overrun by his armies in campaign after campaign. the hittites paid tribute, as also did phoenicia, where he sailed on the mediterranean in a ship of arvad and killed a dolphin in its waters. the pharaoh of egypt, alarmed at the approach of so formidable an invader, sent him presents, which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus, and on the eastern bank of the euphrates, near carchemish and pethor, he hunted wild elephants, as thothmes iii. had done before him. his son still claimed supremacy in the west, as is shown by the fact that he erected statues in "the land of the amorites." but the energy of the dynasty was now exhausted, and assyria for a time passed under eclipse. this was the period when david established his empire; there was no other great power to oppose him in the oriental world, and it seemed as if israel was about to take the place that had once been filled by egypt and babylon. but the opportunity was lost; the murder of joab and the unwarlike character of solomon effectually checked all dreams of conquest, and israel fell back into two petty states. the military revival of assyria was as sudden as had been its decline. in b.c. , assur-nazir-pal ii. ascended the throne. his reign of twenty-five years was passed in constant campaigns, in ferocious massacres, and the burning of towns. in both his inscriptions and his sculptures he seems to gloat over the tortures he inflicted on the defeated foe. year after year his armies marched out of nineveh to slaughter and destroy, and to bring back with them innumerable captives and vast amounts of spoil. western asia was overrun, tribute was received from the hittites and from phoenicia, and armenia was devastated by the assyrian forces as far north as lake van. the policy of assur-nazir-pal was continued by his son and successor shalmaneser ii., with less ferocity, but with more purpose (b.c. - ). assyria became dominant in asia; its empire stretched from media on the east to the mediterranean on the west. but it was an empire which was without organisation or permanency. every year a new campaign was needed to suppress the revolts which broke out as soon as the assyrian army was out of sight, or to supply the treasury with fresh spoil. the campaigns were in most cases raids rather than the instruments of deliberately planned conquest. hence it was that the assyrian monarch found himself checked in the west by the petty kings of damascus and the neighbouring states. ben-hadad and hazael, it is true, were beaten again and again along with their allies, while omri of israel offered tribute to the invader, like the rich cities of phoenicia; but damascus remained untaken and its people unsubdued. the war with assyria, however, saved israel from being swallowed up by its syrian neighbour. hazael's strength was exhausted in struggling for his own existence; he had none left for the conquest of samaria. shalmaneser himself, towards the end of his life, was no longer in a position to attack others. a great revolt broke out against him, headed by his son assur-dain-pal, the sardanapallos of the greeks, who established himself at nineveh, and there reigned as rival king for about seven years. his brother samas-rimmon, who had remained faithful to his father, at last succeeded in putting down the rebellion. nineveh was taken, and its defenders slain. henceforth samas-rimmon reigned with an undisputed title. but assyria was long in recovering from the effects of the revolt, which had shaken her to the foundations. the dynasty itself never recovered. samas-rimmon, indeed, at the head of the army which had overcome his brother, continued the military policy of his predecessors; the tribes of media and southern armenia were defeated, and campaigns were carried on against babylonia, the strength of which was now completely broken. in b.c. babylon was taken, but two years later samas-rimmon himself died, and was succeeded by his son rimmon-nirari iii. his reign was passed in constant warfare on the frontiers of the empire, and in b.c. damascus was surrendered to him by its king mariha, who became an assyrian tributary. in the following year a pestilence broke out, and when his successor, shalmaneser iii., mounted the throne in b.c. , he found himself confronted by a new and formidable power, that of ararat or van. the eastern and northern possessions of assyria were taken from her, and the monarchy fell rapidly into decay. in b.c. an eclipse of the sun took place on the th of june, and was the signal for the outbreak of a revolt in assur, the ancient capital of the kingdom. it spread rapidly to other parts of the empire, and though for a time the government held its own against the rebels, the end came in b.c. . assur-nirari, the last of the old dynasty, died or was put to death, and pulu or pul, one of his generals, was proclaimed king on the th of iyyar or april under the name of tiglath-pileser iii. tiglath-pileser iii. was the founder of the second assyrian empire, which was based on a wholly different principle from that of the first. occupation and not plunder was the object of its wars. the ancient empire of babylonia in western asia was to be restored, and the commerce of the mediterranean to be diverted into assyrian hands. the campaigns of tiglath-pileser and his successors were thus carried on in accordance with a deliberate line of policy. they aimed at the conquest of the whole civilised world, and the building up of a great organisation of which nineveh and its ruler were the head. it was a new principle and a new idea. and measures were at once adopted to realise it. the army was made an irresistible engine of attack. its training, discipline, and arms were such as the world had never seen before. and the army was followed by a body of administrators. the conquered population was transported elsewhere or else deprived of its leaders, and assyrian colonies and garrisons were planted in its place. the administration was intrusted to a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which stood the king. he appointed the satraps who governed the provinces, and were responsible for the taxes and tribute, as well as for the maintenance of order. the bureaucracy was partly military, partly civil, the two elements acting as a check one upon the other. but it was necessary that ararat should be crushed before the plans of the new monarch could be carried out. the strength of the army was first tested in campaigns against babylonia and the medes, and then tiglath-pileser marched against the confederated forces of the armenian king. a league had been formed among the princes of northern syria in connection with that of the armenians, but the assyrian king annihilated the army of ararat in comagênê, and then proceeded to besiege arpad. arpad surrendered after a blockade of three years; hamath, which had been assisted by azariah of judah, was reduced into an assyrian province; and a court was held, at which the sovereigns of the west paid homage and tribute to the conqueror (b.c. ). among these were rezon of damascus and menahem of samaria. tiglath-pileser was still known in palestine under his original name of pul, and the tribute of menahem is accordingly described by the israelitish chronicler as having been given to pul. the assyrian king was now free to turn the full strength of his forces against ararat. the country was ravaged up to the very gates of its capital, the modern van, and only the strong walls of the city kept the invader out of it. the assyrian army next moved eastward to the southern shores of the caspian, striking terror into the kurdish and median tribes, and so securing the lowlands of assyria from their raids. the affairs of syria next claimed the attention of the conqueror. rezon and pekah, the new king of samaria, had attempted to form a league against assyria; and, with this end in view, determined to replace ahaz, the youthful king of judah, by a creature of their own. ahaz turned in his extremity to assyrian help, and tiglath-pileser seized the opportunity of accepting the vassalage of judah, with its strong fortress of jerusalem, and at the same time of overthrowing both damascus and samaria. rezon was closely besieged in his capital, while the rest of the assyrian army was employed in overrunning samaria, ammon, moab, and the philistines (b.c. ). pekah was put to death, and hosea appointed by the assyrians in his place. after a siege of two years, damascus fell in b.c. , rezon was slain, and his kingdom placed under an assyrian satrap. meanwhile tyre was compelled to purchase peace by an indemnity of talents. syria was now at the feet of nineveh. a great gathering of the western kings took place at damascus, where tiglath-pileser held his court after the capture of the city, and the list of those who came to do homage to him includes jehoahaz or ahaz of judah, and the kings of ammon, moab, edom, and hamath. hosea, it would seem, was not yet on the israelitish throne. the old empire of babylonia was thus restored as far as the mediterranean. all that remained was for the assyrian usurper to legitimise his title by occupying babylon itself, and there receiving the crown of asia. in b.c. , accordingly, he found a pretext for invading babylonia and seizing the holy city of western asia. two years later he "took the hands" of bel-merodach, and was thereby adopted by the god as his own son. but he did not live long to enjoy the fruits of his victories. he died december b.c. , and another usurper, ululâ, possessed himself of the throne, and assumed the name of shalmaneser iv. his reign, however, was short. he died while besieging samaria, which had revolted after the death of its conqueror, and in december b.c. , a third general seized the vacant crown. he took the name of the old babylonian monarch, sargon, and the court chroniclers of after-days discovered that he was a descendant of the legendary kings of assyria. his first achievement was the capture of samaria. little spoil, however, was found in the half-ruined city; and the upper classes, who were responsible for the rebellion, were carried into captivity to the number of , persons. the city itself was placed under an assyrian governor. sargon found that the empire of tiglath-pileser had in great measure to be re-conquered. neither tiglath-pileser nor his successor had been able to leave the throne to their children, and the conquered provinces had taken advantage of the troubles consequent on their deaths to revolt. babylonia had been lost. merodach-baladan, the chaldæan prince, had emerged from the marshes of the south and occupied babylon, where he was proclaimed king immediately after shalmaneser's death. for twelve years he reigned there, with the help of the elamites, and one of the first tasks of sargon was to drive the latter from the assyrian borders. sargon had next to suppress a revolt in hamath, as well as an invasion of palestine by the egyptians. the egyptian army, however, was defeated at raphia, and the philistines with whom it was in alliance returned to their allegiance to the assyrian king. now came, however, a more serious struggle. ararat had recovered from the blow it had received at the hands of tiglath-pileser, and had organised a general confederacy of the northern nations against their dangerous neighbour. for six years the struggle continued. but it ended in victory for the assyrians. carchemish, the hittite stronghold which commanded the road across the euphrates, was taken in b.c. , and the way lay open to the west. the barrier that had existed for seven centuries between the semites of the east and west was removed, and the last relic of the hittite conquests in syria passed away. in the following year sargon overran the territories of the minni between ararat and lake urumiyeh, and two years later the northern confederacy was utterly crushed. the fortress of muzazir, under mount rowandiz, was added to the assyrian dominions, its gods were carried into captivity, and the king of ararat committed suicide in despair. from henceforward assyria had nothing to fear on the side of the north. the turn of the medes came next. they were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of nineveh; so also was the kingdom of ellipi, the later ekbatana. sargon could now turn his attention to babylonia. merodach-baladan had foreseen the coming storm, and had done his best to secure allies. an alliance was made with the elamites, who were alarmed at the conquest of ellipi; and ambassadors were sent to palestine (in b.c. ), there to arrange a general rising of the population, simultaneously with the outbreak of war between sargon and the babylonian king. but before the confederates were ready to move, sargon had fallen upon them separately. ashdod, the centre of the revolt in the west, was invested and taken by the turtannu or commander-in-chief; its ruler, a certain "greek," who had been raised to power by the anti-assyrian party, fled to the arabian desert in the vain hope of saving his life, and judah, moab, and edom were forced to renew their tribute. the egyptians, who had promised to assist the rebels in palestine, prudently retired, and the assyrian yoke was fixed more firmly than ever upon the nations of syria. merodach-baladan was left to face his foe alone. in b.c. he was driven out of babylon, and forced to take refuge in his ancestral kingdom in the marshes. sargon entered babylon in triumph, and "took the hands of bel." his title to rule was acknowledged by the god and the priesthood, and an assyrian was once more the lord of western asia. four years later the old warrior was murdered by a soldier, and on the th of ab, or july, his son sennacherib was proclaimed king. sennacherib was a different man from his father. sargon had been an able and energetic general, rough perhaps and uncultured, but vigorous and determined. his son was weak and boastful, and under him the newly-formed assyrian empire met with its first check. it is significant that the babylonian priests never acknowledged him as the successor of their ancient kings; he revenged himself by razing the city and sanctuary of bel to the ground. merodach-baladan re-entered babylon immediately after the death of sargon in b.c. , but he was soon driven back to his retreat in the chaldæan marshes, and an assyrian named bel-ibni was appointed king in his place. the next campaign of importance undertaken by sennacherib was in b.c. . palestine had revolted, under the leadership of hezekiah of judah. the full strength of the assyrian army was accordingly hurled against it. the king of sidon fled to cyprus, and phoenicia, ammon, moab, and edom hastened to submit to their dangerous foe. hezekiah and his philistine vassals alone ventured to resist. the philistines, however, were soon subdued. a new king was appointed over ashkelon, and hezekiah was compelled to restore to ekron its former prince, whom he had imprisoned in jerusalem on account of his loyalty to assyria. the priests and nobles of ekron, who had given him up to hezekiah, were ruthlessly impaled. meanwhile tirhakah, the ethiopian king of egypt, on whose help hezekiah had relied, was marching to the assistance of his ally. sennacherib met him at eltekeh, and there the combined forces of the egyptians and arabians were defeated and compelled to retreat. hezekiah now endeavoured to make peace by the offer of rich and numerous presents, including thirty talents of gold and of silver. but nothing short of the death of the jewish king and the transportation of his people would content the invader. hezekiah accordingly shut himself up within the strong walls of his capital, while the assyrians ravaged the rest of the country and prepared to besiege jerusalem. the cities and villages were destroyed, and , persons were led away into captivity. but at this moment a catastrophe befell the assyrians which saved hezekiah and "the remnant" of israel. the angel of death smote the assyrian army, and it was decimated by a sudden pestilence. sennacherib fled from the plague-stricken camp, carrying with him his spoil and captives, and the scanty relics of his troops. it was the last time he marched to the west, and his rebellious vassal remained unpunished. in the following year troubles in babylonia called him to the south. merodach-baladan was hunted out of the marshes, and fled with his subjects across the persian gulf to the opposite coast of elam, while a son of sennacherib was made king of babylon. but his reign did not last long. six years later he was carried off to elam, and a new king of native origin, nergal-yusezib by name, was proclaimed by the elamites. this was in return for an attack made by sennacherib upon the chaldæan colony in elam, where the followers of merodach-baladan had found a refuge. sennacherib had caused ships to be built at nineveh by phoenician workmen, and had manned them with tyrian, sidonian, and ionian sailors who were prisoners of war. the ships sailed down to the tigris and across the gulf, and then fell unexpectedly upon the chaldæans, burning their settlement, and carrying away all who had escaped massacre. nergal-yusezib had reigned only one year when he was defeated and captured in battle by the assyrians; but the elamites were still predominant in babylonia, and another babylonian, musezib-merodach, was set upon the throne of the distracted country (b.c. ). in b.c. sennacherib once more entered it, with an overwhelming army, determined to crush all opposition. but the battle of khalulê, fought between the assyrians on the one side, and the combined babylonians and elamites on the other, led to no definite result. sennacherib, indeed, claimed the victory, but so he had also done in the case of the campaign against hezekiah. two years more were needed before the babylonians at last yielded to the superior forces of their enemy. in b.c. babylon was taken by storm, and a savage vengeance wreaked upon it. the sacred city of western asia was levelled with the dust, the temple of bel himself was not spared, and the arakhtu canal which flowed past it was choked with ruins. the babylonian chronicler tells us that for eight years there were "no kings;" the image of bel-merodach had been cast to the ground by the sacrilegious conqueror, and there was none who could legitimise his right to rule. on the th of tebet, or december, b.c. , sennacherib was murdered by his two sons, and the babylonians saw in the deed the punishment of his crimes. his favourite son, esar-haddon, was at the time commanding the assyrian army in a war against erimenas of ararat. as soon as the news of the murder reached him, he determined to dispute the crown with his brothers, and accordingly marched against them. they were in no position to resist him, and after holding nineveh for forty-two days, fled to the court of the armenian king. esar-haddon followed, and a battle fought near malatiyeh, on the th of iyyar, or april, b.c. , decided the fate of the empire. the veterans of esar-haddon utterly defeated the conspirators and their armenian allies, and at the close of the day he was saluted as king. he then returned to nineveh, and on the th of sivan, or may, formally ascended the throne. esar-haddon proved himself to be not only one of the best generals assyria ever produced, but a great administrator as well. he endeavoured to cement his empire together by a policy of reconciliation, and one of his first actions was to rebuild babylon, to bring back to it its gods and people, and to make it one of the royal residences. bel acknowledged him as his adopted son, and for twelve years esar-haddon ruled over western asia by right divine as well as by the right of conquest. but a terrible danger menaced assyria and the rest of the civilised oriental world at the very beginning of his reign. sennacherib's conquest of ellipi, and the wars against ararat and minni, had weakened the barriers which protected the assyrian empire from the incursions of the barbarians of the north. the gimirrâ or kimmerians, the gomer of the old testament, driven by the scyths from their seats on the dniester and the sea of azof, suddenly appeared on the horizon of western asia. swarming through the territories of the minni to the east of ararat, they swooped down upon the assyrian frontier, along with other northern nations from media, sepharad, and ashchenaz. while a body of kimmerians under teuspa marched westward, the rest of the allies, under kastarit or kyaxares of karu-kassi, attacked the fortresses which defended assyria on the north-east. at nineveh all was consternation, and public prayers, accompanied by fasting, were ordered to be offered up for a hundred days and nights to the sun-god, that he might "forgive the sin" of his people, and avert the dangers that threatened them. the prayers were heard, and the invaders were driven into ellipi. then esar-haddon marched against teuspa, and forced him to turn from assyria. the kimmerians made their way instead into asia minor, where they sacked the greek and phrygian cities, and overran lydia. the northern and eastern boundaries of the empire were at length secured. it was now necessary to punish the arab tribes who had taken advantage of the kimmerian invasion to harass the empire on the south. esar-haddon accordingly marched into the very heart of the arabian desert--a military achievement of the first rank, the memory of which was not forgotten for years. the empire at last was secure. the assyrian king was now free to complete the policy of tiglath-pileser by conquering egypt. palestine was no longer a source of trouble. judah had returned to its vassalage to assyria, and the abortive attempts of sidon and jerusalem to rebel had been easily suppressed. true to his policy of conciliation, esar-haddon had dealt leniently with manasseh of judah. he had been brought in fetters before his lord at babylon, and there pardoned and restored to his kingdom. it was a lesson which neither he nor his successors forgot, like the similar lesson impressed a few years later upon the egyptian prince necho. the assyrian conquest of egypt has been already described. the first campaign of esar-haddon against it was undertaken in b.c. ; and it was while on the march to put down a revolt in b.c. that he fell ill and died, on the th of marchesvan, or october. the empire was divided between his two sons. assur-bani-pal had already been named as his successor, and now took assyria, while saul-sum-yukin became king of babylonia, subject, however, to his brother at nineveh. it was an attempt to flatter the babylonians by giving them a king of their own, while at the same time keeping the supreme power in assyrian hands. the first few years of assur-bani-pal's reign were spent in tranquillising egypt by means of the sword, in suppressing insurrections, and in expelling ethiopian invaders. after the destruction of thebes in b.c. the country sullenly submitted to the foreign rule; its strength was exhausted, and its leaders and priesthood were scattered and bankrupt. elam was now almost the only civilised kingdom of western asia which remained independent. it was, moreover, a perpetual thorn in the side of the assyrians. it was always ready to give the same help to the disaffected in babylonia that egypt was to the rebels in palestine, with the difference that whereas the egyptians were an unwarlike race, the elamites were a nation of warriors. assur-bani-pal was not a soldier himself, and he would have preferred remaining at peace with his warlike neighbour. but elamite raids made this impossible, and the constant civil wars in elam resulting from disputed successions to the throne afforded pretexts and favourable opportunities for invading it. the elamites, however, defended themselves bravely, and it was only after a struggle of many years, when their cities had fallen one by one, and shushan, the capital, was itself destroyed, that elam became an assyrian province. the conquerors, however, found it a profitless desert, wasted by fire and sword, and in the struggle to possess it their own resources had been drained and well-nigh exhausted. the second assyrian empire was now at the zenith of its power. ambassadors came from ararat and from gyges of lydia to offer homage, and to ask the help of the great king against the kimmerian and scythian hordes. his fame spread to europe; the whole of the civilised world acknowledged his supremacy. but the image was one which had feet of clay. the empire had been won by the sword, and the sword alone kept it together. suddenly a revolt broke out which shook it to its foundations. babylonia took the lead; the other subject nations followed in its train. saul-suma-yukin had become naturalised in babylonia. the experiment of appointing an assyrian prince as viceroy had failed; he had identified himself with his subjects, and like them dreamed of independence. he adopted the style and titles of the ancient babylonian mouarchs; even the sumerian language was revived in public documents, and the son of esar-haddon put himself at the head of a national movement. the assyrian supremacy was rejected, and once more babylon was free. the revolt lasted for some years. when it began we do not know; but it was not till b.c. that it was finally suppressed, and saul-suma-yukin put to death after a reign of twenty years. babylon had been closely invested, and was at last starved into surrender. but, taught by the experience of the past, assur-bani-pal did not treat it severely. the leaders of the revolt, it is true, were punished, but the city and people were spared, and its shrines, like those of kutha and sippara, were purified, while penitential psalms were sung to appease the angry deities, and the daily sacrifices which had been interrupted were restored. a certain kandalanu was made viceroy, perhaps with the title of king. chastisement was now taken upon the arabian tribes who had joined in the revolt. but egypt was lost to the empire for ever. psammetikhos had seized the opportunity of shaking off the yoke of the foreigner, and with the help of the troops sent by gyges from lydia, had driven out the assyrian garrisons and overcome his brother satraps. assur-bani-pal was in no position to punish him. the war with elam and the revolt of babylonia had drained the country of its fighting men and the treasury of its resources. and a new and formidable enemy had appeared on the scene. the scyths had followed closely on the footsteps of the kimmerians, and were now pouring into asia like locusts, and ravaging everything in their path. the earlier chapters of jeremiah are darkened by the horrors of the scythian invasion of palestine, and assur-bani-pal refers with a sigh of relief to the death of that "limb of satan," the scythian king tugdamme or lygdamis. this seems to have happened in cilicia, and assyria was allowed a short interval of rest. assur-bani-pal's victories were gained by his generals. he himself never appears to have taken the field in person. his tastes were literary, his habits luxurious. he was by far the most munificent patron of learning assyria ever produced; in fact, he stands alone in this respect among assyrian kings. the library of nineveh was increased tenfold by his patronage and exertions; literary works were brought from babylonia, and a large staff of scribes was kept busily employed in copying and re-editing them. unfortunately, the superstition of the monarch led him to collect more especially books upon omens and dreams, and astrological treatises, but other works were not overlooked, and we owe to him a large number of the syllabaries and lists of words in which the cuneiform characters and the assyrian vocabulary are explained. when assur-bani-pal died the doom of the assyrian empire had already been pronounced. the authority of his two successors, assur-etil-ilani-yukin and sin-sar-iskun, or saracos, was still acknowledged both in syria and in babylonia, where kandalanu had been succeeded as viceroy by nabopolassar. one of the contract-tablets from the north of babylonia is dated as late as the seventh year of sin-sar-iskun. but not long after this the babylonian viceroy revolted against his sovereign, and with the help of the scythian king, who had established himself at ekbatana, defeated the assyrian forces and laid siege to nineveh. the siege ended in the capture and destruction of the city, the death of its king, and the overthrow of his empire. in b.c. the desolator of the nations was itself laid desolate, and its site has never been inhabited again. nabopolassar entered upon the heritage of assyria. it has been supposed that he was a chaldæan like merodach-baladan; whether this be so or not, he was hailed by the babylonians as a representative of their ancient kings. the assyrian empire had become the prey of the first-comer. elam had been occupied by the persians, the scyths, whom classical writers have confounded with the medes, had overrun and ravaged assyria and mesopotamia, while palestine and syria had fallen to the share of egypt. but once established on the babylonian throne, nabopolassar set about the work of re-organising western asia, and the military abilities of his son nebuchadrezzar enabled him to carry out his purpose. the marriage of nebuchadrezzar to the daughter of the scythian monarch opened the road through mesopotamia to the babylonian armies; the egyptians were defeated at carchemish in b.c. , and driven back to their own land. from gaza to the mouth of the euphrates, western asia again obeyed the rule of a babylonian king. the death of nabopolassar recalled nebuchadrezzar to babylon, where he assumed the crown. but the egyptians still continued to intrigue in palestine, and the jewish princes listened to their counsels. twice had nebuchadrezzar to occupy jerusalem and carry the plotters into captivity. in b.c. jehoiachin and a large number of the upper classes were carried into exile; in b.c. jerusalem was taken after a long siege, its temple and walls razed to the ground, and its inhabitants transported to babylonia. the fortress-capital could no longer shelter or tempt the egyptian foes of the babylonian empire. the turn of tyre came next. for thirteen years it was patiently blockaded, and in b.c. it passed with its fleet into nebuchadrezzar's hands. five years later the babylonian army marched into egypt, the pharaoh amasis was defeated, and the eastern part of the delta overrun. but nebuchadrezzar did not push his advantage any further; he was content with impressing upon the egyptians a sense of his power, and with fixing the boundaries of his empire at the southern confines of palestine. his heart was in babylonia rather than in the conquests he had made. the wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making babylon one of the wonders of the world. the temples of merodach and nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the whole eastern world poured out its treasures at the feet of "the great king." his inscriptions, however, breathe a singular spirit of humility and piety, and we can understand from them the friendship that existed between the prophet jeremiah and himself. all he had done is ascribed to bel-merodach, whose creation he was and who had given him the sovereignty over mankind. he was succeeded in b.c. by his son evil-merodach, who had a short and inglorious reign of only two years. then the throne was usurped by nergal-sharezer, who had married a daughter of nebuchadrezzar, and was in high favour with the priests. he died in b.c. , leaving a child, whom the priestly chroniclers accuse of impiety towards the gods, and who was murdered three months after his accession. then nabu-nahid or nabonidos, the son of nabu-balasu-iqbi, another nominee of the priesthood, was placed on the throne. he was unrelated to the royal family, but proved to be a man of some energy and a zealous antiquarian. he caused excavations to be made in the various temples of babylonia, in order to discover the memorial-stones of their founders and verify the history of them that had been handed down. but he offended local interests by endeavouring to centralise the religious worship of the country at babylon, in the sanctuary of bel-merodach, as hezekiah had done in the case of judah. the images of the gods were removed from the shrines in which they had stood from time immemorial, and the local priesthoods attached to them were absorbed in that of the capital. the result was the rise of a powerful party opposed to the king, and a spirit of disaffection which the gifts showered upon the temples of babylon and a few other large cities were unable to allay. the standing army, however, under the command of the king's son, belshazzar, prevented this spirit from showing itself in action. but a new power was growing steadily in the east. the larger part of elam, which went by the name of anzan, had been seized by the persians in the closing days of the assyrian empire, and a line of kings of persian origin had taken the place of the old sovereigns of shushan. cyrus ii., who was still but a youth, was now on the throne of anzan, and, like his predecessors, acknowledged as his liege-lord the scythian king of ekbatana, istuvegu or astyages. his first act was to defeat and dethrone his suzerain, in b.c. , and so make himself master of media. a year or two later he obtained possession of persia, and a war with lydia in b.c. led to the conquest of asia minor. nabonidos had doubtless looked on with satisfaction while the scythian power was being overthrown, and had taken advantage of its fall to rebuild the temple of the moon-god at harran, which had been destroyed by the scythians fifty-four years before. but his eyes were opened by the conquest of his ally the king of lydia, and he accordingly began to prepare for a war which he saw was inevitable. the camp was fixed near sippara, towards the northern boundary of babylonia, and every effort was made to put the country into a state of defence. cyrus, however, was assisted by the disaffected party in babylonia itself, amongst whose members must doubtless be included the jewish exiles. in b.c. a revolt broke out in the south, in the old district of the chaldæans, and cyrus took advantage of it to march into the country. the babylonian army moved northward to meet him, but was utterly defeated and dispersed at opis in the beginning of tammuz, or june, and a few days later sippara surrendered to the conqueror. gobryas, the governor of kurdistan, was then sent to babylon, which also opened its gates "without fighting," and nabonidos, who had concealed himself, was taken prisoner. the daily services in the temples as well as the ordinary business of the city proceeded as usual, and on the rd of marchesvan cyrus himself arrived and proclaimed a general amnesty, which was communicated by gobryas to "all the province of babylon," of which he had been made the prefect. shortly afterwards, the wife--or, according to another reading, the son--of nabonidos died; public lamentations were made for her, and kambyses, the son of cyrus, conducted the funeral in one of the babylonian temples. cyrus now took the title of "king of babylon," and associated kambyses with himself in the government. conquest had proved his title to the crown, and the priests and god of babylon hastened to confirm it. cyrus on his side claimed to be the legitimate descendant of the ancient babylonian kings, a true representative of the ancient stock, who had avenged the injuries of bel-merodach and his brother-gods upon nabonidos, and who professed to be their devoted worshipper. offerings to ten times the usual amount were bestowed on the babylonian temples, and the favour of the babylonian priesthood was secured. the images which nabonidos had sacrilegiously removed from their shrines were restored to their old homes, and the captive populations in babylonia were allowed to return to their native soil. the policy of transportation had proved a failure; in time of invasion the exiles had been a source of danger to the government, and not of safety. each people was permitted to carry back with it its ancestral gods. the jews alone had no images to take; the sacred vessels of the temple of jerusalem were accordingly given to them. it was a faithful remnant that returned to the land of their fathers, consisting mostly of priests and levites, determined henceforward to obey strictly the laws of their god, and full of gratitude to their deliverer. in jerusalem cyrus thus had a colony whose loyalty to himself and his successors could be trusted, and who would form, as it were, an outpost against attacks on the side of egypt. as long as cyrus and his son kambyses lived babylonia also was tranquil. they flattered the religious and political prejudices of their babylonian subjects, and the priesthood saw in them the successors of a sargon of akkad. but with the death of kambyses came a change. the new rulers of the empire of cyrus were persians, proud of their nationality and zealous for their zoroastrian faith. they had no reverence for bel, no belief in the claim of babylon to confer a title of legitimacy on the sovereign of western asia. the babylonian priesthood chafed, the babylonian people broke into revolt. in october b.c. a pretender appeared who took the name of nebuchadrezzar ii., and reigned for nearly a year. but after two defeats in the field, he was captured in babylon by darius and put to death in august . once more, in b.c. , another revolt took place under a second pretender to the name of "nebuchadrezzar the son of nabonidos." the strong walls of babylon resisted the persian army for more than a year, and the city was at last taken by stratagem. the walls were partially destroyed, but this did not prevent a third rebellion in the reign of xerxes, while the persian monarch was absent in greece. on this occasion, however, it was soon crushed, and Ê-sagila, the temple of bel, was laid in ruins. but a later generation restored once more the ancient sanctuary of merodach, at all events in part, and services in honour of bel continued to be held there down to the time when babylon was superseded by the greek town of seleucia, and the city of nebuchadrezzar became a waste of shapeless mounds. babylonian religion was a mixture of sumerian and semitic elements. the primitive sumerian had believed in a sort of animism. each object had its _zi_ or "spirit," like men and beasts; the _zi_ gave it its personality, and endowed it, as it were, with vital force. the _zi_ corresponded with the _ka_ or "double" of the egyptians, which accompanied like a shadow all things in heaven and earth. the gods themselves had each his _zi_; it was this alone that made them permanent and personal. with such a form of religion there could be neither deities nor priests in the usual sense of the words. the place of the priest was taken by the sorcerer, who knew the spells that could avert the malevolence of the "spirits" or bring down their blessings upon mankind. with the progress of civilisation, certain of the "spirits" emerged above the rest, and became veritable gods. the "spirit" of heaven became ana of erech, the sky-god; the "spirit" of earth passed into el-lil of nippur; and the "spirit" of the deep into ea of eridu. the change was hastened by contact with the semite. the semite brought with him a new religious conception. he believed in a god who revealed himself in the sun, and whom he addressed as baal or "lord." by the side of baal stood his colourless reflection, the goddess baalath, who owed her existence partly to the feminine gender possessed by the semitic languages, partly to the analogy of the human family. but the baalim were as multitudinous as their worshippers and the high-places whereon they were adored; there was little difficulty, therefore, in identifying the gods and "spirits" of sumer with the local baals of the semitic creed. el-lil became bel of nippur, asari or merodach bel of babylon. but in taking a semitic form, the sumerian divinities did not lose their old attributes. bel of nippur remained the lord of the ghost-world, bel-merodach the god who "raises the dead to life" and "does good to man." moreover, in one important point the semite borrowed from the sumerian. the goddess istar retained her independent position among the crowd of colourless female deities. originally the "spirit" of the evening-star, she had become a goddess, and in the sumerian world the goddess was the equal of the god. it is a proof of the influence of the sumerian element in the babylonian population, that this conception of the goddess was never forgotten in babylonia; it was only when babylonian culture was handed on to the semitic nations of the west that istar became either the male atthar of southern arabia and moab, or the emasculated ashtoreth of canaan. the official religion of babylonia was thus the baal-worship of the semites engrafted on the animism of the sumerians. it was further modified by the introduction of star-worship. how far this went back to a belief in the "spirits" of the stars, or whether it had a semitic origin, we do not know; but it is significant that the cuneiform character which denotes "a god" is a picture of a star, and that the babylonians were from the first a nation of star-gazers. in the astro-theology of a later date the gods of the pantheon were identified with the chief stars of the firmament, but the system was purely artificial, and must have been the invention of the priests. the religion and deities of babylonia were adopted by the assyrians. but in assyria they were always somewhat of an exotic, and even the learned class invoked assur rather than the other gods. assur was the personification of the old capital of the country and of the nation itself, and though the scribes found an etymology for the name in that of an-sar, the primæval god of sumerian cosmogony, the fact was always remembered. assur was purely semitic in his attributes, and, like yahveh of israel or chemosh of moab, was wifeless and childless. it is true that a learned scribe now and then found a wife for him among the numerous divinities of the babylonian cult, but the discovery was never accepted, and assur for the mass of his worshippers remained single and alone. it was through trust in him that the assyrian kings believed their victories were gained, and it was to punish those who disbelieved in him that their campaigns were undertaken. in the worship of assur, accordingly, a tendency to monotheism reveals itself. the tendency was even more pronounced in a certain literary school of thought in babylonia. we have texts which resolve the deities of the popular faith into forms of one god; sometimes this is anu of erech, sometimes it is merodach of babylon. babylonian worship necessitated a large hierarchy of priests. at the head was the high-priest, who in early times possessed temporal power and in many states was the predecessor of the king. the king, in fact, inherited his priesthood from him, and was consequently qualified to perform priestly functions. under the high-priest there were numerous classes of ministers of the gods, such as the "anointers," whose duty it was to anoint the holy images with oil, the ordinary "priests," the "seers," and the "prophets." the prophets enjoyed high consideration; they even accompanied the army to the field, and decided whether the campaign would result in victory or defeat. quite apart from all these were the astrologers, who did not belong to the priesthood at all. on the contrary, they professed to be men of science, and the predictions of the future which they read in the stars were founded on the records and observations of former generations. a chief part of the duty of the priests consisted in offering sacrifice and reciting the services. the sacrifices were of two kinds, as in the jewish ritual. the same animals and the same fruits of the earth were offered by both babylonians and israelites, and in many cases the regulations relating to the sacrifices were similar. the services were elaborate, and the rubrics attached to the hymns and prayers which had to be recited are minute and complicated. the hymns had been formed into a sort of bible, which had in time acquired a divine authority. so sacred were its words, that a single mispronunciation of them was sufficient to impair the efficacy of the service. rules for their pronunciation were accordingly laid down, which were the more necessary as the hymns were in sumerian. the dead language of sumer had become sacred, like latin in the middle ages, and each line of a hymn was provided with a translation in semitic babylonian. in appearance, a babylonian temple was not very unlike those of canaan or of solomon. the image of the god stood in the innermost shrine, the holy of holies, where also was the mercy-seat, whereon it was believed, as upon a throne, the deity was accustomed to descend at certain times of the year. in the little temple of balawât, near nineveh, discovered by mr. hormuzd rassam, the mercy-seat was shaped like an ark, and contained two written tables of stone; no statue of the god, however, seems in this instance to have stood beside it. in front of it was the altar, approached by steps. in the court of the temple was a "sea" or "deep," like that which was made by solomon. an early hymn which describes the construction of one of them, states that it was of bronze, and that it rested on the figures of twelve bronze oxen. it was intended for the ablutions of the priests and the vessels of the sanctuary, and was a representation of that primæval deep out of which it was believed that the world originated. one peculiarity the babylonian temples possessed which was not shared by those of the west. each had its _ziggurat_ or "tower," which served for the observation of the stars, and in the topmost storey of which was the altar of the god. it corresponded with the "high-place" of canaan, where man imagined himself nearest to the gods of heaven. but in the flat plain of babylonia it was needful that the high-place should be of artificial construction, and here accordingly they built the towers whose summits "reached to" the sky. the temples and their ministers were supported partly by endowments, partly by voluntary gifts, sometimes called _kurbanni_, the hebrew _korban_, partly by obligatory contributions, the most important of which was the _esrâ_ or "tithe." besides the fixed festivals, which were enumerated in the calendar, special days of thanksgiving or humiliation were appointed from time to time. there was also a weekly sabattu or "sabbath," on the st, th, th, st, and th days of the month, as well as on the th, the last day of the seventh week from the beginning of the previous month. the sabbath is described as "a day of rest for the heart," and all work upon it was forbidden. the king was not allowed to change his dress, to ride in his chariot, or even to take medicine, while the prophet himself was forbidden to utter his prophecies. the mass of the people looked forward to a dreary existence beyond the grave. the shades of the dead flitted like bats in the darkness of the under-world, hungry and cold, while the ghosts of the heroes of the past sat beside them on their shadowy thrones, and allat, the mistress of hades, presided over the warders of its seven gates. the sumerians had called it "the land whence none return," though in the theology of eridu and babylon asari or merodach was already a god who, through the wisdom of his father ea, "restored the dead to life." but as the centuries passed, new and less gloomy ideas grew up in regard to the future life. in a prayer for the assyrian king the writer asks that he may enjoy an endless existence hereafter in "the land of the silver sky," and the realms of the gods of light had been peopled with the heroes of babylonian literature at an early date. the belief in hades went back to those primitive ages when the sumerians of eridu conceived of the earth as floating on the deep, which surrounded it as a snake with its coils, while the sky covered it above like an extinguisher, and was supported on the peak of "the mountain of the world," where the gods had their abode. this primitive cosmological conception underwent changes in the course of time, but the underlying idea of an abyss of waters out of which all things were shaped remained to the end. the chaldæan epic of the creation declares that "in the beginning," "the chaos of the deep" had been the "mother" of both heaven and earth, out of whom first came the primæval deities lakhmu and lakhamu, and then an-sar and ki-sar, the upper and lower firmament. long ages had to elapse before the trinity of the later theology--anu, ea, and bel--were born of these, and all things made ready for the genesis of the present world. merodach, the champion of the gods of light and law, had first to do battle with tiamat, "the dragon" of "the deep," and her allies of darkness and disorder. he had proved his powers by creating and annihilating by means of his "word" alone, and the conflict which he waged ended in the destruction of the enemy. the body of tiamat was torn asunder and transformed into the heaven and earth, her springs of water were placed under control, and the forces of anarchy and chaos were banished from the universe. then followed the creation of the existing order of things. the sun and moon and stars were fixed in their places, and laws given to them which they should never transgress, plants and animals were created, and finally man. babylonian literature went back to a remote date. the age of sargon of akkad was already a highly literary one, and the library he founded at akkad contained works which continued to be re-edited down to the latest days of babylonian literature. every great city had its library, which was open to every reader, and where the books were carefully catalogued and arranged on shelves. here too were kept the public records, as well as title-deeds, law-cases, and other documents belonging to private individuals. the office of librarian was held in honour, and was not unfrequently occupied by one of the sons of the king. every branch of literature and science known at the time was represented. theology was naturally prominent, as well as works on omens and charms. the standard work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, had been compiled for the library of sargon of akkad; so too had the standard work on terrestrial omens. there was also a standard work on medicine, in which medical prescriptions and spells were mixed together. philological treatises were numerous. there were dictionaries and grammars for explaining the sumerian language to semitic pupils, interlinear translations of sumerian texts, phrase-books, lists of synonyms, and commentaries on difficult or obsolete words and passages, besides syllabaries, in which the cuneiform characters were catalogued and explained. mathematics were diligently studied, and tables of squares and cubes have come to us from the library of larsa. geography was represented by descriptions of the countries and cities known to the babylonians, natural history by lists of animals and birds, insects and plants. the assyrians were endowed with a keen sense of history, and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called _limmi_, who gave their names to their years of office. the historical and chronological works of the assyrian libraries are therefore particularly important. they have enabled us to restore the chronology of the royal period of israelitish history, and to supplement the old testament narrative with the contemporaneous records of the assyrian kings. the babylonians were less historically exact, perhaps because they had less of the semitic element in their blood; but they, too, carefully kept the annals of their kings, and took a deep interest in the former history of their country. contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed, however, the larger part of the contents of most babylonian libraries. they have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so that the age of khammurabi, or even of sargon, in babylonia, is beginning to be as well known to us as the age of periklês in greece. along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal documents and records of law-cases which have been preserved. babylonian law was, like english law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and carefully considered code had been formed at an early date. collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be found in the libraries. the autograph letters of khammurabi, the amraphel of genesis, have come down to us, and we even have letters of his time from a lover to his mistress, and from a tenant to his landlord, whom he begs to reduce his rent. boys went to school early, and learning the cuneiform syllabary was a task that demanded no small amount of time and application, especially when it is remembered that in the case of the semitic babylonian this involved also acquiring a knowledge of the dead language of sumer. one of the exercises of the sumerian schoolboy bids him "rise like the dawn, if he would excel in the school of the scribes." purely literary texts were numerous, especially poems, though nothing corresponding to the egyptian novel has been met with. the epic of gilgames, composed by sin-liqi-unnini, has already been referred to. its twelve books answered to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the eleventh accordingly contains the episode of the deluge. gilgames was the son of a royal mother, whose son was fated to slay his grandfather, and who was consequently confined in a tower. but an eagle carried him to a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered erech from its foes, and made it the seat of his kingdom. he slew the tyrant khumbaba in the forest of cedars, and by means of a stratagem tempted the satyr ea-bant to leave the woods and become his counsellor and friend. istar wooed him, but he scorned her offers, and taunted her with her misdeeds to the hapless lovers who had been caught in her toils. in revenge the goddess persuaded her father anu to create a winged bull, which should work havoc in the country of the babylonians. but gilgames destroyed the bull, an achievement, however, for which he was punished by heaven. ea-bani died of the bite of a gadfly, and his spirit mounted to the skies, while gilgames himself was smitten by a sore disease. to heal it he sailed beyond the mouth of the euphrates and the river of death, leaving behind him the deserts of arabia and the twin-mountain where men in the shape of huge scorpions guard the gateways of the sun. at last he found xisuthros, the hero of the deluge, and learned from him how he had escaped death. cured of his malady, he returned homeward with a leaf of the tree of life. but as he rested at a fountain by the way it was stolen by a serpent, and man lost the gift of immortality. in babylonia, and to a lesser extent in assyria, women were practically on a footing of equality with the men. they could trade in their own names, could make wills, could appear as witnesses or plaintiffs in court. we hear of a father transferring his property to his daughter, reserving only the use of it during his life. polygamy was not common; indeed, we find it stipulated in one instance that in the case of a second marriage on the part of the husband the dowry of the first wife should be returned to her, and that she should be free to go where she would. of course these rules did not apply to concubines, who were often purchased. adoptions were frequent, and slaves could be adopted into the family of a freeman. the large number of slaves caused the wages of the free labourer to be low. but the slaves were treated with humanity. from early times it was a law that if a slave were hired to another, the hirer should pay a penalty to his master whenever he was incapable of work, thus preventing "sweating" or overwork. similarly, injuries to a slave were punished by a fine. the slave could trade and acquire property for himself, could receive wages for his work when hired to another, could give evidence in a court of law, and might obtain his freedom either by manumission, by purchase, by adoption, or by impressment into the royal service. farms were usually held on a sort of _métayer_ system, half the produce going to the landlord as rent. sometimes, however, the tenant received only a third, a fourth, or even a tenth part of the produce, two-thirds of the annual crop of dates being also assigned to the owner of the land. the tenant had to keep the farm-buildings in order, and to build any that were required. house-property seems to have been even more valuable than farm-land. the deeds for the lease or sale of it enter into the most minute particulars, and carefully define the limits of the estate. the house was let for a term of years, the rent being paid either twice or three times a year. at the expiration of the lease, the property had to be returned in the state in which the tenant had found it, and any infringement of the legal stipulations was punished with a heavy fine. agents were frequently employed in the sale or letting of estates. the cities were busy centres of trade. commercial intercourse was carried on with all parts of the known world. wheat was exported in large quantities, as well as dates and date-wine. the staple of babylonian industry, however, was the manufacture of cloths and carpets. vast flocks of sheep were kept on the western bank of the euphrates, and placed under the charge of bedâwin from arabia. their wool was made into curtains and rugs, and dyed or embroidered fabrics of various kinds. even belshazzar, the heir-apparent of nabonidos, did not disdain to be a wool-merchant, and we find him lending twenty manehs, the proceeds of the sale of some of it, and taking as security for the repayment of the debt certain house-property in babylon. it was "a goodly babylonish garment," secreted by achan from among the spoil of jericho, that brought destruction upon himself and his family. money-lending naturally occupied a prominent place in the transaction of business. the ordinary rate of interest was per cent, paid in monthly instalments; in the time of nebuchadrezzar, however, it tended to be lower, and we find loans made at - / per cent. the penalty was severe if the capital were not repaid at the specified date. the payment was occasionally in kind, but money was the usual medium of exchange. it consisted of rings or tongue-like bars of gold, silver, and copper, representing manehs and shekels. the maneh was divided into sixty shekels, and the standard used in later babylonia had been fixed by dungi, king of ur. one of the standard maneh-weights of stone, from the mint of nebuchadrezzar, is now in the british museum. in the time of the second babylonian empire stamped or coined money was introduced, as well as pieces of five or more shekels. this was the period when the great banking firm of egibi flourished, which anticipated the rothschilds in making loans to the state. the babylonian cemetery adjoined the cities of the living, and was laid out in imitation of the latter. the tombs were built of crude bricks, and were separated from one another by streets, through which flowed streams of "living water." gardens were planted by the side of some of the tombs, which resembled the houses of the living, and in front of which offerings were made to the dead. after a burial, brushwood was heaped round the walls of the tomb and set on fire, partially cremating the body and the objects that were interred with it within. sanitary reasons made this partial cremation necessary, while want of space in the populous plain of babylonia caused the brick tombs to be built, like the houses of the towns, one on the top of the other. babylonia and assyria were both administered by a bureaucracy, but whereas in assyria the bureaucracy was military, in babylonia it was theocratic. the high-priest was the equal and the director of the king, and the king himself was a priest, and the adopted child of bel. in assyria, on the contrary, the arbitrary power of the monarch was practically unchecked. under him was the turtannu or tartan, the commander-in-chief, who commanded the army in the absence of the king. the rab-saki, rab-shakeh, or vizier, who ranked a little below him, was the head of the civil officials; besides him we hear of the rab-sa-resi or rabsaris, "the chief of the princes," the rab-mugi or rab-mag, "the court physician," and an endless number of other officers. the governors of provinces were selected from among the higher aristocracy, who alone had the privilege of sharing with the king the office of _limmu_, or eponymous archon after whom the year was named. most of these officers seem to have been confined to assyria; we do not hear of them in the southern kingdom of babylonia. there, however, from an early period royal judges had been appointed, who went on circuit and sat under a president. sometimes as many as four or six of them sat on a case, and subscribed their names to the verdict. the main attention of the assyrian government was devoted to the army, which was kept in the highest possible state of efficiency. it was recruited from the free peasantry of the country--a fact which, while it explains the excellence of the assyrian veterans, also shows why it was that the empire fell as soon as constant wars had exhausted the native population. improvements were made in it from time to time; thus, cavalry came to supersede the use of chariots, and the weapons and armour of the troops were changed and improved. engineers and sappers accompanied it, cutting down the forests and making roads as it marched, and the commissariat was carefully attended to. the royal tent was arranged like a house, and one of its rooms was fitted up as a kitchen, where the food was prepared as in the palace of nineveh. in babylonia it was the fleet rather than the army which was the object of concern, though under nebuchadrezzar and his successors the army also became an important engine of war. but, unlike the assyrians, the babylonians had been from the first a water-faring people, and the ship of war floated on the euphrates by the side of the merchant vessel and the state barge of the king. such then were the kingdoms of babylonia and assyria. each exercised an influence on the israelites and their neighbours, though in a different way and with different results. the influence of assyria was ephemeral. it represented the meteor-like rise of a great military power, which crushed all opposition, and introduced among mankind the new idea of a centralised world-empire. it destroyed the northern kingdom of samaria, and made palestine once more what it had been in pre-mosaic days, the battle-ground between the nations of the nile and the tigris. on the inner life of western asia it left no impression. the influence of babylonia, on the other hand, was that of a venerable and a widely reaching culture. the canaan of the patriarchs and the canaanitish conquest was a canaan whose civilisation was derived from the euphrates, and this civilisation the israelites themselves inherited. abraham was a babylonian, and the mosaic law is not egyptian but babylonian in character, wherever it ceases to be specifically israelite. the influence of babylonia, moreover, continued to the last. it was the babylonish exile which changed the whole nature of the jewish people, which gave it new aims and ideals, and prepared it for the coming of the messiah. the babylonian influence which had been working in the west for four thousand years received, as it were, a fresh impulse, and affected the religion and life of judah in a new and special manner. nor has the influence of babylonian culture vanished even yet. apart from the religious beliefs we have received from israel, there is much in european civilisation which can be traced back to the old inhabitants of chaldæa. it came through canaanitish hands; perhaps, too, through the hands of the etruscans. at all events, the system of augury which rome borrowed from etruria had a babylonian origin, and the prototype of the strange liver-shaped instrument by means of which the etruscan soothsayer divined, has been found among the relics of a babylonian library. chapter vii conclusion our task is finished. we have passed under review some of the facts which have been won by modern discovery from the monuments of the nations who helped to create the history of israel. that history no longer stands alone like a solitary peak rising from the plain. egypt, babylonia, and assyria have yielded up their dead; canaan and even arabia are now beginning to do likewise. the oriental world of the past is slowly developing before our eyes; centuries which were deemed pre-historic but a few years ago have now become familiar to us, and we can study the very letters written by the contemporaries and predecessors of abraham, and read the same books as those that were read by them. a new light has been poured upon the old testament; its story has been supplemented and explained; its statements tested and proved. the israelites were but one out of many branches of the same family. their history is entwined around that of their brethren, their characteristics were shared by others of the same race. the canaan they occupied was itself inhabited by more than one people, and after the first few years of invasion, its influence became strong upon them. in race, indeed, the jew was by no means pure; at the outset a mixture of israelite and edomite, he was further mingled with moabite and philistine elements. the first king of judah as a separate kingdom had an ammonite mother, and bore an ammonite name, while the portraits which surmount the names of shishak's conquests in southern palestine show that the old amorite population was still predominant there. it was religion and history that made the jew, not purity of race. that egypt must have exercised an influence upon israel has long been known. the israelites were born as a nation in the land of goshen, and the exodus from egypt is the starting-point of their national history. but it is only since the decipherment of the egyptian inscriptions that it has been possible to determine how far this influence extended, and to what extent it prevailed. and the result is to show that it was negative rather than positive; that the regulations of the mosaic code were directed to preventing the people from returning to egypt and its idolatries by suppressing all reference to egyptian beliefs and customs, and silently contradicting its ideas and practices. even the doctrine of the future life, and the resurrection of the body, which plays so prominent a part in egyptian religion, is carefully avoided, and the ten commandments have little in common with the ethical code of egypt. but while the influence of egypt has thus been shown to be negative rather than positive, the influence of babylonia has proved to be overwhelming. perhaps this is one of the greatest surprises of modern research, though it might have been expected had we remembered that abraham was a native of babylonia, and that israelites and semitic babylonians belonged to the same race. we have seen that the early culture of western asia was wholly babylonian, and that babylonian influence continued undiminished there down to the days of the exodus. the very mode of writing and the language of literature were babylonian; the whole method of thought had been modelled after a babylonian pattern for unnumbered generations. israel in goshen was no more exempt from these influences than were the patriarchs in canaan. babylonian influence is deeply imprinted on the mosaic laws. the institution of the sabbath went back to the sumerian days of chaldæa; the name itself was of babylonian origin. the great festivals of israel find their counterparts on the banks of the euphrates. even the year of jubilee was a babylonian institution, and gudea, the priest-king of lagas, tells us that when he kept it the slave became "for seven days the equal of his master." it was only the form and application of the old institutions that were changed in the levitical legislation. they were adapted to the needs of israel, and associated with the events of its history. but in themselves they were all of babylonian descent. there is yet one more lesson to be learnt from the revelations of the monuments. they have made it clear that civilisation in the east is immensely old. as far back as we can go we find there all the elements of culture; man has already invented a system of writing, and has made some progress in art. it is true that by the side of all this civilisation there were still races living in the lowest barbarism of the stone age, just as there were tasmanians who employed stone weapons of palaeolithic shape less than sixty years ago; but between the civilised man of the babylonian plain and the barbarians around him there existed the same gulf that exists to-day between the european and the savage. the history of the ancient east contains no record of the development of culture out of savagery. it tells us, indeed, of degeneracy and decay, but it knows of no period when civilisation began. so far as archaeology can teach us, the builders of the babylonian cities, the inventors of the cuneiform characters, had behind them no barbarous past. appendices i egyptian chronology egypt was originally divided into several independent principalities. eventually these became the kingdoms of northern (or lower), and southern (or upper) egypt. among the kings of northern egypt were ( ) pu, ( ) ska, ( ) katfu (?), ( ) tau, ( ) thesh, ( ) nenau (?), and ( ) mekhâ; among the kings of southern egypt was besh. the two kingdoms were united by men or meni (menes), king of this, who builds memphis and founds the first dynasty of the united monarchy. dynasty i. (thinite). . meni. . teta i. . atotha. . ata. . husapti. . mer-ba-pa, years. . samsu, years. . qabhu, years. dynasty ii. (thinite). . buzau or bai-neter, years. . kakau. . ba-neter-en, years. . uznas, years. . send, years. . per-ab-sen or ka-ra (?). . nefer-ka-ra, years. dynasty iii. (memphite). . nefer-ka-sokar ( ) years, months, days. . hu-zefa, (?) years, months, days. . babai. . zazai, years, months, day. . neb-ka-ra, years. . zoser, years, months. . zoser-teta, years. . sezes. . nefer-ka-ra i., years. . huni, years. dynasty iv. (memphites). . snefru, years. . sharu. . khufu (cheops), years. . ra-dad-f, years. . khâ-f-ha (chephren). . men-kau-ra (mykerinos). . shepseskaf. dynasty v. (elephantines). . user-ka-f, years. . sahu-ra, years. . kaka, years. . nefer-ar-ka-ra i., years. . shepses-ka-ra, years. . khâ-nefer-ra. . ra-n-user an, years. . men-ka-hor, years. . dad-ka-ra assa, years. . unas, years. . akau-hor, years. dynasty vi. (elephantines). . teta iii. . user-ka-ra. . meri-ra pepi i., years. . mer-en-ra miht-em-saf i., years. . nefer-ka-ra ii. pepi ii., years. . mer-en-ra miht-em-saf ii., year, month. . neit-aker (nitôkris), a queen. dynasties vii. and viii. (memphites). . nefer-ka, years, month, day. . neferus, years, months, day. . ab-en-ra i., years, month, day. . ... year, days. . ab-en-ra ii. . hanti. . pest-sat-en-sopd. . pait-kheps. . serhlinib. ... dad-nefer-ra dudumes. ... neter-ka-ra. men-ka-ra. nefer-ka-ra iii. nefer-ka-ra iv. nebi. dad-ka-ea shema. nefer-ka-ra v. khondu. mer-en-hor. snefer-ka i. ka-n-ra. nefer-ka-ra vi. terel. nefer-ka-hor. nefer-ka-ra vii. pepi-seneb. snefer-ka ii. annu. [user]-kau-ra. nefer-kau-ra. nefer-kau-hor. nefer-ar-ka-ra ii. dynasty ix. (herakleopolites). . khiti or khruti i. mer-ab-ra ... mâa-ab-ra. khâ-user-ra. Âa-hotep-ra. skhâ-n-ra. aah-mes (?)-ra. se-n (?)-mu-ra. dynasty x. (herakleopolites). mer-ka-ea. ... ra-hotep-ab amu-si-hor-nez-hirtef. ... nefer-ka-ra viii. khiti ii. se-heru-herri. [ameni?] according to lauth, the turin papyrus gives kings to the tenth dynasty, and years. dynasty xi. (theban). . antef i. seshes-hor-ap-mâa-ra antuf-Âa, prince of thebes. . neb-hotep mentu-hotep i. . uah-ankh [ter(?)-] seshes-ap-mâa-ra antef-Âa ii., his son. . seshes-herher-mâa-ra-antef iii., his brother. . neter-nefer neb-taui-ra mentu-hotep ii. . nub-kheper-ra antauf, more than years. . neb-khru-ra mentu-hotep iii., more than years. . a'a'h, a queen. . antef v., her son. . s-ânkh-ka-ra i. according to lauth, the turin papyrus makes the sum of the eleventh dynasty years, neb-khru-ra reigning years. dynasty xii. (theban). . amon-em-hat i. s-hotep-ab-ra, alone years. with usertesen i., years. . usertesen i. kheper-ka-ra, alone years. with amon-em-hat ii., years. . amon-em-hat ii. nub-kau-ra, alone years. with usertesen ii., years. . usertesen ii. khâ-kheper-ra, years. . usertesen iii. khâ-kau-ra, [ ] years. . amon-em-hat iii. mâat-en-ra, years. . amon-em-hat iv. mâa-khru-ra, years, months, days. . sebek-nefru-ra, a, queen, years, months, days. the turin papyrus makes the sum of the twelfth dynasty years, month, days. dynasties xiii. (theban) and xiv. (xoite). according to the turin papyrus: . sebek-hotep i. sekhem-khu-taui-ra, son of sebek-nefru-ra, year, months, days. . sekhem-ka-ra, years. . ra amon-em-hat v. . s-hotep-ab-ra ii. . aufni, years. g. s-ânkh-ab-ra ameni antuf amon-em-hat vi., year. . s-men-ka-ra. . s-hotep-ab-ra iii. . s-ânkh-ka-ra ii. , . names lost. . nezem-ab-ra. . ra sebek-hotep ii. . ren-seneb. . autu-ab-ra i. hor. . sezef-ka-ra. . sekhem-khu-taui-ra ii. sebek-hotep iii. . user-en-ra. . s-menkh-ka-ra mer-menfiu. . ... ka-ra. . s-user-set-ra. . sokhem-uaz-taui-ka sebek-hotep iv. . khâ-seshesh-ra nefer-hotep, son of ra-ânkh-f. . si-hathor-ra. . khâ-nefer-ra sebek-hotop v. . [khâ-ka-ra]. . [khâ-ânkh-ra sebek-hotep vi.] . khâ-hotep-ra sebek-hotep vii., years, months, days. . uab-ra Âa-ab, years, months, days. . mer-nefer-ea ai, (or ) years, months, days. . mer-hotep-ra ana, years, months, days. . s-ânkh-en-s-uaztu-ra, years, months. . mer-sekhem-ra andu, years, month. . s-uaz-ka-ra ur, years, ... months, days. . anemen ... ra. - . names lost. . mer-kheper-ra. . mer-kau-ra sebek-hotep viii. - . names lost. . ... mes-ra. . ... mât-ra aba. . nefer-uben-ra i. . ... ka-ra. . s-uaz-en-ra. - . names lost. . nehasi-ra. . khâ-khru-ra. . neb-f-autu-ra, years, months, days. . s-heb-ra, years. . mor-zefa-ra, years. . s-uaz-ka-ra, year. . neb-zofa-ra, year. . uben-ra i. - . names lost. . [neb-] zefa-ra ii., years. . [nefer-] uben-ea ii. . autu-ab-ra ii. . her-ab-ra. . neb-sen-ra. - . names lost. . s-kheper-en-ra. . dad-khru-ra. . s-ânkh-ka-ra iii. . nefer-tum-ra. . sekhem-...-ra. . ka-...-ra. . nefer-ab-ra. . a...ka-ra. . khâ-...-ra, years. . nez-ka-...-ra. . s-men-...-ra. - . names lost. . sekhem-...-ra. . sekhem-...-ra. . sekhem-us...-ra. . sesen-...-ra. . neb-ati-uzu-ra. . neb-aten-uzu-ra. . s-men-ka-ra. . s-user-...-ra. . khâ-sekhem-[hent]-ra. about thirty-seven more names are illegible. dynasties xv., xvi. and xvii. (hyksos). according to josephus, quoted from mauetho:-- . salatis, years. . beon or bnôn, years. . apakhnas or pakhnan, years, months. . apôphis, years. . iannas or annas, years, month. . assis, years, months. ... ya'qob-hal (jacob-el). ... khian (iannas) s-user-set-en-ra. ... apopi i. aa-user-ra (reigned more than years). ... apopi iii. ra-âa-kenen. a dynasty of theban princes was contemporary with the seventeenth hyksos dynasty, the last four of whom were independent: skenen-ra taa i. (revolted against apopi iii.). skenen-ra taa ii. aa. skenen-ra taa iii. ken. uaz-kheper-ra ka-mes and wife aah-hotep. dynasty xviii. (theban). . neb-pehuti-ra aahmes i. (amosis), more than years. . ser-ka-ra amon-hotep i., his son (amenophis i,), years, months. . aa-kheper-ka-ra dehuti dehuti-mes i., his son, and queen amen-sit. . aa-kheper-en-ra dehuti-mes ii., his son (more than years), and wife (and sister) hatshepsu ii. mâ-ka-ra (daughter of hatshepsu i.). . khnum-amon hatshepsu ii. mâ-ka-ra, more than years. . ra-men-kheper dehuti-mes (thothmes) iii., her half-brother, years, months, day (b.c. , march , to february , according to dr. mahler's astronomical determination). . aa-khepru-ra amon-hotep ii., his son, more than years. . men-khepru-ra dehuti-mes iv., his son, more than years. . neb-mâ-ra amon-hotep iii., his son (more than years), and wife teie. . neter-khepru-ra amon-hotep iv. khu-n-aten, his son, more than years. . ankh-khepru-ra and wife meri-aten. . tut-ânkh-amon khepru-neb-ra and wife ankh-nes-amon. . aten-ra-nefer-nefru--mer-aten. . ai kheper-khepru-ar-mâ-ra, more than years. . hor-em-hib (armais) mi-amon ser-khepru-ka, more than years. dynasty xix. (theban). . men-pehuti-ra ramessu i. (ramesses), more than years. . men-mâ-ra seti i. (sethos) mer-en-ptah i., more than years. . user-mâ-ra (osymandyas) sotep-en-ra ramessu ii. (ramses) mi-amon (the sesostris of the greeks), b.c. - (according to dr. mahler). . mer-en-ptah ii. (ammenephthes) hotep-hi-ma ba-n-ra mi-amon. . user-khepru-ra seti ii. mer-en-ptah iii. . amon-messu hik-an mer-kha-ra sotep-en-ra. . khu-n-ra sotop-en-ra mer-en-ptah iv. si-ptah and wife ta-user. dynasty xx. (theban). . set-nekht merer mi-amon (recovered the kingdom from the canaanite arisu). . ramessu iii. hik-an, more than years. . ramessu iv. hik-mâ mi-amon, more than years. . ramessu v. user-mâ-s-kheper-en-ra mi-amon, more than years. . ramessu vi. neb-mâ-ra mi-amon amon-hir-kho-pesh-ef (called meri-tum in northern egypt). . ramessu vii. at-amon user-mâ-ra mi-amon. . ramessu viii. set-hir-kho-pesh-ef mi-amon user-mâ-ra khu-n-amon. . ramessu ix. si-ptah s-khâ-n-ra mi-amon, years. . ramessu x. nefer-ka-ra mi-amon sotep-en-ra, more than years. . ramessu xi. amon-hir-kho-pesh-ef kheper-mâ-ra sotep-en-ra. . ramessu xii. men-mâ-ra mi-amon sotep-en-ptah khâ-m-uas, more than years. dynasty xxi. (tanite). . nes-bindidi (smendes) mi-amon. . p-seb-khâ-n i. (psusennes i.) mi-amon aa-kheper-ra sotep-en-amon. . [nefer-ka-ra] (nephelkheres). . amon-em-apt (amenophthis). . ... (osokhor). . pinezem (?) (psinakhes). . hor-p-seb-khâ-n ii. (psusennes ii.). contemporary with the twenty-first dynasty was an illegitimate dynasty of high-priests at thebes:-- ( .) hir-hor si-amon. ( .) piankhi. ( .) pinezem i. ( .) pinezem ii. with title of "king." ( .) men-kheper-ra and wife isis-em-kheb. ( .) pinezem iii. dynasty xxii. (bubastite). . shashanq i. (shishak) mi-amon hez-kheper-ra sotep-en-ra, son of nemart, captain of the libyan mercenaries, more than years. . usarkon i. mi-amon sek-hem-kheper-ra. . takelet i. mi-amon si-isis user-mâ-ra sotep-en-amon, more than years. . usarkon ii. mi-amon si-bast user-mâ-ra, more than years. . shashanq ii. mi-amon sek-hem-kheper-ra. . takelet ii. mi-amon si-isis hez-kheper-ra, more than years. . shashanq iii. mi-amon si-bast user-mâ-ra, years. . pimai mi-amon user-mâ-ra sotep-en-amon. . shashanq iv. aa-kheper-ra, more than years. dynasty xxiii. . s-hir-ab-ra petu-si-bast. . usarkon iii. mi-amon aa-kheper-ra sotep-en-amon. . p-si-mut user-ra sotep-en-ptah. _interregnum_. egypt is divided between several princes, including tef-nekht, father of bak-en-ran-ef. it is overrun by piankhi the ethiopian, while usarkon iii. reigns at bubastis. the son and successor of piankhi was mi-amon-nut. dynasty xxiv. (saite). bak-en-ran-ef (bokkhoris) uah-ka-ra, more than years. dynasty xxv. (ethiopian). . shabaka (sabako) nefer-ka-ra, son of kashet, years. . shabatoka (sebikhos) dad-ka-ra. . taharka (tirhakah) nefer-tum-khu-ra, years. _interregnum_. egypt is conquered by the assyrian king esar-haddon, and divided into satrapies, b.c. - . taharka and his successor urdamanu (rud-amon), or tan-damanu (tuant-amon), make vain attempts to recover it. finally, psamtik, son of niku (necho), satrap of sais, shakes off the foreign yoke. dynasty xxvi. (saite). b.c. . psamtik i. (psammeti-khos) uah-ab-ra . nekau (necho) nem-ab-ra . psamtik ii. nefer-ab-ra . uah-ab-ra (apries or hophra) haa-ab-ra . aahmes ii. (amasis) si-nit khnum-ab-ra . psamtik iii. ankh-ka-n-ra dynasty xxvii. (persian). . kambathet (cambyses), sam-taui mestu-ra . ntariush (darius i.) settu-ra . khabbash senen tanen sotep-en-ptah, native prince . khsherish (xerxes) . artakhsharsha (artaxerxes) . ntariush (darius ii.) mi-amon-ra dynasty xxviii. (saite). amon-art-t-rut (amyrtæus), more than years dynasty xxix. (mendesian). . nef-âa-rut i. ba-n-ra mi-neteru, more than years. . hakori khnum-mâ-râ sotep-en-ptah, years. . p-si-mut user-ptah-sotep-en-ra, year. . hor-neb-kha, year. . nef-âa-rut ii., year. dynasty xxx. (sebennyte). . nekht-hor-hib ra-snezem-ab sotep-en-anhur, son of nef-âa-rut i., years. . zihu (teos), year. . nekht-neb-ef (nektanebo) kheper-ka-ra, years. egypt reconquered by the persians, b.c. . ii babylonian chronology en-sag-saganna, king of kengi. lugal-zaggisi, king of erech, founds an empire in western asia cir. b.c. (?). kings of lagas, cir. b.c. . ur-duggina. lugal-suggur, vassal of me-sa, king of kis. gursar. nini-khaldu, his son. ur-nina, his son. akur-gal, his son. e-annatum, his son. en-annadu i., his brother, high-priest. entemena, his nephew, high-priest. en-annadu ii., high-priest. lugal-usum-gal, vassal of sargon of akkad. kings of kis. me-sa. enne-ugun. alusarsid. lugal-khassi. dynasty of agade (akkad). sargon or sargani-sar-ali, b.c. . naram-sin, his son, b.c. . bingani-sar-ali, his son. queen ellat-gula (?). first dynasty of ur. lugal-kigub-nidudu. lugal-kisal-si, his son. second dynasty of ur. ur-bau, cir. b.c. ; his step-son, nammakhani, high-priest of lagas. dungi i., his son; gudea and his son, ur-nin-girsu, vassal high-priests of lagas. dynasty of erech. sin-gamil. sin-gasid. dynasty of isin. isbi-girra. libit-istar. pur-sin i. ur-ninip. isme-dagan. en-annatum, his son, vassal of gungunum of ur. third dynasty of ur. gungunum. dungi ii. (reigns at least years). pur-sin ii. (reigns at least years). gimil-sin (reigns at least years). inê-sin (probably followed by sumu-abi). first dynasty of babylon, b.c. . sumu-abi or samu-abi, (or ) years.[ ] sumu-la-ilu, his son, (or ) years. zabium or zabu, his son, years. abil-sin, his son, years. sin-muballidh, his son, (or ) years. babylonia conquered by the elamites; kudur-laghghamar (chedor-laomer) king of elam is suzerain, while eri-aku (arioch) governs southern babylonia and makes larsa his capital. khammurabi or ammurapi, the amraphel of genesis, (or ) years (b.c. - ). he defeats the elamites, restores sin-idinnam to larsa, and reunites babylonia. samsu-iluna, his son, (or ) years. abesukh (abishua) or ebisum, years. ammi-ditana, his son, years. ammi-zadok, his son, years. samsu-ditana, his son, years. dynasty of sisku, b.c. . anman, years. ki-annibi, years. damki-ilisu, years. iskipal, years. sussi, years. gulkisar, years. kirgal-daramas, years. Â-dara-kalamma, years. e-kur-ul-anna, years. melamma-kurkurra, years. ea-ga ... years. the dynasty of the kassites, b.c. .[ ] gandis, years. agum-si, years. agu-yasi, years. ussi, his son, years. adumetas. tazzigurumas. agum-kak-rime, his son. eight unknown kings. kara-indas. kadasman-bel (corresponded with the egyptian king amenophis iii.) kuri-galzu i. burna-huryas, his son. kuri-galzu ii., his son.[ ] kara-khardas. kadasman-kharbe i., his son. the throne usurped by nazi-bugas. kuri-galzu iii., son of kadas-man-kharbe, (?) years. nazi-maruttas, his son, years, b.c. . kadasman-turgu, his son, years. kadasman-buryas, years. kudur-bel, years. sagarkti-buryas, his son, years ( years before nabonidos). bibeyasu, years. bel-sum-iddin, - / year. kadasman-kharbe ii., - / year. rimmon-sum-uzur, years (including the years during which the assyrian king tig-lath-bir held babylon). meli-sipak, years. merodach-baladan i., his son, years. zamama-sum-iddin, year. bel-sum-iddin, years. the dynasty of isin, b.c. . merodach- ... years. four unknown kings. nebuchadrezzar i. bel-nadin-pal. merodach-nadin-akhi, years.[ ] merodach- ... - / year. the throne usurped by rimmon-baladan. merodach-sapik-zer-mati, years. nabu-nadin, years. the dynasty of the sea-coast, b.c. . simbar-sipak, years. ea-mukin-zeri, months. kassu-nadin-akhi, years. the dynasty of bit-bazi, b.c. . Ê-ulmas-sakin-sumi, years. bir-kudur-uzur i., years. silanim-sukamuna, months. the dynasty of elam, b.c. . an ..., an elamite, years. the second dynasty of babylon, b.c. . nebo-kin abli, years. bir-kudur-uzur ii. (?), months, days. probably four names missing. b.c. samas-mudammik cir. nebo-sum-iskun cir. nebo-baladan cir. merodach-nadin-sumi. cir. merodach-baladhsu-ikbi cir. bau-akhi-iddin cir. probably two names missing. nebo-sum-iskun, son of dakuri cir. nabonassar, years nebo-nadin-sumi, his son, years nebo-sum-yukin, his son, month, days the dynasty of sapÊ. yukin-zera or khinziros, years pulu (pul or poros), called tiglath-pileser iii. in assyria, years ululâ, called shalmaneser iv. in assyria merodach-baladan ii the chaldæan from the sea-coast sargon of assyria sennacherib, his son merodach-zakir-sumi, month merodach-baladan iii., months bel-ebus of babylon assur-nadin-sumi, son of sennacherib nergal-yusezib musezib-merodach sennacherib a second time esar-haddon, his son samas-sum-yukin (saos-du-khinos), his son kandalanu (kineladanos) nabopolassar nabu-kudurri-uzur (nebuchadrezzar ii.), his son amil-marduk (evil-merodach), his son nergal-sarra-uzur (nergal-sharezer) labasi-marduk (laborosoar-chod), his son, months. nabu-nahid (nabonidos) cyrus conquers babylon b.c. cambyses, his son gomates (gaumata) the magian usurps the throne, months nebuchadrezzar iii., native king darius (dârayavaush), son of hystaspes nebuchadrezzar iv., rebel king darius restored xerxes i. (khshayârshâ), his son samas-erba, rebel king xerxes restored artaxerxes i. (artakhshatra) longimanus, his son xerxes ii., his son, months sogdianos, his half-brother, months darius ii. nothos, his brother artaxerxes ii. mnêmon, his son okhos (uvasu), son of artaxerxes arses, his son darius iii. kodomannos conquered by alexander the great [footnote : the first date is that of a chronological tablet compiled in the reign of ammi-zadok; the second that of the dynastic tablet compiled probably in the reign of nabonidos. in the latter the reigns of illegitimate kings, pungun-ilu, immerum, and eri-aku, seem to be included in those of the legitimate rulers of the dynasty. immerum, the son of lilium, was a contemporary of sumu-la-ilu, and perhaps, like nur-rimmon and sin-idinnam in the time of sin-muballidh and khammurabi, was vassal king of larsa in southern babylonia.] [footnote : the date is probably from to years too high.] [footnote : the position of this kuri-galzu is not certain. one of the kuri-galzus calls himself "son of burna-buryas," but since nabonidos states that a burna-buryas reigned years after khammurabi, it is possible that among the eight (or in this ease nine) unknown kassite kings there was a burna-buryas i., b.c. , whose son was kuri-galzu i.] [footnote : as sennacherib makes merodach-nadin-akhi defeat the assyrians in b.c. , while the dynastic tablet places the death of the babylonian king in b.c. , there must be a chronological error in the latter.] iii assyrian chronology sargon asserts that he was preceded by assyrian kings, among the earlier of them being adasi and his son bel-bani. high-priests of assur. b.c. isme-dagon samsi-rimmon i., his son igur-kapkapu (?) samsi-rimmon ii., his son (?) khallu (?) irisum, his son (?) kings of assyria. bel-kapkapu, "the founder of the monarchy." assur-suma-esir (?) bir-tuklat-assur, his son, (contemporary of the babylonian king kharbe-sipak). erba-rimmon (?) assur-nadin-akhe i., his son (?) assur-bil-nisi-su cir. buzur-assur assur-nadin-akhe ii. assur-yuballidh, his son cir bel-nirari, his son pudilu (pedael), his son rimmon-nirari i., his son shalmaneser i., his son (the builder of calah) tiglath-bir i., his son conquers babylon and reigns there years assur-nazir-pal i., his son, years tiglath-asaur-bel assur-narara nebo-dan, his son bel-kudurri-uzur. bir-pileser assur-dan i., his son[ ] mutaggil-nebo, his son assur-ris-isi, his son[ ] tiglath-pileser i., his son assur-bil-kala, his son samsi-rimmon i., his brother assur-nazir-pal ii., his son assur-irbi (?) tiglath-pileser ii assur-dan ii., his son rimmon-nirari ii., his son tiglath-bir ii., his son assur-nazir-pal iii. his son shalmaneser ii., his son assur-dain-pal (sardana-pallos), rebel king samsi-rimmon ii., his brother rimmon-nirari ii., his son shalmaneser iii. assur-dân iii. assur-nirari pulu (pul), usurper, takes the name of tiglath-pileser iii. conquers babylon ululâ, usurper, takes the name of shalmaneser iv. sargon, usurper sennacherib (sin-akhe-erba), his son esar-haddon (assur-akh-iddin), his son assur-bani-pal, his son assur-etil-ilani-yukinni, his son (?) sin-sarra-iskun (sarakos) (?) destruction of nineveh [footnote : a contemporary of the babylonian king zamama-sum-iddin. if this is the last king but one of the kassite dynasty, and not rather one of the unknown kings of the dynasty of isin, the date of assurdan i. will have to be pushed about years further back.] [footnote : a contemporary of the babylonian king nebuchadrezzar i.] iv hebrew chronology as corrected by the assyrian monuments the israelitish exodus out of egypt in the fifth year of meneptah, son of ramses ii. campaign of ramses iii. in southern palestine cir. chushan-rishathaim of aram-naharaim or mitanni conquers canaan cir. saul elected king of israel cir. accession of david cir. accession of solomon cir. accession of rehoboam, division of the kingdom cir. invasion of palestine by shishak i. of egypt judah. rehoboam ( years) cir. abijah asa jehoshapbat jeboram ahaziah or jehoahaz athaliah joash amaziah uzziah or azariah jotham ahaz becomes tributary to tig-lath-pileser damascus taken by the assyrians hezekiah invasion of judah by sennacherib manasseh amon josiah jehoahaz jehoiakim jehoiachin zedekiah jerusalem destroyed by nebuchadrezzar israel. jeroboam ( years) nadab baasha elah zimri, for days omri ahab ahab and his allies defeated by the assyrians at qarqar ahaziah revolt of mesha of moab joram jehu he pays tribute to assyria jehoanaz jehoash jeroboam ii. zeohariah shallum menahem pays tribute to tiglath-pileser pekahiah pekah hoshea or samaria taken by the assyrians v the letters of ebeb-tob (or ebed kheba), vassal king of jerusalem, to amenophis iv., king of egypt i. "to the king my lord thus speaks ehed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. what have i done against the king my lord? they have slandered me before the king my lord, saying: ebed-tob has revolted from the king his lord. behold, neither my father nor my mother have exalted me in this place; the arm of the mighty king has made me enter the house of my father. why should i have committed a sin against the king my lord? by the life of the king, i say to the commissioner of the king my lord: why dost thou love the khabiri (confederates) and hate the (loyal) governors? and yet continually are they slandering me before the king my lord, because i say that the provinces of the king my lord are being destroyed. continually are they slandering me to the king my lord. but let the king my lord consider, since the king my lord has established the garrisons which have taken the fortresses ... may the king send help to his country. [may he send troops] to his country! the cities of the king my lord are lost which elimelech is destroying, even all the country of the king; so let the king my lord send help to his country. i say: i will go down to the king my lord, and shall i not see the tears of the king my lord? but the enemy are strong against me, and i have not been able to go down to the king my lord. so let the king incline towards my face and despatch a garrison to me, and i will go down and see the tears of the king my lord. since by the life of the king, when the commissioner departed, i say: the provinces of the king are being destroyed, (yet) thou dost not listen to me. all the governors are destroyed, no governor remains to the king my lord. may the king turn his face to the men and send the troops of the king my lord. no provinces remain unto the king; the khabiri have wasted all the provinces of the king. if troops come this year, the provinces of the king my lord will be preserved; but if no troops come, the provinces of the king my lord will be destroyed.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant: make a clear report of my words to the king my lord that all the provinces of the king my lord are being destroyed." ii. "to the king my lord, my sun-god, thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. behold, the king my lord has established his name at the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun. they have uttered slanders against me. behold, i am not a governor, a dependent of the king my lord. behold, i am the king's friend, and i pay tribute to the king, even i. neither my father nor my mother, but the arm of the mighty king has established me in the house of my father. [when the governor of the king my lord] came to me, i gave him prisoners (?) and slaves. sûta (seti) the commissioner of the king came to me; i gave slavewomen and male prisoners into the hands of sûta as a present for the king my lord. may the king give counsel to his country! the country of the king is being destroyed, all of it. hostilities are being carried on against me. behold, the mountains of seir (see josh, xv. ) as far as gath-carmel have united against all the other governors and are at war with myself. if one looks, shall not one see the tears of the king my lord because war has been made upon me? while there were ships in the midst of the sea the arm of the mighty king possessed naharaim and babylonia, but now the khabiri possess the cities of the king (of egypt). not a single governor remains (among them) to the king my lord; all are destroyed. behold, turbazu has been slain in the gate of the city of zilû (zelah), and the king does nothing. behold, zimrida of lachish has been thrown to the ground by (his) servants and murdered. yaptikh-addu (jephthah-hadad) has been slain in the gate of the city of zilû, and the king does nothing.... let the king [my lord] send help [to his country], let the king turn his face [to his servants]. let him despatch troops to the country [of jerusalem]. [behold], if no troops come this year, all the provinces of the king my lord will be utterly destroyed. they do not tell to the face of the king my lord that the country of the king my lord is destroyed and all the governors are destroyed. if no troops come this year, let the king send a commissioner, and let him come to me with allies, and we will die with the king our lord.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant: at thy feet [i prostrate myself]. make a clear report of these my words to the king my lord that thy faithful servant am i." iii. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of my lord the king seven times seven i prostrate myself. behold, has not malchiel revolted to the sons of labai and the sons of arzai to demand the country of the king for themselves? as for the governor who does this deed, why does not the king question him? behold, malchiel and tagi (the father-in-law of malchiel) are they who have done this, since they have taken the city of rubutê (rabbah, josh. xv. ).... there is no royal garrison. may the king live for ever! verily pûru (pa-hor) has gone down to him; he has left me and is in the city of gaza. but let the king remember him and send fifty men as a garrison to defend the country. all the country of the king has revolted. send yikhbil-khamu, and let him consider the country of the king. to the secretary of the king, ebed-tob thy servant: make a clear report of my words to the king: 'abundant good fortune be unto thee! i am thy servant.'" iv. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. [behold the deed] which malchiel and suardatum have done against the country of the king my lord, hiring (?) the forces of the cities of gezer, of gath, and of keilah, and occupying the country of the city of rubutê (rabbah). the country of the king has gone over to the khabiri. and now at this moment the city of the mountain of jerusalem (uru-salim), whose name is bit-bir (the temple of the god bir), the city of the king, is separated from the locality of the men of keilah. let the king listen to ebed-tob thy servant, and let him despatch troops that i may restore the country of the king to the king. but if no troops arrive, the country of the king is gone over to the khabiri. this is the deed of suardatum and malchiel. but may the king send help to his country." v. _the commencement is lost_.--"and now as to the city of jerusalem, if this country belongs to the king, why is it that gaza is made the seat of the garrison for the king? behold, the country of the city of gath-carmel has fallen away to tagi and the men of gath. he is in bit-sâni, and we have effected that they should give labai and the country of the bedâwin (suta) to the khabiri. malchiel has sent to tagi and takes his sons as servants. he has granted all their requests to the men of keilah, and we have delivered the city of jerusalem. the garrison whom thou sentest by the hand of khapi (apis), the son of miyaria (meri-ra) hadad-el has taken and has established in his house in gaza." vi. "to the king my lord thus speaks ebed-tob thy servant: at the feet of the king my lord seven times seven i prostrate myself. [let the king listen to] the words [of his servant which] have been conveyed to [him].... let the king know that all the provinces have united in hostility against me, and let the king send help to his country. behold, the country of the cities of gezer, of askalon and of lachish have given them food, oil, and whatever they wanted; so let the king send help to the troops and despatch troops against the men who have committed sin against the king my lord. if troops come this year, then there will remain both provinces and governors to the king my lord; but if no troops arrive, there will remain no provinces or governors to the king my lord. behold, this country of the city of jerusalem neither my father nor my mother has given to me; the arm of the mighty king gave it to me, even to me. behold, this is the deed of malchiel and the deed of the sons of labai, who have given the country of the king to the khabiri. behold, o king my lord, be just towards me as regards the babylonians; let the king ask the commissioners whether they have acted violently (?). but they have taken upon themselves a very grievous sin. they have taken their goods and ... let the king ask (them); they had abundance of food, abundance of oil and abundance of clothes, until pauru the commissioner of the king came up to the country of the city of jerusalem, and adai revolted, together with the garrison and the dependents upon the king. let the king know that (pauru) said to me: adai has revolted from me, do not leave the city. this [year] send me a garrison and a royal commissioner. let thy favour be towards me. i have sent to the king my lord prisoners and ... tribute-bearers. the caravans of the king have been robbed in the field of ajalon. let the king my lord know that i am not able to send a caravan to the king my lord according to thy instructions. behold, the king has established his name in the country of jerusalem for ever, and he cannot forsake the territory of the city of jerusalem.--to the secretary of the king my lord, ebed-tob thy servant. at thy feet i fall: i am thy servant. make a clear report of my words to the king my lord, that i am the vassal of the king. abundance of good fortune to thee!--and thou hast performed deeds i cannot enumerate against the men of the land of cush. ... bana is not slain. there are babylonians in my house. let the king my lord ask in regard to them..." * * * * * letter of suwardatum to amenophis iv. "to the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, thus speaks suwardata thy servant, the dust of thy feet: at the feet of the king my lord, my gods, my sun-god, seven times seven i prostrate myself. the king my lord directed me to make war in the city of keilah; i made war; it is (now) at peace with me; my city is restored to me. why does ebed-tob send to the men of keilah, saying: 'take silver and march after me'? and the king my lord knows that ebed-tob has taken my city out of my hand. again let the king my lord inquire whether i have taken a man, or an ox, or an ass from him or his jurisdiction. again labai is the conspirator who had taken our cities, and now labai has taken ebed-tob, and they have taken our cities. and the king knows. to his servant let him grant power, for i did not know they had done anything until the king had sent an account of it to his servant." * * * * * letter from labai to amenophis iv. "to the king my lord and my sun-god thus (speaks) labai thy servant and the dust of thy feet: at the feet of the king my lord and my sun-god, seven times seven i prostrate myself. i have heard the words which the king has sent to me, and here am i, and the king apportions his country unto me. behold, i am a faithful servant of the king, and i have not sinned, and i have not offended, and i do not withhold my tribute, and i do not refuse the requests of the commissioner that is set over me. behold, they have slandered me, and the king my lord will not be hard on my offence. again it is an offence in me that i have entered the city of gezer and ordered the city to assemble, saying, 'the king has taken my property and the property of malchiel.' how could i know what malchiel has done against me? again the king has written to bin-sumya; he does not know that bin-sumya has marched along with the bedâwin, and lo, i have delivered him into the hand of adda-dan. again, if the king sends for my wife, how shall i withhold her; and if the king writes to myself, 'plunge an iron sword in thy heart and die,' how shall i not perform the commandment of the king?" iv the moabite stone (_see page _) . i am mesha the son of chemosh-melech, king of moab, the dibonite. . my father reigned over moab thirty years, and i reigned . after my father. i made this monument to (the god) chemosh at korkhah, as a monument . of salvation, for he saved me from all invaders, and let me see my desire upon all my enemies. omri . was king of israel, and he oppressed moab many days, for chemosh was angry with his . land. his son followed him, and he also said: i will oppress moab. in my days [chemosh] said: . i will see my desire on him and his house, and israel shall surely perish for ever. omri took the land of . medeba (numb. xxi. ), and [israel] dwelt in it during his days and half the days of his son, altogether forty years. but there dwelt in it . chemosh in my days. i built baal-meon (josh. xiii. ) and made therein the reservoirs; i built . kirjathain (numb, xxxii. ). the men of gad dwelt in the land of ataroth (numb, xxxii. ) from of old, and the king of israel built there . (the town) of ataroth; but i made war against the town and took it. and i slew all the [people] . of the town, for the pleasure of chemosh and moab. i took from thence the ariel (champion) of (the god) doda and tore . him before chemosh in kerioth (jer. xlviii. ). and i placed therein the men of sharon and the men . of me-khereth. and chemosh said unto me: go, seize nebo upon israel; and . i went in the night and fought against it from the break of dawn till noon; and i took . it, and slew all (therein), men, [boys], women, [girls], . and female slaves, and devoted them to ashtor-chemosh. and i took from it the ariels of yahveh, and tore them before chemosh. and the king of israel had built . jahaz (isa. xv. ), and dwelt in it, whilst he waged war against me, (but) chemosh drove him out before me. and . i brought from moab men, all chiefs, and carried them to jahaz, which i took . to add to it dibon. i built korkhah, the wall of the forests and the wall . of the citadel: i built its gates and i built its towers. and . i built the temple of moloch, and i made sluices of the water-ditches in the middle . of the town. and there was no cistern in the middle of the town of korkhah, and i said to all the people: make for . yourselves every man a cistern in his house. and i dug the canals for korkhah by means of the prisoners . of israel. i built aroer and i made the road in [the province of] the arnon. [and] . i built beth-bamoth, for it was destroyed. i built bezer (deut. iv. ), for [it was] in ruins. . [and all the chiefs] of dibou were fifty, for all dibon was subject (to me); and i placed . [chiefs] in the towns which i added to the land. i built . beth-medeba (numb. xxi. ), and beth-diblathain (jer. xlviii. ), and beth-baal-meon, and transported thereto the ... . [and the shepherds] of the flocks of the land. and at horonaim (isa. xv. ) there dwelt... . ... and chemosh said unto me: go down, make war upon horonaim. i went down [and made war] . [and took the city]; and chemosh dwelt in it in my days. i went up from thence ... . ... and i ... vii the treaty between ramses ii. and the hittites (_brugsch's translation_) (_see page _) in the year , in the month of tybi, on the st day of the month, in the reign of king ramessu mi-amun, the dispenser of life eternally and for ever, the worshipper of the divinities amun-ra (of thebes), hor-em-khu (of heliopolis), ptah (of memphis), mut the lady of the asher lake (at karnak), and khonsu the peace-loving, there took place a public sitting on the throne of horus among the living, resembling his father, hor-em-khu in eternity, in eternity, evermore. on that day the king was in the city of ramses, presenting his peace-offerings to his father amun-ra and to the gods hor-em-khu-tum, the lord of heliopolis (on), and to amun of ramessu mi-amun, to ptah of ramessu mi-amun, and to sutekh, the strong, the son of nut the goddess of heaven, that they might grant to him many thirty years' jubilee feasts, and innumerable happy years, and the subjection of all peoples under his feet for ever. then came forward the ambassador of the king and the governor [of his house, by name ..., and presented the ambassadors] of the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, who were sent to pharaoh to propose friendship with the king ramessu mi-amun, the dispenser of life, eternally and for ever, just as his father, the sun-god [dispenses it] each day. this is the copy of the contents of the silver tablet which the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, had caused to be made, and which was presented to the pharaoh by the hand of his ambassador tar-tisubu and his ambassador rames, to propose friendship to the king ramessu mi-amun, the bull among the princes, who places his boundary-marks where it pleases him in all lands. the treaty which had been proposed by the great king of the hittites, khata-sir, the powerful, the son of mar-sir, the great king of the hittites, the powerful, the grandson of sapalili, the great king of the hittites, the powerful, on the silver tablet, to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, the powerful--this was a good treaty for friendship and concord, which assured peace [and established concord] for a longer period than was previously the case for a long time. for it was the agreement of the great prince of egypt in common with the great king of the hittites that the god should not allow enmity to exist between them, on the basis of a treaty. to wit, in the times of mutal, the great king of the hittites, my brother, he was at war with [meneptah seti i.] the great prince of egypt. but now, from this very day forward, khata-sir, the great king of the hittites, shall look upon this treaty so that the agreement may remain which the sun-god ra has made, which the god sutekh has made, for the people of egypt and for the people of the hittites, that there should be no enmity between them for evermore. and these are the contents:-- khata-sir, the great king of the hittites, is in covenant with ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, from this very day forward, that there may subsist a good friendship and a good understanding between them for evermore. he shall be my ally; he shall be my friend. i will be his ally; i will be his friend, for ever. to wit: in the time of mutal, the great king of the hittites, his brother khata-sir, after his murder, placed himself on the throne of his father as the great king of the hittites i strove for friendship with ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, and it is [my wish] that the friendship and the concord may be better than the friendship and the concord which before existed, and which was broken. i declare: i, the great king of the hittites, will hold together with [ramessu mi-amun] the great prince of egypt, in good friendship and good concord. the sons of the sons of the great king of the hittites will hold together and be friends with the sons of the sons of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt. in virtue of our treaty for concord, and in virtue of our agreement [for friendship, let the people] of egypt [be bound in friendship] with the people of the hittites. let a like friendship and a like concord subsist in such measure for ever. never let enmity rise between them. never let the great king of the hittites invade the land of egypt, if anything has been plundered from it (i.e. the land of the hittites). never let ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, overstep the boundary [of the land of the hittites], if anything shall have been plundered from [the land of egypt]. the just treaty which existed in the times of sapalili, the great king of the hittites, likewise the just treaty which existed in the times of mutal, the great king of the hittites, my brother, that will i keep. ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, declares that he will keep it. [we have come to an understanding about it] with one another at the same time from this day forward, and we will fulfil it, and will act in a righteous manner. if another shall come as an enemy to the lands of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, then let him send an embassy to the great king of the hittites to this effect: "come and make me stronger than him." then shall the great king of the hittites [assemble his warriors], and the king of the hittites [shall come] and smite his enemies. but if it should not be the wish of the great king of the hittites to march out in person, then he shall send his warriors and his chariots that they may smite his enemies. otherwise [he would incur] the wrath of ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt. and if ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, should banish for a crime] subjects from his country, and they should commit further crime against him, then shall the king of the hittites come forward to kill them. the great king of the hittites shall act in common with [the great prince of egypt]. [if another should come as an enemy to the lands of the great king of the hittites, then shall he send an embassy to the great prince of egypt with the request that] he would come in great power to kill his enemies; and if it be the intention of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, (himself) to come, he shall [smite the enemies of the great king of the hittites. if it is not the intention of the great prince of egypt to march out in person, then he shall send his warriors and his two-] horse chariots, while he sends back the answer to the people of the hittites. if any subjects of the great king of the hittites have offended him, then ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt, shall not receive them in his land, but shall advance to kill them] ... the oath with the wish to say, i will go ... until ... ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, living for ever ... that he may be given for them (?) to the lord, and that ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, may speak according to his agreement for evermore ... [if servants shall flee away] out of the territories of ramessu mi-amun [the great prince of egypt, to betake themselves to] the great king of the hittites, the great king of the hittites shall not receive them, but the great king of the hittites shall give them up to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt [that they may be punished]. if servants of ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, leave his country and betake themselves to the land of the hittites, to make themselves servants of another, they shall not remain in the land of the hittites [but shall be given up] to ramessu mi-amuu, the great prince of egypt. if, on the other hand, there should flee away [servants of the great king of the hittites, in order to betake themselves to] ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt [in order to stay in egypt], then those who have come from the land of the hittites in order to betake themselves to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, shall not be [received] by ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, (but) the great prince of egypt, ramessu mi-amun, [shall deliver them up to the great king of the hittites]. [and if there shall leave the land of the hittites persons] of skilled mind, so that they come to the land of egypt to make themselves servants of another, then ramessu mi-amun shall not allow them to settle, he shall deliver them up to the great king of the hittites. when this [treaty] shall be known [by the inhabitants of the land of egypt and of the land of the hittites, then shall they not offend against it, for all that stands written upon] the silver tablet, these are words which will have been approved by the company of the gods, among the male deities and among the female deities, among those namely of the land of the hittites, and by the company of the gods, among the male deities and among the female deities, among those namely of the land of egypt. they are witnesses for me [to the validity] of these words. this is the catalogue of the gods of the land of the hittites:-- [sutekh of the city of] tump (tennib). sutekh of the land of the hittites. sutekh of the city of arnema. sutekh of the city of zaranda, sutekh of the city of pairaka. sutekh of the city of khisasap. sutekh of the city of sarsu. sutekh of the city of aleppo. sutekh of the city of ... [sutekh of the city of ...] sutekh of the city of sarpina. astartha of the land of the hittites. the god of the land of zaiath-khirri. the god of the land of ka ... the god of the land of kher ... the goddess of the city of akh ... [the goddess of the city of ... ] and of the land of a ... ua. the goddess of the land of zaina. the god of the land of ... nath ... er. [i have invoked these male and these] female [deities of the land of the hittites; these are the gods] of the land, as [witnesses to] my oath. [with them have been associated the male and the female deities] of the mountains and of the rivers of the land of the hittites, the gods of the land of kazawadana (cappadocia), amun, ra, sutekh, and the male and female deities of the land of egypt, of the earth, of the sea, of the winds, and of the storms. with regard to the commandment which the silver tablet contains for the people of the hittites and for the people of egypt, he who shall not observe it shall be given over [to the vengeance] of the company of the gods of the hittites, and shall be given over [to the vengeance of the] company of the gods of egypt, [he] and his house and his servants. but he who shall observe these commandments which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of the people of the hittites or [of the people of the egyptians], because he has not neglected them, the company of the gods of the land of the hittites, and the company of the gods of the land of egypt shall secure his reward and preserve life [for him] and his servants, and those who are with him and with his servants. if there flee away [one] of the inhabitants [from the land of egypt], or two, or three, and they betake themselves to the great king of the hittites, the great king of the hittites shall take them and send them back to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt. now with regard to the inhabitant of the land of egypt who is delivered up to ramessu mi-amun, the great prince of egypt, his fault shall not be avenged upon him, his house shall not be taken away, nor his wife nor his children. he shall not be put to death, neither shall he be mutilated in his eyes, nor in his ears, nor in his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet, so that thus no crime shall be brought forward against him. in the same way shall it be done if inhabitants of the land of the hittites take to flight, be it one alone or two or three, to betake themselves to ramessu mi-amun, the great king of egypt; ramessu mi-amun, the great king of egypt, shall cause them to be seized, and they shall be delivered up to the great prince of the hittites. with regard to him who is delivered up, his crime shall not be brought forward against him. his house shall not be destroyed, nor his wife, nor his children; he shall not be put to death, he shall not be mutilated in his eyes, nor in his ears, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet, nor shall any accusation be brought forward against him. that which is in the middle of this silver tablet and on its front side is a likeness of the god sutekh embracing the great prince of the hittites, surrounded by an inscription to this effect: "the seal of the god sutekh the sovereign of heaven," and "the seal of the writing made by khata-sir, the great and powerful prince of the hittites, the son of mar-sir, the great and powerful prince of the hittites." that which is in the middle of the frame is the seal of sutekh the sovereign of heaven. that which is on the other side (of the tablet) is the likeness of the god of the hittites embracing the great princess of the hittites, surrounded by an inscription to the following effect: "the seal of the sun-god of the city of iranna, the lord of the earth," and "the seal of puu-khipa, the great princess of the land of the hittites, the daughter of the land of qazawadana, the [servant of the goddess iskhara of] iranna, the regent of the earth; the servant of the goddess." that which is in the middle of the frame is the seal of the sun-god of iranna, the lord of all the earth. viii the travels of a mohar a satirical account of a tourist's misadventures in canaan, written in the time of ramses ii., the pharaoh of the oppression (_see page _) i will portray for thee the likeness of a mohar; i will let thee know what he does. thou hast not gone to the land of the hittites, nor hast thou beheld the land of aupa. the appearance of khatuma thou knowest not. likewise the land of igadai, what is it like? the zar (plain) of sesostris and the city of aleppo are on none of its sides. how is its ford? thou hast not taken thy road to kadesh (on the orontes) and tubikhi (the tibhath of chr. xviii. ), neither hast thou gone to the shasu (bedâwin) with numerous foreign soldiers, neither hast thou trodden the way to the magharat (the caves of the magoras near beyrout), where the heaven is dark in the daytime. the place is planted with maple trees, oaks, and acacias, which reach up to heaven, full of beasts, bears and lions, and surrounded by shasu in all directions. thou hast not gone up to the mountain of shaua (in the northern lebanon), neither hast thou trodden it; there thy hands hold fast to the [rein] of thy chariot; a jerk has shaken thy horses in drawing it. i pray thee, let us go to the city of beeroth (cisterns). thou must hasten to its ascent, after thou hast passed over its ford in front of it. do thou explain the attraction to be a mohar! thy chariot lies there [before] thee; thy [strength] has fallen lame; thou treadest the backward path at eventide. all thy limbs are ground small. thy [bones] are broken to pieces. sweet is [sleep]. thou awakest. there has been a time for a thief in this unfortunate night. thou wast alone, in the belief that the brother could not come to the brother. some grooms entered into the stable; the horse kicks out; the thief goes back in the night; thy clothes are stolen. thy groom wakes up in the night; he sees what has happened to him; he takes what is left, he goes to the evil-doers, he mixes himself up with the tribes of the shasu. he acts as if he were an amu (asiatic). the enemies come, they [feel about] for the robber. he is discovered, and is immovable from terror. thou awakest, thou findest no trace of them, for they have carried off thy property. become (again) a mohar, who is fully accoutred. let thy ear be full of that which i relate to thee besides. the town 'hidden'--such is the meaning of its name gebal--what is its state? its goddess (we will speak of) at another time. thou hast not visited it. be good enough to look out for beyrout, sidon, and sarepta. where are the fords of the land of nazana? the land of usu (palætyrus), what is its state? they speak of another city in the sea, tyre the haven is her name. drinking water is brought to her in boats. she is richer in fish than in sand. i will tell thee of something else. dangerous is it to enter into zorah. thou wilt say it is burning with a very painful sting (?) mohar, come! go forward on the way to the land of pa-kâkina. where is the road to achshaph? towards no city. pray look at the mountain of user. how is its crest? where is the mountain of shechem? who can surmount it? mohar, whither must you take a journey to the city of hazor? how is its ford? let me (choose) the road to hamath, dagara, (and) dagar-el. here is the road where all mohars meet. be good enough to spy out its road, cast a look on yâ ... when one goes to the land of adamim, to what is one opposite? do not draw back, but instruct us! guide us that we may know, thou leader! i will name to thee other cities besides these. thou hast not gone to the land of takhis, kafir-malona, tamnah, kadesh, dapul, azai, har-nammata, nor hast thou beheld kirjath-eneb near beth-sopher (kirjath-sepher or debir); nor dost thou know adullam (and) zidiputha, nor dost thou know any better the name of khalza in the land of aupa, the bull on its frontiers (?). here is the place where all the mighty warriors are seen. be good enough to look and see how qina is situated, and tell me about rehob. describe beth-sha-el (bethel) along with tarqa-el. the ford of the land of the jordan, how is it crossed? teach me to know the passage in order to enter into the city of megiddo which lies in front of it. verily thou art a mohar, well skilled in the work of the strong hand. pray, is there found a mohar like thee, to place at the head of the army, or a _seigneur_ who can beat thee in shooting? drive along the edge of the precipice, on the slippery height, over a depth of cubits, full of rocks and boulders. thou takest thy way back in a zigzag, thou bearest thy bow, thou takest the iron in thy left hand. thou lettest the old men see, if their eyes are good, how, worn-out with fatigue, thou supportest thyself with thy hand. _il est perdu, le chameau, le mohar! eh bien![ ]_ make to thyself a name among the mohars and the knights of the land of egypt. let thy name be like that of qazirnai the lord of aser, because he discovered lions in the interior of the balsam-forest of baka at the narrow passes, which are rendered dangerous by the shasu who lie in ambush among the trees. (the lions) measured fourteen cubits by five cubits. their noses reached to the soles of their feet. of a grim appearance, without softness, they cared not for caresses. thou art alone, no stronger one is with thee, no _armée_ is behind thee, no ariel (see sam. xxiii. , isa. xxix. ) who prepares the way for thee, and gives thee counsel on the road before thee. thou knowest not the road. the hair on thy head stands on end; it bristles up. thy soul is given into thy hands. thy path is full of rocks and boulders, there is no way out near; it is overgrown with creepers and wolf's-foot. abysses are on one side of thee, the mountain and the wall of rock on the other. thou drivest in against it. the chariot jumps on which thou art. thou art troubled to hold up thy horses. if it falls into the abyss, the pole drags thee down too. thy _ceintures_ are pulled away. they fall down. thou shacklest the horse, because the pole is broken on the path of the narrow pass. not knowing how to tie it up, thou understandest not how it is to be repaired. the _essieu_ is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. thy courage has evaporated. thou beginnest to run. the heaven is cloudless. thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched, till at length thou findest rest. explain thou thy attraction to be a mohar! thou comest into joppa. thou findest the date-palm in full bloom in its time. thou openest wide the aperture of thy mouth in order to eat. thou findest that the maid who keeps the garden is fair. she does whatever thou wantest of her.... thou art recognised, thou art brought to trial, and owest thy preservation to being a mohar. thy girdle of the finest stuff, thou payest it as the price of a bad rag. thou sleepest every evening with a rug of fur over thee. thou sleepest a deep sleep, for thou art weary. a thief takes thy bow and thy sword from thy side; thy quiver and thy armour are broken to pieces in the darkness; thy pair of horses run away. the groom takes his course over a slippery path that rises in front of him. he breaks thy chariot in pieces; he follows thy foot-tracks. [he finds] thy equipments, which had fallen on the ground, and had sunk into the sand, leaving only an empty space. prayer does not avail thee; even when thy mouth says: "give food in addition to water that i may reach my goal in safety," they are deaf and will not hear. they say not yes to thy words. the iron-workers enter into the smithy; they rummage in the workshops of the carpenters; the handi-craftsmen and soldiers are at hand; they do whatever thou requirest. they put together thy chariot: they put aside the parts of it that have been made useless; thy spokes are _façonné_ quite new; thy wheels are put on, they put the _courroies_ on the axles and on the hinder part; they splice thy yoke, they put on the box of thy chariot; the [workmen] in iron forge the ...; they put the ring that is wanting on thy whip, they replace the _lunières_ upon it. thou goest quickly onward to fight on the battlefield, to do the deeds of a strong hand and of firm courage. before i wrote i sought me out a mohar who knows his power, who leads the _jeunesse_, a chief in the _armée_ [who goes forward] even to the end of the world. answer me not, "that is good, this is bad;" repeat not to me thy opinion. come, i will tell thee all which lies before thee at the end of thy journey. i begin for thee with the palace of sesostris (ramses ii.). thou hast not set foot in it by force. thou hast not eaten the fish in the brook of .... thou hast not washed thyself in it. with thy permission i will remind thee of huzana (near el-arish); where is its fortress? come, i pray thee, to the palace of the land of uzi, of sesostris osymandyas in his victories, to saz-el together with absaqbu. i will inform thee of the land of ainin (the two springs), the customs of which thou knowest not. the land of the lake of nakhai and the land of rehoburtha (rehoboth, gen. xxvi. ) thou hast not seen since thou wast born, o mohar. rapih (the modern boundary between egypt and turkey) is widely extended. what is its wall like? it extends for a mile in the direction of gaza. [footnote : by the use of french words and expressions brugsch endeavours to represent the canaanitish terms which the egyptian writer has affectedly introduced into his work.] ix the negative confession of the egyptians (_sir p. le page renouf's translation_) (_see page _) the th chapter of the book of the dead contains the confession which the soul of the dead man was required to make before osiris and the forty-two divine judges of the dead, before he could be justified and admitted to the paradise of aalu:-- said on arriving at the hall of righteousness, that n (the soul of the dead man) may be loosed from all the sins which he hath committed, and that he may look upon the divine countenances. he saith:--hail to thee, mighty god, lord of righteousness! i am come to thee, o my lord! i have brought myself that i may look upon thy glory. i know thee, and i know the name of the forty-two gods who make their appearance with thee in the hall of righteousness; devouring those who harbour mischief and swallowing their blood, upon the day of the searching examination in the presence of un-neferu (osiris). verily "thou of the pair of eyes, lord of righteousness," is thy name. here am i; i am come to thee; i bring to thee right and have put a stop to wrong. i am not a doer of wrong to men. i am not one who slayeth his kindred. i am not one who telleth lies instead of truth. i am not conscious of treason. i am not a doer of mischief. i do not exact as the first-fruits of each day more work than should be done for me. my name cometh not to the bark of the god who is at the helm. i am not a transgressor against the god. i am not a tale-bearer. i am not a detractor. i am not a doer of that which the gods abhor. i hurt no servant with his master. i cause no famine. i cause not weeping. i am not a murderer. i give not orders for murder. i cause not suffering to men. i reduce not the offering in the temples. i lessen not the cakes of the gods. i rob not the dead of their funereal food. i am not an adulterer. i am undefiled in the sanctuary of the god of my domain. i neither increase nor diminish the measures of grain. i am not one who shorteneth the palm's length. i am not one who cutteth short the field's measurement. i put not pressure upon the beam of the balance. i snatch not the milk from the mouth of infants. i drive not the cattle from their pastures. i net not the birds of the manors of the gods. i catch not the fish of their ponds. i stop not the water at its appointed time. i divide not an arm of the water in its course. i extinguish not the lamp during its appointed time. i do not defraud the divine circle of their sacrificial joints. i drive not away the cattle of the sacred estate. i stop not a god when he cometh forth. i am pure, i am pure, i am pure, i am pure! x letters of khammurabi or ammurapi (the amraphel op gen. xiv. ) to sin-idinnam, king of larsa (the ellasar of genesis) i. "to sin-idinnam thus says khammurabi: the goddesses of the land of emudbalum restored your courage to you on the day of the defeat of kudur-laghghamar (chedor-laomer). because they have supported you among the army of thy hand, turn back the army and let them restore the goddesses to their own seats." ii. "to sin-idinnam thus says khummarabi: when you have seen this letter you will understand in regard to amil-samas and nur-nintu, the sons of gisdubba, that if they are in larsa or in the territory of larsa you will order them to be sent away, and that one of your servants on whom you can depend shall take them and bring them to babylon." iii. "to sin-idinnam thus says khammurabi: as to the officials who have resisted you in the accomplishment of their work, do not impose upon them any additional task, but oblige them to do what they ought to have performed, and then remove them from the influence of him who has brought them." sin-idinnam seems to have been the legitimate prince of larsa, who had been expelled from his dominions by the elamite invader eri-aku or arioch, and had taken refuge at the court of khammurabi in babylon. after the overthrow of the elamites, sin-idinnam was restored by khammurabi to his ancestral principality. xi the babylonian account of the deluge . sisuthros spake thus unto him, even to gilgames: . 'let me reveal unto thee, o gilgames, the tale of my preservation, . and the oracle of the gods let me declare unto thee. . the city of surippak, which, as thou knowest, is built [on the bank] of the euphrates, . this city was (already) old when the gods within it . set their hearts to cause a flood, even the great gods . [as many as] exist: anu the father of them, . the warrior bel their prince, . bir their throne-bearer, en-nugi (hades) their chief. . ea the lord of wisdom conferred with them, and . repeated their words to the reed-bed: 'reed-bed, o reed-bed! frame, o frame! . hear, o reed-bed, and understand, o frame! . o man of surippak, son of ubara-tutu, . frame the house, build a ship: leave what thou canst; seek life! . resign (thy) goods, and cause thy soul to live, . and bring all the seed of life into the midst of the ship. . as for the ship which thou shalt build, . ... cubits shall be in measurement its length; . and ... cubits the extent of its breadth and its height. . into the deep [then] launch it.' . i understood and spake to ea my lord: . 'as for the building of the ship, o my lord, which thou hast ordered thus, . i will observe and accomplish it. . [but what] shall i answer the city, the people and the old men?' . [ea opened his mouth and] says, he speaks to his servant, even to me: . ['if they question thee] thou shalt say unto them: . since (?) bel is estranged from me and . i will not dwell in your city, i will not lay my head [in] the land of bel; . but i will descend into the deep; with [ea] my lord will i dwell. . (bel) will rain fertility on you, . [flocks] of birds, shoals of fish.' _lines to are lost_. . on the fifth day i laid the plan of it (i.e. the ship); . in its hull (?) its walls were _gar_ ( cubits?) high; . _gar_ were the size of its upper part.' another version of the account of the deluge, of which a fragment has been preserved, puts a wholly different speech into the mouth of ea, and gives the hero of the story the name of adra-khasis. this fragment is as follows:-- 'i will judge him above and below, [but] shut [not thou thy door] [until] the time that i shall tell thee of. [then] enter the ship, and close the door of the vessel. [bring into] it thy corn, thy goods, [thy] property, thy [wife], thy slaves, thy handmaids, and the sons of [thy] people, the [cattle] of the field, the beasts of the field, as many as i appoint ... i will tell thee of (the time), and the door [of thy ship] shall preserve them.' adra-khasis opened his mouth and says, he speaks to ea [his] lord: '[o my lord,] none has ever made a ship [on this wise] that it should sail over the land.' ... here the fragment is broken off. the other version proceeds thus:-- . 'i fashioned its side, and closed it in; . i built six storeys (?), i divided it into seven parts; . its interior i divided into nine parts. . i cut worked (?) timber within it. . i looked upon the rudder and added what was lacking. . i poured _sars_ of pitch over the outside; . [i poured] _sars_ of bitumen over the inside; . _sars_ of oil did the men carry who brought it ... . i gave a _sar_ of oil for the workmen to eat; . _sars_ of oil the sailors stored away. . for the [workmen?] i slaughtered oxen; . i killed [sheep?] daily. . beer, wine, oil and grapes . [i distributed among] the people like the waters of a river, and . [i kept] a festival like the festival of the new year. . ... i dipped my hand [in] oil: . [i said to] samas (the sun-god): 'the storeys (?) of the ship are complete; . the ... is strong, and . the oars (?) i introduced above and below.' . [those who should be saved?] went two-thirds of them. . with all i had i filled it; with all the silver i possessed i filled it; . with all the gold i possessed i filled it; . with all that i possessed of the seed of life of all kinds i filled it. . i brought into the ship all my slaves and my handmaids, . the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field, the sons of my people, all of them did i bring into it. . the sun-god appointed the time and . utters the oracle: 'in the night will i cause the heavens to rain destruction; . enter the ship, and close thy door.' . that time drew near whereof he uttered the oracle: . 'on this night will i cause the heavens to rain destruction.' . i watched with dread the dawning of the day; . i feared to behold the day. . i entered into the ship and closed my door. . when i had closed the ship, to buzur-sadi-rabi the sailor . i entrusted the palace with all its goods. . mu-seri-ina-namari (the waters of the morning at dawn) . arose from the horizon of heaven, a black cloud; . the storm-god rimmon thundered in its midst, and . nebo and merodach the king marched in front; . the throne-bearers marched over mountain and plain; . the mighty god of death lets loose the whirlwind; . bir marches causing the storm (?) to descend; . the spirits of the underworld lifted up (their) torches, . with the lightning of them they set on fire the world; . the violence of the storm-god reached to heaven; . all that was light was turned to [darkness]. . in the earth like ... [men] perished (?) _two lines are lost here_. . brother beheld not his brother, men knew not one another. in the heaven . the gods feared the deluge, and . hastened to ascend to the heaven of anu. . the gods cowered like a dog who lies in a kennel. . istar cried like a woman in travail, . the great goddess spoke with a loud voice: . 'the former generation is turned to clay. . the evil which i prophesied in the presence of the gods, . when i prophesied evil in the presence of the gods, . i prophesied the storm for the destruction of my people. . what i have home, where is it? . like the spawn of the fish it fills the deep.' . the gods wept with her because of the spirits of the underworld; . the gods sat dejected in weeping, . their lips were covered ... . six days and nights . rages the wind; the flood and the storm devastate. . the seventh day when it arrived the flood ceased, the storm . which had fought like an army . rested, the sea subsided, and the tempest of the deluge was ended. . i beheld the deep and uttered a cry, . for the whole of mankind was turned to clay; . like the trunks of trees did the bodies float. . i opened the window and the light fell upon my face; . i stooped, and sat down weeping; . over my face ran my tears. . i beheld a shore beyond the sea; . twelve times distant rose a land. . on the mountain of nizir the ship grounded; . the mountain of the country of nizir held the ship and allowed it not to float. . one day and a second day did the mountain of nizir hold it. . a third day and a fourth day did the mountain of nizir hold it. . a fifth day and a sixth day did the mountain of nizir hold it. . when the seventh day came i sent forth a dove and let it go. . the dove went and returned; a resting-place it found not and it turned back. . i sent forth a swallow and let it go; the swallow went and returned; . a resting-place it found not and it turned back. . i sent forth a raven and let it go; . the raven went and saw the going down of the waters, and . it approached, it waded, it croaked and did not turn back. . then i sent forth (everything) to the four points of the compass; i offered sacrifices; . i built an altar on the summit of the mountain. . i set libation-vases seven by seven; . beneath them i piled up reeds, cedar-wood and herbs. . the gods smelt the savour, the gods smelt the sweet savour; . the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer. . already at the moment of her coming, the great goddess . lifted up the mighty bow which anu had made according to his wish (?). . 'these gods,' (she said), 'by my necklace, never will i forget! . those days, i will think of them and never will forget them. . let the gods come to my altar; . (but) let not bel come to my altar, . since he did not take counsel but caused a flood and counted my men for judgment.' . already at the moment of his coming, bel . saw the ship and stood still; . he was filled with wrath at the gods, the spirits of heaven, (saying): . 'let no living soul come forth, let no man survive in the judgment!' . bir opened his mouth and says, he speaks to the warrior bel: . 'who except ea can devise a speech? . for ea understands all kinds of wisdom.' . ea opened his mouth and speaks, he says to the warrior bel: . 'thou art the seer of the gods, o warrior! . why, o why didst thou not take counsel, but didst cause a deluge? . (let) the sinner bear his own sin, (let) the evil-doer bear his own evil-doing. . grant (?) that he be not cut off, be merciful that he be not [destroyed]. . instead of causing a deluge, let lions come and minish mankind; . instead of causing a deluge, let hyænas come and minish mankind; . instead of causing a deluge, let there be a famine and let it [devour] the land; . instead of causing a deluge, let the plague-god come and minish mankind! . i did not reveal (to men) the oracle of the great gods, . but sent a dream to adra-khasis and he heard the oracle of the gods.' . then bel again took counsel and ascended into the ship. . he took my hand and caused me, even me, to ascend, . he took up my wife (also, and) caused her to bow at my side; . he turned to us and stood between us; he blessed us (saying): . 'hitherto sisuthros has been mortal, but . henceforth sisuthros and his wife shall be like unto the gods, even unto us, and . sisuthros shall dwell afar at the mouth of the rivers,' . then he took us afar, at the mouth of the rivers he made us dwell. xii the babylonian epic of the creation tablet i. when the heaven above was not yet named or the earth beneath had recorded a name, the primæval (_ristû_) deep was their generator, mummu-tiamat (the chaos of the sea) was the mother of them all. their waters were embosomed together, and the corn-field was unharvested, the reed-bed was ungrown. when the gods had not yet appeared, any one of them, by no name were they recorded, no destiny [was fixed]. then the great gods were created, lakhmu and lakhamu issued forth [the first], until they grew up [when] ansar and kisar (the upper and lower firmaments) were created. long were the days, extended [was the time, till] the gods [anu, bel, and ea were born], ansar [and kisar gave them birth]. * * * * * the deep [opened] its mouth [and said,] to [tiamat], the glorious, [it spake]: while their path ... i will overthrow their path ... let lamentations arise, let complaining [be made] [when] tiamat [undertakes] this [work] * * * * * their way shall be difficult ... [then] the god mummu answered [his] father the deep: * * * * * their way [shall be overthrown], the light shall be darkened, let [it be] as the night! the deep [heard] him and [his] countenance was lightened; evil planned they against the gods. * * * * * tiamat, the mother of the gods, lifted up herself against them, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods united themselves together with her, until (all) that had been created marched at her side. banning the day they followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they gathered themselves together and began the battle. the mother of the deep (?) (_khubur_), the creatress of them all, added victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she filled their bodies. horrible adders she clothed with terror, she decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... make huge their bodies that none may withstand their breast!' she created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakhamu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the (zodiacal) ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the battle, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she might create (?) eleven such-like monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she had summoned together, she raised up kingu, and magnified him among them: 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he might be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she took his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee; exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' then she gave to him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself, and made himself like anu (the god of heaven), she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri (i.e. kingu) shall dissolve its flame.' * * * * * tablet ii. (_begins with a speech of ansar to merodach_.) "tiamat our mother has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods have united themselves together with her, until (all) that has been created marches at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begun the battle. the mother of the deep (?), the creatress of them all, has added victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... may their bodies be huge so that none may withstand their breast!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakh-amu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man (aquarius), and the (zodiacal) ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the battle, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may create (?) eleven such-like monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them. 'to march before the host,' (she has said,) 'be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and seated him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee; exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' thereupon she has given him the tablets of destiny and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself, and made himself as anu, she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame!' [when merodach heard this, his heart] was grievously troubled, he ... ... and his lips he bit; .....his heart grew angry ......his cry. ......[he determined on] battle. [then spake he to] his father (ea): 'be not troubled; ......thou shalt become the lord of the deep. ......with tiamat will i contend.'" * * * * * merodach [heard] the words of his father, in the fulness (?) of his heart he said to his father: 'o lord of the gods, offspring (?) of the great gods, if indeed i am your avenger, tiamat to overpower and you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet(?). enter joyfully into ubsugina (the seat of oracles) all together. with my mouth like you will i give the oracle. what i create shall never be changed, the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled!' tablet iii. thereupon ansar opened his mouth, to [gâgâ] his [messenger] he uttered the word: 'o angel [gâgâ] who rejoicest my heart, [to lakhmu and lakh]amu will i send thee; [the command of my heart] thou shalt gladly hear(?): 'ansar, your son, has sent me, the wish of his heart he has caused me to know. tiamat our mother has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods, all of them, have united themselves unto her, all whom she has created march at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring (?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begin the fray. the mother of the deep (?), the creatress of them all, has given them victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents with sharp fangs, unsparing in the onset. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their ... 'may their appearance ... may their bodies grow huge so that none may stand before them!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakhamu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the conflict, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may have eleven such monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them: 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee, exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' then she gave him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed; let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself and made himself as anu she determined for the gods her sons their destiny: 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire, the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame.' i sent forth anu, but he would not meet her; ea was terrified and turned back. then i bade merodach, the counsellor of the gods, your son; to attack tiamat his heart urged him. he opened his mouth and spake unto me: 'if i am indeed your avenger, tiamat to overpower, you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet (?). enter joyfully into ubsugina, all together. with my mouth, like you, will i then pronounce an oracle, what i create shall never be changed; the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled.' hasten therefore and determine at once for him his destiny that he may go forth and meet your mighty foe!' lakhmu and lakhamu heard this and lamented, the gods of heaven, all of them, bitterly grieved: 'foolish are they who thus desire battle (?); nor can we understand the [design] of tiamat.' then they came together and marched ... the great gods, all of them, who determine [destinies]. they came before (?) ansar, they filled [his abode], they crowded one on the other in the gathering ... they sat down to the feast, [they devoured] the food; they eat bread, they drank [wine], with sweet honey wine they filled themselves, they drank beer, and delighted their soul (?) ....they ascended into their [seats], to determine the destiny of merodach their avenger. * * * * * tablet iv. then they set him on a princely throne; before his fathers he seated himself as ruler. 'yea, thou art glorious among the great gods, thy destiny has no rival, thy name (?) is anu; from this day forward unchanged be thy command, high and low entreat thy hand! let the word of thy mouth be established, thy judgment never be violated, let none among the gods overpass thy bounds! as an adornment has (thy hand) founded the shrine of the gods, may the place of their gathering (?) become thy home. o merodach, thou art he that avenges us, we give unto thee the sovereignty over the multitudes of the universe. thou givest counsel, let thy word be exalted; may thy weapons be victorious, may thine enemies tremble! o lord, be gracious to the soul of him who putteth his trust in thee, but pour out the soul of the god who has hold of evil.' then place they in their midst a robe; they spake to merodach their first-born: 'may thy destiny, o lord, excel that of the gods; command destruction and creation, and so it shall be done. set thy mouth that it may destroy the robe; bid it return and the robe shall be restored!' he spake and with his mouth destroyed the robe; he spake to it again, and the robe was re-created. when the gods his fathers beheld (the power) of the word of his mouth, they rejoiced, they saluted merodach the king, they bestowed upon him the sceptre, the throne and reign, they gave him a weapon unrivalled, consuming the hostile: 'go,' (they said,) 'and cut off the life of tiamat, let the winds carry her blood to secret places.' (thus) the gods, his fathers, determined for bel his destiny, they showed his path, and they bade him listen and take the road. he made ready the bow and used it as his weapon; he made the club swing, he fixed its seat; then he lifted up the weapon which he caused his right hand to hold; the bow and the quiver he hung at his side. he set the lightning before him, with glancing flame he filled its body. he made also a net to enclose the dragon tiamat. he seized the four winds that they might not issue out of it, the south wind, the north wind, the east wind (and) the west wind; he made them enter the net, the gift of his father anu. he created the evil wind, the hostile wind, the storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the whirlwind, the unending wind: he caused the winds he had created to issue forth, seven in all, confounding the dragon tiamat, as they swept after him. then bel lifted up the deluge, his mighty weapon: he rode in a chariot incomparable, (and) terrible. he stood firm, and harnessed four horses to its side, [steeds] that spare not, spirited and swift, [with sharp] teeth, that carry poison, which know how to sweep away [the opponent]. [on the right] ... mighty in battle, on the left they open ... ......before thee. [bring to the feast] the gods, all of them, [let them sit down and] satisfy themselves with food, [let them eat bread], let them drink wine, [let them ascend to their seats?] and determine the future. [go now,] gâgâ, approach before them, deliver unto them [the message i entrust to] thee: 'ansar, your son, has sent me, the wish of his heart he has caused me to know. tiamat, our mother, has risen up against us, gathering her forces, madly raging. the gods, all of them, have united themselves unto her, even those who created you march at her side. banning the day they have followed tiamat, wrathful, devising mischief, untiring(?) day and night, prepared for the conflict, fiercely raging, they have gathered themselves together and begin the battle. the mother of the deep(?), the creatress of them all, has given them victorious weapons, creating monstrous serpents, with sharp fangs, unsparing in their attack. with poison for blood she has filled their bodies. horrible adders she has clothed with terror, she has decked them with fear, and raised high their.... 'may their appearance,' (she has said).... 'let their bodies grow huge so that none may stand before them!' she has created the adder, the horrible serpent, the lakh-amu, the great monster, the raging dog, the scorpion-man, the dog-days, the fish-man and the ram, who carry weapons that spare not, who fear not the fight, insolent of heart, unconquerable by the enemy. moreover that she may have eleven such monsters, among the gods, her sons, whom she has summoned together, she has raised up kingu and magnified him among them. 'to march before the host, be that thy duty! order the weapons to be uplifted and the onset of battle!' that he may be the first in the conflict, the leader in victory, she has taken his hand and set him on a throne: 'i have uttered the spell for thee,' (she has said); 'exalt thyself among the gods, assume dominion over all the gods! highly shalt thou be exalted, thou that art alone my husband; thy name shall be magnified over [all the world]!' thereupon she has given him the tablets of destiny, and laid them on his breast: 'let thy command be obeyed, let the word of thy mouth be established!' when kingu had exalted himself and made himself like anu she fixed for the gods, her sons, their destiny 'the opening of your mouth shall quench the fire; the exalted of kidmuri shall dissolve its flame.' i sent forth anu, but he would not meet her; ea was terrified and turned back. then i sent forth merodach, the counsellor of the gods, your son; to attack tiamat his heart urged him. he opened his mouth and said unto me: 'if i indeed am your avenger, tiamat to overpower and you to rescue, make ready an assembly, prepare a banquet (?). enter joyfully into ubsugina all together. with my mouth like you will i pronounce the oracle. what i create shall never be changed, the word of my lip shall never go back or be unfulfilled!' hasten therefore and determine for him at once his destiny, that he may go forward and meet your powerful foe!' then went gâgâ and completed his journey unto lakhmu and lakhamu the gods, his fathers, he prostrated himself and kissed the ground at their feet, he bowed himself and stood up and spake unto them: ... clothed with fear; with lustre and terror he covered his head. he directed also his way, he made his path descend, to the place where tiamat [stood] he turned his countenance; with his lip he kept back ... his finger holds the.... on that day they extolled him, the gods extolled him, the gods, his fathers, extolled him, the gods extolled him. then bel drew near, eager for the struggle with tiamat, looking for victory over kingu her husband. when she beheld him, her resolution was destroyed, her understanding was overthrown, her plans confounded. and the gods, his helpers, who marched beside him beheld (how merodach) the prince amazes their eyes. he laid judgment on tiamat, yet she turned not her neck; with her hostile lips she uttered defiance: 'let the gods, o bel, enter on battle behind thee, [behold,] they are gathered together to where thou art.' bel [launched] the deluge, his mighty weapon; against tiamat, who had raised herself (?), thus he sent it. 'thou wert mighty [below,' he cries,] 'exalted above, yet thy heart [has urged thee] to begin the strife, [to lead the gods from] their fathers to [thy side]; [thou hast gathered them around thee] and raisest thyself [against us], [thou hast made] kingu thy husband [and hast bestowed on] him divine power. ... thou hast devised evil, [against the] gods, my fathers, hast thou directed thy enmity. [may] thy host be fettered, thy weapons be restrained! stand up, and i and thou will fight together.' when tiamat heard this, she uttered her former spells, she repeated her command. tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. from her roots she rocked herself completely. she uttered an incantation, she cast a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. then tiamat attacked merodach the counsellor of the gods; in combat they joined; they engaged in battle. then bel opened his net and enclosed her; the evil wind that seizes behind he sent before him. tiamat opened her mouth to swallow it; he made the evil wind to enter so that she could not close her lips. the violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and her heart was prostrated, and her mouth was torn open. he swung the club; he shattered her stomach; he cut out her entrails; he divided her heart; he overpowered her and ended her life; he threw down her corpse; he stood upon it. when tiamat who marched before them was conquered, he dispersed her forces, her host was overthrown, and the gods her allies who marched beside her trembled and feared and turned their backs. they fled away to save their lives; they clung to one another, fleeing helplessly. he followed them and broke their arms; he flung his net and they are caught in the snare. then filled they the world with their lamentations; they bear their sin and are shut up in prison, and the elevenfold creatures are troubled with fear. the host of spirits (?) who marched beside them (?) he throws into fetters and [binds] their hands, and [tramples] their opposition under him. and the god kingu who [had been made leader over] them, he bound him also and did to him as to the [other] gods. and he took from him the tablets of destiny [that were on] his breast; he sealed them with his pen and hung them from his own breast. from the time he had bound and overmastered his foes he led the illustrious foe captive like an ox, bringing to full completion the victory of ansar over his antagonists. the warrior merodach (thus) performed the purpose of ea. over the gods in bondage he strengthened his watch, and he turned backwards tiamat whom he had overpowered. then bel trampled on the body of tiamat; with his club that spares not he smote her skull, he broke it and caused her blood to flow; the north wind bore it away to secret places. then his fathers beheld, they rejoiced and were glad; they bade peace-offerings to be brought to him. and bel rested; his body he fed; he strengthened his mind (?), he formed a clever plan, and he stripped her like a fish of her skin in two halves; one half he took and with it overshadowed the heavens; he stretched out the skin, he appointed watchers bidding them that her waters should not issue forth; he lit up the sky, the sanctuary rejoiced, and he set it over against the deep, the seat of ea. then bel measured the form of the deep; as a palace like unto it he made e-sarra (the upper firmament). the palace of the upper firmament, which he created as heaven, he caused anu, bel and ea to inhabit as their stronghold. tablet v. he made the stations of the great gods; he fixed the stars, even the twin-stars, to correspond with them; he ordained the year, appointing the signs of the zodiac over it; for each of the twelve months he fixed three stars, from the day when the year issues forth to its close. he established the station of jupiter that they might know their bounds, that they might not err, that they might not go astray in any way. he established the station of bel and ea along with himself. he opened also the gates on either side, the bolts he strengthened on the left hand and on the right, and in their midst he set the zenith. he illuminated the moon-god that he might watch over the night, and ordained him for a guardian of the night that the time might be known, (saying): 'month by month, without break, make full thine orb; at the beginning of the month, when the night begins, shine with thy horns that the heaven may know. on the seventh day, halve thy disk; stand upright on the sabbath with the [first] half. at the going down of the sun [rise] on the horizon; stand opposite it [on the fourteenth day] in full splendour (?). [on the th] draw near to the path of the sun; [on the st] stand upright against it for the second time." * * * * * tablet vi. (?) the gods in their assembly created [the beasts], they made perfect the mighty [monsters]; they caused the living creatures of the [field] to come forth, the cattle of the field, the wild beasts of the field, and the creeping things of the [field]; [they fixed their habitations] for the living creatures [of the field] [and] adorned [the dwelling-places] of the cattle and creeping things of the city; [they created] the multitude of creeping things, all the offspring [of the earth]! xiii a sumerian account of the creation from the city of eridu the glorious temple, the temple of the gods, in the holy place (of eridu) had not yet been made; no reed had been brought forth, no tree had been created; no brick had been made, no roof had been formed; no house had been built, no city had been constructed; no city had been made, no dwelling-place prepared. nippur had not been built, e-kur (the temple of nippur) had not been constructed. erech had not been built, e-ana (the temple of erech) had not been constructed. the deep had not been created, eridu had not been constructed. the glorious temple, the temple of the gods, its seat had not been made. all lands were sea. when within the sea there arose a movement, on that day eridu was built, e-sagila was constructed, e-sagila where the god lugal-du-azaga dwells within the deep. babylon was built, e-sagila was completed. the gods and the spirits of the earth were created all together. the holy city (eridu), the seat of the joy of their hearts, they proclaimed supreme. merodach bound together a reed-bed on the waters; dust he made, and he poured it out on the reed-bed. that the gods might dwell in a seat of the joy of their hearts, he formed mankind. the goddess aruru created the seed of mankind along with him. he made the beasts of the field and the living creatures of the desert he made the tigris and euphrates and set them in their place; he declared their names to be good. the _ussu_-plant, the _dittu_-plant of the marshland, the reed and the forest he created. he created the verdure of the plain, the lands, the marshes, and the greensward also, oxen, and calves, the wild ox and its young, the sheep and the lamb, meadows and forests also. the he-goat and the gazelle brought forth (?) to him. then merodach heaped up an embankment at the edge of the sea; ... as it had not before been made, ... he caused it to exist. [bricks] he made in their place, ... roofs he constructed; [houses he built], cities he constructed; [cities he made], dwelling-places he prepared; [nippur he built], e-kur he constructed; [erech he built], e-ana he constructed. the world's greatest books joint editors arthur mee editor and founder of the book of knowledge j.a. hammerton editor of harmsworth's universal encyclopædia vol. xi ancient history mediÆval history * * * * * table of contents ancient history egypt maspero, gaston dawn of civilization struggle of the nations passing of the empires jews josephus, flavius antiquities of the jews wars of the jews milman, henry history of the jews greece herodotus history thucydides peloponnesian war xenophon anabasis grote, george history of greece schliemann, heinrich troy and its remains rome cÆsar, julius commentaries on the gallic war tacitus, publius cornelius annals sallust, catos crispus conspiracy of catiline gibbon, edward decline and fall of the roman empire mommsen, theodor history of rome mediÆval history holy roman empire gibbon, edward the holy roman empire europe guizot, f.p.g. history of civilization in europe hallam, henry view of the state of europe during the middle ages egypt lane-poole, stanley egypt in the middle ages england holinshed, raphael chronicles of england, scotland and ireland freeman, e.a. norman conquest of england froude, james anthony history of england a complete index of the world's greatest books will be found at the end of volume xx. * * * * * acknowledgment acknowledgment and thanks for permitting the use of the following selections--"the dawn of civilisation," "the struggle of the nations" and "the passing of the empires," by gaston maspero--which appear in this volume, are hereby tendered to the society for promoting christian knowledge, of london, england. * * * * * ancient history gaston maspero the dawn of civilisation gaston camille charles maspero, born on june , , in paris, is one of the most renowned of european experts in philology and egyptology, having in great part studied his special subjects on oriental ground. after occupying for several years the chair of egyptology in the École des hautes Études at the sorbonne in paris, he became, in , professor of egyptian philology and archæology at the collège de france. from to he acted in egypt as director of the boulak museum. it was under his superintendence that this museum became enriched with its choicest antique treasures. dr. maspero retired in , but in again went to egypt as director of excavations. his works are of the utmost value, his skill in marshalling facts and deducting legitimate inferences being unrivalled. his masterpiece is an immense work, with the general title of "history of the ancient peoples of the classic east," divided into three parts, each complete in itself: ( ) "the dawn of civilisation"; ( ) "the struggle of the nations"; ( ) "the passing of the empires." _i.--the nile and egypt_ a long, low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this, the delta of egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is, as it were, the gift of the nile. where the delta ends, egypt proper begins. it is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south between regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the banks of the river, made by the nile, and sustained by the nile. the whole length of the land is shut in by two ranges of hills, roughly parallel at a mean distance of about twelve miles. during the earlier ages the river filled all this intermediate space; and the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very summits, still bear unmistakable traces of its action. wasted and shrunken within the deeps of its own ancient bed, the stream now makes a way through its own thick deposits of mud. the bulk of its waters keep to the east, and constitutes the true nile, the "great river" of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. at khartoum the single channel in which the river flowed divides, and two other streams are opened up in a southerly direction, each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream. which is the true nile? is it the blue nile, which seems to come down from the distant mountains? or is it the white nile, which has traversed the immense plains of equatorial africa? the old egyptians never knew. the river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it withheld it from us until a few years ago. vainly did their victorious armies follow the nile for months together, as they pursued the tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide, as full, as irresistible in its progress as ever. it was a fresh-water sea--_iauma, ioma_ was the name by which they called it. the egyptians, therefore, never sought its source. it was said to be of supernatural origin, to rise in paradise, to traverse burning regions inaccessible to man, and afterwards to fall into a sea whence it made its way to egypt. the sea mentioned in all the tales is, perhaps, a less extravagant invention than we are at first inclined to think. a lake, nearly as large as the victoria nyanza, once covered the marshy plain where the bahr-el-abiad unites with the sobat and with the bahr-el-ghazal. alluvial deposits have filled up all but its deepest depression, which is known as birket nu; but in ages preceding our era it must still have been vast enough to suggest to egyptian soldiers and boatmen the idea of an actual sea opening into the indian ocean. everything is dependent upon the river--the soil, the produce of the soil, the species of animals it bears, the birds which it feeds--and hence it was the egyptians placed the river among their gods. they personified it as a man with regular features, and a vigorous but portly body, such as befits the rich of high lineage. sometimes water springs from his breast; sometimes he presents a frog, or libation of vases, or bears a tray full of offerings of flowers, corn, fish, or geese. the inscriptions call him "hapi, father of the gods, lord of sustenance, who maketh food to be, and covereth the two lands of egypt with his products; who giveth life, banisheth want, and filleth the granaries to overflowing." he is evolved into two personages, one being sometimes coloured red, the other blue. the former, who wears a cluster of lotus-flowers on his head, presides over egypt of the south; the latter has a bunch of papyrus for his headdress, and watches over the delta. two goddesses, corresponding to the two hapis--mirit qimait for the upper, and mirit-mihit for the lower egypt--personified the banks of the river. they are represented with outstretched arms, as though begging for the water that should make them fertile. _ii.--the gods of egypt_ the incredible number of religious scenes to be found represented on the ancient monuments of egypt is at first glance very striking. nearly every illustration in the works of egyptologists shows us the figure of some deity. one would think the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, with just enough men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship. each of these deities represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe. thus, naprit was identified with the ripe ear of wheat; maskhonit appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth; and raninit presided over the naming and nurture of the newly born. in penetrating this mysterious world we are confronted by an actual jumble of gods, many being of foreign origin; and these, with the indigenous deities, made up nations of gods. this mixed pantheon had its grades of noble princes and kings, each of its members representing one of the forces constituting the world. some appeared in human form; others as animals; others as combinations of human and animal forms. the sky-gods, like the earth-gods, were separated into groups, the one composed of women: hathor of denderah, or nit of sais; the other composed of men identical with horus, or derived from him: anhuri-shu of sebennytos and thinis; harmerati, or horus, of the two eyes, at pharbæthos; har-sapedi, or horus, of the zodiacal light, in the wady tumilat; and, finally, harhuditi at edfu. ra, the solar disc, was enthroned at heliopolis; and sun-gods were numerous among the home deities. horus the sun, and ra the sun-god of heliopolis, so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. each of the feudal gods representing the sun cherished pretensions to universal dominion. the goddesses shared in supreme power. isis was entitled lady and mistress of buto, as hathor was at denderah, and as nit was at sais. the animal-gods shared omnipotence with those in human form. each of the feudal divinities appropriated two companions and formed a trinity; or, as it is generally called, a triad. often the local deity was content with one wife and one son, but often he was united to two goddesses. the system of triads enhanced, rather than lowered, the prestige of the feudal gods. the son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. when isis and osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant horus, whose mother nursed him, offering him her breast. the gods had body and soul, like men; they had bones, muscles, flesh and blood; they hungered and thirsted, ate and drank; they had our passions, griefs, joys and infirmities; and they were subject to age, decrepitude and death, though they lived very far beyond the term of life of men. the _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated through their members, and carried with it divine vigour; and this they could impart to men, who thus might become gods. many of the pharaohs became deities. the king who wished to become impregnated with the divine _sa_ sat before the statue of the god in order that this principle might be infused into him. the gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows on men. the gods died; each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead deity. at thinis there was the mummy of anhuri in its tomb, at mendes the mummy of osiris, at heliopolis that of tumu. usually, by dying, the god became another deity. ptah of memphis became sokaris; uapuaitu, the jackal of siut, was changed into anubis. osiris first represented the wild and fickle nile of primitive times; but was soon transformed into a benefactor to humanity, the supremely good being, unnofriu, onnophris. he was supposed to assume the shapes not only of man, but of rams and bulls, or even of water-birds, such as lapwings, herons, and cranes. his companion goddess was isis, the cow, or woman with cow's horns, who personified the earth, and was mother of horus. there were countless gods of the people: trees, serpents and family fetishes. fine single sycamores, flourishing as if by miracle amid the sand, were counted divine, and worshipped by egyptians of all ranks, who made them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables and water. the most famous of them all, the sycamore of the south, used to be regarded as the living body of hathor on earth. each family possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or an object; perhaps by a dream and often by sudden intuition. _iii.--legendary history of egypt_ the legendary history of egypt begins with the heliopolitan enneads, or traditions of the divine dynasties of ra, shu, osiris, sit and horus. great space is taken up with the fabulous history of ra, the first king of egypt, who allows himself to be duped and robbed by isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends to heaven. he dwelt in heliopolis, where his court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses. in the morning he went forth in his barque, amid the acclamations of the crowd, made his accustomed circuit of the world, and returned to his home at the end of twelve hours after the journey. in his old age he became the subject of the wiles of isis, who poisoned him, and so secured his departure from earth. he was succeeded by shu and sibu, between whom the empire of the universe was divided. the fantastic legends concocted by the priests go on to relate how at length egypt was civilised by osiris and isis. by osiris the people were taught agriculture; isis weaned them from cannibalism. osiris was slain by the red-haired and jealous demon, sit-typhon, and then egypt was divided between horus and sit as rivals; and so it consisted henceforth of two kingdoms, of which one, that of the north, duly recognised horus, son of isis, as its patron deity; the other, that of the south, placed itself under the supreme protection of sit-nubiti, the god of ombos. elaborate and intricate and hopelessly confused are the fables relating to the osirian embalmment, and to the opening of the kingdom of osiris to the followers of horus. souls did not enter it without examination and trial, as it is the aim of the famous book of the dead to show. before gaining access to this paradise each of them had to prove that it had during earthly life belonged to a friend or to a vassal of osiris, and had served horus in his exile, and had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the typhonian wars. to menes of thinis tradition ascribes the honour of fusing the two egypts into one empire, and of inaugurating the reign of the human dynasties. but all we know of this first of the pharaohs, beyond his existence, is practically nothing, and the stories related of him are mere legends. the real history of the early centuries eludes our researches. the history as we have it is divided into three periods: . the memphite period, which is usually called the "ancient empire," from the first to the tenth dynasty: kings of memphite origin were rulers over the whole of egypt during the greater part of this epoch. . the theban period, from the eleventh to the twentieth dynasty. it is divided into two parts by the invasion of the shepherds (sixteenth dynasty). . saite period, from the twenty-first to the thirtieth dynasty, divided again into two parts by the persian conquest, the first saite period, from the twenty-first to the twenty-sixth dynasty; the second saite period, from the twenty-eighth to the thirtieth dynasty. _iv.--political constitution of egypt_ between the fayum and the apex of the delta, the libyan range expands and forms a vast and slightly undulating table-land, which runs parallel to the nile for nearly thirty leagues. the great sphinx harmakhis has mounted guard over its northern extremity ever since the time of the followers of horus. in later times, a chapel of alabaster and rose granite was erected alongside the god; temples were built here and there in the more accessible places, and round these were grouped the tombs of the whole country. the bodies of the common people, usually naked and uncoffined, were thrust into the sand at a depth of barely three feet from the surface. those of the better class rested in mean rectangular chambers, hastily built of yellow bricks, without ornaments or treasures; a few vessels, however, of coarse pottery contained the provisions left to nourish the departed during the period of his existence. some of the wealthy class had their tombs cut out of the mountain-side; but the great majority preferred an isolated tomb, a "mastaba," comprised of a chapel above ground, a shaft, and some subterranean vaults. during the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs formed an almost uninterrupted chain, are rich in inscriptions, statues, and in painted or sculptured scenes, and from the womb, as it were, of these cemeteries, the egypt of the memphite dynasties gradually takes new life and reappears in the full daylight of history. the king stands out boldly in the foreground, and his tall figure towers over all else. he is god to his subjects, who call him "the good-god," and "the great-god," connecting him with ra through the intervening kings. so the pharaohs are blood relations of the sun-god, the "divine double" being infused into the royal infant at birth. the monuments throw full light on the supernatural character of the pharaohs in general, but tell us little of the individual disposition of any king in particular, or of their everyday life. the royal family was very numerous. at least one of the many women of the harem received the title of "great spouse," or queen. her union with the god-king rendered her a goddess. children swarmed in the palace, as in the houses of private citizens, and they were constantly jealous of each other, having no bond of union except common hatred of the son whom the chances of birth had destined to be their ruler. highly complex degrees of rank are revealed to us on the monuments of the people who immediately surrounded the pharaoh. his person was, as it were, minutely subdivided into compartments, each requiring its attendants and their appointed chiefs. his toilet alone gave employment to a score of different trades. the guardianship of the crowns almost approached the dignity of a priesthood, for was not the urseus, which adorned each one, a living goddess? troops of musicians, singers, dancers, buffoons and dwarfs whiled away the tedious hours. many were the physicians, chaplains, soothsayers and magicians. but vast indeed was the army of officials connected with the administration of public affairs. the mainspring of all this machinery was the writer, or, as we call him, the scribe, across whom we come in all grades of the staff. the title of scribe was of no particular value in itself, for everyone was a scribe who knew how to read and write, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. "one has only to be a scribe, for the scribe takes the lead of all," said the wise man. sometimes, however, a talented scribe rose to a high position, like the amten, whose tomb was removed to berlin by lepsius, and who became a favourite of the king and was ennobled. _v.--the memphite empire_ at that time "the majesty of king huni died, and the majesty of king snofrui arose to be a sovereign benefactor over this whole earth." all we know of him is contained in one sentence: he fought against the nomads of sinai, constructed fortresses to protect the eastern frontier of the delta, and made for himself a tomb in the form of a pyramid. snofrui called the pyramid "kha," the rising, the place where the dead pharaoh, identified with the sun, is raised above the world for ever. it was built to indicate the place in which lies a prince, chief, or person of rank in his tribe or province. the worship of snofrui, the first pyramid-builders, was perpetuated from century to century. his popularity was probably great; but his fame has been eclipsed in our eyes by that of the pharaohs of the memphite dynasty who immediately followed him--kheops, khephren and mykerinos. khufui, the kheops of the greeks, was probably son of snofrui. he reigned twenty-three years, successfully defended the valuable mines of copper, manganese and turquoise of the sinaitic peninsula against the bedouin; restored the temple of hathor at dendera; embellished that of babastis; built a sanctuary to the isis of the sphinx; and consecrated there gold, silver and bronze statues of horus and many other gods. other pharaohs had done as much or more; but the egyptians of later dynasties measured the magnificence of kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid at ghizel. the great pyramid was called khuit, the "horizon," in which kheops had to be swallowed up, as his father, the sun, was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west. of dadufri, his immediate successor, we can probably say that he reigned eight years; but khephren, the next son who succeeded to the throne, erected temples and a gigantic pyramid, like his father. he placed it some feet to the south-west of that of kheops, and called it uiru the great. it is much smaller than its neighbour, but at a distance the difference in height disappears. the pyramid of mykerinos, son and successor of khephren, was considerably inferior in height, but was built with scrupulous art and refined care. the fifth dynasty manifested itself in every respect as the sequel and complement of the fourth. it reckons nine pharaohs, who reigned for a century and a half, and each of them built pyramids and founded cities, and appear to have ruled gloriously. they maintained, and even increased, the power and splendour of egypt. but the history of the memphite empire unfortunately loses itself in legend and fable, and becomes a blank for several centuries. _vi.--the first theban empire_ the principality of the oleander--naru--comprised the territory lying between the nile and the bahr yusuf, a district known to the greeks as the island of heracleopolis. it, moreover, included the whole basin of the fayum, on the west of the valley. attracted by the fertility of the soil, the pharaohs of the older dynasties had from time to time taken up their residence in heracleopolis, the capital of the district of the oleander, and one of them, snofrui, had built his pyramid at medum, close to the frontier of the nome. in proportion as the power of the memphites declined, so did the princes of the oleander grow more vigorous and enterprising; and when the memphite kings passed away, these princes succeeded their former masters and eventually sat "upon the throne of horus." the founder of the ninth dynasty was perhaps khiti i., who ruled over all egypt, and whose name has been found on rocks at the first cataract. his successors seem to have reigned ingloriously for more than a century. the history of this period seems to have been one of confused struggle, the pharaohs fighting constantly against their vassals, and the nobles warring amongst themselves. during the memphite and heracleopolitan dynasties memphis, elephantiné, el-kab and koptos were the principal cities of the country; and it was only towards the end of the eighth dynasty that thebes began to realise its power. the revolt of the theban. princes put an end to the ninth dynasty; and though supported by the feudal powers of central and northern egypt, the tenth dynasty did not succeed in bringing them back to their allegiance, and after a struggle of nearly years the thebans triumphed and brought the two divisions of egypt under their rule. the few glimpses to be obtained of the early history of the first theban dynasty give the impression of an energetic and intelligent race. the kings of the eleventh dynasty were careful not to wander too far from the valley of the nile, concentrating their efforts not on conquest of fresh territory, but on the remedy of the evils from which the country had suffered for hundreds of years. the final overthrow of the heracleopolitan dynasty, and the union of the two kingdoms under the rule of the theban house, are supposed to have been the work of that monthotpu, whose name the egyptians of rameside times inscribed in the royal lists as that of the founder and most illustrious representative of the eleventh dynasty. the leader of the twelfth dynasty, amenemhait i., was of another stamp, showing himself to be a pharaoh conscious of his own divinity and determined to assert it. he inspected the whole land, restored what he found in ruins, crushed crime, settled the bounds of towns, and established for each its frontiers. recognising that thebes lay too far south to be a suitable place of residence for the lord of all egypt, amenemhait proceeded to establish himself in the heart of the country in imitation of the glorious pharaohs from whom he claimed descent. he took up his abode a little to the south of dashur, in the palace of titoui. having restored peace to his country, the king in the twentieth year of his reign, when he was growing old, raised his son usirtasen, then very young, to the co-regency with himself. when, ten years later, the old king died, his son was engaged in a war against the libyans. he reigned alone for thirty-two years. the twelfth dynasty lasted years; and its history can be ascertained with greater certainty and completeness than that of any other dynasty which ruled egypt, although we are far from having any adequate idea of its great achievements, for unfortunately the biographies of its eight sovereigns and the details of their interminable wars are very imperfectly known. uncertainty again shrouds the history of the country after the reign of sovkhoptu i. the twentieth dynasty contained, so it is said, sixty kings, who reigned for a period of over years. the nofirhoptus and sovkhoptus continued to all appearances both at home and abroad the work so ably begun by the amenemhaits and the usirtasens. during the thirteenth dynasty art and everything else in egypt were fairly prosperous, but wealth exercised an injurious effect on artistic taste. during this dynasty we hear nothing of the inhabitants of the sinaitic peninsula to the east, or of the libyans to the west; it was in the south, in ethiopia, that the pharaohs expended all their superfluous energy. the middle basin of the nile as far as gebel-barkal was soon incorporated with egypt, and the population became quickly assimilated. sovkhoptu iii., who erected colossal statues of himself at tanis, bubastis and thebes, was undisputed master of the whole nile valley, from near the spot where it receives its last tributary to where it empties itself into the sea. the making of egypt was finally accomplished in his time. the fourteenth dynasty, however, consists of a line of seventy-five kings, whose mutilated names appear on the turin papyrus. these shadowy pharaohs followed each other in rapid sequence, some reigning only a few months, others for certainly not more than two and three years. meantime, during what appears to have been an era of rivalries between pretenders, mutually jealous of and deposing one another, usurpers in succession seizing the crown without strength to keep it, the feudal lords displayed more than their old restlessness. the nomad tribes began to show growing hostility on the frontier, and the peoples of the tigris and euphrates were already pushing their vanguards into central syria. while egypt had been bringing the valley of the nile and the eastern corner of africa into subjection, chaldæa had imposed not only language and habits, but also her laws upon the whole of that part of eastern asia which separated her from egypt. thus the time was rapidly approaching when these two great civilised powers of the ancient world would meet each other face to face and come into fierce and terrible collision. _vii.--ancient chaldæa_ the chaldæan account of genesis is contained on fragments of tablets discovered and deciphered in by george smith. these tell legends of the time when "nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when nothing below had as yet received the name of earth. apsu, the ocean, who was their first father, and chaos-tiamat, who gave birth to them all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes which bore no fruit. in the time when the gods were not created, lakhmu and lakhamu were the first to appear and waxed great for ages." then came anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; inlil-bel, the king of the earth; ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom. each of them duplicated himself, anu into anat, bel into belit, ea into damkina, and united himself to the spouse whom he had produced from himself. other divinities sprang from these fruitful pairs, and, the impulse once given, the world was rapidly peopled by their descendants. sin, samash and ramman, who presided respectively over the sun, moon and air, were all three of equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, ninib, merodach, nergal, ishtar, the warrior-goddess, and nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities who ranged themselves around anu as around a supreme master. discord arose. the first great battle of the gods was between tiamat and merodach. in this fearful conflict tiamat was destroyed. splitting her body into halves, the conqueror hung up one on high, and this became the heavens; the other he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe as men have known it. merodach regulated the movements of the sun and divided the year into twelve months. the heavens having been put in order, he set about peopling the earth. many such fables concerning the cosmogony were current among the races of the lower euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different types. the most important were the semites, who spoke a dialect akin to armenian, hebrew and phoenician. side by side with these the monuments give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally call sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the empires which rose and fell in western asia before the persian conquest. the cities of these semites and sumerians were divided into two groups, one in the south, near the sea, the other more to the north, where the euphrates and the tigris are separated by a narrow strip of land. the southern group consisted of seven, eridu lying nearest the coast. uru was the most important. lagash was to the north of eridu. the northern group consisted of nipur, "the incomparable," borsip, babylon (gate of the god and residence of life, the only metropolis of the euphrates region of which posterity never lost reminiscence), kishu, kuta, agade, and, lastly, the two sipparas, that of shamash, and that of annuit. the earliest chaldæan civilisation was confined almost to the banks of the lower euphrates; except at the northern boundary it did not reach the tigris and did not cross the river. separated from the rest of the world, on the east by the vast marshes bordering on the river, on the north by the mesopotamian table-land, on the west by the arabian desert, it was able to develop its civilisation as egypt had done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. according to ferossasi the first king was aloros of babylon. he was chosen by the god oannes, and reigned supernaturally for ten sari, or , years, each saros being , years. nine kings follow, each in this mythical record reigning an enormous period. then took place the great deluge, , years after the creation, in consequence of the wickedness of men, who neglected the worship of the gods, and excited their wrath. shamashnapishtim, king at this time in shurippak, was saved miraculously in a great ship. concerning him and his voyage strange fables are recorded. after the deluge, kings ruled during , years. one of these was nimrod, the mighty hunter of the bible, who appears as gilgamesh, king of uruk, and is the hero of extraordinary adventures. history proper begins with sargon the elder, king at the first in agade, who soon annexed babylon, sippara, kishu, uruk, kuta and nipur. his brilliant career was like an anticipation of that of the still more glorious life of sargon of nineveh. his son, naramsin, succeeded him about b.c. he conquered elam and was a great builder. after him the most famous king of that epoch was gudea, of lagash, the prince of whom we possess the greatest number of monuments. but in these records we have but the dust of history rather than history itself. the materials are scanty in the extreme and the framework also is wanting. _viii.--the temples and the gods of chaldæa_ the cities of the euphrates attract no attention, like those of egypt, by the magnificence of their ruins. they are merely heaps of rubbish in which no architectural outline can be traced--mounds of stiff greyish clay, containing the remains of the vast structures that were built of bricks set in mortar or bitumen. stone was not used as in egypt. while the egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the chaldæan temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. these "ziggurats" were composed of several immense cubes piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine by which they were crowned, and wherein the god himself was supposed to dwell. the gods of the euphrates, like those of the nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible and invisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all the regions of the universe; but, whereas in egypt they were, on the whole, friendly to man, in chaldæa they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him. whether semite or sumerian, the gods, like those of egypt, were not abstract personages, but each contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed--earth, air, sky, sun, moon and stars. the state religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city were solemnly bound to observe, included some dozen gods, but the private devotion of individuals supplemented this cult by vast additions, each family possessing its own household gods. animals never became objects of worship as in egypt; some of them, however, as the bull and the lion, were closely allied to the gods. if the idea of uniting all these gods into a single supreme one ever crossed the mind of a chaldæan theologian, it never spread to the people as a whole. among all the thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recorded prayers, we have as yet discovered no document containing the faintest allusion to a divine unity. the temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangements of the universe. the "ziggurat" represented in its form the mountain of the world, and the halls ranged at its feet resembled approximately the accessory parts of the world; the temple of merodach at babylon comprised them all up to the chambers of fate, where the sun received every morning the tablets of destiny. every individual was placed, from the very moment of his birth, under the protection of a god or goddess, of whom he was the servant, or rather the son. these deities accompanied him by day and by night to guard him from the evil genii ready to attack him on every side. the chaldæans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in the other world as the egyptians possessed. the chaldæan hades is a dark country surrounded by seven high walls, and is approached by seven gates, each guarded by a pitiless warder. two deities rule within it--nergal, "the lord of the great city," and peltis-allat, "the lady of the great land," whither everything which has breathed in this world descends after death. a legend relates that allat reigned alone in hades and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had prepared in heaven. owing to her hatred of the light she refused, sending a message by her servant, namtar, who acquitted himself, with such a bad grace, that anu and ea were incensed against his mistress, and commissioned nergal to chastise her. he went, and finding the gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne, and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers and saved her life by becoming his wife. the nature of nergal fitted him well to play the part of a prince of the departed; for he was the destroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle. his functions in heaven and earth took up so much of his time that he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he was consequently obliged to content himself with the rôle of providing subjects for it by dispatching thither the thousands of recruits which he gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle. _ix.--chaldæan civilisation_ the chaldæan kings, unlike their contemporaries, the pharaohs, rarely put forward any pretension to divinity. they contented themselves with occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods. while the ordinary priest chose for himself a single deity as master, the priest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions. he officiated for merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions daily occupied many hours. on great days of festival or sacrifice they laid aside all insignia of royalty and were clad as ordinary priests. women do not seem to have been honoured in the euphratean regions as in egypt, where the wives of the sovereign were invested with that semi-sacred character that led the women to be associated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensable auxiliaries in all religious ceremonies. whereas the monuments on the banks of the nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of their husbands, whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in chaldæa, the wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters and even his slaves, remain absolutely invisible to posterity. the harem in which they were shut up by force of custom rarely, if ever, opened its doors; the people seldom caught sight of them; and we could count on our fingers the number of these whom the inscriptions mention by name. life was not so pleasant in chaldæa as in egypt. the innumerable promissory notes, the receipted accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase--these cunningly drawn-up deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred, reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, and almost exclusively absorbed in material concerns. the climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed on the chaldæan painful exactions, and obliged him to work with an energy of which the majority of egyptians would not have felt themselves capable. and the plague of usury raged with equal violence in city and country. in proportion, however, as we are able to bring this wonderful civilisation to light we become more and more conscious that we have indeed little or nothing in common with it. its laws, customs, habits and character, its methods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from those of the present day that they seem to belong to a humanity utterly different from our own. it thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classical language of the greeks and of the romans, and can read their works almost without effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, the egyptian and chaldæan, have nothing to offer us for the most part but a sequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience. * * * * * the struggle of the nations maspero in this work gives us the second volume of his great historical trilogy. he shows in parallel views the part played in the history of the ancient world by the first chaldæan empire, by syria, by the hyksos, or shepherd kings, of egypt, and by the first cossæan kings who established the greatness of nineveh and the assyrian empire. the great theban dynasty is then exhibited in its romantic rise under the pharaohs. maspero writes not as a mere chronicler or reciter of events, but as a philosophical historian. he makes the reader understand how fatally the chronic militarism of these competing empires drained each of its manhood and brought babylon and assyria simultaneously into a hopeless condition of national anæmia. equally pathetic is the picture drawn of the gradual but sure decay of the grand empire of the pharaohs. maspero, with masterly skill, passes a processional of these despots before our eyes. _i.--the chaldæan empire and the hyksos_ some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battlefields of the contending nations which environ them. into such regions neighbouring peoples come to settle their quarrels, and bit by bit they appropriate it, so that at best the only course open to the inhabitants is to join forces with one of the invaders. from remote antiquity this was the experience of syria, which was thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. chaldæa, egypt, assyria and persia in turn presided over its destinies. semites dwelt in the south and the centre, while colonies from beyond the taurus occupied the north. the influence of egypt never penetrated beyond the provinces lying nearest the dead sea. the remaining populations looked rather to chaldæa, and received the continuous impress of the kingdoms of the euphrates. the lords of babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but gradually yielding to the latter as the city increased in power. each ruler was obliged to go in state to the temple of bel merodach within a year of his accession, there to do homage to the divine statue. the long lists of early kings contain semi-legendary names, including those of mythical heroes. towards the end of the twenty-fifth century, however, before the christian era, a dynasty arose of which all the members come within the range of history. the first of these kings, sumuabim, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign. of the ten kings who followed during the period embraced between the years b.c. and b.c., the one who ruled for the longest term was the. famous and fortunate khammurabi (son of sinmuballit), who was on the throne for fifty-five years. while thus the first chaldean empire was being established, egypt, separated from her confines only by a narrow isthmus, loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. but she had strangely declined from her former greatness, and had been attacked and subdued by invaders appearing like a cloud of locusts on the banks of the nile, to whom was applied the name hiq shausu, from which the greeks derived the term hyksos for this people. modern scholars have put forward many conflicting hypotheses as to the identity of this race of conquerors. the monuments represent them with the mongoloid type of feature. the problem remains unsolved, and the origin of the hyksos is as mysterious as ever. about this time took place that entrance into egypt of the beni-isræl, or isrælites, which has since acquired a unique position in the world's history. a comparatively ancient tradition relates that the hebrews arrived in egypt during the reign of aphobis, a hyksos king, doubtless one of the apopi. the hyksos were ousted by a hero named ahmosis after a war of five years. the xviiith dynasty was inaugurated by the pharaohs, whose policy was so aggressive that egypt, attacked by enemies from various quarters, and roused, as it were, to warlike frenzy, hurled her armies across all her frontiers simultaneously, and her sudden appearance in the heart of syria gave a new turn to human history. the isolation of the kingdoms of the ancient world was at an end; and the conflict of the nations was about to begin. _ii.--beginning of the egyptian conquest_ the egyptians had no need to anticipate chaldæan interference when, forsaking their ancient traditions, they penetrated for the first time into the heart of syria. babylonian rule ceased to exercise direct control when the line of sovereigns who had introduced it disappeared. when ammisatana died, about the year b.c., the dynasty of khammurabi became extinct, and kings of the semi-barbarous cossæan race gained the throne which had been occupied since the days of khammurabi by chaldæans of the ancient stock. the cossæan king who seized on babylon was named gandish. he and his tribe came from the mountainous regions of zagros, on the borders of media. the cossæan rule over the countries of the euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the hyksos exercised at first over the nomes of egypt. the cossæan kings did not merely bring with them their army, but their whole nation, who spread over the whole land. as in the case of the hyksos, the barbarian conquerors thus became merged in the more civilised people which they had subdued. but the successors of gandish were unable permanently to retain their ascendancy over all the districts and provinces, and several of these withdrew their allegiance. thus in syria the authority of babylon was no longer supreme when the encroachments of egypt began, and when thutmosis entered the region the native levies which he encountered were by no means formidable. the whole country consisted of a collection of petty states, a complex group of peoples and territories which the egyptians themselves never completely succeeded in disentangling. we are, however, able to distinguish at the present time several of these groups, all belonging to the same family, but possessing different characteristics--the kinsfolk of the hebrews, the children of ishmæl and edom, the moabites and ammonites, the arameans, the khati and the canaanites. the canaanites were the most numerous, and had they been able to confederate under a single king, it would have been impossible for the egyptians to have broken through the barrier thus raised between them and the rest of asia. _iii.--the eighteenth theban dynasty_ the account of the first expedition undertaken by thutmosis i. in asia, a region at that time new to the egyptians, would be interesting if we could lay our hands on it. we know that this king succeeded in reaching on his first campaign a limit which none of his successors was able to surpass. the results of the campaign were of a decisive character, for southern syria accepted its defeat, and gaza was garrisoned as the secure door of asia for future invasions. freed from anxiety in this quarter, pharaoh gave his whole time to the consolidation of his power in ethiopia, where rebellion had become rife. subduing this southern region and thus extending the supremacy of egypt in the regions of the upper nile, thutmosis was able to end his days in the enjoyment of profound peace. thutmosis ii. did not long survive him. his chief wife, queen hatshopsitu, reigned for many years with great ability while the new pharaoh, thutmosis iii., was still a youth. after the death of hatshopsitu, the young pharaoh set out with his army. it was at the beginning of the twenty-fourth year of his reign that he reached gaza. marching forward he reached the spurs of mount carmel and won a decisive victory at megiddo over the allied syrian princes. the inscriptions at karnak contain long lists of the titles of the king's syrian subjects. the pharaoh had now no inclination to lay down his arms, and we have a record of twelve military expeditions of this king. when the syrian conquest had been effected, egypt gave permanency to its results by means of a series of international decrees, which established the constitution of her empire, and brought about her concerted action with the asiatic powers. she had already occupied an important position among them when thutmosis iii. died in the fifty-fifth year of his reign. of his successors the most prosperous was the renowned amenothes iii., who is immortalised by the wonderful monumental relics of his long and peaceful reign. amenothes devoted immense energy to the building of temples, palaces and shrines, and gave very little of his time to war. _iv.--the last days of the theban empire_ when the male line failed, there was no lack of princesses in egypt, of whom any one who happened to come to the throne might choose a consort after her own heart, and thus become the founder of a new dynasty. by such a chance alliance harmhabi, himself a descendant of thutmosis iii., was raised to the kingly office as first pharaoh of the xixth dynasty. he displayed great activity both within egypt and beyond it, conducting mighty building enterprises and also undertaking expeditions against recalcitrant tribes along the upper nile. rameses i., who succeeded harmhabi, was already an old man at his accession. he reigned only six or seven years, and associated his son, seti i., with himself in the government from his second year of power. no sooner had seti celebrated his father's obsequies than he set out for war against southern syria, then in open revolt. he captured hebron, marched to gaza, and then northward to lebanon, where he received the homage of the phoenicians, and returned in triumph to egypt, bringing troops of captives. by seti i. were built the most wonderful of the halls at karaak and luxor, which render his name for ever illustrious. he associated with him his son, still very young, who became renowned as ramses ii., one of the greatest warriors and builders amongst all the rulers of egypt the monuments and temples erected by this king also are among the wonders of the world. he married a hittite princess when he was more than sixty. this alliance secured a long period of peace and prosperity. syria once more breathed freely, her commerce being under the combined protection of the two powers who shared her territory. ramses ii. was, in his youth, the handsomest man of his time, and old age and death did not succeed in marring his face sufficiently to disfigure it, as may be seen in his mummy to-day. ramses the great, who was thus the glory of the xixth dynasty, reigned sixty-eight years, and lived to the age of , when he passed away peacefully at thebes. under his successors, minephtah, seti ii., amenemis and siphtah, the nation became decadent, though there were transient gleams of prosperity, as when minephtah won a great victory over the libyans. but after the death of siphtah, there were many claimants for the crown, and anarchy prevailed from one end of the nile valley to the other. _v.--the rise of the assyrian empire_ ramses iii., a descendant of ramses ii., was the founder of the last dynasty which was able to retain the supremacy of egypt over the oriental world. he took for his hero ramses the great, and endeavoured to rival him in everything, and for a period the imperial power revived. in the fifth year of his reign he was able to repulse the confederated libyans with complete success. victories over other enemies followed, and also peace and prosperity. the cessation of egyptian authority over those countries in which it had so long prevailed did not at once do away with the deep impression it had made on their constitution and customs. syria and phoenicia had become, as it were, covered with an african veneer, both religion and language being affected by egyptian influence. but the phoenicians became absorbed in commercial pursuits, and failed to aspire to the inheritance which the egyptians were letting slip. coeval with the decline of the power of the latter was that of the hittites. the babylonian empire likewise degenerated under the cossæan kings, and gave way to the ascendancy of assyria, which came to regard babylon with deadly hatred. the capitals of the two countries were not more than miles apart. the line of demarcation followed one of the many canals between the tigris and euphrates. it then crossed the tigris and was formed by one of the rivers draining the iranian table-land--the upper zab, the radanu, or the turnat. each of the two states strove by every means in its power to stretch its boundary to the farthest limits, and the narrow area was the scene of continual war. assyria was but a poor and insignificant country when compared with that of her rival. she occupied, on each side of the middle course of the tigris, the territory lying between the th and th parallels of latitude. this was a compact and healthy district, well watered by the streams running from the iranian plateau, which were regulated by a network of canals and ditches for irrigation of the whole region. the provinces thus supplied with water enjoyed a fertility which passed into a proverb. thus assyria was favoured by nature, but she was not well wooded. the most important of the cities were assur, arbeles, kalakh and nineveh. assur, dedicated to the deity from which it took its name, placed on the very edge of the mesopotamian desert, with the tigris behind it, was, during the struggle with the chaldæan power, exposed to the attacks of the babylonian armies; while nineveh, entrenched behind the tigris and the zab, was secure from any sudden assault. thus it became the custom for the kings to pass at nineveh the trying months of the year, though assur remained the official capital and chief sanctuary of the empire, which began its aggrandisement under assurballit, by his victory over the cossæan kings of babylon. but the heroic age comes before us in the career of shalmaneser i., a powerful sovereign who in a few years doubled the extent of his dominions. he beautified assur, but removed his court to kalakh. his son, tukulti-ninip i., made himself master of babylon, and was the first of his race who was able to assume the title of king of sumir and akkad. this first conquest of chaldæa did not produce lasting results, for the sons of the hero fought each other for the crown, and assyria became the scene of civil wars. the fortunes of babylon rose again, but the depression of assyria did not last long. nineveh had become the metropolis. confusion was increased in the whole of this vast region of asia by the invasion and partial triumph of the elamites over babylon. but these were driven back when nebuchadrezzar arose in babylon. to merodach he prayed, and "his prayer was heard," and he invaded elam, taking its king by surprise and defeating him. nebuchadrezzar no longer found any rival to oppose him save the king of assyria, whom he attacked; but now his aggression was checked, for though his forces were successful at first, they were ultimately sent flying across the frontiers with great loss, through the prowess of assurishishi, who became a mighty king in nineveh. but his son, tiglath-pileser, is the first of the great warrior kings of assyria to stand out before us with any definite individuality. he immediately, on his accession, began to employ in aggressive wars the well-equipped army left by his father, and in three campaigns he regained all the territories that shalmaneser i. had lost, and also conquered various regions of asia minor and syria. in a rising of the chaldæans he met with a severe defeat, which he did not long survive, dying about the year b.c. there is only one gleam in the murky night of this period. a certain assurirba seems to have crossed northern syria, and, following in the footsteps of his great ancestor, to have penetrated as far as the mediterranean; on the rocks of mount amanus, facing the sea, he left a triumphal inscription in which he set forth the mighty deeds he had accomplished. his good fortune soon forsook him. the arameans wrested from him the fortresses of pitru and mutkinu, which commanded both banks of the euphrates near carchemish. what were the causes of this depression from which babylon suffered at almost regular intervals, as though stricken with some periodic malady? the main reason soon becomes apparent if we consider the nature of the country and the material conditions of its existence. chaldæa was neither extensive nor populous enough to afford a solid basis for the ambition of her princes. since nearly every man capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the army, the chaldæan kings had no difficulty in raising, at a moment's notice, a force which could be employed to repel an invasion, or to make a sudden attack on some distant territory; it was in schemes that required prolonged and sustained effort that they felt the drawbacks of their position. in that age of hand-to-hand combats, the mortality in battle was very high; forced marches through forests and across mountains entailed a heavy loss of men, and three or four campaigns against a stubborn foe soon reduced the army to a condition of weakness. when nebuchadrezzar i. made war on assurishishi, he was still weak from the losses he had incurred during the campaign against elam, and could not conduct his attack with the same vigour as had gained him victory on the banks of the ulai. in the first year he only secured a few indecisive advantages; in the second he succumbed. the same reasons which explain the decadence of babylon show us the causes of the periodic eclipses undergone by assyria after each outburst of her warlike spirit. the country was now forced to pay for the glories of assurishishi and of tiglath-pileser by falling into an inglorious state of languor and depression. and ere long newer races asserted themselves which had gradually come to displace the nations over which the dynasties of thutmosis and ramses had held sway as tributary to them. the hebrews on the east, and the philistines on the southwest, were about to undertake the conquest of kharu, as the land which is known to us as canaan was styled by the egyptians. * * * * * the passing of the empires maspero, in the third volume of his great archæological trilogy, completing his "history of the ancient peoples of the classic east," deals with the passing in succession of the supremacies of the babylonian, assyrian, chaldæan, medo-persian and iranian empires. the period dealt with in this graphic narrative covers fully five centuries, from b.c. to b.c. m. maspero in cinematographic style passes before us the actors in many of the most thrilling of historic dramas. one excellent feature of his method is his balancing of evidences. where xenophon and herodotus absolutely differ he tells what each asserts. with consummate skill also he arranges his recital like a series of dissolving views, showing how epochs overlap, and how as babylon is fading assyria is rising, and as the latter in turn is waning media is looming into sight. we are, in this third instalment of maspero's monumental work, brought to understand how the decline of one mighty asiatic empire after another, culminating in the overthrow of the persian dominion by alexander, prepared at length for the entry of western nations on the stage, and how europe became the heir of the culture and civilisation of the orient. _i.--the assyrian revival_ since the extinction of the race of nebuchadrezzar i. babylon had been a prey to civil discord and foreign invasion. it was a period of calamity and distress, during which the arabs or the arameans ravaged the country, and an elamite usurper overthrew the native dynasty and held authority for seven years. this intruder having died about the year b.c., a babylonian of noble extraction expelled the elamites and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the dominion under his rule. five or six of his descendants passed away and another was feebly reigning when war broke out afresh with assyria, and the two armies encountered each other again on their former battlefield between the lower zab and the turnat. the assyrians were victorious under their king, tukulti-ninip ii., who did not live long to enjoy his triumph. his son, assur-nazir-pal, inherited a kingdom which embraced scarcely any of the countries that had paid tribute to former sovereign, for most of these had gradually regained their liberty. nearly the whole empire had to be re-conquered under much the same conditions as in the first instance, but assyria had recovered the vitality and elasticity of its earlier days. its army now possessed a new element. this was the cavalry, properly so called, as an adjunct to the chariotry. but it must be remembered that the strength and discipline which the assyrian troops possessed in such high degree were common to the military forces of all the great states--elam, damascus, nairi, the hittites and chaldea. thus, the armies of all these states being, as a rule, both in strength and numbers much on a par, no single power was able to inflict on any of the rest such a defeat as would be its destruction. twice at least in three centuries a king of assyria had entered babylon, and twice the babylonians had forced the intruder back. profiting by the past, assur-nazir-pal resolutely avoided those conflicts in which so many of his predecessors had wasted their lives. he was content to devote his attention to less dangerous enemies than the people of babylonia. invading nummi, he quickly captured its chief cities, then subdued the kirruri, attacked the fortress of nishtu, and pillaged many of the cities around. bubu, the chief of nishtu, was flayed alive. after a reign of twenty-five years he died in b.c. a summary of the events in the reign of thirty-five years of his successor, shalmaneser iii., is contained on the black obelisk of nimroud, discovered by layard and preserved in the british museum. he conquered the whole country round lake van, ravaging the country "as a savage bull ravages and tramples under his feet the fertile fields." an attack on damascus led to a terrible but indecisive battle, benhadad, king of syria, proving himself fully a match for the invader. but a war with babylon, lasting for a period of two years, ended with victory for assyria, and shalmaneser, entering the city, went direct to the temple of e-shaggil, where he offered worship to the local gods. memorable events followed, first in connection with damascus, ahab, king of isræl, benhadad's ally, and other confederates, had not been faithful to his suzerainty. ahab had by treaty agreed to surrender the city of ramoth-gilead to the syrian monarch and had not fulfilled his pledge. he and jehoshaphat, king of judah, had concluded an alliance against benhadad, who seized the disputed fortress, and the two had organised an expedition, which led to the death of ahab in battle. isræl lapsed once more into the position of a vassal to benhadad, and long remained in that subjection. the last days of shalmaneser were embittered by the revolt of his son, assur-dain-pal, and his death occurred in b.c. the kingdom was shaken by the struggle that ensued between his sons. samsi-ramman iv., the brother of assurdain-pal, reigned for twelve years; his son, ramman-nirari iii., had married the babylonian princess sammuramat, and so had secured peace. he was an energetic and capable ruler. to him at length damascus made submission and paid tribute. but menuas, a bold and able king of urartu, proved himself a thorn in the side of the assyrian king, for he delivered from the yoke of nineveh the tribes on the borders of lake urmiah and all the adjacent regions. everywhere along the lower zab, and on the frontier as far as the euphrates, the assyrian outposts were driven back by menuas, who also overcame the hittites and by his campaigns formed that kingdom of van, or armenia, which was quite equal in size to assyria. he died shortly before the death of ramman-nirari, in b.c. his son, argistis, spent the first few years of his reign in completing his conquests in the country north of the araxes. he was attacked by shalmaneser iv., son of ramman-nirari, but defeated the assyrians. misfortunes accumulated for the rulers and people who had exercised so wide a sway, and the end of the second assyrian empire was not far off. syria was lost under assur-nirari iii., who was also driven from calah by sedition in b.c. he died some months later and the dynasty came to an end, and in a usurper, the leader of the revolt at calah, proclaimed himself king under the name of tiglath-pileser iii. the second empire had lasted rather less than a century and a half. _ii.--to the destruction of babylon_ events proved that, at this period at any rate, the decadence of assyria was not due to any exhaustion of the race or impoverishment of the country, but was owing mainly to the incapacity of its kings and the lack of energy displayed by their generals. the assyrian troops had lost none of their former valour, but their leaders had shown less foresight and skill. as soon as tiglath-pileser assumed leadership, the armies regained their former prestige and supremacy. the empire still included the original patrimony of assur and its ancient colonies on the upper tigris, but the buffer provinces, containing the tribes on the borders of syria, namri, nairi, melitene, had thrown off the yoke, as had the arameans, while menuas of armenia and his son argistis had by their invasions laid waste the median territory. sharduris iii., son of argistis, succeeded to the throne of armenia about , and at once overran the district of babilu, carrying by storm three royal castles, cities, and villages. he also captured the castles of the mountaineers of melitene. crossing mount taurus about , he forced the hittites to swear allegiance. it was in the middle of this eighth century b.c., in the days of tiglath-pileser iii. of assyria, and sharduris iii. of armenia, that isræl, under jehoash, and his son jeroboam ii.; inspired by the exhortations of elisha the prophet, was rehabilitated for a season, winning victories over the syrians and taking vengeance on damascus, and then attacking the moabites. the sudden collapse of damascus led to the decline of syria, but though jeroboam ii. seemed to be firmly seated as king in samaria, the downfall of isræl and judah alike, as well as of tyre, edom, gaza, moab, and ammon, was foretold by the prophet amos, while from the midst of ephraim the priest-seer, hosea, was never weary of reproaching the tribes with their ingratitude and of predicting their coming desolation. ere long, tiglath-pileser began his campaigns against them by attacking the arameans, dwelling on the banks of the tigris. he overthrew them at the first encounter. nabunazir, then king in babylon, bowed before him and swore fidelity to him, and he visited sippar, nipur, babylon, borsippa, kuta, kishu, dilbat and uruk, babylonian "cities without a peer," and offered sacrifices to all their gods--to bel zirbanit, nebo, tashmit, and nir-gal. this settlement took place in b.c. his next exploit was the rapid conquest of the mountainous and populous regions on the shores of the caspian. and now he ventured to try conclusions with armenia and to attack the famous kingdom of urartu in the difficult fastnesses round lakes van and urumiah. crossing the euphrates in the spring of b.c., he captured arpad, and soon afterwards marched forth to meet the great army of sharduris. the rout of the latter was complete, and he fled, after losing , men. the victor was covered with glory; yet the triumph cost him dear, for the forces left him were not sufficient to finish the campaign, nor to extort allegiance from the syrian princes who had allied themselves with sharduris. after spending the winter in nineveh, reorganising his troops, the assyrian inaugurated a campaign which ended in the subjugation of northern syria and its incorporation in the empire. only one difficulty foiled tiglath-pileser. he failed to capture the impregnable fortress of dhuspas, in which sharduris had taken refuge. this capital of urartu held out against a long siege, and at length the assyrian army withdrew. sharduris remained king as before, but he was utterly spent, and his power had received a blow from which it never recovered. since then, armenia has more than once challenged fortune, but always with the same result; it fared no better under tigranes in the roman epoch than under sharduris in the time of the assyrians. as for egypt at this period, it was ruled over by what is known as the bubastite dynasty, so called from the city of bubastis, in the delta, where the pharaohs of the time, osorkon i., his son takeloti i., and his grandson, osorkon ii., for an interval of fifty years chiefly resided, abstaining from politics, so that the country enjoyed an interval of profound peace. but the old cause brought about the fall of this dynasty also. military feudalism again developed and egypt split up into many petty states. the sceptre at length passed to another dynasty, this time of tanite origin. petubastis was the first of the line, but the power was really in the hands of the priests, one of whom, auiti, actually declared himself king, together with pharaoh. sensational events followed. the weakness of egypt tempted an uprising of the ethiopians, who overran a great part of the country. and it was at this period that tiglath-pileser crushed the kingdom of isræl, king pekah being compelled to flee from samaria into the mountains, while the inhabitants of naphtali and gilead were carried into captivity. nabonazir, king of babylon, who had never swerved from the fidelity he had sworn to his mighty ally after the events of , died in b.c., and was succeeded by his son nabunadinziri, who at the end of two years was assassinated in a popular rising, and one of his sons, nabushumukin, who was concerned in the rising, usurped the crown. he wore it for two months and twelve days, and then abdicated in favour of a certain ukinzir, an aramean chief. but tiglath-pileser gave the new dynasty no time to settle itself firmly on the throne. the year after his return from syria he marched against it. after two years of fighting ukinzir was overcome and captured. tiglath-pileser entered babylon as conqueror, and caused himself to be proclaimed king of sumir and akkad within its walls. many centuries had passed since the two empires had been united under one ruler. his babylonian subjects seem to have taken a liking for him; but he did not long survive his triumph, dying after having reigned eighteen years over assyria, and less than two years over babylon and chaldæa. the next great assyrian name is that of sargon ii., whose origin is not clear. and the incidents of the revolution which raised him to the throne are also unknown. the first few years of his reign, which commenced in b.c., were harassed by revolts among many of the border tribes, but these he resolutely faced at all points, inflicting overwhelming defeats on the medes and the armenians. the philistines were cowed by the storming of ashdod, and sargon subdued phoenicia, carrying his arms to the sea. this great monarch, while wars raged round him, found time for extensive works of a peaceful character, completing the system of irrigation, and erecting buildings at calah and nineveh, and raising a magnificent palace at dur-sharrukin. and here he intended in peace to build a great city, but he was, in b.c., assassinated by an alien soldier. sennacherib, his son, fighting on the frontier, was recalled and proclaimed immediately. he either failed to inherit his father's good fortune, or lacked his ability. instead of conciliating the vanquished, he massacred entire tribes, and failed to re-people these with captive exiles from other nations. so, towards the end of his reign--which terminated in b.c.--he found himself ruling over a sparsely inhabited desert where his father had left him flourishing and populous cities. phoenicia and judah formed an alliance with each other and with egypt. sennacherib bestirred himself and tyre perished. the assyrian invader then attacked judah and besieged jerusalem, where hezekiah was king and isaiah was prophesying. whatever was the cause, half the army perished by pestilence, and sennacherib led back the remnants of his force to nineveh. the disaster was terrible, but not irreparable, for another and an equal host could be raised. and it was needed to quell a great babylonian revolt led by merodachbaladan, who had given the signal of rebellion to the mountain tribes also. after a series of terrible conflicts, babylon was taken. and now sennacherib, who had shown leniency after two previous revolts, displayed unbounded fury in his triumph. the massacre lasted several days, none being spared of the citizens. piles of corpses filled the streets. the temples and palaces were pillaged, and finally the city was burnt. in the midst of his costly and absorbing wars we may well wonder how sennacherib found time and means for building villas and temples; yet he is, nevertheless, the assyrian king who has left us the largest number of monuments. his last years were embittered by the fierce rivalry of his sons. one of these he nominated his successor, esarhaddon, son of a babylonian wife. during his absence from nineveh, on the th day of teleth, , his father, sennacherib, when praying before the image of his god, was assassinated by two other sons, sharezer and adrammelech. esarhaddon, hearing of this tragedy, gathered an army, and in a battle defeated sharezer and established himself on the throne. _iii.--the crisis of the assyrian power_ esarhaddon was personally inclined for peace, for he delighted in building; but unfortunate disturbances did not permit him to pursue his favourite occupation without interruption, and, like his warlike predecessors, he was constrained to pass most of his life on the battlefield. he began his reign by quelling an insurrection of the cimmerians in the territories on the border of the black sea. sidon rebelled ungratefully, although his father had saved her from desolation by tyre. he stormed and burnt the city. the scythian tribes came on the field in b.c., but they were diplomatically conciliated. now followed a memorable event. babylon was rebuilt. esarhaddon used all the available captives taken in war on the foundations and the fabrication of bricks, erected walls, rebuilt all the temples, and lavishly devoted gold, silver, costly stones, rare woods, and plates of enamel to decoration. the canals were made good for the gardens, and the people, who had been scattered in various provinces, were encouraged to return to their homes. but fresh foreign complications arose through the support given continually to recalcitrant states in the south of egypt. esarhaddon was provoked to undertake the first actual invasion of egypt in force by assyria for the purpose of subduing the country. over a great combination of the egyptians and ethiopians he won a crushing victory. memphis was taken and sacked. henceforth, esarhaddon, in his pride, styled himself king of egypt, and king of the kings of egypt, of the said, and of ethiopia. but he was not very long permitted to enjoy the glory of his triumph; a determined revolt of the conquered country demanded a fresh campaign. he set out, but was in bad health, and, his malady increasing, he died on the journey in the twelfth year of his reign. before starting on the expedition, he had realised the impossibility of a permanent amalgamation of assyria and babylon, notwithstanding his personal affection for babylon. accordingly, he designated as his successors his two sons. assurbanipal was to be king of assyria, and shamash-shumukin king of babylon, under the suzerainty of his brother. as soon as esarhaddon had passed away, the separation he had planned took place automatically, the two sons proclaiming themselves respectively kings of assyria and babylon. thus babylon regained half its independence. but the assyrian empire was now at its zenith. egypt was quelled by the army of esarhaddon, and to assurbanipal submitted in vassalage the nations of the mediterranean coast. now followed years of exhausting warfare and of victory after victory, which fatally wasted the strength of assyria. never had the empire been so respected; never had so many nations united under one sceptre. but troubles accumulated. mutiny in egypt called for another expedition, which led to the capture and sacking of thebes. next came a war with elam, ending in its subjection to assyria, for the first time in history. but with success. assurbanipal grew arrogant in his attitude to his brother, the king of babylon, and a fratricidal war resulted in the defeat and death of shamash-shumukin and the capture of the rival capital. but assyria was now near one of its recurrent periods of exhaustion, and foes were rising for a formidable attack. _iv.--fall of media and chaldæa_ at the very height of his apparent grandeur and prosperity assurbanipal was attacked by phraortes, king of the medes, who paid for his temerity with his life, being left dead, with the greater part of his army, on the field. but the sequel was unexpected, for cyaxares, son of the slain mede, stubbornly continued the conflict, patiently reorganising his army, until he won a great victory over the assyrian generals, and shut up the remnant of their forces in nineveh. assurbanipal, after a reign of forty-two years, died about b.c., and was succeeded by his son, assuretililani. against his brother and successor, sinsharishkin, the standard of rebellion was raised by nabopolassar, the governor of babylon, who declared himself independent, and assumed the title of king, but his reign not long after ended with his death, in b.c. nebuchadrezzar was proclaimed king in babylon. his reign was long and prosperous, and, on the whole, a peaceful one. the most notable event in the career of nebuchadrezzar ii., was the capture and destruction of jerusalem, in consequence of a revolt of tyre and judea. the unfortunate king, zedekiah, saw his sons slain in his presence, and then, his eyes having been put out, he was loaded with chains, and sent to babylon. nebuchadrezzar died in b.c. after a reign of fifty-five years. his successors were weak rulers, and their reigns were brief and inglorious. the army was suffered to dwindle, and the dynasty founded by nabopolassar came to an end in b.c., when labashi-marduk, the last of the line, after reigning only nine months, was murdered by nabonidus, a native babylonian. this usurper witnessed the rapid rise of the new iranian power which was to destroy him and babylon. in b.c., cyrus, a persian general, revolted against astyages, defeated him, and destroyed the median empire at one blow. the only army that was a match for that of cyrus was the lydian host under king croesus. a conflict took place between the two, ending in the defeat of the most powerful potentate of asia minor. but cyrus treated croesus with consideration, and the lydian king is said to have become the friend of the mighty persian. from that day neither egypt nor chaldæa had any chance of victory on the battlefield. nabonidus became a mere vassal of cyrus, and lived more or less inactively in his palace at tima, leaving the direction of power at babylon in the hands of his son, bel-sharuzu. at length the babylonians grew weary of their king. nabonidus had never been popular, and the discontent of the people at length called for the intervention of the suzerain. in cyrus moved against babylon, and nabonidus now retreated into the city with his troops, and prepared for a siege. but cyrus, taking advantage of the time of the year when the waters were lowest, diverted the tigris, so that his soldiers were able to enter the city without striking a blow. nabonidus surrendered, and belsharuzur was slain. with him perished the second chaldæan empire. the sagacious conqueror did not pillage the city, and treated the citizens with clemency. cyrus associated his son cambyses with himself, making him king of babylon. nothing in babylon was changed, and she remained what she had been since the fall of assyria, the real capital of the regions between the mediterranean and the zapcos. the persian dominion extended undisputed as far as the isthmus of suez. under cyrus took place the first return of the jews to jerusalem. according to xenophon, the great persian, in b.c., died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying them by his wisdom; but herodotus declares that he perished miserably in fighting with the barbarian hosts of the massagetæ, on the steppes of turkestan, beyond the arxes. he had believed that his destiny was to found an empire in which all other ancient empires should be merged, and he all but accomplished the stupendous task. when he passed away, egypt alone remained to be conquered. cambyses succeeded, took up the enterprise against egypt; but after a series of successes met with reverses in ethiopia, which affected his mind, and he is said to have ended his own life. power fell into the hands of a chief of one of the seven great clans, the famous darius, son of hystaspes, whose rival was nebuchadrezzar iii., then king of babylon. once more, in his reign, babylon was besieged and fell, nebuchadrezzar being executed. he was an impostor who had pretended to be the son of the great nebuchadrezzar. and now approached the last days of the greatness of the eastern world, for the eve of the macedonian conquest of the near east had arrived. * * * * * flavius josephus the antiquities of the jews josephus's "antiquities of the jews" traces the whole history of the race down to the outbreak of the great war. he also wrote an autobiography (see lives and letters) and a polemical treatise, "flavius josephus against apion." his style is so classically elegant that critics have called him the greek livy. the following summary of the "antiquities of the jews" contains the substance of the really valuable sections, other portions being little else than a paraphrase of the histories embodied in the old testament. _i.--from alexander to antiochus_ after philip, king of macedon, had been treacherously slain by pausanias, he was succeeded by his son alexander, who, passing over the hellespont, overcame the army of darius, king of persia, at granicum. so he marched over lydia, subdued ionia, overran caria and pamphylia, and again defeated darius at issus. the persian king fled into his own land, and his mother, wife, and children were captured. alexander besieged and took first tyre, and then gaza, and next marched towards jerusalem. at sapha, in full view of the city, he was met by a procession of the priests in fine linen, and a multitude of the citizens in white, the high-priest, jaddua, being at their head in his resplendent robes. graciously responding to the salutations of priests and people, alexander entered jerusalem, worshipped and sacrificed in the temple, and then invited the people to ask what favours they pleased of him; whereupon the high-priest desired that they might enjoy the laws of their forefathers, and pay no tribute on the seventh year. all their requests were granted, and alexander led his army into the neighbouring cities. now, when alexander was dead and his government had been divided among many, ptolemy, the son of lagus, by treachery seized jerusalem, and took away many captives to egypt, and settled them there. his successor, ptolemy philadelphus, restored to freedom , jews who had been kept in slavery at the instance of aristeus, one of his most intimate friends. he also dedicated many gifts to god, and showed great friendship to the jews in his dominions. other kings in asia followed the example of philadelphus, conferring honours on jews who became their auxiliaries, and making them citizens with privileges equal to those enjoyed by the macedonians and greeks. in the reign of antiochus the great the jews suffered greatly while he was at war with ptolemy philopater, and with his son, called epiphanes. when antiochus had beaten ptolemy, he seized on judea, but ultimately he made a league with ptolemy, gave him his daughter cleopatra to wife, and yielded up to him celesyria, samaria, judea, and phoenicia by way of dowry. onias, son of simon the just, was then high-priest. he greatly provoked the king by neglecting to pay his taxes, so that ptolemy threatened to settle his soldiers in jerusalem to live on the citizens. but joseph, the nephew of onias, by his wisdom brought all things right again, and entered into friendship with the king, who lent him soldiers and sent him to force the people in various cities to pay their taxes. many who refused were slain. joseph not only thus gathered great wealth for himself, but sent much to the king and to cleopatra, and to powerful men at the court of egypt. he had a son named hyrcanus, who became noted for his ability, and crossed the jordan with many followers; he made war successfully on the arabians, built a magnificent stone castle, and ruled over all the region for seven years, even all the time that seleucus was king of syria. but when seleucus was dead, his brother antiochus epiphanes took the kingdom, and hyrcanus, seeing that antiochus had a great army, feared he should be taken and punished for what he had done to the arabians. so he took his own life, antiochus seizing his possessions. _ii.--to the death of judas_ antiochus, despising the son of ptolemy as being but weak, and coveting the possession of egypt, conducted an expedition against that country with a great force; but was compelled to withdraw by a declaration of the romans. on his way back from alexandria he took the city of jerusalem, entering it without fighting in the d year of the kingdom of the seleucidæ. he slew many of the citizens, plundered the city of much money, and returned to antioch. after two years he again came up against jerusalem, and this time left the temple bare, taking away the golden altar and candlesticks, the table of shewbread, and the altar of burnt offering, and all the secret treasures. he slew some of the people, and carried off into captivity about ten thousand, burnt the finest buildings, erected a citadel, and therein placed a garrison of macedonians. building an idol altar in the temple, he offered swine on it, and he compelled many of the jews to raise idol altars in every town and village, and to offer swine on them every day. but many disregarded him, and these underwent bitter punishment. they were tortured or scourged or crucified. now, at this time there dwelt at modin a priest named mattathias, a citizen of jerusalem. he had five sons, one of whom, judas, was called maccabæus. mattathias and his sons not only refused to sacrifice as antiochus commanded, but, with his sons, attacked and slew an apostate jewish worshipper and apelles, the king's general, and a few of his soldiers. then the priest and his five sons overthrew the idol altar, and fled into the desert, followed by many of their followers with their wives and children. about a thousand of these who had hidden in caves were overtaken and destroyed; but many who escaped joined themselves to mattathias, and appointed him to be the ruler, who taught them to fight, even on the sabbath. gathering a great army, he overthrew the idol altars, and slew those who broke the laws. but after ruling one year, he fell into a distemper, and committed to his sons the conduct of affairs. he was buried at modin, all the people making great lamentation. his son judas took upon himself the administration of affairs in the th year, and with the help of his brothers and others, cast their enemies out of the country and purified the land of its pollutions. judas celebrated in the temple at jerusalem the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices for eight days. from that time we call the yearly celebration the feast of lights. judas also rebuilt the wall and reared towers of great height. when these things were over he made excursions against adversaries on every side, he and his brothers simon and jonathan subduing in turn idumæa, gilead, jazer, tyre, and ashdod. antiochus died of a distemper which overtook him as he was fleeing from elymais, from which he was driven during an attack upon its gates. before he died he called his friends about him, and confessed that his calamities had come upon him for the miseries he had brought upon the jewish nation. antiochus was succeeded by his son, antiochus eupator, a boy of tender age, whose guardians were philip and lysias. he reigned but two years, being put to death, together with lysias, by order of the usurper demetrius, the son of seleucus, who fled from rome, and, landing in syria, gathered an army, and was joyfully received by the people. against jerusalem, demetrius sent an expedition commanded by his general, bacchides. judas maccabæus, fighting with great courage, but having with him only men, fell in the battle. his brothers simon and jonathan, receiving his body by treaty from the enemy, carried it to the village of modin, and there buried him. he left behind him a glorious reputation, by gaining freedom for his nation and delivering them from slavery under the macedonians. he died after filling the office of high-priest for three years. _iii.--to the roman dominion_ jonathan and his brother simon continued the war against bacchides. they were assisted by alexander, the son of antiochus epiphanes, who, in the th year, came up into syria against demetrius, and defeated and slew him in a great battle near ptolemais. but the son of demetrius, named after his father, in the th year, after alexander had seated himself on the throne and had gained in marriage cleopatra, daughter of ptolemy philometor, came from crete with a great number of mercenary soldiers. jonathan and simon, brothers of judas maccabæus, entering into league with demetrius, who offered them very great advantages, defeated at ashdod the army sent by alexander under apollonius. a breach took place between alexander and ptolemy through the treachery of ammonius, a friend of the former, and the egyptian king took away his daughter cleopatra from her husband, and immediately sent to demetrius, offering to make a league of mutual assistance and friendship with him, to give him his daughter in marriage and to restore him to the principality of his fathers. these overtures were joyfully accepted, and ptolemy came to antioch and persuaded the people to receive demetrius. alexander was beaten in a battle by the two allies and fled into arabia, where, however, his head was speedily cut off by zabdiel, a prince of the country, and sent to ptolemy. but that king, through wounds caused by falling from his horse, died a few days afterwards. demetrius, being secure in power, disbanded a great part of his army, but this action greatly irritated the soldiers. furthermore, he was hated, as his father had been, by the people of syria. a revolt was raised by an apanemian named trypho, who overcame demetrius in a fight, and took from him both his elephants and the city of antioch. demetrius on this defeat retired into cilicia, and trypho delivered the kingdom to antiochus, the youthful son of alexander, who quickly sent ambassadors to jonathan and made him his confederate and friend, confirming him in the high-priesthood and yielding up to him four prefectures which had been added to judea. accordingly, jonathan promptly joined him in a war against demetrius, who was again defeated. soon after demetrius had been carried into captivity trypho deserted antiochus, who had now reigned four years. he usurped power, which he basely abused; and antiochus soter, brother of demetrius, raised a force against him and drove him away to apamea, where he was put to death, his term of power having lasted only three years. antiochus soter then attacked simon, who successfully resisted, established peace, and ruled in all for eight years. his death also was the result of treachery, his son-in-law ptolemy playing him false. his son hyrcanus became high-priest, and speedily ejected the forces of ptolemy from the land. subduing all factions, he ruled justly for thirty-one years, leaving five sons. the eldest, aristobulus, purposed to change the government into a kingdom, and placed a diadem on his own head; but his mother, to whom the supremacy had been entrusted, disputed his authority. he cast her into prison, where she was starved to death; and next he compassed the death of his brother antigonus, but was soon attacked by a painful disease. he reigned only one year. his widow, alexandra, let his brothers out of prison and made alexander janneus king. his reign was one of war and disorder. with savage cruelty he repressed rebellion, condemning hundreds of jews to crucifixion. while these were yet living, their wives and children were slain before their eyes. his life was ended by a sickness which lasted three years, and after his death civil war broke out between his two sons, aristobulus and hyrcanus, in which great barbarities were committed. the conflict was terminated by the intervention of the romans under scarus. the two brothers appealed to pompey after he came to damascus; but that roman general marched against jerusalem and took it by force. thus we lost our liberty as a nation and became subject to the romans. _iv.--the jews and the romans_ crassus next came with roman troops into judea and pillaged the temple, and then marched into parthia, where both he and his army perished. then cassius obtained syria, and checked the parthians. he passed on to judea, fell on tarichæa, and took it, and carried away , jewish captives. a wealthy idumean named antipater, who had been a great friend of hyrcanus, and had helped him against aristobulus, was a very active and seditious man. he had married cypros, a lady of his own idumean race, by whom he had four sons, phaselus, and herod, who afterwards became king, and joseph, and pheroras; and a daughter, salome. he cultivated friendship with other potentates, especially with the king of arabia, to whom he committed the care of his children while he fought against aristobulus. but when cæsar had taken rome, and after pompey and the senate had fled beyond the ionian sea, aristobulus was set free from the bonds in which he had been laid. cæsar resolved to send him with two legions into syria to set matters right; but aristobulus had no enjoyment of this trust, for he was poisoned by pompey's party. but scipio, sent by pompey to slay alexander, son of aristobulus, cut off his head at antioch. and ptolemy, son of menneus, ruler of chalcis, took alexander's brethren to him, and sent his son philippion to askelon to aristobulus's wife, and desired her to send back with him her son antigonus and her daughters; the one of whom, alexandra, philippion fell in love with, and married her; though afterwards his father ptolemy slew him, and married alexandra. now, after pompey was dead, and after the victory cæsar had gained over him, antipater, who had managed the jewish affairs, became very useful to cæsar when he made war against egypt, and that by the order of hyrcanus. he brought over to the side of cæsar the principal men of the arabians, and also jamblicus, the ruler of the syrians, and ptolemy, his son, and tholomy, the son of sohemus, who dwelt at mount libanus, and almost all the cities, and with , armed jews he joined mithradates of pergamus, who was marching with his auxiliaries to aid cæsar. antipater and mithradates together won a pitched battle against the egyptians, and cæsar not only then commended antipater, but used him throughout that war in the most hazardous undertakings, and finally, at the end of that campaign, made him procurator of judea, at the same time appointing hyrcanus high-priest. antipater, seeing that hyrcanus was of a slow and slothful temper, made his eldest son, phaselus, governor of jerusalem; but committed galilee to his next son, herod, who was only fifteen, but was a youth of great mind, and soon proved his courage, and won the love of the syrians by freeing their country of a nest of robbers, and slaying the captain of these, one hezekias. thus herod became known to sextus cæsar, a relation of the great cæsar, who was now president of syria. now, the growing reputation of antipater and his sons excited the envy of the principal men among the jews, especially as they saw that herod was violent and bold, and was capable of acting tyrannically. so they accused him before hyrcanus of encroaching on the government, and of transgressing the laws by putting men to death without their condemnation by the sanhedrin. protecting herod, whom he loved as his own son, from the sanhedrin when they would have sentenced him to death, hyrcanus aided him to flee to damascus, where he took refuge with sextus cæsar. when herod received the kingdom, he slew all the members of that sanhedrin excepting sameas, whom he respected because he persuaded the people to admit herod into the city, and he even slew hyrcanus also. now, when cæsar was come to rome, and was ready to sail into africa to fight against scipio and cato, hyrcanus sent ambassadors to him, desiring the ratification of the league of friendship between them. not only cæsar but the senate heaped honours on the ambassadors, and confirmed the understanding that subsisted. but during the disorders that arose after the death of cæsar, cassius came into syria and disturbed judea by exacting great sums of money. antipater sought to gather the great tax demanded from judea, and was foully slain by a collector named malichus, on whom herod quickly took vengeance for the murder of his father. by his energy in obtaining the required tax, herod gained new favour with cassius. _v.--the herodian era_ in order to secure his position, herod made an obscure priest from babylon, named ananelus, high-priest in place of hyrcanus. this offended alexandra, daughter of hyrcanus and wife of alexander, son of aristobulus the king. she had ten children, among whom were mariamne, the beautiful wife of herod, and aristobulus. she sent an appeal to cleopatra, queen of egypt, in order by her intercession to gain from antony the high-priesthood for this son. at the instance of antony, herod took the office from ananelus, and gave it to aristobulus, but took care that the youth should soon be murdered. then, from causeless jealousy, he put to death his uncle joseph and threw mariamne into prison. victory in a war with arabia enhanced his power. cruelly slaying hyrcanus, he hasted away to octavian, who had beaten antony at actium, and obtained also from him, the new cæsar, augustus, the kingdom, thus being confirmed in his position. women of the palace who hated mariamne for her beauty, her high birth, and her pride, falsely accused her to herod of gross unfaithfulness. he loved her passionately, but, giving ear to these traducers, ordered her to be tried. she was condemned to death, and showed great fortitude as she went to the place of execution, even though her own mother, alexandra, in order to make herself safe from the wrath of the king, basely, and publicly, and violently upbraided her, while the people, pitying her, mourned at her fate. herod was also attacked by a tormenting distemper. he ordered the execution of alexandra and of several of his most intimate friends. by his persistent introduction of foreign customs, which corrupted the constitution of the country, herod incurred the deep hatred of very many eminent citizens. he erected servile trophies to cæsar, and prepared costly games in which men were condemned to fight with wild beasts. ten men who conspired against him were betrayed, and were tortured horribly, and then slain. but the people seized the spy who had informed against them, tore him limb from limb, and flung the body in pieces to the dogs. by constant and relentless severity herod still strengthened his rule. but now fearful disturbances arose in his family. his sister salome and his brother pheroras displayed virulent hatred against alexander and aristobulus, sons of the murdered mariamne, and, on their part, the two young men were incensed at the partiality shown by herod to his eldest son, antipater. this prince was continually using cunning strategy against his brethren, while feigning affection for them. he so worked on the mind of the king by false accusations against alexander that many of the friends of this youth were tortured to death in the attempts made to force disclosures from them. a traitor named eurycles fanned the flame by additional accusations, all utterly groundless, so that herod wrote letters to rome concerning the treacherous designs of his sons against him, and asking permission of cæsar to bring them to trial. this was granted, and they were accused before an assembly of judges at berytus and condemned. by their father's command they were starved to death. for his share in bringing about this tragedy antipater was hated by the people. but the secret desire of this eldest son was to see the end of his father, whom he deeply hated, though he now governed jointly with him and was no other than a king already. herod by this time had nine wives and many children and grandchildren. the latter he brought up with much care. antipater was sent on a mission to rome, and during his absence his plots were discovered, and on his return, herod, amazed at his wickedness, condemned him to death. the king now altered his testament, dividing the territory among several of his sons. he died on the fifth day after the execution of antipater, having reigned thirty-four years after procuring the death of antigonus. archelaus, his son, was appointed by cæsar, in confirmation of herod's will, governor of one-half of the country; but accusation of enemies led to his banishment to vienna, in gaul. cyrenaicus, a roman senator and magistrate, was sent by cæsar to make taxation in syria and judea, and caponius was made procurator of judea. philip, a son of herod, built cities in honour of tiberius cæsar. when pontius pilate became procurator he removed the army from cassarea to jerusalem, abolished jewish laws, and in the night introduced cæsar's effigies on ensigns. about this time jesus, a wise man, a doer of wonderful works, drew over to him many jews and gentiles. he was christ; and when pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him did not forsake him, for he appeared to them again alive at the third day, as the prophets had foretold; and the tribe of christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. john, who was called the baptist, was slain by herod the tetrarch at his castle at machserus, by the dead sea. the destruction of his army by aretas, king of arabia, was ascribed by the jews to god's anger for this crime. agrippa, grandson of herod the great, became the most famous of his descendants. on him claudius cæsar bestowed all the dominions of his grandfather with the title of king. but pride overcame him. seated on a throne at a great festival at cæsarea, arrayed in a magnificent robe, he was stricken by a disease, and died. he was succeeded by his son agrippa, during whose time felix and festus were procurators in judea, while nero was roman emperor. this agrippa finished the temple by the work of , men. the war of the jews and romans began through the oppression by gessius florus, who secured the procuratorship by the friendship of his wife cleopatra with poppea, wife of nero. florus filled judea with intolerable cruelties, and the war began in the second year of his rule and the twelfth of the reign of nero. what happened will be known by those who peruse the books i have written about the jewish war. * * * * * the wars of the jews josephus, in his "wars of the jews," gives the only full and reliable account of the tragic siege and destruction of jerusalem by the romans under titus. excepting in the opening, he writes throughout in the third person, although he was present in the roman camp as a prisoner during the siege, and before then had been, as governor of galilee, the brave and energetic antagonist of the romans. becoming the friend of titus, and despairing of the success of his compatriots, he was employed in efforts to conciliate the leaders of the rebellion during the siege, and he was for three years a privileged captive in the camp of the besiegers. his recital is one of the most thrilling samples of romantic realism in the whole range of ancient literature, and its veracity and honesty have never been impugned. in his autobiography, josephus tells how, after the war, he was invited by titus to sail with him to rome, and how on his arrival there the emperor vespasian entertained him in his own palace, bestowed on him a pension, and conferred on him the honours of roman citizenship. the emperors titus and domitian treated this remarkable jew with continued favour. _i.--beginning of the great conflict_ whereas the war which the jews made against the romans hath been the greatest of all times, while some men who were not concerned themselves have written vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and while those that were there have given false accounts, i, joseph, the son of matthias, by birth a hebrew, and a priest also, and who at first fought against the romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, am the author of this book. now, the affairs of the romans were in great disorder after the death of nero. at the decease of herod agrippa, his son, who bore the same name, was seventeen years old. he was considered too young to bear the burden of royalty, and judea relapsed into a roman province. cuspius fadus was sent as governor, and administered his office with firmness, but found civil war disturbing the district beyond jordan. he cleared the country of the robber bands; and his successor, tiberius alexander, during a brief rule, put down disturbances which broke out in judea. the province was at peace till he was superseded by cumanus, during whose government the people and the roman soldiery began to show mutual animosity. in a terrible riot , people perished, and jerusalem was given up to wailing and lamentation. it was in cæsarea that the events took place which led to the final war. this magnificent city was inhabited by two races--the syrian greeks, who were heathens, and the jews. the two parties violently contended for the pre-eminence. the jews were the more wealthy; but the roman soldiery, levied chiefly in syria, took part with their countrymen. tumults and bloodshed disturbed the streets. at this time a procurator named gessius florus was appointed, and he, by his barbarities, forced the jews to begin the war in the twelfth year of the reign of nero and the seventeenth of the reign of agrippa. but the occasion of the war was by no means proportioned to those heavy calamities that it brought upon us. the fatal flame finally broke out from the old feud at cæsarea. the decree of nero had assigned the magistracy of that city to the greeks. it happened that the jews had a synagogue, the ground around which belonged to a greek. for this spot the jews offered a much higher price than it was worth. it was refused, and to annoy them as much as possible, the owner set up some mean buildings and shops upon it, and so made the approach to the synagogue as narrow and difficult as possible. the more impetuous of the jewish youth interrupted the workmen. then the men of greater wealth and influence, and among them john, a publican, collected the large sum of eight talents, and sent it as a bribe to florus, that he might stop the building. he received the money, made great promises, and at once departed for sebaste from cæsarea. his object was to leave full scope for the riot. on the following day, while the jews were crowding to the synagogue, a citizen of cæsarea outraged them by oversetting an earthen vessel in the way, over which he sacrificed birds, as done by the law in cleansing lepers, and thus he implied that the jews were a leprous people. the more violent jews, furious at the insult, attacked the greeks, who were already in arms. the jews were worsted, took up the books of the law, and fled to narbata, about seven miles distant. john, the publican, and twelve men of eminence went to samaria to florus, implored his aid, and reminded him of the eight talents he had received. he threw them into prison and demanded seventeen talents from the sacred treasury under pretence of cæsar's necessities. this injustice and oppression caused violent excitement in jerusalem when the news reached that city. the people assembled around the temple with the loudest outcries; but it was the purpose of florus to drive the people to insurrection, and he gave his soldiers orders to plunder the upper market and to put to death all whom they met. of men, women, and children there fell that day , . when agrippa attempted to persuade the people to obey florus till cæsar should send someone to succeed him, the more seditious cast reproaches on him, and got the king excluded from the city; nay, some had the impudence to fling stones at him. at the same time they excited the people to go to war, and some laid siege to the roman garrison in the antonio; others made an assault on a certain fortress called masada. they took it by treachery, and slew the romans. one, menahem, a galilean, became leader of the sedition, and went to masada and broke open herod's armoury, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other robbers, also. these he made use of for a bodyguard, and returned in state to jerusalem, and gave orders to continue the siege of the antonio. the tower was undermined, and fell, and many soldiers were slain. next day the high-priest ananias, and his brother hezekiah, were slain by the robbers. by these successes menahem was puffed up and became barbarously cruel; but he was slain, as were also the captains under him, in an attack led on by eleazar, a bold youth who was governor of the temple. _ii.--the gathering of great storms_ and now great calamities and slaughters came on the jews. on the very same day two dreadful massacres happened. in jerusalem the jews fell on netilius and the band of roman soldiers whom he commanded after they had made terms and had surrendered, and all were killed except the commander himself, who supplicated for mercy, and even agreed to submit to circumcision. on that very day and hour, as though providence had ordained it, the greeks in cæsarea rose, and in a single hour slew over , jews, and so the city was emptied of its jewish inhabitants. for florus caught those who escaped, and sent them to the galleys. by this tragedy the whole nation was driven to madness. the jews rose and laid waste the villages all around many cities in syria, and they descended on gadara, hippo, and gaulonitus, and burnt and destroyed many places. sebaste and askelon they seized without resistance, and they razed anthedon and gaza to the ground, pillaging the villages all around, with great slaughter. when thus the disorder in all syria had become terrible, cestius gallus, the roman commander at antioch, marched with an army to ptolemais and overran all galilee and invested jerusalem, expecting that it would be surrendered by means of a powerful party within the walls. but the plot was discovered, and the conspirators were flung headlong from the walls, and an attack by cestius on the north side of the temple was repulsed with great loss. seeing the whole country around in arms, and the jews swarming on all the heights, cestius withdrew his army and retired in the night, leaving of his bravest men to mount guard in the camp and to display their ensigns, that the jews might be deceived. but at break of day it was discovered that the camp was deserted by the army, and the jews rushed to the assault and slew all the roman band. this happened in the twelfth year of the reign of nero. _iii.--judea in rebellion against rome_ nero was at this time in achaia. to him, as ambassador, cestius, sent in order to lay the blame on florus, costobar and saul, two brothers of the herodian family, who, with philip, the son of jacimus, the general of agrippa, had escaped from jerusalem. meantime, a great massacre of the jews took place at damascus. then those in jerusalem who had pursued after cestius called a general assembly in the temple, and elected their governors and commanders. their choice fell on joseph, the son of gorion, and ananus, the chief priest, who were invested with absolute authority in the city; but eleazar was passed over, for he was suspected of aiming at kingly power, as he went about attended by a bodyguard of zealots. but as commanding within the temple he had made himself master of the public treasures, and in a short time the need of money and his extreme subtlety won over the multitude, and all real authority fell into his hands. to the other districts they sent the men most to be trusted for courage and fidelity. josephus was appointed to the command of galilee, with particular charge of the strong city of gamala. he raised in that province in the north an army of more than a hundred thousand young men, whom he armed and exercised after the roman manner; and he formed a council of seventy, and appointed seven judges in each city. he sought to unite the people and to win their goodwill. but great trouble arose from the treachery of his enemy, john of gischala, who surpassed all men in craft and deceit. he gathered a force of , robbers and wasted galilee, while he inflamed the dissensions in the cities, and sent messengers to jerusalem accusing josephus of tyranny. tiberias and several cities revolted, but josephus suppressed the risings, severely punishing many of the leaders. john retired to the robbers at masada, and took to plundering idumsea. _iv.--vespasian and josephus_ nero, on learning from the messengers the state of affairs, at first regarded the revolt lightly; but presently grew alarmed, and appointed to the command of the armies in syria, and the task of subduing the jews, vespasian, who had pacified the west when it was disordered by the germans, and had also recovered britain for the romans. he came to antioch in the early spring, and was there joined by agrippa and all his forces. he marched to ptolemais, where he was met by his son titus, who had, with expedition unusual in the winter season, sailed from achaia to alexandria. so the roman army now numbered , horsemen and footmen, besides large numbers of camp followers who were also accustomed to military service and could fight on occasion. the war was now opened. josephus attempted no resistance in the open field, and the people had been directed to fly to the fortified cities. the strongest of all these was jotapata, and here josephus commanded in person. being very desirous of demolishing it, vespasian besieged it with his whole army. it was defended with the greatest vigour, but was, after fierce conflicts, taken in the thirteenth year of the reign of nero, on the first day of the month panemus (july). during this dreadful siege, and at the capture, , men fell. the romans sought in vain for the body of josephus, their stubborn enemy. he had leaped down the shaft of a dry well leading to a long cavern. a woman betrayed the hiding-place, and josephus was taken and brought before the conqueror, of whom he had demanded from his captors a private conference. to vespasian he announced that he and his son would speedily attain the imperial dignity. vespasian was conciliated by the speech of his prisoner, whom he treated with kindness; for though he did not release him from his bonds, he bestowed on him suits of clothes and other precious gifts. joppa, tiberias, taricheæ, and gamala were taken, both romans and jews perishing in the conflicts. soon afterwards, by the capture of gischala, all galilee was subdued, john of gischala fleeing to jerusalem. _v.--the prelude to the great siege_ while the cities of galilee thus arrested the course of the roman eagles, jotapata and gamala setting the example of daring resistance, the leaders of the nation in jerusalem, instead of sending out armies to the relief of the besieged cities, were engaged in the most dreadful civil conflicts. the fame of john of gishala had gone before him to jerusalem, and the multitude poured forth to do him honour. he falsely represented the roman forces as being very greatly weakened, and declared that their engines had been worn out in the sieges in galilee. he was a man of enticing eloquence, to whom the young men eagerly gave heed. so the city now began to be divided into hostile factions, and the whole of judea had before set to the people of jerusalem the fatal example of discord. for every city was torn to pieces by civil animosities. not only the public councils, but even numerous families were distracted by the peace and war dispute. through all judea the youth were ardent for war, while the elders vainly endeavoured to allay the frenzy. bands of desperate men began to spread over the land, plundering houses, while the roman garrisons in the towns, rather rejoicing in their hatred to the race than wishing to protect the sufferers, afforded little help. large numbers of these evil men stole into the city and grew into a daring faction, who robbed houses openly, and many of the most eminent citizens were murdered by these zealots, as they were called, from their pretence that they had discovered a conspiracy to betray the city to the romans. they dismissed many of the sanhedrin from office and appointed men of the lowest degree, who would support them in their violence, till the leaders of the people became slaves to their will. at length resistance was provoked, led by ananus, oldest of the chief priests, a man of great wisdom, and the robber zealots took refuge in the temple and fortified it more strongly than before. they appointed as high-priest one phanias, a coarse and clownish rustic, utterly ignorant of the sacerdotal duties, who when decked in the robes of office caused great derision. this sport and pastime for the zealots caused the more religious people to shed tears of grief and shame; and the citizens, unable to endure such insolence, rose in great numbers to avenge the outrage on the sacred rites. thus a fierce civil war broke out in which very many were slain. then john of gischala with great treachery, outwardly siding with ananus, and secretly aiding the zealots, sent messengers inviting the idumæans to come to his help, of whom , broke into the city during a stormy night, and slew , of the people. _vi.--the siege and fall of jerusalem_ nero died after having reigned thirteen years and eight days, and vespasian, being informed of the event, waited for a whole year, holding his army together instead of proceeding against jerusalem. galba was made emperor, and slain, as was also otho, his successor; and then, after the defeat and death of the emperor vitellius, vespasian was proclaimed by the east. he had preferred to leave the jews to waste their strength by their internal feuds while he sent his lieutenants with forces to reduce various surrounding districts instead of attacking jerusalem. when he became emperor, he released josephus from his bonds, honouring him for his integrity. hastening his journey to rome, vespasian commanded titus to subdue judea. at jerusalem were now three factions raging furiously. eleazar, son of simon, who was the first cause of the war, by persuading the people to reject the offerings of the emperors to the temple, and had led the zealots and seized the temple, pretended to cherish righteous wrath against john of gishala for the bloodshed he had occasioned. but he deserted the zealots and seized the inner court of the temple, so that there was war between him and simon, son of gioras. thus eleazar, john, and simon each led a band in constant fightings, and the temple was everywhere defiled by murders. now, as titus was on his march he chose out select horsemen, and went to take a view of the city, when suddenly an immense multitude burst forth from the gate over against the monuments of queen helena and intercepted him and a few others. he had on neither helmet nor breastplate, yet though many darts were hurled at him, all missed him, as if by some purpose of providence, and, charging through the midst of his foes, he escaped unhurt. part of the army now advanced to scopos, within a mile of the city, while another occupied a station at the foot of the mount of olives. seeing this gathering of the roman forces, the factions within jerusalem for the first time felt the necessity for concord, as eleazar from the summit of the temple, john from the porticoes of the outer court, and simon from the heights of sion watched the roman camps forming thus so near the walls. making terms with each other, they agreed to make an attack at the same moment. their followers, rushing suddenly forth along the valley of jehoshaphat, fell with violence on the th legion, encamped at the foot of the mount of olives, and working there unarmed at the entrenchments. the soldiers fell back, many being killed. witnessing their peril, titus, with picked troops, fell on the flank of the jews and drove them into the city with great loss. the roman commander now carefully pushed forward his approaches, leveling the whole plain of scopos to the outward wall and destroying all the beautiful gardens with their fountains and water-courses, and the army took up a position all along the northern and the western wall, the footmen being drawn up in seven lines, with the horsemen in three lines behind, and the archers between. jerusalem was fortified by three walls. these were not one within the other, for each defended one of the quarters into which the city was divided. the first, or outermost, encompassed bezetha, the next protected the citadel of the antonia and the northern front of the temple, and the third, or old, and innermost wall was that of sion. many towers, feet high and feet broad, each surmounted with lofty chambers and with great tanks for rain water, guarded the whole circuit of the walls, being in the first wall, in the second, and in the third. the whole circuit of the city was about stadia (four miles). from their pent-houses of wicker the romans, with great toil day and night, discharged arrows and stones, which slew many of the citizens. at three different places the battering rams began their thundering work, and at length a corner tower came down, yet the walls stood firm, for there was no breach. suddenly the besieged sallied forth and set fire to the engines. titus came up with his horsemen and slew twelve jews with his own hands. one was taken prisoner and was crucified before the walls as an example, being the first so executed during the siege. the jews now retreated to the second wall, abandoning the defence of bezetha, which the romans entered. titus instantly ordered the second wall to be attacked, and for five days the conflict raged more fiercely than ever. the jews were entirely reckless of their own lives, sacrificing themselves readily if they could kill their foes. on the fifth day they retreated from the second wall, and titus entered that part of the lower city which was within it with i, picked men. but, being desirous of winning the people, he ordered that no houses should be set on fire and no massacres should be committed. the seditious, however, slew everyone who spoke of peace, and furiously assailed the romans. some fought from the walls, others from the houses, and such confusion prevailed that the romans retired; then the jews, elated, manned the breach, making a wall of their own bodies. thus the fight continued for three days, till titus a second time entered the wall. he threw down all the northern part and strongly garrisoned the towers on the south. the strong heights of sion, the citadel of the antonia, and the fortified temple still held out titus, eager to save so magnificent a place, resolved to refrain for a few days from the attack, in order that the minds of the besieged might be affected by their woes, and that the slow results of famine might operate. he reviewed his army in full armour, and they received their pay in view of the city, the battlements being thronged by spectators during this splendid defiling, who looked on in terror and dismay. then titus sent josephus to address them and to persuade them to yield, but the zealots reviled him and hurled darts at him; but many began to desert, titus permitted them to come in unmolested. john and simon in their anger watched every outlet and executed any whom they suspected of designing to follow. the famine increased, and the misery of the weaker was aggravated by seeing the stronger obtaining food. all natural affection was extinguished, husbands and wives, parents and children snatching the last morsel from each other. many wretched men were caught by the romans prowling in the ravines by night to pick up food, and these were scourged, tortured, and crucified. in the morning sometimes of these victims were seen on crosses before the walls. this was done to terrify the rest, and it went on till there was not wood enough for crosses. terrible crimes were committed in the city. the aged high-priest, matthias, was accused of holding communication with the enemy. three of his sons were killed in his presence, and he was executed in sight of the romans, together with sixteen other members of the sanhedrin, and the parents of josephus were thrown into prison. the famine grew so woeful that a woman devoured the body of her own child. at length, after fierce fighting, the antonia was scaled, and titus ordered its demolition. titus now promised that the temple should be spared if the defenders would come forth and fight in any other place, but john and the zealots refused to surrender it. for several days the outer cloisters and outer court were attacked with rams, but the immense and compact stones resisted the blows. as many soldiers were slain in seeking to storm the cloisters, titus ordered the gates to be set on fire. a soldier flung a blazing brand into a gilded door on the north side of the chambers. the jews, with cries of grief and rage, grasped their swords and rushed to take revenge on their enemies or perish in the ruins. the slaughter was continued while the fire raged. soon no part was left but a small portion of the outer cloisters. titus next spent eighteen days in preparations for the attack on the upper city, which was then speedily captured. and now the romans were not disposed to display any mercy, night alone putting an end to the carnage. during the whole of this siege of jerusalem, , , were slain, and the prisoners numbered , . * * * * * henry milman, d.d. history of the jews henry hart milman, d.d., was born in london on february , , died on september , , and was buried in st. paul's cathedral, of which for the last nineteen years of his life he was dean. he was the youngest son of sir francis milman, physician to george iii, and was educated at greenwich, eton and oxford. although as a scholarly poet he had a considerable reputation, his literary fame rests chiefly on his fine historical works, of which fifteen volumes appeared, including the "history of the jews," the "history of christianity to the abolition of paganism in the roman empire," and the "history of latin christianity to the pontificate of nicholas v." the appearance of the "history of the jews" in caused no small consternation among the orthodox, but among the jews themselves it was exceptionally well received. dean milman wrote several hymns, including "ride on, ride on in majesty," "when our heads are bowed in woe." although this history carries the jewish race down to modern times, it is included in the section of the world's greatest books treating of ancient history, as it is the history of an ancient race, not of a definite country. _i.--dissolution of the jewish states_ by the destruction of jerusalem and of the fortified cities of machærus and masada, which had held out after it, the political existence of the jewish nation was annihilated; it was never again recognised as one of the states or kingdoms of the world. we have now to trace a despised and obscure race in almost every region of the world. we are called back, indeed, for a short time to palestine, to relate new scenes of revolt, ruin, and persecution. not long after the dissolution of the jewish state it revived again in appearance, under the form of two separate communities--one under a sovereignty purely spiritual, the other partly spiritual and partly temporal, but each, comprehending all the jewish families in the two great divisions of the world. at the head of the jews on this side of the euphrates appeared the patriarch of the west; the chief of the mesopotamian communities, assumed the striking but more temporal title of resch-glutha, or prince of the captivity. that judaism should have thus survived is one of the most marvellous of historic phenomena. but, for the most part, the populous cities beyond the jordan, the dominions of agrippa, and samaria escaped the devastation; and, according to tradition, the sanhedrin was spared in the general wreck. after a brief interval of peace for the jews scattered through the world during the reign of nerva, their settlements in babylonia, egypt, cyrene, and judea broke out in rebellion against the intolerant religious policy of the otherwise sagacious and upright trajan. great atrocities were committed by revolting jews in egypt, and the retaliation was terrible. it is said that , jews fell before the remorseless vengeance of their enemies. the flame spread to cyprus, where it was quenched by hadrian, afterwards emperor. he expelled the jews from the island. when hadrian ascended the throne, in a.d., he issued an edict which was tantamount to the total suppression of judaism, for it interdicted circumcision, the reading of the law, and the observance of the sabbath. at this momentous juncture, when universal dismay prevailed, it was announced that the messiah had appeared. he had come in power and glory. his name fulfilled the prophecy of balaam. barcochab, the son of the star, was that star which was to "arise out of jacob." wonders attended on his person; he breathed flames from his mouth which, no doubt, would burn up the strength of the proud oppressor, and wither the armies of the tyrannical hadrian. above all, akiba, the greatest of the rabbins, the living oracle of divine truth, espoused the claims of the new messiah; he was called the standard-bearer of the son of the star. of him also wondrous stories were told. the first expedition of barcochab was to the ruins of jerusalem, where a rude town had sprung up. here he openly assumed the title of king. but he and his followers avoided a battle in the open field. on the arrival of the famous julius severus to take command of the roman forces, the rebel jews were in possession of fifty of the strongest castles and nearly a thousand villages. severus attacked the strongholds in detail, reducing them by famine, and gradually brought the war to a close. over half a million jews perished during the struggle, and the whole of judea was a desert in which wolves and hyenas howled through the streets of the desolate cities. hadrian established a new city on the site of jerusalem, which he called Ælia capitolina, and peopled with a colony of foreigners. an edict was issued prohibiting any jew from entering the new city on pain of death, and the more effectually to enforce the edict, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading to bethlehem. _ii.--judaism and christianity_ for the fourth time the jewish people seemed on the brink of extermination. nebuchadrezzar, antiochus, titus, and hadrian had successively exerted their utmost power to extinguish their existence as a separate people. yet in less than sixty years after the war under hadrian, before the close of the second century after christ, the jews present the extraordinary spectacle of two separate and regularly organised communities--one under the patriarch of tiberias, comprehending all of isrælitish descent who inhabited the roman empire; the other under the prince of the captivity, to whom all the eastern jews paid allegiance. by the mild temper of antoninus pius, the jews were restored to their ancient privileges. though still forbidden to enter jerusalem, they were permitted to acquire the freedom of rome, to establish many settlements in italy, and to enjoy municipal honours. this gentle treatment assuaged the stern temper of the race. awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects. the worship of the synagogue became the great bond of racial union, and through centuries held the scattered nation in the closest uniformity. the middle of the third century beheld all isræl incorporated into their two communities, under their patriarch and their caliphate. the resch-glutha, or prince of the captivity, lived in all the state and splendour of an oriental potentate, far outshining in his pomp his rival sovereign in tiberias. the most celebrated of the rabbinical sovereigns was jehuda, sometimes called the nasi or patriarch. his life was of such spotless purity that he was named the holy. he was the author of a new constitution for the jewish people, for he embodied in the celebrated mischna all the authorised traditions of the schools and courts, and all the authorised interpretations of the mosaic law. both in the east and the west the jews maintained their seclusion from the rest of the world. the great work called the talmud, formed of the mischna and the gemara (or compilation of comments), was composed during a period of thirty years of profound peace for the masters of the babylonian schools, under persian rule. this remains a monumental token of learning and industry of the eastern jewish rabbins of the third and fourth centuries. the formal establishment of christianity by constantine the great, in the early part of the fourth century, might have led to jewish apprehension lest the synagogue should be eclipsed by the splendour of its triumphant rival, the christian church; but the rabbinical authority had raised an insurmountable barrier around the synagogue. and, unhappily, the church had lost its most effective means of conversion--its miraculous powers, its simple doctrine, and the blameless lives of its believers. constantine enacted severe laws against the jews, which seem in great part to have been occasioned by their own fiery zeal. but, still earlier than these enactments, spain had given the signal for hostility towards the jews. a decree was passed at the council of elvira prohibiting jewish and christian farmers and peasants from mingling together at harvest home and other festivals. in egypt, during the reign of constantius, who succeeded his father constantine, the hot-headed jews of alexandria provoked the enactment by that emperor of yet severer laws, by mingling themselves in the factions of arians and athanasians, which distracted that restless city. they joined with the pagans on the side of the arian bishop, and committed frightful excesses. an insurrection in judea, which terminated in the destruction of dio cæsarea, gave further pretext for exaction and oppression. but the apostasy of the emperor for a time revived the hopes of the race, especially when he issued his memorable edict decreeing the rebuilding of the temple on mount moriah, and the restoration of the jewish worship in its original splendour. the whole jewish world was now in commotion. julian entrusted the execution of the project to his favourite, alypius, while he advanced with his ill-fated army to the east. the jews crowded from the most distant quarters to assist in the work. but terrible disappointment ensued. fire destroyed the work, and various catastrophes frustrated the enterprise, and the death of julian rendered it hopeless. the irruption of the northern barbarians during the latter half of the fourth to about the end of the fifth century so completely disorganised the whole frame of society that the condition of its humblest members could not but be powerfully influenced thereby. the jews were widely dispersed in all those countries on which the storm fell--in belgium, the rhine districts, germany, where it was civilised, gaul, italy, and spain. not only did the jews in their scattered colonies engage actively in mercantile pursuits, but one great branch of commerce fell chiefly into their hands--the internal slave-trade of europe. the church beheld this evil with grief and indignation, and popes issued rescripts and interdicts. fierce hostility grew up between church and synagogue. the church had not then the power--it may be hoped it had not the will--to persecute. it was fully occupied with the task of seeking to impart to the fierce conquerors--the vandals; goths, and other barbarians--the humanising and civilising knowledge of christianity. a great enemy arose in the person of the emperor justinian, who was provoked by savage conflicts between the jews and the samaritans to issue severe enactments against both, which led to the fall of the patriarchate. in the east, under the rule during the same period of the persian king, chosroes the just, or nushirvan, who began his reign in a.d., the position was not more favourable for the jews of babylonia. _iii.--the golden age of judaism_ during the conflict between persian and roman emperors a power was rapidly growing up in the secret deserts of arabia which was to erect its throne on the ruins of both. the jews were the first opponents and the first victims of mohammed. at least a hundred and twenty years before christ, jewish settlers had built castles in sabæa and established an independent kingdom, known as homeritis, which was subdued by an arab chieftain and came to an end. but the jews were still powerful in the arabian peninsula. mohammed designed to range all the tribes under his banner; but his overtures were scorned, and he ordered a massacre of all who refused to accept the koran. on one day jews were slain in medina while the prophet looked on without emotion. but the persecution of the jews by the mohammedans was confined to arabia, for under the empire of the caliphs they suffered no further oppression than the payment of tribute. spain had maintained its odious distinction in the west, and it is not surprising that the suffering jews by active intrigue materially assisted the triumphant invasion of the country by the saracens. and in france the jews became numerous and wealthy, and traded with great success. we enter on a period which may be described as the golden age of the modern jews. the religious persecutions of this race by the mohammedans were confined within the borders of arabia. the prophet was content with enforcing uniformity of worship within the sacred peninsula which gave him birth. the holy cities of medina and mecca were not to be profaned by the unclean footstep of the unbeliever. his immediate successors rose from stern fanatics to ambitious conquerors. whoever would submit to the dominion of the caliph might easily evade the recognition of the prophet's title. the jews had reason to rejoice in the change of masters. an islamite sovereign would not be more oppressive than a byzantine on the throne of constantinople or a persian on the throne of ctesiphon. in every respect the jew rose in the social scale under his mohammedan rulers. provided he demeaned himself peaceably, and paid his tribute, he might go to the synagogue rather than to the mosque. in the time of omar, the second caliph, the coinage, already a trust of great importance, had been committed to the care of a jew. and the jews acted as intermediate agents in the interworking of european civilisation, its knowledge, arts, and sciences, into the oriental mind, and in raising the barbarian conquerors from the chieftains of wild, marauding tribes into magnificent and enlightened sovereigns. the caliph readily acknowledged as his vassal the prince of the captivity, who maintained his state as representative of the jewish community. and in the west, during the reigns of pepin and charlemagne, the treatment of jews became much more liberal than before. their superior intelligence and education, in a period when nobles and kings, and even the clergy, could not always write their names, pointed them out for offices of trust. they were the physicians, the ministers of finance, to monarchs. they even became ambassadors. the golden age of the jews endured in increasing prosperity during the reign of louis the débonnaire, or the pious, at whose court they were so powerful that their interest was solicited by the presents of kings. in the reign of charles the bald, the jews maintained their high estate, but dark signs of the approaching age of iron began to lower around. _iv.--the iron age of judaism_ our iron age commences in the east, where it witnessed the extinction of the princes of the captivity by the ignominious death of the last sovereign, the downfall of the schools, and the dispersion of the community, which from that period remained an abject and degraded part of the population. during the ninth and tenth centuries the caliphate fell into weakness and confusion, and split up into several kingdoms under conflicting sovereigns, and at the same time judaism in the east was distracted by continual disputes between the princes of the captivity and the masters of the schools. the tribunals of the civil and temporal powers of the eastern jewish community were in perpetual collision, so that this singular state was weakened internally by its own dissensions. when a violent and rapacious caliph, ahmed kader, ascended the throne, he cast a jealous look on the powers of his vassal sovereign, and, without pretext, he seized scherira, the prince of the community, now a hundred years old, imprisoned him and his son hai, and confiscated their wealth. hai escaped to resume his office and to transmit its honours and its dangers to hezekiah, who was elected chief of the community, but after a reign of two years was arrested with all his family by order of the caliph abdallah kaim ben marillah (a.d. ). the schools were closed. many of the learned fled to spain, where the revulsion under the almohades had not yet taken place; all were dispersed. among the rest two of the sons of the unfortunate prince of the captivity effected their escape to spain, while the last of the house of david who reigned over the jews of the dispersion in babylonia perished on the scaffold. the jewish communities in palestine suffered a slower but more complete dissolution. benjamin of tudela in the compilation of his travels in the twelfth century gives a humiliating account of the few brethren who still clung, in dire poverty and meanness, to their native land. in tyre he found jews, mostly glass-blowers. there were in jerusalem only , almost all dyers of wool. ascalon contained jews; tiberias, the seat of learning, and of the kingly patriarchate, but fifty. in the byzantine empire the number of jews had greatly diminished. we pursue our dark progress to the west, where we find all orders gradually arrayed in fierce and implacable animosity against the race of isræl. every passion was in arms against them. in that singular structure, the feudal system, which rose like a pyramid from the villeins, or slaves attached to the soil, to the monarch who crowned the edifice, the, jews alone found no proper place. in france and england they were the actual property of the king, and there was nowhere any tribunal to which they could appeal. the jew, often acquiring wealth in commerce, might become valuable property of some feudatory lord. he was granted away, he was named in a marriage settlement, he was pawned, he was sold, he was stolen. even churchmen of the highest rank did not disdain such lucrative property. louis, king of provence, granted to the archbishop of aries all the possessions which his predecessors have held of former kings, including the jews. philip the fair bought of his brother, charles of valois, all the jews of his dominions and lordships. the jew, making money as he knew how to do by trade and industry, was a valuable source of revenue, and was tolerated only as such, but he was a valuable possession. chivalry, the parent of so much good and evil, was a source of unmitigated wretchedness to the jew--for religious fanaticism and chivalry were inseparable, the knight of the middle ages being bound with his good sword to extirpate all the enemies of christ and his virgin mother. the power of the clergy tended greatly to increase this general detestation against the unhappy jew. and when undisciplined fanatics of the lowest order, under the guidance of peter the hermit and walter the penniless, were fired with the spirit of the crusades, fearful massacres of jews were perpetrated in treves, metz, spiers, worms, and cologne. everywhere the tracks of the crusaders were deeply marked with jewish blood. half a century after the shocking massacres of jews during the first crusade, another storm gathered, as the monk rodolph passed through germany preaching the duty of wreaking vengeance on all the enemies of god. the terrible cry of "hep!"--the signal for the massacre of isrælites--ran through the cities of the rhine. countless atrocities took place as the crusaders passed on, as the jews record with triumph, to perish by plague, famine, and the sword. _v.--the jews in england_ in the dark ages england was not advanced beyond the other nations of europe in the civil or religious wisdom of toleration. there were jews in england under the saxons. and during the days of the norman kings they were established in oxford and in london. they taught hebrew to christian as well as to jewish students. but they increased in both wealth and unpopularity, false tales about atrocities committed by them being bruited abroad. in many towns furious rabbles at different times attacked the jewish quarters, burnt the dwellings, and put the inmates cruelly to death, as at york, where hundreds perished during a riot in the reign of richard i. king john by cruel measures extorted large sums from wealthy jews. the church was also their implacable enemy, securing many repressive enactments against them. jewish history has a melancholy sameness--perpetual exactions, the means of enforcing them differing only in their cruelty. when parliament refused to maintain the extravagant royal expenditure, nothing remained but still further to drain hebrew veins. in the reign of henry iii. a tale was spread of the crucifixion of a christian child, called hugh of lincoln. the story refutes itself, but it created horror throughout the country. for this crime eighteen of the richest jews of lincoln were hanged, and many more flung into dungeons. the death of henry brought no respite, for edward acted with equal harshness. at length he issued the famous irrevocable edict of total expulsion from the realm. their departure was fixed for october , . all who delayed were to be hanged without mercy. the jews were pursued from, the kingdom with every mark of popular triumph in their sufferings. in one day , were exiled; all their property, debts, obligations, mortgages were escheated to the king. a like expulsion had been effected in france; and spain, where the jews were of a far nobler rank, was not to be outdone in bigotry. during the reign of john i., in a.d., a fierce popular preacher of seville, ferdinand martinez, arch-deacon of ecija, excited the populace to excesses against the jews. the streets of the noble city ran with blood, and , victims perished. the cruel spirit spread through the kingdom, and appalling massacres followed in many cities. a series of intermittent persecutions followed both in spain and portugal, in reign after reign. jews and protestants together went through awful ordeals at the hands of the inquisition. when her glory had declined, spain, even in her lowest decrepitude, indulged in what might seem the luxury of persecution. it was in the reign of charles ii. that the jews found opportunity to steal insensibly back into england. cromwell had felt very favourably disposed towards them, but had not dared to permit the re-establishment which they had openly sought. but the necessities of charles and his courtiers quietly accomplished the, change, and the race has ever since maintained its footing, and no doubt contributed a fair share to the national wealth. russia throughout her history adhered to her hostility to the jews, but expulsion became impossible with such vast numbers. it is estimated that russia contains half the jewish population of the world, notwithstanding that russia proper from ancient times has been sternly inhospitable to the jewish race, while poland has ever been hospitable. the most important measures of amelioration in the lot of the jews in england were passed in , when they acquired the right to possess land; in , when parliament enacted the naturalisation bill; in , when they were admitted to civic corporations; in , when they were admitted to the profession of advocates; in , when they were rendered eligible for the office of alderman and lord mayor; and in , when the last and crowning triumph of the principle was achieved by the admission of jews into parliament. in asia, the jews are still found in considerable numbers on the verge of the continent; in china, they are now found in one city alone, and possess only one synagogue. in mesopotamia and assyria the ancient seats of the babylonian jews are still occupied by , families. but england and anglo-saxon countries generally have been the most favourable to the race. perhaps the most remarkable fact in the history of modern judaism is the extension of the jews in the united states. writing in , i stated, on the best authority then attainable, their numbers at , . they are now [in ] reckoned at , . * * * * * herodotus history the "father of history," as herodotus has been styled, was born at halicarnassus, the centre of a greek colony in asia minor, between the years and b.c., and lived probably to sixty, dying about the year b.c. a great part of his life was occupied with travels and investigations in those lands with which his history is mainly concerned. his work is the earliest essay in history in a european language. it is a record primarily of the causes and the course of the first great contest between east and west; and is a storehouse of curious and delightful traveller's gossip as well as a faithful record of events. the canons of evidence in his day were defective, for obvious reasons; a miscellaneous divine interposition in human affairs was taken for granted, and science had not yet reduced incredible marvels to ordinary natural phenomena. nevertheless, herodotus was a shrewd and careful critic, honest, and by no means remarkably credulous. if he had not acquired the conception of history as an exact science, he made it a particularly attractive form of literature, to which his simplicity of style gives a slight but pleasant archaic flavour. this epitome has been specially prepared far the world's greatest books from the greek text. _i.--the rise of persian power_ i will not dispute whether those ancient tales be true, of io and helen, and the like, which one or another have called the sources of the war between the hellenes and the barbarians of asia; but i will begin with those wrongs whereof i myself have knowledge. in the days of sadyattes, king of lydia, and his son alyattes, there was war between lydia and miletus. and croesus, the son of alyattes, made himself master of the lands which are bounded by the river halys, and he waxed in power and wealth, so that there was none like to him. to him came solon, the athenian, but would not hail him as the happiest of all men, saying that none may be called happy until his life's end. thereafter trouble fell upon croesus by the slaying of his son when he was a-hunting. then cyrus the persian rose up and made himself master of the medes and persians, and croesus, fearing his power, was fain to go up against him, being deceived by an oracle; but first he sought to make alliance with the chief of the states of hellas. in those days, pisistratus was despot of athens; but sparta was mighty, by the laws of lycurgus. therefore croesus sent envoys to the spartans to make alliance with them, which was done very willingly. but when croesus went up against cyrus, his army was put to flight, and cyrus besieged him in the city of sardis, and took it, and made himself lord of lydia. he would have slain croesus, but, finding him wise and pious, he made him his counsellor. now, this cyrus had before overthrown the median king, astyages, whose daughter was his own mother. for her father, fearing a dream, wedded her to a persian, and when she bore a child, he gave order for its slaying. but the babe was taken away and brought up by a herdsman of the hill-folk. but in course of time the truth became known to astyages, and to harpagus, the officer who had been bidden to slay the babe, and to cyrus himself. then harpagus, fearing the wrath of astyages, bade cyrus gather together the persians--who in those days were a hardy people of the mountains--and made himself king over the medians; which things cyrus did, overthrowing his grandfather astyages. and in this wise began the dominion of the persians. the ionian cities of asia were zealous to make alliance with cyrus when he had overthrown croesus. but he held them of little account, and threatened them, and the lacedæmonians also, who sent him messengers warning him to let the ionians alone. and he sent harpagus against the cities of the ionians, of whom certain phocæans and teians sailed away to rhegium and abdera rather than become the slaves of the barbarians; but the rest, though they fought valiantly enough, were brought to submission by harpagus. while harpagus was completing the subjugation of the west, cyrus was making conquest of upper asia, and overthrew the kingdom of assyria, of which the chief city was babylon, a very wonderful city, wherein there had ruled two famous queens, semiramis and nitocris. now, this queen had made the city wondrous strong by the craft of engineers, yet cyrus took it by a shrewd device, drawing off the water of the river so as to gain a passage. thus babylon also fell under the sway of the persian. but when cyrus would have made war upon tomyris, the queen of the massagetæ, who dwelt to the eastward, there was a very great battle, and cyrus himself was slain and the most part of his host. and cambyses, his son, reigned in his stead. _ii.--wars of egypt and persia_ cambyses set out to conquer egypt, taking in his army certain of the greeks. but of all that i shall tell about that land, the most was told to me by the priests whom i myself visited at memphis and thebes and heliopolis. they account themselves the most ancient of peoples. if the ionians are right, who reckon that egypt is only the nile delta, this could not be. but i reckon that the whole egyptian territory is. egypt, from the cataracts and elephantiné down to the sea, parted into the asiatic part and the libyan part by the nile. for the causes of the rising and falling of the nile, the reasons that men give are of no account. and of the sources whence the river springs are strange stories told of which i say not whether they be true or false: but the course of it is known for four months' journey by land and water, and in my opinion it is a river comparable to the ister. the priests tell that the first ruler of egypt was menes, and after him were three hundred and thirty kings, counting one queen, who was called nitocris. after them came sesostris, who carried his conquest as far as the thracians and scythians; and later was rhampsinitus, who married his daughter to the clever thief who robbed his treasure-house; and after him cheops, who built the pyramid, drawing the stones from the arabian mountain down to the nile. chephren also, and mycerinus built pyramids, and the greeks have a story--which is not true--that another was built by rhodopis. and in the reign of sethon, egypt was invaded by sennacherib the assyrian, whose army's bowstrings were eaten by field-mice. a thing more wonderful than the pyramids is the labyrinth near lake moeris, and still more wonderful is lake moeris itself, all which were made by the twelve kings who ruled at once after sethon. and after them, psammetichus made himself the monarch; and after him his great grandson apries prospered greatly, till he was overthrown by amasis. and amasis also prospered, and showed favour to the greeks. but for whatever reason, in his day cambyses made his expedition against egypt, invading it just when amasis had died, and his son psammenitus was reigning. cambyses put the egyptian army to rout in a great battle, and conquered the country, making psammenitus prisoner. yet he would have set him up as governor of the province, according to the persian custom, but that psammenitus was stirred up to revolt, and, being discovered, was put to death. thereafter cambyses would have made war upon carthage, but that the phoenicians would not aid him; and against the ethiopians, who are called "long-lived," but his army could get no food; and against the ammonians, but the troops that went were seen no more. now, madness came upon cambyses, and he died, having committed many crimes, among which was the slaying of his brother smerdis. and there rose up one among the magi who pretended to be smerdis, and was proclaimed king. but this false smerdis was one whose ears had been cut off, and he was thus found out by one of his wives, the daughter of a persian nobleman, otanes. then seven nobles conspired together, since they would not be ruled over by one of the magi; and having determined that it was best to have one man for ruler, rather than the rule of the people or of the nobles, they slew smerdis and made darius, the son of hystaspes, their king. then darius divided the persian empire into twenty satrapies, whereof each one paid its own tribute, save persia itself, and he was lord of all asia, and egypt also. in the days of cambyses, polycrates was despot of samos, being the first who ever thought to make himself a ruler of the seas. and he had prospered marvellously. but oroetes, the satrap of sardis, compassed his death by foul treachery, and wrought many other crimes; whom darius in turn put to death by guile, fearing to make open war upon him. and not long afterwards, he sent otanes to make conquest of samos. and during the same days there was a revolt of the babylonians; and darius went up against babylon, yet for twenty months he could not take it. howbeit, it was taken by the act of zopyrus, who, having mutilated himself, went to the babylonians and told them that darius had thus evilly entreated him, and so winning their trust, he made easy entry for the persian army, and so babylon was taken the second time. _iii.--persian arms in europe_ now, darius was minded to make conquest of the scythians--concerning which people, and the lands beyond those which they inhabit, there are many marvels told, as of a bald-headed folk called argippæi; and the arimaspians or one-eyed people; and the hyperborean land where the air is full of feathers. of these lands are legends only; nothing is known. but concerning the earth's surface, this much is known, that libya is surrounded by water, certain phoenicians having sailed round it. and of the unknown regions of asia much was searched out by order of darius. the scythians themselves have no cities; but there are great rivers in scythia, whereof the ister is the greatest of all known streams, being greater even than the nile, if we reckon its tributaries. the great god of the scythians is ares; and their war customs are savage exceedingly, and all their ways barbarous. against this folk darius resolved to march. his plan was to convey his army across the bosphorus on a bridge of boats, while the ionian fleet should sail up to the ister and bridge that, and await him. so he crossed the bosphorus and marched through thrace, subduing on his way the getse, who believe that there is no true death. but when he passed the ister, he would have taken the ionians along with him; but by counsel of coes of mitylene, he resolved to leave them in charge of the bridge, giving order that, after sixty days, they might depart home, but no sooner. then the scythians, fearing that they could not match the great king's army, summoned the other barbaric peoples to their aid; among whom were the sauromatians, who are fabled to be the offspring of the amazons. and some were willing, but others not. therefore the scythians retired before darius, first towards those peoples who would not come to their help; and so enticed him into desert regions, yet would in no wise come to battle with him. now, at length, darius found himself in so evil a plight that he began to march back to the ister. and certain scythians came to the ionians, and counselled them to destroy the bridge, the sixty days being passed. and this miltiades, the athenian despot of the chersonese, would have had them do, so that darius might perish with all his army; but histiæus of miletus dissuaded them, because the rule of the despots was upheld by darius. and thus the persian army was saved, megabazus being left in europe to subdue the hellespontines. when megabazus had subdued many of the thracian peoples, who, indeed, lack only union with each other to make them the mightiest of all nations, he sent an embassy to amyntas, the king of macedon, to demand earth and water. but because those envoys insulted the ladies of the court, alexander, the son of amyntas, slew them all, and of them or all their train was never aught heard more. now darius, with fair words, bade histiseus of miletus abide with him at the royal town of susa. then aristagoras, the brother of histiæus, having failed in an attempt to subdue naxos, and fearing both artaphernes, the satrap of sardis, and the persian general megabazus, with whom he had quarrelled, sought to stir up a revolt of the ionian cities; being incited thereto by secret messages from histiseus. to this end, he sought alliance with the lacedæmonians; but they would have nothing to do with him, deeming the venture too remote. then he went to athens, whence the sons of pisistratus had been driven forth just before. for hipparchus had been slain by harmodius and aristogiton, and afterwards hippias would hardly have been expelled but that his enemies captured his children and so could make with him what terms they chose. but the pisistratidse having been expelled, the city grew in might, and changes were made in the government of it by cleisthenes the alcmæonid. but the party that was against cleisthenes got aid from cleomenes of sparta; yet the party of cleisthenes won. then, since they reckoned that there would be war with sparta, the athenians had sought friendship with artaphernes at sardis; but since he demanded earth and water they broke off. but because athens was waxing in strength, the spartans bethought them of restoring the despotism of the pisistratidæ. but sosicles, the corinthian, dissuaded the allies of sparta from taking part in so evil a deed. then hippias sought to stir up against the athenians the ill-will of artaphernes, who bade them take back the pisistratidæ, which they would not do. therefore, when aristagoras came thither, the athenians were readily persuaded to promise him aid. and he, having gathered the troops of the ionians, who were at one with him, marched with them and the athenians against sardis and took the city, which by a chance was set on fire. but after that the athenians refused further help to the ionians, who were worsted by the persians. but the ruin of the ionians was at the sea-fight of lade, where the men of chios fought stoutly; but they of samos and lesbos deserting, there was a great rout. _iv.--marathon and thermopylæ_ thereafter king darius, being very wroth with the athenians for their share in the burning of sardis, sent a great army across the hellespont to march through thrace against athens, under his young kinsman mardonius. but disaster befell these at the hands of the thracians, and the fleet that was to aid them was shattered in a storm; so that they returned to asia without honour. then darius sent envoys to demand earth and water from the greek states; and of the islanders the most gave them, and some also of the cities on the mainland; and among these were the aeginetans, who were at feud with athens. but of those who would not give the earth and water were the eretrians of eubcea. so darius sent a great armament by sea against eretria and athens, led by datis and artaphernes, which sailed first against eretria. the athenians, indeed, sent aid; but when they found that the counsels of the eretrians were divided, so that no firm stand might be made, they withdrew. nevertheless, the eretrians fought valiantly behind their walls, till they were betrayed on the seventh day. but the persians, counselled by hippias, sailed to the bay of marathon. then the athenians sent the strong runner pheidippides to call upon the spartans for aid; who promised it, yet for sacred reasons would not move until the full moon. so the athenian host had none to aid them save the loyal platæans, valiant though few. yet in the council of their generals the word of miltiades was given for battle, whereto the rest consented. then the athenians and platæans, being drawn up in a long line, charged across the plain nigh a mile, running upon the masses of the persians; and, breaking them upon the wings, turned and routed the centre also after long fighting, and drove them down to the ships, slaying as they went; and of the ships they took seven. and of the barbarians there fell , men, and of the athenians, . but as for the story that the alcmæonidæ hoisted a friendly signal to the persians, i credit it not at all. now, darius was very wroth with the greeks when he heard of these things, and made preparation for a mighty armament to overthrow the greeks, and also the egyptians, who revolted soon afterwards. but he died before he was ready, and xerxes, his son, reigned in his stead. then, having first crushed the egyptians, he, being ruled by mardonius, gathered a council and declared his intent of marching against the hellenes; which resolution was commended by mardonius, but artabanus, the king's uncle, spoke wise words of warning. then xerxes would have changed his mind, but for a dream which came to him twice, and to artabanus also, threatening disaster if he ceased from his project; so that artabanus was won over to favour it. then xerxes made vast provision for his invasion for the building of a bridge over the hellespont, and the cutting of a canal through the peninsula of athos, where the fleet of mardonius had been shattered. and from all parts of his huge empire he mustered his hosts first in cappadocia, and marched thence by way of sardis to the hellespont. and because, when the bridge was a building, a great storm wrecked it, he bade flog the naughty waves of the sea. then, the bridge being finished, he passed over with his host, which took seven days to accomplish. and when they were come to doriscus he numbered them, and found them to be , , men, besides his fleets. and in the fleet were , great ships, manned chiefly by the phoenicians and the greeks of asia, having also persian and scythian fighting men on board. but when demaratus, an exiled king of sparta, warned xerxes of the valour of all the greeks, but chiefly of the spartans, who would give battle, however few they might be, against any foe, however many, his words seemed to xerxes a jest, seeing how huge his own army was. now, xerxes had sent to many of the greek states heralds to demand earth and water, which many had given; but to athens and sparta he had not sent, because there the heralds of his father darius had been evilly entreated. and if it had not been for the resolution of the athenians at this time, all hellas would have been forced to submit to the great king; for they, in despite of threatening oracles, held fast to their defiance, being urged thereto by themistocles, who showed them how those oracles must mean that, although they would suffer evil things, they would be victorious by means of wooden bulwarks, which is to say, ships; and thus they were encouraged to rely upon building and manning a mighty fleet. and all the other cities of greece resolved to stand by them, except the argives, who would not submit to the leadership of the spartans. and in like manner gelon, the despot of syracuse in sicily, would not send aid unless he were accepted as leader. nor were the men of thessaly willing to join, since the other greeks could not help them to guard thessaly itself, as the pass of tempe could be turned. therefore the greeks resolved to make their stand at thermopylæ on land, and at the strait of artemisium by sea. but at the strong pass of thermopylæ only a small force was gathered to hold the barbarians in check, there being of the spartans themselves only , commanded by the king leonidas. and when the persians had come thither and sought to storm the pass, they were beaten back with ease, until a track was found by which they might take the defenders in the rear. then leonidas bade the rest of the army depart except his spartans. but the thespians also would not go; and then those spartans and thespians went out into the open and died gloriously. _v.--destruction of the persian hosts_ during these same days the greek fleet at artemisium fought three several engagements with the persian fleet, in which neither side had much the better. and thereafter the greek fleet withdrew, but was persuaded to remain undispersed in the bay of salamis. the peloponnesians were no longer minded to attempt the defence of attica, but to fortify their isthmus, so that the athenians had no choice but either to submit or to evacuate athens, removing their families and their goods to troezen or aegina or salamis. in the fleet, their contingent was by far the largest and best, but the commanding admiral was the spartan eurybiades. then the persians, passing through boeotia, but, being dispersed before delphi by thunderbolts and other portents, took possession of athens, after a fierce fight with the garrison in the acropolis. then the rest of the greek fleet was fain to withdraw from salamis, and look to the safety of the peloponnese only. but themistocles warned them that if they did so, the athenians would leave them and sail to new lands and make themselves a new athens; and thus the fleet was persuaded to hold together at salamis. yet he did not trust only to their goodwill, but sent a messenger to the persian fleet that the way of retreat might be intercepted. for the persian fleet had gathered at phalerum, and now looked to overwhelm the grecian fleet altogether, despite the council of queen artemisia of halicarnassus, who would have had them not fight by sea at all. when aristides, called the just, the great rival of themistocles, came to the greeks with the news that their retreat by sea was cut off, then they were no longer divided, but resolved to fight it out. in the battle, the aeginetans and the athenians did the best of all the greeks, and themistocles best among the commanders; nor was ever any fleet more utterly put to rout than that of the persians, among whom queen artemisia won praise unmerited. as for king xerxes, panic seized him when he saw the disaster to his fleet, and he made haste to flee. he consented, however, to leave mardonius behind with , troops in thessaly, he being still assured that he could crush the greeks. and it was well for him that themistocles was over-ruled in his desire to pursue and annihilate the fleet, then sail to the hellespont and destroy the bridge. when the winter and spring were passed, mardonius marched from thessaly and again occupied athens, which the athenians had again evacuated, the spartans having failed to send succour. but when at length the lacedæmonians, fearing to lose the athenian fleet, sent forth an army, the persians fell back to boeotia. so the greek hosts gathered near platæa to the number of , men, but the troops of mardonius were about , . yet, by reason of doubtful auguries, both armies held back, till mardonius resolved to attack, whereof warning was brought to the athenians by alexander of macedon. but when the spartan pausanias, the general of the greeks, heard of this, he did what caused no little wonder, for he proposed that the athenians instead of the lacedæmonians should face the picked troops of the persians, as having fought them at marathon. but mardonius, seeing them move, moved his picked troops also. then mardonius sent some light horse against the greeks by a fountain whence flowed the water for the army; which, becoming choked, it was needful to move to a new position. but the move being made by night, most of the allies withdrew into the town. but the spartans, and tegeans and athenians, perceiving this, held each their ground till dawn. now, in the morning the picked persian troops fell on the spartans, and their grecian allies attacked the athenians. but, mardonius being slain, the persians fled to their camp, which was stormed by the spartans and tegeans, and the athenians, who also had routed their foes; and there the barbarians were slaughtered, so that of , men not , were left alive. but artabazus, who, before the battle, had withdrawn with , men, escaped by forced marches to the hellespont. and on that same day was fought another fight by sea at mycale in ionia, where also the barbarians were utterly routed, for the fleet had sailed thither. and thence the greeks sailed to sestos, captured the place, and so went home. * * * * * thucydides the peloponnesian war the athenian historian, thucydides, was born about b.c., within ten years of the great repulse of the persian invasion. before he was thirty, the great political ascendancy of pericles was completely established at athens, and the ascendancy of athens among the greek states was unchallenged, except by sparta. he was forty at the beginning of the peloponnesian war. thucydides was appointed to a military command seven years later, but his failure in that office caused his banishment. from that time he remained an exiled spectator of events; the date of his death is uncertain. his great work is the history of the peloponnesian war to its twentieth year, where his history is abruptly broken off. to herodotus, history presented itself as a drama; thucydides views it with the eyes of a philosophical statesman, but writes it also with extraordinary descriptive power, not only in pregnant sentences which have never been effectively rendered in translation, but in passages of sustained intensity, of which it would be vain to reproduce fragments. the abridged translation given here has been made direct from the greek. _i.--the beginning of the war_ i have written the account of the war between athens and sparta, since it is the greatest and the most calamitous of all wars hitherto to the greeks. for the contest with the medes was decided in four battles; but this war was protracted over many years, and wrought infinite injury and bloodshed. of the immediate causes of the war the first is to be found in the affairs of epidamnus, corcyra, and corinth, of which corcyra was a colony. of the greek states, the most were joined either to the athenian or the peloponnesian league, but corcyra had joined neither. but having a quarrel with corinth about epidamnus, she now formed an alliance with athens, whose intervention enraged the corinthians. they then helped potidæa, a corinthian colony, but an athenian tributary, to revolt from athens. corinth next appealed to sparta, as the head of hellas, to intervene ere it should be too late and check the athenian aggression, which threatened to make her the tyrant of all greece. at sparta the war party prevailed, although king archidamus urged that sufficient pressure could be brought to bear without actual hostilities. the great prosperity and development of athens since the persian war had filled other states with fear and jealousy. she had rebuilt her city walls and refortified the port of piræus after the persian occupation; sparta had virtually allowed her to take the lead in the subsequent stages of the war, as having the most effective naval force at command. hence she had founded the delian league of the maritime states, to hold the seas against persia. at first these states provided fixed contingents of ships and mariners; but athens was willing enough to accept treasure in substitution, so that she might herself supply the ships and men. thus the provision of forces by each state to act against persia was changed in effect into a tribute for the expansion of the athenian fleet. the continuous development of the power of athens had been checked only momentarily by her disastrous egyptian expedition. her nominal allies found themselves actually her tributary dependencies, and various attempts to break free from her yoke had made it only more secure and more burdensome. hence the warlike decision of sparta was welcomed by others besides corinth. but diplomatic demands preceded hostilities. sparta and athens sent to each other summons and counter-summons for the "expulsion of the curse," that is of all persons connected with certain families which lay under the curse of the gods. in the case of athens, this amounted to requiring the banishment of her greatest citizen and statesman, pericles. to this the spartans added the demand that the athenians should "restore the freedom of hellas," and should specifically remove certain trading disabilities imposed on the people of megara. at this crisis pericles laid down the rules of policy on which athens ought to act--rules which required her to decline absolutely to submit to any form of dictation from sparta. when a principle was at stake, it made no difference whether the occasion was trivial or serious. athens could face war with confidence. her available wealth was far greater--a matter of vital importance in a prolonged struggle. her counsels were not divided by the conflicting interests of allies all claiming to direct military movements and policy. her fleet gave her command of the sea, and enabled her to strike when and where she chose. if peloponnesian invaders ravaged attica, still no permanent injury would be done comparable to that which the athenians could inflict upon them. the one necessity was to concentrate on the war, and attempt no extension of dominion while it was in progress. war was not yet formally declared when the thebans attempted to seize platæa, a town of boeotia, which had long been closely allied to athens. the attempt failed, and the thebans were put to death; but the platæans appealed to athens for protection against their powerful neighbour, and when the athenian garrison was sent to them, this was treated as a _casus belli_. preparations were urged on both sides; sparta summoned her allies to muster their contingents on the isthmus for the invasion of attica, nearly all the mainland states joining the peloponnesian league. the islanders and the cities in asia minor, on the other hand, were nearly all either actually subject to athens or in alliance with her. as pericles advised, the athenians left the country open to the ravages of the invading forces, and themselves retired within the city. in spite of the resentment of those who saw their property being laid waste, pericles maintained his ascendency, and persuaded the people to devote their energies to sending out an irresistible fleet, and to establishing a great reserve both of ships and treasure, which were to be an annual charge and brought into active use only in the case of dire emergency. the fleet sailed round the peloponnese, and the ravages it was able to inflict, with the alarm it created, caused the withdrawal of the forces in attica. in that winter pericles delivered a great funeral oration, or panegyric, in memory of the athenians who had so far fallen gloriously in defence of their country, in which he painted the characteristic virtues of the athenian people in such a fashion as to rouse to the highest pitch the patriotic pride of his countrymen, and their confidence in themselves, in their future, and in their leader. _ii.--early successes of athens_ in the second year of the war, athens suffered from a fearful visitation of the plague, which, however, made no way in the peloponnese. it broke out also among the reinforcements dispatched to potidæa; and it required all the skill of pericles to reconcile the athenians to the continuation of the war, after seeing their territories overrun for the second time for six weeks. by dint of dwelling on the supreme importance of their decisive command of the sea, and on the vast financial resources which secured their staying power, he maintained his ascendency until his death in the following year, though he had to submit to a fine. the events which followed his death only confirmed the profundity of his political judgment, and the accuracy with which he had gauged the capacities of the state. in that winter potidæa was forced to capitulate to the athenians. in the summer of the third year, the lacedæmonians called on the platæans to desert the athenian alliance. on their refusal, platæa was besieged by the allied forces of the peloponnesians. with splendid resolution, the platæans defeated the attempt of the allies to force an entry till they were able to complete and withdraw behind a second and more easily tenable line of defence, when the peloponnesians settled down to a regular investment. the same year was marked by the brilliant operations of the athenian admiral phormio in the neighbourhood of naupactus. on the other hand, a peloponnesian squadron threatened the piræus, caused some temporary panic, and awakened the athenians to the necessity of maintaining a look-out, but otherwise effected little. the year is further noted for the invasion of macedonia by the thracian or scythian king sitalces, who was, however, induced to retire. in the next year, lesbos revolted against the athenian supremacy. as a result, an athenian squadron blockaded mitylene. the lacedaæonians were well pleased to accept alliance with a sea-power which claimed to have struck against athens, not as being subject to her, but in anticipation of attempted subjugation. the prompt equipment, however, of another athenian fleet chilled the naval enthusiasm of sparta. during this winter the platæans began to feel in straits from shortage of supplies, and it was resolved that a party of them should break through the siege lines, and escape to athens, a feat of arms which was brilliantly and successfully accomplished. in the next--the fifth--summer, mitylene capitulated; the fate of the inhabitants was to be referred to athens. here cleon had now become the popular leader, and he persuaded the athenians to order the whole of the adult males to be put to death. the opposition, however, succeeded in getting this bloodthirsty resolution rescinded. the second dispatch, racing desperately after the first, did not succeed in overtaking it, but was just in time to prevent the order for the massacre from being carried out. lesbos was divided among athenian citizens, who left the lesbians in occupation as before, but drew a large rental from them. in the same summer the remaining garrison of platæa surrendered to the lacedæmonians, on terms to be decided by lacedæmonian commissioners. before them the platæans justified their resistance, but the commissioners ignored the defence, and, on the pretext that the only question was whether they had suffered any "wrong" at the hands of the platæans, and that the answer to that was obvious, put the platæans to death and razed the city to the ground. meanwhile, at corcyra, the popular and the oligarchical parties, who favoured the athenians and peloponnesians respectively, had reached the stage of murderous hostility to each other. the oligarchs captured the government, and were then in turn attacked by the popular party; and there was savage faction fighting. an attempt was made by the commander of the athenian squadron at naupactus to act as moderator; the appearance of a peloponnesian squadron and a confused sea-fight, somewhat in favour of the latter, brought the popular party to the verge of a compromise. but the peloponnesians retired on the reported approach of a fresh athenian fleet, and a democratic reign of terror followed. "the father slew the son, and the supplicants were torn from the temples and slain near them." and thus was initiated the peculiar horror of this war--the desperate civil strife in one city after another, oligarchs hoping to triumph by lacedæmonian and democrats by athenian, support, and either party, when uppermost, ruling by terror. it was at this time also that the ionian and dorian cities of sicily, headed by leontini and syracuse respectively, went to war with each other, and an athenian squadron was first induced to participate in the struggle. among the operations of the next, or sixth, summer was a campaign which the athenian commander demosthenes conducted in Ætolia--successful at the outset, but terminating in disaster, which made the general afraid to return to athens. he seized a chance, however, of recovering his credit by foiling a lacedæmonian expedition against naupactus; and in other ways he successfully established a high military reputation, so that he was no longer afraid to reappear at athens. next year, the athenians dispatched a larger fleet with sicily for its objective. demosthenes, however, who had a project of his own in view, was given an independent command. he was thus enabled to seize and fortify pylos, a position on the south-west of peloponnese, with a harbour sheltered by the isle of sphacteria. the spartans, in alarm, withdrew their invading force from attica, and attempted to recover pylos, landing over of their best men on sphacteria. the locality now became the scene of a desperate struggle, which finally resulted in the spartans on sphacteria being completely isolated. so seriously did the lacedæmonians regard this blow that they invited the athenians to make peace virtually in terms of an equal alliance; but the athenians were now so confident of a triumphant issue that they refused the terms--chiefly at the instigation of cleon. some supplies, however, were got into sphacteria, owing to the high rewards offered by the lacedæmonians for successful blockade-running. at this moment, cleon, the athenian demagogue, having rashly declared that he could easily capture sphacteria, was taken at his word and sent to do it. he had the wit, however, to choose demosthenes for his colleague, and to take precisely the kind of troops demosthenes wanted; with the result that within twenty days, as he had promised, the spartans found themselves with no other alternatives than annihilation or surrender. their choice of the latter was an overwhelming blow to lacedæmonian prestige. _iii.--victories of lacedæmon_ the capture of the island of cythera in the next summer gave the athenians a second strong station from which they could constantly menace the peloponnese. on the other hand, in this year the sicilians were awakening to the fact that athens was not playing a disinterested part on behalf of the ionian states, but was dreaming of a sicilian empire. at a sort of peace congress, hermocrates of syracuse successfully urged all sicilians to compose their quarrels on the basis of _uti possidetis,_ and thus deprive the athenians of any excuse for remaining. thus for the time athenian aspirations in that quarter were checked. at megara this year the dissensions of the oligarchical and popular factions almost resulted in its capture by the athenians. the lacedæmonian brasidas, however--who had distinguished himself at pylos--effected an entry, so that the oligarchical and peloponnesian party became permanently established in power. the most important operations were now in two fields. brasidas made a dash through thessaly into macedonia, in alliance with perdiccas of macedon, with the hope of stirring the cities of chalcidice to throw off the athenian yoke; and the democrats of boeotia intrigued with athens to assist in a general revolution. owing partly to misunderstandings and partly to treachery, the boeotian democrats failed to carry out their programme, the athenians were defeated at delium, and delium itself was captured by the boeotians. meanwhile, brasidas succeeded in persuading acanthus to revolt, he himself winning the highest of reputations for justice and moderation as well as for military skill. later in the year he suddenly turned his forces against the athenian colony of amphipolis, which he induced to surrender by offering very favourable terms before thucydides, who was in command of thasos, arrived to relieve it. the further successes of brasidas during this winter made the athenians ready to treat for peace, and a truce was agreed upon for twelve months. brasidas, however, continued to render aid to the subject cities which revolted from athens--this being now the ninth year of the war--but he failed in an attempt to capture potidæa. the period of truce terminating without any definite peace being arrived at, the summer of the tenth year is chiefly notable for the expedition sent under cleon to recover amphipolis, and for a recrudescence of the old quarrel in sicily between leontini and syracuse. before amphipolis, the incompetent cleon was routed by the skill of brasidas; but the victor as well as the vanquished was slain, though he lived long enough to know of the victory. their deaths removed two of the most zealous opponents of the peace for which both sides were now anxious. hence at the close of the tenth year a definite peace was concluded. the lacedæmonians, however, were almost alone in being fully satisfied by the terms, and the war was really continued by an anti-laconian confederation of the former peloponnesian allies, who saw in the peace a means to the excessive preponderance of athens and sparta. argos was brought into the new confederacy in the hope of establishing her nominal equality with sparta. for some years from this point the combinations of the states were constantly changing, while athens and sparta remained generally on terms of friendliness, the two prominent figures at athens being the conservative nicias and the restless and ambitious young intriguer alcibiades. in the fourteenth year there were active hostilities between argos, with which by this time athens was in alliance, and lacedæmon, issuing in the great battle of mantinea, where there was an athenian contingent with the argives. this was notable especially as completely restoring the prestige of the lacedæmonian arms, their victory being decisive. the result was a new treaty between sparta and argos, and the dissolution of the argive-athenian alliance; but this was once more reversed in the following year, when the argive oligarchy was attacked successfully by the popular party. the next year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of melos by the athenians. this was one of the very few islands which had not been compelled to submit to athens, but had endeavoured to remain neutral. thither the athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely without excuse, to compel their submission. the melians, however, refused, and gave the athenians a good deal of trouble before they could be subdued, when the adult male population was put to death, and the women and children enslaved. at this time the athenians resolved, under colour of an appeal for assistance from the sicilian city of egesta, deliberately to set about the establishment of their empire in sicily. the aggressive policy was vehemently advocated by alcibiades, and opposed by nicias. nevertheless, he, with alcibiades and lamachus, was appointed to command the expedition, which was prepared on a scale of unparalleled magnificence. it was on the point of starting, when the whole city was stirred to frenzy by the midnight mutilation of the sacred images called hermæ, an act laid at the door of alcibiades, along with many other charges of profane outrages. of set purpose, however, the enemies of alcibiades refused to bring him to trial. the expedition sailed. the syracusans were deaf to the warnings of hermocrates until the great fleet had actually arrived at rhegium. nicias was now anxious to find an excuse, in the evident falsity of statements made by the egestans, for the fleet to content itself with making a demonstration and then returning home. the scheme of alcibiades, however, was adopted for gaining over the other sicilian states in order to crush syracuse. but at this moment dispatches arrived requiring the return of alcibiades to stand trial. athens was in a panic over the hermæ affair, which was supposed to portend an attempt to reestablish the despotism which had been ended a hundred years before by the expulsion of the pisistratidæ. alcibiades, however, made his escape, and for years pursued a life of political intrigue against the athenian government. nicias and lamachus, left in joint command, drew off the syracusan forces by a ruse, and were thus enabled to occupy unchecked a strong position before syracuse. although, however, they inflicted a defeat on the returned syracusan forces, they withdrew into winter quarters; the syracusans were roused by hermocrates to improve their military organisation; and both sides entered on a diplomatic contest for winning over the other states of sicily. alcibiades, now an avowed enemy of athens, was received by the lacedæmonians, whom he induced to send an able spartan officer, gylippus, to syracuse, and to determine on the establishment of a military post corresponding to that of pylos on attic soil at decelea. _iv.--the disaster of syracuse_ in the spring the athenians succeeded in establishing themselves on the heights called epipolæ, overlooking syracuse, began raising a wall of circumvallation, and carried by a surprise the counter-stockade which the syracusans were raising. in one of the skirmishes, while the building of the wall was in progress, lamachus was killed; otherwise matters went well for the athenians and ill for the syracusans, till gylippus was allowed to land at himera, force his way into syracuse, and give new life. nicias was guilty of the blunder of allowing gylippus to land at himera, to aid the defence, at the moment when it was on the point of capitulation. a long contest followed, the athenians endeavouring to complete the investing lines, the syracusans to pierce them with counterworks. nicias sent to athens for reinforcements, while the syracusans were energetically fitting out a fleet and appealing for air in the peloponnese. nicias, in fact, was extremely despondent and anxious to resign; the athenians, however, answered his dispatches by preparing a great reinforcement under the command of demosthenes, without accepting the resignation of nicias. the lacedæmonians, however, also sent some reinforcements; at the same time they formally declared war, and carried out the plan of occupying and fortifying decelea, which completely commanded the athenian territory and was the cause of untold loss and suffering. now, at syracuse the besieged took the offensive both by sea and land, and were worsted on the water, but captured some of the athenian forts, commanding the entry to the besiegers' lines--a serious disaster. by the time that demosthenes with his reinforcements reached sicily nearly the whole island had come over to the side of syracuse. before this, the syracusans had again challenged an engagement both by sea and land, with results indecisive on the first day but distinctly in their favour on the second. at this juncture, demosthenes arrived, and, seeing the necessity for immediate action, made a night attack on the syracusan lines; but, his men falling into confusion after a first success, the attempt was disastrously repulsed. demosthenes was quick to realise that the whole situation was hopeless; but nicias lacked nerve to accept the responsibility of retiring, and also had some idea that affairs within syracuse were favourable. his obstinacy gave demosthenes and his colleague eurymedon the impression that he was guided by secret information. and now it became the primary object of gylippus and the syracusans to keep the athenians from retiring. another naval defeat reduced the athenians to despair; they resolved that they must cut their way out. the desperate attempt was made, but by almost hopeless men against an enemy now full of confidence. to the excited, almost agonised, watchers on shore, it seemed for a brief space that the ships might force a passage; the fight was a frenzied scuffle; but presently the terrible truth was realised--the athenian ships were being driven ashore. the last hope of escape by sea was gone, for, though there were still ships enough, the sailors were too utterly demoralised to make the attempt. hermocrates and gylippus, sure that a retreat by land would not be tried, succeeded by a trick in detaining the athenians till they had themselves sent out detachments to hold the roads. on the third day the athenians began their retreat in unspeakable misery, amid the lamentations of the sick and wounded, whom they were forced to leave behind. for three days they struggled on, short of food and perpetually harassed, cut off from all communications. on the third day their passage was barred in a pass, and they found themselves in a trap. on the third night they attempted to break away by a different route, but the van and the rear lost touch. overtaken by the syracusans, demosthenes attempted to fight a rearguard action, but in vain, and he was forced to surrender at discretion with his whole force. next day, nicias with the van was overtaken, and, after a ghastly scene of confusion and slaughter, the remnants of the vanguard were forced to surrender also. nicias and demosthenes were put to death; great numbers were seized as private spoil by their captors, the rest of the prisoners--more than , --were confined for weeks under the most noisome conditions in the quarries, and finally the survivors were sold as slaves. so pitiably ended that once magnificent enterprise in the nineteenth year of the war. the terrific disaster filled every enemy of athens with confident expectation of her immediate and utter ruin. lacedæmonians anticipated an unqualified supremacy. at athens there was a stubborn determination to prepare for a desperate stand; but half the islanders were intriguing for lacedæmonian or persian aid in breaking free, while alcibiades became extremely busy. the first peloponnesian squadron which attempted to move was promptly driven into piræus by an athenian fleet and blockaded. on the open revolt of some of the states, the athenians for the first time brought into play their reserve fund and reserve navy--the emergency had arisen. while one after another of the subject cities revolted, the athenians struck hard at chios, and especially miletus, and obtained marked successes. meanwhile, a revolution in samos had expelled the oligarchy and re-established the democracy, to which the athenians accorded freedom, thereby securing an ally. in lesbos also they recovered their challenged supremacy. phrynicus now came into prominence as a shrewd commander and a crafty politician, while the intricate intrigues of alcibiades, whose great object was to recover his position at athens, created perpetual confusion. these events took place in the twentieth year of the war, and to them must be added a lacedæmonian treaty with persia through the satrap tissaphernes. all the leading men, however, were engaged in playing fast and loose, each of them having his personal ambitions in view. of this labyrinth of plots and counter-plots, the startling outcome was the sudden abrogation of the constitution at athens and the capture of the government by a committee of five with a council of four hundred and a supplementary assembly of five thousand--in place of the whole body of citizens as formerly. the five and the four hundred in effect were the government, and established a reign of terror. at athens, the administration thus formed was effective; but the army and fleet at satnos repudiated the revolution and swore loyalty to the democracy, claiming to be the true representatives of the athenian state. moreover, they allied themselves with alcibiades, expecting through him to receive persian support; and, happily for athens, he succeeded in restraining the fleet--which was still more than a match for all adversaries--from sailing back to the piræus to subvert the rule of the four hundred. the more patriotic of the oligarchs saw, in fact, that the best hopes for the state lay in the establishment of a limited democracy; with the result that the extreme oligarchs, who would have joined hands with the enemy, were overthrown, and the rule of the five thousand replaced that of the four hundred, providing athens with the best administration it had ever known. a great naval victory was won by the athenian fleet, under the command of thrasybulus, over a slightly larger peloponnesian fleet at cynossema. * * * * * xenophon anabasis xenophon was born at athens about b.c. , and died probably in . he was an athenian gentleman who in his early-manhood was an intimate member of the socratic circle. in he joined the expedition of cyrus, recorded in the "anabasis," and did not again take up his residence in athens. the "anabasis" must be introduced by an historical note. in the year b.c. the peloponnesian war was brought to a close by a peace establishing the lacedæmonian supremacy consequent upon the crowning disaster to the athenians at aegos potami. in the same year the persian king darius nothus died, and was succeeded on the throne by his son artaxerxes. his younger son, cyrus, determined to make a bid for the throne. he had personal knowledge of the immense superiority of the greek soldiery and the greek discipline over those of the eastern nations. accordingly, he planned to obtain the services of a large contingent of greek mercenaries, who had become the more readily available since the internecine struggle between the two leading states of hellas had been brought to an end. the term "anabasis," or "going up," applies properly to the advance into the interior; the retreat, with which the work is mainly concerned, is the "katabasis." the author writes his record in the third person. this epitome has been specially adapted for the world's greatest books from the greek text. _i.--the going-up of cyrus_ cyrus, the younger brother of artaxerxes the king, began his preparations for revolt by gradually gathering and equipping an army on the pretext of hostile relations between himself and another of the western satraps, tissaphernes. notably, he secretly furnished clearchus, a lacedæmonian, with means to equip a greek force in thrace; another like force was ready to move from thessaly under aristippus; while a boeotian, proxenus, and two others friends were commissioned to collect more mercenaries to aid in the war with tissaphernes. next, an excuse for marching up-country, at the head of all these forces, was found in the need of suppressing the pisidians. he advanced from sardis into phrygia, where his musters were completed at celænæ. a review was held at tyriæum, where the cilician queen, who had supplied funds, was badly frightened by a mock charge of the greek contingent. when the advance had reached tarsus, there was almost a mutiny among the greeks, who were suspicious of the intentions of cyrus. the diplomacy, however, of their principal general, clearchus, the lacedæmonian, coupled with promises of increased pay, prevailed, though it had long been obvious that pisidia was not the objective of the expedition. further reinforcements were received at issus, the eastern seaport of cilicia; cyrus then marched through the cilician gate into syria. at myriandrus two greek commanders, probably through jealousy of clearchus, deserted. cyrus won popularity by refusing to presume thereon; and the whole force now struck inland to thapsacus, on the euphrates. at thapsacus, cyrus announced his purpose. the greek soldiers were angry with their generals for having, as they supposed, wilfully misled them, but were mollified by promise of large rewards. one of the commanders, menon, won the approval of cyrus by being the first to lead his own contingent across the euphrates on his own initiative. the advance was now conducted by forced marches through a painfully sterile country. in the course of this, the troops of clearchus and menon very nearly came to blows; the intervention of proxenus only made matters worse; and order was restored by the arrival of cyrus, who pointed out that the whole expedition must be ruined if the greeks fell out among themselves. by this time, artaxerxes had realised that the repeated warnings of tissaphernes and others were justified; and as the expedition neared babylonia, signs of the enemy became apparent in the deliberate devastation of the country. here orontes, one of the principal persian officers of cyrus, was convicted of treason and put to death. the army was again reviewed, the whole force amounting to some , barbarians and nearly , greeks; the enemy were reputed to number over , , , though not so many took part in the engagement. cyrus now advanced, expecting battle immediately at an entrenched pass; but, finding this unoccupied, he did not maintain battle order; which was hurriedly taken up on news of the approach of the royal forces. the greeks, under clearchus, occupied the right wing, cyrus being in the centre, and ariæus on the left. the king's army was so large that its centre extended beyond the left of cyrus. the greeks advanced on the royalist left, which broke and fled almost without a blow. thinking that the greeks might be intercepted and cut off, cyrus charged the centre in person with his bodyguard, and routed the opposing troops; but dashing forward in the hope of capturing artaxerxes, was himself pierced by a javelin, and fell dead on the field. so ended the career of the most brilliant persian since cyrus the great had established the persian empire; brave, accomplished, the mirror of honour, just himself and the rewarder of justice in others, generous and most loyal to his friends. _ii.--the homeward march_ when cyrus fell, the left wing, under ariæus, broke and fled. the greeks had meantime poured on in pursuit of the royalist left, while the main body of the royalists were in possession of the rebel camp, though a greek guard, which had been left there, held the greek quarter. artaxerxes, however, had no mind to give battle to the returning greek column. it was not till next day that clearchus and his colleagues learned by messengers from ariæus that cyrus was slain, and that ariæus had fallen back to the last halting-place, where he proposed to wait twenty-four hours, and no more, before starting in his retreat westward. clearchus replied, that the greeks, for their part, had been victorious, and that if ariæus would rejoin them they would win the persian crown for him, since cyrus was dead. the next message was from artaxerxes inviting the greeks to give up their arms; to which they replied that he might come and take them if he could, but if he meant to treat them as friends, they would be no use to him without their arms, if as enemies, they would keep them to defend themselves. though no formal appointment was made, the greeks recognised clearchus as their leader. they fell back to join ariæus, who declined the proposal to seat him on the persian throne; and it was agreed to follow a new route in retreat to ionia, the way by which the force had advanced being now impracticable. now, however, artaxerxes began to negotiate through tissaphernes, the greeks maintaining a bold and even contemptuous front, warranted by the king's obvious fear of risking an engagement. finally, an offer came to conduct the greeks back to grecian territory, providing them, at their own cost, with necessaries. prolonged delays, however, aroused suspicions of treachery among the greeks, who distrusted tissaphernes and ariæus alike; but clearchus held it better not to break openly with the persians. the march at last began along a northerly route towards the black sea, the greeks keeping rigidly apart from the persian forces which accompanied them, in readiness for an attack. at the crossing of the tigris suspicion was particularly active, the conduct of ariæus being especially dubious; but still no overt hostilities were attempted until the river zabatus was reached, after three weeks of marching. here clearchus endeavoured to end the extremely strained relations between the greeks and the barbarian commanders by an interview with tissaphernes. both men carefully repudiated any idea of hostile intentions, and the persian invited clearchus and the greek officers generally to attend a conference. not all, but a considerable number--five generals, including clearchus, proxenus, and menon, with twenty more officers and nearly two hundred others--attended. at a given signal all were treacherously massacred; but a fugitive reached the greek camp, where the men sprang to arms. ariæus, approaching with an escort, declared that clearchus had been proved guilty of treason, but was received with fierce indignation, and withdrew. of the murdered generals, clearchus was a man of high military capacity, but a harsh disciplinarian, feared and respected, but very unpopular; proxenus, a particular friend of xenophon, was an amiable but not a strong man; menon, the thessalian, was a crafty and hypocritical time-server, of whom no good can be spoken. the ten thousand greeks were now in an ugly predicament; they were a thousand miles from home, while between them and the black sea lay the mountains of armenia. they were surrounded by hostile hordes, and were without cavalry. they had no recognised chief, and their most trusted leaders were gone. the whole company seemed paralysed under a universal despondency. it was at this juncture that xenophon, an athenian gentleman-volunteer, was stirred to action by a dream. he rose and roused the officers of the contingent of proxenus, to which he was attached. heartened by an address, in which he pointed out that, on the one hand they had to depend on their own courage, skill, and resourcefulness, and, on the other, were released from all obligation to the persians, they unanimously chose him their leader, and at his instigation roused the senior officers of all the other contingents to assemble for deliberation. the council thus summoned, inspired again by the words of xenophon, vigorously backed up by other leaders, appointed new generals, among them xenophon himself, and set about actively to organise a retreat to the sea. the contagion of resolute determination spread through the ranks of the whole force. cheirisophus the lacedæmonian was given the chief command, the two youngest generals, xenophon and timerion, were placed in charge of the rear-guard. a troop of slingers was organised; all horses with the arroy were sequestrated to form a cavalry squadron. the army started on its march through the unknown, formed in a hollow square, which was shortly so organised that the columns could be broadened or narrowed according to the ground without creating confusion. they soon found themselves able to repulse without difficulty even attacks in force by the troops of tissaphernes, the enemy being entirely outmatched in hand-to-hand fighting. the slingers and archers, however, proved troublesome, and hostile forces, though keeping out of reach, were never far off. at last tissaphernes and ariæus drew off altogether, and the greek generals having as alternative courses the march east upon susa, north upon babylon, and west towards ionia, decided to revert to the course northwards to the black sea. _iii.--the sea! the sea!_ this route led at first through the country of the carduchi, a very warlike folk who had never been subjugated. here there was a good deal of hard fighting, the carduchi being adepts in hill warfare, and particularly expert archers. such was the length and weight of their arrows that greeks collected them, and used them as javelins. seven days of this brought the retreating force to the river centrites, which parts the carduchian mountains from the province of armenia. with a barely fordable river, troops in evidence on the other side, and the carduchi hanging on their rear, the passage offered great difficulties, solved by the discovery of a much shallower ford. a feint at one point by the rearguard drew off the enemy on the opposite bank, while the main body crossed at the shallows, which the rearguard also managed to pass by a successful ruse which misled the carduchi. the persian governor of western armenia, tiribazus, offered safe passage through his province, but scouts brought information that large forces were collecting, and would dispute the passage of a defile through which the army must pass. this point, however, was reached by a forced march, and the enemy was put to rout. for some days after this the marching was very severe; the men had to struggle forward on very nearly empty stomachs, through blizzards, suffering terribly from frostbite and the blinding effect of the snow on their eyes, so that at times nothing short of actual threats from the officers could induce the exhausted men to toil forward; and all the time the enemy's skirmishers were harassing the troops and cutting off stragglers. these, however, were finally dispersed by a sudden onslaught of the rearguard, and after this a more populous district was reached, where food and wine abounded, and the greeks, who were not ill-received, made some days' halt to recuperate. here a guide was obtained for the next stages; but on the third night he deserted, because cheirisophus had lost his temper and struck him. this incident was the only occasion of a serious difference between xenophon and the elder commander. on the seventh day after this the river phasis was crossed; but two days later, on approaching a mountain pass, it was seen to be occupied in force. a council of war was held, at which some jesting passed, xenophon remarking on the reputation of the lacedæmonians as adepts in thieving, a jibe which cheirisophus retorted on the athenians; as the business in hand was to "steal a match" on the enemy, each encouraged the other to act up to the national reputation. in the night, a detachment of volunteers captured the ridge above the pass; the enemy facing the main body beat a hasty retreat when they found their position turned. another five days brought the army into the country of the taochi, where the greeks had to rush a somewhat dangerous position in order to capture supplies. a space of some twenty yards was open to such a storm of missiles from above that it could only be passed by drawing the enemy's fire and making a dash before fresh missiles were accumulated. when this was accomplished, however, the foe offered no practical resistance, but flung themselves over the cliffs. eighteen days later the greeks reached a town called gymnise, where they obtained a guide. their course lay through tribes towards whom the governor was hostile, and the greeks had no objection to gratifying him by spoiling and burning on their way. on the fifth day after leaving gymnise, a mountain pass was reached. when the van cleared the top of the mountain, there arose a great shouting. and when xenophon heard it, and they of the rear-guard, they supposed that other enemies were ranged against them, for the men of the land which had been ravaged were following behind; but when the clamour grew louder and nearer, and the new arrivals doubled forward to where the shouting was, so that it became greater and greater with the added numbers, xenophon thought this must be something of moment. therefore, taking lycias and the horsemen, he rode forward at speed to give aid; and then suddenly they were aware of the soldiers' shout, the word that rang through the lines--"the sea! the sea!" then every man raced, rear-guard and all, urging horses and the very baggage-mules to the top of their speed, and when they came to the top, they fell on each other's necks, and the generals, and officers, too, with tears of delight. and in a moment, whoever it was that passed the word, the men were gathering stones, and there they reared a mighty column. and as for the lucky guide, he betook himself home laden with presents. of what befell between this point and the actual arrival of the army on the coast of the black sea at the grecian colony of trapezus [trebizond] the most curious incident was that of the soldiers lighting upon great quantities of honey, which not only made them violently ill, but had an intoxicating effect, attributed to the herbs frequented by the bees in that district. this necessitated a halt of some days. the second day's march thence brought them to trapezus, where they made sacrificial thank-offerings to the gods, and further celebrated the occasion by holding athletic games. _iv.--the end of the expedition_ but trapezus was not greece, and the problem of transport was serious. the men, sick of marching, were eager to accomplish the rest of their journey by sea. cheirisophus the general, as being a personal friend of the lacedæmonian admiral stationed at byzantium, was commissioned to obtain ships from him to take the greeks home. cheirisophus departed. the army, which still numbered over ten thousand persons, was willing enough to maintain its military organisation for foraging and for self-defence; also to make such arrangements as were practicable for collecting ships in case cheirisophus should fail them; but the men flatly refused to consider any further movement except by water. so they stayed where they were, maintaining their supplies by raids on the natives; but time passed, and there were no tidings of cheirisophus. at last, they saw nothing for it but to put the sick and other non-combatants aboard of the vessels which had been secured, send them on by sea, and themselves march by the coast to cerasus, another greek colony. thence they continued their westward progress, in which they met with considerable resistance from the natives, who were barbarians of a primitive type, until they came to cotyora. this was another settlement from sinope; but it received the greeks very inhospitably, so that the latter continued their practice of ravaging the neighbouring territories. it was now eight months since the expedition had started on its homeward march. here a deputation arrived from sinope to protest against their proceedings; but xenophon pointed out that while they were perfectly willing to buy what they needed and behave as friends, if they were not allowed to buy, self-preservation compelled them to take by force. ultimately, the deputation promised to send ships from sinope to convey them thither. during the time of waiting there was some risk of the force breaking itself up, and some inclination to make attacks on the officers, including xenophon. the formulation of charges, however, enabled him amply to justify the acts complained of, and order generally was restored. at last, however, a sufficient number of ships were collected to convey the force to sinope, where also cheirisophus put in his long-delayed appearance. cheirisophus came practically without ships and with nothing but vague promises from the admiral at byzantium. at this point it occurred to the army that it would be better to have a single commander for the whole than a committee of generals each in control of his own division. hence xenophon was invited to accept the position. on consulting the omens he declined, recommending that, since cheirisophus was a lacedæmonian, it would be the proper thing to offer him the command, which was accordingly done. the force now sailed from sinope as far as heraclea. here the contingents from arcadia and archæa--more than half the force--insisted on requisitioning large supplies of money from heraclea. cheirisophus, supported by xenophon, refused assent; the arcadians and achæans consequently refused to serve under their command any more, and appointed captains for themselves. the other half of the army was also parted in two divisions, commanded by cheirisophus and xenophon respectively. from calpe the arcadians and archæans made an expedition into the interior, which fared so ill that xenophon, hearing by accident of what had happened, was obliged to march to their relief. to his satisfaction, however, it was found that the enemy had already dispersed, and the greek column was overtaken on the way back to calpe. the general effect of the episode was to impress upon the arcadians and archæans that it was commonsense for the whole force to remain united. the usual operations were carried on for obtaining supplies, report having arrived that cleander, the lacedæmonian governor of byzantium, was coming, which he presently did, with a couple of galleys but no transports. from information received, cleander was inclined to regard the army as little better than a band of brigands; but this idea was successfully dissipated by xenophon. cleander went back to byzantium, and the greeks marched from calpe to chrysopolis, which faces byzantium. here the whole force was at last carried over to the opposite shore, and once more found itself on european soil, having received promises of pay from the admiral anaxibius. suspicions of his real intentions were aroused, and xenophon had no little difficulty in preventing his soldiery from breaking loose and sacking byzantium itself. ultimately, the greater part of the force took service with the thracian king seuthes. seuthes, however, failed to carry out his promises as to payments and rewards. but now the lacedæmonians were engaged in a quarrel with the western satraps, tissaphernes and artabazus; six thousand veterans so experienced as those who had followed this famous march into the heart of the persian empire, had fought their way from cunaxa to trapezus, and had supported themselves mainly by their military prowess in getting from trapezus to europe, were a force by no means to be neglected, and the bulk of the troops were not unwilling to be incorporated in the lacedæmonian armies. and so ends the story of the retreat of the ten thousand greeks. * * * * * george grote history of greece george grote, born at beckenham, england, nov. , , entered the bank founded by his grandfather, from which he withdrew in . he joined the group of "philosophic radicals," among whom james mill was a leader, and was a keen politician and reformer, and an ardent advocate of the ballot. his determination to write a sound "history of greece" was ensured, if it was not inspired, by mitford's history, a work full of anti-democratic fervour and very antagonistic to the great greek democratic state of athens. in some respects his work is a defence of the athenian democracy, at least as contrasted with sparta; it appeared in twelve volumes between and , and covered greek history from the earliest times "till the close of the generation contemporary with alexander the great." it at once occupied, and still holds, the field as the classic work on the subject as a whole, though later research has modified many of his conclusions. his methods were pre-eminently thorough, dispassionate, and judicial; but he suffers from a lack of sympathetic imagination. he died on june , , and was buried in westminster abbey. _i.--early history_ the divine myths constitute the earliest matter of greek history. these may be divided into those which belong to the gods and to the heroes respectively; but most of them, in point of fact, present gods, heroes, and men in juxtaposition. every community sought to trace its origin to some common divine, or semi-divine, progenitor; the establishment of a pedigree was a necessity; and each pedigree contains at some, point figures corresponding to some actual historical character, before whom the pedigree is imaginary, but after whom, in the main, actual. the precise point where the legend fades into the mythical, or consolidates into the historical, is not usually ascertainable. the legendary period culminates in the tale of troy, which belongs to a period prior to the dorian conquest presented in the herakleid legend; the tale of troy itself remaining the common heritage of the greek peoples, and having an actual basis in historical fact. the events, however, are of less importance than the picture of an actual historical, political, and social system, corresponding, not to the supposed date of the trojan war, but to the date of the composition of the homeric poems. later ages regarded the myths themselves with a good deal of scepticism, and were often disposed to rationalise them, or to find for them an allegorical interpretation. the myths of other european peoples have undergone a somewhat similar treatment. greece proper, that is, the european territory occupied by the hellenic peoples, has a very extensive coast-line, covers the islands of the Ægean, and is so mountainous on the mainland that communication between one point and another is not easy. this facilitated the system which isolated communities, compelling each one to develop and perfect its own separate organisation; so that greece became, not a state, but a congerie of single separate city states--small territories centering in the city, although in some cases the village system was not centralised into the city system. on the other hand, the hellenes very definitely recognised their common affinity, looked on themselves as a distinct aggregate, and very emphatically differentiated that entire aggregate from the non-hellenes, whom they designated as "barbarians." of these states, the first to come into view--post-homerically--is sparta, the head of the dorian communities, governed under the laws and discipline attributed to lycurgus, with its special peculiarity of the dual kingship designed to make a pure despotism impossible. the government lay and remained in the hands of the conquering spartan race--as for a time with the normans in england--which formed a close oligarchy, while within the oligarchical body the organisation was democratic and communistic. for sparta, the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. were characterised by the two messenian wars; and we note that while the hellenes generally recognised her headship, argos claimed a titular right to that position. as a general rule, the primitive monarchical system portrayed in the homeric poems was displaced in the greek cities by an oligarchical government, which in turn was overthrown by an irregular despotism called _tyrannis_, primarily established by a professed popular leader, who maintained his supremacy by mercenary troops. one after another these usurping dynasties were again ejected in favour either of a restored oligarchy or of a democracy. sparta, where the power of the dual kingship was extremely limited, was the only state where the legitimate kingship survived. corinth attained her highest power under the despot periander, son of cypselus. of the ionian section of greek states, the supreme type is athens. her early history is obscure. the kingship seems to have ended by being, so to speak, placed in commission, the royal functions being discharged by an elected body of archons. dissensions among the groups of citizens issued in the democratic solonian constitution, which remained the basis of athenian government, except during the despotism of the house of pisistratus in the latter half of the sixth century b.c. but outside of greece proper were the numerous dorian and ionian colonies, really independent cities, planted in the coast districts of asia minor, at cyrene and barka in mediterranean africa, in epirus (albania), southern italy, sicily, and even at massilia in gaul, and in thrace beyond the proper hellenic area. these colonies brought the greek world in touch with lydia and its king, croesus, with the one sea-going semitic power, the phoenicians, with the egyptians, and more remotely with the wholly oriental empires of assyria and babylon, as well as with the outer barbarians of scythia. between and b.c., athens was generally under the rule of the despot pisistratus and his son hippias. in , the pisistratidæ were expelled, and athens became a pure democracy. meanwhile, the persian cyrus had seized the median monarchy and overthrown every other potentate in western asia; egypt was added to the vast persian dominion by his son cambyses. a new dynasty was established by darius, the son of hystaspes, who organized the empire, but failed to extend it by an incursion into european scythia. the revolt of the ionic cities in asia minor against the governments established by the "great king" brought him in contact with the athenians, who sent help to ionia. demands for "earth and water," _i.e.,_ the formal recognition of persian sovereignty, sent to the apparently insignificant greek states were insolently rejected. darius sent an expedition to punish athens in particular, and the athenians drove his army into the sea at the battle of marathon. xerxes, son of darius, organised an overwhelming force by land and sea to eat up the greeks. the invaders were met but hardly checked at thermopylæ, where leonidas and the immortal three hundred fell; all greece north of the isthmus of corinth was in their hands, including athens. but their fleet was shattered to pieces, chiefly by the athenians under themistocles and aristides at salamis, and the destruction of their land forces was completed by the united greeks at platæa. a further disaster was inflicted on the same day at mycale. _ii.--the struggles of athens and sparta_ meanwhile, the sicilian greeks, led by gelo of syracuse, successfully resisted and overthrew the aggression of carthage, the issue being decided at the battle of himera. the part played by athens under the guidance of themistocles in the repulse of persia gave her a new position among the greek states and an indisputable naval leadership. as the maritime head of hellas she was chief of the naval delian league, now formed ostensibly to carry on the war against persia. but the leaguers, who first contributed a quota of ships, soon began to substitute money to provide ships, which in effect swelled the athenian navy, and turned the contributors into tributaries. thus, almost automatically, the delian league converted itself into an athenian empire. in athens itself an unparalleled personal ascendancy was acquired by pericles, who made the form of government and administration more democratic than before. but this growing supremacy of athens aroused the jealous alarm of other greek states. sparta saw her own titular hegemony threatened; the subject cities grew restive under the athenian yoke. sparta came forward professedly as champion of the liberties of hellas; athens, guided by pericles, refused to submit to spartan dictation, and accepted the challenge which plunged greece into the peloponnesian war. the athenians concentrated on the expansion of their naval armaments, left the open country undefended and gathered within the city walls, and landed forces at will on the peloponnese. platsea, almost their sole ally on land, held out valiantly for some time, but was forced to surrender; and athens herself suffered frightfully from a visitation of the plague. after the death of pericles, cleon became the most prominent leader of the aggressive and democratic party, nicias, of the anti-democratic peace party. over most of greece in each state the oligarchic faction favoured the peloponnesian league, the democratic, athens. the general demosthenes at pylos effected the surrender of a lacedæmonian force, which temporarily shattered sparta's military prestige, a blow in some degree counteracted by the brilliant operations of brasidas in the north, where, however, both he and cleon were killed. meanwhile, athens was awakening to the possibilities of a great sea-empire, in consequence of her intervention having been invited in disputes among the sicilian states. as the outcome, incited by the brilliant young alcibiades, she resolved on the fatal sicilian expedition. the expedition, planned under command of alcibiades and nicias, was dispatched in spite of the startling mutilation of the hermæ, a sacrilegious performance attributed to alcibiades. it had hardly reached sicily when he was recalled, but made his escape and spent some years mainly in intriguing against athens. the siege of syracuse was progressing favourably, when the spartan gylippus was allowed to enter and put new life into the defence. disaster followed on disaster both by sea and land; finally, the whole athenian force was either cut to pieces or surrendered at discretion, to become the slaves of the syracusans, both nicias and demosthenes being put to death. meanwhile, the truce between athens and sparta had been ended, and war again declared. sparta occupied permanently a post of the attic territory, deceleia, with merciless effect. the sicilian disaster moved the islanders, notably chios, to revolt, by spartan help, against athens. she, however, renovated her navy with unexpected vigour. but, with her fleets away, alcibiades inspired oligarchical intrigues in the city; a _coup d'état_ gave the government to the leaders of a group of . the navy stood by the democratic constitution, the were overthrown, and an assembly, nominally of , , assumed the government. a great athenian triumph at arginusæ was followed later by a still more overwhelming disaster at Ægos potami. the spartan commander lysander blockaded athens; starvation forced her to surrender. lysander established the government known as that of the thirty tyrants, who were headed by kritias. lysander's ascendancy created in sparta a party in opposition to him; in the outcome, the spartan king pausanias helped in the overthrow of the thirty at athens by thrasybulus, and the restoration of the athenian democracy. throughout, the conduct of the democratic party, at its best and its worst, contrasted favourably with that of the oligarchical faction. these eighty years were the great period of athenian literature and art: of the parthenon and phidias; of Æschylus, the soldier of marathon; then sophocles and euripides and aristophanes; finally, of socrates, not himself an author, but the inspirer of plato, and the founder of ethical science; according to popular ideas, the typical sophist, but in fact differing from the sophists fundamentally. _iii.--the blotting out of hellas_ the triumph of sparta has established her empire among the greeks; she used her power with a tyranny infinitely more galling than the sway of athens. the spartan character had become greatly demoralised. agesilaus, who succeeded to the kingship, set on foot ambitious projects for a greek conquest of asia; but greece began to revolt against the spartan dominion. thebes and other cities rose, and called for help from athens, their former foe. in the first stages of the ensuing war, of which the most notable battle was coronea, sparta maintained her supremacy within the peloponnesus, but not beyond. athens obtained the countenance of persia, and the counter-diplomacy of sparta produced the peace known by the name of the spartan antalcidas, establishing generally the autonomy of greek cities. but this in effect meant the restoration of spartan domination. in course of time, however, this brought about the defiance of spartan dictation by thebes and the tremendous check to her power inflicted at the battle of leuctra, by epaminondas the theban, whose military skill and tactical originality there overthrew the spartan military prestige. as a consequence, half the peloponnese itself broke away from sparta; a force under epaminondas aided the arcadians, and the arcadian federation was established. hellenic sicily during these years was having a history of her own of some importance. syracuse, after her triumph over the athenian forces, continued the contest with her neighbours, which had been the ostensible cause of the athenian expedition. but this was closed by the advent of fresh invaders, the carthaginians, who renewed the attack repulsed at himera. owing to the disaster to athens, her fleets were no longer to be feared by carthage as a protection to the hellenic world; and for two centuries to come, her interventions in sicily were incessant. now, the presence of a foreign foe in sicily gave intriguers for power at syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of the democracy and the establishment of dionysius as despot. his son, dionysius ii., succeeded, and was finally ejected by the corinthian timoleon, who, after a brilliant career of victories as syracusan general against carthage, acted as general liberator of sicilian cities from despotisms, laid down his powers, and was content with the position, not of despot, but of counsellor, to the great prosperity of sicily as a whole. going back to the north of greece, the semi-hellenic macedon with a hellenic dynasty was growing powerful. philip--father of alexander the great--was now king, and was resolved to make himself the head of the greek world. his great opponent is found in the person of the athenian orator demosthenes, who saw that philip was aiming at ascendancy, but generally failed to persuade the athenians to recognise the danger in which they stood. philip gradually achieved his immediate end of being recognised as the captain-general of the hellenes, and their leader in a new persian war, when his life was cut short by an assassin, and he was succeeded by his youthful son alexander. the greek states, awakening to their practical subjection, would have thrown off the new yoke, but the young king with swift and overwhelming energy swept down from thrace upon thebes, the centre of resistance, and stamped it out. he had already conceived, in part at least, his vast schemes of asiatic conquest; while he lived, greece had practically no distinguishable history. she is merely an appendage to macedon. everything is absorbed in the macedon conqueror. with an army incredibly small for the task before him, he entered asia minor, and routed the persian forces on the river granicus. the greek memnon, the one able leader for the persians, would have organised against him a destructive naval power; but death removed him. alexander dispersed the armies of the persian king darius at the issus, captured tyre after a remarkable siege, and took easy possession of egypt, where he founded alexandria. having organised the administration of the conquered territories, he marched to the euphrates, but did not engage the enormous persian hosts till he found and shattered them at the battle of gaugamela, also called arbela. darius fled, and alexander swept on to babylon, to susa, to persepolis, assuming the functions of the "great king." the fugitive darius was assassinated. alexander henceforth assumed a new and oriental demeanour; but he continued his conquests, crossing the hindoo koosh to bactria, and then bursting into the punjab. but his ambitions were ended by his death, and their fulfilment, not at all according to his designs, was left to the "diadochi," the generals among whom the conquered dominions were parted. athens led the revolt against macedonian supremacy, but in vain. demosthenes, condemned by the conquering antipater, took poison. the remainder of the history is that of the blotting out of hellas and of hellenism. * * * * * heinrich schliemann troy and its remains heinrich schliemann was born at kalkhorst, a village in mecklenburg-schwerin, on january , , and died on december , . during his early childhood an old scholar, who had fallen upon evil days, delighted him with stories of the great deeds of homeric heroes. at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed in a warehouse, but never lost his love for antiquity, and unceasingly prayed to god that he might yet have the happiness to learn greek. an accident released him from his low position, and he went to holland and found a situation in an office. he now began to study languages, suffering extraordinary denials so as to be able to afford money for his studies. in he was sent by his firm to russia, learning swedish and polish, and next acquired greek. later, he travelled in europe and the east, making a voyage round the world. at last he realised the dream of his life. inaugurating a series of explorations in greece and asia minor, dr. schliemann gained fame by his discoveries at tiryus, mycenæ, and troy, largely solving the problems of antiquity and archæology associated with these localities. "troy and its remains" is published here in order that, having read in the classical histories, we may see how the ancient world is reconstructed for modern readers, by the records of one of the most famous of archæologists. _i.--searching for the site of troy_ _hissarlik, plain of troy, october_ , . in my work, "ithaca, the peloponnesus, and troy," published in , i endeavored to prove, both by my own excavations and by the statement of the iliad, that the homeric troy cannot possibly have been situated on the heights of bunarbashi, to which place most archæologists assign it. at the same time i endeavoured to explain that the site of troy must necessarily be identical with the site of that town which, throughout all antiquity and down to its complete destruction at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century a.d., was called ilium, and not until , years, after its disappearance--that is, in a.d.--was christened ilium novum by lechevalier, who, as his work proves, can never have visited his ilium novum. the site of ilium is on a plateau feet above the plain. its north-western corner is formed by a hill about feet higher still, which is about feet in breadth and about feet in length, and from its imposing situation and natural fortifications, this hill of hissarlik seems specially suited to the acropolis of the town. ever since my first visit i never doubted that i should find the pergamus of priam in the depths of this hill. on october , , i started with my wife from the dardanelles for the plain of troy, a journey of eight hours, and next day commenced my excavations where i had, a year previously, made some preliminary explorations, and had found, among other things, at a depth of feet, walls about - / feet thick, which belong to a bastion of the time of lysimachus. hissarlik, the turkish name of this imposing hill at the north-western end of the site of ilium, means "fortress," or "acropolis," and seems to prove that this is the pergamus of priam; that here xerxes in b.c. offered up , oxen to the ilian athena; that here alexander the great hung up his armour in the temple of the goddess, and took away in its stead some of the weapons therein dedicated, belonging to the time of the trojan war. i conjectured that this temple, the pride of the ilians, must have stood on the highest point of the hill, and i therefore decided to excavate this locality down to the native soil, and i made an immense cutting on the face of the steep northern slope, about feet from my last year's work. notwithstanding the difficulties due to coming on immense blocks of stone, the work advances rapidly. my dear wife, an athenian lady, who is an enthusiastic admirer of homer, and knows almost the whole of the iliad by heart, is present at the excavations from morning to night. all of my workmen are greeks from the neighbouring village of renkoi; only on sunday, a day on which the greeks do not work, i employ turks. _hissarlik, october_ , . since my report of the th i have continued the excavations with the utmost energy, with, on the average, workmen, and i have to-day reached an average depth of feet. i found an immense number of round articles of terra-cotta, red, yellow, grey, and black, with two holes, without inscriptions, but frequently with a kind of potter's stamp upon them. i cannot find any trace of their having been used for domestic purposes, and therefore i presume they have served as _ex votos_ for hanging up in the temples. i found at a depth of about five feet three marble slabs with inscriptions. one of these must, i think, from the character of the writing, be assigned to the third century, the two others to the first century b.c. a king spoken of in the third century writing must have been one of the kings of pergamus. the view from the hill of hissarlik is magnificent. before me lies the glorious plain of troy, traversed from the south-east to the north-west by the scamander, which has changed its bed since ancient times. _hissarlik, november_ , . i have now reached a depth of feet. during these operations i was for a time deceived by the enormous mass of stone implements which were dug up, and by the absence of any trace of metal, and supposed that i had come upon the stone age. but since the sixth of this month there have appeared many nails, knives, lances, and battle-axes of copper of such elegant workmanship that they can have been made only by a civilised people. i cannot even admit that i have reached the bronze period, for the implements and weapons which i find are too well finished. i must, however, observe that the deeper i dig the greater are the indications of a higher civilisation. and as i thus find ever more and more traces of civilisation the deeper i dig, i am now perfectly convinced that i have not yet penetrated to the period of the trojan war, and hence i am more hopeful than ever of finding the site of troy by further excavations; for if ever there was a troy--and my belief in this is firm--it can only have been here, on the site of ilium. _ii.--trojan life and civilisation_ _hissarlik, april , ._ on the first of this month i resumed the excavations which were discontinued at the end of november. in the ruins of houses i find, amongst other things, a great number of small idols of very fine marble, with or without the symbols of the owl's head and woman's girdle. many trojan articles found in the ruins have stamped on them crosses of various descriptions, which are of the highest importance to archæology. such symbols were already regarded, thousands of years before christ, as religious tokens of the very greatest importance. the figure of the cross represents two pieces of wood which were laid crosswise upon one another before the sacrificial altars in order to produce holy fire. the fire was produced by the friction of one piece of wood against another. at all depths we find a number of flat idols of very fine marble; upon many of them is the owl's face, and a female girdle with dots. i am firmly convinced that all of the helmeted owls' heads represent a goddess, and the important question now presents itself, what goddess is it who is here found so repeatedly, and is, moreover, the only one to be found upon the idols, drinking-cups, and vases? the answer is, she must necessarily be the tutelary goddess of troy; she must be the ilian athena, and this indeed perfectly agrees with the statement of homer, who continually calls her _thea glaukopis athene,_ "the goddess with the owl's face." _hissarlik, june , ._ i had scarcely begun to extend a third cutting into the hill when i found a block of triglyphs of parian marble, containing a sculpture in high relief which represents phoebus apollo, who, in a long woman's robe with a girdle, is riding on the four immortal horses which pursue their career through the universe. nothing is to be seen of a chariot. above the head of the god is seen about two-thirds of the sun's disc with twenty rays. the face of the god is very expressive, and the folds of his robe are exquisitely sculptured; but my admiration is specially excited by the four horses, which, snorting and looking wildly forward, career through the universe with infinite power. their anatomy is so masterly that i confess i have never seen so masterly a work. it is especially remarkable to find the sun-god here, for homer knows nothing of a temple to the sun in troy, and later history says not a word about the existence of such a temple. however, the image of phoebus apollo does not prove that the sculpture must have belonged to a temple of the sun; in my opinion it may just as well have served as an ornament to any other temple. i venture to express the opinion that the image of the sun, which i find represented here thousands and thousands of times upon the whorls of terra-cotta, must be regarded as the name or emblem of the town--that is, ilios. in like manner, this sun-god shone in the form of a woman upon the propylæa of the temple of the ilian athena as a symbol of the sun-city. this head of the sun-god appears to me to have so much of the alexandrian style that i must adhere to history, and believe that this work of art belongs to the time of lysimachus, who, according to strabo, after the time of alexander the great, built here the new temple of the ilian athena, which alexander had promised to the town of ilium after the subjugation of the persian empire. were it not for the splendid terra-cottas which i find exclusively on the primary soil and as far as - / feet above it, i could swear that at a depth of from to feet, i am among the ruins of the homeric troy. [the reader should bear in mind that dr. schliemann finally came back to this opinion.] for at this depth i have found a thousand wonderful objects; whereas i find little in the lowest stratum, the removal of which gives immense trouble. we daily find some of the whorls of very fine terra-cotta, and it is curious that those which have no decorations at all are always of the ordinary shape, and of the size of small tops, or like the craters of volcanoes, while almost all those possessing decorations are flat, and in the form of a wheel. metals, at least gold, silver, and copper, were known to the trojans, for i found a copper knife highly gilded, a silver hairpin, and a number of copper nails at a depth of forty-six feet. i found many small instruments for use as pins; also a number of ivory needles, and some curious pieces of ivory, one in the form of a paper-knife, the other in the shape of an exceedingly neat dagger. we discovered one-edged or double-edged knives of white silex in the form of saws in quantities, each about two inches long; also many hand millstones of lava, and some beautiful red vases, cups, vessels, jugs, and hand plates. in these depths we likewise find many bones of animals; boars' tusks, small shells, horns of the buffalo, ram, and stag, as well as the vertebræ of the shark. the houses and palaces in which the splendid terra-cottas were used were large and spacious, for to them belong all the mighty heaps of stone, hewn and unhewn, which cover them to the height of from to feet. these buildings were easily destroyed, for the stones were only joined with earth, and when the walls fell everything in the houses was crushed to pieces by the immense blocks of stone. the primitive trojan people disappeared simultaneously with the destruction of their town. [here, as well as in what goes before, dr. schliemann writes on the supposition, which he afterwards abandoned, that the remains in the lowest stratum are those of the trojans of the iliad.] upon the site of the destroyed city new settlers, of a different civilisation, manners, and customs, built a new town; but only the foundation of their houses consisted of stones joined with clay; all the house-walls were built of unburnt bricks. i must draw attention to the fact that i have found twice on fragments of pottery the curious symbol of the _suastika_, or crossed angles, which proves that the primitive trojans belonged to the aryan race. this is further proved by the symbols on the round terra-cottas. the existence of the nation which preceded the trojans was likewise of long duration, for all the layers of _débris_ at the depth of from to feet belong to it. they also were of aryan descent, for they possessed innumerable aryan religious symbols. several of the symbols belonged to the time when germans, pelasgians, hindoos, persians, celts, and greeks still formed one nation. i found no trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it those curious cups which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant, fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne glasses, and with two mighty handles on the sides; they are round below, so that they can only stand on their mouths. further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware, as, for instance, funeral, wine, or water urns, five feet high; likewise, all of those vessels with a beak-shaped mouth, bent back, and either short or long. i have met with many very curious vases in the shape of animals with three feet. the mouth of the vessel is in the tail, which is upright and very thick, and is connected with the back by a handle. in these strata we also meet with an immense number of those round terra-cottas--the whorls--embellished with beautiful and ingenious symbolical signs, amongst which the sun-god always occupies the most prominent position. but the fire-machine of our primeval ancestors, the holy sacrificial altar with blazing flames, the holy soma-tree, or tree of life, and the _rosa mystica_, are also very frequently met with here. this mystic rose, which occurs very often in the byzantine sculptures, and the name of which, as is well known, is employed to designate the holy virgin in the roman catholic liturgies, is a very ancient aryan symbol, as yet, unfortunately, unexplained. it is very ancient, because i find it at a depth of from to feet, in the strata of the successors to the trojans, which must belong to a period about , years before christ. at a depth of - / feet, among the yellow ashes of a house destroyed by fire, i found silver-ware ornaments and also a very pretty gold ear-ring, which has three lows of stars on both sides; then two bunches of earrings of various forms, most of which are of silver and terminate in five leaves. i now come to the strata of _débris_ at a depth of from to feet, which are evidently also the remains of a people of the aryan race, who took possession of the town built on the ruins of troy, and who destroyed it and extirpated the inhabitants; for in these strata of ten feet thick i find no trace of metal, and the structure of the houses is entirely different. all the house-walls consist of small stones joined with clay. in these strata--at a depth of from to feet--not only are all the stone implements much rougher, but all the terra-cottas are of a coarser quality. still, they possess a certain elegance. a new epoch in the history of ilium commenced when the accumulation of _débris_ on this hill had reached a height of feet below its present surface; for the town was again destroyed, and the inhabitants killed or driven out by a wretched tribe, which certainly must likewise have belonged to the aryan race, for upon the round terra-cottas i still very frequently find the tree of life, and the simple cross and double cross with the four nails. in these depths, however, the forms of the whorls degenerate. of pottery, however, much less is found, and all of it is considerably less artistic than that which i have found in the preceding strata. with the people to whom these strata belonged--from to - / feet below the surface--the pre-hellenic ages end, for henceforth we see many ruined walls of greek buildings, of beautifully hewn stones laid together without cement, and the painted and unpainted terra-cottas leave no doubt that a greek colony took possession of ilium when the surface of this hill was much lower than it is now. it is impossible to determine when this new colonisation took place, but it must have been much earlier than the visit of xerxes reported by herodotus, which took place years before christ. the event may have taken place b.c. _iii.--homeric legends verified_ _pergamus of troy, august_ , . on the south side of the hill where i made my great trench i discovered a great tower, feet thick, which obstructs my path and appears to extend to a great length. i have uncovered it on the north and south sides along the whole breadth of my trench, and have convinced myself that it is built on the rock at a depth of - / feet. this tower is now only feet high, but must have been much higher. for its preservation we have to thank the ruins of troy, which entirely covered it as it now stands. its situation would be most interesting and imposing, for its top would command not only a view of the whole plain of troy, but of the sea, with the islands of tenedos, imbros, and samothrace. there is not a more sublime situation in the whole area of the plain of troy than this. in the ashes of a house at the depth of - / feet i found a tolerably well preserved skeleton of a woman. the colour of the bones shows that the lady, whose gold ornaments were near by, was overtaken by fire and burnt alive. with the exception of the skeleton of an infant found in a vase, this is the only skeleton of a human being i have ever met with in the pre-hellenic remains on this hill. as we know from homer, all corpses were burnt and the ashes placed in urns, of which i have found great numbers. the bones were always burnt to ashes. _pergamus of troy, august , ._ in stopping the excavations for this year, and in looking back on the dangers to which we have been exposed between the gigantic layers of ruins, i cannot but fervently thank god for his great mercy, not only that no life has been lost, but that none of us has been seriously hurt. as regards the result of my excavations, everyone must admit that i have solved a great historical problem, and that i have solved it by the discovery of a high civilisation and immense buildings upon the primary soil, in the depths of an ancient town, which throughout antiquity was called ilium and declared itself to be the successor of troy, the site of which was regarded as identical with the site of the homeric ilium by the whole world of that time. the situation of this town not only corresponds perfectly with all the statements of the iliad, but also with all the traditions handed down to us by later authorities. _pergamus of troy, march , . _during this last week, with splendid weather, and with men on the average, i have got through a good piece of work. on the north side of the excavation on the site of the temple of athena i have already reached a depth of feet, and have laid bare the tower in several places. the most remarkable of the objects found this week is a large knob of the purest and finest crystal, belonging to a stick, in the form of a beautifully wrought lion's head. it seems probable that in remote antiquity lions existed in this region. homer could not so excellently have described them had he not had the opportunities of watching them. _pergamus of troy, may , ._ although the pergamus, whose depths i have been ransacking, borders directly on the marshes formed by the simois, in which there are always hundreds of storks, yet none of them ever settle down here. though there are sometimes a dozen storks' nests on one roof in the neighbouring turkish villages, yet no one will settle on mine, even though i have two comfortable nests made for them. it is probably too cold and stormy for the little storks on _ilios anemoessa_. my most recent excavations have far surpassed my expectations, for i have unearthed two large gates, standing feet apart, in a splendid street which proceeds from the chief building in the pergamus. i venture to assert that this great double gate must be the homeric scæan gate. it is in an excellent state of preservation. here, therefore, by the side of the double gate, at ilium's great tower, sat priam, the seven elders of the city, and helen. from this spot the company surveyed the whole plain, and saw at the foot of the pergamus the trojan and achæan armies face to face about to settle their agreement to let the war be decided by a single combat between paris and menelaus. i now positively retract my former opinion that ilium was inhabited up to the ninth century after christ, and i must distinctly maintain that its site has been desolate and uninhabited since the end of the fourth century. but troy was not large. i am extremely disappointed at being obliged to give so small a plan of the city; nay, i had wished to be able to make it a thousand times larger, but i value truth above everything, and i rejoice that my three years' excavations have laid open the homeric troy, even though on a diminished scale, and that i have proved the iliad based upon real facts. homer is an epic poet, and not an historian; so it is quite natural that he should have exaggerated everything with poetic licence. moreover, the events he describes are so marvellous that many scholars have long doubted the very existence of troy, and have considered the city to be a mere invention of the poet's fancy. i venture to hope that the civilised world will not only not be disappointed that the city of priam has shown itself to be scarcely a twentieth part as large as was to be expected from the statements of the iliad, but that, on the contrary, it will accept with delight and enthusiasm the certainty that ilium did really exist, that a large portion of it has now been brought to light, and that homer, even though he exaggerates, nevertheless sings of events that actually happened. homer can never have seen ilium's great tower, the surrounding wall of poseidon and apollo, the scæan gate of the palace of king priam, for all these monuments lay buried deep in heaps of rubbish, and he could have made no excavations to bring them to light. he knew of these monuments only from hearsay and tradition, for the tragic fate of ancient troy was then still in fresh remembrance, and had already been for centuries in the mouth of all minstrels. * * * * * julius cÆsar commentaries on the gallic war caius julius cæsar was born on july , b.c., of a noble roman family. his career was decided when he threw in his lot with the democratic section against the republican oligarchy. marrying cornelia, daughter of lucius cinna, the chief opponent of the tyrant dictator sulla, he incurred the implacable hatred of the latter, and was obliged to quit rome. for a season he studied rhetoric at rhodes. settling in rome after sulla's death, cæsar attached himself to the illustrious pompey, whose policy was then democratic. in b.c. he obtained a quæstorship in spain, and on returning next year reconciled the two most powerful men in rome, pompey and crassus. with them he formed what became known as the first triumvirate. being appointed to govern gaul for five years, cæsar there developed his genius for war; but his brilliant success excited the fears of the senate and the envy even of pompey. civil war broke out. the conflict ended in the fall of pompey, who was defeated in the fateful battle of pharsalia, and was afterwards murdered in egypt. julius cæsar now possessed supreme power. he lavished vast sums on games and public buildings, won splendid victories in gaul, egypt, pontus, and africa, and was the idol of the common people. but the jealousy of many of the aristocrats led to the formation of a plot, and on march , b.c., cæsar was assassinated in the senate house. this summary relates to the commentaries known to be by cæsar himself, certain other books having been added by other latin writers. it will be noticed that he writes in the third person. this epitome is prepared from the latin text. _i.--subduing celtic gaul_ gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the belgæ inhabit; the aquitani another; those who in their own language are called celts, in ours gauls, the third. all these differ from each other in language, customs, and laws. among the gauls the helvetii surpass the rest in valour, as they constantly contend in battle with the germans. when messala and piso were consuls, orgetorix, the most distinguished of the helvetii, formed a conspiracy among the nobility, persuading them that, since they excelled all in valour, it would be very easy to acquire the supremacy of the whole of gaul. they made great preparations for the expedition, but suddenly orgetorix died, nor was suspicion lacking that he committed suicide. after his death, the helvetii nevertheless attempted the exodus from their territories. when it was reported to cæsar that they were attempting to make their route through our province, he gathered as great a force as possible, and by forced marches arrived at geneva. the helvetii now sent ambassadors to cæsar, requesting permission to pass through the province, which he refused, inasmuch as he remembered that lucius cassius, the consul, had been slain and his army routed, and made to pass under the yoke by the helvetii. disappointed in their hope, the helvetii attempted to force a passage across the rhone, but, being resisted by the soldier, desisted. after the war with the helvetii was concluded, ambassadors from almost all parts of gaul assembled to congratulate cæsar, and to declare that his victory had happened no less to the benefit of the land of gaul than of the roman people, because the helvetii had quitted their country with the design of subduing the whole of gaul. when the assembly was dismissed, the chiefs' of the Ædui and of the sequani waited upon cæsar to complain that ariovistus, the king of the germans, had seized a third of their land, which was the best in gaul, and was now ordering them to depart from another third part. to ambassadors sent by cæsar, demanding an appointment of some spot for a conference, ariovistus gave an insolent reply, which was repeated on a second overture. hearing that the king of the germans was threatening to seize vesontio, the capital of the sequani, cæsar, by a forced march, arrived there and took possession of the city. apprised of this event, ariovistus changed his attitude, and sent messengers intimating that he agreed to meet cæsar, as they were now nearer to each other, and could meet without danger. the conference took place, but it led to no successful result, for ariovistus demanded that the romans should withdraw from gaul and his conduct became afterwards so hostile that it led to war. a battle took place about fifty miles from the rhine. the germans were routed and fled to the river, across which many escaped, the rest being slain in pursuit. cæsar, having concluded two very important wars in one campaign, conducted his army into winter quarters. _ii.--taming the rebellious belgæ_ while cæsar was in winter quarters in hither gaul frequent reports were brought to him that all the belgæ were entering into a confederacy against the roman people, because they feared that, after all celtic gaul was subdued, our army would be led against them. cæsar, alarmed, levied two new legions in hither gaul, and proceeded to the territory of the belgæ. as he arrived there unexpectedly, and sooner than anyone anticipated, the remi, who are the nearest of the belgæ to celtic gaul, sent messages of submission and gave cæsar full information about the other belgæ. cæsar next learned that the nervii, a savage and very brave people, whose territories bordered those just conquered, had upbraided the rest of the belgæ who had surrendered themselves to the roman people, and had declared that they themselves would neither send ambassadors nor accept any condition of peace. he was informed concerning them that they allowed no access of any merchants, and that they suffered no wine and other things tending to luxury to be imported, because they thought that by their use the mind is enervated and the courage impaired. after he had made three days' march into their territory, cæsar discovered that all the nervii had stationed themselves on the other side of the river sambre, not more than ten miles from his camp, and that they had persuaded the atrebates and the veromandui to join with them, and that likewise the aduatuci were expected by them, and were on the march. the roman army proceeded to encamp in front of the river, on a site sloping towards it. here they were fiercely attacked by the nervii, the assault being so sudden that cæsar had to do all things at one time. the standard as the sign to run to arms had to be displayed, the soldiers were to be called from the works on the rampart, the order of battle was to be formed, and a great part of these arrangements was prevented by the shortness of time and the sudden charge of the enemy. time was lacking even for putting on helmets and uncovering shields. in such an unfavorable state of affairs, various events of fortune followed. the soldiers of the ninth and tenth legions speedily drove back the atrebates, who were breathless with running and fatigue. many of them were slain. in like manner the veromandui were routed by the eighth and eleventh legions; but as part of the camp was very exposed, the nervii hastened in a very close body, under boduagnatus, their leader, to rush against that quarter. our horsemen and light-armed infantry were by the first assault routed, and the enemy, rushing into our camp in great numbers, pressed hard on the legions. but cæsar, seizing a shield and encouraging the soldiers, many of whose centurions had been slain, ordering them to extend their companies that they might more freely use their swords. so great a change was soon effected that, though the enemy displayed great courage, the battle was ended so disastrously for them that the nervii were almost annihilated. scarcely five hundred were left who could bear arms. their old men sent ambassadors to cæsar by the consent of all who remained, surrendering themselves. the aduatuci, before mentioned, who were coming to the help of the nervii, returned home when they heard of this battle. all gaul being now subdued, so high an opinion of this war was spread among the barbarians that ambassadors were sent to cæsar by those nations that dwelt beyond the rhine, to promise that they would give hostages and execute his commands. he ordered these embassies to return to him at the beginning of the following summer, because he was hastening into italy and illyricum. having led his legions into winter quarters among the carnutes, the andes, and the turones, which states were close to those in which he had waged war, he set out for italy, and a public thanksgiving of fifteen days was decreed for these achievements, an honour which before that time had been conferred on none. _iii.--war by land and sea in gaul_ when cæsar was setting out for italy, he sent servius galba with the twelfth legion and part of the cavalry against the nantuates, the veragri, and the seduni, who extend from the territories of the allobroges and the lake of geneva and the river rhone to the top of the alps. the reason for sending him was that he desired that the pass along the alps, through which the roman merchants had been accustomed to travel with great danger, should be opened. galba fought several successful battles, stormed some of their forts, and concluded a peace. he then determined to winter in a village of the veragri, which is called octodurus. but before the winter camp could be completed the tops of the mountains were seen to be crowded with armed men, and soon these rushed down from all parts and discharged stones and darts on the ramparts. the fierce battle that followed lasted for more than six hours. during the fight more than a third part of the army of , men of the seduni and the veragri were slain, and the rest were put to flight, panic-stricken. then galba, unwilling to tempt fortune again, after having burned all the buildings in that village, hastened to return into the province, urged chiefly by the want of corn and provision. as no enemy opposed his march, he brought his forces safely into the country of the allobroges, and there wintered. these things being achieved, cæsar, who was visiting illyricum to gain a knowledge of that country, had every reason to suppose that gaul was reduced to a state of tranquillity. for the belgæ had been overcome, the germans had been expelled, and the seduni and the veragri among the alps defeated. but a sudden war sprang up in gaul. the occasion of that war was this. p. crassus, a young man, had taken up his winter quarters with the seventh legion among the andes, who border on the atlantic ocean. as corn was scarce, he sent out officers among the neighbouring states for the purpose of procuring supplies. the most considerable of these states was the veneti, who have a very great number of ships with which they have been accustomed to sail into britain, and thus they excel the rest of the states in nautical affairs. with them arose the beginning of the revolt. the veneti detained silius and velanius, who had been sent among them, for they thought they should recover by their means the hostages which they had given crassus. the neighbouring people, the essui and the curiosolitæ, led on by the influence of the veneti (as the measures of the gauls are sudden and hasty) detained other officers for the same motive. all the sea-coast being quickly brought over to the sentiments of these states, they sent a common embassy to p. crassus to say "if he wished to receive back his officers, let him send back to them their hostages." cæsar, being informed of these things, since he was himself so far distant, ordered ships of war to be built on the river loire; rowers to be raised from the province; sailors and pilots to be provided. these matters being quickly executed, he hastened to the army as soon as the season of the year admitted. cæsar at once ordered his army, divided into several detachments, to attack the towns of the enemy in different districts. many were stormed, yet much of the warfare was vain and much labour was lost, because the veneti, having numerous ships specially adapted for such a purpose, their keels being flatter than those of our ships, could easily navigate the shallows and estuaries, and thus their flight hither and thither could not be prevented. at length, in a naval fight, our fleet, being fully assembled, gained a victory so signal that, by that one battle, the war with the veneti and the whole sea-coast was finished. cæsar thought that severe punishment should be inflicted, in order that for the future the rights of ambassadors should be respected by barbarians; he therefore put to death all their senate, and sold the rest for slaves. about the same time p. crassus arrived in aquitania, which, as was already said, is, both from its extent and its number of population, a third part of gaul. here, a few years before, l. valerius præconius, the lieutenant, had been killed and his army routed, so that crassus understood no ordinary care must be used. on his arrival being known, the sotiates assembled great forces, and the battle that followed was long and vigorously contested. the sotiates being routed, they retired to their principal stronghold, but it was stormed, and they submitted. crassus then marched into the territories of the vocates and the tarusites, who raised a great host of men to carry on the war, but suffered total defeat, after which the greater part of aquitania of its own accord surrendered to the romans, sending hostages of their own accord from different tribes. a few only--and those remote nations--relying on the time of year, neglected to do this. _iv.--the first landing in britain_ the following winter, this being the year in which cn. pompey and m. crassus were consuls [this was the year after the building of rome, before christ; it was the fourth year of the gallic war] the germans, called the usipetes, and likewise the tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the rhine, not far from the place at which that river falls into the sea. the motive was to escape from the suevi, the largest and strongest nation in germany, by whom they had been for several years harassed and hindered from agricultural pursuits. the suevi are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they send forth for war a thousand armed men yearly, the others remaining at home, and going forth in their turn in other years. cæsar, hearing that various messages had been sent to them by the gauls (whose fickle disposition he knew) asking them to come forward from the rhine, and promising them all that they needed, set forward for the army earlier in the year than usual. when he had arrived in the region, he discovered that those things which he had suspected would occur, had taken place, and that, allured by the hopes held out to them, the germans were then making excursions to greater distances, and had advanced to the territories of the euburones and the condrusi, who are under the protection of the treviri. after summoning the chiefs of gaul, cæsar thought proper to pretend ignorance of the things which he had discovered, and, having conciliated and confirmed their minds, and ordered some cavalry to be raised, resolved to make war against the germans. when he had advanced some distance, the germans sent ambassadors, begging him not to advance further, as they had come hither reluctantly, having been expelled from their country. but cæsar, knowing that they wished for delay only to make further secret preparations, refused the overtures. marshalling his army in three lines, and marching eight miles, he took them by surprise, and the romans rushed their camp. many of the enemy were slain, the rest being either scattered or drowned in attempting to escape by crossing the meuse in the flight. the conflict with the germans being finished, cæsar thought it expedient to cross the rhine. since the germans were so easily urged to go into gaul, he desired they should have fears for their own territories. therefore, notwithstanding the difficulty of constructing a bridge, owing to the breadth, rapidity, and depth of the river, he devised and built one of timber and of great strength, piles being first driven in on which to erect it. the army was led over into germany, advanced some distance, and burnt some villages of the hostile sigambri, who had concealed themselves in the woods after conveying away all their possessions. then cæsar, having done enough to strike fear into the germans and to serve both honour and interest, after a stay of eighteen days across the rhine, returned into gaul and cut down the bridge. during the short part of the summer which remained he resolved to proceed into britain, because succours had been constantly furnished to the gauls from that country. he thought it expedient, if he only entered the island, to see into the character of the people, and to gain knowledge of their localities, harbours, and landing-places. having collected about eighty transport ships, he set sail with two legions in fair weather, and the soldiers were attacked instantly on landing by the cavalry and charioteers of the barbarians. the enemy were vanquished, but could not be pursued, because the roman horse had not been able to maintain their course at sea and to reach the island. this alone was wanting to cæsar's accustomed success. _v.--cæsar on the thames_ during the winter cæsar commanded as many ships as possible to be constructed, and the old repaired. about six hundred transports and twenty ships of war were built, and, after settling some disputes in gaul among the chiefs, cæsar went to port itius with the legions. he took with him several of the leading chiefs of the gauls, determined to retain them as hostages and to keep them with him during his next expedition to britain, lest a commotion should arise in gaul during his absence. cæsar, having crossed to the shore of britain and disembarked his army at a convenient spot advanced about twelve miles and repelled all attacks of the cavalry and charioteers of the enemy. then he led his forces into the territories of cassivellaunus to the river thames, which river can be forded in one place only. here an engagement took place which resulted in the flight of the britons. but cassivellaunus had sent messengers to the four kings who reigned over kent and the districts by the sea, cingetorix, carvilius, taximaquilus, and segonax, commanding them to collect all their forces and assail the naval camp. in the battle which ensued the romans were victorious, and when cassivellaunus heard of this disaster he sent ambassadors to cæsar to treat about a surrender. cæsar, since he had resolved to pass the winter on the continent, on account of sudden revolts in gaul, demanded hostages and prescribed what tribute britain should pay each year to the roman people. cæsar, expecting for many reasons greater commotion in gaul, levied additional forces. he saw that war was being prepared on all sides, that the nervii, aduatuci, and menapii, with the addition of all the germans on this side of the rhine, were under arms; that the senones did not assemble according to his command, and were concerting measures with carnutes and the neighbouring states; and that the germans were importuned by the treviri in frequent embassies. therefore he thought that he ought to take prompt measures for the war. accordingly, before the winter was ended, he marched with four legions unexpectedly into the territories of the nervii, captured many men and much cattle, wasted their lands, and forced them to surrender and give hostages. he followed up his success by worsting the senones, carnutes, and menapii, while labienus defeated the treviri. gaul being tranquil, cæsar, as he had determined, set out for italy to hold the provincial assizes. there he was informed of the decree of the senate that all the youth of italy should take the military oath, and he determined to hold a levy throughout the entire province. the gauls, animated by the opportunity afforded through his absence, and indignant that they were reduced beneath the dominion of rome, began to organise their plans for war openly. many of the nations confederated and selected as their commander vercingetorix, a young avernian. on hearing what had happened, cæsar set out from italy for transalpine gaul, and began the campaign by marching into the country of the helvii, although it was the severest time of the year, and the country was covered with deep snow. the armies met, and vercingetorix sustained a series of losses at vellaunodunum, genabum, and noviodunum. the gauls then threw a strong garrison into avaricum, which cæsar besieged, and at length cæsar's soldiers took it by storm. all the gauls, with few exceptions, joined in the revolt; and the united forces, under vercingetorix, attacked the roman army while it was marching into the country of the sequani, but they suffered complete defeat. after struggling vainly to continue the war, vercingetorix surrendered, and the gallic chieftains laid down their arms. cæsar demanded a great number of hostages, sent his lieutenants with various legions to different stations in gaul, and determined himself to winter at bibracte. a supplication of twenty days was decreed at rome by the senate on hearing of these successes. * * * * * tacitus annals publius cornelius tacitus was born perhaps at rome, shortly before the accession of the emperor nero in a.d. he married the daughter of agricola, famous in the history of britain, and died probably about the time of hadrian's accession to the empire, a.d. he attained distinction as a pleader at the bar, and in public life; but his fame rests on his historical works. a man of strong prepossessions and prejudices, he allowed them to colour his narratives, and particularly his portraits; but he cannot be charged with dishonesty. the portraits themselves are singularly powerful; his narrative is picturesque, vivid, dramatic; but the condensed character of his style and the pregnancy of his phrases make his work occasionally obscure, and particularly difficult to render in translation. his "germania" is a most valuable record of the early institutions of the teutonic peoples. his "histories" of the empire from galba to domitian are valuable as dealing with events of which he was an eye-witness. his "annals," covering practically the reigns from tiberius to nero, open only some forty years before his own birth. of the original sixteen books, four are lost, and four are incomplete. the following epitome has been specially prepared from the latin text. _i.--emperor and nephew_ tiberius, adopted son and actual stepson of augustus, was summoned from illyria by his mother livia to the bedside of the dying emperor at nola. augustus left a granddaughter, agrippina, who was married to germanicus, the nephew of tiberius; and a grandson, agrippa postumus, a youth of evil reputation. the succession of tiberius was not in doubt; but his first act was to have agrippa postumus put to death--according to his own statement, by the order of augustus. at rome, consuls, senators, and knights hurried to embrace their servitude. the nobler the name that each man bore, the more zealous was he in his hypocrisy. the grave pretence of tiberius that he laid no claim to imperial honours was met by the grave pretence that the needs of the state forbade his refusal of them, however reluctant he might be. his mother, livia augusta, was the object of a like sycophancy. but the world was not deceived by the solemn farce. the death of augustus, however, was the signal for mutinous outbreaks among the legions on the european frontiers of the empire; first in pannonia, then in germany. in pannonia, the ostensible motive was jealousy of the higher pay and easier terms of service of the prætorian guard. so violent were the men, and so completely did the officers lose control, that drusus, the son of tiberius, was sent to make terms with the mutineers, and only owed his success to the reaction caused by the superstitious alarm of the soldiery at an eclipse of the moon. germanicus, who was in command in germany, was absent in gaul. here the mutiny of the lower army, under cæcina, was very serious, because it was clearly organised, the men working systematically and not haphazard. news of the outbreak brought their popular general, germanicus, to the spot. the mutineers at once offered to make him emperor, a proposal which he indignantly repudiated. the position, in a hostile country, made some concession necessary; but fresh disturbances broke out when it was suspected that the arrival of a commission from the senate meant that the concessions would be cancelled. here the reaction which broke down the mutiny was caused by the shame of the soldiers themselves, when germanicus sent his wife and child away from a camp where their lives were in danger. of their own accord, the best of the soldiers turned on their former ringleaders, and slew them. and the legions under cæcina took similar steps to recover their lost credit. germanicus, however, saw that the true remedy for the disaffection would be found in an active campaign. the desired effect was attained by an expedition against the marsi, conducted with a success which tiberius, at rome, regarded with mixed feelings. the german tribe named the cherusci favoured arminius, the determined enemy of rome, in preference to segestes, who was conspicuous for "loyalty" to rome. germanicus advanced to support the latter, and arminius was enraged by the news that his wife, the daughter of segestes, was a prisoner. his call to arms, his declamations in the name of liberty, roused the cherusci, the people who had annihilated the legions of varus a few years before. a column commanded by cæcina was enticed by arminius into a swampy position, where it was in extreme danger, and a severe engagement took place. the scheme of arminius was to attack the romans on the march; fortunately, the rasher counsels of his uncle, inguiomerus, prevailed; an attempt was made to storm the camp, and the romans were thus enabled to inflict a decisive defeat on the foe. it was at this time that the disastrous practice was instituted of informers bringing charges of treason against prominent citizens on grounds which tiberius himself condemned as frivolous. the emperor began to make a practice of attending trials, which indeed prevented corrupt awards, but ruined freedom. now arose disturbances in the east. the parthians expelled their king, vonones, a former favourite of augustus. armenia became involved, and these things were the source of serious complications later. tiberius was already meditating the transfer of germanicus to these regions. that general, however, was planning a fresh german campaign from the north sea coast. a great fleet carried the army to the mouth of the ems; thence germanicus marched to the weser and crossed it. germanicus was gratified to find that his troops were eager for the impending fray. a tremendous defeat was inflicted on the cherusci, with little loss to the romans. arminius, who had headed a charge which all but broke the roman line, escaped only with the utmost difficulty. nevertheless, the germans rallied their forces, and a second furious engagement took place, in which the foe fought again with desperate valour, and were routed mainly through the superiority of the roman armour and discipline. the triumph was marred only by a disaster which befel the legions which were withdrawn by sea. a terrific storm wrecked almost the entire fleet, and it was with great difficulty that the few survivors were rescued. the consequent revival of german hopes made it necessary for two large armies to advance against the marsi and the catti respectively, complete success again attending the roman arms. jealousy of his nephew's popularity and success now caused tiberius to insist on his recall. at this time informers charged with treason a young man of distinguished family, libo drusus, mainly on the ground of his foolish consultation of astrologers, with the result that drusus committed suicide. this story will serve as one among many which exemplify the prevalent demoralisation. in the same year occurred the audacious insurrection of a slave who impersonated the dead agrippa postumus; and also the deposition of the king of cappadocia, whose kingdom was annexed as a province of the empire. a contest took place between the suevi and the cherusci, in which rome declined to intervene. maroboduus, of the suevi, was disliked because he took the title of king, which was alien to the german ideas, being in this respect contrasted with arminius. the cherusci had the better of the encounter. _ii.--the development of despotism_ germanicus on his recall was in danger, while in rome, of being made the head of a faction in antagonism to drusus, the son of tiberius. he was dispatched, however, with extraordinary powers, to take control of the east, where piso, the governor of syria, believed that he held his own appointment precisely that he might be a thorn in the side of germanicus. the latter made a progress through greece, settled affairs in armenia and parthia, and continued his journey to egypt. piso's machinations, encouraged by the reports which reached him of the emperor's displeasure at the conduct of germanicus, caused the gravest friction. finally, on the return from egypt through syria, germanicus became desperately ill. he declared his own belief that piso and his wife had poisoned him; and, on his death, the rumour met general credence, though it was unsupported by evidence. agrippina returned to rome, bent on vengeance, and the object of universal sympathy. piso attempted to make himself master of syria, but failed to win over the legions, and then resolved to return to rome and defy his accusers. about this time arminius was killed in attempting to make himself king. shortly before, tiberius had rejected with becoming dignity a rival chief's offer to poison the national hero of german independence. on the arrival in italy of agrippina with the ashes of germanicus, the popular and official expressions of grief and sympathy were almost unprecedented. this public display was not at all encouraged by tiberius himself. drusus was instructed to emphasize the fact that piso must not be held either guilty or innocent, till the case had been sifted. tiberius insisted that not he, but the senate, must be the judge; the case must be decided on its merits, not out of consideration for his own outraged feelings. piso was charged with having corrupted the soldiery, levied war on the province of syria, and poisoned germanicus. all except the last charge were proved up to the hilt; for that alone there was no evidence. piso, however, despaired, fearing less the ebullitions of popular wrath than the emotionless implacability of the emperor. he was found dead in his room; but whether by his own act or that of tiberius, was generally doubted. the penalties imposed on his wife and son were mitigated by the emperor himself. a number of notorious scandals at this period emphasise the degradation of morals and the disregard for the sanctity of the marriage tie in a society where children were regarded as a burden, in spite of official encouragement of the birth-rate. there was an instructive debate on a proposal that magistrates appointed to provinces should not take their wives with them. risings in gaul of the treveri and aedui created much alarm in rome; the composure of tiberius was justified by their decisive suppression. in africa, blæms successfully suppressed, though he did not finally curb, the brigand chief tacfarinas, who had been building up a nomad empire of his own. it was under dolabella, the successor of blæms, that tacfarinas was completely overthrown and slain. hitherto the rule of tiberius had been, on the whole, prosperous. but the ninth year marks the establishment of the ascendancy of Ælius sejanus over the mind of the emperor, whereby his sway was transformed into a foul tyranny. not of noble birth, sejanus had neglected no means, however base, to secure his own favour with tiberius and with the prætorian guard, of which he held the command. he was now determined to get rid of drusus, the son of tiberius, as the most dangerous obstacle to his ambitions. he accomplished his purpose by administering a poison, of which the operation was unsuspected till the facts were revealed many years later by an accomplice. then the young sons of germanicus became the accepted representatives of the imperial line, for the infant sons of drusus died very shortly afterwards. accordingly, sejanus now directed his attacks against the more powerful persons who might be regarded as partisans of the house of germanicus. despite the multiplications of prosecutions, it is to be noted that it was still possible for a shrewd and tactful person, as exemplified by the career of marcus lepidus, to uphold the principles of justice and liberty without losing the favour of the emperor. among other prosecutions, that of cremutius, whose crime was that of praising the memory of brutus and cassius, demands attention, as the first of the kind. the ambitions of sejanus received a check when he had the presumption to request tiberius to grant him the hand of the widow of drusus in marriage. in order the more surely to bring disgrace on the house of germanicus, he now implanted in the mind of agrippina a conviction that tiberius intended to poison her. that such suspicions were mere commonplaces of that terrible time is well illustrated by the story. incapable of hiding her feelings, the persistent gloom of her face and voice, and her refusal of proffered dishes as she sat near tiberius at dinner, attracted his attention; to test her, he personally commended and pressed on her some apples; this only intensified her suspicions, and she gave them to the attendants untasted. tiberius made no open comment, but observed to his mother that it would hardly be surprising should he contemplate harsh measures towards one who obviously took him for a poisoner. _iii.--morbid tyrant and dotard_ it was at this time that tiberius withdrew himself from the capital, and took up his residence at a country seat where hardly anyone had access to him except sejanus; whether at the favourite's suggestion or not is uncertain. the retreat finally selected was the island of capræ. the monstrous lengths to which men of the highest rank were now prepared to go to curry favour with tiberius and sejanus was exemplified in the ruin of sabinus, a loyal friend of the house of germanicus. the unfortunate man was tricked into speaking bitterly of sejanus and tiberius. three senators were actually hidden above the ceiling of the room where he was entrapped into uttering unguarded phrases, and on this evidence he was condemned. the death of the aged livia augusta removed the last check on the influence of sejanus. [the account of his two years of unqualified supremacy, and of his sudden and utter overthrow has been lost, two books of the "annals" being missing here.] from this time, the life of tiberius at capræ was one of morbid and nameless debauchery. the condition of his mind may be inferred from the opening words of one of his letters to the senate. "if i know what to write, how to write it, what not to write, may the gods and goddesses destroy me with a worse misery than the death i feel myself dying daily." the end came when macro, the prefect of the prætorians, who, to save his own life and secure the succession of gaius cæsar caligula, the surviving son of germanicus, caused the old emperor to be smothered. [the record of the next ten years--the reign of caligula, and the first years of claudius--is lost. when the story is taken up again, the wife of claudius, the infamous messalina, was at the zenith of her evil career.] while the doting pedant claudius was adding new letters to the alphabet, messalina was parading with utter shamelessness her last and fatal passion for silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour. it was the freedman narcissus who made the outrageous truth known to claudius, and practically terrorised him into striking. half measures were impossible; a swarm of messalina's accomplices in vice were put to death. to her, claudius showed signs of relenting; but narcissus gave the orders for her death without his knowledge. when they told claudius that she was dead, he displayed no emotion, but went on with his dinner, and apparently forgot the whole matter. a new wife had to be provided; agrippina, the daughter of germanicus, niece of claudius himself, and mother of the boy domitius, who was to become the emperor nero, was the choice of the freedman pallas, and proved the successful candidate. shortly after, her new husband adopted nero formally as his son. it was not long before she had assumed an air of equality with her husband; and all men saw that she intended him to be succeeded not by his own son britannicus, but by hers, nero. meanwhile, there had been a great revolt in britain against the proprætor ostorius. first the iceni took up arms, then the brigantes; then--a still more serious matter--the silures, led by the most brilliant of british warriors, caractacus. even his skill and courage, however, were of no avail against the superior armament of the roman legions; his forces were broken up, and he himself, escaping to the brigantes, was by them betrayed to the romans. the famous warrior was carried to rome, where by his dignified demeanour he won pardon and liberty. in the far east, mithridates was overthrown by his nephew rhadamistus, and parthia and armenia remained in wild confusion. the reign of claudius was brought to an end by poison--the notorious locusta was employed by agrippina for the purpose--and he was succeeded by nero, to whom his mother's artifices gave the priority over britannicus. _iv.--the infamies of nero_ at the outset the young emperor was guided by seneca and burrus; his first speech--put into his mouth by seneca, for he was no orator--was full of promise. but he was encouraged in a passion for acte, a freed-woman, by way of counterpoise to the influence of his mother, agrippina. the latter, enraged at the dismissal of pallas, threatened her son with the legitimate claims of britannicus, son of claudius; nero had the boy poisoned. in terror now of his mother, he would have murdered her, but was checked by burrus. nero's private excesses and debaucheries developed, while the horrible system of delation flourished, and prosecutions for treason abounded. about this time the emperor's passion for poppæa sabina, the wife of otho, became the source of later disaster. beautiful, brilliant, utterly immoral, but complete mistress of her passions, she had married nero's boon companion. otho was dispatched to lusitania, and poppæa remained at rome. poppæa was bent on the imperial crown for herself, and urged nero against his mother. a mock reconciliation took place, but it was only the preliminary to a treacherous plot for murdering the former empress. the plot failed; her barge was sunk, but she escaped to shore. nero, however, with the shameful assent of burrus and seneca, dispatched assassins to carry out the work, and agrippina was slaughtered. for a moment remorse seized nero, but it was soon soothed; burrus headed the cringing congratulations of roman society, to which thrasea pætus was alone in refusing to be a party. the emperor forthwith began to plunge into the wild extravagances on which his mother's life had been some check. he took cover for his passion for chariot-driving and singing by inducing men of noble birth to exhibit themselves in the arena; high-born ladies acted in disreputable plays; the emperor himself posed as a mime, and pretended to be a patron of poetry and philosophy. the wildest licence prevailed, and there were those who ventured even to defend it. about this time the roman governor in britain, suetonius, crossed the menai strait and conquered the island of anglesea. but outrages committed against boadicea, queen of the iceni, stirred that tribe to fierce revolt. being joined by the trinobantes, they fell upon the romans at camulodunum and massacred them. suetonius, returning hastily from the west, found the roman population in panic. the troops, however, inspired by the general's resolution, won a decisive victory, in which it is said that no fewer than , britons, men and women, were slaughtered. not long after, burrus died--in common belief, if not in actual fact, of poison; and seneca found himself driven into retirement, while tigellinus became nero's favourite and confidant. nero then capped his matricide by suborning the same scoundrel who had murdered agrippina to bring foul and false charges against his innocent wife, octavia; who was thus done to death when not yet twenty, that her husband might be free to marry poppæa. as a matter of course, the crime was duly celebrated by a public thanksgiving. the dispatch of an incompetent general into asia resulted in a most inglorious parthian campaign. nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to poppæa, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant's death. it was well that corbulo, marching from syria, restored the roman prestige in the far east. these events were followed by the famous fire which devastated rome; whether or no it was actually nero's own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of troy. he planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire--and putting to the most exquisite tortures--a class hated for their abominations, called christians, from their first leader, christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under pontius pilate, procurator of judæa, in the reign of tiberius. a very widespread conspiracy was now formed against nero, in favour of one gaius calpurnius piso; fænius rufus, an officer of the prætorians, who had been subordinated to tigellinus, being one of the leaders. the plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators. * * * * * sallust the conspiracy of catiline the roman historian caius crispus sallust, who was born at amiternum in b.c., and died in b.c., lived throughout the active career of julius cæsar, and died while anthony and octavian were still rivals for the supreme power. it might be supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent virtue, but this was merely a literary pose. he was probably driven into private life, in the first place, on account of the scandals with which he was associated. he became a partisan of cæsar in the struggle with pompey, and to this he owed the pro-consulship of numidia, on the proceeds of which he retired into leisured ease. sallust aspired with very limited success to assume the mantle of thucydides, and the rôle of a philosophic historian. he displays considerable political acumen on occasion, but his assumption of stern impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of elevated morality. his "conspiracy of catiline"--the first of his historical essays--was probably written, in part at least, with the object of dissociating cæsar from it; the lurid colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably exaggerated. but whether true or false, the picture presented is a vivid one. this epitome is adapted specially from the latin text. _i.--the plotting_ i esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer's abilities to the utmost personal ambition had at first drawn me into public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and corruption, was so uncongenial that i resolved to retire and devote myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which i felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences which bias the political partisan. for the first of these studies i have selected the conspiracy of catiline. lucius catilina [commonly called catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his passions, ready of speech, but with little true insight of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after sulla's supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of the means, so the end were attained. naturally headstrong, he was urged forward by his want of money, the consciousness of his crimes, and the degradation of morals in a society where luxury and greed ruled side by side. the wildest, the most reckless, the most prodigal, the most criminal, were readily drawn into the circle of catiline's associates; in such a circle those who were not already utterly depraved very soon became so under the sinister and seductive influence of their leader. this man, who in the pursuit of his own vices had done his own son to death, did not hesitate to encourage his pupils in every species of crime; and with such allies, and the aid of the disbanded sullan soldiery swarming in italy, he dreamed of subverting the roman state while her armies, under gnæus pompeius, were far away. the first step was to secure his own election as consul. one plot of his had already failed, because catiline himself had attempted to move prematurely; but the conspirators remained scatheless. those who were now with catiline included members of the oldest families and of equestrian rank. crassus himself was suspected of complicity, owing to his rivalry with pompeius. the assembled conspirators were addressed by catiline in a speech of the most virulent character. he urged these social outcasts to rise against a bloated plutocracy battening on the ill-gotten wealth to which his audience had just as good a title. he promised the cancellation of all debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the general application of the rule of "the spoils to the victors." he had friends at the head of the armies in spain and mauritania, if gaius antonius were the other successful candidate for the consulship, his co-operation, too, could be secured. such was the purport of his speech; but i do not credit the popular fiction that the conspirators were solemnly pledged in a bowl of mingled wine and blood. rumours of the plot, however, began to leak out through a certain fulvia, mistress of quintus curio, a man who had been expelled from the senatorial body on account of his iniquities; and this probably caused many of the nobility to support, for the consulship, cicero, whom, as a "new man," they would otherwise have religiously opposed. the result was that catiline's candidature failed, and cicero was elected with gaius antonius for his colleague. at length cicero, seeing that the ferment was everywhere increasing to an extent with which the ordinary law could not cope, obtained from the senate the exceptional powers for dealing with a national emergency which they had constitutional authority to grant. thus, when news came that a catilinarian, gaius manlius, had risen in etruria at the head of an armed force, prompt administrative measures were taken to dispatch adequate military forces to various parts of the country. catiline himself had taken no overt action; he now presented himself in the senate, was openly assailed by cicero, responded with insults which were interrupted by cries of indignation, and flung from the house with the words "since i am beset by enemies and driven out, the fire you have kindled about me shall be crushed out by the ruin of yourselves." seeing that delay would be fatal, he started at once for the camp of manlius, leaving cethegus and lentulus to keep up the ferment in rome. to several persons of position he sent letters announcing that he was retiring to marseilles; but, with misplaced confidence, he sent one of a different and extremely compromising tenor to quintus catullus, which the recipient read to the senate. it was next reported that he had assumed the consular attributes and joined manlius; whereupon he was proclaimed a public enemy, a general levy was decreed, antonius was appointed to take the field, while cicero was to remain in the capital. _ii.--the downfall_ meanwhile, lentulus at rome, among his various plots, intrigued to obtain the support of the allobroges, a tribe of gauls from whom there was at the time an embassy in rome. the envoys, however, took the advice of quintus fabius sanga, and while he kept cicero supplied with information, themselves pretended to be at one with the conspirators. risings were now taking place all over italy, though they were ill-concerted. at rome, the plan was that when catiline's army was at fæsulæ, the tribune lucius bestia should publicly accuse cicero of having caused the war; and this was to be the signal for an organised massacre, while the city itself was to be fired at twelve points simultaneously. the insurgents were then to march out and join catiline at fæsulæ. the allobroges were now departing, carrying with them letters from lentulus to catiline; but according to a concerted plan, they were arrested. this provided cicero with evidence which warranted the arrest of lentulus and other ringleaders in rome; and its publication created a popular revulsion--the lower classes were not averse from plunder, but saw no benefit to themselves in a general conflagration of rome. a certain lucius tarquinius was now captured, who gave information tallying with what was already published, but further incriminated crassus. crassus, however, was so wealthy, and had so many of the senate in his power, that even those who believed the charge to be true, thought it politic to pronounce it a gross fabrication. the danger of an attempted rescue of lentulus brought on a debate as to what should be done with the prisoners. cæsar, from whatever motive, spoke forcibly against any unconstitutional action which, however justified by the enormity of the prisoners' guilt, might become a dangerous precedent. in his opinion, the wise course would be to confiscate the property of the prisoners, and to place their persons in custody not in rome, but in provincial towns. cæsar's humanitarian statesmanship was answered by the grave austerity of cato. "the question for us is not that of punishing a crime, but of preserving the state--or of what the degenerate roman of to-day cares for more than the state, our lives and property. to speak of clemency and compassion is an abuse of terms only too common, when vices are habitually dignified with the names of virtues. let us for once act with vigour and decision, and doom these convicted traitors to the death they deserve." the decree of death was carried to immediate execution. in the meantime, catiline had raised a force numbering two legions, but not more than a quarter of them were properly armed. he remained in the hills, refusing to give battle to antonius. on hearing the fate of lentulus and the rest, he attempted to retreat to gaul, but this movement was anticipated and intercepted by metellus celer, who was posted at picenum with three legions. with antonius pressing on his rear, catiline resolved to hazard all on a desperate engagement. in exhorting his troops, he dwelt on the fact that men fighting for life and liberty were more than a match for a foe who had infinitely less at stake. thus brought to bay, catiline's soldiers met the attack of the government troops with furious valour, their leader setting a brilliant example of desperate daring, and the most vigilant and vigorous generalship. but petreius, on the other side, directed his force against the rebel centre, shattered it, and took the wings in flank. catiline's followers stood and fought till they fell, with their wounds in front; he himself hewed his way through the foe, and was found still breathing at a distance from his own ranks. no quarter was given or taken; and among the rebels there were no survivors. in the triumphant army, all the stoutest soldiers were slain or wounded; mourning and grief mingled with the elation of victory. * * * * * edward gibbon decline and fall of the roman empire--i edward gibbon, son of a hampshire gentleman, was born at putney, near london, april , . after a preliminary education at westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at magdalen college, oxford, a whim to join the roman church led to his banishment to lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the french language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. he served some years in the militia, and was a member of parliament. it was in , while musing amidst, the ruins of the capitol of rome, that the idea of writing "the decline and fall" of the city first started into his mind. the vast work was completed in . "a study in literature," written in french, and his "miscellaneous works," published after his death, which include "the memoirs of his life and writings," complete the list of his literary labours. he died of dropsy on january , . the portion of the work which is epitomized here covers the period from the reign of commodus to the era of charlemagne, and includes the famous portion of the work dealing with the growth of the christian church. _i.--rome, mistress of the world_ in the second century of the christian era, the empire of rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. on the death of augustus, that emperor bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries--on the west the atlantic ocean, the rhine and danube on the north, the euphrates on the east, and towards the south the sandy deserts of arabia and africa. the subsequent settlement of great britain and dacia supplied the two exceptions to the precepts of augustus, if we omit the transient conquests of trajan in the east, which were renounced by hadrian. by maintaining the dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits, the early emperors caused the roman name to be revered among the most remote nations of the earth. the terror of their arms added weight and dignity to their moderation. they preserved peace by a constant preparation for war. the soldiers, though drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the most profligate, of mankind, and no longer, as in the days of the ancient republic, recruited from rome herself, were preserved in their allegiance to the emperor, and their invincibility before the enemy, by the influences of superstition, inflexible discipline, and the hopes of reward. the peace establishment of the roman army numbered some , men, divided into thirty legions, who were confined, not within the walls of fortified cities, which the romans considered as the refuge of pusillanimity, but upon the confines of the empire; while , chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles of city cohorts and prætorian guards, watched over the safety of the monarch and the capitol. "wheresoever the roman conquers he inhabits," was a very just observation of seneca. colonies, composed for the most part of veteran soldiers, were settled throughout the empire. rich and prosperous cities, adorned with magnificent temples and baths and other public buildings, demonstrated at once the magnificence and majesty of the roman system. in britain, york was the seat of government. london was already enriched by commerce, and bath was celebrated for the salutary effects of its medicinal waters. all the great cities were connected with each other, and with the capital, by the public highway, which, issuing from the forum of rome, traversed italy, pervaded the provinces, and was terminated only by the frontiers of the empire. this great chain of communications ran in a direct line from city to city, and in its construction the roman engineers snowed little respect for the obstacles, either of nature or of private property. mountains were perforated and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams. the middle part of the road, raised into a terrace which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several strata of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with granite or large stones. distances were accurately computed by milestones, and the establishment of post-houses, at a distance of five or six miles, enabled a citizen to travel with ease a hundred miles a day along the roman roads. this freedom of intercourse, which was established throughout the roman world, while it extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life. rude barbarians of gaul laid aside their arms for the more peaceful pursuits of agriculture. the cultivation of the earth produced abundance in every portion of the empire, and accidental scarcity in any single province was immediately relieved by the plentifulness of its more fortunate neighbours. since the productions of nature are the materials of art, this flourishing condition of agriculture laid the foundation of manufactures, which provided the luxurious roman with those refinements of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour which his tastes demanded. commerce flourished, and the products of egypt and the east were poured out in the lap of rome. though there still existed within the body of the roman empire an unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits of society, the position of a slave was greatly improved in the progress of roman development. the power of life and death was taken from his master's hands and vested in the magistrate, to whom he had a right to appeal against intolerable treatment. these magistrates exercised the authority of the emperor and the senate in every quarter of the empire, inflexibly maintaining in their administration, as in the case of military government, the use of the latin tongue. greek was the natural idiom of science, latin that of government. _ii.--the seeds of dissolution_ but while roman society persisted in a state of peaceful security, it already contained within itself the seeds of dissolution. the long peace and uniform government of the romans introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. the minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. the citizens received laws and covenants from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army. of their ancient freedom nothing remained except the name, and that augustus, sensible that mankind is governed by names, was careful to preserve. it was by the will of the senate the emperor ruled. it was from the senate that he received the ancient titles of the republic--of consul, tribune, pontiff, and censor. even his title of _imperator_ was decreed him, according to the custom of the republic, only for a period of ten years. but this specious pretence, which was preserved until the last days of the empire, did not mask the real autocratic authority of the emperor. the fact that he nominated citizens to the senate was proof, if proof were needed, that the independence of that body was destroyed; for the principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive. moreover, the dependence of the emperor on the legions completely subverted the civil authority. to keep the military power, which had given him his position, from undermining it, augustus had summoned to his aid whatever remained in the fierce minds of his soldiers of roman prejudices, and interposing the majesty of the senate between the emperor and the army, boldly claimed their allegiance as the first magistrate of the republic. during a period of years, the dangers inherent to a military government were in a great measure suspended by this artful system. the soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength and of the weakness of the civil authority which afterwards was productive of such terrible calamities. the emperors caligula and domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics. the roman world, it is true, was shaken by the events that followed the death of nero, when, in the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword. but, excepting this violent eruption of military licence, the two centuries from augustus to commodus passed away unstained with civil blood and undisturbed by revolution. the roman citizens might groan under the tyranny, from which they could not hope to escape, of the unrelenting tiberius, the furious caligula, the profligate and cruel nero, the beastly vitellius, and the timid, inhuman domitian; but order was maintained, and it was not until commodus, the son of marcus aurelius antoninus, the philosopher, succeeded to the authority that his father had exercised for the benefit of the roman empire that the army fully realised, and did not fail to exercise, the power it had always possessed. during the first three years of his reign the vices of commodus affected the emperor rather than the state. while the young prince revelled in licentious pleasures, the management of affairs remained in the hands of his father's faithful councillors; but, in the year , the attempt of his sister lucilla to assassinate him produced fatal results. the assassin, in attempting the deed, exclaimed, "the senate sends you this!" and though the blow never reached the body of the emperor, the words sank deep into his heart. he turned upon the senate with relentless cruelty. the possession of either wealth or virtue excited the tyrant's fury. suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation, and the noblest blood of the senate was poured out like water. he has shed with impunity the noblest blood of rome; he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. a cup of drugged wine, delivered by his favourite concubine, plunged him in a deep sleep. at the instigation of lætus, his prætorian prefect, a robust youth was admitted into his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. with secrecy and celerity the conspirators sought out pertinax, the prefect of the city, an ancient senator of consular rank, and persuaded him to accept the purple. a large donative secured them the support of the prætorian guard, and the joyous senate eagerly bestowed upon the new augustus all the titles of imperial power. for eighty-six days pertinax ruled the empire with firmness and moderation, but the strictness of the ancient discipline that he attempted to restore in the army excited the hatred of the prætorian guards, and the new emperor was struck down on march , . _iii.--an empire at auction_ the prætorians had violated the sanctity of the throne by the atrocious murder of pertinax; they dishonored the majesty of it with their subsequent conduct. they ran out upon the ramparts of the city, and with a loud voice proclaimed that the roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction. sulpicianus, father-in-law of pertinax, and didius julianus, bid against each other for the prize. it fell to julian, who offered upwards of £ , sterling to each of the soldiers, and the author of this ignominious bargain received the insignia of the empire and the acknowledgments of a trembling senate. the news of this disgraceful auction was received by the legions of the frontiers with surprise, with indignation, and, perhaps, with envy. albinus, governor of britain, niger, governor of syria, and septimius severus, a native of africa, commander of the pannonian army, prepared to revenge the death of pertinax, and to establish their own claims to the vacant throne. marching night and day, severus crossed the julian alps, swept aside the feeble defences of julian, and put an end to a reign of power which had lasted but sixty-six days, and had been purchased with such immense treasure. having secured the supreme authority, severus turned his arms against his two competitors, and within three years, and in the course of two or three battles, established his position and brought about the death of both albinus and niger. the prosperity of rome revived, and a profound peace reigned throughout the world. at the same time, severus was guilty of two acts which were detrimental to the future interests of the republic. he relaxed the discipline of the army, increased their pay beyond the example of former times, re-established the prætorian guards, who had been abolished for their transaction with julian, and welded more firmly the chains of tyranny by filling the senate with his creatures. at the age of sixty-five in the year , he expired at york of a disorder which was aggravated by the labours of a campaign against the caledonians. severus recommended concord to his sons, caracalla and geta, and his sons to the army. the government of the civilised world was entrusted to the hands of brothers who were implacable enemies. a latent civil war brooded in the city, and hardly more than a year passed before the assassins of caracalla put an end to an impossible situation by murdering geta. twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death under the vague appellation of the friends of geta. the fears of macrinus, the controller of the civil affairs of the prætorian prefecture, brought about his death in the neighbourhood of carrhæ in syria on april , . for a little more than a year his successor governed the empire, but the necessary step of reforming the army brought about his ruin. on june , , he succumbed to the superior fortune of elagabulus, the grandson of severus, a youth trained in all the superstitions and vices of the east. under this sovereign rome was prostituted to the vilest vices of which human nature is capable. the sum of his infamy was reached when the master of the roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex. the shame and disgust of the soldiers resulted in his murder on march , , and the proclamation of his cousin, alexander severus. again the necessity of restoring discipline within the army led to the ruin of the emperor, and, despite thirteen years of just and moderate government, alexander was murdered in his tent on march , , on the banks of the rhine, and maximin, his chief lieutenant, a thracian, reigned in his stead. _iv.--tyranny and disaster_ fear of contempt, for his origin was mean and barbarian, made maximin one of the cruellest tyrants that ever oppressed the roman world. during the three years of his reign he disdained to visit either rome or italy, but from the banks of the rhine and the danube oppressed the whole state, and trampled on every principle of law and justice. the tyrant's avarice ruined not only private citizens, but seized the municipal funds of the cities, and stripped the very temples of their gold and silver offerings. maximus and balbinus, on july , , were declared emperors. the emperor maximus advanced to meet the furious tyrant, but the stroke of domestic conspiracy prevented the further eruption of civil war. maximin and his son were murdered by their disappointed troops in front of aquileia. three months later, maximus and balbinus, on july , , fell victims to their own virtues at the hands of the prætorian guard, gordian became emperor. at the end of six years, he, too, after an innocent and virtuous reign, succumbed to the ambition of the prefect philip, while engaged in a war with persia, and in march , the roman world recognized the sovereignty of an arabian robber. returning to rome, philip celebrated the secular games, on the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from the foundation of rome. from that date, which marked the fifth time that these rites had been performed in the history of the city, for the next twenty years the roman world was afflicted by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. six emperors in turn succeeded to the sceptre of philip and ended their lives, either as the victims of military licence, or in the vain attempt to stay the triumphal eruption of the goths and the franks and the suevi. in three expeditions the goths seized the bosphorus, plundered the cities of bithynia, ravaged greece, and threatened italy, while the franks invaded gaul, overran spain and the provinces of africa. some sparks of their ancient virtue enabled the senate to repulse the suevi, who threatened rome herself, but the miseries of the empire were not assuaged by this one triumph, and the successes of sapor, king of persia, in the east, seemed to foreshadow the immediate downfall of rome. six emperors and thirty tyrants attempted in vain to stay the course of disaster. famine and pestilence, tumults and disorders, and a great diminution of the population marked this period, which ended with the death of the emperor gallienus on march , . _v.--restorers of the roman world_ the empire, which had been oppressed and almost destroyed by the soldiers, the tyrants, and the barbarians, was saved by a series of great princes, who derived their obscure origin from the martial provinces of illyricum. within a period of about thirty years, claudius, aurelian, probus, diocletian and his colleagues triumphed over the foreign and domestic enemies of the state, re-established, with a military discipline, the strength of the frontier, and deserved the glorious title of restorers of the roman world. claudius gained a crushing victory over the goths, whose discomfiture was completed by disease in the year . and his successor, aurelian, in a reign of less than five years, put an end to the gothic war, chastised the germans who invaded italy, recovered gaul, spain, and britain from the roman usurpers, and destroyed the proud monarchy which zenobia, queen of palmyra, had erected in the east on the ruins of the afflicted empire. the murder of aurelian in the east (january ) led to a curious revival of the authority of the senate. during an interregnum of eight months the ancient assembly at rome governed with the consent of the army, and appeared to regain with the election of tacitus, one of their members, all their ancient prerogatives. their authority expired, however, with the death of his successor, probus, who delivered the empire once more from the invasions of the barbarians, and succumbed to the too common fate of assassination in august . carus, who was elected in his place, maintained the reputation of the roman arms in the east; but his supposed death by lightning, by delivering the sceptre into the hands of his sons carinus and numerian (december , ), once more placed the roman world at the mercy of profligacy and licentiousness. a year later, the election of the emperor diocletian (september , ) founded a new era in the history and fortunes of the empire. it was the artful policy of diocletian to destroy the last vestiges of the ancient constitution. dividing his unwieldly power among three other associates--maximian, a rough, brutal soldier, who ranked as augustus; and galerius and constantius, who bore the inferior titles of cæsar--the emperor removed the centre of government by gradual steps from rome. diocletian and maximian held their courts in the provinces, and the authority of the senators was destroyed by spoliation and death. _vi.--reign of the six emperors_ for twenty-one years diocletian held sway, establishing, with the assistance of his associates, the might of the roman arms in britain, africa, egypt, and persia; and then, on may , , in a spacious plain in the neighborhood of nicomedia, divested himself of the purple and abdicated the throne. on the same day at milan, maximian reluctantly made his resignation of the imperial dignity. according to the rules of the new constitution, constantius and galerius assumed the title of augustus, and nominated maximin and severus as cæsars. the elaborate machinery devised by diocletian at once broke down. galerius, who was supported by severus, intrigued for the possession of the whole roman world. constantine, the son of constantius, on account of his popularity with the army and the people, excited his suspicion, and only the flight of constantine saved him from death. he made his way to gaul, and, after taking part in a campaign with his father against the caledonians, received the title of augustus in the imperial palace at york on the death of constantius. civil war once more raged. maxentius, the son of maximian, was declared emperor of rome, and, with the assistance of his father, who broke from his retirement, defended his title against severus, who was taken prisoner at ravenna and executed at rome in february . galerius, who had raised licinius to fill the post vacated by the death of severus, invaded italy to reestablish his authority, but, after threatening rome, was compelled to retire. there were now six emperors. maximian and his son maxentius and constantine in the west; in the east, gelerius, maximin, and licinius. the second resignation of maximian, and his renewed attempt to seize the imperial power by seducing the soldiers of constantine, and his subsequent execution at marseilles in february , reduced the number to five. galerius died of a lingering disorder in the following year, and the civil war that broke out between maxentius and constantine, culminating in a battle near rome in , placed the sceptre of the west in the hands of the son of constantius. in the east, the alliance between licinius and maximin dissolved into discord, and the defeat of the latter on april , , ended in his death three or four months later. the empire was now divided between constantine and licinius, and the ambition of the two princes rendered peace impossible. in the years and civil conflict broke out, ending, after the battle of adrianople and the siege of byzantium, in a culminating victory for constantine in the field of chrysopolis, in september. licinius, taken prisoner, laid himself and his purple at the feet of his lord and master, and was duly executed. by successive steps, from his first assuming the purple at york, to the resignation of licinius, constantine had reached the undivided sovereignty of the roman world. his success contributed to the decline of the empire by the expense of blood and treasure, and by the perpetual increase as well of the taxes as of the military establishments. the foundation of constantinople and the establishment of the christian religion were the immediate and memorable consequences of this revolution. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--ii _i.--decay of the empire under constantine_ the unfortunate licinius was the last rival who opposed the greatness of constantine. after a tranquil and prosperous reign, the conqueror bequeathed to his family the inheritance of the roman empire; a new capital, a new policy, and a new religion; and the innovations which he established have been embraced, and consecrated, by succeeding generations. byzantium, which, under the more august name of constantinople, was destined to preserve the shadow of the roman power for nearly a thousand years after it had been extinguished by rome herself, was the site selected for the new capital. its boundary was traced by the emperor, and its circumference measured some sixteen miles. in a general decay of the arts no architect could be found worthy to decorate the new capital, and the cities of greece and asia were despoiled of their most valuable ornaments to supply this want of ability. in the course of eight or ten years the city, with its beautiful forum, its circus, its imperial palace, its theatres, baths, churches, and houses, was completed with more haste than care. the dedication of the new rome was performed with all due pomp and ceremony, and a population was provided by the expedient of summoning some of the wealthiest families in the empire to take up their residence within its walls. the gradual decay of rome had eliminated that simplicity of manners which was the just pride of the ancient republic. under the autocratic system of diocletian, a hierarchy of dependents had sprung up. the rank of each was marked with the most scrupulous exactness, and the purity of the latin language was debased by the invention of the deceitful titles of your sincerity, your excellency, your illustrious and magnificent highness. the officials of the empire were divided into three classes of the illustrious, respectable, and honourable. the consuls were still annually elected, but obtained the semblance of their ancient authority, not from the suffrages of the people, but from the whim of the emperor. on the morning of january they assumed the ensigns of their dignity, and in the two capitals of the empire they celebrated their promotion to office by the annual games. as soon as they had discharged these customary duties, they retired into the shade of private life, to enjoy, during the remainder of the year, the undisturbed contemplation of their own greatness. their names served only as the legal date of the year in which they had filled the chair of marius and of cicero. the ancient title of patrician became now an empty honour bestowed by the emperor. four prefects held jurisdiction over as many divisions of the empire, and two municipal prefects ruled rome and constantinople. the proconsuls and vice-prefects belonged to the rank of respectable, and the provincial magistrates to the lower class of honourable. in the military system, eight master-generals exercised their jurisdiction over the cavalry and the infantry, while thirty-five military commanders, with the titles of counts and dukes, under their orders, held sway in the provinces. the army itself was recruited with difficulty, for such was the horror of the profession of a soldier which affected the minds of the degenerate romans that compulsory levies had frequently to be made. the number of the barbarian auxiliaries enormously increased, and they were included in the legions and the troops that surrounded the throne. seven ministers with the rank of illustrious regulated the affairs of the palace, and a host of official spies and torturers swelled the number of the immediate followers of the sovereign. the general tribute, or indiction, as it was called, was derived largely from the taxation of landed property. every fifteen years an accurate census, or survey, was made of all lands, and the proprietor was compelled to state the true facts of his affairs under oath, and paid his contribution partly in gold and partly in kind. in addition to this land tax there was a capitation tax on every branch of commercial industry, and "free gifts" were exacted from the cities and provinces on the occasion of any joyous event in the family of the emperor. the peculiar "free gift" of the senate of rome amounted to some $ , . constantine celebrated the twentieth year of his reign at rome in the year . the glory of his triumph was marred by the execution, or murder, of his son crispus, whom he suspected of a conspiracy, and the reputation of the emperor who established the christian religion in the roman world was further stained by the death of his second wife, fausta. with a successful war against the goths in , and the expulsion of the sarmatians in , his reign closed. he died at nicomedia on may , . _ii.--the division of east and west_ the unity of the empire was again destroyed by the three sons of constantine. a massacre of their kinsmen preceded the separation of the roman world between constantius, constans, and constantine. within three years, civil war eliminated constantine. the conflict among the emperors resulted in a doubtful war with persia, and the almost complete extinction of the christian monarchy which had been founded for fifty-six years in armenia. constantius was left sole emperor in . he associated with himself successively as cæsars the two nephews of the great constantine, gallus and julian. the first, being suspected, was destroyed in ; the second succeeded to the purple in . trained in the school of the philosophers, and proved as a commander in a series of successful campaigns against the german hordes, julian brought to the throne a genius which, in other times, might have effected the reformation of the empire. the sufferings of his youth had associated in a mind susceptible of the most lively impressions the names of christ and of constantius, the ideas of slavery and religion. at the age of twenty he renounced the christian faith, and boldly asserted the doctrines of paganism. his accession to the supreme power filled the minds of the christians with horror and indignation. but instructed by history and reflection, julian extended to all the inhabitants of the roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration, and the only hardship which he inflicted on the christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics. while re-establishing and reforming the old pagan system and attempting to subvert christianity, he held out a hand of succour to the persecuted jews, asked to be permitted to pay his grateful vows in the holy city of jerusalem, and was only prevented from rebuilding the temple by a supposed preternatural interference. he suppressed the authority of george, archbishop of alexandria, who had infamously persecuted and betrayed the people under his spiritual care, and that odious priest, who has been transformed by superstition into the renowned st. george of england, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter, fell a victim to the just resentment of the alexandrian multitude. the persian system of monarchy, introduced by diocletian, was distasteful to the philosophic mind of julian; he refused the title of lord and master, and attempted to restore in all its pristine simplicity the ancient government of the republic. in a campaign against the persians he received a mortal wound, and died on june , . the election of jovian, the first of the domestics, by the acclamation of the soldiers, resulted in a disgraceful peace with the persians, which aroused the anger and indignation of the roman world, and the new emperor hardly survived this act of weakness for nine months (february , ). the throne of the roman world remained ten days without a master. at the end of that period the civil and military powers of the empire solemnly elected valentinian as emperor at nice in bithynia. the new augustus divided the vast empire with his brother valens, and this division marked the final separation of the western and eastern empires. this arrangement continued, until the death of valentinian in , when the western empire was divided between his sons, gratian and valentinian ii. his reign had been notable for the stemming of the invasion of the alemanni of gaul, the incursions of the burgundians and the saxons, the restoration of britain from the attacks of the picts and scots, the recovery of africa by the emperor's general, theodosius, and the diplomatic settlement with the approaching hordes of the goths, who already swarmed upon the frontiers of the empire. under the three emperors the roman world began to feel more severely the gradual pressure exerted by the hordes of barbarians that moved westward. in the goths, pursued by the huns, who had come from the steppes of china into europe, sought the protection of valens, who succoured them by transporting them over the danube into roman territory. they repaid his clemency by uniting their arms with those of the huns, and defeating and killing him at the battle of hadrianople in . to save the provinces from the ravages of the barbarians, gratian appointed theodosius, son of his father's general, emperor of the east, and the wisdom of his choice was justified by the success of one who added a new lustre to the title of augustus. by prudent strategy, theodosius divided and defeated the goths, and compelled them to submit. the sons of theodosius, arcadius and honorius succeeded respectively to the government of the east and the west in . the symptoms of decay, which not even the wise rule of theodosius had been able to remove, had grown more alarming. the luxury of the romans was more shameless and dissolute, and as the increasing depredations of the barbarians had checked industry and diminished wealth, this profuse luxury must have been the result of that indolent despair which enjoys the present hour and declines the thoughts of futurity. the secret and destructive poison of the age had affected the camps of the legions. the infantry had laid aside their armour, and, discarding their shields, advanced, trembling, to meet the cavalry of the goths and the arrows of the barbarians, who easily overwhelmed the naked soldiers, no longer deserving the name of romans. the enervated legionaries abandoned their own and the public defence, and their pusillanimous indolence may be considered the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire. _iii.--ruin by goth, vandal, and hun_ the genius of rome expired with theodosius. his sons within three months had once more sharply divided the empire. at a time when the only hope of delaying its ruin depended on the firm union of the two sections, the subject of arcadius and honorius were instructed by their respective masters to view each other in a hostile light, to rejoice in their mutual calamity, and to embrace as their faithful allies the barbarians, whom they incited to invade the territories of their countrymen. alarmed at the insecurity of rome, honorius about this time fixed the imperial residence within the naturally fortified city of ravenna--an example which was afterwards imitated by his feeble successors, the gothic kings and the exarchs; and till the middle of the eighth century ravenna was considered as the seat of government and the capital of italy. the reign of arcadius in the east marked the complete division of the roman world. his subjects assumed the language and manners of greeks, and his form of government was a pure and simple monarchy. the name of the roman republic, which so long preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the latin provinces. a series of internal disputes, both civil and religious, marked his career of power, and his reign may be regarded as notable if only for the election of st. john chrysostom to the head of the church of constantinople. arcadius died in may , and was succeeded by his supposed son, theodosius, then a boy of seven, the reins of power being first held by the prefect anthemius, and afterwards by his sister pulcheria, who governed the eastern empire--in fact, for nearly forty years. the wisdom of honorius, emperor of the west, in removing his capital to ravenna, was soon justified by events. alaric, king of the goths, advanced in to the gates of rome, and completely blockaded the city. in the course of a long siege, thousands of romans died of plague and famine, and only a heavy ransom, amounting to $ , , , relieved the citizens from their terrible situation in the year . in the same year alaric again besieged rome, after fruitless negotiations with honorius, and his attempt once more proving successful, he created attilus, prefect of the city, emperor. but the imprudent measures of his puppet sovereign exasperated alaric. attilus was formally deposed in , and the infuriated goth besieged and sacked rome, and ravaged italy. the spoil that the barbarians carried away with them comprised nearly all the movable wealth of the city. the ancient capital was devastated, the exquisite works of art destroyed, and nearly all the monuments of a glorious past sacrificed to the insatiate greed of the conquerors. fire helped to complete the ruin wrought by the goths, and it is not easy to compute the multitude of citizens who, from an honourable station and a prosperous fortune, were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of captives and exiles. the complete ruin of italy was prevented by the death of alaric in . during the reign of honorius, the goths, burgundians, and franks were settled in gaul. the maritime countries, between the seine and the loire, followed the example of britain in , and threw off the yoke of the empire. aquitaine, with its capital at aries, received, under the title of the seven provinces, the right of convening an annual assembly for the management of its own affairs. honorius died in , and was succeeded by valentinian iii. his long reign was marked by a series of disasters, which foretold the rapidly approaching dissolution of the western empire. genseric, king of the vandals, in crossed into africa, conquered the province, and set up in the depopulated territory, with carthage as his capital, a new rule and government. italy was filled with fugitives from africa, and a barbarian race, which had issued from the frozen regions of the north, established their victorious reign over one of the fairest provinces of the empire. two years later, in , a new and even more terrible danger threatened the empire. the goths and vandals, flying before the huns, had oppressed the western world. the hordes of these barbarians, now gathering strength in their union under their king, attila, threatened an attack upon the eastern empire. in appearance their chieftain was terrible in the extreme; his portrait exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern calmuck: a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body of nervous strength, though of a disproportionate form. he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired. this savage hero, who had subdued germany and scythia, and almost exterminated the burgundians of the rhine, and had conquered scandinavia, was able to bring into the field , barbarians. an unsuccessful raid into persia induced him to turn his attention to the eastern empire, and the enervated troops of theodosius the younger dissolved before the fury of his onset. he ravaged up to the very gates of constantinople, and only a humiliating treaty preserved his dominion to the "invincible augustus" of the east. after the death of theodosius the younger, and the accession of marcian, the husband of pulcheria, attila threatened, in , both empires. an incursion of his hordes into gaul was rendered abortive by the conduct of the patrician, Ætius, who, uniting all the various troops of gaul and germany, the saxons, the burgundians, the franks, under their merovingian prince, and the visigoths under their king, theodoric, after two important battles, induced the huns to retreat from the field of chalons. attila, diverted from his purpose, turned into italy, and the citizens of the various towns fled before the savage destroyer. many families of aquileia, padua, and the adjacent towns, found a safe refuge in the neighbouring islands of the adriatic, where their place of refuge evolved, in time, into the famous republic of venice. valentinian fled from ravenna to rome, prepared to desert his people and his empire. the fortitude of Ætius alone supported and preserved the tottering state. leo, bishop of rome, in his sacerdotal robes, dared to demand the clemency of the savage king, and the intervention of st. peter and st. paul is supposed to have induced attila to retire beyond the danube, with the princess honoria as his bride. he did not long survive this last campaign, and in he died, and was buried amidst all the savage pomp and grief of his subjects. his death resolved the bonds that had united the various nations of which his subjects were composed, and in a very few years domestic discord had extinguished the empire of the huns. genseric, king of the vandals, sacked and pillaged the ancient capital in june . the vacant throne was filled by the nomination of theodoric, king of the goths. the senate of rome bitterly opposed the elevation of this stranger, and though avitus might have supported his title against the votes of an unarmed assembly, he fell immediately he incurred the resentment of count ricimer, one of the chief commanders of the barbarian troops who formed the military defence of italy. at a distance from his gothic allies, he was compelled to abdicate (october , ), and majorian was raised to fill his place. _iv.--the last emperor of the west_ the successor of avitus was a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise in a degenerate age to vindicate the honour of the human species. in the ruin of the roman world he loved his people, sympathised with their distress, and studied by judicial and effectual remedies to allay their sufferings. he reformed the most intolerable grievances of the taxes, attempted to restore and maintain the edifices of rome, and to establish a new and healthier moral code. his military abilities and his fortune were not in proportion to his merits. an unsuccessful attempt against the vandals to recover the lost provinces of africa resulted in the loss of his fleet, and his return from this disastrous campaign terminated his reign. he was deposed by ricimer, and five days later died of a reported dysentery, on august , . at the command of ricimer, the senate bestowed the imperial title on libius severus, who reigned as long as it suited his patron. the increasing difficulties, however, of the kingdom of italy, due largely to the naval depredation of the vandals, compelled ricimer to seek the assistance of the emperor leo, who had succeeded marcian in the east in . leo determined to extirpate the tyranny of the vandals, and solemnly invested anthemius with the diadem and purple of the west ( ). in , ricimer raised the senator olybrius to the purple, and, advancing from milan, entered and sacked rome and murdered anthemius (july , ). forty days after this calamitous event, the tyrant ricimer died of a painful disease, and two months later death also removed olybrius. the emperor leo nominated julius nepos to the vacant throne. after suppressing a rival in the person of glycerius, julius succumbed, in , to a furious sedition of the barbarian confederates, who, under the command of the patrician orestes, marched from rome to ravenna. the troops would have made orestes emperor, but when he declined they consented to acknowledge his son augustulus as emperor of the west. the ambition of the patrician might have seemed satisfied, but he soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that he must either be the slave or the victim of his barbarian mercenaries. the soldiers demanded a third part of the land of italy. orestes rejected the audacious demand, and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of odoacer, a bold barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers that if they dared to associate under his command they might extort the justice that had been denied to their dutiful petition. orestes was executed, and odoacer, resolving to abolish the useless and expensive office of the emperor of the west, compelled the unfortunate augustulus to resign. so ended, in the year , the empire of the west, and the last roman emperor lived out his life in retirement in the lucullan villa on the promontory of misenum. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--iii _i.--the growth of the christian church_ the policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious part of their subjects. the various modes of worship which prevailed in the roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; by the magistrate as equally useful. under this spirit of toleration the christian church grew with great rapidity. five main causes effectually favoured and assisted this development. . the inflexible and intolerant zeal of the christians, purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit of the jewish religion. . the doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important theory. . the miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. . the pure and austere morals of the early christians. . the union and discipline of the christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the roman empire. the early christians of the mother church at jerusalem subscribed to the mosaic law, and the first fifteen bishops of jerusalem were all circumcised jews. but the gentile church rejected the intolerable weight of mosaic ceremonies, and at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practise. after the ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public religion of the jews, the nazarenes, as the christian jews of jerusalem were called, retired to the little town of pella, from whence they could make easy and frequent pilgrimages to the holy city. when the emperor hadrian forbade the jewish people from approaching the precincts of the city, the nazarenes escaped from the common proscription by disavowing the mosaic law. a small remnant, however, still combined the mosaic ceremonies with the christian faith, and existed, until the fourth century, under the name of ebeonites. the immortality of the soul had been held by a few sages of greece and rome, who were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. but reason could not justify the specious and noble principles of the disciples of plato. to the christians alone the authority of christ gave a certainty of a future life, and when the promise of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind on condition of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts of the gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have been accepted by great numbers of every religion, of every rank, and of every province in the roman empire. the immediate expectation of the second coming of christ, and the reign of the son of god with his saints for a thousand years, strengthened the ancient christians against all trials and sufferings. the supernatural gifts which even in this life were ascribed to the christians above the rest of mankind must have conduced to their own comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the power of expelling demons, of healing the sick, and of raising the dead, were prodigies claimed by the christian church at the time of the apostles and their first disciples. repentance for their past sins, and the laudable desire of supporting the reputation of the society in which they were engaged, rendered the lives of the primitive christians much purer and more austere than those of their pagan contemporaries or their degenerate successors. they were insistent in their condemnation of pleasure and luxury, and, in their search after purity, were induced to approve reluctantly that institution of marriage which they were compelled to tolerate. a state of celibacy was regarded as the nearest approach to the divine perfection, and there were in the primitive church a great number of persons devoted to the profession of perpetual chastity. the government of the primitive church was based on the principles of freedom and equality. the societies which were instituted in the cities of the roman empire were united only by the ties of faith and charity. the want of discipline and human learning was supplied by the occasional assistance of the "prophets "--men or women who, as often as they felt the divine impulse, poured forth the effusions of the spirit in the assembly, of the faithful. in the course of time bishops and presbyters exercised solely the functions of legislation and spiritual guidance. a hundred years after the death of the apostles, the bishop, acting as the president of the presbyterial college, administered the sacrament and discipline of the church, managed the public funds, and determined all such differences as the faithful were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge. every society formed within itself a separate and independent republic, and towards the end of the second century, realizing the advantages that might result from a closer union of their interests and designs, these little states adopted the useful institution of a provincial synod. the bishops of the various churches met in the capital of the province at stated periods, and issued their decrees or canons. the institution of synods was so well suited to private ambition and to public interest that it was received throughout the whole empire. a regular correspondence was established between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated and approved their respective proceedings, and the catholic church soon assumed the form and acquired the strength of a great federative republic. the community of goods which for a short time had been adopted in the primitive church was gradually abolished, and a system of voluntary gifts was substituted. in the time of the emperor decius it was the opinion of the magistrates that the christians of rome were possessed of very considerable wealth, and several laws, enacted with the same design as our statutes of mortmain, forbade real estate being given or bequeathed to any corporate body, without special sanctions. the bishops distributed these revenues, exercised the right of exclusion or excommunication of recalcitrant members of the church, and maintained the dignity of their office with ever increasing pomp and circumstance. _ii.--the days of persecution_ the persecution of christians by the roman emperors must at first sight seem strange, when one considers their inoffensive mode of faith and worship. when one remembers the scepticism that prevailed among the pagans, and the tolerant view of all religions which was characteristic of the roman citizen in the early years of the empire, this harshness seems all the more remarkable. it can be explained partly by the misapprehension which existed in the mind of the pagan world as to the principles of the christian faith, and partly by the organization of the sect. the jews were allowed the exercise of their unsocial and exclusive faith. but the jews were a nation; the christians were a sect. moreover, the christians were regarded as apostates from the ancient faith of moses, and, worshipping no visible god, were held to be atheists. the roman policy also viewed with the utmost jealousy and distrust any association among its subjects, and the secret and nocturnal meetings of the christians appeared peculiarly dangerous in the eyes of the law. they were oppressed by the emperor domitian. trajan protected their meetings by requiring definite evidence of these illegal assemblies, and an informer who failed in his proofs was subject to a severe or capital penalty. but the edicts of hadrian and antoninus pius protected the church from the danger of popular clamour in times of disaster, declaring that the voice of the multitude should never be admitted as legal evidence to convict or to punish those unfortunate persons who had embraced the enthusiasm of the christians. the authority of origen and dionysius annihilates that formidable army of martyrs, whose relics, drawn for the most part from the catacombs of rome, have replenished so many churches, and whose marvellous achievements have been the subject of so many volumes of holy romance. the martyrdom of cyprian, bishop of carthage, on september , , was one of the most notable of that period. under marcus antoninus, the christians were treated harshly, but the tyrant commodus protected them by his leniency. after a temporary period of persecution during the reign of severus, the christians enjoyed a calm from to . the storms gathered again under decius, and so vigorous was the persecution that the bishops of the most considerable cities were removed by exile or death. _iii.--the church under constantine_ from to , during the reign of diocletian, the christian church enjoyed peace and prosperity, but in the latter year galerius persuaded the emperor to renew the persecution of the sect. an edict on february enacted that all churches throughout the empire should be demolished, and the punishment of death was pronounced against all who should presume to hold any secret assemblies for the purposes of religious worship. many suffered martyrdom under this cruel enactment. churches everywhere were burnt, and sacred books destroyed. three more edicts published before march led to the imprisonment of all persons of the ecclesiastical order, compelled the magistrates to exercise torture to subvert the religion of their christian prisoners, and made it the duty, as well as the interest, of the imperial officers to discover, to pursue, and to torment the most obnoxious among the faithful. but after six years of persecution, the mind of galerius, softened by salutary reflection, induced him to attempt some reparation. in the edict of toleration which he published on april , , he expresses the hope "that our indulgence will engage the christians to offer up their prayers to the deity whom they adore for our safety and prosperity, and for that of the republic." the triumph of the great constantine established the security of the christian church from the attacks of the pagans. converted in , constantine, as soon as he had achieved the conquest of italy, issued the edict of milan ( ), declaring that the places of worship which had been confiscated should be restored to the church without dispute, without delay, and without expense. though himself never received by baptism into the church, until his last moments, his powerful patronage of the christians, and his edicts of toleration, removed all the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of christianity. the faith of christ became the national religion of the empire. the soldiers bore upon their helmets and upon their shields the sacred emblem of the cross. all the machinery of government was employed to propagate the faith, not only within the empire, but beyond its borders. confirmed in his new religion by the miraculous vision of the cross, constantine, who was the master of the world, consented to recognise the superiority of the ecclesiastical orders in all spiritual matters, while retaining himself the temporal power. the persecution of heresy was carried out by constantine with all the ardour of a convert. an edict confiscated the public property of the heretics to the use either of the revenue or the catholic church, and the penal regulations of diocletian against the christians were now employed against the schismatics. the donatists, who maintained the apostolic succession of donatus, primate of carthage, as opposed to cæcilian, were suppressed in africa, and a general synod attempted to regulate the faith of the church. the subject of the nature of the divine trinity had early given rise to discussion. of the three main heretical views, that of arius and his disciples was the most prevalent. he held in effect that the son, by whom all things were made, though he had been begotten before all worlds, yet had not always existed. he shone only with the reflected light of his almighty father, and, like the sons of the roman emperors, who were invested with the titles of cæsar or augustus. he governed the universe. the tritheists advocated a system which seemed to establish three independent deities, while the sabellian theory allowed only to the man jesus the inspiration of the divine wisdom. the consubstantiality of the father and of the son had been established by the council of nicæa in , but the east ranged itself for the most part under the banner of the arian heresy. at first indifferent, constantine at last persecuted the arians, who later, under constantius, were received into favour. constantinople, which for forty years was the stronghold of arianism, was converted to the orthodox faith under theodosius by gregory nazianzen. _iv.--the conversion of the world_ the pagan religion was finally destroyed about the year , and the faintest vestiges of it were not visible thirty years later. its influence, however, might be observed in many of the ceremonies which were introduced into the church, and the worship of martyrs and relics seemed to revive a system of polytheism by the worship of a hierarchy of saints. among the most famous of the dignitaries of the church at this period was the archbishop of constantinople, who was distinguished by the epithet of chrysostom, or the golden mouth. he attempted to purify the eastern empire, excited the animosity of the empress eudoxia, and died in exile in . the monastic system had been founded by antony, an illiterate youth, in the year , by the establishment on mount cobyim, near the red sea, of a colony of ascetics, who renounced all the business and pleasures in life as the price of eternal happiness. a long series of hermits, monks, and anachorets propagated the system and, patronised by athanasius, it spread to all parts of the world. the monastic profession was an act of voluntary devotion, and the inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal vengeance of the god whom he deserted. the monks had to give a blind submission to the commands of their abbot, however absurd, and the freedom of the mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of credulity and submission. in their dress and diet they preserved the most rigorous simplicity, and they subsisted entirely by their own manual exertions. but in the course of time this simplicity vanished, and, enriched by the offerings of the faithful, they assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged in the luxury of extravagance. the conversion of the barbarians followed upon their invasion of the roman world; but they were involved in the arian heresy, and from their advocacy of that cause they were characterised by the name of heretics, an epithet more odious than that of barbarian. the bitterness engendered by this reproach confirmed them in their faith, and the vandals in africa persecuted the orthodox catholic with all the vigour and cruel arts of religious tyranny. * * * * * decline and fall of the roman empire--iv _i.--theodoric the ostrogoth_ after the fall of the roman empire in the west, an interval of fifty years, until the memorable reign of justinian, is faintly marked by the obscure names and imperfect annals of zeno, anastasius, and justin, who successively ascended the throne of constantinople. during the same period italy revived and nourished under the government of a gothic king, who might have deserved a statue among the best and bravest of the ancient romans. theodoric the ostrogoth, the fourteenth in lineal descent of royal line of the amali, was born ( ) in the neighbourhood of vienna two years after the death of attila. the murmurs of the goths, who complained that they were exposed to intolerable hardships, determined theodoric to attempt an adventure worthy of his courage and ambition. he boldly demanded the privilege of rescuing italy and rome from odoacer, and at the head of his people forced his way, between the years and , through hostile country into italy. in three battles he triumphed over odoacer, forced that monarch to capitulate on favourable terms at ravenna ( ), and after pretending to allow him to share his sovereignty of italy, assassinated him in the same year. the long reign of theodoric ( - ) was marked by a transient return of peace and prosperity to italy. his domestic and foreign policy were dictated alike by wisdom and necessity. his people were settled on the land, which they held by military tenure. a series of matrimonial alliances secured him the support of the franks, the burgundians, the visigoths, the vandals, and the thuringians, and his sword preserved his territory from the incursions of rival barbarians and the two disastrous attacks ( and ) that envy prompted the emperor anastasius to attempt. _ii.--justinian the great_ the death of the emperor anastasius had raised to the throne a dardanian peasant, who by his arts secured the suffrage of the guards, despoiled and destroyed his more powerful rivals, and reigned under the name of justin i. from to . he was succeeded by his nephew, the great justinian, who for thirty-eight years directed the fortunes of the roman empire. the empress theodora, who before her marriage had been a theatrical wanton, was seated, by the fondness of the emperor, on the throne as an equal and independent colleague in the sovereignty. her rapacity, her cruelty, and her pride were the subject of contemporary writings, but her benevolence to her less fortunate sisters, and her courage amidst the factions and dangers of the court, justly entitle her to a certain nobility of character. constantinople in the age of justinian was torn by the factions of the circus. the rival bands of charioteers, who wore respectively liveries of green and blue, created in the capital of the east, as they had created in rome, two factions among the populace. justinian's support of the blues led to a serious sedition in the capital. the two factions were united by a common desire for vengeance, and with the watchword of "nika" (vanquish) (january ), raged in tumult through constantinople for five days. at the command of theodora , veterans who could be trusted marched through the burning streets to the hippodrome, and there, supported by the repentant blues, massacred the unresisting mob. the eastern empire, after rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations whom she had conquered beyond the adriatic, and as far as the frontiers of ethiopia and persia. justinian reigned over provinces and cities. the arts and agriculture flourished under his rule, but the avarice and profusion of justinian oppressed the people. his expensive taste for building almost exhausted the resources of the empire. heavy custom tolls, taxes on the food and industry of the poor, the exercise of intolerable monopolies, were not excused or compensated for by the parsimonious saving in the salaries of court officials, and even in the pay of the soldiers. his stately edifices were cemented with the blood and treasures of his people, and the rapacity and luxury of the emperor were imitated by the civil magistrates and officials. the schools of athens, which still kept alight the sacred flame of the ancient philosophy, were suppressed by justinian. the academy of the platonics, the lyceum of the peripatetics, the portico of the stoics, and the garden of the epicureans had long survived. with the death of simplicius and his six companions, who terminate the long list of grecian philosophers, the golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the platonic succession was broken, and the edict of justinian ( ) imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of athens. the roman consulship was also abolished by justinian in ; but this office, the title of which admonished the romans of their ancient freedom, still lived in the minds of the people. they applauded the gracious condescension of successive princes by whom it was assumed in the first year of their reign, and three centuries elapsed after the death of justinian before that obsolete office, which had been suppressed by law, could be abolished by custom. the usurpation by gelimer ( ) of the vandalic crown of africa, which belonged of right to hilderic, first encouraged justinian to undertake the african war. hilderic had granted toleration to the catholics, and for this reason was held in reproach by his arian subjects. his compulsory abdication afforded the emperor of the east an opportunity of interfering in the cause of orthodoxy. a large army was entrusted to the command of belisarius, one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation. proved in the persian war, belisarius was given unlimited authority. he set sail from constantinople with a fleet of six hundred ships in june . he landed on the coast of africa in september, defeated the degenerate vandals, reduced carthage within a few days, utterly vanquished gelimer, and completed the conquest of the ancient roman province by . the vandals in africa fled beyond the power or even the knowledge of the romans. _iii.--gothic italy_ dissensions in italy excited the ambition of justinian. belisarius was sent with another army to sicily in , and after subduing that island and suppressing a revolt in africa, he invaded italy in . policy dictated the retreat of the goths, and belisarius entered rome (december ). in march, vitiges, the gothic ruler, returned with a force of one hundred and fifty thousand men. the valour of the roman general supported a siege of forty-one days and the intrigues of the pope silverius, who was exiled by his orders; and, finally, with the assistance of a seasonable reinforcement, belisarius compelled the barbarians to retire in march of the following year. the conquests of ravenna and the suppression of the invasion of the franks completed the subjugation of the gothic kingdom by december . the success of belisarius and the intrigues of his secret enemies had excited the jealousy of justinian. he was recalled, and the eunuch narses was sent to italy, as a powerful rival, to oppose the interests of the conqueror of rome and africa. the infidelity of antonina, which excited her husband's just indignation, was excused by the empress theodora, and her powerful support was given to the wife of the last of the roman heroes, who, after serving again against the persians, returned to the capital, to be received not with honour and triumph, but with disgrace and contempt and a fine of $ , . the incursions of the lombards, the slavonians, and the avars and the turks, and the successful raids of the king of persia were among the number of the important events of the reign of justinian. to maintain his position in africa and italy taxed his resources to their utmost limit. the victories of justinian were pernicious to mankind; the desolation of africa was such that in many parts a stranger might wander whole days without meeting the face of either a friend or an enemy. the revolts of the goths, under their king, totila ( ), once more demanded the presence of belisarius, and, a hero on the banks of the euphrates, a slave in the palace of constantinople, he accepted with reluctance the painful task of supporting his own reputation and retrieving the faults of his successors. he was too late to save rome from the goths, by whom it was taken in december ; but he recovered it in the following february. after his recall by his envious sovereign in september , rome was once more taken by the goths. the successful repulse of the franks and alemanni finally restored the kingdom to the rule of the emperor. belisarius died on march , . the emperor survived his death only eight months, and passed away, in the eighty-third year of his life and the thirty-eighth of his reign, on november , . the most lasting memorial of his reign is to be found neither in his victories nor his monuments, but in the immortal works of the code, the pandects, and the institutes, in which the civil jurisprudence of the romans was digested, and by means of which the public reason of the romans has been silently or studiously transfused into the domestic institutions of the whole of europe. _iv.--gregory the great_ justinian was succeeded by his nephew, justin ii., who lived to see the conquest of the greater part of italy by alboin, king of the lombards ( - ), the disaffection of the exarch, narses, and the ruin of the revived glories of the roman world. during a period of years italy was unequally divided between the king of the lombards and the exarchate of ravenna. rome relapsed into a state of misery. the campania was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness. the stagnation of a deluge caused by the torrential swelling of the tiber produced a pestilential disease, and a stranger visiting rome might contemplate with horror the solitude of the city. gregory the great, whose pontificate lasted from to , reconciled the arians of italy and spain to the catholic church, conquered britain in the name of the cross, and established his right to interfere in the management of the episcopal provinces of greece, spain, and gaul. the merits of gregory were treated by the byzantine court with reproach and insult, but in the attachment of a grateful people he found the purest reward of a citizen and the best right of a sovereign. the short and virtuous reign of tiberius ( - ), which succeeded that of justin, made way for that of maurice. for twenty years maurice ruled with honesty and honour. but the parsimony of the emperor, and his attempt to cure the inveterate evil of a military despotism, led to his undoing, and in he was murdered with his children. a like fate befell the emperor phocas, who succumbed in to the fortunes of heraclius, the son of crispus, exarch of africa. for thirty-two years heraclius ruled the roman world. in three campaigns he chastised the rising power of persia, drove the armies of chosroes from syria, palestine, and egypt, rescued constantinople from the joint siege of the avars and persians ( ), and finally reduced the persian monarch to the defence of his hereditary kingdom. the deposition and murder of chosroes by his son siroes ( ) concluded the successes of the emperor. a treaty of peace was arranged, and heraclius returned in triumph to constantinople, where, after the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peacefully enjoyed the sabbath of his toils. the year after his return he made the pilgrimage to jerusalem to restore the true cross to the holy sepulchre. in the last eight years of his reign heraclius lost to the arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the persians. heraclius died in . his descendants continued to fill the throne in the persons of constantine iii. ( ), heracleonas ( ), constans ii. ( ), constantine iv. ( ), justinian ii. ( ), until , when an interval of six years, divided into three reigns, made way for the rise of the isaurian dynasty. _v.--the new era of charlemagne_ leo iii. ascended the throne on march , , and the purple descended to his family, by the rights of heredity, for three generations. the isaurian dynasty is most notable for the part it played in ecclesiastical history. the introduction of images into the christian church had confused the simplicity of religious worship. the education of leo, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with jews and arabs, had inspired him with a hatred of images. by two edicts he proscribed the existence, as well as the use, of religious pictures. this heresy of leo and of his successors and descendants, constantine v. ( ), leo iv. ( ), and constantine vi. ( ), whose blinding by his mother irene is one of the most tragic stories of roman history, justified the popes in rebelling against the authority of the emperor, and in restoring and establishing the supremacy of rome. gregory ii. saved the city from the attacks of the lombards, who had seized ravenna and extinguished the series of greek exarchs in . he secured the assistance of pepin, and the real governor of the french monarchy--charles martel, who, by his signal victory over the saracens, had saved europe from the mohammedan yoke. twice--in and --pepin marched to the relief of the city. his son charlemagne, in , seemed to secure the permanent safety of the ancient capital by the conquest of lombardy, and for twenty-six years he ruled the romans as his subjects. the people swore allegiance to his person and his family, and the elections of the popes were examined and authorised by him. the senate exercised its rights by proclaiming him patrician and of the power of the emperor; nothing was lacking except the title. a document, known as the forged decretals, which assigned the free and perpetual sovereignty of rome, italy, and the provinces of the west to the popes by constantine, was presented by pope hadrian i. to charlemagne. this document served to absolve the popes from their debt of gratitude to the french monarch, and excused the revolt of rome from the authority of the eastern empire. though constantinople returned, under irene, to the employment of images, and the seventh general council of nicæa, september , , pronounced the worship of the greeks as agreeable to scripture and reason, the division between the east and the west could not be avoided. the pope was driven to revive the western empire in order to secure the gift of the exarchy, to eradicate the claims of the greeks, and to restore the majesty of rome from the debasement of a provincial town. the emperors of the west would receive their crown from the successor of st. peter, and the roman church would require a zealous and respectable advocate. inspired by these motives, pope leo, who had nearly fallen a victim to a conspiracy ( ), and had been saved and reinstated by charlemagne, took the opportunity presented by the french king's visit to rome to crown him emperor. on the festival of christmas ( ), in the church of st. peter, leo, after the celebration of the holy mysteries, suddenly placed a precious crown on his head. the dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, his head and body were consecrated with the royal unction, and he was saluted, or adored, by the pontiff after the example of the cæsars. europe dates a new era from his restoration of the western empire. * * * * * theodor mommsen history of rome theodor mommsen was born at garding in schleswig on november , . he studied at kiel university for three years, examined roman inscriptions in france and italy from to , and attained his first professorship at leipzig in , and the berlin chair of ancient history in . his greatest work was the "history of rome," published in , and its successor, the "roman provinces." on this work he brought to bear a research and a scholarship of almost unparalleled range and completeness. he was a man capable of vehement and occasionally unreasonable partisanship, and a strict and cold-blooded impartiality would have tempered the enthusiasm of some of his portraits and the severity of others. these defects, however, are less obvious when his history is condensed in small compass. there are cases in which his judgments are open to adverse criticism. but at the present day it may safely be affirmed that there is no extant history of rome down to the establishment of the empire which can be regarded as rivalling that here presented. upwards of separate publications remain as a monument of mommsen's industry. he died on november , . iapygians, etruscans, and italians, the last certainly indo-europeans, are the original stocks of italy proper. of the italians there are two divisions, the latin and the umbro-sabellian. central italy was occupied by the latins, who were established in cantons formed of village groups; which cantons at an early age formed themselves into the loose latin league, with alba at its head. the roman canton, on both banks of the tiber, concentrated itself on the city earlier than others. the citizens consisted of the families which constituted the larger groups of clans or gentes, formed into those tribes. the remainder of the population were their dependents or slaves. at the head of the family was the father, and the whole community had its king, standing to it in the same relation as the father to the family. his power, within the law, was absolute; but he could not override it or change it on his own authority. this required the formal assent of the assembled citizens. the heads of the clans formed a separate body--the senate--which controlled the appointment of the king, and could veto legislation. by admission of aliens and absorption of other communities, swelling the number of dependents, was gradually created a great body of plebeians, non-citizens, who began to demand political rights; and whom it was necessary to organise for military purposes which was done by the "servian constitution." gradually rome won a supremacy in the latin league, a position of superiority over the aggregate of the other cantons. in this community arose three political movements: ( ) on the part of the full citizen, patricii, to limit the power not of the state, but of the kings; ( ) of the non-citizens, to acquire political rights; ( ) of antagonism between the great landholders and the land-interests opposed to them. the first resulted in the expulsion of the monarchs, and the substitution of a dual kingship held for one year only. but in many respects their joint power was curtailed as compared with that of the monarch, while for emergencies they could appoint a temporary dictator. the change increased the power of the general assembly, to which it became necessary to admit the non-citizen freeholders who were liable to military duties. the life tenure of the members of the senate greatly increased the powers of that body, and intensified the antagonism of the patriarch and the plebeians. at the same time, a landed nobility was developing; and when fresh land was acquired by the state, the patricians claimed to control it. but the great agricultural population could not submit to this process of land absorption, and the consequent strife took the form of a demand for political recognition, which issued in the appointment of tribunes of the plebs, with power of administrative veto. the struggle over privileges lasted for two hundred years. first the canuleian law made marriage valid between patricians and plebeians, and instituted for a time military tribunes. the licinian law, eighty years later, admitted plebeians to the consulship, and also required the employment of free labour in agriculture. the decisively democratic measure was the horticunian law, after another seventy years, giving the exclusively plebeian assembly full legislative power. the practical effect of the changes was to create a new aristocracy, semi-plebeian in origin, and to reduce the personal power of the chief officers of state, while somewhat increasing that of the remodelled senate; rendering it a body selfish indeed in internal matters, but essentially patriotic as well as powerful. _i.--the description of italy_ during the period of this long constitutional struggle, rome and her kinsfolk had first been engaged in a stubborn and ultimately successful contest with the non-aryan etruscan race; and then italy had been attacked by the migrating aryan hordes of the celts, known as gauls, who sacked rome, but retired to north italy; events giving birth to many well-known stories, probably in the main mythical. but the practical effect was to impose a greater solidarity of the latin and kindred races, and a more decisive acceptance of roman hegemony. that hegemony, however, had to be established by persistent compulsion, and there were three stages in its completion. first, the subjection of the latins and campanians; then the struggle of rome with the umbrian-samnites; finally, the decisive repulse of the epirote invader pyrrhus--in effect a hellenic movement. the roman supremacy established through the exhaustion of the valiant samnites required to be confirmed by stern repression of attempts to recover liberty. but the hellenic element in italy, antagonistic to the growing roman power, in effect invited the intervention of the epirote chief. but his scheme was not that of an imperial statesman, but of a chivalrous and romantic warrior. his own political blunders and the iron determination of the romans, destroyed his chances of conquest. his retirement left rome undisputed lord of italy; which in part shared full citizenship, in part possessed only the more restricted latin rights, and in part only rights conceded under varying treaties. a sense of common italian nationality was developing. but if rome was queen of italy, carthage was queen of the seas. maritime expansion was precluded, though rome's position fitted her for it. carthage was the one phoenician state which developed political as well as commercial power. the commercial cities of north africa were in subordination to her, in the western mediterranean she had no rivals, her domestic government was oligarchical. roman intervention in the affairs of sicily, where carthage was the dominant power, produced the rupture between the two great states which was bound to come sooner or later. sicily itself was the scene of the initial struggle, which taught rome that her victories on land were liable to be nullified by the carthaginian sea power. she resolved to build a navy, on the plan of adopting boarding tactics which would assimilate a naval engagement to a battle on land. these tactics were successful enough to equalise the fighting value of the respective fleets. the romans were enabled to land an invading army under regulus in africa. though superior on land, the general's blundering led to a disaster, and for some time misfortune by sea and failure by land dogged the romans. but carthage failed to use her opportunity; she did not attempt to strike a crushing blow when she could have done so. but the private energy of roman patriots at last placed on the seas a fleet which once more turned the scale, whereas it was on land that the brilliant carthaginian hamilcar had displayed his genius and daring. the first punic war gave rome predominance in sicily, and a position of maritime equality. sardinia was added to the roman dominion, and her provincial administration came into being. she was carrying her expansion farther over celtic regions, when hannibal, the son of hamilcar, hurled himself against her, and came near to destroying her. hamilcar had conceived the idea of imperial expansion, and given it shape by creating a dominion in spain; he had looked forward to the life-and-death struggle with rome that was destined to his son; for which spain was to be the base. hannibal, left in control in spain, deliberately challenged rome to war. the challenge was accepted, war was declared, and hannibal accomplished the amazing feat of leading an army of , men from spain and effecting the passage of the alps, while the romans were landing an army in spain. in a brilliant campaign, he defeated the stubborn roman legions at vercellæ and the trebia. but success depended not on the winning of victories by an isolated force, but on the disruption of italy. his superiority in the field was again demonstrated at trasimenus, but no italian allies came in. he outwitted fabius, and then utterly shattered at cannæ a roman force of double his own numbers. for a moment it seemed that italian cohesion was weakening; but the roman senate and people were stirred only to a more dogged resolution. cannæ failed to break up the roman confederation. generalship unaided could accomplish no more. in spain, where young scipio was soon winning renown, the roman arms were in the ascendant, and in sicily. no effective aid was coming from macedon, though war was declared between her and rome. hannibal's activities began to be paralysed; by slow degrees he was forced into the south. hannibal succeeded in crossing the alps with fresh forces, but by a brilliant operation was annihilated on the metaurus. the time had come when scipio could disregard hannibal and strike at carthage herself. even hannibal's return could not save her. the victory of zama decided the issue. carthage became virtually a tributary and subject state. spain was a roman province, and north africa a sort of protectorate. the threatening extension of macedonian power now demanded the protecting intervention of rome; an honest act of liberation for the greeks, but entailing presently the war with antiochus of syria. antiochus had left phillip and macedon in the lurch; now he sought to impose his own yoke in place of theirs. the practical outcome was his decisive overthrow at the battle of magnesia, and the cession to rome of asia minor. pergamus, under the house of actalus, was established as a protected kingdom, as numidia under masinissa had been. the greek states, however, were becoming conscious that their freedom was hardly more than a name; perseus of macedon once more challenged rome, not without greek support. macedon was finally crushed by aemilius paullus at pydna. from that moment, rome dropped the policy of maintaining free states beyond the seas, which had manifestly failed. virtually, the known world was divided into subjects and dependencies of rome, so vast was the change in the forty years between the battles of the metaurus and pydna. rapid extension of dominion by conquest had demoralising results; the ruling race was exposed to strong temptations in the provinces, and the city remained the seat of government, while the best of the burgesses were distributed elsewhere. hence, the popular assembly became virtually the city mob, while the ruling families tended more and more to form a close and greedy and plutocratic oligarchy. the demoralisation was very inadequately checked by the austerity of the censorship as exercised by cato. in the provinces, the spanish natives revolted, and were only repressed after severe fighting. in greece, asia and africa, the roman rule gave neither freedom nor strong government. in africa, the disturbances led to the wiping out of carthage; in greece to the complete subjection of the dependent states; in the far east, a new parthian power arose under mithridates. the mediterranean was allowed to be infested by pirates. revolution was at hand. politics had become reduced to a process of intrigue for office emoluments, involving a pandering to the city mob for its suffrages. _ii.--the revolution_ socially, the most patent evil was the total disappearance of the free agricultural class, the absorption of all the land into huge estates under slave labour. the remedy proposed by tiberius gracchus was the partial state resumption of land and its re-allotment. he adopted unconstitutional methods for carrying his proposals, and was murdered in a riot led by the oligarchs. appeals to the roman populace were not, unfortunately, appeals to the roman nation. his brother, gaius, deliberately designed a revolution. he proposed to work through the antagonism of the aristocrats and the wealthy non-senatorial equestrian order; and by concentrating power in the hands of the tribunate, hitherto checked by the restrictions on re-election. in effect, he meant to destroy the oligarchy by making the tribune a perpetual dictator, and thus to carry through social reforms; to establish also legal equality first for the italians, then for the provinces also. but these reforms were not particularly attractive to the city mob, and the other side could play the demagogue. the condition of cæsarism is the control of physical force; gaius gracchus fell because he had not that essential control. the oligarchy remained supreme. the plans of gracchus for planting colonies and distributing allotments were nullified. the evils of slave labour multiplied, and issued in servile insurrections. in numidia, the able masimissa had been succeeded by micipsa. on micipsa's death, the rule was usurped by his illegitimate nephew jugurtha, whose story has been told by sallust. the war was at least terminated less by the low-born general in command, marius, than his brilliant lieutenant sulla. but marius re-organised the army on the basis which was to make a military despotism practicable, as it made a professional instead of a citizen army. but now a new foe appears; the first teutonic (not celtic) hordes of the cimbri and teutones; to meet with an overwhelming check at the hands of marius at aquæ sextiæ and vercellæ. the successful soldier allied himself with the popular leader saturninus; the programme of gaius gracchus was resuscitated. but marius, a political incapable, separated from the demagogues, and by helping to crush them, effaced himself. livius drusus attempted to carry out the gracchan social reform, with the senate instead of the tribunate as the controlling power; the senatorial party themselves wrecked his schemes, and the antagonistic power of the equestrian order was advanced. but the immediate outcome was the revolt of the italians, the _socii_ (whence the name social war). they were not citizens, not on an equal footing with the citizens before the law. the revolt was suppressed, but the legions were completely out of hand. the attempt of sulpicius to head the reform movement was answered by sulla, who for the first time led a roman army against rome, crushed sulpicius, prescribed some of his adherents, and placed the power of the senate on a stronger footing by legal enactment. then he went to the east, to conduct the war against mithridates. while sulla was conducting his operations, military and diplomatic, with skill and success in the east, his arrangements at rome had left discontent and disappointment seething. there was another revolution, led by cinna, marius and sertorius; it mastered rome. marius spilt seas of blood, but soon died. for three years cinna was supreme, but he had no constructive policy. but now sulla had finished his work in the east. he was returning at the head of a body of veterans devoted to him; and his diplomacy won over half italy to his side. the struggle with the revolutionary government was not greatly prolonged, and it was decisive. in plain terms, the roman constitution had gone utterly to wreck; sulla was in something of the same position as oliver cromwell. he had to reconstruct under conditions which made a constitutional restoration impracticable; but his control of the efficient military force gave him the necessary power. that any system introduced must be arbitrary and find its main sanction in physical force--that it should partake of terrorism--was inevitable. sulla obtained the formal conferment on himself of absolute power. he began by applying this rule of terror not vindictively, but with impersonal mercilessness, against the lives and property of the opposition. in the constitution which he promulgated the senatorial body was alone recognised as a privileged class; the senate itself was increased, it recovered full control of the judiciary and of legislation; no power was left of cancelling membership. the tribunician power was curtailed. the civil and military functions of consuls and prætors were separated. they were to hold civil power in italy proper during their year of office; they were then to have a second year in military control of a province. the planting of military colonies provided numerous garrisons whose interests were associated with the new constitution. when sulla had done his work, he resigned his extraordinary powers with entire indifference. in a little more than a year he died. the sullan constitution saved the roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like cromwell's protectorate. there were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. and there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on work demanding a master. _iii.--pompey and cæsar_ the young graccus pompeius was the most distinguished of the sullan party; crassus was the wealthiest and most powerful of the equestrian group; lepidus was the popular leader. a popular insurrection which he headed was suppressed, and he disappeared, but sertorius, once an associate of marius, had obtained a remarkable personal ascendancy in spain, and, in league with the mediterranean pirates, threatened to be a formidable foe of the new constitution. for some years he maintained a gradually waning resistance against the arms of pompeius, but finally was assassinated. meanwhile tigranes, king of armenia, had been developing a powerful monarchy; and mutual distrust had brought on another war with mithridates, successfully conducted by lucullus. out of this war arose a struggle with tigranes, on whom an overwhelming defeat was inflicted at tigranocerta. but the brilliant achievements of lucullus were nullified by the mutinous conduct of the troops, and the factious conduct of the home government. the gross inefficiency of that government was shown by the immense extension of organised piracy, and by the famous slave revolt under spartacus, which seriously endangered the state. pompeius on his return from spain was barred on technical grounds from the triumph and the consulship which he demanded. he was thus driven into an alliance with the democratic party, and with crassus. the result was the fall of the sullan constitution, and the restoration of checks on the power of the senate. pompeius might have grasped a military despotism; he did not, but he did receive extraordinary powers for dealing with the whole eastern question, and when that work was settled successfully, he would be able to dictate his own terms. pompeius began his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation. he crushed mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of tigranes; mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an insurrection. anarchy in syria warranted pompeius in annexing the seleucid dominion. the whole of the nearer east was now a part of the roman empire; and was thenceforth ruled not as protectorates, but as a group of provinces. egypt alone was not incorporated. meanwhile, the democratic party at rome were dominant, though their policy was inconsistent and opportunist. probably the leading men, such as crassus and the rising gaius, julius cæsar, stood aside from the wilder schemes, such as the catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly fostered them. catiline's projects were betrayed, and the illegal execution of the captured conspirators by the consul cicero was hailed by cato and the senatorial party as a triumph of patriotic statesmanship. catiline himself was crushed in the field. the definite fact emerged, that neither the senatorial nor the democratic party could establish a strong government; that would be possible only for a military monarchy--a statesman with a policy and an irresistible, force at his back. but pompeius lacked the courage and skill. cæsar, as yet, lacked the military force. pompeius, on his return from the east, again allied himself with crassus and cæsar, whose object was to acquire for himself the opportunity which pompeius would not grasp. the alliance gave pompeius the land allotments he required for his soldiers, and to cæsar the consulship followed by a prolonged governorship of gaul. the conquest and organisation of gaul was an end in itself, a necessary defence against barbarian pressure. cæsar's operations there were invaluable to the empire; incidentally, they enabled him to become master of it. cæsar has left his own record. gaul was transformed into a barrier against the teutonic migration. but pompeius, nominally holding a far greater position, proved incapable of controlling the situation in rome; he could not even suppress the demagogue clodius, while the prestige of his military exploits was waning. fear of the power of the triumvirate was driving moderate men to the senatorial part; that party, without an efficient leader, began to find in pompeius rather in ally against the more dangerous cæsar than an enemy. but they would not concede him the powers he required; which might yet be turned to the uses of his colleagues in the triumvirate; he could not afford to challenge cæsar; and cæsar adroitly used the situation to secure for himself a prolongation of his gallic command. the completion of his work there was to have precedence of his personal ambitions. crassus was sent to the eastern command; and pompeius remained in italy, while nominally appointed to spain. pompeius, indeed, attained a predominance in rome which enabled him to secure temporarily dictatorial powers which were employed to counteract the electoral machinery of the republican party; but he had not the qualifications or the inclination to play the demagogue, and could not unite his aspirations as a restorer of law and order with effective party leadership. crassus disappeared; his armies in the east met with a complete disaster at carrhæ, and he took his own life. cæsar and pompeius were left; pompeius was not content that cæsar should stand on a real equality with him, and the inevitable rupture came. in effect pompeius used his dictatorship to extend his own military command and to curtail cæsar's. the position resolved itself into a rivalry between the two; cæsar declaring as always for the democracy, pompeius now assuming the championship of the aristocracy, and the guardianship of the constitution. for cæsar the vital point now was that his own command should not terminate till he exchanged it for a fresh consulship. as the law now stood, he could not obtain his election without resigning his command beforehand. but he succeeded in forcing pompeius to break the law; and in making the official government responsible for declaring war. he offered a compromise, perhaps, in the certainty that it would be rejected--as it was. he was virtually declared a public enemy; and he struck at once. at the head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the rubicon. his rapid and successful advance caused pompeius to abandon italy and fall back on the eastern provinces. the discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by cæsar won him unexpected favour. having secured italy, he turned next on spain, and secured that. swift and decisive action was pitted against inertness. when cæsar entered epirus the odds against him on paper were enormous; but the triumphant victory of phansalus shattered the pompeian coalition. pompeius hurried to egypt, but was assassinated while landing. the struggle, however, was not over till after the battle of thapsus nearly two years after phansalus. cæsar was now beyond question master of the whole roman world. he had made himself one of the mightiest of all masters of the art of war; but he was even more emphatically unsurpassed as a statesman. in the brief time that was left him he laid the foundation of the new monarchy which replaced the ancient republic of rome. * * * * * mediæval history edward gibbon the holy roman empire the third of gibbon's divisions of his great history was devoted to that period which is comprised between the establishment of the holy roman empire in and the final extinction of the eastern empire with the conquest of constantinople by mahomet ii. in . although this was the longest period, gibbon devoted much less space to it than to the preceding parts of his history. this fact was partly due to the gradual diminution of roman interests, for the dominions of the empire became contracted to the limits of a single city, and also to the fact that the material which the most painstaking search placed at his disposal was distinctly limited. but though the conquest of the normans, to instance one section, has been dealt with inadequately in the light of modern research, the wonderful panorama that gibbon's genius was able to present never fails in its effect or general accuracy. the holy roman empire is, of course, properly classified under mediæval history, which accounts for its separation from the rest of gibbon's work. _i.--birth and sway of the empire_ the western empire, or holy roman empire, as it has been called, which was re-established by charlemagne (and lasted in shadow until the abdication of francis ii. under the pressure of napoleon in ), was not unworthy of its title. the personal and political importance of charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of europe. the greek emperor was addressed by him as brother instead of father; and as long as the imperial dignity of the west was usurped by a hero, the greeks respectfully saluted the _august_ charlemagne with the acclamations of "basileus" and "emperor of the romans." lewis the pious ( - ) possessed the virtue of his father but not the power. when both power and virtue were extinct, the greeks despoiled lewis ii. of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of _rex_ degraded him amongst the crowd of latin princes. the imperial title of the west remained in the family of charlemagne until the deposition of charles the fat in . his insanity dissolved the empire into factions, and it was not until otho, king of germany, laid claim to the title, with fire and sword, that the western empire was restored ( ). his conquest of italy and delivery of the pope for ever fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of germany. from that memorable era two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time: ( ) that the prince who was elected in the german diet acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of italy and rome; ( ) but that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and augustus till he had received the crown from the hands of the roman pontiff. the nominal power of the western emperors was considerable. no pontiff could be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. gregory vii., in , usurped this power, and fixed for ever in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of election. nominally, also, the emperors held sway in rome, but this supremacy was annihilated in the thirteenth century. in the fourteenth century the power derived from his title was still recognised in europe; the hereditary monarchs confessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity. the persecution of images and their votaries in the east had separated-rome and italy from the byzantine throne, and prepared the way for the conquests of the franks. the rise and triumph of the mahometans still further diminished the empire of the east. the successful inroads of the bulgarians, hungarians, and russians, who assaulted by sea or by land the provinces and the capital, seemed to advance the approach of its final dissolution. the norman adventurers, who founded a powerful kingdom in apulia and sicily, shook the throne of constantinople ( ), and their hostile enterprises did not cease until the year . _ii.--latin rulers of constantinople_ under the name of the latins, the subjects of the pope, the nations of the west, enlisted under the banner of the cross for the recovery or the release of the holy sepulchre. the greek emperors were terrified and preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to jerusalem with godfrey of bouillon ( - ) and the peers of christendom. the second ( ) and the third ( ) crusades trod in the footsteps of the first. asia and europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred years; and the christian powers were bravely resisted and finally expelled ( ) by saladin ( - ) and the mamelukes of egypt. in these memorable crusades a fleet and army of french and venetians were diverted from syria to the thracian bosphorus; they assaulted the capital ( ), they subverted the greek monarchy; and a dynasty of latin princes was seated near three-score years on the throne of constantine. during this period of captivity and exile, which lasted from to , the purple was preserved by a succession of four monarchs, who maintained their title as the heirs of augustus, though outcasts from their capital. the _de facto_ sovereigns of constantinople during this period, the latin emperors of the houses of flanders and courtenay, provided five sovereigns for the usurped throne. by an agreement between the allied conquerors, the emperor of the east was nominated by the vote of twelve electors, chosen equally from the french and venetians. to him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the byzantine throne, a fourth part of the greek monarchy was assigned; the remaining portions were equally snared between the republic of venice and the barons of france. under this agreement, baldwin, count of flanders and hainault, was created emperor ( - ). the idea of the roman system, which, despite the passage of centuries devoted to the triumphs of the barbarians, had impressed itself on europe, was seen in the emperor's letter to the roman pontiff, in which he congratulated him on the restoration of his authority in the east. the defeat and captivity of baldwin in a war against the bulgarians, and his subsequent death, placed the crown on the head of his brother henry ( - ). with him the imperial house of flanders became extinct, and peter of courtenay, count of auxerre ( - ), assumed the empire of the east. peter was taken captive by theodore, the legitimate sovereign of constantinople, and his sons robert ( - ) and baldwin ii. ( - ) reigned in succession. the gradual recovery of their empire by the legitimate sovereigns of the east culminated in the capture of constantinople by the greeks ( ). the line of latin sovereigns was extinct. baldwin lived the remainder of his life a royal fugitive, soliciting the catholic powers to join in his restoration. he died in . from the days of the emperor heraclius the byzantine empire had been most tranquil and prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession. five dynasties--the heraclian, isaurian, amorian, basilian, and comnenian families--enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and four generations. the imperial house of comnenius, though its direct line in male descent had expired with andronicus i. ( ), had been perpetuated by marriage in the female line, and had survived the exile from constantinople, in the persons of the descendants of theodore lascaris. michael palæologus, who, through his mother, might claim perhaps a prior right to the throne of the comnenii, usurped the imperial dignity on the recovery of constantinople, cruelly blinded the young emperor john, the legitimate heir of theodore lascaris, and reigned until . his career of authority was notable for an attempt to unite the greek and roman churches--a union which was dissolved in --and his instigation of the revolt in sicily, which ended in the famous sicilian vespers (march , ), when , french were exterminated in a promiscuous massacre. he saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the west in rebellion and blood. from these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son, andronicus the elder ( - ). thousands of genoese and catalans, released from the wars that michael had aroused in the west, took service under his successor against the turks. other mercenaries flocked to their standard, and, under the name of the great company, they subverted the authority of the emperor, defeated his troops, laid waste his territory, united themselves with his enemies, and, finally, abandoning the banks of the hellespont, marched into greece. here they overthrew the remnant of the latin power, and for fourteen years ( - ) the great company was the terror of the grecian states. their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignity of the house of arragon; and, during the remainder of the fourteenth century, athens as a government or an appanage was successfully bestowed by the kings of sicily. conquered in turn by the french and catalans, athens at length became the capital of a state that extended over thebes, argos, corinth, delphi, and a part of thessaly, and was ruled by the family of accaioli, plebeians of florence ( - ). the last duke of this dynasty was strangled by mahomet ii., who educated his sons in the discipline of the seraglio. during the reign of john palæologus, son of andronicus the younger, which began in , the eastern empire was nearly subverted by the genoese. on the return of the legitimate sovereign to constantinople, the genoese, who had established their factories and industries in the suburb of galata, or pera, were allowed to remain. during the civil wars the genoese forces took advantage of the disunion of the greeks, and by the skilful use of their power exacted a treaty by which they were granted a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominions. the roman empire (i smile in transcribing the name) might soon have sunk into a province of genoa if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of pera still awed the capital and navigated the euxine till it was involved by the turks in the final servitude of constantinople itself. _iii.--end of the roman world_ only three more sovereigns ruled the remnants of the roman world after the reign of john palæologus, but the final downfall of the empire was delayed above fifty years by a series of events that had sapped the strength of the mahometan empire. the rise and triumph of the moguls and tartars under their emperors, descendants of zingis khan, had shaken the globe from china to poland and greece ( - ). the sultans were overthrown, and in the general disorder of the mahometan world a veteran and adventurous army, which included many turkoman hordes, was dissolved into factions who, under various chiefs, lived a life of rapine and plunder. some of these engaged in the service of aladin ( - ), sultan of iconium, and among these were the obscure fathers of the ottoman line. orchan ruled from to , achieved the conquest of bithynia, and first led the turks into europe, and in established himself in the chersonesus, and occupied gallipoli, the key of the hellespont. orchan was succeeded by amurath i. ( - ). bajazet carried his victorious arms from the danube to the euphrates, and the roman world became contracted to a corner of thrace, between the propontis and the black sea, about fifty miles in length and thirty in breadth, a space of ground not more extensive than the lesser principalities of germany or italy, if the remains of constantinople had not still represented the wealth and populousness of a kingdom. under manuel ( - ), the son and successor of john palteologus, constantinople would have fallen before the might of the sultan bajazet had not the turkish empire been oppressed by the revival of the mogul power under the victorious timour, or tamerlane. after achieving a conquest of persia ( - ), of tartary ( - ), and hindustan ( - ), timour, who aspired to the monarchy of the world, found himself at length face to face with the sultan bajazet. bajazet was taken prisoner in the war that followed. kept, probably only as a precaution, in an iron cage, bajazet attended the marches of his conqueror, and died on march , . two years later, timour also passed away on the road to china. of his empire to-day nothing remains. since the reign of his descendant aurungzebe, his empire has been dissolved ( - ); the treasures of delhi have been rifled by a persian robber; and the riches of their kingdom is now possessed by the christians of a remote island in the northern ocean. far different was the fate of the ottoman monarchy. the massive trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane pass away than it again rose with fresh vigour and more lively vegetation. after a period of civil war between the sons of bajazet ( - ), the ottoman empire was once more firmly established by his grandson, amurath ii. ( - ). one of the first expeditions undertaken by the new sultan was the siege of constantinople ( ), but the fortune rather than the genius of the emperor manuel prevented the attempt. amurath was recalled to asia by a domestic revolt, and the siege was raised. while the sultan led his janizaries to new conquests, the byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. manuel sank into the grave, and john palæologus ii. ( - ) was permitted to reign for an annual tribute of , aspers and the dereliction of almost all that he held beyond the suburbs of constantinople. on november , , constantine, the last of the roman emperors, assumed the purple of the cæsars. for three years he was allowed to indulge himself in various private and public designs, the completion of which were interrupted by a turkish war, and finally buried in the ruins of the empire. _iv.--the great siege of constantinople_ mahomet ii. succeeded his father amurath on february , . his hostile designs against the capital were immediately seen in the building of a fortress on the bosphorus, which commanded the source whence the city drew her supplies. in the following year a quarrel between some greeks and turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. his cannon--for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the christian world, had been betrayed to amurath by the genoese--commanded the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the harbour. but the actual siege was delayed until the ensuing spring of . mahomet, in person, surveyed the city, encouraged his soldiers, and discussed with his generals and engineers the best means of making the assault. by his orders a huge cannon was built in hadrianople. it fired a ball one mile, and to convey it to its position before the walls, a team of sixty oxen and the assistance of men were employed. the emperor constantine, unable to excite the sympathy of europe, attempted the best defence of which he was capable, with a force of , romans and , genoese. a chain was drawn across the mouth of the harbour, and whatever supplies arrived from candia and the black sea were detained for the public service. the siege of constantinople, in which scarcely , soldiers had to defend a city sixteen miles in extent against the powers of the ottoman empire, commenced on april , . the last constantine deserves the name of a hero; his noble band of volunteers was inspired with roman virtue, and the foreign auxiliaries supported the honour of the western chivalry. but their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. their ordnance was not powerful either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. the great cannon of mahomet could only be fired seven times in one day, but the weight and repetition of the shots made some impression on the walls. the turks rushed to the edge of the ditch, attempted to fill the enormous chasm and to build a road to the assault. in the attack, as well as in the defence, ancient and modern artillery was employed. cannon and mechanical engines, the bullet and the battering-ram, gunpowder and greek fire, were engaged on both sides. christendom watched the struggle with coldness and apathy. four ships, which successfully forced an entrance into the harbour, were the limit of their assistance. none the less, mahomet meditated a retreat. unless the city could be attacked from the harbour, its reduction appeared to be hopeless. in this perplexity the genius of mahomet executed a plan of a bold and marvellous cast. he transported his fleet over land for ten miles. in the course of one night four-score light galleys and brigantines painfully climbed the hill, steered over the plain, and were launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the greeks. a bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. the galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert the fate of the capital. on monday, may , preparations were made for the final assault. mahomet had inspired his soldiers with the hope of rewards in this world and the next. his camp re-echoed with the shouts of "god is god; there is but one god, and mahomet is the apostle of god"; and the sea and land, from galata to the seven towers, were illuminated with the blaze of the moslem fires. far different was the state of the christians. on that last night of the roman empire, constantine palæologus, in his palace, addressed the noblest of the greeks and the bravest of the allies on the duties and dangers that lay before them. it was the funeral oration of the roman empire. that same night the emperor and some faithful companions entered the dome of st. sofia, which, within a few hours, was to be converted into a mosque, and devoutly received, with tears and prayers, the sacrament of the holy communion. he reposed some moments in the palace, which resounded with cries and lamentations, solicited the pardon of all whom he might have injured, and mounted on horseback to visit the guards and explore the motions of the enemy. the distress and fall of the last constantine are more glorious than the long prosperity of the byzantine cæsars. at daybreak on may the turks assaulted the city by sea and land. for two hours the greeks maintained the defence with advantage, and the voice of the emperor was heard encouraging the soldiers to achieve by a last effort the deliverance of their country. the new and fresh forces of the turks supplied the places of their wearied associates. from all sides the attack was pressed. the number of the ottomans was fifty, perhaps one hundred, times superior to that of the christians, the double walls were reduced by the cannons to a heap of ruins, and at last one point was found which the besiegers could penetrate. hasan, the janizary, of gigantic stature and strength, ascended the outward fortification. the walls and towers were instantly covered with a swarm of turks, and the greeks, now driven from the vantage ground, were overwhelmed by increasing multitudes. amidst these multitudes, the emperor, who accomplished all the duties of a general and a soldier, was long seen and finally lost. his mournful exclamation was heard, "cannot there be found a christian to cut off my head?" and his last fear was that of falling alive into the hands of the infidels. the prudent despair of constantine cast away the purple. amidst the tumult he fell by an unknown hand, and his body was buried under a mountain of the slain. after his death, resistance and order were no more. two thousand greeks were put to the sword, and more would have perished had not avarice soon prevailed over cruelty. it was thus, after a siege of fifty-three days, that constantinople, which had defied the power of chosroes and the caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of mahomet ii. sixty thousand greeks were driven through the streets like cattle and sold as slaves. the nuns were torn from the monasteries and compelled to enter the harems of their conquerors. the churches were plundered, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments of st. sofia were most wickedly converted to the service of mankind. the cathedral itself, despoiled of its images and ornaments, was converted into a mosque, and mahomet ii. performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving at the great altar, where the christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the cæsars. the body of constantine was discovered under a heap of slain, by the golden eagles embroidered on his shoes, and after exposing the bloody trophy, mahomet bestowed on his rival the honours of a decent funeral. constantinople, desolated by bloodshed, was re-peopled and re-adorned by mahomet. its churches were shared between the two religions, and the greeks were attracted back to their ancient capital by the assurance of their lives and the free exercise of their religion. the grief and terror of europe when the fall of constantinople became known revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades. pius ii. attempted to lead christendom against the turks, but on the very day on which he embarked his forces drew back, and he was compelled to abandon the attempt. the siege and sack of otranto by the turks put an end to all thoughts of a crusade, and the general consternation was only allayed by the death of mahomet ii. in the fifty-first year of his age. his lofty genius aspired to the conquest of italy; he was possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbour, and the same reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the new and the ancient rome. * * * * * franÇois guizot history of civilisation in europe françois pierre guillaume guizot, french historian and statesman, was born of huguenot parents at nimes on october , . the liberal opinions of his family did not save his father from the guillotine in , and the mother fled to geneva, where guizot was educated. he went to paris in the later days of the empire, and engaged himself at once in literature and politics. his lectures on the history of civilisation delivered in , , and , during his professorship at the university of paris, revealed him as a historian with a rare capacity for mastering the broad essential truths of history, co-ordinating them, and expounding them with vigour and impressiveness. his first series of lectures was on "the history of civilisation in europe," a masterly abstract of a colossal subject; the second on "the history of civilisation in france." from to guizot occupied high offices of state, ultimately becoming prime minister; in , like his master louis philippe, he had to fly the country. he died on september , . _i.--the nature of civilisation_ the subject i propose to consider is the civilisation of europe--its origins, its progress, its aims, its character. the fact of civilisation belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, i admit, to explain and describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. it is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people, and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the forces of its existence, are joined in unity. what, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? it seems to me that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is the fact of progress, of development. but what is this progress? what is this development? here is the greatest difficulty of all. the etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer. it tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to men. but is this all? have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of the word? france, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was acknowledged to be the most civilised country in europe; yet in respect of purely civil progress france was then greatly inferior to some other european countries, holland and england, for example. another development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life, of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas. these two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity--are intimately related to each other. their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have profited the individual mind. so much for civilisation in general. it is now necessary to point out the essential difference between modern european and other civilisations. the characteristic of other civilisations has been unity; they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. in egypt and india, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the greek and phoenician republics, the democratic principle. the civilisation of modern europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused, stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. all the various forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise. these diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. the outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the european over the other civilisations. european civilisation, if i may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of god. _ii.--feudalism_ it would be an important confirmation of my assertion as to the diverse character of our civilisation if we should find in its very cradle the causes and the elements of that diversity. and indeed, at the fall of the roman empire, we do so find it. three forms of society, each entirely different from the other, are visible at this time of chaos. the municipalities survived, the last remnant of the imperial system. the christian church survived. and in the third place there were the barbarians, who brought with them a military organisation, and a hardy individual independence, that were wholly new to the peoples who had dwelt under the shelter of the empire. the barbarian epoch was the chaos of all the elements, the infancy of all the systems, a universal hubbub in which even conflict itself had no definite or permanent effects. europe laboured to escape from this confusion; at some times, and in some places, it was temporarily checked--in particular by the great charlemagne in his revival of the imperial power; but the confusion did not cease until its causes no longer acted. these causes were two--one material, one moral. the material cause was the irruption of fresh barbarian hordes. the moral cause was the lack of any ideas in common among men as to the structure of society. the old imperial fabric had disappeared; charlemagne's restoration of it depended wholly on his own personality, and did not survive him; men had no ideas of any new structure--their intellectual horizon was limited to their own affairs. by the beginning of the tenth century the barbarian invasions ended, and as the populations settled down a new system appeared, based partly on the barbarians' love of independence, partly on their plans of military gradation--the system of feudalism. a sound proof that in the tenth century the feudal system was necessary, and the only social state possible, lies in the universality of its establishment. everywhere society was dismembered; everywhere there was formed a multitude of small, obscure, isolated societies, consisting of the chief, his family, his retainers, and the wretched serfs over whom he ruled without restraint, and who had no appeal against his whim. the power he exercised was the power of individual over individual, the domination of personal will and caprice; and this is perhaps the only kind of tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, is never willing to endure. hence the prodigious and invincible hatred that the people have at all times entertained for feudal rule, for the memories of it, for its very name. the narrow concentrated life of the feudal lord lent, undoubtedly, a great preponderance to domesticity in his affairs. the lord had his wife and children for his permanent society; they continually shared his interests, his destiny. it was in the bosom of the feudal family that woman gained her importance in civilisation. the system excited development of private character and passion that were, all things considered, noble. chivalry was the daughter of feudalism. but from the social point of view feudalism failed to provide either legal order or political security. it contained elaborate obligations between the higher and the lower orders of the feudal hierarchy, duties of protection on the one side and of service on the other. but these obligations could never be established as institutions. there was no superior force to which all had to submit; there was public opinion to make itself respected. hence the feudal system was without political guarantee to sustain it. might alone was right. feudalism was as much opposed to the establishment of general order as to the extension of general liberty. it was indispensable for the reconstruction of european society, but politically it was in itself a radically bad system. _iii.--the church_ meanwhile the church, adhering to its own principles, had steadily advanced along the route that it had marked out for itself in the early days of its organisation. it was during the feudal epoch the only power that made for civilised development. all education was ecclesiastical; all the arts were in the service of the church. it had, during the dark ages, won the barbarians to its fold by the gorgeous solemnity of its ritual; and, to protect itself against secular interference, it had declared the spiritual power to be independent of the temporal--the first great assertion, in the history of european civilisation, of the liberty of thought. in one set of respects the church during the feudal epoch satisfied the conditions of good government; in another, it did not. its power was uniformly distributed, it drew its recruits from all classes, and entrusted the rule to the most capable. it was in close touch with every grade of mankind; every colony of serfs, even, had its priest. it was the most popular and most accessible society of the time, the most open to all talents and all noble ambitions. but, on the other hand, it failed in that all-important requisite of good government, respect for liberty. it denied the rights of individual reason in spiritual matters, and it claimed the right to compel belief--a claim that placed it in some dependence upon the temporal powers, since as a purely spiritual body, governing by influence and not by force, it could not persecute without the aid of the secular arm. to sum up, the church exerted an immense and on the whole a beneficent influence on ideas, sentiments, and conduct; but from the political point of view the church was nearly always the interpreter and defender of the theocratic system and the roman imperial system--that is, of religious and civil despotism. _iv.--the towns_ like the church, the municipalities survived the downfall of the roman empire. their history varied greatly in different parts of europe, but none the less some observations can be made that are broadly accurate with respect to most of them. from the fifth to the tenth century, the state of the towns was a state neither of servitude nor of liberty. they suffered all the woes that are the fate of the weak; they were the prey of continual violence and depredation; yet, in spite of the fearful disorders of the time, they preserved a certain importance. when feudalism was established, the towns lost such independence as they had possessed; they found themselves under the heel of feudal chiefs. but feudalism did bring about a sort of peace, a sort of order; and with the slightest gleam of peace and order a man's hope revives, and on the revival of hope he takes to work. so it was with the towns. new wants were created; commerce and industry arose to satisfy them; wealth and population slowly returned. but industry and commerce were absolutely without security; the townsmen were exposed to merciless extortion and plundering at the hands of their feudal overlords. nothing irritates a man more than to be harassed in his toil, thus deprived of its promised fruits. the only way in which the towns could defend themselves from the violence of their masters was by using violence themselves. so in the eleventh century we find town after town rising in revolt against its despot, and winning from him a charter of liberty. although the insurrection was in a sense general, it was in no way concerted--it was not a rising of the combined citizens against the combined feudal aristocracy. all the towns found themselves exposed to much the same evils, and rescued themselves in much the same manner. but each town acted for itself--did not go to the help of any other town. hence these detached communities had no ambitions, no aspirations to national importance; their outlook was limited to themselves. but at the same time the emancipation of the towns created a new class, a class of citizens engaged in the same pursuits, with the same interests and the same modes of life; a class that would in time unite and assert itself, and prevent the domination of a single order of society that has been the curse of asia. although it may be broadly asserted that the emancipation did not alter the relations of the citizens with the general government, that assertion must be modified in one respect. a link was established between the citizens and the king. sometimes they appealed for his aid against their lord, sometimes the lord invoked him as judge; in one way or another a relation was established between the king and the towns, and the citizens thus came into touch with the centre of the state. _v.--the crusades_ from the fifth to the twelfth century, society, as we have seen, contained kings, a lay aristocracy, a clergy, citizens, peasantry, the germs, in fact, of all that goes to make a nation and a government; yet--no government, no nation. we have come across a multitude of particular forces, of local institutions, but nothing general, nothing public, nothing properly speaking political. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, on the contrary, all the classes and the particular forces have taken a secondary place, are shadowy and almost effaced; the stage of the world is occupied by two great figures, government and people. here, if i am not mistaken, is the essential distinction between primitive europe and modern europe. here is the change that was accomplished in the period extending from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. viewed by itself, that period seems a characterless one of confusion without cause, of movement without direction, of agitation without result. yet, in relation to the period that followed, this period had a tendency and a progress of its own; it slowly accomplished a vast work. it was the second period of european civilisation--the period of attempt and experiment, succeeding that of origins and formation, and preparing the way for that of development properly so called. the first great event of this period was the crusades--a universal movement of all classes and all countries in moral unity--the truly heroic event of europe. besides the religious impulse that led to the crusades, there was another impulse. they gave to me an opportunity of widening their horizons, of indulging the taste for movement and adventure. the opportunity, thus freely taken, changed the face of society. men's minds were opened, their ideas were extended, by contact with other races; european society was dragged out of the groove along which it had been travelling. religious ideas remained unchanged, but religious beliefs were no longer the only sphere in which the human intellect exercised itself. the moral state of europe was profoundly modified. the social state underwent a similar change. many of the smaller feudal lords sold their fiefs, or impoverished themselves by crusading, or lost much of their power during their absence. property and power came into fewer hands; society was more centralised, no longer dispersed as it formerly was. the citizens, on their part, were no longer content with local industry and trade; they entered upon commerce on a grander scale with countries oversea. petty influence yielded place to larger influences; the small existences grouped themselves round the great. by the end of the crusades, the march of society towards centralisation was in steady progress. _vi.--the age of centralisation_ already, in the twelfth century, a new idea of kingship had begun, very faintly, to make its appearance. in most european countries the king, under the feudal system, had been a head who could not enforce his headship. but there was, all the while, such a thing as kingship, and somebody bore the title of king; and society, striving to escape from feudal violence and to get hold of real order and unity, had recourse to the king in an experimental way, to see, as one might say, what he could do. gradually there developed the idea of the king as the protector of public order and justice and of the common interest as the paramount magistrate--the idea that changed europe society from a series of classes into a group of centralised states. but the old order did not perish without efforts to perpetuate itself. these efforts were of two kinds; a particular class sought predominance, or it was proposed that the classes should agree to act in concert. to the first kind belonged the design of the church to gain mastery over europe that culminated with pope gregory vii. it failed for three reasons--because christianity is a purely moral force and not a temporal administrative force; because the ambitions of the church were opposed by the feudal aristocracy; and because the celibacy of the clergy prevented the formation of a caste capable of theocratic organisation. attempts at democracy were made, for a time with apparent means, by the italian civic republics; but they were a prey to internal disorder, their government tended to become oligarchical, and their incapacity for uniting among themselves made them the victims of foreign invaders. the swiss republican organisation was more successful, but became aristocratic and immobile. the house towns and the towns of flanders and the rhine organised for pure defence; they preserved their privileges, but remained confined within their walls. the effort at concerted action by the classes was manifested in the states general of france, spain, and portugal, the diet in germany, and the parliament in england. all these, except the parliament, were ineffective and as it were accidental in their action; all they did was to preserve in a manner the notion of liberty. the circumstances of england were exceptional. the parliament did not govern; but it became a mode of government adopted in principle, and often indispensable in practice. nothing, however, could arrest the march of centralisation. in france the war of independence against england brought a sense of national unity and purpose, and feudalism was finally overthrown, and the central power made dominant, by the policy of louis xi. similar effects were brought about in spain by the war against the moors and the rule of ferdinand. in england feudalism was destroyed by the wars of the roses, and was succeeded by the tudor despotism. in germany, the house of austria began its long ascendancy. thus in the fifteenth century the new principles prevailed; the old forms, the old liberties were swept aside to make way for centralised government under absolute rulers. at the same time another new fact entered into european history. the kings began to enter into relations with each other, to form alliances; diplomacy was created. since it is in the nature of diplomacy to be conducted more or less secretly by a few persons, and since the peoples did not and would not greatly concern themselves in it, this development was favourable to the strengthening of royalty. _vii.--the spiritual revolt_ although the church until the sixteenth century had successfully suppressed all attempts at spiritual independence, yet the broadening of men's minds that began with the crusades, and received a vigorous impetus from the renaissance, made its mark even in the fifteenth century upon ecclesiastical affairs. three main facts of the moral order are presented during this period: the ineffectual attempts of the councils of constance and bale to reform the church from within; the most notable of which was that of huss in bohemia; and the intellectual revolution that accompanied the renaissance. the way was thus prepared for the event that was inaugurated when luther burnt the pope's bull at wittenberg in . the reformation was not, as its opponents contend, the result of accident or intrigue; nor was it, as its upholders contend, the outcome of a simple desire for the reform of abuses. it was, in reality, a revolt of the human spirit against absolute power in spiritual affairs. the minds of men were during the sixteenth century in energetic movement, consumed by desire for progress; the church had become inert and stationary, yet it maintained all its pretensions and external importance. the church, indeed, was less tyrannical than it had formerly been, and not more corrupt. but it had not advanced; it had lost touch with human thought. the reformation, in all the lands that it reached, in all the lands where it played a great part, whether as conqueror, or as conquered, resulted in general, constant, and immense progress in liberty and activity of thought, and tended towards the emancipation of the human spirit. it accomplished more than it knew; more, perhaps, than it would have desired. it did not attack temporal absolutism; but the collision between temporal absolutism and spiritual freedom was bound to come, and did come. spiritual movement in european history has always been ahead of temporal movement. the church began as a very loose society, without a properly-constituted government. then it placed itself under an aristocratic control of bishops and councils. then it came under the monarchical rule of the popes; and finally a revolution broke out against absolutism in spiritual affairs. the ecclesiastical and civil societies have undergone the same vicissitudes; but the ecclesiastical society has always been the first to be changed. we are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society, the liberty of the human spirit. at the same time we see political centralisation prevailing nearly everywhere. in the seventeenth century the two principles were for the first time to be opposed. _viii.--the political revolt_ their first shock was in england, for england was a country of exceptional conditions both civil and religious. the reformation there had in part been the work of the kings themselves, and was incomplete; the reformers remained militant, and denounced the bishops as they had formerly denounced the pope. moreover, the aspirations after civil liberty that were stirred up by the emancipation of thought had means of action in the old institution of the country--the charter, the parliament, the laws, the precedents. similar aspirations in continental countries had no such means of action, and led to nothing. two national desires coincided in england at this epoch--the desire for religious revolution and liberty, and the desire for political liberty and the overthrow of despotism. the two sets of reformers joined forces. for the political party, civil freedom was the end; for the religious party, it was only a means; but throughout the conflict the political party took the lead, and the others followed. it was not until that the reformers finally attained their aim in the abolition of absolute power spiritual and temporal; and the accession of william of orange in that year brought england into the great struggle that was raging on the continent between the principle of despotism and the principle of freedom. england differed from other european countries in that the essential diversity of european civilisation was more pronounced there than anywhere else. elsewhere, one element prevailed over the others until it was overthrown; in england, even if one element was dominant, the others were strong and important. elizabeth had to be far more wary with her nobles and commons than louis xiv. with his. for this reason, europe lagged behind england in civil freedom. but there was another reason--the influence of france. during the seventeenth century, the french government was the strongest in europe, and it was a despotic government. during the eighteenth century, french thought was the most active and potent in europe, and it was unboundedly free thought. louis xiv. did not, as is sometimes supposed, adopt as his principles the propagation of absolutism; his aim was the strength and greatness of france, and to this end he fought and planned--just as william of orange fought and planned, not against despotism, but against france. france presented herself at that age as the most redoubtable, skilful, and imposing power in europe. yet, after the death of louis xiv., the government immediately degenerated. this was inevitable. no system of government can be maintained without institutions, and a despot dislikes institutions. the rule of louis xiv. was great, powerful, and brilliant, but it had no roots. the decrepit remains of it were in the eighteenth century brought face to face with a society in which free examination and free speculation had been carried to lengths never imagined before. freedom of thought once came to grips with absolute power. of the stupendous consequence of that collision it is not for me to speak here; i have reached the end. but let me, before concluding, dwell upon the gravest and most instructive part that is revealed to us by this grand spectacle of civilisation. it is the danger, the insurmountable evil of absolute power in any form--whether in a form of a despot like louis xiv. or in that of the untrammelled human spirit that prevailed at the revolution. each human power has in itself a natural vice, a principle of weakness, to which there has to be assigned a limit. it is only by general liberty of all rights, interests and opinions that each power can be restrained within its legitimate bounds, and intellectual freedom enabled to exist genuinely and to the advantage of the whole community. * * * * * henry hallam view of the state of europe during the middle ages henry hallam, the english historian, was born on july , , at windsor, his father being canon of windsor, and dean of bristol. educated at eton and at christ church, oxford, he was called to the english bar, but devoted himself to the study and writing of history. he received an appointment in the civil service, which, with his private means, placed him in comfortable leisure for his wide researches. his son, arthur henry, who died at the age of , is the subject of tennyson's "in memoriam." hallam died on january , , and was buried at clevedon, somersetshire. the "view of the state of europe during the middle ages," commonly known as hallam's "middle ages," was published by the author in . hallam was already well known among the literary men of the day, but this was his first important work. it is a study of the period from the appearance of clovis, the creator of the dominion of the franks, to the close of the middle ages, the arbitrary dividing line being drawn at the invasion of italy by charles viii. of france. _i.--france_ the frankish dominion was established over the roman province of gaul by clovis at the opening of the sixth century. the merovingian dynasty degenerated rapidly; and the power passed into the hands of the mayors of the palace--an office which became hereditary with pepin heristal and charles martel. with the sanction of the pope the merovingian king was deposed by pepin, the son of charles martel, who was crowned king and overthrew the lombard power in italy. pepin was succeeded by charlemagne, who completed the conquest of the lombards, carried his arms into spain as far as the ebro, and extended his power eastwards over the saxons as far as the elbe. in his person the roman empire was revived, and he was crowned emperor at rome on christmas day a.d. . the great empire he had built up fell to pieces under his successors, who adopted the disastrous plan of partition amongst brothers. france fell to the share of one branch of the carlovingians. the northmen were allowed to establish themselves in normandy, and germany was completely separated from france. the carlovingians were displaced by hugh capet. the actual royal domain was small, and the kings of the house of capet exercised little control over their great feudatories until the reign of philip augustus. that crafty monarch drew into his own hands the greater part of the immense territories held by the kings of england as french feudatories. after a brief interval the craft of philip augustus was succeeded by the idealism of st. louis, whose admirable character enabled him to achieve an extraordinary ascendancy over the imagination of his people. in spite of the disastrous failure of his crusading expeditions, the aggrandisement of the crown continued, especially under philip the fair; but the failure of the direct heirs after the successive reigns of his three sons placed philip of valois on the throne according to the "salic" law of succession in . on the pretext of claiming the succession for himself, edward iii. began the great french war which lasted, interrupted by only one regular pacification, for a hundred and twenty years. the brilliant personal qualities of edward and the black prince, the great resources of england, and the quality of the soldiery, account for the english successes. after the peace of bretigny these triumphs were reversed, and the english lost their possessions; but when charles vi. ascended the throne disaster followed. france was rent by the rival factions of burgundy and orleans, the latter taking its more familiar name from the court of armagnac. the troubled reigns of richard ii. and henry iv. prevented england from taking advantage of these dissensions; but henry v. renewed the war, winning the battle of agincourt in his first campaign and securing the treaty of troyes on his second invasion. after his death came that most marvellous revolution wrought by joan of arc, and the expulsion of the english from the country. in france the effect of the war was to strengthen the crown as against the nobility, a process developed by the subtlety of louis xi. out of the long contest in which the diplomatic skill of the king was pitted against the fiery ambitions of charles of burgundy, louis extracted for himself sundry burgundian provinces. the supremacy of the crown was secured when his son charles viii. acquired brittany by marrying the duchess anne. the essential distinction of ranks in france was found in the possession of land. besides the national lands, there were lands reserved to the crown, which, under the name of benefices, were bestowed upon personal followers of the king, held more or less on military tenure; and the king's vassals acquired vassals for themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. on the other hand freeholders inclined, for the sake of protection, to commend themselves, as the phrase was, to their stronger neighbours and so to assume the relation of vassal to liege lord. the essential principle was a mutual contract of support and fidelity, confirmed by the ceremonies of homage, fealty, and investiture, which conferred upon the lord the right to various reliefs, fines, and rights capable of conversion into money payments. gentility, now hereditary, was derived from the tenure of land; the idea of it was emphasised by the adoption of surnames and armorial bearings. a close aristocracy was created, somewhat modified by the right claimed by the king of creating nobles. prelates and abbots were in the same position as feudal nobles, though the duty of personal service was in many cases commuted for an equivalent. below the gentle class were freemen, and the remainder of the population were serfs or villeins. it was not impossible for villeins to purchase freedom. in france the privileges possessed by the vassals of the crown were scarcely consistent with the sovereignty. such were the rights of coining money, of private war, and of immunity from taxation. such legislation as there was appears to have been effected by the king, supported by a royal council or a more general assembly of the barons. it was only by degrees that the royal ordinances came to be current in the fiefs of the greater vassals. it was philip the fair who introduced the general assembly of the three estates. this assembly very soon claimed the right of granting and refusing money as well as of bringing forward grievances. the kings of france, however, sought to avoid convocation of the states general by obtaining grants from provincial assemblies of the three estates. the old system of jurisdiction by elected officers was superseded by feudal jurisdiction, having three degrees of power, and acting according to recognised local customs, varied by the right to ordeal by combat. the crown began to encroach on these feudal jurisdictions by the establishment of royal courts of appeal; but there also subsisted a supreme court of peers to whom were added the king's household officers. the peers ceased by degrees to attend this court, while the crown multiplied the councillors of inferior rank; and this body became known as the parliament of paris--in effect an assembly of lawyers. the decline of the feudal system was due mainly to the increasing power of the crown on the one hand, and of the lower ranks on the other; more especially from the extension of the privileges of towns. but the feudal principle itself was weakened by the tendency to commute military service for money, enabling the crown to employ paid troops. _ii.--italy and spain_ after the disruption of charlemagne's empire the imperial title was revived from the german, otto the great of saxony. his imperial supremacy was recognised in italy; the german king was the roman emperor. italian unity had gone to pieces, but the german supremacy offended italy. still from the time of conrad of franconia the election of the king of germany was assumed, at least my him, to convey the sovereignty of italy. in the eleventh century norman adventurers made themselves masters of sicily and southern italy. in northern italy on the other hand the emperors favoured the development of free cities, owning only the imperial sovereignty and tending to self-government on republican lines. the appearance on the scene in the twelfth century of the emperor frederick barbarossa introduced a period characterised by a three-fold change: the victorious struggle of the northern cities for independence; the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the papacy in the middle provinces; and the union of the kingdom of naples to the dominions of the imperial house. the first quarrels with milan led to the formation of the lombard league, and a long war in which the battle of legnano gave the confederates a decisive victory. the mutual rivalries of the states, however, prevented them from turning this to good account. barbarossa's grandson, frederick ii., was a child of four when he succeeded to the swabian inheritance, and through his mother to that of sicily. it was now that the powerful pope innocent iii. so greatly extended the temporal power of the papacy, and that the rival parties of guelfs and ghibelins, adherents the one of the papacy, the other of the empire, were established as factions in practically every italian city. when the young frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the papacy which ended in the overthrow of the imperial authority. from this time the quarrel of guelfs and ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. charles of anjou was adopted as papal champion; the republics of the north were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment. rome revived her republicanism under the leadership of rienzi. in the general chaos the principle interest attaches to the peculiar but highly complicated form of democracy developed in florence, where the old patrician families were virtually disfranchised. wild and disorderly as was the state of florence, the records certainly point to the conditions having been far worse in the cities ruled by the visconti and their like. of genoa's wars with pisa and with venice a detailed account cannot be given. of all the northern cities venice achieved the highest political position; isolated to a great extent from the political problems of the cities of lombardy and tuscany, she developed her wealth and her commerce by the sea. her splendour may, however, be dated from the taking of constantinople by the latins in , when she became effectively queen of the adriatic and mistress of the eastern mediterranean. in effect her government was a close oligarchy; possessed of complete control over elections which in theory were originally popular. the oligarchy reached its highest and narrowest development with the institution of the famous council of ten. naples and sicily came under the dominion of charles of anjou when he was adopted as papal champion. the french supremacy, however, was overthrown when the sicilians rose and carried out the massacre known as the sicilian vespers. they offered the crown to the king of aragon. it was not till , however, that sicily was definitely united to the crown of aragon and a few years later the same king was able to assert successfully a claim to naples. when the roman empire was tottering the visigoths established their dominion in spain. in saracen invaders made themselves masters of the greater part of the peninsula. the christians were driven into the more northern parts and formed a number of small states out of which were developed the kingdoms of navarre, leon and castille, and aragon. frontier towns acquired large liberties while they were practically responsible for defence against the moors. during the thirteenth century great territories were recovered from the moors; but the advance ceased as the moors were reduced to the compact kingdom of granada. in the fourteenth century the struggle for castille between pedro the cruel and his brother established the house of trastamare on the throne. the crowns of castille and aragon were united by the marriage of isabella and ferdinand. the government of the old gothic monarchy was through the crown and a council of prelates and nobles. at a comparatively early date, however, the "cortes" was attended by deputies from the town, though the number of these was afterwards closely limited. the principle of taxation through representatives was recognised; and laws could neither be made nor annulled except in the cortes. this form of constitutionalism was varied by the claim of the nobles to assume forcible control when matters were conducted in a fashion of which they disapproved. the union of castille and aragon led immediately to the conquest of granada completed in ; an event which in some respects counterbalanced the conquest of constantinople by the turks. _iii.--the german empire and the papacy_ when the german branch of the carlovingian dynasty became extinct the five german nations--franconia, swabia, bavaria, saxony, and lorraine--resolved to make the german kingship elective. for some generations the crown was bestowed on the saxon ottos. on the extinction of their house in , it was succeeded by a franconian dynasty which came into collision with the papacy under pope gregory vii. on the extinction of this line in germany became divided between the partisans of the houses of swabia and saxony, the wibelungs and welfs,--the origin of the hibelines and guelfs. the swabian house, the hohenstauffen, gained the ascendancy in the person of frederick barbarossa. the lineal representatives of the saxon guelfs are found to-day in the house of brunswick. the rule of the swabian house is most intimately connected with italian history. in the thirteenth century the principle that the right of election of the emperor lay with seven electors was apparently becoming established. there were the archbishops of mentz, treves, and cologne, the duke of saxony, the count palatine of the rhine, the king of bohemia, and the margrave of brandenburg. in all other respects, however, several other dukes and princes were at least on an equality with the electors. in the election fell on the capable rudolph of hapsburg; and for some time after this the emperors were chosen from the houses of austria, bavaria, or luxemburg. disintegration was greatly increased by the practice of the partition of territories among brothers in place of primogeniture. a preponderating authority was given to the electors by the golden bull of charles iv. in . the power of the emperor as against the princes was increased, as that of the latter was counterbalanced by the development of free cities. considerable reforms were introduced at the close of our period mainly by maximilian. the depravity of the greek empire would have brought it to utter ruin at a much earlier date but for the degeneration which overtook mohammedanism. incidentally the crusades helped the byzantine power at first to strengthen its hold on some of its threatened possessions; but the so-called fourth crusade replaced the greek empire by a latin one with no elements of permanency. when a greek dynasty was re-established, and the crusading spirit of western europe was already dead, the byzantine princes were left to cope with the turks single handed, and the last of the cæsars died heroically when the ottomans captured constantinople in . throughout the early middle ages the church acquired enormous wealth and church lands were free from taxation. it was not till a comparatively late period that the payment of tithes was enforced by law. not infrequently the church was despoiled by violence, but the balance was more than recovered by fraud. by the time of charlemagne the clergy were almost exempt from civil jurisdiction and held practically an exclusive authority in matters of religion. the state, however, maintained its temporal supremacy. when the strong hand of charlemagne was removed ecclesiastical influence increased. it was under gregory the great that the papacy acquired its great supremacy over the provincial churches. as the power of the church grew after the death of charlemagne, partly from the inclination of weak kings to lean on ecclesiastical support, the papal claims to authority developed and began to be maintained by the penalties of excommunication and interdict. a period of extreme laxity in the tenth century was to be brought to a close in the eleventh partly by the pressure brought to bear on the papacy by the saxon emperors, but still bore by the ambitious resolution of gregory vii. this remarkable man was determined to assert the complete supremacy of the holy see over all secular powers. he refused to recognise the right of secular princes to make ecclesiastical appointments within their own dominions; and he emphasised the distinction between the priesthood, as a cast having divine authority, and the laity, by enforcing with the utmost strictness the ecclesiastical law of celibacy, which completely separates the churchman from the normal interests and ambitions which actuate the layman. in the contest between gregory and the emperor, it seemed for the moment as if the secular power had won the victory; but, in fact, throughout the twelfth century; the claims which gregory had put forward were becoming practically effective partly from the great influence exercised through the crusades. these papal pretensions reached their climax in the great pope innocent iii., who asserted with practical success the right to pronounce absolutely on all disputes between princes or between princes and their subjects, and to depose those who rejected his authority. throughout the thirteenth century rome was once more mistress of the world. the church derived great influence from the institution of mendicant orders, especially those of st. dominic and st. francis which recovered much of the esteem forfeited by the old monastic orders. another instrument of papal influence was the power of granting dispensations both with regard to marriages and as to the keeping of oaths. if the clergy were free for the most part from civil taxation, they were nevertheless severely mulcted by the papacy. the ecclesiastical jurisdiction encroached upon the secular tribunals; the classes of persons with respect to whom it claimed exclusive authority were persistently extended, in spite of the opposition of such princes as henry ii. and edward i. at last, however, the papal aggressor met his match in philip the fair. when boniface viii. died, his successors first submitted to the french monarchy and then became its nominees; while they resided at avignon, virtually under french control. the restoration of the pontificate to rome in was shortly followed by the great schism. for some years there were two rival popes, each of whom was recognised by one or the other half of western christendom. this was terminated by the council of constance, which incidentally affirmed the supremacy of general councils over the pope. the following council at basle was distinctly anti-papal; but the papacy had the better of the contest. _iv.--england_ the anglo-saxon polity limited the succession of the crown to a particular house but allowed a latitude of choice within that house. the community was divided into thames or gentry, ceorls or freemen, and serfs. the ceorls tended to sink to the position known later as villeinage. the composition of the king's great council called the witenagemot is doubtful. the country was divided into shires, the shire into districts called hundreds, and the hundreds into tithings. there appears to be no adequate authority for the idea that trial by jury was practised; the prevailing characteristic of justice was the system of penalty by fine, and the responsibility of the tithing for the misdeeds of any of its members. there is no direct evidence as to the extent to which feudal tenures were beginning to be established before the norman conquest. the norman conquest involved a vast confiscation of property and the exclusion of the native english from political privileges. the feudal system of land tenure was established; but its political aspect here and in france was quite different. there were no barons with territories comparable to those of the great french feudataries. that the government was extremely tyrannical is certain. the crown derived its revenues from feudal dues, customs duties, tallages--that is, special charges on particular towns,--and the war tax called the danegelt; all except the first being arbitrary taxes. the violence of king john led to the demand of the barons for the great charter, the keystone of english liberty, securing the persons and property of all freemen from arbitrary imprisonment or spoliation. thenceforth no right of general taxation is claimed. the barons held themselves warranted in refusing supplies. the king's court was gradually separated into three branches, king's bench, exchequer, and common pleas. the advance in the study of law had the definite effect of establishing a fixed rule of succession to the crown. one point must still be noticed which distinguishes england from other european countries; that the law recognises no distinction of class among freemen who stand between the peers and villeins. the reign of edward i. forms an epoch. the confirmation of the charters put an end to all arbitrary taxation; and the type of the english parliament was fixed. in the great councils the prelates and greater barons had assembled, and the lesser barons were also summoned; the term baron being equivalent to tenant in chief. a system of representation is definitely formulated in montfort's parliament of . whether the knights were elected by the freemen of the shire or only by the tenants in chief, is not clear. many towns were self governing--independent, that is, of local magnates--under charters from the crown. montfort's parliament is the first to which towns sent representatives. edward established the practice in his model parliament; probably in order to ensure that his demands for money from the towns might in appearance at least receive their formal assent. parliament was not definitely divided into two houses until the reign of edward iii. in this reign the commons succeeded in establishing the illegality of raising money without consent; the necessity that the two houses should concur for any alterations in the law; and the right of the commons to enquire into public abuses and to impeach public counsellors. under the second heading is introduced a distinction between statutes and ordinances; the latter being of a temporary character, and requiring to be confirmed by parliament before they acquire permanent authority. in the next reign the commons assert the right of examining the public expenditure. moreover the parliaments more openly and boldly expressed resentment at the acts of the king's ministers and claimed rights of control. for a time, however, the king secured supremacy by a coup d'état; which in turn brought about his deposition, and the accession of henry iv., despite the absurd weakness of his title to the inheritance of the crown. the rights thus acquired developed until the war of the roses. notably redress of grievances became the condition of supply; and the inclination of the crown to claim a dispensing power is resolutely combated. it is also to be remarked that the king's foreign policy of war or peace is freely submitted to the approval of parliament. this continues during the minority of henry vi.; but the revival of dissatisfaction with the government leads to a renewed activity in the practice of impeachments; and parliament begins to display a marked sensitiveness on the question of its privileges. the commons further definitely express their exclusive right of originating money bills. at this time it is clear that at least all freeholders were entitled to vote in the election of the knights of the shire. the selection of the towns which sent up members, and the franchise under which their members were elected, seems to have been to a considerable extent arbitrary. nor can we be perfectly certain of the principles on which writs were issued for attendance in the upper house. we find that for some time the lower clergy as well as the higher were summoned to attend parliament; but presently, sitting in a separate chamber, they ceased to take part in parliamentary business. we have seen the king's court divided into three courts of justice. the court itself, however, as the king's council, continued to exercise a juridical as well as a deliberative and administrative function. in spite of the charter, it possessed an effective if illegal power of arbitrary imprisonment. so far the essential character of our constitution appears to be a monarchy greatly limited by law but swerving continually into irregular courses which there was no constraint adequate to correct. there is absolutely no warrant for the theory that the king was merely a hereditary executive magistrate, the first officer of the state. the special advantage enjoyed by england lay in the absence of an aristocracy with interests antagonistic to those of the people. it would be truer to say that the liberties of england were bought by money than by the blood of our forefathers. the process by which the villein became a hired labourer is obscure and an attempt was made to check it by the statute of labourers at the time of the black death. this was followed by the peasant's revolt of , which corresponded to the far worse horrors of the french jacquerie. sharply though this was suppressed, the real object of the rising seemed to have been accomplished. of the period of the wars of the roses it is here sufficient to say that it established the principle embodied in a statute of henry vii. that obedience to the _de facto_ government is not to be punished on the ground that government is not also _de jure_. _v.--europe_ in spite of the teutonic incursion, latin remained the basis of language as it survived in italy, france, and spain. but the pursuit of letters was practically confined to the clergy and was by them employed almost exclusively in the interests of clerical authority. to this end a multitude of superstitions were encouraged; superstitions which were the cause of not a few strange and irrational outbursts of fanaticism. the monasteries served indeed a useful purpose as sanctuaries in days of general lawlessness and rapine; but the huge weight of evidence is conclusive as to the general corruption of morals among the clergy as among the laity. the common diversion of the upper classes, lay and clerical, when not engaged in actual war, was hunting. an extended commerce was impossible when robbery was a normal occupation of the great. gradually, however, a more orderly society emerged. maritime commerce developed in two separate areas, the northern and western, and the mediterranean. the first great commerce in the north arises from the manufacture in flanders of the wool exported from england. and in the fourteenth century england herself began to compete in the woollen manufacture. the german free manufacturing towns established the great hanseatic league; but maritime commerce between the northern and southern areas was practically non-existent till the fifteenth century, by which time english ships were carrying on a fairly extensive traffic in the mediterranean. in that area the great seaports of italy, and in a less degree, of catalonia and the french mediterranean seaboard, developed a large commerce. naturally, however, the law which it was sufficiently difficult to enforce by land was even more easily defied on the sea, and piracy was extremely prevalent. governments as well as private persons were under a frequent necessity of borrowing, and for a long time the great money lenders were the jews. they, however, were later to a great extent displaced by the merchants of lombardy, and the fifteenth century witnesses the rise of the great bankers, italian and german. the structure and furniture of all buildings for private purposes made exceedingly little provision for comfort, offering an extreme contrast to the dignity of the public buildings and the sublimity of ecclesiastical architecture. during the last three hundred years of our period it is clear that there was a great diminution of the status of servitude and a great increase in the privileges extended to corporate towns. private warfare was checked and lawless robbery to a considerable extent restrained. it is tolerably clear that the rise of heretical sects were both the cause and the result of moral dissatisfaction, tending to the adoption of higher moral standards. some of these sects were cruelly crushed by merciless persecution, as in the case of the albigenses. the doctrines of wickliffe, however, were never stamped out in england; and the form which they took in bohemia among the followers of the martyred john huss had little about them that was beneficial. the great moral school of the middle ages was the institution of chivalry, which existed to animate and cherish the principle of honour. to this a strong religious flavor was superadded, perhaps by the crusades. to valour and devotion was added the law of service to womanhood, and chivalry may fairly claim to have developed generally the three virtues essential to it, of loyalty, courtesy, and liberality. resting, however, as it did on the personal prowess and skill of the individual in single combat, the whole system of chivalry was destroyed by the introduction on an extensive scale of the use of firearms. we turn lastly to the intellectual improvement which may be referred to four points: the study of civil laws the institution of universities; the application of modern languages to literature, and especially to poetry; and the revival of ancient learning. education may almost be said to have begun with the establishment of the great schools by charlemagne out of which sprang the european universities. for a long time of course all studies were dominated by that of theology, and the scholastic philosophy which pertained to it. barren as these pursuits were, they kept alive an intellectual activity which ultimately found fresh channels. the romance languages developed a new literature first on the tongues of the troubadours and then in italy--the italy which gave birth to dante and petrarch. it was about the fourteenth century that a new enthusiasm was born for the study of classical authors, though greek was still unknown. and the final and decisive impulse was given when the invention of printing made the great multiplication of books possible. * * * * * stanley lane-poole egypt in the middle ages stanley lane-poole, born on december , , studied arabic under his great-uncle, lane, the orientalist, and, before going up to oxford for his degree, began his "catalogue of oriental coins in the british museum," which appeared in fourteen volumes between and , and founded his reputation as the first living authority on arabic numismatics. in , , and he was at cairo officially employed by the british government upon the mohammedan antiquities, and published his treatise on "the art of the saracens in egypt" in , in which year he visited stockholm, helsingfors, st. petersburg, moscow, and constantinople to examine their oriental collections. he has written histories of the "moors in spain," "turkey," "the barbary corsairs," and "mediæval india," which have run to many editions; and biographies of saladin, babar, aurangzib; of lord stratford de redcliffe, and sir harry parkes. he has also published a miniature koran in the "golden treasury" series, and written "studies in a mosque," besides editing three volumes of lane's "arabic lexicon." for five years he held the post of professor of arabic at trinity college, dublin, of which he is litt.d. mohammedan egypt, his special subject, he has treated in several books on cairo, the latest being "the story of cairo." but his most complete work on this subject is "the history of egypt in the middle ages," here epitomised by the author. _i.--a province of the caliphate_ ever since the arab conquest in egypt has been ruled by mohammedans, and for more than half the time by men of turkish race. though now and again a strong man has gathered all the reins of control into his own hands and been for a time a personal monarch, as a rule the government has been, till recent years, a military bureaucracy. the people, of course, had no voice in the government. the egyptians have never been a self-governing race, and such a dream as constitutional democracy was never heard of until a few years ago. by the arab conquest in the seventh century the people merely changed masters. they were probably not indisposed to welcome the moslems as their deliverers from the tyranny of the orthodox church of the east roman or byzantine empire, invincibly intolerant of the native monophysite heresy; and when the conquest was complete they found themselves, on the whole, better off than before. they paid their taxes to officials with arabic instead of greek titles, but the taxes were lighter and the amount was strictly laid down by law. the land-tax of about a pound per acre was not excessive on so fertile a soil, and the poll-tax on nonconformity, of the same amount, was a moderate price to pay for entire liberty of conscience and freedom in public worship guaranteed by solemn treaty. the other taxes were comparatively insignificant, and the total revenue in the eighth century was about £ , , . the surplus went to the caliph, the head of the vast mohammedan empire, which then stretched from seville to samarkand, whose capital was first damascus and afterwards baghdad. for over years (till ) egypt was a mere province of this huge caliphate, and was governed, like other provinces, with a sole view to revenue. "milk till the udder be dry and let blood to the last drop" was a caliph's instructions to a governor of egypt. as these governors were constantly changed--there were sixty-seven in years under the abbasid caliphs of baghdad--and as a governor's main object was to "make hay while the sun shines," the process of milking the egyptian cow was often accelerated by illegal extortion, and the governor's harvest was reaped before it was due. illegality was, however, checked to some extent by the generally wise and just influence of the chief justice, or kadi, whose probity often formed the best feature of the arab government in egypt. nor did the caliphs extort taxes without giving something in return. the development of irrigation works was always a main consideration with the early mohammedan rules, from spain to india, and in egypt, where irrigation is the country's very life, it was specially cared for, with a corresponding increase in the yield. moreover, the governors usually held to the agreement that the christians should have liberty of conscience, and protected them from the moslem soldiery. as time went on, this toleration abated, partly because the moslems had gradually become the predominant population. at the beginning the caliphs had taken anxious precautions against the colonising of egypt; they held it by an army, but they were insistent that the army should not take root, but be always free to join the caliph's standard. but it was inevitable that the arabs should settle in so fertile and pleasant a land. each governor brought a small army as his escort, and these arab troops naturally intermarried with egyptian women, who were constitutionally inclined to such alliances. a few arab tribes also settled in egypt. this gradual and undesigned arabising of the country would lead to oppression of the christians, to the "squeezing" of wealthy natives, and occasionally to the institution of humiliating distinctions of dress and other vexations, and even to the spoiling of coptic churches. then sometimes the copts, as the egyptian christians are called, would rebel. their last and greatest rebellion, which occurred in the delta in - , was ruthlessly trampled out by turkish troops under mamun, the only abbasid caliph who made a visit to egypt. many copts now apostatised, and from this time dates the predominance of the moslem population and the settling of arabs in the villages and on the land, instead of as heretofore only in the two or three large towns. the coming of the turkish troops with the caliph mamun was an ominous event for the country. up to all the successive governors had been arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. with some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple habits--the arabs were never luxurious--and usually of strict mohammedan principles. they made money, honestly if possible, during their brief tenure; but they did not harass the people much by their personal interference, and left the local officials to manage matters in their own way, as had always been the custom. they lived at the new capital, fustat, which grew up on the site of the conqueror's camp, and very near the modern cairo; for alexandria, the symbol of roman domination, was dismantled in after the emperor manuel's attempt at reconquest. if they did not do much active good, they did little harm, and egypt pursued her immemorial ways. the last arab governor, anbasa, was a man of fine character, and his term of office was distinguished by the building of the fort of damietta, as a protection against roman raids, and by a defeat of the tributary sudanis near dongola. _ii.--turkish governors_ the arabs have neither the ferocity nor the luxuriousness, nor, it should be added, the courage and the genius for administration of the turkish race. in the arrival of turkish troops in we see a symptom of what was going on all over the eastern caliphate. turks were taking the place of arabs in the army and the provincial governments, just as the persians were filling up the civil appointments. the caliph's turkish bodyguard was the beginning of the dismemberment of the caliphate. it became the habit of the caliphs to grant the government of egypt, as a sort of fief, to a leading turkish officer, who usually appointed a deputy to do his work and to pay him the surplus revenue. such a deputy was ahmad-ibn-tulun ( - ), the first of the many turkish despots of egypt. ibn-tulun was the first ruler to raise egypt from a mere tax-paying appendage of the caliphate to a kingdom, independent save for the recognition of the caliph on the coinage, and he was the first to found a moslem dynasty there. a man of fair mohammedan education, iron will, and ubiquitous personal attention to affairs, he added syria to his dominions, defeated the east romans with vast slaughter near tarsus ( ), kept an army of , turkish slaves and a fleet of a hundred fighting ships. he beautified his capital by building a sumptuous palace and his well-known mosque, which still stands in his new royal suburb of katai; he encouraged the small farmers and reduced the taxation, yet he left five millions in the treasury when he died in . his son maintained his power, and more than his luxury and artistic extravagance; but there were no elements of stability in the dynasty, which depended solely upon the character of the ruler. the next generation saw egypt once more ( ) a mere province of the caliphate, but with this difference, that its governors were now turks, generally under the control of their own soldiery, and much less dependent upon the ever-weakening power of the caliph of baghdad. one of them, the ikhshid, in emulated ibn-tulun and united part of syria to egypt; but the sons he left were almost children, and the power fell into the hands of the regent kafur, a black eunuch from the sudan, bought for £ , who combined a luxurious and cultivated court with some military successes and real administrative capacity. _iii.--the fatimid caliphs_ the mohammedan world is roughly divided into sunnis and shia. the shia are the idealists, the mystics of islam; the sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen. the shia trace an apostolic succession from ali, the husband of the prophet mohammed's daughter fatima, hold doctrines of immanence and illumination, adopt an allegorical interpretation of scripture, and believe in the coming of a mahdi or messiah. the sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no messiah save mohammed. the shia, whatever their racial origin, form the persian, the aryan, adaptation of islam, which is an essentially semitic creed. in the tenth century they had established a caliph among the berbers at kayrawan ( ). they had thence invaded egypt with temporary success in and . when the death of kafur in left the country a prey to rival military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of kayrawan--called the fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from fatima--sent his army into egypt. the people, who had too long been the sport of turkish mercenaries, received the invaders as deliverers, just as the copts had welcomed the arabs three centuries before. gauhar, the fatimid general, entered fustat (or misr, as it was usually called, a name still applied both to egypt and to its capital) amid acclamations in , and immediately laid the foundations of the fortified palace which he named, astrologically, after the planet mars (kahir), el-kahira, "the martial," or "the victorious," which gradually expanded to the city of cairo. he also founded the great historic university mosque of the azhar, which, begun by the heretical shia, became the bulwark of rigid scholasticism and the theological centre of orthodox islam. the theological change was abrupt. it was as though presbyterian scotland had suddenly been put under the rule of the jesuits. but, like the society of jesus, the shia were pre-eminently intellectual and recognised the necessity of adapting their teaching to the capacities of their hearers, and the conditions of the time. they did not force extreme shia doctrine upon the egyptians. their esoteric system, with its graduated stages of initiation, permitted a large latitude, and they were content to add their distinctive formulas to the ordinary mohammedan ritual, and to set them conspicuously on their coinage, without entering upon a propaganda. the bulk of the egyptian moslems apparently preserved their orthodoxy and suffered an heretical caliphate for two centuries with traditional composure. the christian copts found the new _régime_ a marked improvement. mysticism finds kindred elements in many faiths, and the fatimid caliphs soon struck up relations with the local heads of the christian religion. the second egyptian caliph, aziz ( - ), was greatly influenced by a christian wife, who encouraged his natural clemency. bishop severus attended his court, and coptic churches were rebuilt. throughout the fatimid period we constantly find christians and jews, and especially armenians, advanced to the highest offices of state. this was partly due, of course, to their special qualifications as scribes and accountants, for arabs and turks were no hands at "sums." the land had rest under this wise and tolerant caliph. if he set a dangerous example in his luxury and love of display, he unquestionably maintained law, enforced equity, punished corruption, and valiantly defended his kingdom. he fitted out a fleet of sail at maks (then the port of cairo, on the nile), which kept the emperor basil at a distance and assured the caliph's ascendancy from end to end of the mediterranean sea. after these two great rulers the fatimid caliphate subsisted for nearly two centuries by no virtue or energy of its own. the caliphs lived secluded, like veiled prophets, in their huge palace at cairo, given over to sensual delights (saladin found , women in the great palace when he entered it in ), and wholly regardless of their kingdom, which they left to the care of vezirs, who were chiefly bent on making their own fortunes, though there were many able, and a few honest men amongst them. the real power rested with the army, and the only check upon the tyranny and debauchery of the army lay in its own jealous divisions. the fanatical berber regiments imported from tunis, the bloody blacks recruited in the sudan, and the mutinous turkish troops long established in the country, were always at daggers drawn, and their rivalry was the vezirs' opportunity. in such anarchy the country fell from bad to worse. the reign of hakim, the frantic son of aziz and his christian wife, was a personal despotism of the most eccentric kind, marked by apparently unreasonable regulations, such as keeping the shops open by night instead of by day, and confining all women to the house for seven years, as well as by intermittent persecution of christians and jews; and also by enlightened acts, such as the founding of the hall of science and the building of mosques, for all the fatimides were friends to the arts; and ending in the proclamation of hakim as the incarnation of the divine reason, in which capacity he is still adored by the druses of the lebanon. this assumption led to popular tumults and an orgy of carnage, in the midst of which hakim mysteriously disappeared ( ). his successors, zahir ( - ), and mustansir ( - ) did nothing to retrieve the anarchic situation, of which the soldiers were the unruly masters. palace cliques, disastrous famines (one of which lasted seven years, - , and even led to the public selling of human joints as butcher's meat), slave, or rather freedmen's, revolts, military tumults, and the occasional temporary ascendancy of a talented vezir, sum up the history of egypt during most of the eleventh century. the wisdom and firmness of two great armenian vezirs, bedr-el-gemali ( - ) and his son afdal ( - ), brought a large degree of order, but the last years of the fatimid caliphate were blotted by savage murders both of caliphs and vezirs, and by the loss of their syrian dominions to seljuks and crusaders. _iv.--the house of saladin_ it was a question whether egypt would fall to the christian king of jerusalem or the moslem king of damascus; but, after several invasions by both, nur-ed-din settled the problem by sending his syrian army to cairo in , when the crusaders withdrew without offering battle, and the fatimid caliphate came to an end in . on the syrian general's death, two months after the conquest, his nephew, salah-ed-din ibn-ayyub (saladin), succeeded to the vezirate, and after nur-ed-din's death, in , he made himself independent sultan, not only of egypt but of syria and mesopotamia. saladin was a kurd from the tigris districts; but his training and his following were purely turkish, moulded on the seljuk model, and recruited largely from the seljuk lands. his fame was won outside egypt, and only eight of the twenty-four years of his reign were spent in cairo; the rest was passed in waging wars in syria, mesopotamia, and palestine, culminating in the catastrophic defeat of the crusaders near tiberias in , and the conquest of jerusalem and all of the holy land. the famous crusade of richard i., though it resulted only in recovering a strip of coast from acre to jaffa, and did not rescue jerusalem, wore out saladin's strength, and in the chivalrous and magnanimous "soldan" died. in egypt his chief work, after repressing revolts of black troops and shia conspiracies, and repelling successive naval attacks on damietta and alexandria by the eastern emperor and the kings of jerusalem and sicily, was the building of the citadel of cairo after the model of norman fortresses in syria, and the encouragement of sunni orthodoxy by the founding and endowment of medresas, or theological colleges. the people, who had never been really converted to the fatimid creed, accepted the latest reformation with their habitual nonchalance. this was really the greatest achievement of saladin and his house. cairo succeeded to baghdad and cordova as the true metropolis of islam, and egypt has remained true to the most narrow school of orthodoxy ever since. saladin's kinsmen, known as the ayyubid dynasty, ruled egypt for over half a century after the death of their great leader. first his politic brother, adil seyf-ed-din ("saphadin") carried on his fine tradition for a quarter of a century, and then from to seyf-ed-din's able son kamil, who had long been the ruler of egypt during his father's frequent absences, followed in his steps. the futile efforts of the discredited crusaders disturbed their peace. john of brienne's seizure of damietta was a serious menace, and it took all kamil's energy to defeat the "franks" at mansura ( ) and drive them out of the country. on the other hand, he cultivated very friendly relations with the emperor frederic ii., who concluded a singular defensive alliance with him in , to the indignation of the pope. he was tolerant to christians, and listened to the preaching of st. francis of assisi; he granted trading concessions to the venetians and pisans, who established a consulate at alexandria. at the same time he notably encouraged moslem learning, built colleges, and developed the resources of the kingdom in every way. what had happened to the dynasties of tulun, ikhshid, and the fatimides, was repeated on the death of kamil. two sons kept the throne successively till , and then, in the midst of louis ix's crusade, the salvation of egypt devolved on the famous mamluks, or white slaves, who had formed the _corps d'élite_ of saladin's army. _v.--the mamluks_ political women have played a great rôle in egypt from hatshepsut and cleopatra to the christian wife of aziz, the princess royal who engineered the downfall of hakim, and the black mother who dominated mustansir; and it was a woman who was the first queen of the mamluks. sheger-ed-durr ("tree of pearls"), widow of salih, the last reigning ayyubid of egypt, was the brain of the army which broke the chivalry of france. at the second battle of mansura in , she took louis prisoner. then she married a leading mamluk emir, to conciliate moslem prejudice against a woman's rule, and thenceforth for more than two centuries and a half one mamluk after another seized the throne, held it as long as he could, and sometimes transmitted it to his son. when it is noted that forty-eight sultans (twenty-five bahri mamluks, or "white slaves of the river," so called from the barracks on an island in the nile, and twenty-three burgis, named after the burg, or citadel, where their quarters originally were), succeeded one another from to , it will be seen that their average reign was but three and a half years. the throne, in fact, belonged to the man with the longest sword. the bravest and richest generals and court officials surrounded themselves with bands of warrior slaves, and reached a power almost equal to the reigning sultan, who was, in fact, only _primus inter pares_, and on his death--usually by assassination--they fought for his title. all were alike slaves by origin, but this term implied no degradation. any slave with courage and address had the chance of becoming a freedman, rising to influence, and climbing into his master's seat. every man was every other man's equal--if he could prove it; but the process of proving it often turned cairo into a shambles. the mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly sports. they were at the same time the most luxurious of men, heavy drinkers, debauched sensualists, magnificent in their profusion, in their splendid prodigality in works of art and luxury, and in the munificence with which they filled their capital with noble monuments of the most exquisite saracenic architecture. most of the beautiful mosques of cairo were built by these truculent soldiers, all foreigners, chiefly turks, a caste apart, with no thought for the native egyptians whose lands they received as fiefs from the sultan; with no mercy when ambition called for secret assassination or wholesale massacre; yet fastidious in dress, equipment, and manners, given to superb pageants, laborious in business, and fond of music and poetry. their orthodoxy is attested not only by their innumerable religious foundations and endowments, but by their importing into cairo a line of abbasid caliphs--_fainéants_ indeed, but in a manner representative of the great caliphs of baghdad, extinguished by the mongols in --and in maintaining them till the ottoman sultan usurped their very nominal authority as commanders of the faithful. the greatest of all the mamluks was beybars ( - ). he it was who had charged st. louis's knights at mansura in , and afterwards helped to rout the mongol hordes at the critical battle of goliath's spring in ; and he was the real founder of the mamluk empire, and organised and consolidated his wide dominions so skilfully and firmly that all the follies and jealousies and crimes of his successors could not destroy the fabric. he made his army perfect in discipline, built a navy, made canals, roads, and bridges, annexed nubia, organised a regular postal service, built fortifications, mosques, colleges, halls of justice, and managed everything, from the fourth cataract of the nile and the holy cities of arabia to the pyramus and the euphrates, by his immense capacity for work and amazing rapidity of movements. egypt prospered exceedingly under his just, firm, and capable rule; he was severe to immorality and strictly prohibited wine, beer, and hashish. he entered into diplomatic relations with european powers to the great advantage of his country's trade; and his bravery, munificence, and justice have made him a popular hero in arabic romances down to the present day. none of his successors approached his high example khalil indeed recovered acre and all that remained of the crusader's possessions in palestine, and the mamluks, who never lost their soldierly qualities whoever happened to be their nominal ruler, handsomely defeated the mongols again in and , and for ever saved egypt from the unspeakable curse of a mongol conquest nasir, whose reign covers most of the first half of the fourteenth century, was a great builder, and so were many of the nobles of his court. it was the golden age of saracenic architecture, and cairo is still full of the monuments of nasir's emirs. he encouraged agriculture, stockbreeding, farming, falconry, as well as literature and art, everything, in short, except vice, wine, and christians. the burgi, or circassian mamluks ( - ), were little more than chief among the emirs. widespread corruption, the open sale of high offices and of "justice," and general debauchery characterised their rule. yet they built many of the loveliest mosques in cairo, and the conquest of cyprus, long a nest of mediterranean piracy, by bars bey in may be added to their credit. kait bey ( - ) was a great builder, and in every way a wise, brave, and energetic, public-spirited sovereign, and was an exception to the general baseness. egypt was rich in his day. the european trade had swelled enormously, and the duties brought in a prodigious revenue. the italian republics had their consulates or their marts in alexandria, and marseilles, narbonne, and catalonia sent their representatives. the indian trade was also very considerable; we read of £ , paid at one time in customs dues at gidda, then an egyptian port on the red sea. the mamluk sultan took toll on every bale of goods that passed between europe and india in the palmy days that preceded vasco de gama's discovery of the cape route in . it was an immense monopoly, extortionately used, and it was not resigned without a struggle. the mamluk fleet engaged the portuguese off chaul in the bay of bengal in and defeated them; but almeida avenged the honour of his country by a victory over the mamluk admiral hoseyn off diu in the following year, and the prolific transit trade of egypt was to a great extent lost. this final effort was made by the last great sultan of the circassian dynasty, kansuh ghuri ( - ), who also exerted himself manfully in defending his country from the impending disaster of ottoman invasion. but the othmanli turks, greatly heartened by the conquest of constantinople in , had been steadily encroaching in asia, and, after defeating the shah of persia, their advance upon syria and egypt was only a matter of time. the victory was made easier by jealousies and treachery among the mamluks. kansuh fell at the head of his gallant troops in a battle near aleppo in august ; a last desperate stand of the mamluks under the mukattam hill at cairo in january , was overcome, and sultan selim made egypt a province of the turkish empire. such it remains, formally, to this day. * * * * * raphael holinshed chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland raphael holinshed, who was born about , is one of the most celebrated of english chroniclers. the "chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland," known by his name, cover a long period of english history, beginning with a "description" of britain from the earliest times, and carried on until the reign of elizabeth, in the course of which, between and , holinshed died. the work did good service to shakespeare, who drew from it much of the material for his historical plays. the first edition, published in , was succeeded in by another, in which the "chronicles" were continued by john hooker and others. an edition appeared in , in the foreword to which the "chronicles" are described as containing "the most curious and authentic account of the manners and customs of our island in the reign of henry viii. and elizabeth "; and being the work of a contemporary observer this is not too much to claim for it. owing to the great scope of this work, it is impossible to convey an impression of the whole, which is best represented by means of selected examples of the chronicler's method. being the work of so many different authors, the literary quality of the "chronicles" naturally varies; but the learning and research they show make them an invaluable aid to the study of the manners and customs of early england. _i.--master holinshed to his good lord and master, sir william brooke, knight_ being earnestlie required, right honorable, of divers my freends, to set down some breefe discourse of some of those things which i had observed in the reading of manifold antiquities, i was at first verie loth to yeeld to their desires. but, they pressing their irksome sute, i condescended to it, and went in hand with the work, with hopes of good, although no gaie success. in the process of this booke, if your honor regard the substance of that which is here declared, i must needs confess that it is none of mine owne; but if your lordship have consideration of the barbarous composition shewed herein, that i may boldlie claim and challenge for mine owne. certes, i protest before god and your honor, that i never made any choise of stile, or words, neither regarded to handle this treatise in such precise order and method as manie other would have done, thinking it sufficient, truelie and plainelie to set forth such things as i minded to intreat of, rather than with vain affectation of eloquence to paint out a rotten sepulchre, a thing neither commendable in a writer, nor profitable to the reader. but howsoever it be done, i have had an especial eye unto the truth of things, and for the rest, i hope that this foule frizeled treatise of mine will prove a spur to others better learned to handle the self-same argument, if in my life-time i doo not peruse it again. _ii.--some account of the historie of britaine_ as few or no nations can justlie boast themselves to have continued sithence their countrie was first replenished, without anie mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitant mixture, more or lesse, of forreine inhabitants; no more can this our iland, whose manifold commodities have oft allured sundrie princes and famous capteines of the world to conquer and subdue the same unto their owne subjection. manie sorts of people therefore have come in hither and settled themselves here in this ile, and first of all other, a parcell of the lineage and posteritie of japhet, brought in by samothes, in the after the creation of adam. howbeit in process of time, and after they had indifferentlie replenished and furnished this iland with people, albion, the giant, repaired hither with a companie of his owne race proceeding from cham, and not onelie annexed the same to his owne dominion, but brought all such as he found here of the line of japhet, into miserable servitude and most extreame thraldome. after him also, and within lesse than six hundred and two yeares, came brute, the son of sylvius, with a great train of the posteritie of the dispersed trojans in ships; who rendering the like courtesie unto chemminits as they had done before unto the seed of japhet, brought them also wholie under his rule and governance, and dispossessing them he divided the countrie among such princes and capteines as he had led out of grecia with him. then after some further space of time the roman emperours subdued the land to their dominion; and after the coming of the romans, it is hard to say with how manie sorts of people we were dailie pestered. for their armies did commonlie consist of manie sorts of people, and were (as i may call them) a confused mixture of all other countries and nations then living in the world. howbeit i thinke it best, because they did all beare the title of romans, to retaine onelie that name for them all, albeit they were wofull guests to this our iland: sith that with them came all kinds of vice, all riot and excess of behaviour into our countrie, which their legions brought with them from each corner of their dominions. then did follow the saxons, and the danes, and at last the normans, of whom it is worthilie doubted whether they were more hard and cruell to our countrymen than the danes, or more heavie and intollerable to our iland than the saxons or the romans. for they were so cruellie bent to our utter subversion and overthrow, that in the beginning it was lesse reproach to be accounted a slave than an englishman, or a drudge in anie filthie businesse than a britaine: insomuch that everie french page was superiour to the greatest peere; and the losse of an englishman's life but a pastime to such of them as contended in their braverie who should give the greatest strokes or wounds unto their bodies when their toiling and drudgerie could not please them or satisfie their greedie humours. yet such was our lot in those daies by the divine appointed order, that we must needs obey such as the lord did set pyer us, and this all because we refused grace offered in time, and would not heare when god by his preachers did call us so favourablie unto him. by all this then we perceive, how from time to time this hand hath not onelie been a prey, but as it were a common receptacle for strangers, the naturall homelings or britons being still cut shorter and shorter, till in the end they came not onelie to be driven into a corner of this region, but in time also verie like utterlie to have been extinguished. thus we see how england hath been manie times subject to the reproach of conquest. and whereas the scots seeme to challenge manie famous victories also over us, it shall suffice for answer, that they deale in this as in the most part of their historie, which is to seeke great honour by lying, and great renown by prating and craking. indeed they have done great mischief in this hand, and with extreime crueltie; but as for anie conquest the first is yet to heare of. but beside those conquests aforementioned, huntingdon, the old historiographer, speaketh of another, likelie (as he saith) to come one daie out of the north, which is a wind that bloweth no man to good, sith nothing is to be had in those parts, but hunger and much cold. _iii.--of king richard, the first, and his journie to the holie land_ richard the first of that name, and second sonne of henrie the second, began his reign over england the sixt day of julie, in the yere of our lord . he received the crowne with all due and accustomed sollemnitie, at the hands of baldwin, the archbishop of canterburie, the third daie of september. upon this daie of king richard's coronation, the jewes that dwelt in london and in other parts of the realme, being there assembled, had but sorie hap, as it chanced. for they meaning to honour the same coronation with their presence, and to present to the king some honourable gift, whereby they might declare themselves glad for his advancement, and procure his freendship towards them, for the confirming of their privileges and liberties; he of a zealous mind to christes religion, abhorring their nation (and doubting some sorcerie by them to be practised) commanded that they should not come within the church when he should receive the crowne, nor within the palace whilest he was at dinner. but at dinner-time, among other that pressed in at the palace gate, diverse of the jews were about to thrust in, till one of them was striken by a christian, who alledging the king's commandment, kept them backe from comming within the palace. which some of the unrulie people, perceiving, and supposing it had been done by the king's commandement, tooke lightlie occasion thereof, and falling upon the jewes with staves, bats, and stones, beat them and chased them home to their houses and lodgings. then did they set fire on the houses, and the jewes within were either smoldred and burned to death within, or else at their comming forth most cruellie received upon the points of speares, billes, and swords of their adversaries that watched for them verie diligentlie. this great riot well deserved sere and grievous punishment, but yet it passed over without correction, because of the hatred generallie conceived against the obstinate frowardnesse of the jewes. finallie, after the tumult was ceased, the king commanded that no man should hurt or harm any of the jewes, and so they were restored to peace after they had susteined infinit damage. no great while after this his coronation, the king sought to prepare himself to journey to the holie land, and to this end he had great need of money. therefore he made such sale of things appertaining to him, as well in right of the crowne, as otherwise, that it seemed to divers that he made his reckoning never to return agan, in so much that some of his councillors told him plainelie, that he did not well in making things awaie so freelie; unto whom he answered "that in time of need it was no evill policie for a man to help himself with his owne." and further, "that if london at that time of need would be bought, he would surelie sell it, if he might meet with a convenient merchant that were able to give him monie enough for it." then all things being readie, king richard set forth, and, after great hindrance by tempests, and at the hands of the men of cyprus, who warred against him and were overcome, he came to the citie of acres, which then was besieged by the christian armie. such was the valiancie of king richard shown in manfull constraining of the citie, that his praise was greatly bruted both amongst the christians and also the saracens. at last, on the twelfth date of julie, in the yeare of grace , the citie of acres was surrendered into the christian men's hands. these things being concluded, the french king philip, upon envie and malice conceived against king richard (although he pretended sickness for excuse) departed homewards. now touching this departure, divers occasions are remembered by writers of the emulation and secret spite which he should bear towards king richard. but, howsoever, it came to passe, partlie through envie (as hath beene thought) conceived at the great deeds of king richard, whose mightie power and valiantnesse he could not well abide, and partlie for other respects him moving, he took the sea with three gallies of the genevois, and returned into italie, and so home into france, having promised first unto king richard in the holie land, and after to pope celestine at rome, that he would not attempt any hurtfull enterprise against the english dominions, till king richard should be returned out of the holie land. but this promise was not kept, for he sought to procure earle john, king richard's brother, to rebell against him, though he then sought it in vaine. yet were matters nowise peacefull within the realme of england, and because of this, and likewise because the froward humours of the french so greatlie hindered him in warring against the saracens, king richard determined fullie to depart homewards, and at last there was a peace concluded with saladin. but on his journie homewards the king had but sorie hap, for he made shipwracke on the coast of istria, and then fell into captivitie; and this was the manner that it came to passe. _iv.--of king richard's captivitie_ king richard, doubting to fall into the hands of those who might bear him ill-will, made the best shift he could to passe through quietlie, yet were many of his servants made captive, and he himself came with but three men to vienna. there causing his servants to provide meat for him more sumptuous and fine than was thought requisite for so meane a person as he counterfeited then, he was straightway remarked, and some gave knowledge to the duke of austrich named leopold, who loved him not for some matter that had passed in the holie land. moreover, his page, going about the towne to change gold, and buy vittels, bewraied him, having by chance the king's gloves under his girdle: whereupon, being examined, for fear of tortures he confessed the truth. the duke sent men to apprehend him, but he, being warie that he was descried, got him to his weapon; but they alledging the duke's commandement, he boldly answered, "that sith he must be taken, he being a king, would yeeld himselfe to none of the companie but to the duke alone." the duke hearing of this, speedilie came unto him, whom he meeting, delivered up his sword, and committed him unto his custodie. then was he brought before the princes and lords of the empire, in whose presence the emperour charged him with diverse unlawfull doings. king richard notwithstanding the vaine and frivolous objections laid to his charge, made his answers always so pithilie and directlie to all that could be laid against him, and excused himself e in everie point so thoroughlie, that the emperour much marvelled at his high wisdom and prudence, and not onelie greatlie commended him for the same, but from thenceforth used him more courteously. yet did king richard perceive that no excuses would serve, but that he must paie to his covetous host some great summe of monie for his hard entertainment. therefore he sent the bishop of salisburie into england to provide for the paiment of his ransome. finallie the king, after he had beene prisoner one yeare, six weekes, and three daies, was set at libertie on candle-mass day, and then with long and hastie journies, not keeping the high waies, he hasted forth towards england. it is reported that if he had lingered by the way, he had beene eftsoones apprehended. for the emperour being incensed against him by ambassadors that came from the french king, immediatlie after he was set forward, began to repent himselfe in that he had suffered him so soon to depart from him, and hereupon sent men after him with all speed to bring him backe if they could by any means overtake him, meaning as then to have kept him in perpetual prison. but these his knavish tricks being in the good providence of god defeated, king richard at length in good safetie landed at sandwich, and the morrow after came to canterburie, where he was received with procession. from thence he came unto london, where he was received with great joy and gladnesse of the people, giving heartie thanks to almightie god for his safe return and deliverance. the same yeare that king richard was taken by the duke of austrich, one night in the month of januarie about the first watch of the night, the northwest side of the element appeared of such a ruddie colour as though it had burned, without any clouds or other darknesse to cover it, so that the stars showed through that redness and might be verie well discerned. diverse bright strakes appeared to flash upwards now and then, dividing the rednesse, through the which the stars seemed to be of a bright sanguine colour. in februarie next insuing, one night after midnight the like wonder was seene and shortlie after newes came that the king was taken in almaigne. and the same daie and selfe houre that the king arrived at sandwich, whitest the sunne shone verie bright and cleare, there appeared a most brightsome and unaccustomed clearnesse, not farre distant from the sunne, as it were to the length and breadth of a man's personage, having a red shining brightnesse withall, like to the rainbow, which strange sight when manie beheld, there were that prognosticated the king alreadie to be arrived. _v.--of good queen elisabeth, and how she came into her kingdom_ after all the stormie, tempestuous, and blustering windie weather of queene marie was overblowne, the darksome clouds of discomfort dispersed, the palpable fogs and mists of most intollerable miserie consumed, and the dashing showers of persecution overpast, it pleased god to send england a calm and quiet season, a cleare and lovelie sunshine, and a world of blessings by good queene elisabeth, into whose gracious reign we are now to make an happie entrance as followeth. on her entering the citie of london, she was received of the people with prayers, wishes, welcomings, cries, and tender words, all which argued a wonderfull earnest love of most obedient subjects towards their sovereign. and on the other side, her grace, by holding up her hands, and merrie countenance to such as stood farre off, and most tender and gentle language to those that stood nigh unto her grace, did declare herselfe no lesse thankfullie to receive her people's good will, than they lovinglie offered it to her. and it was not onelie to those her subjects who were of noble birth that she showed herself thus verie gracious, but also to the poorest sort. how manie nose gaies did her grace receive at poore women's hands? how oftentimes staid she her chariot, when she saw anie simple bodie offer to speake to her grace? a branch of rosemarie given her grace with a supplication about fleetbridge, was seene in her chariot till her grace came to westminster, not without the marvellous wondering of such as knew the presenter, and noted the queene's most gracious receiving and keeping the same. therefore may the poore and needie looke for great hope at her grace's hand, who hath shown so loving a carefulnesse for them. moreover, because princes be set in their seat by god's appointing, and they must therefore first and chieflie tender the glorie of him from whom their glorie issueth; it is to be noted in her grace that for so much as god hath so wonderfullie placed her in the seat of government of this realme, she in all her doings doth show herselfe most mindful of his goodness and mercie shewed unto her. and one notable signe thereof her grace gave at the verie time of her passage through london, for in the tower, before she entered her chariot, she lifted up her eies to heaven and saith as followeth: "o lord almightie and everlasting god, i give thee most heartie thanks that thou hast beene so mercifull unto me as to spare me to behold this joy full daie. and i acknowledge that thou hast dealt as wonderfullie and as mercifullie with me as thou diddest with thy true and faithfull servant daniell thy prophet, whom thou deliveredst out of the den from the crueltie of the greedie and raging lions; even so was i overwhelmed, and onlie by thee delivered. to thee, therefore, onlie be thankes, honor, and praise, for ever. amen." on sundaie, the five and twentieth daie of januarie, her majestie was with great solemnitie crowned at westminster, in the abbey church there, by doctor oglethorpe bishop of carlisle. she dined in westminster hall, which was richlie hung, and everything ordered in such royall manner, as to such a regall and most solemn feast appertained. in the meane time, whilst her grace sat at dinner, sir edward dimmocke, knight, her champion by office, came riding into the hall in faire complete armour, mounted upon a beautifull courser, richlie trapped in cloth of gold, and in the midst of the hall cast downe his gauntlet, with offer to fight in her quarell with anie man that should denie her to be the righteous and lawfull queene of this realme. the queene, taking a cup of gold full of wine, dranke to him thereof, and sent it to him for his fee. finallie, this feast being celebrated with all due and fitting royall ceremonies, tooke end with great joy and contentation to all the beholders. yet, though there was thus an end of the ceremonies befitting the queene's coronation, her majesty was everywhere received with brave shows, and with pageants, all for the love and respect that her subjects bare her. thus on whitsundaie, in the first year of her reign, the citizens of london set forth a muster before the queene's majestie at greenwich in the parke there, of the number of , men, whereof were pikes, armed in fine corselets, shot in shirts of mail, and halberdiers armed in almaine rivets; these were furnished forth by the crafts and companies of the citie. to everie hundred two wifflers were assigned, richlie appointed and apparelled for the purpose. there were also twelve wardens of the best companies mounted on horsebacke in coates of blacke velvet, to conduct them, with drums and fifes, and sixe ensigne all in lerkins of white sattin of bridges, cut and lined with black sarsenet, and caps, hosen, and scarfs according. the sergeant-majors, captaine constable, and captaine sanders, brought them in order before the queene's presence, placing them in battell arraie, even as they should have fought; so the shew was verie faire, the emperour's and the french king's ammbassadors being present. verilie the queene hath ever shown herself forward and most willing that her faithfull subjects should be readie and skilfull in war as in peace. thus in the fourteenth yeare of her reign, by order of her council, the citizens of london, assembling in their several halles, the masters chose out the most likelie and active persons of their companies to be pikemen and shot. to these were appointed diverse valiant captaines, who to train them up in warlike feats, mustered them thrice everie weeke, sometimes in the artillerie yard, teaching the gunners to handle their pieces, sometimes at the miles end, and in saint george's field, teaching them to skirmish. in the arts of peace likewise, she is greatlie pleased with them who are good craftsmen, and shews them favour. in government we have peace and securitie, and do not greatlie fear those who may stir up wicked rebellion within our land, or may come against us from beyond the sea. in brief, they of norwich did say well, when the queene's majestie came thither, and in a pageant in her honour, one spake these words: "dost them not see the joie of all this flocke? vouchsafe to view their passing gladsome cheere, be still (good queene) their refuge and their rocke, as they are thine to serve in love and feare; so fraud, nor force, nor forreine foe may stand against the strength of thy most puissant hand." * * * * * edward a. freeman the norman conquest of england edward augustus freeman was born at harborne, staffordshire, england, aug. , . his precocity as a child was remarkable; at seven he read english and roman history, and at eleven he had acquired a knowledge of greek and latin, and had taught himself the rudiments of hebrew. an increase in fortune in enabled him to settle down and devote himself to historical research, and from that time until his death on march , , his life was one spell of literary strenuousness. his first published work, other than a share in two volumes of verse, was "a history of architecture," which appeared in . freeman's reputation as historian rests principally on his monumental "history of the norman conquest." it was published in fifteen volumes between and , and, in common with all his works, is distinguished by critical ability, exhaustiveness of research, and an extraordinary degree of insight. his historical scenes are remarkably clear and vivid, as though, according to one critic "he had actually lived in the times." _preliminary events_ the norman conquest is important, not as the beginning of english history, but as its chief turning point. its whole importance is that which belongs to a turning point. this conquest is an event which stands by itself in the history of europe. it took place at a transitional period in the world's development. a kingdom which had hitherto been only teutonic, was brought within the sphere of the laws, manners, and speech of the romance nations. at the very moment when pope and cæsar held each other in the death grasp, a church which had hitherto maintained a sort of insular and barbaric independence was brought into a far more intimate connection with the roman see. the conquest of england by william wrought less immediate change than when the first english conquerors slew, expelled, or enslaved the whole nation of the vanquished britons or than when africa was subdued by genseric. but it wrought a greater immediate change than the conquest of sicily by charles of anjou. it brought with it not only a new dynasty, but a new nobility. it did not expel or transplant the english nation or any part of it; but it gradually deprived the leading men and families of england of their land and offices, and thrust them down into a secondary position under the alien intruders. it must not be forgotten that the old english constitution survived the norman conquest. what the constitution had been under the saxon eadgar, that it remained under william. the laws, with a few changes in detail, and also the language of the public documents, remained the same. the powers vested in king william and his witan remained constitutionally the same as those which had been vested in king eadgar and his witan a hundred years before. immense changes ensued in social condition and administration, and in the relation of the kingdom to foreign lands. there was also a vast increase of royal power, and new relations were introduced between the king and every class of his subjects; but formal constitutional changes there were none. i cannot too often repeat, for the saying is the very summing up of the whole history, that the norman conquest was not the wiping out of the constitution, the laws, the language, the national life of englishmen. the english kingship gradually changed from the old teutonic to the later mediæval type; but the change began before the norman conquest. it was hastened by that event; it was not completed till long after it, and the gradual transition, was brought to perfection by henry ii. certain events indicate the remoter causes of the norman conquest. the accession of eadward at once brings us among the events that led immediately to that conquest, or rather we may look on the accession of this saxon king as the first stage of the conquest itself. swend and cnut, the danes, had shown that it was possible for a foreign power to overcome england by force of arms. the misgovernment of the sons of cnut hindered the formation of a lasting danish dynasty in england. the throne of cerdic was again filled by a son of woden; but there can be no doubt that the shock given to the country by the danish conquest, especially the way in which the ancient nobility was cut off in the long struggle with swend and cnut, directly opened the way for the coming of the norman. eadward did his best, wittingly or unwillingly, to make his path still easier. this he did by accustoming englishmen to the sight of strangers--not national kinsmen like cnut's danes, but frenchmen, men of utterly alien speech and manners--enjoying every available place of honour or profit in the country. the great national reaction under godwine and harold made england once more england for a few years. but this change, happy as it was, could not altogether do away with the effects of the french predilections of eadward. with eadward, then, the norman conquest really begins. the men of the generation before the conquest, the men whose eyes were not to behold the event itself, but who were to do all that they could do to advance or retard it, are now in the full maturity of life, in the full possession of power. eadward is on the throne of england; godwine, leofric, and siward divide among them the administration of the realm. the next generation, the warriors of stamfordbridge and senlac, of york and ely, are fast growing into maturity. harold hadrada is already pursuing his wild career of night-errantry in distant lands, and is astonishing the world by his exploits in russia and sicily, at constantinople and at jerusalem. the younger warriors of the conquest, eadwine and morcere and waltheof and hereward, were probably born, but they must still have been in their cradles or in their mothers' arms. but, among the leaders of church and state, ealdred, who lived to place the crown on the head both of harold and of william, is already a great prelate, abbot of the great house of tewkesbury, soon to succeed lyfing in the chair of worcester. tostig must have been on the verge of manhood; swegen and harold were already men, bold and vigorous, ready to march at their father's bidding, and before long to affect the destiny of their country for evil and for good. beyond the sea, william, still a boy in years but a man in conduct and counsel, is holding his own among the storms of a troubled minority, and learning those arts of the statesman and the warrior which fitted him to become the wisest ruler of normandy, the last and greatest conqueror of england. the actors in the great drama are ready for their parts; the ground is gradually preparing for the scene of their performance. the great struggle of nations and tongues and principles in which each of them had his share, the struggle in which william of normandy and harold of england stand forth as worthy rivals of the noblest of prizes, will form the subject of the next, the chief and central portion of my history. the struggle between normans and englishmen began with the accession of eadward in , although the actual subjugation of england by force of arms was still twenty-four years distant. the thought of another danish king was now hateful. "all folk chose eadward to king." as the son of Æthelred and emma, the brother of the murdered and half-canonised alfred, he had long been-familiar to english imaginations. eadward, and eadward alone, stood forth as the heir of english royalty, the representative of english nationality. in his behalf the popular voice spoke out at once, and unmistakably. his popular election took place in june, immediately on the death of harthacnut, and even before his burial. eadward, then, was king, and he reigned as every english king before him had reigned, by that union of popular election and royal descent which formed the essence of all ancient teutonic kingship. he was crowned at winchester, april , . but by virtue of his peculiar character, his natural place was not on the throne of england, but at the head of a norman abbey, for all his best qualities were those of a monk. like him father, he was constantly under the dominion of favourites. it was to the evil choice of his favourites during the early part of his reign that most of the misfortunes of his time were owing, and that a still more direct path was opened for the ambition of his norman kinsman. in the latter part of his reign, either by happy accident or returning good sense, led him to a better choice. without a guide he could not reign, but the good fortune of his later years gave him the wisest and noblest of all guides. we have now reached the first appearance of the illustrious man round whom the main interest of this history will henceforth centre. the second son of godwine lived to be the last of our kings, the hero and martyr of our native freedom. the few recorded actions of harold, earl of the east angles, could hardly have enabled me to look forward to the glorious career of harold, earl of the west saxons, king of the english. tall in stature, beautiful in countenance, of a bodily strength whose memory still lives in the rude pictorial art of his time, he was foremost alike in the active courage and in the passive endurance of the warrior. it is plain that in him, no less than in his more successful, and, therefore, more famous, rival, we have to admire not only the mere animal courage, but that true skill of the leader of armies which would have placed both harold and william high among the captains of any age. great as harold was in war, his character as a civil ruler is still more remarkable, still more worthy of admiration. the most prominent feature in his character is his singular gentleness and mercy. never, either in warfare or in civil strife, do we find harold bearing hardly upon an enemy. from the time of his advancement to the practical government of the kingdom there is not a single harsh or cruel action with which he can be charged. such was the man who, seemingly in the fourth year of eadward, in the twenty-fourth of his own age, was invested with the rule of one of the great divisions of england, who, seven years later, became the virtual ruler of the kingdom; who, at last, twenty-one years from his first elevation, received, alone among english kings, the crown of england as the free gift of her people, and, alone among english kings, died axe in hand on her soil in the defence of england against foreign invaders. william of normandy bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. no man that ever trod this earth was endowed with greater natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. no man ever did his work more effectually at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as more truly an abiding possession for all time. in his character one feature stands out pre-eminently above all others. throughout his career we admire in him the embodiment in the highest degree that human nature will allow of the fixed purpose and the unbending will. we are too apt to look upon william as simply the conqueror of england. but so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but at the same time his least honourable, aspect. william learned to become the conqueror of england only by first becoming the conqueror of normandy and the conqueror of france. he found means to conquer normandy by the help of france, and to conquer france by the help of normandy. he came to his duchy under every disadvantage. at once bastard and minor, with competitors for his coronet arising at every moment, he was throughout the whole of his early life beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. in , william paid his memorable visit to england. at that time both normandy and england were at rest, enjoying peace. visits of mere friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days. such visits as those which william and eustace of boulogne paid at this time to this country were altogether novelties, and unlikely to be acceptable to the english mind. we may be sure that every patriotic englishman looked with an evil eye on any french-speaking prince who made his way to the english court. william came with a great following; he tarried awhile in his cousin's company; he went away loaded with gifts and honours. and he can hardly doubt that he went away encouraged by some kind of promise of succeeding to the kingdom which he now visited as a stranger. direct heirs were lacking to the royal house, and william was eadward's kinsman. the moment was in every way favourable for suggesting to william on the one hand, to eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by which william should succeed to the english crown on eadward's death. the norman writers are full of eadward's promise to william, and also of some kind of oath that harold swore to him. had either the promise or the oath been a pure norman invention, william could never have paraded both in the way that he did in the eyes of europe. i admit, then, some promise of eadward, some oath of harold. but when the time came for eadward the confessor to make his final recommendation of a successor, he certainly changed his purpose; for his last will, so far as such an expression can be used, was undoubtedly in favour of harold. there is not the slightest sign of any intention on the part of eadward during his later years to nominate william to the witan as future king. the two streams of english and norman history were joined together in the year when the two sovereigns met for the only time in their reigns. those streams again diverged. england shook off the norman influence to all outward appearance, and became once more the england of Æthelstan and eadgar. but the effects of eadgar's norman tendencies were by no means wholly wiped away. normans still remained in the land, and circumstances constituted secondary causes of the expedition of william. it was in the year that the influence of strangers reached its height. during the first nine years of eadward's reign we find no signs of any open warfare between the national and the normanising parties. the course of events shows that godwine's power was being practically undermined, but the great earl was still jutwardly in the enjoyment of royal favour, and his fast possessions were still being added to by royal grants. but soon england began to feel how great is the evil when a king and those immediately around him are estranged from the mass of his people in feeling. to the french favourites who gradually crowded the court of eadward the name, the speech, and the laws of england were things on which their ignorant pride looked with utter contempt. count eustace of boulogne, now brother-in-law of the king of the english, presently came, like the rest of the world, to the english court. the king was spending the autumn at gloucester. thither came count eustace, and, after his satisfactory interview with the king, he turned his face homewards. when a few miles from dover he felt himself, in a region specially devoted to godwine, to be still more thoroughly in an enemy's country than in other parts of england, and he and all his company took the precaution of putting on their coats of mail. the proud frenchmen expected to find free quarters at dover, and they attempted to lodge themselves at their pleasure in the houses of the burghers. one englishman resisted, and was struck dead on the spot. the count's party then rode through the town, cutting and slaying at pleasure. in a skirmish which quickly ensued twenty englishmen and nineteen frenchmen were slain. count eustace and the remnant of the party hastened back to gloucester, and told the story after their own fashion. on the mere accusation of a stranger, the english king condemned his own subjects without a hearing. he sent for godwine, as earl of the district in which lay the offending town, and commanded him to inflict chastisement on dover. the english champion was then in the midst of a domestic rejoicing. he had, like the king, been strengthening himself by a foreign alliance, and had just connected his house with that of a foreign prince. tostig, the third son of godwine, had just married judith, the daughter of baldwin of flanders. godwine, however, bidden without the least legal proof of offence, to visit with all the horrors of fire and sword, was not long in choosing his course. official duty and public policy, no less than abstract justice and humanity, dictated a distinct refusal. now or never a stand was to be made against strangers, and the earl demanded a legal trial for the burghers of dover. but there were influences about eadward which cut off all hope of a peaceful settlement of the matter. eustace probably still lingered about the king, and there was another voice ever at the royal ear, ever ready to poison the royal mind against the people of england and their leader. it was the voice of a foreign monk, archbishop robert. godwine and three other earls summoned their followers and demanded the surrender of eustace, but the frightened king sent for the northern earls siward, leofric, and ralph, bidding them bring a force strong enough to keep godwine in check. thus the northern and southern sections were arrayed against each other. there were, however, on the king's side, men who were not willing to see the country involved in civil war. leofric, the good earl of mercia, stood forth as the champion of compromise and peace, and it was agreed that hostilities should be avoided and that the witenagemot should assemble at michaelmas in london. of this truce king eadward and his foreign advisers took advantage to collect an army, at the head of which they appeared in london. godwine and his son harold were summoned to the gemot, but refused to appear without a security for a safe conduct. the hostages and safe-conduct were refused. the refusal was announced by bishop stigand to the earl as he sat at his evening meal. the bishop wept; the earl sprang to his feet, overthrew the table, leaped on his horse, and, with his sons, rode for his life all that night. in the morning the king held his witenagemot, and by a vote of the king and his whole army, godwine and his sons were declared outlaws, but five days were allowed them to get out of the land. godwine, swegen, tostig, and gyrth, together with gytha and judith, the newly-married wife of tostig, set sail for bruges in a ship laden with as much treasure as it would hold. they reached the court of flanders in safety, were honourably received by the count, and passed the whole winter with him. two of godwine's sons, however, sought another refuge. harold and his younger brother leofwine determined on resistance, and resolved to seek shelter among the danish settlers in ireland, where they were cordially received by king diarmid. for the moment the overthrow of the patriotic leaders in england was complete, and the dominion of the foreigners over the feeble mind of the king was complete. it was while godwine dwelt as an exile at bruges, and harold was planning schemes of vengeance in the friendly court of dublin, that william the bastard, afterwards known as william the conqueror, paid his memorable visit to england, that visit which has already been referred to as a stage, and a most important one, among the immediate causes of the norman conquest. stirring events followed in quick succession. general regret was felt among all patriotic englishmen at the absence of godwine. the common voice of england soon began to call for the return of the banished earl, who was looked to by all men as the father of his country. england now knew that in his fall a fatal blow had been dealt to her own welfare and freedom. and godwine, after sending many petitions to the king, vainly petitioning for a reconciliation, determined to return by force, satisfied that the great majority of englishmen would be less likely to resist him than to join his banners. harold sailed from ireland to meet his father by way of the english channel. godwine sailed up the thames, and london declared for him. panic reigned among the favourites of king eadward. the foreigners took to flight, among the fugitives being archbishop robert and bishop ulf. the gemot met and decreed the restoration of the earl and the outlawry of many normans. the king yielded, and accorded to godwine the kiss of peace, and a revolution was accomplished of which england may well be proud. but a tragedy soon followed, in the death of the most renowned englishman of that generation. during a meal at the easter festival godwine fell from his seat, and died after lying insensible for three days. great was the grief of the nation. harold, in the years that followed, became so increasingly popular that he was virtually chief ruler of england, even before the death of eadward, which happened on january , . his burial was followed by the coronation of harold. but the moment of struggle was now come. the english throne had become vacant, and the norman duke knew how to represent himself as its lawful heir, and to brand the king of the nation's choice as an usurper. the days of debate were past, and the sword alone could decide between england and her enemy. william found one englishman willing to help him in all his schemes, in the person of tostig, harold's brother, who had been outlawed at the demand of the nation, owing to his unfitness to rule his province as earl of northumberland. he had sunk from bad to worse. harold had done all he could for his fallen brother, but to restore him was impossible. tostig was at the norman court, urging william to the invasion of england. at his own risk, he was allowed to make an incursion on the english coast. entering the humber, he burned several towns and slew many men. but after these ravages tostig repaired to ask help of harold hardrada, whom he induced to prepare a great expedition. harold hardrada and tostig landed and marched towards york. a battle was fought between the mercians and norwegians at fulford, in which the former were worsted, but harold was marching northward. in the fearful battle of stamford bridge both harold hardrada and tostig were slain, and the viking host was shattered. the victorious english king was banqueting in celebration of the great victory, when a messenger appeared who had come at fleetest pace from the distant coast of sussex. one blow had been warded off, but another still more terrible had fallen. three days after the fight at stamford bridge, william, duke of the normans, once the peaceful guest of edward, had again, but in quite another guise, made good his landing on the shores of england. it was in august that the norman fleet had set sail on its great enterprise. for several weeks a south wind had been waited for at the mouth of the river dive, prayers and sacred rites of every kind being employed to move heaven to send the propitious breeze. on september the landing was effected at pevensey, the ancient anderida. there were neither, ships nor men to resist the landing. the first armed man who set foot on english ground was duke william himself, whose foot slipped, so that he fell with both hands on the ground. a loud cry of grief was raised at the evil omen. but the ready wit of william failed him not. "by the splendour of god," he cried, "i have taken seizin of my kingdom; the earth of england is in my hands." the whole army landed in order, but only one day was spent at pevensey. on the next day the army marched on eastward and came to hastings, which was fixed on as the centre of the operations of the whole campaign. it was a hard lot for the english king to be compelled to hasten southward to dislodge the new enemy, after scarcely a moment's rest from the toils and glories of stamford bridge. but the heart of harold failed him not, and the heart of england beat in unison with the heart of her king. as soon as the news came, king harold held a council of the leaders of stamford bridge, or perhaps an armed gemot. he told them of the landing of the enemy; he set before them the horrors which would come upon the land if the invader succeeded in his enterprise. a loud shout of assent rose from the whole assembly. every man pledged his faith rather to die in arms than to acknowledge any king but harold. the king thanked his loyal followers, and at once ordered an immediate march to the south, an immediate muster of the forces of his kingdom. london was the trysting-place. he himself pressed on at once with his immediate following. and throughout the land awoke a spirit in every english heart which has never died out to this day. the men from various shires flocked eagerly to the standard of their glorious king. harold seems to have reached london on october , about ten days after the fight at stamford bridge, and a week after the norman landing at pevensey. though his royal home was now at westminster, he went, in order to seek divine help and succour, to pray at waltham, the home of his earlier days, devoting one day to a pilgrimage to the holy cross which gave england her war-cry. harold and william were now both eager for the battle. the king set out from london on october . his consummate generalship is nowhere more plainly shown than in this memorable campaign. he formed his own plan, and he carried it out. he determined to give battle, but only on his own ground, and after his own fashion. the nature of the post shows that his real plan was to occupy a position where the normans would have to attack him at a great disadvantage. william constrained harold to fight, but harold, in his turn, constrained william to fight on ground of harold's own choosing. the latter halted at a point distant about seven miles from the headquarters of the invaders, and pitched his camp upon the ever-memorable heights of senlac. it was his policy not to attack. he occupied and fortified a post of great natural strength, which he speedily made into what is distinctly spoken of as a castle. the hill of senlac, now occupied by the abbey and town of battle, commemorates in its later name the great event of which it was the scene. the morning of the decisive day, saturday, october , at last had come. the duke of the normans heard mass, and received the communion in both kinds, and drew forth his troops for their march against the english post. then in full armour, and seated on his noble spanish war-horse, william led his host forth in three divisions. the normans from the hill of telham first caught sight of the english encamped on the opposite height of senlac. first in each of the three norman divisions marched the archers, slingers, and cross-bow men, then the more heavily-armed infantry, lastly the horsemen. the reason of this arrangement is clear. the light-armed were to do what they could with their missiles to annoy the english; the heavy infantry were to strive to break down the palisades of the english camp, and so to make ready the way for the charge of the horse. like the normans, the english had risen early. the king, after exhorting his troops to stand firm, rode to the royal post; he there dismounted, took his place on foot, and prayed to god for help. the battle began at nine in the morning--one of the sacred hours of the church. the trumpet sounded, and a flight of arrows from all three norman divisions--right, centre, and left,--was the prelude to the onslaught of the heavy-armed foot. the real struggle now began. the french infantry had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade, while a shower of stones and javelins disordered their approach, and while club, sword and axe greeted all who came within the reach of hand-strokes. both sides fought with unyielding valour. the war-cries rose on either side. the normans shouted "god help us!" the english called on the "holy cross." the norman infantry had soon done its best, but that best had been in vain. the choicest chivalry of europe now pressed on to the attack. the knights of normandy and of all lands from which men had flocked to william's standard, now pressed on, striving to make what impression they could with the whole strength of themselves and their horses on the impenetrable fortress of timber, shields, and living warriors. but all was in vain. the english had thus far stood their ground well and wisely, and the tactics of harold had so far completely answered. not only had every attack failed, but the great mass of the french army altogether lost heart. the bretons and the other auxiliaries on the left were the first to give way. horse and foot alike, they turned and fled. the whole of william's left wing was thrown into utter confusion. the strong heart of william, however, failed him not, and by his single prowess and presence of mind he recalled the fleeing troops. order was soon restored, and the norman host pressed on to a second and more terrible attack. the duke himself, his relics round his neck, sought out harold. a few moments more, and the two might have come face to face, but gyrth, the noble brother of the english king, hurled a spear at william. the missile narrowly missed the duke, but slew the spanish steed, the first of three that died under him that day. but william could not fight on foot as well as on horseback. he rose to his feet, pressed straight to seek the man who had so nearly slain him, and the earl fell, crushed beneath the blow of william's mace. nor did he fall alone, for his brother, earl leofwine, was smitten to the earth by an unknown assailant. the second attack, however, failed, for the english lines were as unyielding as ever. direct attack was unavailing. in the norman character fox and lion were equally blended, as william now showed. he ventured on the daring stratagem of ordering a pretended flight, and the unwary english rushed down the slope, pursuing the fugitive with shouts of delight. the error was fatal to england. the tide was turned; the duke's object was now gained; and the main end of harold's skilful tactics was frustrated. the english were no longer entrenched, and the battle fell into a series of single combats. as twilight was coming on an arrow, falling like a bolt from heaven, pierced harold's right eye, and he sank in agony at the foot of the standard. round that standard the fight still raged, till the highest nobility, the most valiant soldiery of england were slaughtered to a man. had harold lived, had another like him been ready to take his place, we may well doubt whether, even after senlac, england would have been conquered at all. as it was, from this moment her complete conquest was only a matter of time. from that day forward the normans began to work the will of god upon the folk of england, till there were left in england no chiefs of the land of english blood, till all were brought down to bondage and sorrow, till it was a shame to be called an englishman, and the men of england were no more a people. * * * * * james anthony froude history of england james anthony froude was born at darlington, england, april , , and died on oct. , . he was educated at westminster, and oriel college, oxford. taking holy orders, he was, for a time, deeply influenced by newman and the tractarian movement, but soon underwent the radical revolution of thought revealed by his first treatise, the "nemesis of faith," which appeared in , and created a sensation. its tendency to skepticism cost him his fellowship, but its profound pathos, its accent of tenderness, and its fervour excited wide admiration. permanent fame was secured by the appearance, in , of the first two instalments of his magnificent work, "the history of england, from the fall of wolsey to the defeat of the armada," the last volume appearing in . this treatise on the middle tudor period is one of the most fascinating historical treatises in the whole range of literature. it is written in a vivid and graphic prose, and with rare command of the art of picturesque description. froude never accepted the doctrine that history should be treated as a science; rather he claimed that the historian should concern himself with the dramatic aspect of the period about which he writes. the student may disagree with many of froude's points of view and portraitures, yet his men and women breathe with the life he endows them, and their motives are actuated by the forces he sets in motion. of his voluminous works perhaps the most notable, with the exception of the "history," are his "history of ireland in the eighteenth century," - , and his "short studies on great subjects," the latter aptly exhibiting froude's gifts of masterful prose and glittering paradox. _i.--the condition of england_ in periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and the habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the influence of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back into a time in which for centuries the european world grew upon a single type, in which the forms of the father's thoughts were the forms of the son's, and the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the footprints of his ancestors. so absolutely has change become the law of our present condition, that to cease to change is to lose place in the great race. looking back over history, we see times of change and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have settled into permanent forms. such was the condition of the greeks through many ages before the persian wars, and such, again, became the condition of europe when the northern nations grafted religion and the laws of the western empire on their own hardy natures. a condition of things differing alike both inwardly and outwardly from that into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily obscure to us. in the alteration of our own characters we have lost the key which would interpret the characters of our fathers. but some broad conclusions as to what they were are, however, at least possible to us. a rough census taken at the time of the armada shows that it was something under five millions. the feudal system, though practically modified, was still the organising principle of the nation, and the owner of land was bound to military service at home whenever occasion required. all land was held upon a strictly military principle. the state of the working classes can best be determined by a comparison of their wages with the price of food. both were as far as possible regulated by act of parliament. wheat in the fourteenth century averaged d. the bushel; beef and pork were / d. a pound; mutton was / d. the best pig or goose could be bought for d.; a good capon for d.; a chicken for d.; a hen for d. strong-beer, which now costs s. d. a gallon, was then a d. a gallon, and table beer was less than / d. a penny at the time of which we write must have been nearly equal in the reign of henry viii. to the present shilling. for a penny the labourer could buy as much bread, beef, beer, and wine as the labourer of to-day can for a shilling. turning then to the question of wages, by the d of the th of henry viii., it was enacted that the master, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tilers, plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and others, employers of skilled workmen should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat and drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-half penny for the yearly average. the common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for the half year; for the remaining half, threepence. the day labourer received what was equivalent to something near twenty shillings a week, the wages at present paid in english colonies; and this is far from being a full account of his advantages. the agricultural labourer held land in connection with his house, while in most parishes there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land, which furnished fuel to him gratis, where pigs might range, and ducks and geese, and where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to be largely enclosed, parliament insisted that the working man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his family's industry. by the th of the st of elizabeth it was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the occupants of such cottage. the incomes of the great nobles cannot be determined for they varied probably as much as they do now. under henry iv. the average income of an earl was estimated at £ , a year. under henry viii. the great duke of buckingham, the wealthiest english peer, had £ , . and the income of the archbishop of canterbury was rated at the same amount. but the establishments of such men were enormous. their retinues in time of peace consisted of several hundred persons, and in time of war a large share of the expenses was paid often out of private purses. passing down to the body of the people, we find that £ a year and heavy duties to do for it, represented the condition of the squire of the parish. by the nd of henry v. "the wages" of a parish priest were limited to £ s. d., except in cases where there was a special license from the bishop, when they might be raised as high as £ . both squire and priest had sufficient for comfort. neither was able to establish any steep difference between himself and the commons among whom he lived, so far as concerned outward advantages. the habits of all classes were free, open, and liberal. in frank style the people lived in "merry england," displaying the "glory of hospitality," england's pre-eminent boast, by the rules according to which all tables were open to all comers without reserve. to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging. the people hated three things with all their hearts--idleness, want, and cowardice. a change, however, was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. chivalry was dying; the abbey and castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, and convictions of the old world were passing away never to return. a new continent had arisen beyond the western sea. the floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. in the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves mankind were to remain no longer. _ii.--the fall of wolsey's policy_ times were changed in england since the second henry walked barefoot through the streets of canterbury, and knelt while the monks flogged him on the pavement in the chapter house, doing penance for becket's murder. the clergy had won the battle in the twelfth century because they deserved it. they were not free from fault and weakness, but they felt the meaning of their profession. their hearts were in their vows, their authority was exercised more justly, more nobly, than the authority of the crown; and therefore, with inevitable justice, the crown was compelled to stoop before them. the victory was great, but, like many victories, it was fatal to the conquerors. it filled them with the vanity of power; they forgot their duties in their privileges, and when, a century later, the conflict recommenced, the altering issue proved the altering nature of the conditions under which it was fought. the nation was ready for sweeping remedies. the people felt little loyalty to the pope. the clergy pursued their course to its end. they sank steadily into that condition which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to celibacy and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of ordinary life. many priests spent their time in hawking or hunting, in lounging at taverns, in the dissolute enjoyment of the world. if, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could still arise among them a remarkable man. in cardinal wolsey the king found an adviser who was essentially a transition minister, holding a middle place between an english statesman and a catholic of the old order. under wolsey's influence, henry made war with louis of france in the pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with luther, and persecuted the english protestants. yet wolsey could not blind himself to the true condition of the church, before which lay the alternative of ruin or amendment. therefore he familiarised henry with sense that a reformation was inevitable. dreaming that it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a wiser spirit, he himself fell the first victim of a convulsion which he had assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay. wolsey talked of reformation, but delayed its coming. the monasteries grew worse and worse. favoured parish clergy held as many as eight benefices. bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to attend to all, attended to none. wolsey himself, the church reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation means), was at once archbishop of york, bishop of winchester and of durham, and abbot of st. albans. under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk low in the respect of the english people. fish's famous pamphlet shows the spirit that was seething. he spoke of what he had seen and knew. the monks, he tells the king, "be they that have made a hundred thousand idle dissolute women in your realm." but wolsey could interfere with neither bishops nor monks without a special dispensation from the pope. a new trouble arose from the nation in the desire of henry to divorce catherine of aragon, who had been his deceased brother's wife, was six years older than himself, and was an obstacle to the establishment of the kingdom. her sons were dead, and she was beyond the period when more children could be expected. though descent in the female line was not formally denied, no queen regent had ever, in fact, sat upon the throne; nor was the claim distinctly admitted, or the claim of the house of york would have been unquestionable. it was, therefore, with no little anxiety that the council of henry viii. perceived his male children, on whom their hopes were centred, either born dead, or dying one after another within a few days of their birth. the line of the princess mary was precarious, for her health was weak from her childhood. if she lived, her accession would be a temptation to insurrection; if she did not live, and the king had no other children, a civil war was inevitable. the next heir in blood was james of scotland, and gravely as statesmen desired the union of the two countries, in the existing mood of the people, the very stones in london streets, it was said, would rise up against a king of scotland who entered england as sovereign. so far were henry and catherine alike that both had imperious tempers, and both were indomitably obstinate; but henry was hot and impetuous, catherine cold and self-contained. she had been the wife of prince arthur, eldest son of henry vii., but the death of that prince occurred only five months after the marriage. the uncertainty of the laws of marriage, and the innumerable refinements of the roman canon law, affected the legitimacy of the children and raised scruples of conscience in the mind of the king. the loss of his children must have appeared as a judicial sentence on a violation of the divine law. the divorce presented itself to him as a moral obligation, when national advantage combined with superstition to encourage what he secretly desired. wolsey, after thirty years' experience of public life, was as sanguine as a boy. armed with this little lever of divorce, he saw himself in imagination the rebuilder of the catholic faith and the deliverer of europe from ecclesiastical revolt and from innovations of faith. the mass of the people hated protestantism as he, a true friend of the catholic cult, sincerely detested the reformation of luther. he believed that the old life-tree of catholicism, which in fact was but cumbering the ground, might bloom again in its old beauty. but a truer political prophet than wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men who were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes of the english testament. catherine being a spanish princess, henry, in , formed a league with francis i., with the object of breaking the spanish alliance. the pope was requested to make use of his dispensing power to enable the king of england to marry a wife who could bear him children. deeply as we deplore the outrage inflicted on catherine, and the scandal and suffering occasioned by the dispute, it was in the highest degree fortunate that at the crisis of public dissatisfaction in england with the condition of the church, a cause should have arisen which tested the whole question of church authority in its highest form. it was no accident which connected a suit for divorce with the reformation of religion. _anne boleyn_ the spanish emperor, charles v., gave catherine his unwavering support, and refused to allow the pope to pass a judicial sentence of divorce. catherine refused to yield. another person now comes into conspicuous view. it has been with anne boleyn as with catherine of aragon--both are regarded as the victims of a tyranny which catholics and protestants unite to remember with horror, and each has taken the place of a martyred saint in the hagiology of the respective creeds. anne boleyn was second daughter of sir thomas boleyn, a gentleman of noble family. she was educated in paris, and in came back to england to be maid of honour to queen catherine, and to be distinguished at the court by her talents, accomplishments, and beauty. the fortunes of anne boleyn were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work ever yet accomplished in this country was committed. in the memorable year , after the meeting of parliament, events moved apace. in six weeks, for so long only the session lasted, the astonished church authorities saw bill after bill hurried up before the lords, by which successively the pleasant fountains of their incomes would be dried up to flow no longer. the great reformation had commenced in earnest. the carelessness of the bishops in the discharge of their most immediate duties obliged the legislature to trespass in the provinces most purely spiritual, and to undertake the discipline of the clergy. bill after bill struck hard and home on the privileges of the recreant clergy. the aged bishop of rochester complained to the lords that in the lower house the cry was nothing but "down with the church." yet, so frightful were the abuses that called for radical reform, that even persons who most disapprove of the reformation will not at the present time wonder at their enactment, or disapprove of their severity. the king treated the bishops, when they remonstrated, with the most contemptuous disrespect. archbishop cranmer now adopted a singular expedient. he advised henry to invite expressions from all the chief learned authorities throughout europe as to the right of the pope to grant him a dispensation of dissolution of his marriage. the english universities, to escape imputations of treasons and to avoid exciting henry's wrath, gave replies such as would please him, that of oxford being, however, the more decided of the two. most of the continental authorities declined to pronounce any dictum as to the powers of the pope. _the fall of the great chancellor_ the fall of wolsey was at hand. his enemies accused him of treason to the constitution by violating a law of the realm. he had acted as papal legate within the realm. the parliaments of edward i., edward iii., richard ii., and henry iv. had by a series of statutes pronounced illegal all presentations by the pope to any office or dignity in the anglican church, under a penalty of premunire. henry did not feel himself called on to shield his great minister, although the guilt extended to all who had recognised wolsey in the capacity of papal legate. indeed, it extended to the archbishops, bishops, the privy council, the two houses of parliament, and indirectly to the nation itself. the higher clergy had been encouraged by wolsey's position to commit those acts of despotism which had created so deep animosity among the people. the overflow of england's last ecclesiastical minister was to teach them that the privileges they had abused were at an end. in february, , henry assumed the title which was to occasion such momentous consequences, of "protector and only supreme head of the church and clergy of england." the clergy were compelled to assent. further serious steps marked the great breach with rome. the annates, or first fruits, were abolished. ever since the crusades a practice had existed in all the churches of europe that bishops and archbishops, on presentation to their sees, should transmit to the pope one year's income. this impressive impost was not abrogated. it was a sign of the parting of the ways. henry laid his conduct open to the world, declaring truly what he desired, and seeking it by open means. he was determined to proceed with the divorce, and also to continue the reformation of the english church. and he was in no small measure aided in the former resolve by the recommendation of francis, for the french king advised him to act on the general opinion of europe that his marriage with catherine, as widow of his elder brother arthur, was null, and at once made anne boleyn his wife. this counsel was administered at an interview between the two kings at boulogne, in october, . the pope had trifled for six years with the momentous question, and henry was growing old. at the outset of the discussion the pope had said: "marry freely; fear nothing, and all shall be arranged as you desire." but the pontiff, reduced to a dilemma by various causes, had fallen back on his italian cunning, and had changed his attitude, listening to the appeals of catherine and her powerful friends. and now he threatened henry with excommunication. henry entered privately into matrimonial relations with anne in november, , and the marriage was solemnly celebrated, with a gorgeous pageant, at westminster abbey in the following january. on july the people gathering to church in every parish read, nailed to the church doors, a paper signed henry r., setting forth that lady catherine of spain, heretofore called queen of england, was not to be called by that title any more, but was to be called princess dowager, and so to be held and esteemed. the triumph of anne was to last but three short years. _protestantism_ wycliffe's labour had left only the bible as the seed of a future life, and no trace remained in the sixteenth century of the lollardry of the fourteenth. but now protestantism recommenced its enterprise in the growing desire for a nobler, holier insight into the will of god. in the year was enrolled in london a society calling itself "the association of christian brothers." its paid agents went up and down the land carrying tracts and testaments with them, and enrolling in the order all who dared risk their lives in such a cause. the protestants thus isolated were waiting for direction, and men in such a temper are seldom left to wait in vain. luther had kindled the spark, which was to become a conflagration in germany, at wittemberg, on october , , by his denunciation of indulgences. his words found an echo, and flew from lip to lip all through western europe. tyndal, an oxford student, went to germany, saw luther, and under his direction translated into english the gospels and epistles. this led to the formation of the "association" in london. the authorities were alarmed. the bishops subscribed to buy up the translations of the bible, and these were burned before a vast concourse in st. paul's churchyard. but wolsey had for two years been suppressing the smaller monasteries. simultaneously, protestants were persecuted wherever they could be detected and seized. "little" bilney, or "saint" bilney, a distinguished cambridge student, was burnt as a heretic at the stake, as were james bainham, a barrister of the middle temple, and several other members of the "association." these were the first paladins of the reformation, and the struggle went bravely forward. they were the knights who slew the dragons and made the earth habitable for common flesh and blood. as yet but two men of the highest order of power were on the side of protestantism--latimer and cromwell. these were now to come forward, pressed by circumstances which could no longer dispense with them. when the breach with the pope was made irreparable, and the papal party at home had assumed an attitude of suspended insurrection, the fortunes of the protestants entered into a new phase. the persecution ceased, and those who were but lately its likely victims, hiding for their lives, passed at once by a sudden alternation into the sunshine of political favour. cromwell and latimer together caught the moment as it went by, and before it was over a work had been done in england which, when it was accomplished once, was accomplished for ever. the conservative party recovered their power, and abused it as before; but the chains of the nation were broken, and no craft of kings or priests or statesmen could weld the magic links again, latimer became famous as a preacher at cambridge, and was heard of by henry, who sent for him and appointed him one of the royal chaplains. he was accused by the bishops of heresy, but was on trial absolved and sent back to his parish. soon after the tide turned, and the reformation entered into a new phase. thomas cromwell, like latimer of humble origin, was the "malleus monachorum." wolsey discovered his merit, and employed him in breaking up the small monasteries, which the pope had granted for the foundation of the new colleges. cromwell remained with the great cardinal till his fall. it was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed itself. the lords had passed a bill of impeachment against wolsey--violent, vindictive, and malevolent. it was to be submitted to the commons. cromwell prepared an opposition, and conducted the defence from his place in parliament so skilfully that he threw out the bill, saved wolsey, and gained such a reputation that he became henry's secretary, representing the government in the house of commons, and was on the highroad to power. the reformation was blotted with a black and frightful stain. towards the end of april, , certain members of the privy council were engaged in secretly collecting evidence which implicated the queen in adultery. in connection with the terrible charge, as her accomplices five gentlemen were arrested--sir william brereton, mark smeton, a court musician, sir henry norris, sir francis weston, and, the accusation in his case being the most shocking, lord rochford, the queen's brother. the trial was hastily pushed forward, and all were executed. the queen, who vehemently and piteously appealed to henry, passionately protesting that she was absolutely innocent, was also condemned, and was beheaded in public on tower hill. henry immediately after the tragedy married jane, daughter of sir john seymour. the indecent haste is usually considered conclusive of the cause of anne boleyn's ruin. on december , , a prince, so long and passionately hoped for, was born; but a sad calamity followed, for the queen took cold, and died on october . in monastic life came to an end in england. the great monasteries were dissolved; the abbey lands were distributed partly amongst the old nobility and partly amongst the chapters of six new bishoprics. on january , , was solemnised the marriage of henry with anne, daughter of the duke of cleves, and sister-in-law of the elector of saxony. this event was brought about by the negotiations of cromwell. the king was deeply displeased with the ungainly appearance of his bride when he met her on her landing, but retreat was impossible. though henry was personally kind to the new queen, the marriage made him wretched. cromwell's enemies speedily hatched a conspiracy against the great statesman. he was arrested on a charge of high treason, was accused of corruption and heresy, of gaining wealth by bribery and extortion, and, in spite of cranmer's efforts to save him, passed to the scaffold on july , . for eight years cromwell, who had been ennobled as earl of essex, was supreme with king, parliament, and convocation, and the nation, in the ferment of revolution, was absolutely controlled by him. convocation had already dissolved the marriage of henry and anne, setting both free to contract and consummate other marriages without objection or delay. the queen had placidly given her consent. handsome settlements were made on her in the shape of estates for her maintenance producing nearly three thousand a year. in august of the same year the king married, without delay of circumstance, catherine, daughter of lord edmond howard. brief, indeed, was her reign. in november, , she was charged with unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. the king was overwhelmed. some dreadful spirit pursued his married life, tainting it with infamy. two gentlemen confessed their guilty connection with the queen. they were hanged at tyburn, and the queen and lady rochford, who had been her confidential companion, suffered within the tower. once more the king ventured into marriage. catherine, widow of lord latimer, his last choice, was selected, not in the interest of politics or religion, but by his own personal judgment; and this time he found the peace which he desired. the great event of was the signal victory of the english over a scottish army of ten thousand men at solway moss. king james of scotland had undertaken, at the instigation of the pope and of the king of france to attack the english as heretics. the scottish clergy were ready to proclaim a pilgrimage of grace. but the english borderers, though only shepherds and agriculturists, as soon as they mounted their horses, were instantly the finest light cavalry in europe. they so disastrously defeated the scots that all the latter either perished in the morass by the solway, or were captured. henry died on january , . he was attended in his last moments by cranmer, having sent specially for the archbishop. the king did not leave the world without expressing his views on the future with elaborate explicitness. he spent the day before his death in conversation with lord hertford and sir william paget on the condition of the country. by separate and earnest messages he commended prince edward to the care both of charles v. and of francis i. the earl, on the morning of henry's death, hastened off to bring up the prince, who was in hertfordshire with the princess elizabeth, and in the afternoon of monday, the st, he arrived at the tower with edward. the council was already in session, and hertford was appointed protector during the minority of edward. thus, the reforming protestant party was in full power. cranmer set the willing example, and the other prelates consented, or were compelled to imitate him, in an acknowledgment that all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical as well as secular, within the realm, only emanated from the sovereign. on february it was ordered in council that hertford should be duke of somerset, and that his brother, sir thomas seymour, should be lord seymour of sudleye; lord parr was to be marquis of northampton; lord wriothesley, the chancellor, earl of southampton; and viscount lisle was to be earl of warwick. the duke of somerset was the young king's uncle, and the real power was at once in his hands. but if he was ambitious, it was only--as he persuaded himself--to do good. _edward's guardian_ under his rule the spirit of iconoclasm spread fast, and the reformation proceeded to completion. churches were cleared of images, and crucifixes were melted into coin. somerset gave the popular movement the formal sanction of the government. injunctions were issued for the general purification of the churches. the book of homilies was issued as a guide to doctrine, care was taken that copies of the bible were accessible in the parish churches, and translations of erasmus's "paraphrase of the new testament" were provided as a commentary. somerset was a brave general as well as a great statesman. he invaded scotland during the first year of his protectorate, on account of the refusal of the scottish government to ratify the contract entered into with henry viii., by which it was agreed that mary queen of scots should marry edward. at the memorable battle of pinkie, on september , , the scots were completely beaten. but somerset was hastily summoned southward. his brother, lord seymour, had been caballing against him, and was arrested, tried, and beheaded on tower hill, on march , . but the fall of the protector himself was not long delayed, for under his administration of three years his policy gradually excited wide discontent. in various parts of the country insurrections had to be suppressed. the french king had taken away the young scottish queen, the king's majesty's espouse, by which marriage the realms of england and scotland should have been united in perpetual peace. money had been wasted on the royal household. the alliance with charles v. had been trifled away. the princely name and princely splendour which somerset affected, the vast fortune which he amassed amidst the ruin of the national finances, and the palace--now known as somerset house, london--which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation with which the council regarded him. his great rival, john dudley, earl of warwick, by constant insinuations both in and out of parliament, excited the national feeling against him to such a degree that at length the young king was constrained to sign his deposition. he seems to have entertained no strong attachment to his uncle. on december i, , he was tried before the lords for high treason and condemned. he was beheaded on tower hill on january , . the english public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are good judges, for the most part, of personal character; and so passionately was somerset loved, that those who were nearest the scaffold started forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. before this event, dudley, by whose cruel treachery the tragedy had been brought about, had been created duke of northumberland. the great aim of this nobleman was to secure the succession to the throne for his own family. with this purpose in view he married his son, lord guildford dudley, to lady jane grey, daughter of the duchess of suffolk, to whom, by the will of henry viii., the crown would pass, in default of issue by edward, mary, or elizabeth. in april, , edward, who had been removed to greenwich in consequence of illness, grew rapidly worse. by the end of the month he was spitting blood, and the country was felt to be on the eve of a new reign. the accession of mary, who was personally popular, was looked forward to by the people as a matter of course. northumberland now worked on the mind of the feeble and dying king, and succeeded in persuading him to declare both his sisters incapable of succeeding to the crown, as being illegitimate. the king died on july . the last male child of the tudor race had ceased to suffer. when lady jane was saluted by northumberland and four other lords, all kneeling at her feet, as queen, she shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the ground. the next monday, july , the royal barges came down the thames from richmond, and at three in the afternoon lady jane landed at the broad staircase of the tower, as queen, in undesired splendour. but that same evening messages came saying that mary had declared herself queen. she had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come to her. happily, the conspiracy in favour of lady jane was crushed, without bloodshed, although it had seemed for a time as if the nation, was on the brink of a civil war. but, though mary wished to spare lady jane and her husband, her intentions were frustrated by the determination of renard, ambassador of the emperor. northumberland was sent to the tower, and beheaded on august , and in the following november lady jane and her husband were also condemned. mary long hesitated, but at length issued the fatal warrant on february , , and four days later both were executed. lady jane was but a delicate girl of seventeen, but met her fate with the utmost heroism. stephen gardiner, bishop of winchester, became the chief instrument of the restoration of the catholic faith under mary. his fierce spirit soon began to display itself. in the fiery obstinacy of his determination this prelate speedily became the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power they loathed. gardiner now saw his romanising party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no longer any henry to stand between them and their enemies. he would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the inquisition. _the reign of terror_ mary listened to the worse counsels of each, and her distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. both gardiner and she resolved to secure the trial, condemnation, and execution of her sister elizabeth, but their plans utterly miscarried, for no evidence against her could be gathered. the princess was known to be favourable to the protestant cause, but the attempts to prove her disloyalty to mary were vain. she was imprisoned in the tower, and the fatal net appeared to be closing on her. but though the danger of her murder was very great, the lords who had reluctantly permitted her to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly sacrificed, or indeed, permit the queen to continue in the career of vengeance on which she had entered. the necessity of releasing elizabeth from the tower was an unspeakable annoyance to mary. a confinement at woodstock was the furthest stretch of severity that the country would, for the present, permit. on may , , elizabeth was taken up the river. the princess believed herself that she was being carried off _tanquam ovis_, as she said--as a sheep for the slaughter. but the world thought she was set at liberty, and, as her barge passed under the bridge, mary heard with indignation, from the palace windows, three salvoes of artillery fired from the steelyard, as a sign of the joy of the people. vexations began to tell on mary's spirit. she could not shake off her anxieties, or escape from the shadow of her subject's hatred. insolent pamphlets were dropped in her path and in the offices of whitehall. they were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her bedroom. her trials began to tell on her understanding. she was ill with hysterical longings; ill with the passions which gardiner, as her chancellor, had provoked, but paget as leader of the opposing party, had disappointed. but she was now to become the wife of king philip of spain. negotiations for this momentous marriage had been protracted, and even after the contract had been signed, philip seemed slow to arrive. the coolness manifested by his tardiness did much to aggravate the queen's despondency. on july , , he landed at southampton. the atmospheric auspices were not cheering, for philip, who had come from the sunny plains of castile, from his window at southampton looked out on a steady downfall of july rain. through the cruel torrent he made his way to church to mass, and afterwards gardiner came to him from the queen. on the next sunday he journeyed to winchester, again in pouring rain. to the cathedral he went first, wet as he was. whatever philip of spain was entering on, whether it was a marriage or a massacre, a state intrigue or a midnight murder, his first step was ever to seek a blessing from the holy wafer. mary was at the bishop's palace, a few hundred yards' distance. mary could not wait, and the same night the interview took place. let the curtain fall over the meeting, let it close also over the wedding solemnities which followed with due splendour two days after. there are scenes in life which we regard with pity too deep for words. the unhappy queen, unloved, unlovable, yet with her parched heart thirsting for affection, was flinging herself upon a breast to which an iceberg was warm; upon a man to whom love was an unmeaning word, except as the most brutal of all passions. mary set about to complete the catholic reaction. she had restored the catholic orthodoxy in her own person, and now was resolved to bring over her own subjects. but clouds gathered over the court. the spaniards were too much in evidence. with the reaction came back the supremacy of the pope, and the ecclesiastical courts were reinstated in authority to check unlicensed extravagance of opinion. gardiner, bonner, tunstal, and three other prelates formed a court on january , , in st. mary overy's church, southwark, and hooper, bishop of gloucester, and canon rogers of st. paul's, were brought up before them. both were condemned as protestants, and both were burnt at the stake, the bishop at gloucester, the canon at smithfield. they suffered heroically. the catholics had affected to sneer at the faith of their rivals. there was a general conviction among them that protestants would all flinch at the last; that they had no "doctrine that would abide the fire." many more victims were offered. the enemies of the church were to submit or die. so said gardiner, and so said the papal legate and the queen, in the delirious belief that they were the chosen instruments of providence. the people, whom the cruelty of the party was reconverting to the reformation, while the fires of smithfield blazed, with a rapidity like that produced by the gift of tongues at pentecost, regarded the martyrs with admiration as soldiers dying for their country. on mary, sorrow was heaped on sorrow. her expectation of a child was disappointed, and philip refused to stay in england. his unhappy wife was forced to know that he preferred the society of the most abandoned women to hers. the horrible crusade against heretics became the business of the rest of her life. archbishop cranmer, bishops ridley and latimer, and many other persons of distinction were amongst the martyrs of the marian persecution. latimer was eighty years of age. mary's miseries were intensified month by month. war broke out between england and france. for ten years the french had cherished designs, and on january , , the famous stronghold fell into their hands. the effect of this misfortune on the queen was to produce utter prostration. she now well understood that both parliament and the nation were badly disposed towards her. but her end was at hand. after much suffering from dropsy and nervous debility, she prepared quietly for what she knew was inevitable. on november , at midnight, taking leave of a world in which she had played so evil a part, mary received the last rites of the church. towards morning she was sinking, and at the elevation of the host, as mass was being said, her head sank, and she was gone. a few hours later the pope's legate, cardinal pole, at lambeth, followed her. thus the reign of the pope in england and the reign of terror closed together. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., ll.d., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. vi. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . bungay: clay and taylor, printers. contents. book viii. (_continued._) _the empire of the medes and persians._ chapter vi. page the fall of the lydian empire chapter vii. the subjugation of asia minor chapter viii. the fall of babylon chapter ix. the kingdom of cyrus chapter x. the fall of egypt chapter xi. the march to meroe chapter xii. the death of cambyses chapter xiii. the rise of darius chapter xiv. the rebellions in the provinces chapter xv. the achievements of darius on the indus and the danube chapter xvi. the conquests in africa and europe chapter xvii. the state of darius chapter xviii. the finance and army of darius chapter xix. the court of darius chapter xx. retrospect book viii. (_continued._) the empire of the medes and persians. eastern iran. chapter vi. the fall of the lydian empire. after the fall of nineveh, media, babylonia, and lydia had continued to exist side by side in peace and friendship. the successful rebellion of cyrus altered at one blow the state of asia. he had not been contented with winning independence for the persians; he had subjected media to his power. in the place of a friendly and allied house, the kings of lydia and babylonia saw astyages deprived of his throne, and media in the hands of a bold and ambitious warrior. nebuchadnezzar of babylonia would hardly have allowed the sovereignty of the table-land of iran to pass out of the power of a near kinsman into that of cyrus without offering some resistance; but he was no longer alive to prevent or revenge the overthrow of his brother-in-law. his son evil-merodach had also come by his death before astyages succumbed to the arms of cyrus, and after a short reign neriglissar left the kingdom to a boy (iii. ). on the other hand, the lydian empire was in its fullest vigour. we are acquainted with the successes which fell to the lot of alyattes after his alliance with media; we saw with what rapidity his son croesus brought to a happy conclusion the long struggle against the greek cities of the coast. his kingdom now embraced the whole of asia minor, as far as the halys; the lycians alone remained independent in their small mountain canton. loved and honoured by his people, as herodotus indicates, croesus saw his complete and compact empire in the greatest prosperity; his treasury was full to overflowing; his metropolis was the richest city in asia after babylon. the lydian infantry were excellent and trustworthy; the cavalry were dreaded; in past days they had measured themselves with success against the medes.[ ] thus in the third or fourth year of his reign, in the pride of his position, surrounded by inexhaustible treasures and the most splendid magnificence, on his lofty citadel at sardis, croesus could declare himself, against the opinion of the athenian solon, the man most favoured by fortune (iii. ). two years afterwards astyages, whose wife aryanis was croesus' sister, was overthrown. croesus had reason enough to take the field for his brother-in-law, and anticipate the danger which might arise for lydia out of sthis change in the east. he might hope that his example would set the babylonians in motion against the usurper of the median throne, and cause the medes themselves to revolt against their new master. but he appears to have been afraid of embarking in an uncertain and dangerous war at a great distance from his own borders. it was not clear that victory at the first onset would imply lasting success, and lydia had no attack to fear so long as cyrus was occupied in establishing his new dominion in media, and engaged in conflicts in the east and north. in sardis it might be assumed that the usurper would find great difficulties in his way. herodotus represents sandanis, a distinguished lydian, as asking croesus whether he would take the field against men who clad themselves in leather, and did not eat what they liked, but what they had, and lived in a rugged country--who drank water and not wine, and had not even figs or any other thing that was pleasant? what could the king, if victorious, take from them, when they had nothing? on the other hand, if conquered, he had much to lose, and if the persians once tasted any of the good things of lydia, they would never be driven out of the land again.[ ] croesus hesitated. it was of the greatest importance for cyrus that lydia and babylonia should not interfere in favour of astyages and the medes, that they remained inactive during the revolution, and allowed him to establish his dominion in media without disturbance, to direct his aim unimpeded against the neighbours of media, and to subjugate without opposition the parthians, hyrcanians, and cadusians. the manner in which war eventually broke out between lydia and persia, the course of the war, and the fortune which overtook croesus, are narrated by herodotus in the following manner: "solon had scarcely left croesus (iii. , note ) when the latter saw in a dream the vision which portended the fate of his son. he had two sons: one was deaf and dumb, but the other, attys, was greatly distinguished above all his companions. the dream told him that he would lose this son by an iron spear-head. in alarm croesus found a wife for his son, would not allow him to go out with the army as before, and removed into the armoury all the armour which was in the chambers, that nothing might fall upon him. at the time when croesus was occupied with the marriage of attys, a phrygian came to sardis, adrastus by name, the son of gordius, the grandson of midas, who had unintentionally killed his brother, and had been banished by his father, and croesus received him. at the same time a great boar appeared on the mysian olympus, which ravaged the lands of the mysians, and as they could not master it, they sent messengers to croesus praying him to allow attys and some chosen youths to come with dogs to set them free from the monster. croesus would not let his son go, for he had just been married. but the son complained to his father: previously he had won great glory in war, and in the chase, now he was kept back from both; how would men look upon him in the market-place?--in what light would he appear to the citizens and his young wife? croesus told him the dream, but attys replied that the boar had no hands, and no iron point: croesus therefore allowed him to go, and bade adrastus accompany his son and watch over him. adrastus promised to bring back his son uninjured, so far as lay in his power, in return for the kindness which croesus had shown him. the boar was surrounded on olympus, and javelins thrown at it from every side; the spear of adrastus missed the boar and hit attys. thus was the dream of croesus fulfilled. adrastus went with the corpse to croesus, and besought him to slay him as a sacrifice to the dead. but croesus replied that adrastus had made recompense enough in condemning himself to death. he had his son buried with proper honours; but adrastus slew himself on the grave." "two years were spent by croesus in mourning for his son. then the destruction of the empire of astyages by cyrus, and the growing power of the persians, put an end to the mourning, and caused him to consider whether he could check the rise of the persians before they became great. with this thought in his mind, he determined to test the oracles, both those of the greeks and that in libya, and ascertain whether they could tell the truth; to the oracle which he found truthful, he would propose the question, whether he should undertake a campaign against the persians. so he sent to the oracles of the greeks, to miletus, delphi, abae, and trophonius, to the sanctuary of amphiaraus at thebes, and to dodona, to the temple of ammon in libya, bidding his messengers inquire on the hundredth day after their departure from sardis, what croesus, the son of alyattes, the king of lydia, was doing on that day. the answers were to be written down, and brought back to him. what the other oracles said no one has narrated, but when the lydians came into the temple at delphi and propounded their question, the priestess answered: 'i know the number of the sand, and the measure of the sea; i understand the dumb, and hear him who speaks not. the scent of the hard-shelled tortoise comes into my nostrils which is being cooked in brass with lamb's flesh; brass is below, and brass is above.' the lydians wrote this down, and returned to sardis; and when the other messengers came back, croesus opened their letters. he paid no attention to the rest, but when he came to the answer from delphi he recognised the power of the god, and saw that the delphic oracle alone had been aware of what he was doing. for on the day appointed he had cooked the flesh of a tortoise and lamb in a brazen vessel, covered with a brazen lid, thinking that it would be impossible to discover or invent such a thing. what answer was brought back from amphiaraus i cannot say, for it is nowhere recorded, but croesus is said to have considered this oracle as truthful. then croesus won the favour of the god of delphi by great sacrifices. he offered victims of every kind, and erected a great pile of wood on which he burned couches covered with gold and silver, golden goblets, purple robes and garments, in the hope that he would thereby gain the favour of the god yet more, and bade the lydians sacrifice to their deity whatever each possessed. and as the sacrifice left behind an enormous mass of molten gold, croesus caused bricks to be made, six palms in length, three in breadth, and one in depth; in all there were bricks. of these, four were of the purest gold, each two and a half talents in weight; and the rest of white gold (_i.e._ of mingled gold and silver), each two talents in weight. in addition, there was a golden lion which weighed ten talents. when these were finished, croesus sent them to delphi, and added two very large mixing-bowls, one of gold, weighing eight talents and a half and twelve minæ, and one of silver, the work of theodorus of samos, as the delphians say, and i believe it, for it is the work of no ordinary artificer; four silver jars, and two vessels for holy water, one of gold and the other of silver, circular casts of silver, a golden statue of a woman, three cubits high, and the necklace and girdles of his queen. all these things he sent to delphi, and to amphiaraus a golden shield and a spear, of which both the stem and the point were of gold." "croesus bade the envoys who carried these gifts ask the oracles, whether he should march against the persians, or collect allies. the answer of both oracles was to the same effect: they told him, that if he went against cyrus he would destroy a great empire, and at the same time advised him to find out who were the most powerful among the greeks, and take them as allies. croesus was greatly delighted when he received this answer; in the certainty that he would overthrow the empire of cyrus, he sent again to delphi and presented each delphian with two staters. the delphians in return bestowed on the lydians for all future time the right to consult the priestess first, the best seats, freedom from contributions, and the citizenship of delphi to any lydian who should wish to become a delphian. croesus inquired of the oracle for the third time: whether his reign would be of long continuance, and the priestess replied: 'when a mule becomes king of the medes, then, o soft-footed lydian, fly from the pebbly hermus; stay not, and take no shame to be a coward.' then croesus was yet more delighted, for he thought that a mule would never rule over the medes instead of a man, and therefore neither he nor his descendants would lose their power. then he inquired who were the most mighty among the hellenes, and when he found that the greatest part of the peloponnesus was subject to the lacedæmonians, he sent messengers with presents to sparta to conclude an alliance. the lacedæmonians were filled with joy; they knew the oracle which had been given to croesus, and made him a friend and ally, as they had previously received many kindnesses at his hands." "croesus now marched to cappadocia in the hope of crushing cyrus and the persians; he also intended to add cappadocia to his kingdom, but above all he wished to take vengeance on cyrus, who had defeated his brother-in-law astyages, and had got him in his power. when he came to the halys, which was the boundary between the lydian and the persian kingdoms, he crossed the river by the bridges, and came into the part of cappadocia, which is called pteria (this region, the strongest in the whole country, lies towards sinope and the pontus euxinus). there he pitched his camp, desolated the land, took the city of the pterians, and enslaved the inhabitants, conquered the neighbouring cities, and drove out the syrians, who had done him no harm whatever. but cyrus collected his army, adding to it all the nations in his march, and took up a position against croesus. previous to setting out, he had sent heralds to the ionians, and requested them to revolt from croesus. to this request the ionians did not listen. then cyrus encamped opposite croesus, and the two armies tried their strength in the land of pteria. a fierce battle was fought; many fell on both sides; neither was victorious, and when night came they desisted from the battle. croesus found that his force was not strong enough; his army was inferior in numbers to that of the enemy, and when cyrus did not venture to attack him on the next day, he returned to sardis. his object was to summon the egyptians, for he had made a treaty with amasis the king of egypt before entering into terms with the lacedæmonians, to send to the babylonians--for with them also and their king labynetus he had made an alliance--and to call on the lacedæmonians to join him at a fixed time. after uniting these, and collecting all his forces, he intended, as soon as the winter was over, to march out against the persians. so when he arrived at sardis he sent heralds to his allies, bidding them assemble in the fifth month at sardis, and dismissed all the mercenaries in the army which had fought against cyrus. he did not expect that cyrus, who had contended in the battle without success, would march against sardis. when croesus retired immediately after the battle in pteria, and it was discovered that the lydian forces were to be disbanded, cyrus saw that it would be much to his advantage to march upon sardis with all speed, before the lydian army could be collected a second time. he was so rapid in his movements, that he announced his own arrival to croesus." "though in great difficulties, inasmuch as things had turned out contrary to his expectations, croesus led out the lydians to battle. and at that time there was no braver and more warlike nation in asia. they fought on horseback, armed with long lances, and were excellent riders. the armies met in the large open plain before sardis. the cavalry of croesus caused alarm to cyrus, and on the advice of harpagus the mede, he collected all the camels which carried the food and baggage of the army, took off their burdens, and had them mounted by armed men. these he placed before the army, then followed the infantry, and after them the persian horse. he bade them not to slay croesus, even though he should seek to defend himself when taken captive. when the battle broke out, the lydian horses were alarmed at the sight and smell of the camels, and turned, and so the hopes of croesus were destroyed. yet the lydians did not lose their courage; they sprang from their horses and met the persians on foot. at length, when many had fallen on both sides, the lydians fled; they were driven into the walls, and besieged by the persians. croesus thought that the siege would occupy a long time, and sent fresh messengers to his confederates, and also to the lacedæmonians, bidding them come as soon as possible. when they arrived at sparta three hundred spartans had been slain by the argives, yet they determined to send assistance; their men were armed and ready to sail, when there came a second message that sardis was captured, and croesus a prisoner." "sardis had been invested fourteen days when cyrus announced to his army that the man who first climbed the walls should receive presents. attempts were made, but as they failed, they were given up. nevertheless hyroeades, a mardian, determined to climb the citadel at a place where no watch had been set. it was never supposed possible that the city could be taken on this side, for the mountain fell precipitously down towards mt. tmolus, and storming was impossible. on the previous day hyroeades had seen a lydian, whose helmet had fallen down, descend after it, and then climb back with it. he also ascended, others followed, and when sufficient persians were on the top, sardis was taken and the whole city plundered. after the citadel had been captured a persian rushed at croesus, whom he did not know, to cut him down. when the dumb son of croesus saw this, through fear and horror he broke out into speech, and cried out: 'man, do not slay croesus.' and ever after he was able to speak." "the persians led croesus to cyrus, who caused a great pyre to be built, and croesus to be led to it in chains with twice seven lydian boys; whether it was that he intended to offer the firstlings of the victory to some god, and discharge a vow, or whether he knew that croesus was eminent for piety, and wished to see if a god would protect him from being burnt alive. when croesus was on the pyre, the words of solon came into his mind, in his distress, that no one among living men was to be accounted happy. when this occurred to him, he sighed deeply after a long silence, and called out thrice, solon! on hearing this cyrus commanded the interpreters to ask croesus whom he was calling upon. at first he was silent; on being pressed, he said: 'on him, whose words i count it above great treasures that all rulers should hear.' as what he said was unintelligible, the question was put to him again, and when they insisted on hearing the whole, he told them, while the pyre was being kindled at the outer edge, what solon the athenian had said to him. when cyrus heard this from the interpreters he reflected that he, a man, was condemning to the flames a man of no less power than himself; in fear of vengeance, and considering that there was nothing certain among men, he changed his mind, and gave orders to quench the fire, and bring down croesus and those with him. when all attempted in vain to quench the flames, croesus, according to the lydian account, called on apollo, entreating him to aid him now if he had ever offered pleasant gifts, and save him in his extremity. when croesus was praying in tears to the god, the sky, which had been clear and still, was suddenly covered with clouds; a storm burst upon them, and the fire was quenched by torrents of rain. and cyrus then saw that croesus was a man beloved by the gods, and asked him why he had marched against his land, and made him his enemy instead of his friend? croesus replied, that he had been induced to do this by his own bad fortune and the good fortune of cyrus. the god of the hellenes had urged him to take the field against cyrus. then cyrus caused the fetters to be struck off him, and placed him near himself. when croesus saw the persians plundering the city, he inquired of cyrus: 'what is all this multitude doing with so much eagerness?' cyrus answered: 'they are plundering your city and treasures.' he replied: 'they are mine no longer; it is your property which they are plundering and sacking. the persians, courageous by nature, are poor; if you allow them to plunder and carry off much booty, it may be that the man who gains the most will rebel against you. if it pleases you, do as i advise. place your body-guard at the gates, and bid them take from the plunderers what they are carrying out, and tell them that a tenth must be offered to zeus. you will escape their ill-will, and they will gladly obey you.' this advice pleased cyrus. he followed it, and promised croesus to grant him a favour in return." "the favour which croesus asked was this: cyrus must allow him to send the fetters, which he wore, to the delphic god, and ask whether it was his manner to deceive those who showed him kindness. cyrus granted the prayer with a smile, and promised that he would not refuse a further request. so lydians went with the fetters to delphi, and asked the god whether he was not ashamed to have urged croesus to make war upon cyrus, who had taken much spoil from him; and at the same time they showed the fetters. the priestess answered, as it is recorded, that even a god could not escape his destiny; croesus was paying the penalty for his fifth ancestor, who had seized a throne which did not belong to him. the god had endeavoured to bring it to pass that the punishment should not fall on croesus but on his children, but he had only been able to defer the capture of sardis for three years; let croesus know that he had been taken captive three years later than was ordained. moreover, the god had sent him help when on the pyre. it was announced that he would destroy a great empire if he went against cyrus, but what empire was not said. nor had croesus understood the response about the mule. cyrus was the mule, the son of a persian father and median mother, a subject and his mistress. when croesus heard this, he saw that he and not the god was in fault." only a meagre excerpt remains of the account given by ctesias of the conflict of cyrus and croesus. the king of the sacæ, amorges, marched with cyrus against croesus and sardis. when the lydians were shut up in the city, croesus, deceived by the portents of the gods, gave his son as a hostage to cyrus, and when he subsequently sought to deceive him in the negotiations, cyrus caused the son to be slain before the father's eyes. the mother, when she saw the execution of her son, threw herself down from the turrets of the walls. then cyrus, on the advice of oebares, caused wooden figures of persians to be placed on long poles and laid against the turrets, that the lydians might be filled with terror at the sight of them. in this way the citadel, and the city itself, was taken. croesus fled for refuge into the temple of apollo, where cyrus caused him to be placed in chains, but though seals were set on them, and oebares was commissioned to keep watch, the fetters were three times removed from croesus in a miraculous manner. then those who had been put in chains with him were beheaded, as though they had conspired to liberate their king, and cyrus brought croesus into the palace and caused yet heavier chains to be put upon him; but the fetters again fell to the ground, this time amid thunder and lightning. at length cyrus liberated croesus, showed him great kindness, and presented him with the large city of barene, near ecbatana, which had been garrisoned by cavalry and , infantry.[ ] polyaenus relates that croesus, after his defeat in cappadocia by cyrus, withdrew his troops in the night by a pass. this pass he then filled with a quantity of timber, to which he set fire in order to check the pursuit of the persians. when the armies met a second time for battle, cyrus rendered the numerous cavalry of the lydians, in which they trusted, useless by placing camels opposite them. thus they were at once put to flight, and trod down the infantry, so that cyrus was again victorious. at sardis croesus once more tried the fortune of battle. as his greek allies delayed their coming, he provided the strongest and tallest lydians with greek armour. the sight of the strange arms checked the persians. they were terrified by the sound of the spears striking against the brazen shields, and the glitter of the shields caused their horses to take fright and turn. they retired, and cyrus concluded a treaty for three days with croesus, in which he was to withdraw his forces from sardis. but as soon as it was night he turned his army again upon sardis, and attacked the city unexpectedly. the ascent of the walls by scaling ladders was successful, yet croesus maintained the citadel and defended it bravely in the deceptive hope that his allies would arrive. then cyrus caused the relatives of those who were with croesus in the citadel to be seized and bound, and brought before the walls; and he announced to their kinsmen on the towers that if the citadel were given up the captives would be set at liberty, if not they would all be hanged. this induced the lydians in the citadel to open the gates. but in another passage polyaenus repeats the version of ctesias about the capture of the city. cyrus caused figures in persian clothing, and wearing beards, with quivers on their shoulders and bows in their hands, to be placed on tall poles of equal length, and in the night these were laid against the walls of the citadel so that the figures rose above the wall. at break of day cyrus attacked the part of the city underneath the citadel. the attacks were beaten off, but on turning round some lydians saw the figures above the citadel, and thinking that it had been stormed by the persians, they fled, and cyrus took sardis by storm.[ ] in xenophon the persians and medes are contending against babylonia. on the representation of the king of babylon that those two nations would subjugate all the world, unless measures were taken to prevent them, croesus marches out to aid the king,[ ] with an army of , horse, and about , light-armed infantry and bowmen. but the united army of the lydians and babylonians, though it reached nearly , cavalry and more than , infantry,[ ] was defeated. cyrus turned his steps towards lydia, and croesus collected a new army on the pactolus of lydians, phrygians, paphlagonians, and lycaonians, who were joined by the cilicians and cappadocians. the egyptians and cyprians came on board ship; envoys went to lacedæmon to ask for troops. with this army croesus marched to meet cyrus at thymbrara. here the battle took place. cyrus had placed two archers on each of the camels; these were ranged opposite the enemy's cavalry, and even from a distance the lydian horses sought to avoid the camels; some turn round, others rear, and press upon each other. so the persians succeeded in overthrowing the disorganised cavalry. but the battle had to be fought out with the javelin, lance, and sword; the persians were not victorious without great bloodshed. croesus flies to sardis, the lydians alone remain faithful, the rest of his army disperses. cyrus pursues him on the next morning, and at once invests sardis. in the very night after the camp was pitched before sardis, chaldæans (_i.e._ gordyæans, carduchians)[ ], and persians climb the fortifications where they seem to be steepest. they were led by a persian, who having formerly been the slave of one on the watch in the citadel, knew the place where the rocks could be climbed from the river. the lydians abandoned the walls, as soon as they saw the citadel taken. croesus shut himself up in his palace, and asked for quarter. cyrus had him brought into his presence, and said that it was not his intention to abandon to his soldiers the richest city in asia after babylon, but they must have some reward for their efforts and dangers which they had undergone. croesus replied that the sack of the city would destroy the sources of wealth, the woven stuffs and industry of the place; if it were spared the lydians would gladly bring the best of what they had, and in a year's time the city would once more be in great prosperity. then cyrus asked croesus how it came to pass that he who was such a zealous servant of apollo, and did everything by his direction, had fallen into calamity. croesus replied that he had brought upon him the aversion of the god by putting it to the test whether his announcements were true. he believed indeed that he had appeased his wrath by rich presents of gold and silver, and when he lost his youthful son he had further asked how he could most happily pass the rest of his life, and the god had answered, "by knowing thyself, thou wilt live happily." he had regarded this condition of happiness as a very easy one; a man might have some difficulty in learning to know others, but himself he could know quite easily. "but i did not know myself," croesus continues in xenophon, "when i fancied that i was equal to you in war; you are descended from the gods, from a series of kings, and from your youth have been exercised in brave deeds. my ancestor was a slave who became king. now i know myself." cyrus allowed him to retain his wife and daughters, gave him servants and entertainment, and took him with him wherever he went, either because he held the advice of croesus to be useful, or because this seemed to him the safest thing to do.[ ] only fragments have come down to us of diodorus' narrative of the fall of croesus; in some respects these agree with the account of herodotus; more frequently they differ from it. he may have borrowed from ephorus.[ ] diodorus began with the death of attys by the javelin of the phrygian adrastus. croesus at first threatens to have adrastus burnt alive, but forgives his offence when he offers his own life for it. but he voluntarily slays himself at the tomb of attys. diodorus then gives an account of the oracles--the first, which croesus received at delphi before the war on behalf of his dumb son,--croesus was foolish in wishing to hear the much-desired voice of his child; he would speak in a day of disaster--the second, about the consequences of crossing the halys; the third, about the mule. croesus sent eurybatus of ephesus with gold, apparently to delphi, but in reality to the peloponnesus, in order to receive as many hellenes as possible into his pay; but eurybatus passed over to cyrus, and revealed everything to him. this act of treachery was held in such detestation by the greeks, that to his day a villain was called eurybatus. when cyrus had reached the passes of cappadocia with his united forces he sent heralds to croesus, to discover his forces, and to tell him that cyrus would pardon his former offences and nominate him satrap of lydia, if he would appear at his gates and there proclaim himself a servant like the rest. croesus replied that cyrus and the persians would sooner endure to be his slaves, as in former times they had been the servants of the medes; as regarded himself, he had never obeyed the order of another person. when croesus had been taken captive, and the flames of the pyre quenched, diodorus represents croesus putting to cyrus the question which we find in herodotus (p. ), about the sacking of the city; cyrus puts an end to the plundering, and orders the possessions of the inhabitants to be brought into the palace. we are further told, that as the rain had suddenly come down and quenched the flames, cyrus regarded croesus as a pious man. moreover, he kept solon's saying in mind; he held croesus in honour, and made him his adviser, regarding one who had associated with so many wise men as being himself prudent and able.[ ] justin's excerpt from pompeius trogus gives a brief account of the fall of the lydian kingdom. when cyrus had reduced the greater part of the nations which had previously been subject to the medes, croesus, the king of lydia, whose power and wealth were then very great, came to the help of the babylonians. he was conquered and retired into his kingdom. when cyrus had settled his quarrel with babylon, he engaged in war with lydia. he easily put to flight the lydian army, already dispirited by the previous defeat. croesus himself was captured. "but the less the danger of the war, the milder was the use made of the victory. to croesus was given his life, portions of his property, and the city of barka, where he lived a life, which, if not that of a king, approached nearly to royal magnificence."[ ] the end only of the account of nicolaus of damascus, containing the story of the intended burning of croesus, has come down to us. cyrus, we are told, had great sympathy with the misfortune of croesus, but the persians insisted that he should be burnt as an enemy. a great pyre was erected at the foot of a hill. cyrus marched out with all his army; a great multitude of natives and foreigners gathered together. when croesus and fourteen lydians were brought out in chains, all the lydians broke out into sighs and lamentations, and beat their heads, so that the weeping and wailing of men and women was greater now than it had been at the capture of the city. this showed what affection croesus inspired among his subjects. "they tore their garments, and thousands of women ran weeping forward. croesus advanced without tears, and with a firm countenance, and when he reached cyrus he asked with a loud voice that his son might be brought to him. this was done. the son embraced his father, and said with tears: 'woe is me, my father. of what avail was your piety; when will the gods help us? have they granted me speech only to bewail our misfortunes?' turning to the persians he said: 'burn me also; i am no less your enemy than my father.' but croesus checked him with these words: 'i alone determined on the war, and no one else of the lydians; therefore i alone must pay the penalty.' when numerous servants of the lydian women had brought rich garments and ornaments of every kind to be burned with him, croesus kissed his son and the lydians who were standing by, and ascended the pyre; but the son raised his hands to heaven and cried aloud: 'king apollo, and all ye gods to whom my father has done honour, come now to our help, that the piety of mankind may not be destroyed with croesus.' his friends could hardly restrain him from casting himself on the pyre. but on a sudden herophile, the sibyl of ephesus, appeared, and descended from the height, and cried: 'ye fools, what injustice is this? supreme zeus, and phoebus, and glorious amphiaraus will not permit it. obey the truthful sayings of my words, that the god may not visit your frenzy with grievous destruction.' cyrus caused the oracle to be interpreted to the persians that they might desist from their purpose, but they set the pile on fire with torches on every side. then croesus called thrice on the name of solon, and cyrus wept, that he should be compelled by the persians to do an unrighteous act, and burn a king who was no less in honour than himself. when the persians looked on cyrus and saw his distress, they changed their minds, and the king bade those who were near him put out the fire. but the pile was on fire and no one could quench it. then croesus called on apollo for help, because his enemies wished to save him and could not. from the morning the day had been cloudy, but without rain, but when croesus had prayed, dark clouds rolled up from every side, lightning and thunder followed fast, and the rain poured down in such streams that not only was the pyre quenched but men could hardly withstand the storm. a purple canopy was quickly spread over croesus, but the persians, terrified at the storm, the darkness, and the panic which had come upon the horses owing to the tempest, were seized with fear of the gods. they thought of the saying of the sibyl and the commands of zoroaster, cast themselves on the earth, and cried for pardon. from this date the rule of zoroaster, which had existed among the persians for a long time, not to burn their dead nor pollute fire in any way, was strictly observed. cyrus led croesus into the palace, treated him as a friend, seeing that he was a pious man, and bade him ask without hesitation for any favour that he chose. croesus asked that he might send his fetters to delphi and ask the god, why he had deceived him by his responses and driven him into war, when he had sent him such trophies; the messengers were also to ask whether the gods of the greeks paid no heed to the gifts which they received. cyrus granted this request with a smile and said that he would not refuse croesus even a greater favour; he made him his friend, and when he left sardis, restored his wives and children, and took him as a companion. some say that he would have made him viceroy of sardis, if he had not been afraid that this would induce the lydians to revolt."[ ] we have already noticed how deep was the impression made on the greeks by the greatness and splendour of the lydian kingdom. lydia was the power of the east with which they first came into immediate contact, the first oriental court which they had before their eyes. a king of lydia had subjugated the great cities of the coast; his wide dominion, power, and wisdom were the admiration of the greeks; his glory and treasures excited their astonishment; he had shown himself kindly and gracious towards them, and sent the richest gifts to their gods--and this king it was who fell by a sudden overthrow from his splendid position. he succumbed to a foreign and distant nation, whose name up to that time was hardly known to greece, and his fall brought with it distress and mischief for the greeks of the west coast of asia minor. this sudden fall of croesus was a striking event, and most disastrous for the greeks, the more striking owing to the unexpected and rapid nature of the change. how could so brave, wise, and religious a ruler fall from the summit of fortune into the deepest distress, and come by a mischance which brought disaster not only on himself and his kingdom, but also on the greek cities? how could this be the result of an undertaking begun on the authority of the god of delphi? these questions forced themselves on the greeks of anatolia, and beyond the sea, and their legends were at pains to solve the problem. in the mind of herodotus the solution was the punishment which sooner or later overtakes every unrighteous act. gyges, the ancestor of croesus, had robbed the ancient royal family of the lydians, the race of sandon, of their throne. it was the vengeance for this crime which overtook croesus. it was a widely-spread and favourite story among the greeks, how solon of athens, unmoved by the successes, the prosperity, and splendour of croesus, had warned him in his proud citadel at sardis of the mutability of human things, and preferred to his brilliant position as a sovereign the modest lot of a life well spent in the performance of duty. we have observed (iii. ) that this narrative is not without some basis of fact. could there be a more impressive illustration of the saying of solon than the fate which had overtaken croesus? the tradition of the greeks, especially of the delphian priesthood, was aware of several oracular responses which had been given to croesus. herodotus' point of view led him to believe that no one, though warned by portents, dreams, and oracles, could escape the doom which hung over him. in this fact lay the justification of the delphian oracle in regard to the prophecies given to croesus. it had announced what was correct, but owing to the blindness sent upon him by fate, croesus had not been able to understand its meaning. guided by these views, herodotus represents misfortune as coming on croesus in one blow upon another immediately after he had displayed the splendour of his empire to solon, and in foolish vainglory had declared himself to be the most fortunate of men. that croesus had two sons, one a youth of promise, the other dumb, and that he lost the former in the bloom of his youth, are facts mentioned by xenophon as well as herodotus.[ ] a dream indicates to croesus the death which is destined for his noble son; and the means which he adopts to avert the death serve to bring it about. adrastus, who first slays his own brother, then the son of croesus, and at length slays himself on the young man's grave, is called a scion of the old phrygian royal family of midas and gordius; hence there is a close connection between the fall of the phrygian and lydian houses. the greeks worshipped nemesis adrastea, _i.e._ the doom which none can escape, on the granicus, and on a mountain near cyzicus.[ ] in the tradition of the lydians, attys was their first king, whom herodotus calls the son of the god manes; according to the legend of the phrygians and lydians, he had been slain by a boar.[ ] as we saw, the phrygians mourned each year for the death of attys, who had been carried off in the bloom of youth (i. ). when death had overtaken this son, croesus sent to delphi to ascertain whether his remaining son should ever receive the gift of speech; and the answer was returned that he would speak on a day of great misfortune. thus the prescience of the delphic priestess is brought forward in the most emphatic manner. the overthrow of astyages caused croesus to examine a whole series of oracles that he might ascertain whether they knew what was hidden from men, before he inquired whether he should march against cyrus. before this examination, croesus had sought and received many prophecies at delphi, and now he tests not this oracle only, but many others. the mixture of belief and scepticism which would give rise to such an examination is not in itself incredible, but the manner in which the test is carried out in the narrative of herodotus, or rather of the delphian priesthood, is wholly beyond belief. the frivolous question--what was the king of the lydians doing on a certain day--the drift of which was so obvious, would certainly be left unanswered by any oracle of repute which was believed to receive revelations from the gods. if we consider the nature of the delphic prophecy, which claimed rather to announce the responses of apollo than to bring to light the past or the future; the religious solemnity of the ceremonies, which they who would consult the oracle had to perform; the small number of the days on which the priestess spoke, we may be quite sure that the priests would have rejected the question. herodotus cannot give the answers of the other oracles--not even the answer of amphiaraus (which is also mentioned in the account of nicolaus), and yet this oracle must have stood the test no less than delphi, for croesus sent presents to it, and laid before it his second question. to apollo of miletus, whose answer to the first question herodotus does not know, and of whom the second question is not asked, croesus dedicates exactly the same gifts as those sent to apollo of delphi after he had stood the test. hence it is quite clear that the supposed examination of the oracles is merely a story invented by the greeks to glorify the delphic shrine. croesus fell, in spite of the splendid presents he had made to the delphic god, on whose advice he had acted; in order to maintain the divine wisdom of the oracle against this charge, it must be proved to have knowledge of the most secret things. and it is true that croesus had put the oracle to the test, though in another manner, by following up the answer to his question whether he should go against the persians, with a second question--whether his empire would continue. the story how splendidly delphi had stood the test then received an apparently certain foundation in the hexameters about the lamb's flesh and tortoise, which was subsequently manufactured in delphi in the name of the priestess. the narrative of the campaign in herodotus is obviously intended to put croesus in the wrong, and burden him with guilt of his own in addition to the offence of his ancestor. sandanis warns him in vain (p. ). cyrus has done nothing to injure croesus, and therefore croesus is the aggressor. he crosses the halys, invades the territory of cyrus, in order to conquer cappadocia and avenge astyages on cyrus; he causes the land of the cappadocians to be desolated; and herodotus lays stress on the fact that this nation was quite innocent. guilt is followed by incapacity, after the indecisive battle. croesus disbands his army for the singular reason that it "was inferior in numbers to that of cyrus." he is then surprised in sardis; the citadel is naturally ascended in the very place where in old days king meles omitted to carry the lion which was to make the walls of sardis impregnable, because he thought it unnecessary, the place being inaccessible. (i. ). croesus is saved from instant death, because the deaf and dumb son receives his speech on a day of misfortune, as delphi had announced. the son can not only speak, but knows how to address his father by name. the favour of the gods, who turn again to croesus when he has expiated the guilt of gyges and himself by his overthrow, is shown in this miracle, and more plainly still on the funeral pyre. the wisdom of the greeks, and of solon, is set in the clearest light, when croesus in his deepest distress, on the brink of a terrible death, remembers the warning once given him by solon. if such a recollection forms the most brilliant evidence of the insight of the greeks, it might also give the motive for the rescue of croesus. the occurrences on and at the pyre partake so strongly of the miraculous that herodotus himself is puzzled. what reason could cyrus, whose gentleness herodotus himself extols, have for condemning croesus to a death by fire, and with him fourteen lydian youths? herodotus knows that fire is a god in the eyes of the persians, and that corpses could not be burnt.[ ] he says: "cyrus either wished to offer first-fruits to some god, or to fulfil a vow, or to ascertain whether apollo would assist the pious croesus." when narrating the astonishing incidents which took place on the pyre, he drops the positive tone, and continues the story with "the lydians say." the pyre is already kindled when the question is asked by the interpreters, what is the meaning of the cry "solon"? croesus is at first obstinately silent, then answers obscurely; and only after long pressure tells of his meeting with solon, which could not be done very briefly if it was to be made intelligible to cyrus, and the narrative had to be translated by the interpreters, as herodotus himself relates. then cyrus is seized with remorse for the execution he has commanded, and the attempt is made to quench the pyre. impossible as all this is, croesus at the last moment confesses that solon is right, and solon's deep insight moves the heart of the great sovereign of the persians, and rescues the once prosperous but now fallen king. in his minute account of the cremation, which, in his rhetorical manner, he connects with the recovery of speech by the deaf and dumb son, nicolaus of damascus felt difficulties like those in herodotus. the law bidding the persians not to pollute fire, nor to "burn the dead," is well known to him. he removes the contradiction by representing the cremation as taking place against the will of cyrus, and remarks that after this incident the regulation was more strictly observed. in his story also the change is made by the mention of solon's name. when cyrus had ascertained what solon had said to croesus, he began to weep, and saw that he had done wrong, and the pain of their king touches the heart of the persians. this movement is assisted in nicolaus by the sibyl of ephesus; in which no doubt he follows the legend of ephesus; croesus had made large presents to the temple of artemis in that city (iii. ). in herodotus, as in diodorus and nicolaus, it is the rain, by which the pyre is quenched, which causes cyrus to continue his gentle treatment of croesus. moreover, the excellent advice, which croesus with immediate prudence gives, for putting an end to the plunder of sardis, and other matters in herodotus, in diodorus, and xenophon, co-operate in influencing cyrus to hold such a wise man in respect. xenophon knows, or at any rate says, nothing of the burning of croesus. ctesias knows nothing of it: in his account miracles of another kind are vouchsafed to the imprisoned croesus by apollo in his temple; the triple loosing of the bonds, and their final removal with thunder and lightning, determine cyrus to set him at liberty and make provision for him. lastly, it was incumbent on herodotus and the greek narratives to justify the delphian oracle with regard to the responses given to croesus. in herodotus and nicolaus this justification is introduced and pointed by the sending of the fetters, which croesus had worn, as the first-fruits of the promised victory to delphi, and the question whether it was the manner of the greek gods to deceive those who had done them kindness. following, no doubt, the legend of the delphic priesthood, herodotus then gives the defence of the priestess, that croesus had not rightly understood the oracles,--though as we shall see, he had understood them correctly enough. the priestess further tells croesus, that he was destined to pay the penalty for the offence, which his ancestor gyges had committed against candaules, though the delphic oracle had sanctioned this crime and carried it out. then destiny has to bear the blame. no man can escape his doom; the god of delphi had deferred the fall of croesus for three years, and saved him from the flames of the funeral pyre. the god of delphi had thus announced the truth (to prove this cyrus is made the son of a median mother), and had shown his gratitude for the gifts of croesus by delaying his overthrow, and rescuing him from the flames, as croesus must himself confess. xenophon dwells yet more on the justification. croesus had placed himself in the wrong with the god, by putting it to the test whether he could tell the truth; then he hopes that he has appeased him by rich presents, but he misunderstands the further response of the god, "that he will be happy when he knows himself," for in descent, bravery, and generalship he holds himself the equal of cyrus. in herodotus and nicolaus the gift of speech to the deaf and dumb son, the quenching of the pyre,--in herodotus also the delay of destiny, and in ctesias, the miraculous loosing of the fetters,--are proofs that the dedicatory gifts of croesus and his piety had not been in vain. they could not avert his doom, but they had alleviated it; the god of the greeks, whom he serves, has at the last saved him from the most cruel fate, and brought it about that croesus ends his days, if not as a ruler, yet in peace and dignity. in spite of all the national and individual points of view which mark herodotus' account of the fall of croesus, and the legends which he has woven into it, and used for his own purposes--the fanciful colours which stamp it as fabulous--it nevertheless contains a nucleus of historical truth, and we can give it a place before the rest as a narrative of facts. we have seen above how suddenly the successful rebellion of cyrus put an end to the close relations between babylonia, lydia, and media; how lydia was touched by this change, how clearly the intervention of lydia was needed, and what reasons could induce croesus to defer it. croesus was obviously brought to abandon his delay by the successes which cyrus achieved in establishing his dominion over the medes, and extending it to north and south, but above all by his conquests in the west and the advance of the persian border to the halys. herodotus' account shows us very clearly that cappadocia had become subject to cyrus. when, on a previous occasion, the medes reached the halys, alyattes, the father of croesus, had taken up arms; was he to fall short of this example, in the presence of a power which had grown up more rapidly and threatened greater danger than the medes? as herodotus told us, it was his intention to attack cyrus before he became too powerful. we may conclude with certainty from what herodotus relates, that croesus did not hide from himself the importance and difficulty of the undertaking. above all he sought to win the favour of sandon the national deity (i. ). the lydians offered large burnt-sacrifices to this deity, their sun-god; on a huge pyre they burnt numerous victims, gold and silver vessels, and costly robes in his honour. herodotus tells us that croesus bade the lydians sacrifice from their own stores on that occasion; hence the great sacrifice, the gold of which croesus dedicated to the god of miletus and delphi, was a national offering, which croesus presented to sandon. we have already shown that the greeks recognised in the sun-god of the lydians their own apollo and hercules, while the lydians found their solar deity in the apollo of the greeks. when gyges undertook to overthrow the old royal family which claimed to spring from this sun-god, and could not succeed in his attempt, an answer was sought from the sun-god of delphi. the god of the greeks then dethroned the descendants of the lydian deity. in the year b.c.[ ] croesus had already sent to delphi, and given dedicatory offerings to the god of delphi and to the ismenian apollo at thebes; and at the present time, when he had resolved to enter on a severe struggle for his throne and kingdom, he called to mind the god, to whose oracle his house owed its position; he would now receive by his favour both kingdom and crown. so apollo of miletus and delphi received silver and gold which had been consecrated by the fire. the bricks into which it was formed were intended to bear the lion which was also fashioned out of the same gold--the symbol of the burning sun, the image of the lydian god. the four golden bricks formed the uppermost steps. the total amount of the gold dedicated at delphi and miletus reached talents. for the presents at miletus croesus used the property of sadyattes, which he had confiscated at the beginning of his reign, dedicated, and applied as an offering.[ ] when croesus sent the gifts to delphi, he inquired of the oracle, as gyges had previously done. at this time--about years before croesus--the question had been who was to ascend the throne of lydia; now the question was, whether the descendant of gyges would maintain it in the conflict against persia. the answer of the priestess, which aristotle and diodorus have preserved in metre,[ ]--"that croesus by crossing the halys would destroy a great kingdom"--is genuine, and was certainly given in the meaning that croesus should undertake the war and would destroy the kingdom of his opponent. the object of croesus in asking the question was to know whether he would be fortunate in his attack on persia. if it was the object of the priesthood to give a dubious answer to this question, they could not possibly have answered the further question--whether he should take allies to help him,--with the command that he must take the "most powerful of the hellenes." at that time the spartans were beyond all question the most powerful of the hellenes. how could the priests of delphi, who owing to the close connection in which they stood to sparta were well aware that the oracle would be a law to that state, send the spartans to defeat and destruction, if they foresaw such a thing?[ ] that at delphi, owing to the impression made on the greeks by the power, greatness, and splendour of the lydian empire, the remote and unknown persians were underrated is quite probable, and indeed sufficiently proved by the subsequent embassy of the spartans to cyrus. the first response did not entirely remove the doubts of croesus, so he asked a second time--"whether his dominion would continue long," and this question received a thoroughly satisfactory answer, _i.e._ an answer which, in the obscure form purposely adopted by oracles, deferred the defeat of the lydians to distant times, and impossible conditions. croesus had not waited for the oracle to provide himself with sufficient support in his undertaking. yet it suited him to enter into negotiations with the spartans, who after a series of successful contests against the pisatae, argos, and some cantons of arcadia, had obtained the foremost place in the peloponnesus. at an earlier time croesus had sent the spartans a considerable present for the erection of a statue of apollo, and their grateful feeling towards him would certainly be strengthened by the authority of the delphian oracle, whose response was known to the spartans, as herodotus expressly states (p. ). even in xenophon's account they declared themselves ready to send auxiliary troops to sardis.[ ] croesus did not stop here: he sent eurybatus to obtain yet more troops in hellas. herodotus told us that croesus was in league with egypt and babylonia against persia before he made the treaty with sparta. amasis, king of egypt, had determined to support croesus, perhaps in return for the service which gyges had once rendered to psammetichus, when he sent soldiers to aid him against his fellow-princes, the vassals of assyria (iii. ). the attitude of babylonia must be decisive. if lydia and babylonia, who were both equally threatened by the new power, united in a firm military alliance, they might hope to contend successfully with the prince of the persians. at babylon, after the accession of nabonetus in the year b.c., the royal power was again in strong hands. according to herodotus, there was a league between croesus and nabonetus against persia. xenophon represents croesus as coming to the aid of the king of babylon. justin states that cyrus was at war with babylon when croesus attacked him; cyrus drove him back, came to terms with babylonia, and carried the war to lydia. from all this we may assume that lydia and babylonia were united, and that they undertook the war against persia in common. croesus then might consider that careful preparations had been made for his enterprise, when in the year b.c., and as we may pre-suppose with certainty, in the spring of the year, he took the field.[ ] he crossed the halys, and directed his course to the commanding plateau of pteria, which herodotus rightly regards as the strongest position in those regions. he took pteria, and the neighbouring cities, and laid waste the land, with the view no doubt of making it impossible for the persian army to support itself. there he remained, either because he shrank from going further, and seeking a decisive conflict at a distance from his own borders, or because he expected a diversion on the part of the babylonians. the attack of croesus was unexpected by cyrus. he was also engaged with another enemy. these conclusions we may draw from the fact that it was autumn according to herodotus before the armies stood opposite each other. herodotus further remarks that babylon, the bactrians, and the sacæ caused cyrus to return out of asia minor.[ ] by lingering in cappadocia croesus had given cyrus time to collect his army and add to it the troops of the countries through which he passed on his march to the west. with his usual circumspection he sought to avail himself of the weak points in his enemy. he sent ambassadors to the greek cities subject to croesus, on the west coast, to urge them to revolt that he might raise up enemies in the rear of the lydians. croesus awaited the attack of the persians in the neighbourhood of the conquered pteria. herodotus tells that the contest was severe. in spite of the considerable superiority of numbers on the persian side, the lydians did not give way. the battle was not decided, when night came on. in truth the victory was with the lydians, whose bravery made such an impression on cyrus that he would not renew the battle. but the timidity of croesus put in his hands all the advantages of a victory. after the bloody day it seemed better to croesus, as is the case with men of weaker mould, not to risk everything, but to put off the final decision; he thought it safer to retire, in order to strengthen his army and so fight with equal numbers. under the supposition that cyrus would not venture to advance "as the winter was at the gate," he retired to lydia. he intended to use the winter for collecting the forces of his confederates at sardis. he requested nabonetus of babylon, the lacedæmonians and the pharaoh, to embark their forces on the syrian coast, the laconian gulf, and at the mouths of the nile, in time for them to reach sardis in the fifth month, _i.e._ in the early spring. to the want of resolution which had suggested the thought of retreat, croesus, when returning, added another great act of folly. he disbanded "the mercenaries" of his army (alyattes had made use of hired soldiers), bidding them come again to sardis in the spring, and returned home with the lydians alone. such a series of blunders could not go unpunished in the presence of a general like cyrus. in no case could he remain in the devastated country of the cappadocians. he must go either forwards or backwards. to choose the latter was voluntarily to abandon the advantages which the retreat of croesus offered. yet he did not content himself with slowly following the unexpected retreat of the lydians. he appears to have been informed of the plans of croesus by eurybatus of ephesus, whose treason is not only mentioned by diodorus after ephorus, but alluded to by plato, demosthenes, and aeschines.[ ] by a rapid march upon the enemy's metropolis cyrus intended to cripple the lydian forces, hit croesus in the very centre of his power, and bring the war to an end at a blow. he came so quickly, that, as herodotus says, he announced his own arrival. the sudden appearance of the persian army in the neighbourhood of sardis completely startled and terrified croesus. he retired in order to be able to place in the field a number of warriors equal to the army of cyrus, and now he was compelled to shut himself up in the walls of sardis or fight with far smaller numbers than took the field at pteria. he chose the latter, and awaited the attack on the plain of the hermus, which was large enough to provide a field for his excellent cavalry. though he had a great advantage in his forces, and in the consciousness of his superiority to his enemy, cyrus omitted no means for securing the victory. he had experienced at pteria the attack of the lydian horse, their superiority to his own cavalry, in spite of the practice in riding which the persians underwent from their youth up, and the excellence of the median horse. to render useless the attack of these horsemen, cyrus caused the camels which carried the baggage and supplies of his army to be mounted, and placed them in the first line. this arrangement is mentioned not only by herodotus but also by xenophon. no doubt the lydian horse would be frightened by the noise and unwonted aspect of these animals. though robbed of their best arm and mode of fighting, the lydians nevertheless resolved to dismount and carry on the battle on foot. they pressed courageously on the persians, and could only be driven into the gates of sardis after a bloody battle. croesus was now limited to the walls of his city, and compelled to defend them. he hoped to be able to hold the city till his confederates should come, to whom on the approach of cyrus he had sent with appeals for immediate assistance. but on the fourteenth day after the investment of the city, as herodotus maintains, cyrus brought matters to a decision. then the mardian climbed the steep rock on the pactolus, on which the citadel lay, at a place where no guard was set, the citadel and city were taken, and croesus became a prisoner. a picture at pompeii exhibits cyrus before his tent, and harpagus beside him, at the moment when croesus is brought forward. herodotus' narrative of the ascent of the citadel of sardis is confirmed by a precisely analogous incident which took place more than three centuries later. antiochus iii. had besieged his brother-in-law achæus for more than a year in sardis, and in vain. all hope of taking the city except by starvation was given up, when lagoras, a cretan, observed that the walls must be left without a guard where the citadel and the city met. at this point the walls rose on steep rocks above a cleft into which the besieged threw from the towers their dead along with the carcasses of beasts of burden and horses. as the birds of prey when they had eaten the corpses settled on the walls, lagoras concluded that no guards were stationed there. by night he examined whether it was quite impossible to climb up and plant scaling-ladders there. when he discovered a ravine by which this seemed practicable, he acquainted the king. the necessary preparations were made; in the night, towards morning, when the moon had set, lagoras with sixteen companions climbed up the rocks; men were ready to support him. the spur on which the wall lay was so steep that even when the morning broke a jutting piece of rock prevented the garrison from seeing what was going on, and when antiochus led his army against the persian gate the garrison went to meet them. meanwhile the assailants by means of two ladders scaled the walls close against the citadel and opened the nearest door; the confusion which ensued put the city in the hands of antiochus after a short struggle. yet achæus maintained the citadel; by a secret steep and dangerous path in the rear he was able to keep up a communication with ptolemy philopator of egypt, and finally he attempted to escape by this means, but he was betrayed and fell into the hands of antiochus ( b.c.).[ ] croesus determined not to survive the great overthrow and sudden disaster which he had brought upon lydia by his campaign. the lydians had become the slaves of the persians, but it might be possible to appease the wrath of sandon, from whom all this misfortune must have come; it might be that the god would again show favour to his people, turn aside their misfortune and slavery, and raise up the kingdom from the depths. in vain had croesus attempted by lavish presents to win the favour of sandon-apollo; there still remained the last great sacrifice. so he resolved to offer himself as a peace-offering for his land and people. in this way he might succeed in laying the foundation of the future liberation and rise of lydia, in conquering by his death his successful opponent. the sacrifice of the heir to the throne and of the king himself in his purple to avert the anger of the sun-god was not unknown in semitic rites. zimri of israel had burnt himself with his citadel in tirzah; ahaz of judah, when defeated by the damascenes, had sacrificed his son as a burnt-offering; manasses of judah "caused his son to pass through the fire in the valley of ben hinnom" (iii. , ); the last king of asshur had burnt himself with his palace in the year b.c.; hamilcar, the son of hanno, threw himself into the flames of the sacrificial fire in order to turn the battle of himera. cyrus had no reason for preventing the death of his opponent, if he chose to die. though he was offering himself as a sacrifice to his gods, these gods were false in the eyes of the persians--they were evil spirits or demons. the persian king could quite understand the resolution of croesus not to outlive the fall of a prosperous and mighty kingdom, and to escape a long imprisonment, and would probably look on it as worthy of a brave man. still less could he object to the wish of a king to die in his royal robes. that the cremation was a sacrifice and not an execution is further proved by the circumstance that croesus is accompanied by twice seven youths. it could never have entered the mind of cyrus to seize and execute fourteen youths, but they might be quite ready to sacrifice themselves with their king. the seventh planet belonged to adar-sandon, _i.e._ to the angry sun-god, and croesus had sat on the throne fourteen years. the gifts also which the lydian women bring or send to the pyre (costly robes and ornaments of every kind, as was customary in the great sacrifices of sandon), are a distinct proof of a peace-offering. in the picture at pompeii croesus has laurel branches round his head, and a wand of laurel in his right hand, and this marks him out, though in the greek manner, as dedicated to sandon; a vase in the louvre presents him seated on the pyre, in a royal robe, with a crown of laurel on his head. in his left hand he holds a sceptre, with the right he is pouring libations from a goblet, while a servant is sprinkling with water the already burning pyre.[ ] but the sun-god would not accept the royal sacrifice and peace-offering. it was no favourable sign that the weather was gloomy ([greek: cheimôn]) on that day, as nicolaus, who here, no doubt, follows xanthus the lydian, tells us, though no rain had fallen. the pyre was kindled; croesus prayed that sandon would graciously accept the offering--the invocation of the god by croesus with tears herodotus gives on the authority of the lydians[ ]--but the prayer is not heard; a storm of rain descends, and the pyre is quenched. this was an unmistakable sign, the clearly-pronounced decision of the god, that he did not and would not accept the sacrifice. croesus must abandon his purpose.[ ] at no time can cyrus have had the intention of doing any further injury to the captive king of the lvdians. herodotus told us that before the battle at sardis he bade his soldiers spare croesus. and he would be the more inclined to show favour and grace to a man whose death heaven had openly prevented. as ctesias told us (p. ), he allotted to croesus the city of barene, near ecbatana, as a residence or means of support. ptolemy mentions the city of uarna in the neighbourhood of ragha, and the avesta speaks of varena in the same region.[ ] after that day croesus submitted to his fate; we find him at the court of cyrus as well as at that of cambyses in an honourable position; both cyrus and his successor at times apply to him for advice. the convulsion which cyrus had caused in the median empire might have ended with placing the persians at the summit instead of the medes, and establishing the power of cyrus within the old borders of the median kingdom. had lydia and babylonia resolved to recognise this change; had they reasons for the assumption that cyrus would not go beyond these limits, the old relation of the three powers might have been renewed, though it would not have been confirmed by the bonds of alliance. but lydia no less than babylonia believed that they were threatened by the advance of cyrus. at the time when croesus attacked him, cyrus certainly did not intend to proceed to the west beyond the borders of cappadocia. this is proved by the fact that he kept within the halys after the conquest of that country. he must establish his power in the east before he could extend his views to the distant west and asia minor. it was babylon which at that time was threatened, if not actually attacked, by cyrus. the advance of the persians to the west, which croesus intended to prevent by his attack, was really caused by it. he brought on the storm which he sought to allay before it burst upon him. by attempting to check the advance of cyrus in the midst of asia he invited him to sardis. the dominion of the mermnadæ was at an end; croesus had lost it years after his ancestor gyges had won it. it is seldom that a sovereign is hurled so suddenly as croesus from the summit of power and prosperity; that the splendour of a high and glorious position stands in such close and striking proximity to the deepest humiliation. there is hardly any instance of a warlike and brave nation passing so suddenly and utterly into obscurity as the lydians; and never has so ancient, so flourishing, and powerful a kingdom, while yet in the period of its growth, been so swiftly overthrown, never to rise again. footnotes: [ ] herod. , , , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] herod. , ; and equally from the persian point of view, xenophon, "cyri inst." , , . [ ] ctes. "pers." ; fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] polyaen. "strateg." , , , ; , , [woelfflin]. [ ] "cyri inst." , , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . vol. i. . [ ] "cyri inst." , , ; , , , ; , , ff. [ ] i draw this conclusion from the story of eurybatus, which was told by ephorus; fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] excerpt. vatic, p. ; "de virtute et vitiis," p. . [= , ff.] [ ] justin, , . lucian ("contemplat." ) represents cyrus as conquering babylonia and then marching against lydia. [ ] [nic. damasc. frag. , ed. müller.] [ ] "cyri inst." , , . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] pausan. , , . . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] marmor parnium, ep. . [ ] boeckh, "staatshaushaltung" . , ; h. stein on herod. , . [ ] aristot. "rhetor." , ; diod. exc. vatic. p. , [= , ]. [ ] herod. , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , , . [ ] the parian marble mentions a mission of croesus to delphi in the year . the date of the year for the capture of sardis is destroyed, and cannot be even approximately restored, as the nearest dates are either mutilated or destroyed. the dates in eusebius are derived from apollodorus, who in turn draws from eratosthenes. eusebius puts the testing of the oracles in olymp. , = b.c., the march of cyrus against croesus in ol. , = b.c., the capture of croesus in ol. , = b.c. jerome represents croesus as beginning the war in ol. , = b.c. and puts his capture in ol. , = b.c. according to the statement of syncellus ( , , ed. bonn.), croesus was defeated in the th year of cyrus, which would give b.c., if with eusebius, who allows cyrus to reign years, we put his accession in b.c. (v. p. _n._). the interval of three years which eusebius ( - ) and two years which jerome ( - ) places between the beginning of the war and the capture of croesus, appears to be due to the three years for which, according to herodotus, apollo delayed the overthrow of croesus; the presents came to delphi three years before the fall (herod. , ). according to herodotus the campaign occupies only one summer and autumn. the temple of delphi was burned down in b.c. (ol. , ; pausan. , , ), and as herodotus represents the temple as intact at the time when croesus sent to delphi after his fall, this must have taken place before b.c., and therefore croesus must have been conquered by cyrus in b.c. if the justification of the oracle in herodotus is merely an invention of the priests, yet in things so well known the existing circumstances could not be left out of sight. it is certain that if the presents of croesus had been injured by the burning of the temple before his fall, this evil omen would not have been left out of sight by the legend, or by herodotus, who himself saw and mentions the lion of croesus at delphi which had been injured by the fire ( , ). i have therefore no scruple in putting the fall of the lydian kingdom in the year b.c. though the reign given by herodotus for croesus, fourteen years and fourteen days, may have arisen out of the fourteen lydian boys who wished to be sacrificed with their king (p. ), yet eusebius, jerome, and syncellus put the reign of croesus at years. it may therefore be regarded as an established fact that his reign ended in the fifteenth year. according to herodotus ( , , ), it might seem as though he were of opinion that croesus sought allies in hellas at the time when pisistratus was tyrant for the third time over athens. but this would be an error due to herodotus' habit of anticipation. we can only be concerned with the second tyranny of pisistratus, which belongs to the years and b.c. against the argument here used--that the priests could not leave out of sight the actual circumstances in things so widely known, even in their inventions, büdinger objects: "the chronological relations in lydian-persian history were neither various nor generally known, when herodotus visited delphi." the objection would be pertinent if the legend of the priests had only been manufactured during herodotus' stay at delphi, and for his use. this is not tenable. the fall of croesus was an event which deeply moved the hellenic world, and created the most lively astonishment; the responses of delphi had allured him to war; the oracle must at once justify itself if it were not to lose considerably in its authority. the justification must, therefore, have been invented at once; in the cities of anatolia it would be best known at that time how and when the mede came into the land with the fall of croesus ([greek: pêlikos êsth' hoth' ho mêdos aphiketo]; xenophanes in athenaeus, p. ), and it was also known everywhere how long before the great presents of croesus had come to miletus and delphi. this must be noticed by the delphian priests. but, as i have expressly said, i have not laid any great stress on this fact, but on the burning of the temple in b.c., for that is the only certain point which can be gained. it does not seem possible to me to make xenophon's account of the lydian and babylonian wars of cyrus in the cyropaedia a reason for placing the overthrow of croesus in b.c. and putting back the beginning of the third tyranny of pisistratus to that date in order to suit this account. there are also reasons of fact against such a date, which are given elsewhere. [ ] herod. , . [ ] plat. "protagoras," p. . demosth. "de corona," ; aesch. "in ctesiph." , and the scholia. [ ] polyb. , ; , . [ ] raoul rochette, "mémoires de l'institut," , , p. ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] büdinger objects to this view that the lydian tradition, which would be favourable to croesus, could not possibly convert the merit of such a sacrifice into an execution. whether the tradition of the lydians was favourable or not to croesus is not handed down; that the greeks were favourable to him we know for certain. it is the tradition of the greek cities--favourable to croesus and unfavourable to cyrus--which we have in the account of herodotus. the rescue of croesus and the wisdom of solon were the points of view given in the greek tradition and guiding it. if nicolaus of damascus has used xanthus, and his account rests on a combination of the greek and lydian tradition--it is precisely in his account that the sacrifice, and the prevention of it by rain, comes out more clearly than in herodotus. [ ] steph. byzant. [greek: barênê]. the barce of justin ( , ) must be the same city. [barene in jeep's ed.] ptolem. , , ; "vend." , . chapter vii. the subjugation of asia minor. however unexpected the attack of the lydians had been by the ruler of the medes and persians, however inconvenient the war with them, he had brought it to a rapid and prosperous decision. though he had entertained no thought of conquests in the distant west before croesus took up arms against him, he resolved to maintain the advantage which the war had brought him to such a surprising extent. great as was the distance between sardis and pasargadae, lydia was to be embodied in his empire, and the Ægean was to form its western boundary. his army took up winter quarters in lydia; from sardis he arranged in person the new government of the land, and the fate of the nations which had been subject to the lydians. we do not know whether the phrygians, bithynians, and paphlagonians submitted to the change of dominion without resistance. Æschylus represents cyrus as subjugating phrygia. according to xenophon, phrygia was reduced by cyrus as he returned from sardis; the paphlagonians submitted voluntarily, like the cilicians; this was the reason why no satraps were sent there, yet the fortresses were occupied with persian garrisons, and the paphlagonians and cilicians had to pay tribute and perform service in war.[ ] cilicia had not been subject to the lydians; ever since the irruption of the scyths had broken the cohesion of the assyrian power, her princes were independent, though they had paid tribute to assurbanipal (iii. , ), they bore the standing title of syennesis. more than sixty years previously nabopolassar of babylon and syennesis of cilicia had brought about peace and alliance between cyaxares of media and alyattes of lydia (v. ). that cilicia now voluntarily submitted to cyrus, if it had not done so previously, can be concluded with certainty from the fact that we subsequently find kings named syennesis at the head of cilicia, who are bound to pay tribute to the persian empire and render service in war.[ ] cyrus met more vigorous resistance in the west of asia minor. the lycians, who maintained their independence against the lydians in their mountains to the south, were not inclined to submit to the persians, nor were their neighbours in the south-west, the carians. the cities of the greeks, who possessed the entire western coast, hesitated which course to take. after their ancestors had set foot on this coast, years previously, they had succeeded in maintaining their ground for a century and a half against the rising power of the lydians under the mermnads; indeed it was during this period that they had extended their trade and colonisation, and risen to be a second naval power beside the phenicians,--the centre of a commerce, which on the one hand included the black sea and the maeotis, and on the other almost all the mediterranean--which included in its empire cyprus and sicily and corsica, egypt and the mouths of the po and rhone, and even extended to the banks of the bætis. along with the trade and wealth of these cities, poetry had burst into a new bloom, plastic art and architecture were eagerly cultivated, the foundations were laid for greek science, natural history, geography, history, and philosophy. life was pleasant and luxurious; no doubt the morals of the lydians had found their way into the cities, but the old vigour still remained in the inhabitants by sea and land. at last they had succumbed to croesus, not because they did not know how to fight, but because they had not followed the advice of thales of miletus, who urged them to carry on the war in common, and place at their head a council with dictatorial powers (iii. ). but the supremacy of croesus, to which they did not submit for much more than a decade, had not been of an oppressive character. it had left the cities unchanged in their internal trade, and in fact had increased rather than destroyed it. croesus had contented himself with yearly tributes from the cities, and we have seen to what a large extent greek art and manners found protection, favour, and advancement at the court of croesus. now these cities suddenly found themselves in the presence of a power of which they had hardly heard the name, and which had prostrated with a mighty blow the kingdom of croesus. as they were not pledged to provide soldiers for the king of the lydians, they had looked on in irresolute neutrality during the war. and they had paid no heed to the request of cyrus that they would join his side. previously it might have been to their interest to weaken the power of lydia, in order to regain their full independence, but when cyrus marched upon sardis it became much more imperative to prevent a stronger power from taking the place of the lydians. a diversion on the part of the greek cities when cyrus was besieging sardis, would have delayed the fate of the city, and might have rendered possible the arrival of the allies. but they had done nothing, and now found themselves alone in the presence of the conqueror. their danger prompted them to offer submission to the king of the persians on the same terms as those on which they had served croesus. cyrus rejected the offer which the ambassadors of the ionian and aeolian cities brought to sardis. mere recognition of his supremacy and payment of tribute he did not consider sufficient to secure the obedience of cities so remote, and he was strong enough to insist on a more dependent relation without great efforts. but ever cautious and provident, he took means to separate the cities. to miletus, the strongest, he offered a continuance of the relations in which she had stood to lydia. when miletus, "from fear," as herodotus remarks, accepted these conditions, cyrus had already won the victory. the cities were divided, robbed of their strongest power and natural head. conscious that their submission on the conditions proposed had been refused, the cities of the ionian tribe took counsel at their old common place of sacrifice on the shore of the sea, opposite samos, under mount mycale. miletus, it is true, was absent; but among the ionians there was far too much pride, far too great a sense of freedom, to offer unconditional submission to cyrus. the defection of miletus seemed to be compensated when ambassadors of the cities of the aeolian tribe appeared on the same day as the ionians, which had never occurred before, and declared their common resolution "to follow the ionians wherever they led."[ ] it was resolved to fortify the cities, to make a resistance to the persians, and for this object to call as quickly as possible on the mother country for help. a common embassy of the ionian and aeolian cities went to sparta, in order to ask aid of the dorians there, the leading state in the peninsula. but in vain did pythermus of phocaea, the mouthpiece of the embassy, put on his purple robe in order to manifest the importance and wealth of the cities, when the ephors introduced the legation before the common assembly. though the spartans at that time were at the height of their power, and had promised help to croesus, though the ships had been equipped and the contingent was ready to embark when the news came of the capture of sardis, sparta now refused to send aid, regardless of the fate of her countrymen. she merely resolved to despatch ambassadors to cyrus with the request that he would leave the greek cities in peace. a ship of fifty oars carried the embassy to asia, with the real object, as herodotus supposes, of ascertaining the position of affairs in ionia and with cyrus. it landed at phocaea. lacrines, the spokesman of the ambassadors, found cyrus in sardis, and there warned him in sparta's name, "to do no harm to any hellenic city, for sparta would not allow such conduct to go unpunished." without the support of an army this warning was an empty and foolish threat, which cyrus treated as it deserved.[ ] there must have been some urgent necessity which summoned cyrus to the east before he subjected the lydians, carians, and greeks of the coast. herodotus tells us that he intended to conquer babylon, the bactrian nation, the sacæ and egyptians. in the early spring he set out with the bulk of his army to ecbatana.[ ] croesus was in his train. he had given the government of lydia to tabalus, a persian, but the management of the revenues to pactyas, a lydian.[ ] he may have thought that lydia was more peaceable than it really was, or more reconciled to its fate by his gentle treatment of croesus, and the nomination of a lydian as manager of the taxes. the dominion of the persians had come upon the lydians suddenly; they refused to recognise the superior power of their rulers, and could not finally accept the rapid change which had so suddenly overthrown their ancient kingdom and their fame in arms. so far from being subdued, they hardly considered themselves seriously beaten. the rapid and decisive action, in which they had been defeated, might appear to them rather a fortunate surprise, than a victory won by the persians. it was pactyas, whom cyrus had made manager of the revenues, who raised the standard of revolt. he collected the lydians, and induced the inhabitants of the coast, i.e. the cities of the greeks, to join him. tabalus could not resist in the open field the sudden outburst of rebellion. when pactyas marched against sardis, he was compelled to shut himself up in the citadel, and was there besieged. while yet on his march cyrus received the news of the revolt. yet his presence in upper asia was so necessary that he did not return in person; he sent mazares, a mede, with a part of the army, to bring the lydians once more to obedience. the rebellion appears to have been undertaken in haste without sufficient preparations, and pactyas was not the man to lead it with energy. he did not venture to await the arrival of mazares; the citadel of sardis was delivered; tabalus was free; the rebellion was crushed; pactyas fled to the greeks on the coast, to cyme, the leading city of the aeolians. when mazares demanded that he should be given up, the oracle of apollo at miletus twice ordered the cymæans, in answer to their repeated inquiry, to surrender him. the priests of that temple, the branchidæ, well knew that the arrangement which their city had made with cyrus, pledged her to carry out the wishes of the persians. the cymæans did not obey even the second response, but first took pactyas in safety to mytilene in lesbos, and when they found that the mytileneans were ready to give him up, they took him to chios. but the chians, though, like the lesbians, they had nothing to fear from the persians in their island, nevertheless surrendered him.[ ] the hopes which the greek cities might have built upon the rebellion of the lydians were quickly broken. the mother country had refused any help. sparta would not come to their assistance, and athens, torn as she was by internal dissensions, could not. no one in the cantons of the greek peninsula roused themselves to give aid to an important section of the greek nation, to the colonies which had outstripped the mother country in their development, or strove to save the most vigorous centres of greek nationality from subjection to a foreign people, which had come out of the remote part of asia. if the voice of a common blood and the sense of nationality failed to warn the greeks beyond the sea against giving over to strangers for plunder such rich and flourishing cities, was there no one in hellas who foresaw that if the establishment of the persian dominion on the coasts of asia minor were not prevented, and the cities of the coast with their navy were allowed to fall into the hands of the persians, greece itself would not be safe from their attack, and they would be able to visit the coasts of hellas in greek ships? yet even without assistance the power of the hellenic cities would have sufficed for a considerable resistance to the persians--for the position of affairs in asia did not allow cyrus to bring any great force against these distant coasts--if they had been able to understand and take to heart the lessons of their own past. if they had neglected to unite their forces against the lydians, such union was now doubly necessary. they had learned from experience the evil of delay, and the danger was now greater than ever. the greek cities were in uncontested possession of the sea,[ ] and thus in a position to give help in common to any city which the persians might attack. an organisation which permitted the whole force of the city to be used for the benefit of each one, would have given a prospect of successful resistance. but no step whatever was taken in this direction. each city turned its attention to strengthening its own walls, and awaiting the attack of the persians. after the subjugation of the lydians, mazares, as herodotus tells us, turned his arms against "those who had besieged tabalus along with pactyas." he invested priene, took the city, and reduced the inhabitants to slavery; then the plain of the maeander was laid waste, the city of magnesia taken, and its inhabitants enslaved. after the capture of magnesia mazares fell sick and died. cyrus sent harpagus the mede as his successor. he marched northwards from the valley of the maeander; in the first instance against phocaea, which appeared to have taken the leading part in resistance, or at any rate had done most to gain the help of sparta; after miletus it was the most powerful city of the ionians. the trade in the adriatic and the tyrrhene sea, on the coasts of gallia and iberia, was in the hands of the phocaeans. a strong and magnificent wall, well built of large stones, surrounded the city, the circuit of which, as herodotus says, reached "not a few stadia." harpagus invested phocaea, and threw up works round the walls; he then sent intelligence to the phocaeans that he should be content if they would pull down but one tower, and solemnly give up to him the possession of one dwelling. the phocaeans must have thought that they could no longer hold the city or repulse an attack. according to herodotus, they answered the offer of harpagus with a request that he would allow them a day for consideration, and for that day would lead his army from the wall. harpagus replied that he knew very well what their intentions were, but he would give them time for consideration. when harpagus led his forces from the wall, the phocaeans drew their ships to the sea, put upon them their wives and children, and everything that they could carry away, even the images of the gods and the votive offerings, and then embarked and sailed to chios. it was their intention to purchase from the chians the oenussæ, islands lying off chios, and to settle there. but the chians refused to sell them, fearing that their trade would go there. then the phocaeans turned their course back to phocaea; harpagus had taken possession of the empty city and left a garrison in it. this the phocaeans cut down; then they sunk a large mass of iron in the sea, with an oath that they would not return again to the city till the iron should float, and shaped their course to the distant western sea, for the island of cyrnus (corsica), where twenty years previously they had founded the colony of alalia. harpagus is said to have burnt phocaea, thus punishing the houses and temples for the attack on the garrison.[ ] after the capture of this city, he besieged teos, and gained possession of the walls by means of the works which he threw up. the teians then went on board their ships, one and all, sailed to the north, and settled on the coast of thrace opposite thasos, where they founded abdera.[ ] "so all the ionians," says herodotus, "with the exception of the milesians, who had come to terms with cyrus, fought against harpagus, and showed themselves brave warriors, each for his own city; but harpagus took them one after the other by investing them and throwing up works against the walls. thus conquered they remained in their cities, with the exception of those exiles, and did what they were bid." after the subjugation of the ionians, harpagus turned to the north, reduced the cities of the aeolians, and bade their military forces join his army. the line of conquest had now reached the dorian cities of the coast, the carians and lycians. the dorians and carians made but little resistance.[ ] the greeks of asia had not only been abandoned by their kinsmen beyond the sea, but also by their gods, or at any rate by their oracles. as apollo of miletus had bidden the cymaeans to give up pactyas, so apollo of delphi bade the cnidians to desist from making their city impregnable. cnidus lay on the western edge of a long and narrow promontory. the inhabitants had begun to cut a channel through the land with a view of securing themselves against the attack of the persians. but though a large number of hands were engaged, the work did not make progress in the hard rock; and as many of the workmen were injured the city sent to delphi to inquire the cause of their misfortunes. the priestess answered, according to the cnidian account: "ye must not fortify the isthmus, nor cut through it; zeus would have made it an island if he had wished."[ ] the cnidians desisted, and surrendered without a struggle to harpagus on his approach. among the carians, the pedasians alone, who had fortified mount lida, made a vigorous resistance; it cost harpagus much trouble to take this fortification. the lycians, who had never been subject to the kings of the lydians, marched out against harpagus. in the open field they fought bravely, though few against many. when conquered and driven into their city xanthus (arna, i. ), they brought their wives and children, their servants, and their goods into the citadel and set them on fire; then they bound themselves by an oath, fell upon the persian army, and maintained the conflict to the last man. then the remaining towns of the lycians, being robbed of their best defenders, submitted. the caunians alone, as herodotus tells us, followed almost exactly the example of the city of xanthus.[ ] even the sea put no limit to the supremacy of the persians. the greeks of the islands of chios and lesbos voluntarily submitted to them, though, as herodotus assures us, "they had nothing to fear," "for the persians were not mariners, and the phenicians were not their subjects at that time."[ ] the two islands would not give up all hope of the possession of the districts on the coasts opposite. about three years after cyrus had left sardis in the spring of the year b.c. his power in lydia was not only firmly founded, but the whole western coast, with all its harbours and landing-places, together with two considerable islands, was subject to him. as aeschylus tells us, he had reduced ionia by force. the east had again overpowered the colonists of the west on its western edge. asia minor, beyond the halys, was subjugated to cyrus in even greater extent than to croesus; in fact it was wholly in his power.[ ] he placed two viceroys over it. one, the viceroy of phrygia, was to govern the north-eastern; the other, the viceroy of lydia, was to govern the south-western half of this wide region. the first took up his position at dascyleum, not far from the shore of the propontis; the other in the citadel at sardis.[ ] among the cities of the greeks, priene and magnesia on the maeander had been destroyed, and their inhabitants enslaved; phocaea had been burned. the rest had not been injured by harpagus after their capture; he had not placed any persian governors over them, nor introduced garrisons. it was not intended in any way to destroy their nationality or their religious worship. their social life, their forms of government, their autonomy remained; even the common sacrifices and assemblies of the ionian cities at mycale were permitted to continue. they had only to recognise the supreme authority of the king of the persians and his viceroys, to pay yearly tribute to the king, the amount of which each city fixed for itself, and furnish a contingent to the army when called upon by the viceroy to do so. when the ionians again met at the common place of sacrifice for the first time after their subjugation, bias of priene, who had escaped the destruction of his country, proposed that all the ionian cities should follow the example of the phocaeans and teians; that there should be a general emigration to sardinia, in order that all might obtain a new country there. they were then to form one great community; one city was to be founded by all in common. had this proposal been carried out, the achievements of cyrus would have exercised a far deeper influence over the distant west, than the mere settlement of the phocaeans in alalia, who moreover were not able to maintain themselves in their new settlement. the centre of hellenic colonisation would have been transplanted from east to west, and the fate of italy would have been changed; the greeks would have retired before the supremacy of the east in order to establish a strong insular power among the weak communities of the west. but the ionians could not rise to the height of such a revolution. among the greeks, the attachment to their ancient soil, their homes and temples, was peculiarly strong. if men could and would forget independence, the supremacy of the persians did not seem very oppressive. it limited the trade of the greeks as little as it repressed their social life; on the contrary, it rather advanced commerce, which now received the protection of the persian king throughout the whole of his wide dominions. the ruin of phocaea also aided the trade of miletus which had suffered neither war nor siege. yet the cities of the greeks were essentially weakened by the war and their subjugation. in phocaea, it is true, a community again grew up. half of the emigrants, in spite of their solemn vow, were seized with a longing for their ancient home; they returned to their desolated city. but for fifty years after this time the new phocaea would or could furnish no more than three ships of war. in priene also and teos sufficient inhabitants gradually assembled to establish small communities.[ ] other circumstances weighed more heavily even than their natural losses. cyrus knew well that it would not be easy to retain in secure obedience cities so distant in situation, so important in population and military resources. at such a distance isolated garrisons would have been exposed to great danger; yet without them the cities would have closed their gates to the persians at any moment, manned their walls, and entered into combinations beyond the sea. every rebellion of this kind made new sieges necessary, and these were the more difficult as persia had no fleet, and could only use the ships of the greeks. situated at the extreme edge of the kingdom, and supported by the opposite shore of the Ægean, each of the larger cities could offer a long resistance. with the unerring political insight which distinguished him, cyrus saw that he must gain adherents within the cities, and have on his side influential interests of sufficient weight to keep the cities in obedience. yet he did not aim at supporting one or other of the parties who contended in the greek cities for the leadership of the community; on the other hand, his favour and that of his viceroys was given to this or that party-leader. his allegiance was to be secured and certain advantages were held out in prospect to the city when led by him. cyrus intended to govern the cities of the greeks by greeks, who were not to be his officers, but to rule the cities as their lords and princes for their own advantage and profit. by their position, which they owed to the favour of persia, and could only maintain with the help of persia against their fellow-citizens, by the interested desire to retain this power in their families and bequeath it to their children, by the concentration of the princely authority, as opposed to the republican institutions and republican spirit of their cities--which authority rested on the persian court, and was closely connected with it--these rulers in union with the viceroys and their troops must be in a position to secure the subjection of the cities. thus it came to pass that not in cyme only, the most important city of the aeolians, but in almost all the towns of the greeks, men were raised to power by the favour and support of the persian satraps, who managed the public affairs, and in the place of autonomous communities came despotisms and principalities, in reality if not in name. how correct cyrus was is proved by the result.[ ] he was able to secure the obedience of the lydians also. he caused the land to be stripped of its arms, even to the extent of taking away the cavalry horses,[ ] and so abandoned all thought of forcing the lydians to serve in his army. the disuse of arms and the lapse of time did their work, aided as they were by a vigorous trade, which in lydia was due not only to the natural wealth and the gold of the soil, but to a long-established and skilful industry. in these pursuits and a luxurious life the lydians forgot their old days and ancient deeds. persia had never again to contend with a rebellion of the lydians. the tradition of the greeks has not omitted to illustrate the important events of the extension and establishment of the persian dominion in asia minor by a series of pointed anecdotes and stories. among these is the reply which cyrus is said to have given to the greek cities, when they offered their submission after the fall of sardis (p. ). at that time cyrus, as herodotus tells us, narrated the following story with reference to their refusal of his first request:--a flute-player once played to some fishes in the sea in order to entice them out. as they did not come, he took them out with a net, and when they leapt about, he said, cease dancing now; ye did not dance out of the water when i played. diodorus puts the transaction later, and with him it is not cyrus, but harpagus, who, as we saw, received the command against the cities after mazares, who told the following apologue to the ambassadors:--he had once asked a maid of her father in marriage, but the father betrothed her to a man of greater importance. when he afterwards found out that the man whom he had despised as a son-in-law was in favour with the king he brought him his daughter, and harpagus took her not for his wife, but for his concubine. by this harpagus meant that as the greeks had not become friends of the persians when cyrus wished it, they could not any longer be allies but only servants.[ ] when lacrines brought to cyrus from the spartans the command that he must not attack any greek city, herodotus represents cyrus as answering, in the pride of his absolute power, that he had never been afraid of men who met in the market-places and deceived each other by speeches and promises. if he remained in health, they would not have to lament over the sorrows of the ionians, but over their own.[ ] here also diodorus gives another version:--to the command of the spartans that he must not attack the hellenes in asia who were their kinsmen, cyrus answered, that he would acquaint himself with the bravery of the spartans when he sent one of his servants to subjugate hellas.[ ] the account which herodotus gives of the negotiations of harpagus with the phocaeans is not historical. if the resistance of the phocaeans was so difficult to overcome that harpagus descended to the concession that only one tower need be pulled down and a single habitation given up to him, the phocaeans had no reason to abandon their city. but if they were in such a condition that they must abandon the defence, the lapse of one day would certainly not suffice for them to get the ships in order, and put on board the whole population with their goods, the images of their gods, and the votive offerings. still more inconceivable would be the folly of harpagus in drawing off his army from the city and thus allowing the phocaeans to destroy his siege works, so that he had to begin them all anew. the striking change which took place in the lydian character after the suppression of the rebellion under pactyas, the contrast between the horse-breeding lydians of the homeric poems, between the mounted squadrons which once pressed so heavily on the greek cities, reduced asia minor, and offered such a brave resistance to the medes and persians, and the peace-loving, effeminate, submissive lydians of the fifth century b.c., was explained by the greek tradition after its own manner. when in his return from sardis to ecbatana, cyrus received the intelligence of the rebellion of the lydians, he confided to croesus, as herodotus tells us, that it seemed to him the best plan to make all the lydians slaves. "i have dealt with them," so herodotus represents cyrus as saying, "as one who spares the children when he has slain the father. i have captured you who have been more to them than a father, and left them their city, and now i wonder that they rebel." croesus replied: "what you say is just, but let your anger pass by; do not destroy an ancient and guiltless city. what took place before was my doing, and the guilt lies on my shoulders; what has happened now is due to pactyas to whom you yourself entrusted sardis. punish him, but spare the lydians. forbid them to carry weapons for the future, order them to wear coats under their mantles, shoes with high heels, and to train their boys in playing and singing and in trade. you will soon make them women instead of men, and they will never revolt or be a source of alarm." croesus gave this advice with the double object of turning aside the vengeance of cyrus from the lydians--for even such a life was better than slavery--and of preserving the lydians for the future from bringing about their own destruction by new rebellions. cyrus followed the advice of croesus. this story is repeated by polyaenus. when the lydians had revolted, cyrus bade mazares take away their weapons and horses, and allow them no longer any practice in throwing the spear and riding; on the contrary, he was to compel them to wear women's clothes, to weave, and play the lute. in this way the lydians became the most unwarlike people, though previously they had been the most warlike.[ ] the new dress which cyrus, on the advice of croesus, commanded the lydians to wear, was the hereditary dress of the lydians (who are called soft-footed in the response of the delphic priestess (p. ), because they wore shoes), and practice in playing and singing were old customs of the lydians which previously had done no harm to their martial valour. the narrative is invented, though not by herodotus, to glorify the wisdom of croesus and give a reason for the clemency which cyrus showed after the rebellion--and at the same time to explain the contrast between the lydians of antiquity and their descendants. footnotes: [ ] aesch. "pers." ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; , , . [ ] herodotus, , , remarks that xerxes gave the satrapy of cilicia to xenagoras of halicarnassus; yet even after this date we find a syennesis at the head of that country, which in the list of herodotus formed the fourth satrapy. [ ] herod. , , , , . [ ] herod. , ; diod. exc. vatic. p. = , , . [ ] herod. , . in , , on the other hand, we find "to the persians;" cf. , . [ ] h. stein on herod. , . [ ] herod. , . what is brought forward in the treatise "on the unfairness of herodotus" from charon of lampsacus against the historian's statement about the surrender of pactyas is limited to the naked fact that he came from chios into the power of cyrus. [ ] thucyd. , , . [ ] herod. , , ; plutarch, "aristid." c. ; pausan. , , . [ ] a party of the emigrant teians is said to have founded phanagoria; scymn. ch. ; "corp. inscrip. graec." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. _loc. cit._ [ ] the subsequent inhabitants of xanthus are explained by herodotus to be foreigners, except eighty families, who were absent at the time. he also mentions caunians about the year b.c. the name of the city occurs at a later date. on the continuance of the league of the lycians, vol. i. p. . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] the year b.c. no doubt passed before the revolt of pactyas. the greek cities had time to build or strengthen their walls before they were attacked. phocaea entered into negotiations for this object with the prince of tartessus after the fall of croesus (herod. , ), and the great wall of the city was finished, with the assistance of money furnished by him owing to the approach of the medes, when harpagus attacked it. this attack cannot therefore have taken place before b.c. the sieges of the ionian and aeolian cities occupied at least a year; the campaign against the dorian cities, the carians and lycians, must therefore have taken place in b.c., if not a year later. hieronymus puts the battle of harpagus against ionia in olymp. , = b.c. [ ] oroetes resided at sardis in the reign of cambyses and mithrobates at dascyleum; herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; miletus and samos contended in b.c. for the possession of priene. [ ] herod. , , ; heracl. pont. fragm. , , ed. müller. [ ] justin. , . [ ] excerpt. vatic. p. = , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. excerpt. vatic. p. = , , . [ ] herod. , , ; polyaen. "strateg." , , . chapter viii. the fall of babylon. when the kingdom of the lydians had succumbed to the arms of cyrus, babylonia alone was left of the three states which had joined in the overthrow of assyria. it was a region of very considerable extent, reaching from the tigris to the coasts of syria, and from the foot of the armenian and cilician mountains to the deserts of arabia; the population was united, and a strong centre was not wanting. as we saw, nebuchadnezzar had not only greatly increased the agriculture and trade of his kingdom, but had also erected the strongest barriers for the protection of his native land and the metropolis. in this he had only the median power in view, but owing to the victory of cyrus over astyages a stronger power had taken the place of media, and neither his wisdom nor his energy had descended to his successors. after a reign of two years his son evilmerodach fell by the hand of his own brother-in-law, neriglissar, who sat but four years on the throne which he had thus acquired. the boy whom neriglissar left behind was murdered by the conspirators who in the year b.c. elevated nabonetus to the throne. of this king we only know that he did not belong to the race of nabopolassar. neriglissar had continued the fortification of the metropolis, and nabonetus completed the walls which were intended to enclose the two parts of the city of babylon on the east and west of the euphrates towards the river. he continued the buildings of nebuchadnezzar at the temples at ur (mugheir), and restored the ancient temple of bilit (mylitta) at that place. his inscriptions entreat the god sin that his works may continue as the heavens, and commend his first-born son belshazzar (bil-sarussur) to the favour of the moon-god. to the city of tyre he gave a new king, hiram of the race of ethbaal, in the year b.c.[ ] we cannot ascertain what position nabonetus took up towards the growing power of cyrus. according to the statement of trogus pompeius, babylon was at war with cyrus, when croesus went to her aid. cyrus repelled this attack, came to terms with babylonia, and carried on war against asia minor. xenophon represents croesus as beginning the war against cyrus at the request of the king of babylon (p. ). herodotus, as has been mentioned above, repeatedly assures us that croesus was in league with the king of babylon, whom he calls labynetus (p. ). as we saw, cyrus left sardis and asia minor in the spring of b.c., before the nations of the western coast, the carians and lycians, had been subjugated; and herodotus remarks that he intended to march against babylon. for babylonia there could certainly be no more favourable moment for carrying on the war with the persians than the time at which cyrus lay opposite the army of croesus at pteria in cappadocia, before he advanced upon sardis. a march of the babylonian army up the river euphrates would have cut off the communications of the persian army with their own home, and compelled cyrus to abandon the lydians and to turn upon babylon. we do not know whether nabonetus looked idly on at the fall of croesus in spite of the league, or whether a second persian army compelled him to leave events to take their course in asia minor, or whether cyrus, on his return to ecbatana, after the overthrow of croesus, as herodotus tells us, marched against nabonetus. all that we know from herodotus is that harpagus subdued lower asia, _i.e._ asia minor, and cyrus himself upper asia, passing from one nation to another without any exception. "the greater part of their achievements," herodotus continues, "i will omit; i will only narrate that feat which cost the most trouble and is the most worthy of notice. when cyrus had reduced the whole of the continent he attacked the assyrians. now assyria had many other large cities, but the most famous and strongest of them was babylon, where their kings dwelt after the destruction of nineveh. labynetus was ruler of the assyrians, and against him cyrus marched." according to this more exact statement, cyrus did not march against babylon directly after the lydian war, but only "when the whole of upper asia had been reduced to subjection." that elam and the land between the lower tigris and the mountains of persia was subject to cyrus before he attacked babylonia, follows from the statements of a prophet of the jews.[ ] berosus says quite distinctly: "when cyrus had subjugated the whole of asia, he set out with a great power from persia against babylon in the seventeenth year of the reign of nabonetus."[ ] we can establish the correctness of this date from other sources, and prove that the war between babylon and persia, which herodotus sets himself to describe in the words quoted, took place ten years after the lydian war. yet it remains doubtful whether babylonia and persia had already met in arms, before, during, or immediately after the lydian war. so much only is certain, that if a collision of this kind had previously taken place, it was indecisive. nor can we make it clear what motives caused nabonetus to allow cyrus to attack babylonia at a time most convenient to himself; whether this attitude was due to the experience of previous failures, or to a feeling of confidence that the natural and artificial barriers of the babylonian land offered a better prospect of success under any circumstances, than an attack on persia. we have already seen how faithfully the jews, whom nebuchadnezzar had transported to mesopotamia and babylonia in the year b.c., and again in b.c. when he conquered and destroyed jerusalem, clung to their god and their religion (iii. ). they cherished the firm hope that the judgment which had fallen on judah and jerusalem would come to an end, and jehovah's anger would turn, when the purification was completed; that the kingdom of david would be restored, and babylon punished for all that it had done to jerusalem. since the times of hosea and isaiah, the prophets of the israelites had always pointed beyond the punishments which jehovah would send upon the sins of his people to their restoration in a happy future. thus in the first year of the reign of nebuchadnezzar, jeremiah had announced that jehovah would allow the king of babel to come upon judah and jerusalem, but that the servitude of judah would only continue for a definite period--for seventy years (iii. ); and ezekiel had definitely and solemnly announced the restoration of the national sanctuary to his people in mesopotamia (iii. ). zealously devoted to the worship of the god whose strong hand alone could break their yoke asunder and lead back their weak numbers to their home, the exiles impatiently awaited the fall of babylon. it was their firm hope that as assyria had fallen, which had annihilated israel and brought the severest blows upon judah, so would the line of destruction reach babylon also, and vengeance would not be delayed. "by the waters of babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, o zion. we hung up our harps on the willows that are in the land; our conquerors asked us for a melody, and those that troubled us for songs of joy. how can we sing jehovah's song in a strange land? o daughter of babylon, thou that makest desolate, blessings be upon him who taketh thy children and throweth them against the rocks."[ ] "why go i sorrowing under the oppression of the enemy? it was not by their sword that they took the land, nor did their arms win the victory, but thou, o jehovah, wert gracious to them. all this came upon us, and yet we were not faithless, our steps strayed not from thy path. tears are my food day and night, while they say to me, where is thy god? i thought how i went with the multitude into the house of god with songs and thanksgiving. thou art my king, jehovah (iii. ); send help to jacob; with thy name we shall tread down our enemies. i put not my trust in my bow, but thou givest us victory over the oppressor. send thy light and thy truth, that they may bring me to thy holy hill, to the god of my joy, that i may praise thee on the lute. why sleepest thou, o lord? awake. cast us not away for ever. our soul is bowed down to the dust, our body pressed to the ground. save us for thy mercy's sake. i will yet praise him, who is my saviour and my god."[ ] even in the last years of nebuchadnezzar, as they looked on the mighty works with which the destroyer of jerusalem surrounded his city, the hopes of the jews rose. from these enormous structures they might conclude how insecure babylon felt herself against the medes. immediately after the death of the great and dreaded prince the jews began to dream of an attack of the medes on babylonia. "israel was a stray sheep," such are the words of a prophet of this period, "which was in terror of lions. the king of assyria ate it, and nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, gnawed the bones." "but the god of israel says, 'i will have vengeance on the king of babel, as i had vengeance on the king of assyria, and i will lead israel back, that he may pasture on carmel and bashan, and satisfy himself on mount ephraim and gilead.'"[ ] "bel shall be put to shame, and i will take out of his mouth that which he has swallowed, and merodach shall be overthrown, their images and idols."[ ] "thou who dwellest on the great waters, thine end is approaching. though babylon exalted herself to heaven, and made the height of her fortification so that no one could pass over, the broad walls shall be cast down and the high gates shall be consumed with fire."[ ] "set up a standard against the walls of babylon, summon against her the kingdoms of ararat, minni (armenia), and ashenas; arm against her all the governors of the kings of the medes, and all the lands of their dominion. summon against her all who draw the bow; stand round babylon, ye archers, and spare not the arrows."[ ] similar views gave rise to another prophecy which deduces the imminent fall of babylon from her pride. "babylon said in her heart, i will climb up to heaven, i will exalt my throne above the stars of god, and dwell on the hill of assembly in the uttermost north. i will climb to the heights of the clouds, and make myself equal to the highest. but against them jehovah arouses the medes, who regard not silver and have no pleasure in gold.[ ] call aloud to them, wave the hand, that they may enter into the gates of the tyrants. their bows will destroy her young men, and she laments not for her children. and thus babylon, the delight of the kingdoms, shall be as sodom and gomorrah. it shall be no more inhabited for ever; the arab shall not pitch his tent there, nor the shepherd feed his flock. beasts of the field shall dwell there; owls shall inhabit the houses, ostriches shall make their home there, and the satyrs shall dance. jackals shall howl in her palaces, and foxes in her pleasure-houses. i will make babylon a dwelling for the hedge-hog, saith jehovah, and i will sweep it with the besom of destruction. the time is at hand, it will come quickly. thy glory is gone down into hell, and the noise of thy harps. thy bed is with the worm, and thy covering is corruption. how art thou fallen from heaven, o lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou beaten to the ground that didst lay low the nations!"[ ] the eager and impatient expectation of the jews could not but perceive the change which had been made in the relation of the states of asia by the victory of cyrus over astyages and the medes three years after the death of nebuchadnezzar. when cyrus afterwards subjugated the nations to the east and west of media, and the mighty kingdom of lydia was shattered by him, so that the fame of his victories filled the east--when it might be expected that his arms would turn against babylon, the jews considered their rescue certain. with redoubled zeal they called down the punishment of jehovah on babylon, and delighted themselves in advance with the coming vengeance. cyrus was the instrument which jehovah had chosen to punish babylon. as the old prophets had seen in the kings of assyria, and jeremiah in nebuchadnezzar, the servants of jehovah, who were to carry out his will on the nations, and hold the judgment day of the lord, so did the jews now see in cyrus a man called to a similar mission, their saviour and liberator; he seemed to them the anointed of jehovah. if the absence of images in the rites of the persians, the worship of auramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, were nearer the religion of the jews than the sacrifices which the babylonians offered before the images of bel and bilit-istar, adar, samas and sin, merodach and nebo, and the worship which they devoted to the ruling powers of the stars, they did not overlook the gulf which divided them; but they were convinced that jehovah chose cyrus as the rod of his anger, and the goad of his wrath, to punish the pride and wickedness of babylon. in this spirit we find a prophet saying, with a definite reference to the announcements of jeremiah: "who called him from the east, whom victory meets at every step? who gives him the nations and subjugates kings to him, and makes their swords as dust, and their bows as chaff? he pursues them and follows safely in the path which his feet have never trodden. i, jehovah, aroused him from the north (midnight), and he came from the rising sun, who calls upon my name. he passes over the mighty ones as over clay, as a potter breaks a vessel. i summoned him for salvation, and his ways will i make smooth; he shall build my city and release my captives, without ransom and without price. i will speak to koresh (cyrus), my shepherd; all my business he shall perform, so that he will say of jerusalem, it shall be built, and of the temple, it shall be established. and i will speak to koresh, mine anointed, whom i hold by his right hand to throw down the nations before him, and strip the loins of the kings, and open the gates and doors: i called thee, though thou knewest me not;[ ] i will go before thee and make plain the ramparts; i will break in pieces the brazen gates, and the cross bars will i loosen" (the gates of babylon were of brass);[ ] "i will say to the deep, dry up, and thy streams i will cause to be parched. hear this, o wanton one, o daughter of the chaldæans, thou that didst lay thy yoke heavily on my people, on the aged one, saying, i will be a lady for ever; but suddenly on one day thou shalt be childless and widowed. keep to thy incantations, to the multitude of the charms wherewith thou hast comforted thyself from thy youth up. may the quarters of the sky arise and help thee, which look to the stars, which on the new moons announce what will come upon thee. bel boweth down, nebo falleth. no more shalt thou be called mistress of the kingdoms, daughter of the chaldæans. i will place thee on the earth without a throne, i will plant thee in the dust, and make thee crawl in the darkness, o virgin, daughter of babylon. take the mill and grind meal, remove thy veil, lift up thy garment, lay bare the thigh, and pass through the rivers; no more shalt thou be called delicate and tender[ ]. zion said, jehovah has left me, and my lord has forgotten me. can a woman forget her sucking child, and have no pity on the fruit of her womb? yet though she may forget, yet will not i, jehovah, forget thee. i have graven thee upon my hands, and thy walls were ever before my eyes[ ]. loose the fetters from thy neck, o captive daughter of zion. shake off the dust, jerusalem; rise up, thou that hast drunk the cup of wrath from the hand of jehovah[ ]. behold, i take from thy hand the cup of my wrath, that thou mayest drink it no more. i put it into the hand of those who have prepared sorrow for thee. break forth into singing, ye ruins of jerusalem; cry aloud, o heaven; rejoice, o earth, for jehovah has mercy on his people[ ]. he called the eagle from the east" (the eagle was the standard of the achæmenids), "the man of his counsel from the distant land. jehovah spake and called him; he leads him forth, and he shall accomplish it; he brings to pass the will of jehovah on babylon, and his might on the chaldæans."[ ] herodotus describes the approach of cyrus and his war against babylon in the following manner: "when on his march against babylon he came to the gyndes (now the diala), which falls into the tigris, and crossed it, one of the sacred white horses was carried away by the stream. cyrus was angry, and threatened that he would make the river so insignificant that a woman should cross it without wetting her knee. with this view he drew lines on each side of the river, and bade his army dig a channel on every line; and as a great multitude was employed, the work was finished, but it occupied the whole summer, so that cyrus did not lead his army against babylon till the second spring. the babylonians marched out of the city and awaited his attack. when cyrus came up the babylonians joined battle; they were defeated, and driven into the walls. they had known for a long time that cyrus would not remain at rest, for they had seen how he had reduced all nations alike, and therefore they had collected provisions for many years in the city. the siege, therefore, caused them no alarm; but cyrus was in difficulties, for time passed away, and he made no advance. afterwards he did as follows, whether it was that some one suggested the plan to him, or whether he discovered it for himself. he placed part of his army where the river flows into the city, and part where it flows out, and bade them enter the city by the river as soon as it could be forded. after he had given them orders, he went with the bulk of his army to the basin, which the queen of the babylonians had caused to be excavated, and did what she had done with the basin and the river. by leading the river through the opening into this basin, which was a marsh, he made the old bed so that it could be forded. when this had been done, and the water of the river had fallen to such an extent that it reached the middle of a man's thigh, the persians who had been placed near the city forced their way into babylon along the bed of the river. had the babylonians previously known or suspected what cyrus intended, the persians would not have passed unnoticed into the walls; had they closed the gates leading from the city to the river, and mounted the walls which line the banks, they would have caught the persians in a trap as it were, and they would have perished miserably. but the persians came quite unexpectedly. the outer parts of the city had been already taken while those in the centre, who, as the babylonians say, knew nothing of the matter, owing to the extent of the city, were dancing and making merry--for it so happened that a festival was being celebrated--until they at length discovered their misfortune." xenophon relates that the inhabitants of babylon laughed at the siege, because the strong and lofty walls could not be taken by storm, and the siege would not hurt them, for they had provisions for more than twenty years. cyrus also soon convinced himself that the city could not be taken by the means which he was employing, and resolved to draw off the euphrates, which traverses the city in a stream two stadia ( feet) in breadth, and twice the height of a man in depth. for this object he threw a rampart round the whole city, with a very broad and deep trench before it on the side towards the city. this great work was apportioned to the different parts of the army, and the time occupied in it was calculated at a year. where the trenches approached the river the earth was not excavated, so that the water would not flow into the trenches. when cyrus perceived that the babylonians celebrated a festival at a fixed time, at which they feasted for the whole night, he caused the earth which separated the river from the trenches above the city to be cut through by a multitude of men as soon as it was dark; the water at once ran into the trenches, and the river sank so low that it could be forded. the river now opened a way into the city, and cyrus bade his troops enter by its bed. they would find the inhabitants drunk and asleep, without any organization for resistance, and when they found the enemy in the city they would lose all their courage. if the babylonians, nevertheless, attempted to hurl down missiles from the roofs, the houses could be burned, and they would take fire readily, as the doors were of palm-wood covered with bitumen. a separate troop of the persian army, which gobryas led, had orders to make their way to the palace of the king as quickly as possible. the persians entered, and cut down the inhabitants whom they found; others saved themselves by flight. the watch of the palace were drinking by a bright fire before the gates, which were closed. they were surprised and cut down. when the noise of the fight was heard inside the palace, the king sent to inquire what was the meaning of the tumult. but as soon as the gate was opened the persians forced their way into the palace; the king and those around him drew their swords, but succumbed to numbers, and were killed. meanwhile cyrus had despatched his cavalry along the streets, sending with them men skilled in the syrian language, who proclaimed that every one who remained in his house would be uninjured; all who showed themselves in the streets would be put to death. thus the city quickly passed into the hands of the persians. the gates of the citadel were opened the next morning, when the dawn of light showed them the persians in possession of the city.[ ] polyaenus gives two versions of the taking of babylon. the babylonians laughed at the siege, as they had provisions for many years. but cyrus drew off the euphrates, which flows through the middle of the city, and turned it into a neighbouring swamp. as the babylonians were thus cut off from drinking-water, they soon opened their gates to cyrus. the second version is different. when, in order to take babylon, cyrus had made a trench to receive the water of the euphrates, which flows through the city, he led away the army from the walls. the babylonians believed that cyrus had abandoned the siege, and they became negligent in keeping watch on the walls. but after drawing off the water, cyrus led the persians through the old bed, and unexpectedly made himself master of the city. besides these accounts of the greeks, proclamations of the hebrews, which are joined on to the prophecies of isaiah and jeremiah, give indications on the fall of babel. "behold, saith jehovah, i will dry up their sea and parch their fountains. when they are heated i will prepare a drink for them, and intoxicate them, so that they make merry, that they may sleep an everlasting sleep, and awake no more. and behold! there came mounted men. the night of my pleasure was turned to horror. the watchman wakes, the table is prepared, there is eating and drinking. rise up, ye princes, anoint the shield. their dwellings are set on fire, the bars are broken. one runs to meet another, and messenger to meet messenger, bringing news to the king of babylon that his city is captured on every side; the channels are taken, the lakes they have burned with fire. babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all her idols are trampled underfoot. the whole earth rests, and is at peace, the lands break forth into joy. the cypresses are glad over thee, the cedars of lebanon; now that thou art fallen, no one will come to cut us down."[ ] the kings of babylon, like those of asshur, used the cedars of lebanon for their palaces; nebuchadnezzar himself tells us that he caused cedars to be felled in lebanon for his palace (iii. ). a later book of the hebrews, the book of daniel, which was written in the first century b.c., under antiochus epiphanes ( - b.c.), about the year b.c., represents babylon as taken by the persians during the night of a festival, but darius, not cyrus, is the persian king. belshazzar, the son of nebuchadnezzar, is king of babylon. he gives a great banquet to his thousand mighty men, and, heated by wine, causes the gold and silver vessels to be brought which nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple at jerusalem; and his mighty men, their wives and concubines, drink out of them, and sing songs of praise to their gods of gold and silver, brass, iron, stone, and wood. then suddenly a hand writes letters on the wall of the palace. the king changes colour; the wise men of babylon, the chaldæans, the magicians, and prophets were brought, but they cannot read the writing. then daniel was summoned, one of the jews whom nebuchadnezzar brought from babylon, who had already interpreted dreams for nebuchadnezzar which the wise men of babylon could not expound, and had remained true to the religion of jehovah under all temptations. he read the words, which were hebrew,--mene, tekel, peres,--and explained them: thy kingdom is "numbered"; thou hast been "weighed" in the balance and found wanting, because thy heart is not humbled, and thou honourest not the god in whose hand is thy breath and all thy fortunes; thy kingdom has been "divided" among the medes and persians. then the king commanded to put the purple robe on daniel, and the golden chain upon his neck, and proclaim him third in the kingdom. "but in that night was belshazzar the king of the chaldæans slain, and darius the mede received the kingdom."[ ] only a short excerpt has come down to us of the account which berosus gave of the capture of babylon. "cyrus set out from persia with a strong force against babylon. when nabonetus heard of his approach, he went to meet him with his army, and they joined battle. he was defeated, and fled with a few companions into the city of the borsippeans, where he was besieged. cyrus took babylon, and as he had found the city difficult to reduce, and stubborn, he gave orders to throw down the walls outside the city, and then set out against borsippa in order to get nabonetus into his power, by bringing the siege to an end. but nabonetus did not wait for the city to be taken by storm; he surrendered. cyrus treated him with kindness, and sent him from babylon to carmania, which he appointed to be his dwelling-place. there nabonetus lived for the remainder of his life, and there he died." according to eusebius, cyrus gave the vice-royalty of carmania to nabonetus, and darius took it away again.[ ] after all that has been observed above, the attack of cyrus could not be unexpected by nabonetus, and we also see from herodotus that it had been long foreseen, and provisions for many years had been collected in babylon--according to xenophon there was sufficient for twenty years. we find, moreover, that the fortifications of the city had been completed; the great extent which nebuchadnezzar had allowed for the wall of the city must have enclosed a wide breadth of country, or at any rate pastures large enough to maintain numerous herds of cattle. and nebuchadnezzar had not merely made the metropolis the fortress and strong camp of the kingdom, which could both receive and protect the military forces, he had covered the northern edge of the babylonian land by a fortification of a hundred feet in height and twenty in thickness, which extended from the euphrates to the tigris. behind this wall were the four great canals which connected the euphrates and tigris; and, protected by the great wall, there lay on the euphrates at sepharvaim, the reservoirs by which the level of the euphrates could be raised or lowered, and the canals fed--the basin of which nebuchadnezzar had availed himself in building his bridge over the euphrates,--works which herodotus, we do not know on what authority, but very erroneously ascribes to nitocris, a queen of babylon. by this wall, and the canals, which it would be necessary to dam up, any attack on the heart of babylonia from the direction of mesopotamia would be rendered almost impossible. the tigris after leaving the mountains of armenia, above the ruins of nineveh, is not difficult to cross in the summer, yet an attack from this side would encounter almost insuperable difficulties, and even if they were overcome the attacking army would be involved in a labyrinth of canals, in which the cavalry of the persians could be of little use. hence babylonia could only be reached by crossing the tigris and euphrates below that fortification and the canals,--a difficult task. if cyrus attempted to cross both rivers above this point, and then march down the western shore till he was below the "median wall," he would sacrifice altogether his communication with persia, he would have to march southwards through the syrian desert, and then force the passage of the euphrates, in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, _i.e._ in the face of the enemy's power, while he at the same time would find himself in the midst of an extensive system of canals, and of the swamps which lie along the euphrates between babylon and the sea (i. , iii. ). under these circumstances cyrus could only cross the tigris from the east, and attempt an attack below the wall which united the two rivers. this was the line which, in fact, he followed. berosus told us that cyrus "marched from persia against nabonetus," and herodotus exhibits him as occupied for a whole summer on the diala. his occupation there, as herodotus describes it, is very unintelligible; the diala was punished by being divided into canals, and so made fordable. that cyrus should punish a river is both unlikely in itself and opposed to the religious conceptions of iran, which as we know required the greatest respect to be paid to rivers; more improbable still and indeed impossible is it in the midst of the war against babylon. if we do not assume that the source from which herodotus drew has wrongly brought a great work of irrigation which cyrus undertook for the land of the diala at some other time into connection with this war against babylon, it must be the passage of the tigris which is in question. what we know of the military achievements of cyrus does not allow us to suppose that when once in the field he would give his opponents the respite of a whole summer. if we could assume that the army of nabonetus had contested the crossing with cyrus at this point, above the mouth of the diala, where at a later time the babylonians attempted to check darius--and that they had ships of war in the tigris then, as at the time of darius--we might then suppose that cyrus reached the tigris above the mouth of the diala, and not being able to force the crossing, attempted to carry off the water of the river into the diala, above and behind his camp, and at length succeeded in his attempt. even then the number of the canals is very remarkable. but whether the supposition is right or wrong, in any case we may assume on the basis of the narrative of herodotus that cyrus began the war against babylon in the spring of the year b.c., that he crossed the tigris in the neighbourhood of the diala, and that the only result of his first campaign was to effect the passage of the tigris and retain command of the river. from this point, in the next spring, he led his army, as herodotus states, in a diagonal across babylonia towards the city. nabonetus lost the battle, which, as herodotus says, was fought in the neighbourhood of babylon. of nabonetus and his fate the historian says not a word; we have therefore no reason to doubt the statement of berosus, that nabonetus did not again return to babylon, but took refuge in borsippa with a few companions, and was there besieged. it was obviously of great advantage to cyrus to prevent the babylonians from entering into their city, to drive away the army or part of it from the city in order to diminish the number of those who could defend the walls. he might accomplish this object by strengthening his right wing and advancing with it. if nabonetus and a part of the fugitives were thus cut off from babylon, he could only retire southwards beyond the euphrates into the city nearest babylon, _i.e._ into borsippa, to seek protection at the great temple of nebo (i. ), the god whose name he bore.[ ] the command in babylon then devolved on his eldest son bil-sar-ussur (p. ). it follows from the narrative of berosus that cyrus quickly followed up the defeated army of the babylonians, that a part of the persians, treading on the heels of the fugitives, crossed the euphrates below the city, to invest borsippa and the metropolis on the western side. berosus has told us that cyrus marched against babylon with a great force. his army must indeed have been strong enough to enclose the second circuit of the city, or miles (iii. ), to meet the attack of the whole force of the besieged on both sides of the river, and blockade borsippa. but the inhabitants "ridiculed the siege," and cyrus could make no progress--such is the account in herodotus and xenophon. owing to the amount of provisions at the command of the city, an investment could not promise any result, and there was little prospect of storming the city. the broad and deep trenches in front of the walls made it impossible to undermine them; even if these could be filled up under the missiles of the enemy in a few places for the battering-rams to be brought forward, the strength of the walls was so great that they could not be broken. still less possible was it to mount them. they were so high that the arrows of the besiegers could not reach them with force, and even if the attack was carried successfully over the trenches, no towers or ladders would be at once strong and high enough to bring the storming party to the turrets. according to herodotus, a long time had elapsed before cyrus formed his plan. he bethought himself of the basin which nebuchadnezzar had excavated at sepharvaim, for the regulation of the inundations of the euphrates, for feeding and damming up the canals; this work constructed for the benefit and protection of the land he used for the destruction of the capital. the euphrates was to be led off into this basin till its bed could be forded at babylon. then the storming of the city was to be attempted from the river, the walls on the banks being less high and strong. for this object it was necessary to obtain possession of the fortress of sepharvaim, which guarded the sluices of the basin, to deepen or enlarge the basin itself, so that for a certain period it could receive the whole mass of water; it was also requisite that the canal which led into it should be widened and deepened; and lastly the course of the river beneath the basin, or rather beneath the great canals which led into the tigris, must be barred by a dam, if the euphrates was to flow into it. the army of cyrus must have been so strong, that after leaving behind a sufficient number of men on both sides of the euphrates to continue the blockade of the city and of borsippa, it could detach an adequate force of troops and workmen to sepharvaim. before these works could be begun, the inundation which in june and july the euphrates pours over the plain of babylon must have been over; and before the return of the inundation in the autumn, which would imperil the whole undertaking, sepharvaim must be captured, the euphrates drawn off, and babylon conquered. when sepharvaim was in the hand of cyrus, the stream, which had previously been dammed up with the exception of a small passage, must have been rapidly closed, that the babylonians might not have their suspicions roused by the fall of the water, and guard the walls on the river with redoubled vigilance. the time was short. pliny has preserved for us the statement that the large city of agranis, which lay on the euphrates, where the canal nahr malka (iii. ) flowed out of the river, was destroyed by the persians; the walls of the city of sepharvaim which had been rendered famous by the wisdom of the chaldæans (sippara, i. ), were also destroyed by the persians, and gobares (gobryas), as some say, had drawn off the euphrates.[ ] to gobryas xenophon also allots an important share in the capture of babylon (p. ). even without these statements of pliny, which support the account of herodotus, and inform us of the battles which the persians had to fight on the euphrates above babylon in order to establish themselves at the entrance of the nahr malka, and get the mouth of the basin into their power--even without the hints of the prophets of the hebrews about the "drying up of the springs," and "parching of the channels," and the remark of polyaenus about the drawing off of the euphrates at a marsh (the basin of sepharvaim was, when not filled, a marsh), we must reject xenophon's account of the drawing off of the euphrates. conceding the extent of the walls of babylon, even if limited to one bank of the river, the work could not have been done in a year; and every day the execution of the work under the eyes of the besieged would have made its object more plain. the plan of cyrus succeeded. the removal of agranis and sepharvaim made the execution possible; the number of hands at his disposal caused all the works to be carried out at the right time, _i.e._ before the inundation of the autumn. the storming of the city could be attempted by the river-bed both above and below the city.[ ] that it took place and was accomplished on the night of a festival, is stated in the narratives of herodotus and xenophon, and indicated by the hebrew prophet in the words "the night of my pleasure was turned to horror," and other phrases (p. ); and the book of daniel makes the same assertion. aristotle is of opinion that even three days after, a third part of the population did not know that the city had been taken.[ ] xenophon represents the division of gobryas as the first to reach the palace; the king falls when defending himself against their attack. by the palace is here meant one of the two royal citadels, either the older on the western bank, or the more recent on the eastern bank of the euphrates, the palace of nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar (iii. ), and the king whom he represents as slain there, must have been bil-sarussur, the son and heir of nabonetus. as we have observed, the book of daniel calls the king who lost his throne and life on the night of the festival, belshazzar. in addition to him, nabonetus had a second son, named nebuchadnezzar (see below, chap, xiv.). besides the palace of the king, xenophon speaks of citadels of babylon which surrendered to the conqueror on the following morning. after the capture of the metropolis, which was followed by the surrender of borsippa, and the capture of nabonetus ( b.c.), cyrus, so far as we can tell, showed clemency both towards the king, whom he caused to be taken to carmania, and to the city of babylon. the kings of asshur treated besieged princes and conquered cities in a manner very different from that in which cyrus treated astyages, croesus and sardis, nabonetus and babylon. babylonia was not oppressed; the city was not destroyed. cyrus stepped into the place of the native king. the babylonian tablets after the capture of the city and the fall of the kingdom, date from the years of the reign of cyrus over babylonia, the years "of kurus, king of babylon, king of the lands."[ ] the city of babylon retained her temples and palaces and her mighty walls. herodotus tells us expressly that cyrus did no injury to the walls or the gates of babylon,[ ] and twenty years afterwards we find the city in possession of her impregnable works. xenophon remarks that cyrus placed troops in the citadels, set captains over them, left behind a sufficient garrison in the city and charged the inhabitants with the maintenance of it; the arrangements then made for keeping guard were in existence still.[ ] if, therefore, the excerpt of josephus from berosus tells us that cyrus destroyed the walls "outside the city," this can only refer to the great wall which nebuchadnezzar had built from the euphrates to the tigris above sepharvaim, as a protection against an attack from the north. it would have been a heavy task to level with the ground this fortification throughout its entire length of from to miles, the persians therefore contented themselves with making large breaches in it. the wall was in this condition when xenophon came with the ten thousand to babylon.[ ] the fall of the metropolis had decided the fortune of the babylonian kingdom, and the provinces. the most important of these was syria, with the great trading places of the phenicians on the mediterranean; we remember how many and what severe struggles the subjection of syria had cost nebuchadnezzar. at the present moment the approach of the persians was enough to cause syria to recognise the supremacy of cyrus almost without a blow. herodotus tells us that the phenicians voluntarily submitted to the persians; xenophon mentions that cyrus had subjugated the phenicians; polybius observes that gaza alone among all the cities of syria offered resistance; the rest, terrified at the approach of the persians and the greatness of their power, had surrendered themselves and their lands to them. with the capture of gaza cyrus stood on the borders of egypt. as we have seen, nebuchadnezzar allowed the states and cities of syria to retain their native princes, so long as these preserved their fidelity to him; even over the phenician cities he and his successors placed men of their own royal or priestly families to be at once judges or princes of the cities and viceroys of babylon. that tyre surrendered without a struggle, as herodotus and polybius tell us of syria, that cyrus, like nebuchadnezzar before him, left the princes who submitted in command, follows from the fact that hiram, whom nabonetus had made king of tyre, continued to reign over the city under cyrus.[ ] if cyrus felt himself compelled to establish princes in the greek cities of the coast for the first time, who owed their position to him, and could not maintain it without his aid, the cities of phoenicia had long been accustomed to receive these princes from distant sovereigns. cyrus and his successors confined themselves in their choice to the old royal families of the phenician cities; at any rate we find, even under the achæmenids, men with the hereditary names at the head of tyre and sidon. yet the relations of the phenician cities did not remain without change. cyrus, as it seems, availed himself of the old rivalry between tyre and sidon to win a further support for his power. ever since the foundation of gades, and the times of the first hiram of tyre, the contemporary of solomon, sidon had been gradually forced by tyre into the second place; under the persian kingdom sidon again appears as the first city of phoenicia, and her kings have the precedence of those of tyre and the other cities.[ ] to the population on the whole the change to the persian dominion would be regarded with indifference if not with pleasure; a connection with the persian empire opened a far more extensive market for trade, and secured and protected intercourse over a far greater extent of country than the kingdom of nebuchadnezzar. the ancient kingdom of babylon, in which the civilisation of the semitic stock had taken root some fifteen centuries previously, and had attained to such peculiar development, which had struggled so long and stubbornly against the younger kingdom of assyria, and when it finally succumbed, had been raised to yet greater power than it had ever attained to in old times, under the brilliant reigns of nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar--which had united the branches of the semitic stem from the tigris to the mediterranean, from the foot of the armenian mountains to the deserts of arabia--had succumbed to the attack of cyrus after a brief existence, sixty-nine years after the fall of nineveh. the predominance exercised for so many centuries by semitic culture and semitic arms through the old babylonian, the assyrian, and the second babylonian kingdom, passed to a tribe of different character, language, and culture--to the arians of iran. it was this violent change, which brought to a semitic tribe liberation for its fellow semites. the hopes of the jews were at last fulfilled. the fall of babylon had avenged the fall of jerusalem, and the subjugation of syria to the armies of babylon opened the way for their return. cyrus did not belie the confidence which the jews had so eagerly offered him; without hesitation he gave the exiles permission to return and erect again their shrine at jerusalem. the return of the captives and the foundation of a new state of the jews was very much to his interest; it might contribute to support his empire in syria. he did not merely count on the gratitude of the returning exiles, but as any revival of the babylonian kingdom, or rebellion of the syrians against the persian empire, imperilled the existence of this community, which had not only to be established anew, but would never be very strong, it must necessarily oppose any such attempts. forty-nine years--seven sabbatical years, instead of the ten announced by jeremiah--had passed since the destruction of jerusalem, and more than sixty since jeremiah had first announced the seventy years of servitude to babylon. cyrus commissioned zerubbabel, the son of salathiel, a grandson of jechoniah, the king who had been carried away captive, and therefore a scion of the ancient royal race, and a descendant of david, to be the leader of the returning exiles, to establish them in their abode, and be the head of the community;[ ] he bade his treasurer mithridates give out to him the sacred vessels, which nebuchadnezzar had carried away as trophies to babylon, and placed in the temple of bel; there are said to have been more than utensils of gold and silver, baskets, goblets, cups, knives, etc. but all the jews in babylon did not avail themselves of the permission. like the israelites deported by sargon into media and assyria some years previously, many of the jews brought to mesopotamia and babylonia at the time of jechoniah and zedekiah, had found there a new home, which they preferred to the land of their fathers. but the priests (to the number of more than [ ]), many of the families of the heads of the tribes, all who cared for the sanctuary and the old country, all in whom jehovah "awoke the spirit," as the book of ezra says, began the march over the euphrates. with zerubbabel was joshua, the high priest, the most distinguished among all the jews, a grandson of the high priest zeraiah, whom nebuchadnezzar had executed after the capture of jerusalem. the importance of the priests had increased in the captivity; they had become the natural heads and judges of the jews, and the people following the guidance of the prophets, had learned to regard jehovah as their peculiar lord and king. it was a considerable multitude which left the land "beyond the stream," the waters of babylon, to sit once more under the fig-tree in their ancient home, and build up the city of david and the temple of jehovah from their ruins; , freemen, with hebrew men-servants and maid-servants; their goods were carried by camels, horses, mules, and asses ( b.c.)[ ] the exodus of the jews from babylon is accompanied by a prophet with cries of joy, and announcements filled with the wildest hopes. was not the fall of babylon and the return home a sure pledge that the anger of jehovah was appeased? must not the dawn of that brilliant time be come, which the prophets had always pointed out behind the execution of the punishment? could not the most joyful expectation prevail that jehovah's grace would be greater henceforth than his anger in the past? thus, in the spirit, the prophet saw all the scattered members of the people of israel, who since the time of tiglath-pilesar ii. had been carried away, or fled for refuge, return from the distant lands, from egypt and the isles; jerusalem has put on a new splendour which far exceeds that of old days; and therefore he gives expression to the confident expectation that the people of jehovah will be the first nation of the earth, and the resurgent zion will be the centre and the protector of all nations. "go forth from babylon," he cries; "fly from the land of the chaldæans! proclaim it with shouts of joy, tell it to the end of the earth and say: 'jehovah hath redeemed his servant jacob.'"[ ] "how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth peace, that saith unto zion, thy god reigneth.[ ] up, up, go forth, touch no unclean person; go forth from among them. cleanse yourselves, ye that bear jehovah's vessels.[ ] ye shall go forth in joy and be led in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees shall clap their hands.[ ] jehovah goes before you, and the god of israel brings up the rear. was it not jehovah who made the depths of the sea to be your pathway, so that his redeemed passed through? in the desert through which they passed they thirsted not; he clave the rock and the waters flowed.[ ] so shall the ransomed of jehovah return, and come with singing to zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; sorrow and sighing shall flee away.[ ] o, poor ones, surrounded with misery and comfortless; for a little time jehovah left thee, but he takes thee up again with greater love, and i will have mercy on thee for ever, saith jehovah. as i swore that the waters of noah should not come again upon the earth, so do i swear to be angry with thee no more. the mountains may melt and tremble, but my mercy will leave thee no more. jehovah calls thee as an outcast sorrowful woman, and thy god speaks to thee as to a bride who has been put away;[ ] thy ruins, and deserts, and wasted land, which was destroyed from generation to generation--thy people build up the ruins, and renew the ancient cities.[ ] behold, i will make thy desert like eden, and thy wilderness like the garden of the lord; i will lay thy stones with bright lead, and thy foundations with sapphires, and make thy towers of rubies and thy gates of carbuncles.[ ] joy and delight is in them, thanksgiving and the sound of strings. the wealth of the sea shall come to thee, and the treasures of the nations shall be thine;[ ] like a stream will i bring salvation upon israel, and the treasures of the nations like an overflowing river.[ ] thy sons hasten onward; those that laid thee waste go forth from thee.[ ] lift up thine eyes and see; thy sons come from far, and i will gather them to those that are gathered together. the islands and the ships of tarshish wait to bring thy children from afar, their gold and their silver with them.[ ] the land will be too narrow for the inhabitants; widen the place for thy tent, let the carpets of thy habitation be spread--delay not. draw out the rope; to the right and to the left must thou be widened.[ ] i will set up my banner for the nations, that they bring thy sons in their arm, and thy daughters shall be carried on the shoulders. kings shall be thy guardians, and queens thy nursing-mothers; i will bow them to the earth before thee, and they shall lick the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that i am jehovah, and they who wait patiently for me shall not be put to shame."[ ] such expectations and hopes were far from being realised. the edomites had, in the mean-time, extended their borders, and obtained possession of the south of judah, but the land immediately round jerusalem was free and no doubt almost depopulated. as the returning exiles contented themselves with the settlement at jerusalem, the towns to the north, anathoth, gebah, michmash, kirjath-jearim, and some others--only bethlehem is mentioned to the south,[ ] they found nothing to impede them. their first care was the restoration of the worship, according to the law and custom of their fathers, for which object an altar of burnt-offerings was erected on the site of the temple, in order to offer the appointed sacrifice at morning and evening. the priests, minstrels, and levites were separated according to their families, and those who could not prove their priestly descent were rejected for the sacred service;[ ] the attempt was then made to arrange the rest of the exiles according to their families, in order to decide their claims and rights to certain possessions and lands. then voluntary gifts were collected from all for the rebuilding of the temple; contributions even came in from those who had remained in babylonia, so that , pieces of gold and minæ of silver are said to have been amassed. tyrian masons were hired, and agreements made with tyrian carpenters, to fell cedars in lebanon, and bring them to joppa, for which cyrus had given his permission. the foundation of the temple was laid in the second year of the return ( b.c.). the priests appeared in their robes with trumpets, and the levites with cymbals, to praise jehovah; "that he might be gracious, and his mercy be upon israel for ever." those of the priests and elders who had seen the old temple are said to have wept aloud; "but many raised their voices in joy so that the echo was heard far off."[ ] we have evidence of the grateful and elevated tone which filled the exiles in those days, in songs, where we read: "they pressed upon me in my youth, but they overpowered me not. the ploughers ploughed upon my back and made long furrows. jehovah is just; he broke the bonds of the wicked. praised be jehovah, who did not give us over as prey to their teeth; our soul escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler. when jehovah turned again the captivity of zion, our way was filled with joy; and they said among the nations: jehovah hath done great things for them! jehovah hath chosen zion, and taken it to be his abode and resting-place for ever and ever. there he will clothe his priests with salvation, and exalt the power of david, and clothe his enemies with shame."[ ] the fortunate beginning of the restoration of the city and temple soon met with difficulties. the people of samaria, who were a mixture of the remnant of the israelites and the strangers whom sargon had brought there after the capture of samaria (iii. ), and esarhaddon at a later date (iii. ), came to meet the exiles in a friendly spirit, and offered them assistance, from which we must conclude that in spite of the foreign admixture the israelitish blood and the worship of jehovah were preponderant in samaria. the new temple would thus have been the common sanctuary of the united people of israel. but the "sons of captivity" were too proud of the sorrows which they had undergone, and the fidelity which they had preserved to jehovah, and their pure descent, to accept this offer. hence the old quarrel between israel and judah broke out anew, and the exiles soon felt the result. after their repulse the samaritans set themselves to hinder the building by force; "they terrified the exiles that they built no more, and hired counsellors to make the attempt vain during the whole of the remainder of the reign of cyrus."[ ] the reasons which these counsellors brought forward before cyrus against the continuation of the buildings at jerusalem, would be the same which were afterwards brought before artaxerxes longimanus; namely, that when jerusalem and its walls were finished the city would become rebellious and disobedient, as it was previously under the kings of babylon. footnotes: [ ] the reigns of nebuchadnezzar, evilmerodach, neriglissar, and the accession of nabonetus in b.c., are now fixed not only by the canon of ptolemy but also by the babylonian tablets, which give forty-three years for nebuchadnezzar ( - ), two years for evilmerodach ( - ), four years for neriglissar ( - ), seventeen years for nabonetus, ( - ); "transactions bibl. society," , p. - . oppert (_l. c._ p. ) also mentions a tablet of labasi-marduk (labasoarchad), who sat on the throne for nine months. boscawen reads lakhabasi-kudur, _l. c._ p. . on the elevation of hiram in tyre, vol. iii. . [ ] ps. and isa. xxi. . [ ] fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] ps. cxxxvii. [ ] ps. liii., liv. [ ] jer. . - . [ ] jer. . ; li. . [ ] jer. li. , , . [ ] jer. . , ; li. . [ ] v. _n_. [ ] deut. isa. xiii. - ; xiv. , - . [cf. cheyne, "isaiah," vol. ii., essay xi.] [ ] deut. isa. xli. , ; xli. ; xliv. . kohut, "antiparsismus in deut. yesaias, z. d. m. g." , , ff. [ ] deut. isa. xlv. , , . vol. iii. . [ ] deut. isa. xlvii. - . [ ] deut. isa. xlix. - . [ ] deut. isa. li. . vol. iii. . [ ] deut. isa. xlix. . [ ] deut. isa. xlvi. ; xlviii. , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , . [ ] jer. li. , , ; deut. isa. xiv. - ; xxi. - . [ ] dan. v. - . [ ] beros. fragm. ; euseb. "chron." . , ed. schöne. [ ] on the site of borsippa, vol. i. , and on nebuchadnezzar's buildings at the temple of nebo, at borsippa, iii. . [ ] pliny, "h. n." , . [ ] sir henry rawlinson spoke in the asiatic society on nov. , , of a babylonian cylinder brought home by rassam, which, though broken, is said to give an account in thirty-seven legible lines of the capture of babylon by cyrus, and to contain a genealogical tree of cyrus. as yet i have not been able to learn anything further. [cf. cheyne, "isaiah," vol. ii., essay xi.] [ ] "pol." , , . [ ] oppert et ménant, "docum. juridiq." p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , , , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , . vol. iii. . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; , , . on hiram, above, p. ; joseph. "c. apion," , ; polybius, , . the statement of polybius might be referred to the campaign of cambyses against egypt, if the supremacy of cyrus in syria were not proved by other evidence, as ezra iii. , and the return of the jews. herodotus also would not have omitted the siege of gaza in his detailed description of the march of cambyses against egypt, if it had not taken place until then. the general expression in herodotus ( , ) cannot outweigh all these proofs; it only says with the exaggerated tone of flattery that cambyses first placed a fleet on the sea, and claims the subjugation of cyprus for him. as a fact cyrus left the islands of anatolia, except chios and lesbos, which voluntarily submitted, uninjured, and did not call on them for a fleet, for which there were many good reasons from the point of view of a persian king. [ ] herod. , ; , , ; , , , ; xenoph. "ages." , ; diod. , . the rebellion of sidon in b.c. again reversed the relations. [ ] chron. iii. - . [ ] ezra ii. - . [ ] ezra ch. ii. as babylon was conquered in the summer of , the first year of cyrus in babylon reaches to the summer of ; ezra i. , ; beros. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] deut. isa. xlviii. . [ ] deut. isa. lii. . [ ] deut. isa. lii. . [ ] deut. isa. lv. . [ ] deut. isa. xlviii. . [ ] deut. isa. li. . [ ] deut. isa. liv. - . [ ] deut. isa. xlix. ; lviii. . [ ] deut. isa. liv. . [ ] deut. isa. lx. . [ ] deut. isa. lxvi. . [ ] deut. isa. xlix. . [ ] deut. isa. lx. - . [ ] deut. isa. liv. . [ ] deut. isa. xlix. , . [ ] ewald, "volk. israel." , . [ ] ezra ii. - . [ ] ezra iii. - . [ ] ps. cxxix.-cxxxii. [ ] ezra iv. - , . it is obvious that verse must follow on verse in chap. iv. the verses - treat of things which happened under xerxes and artaxerxes, and they have got into the wrong place. chapter ix. the kingdom of cyrus. we were able to prove that cyrus, soon after his victory over astyages and the medes, reduced the parthians and hyrcanians beneath his dominion, that the caducians, the armenians, and the cappadocians were his subjects before the lydian war, that his empire at this period extended to the halys. how far he had already advanced towards the bactrians and sacae must remain uncertain, owing to the contradiction which exists on this point between the summary narrative of herodotus and the excerpt from ctesias. afterwards the lydian war and its sequel made cyrus master of the whole of asia minor. between the lydian and babylonian wars herodotus represents him as conquering the whole of upper asia, one nation after the other, and berosus as conquering the whole of asia. when our knowledge is so scanty, it is impossible to fix the campaigns of cyrus in the east and the west with greater exactness, or even to ascertain clearly what successes he achieved in these regions before and after the babylonian war. we merely perceive that elam was subject to cyrus before the attack on babylon (p. ), and if a habitation could be allotted to nabonetus in carmania, that country must have been subject before the war which destroyed the babylonian kingdom; we may also conclude with great probability that cyrus would not have marched against babylon before he felt himself secure in the east. hence we may assume that iran was subject before the babylonian war, and the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of the gandarians and their northern neighbours, the sogdiani and chorasmians, must be ascribed to the period after this war. whether the nations in the north of armenia, on the isthmus between the black and the caspian sea, the saspeires and alarodians in the east, and the colchians and phasians in the valley of the phasis, were reduced by cyrus or his immediate successors remains doubtful. in the east he had conquered the drangians, areians, arachoti, gedrosians, and gandarians, to the south of the cabul on the indus,[ ] and imposed tribute on the açvakas to the north of the cabul.[ ] in the land of the arachoti he destroyed, as we are told, the city of capisa; darius mentions a city, kapisakani in arachosia, and capisa is also mentioned elsewhere in later writers.[ ] nearchus tells us that cyrus undertook a campaign against the land of the indians; on the march thither he lost the greater part of his army in gedrosia, owing to the desert and the difficulties of the way; according to the account of the natives cyrus and seven men alone remained out of the whole army.[ ] in his account of alexander of macedon, diodorus remarks that after he had encamped at drangiana (v. ), he came to the ariaspi, who were neighbours to the gedrosians. these ariaspi (whose abodes we have already discovered in the neighbourhood of the etymandros) were called "benefactors" for the following reason. on one of his campaigns, cyrus was in the desert, and reduced to extreme distress for want of necessaries; famine compelled his men to eat each other; till the ariaspians brought up , waggons, filled with provisions. thus rescued, cyrus allowed them immunity from contributions, honoured them with other presents, and gave them the name of "benefactors."[ ] strabo also tells us that the ariaspians received this name from cyrus, and so does arrian, though he gives a different and less appropriate reason for it, saying that they had assisted cyrus in his campaign against the scyths.[ ] curtius tells us, as a reason for the name, that the ariaspi had aided the army of cyrus when suffering from want of provisions and the cold, with supplies and shelter.[ ] herodotus observes that those who had done a service to the king were called "orosangians." in old bactrian, _huvarezyanha_ means the doer of a kind action. other instances are not wanting to prove that the persian kings followed the example of cyrus in conferring this title as a distinction. we may regard it as certain that cyrus had gone beyond gedrosia and reduced the gandarians and the açvakas to the north of the cabul; that he afterwards advanced to the indus, and his army was brought into great distress in the deserts of gedrosia, as was afterwards the case with alexander's army on his return from the indus. the ariaspians, from the position of their country, could only be in a position to bring aid if cyrus were returning from the indus, or if the distress was so great on the outward march that he felt himself compelled to return when in gedrosia. megasthenes distinctly states that cyrus did not cross the indus or set foot in india.[ ] in the north-east he had reduced the margiani and bactrians to lasting obedience. as he had gained a good frontier in the east on the indus, he set himself to obtain a similar frontier in the north-east. the northern neighbours of the hyrcanians, parthians and margiani, the sacae and the chorasmians on the lower oxus, were subject to him. with the conquest of the sogdiani on the western slope of the belurdagh cyrus touched the course of the jaxartes. there, on a stream running into that river, he built six citadels and a large fortress to secure the border against the nomads of the steppes beyond. these, like the fortress in the land of the cadusians (v. ), bore the name of cyrus. the greeks call the north-eastern cyrus, cyreshata, _i.e._ the farthest cyrus (v. ). from the mountains of his native land cyrus had subjugated in thirty years three great kingdoms--media, lydia, and babylonia; he had conquered asia from the shore of the Ægean sea to the indus, and from the brook of egypt to the shores of the black and caspian seas and the banks of the jaxartes. none of the conquerors before him--no pharaoh of egypt--none of the ancient kings of elam or babylon, or of the restless sovereigns of assyria, nor even the mede cyaxares--had achieved results which could be distantly compared with the successes of cyrus. and he had done more than merely subdue this region; he had understood how to maintain his conquests; he was not compelled like the rulers of assyria to begin each year a new struggle against his defeated opponents; in his unbounded empire he knew how to institute arrangements which ensured an existence of two whole centuries. hence it would be of great service to know more precisely what his regulations were for the management of his empire. but we are almost entirely without information about them. we can only attempt to draw conclusions from certain hints supplied by tradition as to the form which cyrus gave to his dominions. we have already remarked that the greeks ascribed to cyrus the foundation of excellent institutions, and placed him by the side of lycurgus; they maintained that at the time of cyrus the persians were in a condition midway between slavery and freedom. arrian observes that the persians, with whom cyrus deprived the medes of the empire and subjugated the remaining nations of asia partly by arms and partly by voluntary submission, were poor and the inhabitants of a rugged country, and obeyed regulations which made their training like that of the spartans.[ ] we can plainly see that the kingdom rested on the power and devotion of the persians; they were the ruling tribe beside the sovereign, and in addition to the proud consciousness that they were the lords of the empire cyrus allowed them to enjoy the fruits and advantages of dominion. the persians were free from contributions and taxes for the empire, they had only to render military service. xenophon tells us that in the time of cyrus the owners of land furnished excellent horsemen, who took the field; the rest served for pay. the garrisons in the fortresses were composed of persians who were handsomely treated.[ ] the greeks have already told us that cyrus permitted the persians to express their opinions freely and openly, and paid honour to those who gave good counsel, and if they assert that no one rewarded services more liberally (v. ), these rewards would mainly fall into the hands of the persians. from the persians were first and chiefly elected the captains of the armies, the commanders of the contingents which the subject nations had to furnish, and the viceroys who governed the conquered provinces. yet nearer to the king stood the six princes of the persian tribes (the prince of the pasargadae was the king), the descendants of those who in union with achaemenes had once governed the persian nation. like the king himself they wore the upright tiara; from their families the king had to choose his legitimate wife, while his daughters were married to the sons of the tribal princes.[ ] the wife of cyrus was the daughter of the tribal prince pharnaspes. the chiefs of the persians were the nearest to the throne; they entered into the king's presence unannounced, and no doubt formed with the king the chief council of the kingdom. besides this chief council there was a supreme court of seven judges. these, as herodotus tells us, were chosen men, who had to pronounce sentence for the persians, and explain the customs of the fathers; and "everything was brought before them." they held their office for life, unless convicted of injustice.[ ] we also find that the son succeeded the father. but even these judges were subject to the supervision and authority of the king, and if it was proved that any of them had received bribes he inflicted the severest penalties.[ ] "at the time of the medes," herodotus tells us, "the nations ruled over each other; the medes ruled over all, and directly over those nearest to them; these again over their neighbours, who in their turn ruled over those who lay on their borders. in the same way the persians estimate the value of nations. they consider themselves by far the best of all nations; next in order come those who live nearest to them, and those who are most remote are held in least estimation."[ ] if herodotus has here correctly represented the self-consciousness of the persians his statement also obviously implies the pride of race, the community of language and religion, which united the persians with the kindred nations of the iranian table-land, and most closely with the medes, and the nations of western iran. this feeling presented itself to cyrus as a valuable political consideration, and he felt himself called upon to win for his kingdom the medes as the nation nearest akin to the persians and more numerous. with this view he spared and respected astyages, took his daughter into his house, and made her his wife, and even in the first decade of his reign had no hesitation in appointing medes as generals and viceroys; the custom of his successors, to reside for some time in ecbatana, in order by this means to attach the medes to the kingdom, must, no doubt, go back to cyrus. but even towards the conquered nations of alien race, language, and religion cyrus conducted himself in a manner very different from the manner of the kings of asshur before him. their kings were not executed, their cities were not burnt, and their religion and worship were left uninjured. on the other hand cyrus did not content himself with the homage of the conquered princes, nor did he, like the assyrians, allow men of the same nation to take their place. execution, cruel treatment, imprisonment of the conquered prince, alone or with his family, could only embitter the conquered nation against the conqueror. the continuance of the conquered prince in power only supplied them with the impulse and means to recover their former independence, and princes chosen in their place from the midst of the subjects would soon follow the lead of the national tendencies, and their own ambition. astyages, croesus, and nabonetus received residences and possessions in distant regions, which allowed them to live in dignity and opulence; and where the throne remained in the families of the native rulers in districts of moderate extent which had submitted voluntarily, as in cilicia and the cities of the phenicians, this was not done without certain limitations and safe regulations. cyrus set viceroys over the parts of his empire, who were supplied with troops in moderate numbers. the chief cities, such as sardis and babylon, like the border fortresses, were secured by garrisons of persian troops. cyrus did not impose heavy burdens on the conquered nations; he left it to themselves to fix the amount of the yearly contributions which they should pay into his treasury, though it is true that the amount of the favour they had to expect from the king depended on the tribute. the viceroys were subordinate to the king, but with this restriction they exercised supreme authority in the regions over which they presided. their main duty was to preserve the province in obedience and peace. whether the command that they were to look after the development of agriculture, and the growth of the population, is traceable to cyrus (v. ), we cannot decide, but we see clearly that the various communities and regions managed their own affairs independently, and governed themselves. the local political institutions were not attacked and removed any more than the religious. it was of no importance whether the local organisation was dynastic or republican, though in more important communities such as the greek cities--the anatolian, and the phenician cities on the syrian coast, cyrus gave the preference to the dynastic form, inasmuch as the dynasties there were compelled to seek from the king the support necessary for maintaining their power. if princes of the old royal families were set up over the cities of the phenicians, the rise of party leaders to a princely position was favoured among the greeks. the local interests of one town were also advanced against those of another, _e.g._ the interests of sidon against those of tyre, and the interests of miletus against the other cities. the persons thus favoured were by this means closely connected with the kingdom; in the event of a change of dominion they had to fear the loss of the privileges which they had attained. moreover cyrus had at hand rewards and distinctions of merit, not for the persians only, but also for his subjects in other nations. xenophon lays stress on the liberality of cyrus towards those who had done him good service as the chief means by which he established and strengthened his empire, and if he tells us that the kings of persia had continued what cyrus had begun, we may certainly assume that the magnificent list of distinctions and honours, which we find in use at a later time in the persian empire, goes back to cyrus. the merits which whole regions and tribes had done to the king were also rewarded. we have already seen that the title "benefactors," with which largesses in land were joined,[ ] was given not only to distinguished men but also to tribes. "what conqueror except cyrus," asks xenophon, "has been called father by his subjects, a name which is obviously given not to the plunderer but to the benefactor?" by gentleness and liberality he induced men to prefer him to son, or brother, or father. as he cared for his subjects and treated them as a father, so did they honour him as a father. in this way he was able to reign alone, and rule according to his own will his kingdom which was the greatest and most splendid of all.[ ] though this description of xenophon is idealised, though even the more sober statements of the greeks, the words of plato already quoted, the statements of herodotus, that the persians held no one to be the equal of cyrus, that they called him father because he had ruled them with a father's gentleness and had provided them with all good things,[ ] and the opinion of aeschylus who speaks of cyrus as a wise and right-minded man, primarily represent the grateful memory which the persians cherished of the founder of their kingdom, cyrus is undoubtedly the least bloody among the conquerors and founders of empires known to the history of the east. his object was not to terrify the conquered nations and hold them in check by arms, but to reconcile them to the new government. in babylon he simply took the place of the native king; like him, he took measures for the maintenance of the great temples of the land; on a brick found at senkereh we read: "kuras, maintainer of bit-saggatu" (_i.e._ of the great temple of merodach at babylon) "and bit-zida" (the temple of nebo at borsippa), "son of kambuziya, i, the king."[ ] hence he not only left his subjects their religion and rites, but was careful of them. in the same way their administration of justice remained undisturbed, and so far as possible he allowed them to rule themselves. he did not attempt to exhaust their means; on the contrary, agriculture and trade were favoured, and wherever a rebellion was attempted and suppressed, the supression was not followed by any sanguinary punishment. in spite of our defective information we may still recognise some trace of his keen and unerring political insight. the manner in which he organised his empire deserves the higher praise because it is the product of his own mind, and not a copy of any pattern. the grounds for the clemency and moderation by which he was guided, we must seek not only in the religious views of iran, but to a still greater degree in his character and his political conceptions. that along with the effort to satisfy the persians and win the hearts of his subjects,--with the clever opposition of interests, and most lavish application of rewards and distinctions,--cyrus did not neglect real support and means of power, is proved by the care which xenophon represents him as bestowing on the army, the fortification of pasargadae, the garrisons in the chief cities of the subject lands, the fortresses on the borders of the kingdom. the commanders in all these places, no less than the "chiliarchs" of the garrisons, were nominated directly by cyrus, the lists of the garrisons were brought before the king. the arrangement of the persian army in divisions of ten battalions of a thousand men each, which were again broken up into ten companies, with seven corporals each, is attributed by xenophon to cyrus. he put an end to all skirmishing with horsemen cavalry, by clothing cavalry and horses in mail, and supplying each soldier with a javelin only, so that they fought man against man; the infantry he armed with the wicker, leather-covered shield, battle-axe, and knife, also with a view to close fighting.[ ] to meet the costs of government and the army, cyrus collected a large treasure, which he deposited in his palace at pasargadae. pliny has preserved the statement that the conquest of asia yielded to cyrus , pounds of gold besides that which had been manufactured, and the golden vessels, and , talents of silver.[ ] though this statement may be exaggerated, the gold accumulated by alyattes and croesus at sardis, the treasures of the royal palaces at ecbatana and babylon, all of which fell into the hands of cyrus, were not inconsiderable. in both these latter places the booty of assyria was collected, and in babylon the booty of syria and the tribute of the phenicians. in any case the treasure which cyrus deposited at pasargadae provided abundant means for a long time to satisfy the most extravagant needs of the empire, the court, and the army, and to recompense every deed of merit with gold. the treasures which alexander, after a long period of decline in persia, found at susa, persepolis, ecbatana, and pasargadae, are estimated by the greeks at , talents, _i.e._ at more than £ , , , and beside this there were the gold and silver ornaments of the citadel (v. ), and a large amount of manufactured gold and silver. what alexander left of the latter in susa alone afterwards provided antigonus with , talents.[ ] "concerning the death of cyrus," so herodotus tells us, "there are many narratives, but the most probable in my mind is the following: when he had reduced the babylonians, he wished to conquer the massagetæ also. there were many things which impelled him to this: in the first place his birth, by which he considered himself more than human. then the success which had attended him in all his wars; for whatever the nation against which he directed his army it was unable to withstand him. the massagetæ were said to be a great and brave nation; some call them scythians. they dwell beyond the araxes (jaxartes: herodotus confuses this river with the aras), towards the morning and sunrise. the caspian sea is a sea by itself, fifteen days' journey in length and eight in breadth; on the west side of the sea is the caucasus, but towards the east it is bounded by a plain of unlimited extent. a considerable part of this plain was occupied by the massagetæ. they wear a dress like that of the scythians, and resemble them in their mode of life; they fight on horse and on foot, use the bow and the lance, and also carry battle-axes. the points of their lances and arrows and their axes are made of copper, as also are the corslets of the horses. but for their girdles, for the adornment of the head and shoulders, as well as for the bits, cheek-pieces, and curbs of their horses, they use gold. silver and iron they do not possess, these metals are not found in the country, but gold and copper in abundance. each man marries one wife, but they have their wives in common, and when any one desires to lie with a woman he hangs his quiver on her waggon, and no attack is made upon him. those who reach a great age are put to death by their relations, who assemble for that purpose, cooked along with sheep's flesh, and eaten; this they consider the most fortunate lot. those who die of sickness are not eaten but buried, and they look on it as a misfortune not to be killed. they do not cultivate the soil, but live on their herds and on fish, which the araxes supplies in large quantities, and drink milk. of the gods they worship the sun only, and to him they sacrifice horses, because they think that the swiftest animal should be offered to the swiftest deity. at that time a woman, tomyris by name, was queen of the massagetæ, her husband being dead. cyrus sent to her under pretext of an offer of marriage; he wished to make her his wife. but tomyris perceived that it was not her, but the kingdom of the massagetæ, that he wanted, and refused the offer. as cunning was of no avail, cyrus marched openly against the massagetæ, threw a bridge of boats over the araxes in order to carry his army across, and caused towers to be built on the merchant-men which were to form a bridge over the river. while he was occupied with this, tomyris sent him a herald, saying: 'o, king of the persians, desist from the undertaking which thou hast begun, for thou knowest not whether thou wilt bring it to a good end. desist, and rule over what is thine, leaving us to govern what is ours. but thou wilt take no heed of these exhortations, but rather do anything than remain at rest. if thou eagerly desirest to make trial of the massagetæ, desist from making this bridge over the river; enter upon our land; we will retire three days' march from the river; or if thou wouldst rather have us in thy land, do thou the same.' when cyrus heard this he collected the chiefs of the persians in order to consult with them what he should do. their advice was all to one purport; he was to allow tomyris and her army to come into his land. but croesus, the lydian, who was present, dissented from this advice. 'if we allow the enemy to come into the land,' he said to cyrus, there will be danger: 'shouldst thou be defeated, the whole empire will be ruined. the victorious massagetæ will never retire, but invade thy lands, and shouldst thou be victorious, thou wilt not reap such results as if thou wert to defeat the massagetæ beyond the river, for then thou couldst advance into the dominion of tomyris. besides, it is shameful and disgraceful that the son of cambyses should retire before a woman. for this reason it seems to me right to cross the river and advance as far as they retire, and there attempt to gain the victory over them. as i am told, the massagetæ are not acquainted with the luxuries of the persians; they have no experience of enjoyment. we must prepare a meal for them in our camp, slaying and dressing sheep, and placing at hand goblets of unmixed wine, and various kinds of food; then leave behind the weakest part of the army and retire to the river. if i am not deceived, they will seize upon the provisions when they see them, and we shall be in a position to do great things.' cyrus decided in favour of the advice of croesus, and caused a message to be sent to tomyris that she should retire; he would advance beyond the river. she retired as she promised. but cyrus gave his son cambyses, who would be king after him, to croesus, and exhorted him to honour the lydian king, and treat him kindly if the expedition across the river should turn out badly. then he sent the two to persia, and crossed the river with his army. and in the first night which he spent in the land of the massagetæ he saw in a dream the eldest son of hystaspes, with wings on his shoulders, one of which overshadowed asia and the other europe. the eldest son of hystaspes was darius, at that time a youth of about years, who had been left behind in persia, because he was not old enough to accompany the army. cyrus summoned hystaspes, took him aside, and said to him in private: 'hystaspes, thy son is conceiving evil plots against me and my kingdom. the gods watch over me, and show me the danger which is threatening. return at once to persia, and act in such a way that if i succeed in this enterprise and return home, thou mayest bring thy son before me for examination.' hystaspes answered: 'if the dream shows thee that my son is conceiving a revolt against thee, i will give him over to thee to deal with as thou wilt.' then hystaspes went over the araxes on his way back to persia, to keep his son under guard for cyrus. but when he had gone a day's march from the river, cyrus did as croesus had advised; he left the useless men in the camp, and marched with the able-bodied back to the river. a third part of the army of the massagetæ came to the camp, slew those that were left behind, in spite of their resistance, and as they found the meal prepared, and had conquered the enemy, they feasted, and then fell asleep, gorged with food and wine. when the persians came up they slew many of them, and took even more prisoners, among them spargapises, the son of tomyris, the leader of the massagetæ. when the queen discovered what had befallen the army and her son, she sent a herald to cyrus, who said: 'o cyrus, insatiate of blood, exalt not thyself because that by the fruit of the vine, filled with which ye rage and utter evil words--that by such poison thou hast treacherously got possession of my son, and not by bravery in the battle. now take my advice, for i counsel thee well. give me my son back again, and depart out of this land, without punishment for bringing shame on the third part of the army of the massagetæ. if thou dost not do this, i swear by the sun, the lord of the massagetæ, that i will satisfy thee with blood, insatiate as thou art.' to this message cyrus paid no heed. when he had recovered from the effects of the wine, spargapises discovered into what a calamity he had fallen. he requested cyrus that he should be freed from his chains. as soon as this was done, and his hands were free, he killed himself. as cyrus did not obey her, tomyris collected her whole force, and joined battle with him. i learn that this battle was the most severe ever fought among the barbarians, and it was fought as follows. in the first place, so we are told, they hurled missiles from a distance, and when the missiles were exhausted they fell upon each other, and fought with lances and swords. they maintained the battle a long time, for neither side would fly; but at last the massagetæ got the upper hand. the greater part of the persian army perished and cyrus himself fell, after a reign of years. tomyris searched for the corpse of cyrus among the dead, and when she had found it, she plunged the head in a bottle filled with human blood, and said in insult to the dead: 'though i live and have conquered thee in the battle, thou hast nevertheless made me unhappy, for thou hast taken away my son by treachery. yet, as i threatened, i will satisfy thee with blood.'" in a similar way, though not without variations, diodorus and trogus narrate the death of cyrus. the account of diodorus marks even more strongly the shameful death of the king. he tells us that, after the overthrow of the babylonians, cyrus desired to subdue the whole earth. he had reduced the greatest nations and mightiest nations, he was of opinion that no ruler or nation could withstand his power. like many of those who exercise irresponsible power, cyrus did not know how to bear prosperity as a man should. he led a strong army to scythia; but the queen of the scythians took him prisoner and crucified him. in the excerpt from pompeius trogus we are told that when cyrus had reduced asia and brought the east into his power, he marched upon the scythians. but tomyris, their queen, was not terrified by the approach of the persians. she might have defended the passage of the jaxartes against them, but she considered that flight would be more difficult for the enemy if they had the river behind them. so cyrus crossed the jaxartes, and pitched his camp when he had advanced some distance into the country of the enemy. on the next day he abandoned it as if in terror and retired, leaving in it a sufficiency of wine and everything that is required for a banquet. the queen, on hearing this, sent her young son to pursue the enemy with a third part of her army. when he reached the camp, the youth, who had no experience of war, gave up all thought of the enemy, and allowed his people to become intoxicated with the wine, to which they were not accustomed. cyrus returned in the night, and all the scythians including the queen's son were cut down. in spite of the loss of such an army, and the still greater loss of her only son, tomyris thought only of revenge, and plotted how she could destroy the victors by treachery. when she was no longer in a condition to give battle she enticed cyrus by retiring into a pass, after she had placed an ambush in the mountains. so she succeeded in defeating the whole persian army, , men, with the king. not even a messenger escaped to tell of the disaster. she caused the head to be cut off the body of cyrus, and placed in a bottle filled with human blood, calling out: "satiate thyself with the blood for which thou didst thirst with an insatiable desire."[ ] in regard to this story, which no doubt is to be ascribed to deinon, arrian remarks quite briefly: "whether the defeat of the persians in scythia was brought about by the difficulty of the land, or some mistake of cyrus, or whether the scythians were better soldiers than the persians of that date, i cannot determine."[ ] polyaenus must have had stories of a similar kind before him; but in his account the stratagem which cyrus uses against tomyris is used by the queen against cyrus, and this is the reason given for the defeat of the persian army and the death of the king. when cyrus approached, tomyris retreated with her army in pretended flight. the persians pursued; in the camp of the queen they found a great store of wine, provisions, and cattle, on which they feasted and drank the whole night through as though they had already won the battle. then, when they could scarcely move, tomyris attacked them and cut them all down together with cyrus himself.[ ] the narrative of herodotus involves glaring contradictions. in opposition to the cunning, ambition, and bloodthirstiness of cyrus, it presents to us as a model of honour, love of peace, moderation and self-restraint, the queen of a nation of cannibals, who gives cyrus the wisest lessons before exacting punishment for his insatiable ambition. she perceives the treachery of his intended wooing. when he comes openly with force, she urges him to be content with what he possesses, makes the battle easier for him by allowing him to cross the river without opposition, and then gives him the choice of a field of battle. when cyrus has made a treacherous use of her honourable and open offers she taunts him with the evil results of the use of wine on the persians and again offers peace on the most favourable conditions; if cyrus surrenders her son and retires from her country she will allow the destruction of her army to go unpunished. this moderation remains without any effect; cyrus goes blindly to his destruction. but the queen of the barbarians has no enjoyment of this success; her sorrow for the loss of her son, who puts an end to his own life in noble shame that he has brought his army to destruction, and become a captive by excess in wine, is greater than her joy at the victory. hardly less strange is the conduct of cyrus. the general who has conquered media, lydia, and babylonia, and the nations of asia, is uncertain how to carry on the campaign against the massagetæ; he takes counsel with the prince, whom in spite of the bravery of his people he has defeated most rapidly and decisively: he allows this prince to tell him that the son of cambyses ought not to give way to a woman, and follows his advice against the unanimous opinion of the persians. at the same time he has evil intimations about the issue of the decision; and sends the heir to the throne back to persia. he boasts that the gods have announced to him all the misfortunes which threatened him, whereas it is the elevation of darius which was shown to him in the dream, a danger which did not even remotely threaten him, and not the destruction which was to overtake him in two days. it need not be proved that this narrative has come from a poetical source. the prominent traits, the long speeches and counter-speeches, the lament of the mother, the bottle of blood, point beyond all mistake to poetry. it is clear that persian poems would not ascribe to the great founder of their empire, whom they honoured as a father, the part which herodotus represents him as taking against the queen of a barbarous nation; least of all would they charge cyrus with an insatiable thirst for blood, and bring him on that account to a shameful end. but the medes, as they had matched the poems of the persians on the birth, youth, and rise of cyrus with other songs about his origin, his fortune, and the fall of astyages composed from their own point of view, might very well describe after their own manner the death of the king. they could not reverse their own subjugation, but they could have the satisfaction of reprobating the ambition and bloodthirstiness of their conqueror, who called out the median army for ceaseless service; they could bring the conqueror of asia to a miserable end, and represent the subduer of the noblest men as finding his master in a woman. and if it was the advice of a conquered and captive king which led cyrus to destruction,--the trait suits the context and presents an instance of poetical justice. the dream of cyrus obviously belongs to another context; it is merely inserted here in order to show how cambyses and hystaspes escaped the great defeat in the land of the massagetæ. at a later time the medes felt heavily enough the power of darius. the median poems on the rebellion of cyrus contained a certain element of fact in the desertion of harpagus, and the same may have been the case in their poems about tomyris. ctesias told us above that cyrus conquered and took prisoner the king of the sacae, but was afterwards severely defeated by his wife sparethra, in which defeat many captives were taken, and among them the most distinguished medes. strabo also tells us of a battle which cyrus lost against the sacae. forced to retire, he had abandoned his camp and all that was in it, and when the sacae were enjoying the booty he fell upon them and cut them down. these events may underlie the story of tomyris. from the various narratives, which, as herodotus informs us, were current about the rise and death of cyrus, the historian chose that account of both which seemed to him the "most probable," _i.e._ that which coincided with his own views, and thus appeared to him most credible. it is the firm conviction of herodotus, the thought which lies at the base of his great history, that every unjust deed, every act of violence, is followed by punishment. cyrus had considered himself to be more than a man; he had placed no limit, no end to his conquests. hence retribution overtook him in his conflict with a woman. the description of the barbarous custom of the massagetæ was obviously wanting in the authority which herodotus followed about the death of cyrus; it comes from another source. in this way, though unobserved by herodotus, a glaring contradiction has crept into his narrative. if we may draw a conclusion from the name spargapises, _i.e._ youthful form, the enemies in the poetry which he used were of arian stock.[ ] according to the account of ctesias cyrus fell in war against the derbiccians. these were said by some to dwell in the neighbourhood of the margiani; by others they were placed on both sides of the mouth of the oxus; but as ctesias mentions the indians as their allies and represents the sacae as dwelling at no great distance, we must look for them on the middle course of the oxus in the neighbourhood of bactria. according to strabo's description, the derbiccians worshipped the earth, to which they sacrificed male creatures, just as they ate none but male animals. the smallest offence was punished with death. the men who had exceeded their seventieth year were slain and eaten by their nearest relatives. the women who came to old age were also killed but not eaten. curtius states that a part of their warriors were armed with poles hardened in the fire.[ ] "amoraeus," so we are told in the excerpt preserved from ctesias' "persian history," "was king of the derbiccians; against him cyrus marched, and the indians aided the derbiccians in the battle. the elephants which the derbiccians received from the indians were placed in the ambush. they caused the persian cavalry to retreat. cyrus fell from his horse, and as he lay on the ground an indian hit him with his javelin under the hip in the thigh. he was lifted up and carried into the persian camp. in this battle many of the persians fell, and also many of the derbiccians-- , on either side. hearing this, amorges the king of the sacae came to the help of cyrus with , men. when the battle was renewed, the persians and sacae fought bravely and conquered. amoraeus fell and with him his two sons; , derbiccians and persians were left in the field, and the land of the derbiccians submitted to cyrus. but he felt his end approaching. he named his eldest son cambyses as his successor; and the younger tanyoxarkes he made lord of the bactrians, the chorasmians, parthians, and carmanians, with an arrangement that their lands should pay no tribute. to the two sons of spitamas, spitaces and megabernes (v. ), he gave the satrapies of the derbiccians and hyrcanians (barcanians), and bade them obey their mother (amytis) in all things. they were also to give their hands to each other and to amorges in pledge that they would treat him and each other as friends; on him who persisted in kindness to his brother cyrus invoked blessings, and curses on him who should be the first to begin a quarrel. thus saying, he died on the third day after his wound."[ ] this narrative also goes back to a poetical source, though it is not directly borrowed any more than the narrative of herodotus. meagre as the excerpt is, there can be no doubt about the poetical origin of it. this is proved by the compression of the events into a few days; the rapid and ready assistance given by the king of the sacae, whom cyrus had once captured in battle and then made his friend; the gratitude which he reaped for this deed in his last days; the heavy penalty laid upon the derbiccians for the wound of cyrus; the fall of their king and his two sons and the submission of the country; the death of cyrus after great danger in the moment of victory; the appointment of a successor; the recommendation of amorges; the exhortations to union given by cyrus when dying to his sons; his blessing on the son who remembered them, and his curse on him who neglected them. here also, as in the different accounts of herodotus and ctesias in the elevation of cyrus, we find points of agreement in the two versions. whether the names tomyris and amoraeus can be connected we need not inquire. each story contains the space of three days, the appointment of a successor, the exhortations and the recommendation of a third person--croesus in the one, amorges in the other. as in the story of ctesias--nicolaus about the rise of cyrus, oebares takes the place of harpagus in herodotus, so here the sacian amorges takes the place of the lydian croesus; though croesus, it is true, gives only ruinous advice, and amorges renders active and valuable help. as the persian tradition is preserved in the story of ctesias about the rise of cyrus, though the medes had their discrepant version, so in the story of the fall, as given by this historian, we have no doubt the persian account. the region which is allotted to the second son, the emphasis laid on the harmony of the sons, the death of cyrus in victory, no less than the tone which pervades the whole narrative, prove the persian origin of the story. the aged prince is wounded at the head of his people in a battle on horseback; but his friends avenge him; he dies, as he had lived, in victory and success, surrounded by his sons and stepsons. this glorification of his death was matched by the medes in the poems from which the narrative of herodotus has arisen. xenophon represents cyrus as dying at an advanced age in peace, when he has reached persia for the seventh time after winning the empire. in the palace he had a dream which announced his approaching end. he caused his sons to be brought to him, who had accompanied him to persia, his friends, and the captains of the persians. his power, so he told them, had not decayed with age; he had striven for nothing and attempted nothing that he had not obtained, and what he had once obtained he had never lost. though everything had succeeded according to his wishes, he had never allowed himself to indulge in proud thoughts and excessive rejoicing, for he had ever been attended by the apprehension that evil would come upon him in the future. "do you now, cambyses," he continued, "receive the throne, which the gods and i, so far as lies in me, give to you; to you, tanaoxares, i give the satrapy over the medes, the armenians, and the cadusians. i give you this because i deem it right to leave to the elder the larger dominion and the name of king, but to you a less burdensome fortune." then he urged both to remain in the closest friendship, for they had been nourished by one mother, and had grown up in one house; neither of them could find a stronger support than his brother. he made them swear by the gods of their fathers that they would hold each other in honour; they could not prove their love for him more truly in any other way. finally, he reminded them that by showing kindness to friends they would be able to punish their enemies, gave his hand to all, veiled his face and died.[ ] according to the account of the companions of alexander of macedon, the corpse of cyrus rested in the abode of his ancestors, at his metropolis, pasargadae, in the precincts of the "old citadel." concerning his tomb we have only the account of aristobulus, who saw it when alexander reached pasargadae, and on the return from india received a commission to restore the sepulchres which had been plundered in the mean time. this account is preserved in two excerpts; the shorter one is given by strabo, the more circumstantial by arrian. in the latter we are told: "at pasargadae in the royal garden (paradeisus) was the tomb of cyrus. round the tomb a grove of trees had been planted of various kinds; the soil was permeated by streams and overgrown with thick grass. the tomb itself was built of square stones in a rectangular form; the upper part was a covered chamber." from strabo we learn that "the tomb is a tower of no great size, which is massive in the lower part, but in the upper story is a room." "the door which leads into it," arrian continues, "is so narrow, that a moderately stout man could scarcely enter. in the chamber was a couch with feet of beaten gold, with purple coverlet over which lay carpets of babylonian pattern. there was also a robe (_kandys_) and under-garments of babylonian manufacture, and median trowsers, garments coloured blue and purple, some of one colour, some of the other, chains, swords, and necklaces of gold and precious stones, and a table (strabo adds goblets). on the middle of the couch was the coffin with the corpse of cyrus, covered with a lid. the inscription on the grave, in the persian language and persian letters, says: 'o men, i am cyrus the son of cambyses, who founded the empire of the persians and governed asia; do not grudge me this monument.' within the outer wall of the sepulchre near the steps which lead to the chamber was a small dwelling for the magians, who have watched the tomb since the time of cyrus, the office descending from father to son. each day they receive a sheep and a fixed amount of corn and wheat, and each month a horse to sacrifice to cyrus." the corpse itself is said to have been completely preserved after two centuries. onesicritus tells us that the tower of the sepulchre had ten stories; the inscription was in persian and greek written in persian letters, and said: "here lie i, cyrus, king of kings."[ ] near the modern city of murghab, on a plain covered with the ruins of walls, not far from a square tower and a platform, built of square blocks of marble to a height of nearly forty feet, on a substructure of seven flats (the sacred number which we meet everywhere) arranged in terraces, rises a plain oblong building constructed of huge stones of the most beautiful white marble, which are closely fitted together, and covered with a flat gable roof; it forms a chamber in which the entrance is through a door four feet in height. the excellent and beautiful proportions, the quiet simple forms of the building, give an impression of solemnity, and appear to mark a consecrated place. close to this building, and again in a terrace, we find bases, shafts, and pillars, which must have belonged to a large structure, perhaps to a portico, which was in some connection with the stages of the terrace. three door-posts bear, in three different languages, the inscription: "i, cyrus, the king, the achæmenid." hence there can be no doubt that these remains belong to a structure erected by cyrus. before the posts are twelve bases, and before these a pillar of marble fifteen feet in height, formed from a single stone. on this is cut in relief a slim form in profile. it has four wings springing from the shoulders, is clothed in a closely-fitting garment falling to the ancles; on the right side which is visible, and on the lower hem, the garment is furnished with fringes. the form of the uncovered lower arm seems to indicate a commanding attitude. the head is covered with a striped, closely-fitting cap, which reaches down to the neck. out of the crown of it rise two horns, which extend on either side and bear a tall ornament of peculiarly-formed leaves and feathers. the face is surrounded by a full but short beard, the nose is somewhat rounded at the tip, the line of the profile is straight and well-formed, the expression mild and serene. over the head, as on the posts, we find written in cuneiform letters: "_adam kurus khsayathiya hakhamanisiya_" _i.e._ "i, cyrus, the king, achæmenid."[ ] this is, it would seem, a picture of the famous king. so far as we can tell cyrus was long in coming to his prime, and did not attain to his full powers till he had reached the years of manhood. sprung from the royal house of the persians, grandson of achæmenes, he grew up at pasargadae, and rendered service as a vassal to his sovereign. while performing courtly and martial duties at ecbatana, the extinction of the male line of the house of deioces, and the rival claims which the death of astyages would call forth, opened to him the prospect of obtaining independence for himself and the persians. when once more among his own people, the suspicion of astyages forces arms into the hands of himself and his father. astyages penetrates into the mountains of persia, and cambyses is slain; only after severe struggles are the medes beaten back. cyrus avails himself of his success in order to carry war into media. about eighty years after achæmenes had joined phraortes cyrus marches victoriously into ecbatana. he at once aims at a higher object. the dominion of the medes must pass over to the persians. babylon and lydia give him time to subjugate the parthians and hyrcanians, to make war on the sacae and bactrians, to reduce the cadusians, armenians, and cappadocians. when yet unprepared or engaged in other conflicts, he is attacked by croesus. a brilliant campaign carries him far beyond the defensive; he overthrows the lydian empire and advances to the shore of the Ægean. while his generals complete the reduction of asia minor he turns again to the east; once more babylon gives him time to establish and extend his empire in the table-land of iran. secure on the east and west he proceeds to the decisive struggle with babylon. in the first campaign he crosses the tigris and secures the passage; in the second he defeats nabonetus, captures sepharvaim, storms babylon, obtains possession of borsippa, subjugates syria, and the phenician cities. after the annihilation of the babylonian kingdom, cyrus extends the borders of his empire still further to the east. the nations on the right bank of the indus, the chorasmians and the sogdiani, are reduced, and the jaxartes becomes the limit of the kingdom. thus by unwearied energy, restless effort, and tough endurance, cyrus achieved a career which has no equal; from being chief of the persian tribes he became sovereign of asia. as xenophon says, his kingdom extended from regions which are rendered uninhabitable by heat, to others which are uninhabitable by reason of the cold. this aim cyrus had pursued with great determination; he had not been guilty of any wild outbursts. a general, rapid in decision and tenacious in purpose, he had understood how to meet failure and make himself master of the most difficult undertakings. other military princes of the east have achieved greater conquests in a shorter space of time than cyrus, but none understood how to preserve the empire he had won, and make it permanent, as cyrus did. he possessed not only the keen eye of the general, but an unerring political insight, and an unusual power of penetrating into the interests, the motives, the manners and actions of the communities and nations which victory placed in his power. among the rulers of the east no one is like him, and one alone approaches him, the second successor on the throne which he founded. footnotes: [ ] behist. , . [ ] arrian. "ind." , . [ ] plin. "h. n." , ; ptolem. , . [ ] script. alex. magni; fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; arrian, "anab." , , ; , , . [ ] curtius, , , . [ ] in strabo, p. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; , , . [ ] _e.g._ ctes. "pers." . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "anab." , , ; esther i. . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , ; , , . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] "persae," - . [ ] "transact. bibl. arch." , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , ; , , , . [ ] plin. "h. n." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , ; curtius, , , ; , , , ; diod. , , ; strabo, p. . [ ] diod. "exc. vat." p. , , ; justin, , ; , ; , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . a similar story is in frontin. "strateg." , , . [ ] polyaen. "strateg." , . [ ] _Çparheghapaeça_, from _çpareg_, to shoot, spring, and _paeça_, _piça_, shape: müllenhoff, "monatsberichte berl. akad." , s. . [ ] strabo, p. , ; plin. "h. n." , ; ptolem. , ; curtius, , ; diod. , ; steph. byz. [greek: derbikkai]. [ ] ctes. "pers." - . [ ] "cyri inst." , . [ ] ctes. "pers." ; arrian, "anab." , ; strabo, p. ; plin. "h. n." , ; plut. "alex." . curtius ( , ) asserts after cleitarchus, that when alexander visited the tomb of cyrus on his return from india, he only found the shield of cyrus, then rotten, two scythian bows, and a sword in the sepulchre. [ ] in the wings, the clothing, and the peculiar head-dress this portrait (tenier, "descript." pl. ) differs essentially from the representation of darius and his successors at persepolis and naksh-i-rustem. it is not cyrus but his fravashi which is here represented. the building at murghab is somewhat like the description of the tomb of cyrus given in the text, but the site will not allow us to regard it as the tomb at pasargadae. it must be a building which one of his successors has dedicated to the memory of the great king. the profile in the relief confirms to some degree plutarch's statement that cyrus had an aquiline nose, and the persians therefore considered beaked noses the most becoming: "praec. ger. reip." c. . the nose of darius, as we see it in the monuments, appears straighter and longer. chapter x. the fall of egypt. after the death of the great king who had founded the persian empire, cambyses (kambujiya), the elder of the two sons whom cassandane had borne to cyrus, ascended the throne of the new kingdom in the year b.c. a few years before his death cyrus had entrusted him with the vice-royalty of babylonia.[ ] herodotus tells us that "cambyses again reduced the nations which cyrus had subjugated, and then marched against egypt." egypt was the oldest of the great powers of the ancient east, and, after the fall of media, lydia, and babylonia, it still remained independent beside the kingdom which had risen up so rapidly and brilliantly out of their ruins. a hundred and fifty years previously egypt had succumbed to the arms of the assyrians; how could an ambitious ruler of persia imagine that it could now resist the incomparably greater forces which were at his command? we know how psammetichus and his descendants had restored egypt to her ancient position, the place which they had assigned to the greeks and greek civilisation in their state, a place which had not been altered by amasis, though brought to the throne by a revolution which had removed the house of psammetichus ( b.c.). the attempt of necho to renew the achievements of the tuthmosis, amenophis, and ramses in syria and on the euphrates was wrecked by the sudden rise of the babylonian kingdom under nebuchadnezzar, and hophra had in vain attempted to prevent the fall of jerusalem and the advance of babylon to the borders of egypt. the growth of the persian power threatened to give egypt a far more dangerous neighbour than she had had in babylonia. amasis did not underrate the crisis. herodotus told us above that he had combined with lydia against cyrus, that croesus had called upon the egyptian auxiliaries for the second campaign, and finally for the rescue of sardis. the rapid progress of the war and the fall of sardis defeated the aims of amasis. then, as we saw, a decade elapsed before cyrus directed his arms against babylonia. that amasis made every attempt to support nabonetus against the persians is not told us by tradition, unless indeed we accept as tradition xenophon's statement, who represents the lydians and egyptians as fighting against the persians with the babylonians (p. ). the fall of babylon was followed directly by the subjugation of syria, the conquest of gaza (p. ), and the advance of the persian border to the desert. amasis does not appear to have been wholly inactive in the face of the approaching danger. herodotus tells us that he took the island of cyprus and made it tributary, and diodorus narrates that he subjugated the cities in cyprus, and adorned many of the temples there with splendid offerings.[ ] we may assume that the enterprise of amasis against cyprus was intended to provide a counterpoise to the incorporation of syria in the persian empire. it may have appeared more desirable to the princes of the cyprian cities to be vassals of the remote and less powerful egypt than of the rising and powerful kingdom of persia. in any case, when he had set foot in cyprus, amasis prevented that rich island, with its numerous cities, from falling into the power of the persians; the ships of the cyprian cities could assist him in keeping off the fleet of the phenicians from their coasts, should the persian monarch call out that fleet against egypt. that this was the object of the occupation of cyprus by amasis is confirmed by the fact that some years after the fall of babylon he entered into communication with the island of samos. while chios and lesbos, as has been observed, submitted to the persians without compulsion, samos had remained independent. polycrates, the son of aeaces, who had made himself master of the island in the year b.c., built a splendid fleet of eighty heavy and a hundred light ships, with which he could maintain his independence against the persians. the fleet of polycrates could hold the fleet of the ionians in check if it were called upon by the persians, just as the cyprians could restrain the phenicians. amasis entered into close and friendly relations with the prince of samos, who on his part must have gladly accepted the support of egypt against the persians. besides the possession of cyprus and this union with samos, egypt's power of resistance rested essentially on the difficulty of crossing the desert which separates egypt from syria with a large army, on the considerable numbers of the warrior caste, in spite of the emigration under psammetichus, and the fidelity and bravery of the ionian and carian mercenaries, to whom amasis had entrusted his personal protection. the danger of an attack from persia seemed to have passed over when, after the subjugation of syria, cyrus turned towards the distant east, the indus and jaxartes; and amasis may have been careful not to irritate his powerful neighbour. the skill of the physicians of egypt was in great repute. when cyrus asked amasis for the best oculist, the pharaoh, according to the persian story, may have acceded to his wish.[ ] the death of cyrus would then bring still greater prospects of power to amasis, until at last the decisive moment came thirteen years after the fall of babylon. "cambyses," so herodotus tells us, "sent to egypt and asked the daughter of amasis in marriage. both hating and dreading the power of the persians, amasis was uncertain whether to send or refuse her, for he well knew that cambyses did not intend to take her as his legitimate wife, but as a concubine. so he devised the following plan:--nitetis, the daughter of the preceding king hophra was the only member of her family remaining. she was tall and beautiful, and amasis adorned her with garments and gold and sent her as his own daughter to persia. but some time after, when cambyses was embracing nitetis and calling her by the name of her father, she said: 'o king, thou art deceived by amasis, who has sent me to thee thus adorned as his daughter, whereas in truth i am the daughter of hophra, whom, though his lord, amasis slew together with the egyptians.' this speech put cambyses into a violent rage, and for this reason he marched against egypt. this is the account which the persians give; but the egyptians claim cambyses as their own, maintaining that he was the son of this daughter of hophra. it was not cambyses, but cyrus, who desired the daughter of hophra. but in this they are wrong. the law of the persians is not unknown to them (for the egyptians know the laws of the persians better than any one else), that the son of the concubine is not made king if there are sons of the queen, and that cambyses was the son of cassandane, the daughter of pharnaspes, and not of the egyptian woman. they invert the transaction because they wish to give themselves out as allied to the house of amasis. among the auxiliary troops of amasis there was a man of halicarnassus, phanes by name, of good understanding and mighty in war. injured by amasis in some way, he fled by ship out of egypt, in order to join cambyses. as he was a man of importance among the auxiliary troops, and most accurately acquainted with egypt, amasis was anxious to take him, and sent his most trusty eunuch after him in a trireme. the eunuch caught him up in lycia, but he did not bring him back to egypt. phanes outwitted him, by making his guards intoxicated, and so escaped to persia. when he came to cambyses, who, though intending to invade egypt, was uncertain how to pass through the waterless region, phanes told him all the affairs of amasis, and how the march was to be arranged. he advised him to send to the king of the arabians, and ask him to give him a safe passage. the approach to egypt is open on this side only. from phoenicia to the borders of the city of gaza,[ ] which, as it seems to me, is not much smaller than sardis, the land belongs to the syrians, who are called palaestinians (pelishtim), but from this city to jenysus the harbours of the sea are subject to the arabians; from jenysus to the serbonian lake they again belong to the syrians, and at the serbonian lake egypt begins. the strip between the city of jenysus and the serbonian lake, a journey of three days, is wholly without water. instructed by the halicarnassian, cambyses sent messengers to the arabian, and received permission for the passage, and when the arabian had given the envoy of cambyses a solemn promise with invocation of urotal and alilat, and smearing of seven stones with blood (i. ), he caused bags of camel-skins to be filled with water, loaded all his camels with them, and after marching into the waterless district he there awaited the army of cambyses. but psammenitus, the son of amasis, encamped on the pelusiac mouth of the nile. for when cambyses marched with all over whom he ruled, even with those of the hellenes who were in his power,[ ] against egypt, he found that amasis was no longer alive; he had died after a reign of years, without meeting with any great disaster in that time. when the persians had marched through the waterless region and had pitched their camp opposite the egyptians for battle, the auxiliaries of the egyptians, hellenes and carians, who were enraged against phanes because he had brought a foreign army against egypt, did as follows:--the children of phanes had remained in egypt. they brought them into the camp, and then led them between the two camps before the eyes of their father, and slew them one after the other over a vessel. when they were all dead they poured water and wine into the vessel; all the mercenaries drank of the blood and then went to battle. the struggle was severe; when a great number had fallen on both sides the egyptians were put to flight. and here i observed a very strange phenomenon, my attention being called to it by the natives. the bones of those who fell in the battle were gathered up separately; the persians are on one side and on the other the egyptians, and the sculls of the persians are so thin, that even if a pebble is thrown upon them they break, while those of the egyptians are so hard that they can hardly be broken with a stone. the egyptians fled without any order. to those who were shut up in memphis cambyses sent a persian herald in a trireme, to summon them to surrender. but when the egyptians saw the ship come into memphis they hastened down from the citadel, destroyed the ship, tore the men in pieces, and carried them to the citadel. then the egyptians were besieged and finally surrendered." "on the tenth day after cambyses had taken the citadel of memphis he desired to make trial of psammenitus, whom he had taken prisoner with the other egyptians in the city, and who had reigned but six months. he therefore did as follows: he sent his daughter in the dress of a slave with a pitcher, and along with her the daughters of the leading egyptians, similarly attired, to fetch water. when they passed before their fathers with lamentations and sighs, these also cried and sighed at the sight of their daughters' shame, but when psammenitus saw what was done he fixed his eyes on the earth. when the maidens had passed with the water, cambyses caused the son of psammenitus to be led past with two thousand egyptians of the same age, with ropes round their necks and in their mouths. they were to be the expiation of the mytileneans, who were slain on the ship in memphis; the royal judges of the persians (p. ) had decided that for every dead man ten of the leading egyptians must die. psammenitus saw the train, and knew that his son was being led out to death, and the egyptians who sat round him wailed and lamented, but he did as he had done at the sight of his daughter. when they also had passed, it happened that an old man, who had been a guest at the table of the king, but had now lost everything and was as poor as a beggar, and asked alms of the soldiers, passed by psammenitus and the egyptians in the suburbs. when psammenitus saw this he lamented aloud, beat his head, and called on his friend by name. the guards who stood by announced what he had done on each occasion. cambyses was astonished, and asked psammenitus, by a messenger, why he had neither lamented nor sighed at the sight of his daughter in her shame, and his son when led out to execution, but had paid this tribute of respect to a beggar with whom cambyses had discovered he was in no way connected. psammenitus answered, 'o son of cyrus, my own misfortune was too great for tears, but the sorrows of my friend called for lamentation, since on the threshold of old age he had fallen from great possessions to the condition of a beggar.' when this was told to cambyses it seemed to him well said; but as the egyptians tell the story, croesus wept (he had followed cambyses to egypt), and the persians who were present wept, and cambyses was touched with some degree of compassion. he at once gave orders not to execute the son of psammenitus, and to fetch psammenitus from the suburb into his presence. the messengers found the son no longer alive, but they brought psammenitus himself to cambyses, who did him no further injury. had psammenitus known how to remain quiet, he would certainly have received the government of egypt; for the persians are wont to honour the sons of kings, and even though the fathers have revolted, they give the dominion to the son. but when psammenitus dealt treacherously he received his reward. he was detected in exciting the egyptians to revolt. when cambyses discovered this, he compelled him to drink bulls' blood, and he died on the spot. such was his end." "but cambyses came from memphis to sais, and when he entered the palace of amasis, he gave orders to take his body out of the grave; when this was done he caused the corpse to be scourged, the hair to be torn out; he stabbed it and treated it with every kind of indignity. when those who were executing his commands grew weary, for the body being embalmed resisted their blows, and did not come to pieces, he ordered it to be burned. this was a sacrilegious command. the persians regard fire as a deity, and the burning of the dead is not according to the laws either of the persians or the egyptians. the persians do not consider it right to offer a corpse to a god; the egyptians regard fire as a living all-consuming animal, and as it is by no means lawful to give up corpses to animals, they embalm them that they may not be consumed by worms. hence cambyses had commanded what was not allowed by the law of either nation. but the egyptians say that it was not amasis who endured this contumely, but another egyptian of the same age, whom the persians outraged under the impression that they were outraging amasis. amasis had been informed by an oracle what would happen to him after death; to escape his fate he had buried a man, who died at the time, in the tomb which he had made for himself at the temple of neith at sais, near the door, and had commanded his son to bury him in the innermost grave-chamber. in my opinion these arrangements of amasis about his burial were not carried out, they were mere inventions of the egyptians." ctesias' narrative is as follows: cambyses fulfilled the last commands of his father that his younger brother tanyoxarkes should be made lord of the bactrians, chorasmians, parthians, and carmanians, and in every other respect, and sent his corpse to persia for burial. having ascertained that the egyptian women were more desirable than others, he asked amasis for one of his daughters, and amasis sent nitetis the daughter of hophra. cambyses took great delight in her, and loved her much, and when he had learned all her story he acceded to her request that he would avenge the murder of her father. when he had armed against egypt and amyrtaeus, the egyptian king, the eunuch combaphes, who had great influence with amyrtaeus, betrayed the passes into egypt, and all the affairs of the country, in order that he might be viceroy of it. then cambyses set out on his march; in the battle , egyptians and , persians were slain,[ ] amyrtaeus was taken alive, and all egypt was subjugated. cambyses did no further harm to amyrtaeus beyond sending him with egyptians of his own choice to susa; but combaphes became governor of egypt as cambyses had promised first by izabates, his most trusted eunuch and the cousin of combaphes, and then by his own mouth.[ ] herodotus' account is once more dominated by the desire to give prominence to the vengeance for the crime which amasis committed in betraying hophra his master and thrusting from the throne the legitimate ruler of egypt (iii. ). amasis was spared, but the punishment fell upon the son, who thus suffered for his father's sins. the sources open to herodotus were the narratives of the persians, of the egyptians, and of his own people. the greeks of asia minor had taken part in the campaign of cambyses against egypt; greek mercenaries assisted in the defence; and as we have seen, greeks were settled in egypt in considerable numbers. herodotus himself rejects the story that cambyses was the son of the daughter of hophra, as the egyptians maintained by way of consolation; as well as another story that cambyses had invaded egypt in order to avenge the preference which cyrus showed to the daughter of hophra over his mother cassandane. on the other hand, he adopts, though with hesitation, the story of the persians that cambyses sought a wife from amasis, because it agrees with his own idea that ruin was brought upon amasis by his own treachery and the daughter of the pharaoh whom he had deposed. deinon in his persian history and lyceas of naucratis retained both these stories together in the form that amasis sent nitetis to cyrus, and that she was the mother of cambyses who invaded egypt to avenge hophra. the solicitation of cambyses, and the deception of amasis, in herodotus, and in a still more pointed form in ctesias, the source of which, herodotus tells us, was the narrative of the persians, has obviously arisen out of persian poems about cambyses, which required some poetical motive for the campaign against egypt; we saw that the modern version of the poems concerning cyrus represented the campaign against tomyris as due to a similar motive. hophra died in the year ; when cambyses ascended the throne, his youngest daughter must have been more than forty years of age. there was no need of any motive of this kind to excite cambyses against egypt, as has been shown above; after the fall of lydia and babylonia, egypt was the natural aim for the persian weapons. cambyses did not begin the war against egypt immediately after his accession. though ctesias tells us that he first placed his brother over the bactrians, chorasmians, parthians, and carmanians, cyrus, when he entrusted the kingdom of babylonia to cambyses, may have given the viceroyalty over the regions of the east to his younger son. we may confidently believe herodotus that the death of cyrus gave the subject nations the hope of again throwing off the yoke. after overcoming these rebellions (p. ), in the fifth year of his reign, cambyses marched against egypt. amasis, as we have observed, had made himself master of the island of cyprus, and had entered into communication with polycrates the prince of samos, in order to cover an attack on egypt by sea, and provide, in case of necessity, a counterpoise to the naval power of the greek cities on the coast, and that of the phenicians. cyrus had allowed his empire to be bounded by the sea, though he did not refuse the voluntary submission of chios and lesbos. cambyses went further. he wished to procure a fleet for his kingdom; persia was to rule by sea as well as land. this, it is true, could only be done by forcing arms into the hands of subject tribes and cities, and that on an element on which the persians could not pursue them. it was a bold conception, and in forming it cambyses must have felt quite secure of the obedience of the greek and phenician cities, and of the allegiance of the old princely houses who ruled in the latter no less than of the new ones who ruled in the former. for the first time the command went forth to the harbour cities of the syrian and anatolian coasts, that they were to arm their ships for the king. the fleet was to support the attack of the land army, and then, passing up the nile, facilitate the movements of the army in egypt. the ships of the greeks were to unite with those of the phenicians in the harbour of acco to the south of carmel.[ ] this resolution of cambyses and the assembling of so magnificent a fleet on the coast of phoenicia at once bore fruit. the princes of the cyprian cities abandoned egypt, recognised the supremacy of persia, and at once prepared their ships for a voyage against egypt. in return for this sudden and voluntary submission they were allowed to remain at the head of the cities; they were only to pay tribute and furnish contingents in war.[ ] on polycrates of samos also the naval armament of cambyses made a most lively impression. when in possession of a strong fleet cambyses could use it against samos. was polycrates to fight for egypt whose naval power could not defend him against this fleet, or was he to remain neutral? polycrates held the latter course to be the worst; neutrality during the war of cyrus and croesus had cost the greek cities dear enough. he determined to change his front. when the ionian cities launched their ships, and the vessels of chios and lesbos steered towards the syrian coast, he also offered to place ships at the disposal of the persian king for use in egypt. cambyses accepted the submission of polycrates, and he sent forty well-manned ships of war.[ ] thus cambyses had already deprived the pharaoh of two important points of support before he had begun the war. whether amasis was alive at the defection of the princes of cyprus, and of polycrates, is doubtful. it is possible that his death, which elevated to the throne of egypt his son psammenitus (psamtek iii.), an untried prince in the place of a proved and experienced leader such as amasis, was another weight in the scale on the side of defection. there was still another difficulty to remove. the syrian coast formed a strong wall of protection for egypt. if the fleet followed the army along the coast it found none but difficult landing-places; at present there are none in that region for the heavier ships of our days. in any case, in a numerous army such as cambyses no doubt led, care would have to be taken for the horses and camels. it is not true that cambyses requested a free passage from the king of the arabians; the men in question were the chiefs of the arabs in the peninsula of sinai, the midianites and amalekites; and it was the supply of water for the army which these tribes undertook. after completing his preparations cambyses set out early in the year b.c., in order to march through the desert before the beginning of the hottest weather, and arrive in egypt sufficiently early before the inundation.[ ] as the desertion of eurybatus aided cyrus in the lydian war (p. ), so was cambyses assisted in his preparations for the campaign against egypt according to the narrative of herodotus by the advice of phanes, and according to ctesias by the advice of combaphes. we may here give unhesitating confidence to the definite assertion of herodotus as it concerns his own countryman of halicarnassus. the departure of phanes for egypt must have taken place in the autumn of the year b.c., for it is amasis who sends his trusted eunuch after him as far as lycia. for the name of psammenitus the fragment of ctesias gives the incorrect name of amyrtaeus (if this name of the later opponent of persia on the nile is not due to the excerpt), it substitutes combaphes for phanes, _i.e._ to all appearances the eunuch who pursues phanes for phanes himself. we do not find elsewhere the slightest trace that combaphes received the vice-royalty of egypt; on the contrary, the statements of the fragments about the cousinship of the chief eunuch of pharaoh and the chief eunuch of cambyses, and the repeated promise of the vice-royalty which is made to combaphes, point to persian poems, which had to clothe incidents of this nature in a poetical garb; we have already frequently met with the analogous promises of arbaces to belesys, and of cyrus to the interpreters of dreams at babylon. with regard to the course of the war we can only establish the fact, that psammenitus collected all his forces, _i.e._ the warrior caste, and his ionian and carian troops, which were apparently strengthened by libyan tribes, and greeks from cyrene, and awaited the attack of the persians at the point where at the present day the caravan road from gaza reaches egypt, near pelusium, the old border fortress, surrounded by the sand of the desert and wide expanses of mud. in regard to this battle we only learn from ctesias that , egyptians and , persians fell; whether it be that these numbers are taken from the persian poems, or whether they belong to the official persian account. a part of the egyptian army retired to pelusium; with another band of fugitives psammenitus reached memphis. when the persians had besieged and captured pelusium, which made a bold resistance, egypt lay open to them. cambyses shaped his course to memphis. there in past days the empire of the pharaohs had arisen; there stood the temple of ptah, the most sacred shrine of the land, which menes himself was said to have founded, which all his successors, including amasis, had enlarged and adorned. memphis closed the approach to the upper river valley, which was barred to the persians so long as the city held out. hence it appears to have been the determination of psammenitus to give up the delta to the persians, to defend memphis, and shut himself up in its walls. the city is said to have been twenty miles in circuit (i. ); it lay on the western bank of the nile, and cambyses had the difficult task of crossing the river before he could invest the city. but now it was seen how great was the support afforded by the fleet. the egyptian ships must have been forced to retire; the union of the persian army with the fleet was accomplished; one of these ships appeared before the walls of memphis sooner than the army. according to the account of herodotus it would seem that it was not the city but only the citadel of memphis, "the white tower" on the southern dam, which defended itself. if this was the case cambyses had no doubt to thank the fleet for it. elsewhere the city must have been defended on the side towards the nile by the river-dams merely, which the garrison despaired of holding against the attack of numerous ships of war. thus invested and attacked the citadel must at length have opened the gates; and with the citadel psammenitus fell into the hands of the persians.[ ] after the fall of memphis cambyses does not seem to have found resistance anywhere. it is nevertheless possible that sais, the residence of psammetichus and his descendants, as well as of amasis and psammenitus, the burial-place of the princes and of amasis, attempted a defence. in any case the conquest of sais completed the subjugation of the egyptian land. an inscription of the egyptians says: "when the great prince, the lord of the world, kambathet, marched against egypt, all nations of the earth were with him. he became lord of the whole land and settled there."[ ] in a war of a few months cambyses had overthrown a kingdom which reckoned by millenniums, and had been the wonder of the world. what herodotus tells us of the fate of psammenitus and the death of his son reminds us in a striking manner of the legend of the greeks about the distress and the rescue of croesus, who also reappears in this narrative. in both herodotus becomes uncertain towards the end, and changes from direct to indirect narration, from assertion to supposition. when cyrus commanded croesus to be burned, he intended, according to herodotus, to prove whether a god would come to his aid; cambyses intends to put the endurance of psammenitus to the test. two trials are made with this object; and a third trial also takes place; and if croesus calls on solon three times on the pyre, psammenitus remains dumb "with horror," as aristotle says, at the sight of his daughter at her slavish task, and of his son when led out to execution; it is only at the sight of his friend who has become a beggar that he breaks forth into lamentation. like cyrus at sardis, cambyses at memphis inquires into the reason of such conduct. but if cyrus weeps at the pyre, and desires to save croesus, who is finally rescued by a god, so in this place, all the persians who are present weep, and croesus weeps, and cambyses himself is touched by compassion; he wishes to save the son of psammenitus; and though he cannot do this he releases the father out of captivity and receives him at his court. there is a difference in the stories in the fact that though cambyses is putting psammenitus to the test, the son is actually executed, and that the compassion of cambyses is not aroused by the danger impending over the egyptian king, but by his conduct. as in the story of croesus and cyrus, so in this, we have obviously a legend of the greeks--the greeks in egypt. the first story has arisen out of the intention of croesus not to survive the fall of his kingdom, to offer himself as a sacrifice to the angry god of the lydians; and the second has no other foundation than the punishment exacted by cambyses in accordance with the sentence of the seven judges (p. ), for the murder of his herald who had demanded the surrender of memphis, and for the massacre of the crew of the ship in which the herald had gone to the city. if the seven judges demand ten egyptians for every man slain, this sentence, though it fell on the most distinguished families of egypt, would seem mild enough according to the scale of oriental punishments; as men were brought out for execution, the ship must have had the usual crew of a greek trireme. whether the son of psammenitus was really put to death for the herald, we must leave to the legend; ctesias tells us only of the deportation of psammenitus and egyptians to susa. cambyses resolved to treat psammenitus and egypt in precisely the same way as cyrus had treated croesus and lydia, nabonetus and babylon. it is not said that any harm was done to the city of memphis, and herodotus tells us himself that if psammenitus had known how to keep quiet, cambyses would have entrusted him with the governorship of egypt. yet the degradation of his daughter and the execution of his son were a strange initiation of such treatment.[ ] still more incredible is the ill-treatment and burning of the corpse of amasis, for which cambyses had not the slightest reason, especially as herodotus states that cambyses sent ladice, the widow of amasis, unharmed back to her own city of cyrene.[ ] the story belongs to the context of the narrative according to which cambyses sues for the daughter of amasis, and is deceived by him with the daughter of hophra, whose desire for vengeance on amasis he satisfies. as amasis is no longer alive, vengeance comes upon his son and grandson, and even on his own body. for this reason herodotus has adopted this story, for he lays great stress on the fact that no misfortune befell amasis in his life, though he rejects the egyptian version that amasis had taken the precaution to substitute the corpse of another person of the same age for his own. if sais resisted and was taken by storm, the temple of neith might certainly be injured, the royal sepulchres violated, and the mummies taken from them, without any blame attaching to cambyses, though on a similar occasion at memphis he is charged by herodotus with opening the tombs and disturbing the rest of the dead.[ ] the egyptian inscription informs us that the conduct of cambyses at sais and in the temple of neith, in the portico of which amasis had built his sepulchre, was widely different from that described by the legend. he removed his soldiers from the temple, purified it, and both here and in other places he showed his regard for the worship of the egyptians as cyrus had shown it for the worship of the babylonians and the hebrews. from the account of herodotus, no less than from the later circumstances of egypt, it is clear that no alteration was made in the government, law, and administration of justice, except that a persian satrap was placed at the head of the country and persian garrisons were sent to the citadels of the most important places. even the egyptian warrior caste remained unchanged and undiminished; it merely passed from the service of the pharaohs into that of the achæmenids; and after repeated rebellions numbered more than , men in the middle of the fifth century b.c. footnotes: [ ] the babylonian tablets give dates from the first to the ninth year inclusive of "kuras, king of babylon," which entirely agree with the dates of the canon of ptolemy, _i.e._ with the capture of babylon by cyrus b.c., and the death of cyrus in b.c. on another tablet, no. , br. mus., we find the "year eleven of cambyses king of babylon" (e. schrader, "z. aegypt. sprach." , s. ff.). it is a fact established by the canon of ptolemy as well as by herodotus that cambyses did not sit on the throne for eight whole years. tablet explains this eleventh year; it runs as follows: "babylon month kislev, day , year of cambyses king of babylon, at that time cyrus king of the lands." hence in babylon dates were sometimes fixed by the years of cyrus king of babylon, and sometimes by the years of the viceroy. if the "year eleven" of cambyses in babylon was the year of cambyses' death, cyrus must have handed over the government of babylonia to him in the year b.c., _i.e._ three years before his own death. this view, which has been developed by e. schrader, i feel able to adopt against the opinion of t. g. pinches, who wrongly assumes an abdication of cyrus. that years were not dated from cambyses after his death is proved by seventeen other tablets, which do not go beyond the eighth year of his reign, and two others of the elul and tisri from the first year of barziya, _i.e._ of the pseudo-smerdis. [ ] herod. , ; diod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herodotus writes kadytis after the egyptian name kazatu. vol. i. . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] bekker reads . [ ] ctesias, "pers." ; athenaeus, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] in herod. ( , ) the voluntary submission of the cyprians stands in direct connection with their participation in the campaign against egypt; hence it cannot be placed earlier. if xenophon ("inst. cyri," , ) represents the cyprians as already subjugated by cyrus, he maintains the same of egypt also. on the other hand, the statement of xenophon that the cyprians retained their native kings owing to their voluntary submission is amply confirmed by later events ("inst. cyri." , , ; , , ). [ ] herod. , . [ ] according to lepsius, amasis died in january , and hence memphis fell in july of this year: "monatsberichte berl. akademie," . the psammenitus of herodotus is called psammecherites in manetho; and psamtik on the monuments. rosell. "monum. storici." , ; , . [ ] diod. "exc. de virtute," p. ; polyaen. "strateg." , . in regard to the campaign we may compare the march of pharnabazus and iphicrates against nectanebos in the year b.c., in diod. , - . aristot. "rhet." , , . [ ] herod. , . de rougé, "revue archeol," , ; brugsch, "hist. of egypt," , . [ ] aristot. "rhet." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . chapter xi. the march to meroe. more than two centuries before cambyses set foot upon its soil, egypt had experienced the rule of the stranger. the reign of the ethiopic monarchs of napata over egypt ( - b.c.) was followed by the more severe dominion of the assyrians. but psammetichus had been able to restore the kingdom, and the sovereignty of his house; the reign of amasis had called into existence a beautiful after-bloom of egyptian art, had given a lively impulse to trade, and increased the welfare of the land. now the day of pelusium and the fall of memphis had decided the fate of egypt irrevocably and for all time. the kingdom had been founded from memphis three thousand years previously, and at memphis it was now overthrown. egypt, in spite of repeated and stubborn attempts, was never able to recover from the dominion of the persians, and even the fall of the persian empire did not permit the rise of the egypt of the egyptians. the speedy and great success which cambyses achieved had effects beyond the borders of egypt. herodotus narrates that the libyans in their anxiety about the fortune of egypt submitted to cambyses without a battle, promised to pay tribute, and sent presents. the cyrenaeans also and barcaeans from similar apprehensions had done the same. the presents of the libyans were graciously accepted by cambyses, but the minae which the cyrenaeans sent, he threw with his own hand among the people because "it was too little."[ ] diodorus explains the anxiety of the libyans and cyrenaeans, "after cambyses had become lord of the whole of egypt" and the voluntary submission which was the consequence of it, by the fact that the libyans and cyrenaeans had fought against cambyses with the egyptians. we know from other sources that the princes of cyrene were in close and friendly connection with amasis.[ ] the subjugation of the libyans cannot have extended farther than to the tribes adjacent to the delta, and reaching towards the west perhaps as far as cyrene. at that time archelaus iii. was the king of cyrene. more than a century before, greeks from the island of thera had founded the city on the well-watered and grassy slopes which run from the table-land of barca to the sea. ever since that time the family of battus and archelaus had reigned over this settlement, which, owing to its favoured position and lively trade, rose quickly to power and wealth. the attack which pharaoh-hophra made upon it in the year b.c. had been successfully repulsed by the cyrenaeans (iii. ). subsequently, about the year b.c., battus iii. had been compelled to submit to a constitutional form of government which restricted the monarchy to a hereditary presidentship. discontented with this position, archelaus iii. attempted to recover the old powers. the attempt failed, archelaus fled, and found shelter with polycrates, the tyrant of samos. when he had collected there an army of adventurers he returned at their head, subverted the constitution, and set on foot a cruel persecution against all who had adhered to it. he may have felt the ground insecure under his feet in the city; the fall of egypt deprived him of the support which he had had in that country, and if he had really sent a contingent to aid psammenitus he had to fear the vengeance of cambyses. these were reasons enough for seeking the protection of the persian king. he recognised the sovereignty of cambyses, and sent that sum of money as the first proof of his submission. "cambyses now proposed to himself a threefold expedition," so herodotus relates; "one against the carthaginians, a second against the ammonians, and a third against the long-lived ethiopians, who inhabit libya on the southern sea. it seemed best to send the fleet against the carthaginians, and a part of the land army against the ammonians, but to the ethiopians envoys were first sent. when he had given this command he ordered fish-eaters to be brought from elephantine (the island on the nile on the border of egypt) who were acquainted with the language of the ethiopians. while these were being brought he ordered the fleet to set out against carthage. but the phenicians refused; they were bound by great oaths, and they would be guilty of a crime if they went against their own children. as the phenicians refused, the rest (_i.e._ the greeks) were not strong enough, and so the carthaginians escaped slavery under the persians. for cambyses could not do violence to the phenicians, because they had voluntarily submitted to the persians (p. ), and the whole naval power rested on the phenicians. when the fish-eaters had come, they were told what they had to say to the ethiopians, and received the presents which they had to take--a purple robe, a golden necklace and bracelets, a box of alabaster filled with ointment, and a jar of palm-wine. the ethiopians to whom they were sent were said to be the tallest and most beautiful of men, and as they live under laws which are different from those of other men, they were said to regard the man who is the tallest and strongest among them as the most worthy of the throne." "when the fish-eaters reached the ethiopians and gave over their presents to the king, they said: 'cambyses, the king of the persians, wishes to be your friend and sends you as presents these things in which he takes most delight himself.' the ethiopians answered: 'the persian king has not sent you with these presents because he wishes to be my friend, and ye are not speaking the truth. you have been sent to spy out my kingdom, and he is not a righteous man. if he were righteous he would not have desired another land than his own, nor would he have reduced men to slavery from whom he had suffered no wrong. give him this bow (the bows of the ethiopians were of palm-wood and more than four cubits in length),[ ] and say to the king of the persians, that when his people can string a bow of that size he may march against the long-lived ethiopians with an overwhelming army; till then, he may thank the gods that it has not occurred to the sons of the ethiopians to conquer another land in addition to their own.' then he gave them the bow, and he took the purple robe, and asked what it was and how it was made. and when the fish-eaters gave him a true account of the purple and the dyeing, he said that the men were deceivers and their garments deceptive. when he saw the necklace and bracelets, the king laughed, for he imagined that they were fetters; their fetters, he said, were stronger. then he inquired about the ointment, and when the preparation and use of this were explained, he said the same as about the robes. the wine he drank and it pleased him greatly, and he asked what the king of persia ate, and what was the greatest age to which the persians lived. they replied that he ate bread, and explained the nature of wheat; they also put the greatest age to which the persians lived at eighty years. the king replied that he did not wonder that their years were few, inasmuch as they ate dirt, and they would not live so long as they did, if the drink did not strengthen them--in that matter the persians had the advantage. of the ethiopians most lived to years, and some even longer; their food was cooked flesh, and their drink milk. when the envoys returned and cambyses received their account, he fell into a passion, and marched against the ethiopians without taking measures for the supply of provisions or considering that he was about to march to the end of the world, but like one distraught and out of his mind, he set forth on his expedition as soon as he heard the account of the fish-eaters. no persian was able to draw the bow of the ethiopians; smerdis alone, the brother of cambyses, was able to draw it two finger-breadths.[ ] cambyses bade the greeks who were with him (_i.e._ the crews of the greek ships) to remain in egypt; but the whole of the rest of the army he took with him. when he came to thebes, he sent , men away with orders to enslave the ammonians and burn the oracle of zeus; with the rest he marched against the ethiopians. but before the army had traversed a fifth part of the way all their provisions were consumed, and not long after even the beasts of burden were eaten. if cambyses when he saw this had given up his intention, and led the army back, he would have shown himself a wise man after his first mistake, but he went recklessly onward. so long as the soldiers found anything growing on the ground, they ate herbs and grass; but when they came to the sand, some of them did a horrid deed; they drew lots for the tenth man and ate him. when cambyses heard of this, he was distressed that the soldiers should eat each other, abandoned the war against the ethiopians, marched back, and reached thebes after losing many men. this was the end of the expedition against the ethiopians. but with regard to those who were sent against the ammonians it is only known that they reached the city of oasis where the samians dwell, seven days' march distant from thebes through the desert; in the greek language this place is called the island of the blessed. to this place the army came; but beyond this no man knows anything except what the ammonians say. they relate that when they marched from the oasis through the sand and were about midway between the oasis and the ammonians, and were eating breakfast, a great wind from the south blew up a mass of sand and overwhelmed them, and in this way they perished." diodorus represents cambyses as making the attempt to subjugate the ethiopians with a great host, in which he lost the whole of his army and was in the greatest danger.[ ] if the legend of the greeks of the fortunes of psammenitus after his defeat exhibits analogous traits to the legend, also greek, of the fate of croesus after his capture, the account given by herodotus of the march of cambyses against the long-lived ethiopians reminds us of his account of the march of cyrus against the massagetæ. in both cases the aim is directed against unknown foreign nations, against whom there is no reason to make war; in both cases good sense, moderation, wisdom, and love of peace are found in the chief of the barbarians; in both envoys are sent under false pretences; in both the conversation on either side is accurately known. in the first case it is a foolish resolution which brings ruin; in the second it is the vexation of cambyses at the answer of the ethiopians, and the inability to draw the bow, which causes him to lead his army without any hesitation into destruction. along with other indications, the test of the bow here, like the bottle in the other legend, points to a poetical source. we have seen that the ancient pharaohs, the sesurtesen and amenemha, tuthmosis and amenophis, and after them sethos and ramses ii., had extended the dominion of egypt up the nile to semne and cumne, and subsequently to mount barkal. the egyptian language, worship, and art spread in this direction, and with the decline of the egyptian power after the time of the ramessids (from the year b.c.), an independent state grew up, the metropolis of which was napata, near the modern meravi, on mount barkal. the princes of this state in their turn, from king pianchi onwards, had forced their way down the nile.[ ] sabakon, sebichos, and tirhaka had governed napata and egypt. after sabakon had come into conflict with the assyrians at raphia in syria ( b.c.), and tirhaka at altaku ( b.c.), tirhaka succumbed in the year b.c. to the arms of esarhaddon. repeated attempts of tirhaka and his son urdamane upon egypt were wrecked; esarhaddon calls himself king of miluhhi and cush. assurbanipal boasts that he pursued urdamane as far as the land of cush. but the kingdom of napata, which the inscriptions of sargon, sennacherib, esarhaddon and assurbanipal call miluhhi (meroe[ ])--in the inscriptions on mount barkal we find the names meru and merua--continued to exist, and maintained itself against the restoration of egyptian power under psammetichus and his successors. we cannot doubt that cambyses wished to penetrate up the nile at least as far as the army of the assyrians, that he felt it necessary to secure his dominion in egypt against attacks from napata, and to extend his dominion as far up the nile as the army of the old pharaohs had reached. that the prince, who, as we saw, made the most careful preparations for the campaign against egypt, should have thrown himself foolishly and recklessly into this undertaking, as herodotus represents, is incredible, and the statement must be attributed to special tendencies in the sources used by the historian. so far as meroe, herodotus tells us from information collected at elephantine on the southern border of egypt, the way lay up and on the nile. first there were four days' journey from elephantine (against the stream), then forty days' march along the river, since the rocks made navigation impossible, and then after twelve days' voyage the great city of meroe was reached, the metropolis of the rest of the ethiopians. the distance to the place where the egyptians lived who had emigrated under psammetichus (iii. ) was not less than the distance from elephantine to meroe, and it was a long journey for them to the long-lived ethiopians. the total of days' journey from the way from elephantine to meroe upon or along the nile points to a place much higher up the river than napata. the new meroe is meant, which the princes of napata, receding before the persians, had founded before the time of herodotus.[ ] herodotus' statements that the ethiopians worshipped zeus and dionysus alone among the gods, and worshipped them very zealously, that there was an oracle of zeus in their country, and that it was only by its command that they went to war, are completely established by the monuments of napata. they show that the worship of ammon, the god of thebes and upper egypt, and that of osiris whom the greeks, as we know, compared with their dionysus, were zealously prosecuted. from inscriptions and intelligence of other kinds we have also ample information of the influence of the priests, and the importance of the oracle in the kingdom of napata. the fame of the priesthood at napata may be the basis of the "pious ethiopians" of homer; the same piety, though further removed, is shown in herodotus' narrative of the long-lived ethiopians. when cambyses, so strabo tells us, had made himself master of egypt, he advanced to meroe (napata), and it is said that he gave the name to the city in honour of his wife, or his sister, as others say, who was buried there. diodorus indeed tells us that cambyses founded the famous city of meroe, and gave it the name of meroe after his mother.[ ] josephus also observes that cambyses changed the name of the royal city of the ethiopians and called it meroe.[ ] however unfounded may be the assertion that the name of meroe proceeded from cambyses--for we find it used two centuries previously by the assyrians--it is quite clear from these statements that cambyses did advance as far as the old metropolis of the ethiopians and brought it into his power; that he conquered and maintained the kingdom of napata. indeed herodotus tells us elsewhere himself that he advanced far beyond napata to the south. "in his campaign against the long-lived ethiopians," we are told in this passage, "cambyses subjugated the ethiopians who dwell around the sacred nysa, and hold festivals in honour of dionysus." the position of the mythical nysa, we cannot, it is true, define more precisely than that a homeric hymn puts it above the fountains of the nile,[ ] and herodotus himself places it above egypt in ethiopia;[ ] but inasmuch as these ethiopians of nysa wore leopard and lion skins, according to herodotus, and were armed with clubs; as their arrow-heads were made of sharp stones, and their lances of the horns of antelopes; as they painted themselves half red and half white in battle;[ ] as they had to pay to the persians every third year two hundred logs of ebony, twenty large tusks of elephants, five boys, and two choenixes of unrefined gold,[ ] cambyses must have penetrated into the land of the negroes, the zone of ebony and the elephant. on the middle course of the nile in nubia, and above napata, there were tribes akin to the egyptians; the land of the negroes began about the union of the white and blue nile. the monuments of egypt comprise both populations under the name cush, the name of the land of the south, and they exhibit these southern nations as partly red and partly black. the greeks call the red and black inhabitants of the land of the south, ethiopians. according to the statements of artemidorus of ephesus and of agatharchides, which have been preserved by strabo and diodorus, the land of the elephant-hunters and ostrich-eaters, who fought with the ethiopians, men armed with the horns of the antelope, began south of the confluence of the atbara and bahr-el-azrek or blue river, and the nile.[ ] at the present time the region of the ebony-woods and elephants begins in the marsh at the foot of the abyssinian alps; elephants are not found elsewhere except in some more northern regions on the red sea; and that the ethiopians did not acquire the elephants' tusks in the way of trade is proved by the small amount of gold which they had to pay as tribute. as we find in the reliefs of persepolis and naksh-i-rustem, among the nations of the persian kingdom, certain figures which are marked out as negroes by their short, curly hair, their snub nose, their bare breast and the animal's skin on the shoulders; as the ethiopians of nysa and their neighbours served, according to herodotus, in the army of xerxes, and paid the tribute mentioned, as herodotus expressly tells us, even in his day, the march of cambyses must have penetrated beyond the mouth of the atbara, and napata must have been permanently maintained, otherwise such distant tribes would not have furnished contingents in war fifty years later, and their tribute would have come to an end long before herodotus. hence cambyses did not, as the account of herodotus represents, return to egypt from the upper nile without success. on the contrary, he penetrated much further than the assyrians, and his campaign had more lasting results than the conquests of tuthmosis iii. and ramses ii. on the upper nile. the account given by herodotus of the distress into which the army fell, the statement that the soldiers ate each other (which is also told of the expedition of cyrus to the indus), and that the retreat to egypt was thus brought about, is hardly compatible with such results and so firmly-established a supremacy. yet we may suppose that cambyses wished to penetrate even further than the junction of the white and blue nile, and there fell into difficulties. but it is probable that quite another incident lies at the base of the legend of the distress of cambyses "in the sand." at premnis on the nile, pliny mentions "the market of cambyses;" in ptolemy the same place is called "the magazine of cambyses." strabo, when narrating the campaign which petronius took in the year b.c. against napata, tells us, that after petronius had taken pselchis ( miles above elephantine) he came to premnis ( miles further up the nile, below abu simbel and the falls of wadi halfa), "after he had marched through the sand-heaps in which the army of cambyses was buried by a sudden wind." thus, five hundred years after the campaign of cambyses, the tradition was in existence, that his army had been buried there. hence when napata had been conquered, and the negro stems subjugated, when mount barkal and the falls of wadi halfa were already behind the army on the return journey, it was overtaken by a sand-storm in the neighbourhood of egypt, and a part of the army, though not the whole, was buried.[ ] herodotus told us above that cambyses in his march against the ethiopians sent a section of his army against the ammonians, to reduce them to slavery, and burn the oracle of ammon there. diodorus repeats the statement of herodotus almost in the same words. justin observes, that cambyses had sent an army for the conquest of the famous temple of ammon, but it was overwhelmed by a storm and masses of sand. herodotus' narrative of this campaign cannot have arisen from the source from which he took the striking traits of his account of the march against the long-lived ethiopians. had this treated of the march against the ammonians it would have given some account of the issue of it; but herodotus expressly tells us that only the ammonians could give an account of this. his authority therefore was a greek-egyptian tradition. the ammonians inhabited the oasis of sivah, which lies in the desert to the west of egypt: the worship of ammon was carried there by egyptian settlers and egyptian influence.[ ] we cannot doubt that cambyses, after cyrene and the tribes of the libyans between egypt and cyrene had submitted, sent a part of his army to obtain possession of this oasis. the oasis of ammon was well adapted to keep the libyans of the coast as well as the cyrenaeans in subjection; and was at the same time an important station for trade, and a desirable point of support for further undertakings in the west. the command to enslave the inhabitants of the oasis and burn the temple, is part of the conception which represents cambyses as setting out against the ethiopians in a moment of reckless passion. according to herodotus, the expedition to sivah came in seven days after leaving thebes to "the island of the blest," _i.e._ to the oasis el charigeh, which as a fact is seven good days' march from thebes in the desert.[ ] from this point the army had to proceed about miles; at present the caravans go northward from el charigeh, then to the west from the oasis of kasr, to sivah. what happened to the army on one of these routes, no one, herodotus says, can tell; the ammonians declared that it was buried half way between el charigeh and sivah. it would be rash to connect the heaps of bones which a traveller in our times saw in the neighbourhood of the oasis of kasr with the destruction of the army of cambyses,[ ] and it is surprising that the persians took the longer route from thebes, when the shorter route which led from memphis to sivah was already frequented. alexander of macedon, in order to reach the ammonians, marched from the mareotic lake along the coast westward to paraetonium, then he turned directly to the south, and in eight marches reached the oasis. a modern traveller reached it in fifteen days from fayum, in , and the troops of mahomet ali who subjugated sivah in to egypt ( men and camels with water) reached it in fourteen days. most remarkable of all is the fact, that both campaigns of cambyses were overtaken by the same disaster. the direction taken by each does not allow us to connect the two; the route to sivah could not be past pselchis and premnis. yet neither one nor the other disaster is in itself incredible, though , men cannot have perished. some years ago a caravan of about souls was buried in a sand-storm on the road from darfur to egypt.[ ] but even if the division which was despatched against the oasis of ammon succumbed to the storms of the desert, cambyses maintained the oasis el charigeh, which herodotus calls the city oasis and the island of the blessed. the magnificent remains of a temple which darius the son of hystaspes caused to be erected there to the god of the oasis, the ram-headed ammon, prove that the oasis was conquered and held by cambyses.[ ] like the undertaking against the ammonians, the intention of cambyses to send the fleet against carthage was evidence of his plan of extending his power to the west, and achieving in africa what his father had done in asia. herodotus gives the account of the order commanding the fleet to sail, of the refusal of the phenicians, and the abandonment of the project by cambyses, according to the tradition of the greeks, who together with the phenicians made up the fleet of cambyses and the greeks in egypt. there is no reason to doubt the statement. by the submission of the cyrenaeans and barcaeans cambyses became the neighbour of carthage, which had lately united the phenician colonies of west africa under her leadership and was eager to oppose the advance of the greeks in the west of the mediterranean, the settlement of their colonies to the west of the great syrtis, and their progress in sardinia, corsica, and sicily. if the attempt to advance to the desert to the west of el charigeh were already wrecked, if cambyses had already returned from napata when he commanded the fleet to sail against carthage, new successes covered that disaster as well as the calamity of premnis, and the gain of carthage was of more importance than that of the oasis of sivah. the old phenicians of the east, in union with the navy of the anatolian cities, was to conquer the new phoenicia of the west. the greeks no doubt were ready, but the phenicians refused. by injuring their colonies in the west they would have rendered the greatest service to the rival naval power and trade of the greeks; in anatolia and on the coasts of sicily they would probably have given a fatal blow to their own power by sea. whether cambyses saw this connection of affairs, and felt that the subjection of carthage would liberate the independent greeks from a dangerous neighbour, and the dependent greeks from a rival in trade, or whether he simply gave way to the refusal of the phenicians, we cannot decide: we only know that "as the fleet of the phenicians refused,"--and it formed the preponderating part of the naval force,--it was impossible to compel it to go. footnotes: [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. "exc. de legat." p. = , . [ ] herod. , . cf. strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , - ; diod. , . [ ] vol. iii. ff. . [ ] the name miluhhi is nevertheless used so often in the inscription of the kings, and in such close connection with egypt, that the kingdom of napata may merely be meant. assurbanipal tells us that his brother seduced into rebellion "the princes of miluhhi whom he subjugated." vol. iii. . [ ] herod. , ; strabo, p. . herodotus' statements, like those of the later authorities from eratosthenes to strabo and pliny, have the second, more southern, meroe in view, the ruins of which were found at begerauieh, above the mouth of the atbara, some miles as the crow flies to the south of napata. they describe this meroe as situated on an island, because the atbara was regarded as an arm of the nile. the ruins at begerauieh are less important and artistic than those of napata, the hieroglyphics are of another kind. as the persians maintained their hold on napata, a new metropolis of the ethiopian kingdom obviously grew up at this place after the times of cambyses and darius, which adopted the name and civilization of the old. [ ] strabo, p. ; diod. , . [ ] "antiq." , . [ ] "hymn." , . [ ] "hymn." , . [ ] "hymn." , . [ ] "hymn." , . [ ] diod. , , ; strabo, p. . [ ] plin. "h. n." , ; strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] parthey, "die oase des jupiter ammon, abh. berl. akad." , s. ff. [ ] belzoni, "narrative," p. . [ ] ritter, "erdkunde," , , . [ ] lepsius, "trinuthis, z. aegypt. sprache," , s. ff. chapter xii. the death of cambyses. "when cambyses returned from thebes to memphis," so herodotus narrates, "apis appeared to the egyptians. they put on their best clothes, and made holiday. cambyses seeing this, formed the opinion that they held the festival because misfortune had happened to him. he summoned the governors of memphis, and when they came into his presence asked them why the egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he had been in memphis before, but only now that he had lost the greater part of his army. they replied that their god had appeared to them, who for a long time had been wont to appear, and when he appeared all the egyptians were delighted. when cambyses heard this he said that they lied, and punished them with death. he then sent for the priests, and when they said the same, he said that he would soon ascertain whether a tame deity had appeared to the egyptians, and commanded them to bring out apis. apis was brought out, and cambyses mad as he was drew his sword. he meant to stab apis in the belly, but he hit the thigh and said with a laugh to the priests: 'wretches, are these creatures gods, which have flesh and blood, and feel iron? such a god is worthy of the egyptians. but you shall not mock me for nothing,' he gave command to scourge the priests and slay every egyptian who was found making holiday. in this way the festival came to an end; the priests were punished, the apis died in the temple of the wound in his thigh, and the priests buried him secretly unknown to cambyses.[ ] but the king remained in memphis and raged against the egyptians, the allies, and the persians. he caused the old sepulchres to be opened and looked at the corpses; he went into the temple of hephaestus (ptah, i. ), and desecrated the image of the god in various ways. he also entered the temple of the cabiri (belonging to the phenicians at memphis, iii. ), which none but the priests may enter, and outraged the images and burned them."[ ] diodorus observes that cambyses, as was said, took away the golden zone in the ramesseum, which measured cubits, one for each day in the year, and was a cubit thick.[ ] justin tells us quite generally that cambyses, enraged at the superstition of the egyptians, gave orders for the destruction of the temples of apis and the other gods.[ ] in the narrative of herodotus the best reason given for the wounding of apis is the vexation of the king at the failure of his campaigns against the ethiopians and ammonians, and the refusal of the phenicians; and the belief that the festival of apis was merely an excuse for making merry over the blows which had fallen upon him. if cambyses tells the priests, who exhibit apis to him as a god who has recently appeared to them, that "they lied," it was very difficult for a worshipper of auramazda to believe that a young bull was a god, and the highest god, and the "lie" with which cambyses charges them, seems to be an accurate trait corresponding to the conceptions of the avesta about the "lying gods," and to the zoroastrian respect for the truth. there could hardly be a more strongly-marked contrast than between the worship of auramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, and surrounded by the light spirits of the sky, in which no images were allowed, and the rites of the egyptians, their worship of numerous images of the most extraordinary form in splendid temples, their adoration of the sacred animals, in which these deities appeared, and were thought to be present,--between their anxious care for the preservation of the corpse, and the eagerness of the iranians to remove the impure remains of man. cambyses might in all honesty believe that he was in contact with a stupid worship of idols, a senseless adoration of calves, crocodiles, and serpents, and a nation of "liars." but if he held such opinions, he did not act on them. if he had outraged the worship of egypt in the manner represented by the legends of the egyptians in herodotus and justin, the country could hardly have remained at rest after his death, when almost all the other lands rebelled against the persians. egyptian inscriptions prove that under cambyses there was no sort of religious persecution, but quite the reverse. in the tombs of the apis, on the plateau of memphis, on the vestibule of the new gallery which psammetichus had caused to be hollowed out for them, when the old gallery of ramses ii. was filled, we see on a pillar cambyses adoring the apis. the inscription tells us: "in the year four, in the month epiphi, in the reign of cambyses (kambathet), the immortal, the god was brought here for the burial which the king ordained for him. a second apis, the successor of that which was buried, was born, as the inscription of the apis tombs tells us, on the th tybi, in the fifth year of the reign of cambyses.[ ] inscriptions found on the statue of an egyptian, uzahorsun (at present in the vatican), tell us that he had been a magistrate under amasis and psammenitus (psamtik iii.), and afterwards under cambyses and darius. 'when the great prince, the lord of the world, kambathet,'[ ] so we are told in these, 'marched against egypt, all the nations of the earth were with him.' he became lord of the whole land, and settled therein. he was the great lord of egypt, the great prince of the whole world, the king of upper and lower egypt, ra-mesut (_i.e._ ra born again[ ]). and his holiness conferred on me the dignity of a counsellor and overseer of the royal gates, and commanded that i should ever be where he was. i brought a complaint before his holiness touching the people who were in the temple of neith, that they might be driven out, that the temple might be purified and clean as before. his holiness commanded the temple to be purified, and the sacred gifts to be brought as before to neith, the great mother of the great gods who dwell in sais. and his holiness commanded to celebrate all the great and little festivals, as had been done before. this his holiness did because he had commanded me to announce to him the greatness of sais, which is the city of all the gods, who are there enthroned on their seats for ever. when the king of upper and lower egypt came to sais, he entered himself into the temple of neith. he visited the sacred place of her holiness the goddess, as every king had done. his holiness did this on the information which he had received of the greatness of her holiness, who is the mother of the sun himself. his holiness performed all the rites in the temple of neith. he offered a libation of the lord of eternity (osiris) in the inner chamber of the temple of neith, as all kings had done before him. on the command of his holiness, the worship of neith, the great mother of the gods, was re-established in all its completeness for ever. i have provided the sacred worship of neith, the lady of sais, with all good things, as a good servant does for his master. i have re-established the priests in their office, and on the command of the king have given them rich possessions to be their own for ever. i have erected a good sepulchre for him who was without a coffin. i was a good citizen of my city. i have caused its children to live. i have set up all their houses; i have shown them every kindness as a father for his son. i have rescued their population, when disaster fell upon their canton, at a time when there was great calamity in all the land. never did such calamity fall upon their land before."[ ] this inscription, like those on the apis tombs, proves that cambyses in egypt, like his father in babylon, wished to take the place of the old princes of the land, and did take it; and that he bore the titles of the ancient pharaohs, and that a regal-name ra-mesut was added to his name, as was the custom with his predecessors. he undertook the protection of the ancient gods of the land; he allowed egyptians, servants of the old king's, to come into his immediate service; he listened to their advice; heard their complaints about the outrages done to the temple, which could hardly have been avoided in the occupation (p. ), and removed the cause; restored the priests to the enjoyment of their incomes; showed respect to their religion, and allowed it to continue without restriction. however great we suppose the care to be which the egyptian inscriptions take to say no evil of the persian king, whatever weight we ascribe to the fact that after the persians had once become their masters, the priests followed the traditional custom in denoting the kings of the persians by the titles of their pharaohs; whatever importance we allow to the fact that the priests were closely interested in representing religious affairs as unaltered even after the change in the rulers, and however much we deduct from their formal style on the score of these considerations--it still remains an established fact, from these inscriptions, that cambyses did not oppress the egyptians or their religion. the purification of one of the largest and most sacred temples in egypt, the restoration of the priesthood and the worship at the temple, could not have been ascribed to cambyses if the opposite was known to be the case. on the other hand, the narrative of uzahorsun presents us with the natural course of affairs. if he speaks of a great calamity such as had never before fallen on the district of sais and the whole land, this refers to the conquest of egypt by the persians, since he claims the merit of having rescued the population at sais in this calamity. we saw above, from the narrative of herodotus, that cambyses went to sais, after the capture of memphis. the inscriptions show that the priests had been driven from the temple of neith, that the soldiers were quartered in it, that sacrifice and worship came to an end. but it also teaches us that cambyses removed these evils. whether he felt himself called upon to offer gifts in the temple of neith and pour libations, or whether the priests when restored to possession of the temple property did this on his behalf, is indifferent; the inscription and herodotus tell us that he entered the temple in person. of the two apis-bulls which the inscriptions mention as belonging to the reign of cambyses, the first, which was buried in epiphi of the fourth year of cambyses, may have been that which the king is said to have wounded after his return from napata. but herodotus observes that the priests buried this apis "secretly." this is contradicted by the sepulchral pillar, inasmuch as cambyses causes a place to be prepared for the burial of this apis, and we have a picture of cambyses in adoration before this apis. the hypothesis, which we might frame, that the priests have given themselves the satisfaction of representing cambyses as entreating the pardon of the god whom he had slain in a holy place, little visited by the persians, would be very artificial and insufficient to account for this glaring contradiction. hence we have to correct in some very essential points the greek-egyptian tradition of cambyses. though the egyptians might attempt, as we saw, to change cambyses into the grandson of their own pharaoh hophra, the people could hardly fail to attribute evil deeds and crimes to the man who had deprived their land of its independence, who had caused them painfully to feel the loss of their pride, the antiquity and the monuments of their history, their wisdom and art, a loss which they felt deeply as their repeated and stubborn rebellions show. but herodotus would be the more ready to give credence to the narrative of the egyptians of the wounding of apis, because it explained the miserable death of cambyses as the just punishment for this crime. besides there were narratives of the persians, which tended to impress on cambyses the traits which he bears in herodotus. "smerdis, the brother of cambyses," so herodotus further narrates, "was with him in egypt. cambyses sent him back out of jealousy, because he was able to draw the bow of the ethiopians further than all the rest of the persians. when smerdis had returned to persia, cambyses saw in a dream a messenger from persia, who told him, that his brother sat up on the throne and that his head touched heaven. he was afraid that his brother would slay him and take possession of the kingdom; hence he sent prexaspes the persian in whom he had most confidence to persia to put him to death. prexaspes went to susa, and slew smerdis as some say, while hunting with him, but according to others, by taking him out on the red sea (the persian gulf) and throwing him into the water. this was the first evil deed which cambyses committed immediately after his crime against apis. the second he committed against his own sister, by the same father and mother (_i.e._ against the youngest of the three daughters whom cassandane bore to cyrus; her name has not come down to us with certainty). he was seized with a passion for one of his sisters, and desired to have her to wife; but as he saw that this was unusual, for up to this time the persians had not taken sisters to wife, he asked the royal judges (p. ) whether there was any law which stood in the way of his wish to marry his sister. the judges made a reply which was both just and safe; they could find no law which bade the brother marry the sister, but they had found a law which allowed the king of the persians to do as he pleased. then cambyses married the sister whom he loved, and after this a second younger sister. the latter followed him to egypt. here she witnessed, together with cambyses, a young lion fighting against a young dog, and when the dog was being beaten, its brother broke its chain and came to its aid, and the two together got the better of the lion. cambyses was delighted at the sight, but his sister wept. when cambyses perceived this he asked the cause of her tears; she replied that she wept because she thought of smerdis when she saw the brother running to help the brother, and knew that no one would come to help him (cambyses). for this speech, the greeks say, cambyses put his sister to death. the egyptian account is that at table she took a lettuce, stripped off the leaves and asked cambyses whether it looked better when bare or when full of leaves, and when he replied that it looked better when full of leaves, she retorted: 'and yet you have made it bare by desolating the house of cyrus.' in a rage cambyses gave her a kick, and as she was pregnant, she miscarried and died. such was the fury of cambyses against his own family, and he was guilty of similar acts against the persians. he asked those persians who sat with him and croesus what sort of a man he appeared to be in comparison with his father. they replied that he was greater than his father; for he possessed all that cyrus had possessed, and egypt and the sea in addition. this answer did not please croesus, who said: 'o son of cyrus, to me thou seemest not to be equal to thy father, for thou hast not a son to leave behind thee such as he left in thee'; and when he heard this cambyses was pleased and praised the answer of croesus. he is said once to have asked prexaspes whom he most honoured, and who carried in messages to him--his son was cup-bearer to cambyses, an office of no slight honour--what do the persians think and say of me? prexaspes replied: 'o sire, in all other things they praise thee greatly, but they say thou art too much given to wine.' cambyses answered in displeasure: 'so the persians now say that owing to wine i am mad and not in my right mind; their previous answer was untrue.' he remembered that they had called him greater than cyrus, and said to prexaspes: 'see now for yourself whether the persians speak the truth, or whether they tell foolish tales. there is your son in the portico; if i hit him in the heart it is clear that the persians are wrong in what they say. but if i miss they are right and i am not in my senses.' the king drew the bow, hit the youth, ordered the body to be opened and the wound to be examined. when it was found that the arrow was in the heart he laughed, and in great delight said to the father: 'now i have proved to you, prexaspes, that i am not mad, but that the persians are out of their senses. tell me now, did you ever see such an archer?' as prexaspes saw that he was not in his right mind, and was afraid for himself, he replied: 'i believe that god himself could not shoot so well.' on another occasion he caused twelve of the leading persians for some trifling cause to be buried alive, head downwards. then croesus felt it right to warn him with words such as these: 'o king, do not yield in everything to youth and anger; restrain and bridle thyself. it is good to look beforehand, and prudence is wise. thou slayest men of thy own nation without good reason and killest youths. if thou persistest in this, beware lest the persians fall from thee. thy father cyrus charged and bade me many times to warn thee and counsel thee for good.' cambyses answered: 'dost thou venture to advise me, who hast governed thine own land so well, and advised my father to cross the araxes against the massagetæ, when they were willing to come over the river? a bad ruler of your country, you have brought yourself to destruction, and cyrus also who followed your advice: you shall not escape me; i have long been seeking for an excuse to take you.' he seized his bow in order to shoot him, but croesus escaped and ran out. as he could not shoot him, he ordered his servants to seize him and put him to death. the servants, who knew his manner, hid croesus; if cambyses changed his mood and asked for croesus they intended to bring him and receive presents, but if not, they would put him to death. not long after cambyses asked for croesus, and the servants said that he was alive. then cambyses said he was glad that croesus was alive; but those who had preserved him should not escape, but die; and this sentence he executed." "while cambyses was passing his time in egypt two brothers rose up against him, two magians, one of whom cambyses had left behind as the overseer of his house. this man, whose name was patizeithes, rebelled when he found that the death of smerdis was concealed, that few persians knew of it, and the majority believed him to be alive. building on this, he intended to make himself master of the throne. he had a brother who was very like smerdis and had also the same name. when he had persuaded this brother to take his advice in everything, he put him on the throne, and sent heralds in every direction, even to egypt, to announce to the army that henceforth they should obey smerdis the son of cyrus, and not cambyses. the envoy to egypt found cambyses and the army at ecbatana in syria; he came forward and proclaimed his message. when cambyses heard this, he thought that what was said was true, that prexaspes had betrayed him, and when sent to kill smerdis had not done so. he said to prexaspes: 'is this the way you have carried out my commands?' but prexaspes answered: 'sire, it is not true that thy brother has rebelled against thee, and no war will ever proceed from him. i myself, after executing your commands, buried him with my own hands. if the dead can rise then expect that astyages the mede will rise again; but if things continue as they have hitherto been, no evil will happen to you from smerdis. i think that we should send for the herald and find out from him by whose order he announces to us that we are to obey smerdis.' this advice pleased cambyses. the herald was fetched, and prexaspes asked him: 'you say that you come as a messenger from smerdis, the son of cyrus. if you tell us the truth, whether you saw smerdis when he gave these orders, or whether you received them from one of his servants, you shall go away uninjured from this place.' the man replied: 'since cambyses left for egypt i have not seen smerdis; the magian whom cambyses left as overseer of his house gave me these commands; he said that smerdis the son of cyrus bade me make this proclamation to you.' then cambyses said: 'prexaspes, you like a brave man have done what i commanded, and avoided all blame; but who of the persians is it that has taken the name of smerdis and revolted against me.' prexaspes replied: 'o king, i believe that i understand what has happened; the rebels are the magians, patizeithes, the overseer of the palace, and his brother smerdis.' then cambyses was struck with the truth of the speech, and the fulfilment of the dream, and when he found that he had killed his brother for no result, he wept and bewailed his misfortune, and determined to lead his army with all haste against susa and the magians. but as he was mounting his horse, the button fell from the end of the sheath of his sword, and the naked point entered his thigh in the same place in which he had once stabbed apis. as he believed that the wound was mortal, he asked for the name of the city. he was told that it was ecbatana. it had been previously announced to him at buto that he would die at ecbatana; and he believed that he would end his days as an old man at ecbatana in media. but when he heard the name he was brought to his senses by the terror of the calamity which threatened him from the magians, and by the wound, and said, with clear understanding of the oracle, that it was fated for the son of cyrus to die there. after some twenty days he caused the most distinguished of the persians who were with him to be summoned, and said: 'persians, i am brought to such a state that i must reveal to you what i have most carefully concealed. when i was in egypt i saw in my sleep a dream,--would that i had never seen it. it seemed to me that a messenger came from home, who announced that my brother sat on the royal throne and touched heaven with his head. then i was afraid that my brother was taking the throne from me, and i acted more rashly than wisely,--it is not permitted to human nature to avoid the coming future. i sent, fool that i was, prexaspes to susa to slay smerdis. after the crime, i felt myself secure; i never believed that another would rise up against me after the death of smerdis. wholly in error concerning that which was to come, i have murdered my brother without sufficient cause, and am nevertheless deprived of the sovereignty. it was the rebellion of the magian smerdis which the demon revealed to me in a dream. this deed i have done: be ye assured that smerdis, the son of cyrus, is no longer alive. the magian whom i left behind as overseer of the palace and his brother smerdis have obtained possession of the throne. he who before all others would have averted this disgrace from me, is no more; he has met his death by wicked murder at the hands of his nearest relation. as he is no more, and i am dying, persians, i must tell you what to do after my death. and so i charge you, calling on the royal gods, all of you, but chiefly the achæmenids, who are here present, not to allow the dominion to pass over to the medes. if they obtain it by craft, take it from them by craft; if they maintain it by force, take it away by yet stronger force. if ye do this, the earth will bring forth fruit for you, and your wives will bear children, and your flocks will increase, and ye will be free men for all time. but if ye do not acquire the sovereignty again or attempt to recover it, i pray the gods that the opposite may happen to you all, and that every persian may come to such an end as mine.' when cambyses had thus spoken he lamented all the deeds that he had done, and the persians rent their garments and lamented and cried aloud. when the bone had gangrened and the thigh became inflamed, cambyses, the son of cyrus died, after he had sat on the throne for seven years and four months, without leaving behind him son or daughter." if in the narrative given by herodotus of the fate of psammenitus and the campaign of cambyses against the ethiopians we perceived egyptian and greek traditions, and along with them a poetical source, so in this account of the crimes of cambyses and his death we have obviously greek-egyptian legends and echoes of iranian poetry existing side by side. to the first we may trace the wounding of apis, as already observed, and then the explanation of a custom which is hinted at in the avesta, the marriage with a sister, by the decision of the judges and the example of cambyses, the oracle of buto, and its explanation by the syrian ecbatana, the reason for the wound in the thigh of cambyses (the similar wound inflicted on apis), and, as we shall see, the warning of croesus. the legends did not trouble themselves with the contradiction that, though they represent cambyses as outraging osiris-apis, and ptah, they allow him to ask advice from egyptian gods--a proceeding which is not made more credible by the fact that stephanus of byzantium identifies the syrian ecbatana with bataneia, and observes that the city of hamath (amatha) was also called akmatha, though the invention of the oracle is thus made more intelligible.[ ] like his countrymen before him, herodotus must have been struck by the contrast between the long reign, the achievements and successes of cyrus, and the short reign and disastrous end of his son. the egyptian-greek tradition explained it by the wickedness of cambyses, and this wickedness is the result of his attack on apis; the frenzy of cambyses begins immediately after this with the murder of his brother. in herodotus the frenzy begins even earlier; the supposed maltreatment of the corpse of amasis must belong to the period immediately after the victory over the egyptians, _i.e._ to the period before the march to the south, and consequently herodotus represents cambyses as out of his mind when entering on this campaign, and continuing in his frenzy till he is compelled to return. the reason which he gives for this madness is that cambyses, though herodotus represents him in another story as full of ambitious plans from his youth, was afflicted from his birth, as it was said, with a severe disease, which some call "the sacred sickness," and that in great sickness of the body it was not strange that the mind also should be affected.[ ] by the sacred sickness the greeks meant epilepsy, or spasmodic attacks in general, which were ascribed to the anger of the gods. with complete consistency herodotus represents the madness as going on, till cambyses is seized with anxiety concerning the rebellion of the magian, and finds himself wounded in the thigh. with this observation he introduces the public confession and remorse--the last words of cambyses. other greeks explain the crimes of cambyses in a more natural manner. diodorus is of opinion that he was naturally furious and changeful in his moods; the greatness of the kingdom made him yet wilder and more proud of spirit, and after the capture of pelusium and memphis he could not bear his prosperity as a man should.[ ] the "laws" (of plato) lay the blame on the education of cambyses. in the field from his youth, surrounded by war and danger, cyrus left the education of his sons to the royal women, and overlooked the fact that his children were not brought up and educated in the customary persian manner. the women and eunuchs brought them up as if they needed no control, and, while yet mere children, were prosperous and perfect men. no one was allowed to contradict them; all must praise what they said or did; thus they grew up luxurious and uncontrolled; their spirits were over-full of ambition. when after such adulation and uncontrolled freedom they grew up and received the kingdom, one slew the other, enraged at his equal position, and then, maddened by drink and debauchery, lost the dominion owing to the medes and the so-called eunuch, who despised the foolishness of cambyses.[ ] it is more difficult to trace the tendencies of the poetical source which has become united with the legends in the narrative of herodotus than to separate the legends themselves, and fix the motives which have determined the conception and judgment of the greeks about cambyses. from what other source could the vision of cambyses, the shot into the heart of the cup-bearer, have come, or the conversations of cambyses with prexaspes, or the final words of cambyses? if these traits are only before us as fragments at third or fourth hand, their connection with the narrative of the campaign against the long-lived ethiopians is undeniable (the bow of the ethiopians is the point of connection). and if we call to mind that in his last exhortations to his two sons, cyrus calls down blessings on the son who remains well disposed to his brother, and imprecates curses on the son who is the first to do evil (p. ), the structure of the poem becomes clear. it founds the misfortune of cambyses on his disobedience to his father's command, and exhibits the penalty of disobedience and crime committed against a brother. smerdis is able to draw the bow of the ethiopian further than cambyses and all the other persians. this excites envy and jealousy in his brother, who sends smerdis back to persia. then in a dream he sees him on the throne, and his head reaches to heaven. he sends prexaspes to persia, who slays the son of cyrus in the chase and buries him with his own hand. the instrument of the murder is quickly overtaken by punishment. had cambyses slain prexaspes himself intentionally or in anger, it would be conceivable; but the murder of his son is unintelligible. only poetical justice could execute vengeance for the fact that prexaspes had laid his hand on the son of cyrus, by representing cambyses as slaying with his own hand, without any personal reason whatever, the son of the man who by his own command had slain his brother, and who is best acquainted with this secret crime, the revelation of which would rouse the hearts of all the persians against the king. as the poem goes on, it has in store even heavier penalties for the man who has slain the son of cyrus. but it is not merely the murder of the young prexaspes which belongs to a poetical source. the same authority represents cambyses as becoming more and more deeply involved in guilt and crime against his house. when looking on at the two dogs which together got the better of the lion, his sister reminds him of the death of his brother. in his rage he ill-treats her and so destroys his long-cherished hope of posterity. the house of cyrus is desolate. he has mistrusted his brother without reason--the man whom he has trusted and made the governor of his palace rebels against him; he places his brother on the throne as the younger son of cyrus, and causes him to be proclaimed as king. in despair at such calamities, at the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the guilty cause, cambyses ends his days. he pays the penalty of his heavy guilt by confessing and lamenting his offence before the assembly of the chief persians. the curse of cyrus is fulfilled. if herodotus gives the account of the death of cambyses after the greek-egyptian legend, he is obviously following iranian poetry in the accompanying circumstances and in the speech of the dying cambyses. we have iranian conceptions in the answer of prexaspes: "if the dead can rise, your brother will return"; in the saying of cambyses to the persians: "if ye strive earnestly to win back the dominion, the earth will bring forth fruit, and your wives will bear children, and your flocks will increase." conceptions and ideas of this kind, expressed almost in the same words, have met us frequently in the avesta. the close of the speech of cambyses removes the guilt and points to the future, for he charges the persians, and above all the achæmenids, to risk everything that the dominion may not again pass to the medes. if the persians fight bravely with all the means at their disposal for the dominion, all will go well with them, if not cambyses prays the gods that the reverse may happen to them; may every persian die like himself by a most miserable death, _i.e._ by suicide, which the doctrines of zarathrustra from their whole tenor must have most severely condemned. no doubt the persian epos had to explain the contrast in which the reign of cambyses stood to that of cyrus; no doubt it was a fact that the race of cyrus came to an end in the male line owing to his guilt. it was due to him that his reign was followed by that of an usurper; that rebellion broke out in all quarters, the kingdom became completely disintegrated, and the establishment of cyrus seemed ruined. the songs of the persians gave a reason for the sudden change in the manner indicated, by the murder of the brother and its results. but they would not have charged cambyses with madness or with any other offences than this combination required. they would not have forgotten his services to persia; the establishment of the persian power in the mediterranean, the victory over egypt, over the ethiopians of napata, and the negroes. it was not these poems which branded his campaign to the south as a mad undertaking, and represented it as a failure; they could not have opposed croesus as a wise adviser to cambyses, or allowed cambyses to speak of the miserable end of cyrus in the land of the massagetae. if these elements in the narratives of herodotus have not come down from greek-egyptian tradition, if the warning of croesus, in the form in which we have it, was not attached by him to his account of the death of cambyses, we should have to assume that in this case also the persian poems came to herodotus in their median counterparts--a hypothesis which is excluded by the distinctly ante-median and persian traits in the dying speech of cambyses. let us see whether information from other sources puts us in a position to establish the actual connection of affairs free from the admixture of greek-egyptian tradition and persian poetry. ctesias treated the reign of cambyses in detail in the twelfth book of his persian history. of this only a meagre excerpt has come down to us, according to which the narrative began with the statement that cambyses, in accordance with the last commands of his father, handed over chorasmia, bactria, parthia, and carmania to his brother tanyoxarkes, as ctesias calls him. then follows the conquest of egypt, as given above; and after this we are told: "there was a magian of the name of sphendadates who had committed some fault and been scourged by tanyoxarkes. the magian went to cambyses to calumniate his brother, saying that his mind was set on evil. as a proof of defection he alleged that tanyoxarkes would not come if he were sent for. cambyses bade his brother come, but he refused, being occupied with other business. then the magian became more persistent in his calumnies. amytis, who saw what was the magian's object, warned her son cambyses not to trust him. cambyses pretended not to trust him, but in reality reposed entire confidence in him. when cambyses bade his brother come for the third time, he obeyed. cambyses embraced him, but was none the less determined to put him out of the way; but he was anxious to carry out his design unknown to his mother. the deed was accomplished. the magian advises the king as follows: he was very like tanyoxarkes, the king might give orders that his head should be cut off as having accused his brother falsely; he would then secretly slay tanyoxarkes, and clothe him (the magian) in his robes, so that he might be taken for him. this was done. tanyoxarkes died by drinking bull's blood, and the magian was clothed in his garments and called tanyoxarkes. this was for a long time concealed from all except artasyras the hyrcanian and the eunuchs bagapates and izabates, who were most intimate with cambyses; to them alone had cambyses ventured to mention the matter. he caused the eunuchs of tanyoxarkes and labyzus, the chief of them, to be summoned, showed them the magian thus attired, and said: do you believe that this is tanyoxarkes? labyzus was astonished and said: what other man are we to think that he is? so greatly did the magian deceive men by his likeness to tanyoxarkes. the magian was now sent to bactria, and there conducted himself in all respects as tanyoxarkes. when five years had gone by amytis learnt what had been done from the eunuch tibetheus, whom the magian had caused to be beaten. she asked cambyses to give up sphendadates, but he refused. then she pronounced her curse, took poison, and died. when cambyses sacrificed, the blood of the sacrificial animals did not flow. he became dejected, and when roxane bore him a boy without a head, he was even more out of heart, and the magians interpreted the signs to mean that he could leave no successor. his mother appeared to him in a dream and threatened him for the murder, and this made him more dejected than ever. when he came to babylon, by way of pastime he chipped a piece of wood with a sword, and so hit the muscle of his thigh, and died on the eleventh day after, when he had reigned eighteen years. before his death artasyras and bagapates had resolved that the magian should reign; and he reigned after the death of cambyses." the length of the reign of cambyses is incorrect, as indeed almost all the numbers in ctesias are wrong. it is also a mistake that in his account cambyses and his brother are the sons of cyrus and amytis the daughter of astyages. as we have said, they were the sons of cyrus and cassandane, who died before cyrus (v. ). the object of ctesias was to prove the statements of herodotus incorrect by opposing them with others. the elevation of amytis to be the mother of the brothers, and the part which the account of ctesias ascribes to this supposed mother, shows that ctesias has here followed a median version, in which the daughter of astyages became, not the mother of cyrus, it is true, but the mother of his successor, the ruler of persia and media,--the same version which, as we have already seen, assigns to amytis the greatest influence on cyrus, and in the present instance on his son cambyses. without doubt this version is derived from a poetical source; that is proved by a number of traits: the calumniation of the brother, the double introduction of the scourging, the three-fold summoning before the king, the conversation of cambyses with the eunuch, the three-fold increase of the distress of cambyses, the suicide and curse of amytis, the signs at sacrifice and the abortion, the appearance of the dead, which fills up the measure and drives cambyses to death. as in the previous case, in this form of the poems, it was the median queen who punished oebares, who incited cyrus to revolt, for this act and for the death of her father, so here she visits the ruler of the persians and medes for his crime. against this view of the account of ctesias it may be urged that the medes would take the side of the magian more vigorously than that of amytis, for the magian was apparently a mede. herodotus, at any rate, once represents gobryas as calling him a mede.[ ] cambyses, it is true, does not call him so, but in his last speech merely urges the persians not to let the empire revert to the medes, which means no more than that the empire is not to go back to the medes on the extinction of the house of cyrus, when his kingdom is being broken up. we shall see that the usurper was not a mede, and is only called a mede by herodotus because he wrongly thought that all the magians were exclusively medes (v. ). but as the story of ctesias obviously goes back to a poetical source, we are not carried any further by it in establishing the actual facts of the case. a third story of the death of cambyses, that of trogus, is also retained in an excerpt only. it is apparently taken from the persian history of deinon. "cambyses added egypt to the kingdom of his father. enraged at the superstition of the egyptians, he commanded the temples of apis and the other gods to be destroyed. he also sent an army to conquer the far-famed temple of ammon, but it was overwhelmed by storms of sand. then in a dream he saw his brother as the future king. terrified by this vision, he did not hesitate to add the murder of a brother to the burning of temples. for this horrible service he sent cometes, a magian, one of his trusted servants. meantime, his sword coming accidentally out of the sheath, he wounded himself deeply in the thigh, and died, as a penalty either for the murder of his brother which he had commanded, or for the burning of the temples. when the magian heard this he hastened to commit the crime before the news of the death of the king was spread abroad; and when he had killed smerdis, to whom the throne belonged, he brought in his brother oropastes. this brother was very like smerdis in form and feature; and as no one suspected the deception, oropastes became king instead of smerdis. the matter was the more secret because among the persians the king lives in retirement by reason of his majesty."[ ] darius, in his inscriptions on mount behistun, has left us the authentic though very compressed history of cambyses. "kambujiya, the son of kurus," he tells us, "was of our race, was previously king here. this kambujiya had a brother, bardiya by name, of the same father and mother as kambujiya. kambujiya slew this bardiya. when kambujiya had slain bardiya the people did not know that bardiya was dead. then kambujiya marched against egypt. when kambujiya marched against egypt the people became rebellious, and the lie spread both in persia and in media and in the other provinces. there was a man, a magian, gaumata by name; he rose up from pisiyauvada, from mount arakadris, which is there. it was in the month viyakhna, on the fourteenth day, that he rose up. he lied to the people; i am bardiya, the son of kurus, the brother of kambujiya. then the whole kingdom rebelled against kambujiya; it went over to the other, both persia and media and the rest of the provinces. he took them for his own; he was king; he seized the empire. in the month garmapada, on the ninth day, it was that he seized the dominion. then kambujiya died, for he took his own life."[ ] hence we may establish the true course of events in something like the following form. cyrus made a certain division of the kingdom; under the sovereignty of the elder son he assigned to the younger chorasmia, bactria, parthia, and carmania, and thus sowed the germ of contention between the brothers. the younger was called bardiya. this name sounded to the greek as berdis, and then it passed into smerdis, as bagabukhsa becomes megabyzus.[ ] if xenophon calls smerdis tanaoxares, and ctesias tanyoxarkes, this can only be an epithet which the persians gave to smerdis. the old bactrian _thanvarakhshathra_ would mean king of the bow. the persians might give this name to smerdis, as their poems celebrate him as the best drawer of the bow; it was this superiority of smerdis which, according to the poems of the persians, aroused the jealousy of cambyses. the tradition of iran can tell of the three best shots that were ever made:[ ]--the best was made by arshana, the son of kava kavata (v. , ); and king bahram gor slays his beloved because she does not sufficiently admire his skill with the bow. bardiya did not accompany his brother to egypt; so that he could not have been sent back from thence. on the contrary, cambyses had conceived a suspicion of him even before the campaign to egypt; he was afraid that his brother in bactria would make use of the distance at which he would be to seize the throne in secret, and the more extensive the conquests which cambyses intended to make in africa the more dangerous would the possibility appear to him. he caused him to be put to death before he set out to egypt. his death remained a secret. by whom and how bardiya was killed, and how the secret was kept, whether by an arrangement such as that described by ctesias or by some other means, we cannot decide. the kingdom, the persians, and the princes of the persians did not know but that bardiya was alive. but the magian gaumata is aware of the fact. of the writers of the west, trogus pompeius alone gives the true name of the usurper in the grecised form of cometes. as the name is correct in trogus, the name of the brother of cometes, whom he calls oropastes, may also be correct. but the narrative in the excerpt in trogus must be so far altered in accordance with the version of herodotus that cambyses left oropastes behind as overseer of the palaces, and that he placed his brother gaumata on the throne. in ctesias the man who suggests the murder becomes himself the false bardiya and the future king. the inscription of darius speaks only "of the magian gaumata," of "his leading adherents." the rebellion of gaumata was not delayed till the death of cambyses, as ctesias supposed. it occurred, as the inscription shows, while he was still on the nile. during the absence of cambyses the lie spread in persia, media, and the rest of the provinces. the inscription mentions the day on which gaumata rebelled, and the place where it happened: at pisiyauvada in mount arakadris this false bardiya arose. as the position of this place and mountain is not defined, as is elsewhere the case in the inscription of darius, by the addition of the name of the country, we may assume that it was in persia that the false bardiya, as his interests and the position of affairs required, came forward, and that he first called on the persians to acknowledge him as king and lord of the realm, as indeed he must have done if he desired success. the inscription does not tell us that gaumata was a mede, or that the medes first recognized him as their king; it merely says: on the fourteenth of the month viyakhna (_i.e._ in the spring of the year b.c.) the whole kingdom rose in rebellion against cambyses, both persia and media and the rest of the provinces. we shall see below that even after the fall of gaumata it was not media which gave the sign for rebellion against his murderers, but that that country followed the example of the elamites and babylonians, and was led by uvakhshathra, a man of the race of cyaxares. first persia, then media, then the rest of the lands recognized the false bardiya as their king; "he took from cambyses persia, media, and the rest of the provinces," says the inscription. then in the month of garmapada (_i.e._ in july or august) the false bardiya was crowned at pasargadae (v. ). that gaumata was recognized as king in babylonia is not only proved by the assertion of darius, but also by two babylonian tablets, which are dated from the th elul and st tisri "in the first year of king barziya."[ ] on the news of the rebellion cambyses makes aryandes satrap of egypt,[ ] and sets out against the usurper. on this march, at ecbatana in syria, according to herodotus, _i.e._ at batanea or hamath, or at babylon, as ctesias asserts, or on the return to damascus, according to josephus,[ ] he died. however dark may be the shadows which fall on the figure of cambyses, it has received blacker traits than truth can confirm in the legends of greece and egypt, and, to some extent, in the poems of media and persia. we have mentioned the story which ascribes to him ambitious plans in his boyish years; in the estimate which the persians form of him according to their poems it is only his love of wine which is reprobated. more important is the judgment which the persians really passed on cambyses; herodotus tells us they called cyrus the father, but cambyses, because he was severe and ambitious, they called the master.[ ] from this sentence--from despotic severity and violence, whatever may have been the degree in which they were present--it is a long way to the picture of the frantic tyrant which herodotus has sketched on the basis of these legends and poems. what we know by credible tradition of the crimes of cambyses, apart from his act against his brother, and the supposed outburst of rage against his sister, is limited to the penalty which he imposed upon memphis for the murder of the herald and the crew, and the punishment of sisamnes, one of the seven judges who was found guilty of bribery and unjust judgment. he had him executed, the corpse was flayed, and the judge's seat covered with the skin, on which the son, who was named his successor, was to give judgment.[ ] the punishment of memphis cannot be called cruel in the spirit of these times; and the punishment of the unjust judge is in the manner of an oriental prince who loves justice. the reign of cambyses was undoubtedly marked by the effort to continue the acts of his father, and in this effort he shows both vigour and resolution. the idea of creating a fleet for the persian empire was bold and happy, and bore fruits in the submission of cyprus and samos without a blow. the preparations for the campaign against egypt were made with great prudence, and proved adequate and effectual. but even before he set out for egypt he had cast the lot which decided his life. how far the conduct of his brother, which is suggested in the version of ctesias, excused the suspicion of cambyses, we cannot decide. he did not venture to leave the kingdom so long as his brother ruled over the eastern half of it; he feared his rebellion during his absence, and removed him out of the way. the painful secrecy of the deed shows that cambyses was tormented with remorse and shame for this crime. at the gates of egypt he conquered in a mighty battle. he used the victory to storm the strong border fortresses of egypt, and then at once turned against memphis, the most important city and fortress of the enemy. the treatment of the captive psammenitus repeats the mild manner of cyrus towards conquered princes; we have seen above what clemency cambyses showed after the conquest was completed towards the egyptians and their temples. in possession of egypt, he intended to achieve in africa what his father had done in asia; far to the south and west the country was to be subject to the persians. the campaign against napata led to the conquest of that kingdom. by maintaining this conquest, the supremacy of persia over egypt was rendered secure from attacks on that side, and the negro tribes to the south of napata were kept in obedience, though previously they had been visited by the pharaohs only in flying incursions. it was at napata that, according to the tradition preserved by diodorus, strabo, and josephus, cambyses lost his sister, and with her the hope of an heir, by his own brutal violence, as the songs represent, when his sister reminded him of the death of his brother. but strabo and diodorus observe, as has been shown above, that he named the city after his sister "to honour her." no doubt the disquiet of his conscience increased the longer he remained without children. what was to become of the kingdom after his death? the brother, whom he had killed, had only left a daughter.[ ] burdened with new anxiety, if not with new guilt, he turned back from napata. the disaster, which befell the army at premnis, and the failure of the expedition against the oasis of sivah, though it did not involve the loss of , men, might seem to him proofs that he had brought upon himself the anger of auramazda and mithra. then the phenicians refused to march against the carthaginians, and he was unable to compel them. the absence of any heir, the misfortunes which had fallen upon him, increased his inward torments. he became more distrustful, passionate, and savage. he may have sought forgetfulness in wine, but the remedy only increased his violence. he shrank from seeing again his home and the desolate house of cyrus, and remained inactive and irresolute for a year and a half in egypt; in spite of the danger which attached to the absence of the ruler of so vast a kingdom. in persia and the provinces nothing was known of the death of bardiya. the neglect of the kingdom, the absence of the king for three years, inspire gaumata with the courage to make use of his opportunity, and turn the secrecy of the crime against cambyses. the persians declare for the brother who is among them, as against the distant king who seemed to have forgotten persia in egypt; even the satraps of the other countries soon decide in favour of bardiya, as for years they had seen nothing of cambyses. in three months after his appearance gaumata was formally crowned. the account of the rebellion startled cambyses from his stupor in egypt; he placed a satrap over the conquests he had made and hastened to syria, where he learnt the full amount of the usurper's success. with anger he sees the crown of cyrus on the head of a miserable pretender. if he is effectually to contend against the opponent who has risen to such power, he must acknowledge himself before the persians and the kingdom as the murderer of his brother, and even if he makes this shameful confession, will the persians believe and follow him? will they not think that he announces the murder in order to thrust his brother from the throne? in despair he perceives that he has destroyed the house of cyrus, and ruined the work of his father, the fruit of thirty years of effort and struggle. he sees no means of preventing the course of affairs, the ruin of the kingdom of which he is the cause. he acknowledges before the princes of the persians what he has done, commands them to make good the damage which he has caused, and seals his declaration by taking his own life. such was the tragical end of the son of the great cyrus. footnotes: [ ] herod. , - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] vol. i. . diod. , . [ ] justin. , . [ ] the reading "year " in the first is confirmed by "year " in the second inscription. lepsius ("monatsberichte berl. akad." , s. , ) has examined the difficulties which arise regarding the time of cambyses' campaign against egypt, from the contradiction between these dates and the statements of the greeks. [ ] the inscriptions also give the name cambyses in the form kambuza. [ ] lepsius, "z. aegypt. spr." , s. . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéol." , ff.; brugsch, "hist. d'egypt," p. , . in the "history of egypt," brugsch reads uzahorenpiris for uzahorsun. [ ] stephen. byz. [greek: agbatana batana amatha]. cf. v. , and von gutschmid, "n. beitrage," s. . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] "excerpt. de virt." p. = , . [ ] plato, "legg." p. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] justin. , . [ ] so oppert according to the persian inscription in "journal asiatique," , , , ; and according to the second series, "records of the past," , . [ ] barziya in the babylonian text. smerdis, the favourite of polycrates (anacreon, fragm. , ed. bergk), was no doubt named after the brother of cambyses. [ ] sachau, "albiruni," p. ; nöldeke, "tabari," s. , . [ ] elul and tisri fall in september and october. the last year of cambyses is b.c. according to herodotus, cambyses reigned seven years and five months, and the magian more than seven months; the two make up eight years. the number of the persian days of the month are repeated in the babylonian version of the behistun inscription. hence the persians adopted the year of the assyrians and babylonians as well as their cuneiform writing, but they had independent names for the months. unfortunately the names of the months in the babylonian text are more frequently destroyed than not, so that we can only be certain in giving kislev (november-december) as corresponding to the athriadiya of the persians, tebet (december-january) to anamaka, iyar (may-june) to taigarshis. oppert maintains that we can also identify the babylonian adar or veadar (febr.-march) with the viyakhna of the persians; but the text is uncertain in this passage. finally, we may with tolerable certainty regard garmapada (_i.e._ the path of heat) as corresponding to july and august, to the tammuz or ab of the babylonians. if viyakhna is really adar, the proclamation of the magian took place in march, b.c., and his coronation in garmapada (july and august). this according to darius was followed by the death of cambyses. the two tablets quoted date from september and october in the first year of barziya. according to herodotus, the magian reigned more than seven months after the death of cambyses, _i.e._ down to the spring of b.c. according to the inscription of behistun, darius slew him on the tenth of bagayadis (_i.e._ sacrifice to the gods), which would thus be parallel to the nisan of the babylonians, _i.e._ to our april. [ ] herod. , . [ ] "antiqu." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , . chapter xiii. the rise of darius. "the persians, when they heard the words of cambyses," so herodotus continues his narrative, "did not believe that the magians had possessed themselves of the throne; on the contrary, they thought that cambyses had said what he had said of the death of smerdis in order to deceive them, that the whole of persia might rise against smerdis. they believed that smerdis the son of cyrus was on the throne; for even prexaspes solemnly denied that he had slain smerdis; after the death of cambyses it was dangerous for him to allow that he had put to death the son of cyrus with his own hand. the magian who had taken the name of cambyses reigned in security and showed great mildness to all his subjects. immediately after he had got possession of the throne, he proclaimed freedom from military service and tribute for three years to all the nations over whom he reigned. but in the eighth month of his reign it was discovered who he was. otanes, the son of pharnaspes, was one of the first of the persians in descent and wealth. he first conceived a suspicion of the magian because he never went out of the citadel, nor allowed any of the leading persians to approach him. phaedyme, the daughter of otanes, had been the wife of cambyses, and with the rest of the wives she had passed over to the magian. otanes caused the question to be put to his daughter, whether the man with whom she lay was smerdis the son of cyrus, or another. she replied that she had never seen smerdis, and could not tell who he was. then otanes sent a second time: 'if you do not know smerdis, ask atossa, with whom you and she lie, for she will know her own brother.' the daughter answered: 'i cannot speak with atossa, or see any other of the women, for since this man, whoever he is, came to the throne, he has kept us all apart, and sent one in one direction, and another in another.' when otanes heard this, the matter became yet clearer. he sent a third message to his daughter, saying: 'my daughter, you are come of a noble race and must accept the risk which your father lays upon you. if this man is not smerdis the son of cyrus, but the person whom i suspect that he is, he must not go unpunished for associating with you, and exercising dominion over the persians. do as follows: when you perceive that he is asleep, feel for his ears. if he has ears, be sure that he is the son of cyrus, but if he has none he is smerdis the magian.' phaedyme sent an answer to her father, saying that she would run the greatest risk in doing as he bade, for if the man had no ears, and she was found feeling for them, he would put her out of the way; however, she would do it. and when it came to her turn to go to the magian, she did all that her father had bidden her; she lay with him, and when he was asleep she felt for his ears, and easily discovered that he had none. when cyrus was king he had for some grave reason cut off this man's ears. when it was day she sent her father word how the matter stood." "otanes related all the circumstances to aspathines and gobryas, who were the first among the persians and most worthy of confidence, and as they had also had their suspicions that the case was so, they listened to the proposals of otanes. the three were of opinion that each should join with him the persians whom he counted most worthy of confidence. otanes brought intaphernes; gobryas, megabyzus; and aspathines, hydarnes. to these six at susa, darius the son of hystaspes came from persia, for hystaspes was satrap of persia, and when he came, the six resolved to make him their associate. they met, pledged mutual fidelity, and took counsel. and when it came to darius' turn to give his opinion, he said: 'i believed that i alone knew that the magian was king, and that smerdis the son of cyrus was dead, and for that reason i came with haste to put the magian to death. but as i feel that you also know this and not i only, we must at once proceed to action without delay; for that will be dangerous.' then otanes spoke: 'o son of hystaspes, thou art the son of a brave father, and thou showest thy courage not less than he. but do not so hasten the matter without consideration; begin it with prudence. we must be more numerous, and then make our attempt.' darius replied: 'ye men that are present, if ye enter on the matter as otanes wishes, ye will come to a shameful end. some one who seeks his own advantage will betray the matter to the magian. ye ought to have taken the matter on yourselves and so accomplished it. but as ye have resolved to take in more confederates, and have confided the matter to me, it must be done to-day. if this day passes by, i tell you that i will allow no informer to be before me; i will myself betray you to the magian.' when otanes saw darius so eager, he said: 'as you compel us to hasten the matter and allow no delay, tell us how shall we enter the palace and overcome them? you know yourself--if you have not seen, you have heard--that guards are set; how shall we pass by them?' 'many things,' darius said, 'may be proved by deeds and not by words; other things may be done in word but no brilliant deed corresponds to them. you know that it is not difficult to pass through the guards that are set. no one will prevent men of our rank; one will give way from respect, another from fear. then i have an excellent excuse for passing through, if i say that i have just come from persia and have to give a message from my father to the king. if an untruth must be told, let it be told. if a man seeks for no advantage to himself by his untruth, he who tells the truth may be a liar, and he who lies may be a truthful man. if any of the door-keepers allow us to pass willingly by, this will be in the future an advantage for him, but any one who opposes us will show at once that he is our enemy; we will then force our way and begin the work.' then gobryas said: 'we can never with greater honour win back the empire, or, if we fail, find a more honourable death. are not we persians ruled by a mede, a magian, a fellow without ears? those of you who were with cambyses when sick remember what he imprecated on the persians if they did not seek to regain the dominion. at that time we did not believe him, we thought that he spoke to deceive us. now i give my vote to you, darius, and go straight from this consultation to the magian.' so gobryas spake and all agreed with him. "while they were thus deliberating, the following incident happened. after solemn deliberation it seemed advisable to the magians to make prexaspes their friend; he had been cruelly treated by cambyses, he alone knew of the death of smerdis, and was of great influence among the persians. for this reason they sent for him, and sought by pledges and oaths to bind him not to reveal to any one the deception he had practised on the persians, and they promised him everything in their power. when prexaspes agreed to do as they wished, they further proposed that he should summon the persians under the walls of the citadel; mount a tower and tell them that they were governed by smerdis and by no other. this request the magians made because the persians had great confidence in prexaspes, and he had repeatedly told them that smerdis was alive and his death a fiction. when prexaspes declared his readiness they summoned the persians to the tower and bade him speak. but he, purposely forgetting what they had requested, began to speak of the race of cyrus, and when he came to cyrus himself he enumerated the blessings which he had provided for the persians, and going yet further he revealed the truth, declaring that he had concealed it before because it was dangerous for him to say what had been done, but now the necessity was laid upon him to reveal it. and now he said, that, compelled by cambyses, he had slain smerdis, and that magians were on the throne. when he had imprecated a bitter curse upon the persians if they did not win back the kingdom, and take vengeance on the magians, he threw himself head foremost down from the tower. all his life he had been an honourable man, and such he died. "when they had resolved to attack the magians without delay, the seven persians invoked the gods, and set forth on the way, without knowing what had happened to prexaspes. when they had proceeded half the distance, they heard of it. they slipped aside to consider the matter. and otanes with some others were of opinion that they must wait, for all would be in confusion, but darius and the rest declared that without hesitation they must carry out what they had resolved upon. while they were thus at variance, seven pairs of hawks appeared, which pursued and tore to pieces two pairs of vultures. when the seven saw this they all took the view of darius, and encouraged by the birds, went to the palace. when they reached the gates it happened as darius expected. the guards respectfully allowed the first men among the persians to pass through, as though they were led by some divine guide; no one suspected them, and no one asked any questions. but when they came to the portico, they came upon the eunuchs who carried messages in to the king. these asked what they wanted, threatened the guards for allowing them to pass, and detained them. the conspirators encouraged each other, drew their swords, struck down those who sought to detain them, and burst at a run into the hall. the two magians were there at the time, consulting about the affair of prexaspes. when they heard the noise and the cry of the eunuchs, they sprang up to see what was the matter, then hastened back and made ready for defence. one seized a bow, the other a spear. the first could not use the bow, for the conspirators were close upon him, but the other wounded aspathines in the thigh and hit intaphernes in the eye. the magian with the bow retired into a dark chamber off the hall, and wished to close the door, but darius and gobryas hastened after him; gobryas seized and held him, and when darius hesitated to strike lest in the darkness he should hit gobryas, gobryas cried out: 'strike even though you pierce us both.' darius did so and smote the magian only. when both were slain, their heads were cut off; the two conspirators who were wounded remained to guard the citadel; the other five rushed out, called the persians together, and showed them the heads. when the persians heard of the deception of the magians, and what had happened, they thought it right to do the same; they drew their swords, and slew every magian whom they could find, and had they not been prevented by the approach of night, not a magian would have been left." the account given by trogus of the overthrow of the medes, so far as it has been preserved to us, differs only in unimportant points from the narrative of herodotus. in order to gain the favour of the people, the magians remitted the tribute and military service for three years. this first excited suspicion in the mind of otanes, a persian of great position and discernment. he commanded his daughter, who was among the royal concubines,--they were secluded from each other,--to feel the ears of the king when asleep, for cambyses (in herodotus it is cyrus) had cut off both the ears of the magian. "informed by his daughter that the king had no ears, he announced this to the princes of the persians, urged them to put the false king to death, and bound them by an oath. seven persons shared in the conspiracy; and to prevent any change of opinion in time, or any disclosure, they at once put their swords under their garments and went to the palace. they cut down all who came in their way, and so reached the magians, who were not wanting in skill to defend themselves; with drawn weapons they slew two of the conspirators (in herodotus these are only wounded), but they were overpowered by numbers. gobryas seized one of them, and when his companions hesitated to strike lest they should pierce him along with the magian, for the affair took place in a dark room, he called out to them to strike even through his own body. but by good fortune he was uninjured and the magian was slain." in the narrative of ctesias, as we have seen, there is but one magian, sphendadates, whom cambyses himself had placed on the throne of bactria in the place of his murdered brother (tanyoxarkes), and had commanded him to play his part. astasyras, bagapates, and izabates are aware of the secret. after cambyses, sphendadates becomes king, whom astasyras and bagapates had determined to assist to the throne even before the death of cambyses. "when the magian was reigning under the name of tanyoxarkes, izabates came out of persia, where he had brought the body of cambyses, revealed all to the army, and insulted the magians. then he fled to the sanctuary, where he was seized and his head cut off. then seven distinguished persians met, and after pledging their faith mutually, they joined with themselves artasyras and then bagapates who had the keys of the royal citadel. and when the seven were admitted by bagapates to the citadel, they found the magian with a concubine from babylon. when he saw them, he sprang up, and as he had no weapons--for bagapates had secretly removed them all--he broke up a golden chair, and fought with the foot of this till he was cut down by the seven. he had reigned seven months."[ ] herodotus' narrative of the death of the magians again points to a poetical source. in the speech of the dying cambyses, in the curse which he imprecates if the kingdom is not maintained and recovered, and the indication that it must be done by force and treachery, this source introduces the new series of events in an attractive and exciting manner. but the concealment of the truth, the secret murder of his brother, have evil consequences which extend beyond the life of cambyses. the persians did not believe him; they thought that when dying he wished to make them the enemies of his brother. it required the penetration of otanes, the courage and devotion of his daughter, to bring the truth to light. at first otanes prudently admits two men only into the secret; each of the three then discloses it to a trusty friend, and when darius comes from persia to susa all are agreed to make him a confederate. his high mission has already been indicated in the poem by the dream of cyrus wherein he saw the son of hystaspes with wings on his shoulders, one of which overshadowed asia, the other europe. darius urged the confederates to immediate action. the faint justification of the deception which we find in herodotus shows that in this matter an attempt was made in the poetical source to keep in harmony with the iranian view of the absolute necessity of telling the truth. the decisive moment approaches nearer and with greater force to the magians. they have won the throne by treachery, they maintain it by cunning, inasmuch as they demand neither tribute nor soldiers from the subject countries; but at length they suffer for their treachery. they attempt to gain prexaspes; he is to declare publicly that the magian is the son of cyrus. prexaspes proceeds apparently to do this, but he is resolved to use the freedom of speech which the magians allow him for their ruin. he reveals the truth before all the people, and throws himself down from the tower. the punishment which the poem has already inflicted on prexaspes for the murder of bardiya in the death of his own son (p. ) is not sufficient. like the king at whose command he sinned, prexaspes ends his days by suicide. it is only by this complete revelation of the truth, this voluntary death, and tragic end, that he makes complete atonement for laying his hand on the son of cyrus. thus the figure of prexaspes belongs to the series of faithful persians, who, like oebares, knew how to serve not the king only but the prosperity of persia with complete devotion. while this took place before the citadel, and the magians in terror deliberated what they should do, now that the proceeding which was to establish their dominion had dashed them to the ground, the conspirators were already on the way. once more the prudent otanes hesitates; and once more darius urges haste. but the princes of the persians must perform the act alone; they cannot wait for the effect of the revelation of prexaspes on the people. the gods themselves give them a sign; the seven hawks tear to pieces the two vultures. the poem closes with the death-struggle of the magians, the readiness of gobryas to allow himself to be slain with the magian, _i.e._ the false king, and the happy restoration of the dominion of the achæmenids. the objections which can be made against this poetical account of the matter are obvious. the disbelief of the persians in the admissions of cambyses is hardly credible. if they had doubted at the first, they could doubt no longer when the king had sealed his accusation by his despair and death. when otanes imparts his discovery to gobryas and aspathines, they say that "they had already suspected it;" darius then comes, and when he has been unanimously received into the conspiracy he says: "that he had hitherto believed that he alone knew the secret, and had hastened from persia in order to slay the magian." the poem has no doubt inserted this scepticism of the persians to explain why they did not rise against the usurper immediately after the death of cambyses. the discovery by the absence of the ears must also belong to the poem; it is a tale of the harem, in the manner of the poetry of the east. the deed of prexaspes, whose place is taken by izabates in ctesias, is quite incredible and impossible in the context of herodotus. the magians had no reason whatever to urge prexaspes to a public explanation; no one among the people had any suspicion; seven men only are acquainted with the truth, and the magians have no intimation of their knowledge. if susa was the scene of the deed, the magians acted still more perversely, and prexaspes sacrificed himself at any rate without the hope of any immediate effect. the susians had not the least interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the king. if the achæmenids were no longer their masters, so much the better, inasmuch as they now enjoyed that mild dominion, which herodotus himself ascribes to the magians. in the narrative of the conspiracy two factors are obviously combined. otanes is the originator, darius joins the band later, but has already resolved to slay the magi. supported by gobryas he urges immediate action, and indeed forces the conspirators to act by the threat that, if there is any delay, he will himself reveal the conspiracy, while otanes, both in the deliberation, and on the way to the palace, is in favour of delay. it was obviously the effect of the poem to bring plainly into light the merit which, on the one hand, otanes and the five conspirators, and on the other darius, had earned in the great achievement of the overthrow of the magi, and to apportion a part of it to each section. the eminent position which the poem allots otanes is explained by the advantages and privileges which the house of otanes enjoyed in persia above the other tribal princes, and which were attributed to the part which he took in the removal of the dominion of the magi.[ ] according to herodotus otanes was the son of pharnaspes, and his sister cassandane was the wife of cyrus, the mother of cambyses and smerdis. he was thus the uncle of the king and of smerdis; and he was also the father-in-law of the king, for his daughter phaedyme was among the wives of cambyses. this is the account of herodotus. but we have convincing evidence that otanes was not the son of pharnaspes. as the father-in-law of cambyses he was sufficiently near the throne to take a leading part in the action. hystaspes, the father of darius, had already been sent back by cyrus from his camp on the jaxartes (p. ), according to herodotus, in order to keep watch over his son darius. in herodotus hystaspes is now overseer of persia, and his son comes to susa, to slay the magians with his own hand. in another passage herodotus himself relates that darius was sprung from the family of the achæmenids; hystaspes was the son of arsames, who was the son of ariaramnes, the brother of cambyses i. the father of cyrus.[ ] it is a fact that darius was sprung from the younger line of the house of achæmenes. the elder son of teispes, the son of achæmenes, was cambyses i., and the younger son was ariaramnes. his son was arsames, who was the father of hystaspes, the cousin of cambyses.[ ] when the older line became extinct in cambyses, the younger should have ascended the throne in the person of their head hystaspes, but the magians usurped it. what could be more natural than that hystaspes and darius should take the lead in overthrowing the usurper, and winning back the crown which had been taken from them. as the future head of the tribe of the pasargadae, the future heir to the throne takes the lead, and we may find in his six associates the remaining six tribes of the persians. we know that they had the privilege of marriage with the house of achæmenes, and of free entry to the king; the tribal princes also wore the upright _kidaris_, like the king (v. ). hence darius could say in herodotus: "who will refuse entrance to us, the chiefs of the persians?[ ]" and any one who should do so "would at once show himself to be their enemy;" hence, as herodotus relates, the seven, by divine guidance, arrived at the palace. thus far does tradition carry us; but the inscriptions of darius enable us to go a good step farther. "the dominion, which gaumata the magian took from cambyses, belonged of old to our family," so king darius tells us. "my father was vistaçpa, the father of vistaçpa was arsama, the father of arsama was ariyaramna, the father of ariyaramna was chaispis, and the father of chaispis was hakhamanis. this gaumata lied. he said: i am bardiya, the son of kurus; i am king. there was no one, either mede or persian, or of our family, who had taken the dominion from gaumata the magian.[ ] the people feared him; he put to death many people who had known bardiya, to prevent its being known that he was not bardiya the son of kurus. no one made any attempt against gaumata the magian, till i came. then i called auramazda to my aid; and auramazda assisted me. there is a citadel, Çikathauvatis by name, in the land of niçaya in media; there with men devoted to me i slew gaumata the magian and his chief adherents. this was in the month bagayadis, on the tenth day. i slew him, and took from him the dominion. by the grace of auramazda i became king. auramazda transferred the kingdom to me; i restored the dominion which was taken from our tribe. the places of worship (the houses of the gods in the babylonian version) which gaumata the magian destroyed, these i preserved for the people. i gave back to the families what gaumata had taken from them. what had been carried away i placed where it had been before. by the grace of auramazda i did this. i laboured till i placed this race of ours again in its position. as it was before, as though gaumata the magian had not robbed our family, so i arranged it again.[ ] these are the men who were present at the time when i slew gaumata the magian, who called himself bardiya; these men helped me at that time as my adherents: vindafrana (intaphernes in herodotus), the son of vayaçpara, a persian; utana (otanes), the son of thukhra, a persian; gaubaruva (gobryas), the son of marduniya (mardonius), a persian; vidarna (hydarnes), the son of bagabigna, a persian; bagabukhsa (megabyzus), the son of daduhya, a persian; ardumanis, the son of vahuka (ochus), a persian."[ ] as has been shown, gaumata had seized the dominion on persian ground. he had first shown himself to the persians as their master: "he caused persia to revolt," is the recapitulation in the inscription of behistun. the statement of herodotus that he remitted for a certain period the tribute, which the provinces had to furnish yearly in the form of presents, and announced that for some years to come they need not expect anything from distant wars, cannot be called in question. he had every reason to make his rule acceptable, and the treasures of cyrus at pasargadae were no doubt still large enough to enable him to dispense with the tribute for some years.[ ] the inscription of darius and the tablets at babylon (p. ), establish the fact that not the satraps only, whom cyrus and cambyses had set up, and the population of the subject lands, but even the army of cambyses which had gone with him to egypt and returned after his death, recognized the magian as king. as herodotus says, gaumata succeeded so that all nations wished his reign back when he had fallen, except the persians. most remarkable is the passage in the inscription of darius according to which gaumata had destroyed the places of worship or the houses of the gods. how could a man, who claimed to be the son of cyrus, begin by attacking the existing mode of worship, which cyrus had practised and protected, without annihilating himself? or was it the magian tendency in him, which sought to bring the stricter forms observed by the priests into universal observance, and establish uniformity of worship? or does darius merely mean that gaumata had allowed the temples of the subject nations to fall into ruin (cyrus and darius took them under their care). this is probably the meaning of the obscure passage in the persian text; the babylonian version shows that temples of the gods are spoken of, and these the persians and medes did not possess. the murder of smerdis cannot have remained an entire secret. the murderer or murderers knew it, and the relatives, the members of the house of achæmenes, the servants and women, cannot have been deceived by the resemblance for any length of time. the narrative of darius tells us plainly, "that gaumata put to death many men in order that it might not be known that he was not the son of cyrus." there is no doubt that cambyses, when dying, acknowledged his deed, but only to the achæmenids and the six tribal princes. darius was with cambyses in egypt. from herodotus we learn that he secretly sent messages to the satraps at the time of the rule of the magians[ ]. hence he knew of the fact, and, as was fitting, he urged the overthrow of the magian before all others. why the younger line of the royal house and the tribal princes of the persians did not come forward immediately after the death of cambyses--why they did not call on the persians to rise against the magians--on these matters we can only make conjectures, which however are of a suggestive kind. one obvious reason was that the declaration that the throne had been usurped, and the rising of the persians which would have followed such a declaration, would have thrown the kingdom into the most violent convulsions. this would have given the subject nations the choice of taking up arms for their favourite, the usurper, or for their own independence; it would have given them the right, and the medes above all, of throwing off the existing rule. could they venture to renew the dangerous war, which cyrus had waged against the medes, which had been so long undecided, and had brought the persians into the greatest distress, in which they had conquered only after the most severe efforts? who would guarantee a happy issue to the new conflict? and if the medes were really conquered for the second time, would not the conflict with them be the signal for the other nations to revolt on their part also? in this way the kingdom of cyrus would be completely disorganized. thus hystaspes and darius and the princes of the persians hesitated; and contented themselves with coming to a secret understanding with the satraps. so long as the royal house and the six princes remained silent, the pretended son of cyrus was compelled to spare the achæmenids and the tribal princes in order to play his own part, but their silence on the other hand declared the magian to be the legitimate ruler, and the longer that they were silent the more securely did they establish his throne. this position of affairs was the more difficult for the achæmenids, because gaumata, as we are told in the inscription, removed his residence from persia to media. he was aware no doubt that his deception could not be long maintained against the persians and the satraps. in media, therefore, he was more secure than in persia, for in media the magians formed a numerous and exclusive order. if the persians rose against him his best support against them was the medes; if the deception had to be dropped, the rising of the persians would pass into a war between the persians and medes. from the important position which the authority of herodotus assigns to otanes, and the peculiar honours subsequently paid to him and his family, we may perhaps assume that it was he more than any other, who, with the fixed resolution not to endure the dominion of gaumata, pointed out at the same time the unavoidable consequences of an armed rising of persia. instead of shattering the central power with their own hands, he must have advised his confederates to get it into their own power, and with this object in view he proposed the removal of the magian, the surprise, and assassination in the citadel. there would be time for an open conflict if the assassination failed. darius, who was then about thirty-five,[ ] was younger and more hasty; he may have insisted on a sudden decision and have been more inclined to use open violence. finally, the princes of the persians united with darius in the attempt to assassinate the king. it is obvious that the consultations and deliberations which led to this resolution took place among few, and in the greatest secrecy. it was necessary to avoid observation and suspicion; they must not go in a company. the son of hystaspes might take a message from his father to the king, and the chiefs of the persian tribes might accompany him. they were the chosen councillors of the king, and had the right of free entry to him. ought they to despair of this because they had not been summoned to the council? if they had had confederates in the palace of gaumata, as ctesias suggests, it would have been the most foolish rashness to go to media in such small numbers. that darius accomplished the deed with six associates only, as he himself tells us, proves that they could reckon on obtaining an entrance for these seven only, and that the king dared not refuse it to them. his false assertion that he was an achæmenid, and the king of the persians, must have been his ruin; it compelled him to admit the seven; at any rate the guards of the palace had no orders to the contrary. the upright tiara, which the persian kings, the descendants of achæmenes, and the princes of the remaining six tribes wore, and which plutarch suggests was the mark of recognition among the conspirators (polyaenus states this for a fact[ ]), pointed out darius and his associates to the body-guard as having the right of free entrance. it was not, as the greeks thought, a mark of distinction given to the six after the deed, but, as we have seen, a distinction which they possessed, along with others, from the time of achæmenes, and the arrangement of the persian constitution. the six princes of the persians, and at their head the eldest son of the lawful successor to the throne, hystaspes the prince of the seventh tribe, or pasargadae, were resolved to attack the pretended king in his palace in media, and risk their lives to maintain the throne in the hands of the persians. we must look for the citadel of Çikathauvatis in niçaya between kermanshah and elvend, at the southern foot of the mountain overlooking the pastures of the nisæan horses. if the attempt failed darius and his companions could hardly escape. but the father of darius and two younger brothers (artabanus and artaphernes) were alive and in safety. they could avenge the fall of the conspirators, and by taking up the struggle openly, attempt to succeed where craft had failed. in the struggle, as in the previous consultation, the source from which herodotus has drawn represents gobryas as the leading person next to darius. he is the first whom otanes admits to the secret; he always votes with darius for immediate action; he seizes one of the two magians--obviously the king himself--whom darius then slays. gobryas was the chief of the pateischoreans, who dwelt next to the pasargadae on lake bakhtegan, and the father-in-law of darius, to whom his daughter had already borne three sons.[ ] the bold resolution to attack the usurper in the midst of media and cut him down with his adherents in his palace succeeded. if herodotus tells us that when the princes after the assassination called the persians together, and showed them the heads of the magians, the persians also drew their swords and slew all the magians who came in their way, the truth is that the only persians before the citadel of Çikathauvatis in the median district of nisaea would be the servants of the persians who accompanied them there. the question was not the slaughter of the magi; such a massacre would have been the most foolish thing that could have been done. the persians who attended the princes had no other duty than to enable their masters to escape from the citadel in case of failure, and in case of success to prevent the servants of gaumata, who may very likely have been for the most part magians, from dispersing, and to cut them down, to avail themselves of the overthrow of the guard in order to disarm them. the supposed slaughter of the magians has arisen from the festival, by which the persians celebrated the day of the assassination of the magian, the tenth of bagayadis.[ ] five days after the death of the magian the seven took counsel together, as herodotus relates, on the state of affairs. otanes was of opinion that the government should be handed over to the whole body of the persians, that it was not well that one should rule over them. megabyzus represented oligarchy; the best men should form the best resolutions. darius spoke in favour of monarchy. in an oligarchy enmities arise, and out of enmities rebellions and struggles, which lead to monarchy. in democracy baseness forces its way in, and the base gather together till a man arises who can reduce them to order; he is then admired by the people and raised to be their ruler. a man had given freedom to the persians, and it was not well to set aside the laws of the fathers. then otanes said: "fellow-conspirators, it is obvious that one of us will be king, as we are leaving the choice to the persians either by lot or in some other manner. but i do not seek the throne with you: i wish neither to be a ruler, nor to be ruled over. i leave the dominion to you on the condition that neither i nor my descendants shall be subjects to you." the six agreed, and otanes remained apart; to this day his family is the only free family in persia, and is governed only so much as it pleases, provided that it does not transgress the laws of the persians. the others resolved, that if the monarchy came to one of them, otanes and his descendants should each year receive a median robe and the gifts of highest honour usual among the persians, because he had been the first to entertain the idea and had called them together. for the whole seven they resolved that each should have the right of entering the palace without announcement, whenever he would, and the king should not be allowed to take a wife from any but the families of the conspirators. the throne was to go to the man whose horse, when in the suburbs of the city, should be the first to neigh at the rising of the sun. in the night oebares, the groom of darius, led his horse along the road, on which the six would ride in the morning, to a mare which he had previously caused to be brought there. when the princes rode out next morning, as had been agreed upon, the horse of darius neighed at the place where the mare had been brought to him in the night, and at the same moment there was thunder and lightning in a clear sky. then the five sprang from their horses and did homage to darius. and when darius was established on his throne, he set up a picture in relief on stone representing a man with a horse, and underneath it he engraved the words: "darius, the son of hystaspes, by the help of his horse and his groom oebares, came to be king over the persians."[ ] in pompeius trogus we are told: "the conspirators were so equal in valour and noble birth, that it was difficult for the people to elect one of them to be king. but the conspirators themselves devised an expedient which left the decision to religion and good luck. they resolved to ride early in the morning to a particular place before the citadel; and he whose horse was the first to neigh at the rising of the sun, was to be king. for the persians regarded the sun as the only deity, and horses as sacred to him. among the conspirators was darius the son of hystaspes." after narrating the trick of the groom in the same manner as herodotus, our excerpt continues: "the moderation of the others was so great that when they had received the sign from the gods (justin speaks only of the neighing, not of the thunder and lightning), they at once sprang from their horses and greeted darius as king. the whole people followed the decision of the princes and made him their king. by such a trivial circumstance did the monarchy of the persians, which was won by the valour of the seven noblest men, come into the hands of one person. it is extraordinary that those who risked their lives to wrest the throne from the magians, should have resigned it with such readiness, though it is true that in addition to the nobility of form, and the valour, which made darius worthy of the throne, he was also related by blood to the ancient kings."[ ] the excerpt from the account of ctesias tells us: "sphendadates (p. ff.) had reigned seven months (_i.e._ after the death of cambyses). of the seven darius became king because his horse first neighed at the rising of the sun, which was the sign agreed upon among them; but it was induced to neigh by a certain trick and stratagem. since then the persians celebrate the slaughter of the magians on the day on which sphendadates the magian was slain."[ ] an election to the throne was not a matter of necessity after the fall of the magian. the older line of the royal house, the descendants of the elder son of teispes, had become extinct with smerdis and cambyses; the younger line had the right to ascend the throne. the head of this line was hystaspes. we not only learn from herodotus, that he was still alive, the inscription of behistun mentions his achievements after his son ascended the throne. the father gave place to the son, just as the father of cyrus had given place to his son in the rise of the persians against astyages. hystaspes abandoned the throne in favour of his eldest son. this renunciation, in case of success, must have taken place before darius set out to media, when the son went with the princes of the persians to succeed in the work of liberation or to perish. these princes were in a position to salute darius as king immediately after the fall of the magian. a sign from the gods could only be required to show that the son would be accepted in the place of the father. it was more important to prove to the medians, the inhabitants of nisaea, that the new ruler who took the place of the murdered prince had done so with the will of the gods, that darius had seized the crown with the will of auramazda and mithra. we know the sacred horses and chariot which the persians kept for the god of the sun and of light. the lucky neighing with which the horse on which the new king was mounted greeted the rising of the sun on the seventh day after the death of the magian, put it beyond doubt that the act was just, that the new ruler of persia was under the protection of the far-seeing mithra, the god of truth, the destroyer of lies. the narrative of the trick of oebares is no doubt a greek invention. in the mind of the persians it would have deprived the divine signal of any importance. in the narrative of herodotus it is quite superfluous, for not only does the horse neigh but thunder and lightning occur in a clear sky. the name of the groom, oebares, does not improve the story or make it more credible; it is merely a repetition of the name of that most faithful and energetic counsellor and helper of cyrus, who first, himself a fortunate omen, meets him in the foreign country, and carries horsedung towards him, and afterwards assists him to victory and the throne (v. ). as regards the equestrian picture, which, according to herodotus, darius set up in honour of his horse and his groom, darius had certainly no interest in announcing to the kingdom that he had won the throne by deception. no doubt darius left splendid monuments behind him. he may also have caused the divine consecration and confirmation of his kingdom to be engraved upon a rock, but the inscription to the picture certainly did not mention the deception, or the inventor of it and his service. herodotus represents the conspirators as consulting about the best form of government on the sixth day after the assassination, no doubt because the opinion existed among the greeks, that the persians had a custom by which anarchy was allowed to prevail for five days after the death of the king, not as a sign of mourning, but in order to learn by experience what an evil anarchy was.[ ] the best form of government might be discussed in hellas, but it could not be discussed in persia, and least of all in the citadel of Çikathauvatis. herodotus himself observes, that these speeches were incredible to some of the greeks, but that nevertheless they were made;[ ] he even recurs to the subject, supporting the story on the fact that mardonius, the son of gobryas, had removed the tyrants from the cities of the ionians and set up democracies there. herodotus exaggerates what was done in the year b.c. in order to support his story of this discussion; if mardonius established democracies, otanes may have represented this form of constitution in the council of the seven. at that time tyrannies were not preserved in the greek cities to the extent that the princes of miletus, histiaeus and aristagoras, raised the sign of rebellion for the ionians on purely personal grounds. hence after the rebellion had been crushed, tyrannies were not fully restored in these cities. but the tyrants who remained faithful to persia, like aeaces of lesbos, and strattis of chios, were replaced on their thrones. strattis was ruler of lesbos in the time of xerxes. even after mardonius had visited the coast of anatolia, hippoclus and aeantides ruled over lampsacus; the pisistratidæ in sigeum; demaratus obtained teuthrania, halisarna, and pergamum; gongylus, gambrion, myrina, and gryneum; theomestor in the reign of xerxes was tyrant of samos; in herodotus' own city the descendants of lygdamis retained the throne. to renew the tyrannies in their old extent, when they were intended to keep in subjection greek maritime cities of considerable power without persian garrisons was not necessary after these cities had been so greatly weakened by the suppression of the rebellion.[ ] the legend of the discussion of the seven as to the best form of constitution has grown up out of the privileges of the six tribal princes, who as a fact formed an aristocratic element in the persian constitution (v. ), and out of the peculiar immunities enjoyed by the house of otanes; the greeks traced both one and the other back to the assassination of the magians. from the immunities, and supposed self-government of this house, the greeks concluded that otanes must at that time have pronounced for the freedom and self-government of the persians, and herodotus represents him as consistently democratic, and taking no part in the election to the throne. in the discussion the defence of monarchy was naturally assigned to the future occupant of the throne. footnotes: [ ] ctes. "pers." . the names of the seven in ctesias have been discussed already, vol. v. _n._ [ ] herod. , , , and below, p. , . [ ] herod. , ; , , . [ ] vol. v. _n._ [ ] herod. , , . [ ] spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. , "to say;" so oppert ("peuple des mèdes," p. ) after the turanian version; on the other hand mordtmann in "z. d. m. g." , gives, "to undertake." [ ] spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. ff.; oppert, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] herodotus gives aspathines or aspathenes; the inscription on the tomb of darius mentions açpachana as holding an honourable office near the person of the king. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] see below, p. . [ ] plutarch, "praec. gerend. reip." c. ; polyaen. "strateg." , . [ ] herod. , ; behist. , ; , , . n. r. c. [ ] g. rawlinson's view, which he gives in an excursus to his herodotus ( , ff.)--that the magian was not a mede, i accept, as i have observed, p. . darius says in the inscription of behistun that neither a persian nor a "mede" had risen against gaumata, and moreover, that he had recovered the dominion which had been taken "from his tribe" and "race." but in no case was it a question of a religious conflict, but rather to avoid a new struggle between media and persia. on the passage , in the inscription all that need be said has been given already (p. ). [ ] herod. , - . [ ] justin. , . [ ] ctes. "pers." . [ ] sext. empir. "adv. rhet." in stein, herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] the evidence in support of this will be found in the greek history. chapter xiv. the rebellions in the provinces. one of the boldest deeds known to history had been accomplished, one of the most marvellous complications had been severed by a remarkable venture. at a distance from their home and people, six persians, led by a prince of the royal house, had attacked and cut down the pretended son of cyrus, in his fortified citadel, when surrounded by his adherents, after he had reigned for more than ten months (spring b.c.[ ]). an achæmenid again sat on the throne of cyrus. whether the removal of the usurper and the sudden proclamation of darius on the soil of media had really prevented the ruin of the kingdom, as it was intended to do, and whether it would produce the results which the achæmenids and the princes of the persians expected from it, was a question, which, in spite of the success, still remained to be settled. it was true that the resumption of the struggle with the medes for the sovereignty was for the moment avoided, but that the accession of darius brought the whole kingdom into obedience to his power had still to be shown. undeniable facts prove that even in the last years of cambyses the bonds of obedience were relaxed. the satraps of the provinces had been able to rule over their provinces independently. this had been rapidly followed by two violent changes in the succession, which seemed to promise success to further usurpation. the various nations were quite satisfied with the rule of gaumata. their favourite chief had been slain; they were now called upon to obey his assassin, whose reign betokened the return of the severer rule. neither in media nor in babylon did men forget the state of affairs before cyrus; scarcely eighteen years had elapsed since babylon had been taken by cyrus. the nations of the kingdom were in agitation.[ ] elated by the success of his venture, in the full vigour of his life,--according to herodotus darius had scarcely reached the thirtieth year, and according to ctesias the thirty-sixth year of his age,[ ]--the new ruler seemed equal even to the heaviest tasks. the boldness of his resolution, the daring nature of the advice which he had given, were favourable indications that he possessed the power to keep the kingdom of cyrus together. while he could not but direct his gaze in the most eager expectation to the nations of the empire, he found in his immediate proximity, among the associates in the deed of Çikathauvatis, an independent and rebellious spirit. a remarkable indication proved that the princes of the persian tribes, to whose devotion he owed the throne, who had risked as much as himself, were for that very reason inclined to regard themselves as more on an equality with the new king, and to pay less respect to his authority. soon after the assassination of the magian, intaphernes, one of the six persian princes, who had lost an eye in the conflict with the magians, came one day into the palace to speak with the king. but the doorkeepers and servants would not admit him because the king was with one of his wives. intaphernes thought that this statement was false, and that the new king intended to refuse to the persian princes the ancient right of free entry; he drew his sword, cut off the ears and noses of each of the two servants, strung them on the reins of his bridle and hung them round their necks. in this act of violence darius could only see extreme contempt for the royal dignity, and the most severe outrage of it in the persons of his servants; he was convinced that it was the announcement of a rebellion. he did not venture to step in and punish at once; he could hardly assume that intaphernes would have done such an action without an understanding with the other chieftains; they had intended, no doubt, to humble the king, and now that they had helped him to the throne, they wished to take up a different position towards the ruler whom they had raised from that which they had occupied towards cyrus and cambyses. it was not till darius had questioned each of the princes separately, and ascertained that intaphernes had acted independently, that he caused him to be thrown into prison with his sons and all his family. he desired, no doubt, on this first opportunity to show the chiefs of the persians their master, and his intention was naturally carried out with oriental cruelty. regardless of the services of intaphernes and the wound which he had received, he was to be executed and all the males of his house with him; the entire stock of this princely family was to be annihilated. the entreaties of the wife of intaphernes only prevailed so far as to save from death her brother and her eldest son, so that the race could at least be kept in existence.[ ] still more dangerous, though at a greater distance, appeared to be the attitude of a satrap who ruled over wide regions. oroetes had been made satrap of lydia and ionia by cyrus. in the last year of cambyses he had enticed polycrates of samos to magnesia into his power, and had caused him to be executed there, in order to bring about the subjugation of samos. when called upon by darius to declare against gaumata he had paid no heed to the command, but had availed himself of the confusion to assassinate mitrobates the satrap of phrygia, who resided at dascyleum, and possess himself of that satrapy. he now ruled from sardis to the halys. after the accession of darius, so far from obeying his commands to appear at the court, he cut down the messenger who brought them. it was obviously his intention to establish an independent kingdom in asia minor. it did not appear possible to crush him without an open struggle, and the beginning of this would be a signal of revolt for many others. darius summoned the chief of the persians, and asked if any one could remove oroetes out of the way. in the narrative of herodotus not one only but thirty offered themselves for the venture. they cast lots, and the lot fell on bagaeus the son of artontes. provided with the necessary letters from the king, he went as an extraordinary commissioner to sardis. the garrison of the citadel at sardis in which oroetes resided consisted of a thousand persian lance-bearers. bagaeus caused a communication from darius to be read to these troops in the presence of oroetes. they showed respect for the letter and the royal seal, and expressed a willingness to obey the king's commands. as soon as bagaeus had convinced himself of their feeling, he read an order from darius in which the lance-bearers were forbidden to obey oroetes any longer. they at once placed their lances on the ground. encouraged by this, bagaeus immediately read the last order, in which darius bade the persians at sardis to put oroetes to death. this command also was executed on the spot. it was a rapid success, and an extremely fortunate event for darius. asia minor from the halys to the aegean was brought under his authority at a single blow. herodotus only remarks in passing, that the medes revolted from darius, but were conquered in the battle and reduced again to submission.[ ] he relates the rebellion of the babylonians at greater length. since the accession of the magian the babylonians had secretly prepared to throw off the yoke of persia. they put to death all the women in the city who were not mothers, leaving only a childless wife and another woman in each household, that their provisions might not fail, and when darius brought up his forces, and invested babylon, they made merry over the siege and danced behind their towers. a whole year and seven months passed away, and darius tried every art and invention in vain, including the means by which cyrus had taken the city and many others, but the babylonians were strongly on their guard, and it was impossible to take the city. in the twentieth month, zopyrus the son of megabyzus, one of the men who had taken part in the assassination of the magian, appeared before the throne of darius with his nose and ears cut off, his hair shaved, and his body covered with blows from a whip. distressed to see one of the most distinguished men in such a condition, the king sprang up and asked who had done him such an irreparable injury. it was intolerable, zopyrus answered, that the assyrians should mock the persians any longer; he had not acquainted the king with his design that he might not prevent him from carrying it out. it was his intention in this plight to seek admittance into the city and to tell the babylonians that the king of the persians had treated him thus. he thought that they would believe him, and entrust him with the command over a division. on the tenth day after his reception into the city, darius was to place a thousand men of the troops which he valued least against the gate of semiramis; on the seventeenth two thousand against the gate of ninus; on the thirty-seventh four thousand against the gate of the chaldæans. if he achieved great successes against these troops the babylonians would no doubt entrust everything to him, even the keys of their gates. then darius was to attack the city on all sides, and place the persians against the gates of belus and the gate of the cissians. "zopyrus set forth, gave his name at the gate, pretended to be a deserter, and demanded entrance. the guards led him before the council of the city. he lamented the treatment which he had received from darius because he had advised him to lead away his army, inasmuch as there was no way of taking the city. he could do them the greatest services, and darius and the persians the greatest harm, for he knew their plans in every direction. the babylonians seeing the most distinguished persian without nose or ears, covered with stripes and blood, listened to his words, and believed that he had come to aid them; and they were ready at his request to allow him the command of a division." at the head of his babylonian soldiers zopyrus cut down the three troops on the days agreed upon. "then zopyrus was all in all to the babylonians; they elected him general and keeper of the walls of the city, and when darius, as had been agreed upon, stormed the city on every side, and the besieged repulsed their opponents in every direction, zopyrus opened the cissian gate and the gate of belus to the persians and brought them into the city. the babylonians who saw this fled into the shrine of belus, but the others fought on in their ranks till they perceived that they had been betrayed. thus babylon was recovered, and darius now did what cyrus had neglected to do at the time of his conquest; he destroyed the walls, tore down the gates, impaled nearly three thousand of the leading men, and gave the city to the remainder for a habitation. in order that they might have wives and posterity, darius commanded each of the neighbouring nations to send a number of women to babylon; in all there were , , and from these the present inhabitants of the city are descended. in the judgment of darius no one had ever done greater service to the persians than zopyrus, with the exception of cyrus, with whom no persian could be compared. it is also asserted that darius was wont to say that he would willingly lose twenty babylons, if zopyrus might be restored from his mutilated condition. he held him in great honour, gave him each year the presents which are most honourable among the persians, conferred on him for his life the government of babylon free of all tribute to the king, and a great deal besides."[ ] megabyzus, the son of daduhya, who aided darius in putting the magian to death, and his descendants, were only too well known to the greeks, and more especially to the athenians. megabyzus conquered perinthus, and reduced thracia and macedonia beneath the persian rule. the son of this megabyzus was zopyrus, to whom darius, according to the narrative of herodotus, owed the capture of babylon; the son of zopyrus was megabyzus the younger, who in the year b.c. inflicted on the athenians in egypt one of the heaviest defeats which they ever experienced; they lost more than triremes, and nearly the whole of the crews, for those who escaped to cyrene were few in number.[ ] from the marriage of this megabyzus with the daughter of xerxes and amestris, the granddaughter of otanes, sprang the younger zopyrus, who broke with artaxerxes i. after the death of his parents, retired to athens after b.c., and afterwards, when attacking the city of caunus in caria with attic troops--the city belonged to the attic league but had withdrawn from it, and it was necessary to reduce it--was killed by a stone thrown from the walls.[ ] hence the achievements of the princely family, who were the forefathers of the deserter--of his father megabyzus, his grandfather, the elder zopyrus, and his great-grandfather--were peculiarly interesting to the greeks. the minute account which herodotus gives of the greatest act of the older zopyrus must be derived from information which he obtained in athens either from the younger zopyrus or from his retinue, and these would relate what the minstrels of the persians had sung of the sacrifice made by the elder zopyrus for the great king and the kingdom. we can trace a poetical source in the mocking of the besiegers, and the saying connected with it. a babylonian cries to the persians, "why do you sit there? why do you not retire? ye will take the city when mules bring forth." a mule belonging to zopyrus does bring forth; this sign, showing that babylon can be taken, determines zopyrus to mutilate himself, when he had previously ascertained from darius that the king attached the greatest importance to the capture of the city. the massacre of the women of the babylonians must also be poetical. herodotus himself tells us that the babylonians had prepared their rebellion for a long time, ever since the magian had ascended the throne. thus they had at least a year before the investment of the city in which to furnish it with provisions, and the adjacent country was most fruitful; moreover, the walls of babylon enclosed a very large extent of arable and pasture land (iii. ). we may conceive of such wholesale massacre as an act of desperation in consequence of a long siege; but in the account of herodotus it took place before the city was invested, and is one of the preparations of the babylonians. it is not until he has heard of the massacre of the women that darius sets out against babylon. not less remarkable are the definite numbers of the troops, which zopyrus with the babylonians cuts down on the appointed days. the names of the five gates mentioned in the narrative seem to show exact local knowledge. but though a gate in babylon might be named after belus, and another "the gate of elam" (the cissians); no gate in that city could have been named after the chaldæans, or ninus, or semiramis. so far as the inscriptions of babylon have been deciphered, the names of the gates were different.[ ] as the forms of ninus and semiramis and their history do not belong even in the remotest degree to babylonia and her history, but are rather shown to be inventions of the medo-persian epos, these two gates which are named after them point to the persian source from which the narrative of herodotus was derived. more incredible even than the massacre of the women at the beginning of the rebellion is their replacement after the capture by the , women whom darius causes the neighbouring nations to send to babylon. darius had no reasons for assisting a city which had maintained itself against him for more than twenty months, the walls and gates of which he had broken, and at the same time, as herodotus himself tells us, had executed the leading men, in number, by a cruel death. his interests lay in precisely the opposite direction. darius himself informs us about the rising of the babylonians and their subjugation. "when i had slain gaumata, there was a man atrina, by name, the son of upadarma, who rebelled in susiana. he said to the people: 'i am king in susiana.' then the inhabitants in susiana became rebellious; they went over to atrina; he was king in susiana. moreover there was a man of babylon, naditabira by name (nidintabel in the babylonian text), the son of aniri; he rebelled in babylon. he deceived the people thus: 'i am nabukadrachara (nabukudurussur), the son of nabunita.' then the people of babylon went over entirely to naditabira; he seized the throne in babylon. after this i sent (an army?) to susiana; atrina was brought in fetters before me; i slew him. then i marched to babylonia against naditabira, who called himself nabukadrachara. the army of naditabira maintained the tigris, and occupied the river with ships; his whole power protected the tigris.[ ] auramazda came to my aid; by the grace of auramazda i crossed the tigris, and severely defeated the army of naditabira. on the th of the month of athriyadiya (on the th of the month kislev), then it was, that we gave battle. after this i marched against babylon. when i went against babylon, there is a city, by name zazana on the euphrates, there this naditabira, who called himself nabukadrachara, had come with an army to give me battle. then we joined battle. auramazda came to my aid; by the grace of auramazda i severely defeated the army of naditabira. the enemy was driven into the water; the water carried him away;[ ] on the second day of the month of anamaka, then we joined battle. then naditabira went with a few horse to babylon, and i went to babylon. by the grace of auramazda i took babylon and captured naditabira. then i slew naditabira at babylon. while i was in babylonia these provinces revolted: persia, susiana, media, assyria, parthia, margiana, the sattagydæ, the sacæ."[ ] the inscription shows that the inhabitants of elam gave the signal for revolt, that their leader atrina attempted to raise once more that ancient kingdom years after its fall. nabonetus (nabunahed, nabunita), the last king of babylon, had been sent by cyrus to carmania and had died there (p. ). a man, who gave himself out to be his younger son, took the lead of the babylonians, and once more called into existence the revered name of nebuchadnezzar. he had time to collect an army, and considered himself strong enough to meet the persians in the open field. on the eastern border of the ancient kingdom, on the tigris, he awaited the attack of the persians; he brings armed ships to the place, that they may facilitate his defence of the right bank, and make it difficult for the enemy to cross the river. the elamites were overpowered, their leader captured and slain. the heavier task of reducing babylon was undertaken by darius himself. the army which he led was obviously the same as that which conquered susiana; it consisted of persians and medes, as is shown by the sequel of the inscription. darius had to open the campaign against the new nebuchadnezzar in the same manner in which cyrus nineteen years previously had begun his war against nabonetus. he had first to cross the tigris. this was done, and nebuchadnezzar retired in a slanting direction across babylonia to the euphrates, closely pursued by darius. on the euphrates he was again defeated, and his people were driven in part into the river, but he was not cut off from the city as nabonetus had been by cyrus; he was able to reach the protection of the walls of babylon. we know their powers of resistance. the persians had crossed the tigris at a place where it is not more than miles distant from the euphrates, _i.e._ not far below the median walls; for the battle on the tigris was fought on the th (or th) of athriadiya, and six days after, on the nd of anamaka, the babylonian army suffered its second defeat on the bank of the euphrates at zazana. as athriadiya coincides with the kislev (november-december) and anamaka with the tebet (december-january) of the babylonians (p. ), the rebellion of babylonia must have taken place in the summer and the investment of the city in the last weeks of the year b.c. the inscriptions tell us nothing of the length of the siege. on the other hand we have five tablets from the reign of the rebel, nebuchadnezzar iii., all dated from babylon, and bearing the name of the same witness. they date, in the time of this king, from kislev , to the next tisri and marchesvan, _i.e._ from november-december of the year of the battles down to october-november of the next year.[ ] the inscription of behistun allows that all the central lands of the kingdom, not excepting persia, rebelled against darius during the siege. it follows therefore that success at babylon was long enough delayed to awake the hope that darius would be checked before babylonia, and defeated there. the twenty months of herodotus would carry us from the end of the year b.c. to the autumn of the year b.c. the rebellion made head everywhere. in spite of the day of Çikathauvatis, the kingdom was going to ruin. the position of darius was desperate. the longer the siege, the more fixed the belief that he could not succeed, the greater was the progress of the revolt. if he raised the siege to turn against the rebels, that was a proof that he could not conquer babylon; the confidence of the rebels in their fortunes would be increased, and the army discouraged with which he had conquered on the tigris and the euphrates, with which he stood in personal relations, and which he had drawn into close connection with himself. on this army the kingdom rested; it remained yet loyal in the camp at babylon. the deed in nisaea had been best confirmed by the fact that media recognized darius as king, that he had been able to summon the median contingent to the field, and by his successes to connect the median army with himself. "the persian and median army which was with me remained faithful; the median nations which remained at home, revolted"--so we learn from the inscription.[ ] darius perceived that he must not weaken the only support which he had in this difficult crisis, or remove it by his own act. he judged the situation correctly, and remained before babylon in spite of bad news which was brought to him from all sides. but the resistance was not less stubborn than the attack. it seemed as though the new reign of darius must come to an end before babylon. could it continue beside the defection of the medes, parthians, hyrcanians, margiani, sagartians and sattagydæ, the armenians, assyrians, and susiani, the rebellion of the persians themselves? was it possible to check the outbreak of the storm of ruin in the face of the indomitable resistance of babylon? only in the distant east and west were there glimpses of light. the satraps of arachosia and bactria, vivana and dadarshis, remained loyal to darius and kept their lands in obedience. asia minor was quiet; if darius had not succeeded in removing oroetes at the right moment, these regions also would have taken up arms against darius either under him or under some native ruler. the account of darius allows us to see that the recently-subdued susiani were the first to rebel when darius was delayed at babylon. after them the medes rebelled, in order to renew the struggle for the sovereignty between persia and media; this was followed in the east by the rebellion of the sattagydæ, the parthians, the hyrcanians, the margiani, the sacæ; in the west the armenians and syrians took up arms. finally, even the persians held out a hand to the subject nations for the overthrow of the kingdom and their own dominion. vahyazdata, a persian of the tribe of the utians (v. ), declared himself to be the legitimate ruler; the brother of cambyses was alive; he was no other than bardiya, the son of cyrus. the persians believe him; this second pretender finds many adherents. the inscription is as follows: "there was a man, by name martiya; he dwelt in the city of kuganaka in persia; he revolted in susiana; and said to the people: 'i am ymani, king in susiana.' there was a man, fravartis (phraortes) by name, a mede. he revolted in media, and said: 'i am khsathrita of the family of uvakhshathra' (cyaxares). the median nation then became rebellious towards me; they went over to fravartis; and he was king in media. thereupon i sent an army. i made vidarna, a persian, my servant, the general, and said to them: 'go down and smite the median army which does not call itself mine.' then vidarna marched out. when he came to media, he fought a battle with the medes at marus, a city in media. by the grace of auramazda the army of vidarna conquered that rebellious army on the (twenty-seventh) day of the month anamaka (of the month tebet).[ ] there was a district campada (cambadene) in media; there my army awaited me. the parthians and hyrcanians became rebellious to me, and joined fravartis. vistaçpa, my father, was in parthia; the people left him and revolted. then vistaçpa took those who adhered to him and marched against the rebels. on the nd day of the month viyakhna vistaçpa, by the grace of auramazda, defeated the rebels near the city of viçpauvatis in parthia. i sent my servant, dadarshis by name, an armenian, to armenia. when he came to armenia, the rebels gathered together and marched against dadarshis to give battle. by the grace of auramazda my army defeated the revolted army near zuza in armenia, on the th day of the month of thuravahara. the rebels marched against dadarshis a second time. near the fortress of tigra in armenia on the th of thuravahara my army defeated the rebellious army; they slew of them, and took prisoners.[ ] a third time the rebels marched against dadarshis. near the fortress of uhyama in armenia my army defeated the rebellious army on the th day of the month thaigarshis. there dadarshis waited till i came to media. a man, by name chitratakhma, revolted from me. 'i am king of sagartia,' he said to the people, 'of the race of uvakhshathra' (cyaxares). there is a province margiana (margu) by name which revolted from me. they made a man of margiana, frada by name, their leader. against him i sent dadarshis (dadarsu) a persian, my servant, the satrap of bactria. there was a man, vahyazdata by name, in the city of tarava, in the district of yutiya in persia; he said to the people: 'i am bardiya, the son of kurus.' the persian nation revolted from me. he was king in persia. this vahyazdata, who called himself bardiya, sent an army to arachosia against the persian vivana, my servant, the satrap of arachosia." the rebellion of phraortes (which took place in the summer of b.c.) was the more dangerous because it was undertaken with the obvious intention of restoring the independence of media under a scion of the old native royal house, and the name of cyaxares could not but excite and give new life to national memories among the medes. whatever troops darius could spare, and for this purpose he could only use persians, he sent under the command of the tribal prince hydarnes, his associate in the assassination of the magi, against the medes, at the same time despatching dadarshis an armenian to armenia, to check the advance of the rebellion there, and mainly, no doubt, to prevent the alliance of the armenians and the medes. a whole year after darius had begun the investment of babylon, on the th day of anamaka (december-january, b.c.), hydarnes encountered phraortes at marus. he did not obtain any great success. he had to content himself with maintaining against phraortes the district of cambadene in the south of media. in the west of media, dadarshis had no better success against his armenian compatriots. when he had fought two battles, of no great importance, if we are to judge from the losses of the rebels in one, in one month (on the eight and eighteenth), and a third in may (thaigarshis) of the year b.c., he was compelled to retire to a fortress named uhyama. in parthia, to the east of media, hystaspes the father of darius, who was expected to keep these regions of the kingdom in obedience, was not in a position, with the forces at his disposal, to prevent the defection of the parthians, hyrcanians, margiani, and sacæ. he contented himself with the attempt to prevent the combination of the parthians and hyrcanians with phraortes, and to limit as far as possible the spread of the rebellion. he only succeeded in retaining a part of the parthians in obedience. the battle at viçpauvatis (in viyakhna, _i.e._ in march, ), made it possible for him to maintain himself in parthia, but was far from giving him the control of the land. the troops and generals sent by darius were not able to prevail against the rebels; in media and armenia they were reduced to the defensive, and the same was the case with hystaspes the father of darius in bactria. this collapse of the kingdom and general rebellion was used by a persian of the tribe of the utians (yutiya[ ]) in order to win over the persians once more with the name of bardiya, and to wrest them from the rule of darius. vahyazdata must have found a considerable following in persia, and his successes must have been important, since he could attempt to extend his dominion to the east over carmania and arachosia, and to send an army to arachosia in order to win this province also from darius. the position of darius before babylon was hopeless. the danger increased every day, and there was still no prospect of winning the city. we may certainly believe the narrative of herodotus that darius left no means untried to reduce it, that he repeated the device of drawing off the water of the euphrates into the basin of sepharvaim, by which cyrus had attained his object twenty years previously; the babylonians had been taught by that siege to be on their guard in this direction. the account of darius does not tell us how the city was finally taken; he does not mention the name of zopyrus. the pressure of the surrounding dangers was so great, the hope of taking the city by force so small, that the son of a tribal king might feel himself called upon to sacrifice himself for the king and the kingdom, to adopt desperate measures. that zopyrus did take a prominent part in the capture of babylon is clear from the fact, which we do not learn from herodotus only, that the satrapy of babylon was given to him, and remained in his hands during the whole reign of darius and afterwards. he is said to have lost his life in a rebellion of the babylonians in the reign of xerxes.[ ] we cannot doubt that after the capture darius proceeded with greater severity against babylon than cyrus had done, that the gates were broken and large spaces of the walls thrown down (p. ). the inscription of behistun merely mentions the execution of the third nebuchadnezzar. after a siege of twenty months babylon fell in the autumn of the year b.c. darius tells us further: "thereupon i went up from babylon, and marched to media. the susiani were overcome with fear, they seized upon martiya (p. ), who was their general, and put him to death. when i had reached media, there is a city, kudurus (kunduru) by name, in media, to which fravartis marched against me with an army. then they gave me battle. auramazda came to my aid. by the grace of auramazda i severely defeated the army of fravartis on the th day of the month of adukanis. then fravartis with a few horsemen withdrew to the district of raga in media. then i sent an army against them; fravartis was captured and brought to me. i cut off his nose, ears, and tongue. he was kept in chains at my gate; all the people saw him. then i crucified him at hangmatana (ecbatana), and the men who were his principal adherents i imprisoned in the citadel of hangmatana. then i sent a persian army from raga to vistaçpa, and when it had reached him, he marched out with it. there is a city patigrabana[ ] in parthia, there vistaçpa severely defeated that rebellious army on the st day of the month of garmapada; he slew of them, and took captives. then the land of parthia was mine. i sent vaumiça a persian, my servant, to armenia; when he came there the rebels collected to give battle to vaumiça. at achitu in assyria my army defeated the rebels on the th day of anamaka, and slew of them. a second time they gathered together and marched against vaumiça. there is a district antiyara (otiara) by name, in armenia; there they fought on the last day of the month of thuravahara (yiyar ). by the grace of auramazda my army defeated the rebels severely; they slew and took prisoners. against chitratakhma (the leader of the rising of the sagartians), i sent a part of the persian and median army.[ ] i made takhmaçpada, a mede, the general. takhmaçpada fought with chitratakhma and my army defeated the rebellious army, seized chitratakhma, and brought him to me. i cut off his nose and ears, he lay in chains at my gate; all the people saw him. then i crucified him at arbira (arbela in assyria). dadarshis, a persian, my servant, the satrap of bactria, fought a battle with the margiani (frada was the leader of the rising here) on the rd day of the month of atriyadiya. by the grace of auramazda my army defeated the hostile army very severely. dadarshis slew of them, and took prisoners.[ ] then the land was mine. vahyazdata, who called himself bardiya, sent an army to arachosia against the persian vivana, my servant, the satrap of arachosia. 'go up,' he said to them; 'defeat vivana and the army, which calls itself the army of king darius.' there is a fortress, kapisakani by name; there they fought the battle. by the grace of auramazda my army defeated the rebellious army on the th of anamaka. for a second time the rebels marched against vivana. in the district of gandutava (ganduvada) on the th of the month viyakhna, my army defeated the rebellious army. then the general of vahyazdata withdrew with his faithful warriors to a fortress, arsada by name, in arachosia. vivana followed him with an army. then he seized him and slew him and the captains who were with him. i sent out a part of the persian and median army which was with me; i made artavardiya, a persian, my servant, the general of it; artavardiya marched to persia; the rest of the army went with me to media. when artavardiya was in persia, there is a city rakha (racha); to this vahyazdata who called himself bardiya marched to fight against artavardiya. auramazda came to my aid; on the th of thuravahara my army defeated the army of vahyazdata very severely. then vahyazdata went to pisicauvada. from thence he marched against artavardiya and gave him battle. there is a mountain paraga (parga) by name; there they fought on the th day of garmapada. by the grace of auramazda my army defeated that of vahyazdata; and they seized vahyazdata and also his chief adherents. uvadaidaya is a city in persia; there i crucified vahyazdata and the captains who were with him." the connection between these various battles is no doubt as follows. when babylon had fallen in the autumn of the year b.c. and the new nebuchadnezzar had been executed, darius set out in the spring of the year b.c. hydarnes maintained himself against phraortes on the western border of media, dadarshis against the rebels in armenia, and hystaspes in parthia. the new pretender to the name of smerdis ruled in persia, and his attempt to gain possession of the lands farther to the east and of arachosia was first checked by the defeat which he suffered from the satrap of arachosia in a battle fought in december of the year b.c. in all these directions, in armenia and parthia, help was needed, and the decision lay in persia and media. darius did not direct his march against persia, but against media. there, as he acutely saw, lay the main strength of the rebellion. his approach terrified the susiani; they slay their chief, their king martiya, and submit. arrived at the border of media and persia, darius divides his army. to make use of the mutual jealousy of the persians and medes, and to prevent any contact of his median troops with their rebellious kinsmen, he sends the persian artavardiya with the median troops to persia against vahyazdata, and with the persians he marches against phraortes to media. hydarnes waited for him at campada; the first object was to unite the troops. the road from susiana to ecbatana ran through the district of cambadene. when united with hydarnes darius overcomes phraortes in the month of adukanis (perhaps in june) of the year at kudurus, pursues him to ragha, and takes him prisoner. before he executed him in front of the citadel of deioces, phraortes, and cyaxares, he had cut off his nose, ears, and tongue, and in this condition he had publicly exhibited him in chains, in order to convince the medes that they had nothing to hope from the supposed scion of cyaxares. the rebellion of the medes is at an end. darius can divide his forces. from ragha he sends aid to his father hystaspes in parthia, and with this additional aid hystaspes is able to defeat the rebellion of the parthians in garmapada, _i.e._ in the summer of b.c. at the same time dadarshis had received the support in armenia for which he was waiting, under the protection of the fortress of uhyama. the persian vaumiça, who brought up the reinforcements for darius, defeats the armenian rebels in anamaka, _i.e._ in december of the year b.c.; a second victory of vaumiça, in yiyar (may) of the following year ( b.c.), puts an end to the rebellion in armenia. a third army was sent by darius after the fall of phraortes against the sagartians; which overpowered them and took their chief chitratakhma prisoner. meanwhile artavardiya, whom darius had sent from susiana, when on his march against phraortes, to check the rebellion in the native land, had fought with success against vahyazdata. the latter had weakened his forces by sending a detachment to arachosia. vivana, the satrap of arachosia, had repulsed their attack in december at kapisakani, and in march (viyakhna) of the year b.c. he had entirely destroyed them. this failure in the east was followed in the same spring by the attack of artavardiya from the west. first defeated in thuravahara (april) at racha, vahyazdata succumbed in the summer (in garmapada) at mount paraga, five days after hystaspes had again become master of the parthians in the north-east of iran. the forces of the satrap of bactria, the second dadarshis, had sufficed to put an end to the rebellion of the margians. that which the deed of Çikathauvatis, the assassination of gaumata in the spring of the year b.c., was intended to prevent, had nevertheless happened. the whole kingdom was disorganised. in ceaseless conflicts, which extended over four years, from the autumn of b.c. to the spring of b.c., darius had reconquered it, step by step. he had been compelled to reduce by force of arms even the very foundation of it, the native land of persia, and to carry on once more the conflict between persia and media. it had been necessary to repeat the achievements of cyrus, if not to their full extent yet in part under far more difficult conditions. the new king had passed with success through the severest crisis, and had reorganised the kingdom. this was the result of his indomitable persistence before babylon. by this means he had retained the medes and persians of his army in their fidelity, and by the final success had filled them with self-confidence. the fear which afterwards preceded his arms, certainly rendered more easy the decisive victory of kudurus and at mount paraga. darius had not yet reached the goal; the kingdom was not entirely pacified. the reduction of babylon and the execution of nebuchadnezzar iii. had not eradicated the strong impulse which the babylonians felt to regain their independence. they were once more carried away by the charm which the name of nebuchadnezzar exercised upon them: "when i was in persia and media," so darius relates at the close of the third column of the great inscription of behistun, "the babylonians became rebellious for the second time. a man of the name of arakha, an armenian, rose up in the city of dubana (dubala, dibleh?) in babylonia. 'i am nebuchadnezzar, the son of nabonetus,' such was his falsehood: he made himself master of the city of babylon and was king. i sent intaphernes, my servant, a mede, with an army against babylon. intaphernes took babylon, and slew much people. on the nd of the month markazana, arakha with his chief adherents was captured;[ ] then i ordered them to be crucified in babylon." no doubt darius had left sufficient garrisons in the two royal citadels of the city which he had conquered with so much trouble, and, therefore, it is the more remarkable that arakha, who did not rebel in babylon itself, was able to make himself master of the city. we may assume that darius did not give the babylonians time to fill up the breaches which he had made in the walls of babylon; this time the median intaphernes must have found the task lighter. the second rising of the babylonians seems to have seduced the susiani, and to have caused a third rebellion of this land. in a fifth column, subsequently added to the inscription of behistun, we have information about this rebellion of the susiani and the reduction of the sacæ. but this part of the inscription is so greatly injured that only a few words can be read with certainty. all that is clear is that gaubaruva (gobryas), the father-in-law of darius and one of the seven, was sent against the susiani and conquered them, that darius himself marched against the sacæ, that he fought against the _Çaka tigrakhauda_, i.e. against the sacæ with pointed caps, and conquered them on the sea (_i.e._ on the caspian), that he captured and slew their chief Çakunka. polyaenus has preserved a few details of the war against the sacæ, though they rest on little authority; they prove that it was carried on in the neighbourhood of bactria, and was a serious struggle.[ ] darius recapitulates the narrative of the achievements of the first years of his reign thus: "this is what i accomplished, what i accomplished always with the grace of auramazda; i have fought nineteen battles, and taken captive nine kings."[ ] in remembrance of these deeds and achievements, darius erected a magnificent memorial in that flourishing district of media which the medes called bagistana, _i.e._ land of the gods. the choaspes (kerkha) rises on the southern slope of the elvend, on the northern slope of which lay ecbatana. breaking through the mountain rim of iran, it flows down a long and narrow valley towards the south into the lower tigris. in its upper course the choaspes traverses an elevated depression, which is now thickly strewn with villages, the chosen summer abode of the shepherd tribes. to the north this depression is bounded by a steep mountain-chain, twenty miles in length, which ends towards the east in a precipitous wall of rock more than feet high. on this wall, which looks towards the rising sun, over a clear fountain which springs at the foot of the rock, darius caused a part of the stone feet above the plain to be made smooth with the chisel, polished and cut in relief; the relief is explained by two inscriptions, a shorter one above and a longer one below, in cuneiform letters. at the foot of the rock there was a park (paradisus) twelve stades in the circuit.[ ] being placed in media, this monument was no doubt intended to remind the medes that any rebellion against the power of the persians even under the most favourable circumstances would fail. the rock-picture represents darius, who in size towers over the other figures. he wears a robe which in front falls down over the knee, and behind to the middle of the calf, a crown, a simple fillet with spikes on his head; rings are on his arms, the hair is long, the beard curled. behind him stand a bow-bearer and a lance-bearer, both with long robes and beards. the king places his right foot on a man lying on the ground. below this we can read: "this gaumata, the magian, lied: he said, 'i am bardiya, the son of kurus; i am king.'" opposite to darius, bound to each other by a rope round their necks, and their hands tied behind them, stand nine kings with their heads uncovered (the last only has a very tall pointed cap, which marks him as the king of the _Çaka tigrakhauda_), clothed in various garments. over the first form, which is clad in a long beautiful robe reaching to the ancles, we read: "this atrina lied; he said: 'i am king in susiana'"; and over the second, in a short robe: "this naditabira lied; he said thus: 'i am nabukadrachara, the son of nabunita, i am king of babylon.'" near the third figure, also in a short garment, is written: "this fravartis lied; he said: 'i am khsathrita, of the race of uvakhshathra, i am king in media.'" the fourth wears persian clothing: "this martiya lied; he said; 'i am ymani, king in susiana.'" over the fifth form we find: "this chitratakhma lied; he said: 'i am king in sagartia, of the race of uvakshathra.'" over the sixth, who is clothed as a persian: "this vahyazdata lied; he said: 'i am bardiya, the son of kurus; i am king.'" over the seventh prisoner, who is clothed like the second, we read: "this arakha lied; he said thus: 'i am nabukadrachara, the son of nabunita; i am king in babylon.'" over the eighth, who wears persian garments: "this frada lied; he said thus: 'i am king in margiana.'" the ninth stands a little further back; the inscription tells us: "this is Çakunka, the sacian." the picture does not mention the conquest of the parthians, hyrcanians, assyrians, armenians, and sattagydae. in the midst, above the whole description, hovers auramazda, a solemn, aged countenance, with long hair and beard, visible only to the knees, in a winged circle. under this picture, at the close of the fourth column, before the account of the new rebellion of the susiani and the subjugation of the sacæ, the inscription tells us: "what i have done, i have done by the grace of auramazda. auramazda came to my aid, and the other gods, who did so because i was not hostile; because i was not a liar or violent. thou, who readest these inscriptions, may they tell thee what i have done. regard them not as lies. these lands which became rebellious to me, the lie made them rebellious. thou who wilt be king hereafter, guard against the lie. punish severely the man who is a liar; if thou keepest this mind, my land will be powerful. thou who seest this tablet hereafter, destroy it not. if thou preservest it as long as thou canst, auramazda will be favourable to thee; thou wilt have descendants, and live long, and may auramazda cause that to succeed which thou dost undertake. if thou destroyest this tablet, may auramazda smite thee, may he give thee no posterity, and what thou doest may he render vain.[ ]" footnotes: [ ] above, p. , _n._ [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] he was, according to herodotus, twenty years old at the death of cyrus. herod. , ; , . ctesias ("pers." ) gives darius a reign of thirty-one years and a life of seventy-two. that the reign of darius lasted thirty-six years is fixed both by the astronomical canon and egyptian inscriptions, which mention the thirty-sixth year of darius; and lastly by the egibi-tablets of babylon, which give dates out of thirty-five years (with the single exception of the seventh year). "transact. bibl. arch." , ff. according to ctesias, darius would be thirty-six years old in the year b.c. [ ] herod. ( , , ) puts this event; [greek: autika meta tên epanastasin]. [ ] herod. , . [ ] justin repeats the narrative of herodotus in a rhetorical form; he incorrectly regards zopyrus as one of the seven. diodorus attempts to unite the statements of herodotus and ctesias, by maintaining that zopyrus was also called megabyzus; the "twenty babylons" are reduced to ten. (exc. vat. p. , = , .) in herod. ( , ) darius wishes when he opens the finest pomegranate that he had as many megabyzuses (the father of zopyrus is meant) as the fruit had seeds. plutarch transfers this to zopyrus, and represents darius as saying that he would rather have zopyrus uninjured than babylons; "reg. apophthegm." . in polyaenus ( , ), zopyrus imitates the device which sirakes, a sacian, had previously employed against darius, and opens the gates of babylon to the persians by night. [ ] thucyd. , , , ; diod. , , , , ; , ; isocr. "de pace," . [ ] ctes. "pers." . the paidagogos of alcibiades was no doubt named after this zopyrus. plutarch, "lycurg." c. ; alcib. c. ; kirchhoff, "enstehungszeit," s. . [ ] _e.g._ ménant, "babylon," p. ; oppert. "expéd." , , . [ ] so according to the babylonian text in schrader, "keilinschriften," s. . [ ] oppert after the turanian text: "i slew much people from the army of nidintabel, and drove others to the river; they were drowned in the river." [ ] the turanian version mentions egypt after assyria. in the inscription nothing is said of this country; no egyptians are found in the rows of the conquered rebels. [ ] the two egibi-tablets quoted by boscawen in "trans. bibl. arch." , , on nebuchadnezzar iii. have been rightly ascribed by oppert, relying on the names of the witnesses, to the later rebellion of arakha. [ ] cf. schrader, "keilinschriften," s. . [ ] schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . the day of the month belongs to the corresponding babylonian month tebet. [ ] mordtmann, _loc. cit._ s. ; schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] above, vol. v. . the district of otene belongs no doubt to armenia. steph. byz. _sub voce_. [ ] what herodotus relates of zopyras, ctesias relates of his son megabyzus ii. in regard to this new rising, of which we have no more accurate knowledge in any other source, but which must not be called in question. herodotus himself indicates a rebellion under xerxes, in which the golden image of belus was taken away from the lower chamber in the great temple ( , ), and we have strabo's statement of the destruction of belus by xerxes, p. . if darius, as herodotus tells us, , , "destroyed the gates of babylon," it does not follow that he opened the supposed tomb of nitocris over the main gateway, because it made it impassable, as herodotus thinks ( , ). [ ] vol. v. p. , _n._ [ ] oppert, "peuple des mèdes," p. . [ ] mordtmann, _loc. cit._ s. , ; spiegel, "altpers. keilinschriften," bag. , ; schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , . the date of this rebellion cannot be accurately fixed. the passage in the inscription of behistun which bears upon it stands at the close of the connected narrative; we should therefore have to assume that it took place in the year b.c., for this passage begins with the words, "when i was in persia and media," which in the connection can only have the meaning: when i was occupied with the overthrow of phraortes and vahyazdata. on the other hand the egibi-tablets are wanting for the seventh year of darius only, so that according to this the year b.c. would be the year of the rebellion of arakha. above, p. , _n_. [ ] polyaen. , . [ ] oppert, "peuple des mèdes," p. , inserts at the beginning of this fifth column of the inscription of behistun before _thardam_: _duvadaçamam_, so that we get the meaning; "this is what i have done up to the twelfth year." the eleventh year of darius ends in spring . but chronological dates are not to be obtained by merely emending the text. according to the context and the first line of col. v. darius said in reference to the four preceding columns: "this i have done up to this or that year." then follows the narrative of the new rebellion of the babylonians and the subjugation of the sacæ. if the rebellion of arakha took place in the seventh year of darius, as oppert himself assumes, we should rather insert _astemam_ before _thardam_. [ ] diodor. , ; , . suidas [greek: bagistanon oros]. ritter, "erdkunde," , . [ ] spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. ff. oppert in the "journal asiatique," s. , vol xvii., ff., and "peuple des mèdes," p. ff., col. iv. . oppert after a turanian version above the picture here translates as follows: "et darius le roi dit: par la grâce d'ormuzd j'ai fait une collection de textes ailleurs en langue arienne, qui autrefois n'existait pas. et j'ai fait un texte de la loi et un commentaire de la loi et la bénédiction et les traductions. et ce fut écrit et je le promulgai en entier, puis je rétablis l'ancien livre dans tous les pays et les peuples le reconnurent." chapter xv. the achievements of darius on the indus and the danube. aeschylus represents the persians as saying, "a great, prosperous, victorious life was granted to us by destiny, when king darius, the lord of the bow, susa's beloved captain, governed the land, without fault or failure, like a god. the persians called him their divine counsellor: he was filled with a godlike wisdom, and wisely did he, the susa-born god of persia, lead our army. we were seen in splendid array; there was ready for him the unwearying might of armed men, and troops mingled from all nations, and the return from the wars was glorious. according to his will, he ruled the wealthy populous cities of the greeks in the land of ionia, and the wave-beaten islands of the seas, adjacent to that land, chios, lesbos and samos rich in olives, and lemnos between both shores, and the cities of cyprus, paphos, soli, and salamis. many cities he took adjacent to the thracian borders on the strymonian sea: even the walled cities, far from the shore, obeyed him, and the famous cities on the strait of helle, on the bay of the propontis, and the mouth of the pontus. beloved hero, thy like lies not in the land of persia."[ ] the rebellions were crushed, the kingdom of cyrus was once more established. darius took precautions to prevent the recurrence of such serious dangers, and to bring the nations into a lasting state of dependence. he created fixed districts for government, strengthened the action of the central power, secured the necessary means for this, and sought to arrange the taxes and tributes of the provinces and settle them at fixed contributions. along with this improvement in the organization of the kingdom he kept in sight the extension of it; he did not wish to be left behind cyrus and cambyses in this respect. we cannot decide whether the northern boundary of the kingdom reached the caucasus in the time of cyrus; it is certain that under darius the nations between the black and the caspian sea, the colchians, the tibarenes, chalybes, moschians, and saspeires, were subject to the persians. herodotus observes that the colchians and their neighbours paid the tribute which they had imposed upon themselves--which implies that these nations submitted voluntarily. "the empire of the persians," herodotus tells us, "extends to the caucasus; the territory to the north pays no heed to them."[ ] it was a considerable gain when the kingdom extended as far as the caucasus, or included the whole range; for by this means it acquired a strong natural border, and at the same time controlled the trading road which ran from the east and the caspian sea through the valleys of the cyrus (kur) and the phasis to the black sea. in the east cyrus, as we saw, had already advanced as far as the indus; he had conquered the açvakas on the north of the cabul, and the gandaras to the south of that river. of their neighbours, bactria and arachosia had remained true during the great rebellion, though the sattagydæ (the gedrosians) had revolted. darius had himself marched against the sacæ, and reduced them again to subjection. herodotus tells us, that he sent out a party to explore the indus; in which was scylax, an inhabitant of caryanda in caria. they set out from the land of the pactyes (_i.e._ from arachosia), and from the city of caspatyrus (cabul) they followed the course of the indus to the sea. then they sailed to the west, and in the thirtieth month they arrived at the point from which the phenicians started, who sailed round africa at the command of necho (iii. ), _i.e._ they did not return to the persian gulf but sailed round arabia, and landed in the north-west corner of the arabian gulf at heroonpolis. after their return darius made use of this sea, and subjugated the indians.[ ] the extension of the persian kingdom in the land of the indus, by darius, is beyond a doubt. in the inscription which he caused to be engraved on mount behistun after the suppression of the rebellions, he enumerates the nations which obey him. we can find but one name of an indian nation to the right of the indus--the gandaras. the inscription of the palace of persepolis, which darius built a few years later, mentions the idhus, _i.e._ the indians, besides the gandarians. herodotus further informs us that it was the northern indians whom darius had subjugated. they formed the twentieth satrapy of his kingdom, while the gandarians were united with the arachoti in the seventh satrapy. the twentieth satrapy of northern indians comprised the lands to the north of cabul, on the right bank of the stream, from the land of the açvakas as far as the summits of the himalayas. it paid talents of gold, the highest tax among all the satrapies of the kingdom.[ ] in the west darius pursued even more extensive plans. if cambyses had trodden the soil of africa, his armies were to cross the western sea, and carry the empire of persia into europe--a point which none of the great warrior princes of the east had as yet reached. diodorus tells us, that darius, filled with eager desire to extend his dominion, master of almost all asia, and trusting to the magnitude of the persian power, desired to conquer europe as his ancestors had defeated the mightiest nations with less forces.[ ] the first achievement of darius in this direction was the conquest of samos, the most powerful and prosperous of the islands on the coast of asia minor. oroetes had already prepared the way for this by inviting polycrates to magnesia and there putting him to an ignominious death, for when polycrates was master of samos and at the head of the splendid naval power which he had created he could contest with persia the possession of the Ægean (p. , ). polycrates had left the most trusted of his dependents, maeandrius, as regent during his absence. on the news of the death of polycrates, he declared his willingness to lay down his power. but when the nobles of samos demanded an account of the treasures of polycrates which were in the hands of maeandrius, he treacherously seized those who made the demand, threw them into prison, and maintained himself as tyrant. at an earlier time, polycrates, in close union with his two brothers, pantagnotus and syloson, had made himself master of samos: he then removed the former out of his path, and sent the second into banishment. syloson went to egypt to amuse himself with the sights of the country. there, according to herodotus, he was one day seen by darius, who was then in egypt with cambyses, in the market-place of memphis, clad in a red cloak. the cloak pleased darius and he wished to purchase it, but syloson hastened to offer it as a present to the persian prince. when darius became king, syloson went to susa, as herodotus relates, placed himself at the gate of the palace, and told the door-keeper that he had done a service to the king. darius in astonishment at such an assertion from a greek, caused syloson to be brought, remembered the cloak, and was prepared to reward the gift by a liberal present of gold and silver. but syloson urged the king to restore him to the throne of polycrates, which was now in the hands of a man who had been a slave in his family; the island was to be spared.[ ] whether this narrative has any real foundation or not (in any case susa must be struck out) darius found it advantageous to get samos into his power; and, as we have seen, it was a maxim from the time of cyrus to set up princes in the maritime cities and the islands, who owed their power to the persians, and who could only maintain it with their help. he commanded otanes, whose service in the assassination of the magi we know, to cross over into samos. the samians had no inclination to fight in the cause of maeandrius, nor did they venture to resist the persians. when otanes landed with the persian troops, maeandrius with his dependants retired into the citadel, and sent a message to otanes that he was prepared to quit the island. when this had been agreed upon, the captains of the persians waited without suspicion before the citadel for the departure of maeandrius and his associates, and for the opening of the gates. then the half-witted brother of maeandrius, charilaus, who had been confined in prison in the citadel, burst forth from the open gates with the old mercenaries of polycrates and fell upon the nearest persians, who in reliance on the treaty were unprepared for an enemy, and cut the captains down, while maeandrius passed by a subterranean passage to the sea, and embarked on board ship. the mass of the persians hastened to the rescue; the mercenaries were driven back into the citadel. enraged at the treachery, otanes gave the command to cut down all the samians who fell into the hands of the persians both within and without the walls. the city was set on fire, and the flames injured the temple of hera, which was the largest building in greece after the temple of artemis at ephesus. when the citadel had fallen, syloson received from the persians ( b.c.) the ruined city and the desolate island. he enjoyed the throne but a short time, which he had purchased by the ruin of the flourishing country, and vassalage to the great king.[ ] the island recovered from the blow which it received from the persians. twenty years after the subjugation it could once more equip and man triremes. the possession of samos completed the dominion of darius over the coasts of anatolia. it was of greater importance to get into his power the two straits which separate europe from asia--the hellespont and the bosphorus. if the greek cities on the asiatic side were subject, the cities and lands beyond were still to be conquered, and with the conquest of these the persian empire would set foot in europe. perinthus, a colony of the recently-conquered samos, selymbria on the northern shore of the propontis, and byzantium on the bosphorus, both colonies of megara, recognised the dominion of darius; in byzantium, the most important of these cities, a tyrant, ariston by name, soon took the lead.[ ] the european shore of the hellespont, the thracian chersonesus, had been for more than forty years under the rule of a princely family, which sprang from attica. one of the oldest noble families in attica, which had retired from the country before the usurpation of pisistratus in b.c.--the philaidae, had established a principality there, by protecting and securing the doloncian thracians in the peninsula against their fellow-countrymen the apsinthians, who dwelt at the mouth of the hebrus. the position which the first of these princes, miltiades ii., thus obtained in the hellespont, filled the city of lampsacus, which lay opposite, on the asiatic shore, with jealousy and anxiety for her trade; the question in dispute was the control of the busy strait. lampsacus waged long and vigorous war against miltiades and his nephew and successor stesagoras. the latter was followed by his younger brother, miltiades iii. (about b.c.), who had taken the reins of government tightly in hand. the forces of the little principality did not suffice to offer resistance to the persians; and the walls of sestos and cardia were insufficient. we hear of no resistance, and miltiades passed into the series of persian vassal princes. in this way he was secured against lampsacus and sigeum also, where pisistratus, in league with polycrates of samos, had placed his younger son hegesistratus as prince about the year b.c., who became a vassal of persia when cambyses demanded ships from the greek cities, or after the fall of polycrates, or certainly when darius extended his sovereignty over samos. by the subjugation of byzantium and the thracian chersonesus, darius was not merely master of the whole of the important trade of the greek cities of asia minor, and the cantons of hellas, with the north shore of the black sea, but the path into europe was in his hand. according to ctesias, he bade ariamnes, his satrap in cappadocia, sail to scythia and there make prisoners. ariamnes carried out the command with thirty penteconters, and brought back captives.[ ] if the statement is correct, it must refer to an investigation of the north coast of the black sea, similar to that made by darius of the east on the indus (p. ), and at a later time of the coasts of hellas and magna graecia.[ ] darius contemplated a great expedition; he wished to cross the straits with a large force, but not to pass to the west against macedonia and the cantons of the greeks, but to the north beyond the danube. it must have seemed more important to him to secure himself in the north first; the conquest of the west he regarded as less urgent, and also as a less important undertaking. herodotus tells us that darius' object was to avenge the incursion which the scythians made, at the time of cyaxares, into media.[ ] it is his manner to connect events by a nexus of guilt and punishment; darius cared very little for the disaster which had fallen on media. we shall be more correct in ascribing to him the intention of getting the whole shore of the black sea into his power, in order that he might reduce the western and northern coasts, when, the south-west, as far as the caucasus, being already subjugated, the whole sea would be a persian lake. on the northern edge lay a district fertile in corn, and flourishing colonies of the greeks. with this territory and these cities the persian kingdom would have gained the mouth of the rivers of the north, and the outlet of the trading roads to the nations of the north, as it had already got command of the trading roads which met from the east and west in colchis. but what really happened to the north of the danube, so far as we can fix the incidents, does not agree with this plan. the object of the enterprise, unless we assume that darius only wished to carry his arms to the most remote nations, cannot be made clear, nor can we follow with certainty all the phases in it. if cambyses had supported his expedition against egypt by the navy of the phenician cities and the greek cities of anatolia, darius had still more urgent need of their sailors to convey him to europe, across the danube. to the mariners of the anatolian coasts and the islands lying off them, the waters of the black sea and the mouths of the danube and borysthenes were hardly less familiar than the shores of the Ægean. this co-operation was therefore the most essential. darius called out the navy of the greek cities of his kingdom, and that navy only; employment was found for the phenician fleet was another direction. the greeks had to furnish no less than triremes, _i.e._ a fleet of which the crews reached the total of , men. that fleet was intended to convey the land army, the levy of the entire kingdom, across the straits, and it must assemble before the army arrived. the task before it was the transport of , men, for that, according to herodotus, was the strength of the army of darius, with numerous horses, and the enormous train of servants, porters, and beasts of burden to europe. this involved the embarkation and debarkation of the animals,--a long and difficult operation; it was desirable to lose as little time as possible, and more desirable still to keep and maintain a safe connection with asia in the rear of the army. hence darius considered whether it were possible to bridge over one of the straits. he found a greek who undertook to carry out this idea, and had no scruples in building a bridge to connect the mighty persian empire with europe, and facilitate the subjugation of his own countrymen in their native land. in the island of samos, so recently conquered by darius, were the best engineers in greece. after the construction of the great temple of hera had been begun, the samians had found various opportunities of exercising their skill. a long and difficult acqueduct, and breakwaters for the protection of the harbour, had been partly begun and partly carried out before the reign of polycrates; the building of the palace, the strong fortifications, and, above all, the great docks and harbour-works, which polycrates set on foot, had given yet further practice to the samians. from this school came mandrocles, who undertook the construction of the bridge. darius commanded mandrocles to build a bridge over the bosphorus, which lay in the direction of his march. this strait was narrower than the hellespont, but the current which sets through it from north to south was much stronger. mandrocles began the structure with the crews and materials of the fleet which had been ordered to assemble.[ ] several hundreds of ships, fastened together, were placed in the strait,[ ] and carefully anchored against the north wind and the current. on the coast of asia, the bridge lay to the north of the city of chalcedon and in its territory; herodotus supposes that the european end touched the shore between byzantium and the temple, which, situated to the north of byzantium at the mouth of the pontus, served as a signal to the ships entering the bosphorus.[ ] polybius remarks that the bridge "was said" to end at the hermaeum, which lay on the promontory of the european shore.[ ] strabo places this temple ten stadia to the south of the northern entrance of the bosphorus.[ ] hence we may assume that mandrocles constructed his bridge across the narrowest part of the strait, about paces in breadth,[ ] and that it lay at the place where the castles of anadoli hissari and rumili hissari now stand opposite each other. the army was collected, the bridge was ready, when darius came to chalcedon. he inspected the bridge, and was greatly pleased with the construction; he embarked on board ship and proceeded for some distance into the pontus, then he returned to the temple of zeus urius on the shore of asia, at the mouth of the bosphorus, and looked out into the sea. before his wishes and his power, and the skill of his greek engineer, the impossible had become possible; the bosphorus was compelled to submit to a bridge. mandrocles received the most valuable presents. the fleet of the ionians lay on the black sea, when the army, which was the greatest that a persian sovereign had ever brought together, commenced the passage. the train was interminable which filed before the king over the sea; the rock on which darius sat was pointed out for a long time afterwards. even "shepherd sacæ, of the race of the scythians, the children of a nomad race," passed over the bridge;[ ] the nomads of the steppes of the oxus were led by darius against the nomads of the steppes to the north of the pontus. in remembrance of this passage darius caused two columns of white stone to be erected on the european shore, which recorded the names of all the nations included in the army; the inscription on one side was in the persian cuneiform (in assyrian letters, as herodotus says), and on the other in the hellenic language and letters. mandrocles also was proud of his work, and dedicated a picture which represented the bridge, the army crossing it, and darius sitting on his throne, in the great sanctuary of his city, the temple of hera at samos, with the following inscription: "when mandrocles bridged the fish-teeming bosphorus, he dedicated this picture to hera in remembrance of the floating bridge. he obtained the crown, the glory of the samians, in that he completed the work to the satisfaction of king darius."[ ] it was in the year b.c. that the armies of asia trod the soil of europe.[ ] the fleet was ordered to sail along the thracian coast in the pontus, then to enter the mouth of the danube, and there prepare means for the army to cross the river, by procuring supplies, and constructing a bridge, no easy task considering the breadth and rapidity of the stream. the sovereigns of the greek cities, who owed their elevation to the persian king, commanded their ships in person, as darius had taken the field in person, or entrusted them to their sons. thus histiaeus the son of lysagoras, the sovereign of miletus, which was the most powerful of the greek cities of the coast, commanded his own ships, laodamas the ships of phocaea, aeaces the son of syloson the ships of samos, strattis the ships of chios, aristagoras the ships of cyzicus, metrodorus those of proconnesus in the propontis, daphnis the ships of abydus. the ships of lampsacus were in the charge of hippoclus, those of parium in the charge of herophantus; and lastly, the sovereigns of the recently-conquered districts, ariston and miltiades, commanded the ships of byzantium, of sestos, and cardia. while the fleet sailed to the danube, the land army marched for two days from the coast, to the north, in the direction of the balkan. at the sources of the tearus, which no doubt are those of the simir dere, which near bunar hissar send up warm and cold springs--thirty-eight in number according to herodotus--the army rested three days; darius caused a monument to be erected with an inscription, which herodotus gives thus: "the springs of the tearus supply the best and purest water of all rivers, and to these on his march against the scyths came the bravest and most handsome of men, darius the son of hystaspes, the king of the persians and of all the mainland."[ ] the tribes of the thracians, through whose districts the expedition marched, submitted without opposition. these were the inhabitants of the region of salmydessus; the odrysae in the valley of the artiscus (_i.e._ the teke deresi or nessowa), the skyrmiads and nipsaeans, who dwelt near apollonia, the greek city on this coast (a colony of miletus, now sizepoli), and mesembria, now misivri (a colony of the greeks, planted soon after the other).[ ] it was not till the persians had passed the heights of the balkan that they found resistance. between this range and the danube were the getae, called by herodotus the most brave and just of all the thracians. they offered an obstinate resistance, but were nevertheless at once crushed by overpowering numbers.[ ] meanwhile the fleet had advanced two days' voyage up the river from the mouth, and placed the bridge there, _i.e._ at the place where the river becomes one stream. by this bridge the greek army, to use the expression of herodotus, passed "over the greatest river which we know." strabo says that the bridge was placed over the lower part of the southern, and largest, of the mouths of the danube; which was called the sacred mouth. on the further shore began the land of the scoloti. when the army had crossed the danube, darius, as herodotus relates, wished to destroy the bridge and employ the crews in his army. but on the advice of coes of lesbos, who pointed out that he must leave the way open for his return, darius abandoned his purpose; he then summoned the princes of ionia, and gave them a thong with knots, bidding them untie a knot each day. if the army did not return to the bridge in these days they were to go home.[ ] the three kings of the scoloti (iii. ) idanthyrsus, who inherited the largest dominion, scopasis and taxakis--so herodotus relates--as soon as they received news of the approach of darius, sent messengers to their neighbours to ask for assistance. the kings of the agathyrsi (the western neighbours of the scoloti), the neuri, the cannibals and melanchlæni (who lay to the north), and the kings of the sarmatians, geloni, and budini, who dwelt in the east beyond the don, assembled for consultation. the kings of the sarmatians, geloni, and budini agreed to send help to the scoloti, but the rest refused. as the agathyrsi, neuri, cannibals, and melanchlæni would not help them in the contest, the scoloti determined to decline battle with the persians and retire. their wives and children they placed on chariots together with the rest of their goods, took their slaves and herds and marched to a secure position in the north; only so much cattle was left with the army as was necessary for its support. then the army was divided into two parts. one under the command of scopasis was to unite with the sarmatians and retire straight towards the don, if the persians took that direction; it was to keep one or two marches ahead of the persians, to stop up the springs and fountains, and destroy the pastures; but if darius turned, it was at once to pursue the persians. the other part of the army, under idanthyrsus and taxakis, was to unite with the budini and geloni, and to march in a similar manner to the north as far as the land of the neuri, the cannibals, and melanchlæni, in order to involve them in the war. the army of scopasis found the persians already three days' march on their side of the danube. it retired, and the persians pursued as far as the don. when the scoloti and sarmatians crossed the river, the persians crossed it also; in pursuit of the scythians they marched through the land of the sarmatians, reached that of the budini, where they burned the great wooden city of the geloni, which they found entirely deserted, and at length came to the desert which extended for seven days' journey to the north of the land of the budini. when darius reached the desert he abandoned the further pursuit, and encamped his army on the bank of the oarus (_i.e._ the volga). at the same time he built eight great fortresses, at equal distances, each about sixty stades from the other, the remains of which, herodotus remarks, existed in his day. while darius was thus occupied, the army of scopasis in the north marched back into their own land and united with the army of idanthyrsus. when the scythians were no more to be seen, darius left the fortresses unfinished, turned to the west, under the impression that the scythians would retire in that direction, hastened in rapid marches to the land of the scoloti, and there found the united army of the scythians. again the scoloti retired, and as darius did not cease to press them, they passed, as they had resolved, over the northern boundary of their land, into the land of the melanchlæni, who dwelt beyond the scoloti, between the don and the gerrhus, a tributary of the dnieper. from the land of the melanchlæni they proceeded yet further to the west, through the land of the cannibals into that of the neuri, who lay above the lake out of which the dniester flows (iii. ). all these tribes fled before the approach of the scoloti and the persians to the north; but when the scoloti wished to cross the borders of the agathyrsi, they prepared to defend them, and compelled the scoloti to return from the land of the neuri to the south into their own land. when this went on, and there was no end, darius sent a horseman to idanthyrsus with the request that he would either stand and fight, if he had the forces to do so, or send earth and water to him as his master. idanthyrsus answered that the scoloti had neither cities nor lands which made it necessary to fight with the persians in order to defend them; but if darius was eager for a battle, there were the tombs of their fathers; let him discover these and attack them, he would then see whether the scoloti dare fight or not. on this the scoloti sent the part of the army which scopasis commanded, with the sarmatians, to the danube, in order to negotiate with the ionians at the bridge, but the army of idanthyrsus was not to retire any longer, but to attack the persians as soon as they began to prepare the meal after the day's march. this was done, and each time the persian cavalry were put to flight by the scoloti; but as soon as the foot soldiers came to the rescue of the cavalry, the scoloti retired. in this way the scoloti attacked the persians by night also. and their kings (idanthyrsus and taxakis) sent to darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. gobryas, the father-in-law of darius, interpreted these gifts to mean, that the scythian message was: unless you become birds and fly into heaven, or mice and creep into the earth, or frogs and leap into the marshes, you will succumb to our arrows. the scoloti also, who were now armed for battle, drew out with horse and foot; and when they were in line, a hare ran past and the scoloti chased it, one after the other, as they happened to catch sight of it. then darius said, these men hold us in great contempt; gobryas has correctly interpreted the meaning of the gifts; we must carefully consider how we are to secure our return. gobryas advised that they should light the camp fires as usual when night came on; that they should leave behind the sick and weak, who could not bear burdens, in the camp, and with the rest set out at once for the danube before the scythians reached the river and broke down the bridge, or the ionians came to some resolution ruinous to the persians. this advice darius followed. the sick and exhausted, and all whose loss would be of little importance, were commanded to defend the camp, as the king with the rest of the army wished to make an attack on the scythians, and as soon as the fires had been lighted darius began his march to the danube. on the following morning those who had been left behind perceived that they had been betrayed by darius, and prayed for quarter to the scythians. the whole army of the scythians with the budini, the geloni, and sarmatians, went straight to the danube, for scopasis with his division had already retired from the river, after telling the ionians that they must not allow the bridge to stand after the sixtieth day, and the ionians had given a promise to that effect. as all the scythians were mounted they marched far more rapidly than the persians and could soon have caught up darius, had not the persians in ignorance taken a longer route, so that idanthyrsus with the whole army of the scythians reached the danube before darius arrived. the scythians now called upon the leaders of the greeks to break down the bridge, for the appointed time had passed; by that means they would get rid of their master, and might thank the gods and the scythians for their liberation. as the sixty days during which the fleet was to remain in the danube, by the command of darius, were really past, miltiades of the chersonnesus urged the captains of the greek ships to listen to the request of the scythians, and set the ionians at liberty. but histiaeus, the tyrant of miletus, said that each of them held his power in his city by darius only; if the king's power were overthrown, he would not be a tyrant in miletus, nor would any other tyrant keep his throne; every city would prefer democracy to tyranny. when all, with the exception of miltiades, had agreed to this resolution, they determined to remain, but to prevent the bridge from being used by the scythians they destroyed it for the length of a bowshot from the northern bank. thinking that the greeks were removing the whole bridge, the scythians returned, to seek out darius and destroy him. but they missed the persians yet a second time. they thought that the persians would seek out the places where the wells had not been stopped up, and the pastures had not been destroyed; but they returned by the way that they came, and their enemies with great difficulty reached the crossing of the danube. it was night, the bridge could not be found, and the persians were in great alarm that the ionians had abandoned them. then darius commanded an egyptian, who had a very loud voice, to come forward to the bank and call for histiaeus of miletus. the cry was heard; histiaeus at once sent all the ships to transfer the troops, and restored the bridge. clear and definite as the incidents are which lead darius to the danube, the river is no sooner crossed than everything passes into northern mists, into the marvellous and the incredible. let us first consider the conduct of the scoloti. the kings of the barbarous north, though far distant from each other--herodotus gives the land of the scoloti a length and breath of miles--meet in a great congress. where the congress was held we are not told. the kings of the agathyrsi, neuri, melanchlæni, and cannibals find that the matter does not concern them, for they had not invaded media. but the distant tribes to the east beyond the don, the sarmatians, budini, and geloni, come a distance of hundreds of miles to assist their neighbours; they carry their public spirit so far as to sacrifice their own lands, regardless of which the budini and geloni march with idanthyrsus first to the north and then to the west; the sarmatians follow scopasis far to the north-east. why the scythians divided their army in the first instance, why they did not unite to meet darius, we cannot ascertain. we are not told what idanthyrsus is doing while scopasis retires to the volga; we only know that the two armies again unite, while darius is building the castles on the volga. when united the scythians retire to the west as far as the borders of the agathyrsi, _i.e._ to transylvania, the most foolish thing for their own interests which they could have done, for by this means they brought darius back into the neighbourhood of the danube. on the borders of the agathyrsi darius summons them to battle. the princes answer that they will fight if he attacks the tombs of their fathers. these tombs we have found in the neighbourhood of the gerrhus; they are the numerous kurgans below the rapids of the dnieper,[ ] a region which darius must have traversed on his way north-eastwards to the volga. darius does not accede to the request of the scythians. nevertheless they determined to attack the persians, and yet contradict the object of this attack by sending scopasis with his army and the sarmatians to the danube, thus weakening the army. when scopasis and the sarmatians are gone, idanthyrsus offers the battle hitherto so carefully avoided, with cavalry and infantry, though herodotus remarks that the scythians have no infantry. meanwhile scopasis comes with his army to the danube, not to fight with the greeks but to treat with them. what reasons had the scythians not to treat the greeks as enemies? if they wished to cut off the return of darius, they must attack the bridge and destroy it. if they thought that they could not do this, or did not wish to do it, but to treat, they need not have sent half the army with the sarmatians, but only a few horsemen. the greeks were able to protect the bridge with a fort, upon which the scythian cavalry could hardly have made any effectual impression, or if they neglected to do that, they could at any moment, if watchful, bring the bridge to their own side of the river, and then secure it with all their ships till darius should appear on the farther shore. but the scythians send scopasis with his army. he tells the ionians that he knew that darius had ordered them to wait sixty days; they were to wait till the time had passed and then sail away. when the greeks had undertaken to do this scopasis marches with his army to the north. he joins idanthyrsus again when darius has begun his retreat. the united army reaches the bridge long before darius. a second time we have negotiations with the ionians. the sixty days are past, and the scythians entreat the ionians to sail away now, at any rate. they are satisfied when the greeks remove a part of the bridge, saying that they have begun to break it up and will now sail home. they do not wait till they see all the ships sailing down the stream. they have cut off darius; he cannot escape them and reach the danube. but they turn back into the steppe, and miss him again. still more unintelligible and extraordinary is the conduct of darius. when the danube has been crossed he commands the greeks to break down the bridge; the crews are to join the army on land. it would follow from this that darius thought the bridge no longer necessary. it was not his intention therefore to return to the danube, but to march round the black sea, and over the caucasus, if indeed he did not mean to skirt the northern shore of the caspian and return home over the oxus. if this was his object why did he not avail himself of the important assistance which the fleet could afford him, and command it to accompany the march of the army along the northern shore of the black sea? it would then have brought provisions to the army, or to the mouths of the rivers, and supported any attacks on the greek cities of these coasts; on tyras at the mouth of the dniester, on ordessus on the teligul, on olbia at the mouth of the bug, and panticapaeum on the cimmerian bosphorus. to leave the attack on the greek cities to the greek ships only would be dangerous, but there was no danger in giving them a share in it if the main point was to strengthen the army on land. but darius wished neither to use the fleet, nor to allow the bridge to stand, which is the more remarkable as the bridges on the bosphorus were not removed but allowed to remain, obviously under the protection of greek men-of-war. at the danube darius has to be informed for the first time by a greek that a way must be left open for his return. nevertheless he does not order the greeks to keep the bridge till further notice, or till his return. for sixty days only after his departure does he leave the means for his return open; so long the bridge is to remain; when that time has expired, the fleet is to sail away. what interest had darius in allowing the greeks to depart home as quickly as possible? in order to fix this period of time, he gives the leader of the greeks a thong with sixty knots. the calendars of the persians and greeks were different; there were variations in the calendars of the aeolians, ionians, and dorians; but sixty days could have been fixed without a strap and knots. beyond the danube darius blindly follows the division of scopasis, wherever it leads him away to the east and north as far as the volga. on what did the army of darius subsist--and it numbered , men, or if we include the train, it reached a total of about a million--for more than two months in a country in which, according to herodotus' own statement, there was no tilled land except at the mouths of the bug and dnieper, and in which the advancing scythians had destroyed the wells and pastures, as herodotus asserts? how did the persians cross the tyras (dniester), hypanis (bug), borysthenes (dnieper), and the tanais (don)? from whence did they procure the wood for the bridges or rafts for crossing them, in the steppe which herodotus rightly describes as entirely without wood down to the forests on the southern edge? whence came the water for man and beast in the waterless desert? when darius had crossed the don herodotus represents him as building eight large fortresses beyond the river on the bank of the volga, the object of which it is impossible to discover; and in a space of a little more than two months he represents the persian army as not only building these forts but marching round the whole territory of scythia, which in his description extends for miles from the mouth of the danube to the mouth of the don, and an equal distance northwards into the land, and even far beyond it. darius marches as far as the volga on the east, and northwards to the desert which lies beyond the sarmatians (whose territory extends for fifteen days' journey up the don),[ ] and also beyond the budini, "a great and numerous people," and the geloni (p. ). from this point he returns, according to herodotus, through the territory of the northern neighbours of the scythians to the west, as far as the lake out of which the tyras (dniester) rises, till the scythians, who are a day's march in advance of the persians, reach the land of the agathyrsi. according to herodotus' reckoning of the distances, darius traversed a journey of about a hundred days' marches of twenty-five miles each, in less than fifty days. if herodotus allows the region of the scoloti to extend too far to the north, if on the dnieper it reached only to the rapids of the stream, where the tombs of the scythian kings lay, the distance, on the other hand, from the mouth of the danube to the don, on which the scoloti and the sarmatians bordered, and which darius is said to have crossed, was far greater than herodotus assumes; it is at least miles, and from the mouth of the danube to the volga at least miles, which on the route taken by darius could not possibly have been traversed both ways in eighty or ninety days. herodotus does not allow darius even this space of time. according to his account, the march of darius to the desert, which separates the land of the budini and geloni on the north from the thyssagetae, to the bank of the volga, the building of the castles, the return from this point to the borders of the agathyrsi and the lake from which the dnieper springs, did not occupy sixty days. it is in this region that the scythians resolve to retire no farther, but to attack the persians daily, when they begin to cook their food in a land barren of wood, and they send scopasis from this point to the danube. scopasis reaches the river before the expiration of the sixty days for which darius has bidden the ionians wait; indeed, the scythians of idanthyrsus occasionally surrender flocks to the army of darius, in order that the persians may not think of retiring, _i.e._ in order to keep them in scythia till the sixty days are at an end. impossible as all these marches are, especially in the short space which herodotus allots to them, the conduct of darius is more impossible still. he advances beyond the don as far as the volga, in order to build fortresses which he does not complete; from this point he marches back again after the scythians as far as the sources of the dniester in order to bring on a conflict. at last they draw out for battle; darius has attained the object he so greatly desired. then follows the hunting of the hare by the scythians, and darius determines to march away rapidly in the same night to the danube; "because the scythians held them in contempt." he fortunately reached the bridge by taking the road on which he had come, but the scythians assume that as the wells had been stopped up and the pastures destroyed, he could not come by that route. but how could the persians, who when advancing had marched to the north-east to the don, strike out the same path on their return, upon which they started on the borders of transylvania, and the sources of the tyras (dniester)? the course of affairs must have been widely different. as darius allowed the bridge over the bosphorus to remain, and left the fleet on the danube, it cannot have been his fixed purpose to coast round the black sea. but in any case he must preserve his communications with asia and persia and support his army. all the sick, or wounded, or unserviceable men in the army, and all the messengers could only be sent back over the bridge on the danube. the crews of the fleet were the rear-guard of the army, maintaining and defending its communications. it had also to provide for its own maintenance, _i.e._ for the needs of more than , men, and no doubt it likewise collected the provisions for the army by land. however great the stores which the army brought with it, they would soon be consumed in the steppe, unless supplemented. wherever darius marched, he could not venture, with the enormous mass of men and animals in his army, to go more than a few days' march at the most from the river-courses. the idea of retiring before the enemy naturally occurred to a people who were without a settled habitation, who wandered in hordes through fixed districts of pasture, living on the backs of their horses, and carrying their women and children with them in waggons drawn by oxen (iii. ). what had they to lose, and what could they fear from the persians, if the unarmed, the women, children, servants, and herds, had already been sent at the right time under safe convoys far into the interior towards the neighbouring nations?--if all the men--and the scoloti were not a numerous nation[ ]--collected together, and accustomed as they were to abstinence, and living in continual movement, advancing far more lightly and rapidly on their steppe-horses than their encumbered opponents, hovered round their enemy, stopped up wells and destroyed pastures, without ever engaging in battle? if the scythians were wise, they would not retire to the east, where darius could approach the coast, and bring up his fleet with auxiliaries, but away from the sea, _i.e._ to the north. if the scythians were not terrified by the enormous power of darius, and knew how to avoid battles, the army of darius would soon be ruined by its own numbers in the desert. as a fact this is the way in which the war beyond the danube seems to have been carried on. herodotus tells us that darius came upon the scythians three marches beyond the danube. if he found their forces united, he must have hoped to engage them in a battle which would have decided the campaign at one stroke in his favour. but these mounted opponents could not be captured, darius sinks deeper and deeper into the desert, till he is compelled by distress to return, and his retreat was made an occasion of heavy losses by the light-armed scythians. in the excerpt from the narrative of trogus preserved by justin, which may have been derived from deinon's "persian history," we are told: "the scythians drove back darius the king of the persians in shameful flight. when iancyrus (_i.e._ idanthyrsus), the king of the scythians, had refused to give his daughter in marriage to darius, darius made war upon him, and invaded scythia with , soldiers. as the scythians gave him no opportunity of battle, he retreated in great anxiety lest the bridge over the danube should be broken in his rear, after losing , men. owing to the abundance of men this loss was not considered a disaster."[ ] in ctesias the king of the scythians is called scytharbes. "darius collected an army of , men, bridged the bosphorus and the danube, marched into scythia, and penetrated for a distance of fifteen days. scytharbes and darius sent each other the gift of a bow. as the bow of the scythian was the stronger, darius retired over the bridge and broke it up, before the whole army had passed over. those who were left behind, , men in number, were cut down by scytharbes. darius crossed the bridge over the bosphorus, and burnt the houses and the temples of chalcedon, because the chalcedonians had attempted to destroy the bridge, and had thrown down the altar which darius had set up at the crossing."[ ] strabo remarks: "at the mouths of the danube there is a large island, peuce. the mouths are seven in number, and the largest is called the sacred mouth; the distance to peuce by this is stadia; above the lower part of this mouth darius built the bridge; it might have been bridged on the upper part also. it is the first if you take the left hand when sailing into pontus; the rest follow in the voyage to tyras. on the pontic sea, from the danube to the tyras (dniester) is the desert of the getae, a vast waterless plain. when darius, the son of hystaspes, crossed the ister, to march against the scythians, he was in danger of perishing by thirst with his whole army through being cut off in this desert; but he discovered his danger just in time, and returned.[ ] for the support of the camel which had best sustained with him the weariness of the journey through the desert of scythia, and had carried the baggage with the provisions of the king, he apportioned the hamlet of gaugamela in assyria," _i.e._ its income and tribute, or natural products.[ ] the level desert of strabo, between the danube and the dniester, includes moldavia as far as the eastern slopes of the mountains of transylvania, bessarabia, and podolia. herodotus also represents the decisive charge in the campaign as taking place in the neighbourhood of the agathyrsi, _i.e._ the inhabitants of transylvania. ctesias tells us that darius had marched fifteen days beyond the danube. reckoning a day's march at miles, as herodotus does, darius would thus have advanced miles to the north of the danube, with which the assertion of herodotus agrees, that the scoloti retired before darius to the border of the land of the agathyrsi, and the lake out of which the tyras rises, but no further. by the lake out of which the tyras rises we can hardly understand the lakes at lemberg, for darius could scarcely have come so far to the west. the marshes at the source of the bug are probably meant, which as the crow flies are miles from reni, on the danube. if the scoloti ventured to retire but a little way from the river courses, the persians retired still less. hence the retreat of the scythians and the advance of darius must have proceeded up the pruth, through bessarabia to podolia as far as the marshes on the upper dniester in which the bug rises, where herodotus represents the two armies as encamping opposite each other, or as far as the marshes of the prypet. the answer which herodotus puts in the mouth of idanthyrsus--that darius should attack the tombs of the kings (on the rapids of the dniester) and then the scythians would fight, has a meaning, if darius was far from the centre of scythia, and the message was sent to him when in the neighbourhood of the source of the bug or the prypet; it was without meaning if he had already traversed the whole land of scythia as far as the don and the volga. want of provisions for man and beast far more than the want of water would have compelled him to return. had the scythians previously surrounded the army of darius on all sides, they would have thrown themselves with impunity in full force on his rear when retreating. if everything left behind through weariness and sickness had fallen into their hands, they would now not merely hinder the retreat but greatly endanger it. as soon as the communications with the danube were completely closed (strabo tells us that darius was cut off in the desert of the getae), darius must have been in alarm whether the fidelity of the tyrants or their desire to maintain their position in their own cities was strong enough to keep them at the bridge, and if this were the case whether they could induce their crews to remain. such in its essential outlines must have been the course of the campaign of darius beyond the danube. what herodotus tells us are legends of the scythians, which he had heard with some additions from his fellow-countrymen, in ordessus and olbia. it was the greatest glory of the scythians not to have succumbed to this attack; no doubt they placed in the most brilliant light the cunning and endurance of their fathers, which brought about this result. we must remove from the series of events the meeting of the barbarians, the assistance of the geloni, budini, and sarmatians, the entire eastern part of the story, no less than the march through the whole of scythia. that story has no doubt arisen from the supposed object of it--the assumed eight fortresses of darius on the volga, the remains of which were in existence in herodotus' time. these unfinished citadels were either fortifications of some tribe or another, long since abandoned, or ancient tumuli, such as are still frequently found in the steppes above the black sea. some were said to be trenches of the cimmerians and others trenches of darius. it was these which gave the direction to the march of darius. besides tradition from greece and scythia we have isolated traces of iranian poetry in the accounts of herodotus, justin, and ctesias. to these belong the suit of darius for the daughter of the king of the scythians and his refusal, the sending of the bow, and the enigmatical gifts of the scythians, of which gobryas could interpret the meaning. other greeks could mention the names of different persons who had guessed this riddle.[ ] a peculiar concatenation of circumstances had placed in the hands of the princes of the greeks of anatolia the fortune of the persian army, and with it the fortune of the persian monarchy and the entire persian empire. if they left darius to his fate, removed the bridge, and sailed home with their ships, it would be almost impossible for the persian king and army to cross the danube, and the greek cities would have been free from any foreign dominion. as soon as darius was at a distance from the bridge, the scythians must have called upon the greeks to depart, and they must have repeated their request more urgently when they had cut off darius's connection with the bridge and intercepted his retreat; they would represent his position to be as desperate as possible. without doubt histiaeus of miletus was commander of the fleet. not once only, as herodotus represents, but every day histiaeus, on whom the greatest responsibility rested, must have discussed with his associates the question of remaining or departing, when it was clear that darius was in danger, and there could not be a doubt that the scythians were pressing hard upon him, and perhaps cutting off his return.[ ] but there was only one among the tyrants of the greeks who firmly represented the view that they ought to abandon the king. this was miltiades of chersonesus, one of the newest vassals of persia, who had not been raised to the throne by darius, but only confirmed in his hereditary principality. the opposite view, according to herodotus, was heard from the mouth of histiaeus. it showed how correct was the calculation of cyrus, when, in order to secure the obedience of the greek states, he had made the elevation of princes in them one of his principles. there is no doubt that the princes could now have put an end to the dominion of the persians, but at the same time they would have put an end to their own power; they would have annihilated themselves with the king of the persians. the large majority of the tyrants, so we are told in nepos, joined in the opinion of histiaeus. we can with certainty assume that those of the tyrants who subsequently received peculiar marks of distinction from darius; histiaeus of miletus, hippoclus of lampsacus, coes, the leader of the ships of lesbos, contributed in some essential manner to the retention of the fleet; that it was chiefly they who kept back the others, and above all the crews. but even those tyrants who maintained most strongly that the post entrusted to them should be kept, could not prevent the possibility that the persians might be detained in the desert; that darius might not return. in this uncertain and wavering position (darius remained longer than was expected and thus many people thought him lost), the last decision would be deferred for a certain time, and the crews would be calmed by a promise not to wait for darius beyond a certain period. the same reply might be made to the demands of the scythians in order not to ruin their cause with them should they really destroy the army of the persians. in the other event darius might be told that the period was merely fixed in order to keep the scythians away from the bridge. from such a period, which the princes fixed for themselves and their crews, may have arisen the legend of the command of darius, that they were to wait for sixty days--a story which was afterwards quoted by the greeks against the tyrants to the effect that they not only faithfully carried out the commands of darius, but had gone beyond them to rescue him. as a fact darius must have spent far more than sixty days beyond the danube if he advanced fifteen full days' marches, according to the reckoning of herodotus, and penetrated to the sources of the dniester, the bug, or the prypet. for an army like that of darius could not march more than ten miles a day, and thus the miles of advance and retreat, which in the latter part would have been traversed amid continual encounters, required at least eighty or ninety days. the ionians had remained, though they had not kept all the contingents with them. the ships of antandros and lamponium, and no doubt those of other cities also, had sailed away of their own accord.[ ] how great soever the losses may have been which the army of darius suffered in scythia--the number, , , which ctesias represents as perishing by the premature destruction of the bridge, and which justin represents as the entire sum of the losses of the army, appears to have been the official amount of the loss among the persians--when the danube was crossed, they found security and provisions, rest and refreshment. the scythians could not force a passage against the ships of war, which controlled the stream, and the land army of the persians. undisturbed by them, darius could now have made better arrangements for continuing the war beyond the danube, and preparing for the conduct of it, if unexpected events had not compelled him to complete his retreat in haste. ctesias told us above that the chalcedonians, on whose territory lay the asiatic end of the bridge, had attempted to break it down. strabo relates that darius burned the cities round the propontis and abydus because he was afraid that they might supply the scythians with transports to asia.[ ] herodotus tells us, that darius, on his return from the danube, marched through thrace into the land of the hellespontians; thence he crossed on the ships to asia, and then repaired himself to sardis,[ ] leaving behind megabyzus as general in the land of the hellespontians, who reduced by force of arms those who did not "medize."[ ] with the persians who remained in europe he first attacked the perinthians "who would not submit to darius;" the perinthians fought bravely for their freedom, but the numbers of the persians were overpowering.[ ] but otanes, the son of sisamnes, to whom darius entrusted the command by sea, took byzantium, chalcedon, antandros, and lamponium. the reason for enslaving and subjugating these cities, was that he charged some of them with abandoning the army on the march against the scythians, and others with injuring the army on its return. the latter charge would apply chiefly to byzantium and chalcedon.[ ] it follows further from the narrative of herodotus, that darius awaited the result of the action of megabyzus and otanes at sardis, and did not return to persia till megabyzus had penetrated to the west into thracia, and he had established his brother artaphernes as satrap at sardis.[ ] of the scythians herodotus tells us that they pursued darius with their united forces as far as the thracian chersonese; miltiades did not venture to await their arrival there but fled, till the scythians had retired and the doloncians had brought him back. next, in order to punish darius for his invasion of their land, the scythians sent an embassy to sparta, in order to call upon the spartans to cross over to ephesus, while they attacked media from the phasis.[ ] from this we conclude that a serious rebellion of the greek cities on both shores of the straits and the propontis broke out in the rear of darius; that the cities thought darius lost, or intended to prevent his return. byzantium rebelled, though the tyrant ariston was at the river with the fleet of the city; so also abydus, whose tyrant daphnis was likewise there with his fleet. besides these cities, perinthus, chalcedon, antandrus, and lamponium, on the ionian coast, are expressly mentioned as rebels. strabo speaks generally of the cities round the propontis in this sense. herodotus tells us that chalcedon was taken, and ctesias that it was burnt. according to the latter the chalcedonians were eager to destroy the bridge; but darius was nevertheless able to pass it. herodotus asserts that darius passed on the ships from sestus into asia, and that the scythians pursued him as far as the thracian chersonesus. this definite and double statement on the direction of the return march, and the passage of darius into asia, must be maintained against the inexact excerpt from ctesias. if the bridge lay over the bosphorus, darius certainly did not march to the hellespont. the course of events was this. when he arrived on the northern side of the danube darius perceived that a part of the greek ships had sailed homeward, that the communications with asia were interrupted, that the bridge had been broken, that the cities on both shores of the straits were in rebellion. he was compelled to send the fleet at once to the straits in order to reopen communications. as byzantium and chalcedon could throw great difficulties in the way of any communication or passage over the bosphorus, the fleet was bidden to open the hellespont and keep it open. when the fleet was dismissed it was no longer possible to keep the army on the danube; and besides it was imperative to bring the rebellious cities to obedience at once, a duty which could not be left merely to their fellow-countrymen who had remained faithful in the fleet. so darius must have led the army to the hellespont as soon as he had allowed time for rest on the danube. the scythians no doubt crossed the river when they saw the army of darius leave the bank, and well-mounted hordes followed the retreating army on the south of the danube in order to make booty, to carry off the baggage, and cut down the stragglers. but there was no serious pursuit. the scythians could not have undertaken this against the persians; and if they had undertaken it and threatened danger, darius would not have sent a part of the army to asia. he must then have turned his whole force upon the scythians. miltiades certainly did not retire before the scythians but before the persians. even if he had gone no farther than expressing his wish, and had not left the danube with his ships,[ ]--though he had not found means for embarrassing the retreat of the persians over the hellespont, yet in the eyes of the persians he was the author of the revolt, his vote in the council of war at the danube was obviously treacherous, and the beginning which gave impulse to the mischief. miltiades then retired to the thracians. he had married the daughter of olorus, a thracian prince. twelve years later the general revolt of the greek states gave him the means of returning to his principality. the embassy of the scythians to sparta seems no more than a fable of the spartans, which belongs to the obscure side of the history of cleomenes. arrived at the hellespont, darius allowed a part of the army under megabyzus to remain on the european shore for the purpose of besieging perinthus and the other cities on that coast, with the rest he passed on the raft to the asiatic side: the conduct of sieges was no task for a king. but he wished to remain at sardis in the neighbourhood till the rebels were punished, the passage secured, and till the auxiliaries for the army of megabyzus and their communications were settled. otanes, the son of sisamnes, received the command on the asiatic shore; he besieged and destroyed abydus, reduced the cities on the trojan coast, on the southern shore of the propontis, and then turned against chalcedon and byzantium, while in the mean time megabyzus had besieged and taken perinthus and the cities on the northern coast of the propontis. the campaign against the scythians was not to remain without results; darius could not allow himself to set foot in europe for nothing. when only chalcedon and byzantium remained unconquered, otanes received the command over the troops on both shores, and megabyzus was commanded to make the tribes of the thracians on the west as far as the strymon subjects of the persian king. chalcedon was the first to fall after a protracted siege. the exiles from chalcedon and byzantium founded mesembria.[ ] footnotes: [ ] "pers." , , , ff. . [ ] herod. , - , ; , , . xenoph. "anab." , ; , . arrian ("anab." , ) mentions albanians in the army of the last darius. [ ] herod. , . [ ] vol. iv. . [ ] exc. vatic. p. = , , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , - . paus. , , , ff. heracl. pont. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , . [ ] ctes. "pers." . [ ] at a later time xerxes caused sataspes to sail round africa. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] triremes and penteconters were used for the bridge of xerxes. herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] polyb. , . [ ] strabo, p. , . opposite the temple of the chalcedonians on the mouth of the pontus, which was sacred to zeus urias (now anadoli kavak), there lay on the european shore also on the mouth of the pontus a temple of the byzantines which later authors call the serapeum (now rumili kavak). scyl. "peripl." . [ ] herodotus allows the bosphorus a breadth of four stades; strabo in one passage mentions four, in another five; p. , . modern authors do not agree in their measurements (grote, "hist. of greece," , ), but give about - / mile, _i.e._ above feet for the narrowest part, and five miles for the widest. for the narrowest place most authorities allow about feet, _i.e._ - / stades; cp. kruse, on herodotus' measurement of the pontus, s, . on the other hand, moltke ("briefe," s. ) gives the following: at the northern mouth between the light-houses, paces; at tell tabia, paces; between the castles, paces. [ ] "anapl. p. e." frag. . choerilus, in strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] the chronology of the conquests of darius is not easy to fix. in herodotus the campaign against samos is contemporaneous with the rebellion of the babylonians ( , ). if darius had had armies at his disposal from samos there, he would not have needed to send bagaeus. the expedition to samos must be placed after the end of the rebellion, _i.e._ at the earliest in the year , and it cannot be put later than a year at the least before the scythian expedition, since the ships of samos, led by syloson's son, take part in that expedition, and in addition to samos the cities of the bosphorus are in the hands of the persians before that event. the expedition to investigate the shores of greece, in which democedes took part, is placed by herodotus before the attack upon scythia. this is improbable, because the experience which darius gained in the scythian expedition, and which made it seem desirable to put the command in persian hands, preceded this expedition. there is nothing to point to it before the expedition; it first becomes intelligible when darius had resolved to change his plan of conquests in the north for conquests in the west, and had given megabyzus orders to subjugate the coasts of thracia on the Ægean,--when megabyzus had advanced to the strymon and macedonia had recognised the sovereignty of persia. on the other hand, the investigation of the greek coasts cannot be put much later than , since milo of crotona, who is still of great influence in that region, as herodotus himself remarks ( , ), betroths his daughter to democedes. this influence milo retained only as far as the year or ; for soon after the victory over sybaris and the destruction of the city, which took place or b.c., the rising against pythagoras and the aristocracy took place; they were overthrown and expelled. in herodotus the scythian expedition comes after the capture of babylon ( , ). we have seen from the inscriptions (p. ), that there were two rebellions of babylon, and that they cannot have come to an end before the close of the year . now samos was subjugated before this scythian expedition; moreover byzantium and the chersonese must have been in the hands of the persians; at least a year must have been occupied with the preparations required to bring , men to the bosphorus, and with the preparations for building the bridge (herod. , ). hence the campaign cannot have commenced before the year b.c. and it cannot be put later than b.c. miltiades is already master of the chersonese when darius crosses the danube; according to herodotus it is the pisistratids (not hippias) who sent him there. hence miltiades was master of the chersonese before b.c., the year in which hipparchus was murdered. again, when miltiades has to retire from the chersonese before the return of darius, he does not go to athens, from which it follows that hippias was still tyrant in athens. thucydides tells us that when hippias, after the murder of hipparchus, was looking about for alliances he married his daughter to aeantides, the son of hippoclus, tyrant of lampsacus, because he saw that hippoclus was in great repute with darius. this influence hippoclus must have gained in the scythian expedition; he led the ships of his city to the danube and voted for remaining there. hence this expedition must be put some time before b.c. if we allow two years for the battles of megabyzus in thrace, and the march of bubares to macedonia after the scythian war, and place, as is natural, the expedition to the coasts of hellas, which falls in the year b.c., after these acquisitions, we might keep to the year for the scythian expeditions. but as the indian conquests precede the scythian war, the year b.c. seems still better. the expedition to barca is, in herodotus, contemporaneous with the conflicts of megabyzus against those "who were not of median opinions" ( , ). this contemporaneous date is supported by the fact that greek ships only, and not phenician, are ordered to the danube, and to support the communications of megabyzus with asia,--a circumstance which is best explained by the absence of the phenicians in the african expedition. moreover, justin ( , ) speaks of an embassy of darius to carthage at the time when this city was engaged in a conflict with doreus of sicily (herod. , - ; , ; diod. , ). such an embassy, which could only be sent to demand a recognition of supremacy or union in war against the greeks, was first suggested when the persians reached as far as the euhesperides and persia became a neighbour of carthage, _i.e._ after the expedition to barca. the colony of dorieus on the eryx was planted between and ; he had previously taken part in the battle on the traeis in or b.c. the embassy of darius to carthage would therefore be subsequent to the campaign to barca and the expedition of democedes, and the years and seem most suitable for the first. from the inscriptions of darius it is clear that the inscription of persepolis, when compared with the inscription of behistun, enumerates more subject lands. the former speaks of the ionians of the continent and the ionians of the sea (_daraya_), while the inscription of behistun merely mentions the ionians. by the ionians of the sea we are to understand the newly-subjugated greeks of samos, the greek cities on the bosphorus and propontis. moreover, the inscription of persepolis, as already mentioned, speaks of idhus (p. ), while the inscription of behistun speaks of gandaras only. it follows from this that the first undertakings of darius after crushing the rebellion were the wars in the east, the conquests of samos and the greek cities on the straits. this is established by the statement of herodotus that the indians were included in the first division into satrapies--which he places soon after the accession of darius--but the islands and the thracians were added later on. the palace at persepolis must therefore have been built about the year b.c. after the war upon the indians and the expedition to samos, after the subjugation of the strait, but before the campaigns against scythia and barca. the scythian campaign falls in the year , the conquests of megabyzus and otanes in , the campaign against barca in and , the expedition for the investigation of the greek coasts in or . the inscription on the tomb of darius does not mention ionians of the continent and ionians of the sea, but ionians merely in one case, and then _yauna takabara_, _i.e._ ionians who wore locks, by whom may be meant the greeks of lemnos and imbros, the greek cities of the thracian coast, and the macedonians, _i.e._ the regions which were first subjugated after the scythian campaign. it will be made clear below that the last names in the inscription on the tomb are to be explained of african tribes, _i.e._ of the result of the expedition against barca. by the Çkudra, mentioned on the inscription, we may understand the thracians; in the place of the Çaka who are mentioned without any addition at behistun and persepolis, the sepulchral inscription has three kinds of Çaka:--_Çaka humavarka_, who must be interpreted to mean the amyrgian sacae of herodotus; _Çaka tigrakhauda_, _i.e._ sacae with pointed caps; and finally _Çaka taradaraya_, _i.e._ sacae beyond the sea, who must be the scoloti. [ ] herod. , - . [ ] herod. , - . "geographical journal," vol. , p. ff, where is also to be found the report of general jochmus on the supposed inscription in cuneiform letters and on the stone-heaps, which, according to herodotus, the soldiers of darius piled up at artiscus. [ ] herod. , , ; strabo, p. ; thuc. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] vol. iii. . neumann, "hellenen in skythenlande," s. , , . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] neumann, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] justin, , , . [ ] ctes. "pers." . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] pherecyd. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] hic quum crebri afferrent nuntii male rem gerere darium premique ab scythis, miltiades hortatus est, etc. nepos, "miltiades," , in any case following ephorus. [ ] herod. , . it is clear that the antandrians and lamponians were accused only of abandoning the campaign, not of imperilling the retreat. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , , , . the chronology which herodotus thus gives to the campaign of otanes, representing it as subsequent to that of megabyzus, is impossible. he himself represents otanes as nominated general of the forces on sea, and only subsequently as a successor of megabyzus. the subjugation of the cities belongs to his first command. [ ] herod. , , . [ ] it is self-evident that miltiades did not wait for the arrival of darius on the danube. [ ] according to polyaenus, chalcedon was taken by a mine, which was carried from a hill stades from the city under the market-place. "strateg." , , . it is obvious that we must read [greek: kalchêdôn] here, and not [greek: karchêdôn]. the altar of zeus diabaterius which, according to ctesias, darius erects, and the chalcedonians subsequently pull down, is certainly identical with the two monuments which, according to herodotus, darius set up at byzantium (above, p. ). herodotus also speaks of the destruction of the monuments, but ascribes it to the byzantines. this was done obviously in the time after the battle of mycale; if previously destroyed they would have been restored by megabyzus and otanes when they subjugated the hellespont. of the later destruction herodotus relates that the byzantines conveyed the stones into the city, and used them in building the altar of artemis orthosia; one stone only, covered with assyrian letters, was left at the temple of dionysus: herod. , . chapter xvi. the conquests in africa and europe. like bactria and arachosia, asia minor and egypt had remained loyal, when the natives in the centre of the kingdom, the semites and arians, and even the persians, had revolted against darius. in egypt aryandes, who had been appointed satrap by cambyses, still held his office. uzahorsun, the egyptian whom cambyses had placed in his retinue and taken into his service (p. ), tells us, "that his holiness, the king of upper and lower egypt, darius (ntariush), the ever-living, had commanded him to go to egypt, when his holiness was in elam, when he became lord of the whole world, the great king of egypt." according to the commands of his holiness he (uzahorsun) had restored order in egypt and had received contributions from all. no one had spoken evil of him, for he had given to every one what was justly his; he had restored all men to their rights, and had placed them in the boundaries of their property as it had been marked out; the worship of the gods and their habitations had been restored according to the will of his holiness; the offerings had been brought, the festivals had been celebrated.[ ] in addition to the toleration which the achæmenids always extended to the religion of the nations subject to them, though it was not their own religion, and the care which they took of their places of worship, darius seems to have been at especial pains to win the affections of the egyptians. his intention was, no doubt, to make egypt the starting-point for further enterprise in africa, and the support of the conquests which he had in contemplation. herodotus tells us that when darius determined to erect his statue before the temple of ptah at memphis, he gave way before the opposition of the priest of the temple. diodorus tells us that the egyptians consider darius as their sixth law-giver, after menes, sasychis, sesosis, bocchoris, and amasis. darius had mixed with the egyptian priests, and had thus become acquainted with their theology, and the magnanimity and devotion of their ancient kings. he set them before him as a pattern, and for this reason he was so highly honoured among the egyptians that even in his life-time he was considered a god, and after his death he received the honours which in ancient days had been given to the kings of egypt, whose reigns had been most in accordance with law. the name of darius meets us frequently on the buildings of egypt. a long inscription in the stone quarries at hamamat informs us that an egyptian architect, chnum-ab-rha, who had already been in the service of amasis, was in the service of darius from the th to the th year of his reign, and carried out his various buildings.[ ] the apis which had appeared in the fifth year of cambyses (p. ), died in the fourth year of darius ( b.c.), and was buried in the necropolis of memphis, in the sanctuary of osiris-apis, in the front space of the gallery of the tombs of apis, which psammetichus had added to the gallery of ramses ii.[ ] another great work which darius undertook in connection with the monuments of the ancient pharaohs, besides the advantages which it conferred on the trade of the whole kingdom and the intercourse between the parts of it, must have been of the very greatest value to egypt.[ ] from the valley of the nile, to which darius devoted such attention, in the autumn of the same year in which he marched to the danube, a second persian expedition set forth, comprising both an army and a fleet--a great armament, as herodotus says, which was intended to establish and extend the dominion of the persian kingdom on the north coast of africa.[ ] the libyan tribes which inhabited these deserts on the borders of egypt, like the great cities cyrene and barca, had paid homage to cambyses, had sent presents, and agreed to pay tribute.[ ] barca had been founded by cyrene about years before the conquest of egypt by cambyses, and was governed by a branch of the battiadae, the royal house of cyrene. the daughter of the prince of barca, whom herodotus, following no doubt the libyan name for the royal title, calls alazeir, was the wife of archelaus iii. of cyrene, who for reasons known to us had submitted to cambyses. more than ten years afterwards, archelaus repaired to his father-in-law at barca; during his absence his mother pheretima was to govern cyrene. while at barca, he was murdered together with his father-in-law alazeir by certain cyrenaeans who had fled to that city to escape the cruelty with which he had re-established his sway in cyrene (p. ), and by the people of barca.[ ] his mother, who was no longer in any position to maintain her power in cyrene, fled to egypt and besought assistance from aryandes; "in return for her fidelity to persia, her son had been slain." aryandes sympathised with her distress, so herodotus tells us, and put at her disposal the whole force in egypt, both the army and the fleet; sympathy with pheretima was the reason of the campaign of the persians against barca. he adds that in his own opinion this was merely a pretext; the real object was the subjugation of the libyans, of whom a few only were the subjects of darius.[ ] by the assassination of the two princes who had submitted to persia the word for revolt was given, and the more plainly because the barcæans, according to herodotus, refused to give up the murderers. the land round cyrene was extraordinarily fertile, and the district of barca reached on the west to the great syrtis. the army which set out to reduce a city, miles distant from memphis, was led by a persian, amasis of the tribe of the maraphians. (v. ). this march along the north coast through regions partly desert and partly inhabited by nomads, was to be supported by a fleet formed no doubt of phenician and egyptian ships, under the command of badres of the tribe of the pasargadae. the persians reached the extensive and well-watered mountain plain which formed the territory of barca. the city was invested, but the barcæans made a vigorous resistance. furious attacks of the persians were repulsed, and even their attempt to carry mines under the city miscarried. a smith in barca, according to herodotus, discovered the direction of the mines by placing a brazen shield upon the ground, inside the wall, and striking it,--the soil being hollow, wherever the shield resounded. then the barcæans dug shafts and killed the workmen of the enemy in their passages. after nine months of fruitless efforts amasis was convinced that he could not take the place by storm. he offered to abandon the siege if the barcæans would pay a suitable tribute to the king; so long as they fulfilled this condition the persians would not take up arms against them. the conditions were sworn to on both sides, as herodotus tells us, in the form that they "should be kept so long as the earth remained." but on the previous night amasis had excavated the place on which the oath was sworn, had covered the excavation with wood, and placed earth upon the wood. when the barcaeans, in reliance on the truce, opened the gates, came out of their city and permitted the persians to enter it, amasis caused the earth to fall in by removing the wood-work, in order to make the treaty invalid. being masters of the city the persians gave up to pheretima those who were chiefly implicated in the murder of archelaus. she caused them to be crucified round the walls of barca, and at the same time cut off the breasts of their wives and affixed them to the walls. the persians also carried away a large number of prisoners, in order to weaken the city, and so to retain it in subjection with less effort. only the battiadæ and a remnant of the population were left. after thus reducing the city, the persians marched through the fruitful plain, which stretches to the west of barca between the table-land and the sea, towards the west. at euhesperides on the great syrtis they reached the extreme point in the west of africa to which the persians ever penetrated.[ ] "when the army reached cyrene on its return," so herodotus tells us, "the cyrenaeans in obedience to an oracle allowed it to pass through the city. while passing through, badres, the commander of the fleet, bade them take the city, but amasis prevented this, saying that he was sent out against barca, and no other city. when they had marched through, and the army was encamped on the hill of zeus lycaeus, they repented that they had not seized carthage, and attempted to enter the city a second time. but this the cyrenaeans would not allow. then the persians, though no one was fighting against them, were seized with a panic; they ran away about sixty stades and there encamped till a messenger of aryandes called them back. at their request they received provisions for the journey from the cyrenaeans and returned to egypt. but those who remained behind and delayed their march were cut down by the libyans for the sake of their clothes and armour, till they reached egypt. the captive barcæans were sent to the king, and darius gave them a village in bactria for a habitation to which they gave the name barca. this village was inhabited in bactria down to my time."[ ] according to this narrative the expedition to barca, which set out in the autumn of b.c. and returned home at the earliest towards the end of b.c. (the siege of barca occupied nine months), did not turn out prosperously for the persians. the contrary was the case. herodotus repeats a legend of the cyrenaeans, which was intended to put their courage in a clear light, and according to which an entrance into the city when demanded for the third time was refused to the persian army which had marched through cyrene on its advance and return. further, an attempted attack of the persians failed though there was no resistance, and cyrene magnanimously furnished the persians with provisions for their journey. the army and fleet of the persians, when quartered in the fertile district of cyrene, were in a position to supply themselves abundantly at the cost of the city. moreover, we subsequently find a fourth battus at the head of cyrene and barca, and after him a fourth arcesilaus.[ ] after the murder of arcesilaus iii. a battiad would have been the less likely to ascend the throne of cyrene without the aid of the persians, owing to the cruel punishment which pheretima had inflicted on her opponents. moreover, herodotus tells us himself that darius included the libyans adjacent to egypt as well as cyrene and barca in the sixth satrapy, _i.e._ the satrapy of egypt, and imposed upon the two a yearly tribute of talents.[ ] from other accounts it is clear that the libyans of this district, and with them the inhabitants of the oasis of ammon, had to contribute salt to the persians, and herodotus tells us that these libyans of the north coast, clad in the skins of animals and armed with poles hardened in the fire, served in the army of the persian kings along with the curly-haired negroes living beyond egypt.[ ] monuments and inscriptions also prove that not cyrene and barca only, but even the libyan tribes of the north coast as far as the great syrtis, _i.e._ the adyrmachidae, giligammae, and asbystae were subdued at that time, and that the dominion of darius extended as far as the oases on the northern edge of the desert. herodotus has already told us of the oasis polis, which was situated seven days' journey from thebes in the sand (p. ),--the modern oasis el charigeh. the inscriptions of the great temple, the walls of which still exist at this place in tolerable preservation, tell us that darius "s-tut-ra,"[ ] _i.e._ rival of the sun, dedicated this temple to ammon ra of thebes, the lord of hib (which is the name of this oasis among the egyptians). in the colossal picture on the exterior wall at the back, darius offers sacrifice to this god and the goddess mut, who stands behind him; behind the king we also see the goddess hathor.[ ] at a later time darius ochus added to this temple. the inscription of naksh-i-rustem, which distinguishes the tomb of darius, quotes among the nations who were his subjects the _putiya_, _machiya_, and _kushiya_. by the putiya (puta in the babylonian translation of the inscription) we must understand beyond doubt the put of the hebrews, _i.e._ the libyans; the machiya may be the maxyes of herodotus, to the west of cyrene, the mashawasha of the egyptians; the kushiya are the cushites of the egyptians, hebrews, and assyrians, the ethiopians of the greeks, _i.e._ the nubians and negroes beyond egypt.[ ] justin's excerpt from pompeius trogus tells us that darius sent an embassy to carthage with the command that the carthaginians must abstain from human sacrifices and the use of dogs' flesh, burn their corpses instead of burying them; and at the same time he bade them furnish auxiliary troops against the greeks, whom he intended to attack. the carthaginians refused the auxiliary troops because they were frequently at war with their neighbours; to the rest of his commands they readily submitted that they might not seem to be obstinate.[ ] both the objects mentioned for the embassy are fictions, though they show an acquaintance with the arian religion and the views of darius, but there is no reason to doubt that darius entered into negotiations with carthage. cambyses had already fixed his eye on carthage, and darius by the expedition to barca and euhesperides, had become the neighbour of the city, the territory of which reached as far to the east as the great syrtis. in common opposition to the greeks the interests of carthage and darius were united, for the greek navy was the rival of the phenicians and carthaginians, and the carthaginians were in conflict with the greek cities in sicily. in justin's account the embassy of darius came to carthage at the time when the carthaginians in sicily were in conflict with dorieus. their struggle to prevent the settlement on eryx fell between the years and b.c. the expedition against barca came to an end as we saw in the year b.c. hence the negotiations between persia and carthage must have followed upon this expedition.[ ] while the persians in the south of the mediterranean were advancing to the west along the coast of africa, the army of megabyzus moved along the north in the same direction ( b.c.). perinthus and the cities on the northern shore of the propontis were reduced and punished, and then darius gave orders, according to herodotus, for the reduction of thrace. "and megabyzus marched through thrace, and reduced every nation and every city into submission to the king. the nation of the thracians is the greatest after the indians, and if it were united or governed by one man, it would be invincible, and in my opinion the strongest of all nations. but as this is impossible, and can never be brought about, they are weak. they buy their wives at a high price from their parents and sell the children into foreign countries. they regard it as the greatest degradation to till the field, as most honourable to do nothing, as most noble to live by war and plunder. it is a mark of birth to be tatooed, and of low origin to have no print upon the skin. the rich lay out their dead for three days; first they mourn for them, then they slay victims of every kind and make a feast, burn the corpse or bury it, heap up a mound, and celebrate games of all kinds, in which, as is right, the greatest prizes are put up for the victors. they worship only ares, dionysus, and artemis; but their kings also specially worship hermes from whom they claim to be descended. of this territory megabyzus subjugated the whole strip, which lay on the sea, to darius." the paeonians, who were settled on the strymon and round lake prasias, assembled on their coast to await the attack. but megabyzus turned into the inland region to the north of mount pangaeum, and from that direction fell unexpectedly upon the cities of the paeonians, which were undefended. then each of the paeonians hastened back to his family and they submitted to the persians, and megabyzus caused the paeonians on the siris, and the paeoplians, who were situated to the north of pangaeum, on the strymon, to be carried captive to sardis to the king. "but the paeonians who dwelt on mount pangaeum, and on piles in lake prasias, were not at first subjugated by megabyzus, though he made the attempt."[ ] together with the tribes of the thracians, the numerous cities of the greeks on this coast became subjects of darius.[ ] doriscus on the mouth of the hebrus received a persian garrison.[ ] in vain the inhabitants of teos, more than thirty years previously, had emigrated before the siege of harpagus, and founded abdera on this coast--they now became subjects of the persians. in return for the great service which he had rendered at the bridge on the danube, histiaeus the prince of miletus received permission to found a colony on the strymon, where it leaves lake prasias, in the land of the edonians, near myrcinus, on the north-west spur of pangaeum, which is here clothed with magnificent forests, and possessed fruitful veins of silver.[ ] histiaeus began at once to build the walls which were to protect the new settlement. with the subjugation of the paeonians and the crossing of the strymon, megabyzus reached the border of an empire, the macedonian kingdom, the central district of which lay between the axius and the haliaemon. amyntas, the son of alcetas,[ ] the king of macedonia, was requested by megabyzus through an embassy of seven persians to send earth and water as tokens of submission to darius. amyntas was in great terror of the persians, as herodotus tells us;[ ] he did not refuse the request, and thus acknowledged the sovereignty of the persians. in order to do honour to his envoys, they were hospitably entertained. but when in their intoxication they laid hands on the women of the royal house, alexander the young son of amyntas caused them to be cut down with their train. as they did not return, megabyzus sent his son bubares, the brother of the zopyrus who had done good service before babylon, and was now viceroy there, with an armed force.[ ] amyntas was prepared to pay a large sum as a fine, and to receive the son of megabyzus at his royal house; he gave his own daughter gygaea, the sister of alexander, in marriage to bubares.[ ] while megabyzus subjugated the thracian coast with its harbours and trading-places to the west as far as the strymon, otanes had completed the reduction of the rebellious greek towns to the south of the straits, on the shores of asia minor. not only lamponium and antandrus, opposite lesbos, but also abydus, chalcedon, and byzantium were punished. coes, who had led the ships from lesbos to the danube, had been rewarded for his services to darius by the government of the island. he was not required to furnish ships to otanes for the conquest of lemnos and imbros. the lemnians resisted bravely. when they had been conquered, otanes made lycaretus, a brother of maeandrius of samos (p. ), tyrant of the island, and he governed it till his death (towards b.c.[ ]). with the conquest of lemnos and imbros, two large and important islands in the Ægean sea, in addition to samos, chios and lesbos were gained for the persian kingdom. after the expedition across the danube, darius intended to carry his conquests to the west of europe, not to the north. the cantons of hellas were the aim towards the attainment of which megabyzus and otanes prepared the way. the co-operation of the marine appeared indispensable for further enterprises in this direction. the events at the bridge over the danube had shown darius that it was extremely rash to leave in the hands of the tyrants of the greeks the command of the fleet formed out of the vessels from their cities. the phenicians he could certainly trust, if he led them against the greeks, but the navigation of the greeks had long ago driven the trade of the phenicians from the greek coasts. in any case it was advisable that a number of leading persians should be acquainted with the greek waters, that they might be entrusted with the command of squadrons. that persians were equal to such an office had been shown in africa. darius commanded fifteen persians selected by himself to go on board phenician ships in order to visit and investigate the coasts of hellas and sicily. the expedition embarked on two sidonian ships of the line, which were accompanied by a transport vessel, and set sail from sidon. on board was a greek physician as interpreter and guide--democedes of croton, who had previously been physician to polycrates of samos. he had accompanied his master on his unfortunate voyage to magnesia (p. ). after the execution of polycrates, oroetes had released the samians in his company, and retained the rest as slaves in his house. when bagaeus had caused oroetes to be slain he sent his property and slaves to the court of the king, where democedes was kept in rags and chains along with his companions in misfortune. it happened that darius, in leaping from his horse when hunting, dislocated his ancle. the egyptian physicians, who were in the greatest repute in the east, and had already been retained since the time of cyrus at the persian court (p. ), could not cure the mischief. at last some one remembered to have heard of the fame of democedes among the greeks. darius caused him to be summoned, and was healed by him. soon after democedes cured atossa, the daughter of cyrus, the first wife of darius, of a dangerous tumour in the breast. in return for his successful treatment darius presented him with two pairs of golden chains; and when receiving them democedes, according to the greeks, inquired: whether the king desired to double his misery in return for the cure? from that time he was in high favour with the king, and was appointed a companion of his table, one of the greatest and rarest distinctions in persia; it was said to be his intercession which rescued the egyptian physicians who were about to be crucified because they were unable to heal darius. he now accompanied the expedition, as a man acquainted with the localities, to hellas and sicily, in the year b.c. the king bade the persians keep watch upon democedes, and not suffer him to escape to the hellenes. the expedition sailed round hellas; it kept close to the shore, and sketched the coast; as herodotus remarks, these were the first persians who had come to greece. from hellas they directed their course to lower italy. when the persians were at tarentum democedes succeeded in escaping. when it was discovered that he had gone to crotona, his native city, the persians sailed thither and requested the inhabitants to give him up, but in vain. then they experienced a further disaster; they were driven to iapygia; the crew were captured and enslaved; only after some time had passed were the persians ransomed by gillus, a tarentine exile, and carried back to persia.[ ] however vexatious the loss of his physician might be to darius, this expedition enabled him to prepare for the enterprise in the greek waters which he had in view. the main object was attained; a number of persians had been made acquainted with the sea and the coasts. footnotes: [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , . de rougé has aram, brugsch now reads elam ("hist. of egypt," , ), and translates: "for he also was the great lord of all lands and a great king of egypt,--in order that i might reinstate the number of the sacred scribes of the temples, and revive whatever had fallen into ruin. the foreigners escorted me from land to land, and brought me safe to egypt, according to the command of the lord of the land. i did according to what he had commanded. i chose them from all their (?) of the sons of the inhabitants--to the great sorrow of those who were childless--and i placed them under expert masters, the skilful in all kinds of learning, that they might perform all their works. the king did all this--in order to uphold the name of all the gods, their temples, their revenues, and the ordinances of their feasts for ever." [ ] herod. , ; diod. , , . for _rach-num-hat_ which he read previously brugsch now reads _chnum-ab-rha_. "hist. of egypt," , . [ ] mariette, "athen. franç." ; mai, p. . [ ] the remark in polyaenus; darius marching through arabia against the egyptians who rebelled against the tyranny of aryandes, had again gained their affection by offering a prize of talents of gold to the discoverer of a new apis in the place of that which had just died, cannot be referred to the apis which died in the year b.c. in that year darius was fighting in media against phraortes, aryandes was satrap in the year b.c. and long after. hence it must refer to the second apis, which appeared in b.c., the thirty-first year of darius, for which darius caused a sepulchre to be built. that the first rebellion of the egyptians against darius took place about this time follows from a chapter in aristotle's "rhetoric," , , where we are told that darius did not cross over to hellas before he had reduced egypt; and in like manner xerxes reduced egypt before crossing over to hellas. the "crossing over" can only refer to the campaign of datis and artaphernes; the first rebellion of egypt against darius therefore took place just when the rebellion of the ionians had been crushed, _i.e._ , b.c.; the second occurred in b.c. [ ] herod. , says, "at the same time when megabyzus subjugated the inhabitants of the hellespont." this subjugation would begin in the autumn and pass over into the next spring. [ ] herod. , . above, p. . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] herod. , - ; heracl. pont. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , ; heracl. pont. fragm. , ed. müller; pindar, "pyth." , and the scholia. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] in brugsch, "hist. of egypt," , , settu-ra. [ ] lepsius, "inschriften von charigeh und dachileh, z. f. aeg. spr." , s. , . [ ] it seems to me rash to find carthage in _karka_ (so also in the babylonian version) with oppert ("journal asiatique," , p. ff.), and mordtmann ("z. d. m. g." , ). [ ] justin, , . [ ] though i admit that negotiations may have taken place between darius and the carthaginians, i do not at the same time allow the accuracy of the statement in diodorus about the league of xerxes and the carthaginians against the greeks: a sicilian may be suspected of ascribing to his countrymen as large a share as possible in the glory of the persian war. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , ; thuc. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; justin, , , . [ ] herod. , , ; justin, , , . in the year b.c., in which this incident falls, alexander must have been very young; herodotus speaks of him as young and inexperienced. in justin we are told in reference to the length of his life: "_senex decessit_." on the reigns of amyntas and alexander philhellen, i shall treat in my greek history. for the present i refer to droysen, "hellenismus," ^ , , and von gutschmid, "ueber die makedonische anagraphe, symbol. philolog." bonn. [ ] the ionian revolt liberated lemnos from the dominion of the persians; when miltiades during the revolt subjugated lemnos and imbros to athens, hermon was at the head of lemnos. [ ] herod. , - . athenaeus, p. . on the date of the expedition above, p. , _n._ that this whole expedition owed its origin to an intrigue of democedes, is merely a part of herodotus' love of anecdote. but it is not incredible that democedes joined it in the hope of returning to greece. chapter xvii. the state of darius. the perseverance and vigour of darius had succeeded in re-establishing and extending the kingdom of cyrus. in the west he had reached mount olympus and the great syrtis, in the east the course of the indus, high up among the himalayas; in the north the boundaries were the caucasus and the jaxartes, in the south the tribes of arabia and the negroes above nubia. he set himself to give a regulated administration to this empire, which had been acquired by such vast conquests, and which in its wide extent threw the empire of the assyrians completely into the shade. he made the first attempt known to history to organize his conquests and govern them on a fixed plan. thus he became the real founder of the persian empire. he succeeded so far that an empire, the like of which had not been seen upon earth, which enumerated the most various nations among its subjects, was really governed, and the foundations which he laid were so firm that in spite of many serious rebellions, the empire never fell from internal disorganization. the chief support of the kingdom lay in the proud feeling of the persians that they were the ruling nation of asia, and governed the nations through their king and with their king. they saw with satisfaction how the tribute, the contributions, the prisoners of the subject nations came from the furthest distance to their mountains, how the palaces of their king rose in ever-increasing splendour on their native soil, what brilliance and magnificence surrounded their ruler, the king of kings. from the persians were chosen the magistrates who governed the provinces, and the generals who commanded their contingents; persians surrounded the king and were his counsellors and judges. the court, the administration, and the army opened the most brilliant prospect to every persian who was in a position to distinguish himself in the eyes of the king; and service in war offered acceptable pay to the man of the people. persian troops, excellently appointed, protected the person of the king; they formed the garrisons of the fortresses, they were the nucleus of the army, and marched before the rest of the troops. in solemn processions and parades, the persians were always on the right of the king.[ ] they were not only free from tax and tribute of every kind, but largesses of money were made whenever the king entered pasargadae (v. ). plato's laws maintain that darius established as law the allotments which cyrus promised the persians; in this way he had shown his inclination to the persians and had established a common feeling between the ruler and the nation.[ ] however this may be, every one, even the meanest persian, felt that he had a share in the government of asia. it was a principle of the king of persia from the time of cyrus to grant to the leading families of the persians and the persian nobility a rich share in the fruits and advantages of the empire, but at the same time to accustom them to dependence and subjection, and to train up in them a vigorous class of magistrates and officers. if the wealthy families of persia remained in their old mode of life in the country, with their flocks, such a position might keep up a feeling of independence and freedom which was hardly compatible with the unlimited power of the king and the interests of the empire. it was desirable to bring them to the court, and keep them under supervision, to make them dependent on the favour of the king, and habituate them to constant service. the median court had been numerous; the persian court was even more extensive, not merely for the sake of magnificence, or to display the splendour and greatness of the ruler, and so impose upon the persians and the subject nations, but also with a view of educating the nobility in court life. no one could count on advancement who did not show himself at the gate of the king; indeed it was difficult for any one whom the king did not see to obtain a hearing from him. those whose duty it was to appear at court were urged not to fail in their appearance.[ ] in this way they learnt not merely behaviour and conduct, modesty and self-control,[ ] but were accustomed to live in the shadow of the throne, and to seek the sun of royal favour. in the immediate neighbourhood of the king men could look up with obedience and respect to the greatness of the ruler. if in this way the nobility were linked round the court, and instructed to strive for the favour of the king as the highest honour, if the strict ceremonial of the court reduced them to constant obedience, the king on the other hand had opportunity to select, from personal knowledge and confidence, the magistrates to whom important posts might be entrusted.[ ] the officers round the person of the king, and employed in the service of the state and court, were numerous. next to the throne came the six tribal princes, who wore the upright kidaris, the sign of royalty, and to them, as we often find, the most difficult duties in war, and the most important expeditions and provinces were entrusted. next to the tribal princes were the seven supreme judges of the kingdom, who watched over the hereditary customs, and the controller of the empire, "the king's eye." less influential, but nevertheless important owing to their personal relation to the king, were the "quiver-bearer" and the "lance-bearer"; we find the persons who filled these offices at the time depicted on the relief at behistun beside the king. the office of "bearer of the king's footstool" is also mentioned. the great court-offices, of the "chief staff-bearer," "messenger," "announcer," "chief butler," "master of the horse," and "master of the chase," together with various other honourable offices, and many subordinate places, gave an opportunity of uniting a large number of persians closely with the court life, and employing as viceroys and generals those whom the king had found to be excellent servants.[ ] but medes were employed in the service of the kingdom as well as persians. if media was treated in other respects like the rest of the provinces (it had to pay yearly talents of tax, and furnish , sheep for the court), the system of cyrus, who by entrusting important commissions to eminent medes, had attempted to reconcile media to the new position of affairs, was followed by darius in spite of the rebellion. from other nations only those who had been specially tested were in rare cases entrusted with high offices. cyrus had introduced the custom of rewarding loyalty and devotion to the king and service to the kingdom by distinctions, marks of honour, and gifts conferred in the most marked and distinctive manner,--of exciting ambition and emulation by favour and liberality. who makes such presents, said xenophon, as the king of the persians?--armlets, chains, and horses with golden bridles; no one could possess such things unless they were presented to him by the king.[ ] who could compare with the decorated friends of the king of persia?--he alone appeared in more splendid array. the sending of a portion from the royal table was no slight honour.[ ] the present of the kaftan (kandys) was a common distinction; more important were the golden armlets, the golden chain, the golden crown, the golden wreath, the golden sabre, the horse with golden harness. other presents were also made, as plane-trees and vines of gold, golden millstones more than pounds in weight.[ ] there were also gifts of property, and allocations of the produce of certain cities and districts. pre-eminent services were rewarded by the title "benefactor"; we remember that the avesta requires the good thought, the good word, and the good act. besides these distinctions, advancement to the upper classes of the kingdom counted as the highest honour. the "table companions" of the king, and above them "the kinsmen" of the king had the first portion in the kingdom after the tribal princes and the great officers. the bestowal of the rank of the table companion conferred the right to eat at or near the table of the king, and occasionally to make merry with him. the elevation to be a "kinsman of the king" conferred the rank of an achæmenid, a prince of the house. like the king, the kinsmen wore a pale blue band round the tiara, and had the right to kiss the king, a custom which was usual in persia among persons of equal rank.[ ] according to the statements of herodotus, the boys of the persians were instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year (xenophon and strabo assert till their twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year) in riding, shooting with the bow, and speaking the truth.[ ] in the laws we are told that the boys of the medes were entrusted to the women, and those of the persians to free men. according to the assertion of nicolaus of damascus, cyrus was already instructed in the philosophy of the magians, in justice and truthfulness, as the hereditary laws prescribed for the leading persians.[ ] plato tells us that the sons of the kings of the persians were attended by eunuchs till their seventh year; from that time till the fourteenth year they learned to ride, shoot, and hunt. then they received distinguished teachers, of whom the first instructed them in the wisdom of zoroaster, and the business of the crown, the second in the duty of truthfulness, the third in temperance, the fourth in courage and bravery.[ ] plutarch observes that a magian presided over the education of the princes and instructed them even in magic.[ ] xenophon narrates that the princes and the children of the leading persians were brought up "at the gate" of the king, where they learned temperance and prudence and saw nothing unbecoming. they observed what men were honoured by the king and whom he punished, and thus learned even in their boyhood to command and obey. modesty and obedience were counted as a distinction among these boys. in this way they learned to be excellent riders, to throw the javelin, and use the bow. at a later time they became so skilful in hunting that they ventured to encounter a bear.[ ] even now, he says in another passage, it is the custom to educate children at the court, but the exercise in riding has fallen into disuse, because they no longer go where they could gain reputation by skill in the art; and if in former days they seemed to learn justice when they listened to just sentences, they now see that he obtains justice who gives most. and if they formerly learned the nature of all plants in order to avoid what was noxious, they now seem to have acquired this knowledge in order to do as much mischief as possible.[ ] in strabo's account the education seems arranged even more systematically. he tells us that the persian boys were brought up, fifty together, with one of the sons of the king, or with the sons of the satraps. intelligent men were appointed to teach them, who instructed them in the legends of the gods, sometimes with and sometimes without song, and also recounted to them the noblest deeds of men, besides those of gods.[ ] at the same time the boys and young men were rendered hardy. they were aroused early in the morning by the sound of a gong, and for food commonly received barley or wheaten bread, and water to drink; when hunting or keeping the flocks, they were compelled to live on wild fruits, acorns, and forest berries, and to pass the night in the open air. they had also to learn to distinguish wholesome and noxious herbs, to plant trees, and prepare hunting nets.[ ] putting this evidence together, and remembering that even in the fourth century the kings and their retinue undertook long hunting expeditions on horseback, without permitting themselves to be checked by weariness, heat or cold, hunger or thirst,[ ] there seems to be no doubt that the persian kings introduced a system of education for the officers on the basis of the old mode of life and the customs of the nation, and in this system their own sons, so far as seemed good, had a part. riding and shooting were national exercises among the persians; hunting was necessary for the protection of the flocks, and was therefore carried on as a religious duty no less than as a pleasure; from all antiquity the keeping of flocks and the protection of them against beasts of prey was assigned to the youth. if these exercises were systematized, and regard was paid to the prospect of military service in some official capacity, if the young men were also accustomed to unhesitating obedience, such a school might be expected to supply capable and active officers and good generals. a hardy and vigorous life was the more necessary for the sons of the persians as luxury began to spread among the higher classes after the successes of cyrus. we may believe the accounts of the greeks that instruction in religion formed a part of the system; the avesta requires such instruction, and it is usual among the parsees at the present day (v. , ). but the greeks are wrong in supposing that these cadet schools were the general mode of education among the persians, and maintaining that the persian boys received a training like those of the spartans. it was only for political reasons that a number of young men from the eminent families were educated to be generals and viceroys. xenophon has perceived that the education was limited to the higher classes, and states this distinctly in the "anabasis." this education went on partly under the eyes of the king at court, partly at the courts of the satraps, which were arranged on the pattern of the royal household.[ ] even under the sassanids the sons of the nobles were educated at court; we have special mention of the teachers of the horsemen.[ ] it was not the intention of cyrus or darius to interfere with the life and habits of the subject nations more than was necessary in order to maintain their supremacy and to secure obedience. the ancient dynasties in babylon and egypt were removed; cyrus, cambyses, darius, and xerxes are called kings of babylon in numerous inscriptions;[ ] in egypt, as the native inscriptions have shown us, they received the style and title of the pharaohs. in both countries they take the place of the native monarchs, and not in name only, for at the same time they undertake the protection of the national religion and law. the peculiar ordinances and the law, the political and administrative arrangements of the subject lands, are said to have continued under the persian empire to the widest possible extent. in some cases, indeed, old native families remained at the head of affairs, as in cilicia, the phenician and cyprian cities; in bactria native princes governed the districts (v. ); in the cities of the greeks and the subjugated islands of the Ægean sea, the persian kings had set up princes from the native population. the nomad tribes of the empire could only be ruled by keeping up relations with their chiefs. but in whatever way the various parts of the subject territory were arranged, whether there were princes or a more popular administration, their communities, their lands and cities, were left to govern themselves in their hereditary manner, according to their own customs, laws, and rules, provided that they paid tribute and furnished a contingent in war. darius appears even to have taken upon himself the development of the national law; we have seen that the egyptians called him their sixth law-giver (p. ). the gods, the modes of religion and worship, were interfered with even less than the custom and law of the subject nations, notwithstanding that cyrus and darius with the persians and arians of iran may have been convinced that there could be none but lying gods and false worship beside auramazda and mithra, and the gods of the arians. the kings of the persians were not even content with this liberal tolerance which forms the chief glory of their rule; they promoted the worship of the subject nations. the inscription on the brick at senkereh,[ ] mentions cyrus as the restorer of the great temple of merodach at babylon (the tower of belus), and of the temple of nebo at borsippa (bit-zida); we found cambyses with the egyptian title of the new sun-god, and celebrated as the restorer of the worship of neith at sais; he is also represented in adoration before the apis which died in his reign. and in this matter darius did not remain behind his predecessors. we have already heard from the egyptian uzahorsun that he was sent to egypt soon after the accession of darius, in order to take care of the habitations of the gods and their festivals, _i.e._ to support and maintain the religious worship. in his temple at the oasis of el charigeh, darius, adorned with the title "rival of the sun," offers prayer to ammon with the ram's head. darius caused the apis which died in the fourth year of his reign to be buried (p. ), and in spite of a recent rebellion, a sepulchre was built, "to endure for ever," for the apis which appeared in the thirty-first year of his reign, _i.e._ in b.c.; to make room for this the gallery of psammetichus was extended. darius, it is said, proposed a prize of talents of gold for the discovery of this new apis.[ ] nor was it egypt only which experienced the care of darius for the national worship of the subject nations. the samaritans had hindered the restoration of the temple and walls of jerusalem, which the exiles from babylonia had taken in hand, by threats and by warnings to the court of cyrus (p. ). when darius ascended the throne, the prophets haggai and zechariah called upon their countrymen to finish the restoration of the temple. haggai reproved the indifference to solemn duties and the selfishness which allowed panelled houses to rise for men, while the house of god was desolate: "therefore the heavens restrained their dew, and the earth her increase." he reminded them of the punishments which had come upon their fathers for neglecting the will of jehovah: he demanded vigorous action from zerubbabel and the high priest joshua; he pronounced the blessing of jehovah, if the temple were finished and proclaimed to zerubbabel the son of salathiel, to whom, eighteen years before (p. ), cyrus had entrusted the leadership of the "sons of captivity," that jehovah would keep him as his seal-ring if the work were finished. to joshua zechariah promises royal splendour and long posterity in return for the building of the temple.[ ] when the temple is restored, the scattered remnants of israel would return, and if the walls of jerusalem were not restored, jehovah would be a wall of fire to his city. "many people and mighty nations will come to seek jehovah at jerusalem, and make supplication in the presence of the lord."[ ] the exhortations of the prophets had such effect that the building of the temple and the city-walls was taken up again in the second year of darius ( b.c.). when the satrap of syria, who is called thathnai in the book of ezra, and his subordinates raised the question--who had given permission for the building--the jews fell back on the written permission of cyrus. the satrap referred the matter to the king. according to the narrative of the jews darius caused a search to be made for this document in babylon and ecbatana, and when it was found in the archives at ecbatana, he sanctioned the building by a new royal rescript. the work was carried on under repeated exhortations of the two prophets, and after four years and five months it was completed. in the sixth year of darius ( b.c.), seventy years after nebuchadnezzar had pulled it down, the temple was rebuilt. the dedication was made by a sin-offering of twelve goats from the twelve tribes of israel, and a thank-offering of bulls, rams, and lambs.[ ] the walls of the city and the ancient citadel of david by degrees rose once more.[ ] in the place of the governorships which cyrus and cambyses had established as the need arose, darius introduced fixed departments. about the year b.c. the kingdom was divided into twenty satrapies. asia minor was broken up into four satrapies. the first included the west coast of asia minor; it was the narrow strip of coast in which lay the greek cities from the sigean promontory as far as caria; the territory of the carians also, and that of the lycians, the solymi, and pamphylians, under the taurus on the south coast, were attached to this satrapy. the second satrapy, of which the metropolis was sardis, comprised mysia and lydia, together with the southern strip of phrygia. to the third satrapy, the satraps of which resided at dascyleum on the hellespont, the greek cities on the hellespont, the propontis, and the bosphorus were allotted; the thracians in asia, _i.e._ the bithynians, the paphlagonians, the phrygians as far as the halys, and the cappadocians beyond the halys as far as the border of armenia. cilicia with its metropolis of tarsus was the fourth satrapy. between asia minor and the highlands of iran there were six satrapies. the tibarenes, mosynoeci, macrones, and moschians on the pontus, formed the first (the eighteenth in herodotus' reckoning); the nations who dwelt to the east of them in the valley of the araxes, the saspeires and alarodians, along with the western part of armenia, formed the second (the eleventh); the rest of armenia the third (the thirteenth); syria and phoenicia and the island of cyprus the fourth (the fifth);[ ] assyria and babylonia, with the metropolis, babylon, the fifth (the ninth); the land of the cissians (susiana) on the left bank of the tigris the sixth (the eighth). egypt with cyrene and barca, the subject tribes in ethiopia and libya, formed a separate satrapy (the sixth); the satrap resided at memphis. the table-land of iran was broken up into nine satrapies. these were the satrapy of media (the tenth); the satrapy of the caspians, which comprised the lands to the north of the medes on the caspian sea, the valley of the cyrus, and the lands of the cardusians, the mardians, the tapurians and hyrcanians (the nineteenth); the satrapy of the parthians, arians, chorasmians, and sogdians (the sixteenth); the satrapy of the sacae (the fifteenth); the satrapy of the bactrians, to which the margians also seem to have belonged (the twelfth);[ ] the satrapy of the sattagydæ (thataghus) and the gandarians, _i.e._ of the gedrosians, the arachoti, and the gandharas, on the south bank of the cabul (the seventh);[ ] the satrapy of the sagartians and sarangians, which extended in the east of persia as far to the south as the persian gulf, and included the islands belonging to it (the fourteenth); the satrapy of the paricanians and ethiopians in asia; _i.e._ the inhabitants of the southern edge of the table-land on the east, including the black tribes in the delta of the indus (the seventeenth); and finally the satrapy of the indians, which included all the tribes on the right bank of the indus, from the summits of the himalayas to the junction of the cabul and the indus (the twentieth).[ ] the viceroys whom darius placed over these districts had to keep the aggregate of the various political bodies, of which the satrapies consisted, in obedience to the empire and in peace towards each other; to collect the taxes and tribute, to summon and organize the military levies. the satrap was the highest authority in his province--the supreme appeal in law, administration, and military affairs. the king alone was superior. he was the judge before whom could be laid appeals from the judgment of the princes and local boards, if the claimant had not preferred to go to him in the first instance; he was the only judge between the princes, the districts, the tribes and cities of his province. his arrangements must be obeyed. he was to take measures for the advancement of cultivation and the increase of the population in his province, both as fullfilling the rules of the avesta, and in the interest of the kingdom. he kept watch over trade and currency, over the military roads, the stations, the harbours, the canals and dams; he had the right to strike silver coins for his province. he had charge of the military affairs of the province; and was responsible for the weapons and ships when required for the levy. the apportionment of the taxes and tributes to the districts and communities of the province, the collection of these, and the despatch of the proper revenues to the king were among his duties. he had royal scribes to assist him in these matters, who read to him the commands of the king and drew up his reports to the king. it was not likely to escape darius that the great powers in the hands of the satrap would lead him to use his delegated power independently and even against his chief. the attempt of oroetes to found an independent monarchy in asia minor, had caused him great anxiety in a time of difficulty. he could not always expect that such tendencies in distant provinces could be known in time, or that rebellions on the part of satraps could be prevented. the king withdrew from them the nomination of the commanders of the castles, which controlled the main roads of the provinces, the more important fortresses and citadels of the provinces, _e.g._ the citadels at ecbatana, babylon, and memphis, that, as xenophon says, "a satrap who trusting to his power and the number of his subjects should refuse obedience, might find opponents in his province"; and he even nominated the commanders of the persian battalions, which formed the garrisons of the fortresses,[ ] but limitations of this kind were insufficient against the power which their office gave to the satrap, if the royal power was unable to make itself felt with force and rapidity. the central power must be in vigorous operation against the satraps, if the feeling of dependence and responsibility were to be kept alive among them. appeals from the jurisdiction of the satraps to the king were possible for the adjacent provinces and did occur, but for the inhabitants of more distant provinces they were extremely difficult; yet these were the provinces chiefly in point. if months elapsed before an order of the kings reached memphis or sardis, the indus or the caucasus, or the satraps of these provinces received an answer to their questions, the necessary result would be that these men would regard themselves as independent, withdrawn from all authority and obedience. and the distant provinces, no less than the satraps, had to be kept in order. if reinforcements were to be sent to them the march must not be too long; if the borders were to be defended at the right time, the advance of the army from the inner provinces must not occupy too much time. the larger the empire the more urgently were rapid communications required to give reality to the operation of the central force and secure the kingdom within and without. the distance from the strymon to the indus was enormous; from ephesus to the hindu kush was miles, and from memphis to sogdiana miles. darius perceived that the kingdom could not be governed or maintained without good communications. when the western border of the empire touched the hellespont, the palaces in persia were too far to the east; and the difficulty was increased when africa, as far as the greater syrtis, and the thracian coast and macedonia in europe had been conquered. reasons of this kind must have induced darius to place the centre of administration as nearly as possible in the centre of the kingdom; yet he dared not venture to move too far from persia. he did not hesitate to move his residence further to the west out of the native territory into susiana, a region occupied by subjects of alien race and language, and make susa the centre and metropolis of the kingdom. strabo tells us that cyrus and the persians saw that, after the subjugation of the medes, their land lay at the remote edge, while susiana was more in the centre, and nearer the babylonians and the other nations. for this reason they transferred the seat of the monarchy there, availing themselves of the proximity of the land and the fame of the city. the change was the more desirable because susiana had never pursued an ambitious course of policy, but had always been part of a larger state, except perhaps in the times of the heroes.[ ] it is a mistake in strabo, which however herodotus and aeschylus had already made, to say that cyrus transferred the residence from persia to susa. aeschylus speaks of darius as the susa-born god of persia; and herodotus places the palace and government of the pseudo-smerdis at susa; it is from the tower of the walls of the citadel of susa that prexaspes throws himself; there the magian is assassinated, darius is raised to the throne, and resides from the very beginning of his reign. but this is an anticipation of the residence which was erected here by darius with the intention that it should be the fixed abode of himself and his successors, the centre of the kingdom and the government. pliny and aelian tell us definitely that darius built susa the royal citadel of the persians, and the inscriptions confirm this statement.[ ] not less incorrect is the remark of strabo, that susiana had always formed part of a larger kingdom, and had never pursued an ambitious policy. on the contrary we saw how elam, after an independence of years, became subject first to assyria for a few decades, and then to media and persia. and the elamites had so little forgotten their ancient days that they rose three times against darius.[ ] the intention to keep the semitic lands in check, to be nearer babylon, without giving up the communication with the native land, must have contributed to the resolution of darius to transfer the residence to susa. if nebuchadnezzar of babylon had carried a road from his metropolis in a slanting direction through the desert to syria (iii. ), works of this kind were far more urgently needed for the immensely greater extent of the persian empire. great roads must be made from susa in all directions to the borders of the empire, and maintained. though cyrus and cambyses may have made some steps in this direction, it was darius who carried out the plan and founded the great system of roads which traversed persia in all directions, and were now carried from susa. "who," asks xenophon, "could so quickly strike down opponents, separated from him by a road of many months, as the king of the persians?"[ ] at the close of his "persian history" ctesias gave a sketch of the persian roads, which led from ephesus to bactria and india, with an account of the stations, days'-journey, and parasangs. this is lost. we know but one member of the system, the road which led from susa, past sardis, to ephesus. of this road, which interested the greeks most, herodotus gives the following account: "from the greek sea to susa is a distance of , stades ( miles). from ephesus to sardis is a distance of stades ( - / miles), which can be traversed in three days. from this point there are royal stations and the most excellent inns: the whole road passes through inhabited lands and is secure. first, it passes through the region of the lydians, who inhabit a fruitful land and are rich in silver; then through the region of the phrygians, who are rich in cattle and fruits of the field; these make up stations, - / parasangs. then the halys has to be crossed; there are gates here through which you must pass in order to go over the river, and a strong guard-house. beyond the river you are in cappadocia, and to the borders of cilicia is a distance of stations and parasangs. on the borders of cappadocia and cilicia are two gates and two guard-houses: passing through cilicia in three stations, a distance of parasangs, you reach the border of armenia which is formed by the euphrates. the euphrates is crossed by a ferry. in armenia, which possesses much cattle, there are stations provided with guard-houses, and - / parasangs. then follows the tigris, and two other rivers bearing the same name (the greater and the lesser zab); and finally the gyndes, which cyrus diverted from its channel: these have to be crossed in boats. from armenia you pass to the matieni, the neighbours of the armenians; here there are stations and parasangs to be traversed; from the borders of the matieni and the cissians (_i.e._ the susiani) to the choaspes, where susa is built upon it (this river has also to be crossed by a ferry), are stations and - / parasangs, making a total of stations and parasangs, or , stades ( - / miles). hence if the royal road has been rightly measured, and a traveller makes stades (five parasangs, miles) a day, he goes from sardis to susa in days, and to ephesus (if we add in the distance from ephesus to sardis) in days." from this description we see that the road has been accurately measured, well-kept, guarded, and provided with stations about every miles, in which the travellers could find shelter. as herodotus calls these inns very beautiful, we must assume that after the persian fashion they were provided with plantations, and this is confirmed by other evidence. we are told that a station on the royal road in cadusia, in a wholly bare and treeless region, was surrounded by a park of high pines and cypresses. the indians also were accustomed to plant their roads and provide them with shady resting-places. the road from sardis to susa did not take the shortest route; the object was to escape the syrian and phrygian desert, and carry the road through regions which could support the army on the march. hence it ran from susa in the valley of the tigris on the left bank of the river through susiana and the native land of the assyrians, for miles in a north-westerly direction, to the mountains of armenia. the region between the tigris and the zagrus to the north of the satrapy of cissia (susiana) is called by herodotus the land of the matieni, and he extends this name, which is elsewhere used only for the tribes dwelling round the lake of urumiah, to the tigris. armenia proper was then crossed by the road in a straight line from east to west, from the upper tigris to the upper euphrates. of cilicia it touched merely the north-east corner, and then cut through cappadocia in a north-westerly direction to the halys. it crossed the river in the neighbourhood of pteria, passed in a south-westerly direction through phrygia, leaving the desert to the south, and lydia to sardis.[ ] from this great road to the west then branched off between the gyndes (diala) and the physcus (adhem) the road to babylon, and at physcus the road to ecbatana. the royal roads through the kingdom secured before all things the rapid operation of the central power and the king on the representatives of his power in the provinces. the stations were used for a postal arrangement, the duty of which it was to carry the commands of the king and the reports and questions of the satraps. thanks to this post the king was in the possession of a means of communication far superior to that within the reach of any of his subjects. at the stations on all the roads of the kingdom, at intervals of miles or a little more, horses and riders (astandae, angari) were placed, whose sole business it was to carry the royal messages and errands. one of these postmen must always be in attendance, in order to carry a letter as soon as it arrived, at the full speed of his horse, by day or by night, in heat or in snow, to the next station. among the greeks it was said that the persian couriers travelled swifter than cranes; herodotus also assures us that nothing in the world was more rapid than these horsemen.[ ] thus the king's commands travelled on well-built and carefully-guarded roads by this post in the shortest space of time to the most remote provinces. they were brought from susa to sardis in five or six days and nights. the commands of the king to the satraps were always given in writing, and accredited by the impression of the king's seal.[ ] this seal presents to us king darius with the covered tiara on his head standing on the chariot behind the charioteer; a lion, struck by his arrow, lies beneath the hoofs of the horses which are leaping forward. the king is about to shoot a third arrow at a second huge lion, which has reared himself up in self-defence, and has already received two arrows from the king. at the side a date palm is visible; over the king hovers auramazda. the inscription, which is in three languages, says: "i am darius, the great king."[ ] the rapidity with which the king's commands reached even the satraps of the most distant lands, kept the authority of the king before them. the fortresses and guard-posts on the roads not only served to maintain security on and near them, and to make commerce safe; they were also used to control trade, and travelling, and any correspondence among the subjects. the fortresses were placed at points which could not be avoided, in narrow passes, or on the bridges of great rivers. those in command dared not allow any one to pass who did not establish his right, as above suspicion. the scribes assigned to the commanders looked over all the letters, which were carried through by messengers.[ ] as the fortresses in which these guard-posts lay were placed in the most important divisions of the country, the roads could be closed by the posts. if a rebellion arose in this or that quarter, the effect on the neighbouring province was checked by closing the roads by means of the forts, or the road was defended from post to post. and if an enemy invaded from outside he found in them points of resistance, and the persians points of support. the guidance and control of the viceroys was not confined to the rapid and lively communications between them and the king. the greeks tell us that the king travelled every year to this or that province in order to review the troops, and examine the cultivation of the soil. where the king did not make a visitation in person, he did so by confidential ministers. we are further informed that these visitations were entrusted to the princes of the royal house.[ ] where the king found that the land was populous and well cultivated, the forests in good order, and the fields full of the fruits which the land produced, he distinguished the governor by gifts and honours. but where he found the land thinly populated and badly cultivated, whether it was owing to the severity, the neglect, or the extortion of the satrap, the satrap was punished and removed from his place.[ ] the charge of the whole country lay on the chief overseer, the high official who bore the title of the "king's eye." in the persians of aeschylus, the chorus inquire of xerxes, "where his faithful eye has remained?" herodotus notices as an arrangement of the median kingdom, that the king named a man especially devoted to him, his "eye." we see that unexpected inspections were made by the "eye" of the persian king, and that his subordinates, who were not known to be such, carried on a minute superintendence over the conduct of the satraps, the other officers, and the subject people.[ ] still more mysterious was the work of the officers who were known as the king's "ears." they cannot have been far removed from spies. we saw to what an extent the princes of india carried on the system of secret espionage. herodotus told us in regard to deioces that his spies and informers were in every land, and a persian proverb said, "the king has many eyes and ears." the greeks declare that the persian spies did not always content themselves with relating what they had heard, but told much besides in order to show their zeal. accusation was received with favour by the king and rewarded by distinctions and presents.[ ] we saw what control was exercised on the great roads, the arteries of communication. owing to the number of guard-houses in each road, which repeated the inquiries of the first, any one at the court was in a position to compare the accounts of the commanders, and to control them. no one passed even the borders of babylonia without proving who he was, and of what city, and why he was travelling.[ ] in this way every suspicious circumstance was brought to light, and it was certain that no conspiracy or rebellion could be contrived without some indications being received at the court of the king. what could not be prevented by the control of the higher and lower officers, and the police supervision of the subjects, was suppressed by the severe exercise of punishment, which was intended to strike fear into magistrate and subject alike by the force of terrible examples. the terrorist use of punishment which the brahmans on the ganges knew how to prove to be a divine right, and a duty of the royal office, was in persia regarded as an indispensable means for supporting the state. and as a fact obedience to the absolute ruler rested, in the magistrates and the ruling tribe, more decidedly on the apprehension of punishment than on any personal interest or common share in the maintenance of the kingdom; and in the subject nations it rested on the fear of the ruler and the interests which the persian kings gained in those districts. those entrusted with the power of office must also be the most obedient and submiss. above all, the feeling must be kept alive in the satraps of the provinces that the enormous powers delegated to them were given on the condition of absolute obedience. the severe penalties which overtook any resistance, or the careless execution of a royal command, were only the reverse of the favours which fell to their lot in other circumstances. however earnestly the religion of zarathrustra preached the regard for life, the rules of religion were compelled, even in persia, to give way to reasons of state. we find darius no less than cambyses inflicting severe penalties for trifling offences. if the satraps gave any grounds for suspicion, they were either secretly or openly removed out of the way.[ ] but even in the judges and on those who were not officers every transgression and act of disobedience to the wish of the king was cruelly punished. darius, who was not considered a harsh ruler, did not content himself with the execution of intaphernes; he caused nearly all the males of the house to be put to death, though intaphernes had taken such a prominent part in the assassination of the magian. the leaders of the rebellions in the provinces were punished by crucifixion or hanging. khsathrita, who caused the medes to revolt, and chitratakhma, the leader of the sagartians, had their noses and ears cut off before execution, and in this state were exposed to public view.[ ] when darius marched against the scythians, oeobazus, a distinguished persian, entreated that one of his three sons might remain behind. the king considered that this wish was not in harmony with the devotion which every persian owed to the kingdom; he replied that all his sons should remain, and at once ordered them to be executed. sandoces, one of the royal judges, had been bribed to give a false judgment; darius caused him to be crucified; he was already placed on the cross when the king remembered that he had done more good than evil to the royal house, and ordered him to be taken down again. he lived, and remained in the service, but not in the highest court of the kingdom.[ ] one of the mildest forms of punishment was banishment to the islands of the persian gulf. common punishments were the loss of eyes, nose, ears, tongue; the cutting off of hands, arms, and feet; scourgings were frequent, and they were inflicted even by the satraps.[ ] the king pronounced the sentence of death by touching the girdle of the accused, or occasionally allowed it to be pronounced in his presence by the seven judges. the sentence was then carried out by crucifixion or decapitation.[ ] in later times we hear of grinding between stones, incisions in the body while alive, and painful imprisonment in troughs; xenophon indeed tells us that one of those who took part in the rebellion of the younger cyrus was tortured for a whole year.[ ] if we compare the practice of the princes of persia with the conduct of the assyrian kings, and the later rulers of the east, we cannot fail to recognize that the officers under the achaemenids were in a better position and more richly paid, but also better controlled and kept in greater dependence than was the case afterwards. the subjects, in spite of acts of cruel caprice which affected certain persons, were incomparably better off than those of the assyrians, or of the dynasties which afterwards ruled the east. they were governed with more intelligence and clemency than the subjects of the porte, or the khedive, or the shah of persia, or the emirs of cabul and herat. it was no small thing that the persian kings established peace in all asia from the shores of the hellespont to the belurdagh, and maintained order and security from the nile to the himalayas. moreover, the religion and worship of the subject nations, of whatever kind they might be, were not injured, but rather protected and held in honour. law, justice, and manners remained the same, and the subjects preserved their local self-government. agriculture in the provinces received attention, trade and commerce went on along the roads and rivers of the vast empire, and was not only unmolested but protected. footnotes: [ ] herod. , ; , ; , . xenoph. "cyri instit." , , , . [ ] "laws," p. . vol. v. _n._ . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , , , - . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , ; , , - . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , ; "cyri instit." , , . [ ] herod. , . , ; ctes. "pers." ; xenoph. "cyri instit." , , , ; "anab." , ; plut. "artaxerxes," c. - . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "anab." , , ; "cyri instit." , , ; arrian, "anab." , ; curtius, , , . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "cyri instit." , , ; , , ; strabo, p. . [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller; "laws," p. . [ ] "alcib. i." p. , . [ ] plut. "artax." c. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . [ ] themistocles also was instructed in the doctrine of the magians, when he was trained for a place at the persian court; plut. "themist." c. . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , ; , , , , . plut. "artax." c. , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] nöldeke, "tabari," s. , . [ ] g. smith, "discoveries," p. , ; boscawen, "transactions bibl. arch." , ff. [ ] above, p. . [ ] mariette, "athen. franç,." may, , p. ; brugsch, "hist. of egypt," , . above, p. , _n._ . [ ] haggai i. , ; ii. - ; zechariah vi. - . [ ] zechariah ii. , ; viii. . [ ] ezra c. vi.; psalm lxvi. appears to refer to this. [ ] nehemiah i. . [ ] in the three lists of nations in the inscriptions of darius, syria and phenicia are not specially mentioned; they must be included in the names babylonia and arabia; in the same way lydians, phrygians, carians, and mysians are included in the name Çparda, _i.e._ sardis. [ ] behistun, , ff. [ ] the inscription of behistun specially designates arachosia and bactria as satrapies, , , , , . [ ] herodotus ( , ) places this arrangement into satrapies immediately after the accession. this is impossible, owing to the rebellions, which continued down to the year b.c. but from the fact that herodotus includes the indians in this arrangement, and represents the thracians and the islands as added subsequently ( , , ), we may conclude that it was made after the indian conquests and before the successes of megabyzus and otanes, _i.e._ about b.c. the arrangement of darius was not retained without changes. babylonia and assyria were afterwards separated; babylonia formed one satrapy, syria and assyria a second, phoenicia and arabia a third. the satrapy of the ionians revolted after the battle of mycale; in the peloponnesian war, we find, as in the time of cyrus, two satrapies in hither asia, sardis and dascyleum. xenophon ("anab." _in fine_) enumerates six satrapies in asia minor: lydia, phrygia, bithynia, paphlagonia, cappadocia and lycaonia, cilicia. arrian, ("anab." , ) enumerates five: phrygia on the pontus, greater phrygia, lydia, cappadocia, cilicia; and, finally, in these later periods several satrapies were united in one hand. [ ] above, p. . xenoph. "cyri instit." , , , , ; curtius, , , . there is no doubt that the satraps commanded the troops of their districts; at a later time they even carried on independent wars. that the garrisons of the fortresses were bound to obedience follows from herod. , . the limitations, which xenophon ascribes to cyrus, must belong to darius; "cyri instit." , , , , ; "oecon." , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] plin. "h. n." , ; ael. "hist. anim." , . ardeshir also found fars too distant; he made shahabad near susa the second city of the kingdom. [ ] vol. i. . vol. iii. . above, p. . [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] kiepert has convincingly shown how the lacuna in herodotus ( , ) is to be filled up ("monatsberichte der berliner akademie," , s. ). xenophon gives twelve short marches and about ten parasangs from the foot of the carduchian mountains to the greater zab--_i.e._ about parasangs; from the zab to the physcus is parasangs; from the physcus to the bridge of the tigris at sittace is parasangs. the territory which he traversed in this region he considers to be part of media ("anabasis," , ff.). hence there can be no doubt that the length of the royal road from the point where it crossed the tigris to the borders of susiana was parasangs. if xenophon passed beyond the point at which the royal road crosses the tigris, to the north, this is amply compensated by the greater distance from the bridge at sittace to the gyndes and the borders of susiana. at opis the column of the greeks came upon the persians who were marching from ecbatana to babylon. so the road from ecbatana must have joined the great royal road at physcus, and then it ran past sittace to babylon. alexander also, in order to come from babylon to susa, first marched north-east to sittace, and after crossing the tigris proceeded south-east to susa: diod. , , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . suidas and hesychius [greek: astandês, angaros]. plut. "artax." ; "alex." . xenophon ascribes even this arrangement to cyrus, but it could only be made effectual by a network of first-rate roads. [ ] herod. , ; ezra i. ; vi. ; esther iii. , - ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] in layard; cf. brandis, "münzwesen in vorderasien," s. . [ ] herod. , , - . , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , . [ ] xenoph. "oecon." , - . [ ] herod. , ; aesch. "pers." ; plut. "artax." . suidas and hesych. [greek: ophthalmos]; xenoph. "cyri instit." , , ; , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , , ; brisson, "de reg. pers." , . [ ] herod. , , - ; , ; brisson, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; plut. "artax." . [ ] above, p. , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , ; brisson, "de reg. pers." , ff. [ ] xenoph. "anab." , ; plut. "artax." ; curtius, , , - ; diod. , . [ ] plut. "artax." , , , ; xenoph. "anab." , . chapter xviii. the finance and army of darius. the empire of darius rested on the fact that the persians regarded themselves as the governing nation in asia, and on their desire and determination to maintain this position, with the advantages which it brought to them; on the devotion and fidelity with which the persian tribal princes and nobles stood by the king; on their habits of obedience and subjection; on the ambition of officers and governors, which was excited by obvious distinctions; on the education of a considerable portion of the persian youth specially for service in the army and the state. darius was at pains to add to these foundations substantial means for maintaining the empire in the greatest profusion. when he abandoned the system of cyrus and cambyses, who had allowed the provinces to fix the amount of their yearly tribute themselves, and set himself to secure a fixed income for the state, it was previously necessary to fix the standard according to which the tribute, which would now be paid as taxes, should be assessed; to arrange the value at which the royal chest would accept the various standards current in the subject nations. with this object he created a currency. he founded his standard on the forms which the babylonian system had developed in the course of time. the new gold currency was struck on the standard of the babylonian gold talent, _i.e._ on a normal weight of - / pounds. three thousand coins were struck out of this total. the gold in this new currency was purer than that used by croesus, or in the older coins in the ionic cities of asia minor; the coins which have come down to us show but little alloy of silver. the gold piece weighed . grammes; and had in our coinage a value of about shillings; hence the gold talent of darius was worth guineas. these new pieces were called by the hebrews darkon and darkemon, among the greeks darics. it was of the first importance to bring the gold of the coinage into a simple and easily convertible ratio with silver. in order to do this the silver coins were struck from a larger weight than the gold. here also darius used a babylonian talent;--the silver talent of - / pounds, for the normal weight. from this staters were struck of a weight of . grammes; or drachmas of a weight of . grammes. the silver staters of darius (silver darics) were called by the greeks median sigli (shekels). as gold was valued at - / times the value of silver, the silver stater, which was one-fourth heavier than the gold coin, was equal to a tenth part of its value, and the drachma to a twentieth. hence the gold daric was changed for ten silver staters or twenty silver drachmas. the silver talent of darius was worth more than £ of our money, the silver stater was worth about two shillings. the silver talent of darius (which the greeks call the babylonian talent) stood to the euboean talent of the greeks, who had used the light babylonian talent as a standard, in a ratio of to .[ ] the new darics were marked with the figure of the king. three hundred have been lately found in the bed of the canal which the son of darius caused to be cut through the promontory of athos; and they exhibit darius running or kneeling, in a long cloak, with the kaftan over it, the royal tiara on the head, with thick hair and beard; in the right hand, which is depressed, we find a lance; sometimes a sword; and in the left, which is outstretched, the bow. the silver coins of the king also carried his image; in these he sometimes holds an arrow instead of a bow in his left hand. for the syrian districts darius had a special large silver coin of about grammes struck, in addition to the royal currency. these present the king with his right hand elevated and his left depressed, on his chariot, which is drawn by four or six horses, which spring over a dead lion. on the reverse is the picture of a city with towers. on other coins of the same kind, the reverse of which presents a galley with rowers, the king is also on his chariot, the horses are moving slowly, and the royal staff-bearer follows the chariot. the new coinage was not entirely to expel or replace the standards current in the provinces. the coining of gold was indeed reserved for the crown, but the old silver coins of the provinces were not only allowed to be current, they might even be increased, for the right to coin silver was left to the districts, cities, and dynasties. they were allowed to use their own standards, and mark their coins in whatever way they pleased. communities could put the arms of the city, the dynasts their own portraits, on the coins. the satraps also had the right to coin silver coins, and mark them with special emblems, their names or portraits (among the emblems we find two men before a fire-altar, the form of auramazda, etc.). the silver money which the satraps struck had no legal privileges over the common coins of the provinces. in the first instance they were coined in exceptional cases when there was a deficiency of the currency, or money was needed for important military undertakings. the satraps, like the countries, the cities, and dynasts, rarely coined after the royal standard; they generally followed the standards common in their provinces in order to meet the local needs.[ ] in the fourth century b.c. they began to coin more frequently. at the chest of the king only the royal currency was accepted; all other coins were received as bullion, weighed by the royal standard, and then melted down in order to be struck in the royal currency and issued when required.[ ] it was the opinion of darius that the crown ought to possess the means for the largest outlay that could be demanded. the treasury of cyrus was not perhaps exhausted, but no doubt it was seriously diminished by the campaigns of cambyses, the magian, the rising of vahyazdata, and the suppression of the rebellions. the object to be attained was that the yearly income should considerably surpass the yearly expenditure; the excess could then be collected in the treasury, which would thus be in a position to pay and support for years the largest armies that could be required. the care which darius bestowed on the currency and taxation astonished the persians, who no doubt remembered the magnanimous conduct of cyrus, to whom such things were of little moment; as herodotus tells us, they called him the "retail-dealer" in contrast to cyrus.[ ] the measure, by which darius imposed on all his lands the taxes which they had to pay year by year, was the produce of their soil. if the tax which was thus laid on the soil of the provinces on a fixed ratio was not excessive, they were nevertheless subject to services, and the crown could with certainty reckon on the payment of the contributions. the whole amount of arable land in the provinces was measured by parasangs (each of stades); and according to the extent, when thus ascertained, and the quality of the soil, as herodotus states, the taxes of the provinces were fixed in the royal currency. within each province the various countries and cantons, which formed a political unit, whether under dynasts or chieftains, or some other form of constitution, were burdened with a fixed share of the contribution of the whole--as we may see from the statement that the overseers of the cantons and countries were responsible for the payment of the taxes. after exhausting wars, new measurements were made with a view to further valuations.[ ] the lowest contribution of land-tax was made by the satrapy of the arachoti (the pactyans of herodotus), and the gedrosians (the sattagydae of herodotus), to which belonged also the gandarians to the south of cabul; it amounted to talents of silver (about £ , ); the next lowest amount was talents, (about £ , ), which was paid by two satrapies, the saspeires and alarodians in the valley of the araxes, and the caspians, _i.e._ the cadusians, the mardians, the tapurians, and hyrcanians. the satrapy of the sacians paid talents (£ , ). four satrapies paid talents (£ , ), the satrapy of the parthians, areians, chorasmians and sogdiani, of the moschians and tibarenes, of the ionians and of the susiani. the satrapy of syria with phoenicia and cyprus paid talents (£ , ); the satrapies of bactria and phrygia with cappadocia paid talents each (£ , ); armenia, and the satrapy of the paricanians and ethiopians in asia, paid talents each (£ , ); media had to pay talents (£ , ); the satrapies of lydia and cilicia each (£ , ); drangiana (the sarangians and sagartians) paid talents (£ , ); egypt with cyrene, barca, and the tribes of the libyans, talents (£ , ); the satrapy of babylon, _i.e._ the region to the south of the armenian mountains between the euphrates and the tigris as far as the mouth of the rivers, paid talents (_i.e._ £ , ). this was the highest tax imposed on any satrapy; from this assessment, as well as from other evidence, we may conclude that babylonia was the best cultivated and most fruitful province in the whole kingdom. the entire income from this satrapy is put by herodotus at an artabè of silver daily, and the persian artabè was larger by three choenixes than the attic medimnus. the artabè, therefore, was about equal to a prussian bushel, _i.e._ to a measure of cubic inches.[ ] darius thus received every year from the land-tax of the provinces, talents of silver in the royal standard, _i.e._ in round figures £ , , . to this has to be added the large amount of gold-dust, which the twentieth, or indian satrapy, paid yearly to the king. this amount, talents according to herodotus, was not the land-tax of the province; it was obtained from the gold-sands of the himalayas. this raised the net income of the treasury to a total of about £ , , , and to this again have to be added the taxes imposed on lemnos and imbros, on the thracians and the greek towns on the thracian coast, with the macedonians, after the campaign to the danube, and the tribute in kind paid by the subject tribes among the arabians ( talents of frankincense every year), and the negroes (ivory and ebony), and the tribute in slaves paid by the colchians ( boys and virgins every fifth year). more important than these contributions of the arabians, negroes, and colchians, was the income in money which the crown derived from local sources, within the empire, and the proceeds of royal privileges--more important still the produce in kind which the provinces had to pay every year in addition to the land-tax. in the satrapy of the parthians and areians a large sum was paid every year for the opening of the sluices of the ares (no doubt an affluent of the margus, v. ), without which the fields were in that district dried up in the summer. in egypt the fishery on the canal, which connected the lake of amenemhat with the nile, brought the king every year talents.[ ] in what way the contributions in kind were divided and imposed upon the provinces, it is not easy to see. herodotus only tells us that the whole kingdom was divided into cantons for the support of the king and army; a full third of this burden fell upon the satrapy of babylon.[ ] we know that cappadocia, _i.e._ phrygia and cappadocia, the third satrapy of herodotus, provided each year, in addition to the land-tax of £ , , horses, mules, and , sheep; media in addition to her land-tax provided double this amount of animals.[ ] armenia provided , foals each year in addition to the tax of £ , .[ ] cilicia furnished grey horses each year. besides these contributions in animals, there were payments in corn for the garrisons in the provinces. the persians who formed the garrison of the white fortress in memphis received yearly from egypt , bushels of wheat, an amount which would abundantly supply the wants of men. as wheat was cheap in egypt this contribution would represent a value of about £ .[ ] each province sent its best products to the court; and nothing but the best was brought to court or received there; there all that was splendid in the empire was to be collected.[ ] babylon sent every year eunuch-boys for service at the court, and colchis sent male and female slaves of caucasian race. chalybon (helbon) in syria furnished wine for the court; wheat came from the cities of the aeolians and the anatolian coast, salt from the libyans and the oasis of siwah.[ ] "from ancient times," theopompus of chios informs us, "the taxes and the entertainment of the king were imposed on the cities according to their size."[ ] ctesias and deinon maintain that the table of the king of persia, _i.e._ the entertainment of the entire court, cost talents daily. this is grossly exaggerated. from herodotus we see that the support of xerxes and his train, the officers, and all the necessary accompaniments, the tents and plate, and moreover the feeding of the entire army for one day cost the city of abdera talents, and the island of thasos talents (£ , ). theopompus also tells us that when the king visited a city it cost them , and sometimes , talents to entertain him, and others spent even larger sums.[ ] these expenses were increased by the fact that the servants took away with them the plate used at table.[ ] the support of the king, and apparently of the satraps, officers, and generals when travelling, the maintenance of troops on the march, were extraordinary burdens, but the contributions for the table of the king were ordinary and regular. the daily maintenance of the court was expensive, because it included the support of a body-guard. "every day," heraclides of cyme relates, "a thousand animals were slaughtered; among them horses, camels, oxen, asses, and deer, but chiefly sheep. many birds were eaten, and arabian ostriches among them. the greater part of this and of the other food was brought to court for the body-guard, and the overseers gave out meat and bread in equal portions; for as the mercenaries in hellas receive money, so do these soldiers receive their maintenance from the king."[ ] fifteen thousand men are said to have been fed at the court every day; and as the body-guard may be put at , men, this statement does not seem exaggerated. beside the contributions in kind for the equipment of the army, the support of garrisons and the court, there were burdens of another kind. the kings of persia kept great studs for the court and army. we have already mentioned the stud in nisaea in media; , or , horses are said to have pastured there. the royal studs in babylonia contained in breeding horses, horses and , mares--"besides the horses for war," as herodotus expressly adds. the indian dogs which were kept by darius or his successors were so numerous, that four great villages in babylonia had to contribute exclusively to their maintenance.[ ] as herodotus observes that these villages were free from other burdens, we may assume that all the places, on which contributions in kind were imposed for special objects, were exempted from the large contributions for the court and army in horses, beasts of burden, cattle for slaughter, corn, etc. elsewhere we find places burdened with special services to members of the royal house, or favourites. certain districts and cities had to pay for the girdle of the queen, others for her veil; one place paid for the head-band, another for the necklace, a third for the hair ornaments of the queen.[ ] xenophon tells us that the favourites of the king of persia received horses and servants in the various provinces, and transmitted them to their descendants.[ ] when demaratus, king of sparta, after losing his throne, sought protection with darius in persia, the city of halisarna and the district of teuthrania were allotted to him. gongylus of eretria received from darius gambrium, myrina, and gryneum. at a later time magnesia on the maeander was assigned to themistocles--a city, which, recovering from the destruction by mazares (p. ), paid, according to thucydides, a yearly contribution of talents (more than £ , ) for bread, lampsacus, which was famous for its cultivation of the vine, for wine, and myus for relishes. in this way, in accordance with the system of cyrus and darius, demaratus was made prince of halisarna, gongylus became prince of gambrium, themistocles prince of magnesia; the latter also received contributions in produce from other cities. demaratus and gongylus left their thrones to their descendants.[ ] as the places which had to provide contributions in kind for special purposes or individuals were freed from the contributions of the provinces to the army and court--the land-tax of the places presented to favoured persons were no doubt taken out of the land-tax of the province. we are not in a position to fix even approximately the amount of the net income of the treasury of darius which came in every year over and above the land-tax of the provinces and the tolls. nor can we say how high the yearly contributions in kind paid by the provinces for the court and army ran. if we set aside the extraordinary burdens of supporting the king on a journey, or a satrap, or officer, and the maintenance of troops on a march, and follow theopompus in assuming that the average daily expense of the whole court amounted to babylonian talents, a total of , talents of the royal standard, _i.e._ more than £ , , , would be required for this purpose, a sum in excess of the land-tax of the provinces. if we further assume that the maintenance of the army imposed on the provinces a burden equal to the maintenance of the court, the provinces would have to pay for the state, in ordinary burdens, without regard to their own requirements, three times the amount of the land-tax. egypt, which, with cyrene and barca, had to pay talents in tax, would thus pay talents of royal money every year, _i.e._ more than £ , . at a later time we find that ptolemy ii. received each year from egypt , attic talents, _i.e._ about £ , , , and , , artabès of corn, and ptolemy auletes received , and, according to cicero's statement, , attic talents.[ ] the income of the empire of the sassanids under chosru parviz is put at nearly £ , , .[ ] thus the burdens which the subject lands had to pay to the king do not seem extraordinarily heavy, and, on the other hand, the rule of the persians certainly tended to promote their welfare. we have observed that the satraps were commanded to take care for the agriculture and the forests of their provinces, and that special attention was paid to this in the visitation of the provinces. in his palaces and wherever he went the king caused the most beautiful gardens to be made and planted with excellent trees,[ ] and the satraps did the same at their residences. the parks at the residence of the satrap of phrygia-cappadocia, near dascyleum, were of great extent, consisting in part of an enclosure for game, in part of open hunting-ground. when agesilaus of sparta had laid them waste, the satrap pharnabazus said to him: "all that my father left to me, beautiful buildings, gardens full of trees and game, which were the delight of my heart, i now see cut down and burnt."[ ] at sardis the satraps of lydia-mysia had made several parks of this kind; the most beautiful was adorned with water and meadows, with places for recreation and shade, in a most extraordinary and royal manner.[ ] the younger cyrus enlarged this by a new park. when he showed it to lysander, the greek marvelled at the beauty of the trees, the evenness of their growth, the straight rows and well-chosen angles in which they stood and cut each other, the various and delightful odours which met those who walked in it, and declared that he admired yet more the man who had measured out and arranged the whole. the prince replied that he had measured it out and arranged it himself, and had even planted some with his own hands. and when lysander, looking at the splendid clothes of the prince, his chains and amulets and ornaments and perfumes, seemed to doubt this, cyrus replied: "i swear by mithra, that i never take food till i have heated myself into a sweat by martial exercises or garden work."[ ] the trade of the empire must have been very greatly promoted by the roads which darius made through it in every direction. merchandise passed from one end of the empire to another on paved roads, which were provided with excellent inns and secured by numerous guard-posts. moreover, by his royal currency, darius had created money which passed from the hellespont and the nile to the indus, and thus the merchants had everywhere at hand a fixed measure of value. the raw products which were required by the manufacturing lands, could be bartered in safety, on the upper nile, in libya and arabia, and on the indus; the wide market which the extent of the persian kingdom opened to the harbour cities of asia minor and syria, to the industry of the lydians and phenicians, the egyptians and babylonians, could be used in the readiest and most profitable manner. ramses ii. of egypt had conceived the idea of a direct communication by water between the nile and the red sea in order to facilitate the trade with south arabia. for this object he had caused a canal to be taken from the nile at bubastis, but he had only carried it as far as the lake of crocodiles. pharaoh necho more than years later had again taken up the work and carried the canal as far as the bitter lakes. from this point the canal was to abandon the direction towards the east and turn almost at a right angle to the south and the red sea. necho failed to effect the communication between the bitter lakes and the red sea; and the canal remained unfinished. herodotus, who knew nothing of the attempt of ramses ii., says: "darius carried a canal from the nile to the arabian gulf."[ ] "necho was the first to attempt a canal leading into the red sea, and darius accomplished what he began. the length of the voyage is four days, and the canal is broad enough to allow two triremes when rowing to pass one another (_i.e._ more than feet). the water of the nile flows into it a little above bubastis, and empties into the red sea. for the first part it is excavated in the plain of egypt, which lies towards arabia, under the mountains opposite memphis, in which are the stone quarries. at the foot of the mountain the canal runs away to the east, and then through a cleft in the range to the south, and southward, into the arabian gulf. the distance from the northern sea--the mediterranean--to the red sea by the shortest route from pelusium[ ] is stades ( miles); but the canal is much longer, owing to bends in it."[ ] in the bed of this canal, the direction of which can still be traced in part, three stones were discovered at saluf el terraba, on the crocodile lake, not far from the southern ridge of the bitter lakes. they have recently been much injured by the workmen at the suez canal. on the front is seen the form of darius with the tall tiara on his head (the upper part of one of the monuments is preserved); and beside the figure of the king we find the name and title in hieroglyphics. beneath are the titles and inscriptions in persian, turanian, and babylonian; on the back is an inscription in hieroglyphics which has been destroyed with the exception of a word; but of the persian and turanian version we can still read a part: "darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the lands, the king of this wide earth, the son of hystaspes, the achæmenid. darius the king says: 'i, the persian, have governed egypt; i have caused a canal to be dug from the river which flows in egypt to the sea which reaches to persia.'" darius did not, like ramses and necho, think only of a direct communication by water with south arabia, but rather of a communication with persia, and not only with the coasts of persia but even with the mouths of the indus. his expedition to explore the indus did not sail back to the persian gulf, but coasted arabia and returned to the red sea; and herodotus tells us that darius, after that expedition, made use of the southern sea.[ ] after opening a road by water into the red sea, darius could, if he thought fit, order the ships of the ionians and phenicians to the coast of arabia, the persian gulf, or the indus, and send the ships of babylon to the mediterranean. traders made a constant use of the canal; the ships of sidon and tyre could sail from the nile to the shores of arabia felix, a voyage which the phenicians at the time of solomon, and uzziah of judah, attempted to make from elath with the permission and assistance of those princes. from arabia they could visit the mouth of the indus, as their ships had done nearly years before at the time of solomon. however active the wearer of the crown and his immediate supporters might be in the government of the kingdom, however speedily their commands were made known in the provinces--in spite of the severity with which the satraps were watched and controlled, and the impulse given to their ambition and emulation,--in spite of the excellent management of the state income and the abundance of the means at disposal, and the sums of gold and silver, the gold and silver ornaments, the splendid furniture in the royal citadels, which were in existence for nearly years after this time, attest the success of darius--the kingdom rested in the last resort on the fidelity and bravery of the army. in his body-guards and in the garrisons of the fortresses and guard-posts scattered up and down the whole kingdom, darius had a considerable standing army formed of persians.[ ] in case of war this standing army was strengthened by the levy of the larger landed proprietors in persia, who had to furnish cavalry, and the subject lands.[ ] though the fortified places were numerous, the amount of troops in the various forts was not necessarily great, and the complement of a persian battalion, men, seems rarely to have been exceeded. the garrison of the oldest city in the empire, the white fortress at memphis, was much stronger, and so, no doubt, were the garrisons of the two citadels of babylon and of ecbatana. in the west dascyleum on the propontis, and sardis, the citadel of which was held by men, were the extreme points; in the interior there were so many garrisons at celaenae, on the bridge over the halys, and at other places west of the halys, that a considerable army could be formed for service in the field.[ ] east of the halys, in cilicia, there was the garrison of the two forts on the borders of cilicia and cappadocia, and in addition a body of cavalry which it cost talents (£ , ) a year to support. the citadels and fortresses which the inscriptions of darius mention in armenia, media, persia, and arachosia, show that there was a certain number of fortified places in those regions. in armenia tigra and uhyama are mentioned; in media ecbatana and Çikathauvatis; in arachosia kapisakanis (kapisa) and arsada. the chief points in the royal road from susa to sardis at the most important divisions in the country were closed by fortresses, and the same was the case on the other military roads; we cannot therefore doubt that the military arrangements in the eastern provinces were the same as in the west, though the greeks can only tell us of the west. lastly, there was a number of fortresses at the extreme borders of the kingdom. in egypt, in addition to memphis, daphne and elephantine were fortified;[ ] in the country of the cadusians cyrus had already founded the city on the jaxartes known as _ultima cyrus_, and in the neighbourhood were several citadels to protect the borders (p. ). besides the garrisons, the amount of troops was fixed which the satraps had to keep under arms, to support their authority, to carry out executions, and to secure the provinces.[ ] like the garrisons, the troops of the satraps, in case of necessity, could fall back on the assistance of the reserve corps of larger districts, such as the cilician cavalry. the troops stationed in the provinces were reviewed yearly, as xenophon tells us. for this object they were gathered together at a fixed place in the provinces, with the exception of the garrisons of the fortresses. for the more western districts the place of assembly was thymbrara on the pactolus,[ ] where also, in time of war, the levy of the province was assembled. the troops which were nearer the residence of the king, were, according to xenophon, inspected by the king in person; those at a greater distance by men in his confidence. the satraps, chiliarchs, and commandants, who brought up the prescribed number of troops provided with excellent weapons and horses, were rewarded by presents and marks of distinction; those who neglected their troops or made money out of them were severely punished and removed from their office.[ ] from herodotus we learn that the guard of the king consisted of selected persian horsemen and lance-bearers on foot, whose lances were adorned at the lower end with apples of gold and silver, and also of a division of , infantry, whom the persians call the immortals, because their number is always the same. but the name of the corps may be formed from the amesha Çpenta ameretat (v. , ). xenophon ascribes this institution to cyrus.[ ] nine thousand of them had silver pomegranates on their lances, but a thousand who were selected from the whole corps to form the first battalion had their pomegranates of gold. on the monuments they carry lances taller than the height of a man, and oval shields of half a man's height. this troop was distinguished as the body-guard of the king by golden necklaces and other ornaments; it was better furnished than other troops with beasts of burden and camels to carry the baggage and the provisions. later writers speak only of these , infantry as forming the guard. they inform us that the corps was always about the king, keeping watch in the palace day and night, where they had a court to themselves; they accompanied the king on his journeys, when they camped in a circle round the king's tent.[ ] the amount of the whole army cannot even be approximately fixed. darius led the levy of the empire over the bosphorus to the amount of , men; from the subject lands so many soldiers would be required as would be necessary.[ ] it was more difficult to organize this vast mass. the strength of the army, like that of the kingdom, rested on the military skill and superiority of the persians. with the persians, as with the indians, the chief weapon was the bow, and the persian arrows like the indian were of reed. aeschylus praises "the mighty with the bow, the strength of the persian land," and atossa, the queen of darius, is represented as asking whether "the bow-driven arrow adorns the hand" of the hellenes.[ ] the persians preferred to fight on horseback. the rider placed a coat of mail over the short shirt, and beside the bow and a short javelin carried a crooked and not very long sabre on the right hip;[ ] the head was protected by the tiara. but there were also large divisions of heavy armed cavalry among the troops of the persians in which the men wore brass or iron helmets and strong harness, while their horses were armed with frontlets and breast-pieces.[ ] the infantry carried long rectangular shields of wicker-work, under which hung the quiver with the javelin and sabre, but as a rule they were without coats of mail.[ ] the leading men and officers were adorned in battle with their best purple robes, neck-chains, and armlets; over the coat of mail they threw the glittering kandys; on the hip hung a sabre with a golden handle and a golden sheath. thus they mounted their war-horses, nisaean greys, with golden trappings, the wildness of which sometimes caused the death of the rider. aeschylus speaks of them as "horsemen mighty with the bow, dreadful to behold, and terrible in the venturous courage of their hearts."[ ] in military skill the persians regarded the medes as next to themselves; then followed the sacae, the bactrians, the indians, and the other arian tribes. next to the medes the sacae were the most trustworthy troops.[ ] the contingents of the provinces were governed by persian generals, who were mainly taken from the members of the royal family, the "kinsmen" of the king, and the tribal princes.[ ] like the persian troops, these contingents were arranged in divisions of , men. each division was subdivided into ten battalions of men, and the battalions into ten companies of men; the company was made up of groups, which, according to xenophon, consisted of seven men among the persians, and according to herodotus of ten in the contingents.[ ] the commander of the entire contingent of a province had the nomination of the officers of divisions and the leaders of battalions; the officers of divisions, as herodotus says, nominated the captains of companies, and the leaders of the groups.[ ] the native dynasts as a rule marched out with their troops and ships, but they were subject to the commanders of the contingents.[ ] the king reviewed the army from his war-chariot, surrounded by scribes, who wrote down everything worthy of notice. when parading before the king, the horsemen dismounted, stood by their horses, and concealed their hands in the sleeves of their kandys. the camp was always pitched in a particular order; the tent of the king was on the eastern side, for the abode of the gods was in the east. the large and splendid tent of the king was surrounded by the tents of the guard; the cavalry, the infantry, and the baggage had special places assigned to them.[ ] they understood how to fortify the camp;[ ] an open camp was always at a certain distance, about seven miles, from the enemy in order to avoid surprises as far as possible. the persian cavalry required a considerable time, especially at night, for preparation. their spirited horses had not only to be tethered, but even tied by the feet to prevent their running away. the unfettering, saddling and bridling of the horses, and putting on the harness, took up much time, and could not be done at night without disorder and confusion.[ ] when there was danger of a surprise the troops had to remain at night under arms. the signal for marching was given from the royal tent with the trumpet, but never before daybreak,[ ] "before the glittering mithra mounted, and in golden shape seized the beautiful summits," the army of the persians was not to move. in the same way the march ended at the latest at sunset.[ ] in battle the king occupied the centre of the position, surrounded by the achæmenids, the "kinsmen" and "companions," several hundred in number,[ ] and the body-guard, the cavalry of which usually stood in the first ranks before the king; next to them in the centre came the best troops in the army.[ ] according to ancient custom the king generally fought from a chariot drawn by nisaean horses,[ ] with his bow in his hand, in which manner, at an earlier period, the princes of the indians had fought, and the kings of the east, the pharaohs, the rulers of assyria, and the princes of the syrians. the king also, when in battle, wore all his royal ornaments, the purple kaftan over his armour, and the royal tiara. near him was the ensign of the empire, the golden eagle on a tall pole.[ ] the mass of the cavalry was generally placed on the wings; between these and the centre were the contingents of the subject nations, each according to its divisions, which were drawn up separately in solid squares.[ ] the battle was begun by the cavalry and infantry with a thick shower of arrows. with this an attempt was made to ward off the attacks of the enemy, and it was kept up till the enemy seemed to be thrown into confusion. then the troops were brought closer; javelins were hurled and sabres drawn.[ ] the persian and sacian cavalry was most dreaded; as it consisted to a great extent of archers it was difficult to approach it. if the cavalry marched to the attack with arms in rest, the onset was made first with separate squadrons, and then in entire masses.[ ] the medes and persians had learned the art of siege from the assyrians. the cities were enclosed by ramparts, and on these works were carried forward, under the protection of which battering-rams were brought to bear against the trenches and walls. the persians were also well acquainted with mining. passages were carried under-ground, both to make breaches in the walls by excavations, and to provide a way into the city. in order to recapture chalcedon, which had rebelled against darius when he crossed the danube against the scythians, together with the cities of the propontis and hellespont, an under-ground passage of more than stades in length was carried, after the king's return, under the walls of the city to the market-place, and the chalcedonians had no suspicion of its existence, till the persians appeared in the city.[ ] footnotes: [ ] in his "metrological studies" böckh fixed the ratio of the euboean to the babylonian talent as : . since that time the discovery of numerous gold and silver persian coins and of weights at babylon and nineveh, and the lion of abydus with its aramaean stamp, have provided the means for fixing the gold talent of darius at , kilogrammes, and his silver talent (the babylonian talent) at , kilogrammes; brandis, "münzwesen," s. , , , . hence brandis takes mommsen's view, that in herod. , , , we must read instead of euboean talents; the euboean talent in attica was a little heavier than the light babylonian talent (the gold talent of darius), and in the calculation babylonian talents must be made equal to euboean talents, which enables us to preserve the total sum given by herodotus-- , talents. [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. , , , . [ ] herod. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "hellen." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; böckh, "staatshaush." ^ , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , ff. [ ] herod. , ; böckh, "staatshaush." ^ , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; athenaeus, p. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] in athenaeus, p. . [ ] _loc. cit._ in athenaeus. [ ] herod. , ; plut. "artax." c. , . [ ] in athenaeus, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "anab." , , ; , , ; plato, "alcib. i." p. ; cic. "in verrem," , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] xenoph. "hellen." , , ; "anab." , , ; , , ; thucyd. , ; plutarch, "themist." ff. that themistocles was prince of magnesia is the less doubtful because a silver stater of this city, , grammes in weight, with the square, and the name of themistocles, is in existence: mommsen. "rom. münzwesen," s. ; brandis, "münzwesen in vorderasien," s. , proves a second coin of themistocles, . grammes in weight. [ ] droysen, "hellenismus," , ; diod. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] nöldeke, "tabari," s. ff. [ ] "oecon." , , ff. [ ] xenoph. "hellen." , , . [ ] plut. "alcib." . [ ] "oecon." , - ; aelian, "hist. anim." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . on the monuments of darius, see lepsius, "chronol." s. , and "monatsberichte b. a." , s. ; oppert, "mémoires prs. à l'acad. des inscrip." , ( ), p. ff. in opposition to the definite and detailed assertion of herodotus, given in the text, the assertion in strabo (p. ) and diodorus ( , ) that darius nearly finished the canal but did not quite finish it, cannot be accepted. herodotus was in egypt not much more than years after the death of darius (about b.c.). diodorus and strabo accept the tradition of the times of the ptolemies, which sought to claim for them the glory of completing the work, though they did no more than reopen the canal which had become silted up. to support this tradition oppert has supplemented the decisive word of which no more than the syllable _ta_ remains, according to his transcription, in such a way that the meaning extracted is that darius filled up his own canal. i do not see why this _ta_ should not be a part of _uçtaka_, _i.e._ to excavate, as well as of _vikata_, _i.e._ to make level. we cannot assume without further evidence that darius set up a monument over the failure of his undertaking or its destruction. the turanian version, which oppert has since published ("peuple des mèdes," p. ) does not help us to a decision, for it is only preserved as far as the place in question. [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , - . [ ] herod. , ; , ; xenoph. "anab." , ; diod. , ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] xenoph. "oecon." , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] "oecon." , . [ ] herod. , , , ; , ; heraclid. cuman. fragm. , ed. müller; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] curtius, , , ; xenoph. _loc. cit._ [ ] it is true that the population between the euphrates and the indus is now rated at , , only. kenneir, "geograph. memoir of persia," p. - . but the numbers of the prisoners and the slain in the inscriptions of behistun allow us to conclude that the population of iran was far greater. under the ptolemies egypt, consisting of about , communities, counted , , inhabitants; diod. , . that asia minor was not less populous is proved, for certain districts, by the statements of xenophon; the budget of darius, the numbers of his army, and more especially of the army of xerxes, the mass of troops which the younger cyrus collects in asia minor and artaxerxes in the eastern provinces, are evidence of a tolerably dense population. [ ] "pers.," , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; xenoph. "anab." , , ; "cyri inst." , , ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , , , , ; plut. "artax." ; aeschyl. "pers." - . [ ] herod. , ; polyaen. "strat." , . according to herodotus the sacae were in the centre at marathon. mardonius retains them in thessaly with the bactrians and indians: herod. , ; , . in the battle at arbela they were among the bravest: arrian, "anab." , . [ ] herod. , ff. [ ] herod. , , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] curtius, , , . [ ] brisson, _loc. cit._ , c. . [ ] curtius, , , , ; xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] artaxerxes is on horseback in the battle of cunaxa; plutarch, "artax." , , but the general custom is given in c. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . vol. v. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , . [ ] herod. , , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , , . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] above, p. . herod. , , ; , ; , ; polyaen. "strateg." , , . chapter xix. the court of darius. along with the new arrangement of the administration of the empire darius had transferred the centre of it into a province, which had thrice rebelled against him, to susa,[ ] the ancient metropolis of elam, which assurbanipal had conquered, plundered, and destroyed years previously. since that time the city had risen from its ruins. we have seen what motives determined darius to take this step. the position of the city, which was not far removed from his native territory, and at the same time brought the stubborn resistance of the babylonians under the close pressure of the royal residence, offered the requisite security. out of media, from the southern foot of the mount elvend (orontes), the kerkha, or choaspes, flows down the heights which bound iran on the west, towards the south-west; and then breaks through them in order to fall into the tigris. further to the east is the dizful. rising more to the south than the kerkha it reaches the plains of elam in a course parallel to that stream and then falls also into the tigris. between these two rivers there rises in the mountain edge the shapur, a river of a short and narrow course, but with a deep channel. for a time it flows in the same direction with the others, then it turns to the east, and falls into the dizful, or rather into the karun, as the dizful is now called in its lower course, after the affluent which falls into it from the east. at the point where the kerkha and dizful approach within two or three leagues of each other,--though lower down they separate more and more widely,--about half a league from the east bank of the kerkha, and on the eastern side of the shapur, is the city of susa. the approach from the west was barred by the kerkha, and from the east by the dizful and its affluents. if an enemy came from the west or the east, he had to cross considerable rivers. the great road which ran from the west from sardis to susa, came to an end opposite susa on the west bank of the kerkha. according to herodotus the city could only be reached by a ferry across the river. this was no doubt an arrangement for security. an approaching enemy was not to find bridges either on the kerkha or the dizful.[ ] thus irrigated by three rivers, the land round the city was extraordinarily fruitful and blooming. the greeks were right in calling susa "the ancient great city." though it was not, as they imagined, at one time the abode of memnon, the son of the morning, who had come to the help of the trojans, we have made acquaintance with the ancient kingdom of elam, the beginnings of which we had to place about the year b.c. we saw that the princes of this kingdom could make war upon babylonia, and reduce it to dependence in the last centuries of the third millennium b.c., and that its armies must have reached syria. then elam had withstood the assyrians for a long time with very great stubbornness, until at length after brave struggles it succumbed to the arms of assurbanipal. a relief in the palace of assurbanipal exhibited susa before its capture, in the year b.c., stretching along between two rivers (the shapur and the dizful), and surrounded by high walls and numerous towers. the new susa also, the susa of darius and his successors, extended, according to the evidence of strabo, between the two rivers; according to his statement the city had a circuit of stades, and according to diodorus of stades, _i.e._ of or miles--an extent which does not leave it far behind the fallen cities of the assyrians, and babylon.[ ] but susa, which in spite of its numerous population was inhabited only to a small extent by persians, required to be fortified even less than ecbatana. the royal citadel must keep the city in check, and afford the most complete security to the palace. we are expressly told that this citadel was protected by strong works, which would indeed be necessary for the position of affairs and the object of darius.[ ] according to the statement of pliny, the citadel was surrounded by the eulaeus, the name which he gives to the choaspes; the book of daniel also represents the ulai as flowing round the castle of susa.[ ] the ruins prove that the palace lay on the shapur. within the protecting walls of the fortress was the "golden dwelling," "the gold-adorned chambers of darius" as aeschylus calls them,[ ] the "far-famed palace" in the language of diodorus. according to aelian darius took a pride in the buildings which he had erected at susa; it was he who had erected the famous works there.[ ] the ruins of susa are now surrounded by a wilderness, inhabited only by lions and hyænas. the soil is still productive of grass, and the remains of numerous canals attest the ancient cultivation. steep mounds of débris and heaps of ruins rise thickly on the left bank of the shapur, in appearance closely resembling the remains of babylon and nineveh. the highest mound is nearest the river; it rises feet above the level of the water, is feet in circumference, and appears to have supported a part of the citadel; the mound abutting on the north only rises or feet, and forms a square, the sides of which measure or feet. on this the remains of a large building have been discovered. further to the east is an extensive platform, the circumference of which far surpasses that of the two first put together; the height on the south side reaches feet and on the east and north about feet. on the east of these three heaps are mounds of a smaller size. these may be remains of the city, while the others represent the citadel. the entire circuit of the ruins is about - / miles. they confirm the statement of strabo that susa was built of brick, inasmuch as they present masses of bricks, partly burnt, partly dried in the sun. but even the palaces in the citadels were built of bricks in the outer walls only; they did not contain those narrow long porticoes, which formed the royal palaces of nineveh, but were rather large square halls, resting on huge terraces. the bases and remains of the northern hill allow us to trace three magnificent porticoes. the interior of the building was formed by a large hall with pillars, the roof of which was supported by pillars ranged in six rows; the pillars were of stone, slight and tall, the capitals were formed by the fore-quarters of kneeling horses. round three sides of this hall, the north, east, and west, were placed porticoes, feet in breadth, the roofs of which were supported by pillars in two rows. four pillars of the chief hall bear the same inscription in cuneiform letters, and, as always, in the persian, babylonian, and turanian languages. in this artaxerxes mnemon ( - b.c.) relates that his great-great-grandfather (_apanyaka_) darius had erected this building and that he had restored it. he entreats auramazda, anahita, and mithra, to protect him and his work. on some pillars we find the inscription: "i, artaxerxes, the great king, the king of kings, son of the king darius" (_i.e._ darius ochus).[ ] though darius elevated susa to be his chief residence, the native land of the empire, and the nucleus of it, his own home, was to receive a proper share of the splendour and glory of the court. after the conquests on the indus darius built a new residence in the land of the persians, to the north-west of pasargadae, which cyrus had made a fortified city, and where he had erected his palace and deposited the spoil of his previous victories. at the confluence of the pulwar and the kum-i-firuz the mountains retire on either side, and leave a space for the most delightful plain in persia, which is still covered with villages,--the plain of merdasht. four thousand feet above the sea, surrounded on every side by lofty mountains, which on the west are covered with snow, the climate is mild and salubrious. curtius considers it the most healthy district in asia.[ ] from the mountain-range on the west, a block of mountains now called kuh istachr advances into the plain, and gradually falls away to the pulwar; opposite to this, the eastern range also advances with a mighty summit, called rachmed, a spur of which, at no great height, forms a broad terrace commanding the plain. on both sides the heights extend a little further to the river, so that the terrace forms the retiring level of a natural semicircle. this terrace was chosen by darius for the site of his new palace, by the walls of which a city was to rise. the greeks call this city of darius, persepolis; _i.e._ city of the persians. diodorus tells us: "the citadel of persepolis was surrounded by three walls, of which the first was cubits in height and surrounded by turrets, adorned with costly ornamentation. the second wall had similar ornaments, but was twice as high. the third wall formed a square, and was cubits in height; it consisted of hard stones, well fitted together, so as to last for ever. on each side was a gate of brass, and near it poles of brass, cubits in height; the first for security, the second to strike terror. in the citadel were several richly-adorned buildings for the reception of the king and the generals, and treasuries built for the reception of revenues. to the east of the citadel, at a distance of four plethra, lies a mountain, called the "royal mountain," in which are the tombs of the kings. the rock was excavated, and had several chambers in the middle, which served to receive the corpses. but they were without any means of access; the corpses were raised by machines and lowered into the tombs.[ ]" the remains of persepolis show that the terrace was surrounded on the west, north, and south by a wall; and that by removing the earth or filling it in it was changed into a surface measuring about feet in length from north to south, and about feet in breadth from west to east, towards the heights of rachmed. on the edge of the terrace rose a wall, the third wall of diodorus, which surrounded it on the north, west, and south. according to the description of diodorus, the eastern side, towards rachmed, was also surrounded by this wall. at the present day we only find remains of the three sides mentioned, consisting of blocks of marble from four to six feet in thickness, which in some places rise to a height of feet above the level of the terrace. if we reckon in the height of the terrace, those walls had certainly the elevation of cubits which diodorus gives them. the two other walls were on the plain, and barred the approach to the palace; of these there are no remains. within the third wall, on the terrace, rise the buildings of the palace. an inscription on the wall of the terrace in the turanian language tells us: "darius the king says: on this place a fortress is founded; previously there was no fortress. by the grace of auramazda i have founded this fortress, strong, beautiful, and complete. may auramazda and all the gods protect me and this fortress and all that is in it."[ ] on the western side of the terrace towards the northern edge, two flights of steps, receding into the terrace, and joining at the top, lead up to the surface and the gate of the palace. they consist of broad steps of large blocks of marble, ten or fifteen steps being sometimes formed out of one block. ten horsemen could easily ride up together on each side. on the top of the terrace behind the landing of the steps, there was a gate in the wall, the place of which can be found by a break in the ruins; through this was the entrance into the citadel. not far from the western edge of the terrace, about equally removed from the northern and southern walls, on an elevated platform, rose a structure, feet in length, and feet in breadth; only a few fragments of the walls, door-posts, and window-cases remain, with the bases of the pillars in the hall ( in number) which formed the centre of the building. on the window-ledges of the building is an inscription in three languages, in which we read: "darius (darayavus), the great king, the king of kings, the king of the lands, the son of hystaspes, an achæmenid, has erected this house."[ ] on a pilaster in the south-west corner we find an inscription of xerxes which tells us: "under the protection of auramazda, darius, my father, erected this house." the relief of one of the two posts of the door, which forms the entrance to the central hall on the north, exhibits darius himself. the figure is - / feet high. the king is dressed in a garment which falls down to the ancles; the sleeves are very wide; he has high shoes, and wears the tiara; in his left hand he holds a long sceptre, and in the right a cup-shaped vessel. the beard is long, the hair comes out in strong locks under the tiara; the face is so injured that little more can be recognized beyond the long profile, the straight outline of the nose, and the quiet dignity of expression. both the lines of the face and the expression correspond to the head of the king preserved on the memorial stone of the canal (p. ). over the king in a winged circle hovers auramazda, whose figure from the knees upward projects from the circle beneath which the long robe of the god runs out in feathers. he wears a tiara like the king and in the left hand bears a ring. the countenance is aged and solemn; the hair and beard are like those of the king. the figure of the deity is obviously copied from the asshur which hovers over the kings of assyria. behind the king, in similar clothing, but with much smaller and lower tiaras on the head, are the bearer of the royal parasol, which he holds over the head of the king, and the bearer of the fan. the largest structure lies to the east, near the height of rachmed. it forms a regular square of more than ( ) feet on each side, on which, on the north side, abutted a portico formed of two rows of pillars. the outer walls of the square consist of blocks of marble neatly fitted together, and more than ten feet in thickness. eight gates, two towards each quarter, on the posts of which stand two lance-bearers face to face, led into a large hall the roof of which was supported by pillars, ten in ten rows.[ ] at the north entrance to the portico, in the two western doors of the hall, the king is represented in conflict with monsters. in these reliefs he is shown with only a narrow band round the brow, or he wears a low cap; his robe is short, his arms are bare. he raises a lion with his right hand and presses the throat, while in his left he holds a dagger; he seizes a winged one-horned monster with the jaws of a wolf and the legs of a bird by the horn, and rips up the belly;[ ] the third monster has the head and the claws of an eagle; the fourth is a four-footed animal standing up, with a horn in the forehead, which the king seizes, while with his left hand he has already thrust the sword into the body. these pictures are, no doubt, like the human-headed bulls which xerxes subsequently set up at persepolis, imitations of semitic symbols. the overpowering or slaughter of the lion was, among the assyrians, cilicians, and lydians, an ancient mode of representing the greatest achievement of melkart-sandon--the conquest of the fierce heat. this victory over evil was easily and naturally transferred to the office of the ruler, and could be accepted, even among the iranians, as the religion of the avesta rests in its principles on the resistance to the evil spirits of angromainyu and the contest with his savage and harmful creatures, and requires this contest. the great hall of pillars was, as the sculptures of the walls and posts show, the royal hall of audience. the throne was between the two central rows of pillars, opposite the two doors of the north, on the southern wall of the hall. here, on days of reception and festivity, the whole splendour of the persian empire was displayed. then, as the book of esther says; "golden and silver cushions were laid on the floor of marble and alabaster, of pearls and tortoise-shell"; and "between the pillars hung white and purple curtains, on rings of silver, and linen and purple strings," and "wine was poured in abundance from golden vessels."[ ] the walls of this room, and the beams of the roof, would not be without that ornamentation of gold and silver plates, which covered the walls, pillars, and beams of the chambers of the palace of ecbatana (v. ). the metal bolts which are found here and there on the inner side of the walls, can hardly have had any other purpose than to support plates of this kind. in both the northern gates two reliefs exhibit darius sitting on the throne, on a lofty chair with a still higher back. the feet of the king rest on a stool; he wears the tiara, and has the sceptre in his right hand, a goblet in his left. behind him is the bearer of the fan with a covered mouth, that his impure breath might not touch the king, then the bow-bearer without the paitidana (v. ), and at a greater distance one of the body-guard. a foreign emissary approaches the throne, clad in a tight coat with sleeves, and trousers joined to it, with a rounded cap. he holds his hand before his mouth while speaking to the king; behind him stands another figure with veiled mouth. this group of figures rests on a pediment which is formed by four rows of ten guards placed one over the other. these are armed partly with bows and lances, and partly with shields and lances. their clothing exhibits two types; which often recur on the monuments of persepolis. in the three lower rows one half of the men have wide coats reaching down to the ancles, with large sleeves, and high angular tiaras; the other half have coats with tight sleeves, reaching to the knee only, trowsers joined to them, and a low round covering for the head. this appears to be the persian dress, the other is the dress of the medes. over the throne of the king a canopy with hanging fringes encloses the whole picture; except that in the middle, two winged circles are seen; beside the lower rows of figures on each side are four dogs (the animals of auramazda); and beside the upper four bulls may be seen on each side. this picture of the enthroned king is repeated on the pilasters of the two southern gates; but on the third relief we find only darius on the throne, with the fan-bearer behind; and the throne is not supported by the rows of guards, but on fourteen figures of another shape which are arranged in three rows; in the highest row are four figures, in the two lower five; in the last figure on the lowest row towards the west, there is an unmistakable negro. they bear the throne of the king with raised arms; above the two winged rings is the picture of auramazda. on the fourth relief is some dignitary of the empire, or a prince of the house, behind the throne of the king, which is here supported in the same way by twenty-nine figures arranged in three rows. here also auramazda hovers over the two winged circles. these figures are intended to present a picture of the government of darius as resting in the one case on the fidelity and bravery of the army, and in the other, on the obedience of the subject nations. the supporting figures of the southern doors are all clothed differently, in the various dresses of the empire. between these doors we find the following inscription: "the great auramazda, who is the greatest of gods, has made darius king. he has given him the kingdom; by the grace of auramazda darius is king. darius the king speaks: 'this land of persia, which auramazda has given to me, which is beautiful, rich in horses and men, fears no enemy by the protection of auramazda, and of me, king darius. may auramazda stand beside me with the gods of the land, and protect this region against war, blight, and the lie. may no enemy come to this region, no army, no blight, no lie. for this favour i entreat auramazda, and all the gods. may auramazda grant me this with all the gods.'" on the same wall we are told: "i am darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of these numerous lands, the son of hystaspes, an achæmenid. darius the king says: 'by the grace of auramazda these are the lands which i rule over with this persian army, which are in fear of me, and bring me tribute: the susians, the medes, the babylonians, the arabs, the assyrians, the egyptians, the armenians, the cappadocians, the inhabitants of sardis, the ionians of the mainland, and those of the sea. and in the east the sagartians, the parthians, the sarangians, the areians, the bactrians, the sogdiani, the chorasmians, the gedrosians, the arachoti, the indians, the gandarians, the sacae, the macians. if thou thinkest: may i tremble before no enemy, then protect this persian army; if the persian army is protected, prosperity will remain unbroken to the most distant days.'"[ ] the successors of darius extended the palace of persepolis. directly behind the gate to which the great staircase on the terrace leads, king xerxes, the son and successor of darius, erected a portico. from the two front pilasters which form the entrance to this court from the west, two horses are hewn out in high relief; their heads and fore-feet project in front, their bodies and hinder quarters stand out from the pilasters in the entrance. these horses are feet in length. from the four pillars which support the roof of the portico behind this entrance, two are still standing, feet in height. corresponding to the two guards of the front entrances, we find at the exit of the hall towards the interior of the citadel, _i.e._ towards the east, two winged bulls with human heads, projecting from the pilasters. about feet in length, these bulls are precisely similar to the human-headed bulls of nineveh, but the wings of the bulls are not thrown back so far, and the solemn bearded head is not surmounted here by a round cap, but by the persian tiara; these tiaras, like the caps at nineveh, are surrounded by four united horns. the horse, the animal of mithra, which occurs repeatedly on the ruins of persepolis, was no doubt the peculiar symbol of the persians; the human-headed winged bulls belong, as has been observed, to babylon and assyria. between this portico and the smaller building of his father, on the western edge of the terrace, xerxes constructed a magnificent building. three porticoes, of twelve pillars each, surrounded on the north, west, and south, a hall, formed of pillars of black marble, feet in height, and placed closely to each other in six rows; are still standing. the building rose upon a walled platform, paved with blocks of marble. this appears to have been a kind of vestibule in which the court, the foreign ambassadors, the emissaries of the provinces, who brought tribute, assembled. the inscription calls it a reception-house,[ ] and the reliefs with which the front wall of the platform, ten feet in height, is ornamented, indicate that it was a vestibule. two flights of steps lead up to this platform, and in the middle they form a projecting landing, on the front of which, on either side of an inscription, stand the seven guardians of the kingdom, three on one side and four on the other, in median garments, with an upright spear in the hand. on the external walls of the steps we see a lion on either side, which attacks a horned horse from behind; the horse turns to defend itself. on the wall of the platform reliefs on either side of the steps exhibit three rows of figures one above the other. on the west side are the nations bringing tribute, on the eastern, which is more honourable, the body-guard and the court of the king. in each row here soldiers of the body-guard advance to the steps; then the people of the court follow, partly in median and partly in persian dress; most of them have a dagger at the side; some are in conversation and take each other by the hand; others have suspended the bow in a belt over the shoulder; others carry cups, others staves which end in an apple in their hands. on the west side of the steps the figures are arranged in sections, each containing six men (with one exception, which contains eight). the first figure always carries a staff, which marks him out as introducing strangers. the staff-bearer holds the nearest man by the hand; this second figure and the four which follow are differently clad in each section; the last four carry various objects, garments, jars containing different articles, etc., or lead camels, horses, humped oxen, cattle, rams, mules, and other animals. these are the satrapies of the kingdom who are brought before the king by the officers, and present their tribute. a second building, which xerxes erected to the south-west of the smaller structure of darius, consists of a portico of pillars, and a hall of pillars, on which abut four chambers on the east and west. this seems to have been his dwelling-house at persepolis; at any rate we see in the sculptures of the hall six servants, who are carrying dishes with food, and a wine-skin. in addition to these, in four other places on the terrace, there are remains of less extensive buildings, one of which, lying in the south-west angle, was built by artaxerxes iii. numerous ruins before the royal citadel, reaching from the foot of the terrace to the pulwar, and the ruins of a wall, which ran along the river, confirm the statements of the greeks, that a city of considerable size lay adjacent to the palace, just as the remains of canals and aqueducts show that the valley in front of the citadel was carefully cultivated. near the new citadel and city, which darius added to his home a few years later, he caused the place to be marked out in which his corpse should rest or be exposed. two leagues to the north-west from the ruins of the citadel of persepolis, on the further shore of the pulwar, lies a steep wall of white marble, now called naksh-i-rustem, _i.e._ pictures of rustem. at an elevation of or feet above the ground this wall is hewn and wrought. the lowest part of this work is a plain surface, which forms the basis for a façade of four pillars, which are cut out of the rock. the capitals, like those in the palaces of persepolis, are formed of the fore-quarters of two kneeling horses united at the middle. between the two central pillars is the case of a door. the heavy moulding which these pillars support passes into a toothed plinth, on which rises a sort of catafalque, where are two rows of men, each containing fourteen, in different dresses (among them are three negroes), who support a beam with upraised arms, on which a few steps lead up to a platform. on this stands darius before an altar, the fire on which is flaming. the left hand rests on the bow which is planted on the platform, the right is raised in prayer. in the centre above the king hovers auramazda in a winged circle; to the right the sun's disc is visible. the door of the façade does not seem to have been an entrance; but now the lower part of it is opened, and leads behind the façade into a long chamber, and three smaller ones, which are cut out of the mountain. any one who wishes to have a near view of the façade must be drawn up, as ctesias says that the parents of darius were; the corpses also must have been drawn up, as we are told by diodorus. on the façade under the form of the king we find the following inscription: "i, darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the lands of all tongues, the king of the great and wide earth, the son of hystaspes, the achæmenid, the persian, the son of a persian, ariya, scion of ariya (in the babylonia text we have only, a persian, son of a persian). darius the king says: 'by the grace of auramazda these are the lands which i governed beyond persia; i ruled over them: they brought me tribute, they did what i commanded them: they obeyed my law: the medes, susians, parthians, areans, bactrians, sogdians, chorasmians, sarangians, arachoti, gedrosians, gandarians, indians, amyrgian-sacæ, sacæ with pointed caps, babylonia, assyria, arabia, egypt, armenia, cappadocia, the inhabitants of sardis, the ionians, the sacæ beyond the sea, the Çkudra (the thracians?) the ionians who wear knots,[ ] the putiya, the kushiya, the machiya, the karka (p. ). auramazda gave me these lands when he saw them in rebellion, and granted to me the rule over them; by the grace of auramazda i have again reduced them to order; what i told them, that was done, because it was my will. if thou thinkest: how many were the lands which darius ruled? look on the picture of those who bear my throne, in order to know them. then wilt thou know that the lance of the persian penetrated far, that the persian fought battles far from persia. what i have done, i have accomplished by the grace of auramazda: auramazda came to my help, till i accomplished it; may auramazda protect me, my house and my land. may auramazda grant me that for which i pray. o man, resist not the command of auramazda; leave not the right path; sin not.'"[ ] the mention of the "knot-bearing" ionians, and the putiya (_i.e._ the libyans), and the sacæ beyond the sea on this inscription shows that it was engraved after the campaigns to the danube and barca, the subjection of lemnos and miletus, and the greek cities on the coast of thracia, _i.e._ after the year b.c.; it was after this year that darius caused his tomb to be constructed.[ ] on the frame of the façade, over the pillared portal, we find on each side three figures in long robes placed over each other. these are the six princes of the persian tribes, the six chiefs of the empire after the king. above the highest figure on the left of the king we read: "gaubaruva (gobryas) the pateischorean, the lance-bearer of king darius;"[ ] over the second "açpachana (aspathines), the bow-bearer of king darius."[ ] the ruins of susa and persepolis, the only remains of ancient west iranian architecture which have come down to us, show that it was indeed founded upon babylonian and assyrian patterns, but that it was by no means mere imitation. neither in ecbatana nor in persepolis was the use of brick necessary; stone was at hand; and even in susa, at a distance of miles from the mountains, stone was used. the ruins give evidence of a skill in smoothing and fitting the stones, which can only have been attained by long practice. if the platform, on which the buildings rest, belongs to the babylonian and assyrian style, the ruins of persepolis and susa nevertheless exhibit a perfectly independent style, which seems to have arisen out of an earlier practice of building in wood, and a peculiar manner of treating the ornamentation. we have seen that the plan of the palace at ecbatana presupposed the use of wood, that the pillars there were wooden posts covered with precious metals. in persepolis stone took the place of wood. the outer walls of the building are strong, the blocks and mouldings over the windows and doors are high and massive, but along with this massiveness, strength, and permanence, the buildings show a tendency to run into great height. the pillars are slender, reminding us of tent-posts; though of more than feet in height they have a diameter of only four feet, and the inter-columniations are often more than feet. the socles and capitals (which are either the fore-quarters of horses or bulls or inverted cups) are high and delicate. the socles do not project far, the capitals are slender; the buildings, which were covered by roofs of beams, overlaid no doubt with plates of gold and silver, thus acquired, along with their solidity, the impression of imposing elevation and delicate lightness. the sculptures also are distinguished from those of babylon and assyria, not merely by the fact that they are carried out in harder material, but they have also greater repose in the expression, the figures are less compressed, the muscles less prominent, the development of the forms more noble and free, the fall of the folds simple and natural. animals are represented with extraordinary vigour and life. the execution in detail is careful, but flatter and duller than at nineveh. the expression of the heads does not possess the energy and life which the sculptures of assyria present; even in the most excited action it is ceremonious. it is solemn, massive, earnest, dignified, and restrained, but wanting in character. beside the sculptures which symbolically represent the dignity, business, or deeds of the officers of the empire, the remaining reliefs of persepolis give no chronicle of the reign of darius and xerxes; we find neither battles nor sieges; they merely glorify the splendour and greatness of the monarchy; they exhibit the throne of the king which the subject nations carry, surrounded by the princes of the kingdom, and protected by the body-guard. we see the subject nations bringing tribute, and thus we have a picture of established power, and secure majesty, but not of the individual acts and victories of the king. the only historical sculpture which is at present known, is the inscription of darius at behistun. the style is simple and severe, the treatment far less minute than on the reliefs of persepolis and naksh-i-rustem, but naïve and vigorous. susa, so strabo tells us, was adorned more than other cities by the kings of the persians; each built a separate dwelling there as a memorial of his reign; after susa they honoured the palaces of persepolis and pasargadae; at gabae also in upper persia and at taoke on the coast they had castles.[ ] from xenophon we learn that "the kings of persia, it is said, pass the spring and the summer in susa and ecbatana."[ ] we may conclude from these statements, and from the fact that the achæmenids not only preserved but multiplied the gold and silver ornaments of the citadel of ecbatana, as well as the buildings of the palace (v. ), that susa remained the ordinary residence even under the successors of darius, but that in the height of summer--in order to avoid the heat of the plains of elam--the court sought the cooler air of the ancient residence of phraortes and cyaxares--a change advisable on political grounds also. even a short residence in ecbatana showed that media did not occupy the last place in the kingdom. the persian kings also resided at times in babylon. the sassanids pursued the same course. ardeshir built shahabad in elam, his successors resided in madain, but during the summer in hamadan.[ ] the palaces in the mother country were visited by darius and his successors from time to time, who like himself caused their sepulchres to be cut either in the rocks of naksh-i-rustem, or on mount rachmed, immediately to the east of the citadel. there are three sepulchres by the side of that of darius, and three on mount rachmed. the size and splendour of the palaces at susa, ecbatana, persepolis, and pasargadae were matched by the numbers and brilliance of the court. the ceremonies and the arrangement of the service were taken from the pattern of the median court, but not without considerable variations, and the medes, in turn, had imitated the style of the assyrian and babylonian court. the prominent position of the six tribal princes, the supreme judges, the "kinsmen and table companions of the king," were without a parallel among the medes; it was they who immediately surrounded the king next to the occupants of the great offices of state or honour. it was the opinion of cyrus, xenophon tells us, that the ruler should not only be superior to his subjects in valour, but he must exert a charm over them also. thus he accustomed both himself and his officers to give commands with dignity, and for himself and for them he adopted the median dress, as being more imposing and majestic. on solemn occasions the king appeared in a long purple robe, bordered with white--such as no one but himself might wear,[ ] a kaftan (kandys) of brilliant purple was thrown over it.[ ] the embroidery exhibited falcons and hawks, the birds of the good god, which dwell in the pure air nearest to heaven. this garment was held together by a golden girdle, in which was a sabre adorned with precious stones. the trowsers were of purple; the shoes of the colour of saffron.[ ] the head was covered by the upright tiara or kidaris,[ ] of a white and blue colour, or by a band of the same colours, and also by a crown, as we see from the picture of darius on a seal at behistun.[ ] plutarch tells us that the king's attire was valued at , talents (nearly £ , , ); his ornaments and attire on solemn occasions are no doubt meant.[ ] if the royal court of the sassanids was arranged after that of the achæmenids, the attire of the king was even more extravagant. as the greeks inform us, the king of the persians was a sight seldom seen by the persians.[ ] only the six tribal princes could enter without being announced. the attempt in any other person would be punished with death, unless the king forgave the offence.[ ] it required time and trouble, and even special favour, to make way through the troops of body-guards, servants, eunuchs, under-officers, and court nobles; and when this was done it was necessary to be announced by the officers who introduced strangers, or by the chief door-keeper. the king sat on a golden throne when he gave audience. over this was stretched a baldachino of vari-coloured purple, supported by four golden pillars adorned with precious stones.[ ] it was the custom among the persians for the lower to bow to the earth before the more honourable,[ ] no one approached the king without falling in the dust before him.[ ] any one who spoke to the king was compelled to keep his hands hidden in the long sleeves of his upper garment, in order to show that he neither could nor would use them.[ ] according to xenophon the king of the persians at day-break praised the powers of heaven, sacrificed daily to the gods, whom the magians indicated. plutarch tells us that he was awaked daily by a chamberlain with the words: "arise, o king, and think of the things which auramazda has given thee to think of."[ ] at table the queen-mother and the queen sat beside him. the first sat above him, the second below, the king was in the middle of the table.[ ] like all the persians, he ate but one meal a day, but this lasted a long time. the princes, the "kinsmen" and "table companions" of the king, as a rule, ate in an ante-chamber, but at banquets they were in the same hall with him, in their proper order, the king on a rich divan with a golden frame, the companions on pillows or carpets on the floor,[ ] so arranged that those whom the king trusted most were on his left, the others on his right; "because the king," as xenophon says, "could in case of need defend himself better with his right hand."[ ] before it was brought to the king the food was tested by tasters; and before handing the goblet to the king, the butler drank a few drops out of it with a spoon, to prove that it was not poisoned.[ ] many kinds of food were set on the table, but only a moderate portion of each was placed before every person. xenophon praises the abstinence of the well-bred persians at table; they regarded it as low and brutish to show desire for food or drink.[ ] plutarch says: "not only the friends, and commanders, and body-guard of the king had portions from his table, but also what the slaves and dogs ate was put upon the board, so that the kings of the persians made all who were in their service the companions of their table and their hearth."[ ] what was left from the table of the king was carried into the courts and distributed in equal portions among the body-guard and the servants.[ ] if the meal was followed by any drinking, the queen-mother and the queen retired, before the concubines entered to play and sing.[ ] the table-companions might not look at the concubines, and the eunuchs, who brought the women into the hall, took care that they should not. even at night, when the king retired to rest, the concubines played and sang by the light of burning lamps.[ ] on the festival of mithra, the king was allowed to dance in persian fashion, and to be intoxicated;[ ] on his birthday he gave a great banquet, which, as herodotus tells us, was called among the persians the perfect banquet. on this day the king gave presents to the persians (_i.e._ they received a largess of money), and at the banquet, in which the women took part, he could not refuse any petition.[ ] in accordance with the doctrine of the avesta the king celebrated the day which had called him into life, and, as plato tells us, all asia celebrated with sacrifices and feasts the day which had given them their ruler.[ ] no one ever saw the king on foot; if he passed through the courts of the palace carpets of sardis were spread before him, on which no other foot might step.[ ] outside the palace the king was sometimes seen on horseback, but more frequently in his chariot. it was a much-envied distinction among the princes of persia to be allowed to assist the king to his horse.[ ] if he descended from his chariot, no one might reach out his hand to support him; it was the duty of the bearer of the royal stool to place a golden stool for him to descend. at solemn processions, the roads on which the royal train passed were cleansed, as in india, strewn with myrtle and made odorous with frankincense; a string of guards and whip-bearers were placed along the way to prevent any one from coming forward to the chariot of the king.[ ] the body-guard in their golden ornaments with crowned tiaras led the way and brought up the rear. the chariot of mithra, yoked with eight nisaean greys, went before the king; the sacred fire was carried before him by the magians; and beside the chariot of the king, which was drawn by six or four nisaean horses, marched staff-bearers. the chiefs of the tribes, the achæmenids, the great officers of the court, the "kinsmen and table companions" of the king followed. in the train in the rear no doubt the royal horses, two or four hundred in number, were, no doubt, led in splendid trappings.[ ] darius was married before he ascended the throne of the magian. his wife was the daughter of gobryas, the chief of the pateischoreans. she had borne him three sons before he came to the throne: artabazanes, arsamenes, and ariabignes.[ ] when he had acquired the throne, he made atossa, the daughter of cyrus, his queen, _i.e._ his legitimate wife; the younger line of achæmenes was thus yet more closely united with the elder. the daughter of gobryas fell into the rank of the second wives; atossa took the place which cassandane had held beside cyrus, and which she herself had previously occupied with cambyses. the second daughter of cyrus, artystone, and parmys the only daughter whom smerdis had left, passed into the harem of darius. atossa bore him four sons: xerxes, hystaspes, masistes, and achæmenes; artystone bore arsames and gobryas, and parmys ariomardus. darius had also sons by other women, as phratagune, the daughter of his brother, artanes; "he had many sons," is the remark of justin.[ ] the secondary wives of the king ranked above the concubines. the number of the latter was, at any rate under the successors of darius, very considerable; it is given at , , and . after the battle of issus, concubines of the last darius were discovered among the captives.[ ] these women, as diodorus informs us, were sought out from the most beautiful maidens in asia; for the new-comers, according to the book of esther, a year's preparation was necessary. this went on in a special department of the seraglio, and consisted in the use of ointments, spices, and perfumes.[ ] they were so far beneath the queen, that they were compelled to prostrate themselves before her when she looked at them;[ ] at no time, except at the table of the king, could they be seen by men. if they accompanied the king on the chase or on journeys, and, as became usual at a later time, to the field, they were always in closed conveyances. any one who touched one of the concubines was put to death, and even any one who approached their waggons, or passed through the train.[ ] the queen enjoyed greater liberty. we are told of stateira, the consort of artaxerxes ii., that she always travelled with her hangings drawn back, and allowed the women of the people to come up to her car and greet her.[ ] we have mentioned already how numerous were the persons about the court. the greeks call attention to the splendid attire of the servants, and remark that the preparation of the king's table and the waiting gave them a great deal of trouble: in fact half the day was taken up with this. each of the great court officers had a large number of subordinates. the chief door-keeper had at his disposal a number of eunuchs, who watched over the inner courts of the palace and the harem, waited on the women and carried messages. the degrading use of castration was unknown to the nations of the arians, and contrary to their religion, which put so high a value on life, and the preservation of the germs of life. it was from the princes of the semites, the assyrian and babylonian court, that the use of eunuchs for guarding the harem, for waiting on the king and his women, and service in the inner chambers, was borrowed by the median kings. in addition to other burdens, babylonia supplied each year mutilated boys to darius. eunuchs were never employed in the persian army for commanders, or for officers of state, as was the case in assyria and babylonia; but personal attendance on the king, which even in the time of cyrus devolved on eunuchs, brought some of them into favour and influence under him, and subsequently under cambyses.[ ] beside the chief door-keeper and his eunuchs, was the chief staff-bearer with his subordinates. it was his duty to introduce strangers and those who came to ask for assistance; the envoys from countries and cities; to preserve order in the palaces, to superintend and punish the servants. the chief butler was at the head of a large number of butlers and waiters. the chamberlains, the valets of the king with their subordinates, the spreaders of pillows and carpets, the carvers and table-dressers, the cooks and bakers, the preparers of ointment, the weavers of crowns, the lamp-lighters and palace-sweepers formed a considerable body. in addition there was the chief groom with his subordinates, the master of the hunt, the hunters and dog-keepers. physicians also were at hand, chiefly from egypt, who had the greatest reputation in the east; then came the greeks.[ ] long caravans, surrounded by the body-guard, conducted the court, when a change of residence was made, from susa to the palaces of persia or ecbatana. a large amount of splendid furniture, cattle for slaughter, food and drink of special quality, were taken with them. herodotus tells us that the king of persia drank only the water of the choaspes, _i.e._ the kerkha, which was boiled and carried in silver vessels on four-wheeled cars both into the field, and on journeys.[ ] beside numerous waggons the conveyance of the court required camels.[ ] along with the military equipage of the last darius cooks, pastry-cooks, preparers of milk diet, preparers of liquors, cellarmen, preparers of ointment, and chaplet-makers were captured.[ ] footnotes: [ ] the name in hebrew is shushan, among the assyrians, shusan, _hodie_, shush. [ ] loftus, "travels in susiana," p. ff. nöldeke ("göttingen g. g." , s. ff.) has treated exhaustively of the various names of ancient elam, as susiana is invariably called among the assyrians, babylonians, and hebrews. he proves that the name [greek: kissiê] which is in use among the older greeks, aeschylus, hecataeus, and herodotus, must be derived from the kossaeans, a tribe who inhabited the northern and higher part of susiana, and the mountainous edge towards iran. of later writers polybius only uses the name cissians, who also uses the name matieni in the sense of herodotus. uwaya, the name common among the persians for susiana, is taken from the uxians, who were the eastern neighbours of persia, _i.e._ the tribe in susiana which dwelt nearest to persia; it is retained in the new persian chuz and chusistan. among the greeks the name elymaeans is first used by the companions of alexander as the name for a tribe, and then in the second century b.c. as the name of a new kingdom which restored the ancient elam. yet to this tribe which inhabited the plain and the hills of susa and shuster was due the foundation and government of the kingdom which once ruled in the valley of the euphrates, which so long resisted the assyrians, but was entirely unknown to the greeks. the rivers of susiana are difficult to fix, as both persian and native names are indifferently used. the name choaspes, which contains _açpa_, is plainly persian; it is no doubt the kerkha. on the eulaeus, koprates, and pasitigris, see droysen, "hellenismus," ^ , _n._ [ ] aesch. "pers." , ; athen. p. ; strabo, p. , , ; diod. , . [ ] polyb. , . [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , ; daniel viii. , . [ ] "pers." , , , . [ ] ael. "hist. an." , . [ ] ménant, "achaemenides," p. , ; oppert, "peuple des mèdes," p. . [ ] curtius, , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] oppert, "peuple des mèdes," . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._ , ; spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. ; schrader, "assyr. babyl. keilinschriften," s. . [ ] texier, "description," pl. . [ ] impressions of seals which have been discovered in the palace of sennacherib at kuyundshik, represent the king of assyria in precisely the same position.--layard, "nineveh and babylon," p. , . [ ] esther i. , . [ ] inscriptions h. and j. oppert, "journal asiatique," , ; spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. . oppert now translates _aniya_ not by "enemy" but literally by "the other;" by which angromainyu would be meant: "peuple des mèdes," p. . [ ] _viçadahyaus_; spiegel, _loc. cit._ s. ; benfey, "keilinschriften," s. - ; schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] above, p. _n._ [ ] oppert. "z. d. m. g." , ff.; mordtmann, _loc. cit._ , ff.; spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. ; schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] above, p. _n._, . [ ] so the babylonian text. [ ] it is merely a guess that _saraçtibara_ means bow-bearer; spiegel, "keilinschriften," s. . oppert translates: bearer of the commands of the king; "peuple des mèdes," p. . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] "anab." , , . [ ] nöldeke, "tabari," s. . xenophon's statements about the residences in the "anabasis" (_loc. cit._) cannot be outweighed by the systematized arrangement in the "cyropaedia" that cyrus spent three months at susa, two at ecbatana, and seven months at babylon, which plutarch ("de exilio," c. ) repeats in the form, that the persian kings passed the spring at susa, the summer in media, and the winter in babylon. with aeschylus and herodotus susa is a fixed residence, and so also in the treatise "de mundo," p. , and the hebrews, _e.g._ nehemiah i. . joseph. "antiq." , , . athenaeus, p. , thinks that persepolis was the residence for the autumn. in the winter of the year - conon finds artaxerxes ii. at babylon; the same king says in plutarch ("artax." c. ) to parysatis, that he will never see babylon as long as she lives. [ ] plut. "artax." c. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] aeschyl. "pers." . [ ] plut. "artax." c. . [ ] diod. , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] plutarch ("artax." c. ) maintains, it is true, that this is the value of the garments which the king habitually wore. arrian treats of this subject, "anab." , , and curtius, , , - ; , , . with respect to the royal colours, cf. esther i. . [ ] phan. eres. fragm. , ed. müller; plut. "artax." c. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] esther iv. . cf. herod. , , . [ ] heracl. cum. fragm. , ed. müller; esther v. . [ ] herod. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] xenoph. "hellen." , ; . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , , , with the addition that this was the custom in his day. plut. "ad princ. ineruditum," . [ ] plutarch, "artax." c. ; "conjug. praecepta," c. ; "quaest. conviv." , , . [ ] heracl. cum. fragm. ; xenoph. "hellen." , , . [ ] "cyri inst." , , , . [ ] suidas, [greek: edeatros]. [ ] "cyri inst." , , . [ ] plut. "quaest. conviv." , , . [ ] athenaeus, p. . above, p. . [ ] plut. "quaest. conviv." , , ; "conjug. praecepta," . [ ] heracl. cum. fragm. ; diod. , . [ ] ctesias and darius, in athenaeus, p. . [ ] herod. , , ; esther ii. . [ ] "alcib. i." p. . [ ] heracl. cum. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] herod. , ; curtius, , , . [ ] herod. , , ; , ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , - ; curtius, , , . [ ] herod. , , ; , . herodotus ( , ) calls arsamenes the son of darius, and ( , ) arsames the son of darius and artystone. artabazanes is called by justin ( , ) artamenes. [ ] herod. , ; justin, , . [ ] diod. , ; athenaeus, p. . [ ] esther ii. - ; v. ; viii. . [ ] deinon in athenaeus, p. . [ ] heracl. cum. fragm. , ed. müller; plut. "artax." c. . [ ] plut. "artax." . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; , , ; plut. "artax." c. ; nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. on the physicians, above, p. , . [ ] herod. ( , ) ascribes this custom to cyrus, though the reference to susa which he adds shows that it can only have come into existence after susa became a residence. [ ] demosth. "symmor." p. . [ ] athenaeus, p. . chapter xx. retrospect. the arrangement which darius had given to his vast empire allowed the character, laws, manners, and religion of the subject nations to remain as far as possible unchanged, and only interfered, exceptionally, in the hereditary local customs of the provinces. adequate provision for the maintenance of the central government, the establishment of rapid combinations, care for the training of the generals and officers, ample and obvious rewards for service, a system of taxation far removed from extortion, regulations for the advancement of agriculture, development of the trade on the southern sea, or by land, since the caravans could pass unharmed and even protected from miletus to susa, from cyrene to the indus, seemed to give a solid foundation, an adequate support, and abiding power to the empire of cyrus and darius. yet for the security and continuance of it, it was of the first importance, whether the national feeling of the subject peoples, in spite of or owing to the tolerance of the empire, was still sufficiently vigorous and strong to create in them the desire to rise from the subjection in which they were, to win back their independence, and develop their national existence; whether the controlling power of the ruling people was sufficient to maintain itself for a length of time over such wide regions; whether, in fine, the ruling house would preserve, amid the splendour of its new palaces, and the brilliance of extraordinary success, the vigour and force required to sustain the heavy task of administering the empire in the manner of darius. under his sceptre the national civilizations of asia which had hitherto been separated were united into a great whole. beside the ancient civilization of babylon stood the yet more ancient civilization of egypt; beside the lydians and syrians, and the hellenes of the anatolian coast, stood the forms of life existing on the indus, all united in equal rights; above these, and yet owing to the formation of this empire, side by side with them, was the characteristic civilization of the bactrians, medes, and persians. the ancient communities of egypt, babylonia, and phoenicia were able, it is true, to make attempts, and even stubborn attempts, at resistance, but they did not succeed in effecting a new departure. on the contrary, the various forms of civilization united together began by degrees to exercise a mutual influence, and each wore down the other. only the religious feeling of that syrian tribe, whose states had been crushed beneath the armies of the kings of asshur and babylon, remained free from this assimilation, and self-secluded; in the native soil, which cyrus had once more allowed the exiles to occupy, they struck new and deeper roots, which promised the noblest fruits from the old sturdy stock. the persians, and especially the upper orders, could not remain uninfluenced by the privileged position of the ruling people and reigning class in such a wide empire, and by the pattern of the court. the fruits of dominion flowed in upon them; their lives were opulent and full of enjoyment. the greeks can tell us a great deal of the splendour and luxury of the persians, which were introduced in the time of darius and subsequently. they inform us that the persians adopted a richer style of dress. like the indians, the medes and the persians after them delighted to adorn themselves; but according to the greeks the persians were even more anxious to give themselves a dignified and imposing appearance. they wore the loose dress of the medes, in blue and red purple; they also followed the medes in wearing chains, and armlets, and earrings of gold.[ ] the hair and beard received careful attention. in summer the parasol-bearers were always at hand, in winter gloves were worn.[ ] the houses were adorned with costly carpets; the persians lay on beds with golden feet, and soft cushions; and on the tables of the higher classes glittered goblets, bowls, and pitchers of gold and silver. the servants were numerous, trained butlers, bakers, and cooks were kept.[ ] the table of the persians, as the greeks tell us, presented but few kinds of farinaceous food, but whole animals were served up, and the dessert was plentiful and in various courses.[ ] the hereditary moderation in wine was not observed. herodotus tells us that: "the persians readily accept foreign customs. they wear the median dress because they consider it more beautiful, and in war they use egyptian coats of mail. they adopt any customs which please them, and in addition to a large number of wives, they have many concubines."[ ] about the year b.c. the persians were so accustomed to convenience in their domestic economy, that they took even into the field of battle their servants together with their cooks and maid-servants, their entire harem with costly furniture, partly in closed waggons and partly on camels; even the men of the guard were followed by their women and furniture. the nobles encamped under tents splendidly wrought with gold and silver.[ ] but in spite of this luxury, self-control and military vigour were never eradicated in the persians. they were always seen in a becoming attitude. they were never observed to eat or drink greedily; they never laughed loud, or quarrelled, or gave way to passion.[ ] the education which the sons of the nobles received under the eye of the king and the satraps, and the rich rewards in store for eminent valour, kept up a manly spirit. we have more than one instance of acts of rare devotion to the king and the empire. the remembrance of the conflicts of cyrus, of the wars which darius carried on, the consciousness of great successes, the proud feeling that they governed the nations of asia, formed strong counterpoises to the advance of effeminacy. even those who lived most delicately at home eagerly joined in the chase, in the prescribed extirpation of the animals of angromainyu, and the princes did not disdain to do garden-work with their own hands day by day. at that time, as xenophon observes, the old persian sobriety and force existed beside the median dress and luxury, and heracleides of pontus tells us that the persians and medes, who loved luxury and excess above others, were also the bravest and most magnanimous of the barbarians.[ ] artaxerxes mnemon, in spite of his golden ornaments and purple kaftan, dismounted from his horse, and marched on foot, shield on arm and quiver on shoulder, day by day at the head of his soldiers, through the roughest and steepest mountain paths, though the day's march reached miles or more. in spite of armlets and purple hose the leading persians long after the time of darius leapt from their horses into the mud, in order to extricate a baggage-cart, which prevented the march of the army; and the common soldier, even when frozen with cold, hesitated to lay the axe to beautiful trees which would be consumed merely to warm him by his watch-fire. the prescripts of religion were not without effect. the kings kept their word when given; every persian regarded it as shameful to break the pledge of plighted hands, to refuse reverence to his parents--his mother especially--to speak falsely, and to seek for gains by trade. thucydides says of them that they liked better to give than to receive.[ ] the pride of the persians preferred to serve the king with arms and receive favour and presents from him, than to carry on any kind of trade. a great number of the persians were constantly under arms in the standing army; the rest tended their flocks and cultivated their fields in the hereditary way. they kept to the old persian dress, the close and short garment of leather; their coats reached only half way down the thigh, and instead of the tiara they wore a low band round the head. along with their dress and mode of life, they kept true to the manners and moderation of their forefathers, and practised the old arts of riding and archery. more serious for the future of the kingdom than any splendour or magnificence on the part of eminent persians, was the influence, which in the composition of the court was unavoidable, of his personal servants on the king and on his resolutions--and the danger that court intrigues might override the interest of the empire; above all, the still more unavoidable influence of the harem. if the position of the queen-mother, who, in accordance with the doctrines of zarathrustra, enjoyed a position of great respect at court, and her relations to the queen or first wife gave occasion for jealous rivalry, each secondary wife had still stronger motives to seek or maintain influence with the king, to disparage the queen and the other wives before him, and make provision for her sons if she could not aspire to gain the succession to the throne. thus a door was opened to ambition and intrigue, and the eunuchs of the wives found in this occupation only too good an opportunity for gaining importance and weight. if such evils were a little matter under a ruler of the determination and wisdom of darius, it was impossible to count on the fact that he would be followed by a series of kings like himself, and equally great. but if the court outgrew the state, and the fortunes of the empire were decided in the seraglio, the empire itself might be thrown into danger with a change in the succession. the education given to the princes, and especially to the heir to the throne, has been mentioned already, as well as their instruction in the wisdom of the magi. the crown descended to the eldest son of the legitimate wife or queen. whenever the king took the field, in order to prevent contention he nominated his successor. even about the successor of darius a difficulty might arise. his first wife, the daughter of gobryas, had borne him three sons before he came to the throne; when king, he had made atossa his queen, and had four sons by her (p. ). which was the legitimate heir, the eldest of the first family, or of the second?--artabazanes or xerxes? at the death of the king, as diodorus tells us, the sacred fire in the royal palace, and in all the houses of the persians, was put out.[ ] we remember the prescript of the avesta that the fire of the hearth must be removed from the house of the dead, together with all the sacred vessels, the pestle, the cup, the bundle of rods and the haoma, and that the fire could not be kindled again till the ninth or thirtieth day after the death (v. ). the heir to the throne repaired to pasargadae, to receive consecration from the magi there. "in that city," says plutarch, "there is the shrine of a warlike goddess who may, perhaps, be compared with athene; to this the prince who is to be consecrated goes, and there lays his robe aside, in order to put on the garment which cyrus wore before he became king: then he eats a cake of dried figs, bites a terebinth, and drinks a cup of sour milk (no doubt in remembrance of the old life of the persians). whether he has anything to do beyond this is unknown."[ ] we are told elsewhere that the new king put the royal _kidaris_ on his head; and no doubt the act would be accompanied with invocations by the magi. the shrine of the goddess mentioned by plutarch must have been a place of sacrifice to anahita; the heroes and kings of the avesta sacrifice to this goddess in order to attain the splendour of majesty, the supreme dominion.[ ] the arian tribes of the table-land of iran have preserved the original character of their family more truly than their kinsmen who settled on the indus and the ganges, and filled the deccan with their civilization. placed in a less tempestuous region, in a land where there were sharp contrasts of climate, of hill and plain, of fertility and desolation, of snow and sand storms, the life of the arians in iran was more vigorous and manly than life in india. the tribes in the north-east attained to civic life and intellectual progress before the tribes of west iran. the contrast in which the former stood to the hordes of the neighbouring steppes, and the repulsion of their attacks, led the bactrians to a larger state, and the formation of a military monarchy, which arose from the midst of an armed nobility, while the weight of the ancient and powerful states of the semites in the valley of the euphrates and the tigris, repressed the independent development of the tribes of western iran. the foundations of the religious views of the arians were the same to the east and west of the indus. with the arians of the panjab, the arians of iran shared the belief in the power of the spirits of light which gave life and blessing, in the destructive power of the black spirits, and the struggle of the spirits of light against the spirits of darkness. the peculiar intensity of the contrasts in nature and in the conditions of life in the north-east, gave an impulse to the development of religious views there, which led to the systematic opposition of the hosts of heaven and of hell, and the union of these groups under two supreme spirits, and to deeper ideas of their nature. it was a transformation of the old conceptions which at the same time carried with it a change and increase in the ethical demands made upon men. while the development of conceptions beyond the indus tended to set man free from all sensuality, and sought to bring him back to his divine origin, by crushing the body and quenching the individuality, the doctrine of zarathrustra excludes only the harmful side of nature, and demands the increase of the useful side; it pledges every man to take a part in the conflict of the good spirits against the evil, demands that by his work, his activity, and the purity of his soul, he enlarge the kingdom of the good and light spirits to the best of his ability, and thus forms sound and practical aims for the conduct of men. when this doctrine had penetrated to the nations of west iran, and struck deep roots among them, the medes succeeded in combining their tribes, and repelling the supremacy of the assyrians. in no long time the borders of their dominion extended, in the west to the halys, and in the east over the whole table-land of iran; in union with babylon they overthrew the remnant of assyria, and shared with that city the empire over hither asia. what the medes had begun, the persians finished, when they had taken the place of the medes. one after another the ancient kingdoms of hither asia fell before them--the lydian empire, which had finally united under its sway the tribes and cities of the western half of asia minor, ancient babylon, which had once more united the valley of the two streams, the states of syria, and the cities of the phenicians, and at length even primeval egypt. arian life and arian culture were now dominant through the whole breadth of asia, from the pearl-banks and coral-reefs of the indian ocean to the hellespont. at the time when the first arian settlers were landing far in the east on tamraparni (ceylon) the cities of the hellenes on the western coast of anatolia and the strand of the aegean were compelled to bow before the arms of cyrus. the world had never seen before such an empire as that of darius, the borders of which reached from the libyans, the plateau of barca, the nubians and negroes beyond egypt, the tribes of the arabian desert to the summits of the caucasus, the remote city of cyrus on the jaxartes, and the gold-land of the daradas in the lofty himalayas. and not contented with this range darius aspired to extend yet further the limits of his empire. beyond the aegean sea a branch of the arian stock had developed an independent civilization and civic life in small mountain cantons surrounded by the sea. the eye of the potentate of asia looked no doubt with contempt on these unimportant communities, whose colonies in asia and africa had long been subject to him; on states of which each could put in the field no more than a few thousand warriors. the sea, which separated the persian kingdom from the cantons of the greeks, had already been crossed; the persians had seen the mouths of the danube; the straits of the bosphorus and the hellespont were in the power of darius, the coasts of thrace and the greek states were subject to him; he had already planted a firm foot at the mouths of the hebrus and the strymon, and the prince of macedonia paid him tribute. at his command phenicians and persians had investigated the coasts of the aegean sea, and of hellas. was it possible that these small cantons, without political union or common interests, living in perpetual strife and feud, excited and torn by internal party contests in which there were almost as many views as men, whose exiles made their way to the lofty gates of the persian monarch, whose princes were at pains to secure their dominions by vassalage to the great king, and join in leagues with him against their countrymen--was it possible that these cantons, in this position, would maintain their independence against persia, and resist the attack of this universal empire,--the onset of asia? would the greeks be bold enough to venture on such a hopeless struggle, to oppose the persians, whose name was a terror to all their neighbours, and even to the hellenes? few, herodotus tells us, could even bear the sight of the persian cavalry, and plato remarks that the minds of the greeks were already enslaved to the persians. it was a question of decisive importance for the civilization and development of humanity; whether the new principle of communal government, which had been carried out in the hellenic cantons, should be maintained, or pass into the vast limits of the persian empire, and succumb to the authority of the king: state power and civic life, absolute authority and the will of the majority, abject obedience and conscious self-control, the masses and the individual--these were ranged opposite each other, and the balance was already turning in favour of overwhelming material force. footnotes: [ ] plut. "artax." c. ; xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; "anab." , , ; strabo, p. . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , . [ ] aeschyl. "pers." ; xenophon, "cyri inst." , , . [ ] herod. , ; heracleides of cyme (fragm. , ed. müller) contests the excess of the king at table as well as of the officers and generals. cf. xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; , , ; strabo, p. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , ; , , , , ; xenoph. "anab." , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ff. [ ] xenoph. "cyri inst." , , ; heracl. pont. ap. athenaeum, p. . [ ] plut. "artax." , ; xenoph. "anab." , ; "cyri inst." , , ; thuc. , . [ ] diod. , . cf. curtius, , , . [ ] plut. "artax." . [ ] vol. v. , . "aban yasht," , , , . the end. bungay: clay and taylor, printers. _j. d. & co._ transcriber's notes: . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . carat character is used to indicate subscript in this text version. . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. the history of antiquity. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. ii. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . bungay: clay and taylor, printers. the present volume has been translated from the fifth edition of the original, and has had, throughout, the benefit of professor duncker's revision. e. a. _oxford, jan. , ._ contents. book iii. _assyria. phoenicia. israel._ chapter i. page the story of ninus and semiramis chapter ii. the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom chapter iii. the navigation and colonies of the phenicians chapter iv. the tribes of israel chapter v. the establishment of the monarchy in israel chapter vi. david's struggle against saul and ishbosheth chapter vii. the rule of david chapter viii. king solomon chapter ix. the law of the priests chapter x. judah and israel chapter xi. the cities of the phenicians chapter xii. the trade of the phenicians chapter xiii. the rise of assyria book iii. assyria. phoenicia. israel. assyria. chapter i. the story of ninus and semiramis. about the middle course of the tigris, where the mountain wall of the armenian plateau steeply descends to the south, there is a broad stretch of hilly country. to the west it is traversed by a few water-courses only, which spring out of the mountains of sindyar, and unite with the tigris; from the east the affluents are far more abundant. on the southern shore of the lake of urumiah the edge of the plateau of iran abuts on the armenian table-land, and then, stretching to the south-east, it bounds the river valley of the tigris toward the east. from its vast, successive ranges, the zagrus of the greeks, flow the lycus and caprus (the greater and the lesser zab), the adhim and the diala. the water, which these rivers convey to the land between the zagrus and the tigris, together with the elevation of the soil, softens the heat and allows olive trees and vines to flourish in the cool air on the hills, sesame and corn in the valleys between groups of palms and fruit-trees. the backs of the heights which rise to the east are covered by forests of oaks and nut trees. toward the south the ground gradually sinks--on the west immediately under the mountains of sindyar, on the east below the lesser zab--toward the course of the adhim into level plains, where the soil is little inferior in fertility to the land of babylonia. the land between the tigris and the greater zab is known to strabo and arrian as aturia.[ ] the districts between the greater and lesser zab are called arbelitis and adiabene by western writers.[ ] the region bounded by the lesser zab and the adhim or the diala is called sittacene, and the land lying on the mountains rising further toward the east is chalonitis. the latter we shall without doubt have to regard as the holwan[ ] of later times. according to the accounts of the greeks, it was in these districts that the first kingdom rose which made conquests and extended its power beyond the borders of its native country. in the old time--such is the story--kings ruled in asia, whose names were not mentioned, as they had not performed any striking exploits. the first of whom any memorial is retained, and who performed great deeds, was ninus, the king of the assyrians. warlike and ambitious by nature, he armed the most vigorous of his young men, and accustomed them by long and various exercises to all the toils and dangers of war. after collecting a splendid army, he combined with ariæus, the prince of the arabs, and marched with numerous troops against the neighbouring babylonians. the city of babylon was not built at that time, but there were other magnificent cities in the land. the babylonians were an unwarlike people, and he subdued them with little trouble, took their king prisoner, slew him with his children, and imposed a yearly tribute on the babylonians. then with a still greater force he invaded armenia and destroyed several cities. barzanes, the king of armenia, perceived that he was not in a position to resist. he repaired with costly presents to ninus and undertook to be his vassal. with great magnanimity ninus permitted him to retain the throne of armenia; but he was to provide a contingent in war and contribute to the support of the army. strengthened by these means, ninus turned his course to media. pharnus, king of media, came out to meet him with a strong force, but he was nevertheless defeated, and crucified with his wife and seven children, and ninus placed one of his own trusty men as viceroy over media. these successes raised in ninus the desire to subjugate all asia as far as the nile and the tanais. he conquered, as ctesias narrates, egypt, phoenicia, coele syria, cilicia, lycia and caria, lydia, mysia, phrygia, bithynia, and cappadocia, and reduced the nations on the pontus as far as the tanais. then he made himself master of the land of the cadusians and tapyrians, of the hyrcanians, drangians, derbiccians, carmanians, chorasmians, barcians, and parthians. beside these, he overcame persia, and susiana, and caspiana, and many other small nations. but in spite of many efforts he failed to obtain any success against the bactrians, because the entrance to their land was difficult and the number of their men of war was great. so he deferred the war against the bactrians to another opportunity, and led his army back, after subjugating in years all the nations of asia, with the exception of the indians and bactrians. the king of the arabians he dismissed to his home with costly presents and splendid booty; he began himself to build a city which should not only be greater than any other then in existence, but should be such that no city in the future could ever surpass it. this city he founded on the bank of the tigris,[ ] in the form of an oblong, and surrounded it with strong fortifications. the two longer sides measured stades each, the two shorter sides stades each, so that the whole circuit was stades. the walls reached a height of feet, and were so thick that there was room in the gangway for three chariots to pass each other. these walls were surmounted by towers, each of the height of feet. as to the inhabitants of the city, the greater number and those of the most importance were assyrians, but from the other nations also any who chose could fix his dwelling here, and ninus allotted to the settlers large portions of the surrounding territory, and called the city ninus, after his own name. when the city was built ninus resolved to march against the bactrians. he knew the number and bravery of the bactrians, and how difficult their land was to approach, and therefore he collected the armies of all the subject nations, to the number of , , foot soldiers, , cavalry, and towards , chariots of war. the narrowness of the passes which protect the entrance to bactria compelled ninus to divide his army. oxyartes, who at that time was king of the bactrians, had collected the whole male population of his country, about , men, and met the enemy at the passes. one part of the assyrian army he allowed to enter unmolested; when a sufficient number seemed to have reached the plains he attacked them and drove them back to the nearest mountains; about , assyrians were slain. but when the whole force had penetrated into the land, the bactrians were overcome by superior numbers and scattered each to his own city. the rest of the cities were captured by ninus with little trouble, but bactra, the chief city, where the palace of the king lay, he could not reduce, for it was large and well-provisioned, and the fortress was very strong. when the siege became protracted, onnes, the first among the counsellors of the king and viceroy of syria, who accompanied the king on this campaign, sent for his wife semiramis to the camp. once when he was inspecting the flocks of the king in syria, he had seen at the dwelling of simmas, the keeper of these flocks, a beautiful maiden, and he was so overcome with love for her that he sought and obtained her as a wife from simmas. she was the foster-child of simmas. in a rocky place in the desert his shepherds had found the maiden about a year old, fed by doves with milk and cheese; as simmas was childless he had taken the foundling as his child, and given her the name of semiramis onnes took her to the city of ninus. she bore him two sons, hyapates and hydaspes, and as she had everything which beauty requires, she made her husband her slave; he did nothing without her advice, and everything succeeded admirably. she also possessed intelligence and daring, and every other gift likely to advance her. when requested by onnes to come to the camp, she seized the opportunity to display her power. she put on such clothing that it could not be ascertained whether she was a man or a woman, and this succeeded so well that at a later time the medes, and after them the persians also, wore the robe of semiramis. when she arrived in the camp she perceived that the attack was directed only against the parts of the city lying in the plain, not against the high part and the strong fortifications of the citadel, and she also perceived that this direction of the attack induced the bactrians to be careless in watching the citadel. she collected all those in the army who were accustomed to climbing, and with this troop she ascended the citadel from a deep ravine, captured a part of it, and gave the signal to the army which was assaulting the walls in the plain. the bactrians lost their courage when they saw their citadel occupied, and the city was taken. ninus admired the courage of the woman, honoured her with costly presents, and was soon enchained by her beauty; but his attempts to persuade onnes to give up semiramis to him were in vain; in vain he offered to recompense him by the gift of his own daughter sosana in marriage. at length ninus threatened to put out his eyes if he did not obey his commands. the terror of this threat and the violence of his own love drove onnes out of his mind. he hung himself. thus semiramis came to the throne of assyria. when ninus had taken possession of the great treasures of gold and silver which were in bactra, and had arranged everything there, he led his army back. at ninus semiramis bore him a son, ninyas, and at his death, when he had reigned years, ninus bequeathed to her the sovereign power. she buried his corpse in the royal palace, and caused a huge mound to be raised over the grave, feet in the circuit and feet high, which towered over the city of ninus like a lofty citadel, and could be seen far through the plain in which ninus lay. as semiramis was ambitious, and desired to surpass the fame of ninus, she built the great city of babylon, with mighty walls and towers, the two royal citadels, the bridge over the euphrates, and the temple of belus, and caused a great lake to be excavated to draw off the water of the euphrates. other cities also she founded on the euphrates and the tigris, and caused depôts to be made for those who brought merchandise from media, paraetacene, and the bordering countries. after completing these works she marched with a great army to media and planted the garden near mount bagistanon. the steep and lofty face of this mountain, more than , feet in height, she caused to be smoothed, and on it was cut her picture surrounded by guards; and an inscription was engraved in syrian letters, saying that semiramis had caused the pack-saddles of her beasts of burden to be piled on each other, and on these had ascended to the summit of the mountain. afterwards she made another large garden near the city of chauon, in media,[ ] and on a rock in the middle of it she erected rich and costly buildings, from which she surveyed the blooming garden and the army encamped in the plain. here she remained for a long time, and gave herself up to every kind of pleasure. she was unwilling to contract another marriage from fear of losing the sovereign power, but she lived with any of her warriors who were distinguished for their beauty. all who had enjoyed her favours she secretly put to death. after this retirement she turned her course to egbatana, caused a path to be cut through the rocks of mount zagrus, and a short and convenient road to be made across them, in order to leave behind an imperishable memorial of her reign. in egbatana she erected a splendid palace, and in order to provide the city with water she caused a tunnel to be made through the lofty mountain orontes at its base, which conveyed the water of a lake lying on the other side of the heights into the city. after this she marched through persia and all the countries of asia which were subject to her, and caused the mountains to be cut through and straight and level roads to be built everywhere, while in the plains she at one place raised great mounds over her dead generals, and in another built cities on hills; and wherever the army was encamped eminences were raised for her tent so that she might overlook the whole. of these works many are still remaining in asia and bear the name of semiramis. then she subjugated egypt,[ ] a great part of libya, and nearly the whole of ethiopia, and finally returned to bactra. a long period of peace ensued, till she resolved to subjugate the indians on hearing that they were the most numerous of all nations, and possessed the largest and most beautiful country in the world. for two years preparations were made throughout her whole kingdom; in the third year she collected in bactria , , foot soldiers, , horsemen, and , chariots. beside these, , camels were covered with the sewn skins of black oxen, and each was mounted by one warrior; these animals were intended to pass for elephants with the indians. for crossing the indus ships were built, then taken to pieces again, and the various parts packed on camels. stabrobates, the king of the indians, awaited the assyrians on the bank of the indus. he also had prepared for the war with all his power, and gathered together even a larger force from the whole of india. when semiramis approached he sent messengers to meet her with the complaint that she was making war upon him though he had done her no wrong; and in his letter he reproached her licentious life, and calling the gods to witness, threatened to crucify her if victorious. semiramis read the letter, laughed, and said that the indians would find out her virtue by her actions. the fleet of the indians lay ready for battle on the indus. semiramis caused her ships to be put together, manned them with her bravest warriors, and, after a long and stubborn contest, the victory fell to her share. a thousand ships of the indians were sunk and many prisoners taken. then she also took the islands and cities on the river, and out of these she collected more than , prisoners. but the king of the indians, pretending flight, led his army back from the indus; in reality he wished to induce the enemy to cross the indus. as matters succeeded according to her wishes, semiramis caused a large and broad bridge to be thrown skilfully over the indus, and on this her whole army passed over. leaving , men to protect the bridge, she pursued the indians with the rest of her army, and sent on in front the camels clothed as elephants. at first the indians did not understand whence semiramis could have procured so many elephants and were alarmed. but the deception could not last. soldiers of semiramis, who were found careless on the watch, deserted to the enemy to escape punishment, and betrayed the secret. stabrobates proclaimed it at once to his whole army, caused a halt to be made, and offered battle to the assyrians. when the armies approached each other the king of the indians ordered his horsemen and chariots to make the attack. semiramis sent against them her pretended elephants. when the cavalry of the indians came up their horses started back at the strange smell, part of them dislodged their riders, others refused to obey the rein. taking advantage of this moment, semiramis, herself on horseback, pressed forward with a chosen band of men upon the indians, and turned them to flight. stabrobates was still unshaken; he led out his elephants, and behind them his infantry. himself on the right wing, mounted on the best elephant, he chanced to come opposite semiramis. he made a resolute attack upon the queen, and was followed by the rest of the elephants. the soldiers of semiramis resisted only a short time. the elephants caused an immense slaughter; the assyrians left their ranks, they fled, and the king pressed forward against semiramis; his arrow wounded her arm, and as she turned away his javelin struck her on the back. she hastened away, while her people were crushed and trodden down by their own numbers; and at last, as the indians pressed upon them, were forced from the bridge into the river. as soon as semiramis saw the greater part of her army on the nearer bank, she caused the cables to be cut which held the bridge; the force of the stream tore the beams asunder, and many assyrians who were on the bridge were plunged in the river. the other assyrians were now in safety, the wounds of semiramis were not dangerous, and the king of the indians was warned by signs from heaven and their interpretation by the seers not to cross the river. after exchanging prisoners semiramis returned to bactra. she had lost two-thirds of her army. some time afterwards she was attacked by a conspiracy, which her own son ninyas set on foot against her by means of an eunuch. then she remembered a prophecy given to her in the temple of zeus ammon during the campaign in libya; that when her son ninyas conspired against her she would disappear from the sight of men, and the honours of an immortal would be paid to her by some nations of asia. hence she cherished no resentment against ninyas, but, on the contrary, transferred to him the kingdom, ordered her viceroys to obey him, and soon after put herself to death, as though, according to the oracle, she had raised herself to the gods. some relate that she was changed into a dove, and flew out of the palace with a flock of doves. hence it is that the assyrians regard semiramis as an immortal, and the dove as divine. she was years old, and had reigned years. the preceding narrative, which is from diodorus, is borrowed in essentials from the persian history of ctesias, who lived for some time at the persian court in the first two decades of the reign of artaxerxes mnemon ( - b.c.). on the end of semiramis the account of ctesias contained more details than the account of diodorus. this is made clear by some fragments from ctesias preserved by other writers. in nicolaus of damascus we are told that after the indian war semiramis marched through the land of the medes. here she visited a very lofty and precipitous mountain, which could only be ascended on one side. on this she at once caused an abode to be built from which to survey her army. while encamped here, satibaras the eunuch told the sons of onnes, hyapates and hydaspes, that ninyas would put them to death if he ascended the throne; they must anticipate him by removing their mother and ninyas out of the way, and possessing themselves of the sovereign power. moreover, it was to their great dishonour to be spectators of the licentiousness of their mother, who, even at her years, daily desired every youth that came in her way. the matter, he said, was easy of accomplishment; when he summoned them to the queen (he was entrusted with this business) they could come to the summit of the mountain and throw their mother down from it. but it happened that behind the altar, near which they held this conversation, a mede was lying, who overheard them. he wrote down everything on a skin and sent it to semiramis. when she had read it she caused the sons of onnes to be summoned, and gave strict orders that they should come in arms. delighted that the deity favoured the undertaking, satibaras fetched the young men. when they appeared semiramis bade the eunuch step aside, and then she spoke to them: "you worthless sons of an honest and brave father have allowed yourselves to be persuaded by a worthless slave to throw down from this height your mother, who holds her empire from the gods, in order to obtain glory among men, and to rule after the murder of your mother and your brother ninyas. then she spoke to the assyrians."[ ] here the fragment of nicolaus breaks off. from the fragments of cephalion we may gather that the sons of onnes were put to death by semiramis. yet cephalion gave a different account of the death of semiramis from ctesias; according to him ninyas slew her.[ ] in ctesias, as is clear from the account of diodorus and other remains of ctesias, nothing was spoken of beyond the conspiracy which ninyas prepared against her.[ ] after the death of semiramis, so diodorus continues his narrative, ninyas ruled in peace, for he by no means emulated his mother's military ambition and delight in danger. he remained always in the palace, was seen by no one but his concubines and eunuchs, took upon himself no care or trouble, thought only of pleasure and pastime, considered it the object of sovereign power to give himself up undisturbed to all sorts of enjoyment. his seclusion served to hide his excesses in obscurity; he seemed like an invisible god, whom no one ventured to offend even in word. in order to preserve his kingdom he put leaders over the army, viceroys, judges, and magistrates over every nation, and arranged everything as seemed most useful to himself. to keep his subjects in fear he caused each nation to provide a certain number of soldiers every year, and these were quartered together in a camp outside the city, and placed under the command of men most devoted to himself. at the end of the year they were dismissed and replaced by others to the same number. hence his subjects always saw a great force in the camp ready to punish disobedience or defection. in the same way his descendants also reigned for generations, till the empire passed to the medes.[ ] slightly differing from this account, nicolaus tells us that sardanapalus--to whom in the order of succession the kingdom of ninus and semiramis finally descended--neither carried arms nor went out to the hunting-field, like the kings in old times, but always remained in his palace. yet even in his time the old arrangements were kept and the satraps of the subject nations gathered with the fixed contingent at the gate of the king.[ ] from what source is the narrative of ninus and semiramis derived? what title to credibility can be allowed it? herodotus states that the dominion of the assyrians in asia was the oldest; their supremacy was followed by that of the medes, and the supremacy of the medes was followed by the kingdom of the achæmenids. herodotus too is acquainted with the name of semiramis; he represents her as ruling over babylon, and building wonderful dykes in the level land, which the river had previously turned into a lake.[ ] strabo tells of the citadels, cities, mountain-roads, aqueducts, bridges, and canals which semiramis constructed through all asia, and to semiramis lucian traces back the old temples of syria.[ ] we may assume in explanation that the tradition of hither asia has ascribed to the first king and queen of assyria the construction of the ancient road over the zagrus, of old dykes and aqueducts in the land of the euphrates and tigris, the building, not of nineveh only, but also of babylon, the erection of the great monuments of forgotten kings of babylon,--as a fact, assyrian kings built in babylon also in the seventh century. we may find it conceivable that this tradition has gathered together and carried back to the time of the foundation all that memory retained of the acts of assyrian rulers, the campaigns of conquest of a long series of warlike and mighty sovereigns, the sum total of the exploits to which assyria owed her supremacy. yet against such an origin of this narrative doubts arise not easy to be removed. it is true that when this tradition explains the mode of life and the clothing of the kings of asia, and the clothing of the medes and persians, from the example of semiramis, who wore in the camp a robe, half male and half female (p. ); when this tradition derives the inaccessibility of the kings of asia and their seclusion in the palace from the fact that ninyas wished to hide his excesses, and appear to his subjects as a higher being,--traits of this kind can be set aside as additions of the greeks. to the babylonians and assyrians, the medes and persians, the life and clothing of their rulers could not appear contemptible or remarkable, nor their own clothing half effeminate, though the greeks might very well search for an explanation of customs so different from their own, and find them in the example and command of semiramis, and the example of ninyas. and if in herodotus the empire of the assyrians over asia appears as a hegemony of confederates,[ ] this idea is obviously borrowed from greek models. the opposite statement of the division of the assyrian kingdom into satrapies, the yearly change of the contingents of troops, comes from ctesias, who transferred the arrangements of the persian kingdom, with which he was acquainted, to their predecessors, the kingdom of the assyrians, or found this transference made in his authorities, persian or mede, and copied it. yet, after making as much allowance as we can for the amalgamating influence of native tradition, after going as far as we can in setting apart what may be due to the greeks, how could such an accurate narrative, so well acquainted with every detail of the siege of bactra, and the battle on the indus, have been preserved for many centuries in the tradition of hither asia, retained even after the overthrow of assyria, and down to the date when curious greeks, years after the fall of nineveh, reached the euphrates and tigris? we possess a positive proof that about this time, in the very place to which this tradition must have clung most tenaciously, within the circuit of the old assyrian country, no remembrance of that mighty past was in existence. when, in the year b.c., xenophon with his , marched past the ruins of the ancient cities of the assyrian kingdom, the ruins of asshur, chalah, and nineveh, before ctesias wrote, he was merely told that these were cities of the medes which could not be taken; into one of them the queen of the medes had fled before the persian king, and the persians, with the help of heaven, took and destroyed it when they gained the dominion over media.[ ] from the assyrians, therefore, herodotus and ctesias could not have obtained the information given in their statements about ninus and semiramis, nor could their knowledge have come from the babylonians. the tradition of babylonia would never have attributed the mighty buildings of that city and land to the queen of another nation, to which babylon had succumbed. hence the account of the greeks about assyria and her rulers could only come from the medes and persians. but our narrative ascribes to semiramis even the great buildings of the median rulers, the erection of the royal citadel of egbatana, the residence of the median kings; the parks and rock sculptures of media, even the rock figure on mount bagistanon (p. ). this sculpture in the valley of the choaspes on the rock-wall of bagistan (behistun) is in existence. the wall is not , but only feet high. it is not semiramis who is pourtrayed in those sculptures, but darius, the king of persia, and before him are the leaders of the rebellious provinces. it was the proudest monument of victory in all the history of persia. would a persian have shown this to a greek as a monument of semiramis? it would rather be a mede, who would wish to hide from the greeks that media was among the provinces a second time conquered and brought to subjection. the difficulty of ascertaining the sources of our narrative is still further increased in no inconsiderable degree by the fact that the books of ctesias are lost, and that diodorus has not drawn immediately from them, but from a reproduction of ctesias' account of assyria. yet the express references to the statements of ctesias which diodorus found in his authority, as well as fragments relating to the subject which have been elsewhere preserved, allow us to fix with tolerable accuracy what belongs to ctesias in this narrative, and what clitarchus, the renewer of his work, whom diodorus had before him, has added.[ ] it is ctesias who enumerates the nations which ninus subdued (p. ). with him semiramis was the daughter of a syrian and derceto, who throws herself into the lake of ascalon, and is then worshipped as a goddess there.[ ] to ctesias belongs the nourishment of the child semiramis by the doves of the goddess, her rise from the shepherd's hut to the throne of assyria. he represents her as raising the mountain or the tomb of ninus; he ascribes to her the building of babylon, its mighty walls and royal citadels, the aqueducts, and the great temple of bel. he represented her as marching to the indus[ ] and afterwards towards media; as making gardens there and building the road over the zagrus. he represented her as raising the mounds over the graves of her lovers;[ ] he told of her sensuality, of the designs of her sons by the first marriage, and the plot of ninyas; he recounted her end, which was as marvellous as her birth and her youth: she flew out of the palace up to heaven with a flock of doves. if the conquest of egypt by semiramis also belongs to ctesias,[ ] the march through libya, and the oracle given to her in the oasis of ammon, together with the version of her death, which rests on this oracle (she caused herself to disappear, _i.e._ put herself to death, in order to share in divine honours), belong to clitarchus. if, therefore, we may regard it as an established fact that our narrative has not arisen out of assyrian or babylonian tradition, that the views and additions of greek origin introduced into it leave the centre untouched; if we have succeeded in discovering, to a tolerably satisfactory degree, the outlines of the narrative of ctesias, the main question still remains to be answered: from what sources is this narrative to be derived? in the first attempt to criticise this account we find ourselves astonished by the certainty of the statements, the minute and, in part, extremely vivid descriptions of persons and incidents. not only the great prince who founded the power of assyria, and the queen whose beauty and courage enchanted him, are known to ctesias in their words and actions. he can mention by name the man who nurtured semiramis as a girl, and her first husband. he knows the names of the princes of the arabs, medes, bactrians, and indians with whom ninus and semiramis had to do. the number of the forces set in motion against bactria and india are given accurately according to the weapon used. the arrangements of the battle beyond the indus, the progress of the fight, the wounds carried away by semiramis, the exchange of prisoners, are related with the fidelity of an eye-witness. weight is obviously laid on the fact that after semiramis had conquered and traversed egypt and ethiopia, after her unbroken success, the last great campaign against the indians fails because she attacked them without receiving any previous injury. the message which stabrobates sends to her, the letter which he writes, the reproaches he makes upon her life, the minute details which ctesias gives of the relation of onnes to semiramis, of the conspiracy of the sons by this marriage, who felt themselves dishonoured by the conduct of their now aged mother, of the letter of the mede, whose fidelity discovered the plot to her, of the speeches which semiramis made on this occasion, carry us back to a description at once vivid and picturesque. if we take these pictures together with the account of ctesias about the decline of the assyrian kingdom, in which also very characteristic details appear, if we consider the style and the whole tone of these accounts of the beginning and the end of the assyrian kingdom, we cannot avoid the conclusion that ctesias has either invented the whole narrative or followed a poetic source. the first inference is untenable, because the whole narrative bears the colour and stamp of the east in such distinctness that ctesias cannot have invented it, and, on the other hand, it contains so much poetry that if ctesias were the author of these descriptions we should have to credit him with high poetic gifts. we are, therefore, driven to adopt the second inference--that a poetic source lies at the base of his account. if, as was proved above, neither assyrian nor babylonian traditions can be taken into consideration, assyrian and babylonian poems are by the same reasoning put out of the question. on the other hand, we find in ctesias' history of the medes episodes of at least equal poetic power with his narrative of ninus and semiramis. plutarch tells us that the great deeds of semiramis were praised in songs.[ ] it is certain that they could not be the songs of assyria, which had long since passed away, but we find, on the other hand, that there were minstrels at the court of the medes, who sang to the kings at the banquet; it is, moreover, a mede who warns semiramis against hyapates and hydaspes; and the other names in the narrative of ctesias bear the stamp of the iranian language. further, we find, not only in the fragments of ctesias which have come down to us, but also in the narratives of herodotus and other greeks concerning the fortunes of the medes and persians down to the great war of xerxes against the hellenes, remains and traces of poems which can only have been sung amongst the medes and persians. we have, therefore, good grounds for assuming that it was medo-persian poems which could tell the story of ninus and semiramis, and that this part of the medo-persian poems was the source from which ctesias drew. it was the contents of these poems recounted to him by persians or medes which he no doubt followed in this case, as in his further narratives of parsondes and sparethra, of the rebellion and struggle of cyrus against astyages, just as herodotus before him drew from such poems his account of the rebellion of the magi, the death of cambyses, and the conspiracy of the seven persians. after severe struggles the princes and people of the medes succeeded in casting down the assyrian empire from the supremacy it had long maintained; they conquered and destroyed their old and supposed impregnable metropolis. if the tribes of the medes had previously been forced to bow before the assyrians, they took ample vengeance for the degradation. hence the median minstrels had a most excellent reason to celebrate this crowning achievement of their nation; it afforded them a most agreeable subject. if, in the earlier and later struggles of the medes against assyria, the bravery of individual heroes was often celebrated in song, these songs might by degrees coalesce into a connected whole, the close of which was the overthrow of the assyrian empire. the median poems which dealt with this most attractive material must have commenced with the rise of the assyrian kingdom; they had the more reason for explaining and suggesting motives for this mighty movement, as it was incumbent on them to make intelligible the wreck of the resistance of their own nation to the onset of the assyrians, and the previous subjection of media. in these poems no doubt they described the cruelty of the conqueror, who crucified their king, with his wife and seven children (p. ). the more brilliant, the more overpowering the might of assyria, as they described it, owing to eminent sovereigns in the earliest times, the wider the extent of the empire, the more easily explained and tolerable became the subjection of the medes, the greater the glory to have finally conquered. this final retribution formed the close; the striking contrast of the former exaltation and subsequent utter overthrow, brought about by median power and bravery, formed the centre of these poems. the prince of the assyrians whose success is unfailing till he finds himself checked in bactria, the woman of unknown origin found in the desert, fostered by herdsmen, and raised from the lowest to the most elevated position,[ ] who in bravery surpasses the bravest, who outdoes the deeds of ninus, whose charms allure to destruction every one who approaches her, who makes all whom she favours her slaves in order to slay them, who without regard to her years makes every youth her lover, and is, nevertheless, finally exalted to the gods--are these forms due to the mere imagination of medo-persian minstrels, or what material lay at the base of these lively pictures? the metropolis of the assyrians was known to the greeks as ninus; in the inscriptions of the assyrian kings it is called ninua. from this the name of ninus, the founder of the empire, as well as ninyas, is obviously taken. in herodotus[ ] and the chronographers ninus is the son of belus, _i.e._ of bel, the sky-god already known to us (i. ). the monuments of assyria show us that the assyrians worshipped a female deity, which was at once the war-goddess and goddess of sexual love--istar-bilit. istar was not merely the goddess of battles--bringing death and destruction, though also conferring victory; she was at the same time the goddess of sensual love. we have already learned to know her double nature. in turn she sends life, pleasure, and death. if istar of arbela was the goddess of battle, istar of nineveh was the goddess of love (i. ). as the goddess of love, doves were sacred to her. in the temples of syria there were statues of this goddess with a golden dove on the head; she was even invoked there under the name of semiramis, a word which may mean high name, name of the height.[ ] thus the medo-persian minstrels have changed the form and legend of a goddess who was worshipped in assyria, whose rites were vigorously cultivated in syria, into a heroine, the founder of the assyrian empire; just as in the greek and german epos divine beings have undergone a similar change. this heroine is the daughter of a maiden who slays the youth whom she has made happy with her love, who gave her her daughter, _i.e._ she is the daughter of the goddess herself. like her mother, the goddess, the daughter, semiramis, inspires men with irresistible love, and thus makes them her slaves. at the same time, as a war-goddess, she surpasses all men in martial courage, and brings death to all who have surrendered to her. the origin of the goddess thus transformed into a heroine is unknown and supernatural; her characteristics are marvellous powers of victory and charms of love. the neighbourhood of ascalon, where we found the oldest and most famous temples of the syrian goddess of love (i. ), was the scene of the origin of the miraculous child. the doves of the syrian goddess nourish and protect her in the desert. she grows up in syria, where the worship of the goddess of sexual love was widely spread. whether simmas, her foster-father, has arisen out of samas, the sun-god of the semites, and onnes, the first husband of semiramis, out of anu, the god of babel and asshur, cannot indeed be decided. but in her relation to onnes, whom her charm makes her slave, to whom she brings uninterrupted success, till in despair at her loss he takes his life, the medo-persian minstrels describe the glamour of love and the sensual pleasure, as well as the destruction which proceeds from her, in the liveliest and most forcible manner. even after the indian campaign she indulges her passions, and then puts those to death to whom she grants her favours. in this life the poems found a motive for the plots of her sons, from which she was at first rescued by the fidelity of a mede,--a trait which again reveals the origin of the poem. as semiramis was a heroine merely, and not a goddess, to the minstrels, they could represent her overthrow, her defeat and wounds, on the indus, which afterwards was the limit of the conquests of the medians and persians. at the end of her life the higher style reappears, the supernatural origin comes in once more. she flies out of the palace with the doves of bilit, which protected her childhood. in ctesias the goddess of ascalon is derceto,[ ] and therefore later writers could maintain that the kings of assyria, the descendants or successors of semiramis, were named dercetadæ.[ ] footnotes: [ ] strabo, pp. , . arrian, "anab." , , . the same form of the name, athura, is given in the inscriptions of darius. [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , ; , : adiabene assyria ante dicta. ptolemæus ( , ) puts adiabene and arbelitis side by side. diodorus, , . arrian, epit. : [greek: tên men mesên tôn potamôn gên sai tên arbêlitin eneime amphimachô.] [ ] polyb. , . the border line between the original country of assyria and elam cannot be ascertained with certainty. according to herodotus ( , ) susa lay parasangs, _i.e._ about miles, to the south of the northern border of susiana. hence we may perhaps take the diala as the border between the later assyria and elam. the use of the name assyria for mesopotamia and babylonia, as well as assyria proper, in herodotus (_e.g._ , ) and other greeks,--the name syria, which is only an abbreviation of assyria (herod. , ),--arises from the period of the supremacy of assyria in the epoch - b.c. cf. strabo, pp. , , and nöldeke, [greek: assyrios], hermes, ( ), ff. [ ] the euphrates, which diodorus mentions , and also , , is not to be put down to a mistake of ctesias, since nicolaus (frag. , ed. müller) describes nineveh as situated on the tigris in a passage undoubtedly borrowed from ctesias. the error belongs, as carl jacoby ("rhein. museum," , ff.) has proved, to the historians of the time of alexander and the earliest diadochi, who had in their thoughts the city of mabog (hierapolis), on the euphrates, which was also called nineveh. the mistake has passed from clitarchus to the narrative of diodorus. [ ] steph. byzant. [greek: chauôn, chôra tês mêdias, ktêsias en prôtô pertikôn. Ê de semiramis enteuthen exelaunei, k. t. l.] [ ] diod. , . [ ] frag. , ed. müller. [ ] frag. , , ed. müller; cf. justin. , . [ ] anonym. tract. "de mulier." c. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] nicol. frag. , ed. müller. [ ] , . [ ] strabo, pp. , , ; lucian, "de syria dea," c. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , - . [ ] diodorus tells us himself ( , ) that in writing the first chapters of his second book he had before him the book of clitarchus on alexander. carl jacoby (_loc. cit._)--by a comparison with the statements in point in curtius, who transcribed clitarchus, and by the proof that certain passages in the narrative of diodorus which relate to bactria and india are in agreement with passages in the seventeenth book, in which diodorus undoubtedly follows clitarchus; that certain observations in the description of babylon in diodorus can only belong to alexander and his nearest successors; that certain preparations of semiramis for the indian campaign agree with certain preparations of alexander for his indian campaign, and certain incidents in alexander's battle against porus with certain incidents in the battle of semiramis against stabrobates; and finally by showing that the situation of the ancient nineveh was unknown to the historians of the time of alexander, who were on the other hand acquainted with a nineveh on the euphrates (hierapolis, mabog; plin. "hist. nat." , ; ammian. marcell. , , )--has made it at least very probable that diodorus had ctesias before him in the revision of clitarchus. we may allow that clitarchus brought the bactrian oxyartes into the narrative, unless we ought to read exaortes in diodorus; but that the name of the king in ctesias was zoroaster is in my opinion very doubtful. the sources of ctesias were stories related by persians or medes from the epic of west iran. that this should put zoroaster at the time of ninus, and make him king of the bactrians, in order to allow him to be overthrown by the assyrians, is very improbable. whether ctesias ascribed to semiramis the building of egbatana is also very doubtful; that he mentioned her stay in media, and ascribed to her the building of the road over the zagrus and the planting of gardens, follows from the quotation of stephanus given above. ctesias has not ascribed to her the hanging gardens at babylon. diodorus makes them the work of a later syrian king, whom ctesias would certainly have called king of assyria. ctesias too can hardly have ascribed to her the obelisk at babylon (diod. , ); so at least the addition of diodorus, "that it belonged to the seven wonders," seems to me to prove. [ ] "catasterism." c. ; hygin. "astronom." , . in diodorus aphrodite, enraged by a maiden, derceto, imbues her with a fierce passion for a youth. in shame she slays the youth, exposes the child, throws herself into the lake of ascalon, and is changed into a fish. for this reason the image of the goddess derceto at ascalon has the face of a woman and the body of a fish ( , ). [ ] diod. , , _init._ [ ] georg. syncell. p. , ed. bonn. [ ] diod. , . [ ] "de iside," c. . [ ] diod. , , _init._ [ ] herod. , . [ ] lucian, "de syria dea," c. , , . the name semiramoth is found chronicles xv. , ; xvi. ; , xvii. . [ ] ctesias in strabo, p. . [ ] agathias, , . chapter ii. the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom. to relegate ninus and semiramis with all their works and deeds to the realm of fiction may appear to be a startling step, going beyond the limits of a prudent criticism. does not ctesias state accurately the years of the reigns: ninus reigned, according to his statement, years; semiramis was years old, and reigned years? do not the chronographers assure us that in ctesias the successors of ninus and semiramis, from ninyas to sardanapalus, the last ruler over assyria, kings, were enumerated, and the length of their reigns accurately given, and has not eusebius actually preserved this list? since, at the same time, we find out, through diodorus and the chronographers, as well as through this list, that ctesias fixed the continuance of the assyrian kingdom at more than years, or more exactly at , and the fall of the kingdom took place according to his reckoning in the year b.c., ninus must on these dates have ascended the throne in the year b.c. ( + ), and the reign of semiramis commenced in b.c. ( + ). eusebius himself puts the accession of ninus at b.c.[ ] if in spite of these accurate statements we persist in refusing to give credit to ctesias, berosus remains, who, according to the evidence of the chronographers, dealt with the rule of semiramis over assyria. after mentioning the dynasty of the medes which reigned over babylon from - b.c., the dynasty of the elamites ( - b.c.), of the chaldæans ( - b.c.), and of the arabs, who are said to have reigned over babylon from the year to the year b.c., berosus mentioned the rule of semiramis over the assyrians. "after this," so we find it in polyhistor, "berosus enumerates the names of kings separately, and allotted to them years. after them there was a king of the chaldæans named phul, and after him sennacherib, the king of the assyrians, whose son, esarhaddon, then reigned in his place."[ ] if we take these kings for kings of assyria, who ruled over this kingdom after semiramis, then, by allowing the supplements of these series of kings previously mentioned (i. ), the era of these kings will begin in the year b.c. and end in b.c., and the date of semiramis will fall immediately before the year b.c. in the view of herodotus, ninus was at the head of the assyrian empire, but not semiramis. as already observed (p. ), he mentions semiramis as a queen of babylon, and does not place her higher than the middle of the seventh century b.c.;[ ] but he regards the dominion of assyria over upper asia as commencing far earlier. before the persians the medes ruled over asia for years; before them the assyrians ruled for years; the medes were the first of the subject nations who rebelled against the assyrians; the rest of the nations followed their example. as the median empire fell before the attack of the persians in b.c., the beginning of the median empire would fall in the year b.c. ( + ), and consequently the beginning of the assyrian kingdom in the year b.c. ( + ), _i.e._ four or five decades later than berosus puts the death of semiramis. for the date of the beginning of the assyrian dominion herodotus and berosus would thus be nearly in agreement. it has been assumed that the kings whom the latter represents as following semiramis were kings of assyria, who ruled at the same time over babylon, and were thus regarded as a babylonian dynasty. this agreement would be the more definite if it could be supposed that, according to the view of herodotus, the beginning of the years which he gives to the median empire was separated by an interval of some decades from the date of their liberation from the power of the assyrians. in this case the empire of the assyrians over asia would not have commenced very long before the year b.c., and would have extended from that date over babylonia. in complete contradiction to this are the statements of ctesias, which carry us back beyond b.c. for the commencement of the assyrian empire. they cannot be brought into harmony with the statements of herodotus, even if the time allotted by ctesias to the assyrian empire ( years) is reckoned from the established date of the conquest of nineveh by the medes and babylonians ( b.c.). the result of such a calculation ( + ) carries us back to b.c., a date far higher than herodotus and berosus give. is it possible in any other way to approach more closely to the beginning of the assyrian kingdom, the date of its foundation, or the commencement of its conquests? we have already seen how the pharaohs of egypt, after driving out the shepherds in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries b.c., reduced syria to subjection; how the first and third tuthmosis, the second and third amenophis, forced their way beyond syria to naharina. the land of naharina, in the inscriptions of these kings, was certainly not the aram naharaim, the high land between the euphrates and tigris, in the sense of the books of the hebrews. it was not mesopotamia, but simply "the land of the stream (nahar)." for the hebrews also nahar, _i.e._ river, means simply the euphrates. it has been already shown that the arms of the egyptians hardly went beyond the chaboras to the east; and if the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii. represent him as receiving on his sixth campaign against the syrians, _i.e._ about the year b.c., the tribute of urn assuru, _i.e._ of the chieftain of asshur, consisting of minæ of lapis-lazuli; if these inscriptions in the year once more mention among the tribute of the syrians the tribute of this prince in lapis-lazuli, cedar-trunks, and other wood, it is still uncertain whether the chief of the assyrians is to be understood by this prince. had tuthmosis iii. really reached and crossed the tigris, were assuru assyria, then from the description of this prince, and the payment of tribute in lapis-lazuli and cedar-trunks, we could draw the conclusion that assyria in the first half of the sixteenth century b.c. was still in the commencement of its civilisation, whereas we found above that as early as the beginning of the twentieth century b.c. babylonia was united into a mighty kingdom, and had made considerable advance in the development of her civilisation. our hypothesis was that the semites, who took possession of the valley of the euphrates, were immigrants from the south, from arabia, and that this new population forced its way by successive steps up the river-valley. we were able to establish the fact that the earliest governments among the immigrants were formed on the lower course of the euphrates, and that the centre of the state in these regions slowly moved upwards towards babel. we found, further, that semitic tribes went in this direction as far as the southern slope of the armenian table-land.[ ] in this way the region on the tigris, afterwards called assyria, was reached and peopled by the semites. with the hebrews asshur, beside arphaxad and aram, beside elam and lud, is the seed of shem. "from shinar" (_i.e._ from babylonia), we are told in genesis, "asshur went forth and built nineveh, and rehoboth-ir, and chalah, and resen between nineveh and chalah, which is the great city." there is no reason to call in question this statement that assyria was peopled and civilised from babylonia. language, writing, and religion exhibit the closest relationship and agreement between babylonia and assyria. on the west bank of the tigris, some miles above the confluence of the lesser zab, at the foot of a ridge of hills, lie the remains of an ancient city. the stamps on the tiles of these ruins tell us that the name of the city was asshur. tiglath pilesar, a king of assyria, the first of the name, whose reign, though we cannot fix the date precisely, may certainly be put about the year b.c., narrates in his inscriptions: the temple of the gods anu and bin, which samsi-bin, the son of ismidagon, built at asshur years previously, had fallen down; king assur-dayan had caused the ruins to be removed without rebuilding it. for years the foundations remained untouched; he, tiglath pilesar, restored this ancient sanctuary. tiles from this ruin on the tigris, from this city of asshur, establish also the fact that a prince named samsi-bin, son of ismidagon, once ruled and built in this city of asshur. they have the inscription: "samsi-bin, the son of ismidagon, built the temple of the god asshur."[ ] hence samsi-bin built temples in the city of asshur to the god asshur as well as to the gods anu and bin. his date falls, according as the years of the inscription of tiglath pilesar, during which the temple of anu and bin was not in existence, are added to the space of years or included in them, either about the year or b.c.; the date of his father ismidagon about the year or b.c. in any case it is clear that a place of the name of asshur, the site of which is marked by the ruins of kileh-shergat, was inhabited about the year b.c., and that about this time sanctuaries were raised in it. the name of the place was taken from the god specially worshipped there. as babel (gate of el) was named after the god el, asshur was named after the god of that name. the city was asshur's city, the land asshur's land. beside the city of asshur, about miles up the tigris, there must have been at the time indicated a second place of the name of ninua (nineveh), the site of which is marked by the ruins of kuyundshik and nebbi yunus (opposite mosul), since, according to the statement of shalmanesar i., king of assyria, samsi-bin built another temple here to the goddess istar.[ ] ismidagon, as well as samsi-bin, is called in the inscription of tiglath pilesar i. "patis of asshur." the meaning of this title is not quite clear; the word is said to mean viceroy. if by this title a vice-royalty over the land of asshur is meant, we may assume that assyria was a colony of babylonia--that it was under the supremacy of the kings of babylon, and ruled by their viceroys. but since at a later period princes of assyria called themselves "patis of asshur," as well as "kings of asshur," the title may be explained as meaning that the old princes of assyria called themselves viceroys of the god of the land, of the god asshur. moreover, it would be strange that a colony of babylonia, which was under the supremacy of that country, should make its protecting god a deity different from that worshipped in babylonia. from this evidence we may assume that about the year b.c. a state named asshur grew up between the tigris and the lesser zab. this state must have passed beyond the lower stages of civilisation at the time when the princes erected temples to their gods at more than one chief place in their dominions, when they could busy themselves with buildings in honour of the gods after the example of the ancient princes of erech and nipur, of hammurabi, and his successors at babylon. with this result the statements in the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii do not entirely agree. two hundred years after the time of ismidagon and samsi-bin they speak only of the chief of asshur, and of tribute in lapis-lazuli and tree-trunks; but this divergence is not sufficient to make us affirm with certainty that the "assuru" of tuthmosis has no reference whatever to assyria. if we were able to place the earliest formation of a state on the lower euphrates about the year b.c., the beginnings of assyria, according to the inferences to be drawn from the evidence of the first tiglath pilesar and the tiles of kileh-shergat, could not be placed later than the year b.c. beside ismidagon and samsi-bin, the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar and the tiles of the ruins of kileh-shergat mention four or five other names of princes who belong to the early centuries of the assyrian empire, but for whom we cannot fix any precise place. the date of the two kings, who on assyrian tablets are the contemporaries of binsumnasir of babylon, assur-nirar, and nabudan, could not have been fixed with certainty if other inscriptions had not made us acquainted with the princes who ruled over assyria in succession from -- b.c.[ ] from these we may assume that assur-nirar and nabudan must have reigned before this series of princes, _i.e._ before b.c., from which it further follows that from about the year b.c. onwards assyria was in any case an independent state beside babylon. we found above that the treaty which assur-bil-nisi, king of assyria, concluded about the year b.c. with karaindas, king of babylon, for fixing the boundaries, must have been preceded by hostile movements on the part of both kingdoms. we saw that assur-bil-nisi's successor, busur-assur, concluded a treaty with the same object with purnapuryas of babylon, and that assur-u-ballit, who succeeded busur-assur on the throne of assyria, gave his daughter in marriage to purnapuryas. in order to avenge the murder of karachardas, the son of purnapuryas by this marriage, who succeeded his father on the throne of babylon, assur-u-ballit invaded babylonia and placed kurigalzu, another son of purnapuryas, on the throne. we might assume that about this time, _i.e._ about b.c., the borders of assyria and babylonia touched each other in the neighbourhood of the modern aker-kuf, the ancient dur-kurigalzu.[ ] assur-u-ballit, who restored the temple of istar at nineveh which samsi-bin had built, was followed by pudiel, bel-nirar, and bin-nirar.[ ] the last tells us, on a stone of kileh-shergat, that assur-u-ballit conquered the land of subari, bel-nirar the army of kassi, that pudiel subjugated all the land as far as the distant border of guti; he himself overcame the armies of kassi, guti, lulumi and subari; the road to the temple of the god asshur, his lord, which had fallen down, he restored with earth and tiles, and set up his tablet with his name, "on the twentieth day of the month muhurili, in the year of salmanurris."[ ] bin-nirar's son and successor was shalmanesar i., who ascended the throne of assyria about b.c. we learnt above from genesis, that "asshur built the cities of nineveh, rehoboth-ir, resen and chalah." assur-nasirpal, who ruled over assyria more than years after shalmanesar i., tells us that "shalmanesar the mighty, who lived before him, founded the ancient city of chalah."[ ] it is thus clear that assyria before the year b.c. obtained a third residence in addition to the cities of asshur and nineveh. like asshur and nineveh, it lay on the banks of the tigris, about miles to the north of asshur, and to the south of nineveh. it was not, however, like asshur, situated on the western bank of the river, but on the eastern, like nineveh, a little above the junction of the upper zab, in a position protected by both rivers, and thus far more secure than asshur. shalmanesar also built in both the old residences of asshur and nineveh. tiles of kileh-shergat bear the stamp, "palace of shalmanesar, son of king bin-nirar."[ ] his buildings in nineveh are certified by an inscription, in which shalmanesar says: "the temple of istar, which samsi-bin, the prince who was before me, built, and which my predecessor assur-u-ballit restored, had fallen into decay in the course of time. i built it up again from the ground to the roof. the prince who comes after me and sees my cylinder (p. ), and sets it again in its place, as i have set the cylinder of assur-u-ballit in its place, him may istar bless; but him who destroys my monument may istar curse and root his name and race out of the land."[ ] in the same inscription shalmanesar calls himself conqueror of niri, lulumi and musri, districts for which--at any rate for the two last--we shall have to look in the neighbourhood of nineveh, in the chain of the zagrus. the son of shalmanesar i. was tiglath adar; he completed the restoration of the temple of istar at nineveh, and fought with such success against nazimurdas of babylon that he placed on his seal this inscription: "tiglath adar, king of the nations, son of shalmanesar, king of asshur, has conquered the land of kardunias." but he afterwards lost this very seal to the babylonians, who placed it as a trophy in the treasure-house of babylon (about b.c.).[ ] these are the beginnings of the assyrian kingdom according to the indications of the monuments. after the series of kings from assur-bil-nisi to tiglath adar, whose dates come down from about the year to about b.c., there is a gap in our knowledge of some decades. after this we hear at first of new struggles with babylon. in these belkudurussur of assyria (about b.c.) lost his life. the babylonians, led by their king, binpaliddin, invaded assyria with a numerous army in order to take the city of asshur. but adarpalbitkur, the successor of belkudurussur, succeeded in forcing them to retire to babylon.[ ] of adarpalbitkur his fourth successor proudly declares that "he was the protector of the might of asshur, that he put an end to his weakness in his land, that he arranged well the army of the land of assyria."[ ] his son, assur-dayan (about b.c.) was able to remove the war again into the land of babylonia; he claims to have carried the booty from three places in babylonia--zab, irriya and agarsalu--to assyria.[ ] it was he who had carried away the ruins of the fallen temple which samsi-bin had built at asshur to anu and bin, but had not erected it again. according to the words of his great-grandson, "he carried the exalted sceptre, and prospered the nation of bel; the work of his hands and the gifts of his fingers pleased the great gods; he attained great age and long life."[ ] of assur-dayan's son and successor, mutakkil-nebu (about b.c.), we only find that "asshur, the great lord, raised him to the throne, and upheld him in the constancy of his heart."[ ] mutakkil-nebu's son, assur-ris-ilim (between and b.c.) had to undergo severe struggles against the babylonians, who repeatedly invaded assyria under nebuchadnezzar i. at length assur-ris-ilim succeeded in repulsing nebuchadnezzar, and took from him ( ) chariots of war with a banner. tiglath pilesar, the son of assur-ris-ilim, says of the deeds of his father, doubtless with extreme exaggeration, "he conquered the lands of the enemy, and subjugated all the hostile lands."[ ] the tiles of a heap of ruins at asshur bear the inscription, "tiglath pilesar, the favoured of asshur, has built and set up the temple of his lord the god bin." at the four corners of the foundation walls of this building were discovered four octagonal cylinders of clay, about a foot and a half in height, on the inscriptions of which this king repeats the narrative of the deeds of the first five years of his life. he restored the royal dwelling-places and the fortresses of the land which were in a bad condition, and planted again the forests of the land of asshur; he renovated the habitation of the gods, the temples of istar and bilit in the city of asshur. at the beginning of his reign anu and bin, his lords, had bidden him set up again the temple which samsi-bin had once built for them. this he accomplished; he caused the two great deities to enter into their high dwelling-places and rejoiced the heart of their great divinity. "may anu and bin grant me prosperity for ever, may they bless the work of my hands, may they hear my prayer and lead me to victory in war and in fight, may they subdue to my dominion all the lands which rise up against me, the rebellious nations and the princes, my rivals, may they accept my sacrificial offerings for the continuance and increase of my race; may it be the will of asshur and the great gods to establish my race as firm as the mountains to the remotest days."[ ] these cylinders tell us of the campaign of tiglath pilesar. first he defeated , moschi (muskai) and their five kings. he marched against the land of kummukh, which rebelled against him; even that part of the inhabitants which fled into a city beyond the tigris which they had garrisoned he overcame after crossing the tigris. he also conquered the people of kurkhië (kirkhië) who came to their help; he drove them into the tigris and the river nami, and took prisoner in the battle kiliantaru, whom they had made their king; he conquered the land of kummukh throughout its whole extent and incorporated it with assyria.[ ] after this he marched against the land of kurkhië; next he crossed the lower zab and overcame two districts there. then he turned against the princes of the land of nairi (he puts the number of these at ); these, and the princes who came from the upper sea to aid them, he conquered, carried off their flocks, destroyed their cities, and imposed on them a tribute of horses and oxen. these battles in the north were followed by a campaign in the west. he invaded the land of aram, which knew not the god asshur, his lord;[ ] he marched against the city of karkamis, in the land of the chatti; he defeated their warriors on the east of the euphrates; he crossed the euphrates in pursuit of the fugitives and there destroyed six cities. immediately after this the king marched again to the east, against the lands of khumani and musri and imposed tribute upon them. "two-and-forty lands and their princes," so the cylinders inform us, "from the banks of the lower zab as far as the bank of the euphrates, the land of the chatti, and the upper sea of the setting sun, all these my hand has reached since my accession; one after the other i have subjugated them; i have received hostages from them and laid tribute upon them."[ ] "this temple of anu and bin and these towers," so the inscription of the cylinders concludes, "will grow old; he who in the succession of the days shall be king in my place at a remote time, may he restore them and place his name beside mine, then will anu and bin grant to him prosperity, joy and success in his undertakings. but he who hides my tablets, and erases or destroys them, or puts his name in the place of mine, him will anu and bin curse, his throne will they bring down, and break the power of his dominion, and cause his army to flee; bin will devote his land to destruction, and will spread over it poverty, hunger, sickness, and death, and destroy his name and his race from the earth. on the twenty-ninth day of kisallu, in the year of in-iliya-allik."[ ] in memory of his achievements against the land of nairi, tiglath pilesar also set up a special monument. on a rock at one of the sources of the eastern tigris near karkar we see his image hewn in relief. he wears the tall cap or _kidaris_; the hair and beard are long and curled; the robe falls in deep folds to the ancles. the inscription runs: "by the grace of asshur, samas and bin, the great gods, my lords, i, tiglath pilesar, am ruler from the great sea of the west land (_mat acharri_) to the lake of the land of nairi. three times i have marched to the land of nairi."[ ] the first subjugation of this district could not, therefore, have been complete. as this monument proves, tiglath pilesar's campaigns could not have ended with the fifth year of his reign. from the synchronistic tablets we can ascertain that he had to undergo severe struggles with the babylonians. marduk-nadin-akh of babylon invaded assyria, crossed the tigris, and the battle took place on the lower zab. in the next year, according to the same tablets, tiglath pilesar is said to have taken the border-fortresses of babylon, dur-kurigalzu, sippara, babili and upi (opis ?).[ ] however this may be, tiglath pilesar in the end was at a disadvantage in his contest with the babylonians. sennacherib, king of assyria, tells us, "the gods of the city hekali, which marduk-nadin-akh, king of the land of accad, had taken in the time of tiglath pilesar, king of asshur, and carried to babylon years previously, i have caused to be brought back again from babylon and put up again in their place." a babylonian tablet from the tenth year of marduk-nadin-akh of babylon appears to deal with loans on conquered assyrian territory.[ ] when tiglath pilesar ascended the throne about the year b.c. the empire of assyria, as his inscriptions show, had not as yet made any extensive conquests beyond the circle of the native country. the muskai, _i.e._ the moschi, whom we have found on the north-western slopes of the armenian mountains, against whom tiglath pilesar first fought, had forced their way, as the cylinders tell us, into the land of kummukh.[ ] as the inhabitants of the land of kummukh are conquered on the tigris and forced into it, while others escape over the tigris and defend a fortified city on the further side of the river, as the land itself is then incorporated with assyria, we must obviously look for it at no great distance to the north on both shores of the upper tigris. we shall hardly be in error, therefore, if we take this land to be the district afterwards called gumathene, on the tigris, which ammianus describes as a fruitful and productive land, _i.e._ as the canton of amida.[ ] the next conflicts of tiglath pilesar took place on the lower zab, _i.e._ at the south-eastern border of the assyrian country. further to the south, on the zagrus, perhaps in the district of chalonitis, or between the lower zab and the adhim, or at any rate to the east, we must look for the land of khumani and the land of musri. the image at karkar, tiglath pilesar's monument of victory, gives us information about the position of the land of nairi. it comprises the mountain cantons between the eastern tigris and the upper course of the great zab, where that river traverses the land of arrapachitis (albak). the lake of the land of nairi, to which the inscription of karkar extends the rule of tiglath pilesar, and the upper sea from which auxiliaries come to the princes of the land of nairi, are both, no doubt, lake van. the inhabitants of nairi are not like those of the land of kummukh, incorporated with assyria, they have merely to pay a moderate tribute in horses and oxen. the campaign of tiglath pilesar against karkamis (karchemish) proves that the dominion of assyria before his reign did not reach the euphrates. he marches against the land of aram and has then to fight with the army of karchemish on this side, _i.e._ on the east side of the euphrates; the results which he obtained on this campaign to the west of the euphrates he does not himself rate very highly. we saw that in the end he remained at a disadvantage in his contest with babylon. on the other hand, in campaigns which took place in years subsequent to the attempt against karchemish, he must have forced his way to the west far beyond the euphrates, in order to be able to boast on the monument at karkar "that he ruled from the sea of nairi as far as the great sea of the west land," _i.e._ to the mediterranean. hence we have to assume that he went forth from karchemish westwards almost as far as the mouth of the orontes. we should be more accurately informed on this matter if the fragment of an inscription on an obelisk beside an inscription of assurnasirpal, who reigned more than years after tiglath pilesar, could be referred to tiglath pilesar. the fragment speaks in the third person of the booty gained in hunting by a king, which is given in nearly the same totals as the results of tiglath pilesar's hunts on his cylinders. these represent him as slaying lions and capturing . the fragment speaks of and lions, of amsi killed in charran on the chabor, of rim whom the king slew before the land of chatti at the foot of mount labnani (lebanon), of a crocodile (_nasukh_) which the king of musri sent as a present. the hunter, it is said, ruled from the city of babylon, in the land of accad, as far as the land of the west (_mat acharri_).[ ] according to the inscriptions on the cylinders the land of aram lies to the east of the euphrates; the city of karchemish lies on the west bank in the land of the chatti. the chatti are the hittites of the hebrews, the cheta of the egyptians. we found that the inscriptions of sethos and ramses ii. extended the name of the cheta as far as the euphrates (i. , ). but although the kingdom of the hittites had fallen two centuries before tiglath pilesar crossed the euphrates, the name still clung to this region, as the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar and his successors prove, more especially to the region from hamath and damascus as far as lebanon. the land of the west (_mat acharri_) in the strict sense is, of course, to the assyrians, from their point of view, the coast of syria. whatever successes tiglath pilesar may have gained in this direction, they were of a transitory nature. the first of his sons to succeed him was assur-bel-kala, whose reign we may fix in the years - b.c. with three successive kings of babylon, marduk-sapik-kullat, saduni (?), and nebu-zikir-iskun, he came into contact, peaceful or hostile. with the first he made a treaty of peace, with saduni he carried on war, with nebu-zikir-iskun he again concluded a peace, which fixed the borders. this was confirmed by intermarriage;[ ] assur-bel-kala married his daughter to nebu-zikir-iskun, while the latter gave his daughter to assur-bel-kala. of the exploits of his successor, samsi-bin ii. ( - b.c.), a second son of tiglath pilesar, we have no account.[ ] we cannot maintain with certainty whether assur-rab-amar, of whom shalmanesar ii. tells us that he lost two cities on the euphrates which tiglath pilesar had taken,[ ] was the direct successor of samsi-bin. after this, for the space of more than years ( - ), there is again a gap in our knowledge. not till we reach assur-dayan ii., who ascended the throne of assyria about the year b.c., can we again follow the series of the assyrian kings downwards without interruption. this assur-dayan ii. is followed by bin-nirar ii., about ; bin-nirar, by tiglath adar ii., who reigned from - b.c. he had to contend once more against the land of nairi, _i.e._ against the region between the eastern tigris and the upper course of the upper zab. as a memorial of the successes which he gained here he caused his image to be carved beside that of tiglath pilesar in the rocks at karkar (see below). besides this, there is in existence from his time a pass, _i.e._ a small tablet, with the inscription, "permission to enter into the palace of tiglath adar, king of the land of asshur, son of bin-nirar, king of the land of asshur."[ ] neither at the commencement nor in the course of the history of assyria do the monuments know of a king ninus, a queen semiramis, or of any warlike queen of this kingdom; they do not even mention any woman as standing independently at the head of assyria. once, it is true, we find the name semiramis in the inscriptions in the form sammuramat. sammuramat was the wife of king bin-nirar iii., who ruled over assyria from the year - b.c. on the pedestal of two statues, which an officer of this king, the prefect of chalah, dedicated to the god nebo, the inscription is: "to nebo, the highest lord of his lords, the protector of bin-nirar, king of asshur, and protector of sammuramat, the wife of the palace, his lady." the name of ninyas is quite unknown to the monuments, and of the names of the kings which ctesias gives, with their names and reigns as successors of ninyas down to the overthrow of the kingdom and sardanapalus (p. ),--unless we identify the last name in the list, that of sardanapalus, with the assurbanipal of the inscriptions, _i.e._ with the ruler last but one or two according to the records,--no single one agrees with the names of the monuments, which, moreover, give a higher total than six-and-thirty for the reigns of the assyrian kings. the list of ctesias appears to have been put together capriciously or merely invented; the lengths of the reigns are pure imagination, and arranged according to certain synchronisms. not less definite is the evidence of the monuments that the pre-eminence of assyria over upper asia cannot have commenced in the year or b.c., as ctesias asserts, or as may be assumed from his data, nor in , as has been deduced from the statements of berosus, nor finally in the year , according to herodotus' statements (p. ). though we are able to find only approximately the dates of the kings of assyria, whose names and deeds we have passed in review, the result is, nevertheless, that the power of assyria in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries did not go far beyond the native country--that her forces by no means surpassed those of babylon--that precisely in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c. the kingdom of babylon was at least as strong as that of assyria--that even towards the close of the twelfth century tiglath pilesar i. could gain no success against babylon--that his successors sought to establish peaceful relations with babylonia. there is just as little reason to maintain the period of years which herodotus allows for the assyrian empire over asia. this cannot in any case be assumed earlier than the date of tiglath pilesar i., who did at least cross the euphrates and enter northern syria. the beginning of this empire would, therefore, be about b.c., not b.c. the date also which herodotus gives for the close of this empire (before b.c.) cannot, as will be shown, be maintained. according to this datum the decline and fall of assyria must have began with the period in which, as a fact, she rose to the proudest height and extended her power to the widest extent. the period of years can only be kept artificially by reckoning it upwards from the year b.c., the year of the overthrow of the assyrian empire; then it brings us from this date to b.c., _i.e._ to the time of tiglath pilesar i. but we saw that the conquests of tiglath pilesar did not extend very far, that his successes west of the euphrates were of a transitory nature; in no case could a dominion of assyria over babylon be dated from his reign. the complete agreement of the assyrian and babylonian style and civilisation is proved most clearly by the monuments. the names of the princes of assyria are formed analogously to those of the babylonians; the names and the nature of the deities which the assyrians and babylonians worship are the same. in assyria we meet again with anu the god of the high heaven, samas the sun-god, sin the moon-god, bin (ramman) the god of the thunder; of the spirits of the planets adar, the lord of saturn, nebo, the god of mercury, and istar, the lady of venus, in her double nature of destroyer and giver of fruit, reappear. there is only one striking difference: the special protector of assyria, asshur, the god of the land, stands at the head of the gods in the place of el of the babylonians. he it is after whom the land and the oldest metropolis is named, whose representatives the oldest princes of assyria appear to have called themselves. the name of asshur is said to mean the good or the kind;[ ] which may even on the euphrates have been an epithet of el, which on the tigris became the chief name of the deity. as the ancient princes of ur and erech, of nipur and senkereh, as the kings of babel--so also the kings of assyria, as far back as our monuments allow us to go--built temples to their gods; like them they mark the tiles of their buildings with their names; like the kings of babel, they cause inscriptions to be written on cylinders, intended to preserve the memory of their buildings and achievements, and then placed in the masonry of their temples. the language of the inscriptions of assyria differs from those of the babylonian inscriptions, as one dialect from another; the system of writing is the same. the population of assyria transferred their language and writing, their religious conceptions and modes of worship, from the lower euphrates to the upper tigris. if the princes of erech, nipur and babylon had to repel the attacks of elam, the assyrian land, a region of moderate extent, lay under the spurs of the armenian table-land, under the ranges of the zagrus. the struggle against the tribes of these mountains, in the zagrus and in the region of the sources of the euphrates and the tigris, and the stubborn resistance of these tribes appears to have strengthened the warlike powers of the assyrians, and these ceaseless campaigns trained them to that military excellence which finally, after a period of exercise which lasted for centuries, won for them the preponderance over mesopotamia and syria, over babylonia and elam, no less than over egypt. footnotes: [ ] diod. , ; euseb. "chron." , p. ; , p. , ed. schöne; syncellus, "chron." , , , ed. bonn; brandis, "rer. assyr. tempor. emend." p. _seq._ [ ] euseb. "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. [ ] , , . [ ] vol. i. . [ ] ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. smith, "discov." p. . [ ] the date of tiglath adar is fixed by the statement of sennacherib that he lost his seal to the babylonians years before sennacherib took babylon, _i.e._ about the year b.c. as the series of seven kings who reigned before tiglath adar is fixed, assur-bil-nisi, the first of these, can be placed about b.c. if we allow years to each. [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] this series, pudiel, bel-nirar and bin-nirar, is established by tiles of kileh-shergat, and the fact that it joins on to assur-u-ballit, by the tablet of bin-nirar discovered by g. smith, in which he calls himself great grandson of assur-u-ballit, grandson of bel-nirar, and son of pudiel; g. smith, "discov." p. . [ ] g. smith, "discov." pp. , . [ ] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. ; "records of the past," , . [ ] ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ; e. schrader, "a. b. keilinschriften," s. . as sennacherib states that he brought back this seal from babylon after years, and as sennacherib took babylon twice in and b.c., the loss of it falls either in the year or b.c. as he brings back the assyrian images of the gods at the second capture ( b.c.), the seal of tiglath adar may have been brought back on this occasion. [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] so the passage runs according to a communication from e. schrader. on the reading adarpalbitkur as against the readings ninpalazira and adarpalassar, see e. schrader, "a. b. keilinschriften," s. . on what ménant ("annal." p. ) grounds the assumption that belkudurussur was the immediate successor of tiglath adar i cannot say; it would not be chronologically impossible, but the synchronistic tablet merely informs us that adarpalbitkur was the successor of belkudurussur; g. rawlinson, "mon." , . still less am i able to find any foundation for the statement that binpaliddin of babylon, the opponent of belkudurussur and adarpalbitkur, was a vassal-king set up by assyria. the date of tiglath pilesar i. is fixed by the bavian inscription, which tells us that sennacherib at his second capture of babylon brought back out of that city the images of the gods lost by tiglath pilesar years previously (bav. - ), at the period between and b.c. if he began to reign , then the five kings before him (the series from adarpalbitkur to tiglath pilesar is fixed by the cylinder of the latter), allowing years to each reign, bring us to b.c. for the beginning of belkudurussur. to go back further seems the more doubtful, as tiglath pilesar put assur-dayan, the third prince of this series, only years before his own time. [ ] sayce, "records of the past," , ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] communication from e. schrader. [ ] cf. g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] vol. i. p. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, "annal." pp. , . [ ] column, , , _seqq._, , . [ ] column, , . [ ] column, , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] vol. i. p. ; e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] vol. i. p. ; bavian inscrip. - ; ménant, "annal." pp. , . inscription on the black basalt-stone in oppert et ménant, "documents juridiques," p. . is the name of the witness (col. , ), sar-babil-assur-issu (p. ), correctly explained by "the king of babel has conquered asshur"? [ ] col. , . [ ] ammian. marcell. , . [ ] araziki cannot be taken for aradus, the name of which city on the obelisk and in the inscriptions of assurnasirpal, shalmanesar, and elsewhere is arvadu. [ ] sayce, "records," , ; ménant, "annal." p. ; "babylone," pp. , . [ ] according to g. smith ("discov." p. , ) this samsi-bin ii. restored the temple of istar at nineveh which samsi-bin i. had built (above, p. ). [ ] inscription of kurkh, "records of the past," , ; ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. . chapter iii. the navigation and colonies of the phenicians. at the time when babylonia, on the banks of the euphrates, flourished under the successors of hammurabi in an ancient and peculiar civilisation, and assyria was struggling upwards beside babylonia on the banks of the tigris, strengthening her military power in the armenian mountains and the ranges of the zagrus, and already beginning to try her strength in more distant campaigns, a semitic tribe succeeded in rising into eminence in the west also, in winning and exerting a deep-reaching influence on distant and extensive lands. it was a district of the most moderate extent from which this influence proceeded, its dominion was of a different kind from that of the babylonians and assyrians; it grew up on an element which elsewhere appeared not a favourite with the semites, and sought its points of support in settlements on distant islands and coasts. by this tribe the sea was actively traversed and with ever-increasing boldness; by circumspection, by skill, by tough endurance and brave ventures it succeeded in extending its dominion in ever-widening circles, and making the sea the instrument of its wealth and the bearer of its power. on the coasts of syria were settled the tribes of the arvadites, giblites and sidonians (i. ). their land extended from the mouth of the eleutherus (nahr el kebir) in the north to the promontory of carmel in the south. a narrow strip of coast under mount lebanon, from to miles in breadth and some miles in length, was all that they possessed. richly watered by the streams sent down from lebanon to the sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. the eleutherus is followed to the south by the adonis (nahr el ibrahim), and this by the lycus (nahr el kelb); then follow the tamyras (nahr damur), the bostrenus (nahr el auli[ ]), the belus (the sihor libnath of the hebrews, now nahr naman), and lastly the kishon. above the shore rise hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on lebanon splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the vast forests (i. ) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as tacitus says,[ ] and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit of lebanon. ammianus speaks of the region under lebanon as full of pleasantness and beauty. the upper slopes of the mountain furnish pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. the high mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the roman cæsars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks across lebanon[ ]), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before them lay the sea. at an early period they must have become familiar with that element. the name of the tribe which the hebrew scriptures call the "first-born of canaan" means "fishermen." the places on the coast found the sea the easiest means of communication. thus the sea, so rich in islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the sidonians, giblites and arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages the fishermen and navigators of the coast. we found that the beginning of civilisation in canaan could not be placed later than about the year b.c., and we must therefore allow a considerable antiquity to the cities of the sidonians, giblites, arvadites, zemarites and arkites. the settlement on the site of sidon was founded, no doubt, before the year b.c., and that on the site of byblus cannot certainly be placed later than this period.[ ] the campaigns which the pharaohs undertook against syria and the land of the euphrates after the expulsion of the shepherds could not leave these cities unmoved. if the zemar of the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii. is zemar (simyra) near aradus, and arathutu is aradus itself, the territories of these cities were laid waste by this king in his sixth campaign (about the year b.c.); if arkatu is arka, south of aradus, this place must have been destroyed in his fifteenth campaign (about the year b.c.). sethos i. ( - b.c.) subdued the land of limanon (_i.e._ the region of lebanon), and caused cedars to be felled there. one of his inscriptions mentions zor, _i.e._ tyre, among the cities conquered by him. the son and successor of sethos i., ramses ii., also forced his way in the first decades of the fourteenth century as far as the coasts of the phenicians. at the mouth of the nahr el kelb, between sidon and berytus, the rocks on the coast display the memorial which he caused to be set up in the second and third year of his reign in honour of the successes obtained in this region.[ ] in the fifth year of his reign ramses, with the king of the cheta' defeats the king of arathu in the neighbourhood of kadeshu on the orontes, and ramses iii. about the year b.c., mentions beside the cheta who attack egypt the people of arathu, by which name, in the one case as in the other, may be meant the warriors of aradus.[ ] if arathu, like arathutu, is aradus, it follows, from the position which ramses ii. and iii. give to the princes of arathu, that beside the power to which the kingdom of the hittites had risen about the middle of the fifteenth century b.c., and which it maintained to the end of the fourteenth,[ ] the phenician cities had assumed an independent position. the successes of the pharaohs in syria come to an end in the first decades of the fourteenth century. egypt makes peace and enters into a contract of marriage with the royal house of the cheta; the syrians obtain even the preponderance against egypt (i. ), to which ramses iii. towards the end of the fourteenth century was first able to oppose a successful defence. the overthrow of the kingdom of the hittites, which succumbed to the attack of the amorites (i. ) soon after the year b.c., must have had a reaction on the cities of the phenicians. expelled hittites must have been driven to the coast-land, or have fled thither, and in the middle of the thirteenth century the successes gained by the hebrews who broke in from the east, over the amorites, the settlement of the hebrews on the mountains of the amorites, must again have thrown the vanquished, _i.e._ the fugitives of this nation, towards the coast. with this retirement of the older strata of the population of canaan to the coast is connected the movement which from this period emanates from the coasts of the phenicians, and is directed towards the islands of the mediterranean and the Ægean. it is true that on this subject only the most scanty statements and traces, only the most legendary traditions have come down to us, so that we can ascertain these advances only in the most wavering outlines. one hundred miles to the west off the coast of phoenicia lies the island of cyprus. on the southern coast of this island, which looked towards phoenicia, stood the city of citium, kith and chith in the inscriptions of the phenicians, and apparently kittii in those of the assyrians. sidonian coins describe citium as a daughter of sidon.[ ] after this city the whole island is known among the semites as kittim and chittim; this name is even used in a wider sense for all the islands of the mediterranean.[ ] the western writers state that before the time of the trojan war belus had conquered and subjugated the island of cyprus, and that citium belonged to belus.[ ] the victorious belus is the baal of the phenicians. the date of the trojan war is of no importance for the settlement of the phenicians in cyprus, for this statement is found in virgil only. more important is the fact that the settlers brought the babylonian cuneiform writing to cyprus. this became so firmly rooted in use that even the greeks, who set foot on the island at a far later time, scarcely before the end of the ninth century, adopted this writing, which here meanwhile had gone through a peculiar development, and had become a kind of syllabic-writing, and used it on coins and in inscriptions even in the fifth century b.c.[ ] the settlement of the sidonians in cyprus must therefore have taken place before the time in which the alphabetic writing, _i.e._ the writing specially known as phenician, was in use in syria, and hence at the latest before b.c. how long before this time the settlement of the phenicians in cyprus took place can, perhaps, be measured by the fact that the cyprian alphabet is a simplification of the old babylonian cuneiform writing. the simplified form would undoubtedly have been driven out by the far more convenient alphabetic writing of the phenicians if the cyprian writing had not become fixed in use in this island before the rise of the alphabetic writing. further, since the phenicians, as we shall see, set foot on the coast of hellas from about the year b.c. onwards, we must place the foundation of the colonies on the coasts nearest them, the settlement in cyprus, before this date, about the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. what population the phenicians found on cyprus it is not possible to discover. herodotus tells us that the first inhabitants of the island were ethiopians, according to the statements of the cyprians. it is beyond a doubt that not citium only, but the greater part of the cities of the island were founded by the phenicians, and that the phenician element became the ruling element of the whole island.[ ] it is belus who is said to have conquered cyprus, and to whom the city of citium is said to belong; _i.e._ citium worshipped the god baal. at amathus, to the west of citium, on the south coast of the island, which was called the oldest city on cyprus, and which nevertheless bears a distinctly semitic name (hamath), adonis and ashera-astarte were worshipped,[ ] and these deities had also one of their oldest and most honoured seats of worship at paphos (pappa in the inscriptions), on the west coast. the homeric poems represent aphrodite as hastening to her altar at paphos in cyprus. pausanias observes that the aphrodite of cyprus was a warlike aphrodite,[ ] and as the daughters of the cyprians surrendered themselves to the foreign seamen in honour of this goddess,[ ] it was the astarte-ashera of the phenicians who was worshipped at amathus and paphos. the zeus of the cyprian city salamis (sillumi in the inscriptions of the assyrians), to whom, according to the evidence of western writers, human sacrifices were offered, can only be baal moloch, the evil sun-god of the phenicians. in the beginning of the tenth century b.c. the cities of cyprus stood under the supremacy of the king of tyre.[ ] the island was of extraordinary fertility. the forests furnished wood for ship-building; the mountains concealed rich veins of the metal which has obtained the name of copper from this island.[ ] hence it was a very valuable acquisition, an essential strengthening of the power of sidon in the older, and tyre in the later, period. following zeno of rhodes, who wrote the history of his home in the first half of the second century b.c.,[ ] diodorus tells us: the king of the phenicians, agenor, bade his son cadmus seek his sister europa,[ ] who had disappeared, and bring back the maiden, or not return himself to phoenicia. overtaken by a violent storm, cadmus vowed a shrine to poseidon. he was saved, and landed on the island of rhodes, where the inhabitants worshipped before all other gods the sun, who had here begotten seven sons and among them makar. cadmus set up a temple in rhodes to poseidon, as he had vowed to do, and left behind phenicians to keep up the service; but in the temple which belonged to athena at cnidus in rhodes he dedicated a work of art, an iron bowl, which bore an inscription in phenician letters, the oldest inscription which came from phoenicia to the hellenes. from rhodes cadmus came to samothrace, and there married harmonia. the gods celebrated this first marriage by bringing gifts, and blessing the married pair to the tones of heavenly music.[ ] ephorus says that cadmus carried off harmonia while sailing past samothrace, and hence in that island search was still made for harmonia at the festivals.[ ] herodotus informs us that cadmus of tyre, the son of agenor, in his search for europa, landed on the island of thera, which was then called callisto, and there left behind some phenicians, either because the land pleased him or for some other reason. these phenicians inhabited the island for eight generations before theras landed there from lacedæmon. the rest went to the island of thasos and there built a temple to heracles, which he had himself seen, and the city of thasos. this took place five generations before heracles the son of amphitryon was born. after that cadmus came to the land now called boeotia, and the phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and taught the hellenes many things, among others the use of writing, "which as it seems to me the hellenes did not possess before. they learnt this writing, as it was used by the phenicians; in the course of time the form of the letters changed with the language. from these phenicians the ionians, among whom they dwelt, learnt the letters, altered their form a little, and extended their use. as was right, they called them phenician letters, since the phenicians had brought them into greece. i have myself seen inscriptions in cadmeian letters (_i.e._ from the time of cadmus) in the temple of ismenian apollo at thebes."[ ] according to the narrative of hellanicus, cadmus received an oracle, bidding him follow the cow which bore on her back the sign of the full moon, and found a city where she lay down. cadmus carried out the command, and when the cow lay down wearied, where thebes now stands, cadmus built there the cadmeia (the citadel of thebes).[ ] according to the statement of pherecydes cadmus also built the city of thebes.[ ] with hecatæus of miletus cadmus passes as the discoverer of letters; according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the art of mining.[ ] the direction of the phenician settlements, which proceeds in the Ægean sea from s.e. to n.w., cannot be mistaken in these legends. first rhodes, then the cyclades, then the islands on the thracian coast, samothrace and thasos, were colonised; and at length, on the strait of euboea, the mainland of hellas was trodden by the phenicians, who are said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence over the hellenes. the legend of cadmus goes far back among the greeks. in the homeric poems the inhabitants of thebes are "cadmeians." the thebaid praised "the divine wisdom of cadmus;" in the poems of hesiod he leads home harmonia, "the daughter of ares and aphrodite," and pindar describes how the muses sang for "the divine cadmus, the wealthiest of mortals, when in seven-gated thebes he led the ox-eyed harmonia to the bridal-bed."[ ] agenor, the father of cadmus, is a name which the greeks have given to the baal of the phenicians.[ ] cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a goddess,--who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble, bring gifts and sing,--whose wife was worshipped as the protecting goddess of thebes,[ ]--whose daughters, ino, leucothea and semele, are divine creatures, whom zeus leads to the elysian fields,[ ]--can only be a god. he seeks the lost europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. we know the moon-goddess of the phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned astarte, who wears a cow's head, the goddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus the daughter of ares and aphrodite. "the great temple of astarte at sidon," so we find in the book of the syrian goddess, "belongs, as the sidonians say, to astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of europa, the sister of cadmus." the meaning of the word europa has been discussed previously (i. ). cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-goddess, who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy marriage, is the baal melkarth of the phenicians. the death-bringing istar-astarte is changed into bilit-ashera, into the fruit-giving goddess;[ ] the gloomy europa changes into harmonia, the goddess of union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants deadly gifts. it is the myth of melkarth and astarte which the greeks present to us in the story of cadmus; with this myth they have connected the foundation of the phenician settlements in rhodes, thera, samothrace, thasos and boeotia; they have changed it into the foundation of these colonies. the name cadmus means the man of the east; to the hebrews the arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as beni kedem, _i.e._ sons of the east.[ ] to the greeks the phenicians were men of the east, just as to the english of the thirteenth century the merchants of lubeck were easterlings. the citadel of thebes, which the men of the east built, preserved the name of cadmus the son of the east, and kept it alive among the greeks. what we can gather from grecian legend is confirmed by some statements of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the phenicians. thucydides informs us that the phenicians colonised most of the islands of the Ægean.[ ] diodorus has already told us with regard to rhodes that in the temples of this island were phenician works of art and inscriptions, and that in rhodes the sun-god and the seven children which he begot there were worshipped. in the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the baal of the phenicians (i. ). and if diodorus mentions makar among the seven sons of the sun-god of rhodes,--if according to others rhodes, like cyprus, was called macaria,--makar is a greek form of the name melkarth. we further learn that on the highest mountain summit in rhodes, on atabyris, zeus was worshipped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was offered yearly to cronos. in atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the semitic tabor, _i.e._ the height. we found above that the phenicians worshipped baal under the form of a bull, and the greeks are wont to denote baal moloch by the name of cronos.[ ] these forms of worship continued to exist even when at a later time hellenic immigrants had got the upper hand in rhodes. it was the dorians who here met with resistance from the phenicians at camirus and ialysus; they got the upper hand, but admitted phenician families into their midst,[ ] and continued their sacred rites. diodorus informs us that the phenicians whom cadmus had left behind on rhodes had formed a mixed community with the ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had performed the sacred duties.[ ] even at a later time rhodes stood in close relation with phoenicia, especially with the city of aradus.[ ] thus it happened that the colonies which the rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in sicily, gela and acragas, carried thither the worship of zeus atarbyrius. zeus atarbyrius was the protecting deity of acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. the coins of gela also exhibit a bull.[ ] of the island of thera, herodotus told us that the phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight generations, _i.e._ for more than years according to his computation. herodotus names the chief of the phenicians whom cadmus left behind on thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected there.[ ] the descendants of these phenicians were found here by the greek settlers from laconia. it is certain that even in the third century b.c. the island worshipped the hero phoenix.[ ] of the island of melos we learn that it was occupied by phenicians of byblus, and named by them after their mother city;[ ] the island of oliaros near paros was, on the other hand, according to heraclëides ponticus, occupied by the sidonians.[ ] strabo informs us that samothrace was previously called melite (malta); from its height (the island is a mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit reaches feet) it obtained the name of samos, "for high places are called sami;"[ ] as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this meaning, like the name melite, belongs to the phenician language. ephorus has already told us (p. ) that the samothracians sought for harmonia at their festivals; diodorus represents cadmus as celebrating the marriage with harmonia on samothrace as well as at thebes, and we learn from herodotus that the cabiri, _i.e._ the great gods of the phenicians, were worshipped on samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods," _i.e._ to the cabiri.[ ] the islands of imbros and lemnos also worshipped the cabiri; lemnos especially worshipped hephæstus, who had a leading place in this circle.[ ] the island of thasos is said, according to the statement of the greeks, to have been called after a son of phoenix, or agenor, of the name of thasos, who was consequently a brother of cadmus. herodotus saw on the island a temple which the phenicians had built to heracles, _i.e._ to baal-melkarth, and the mines which they had made on the coast opposite samothrace; "they had overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."[ ] herodotus also tells us that the temple of aphrodite urania on the island of cythera off the coast of laconia was founded by the phenicians, and pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred temple of urania among the hellenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the goddess in armour. aphrodite urania is with the greeks the syrian aphrodite; if she was represented on cythera in armour it is clear that she was worshipped there by the phenicians as astarte-ashera, _i.e._ as the goddess of war and love.[ ] not in the islands only, but on the coasts of hellas also, the phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of worship belonging to them. on the isthmus of corinth melicertes, _i.e._ melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting navigation; corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.[ ] aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of acrocorinthus, was worshipped by prostitution like the ashera-bilit of the phenicians. in attica also, in the deme of athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess of cythera, which king porphyrion, _i.e._ the purple man, the phenician, is said to have founded there at a very ancient time "before king actaeus."[ ] at marathon, where heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name represents the phenician city marathus, rose a fountain which had the name makaria, _i.e._ makar,[ ] the name of melkarth, which we have already met with in cyprus and rhodes, and shall meet with again. more plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in hymettus at the village of spata attest the ancient settlement of the phenicians on the attic coast. these are chambers dug deeply into the rock after the phenician manner, with horizontal roofs after the oldest fashion of phenician graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. the ornaments and works in glass, ivory, gold and brass discovered here, which are made after babylonian and egyptian models, can only have been brought by the phenicians.[ ] the citadel of thebes, as has been said, retains the name of cadmus; the poetry of the greeks praised the mighty walls, the seven gates of thebes. we know the number seven of the great phenician gods; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the gods of the sun, the moon and the five planets;[ ] and the greeks have already admitted to us that they received the wearing of armour, the art of mining and masonry and finally their alphabet from cadmus, _i.e._ from the phenicians, the cadmeans of thebes. in the homeric poems europa, the daughter of phoenix, bears minos to zeus. the abode of minos is the "great city" of cnossus in crete; he receives each nine years the revelations of his father zeus; for his daughter ariadne dædalus adorns a dancing place at cnossus. after his death minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.[ ] his descendants rule in crete.[ ] later accounts tell us that zeus in the form of a bull carried off europa from phoenicia, and bore her over the sea to crete. the wife of her son minos, pasiphaë, then united with a bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the minotaur, _i.e._ the minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.[ ] the son of minos, androgeos (earth-man) or eurygyes (broadland), was destroyed in attica by the bull of marathon, who consumed him in his flames.[ ] to avenge the death of androgeos minos seized megara, and blight and famine compelled the athenians to send, in obedience to the command of minos, seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to crete, who were then sacrificed to the minotaur.[ ] others narrate that hephæstus had given minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to minos.[ ] when dædalus retired before the wrath of minos from crete to sicily, minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found, according to herodotus, a violent death.[ ] the king of the sicanians, so diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. the cretans buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret place, and built upon them a temple to aphrodite, and as they could not return to crete because the cretans had burned their ships, they founded the city minoa in sicily; but the tomb of minos was shown in crete also.[ ] a bull-god carries the daughter of phoenix over the sea to crete and begets minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with pasiphaë, _i.e._ the all-shining, the minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the semites; androgeos succumbs to the heat of the bull of marathon, an iron man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. these legends of the greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the rites observed in crete from the coast of syria, of the settlement of phenicians in crete. the bull-god may be the baal samim or the baal moloch of the phenicians; europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-goddess of the phenicians (p. ); pasiphaë is only another name for the same goddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry heaven. we know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were offered to baal moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-god, and that these sacrifices were burnt. ister, a writer of the third century b.c., tells us quite simply; in ancient times children were sacrificed to cronos in crete.[ ] before the harbour of megara lay an island of the name of minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe, the athenians offered peace-offerings at the thargelia, "in the place of human sacrifices,"[ ] that the consuming sun might not kill the harvest. the name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames of the bull of marathon, prove that beside the worship of the syrian goddess at athmonon, and the worship of melkarth at marathon, the worship of baal moloch had penetrated as far as megara and attica. minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a god; his proper name is minotaur, a name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. when baal melkarth had found and overcome astarte, after he had celebrated with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the phenician myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. the phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater proximity.[ ] minos goes to sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of astarte-ashera, with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this marriage is changed from the goddess of war into the goddess of love. the tombs of minos in crete, sicily, and finally at gades, of which the greeks speak, are in the meaning of the phenician myth merely resting-places of the god, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into new power. the greeks made minos, who continued to live in the under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of the souls themselves. on the southern coast of sicily, at the mouth of the halycus, lay the city which the greeks called minoa or heraclea-minoa after minos. to the phenicians it was known as rus melkarth (p. ), a title which proves beyond doubt that minos was one of the names given by the greeks to this god of the phenicians. the worship of baal moloch, which the phenicians brought to crete and the shores of megara and attica, was not all that the greeks personified in the form of minos; they did not confine themselves to one side of the myth of baal melkarth. when grecian colonists settled subsequently in crete they found the cities of the phenicians full of artistic capacity, and their life regulated by legal ordinances. thus their legend could place the artist dædalus, the discoverer and pattern of all art-industry, beside minos, and refer to minos the ordinances of the cities. zeus himself had revealed these arrangements to him. at a later time the greek cities of crete traced their own institutions back to minos; here and there they may perhaps have followed a phenician model, or they may have given out that such a model had been followed. plato represents minos as receiving the wise laws which he introduced into crete from zeus. with aristotle also minos is the founder of the cretan laws.[ ] in the circle of the cabiri the sky-god baal samim was the protector and defender of law (i. ). lastly, minos is with the greeks at once the representation and expression of the dominion which the phenicians exercised in ancient times over the islands of the Ægean sea, before the settlements of the greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the ships of the greeks took the lead in these waters. in the age of the heroes, so herodotus tells us, minos established the first naval empire; the carians, who inhabited the islands, he made his subjects; they did not indeed pay tribute, but they had to man his ships whenever necessary.[ ] "the oldest king," says thucydides, "of whom tradition tells us that he possessed a fleet was minos. he ruled over the greatest part of the greek sea and the cyclades, which he colonised, driving out the carians and making his sons lords of the islands."[ ] minos, as a king ruling by law, is then said to have put an end to piracy. the phenicians could not certainly have left out of sight the largest of the islands, which forms the boundary of the Ægean sea; and the traditions of the greeks can hardly go wrong if they make this island the centre of the naval supremacy of minos, _i.e._ of the supremacy of the phenicians over the cyclades. crete must have been the mainstay of their activity in the Ægean, just as thebes was the point on the mainland where they planted the firmest foot. the title minoa seems to lie at the base of the name of minos, a title borne not only by the island off megara and the city in sicily, but also by two cities in crete (one on the promontory of drepanum, the other in the region of lyctus), by some islands near crete, a city in amorgus, and a city in siphnus. the name minoa (from _navah_) could mean dwelling; it is certain evidence of a phenician settlement. but the phenicians have left traces of their existence in crete beside the names minos and minoa and the forms of worship denoted by them. coins of the cretan cities gortys and phæstus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. near the cretan city of cydonia the jardanus, _i.e._ the jordan, falls into the sea; the name of the city labana goes back to the phenician word _libanon_, i.e. "white." cnossus, the abode of minos in homer and herodotus,[ ] was previously named kairatus; _karath_ in phenician means city. itanus, in crete (_ethanath_ in the semitic form), is expressly stated to be a foundation of the phenicians.[ ] with regard to the state of civilisation reached by syria before the year b.c., we may draw some conclusions from the fact that not merely did the civilisation of egypt influence the shepherds of semitic race who ruled over egypt at that period, but that semitic manners and customs left behind traces in egypt (i. ). hence we may assume that the syrians carried their wine and their oil to the nile at the time when their kinsmen ruled there ( - b.c.). the civilisation of syria appears more clearly from the tributes imposed by tuthmosis iii. on syria, which are here and there illustrated by the pictures accompanying the inscriptions of this pharaoh. the burdens imposed on the syrians consist not only of corn, wine, oil and horses; not only of gold, silver and iron, but also of arms and works of art, among which the pictures allow us to recognise carefully-decorated vessels. on the other hand, it is clear from the fact that the babylonian weights and measures were in use in syria at this time (i. ) that the syrians before this period were in lively intercourse with the land of the euphrates, that even before the sixteenth century b.c. caravans must have traversed the syrian deserts in every direction, and even then the syrians must have exchanged the products of their land for babylonian stuffs and the frankincense which the arabians on their part carried to babylon. the dependence of syria on egypt under the tuthmosis and amenophis can only have augmented the intercourse of the syrians with the land of the nile. afterwards sethos i. ( - ) caused wood to be felled on lebanon; it must have been the places on the coast under lebanon which carried to egypt in their ships, along with the wine and oil of the coast and the interior, the wood so necessary there for building and exchanged it for the fabrics of egypt. wood for building could not be conveyed on the backs of camels, and the way by sea from the phenician towns to the mouths of the nile was far easier and less dangerous than the road by land over rocky heights and through sandy deserts. hence, as early as the fifteenth century b.c., we may regard the phenician cities as the central points of a trade branching east and west, which must have been augmented by the fact that they conveyed not only products of the syrian land to the euphrates and the nile, but could also carry the goods which they obtained in exchange in egypt to babylonia, and what they obtained beyond the euphrates to egypt. at the same time the fabrics of babylon and egypt roused them to emulation, and called forth an industry among the phenicians which we see producing woven stuffs, vessels of clay and metal, ornaments and weapons, and becoming pre-eminent in the colouring of stuffs with the liquor of the purple-fish, which are found on the phenician coasts. this industry required above all things metals, of which babylonia and egypt were no less in need, and when the purple-fish of their own coasts were no longer sufficient for their extensive dyeing, colouring-matter had to be obtained. large quantities of these fish produced a proportionately small amount of the dye. copper-ore was found in cyprus, gold in the island of thasos, and purple-fish on the coasts of hellas. when the fall of the kingdom of the hittites and the overthrow of the amorite princes in the south of canaan augmented the numbers of the population on the coast, these cities were no longer content to obtain those possessions of the islands by merely landing and making exchanges with the inhabitants. intercourse with semi-barbarous tribes must be protected by the sword. good harbours were needed where the ships could be sheltered from storm and bad weather, where the crews could find safety from the natives, rest and fresh stores of water and provisions. thus arose protecting forts on the distant islands and coasts, which received the ships of the native land. under the protection of these intercourse could be carried on with the natives, and they were points of support for the collection of the fish and the sinking of mines. in order to obtain the raw material necessary for their industry no less than to carry off the surplus of population, the phenicians were brought to colonise cyprus, rhodes, crete, thera, melos, oliarus, samothrace, imbros, lemnos and thasos. in the bays of laconia and argos, in the straits of euboea,[ ] purple-fish were found in extraordinary quantities. the phenicians settled in the island of cythera in the bay of laconia, which, as aristotle says, was once called porphyrussa from its purple-fish,[ ] and there erected that ancient temple to the oriental aphrodite, aphrodite in armour, just as in attica in the deme of athmonon they founded the temple of the syrian aphrodite and excavated the tombs on hymettus.[ ] midway between the straits of euboea and the bay of corinth, which abounded with purple-fish, rose the strong fortress of the cadmeia, and on acrocorinthus the shrine of ashera. herodotus and thucydides told us above (p. ) that the carians inhabited the islands of the Ægean sea. these were they whom minos had made subject to his dominion. beside this, we are informed more particularly that the carians had possessed the island of rhodes, which lay off their coast, and had dwelt on chios and samos (i. ). what degree of civilisation was reached by the population of the islands of the Ægean sea before the phenicians came into relations with them may be inferred to some extent from the discoveries made in the island of thera. in and beneath three layers of ashes and tufa caused by vast eruptions of the volcanos of this island have been discovered stone instruments, pottery of the most rudimentary kind, in part with the rudest indications of the human face and figure, and beside these weapons of copper and brass. in the upper layers of the tufa we find far better pottery decorated in the phenician style. on melos also, and in the tombs at camirus in rhodes, vessels of the same kind have been discovered; and, finally, in the highest of the layers at thera are gold ornaments of the most various kinds, and ornaments of electron, _i.e._ of mixed gold and silver, all of a workmanship essentially non-hellenic. from these facts we may draw the conclusion that the ships of the phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in brass and copper, their pottery and ornaments; that the carians of the islands, following these patterns, raised their own efforts to a higher stage, and that afterwards the phenicians themselves settled in the islands and made themselves masters of them. perhaps we may even go a step further. in the lower strata of the excavations at hissarlik, on the trojan coast, we find exactly the same primitive pottery, with the same indications of human forms, as in thera, while in the refuse lying above this are idols and pottery adorned after phenician patterns, which correspond exactly to the idols of cyprus, as well as ornaments like those of thera. hence in this region also we may assume that the phenicians gave the impulse and the example to the development of civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of adramyttion on the trojan coast repeats the name of a phenician foundation on the coast of north africa (adrames, hadrumetum), and even strabo ascribes the worship of the cabiri to some places on the trojan coast.[ ] far more definite traces of the phenician style and skill are in existence on the shore of the bay of argos. the ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at mycenæ are hewn in the rocks after the manner of the phenicians. as in the ancient burying-places of the phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most ancient custom in phoenicia. the masks of beaten gold-leaf which were found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are evidence of a custom which the phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces of egyptian coffins.[ ] the corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. there is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. the ornaments remind us of babylonian and assyrian patterns; the idols in burnt clay are in the phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms, antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the east; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached the bay of argos in phenician ships. still there are grave reasons for refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of the phenicians. the numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional custom either with regard to the phenicians or the hellenes, but which thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the carians.[ ] we learn, moreover, even from the homeric poems, that the carians loved gold ornaments, and further, that the greeks improved their armour after the pattern of the carians (i. ). as we also find the double axe of the carian god, the "zeus stratius" as the greeks called him, the "axe-god," the chars-el in the carian language (i. ), on some ornaments of the tombs of mycenæ, the supposition forces itself upon us that carians from the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of argos. in any case, the tombs of mycenæ, both from their position and their contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the phenicians. can we fix the time at which the phenicians first set foot on the islands of hellas? herodotus tells us that troy was taken in the third generation after the death of minos.[ ] if we put three full generations, according to the calculation of herodotus, between the death of minos and the conquest of ilium, the first event took place years before the second. since, according to the data of herodotus, the capture of ilium falls in the year or b.c., minos would have died in the year or b.c. the landing of the phenicians on thasos and the expedition of cadmus from phoenicia beyond the islands to boeotia are placed by herodotus five generations before heracles, and heracles is placed years before his own time. if we reckon upwards from the year or b.c., heracles lived about the year or b.c., and cadmus five generations, _i.e._ - / years, before this date, or about the year or b.c.[ ] on the island of thera, herodotus further remarks, the phenicians whom cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, _i.e._ - / years, before the dorians came to the island.[ ] melos was also occupied by dorians, who asserted in b.c. that their community had been in existence years,[ ] according to which statement the dorians came to melos in the year b.c. with this event the phenician rule over the island came to an end. if we assume that thera, which is close by melos, was taken from the phenicians by the dorians at the same time as the latter island, the eight generations given by herodotus for the settlements of the phenicians on thera would carry us back to the year b.c. ( + - / ), a date which is certainly in agreement with his statement about the death of minos, but contradicts the date given for cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of herodotus, left behind the settlers on thera and thasos when he first sailed to boeotia. herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of legend. the five generations which separated cadmus from heracles were for him, no doubt, polydorus, labdacus, laius, oedipus and polynices; for the three generations between the death of minos and the capture of troy we find in homer only two, deucalion and idomeneus.[ ] but we can still find from herodotus' calculations how far back the greeks placed the beginning and the end of the empire of the phenicians over their islands and coasts. beyond this the chronographers do not give us any help. eusebius and hieronymus (jerome) place the rape of europa in the year or b.c.; the rule of cadmus at thebes in the year b.c. or ( ) b.c.; the settlement of the phenicians on thera, melos, and thasos in the year b.c.; the beginning of the rule of minos in the year b.c., or, according to another computation, in the year b.c.[ ] we can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the phenicians in the Ægean sea. in the lower strata of the excavations at hissarlik, on the coast of troas, clay lentils have been found with cyprian letters upon them.[ ] since the greeks declared that they learnt their alphabet from the phenicians and cadmus, and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the phenicians which lies at the root of the greek, the cyprian letters can only have been brought thither by phenician ships from cyprus before the discovery of the phenician letters, or from the islands off the trojan coast occupied by the phenicians, from lemnos, imbros and samothrace; otherwise they must have come to the troad at a later time by cyprian ships or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. among the sons of japheth, the representative of the northern nations, genesis mentions javan, _i.e._ the ionian, the greek; and enumerates the sons of javan: elisha, tarshish, chittim, and dodanim or rodanim--the reading is uncertain.[ ] it is a question whether the genealogical table in genesis belongs to the first or second text of the pentateuch, _i.e._ whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the tenth century b.c. in any case it follows that in the beginning of the eleventh or tenth century b.c. the name and nation of the ionians was known not only in the harbour-cities of phoenicia, but in the interior of syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts of the mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these ionians. chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of cyprus; the rodanim are the inhabitants of rhodes (dodanim would have to be referred to dodona); elisha is elis in the peloponnese, or the island of sicily, if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and islands;[ ] tarshish is tartessus, _i.e._ the region at the mouth of the guadalquivir. if ezekiel mentions the purple which the phenicians bring from "the isles of elishah,"[ ] the islands and coasts of the Ægean sea are plainly meant, on which the phenicians collected the fish for their purple dye. this much is clear, that at least about the year b.c. not only the islands and coasts of the Ægean were known in syria, but even then the name of the distant land of tarshish was current in syria. we shall further see that as early as b.c. phenician ships had passed the straits of gibraltar. hence we may conclude that the phenicians must have set foot on cyprus about the year b.c., and on the islands and coasts of hellas about the year b.c. thucydides observes that in ancient times the phenicians had occupied the promontories of sicily and the small islands lying around sicily, in order to carry on trade with the sicels.[ ] diodorus siculus tells us that when the phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of melite (malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their ships. the island of gaulus also, which lies close to melite, is said to have been a colony of the phenicians.[ ] on the south-eastern promontory of malta there was a temple of heracles-melkarth,[ ] the foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given by the phenician inscriptions found there. the island, like the mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought after in antiquity. on gaulus also, a name mentioned on phenician coins, are the remains of a phenician temple. between sicily and the coast of africa, where it approaches sicily most nearly, lay the island of cossyra, coins of which bear phenician legends. along with a dwarfish figure they present the name "island of the sons,"[ ] _i.e._ no doubt, the children of the sun-god whom we met with in rhodes. on the east coast of sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with the mainland (now isola degli magnisi), the city of thapsos, the name of which reveals its founders; _tiphsach_ means coming over, here coming over to the mainland. in the same way the promontory of pachynus (_pachun_ means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of phoenicus are evidence of phenician colonisation. on the south coast of sicily, not far from the mouth of the halycus, the phenicians built that city which is known to the greeks as makara and minoa, or heracleaminoa; the coins of the city present in phenician characters the name rus-melkart, _i.e._ "head (promontory) of melkarth."[ ] off the west coast of sicily the phenicians occupied the small island of motye.[ ] on this coast of the larger island, on mount eryx, which rises steeply out of a bald table land ( feet above the sea), they founded the city of eryx, and on the summit of the mount, feet high, they built a temple to the syrian aphrodite. in diodorus it is eryx the son of aphrodite who builds this temple; Æneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."[ ] virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of eryx, near to the stars, in honour of venus idalia, _i.e._ the goddess worshipped at idalion (idial) on cyprus by the immigrants from the east, who, with him, are the companions of Æneas.[ ] the courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen[ ]), even without the phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of its syrian origin. the mighty substructure of the building is still in existence. dædalus is said to have built it for the king of the sicanians (p. ). beside the syrian goddess, the phenicians also worshipped here the syrian god baal melkarth. according to the account of diodorus, heracles overcame eryx in wrestling, and so took his land from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.[ ] the kings of sparta traced their origin to heracles. when dorieus, the son of anaxandridas, king of sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that the crown had fallen to his brother cleomenes, the oracle bade him retire to eryx; the land of eryx belonged to the heraclids because their ancestor won it. the carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this right; dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.[ ] on the north coast of sicily, panormus (palermo) and soloeis were the most important colonies of the phenicians. panormus, on coins of the phenicians machanath, _i.e._ the camp, worshipped the goddess of the sexual passion; soloeis (_sela_, rock) worshipped melkarth. in a hymn to aphrodite, sappho inquires whether she lingers in cyprus or at panormus.[ ] motye, soloeis and panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the carthaginians in sicily.[ ] on sardinia also, as diodorus tells us, the phenicians planted many colonies.[ ] the mountains of sardinia contained iron, silver, and lead. according to the legend of the greeks, sardus, the son of makeris, as the libyans called heracles, first came with libyans to the island. then heracles sent his brother's son iolaus, together with his own sons, whom he had begotten in attica, to sardinia. as heracles had been lord of the whole west, these regions belonged of right to iolaus and his companions. iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was afterwards known by the name of iolaus; then he sent for dædalus out of sicily and erected large buildings, which, diodorus adds, are still in existence; but in sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in agyrion, "where," as diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly sacrifices are offered."[ ] makeris, the supposed father of sardus, is, like makar, a form of the name melkarth. if sardinia and the whole west as well as eryx is said to have belonged to heracles, if heracles sends out his nearest relations to sardinia, if the artist dædalus is his companion here as he was the companion of minos in crete and sicily, it becomes obvious that the temples of baal melkarth on the coasts of sardinia and sicily lie at the base of these legends of the greeks, that it was the phenicians who brought the worship of their god along with their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of the sardinian mountains in copper. as we already ventured to suppose (i. ), iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of baal.[ ] the legend of the greeks makes heracles, _i.e._ baal melkarth, lord of the whole west. as a fact, the colonies of the phenicians went beyond sardinia in this direction. their first colonies on the north coast of africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest sicily; hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.[ ] in the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. ) hippo is named beside tyre and citium as a daughter of sidon. when a second hippo was afterwards founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of sardinia, at the mouth of the ubus, the old hippo got the name of "ippoacheret," and among the greeks "hippon zarytos," _i.e._ "the other hippo."[ ] ityke (_atak_, settlement, utica), on the mouth of the bagradas (medsherda), takes the next place after this hippo, if indeed it was not founded before it. aristotle tells us that the phenicians stated that ityke was built years before carthage,[ ] and pliny maintains that ityke was founded years before his time.[ ] as carthage was founded in the year b.c. (below, chap. ), ityke, according to aristotle's statement, was built in the year b.c. with this the statement of pliny agrees. he wrote in the years - a.d., and therefore he places the foundation of ityke in the year or b.c. about the same time, _i.e._ about the year b.c., the phenicians had already reached much further to the west. in his phenician history, claudius iolaus tells us that archaleus (arkal, heracles[ ]), the son of phoenix, built gadeira (gades).[ ] "from ancient times," such is the account of diodorus, "the phenicians carried on an uninterrupted navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in africa, and not a few in europe, in the regions lying to the west. and when their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the pillars of heracles, which is called oceanus. first of all, on their passage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of europe a city which they called gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place, chiefly a beautiful temple to heracles, with splendid offerings according to the custom of the phenicians. and as this temple was honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it was held in great reverence. when the phenicians, in order to explore the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the shore of libya, they were carried away far into the oceanus by a strong wind, and after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island opposite libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be intended for the dwelling of the gods rather than men."[ ] strabo says, the gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the tyrians send a colony to the pillars of heracles. when those who had been sent reached the straits of mount calpe they were of opinion that the promontories which enclosed the passage, calpe and the opposite headland of abilyx in libya,[ ] were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of the travels of heracles, which the oracle mentioned. so they landed on this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the axitani (sexi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there they turned back. those sent out after them sailed through the straits, and cast anchor at an island sacred to heracles, stades beyond the pillars, opposite the city of onoba in iberia; but as the sacrifices were again unfavourable they also again turned home. finally, a third fleet landed on a little island stades beyond mount calpe, close to the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the bætis. here, on the east side of the island, they built a temple to heracles; on the opposite side of the island they built the city of gadeira, and on the extreme western point the temple of cronos. in the temple of heracles there were two fountains and "two pillars of brass, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."[ ] this foundation of gades, which on the coins is called gadir and agadir, _i.e._ wall, fortification, the modern cadiz, and without doubt the most ancient city in europe which has preserved its name, is said to have taken place in the year b.c.[ ] if ityke was founded before b.c. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of gades soon after that date. hence the ships of the phenicians would have reached the ocean about the time when tiglath pilesar i. left the tigris with his army, trod the north of syria, and looked on the mediterranean. the marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a path for the waves of the mediterranean to the boundless waters of the atlantic ocean might implant in the phenician mariners who first passed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the god set up to mark the end of the earth; in the endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in which their sun-god went to his rest. that gades, on the shore of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship of melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the supposed death of heracles[ ]) and the awakening of the god with the sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact which requires no explanation. the legends of the hesperides, the daughters of the west, in whose garden melkarth celebrates the holy marriage with astarte (i. ), of the islands of the blest in the western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant fertility and favoured climate of madeira and the canary islands. the land off the coast of which gades lay, the valley of the guadalquivir, was named by the phenicians tarsis (tarshish), and by the greeks tartessus. the genealogical table in genesis places tarsis among the sons of javan. the prophet ezekiel represents the ships of tarshish as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to tyre. "the ships of tarshish," so he says to the city of tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."[ ] the sicilian stesichorus of himera expresses himself in more extravagant terms. he sang of the "fountains of tartessus (the guadalquivir) rooted in silver." the greeks represent the tartessus, the river which brought down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver mountain,[ ] and according to herodotus the first greek ship, a merchantman of samos, which was driven about the year b.c. by a storm from the east to tartessus, made a profit of talents.[ ] aristotle tells us that the first phenicians who sailed to tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the ships could not carry the burden, so that the phenicians left behind the tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new tackle of silver.[ ] poseidonius says that among that people it was not hades, but plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. once the forests had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire, flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold and silver. on the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver, tin and white gold mixed with silver. this soil the rivers washed down with them. the women drew water from the river and poured it through sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the sieve.[ ] diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the forests on the pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that many streams were formed of pure silver. to the native inhabitants the value of silver was so little known that the phenicians obtained it in exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the silver to asia and all other nations. the greed of the merchants went so far that when the ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. strabo assures us that the land through which the bætis flows was not surpassed in fertility and all the blessings of earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver, copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and excellence. the gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by washing, as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. in the sands of gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and requiring very little purification. stone salt was also found there, and there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent wool, of corn and wine. the coast of the shore beyond the pillars was covered with shell-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in fish (the tunnies and the tartessian murena so much sought after in antiquity),[ ] which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the beach. corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were exported from this fortunate land.[ ] if the phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon cyprus and rhodes, the islands of the Ægean and the coasts of hellas, their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their trade lucrative. that subsequently in the twelfth century they also took into possession the coasts of sicily, sardinia and north africa by means of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and metals of the west was very lively and increasing in syria and in egypt, in assyria and babylonia. the market of these lands must have been very remunerative to the phenicians in order to induce them to make their discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. if the phenicians about the year b.c. were in a position to discover the straits of gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised navigation for a long time. the horizon of the greek mariner ended even in the ninth century in the waters of sicily, and in the fifth century b.c. the voyage of a greek ship from the syrian coast to the pillars of heracles occupied days.[ ] after the founding of gades the phenicians ruled over the whole length of the mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. their ships crossed the long basin in every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. they showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation than the babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the assyrians in the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the phenicians were building gades; they were more venturesome and enduring on the water than their tribesmen the arabians on the sandy sea of the desert. in the possession of the ancient civilisation of the east their mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the thracians and hellenes, the sicels, the libyans and iberians which the portuguese and the spaniards presented years later to the tribes of america. footnotes: [ ] robinson, "palestine," , . [ ] tac. "hist." , . [ ] rénan, "mission de phénicie," p. . [ ] vol. i. pp. , . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] the legend runs, "from the sidonians, mother of kamb, ippo, kith(?), sor," movers, "phoeniz." , . [ ] isaiah xxiii. , ; jeremiah ii. ; ezekiel xxvii. ; joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] virgil, "Æn." , , . [ ] brandis, "monatsberichte berl. akad." , s. ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] stephan. byz. [greek: amathous]. [ ] "odyss." , ; tac. "annal." , ; pausan. , , ; pompon. mela, , . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] joseph. "in apion." , ; "antiq." , , , , , . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] in homer europa is not the daughter of agenor but of phoenix ("il." , ), just as cadmus, thasos, and europa are sometimes children of agenor and sometimes of phoenix. in hdt. , it is cretans who carry off europa, the daughter of the king of tyre. [ ] diod. , , ; , , , , , . [ ] ephor. frag. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , ; , , ; , , . [ ] frag. , , ed. müller. [ ] frag. - , - , ed. müller. [ ] frag. , ed. müller. [ ] "theog." , ; pind. "pyth." , _seqq._ [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , , . [ ] plut. "pelop." c. . [ ] pind. "olymp." , . [ ] vol. i. . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , . [ ] thac. , . [ ] vol. i. , . [ ] athenæus, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] boeckh. c. i. g. . [ ] hefter, "götterdienste auf rhodos," , ; welcker, "mythologie," , ; brandis, "munzwesen," s. . [ ] schol. pind. "pyth." , ; pausan. , , , ; steph. byz. [greek: membliaros]. [ ] boeckh. c. i. g. . [ ] herod. , ; steph. byz. [greek: mêlos]. [ ] steph. byz. [greek: Ôliaros]. [ ] strabo, pp. , , ; diod. , . [ ] vol. i. ; herod. , ; conze, "inseln des thrakischen meeres," _e.g._ s. . [ ] strabo, p. ; steph. byz. [greek: imbros]; vol. i. . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] herod. , ; pausan. , , ; , , . [ ] pausan. , , ; boeckh, "metrologie," s. . [ ] pausan. , , ; , , , . [ ] strabo, p. ; pausan. , , . [ ] [greek: athÊnaion s' g'], , and below, chap. xi. [ ] brandis, "hermes," , ff. i cannot agree in all points with the deductions of this extremely acute inquiry. [ ] "il." , ; , ; "odyss." , ; , . [ ] "odyss." , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] serv. ad "Æneid." , . [ ] hesych. [greek: ep' eurugun agôn]; plut. "thes." c. ; diod. , . [ ] apollodor. , , ; suidas, [greek: sardônios gelôs]. [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , - ; schol. callim. "hymn. in jovem," . [ ] istri frag. , ed. müller. [ ] istri frag. , ed. müller. [ ] müllenhoff, "deutsche alterthumskunde," i. . [ ] plato, "minos," pp. , , , ; "de. legg," _init._; aristot. "pol." , , , ; , , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; , - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; steph. byz. [greek: itanos]. [ ] pausan. , , . [ ] aristotle, in steph. byz. [greek: kythêra]. [ ] above, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] below, chap. . [ ] thuc. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] thuc. , . [ ] herod. , ; "il." , ; "odyss." , . [ ] euseb. "chron." , p. _seqq._ ed. schöne. even in diodorus, , , we find two minoses, an older and a younger. [ ] lenormant, "antiq. de la troade," p. . [ ] genesis x. - : chron. i. - . [ ] kiepert, "monatsberichte berl. akad." . [ ] ezek. xxvii. . [ ] thuc. vi. . [ ] diod. v. . [ ] ptolem. , , . [ ] _ai benim_; movers, "phoeniz." , , , . [ ] heracl. pont. frag. , ed. müller; gesen. "monum." p. ; olshausen, "rh. mus." , s. . [ ] thuc. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] "Æn." , . [ ] diod. , ; strabo, p. ; athenæus, p. ; aelian, "hist. an." , ; , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] steph. byz. [greek: solous]. sapphon. frag. , ed. bergk; it is possible that panormus on crete may be meant. [ ] thuc. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , , , ; , ; arist. "de mirab. ausc." c. ; pausan. , , . [ ] movers ("phoeniz." , ) assumes that iolaus may be identical with esmun (i. ). [ ] sallust, "jugurtha," , . [ ] movers, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] "de mirab. ausc." c. . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] arkal or archal may mean "fire of the all," "light of the all." [ ] etym. magn. [greek: gadeira]. [ ] diod. , , . [ ] on the meaning given in avienus ("ora marit") of abila as "high mountain," and calpa as "big-bellied jar," cf. müllenhoff, "deutsche alterthumsk," , . [ ] strabo, pp. - . justin ( , ) represents the tyrians as founding gades in consequence of a dream. in regard to the name cf. avien. "ora marit," - . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , . strabo (p. ) puts the first settlements of the phenicians in the midst of the libyan coast and at gades just after the trojan war, velleius ( , , , in combination with , , ), in the year b.c. cf. movers, _loc. cit._ s. , note . the greeks called both land and river tartessus. the pillars of the tyrian god "archaleus," are with them the pillars of their "heracles," which he sets up as marks of his campaigns. here, opposite the mouth of the tartessus, they place the island erythea, _i.e._ the red island on which the giant geryon, _i.e._ "the roarer," guards the red oxen of the sun: erythea is one of the islands near cadiz; müllenhoff, deutsche "alterthumsk:" , ff. [ ] sall. "jugurtha," c. . [ ] ezek. xxvii. , . [ ] in strabo, p. ; müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "de mirab. ausc." c. . [ ] in strabo, p. . [ ] aristoph. "ranae," . [ ] diod. , ; strabo, p. _seqq._ [ ] scylax, "peripl." c. . chapter iv. the tribes of israel. not far removed from the harbour-cities, whose ships discovered the land of silver, which carried the natural wealth of the west to the lands of the euphrates and tigris, and the nile, in order to exchange them for the productions of those countries, in part immediately upon the borders of the marts which united the east and the west, and side by side with them, dwelt the israelites on the heights and in the valleys which they had conquered, in very simple and original modes of life. even during the war against the ancient population of canaan, immediately after the first successes against the amorites, they had, as we have seen, dropped any common participation in the struggle, any unity under one leader. according to their numbers and bravery, and the resistance encountered, the various tribes had won larger or smaller territories, better or inferior districts. immigration and conquest did not lead among the israelites to a combination of their powers under the supremacy of one leader, but rather to separation into clans and cantons, which was also favoured by the nature of the country conquered, a district lying in unconnected parts, and possessing no central region adapted for governing the whole. thus, after the settlement, the life of the nation became divided into separate circles according to the position and character of the mountain canton which the particular tribe had obtained, and the fortune which it had experienced. even if there was an invasion of the enemy, the tribe attacked was left to defend itself as well as it could. it was only very rarely, and in times of great danger, that the nobles and elders of the whole land, and a great number of the men of war from all the tribes, were collected round the sacred ark at shiloh, at bethel, at mizpeh, or at gilgal for common counsel or common defence. but even when a resolution was passed by the nobles and elders and the people, individual tribes sometimes resisted, even by force of arms, the expressed will of the nation, or at least of a great part of the nobles and people, and the division of the tribes sometimes led even to open war. within the tribes also there was no fixed arrangement, no fixed means for preserving peace. the clans and families for the most part possessed separate valleys, glens, or heights. the heads of the oldest families were also the governors of these cantons, and composed the differences between the members of the clan, canton, or city by their decisions; while in other places bold and successful warriors at the head of voluntary bands made acquisitions, in which the descendants of the leader took the rank of elder and judge. eminent houses of this kind, together with the heads of families of ancient descent, formed the order of nobles and elders; "who hold the judge's staff in their hands, and ride on spotted asses with beautiful saddles, while the common people go afoot."[ ] if a tribe fell into distress and danger, the nobles and elders assembled and took counsel, while the people stood round, unless some man of distinction had already risen and summoned the tribe to follow him. for the people did not adhere exclusively to the chief of the oldest family in the canton; nobles and others within, and in special cases without, the tribe, who had obtained a prominent position by warlike actions, or by the wisdom of their decisions, whose position and power promised help, protection and the accomplishment of the sentence, were invited to remove strife and differences, unless the contending persons preferred to help themselves. only the man who could not help himself sought, as a rule, the decision of the elder or judge. the names of some of the men whose decision was sought in that time have been preserved in the tradition of the israelites. tholah of the tribe of issachar, jair of the land of gilead, ebzan of bethlehem in the tribe of judah, elon of the tribe of zebulun, and abdon of ephraim, are all mentioned as judges of note. of jair we are told that he had sons, who rode on asses, and possessed villages. ebzan is also said to have had sons and to have married daughters; while abdon had sons and grandsons, who rode on asses.[ ] on the heights and table-lands of the districts east of the jordan, in the land of gilead, were settled the tribes of reuben and gad and a part of the tribe of manasseh. at an early period they grew together, so that the name of the region sometimes represents the names of these tribes. here the pastoral life and breeding of cattle remained predominant, as in the less productive districts on the west of the jordan. but on the plains and in the valleys of the west the greater part of the settlers devoted themselves to the culture of the vine and agriculture. the walls of the ancient cities were at first used as a protection against the attacks of robbers, or raids of enemies; the inhabitants, afterwards as before, planted their fields and vineyards outside the gates.[ ] but the custom of dwelling together led to the beginnings of civic life, industrial skill, and common order. the trade of the phenicians, which touched the land of the hebrews here and there, and the more advanced culture of the cities of the coast, could not remain without influence on the hebrews. the religious feeling which separated the israelites from the canaanites was not more thoroughly effective than the community of blood and the contrast to the ancient population of the land in bringing about the combination and union of the israelites. the religious life was as much without organisation as the civic; on the contrary, as the israelites spread as settlers over a larger district, the unity and connection of religious worship which moses previously established again fell to the ground. it is true, the sacred ark remained at shiloh, five leagues to the north of bethel, under the sacred tent in the land of the tribe of ephraim. at this place a festival was held yearly in honour of jehovah, to which the israelites assembled to offer prayer and sacrifice. on other occasions also people went to shiloh to offer sacrifice.[ ] the priestly office in the sacred tent at the sacred ark remained with the descendants of aaron, in the family of phinehas, the son of eleazar, the eldest son of aaron (i. ). but with the settlement a number of other places of sacrifice had risen up beside the sanctuary at shiloh. on the heights and under the oaks at ramah in the land of benjamin, at mizpeh in the same district, as well as at mizpeh beyond jordan, where jacob and laban had parted in peace,[ ] at bethel on the borders of the land of ephraim and benjamin, where abraham sacrificed (between bethel and ai) and jacob received the name of israel;[ ] finally at gilgal on the east of jordan, where joshua lay encamped, and kept the passover, before he attacked jericho, jehovah was invoked. at these places also the firstlings of the fruits were offered; goats, rams, and bulls were offered, with or without the intervention of the priest, and inquiry made for the will of jehovah without priestly help or intervention. any one who set up an altar established a priest there, or hired a priest. for this purpose men were chosen who claimed to be of the race of moses and aaron, just as the service of the sacred ark at shiloh was in the hands of this family; but men of other origin and tribes were not excluded even from the priesthood at the ark.[ ] in such a want of any defined and influential position of the priesthood, in the want of any church organisation, it was only the superior personal power of the priests at shiloh which could protect the religious feeling and traditional custom against the influences of the new surroundings, and canaanitish rites. tradition, at any rate from the first third of the eleventh century b.c., had no good to tell of the morals of the priests at shiloh. to those who came to bring an offering the servant of the priest said, "give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not have it sodden but raw." if the person sacrificing replied, "we will burn only the fat, then take what you desire," the servant answered, "you must give it me now, and if you will not i shall take it by force." if the priest desired cooked flesh from the sacrifice, he sent his servant, who struck with his three-pronged fork into the cauldron, and what he brought out was the priest's. the religious views of the israelites, not sufficiently represented among themselves, were the more exposed to the influence of the rites of the canaanites, as these rites belonged to tribes of kindred nature and character. in this way it came about that the canaanitish gods baal and astarte were worshipped beside jehovah, the god of israel, and that in one or two places the old worship was perhaps entirely driven out by these new gods. but even where this did not take place, it was owing to the example and impulse of the syrian modes of worship that images were here and there set up on the altars of jehovah. when the conception of the divine nature in the spirit of a nation passes beyond the first undefined feeling and intimation,--when it receives a plainer and more expressive shape in the minds of men, and the first steps of artistic and technical skill, or the example of neighbours, are coincident with this advance,--the general result is that men desire to see the ruling powers fixed in distinct forms, then the gods are presented in a realistic manner in visible forms and images. and thus it was among the israelites. the command of moses given in opposition to the images of egypt (i. ) was long since forgotten. michah, a man of the tribe of ephraim, caused a goldsmith to make a carved and molten image of jehovah of shekels of silver; and set it up in a temple on mount ephraim, establishing as a priest a levite, the "descendant of moses." when a part of dan marched northwards in order to win for themselves abodes there, which they could not conquer from the philistines, the men of dan carried off this image along with the levite and set it up in the city of laish (dan), which they took from the sidonians (i. ), and the "grandson of moses" and his descendants continued to be priests before this image.[ ] at nob also there was a gilded image of jehovah, and many had teraphim, or images of gods in the form of men, in their houses.[ ] nothing important was undertaken before inquiry was made of the will of jehovah. the inquiry was made as a rule by casting lots before the sacred tabernacle at shiloh, before the altars and images of jehovah,[ ] or by questioning the priests and soothsayers. counsel was also taken of these if a cow had gone astray, and they received in return bread or a piece of money. of the feuds which the tribes of israel carried on at this time, some have remained in remembrance.[ ] the concubine of a levite, so we are told in the book of judges, who dwelt on mount ephraim, ran away from her husband; she went back to her father, to bethlehem in judah. her husband rose and followed her, pacified her, and then set out on his return. the first evening they reached the city of the jebusites, but the levite would not pass the night among the canaanites (i. ), and turned aside to gibeah, a place in the tribe of benjamin. here no one received the travellers; they were compelled to remain in the street till an old man came home late in the evening from his work in the field. when he heard that the traveller was from ephraim he received him into his house, for he was himself an ephraimite, gave fodder to the asses of the levite and his concubine, and placed his attendant with his own servants. then they washed their feet, and drank, and their hearts were merry. but the men of gibeah collected round the house in the evening, pressed on the door, and demanded that the stranger from ephraim should be given up to them; they wished to destroy him. in order to save himself the priest gave up to them his concubine, that they might satisfy their passions on her. the men of gibeah abused her the whole night through, so that next morning she lay dead upon the threshold. the levite went with the corpse to his home at ephraim, cut it into twelve pieces with a knife, and sent a piece to each tribe. every one who saw it said, "the like was never heard since israel came out of egypt." and the chiefs of the nation assembled and pronounced a curse upon him who did not come to mizpah (in the land of benjamin) that he should be put to death. then all the tribes assembled at mizpah, it is said about , men;[ ] only from jabesh in gilead and the tribe of benjamin no one came. the levite told what had happened to him, and the tribes sent messengers to benjamin, to bring the men of gibeah. but the children of benjamin refused, and assembled their men of war, more than , in number, and took up arms. then the people rose up and said, "cursed be he who gives a wife to benjamin."[ ] every tenth man was sent back for supplies; the rest marched out against benjamin. but "benjamin was a ravening wolf, who ate up the spoil at morning and divided the booty in the evening;" they were mighty archers, and could throw with the left hand as well as the right.[ ] they fought twice at gibeah with success against their countrymen. not till the third contest did the israelites gain the victory, and then only by an ambuscade and counterfeit flight. after this overthrow the whole tribe is said to have been massacred, the flocks and herds destroyed, and the cities burnt. only men, as we are told, escaped to the rock rimmon on the dead sea. when the community again assembled at bethel the people were troubled that a tribe should be extirpated and wanting in israel; so they caused peace and a safe return to be proclaimed to the remainder of benjamin. and when , men were sent out against jabesh to punish the city because none of their inhabitants came to the gathering at mizpeh, they were ordered to spare the maidens of jabesh. in obedience to this command they brought maidens back from jabesh, and these were given to the benjamites. but as this number was insufficient the benjamites were allowed, when the yearly festival was held at shiloh (p. ), and the daughters of shiloh came out to dance before the city, to rush out from the vineyards and carry off wives for themselves. thus does tradition explain the non-execution of the decree that no israelite should give his daughter to wife to a man of benjamin, and the rescue of the tribe of benjamin from destruction.[ ] without unity and connection in their political and religious life, amid the quarrels and feuds of the tribes, families and individuals, when every one helped and avenged himself, and violence and cruelty abounded,--in the lawless condition when "every one in israel did what was right in his own eyes,"--the israelites were in danger of becoming the prey of every external foe, and it was a question whether they could long maintain the land they had won. it was fortunate that there was no united monarchy at the head either of the philistines or the phenicians, that the latter were intent on other matters, as their colonies in the mediterranean, while the cities of the philistines, though they acquired a closer combination as early as the eleventh century b.c., or even earlier (i. ), did not, at least at first, go out to make foreign conquests. but it was unavoidable that the old population, especially in the north, where they remained in the greatest numbers amongst the israelites, should again rise and find strong points of support in the canaanite princes of hazor and damascus; that the moabites who lay to the east of the dead sea, the ammonites, the neighbours of the land of gilead, that the wandering tribes of the syrian desert should feel themselves tempted to invade israel, to carry off the flocks and plunder the harvests and, if they found no vigorous resistance, to take up a permanent settlement in the country. without the protection of natural borders, without combination and guidance, as they were, the israelites could only succeed in resisting such attacks when in the time of danger a skilful and brave warrior was found, who was able to rouse his own tribe, and perhaps one or two of the neighbouring tribes, to a vigorous resistance, or to liberation if the enemy was already in the land. it is the deeds of such heroes, and almost these alone, which remained in the memory of the israelites from the first two centuries following their settlement; and these narratives, in part fabulous, must represent the history of israel for this period. eglon, king of moab, defeated the israelites, passed over the jordan, took jericho, and here established himself. with gilead the tribe of benjamin, which dwelt nearest to jericho, at first must have felt with especial weight the oppression of moab. for years the israelites are said to have served eglon. then ehud, of the tribe of benjamin, a reputed great grandson of the youngest son of jacob, the father of the benjamites, came with others to jericho to bring tribute. when the tax had been delivered ehud desired to speak privately with the king. permission was given, and ehud went with a two-edged sword in his hand, under his garment, to the king, who sat alone in the cool upper chamber. ehud spoke: "i have a message from god to thee;" and when eglon rose to receive the message ehud smote him with the sword in the belly, "so that even the haft went in, and the fat closed over the blade, for the king of moab was a very fat man. but ehud went down to the court, and closed the door behind him." when the servants found the door closed they thought that the king had covered his feet for sleep. at last they took the key and found the king dead on the floor. but ehud blew the trumpet on mount ephraim, assembled a host, seized the fords of jordan, and slew about , moabites, and the moabites retired into their old possessions.[ ] another narrative tells of the fortunes of the tribes of naphtali, zebulun, and issachar, which were settled in the north, under mount hermon. jabin, king of hazor, had chariots of iron, and sisera his captain was a mighty warrior, and for years they oppressed the israelites.[ ] deborah, the wife of lapidoth, of the tribe of issachar, dwelt in the land of benjamin, between bethel and ramah, under the palm-tree; she could announce the will of jehovah, and the people came to her to obtain counsel and judgment. at her command barak, the son of abinoam, assembled the men of the tribes of zebulun and naphtali; assistance also came from issachar, manasseh, ephraim and benjamin. sisera went forth with chariots and a great host and the israelites retired before him to the south of the brook kishon. sisera crossed the brook and came upon the israelites in the valley of megiddo; he was defeated, leapt from his chariot, and fled on foot and came unto the tent of heber the kenite. jael, heber's wife, met him and said, "turn in, my lord, to me; fear not." when in his thirst he asked for water, she opened the bottle of milk and allowed him to drink, and when he lay down to rest she covered him with the carpet. being wearied, he sank into a deep sleep. then jael softly took the nail of the tent and a hammer in her hand, and smote the nail through his temples so that it passed into the earth. when barak, who pursued the fugitive, came, jael said, "i will show thee the man whom thou seekest," and led him into the tent where sisera lay dead on the ground. israel's song of victory is as follows: "listen, ye kings; give ear, ye princes; i will sing to jehovah, i will play on the harp of jehovah, the king of israel. there were no princes in israel till i, deborah, arose a mother in israel. arise, barak; bring forth thy captives, thou son of abinoam. shout, ye that ride on she-asses, and ye that sit upon carpets, and ye that go on foot, and let the people come down into the plain, to the gates of the cities. then i said, go down, o people of jehovah, against the strong; a small people against the mighty. from ephraim they came and from benjamin, from machir (_i.e._ from the manassites on the east of the lake of gennesareth) the rulers came, and the chiefs of issachar were with deborah, and zebulun is a people which perilled his life to the death, and naphtali on the heights of the field. on the streams of reuben there was taking of counsel, but why didst thou sit still among the herds to hear the pipe of the herdsmen? gilead also remained beyond jordan, and asher abode on the shore of the sea in his valleys, and dan on his heights. the kings came, they fought at the water of megiddo; they gained no booty of silver. issachar, the support of barak, threw himself in the valley at his heels. the brook kishon washed away the enemy: a brook of battles is the brook kishon. go forth, my soul, upon the strong. blessed above women shall jael be, above women in the tent. he asked for water, she gave him milk; she brought him cream in a lordly dish. she put forth her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer, and she smote sisera, she shattered and pierced his temples. between her feet he lay shattered. the mother of sisera looked from her window; she called through the lattice: 'why linger his chariots in returning? why delay the wheels of his chariot?' her wise maidens answered her; nay, she answered herself: 'will they not find spoil and divide it; one or two maidens to each, spoil of broidered robes for sisera?' so must all thine enemies perish, o jehovah, but may those who love him be as the sun going forth in his strength." whether this song was composed by deborah, or by some other person in her name, it is certainly an ancient song of victory and contemporary with the events it celebrates. the tribes of israel also which were settled in the land of gilead remembered with gratitude a mighty warrior who had once delivered them from grievous oppression. the ammonites, the eastern neighbours of the land of gilead, oppressed "the sons of israel who dwelt beyond jordan" for years, and marched over jordan against judah, benjamin and the house of ephraim. then the elders of the land of gilead bethought them of jephthah (jephthah means "freed from the yoke"), to whom they had formerly refused the inheritance of his father because he was not the son of the lawful wife, but of a courtezan. he had retired into the gorges of the mountain and collected round him a band of robbers, and done deeds of bravery. to him the elders went; he was to be their leader in fighting against the sons of ammon. jephthah said, "have ye not driven me out of the house of my father? now that ye are in distress ye come to me." still he followed their invitation, and the people of gilead gathered round him at mizpeh and made him their chief and leader. "if i return in triumph from the sons of ammon," such was jephthah's vow, "the first that meets me at the door of my house shall be dedicated to jehovah, and i will sacrifice it as a burnt-offering." when he had asked the tribe of ephraim for assistance in vain he set out against the ammonites with the warriors of the tribes of reuben, gad and manasseh, and overcame them in a great battle on the river arnon. the ephraimites made it a reproach against jephthah that he had fought against the ammonites without them; they crossed the jordan in arms. but jephthah said, "i was in straits, and my people with me; i called to you, but ye aided me not." he assembled the men of gilead, defeated the ephraimites, and came to the fords of the jordan before the fugitives, so that more than , men of ephraim are said to have been slain. when he returned to his home at mizpeh his only daughter came to meet him joyfully, with her maidens and timbrels and dancing. jephthah tore his garments and cried, "my daughter, thou hast brought me very low; i have opened my mouth to jehovah and cannot take it back." "my father," she answered, "if thou hast opened thy mouth to jehovah, do to me as thou hast spoken, for jehovah has given thee vengeance on thine enemies, the ammonites. but first let me go with my companions to the mountains, and there for two months bewail my virginity." this was done, and on her return jephthah did to her according to his vow. and it was a custom in israel for the maidens to lament the daughter of jephthah for four days in the year. after this jephthah is said to have been judge for six years longer beyond jordan, _i.e._ to have maintained the peace in these districts. grievous calamity came upon israel in this period from a migratory people of the syrian desert, from the incursions of the midians, who, like the moabites and ammonites, are designated in genesis as a nation kindred to the israelites, with whom moses was said to have entered into close relations (i. , ). now the midianites with other tribes of the desert attacked israel in constant predatory incursions. "like locusts in multitude," we are told, "the enemy came with their flocks and tents; there was no end of them and their camels. when israel had sowed the sons of the east came up and destroyed the increase of the land as far as gaza, and left no sustenance remaining, no sheep, oxen and asses. and the sons of israel were compelled to hide themselves in ravines, and caves, and mountain fortresses."[ ] for seven years israel is said to have been desolated in this manner. beside the tribes of issachar and zebulun, between mount tabor and the kishon, dwelt a part of the tribe of manasseh. the family of abiezer, belonging to this tribe, possessed ophra. in an incursion of the midianites the sons of joash, a man of this family, were slain;[ ] only gideon, the youngest, remained. when the midianites came again, after their wont, at the time of harvest, and encamped on the plain of jezreel, and gideon was beating wheat in the vat of the wine-press in order to save the corn from the midianites, jehovah aroused him. he gathered the men of his family around him, in number.[ ] when jehovah had given him a favourable sign, and he had reconnoitred the camp of the midianites, together with his armour-bearer phurah, he determined to attack them in the night. he divided his troop into companies containing a hundred men; each took a trumpet and a lighted torch, which was concealed in an earthen pitcher. these companies were to approach the camp of the midianites from three sides, and when gideon blew the trumpet and disclosed his torch they were all to do the same. immediately after the second night-watch, when the midianites had just changed the guards, gideon gave the signal. all broke their pitchers, blew their trumpets, and cried, "the sword for jehovah and gideon!" startled, terrified, and imagining that they were attacked by mighty hosts, the midianites fled. then the men of manasseh, asher, zebulun and naphtali arose, and gideon hastily sent messengers to the ephraimites that they should seize the fords of jordan before the midianites. the ephraimites assembled and took two princes of the midianites, oreb (raven) and zeeb (wolf). the ephraimites strove with gideon that he had not summoned them sooner. gideon replied modestly, "is not the gleaning of the grapes of ephraim better than the vintage of abiezer? did not jehovah give the princes of midian into your hand? could i do what ye have done?" he pursued the midianites over the jordan in order to get into his power their princes zebah and zalmunna, who had previously slain his brothers. when he passed the river at succoth he asked the men of succoth to give bread to his wearied soldiers. but the elders feared the vengeance of the midianites, and said, "are zebah and zalmunna already in thine hand, that we should give bread to thy men?" gideon replied in anger, "if jehovah gives them into my hand i will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers." the inhabitants of penuel on the jabbok also, to which gideon marched, refused to feed their countrymen; like those of succoth, they feared the midianites. gideon led his army by the way of the dwellers in tents far away to karkor. here he defeated and scattered the , midianites who had escaped, and captured the two princes. then he turned back to succoth and said to the elders, "see, here are zebah and zalmunna, for whom ye mocked me." he caused them to be seized, seventy-seven in number, and tore them to death with thorns and briers. the tower of penuel he destroyed, and caused the inhabitants of the place to be slain. to the captured princes he said, "what manner of men were they whom ye once slew at tabor?" and they answered, "as thou art, they looked like the sons of a king." "they were my brethren, the sons of my mother," gideon answered. "as jehovah liveth, if ye had saved them alive i would not slay you. stand up," he called to his first-born son jether, "and slay them." but the youth feared and drew not his sword, for he was yet young. "slay us thyself," said the prisoners, "for as the man is, so is his strength." this was done. when the booty was divided gideon claimed as his share the golden ear-rings of the slain midianites. they were collected in gideon's mantle, and the weight reached shekels of gold, beside the purple raiment of the dead kings, and the moons and chains on the necks of the camels. gideon had gained a brilliant victory; no more is heard of the raids of the midianites. out of the booty he set up a gilded image (ephod) at ophra.[ ] he overthrew the altar of baal and the image of astarte in his city; and this, as is expressly stated, in the night (from which we must conclude that the inhabitants of ophra were attached to this worship); and in the place of it he set up an altar to jehovah on the height, and in the city another altar, which he called "jehovah, peace." "unto this day it is still in ophra." after the liberation of the land, which was owing to him, gideon held the first place in israel. we are told that the crown had been offered to him and that he refused it.[ ] but if gideon left sons of his body by many wives, if we find that his influence descended to his sons, he must have held an almost royal position, in which a harem was not wanting. he died, as it seems, in a good old age, and was buried in the grave of his fathers (after b.c.[ ]). the same need of protection which preserved gideon in power till his death had induced some cities to form a league, after the pattern of the cities of the philistines, for mutual support and security. shechem, the old metropolis of the tribe of ephraim, was the chief city of this league. here on the citadel at shechem the united cities had built a temple to baal berith, _i.e._ to baal of the league, and established a fund for the league in the treasury of this temple. one of the sons of gideon, the child of a woman of shechem, by name abimelech, conceived the plan of establishing a monarchy in israel by availing himself of gideon's name and memory, the desire for order and protection from which the league had arisen, and the resources of the cities. at first he sought to induce the cities to make him their chief. supported by them, he sought to remove his brothers and to take the monarchy into his own hands as the only heir of gideon. a skilful warrior like abimelech, who carried with him the fame and influence of a great father, must have been welcome to the cities as a leader and chief in such wild times. abimelech spoke to the men of shechem: "consider that i am your bone and your flesh; which is better, that men rule over you or i only?" then the citizens of shechem and the inhabitants of the citadel assembled under the oak of shechem and made abimelech their king, and gave him shekels of silver from the temple of baal berith, "that he might be able to pay people to serve him." with these and the men of shechem who followed him he marched and slew all his brethren at ophra in his father's house (one only, jotham, escaped him), and israel obeyed him. abimelech seemed to have reached his object. perhaps he might have maintained the throne thus won by blood had he not, three years afterwards, quarrelled with the cities which helped him to power. the cities rose against him. abimelech with his forces went against the chief city, shechem. the city was taken and destroyed, the inhabitants massacred. about men and women fled for refuge into the temple of baal berith in the citadel; abimelech caused them to be burned along with the temple. then he turned from shechem to thebez, some miles to the north. when he stormed the city the inhabitants fled into the strong tower, closed it, and went up on the roof of the tower. abimelech pressed on to the door of the tower to set it on fire, when a woman threw a stone down from above which fell on abimelech and broke his skull. then the king called to his armour-bearer, "draw thy sword and slay me, that it may not be said, a woman slew him." the youthful monarchy was wrecked on this quarrel of the citizens with the new king. after this time eli the priest at the sacred tabernacle, a descendant of ithamar, the youngest son of aaron,[ ] is said to have been in honour among the israelites. not only was he the priest of the national shrine, but counsel and judgment were also sought from him. but eli's sons, hophni and phinehas; did evil, and lay with the women who came to the sacred tabernacle to offer prayer and sacrifice.[ ] footnotes: [ ] judges v. , ; x. . [ ] judges x. - ; xii. - . [ ] _e.g._ judges ix. . [ ] judges xxi. ; sam. i. ; ii. . [ ] judges xx. ; vol. i. . [ ] sam. x. ; vol. i. , . [ ] judges xvii. , ; xviii. ; sam. vii. ; , vi. . [ ] judges xvii. ff. [ ] sam. xix. - ; xxi. ; gen. xxxi. ; judges xvii. ; xviii. , ; kings xxiii. . [ ] _e.g._ judges vi. - ; xviii. ; xx. ff. the priests wore a pocket with lots (apparently small stones) on the breast. the urim and thummim of the high priest was originally nothing but these lots. [ ] on the composition of the book of judges, cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," ff. [ ] in david's time only , are given: below, chap. . [ ] judges xx. ; xxi. - . [ ] gen. xlix. ; judges xx. ; chron. viii. ; xii. ; chron. xiv. . [ ] these events belong, according to judges xx. ff., to the period immediately after the conquest: as a fact, the war against benjamin is not to be placed long after this, _i.e._ about b.c. cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] judges iii. ff. [ ] judges iv., v. [ ] judges vi. - . [ ] judges viii. . [ ] the observation that gideon was the least in the house of his father, and his family the weakest in manasseh (judges vi. ), is due no doubt to the tendency of the ephraimitic text to show how strong jehovah is even in the weak. from similar motives it is said that gideon himself reduced his army to men (judges vii. - ). in the presence of the ephraimites gideon speaks only of the family of abiezer. [ ] what is meant in judges viii. by an ephod is not clear. the words which follow in the verse--that all israel went whoring after gideon--are obviously an addition of the prophetic revision. [ ] judges viii. . [ ] gideon's date can only be fixed very indefinitely. he and the generations after him must have belonged to the second half of the twelfth century b.c. [ ] joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] sam. ii. - . chapter v. the establishment of the monarchy in israel. more than a century and a half had passed since the israelites had won their land in canaan. the greater part of the tribes, beside the breeding of cattle, were occupied with the cultivation of vines and figs, and regular agriculture; the minority had become accustomed to life in settled cities, and the earliest stages of industry; but the unity of the nation was lost, and in the place of the religious fervour which once accompanied the exodus from egypt, the rites of the syrian deities had forced their way in alongside of the worship of jehovah. the division and disorganisation of the nation had exposed the israelites to the attacks of their neighbours; the attempt of abimelech to establish a monarchy in connection with the cities had failed; the anarchy still continued. worse dangers still might be expected in the future. the forces of the moabites, midianites, and ammonites were not superior to that of the israelites, the attacks of the tribes of the desert were of a transitory nature; but what if the cities of the coast, superior in civilisation, art, and combined power, should find it convenient when the affairs of israel were in this position to extend their borders to the interior, and israel should be gradually subjugated from the coast? from the phenicians there was nothing to fear: navigation and trade entirely occupied them; from the beginning of the eleventh century their ships devoted their attention to discoveries in the atlantic ocean, beyond the straits of gibraltar (p. ). the case was different with the warlike cities of the philistines. if the philistines were behind the israelites in the extent of their territory and dominion, their forces were held together and well organised by means of the confederation of the cities. bounded to the west by the sea, and to the south by the desert, the only path open to them for extending their power was in the direction of the hebrews. for a long time they had been content to put a limit upon the extension of the tribes of judah and dan, but in the first half of the eleventh century b.c. the condition of israel appeared to the federation of the philistines sufficiently inviting to induce them to pass from defence to attack. their blows fell first on judah, simeon, and the part of dan which had remained in the south on the borders of the philistines; tribes which had hitherto been exempted from attack, whose territory had been protected by the deserts on the south, and the dead sea on the east. but now they were attacked from the direction of the sea. the struggle with the philistines was not a matter of rapine and plunder, but of freedom and independence. the aim of the five princes of the philistines (i. ) was directed towards the extension of their own borders and their own dominion, and the war against the israelites was soon carried on with vigour. the tribes of judah and dan were reduced to submission.[ ] if the israelites did not succeed in uniting their forces, if they could not repair what was neglected at the conquest, and had since been attempted in vain, the suppression of their independence, their religious and national life, appeared certain. the question was whether the nation of israel, accustomed to an independent and defiant life in small communities, and corrupted by it, possessed sufficient wisdom and devotion to solve the difficult task now laid upon it. it was a melancholy time for israel when the philistines ruled over the south of the land. later generations found some comfort for this national disgrace in the narratives of the strong and courageous samson, the son of manoah, of the tribe of dan, whose deeds were placed by tradition in this period. he had done the philistines much mischief, and slain many of them; even when his foolish love for a philistine maiden finally brought him to ruin, he slew more philistines at his death than in his life--"about men and women."[ ] whatever be the truth about these deeds, no individual effort could avail to save israel when the philistines seriously set themselves to conquer the northern tribes, unless the nation roused itself and combined all its forces under one definite head. the philistines invaded the land of ephraim with a mighty army, and forced their way beyond it northwards as far as aphek, two leagues to the south of tabor. at tabor the israelites assembled and attempted to check the philistines, but they failed; israelites were slain. then the elders of israel, in order to encourage the people, caused the ark of jehovah to be brought from shiloh into the camp. eli, the priest at the sacred tabernacle, was of the age of years. hophni and phinehas, his sons, accompanied the sacred ark, which was welcomed by the army with shouts of joy. in painful expectation eli sat at the gate of shiloh and awaited the result. then a man of the tribe of benjamin came in haste, with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head, and said, "israel is fled before the philistines, thy sons are dead, and the ark of god is lost." eli fell backwards from his seat, broke his neck, and died. about , men are said to have fallen in the battle (about b.c.).[ ] at the sacred tabernacle at shiloh samuel the son of elkanah had served under eli. elkanah was an ephraimite; he dwelt at ramah (ramathaim, and hence among the greeks arimathia[ ]). samuel was born to him late in life, and, in gratitude that at last a son was given to her, his mother had dedicated him to jehovah, and given him to eli to serve in the sanctuary. thus even as a boy samuel waited at the sacrifices in a linen tunic, and performed the sacred rites. he grew up in the fear of jehovah and became a seer, who saw what was hidden, a soothsayer, whom the people consulted in distress of any kind, and at the same time he announced the will of jehovah, for jehovah had called him, and permitted him to see visions, "so that he knew how to speak the word of god, which was rare in those days," and "jehovah was with him and let none of samuel's words fall to the ground."[ ] after the crushing defeat at aphek it devolved on samuel to perform the duties of high priest. he summoned the people to mizpeh in the tribe of benjamin and prayed for israel. large libations of water were poured to jehovah. when the philistines advanced samuel sacrificed a sucking lamb (no doubt as a sin-offering), and burned it. "then on that day jehovah thundered mightily out of heaven over the philistines, and confounded them so that they were defeated." this victory remained without lasting results. on the contrary, the slavery of the israelites to the philistines became more extensive and more severe. in order to bring the northern tribes into the same subjection as the tribes of dan, judah, and simeon, the philistines established fortified camps at michmash and geba (gibeah) in the tribe of benjamin, as a centre from which to hold this and the northern tribes in check. the men of the tribes of judah and simeon had to take the field against their own countrymen. these arrangements soon obtained their object. all israel on this side of the jordan was reduced to subjection. in order to make a rebellion impossible, the israelites were deprived of their arms; indeed, the philistines were not content that they should give up the arms in their possession, they even removed the smiths from the land, that no one might provide a sword or javelin for the hebrews. the oppression of this dominion pressed so heavily and with such shame on the israelites that the books of samuel themselves tell us, if the plough-shares, bills, and mattocks became dull, or the forks were bent, the children of israel had to go down into the cities of the philistines in order to have their implements mended and sharpened.[ ] at this period samuel's activity must have been limited to leading back the hearts of the israelites to the god who brought them out of egypt; he must have striven to fill them with the faith with which he was himself penetrated, and the distress of the time would contribute to gain acceptance for his teaching and his prescripts. the people sought his word and decision; he is said to have given judgment at bethel, gilgal, and mizpeh. he gathered scholars and disciples round him, who praised jehovah to the sound of harp and lute, flute and drum, who in violent agitation and divine excitement awaited his visions, and "were changed into other men."[ ] from the position which tradition allots to samuel, there can be no doubt that he brought the belief in and worship of the old god into renewed life, and caused them to sink deeper into the hearts of the israelites. the oppression of his people by the philistines he could not turn away, though he cherished a lively hope in the help of jehovah. the tribes on the east of the jordan remained free from the dominion of the philistines; yet for them also servitude and destruction was near at hand. the ammonites were not inclined to let slip so favourable an opportunity. as the land on the west of the jordan was subject to the philistines, the tribes on the east would prove an easy prey. the ammonites encamped before jabesh in gilead, and the inhabitants were ready to submit. but nahash, the king of the ammonites, as we are told, would only accept their submission on condition that every man in jabesh put out his right eye. then the elders of jabesh sent messengers across the jordan and earnestly besought their countrymen for help. the tribe of benjamin had to feel most heavily, no doubt, the oppression of the philistines. in their territory lay the fortified camps of the enemy. here, at gibeah, dwelt a man of the race of matri, saul the son of kish, the grandson of abiel. kish was a man of substance and influence; his son saul was a courageous man, of remarkable stature, "higher by a head than the rest of the nation." he was in the full strength of his years, and surrounded by valiant sons: jonathan, melchishua, abinadab, and ishbosheth. one day, "just as he was returning home from the field behind his oxen," he heard the announcement which the messengers of jabesh brought. himself under the enemy's yoke, he felt the more deeply what threatened them. his heart was fired at the shame and ruin of his people. regardless of the philistines, he formed a bold resolution; assistance must be given to those most in need. he cut two oxen in pieces, sent the pieces round the tribes,[ ] and raised the cry, "whoso comes not after saul, so shall it be done to his oxen." the troop which gathered round him out of compassion for the besieged in jabesh, and in obedience to his summons, saul divided into three companies. with these he succeeded in surprising the camp of the ammonites about the morning watch; he dispersed the hostile army and set jabesh free. whatever violence and cruelty had been exercised since the settlement of the israelites in canaan, however many the feuds and severe the vengeance taken, however great the distress and the oppression, the nation, amid all the anarchy and freedom so helpless against an enemy, still preserved a healthy and simple feeling and vigorous power. and at this crisis the israelites were not found wanting; saul's bold resolution, the success in setting free the city in her sore distress, the victory thus won, the first joy and hope after so long a period of shame, gave the people the expectation of having found in him the man who was able to set them free from the dominion of the philistines also, and restore independence, and law, and peace. when the thank-offering for the unexpected victory, for the liberation of the land of gilgal, was offered at gilgal on the jordan, as far as possible from the camp of the philistines, "all the people went to gilgal, and there made saul king before jehovah, and saul and all the men of israel rejoiced greatly" ( b.c.). the heavy misfortunes which the land had experienced for a long time, the severe oppression of the dominion of the philistines, had at length taught the majority that rescue could only come by a close connection and union of the powers of the tribes, and an established authority supreme over all. to check anarchy from within and oppression from without required a vigorous hand, a ruling will, and a recognised power. what the people could do to put an end to the disorganisation was now done, they had placed a man at the head whom they might expect to be a brave leader and resolute guide. the israelites had used their sovereignty to give themselves a master, and might hope with confidence that by this step they had laid the foundations of a happier future which they might certainly greet with joy.[ ] immediately after his election on the jordan, saul was firmly resolved to take up arms against the philistines for the liberation of the land. he turned upon their camp in the district of his own tribe. while he lay opposite the fortifications at michmash, and thus held the garrison fast, his son jonathan succeeded in conquering the detachment of the philistines stationed at geba. but the princes of the philistines had no mind to look on at the union of israel. they assembled, as we are told, an army of chariots, cavalry, and foot soldiers beyond number; with these the tribes of judah and simeon were compelled to take the field against their brethren.[ ] whether the numbers are correct or incorrect, the armament of the philistines was sufficient to cause the courage of the israelites to sink. saul summoned the israelites to the jordan, to gilgal, where he had been raised to be their chief. but in vain he caused the trumpets to be blown and the people to be summoned. the israelites crept into the caves and clefts of the rock, and thorn-bushes, into the towers and the cisterns, and fled beyond jordan to find refuge in the land of gilead. only the king and his brave son jonathan did not quail before the numbers or gallantry of the enemies, though only a small troop--it is said about men--gathered round saul. the great army of the philistines had first marched to the fortified camp at michmash, and from this point, after leaving a garrison behind, in which were the israelites of judah and simeon, it separated into three divisions, in order to march through israel in all directions and hold the country in subjection. one column marched to the west in the direction of beth-horon, the second to the north towards ophra, the third to the east towards the valley of zeboim.[ ] this division made it possible for saul to attack. he turned upon that part of the army which was weakest and most insecure, the garrison at michmash, and made an unexpected attack on the fortification. jonathan ascended an eminence in the rear, while saul attacked in the van. in the tumult of the attack the hebrews in the camp of the philistines joined the side of their countrymen, and saul gained the fortification. the philistines fled. the king knew what was at stake and strove to push the victory thus gained to the utmost.[ ] without resting, he urged his men to the pursuit of the fugitives. that none of his troop might halt or stray in order to take food, he said, "cursed is the man who eats bread till the evening, till i have taken vengeance on mine enemies." jonathan had not heard the command of his father, and as the pursuers passed through a wood in which wild honey lay scattered he ate a little of the honeycomb. for this he should have been put to death, because he was dedicated to jehovah (i. ). but the warriors were milder than their customs. "shall jonathan die," cried the soldiers, "who has won this great victory in israel? that be far from us: as jehovah liveth, not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground, for he has wrought with god this day;" "and the people rescued jonathan that he died not."[ ] this success encouraged the israelites to come forth from their hiding-places and gather round their king. but only a part of the hostile army was defeated, and the philistines were not so easily to be deprived of the sovereignty over israel. "and the strife was hot against the philistines so long as saul lived," and "king saul was brave and delivered israel from the hand of the robbers," is the older of the two statements preserved in the books of samuel. saul had rendered the service which was expected by the israelites when they elevated him: he had saved his nation from the deepest distress, from the brink of the most certain destruction. without him the tribes beyond the jordan would have succumbed to the ammonites and moabites, and those on this side of the river would at length have become obedient subjects of the philistines. he found on his accession a disarmed, discouraged nation. by his own example he knew how to restore to them courage and self-confidence, and educate them into a nation familiar with war and skilled in it. the old military virtues of the tribe of benjamin (p. ) found in saul their full expression and had a most beneficial result for israel. the close community in which from old time the small tribe of benjamin had been with the large tribe of ephraim, by the side of which it had settled, was an advantage to saul.[ ] the strong position which he gained by the recognition of these two tribes could not but have an effect on the others, and contribute with the importance of his achievements and the splendour of their results to gain firmness and respect for the young monarchy, and win obedience for his commands. in the ceaseless battles which he had to carry on he was mainly supported by his eldest son jonathan, who stood beside him as a faithful brother in arms, and his cousin abner, the son of ner his father's brother, whom he made his chief captain. "and wherever saul saw a mighty man and a brave he took him to himself."[ ] thus he formed around him a school of brave warriors. he appears to have kept warriors under arms in the district of benjamin, and this formed the centre for the levy of the people.[ ] but the israelites had not merely to thank the king they had set up for the recovery and vigorous defence of their independence and their territory; he was also a zealous servant of jehovah. he offered sacrifice to him, built altars, and inquired of him by his priests, who accompanied him even on his campaigns.[ ] he observed strictly the sacred customs; even after the battle the exhausted soldiers were not allowed to eat meat with blood in it. he was prepared to allow even his dearest son, whose life he had unconsciously devoted, to be put to death. he removed all magicians and wizards out of the land with great severity.[ ] how earnestly he took up the national and religious opposition to the canaanites is clear from his conduct to the hivites of gibeon, chephirah, beeroth, and kirjath-jearim, who had once made a league with joshua, and in consequence had been allowed to remain among the israelites (i. ). "saul sought to slay them in his zeal for israel," and the gibeonites afterwards maintained that saul had sought to annihilate them, and his purpose was that they should be destroyed and exist no more in all the land of israel.[ ] the ark of the covenant, which had fallen into the hands of the philistines at the battle of aphek, was brought back to israel in his reign. the possession of it, so the hebrews said, had brought no good to the philistines. they had set it up as a trophy of victory in the temple of dagon at ashdod. but the image of the god had fallen to pieces, and only the fish-tail was left standing (i. ); the people of ashdod had been attacked with boils, and their crops destroyed by mice. the same occurred at gath, when the ark was brought there, and, in consequence, the city of ekron had refused to accept it. then the philistines had placed the ark upon a wagon, and allowed the cows before it to draw it whither they would. they drew it to beth-shemesh in the tribe of judah. but when the people of beth-shemesh looked on the ark a grievous mortality began among them, till the men of kirjath-jearim (not far from beth-shemesh) took away the ark, and abinadab set it up in a house on a hill in his field, and established his own son eleazar as guardian and priest (about b.c.[ ]). the books of the chronicles mention the gifts which saul dedicated to the national sanctuary.[ ] as king of israel, saul remained true to the simplicity of his earlier life. of splendour, courts, ceremonial, dignitaries, and harem we hear nothing. if not in the field he remained on his farm at gibeah, with his wife ahinoam,[ ] his four sons, and his two daughters. abner and other approved comrades in arms ate at his table. his elder daughter merab he married to adriel the son of barzillai. michal, the younger, he gave to a youthful warrior, david the son of jesse, who had distinguished himself in the war against the philistines, whom he had made his armour-bearer and companion of his table, entrusting him at the same time with the command of men of the standing army.[ ] "what am i, what is the life and the house of my father in israel, that i should become the son-in-law of the king? i am but a poor and lowly man." so david said, but saul remained firm in his purpose. of saul's later battles against the philistines tradition has preserved only a few fragments, from which it is clear that the war was carried on upon the borders by plundering incursions, which were interrupted from time to time by greater campaigns.[ ] but the preponderance of the philistine power was broken. and saul had not only to fight against these. "he fought on all sides," we are told, "against all the enemies of israel, against moab, and against the sons of ammon, and against edom, and against the kings of zobah, and whithersoever he turned he was victorious."[ ] when the amalekites from their deserts on the peninsula of sinai invaded the south of israel, and forced their way as far as hebron, he defeated them there at maon-carmel,[ ] and pursued them over the borders of israel into their own land as far as the desert of sur, "which lies before egypt," and took agag their king prisoner. it was a severe defeat which he inflicted on them.[ ] "saul's sword came not back empty," and "the daughters of israel clothed themselves in purple," and "adorned their garments with gold" from the spoil of his victories.[ ] the israelites felt what they owed to the monarchy and to saul.[ ] footnotes: [ ] judges xiii. ; xiv. ; xv. ; sam. iv. . [ ] in samson, who overcomes the lion, and sends out the foxes with firebrands, who overthrows the pillars of the temple, and buries himself under it, steinthal ("zeitschrift für völkerpsychologie," , ) recognises the sun-god of the syrians. the name samson means as a fact "the sunny one." the long hair in which samson's strength lay may symbolise the growth of nature in the summer, and the cutting off of it the decay of creative power in the winter: so too the binding of samson may signify the imprisoned power of the sun in winter. as melkarth in the winter went to rest at his pillars in the far west, at the end of his wanderings, so samson goes to his rest between the two pillars in the city on the shore of the western sea. if, finally, samson becomes the servant of a mistress dalilah--_i.e._ "the tender"--this also is a trait which belongs to the myth of melkarth; cf. i. . it is not to be denied that traits of this myth have forced their way into the form and legend of samson, although the long hair belongs not to samson only, but to samuel and all the nazarites; yet we must not from these traits draw the conclusion that the son of manoah is no more than a mythical figure, and even those traits must have gone through many stages among the israelites before they could assume a form of such vigorous liveliness, such broad reality, as we find pourtrayed in the narrative of samson. [ ] the simplest method of obtaining a fixed starting-point for the date of the foundation of the monarchy in israel is to reckon backwards from the capture of jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple by nebuchadnezzar. according to the canon of ptolemy, nebuchadnezzar's reign began in the year b.c., the temple and jerusalem were burned down in the nineteenth year of king nebuchadnezzar ( kings xxv. ; jer. lii. ), _i.e._ in the year b.c. from this year the hebrews reckoned years to the commencement of the building of the temple ( = years of solomon since the beginning of the building + years from the death of solomon to the taking of samaria + years from the taking of samaria to the destruction of the temple). hence the building of the temple was commenced in the year b.c. since the commencement of the building is placed in the fourth year of solomon, his accession would fall in the year b.c.; and as years are allotted to david, his accession at hebron falls in b.c., and saul's election about b.c. in the present text only the number two is left of the amount of the years of his reign ( sam. xiii. ), the years of his life also are lost; we may perhaps assume years for his reign, since eupolemus gives him years (alex. polyh. frag. , ed. müller), and josephus ("antiq." , , , , , ). his contemporary, nahash of ammon, is on the throne before the election of saul, and continues beyond the death of saul and ishbosheth, and even years into the reign of david. nahash must have had an uncommonly long reign if saul reigned more than years. it makes against the dates b.c. for saul, b.c. for david, b.c. for solomon, that they rest upon the succession of kings of judah, from the division of the kingdom down to the fall of samaria, which is reckoned at years, while the succession of kings of israel during the same period only fills years. movers ("phoeniz." , , ff.) has attempted to remove this difficulty by assuming as a starting-point the statements of menander of ephesus, on the succession of kings in tyre, preserved in josephus ("c. apion," , ). josephus says that from the building of the temple, which took place in the twelfth year of hiram king of tyre, down to the founding of carthage, which took place in the seventh year of pygmalion king of tyre, years months elapsed. from the date given by justin ( , ) for the founding of carthage ( years before the founding of rome; + ), _i.e._ from b.c., movers reckons back years, and so fixes the building of the temple at the year b.c., on which reckoning solomon's accession would fall in the year b.c., david's in the year b.c., and saul's election in b.c. but since the more trustworthy dates for the year of the founding of carthage, , , and , have an equal claim to acceptance, we are equally justified in reckoning back from and to saul's accession. according to the canon of the assyrians, the epochs in which were fixed by the observation of the solar eclipse of july in the year b.c., samaria was taken in the year b.c. if from this we reckon backwards years for judah, solomon's death would fall in the year b.c., his accession in b.c., david's accession in b.c., saul's election in b.c. if we keep to the amount given for israel ( years + ), solomon's death falls in , his accession in , the building of the temple in b.c., david's accession in b.c., saul's accession in b.c. but neither by retaining the whole sum of years, according to which the building of the temple begins b.c. ( + ), and solomon dies in b.c., nor by putting the death of solomon in the year or b.c., do we bring the assyrian monuments into agreement with the chronological statements of the hebrews. if we place the date of the division of the kingdom at the year b.c., ahab's reign, according to the numbers given by the hebrews for the kingdom of israel, extends from to b.c.; if we place the division at b.c., it extends, according to the same calculation, from to b.c. on the other hand, the assyrian monuments prove that ahab fought at karkar against shalmanesar ii. in the year b.c. (below, chap. ). since ahab after this carried on a war against damascus, in which war he died, he must in any case have been alive in b.c. hence even the lower date taken for ahab's reign from the hebrew statements ( - b.c.) would have to be brought down years, and as a necessary consequence the death of solomon would fall, not in the year b.c., but in the year b.c. if we could conclude from this statement in the assyrian monuments that the reigns of the kings of israel were extended by the hebrews beyond the truth, it follows from another monument, the inscription of mesha, that abbreviations also took place. according to the second book of kings (iii. ), mesha of moab revolted from israel when ahab died. the stone of mesha says: "omri took medaba, and israel dwelt therein in his and his son's days for years; in my days camus restored it;" nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa." hence omri, the father of ahab, took medaba years before the death of ahab. ahab, according to the hebrews, reigned years, omri . according to the stone of mesha the two reigns must have together amounted to more than years. since omri obtained the throne by force, and had at first to carry on a long civil war, and establish himself on the throne ( kings xvi. , ), he could not make war upon the moabites at the very beginning of his reign. here, therefore, there is an abbreviation of the reign of omri and ahab by at least years. hence the contradiction between the monuments of the assyrians and the numbers of the hebrews is not to be removed by merely bringing down the division of the kingdom to the year b.c. in order to obtain a chronological arrangement at all, we are placed in the awkward necessity of making an attempt to bring the canon of the assyrians into agreement with the statements of the hebrews by assumptions more or less arbitrary. jehu slew joram king of israel and ahaziah of judah at the same time. from this date upwards to the death of solomon the hebrew scriptures reckon years for israel, and for judah. jehu ascended the throne of israel in the year b.c. at the latest, since, according to the assyrian monuments, he paid tribute to shalmanesar ii. in the year b.c. if we reckon the years for israel upwards from b.c., we arrive at b.c. for the division of the kingdom; and if to this we add, as the time which has doubtlessly fallen out in the reigns of omri and ahab, years, b.c. would be the year of the death of solomon, the year in which the ten tribes separated from the house of david. if we keep the year for the division, the year comes out for the accession of solomon, the year for the beginning of the building of the temple, the year for the accession of david at hebron, and the year for the election of saul. fifteen years may be taken for the continuance of the heavy oppression before saul. for the changes which we must in consequence of this assumption establish in the data of the reigns from jeroboam and rehoboam down to athaliah and jehu, _i.e._ in the period from b.c. to b.c., see below. omri's reign occupies the period from - b.c. ( years instead of ), _i.e._ a period which agrees with the importance of this reign among the moabites and the assyrians; ahab reigned from - b.c. according to kings xvi. , ahab took jezebel the daughter of ethbaal the king of the sidonians to wife. if this ethbaal of sidon is identical with the ithobal of tyre in josephus, the chronology deduced from our assumptions would not be impossible. granted the assertion of josephus that the twelfth year of hiram king of tyre is the fourth year of solomon ( b.c.), hiram's accession would fall in the year b.c.; according to josephus, ithobal ascended the throne of tyre years after hiram's accession, when he had slain pheles. he lived according to the same authority years and reigned years, _i.e._ from - b.c. ahab, either before or after the year of his accession ( ), might very well have taken the daughter of this prince to wife. and if we assume that the statement of appian, that carthage was in existence years before her destruction by the romans, _i.e._ was founded in the year b.c., the - / or years of josephus between the building of the temple and the foundation of carthage, reckoned backwards from b.c., lead us to the year b.c. for the building of the temple. [ ] now beit-rima, north-east of the later lydda. [ ] sam. iii. , . [ ] sam. xiii. - , from the older account. [ ] sam. x. , ; xix. - . [ ] compare the division of the corpse by the levite, above, p. . [ ] owing to the later conceptions that the king needed to be consecrated by the prophets, that jehovah is himself the king of israel, an almost inexplicable confusion has come into the narrative of saul's elevation. not only have we an older and later account existing side by side in the books of samuel, not only has there been even a third hand at work, but the attempts to bring the contradictory accounts into harmony have increased the evil. in sam. viii. we are told: the elders of israel and the people required from samuel a king at ramah, because he was old and his sons walked not in his ways. jehovah says to samuel: they have not rejected thee, but me; yet samuel accedes to the request of the israelites. samuel gives the elders a terrifying description of the oppression which the monarchy would exercise upon them, a description which evidently predates the experiences made under david, solomon, and later kings, whereas at the time spoken of the nation had suffered only too long from wild anarchy. the reasons, moreover, given by the elders, why they desired a king, do not agree with the situation, but rather with the time of eli, who also had foolish sons. in spite of samuel's warning the people persist in their wish to have a king. further we are told in chap. ix. -x. , how saul at his father's bidding sets out in quest of lost she-asses, and goes to inquire of samuel, for the fourth part of a silver shekel, whither they had strayed. at jehovah's command samuel anoints the son of kish to be king, when he comes to him; he tells him where he will find his asses, and imparts to him two other prophecies on the way. then we are told in chap. x. - that samuel summons an assembly of the people to mizpeh, repeats his warning against the monarchy, but then causes lots to be cast who shall be king over the tribes, and families, and individuals. the lot falls upon saul, who makes no mention to any one of the anointing, but has hidden himself among the stuff. finally, in chap. xi. we find the account given in the text, to which, in order to bring it into harmony with what has been already related, these words are prefixed in ver. : "and samuel said to the people, come, let us go to gilgal to renew the kingdom;" but in xi. we find: "then went all the people to gilgal, and made saul king before jehovah in gilgal." the contradictions are striking. the elders require a king from samuel, whom they could choose themselves ( sam. ii. ; v. ; kings xii. , ; kings xiv. ), and whom, according to sam. xi. , the people actually choose. jehovah will not have a king, but then permits it. nor is this permission all; he himself points out to samuel the man whom he is to anoint. anointed to be king, saul goes, as if nothing had taken place, to his home. he comes to the assembly at mizpeh, and again says nothing to any one of his new dignity. already king by anointment, he is now again made king by the casting of lots. he returns home to till his field, when the messengers from jabesh were sent not to the king of israel, but to the people of israel, to ask for help. in gibeah also they do not apply to the king; not till he sees the people weeping in gibeah, does saul learn the message. yet he does not summon the people to follow him as king; he requests the following just as in earlier times individuals in extraordinary cases sought to rouse the people to take up arms. it is impossible that a king should be chosen by lot at a time when the bravest warrior was needed at the head, and simple boys, who hid themselves among the stuff, were not suited to lead the army at such a dangerous time. at the time of saul's very first achievements his son jonathan stands at his side as a warrior; at his death his youngest son ishbosheth was years of age ( sam. ii. ). saul must therefore have been between and years old when he became king. the request of the elders for a king, and samuel's resistance, belong on the other hand to the prophetic narrator of the books of samuel, in whose account it was followed by the assembly at mizpeh and the casting of lots. the same narrator attempts to bring the achievement at jabesh, and the recognition of saul as ruler and king which followed it, into harmony with his narrative by the addition of the restoration of the kingdom and some other interpolations. the philistines would hardly have permitted minute preparations and prescribed assemblies for the election of king. the simple elevation and recognition of saul as king after his first successful exploit in war corresponds to the situation of affairs (cf. i xii. ). and i am the more decided in holding this account to be historically correct, because it does not presuppose the other accounts, and because the men of jabesh, according to the older account, fetched the bodies of saul and his sons to jabesh from beth-shan and burned them there, sam. xxxi. , . the older account in the books of samuel knows nothing of the request of the elders for a king. after the defeat which caused eli's death, it narrates the carrying back of the ark by the philistines, and the setting up of it at beth-shemesh and kirjath-jearim. then follows saul's anointing by samuel (ix. - , ); then the lost statement about the age of saul when he became king, and the length of the reign; then the great exploits of saul against the philistines (xiii. - , ); xiii. - stands in precise relation to x. . that the achievement of jabesh cannot have been wanting in the older account follows from the express reference to it at the death of saul. [ ] sam. xiii. - ; xiv. . [ ] sam. xiii. - . [ ] sam. xiv. - . [ ] so the older account, sam. xiv. - . [ ] numbers ii. - ; joshua xviii. - ; judges v. . that ephraim remained true to saul follows from the recognition of ishbosheth after saul's death, sam. ii. , . [ ] sam. xiv. . [ ] sam. xiii. . [ ] sam. xiv. , , ; xxviii. . [ ] sam. xxviii. , . [ ] sam. xxi. , . [ ] the ark was brought by david from kirjath-jearim to zion. that could not take place before the year b.c. saul's death falls, as was assumed above, in the year b.c. but the ark is said to have been at kirjath-jearim years ( sam. vii. ; vi. ), it must therefore have been carried thither b.c., or a few years later. the stay among the philistines must have been more than seven months, as stated in sam. vi. ; the stay at beth-shemesh was apparently only a short one. the battle at tabor and eli's death cannot, as shown above, be placed much later than b.c. according to sam. xiv. ; xviii. , the ark was in saul's army at the battle of michmash, and ahijah (ahimelech), the great-grandson of eli, was its keeper. [ ] chron. xxvi. . [ ] only one concubine is mentioned, by whom saul had two sons. [ ] sam. xviii. , - , ; xxii. . [ ] sam. xvii., xviii., xxiii. . [ ] sam. xiv. , . [ ] sam. xv. . the place near hebron still bears the name carmel. [ ] nöldeke, "die amalekiter," s. , . [ ] sam. i. - . [ ] this follows from the fact that the monarchy remains even after saul's death, from the lamentation of the israelites for saul, and their allegiance to his son ishbosheth. chapter vi. david's struggle against saul and ishbosheth. the position which samuel gained as a priest, seer, and judge after the death of eli and his sons, and continued to hold under the sway of the philistines must have undergone a marked change, owing to the establishment of the monarchy in israel, though in the later text of the books of samuel it is maintained that "samuel judged israel till his death."[ ] we know that samuel had set up an altar to jehovah at ramathaim, his home and dwelling-place (p. ), but it is not handed down that he had again set up there the sacred tabernacle and the worship at the sacred ark, though this may very well have been the case after the philistines sent back the ark. both the older and the later text of the two books of samuel represent him as in opposition to the monarchy. according to the later text, written from a prophetic point of view, samuel had from the first opposed the establishment of the monarchy; and both the older and the more recent account know of a contention between saul and samuel. the former tells us: when saul immediately after his election took up arms against the philistines, and these marched out with their whole fighting power, and saul gathered the israelites at gilgal, samuel bade the king wait seven days till he came down to offer burnt-offering and thank-offering. "and saul waited seven days, but samuel came not; the people were scattered. then saul said: bring me the burnt-offering and the thank-offering. he offered the burnt-sacrifice, and when he had made an end samuel came, and saul went to greet him. and samuel said, what hast thou done? saul answered, when i saw that the people were scattered from me, and thou didst not come at the time appointed, and the philistines were encamped at michmash, i said, the philistines will come down upon me to gilgal, and i have not made supplication to jehovah, so i forced myself and offered the burnt-sacrifice. then samuel said, thou hast done foolishly; thou hast not observed the command of thy god which he commanded thee. jehovah would have established thy kingdom over israel for ever, but now thy kingdom shall not endure."[ ] the more recent account puts the contention at a far later date. when saul marched against the amalekites samuel bade him "curse" everything that belonged to amalek, man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. after the return of the victorious army samuel came to gilgal, and said, what meaneth this bleating of sheep and lowing of oxen in my ears? saul answered, i have obeyed the voice of jehovah and have gone the way which jehovah sent me, and i have brought with me agag the king of amalek, and have "cursed" amalek. but from the spoil the people have taken the best of what was "cursed," in order to sacrifice to jehovah, thy god, at gilgal. samuel answered in the tone of isaiah, hath jehovah delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifice? to obey is better than sacrifice. saul confesses that he has sinned and transgressed the command of jehovah and the word of samuel, "for i feared the people, and obeyed their voice. and now forgive me my sin, and turn with me, that i may entreat jehovah. but samuel said, i will not turn back with thee; because thou hast rejected the word of jehovah he will reject thee from being king over israel. samuel turned to go, but saul caught the hem of his garment and said, i have sinned, yet honour me before the elders of my people, and before israel, and return with me, that i may offer prayer before jehovah. then samuel turned behind saul, and saul offered prayer before jehovah. and samuel bade them bring agag the king of amalek before him, and said, as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women; and he hewed agag in pieces before jehovah at gilgal. and samuel went up to ramathaim and saw saul no more."[ ] in the narrative of the first text saul appears to be thoroughly justified by the most urgent necessity; in the narrative of the second text he acknowledges openly and completely that he has sinned. it may have been the case that saul did not appear to samuel sufficiently submissive to his utterances, which for him were the utterances of god; that he wished to see the rights and power of a king exercised in a different manner and in a different feeling from that in which saul discharged his office. more dangerous for saul than any reproach or coldness on the part of samuel was the contention which he had in the latter years of his reign with another man, whom he had himself raised to eminence--a strife which cost saul the reward of his laborious and brave reign, and his house the throne; while israel lost the fruits of great efforts, and the fortunes of the people were again put to the hazard. of the family of perez[ ] of the tribe of judah, david was the youngest (eighth) son of a man of some possessions, jesse of bethlehem. he was entrusted with the care and keeping of the sheep and goats of his father in the desert pastures on the dead sea, and his shepherd life had caused him to grow up in a rough school. it had made him hardy, it had given strength and suppleness to his body; he had gained a delight in adventure and unshaken courage in danger. in defence of the flocks he had withstood bears and ventured into conflict even with a lion. in the loneliness and silence which surrounded him he practised singing and playing; the severe and solemn nature of that region was adapted to impress great thoughts on his mind, to give force and elevation to his spirit. from such a school he came into the ranks of the warriors of saul; the bold deeds which even in his youth he had performed against the philistines induced saul to make david one of "the brave," whom he took into his house (about b.c.).[ ] he also made him one of his captains,[ ] and frequently sent him out against the philistines; in these inroads he fought with more success than other chieftains.[ ] thus david was a favourite in the eyes of the people and the servants of the king, and jonathan, saul's eldest son, made a covenant with david, because "he loved him as his own soul."[ ] in the house of saul david was trusted and honoured before the other warriors; he was his armour-bearer and the chief of a troop of men. after jonathan and abner, david was nearest the king; he had the complete confidence of saul, and at length became his son-in-law.[ ] some years afterwards (about b.c.[ ]), saul conceived a suspicion of the man whom he had elevated to such a height. he imagined that his son-in-law intended to seize the throne from himself, or contest the succession with his son jonathan. according to the older account it was jealousy of the military renown of david, which threatened to obscure his own, that roused saul against david;[ ] according to the later, saul feared the partiality which the people displayed towards david. he says to jonathan, "so long as the son of jesse lives, thou and thy kingdom will not continue."[ ] according to the same account an evil spirit came over saul, he was beside himself in the house and threw a spear at david, who played the harp.[ ] david avoided the cast: he fled to samuel at ramathaim into the dwellings of the seers,[ ] and from thence escaped to achish, the prince of the philistines of gath.[ ] in the older account also it is an evil spirit of jehovah which comes over saul, and causes him to thrust with his spear at david while he is playing the harp. david escapes into his house. at saul's command the house is surrounded; and david is to be slain the next morning. but michal, the daughter of saul, david's wife, let him down from a window, and in his place she put the teraphim, _i.e._ the image of the deity, into the bed, covered it with a coverlet, laid the net of goat's hair on the face, and gave out that david was sick. david meanwhile flies to nob (in the land of benjamin), where was set up a gilded image of jehovah, before which a company of priests served, and at their head ahimelech, a great-grandson of eli,[ ] who had previously inquired of jehovah for david.[ ] ahimelech gave david the sacred loaves, and a sword which was consecrated there, and from hence, according to this account, david escaped to achish. saul reproached his daughter for aiding david, and said, "why hast thou allowed my enemy to escape?" then he gave her to wife to phalti of gallim. we are not in a position to decide whether david really pursued ambitious designs; whether, as a matter of fact, he conspired with the priests against saul and his house, as saul assumed; whether saul saw through his designs and plots, or suspected him without reason.[ ] david was not content with escaping the anger and pursuit of saul, with placing himself and his family in security. he repaired to the enemies of his land, the philistines, who would not have accepted at once an opponent who had done them grievous injury, if he had not openly broken with saul and given them to suppose that henceforth he would support their struggle against saul and israel. yet david did not bring his father and mother, on whom saul could have taken vengeance, out of the land to gath, where they might have been a pledge of his fidelity to the philistines; he put them in the hands of the king of moab, and also entered into relations with the king of the ammonites.[ ] it was probably with the consent of the philistines that david returned from gath into the land of judah, and there threw himself into the wild regions by the dead sea, where he had previously pastured his father's sheep and goats, in order to bring his own tribe of judah into arms against the king sprung from the small tribe of benjamin.[ ] the cave of adullam was the place of gathering. his brothers, the whole house of his father, came, and a prophet of the name of gad, "and all oppressed persons, and any one who had a creditor and was of a discontented spirit," and "david was their chief, and had under him men."[ ] "saul heard that all men knew about david and the men who were with him, and sent out to bring before him ahimelech and the house of his father and all the priests of nob." the king sat on the height near gibeah under the tamarisk, with his spear in his hand and his servants round him. "why hast thou conspired against me," he said to ahimelech, "thou and the son of jesse, that he has rebelled against me. thou shalt die, and the house of thy father." and he commanded his body-guard who stood near him: "come up and slay the priests of jehovah, their hand is with david." then men were slain who wore the linen tunic; and nob, the city of the priests, saul smote with the edge of the sword; one only, abiathar, a son of ahimelech, escaped with the image of jehovah to david.[ ] david had no doubt calculated on greater success in the tribe of judah. so long as his following was confined to four or six hundred men, he could only live a robber life with this troop. but by this course he would have roused against himself those whom he robbed, and strengthened the attachment to saul. so he attempted to keep a middle path. he sent to nabal, a rich man at carmel near hebron (p. ), who possessed sheep and goats, a descendant of that caleb who had once founded himself a kingdom here with his sword (i. ), and bade his messengers say: david has taken nothing of thy flocks, send him therefore food for him and his people. but nabal answered: "who is david, and who is the son of jesse? there are now many servants who run away from their masters." then david set out in the night to fall upon nabal's house and flocks. on the way abigail, nabal's wife, met him. in fear of the freebooters she had caused some slaughtered sheep, loaves, and pitchers of wine, some figs and cakes of raisins, to be laid on asses in order to bring them secretly into david's camp. praised be thy wisdom, woman, said david: by the life of jehovah, if thou hadst not met me there would not have been alive at break of day a single male of nabal and his house. nabal died ten days after this incident. david saw that such a wealthy possession in this region could not but be advantageous. saul's daughter was lost to him; he sent, therefore, some servants to abigail to carmel. they said, david has sent us to thee to take thee to him to wife. abigail stood up, bowed herself with her face to earth, and said: behold, thy handmaid is ready to wash the feet of the servants of thy master. then she set out with five of her maids, and followed the servants of david and became his wife.[ ] as a fact this marriage appears to have furthered the undertaking of david; the places in the south of judah, aroer, hormah, ramoth, jattir, eshtemod, and even hebron, declared for him.[ ] from this point david sought to force his way farther to the north, and possessed himself of the fortified town of kegilah (keilah).[ ] when saul was told that david was in kegilah, he said: god has delivered him into my hand in that he has shut himself up in a city with gates and bars. he set out against kegilah. david commanded abiathar the priest, who had fled to him from nob with the image of jehovah, to bring the image, and david inquired of the image: will the men of kegilah deliver me and my followers into the hand of saul? jehovah, god of israel, announce this to me. and jehovah said, they will deliver thee.[ ] then david despaired of remaining in the city and fled; he retired again into the desert by the dead sea near ziph and maon. but saul pursued and overtook him; nothing but a mountain separated david's troop from the king; david was already surrounded and lost, when the news was brought to saul, "hasten and come, for the philistines are in the land." this was no doubt an incursion made by the philistines in aid of the hardly-pressed rebels. saul abandoned the pursuit and went against the philistines: david called the mountain the rock of escape.[ ] when the king had driven back the philistines he took men out of the army to crush the rebellion utterly. david had retired farther to the east, on the shore of the dead sea, in the neighbourhood of engedi, to the "rock of the goat," and there he was so closely shut in by saul that he had to despair of remaining in judah. he escaped with his troop to the philistines: the rebellion was at an end.[ ] david's attempt to induce the tribe of judah to fall away from saul was entirely wrecked. driven from the ground on which he had raised the standard of revolt, he no longer scrupled to enter formally into the service of the philistines, and these must have welcomed the aid of a brave and skilful leader, who, though once their enemy, had already in judah engaged the arms of saul, the weight of which they had so often felt, and which had taken from them their dominion over israel. achish, king of gath, to whom david again fled, was of opinion "that david had made himself to stink among his people, israel, and would be his servant for ever;" and gave the border city ziklag to be a dwelling for him and his band of freebooters.[ ] david now settled as a vassal of achish at ziklag. at his command he was compelled to take the field, and also to deliver up a part of the spoil which he obtained.[ ] thus from the land of the philistines, with his band, which here became strengthened by the discontented in israel[ ] who fled to him over the border, david carried on a petty war against saul and his country. in these campaigns david was wise enough to spare his former adherents in judah, the cities which had once declared for him, and his attacks were only directed against the adherents of saul; in secret he even maintained his connection with his party in judah, and to the elders of the cities which clung to him he sent presents out of the booty won in his raids and plundering excursions.[ ] david had already lived more than a year in ziklag,[ ] when the philistines assembled all their forces against saul. when the princes of the philistines marshalled their army, and caused it to march past in troops, david and his men also came among the soldiers of achish. then the other princes said to achish: what need of these hebrews? let not david go to the battle; he may become a traitor, and go over to his master, in order to win favour with saul at the price of our heads. achish trusted david, and said: he has already dwelt with me for a time, for years; to this day i have found nothing in him. but the other princes insisted on their demand; perhaps they remembered the day of michmash, when saul had obtained his first victory over the philistines with the aid of the hebrews in their camp. when achish announced to david that he could not accompany the army, he answered: what have i done, and what hast thou found in thy servant since i came to thee to this day, that i should not fight against the enemies of my king? in spite of his earnest desire, david was sent back.[ ] the army of the philistines passed to the north, through the land of ephraim, into the land of issachar, and encamped at shunem in the plain of jezreel. on mount gilboa, over against them, saul was encamped with the army of the israelites.[ ] the battle broke out, and the contest was severe. saul saw his sons abinadab and melchishua, and finally jonathan himself, fall; the israelites retired, and the archers of the enemy pressed on the king. saul refused to fly, and survive the death of his sons and his first defeat. he called to his armour-bearer: draw thy sword and slay me, that these uncircumcised may not come upon me and maltreat me. but the faithful comrade would not lift his hand against his master. then saul threw himself upon his sword, and the armour-bearer followed the example of the king. the army of the israelites was scattered in every direction. the philistines rejoiced when they found the corpse of saul on mount gilboa. they took the armour from the dead king, and sent it round their whole land, that every one might be convinced that the dreaded leader of israel was no longer living. then the armour was laid up in the temple of astarte. the philistines cut off the head of the corpse and hung it up as a trophy in the temple of dagon; the trunk and the corpses of the three sons of saul were set up in the market-place of beth-shan, not far from the field of battle, in order to show the israelites that they had nothing more to hope from saul and his race ( b.c.).[ ] israel was benumbed with terror. the nurse let the young son of jonathan, mephibosheth, fall to the ground when she heard the news of gilboa. many retired beyond the jordan before the philistines; others hastened to ziklag, to place themselves under david's protection. but from jabesh in gilead, which saul had once rescued from the most grievous distress, valiant men set out over the jordan to beth-shan. here, at night, they took the corpses of saul and his three sons from the market-place, brought them to jabesh, and buried them under the tamarisk, and the inhabitants of jabesh fasted and lamented seven days for saul's death.[ ] the israelites had reason enough to sorrow and lament for saul. from one of the songs of lamentation sung in these days it is convincingly clear what this man had done for them. "the gazelle, o israel," so it was sung at that time, "is stricken on thy heights! fallen are thy heroes! tell it not in gath, publish it not in the streets of ascalon, lest the daughter of the philistine rejoice, lest the daughter of the uncircumcised triumph. ye mountains of gilboa, let there be no dew nor rain upon you, nor offerings of first-fruits! for there the shield of the mighty was cast away, the shield of saul. from the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of jonathan turned not back, and the sword of saul returned not empty. saul and jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. they were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions. ye daughters of israel, weep for saul, who clothed you delicately in purple, and put ornaments of gold on your garments. how are the mighty fallen in battle."[ ] a single stroke had annihilated all that had been obtained in long and toilsome struggles. the philistines were again masters on this side of jordan as in the unhappy times before saul. but in spite of the fall of the hero who had been the defence of israel and the terror of the enemies, the monarchy remained, so firmly had saul established it. ishbosheth, the youngest son of saul, had escaped the battle; with abner, the general, he had found safety beyond the jordan. here he took up his abode at machanaim, and the tribes on the other side of the jordan recognised him as their king. abner's sword was a strong support for ishbosheth, and the adherence of the israelites to saul's family soon permitted him to force his way from machanaim over the jordan. here, also, amid the arms of the philistines, ishbosheth was recognised as king. thus abner's courage and bravery succeeded in wresting the fruits of the victory at gilboa from the philistines, and liberating from their yoke first ephraim and benjamin, and then the whole region of the northern tribes.[ ] while abner was engaged in preserving the remnants of saul's dominion for his son, and in driving the philistines out of the land, david looked after his own interests. the fresh terror of the overthrow at gilboa had driven many israelites to ziklag. david's name stood high among the warriors of israel, and protection against the philistines was certain to be found with their vassal. the places in the tribe of judah which had formerly joined david now again resorted to him, and the tribe of judah had previously been subject to the philistines longer than any other, and was more accustomed to their dominion. as the tradition tells us, david inquired of jehovah whether he should go from ziklag into one of the cities of judah, and jehovah answered: go to hebron. this was done. "and the men of judah there anointed david king of the house of judah, for only the house of judah adhered to david."[ ] thus david, after saul's death, succeeded in the attempt which had failed in saul's lifetime; he established an independent monarchy in the tribe of judah. here he ruled at hebron at first quietly, under the protection of the philistines.[ ] but when abner had again wrested the north and centre of the land from the hands of the philistines, when ishbosheth's rule again united the whole land as far as the tribe of judah, he turned his arms not more against the philistines than against their vassal at hebron in order to complete the liberation of israel. "the strife was long between the house of saul and the house of david,"--so runs the older account.[ ] of the events of this war between judah and the rest of the tribes, we only know that on a certain day joab at the head of david's men, and abner at the head of the men of ishbosheth, strove fiercely at the pool of gibeon, and joab's brother asahel was slain by abner. for several years the war continued without any decisive result, till a division arose between ishbosheth and abner which gave david the advantage, and finally placed him on the throne of saul. ishbosheth appears to have become distrustful of abner, to whom he owed everything. when abner took rizpah, the concubine of saul, to himself, ishbosheth thought that he intended in this way to establish a right to the throne, in order to wrest the dominion from himself, and did not conceal his anger.[ ] then abner turned from the man he had exalted and entered into a secret negotiation with david. this was received with joy by david. crafty as he was, he first demanded that his wife michal, the daughter of saul, whom saul after david's rebellion had married to phalti, should be sent back to him. david had found out the attachment of the israelites to the house of saul, and was no doubt of opinion that nothing would sooner help him to the throne than the renewed connection with saul's family; if none of the descendants of saul survived but this daughter he would be his legitimate heir. abner sent michal, and went himself to hebron in order to arrange about the transfer of the kingdom. they were agreed; abner had done his service. he was already on his way home to machanaim, when joab, the captain of david, called him back. he came, and joab took him aside under the gate of hebron, as though he had something to tell him in secret; instead, he thrust his sword through his body. david asserted his innocence and lamented abner's death. abner's body was buried solemnly at hebron. david followed the bier in sackcloth, but joab remained unpunished.[ ] he slew abner because the latter had previously slain his brother asahel at gibeon; but this was done in honourable fight, not by assassination. when the announcement of abner's death came to machanaim "ishbosheth's hands were numbed, and all israel was troubled." the israelites lamented abner's death. "must abner die as a godless man dieth?" they sang. "thy hands were never bound, thy feet never fettered; thou hast fallen as a man falls before the children of iniquity."[ ] the pillar of the kingdom was broken. then two captains of the army of ishbosheth, brothers of the tribe of benjamin, hoped to gain favour with david. while ishbosheth was resting at midday in his chamber on his bed, they entered unobserved into his house, cut off his head, and brought it hastily to hebron to david. this murder carried david quickly to his goal, but he would not praise those who committed it; he caused them both to be executed. the throne of saul was empty. david, the husband of his daughter, was at the head of a not inconsiderable power; whom could the tribes who had obeyed ishbosheth raise to the throne except him, if an end was to be put to the pernicious division, and the people were again to be united under one government? the elders of the tribes were intelligent enough to value rightly this position of affairs. hence the people met together at hebron; in full assembly david was raised to be king of israel, and anointed by the elders.[ ] eight years had passed since saul and his three elder sons fell on gilboa. all was full of joy, union, and hope that better times would come again after the end of the long strife ( b.c.).[ ] at length david stood at the goal which he had pursued steadfastly under many changes of fortune. but there were still some male descendants of saul in existence. the hivites of gibeon cherished a deadly hatred to the race of saul, because saul's hand had been heavy upon them "in his zeal for the sons of israel." david offered to "avenge the wrong which saul had done to them."[ ] they demanded, that as their land had borne no fruit for three years, seven men of the race of saul should be given to them, that they might "hang them up before jehovah at gibeah," the dwelling-place of saul. there were just seven male descendants of saul remaining: two sons by rizpah, his concubine, and five grandchildren, whom merab, the eldest daughter of saul, had borne to adriel. these david took and "gave them into the hands of the gibeonites, and they hanged them up on the hill before jehovah." there was still another descendant of saul's remaining, mephibosheth, the son of jonathan; but he was only or years of age, and was, moreover, lame of both feet, from the fall which he had suffered in the hands of his nurse. david also thought of the close friendship which he had contracted in earlier days with jonathan; he gave to mephibosheth saul's land at gibeah, and arranged that saul and jonathan's bones should be brought from jabesh to zelah, near gibeah, and buried where kish, saul's father, lay. in the tribe of benjamin, to which saul belonged, and among those connected with his house, the acts of david to the house of saul were not forgotten; they hated david, the "man of blood." footnotes: [ ] sam. vii. . [ ] sam. x. ; xiii. - . [ ] sam. xv. [ ] ruth iv. - . [ ] in sam. v. , it is stated that david when he was raised at hebron to be king of judah was years old. this took place b.c. (p. , note); david must therefore have been born b.c., and could not have marched out to battle before b.c. [ ] sam. xviii. . [ ] the tale of the battle of david with the giant goliath appears to have arisen out of a later conflict of david when king with a mighty philistine. in sam. xxi. - we are told, "and there was again a battle of philistines at gob. then elhanan, the son of jair orgim, a bethlehemite, slew goliath of gath; the shaft of whose spear was as a weaver's beam." shortly before it is stated: "david and his servants strove with the philistines, and david was weary, and ishbi thought to slay david--the weight of his spear was shekels; then abishai (the brother of joab) aided the king, and slew the philistine," sam. xxi. - . from the conflict with a giant which david had to undergo when king, and the slaughter of goliath of gath by elhanan, a fellow-townsman of david's from bethlehem, the legend may have arisen that david himself slew a great giant. this legend was then transferred by the theocratic narrative into david's boyhood; in this way he was marked from the beginning as the chosen instrument of jehovah. the statement in chron. xxi. cannot be made to tell against this view, which in order to explain the contradiction between the first and second books of samuel explains the giant whom elhanan slew, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam, to be a brother of goliath; the less so inasmuch as the passage from the book of samuel is repeated word for word with this addition, while the battle of david with ishbi is omitted. if david really slew a distinguished warrior of gath in saul's time, it is the more difficult to explain how he could afterwards fly to the prince of gath of all others, and enter into such close relations with him. the often-mentioned national song, "saul has slain his thousands and david his tens of thousands," is scarcely applicable to the slaying of a giant, however great he might be, and probably comes from the time of david's reign when he had really gained more brilliant victories than saul. [ ] sam. xviii. . [ ] sam. xvi. ; xviii. ; xxii. . [ ] this date may be assumed, if we put the death of saul in the year b.c. (p. ), since david's rebellion in judah lasted a considerable time, and he afterwards remained at ziklag at least months, sam. xxvii. ; xxix. . [ ] sam. xviii. . [ ] sam. xviii. ; xx. . [ ] sam. xviii. . [ ] as najoth, or rather newajoth, means dwellings, the habitations of the prophet's disciples must be meant. [ ] sam. xix. - ; xxi. - . [ ] sam. xxii. . [ ] sam. xiv. . [ ] the older text, , xxvi. , represents david as saying to saul: "if jehovah hath stirred thee against me, let him accept an offering, but if men, cursed be they before jehovah." in the books of samuel the relations of saul and david are strangely confused, for reasons which are not far to seek. the older account of the priests and the later one of the prophets, which are mixed together in these books, had equally reason to place in as favourable a light as possible the founder of the power of israel, of the united worship, the minstrel of the psalms, the progenitor of the kings of judah, and to put him in the right as against saul and the house of saul. to the older narrative belongs the description of david's shepherd life, his battle with the giant, his rise as a warrior,--the intention is to show that jehovah is strong in the weak. the shepherd-boy comes into the camp in order to bring bread to his brethren and cheese to the captain. his brethren are angry that he has left the sheep, and wish to send him back, but he will fight with the giant who has defied the army of the living god. saul dissuades him from the contest, but david persists, refuses armour, and goes forth in trust on jehovah, who gives not the victory by spear and shield. by this victory he is marked as the chosen instrument of jehovah. in both accounts saul loses the favour of jehovah by disobedience to samuel. according to the later text, samuel, when he had broken with saul owing to the incomplete "cursing" of amalek, took the horn of oil and anointed the youngest son of jesse, who was fetched from the sheep, king over israel amid his brethren. when this had been done saul's servants bring david as a brave hero and warrior, "prudent in speech, a comely person, cunning in playing," sam. xvi. yet samuel had no right to place kings over the israelites, and if he went so far in his opposition to saul, he made himself responsible for the rebellion; if he really intended this, he would have set up some other than a shepherd-boy against saul. if, on the other hand, david was really anointed, saul was quite justified in pursuing him. yet it was with this anointment, as with that of saul; no one knew anything of it, and david himself makes no use of this divine election, not even when he organises the rebellion in judah, nor after saul's death at hebron, nor in the struggle against ishbosheth, who was not in any case anointed, nor even after the death of ishbosheth: he is after this chosen by the people in hebron and anointed king over israel. it is only the philistines in gath who know anything of david's royal dignity, when he comes to them for the first time, sam. xxi. . we see plainly that this anointment is a careless interpolation of the prophetic revision, to which the verses - of the chapter quoted undoubtedly belong, just as chap. xvi. is intended to legitimise david. the same account represents saul as thrusting twice with his javelin at david, xviii. , , on the very day after he has slain the giant. as though nothing had happened, david continues in the house of saul, and saul confers on him still greater honours and dignities. in the older as well as in the later account this is turned round so as to seem that saul gave these to david as a "snare," that david might fall by the hands of the philistines, xviii. , ; and with this view saul requires foreskins of the philistines as the price of michal. it is obvious that saul had other means, more certain to accomplish his object, at his command to destroy david, if he really intended it; according to the older account saul requests jonathan and his men, though in vain, to slay david, xix. . when the attempt at assassination and the open breach has taken place in both narratives, saul, according to the prophetic account, marvels nevertheless that david does not come to table, xx. , . to this text also belongs the further statement that when jonathan excused david, saul thrust at him also with his spear, xx. . in the older account ahimelech, who had aided david in his flight, makes the excuse that he knew not that david fled before the king. "david was the most honoured among the friends of saul:" no one therefore knew anything of these plots and attempts of saul upon david. every one sees that this is impossible. jonathan knows david better than saul, and always defends him against his father; then david himself calls on jonathan to kill him if there is any wickedness in him, , xx. . the story of the arrows is very poetical, but the sign is quite unnecessary, since they afterwards converse with each other, , xx. - . in the older account also of the occurrence in the desert by the dead sea, the prophetic account has inserted a visit of jonathan to david. jonathan strengthens david's courage although he is in rebellion against his father. "fear not," jonathan says to him, "the hand of my father will not reach thee, thou shalt be king over israel," xxiii. - . saul was something different from the madman who betwixt sane intervals and reconciliations is constantly making fresh attacks on david's life, whether innocent or guilty. even the most complete recognition of all that david established at a later time for israel, and with an influence extending far beyond israel, does not make it a duty to overlook the way in which he rose to his eminence. [ ] sam. xxii. ; , x. . [ ] in sam. xxix. , achish says of david, "he has now been with me for years." [ ] so the older account, sam. xxii. - . [ ] so the older story, sam. xxii. the priestly point of view from which it is written causes it, in order to prove the innocence of the priests, to represent david as saying on his flight to ahimelech that he had a hasty mission from the king, so that ahimelech can explain to saul that he knew nothing about the flight. from the same point of view we must derive the statement that the body-guard hesitated to lay hands on the holy men, and that an edomite slew them. that the punishment of nob took place long after david's flight and rebellion, is clear from the fact that the fugitive abiathar finds david already in possession of kegilah, sam. xxii. ; xxiii. , . [ ] sam. xxv. - , - . [ ] sam. xxx. - . [ ] that david saved and won kegilah from the philistines, and obtained a great victory over them, as we find it in the older account ( sam. xxiii. - ), is more than improbable. david certainly could not undertake to fight with saul and the philistines at one time with men. how could he meet an army of the philistines in the field, when he does not trust himself to maintain the walls of kegilah against saul with his troop. the citizens of kegilah would hardly have been prepared to give him up, if just before he had done them such a kindness. finally, this battle contradicts the position in which we find david before and afterwards with regard to the philistines. achish at any rate has unbounded confidence in david since his desertion, and will even make him "keeper of his head," sam. xxviii. . [ ] sam. xxiii. - . [ ] sam. xxiii. - . [ ] so the older account, sam. xxvi. , ; xxvii. - . while saul has cast his spear at david, and pursues him everywhere with unwearying energy in order to slay him, david gives him his life. according to the older account, saul sleeps in his encampment in the wilderness of ziph. david with abishai secretly enters this, and he distinctly refuses, when urged by abishai to slay saul, to listen to him, because saul is an "anointed of jehovah," takes the spear and the water-bowl of the king, plants himself on a mountain in the distance, and from this reproaches abner that he has been so careless in providing for the safety of the king. saul is again touched, acknowledges his sins and follies, begs david to return, and finally gives him his blessing on his undertaking. david upon this declares that his life will be regarded before jehovah as he has regarded saul's life, and escapes to the philistines. according to the prophetic account, saul "covers his feet" in a cave in the desert of engedi, in which are concealed david and his men. these urge david to slay saul, but he replies, "far be it from me to lay my hand on the lord's anointed," and merely cuts off the corner of saul's upper garment. when saul awakes and goes out of the cave, david hurries after him, prostrates himself, and proves by the piece in his hand that those did him wrong who said that he sought to do saul mischief, "but thou art seeking to take my life." saul weeps, acknowledges that david is more just than he is; may jehovah reward him (david) for this day. "i know," saul continues, "that thou wilt be king, and the kingdom of israel will continue in thy hand." let david only swear to him not to destroy his seed. this david does, sam. xxiv. - . if this event, in itself all but impossible, ever took place, it must have had some consequences; yet there is no change in the relations of saul and david, saul continues to pursue david. if david took the oath not to destroy the descendants of saul, he broke it. [ ] so the older account, sam. xxvii. . [ ] sam. xxvii. , . [ ] chron. xiii. - , . [ ] sam. xxx. - ; _supra_, p. . in order to wash david clean from the reproach of fighting with the philistines against his people, it is observed (xxvii. - ) that david always marched against the tribes of the desert, that he cut down the prisoners, and then reported to achish that he "had invaded the south of judah." the position of ziklag was ill-suited for attacks on the desert, and achish had not given him any commands to fight against the children of the desert. at a later time achish says of david: "since his desertion i have found nothing in him," xxix. , ; he will make him even the protector of his own life ( , xxviii. ), and such deceit as is here attributed to david presupposes that achish and all the rest of the philistines were blind. [ ] sam. xxvii. , "one year and four months:" xxix. , achish says, "he has been with me--for years." [ ] according to the older account, sam. xxviii. , when achish requires him to march with him against saul, david replies, "so shalt thou behold what thy servant will do." the narrative of the sending back of david at the wish of the remaining princes, and david's protest against it, belong also to the older narrative. this is repeated in chronicles ( , xiii. ) very emphatically, and without any motive in the context, so that it might be possible to accept the same view which represents david as constantly marching against the desert from ziklag. for the moral estimate of david it is sufficient that it did not rest with him to join in the battle. [ ] the story of the witch of endor (xxviii. ff.) belongs to the later account. to begin with, this account contradicts itself; we are told in the introduction (verse ) that saul had removed the necromancers and "wise men" out of israel, a statement which is repeated in the course of the story (verse ). nevertheless saul causes a witch to be sought out, because when already encamped before the philistines "he is in great fear of the enemy." saul was a brave warrior, who even in a worse position had never trembled. he sends for this woman in order to speak with samuel's ghost. if saul had any desire to see ghosts, he would desire to see the ghost of samuel least of all, for he, according to the same prophetic account, had anointed david to be king against saul (verse ). samuel as a ghost has thus a third opportunity for reproaching saul, and telling him "that jehovah had given the kingdom to david, because he had not satisfied his wrath on amalek" (p. ). [ ] sam. xxxi. - ; chron. x. . according to a second account of the death of saul in sam. i. ff., an amalekite came unexpectedly to mount gilboa. he finds saul in flight leaning on his spear, and saul says to him, "slay me." the amalekite does so; takes the crown from the head of the king, and his bracelets, and then flies to ziklag in the territory of the philistines in order to bring the crown to david. david causes him to be slain, because "he had lifted up his hand against the anointed of the lord." the object of this story is too plain--to bring the crown of saul into the hands of david in order to make him the legitimate king, and at the same time to exhibit david as loyal to saul even after his death, and avenging his murder--and the impossibilities in it are too great. david afterwards permitted the execution of the remaining descendants of saul. [ ] sam. xxxi. , ; , xxi. . [ ] this lament, which was in the book of jasher ( sam. i. ), is ascribed to david. his moral participation in the issue of the battle must have been most clear to himself; his rebellion and desertion to the philistines had weakened saul's powers of fighting and deprived him of brave warriors; he had been ready to fight in the army of the philistines against saul and jonathan. least of all could david sing, "tell it not in gath," since he himself was in the land of gath. the last verse, "i am distressed for thee, my brother jonathan," etc., may certainly have come from david, and may have been added to the lament at a later time. thus the whole might appear to be the work of david. [ ] sam. ii. - . [ ] sam. ii. , , - . [ ] this conclusion must be drawn both from the earlier relation to the philistines, and from the fact that david during this whole time has not to fight with the philistines, whereas afterwards, as soon as he has united the tribes under his rule, he has to wage the fiercest war with them; apparently he was supported against ishbosheth and abner by the philistines in order to put a stop to abner's advances. cf. ewald, "geschichte des volks israel," , . [ ] david reigned seven years and six months at hebron, sam. iii. , , ; , v. , ; kings ii. . ishbosheth's reign is given at two years only. these two statements can only be brought into harmony by supposing that ishbosheth was not acknowledged king of the northern tribes till five and a half years after saul's death, _i.e._ abner required this time to drive the philistines out of these regions, or that david was not acknowledged king of israel till five and a half years after the death of ishbosheth. [ ] sam. iii. . [ ] sam. iii. - . [ ] this beautiful lament is also ascribed to david: david was the singer, and, like the psalms, other songs also come from him. but david could not speak of joab and indirectly of himself as a "child of iniquity." [ ] sam. v. - . [ ] chron. xii. ff. [ ] sam. xxi. . chapter vii. the rule of david. at the cost of his nation, in collusion with the enemies of his land, and under the protection of the philistines, david had paved the way to dominion over israel. he had much to make good. he had to cause the way which led him to the throne to be forgotten, to heal the wounds which the long contention must have inflicted on his land, to surpass the great services which saul had rendered to the israelites by yet greater services, by more brilliant exploits, by more firmly-rooted institutions. a brave warrior even in early years, david had been afterwards tested and strengthened by adventures and dangers of every kind; he had understood how to meet or escape even the most difficult situations. he had the inclination and power for great things, and was little scrupulous in the choice of the means which brought him most swiftly and completely to his object. his vision was clear and wide; clever, crafty, and quickly decided, he nevertheless knew how to wait when the object could not be obtained at the moment. it was his in an extraordinary measure to retain old comrades, to win new ones and attach them to himself. it was not his intention to be at the beck of the philistines longer than he had need of them; with his elevation at hebron came the moment for breaking with them. he saw that they would not lose without a heavy price the preponderance in which his rebellion against saul, his leadership in judah, his struggle against ishbosheth had again placed them; that their exasperation would be the deeper and more lasting because he had deceived the hopes which they had placed in him. he began his reign with an undertaking which shows the certainty and width of his views. his dominion over the tribes of simeon and judah had been established for almost eight years, but over the northern tribes it was recent, and had to be confirmed. the remembrance of saul was cherished most warmly in the tribe of benjamin, which lay next to judah on the north. in this land, not far from the northern border of judah, was a city of the name of jebus, inhabited by the jebusites, a relic of the old population which at the time of the settlement the benjaminites had not been able to overcome.[ ] the city stood on steep heights, surrounded by deep gorges, which formed natural trenches; the walls of the eastern height on which the citadel stood, mount zion, were so strong that the jebusites are said to have boasted that the blind and lame were sufficient to defend them. this city appeared to david excellently situated for protection against the philistines and for his own royal abode; it had the faithful tribes of judah and simeon to the south, and was pushed forward like a fortification into the territory of benjamin and the northern tribes. nor was it useful only in establishing his dominion over israel. even in saul's reign it had been difficult when an enemy invaded the open cantons of israel to find time for assembling the fighting powers, the levy of the people; there had been no fortified point on which the first shock of the enemy's onset broke, no city strongly fortified and of considerable size in which large numbers could find protection. soon after the assembly at hebron, which had transferred to him the royal authority over all the tribes of israel, david set himself to win this place. first he cut off the water from the city of the jebusites, and then joab with the veteran band of david succeeded in climbing the wall in a sudden attack. the inhabitants were spared; at any rate a part of them must have remained, for we afterwards find jebusites in and about jerusalem.[ ] the princes of the philistines had begun to arm immediately upon the announcement of david's election to be king of all israel.[ ] david awaited their approach in the citadel of zion which he had just conquered. the philistines encamped before the city. when they were scattered in search of plunder in the valley of rephaim david inquired of jehovah whether he should go down against them. the answer was favourable. the philistines were surprised and defeated. but they soon appeared a second time under the walls of zion, and the oracle of jehovah bade david not to go directly against them, but to turn aside under the balsam trees. if he heard the tops of the trees rustle he was to hasten on; that was the sign from god that he would go before him to smite the camp of the philistines. so it befel. david gained a great victory and was enabled to pursue the philistines as far as gezer.[ ] yet the war was not decided, but still continued for a long time. four battles took place on the borders near gob and gath, and many severe combats had to be fought with the philistines. from all the traces of tradition it is clear that this war was the most stubborn and dangerous of all that david had to wage. in israel there were stories of the brave deeds of individual heroes which were accomplished in these battles: of abishai, the brother of joab, who saved the king in battle, when the mighty philistine ishbi thought to overcome him; of elhanan, who slew goliath of gath; and of the deeds of jonathan, the nephew of david, and sibbechai against the philistines.[ ] at length david succeeded in "wresting the bridle out of the hand of the philistines," and "breaking their horn in pieces;"[ ] he drove them back to their old borders. they had suffered such serious blows that for a long time they abstained from all further attacks, after they had carried on warfare against the hebrews for about years. yet even david, in spite of this success, made no serious attempt to advance the borders of israel towards the sea, or to subjugate the cities of the philistines. when the most pressing danger from the philistines was over, david turned his arms to the south and east, against the amalekites, the moabites, and ammonites, who had once caused so much misery and disaster to israel. against the amalekites saul had already accomplished the main task (p. ). david smote them with such effect that the name of the amalekites is hardly once mentioned afterwards; the remainder of the race seem to have been amalgamated with the edomites.[ ] david had at a former time entered into connection with the king of moab; when he fled from saul he placed his parents under his protection. the cause of the rupture is unknown; we only know that david utterly overthrew the moabites and caused two-thirds of the prisoners to be put to death. it is said that they were compelled to lie down; they were then divided by a measuring cord into three parts, of which two were slain by iron threshing-carts being drawn over them, and only a third part were spared.[ ] nahash, the king of ammon, with whom david had also previously been in relations (p. ), was succeeded by his son hanon. this prince insulted david's envoys, he caused their beards to be shaved off, and their garments to be cut away as high as the middle. david sent joab with the levy of the people against the ammonites to avenge the insult. hanon called on the king of zobah--saul had already had to fight against zobah--and the rulers of beth-rehob, maacah, and tob in syria for assistance. hadad-ezer of zobah sent , men; from tob came , ; from maacah . joab divided his army, left his brother abishai to oppose the ammonites, and turned himself with picked men against the syrians and defeated them before they could join the ammonites.[ ] after this defeat the ammonites also retired before abishai into their fortified city of rabbath-ammon on the nahr-ammon. but in the next spring hadad-ezer collected his whole force. david marched across the jordan to meet the syrians, and defeated hadad-ezer in a decisive battle at helam; the israelites carried off the chariots of the enemy for spoil; horsemen and , foot-soldiers were captured.[ ] david followed up this victory and overran the cities of the king of zobah, when the king of damascus took the field in aid of hadad-ezer, and the edomites invaded judah from the south. david remained in the field against the syrians, and sent joab with only a part of the army against the edomites. in the salt valley, at the southern end of the dead sea, joab and abishai defeated the edomites; , out of , are said to have fallen on this day.[ ] in spite of this severe defeat the edomites made a stubborn resistance. joab, in continuous struggles which went on for six months, destroyed a great part of the male population (the son of the king of edom was carried by the servants of his father to egypt), and subjugated the rest of the inhabitants to the dominion of david. while joab was fighting in edom, david had defeated the men of damascus and brought the war in the north to an end. thoi, the king of hamath, whom hadad-ezer had previously oppressed, entered into a league with david. only the ammonites still continued to resist. joab was sent against them in the next year; he laid their land waste, and took one city after another. the captives were placed under saws and axes, and burnt in kilns, or slain like the moabites under iron threshing-wagons. at length joab could announce to david that rabbath-ammon, the chief city of the ammonites, was reduced to extremities; the king must come to enter into the city. rabbath was destroyed (about b.c.[ ]); the inhabitants shared the fate of the other ammonite cities. from the syrian campaign david had brought back a trophy of war-horses, copper vessels from the cities of hadad-ezer of zobah which were captured, and finally the golden shields which the commanders of this king had carried. from rabbath he brought home the golden crown of the king of the ammonites,--it is said to have been a kikkar (i. ) in weight and set with precious stones,--together with other utensils of silver and gold. the moabites, the ammonites, and edomites were compelled to pay tribute. garrisons were put in the strong places; even damascus is said to have received a garrison of israelites.[ ] after saul had first saved israel out of the hand of their oppressors, after these advantages were lost by the domestic strife, david had now formed the israelites into a ruling nation from isolated tribes who had been so often and so long plundered by their enemies. he had come victorious out of the most severe struggles. with reason could israel now sing: "saul has slain his thousands, david his tens of thousands." it was a rapid and brilliant transformation. david was master from the borders of egypt, the north-east point of the red sea, to damascus. he was not content with successfully establishing his rule for the moment by these great and brilliant deeds of arms; he intended to give it a solid support for the future. he employed the spoils of his victories in order to fortify more strongly and extend the city which he had chosen for his metropolis; it was now called the city of david, and afterwards jerusalem.[ ] on zion, the citadel of jerusalem, david caused a royal palace to be built. in the city the remnant of the jebusites had been joined by inhabitants from the tribes of judah and benjamin. if david hoped to lessen the disaffection of the tribe of benjamin by establishing a royal citadel in their land he had not calculated wrongly. the sequel shows that benjamin, which previously held to ephraim, now stood fast by judah. in possession of a considerable and well-fortified metropolis, and a strong royal citadel, david was able to rule over israel with greater safety and severity than saul from his rural court at gibeah. moreover, david intended to create independent means and property for the crown, and kept together what he had won. from the tribute of the subjugated nations he formed a treasury, which was placed under the care of asmaveth. in addition we hear of overseers of the royal gardens, oliveyards, vineyards, and sycamore plantations, and we learn that david kept flocks of small cattle, herds of oxen, and camels.[ ] the strongest support of the throne were his selected and thoroughly devoted troops of warriors. david was accompanied by a body-guard which was always with him (saul had had round him some "runners"). it appears from the name, pelethites and cherethites, to have been entirely composed of foreigners; their leader was benaiah.[ ] the core of the army was formed not by this body-guard, but by the freebooters who once gathered round him in the cave of adullam and at ziklag, warriors tried often and in numerous battles. they remained in one body in jerusalem, and were maintained by the king. this band--it was apparently about men in number,[ ] and in the ranks were also foreigners, hittites, ammonites, moabites, and others, who formerly associated with david, or were attracted by the fame of his deeds--was called the troop of the mighty, "gibborim;" accompanied by armour-bearers and servants, they took the field. they were divided into three portions, under three leaders; at their head fought selected heroes: abishai, joab's brother, was the captain.[ ] as simple peasants, the israelites had always fought on foot, without horses and horsemen; david, after the pattern of the syrians, introduced chariots. josheb bassebet was the captain of the war-chariots.[ ] along with the gibborim, the chariots were intended to give, as trained divisions, firmness and support to the levy of the whole people. in order to regulate the levy, joab, the chief captain, with some of his subordinates, was commanded to enumerate and write down all the fighting men from the jabbok to mount hermon, and from dan to beersheba. nine months and twenty days were required by the captains for this task. when the muster was completed, captains were appointed for hundreds and thousands; but in order that the whole mass of the people need not be called out on every campaign and every attack of the enemy,--in which hitherto, for the most part, only those who were eager for battle had engaged, while those who preferred peace and rest remained at home,--the whole number of the fighting men was divided into twelve portions, of which each, in number , men, was pledged to service for one month in the year. each of these divisions had a separate captain. as occasion required, several of the divisions, or all, might be called out. if we may trust these accounts, israel had at that time , fighting men, and consequently a population of about two millions.[ ] hitherto the descendants of the oldest families, the heads of the tribes, the successors of those who in the conquest of the land had won for themselves separate localities and valleys, had enjoyed a pre-eminent position within the circle of the various tribes (p. ). to them, or to brave warriors, the israelites had gone,--to men who had become of importance owing to their possessions, and who had the reputation of passing sound judgments,--or to priests and soothsayers, when they sought for advice, protection, and justice. since the establishment of the monarchy the king was the supreme judge. david exercised this office as saul had done.[ ] but though he retained the right of deciding in the last instance, david seems to have appointed the princes and judges of the tribes; he charged certain of his adherents with the duty of giving justice to the tribes and communities, although, of course, every man had the right of appeal from his decision to the decision of the king. jurisdiction and administration not yet being separated, we may suppose that a regular government, which secured to the throne the execution of its will and of the orders given, was established by this means already in david's reign. we find that, beside the captains of the army, the officers of the house and treasury, the king had a chancellor, a scribe, and overseer of the taxes. ahithophel was the man on whose advice david mainly depended; his most trusted friend was hushai; and in the last twenty years of his life the prophet nathan enjoyed a high place in his favour.[ ] it was a marvellous career that lay behind david. he had grown up in a hardy youth; early approved as a brave warrior and skilful leader, he was then raised to the side of saul and jonathan; after this he experienced the most sudden reverse of fortune, and at length by very perplexed paths he reached the highest stage. on this he had been able to retrieve many mistakes; he came victorious out of every conflict. saul's deeds were surpassed, and israel was proud of the successes of david and the respect which he won for her. he had securely established his authority; it was founded so firmly that the crown must pass to his descendants. the religious feeling which impelled him to inquire of jehovah before every undertaking, which brought him at an early period into connection with the seers and priests, could not but increase as he looked back upon the course of his life. who had greater reason than he to be thankful to the god who protected him and guided him so marvellously, who saved him out of every danger and had raised him to such power and splendour? in early days singing and harp-playing had occupied the leisure of his shepherd life; gifted with poetic powers, he understood how to give a powerful expression to his gratitude towards jehovah. after these great wars he is said to have sung: "jehovah, my rock, my fortress, my shield; the horn of my salvation, my defence. i called on him who is worthy of praise, and was delivered from my enemies. out of his palace he heard my voice, and my cry came into his ears. then the earth moved and quaked, and the foundations of the earth trembled, for he was wroth. smoke rose out of his nostrils, and a consuming fire went from his mouth; coals burned forth from him. he bowed the heavens, and came down on the cherubim, and hovered on the wings of the wind. he made darkness his veil, the tempest and dark cloud his tabernacle. jehovah thundered, and the highest gave forth his voice, hail-stones and coals of fire. he shot forth his arrows and destroyed the enemy, the lightning fell and dispersed them. with thee, jehovah, i went against hosts, and with my god i climbed over walls. jehovah girded me with power; he gave me feet like harts' feet; he taught my hand the battle, so that my arm strung the iron bow. i pursued my enemies and overtook them, and turned not back till i had destroyed them; i shattered them in pieces that they could not rise up; i scattered them like dust before the wind; i cast them forth like dung. thou, jehovah, didst save me from the battles of the nations, and didst place me at their head; nations which i knew not serve me. at a rumour they obey me, and the sons of strangers flatter me; they sink away and tremble out of their castles. praised be my protector, exalted be the god of my salvation."[ ] it was not in praise and thanksgiving only that david gave expression to the grateful feeling which filled him towards god; he had it much at heart to create a lasting abode and visible centre for the worship of jehovah. for years the sacred ark of israel had remained at kirjath-jearim, in the house of abinadab, who had made one of his sons the custodian of it. david determined to convey it into his metropolis, that it might there be in secure keeping, and receive proper reverence. it was placed on a new wagon; abinadab's sons, ahio and uzzah, led it forth. on the way an evil omen occurred: the oxen which drew the wagon broke loose, the ark tottered, and uzzah put out his hand to stay it. "then the anger of jehovah broke forth against uzzah, and he smote him, and he died there before god." after this incident david feared to carry the ark further; it remained on the road, at the house of obed-edom; and not until it was seen that it brought prosperity to the house of obed-edom did david, three months after, again take it up and carry it to jerusalem. in festal train the people accompanied it with "shouting and trumpets;" and david, clad in the linen tunic of the priests, "danced before jehovah." "lift up your heads, o ye gates, that the king of glory may come in," he is said to have sung. the tabernacle was already erected on zion, and in it the ark of jehovah was then placed; and "david sacrificed burnt offerings and thank offerings, and gave to all the people, to each man a measure of wine, a loaf of bread and a cake of raisins" (about b.c.[ ]). abiathar, the son of ahimelech, of the house of eli, of the race of ithamar, of the tribe of aaron, who had formerly fled to him with the image of jehovah from nob and remained by his side, and beside him zadok, of the house of eleazar, of the tribe of aaron, who had hitherto been high priest at the place of sacrifice at gibeon,[ ] were made by david the custodians of the new tabernacle, which he then adorned with the costly spoil of his victories. by bringing the ark of the covenant into his city he gave it a sacred pledge, the assurance of the protection and the grace of jehovah. his city was the dwelling of jehovah, the citadel of zion the mount of god. david's new metropolis was thus at the same time raised to be the central point of the national worship, and in the fullest sense the metropolis of the land. service before the ark of the covenant on zion could not but throw into the shade the old places of sacrifice at shiloh, bethel, gibeon, gilgal, and nob. the erection of the sacred ark on zion, the foundation of a central point for the worship, certainly met the wishes of the priests. only by a strictly-regulated and dominant mode of worship, by centralising the service, could the priests hope to bring into vogue the arrangement of ritual which they regarded as the true method appointed by god. relying on the importance of such a central point, on the authority of the crown, they could expect obedience to their regulations. david on his part would hardly fail to see what weight the influence of an allied priesthood could add to the strength of the throne. what david did for israel by the cultivation of religious song, by setting up the old national shrine in the new metropolis, by the dedication of it to be the abode of jehovah has been of deep-reaching and even decisive influence for the fortunes of israel and the course of her religious development. it is, of course, beyond doubt that only a few of the psalms which david is said to have sung can with certainty be traced back to him; but from the fact that the greater part of these poems could be ascribed to him, it follows with the greater certainty that he must have given a powerful impulse to the religious poetry of israel, that the words of thankfulness and trust in god from the lips of the victorious royal minstrel had the greatest influence on the israelites. this influence connected with the exaltation and worship of the national sacred relic at zion gave a new life and firmer root to the belief of the israelites, both in the direction of religious feeling and religious prescriptions. when the chief place of sacrifice was marked out indubitably by the sacred ark on zion, and members of the oldest priestly family officiated there, it was natural that by degrees a considerable number of priests should collect there, in order to share and co-operate in the worship in the sacred tent, in the tabernacle. these priests were arranged according to their families or "houses;" the greater number claimed eleazar, the third son of aaron, as their progenitor, while the less claimed to be descended from ithamar, the fourth son of aaron.[ ] the eyes of the priesthood were already turned from hebron to the early history of the nation, to the correct mode of worship, as aaron and moses had formerly proclaimed and practised it, which since the settlement in canaan had become almost forgotten and obsolete with priests and laymen, since different customs had come into use at different places of sacrifice. the service at the new and yet ancient shrine at jerusalem must support the impulse to practise, here at any rate, the old correct customs in perfect purity as a pattern and example, to insist on the custom of zion as pleasing to god, and established by moses, and to bring once more into authority and practice the true regulations of the sacrificial rites for the whole land. agreement and union in the mode of worship would be most quickly and most thoroughly obtained if the place of the tabernacle could be shown to be the only correct place of sacrifice. though the philistines had opposed the growth of the strength of israel, the combination and arrangement of her powers, with perseverance and stubbornness, the cities of the phenicians seem rather to have welcomed the establishment of a strict ruling authority in israel, which preserved peace in the land and so made trade easier. perhaps too they looked with pleasure on the formation of a power which could balance that of the philistines, and prevent them from advancing as far as the gates of tyre. at any rate hiram, king of tyre, who began to rule in that city in the year b.c.,[ ] entered into friendly relations with david. he sent him tyrian artisans, who adorned david's palace on zion. the israelites were not skilled in fine building. after this palace was completed we must look on david's house and court as splendid and numerous. there was the chancellor, the keeper of the treasury, the chief tax-gatherer, the scribe with his subordinates; there were singers, male and female, the body-guard, and the servants.[ ] david had brought seven wives from hebron to his new metropolis. michal, the daughter of saul, had borne no children to david; his eldest son, amnon, was by ahinoam of jezreel; the second, chileab, by abigail, the widow of nabal. when he ruled the tribe of judah from hebron he married a fourth wife, maacah, the daughter of thalmai, prince of geshur, in order, no doubt, to strengthen by this connection his power, then so weak. maacah bore him a third son, absalom, and a daughter, tamar; his fifth wife, haggith, bore a fourth son, adonijah. in jerusalem he took yet more wives and concubines into his house, who, besides these sons, bore seventeen sons and several daughters, beside tamar. when his sons became men, the unavoidable consequences of the harem came to light: the mutual jealousy of the sons of the various wives, and the ambition of some of the wives to obtain the succession for their sons. the establishment of the monarchy had brought a rich return to the israelites. under its guidance, not only had the enemies of the land been beaten back, but israel had gained a leading place in syria. moreover, david had transformed the somewhat insecure leadership conferred on saul by his election into a firm and deep-reaching supremacy; a mere name, a wavering authority, he had raised after the pattern of his neighbours into a strict rule, which could lead the people at will, and dispose of them at pleasure. this transformation had taken place so quickly, the enrolment of israel in the forms of syrian monarchy was carried out so thoroughly, that there could not fail to be a strong reaction. the new officers were oppressive; task-work for the king, levies of the army for muster and for service beyond the land, were to the israelites new and very unwonted burdens. when external dangers had passed away with the humiliation of the neighbours, and the days of the old incursions, distresses, and oppressions were forgotten, it might very well happen that the israelites felt the new arrangement of the community, the mode in which they were governed, to be a burden rather than a benefit. in the later years of the reign of david a lively aversion to his rule was spread through all the tribes; and it is remarkable that it was most deeply felt in his own tribe of judah, which had formerly exalted him in hebron. on this feeling of the people, david's third son, absalom, founded the plan of depriving his father of the sovereignty, in order to ascend the throne before it came to him by inheritance.[ ] absalom, david's son by maacah of geshur, was a handsome man, without blemish from head to foot, adorned with a heavy growth of hair, and a favourite of the people, though the guilt of a foul deed lay upon him. the beauty of tamar, the full sister of absalom, had roused the passions of amnon, the eldest son of david. he enticed her into his house by deceit, dishonoured her and thrust her in scorn into the street. as the king did not punish the crime, absalom invited amnon to his plot of baal hazor, to the sheep-shearing, and there caused him to be stabbed by his servants in order to avenge his sister's shame. after this he fled to his grandfather, the prince of geshur. after three years' banishment he was allowed to return, but might not see his father's face; this was not permitted till two years after his return. amnon was dead; chileab, david's second son, died, as it seems, in this period. absalom was now again received into favour, and became the legitimate heir to the throne. as a token of his claims, absalom procured horses, and chariots and a retinue of men. early in the morning he was at the gates of jerusalem; he inquired of every one whence he came, allowed no one to prostrate himself before him, but shook all by the hand and kissed them. if he heard that any one came for justice, he caused the matter to be told to him, and then said: your cause is good, but you will not be heard; if i were judge in israel you would certainly gain your rights. four years after his return from geshur, when ahithophel, the most distinguished of david's counsellors, and amasa, the son of a sister of david, had gone over to his side,[ ] absalom considered his prospects favourable. he sent trusty men to all the tribes with instructions to proclaim him king as soon as they understood that he was in hebron. under pretence of offering sacrifice at hebron, which city perhaps looked with jealousy on the new metropolis, absalom went from jerusalem to hebron. the tribes obeyed this signal for revolt; everywhere the people on this side jordan declared for absalom, and great numbers gathered round him. at their head he set out against jerusalem, against his father. david was completely taken by surprise. his own son now brought on him retribution for all that he had previously done to saul. clever and circumspect as the old king was, he seems to have found his master in his son. not secure of the people even at jerusalem, he could not venture to defend himself in his fortified metropolis; nothing remained but to retire in all haste. yet even in this desperate position the cunning which had so often come to his aid in his varied life did not desert him. absalom he feared little; his greatest terror was the counsels of ahithophel. hence he commanded hushai (p. ) to remain behind, and in appearance to take absalom's part, in order to counteract ahithophel. if absalom could be induced not to pursue his advantage immediately, and david could gain time to collect his adherents, much would be won. abiathar and zadok also, the high priests of the sacred tabernacle, who wished to share his flight, were bidden to remain in jerusalem. their position as priests was a sufficient protection for them; by means of their sons they were to furnish information of what took place in the city.[ ] accompanied by some of his wives and their children, by his most faithful adherents, the gibborim, and the body-guard, david left the city in the early morning. over the kidron, along the mount of olives, he hastened eastwards to find protection beyond the jordan. at bahurim shimei, a man of benjamin, of the race of matri, to which saul belonged, saw from an eminence the flight of the king. he threw stones down upon him and said: may jehovah bring upon thee all the blood of the house of saul, in whose place thou hast become king; see, thou art now in calamity; away, thou man of blood. the body-guard wished to take the man and slay him, but david restrained them, and said: my son, who has come forth from my loins, is seeking my life; how much more a man of benjamin; let him curse. perhaps at this moment david's spirit was really broken; perhaps he did not wish that the people should be further roused by new acts of violence; in the sequel he showed that he had neither forgotten nor forgiven the words of shimei. on the same day absalom marched into jerusalem, and among those who greeted him he saw with astonishment hushai, the ancient friend of his father. he believed hushai's assurance that he wished to "serve him whom jehovah and all the men of israel had chosen." ahithophel considered the success which had been obtained, the rebellion which spread through the whole country on this side of the jordan, and the possession of the strong metropolis and the palace without a blow, insufficient and indecisive. he saw the situation clearly, and was convinced that all would be lost if the king had time to collect round him his old adherents, his companions in victory. filled with the conviction that the only way to obtain the end in view was to make an immediate use of the great advantages won by the surprise, he insisted that absalom should at once set out in pursuit of david. the people which absalom had led from hebron were numerous, of these he wished to leave behind the burdensome multitude and select , for this expedition. hushai opposed this proposal with great skill. thou knowest thy father, he said to absalom, he is a mighty warrior, like a bear deprived of her whelps in the forest, and his men are mighty and of fierce courage. he will not be encamped on the field, but will have concealed himself in one of the hiding-places. if any of our men fall it will be said, absalom's men have been defeated, and all thy adherents will lose courage. rather rouse all israel, and march out at their head, that we may encamp against david like the sand of the sea, and none of his men may escape. absalom followed this advice to his ruin. yet hushai was not certain that ahithophel would not win over absalom to his opinion, or go of his own will against david; so he sent his maid before the gate to the fuller's well (to the south of the city, where the valleys of hinnom and kidron join), where jonathan, the son of abiathar, and ahimaaz, the son of zadok, lay concealed (absalom's men had not allowed them to leave the gate), with instructions to them to hasten to the king and warn him not to encamp on this side of jordan. though watched by absalom's guards and pursued, the two men came without disaster to david, who again set out in the night. when ahithophel heard that the king was beyond jordan he despaired of the undertaking; he saddled his ass, went to his own city, set his house in order and hung himself. absalom took formal possession of the sovereignty, and as a sign that he had broken for ever with his father and assumed the government, he took the royal harem into his possession. a tent was set up on the roof of the palace of zion, under which absalom lived with the ten concubines whom david had left behind in jerusalem before the eyes of israel. when this was done he raised the whole people to march against his father, and went with numerous troops to the jordan. david was at mahanaim, like ishbosheth before him, eagerly busied with his army. it was due to the cunning arrangements made in the flight from jerusalem that he had escaped without danger beyond jordan, and was enabled to assemble his own adherents there while absalom was calling out and collecting the whole army. from the ammonites, whom he had treated so harshly, he seems nevertheless to have received support.[ ] while absalom crossed the jordan, david divided the forces he had at his disposal into three corps, the command of which he entrusted to joab, his brother abishai, and ithai, a philistine of gath. he remained behind in mahanaim, and bade the captains deal gently with absalom in the event of victory. the armies met in the forest of ephraim, not far from the jordan. in spite of the superiority of the numbers opposed to them, the tried and veteran soldiers of david had the advantage over the ill-armed and ill-organised masses of peasants. absalom started back on his mule, fell into a thicket, and became entangled by his long hair in the branches of a large terebinth. he remained hanging while his mule ran away from under him. joab found him in this position, and thrust his spear thrice through his heart. either the fall of the hostile leader, the author of the rebellion, appeared a sufficient success to david's men, or the advantage gained over absalom's army was not very great, or they found themselves too weak to follow it up. joab led the army back to mahanaim. though the rebellion had lost its leader by the fall of absalom, it was far from being crushed. absalom's captain, amasa, the nephew of david, collected the masses of the rebellious army; the elders of the tribes, as well as the people, were ready to continue the struggle against david, though some were again inclined to accept their old king. if the tribes could be divided, and amasa separated from the elders of judah, the victory was almost certain. on this david built his plan. by means of the priests abiathar and zadok he caused it to be made known to the elders of judah that the rest of the tribes had made overtures to him, to recognise him again as king, which was not the case;--would they be the last to lead back their own flesh and blood, their tribesman david? at the same time the priests were bidden to offer to amasa the post of captain-general as the reward of his return, and this offer david confirmed with an oath: so might god do to him if amasa were not captain all his days in the place of joab.[ ] the elders of judah allowed themselves to be entrapped no less than amasa, who little knew with whom he had to do. they sent a message to the king that he might return over the jordan, and went to meet him at gilgal. david showed himself placable, and prepared to pardon the adherents of absalom. shimei, who had cursed him on his retirement from jerusalem, went to meet him at the jordan; and when the boat which carried david over reached the hither bank he fell at his feet. david promised not to slay him with the sword.[ ] from mephibosheth, the son of jonathan, who had declared for absalom, he only took the half of saul's inheritance.[ ] the remaining tribes were enraged at the tribe of judah, partly because they had abandoned the common cause, partly because judah had entirely appropriated the merit of bringing back the king. their feelings were wavering: half were for submission, the others for continuing the resistance.[ ] then rose up a man of benjamin, sheba, the son of bichri. "what part have we in david, what portion in the son of jesse?" he cried to the waverers, caused the trumpets to be blown, and gave a new centre to rebellion and resistance. david commissioned amasa to call out the warriors of judah within three days and lead them to jerusalem. while amasa was occupied with carrying out this command, david sent joab with the gibborim and the body-guard against sheba. at gibeon joab met amasa. is all well with thee, my brother? he said, and took him by the beard with his right hand to greet him, while with the left he thrust his sword through his body.[ ] thus, after he had been gained by deceptive promises, the dangerous man was removed as abner had been before him. sheba could not withstand the impetuous advance of joab; the tribes submitted. sheba's first resistance was made far in the north at dan, in the city of abel-beth-maachah, and there he defended himself so stubbornly that a rampart was thrown up against the city and besieging engines brought up against the walls. when the walls were near upon falling, and the citizens saw destruction before them, they saved themselves by cutting off sheba's head and sending it to joab.[ ] the reaction of the people against the new government, at the head of which absalom, amasa, and sheba had successively placed themselves, was overcome. many years before, at the time when joab was besieging rabbath, the metropolis of the ammonites, david had gone out on the roof of his house in zion in the cool of the evening. this position overlooked the houses in the ravine which separated the citadel from the city. in one of these david saw a beautiful woman in her bath. this was bathsheba, the wife of uriah, a hittite, who served in the troop of the "mighty." the king sent for her to his palace, and she soon announced to david that she was with child. david gave orders to joab to send uriah from the camp to jerusalem. he asked him of the state of the war and the army, and then bade him go home to his wife, but uriah lay before the gate of the palace. when david asked him on the next morning why he had not gone home to his house, he answered: israel is in the field, and my fellows lie in the camp before rabbath, and shall i go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? remain here, replied david; to-morrow morning i will let thee go. david invited him into the palace and made him drunken, but, as before, uriah passed the night before the gate of the palace. then, on the following day, david sent uriah to the camp with a letter to joab: place uriah in the thickest of the battle, and turn away from him, that he may be smitten, and die. soon after a messenger came from the camp and announced to the king: the men of rabbath made a sally; we repulsed them, and drove them to the gate; then the bowmen shot at thy servants from the walls, and some of our men were slain, among them uriah. david caused bathsheba, when the time for mourning was over, to come into his harem, and after the death of her first child, she bore a second child, whom david called solomon, _i.e._ the peaceful,[ ] as the times of war were over with the capture of rabbath and the subjugation of the ammonites. after absalom's death the heir to the crown was adonijah, the fourth son of david, whom haggith had borne to him while at hebron. solomon was the seventh in the series of the surviving sons of david, and as yet quite young; yet bathsheba attempted to place her son on the throne. one of the two high priests, zadok, supported bathsheba's views, as also nathan the prophet, who acquired great influence with david in the last years of his reign. both might expect a greater deference to priestly influence from the youthful solomon than from the older and more independent adonijah, and the more so if they assisted the young man to gain the throne against the legitimate successor. so bathsheba prevailed upon david to swear an oath by jehovah that solomon should be his successor in the place of adonijah.[ ] but adonijah did not doubt that the throne belonged to him, that all israel was of the same conviction, and their eyes turned upon him.[ ] if zadok was in favour of solomon's succession, abiathar, the old and influential adherent of david, was for adonijah, and what was more important, the captain of the army, joab, who had won david's best victories, also declared for him. on the other hand, bathsheba's party won benaiah, the captain of the body-guard, so that the power and prospects of both party were about equal. when david, years old, lay on his death-bed, adonijah felt that he must anticipate his opponents. he summoned his adherents to meet outside the walls at the fuller's well (p. ). joab appeared with the leaders of the army, abiathar came to offer sacrifice, and all the sons of david except solomon. the sacrifice was already being offered, the sheep, oxen and calves were killed, the proclamation of adonijah was to follow immediately after the sacrifice, when the intelligence was carried to the opposite party. bathsheba and nathan hastened to the dying king to remind him of his oath in favour of solomon. he gave orders that solomon should be placed on the mule which he always rode himself and that zadok should anoint the youth under the wall of zion eastwards of the city at the fount of gihon. then benaiah with the body-guard was to bring him back into the city at once with the sound of trumpets, and lead him into the palace, in order to set him upon the throne there. this was done. zadok took the horn of oil from the sacred tabernacle, and when the new ruler returned in solemn procession to the palace all the people cried with joy: long live king solomon. when adonijah and his adherents heard the shouting from the city, and understood what had taken place, they gave up their cause for lost, and dispersed in dread in every direction. david rejoiced over this last success;[ ] he called solomon to his bedside, and said to him: "do good to the sons of barzillai the gileadite; he received me well when i fled over jordan before thy brother absalom. shimei, who cursed me when i fled to mahanaim, i have sworn not to slay; let him not go unpunished, and bring his grey hairs to the grave with blood. what joab did to abner and amasa thou knowest; let not his grey hairs go down to the grave in peace."[ ] david was buried in the grave which he had caused to be made on zion, where the heights of the citadel meet the western height, on which the city lay. thus david had succeeded in healing the wounds which his ambition had inflicted in past days on israel; he understood how to establish firmly the monarchy, and along with it the power and security of the state. he had given such an important impulse to the worship, to the religious poetry, and consequently to the religious life, of the hebrews, that his reign has remained of decisive importance for the entire development of israel. but beside these great successes and high merits lie very dark shadows. if we cannot but admire the activity and bravery, the wisdom and circumspection, which distinguish his reign, there stands beside these qualities not only the weakness of his later years, which caused him to make a capricious alteration in the succession, thereby endangering the work of his life; other actions, both of his earlier and later years, show plainly that in spite of religious feeling and sentiment he did not hesitate to set aside very fundamental rules of morality when it came to winning the object he had in view. if even in his last moments he causes joab to be put to death by the hand of his son, it may be that this old servant, when he had taken the side of the other son in the succession, appeared very dangerous for the rule of the younger son. but joab had rendered the greatest services to david, he had won for him the most brilliant victories; and if our account makes david give the murder of abner and amasa as the reason for that command, david had made no attempt to punish one deed or the other; on the contrary, he had gladly availed himself of at least the results and fruits of them. we must not indeed measure those days of unrestrained force and violent passion in hatred and love, in devotion and ambition, by the standard of our own tamer impulses; the manner of the ancient east, above all of the semites, was too much inclined to the most bloody revenge. yet david's instructions to destroy a man of no importance, whom he had once in a difficult position sworn to spare, out of the grave, by the hand of his son, goes beyond the limit of all that we can elsewhere find in those times and feelings. footnotes: [ ] joshua xv. ; judges i. . [ ] sam. v. - ; xxiv. ; kings ix. . [ ] sam. v. . [ ] sam. v. - . [ ] above, p. , note ; sam. xxi. - ; chron. xxi. - ; xix. . [ ] sam. viii. . jesus, son of sirach, xlvii. . [ ] nöldeke, "amalekiter," s. - . [ ] sam. viii. . [ ] sam. x. - . [ ] sam. viii. , ; x. - . [ ] psalms lx. ; sam. viii. . [ ] the date rests on the fact that solomon was born soon after, and was more than years old when he came to the throne; see below. the war against hadad-ezer cannot be placed before , since rezon, who escaped, remained solomon's opponent as long as solomon lived. kings xi. . [ ] sam. viii. , , ; x. . [ ] kings xi. . [ ] chron. xxvii. - . [ ] sam. xx. ; chron. xviii. . [ ] sam. xv. . [ ] sam. xxiii. ; chron. xi. , - . [ ] sam. xxiii. . [ ] sam. xxiv. . the number of the levy here, as in almost all accounts of the assembling of the people, must be grossly exaggerated: , are given in israel, , in judah only. chronicles raises the first number to , , , and reduces the second to , , xxii. . the statement given in chronicles about the division of the levy into troops, and the strength of these troops ( xxviii. - ), contradicts these numbers. as this arrangement of the army is mentioned in chronicles only, which books show a great tendency to systematise, the division into remains uncertain. that there was a numbering of the people is not to be doubted. it is counted as one of david's errors, and jehovah strikes the people with pestilence. this narrative is connected with the command to redeem the firstborn, the boys (vol. i. ), the ordinance given in exod. xxx. , which is connected with the same conception: "when thou takest the sum of the children of israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to jehovah that there be no plague among them." [ ] sam. viii. . [ ] sam. xx. - ; chron. xxvii. - . [ ] psalm xviii.; cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] sam. vi. - , - ; psalm xxiv. on the date see above, p, , n. . m. niebuhr ("assur und babel," s. ) explains the number of - / years given by josephus ("ant." , ) by assuming that it contains the interval of - / years which the hebrews give for the interval between the building of the temple and its destruction. to this amount is added eight years for the captive high priest jozadak, down to the time when his son joshua became high priest, and years for zadok's priesthood before the commencement of the building of the temple. if we reckon the years of zadok backwards for the time that we have assumed for the beginning of the temple, b.c., we arrive at the year b.c. for the erection of the new tabernacle. [ ] chron. xvi. . [ ] sam. xv. , ; chron. vii. - , - ; xxiii.-xxvi. [ ] if josephus is right, that the fourth year of solomon was the twelfth year of hiram of tyre. [ ] sam. xix. . [ ] absalom's rebellion cannot have taken place till the latter years of david. absalom was born in hebron, and therefore, at the least, after david's thirtieth year, sam. v. . he must at the least have been towards years old when he caused amnon to be murdered. five years passed before david would allow him to enter his presence, sam. xiii. , and xiv. . lastly, his efforts to gain popularity, and the preparations for rebellion, must have occupied two years. if it is stated in sam. xv. that after absalom's return from geshur years elapsed till his rebellion, absalom must have been years old at the time of his rebellion, and david at the least years old. hence in the passage quoted four years must be read instead of . [ ] sam. xv. - ; xvii. ; chron. ii. . [ ] sam. xv. - . [ ] sam. xvii. . [ ] sam. xix. - . [ ] sam. xix. - ; kings ii. . [ ] sam. xvi. - ; xix. - . [ ] sam. xix. . [ ] sam. xx. - ; kings ii. . [ ] sam. xx. - . [ ] sam. xii. - ; chron. xxii. . [ ] kings i. , . [ ] kings ii. , . [ ] kings ii. - . [ ] kings ii. - . the verses sam. xxiii. - may have been a speech of david's at some former time, if they are not an addition of the prophet's. contrasted with the very definite and realistic colouring of the passage quoted from the book of kings, they can hardly be considered the last words. chapter viii. king solomon. in the last hour of his life david had raised his favourite son to the throne. the young king was not much more than years of age,[ ] and the news of the death of the dreaded ruler of israel could not but awaken among all who had felt the weight of his arm the hope of withdrawing themselves from the burden laid upon them. the son of the king of edom, whom his father's servants had carried away in safety into egypt, had grown up there under the protection of the pharaoh; at the news of david's death he hastened to edom to summon his people to freedom and the struggle against israel. a captain of hadad-ezer of zobah, whom david overthrew, rezon by name, fled at that time into the desert, where he collected a troop round him and lived by plundering. now he threw himself on damascus, gained the city, and made himself prince. moreover, the power of solomon was not firmly established even in israel; the people had expected the accession of adonijah,[ ] and though he and his confederates retired at the first alarm, there was no lack of adherents. serious dangers and commotions appeared to threaten the new reign. adonijah had fled for refuge to the altar; he besought solomon for a pledge not to slay him. solomon promised to spare him if he remained quietly at home. joab did not know what commands david had given solomon in his dying hour, but he did know that solomon would not forgive him for supporting adonijah. he sought refuge in the tabernacle of jehovah, and took hold of the horns of the altar in the tent. solomon bade benaiah cut him down. benaiah hesitated to pollute the altar with blood; he reported that joab could not be induced to leave the altar. the young king repeated his command, "cut him down, and take from me and from the house of my father the blood of abner and the blood of amasa." so joab was slain by benaiah at the altar of the sacred tent, and buried "in his house in the desert." the high priest abiathar escaped with his life. "i will not slay thee," so solomon said to him, "because thou didst once suffer with my father." he banished him as a "man of death" to his inheritance at anathoth. zadok was henceforth sole high priest at the sacred tent. when adonijah afterwards besought solomon to give him one of the concubines of david, abishag the shunamite, to wife, solomon thought that he sought to obtain the throne by this means. he commanded benaiah to slay him on the spot. with the death of adonijah his party lost their head and centre: it ceased to exist. solomon broke the rebellion of the edomites not by his arms only, but also by withdrawing from them the support of egypt. he sought the hand of the daughter of the king of egypt and obtained it.[ ] thus he not only withdrew from edom their reliance on egypt, he also obtained the active support of his father-in-law. the edomites were defeated in battle by solomon; egyptian soldiers reduced gezer for him.[ ] on the other hand, solomon could not defeat the new king of damascus. rezon maintained his place, and was an "adversary to israel as long as solomon lived."[ ] hence it is hardly possible that solomon reduced the kingdom of hamath, north of damascus, to subjection, as the chronicles assert;[ ] on the other hand, it appears that the oasis of tadmor, in the syrian desert, north of damascus, was gained, and the city of that name was founded and established there. hence, even after the loss of damascus, he had command of one of the roads to the euphrates.[ ] we may assume that solomon retained the kingdom of david without any essential alteration in extent; that he, like his predecessor, held sway as far as the north-east point of the red sea; and that even if his rule did not extend, like david's, to the euphrates, yet he possessed a predominant position in this direction. the connection in which hiram king of tyre stood with his father he not only maintained, but made it more close and more extensive. with the close of the third year of the reign of solomon the wars which the change on the throne kindled came to an end. it is said to have been david's intention in the last years of his reign to build a temple in the place of the sacred tent on zion. as soon as times of peace came solomon set himself to carry out this purpose. hiram of tyre promised to deliver wood from the forests of lebanon at a price, and to put at his disposal architects and moulders of brass. to the north of the palace which david had built on zion the mountain, on which the citadel was, rose higher. here the new temple was to be erected. the first task was to level the height; a terrace was raised upon it by removing some parts and filling up others, and building substructures; this terrace was intended to form the precincts and support the temple itself. the surrounding hills and the neighbourhood provided an ample supply of stones for building; stone of a better quality was quarried in lebanon and carried down. the trees felled in lebanon were carried to the coast, floated round the promontory of carmel as far as japho (joppa), and again dragged up from this point to jerusalem.[ ] the vessels and the ornaments of brass intended for the temple were cast "in clay ground" beyond the jordan, between succoth and zarthan, by the tyrian hiram.[ ] a wall of huge stones, on which were built the dwellings of the priests, surrounded the temple precincts. the temple itself was a building of moderate dimensions, but richly adorned. a portico of cubits in breadth and cubits in depth, opening to the east, formed the entrance into the temple. before this portico, after the syrian manner, stood two pillars of brass, one called jachin, the other boaz. the temple, exclusive of the portico, was cubits in length, cubits in breadth, and cubits in height. the breadth was limited by the unsupported span of the beams of the roof. on both sides of the temple itself leaned side-buildings, which rose to the height of half the main structure. the front space of the temple was lighted by trellised openings over these side-buildings. this front space, which was the largest, and entered from the portico by a door of cypress wood, adorned with carved work overlaid with gold, was richly ornamented. the floor was laid with cypress wood overlaid with gold; the walls and the roof were covered with panels of cedar wood, which in richly-carved work displayed cherubs and palm-branches, so that not a stone could be seen in the interior. in this space of the temple--the "holy"--was an altar overlaid with gold for offering frankincense (for the smoke-offering), and a sacred table for the sacrificial bread. nearer to the inner space of the temple--the "holy of holies"--were ten candlesticks, and further in a candlestick with seven branches. the holy of holies, _i.e._ the smaller inner space of the temple, which was intended to receive the sacred ark, was divided from the holy by a wall of cedar wood, in which was a double door of olive wood, hanging on golden hinges. only the high priest could enter the holy of holies, the walls of which were covered with gold-leaf, and even from him the sight of the ark was hidden by a curtain of blue and red purple, and approach was barred by a golden chain. immediately before the ark were two cherubs of carved olive wood overlaid with gold, cubits high, with outspread wings, so that from the point of one wing to the point of the other was also a distance of cubits.[ ] the sacrifices of animals were offered in the open air of the court in front of the temple. for this object a great altar of brass was erected in the middle of the court, cubits in height and in the square. southward of this altar was placed a great basin, in which the priests had to perform their ablutions and purifications; this was a much-admired work of the artisan hiram, and called the sea of brass. supported by twelve brazen oxen, arranged in four sets of three, and turned to the four quarters of the sky, the round bowl, which was of the shape of a lily broken open, measured five cubits in depth and in circumference.[ ] beside this great basin five smaller iron bowls were set up on either side of the altar. these rested on wheels, and were adorned with cherubs and lions, palms and flowers, with the greatest skill. they were intended to serve for washing and purifying the animals and implements of sacrifice. solomon commenced the building of the temple in the second month of the fourth year of his reign ( b.c.). after seven years and six months it was finished in the eighth month of the eleventh year of solomon's reign ( b.c.). the elders of all israel, the priests and levites, and all the people "from hamath to the brook of egypt," flocked to jerusalem. in solemn pomp the sacred ark was drawn up to the temple height; oxen and sheep without number were sacrificed for seven days, and from that time forward the king offered a solemn sacrifice each year at the three great festivals in the new temple.[ ] the house which david had built for himself on zion no longer satisfied the requirements of solomon and his larger court. when the temple was finished he undertook the building of a new palace, which was carried out on such a scale that the completion occupied thirteen years.[ ] the new palace was not built on zion, but on the western ridge, which supported the city to the west of zion and david's palace. it consisted of several buildings, surrounded by courts and houses for the servants, and enclosed by a separate wall. the largest building was a house of stone three stories high, the stories and roof of which were supported by cedar pillars and beams of cedar; the length was , the breadth , and the height cubits (about feet). a balustrade or staircase in this house was made of sandal wood, which the ships of ezion-geber had brought from ophir.[ ] on this building abutted three colonnades, the largest cubits long and broad; the third was the hall of the throne and of justice.[ ] here stood the magnificent throne of solomon, "of which the like was never made in any kingdom," of ivory overlaid with gold. six steps, on which were twelve lions, led up to it; beside the arms of the seat were also two lions.[ ] then followed the dwelling of solomon, from which a separate stair-way was made leading up to the temple, together with the chambers for the wives of the king,--their number is given at , the number of the concubines at ,[ ]--and lastly a separate house for his egyptian consort, who passed as the first wife, and was honoured and distinguished above the rest. in the four-and-twentieth year of solomon's reign ( b.c.) this building was brought to an end, "and the daughter of pharaoh went up from the city of david into the house which solomon had built for her."[ ] solomon felt it incumbent on him to secure his land, and not merely to adorn the metropolis by splendid buildings, but to make it inaccessible to attack. to protect northern israel against rezon and damascus he fortified hazor, whose king had once so grievously oppressed israel, and baalath; to protect the western border he fortified megiddo, gezer, and beth-horon.[ ] the defensive works which david had added to the old fortifications of the metropolis he enlarged and extended. the gorge which, running from north to south, divided the city of jerusalem on the western height from the citadel of zion on the east he closed towards the north by a separate fortification, the tower of millo. by another fortification, ophel, he protected a depression of mount zion between david's palace and the new temple, which allowed the citadel to be ascended from the east. the space over which the city had extended on the western height opposite the temple, in consequence of the growth of a suburb there towards the north, the lower city, he surrounded with a wall.[ ] he raised the number of the chariots of war, which david had introduced, to , for which horses were kept. he formed a cavalry force of , horses, he built stables and sheds for the horsemen and chariots. if we include the body-guard, the standing army which solomon maintained may very well have reached , men.[ ] the excellent arrangement of his military means and forces must have contributed to make israel respected and to preserve peace in the land. in solomon's reign, so we are told in the books of kings, every one could dwell in peace under his own vine and his own fig tree.[ ] this peace from without, united with the peace which the power and authority of the throne secured in the country, must have invigorated trade, favoured industry, and considerably increased the welfare of israel. the example of the court, the splendour and magnificence of which was not increased by buildings only, made the wealthy israelites acquainted with needs and enjoyments hitherto unknown to their simple modes of life. if hitherto the israelites had sold to the phenicians wine and oil, the wool of their flocks, and the surplus products of their lands for utensils and stuffs, the finer manufactures of the phenicians now found a demand in israel. if the king of israel was friendly to the phenicians, he allowed them a road by land through his territories to egypt; now that the ammonites, moabites and edomites had been subjugated he could close or open the caravan road past rabbath-ammon, kir moab, and elath to south arabia (i. ), and when tadmor was in his hands he could permit or prohibit a road to the euphrates beside that past damascus. solomon prohibited none of these; on the contrary, he promoted the intercourse of the merchants by erecting resting-places and warehouses on all the lines of traffic which crossed his dominions.[ ] the exportation of chariots and war-horses from egypt to syria, which the pharaoh no doubt permitted in an especial degree to his son-in-law, solomon carried on by means of merchants commissioned by him.[ ] another trade undertaking, at once much more far-seeing, and promising far greater gains, he commenced in union with the king of tyre. it was of great importance to the phenicians to obtain an easier connection with south arabia in the place of, or at least in addition to, the dangerous and very uncertain caravan routes past damascus and dumah (i. ), or past elath along the coast of the red sea, to south arabia. the circuit by babylon was very distant, and not much more secure. the rule of solomon over edom pointed out the way, and secured the possibility of reaching south arabia by the red sea. at eziongeber, near elath, tyrian shipbuilders built the vessels which were to explore the coasts of south arabia, the coasts of the land of gold. guided by phenician pilots, phenicians and israelites sailed into the unknown sea, and to unknown and remote corners of the earth. they succeeded not only in reaching the south arabian coasts and the coasts of east africa, but in passing beyond to ophir, _i.e._, as it seems, to the mouths of the indus. after an absence of three years the first expedition brought back gold in quantities, silver, ivory, sandal wood, precious stones, apes and peacocks. the profits of this expedition are said to have contributed as solomon's share kikkars of gold, _i.e._ towards , , thalers (about £ , , ).[ ] with the increased sale of the products of the country, the improvement and security of the great routes of traffic, the entrance of israel into the trade of the phenicians, and the influx of a considerable amount of capital, money seems to have become very rapidly and seriously depreciated in price in israel. before the establishment of the monarchy a priest is said to have received silver shekels, with food and clothing, for his yearly service at a sacred place.[ ] the amount from which abimelech is said to have maintained his retinue (p. ) is placed at only shekels of silver. before the epoch of the monarchy the prophet received a quarter of a shekel as a return for his services. david purchased the threshing-floor of araunah at zion with two oxen for shekels of silver.[ ] on the other hand, solomon appears to have paid the keepers of his vineyards a yearly salary of silver shekels, and in his time shekels were paid for an egyptian horse, and shekels ( thalers = £ ) for a war-chariot.[ ] the prosperity of the land allowed solomon to increase the income of the throne by taxation of the people. his income from the navigation to ophir, from trade, from the royal demesnes, and the taxes of israel is said to have brought in a yearly sum of kikkars of gold, _i.e._ about , , of thalers (about £ , , ).[ ] he applied these revenues to the support of his army, to his fortifications, sheds, and splendid buildings, to the erection of the stations on the trade roads, and finally to the adornment of the court. "he built in jerusalem, on lebanon, and in the whole land of his dominion," say the books of kings.[ ] we hear of conduits, pools and country houses of the king on antilibanus; of vineyards and gardens at baal-hammon. the splendour of his court is described in extravagant terms. all the drinking-vessels and many other utensils in the palace at jerusalem, and in the forest-house in antilibanus, are said to have been of pure gold, and the servants were richly clad.[ ] in a costly litter of cedar wood, of which the posts were of silver, the arms of gold, and the seat of purple, solomon was conveyed to his vineyards and pleasure-houses in antilibanus, surrounded by a retinue of men chosen from the body-guard.[ ] at solemn processions the body-guard carried ornamented shields: were of pure gold,--for each shekels were used,-- of alloyed gold.[ ] the number of male and female singers, of the servants for the king and crowded harem, and the kitchen, must have been very great, as may be inferred from the very considerable consumption of food and drink in the palace. from the court and from trade such an amount of gold flowed to jerusalem that silver was in consequence depreciated.[ ] the new arrangement of state life, which was partly established, partly introduced, by solomon, the leisure of peace, the close contact with phoenicia and egypt, the entrance of israel into extensive trade, the increase of prosperity, the richer, more various, and more complicated conditions of life, the wider range of vision, could not be without their influence on the intellectual life of the israelites. from this time an increased activity is displayed. they were impelled and forced to observation, comparison and consideration in quite another manner than before. the results of these new reflections grew into fixed rules, into proverbs and apophthegms. in this intellectual movement solomon took a leading part. a man of poetical gifts like his father, he composed religious and other poems ( in number, according to the tradition). the impulse to knowledge and the sense of art which he excites must first have found room within himself; his vision, like his means, reached the furthest. hence we have no reason to doubt that he was one of the wisest in his nation. "god," says the book of kings, "gave solomon a spirit beyond measure, as the sand of the sea. and the wisdom of solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the east, and the wisdom of egypt. he was wiser than all men, and he spoke of the trees, from the cedar on lebanon to the hyssop which grows on the wall, and of the cattle and the birds, and the worms and the fishes."[ ] beside poetry and extensive knowledge of nature, in which he surpassed his wisest countrymen, ethal and heman, chalcol and darda, it was his keen observation, his penetrating knowledge of mankind, his experience of life which made the greatest impression. his proverbs and rules of life seemed to the israelites so pointed and exhaustive that they attributed to solomon the entire treasure of their gnomic wisdom, which was afterwards collected into one body. among these proverbs scarcely any can with complete certainty be ascribed to solomon, but the fact that all are attributed to him is a sufficient proof that solomon possessed a very striking power in keen observation of human nature and human affairs, in the pregnant expression of practical experience, in combining its lessons into pointed and vigorous sentences. as a proof of his acuteness and the calm penetration of his judicial decisions, the people used to narrate the story of the two women who once came before solomon into the hall of justice. one said: i and that woman lived in one house, and each of us bore a male child. in the night the son of this woman died. she rose, laid her dead son at my breast, and took my living child to her bosom. when i woke i had a dead child in my arms; but in the morning i perceived that this child was not the son which i had borne. the other woman answered: no; the living boy is my son, and thine is the dead child. the king turned to his retinue and said: cut the living child into two parts, and give half to one and half to the other. then tenderness for her child arose in the mother of the living child. i pray you, my lord, she said, give her the living child, but slay it not. and the king gave sentence: this is the mother, give her the child. it is further narrated that the fame of solomon's wisdom reached even to distant lands, and kings set forth to hear it. from arabia the queen of the sabæans (sheba, i. ) is said to have come with a long train of camels, carrying spices, gold, and precious stones, in order to try solomon with enigmas. and solomon told her all that she asked, and solved all the enigmas, and nothing was hidden from him. when the queen perceived such wisdom, and saw the house which he had built, and the food on his table, and his counsellors, and his cup-bearers, and servants, and the burnt sacrifice which he offered in the house of jehovah, she sent him kikkars of gold, and such an amount of spices as never afterwards came to jerusalem. this narrative may not be without some foundation, in fact we saw above how old was the trade of egypt and syria with the land of frankincense. we shall afterwards find queens among the arabians in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.: zabibieh, samsieh, and adijah, and even at the head of the tribes of the desert. to this day the east preserves the memory of the wise king solomon, who, in their legends and stories, has at the same time become a great magician and exorcist. however great the splendour of israel in solomon's reign, this advance was not without a darker side. the new paths in which solomon led his people brought the israelites comfort and opulence, the advantages and impulses of a higher civilisation and more active intellectual life. but with the splendour and luxury of the court, and the increasing wealth, the old simplicity of manners disappeared. the land had to bear the burden of a rule which was completely assimilated to the forms of court life, and the mode of government established in egypt and syria, in babylon and assyria. the court, the army and the buildings required heavy sums and services, and these for the most part had to be paid and undertaken by the people. solomon not only imposed on the tribes the maintenance of his standing troops, the cavalry and the chariots, he also demanded that they should support the court by contributions in kind. this service was not inconsiderable. each day kor of fine and kor of ordinary meal were required, stalled oxen, and oxen from the pasture, and head of small cattle. besides this, deer and fallow-deer, gazelles and fed geese were supplied. the assistance which hiram king of tyre gave to solomon's buildings, the wood from lebanon, had to be paid for; each year , kor of wheat and , bath of oil and wine were sent to tyre, and this the israelites had to provide. further, the people had to pay a regular yearly tax in money to the king.[ ] still more oppressive was the task-work for the buildings of the king. it is true that the remnant of the tribes subject to the israelites, the amorites, hittites, hivites and jebusites, were taken chiefly for these tasks, for solomon had compelled them to do constant task-work,[ ] but the israelites themselves were also employed in great numbers in the building. over each tribe of israel solomon placed an overseer of the task-work, and these overseers were all subordinate to adoniram, the chief task-master. the israelites summoned for these services are said to have had two months' rest after one month of work, and there was a regular system of release. in the years when the buildings were carried on with the greatest vigour, , workmen are said to have been engaged in felling wood in lebanon, in quarrying and hewing stones under tyrian artisans, while , others carried out the transport of this material. though the workmen were constantly changed and the extension of the task was not unendurable, these burdens were unusual and certainly undesirable. in order to introduce regularity into the payments in kind and the taxes of the land, the country was divided into twelve districts,--no doubt on the basis of the territorial possessions of the tribes,--and over these royal officers were placed. each district had to provide the requirements of the royal house for one month in the year. these overseers of the districts were subordinate to a head overseer, azariah, the son of that nathan to whom, next to his mother, solomon owed the throne.[ ] yet in spite of all the services of subjects, in spite of all means of receipts, solomon's expenditure was in excess of his income. when the settlement with hiram followed the completion of the building of the temple and palace, it was found that hiram had still kikkars of gold to receive. as solomon could not pay the sum, he ceded to tyre twenty israelite places on the border. no doubt the king of tyre was well pleased to complete and round off his territory on the mainland.[ ] the example of a lavish and luxurious court, the spectacle of a crowded harem, the influence and demeanour of these females, was not only injurious to the morals of the people, but to their religious conduct. if the national elevation of the israelites under saul and david had forced back the foreign rites which had taken a place after the settlement beside the worship of jehovah, it is now the court which adopts the culture and manners of the phenicians and syrians, and by which the worship of strange gods in israel again becomes prominent. among the wives of the king many were from sidon, ammon, moab and edom. solomon may have considered it wise to display tolerance towards the worship of the tributary nations, but it was going far beyond tolerance when the king, who had built such a richly-adorned and costly temple to the national god of israel, erected, in order to please these women, altars and shrines to astarte of sidon, to camus of the moabites, and milcom of the ammonites.[ ] yet the impulse which solomon's reign gave to the worship of jehovah was far the most predominant. it is true that the idea of raising a splendid temple to jehovah in jerusalem arose out of the model of the temple-service of the phenicians and philistines and their magnificent rites (i. ), whereas the israelites hitherto had known nothing but places for sacrifice on altars on the heights and under the oaks,--nothing but a sacred tent. the temple itself was an approximation to the worship of the syrians; but it was at the same time the completion of the work begun by david. this building of the temple was the most important of the acts of solomon during his reign, and an undertaking, which in its origin was to some degree at variance with national feeling, not only contributed to the maintenance of the national religion, but also had very considerable influence upon its development. solomon, after his manner, may have had the splendour and glory of the structure chiefly in view,--yet just as the monarchy comprised the political life of the nation, so did the specious, magnificent temple centralise the religious life of the nation, even more than david's sacred tent. by this the old places of sacrifice were forced into the shade, and even more rarely visited. the building of the temple increased the preponderance of the sacrifice offered in the metropolis. the priests of the altars in the country, who mostly lived upon their share in the sacrifices, turned to jerusalem, and took up their dwelling in the city. here they already found the priesthood, which had gathered round abiathar and zadok (p. ). the union of a large number of priestly families at jerusalem, under the guidance of the high priest appointed already by david, caused the feeling and the consciousness of the solid community and corporate nature of their order to rise in these men, while the priests had previously lived an isolated life, at the places of sacrifice among the people, and hardly distinguished from them, and thus they were led to a far more earnest and systematic performance of the sacred worship. it was easy to make use of the number of priests already in existence in order to give to the rites the richer and more brilliant forms which the splendour and dignity of the temple required. for this object the arrangements of the sacred service must be divided, and the sacred acts allotted to special sections of the priests at hand. the organisation of the priesthood needed for these divisions was naturally brought about by the fact that those entrusted with the office of high priest supposed themselves to be descendants of aaron, and that even in david's reign these had been joined by the priests who claimed to be of the same origin. these families, the descendants of eleazar and ithamar, retained the essential arrangements of the sacrifice and the expiation, the priesthood in the stricter sense. even the families, who side by side with these are said to have belonged to the race of aaron, which, like aaron, are said to have sprung from the branch of kohath, were not any longer admitted to this service. the priestly families of this and other origin, which are first found at a later date in jerusalem, who retained their dwelling outside jerusalem, were united with the races of gershom and merari, and to them, as to the families of the race of kohath which did not come through aaron, were transferred the lesser services in the worship and in the very complicated ritual. those men of these races who were acquainted with music and singing, together with such musicians as were not of priestly blood, were also divided into sections. they had to accompany the sacrifice and acts of religious worship with sacred songs and the harp. others were made overseers of the sacred vessels and the dedicatory offerings, others set apart for the purification of the sanctuary and for door-keepers. all these services were hereditary in the combinations of families allotted to them. this organisation of the priesthood cannot have come into existence, as the tradition tells us, immediately after the completion of the temple; it can only have taken place as the effects of a splendid centre of worship in the metropolis of the kingdom became more widely felt, and was finally brought to completion under the guidance of the priests attending on the sacred ark.[ ] thus there was connected with the building of the temple by solomon, not only the reunion of the families of the tribe of levi--if these even previously had formed a separate tribe;--by means of adoption from all the families which for generations had been dedicated to the sacred rites, the formation and separation of the priestly order became perfect.[ ] at first, without any independent position, this order was dependent on the protection of the monarchy, which built the temple for it, and the importance of the priests was increased with the splendour of the worship. at the head of the new order stood the priests of the ark of jehovah, who had already, in earlier times, maintained a pre-eminent position, which was now increased considerably by the reform in the worship. but they also were dependent on the court, though they soon came to exercise a certain influence upon it. as david had made zadok and abiathar high priests, so solomon removed abiathar and transferred the highest priestly office to zadok, of the branch of eleazar. far more important than the position of the priesthood at the court was the feeling and consciousness of the mission given to them, of the duties and rights, to which the priesthood attained when combined in the new society. as they were at pains to practise a worship pleasing to jehovah, they succeeded even before solomon in discovering an established connection between the past and the present of the nation, in recognising the covenant which jehovah had made with his people. from isolated records, traditions, and old customs they collected the law of ritual in the manner which they considered as established from antiquity, the observation of which was, from their point of view, the maintenance of the covenant into which israel had entered with his god. this was the light in which, even in david's time, the fortunes of israel appeared to the priests, and from this point of view they were recorded in the first decade of david's reign. the order which the priests required for the worship, its unity, centralisation and adornment, the exact obedience to the ritual which was considered by them true and pleasing to god, the position which the priesthood had now obtained, or claimed, appeared to them as already ordained and current in the time when jehovah saved his people with a mighty arm, and led them from egypt to canaan. they had been thrust into the background and forgotten, owing to the guilt and backsliding of later times. now the time was come to establish in power the true and ancient ordinances of moses in real earnest, and to restore them. it was of striking ethical importance, that by these views the present was placed in near relation and the closest combination with a sublime antiquity, with the foundation of the religious ordinances. the impulse to religious feeling which arose out of these views and efforts found expression in a lyrical poetry of penetrating force. david had not only attempted simple songs, but also, as we have seen, more extended invocations of jehovah; and the skilled musical accompaniment which now came to the aid of religious song in the families of the musicians, must have contributed to still greater elevation and choice of expression. the intensity of religious feeling and its expression in sacred songs must also have come into contact more especially with that impulse which had hitherto been represented in the seers and prophets, who believed that they apprehended the will of jehovah in their own breasts, and, in consequence of their favoured relation to him, understood his commands by virtue of internal illumination. all these impulses operated beyond the priestly order. in union with the lofty spiritual activity of the people, they led, in the first instance, to the result that in the last years of solomon the annalistic account of the fortunes of the people and the record of the law was accompanied by a narrative of greater liveliness, of a deeper and clearer view of the divine and human nature (i. ), which at the same time, in the fate of joseph, gave especial prominence to the newly-obtained knowledge of egyptian life, the service rendered by the daughter of the king of egypt to the great leader of israel in the ancient times, the blessing derived from the friendly relations of israel and egypt, and the distress brought upon egypt by the breach with israel. footnotes: [ ] bathsheba became david's wife not long before the capture of rabbath-ammon. her first child died. according to kings iii. , solomon, at the time of his accession, is still a boy. but since, according to kings xiv. , his son rehoboam is years old at solomon's death, and solomon had reigned years, solomon must have been more than at the death of david. hence, on p. above, the date of the capture of rabbath-ammon is fixed at b.c. [ ] kings ii. . [ ] kings iii. . from the statement in kings xi. - , this must have been the daughter of amenophtis, the pharaoh who succeeded the king mentioned here, the fourth tanite in manetho's list. below, book iv. chap. . [ ] kings ix. . [ ] kings xi. - . [ ] chron. viii. . [ ] chron. vii. ; viii. ; kings ix. ; joseph. "antiq." , , . the passage in the book of kings appears, it is true, to indicate thamar in southern judæa. [ ] kings v. - , - . [ ] kings vii. . [ ] kings vi., vii. - ; chron. iii. , . [ ] a similar vessel of stone, feet in circumference, adorned with the image of a bull, lies among the fragments of amathus in cyprus: o. müller, "archæologie," § , anm. . [ ] kings ix. . [ ] kings vii. - . [ ] kings x. ; chron. ix. . [ ] kings vii. . [ ] kings x. - . [ ] the song of solomon says, "there are queens, concubines, and maids without number." [ ] kings ix. , . [ ] kings ix. - . [ ] kings xi. ; ix. - . [ ] kings iv. ; x. . [ ] kings iv. , ; v. . [ ] kings ix. . [ ] kings x. . [ ] kings ix. - ; x. . [ ] judges xvii. . the hebrew silver shekel is to be reckoned at more than _s._ _d._; the gold shekel from to _s._ cf. vol. i. . [ ] sam. xxiv. . [ ] song of solomon viii. ; cf. mover's "phoenizier," , ff, ff. [ ] kings x. . [ ] kings ix. . [ ] kings x. ; chron. ix. . [ ] song of solomon iii. - . [ ] kings x. . [ ] kings x. . [ ] kings iv. - . [ ] kings iv. , , - . [ ] kings ix. , . in order to prove that solomon used these and no others for his workmen, the chronicles ( , ii. , ) reckon this remnant at , men, _i.e._ exactly at the number of task workmen with their overseers given in the book of kings. according to this the incredible number of half a million of canaanites must have settled among the israelites. the general assertion of the books of kings ( , ix. ) is supported by the detailed evidence in the same books, , v. ; xi. ; xii. ff. [ ] kings iv. - ; v. - . [ ] kings ix. - . the contradictory statement in chronicles ( , viii. ) cannot be taken into consideration. [ ] kings xi. - , . though this account belongs to times no earlier than the author of deuteronomy, yet since the destruction of these places of worship "set up by solomon" is expressly mentioned under josiah ( kings xxiii. ), it cannot be doubted. [ ] chron. xxiv.-xxvii. here, as is usual in the chronicles, the division of the priests is given systematically, and the idea of such a division is ascribed to the last years of david. "the levites were numbered according to david's last commands," chron. xxiv.; cf. cap. xxvii. throughout the chronicles make a point of exhibiting david as the originator, and solomon as the executive instrument. we must content ourselves with the result that the temple is of decisive importance in separating the priests from the people, and for gathering together and organising the order. [ ] it appears that the lists of the priestly families were taken down in writing when the organisation of the order was concluded: nehem. vii. . chapter ix. the law of the priests. out of the peculiar relation in which israel stood from all antiquity to his god, out of the protection and prosperity which he had granted to the patriarchs and their seed, out of the liberation from the oppression of the egyptians, which jehovah had prepared for the israelites with a strong arm, out of the bestowal of canaan, _i.e._ the promise of jehovah to conquer the land, which the israelites had now possessed for centuries, there grew up in the circles of the priests, from about the time of samuel, the idea of the covenant which jehovah had made with the patriarchs, and through them with israel. jehovah had assured israel of his protection and blessing; on the other hand, israel had undertaken to serve him, to obey his commands, and do his will. if israel lives according to the command of jehovah, the blessing of his god will certainly be his in the future also; the reward of true service will not and cannot be withheld from him. the will of jehovah which israel has to obey, the law of jehovah which he has to fulfil, was contained in the moral precepts, the rules of law, and rubrics for purification and sacrifice, the writing down of which in the frame-work of a brief account of the fortunes of the fathers, the slavery in egypt, the liberation and the conquest of canaan, on the basis of older sketches of separate parts, was brought to a conclusion at hebron, in the priestly families of the tribe of aaron, about the first decade of david's reign (i. ). in this writing were laid down the views held by the priesthood on the life pleasing to god, on the past of the nation and the priests, and of the correct mode of worship. it was the ideal picture of conduct in morals, law and worship which the priests strove after, which must in any case have existed in that great period when jehovah spoke to the israelites by the mouth of moses. and, as a fact, the foundations of the moral law, the fundamental rules of law and customs of sacrifice, as we found above (i. ), do go back to that time of powerful movement of the national feeling, of lofty exaltation of religious emotion against the dreary polytheism of egypt. it is doubtful, whether the families of the priests and sacrificial servants who traced back their lineage to levi, the son of jacob (p. ), and were now united by david and solomon for service at the sacred tabernacle, for sacrifice and attendance at the temple, had of antiquity formed a separate tribe, which afterwards became dispersed (i. ),--or if this tribe first was united under the impression made by the idea of true priesthood, which those writings denoted as an example and pattern, and under the influence of the change introduced by the foundation of a central-point for the worship of israel in the tabernacle of david, and then in the temple of solomon, for the priestly families scattered through the land, by means of a gradual union of the priestly families; at all events, a position at least equal in dignity to the rest of the tribes ought to be found for the tribe of levi, which knew the will and law of jehovah, and the correct mode of sacrifice. it was not indeed possible in israel to give the first and most ancient place to the tribe of the priests, as has been done in other nations where a division of orders has crystallised into hereditary tribes. in the memory of the nation reuben was the first-born tribe, _i.e._ the complex of the oldest families, the oldest element of the nation, and the importance of the tribes derived from joseph and the tribe of judah in and after the conquest of canaan was so firmly fixed that the tribe of levi could not hope to contend with them successfully in the question of antiquity. but what was wanting in rank of derivation could be made up by special blessings given by jehovah, and by peculiar sanctity. according to an old conception the first-born male belonged to jehovah. in the sketch of the fortunes of israel and of the law, jehovah says to moses, he will accept the tribe of levi in place of the first-born males of the people. the number of the first-born males of one month old of all the other tribes was taken--they reached , ; the number of all the men and boys down to the age of one month in the tribe of levi was , . these , levites jehovah took in the place of the first-born of the people, and the remaining were ransomed from jehovah at the price of five shekels of silver for each person.[ ] thus the levites were raised by jehovah to be the first-born tribe of israel. levi was the tribe which jehovah had selected for his service, the chosen tribe of a chosen nation. moses and aaron were of this tribe, and if, instead of a few families who stood beside moses when he led israel out of egypt, and restored the worship of the tribal deity, the whole tribe of levi was represented as active in his behalf, and as a supporter of moses, the consecration of age was not wanting to this tribe, and reverence was naturally paid to it in return for such ancient services. the levites were not to busy themselves with care for their maintenance, they were not to work for hire, or possess any property; they were to occupy themselves exclusively with their sacred duties. instead of inheritance jehovah was to be their heritage.[ ] it is true that the plan for the maintenance of the tribe of levi, sketched in the first text on the occasion of the division of canaan, the cities allotted to them in the lands of the other twelve tribes ( for the priests and for the assistant levites[ ]), could never be carried out; yet claims might be founded on it. moreover, the necessary means for support were supplied in other ways. the firstlings of corn, fruits, the vintage, the olive tree, were offered by being laid on the altar. no inconsiderable portion of other offerings was presented in the same manner. all these gifts could be applied by the priests to their own purposes.[ ] but by far the most fruitful source of income for the priesthood was the tithe of the produce of the fields, which was offered according to an ancient custom to jehovah as his share of the harvest. the law required that a tenth of corn, and wine, and oils, and of all other fruits, and the tenth head of all new-born domestic animals, should be given to the priests.[ ] the statements of the prophets and the evidence of the historical books prove that the tithes were offered as a rule, though not invariably. as the levites who were not priests had no share in the sacrifices, the law provided that the tithe should go to them, but the levites were in turn to restore a tenth part of these tithes to the priests. finally, the law required that a portion of the booty taken in war should go to the levites; that in all numberings of the people and levies each person should pay a sum to the temple for the ransom of his life.[ ] only the descendants of aaron could take part in the most important parts of the ceremonial of sacrifice. from his twenty-fifth or thirtieth year to his fiftieth every levite was subject to the temple service.[ ] the law prescribed a formal dedication, with purifications, expiations, sacrifices, and symbolical actions for the exercise of the lower as well as the higher priesthood, for the offering of sacrifice and the sprinkling of the blood as well as for the due performance of the door-keeping. at the dedication of a priest these ceremonies lasted for seven days, but the chief import of the ritual was to denote the future priest himself as a sacrifice offered to jehovah. only those might be dedicated who were free from any bodily blemish. "a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or anything superfluous, or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, or crook-backt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken shall not come nigh to offer the offering of the lord made by fire."[ ] no priest was to make baldness on his head or shave off the corners of his beard, or make any cuttings in his flesh;[ ] before the sacrifice he might not take wine or any intoxicating drink; he was required to devote himself to especial purity and cleanliness, and observe in a stricter degree the laws concerning food; he might not marry a widow or a woman divorced from her husband, still less a harlot; he was to avoid most carefully any contact with a corpse: only in the case of his nearest relatives was this defilement allowed. the clothing of the priests was definitely prescribed. he must wear a robe of white linen (byssus), woven in one piece; and this robe was held together by a girdle of three colours, red, blue and white. the priest also wore a band of white linen round his head, and trousers of white linen in order that he might not discover his nakedness when he ascended the steps of the altar.[ ] the foremost place among the consecrated priests was occupied by the high priest. he alone had the right to enter the inner space of the sanctuary, the cell in which stood the ark of the covenant--the other priests could enter the outer space only; he alone could offer sacrifice in the name of the whole people, he alone could announce the will and oracle of jehovah, and consecrate the priests. the ritual for the high priest was most strict. in the belief of the hebrews the most accurate knowledge and the most careful circumspection was needed in order to offer an effective sacrifice and avoid arousing the anger of jehovah by some omission in the rite, and if the law required of all priests that they should devote themselves to especial purity and holiness, this demand was made with peculiar severity upon the high priest. he might marry only with a pure virgin of the stock of his kindred; he must keep himself so far from all defilement that he might not touch the corpse even of his father and his mother; he might not, on any occasion, rend his garments in sorrow. the distinguishing garb of the high priest was a robe of blue linen, which on the edge was adorned with pomegranates and bells; the bells were intended, as the law says, to announce the coming of the priest to the god who dwelt in the shrine of the temple, that the priest might not die.[ ] over this robe the high priest wore a short wrapper, the so-called ephod or shoulder-garment, and on his breast in front the tablet with the holy urim and thummim, by means of which he inquired of jehovah, if the king or any one from the people asked for an oracle. the other priests also, at least in more ancient times, wore the ephod with the urim and thummim; but the ephod of the high priest was fastened on the shoulders by two precious stones, and the front side of his breastplate was made of twelve precious stones set in gold, on which were engraved the names of the twelve tribes. the head-band of the high priest was distinguished from that of the other priests by a plate of gold bearing the inscription, "holy is jehovah;" he might not even uncover his head.[ ] the mode of worship was regulated by the law in a systematic manner. beside the sabbath, on keeping which the law laid special stress, and regarded it as a symbol of the relation of israel to jehovah, the israelites celebrated feasts at the new moon and the full moon,[ ] and held three great national festivals in the year. these festivals marked in the first instance certain divisions of the natural year. yet the first, the festival of spring, had from ancient times a peculiar religious significance. it has been remarked above that at the spring festival not only were the firstlings of the harvest, the first ears of corn, offered to the tribal god, but that also, as at the beginning of a new season of fertility, a sin offering, the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb, was made for the first-born which were not offered. the spring festival was also the festival of the sparing of the first-born, the passah or passover of jehovah (i. ). the priestly ordinance, which sought to give a definite historical cause for the customs of the festival, and to mark the favours which jehovah had granted to his people, connects the old usages of this festival with the exodus from egypt, and we have already seen how from this point of view old ceremonies of this festival were transformed, and new ones were added (i. ). as the spring festival was kept in the first month of the hebrew year, nisan (march-april) (it began on the evening of the day after the new moon, at the rise of the full moon, when the sun is in the ram), the exodus from egypt was supposed to have taken place on the morning which followed this night. the passah continued for seven days, in which, from the morning of the second day to the evening of the seventh, only unleavened bread could be eaten, i.e. the firstlings of the corn in their original form, and no business could be carried on. on each of the seven days of the feast, according to the law, two young bulls, a ram and seven yearling lambs were offered as a burnt offering for israel in the temple, and besides these a goat, as a sin offering. the neglect of the festival, the eating of leavened bread on any of the days, was threatened by the law with extirpation from the community.[ ] as the greater number of the tribes attained to a settled life and agriculture, the feast of the ripe fruits or harvest naturally rose to importance beside this festival of the earliest fruits. seven full weeks after the commencement of the passah, or six weeks after the end of it, the feast of new bread was celebrated. the sheaves were brought, the corn trodden out, the first new meal prepared. according to the law, each house in israel, _i.e._, no doubt, each which possessed land and flocks, had to bring two leavened firstling loaves of new wheaten meal and two yearling lambs as a thank offering. before these were offered no one could eat bread made from the new corn.[ ] the festival of autumn, which took place in the seventh month of the hebrew year (september--october), from the fourteenth to the twenty-first day of the month, was merrier and of longer duration. it was the festival of the completion of the in-gathering, and of the vintage, and consequently can hardly go back beyond the time of the settlement in canaan.[ ] it was customary to erect arbours of palm leaves, willows, and oak branches, as was indeed necessary at a time when men were occupied in remote orchards and vineyards, and in these the feast was kept, unless it was preferred to keep it at some important place of sacrifice, in order to offer the thank offering there,[ ] and in this case those who came to the feast also passed the day in tents or arbours. like the feast of spring, the feast of tabernacles continued for seven days. according to the law, israel was to offer bulls, rams, and seven times lambs at this festival as a burnt offering. to this feast also a historical meaning was given; the tabernacles were erected to remind israel of the fact that he had once dwelt in tents in the wilderness. at these three festivals, "thrice in the year, all the males of israel must appear before jehovah."[ ] such was the law of the priests. it was the intention of the priests that the three great festivals should be celebrated at the dwelling of jehovah, _i.e._ at the tabernacle, and afterwards at the temple; hence at the great festivals the israelites were to go to jerusalem. but the strict carrying out of such a common celebration was opposed to the character of the festivals themselves. we saw that even when the sacred ark still stood at shiloh, pilgrimages were made thither once a year at the festival of jehovah. after the erection of the tabernacle and the temple this, no doubt, took place more frequently, and the numbers were greater. yet the object of the priests could not be completely realised. the paschal festival was the redemption of the separate house, of each individual family. this meaning and object was very definitely stamped on the ritual. in a similar manner, the feast of the beginning of harvest and of the first fruits required celebration at home, on the plot of land, and this was still more the case with the festival of thanksgiving for the completed harvest. before the people rejoiced in the blessing of the completed harvest at the feast of tabernacles, all misdeeds which might have defiled the year to that time must be cancelled and removed by a special sacrifice. for this object the law on this occasion made a requirement never demanded at any other time. from the evening of the ninth to the evening of the tenth day there was not only a cessation of business, but a strict fast was kept. every man among the people must subject himself to this regulation, and he who transgressed it was threatened with the loss of his life.[ ] the high priest had first to cleanse himself and the other priests, and then the dwelling of jehovah; for even the sanctuary might be defiled by the inadvertence of the priests. when the high priest had bathed he must clothe himself in a coat and trousers of white linen, with a girdle and head-band of the same material, and offer a young bull as a sin offering. bearing a vessel filled with the blood of this victim, and with the censer from the altar of incense in the interior of the sanctuary, which contained burning coals and frankincense, the high priest went alone into the holy of holies, behind the curtain before the ark of the covenant. immediately on his entrance the clouds arising from the censer must fill the chamber, that the priest might not see the face of jehovah over the cherubs and die. then the high priest sprinkled the blood from the vessel seven times towards the ark, and when thus cleansed he turned back to the court of the sanctuary, in which two goats stood ready for sacrifice. he cast lots which of the two should be sacrificed to jehovah and which to azazel, the evil spirit of the desert. when the lot was cast, the high priest laid his hand on the head of the goat assigned to azazel, confessed all the sins and transgressions of israel on this goat, and laid them on his head, in order that he might carry them into the desert-land into which the goat was driven from the sanctuary. then the high priest slew the other goat assigned to jehovah, and, returning into the holy of holies, sprinkled with his blood the ark of the covenant for the second time, in order to purify the people. when the altar of incense, in the outer part of the sanctuary, had been sprinkled in a similar manner, the high priest declared that jehovah was appeased. after a second bath he put on his usual robes, and offered three rams as burnt offerings for himself, the priesthood, and the nation.[ ] all sacrifices were to be offered at the tabernacle, "before the dwelling of jehovah;" and afterwards in like manner in the temple. the law of the priests threatened any one with death who sacrificed elsewhere.[ ] the most essential regulations for the offering of sacrifice are perhaps the following:--any one who intended to bring an offering must purify himself for several days. wild animals could not be offered. in the hebrew conception the sacrifice is the surrender of a part of a man's possessions and enjoyments. hence only domestic offerings could be offered, because only these are really property. cattle, sheep, and goats were the animals appointed for sacrifice. the poorer people were also allowed to offer doves. each victim must be without blemish and healthy, and it must not be weakened and desecrated by labour. before the animal was killed the sacrificer laid his hand on its head for a time; then he who offered the sacrifice, whether priest or layman, slew the victim, but only the priest could receive the warm blood in the sacrificial vessel. with this vessel in his hand the priest went round the altar and sprinkled the feet, the corners, and the sides of it with the blood of the victim. in the hebrew conception the life of the victim was in its blood, and thus the sprinklings which were to be made with it form the most important part of the holy ceremony. from ancient times the burnt offering was the most solemn kind of sacrifice. only male animals, and, as a rule, bulls and rams, could be offered as burnt offerings. when they had been slain and skinned these offerings were entirely burnt in the fire on the altar, without any part being enjoyed by the sacrificer or the priest, as was the case in other kinds of offerings; only the skin fell to the share of the priests. as the burnt offering was intended to gain the favour of jehovah, so were the sin offerings intended to appease his anger and blot out transgressions. for sin offerings female animals were used as a rule, as male animals for the burnt offerings,[ ] but young bulls and he-goats were also offered as expiatory offerings for the whole people, and for oversights or transgressions of the priests in the ritual, and for sin offerings for princes. in sin offerings only certain parts of the entrails were burnt, the kidneys, the liver, and other parts; and in this sacrifice the priests sprinkled the blood on the horns of the altar; the flesh which was not burned belonged to the priests. in thank offerings and offerings of slaughter (so called because in these the slaying and eating of the victim was the principal matter) only the fat was burnt, the priests kept the breast and the right thigh,[ ] the rest was eaten by the sacrificer at a banquet with the guests whom he had invited; but this banquet must be held at the place of sacrifice, on the same or at any rate on the following day. drink offerings consisted of libations of wine, which were poured on and round the altar (libations of water are also mentioned, though not in the law, p. ); the food offerings in fruits, corn, and white meal, which the priests threw into the fire of the altar; in bread and cookery, which, drenched with oil and sprinkled with salt and incense, was partly burned, and partly fell to the lot of the priests. lastly, the incense offerings consisted in the burning of incense, which did not take place, like the other sacrifices, on the larger altar in the court of the sanctuary, but on the small altar, which stood in the space before the holy of holies of the tabernacle, and afterwards of the temple.[ ] according to the law, a service was to be continually going on in the dwelling of jehovah. the sacred fire on the altar in the interior of the tabernacle was never to be quenched; before the holy of holies on the sacred table twelve unleavened loaves always lay sprinkled with salt and incense, as a symbolical and continual offering of the twelve tribes. each sabbath this bread was renewed, and the loaves when removed fell to the priests. before the curtain of the holy of holies the candlestick with seven lamps was always burning, and every morning and evening the priests of the temple were to offer a male sheep as a burnt offering at the dwelling of jehovah, and two sheep on the morning and evening of the sabbath. the high priest had also to make an offering of corn every morning and evening.[ ] beside the sacrifice, the law of the priests required the observance of a whole series of regulations for purity. it is not merely bodily cleanliness which these laws required of the israelites, nor is it merely a natural abhorrence of certain disgusting objects which lies at the base of these prescriptions; it is not merely that to the simple mind physical and moral purity appear identical, that moral evil is conceived as a defilement of the body; nor are these regulations merely intended to place a certain restriction on natural states and impulses. these factors had their weight, but beside them all a certain side of nature and of the natural life was set apart as impure and unholy. the laws of purity among the israelites are far less strict and comprehensive than those of the egyptians and the indians; but if we unite them with the ritual by which transgressions of these rules were done away and made good, they form a system entering somewhat deeply into the life of the nation. for the laity also the law required and prescribed cleanliness of clothing. stuffs of two kinds might not be worn; pomegranates must be fixed on the corners of the robe. the field and vineyard might not be sown with two kinds of seed; nor could ox and ass be yoked together before the plough.[ ] certain animals were unclean, and these might not be eaten. the clean and permitted food was obtained from oxen, sheep, goats, and in wild animals from deer, wild-goats, and gazelles, and in fact from all animals which ruminate and have cloven feet. unclean are all flesh-eating animals with paws, and more especially the camel, the swine, the hare, and the coney. of fish, those only might be eaten which have fins and scales; all fish resembling snakes, like eels, might not be eaten. most water-fowl are unclean; pigeons and quails, on the other hand, were permitted food. all creeping things, winged or not, with the exception of locusts, are forbidden.[ ] moreover, if the permitted animals were not slain in the proper manner their flesh was unclean; if it had "died of itself," or was strangled, or torn by wild beasts,[ ] the use of the blood of the animal was most strictly forbidden, "for the life of all flesh is the blood;" even of the animals which might be eaten the blood must be poured on the earth and covered with earth.[ ] as the eating of forbidden food made a man unclean, so also did all sexual functions of man or woman, and all diseases connected with these functions, including lying in child-bed. every one was also unclean on whose body was "a rising scab or bright spot," but above all the white leprosy rendered the sufferer unclean.[ ] finally, any contact with the corpse of man or beast, whether intentional or accidental, rendered a man unclean. the house in which a man died, with all the utensils, was unclean; any one who touched a grave or a human bone was tainted.[ ] the priestly regulations set forth in great detail the ceremonies, the washings and sacrifices, by which defilements were to be removed. the unclean person must avoid the sanctuary, and even society and contact with others, till the time of his purification, which in serious defilements can only begin after the lapse of a certain time. in the more grievous cases ordinary water did not suffice for the cleansing, but from the ashes of a red cow without blemish, which was slain as a sin offering and entirely burnt, the priest prepared a special water of purification with cedar wood and bunches of hyssop. the reception of healed lepers required the most careful preparations and most scrupulous manipulations. among the regulations of purity is reckoned the custom of circumcision, which was practised among the israelites, and retained by the law. yet the reason for this peculiar custom, which according to the regulations of the priests was performed on the eighth day after birth, the first day of the second week of life,[ ] seems to lie in other motives rather than in the desire to remove a certain part of the male body which was regarded as unclean. we saw above that according to the old conception of the israelites the firstborn must be ransomed from jehovah, that the life of all boys, if it was to be secured, must be purchased from jehovah (i. , ). hence, if we may follow the hint of an obscure narrative, it is not improbable that circumcision of the reproductive member was a vicarious blood-sacrifice for the life of the boy. when moses returned from the land of midian to egypt--so we learn from the ephraimitic text--"jehovah met him in the inn, and sought to kill him. then zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and he departed from him."[ ] to the israelites circumcision was a symbol of their connection with the nation, of their covenant with jehovah and selection by him. the most important part of the purity of the people of jehovah was their maintenance of his worship, the strict severance of israel from the religion of their neighbours and community with them. it was now seen what influence living and mingling with the canaanites had exercised in the national worship, and it was perceived what an attraction the syrian rites had presented for centuries to the nation, and what a power they still had upon them. hence even moses was said to have given the command to destroy the altars and images of the canaanites, to drive out all the canaanites, and make neither covenant nor marriage with them.[ ] the law forbade sacrifices to moloch under penalty of death; any one who did so was to be stoned. those who made offerings to other gods than jehovah were to be "accursed" (i. ). wizards were also to be stoned.[ ] "ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you. do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to play the harlot."[ ] all these are commands directed against the manners, funeral customs, and religious worship of the canaanites. strangers were not to be received into the community and people of israel; nor could israelites contract marriage with women who were not israelites; it is only the later law which allows women captured in war to be taken into the marriage bed.[ ] these are the "misanthropical" laws of the jews of which tacitus speaks with such deep aversion. the law assigned a far-reaching religious influence to the priests. they alone could turn the favour of jehovah towards his people by correct and effective sacrifices, and appease his wrath; they announced the will of jehovah by his oracle; in regard to diseases and leprosy, they exercised police functions over the whole nation by means of the regulations for cleanliness and food; they could exclude any one at their discretion from the sacrifices and, consequently, from the community; and, in fine, they were in possession of the skill and knowledge with which the people were unacquainted. the priesthood arranged the chronology and the festivals, they supervised weights and measures,[ ] they knew the history of the people in past ages, and their ancient covenant with the god of the ancestors. from their knowledge of the ordinances of jehovah followed the claim which the priests made to watch over the application of these ordinances in life, the administration of law and justice. but at first this claim was put forward modestly. the old regulations about the right of blood in the time-honoured observances of justice were added to the law of ritual when this was written down (i. , ); they were modified here and there by the views of the priesthood, and in some points essentially extended; and now, like the ordinances for the places of sacrifice, mode of worship, and purification, they stood opposed in many regulations to real life as ideal but hardly practicable standards. according to the view of the priests jehovah was the true possessor of the land of israel. he had given it to his people for tenure and use. from this conception the law derived very peculiar conclusions, which might be of essential advantage for retaining the property of the families in their hands, for keeping up the family and their possessions, on which the hebrews laid weight, and for proprietors when in debt. to aid the debtor against the creditor, the poor against the rich, the labourer against him who gave the work, the slave against his master, is in other ways also the obvious object of the law. as all work must cease on the seventh day, the day of jehovah, so must there be a similar cessation in the seventh year, which is therefore called the sabbath year. in every seventh year the israelites were to allow the land which jehovah had let to them to lie fallow, in honour of the real owner. in this year the land was not sowed, nor the vine-trees cut, nor the wild beast driven from the field, every one must seek on the fallow what had grown there without culture. if this sabbath of the seventh year was kept jehovah would send such increase on the preceding sixth year that there should be no want.[ ] when this period of seven fallow years had occurred seven times the circle appeared to be complete, and from this point of view the law ordained that at such a time everything should return to the original position. hence, when the seventh sabbath year was seven times repeated (in the year of jubilee) not only was agriculture stopped, but all alienated property, with the buildings and belongings, went back to the original owner or his heirs.[ ] the consequence was that properties were never really sold, but the use of them was assigned to others, and hence, even before the year of jubilee, the owner could redeem his land by paying the value of the produce which would be yielded before the year of jubilee. but the priests were far from being able to carry out these extended requirements which proceeded from the sanctity of the sabbath, and from the conception that the land of israel belonged to jehovah, and every family held their property from jehovah himself, and which were intended to make plain the true nature of the property of the israelites. it was an ideal picture which they set up, and hardly so much as an attempt was made to carry it out. they could reckon with more certainty on obedience to a law which ordained that no interest was to be taken from the poor, and no poor man's mantle was to be taken in pledge.[ ] nevertheless, the law of debt was severe. if the debtor could not pay his debt before a fixed time the creditor was allowed to pay himself with the moveable and fixed property of the debtor; he could sell his wife and children, and even the debtor himself, as slaves, or use him as a slave in his own service. for the legal process we find in the law no more than the regulation "that one witness shall not bear evidence against a man for his death," _i.e._ that one witness was not sufficient to establish a serious charge, that "injustice shall not be done in judgment, that the person of the small shall not be disregarded, nor the person of the great honoured;" "according to law thou shalt judge thy neighbour."[ ] for every injury done to the person or property of another, the guilty shall make reparation. we know already the old ordinances which require life for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth (i. ). injury to property and possession was to be fully compensated; even the injury done by his beast was to be compensated by the master. theft was merely punished by restoring four or five times the value of the stolen goods. if the thief could not pay this compensation he was handed over to the injured man as a slave. but any one who steals a man in order to keep him as a slave, or to sell him, was to be punished with death.[ ] if a murder was committed, the avenger of blood, _i.e._ the nearest relative and heir of the murdered man, was to pursue the murderer and slay him, wherever he met him, as soon as it was established by two persons that he was really guilty. the law even forbade the avenger of blood to accept a ransom instead of taking the life of the guilty, because the land was desecrated by the blood of the murdered man, "and the land is not cleansed from the blood spilt, save by the blood of the murderer." an exception was allowed only when one man slew another by accident, and without any fault of his own, and not out of hostility or hatred. in this case the slayer was to fly into one of the six cities which were marked out as cities of refuge.[ ] from the elders of the city the pursuing avenger of blood was to demand the delivery of the slayer, and they were to decide whether the act was done from hatred and hostility, or was merely an accident. if the elders decided in favour of the first alternative, they were to give up the guilty into the hands of the avenger of blood, that he might die. in the other case, the slayer must remain in the city of refuge till the death of the high priest, and the avenger was free from the guilt of bloodshed if before that time he met him beyond the confines of the city of refuge and slew him.[ ] the regulations of the priests even went so far as to lay down a rule that if a savage bull slew a man the bull was not only to be stoned, and not eaten as an unclean animal, but his master also must die, or at any rate pay a ransom, if he knew that the animal was savage, and yet did not control him.[ ] among the people of the east the wealthier men did not content themselves with one wife. this custom prevailed in israel also. the law of the priests did not oppose a custom which had an example and justification in the narratives of the patriarchs. the israelites also followed the general custom of the east, in purchasing the wife from her father, and recompensing the father for the loss of a useful piece of property--for the two working hands which he lost when he gave away his daughter from his house. thus jacob obtained the daughters of laban by a service of years. the price of a wife purchased for marriage from the father seems to have been from to shekels of silver ( _s._ to _s._).[ ] the conclusion of the marriage was marked by a special festivity, after which the bride was carried by her parents into the nuptial chamber. the prostitution of maidens in honour of the goddess of birth, so common among the neighbouring nations, was strictly forbidden by the book of the law. the daughter of a priest who began to prostitute herself was to be burnt with fire, because she thus "defiled not herself only, but also her father."[ ] the man who seduced a virgin was compelled to purchase her for his wife, and even if her father would not give her to wife he was to pay him the usual purchase-money. adultery was punished by the law with even greater severity than violations of chastity before marriage. the adulteress, together with the man who had seduced her into a violation of the marriage bond, were to be put to death.[ ] if a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness without being able to prove it against her a divine judgment was to decide the matter. the priest was to lead man and wife before jehovah. then he was to draw holy water in an earthen pitcher, and throw dust swept from the floor of the dwelling of jehovah into this, and say to the woman, "if thou hast not offended in secret against thy husband, remain unpunished by this water of sorrow, that bringeth the curse; but if thou hast sinned, may this water go into thy body and cause thy thighs to rot, and may jehovah make thee a curse and an oath among thy people." the woman answered, "so be it;" and when the priest had dipped in the water a sheet written with the words of this curse, she was compelled to drink it.[ ] thus the woman was brought to confession, or was freed from the suspicion of her husband. marriages were forbidden not only with strange women, but also within certain degrees of relationship; in which were included not only those close degrees, to which there is a natural abhorrence, but also such as did not exclude marriage in other nations. in this matter the law of the priests proceeded from the sound view that marriage did not belong to a natural connection already in existence, but was intended to found a new relationship. not only was marriage forbidden with a mother, with any wife or concubine of the father, with a sister, a daughter, or granddaughter, a widowed daughter-in-law; but also with an aunt on the father's or mother's side, with a stepsister, or sister by marriage, with a sister-in-law, or wife's sister so long as the wife lived.[ ] the husband purchased his wife as a chattel; hence in marriage she continued to live in entire dependence beside her husband. the husband could not commit adultery as against his wife; it was the right of another husband which was injured by the seduction of the wife. it rested with the husband to take as many wives as he chose beside his first wife, and as many concubines from his handmaids and female slaves as seemed good to him. the husband could put away his wife if she "found no favour in his eyes," while the wife, on her part, could not dissolve the marriage, or demand a separation; she possessed no legal will. like the wife, the children stood to the father in a relation of the most complete dependence. nor only did he sell his daughters for marriage, he could give them as pledges, or even sell them as slaves, but not out of the land;[ ] and though the father was not allowed to sell the son as a slave, he could turn him out of his house. obedience and reverence towards parents were impressed strongly on children, even in the earliest regulations derived from the time of moses. the son who curses his father or mother, or strikes them, must be put to death.[ ] the first-born son is the heir of the house; after the death of the father he is the head of the family, and succeeds to his rights over the younger sons and the females. it is not clear whether the law allows any claims to the moveable inheritance to any of the sons besides the eldest, to whom the immoveable property passed absolutely; the sons of concubines and slaves had no right of inheritance if there were sons in existence by legitimate marriage. daughters could only inherit if there were no sons. the heiress could not marry beyond the tribe, in order that the inheritance might at least fall to the lot of a tribesman. if there were neither sons nor daughters, the brother of the father was the heir, and then the uncles of the father.[ ] the law attempts to fix and ameliorate the position of day-labourers and slaves. "the hire of the labourer shall not remain with thee till the morrow."[ ] the number of slaves appears to have been considerable. they were partly captives taken in war, and partly strangers purchased in the way of trade; partly hebrews who, when detected in thieving, could not pay the compensation, or who could not pay their debts, or hebrew daughters sold by their parents. the marriages of slaves increased their number. the law required that slaves should rest on the sabbath day;[ ] and even the oldest regulations restrict the right of the master over the life of his slave by laying down the rule that the slave shall be free if his master has inflicted a severe wound upon him, and that the master must be punished if he has slain his slave.[ ] the slave who was a born israelite might be ransomed by his kindred, if they could pay the sum required.[ ] the hebrew slave was treated by his master as a hired labourer, and hind.[ ] when the hebrew slave had served six years his master was compelled to set him free without ransom in the seventh year. a hebrew could only remain in slavery for ever when, after six years of service, he voluntarily declared that he wished to remain with his master; then, as a sign that he permanently belonged to the house of his master, his ear was pierced on the door-post with an awl. footnotes: [ ] exod. xiii. ; numbers iii. - ; viii. . [ ] numbers xviii. - . [ ] vol. i. , . [ ] numbers xviii. - . [ ] levit. xxvii. - . [ ] genesis xiv. ; xxviii. . [ ] exod. xxx. - ; xxxviii. - . [ ] levit. xxi. - . [ ] levit. xxi. . [ ] exod. xx. . [ ] exod. xxviii. - ; xxxix. - . [ ] exod. xxviii. - , - . [ ] sam. xx. , , , and many passages in the prophets; numbers xxviii. ; xxix. ; ewald, "alterthümer," s. . [ ] exod. xii. - ; numbers ix. ; xxviii. - . [ ] levit. xxii. - . [ ] at the division of the kingdom jeroboam is said to have changed this festival to the fifteenth day of the eighth month; kings xii. . [ ] _e. g._ sam. i. ; kings xii. - . [ ] exod. xxiii. ; xxxiv. . [ ] levit. xxiii. . [ ] levit. xvi., xxiii. - . [ ] levit. xvii. - . [ ] levit. i-vi. [ ] levit. vii. - , and in other passages. [ ] _supr._ p. . exod. xxx. - . [ ] levit. vi. , ; ix. . [ ] numbers xv. ; levit. xix. . [ ] levit. xi. - . [ ] levit. xvii. . [ ] levit. xvii. . [ ] levit. xiii., xiv. [ ] the spoils taken in war are also to be purified; numbers xxxi. - . [ ] levit. xii. . the arabian tribes in the north of the peninsula, who were nearly related to the hebrews, observed this custom, and the phenicians also, while the philistines did not observe it; herod. , . in genesis (xxi. ; xvii. - , ) it is expressly mentioned that ishmael was not circumcised till his thirteenth year, but isaac was circumcised at the proper time, on the eighth day. this shows that circumcision was a very ancient custom among the israelites, and at the same time indicates that among the arabs the boys were not circumcised till later years, which may have been the case in the older times among the hebrews also. cf. joshua v. - ; joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] exod. iv. ; cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] numbers xxxiii. - ; exod. xxiii. ff; xxxiv. - ; vol. i. . [ ] levit. xviii. ; xx. , ; exod. xxii. . [ ] levit. xix. - . [ ] deut. xxi. - ; cf. numbers xii. . [ ] levit. xix. , . [ ] exod. xxiii. , ; levit. xxv. . [ ] levit. xxv. - . [ ] exod. xxii. - ; levit. xxv. - . [ ] numbers xxxv. ; levit. xix. . [ ] exod. xxi. . [ ] exod. xxi. - ; numbers xxxv. ; joshua xx. - . [ ] numbers xxxv. - . [ ] exod. xxi. - . [ ] exod. xxi. ; hosea iii. ; cf. deuteron. xxii. , . [ ] levit. xix. ; xxi. . [ ] levit. xviii. ; xx. . [ ] numbers v. - . [ ] levit. xviii. [ ] exod. xxi. , . [ ] exod. xxi. ; levit. xx. . [ ] numbers xxxvi. - ; tobit vii. ; numbers xxvii. . [ ] levit. xix. . [ ] exod. xx. . [ ] exod. xxi. , , ; vol. i. . [ ] levit. xxv. ff. [ ] levit. xxv. - . chapter x. judah and israel. the monarchy in israel was established by the people to check the destruction and ruin with which the land and population were threatened by the incursions of the neighbours on the east, by the dangerous arms of the philistines. the first attempt to set up a monarchy in connection with the cities of the land was soon wrecked and swept away, without leaving a trace behind. in spite of his support in the wishes of the great majority of the israelites, the monarchy of saul had not succeeded in establishing itself securely by its simple and popular conduct. it was not till the monarchy had fortified the royal city and palace, established a body-guard and standing troops, magistrates and tax-gatherers, and had entered into close relation with the priests, that it obtained security and permanence. it had indeed fulfilled its mission and saved israel; it had won power, glory, and respect for the nation, and imparted to it lofty impulses of the most important kind. it had at the same time gone far beyond the intention of its foundation. it was now a sultanate, which, by filling the land with syrian trade and customs, and allowing the growth of syrian modes of worship, threatened in one direction the nationality with the same dangers which it had removed in another. the transformation which the manner of life in israel underwent during the reigns of david and solomon was so thorough that even under david a reaction set in. if in the time before david and solomon the israelites had led an unrestrained life, they were now ruled by a severe monarchy. in the place of the patriarchal authority of the elders and heads of tribes, whose decisions they had formerly sought, came the rule of royal officers, who could exercise their power capriciously enough. if hitherto they had lived unmolested, every man on his own plot, beneath his vine and fig tree, they were now compelled to pay taxes and do task-work. after the burdens solomon had laid upon the people, this reaction must have been stronger than at the time when absalom's rebellion shattered the throne of his father. moreover, solomon's reign, though it lasted full years, did not give the same impression of vigorous power as david's strong arm had done before him, and the monarchy was not so old, nor so firmly established as an institution, that the israelites could not remember the times which preceded it. no doubt the tribe of judah could bear the new burdens, because it enjoyed the advantages of the new polity. the king belonged to this tribe; the temple and metropolis were in its territory. but the interests of the other tribes were the more deeply injured. above all, the tribe of ephraim must have felt itself degraded. in this tribe the memory of joshua still lived, the remembrance of the conquest of the land; once it had held the foremost place, and on its soil the ark of jehovah had stood. now the pre-eminence was with judah, the tribe which had long been subject to the philistines; the sacred ark stood at jerusalem, and the ancient places of sacrifice were neglected. of the feeling of the tribe of ephraim we have indubitable evidence in an attempt at rebellion at the beginning of the last decade of the reign of solomon; an attempt, it is true, which was quickly suppressed.[ ] when solomon died, in the year b.c., it was not the contests between his sons or the intrigues of the harem which now threatened the succession. rehoboam, solomon's eldest son, who was born to him by naamah the ammonite, was now in his forty-second year, and thus in the vigour of age. this vigour he needed. at the news of solomon's death the people gathered to their old place of assembly at shechem. this self-collected assembly showed that the majority of israel were mindful of their right to elect the king. the greatest circumspection and tact were needed to avert the approaching storm. rehoboam saw that he must not look idly on. he must either attempt to disperse the assembled multitude by force and maintain the crown by arms, or he must treat with it. hence he set forth to shechem, accompanied by the counsellors of his father. a deputation of the people met him, and said, "thy father made our yoke grievous; now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee." rehoboam promised to make an answer on the third day. he assembled his counsellors. the old men among them--so all the older text of the books of kings tells us--advised compliance, and recommended him to speak kindly to the people; the younger, who had grown up with the new king, and were accustomed to flatter him, and desired unrestricted power over the people, urged him to reject strongly such claims and such rebellion. rehoboam was foolish enough to follow advice which could not but be ruinous. although he can hardly have said to the people the words which the books of kings put in his mouth--"my father chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions,"--he rejected the demand of the israelites. then a cry arose in the assembly of the people, "we have no part in david, nor any inheritance in the son of jesse; to your tents, o israel!" when it was too late rehoboam attempted to soothe the enraged multitude. he sent his task-master, adoniram, to them, but the people slew the ill-chosen messenger by stoning him to death. nothing remained for rehoboam but to mount his chariot in haste and fly to jerusalem. the grievous distress which years before had caused the nation at gilgal to proclaim saul king with one consent, and which after the death of ishbosheth had united the tribes round david at hebron, had long passed away. the danger which division had once brought upon israel had faded into the distance, and was forgotten in the security which had prevailed in the last generations against the neighbours on every side. nothing was thought of but the immediate evil and the coming oppression, if the monarchy went further on the lines on which it was treading. at the time of solomon an ephraimite named jeroboam, the son of nabath (nebat) of zereda, who is spoken of as "a brave man," was a second overseer among the task-labourers. as he was skilful in the discharge of his duties, solomon raised him to be the overseer of the task-work of his tribe. this office, which made him known to all his tribe, jeroboam must have discharged in such a way as to gain the favour rather than the aversion of the tribesmen. we are told in a few words that "jeroboam raised his hand against solomon," and that "solomon sought to slay him." jeroboam escaped to egypt, and found refuge with the pharaoh shishak (about b.c.). immediately after solomon's death jeroboam received a message from his tribesmen to return. rehoboam's refusal to carry on a milder form of government decided the choice of jeroboam as king. that choice declared sufficiently the degree of aversion which the multitude bore to the house of david and the monarchy at jerusalem. the chief city, the tribe of judah, the tribe of simeon, so long united in close connection with judah, and a part of the tribe of benjamin, whose land lay immediately at the gates of jerusalem, remained true to the son of solomon. from the tribe of judah the rise and dominion of david had its commencement; to them that dominion was now returned, and was again confined within its early limits. the question was whether rehoboam could achieve what his grandfather david had succeeded in doing--could regain the dominion over the whole land from judah. rehoboam thought, no doubt, that he could reduce by the power of his arms the tribes which had withdrawn themselves from his dominion. he armed and assembled the warriors of the tribes of judah and benjamin. if he soon abandoned this intention, the reason hardly lies in the warning of the prophet semaiah, as the prophetic revision maintains in a passage interpolated into the annals,--we are told at the same time that there had been "a contention between rehoboam and jeroboam from the first,"[ ]--but in the fact that a mightier enemy came upon rehoboam. from the time when the hebrews won their abode in canaan, they had not been molested in any way from egypt, where the rulers since the reign of ramses iii. rested quietly by the nile. solomon, as we saw (p. ), entered into friendly relations with egypt, and even into affinity. but in the later years of his reign a new dynasty ascended the throne of egypt in the person of shishak, which took up a different attitude. with him jeroboam had found refuge from the pursuit of solomon. it was to jeroboam's interest, no less than shishak's, that this connection should continue after jeroboam became king of israel. it is not improbable that shishak made war upon rehoboam in order to secure jeroboam in his new dominion. whether jeroboam sought the help of egypt or not, why should not egypt have availed herself of the breach in the israelitish kingdom which had reached such a height in syria under david and solomon, and forced her way even to the borders of egypt? why should she not establish the division and the weakness of israel? at the same time, in all probability, a cheap reputation for military valour might be obtained, and the treasures of solomon seized. in the year b.c., the fifth year of rehoboam's reign, the pharaoh invaded judah. he is said to "have come with chariots, and , horsemen; and the people who accompanied him from egypt, libya, and ethiopia were beyond number." rehoboam could not withstand the power of shishak; one city after another, including jerusalem, opened her gates to the pharaoh. the glory of solomon was past and gone. shishak took away the treasures of the temple and the royal palace, and the gold shields which solomon had caused to be made for the body-guard. there was no thought of a lasting conquest and the subjugation of syria; the object was merely to weaken, plunder, and reduce judah. when this object was obtained the pharaoh turned back to egypt. on the outer walls of the temple of karnak we may see the gigantic form of shishak, who brandishes the weapon of victory over a crowd of conquered enemies; bearded figures are to be seen, with their hands tied behind them, whom ammon and mut are leading before shishak. the lower part of these figures is covered by the name-shields. they represent the places in the kingdom of judah, which in equal number were taken or were taxed by the pharaoh. of these name-shields about are still legible, but few names are found among these which correspond to known places in judæa. we may perhaps recognise jehud, ajalon, beth-horon, gibeon, beeroth, rimmon in the north of judah or in benjamin; engedi and adullam in the east; lachish, adoraim, mareshah, kegilah (keilah), and some other places in the centre of judah. as there is scarcely one among these names which can with certainty be apportioned to the kingdom of israel, the conclusion may naturally be drawn that the campaign was made with a favourable regard to jeroboam, and was confined to judah.[ ] it was a heavy blow which had befallen the little kingdom, and, what was still worse, jeroboam could avail himself of it, and the pharaoh could repeat his raid. rehoboam saw that the only way to increase the power of resistance in his kingdom and prevent its overthrow was to strengthen the fortifications of the metropolis, and change all the larger towns in the land into fortresses. he carried this plan out, we are told, so far as he could, and provided them with garrisons, arms, supplies, and governors. fifteen of these are mentioned in the chronicles. the dominion over the edomites, whom saul fought with and david overcame, and who attempted in vain to break loose under solomon, was maintained by rehoboam. after the brief reign of abiam, the son of rehoboam ( - b.c.), asa, the brother of abiam, ascended the throne of judah. in his time, according to the chronicles, serah, the cushite, invaded judah with a great army, and forced his way as far as maresa; but in the fifteenth year of his reign asa defeated the cushites, and sacrificed oxen and sheep out of the booty to jehovah at jerusalem. the books of the kings know nothing but the fact that asa was engaged in constant warfare with baasha, the second successor of jeroboam, king of israel ( - b.c.).[ ] baasha forced his way as far as ramah, _i.e._ within two leagues of jerusalem. this place he took and fortified, and was now enabled to press heavily on the metropolis of judah, by checking their trade and cutting off their supplies. asa's military power does not seem to have been sufficient to relieve him from this intolerable position. he "took all the silver and gold that remained in the treasures of the house of jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house," and sent it to benhadad, who was now king of damascus in the room of rezon the opponent of solomon, and urged him to break his covenant with baasha, and make war upon him that he might leave judah at peace. benhadad agreed to his request. he invaded israel. as jeroboam had summoned egypt against judah, judah was now joined by damascus against israel. baasha abandoned his war against israel, and asa caused the wood and the stones of the fortifications to be hastily carried away from ramah, and with this material he entrenched gebah and mizpeh against israel.[ ] an addition in the first book of kings remarks that asa removed the harlots and the idols out of the land, that he threw down the image of astarte, which his mother had set up, and burnt it in the valley of the kidron.[ ] this was a healthy reaction against the foreign rites which had crept in in the last years of solomon's reign. asa's son jehoshaphat ( - b.c.) went further in this direction. the remainder of the harlots were removed from the land; he entered into peaceful relations with israel. the supremacy over the edomites was maintained, and they were governed by viceroys of the king of judah.[ ] we find that the edomites sent contingents to him; and his sway extended as far as the north-east point of the red sea. here, at elath, as in solomon's time, great ships were built for the voyage to ophir.[ ] the ten tribes who had set jeroboam at their head were the mass of the people both in numbers and extent of territory. they might hope to carry on the kingdom, they preserved the name of israel; while in the south there was little more than one powerful tribe separated from the rest. shechem, the ancient metropolis of the tribe of ephraim, the place at which the crown was transferred to jeroboam, was the residence of the new king. when jerusalem was no longer the chief metropolis of the kingdom, the temple there could not any longer be the place of worship for all the tribes. it would be nothing less then recognising the supremacy of rehoboam if the tribes continued to go up to jerusalem to the great sacrifices and festivals. the places of worship for the new kingdom must be within its own borders. jeroboam consecrated afresh the old place of sacrifice, bethel, on the southern border of the territory of ephraim, the place where abraham had offered sacrifice, and jacob had rested (i. , ); and on the northern boundaries of his kingdom he consecrated the place of sacrifice at dan, which the danites had once founded on taking laish from the sidonians (p. ). at both places he set up a golden calf to jehovah, and instituted priests; and, as we are told, the israelites came like one man to the feasts of dan, and sacrificed at bethel, where the sanctuary also contained a treasury. of other actions of jeroboam, we only know that he built, _i.e._ fortified, peniel in the land beyond jordan; no doubt in order to be able to maintain his supremacy over the ammonites. the severe blow which had fallen on the kingdom of judah by the incursion of shishak secured him from any serious attack on the part of rehoboam. the petty warfare on the borders of judah and israel naturally did not cease during his reign (p. ). nadab, the son of jeroboam ( - b.c.), marched against the philistines in order to recover from them gibbethon in the land of the southern danites. here in the camp at gibbethon he was slain by baasha, one of the captains of his army, and the whole race of jeroboam was destroyed. baasha ascended the throne, which nadab had held for two years only. he took up his abode at tirzah, a pleasantly-situated place north of shechem.[ ] the division of the kingdom of israel and its consequent debility could not but appear a desirable event to the kingdom of damascus, which, though overthrown by david, was restored by rezon in solomon's time (p. .) attacks of judah on israel could not be supported by damascus, because they might lead to a reunion, and for the same reason israel could not be allowed to subjugate judah. this seems to have been the reason which induced benhadad of damascus to accede to the request of asa, king of judah, when baasha had entrenched ramah against jerusalem. benhadad's invasion of the north of israel, the desolation of the district on the upper jordan and the lake of genesareth,[ ] gave relief to the oppressed kingdom of judah (p. ). baasha's son elah was slain at a banquet at tirzah, after a short reign ( - b.c.), by zimri, one of the captains of his army, who seized the crown. but the army of israel, which was again encamped at gibbethon, on hearing of what had taken place at tirzah, elected omri, their leader, king. omri broke up the siege of gibbethon, marched to tirzah, and took the city. zimri despaired of maintaining himself in the royal castle, and burnt himself in it. yet omri was not master of israel. half of the people joined tibni, the son of ginath. omri gradually gained the upper hand, till tibni's death decided the matter in his favour. with the elevation of omri ( - b.c.) a third dynasty ascended the throne of israel, while in judah the crown continued peacefully in the family of david. like baasha, omri founded a new residence; he removed his seat from tirzah to mount shomron, and here built the new city of that name (samaria). nothing is said of the wars of omri against judah. to benhadad of damascus he seems to have lost some towns in the land of gilead.[ ] that he ruled with address, vigour, and a strong hand is clear from the inscription on a monument which mesha, king of moab, caused to be erected in his city of dibon (east of the dead sea). this tells us that omri and his son after him held moab in subjection for years; that not only was the city of nebo garrisoned by the israelites, but omri even took medabah, _i.e._ the region south of nebo towards dibon, and occupied it, and "oppressed moab for a long time," because "camos, the god of the moabites, was angry at his land."[ ] as mesha regained his independence after the death of ahab, the son of omri, the more severe subjection of the moabites by omri must have begun in the year b.c. omri seems to have entered into friendly relations with ethbaal, king of tyre ( - b.c.), or his successor balezor ( - b.c.).[ ] omri's authority and reputation must have been considerable, since even after the overthrow of his house, in the second half of the ninth century b.c., the kings of assyria speak of the king of israel as "the son of omri," and the kingdom of israel as the "house of omri." ahab, omri's son ( - b.c.), maintained the power which his father had won. the books of kings tell us that mesha, king of moab, sent him yearly the wool of , sheep and lambs,[ ] and mesha himself tells us that omri was followed by his son, who also said, "i will oppress moab;" and israel "dwelt at medabah for years in the days of omri and ahab." that the ammonites also were subject to ahab seems a just conclusion from the inscriptions of shalmanesar, king of assyria.[ ] with tyre ahab was in close connection. his wife jezebel was the daughter of ethbaal, king of tyre, the aunt of mutton, the contemporary king of tyre (p. ). he was on friendly terms with judah, which began to rise again (as we saw) under the rule of jehoshaphat. jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat, was married to athaliah, the daughter of ahab and jezebel.[ ] on the vine-clad hills of jezreel ahab built himself a palace adorned with ivory, after the pattern of the phenician princes.[ ] the rites of the neighbouring tribes, the worship of astarte, camos, and milcom, which found their way into the hebrew tribes, and even to jerusalem in the last years of solomon's reign, were again removed in judah, as we have seen (p. ), under the reigns of asa and jehoshaphat. for israel the dedication of the places of worship at bethel and dan to jehovah, which jeroboam instituted, in spite of the erection of the image of jehovah, marked a reaction against the rites of the canaanites. but the connection into which ahab entered with tyre brought it about that the gods of the phenicians were again looked on with reverence in israel. induced by jezebel, his tyrian wife, so we are told, ahab caused a temple to be erected in samaria, which his father had built, to baal of tyre, at which priests maintained the worship; and a temple was also dedicated to astarte, which gave occupation to priests.[ ] it was an ancient custom among the hebrews, as we have already found more than once, to inquire of jehovah what should be done. in israel the custom of thus making inquiry was more widely spread than in other nations. before any undertaking inquiry was made of his will. jehovah's voice decided the sentence in the judgment court. it was usual in all cases and times to appeal to the decision of jehovah. question and answer were made, as has been remarked, by the priests casting lots before the sacred ark, the altars, and the images of jehovah. if a criminal had to be discovered, the tribes and races came forward, and he was marked out by the lot cast before jehovah. we saw that saul inquired of jehovah on his campaign (p. ). david undertook nothing without inquiring of the image of jehovah which he carried about with him (p. ). if any one wished to mark out the wisdom of any advice, it was said, "it is as if jehovah had answered." but beside the priests who cast the lots, there were men who saw into what was hidden, and knew the future. to these soothsayers men went as well as to the lot before jehovah; they desired to know whether there would be rain or drought, where a lost beast was to be found; they inquired for remedies for disease. the soothsayers even pronounced sentences at law, and their sentence was then as the sentence of jehovah. it was jehovah who illuminated such men, and imparted to them a keener vision, a higher knowledge. they believed, as the people believed of them--and the belief was stronger as the religious feeling was more intense--that they stood in a nearer and closer relation to jehovah. if they also foretold events for reward, yet they lived in the belief that they knew the will and the counsels of jehovah, and in this conviction they gave advice and judgment; they were not only soothsayers, but seers. in such a conviction mere prediction passed into prophecy, _i.e._ into the revelation of the will of jehovah by the mental certainty of the seer. in this position we found samuel, who, from being a priest, had attained to a knowledge of the will of jehovah; he was at once priest, soothsayer for hire, and prophet; _i.e._ he not only announced external matters still in the future, but also announced the just decision, the resolve pleasing to god. he gathered disciples round him, who praised jehovah with harp and lute, and waited to see his face, and became changed into other men (p. ). gad and nathan, with whom david and solomon took counsel, were men of this style and tone. with the loftier impulses which the religious life received both on the ritual and legal side, as well as on the side of religious feeling under david and solomon, with the survey of the fortunes which jehovah had prepared for his people, with the expression of intense devotion in that poetry to which david opened the way, the elevation of mind in the prophets must have been increased and extended; their views must have become deeper. in the kingdom of israel, so far as our knowledge goes, the seers and prophets had made no protest against the worship of jehovah under an image. but they came forward with decisive opposition to the worship of baal and astarte, the strange gods which ahab and jezebel had introduced into samaria and israel. ahab decreed persecution against them, which strengthened instead of breaking the intensity of their faith, their adhesion and devotion to the god of the ancestors. they were driven to live in solitudes, deserts, ravines, and caves. on their privations, fasts, and lonely contemplations in the silence of the desert followed dreams and ecstatic visions. by these the close and favoured relation of the persecuted to the god of israel became an established certainty. the power of prediction passed into the background as compared with this awakening by jehovah, and the duty to strive, contend, and suffer for the worship of the god of the nation against strange gods. if a prophet who had lifted up his voice against the sacrifice to baal was compelled to fly before the king into the desert, he was followed thither by eager associates, who had at heart the worship and service of jehovah. these listened to his words and promptings; these were his disciples. the numbers of the awakened and illuminated increased; amid danger and in privation their religious life became more earnest; their zeal for jehovah and their hatred of the strange gods and their worshippers became deeper as the persecution fell heavier upon them. they became men of word and action. strengthened in this conflict for zealous struggles in behalf of the ancient lord, oppressed and persecuted for their faithfulness to the god of israel, their relation to him took the shape of an inward conviction of great force and intensity. filled with their belief and the revelations which jehovah had imparted to them, they came forward in the boldest manner to oppose the apostate kings; their zeal for jehovah rose to the wildest fanaticism, which shrunk from no means of destroying the servants of the strange gods. to bring into light the force of their opposition to the wicked kings, and the power which jehovah gives to his faithful servants, tradition has adorned with many miracles the lives of elijah and elisha, the men who in ahab's time transformed the prognostications of the seers into a prophetic censure. elijah is said to have ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, and even the corpse of elisha worked miracles. at the urgent request of jezebel, so we are told, ahab gave orders that the prophets of jehovah, who roused the people against him, should be driven out of the land or put to death.[ ] elijah retired from thisbe in gilead, first to the region of jordan, and then to zarephath (sarepta) in the land of the sidonians;[ ] and finally he found a place of refuge in the ravines of carmel, on the sea-shore. a girdle of skins surrounded his loins, and a mantle of hair covered his shoulders; ravens were said to have brought bread and flesh to the hungry prophet in the desert.[ ] it came to pass that there was a long drought in israel. in this time of distress elijah came forth from his hiding-place to point out the anger of jehovah on the king and the people for their worship of baal, and to proclaim relief if they returned to the god of israel. he requested ahab to gather the people and all the priests of baal and astarte to carmel, and there jehovah would send rain. to this request ahab agreed. "how long will ye halt on both knees, and go after jehovah as well as baal," cried elijah to the assembled multitude. "i alone am left of the prophets of jehovah, and the prophets of baal are men. give us then two bulls: one to me, and one to the priests of baal. we will cut them in pieces and lay them on the wood, and the god who answers with fire shall be our god." the priests of baal slew their bull, laid him on the wood, and called on baal from morning to mid-day, and said, o baal, hear us! but in vain. meanwhile elijah, so the narrative continues, built an altar of stones, for the tribes, and made a trench round it; cut the bull in pieces, and laid him on the wood of the altar, and thrice poured water over all. when he called on jehovah--to make it known on that day that he was god in israel, and elijah was his servant--fire fell from heaven and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the altar. all the people fell on their faces, and elijah said, seize the prophets of baal; let none of them escape. the people fell upon them; they were brought down from the mountain, and elijah slew them at the brook kishon. then a little cloud was seen from carmel rising out of the sea, of the size of a man's hand, and elijah said to the king, "harness thy chariot and haste away, that the rain overtake thee not." the sky was quickly covered with black clouds, and heavy rain followed upon storms of wind. but elijah ran before ahab to his palace in jezreel.[ ] of this narrative, which belongs to the prophetic revision of the annals, we may perhaps retain with certainty the facts that elijah declared a severe famine and drought in the land to be the punishment of jehovah for the worship of baal; that the excited people slew the priests of baal; that ahab accorded to the prophets of jehovah permission to return to their homes and liberty; and that the worship of jehovah in israel, which had been seriously threatened by those rites, regained the upper hand and decided victory, though it could not entirely drive out the worship of baal. the increase in the strength of israel under omri and ahab, the connection into which ahab entered with jehoshaphat of judah, the alliance between the two houses, must have appeared to benhadad ii., the king of damascus, a serious matter for his own position. for this or for other reasons he broke with ahab, and renewed the struggle which had gone on in omri's time between israel and damascus. he invaded israel with all his power: kings were with him--such is the no doubt greatly exaggerated account. ahab fell upon the aramaeans while benhadad was at a banquet, and though his army was only strong, he obtained a great victory. then, as we are told in the prophetic revision of the books of kings, benhadad's servants advised him to contend with the israelites on the plain; their gods were gods of the hills, and therefore they had gained the victory. benhadad came in the next year with an army of aramaeans, which filled the land. nevertheless ahab again defeated them at aphek (eastward of lake merom), and so utterly overthrew them that benhadad sent his servants with sackcloth about their loins, and halters round their heads, to ahab to pray for mercy. this ahab granted, and benhadad in turn undertook to restore the cities which his father had taken from the father of ahab, _i.e._ from omri. the princes of syria had every reason to forget their hatred and make up their quarrels. assurbanipal and shalmanesar ii., kings of assyria, had attacked and subjugated the districts on the euphrates, and established fortresses there. the former forced his way as far as the orontes and the amanus; the latter had already subjugated cilicia. in the year b.c. shalmanesar ii. left nineveh in the spring, crossed the euphrates, demanded tribute there, and then turned towards damascus. he came upon benhadad (bin-hidri) of damascus, to whom ahab (achabbu), king of israel, as well as the king of hamath, and the king of aradus, together with some other syrian kings, had brought up their forces. to the army of the syrians shalmanesar allowed more than , men--he enumerates princes who combined to oppose him. damascus furnished the strongest contingent, viz., , men and chariots; then came israel, with , men and chariots; and hamath, with , men and chariots. the armies met at karkar. the king of assyria claims the victory; he professes to have captured the chariots and horsemen of the syrians, and to have cut down their leaders. according to one inscription , syrians, according to two others , , were left on the field. but shalmanesar says nothing of the subjection of the princes who fought against him, or of the payment of tribute by those who are said to be vanquished, or of conquered cities. hence the truth is that the combined forces of the syrians succeeded in repulsing the attack of the assyrians. this was their victory, though they may not have obtained the victory on the field.[ ] when the danger threatened by the attack of assyria passed away, the contention between damascus and israel broke out again. the hebrew scriptures tell us that benhadad did not keep his promise, and did not restore the city of ramoth in gilead to ahab. ahab may have thought that he had the greater ground for complaint against damascus, as he took upon himself the severe battle against assyria, though it was damascus, and not israel, which stood in the direct line of danger. he united with judah against damascus, and sent a request to jehoshaphat, king of judah, to march out with him. jehoshaphat answered, "i will go forth as thou goest; my people as thy people; my horses as thy horses;" and he came with his warriors to samaria. both kings sat on their seats at the gate, in order to review the army as it passed out; and the prophets of jehovah, in number, prophesied good things to them, and said, "go forth against ramoth in gilead; jehovah will give it into your hands." one only of these prophets, michaiah, the son of imlah, prophesied evil; ahab, we are told, caused him to be thrown into prison till he should return in prosperity.[ ] a battle took place in the neighbourhood of ramoth in gilead; ahab was severely wounded by an arrow which passed between the joints of his mail; he caused the wound to be bound up, and returned to the fight, in order not to discourage his warriors, and continued to stand upright in his chariot, though his blood flowed to the bottom of it, till the evening, when he died. when the soldiers heard of the death of the king the army dispersed in every direction. jehoshaphat, king of judah, escaped ( b.c.). the death of such a brave warrior as ahab was a heavy blow to the kingdom of israel. we are not told by what sacrifices ahaziah, the son of ahab and jezebel, had to purchase peace; we only know that the moabites revolted from israel on the news of the death of ahab, and that mesha no longer paid the tribute which he and his father had paid to omri and ahab. in any case it was a great relief for israel when shalmanesar, king of assyria, in the years and b.c., turned his arms against hamath and damascus.[ ] in this way ahaziah's younger brother, joram, who succeeded him after a short reign ( - b.c.), was able to attempt to subjugate the moabites anew. he called on jehoshaphat, king of judah, to go out with him, and jehoshaphat said, "i am as thou art; my horses as thy horses," and raised not only the warriors of judah, but those of edom also. the attack was made from the land of the kingdom of judah and edom on the southern border of the moabites. the moabites were defeated, their cities destroyed, their fields laid waste, their wells filled up. mesha threw himself into the fortress of kir harosheth, which is probably the later kerak, to the south of the arnon, not far from the east shore of the dead sea. the slingers of both kings surrounded the fortress, and cast stones against the walls. "and when the king of moab saw that the battle was too strong for him," and he had attempted in vain to break out, "he took his firstborn son, who would be king in his place, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering on the wall. and there was a great anger against israel, and they returned from him, and went back into their own land" ( b.c.). notwithstanding this fortunate beginning, the campaign against moab, as is allowed even by the books of kings, was finally wrecked. this termination agrees with the statements of mesha on the monument of dibon. "forty years," it says, "israel dwelt in medabah; camos gave it back in my days. and the king of israel built ataroth, and i fought against the stronghold and took it, and took all the men captive, and brought them as a pleasing spectacle to camos and moab. and camos said to me, go and take nebo from israel; and i went in the night and fought against it from daybreak to mid-day; and i took it. it was devoted to destruction to ashtor-camos (i. ); and i took from thence the furniture of jehovah, and dragged them before camos. and the king of israel built jahaz, and placed himself therein, in his contest against me, and camos drove him out before me. i took from moab men, all the chiefs, and led them out to jahaz, and took it, in order to unite it to dibon. i built karho,[ ] the gates, the towers, and the royal palace. i built aroer, and made the road over the arnon. i built beth bamoth, which was destroyed. i built bazor, and beth diblathaim, and beth baal-meon. and camos said to me, go down to fight against horonaim." here our fragments of the inscription break off. we see that ahab's successors, ahaziah and joram, attempted to force moab to submission by planting fortresses in the land; that they attempted to subjugate the moabites from ataroth, nebo, and jahaz. when this mode of warfare did not succeed, and the fortresses were destroyed, the great campaign was undertaken which in the end came to disaster, unless we were to place this campaign before the time when joram built those fortresses. it was impossible for joram to entertain any further hopes of the subjugation of moab when benhadad, after escaping from the attack of shalmanesar, turned upon him. the israelites were unable to keep the field, and joram was shut up in samaria. the supplies failed, and the famine is said to have been so grievous in the city that an ass's head sold for shekels, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five shekels, and mothers even laid their hands upon their own children. but elisha, the favourite disciple of elijah, is said to have urged them to hold out, and promised present help from jehovah. suddenly, in a single night, the army of the aramaeans disappeared. they feared, so the prophetic revision of the annals relates, that the kings of the hethites and the kings of egypt had set out to the aid of joram. as shalmanesar of assyria tells us that he marched in the year b.c. with , men against benhadad of damascus and irchulina of hamath, we may assume that it was the approach of the assyrians which induced benhadad to raise the siege of samaria, in order to meet the assyrians with all his own forces and those of hamath. here again shalmanesar announces a victory obtained over benhadad and irchulina of hamath, and twelve princes, and again the victory is without results. it was not to the power of shalmanesar, but to elisha, the prophet of israel, that benhadad of damascus succumbed. for what reason we know not, elisha left israel and went to damascus. benhadad lay sick. he sent his chosen servant hazael with costly presents to elisha to inquire if he would recover. elisha answered, say to him, thou shalt recover; but jehovah has shown me that he will die. hazael announced the message, and on the next day smothered the king, and placed himself on the throne of damascus ( b.c.). the new king at once resumed the war with israel, and, as it would appear, not without the instigation of elisha.[ ] jehoshaphat of judah had died a few years previously ( b.c.). the crown passed to his son jehoram, the brother-in-law of joram. the edomites, who had continued to follow jehoshaphat into the field against moab, revolted from him, and slew the judæans who had settled in edom,--these settlers may have been most numerous in the harbour city of elath,--and placed themselves under a king.[ ] jehoram attempted to reduce them in vain; the fortune of war was against him; he was surrounded by the edomites, and was compelled to force his way with his chariots of war by night through the army of the edomites. the philistines also pressed upon jehoram, and carried away, even from jerusalem, captives and precious things.[ ] jehoram's reign continued for four years. yet the misfortunes of judah do not seem to have been very heavy. jehoram's son ahaziah, the nephew of joram of israel, who came to the throne in the year b.c., was soon after his accession in a position to aid his uncle against the men of damascus. both kings encamped at ramoth gilead, in order to maintain the city against hazael.[ ] in the conflict joram was wounded; he returned to jezreel to be healed, and soon after ahaziah left the camp at ramoth in order to visit his uncle in his sickness. to elisha this seemed the most favourable moment for overthrowing the king of israel, and he urged jehu, the foremost captain in the israelite army, to revolt against the wounded king. he sent one of his disciples to ramoth with instructions to pour oil upon jehu, with the words, "jehovah says, i anoint thee to be king over israel." the chiefs were sitting together at ramoth when the messenger of elisha entered. "i have a message for jehu," he said; and poured the oil upon him with the words, "jehovah, the god of israel, anoints thee to be king over his people, and says, thou shalt destroy the house of thy master. i will avenge the blood of my prophets on jezebel. the house of ahab shall be destroyed, and i will cut off from ahab what pisseth against the wall, and dogs shall eat jezebel in jezreel, and none shall bury her." the youth had scarcely uttered these words when he returned in haste. the chiefs and the servants asked in wonder, "wherefore came this madman?" but when jehu declared to them what had taken place, they hastily took off their mantles, and spread them before jehu's feet; they blew trumpets and cried, "jehu is king." jehu at once set out with a host to jezreel, that no tidings might precede him. the watchmen of the tower told the king that a troop was coming in great haste, and apparently led by jehu. thinking that jehu was bringing news of the army, the wounded joram went to meet him with his guest, ahaziah, king of judah. "is it peace?" cried joram to jehu. "what peace," he replied, "while the whoredoms of thy mother jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" in terror joram cried out, "there is treachery, o ahaziah," and turned his horses to escape by flight. but jehu smote him with an arrow in the back through the shoulders, so that the point reached the heart. joram fell dead from the chariot. ahaziah escaped. from the window of her palace at jezreel jezebel saw the death of the king, her second son. by this her own fate was decided. but her courage failed not. as jehu approached she called to him from the window, "had zimri peace, who slew his master?" jehu made no answer, but called out, "who is on my side?" two or three eunuchs answered, "we are." then jehu commanded, "throw the queen down." they threw the widow of ahab out of the window, so that her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on jehu's horses, and the ruthless murderer drove over the corpse. she had survived ahab ten years. jehu went into the palace, ate and drank, and sent a message to the elders of the tribes and the captains of the fortresses: "if ye are on my side and obey my voice, slay the sons of ahab who are with you, and send their heads to jezreel." the elders feared the murderer to whom joram and jezebel had succumbed, and did as he bade them. seventy sons and grandsons of ahab were slaughtered; their heads were thrown in two heaps before the palace at jezreel by jehu's orders. then he spoke in scorn to the people, "i have slain one; but who slew all these?" still unsatisfied with blood, he caused all the kindred of the royal house, all the councillors, friends, and priests of joram to be slain ( b.c.). jehu had caused the king of judah to be closely pursued on that day. at jibleam the arrows of the pursuers reached ahaziah; wounded to the death, he came to megiddo, and there he died. thus the prospect was opened to jehu of becoming master of the kingdom of judah also. with this object in view, he caused the brothers and relatives of the murdered ahaziah to be massacred, so far as he could take them; in all they were men.[ ] but meanwhile the mother of the murdered ahaziah, athaliah, heard in judah of the death of her son in israel, and seized the reins of government there. she determined to retain them against every one; and on her side also destroyed all who stood in her way. she did not spare even her own grandsons, the sons of ahaziah; it was with difficulty that the king's sister succeeded in saving joash, the infant son of her brother.[ ] the prophets of israel took no offence at the cruelties of jehu, to which they had given the first impulse; according to the revision of the annals, they even proclaimed to him the word of jehovah. "because thou hast done what is right and good in my eyes, and hast executed upon the house of ahab all that was in my heart, thy descendants shall sit upon the throne of israel."[ ] jehu on his part was no less anxious to show his gratitude to the men to whom he owed his exaltation. he summoned the priests of baal, and announced to them in craft, "ahab served baal a little, but jehu shall serve him much;" and caused a great sacrifice to be made to baal; all who remained absent should not live. thus he collected all the servants and priests of baal in the temple of the god at samaria. the sacrifice began; jehu came in person to take part in the solemnity; when on a sudden soldiers entered the temple and massacred them all. the two pillars before the temple were burnt, the image of baal was thrown down, the temple was destroyed, and the place purified.[ ] a hundred and ten years had elapsed since the revolt of the ten tribes from the house of david and the division of israel. during this time the two kingdoms had been at war, and had summoned strangers into the land against each other; even the connection into which they had entered in the last thirty years, and the close relations existing between ahab and joram of israel and jehoshaphat, jehoram and ahaziah of judah had not been able to give more than a transitory firmness and solidity to the two kingdoms. in the kingdom of judah the crown continued in the house of david; in israel neither jeroboam's nor baasha's race had taken root. and now the house of omri also was overthrown and destroyed by a ruthless murderer. with jehu a third warrior had gained the crown of israel by a violent hand, and a fourth dynasty sat upon the throne of jeroboam. it was a favourable circumstance for the new king of israel that shalmanesar ii. of assyria again made war upon damascus. on the mountains opposite to the range of lebanon, so shalmanesar tells us, he defeated hazael of the land of aram, _i.e._ of damascus, in the year b.c.; he slew , of his warriors, and took war-chariots. after this he besieged him in damascus, and destroyed his fortifications. jehu could hardly think, as ahab had done before him, of joining damascus in resisting assyria; his object was rather to establish the throne he had usurped by submission to and support from assyria. in this year, as shalmanesar tells us, he sent tribute like sidon and tyre. on an obelisk in his palace at chalah, on which shalmanesar caused the annals of his victories to be written and a picture to be made of the offering of the tribute from five nations, we see him standing with two eunuchs behind him, one of whom holds an umbrella, while two others lead before him the deputies of jehu. the first israelite prostrates himself and kisses the ground before the feet of shalmanesar; seven other israelites bring jars with handles, cups, sacks, goblets, and staves. they are bearded, with long hair, with shoes on their feet, and round caps on their heads, the points of which fall slightly backwards. the under garment reaches almost to the ancles; the upper garment falls in two parts evenly before and behind from the shoulders to the hem of the under garment. the inscription underneath runs: "the tribute of jehu (jahua), the son of omri (chumri): bars of gold, bars of silver, cups of gold, ladles and goblets of gold, golden pitchers, lead, and spears: this i received."[ ] though jehu submitted to the assyrians, the power and spirit of hazael was not broken by his defeat or by the siege of damascus. shalmanesar speaks of a new campaign against the cities of hazael in the year b.c. he does not tell us that he has reduced damascus, he merely remarks that sidon, tyre, and byblus have paid tribute; and again, under the year b.c. he merely notes in general terms that he has received the tribute of all the princes of the land of chatti (syria). hazael remained powerful enough to take from jehu, who, though a bloody and resolute murderer, was a bad ruler, all the territory on the east of the jordan which ahab and joram had defended with such vigour.[ ] under jehoahaz, the son of jehu ( - b.c.), the power of israel sank lower and lower. hazael, and after him his son, benhadad iii., pressed heavily upon him. jehoahaz was compelled to purchase peace by further concessions;[ ] his whole fighting force was reduced to chariots of war, horsemen, and , foot-soldiers, while ahab had led chariots into the field. the devastation caused by damascus in israel was terrible. the books of kings represent elisha as saying to hazael, "the fortresses of israel thou shalt set on fire, their young men thou shalt slay with the sword, their children thou shalt cut in pieces, and rip up their women with child;"[ ] and in the prophet amos we are told that the damascenes had thrashed israel with sledges of iron. in the prophecies of amos, jehovah says: "therefore i will send fire into the house of hazael, to consume the palaces of benhadad, and break the bars of damascus, and destroy the inhabitants of the valley of idols."[ ] the assyrians brought relief to the kingdom of israel. in the books of the kings we are told, "jehovah gave israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the aramaeans (syrians), and they dwelt in their tents as yesterday and the day before."[ ] it was bin-nirar iii., king of asshur, who threatened damascus and syria. in the year b.c. the canon of the assyrians notices a campaign of this king against syria, and in his inscriptions he mentions that he had conquered mariah, king of damascus (who must have been the successor of benhadad iii.), and laid heavy tribute upon him.[ ] though israel (the house of omri), as well as sidon, the philistines, and edomites, had now to pay tribute to the conqueror of damascus, yet in the last years of the reign of jehoahaz the land was able to breathe again, and joash, the grandson of jehu ( - b.c.[ ]), was able to retake from the enfeebled damascus the cities which his father had lost,[ ] and make the weight of his arms felt by the kingdom of judah. in judah, as has been mentioned, jehoram's widow, athaliah, the mother of the murdered ahaziah, had seized the throne ( b.c.). she is the only female sovereign in the history of israel. athaliah was the daughter of ahab of israel and jezebel of tyre; like her mother, she is said to have favoured the worship of baal. as the prophets of israel had prepared the ruin of the house of omri in israel, the high priest of the temple at jerusalem, jehoiadah, now undertook to overthrow the daughter of this house in judah. ahaziah's sister had saved a son of ahaziah, joash, while still an infant, from his grandmother (p. ). he grew up in concealment in the temple at jerusalem, and was now seven years old. this boy the priest determined to place upon the throne. he won the captains of the body-guard, showed them the young joash in the temple, and imparted his plan for a revolt. on a sabbath the body-guard and the levites formed a circle in the court of the temple. jehoiadah brought the boy out of the temple and placed the crown upon his head; he was anointed, and the soldiers proclaimed him king to the sound of trumpets. the people agreed. athaliah hastened with the cry of treason into the temple. but at jehoiadah's command she was seized by the body-guard, taken from the temple precincts, and slain in the royal palace. then the boy was brought thither by the levites and solemnly placed upon the throne. "and all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was at rest," say the books of kings ( b.c.). the victory of the priesthood had the same result for judah as the resistance of elijah and the prophets against ahab, and the overthrow of his house, had introduced in israel, _i.e._ the suppression of the worship of baal. the temple of baal at jerusalem was destroyed; the high priest of it, mathan by name, was slain. yet the number of the worshippers in jerusalem must have been so considerable, and their courage so little broken, that it was thought necessary to protect the temple of jehovah by setting a guard to prevent their attacks.[ ] jehoiadah continued to act as regent for the young king, and the prophecies of joel, which have come down to us from this period,[ ] prove that under this regency the worship of jehovah became dominant, that the festivals and sacrifices were held regularly in the temple at jerusalem, and that the ordinances of the priests were in full force. when joash became ruler he carried on the restoration of the temple, which had fallen into decay, even more eagerly than the priesthood. his labours were interrupted. it was the time when israel could not defend themselves against damascus. marching through israel, hazael invaded judah, and besieged jerusalem. joash was compelled to ransom himself with all that his fathers, jehoshaphat, jehoram, and ahaziah, had consecrated to jehovah, and what he himself had dedicated in the temple, and with the treasures of the royal palace.[ ] like his father and his grandmother, joash died by a violent death. two of his servants murdered him ( b.c.); but his son amaziah kept the throne, and caused the murderers of his father to be executed. he commenced a war, for what reason we know not, with israel, who was now fighting with success against damascus. joash of israel defeated him at bethshemesh; amaziah was taken prisoner and his army dispersed. the king of israel occupied jerusalem, plundered the temple and the palace, and did not set the king of judah free till the walls of jerusalem were thrown down for a space of cubits from the gate of ephraim, _i.e._ the western gate of the outer city to the corner gate, at the north-west corner of jerusalem, and the judæans had given hostages to keep the peace for the future. against the edomites amaziah contended with more success. he defeated them in the valley of salt; , edomites are said to have been left on the field on that day. the result of the victory was the renewal of the dependence of edom on judah, though not as yet throughout the whole extent of the land. amaziah also fell before a conspiracy. it was in vain that he escaped from the conspirators from jerusalem to lachish; they followed him and slew him there. but the people placed his son uzziah (azariah), though only years old, on the throne of judah ( b.c.).[ ] footnotes: [ ] kings xi. ff place the rebellion of jeroboam in the time when solomon built millo (p. ), and give him asylum with shishak, king of egypt. solomon built millo, the walls of jerusalem, and the fortifications (p. ) when the building of the palace was finished ( kings ix. , , ). the building of the palace was completed in b.c. (p. ); hence the building of millo must have begun about this time. it can hardly have lasted more than years. jeroboam's rebellion, therefore, and shishak's accession are not to be placed after, but a little before, b.c. lepsius puts shishak's accession at b.c. [ ] kings xii. ; xiv. . [ ] o. blau in "zeitschr. d. m. g." , ff, and below. the shield which champollion read judaha malek is read jehud by blau, who refers it to jehud, a place of the southern danites. even the occurrence of names of towns belonging to the kingdom of ephraim would not exclude the possibility that shishak's campaign was undertaken in favour of jeroboam. jeroboam acknowledged the supremacy of egypt in the meaning of the pharaoh when he called on egypt for help, and therefore, after the manner of egyptian monuments of victory and inscriptions, his cities could be denoted as subject to egypt. hence makethu, as brugsch reads (gesch. Ægyptens, s. ), may be megiddo or makedu in the north of judah; in the first case the explanation given holds good. jerusalem is not found among the names which can be read and interpreted. [ ] _supra_, p. , _note_. i have remarked that assumptions there noticed are necessary to bring the hebrew chronology into harmony with the assyrian monuments and the stone of mesha. that ahaziah of judah and joram of israel must have been slain, at the latest, in the year b.c. is a necessary consequence of the fact that jehu paid tribute to the assyrians as early as the year b.c. in the same way the assyrian monuments prove that ahab of israel cannot have died before the year b.c. as the hebrew scriptures, in the chronology of israel, put ahaziah with two years, and joram with twelve years, between ahab's death and jehu's accession, four years must be struck out and deducted from the reign of joram. to maintain the parallelism, the same operation must be performed with the contemporary kings of judah, and the reign of jehoram of judah (for which, even if we retain the data of the books of kings, six years remain at the most) must be reduced from eight years to four. these four years in each kingdom will be best added to the first reigns after the division, to jeroboam ( + = ) and rehoboam ( + = ). twelve years must be added to the reign of omri (p. , _n._). the same augmentation must be made in the corresponding reign of asa of judah, or, rather, as the chronology of judah from rehoboam to athaliah gives three years less than that from jeroboam to jehu, years must be added to asa instead of , so that his reign reaches + = , and omri's reign + = years. hence rehoboam was succeeded by abiam not in the eighteenth, but in the twenty-second year of jeroboam; ahab ascended the throne not in the thirty-sixth, but in the fifty-fourth year of asa. from these assumptions are deduced the numbers given in the text. i consider it hopeless to attempt to reconcile the divergencies in the comparisons of the two series of kings in the books of kings; _e. g._ that omri should ascend the throne in the thirty-first year of asa, and reign years, while ahab nevertheless ascends the throne in the thirty-eighth year of asa. [ ] kings xv. - ; chron. xvi. - . [ ] kings xv. - ; chron. xiv. - . [ ] kings xxii. ; , viii. . [ ] kings xxii. . [ ] song of solomon vi. . [ ] kings xv. . [ ] kings xx. . [ ] nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa." [ ] _infra_, chap. xi. [ ] kings iii. . [ ] the inscription of kurkh enumerates in the army of the syrians at karkar men from ammon under bahsa, the son of ruchub (rehob); schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. . [ ] kings viii. . [ ] kings xxi. ; xxii. ; , ix. ff. [ ] kings xvi. - ; xviii. ; , iii. . [ ] kings xviii. - , ; xix. - . [ ] kings xvii. , . [ ] kings i. ; , xvii. - . [ ] kings xviii. - . [ ] the objections which have been made against the assumption that the king of damascus and achabbu, against whom and their confederates shalmanesar fought at karkar, according to the monument of kurkh (col. ), were benhadad ii. of damascus of the books of kings and ahab of israel are untenable. shalmanesar ii. marches four times against a king of damascus; subsequently, four years after his last war with this king, he marches against a second king of damascus, whose name in the inscriptions is indubitably chazailu. in the books of kings benhadad, ahab's contemporary and opponent, is overthrown by hazael, who becomes king of damascus in benhadad's place. thus we obtain a certain basis for identifying the benhadad overthrown by hazael with the prince of damascus against whom shalmanesar fought four times. hence on the reading of the name of this opponent of shalmanesar in the inscriptions i cannot place special weight, especially as the assyrian symbol for the deity in the name in question is well known to have more than one signification. if a further objection is made, that ahab cannot have combined with damascus against assyria, but rather with assyria against damascus, in order to get rid of that opponent, the answer is that ahab had reduced damascus before shalmanesar's first march against the city. ahab had released benhadad under a treaty ( kings xx. ), and they "were at peace three years" ( kings xxii. ). hence at this moment ahab was not in need of the assistance of assyria. that free leagues are altogether inconceivable among the syrian princes of that time is an assumption contradicted by numerous statements in the egyptian monuments of tuthmosis iii., of ramses ii. and iii., and yet more numerous statements in the assyrian inscriptions. not much weight can be allowed to the late and very general statements of nicolaus in josephus. if nicolaus (joseph. "antiq." , , ) calls the opponent of david hadad, the books of kings do not mention the name of the king of damascus against whom david contends. if he maintains that the grandson of benhadad i., the third of the name, desolated samaria, it is rather benhadad i. of the books of kings, who was not the son and grandson of a benhadad, but the son of tabrimmon, and grandson of hesjon, who first laid samaria waste ( kings xv. - ). a second benhadad contends with ahab, who certainly may have been a grandson of the first, but certainly cannot have been the grandson of the opponent of david. if nicolaus further tells us, that after benhadad i. his descendants ruled for generations, and each of them along with the throne received the name of benhadad, this is contradicted by the books of kings, not merely in the genealogy of the first benhadad of those books, but also in the fact that in them benhadad ii., the contemporary of ahab and jehoram, is overthrown by hazael, who then in a long reign over damascus inflicts severe injury on israel and judah. hazael is followed in the books of kings by benhadad iii. that "achabbu from the land of sir'lai" is correctly read in the inscription of kurkh is an ascertained fact. [ ] the prophetic revision explains the overthrow of ahab by the fact that he had spared benhadad in the previous war, when jehovah had delivered him into his hand. [ ] ninth and tenth year of shalmanesar ii. [ ] according to nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa," the upper city of dibon. [ ] kings xix. ; , viii. - . [ ] joel iv. ; amos i. , . [ ] chron. xxi. - ; amos i. ; cf. _infra_, p. . n. . [ ] kings ix. . [ ] kings x. - . [ ] kings xi. - . [ ] kings x. . "to the fourth generation" may have been added by the revision _post eventum_. [ ] kings x. - . [ ] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. . [ ] kings x. . [ ] kings xiii. . [ ] kings viii. . [ ] amos i. . [ ] kings xiii. . [ ] see below, p. . [ ] of this date and the time of amaziah i shall treat in the first chapter of book iv. [ ] kings xiii. . [ ] kings xi. - . [ ] they fall about b.c. the minority of the king is clear, and the verses iv. ff. points to the incursion of the philistines into judah, mentioned p. . [ ] kings xii. , . the occurrence is recorded after the twenty-third year of joash, and the twenty-third year was b.c. [ ] the subjugation of edom can only have taken place after the year b.c., _i.e._ after the march of bin-nirar ii. to the sea-coast. bin-nirar enumerates edom among the tribute-paying tribes of syria. on this and on the date of uzziah's accession, cf. book iv. chap. . chapter xi. the cities of the phenicians. the voyages of the phenicians on the mediterranean; their colonies on the coasts and islands of that sea; their settlements in cyprus, rhodes, crete, the islands of the Ægean, samothrace, and thasos, on the coasts of hellas, on malta, sicily, and sardinia; their establishments on the northern edge of africa in the course of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries b.c.; their discovery of the atlantic about the year b.c., have been traced by us already. of the internal conditions and the constitution of the cities whose ships traversed the mediterranean in every direction, and now found so many native harbours on the coasts and islands, we have hardly any information. we only know that monarchy existed from an ancient period in sidon and tyre, in byblus, berytus, and aradus; and we are restricted to the assumption that this monarchy arose out of the patriarchal headship of the elders of the tribes. these tribes had long ago changed into civic communities, and their members must have consisted of merchant-lords, ship-owners, and warehousemen, of numerous labourers, artisans, sailors, and slaves. the accounts of the hebrews exhibit the cities of the philistines, the southern neighbours of the phenicians on the syrian coast, united by a league in the eleventh century b.c. the kings of the five cities of the philistines combine for consultation, form binding resolutions, and take the field in common. we find nothing like this in the cities of the phenicians. not till a far later date, when the phenicians had lost their independence, were federal forms of government prevalent among them. the campaigns of the pharaohs, tuthmosis iii., sethos, and ramses ii., did not leave the cities of the phenicians untouched (i. ). after the reign of ramses iii., _i.e._ after the year b.c., syria was not attacked from the nile; but the overthrow of the kingdom of the hittites about this period, and the subjugation of the amorites by the israelites, forced the old population to the coast (about b.c.). one hundred and fifty years later a new opponent of syria showed himself, not from the south, but from the east. tiglath pilesar i., king of assyria ( - b.c.), forced his way over the euphrates, and reached the great sea of the western land (p. ). his successes in these regions, even if he set foot on lebanon, could at most have reached only the northern towns of the phenicians; in any case they were of a merely transitory nature. the oldest city of the phenicians was sidon; her daughter-city, tyre, was also founded at a very ancient period. we found that the inscriptions of sethos i. mentioned it among the cities reduced by him. the power and importance of tyre must have gradually increased with the beginning of a more lively navigation between the cities and the colonies; about the year b.c. her navigation and influence appears to have surpassed those of the mother-city. if old hippo in africa was founded from sidon, tyrian ships sailed through the straits of gibraltar, discovered the land of silver, and founded gades beyond the pillars. accordingly we also find that tyre, and not sidon, was mistress of the island of cyprus. according to the statements of the greeks, a king of the name of sobaal or sethlon ruled in sidon at the time of the trojan war, _i.e._ before the year b.c.;[ ] about the same time a king of the name of abelbaal reigned in berytus.[ ] from a fragment of menander of ephesus, preserved to us by josephus, it follows that after the middle of the eleventh century b.c. abibaal was reigning in tyre. a sardonyx, now at florence, exhibits a man with a high crown on his head and a staff in his hand; in front of him is a star with four rays; the inscription in old phenician letters runs, "of abibaal." did this stone belong to king abibaal?[ ] hiram, the son of this king, ascended the throne of tyre while yet a youth, in b.c. he is said to have again subjugated to his dominion the kittians, _i.e._ the inhabitants of citium, or the cities of cyprus generally, who refused to pay tribute. what reasons and what views of advantage in trade induced hiram to enter into relations with david in the last years of his reign, and unite these relations even more closely with solomon, the successor of david, has been recounted above. it was this understanding which not only opened israel completely to the trade of the phenicians, but also procured to the latter secure and new roads through israel to the euphrates and egypt, and made it possible for them to discover and use the road by sea to south arabia. thus, a good century after the founding of gades, the commerce of the phenicians reached the widest extension which it ever obtained. we saw that the phenicians about the year b.c. went by ship from elath past south arabia to the somali coast, and reached ophir, _i.e._ apparently the land of the abhira (_i.e._ herdsmen) on the mouths of the indus.[ ] the other advantages which accrued to hiram from his connection with israel were not slight. solomon paid him, as has been said, , kor of wheat and , bath of oil yearly for years in return for wood and choice quarry stones, and finally, in order to discharge his debt, had to give up israelitish towns on his borders. hiram had to dispose of very considerable resources; his receipts must have been far in excess of solomon's. of the silver of tarshish which the ships brought from gades to tyre, of the gold imported by the trade to ophir, of the profits of the maritime trade with the land of incense, a considerable percentage must have come into the treasury of the king, and he enjoyed in addition the payments of solomon. in any case he had at his command means sufficient to enlarge, adorn, and fortify his city. ancient tyre lay on the seashore; with the growth of navigation and trade, the population passed over from the actual city to an island off the coast, which offered excellent harbours. on a rock near this island lay that temple of baal melkarth, the god of tyre, to which the priests ascribed a high antiquity; they told herodotus that it was built in the year b.c. (i. ). hiram caused this island to be enlarged by moles to the north and west towards the mainland, and protected these extensions by bulwarks. the circuit of the island was now stades, _i.e._ more than two and a half miles; the arm of the sea, which separates the island from the mainland, now measured only feet (three stades).[ ] the whole island was surrounded with strong walls of masonry, which ran out sharply into the sea, and were washed by its waves, so that no room remained for the besieger to set foot and plant his scaling-ladders there. on the side of the island towards the mainland, where the docks were, these walls were the highest. alexander of macedon found them feet high. the two harbours lay on the eastern side of the island--on the north-east and the south-east; on the north-east was the sidonian harbour (which even now is the harbour of sur); and on the south-east the egyptian harbour. if the former was secured and closed by huge dams, the latter also was not without its protecting works, as huge blocks in the sea appear to show, though the dams here were no longer in perfect preservation even in strabo's time. on the south shore of the island, eastward of the egyptian harbour, lay the royal citadel; on the north-west side a temple of baal samim, the agenorion of the greeks. the rock which supported the temple of melkarth appears to have been situated close to the city on the west.[ ] this, like the temple of astarte, was adorned and enlarged or restored by hiram. for the roof he caused cedars of lebanon to be felled. in the ancient shrine of the protecting deity of the city, the temple of melkarth, he dedicated a great pillar of gold, which herodotus saw there years later beside an erect smaragdus, which was so large that it gave light by night. this was perhaps a symbol of the light not overcome by the darkness.[ ] hiram died after a reign of years, in the fifty-third year of his life. his son baleazar, who sat on the throne for seven years ( - b.c.), was succeeded by his son abdastartus (_i.e._ servant of astarte), who, after a reign of nine years ( - b.c.), fell before a conspiracy headed by the sons of his nurse. abdastartus was murdered, and the eldest of the sons of his nurse maintained his dominion over tyre for years ( - b.c.). then the legitimate dynasty returned to the throne. of the brothers of the murdered abdastartus, astartus was the first to reign ( - b.c.), and after him astarymus ( - b.c.), who was murdered by a fourth brother, pheles. but pheles could not long enjoy the fruits of his crime. he had only been eight months on the throne when he was slain by the priest of astarte, ethbaal (ithobaal). with pheles the race of abibaal comes to an end ( b.c.). ethbaal ascended the throne of tyre, and was able to establish himself upon it. he is said to have built or fortified bothrys in lebanon, perhaps as a protection against the growing forces of damascus.[ ] in israel, during ethbaal's reign, as we have seen, omri at the head of the army made himself master of the throne in b.c., just as ethbaal had usurped the throne of tyre. both were in a similar position. both had to establish their authority and found their dynasty. ethbaal's daughter was married to ahab, the son of omri. what were the results of this connection for israel and judah we have seen already. to what a distance the power of tyre extended in another direction is clear from the fact that ethbaal founded auza in the interior of africa, to the south of the already ancient colony of ityke (p. ).[ ] after a reign of years ethbaal was succeeded by his son balezor ( - b.c.).[ ] after eight years balezor left two sons, mutton and sicharbaal, both under age. yet the throne remained in the house of ethbaal, and continued to do so even when mutton died in the year b.c., and again left a son nine years old, pygmalion, and a daughter elissa, a few years older, whom he had married to his brother sicharbaal, the priest of the temple of melkarth.[ ] mutton had intended that elissa and pygmalion should reign together, and thus the power really passed into the hands of sicharbaal, the husband of elissa. when pygmalion reached his sixteenth year the people transferred to him the sovereignty of tyre, and he put sicharbaal, his uncle, to death, either because he feared his influence as the chief priest of the tutelary god of the city, or because, as we are told, he coveted his treasures ( b.c.).[ ] elissa fled from tyre before her brother, as we are told, with others who would not submit to the tyranny of pygmalion.[ ] the exiles (we may perhaps suppose that they were members of old families, as it was apparently the people who had transferred the throne to pygmalion) are said to have first landed at cyprus, then to have sailed to the westward, and to have landed on the coast of africa, in the neighbourhood of ityke, the old colony of the phenicians, and there to have bought as much land of the libyans as could be covered by the skin of an ox. by dividing this into very thin strips they obtained a piece of land sufficient to enable them to build a fortress. this new dwelling-place, or the city which grew up round this fortress, the wanderers called, in reference to their old home, karthada (_karta hadasha_), _i.e._ "the new city," the karchedon of the greeks, the carthage of the romans. the legend of the purchase of the soil may have arisen from the fact that the settlers for a long time paid tribute to the ancient population, the maxyans, for their soil. the ox-hide and all that is further told us of the fortunes of elissa, her resistance to the suit of the libyan prince iarbas,[ ] her self-immolation in order to escape from this suit (virgil made despised love the motive for this immolation), is due to the transference of certain traits from the myths of the horned moon-goddess, to whom the cow is sacred, the wandering astarte, who also bore the name of dido, and of certain customs in the worship of the goddess to carthage; these also have had influence on the narrative of the flight of elissa.[ ] the new settlement was intended to become an important centre for the colonies of the phenicians in the west. the situation was peculiarly fortunate. where the north coast of africa approaches sicily most nearly, the mountain range which runs along this coast, and forms the edge of the table-land in the interior, sinks down in gentle declivities, which thus form water-courses of considerable length, to a fertile hill country still covered with olive-gardens and orange-forests. from the north the sea penetrates deeply into the land between the "beautiful promontory" (ras sidi ali) and the promontory of hermes (ras addar). on the western side of this bay a ridge of land runs out, which possesses excellent springs of water. not far from the shore a rock rises steeply to the height of about feet. on this was planted the new citadel, byrsa, on which the wanderers erected a temple to their god esmun (i. ). this citadel, which is said to have been about paces (double paces) in the circuit,[ ] was also the city round which at a later time grew up the lower city, at first on the south-east toward the shore, and then on the north-west toward the sea. the harbour lay to the south-east, under the citadel. some miles to the north of the new settlement, on the mouth of the bagradas (medsherda), at the north-west corner of the bay, was ityke, the ancient colony of the phenicians, which had been in existence for more than two centuries when the new settlers landed on the shore of the bay; and not far to the south on the shore was adrymes (hadrumetum), another city of their countrymen, which sallust mentions among the oldest colonies of the phenicians.[ ] the carthaginians never forgot their affection for the ancient ityke, by whose assistance, no doubt, their own settlement had been supported.[ ] the fragment which josephus has preserved from the annals of the kings of tyre ends with the accession of pygmalion and the flight of elissa. more than two centuries had passed since the campaign of tiglath pilesar i. to the mediterranean, during which the cities of the phenicians had suffered nothing from the arms and expeditions of the assyrians. but when balezor and mutton, the son and grandson of ethbaal, ruled over tyre ( - b.c.), assurbanipal of assyria ( - b.c.) began to force his way to the west over the euphrates. when he had reduced the sovereign of karchemish to obedience by repeated campaigns, and had built fortresses on both banks of the euphrates, he advanced in the year b.c. to the orontes, captured the marches of lebanus (labnana), and received tribute from the king of tyre, _i.e._ from mutton, from the kings of sidon, of byblus, and aradus. according to the inscriptions, the tribute consisted of bars of silver, gold, and lead. assurbanipal's successor, shalmanesar ii. of assyria ( - b.c.), pushed on even more energetically to the west. after forcing cilicia to submit, he attacked hamath, and in the year , as we have seen, he defeated at karkar the united kings of hamath, damascus, and israel, who were also joined by matinbaal, the king of aradus. but shalmanesar was compelled to undertake three other campaigns to damascus ( , , and b.c.) before he succeeded, in the year b.c., in making damascus tributary. as has been remarked, israel did not any longer attempt the decision of arms, and sought to gain the favour of assyria; like tyre and sidon, jehu sent tribute to shalmanesar. this payment of tribute was repeated perforce by tyre, sidon, and byblus, in the years and b.c., in which shalmanesar's armies again appeared in syria. moreover, the inscriptions of bin-nirar, king of assyria ( - b.c.), tell us that damascus, tyre, sidon, israel, edom, and the land of the philistines had paid him tribute. it is obvious that the cities of the phenicians would have been as a rule most willing to pay it. when assyria had definitely extended her dominion as far as the euphrates, it was in the power of the assyrian king to stop the way for the merchants of those cities to mesopotamia and babylon, and thus to inflict very considerable damage on the trade of the phenicians, which was for the most part a carrying trade between the east and west. what were the sums paid in tribute, even if considerable, when compared with such serious disadvantages? hitherto we have been able to observe monarchy in the patriarchal form of the head of the tribe, in the god-like position of the pharaohs of egypt, in the forms of a military principate, who ruled with despotic power over wide kingdoms, or in diminished copies of this original. it would be interesting to trace out and ascertain the changes which it had now to undergo at the head of powerful trading and commercial cities such as the phenicians were. we have already seen that the principate of these cities was of great antiquity, that it remained in existence through all the periods of phenician history, that it was rooted deeply enough to outlive even the independence of the cities. all more detailed accounts are wanting, and even inductions or comparisons with the constitution of carthage in later times carry us little further. not to mention the very insufficient accounts which we possess of this constitution, it was only to the oldest settlements of the phenicians in cyprus that the monarchy passed, at least it was only in these that it was able to maintain itself. the examination of these institutions of carthage is adapted to show us in contrast on the one hand to the tribal princes of the arabians, and on the other to the monarchy of elam, babel, and asshur--what forms the feeling and character of a semitic community, in which the burghers had reached the full development of their powers, were able to give to their state, which at the same time was supreme over a wide region; but for the constitution of the phenician cities scarcely any conclusions can be drawn from it. of the internal condition of the phenician cities, the fragment of the history of tyre in josephus only enables us to ascertain that there was no lack of strife and bloodshed in the palaces of the kings, and that the priests of the tutelary deity must have been of importance and influence beside the king. but it follows from the nature of things that these city-kings could not have held sway with the same complete power as the military princes of the great kingdoms of the east. the development of independence among the burghers must have placed far closer limitations upon the will of the kings in these cities than was the case elsewhere in the east. the more lively the trade and industry of the cities, the more strongly must the great merchants and manufacturers have maintained against the kings the consideration and advancement of their own interests. for the maintenance of order and peace, of law and property in the cities they looked to the king, but they had also to make important demands before the throne, and were combined against it by community of interests. they were compelled to advance these independently if the king refused his consent. isaiah tells us that the merchants of tyre were princes. ezekiel speaks of the grey-haired men, the "elders" of the city of byblus.[ ] of the later period we know with greater certainty that there was a council beside the kings, the membership in which may have belonged primarily to the chiefs of the old families, but also in part to the hereditary priests. inscriptions of the cities belonging to grecian times present the title "elders."[ ] the families in the phenician cities which could carry back their genealogy to the forefathers of the tribes which possessed land and influence before the fall of the hittites, the incursions of the hebrews, and the spread of trade had brought a mass of strangers into the city walls, would appear to have had the first claim to a share in the government; the heads of these families may at first have formed the council which stood beside the king. yet it lies in the nature of great manufacturing and trading cities that the management of interests of this kind cannot be confined to the elders of the family or remain among the privileges of birth. hence we may assume that the great trading firms and merchants could not long be excluded from these councils. in the fourth century b.c. the council of sidon seems to have consisted of or elders.[ ] owing to the treasures of east and west which poured together into the cities of the phenicians, life became luxurious within their walls. men's efforts were directed to gain and acquisition; the merchants would naturally desire to enjoy their wealth. the lower classes of the closely-compressed population no doubt followed the example set them by the higher. from the multitude of retail dealers and artizans, the number of pilots and mariners who returned home eager for enjoyment after long voyages, men whose passions would be unbridled, a turbulent population must have grown up, in spite of the numerous colonies into which the ambitious as well as the poor might emigrate or be sent with the certain prospect of a better position. we saw above that the people of tyre are said to have transferred the rule to pygmalion. for the later period it is certain that even the people had a share in the government.[ ] the hereditary monarchy passed, so far as we can see, from the mother-cities to the oldest colonies only, _i.e._ the cities in cyprus. in the other colonies the chief officers were magistrates, usually two in number.[ ] they were called _sufetes_, _i.e._ judges. in carthage these two yearly officers, in whose hands lay the supreme administration of justice, and the executive, formed with elders the governing body of the city. it seems that these men were the representatives of as many original combinations of families into which the old houses of the city were incorporated. the connection of the colonies and mother-cities, both in general and more especially where the colony could dispense with the protection of the mother-city, were far more mercantile and religious than political. the colonies worshipped the deities of the mother-cities, and gave them a share in their booty. we also find that descendants of priests who had emigrated from the mother-city stood at the head of the temples of the colonies. in carthage, where the priests of melkarth wore the purple robe, the office was hereditary in the family of bithyas, who is said to have left tyre with elissa.[ ] we are acquainted with the gods of the phenician cities, and the mode in which they worshipped them; with el and baal-samim, baal-melkarth and baal-moloch, adonis, astarte and ashera, with the rites of continence and mutilation, of sensual excess and prostitution, of sacrifice and fire-festival, which were intended to win their favour and grace. we observed that the protecting deities of the separate states had even before the days of hiram been united in the system of the seven great gods, the cabiri, at whose head was placed an eighth, esmun, the supreme deity. we saw that in this system special meanings were ascribed to them in reference to the protection of peace and law, of industry and navigation; and we cannot doubt that with the riches which accumulated in the walls of the cities, with the luxury of life which these riches permitted, the lascivious and sensual side of the worship must have increased and extended. the life led by the kings of the old phenician cities is described as rich and splendid. we have already assumed that the princes of the phenician cities had a rich share in the returns of trade, and indeed the fact can be proved from the hebrew scriptures for hiram, king of tyre. ezekiel tells us, "the king of tyre sits like a god in the seat of god, in the midst of the seas; he dwells as in eden, in the garden of god. precious stones are the covering of his palaces: the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the chrysolite, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the carbuncle, the emerald, and gold; the workmanship of his ring-cases he bears upon him."[ ] "his garments," we are told in a song of the hebrews, "smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia; in ivory palaces the sound of harps gladdens him. at his right hand stands the queen in gold of ophir, in a garment of wrought gold: on broidered carpets she shall be brought to him; the young maidens, her companions, follow her."[ ] hosea calls tyre "a plantation in a pleasant meadow."[ ] of the city itself ezekiel says, "the architects have made her beauty perfect. all her planks (wainscot) were of cypress, and her masts of cedar of lebanon; the rudders are of oaks of bashan, the benches of ivory, set in costly wood from the island of cyprus. for sails tyre spreads out byssus and gay woofs; blue and red purple from the islands of elisa formed their coverlets."[ ] in the description of strabo, more than years later, tyre appears less magnificent. the houses of the city were very high, higher than at rome; the city still wealthy, owing to the trade in her two harbours and her purple factories, but the number of these made the city unpleasant. strabo does not mention any considerable building in the city. of aradus he says, "the smallness of the rock on which the city lies, seven stades only in circuit, and the number of inhabitants caused every house to have many stories. drinking-water had to be obtained from the mainland; on the island there were only wells and cisterns."[ ] scarcely any striking remains of the ancient buildings of phoenicia have come down to our time. the ancient temples enumerated in the treatise on the syrian goddess have perished without a trace; the temple of melkarth of tyre, the great temple of astarte at sidon, the temple of bilit (ashera) at byblus,[ ] although they were certainly not of a character easy to destroy. that the phenicians were acquainted from very ancient periods with the erection of strong masonry was proved above. not only have we the legend of the greeks, that cadmus taught them the art of masonry and built the famous walls of thebes; we saw how israel, about the year b.c., provided herself with masons, stone-cutters, and materials from tyre. hence we may also assume that the architecture of the temple and the royal palaces of solomon described in the books of kings corresponded to the architecture of the phenicians. the temples and palaces of the phenicians consisted, therefore, of walls of large materials, roofed with beams of cedar; in the interior the materials were no doubt covered, as at jerusalem, with planks of wood and ornaments of brass, "so that the stone was nowhere seen" (p. ). ezekiel has already told us that the planks of the roofs of the royal palace at tyre were overlaid with gold and precious stones; and the books of kings showed us that even the floors were adorned with gold. all the remains of walls in phoenicia that can be referred to an ancient period exhibit a style of building confined to the stone of the mountain range which hems the coast, and desirous of imitating the nature of the rocks. blocks of large dimensions were used by preference; at first they were worked as little as possible, and fitted to each other, and the interstices between the great blocks were filled with smaller stones. of this kind are the fragments of the walls which surround the rock on which the city of aradus stood. gigantic blocks, visible even now here and there, formed the dams of the harbours of aradus, sidon, tyre, and japho.[ ] it was a step in advance that the blocks, while retaining the form in which they were quarried, were smoothed at the joints in order to be fitted together more firmly, and a further step still that the blocks were hewn into squares, though at first the outer surfaces of the squares were not smoothed. so far as remains allow us to see, the detached structures were of a simple and massive character, in shape like cubes of vast dimensions; the walls, as is shown by the city wall of aradus, were joined without mortar, and in the oldest times the buildings appear to have been roofed with monoliths. cedar beams were not sought after till larger spaces had to be covered. beside old water-basins hewn in the rock, and oil or wine presses of the same character, we have no remains of ancient phenician temples but those on the site of marathus (now amrit), a city of the tribe of the arvadites, to the south of aradus, and in the neighbourhood of byblus.[ ] the bases of the walls which enclose the courts and water-basins of the temple of marathus can still be traced, as well as the huge stones which formed the three cellæ, the innermost shrines of this temple. on either side of a back wall formed of similar materials heavy blocks protrude, and are roofed over, together with this wall, by a great monolith, which protected the sacred stone or the image of the deity.[ ] this heavy style of the city walls, dams, temples, and royal castles did not prevent the phenicians, any more than the egyptians, from building the upper stories of the dwelling-houses of their cities in light wood-work. by far the most important remains of ancient phoenicia are the rock-tombs, which are found in great numbers and extent opposite to the islands of tyre and aradus, as well as at sidon, byblus, and among the ruins of the other cities on the spurs of lebanon; and which at tyre especially spread out into wide burial-places, and several stories of tombs, one upon the other. in the same style we find to the west of the ruins of carthage long walls of rocks hollowed out into thousands of tombs, and furnished with arched niches for the reception of the dead.[ ] in the oldest period the phenicians must have placed their dead in natural cavities of rock, and perhaps they erected a stone before them as a memorial. in genesis abraham buries sarah in the cave of machpelah, and jacob sets up a stone on the grave of rachel.[ ] afterwards the natural hollows were extended, and whole cavities dug out artificially for tombs. the tomb of david and the tombs of his successors were hewn in the rocks of the gorge which separated the city from the height of zion (p. ). the oldest of the artificial tombs in phoenicia are doubtless those which consist of cubical chambers with horizontal hewn roofs. round one or two large chambers lower oblong depressions are driven further in the rocks to receive the corpses. the entrance into these ancient chambers are formed by downward perpendicular shafts, at the bottom of which on two sides are openings into the chambers secured by slabs of stone laid before them. shafts of this kind must be meant when the hebrews say in a figure of the dead, "the mouth of the well has eaten him up." later than the tombs of this description are those the entrance to which is on the level ground (which was then closed by a stone), which have roofs hewn in low arches, and side niches for the corpses. the arched chambers approached by steps leading downward, the walls of which are decorated after grecian patterns on the stone, or on stucco, must originate from the time of the predominance of greek art, _i.e._ of the days of hellenism. the oldest style of burial was the placing of the corpse in the cavity, the grave-chamber, and afterwards in the depression at the side of this. at a later time apparently the enclosure of the corpse in a narrow coffin of clay became common here, as in babylonia. coffins of lead have also been found in the rock-tombs of phoenicia. but beside these, heavy oblong stone-coffins with a simple slab of stone as a lid were in use in ancient times; along with flat lids, lids raised in a low triangle are also found; later still, and latest of all, are coffins and sarcophagi adorned with acroteria and other ornaments of the greek style.[ ] in the flat limestone rocks which run at a moderate elevation in the neighbourhood of sidon, and contain the vast necropolis of that city, there is a cavern, now called mogharet ablun, _i.e._ the cave of apollo. beside the entrance, in a depression covered by a structure attached to the rock-wall (the rock-tombs were supplemented and extended by structures attached to the wall), was found a coffin of blackish blue stone, the form of which indicates the shape of the buried person after the manner of the mummy-coffins of egypt, and displays in colossal relief the mask of the dead in egyptian style, with an egyptian covering for the head and beard on the chin; the band round the neck ends behind in two hawk's heads. the inscription in phenician letters teaches us that this coffin contained esmunazar, king of sidon. similar sarcophagi in stone, in part expressing the form even more accurately, seven or eight in number, have been discovered in other chambers of the burial-place of sidon, and in the burial-places of byblus and antaradus, but only in cubical, _i.e._ in more ancient chambers. marble coffins of this kind have also been found in the phenician colonies of soloeis and panormus in sicily, and of the same shape in burnt earth in malta and gozzo. the phenicians, therefore, came to imitate the coffins of the egyptians. similar imitation of egyptian burial is proved by the gold plates found in phenician chambers, which are like those with which we find the mouth closed in egyptian mummies, and the discovery of golden masks in phenician chambers,[ ] which correspond to the gilding of the masks of the face of the innermost egyptian coffins which immediately surround the linen covering. as the face-mask of the external coffin imitated the face of the dead in stone or in coloured wood, so also ought the inner gilded face to preserve the features of the dead. this imitation of the egyptian style of burial among the phenicians must go back to a great antiquity. it is true that esmunazar of sidon did not rule till the second half of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century b.c.[ ] yet the shape and style of his coffin reminds us of older egyptian patterns; it is most like the stone coffins of egypt which have come down from the beginning of the sixth century. and if the ancient tombs opened at mycenæ behind the lion's gate belong to carians influenced by phenician civilisation (p. ), if golden masks are here found on the face of the dead, the phenicians must have borrowed this custom from the egyptians as early as the thirteenth century, if not even earlier. the remains which have come down to us of the sculpture, jars, and utensils of phoenicia exhibit the double influence which the art and industry of the phenicians underwent even at an early period. agreeably to the close relations into which the phenicians entered, on the one hand with babel and asshur, and on the other with egypt, the effects of these two ancient civilisations meet each other on the coast of syria. the arts of the kindred land of the euphrates, the relations of which to phoenicia were at the same time the older, naturally made themselves felt first. when tuthmosis iii. collected tribute in syria at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the babylonian weight was already in use there; the jars which were brought to this king as the tribute of syria are carefully worked, but as yet adorned with very simple and recurring patterns of lines. on the other hand, the ornaments found in the tombs of mycenæ, gold-plates, frontlets, and armlets, exhibit ornaments like those figured on the monuments of assyria; and the objects found in the rock-tombs on hymettus, at spata, point even more definitely to babylonian patterns: winged fabulous animals and battles of beasts (a lion attacking a bull or an antelope[ ]) are formed in the manner of the eastern semites, which brings the form of the muscles into prominence. we may assume that the influence of egypt began with the times of the tuthmosis and amenophis, and their supremacy in syria, and slowly gathered strength. the heavy style of phenician buildings would not be made lighter or more free by the architecture of egypt, which also arose out of building in rock. the temples of phoenicia adopted egyptian symbols for their ornaments; the monoliths of the roofs of those three cellæ at marathus exhibit the winged sun's-disk, the emblem at the entrance of egyptian temples; the chests for the dead and masks for the mummies of the egyptians were imitated in the rock-tombs of phoenicia. if the weaving of the phenicians at first copied the ancient babylonian patterns, they began under the stronger influence of egypt to adorn their pottery and metal-work after egyptian patterns. but they also combined the babylonian and egyptian elements in their art.[ ] the oldest memorial of this combination is perhaps retained in that winged sphinx, which belongs to the time of the dominion of the shepherds in egypt. in the graves on hymettus pictures in relief of female winged sphinxes are found with clothed breasts and peculiar wings, in a treatment obviously already conventional. in phoenicia itself are found reliefs of similar sphinxes, old men with a human face on either side of the tree of life, which meet us oftentimes in the monuments of assyria. this combination, this use of babylonian and egyptian types and forms side by side, is seen most clearly on a large bowl found at curium near amathus, in cyprus, and wrought with great care and skill.[ ] it follows that the art of the phenicians was essentially imitative and intended to furnish objects for trade. of round works of sculpture we have only dwarfish deities (i. ), the typical form of which was naturally retained, and a few lions coarsely wrought in the style of the plastic art of babylon and assyria.[ ] the relation in which the lion stood to the god melkarth naturally made the delineation of the lion a favourite object of phenician art. phoenicia, though the home of alphabetical writing, has left us no more than two or three inscriptions, and carthage has not left us a great number. not that there was any lack of inscriptions in phoenicia in ancient days. we have heard already of ancient inscriptions at rhodes, thebes, and gades. job wishes that "his words might be graven on rocks for ever with an iron chisel and lead."[ ] the inscriptions of phoenicia have perished because they were engraved like those inscriptions of gades, on plates of brass. beside the inscription on the coffin of esmunazar, king of sidon, already mentioned, of a date about b.c., only two or three smaller inscriptions have been preserved, which do not go beyond the second century b.c. in this inscription esmunazar speaks in person; he calls himself the son of tabnit, king of the sidonians, son of esmunazar, king of the sidonians. with his mother, amastarte, the priestess of astarte, he had erected temples to baal, astarte, and esmun. he beseeches the favour of the gods for himself and his land; he prays that dor and japho may always remain under sidon; he declares that he wishes to rest in the grave which he has built and in this coffin. no one is to open the tomb or plunder it, or remove or damage this stone coffin. if any man attempts it the gods will destroy him with his seed; he is not to be buried, and after death will find no rest among the shades.[ ] there is scarcely any side of civilisation, any forms of technical art, the invention of which was not ascribed by the greeks to the phenicians. they were nearly all made known to the greeks through the phenicians; more especially the building of walls and fortresses, mining, the alphabet, astronomy, numbers, mathematics, navigation, together with a great variety of applications of technical skill. if the discovery of alphabetic writing belongs to the phenicians, the babylonians were the instructors of the phenicians in astronomy as well as in fixing measures and weights (i. ). yet this is no reason for contesting the statement of strabo that the sidonians were "eager inquirers into the knowledge of the stars and of numbers, to which they were led by navigation by night and the art of calculation."[ ] in the same way the technical discoveries ascribed by the greeks to the phenicians were not all made in their cities; they carried on with vigour and skill what grew up independently among them as well as what they learnt from others. the making of glass was undoubtedly older in egypt than in phoenicia (i. ). egypt also practised work in metals before phoenicia. snefru and chufu made themselves masters of the copper mines of the peninsula of sinai before the year b.c. (i. ), while the phenicians can hardly have occupied the copper island off their coast (cyprus) before the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. artistic weaving and embroidery were certainly practised at a more ancient date in babylonia than in the cities of the phenicians. but all these branches of industry were carried on with success by the phenicians. sidon furnished excellent works in glass, which were accounted the best even down to a late period of antiquity. the dunes on the coast between acco and tyre, where is the mouth of the glass-river (sihor libnath),[ ] provided the phenician manufacturers with the earth necessary for the manufacture of glass. it was maintained that the most beautiful glass was cast in sarepta (zarpath, _i.e._ melting), a city on the coast between sidon and tyre.[ ] the purple dyeing, _i.e._ the colouring of woofs by the liquor from fish, was discovered by the phenicians. they were unsurpassed in this art; it outlived by many centuries the power and splendour of their cities. trumpet and purple fish were found in great numbers on their coasts, and the liquor from these provided excellent dye. the liquor of the purple-fish, which comes from a vessel in the throat, is dark-red in the small fish, and black in the larger fish; the liquor of the trumpet-fish is scarlet. the fish were pounded and the dye extracted by decoction. by mixing, weakening, or thickening this material, and by adding this or that ingredient, various colours were obtained, through all the shades of crimson and violet down to the darkest black, in which fine woollen stuffs and linen from egypt were dipped. the stuffs soaked in these colours are the purple cloths of antiquity, and were distinguished by the bright sheen of the colours. the tyrian double-dyed cloth, which had the colour of curdled blood, and the violet amethyst purple were considered the most beautiful.[ ] three hundred pounds of the raw material were usually required to dye pounds of wool.[ ] when the purple stuffs began to be sought after, the fish collected on the coasts of tyre, sidon, and sarepta were no longer sufficient. we saw how the ships of the phenicians went from coast to coast in order to get fresh materials for the dye, and found them in great numbers on the shores of cyprus, rhodes, crete, cythera, and thera; in the bays of laconia and argos, and in the straits of euboea. purple-fish were also collected on the greater syrtis, in sicily, the balearic isles, and coasts of tarshish.[ ] even at a later period, when the art of dyeing with the purple-fish was understood and practised at many places in the mediterranean sea, the tyrian purple still maintained its pre-eminence and fame. "tyre," says strabo, "overcame her misfortunes, and always recovered herself by means of her navigation, in which the phenicians were superior to all others, and her purples. the tyrian purple is the most beautiful; the fish are caught close at hand, and every other requirement for the dyeing is there in abundance."[ ] a hundred years later pliny adds "that the ancient glory of tyre survived now only in her fish and her purples."[ ] the consumption and expense of purple in antiquity was very great, especially in hither asia. at first the phenician kings wore the purple robe as the sign of their rank; then it became the adornment of the princes of the east, the priests, the women of high rank, and upper classes. in the temples and palaces the purple served for curtains and cloths, robes and veils for the images and shrines. the kings of babylon and assyria, and after them the kings of persia, collected stores of purple stuffs in their palaces. plutarch puts the value of the amount of purple found by alexander at susa at talents.[ ] in the west also the purple robe soon became the distinguishing garb of royalty and rank. yet the greeks and romans of the better times, owing to the costliness of the material, contented themselves with the possession of borders or stripes of purple. the weaving and embroidery of the phenicians apparently followed assyrian and babylonian patterns. they must also have made and exported ceramic ware and earthen vessels in large numbers at an ancient period, as is proved by the tributes brought to tuthmosis iii., the discoveries in cyprus, rhodes, thera, and at hissarlik. in the preparation of perfumes sidon and tyre were not equal to the babylonians. it is true that their manufacturers supplied susinum and cyprinum of excellent quality, but they could not attain to the cinnamon or the nard ointment, nor to the royal ointment of the babylonians.[ ] in mining the phenicians were masters. in regard to the phenician skill in this art, the book of job says, "the earth, from which comes nourishment, is turned up; he lays his hand upon the flint; far from the dealings of men he makes his descending shaft. no bird of prey knows the path; the eye of the vulture discovers it not; the wild beasts do not tread it. through the rocks paths are made; he searches out the darkness and the night. then his eye beholds all precious things. the stone of the rocks is the place of the sapphire and gold-dust. iron is taken out of the mountains; stones are melted into brass, the drop of water is stopped, and the hidden is brought to light."[ ] the phenicians dug mines for copper, first on lebanon and then in cyprus. we saw that they afterwards, in the second half of the thirteenth century, opened out the gold treasures of thasos in the thracian sea. herodotus, who had seen their abandoned mines there (they lay on the south coast of thasos), informed us that the phenicians had entirely "turned over a whole mountain." yet even in the fifth century b.c. the mines of thasos produced a yearly income of from two to three hundred talents. in spain the phenicians opened their mines in the silver mountain, _i.e._ in the sierra morena, above the lower course of the baetis (the guadalquivir);[ ] their ships went up the stream as far as sephela (perhaps hispalis, seville). the richest silver-mines lay above sephela at ilipa (niebla); the best gold and copper mines were at cotini, in the region of gades.[ ] diodorus assures us that all the mines in iberia had been opened by phenicians and carthaginians, and not one by the romans. in the more ancient times the workmen here brought up in three days an euboic talent of silver, and their wages were fixed at a fourth part of the returns. the mines in iberia were carried down many stades in depth and length, with pits, shafts, and sloping paths crossing each other; for the veins of gold and silver were more productive at a greater depth. the water in the mines was taken out by egyptian spiral pumps. strabo observes that the gold ore when brought up was melted over a slow fire, and purified by vitriolated earth. the smelting-ovens for the silver were built high, in order that the vapour from the ore, which was injurious and even deadly, might pass into the air.[ ] the phenicians also understood how to work skilfully the metals supplied by their mines. at the founding of gades, which we had to place about the year b.c., iron pillars with inscriptions are mentioned which the settlers put up in the temple of melkarth (p. ). the brass work which the melter, hiram of tyre, executed for solomon (p. ) is evidence of long practice in melting brass, and of skill in bringing into shape large masses of melted metal. the homeric poems speak of sidon as "rich in brass," and "skilful;" they tell us of large beaten bowls of brass and silver of sidonian workmanship, "rich in invention." even at a later period the goblets of sidon were in request. not only metal implements and vessels of brass and copper, molten and beaten, were furnished by the phenicians; they must also have manufactured armour in large quantities, if we may draw any conclusion about armour from the tribute imposed on the syrians by tuthmosis iii. it is easily intelligible of what value it must have been for the nations of the west to come into the possession of splendid armour and good weapons. besides these are the ornaments found in great numbers, and of high antiquity, in the tombs of spata and mycenæ, and in the excavations at hissarlik. in homer, phenician ships bring necklaces of gold and amber to the greeks. at a later time the ornaments of the phenicians and their alabaster boxes were sought after; the carved work in ivory and wood, with which they also adorned the prows and banks of oars of their ships, is praised by ezekiel. they also knew how to set and cut precious stones; some seals have come down to us in part from an ancient date.[ ] in ship-building the phenicians were confessedly superior; they are said to have discovered navigation.[ ] the ancient forests of cedar and cypress which rose immediately above their shores supplied the best wood, which resisted decay for an extraordinary length of time even in salt water. much as the phenicians used these forests in the course of a thousand years for building their ships, their palaces, and temples, as well as for exportation, they provided even in the third century b.c. a material which for extent, size, and beauty won the admiration of the greeks.[ ] the oldest ship of the phenicians which continued through all time in use as a trading-vessel was the _gaulos_, a vessel with high prow and stern, both of which were similarly rounded. it was propelled by a large sail and by rowers, from to in number. besides the gaulos, there was the long and narrow fifty-oar, which served for a merchantman and pirate-ship as well as for a ship of war, and after the discovery of the silver land the large and armed merchantman, the ship of tarshish. isaiah enumerates the ship of tarshish among the costly structures of men.[ ] ezekiel compares tyre to a proud ship of the sea. we know that the great transport-ships and merchantmen of the phenicians and carthaginians could take about men on board. the byblians were considered the best ship-builders. the keels of the ships, like the masts, were made of cedar; the oars were of oak, supplied by the oak forests of the table-land of bashan. the mariners of sidon and aradus were considered the best rowers. the greeks praise the strict and careful order on board a phenician ship, the happy use of the smallest spaces, the accuracy in distributing and placing the lading, the experience, wisdom, activity, and safety of the phenician pilots and officers.[ ] others commend the great sail and oar power of the phenician ships. they could sail even against the wind, and make fortunate voyages in the stormy season of the year. while the greeks steered by the great bear, which, if a more visible, was a far more uncertain guide, the phenicians had at an early time discovered a less conspicuous but more trustworthy guide in the polar star, which the greeks call the "phenician star." the greeks themselves allow that this circumstance rendered the voyages of the phenicians more accurate and secure. on an average the phenician ships, which as a rule did not set out before the end of february, and returned at the end of october, accomplished miles in hours; but ships that were excellently built and equipped, and sufficiently manned, ran about miles.[ ] in the fifteenth century the galleys of venice could run from to miles in the mediterranean in the hours. the excellence of the phenician navy survived the independence of the cities. inclination towards, and pleasure in navigation, as well as skill in it, were always to be found among the populations of those cities. the phenician ships were by far the best in the fleets of the persian kings. footnotes: [ ] eustath. ad "odysseam," , . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] de luynes, "essai sur la numismatique des satrapies," p. . [ ] above, p. . [ ] curt. , . pliny ("hist. nat." , ) puts the distance from the mainland at paces (double paces). [ ] on coins of tyre of a later time we find two rocks, which indicate the position of the city. ezekiel (xxvi. , ) threatens that she shall be a naked rock in the sea for the spreading of nets. joseph. "c. apion," , , ; diod. , ; arrian, , , . renan's view ("mission de phénicie," p. ff.) on the agenorion has been adopted; some others of his results appear to be uncertain. [ ] vol. i. ; menander in joseph. "c. apion." , , . [ ] joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] joseph. _loc. cit._ [ ] in order to bring the reigns of josephus into harmony with his total, the total, which is given twice, must be retained. hence nothing remains but to replace, as movers has already done, the three and six years given by josephus for balezor and mutton by the eight and years given by syncellus. [ ] on the identity of the names acerbas, sichaeus, sicharbas, sicharbaal, serv. "ad Æneid," , ; movers, "phoeniz." , , . [ ] justin, , . [ ] timaeus, fragm. , ed. müller; appian, "rom. hist." , . [ ] timaeus, fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] vol. i. ; movers, "phoeniz." , ff. [ ] oros. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] sall. "jug." . [ ] the various statements about the year of the foundation of carthage are collected in müller, "geograph. græci min." , xix. it is impossible to fix the foundation more accurately than about the middle of the ninth century b.c. we may place it in the year b.c. if we rest on the - / years of josephus from the building of the temple (according to our own date b.c.), and the round sum given by appian--that years elapsed from the founding by dido to the destruction of the city; "rom. hist." , . [ ] ezekiel xxvii. . [ ] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. . [ ] diod. , , ; fragm. , ed. bipont; cf. justin. , . [ ] joseph. "antiq." , , , ; curt. , . [ ] liv. , ; movers, "phoeniz." , , ff, ff. [ ] servius, "ad Æneid." , . [ ] ezekiel xxviii. - . [ ] psalm xlv. - . though it is doubtful whether there is any reference here to tyre, the court-life of the israelites was imitated from the phenicians. [ ] hosea ix. . [ ] ezekiel xxvii. - . [ ] strabo, pp. , . [ ] lucian, "de syria dea," - . [ ] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. ff, . [ ] ceccaldi, "le monument de sarba," revue archéolog. . [ ] renan, "mission de phénicie," p. ff. [ ] beulé, "nachgrabungen zu karthago," s. ff (translation). [ ] gen. xxxv. . [ ] renan, _loc. cit._ ff. [ ] in cyprus also a mask of this kind has been found. [ ] von gutschmid, in "fleckeisens jahrbücher," , s. . [ ] [greek: athÊnaion s' g' pinax]; a. , b. . [ ] helbig, "cenni sopra l'arte fenicia," p. ff. [ ] ceccaldi, "les fouilles de curium," revue archéolog. . [ ] renan, _loc. cit._ pp. , , . [ ] job xix. . [ ] rödiger, "z. d. m. g." , ; schlottmann, "inschrift esmunazars;" halévy, "mélanges," pp. , ; oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] joshua xix. . strabo, p. . tacitus says, "on the shore of judæa the belus falls into the sea: the sand collected at the mouth of this river, when mixed with saltpetre, is melted into glass. the strip of shore is of moderate extent, but inexhaustible;" "hist." , [ ] pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] adolph schmidt, "forschungen auf dem gebiete des alterthums," s. . [ ] schmidt, _loc. cit._ ff. [ ] herod. , ; pliny, "hist. nat." , ; strabo, pp. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] plut. "alex." c. . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , . [ ] job xxviii. - . in this description the author could only have phenician mines in his eye. [ ] müllenhoff, "deutsche altertumskunde," , ff. [ ] strabo, p. . kotini = the oleastrum of the romans; pliny, "hist. nat." , . ptolem. , , . [ ] strabo, pp. , , ; pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] ezekiel xxvii. , ; levy, "siegel und gemmen." if the first text of the pentateuch represents the names of the tribes of the people as engraved upon the precious stones in the shield on the breast of the high priest (exod. xxv. ; xxviii. ff, _supra_, ), the author had, no doubt, the work of phenician artists in his eye. [ ] pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] diodor. , . [ ] isaiah ii. . [ ] xen. "oecon." , . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , ff, ff. chapter xii. the trade of the phenicians. we found above at what an early period the migratory tribes of arabia came into intercourse with the region of the euphrates, and the valley of the nile, how in both these places they purchased corn, implements, and weapons in return for their horses and camels, their skins and their wool, and the prisoners taken in their feuds. it was this exchange trade of the arabian tribes which in the first instance brought about the intercourse of syria with babylonia and egypt. egypt like babylonia required oil and wine for their population; metals, skins, and wool for their manufactures; wood for the building of houses and ships. for the syrians and cities of the phenicians the intercourse with the arabians, and the lands of the euphrates and tigris, was facilitated by the fact that nations related to them in race and language dwelt as far as the border-mountains of armenia and iran and the southern coast of arabia, and their trade with egypt was facilitated in the same manner when semitic tribes between and b.c. obtained the supremacy in egypt and maintained it for more than three centuries. from the fact that babylonian weights and measures were in use in syria in the sixteenth century b.c., we may conclude that there must have been close trade relations between syria and babylonia from the year b.c.; and in the same manner in consequence of the conquest of egypt by the shepherds more active relations must have commenced between syria and the land of the nile, at a period not much later. the supremacy which egypt afterwards obtained over syria under the tuthmosis and amenophis must have rather advanced than destroyed this; thus sethos, towards the year , used his successes against the cheta, _i.e._ the hittites, to have cedars felled on lebanon. we may assume that even before this time, after the rise of the kingdom of the hittites, _i.e._ after the middle of the fifteenth century, the cities of the phenicians were no longer content to exchange the products of syria, wine, oil, and brass, the manufactures of their own growing industry, purple stuffs and weapons, with the manufactures of egypt, linen cloths, and papyrus tissues, glass and engraved stones, ornaments and drugs, on the one hand, and on the other hand with the manufactures of babylon, cloths, ointments, and embroidered stuffs: they also carried egyptian fabrics to babylon, and babylonian fabrics to egypt. the trade of phoenicia with egypt and babylonia was no longer restricted to the exchange of phenician-syrian products and fabrics with those of egypt and babylon: it was at the same time a middle trade between those two most ancient seats of cultivation, between egypt and babylonia. it cannot have been any detriment to this trade of the phenicians that a second centre of civic life sprang up subsequently on the central tigris in the growing power of assyria. in the ruins of chalah (p. ) egyptian works of art have been dug up in no inconsiderable numbers. herodotus begins his work with the observation that the phenicians at an early period endeavoured to export and exchange egyptian and assyrian (_i.e._ babylonian and assyrian) wares. the sea lay open to the cities of the phenicians for their intercourse with egypt; for this route they were independent of the good will or aversion of the tribes and princes, who ruled in the south of canaan; moreover the wood of lebanon could not be carried by land to egypt. we may certainly assume that the navigation of the phenicians was enabled to obtain its earliest practice for further journeys by these voyages to that mouth of the nile, which the egyptians opened to foreign ships (i. ). the free and secure use of the routes of the caravans to the euphrates, and from this river to the syrian coast, must have been obtained from the rulers of syria, the princes of hamath and damascus, the migratory tribes of the syrian desert, the princes whose dominions lay on the euphrates; and would hardly be obtained without heavy payments. so much the more desirable was it, if the cities could enter into special relations with one or other of these princes, such as david and solomon, who not only opened israel to them, but also provided the routes with caravanserais and warehouses (p. ). the trade-road to the euphrates led from sidon past dan (laish) in israel to damascus, hence northwards past riblah and emesa (hems) to hamath, from hamath to bambyke (hierapolis) in the neighbourhood of the euphrates, and then crossed over the river to harran (i. ). from harran the caravans went down along the belik to the euphrates, then in the valley of the euphrates to babylon, or went eastwards past nisibis (nisib) to the tigris. a shorter road to the euphrates ran past damascus and the oasis of tadmor, and reached the river at thipsach (thapsacus) at the farthest bend to the west.[ ] we have already seen at what an early period the trade with the land of frankincense, _i.e._ with south arabia, grew up for egypt, owing to the mutual intercourse of the arabian tribes (i. ). the first attempt of egypt to open a communication by sea with south arabia falls about the year b.c. at a period not later, other arabian tribes must have carried the incense and spices of south arabia to elam, ur and nipur, and babylon. syria must have received the products of south arabia first through babylon, then by means of direct communication with the arabs, and lastly by the special caravans of the phenicians. we hear of two trade-roads to that land. one led past damascus to the oasis of duma (dumat el dshandal), and from thence through the interior of arabia to the south; the other ran through israel past ashtaroth karnaim, through the territories of the ammonites, moabites, and edomites, to elath, and thence led along the coast of the arabian gulf to the sabæans (i. ). from the sabæans and the chatramites even before the year b.c. the caravans brought not spices only and incense, but also the products of the somali coast. the sabæans traversed the arabian gulf and carried home the products of the coast of east africa; the southwest coast of arabia was no longer a place for producing and exporting frankincense and spices; it became the trading-place of the somali coast, and before the year b.c. was also the trading-place for the products of india, which ships of the indians carried to the shore of the sabæans and chatramites (i. ). it must have been a considerable increase in the extent of the phenician trade and the gains obtained from it, when the phenicians were able to make such a fruitful use of their connection with south arabia that it fell into their hands to provide egypt, with her products, and perhaps even babylonia also. their caravan trade with south arabia must have been lively, and the impulse to extend it strong, as they induced king solomon to allow them to attempt a connection by sea from elath with south arabia. by the foundation and success of the trade to ophir, and the most remote places of the east which they reached, their commerce obtained its widest extent, and brought in the richest returns. with incense and balsam, there came to tyre cinnamon and cassia, sandal-wood and ivory, gold and pearls from india, and the silk tissues of the distant east.[ ] the commerce of the phenician cities comprised egypt, babylonia, and assyria, it touched mesopotamia and armenia, the lands of the moschi and tibarenes, the silver and copper mines of the chalybes on the black sea.[ ] when on the opening of the communication by the red sea with south arabia and the countries beyond, it gained the widest extent to the south and east, it had for a whole century past traversed the entire length of the mediterranean to the straits of gibraltar. we saw above how the phenicians steered to cyprus, rhodes, crete, to the Ægean sea, to the coasts of hellas, in order to barter or dig up minerals, to collect purple-fish for their coloured stuffs, and how after the middle of the thirteenth century they began to plant settlements on these coasts. the request for minerals must have been so strongly felt in their own cities, in egypt and the lands of the euphrates, in the course of the twelfth century, that the ships of the phenicians went farther and farther to the west in search of them, that sicily, sardinia, and corsica were reached and then colonised by them. at the same time ityke and old hippo were built on the coast of africa. these supplied saltpetre, alum, and salt, skins of lions and panthers, horns of buffalos, ostrich eggs and feathers, slaves and ivory to the mother-cities. after this, about the year b.c., gades was built on the shore of the atlantic ocean. the trade of the phenicians now brought not only the products of syria and the manufactures of their cities to egypt and babylonia; it was not merely a middle trade between those two lands, nor merely an independent trade and middle trade between south arabia and the civilised countries; it mediated now between the east and the west, the products and manufactures of the near and distant east, and the natural products of the near and distant west, between the ancient civilisation of the east and the young life of the nations of the west. it was above all the metals of the west, the gold of the thracian, the copper of the italian islands, the silver of tartessus, which the ships of the phenicians carried into the harbours of the mother-cities: the nations of the west received in return weapons, and metal vases, ornaments, variegated cloths, and purple garments. the works of babylonian and egyptian style, the works which are found in the tombs of caere, clusium, alsium, at corneto and praeneste, adorned in types at once egyptian and babylonian-assyrian, like the implements and ornaments found in the tombs of spata and mycenæ, can only have come into the possession of the etruscans, latins, and lucanians from intercourse with the phenicians, the phenician colonies of sicily, or from the trade with carthage.[ ] from gades the phenicians succeeded in forcing their way farther to the atlantic ocean. phenician colonies were founded on the west coast of africa. lixus, the oldest and most important of these (lachash, now el araish), at the mouth of the river of the same name (now wadi el ghos), is said to have been the seat of a famous sanctuary of melkarth.[ ] strabo is of opinion that these colonies of the phenicians beyond the pillars of hercules were built soon after the trojan war, _i.e._ about the year b.c.[ ] diodorus told us already how phenician ships, steering to the coast of libya in order to explore the sea beyond the pillars were carried away by a storm far into the ocean, and discovered a large island opposite libya, which, from the pleasantness of the air and the abundance of blessings, seemed fitted to be the dwelling of the gods rather than men (p. ). we can hardly doubt, therefore, that the phenicians visited madeira and the canary islands. tin was early known to the ancient world, and was indispensable for the alloy of copper, but it could only be found mixed with copper in the mines of the chalybes and tibarenes (the tabal of the assyrians, the tubal of the hebrews), whose name is found in genesis in tubal-cain, the first smith, the father of them that work in brass and iron (i. ). besides these, there were tin mines only in the lofty hindukush, in the north-west of iberia, and in the south-west of england.[ ] herodotus observes: tin and amber come from the extreme western ends of europe. he could not learn from any eye-witness whether there was a sea there, though he had taken much trouble in the matter. pliny tells us: midacritus first brought tin from the island kassiteris, _i.e._ the tin-island.[ ] it was the phenicians who obtained tin, and they did not obtain it from iberia only: their ships sailed through the bay of biscay, they became acquainted with the shore of brittany, which appears to have been known to them as oestrymnis; they discovered the tin islands, _i.e._ the channel islands, the coast of cornwall, and even the island of albion.[ ] the tin-islands or kassiterides of the greeks are the islands of the north-west ocean, known to the phenicians, who procured tin from them. the homeric poems often mention amber, which, worked into ornaments, phenician ships brought to the greeks. ornaments of amber are met with in the oldest tombs of cumae, in the tombs at the lion's gate at mycenæ.[ ] hence the phenicians must have been in possession of amber as early as the eleventh century b.c. amber was found not only on the shores of the baltic, but also on the coast of the north sea, between the mouth of the rhine and the elbe. we may therefore draw the conclusion that in the eleventh and tenth centuries b.c. they must have advanced far enough in the channel towards the mouth of the rhine, or beyond it, to obtain amber by exchange or collect it themselves, unless we assume an extensive intercourse between the celts and germans.[ ] the starting-point, harbour, and emporium for the trade in the west and the voyages beyond the pillars of melkarth in the atlantic ocean was gades. long after the naval power of the phenicians and carthage had perished, gades remained a great, rich, and flourishing city of trade. strabo describes it thus: "situated on a small island not much more than a hundred stades in length, and scarce a stade in breadth, without any possessions on the mainland or the islands, this city sends out the most and largest ships, and seems to yield to no other city, except rome, in the number of the inhabitants. but the greater part do not live in the city, but on ships."[ ] in the tenth century b.c. the navigation and trade of the phenicians extended from the coasts of the arabian sea, from the somali coast, and perhaps from the mouths of the indus as far as the coast of britain; from the coasts of mauritania on the atlantic to the tigris, from armenia to the sabæans. stretching out far in every direction, they had as yet suffered reverses in one region only, in the basin of the Ægean sea. their trade and intercourse was not indeed destroyed, but their mines, their colonies on the islands of this sea and the coasts of hellas, were lost. before hiram ascended the throne of tyre, the phenicians, after teaching babylonian weights and measures, the building of fortresses and walls, and mining to the greeks, and bringing them their alphabet (p. ), were compelled to retire before the increasing strength of the greek cantons, not only from the coasts of hellas, but also from the islands of the Ægean. the trade, however, with the hellenes continued as before, in lively vigour, so far as the homeric descriptions can be accepted as evidence. the most valuable possessions in the treasuries of the greek princes are sidonian works of art. phenician ships often show themselves in greek waters. when one of these merchantmen is anchored, the wares are set out in the ship, or under tents on the shore, or the phenicians offer them for sale in the nearest place. a phenician vessel laden with all kinds of ornaments lands on an island; after the phenicians have sold many wares they offer to the queen a necklace of gold and amber, and at the same time they carry off her son, and sell him on another island. a phenician freights a ship to libya, and persuades a greek to go with him as overseer of the lading: he intended to sell him there as a slave. along with these notices in the homeric poems on the trade of the phenicians, an account has also come down to us from an eastern source. the prophet joel, who prophesied about the year b.c., says, in regard to the invasion of the philistines in judah, which took place about the year b.c., and brought them to the walls of jerusalem (p. ); tyre and sidon, and all the regions of the land of the philistines, have stolen the silver and gold of jehovah, and carried the costly things into their temples; the sons of judah and jerusalem they sold to the sons of javan (the greeks), in order to remove them far from their land.[ ] for the colonies which the phenicians had to give up on the greek coasts and islands, they found a rich compensation in the strengthening and increase of their colonies on the west of the mediterranean, on sardinia, where they built caralis (cagliari) on the southern shore, on corsica, on the north coast of africa, where carthage arose about the middle of the ninth century (p. ), and on the shores of iberia. but another loss which befell them in the east could not be made good so easily. after king jehoshaphat's death ( b.c.), even before the invasion of the philistines, the kingdom of judah, as we saw (p. ), lost the sovereignty over the edomites. hence the harbour-city of elath was lost to the phenicians also, and the ophir trade at an end, a century and a half after it began. though years later, when judah under amaziah and uzziah had reconquered the edomites, and elath was rebuilt, this navigation, as it seems, was again set in motion, this restoration was of no long continuance. after the middle of the eighth century the phenicians were finally limited for their trade with the sabæans to the caravan routes through arabia. a still more serious source of danger was the approach of the assyrian power to the syrian coast. in the course of the ninth century (from b.c.), as has been remarked above, assyrian armies repeatedly showed themselves in syria, and their departure had repeatedly to be purchased by tribute. as this pressure increased, and the assyrian rulers insisted on pushing forward the borders of their kingdom towards syria as far as the shores of the mediterranean, as the cities of the phenicians became subject to a power the centre of which lay in the distant interior, the trade not to the east but to the west came into question, and it was doubtful whether the cities, when embodied in a great land-power, could retain cyprus in subjection, and keep up the trade with egypt, and the connection with their colonies in the west. the doubt became greater when, after the beginning of the eighth century b.c., a dangerous opposition rose in the mediterranean, and a still more serious competition against the phenicians. not content with driving the phenicians out of the Ægean sea, with obtaining possession of the islands and the west coast of asia minor, the hellenes spread farther and farther to the west. already they had got rhodes into their hands; they were already settled off the coast of syria, on the island of cyprus, among the ancient cities of the phenicians. still more vigorous was the growth of their settlements to the west of the mediterranean. after founding cyme (cumae) on the coast of lower italy, they built in sicily, after the middle of the eighth century, in quick succession, naxus ( b.c.), syracuse ( b.c.), catana ( b.c.), and megara ( b.c.), to which were quickly added rhegium, sybaris, croton, and tarentum in lower italy ( - b.c.). were the cities of the phenicians in sicily, rus melkarth, motye, panormus, soloeis, and eryx (p. ), in a position to hold the balance against these rivals and their navigation? the injurious effects of the competition of a rival power by sea for the trade of the phenicians must have increased when, in the seventh century, the cities of the greeks in sicily increased in number, and egypt was opened to them about the middle of this century; when, in the year b.c., the first greek city, cyrene, rose on the shore of africa, and about the same time the greeks entered into direct trade connections with tartessus; when at the close of this century a greek city was built on the shore of the ligystian sea, at the mouth of the rhone, and soon after the settlements of the greeks in sicily and in the west of the mediterranean began to multiply. while in this manner the field of phenician trade was limited by the constant advance of the greeks, the mother-cities, from the same period, the middle of the eighth century, had to feel the whole weight of the development of assyrian power. and when this pressure ceased, in the second half of the seventh century, it was followed by the still more burdensome oppression of the babylonian empire. yet in spite of all hindrances and losses, a prophet of the hebrews after the middle of the eighth century could say of tyre, that "she built herself strongholds, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets."[ ] and ezekiel at the beginning of the sixth century describes the trade of tyre in the following manner: "thou who dwellest at the entrance of the sea, who art the trader of the nations to many islands! on mighty waters thy rowers carry thee; thy trade goes out over all seas; thou satisfiest many nations; thou hast enriched the kings of the earth by the multitude of thy goods and wares. thou art become mighty in the midst of the sea. all ships of the sea and their sailors were in thee to purchase thy wares. persians and libyans and lydians serve in thee; they are thy warriors; they hang shield and helmet on thy walls: thy own warriors stand round on the walls, and brave men are on all thy towers. syria is thy merchant, because of the number of the wares of thy skill; they make thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. damascus is thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, in the wine of helbon, and white wool. judah and the land of israel were thy merchants; they traded in thy market wheat and pastry and honey. they of the house of togarmah (armenia) traded in thy fairs with horses and mules. haran, canneh, and asshur, and childmad were thy merchants in costly robes, in blue cloths and embroidered work, and chests of cedar-wood full of damasks bound with cords, in thy place of merchandise. dedan (the dedanites[ ]) is thy merchant in horse-cloths for riding. wedan brings tissues to thy markets: forged iron, cassia, and calamus were brought to thy markets. arabia and all the princes of kedar are ready for thee with lambs, rams, and goats. the merchants of sabæa and ramah[ ] traffic with thee; they occupied in thy fairs with the chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold. javan (the greeks), tubal, and mesech (the tibarenes and moschi) are thy merchants; they trade with silver, iron, tin, and lead. many islands are at hand to thee for trade; they brought thee for payment horns of ivory and ebony. the ships of tarshish are thy caravans in thy trade: so art thou replenished and mighty in the midst of the sea."[ ] footnotes: [ ] _supra_, p. . movers, "phoeniz." , , ff. [ ] movers, _loc. cit._ , , ff. [ ] vol. i. p. . ezekiel xxvii. ; xxxviii. . [ ] helbig, "annali del inst. arch." , pp. , , ff. [ ] pliny, "hist. nat." s. ; , . cf. movers, _loc. cit._ , , ff. [ ] strabo, p. ; cf. p. . [ ] the german tin-mines were not opened till the middle ages; those of farther india in the last century; müllenhoff, "deutsche altertumskunde," s. . [ ] herod. , ; pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] at a later time we meet with the name prettanian islands. ynis prydein, _i.e._ island of prydein, was the name given by the welsh to their land; müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. ff, ff. [ ] helbig, "commercio dell ambra," p. , _n._ . on the amber in the tombs east of the apennines, pp. , . [ ] müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] joel iii. ff. on the date of joel, _supra_, p. , _n._ . de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . according to the data established above, the minority of joash falls between and b.c. [ ] the older zechariah ix. , and de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] ezekiel xxvii. chapter xiii. the rise of assyria. the campaigns which tiglath pilesar, king of asshur, undertook towards the west about the end of the twelfth century, and which carried him to the upper euphrates and into northern syria, remained without lasting result. the position which tiglath pilesar then had won on the euphrates was not maintained by his successors in any one instance. more than years after tiglath pilesar we find tiglath adar ii. ( - b.c.) again in conflict with the same opponents who had given his forefather such trouble--with the mountaineers of the land of nairi, the district between the highland valley of albak on the greater zab and the zibene-su, the eastern source of the tigris. the son and successor of this tiglath adar, assurnasirpal, was the first whom we see again undertaking more distant campaigns; the successful results of which are the basis of a considerable extension of the assyrian power. assurnasirpal also chiefly directed his arms against the mountain-land in the north. on his first campaign he fought on the borders of urarti, _i.e._ of the land of ararat, the region of the upper araxes. in the second year of his reign ( b.c.) he marched out of the city of nineveh, crossed the tigris, and imposed tribute on the land of kummukh (gumathene, p. ), and the moschi, in asses, oxen, sheep, and goats. in the third year he caused his image to be hewn in the place where tiglath pilesar and tiglath adar his fathers had chosen to set up their images; he tells us that his own was engraved beside the others.[ ] only the image of tiglath pilesar i. is preserved at karkar. assurnasirpal received tribute from the princes of the land of nairi--bars of gold and silver, iron, oxen and sheep; and placed a viceroy over the land of nairi. but the subjugation was not yet complete; assurnasirpal related that on a later campaign he destroyed places in the land of nairi.[ ] he tells us further, that on his tenth campaign he reduced the land of kirchi, took the city of amida (now diarbekr), and plundered it.[ ] below this city, on the bank of the tigris at kurkh (karch), there is a stone tablet which represents him after the pattern of tiglath pilesar at karkar (p. .) between these conflicts in the north lie campaigns to the south and west. in the year b.c. he marched out, as he tells us, from chalah. on the other bank of the tigris he collected a heavy tribute, then he marched to the euphrates, took the city of suri in the land of sukhi, and caused his image to be set up in this city. fifty horsemen and the warriors of nebu-baladan, king of babylon (kardunias), had fallen into his hand, and the land of the chaldæans had been seized with fear of his weapons.[ ] we must conclude therefore that the king of babylon had sent auxiliary troops to the prince of the land of sukhi (whom the inscriptions call sadudu). in the following year he occupied the region at the confluence of the chaboras with the euphrates, crossed the euphrates on rafts, and conquered the inhabitants of the lands of sukhi, laki, and khindani, which had marched out with men to meet him. on the banks of the euphrates he then founded two cities; that on the further bank bore the name of "dur-assurnasirpal," and that on the nearer bank the name of "nibarti-assur." during this time he pretends to have slain amsi (p. ) on the euphrates, and captured ; to have slain eagles and captured .[ ] then he turned against karchemish, in the land of the chatti (p. ). in the year b.c. he collected tribute in the regions of bit bakhian and bit adin in the neighbourhood of karchemish, and afterwards laid upon sangar, king of karchemish, a tribute of talents of silver, and talents of iron. from karchemish assurnasirpal marched against the land of labnana, _i.e._ the land of lebanon. king lubarna in the land of the chatti submitted, and had to pay even heavier tribute than the king of karchemish. assurnasirpal reached the orontes (arantu), took the marches of lebanon, marched to the great sea of the western land, offered sacrifice to the gods, and received the tribute of the princes of the sea-coasts, the prince of tyre (ssurru), of sidon (ssidunu), of byblus (gubli), and the city of arvada (aradus), "which is in the sea" (p. )--bars of silver, gold, and lead;--"they embraced his feet." then the king marched against the mountains of chamani (amanus); here he causes cedars and pines to be felled for the temples of his gods, and the narrative of his exploits to be written on the rocks, and worshipped at nineveh before the goddess istar.[ ] according to the evidence of these inscriptions, assurnasirpal established the supremacy of assyria in the region of the sources of the tigris. but even he does not appear to have gone much further than tiglath pilesar before him, for he also fought once on the borders of armenia, _i.e._ of the land of ararat, and on the other hand forced his way as far as the upper course of the eastern euphrates. against babylon he undertook, so far as we can see, no offensive war; he was content to drive out of the field the auxiliaries which nebu-baladan of babylon sent to a prince on the middle euphrates without pursuing the advantage further. the most important results which he obtained were in the west. he gained the land of the chaboras, and fixed himself firmly on the euphrates above the mouth of that river. to secure the crossing he built a fortress on either side, and then forced his way from here to the mountain land of the amanus, to the orontes and lebanon. for the first time the cities of the phenicians paid tribute to the king on the banks of the tigris; arvad (aradus), gebal (byblus), sidon, and tyre, where at this time, as we saw (p. ), mutton, the son of ethbaal, was king. shalmanesar i., who reigned over assyria about the year b.c., built, as we have remarked above, the city of chalah (nimrud), on the eastern bank of the tigris above the confluence of the greater zab. the remains of the outer walls show that this city formed a tolerably regular square, and that the western wall ran down to the ancient course of the tigris, which can still be traced. in the south-western corner of the city, on a terrace of unburnt bricks, rose the palaces of the kings and the chief temples. they were shut off towards the city by a separate wall. nearly in the middle of this terrace on the river-side we may trace the foundation-works of a great building, called by our explorers the north-west palace. in the remains of this structure, on two surfaces on the upper and lower sides of a large stone, which forms the floor of a niche in a large room, is engraved an inscription of assurnasirpal, and a second on a memorial stone of to feet high. inscriptions on the slabs of the reliefs with which the halls of the building were adorned repeat the text of these inscriptions in an abbreviated manner. they tell us that the ancient city of chalah, which shalmanesar the great founded, was desolate and in ruins; assurnasirpal built it up afresh from the ground;[ ] he led a canal from the greater zab, and gave it the name of patikanik;[ ] traces and remains are left, which show us that the course of the canal from the greater zab led directly north to the city. cedars, pines, and cypresses of mount chamani (amanus) had he caused to be felled for the temples of adar, sin, and samas, his lords.[ ] he built temples at chalah for adar, bilit, sin, and bin. he made the image of the god adar, and set it up to his great divinity in the city of chalah, and in the piety of his heart dedicated the sacred bull to this great divinity. for the habitation of his kingdom, and the seat of his monarchy, he founded and completed a palace. whosoever reigns after him in the succession of days may he preserve this palace in chalah, the witness of his glory, from ruin; may he not surrender it to rebels, may he not overthrow his pillars, his roof, his beams, or change it for another structure, or alter his inscriptions, the narrative of his glory. "then will asshur the lord and the great god exalt him, and give him all lands of the earth, extend his dominion over the four quarters of the world, and pour abundance, purity, and peace over his kingdom."[ ] the palace of assurnasirpal at chalah was a building about feet in length and feet in breadth. two great portals guarded by winged lions with bearded human heads, the images or symbols of the god nergal, led from the north to a long and proportionately narrow portico of feet in length and feet in breadth. in the south wall of this portico a broad door, by which stand two winged human-headed bulls, images of the god adar, and hewn out of yellow limestone, opens into a hall feet long and broad. on the east and south sides also of the central court (the west side is entirely destroyed) lie two longer halls, and a considerable number of larger and smaller chambers. the height of the rooms appears to have been from to feet.[ ] the walls of the northern portico were covered with slabs of alabaster to a height of or feet, on which were reliefs of the martial exploits of the king, his battles, his sieges, his hunting--he claims to have killed no fewer than mighty lions, and to have taken alive. the reliefs on the slabs of the second hall, which abuts on this, exhibit colossal forms with eagle heads. above the slabs the masonry of the walls was concealed by tiles coloured and glazed, or by painted arabesques. beside the fragments of this building a statue of the builder, assurnasirpal, was discovered. on a simple base of square stone stands a figure in an attitude of serious repose, in a long robe, without any covering to the head, with long hair and strong beard, holding a sort of sickle in the right hand, and a short staff in the left.[ ] on the breast we read, "assurnasirpal, the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of asshur, the son of tiglath adar, king of asshur, the son of bin-nirar, king of asshur. victorious from the tigris to the land of labnana (lebanon), to the great sea, he subjugated all lands from the rising to the setting of the sun."[ ] an image in relief at the entrance of the west of the two temples which this king built, to the north of his palace, on the terrace of chalah (at the entrance to the first are two colossal winged lions with the throats open, and at the entrance of the second two wingless lions), exhibits the king with the kidaris on his head, and his hand upraised; before the base of the relief stands a small sacrificial altar.[ ] we have already mentioned the image of assurnasirpal which he had engraved near kurkh, and which is preserved there. according to inscriptions lately discovered, and not yet published, assurnasirpal built a palace at niniveh also, and restored the ancient temple of istar, which samsi-bin formerly erected there (p. ).[ ] the reign of assurnasirpal gave the impulse to a warlike movement which continued in force long after his time, and extended the power of assyria in every direction. his son, shalmanesar ii., who ascended the throne in b.c., followed in the path of his father. in the first years of his reign he fought against khubuskia, which, as we find from the inscriptions, was a district lying on the greater zab, against a prince of the land of nairi (p. ), against the prince of ararat (urarti), arami, and received the tribute of the land of kummukh (p. ). he crosses the river arzania--either the arsanias (murad-su), the eastern euphrates, or the arzen-su (nicephorius), which falls into the tigris before it bends to the south--and takes the city of arzaska in urarti, _i.e._ perhaps arsissa, on lake van.[ ] these wars in the north were followed by battles on the euphrates. he conquers the city of pethor on this side of the euphrates, and the city of mutunu on the farther side, which tiglath pilesar had won, but assur-rab-amar had restored by a treaty to the king of aram, and settled assyrians in both places. then he fought against a prince of the name of akhuni, who resided at tul barsip on the euphrates. shalmanesar takes this city, transplants the inhabitants to assyria, and calls it kar-salmanassar. he receives the tribute of sangar, prince of karchemish, against whom his father had fought, and finally took akhuni himself prisoner.[ ] then he advances towards chamani (to the amanus), crosses the arantu (orontes); pikhirim of the land of chilaku (_i.e._ of cilicia) is conquered by him.[ ] the next object of the arms of shalmanesar was syria, which he had merely touched on the north in passing by on the campaign against cilicia. on a memorial stone which he set up at kurkh, on the upper tigris, where we already found the image of assurnasirpal,--the stone is now in the british museum,--shalmanesar tells us that in the year b.c. he left nineveh, marched to kar-salmanassar, and there received the tribute of sangar of karchemish, kutaspi of kummukh, and others. "from the euphrates i marched forth, and advanced against the city of halwan. they avoided a battle and embraced my feet. i received gold and silver from them as their tribute. i made rich offerings to bin, the god of halwan. from halwan i set forth and marched against two cities of irchulina of hamath. argana, his royal city, i took; his prisoners, the goods and treasures of his palace, i carried away; i threw fire upon his palaces. from argana i marched forth to karkar. i destroyed karkar and laid it waste and burnt it with fire. twelve hundred chariots, horsemen, , men of benhadad of damascus;[ ] chariots, horsemen, , men of irchulina of hamath; (? ) chariots, , men of ahab of israel; men of the guaeer; men of the land of musri; chariots, , men of the land of irkanat; men of matinbaal of aradus (arvada); men of the land of usanat; chariots and , men of adonibal of sizan; camels of gindibuh of arba;--hundred men of bahsa of ammon; these twelve princes rendered aid to each other, and marched out against me to contend with me in battle. aided by the sublime assistance which asshur my lord gave to me, i fought with them. from the city of karkar as far as the city of gilzana[ ] (?) i made havoc of them. fourteen thousand of their troops i slew; like the god bin i caused the storm to descend upon them; during the battle i took their chariots, their horses, their horsemen, and their yoke-horses from them."[ ] on the obelisk of black basalt found in the ruins of chalah, shalmanesar says quite briefly, "in my sixth campaign i went against the cities on the banks of balikh (belik) and crossed the euphrates. benhadad of damascus, and irchulina of hamath, and the kings of the land of chatti and the sea came down to battle with me. i conquered them; i overcame , of their warriors with my arms." the same statement is repeated in a third inscription, that of the bulls.[ ] the kings of syria were defeated, but by no means subdued. shalmanesar says nothing of their subjugation and tribute (p. ). the arms of assyria were next turned in another direction. an illegitimate brother, marduk-belusati, had rebelled against marduk-zikir-iskun, the son and successor of nebu-baladan of babylon. shalmanesar supported the first. during the second campaign against marduk-belusati the united troops of marduk-zikir-iskun and shalmanesar, or the latter alone, succeeded in defeating the rebels; marduk-belusati was captured and put to death with his adherents. shalmanesar sacrificed at babylon, borsippa, and kutha. he claims to have imposed tribute on the chiefs of the land of kaldi (chaldæa), and to have spread his fame to the sea.[ ] after this decisive success in babylonia, shalmanesar resumed the war against damascus. for two years in succession he marched out against benhadad of damascus. in the year he defeats benhadad of damascus, the king of hamath, together with kings from the shores of the sea.[ ] then the king tells us further: "for the ninth time ( b.c.) i crossed the euphrates. i conquered cities without number; i marched against the cities of the land of chatti and of hamath; i conquered ( ) cities. benhadad of damascus, kings of the chatti (syrians), mutually confided in their power. i put them to flight." and further: "in the fourteenth year of my reign ( b.c.) i counted my distant and innumerable lands. with , men of my soldiers i crossed the euphrates. meanwhile benhadad of damascus, and irchulina of hamath, with the kings of the upper and lower sea, armed their numerous troops to march against me. i offered them battle, put them to flight, seized their chariots and their horsemen, and and marched against the cities of hazael of damascus, took from them their baggage. in order to save their lives, they rose up and fled."[ ] this victory also was without result. in vain shalmanesar had marched four times against damascus; in vain he led out on the last campaign , men against syria. not till some years afterwards, when hazael, as we saw above (p. ), killed benhadad and acquired the throne of damascus in his place, can shalmanesar speak of a decisive campaign in syria. "in the eighteenth year of my reign ( b.c.) i crossed the euphrates for the sixteenth time. hazael (chazailu) from the land of aram trusted in the might of his troops, collected his numerous armies, and made the mountains of sanir,[ ] the summits of the mountains facing the range of lebanon, his fortress. i fought with him and overthrew him; , of his warriors i conquered with my weapons; of his chariots, of his horsemen, together with his treasures, i took from him. to save his life he fled away. i pursued him. i besieged him in damascus, his royal city; i destroyed his fortifications. i marched to the mountains of hauran; i destroyed cities without number, laid them waste, and burned them with fire: i led forth their prisoners without number. i marched to the mountains of the land of bahliras, which lies hard by the sea: i set up my royal image there. at that time i received the tribute of the tyrian and sidonian land, of jehu (jahua), the son of omri (chumri), _i.e._ of jehu, king of israel."[ ] though sidon, tyre, and israel paid tribute, the resistance of the damascenes was still unbroken. shalmanesar further informs us that (in the year b.c.) he crossed the euphrates for the twenty-first time, but he does not say that he reduced them; he only asserts that he received the tribute of tyre, sidon, and byblus, and then assures us, quite briefly, in the account, of his twenty-fifth campaign ( b.c.), that he received "the tribute of all the princes of syria" (of the land of chatti).[ ] in the very first years of his reign shalmanesar had contended against the prince arami of ararat, and against the land of nairi, between the eastern tigris and the greater zab. the obedience of these regions was not gained. in the year shalmanesar again marched to the sources of the tigris, erected his statue there, and laid tribute on the land of nairi.[ ] twenty years later he sent the commander-in-chief of his army, dayan-assur, against the land of ararat, at the head of which siduri now stood, and not arami. dayan-assur crossed the river arzania (p. ) and defeated siduri ( b.c.). on a farther campaign (in b.c.) dayan-assur crosses the greater zab, invades the territory of khubuskia (p. ), fights against prince udaki of van, _i.e._ of the armenian land round lake van, and from this descends into the land of the parsua, which shalmanesar himself had trodden seven years before. here dayan-assur collected fresh tribute. on a third campaign ( b.c.) dayan-assur received tribute from the land of khubuskia, then invaded ararat, and there plundered and burned places. meanwhile shalmanesar himself marched in the years and b.c. against the land of tabal, _i.e._ against the tibarenes, on the north-west offshoot of the armenian mountains, advanced as far as the mines of the tibarenes, and laid tribute on their princes.[ ] in the next year he turns to the south-east, marches over the lesser zab, against the lands of namri and karkhar, which we must therefore suppose to have been between the lesser zab and the adhim and diala, on the spurs of the zagrus. yanzu, king of namri, was taken captive, and carried to assyria. shalmanesar left the land of namri, imposed tribute on the princes of the land of parsua, and turned to the plains of the land of amadai, _i.e._ against media ( b.c.).[ ] two years afterwards. shalmanesar climbed, for the ninth time, the heights of amanus (chamani), then he laid waste the land of kirchi ( b.c.), then marched once more against the land of namri, there laid waste places, and advanced beyond chalvan (chalonitis, holwan).[ ] on the obelisk of black basalt, dug up at chalah in the remains of the palace of shalmanesar ii. (the central palace of the explorers), we find beside the account of the deeds of the king five sculptures in relief, which exhibit payments of tribute. of the picture which represents the payment of jehu, of the kingdom of israel, we have spoken at length above (p. ). above this, which is the second picture, on the highest or first, is delineated the payment from the land of kirzan. the title tells us: "tribute imposed on sua of the land of kirzan:[ ] gold, silver, copper, lead, staves, horses, camels with two humps." as on the second strip the king is represented receiving the tribute of israel; so on this strip also we see the leader of those who pay tribute prostrate on the ground before him; behind the leader are led a horse and two camels with double humps; then follow people carrying staves and kettles. the superscription of the third relief says: "tribute imposed on the land of mushri: camels with two humps, the ox of the river sakeya." on the picture we see two camels with double humps, a hump-backed buffalo, a rhinoceros, an antelope, an elephant, four large apes, which are led, and one little one, which is carried. the superscription of the fourth relief says: "tribute imposed upon marduk-palassar of the land of sukhi:[ ] silver, gold, golden buckets, amsi-horns, staves, birmi-robes, stuffs." the relief itself depicts a lion, a deer, which is clutched by a second lion, two men with kettles on their heads, two men who carry a pole, on which are suspended materials for robes, four men with hooked buckets or hooked scrips, two men with large horns on their shoulders, two men with staves, and lastly a man carrying a bag. the superscription of the fifth relief says, "tribute imposed on garparunda of the land of patinai: silver, gold, lead, copper, objects made of copper, amsi-horns, hard wood."[ ] under this we see a man raising his hands in entreaty, a man with a bowl with high cups on his head, two men with hooked buckets, carrying horns on their shoulders, one man with staves; after these two assyrian officers, a man in a position of entreaty, two men with hooked buckets and horns, a man with two goblets, two men with hooked buckets and sacks on their shoulders, two men, of whom one holds a kettle, and the other carries a kettle on his head. assurnasirpal had already fought against the land of sukhi. as he marches to the euphrates in order to attack sadudu, prince of sukhi, as the king of babylon sends auxiliaries to sadudu at that time, and the land of chaldæa is seized with terror after the conquest of the land of sukhi, we must look for sukhi on the middle euphrates, below the mouth of the chaboras. the tribute which, according to that inscription, shalmanesar imposed on the prince of sukhi, who has a name which may be compared with the names of the kings of babylon,--gold, silver, robes, and stuffs,--does not contradict this assumption. shalmanesar fought against the patinai in the first year of his reign, according to the inscription of kurkh. shapalulme, the prince of the patinai at that time, combined with sangar of karchemish and akhuni of tul-barsip. like these, the patinai were vanquished, their cities were taken, , prisoners were carried away, and they were compelled to pay tribute. as shalmanesar in order to reach the patinai marches against them from mount amanus,[ ] we must look for their abode on the upper euphrates, to the north of karchemish, between the euphrates and the orontes. the tribute imposed on garparunda of patinai--gold, silver, copper, amsihorns, hard wood--is not against this supposition. the land of kirzan or guzan we can only attempt to fix by the tribute paid--camels with double humps. this kind of camel is found on the southern shore of the caspian sea and tartary, and we are therefore led to place kirzan on the southern shore of the caspian. the land of mushri, the tribute of which consists of hump-backed buffaloes, _i.e._ yaks (an animal belonging to the same district, bactria and tibet), camels with double humps, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and apes, must therefore be sought in eastern iran, on the borders of the district of the indus, whether it be that shalmanesar really penetrated so far, or that the terror of his name moved east iranian countries to send tribute to the warrior prince of nineveh and chalah. like his father, shalmanesar resided at chalah. on the terrace of this city, to the south-east of the palace of his father, he built a dwelling-place for himself, and in this set up the obelisk, the inscriptions on which give a brief account of each year of his reign. in the ruins of this house two bulls also have been discovered, which are covered with inscriptions, which, together with the inscription of kurkh on the tigris, supplement or extend the statements of the obelisk. more considerable remains have come down to us of another building of shalmanesar. assurnasirpal had erected at chalah two temples to the north of his palace. to the larger (western) of these two temples on the north-west corner of the terrace shalmanesar added a tower, the ruins of which in the form of a pyramidal hill still overtop the uniform heap of the ruined palaces. on the foundation of the natural rock of the bank of the tigris lies a square substructure (each of the sides measures over feet) of feet in height, built of brick and cased with stone. on this base rises a tower of several diminishing stories. in the first of these stories, immediately upon the platform, is a passage feet long, feet high, and feet in breadth, which divides the storey exactly in the middle from east to west. two centuries after the fall of the assyrian kingdom, xenophon, marching up the tigris with the , , reached the ruins of chalah. after crossing the zapatus, _i.e._ the greater zab, he came to a large deserted city on the tigris, the name of which sounded to him like larissa (chalah); it was surrounded by a wall about seven and a-half miles long. this wall had a substructure of stone masonry about feet high; on this it rose, feet in thickness, and built of bricks, to the height of feet. beside the city was a pyramid of stone, a plethron ( feet) broad and two plethra high; to these many of the neighbouring hamlets fled for refuge.[ ] shalmanesar's tower was broken, and by the fall of the upper parts had become changed into a pyramid. the sides of the tower xenophon put at almost half their real size; the height of the ruins is still about feet. that shalmanesar also stayed at nineveh is proved by the inscriptions; that he possessed a palace in the ancient city of asshur is proved by the stamp of the tiles at kileh shergat.[ ] in a reign of years shalmanesar ii. had gained important successes. in the north he had advanced as far as lake van, and the valley of the araxes, the tibarenes in the north-west, and the cilicians in the west had felt the weight of his arms. he had directed his most stubborn efforts against the princes on the crossings over the euphrates towards syria, and towards the region of mount amanus and syria itself. damascus and hamath were forced to pay tribute after a series of campaigns; byblus, sidon, and tyre repeatedly paid tribute, and israel after it had received a new master in jehu. by shalmanesar's successful interference in the contest for the crown in the civil war in babylon, the supremacy of asshur over babel was at length obtained. the regions of the zagrus had to pay tribute to shalmanesar. he first trod the land of media, and his successes were felt beyond media as far as the southern shore of the caspian sea and east iran. in spite of the unwearied activity of shalmanesar, in spite of his ceaseless campaigns and the important results gained by his weapons, his reign ended amid domestic troubles, caused by a rebellion of the native land. shalmanesar's son and successor, samsi-bin iii. ( - b.c.), tells us in an inscription found in the remains of his palace, which he built in the south-east corner of the terrace of chalah, that his brother assurdaninpal set on foot a conspiracy against his father shalmanesar, and that the land of asshur, both the upper and lower, joined the rebellion. he enumerates cities, among them asshur itself, the ancient metropolis, and arbela, which joined assurdaninpal; but "with the help of the great gods" samsi-bin reduced them again to his power. then he tells us of his campaigns in the north and east. in his first campaign the whole land of nairi was subjugated--all the princes, in number, are mentioned; the land of van also paid tribute. the assyrian dominion, asserts the king, stretched from the land of nairi to the city of kar-salmanassar, opposite karchemish (p. ). then he fought against the land of giratbunda (apparently a region on the caspian sea, perhaps gerabawend), took the king prisoner, and set up his own image in sibar, the capital of giratbunda,[ ] and afterwards directed his arms against the land of accad (babylonia). when he had slain , men and taken prisoners, king marduk-balatirib marched out against him with the warriors of chaldæa and elam, of the lands of namri (p. ) and aram. he defeated them near dur-kurzu, their capital: were left on the field, taken prisoners; chariots of war and ensigns of the king remained in the hands of the assyrians ( b.c.). at this point the inscription breaks off; elsewhere we hear nothing of further successes against babylonia, we only learn that samsi-bin in the eleventh and twelfth years of his reign ( and b.c.) again marched to chaldæa and babylon,[ ] and we can only conclude from the fact that the king of babylon received help not only from namri and aram, but also from elam, that the assyrians under samsi-bin continued to advance, and that their power must by this time have appeared alarming to the elamites also. bin-nirar iii. ( - b.c.), the son and successor of samsi-bin, raised the assyrian power still higher. twice he marched out against the armenian land on the shore of lake van; eight times he made campaigns in the land of the rivers, _i.e._ mesopotamia. in the fifth year of his reign he went out against the city of arpad in syria; in the eighth against the "sea-coast," _i.e._ no doubt against the coast of syria. the beginning of an inscription remains from which we can see the extent of the lands over which he ruled, or which he had compelled to pay tribute. "i took into my possession," so this fragment tells us, "from the land of siluna, which lies at the rising of the sun, onwards; viz., the land of kib, of ellip, karkas, arazias, misu, madai (media), giratbunda throughout its whole extent, munna, parsua, allabria, abdadana, the land of nairi throughout its whole extent, the land of andiu, which is remote, the mountain range of bilchu throughout its whole extent to the great sea which lies in the east, _i.e._ as far as the caspian sea. i made subject to myself from the euphrates onwards: the land of chatti (aram), the western land (_mat acharri_) throughout its whole extent, tyre, sidon, the land of omri (israel) and edom, the land of palashtav (philistæa) as far as the great sea to the setting of the sun. i imposed upon them payment of tribute. i also marched against the land of imirisu (the kingdom of damascus), against mariah, the king of the land of imirisu. i actually shut him up in damascus, the city of his kingdom; great terror of asshur came upon him; he embraced my feet, he became a subject; talents of silver, talents of gold, talents of copper, talents of iron, robes, carven images, his wealth and his treasures without number, i received in his palace at damascus where he dwelt.[ ] i subjugated all the kings of the land of chaldæa, and laid tribute upon them; i offered sacrifice at babylon, borsippa, and kutha, the dwellings of the gods bel, nebo, and nergal."[ ] according to this king bin-nirar not only maintained the predominance over babylon which his grandfather had gained, but extended it: his authority reached from media, perhaps from the shores of the caspian sea, to the shore of the mediterranean as far as damascus and israel and edom, as far as sidon and tyre and the cities of the philistines. the cilicians and tibarenes who paid tribute to shalmanesar are not mentioned by bin-nirar in his description of his empire. so far as we can see, the centre of the kingdom was meanwhile extended and more firmly organised. among the magistrates with whose names the assyrians denote the years, at the time of shalmanesar and his immediate successors the names of the commander-in-chief and three court officers are regularly followed by the names of the overseers of the districts of rezeph (resapha on the euphrates), of nisib (nisibis on the mygdonius, the eastern affluent of the chaboras), of arapha, _i.e._ the mountain-land of arrapachitis (albak); hence we may conclude that these districts were more closely connected or incorporated with the native land, and governed immediately by viceroys of the king. how uncertain the power and supremacy of assyria was at a greater distance is on the other hand equally clear from the fact that bin-nirar had to make no fewer than eight campaigns in the land of the streams, _i.e._ between the tigris and the euphrates; that he marched four times against the land of khubuskia in the neighbourhood of armenia, and twice against the district of lake van, against which his father and grandfather had so often contended. bin-nirar iii. also built himself a separate palace at chalah, on the western edge of the terrace of the royal dwellings, to the south of the palace of his great grandfather assurnasirpal. in the ruins of the temple which he dedicated to nebo have been found six standing images of this deity, two of which bear upon the pedestal those inscriptions which informed us that the wife of bin-nirar iii. was named sammuramat (p. ). on a written tablet dated from the year of musallim-adar (_i.e._ from the year b.c.), the eighteenth year of bin-nirar, on which is still legible the fragment of a royal decree, we also find the double impress of his seal--a royal figure which holds a lion. a second document from the time of the reign of this prince, from the twenty-sixth year of his reign ( b.c.), registers the sale of a female slave at the price of ten and a half minæ, and gives the name of the ten witnesses to the transaction.[ ] the preservation of this document is the more important inasmuch as a notice in phenician letters is written beside it. hence we may conclude that even in the days of bin-nirar iii. the alphabetic writing was known as far as this point in the east, though the cuneiform alphabet was retained beside it, not only at that time, but down to b.c., and indeed, to all appearance, down to the first century of our reckoning.[ ] footnotes: [ ] ménant, "ann." pp. , , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] e. schrader. "k. a. t." s. , . [ ] schrader, _loc. cit._ s. , . [ ] "records of the past," , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarch." ^ , . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarch." ^ , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarch." ^ , ; ^ , . [ ] g. smith, "discov." pp. , , . [ ] sayce, "records of the past," pp. , . [ ] according to the inscription of kurkh in the year ; according to the obelisk b.c. [ ] ménant, "ann." p. . [ ] bin-hidri is read by e. schrader and others. rimmon-hidri by sayce. as the god bin was also called rimmon, the ideogram of the name may be read one way or the other. the books of the kings call the contemporary of ahab, benhadad. for farther information, see p. , note. [ ] sayce, "records," , . [ ] e. schrader, "keilinschriften und a. t." s. ff., , ; ménant, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] ménant, "ann." p. . [ ] vol. i. . ménant, "babyl." p. . [ ] inscriptions on the bulls in ménant, "ann." p. . [ ] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. ; above, p. . [ ] communication from e. schrader; cf. deuteron. iii. . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. , . [ ] cf. above, p. . [ ] inscription of the obelisk and the bulls in ménant, "ann." , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] sayce reads guzan. [ ] according to a communication from e. schrader, marduk-habal-assur ought to be read, not marduk-habal-iddin. [ ] oppert, "memoires de l'acad. d. inscript." , , ; sayce, "records of the past," , . [ ] sayce, "records of the past," , , , , , . [ ] "anab." , , - . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] the reading is uncertain. [ ] oppert, "empires," pp. , ; g. rawlinson, "monarch." ^ , p. , _n._ ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. ; cf. g. rawlinson, ^ , . [ ] oppert et ménant, "documents juridiques," pp. - . [ ] g. smith, "discov." p. ; oppert et ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . end of vol. ii. transcriber's notes: . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . carat character is used to indicate subscript in this text version. . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., ll.d., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. iii. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . bungay: clay and taylor, printers. contents. book iv. _assyria._ _israel._ _egypt._ _babylon._ _lydia._ chapter i. page the campaigns of tiglath pilesar ii chapter ii. the prophets of israel chapter iii. the pharaohs of tanis, bubastis, and napata chapter iv. the first collision of assyria and egypt chapter v. assyria in the reigns of sargon and sennacherib chapter vi. sennacherib in syria chapter vii. esarhaddon chapter viii. assurbanipal's wars and victories chapter ix. the constitution, army, and art of the assyrians chapter x. judah under manasses and josiah chapter xi. the nations of the north chapter xii. the fall of assyria chapter xiii. egypt under psammetichus and necho chapter xiv. the restoration of babylon chapter xv. nebuchadnezzar and his successors chapter xvi. egypt under the last pharaohs chapter xvii. the overthrow of the heracleids in lydia chapter xviii. lydia under the mermnadÆ assyria. chapter i. the campaigns of tiglath pilesar ii. in the course of the ninth century b.c. the power of assyria had made considerable progress. in addition to the ancient dependencies on the upper zab and the upper tigris, in armenia and mesopotamia, the principalities and cities on the middle euphrates had been reduced, the region of the amanus had been won. cilicia had been trodden by assyrian armies, damascus was humbled, syria had felt the weight of the arms of assyria in a number of campaigns; the kingdom of israel and the cities of the phenicians had repeatedly brought their tribute to the warlike princes of nineveh; at length even the cities of the philistines and the edomites could not escape a similar payment. tiglath pilesar i. had seen the great sea of the west, the mediterranean; three centuries later bin-nirar iii. received the tribute of all the harbour cities of the syrian coast, the great centres of trade on this sea. nor was it to the west only that the power of the assyrians advanced. shalmanesar ii. and bin-nirar iii. gained the supremacy over babylon, the ancient mother-country of assyria. each offered sacrifices at babylon, borsippa, and kutha; while to the north-west the power of assyria extended beyond media as far as the shores of the caspian sea. the successors of bin-nirar iii. were not able to sustain their power at this height. shalmanesar iii. ( - b.c.) had again to fight against damascus and hadrach (in the neighbourhood of damascus[ ]); in his short reign of ten years he marched six times against the land of ararat (urarti). assur-danil iii. ( - b.c.), the successor of shalmanesar iii., also fought against hadrach and arpad (now tel erfad, near hamath[ ]). he had, moreover, to suppress disturbances which had broken out on the upper zab in arrapachitis (arapha), and in the land of guzan (gauzanitis) on the chaboras. in the reign of assur-nirar ii. ( - b.c.) there were risings in assyria, even in chalah, the metropolis.[ ] but the prince who succeeded assur-nirar ii. on the throne of assyria, tiglath pilesar ii., was able not merely to raise the kingdom to the position which it had occupied under shalmanesar ii. and bin-nirar iii., but to make it a predominant power over a still wider circuit. the armies of shalmanesar ii. had invaded media; among the tribute brought to him by the land of mushri we found camels with two humps, buffaloes, (yaks) and elephants. after a successful campaign against babylon, which he undertook immediately after his accession, tiglath pilesar led his army to the table-land of iran, and forced his way to the east.[ ] a tablet discovered at chalah, which gives a summary of tiglath pilesar's achievements from the first to the seventeenth year of his reign, mentions the districts subjugated in this direction. it is a long list, beginning with the land of namri.[ ] the districts of parsua, zikruti, nisaa, and arakuttu are mentioned,[ ] and the enumeration concludes with districts in the wilds of media.[ ] the king defeated the numerous warriors of this region; " , of their people, children, horses, asses, mules, oxen, and sheep without number i carried away."[ ] such are the words of the inscription, which proceeds: "i took possession of the land of namri anew, and the land of parsua." with these regions thirteen districts already mentioned are again enumerated. "zikruti in rugged media i added to the land of assyria; the cities i built up anew; in them i placed warriors of asshur, my lord, and people whom my hand had taken captive. i received the tribute of media, of ellip, and all the princes of the mountains to bikni; horses, asses, mules, oxen, sheep without number. my general, assurdainani, i sent into rugged media towards the rising of the sun. he brought back horses, oxen, sheep without number."[ ] according to this inscription tiglath pilesar, on his first campaign against iran, which we may place, on the authority of the list of rulers, in the year or b.c.,[ ] though he failed to reach bactria and the indus, forced his way into the eastern regions of iran as far as the further shore of lake hamun. the meaning of the names nisaa, zikruti, and arakuttu is hardly doubtful. nisaa must denote the region or district of nisæa in the east of media. zikruti,[ ] which is mentioned together with nisæa, may be the name of the sagartians of herodotus, the açagarta of the inscriptions of the achæmenids, a race mentioned by herodotus among the tribes of the persians; they were settled or wandered to the east of the latter. arakuttu gives us the semitic form of the name of the harauvati of the persian inscriptions, the haravaïti of the avesta, the arachoti of the greeks. the arachoti were settled in the river-valley of the arachotus (now arghandab), which falls into lake hamun, to the east of the river. but tiglath pilesar did not maintain his supremacy on the table-land of iran to this extent. in the enumeration of the conquered districts of the second campaign the names nisaa and arakuttu are wanting, while zikruti, parsua, and madai (media), and the tribute of media, which must therefore have been obtained by a new campaign of the general of tiglath pilesar, are brought into prominence. the second campaign of the king was therefore limited to the western regions of iran. at a later time, in the ninth year of his reign ( _b.c._), he once more marched into the land of media.[ ] a second inscription says, in summary, that tiglath pilesar imposed tribute on the "land of parsua" and the "city of zikruti," which was dependent on the land of the medes, and on the princes of the land of media as far as the land of bikni.[ ] when tiglath pilesar ascended the throne nabonassar ( - b.c.) had been king of babylon for two years, according to the canon of ptolemy. babylonia no longer possessed the extent of country once given to her by hammurabi, and which we may ascribe to her during the numerous wars carried on with assyria from the middle of the fifteenth century, and even at the date of shalmanesar ii. and bin-nirar iii. either through the preponderance which assyria had obtained over babylon after the middle of the ninth century, or from other causes, we find several independent principalities on the lower course of the euphrates after the middle of the eighth century; the assyrian inscriptions mention as such, bit sahalla, bit silan, bit dakkur, bit amukan, and bit yakin at the mouth of the euphrates, on the shore of the persian gulf. so far as we can discover from the monuments, tiglath pilesar was at war with babylonia in the very first year of his reign.[ ] dur kurigalzu, the old border fortress of babylon against assyria, sippara, and other cities of the land of kardunias on the river or canal ukni, are mentioned, and the priests of bit saggatu or bit zida, _i.e._ of the chief temples of babylon and borsippa, together with the priest of nergal, who bring gifts to tiglath pilesar; we hear of talents of gold, and talents of silver, received by tiglath pilesar in the first year of his reign.[ ] in the summary of his achievements (on the tablet of chalah) the king says that he has taken dur kurigalzu, that he has offered sacrifice at sippara, nipur, babylon, borsippa, kutha, and ur, that in the beginning of his reign he ruled from dur kurigalzu to nipur.[ ] the king of babylon, against whom he fought and whom he compelled to open the gates of his fortresses and of babylon, is not mentioned by tiglath pilesar. we must assume, from the canon of ptolemy, that it was nabonassar who bowed himself before the weight of the arms of assyria. yet the obedience of babylon was not secured. fragments of the detailed annals of tiglath pilesar inform us that his general again fought against the babylonians, that he himself again conquered a city which the babylonians had taken, that in the region of tel assur he sacrificed to merodach the god of tel assur.[ ] an inscription of chalah narrates that tiglath pilesar laid waste bit amukan and bit sahalla, and took their kings nabu-sabzi and zakiru prisoners; that he besieged king kinziru in sapiya (sape), his capital, and added to assyria pillutu on the border of assyria and elam; that he received the tributes of the kings of the chaldæans, of balasu, the son of dakkuri, of nadin of larrak, and merodach baladan, the son of yakin, the king of the sea coast.[ ] the large tablet tells us more at length. "pillutu on the borders of elam i added to assyria; the chaldæans i removed from thence and placed in the midst of assyria. the warriors of nabu-sabzi, the son of silani, i defeated under the walls of his city of sarrapani, and i crucified him before the great gate of his city. five thousand five hundred of his people i took captive; his sons, his daughters, his gods i carried away: his city and the cities round about it i destroyed and burnt. zakiru, the son of sahalli, and his chieftains i captured; i put them in irons and brought them to assyria; of the people of bit sahalla i captured; i laid waste all the districts of bit sahalla and united them to assyria. the numerous army of kinziru, the son of amukan, i defeated before the great gate of his city, sapiya; i besieged him and overthrew all his cities. bit silan, bit amukan, bit sahalla, i have laid waste throughout their whole extent; i received the tribute of balasu, the son of dakkuri, and of nadin of larrak; merodach baladan, the son of yakin, the king of the sea-coast, was overcome by the fear of asshur, my lord: he came to sapiya and kissed my feet, and i received his tribute."[ ] the canon of ptolemy represents nadius as succeeding nabonassar of babylon in the year b.c. is the nabu-sabzi of bit silan whom tiglath pilesar defeats near the city of sarrapani the king nadius of the canon; and ought his name to be altered in the canon to nabius? according to the canon nadius reigned only two years ( , b.c.); the campaign of tiglath pilesar, which ended in the conquest and execution of nabu-sabzi, must therefore have taken place in the year b.c. after the conquest of nabu-sabzi, as the inscriptions told us, tiglath pilesar subjugates kinziru of bit amukan, when he had besieged sapiya, his capital; in this city he receives the homage of merodach baladan. the list of rulers places the campaign against sapiya in the year b.c. in the canon of ptolemy, nadius is succeeded by a joint rule: from the year to b.c. chinzirus and porus reign over babylon. is the kinziru of bit amukan the chinzirus of the canon? after the subjugation of merodach baladan, king of the sea-coast, _i.e._ the coast of the persian gulf, tiglath pilesar's dominion extended over the whole region of the euphrates. he assures us that "he laid waste the land of chaldæa throughout its whole extent," and "received tribute from all the chaldæans;" that "he possessed the whole land of kardunias (babylonia), and was lord over it;"[ ] and with perfect truth, for an inscription of king sargon tells us, that bit amukan, bit dakkur, bit silan, bit sahalla, bit yakin form the whole of the land of the chaldæans.[ ] tiglath pilesar calls himself "king of asshur, king of babylon, king of sumir and accad;" he claims the full title of the kings of babylon. the names of the principalities of chaldæa are obviously taken from their dynasties. nabu-sabzi is called the son of silan, and his land bit silan; merodach baladan is the son of yakin, and his land is bit yakin. shalmanesar ii., as we saw (vol. ii. p. ), spoke of israel as bit omri, _i.e._ the house of omri. the chinzirus of the canon of ptolemy enables us to assume that tiglath pilesar after the defeat of kinziru of bit amukan placed this kinziru as a vassal-king or viceroy over babylon, a proceeding which recurs often enough in the proceedings of the kings of asshur towards conquered principalities and lands. the canon of ptolemy does not make chinzirus the sole king of babylon. from b.c. to b.c. chinzirus and porus are said to have reigned together--a joint sovereignty, of which this is the only instance in the canon. strikingly enough their two reigns end in the same year, and this, b.c. is the very year in which, according to the assyrian canon, tiglath pilesar's reign is brought to a close. in the excerpt from berosus' list of the kings of babylon, given by polyhistor, of which eusebius has preserved some very scanty fragments, the kings who reigned over babylon for years are followed by "a king of the chaldæans, whose name was phul."[ ] if the babylonians named tiglath pilesar phul in their list of kings, and if porus in the canon of ptolemy is a mistake for polus (pul), the babylonians, in order to conceal their dependence on assyria, must have placed their countryman before the stranger, the vassal king before the real king in their series of rulers. the hebrew scriptures tell us that phul of asshur marched against israel; menahem of israel paid phul a tribute of talents of silver, and the king of assyria returned into his land. then ahaz of judah sent messengers to king tiglath pilesar of asshur to save him out of the hand of rezin, king of damascus, and pekah, king of israel. pekah had put to death pekahiah, the son of menahem, after a reign of two years, and seated himself on the throne. tiglath pilesar listened to ahaz and came and carried away a part of the israelites to assyria, and hoshea set on foot a conspiracy and slew pekah and became king in his place.[ ] the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar mention among the princes who brought him tribute "minihimmi (menahem) of samirina (samaria),"[ ] and also "jauhazi (ahaz) of judah;"[ ] a fragment informs us that tiglath pilesar reached the borders of bit omri, _i.e._ of israel (vol. ii. p. ). "pakaha (pekah) their king they had slain;" so tiglath pilesar continues in this fragment, "i put husi (hoshea) to be king over them."[ ] the inscription also speaks, in this place, of sending or carrying away to assyria, but it is in such a mutilated condition that more accurate knowledge is impossible. still it is abundantly clear from this fragment that the king of assyria, who received tribute from menahem of israel and then marched against israel when pekah had ascended the throne, was one and the same prince, tiglath pilesar. we might assume a double payment of tribute on the part of menahem, a payment to phul and a second payment to tiglath pilesar, but this is met by the fact that the monuments of assyria know no king of the name of phul, and the continuity of the lists of assyrian eponyms does not allow us to insert a king of the name of phul between tiglath pilesar and his predecessor assur-nirar ii. the error of the book of kings in ascribing the first campaign against menahem of israel to phul, and the second, in support of ahaz against pekah of israel, to tiglath pilesar, is most easily explained, if we admit the hypothesis given above,[ ] that the babylonians gave the name phul to tiglath pilesar as their supreme king. tiglath pilesar held the western regions of the table-land of iran in dependence. he ruled as king over babylonia, over the whole region of the euphrates down to the borders of elam and the shore of the persian gulf; and in the north also he led the armies of assyria to victorious campaigns. his tablets tell us that he incorporated with assyria the land of nairi, _i.e._ the region between the upper zab and the upper tigris, that he defeated king sarduarri of ararat (urarti), who had rebelled against him, took his camp and besieged him in his city of turuspa; that he set up "an image of his majesty" there, and laid waste the land of ararat far and wide.[ ] afterwards sarduarri and sulumal of milid (melitene) and kustaspi of kummukh (gumathene), each trusting to the power of the other, rebelled; these he defeated, and took captives to the number of , men. in the middle of the battle sarduarri rode away: he (tiglath pilesar) took the seal from his neck, his neck-band, his royal chariot, and his couch, and dedicated them to istar of nineveh.[ ] the inscriptions further inform us that kustaspi of kummukh, sulumal of milid, and vassurmi of tubal gave tribute to tiglath pilesar, and when vassurmi was negligent in the service of assyria and did not appear before his face, tiglath pilesar sent his chief captain against him and set up chulli to be king of tubal in vassurmi's place.[ ] the list of rulers puts the first war of tiglath pilesar in the year b.c., the second campaign against ararat and the princes leagued with him in the year b.c. of the successes of tiglath pilesar in syria we shall hear below. when he received the tribute of hamath, byblus, and israel before the ninth year of his reign, _i.e._ in the year b.c., zabibieh, the queen of the arabs, also paid tribute.[ ] when he had overthrown damascus, israel, and the philistines ( b.c.), he fought against samsieh, the queen of the arabians, in the region of saba,[ ] as we are told in a fragment of his annals, and took from her , camels, and , oxen. in the inscriptions which sum up the achievements of the king we are told that he subjugated the nabatu (who must be sought to the south on the lower euphrates), the hagaranu (the hagarites), the pekudu (pekod);[ ] that the distant tribes of tema (the temanites) and saba (the sabæans), on the borders of the setting sun, heard of his power, and submitted to him, brought gold, silver, and camels, and kissed his feet.[ ] a fragment of the annals repeats this statement; on the borders of the land of the setting sun they heard of his power and his victories and submitted to him.[ ] hence it was not only migratory tribes in the neighbourhood of syria and the lower euphrates, like the pekod and hagarites, whom tiglath pilesar forced to recognise his supremacy and pay tribute: his armies must have advanced from syria and the lower euphrates to the interior of arabia, if the temanites (i. ) and the tribes of the south, "on the borders of the setting sun," _i.e._ the tribes of the south-west, the sabæans, in "fear of his power and his victories," sent him tribute. if the armies of assyria reached no further than deraeah in the interior of arabia, it was still a vast stretch of country which they traversed in the eighteen years in which tiglath pilesar sat on the throne. yet they also reached lake hamun and the land of the arachoti in the east on the further side of the persian gulf. on the terrace of chalah which supported the royal citadels tiglath pilesar built himself a palace to the south of the house of shalmanesar ii. it is the central palace of the explorers. the great inscription on one of the marble slabs found in the floor in the ruins tells us that he built his royal abode in the midst of chalah for his glory; that he placed it higher above the bed of the tigris than the palaces of his predecessors; that he adorned it with costly decorations, and placed in it the tributes of the kings of the chatti, the princes of the aramæans and chaldæans, who had bowed their might at his feet[ ] the inscription begins with the words, "palace of tiglath pilesar the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of assyria, the high priest of babylon, the king of sumir and accad, the king of the four quarters of the earth, the mighty warrior, who in the service of asshur his lord has marched through the lands, swept over them like a storm, treated them as captives; the king, who, under the protection of asshur, samas, merodach, the great gods, his lords, ruled from the sea of bit yakin as far as bikni, and from the sea of the setting sun (_i.e._ the mediterranean) as far as muzur (egypt)."[ ] the second shorter inscription says in a similar manner: "palace of tiglath pilesar the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of assyria, the king of babylon, the king of sumir and accad, the king of the four quarters of the earth, the mighty warrior, who in the service of asshur, his lord, has trodden to pieces like clay all who hated him, has washed them away like a flood and made them into shadows--the king who marched out under the protection of nebo and merodach, the great gods, and reigned from the sea of bit yakin to the land of bikni, to the rising sun, and from the sea of the setting sun to muzur, who possessed all lands from the setting to the rising and ruled over their kingdoms."[ ] of this proud palace but scanty ruins remain. one of the successors of tiglath pilesar, who ascended the throne of assyria years after him, caused the slabs on which tiglath pilesar had depicted his campaigns and victories together with the explanatory inscriptions above them, to be taken away, in order to have them smoothed, and placed when filled with pictures of his own achievements in the house which he built in the south-west corner of the terrace of chalah. this successor died during the building of his house. this is clear from the fact that slabs and inscriptions of the palace of tiglath pilesar, intended for the new structure, have been found partly in the remains of the old building and partly in the new structure, with the defacement partially carried out.[ ] footnotes: [ ] the older zachariah mentions the land of hadrach beside damascus and hamath, zech. ix. , . [ ] fifteen miles to the north-west of aleppo the ruin-heaps at tel erfad mark the site of the ancient arpad; kiepert, "z.d.m.g." , . [ ] a document has been preserved from the reign of assur-nirar, belonging to the year b.c., regarding the lease of a piece of land; oppert et ménant, "docum. juridiq." p. . [ ] the list of rulers represents him as marching to the stream, _i.e._ to the euphrates, immediately after his accession, and afterwards to the land of namri, _i.e._ to the zagrus. [ ] g. smith reads zimri. [ ] nissi in g. smith, "disc." p. , but in frag. nissa. [ ] so according to g. smith [who reads likruti]. [ ] ll. - in g. smith, "disc." p. ; ménant, "annal." pp. , . [ ] ll. - , in g. smith, "disc." p. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ . the words "i possessed anew" are wanting in g. smith; cf. lenormant, "z. Ægypt. sprache," , s. ff. the statement about the subjugation of bit hamban and the regions which follow, ll. - , is repeated in the inscription in layard, pp. , , l. ; in ménant, _loc. cit._ . the statement about the campaign of assurdainani is repeated in frag. , p. in g. smith, _loc. cit._ [ ] this gives - _b.c._: bildanil. to the land of namri; cf. frag. in g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] ménant translates, "city of zikruti;" g. smith's rendering does not give this description in this passage (p. ), but on p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] l. in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] above, p. , _note ._ [ ] frag. , in g. smith, "disc." pp. , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] the list of rulers inserts a second campaign of tiglath pilesar to the land of the stream in the year b.c.; frag. , . , , - in g. smith, _loc. cit._ pp. , , . [ ] ll. - in g. smith, "disc." pp. , . [ ] ll. - in g. smith, "disc." pp. - . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] oppert, "dur sarkayan," p. ; ménant, "annal." pp. , . [ ] vol. ii. p. ; euseb., "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. [ ] kings xv. , ; xvi. - ; chron. v. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] it is due to e. schrader. [ ] frag. , ll. - in g. smith, "disc." pp. , . [ ] frag. in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] the large inscription, lines - , , in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] frag. , l. in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] frag. , l. ; cf. frag. , l. ; frag. , l. in g. smith, pp. , , . [ ] tablet of chalah, l. in g. smith, p. ; stone of chalah, ll. , , , p. . [ ] stone of chalah, ll. - in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] frag. , _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ll. - in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] g. smith, "disc." ll. - , p. , . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] the three private documents on the sale of a slave, the loan on the mortgage of a field, and the interest and security for an advance, which are placed in the time of tiglath pilesar iii., are given in oppert et ménant, "docum. juridiq." p. _sqq._ chapter ii. the prophets of israel. the overthrow of the house of omri had not raised the power of the kingdom of israel. jehu, it is true, sent tribute to shalmanesar ii. king of assyria ( b.c.). but in spite of this subjection to the great king on the tigris, neither jehu nor his son jehoahaz was in a position to repel the attacks of the princes of damascus, hazael and benhadad iii.; the whole region to the east of the jordan, the land of gilead, had to be conceded to damascus after the most cruel devastation of that district and of all israel. it was the distress into which bin-nirar iii. of asshur brought damascus which first afforded respite to israel in the last years of jehoahaz, though tribute for this service also had to be paid to assyria ( b.c.). his successor, king joash ( - b.c.) was now able to wrest from damascus at least those cities which his father had lost, and the son of joash, jeroboam ii. ( - b.c.), the fourth sovereign of the house of jehu, succeeded in gaining the upper hand over damascus, in completely reconquering the land of gilead, and inflicting heavy blows on hamath. the land which he conquered from hamath he retained; the books of kings mention the brave deeds of jeroboam ii., how "he set up again the borders of israel, from the land of hamath to the sea of the plain." during his long and powerful reign--he sat on the throne for years[ ]--agriculture was developed, trade became again active, and, as it seems, very lucrative. in samaria, the metropolis, there were splendid houses, the inhabitants of which lived in magnificence and luxury.[ ] in judah the reign of joash, whom the high-priest jehoiada placed on the throne in the year b.c., again fully established the worship of jehovah in opposition to the favour which his grandmother athaliah had shown to the worship of baal. amaziah, the son of joash, maintained his throne against the murderers of his father; his arms were successful against the edomites, but failed against israel. when he also was slain by conspirators, the people, in the year b.c., raised his son uzziah (azariah) to the throne. uzziah was only years of age at the time of his accession, but young as he was he learned well how to rule, and the length of his reign allowed him to see the fruit of his labours. the chronicles say of him: "he loved husbandry; he had husbandmen and vinedressers in the mountains, and dug many wells in the desert, for he had many cattle in the low country and in the plain."[ ] uzziah was also a brave warrior. against the philistines he obtained greater successes than fell to the lot of any of his predecessors, including even saul and david, greater than those won by any of his successors. he took gath, the prince of which david had once served; he gained jabneh and conquered ashdod, and destroyed the walls of this city. the loss of gath and ashdod limited the league of the cities of the philistines to ekron, ascalon, and gaza; uzziah built jewish cities in the conquered districts,[ ] he forced the ammonites to pay tribute, he completed the subjugation of the edomites which his father amaziah had begun, and his fame reached even to egypt.[ ] he rebuilt the harbour-city of elath on the red sea, which the rebellion of the edomites against judah had wrested from king jehoram about the year b.c. (ii. ), placed jews there, and apparently restored the ophir trade of solomon.[ ] "he was marvellously helped," say the chronicles, "till he became strong." amid such successes uzziah did not forget that changes would occur, that other times would come. in the second half of his reign[ ] he strengthened the walls of jerusalem with towers at the corner-gate, _i.e._ at the north-west corner, of the city wall, at the valley gate, and at the corner, _i.e._ where the wall of the upper city advances to the west, and caused "engines invented by cunning men to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks of the walls, to throw arrows and great stones withal."[ ] the levy of the people was put in order; the fighting men were entered on a register; uzziah "prepared for the whole army shields and spears, coats of mail and helmets, bows and slinging stones."[ ] "and uzziah did what was right in the eyes of jehovah as amaziah his father had done, save that the people still sacrificed and offered incense on the high places"--so we are told in the books of kings. the chronicles add that he sought god as long as the prophet zachariah lived.[ ] afterwards he had a quarrel with the priests of the temple because he sacrificed with his own hands in the great space of the temple, the holy place (before the holy of holies), on the altar in that space intended for incense. david and solomon had offered incense there before him; the priesthood intended therefore to make good their exclusive claim to every kind of sacrifice as against uzziah.[ ] uzziah succeeded in raising judah to the highest point of power and importance, which it reached after the defection of israel. thus after severe tempests the reigns of jeroboam ii. and uzziah brought to israel and judah the restoration of order, power and prosperity. the flourishing condition of agriculture and trade increased the well-being of the people, and produced profits which led the wealthy classes into a misuse of their wealth, into extravagance and luxury. this mode of life, which seldom, in the east especially, fails to accompany gains easily got, was attacked in both kingdoms by a merciless criticism. in israel and in judah a careless enjoyment of life was connected not unfrequently with a certain inclination towards the rites of the syrians. from the time that the house of jehu ruled in israel, and joash ascended the throne of judah, the favourable feeling towards syrian rites had ceased, from the throne downwards. with the restoration of more active relations towards the neighbouring nations their example operated with renewed force on the wealthier classes of israel, and among them, and afterwards no doubt among the people, admission and recognition was thus gained for the religious observances of the syrians. as the sensual elements in the forms of the gods and the cultus of the syrians became more marked--as the worship of the deities of procreation and birth became more licentious and debauched, in connection with the increased population, and consequent luxury and dissoluteness in the phenician cities (ii. ), as the prostitution became more general, the service of androgynous deities more zealous--as the number of sacred servants, of companions male and female, of eunuchs and men ready to make themselves eunuchs, became larger--as this worship of lust and mutilation grew more disgusting, and the flames on the altar of moloch rose more frequently--so much the more vigorous, in the circles of the neighbouring nations, whose national and religious life was roused, must have been the aversion and opposition to such licentious practices, to rites of so different a nature, and so strongly at variance with their own faith. three centuries before this time, israel by the foundation of a monarchy had gained rest and security against her nearest neighbours in the east and west, against moab and ammon, and the philistines. after the division the powers of israel and judah had hardly sufficed at all times to protect them against their neighbours; and even, at last, against the damascenes. serious dangers threatened from a greater distance. egypt, the country from which in syria there was naturally the most to fear, had kept within her borders since the settlement of the israelites in canaan, as if to secure space and freedom for the development of israel. only once in the course of five centuries was this rest broken by the campaign of the pharaoh shishak, and then in a very transitory manner. but half a century after this campaign another opponent arose far to the east on the banks of the tigris, who now had secured a firm footing on the euphrates, whose armies first trod the north of syria, and tried their strength in repeated campaigns against damascus. ahab of israel in league with damascus and other princes of the syrians succeeded in beating off the first attack; but after him jehu and jehoahaz of israel paid tribute to the kings of asshur, and though the successors of bin-nirar iii. had to fight in arrapachitis and gauzanitis, they repeatedly led their armies against northern syria, against arpad and hadrach. however secure men might feel in israel and judah in the possession of the position recently obtained under jeroboam and uzziah, it could not escape a keener eye that a power had forced its way to the euphrates, and every moment threatened a renewed attack on syria which israel and judah were not in a position to resist, even in the favourable position in which for a moment they were situated. even if israel and judah united their forces, which for the moment were excellently arranged, it was scarcely conceivable that they could make any stand against the supremacy of assyria, if this were expressly directed against syria. only in the event of a hearty combination of all the states and tribes of syria, the philistines and the phenicians, hamath and damascus, israel and judah; only by the union of all syria under one power, could a sufficient counterpoise be provided to the assyrian power. but the feeling and tendencies of these states were different, as also was the state of civilisation and religious life; and the thought of such an union never arose among them. even if it had it could hardly be realised here, or elsewhere in the east, in any other way than by establishing one despotic monarch. such a form of union would at any rate have required that israel should give the best she had. instead of a political impulse which would have united israel and judah with damascus and hamath, the phenicians and philistines, the internal circumstances of israel and judah, the opposition to the renewed encroachments of the canaanitish worship, combined with the threatening position of assyria, gave a new, peculiar, and lofty flight to the religious development of the israelites. in its struggles against the house of omri the prophetic power was inwardly ripened and strengthened. with the relaxation of persecution the intensity and ecstacy of the prophets must have been relaxed. in the place of the passionate strife came a more peaceful tone, greater calmness, more earnest introspection. yet the prophetic power was not merely purified, it was also deepened. by degrees, elements which had been developed in other spheres exercised an influence on the prophetic work, on the reflection on the nature and will of jehovah, and the effort to be absorbed in him. the expression and outlet which religious feeling had found in religious songs, in invocations, and hymns of thanksgiving, praise and penitence, supplied to the prophetic feeling a fuller, broader and more variable background. to the oldest account of the fortunes of israel, which arose in priestly circles, and of the covenant which his god had once made with him, to the collection and establishment of the law which formed the contents of this covenant, was soon added the second text, which described in a more lively manner the manifestations of the tribal god, his guidance of the patriarchs and forefathers of the nation, and, like the older text, it was for a long time in the hands of the prophets. even before joel, at the time when the high-priest jehoiada was regent for king joash in judah (ii. ), urged the nation to repentance and introspection, the hand of a prophet had united those two texts. penetrated by their contents, he had, as might be expected from his point of view, laid the main stress on the promises and prophecies, on the relation of man to god, on the nature of man, and his duty in life. in this form the books of the fortunes of the patriarchs, of the covenant of jehovah and israel, of the promise of protection and blessing in return for the observation of this covenant, must have exercised an especial influence on the circle of the prophets; they showed them the past in the closest relation to the present; they strengthened their conviction that the external relation was insufficient, that the essential point was the internal relation of man to his god. as a fact the people of israel had experienced a peculiar fortune. of the same origin as a part of the arabian and syrian tribes and closely allied to them, the israelites had not followed the same path of development. branching off from those nearest, and then from their older tribesmen, with whom they had previously pastured their flocks, they grew up into a nation on the borders of egypt and under egyptian supremacy; a nation in which nomadic simplicity met with certain influences due to egyptian culture. forced back upon their feeling of national independence by the oppression of the egyptians, the children of jacob had emancipated themselves from egyptian dominion, and had embraced with renewed vigour the worship of their tribal god, and at length had won by force of arms an abode among the kindred tribes, to which they now stood opposed as enemies. the tribes of syria were far before them in culture of every kind, in wealth and adornment of life; the tribes of the desert, the closely related neighbours on the east of the jordan, did not cease to attack and plunder the cantons of the israelites; their neighbours on the south coast sought with persistence to subjugate them. thus the national contrast remained in force, and the fixity of it was favoured by the nature of the mountain country, the seclusion of many valleys and heights possessed by the israelites, while these same natural conditions rendered impossible such a thorough entrance into the life of the maritime cities, and the life of damascus and hamath, as could lead to the dissolution of the nationality. the fact that israel, at the time of david and solomon, obtained the preponderance over their neighbours, tended, together with the national pride, to strengthen the contrast instead of weakening it, and maintained the consciousness of nationality as a great memory. even from this point of view, starting from the national feeling and consciousness, the prophets could not but oppose the syrian tribes and their rites, and in this opposition they found the more ready acceptance in israel, the more thoroughly the consciousness was aroused that the land had been won and maintained in conflict with the tribes to whom this worship belonged. but the conception of the nature of the national deity was far more powerful in the prophets than the sense of nationality. in contrast to the lascivious worship of the powers of nature, the god of israel was originally conceived as a deity who was alien and opposed to the creative powers of nature. in the sense of this contrast jehovah was regarded as an exalted and terrible deity, to look on whom brought death; in this feeling the simple conception, which cannot forego the sensuous element, saw jehovah's manifestation in flame, in the destroying but purifying glow of fire. the aversion to all sensuous nature now rises to its fullest power in the mind of the prophets in opposition to the syrian rites; their supernatural point of view, forced onward by the struggle and the contrast, disrobed the idea of god of every material element which still adhered to it. how could this supra-terrestrial power, before which all that is earthly is dust and mire, dwell in a frail image made by human hands? the temple at jerusalem had no image, the greater part of the old places of sacrifice were without any, and among the hebrews it was well known that the worship of jehovah without images was the traditional mode of worship. neither the bull-images of jehovah, which had been set up at the time of the division of the kingdom in israel, in contrast to the images of the syrian gods, though tolerated by the prophets at the time of ahab and jehoram, nor any other image of the god, ought to be worshipped. if the divine power is not only supernatural but also purely spiritual, beyond nature and ruling over it; if it is without manifestation in the world of sense; there can be no question of the worship or deification of elementary powers, or the personification of physical processes; the worship of these is nothing but deception and senseless rites. moreover, the power before which all nature quakes can be but one. thus, to the prophetic mind, jehovah from being the tribal god of israel, beside whom other gods defended their nations, though not so mighty as he, becomes the one and only god. and to them this god is no longer merely the power which rules over nature, no longer merely the jealous and severe god of his nation from whom the first-born must be purchased, who must be worshipped with many sacrifices, and pleasant odours--to the inward emotion, the inward certainty, and conscience of the prophets he is at the same time the highest ethical power. whatever they in their enlightenment and in their hearts felt to be the just, the good, the highest, is jehovah's nature. in him were concentrated the moral elements as conceived by the prophets, and nature is no more than the footstool under his feet. he is now the one supernatural, spiritual and moral power, which rules the world, before which earth and mankind disappear. he is pure, holy and sublime; he hates injustice, violence, exaction, avarice, deceit, and oppression of kindred, and looks not on wickedness with favour. his will is just, he will requite every one according to his actions, and will not forget the evil of the evil-doer. what can the holy and just lord in heaven care for offerings of food, frankincense, and drink? the lips and the heart must be elevated to his greatness, his commands must be kept, and men must make themselves holy as he is holy. the only service of the holy god is a holy and righteous life. sacrifice is not required, but recognition of god, simplicity, chastity, and moderation. if from this point of view, to which their own conception had laboriously risen--they had learned to know the ancient god of israel in his true nature--and following the lead of the sacred scriptures, the prophets cast a glance on the fortunes and achievements of their nation,--had not jehovah already announced himself to their forefathers? had he not by moses commanded and established the true worship? had he not done great things for his people? had he not led them out of egypt and given them this beautiful land for a possession? but had israel been grateful for this?--had he made any return?--had he kept the covenant which jehovah had made with him, and his law? at the best sacrifices were offered at jerusalem, prayer was made to bull-images at dan and bethel. but how many were there who worshipped baal, astarte, and ashera! how regardless of their duties were the rich, and the judges, how luxurious and dissolute in their lives! was this the way to fulfil the commands of the just and holy god? from this arose a peculiar class of ideas. jehovah had chosen israel for his people before other nations. he desires to protect him and grant him his favour. but how can he, the pure and holy god, grant protection and defence, if his people live an impure and unholy life? to protect sinners would be against his own nature. jehovah was a severe and jealous god; was he not to punish the defection from his service, the faithlessness and ingratitude of the nation, with grievous punishment? must he not visit these wrong-doers with a heavy penalty? the assyrians were on the euphrates. from these suppositions, and the conclusion that jehovah, according to his pure and holy being as well as his severe nature, must punish the error of the people; that he could not allow the breach of the ancient covenant, the defection, the worship of idols, the injustice, and the luxury to remain unvisited, grew up the idea of a great sentence about to be executed on israel and judah. among the prophets this became a settled conviction. but according to their conception, jehovah is raised far above the weakness and the anger of men. if his people return to him, amend their conversation, and serve him with their lips and their heart, he will in his mercy pardon them, or the punishment which he sends upon them will be merely a purification; the stiff-necked obstinacy of the hard heart he will break; many will fall, but he will spare those who are true to him; and when he has corrected his people by a severe judgment, he will exalt them anew, and take up his abode on zion. filled with these conceptions the prophets came forward soon after the beginning of the eighth century. they are no longer sooth-sayers and seers; they do not predict any more; they do not announce definite facts; they only know what will and must be the consequences of the sinful life of the people: they proclaim a great judgment; they declare what must be done in order to turn aside the wrath of jehovah. impelled by inward certainty to ascertain and reveal the nature and will of jehovah, filled with religious inspiration, and in a tone of deepest earnestness, the prophets give to their utterances an expression of force and fire, which forms a proper sequel to the beautiful beginnings of lyric poetry, as we have learned to know them in the songs of victory, in the strains of thanksgiving and lamentation of the israelites, in the psalms--a sequel which corresponds to the power and importance of the spiritual movement from which the exhortations of the prophets arise. with unwearied zeal they exhort the people to return to their ancient god and trust in him alone. then, as israel's power began to decline after the death of jeroboam and uzziah, the view and conception of the prophets becomes higher and higher; the more threatening and dangerous the position of affairs, the greater their influence; and at the time when the political existence of the israelites was broken down, their religious life is perfected and purified, into a thorough recognition of ethical monotheism. a man of the kingdom of judah, amos of tekoa, a place not far from jerusalem, prophesied in israel in the first decades of the reign of jeroboam, between and b.c. he calls himself "neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet;" he assures us that he was not a disciple of the prophets, and did not wear the usual garb of a prophet, _i.e._ a poor coarse clothing. he adds that he was a herdsman and a planter of sycamores: "jehovah took me from following the flock, and said to me; go and prophesy to my people in israel."[ ] from these prophecies, which he afterwards wrote down, it is plain that the holy scriptures, in the form in which the two texts had been united and revised by the hand of a prophet, were familiar to him and present before him; that the prophecies of joel were known to him.[ ] it was in bethel, the chief place of sacrifice in israel, that he came forward. there, at the place of the bull-image, he proclaimed the wickedness of this worship, and branded in still stronger terms the moral corruption of the land. in vain had jehovah uttered warnings by his prophets; the law was not regarded; justice was crooked; the weak were oppressed. no doubt amos exaggerated his reproaches, but we cannot doubt that the faults he attacked were in existence. the careless he threatened with the destruction which would soon burst upon them if they remained without repentance or improvement. then would the high places of isaac be laid waste, and the shrines of israel destroyed, and jehovah would rise up with the sword against the house of jeroboam. the priests of israel could not endure to hear such utterances. the high priest at bethel, amaziah, said to amos: "seer, go flee thee away into the land of judah, and there eat bread and prophesy. prophesy not again any more at bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and the king's court." amos answered: "thou sayest, prophesy not against israel, and drop not thy word against the house of isaac. therefore thus saith jehovah: thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by a line; and thou shalt die in polluted land: and israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land." then amaziah the priest sent to king jeroboam: "amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of israel; the land is not able to bear all his words; for he saith, by the sword shall jeroboam die, and israel shall be led captive out of his land." the proclamations of amos were not directed against israel alone. he threatens the damascenes and the ammonites with vengeance for the devastations they had caused in gilead (ii. ); the philistines because they had carried away captives from judah and sold them (ii. ); the city of tyre because she put the captives of judah in the hands of the edomites; the edomites because they pursued their brothers (the judæans) with the sword (ii. ). nor does he even spare the kingdom of judah; even there the law of jehovah is despised, and his ordinances are not kept. but the judgment of jehovah will descend only on the guilty, and when the day of judgment is over jehovah will again purify israel and set up zion. "did i not bring you up from egypt?" so amos represents jehovah as saying; "did i not lead you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the amorites? did i not destroy the amorites before you, who were tall as cedars, and strong as oaks? did i not raise up prophets from your sons, and nazarites from your young men?[ ] hear this word, ye who oppress the weak and trample underfoot the poor;[ ] ye who stretch yourselves beside the altar on garments taken in pledge, and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of your gods; ye who overpower the just, and make the poor bow down at the gate;[ ] who purchase the thirsty for silver, and the helpless for a pair of shoes;[ ] who, father and son together, go to one mistress, and say: when is the new moon over that we may sell grain, and the day of rest that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balance for deception. do men hunt the horse on the rocks, and plough the stone with oxen, that ye may turn justice into poison, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock?[ ] because ye trample down the weak, and oppress them with burdens, ye have planted pleasant vineyards, and built houses of hewn stone.[ ] o ye that are at ease in zion, ye careless ones in the mount of samaria, who imagine that the day of destruction is far off, and draw near the seat of violence; who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch yourselves on couches; who eat up the lambs of the flock and the calves of the stall; who chant to the sound of the harp, in order to invent instruments of music like david;[ ] who empty your wine cups, and anoint yourselves with the chief oil, and trouble not yourselves for the affliction of joseph; ye shall not dwell in your houses, and drink the wine out of your pleasant gardens: ye shall go forth into misery, with the first that go captive.[ ] go to bethel, and transgress; to gilgal, and multiply transgression. bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes on the third day; burn thank-offerings, and publish the free will offerings.[ ] seek me not at bethel, and go not to gilgal and beersheba. i hate your festivals, and will not taste your offerings, or look on the thank-offering of your stalled calves. take from me the noise of your songs, and let me not hear the sound of the harp.[ ] let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: establish judgment in the gate; it may be that jehovah will have mercy on the remnant of joseph. hate the evil, and love the good, so will jehovah, the god of hosts, be with you."[ ] "but they multiply injustice and robbery in their palaces. the end of my people israel draws near; i will not overlook it longer in him. i will change your festivals into lamentation, and all your songs into mourning, and will bring sackcloth about your loins. the enemy comes round the land, and tears down the power of israel, and his palaces are plundered.[ ] go to calneh, and see, and from thence pass to hamath the great (ii. , _supr._ p. ), and go down to gath (p. ); are ye better than these kingdoms, or is your land greater? i raise against you a nation which will force you from hamath unto the river of the plain.[ ] at the time when i avenge the evil of israel upon him, and the altars of bethel, the horns of the altar will fall to the ground. i will smite the winter house and the summer house; the houses of ivory shall fall to the ground.[ ] the flight shall perish from the swift; the bowman shall not stand, the horseman shall not deliver himself, and the most courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked on that day.[ ] all the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say: the evil shall not overtake us.[ ] but i will not utterly destroy the house of jacob. i will shake them as a man shaketh a sieve, and not a grain shall fall to the ground. the days come when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and i will bring again the captivity of my people israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them, and i will plant them fast in the land, which i have given to them, that they be no more pulled out." amos had not deceived himself as to the want of inward cohesion in the circumstances of israel. the days of jeroboam ii. were coming to an end. the power which he had gained for his kingdom, the order he had given to it, were not so firmly fixed that they outlived the founders. his son zachariah, who ascended the throne in b.c., remained on it for half a year only. he was murdered "before the people" by a man of the name of shallum, the son of jabesh, who placed himself at the head of a conspiracy, and with him the house of jehu came to an end in the fourth generation. shallum seized the throne, but maintained it only a month. menahem, the son of gadi, rebelled against him in tirzah, defeated and slew him, and took his place on the throne ( b.c.).[ ] he met with resistance in the land; internal strife distracted israel, and loosed all the bonds of order. "the idols have spoken vanity," so we find it in the older zachariah; "and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain; therefore they went their way as a flock; they were troubled, because they had no shepherd. mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and i will punish the goats.[ ] i will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith jehovah; but lo! i will deliver the men, every man into his neighbour's hand, and into the hand of his king, and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand i will not deliver them. three shepherds also i cut off in one month;[ ] and my soul loathed them; and i said, i will not feed you: that which dieth, let it die; and that which is to be cut off, let it be cut off, and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another. for lo! i will raise up a shepherd in the land which shall not visit those that be cut off, nor seek the strayed one, nor heal that which is wounded; but he shall eat the flesh of the fat. woe to the worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his right arm, and upon his right eye. his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye darkened.[ ] open thy doors, o lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars! howl, cypress, for the cedar is fallen; for the heights are made desolate: howl, o oaks of bashan; for the steep forest sinketh! listen to the howling of the shepherds; for their glory is spoiled: listen to the roaring of lions, for the pride of jordan is desolate.[ ] the burden descends on hadrach, and on damascus; on hamath that shall border thereby; on tyre and sidon, though it be very wise. tyre built herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. behold, the lord will take her, and cast her walls into the sea, and she shall be consumed by fire. ascalon shall see it, and fear; gaza, and be very sorrowful, and ekron, for her expectation shall be ashamed; and the king shall perish from gaza, and ascalon is uninhabited. a strange race shall dwell in ashdod, and i will destroy the pride of the philistines.[ ] and i will cut off the chariot from ephraim, and horses from jerusalem. but jehovah shall save them in that day as the flock of his people; they are the stones of a crown lifted up upon his land."[ ] even earlier, in the last years of the reign of jeroboam, or the beginning of the reign of his son zachariah, hosea, the son of beeri, had received the word. "yet a little time," such is the word of jehovah in his lips, "and i will avenge the bloodguiltiness of jezreel on the house of jehu (the murder of jehoram and jezebel by jehu, ii. ), and put an end to the kingdom of the house of israel; and at the same time i will break the bow of israel in the valley of jezreel."[ ] when zachariah fell before shallum, and jehu's house was destroyed, we find in hosea, "they chose kings without me (jehovah), captains of whom i knew nothing." "i will give thee a king in my anger, and take him away in wrath. all your kings shall fall, for none of them call upon me. israel is a heifer that cannot be tied."[ ] the prophet demands with the greatest vehemence that the worship of images shall be given up, and the bull-images at dan and bethel (ii. ) removed: that robbery and murder come to an end, that israel turn to jehovah; the judgment threatens, and there is no helper but jehovah.[ ] "hear this, ye priests; receive it, house of israel; and thou, house of the king, take heed thereof," cries hosea.[ ] "when israel was a child i loved him, saith jehovah; i called my son from egypt. in the desert, in the land of great drought, i did know thee.[ ] i taught ephraim to go, taking them by the arm; i drew them with human cords, with bands of love; i took off the yoke from their backs, and laid meat unto them.[ ] israel was an empty vine, but the more that his fruit increased, the more altars did he build; the better his land, the more beautiful pillars did he set up.[ ] they made images of their silver according to their knowledge, idols, the work of craftsmen, and said: let them that sacrifice kiss the calves.[ ] they sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because the shadow thereof is good.[ ] i will go after my lovers, saith israel, the faithless wife, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink; and she knows not that jehovah increased her corn and sweet wine, and oil, and silver.[ ] there is no faithfulness, no love, no knowledge of god in the land. ye have ploughed wickedness and reaped iniquity, and have eaten the fruit of lies.[ ] they practise swearing and lying, and stealing, and adultery, and violence; the priests commit murder on the way to shechem; they practise all iniquity in gilgal, and bloodguiltiness is joined to bloodguiltiness.[ ] they slay flesh for sacrifice, and eat it.[ ] i desire not sacrifice but mercy; and the knowledge of god more than burnt offerings.[ ] therefore in my own time i will take back my corn; i will tear away my wool and my flax from the harlot israel; and make an end to her festivals, her new moons, her sabbaths, and avenge on her the days of baal, when she offered incense to them which placed their nose-ring and ornaments upon her, and went after her lovers, and loved the hire of the harlot at every thrashing floor, but forgat me."[ ] "israel hath forgotten his creator, and built palaces, and judah hath multiplied his fortified cities,"[ ] says the prophet in regard to the fortresses built by uzziah (p. ). "they trusted to the number of thy warriors, but israel's king passes away like a morning cloud. ephraim is as a silly dove; they call on egypt; they go to assyria to bring whoredom. ephraim goes after asshur, and sends to the king for help. ephraim will hunt after the wind, and strain after the east wind, that they may make a covenant with assyria, and carry oil to egypt.[ ] the deliverer king will not heal you. the east will come; a wind of jehovah will rise out of the desert, which will plunder the treasure of costly furniture, and samaria will repent. the calf of bethaven (= house of evil,--thus the prophet alters the name of bethel = house of god, the chief place of worship in the kingdom of israel) will be carried to assyria, as a gift to the king, the deliverer; asshur shall be their king, for they will not amend. the days of punishment, of vengeance will come; as to the people, so shall it happen to the priests. israel's pride shall be bowed down, and judah shall fall with him. they shall not remain in the land of jehovah; ephraim shall return to egypt, and eat unclean things in assyria. they are gone because of destruction; egypt shall gather them up, and memphis shall bury them.[ ] the high places of bethaven shall be destroyed; thorns and thistles shall come up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us; and to the hills, fall on us."[ ] "what shall i do to thee, ephraim? how shall i deal with thee? shall i destroy thee? saith jehovah. but my heart is turned, my repentings are kindled; i will not execute the fierceness of my wrath; i am god and not man; as the holy one i will not come into anger.[ ] i will punish them till they repent, and in their affliction they will seek me early.[ ] i will allure them into the wilderness; i will speak to their hearts, that israel may sing again as in the days of his youth, and on the day when he came out of egypt; and the name of baal i will remove out of his mouth.[ ] return, o israel, to jehovah thy god. speak ye to him; take away iniquity, and receive us, that we offer the sacrifice of our lips. assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; the work of our hands shall be called our gods no more.[ ] then, saith jehovah: i will hear ephraim, and look with favour upon him. i will heal their backsliding, and come and love them freely; my anger is turned away, and i will let them dwell in their houses. i will be as dew upon israel; israel shall grow as a lily, and cast forth his roots as lebanon: and i will betroth thee unto me for ever; i will betroth thee in righteousness and in judgment, in loving-kindness, gentleness, and mercies."[ ] the words of hosea leave no doubt that menahem, king of israel, sought aid from assyria in order to maintain himself on the throne. with this the books of kings agree. they tell us: menahem gave to the king of assyria kikkar of silver (according to the babylonian standard about £ , ), "that the king might join him in establishing the kingdom in his hand." the payment of the money was imposed by menahem on all the men of substance in israel; fifty shekels of silver on every man. according to this the king of israel was himself without means, but the land must have been in a position to pay such a considerable tribute, so large a sum. there must, according to this statement, have been at this time , families in israel who were in a position to pay a mina each (about £ ). the monuments of assyria inform us that in the year b.c. tiglath pilesar marched against northern syria and arpad (tel erfad p. ); that he conquered arpad after a siege of three years, or after three campaigns against the city.[ ] in the city of arpad--so we are told in a fragment of his annals--he received the tribute of rezin of damascus; kikkar of gold, kikkar of silver, kikkar of copper; and the tribute of kustaspi of kummukh, of hiram of tyre, of pisiris of karchemish.[ ] this must, therefore, have taken place in the year or b.c. he received the tribute of menahem immediately before the ninth year of his reign ( b.c.), _i.e._ in the year b.c. he tells us that at that time he received tribute from kustaspi of kummukh, rezin of damascus, menahem of samaria, hiram of tyre, sibittibal of gebal (byblus), urikki of kui (cilicia), pisiris of karchemish, eniel of hamath, tarchular of gamguma, sulumal of milid, vassurmi of tubal, and zabibieh, the queen of the arabs. menahem, therefore, sought to purchase the help of tiglath pilesar by offering tribute soon after the fall of arpad. hence in these years the king of assyria held a position which included northern and central syria, and governed those countries immediately from the crossing of the euphrates at karchemish, and from arpad. passing beyond hamath and damascus, beyond byblus and tyre, he was now ruler over the kingdom of samaria also. from the south-east a princess of the arabs, from the north-west the prince of the cilicians, sent tribute. menahem of israel must have died soon after the payment of tribute; the subjection to assyria appears to have established his power so far that his son pekahiah could succeed him on the throne ( b.c.). but in the second year of his reign pekahiah was murdered in the palace at samaria by pekah, the son of remaliah, who now ascended the throne of israel ( b.c.). pekah combined with rezin, king of damascus, for a united attack on the kingdom of judah. judah did not remain untouched by the establishment and extensive advances of the assyrian power in syria. we saw in what successful struggles uzziah-azariah had extended the territory of judah in his long reign; how agriculture and trade developed under him. the advance of tiglath pilesar in the last years of the reign of uzziah called these successes in question once more. it did not find uzziah wholly unprepared. he had fortified jerusalem more strongly; he had provided for the arming of his forces, and arranged the levy of the men of military age. a very mutilated fragment of the annals of tiglath pilesar mentions twice the land of judah, and three times the second half of the name of azariah, _i.e._ the name by which uzziah is named in the books of kings.[ ] another fragment, which deals with the events in syria which took place before the payment of tribute to menahem, again mentions azariah (uzziah); it informs us that mount lebanon, the land of baalzephon,[ ] the land of ammana (the region of the amanus?) the city of hadrach had been subjugated; that the king "added to the land of assyria nineteen districts of hamath, situated on the sea of the setting sun, together with the cities in their land, which had revolted to azariah in faithless rebellion, and had placed his officers and viceroys over them."[ ] the districts of hamath here mentioned must be sought between the orontes and the sea, immediately north of aradus. the occurrence no doubt took place in the time when tiglath pilesar fought against or besieged arpad, _i.e._ in the years from b.c. to . from this we must conclude that azariah (uzziah) of judah (neither he nor the kingdom of judah is mentioned among the tributary states in these fragments) assumed a hostile position towards tiglath pilesar; that during the struggle for arpad he attempted to unite some of the states and tribes of syria against the advance of assyria. this opposition of judah may have formed another motive for menahem to place himself under the supremacy, and at the same time under the protection, of tiglath pilesar. as vassals of tiglath pilesar, rezin of damascus and pekah of israel may have felt themselves more justified in attacking the southern neighbour-state, the kingdom of judah, which would not submit to the dominion of assyria. uzziah was no more when pekah obtained the throne of israel. he had died four years previously ( b.c.), and was buried in the sepulchres of the kings at jerusalem. his son jotham, who had already shared in the rule during the last years of his father's reign, sat on the throne of judah. he withstood the attack of the combined israelites and damascenes.[ ] but his son ahaz, who succeeded him in the year b.c., was reduced by this war to the greatest distress. the philistines whom uzziah had repelled and punished severely, the edomites whom he had subjugated, rebelled. pekah's warriors laid judah waste, and carried rich booty and numerous prisoners to samaria; rezin pressed forward to the south to aid the edomites, expelled the judæans from elath, and there established himself on the red sea. the hostile armies marched on jerusalem. ahaz "made his son to go through the fire" to avert the threatened ruin. at last he found no other means of rescue than to pay homage to assyria, and entreat the protection of tiglath pilesar. in the last years of uzziah, and in the reign of jotham, isaiah, the son of amoz, had received the word at jerusalem. like amos and hosea, isaiah contended against the luxury and dissoluteness of the rich, the injustice of the elders, the corruption of the judges, the idolatry in the land. he attacked the false security in which men reposed in the possession of horses and chariots of war; he announced the coming vengeance with even more vehement emphasis than his predecessors. if for them the gods of the other nations have already disappeared beside the one jehovah, isaiah represents the approaching destruction as breaking out not only over israel and judah, but over all nations, because they go after false gods. their evil deeds will also be punished; no power on the earth can stand before jehovah. but behind this judgment, the horror of which will turn all men to jehovah, isaiah also exhibits the restoration of israel and judah, the restoration of the whole renewed world, in the most glowing colours. that was jehovah's purpose "since the days of old." "the land is full of horses," so isaiah spake, "and there is no end of its chariots." as we have seen, uzziah had amassed munitions of war, and arranged excellently the military power (p. ),--"but the land is also full of idols, and they worship the work of their own hands. every man oppresses his neighbour; the young man behaves proudly against the old, and the base against the honourable. thy chiefs, o jerusalem, are faithless men, the companions of thieves![ ] every one loves bribery, and seeks after gain. they do no justice to the orphan, and regard not the cause of the widow. woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the scribes who write iniquity, to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor![ ] woe to them who justify the wicked for reward, and take away the right of the just![ ] woe to them that join house to house, and field to field, till they alone are possessors of the land![ ] what mean ye to beat my people in pieces, saith jehovah, and grind the faces of the poor?[ ] woe to them that rise up early in the morning, and follow strong drink, who heated with wine sit till the night; and the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts![ ] woe to them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink! woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter; that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! woe to them who draw upon them punishment with cords of vanity, and reward of sin with a cart-rope!"[ ] isaiah carried the jews from the service of sacrifice to the improvement of the heart, to righteous conversation and good works. "to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?" so isaiah represents jehovah as saying. "i am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of stalled calves; and i delight not in the blood of bullocks, lambs, and he-goats. who hath required of you to tread my courts? your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are trouble to me, i am weary to bear them. bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me: when ye spread forth your hands i will hide mine eyes from you; and when ye pray, i will not hear you.[ ] with your mouth ye draw near to me, and with your lips ye honour me; but your heart ye keep far from me, and your fear of me is taught by the precept of men.[ ] relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead the cause of the widow. wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil."[ ] "what could have been done more to my vineyard, that i have not done to it? wherefore, when i looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? ye have turned my vineyard into a pasture; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. now i will take away the hedge, and pull down the walls, that it may be trodden down.[ ] i will come to judgment with your elders and chiefs, and i will deal marvellously with this people; the wisdom of their wise men, and the understanding of the prudent shall be hid."[ ] after isaiah had depicted the terrors of the day of judgment, the quaking of the earth, the creeping away and the death of sinners, in lively colours, he represents the people as crying out: "who of us shall dwell with the devouring fire, and the everlasting flame?" and then answers: "he that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; who despiseth the gain of oppressions; that turneth his hands from holding of bribes, and stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; who taketh justice for his measuring line and righteousness for his balance: he shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of the rock, and his waters shall not be dried up. though your sins be red like scarlet, they shall be white as snow, if ye obey jehovah."[ ] with the death of jotham the distress increased. isaiah warns his people not to seek aid from assyria. "wickedness," he cries, "burneth as fire; no man shall spare his fellow. he shall snatch on the right hand and be hungry; and eat on the left hand and be unsatisfied. manasseh shall eat ephraim, and ephraim manasseh, and both together shall fall upon judah."[ ] "fear not," he says to king ahaz, "neither be faint-hearted, for the two tails of these smoking firebrands; for the fierce anger of rezin and the son of remaliah; they shall not break open jerusalem, and the land, before whose kings thou art afraid, shall soon be made desolate.[ ] but with the razor that is hired beyond the river (euphrates) the lord will shear off thy head, and the hair of thy feet, and thy beard."[ ] and when ahaz refused to be restrained, isaiah proclaimed: "because israel rejoices in rezin and the son of remaliah, the lord will bring upon them the waters of the river strong and many. the stream shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; the riches of damascus and the spoil of samaria shall be taken away before the king of assyria. but the stream shall pass through judah; it shall overflow and go over till it reaches even to the neck."[ ] "ahaz sent messengers to tiglath pilesar, king of assyria," so the books of kings tell us, "saying, i am thy servant and thy son; come up and save me out of the hands of the king of aram (of damascus) and the king of israel. and ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the house of jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house, and sent a present to the king of assyria. then the king of assyria gave ear to him. he marched out against damascus and took it, and carried away the inhabitants to kir, and slew rezin. and in israel tiglath pilesar took ijon and abel-beth-maachah, and janoha, and kedesh, and hazor, and gilead, the whole land of naphtali, and led them away to assyria. and hoseas, the son of elah, set on foot a conspiracy against pekah, and defeated him, and slew him, and was king in his place. but ahaz went to damascus to meet king tiglath pilesar."[ ] the assyrian list of rulers mentions for the year b.c. a campaign of tiglath pilesar against the land of the philistines, and for the years and b.c. campaigns of the king against damascus. a fragment of the annals informs us that the army of damascus was defeated; that their king rezin (rasunnu) fled to the great gate of his city; that his captive generals were crucified; that the city was besieged; that hadara, the house of the father of rezin, was taken; that places in districts of the kingdom of damascus (imirisu) were laid waste.[ ] a further fragment informs us that tiglath pilesar made himself master of the cities of hadrach, zemar, and arka (the two ancient cities of the phenicians on the coast, already known to us); that he reached the borders of the land of omri (israel); that hanno, king of gaza, fled to egypt before the face of the warrior tiglath pilesar. afterwards the fragment mentions the land of omri, speaks of a sending or carrying away to assyria, and continues: "pekah (pakaha) their king they had slain. hoseas (husi) i made king over them."[ ] the inscription, which comprises the deeds of tiglath pilesar down to the last year of his reign, mentions towards the end the princes of assyria, who brought him tribute: sibittibal of byblus, eniel of hamath, mattanbal of arvad, sanib of ammon (bit ammanai), salman of moab, mitinti of ascalon, ahaz of judah (jauhazi, jahudai), kosmalak of edom, hanno (hanun) of gaza.[ ] the attempt of rezin of damascus and pekah of israel to break the rise of the philistines and edomites, and the power of the kingdom of judah, fortified as it was and strengthened by uzziah, led to important consequences, to the subjugation of syria to assyria throughout its whole extent. when ahaz called for help, tiglath pilesar turned against the enemies of judah. the kingdom of damascus, which for years had so powerfully withstood the assyrians, succumbed after a struggle of two years. tyre and byblus had long paid tribute to tiglath pilesar, and now aradus was compelled to recognise the supremacy of assyria; israel was overrun: the inhabitants of the northern towns--ijon, abel-beth-maacha, hazor and kedesh, and the dwellers in the land of naphtali on the lakes of merom and genezareth, and of the land of gilead--were carried away to assyria. the eastern neighbours of israel and of the land of gilead, the ammonites and moabites, were driven to submit like the edomites; the cities of the philistines were conquered. with the subjugation of ascalon and gaza the assyrian kingdom became the neighbour of egypt. footnotes: [ ] kings xiv. ; amos vi. , . [ ] amos iii. ; vi. - ; hosea xii. . that the commencement of jehu and athaliah must be placed at the year b.c., has been shown vol. ii. p. . the books of kings give years from the accession of athaliah to the fall of samaria, and years from the accession of jehu to the same time. hence the synchronism which they observe for corresponding reigns in israel and judah cannot be correct at any rate for the last half-century of this time, and varying statements with reference to these reigns show that this fact was known to those who made these observations. moreover, the canon of the assyrians puts the fall of samaria in the year b.c., from which it follows ( - = ), that years in excess for judah, and for israel, have been added. thus we are driven to hypotheses for the period from to b.c., as well as for the period - . in the traditional numbers at least in one reign there has been abbreviation, not extension, as in the previous period. samaria was taken in the ninth year of hoshea, the seventh of hezekiah ( kings xvii. ; xviii. ). hoshea therefore ascended the throne in , hezekiah in b.c. but the facts narrated in a fragment of the annals of tiglath pilesar, that he reached the borders of bit omri, that he conquered gaza and made hoshea king (frag. , in g. smith, "disc." p. ), fall, according to the list of rulers, in the year b.c. hoshea's accession must, therefore, be placed in the year b.c. hoshea's predecessor, pekah, is said to have reigned years. if hoshea ascended the throne in b.c., pekah, according to this statement, must have ascended it in b.c., and pekahiah, the son of menahem, who only reigned two years, in . but the fragment of the annals of tiglath pilesar, which mentions the payment of tribute by menahem, puts this payment immediately before the ninth year of tiglath pilesar, _i.e._ before the year b.c.,; frag. , in g. smith, _loc. cit._ in , therefore, menahem was still on the throne; and his death cannot have taken place before this year. thus the interval between menahem's death and hoshea's accession, which the books of kings reckon at years, is reduced to four years; pekah cannot have reigned , but only two or three years. menahem's death in b.c., fixes the beginning of his reign, which lasted years, at b.c. before him, zachariah, the son of jeroboam, and shallum, reigned seven months. jeroboam's reign must, therefore, have ended in b.c. it lasted years, and must, therefore, have begun in b.c. thus of the years and seven months, which the books of kings reckon for israel from the accession of jeroboam to the capture of samaria, only remain. we must place jeroboam from to , zachariah and shallum in , menahem's accession in , his death in ; pekahiah from to , pekah from to , in which year he is succeeded by hoshea. in the list of the kings of judah, years are enumerated from uzziah's (azariah's) accession to the fall of samaria. before hezekiah, whose accession as already observed is to be put in b.c., comes ahaz with years; before ahaz, jotham also with years. hence jotham's predecessor, uzziah-azariah, died in , and ahaz began to reign in . but the eighth fragment of the annals of tiglath pilesar, already mentioned, puts the defection of the districts of the land of hamath to azariah not long before the year b.c.,; other fragments mention contacts with azariah, which, according to the list of rulers, belong to the years or b.c. hence azariah was alive at any rate as late as b.c.; the interval given by the books of kings between uzziah-azariah and the accession of hezekiah is reduced from to years. the reigns of jotham and ahaz must therefore be reduced from years each to six years each; and the years from uzziah's accession to the fall of samaria to years. the parallelism with the reigns in israel remains undisturbed. jotham reigned from to , ahaz from to . in the year ahaz is attacked by pekah, who, as we have seen, reigned from to , and before the accession of ahaz had attacked his predecessor jotham ( kings xv. ). the campaign of tiglath pilesar against pekah took place, according to the list of the rulers, in the year b.c. the same list puts the war of tiglath pilesar against damascus in the years and b.c. the great inscription of tiglath pilesar which narrates his deeds down to the seventeenth year of his reign, _i.e._ down to b.c., mentions shortly before the close the tribute of jauhazi of judah (in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ), and the books of kings (ii. xvi. , ), mention the journey of ahaz to damascus to pay homage there to tiglath pilesar. this must, therefore, have taken place in b.c.. the synchronism of jeroboam and uzziah, which is also always marked at the commencement of the prophetic writings referring to them, is not altered by our assumptions. uzziah, who ascended the throne at years of age, reigned from to ; jeroboam from to . from uzziah's accession up to the accession of athaliah, the books of kings give years; the interval between and gives us years; so that there must have been an abbreviation. this can be assumed most conveniently in the reign of amaziah, which lasted for years, and includes the years from to . in the reign of his father joash we know that there was a long minority, and the twenty-third year of this reign is mentioned. of amaziah's acts, the subjugation of edom, which he did not complete, comes after the year b.c. edom's tribute is mentioned under bin-nirar of assyria (ii. ). just as little is the parallelism of amaziah with joash of israel altered by our assumption. as years, i.e. eight years too many, were given for israel from the accession of jeroboam ( ) up to jehu's accession, eight years must be taken from the reign of joash, and for his reign, therefore, eight years are left instead of , i.e. the eight years from to . violent as these assumptions seem as compared with the traditional numbers of the books of kings, they are merely given as a forced hypothesis, and at any rate leave the traditional facts undisturbed, while the coincidence, which may be obtained by assuming joint regencies, a first and second reign of jeroboam ii., a first and second menahem, a first and second reign of pekah, for the lists of judah and israel, alters the tradition without bringing the agreement into harmony with the list of eponyms. [ ] chron. xxvi. . [ ] chron. xxvi. ; zech. ix. . as amos mentions the capture of gath (vi. ), and judah is still to conquer the remnant of edom (amos ix. ), the war against the philistines must be regarded as one of uzziah's deeds in arms. [ ] chron. xxvi. ; isa. ii. . [ ] kings xiv. . the re-conquest of the judæan settlement and harbour city, which had been destroyed by the edomites in their revolt from judah under jehoram (ii. ), can have had no other object than to restore the trade connections on the red sea. besides, it is expressly stated ( kings xvi. ): "at the same time ( b.c.), rezin again gained elath for syria, and drove the jews out of elath, and the syrians came to elath, and dwelt there to this day." [ ] this follows from the fact that amos speaks of the ruined tabernacle of david, and the breaches in its wall (ix. ). [ ] chron. xxvi. . [ ] chron. xxvi. - . [ ] an older prophet of this name, distinct from the son of jehoiadah, and perhaps also distinct from the son of berechiah (isa. viii. ), but identical with this zachariah, if the words of the chronicles may be explained to mean: "so long as he (uzziah) listened to zachariah." [ ] kings xv. ; chron. xxvi - ; kings ix. . [ ] amos i. ; iv. . [ ] the date of amos is fixed not only by the superscription, but by the mention of the house of jeroboam in his prophecies. moreover, the desolation caused by the damascenes in israel, the campaigns of the philistines against judah (ii. ), appear to be in recent remembrance. if the "fallen tabernacle of david, the breaches in its wall," are also mentioned (ix. , ), it is clear that uzziah, who came to the throne in the year b.c. at an age of years, had not completely restored judah, that he had not recovered elath. on the other hand, it is clear that gath was already taken. hence amos cannot have come forward before the tenth or twelfth year of uzziah, _i.e._ before or , according to our computation (p. , _note_). the canon of the assyrians agrees with this in putting the campaign of bin-nirar to the coast in the year b.c.; and afterwards records the last campaign of the assyrians to damascus before the time of tiglath pilesar ii. in the year b.c.; after which time only contests against hadrach ( - ) and against arpad are mentioned (p. ), which tiglath pilesar then resumes in the year b.c. in amos the assyrians are still in the back-ground. [ ] amos ii. - . [ ] amos viii. ; v. . [ ] amos ii. , . [ ] amos viii. . [ ] amos vi. . [ ] amos v. . [ ] amos vi. - . [ ] amos v. . [ ] amos iv. , . [ ] amos v. - . [ ] amos v. , , . [ ] amos iii. , ; vi. . [ ] amos vi. . [ ] amos iii. , . [ ] amos ii. - . [ ] amos ix. . [ ] kings xv. - . [ ] zech. x. , . [ ] king zachariah, and then shallum: the third is the opponent of menahem who sought to maintain himself in tipsach (taanach?). [ ] zech. xi. , , , , . [ ] zech. xi. - . [ ] zech. ix. - . [ ] zech. ix. , . [ ] hosea i. , . [ ] hosea viii. ; iv. ; vii. ; xiii. . [ ] hosea xiii. . [ ] hosea v. . [ ] hosea xiii. . [ ] hosea xi. - . [ ] hosea x. . [ ] hosea xiii. . [ ] hosea iv. . [ ] hosea ii. - . [ ] hosea x. . [ ] hosea iv. . [ ] hosea viii. . [ ] hosea vi. . [ ] hosea ii. - ; ix. . [ ] hosea viii. . [ ] hosea xii. . [ ] hosea ix. - ; v. ; vii. ; viii. ; x. ; xi. ; xiii. ; xiv. . [ ] hosea x. . [ ] hosea xi. . [ ] hosea v. . [ ] hosea ii. - . [ ] hosea xiv. - . [ ] hosea xiv. - ; ii. . [ ] lists of rulers, - , "during three years he conquered arpad." [ ] frag. , in g. smith, p. . [ ] eberhard schrader, "jahrb. protest. theolog." , s. . [ ] a different baalzephon from that on the red sea; exod. xiv. , . [ ] schrader, _loc. cit._ s. ; rodwell, "records of the past," , ; g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] kings xv. , , . [ ] isa. ii. . the moral precepts of isaiah are collected in the text without regard to the chronology. [ ] isa. x. , . [ ] isa. v. . [ ] isa. v. . [ ] isa. iii. , . [ ] isa. v. , . [ ] isa. v. - . [ ] isa. i. - . [ ] isa. xxix. . [ ] isa. i. , . [ ] isa. v. , , , . [ ] isa. xxix. . [ ] isa. xxxiii. - ; i. , . [ ] isa. ix. - . [ ] isa. vii. , , . [ ] isa. vii. . [ ] isa. viii. - . [ ] kings xv. , ; xvi. - . [ ] frag. , in g. smith, "disc." p. ; e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. . [ ] frag. , in g. smith, p. , ; rodwell, "records of the past," , ; e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. . [ ] ll. - , in g. smith, "disc." p. , ; e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . chapter iii. the pharaohs of tanis, bubastis, and napata. at the close of the fourteenth century b.c. ramses iii. had secured egypt against the attacks of the libyans, syrians, and arabians. his successors of the same name remained peacefully within the borders of their land. neither tradition nor monuments tell us of their campaigns. two or three sepulchres in the rocks of biban el moluk and some inscriptions give us their names, and inform us that these ramessids built at the temple of chon at thebes, that they maintained the dominion of thebes up the nile as far as mt. barkal down to the year b.c.[ ] of more importance is the fact that under the successors of ramses vi., the last rulers of the name of ramses, who sat on the throne from the year to b.c., the high-priests of thebes obtained a position which formed a strong counterpoise to the power of the kings, and at length threw it into the back-ground, if it did not altogether remove it. in inscriptions in the temple of chon, herhor, the high-priest at the time of ramses xiii., receives the title of prince (_si suten_, king's son) of cush, a title borne by the viceroys of napata since ramses ii. they call him "commander-in-chief of the army in upper and lower egypt;" and finally, "si-amun" and "si-ra," and with these titles, which were borne by the pharaohs, herhor receives also the symbols of the king. it is also thought that the inscriptions speak of tribute of the retennu, _i.e._ the syrians, which he received.[ ] it may be that herhor rose to the throne after the death of ramses xiii., or that he reigned during his lifetime, or that he absolutely deposed him. pianchi, the son of herhor, is called in the monuments "high-priest of ammon, prophet of mut, commander of the cavalry of the king of upper and lower egypt;" but the king, whose officer pianchi was, is not mentioned. on the other hand, pinotem, the son of this pianchi, like herhor, bears on the monuments the addition of a divine name "miamun," after the manner of the pharaohs, and royal symbols. a memorial stone of thebes tells us that mencheper-ra, general-in-chief of the army of upper and lower egypt, son of king miamun pinotem, marched out in the twenty-fifth year, _i.e._ in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of pinotem, to patores, _i.e._ upper egypt, in order to "restore peace in the land and punish the enemy." the families of thebes received him with songs of joy; on the fourth intercalary day, on the feast of the birth of isis, the majesty of ammon, the king of the gods, was brought forth in procession; mencheper-ra implored the sanction of ammon, that the banished--there were myriads of them--might be brought back, and the god gave his sanction. it seems then that the supremacy of the family of herhor met with a violent resistance, and that pinotem nevertheless found himself strong enough in the twenty-fifth year of his reign to publish an act of amnesty. whether pinotem's son, mencheper-ra, came to the throne, whether and how the race of the ramessids became extinct, we do not know.[ ] but the period of the extinction of the ramessids and of the priests of thebes who contended with them for power, or shared it with them, we may place about the year b.c. in manetho's list the ramessids are succeeded by a dynasty of seven princes, who belonged to the canton of tanis (zoan). together they are said to have reigned over egypt years. the first prince of this house, smendes, must have ascended the throne about years before the time when the people of israel raised up saul to be king. the chronology of the hebrews allows us to establish the fact that the last prince of this house must have come to an end at least ten years before the middle of the tenth century.[ ] from this point ( b.c.), the period already mentioned as the length of the dynasty of the tanites, carries us back to the year for the date of the accession of smendes. since the expulsion of the hyksos the central point of the kingdom had remained for more than years at thebes. with the accession of the tanites it was removed to the delta. henceforth it was never restored to upper egypt or to thebes. after a reign of years smendes was succeeded by psusennes, who sat on the throne for years ( - b.c.). if it was psusennes, who took into his protection the young son of the king of edom, who was saved from david and joab by the servants of his father, and gave him the sister of his wife in marriage,[ ] it is the daughter of amenophtis, the fourth prince of this house ( - b.c.), which solomon took to wife, whom he honoured above his other wives, and for whom he built a special house near his new palace (ii. ). solomon remained on good terms with the successors of amenophtis. only a few shields have been preserved from the monuments of this dynasty in the ruins of tanis; in these we can recognise the name of smendes in the form of si-mentu, of psusennes i. in the form psiuncha, of amenophtis in the form amenemenkam, and lastly of psusennes ii. in the form hor psiuncha.[ ] the last prince of this house, psusennes ii., was succeeded in the year b.c. by sesonchis, the ssheshonk of the monuments, the shishak of the hebrews. with him begins a new dynasty, which, according to manetho's list, belonged to the canton of bubastis. in the western delta a considerable part of the population, at any rate since the time of the shepherd kings, was of a semitic character. but families belonging to the nation of the shepherds were not all that remained from those periods; semitic elements remained in the language and manners of the egyptians, and these certainly increased in importance owing to the campaigns of the tuthmosis and amenophis in syria, the long settlement of the hebrews in this district, the relations of ramses ii. to the hittites; lastly, to the trade of the phenicians, the friendly relation and lively intercourse which the tanites maintained since solomon's time with the kingdom of israel. the names of the forefathers and descendants of ssheshonk show that he belonged to a semitic family living in the canton of bubastis. his forefathers had risen under the pharaohs of tanis; his grandfather, whose name the grandson bore, had married a lady of distinction. the offspring of this marriage, nemrut (nimrod), was captain of the body-guard (mashawasha), and bore the semitic title, _ser a mat_, _i.e._ sovereign; at any rate he is so named by his son ssheshonk on a granite block at abydus, which enumerates the funds supplied by the son for the libations poured to his father who is buried here--unless we have rather to recognise in this title as well as in the addition to it, "prince of princes," titles of distinction subsequently transferred from the son to the father.[ ] in another inscription the same ssheshonk calls his predecessor psusennes ii. king of upper egypt;[ ] a memorial stone of selsilis mentions a double accession of ssheshonk; the inscription on a statue of the nile in the british museum states that king hor psiuncha married his daughter rakamat to osorkon, the son of ssheshonk.[ ] hence we may assume that ssheshonk, the son of nemrut, became a rival for the throne; that psusennes ii. was perhaps compelled to retire to upper egypt, whither ssheshonk could not penetrate; that a compromise took place with psusennes, the possessor of the throne, by means of this marriage, which secured the succession to ssheshonk and his family; and that ssheshonk subsequently described his rebellion as his first accession, and his accession after the death of psusennes ii. as his second.[ ] however this may be, whether ssheshonk in the first instance obtained the power over lower egypt only, whether he afterwards lost it, or whether he did not obtain the supremacy till after the death of hor psiuncha,[ ] he took up a different position towards the kingdom of judah from that occupied by the dynasty of tanis since the accession of amenophtis. when flying from solomon, jeroboam found refuge and protection with ssheshonk. when after solomon's death the ten tribes made jeroboam their king, as against rehoboam, ssheshonk in the year b.c. undertook the campaign against judah which secured jeroboam; he confirmed the division, carried away spoil from judah, and exhibited israel in dependence on egypt. the results of this campaign ssheshonk caused to be set forth in the most splendid manner on the walls of the temple of karnak, westward of the building which ramses iii. had here erected in the circuit-wall, (i. ). the picture displays the victorious pharaoh, and the taxed places as bound figures in a long row (ii. ). over the row of vanquished places we read that "the good god (the king) returned in peace, after defeating the nations of the north and south; that he led home captive nations who had never seen egypt, that he spread the terror of his name as far as the four pillars of the heavens." ammon says to the king: "my heart is glad, that i have seen thy victories. i have granted that the nations of the south shall be defeated and come to thee, and the nations of the north shall be subject to the greatness of thy name. their kings throw themselves on the belly, for they are stricken to the ground in their vallies. i have known the splendour of thy thoughts; thou hast carried out the work of my temple at thebes, the brilliant place, which my heart loves; thou hast begun to build in hermonthis and heliopolis."[ ] we see what achievements the inscriptions of the pharaohs can make out of a plundering excursion into the south of syria: the nations of the north and of the south are overcome; the terror of ssheshonk is spread to the pillars of the sky. besides this picture of his victories on the outer wall, ssheshonk erected a kind of entrance porch to the southern court of the great temple at karnak. the inscriptions on the architrave of this porch tell us that ssheshonk had given command to enlarge the temple of ammon; that he had made the city of thebes to live again.[ ] on a memorial stone in the quarries of selsilis, the goddess mut places the king, "the great conqueror of all nations," accompanied by his son aupoth,[ ] before ammon of thebes, ra-harmachu of heliopolis, and ptah of memphis. the inscription says: "that is the divine benefactor; ra wears his shape; he is the image of harmachu. ammon has placed him on the throne, in order to complete what he had begun, in the occupation of egypt for the second time. this is king ssheshonk; he caused a new quarry to be opened for the beginning of a structure. of such a nature is the kindness which he has shown to his father, ammon ra." then ssheshonk himself says: "it is a beautiful thing to work for ammon. grant me a long reign for that which i have done. i have caused a new quarry to be opened for him for the beginning of a work. the high priest of ammon has carried it out, aupoth the highest captain of the most famous army, the first of all the warriors of patores, the son of ssheshonk."[ ] the architect also, who had to erect the portico, horemsaf, mentions this task in an inscription at selsilis. in the twenty-first year, _i.e._ in the twenty-first year of the reign,[ ] ssheshonk had commanded him to obtain the best stones of selsilis, in order to erect buildings for the king of the gods, and to surround them with a strong wall.[ ] ssheshonk was succeeded by his son osorkon, the husband of the daughter of psusennes ii., the last king of the preceding dynasty. it is supposed that in him we may discover the cushite serach, who, according to the books of chronicles, invaded the kingdom of judah in the fifteenth year of king asa, _i.e._ in b.c., but was defeated by him at maresa (ii. ). the monuments of egypt only mention to us the names of the two wives of osorkon. osorkon was followed by takeloth, osorkon ii., ssheshonk ii., takeloth ii., ssheshonk iii., pimai, and ssheshonk iv. no monuments of these kings have come down to us except memorial stones in the tombs of the apis on the plateau of memphis. these memorials show that the regulations of ssheshonk i. to give to one of his sons the office of high priest at thebes, and with this office to combine the command of divisions of the army, and to put other divisions of the army in the hands of other members of the royal house--regulations obviously intended to strengthen the power of the throne--were observed by his successors. we find the sons of his successors as high priests of thebes and memphis, as commanders of the troops of thebes, hermopolis, and heracleopolis, as "princes (_i.e._ leaders) of the mashawasha."[ ] we remember the struggles which the earliest successors of ramses ii. had to carry on against the libyans, especially against the mashawasha, or maxyians. from the time of ramses iii. the body-guard of the pharaohs seems to have consisted mainly of libyans, especially of mashawasha; the warrior caste of egypt appears to have been chiefly kept up and supplemented by libyans. the father of ssheshonk was, as observed, the captain of the mashawasha. ssheshonk, the son of osorkon ii. (afterwards ssheshonk ii.), as high priest of memphis buried in the twenty-third year of the reign of his father an apis, who had died in that year. takeloth, the son of this ssheshonk ii. (afterwards takeloth ii.), was high priest of ammon of thebes. in the fifteenth year of the reign of his father a rebellion broke out in the cantons of the south and north. he fought without ceasing for many years at the side of his father, and gained victories over the rebels.[ ] according to the apis-stones, ssheshonk iii. reigned more than years. in the twenty-eighth year of his reign an apis was born, which lived years, and was buried in the second year of king pimai under the superintendence of petise, the son of the high priest of memphis, takeloth, and the royal princess thisbastir. the successor of this apis, which was discovered in the same year of king pimai, died in the fourth year of ssheshonk iv., a third in the eleventh, and a fourth in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign.[ ] according to manetho's list, the nine princes of this dynasty of bubastis reigned altogether years; but the sum of the reigns, according to the items in the list, only reaches years. the years of the reigns given on special occasions, on the monuments mentioned, give at least years for six alone of these nine princes. if we maintain the assertion of manetho, the dynasty of the bubastites reigned from the year b.c. to the year b.c.; if we calculate the length of the rule of this dynasty according to the generations of the princes, then, even if the length of each generation is taken only at years, they must at least have reigned years, _i.e._ from to b.c.[ ] that the rule of the bubastites ended about the year b.c., at any rate in the minds of the chronographers who have preserved manetho's list in the excerpt, follows from the fact that our excerpts put the celebration of the first olympian festival in the reign of petubastis, the prince who immediately succeeds the bubastites. we may therefore assume that the bubastites reigned over egypt from the year to about the year b.c. the successors of petubastis of tanis, whose date thus falls about the year b.c., are, according to manetho, osorkon (the third of this name), psammus, and zet. diodorus tells us of a tnephachtus, king of egypt, who carried on war with the arabs. one day, when in the desert, there was a lack of the means of subsistence, and tnephachtus after a day of fasting enjoyed so highly a scanty meal, that he abominated luxury, and cursed the king who first introduced it. so earnest was he with this curse that he had it engraved in sacred characters in the temple of zeus at thebes.[ ] plutarch also tells us: on a campaign against the arabs the baggage was left behind, and technactis (tnephachtus) gladly satisfied himself with the food which was at hand, and when he subsequently fell into a deep sleep on the straw, he was so pleased with this simple mode of life that he cursed menes who first seduced the egyptians from a simple and parsimonious mode of life, and caused this curse to be engraved on a memorial stone, with the sanction of the priests.[ ] the son of this tnephachtus is called bocchoris by diodorus and plutarch; manetho's list puts a king bocchoris after zet, and describes him as belonging to the district of sais. the date of bocchoris is fixed by the fact that the seventh celebration of the olympian games,_ i.e._ the year , occurred during his reign.[ ] if petubastis reigned, as we saw, about the year b.c., and bocchoris ascended the throne about b.c., the date of his father tnephachtus, who is not mentioned in manetho's list (he must be meant by the zet of the list), will fall in the period between and b.c. we can only assume that tnephachtus, in the time of petubastis or osorkon iii. who succeeded petubastis, rebelled against the reigning pharaoh, and obtained the power, and that the list of manetho has passed him over as the opponent of the legitimate princes. as a fact we shall find that other usurpers beside tnephachtus rose up beside and against petubastis and osorkon; that osorkon was restricted to bubastis, and as the inscriptions of thebes mention psammus (psimut) we may further suppose that he retired from tanis, where manetho's list places him, to upper egypt. the extinction of the military vigour of egypt under the later ramessids, the formation of the body-guard and army of libyan mercenaries, bore its natural fruit. the disruption of the state-power, which thus begun as early as the later bubastites, led under petubastis and osorkon iii. to the complete ruin of the kingdom. the commanders of the army in the districts, and no doubt other men of great position and ambition, threw off obedience, made themselves independent, and supported by their soldiers gained an independent power. nine hundred years after the expulsion of the shepherds the ancient kingdom broke up into a series of separate dominions. a memorial stone discovered in the remains of napata, near mount barkal, displays to us quite a different picture of the condition of egypt about the middle of the eighth century from that which we should imagine when we read in manetho an apparently unbroken succession of pharaohs. on that stone osorkon is indeed mentioned, but only as king of the city of bubastis. beside him we find petisi of athribis (west of bubastis), anchor of sesennu (hermopolis minor), nimrod (nemrut) of sesennu (hermopolis major, now ashmunein), ssheshonk of busiris, pefabast of chnensu (heraclea major), pithenef of pisabtu; fourteen or fifteen princes, and among them tafnecht (tnephachtus) of sais. it is clear from this that petubastis and osorkon were not able to maintain the royal authority; that osorkon was limited to bubastis; the chiefs of the rest of the land stood beside him with equal right and equal power. the same memorial teaches us that tnephachtus of sais gained memphis; that he undertook to subjugate the remaining princes to his supremacy. he succeeded in forcing king osorkon and the chiefs of upper egypt into obedience; they recognised in him their superior; and he attempted to make even the princes of upper egypt, _i.e._ the begs of the mamelukes in that region, his vassals. the amenemha and sesurtesen had once carried the southern border of egypt to semne and kumne. after them the tuthmosis and amenophis forced their way as far as mount barkal; lower as well as upper nubia became a province of egypt. the ramessids had maintained this province, and governed it by viceroys. amenophis iii. and ramses ii. filled nubia as far as mount barkal with their temples; thus the worship observed in egypt became dominant in nubia also, especially the worship of the god ammon, whom upper egypt and the pharaohs of thebes regarded as the highest deity. with the religious worship, and the government of egyptian magistrates, the language, alphabet, and manners of egypt became current in nubia, although the people retained their ancient tongue. after a continuance of years, when the egyptian power began to sink under the later ramessids, and the high priests of ammon at thebes rose against them,--before the year b.c. the supremacy of egypt over the south became extinguished. the high priest herhor is the last who bears the title of "king's son of cush;" under the tanites, smendes and his successors, the monuments no longer mention any viceroy of cush.[ ] we may, therefore, assume that nubia was an independent state from the year b.c. onwards. yet the long continuance of the egyptian rule had caused the style and civilisation of egypt to strike firm roots here. the city, which was adorned by amenophis iii. and ramses ii. with splendid buildings; the neb (napata) of the hieroglyphics, the merua or berua of the native language, was the seat of the princes of the new state, in which, before as after, the style, worship, and writing of egypt was predominant; the language also, which the new monarchy used in its documents, was the language of egypt. the name of the first independent ruler of napata, the king of ethiopia, as the greeks call him, whom we know, is mentioned in the memorial stone already spoken of. the name and attribute are egyptian: pianchi miamun.[ ] in the twenty-first year of his reign, in the month thot, so the memorial tells us, it was announced to king pianchi that tnephachtus of sais and memphis had possessed himself of the whole of the land of the west. "the princes and lords of the cities are like dogs before his feet. all princes who recognise his power, these he allows to remain, each in his own canton, as lords and princes of the cities." the princes in upper egypt who were not yet subject to tafnecht, sent to pianchi "messages continually, whether he also would wish to know nothing of the land of the south," _i.e._ whether he also was inclined to abandon upper egypt to tafnecht. the condition of egypt was thus inviting enough to induce a power, strongly established in the south, to extend its dominion to the north, at least over upper egypt. upper egypt was naturally from an ancient period in closer relation to nubia and napata than lower egypt. the removal of the residence and centre of the kingdom to lower egypt at the time of the tanites and bubastites must have contributed to awaken anew the old opposition between the upper and lower land: and in its turn, when tafnecht had got the upper hand in lower egypt, and forced his way to upper egypt, this opposition strengthened the wish to seek support and protection on the upper nile, before submitting to a saite, a prince of lower egypt. king pianchi sent his army to aid the princes of upper egypt. according to the memorial stone tafnecht, who with his vassals awaited the ethiopians at chnensu (heracleopolis major), was defeated. the ethiopians then turned upon ashmunein, which was defended against them by its prince, nemrut. here, however, as the stone admits, they suffered a severe defeat. at the beginning of the next year, pianchi himself set forth, celebrated the festival of ammon at thebes, commenced the regular siege of ashmunein by throwing up a wall of circumvallation, and then for three days bombarded the city. then nemrut besought pianchi to receive him among his servants and accept his tribute. pianchi marched into the city, sacrificed to the god and lord of the city, "to his father thot," bulls, calves, and birds; and the people of ashmunein sang: "beautiful is the horus, who dwells in his city, the son of ra, pianchi; and pianchi repaired to the house of king nemrut, to his treasury and the house of his possessions." when nemrut had surrendered to pianchi, pefabast of chnensu also appeared with gifts, with gold, silver, precious stones, and horses, threw himself on the ground before pianchi, and said: "hail to thee, horus, mighty bull! i am sunken in darkness; give clearness to my countenance; i will be a servant together with my subjects, who will bring presents." when four other cities had opened their gates, pianchi appeared with his ships before memphis, and promised to spare the inhabitants of the city: "the children should not weep" if they opened the gates to him; he would merely sacrifice to ptah and the gods of memphis. tafnecht threw of his warriors into the city. yet pianchi succeeded in taking the city from the harbour in open battle; "many were slain, many captured alive;" pianchi caused the temples to be protected; purified himself, and offered a great sacrifice "to his father ptah." then aupoth and all the princes of lower egypt submitted, and pianchi marched to on (heliopolis); and on the height near on, in the sight of ra at his rising, he offered a great sacrifice, and went into the temple to behold the god in the benben chamber. "he was alone; he undid the bars, and opened the doors, and beheld his father ra, and the morning barque of ra, and the evening barque of tum. then he closed the doors and sealed them." after this, osorkon (of bubastis) and petise (of athribis) submitted. tafnecht himself sent a messenger to pianchi; he could not stand before his fire; pianchi may receive his possessions for his treasury. pianchi on his part sent the "leader of the prayers" and his chief captain, and tafnecht took the oath: "he would not transgress pianchi's commands, nor disregard his words; he would do no harm to any prince against his will; he would do according to the words of pianchi." then the ships were laden with silver, gold, copper, and other good things of lower egypt, and pianchi went up the stream, and the dwellers on the bank sang: "o royal conqueror, thou hast come, and hast smitten lower egypt; thou makest the men to be women. thy work will continue, thou king and friend of thebes."[ ] this campaign of pianchi from napata, the first attempt of a ruler of ethiopia to possess himself of egypt, must be placed about the year b.c.[ ] we can hardly contest the successes which the memorial stone ascribes to pianchi. pianchi as a fact took chnensu and memphis; he reached heliopolis; most of the vassals of tnephachtus paid homage to him. but pianchi's own narrative does not maintain that he took sais, and that tnephachtus appeared before him. he makes a treaty with tnephachtus; he is contented that tnephachtus recognises his supremacy, and at once turns back to ethiopia with the presents or tribute of the vassals of tnephachtus. from this it follows that tnephachtus maintained the lower delta; that pianchi either made no vigorous attempt to conquer this district, or was unable to conquer it; that he did not believe that he could maintain his position permanently in egypt, and therefore was content with a recognition of his supremacy. in any case, after pianchi's retirement, tnephachtus re-established his power over the princes of these districts; he must even have extended it further to the south, than was the case before pianchi's campaign, if, as diodorus states, he set up inscriptions in the temple of zeus, _i.e._ of ammon, at thebes, and could bequeath the sovereignty over egypt to his son. the position which manetho's list and the accounts of western nations give to his son bocchoris, is in favour of the assertion, that tnephachtus succeeded in subjugating all egypt to his power. it is easily conceivable that to such a vigorous and indomitable warrior the ceremonial and the splendour of the pharaohs' table and kitchen, the royal bed-chambers and couches, were highly distasteful. of bocchoris, the son of tnephachtus, "the wise, the celebrated in song," who succeeded his father in the year b.c., athenæus tells us that he lived as simply as his father.[ ] diodorus narrates that he was of a very weak body, but surpassed all his forefathers in acuteness of mind: his decisions were so excellent that many were quoted even in his day. the egyptians reckoned the wise bocchoris as their fourth law-giver; he founded the laws of the monarchy, and from him proceeded the rules about debt and contract.[ ] any one who borrowed money without a written contract was to be free of the debt if he swore that he owed nothing; any one who advanced money on a written document could not receive back more than the capital and an equal value in interest. only the property, not the person, of the debtor could be claimed by the creditor.[ ] a decision of bocchoris is preserved in plutarch. an egyptian youth was seized with love for the courtezan thonis, who demanded a great sum of money. then he dreamt that he had enjoyed her love, and his desire ceased; but she claimed the hire agreed upon before a court of law. when bocchoris heard the plaint he ordered the defendant to put the sum of money demanded into a jar, to take this in his hand, and carry it backwards and forwards. the courtezan was to cling to the shadow: fancy was the shadow of reality.[ ] in another passage plutarch narrates that when bocchoris was in an angry mood, isis sent him an adder, that he might wind it round his head, and when overshadowed by it, give just judgment; an anecdote which obviously contains the explanation given by the greeks of the uræus-diadem of the pharaohs; though the connection of the story with bocchoris speaks for his fame as a judge, a fame which he enjoyed among the greeks, even at the time of alexander, on the ground of egyptian tradition. all these statements show that the "much sung" bocchoris[ ] was in the recollection of the egyptians a ruler who again restored the royal power, fixed its conditions and preserved them by his judicial decisions; who brought about order and justice in all the transactions of life during a period of disturbance and confusion. this description is not belied by the statement which is also made, that he was covetous of money.[ ] the crown was certainly not in a position to dispense with means, when mercenaries had become of such prime importance in egypt. we know nothing of any deeds of bocchoris in war. we only find that he looked inactively on the great change which took place in syria in the last decade of his reign. when assyria planted her foot ever more firmly in syria (p. ), the eyes of israel were directed to egypt. when gaza, the most southern fortress of palestine, fell into the hands of the egyptians, and the prince sought protection in egypt (p. ), we hear nothing of any arrangements of bocchoris. no doubt he found himself threatened by a neighbour nearer and more dangerous. there are no monuments of bocchoris in existence, with the exception of the sarcophagus of an apis, which stood in the same chamber in which was placed the apis which died in the thirty-seventh year of ssheshonk iv. the name of the king is here bokenranef.[ ] this burial of the sacred bull of memphis in the traditional manner contradicts the narratives of the western writers, that bocchoris did not observe the prescripts of religion, and caused the sacred white bull of ra at heliopolis to fight against a wild bull, a proceeding which caused a rebellion among the egyptians.[ ] statements of this kind, like the stories of portents, which happened in his time,--that a goat spoke, that a lamb was born with eight feet, two tails, two heads, and two horns, and spoke,[ ]--are intended no doubt to supply a motive for and prepare the blow which fell upon egypt and bocchoris, and which the king's wisdom and justice could not prevent. what pianchi was unable to carry out was accomplished by his second successor, sabakon.[ ] from the books of manetho nothing has been preserved beyond the observation, that sabakon the ethiopian took bocchoris prisoner in war, and caused him to be burnt alive; herodotus tells us that sabakon, the king of the ethiopians, marched through egypt with a mighty army of his people, and the king of egypt (herodotus calls him anysis) fled into the marshes. sabakon was a mild ruler, and did not punish any egyptian with death. those who had committed an offence, he condemned to raise the dams which sesostris had caused to be thrown up round the cities, according to the measure of the offence, and thus the cities of egypt became far higher; "and highest of all, in my opinion," herodotus adds, "was the city of bubastis."[ ] "though by birth an ethiopian," says diodorus of sabakon, "he surpassed his predecessors in piety and gentleness. of this it is sufficient proof that he did away with the severest penalty, the penalty of death, and caused those who were condemned to death to perform task-work in chains in the cities, since he was of opinion that the reduction of the punishment would not only be an advantage to the condemned persons, but also bring great advantage to the cities." by these task-labourers he caused many dams to be raised, and many needful canals to be cut.[ ] with the gentleness of sabakon, thus praised by herodotus and diodorus, the statement of manetho, that he burnt bocchoris alive, and the statement of herodotus, that he put to death necho of sais, do not very well agree. the last bubastites, petubastis and osorkon, had not been able to maintain the power of the crown against the lords of the districts, and the brave and skilful attempt to restore the power of the pharaohs made by tnephachtus and bocchoris was wrecked. after bocchoris succumbed to the ethiopians in the year b.c.[ ] egypt obeyed a foreign ruler. the king of napata was also the pharaoh of egypt; egypt and meroe were united. the chief importance of the change thus accomplished lay in the fact that the valley of the nile, from the mouths as far as dongola, was united into one state; that the warlike power of egypt, which had become extinct under the later ramessids, and then was replaced by libyan mercenaries to the ruin of egypt, was now replaced by the unspent vigour of the ethiopians; and the combination of the latter with the rich means and resources of egypt availed to strengthen the country considerably, and restore her to her previous position. for the internal condition of egypt the new sovereignty brought hardly any other change than this, that the rulers now found a strong point of support in their own land. the dynasties which, so far as we can see, tnephachtus and bocchoris overcame or removed, we find again at the head of their districts under the ethiopians. it is possible that oppressed or expelled families among these invited or supported sabakon's invasion of egypt, just as in the preceding generation the princes of upper egypt summoned pianchi to support them against the father of bocchoris. that sovereigns and hereditary lords were at the head of the districts of egypt under sabaka and his successors of meroe is beyond a doubt. thus the rule of sabakon and his ethiopian successors might appear as a restoration of the old state of affairs in contrast to the innovations of tnephachtus and bocchoris, and the more so, as these rulers jealously adopted the national worship. we saw how earnest pianchi was in visiting the temples of egypt; how he offered sacrifice to his father thot, his father ptah, his father ra, and saw the last in his shrine at heliopolis; the memorial stone even assures us that of the princes who submitted to him he allowed those only to come into his presence at that time who had eaten no fish, _i.e._ who strictly observed the rules of purification. it was the reverence of the priests, the participation in the worship, the correct behaviour, in which sabakon and his ethiopian successors come forward as genuine followers of the pharaohs, which appear to have won for sabakon--who is to the greeks the representative of the ethiopian dynasty--that reputation for gentleness and justice which herodotus and diodorus repeat from the tradition of the egyptians. at the temples at memphis,[ ] at luxor, and karnak, sabakon undertook works of restoration. his name and title here are raneferka shabaka. on the pillars of the main gateway at karnak the goddess hathor embraces him; the inscription on this gate describes him as "the good god, the giver of life for ever, like the sun," and declares that he has received the tribute of the negroes, and the tribute of the chalu, _i.e._ the inhabitants of palestine. how the latter statement is to be explained will become clear afterwards; we shall see that sabakon had much better reason to be silent about the events in syria than to boast of them. sabakon died in the year b.c.,[ ] and left the empire over napata and egypt to his own son sebichus, as manetho calls him; shabataka as the name is given on monuments at memphis.[ ] his successor was tirhaka, the taharka of the monuments. the list of manetho describes him as not being the son of his predecessor. we do not know in what way he came to the throne of egypt; it appears that he got the crown by force; we can only establish the fact that he obtained the sovereign power in the year b.c.[ ] considerable relics of his buildings remain in his native land at napata. among them are especially prominent the ruins of a great temple, just as all the buildings there are wholly in egyptian style.[ ] in egypt tirhaka's name occurs frequently on the walls of karnak. on the portals of the temple of medinet habu, we see him before the face of ammon brandishing his war-club over ten bearded forms. the inscription tells us that he overcame the black land (kemi, egypt), and the red land; on a memorial stone of dongola the names of the regions and tribes are given, which he subjugated there in the distant south; names quite unknown and inexplicable to us.[ ] with megasthenes it is the ethiopian tearkon (tirhaka), a mighty warrior, who subjugated libya, advanced as far as the pillars of hercules, and even crossed into europe.[ ] we shall see that as soon as he ascended the throne his attention was occupied in the east, and that he fought with success in syria at this time. what he may have afterwards accomplished against the negroes, and perhaps against tribes of libya, in almost thirty years we cannot ascertain accurately. the severest struggles awaited him in the last decade of his reign, in which a mighty opponent rose up against him, with whom he wrestled stubbornly but without success. footnotes: [ ] vol. i. . [ ] lepsius, "abh. berl. akad." , s. ; brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. p. . [ ] it ends in brugsch, _loc. cit._ ii. , with ramses xvi. [ ] ii. , _note_. [ ] ii. . [ ] maspero reads psiuncha; brugsch, pisebkhan. [ ] in the unpublished inscription of abydus in brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. p. . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ ii. p. . [ ] according to brugsch, rakamat, or karamat, was not the wife of osorkon, but of ssheshonk, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] to make pithut, ssheshonk, nemrut, and ssheshonk ii., as well as panrechnes or pallash-nisu, kings of assyria, and place a conquest of egypt by assyria at the end of the twenty-first dynasty (brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. p. ), because nemrut or nemaroth is called on the stone of abydus "_ser a mat_," and "prince of princes," appears to me absolutely impossible. how could one of the kings of asshur, who, in the service of asshur, samas, and bin, overthrew the nations, allow himself to be buried near osiris of abydus?--how could his son perform egyptian funeral rites for him there? the books of the hebrews must have preserved some knowledge of a conquest of egypt in the time of david and solomon, in the first half of the tenth century--how could the armies of assyria have come to egypt except through syria? tiglath pilesar i., about b.c., touched northern syria merely in passing; not till the ninth century did assurnasirpal again come as far as mount amanus and the coast of the phenicians, and shalmanesar as far as damascus. a hundred years later tiglath pilesar ii. first planted a firm foot in syria. the semitic (?) character of the names of the princes of the twenty-second dynasty, who are also distinguished as eager worshippers of the gods of egypt, as well as the semitic nationality of the six or eight servants, who, according to the stone of abydus, were allotted to the plots of ground for the funeral service of nemaroth at abydus, are sufficiently explained by what we know of the mingling of the population in the western delta, and of other semitic influence in egypt. [ ] it ought perhaps to be observed that shishak ( kings xi. ), is not called pharaoh, but melek mizraim. [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] others read shuput. [ ] brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. . [ ] according to manetho's list, sesonchis reigned years. [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ ii. p. . [ ] _sera en mashush._ [ ] chabas, "mélanges," ser. , pp. - . [ ] lepsius, "abh. berl. akad. phil. hist. klasse," , s. . mariette, "bull. archéolog. athen. franc." , pp. , - . [ ] cp. von gutschmid, "beiträge zur geschichte des alten orients," s. , _seqq._ [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. ; cf. athenæus, p. . [ ] joseph. "c. apionem," , , . [ ] mariette, "revue archéolog." , , . [ ] pianchi is also called the son of the high priest herhor (p. ). but this coincidence does not compel us to explain the kings of napata as descendants of that herhor who lived years before pianchi of napata. [ ] de rougé, "mémoire sur une inscript. de piankhi;" brugsch, "hist. of egypt," i. ; ii. , . [ ] i have shown above that petubastis came to the throne about the year b.c., and bocchoris, the son of tnephachtus, about b.c.; tnephachtus, therefore, must be placed in the time between - b.c. thus the time of the campaign of pianchi is fixed. to throw back the campaign nearly years is not possible, owing to the mention of osorkon, the names of nemrut, ssheshonk, petise, which belong to the house of the bubastites, and the date of tnephachtus. if the lists of assurbanipal mention a ssheshonk of busiris, a tafnecht--not of sais, but of buni or bunubu; a pefabast, not of chnensu but of zoan--the reappearance of these names can be explained by the fact that these dynastic families have also been preserved among the ethiopians (p. ). [ ] athenæus, p. ; diod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "demetr." c. . [ ] Ælian. "hist. an." , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] mariette, "bab. athen. franc." p. - . [ ] Ælian. "hist. an." , . [ ] Ælian. _loc. cit._ , . [ ] de rougé, "mélanges d'archéol." , , concludes from the monuments of tirhaka and the statue of ameniritis, that kashta succeeded pianchi, that sabakon and the others are children of kashta (?) according to brugsch the -ka in shabaka and shabataka is the attached article of the barabra language. hence it is explained how saba(ka) can become seveh among the hebrews, or sabhi among the assyrians. cf. oppert. "mémoire sur les rapports de l'egypte et de l'assyrie," p. - . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] i have already been able to fix the end of the ramessids, the date of the tanites and bubastites, by the date of the accession of shishak in the hebrew reckoning; the length of the dynasty of the tanites in manetho; and the length of the bubastites as corrected by the monuments, and the synchronism of the first olympiad for petubastis. for the period from the end of the bubastites to the accession of sabakon, the important points are the seventh olympiad for bocchoris, and the sarcophagus of the apis of bokenranef. if bocchoris came to the throne in the year b.c., ssheshonk iv. died in the year b.c.; if this was the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth of his reign, the successor of the apis buried in the thirty-seventh year of ssheshonk might certainly live to the year , the sixth year of bocchoris according to my reckoning. it is decisive for sabakon's accession in egypt that hoshea of israel undoubtedly ascended the throne in b.c. (p. , note; ). shalmanesar iv. of assyria marched against israel in the year b.c., when he had discovered the conspiracy of hoshea with seveh (sabakon, p. ). hoshea must, therefore, have negotiated with seveh in b.c. at the latest, and probably earlier. sabakon must have been previously established on the throne of egypt. he cannot, therefore, have conquered egypt later than b.c. bocchoris therefore reigned years ( - b.c.); the time which manetho allots to bocchoris, six years, is too short for the completion of his legislation and the attainment of that fame as a legislator which he left behind him, according to the account of the greeks. that tirhaka reigned over meroe and egypt in the year at the latest, is proved by the battle of eltekeh, which was fought in b.c. (p. ). if seveh, who negotiated with hoshea, is supposed to be sabataka, the conquest of egypt by sabakon must be put in the year . the apis discovered in the twenty-sixth year of tirhaka and buried in the twentieth year of psammetichus, shows that according to the chronology of that period, psammetichus was regarded as the immediate successor of tirhaka. according to the reign of years allotted to him by herodotus and manetho, psammetichus begins in b.c., since his death is fixed with certainty in b.c. if tirhaka's reign over egypt began in the year b.c., the year would be the twenty-sixth of his reign; the apis lived down to the twentieth year of the reign of psammetichus, _i.e._ down to the year b.c.--consequently years, an age (the number on the inscription is illegible), which even a less carefully tended bull might attain. tirhaka reigned from to b.c., _i.e._ years. if the lists of manetho, according to our excerpts, allow him only years (syncellus gives ), this is obviously due to the fact that the reigns of stephinates, nechepsus, and necho, who ought to stand side by side with tirhaka, with seven, six, and eight years, _i.e._ with years in all, are deducted from the reign of tirhaka, in order to place these three princes after him. to the predecessors of tirhaka, sabakon and sebichus, manetho allows eight and fourteen years. the monuments of egypt show that sabakon reigned at least years; sabakon must, therefore, according to these dates, have begun to reign in egypt not later than b.c. ( + + ). the assyrian monuments show that sabakon fought with sargon at raphia in the year b.c., and his successor negotiated with him; that tirhaka fought with sennacherib in syria in b.c., and that he was at war with assurbanipal about the year b.c. [ ] goodwin in chabas, "mélanges," , ff. [ ] among the hebrews, the king with whom hoshea of israel ( - b.c.), negotiates is called seveh (so). sargon's inscriptions name the opponent against whom he fought at raphia in the year b.c. "sabhi, sar of the land of muzur," and also "sabhi siltannu of muzur." the inscription of karnak gives sabakon's (shabaka's) twelfth year; we must, therefore, although manetho's list allows him only eight years, assume that sabakon was the opponent of sargon at raphia, as stated in a preceding note. if sabakon died immediately after his twelfth year, he died in b.c. the ruler of egypt who pays tribute to sargon in the year , is repeatedly called by the assyrian inscriptions, "pirhu (pharaoh), sar of muzur." so in the cylinder of g. smith ("disc." p. ), the ruler of egypt, who unites with ashdod in the year b.c., is called "pirhu sar of muzur;" finally, the prince who delivers up yaman, when it has been mentioned that yaman fled beyond egypt into the border land of miluhhi, is called by sargon "sar miluhhi." the pharaoh, sar muzur, whom we find on the throne of egypt in to b.c., and the sar miluhhi, who gives up yaman, can only be shabataka-sebichus, the successor of sabakon. [ ] mariette, "monuments," pl. e. [ ] not much weight could be laid on the observation in the palatine codex of hieronymus (jerome); tarachus (ab Æthiopia duxit exercitum), sebico interfecto Ægyptiis regnavit annis xx.; but in the inscription of medinet habu tirhaka calls himself conqueror of kemi, _i.e._ of egypt. [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. , . [ ] brugsch, "geogr." , . [ ] strabo, p. , , . büdinger's view ("Ægypt. forschung. herodots," , ), that we must recognise tirhaka in the etearchus of herodotus might be adopted if the narrative did not too definitely point out travelling cyrenæans as the source; and the founding of cyrene cannot be carried back to the time of tirhaka. chapter iv. the first collision of assyria and egypt. when tiglath pilesar ascended the throne of assyria, he first compelled babylonia to recognise his supremacy; after that he advanced into the table land of iran, as far as arachosia, and there at the least maintained his supremacy far and wide over the medes. to the north he fought against nairi and urarti, against kummukh and tubal ( b.c.); even the union into which the distressed princes of that region entered against him did not protect them; after a second subjugation the tubal, _i.e._ the tibarenes, received a prince from the hand of tiglath pilesar ( b.c.). meanwhile he had already overthrown arpad in the west, which had resisted his predecessors so vigorously in a struggle which continued for three years; received tribute from karchemish, damascus, and tyre; and placed the region of amanus, lebanon, hadrach, and several districts of hamath under assyrian viceroys ( - b.c.). two years afterwards the princes of cilicia, of hamath, of byblus, menahem king of israel, and zabibieh, the queen of the arabs, submitted ( b.c.). the appeal of ahaz for help brought him again into syria; after a struggle of three years damascus was overthrown, israel deprived of a portion of her population, and given to another prince, the cities of the philistines conquered, the ammonites, moabites, and edomites overthrown, and at length samsieh, the queen of the arabs, was defeated ( - b.c.). this complete subjugation of syria was followed by new conflicts on the lower euphrates. nabu-sabzi and kinziru were overpowered; kinziru became a vassal of babylon, and when merodach baladan paid homage at sapiya, the dominion of tiglath pilesar extended to the shore of the persian gulf ( b.c.). he now called himself king of asshur and babel, and in the last years of his reign received the tribute of tribes from the south of arabia. after an eventful reign of years which gained for assyria the supremacy over media, syria, and babylonia, tiglath pilesar died in the year b.c. his successor was shalmanesar iv. no inscriptions have been preserved from the short reign of this king. the astronomical canon represents a change in the succession of babylon at the death of tiglath pilesar; in the place of the joint reign of chinzirus and polus, in which we believed that we might recognise the supremacy of tiglath pilesar, obscurely given in babylonian tradition under the name polus (phul), and the vassal-reign of kinziru (p. ), comes the reign of elulæus in the year b.c. that chinzirus and polus died in the same year, that kinziru died in the same year as tiglath pilesar, would be remarkable, but by no means impossible. it is more probable that shalmanesar found it advisable to make a change in the vassal king at babylon, and that after his accession he placed elulæus (illuhillu) there as a vassal. shalmanesar's attention was soon occupied in another direction. saved by the arms of assyria from the overpowering advance of the damascenes and israelites, the philistines and edomites, ahaz, king of judah, had paid homage to tiglath pilesar at damascus. "when ahaz saw the altar which was at damascus," so we are told by the books of kings, "he sent a pattern of it to uriah the priest, and uriah built the altar after this pattern, and when ahaz came from damascus he sacrificed on this altar, and offered burnt offerings and meat offerings, and poured out his drink offering, and sprinkled the blood of his thank offering on the altar. the iron altar, which stood before jehovah, he removed, and the iron sea he took from the oxen and placed it on the pavement (ii. ). and ahaz bade uriah offer the burnt offering in the morning, and the meat offering in the evening, and the burnt and meat offering of the king, and all the sacrifices of the whole people of the land, on the new altar, and the king's entry he turned to the house of jehovah for the king of assyria."[ ] according to this ahaz, in order to prove his submission to his sovereign, altered the altar and arrangements of the temple at jerusalem after the pattern of an altar on which he had seen tiglath pilesar sacrifice to his gods at damascus, and the ritual there observed.[ ] the high priest uriah submitted. he not only allowed the king to sacrifice in person, against which the priesthood had contended in the case of uzziah, but he altered the service of the temple according to the wishes of the king. judah was laid waste through her length and breadth. the damascenes and the israelites, the philistines and the edomites, had got the whole land into their power as far as the metropolis. even from this heavy blow judah would learn nothing. instead of turning thankfully to jehovah for rescue from such distress, the altars of the temples were altered after an assyrian pattern. isaiah saw this movement with the deepest indignation. "your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence. and the daughter of zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. had not jehovah left to us a small remnant, we had been as sodom and gomorrah. from the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been pressed out, nor bound up, nor mollified with ointment. why should ye be stricken any more, and revolt any more? they are replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the philistines, and agree with the children of strangers. the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but israel knows him not."[ ] israel suffered still more than judah by the carrying away of the population of the northern and eastern districts, the land of nephtali, and the land of gilead. hoshea reigned over the remainder from the year (p. ). according to the books of kings he set on foot a conspiracy, slew pekah, and became king in his place; according to the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar, tiglath made him king over israel. these statements are not contradictory. pekah had been in league with rezin of damascus, the opponent of assyria and judah: why should not tiglath pilesar recognise and establish as king of israel the man who had removed the opponent of assyria?[ ] hoshea sent his tribute yearly to the king of assyria.[ ] but when the dreaded warrior prince of asshur--when tiglath pilesar died, there awoke in the philistines, the phenicians, and above all in eulæus, king of tyre, and hoshea, king of israel, the hope of withdrawing themselves from the yoke of assyria. if hoshea had risen as a partisan of assyria, he determined now that he was in possession of the throne to break loose from that empire. the hope of liberation rested not only on the fact that tiglath pilesar was no more; it received a still stronger point of support in the change which had taken place in egypt in the last years of tiglath pilesar. menahem of israel had already thought of securing the assistance of egypt before he sent his tribute to assyria (p. ), and the same thought must have occurred to uzziah in his last years. hanno of gaza had taken refuge in egypt from tiglath pilesar (p. ). the prudent bocchoris had left, or been compelled to leave, syria untouched. but since his reign sabakon had united the forces of dongola, nubia, and egypt into a strong power. when tiglath pilesar had extended the dominion of assyria as far as gaza and elath, and a victorious aggressive power of great strength stood on the borders of egypt, the attack of assyria might be expected there. a far-seeing ruler of egypt, secure of his military power, must endeavour to anticipate this attack; he must prevent it by uniting the elements of resistance existing in syria. if the issue were favourable, the dominion of assyria over syria would thus be removed; in any case egypt would have allies in syria for the war against assyria. "hoshea sent messengers to seveh (sabakon) king of egypt," so the hebrews tell us, "and brought the king of assyria no present more as formerly." it is this attempt to gain assistance, and probably the presents which accompanied it--perhaps also gifts from hanno at gaza, the princes of tyre, zemar, and hamath (see below)--which sabakon, on the walls of karnak, describes as tribute received from the inhabitants of palestine (p. ). isaiah foresaw very plainly what would be the issue of this undertaking which to him appeared madness and intoxication. he announced destruction and ruin to the philistines, the kingdom of israel, and the phenicians. the carrying away into captivity already sent by jehovah upon israel, in punishment of her offences, and the war against judah had brought about no improvement, no reformation; the severe lesson teaching them to remain at rest, which the sons of israel had then received, is disregarded; they are calling down upon themselves a still heavier judgment. isaiah spoke the more strongly as he was desirous to prevent judah also, where hezekiah, the son of ahaz, ascended the throne in b.c., from joining in this attempt. in reference to the death of tiglath pilesar he cries to the cities of the philistines: "rejoice not, whole philistia, because the rod is broken which smote thee. for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit is a flying serpent. from the north cometh a smoke."[ ] to the cities of tyre and sidon, he cries: "howl, ye ships of tarshish, for tyre is laid waste: there is no house more, no entering in. be still, ye inhabitants of the coast, which the merchants of sidon that pass over the sea replenished. by distant waters the seed of the nile, the harvest of the river, was their revenue, and she was the mart of nations. be thou ashamed, sidon, for the sea hath spoken; the strength of the sea thus: i travailed not, and brought not forth; i brought up no young men and maidens. pass ye over to tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the coast! is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days? her own feet shall carry her afar off to sojourn. who hath taken this counsel against tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? jehovah the lord of hosts hath purposed it. jehovah gave command over canaan to destroy her fortresses, and said: thou shalt no more rejoice, thou oppressed virgin, daughter of sidon! pass over to chittim (the cyprians, ii. ). there also thou shalt have no rest. when the report comes to egypt, they shall be sorely pained at the report of tyre."[ ] isaiah directs his most severe warning to those of his own race, the kingdom of israel. "woe to the proud crown of the drunken ephraim, the faded flower on the head of the fat valley of those possessed by wine," he cries. "priests and prophets have erred through strong drink, and are overcome with wine. jehovah will speak to this people with an alien tongue, to whom he said: give ye rest to the weary; this is the way of salvation. but they would not listen. to whom shall he teach knowledge? whom shall he make to understand doctrine?--them that are weaned from the milk, and removed from the mother's breast? behold, a stronger and mightier shall come from the lord, as a tempest of hail, and a destroying storm; as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, he shall cast them with violence to the earth. he will trample it under foot, the proud crown of the drunken ephraim; the faded flower on the head of the fat valley will disappear like early fruit before the gathering."[ ] "shalmanesar the king of assyria," so the books of kings tell us, "discovered a conspiracy in hoshea, that he had sent messengers to seveh (so), the king of egypt, and brought him no more a present as before. he went up against hoshea, seized him, and put him in chains in prison, and marched over the whole land, and against samaria, and besieged the city three years." josephus tells us: "it was told shalmanesar that hoshea had secretly invited egypt to a combined struggle. in his anger he marched out against samaria, besieged the city for three years, and took hoshea prisoner." "but the king of assyria fought against the whole of syria and phoenicia. he marched against tyre while elulæus reigned there. menander, who has drawn up the annals and translated the archives of the tyrians into the greek language, vouches for this when he says: elulaeus reigned years; when the citians revolted, he sailed thither and again reduced them to subjection. the king of assyria sent an expedition against these, overran all phoenicia with war, made peace with them all, and returned. sidon, and acco, and old tyre, and many other cities revolted from the tyrians; but as the tyrians themselves did not submit, the king turned again upon them, and the phenicians manned ships for him, and placed upon them rowers.[ ] against these the tyrians set sail with ships; destroyed the vessels of the enemy, and made about prisoners. but the king of assyria placed guards on the river, and on the conduits, to prevent the tyrians from drawing water, and returned home. the tyrians endured this for five years, during which they drank water from wells that they had dug. this is what is stated in the records of the tyrians about shalmanesar, the king of the assyrians."[ ] according to these indications and statements we may assume the course of affairs to have been something of the following kind. the cities of the phenicians, and of the philistines, and the kingdom of israel hope for the assistance of the king of meroe and egypt, of sabakon, whom the hebrews call seveh, and the inscriptions of the assyrians, sabhi. shalmanesar overruns syria, before the assistance from egypt has arrived there ( b.c.).[ ] hoshea is either taken by surprise and overcome, or in his terror attempts to appease the king of asshur by submission. he is carried away to prison, and shalmanesar turns towards the coast. the cities of the phenicians submit; only the island city of tyre resists (ii. ). the cities, which had submitted, were now compelled to furnish ships to shalmanesar for the conquest of cyprus, and the blockade of the island city, which was carried on from the mainland also, since old tyre was garrisoned there, and the inhabitants of the island city were prevented from drawing water on the coast. it is remarkable that the tyrians are said to have met the ships of the blockade with ships only. yet this is no doubt no more than a mere sally of the besieged. the ships of the inhabitants of the mainland may not have taken a vigorous part in the fighting; and the blockade may not have been carried on very strictly. tyre may very well have been able to endure a somewhat lax investment for five years. the resistance of the tyrians appears to have inspired courage in the israelites and the metropolis of israel, so that they defied the arms of the assyrians even after the carrying away of hoshea. in the year b.c. shalmanesar turned from the coast, against samaria. the israelites defended their city most stubbornly. damascus had resisted tiglath pilesar two years; samaria, like arpad, held out for three years. "the king of assyria took samaria," so we are briefly told in the books of kings, "and carried israel to assyria, and gave them dwellings in chalah and chabor, by the river of gozan, and in the cities of the medes." the monuments of assyria inform us that shalmanesar iv. did not live to see the fall of samaria. he died in the course of the last year of the siege ( b.c.). sargon, his successor, boasts of this achievement of his arms. "in the beginning of my reign," so we are told in the annals of sargon, "i besieged the city of samaria (samarina), and took it with the help of the god samas, who gives me victory over my enemies. i took , prisoners. i took chariots as my royal portion. i brought them to assyria, and in their place i put people whom my hand had reduced. i placed my officers and viceroys over them, and imposed tribute upon them as on the assyrians."[ ] this statement is repeated in the inscription which gives the more important acts of sargon (the so called _fasti_), with this difference at the close: "my officers i placed over them; i imposed on them the tribute of the previous kings."[ ] the inscription of the bulls says quite briefly: "he (sargon) overthrew samaria, and all the house of omri."[ ] the inscription on the cylinder says: "i have subjugated the great land of bit omri."[ ] the annals recapitulate: "i have laid waste the region of samaria, and the land of bit omri." after informing us that the king of israel was carried away to the east, the books of kings tell us, like the annals of sargon, that other inhabitants were settled in israel: "he caused people to come from babel and from kutha, from sepharvaim, ava, and hamath," and placed them in the cities of samaria in the room of the children of israel.[ ] sargon's own account confirms this statement; his inscriptions show us further to what stock these settlers belonged. in the year b.c., very soon after the capture of samaria, he transplanted people from babylonia to the land of the chatti, _i.e._ to syria.[ ] we are also told that people were removed from the four districts of armenia to syria, to the coast;[ ] and finally, that people of arabian descent, "of thammud, marsiman, chayapa, and the land of bari," were settled in the city of samaria. the strengthening of the alien element in samaria was caused by the fact that the israelites, in spite of the severe punishment which they had undergone, had nevertheless attempted to rebel once more against assyria.[ ] the carrying away of the inhabitants of naphtali and gilead, which tiglath pilesar had executed, the removal into a new environment, which sargon now carried out twelve years after the former deportation, were blows from which the ten tribes could not again recover. not that the existence of the people was annihilated; many, no doubt, perished in the conquest of the land and metropolis, yet it was by no means the whole remnant that was carried away. it was only a part of the population on whom that severe lot descended. isaiah tells us jehovah punished the people by measure, and allowed a remnant to remain.[ ] the number of those who remained was sufficient to gain the preponderance in a population so strongly mixed with foreign settlers.[ ] yet this admixture sapped the national vigour at the core. in the inscriptions of the assyrians we hear no more of the land of omri, but only of samaria; from them we see that kings remained at the head of the land; they mention a second menahem and an abibaal as kings of samaria. the community over which the descendants of david ruled was, in the first place, only anxious for the preservation of the national life and faith. judah remained obedient to assyria. hezekiah of judah looked on at the long siege of samaria, the death-struggle of israel, and the carrying away of his kindred without moving. he must have paid his tribute regularly. an inscription of sargon, belonging to the first years of his reign, enumerates the "distant judah" among the subject lands.[ ] the subjugation of the phenicians, the punishment of israel for her defection, did not break the hopes which the syrians reposed in egypt. two years after the fall of samaria, egypt may have been better prepared for war, for a march into syria, than at the time of shalmanesar's campaign against hoshea and the phenicians. egypt's power appeared nearer at hand; sargon had to advance from the tigris. hamath rebelled against assyria. "ilubid possessed himself of the crown of hamath," so we are told in the inscriptions of sargon; "he took the city of karkar, and roused the cities of arpad, damascus, zemar (simyra), and samaria against me. i besieged him and his warriors in the city of karkar."[ ] the city of karkar, near which, years before, benhadad of damascus and ahab of israel had fought against shalmanesar ii., was taken; ilubid was captured, and sargon caused him to be flayed--a relief in the palace of sargon exhibits the execution of this sentence.[ ] the memorial stone of larnaka says: "ilubid of hamath rebelled; i fought against him, and covered the land of hamath with ruins." sixty-three thousand people were transplanted from assyria into the land of hamath.[ ] but sargon succeeded in becoming master of a mightier opponent, in maintaining syria against egypt. sabakon had marched through the desert with the forces of ethiopia and egypt; hanno of gaza, who once retired to egypt before tiglath pilesar, joined him with his warriors. sargon went to meet them. the armies met at raphia (now refah, between el arish and gaza, where at a later period ptolemy philopator of egypt overcame antiochus the great). "sabhi trusted in his forces," so the annals of sargon tell us, "and came to meet me to offer me battle. i called upon the great god asshur, my lord; i smote them. sabhi fled with a shepherd, who kept the sheep, and escaped. hanno i took prisoner. all that he possessed i carried away to assyria. i laid waste and destroyed his cities, and burned them with fire. i carried away men with their possessions."[ ] the introduction to the annals and the inscription on the bulls say briefly: "the armies of the land of muzur (egypt) he (sargon) defeated near the city of raphia (rapih). hanno, the king of gaza, he brought into slavery."[ ] the inscription of the cylinder says: "near the city of raphia i defeated the king of muzur; the king of the land of gaza i took prisoner and carried to assyria." the fasti of sargon inform us: "hanno, king of gaza, marched with sabhi, the sultan of egypt (_siltannu mussuri_), to meet me near the city of raphia, to offer me battle and conflict. i put them to flight. sabhi was seized with fear of the might of my arms; he fled, and not a trace of him was seen. hanno, the king of gaza, i took captive with my own hand."[ ] sargon's contests in syria did not end with the battle at raphia ( b.c.). after the inscription on the bulls has narrated the victory over the army of egypt, it continues immediately: "i fought against the tribes of the thammud, ibadid, marsiman, and chayapa, who had invaded the land of bit omri, _i.e._ israel."[ ] on the other hand, the annals tell us, under sargon's seventh year ( b.c.): "i marched against the tribes of tasid, ibadid, marsiman, and chayapa; against the distant dwellers in the land of bari, which the scholars and the wise knew not. none of the kings my forefathers had heard this name. i compelled them to obey asshur, and those who remained i drove out of their dwellings, and placed them in the city of samaria." on this campaign sargon must have advanced into the peninsula of sinai, and far into arabia, for the annals continue: "pharaoh (pirhu), the king of egypt (muzur), samsieh the queen of the arabs, iathamir the sabæan, are kings from the distant coast of the sea and from the land (chasm). as their tribute i received herbs of the east of various kinds, metals, horses, and camels."[ ] the fasti, which compress events, have the following words after the account of the battle of raphia: "i received the tribute of pharaoh the king of egypt, of samsieh the queen of the arabs, of iathamir the sabæan; gold, herbs, horses, camels."[ ] we remember that samsieh, like the sabæans, had already paid tribute to tiglath pilesar. the stubborn obstinacy of the syrians was not broken even by the desolation of hamath and the battle at raphia. building on the assistance of shabataka of meroe and egypt, the son and successor of sabakon, ashdod, the city of the philistines, revolted in the eleventh year of sargon, _i.e._ in the year b.c. the hope in egypt was shared by their neighbours in judah, edom, and moab. but ashdod was soon invested by the assyrians and taken, and the invasion of egypt by the assyrians was expected in judah. in isaiah we are told: "in the year in which tartan, _i.e._ the assyrian general-in-chief, came unto ashdod, when sargon sent him, and besieged ashdod and took it, at that time spoke jehovah: go and loose the sackcloth from thy loins, and put off the shoes from thy feet; and isaiah did so, and walked naked and barefoot. then spake jehovah: as my servant isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon egypt and ethiopia (cush), so shall the king of assyria lead the egyptians prisoners, and the ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their nakedness uncovered, to the shame of egypt. then shall they be ashamed of ethiopia their expectation, and of egypt their glory. and the inhabitants of these coasts said on the same day: behold, such is our expectation, whither we fled for help, to be delivered from the king of assyria: how shall we escape?"[ ] sargon's annals tell us: "azuri, the king of ashdod, lifted up his spirit to disobedience, so as to pay his tribute no longer. he sent messages hostile to assyria to his neighbours. i bethought me of vengeance, and put another ruler over his land. i raised his brother achimit to the throne, but the people of the chatti inclined to rebellion, and were weary of the reign of achimit, and raised to the throne yaman, who had no right to it. in the anger of my heart i marched with my warriors against ashdod. i besieged, i took ashdod and gimt-asdodim; with the gods which inhabit these cities i took the gold, the silver, and all that was in his palace. then i restored these cities; i placed people whom i had subjugated in them. i put my viceroy over them, treated them as assyrians, and they were obedient."[ ] the much injured inscription of a cylinder informs us that "sargon, in the ninth year of his reign ( b.c.), when he had come to the shore of the great sea, and philistæa, displaced azuri of ashdod, because he had hardened his heart to pay tribute no longer, and had sent to the kings, the enemies of assyria. before the face of azuri i exalted his brother achimit, and laid taxes and tribute on him as on the kings round about him. but the people would not pay taxes and tribute, rebelled against him, and drove him out for the good that he had done them. yaman, who had no right to the throne, they made their lord, and armed and fortified their cities for war." "the nations of philistæa, judah, edom, and moab, though they brought their tribute and presents to the god asshur, spoke treachery like their evil kings; in order to fight against me, they sent gifts to pharaoh, the king of egypt, a prince who could not save them, and besought his alliance." "i preserved the honour of asshur; i crossed the tigris and euphrates in the height of the flood." "when yaman heard of my campaign against the land of the chatti, the fear of asshur, my lord, overcame him. he fled to the borders of egypt, to the border-land of meroe (miluhhi); to a distant place he fled, and his hiding-place was not discovered."[ ] the introduction to the annals of sargon tells us: "yaman had misjudged my power; he fled to the borders of the land of meroe."[ ] in the fasti of sargon we learn: "yaman heard of the approach of my army; he fled to a region of egypt which lies on the border of meroe: not a trace of him was seen. i besieged, i took ashdod and gimt-asdodim: his gods, his consort, his sons, his treasures, possessions, the costly things of his palace, and all the inhabitants of his land i destined to captivity." the annals tell us at the very beginning: "yaman of ashdod, who despised my power, fled into the lands of the south, to the borders of meroe. the king of meroe was overcome by the fear of asshur; he bound his (yaman's) hands and feet with iron chains, and sent his messengers before my face to assyria."[ ] the fasti say: "the king of meroe, in a desolate region, whose fathers had not sent ambassadors to my royal forefathers to entreat for peace--the power of merodach, a mighty terror, overcame him; fear seized him. he put him (yaman) in iron chains; he guided his steps to assyria, and he appeared before me."[ ] from these statements it follows, that the army of egypt, in which yaman of ashdod hoped, on whose forces the rest of the cities of the philistines, judah, edom, and moab reckoned in order to rebel against assyria, as isaiah and sargon told us, never came. it was no doubt again the unexpected celerity with which the assyrian army appeared before ashdod in the year b.c. (sargon has told us already that he crossed the tigris and euphrates at the time of the flood), which destroyed all these plans. but the invasion of egypt and napata by the assyrians, which isaiah expected and announced, did not take place; according to sargon's statement, shabataka preferred to avert the attack of the assyrians by surrendering yaman. at the commencement of his annals sargon tells us, that he imposed tribute on the kings of the land of yatnan, who dwelt at a distance of seven days' voyage in the sea of the setting sun.[ ] the fasti narrate: "the seven kings of yatnan, whose names none of the kings, my fathers, nor any one in assyria and babylonia, had heard of, received intelligence of my victories in the land of the chaldæans and the chatti. my glory spread to the midst of the sea. they bowed their pride; they humbled themselves; they appeared at babylon before me, and brought gold, silver, vessels, the products of their land." yatnan is the island of cyprus; the seven days' journey is the distance from tyre to citium, about miles. the payment of the tribute of the seven kings of cyprus took place in b.c. hence we may assume that after the punishment of ashdod and the surrender of yaman, sargon's dominion was established in syria, and that tyre submitted like the other cities of the phenicians. hence the princes of cyprus might consider it advisable to pay homage to the king, unless perhaps they sought in him a point of support against tyre. as a symbol of his dominion over cyprus, sargon caused his image to be engraved on a memorial stone in the usual manner, and set it up at citium in the midst of the island; it is now in the berlin museum. the inscription gives the extent of the dominion of sargon; relates the most important events of his reign; mentions the temples he has built, the offering of the tribute of the seven princes of the land of yatnan at babylon--then the erection of the image--and threatens with curses and annihilation those who alter the tablet and change sargon's name or anything else written on the tablet: if any one attempts such a thing, nebo and the gods who dwell in the middle of the wide sea will destroy him and his race.[ ] footnotes: [ ] kings xvi. - . [ ] no one can seriously maintain that ahaz imitated the ritual of the chief enemy of assyria and judah, the altar and worship of rezin, who was moreover now overthrown. [ ] isa. i. , - ; ii. . [ ] the books of kings are only wrong in representing hoshea as first subject, and paying tribute, to shalmanesar iv. (xvii. ). [ ] kings xvii. . [ ] isa. xiv. - . [ ] isa. xxiii. - . [ ] isa. xxviii. - . [ ] so must we read for ; penteconters required ; triremes at least rowers. [ ] "antiq." , , . [ ] as samaria was besieged - b.c., we may place the beginning of the assyrian war in . [ ] oppert, "dour sarkayan," p. , ; "records of the past," , ; e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ; ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. ; ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] l. , in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] l. , in ménant, p. . [ ] kings xvii. , . [ ] "the annals of sargon," oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. , . [ ] isa. xi. - ; chron. xxx. , ; xxxiv. . [ ] kings xvii. ff. [ ] inscription of nimrud, in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. ; in e. schrader, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] "annals of sargon," oppert, "records of the past," , ; g. smith, _loc. cit._ [ ] in the great hall no. , in botta. ménant, p. . [ ] memorial-stone of larnaka, in ménant, p. ; g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , ; e. schrader, "k. a. t." ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] e. schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] communication from e. schrader. [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] isa. xx. ff. [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._ , ; ménant, p. ; cf. l. of the inscription on the bulls in ménant, p. . [ ] g. smith's cylinder, "disc." p. ff. [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ff.; cf. ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, p. , - . that the stone cannot have been set up in babylon before the payment of tribute in b.c., is proved by the mention of the tribute upon it. cp. g. smith, "z. Ægypt. sprache," , s. ; , s. , . chapter v. assyria in the reigns of sargon and sennacherib. in his inscriptions sargon speaks of the kings who ruled over asshur before him, but he mentions neither his father nor his grandfather, though these are regularly mentioned by all the other kings of assyria who ascended the throne in direct succession. it follows that he was neither the son nor the grandson of shalmanesar iv.; nevertheless he was one of the mightiest, most victorious, and powerful of the rulers of assyria. nor did the uninterrupted series of his campaigns prevent him from undertaking and carrying out great buildings. to the two ancient chief cities of assyria--asshur and nineveh--shalmanesar i. had added chalah, which was subsequently adorned by assurnasirpal, shalmanesar ii. and tiglath pilesar ii. with temples and palaces. sargon built a new residence in the neighbourhood of nineveh. on the course of the khosr, which flows through ancient nineveh into the tigris, ten miles up the stream, he built a new royal abode, which he called after his name dur sarrukin, _i.e._ fortress of sargon. the new city (khorsabad) formed, as the remains of the outer walls show, a rectangle, each of the shorter sides of which measures more than , and each of the longer sides feet.[ ] in the north-west front of the outer wall the palace, surrounded by a separate wall, rose above the rectangle of the new city. the outer walls of the city were feet in thickness; they were built up in brick, on a basis of stone; the outer wall of the palace, which flanked as a fortress the north-western side of the city wall, was entirely cased with stone.[ ] the entrance to the main structure of the royal fortress was guarded by two human-headed bulls. the halls were adorned with reliefs, which exhibit the exploits of the king. here was to be seen the execution of ilubid, king of hamath (p. ); the besieging and storming of cities. over the reliefs, beginning from the entrance in the form of a broad frieze, an inscription runs toward the left round the hall, which explains the pictures on the reliefs and ends on the opposite side of the entrance. in some halls this frieze forms a connected narrative, which relates the acts of the king in succession according to the years of the reign (the so-called annals). in the great gallery and the chambers abutting on it the inscriptions are shorter: here they are content with bringing into prominence the most important acts of the king (the so-called fasti). the two bulls at the entrance of the palace are also covered with inscriptions. in the foundations of the palace was found a stone chest, in which lay seven plates of gold, silver, tin, copper, lead, alabaster, and marble, on which are inscriptions as well as on the clay cylinders found in the ruins. on the bricks of the palace we read: "palace of sarrukin the viceroy of bel, patis of asshur (ii. ), the mighty king, king of the nations, king of asshur." and on the gold plate: "palace of sarrukin, viceroy of bel, patis of asshur, the mighty king, king of the nations, king of asshur, who rules from the rising to the setting sun, over the four regions of the world, and places viceroys over them. according to my pleasure i have built a city in the neighbourhood of the mountains, and given to it the name of fortress of sarrukin. for salman, sin, samas, bin, and adar, i have built dwellings for their great divinities in the midst of the city. the glory of my name i have inscribed on tablets of gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, alabaster, and marble, and placed them in the foundations of the palace. whoso injures the works of my hand, and robs my treasure, may asshur, the great lord, destroy his name and seed."[ ] the annals mention this palace in the year b.c.; at the close they speak of the completion of it in the year b.c. "with the heads of the provinces, the viceroys, the wise men, i settled down in my palace, and exercised justice."[ ] in the inscriptions on the bulls, as well as on a cylinder, the king says, that he has named the gates to the east after samas and bin; those to the west after anu and istar; and those to the south after bel and bilit; those to the north after salman and the lady of the gods.[ ] sargon's predecessor, shalmanesar iv., as we were able to assume, placed elulæus over babylon as a vassal king. the astronomical canon observes that the reign of elulæus came to an end in b.c., the same year in which shalmanesar iv. died, and merodach baladan (mardokempados) ascended the throne of babylon in the year b.c. we may suppose that this merodach baladan was no other than the prince of bit yakin, _i.e._ of south chaldæa, who had submitted ten years before to tiglath pilesar at sapiya ( b.c.). he must have availed himself of the decease of shalmanesar, and the occupation of the assyrian army in syria, which was detained before samaria, to make himself master of babylon from the south, and unite the whole region of babylonia under his rule. as soon as samaria fell, sargon turned against him. in the annals, the account of the capture of samaria is followed, in the very first year of sargon ( - b.c.), by a campaign against humbanigas, the king of elam, who, as the fasti say, was defeated "in the plains of kalu."[ ] the annals then continue: "merodach baladan, who had made himself lord of the kingdom of babylon against the will of the gods." the destruction of the remainder of the narrative has left only a few words legible, from which we may gather that sargon fought against merodach baladan, that he removed people from babylonia to the land of the chatti, _i.e._ to syria: according to the books of kings these were inhabitants of sepharvaim and kutha (p. ). whatever losses merodach baladan suffered, in this way he retained babylon and the throne. the astronomical canon represents him as reigning from b.c. to b.c. clay tablets in the shape of lentils, found in the ruins of sargon's palace at khorsabad (they were brought there, no doubt, as booty from babylonia), bear the date of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh years of marduk-habaliddin, king of babylon (_sar babilu_[ ]); even sargon's annals represent merodach baladan as ruling over sumir and accad for twelve years (_i.e._ from to b.c.). after the war against humbanigas and merodach baladan, against elam and babylonia, sargon, as we saw, marched to syria in order to subjugate hamath and gaza, and to defeat at raphia ( b.c.) the army of the egyptians and ethiopians led by sabakon. in the next years sargon fought in the north against the people of van, who had shaken off the dominion of iranzu, an adherent of assyria, and against urza of ararat; the inhabitants of the four cantons in armenia he removed to the land of chatti, and the land of acharri, _i.e._ to syria and the syrian coast.[ ] after this, in the year b.c., pisiris of karchemish, who had paid tribute to tiglath pilesar, was reduced. karchemish was taken, pisiris put in chains, the rebels carried to assyria, and assyrians placed in karchemish. from the booty of karchemish talents of gold, talents and minæ of silver were brought into the treasury at chalah.[ ] urza of ararat and prince bagadatti of mount mildis (perhaps the region of melitene, malatia) excited the people of van to rebellion, as sargon says; aza, the prince of van, was slain. sargon terrified the rebels into submission, caused bagadatti to be flayed at the same place where aza was slain, and placed ullusun, the brother of aza, on the throne of van. but ullusun united with urza of ararat and the princes of karalla and allabur. when sargon advanced, ullusun submitted; sargon allowed him to remain on the throne on condition that he paid heavier tribute; the prince of karalla was driven out, the people of allabur carried to hamath ( b.c.[ ]); in ararat, urza maintained his position. vassurmi, the king of the tabal, the tibarenes, had been dethroned by tiglath pilesar, and chulli put in his place (p. ). sargon allowed ambris to succeed his father in the government of the tabal, gave him his own daughter to wife, and intrusted him with the government of the cilicians in addition to the tabal. ambris abused this confidence. he united with mita, the king of the moschi, with urzana of mussasir (which must, no doubt, be sought on lake van), and urza of ararat against assyria. ambris was defeated and taken prisoner, and carried to assyria with his chief adherents. mita submitted, like the cilicians: mussasir, the city of urzana, was taken by storm: urza of ararat, whose resistance had been the longest and most stubborn, wandered about as a fugitive, and took his own life ( b.c.).[ ] the armies of shalmanesar ii. were the first to make an advance on the table-land of iran. as already remarked, they trod the plains of media in b.c. ninety years later, tiglath pilesar ii. subjugated the land of nisaa (the region of nisæa in media) and then the cities of media, on his first, second, and ninth campaigns; he imposed tribute on the princes of the land of media. sargon tells us that in his sixth year ( b.c.) he fought against the land of karkhar, which we must seek in the zagrus (perhaps it is a part of the valley of the kerkha); that he named a city there kar sargon. he received considerable tribute from princes of the medes, and set up his image in the midst of their places.[ ] in the next year, when urza of ararat conspired with ullusun of van, and ullusun with dayaukka, the overseer of van (?), "i took fortresses," so the annals say, "and carried away dayaukka and his tribute with me, and restored peace to the land of van" ( b.c.).[ ] the fasti also mention the capture of the places; after this they give the capture of bagadatti, and continue: "i caused him to be flayed, and carried dayaukka with his adherents away into the land of amat, and made them dwell there."[ ] "in order to maintain myself in media, i built fortresses in the neighbourhood of kar sargon," so the annals relate in the same year,[ ] "and received the tribute of princes of the medes." to the erection of fortresses in the neighbourhood of kar sargon the fasti add: "i conquered cities in media, united them with assyria, and imposed on them a tribute of horses."[ ] in the year b.c., according to the statement in the annals, sargon marched against bit dayauku, and against the nation of karalla, who had driven out sargon's viceroy. "the lands of bit ili, the district of media, which belongs to ellip--and the chief districts of media, which had thrown off asshur's yoke, and put mountains and vallies in terror--i pacified. i received the tribute of princes of the medes; horses, sheep, and asses in great numbers."[ ] the much-injured inscription of an octagonal cylinder enumerates the princes of media who paid this tribute in this year: among them we find pharnes, barzan, aspabara, satarparnu, ariya, and finally arbaku of arnasia.[ ] sargon's inscriptions repeatedly boast that he subjugated "the distant land of media; all places of the distant media as far as the borders of the land of bikni;" that "his power extended as far as the city of simaspati, which belonged to the distant media in the east."[ ] when syria had been reduced, egypt repelled, the north brought into obedience, and media made tributary, sargon undertook to restore the supremacy of assyria over babylonia. merodach baladan's rule must be removed. the dominion of assyria must be again restored as it was in the time of tiglath pilesar. "for twelve years," so the fasti of sargon tell us, "merodach baladan had roused up the land of sumir and accad. i resolved to march against the inhabitants of the land of kaldi (chaldæa). merodach baladan heard of the approach of my army; he left babylon, betook himself to dur yakin, strengthened the walls there, and called upon the tribes of gambul, pekod, tumun, ruhua, and chindar. my warriors defeated the enemy. the migratory tribes fled after this defeat. merodach baladan left his tent, the insignia of his royal dignity, his chariot and adornments behind him, and fled away in the night. i besieged and took the city of dur yakin. his wife, his sons, his daughters, his palace, and all that was therein, i took. i burnt the city, and threw down the old walls. i permitted the inhabitants of sippara, of nipur, of babylonia, and borsippa to continue their occupations. to the cities of arak (erech) and larsam (senkereh) i gave back the gods which dwell there, and restored the temples."[ ] the annals give a more detailed account, but in the narrative of these events the text is interrupted by great lacunæ. in the introduction we have: "merodach baladan showed the greatest violence against the will of the gods of babylon; my hand reached him; i took from him all his land." then follows the narrative of the occurrence under the twelfth year of the king ( b.c.): "merodach baladan refused to pay tribute. he had concluded an alliance with sutruk nanchundi, the king of elam, and aroused all the tribes of aram (mesopotamia) against me. he strengthened his fortresses and assembled his troops. i took captive , men." after an enumeration of the cities which sargon took, and the narrative of the subjection of the pekod, we are told: "the rest of the inhabitants of the land of aram had put their hopes in merodach baladan and sutruk nanchundi, and gathered on the river ukni. i put them to flight." after this sargon takes several cities of elam; sutruk nanchundi retires before him into the mountains. merodach baladan heard this in his palace at babylon; he left the city at night with his warriors, directed his steps to the land of elam, and sent a considerable weight of silver to sutruk nanchundi, to induce him to send aid. "i marched at once to babylon, sacrificed to the gods, and set up my power in the midst of the palace of merodach baladan." "in the thirteenth year of my reign, merodach baladan compelled the cities of ur and larsam to pay him tribute, collected his forces at dur yakin, and there fortified himself. i went boldly against him, threw his warriors and horses into confusion; i cut down the people of the pekod and marsiman, and took the symbols of their kingdom. and merodach baladan acknowledged his weakness; he abandoned the sceptre and throne, and kissed the earth in the presence of my emissary. i summoned him, and received him into favour. dur yakin i burnt; i laid regular tribute on the upper and lower land of bit yakin. while i punished the chaldæans and aramæans, and made my power felt by the elamites, my viceroy, in the land of kui (cilicia), in the regions of the setting sun, attacked mita, the moschian, took two fortresses and men, freemen and slaves. to complete his subjugation, mita sent his envoy with his tribute as far as the coast of the eastern sea, and acknowledged the power of the god asshur. the seven kings of yatnan (cyprus) also brought their tribute into my presence at babylon; gold, silver, and the products of their land, and kissed my feet."[ ] these accounts show that sargon's war against merodach baladan occupied two years ( and b.c.). in the first campaign the babylonians were defeated in the field; the aramæans dispersed; the elamites, among whom the sovereignty had been meanwhile transferred from humbanigas to sutruk nanchundi, driven back, and the cities of babylonia taken. merodach baladan abandons babylon, and retires to the lower euphrates, to the land of his nation. sargon ascends the throne of babylon, and takes the title, "king of babel, of sumir and accad," which tiglath pilesar had borne before him. the second campaign ends with the capture and destruction of dur yakin, with the subjugation of the whole region of the euphrates as far as the shore of the persian gulf, and the receiving of merodach baladan into favour. according to the astronomical canon, arkeanus ascended the throne of babylon in the year b.c. arkeanus can only be sargon (sarrukin). one of the tablets, which contains contracts about the sale of parcels of land, slaves, and loans, from the time of sargon, bears the date: "month sebat, year of muttakkil-assur, viceroy of gozan; fifteenth year of sargon, king of asshur, third year of his reign in babylon."[ ] as sargon certainly cannot have ascended the throne of babylon later than the year b.c., the year - would be the third year of his reign over babylonia; the canon of the assyrian rulers actually puts the year of muttakkil-assur at the year b.c. the campaigns of the unwearied sargon did not end with the subjugation of the whole region of babylonia. the annals and fasti narrate how he overthrew mutallu of kummukh (gumathene), who had united himself with argistis, king of ararat, who must have taken the place of urza (p. ), and that he planted there people from bit yakin ( b.c.). the land of ellip, which he had previously subjugated, remained faithful to him as long as king dalta lived. after his death his sons nibi and ispabara contended for the throne. the former sought help from sutruk nanchundi of elam; ispabara vowed allegiance to him (sargon). to support ispabara, sargon sent troops to the land of ellip, the position of which we can only so far ascertain from the inscriptions, as to know that it bordered on media (p. ) as well as elam. nibi's warriors and the elamites were defeated; nibi was taken prisoner, his adherents were crucified, and ispabara became the prince of the whole land ( b.c.).[ ] sargon, who defeated the egyptians and the ethiopians, who subjugated syria and babylonia, who had gone through so many battles, came to a violent end, but not in war. he was murdered. the list of the rulers announces the naked fact in the year b.c., and adds the accession of his son sennacherib, on whom fell the heavy task of maintaining the wide dominion which sargon had won. if he did not succeed in doing this without some loss, his buildings, which he began immediately after his accession, were not inferior to those of his father. he must have commenced them at the beginning of his reign. the inscription on a cylinder (bellino), bearing the date of the third year of sennacherib, gives the dimensions of a palace of sennacherib at nineveh, and describes the architecture and adornment. the kings, his fathers, had built this palace, but had not completed its splendour; the waves of the tigris had injured the foundations; he altered the course of the tigris, strengthened the dams, built the palace afresh, and caused lions and bulls to be hewn out of great stones.[ ] the remains of this structure lie on the site of the ancient nineveh, immediately to the north of the khosr, which flowed through the city, on the old bed of the tigris, near the modern village of kuyundshik. the dimensions give this palace the first place among the castles of the kings of asshur. it rose on a terrace of more than feet in height, close by the tigris. the great porticoes were from to feet in length, and about feet in breadth; the great gallery was feet in length, and feet in breadth. about chambers have been discovered in this building.[ ] the main front lay to the north-west; two great winged bulls with human heads guarded the entrance. at the entrance of the north-east front also were two bulls of this kind. in the great portico behind this entrance, and the gallery abutting upon it, the process of building is represented on the reliefs on the walls. we see the clay pits, the workmen carrying baskets filled with clay and bricks, the great blocks intended for the images of the lions and bulls coming up the tigris, and brought to the elevation on shore by ropes drawn by hundreds of hands. this is done by means of slips under which are placed wooden rollers. a lion, already finished, standing upright and surrounded by a wooden case, and held up by workmen with ropes and forked poles, is drawn along in this manner; the hinder end of the slip is then raised by a lever placed on wedges in order to facilitate the elevation. the overseer stands between the fore-feet of the colossus, and directs by the movement of his hands the efforts of the workmen. sennacherib himself from his chariot watches the advance of this statue. in the same way a finished human-headed bull is drawn along by four long rows of workmen. in another chamber we see rows of servants, who carry apples and grapes, pastry and other food in baskets. the reliefs of the next porticoes and halls exhibit the warlike acts of sennacherib; the crossing of rivers, sieges, stormings of cities in the mountain country, in the plain, in the marsh. unfortunately the inscriptions over these have almost entirely perished along with the upper part of the walls; only a few words are legible. the inscription of the third year of sennacherib ( b.c.) concludes the account of this building with the words: "to him among my sons, whom asshur in the course of the days shall summon to be lord over land and people, i say this: this palace will grow old and fall to pieces. may he set it up, restore the inscriptions and the writing of my name, and clean the images; may he offer sacrifice, and put everything in its place; so shall asshur hear his prayer."[ ] the inscriptions on slabs between the thighs of the two bulls before the north-west entrance give a detailed account of the dimensions and manner of the building of this palace.[ ] in the inscription on the cylinder, sennacherib boasts that he made a canal from the khosr through the city; that he renovated nineveh, "the city of istar," and made it brilliant as the sun; the prisoners, chaldæans, aramæans, captives from van and cilicia, were employed on these works.[ ] the adornment of nineveh, the strengthening of its walls, are mentioned on inscriptions on slabs in the palace itself.[ ] another cylinder (smith) from the ninth year of the reign of sennacherib ( b.c.),[ ] also mentions the buildings which the king undertook for the restoration of nineveh: the prisoners of his campaigns worked at them: philistines and tyrians are here added to chaldæans, aramæans, armenians, and cilicians.[ ] later documents inform us that sennacherib built temples to nebo and merodach at nineveh.[ ] a third cylinder (taylor) has been preserved from the fifteenth year of the reign of sennacherib ( b.c.), which tells us of a second great building of his at nineveh. by the kings, his fathers, a house had been erected for the preservation of the treasure; for the horses and troops. this building had become damaged; he caused the old house to be removed, and built up again on a larger scale.[ ] the remains of this building lie to the south of the confluence of the khosr and tigris near the modern nebbi yunus. according to the evidence of the ruins it was of smaller dimensions than the palace at kuyundshik. to the north-east of nineveh, near the modern bavian, the image of sennacherib is hewn in the rocks. the inscription on this image informs us in detail what sennacherib had done for the irrigation of the land of assyria: among other things it is mentioned, that he had made ( ) canals from the khosr, or into it.[ ] bricks found at sherif-khan show by the stamp that sennacherib built a temple there to nergal; the bricks of a heap of ruins to the south-west of the ancient arbela show that he erected there the fortifications of a city called kakzi.[ ] the most indispensable task which devolved on sennacherib at his accession was the keeping of babylon in subjection. the news of the death of sargon, the mighty warrior, might arouse among all the nations which had felt the weight of his arms so heavily the hope of again shaking off the yoke. if the babylonians succeeded in freeing themselves from the dominion of his successor, there was the prospect that such a success would be an event of wide importance; a sign and example to the subject lands. according to the evidence of josephus, berosus related of sennacherib that he fought against all asia and egypt:[ ] abydenus represented him as subjugating babylonia.[ ] alexander polyhistor, according to a fragment which eusebius has preserved, narrated as follows: "after that the brother of sennacherib reigned in babylon, and after him akises, who was slain by merodach baladan after days; merodach baladan maintained himself by violence for six months, and was then slain by a man of the name of elibus. but in the third year of the reign of elibus, sennacherib, the king of assyria, collected an army against the babylonians, conquered them in the battle, and carried away elibus with his followers to assyria. sennacherib placed his son asordanes (esarhaddon) as ruler over babylon; he himself returned to assyria."[ ] after the reign of arkeanus (sargon) from b.c. to b.c., the astronomical canon gives an interregnum for the years and b.c.; after this comes the reign of belibus, which lasted three years, from b.c. to b.c. belibus was succeeded by aparanadius, who reigned six years ( - b.c.). if we attempt to unite these statements with the quotation from polyhistor, sennacherib, immediately on his accession, made his brother king and viceroy of babylon, but he was unable to maintain his position; a rebel, akises, seized the throne, and was in his turn overthrown by merodach baladan, whose reign over babylon only lasted six months. the two years after sargon's death, which were occupied by this regency and these usurpations, are marked in the astronomical canon as an interregnum. as the last half year of this period was occupied with the usurpation of merodach baladan, and the preceding month by akises, sennacherib's brother must have reigned over babylon months after sargon's death, or a little longer (the canon gives the last year of each reign entirely to the king who died in it). towards the close of these two years the elibus of polyhistor, the belibus of the canon, overthrew merodach baladan, and reigned till b.c., in which year sennacherib marched against babylonia, defeated elibus, took him prisoner, and placed his son asordanes as king over babylon. the aparanadius of the canon must be the asordanes of polyhistor. sennacherib's inscriptions show that the events took place nearly but not quite in this manner. his archives say nothing of the regency of a brother in babylon; they do not exclude such a regency, but they show clearly that merodach baladan was in possession of the throne of babylon in b.c. is this merodach baladan the merodach baladan of bit yakin, of south chaldæa, who paid homage to tiglath pilesar ii. at sapiya in the year b.c., and who after the death of shalmanesar iv., in the year b.c., possessed himself of the throne of babylon--whom sargon fought against at that time, but did not overthrow--whom he deprived of all his land in the years and b.c., and then received into favour? the man who possessed himself of babylon in the year b.c. belongs without a doubt to the princely house of bit yakin; we find him retiring before sennacherib from babylon to bit yakin, as he had previously retired before sargon. the merodach baladan of sennacherib can therefore only be the merodach baladan of tiglath pilesar, and sargon, or a son of the same name.[ ] as the inscriptions give the name simply without any addition, we have in him no doubt the same prince of bit yakin who submitted to tiglath pilesar and was defeated by sargon. that merodach baladan was in possession of babylon at least six months, as polyhistor states, is proved by the combinations into which, according to sennacherib's inscriptions, he entered with the king of elam, the tribes of mesopotamia, and tribes of the arabians, before sennacherib attacked him; by the fact that sennacherib found the troops of elam united with those of babylon; and by the embassy of merodach to hezekiah, king of judah, urging him to make common cause with him against assyria, which is mentioned in the hebrew scriptures. he certainly had time to make extensive preparations against sennacherib. merodach baladan must therefore have obtained the throne of babylon not long after the accession of sennacherib. sennacherib's first campaign was directed against him in order to restore the authority of assyria over babylonia. the inscription of nebbi yunus tells us at the very beginning: "in a great battle i conquered merodach baladan and the nations of chaldæa and aram; the army of elam which had come to their assistance."[ ] four other narratives in greater detail have been preserved relating to this campaign; one from the third year of sennacherib ( b.c., the cylinder bellino, already mentioned), the second from the ninth year of sennacherib ( b.c., the cylinder smith, also already mentioned), the third dates from the fifteenth year of sennacherib ( b.c., the cylinder taylor), the fourth is given in the inscription on a slab between the thighs of the bulls at the entrance to the great palace of sennacherib at kuyundshik. this last account, which is uninjured, does not go back beyond the fourth year of sennacherib. the oldest account tells us: "at the beginning of my reign i inflicted a defeat on merodach baladan, the king of kardunias (babylon), together with the army of elam, before the city of kis. in the middle of the battle he escaped alone, and fled to the land of guzuman, into the marshes. the chariots, horses, mules, and camels, which he left on the field of battle, fell into my hands. his palace in babylon i entered full of joy. i opened his treasury; i carried away gold, silver, golden and silver vessels, precious stones; his wife, and the women of the palace. i sent my soldiers to pursue him to guzuman, to the marshes. they pursued him five days, but no trace of him was seen. in the strength of asshur, my lord, i took fortified cities and fortresses in the land of kaldi, and smaller places. the aramæans and chaldæans, who formed garrisons in erech, nipur, kis, chalanne, and kutha, i carried away with the rebellious inhabitants; belibus, the son of a man of wisdom, from the neighbourhood of suanna, i made the ruler of sumir and accad."[ ] the two accounts immediately following the first agree with it except that the number of the fortified places taken in chaldæa is given as and , and the number of smaller places in both is . both also, like the summary account on the slabs of the bulls, pass over the setting up of belibus as regent,[ ] no doubt because this regency was no longer in existence when they were written. in polyhistor, as we have seen, it is elibus who overthrows merodach baladan; in the astronomical canon, belibus ascends the throne of babylon in the year b.c. according to the inscriptions, merodach baladan's rule over babylon was overthrown as early as b.c.; according to the canon, his overthrow, or at any rate the establishment of belibus, did not take place till b.c. after driving merodach baladan out of babylonia sennacherib subjugated the tribes of tumun, richih, rahua, pekod, hauran, nabatu, and hagaranu (the hagarites), who "had not been reduced to submission," _i.e._ who had taken up arms against assyria for merodach baladan; , men and women, children and adults,[ ] were captured and carried away to assyria, with horses and mules, camels, , oxen, and , head of small cattle.[ ] the amount of cattle taken is omitted in the second, third, and fourth accounts; the second and third give us the number of the prisoners. these prisoners (chaldæans and aramæans), sennacherib, as we saw above, employed in building his new palace and his buildings at nineveh. after this sennacherib turned against ispabara, king of ellip, whom sargon had assisted to the throne against his brother (p. ). ispabara escaped, the land was laid waste, places were taken, the chief city ilinzas received a new name, kar sennacherib. "at my return," so we find it stated with complete agreement in all the four narratives, "i received the great tribute of the distant land of media, and subjugated that land to my dominion."[ ] merodach baladan had been compelled to retire from babylonia. he had maintained himself in his native land in south chaldæa. when in syria, sidon and ascalon, ekron and judah took up arms, and sennacherib was compelled to march thither, merodach baladan could attempt to regain what he had lost. he was soon again in alliance with the king of elam, or rather he remained in alliance with him. the elamites reconquered two cities which sargon had taken from them. in babylonia a rebellion broke out, at the head of which stood a man of the name of suzub. belibus appears to have been unable to maintain himself against him, against south chaldæa under merodach baladan, and elam. the astronomical canon puts the end of his reign in b.c. the later inscriptions of sennacherib, as already observed, make no mention of belibus, but they tell us of a campaign which sennacherib on his return from the syrian war, in which at the close, as we shall soon see, he gained no success, undertook against suzub and south chaldæa. "in my fourth campaign," so sennacherib relates on the cylinders smith and taylor, "i collected my army: i bade it go against the land of bit yakin. in the course of this enterprize i brought about the overthrow of suzub the chaldæan, who dwelt in the marshes; he retired. merodach baladan, whom i had thrown to the ground on my former campaign, whose war-like forces i had scattered, retired from the approach of my mighty warriors, and the blow of my violent attack; he put the gods, who rule in his land, on board ship, and fled like a bird to nagitirakki, which lies in the midst of the sea. his brothers, the scions of the house of his father, whom he left behind on the coast, and the remainder of his nation in the lakes and marshes i brought out and took prisoners. i turned back and destroyed his cities. i struck terror into his ally, the king of elam. at my return i put assurnadin, my eldest son, on the throne of his dominion, and entrusted him with the whole extent of the land of sumir and accad." the stone slabs on the bulls of kuyundshik also mention the establishment of assurnadin in babylon.[ ] from this account we gather that babylon, if it was not lost, wavered; that the chief of the rebels in babylonia retired before the approach of sennacherib into the marshes. the establishment of assurnadin as regent of babylonia by sennacherib did not take place till merodach baladan was driven out of bit yakin. the inscriptions do not mention sennacherib's entrance into babylon. aparanadius, whose reign the astronomical canon represents as beginning with the year b.c., can only be assurnadin, the son of sennacherib.[ ] the expulsion of merodach baladan out of south chaldæa; the establishment of the successor to the throne of assyria as regent of babylon, had no more lasting results than the establishment of belibus three years before. suzub, who had retired into the marshes before sennacherib, was again at the head of babylonia. "the tribes of bit yakin," so sennacherib tells us on the cylinder taylor, "despised my rule; they settled in the city of nagitti, in the land of elam." sennacherib directed his sixth campaign against them (the fifth was directed against the land of nipur). "on my sixth campaign ( b.c.), i attacked elam, and carried the people of bit yakin with the people of elam into captivity. at my return, suzub, a child of babylonia, whom the rebellious people in the land of sumir and accad had raised up, came to offer me battle. i conquered him; he fell into my hand; i gave him his life, and caused him to be taken into assyria. the king of elam, who came to his assistance, i put to flight."[ ] the inscription of nebbi yunus gives us a fuller account. it narrates the carrying away of the people of elam, like the cylinder, and then continues: "after this (?) the leading inhabitants of babylonia, who were round merodach baladan, escaped and called on the king of elam for help, who placed suzub, the son of gated, on the throne. i sent my warriors against the king of elam; they slew many of his people; they made themselves masters of the gods who dwell in arak (erech), of samas, bilit, istar, nergal, and their endless treasures. suzub, the king of babylon, who was taken prisoner after a great battle, they brought to nineveh into my presence."[ ] we see that in spite of the regency of assurnadin, which would not be weak, in spite of the attack of sennacherib on elam, the adherents of suzub, when combined with the adherents of merodach baladan and supported by elam, were strong enough to remove assurnadin not long after his appointment, and to raise suzub to the throne. his defeat and imprisonment were heavy blows for the babylonians, but they did not break their resistance. the city of babylon was not attacked by sennacherib. the stubborn resistance of babylonia against sennacherib was supported, as the inscriptions clearly show, by elam, where a new king, kudur nanchundi, had succeeded sutruk nanchundi (p. ).[ ] in order, no doubt, to isolate the babylonians and take from them this support of their resistance, sennacherib directed his seventh campaign against elam: "the king of elam," we are told in the inscription of nebbi yunus, "had been the ally of the people of babel."[ ] the two cities which sargon had taken from sutruk nanchundi,[ ] which the elamites had subsequently reconquered, were taken by sennacherib, who besides enumerates large cities of elam, which he had besieged, conquered, and burnt. kudur nanchundi abandoned his chief city, madaktu, and escaped into a distant region. sennacherib intended to besiege madaktu, but snow and rain detained him in the mountains; he returned to nineveh.[ ] sennacherib had not attained his object, the subjugation of elam. what sennacherib announces as the result of his campaign must have appeared to the babylonians as very small, if not altogether a failure. in the cylinder taylor a new struggle against babylon follows the return of sennacherib to nineveh, a struggle more important and severe than any preceding. suzub, whom sennacherib had taken captive in b.c., escaped out of imprisonment, and again appeared as king at the head of babylonia. merodach baladan is no more, but his son unites with suzub; all chaldæa rises; and by its side the elamites, aramæans, and several tribes of arabia. this great rebellion ends with the capture and destruction of babylon. the date of these events, which took place in the eighth campaign of sennacherib, can only be defined by the fact that they belong to the period after the year b.c., and before the year b.c. the cylinder which narrates them bears the date of the beginning of the year of belsimiani, i.e. of the year b.c. the events of the eighth campaign are connected, and follow immediately on each other; the close was the conquest of babylon and second capture of suzub, as the introductory words to this campaign on the cylinder prove: "in my eighth campaign the dominion of suzub came to an end." after the conquest of babel, this inscription only mentions the erection of the building at nebbi yunus (p. ). we must, therefore, put the beginning of the new struggle in the year b.c., the destruction of babylon in the year b.c. the babylonians--so our inscription continues after the return of sennacherib from elam--had closed the great gates of their city; suzub, who had escaped out of captivity to elam, and had returned from thence to babylon, was placed on the throne of sumir and accad. he opened the treasure of bit saggatu, _i.e._ of the great temple of merodach (i. ), and sent the sacred gold and silver to the king of elam. kudur nanchundi died three months after the campaign of sennacherib against elam; he was succeeded by his brother, umman minanu, who was ready to give assistance. nabu-labar-iskun, a son of merodach baladan, joined suzub; the chaldæan regions of bit adin, bit amukan, bit sahalla, took his side. the parsua, the land of ellip, finally the tribes of the pekod, gambul, rahua, and chindar, rebelled and marched to babel to suzub, "whom they called king of babylon."[ ] "the king of elam, the lands of parsua and ellip, the whole of chaldæa, all the tribes of aram, were united with the king of babylon."[ ] on the banks of the tigris, near the city of chaluli, they offered battle to sennacherib, , strong. sennacherib conquered; nabu-labar-iskun was captured; umman minanu and suzub escaped. "i granted their lives to those who submitted, and acknowledged my dominion." with these words the account of the eighth campaign of sennacherib closes on the cylinder taylor. after the description of the battle of chaluli the inscription of bavian continues: "the whole land of elam i struck with terror; the warriors fled before me to the highest mountains. a second time i turned against babylon; i won the city; i spared not the men, the children, or the slaves. suzub, the king of babylon, who fell into my hands, i carried away and his kindred. the gods of the city of hekali, bin and sala, which marduk-nadin-akh, king of accad, had taken from tiglath pilesar and carried to babylon years previously, i took away from babylon; i put them up again in their place in the city of hekali. the cities and their palaces i have destroyed from the foundation to the summit; the walls, altar, temples, and towers, i have laid waste."[ ] the statements of the astronomical canon do not agree with these inscriptions. with the canon, this period, distracted by contests in which for the most part suzub is at the head of babylon and the city of babel is not in the power of sennacherib, was the reign of aparanadius, or, as we supposed, of assurnadin, which in the canon lasts from to b.c. the year is given to regebelus, who is succeeded by mesesimordakus from the year to b.c. after this the canon places an interregnum of eight years ( - b.c.). if we are to attempt to harmonise the two, regebelus and mesesimordakus may be regarded as viceroys, to whom, after the capture of babylonia, sennacherib entrusted the rule of the country in those years. the interregnum which follows would then be explained by the fact that sennacherib reigned over babylonia without a viceroy from the year b.c. but in none of the inscriptions preserved does sennacherib name himself in his title, king of sumir and accad, or king of babel. the astronomical canon gave us the name of sargon at the time when he ruled directly over babylon; why is not sennacherib's name mentioned in a similar position? it is not impossible that new rebellions followed the capture of babylon, in which regebelus and mesesimordakus were leaders; but it is certain that babylonia, if not south chaldæa, was under the dominion of assyria at the death of sennacherib. footnotes: [ ] flandin gives the long and short sides of the rectangle doubled at metres; the inscription which reckons in the whole circuit the building of the palace which juts out from the rest, at , cubits (_ammat_). the babylonian and assyrian cubits are both = millimetres; lepsius, "abh. berl. akad." ; "monats-berichte ders." . vol. i. p. . [ ] rawlinson, "monarch," ^ , ff. [ ] oppert, "dour sarkayan," p. , . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , , . [ ] oppert, "dour sarkayan," p. . [ ] in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] oppert, "dour sarkayan," p. , ; oppert et ménant, "doc. juridiques," p. . [ ] ménant, "annal." . in oppert, "records of the past," , , the fourth canton is called pappa. above, p. . [ ] inscription of nimrud in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . he reads two talents minæ of gold; g. smith reads talents of gold. [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] oppert, "records of the past," , , , . vol i., p. . [ ] annals in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] annals in ménant, p. ; oppert, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] ménant p. . [ ] oppert, _loc cit._ , . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] ménant p. ; oppert, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._ , ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. , , , , , . [ ] in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] above, p. ; oppert, "records of the past," , - . [ ] ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] the annals in oppert, _loc. cit._ , - . the fasti in ménant, "annal." p. , . [ ] cylinder bellino in ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarch," ^ . , _n._ . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] year of nabudurussur. [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] rodwell, "records of the past," , ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] in euseb. "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. [ ] euseb. "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. [ ] cf. e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ff. [ ] in ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ff. [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. ; cylinder taylor in ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. smith's cylinder, "disc." p. ; ménant reads prisoners on the cylinder taylor. [ ] cylinder bellino. [ ] cylinder bellino, in ménant, p. ; cylinder g. smith, "disc." p. ; cylinder taylor in ménant, p. ; "records of the past," , . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. ; ménant, "annal." p. , "records of the past," , . [ ] the fourth campaign of sennacherib, the establishment of assurnadin cannot be later than the year _b.c._, since the cylinder smith, which dates from the year b.c., concludes with these events, and then speaks only of the buildings; g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] in ménant, p. . [ ] an inscription of this king found at susa is explained by oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] above, p. ; annals of sargon, in oppert, "records of the past," , . [ ] cylinder taylor in ménant, p. . [ ] cylinder taylor in ménant, p. , ; talbot, "records of the past," , . [ ] inscription of nebbi yunus in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . an inscription of exarhaddon repeats the events of this war: suzub, "of unknown race, a lower chieftain," came to babylon, and was raised to be king; umman minanu was gained by the treasures of bit saggatu; the parsua joined, etc.; g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] rodwell, "records of the past," , , ; ménant, "babylone," p. . vol. ii. p. . chapter vi. sennacherib in syria. when babylonia rebelled against sennacherib, immediately after the murder of sargon; when merodach baladan, whom sargon had deprived of the rule over babylon, and had finally suffered to remain in south chaldæa, succeeded in again making himself master of babylon; when the aramæans, the tribes of arabia, elam, and the land of ellip had taken up arms against sennacherib--the regions of syria also thought of shaking off the yoke of assyria. the cities of the phenicians and of the philistines, the kingdom of judah, over which king hezekiah had ruled since the death of ahaz ( b.c.), rebelled. the old opponent of assyria in the east, merodach baladan, sought support in the west; the west put hope in the successes of the east: babylonia and syria entered into combination. the hebrew scriptures tell us: "merodach baladan, the son of baladan, king of babel, sent a letter and present to king hezekiah. and hezekiah listened to him, and shewed them all his treasure-house, the silver and the gold, the spices, and the precious oil, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing that he did not show them in his house, and in his dominion."[ ] the request of merodach baladan to make common cause with him, which reached hezekiah in the year b.c.,[ ] did not find judah unprepared. since ahaz had purchased the safety of his kingdom before the combined forces of damascus and israel, by submission to the dominion of assyria, judah had been at peace. in nearly thirty years of peace, which had elapsed since that time, the kingdom had been able to recover her position. the long siege of samaria, the fall of the kingdom of israel, were seen by hezekiah without any movement. but the thought of shaking off one day the yoke of assyria was not new to him. sargon has already told us, that at the time when ashdod rebelled under yaman ( b.c.), the philistines, edom, moab and judah, did indeed pay their tribute, but they thought of treachery, and had sent presents to the king of egypt (at that time shabataka, p. ). hezekiah had provided armour, weapons and shields in abundance; he could now no doubt show a well-furnished armour-house to the envoys of merodach baladan.[ ] the neighbours of judah, the cities of the philistines, and sidon among the phenicians, were prepared to make common cause with hezekiah. in the deepest secrecy he formed connections with tirhaka the successor of shabataka in egypt and meroe, and sent him valuable presents.[ ] beside babylonia, hezekiah could reckon on egypt; it was much to the interest of egypt to nourish the resistance of syria against assyria, and to support the syrians against sennacherib as soon as they took up arms. isaiah most earnestly warned the king and the people of judah against such a rash enterprise--how could any one hope to withstand the crushing power of the assyrians? "woe to the rebellious children," is the cry of the prophet to the king and his counsellors, "that take counsel without jehovah, and make covenants, not in jehovah's spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who go down to egypt and enquire not at the mouth of jehovah, to protect themselves with the protection of pharaoh, and trust in the shadow of egypt! the protection of pharaoh shall be your shame, and the trust in egypt your confusion. they will carry their riches on the backs of asses, and their treasures upon the bunches of camels to a people that shall not profit them. egypt's help is vain and void. i call egypt a tempest, which sits still. woe to them that go down to egypt for help, and stay on horses and on chariots because they are many, but look not unto jehovah! the egyptians are men, and not god; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. the protector stumbles, and the protected falls to earth.[ ] but ye are a rebellious people, lying children, and will not hear the command of jehovah. ye say to the seers, see not; and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us true things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceit.[ ] beware that your bands be not made stronger.[ ] say not, the overflowing scourge shall not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under deceit we have hid ourselves.[ ] the overflowing scourge shall tread you down. the lord jehovah, the holy one of israel said, in repentance and rest ye shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. but ye said, no; for we will flee upon horses, we will ride upon the swift.[ ] because ye trust in oppression and perverseness your iniquity shall be as a watercourse breaking out against a high wall, whose breaking cometh in an instant.[ ] i have heard from jehovah god of hosts, of a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth."[ ] "add ye year to year, let the feasts go round, for i will distress jerusalem, saith jehovah, and encamp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and raise forts against thee.[ ] the enemy is come to aiath, he is passed to migron; at michmash he hath laid up his carriages. they are gone over the passage; they have taken up their lodging at geba; ramah is afraid; gibeah of saul is fled. lift up thy voice, o daughter of gallim; cause it to be heard unto laish, o poor anathoth! madmenah is removed, and gebim's inhabitants flee. this day they shall remain in nob; then he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of zion, the hill of jerusalem.[ ] what aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the house-tops, thou that art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city? elam bears the quiver, with chariots of men and horsemen, and kir uncovers the shield. thy choicest valleys are full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array against the gate. the walls are broken down, and there is a sound of crying to the mountains."[ ] we saw how sennacherib succeeded in forcing merodach baladan from babylon into south chaldæa, in defeating the aramæans, in driving back the elamites, and subjugating the land of ellip ( and b.c.). after the rebellion in the east was crushed, he turned, in the year b.c., to syria, to bring again into obedience the rebellious cities and states.[ ] in the inscription on the bulls, and on the cylinders smith and taylor,[ ] sennacherib tells us: "in my third campaign i marched against the land of the chatti (the syrians). luli (elulæus), the king of sidon, was seized with a mighty terror of my rule, and fled from the west land (_acharri_) to cyprus (yatnan), in the sea. i reduced his land to subjection. great sidon, and little sidon, beth zitti, zarephath, machallib, achzib, akko, his fortified cities, the might of my warriors and the terror of asshur overpowered them. they submitted to me. tubal (ithobal) i placed upon the royal throne over them, and the payment of yearly tribute to my kingdom i imposed upon them as a continuous tax. menahem of samaria (the second of this name, p. ), tubal of sidon, abdilit of aradus, urumelek of byblus, mitinti of ashdod, kamosnadab of moab, malikram of edom--all the kings of the west land, brought their costly presents and things of price to me, and kissed my feet. but zidka of ascalon, who had not bowed to my yoke, the gods of the house of his fathers, the treasures, his wife, his sons, his daughters i brought to assyria. sarludari, the son of rukibti, their former king, i placed over the people of ascalon. i imposed upon him the payment of tribute, as the symbol of subjection to my rule, and he rendered obedience. in continuing my campaign i marched against the cities of zidka, beth dagon, yappa (joppa), bene barak, azor (yasur), which had not submitted to my service, i besieged them. i took them and led away their prisoners. the chiefs and the nation of ekron, who had put padi their king, who remained true and faithful to assyria,[ ] into iron bonds, and had handed him over to hezekiah (chazakiyahu) of judah, my enemy. their heart was afraid, for the evil deed which they had done. in the neighbourhood of eltekeh (altaku), the battle was drawn out against me; they encouraged their warriors to the contest. in the service of asshur i fought against them and overpowered them. the charioteers and sons of the king of egypt, together with the charioteers of the king of meroe, my hand took prisoners in the midst of the fight. eltekeh and timnath (taamna) i attacked, i took, i carried their prisoners away. i marched against the city of ekron. the priests,[ ] the chiefs, who had caused the rebellion, i put to death; i set their bodies on stakes on the outer wall of the city (the inscription of the bulls says: 'i smote them with the sword'). the inhabitants of the city who had exercised oppression and violence, i set apart to be carried away; to the rest of the inhabitants who had not been guilty of faithlessness and rebellion i proclaimed forgiveness. i brought it about that padi their king could leave jerusalem, installed him on his throne of dominion over them, and laid upon him the tribute of my rule. hezekiah of judah who did not submit-- of his fortified cities, and innumerable fortresses and small places in his kingdom i besieged and took. two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty captives, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep without number, i took out from them, and declared to be booty of war. hezekiah himself i shut up like a bird in a cage in jerusalem (ursalimma), his royal city. i threw up fortifications and towers against the city; i broke through the exit of the great gate. his cities which i laid waste i separated from his land, and gave them to mitinti the king of ashdod, and padi the king of ekron, and ismibil the king of gaza, and thus i diminished his land. he (hezekiah) was overcome with fear before my power, and the urbi (?) and the brave warriors whom he had brought up to jerusalem for defence inclined to submission. he agreed to pay tribute.[ ] thirty talents of gold, talents of silver, precious stones, chairs of ivory, skins and horns of amsi, great treasures, his daughters, the servants of his palace, women and men, he sent to nineveh, my royal abode, and his envoy to pay the tribute and promise submission."[ ] the account of sennacherib shows that sidon and judah stood at the head of the rising in syria, that the population of the cities of the philistines was more eager than their princes for war with assyria. the men of ascalon had either deposed their prince, who adhered to assyria, or raised up zidka, after him, to oppose assyria. when padi, the prince of ekron, would not join the rebellion against assyria, the chiefs, the priests, and a part of the population of the city, took him prisoner, and handed him over to hezekiah. we have already seen from the statements of the hebrews, that hezekiah had made better preparations for the contest than hoshea of israel years before. not only were weapons and armour ready for the people; the towers and walls of jerusalem had been improved and strengthened. the defensive work between zion and the city, millo, had been secured by new fortifications, a copious conduit brought into the city. when the danger came, the streams and springs round the city were filled up, and an outer wall was carried round the city as a first line of defence. in order to obtain the materials for this, a number of houses were pulled down in the city.[ ] the books of kings tell us that "sennacherib, king of assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of judah and took them. then hezekiah sent to the king of assyria to lachish, and said: i have sinned, depart from me; what thou layest upon me i will bear. then the king of assyria laid upon hezekiah talents of silver and talents of gold. and hezekiah gave all the silver that was in the house of jehovah, and in the treasures of the king's house, and cut down the doors and posts of the temple of jehovah, which he had overlaid, and gave it to the king of asshur. but the king of assyria sent tartan and rabsaris and rabshakeh from lachish with a great army against jerusalem, and when they were come up, they halted by the conduit of the upper pool which lies by the street of the fuller's field. and they cried to the king. then there went out to them eliakim, the overseer of the king's house, and shebnah the scribe, and joah the chancellor. and rabshakeh said to them: ye trust in the staff of a broken reed, even egypt, which passes into a man's hand and pierces him who leans upon it. how will ye thrust back a single captain, one of the least of the servants of my master? and eliakim, shebnah, and joah said: speak to thy servants in syriac; we understand it; speak not in the jews' language in the ears of the people that are on the wall. has my master sent me to thy master and to thee, said rabshakeh, and not to those who sit on the wall, who, with you, shall eat their dung and drink their water? and rabshakeh came up and cried with a loud voice, in the jews' language, towards the wall: hear the words of the great king, the king of assyria: if ye will make peace with me,--thus he saith to you,--and come forth, ye shall eat every one of his own vineyard, and fig tree, and drink the water of his well. but the people remained quiet: for the king had given commandment not to answer the assyrians. and rabshakeh turned back, and found the king of assyria warring before libnah. here he heard of tirhaka, king of ethiopia, that it was said: see, he has come up to contend with thee. and he again sent messengers to hezekiah, and said: be not deceived by thy god in whom thou trustest. have the gods of the nations whom my fathers overthrew saved them--gozan, and haran, and rezeph, and the sons of eden and telassar? (p. .) where is the king of hamath, and the king of arpad, and the kings of sepharvaim, hena, and iva?"[ ] this account of the hebrews is confirmed, and supplemented by the inscriptions of sennacherib, given above. they tell us that the king of assyria directed his arms first against sidon. he takes the smaller cities of the coast belonging to sidon, zarephath, achsib, akko. king elulæus retires to cyprus. sidon opens her gates, and receives a new prince, ithobal (tubal), at the hands of sennacherib. aradus and byblus bring tribute. it must have been at the time of this campaign in syria that sennacherib caused his image to be engraved on the rocks at the mouth of the nahr el kelb, beside the reliefs which ramses ii. had caused to be cut there more than years before. the picture represents him in the usual manner of assyrian rulers, with the kidaris on his head, the right hand raised, and inscriptions in cuneiform letters beside the hieroglyphs of ramses. the cuneiform inscription is destroyed to such a degree that only the name of sennacherib can be read. from the coast of the phenicians sennacherib marches to the south, along the sea, against the cities of the philistines. first, the places subject to ascalon, japho, beth dagon, bene barak, yasur, are besieged and taken. matinti, the prince of ashdod, pays tribute to sennacherib. ascalon herself appears to have opened her gates while zidka escaped, for the inscription only mentions the carrying away of his wife, his sons and daughters. sarludari, the son of rukibti, who had previously reigned in ascalon, and remained loyal to assyria, was placed on the throne. the prince of samaria, menahem ii., the princes of moab and edom, bring tribute. sennacherib turns against ekron: as already remarked, the ekronites had deposed their prince, padi, and given him up as a prisoner to hezekiah. beside ekron only judah remains in arms against assyria. the account of the hebrews says that sennacherib took all the fortified cities in judah. sennacherib's account says that he took fortified places, small places without number, and carried away , men and women. then, according to the account of the hebrews, hezekiah sent to the king of assyria at lachish to enter into negotiations. hezekiah was terrified by the overthrow of the cities of the phenicians and philistines, the subjugation of the remaining princes, and the invasion of his land. as the army of tirhaka was not yet in syria, he despaired under such circumstances of maintaining his position, and paid the tribute which sennacherib required-- talents of gold, and talents of silver, according to the hebrew account. the statement of sennacherib gives talents of gold, and talents of silver. the difference is explained if we may assume that the amount given by sennacherib is founded on the light babylonian talent, that of the hebrews on the heavy syrian talent; heavy syrian talents are equivalent to light babylonian talents.[ ] if sennacherib states further that he "brought padi out of jerusalem" (p. ), he, no doubt, required and obtained the surrender of padi besides the tribute in this negotiation with hezekiah. but sennacherib was not content with this demand. it is clear that when the tribute had been paid, and padi given up, he made the further request to open the gates of jerusalem. this hezekiah refused. the siege of jerusalem, which hezekiah had sought to avert, commenced. "i shut him up," says sennacherib, "in jerusalem, like a bird in a cage." as the account of the hebrews shows, sennacherib did not appear himself in person at jerusalem. hezekiah's envoys find him at lachish, in the south of judah. a relief of the palace of sennacherib at kuyundshik (p. ) shows us the king in the camp at lachish. with two arrows in the right, and the bow in the left hand, he sits in the tent, on a high and richly-adorned chair; two eunuchs with fans are behind him, fanning him; before him is a general, and behind the latter, curly-haired and bearded prisoners, and women among them.[ ] the upper inscription says: "tent of sennacherib, king of the land of asshur." the lower inscription says: "sennacherib, king of the nations, king of the land of asshur, sits on an exalted throne, to receive the booty from lachish."[ ] as we gathered from his inscriptions, sennacherib marched along the coast from sidon to the south; he had passed beyond japho, when the resistance of ekron checked him. in order to bring ashdod and ascalon to obedience, and to await the approach of tirhaka, sennacherib encamped at lachish, to cover the siege of ekron, and beat back the egyptians and ethiopians who, according to his account, marched to the aid of ekron. in order to avoid having any enemy in the rear at the time of tirhaka's arrival, he sends his commander-in-chief, tartan, with a part of his army, to invade judah. he was so far successful that hezekiah paid tribute and surrendered padi. the surrender of jerusalem did not take place. he now caused jerusalem to be invested. under these circumstances the approach of the assyrians did not take place, as isaiah had announced, from the north, through the pass of michmash, but from the south. when arrived before jerusalem, the leaders of the assyrians begin to negotiate; they demand the surrender of the city, "the hope in egypt is vain." as they failed to produce an effect on the emissaries of hezekiah, they attempt to entice the soldiers on the wall to desert. in order to lend force to the negotiations the siege is commenced. meanwhile the egyptians come nearer; sennacherib goes back to libnah, and the renewed negotiations, which according to the statements of the hebrews he here commences with hezekiah, show how anxious he was to get jerusalem into his hands. as the negotiations failed, he was compelled to attempt to gain the city by assault, by trenches, and besieging towers. isaiah had proclaimed the day of judgment with more earnestness than any prophet before him. none of them had set himself with such force to take away every support from the feeling of self-confidence. the jews were to look forward with fear and trembling to the day of judgment, that they might learn to trust in jehovah alone, and from this renovation of the heart might spring into blossom the new and better time--the new kingdom. when all splendour and wealth is destroyed; when the chiefs and the warriors are overthrown; when "the sinners in zion quake, and trembling seizes the godless;" when "the lord has thus washed away the lewdness of the daughter of zion,"[ ] and "purged away the dross as with lye," then "he will be very gracious to his people which dwelleth in zion, at the voice of her cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee."[ ] but isaiah had not proclaimed the coming judgment for judah only; he had announced without ceasing, that no earthly power, however great and proud it might be, could stand before jehovah. in his lofty conception the judgment over israel became a judgment over the whole world, from the cleansing punishment of which would arise the new and true religion for all, a new life in the fear of god and in piety, in righteousness and peace. "the day of the lord of hosts," he says, "shall be upon every thing that is proud and lofty, and upon every thing that is lifted up; and it shall be brought low; and upon all the cedars of lebanon, and all the oaks of bashan, upon all the high mountains, and lofty towers, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of tarshish, and all costly pictures. the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men, and their idols of silver and gold they shall cast down to the moles and the bats, and jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day."[ ] thus egypt and ethiopia also will be smitten, and at length the line will reach even the scourge with which jehovah has punished the sins of the others, even the assyrians. this great day of judgment, "which avenges their misdeeds on the inhabitants of the earth," is followed by the restoration, for jehovah "smites and heals."[ ] as the exiles of israel shall return from asshur and the lost from egypt (the israelites who had fled thither before sargon), and israel's power shall be restored, so will assyria and egypt be restored, and jehovah will say: "blessed be egypt my people, and assyria, the work of my hands, and israel my inheritance."[ ] the standard of jehovah will be planted on the hill of zion, and under this banner the people shall assemble. "all nations shall come to the mount of jehovah to learn the way of jehovah, and walk in his paths, for out of zion shall go forth the law, and the word of jehovah from jerusalem. then will jehovah judge among the nations, and the work of righteousness is peace, and the fruit of righteousness is rest, so that the nations will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. nation shall not raise up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.[ ] the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. the cow and the lioness shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox; the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp."[ ] but in order that this happy time, "which shall be full of the knowledge of jehovah as the waters cover the sea," may be brought on, jehovah's worship must be maintained by a remnant of the people which he has chosen, to which he announced his will since the days of the patriarchs. isaiah was, therefore, firmly convinced that zion and the temple of jehovah, "in which he had founded a precious corner-stone," could not perish;--that "from jerusalem a remnant would go forth, and the ransomed from mount zion." as jehovah had punished israel only in measure[ ] by carrying the people away into captivity, but had turned aside the complete annihilation of the people, so isaiah firmly believed that in the present instance also judah would not be entirely destroyed, that jerusalem would not be taken, and the judgment of jehovah would be accomplished by the harrying and devastation of the whole land by the assyrians, and the capture of the remaining cities. this hope was in him the more surely founded as hezekiah worshipped jehovah with zeal and earnestness. though the cities of judah were lost, and sennacherib lay in the south of judah with a mighty army, though hundreds of thousands had been carried away, and jerusalem itself was now shut up, isaiah was nevertheless more zealous and earnest in urging the people and the king to resistance than he had previously been in advising them to desist from the undertaking. the line of destruction would soon reach the assyrians, they would not march into jerusalem; jehovah would rescue the remnant of judah. "lo! the assyrian," thus isaiah represents jehovah as saying, "the rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation is in his hand. against the people of my wrath i will send him to take the spoil, and to tread them down like the mire of the street.[ ] but it shall come to pass that when the lord hath performed his whole work upon mount zion and on jerusalem, i will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of assyria, and the glory of his high looks. for he saith: i have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and i have put down the princes like a valiant man. my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have i gathered all the earth; there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. by the strength of my hand i have done it, and by my wisdom, for i am prudent. shall i not, as i have done to samaria and her idols, so do to jerusalem and her idols? shall the axe boast against him that heweth therewith; or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod led him that bears it, or the staff raised the man. therefore the lord of hosts will send a blight upon his fatness, and a firebrand will destroy his splendour, and diminish the glory of his forest and his fruitful field, and the remnant of the trees will be so few, that a child may write them.[ ] when thou shalt cease to desolate, thou shalt be desolated: when thou shalt make an end to plunder, they shall plunder thee.[ ] jehovah hath determined it from the days of old, and from distant times he hath established it. i have suffered it to take place that the assyrian destroyed the cities and made them heaps of ruins, and that their inhabitants were put to shame, of small power, as grass of the field. but i know the insolence of the mighty, and his going out and coming in, saith jehovah. for the sake of his insolence, and because his tumult has come up into my ears, i will put my ring in his nose, and my bit in his mouth, and carry him back on the way that he came. o my people that dwelleth in zion, be not afraid of the assyrian. he smote thee with the rod, and lifted up his staff against thee. yet a little while and my indignation shall cease, and mine anger shall turn to their destruction, and in that day his burden shall be taken from thy shoulder, and his yoke from thy back.[ ] the king of assyria shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with a shield, nor cast a bank against it. by the way that he came, by the same shall he return. and i will defend this city to save it for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant david.[ ] as i have purposed so shall it come to pass. i will break the assyrian in my land, and tread him under foot.[ ] lo! a noise of many nations, which make a noise like the sound of mighty waters. but jehovah shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the whirling dust before the wind. and behold at evening trouble, and before the morning they are not. this is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us."[ ] no doubt the assyrians threw up trenches and besieging towers round the city; no doubt they endeavoured to destroy the walls and gates. but jerusalem was saved. the army of tirhaka, though it appeared very late in syria, did not fail to come. sennacherib had time to bring the siege of ekron to an end, to execute the leaders of the rebellion, to carry away a part of the population, and set up padi again as the prince of ekron (p. ), before the egyptians and ethiopians came. he retired before their approach from libnah to timnath and eltekeh, in order, no doubt, to be nearer the part of his army which was besieging jerusalem, and to be able to withdraw troops from it for the decisive battle. of this battle, which took place near eltekeh, he tells us that he was victorious in it; that he took captive charioteers and sons of the princes of egypt, and charioteers of the king of meroe in the conflict. but while in other cases the hostile king is invariably mentioned by name, tirhaka's name is wanting; sennacherib speaks quite vaguely of the kings of egypt (_sarrani mat mussuri_) and the king of meroe (_sar mat miluhhi_), who came to aid ekron, of sons of the kings of egypt, of charioteers of the kings of meroe, whom he captured; captive sons of princes are also mentioned elsewhere in the inscriptions. further, sennacherib does not tell us, as is usual elsewhere, how many of the enemy were killed, how many prisoners he took, that the enemy fled, and that he pursued them. if we add to this that the siege of jerusalem ends suddenly according to the account of the hebrews, that sennacherib's army did not appear afterwards in syria, although he sat for years on the throne of assyria after this battle, we cannot fail to see that sennacherib, if not completely defeated at eltekeh, must have suffered the severest losses--losses of such weight that they compelled him to retire immediately after the battle, and break off the siege of jerusalem on the spot. this result sennacherib's inscriptions conceal by speaking very vaguely of the enemy, and bringing into prominence some captures, which may have been effected even by the defeated side in the battle. this concealment was aided by the fact that the rulers who rose again in the districts of egypt under sabakon--the "hereditary lords," who maintained themselves under sabakon's successors--could be described as kings, while their sovereign, tirhaka, could be kept in the background, and made to appear as the king of meroe. of more importance is the attempt in the annals to give the appearance of a favourable issue to the campaign in syria, by altering the chronology of the events. they represent that, which took place before the battle of eltekeh, as taking place after it; the invasion of judah, the negotiations with hezekiah, his payment of tribute, which according to the account of the hebrews took place before the battle at eltekeh, when sennacherib was at lachish, they put after the battle, so that sennacherib's campaign appears to close with the submission of hezekiah. the inscriptions do not give any false facts: they even mention the attempt to seduce the soldiers of hezekiah, saying that "the good warriors, whom he had brought to jerusalem for defence, were inclined to submission;" they only alter the order, and represent the capture of ekron, the shutting up and siege of jerusalem, the division of the land in the south of judah among ashdod, ekron, and gaza, and, finally, the payment of tribute by hezekiah, as coming after the battle of eltekeh, whereas these events preceded it; and in their usual manner they exaggerate the payments of hezekiah, when they represent him as sending "his daughters" to nineveh. that the inscription of nebbi yunus mentions the subjugation of the land of judah (jehuda) and its king hezekiah (chazakiyahu), beside the dethronement of luli of sidon,[ ] has no basis beyond the tribute of talents. to the hebrews the rescue from the most grievous distress, the sudden departure of the assyrians from the walls of jerusalem, could appear only as a decree of jehovah, as the work of his mighty arm. when isaiah announced to hezekiah the word of jehovah: "i will protect this city, and save it for my own and my servant david's sake"--the books of the kings continue--"it came to pass in the selfsame night that the angel of jehovah went out, and slew in the camp of the assyrians , men.[ ] and when they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. then sennacherib departed, and went and returned, and dwelt in nineveh." in most complete contrast to his father ahaz, who had sacrificed his son to moloch, and altered the arrangements of the temple at jerusalem after an assyrian model (p. ), hezekiah was sincerely devoted to the worship of jehovah. he had "removed the high places, broken the pillars, and destroyed the astartes;" he had made thorough regulations for the purification, arrangement, and elevation of the worship, and taken measures for the better maintenance of the priests and levites.[ ] the revision by the prophetic hand, in which we possess the books of kings, naturally derives all the misery which fell upon israel and judah from the idolatry of the kings, who for this reason, no doubt, are made to sacrifice on the hills more frequently than was really the case, to offer incense to strange gods, and pray to all the host of heaven. the more easy was it, on the other hand, to believe that the sudden, most unhoped-for rescue of the pious king was brought about by the direct interposition of jehovah, and the announcement of the great prophet fulfilled on the spot. the priests of memphis, or the interpreter, gave the following account of the meeting of sennacherib and the egyptians to herodotus: sethos, a priest of hephæstus (of ptah of memphis), ruled over egypt, when sanacheribus, the king of the arabs and assyrians, led a great army against egypt. of the warriors in egypt none would go against him, for sethos had despised them, as though he had no need of them, treated them badly, and taken away the plots of land which they had possessed under former kings. in despair sethos lamented in the temple before the image of the god, and the god appeared to him in a dream, and bade him be of good courage; he would suffer no harm if he marched out against the enemies; the god would himself send him helpers. so sethos marched out with those who would follow of their own will--none of the warriors followed--and pitched his camp near pelusium. then field-mice spread over the camp of the enemies, and gnawed to pieces their quivers, their bows, and shield-handles; and when on the next morning they fled away without arms, many of them were slain. "and now this king," so herodotus concludes his narrative, "stands in stone in the temple of hephæstus (of ptah), with a mouse in his hand, and says by his inscription--'look on me, and be pious.'"[ ] neither the list of manetho nor the monuments mention or know a priest sethos of memphis, who ruled over egypt in the days of sennacherib. the opponent of sennacherib from the nile, whose name is passed over in his inscriptions, was tirhaka, the king of napata and egypt, as the hebrews tell us, and the statement has been already confirmed by the monuments of egypt. footnotes: [ ] kings xx. . [ ] merodach baladan was, as has been shown (p. ), driven out of babylon in the year b.c.; it is certain that he was ruler there in b.c. if the books of the kings do not mention his embassy to hezekiah till after the siege of jerusalem by the assyrians, they show by the announcement of isaiah to hezekiah, which they put after the embassy of merodach baladan thus: "he will be saved out of the hand of the assyrians" ( , xx. ), that the embassy was at jerusalem before the campaign of sennacherib; cf. isa. xxxix. [ ] isa. xxii. ; chron. xxxii. , . [ ] isa. xxx. , , . [ ] isa. xxxi. - . [ ] isa. xxx. , . [ ] isa. xxviii. . [ ] isa. xxviii. . the deceit is no doubt to be explained by the secrecy of the negotiations with egypt. [ ] isa. xxx. , . [ ] isa. xxx. , . [ ] isa. xxviii. . [ ] isa. xxix. . [ ] isa. x. - . [ ] isa. xxi. , , - . [ ] it is the third warlike enterprise of sennacherib, which for the following reasons cannot be placed earlier than b.c. the cylinder bellino dates from the seventh month of the third year of sennacherib, _i.e._ from the year / ; it concludes with the subjugation of ellip and the tribute of the medes. sennacherib, therefore, may have first marched to syria in the year b.c. the inscription of the bulls narrates this campaign, which extends to the establishment of assurnadin in babylon; so the cylinder smith, which dates from the year b.c. hence, as the year of hezekiah's accession is fixed for the year b.c. (p. , _n._), the siege of jerusalem does not fall in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, in which the books of kings place it, but in the twenty-eighth year. [ ] i combine these three accounts, which differ but little from each other. [ ] cylinder smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] inscription of the bulls in e. schrader, "k. a. t." l. , s. . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." ff. g. smith, "disc." p. ff. rodwell, "records of the past," , ff. [ ] isa. xxii. , , . [ ] kings xviii. ff.; kings xix. - ; isa. xxxvi., xxxvii.; chron. xxxii. [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. . [ ] room , in layard. [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. . [ ] isa. i. . [ ] isa. xxx. . [ ] isa. ii. - . [ ] isa. xix. . [ ] isa. xix. . [ ] isa. ii. , . [ ] isa. xi. - ; cf. xxv. - ; xxxv. - . the ideas of the happy future are not quite consistent in isaiah. if in one place he extends the peace of the world down to the beasts of prey, in others he represents the restored kingdom of david, the united ephraim and judah, as "oppressing their oppressors." "judah will be a terror for egypt" (xix. ), and the israelites will "flee to the sea on the shoulders of the philistines: together they will plunder the sons of the east, and subjugate edom, moab, and ammon" (xi. ). in the same way the new king of the race of david, who will then rule, appears to him at one time gifted with the strength of david, and is again described as participating in the divine nature, and passes into a general picture of the happy future. [ ] isa. xxvii. . [ ] isa. x. , . [ ] isa. x. - . [ ] isa. xxxiii. . [ ] isa. x. - . [ ] kings xix. - ; isa. xxxvi., xxxvii. - . [ ] isa. xiv. - . [ ] isa. xvii. - . [ ] in ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] kings xix. , . [ ] kings xviii. . [ ] herod. , . chapter vii. esarhaddon. sennacherib had been compelled to retire from syria before the egyptians and ethiopians, before the army of tirhaka. if he did not seek to compensate this failure by new campaigns to syria, if he omitted to attempt the subjugation of syria a second time, the reason obviously lay in the fact, that his arms were occupied nearer home by the rebellion of babylonia, the attitude of merodach baladan in south chaldæa, and his combination with elam. we are acquainted with the series of rebellions and struggles which sennacherib had to meet here, till in the year b.c. he finally succeeded in overcoming the confederates leagued against him in a great battle, and capturing the city of babylon (p. ). yet even after these important successes, sennacherib's armies, so far as we see, never appeared again in syria. the books of the hebrews tell us nothing of any further attacks of sennacherib on judah: they merely say: "sennacherib afterwards remained in nineveh." the accounts preserved in the inscriptions of the campaigns of sennacherib do not go beyond the capture of babylon: the account which reaches furthest down is dated b.c. of the next ten years, during which sennacherib continued to sit on the throne of assyria, we have no connected information. even the inscriptions which collect the acts of sennacherib, the inscription of nebbi yunus, and the inscription of bavian, end their account of his military deeds with the battle of chaluli and the capture of babylon. indications lead to the conclusion that sennacherib, even in this last decade of his reign, was so actively engaged in contests on the lower euphrates and against elam, that he was compelled to leave syria to her fate. the fragment of an inscription speaks of sennacherib's wars against a queen of the arabs; in an inscription of his successor also we hear of a conquest of sennacherib in arabia.[ ] tiglath pilesar had fought against samsieh, the queen of the arabs, sargon had received tribute from her, and sargon and tiglath pilesar had also received the tribute of the sabæans.[ ] herodotus, as we saw (p. ), calls sennacherib the king of "the arabians and assyrians," from which we may conclude that in the tradition of egypt, on which this account given by herodotus of sennacherib was based, he was a ruler to whom a considerable part of arabia was subject. in the inscriptions of the successor of sennacherib, we find at his accession nabuzir, a son of merodach baladan, in possession of bit yakin, the land of the sea, the old domain of his race.[ ] he must, therefore, have won it back in sennacherib's time, and though he may have had to pay tribute he must have maintained his conquest. lastly, we hear that halludus, the successor of uman minanu of elam, made a vigorous resistance to sennacherib, and that sennacherib won from him bit imbi, a border fortress.[ ] sennacherib's inscriptions repeatedly inform us that he caused trees to be felled on mount amanus, _i.e._ in the neighbourhood of cilicia, for his buildings.[ ] inscriptions from the third and ninth years of sennacherib also mention the fact that captive cilicians were compelled to work at these buildings (p. ), and in the inscription of nebbi yunus, the mention of the syrian campaign of sennacherib is followed by the statement, that he reduced the cilicians, who inhabited the forests, and destroyed their cities.[ ] sennacherib, therefore, must have maintained by repeated contests the dominion over the cilicians, which sargon had already gained (p. ). polyhistor tells us that sennacherib in assyria heard of the landing of a grecian army in cilicia; he hastened thither and defeated the greeks, after losing many of his own people; in remembrance of this victory he caused his image to be set up there, with an inscription in chaldæan letters, as evidence of his bravery and skill, and built the city of tarsus after the model of babylon. in the somewhat different account of abydenus, sennacherib, after subjugating babylon, defeated a fleet of the greeks in a naval battle off the coast of cilicia, founded the temple of anchiale, set up brazen pillars with an inscription of his achievements, and built the city of tarsus after the model of babylon, so that the cydnus flowed through tarsus in the same manner as the euphrates through babylon. hellanicus had already told the greeks that tarsus and anchiale had been built by a ruler of babylon, and the companions of alexander of macedon saw near the walls of anchiale the picture of a king of assyria, with the right hand raised.[ ] after an eventful reign of years, sennacherib came to an end even more miserable than the end of his father ( b.c.[ ]). "when sennacherib was worshipping in the house of nisroch his god," so we find in the books of kings, "his sons adramelech and nergal sarezer slew him with the sword. they escaped into the land of ararat, and esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead."[ ] according to polyhistor, ardumuzanes, the son of sennacherib, was the treacherous assassin of his father; in abydenus nergilus succeeds sennacherib; nergilus was slain by his son adrameles, who was killed by his brother axerdis, and his army driven back to the city of bizana (in armenia).[ ] the canon of the assyrians merely mentions at the year b.c., "assur-akh-iddin (esarhaddon) ascends the throne."[ ] sennacherib's inscriptions told us that after the campaign in which he had driven merodach baladan out of bit yakin, he had placed his eldest son, assurnadin, as regent over babylon (p. ). of this assurnadin we only know this fact: we hear nothing of his later fortunes. on a tablet, sennacherib states that he has set apart golden chains, ivory, and precious stones, a mina and a half in weight, for his son esarhaddon.[ ] esarhaddon, therefore, a fourth son of sennacherib, wrested from his brothers, adramelech and nergal sarezer, the murderers of his father, the fruit of their evil deeds, and became sennacherib's successor. the acts of esarhaddon show that he was a prince of energy, and knew how to guide the reins with a strong hand. his father's reign had not been poor in results, but still he had not been able to maintain the dominion of sargon in its full extent: he had been compelled to give up syria. esarhaddon was not only able to recover this loss, he raised assyria to a height which she had never attained before. shalmanesar ii. had trodden syria, received the tribute of israel, and reduced the west of iran to submission; tiglath pilesar ii. had seen arachosia, received the homage of judah, and ruled over babylonia; sargon had held sway over syria and babylonia, cilicia and media; esarhaddon kept the west of iran in submission; he not only extended the dominion of assyria further to the north than any of his predecessors; he reduced babylon to certain obedience, his armies passed far beyond the borders of syria, and of asia towards the south-west. according to a cylinder found at kuyundshik and much injured at the beginning, esarhaddon with his army hastened to nineveh; asshur, samas, bel, nebo, and istar, had fortunately placed him on the throne of his father. in nineveh he heard that nabu-zir, the son of merodach baladan, the lord of bit yakin, had attacked the faithful overseer of ur (mugheir), had smitten him with the sword, and refused homage. esarhaddon sends his troops against nabu-zir, who flies before them to elam: nahid merodach, the brother of nabu-zir, comes from elam to pay homage to esarhaddon; he receives the land of the sea-coast, the inheritance of his brother. "without fail," we are further told, "he came each year to nineveh, with rich presents to kiss my feet."[ ] the inscription of a second cylinder, found at nebbi yunus, mentions the same event. "nabu-zir," we are told, "trusted in elam, but he did not by that means save his life. i requested his brother nahid merodach to do homage to me. he hastened from elam to nineveh, and kissed my feet; the whole of the sea-coast i gave to him."[ ] "samas-ibni, prince of bit dakkur in chaldæa, took land in possession which belonged to the sons of babylon and borsippa. i gave it back to them, and put nabu-sallim, the son of balasu, on the throne, who became my servant."[ ] on a third cylinder (aberdeen) esarhaddon says: "at the beginning of my reign, on my first warlike enterprise, i established myself firmly on the seat of my dominion." he marches to babylon, makes prisoners, assembles the warriors, and all the tribes of the inhabitants of kardunias, assumes the crown, and bids the chiefs prostrate themselves before him.[ ] that esarhaddon bore the crown of babylon is told us in the current title of his inscriptions: "king of asshur, king of babel, king of sumir and accad (king of kardunias)." according to the astronomical canon, asaridinus (assur-akh-iddin) reigns over babylon from the beginning of the year b.c. to the end of the year b.c. over assyria esarhaddon reigned from to b.c. esarhaddon appears to have adopted a different method from his fathers for securing his dominion over babylonia. so far as we can see, he attempted to pacify and win the babylonians by mild regulations, by setting up the temples destroyed by his father, and restoring the city. a tablet of esarhaddon narrates in detail the wars which sennacherib carried on against babylonia, and then mentions the destruction of the city in order to conclude with the enumeration of the buildings which he, esarhaddon, erected in babylon.[ ] according to the cylinder aberdeen, esarhaddon, at his coronation in babylon, liberated the prisoners whom he had taken; according to the cylinder of nebbi yunus, he restored, as already mentioned, to the sons of babylon and borsippa the land which samas-ibni of bit dakkur had taken from them. the cylinder aberdeen tells us that esarhaddon fixed the year and the day for the building, _i.e._ for the restoration of bit saggatu--it was the chief temple of babylon, the sanctuary of bel merodach, the protecting deity of the city (i. )--that he had bricks made for this building, that he restored the injured temples of the gods, and the walls of babylon, imgur-bel, and nivit bel.[ ] bricks of the ruin-heaps of amram ibn ali, on the site of the ancient babylon, bear the stamp: "to the god of merodach, his lord, esarhaddon, king of asshur, king of babel, begun and built the altars of bit saggatu."[ ] on the cylinder of nebbi yunus, esarhaddon says: "when samas, bel, nebo, istar of nineveh, and istar of arbela had given me the victory over my enemies, out of the booty of foreign lands, which my hand reduced by the aid of the great god, my lord, i built ( great) temples in the cities of assyria and babylonia, covered them with silver and gold, and made them to shine as the day."[ ] of esarhaddon's relations to elam, the inscriptions only tell us that he strongly fortified a border-city against elam.[ ] the tribes of the arabs were reduced far and wide. the cylinder of nebbi yunus mentions the city of adumu, the fortress of the arabs, which sennacherib took;[ ] he, esarhaddon, made tabua, a woman brought up in his palace, queen of the arabs, and increased by camels the tribute paid to his father. when hazael, the prince of another arabian tribe, died, esarhaddon put his son yahlu on the throne, and raised the tribute paid by hazael by minæ of gold, camels, and payments of other kinds.[ ] the distant land of bazu had been trodden by none of his forefathers; he advanced thither; six princes of this region, kisu, akbaru, mansaku, habizu, niaru, habanamru, and two queens, yapah and bailu, he slew; their gods, their possessions, and their people, he carried off to assyria; the king of the gambul, who dwelt in the marshes and waters (in the region at the mouth of the euphrates), submitted, and brought presents and tribute.[ ] in the east, esarhaddon kept the tribes of the medes in subjection. the cylinder of nebbi yunus says: "the land of patusarra, a region in the neighbourhood of ----, in the midst of the distant land of media, on the border of the land of bikni, of the copper-mountains--this land none of the kings, my forefathers, had subjugated. sitirparna and iparna, the princes of the strong places, had not bowed before me; i carried them to assyria, with their subjects, horses, chariots, oxen, sheep, asses, as rich booty." "arpis, zanasana, ramatiya, the princes of the cities of partakka, partukka, and uraka-zabarna in the land of media, the position of which was distant, who in the days of the kings, my forefathers, had not trodden the soil of assyria,--the fear of asshur my lord threw them down; they brought for me to my chief city, nineveh, their great beasts, copper (?), the product of their mines, bowed themselves with folded hands before me, and besought my favour. i placed my viceroys over them, who united the inhabitants of those regions with my kingdom; i laid upon them burdens, and a fixed tribute."[ ] of esarhaddon's acts in the north, we learn that he drove out the inhabitants of the land of van from their dwellings, that he trod down the inhabitants of the land of chilaki (cilicia), and the duha who dwelt in the forests of the land of tabal. twenty-one fortresses, and the small places round them, he took and burnt down; and carried away the inhabitants. tiuspa of the land of gimirai (cimmeria), which lay in the far distance, submitted to him.[ ] the most important achievements of esarhaddon were accomplished in the west. on the cylinder of kuyundshik, the expulsion of nabu-zir, and the establishment of nahid merodach his brother in bit yakin, to which the cylinder of nebbi yunus adds the subjugation of bit dakkur, is followed by a campaign of esarhaddon to syria, which must, therefore, fall in the year or b.c. sennacherib had dethroned elulæus of sidon in the year b.c., and put ithobal in his place (p. .) ithobal was no longer at the head in sidon. esarhaddon tells us, that abdimilkut of sidon, and sanduarri, a king in the mountain-land (therefore, no doubt, a prince of lebanon), united against him. "abdimilkut trusted in his position by the great sea, and threw off my yoke."[ ] "the great city of sidon," so we are told on a cylinder of nebbi yunus, "which lies on the sea, i attacked; all their places, fortresses and dwellings, i destroyed; i threw them into the sea. abdimilkut, who had fled before the face of my warriors into the middle of the sea, i seized like a fish, and cut off his head. his possessions, gold, silver, and precious stones, the treasures of his palace, his innumerable people, oxen, sheep, and asses, i carried away to assyria. the princes of the land of chatti (syria) i collected. i caused a new city to be built, and called it the city of esarhaddon. the people which my bow had taken in the lands and on the sea of the rising sun (_i.e._ the inhabitants carried away from bit yakin), i settled there, and placed my viceroys over them. i caught sanduarri like a bird in the midst of the mountains, and caused his head to be cut off. the heads of sanduarri and abdimilkut i hung up beside the heads of their chiefs, and marched to nineveh."[ ] the overthrow of sidon, and the terrible example which esarhaddon had made by this execution of the conquered princes, appears to have frightened all syria into obedience. to this, at any rate, the assembling of all the princes of syria, of which the cylinder speaks, points; and we learn further, without any mention of new contests in syria, that the princes of cyprus paid homage to esarhaddon. after the cylinder has narrated the achievements of esarhaddon against the arabs, the medes, and the cilicians, which he accomplished down to the close of the year b.c. (the cylinder bears the date of the year of atarilu _i.e._ of b.c.), it proceeds to the description of the buildings of esarhaddon. in nineveh he built at the smaller edifice of his father to the south of the khosr, and at the great palace of sennacherib to the north of it (p. ). the description of the buildings begins with the mention of an embassy of esarhaddon to the princes of syria and cyprus, and their assembling; they have to provide the material and adornment of these palaces by taxes and contributions. twelve kings of the chatti were called upon: baal, king of tyre; manasses, king of judah (_minasi sar ir jahudi_); kausgabri, king of edom; musuri, king of moab; zilli-bel, king of gaza; mitinti, king of ascalon; ituzu, king of ekron; milkiasap, king of byblus; matanbaal, king of arvad; abibaal, king of samaria; puduil, king of ammon; achmilku, king of ashdod. no mention is made of a prince of sidon; as the inscriptions told us above, that city was under a viceroy of the king. in addition to these twelve kings, a summons was sent to "ten kings of yatnan (cyprus), in the midst of the sea:" ikistusu (aegisthus) king of idalium (idial); pisuaguru (pythagoras), king of kitrusi (chytrus?); ----, king of salamis (sillumi); ituandar (eteandros), king of paphus (pappa); iriil (according to another reading eresu), king of soli (sillu); damasu (damasus), king of kurion; rumisu, king of tamasus; damusi, king of amtihatasti (amathus?); unasagusa, king of limenia (limini); buhli, king of aphrodision (upridissa). "in all, i called upon kings of the land of the chatti on the sea coast and in the sea."[ ] but in spite of this obedience of the princes of syria and cyprus, esarhaddon had to undergo contests in syria after this time, _i.e._ after the year b.c., which brought him beyond the borders of syria. in the year b.c. manasses succeeded his father hezekiah in judah; he was then a boy of years of age.[ ] but when he came of age he did not follow in the steps of his pious father; therefore, we are told in the chronicles, jehovah caused the captains of the army of the king of assyria to come upon him; they took manasses prisoner with thorns, and bound him in chains, and carried him to babel. and when he was in distress he besought jehovah, and humbled himself before the god of his fathers, and jehovah heard his prayer, and caused him to return to jerusalem, to his kingdom.[ ] the books of the hebrews further tell us that esarhaddon, king of assyria, settled people from persia, erech and babel, from susa and elam, in samaria.[ ] the carrying away of manasses, and strengthening of the foreign population in israel, can only have been caused by attempts at rebellion in the kingdom of judah and land of israel. these attempts must have taken place after b.c., with which year the cylinders close, which narrate the deeds of esarhaddon down to this point, without any mention of such rebellions; on the contrary, we saw that these cylinders at the close of this epoch describe manasses of judah and abibaal of samaria as among the obedient and tributary vassals of esarhaddon. the fragment of an inscription of esarhaddon, which narrates the events of his tenth campaign, and which we cannot place before the year b.c., as there is no mention of the campaign in the inscriptions dated from that year, informs us of a rebellion of baal, king of tyre, who was mentioned at the close of the inscriptions previously quoted at the head of the vassals of esarhaddon in syria. we can assume the more certainly that judah and samaria joined this rebellion, as the fragment adds: king baal of tyre "threw off the yoke of assyria, trusting in king tarku (tirhaka) of cush."[ ] it must have been the interference of egypt, the hope in egypt and ethiopia, which urged a portion of the syrians to renewed attempts at rebellion. tirhaka, as we have seen, fought against esarhaddon's father in the year b.c., by no means without success, at eltekeh; after the battle sennacherib abandoned syria. the restoration of the supremacy of assyria, which took place after the overthrow of abdimilkut of sidon, was calculated to drive the ruler of egypt and ethiopia to an attempt to prevent the establishment of assyria on his borders. in the hope of such assistance, tyre, which stood at the head of phoenicia, after the defeat of sidon, may have taken up arms; judah and samaria may have joined her. the fragment of another inscription of esarhaddon tells us that he sent out his forces "to fight against tarku, the king of cush, against the men of egypt, and the allies of tarku" (_i.e._ no doubt, against tyre, judah and samaria). the assyrian army won the victory. tarku fled.[ ] the return of tirhaka was followed by the subjugation of judah and samaria, the carrying away of manasses to babel (esarhaddon built, as we saw, at babel, and then, no doubt, resided there), and the settlement of inhabitants from the east in samaria, in order to secure the obedience of this land. we may put these events in the year b.c. as tyre on her island continued her resistance, esarhaddon marched to break this down, on his tenth campaign, in the early spring, in the month of nisan, crossed the swollen waters of the euphrates and tigris, caused fortifications to be thrown up against tyre, cut them off, as he says, from water and food, and directed his march against muzur (egypt) and miluhhi (napata). from aphek in samaria he set out southwards against raphia (refah near gaza), where his grandfather sargon had defeated sabakon (seveh) of ethiopia and egypt nearly years before (p. ). on the march through the desert the army suffered from want of water; but merodach came to the aid of esarhaddon's warriors, and saved their lives,--as the inscription tells us, which breaks off at the point where it is telling of the first conflict with the enemy. after the indubitable successes of esarhaddon against tirhaka, tyre submitted: the king baal was pardoned; we find him again at the head of the city under esarhaddon's successor. in the same way, after the subjection of tyre, or some time later, when no one in syria could any longer found hopes on egypt, manasses again became king of judah, as the hebrews state. in the list of the subject princes of syria after the death of esarhaddon, the king of judah follows immediately after baal of tyre; unfortunately the name (in any case manasses) is broken off. either on the campaign, of which the first incidents have been already related in the fragment last mentioned, or on a campaign immediately following, tirhaka was not only defeated, but driven out of egypt, back to his own native land. esarhaddon became lord of egypt. a fragment of abydenus says: "esarhaddon obtained the lower portions of syria and egypt by conquering them."[ ] on that rock of the phenician coast at the mouth of the nahr el kelb, between byblus and berytus, where sennacherib had caused his picture and inscription to be engraved beside the sculptures of ramses ii., esarhaddon also caused his image to be engraved, after he had become master of egypt. in its damaged condition the inscription only allows us to ascertain that victories over tirhaka, the capture of memphis, the conquest of egypt, are mentioned in them. at the close the inscription speaks of tyre, and again mentions kings, _i.e._ it records the second complete submission of syria.[ ] esarhaddon's successor informs us: his father had marched to egypt, and forced his way to the midst of egypt. "he defeated tirhaka, the king of cush, and destroyed his power. he conquered egypt (muzur) and cush, and carried away innumerable prisoners. he subjugated the land throughout its whole extent, and annexed it to assyria. the earlier names of the cities he altered, and gave them new names; his servants and viceroys he entrusted with the dominion over them; the payment of tribute he imposed upon them."[ ] the list of the viceroys or princes which esarhaddon placed over egypt after the expulsion of tirhaka, allows us to see that the greater number of the reigning families in the districts of egypt, who had maintained themselves under the dominion of the ethiopians, must have recognised the dominion of esarhaddon in the place of the dominion of tirhaka, and passed from vassalage to him into vassalage to assyria. but not all. many of them may have shared tirhaka's fortunes. in the place of those who did not adapt themselves to the new rule, came others who thought to rise as adherents of assyria. the prince who received from esarhaddon the regions of sais and memphis, and consequently the most important position, niku (necho), was certainly a man who had vigorously supported the new government.[ ] sarludari is said to have governed the canton of zitinu; pakruru, the land of pisaptu; putubasti, the land of tanis (zanu, zoan); harsiesu administered the land of zabnuti (sebennytus); tapnachti (tnephachtus), the canton of bunubu; sushinqu, the land of busiris (pusiru); ziha, the land of siut; lamintu, the land of chimuni; ispimatu, the land of taini (thinis); muntimianche, the land of thebes (niha).[ ] according to this, esarhaddon made those princes of the districts in egypt who, though they had hitherto obeyed tirhaka, were willing to submit to him, his vassals, so far as he did not replace them by egyptians, whom he considered more trustworthy, and here and there by assyrians. to necho he handed over or continued the important districts of memphis and sais. as necho of sais came to the throne, according to the statement of manetho, eight years before psammetichus, and psammetichus, according to the date of the egyptians, became king in b.c., necho's accession falls in b.c., and the conquest of egypt by esarhaddon may be placed in this year. the conquest of cush, _i.e._ of the land of the south, is due to the exaggeration of esarhaddon: we find tirhaka soon after in possession of napata. the slabs of reliefs which esarhaddon caused to be made for the adornment of the new palace which he began to build at chalah after the conquest of egypt, bear on the reverse the inscription: "palace of esarhaddon, king of asshur and babel, king of muzur (lower egypt), king of patrus (patores, upper egypt), of the land of miluhhi (meroe), and of the land of cush."[ ] this new palace at chalah was built by esarhaddon in the south-west corner of the terrace on which rise the royal fortresses of this city, to the west of the building of tiglath pilesar ii. in extent it comes nearest to the palace of assurnasirpal in the north-west corner (ii. ). but it was not completed, though esarhaddon did not hesitate to take the reliefs from the palace of tiglath pilesar and use them for his new building (p. ). a broad staircase leads to the south front, to a double portico guarded by lions and sphinxes. the sphinxes are recumbent lion-bodies, with wings; the human head bears the assyrian tiara surrounded by horns. these forms, not elsewhere found in syria, prove a certain imitation of egyptian models, which the assyrians must have become first acquainted with on the nile.[ ] footnotes: [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. . the fragment must speak of events subsequent to the year b.c., since the cylinder taylor, which dates from this year, does not mention this war. [ ] above, p. . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t.," s. . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. , . ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] _e.g._ nebbi yunus in ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] nebbi yunus in ménant, p. . [ ] alexander and abydenus in euseb. "chron." i. p. , , ed. schöne. for templum atheniensium, it is obvious that we must read anchialensium. [ ] private documents from the reign of sennacherib on the sale of houses, vineyards, slaves, debts, are in existence from the years , , , , , , oppert et ménant, "doc. juridiq." p. ff. [ ] kings xix. . the statement of josephus ("antiq." , i. ) rests only on this passage. in calling adramelechus and saraserus the elder sons of sennacherib, and representing them as fleeing before the assyrians to armenia, he can scarcely have any other authority than this passage, although immediately before he quotes a passage of berosus. [ ] bizana is a conjecture of von gutschmid for in byzantinorum urbem. [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. . [ ] sayce, "records of the past," , . [ ] talbot, "records of the past," , - . [ ] talbot, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] talbot, _loc. cit._; ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] ménant, p. . [ ] talbot, "records of the past," , ; ménant, p. . [ ] talbot, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. . [ ] talbot, "records," , . [ ] talbot, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] so e. schrader translates. [ ] vol. i. p. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] talbot, "records," , . [ ] g. smith, "assyrian canon," p. , . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. ; g. smith, "assyrian canon," p. ; talbot, "records," , ; the name of eteander of paphus is also read on golden armlets, found at kurion. cf. g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. . [ ] the year is obtained for the accession of manasses, by calculating the reigns of the kings of judah from the date of the taking of jerusalem by nebuchadnezzar, _i.e._ from the year b.c. as hezekiah must have ascended the throne in b.c. (p. , _n._), he reigned no doubt two years longer than the books of kings allow, which allot to him a reign of years. [ ] chron. xxxiii. - . [ ] ezra iv. , . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon." p. . [ ] in eusebius, "chron." i. p. , ed. schöne. [ ] oppert, "mémoires de l' acad. des inscript.," , , . g. smith, "assyrian canon," p. . [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. . [ ] psammetichus begins to reign in the year , according to the egyptian reckoning, as will be shown below. the list of manetho allots eight years to his father necho. necho, therefore, began to reign in b.c., _i.e._ in the year in which esarhaddon conquered egypt. nechepsus and stephinates, whom manetho places six and seven years before necho, belong to the family of psammetichus. perhaps they were at the head of isis, under tirhaka; then necho, the son of nechepsus, would have made himself noticed by esarhaddon by going over to him. [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. ff. haigh, "zur aeg. sprache," ; s. ff. the muntimianche of thebes may be the month-em-ha of the inscription of the temple of mut at thebes, the pious foundations of which it enumerates; in a slab found in this temple he is called: "hereditary lord, prince of patores, prophet of ammon." brugsch, "hist, of egypt," ii. . [ ] ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] private documents on the sale of lands, slaves, on loans from the time of esarhaddon, are in existence, belonging to the years , , , , . oppert et ménant, "docum. jurid." cf. g. smith, "disc." p. ff. chapter viii. assurbanipal's wars and victories. in his last years esarhaddon had raised his son assurbanipal to be co-regent with himself.[ ] shortly before his death, which overtook him in the year b.c. after a short but eventful reign of years, he appears to have given up the government entirely to him.[ ] immediately after his accession the new prince received the intelligence that tirhaka, whom his father had driven out of egypt into napata, had invaded egypt, and taken memphis, that the princes whom esarhaddon had entrusted with the government of egypt had fled before tirhaka into the desert.[ ] assurbanipal collected his army in order to maintain egypt. in syria he received the homage of the princes of that land and of cyprus, who had brought tribute and had been subject to his father. these were the lords of the states mentioned in the inscriptions of esarhaddon,--the princes of tyre, judah, edom, moab, gaza, ascalon, ekron, byblus, arvad; with the exception of baal of tyre (p. ), their names are broken out of the inscription (cylinder c); the three last states of syria, found in the list of esarhaddon, samaria, ammon, and ashdod, are also wanting here. then follow the kings of cyprus, in which the cities and the persons are those of the list of esarhaddon; only the three first are wanting. but as the whole number is again put at princes of the land of the coast and the sea, we may conclude with certainty that from the year b.c.--since the rebellion and re-installation of baal of tyre, and manasses of judah, there had been no movements and changes in syria. assurbanipal informs us that he went down from syria to egypt; at karbanit he met the army of tirhaka, and drove it out of the field. when tirhaka heard of this at memphis, he retired to thebes. assurbanipal pursued him, took the city, and caused his army to encamp in it; he restored the princes to whom his father had given the districts of egypt, left behind a portion of his army, and returned to nineveh with rich booty ( b.c.).[ ] tirhaka was again forced back to napata,[ ] but the dominion of assyria was not yet firmly established in egypt. assurbanipal may have imposed heavier duties on the rulers of the districts; the continued stay of assyrian troops in egypt may have appeared too burdensome and oppressive. whatever the motive, some of these vassals entered into secret communication with tirhaka; at their head was necho, the chief of the most important districts, memphis and sais, and with him sarludari of zihinu, and pakruru of pisaptu. they intended to return from the vassalage of assyria to the vassalage of napata; they invited tirhaka to return to egypt and again seize the sovereign power. the condition would without doubt be that tirhaka should continue them in their rule over the cities and districts which esarhaddon and assurbanipal had given over to them. but the leaders of the assyrian troops captured their messenger, caused necho, sarludari, and pakruru to be arrested, put them in chains, and sent them to nineveh. the assyrians took memphis, mendes (ben-didi), and tanis (zanu, zoan), cut down the inhabitants who resisted, and broke the towers on their walls. tirhaka retired before the assyrian troops to napata. it appears that assurbanipal attempted to give other supports than mere force of arms to his rule over the distant egypt. he released necho from his bonds, restored to him the government of sais, and gave to his son neboshezban the government of the canton of athribis: "i continued to extend to them," he tells us, "the kindness and favour which my father had shown them." even these means were soon found to be insufficient. tirhaka's days came to an end. he was succeeded on the throne of napata by urdamane, whom assurbanipal calls a son of sabakon (sabaku). he set out to restore the dominion of ethiopia over egypt; he won thebes, defeated the assyrian troops before memphis, shut up the defeated army in memphis, and took them prisoners. "a messenger went in haste to nineveh" to bring to the king the intelligence of these grievous disasters.[ ] assurbanipal set out for egypt in person, to make good the blow which the arms of assyria had received, to restore the prestige and dread of his power. when he had crossed the borders of egypt, urdamane left memphis in order to return to thebes. "the princes and viceroys whom i had placed over egypt, came before my face and kissed my feet," so assurbanipal tells us. "i pursued urdamane and came to thebes; he fled at the approach of my mighty army. i took the city of thebes; silver, gold, precious stones, the treasures of the palace, men and women, two great obelisks, which stood before the gates of the temple, engraved with beautiful sculptures; a great and innumerable booty i carried away from thebes (niha) to assyria. i made my warriors march over egypt and cush, and won glory."[ ] "no-ammon (thebes) was situate among the rivers,"--so the prophet nahum describes the capture and desolation of thebes by assurbanipal and the assyrians,--"with waters round about her, whose rampart was the stream, and her walls the stream. ethiopia (cush) mighty in numbers, and egyptians endless in multitude, phut (arabians) and libyans (lubim) were her helpers. yet she went forth into misery and captivity; her children were dashed to pieces at the tops of all the streets. they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains."[ ] the repeated attempts of tirhaka and his successor to re-establish the government over egypt from napata were wrecked. after the capture and sack of thebes, which we can place in the year b.c.,[ ] assurbanipal sought further to secure the obedience of egypt by settlers, whom he brought there from conquered lands.[ ] from that time, for at least ten years, egypt remained in his possession without any disturbance. but in spite of this establishment of the assyrian dominion in egypt assurbanipal had again, in the next few years, to quell rebellions in syria. tyre and aradus attempted to regain their independence, an attempt at defection, which could now have even a less chance of success than when egypt stood unbroken under the ethiopians. baal, king of tyre, who had already rebelled against esarhaddon, and was afterwards pardoned and restored, who subsequently paid his tribute with all obedience, now took up arms anew, ten years after his first rebellion. assurbanipal's third war was directed against tyre and aradus. he tells us that the fortresses of king baal were taken, that he cut off all exit from tyre, and compelled the inhabitants to drink the water of the sea, that he brought about their submission by a close investment. when baal had given up his son, his daughters, and the daughters of his brothers, with a considerable tribute, he was again replaced in his dominion.[ ] the king of arvad, also yakinlu, "who dwelt in the sea" (the city of arvad lay on an island off the coast, ii. ), was compelled to submit; he sent his daughter with many presents to nineveh for the harem of the king, and kissed assurbanipal's feet; after his death the government of arvad was entrusted to azibaal, a son of yakinlu. assurbanipal's power and supremacy reached far to the west beyond syria. he tells us that mugallu, the king of the tibarenes, and sandasarmi of cilicia, who had not obeyed his predecessors, sent their daughters to nineveh, and kissed his feet. gyges (gugu) also, the king of lydia, "a land, the name of which my father had not heard," says assurbanipal, sent a message to nineveh. gyges had obtained the throne of lydia by violence; he was opposed by a strong party who adhered to the old royal family which he had overthrown; and it was not in domestic matters only that he found himself in difficulties. the cimmerians who had invaded asia minor and were settled there on the lower halys, who, as esarhaddon told us, recognised his supremacy (p. ), had forced their way from thence to phrygia and lydia. gyges obviously sought support in assyria, the strong neighbour of the cimmerians, as soon as and as long as tubal and cilicia obeyed the king of asshur. the inscriptions of assurbanipal tell us that gyges promised obedience to him and brought tribute.[ ] thus the supremacy of assyria reached the west of asia minor, the coasts of the Ægean sea (about b.c.). the next campaigns of the king were directed to the north. achsheri, king of minni, had kept back his tribute. the assyrians traversed and desolated his land in two successive invasions; achsheri's own subjects rose against him, and slew him; his son ualli submitted, sent his daughter to nineveh, and paid the tribute which had been kept back, and which assurbanipal increased by horses.[ ] sarduri, king of the neighbouring ararat (urarti), sent rich presents, and acknowledged the supremacy of assyria. the rebellion of birizchadri, a chief of the medes, and of the two sons of gagi, a chief of the sacae (sachi), sariti and pariza was defeated; fortified places were taken; the three rebels were taken prisoners and carried to nineveh.[ ] assurbanipal bestowed especial attention on babylonia, the government of which he had entrusted to his younger brother samul-sum-ukin (samuges in abydenus, saosduchinus in the canon of ptolemy).[ ] he tells us that here also he had continued the building of the temples which his father had begun, that he built at bit saggatu at babel, and erected four silver bulls at the gate of the temple of bit zida at borsippa, that he had adorned the abodes of bel and bilit. a brick found at babylon bears the inscription, "to the god merodach, my lord, assurbanipal, king of assyria, king of babylon."[ ] when urtaki, king of elam (he had succeeded his brother ummanaldas i. on the throne there), invaded babylonia, samul-sum-ukin called on his brother for assistance; the elamites were already encamped before the walls of babylon.[ ] "to protect bel and nebo, my gods, whom i served," says assurbanipal, "i gathered together my warriors." the elamites were driven back to their borders. not long after this failure urtaki, king of elam, died, and the third brother of ummanaldas and urtaki, teumman, ascended the throne. the sons of the two elder brothers, the sons of ummanaldas, and the sons of urtaki (the latter were called ummanigas and tammaritu) were afraid that teumman would cause them to be removed out of his way, in order to secure the succession for his own sons, and fled to assyria.[ ] teumman demanded that they should be given up. assurbanipal refused; and when in consequence teumman declared war and invaded assyria, assurbanipal sacrificed to the war-goddess istar at her abode in arbela, "the city of the joy of her heart," and prayed: "o thou goddess of goddesses, dreadful in battle, goddess of war, queen of the gods, rejoice the heart of asshur; strike down teumman and destroy him. and the goddess heard my prayer and said: fear not; i will grant thee favour." but in that night istar appeared in a dream to the seer, with her bow in her hand, and announced that the enemy would not remain; in the midst of the battle she would protect the king of asshur.[ ] assurbanipal went against elam in his fifth war, which he led in person. teumman retired before the assyrians, and awaited the attack of their army in a position at eulæus (ulai), in the neighbourhood of susa. the assyrians, and with them the sons of urtaki, ummanigas and tammaritu, fought with success. teumman, wounded in the battle, fled with his eldest son; the chariot broke down in the forest; they were taken and slain. assurbanipal placed ummanigas on the throne of susa. a relief in the palace of assurbanipal depicts the enthronement of ummanigas at madaktu and susa by an assyrian officer.[ ] chidalu, a part of elam, which hitherto had been ruled over by istar-nandi--the east of elam apparently--was handed over to tammaritu. teumman's head was seen at the entrance of assurbanipal into nineveh: it was placed on the great gate of that city (about b.c.).[ ] assurbanipal had carried off one success upon another; he was master of egypt, received tribute from lydia, and placed kings over elam at his pleasure, when the rebellion of his brother samul-sum-ukin in babylon threatened to overthrow the foundations of the kingdom. eager to reign independently, samul-sum-ukin opened the treasures of the temples of bel at babylon, of nebo at borsippa, of nergal at kutha, and sent rich presents to ummanigas, whom assurbanipal had raised to the throne of elam not long before, in order to incite him to take up arms against assyria and to secure the aid of elam. ummanigas took his side.[ ] samul-sum-ukin also called on the districts on the euphrates and tigris to join him. in vain did the prefects of erech, amida, and arapha attempt to check the rebellion. the children of babylon forgot the favour shown to them, says assurbanipal, the temples which he had restored and adorned with silver and gold; the inhabitants of sippara, babylon, borsippa, kutha disregarded their brotherhood, and took up arms against him. the signal given by the king's own brother was followed by the arabians, syrians, and lydians. "that faithless brother, samul-sum-ukin, led astray the inhabitants of accad, of chaldæa, of aram, and of the sea coast, my tributary subjects, to rebel against me. the princes (_sarri_) of the land of guti, of the land of the west (_mat acharri_), of miluhhi, which my hands brought into submission, all these he seduced to fall from me, they took his side:" such is the statement of assurbanipal.[ ] this rising was all the more dangerous, as some of the vassal-princes of egypt thought it a favourable moment for throwing off the yoke of assyria. the son of the necho, whom in spite of his conspiracy with tirhaka assurbanipal had a second time made prince of sais, neboshezban, who was then ruler of the canton of athribis, and after the death of his father necho, which occurred in the mean time (necho died shortly before, or in, the year b.c.),[ ] succeeded him as prince of sais, was at the head of this movement. assurbanipal tells us that gyges of lydia sent aid to pisamilki, the prince (_sar_) of muzur, who had cast off the yoke of his rule.[ ] in this pisamilki we may recognise the psammetichus of the greeks, the psamtik of the egyptians, the son of necho of sais, the same person whom assurbanipal, when he mentions the restoration of necho and his son, calls by the assyrian name of neboshezban. when the failure of that attempt had made necho and his son captives of assyria, the important point was to give pledges to the king of assyria that the fidelity of his vassals would not again be broken. the egyptian tradition of the rise of psammetichus, preserved for us by herodotus and diodorus, ought not to have more weight than that assyrian name against the identity of pisamilki and psammetichus. that tradition knows of nothing but contests of psammetichus with his fellow-princes, not with the assyrians; like manetho's list of kings, it is absolutely silent about the assyrians, because it wishes to conceal the fact that the assyrians ever had dominion over egypt. the tradition of egypt imagines a voluntary retirement of the king of ethiopia, or his abdication of the government of egypt, and then represents the egyptians as setting up princes in the place of one: we have already seen that were set up by esarhaddon, and retained by assurbanipal. manetho's list says nothing either of the assyrian dominion, or of the twelve; in it the rule of the last ethiopian is followed by the dynasty of the saites, two forefathers of necho, and then by necho and psammetichus. the sepulchres of the apis show, that as a fact, the dates were differently fixed in the seventh century b.c. in egypt. even then the kings of assyria were disregarded; the reign of the ethiopian tirhaka is followed immediately by the reign of psammetichus. the struggles which psammetichus had to undergo with his fellow-princes, of which herodotus, diodorus, and strabo tell us, were, as a fact, contests with those among the princes who adhered to assyria, who would not follow the lead of psammetichus against assyria, and submit to his rule over egypt. the rebellion of samul-sum-ukin appeared to tear from its lines the whole structure of the assyrian supremacy. but assurbanipal knew how to cope with serious danger: deep-seated confusion in elam made his task easier. thus he succeeded in this sixth war in driving his brother's army out of the field. he besieged sippara and kutha. against ummanigas of elam, who, though placed there by assurbanipal himself, was now an ally of samul-sum-ukin, his own son tammaritu rose in rebellion. he slew his father, but persisted in the war against assyria, which his father had begun. he marched out to aid samul-sum-ukin; in the middle of the war indabigas, one of his servants, rebelled against him; tammaritu found it necessary to seek the protection of his enemy assurbanipal. thus samul-sum-ukin's hope in the help of elam vanished. after sippara, kutha, and borsippa had fallen, babylon was shut up. the famine in the city was so great that "they ate the flesh of their sons and their daughters," as assurbanipal tells us. of the death of his brother he tells us: asshur, sin, samas, bin, bel, nebo, and istar thrust him into burning fire, and destroyed his life. assurbanipal's punishments were fearful. he had the tongues torn out of those who spoke against him; even those of the offenders who escaped the famine and the burning fire, did not get away free; they were slain or reduced to slavery. but he spared the remainder of the sons of babylon, kutha, and sippara. on the people of accad, on the portion of the chaldæans and aramæans, and those of the sea coast who had taken the side of samul-sum-ukin, he again placed the yoke of asshur. a relief of the palace of assurbanipal exhibits him on the chariot of war, with prisoners and booty before him. the inscription says: the king commands the coronation robe of samulsum-ukin, his garments, his wives, his chariots, his captains, his warriors, and his slaves to be brought before him.[ ] after thus suppressing the rising of the babylonians, assurbanipal directed the whole of his forces to the subjugation of elam. the domestic condition of elam seemed to promise success to a vigorous attack. indabigas experienced the fate which he had prepared for tammaritu; he was driven from the throne by a man of the name of ummanaldas, the son of attamitu.[ ] this rebel did not find universal recognition; pache maintained a part of the land against him. under such circumstances the victory could not be very difficult. assurbanipal sent troops under balibni against the land of bit yakin, which was governed by nabubelzikri, a grandson of merodach baladan, as a tributary prince (perhaps the son of nahid-merodach, p. ), who appears to have taken part in the rebellion of samul-sum-ukin, and then to have escaped to elam. assurbanipal had already demanded his surrender from indabigas, and he repeated the demand after the rise of ummanaldas, who also refused it. the assyrian army led by assurbanipal to his seventh war crossed the borders of elam. ummanaldas abandoned his metropolis, madaktu, and fled into the mountains. assurbanipal placed tammaritu on the throne at susa, but soon returned, either from fear of his disobedience or because he had heard of it, to elam, dethroned tammaritu, and carried him prisoner to assyria; marched through the whole land, devastating it, and took cities, which are enumerated in the inscription. nevertheless, after his departure, ummanaldas again obtained power over elam; assurbanipal was compelled to march against the country once more. this was his eighth war. he obtained the most complete success; madaktu and susa fell into his hand. "i opened their treasure-houses," says assurbanipal; "i took the treasures, which the earlier kings of elam and those of these days had collected. no enemy beside myself had laid hands upon them. the silver and gold which the earlier and later kings of sumir and accad, and of kardunias, had sent to elam, which earlier kings and samul-sum-ukin had paid for the help of elam; robes, arms, chariots, i carried to assyria. i broke down the tower of susa; susinak, the god of their oracle, whose image no man had seen, and the remaining gods (eighteen gods and goddesses are mentioned) with their treasures, priests, and servants, i carried to assyria. thirty-two images of the kings in silver, gold, brass, and stone, i carried away from susa, madaktu, and huradi, and in addition an image of humbanigas (p. ), of istar-nandi, of halludus (p. ), and the younger tammaritu. i broke the winged lions and bulls, which guarded the temples, the winged bulls before the temple gates of elam, and sent their gods and goddesses into captivity: i destroyed the palaces of their kings, the earlier and the later, the opponents of my father; the rulers and inhabitants of their cities, the people great and small, i carried away with their flocks; their warriors i divided throughout the land of my kingdom ( b.c.)[ ]" in spite of this savage destruction, ummanaldas could return from the mountains, and again take possession of the ruins of madaktu. he was now, as it appears, prepared to accede to assurbanipal's renewed request to give up the grandson of merodach baladan. the latter anticipated his surrender, inasmuch as he and his armour-bearer mutually slew each other. ummanaldas gave up the corpse, and assurbanipal had the head cut off. thus died the last scion of merodach baladan of whom we hear: so ended the race which for years, with incredible endurance and stubbornness, had asserted the independence of south chaldæa and babylonia against assyria. after this ummanaldas had to give way to pache, who received a part of elam. but pache could not stand before the assyrian army, or did not venture to resist it. he was taken prisoner; ummanaldas also was captured, "like a raven," in the mountains, into which he had fled for refuge. "tammaritu, pache, and ummanaldas, who ruled over elam in succession, i brought them beneath my yoke, with uaiti, the king of the arabs, whom i brought out of his land to assyria. i had them bound to the yoke of my war-chariot; they drew it to the gate of the temple of bilit, the famed wife of asshur, the mother of the great gods."[ ] ancient elam, the oldest power in the region of the euphrates and tigris, and in all hither asia, which once, before the times of hammurabi of babylon, before the year b.c., had held sway over the states of the lower euphrates, whose armies in those days had seen syria, was fallen, never to rise again. "in the midst of hell," says the prophet ezekiel, "is elam, and all her multitude about her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which are gone down uncircumcised into the nether parts of the earth. they who caused terror in the land of the living have borne their share with them that go down to the pit. they have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude; they are placed among the slain."[ ] it is true that, more than a century after the fall of susa, we hear of stubborn attempts on the part of elam to restore her state; but after that elam ceased to exist, except as a name, and her history was then the more utterly forgotten, because after this rebellion the metropolis of susa became the residence of the wide dominion of the kings of another people, the achæmenids. babylonia was in subjection, and elam had ceased to exist. assurbanipal employed his arms in punishing the arabian tribes who had supported the rebellion of his brother. ammuladin, the king of the kedarites, had attacked the princes of syria who remained loyal to assurbanipal. the attack failed. ammuladin was defeated, and taken prisoner by kamoshalta, the king of moab; with him adiya, a princess of the arabians, was given up to assurbanipal.[ ] two other princes of the arabs, the brothers abiyateh and aimu, had led their warriors to babylon, to samul-sum-ukin. they had been there defeated together with him and shut up in babylon. when the famine was sore there, they attempted in vain to break through the siege; abiyateh gave himself up to assurbanipal. with them the soldiers of a third arabian prince, uaiti, had marched to babylon. assurbanipal now attacked uaiti, whose tribes dwelt on the borders of ammon, moab and edom, in hauran and near zoba; their dwellings and tents were burnt. uaiti was carried prisoner to nineveh, and abiyateh was set up in his place. scarcely had he been set up, when he united with nadnu, the prince of the nebaiyoth, against assyria. on his ninth campaign, assurbanipal marched over the tigris and euphrates into the deserts of syria. as he tells us, he defeated the servants of the deity of atar-samain and the nebaiyoth, took both princes prisoners in the battle, and caused their flocks to be driven off far and wide. "i divided camels like sheep," he says; "they fetched half a shekel of silver at the gate. on my return i took hosah, which lies on the shore of the sea, which was disobedient, and did not pay tribute, and carried the people to assyria. the people of akko, who did not obey, i destroyed; the remnant i carried to assyria."[ ] not only the arabian tribes between the euphrates and the jordan, not only the princes of syria, but the land of ararat also, as assurbanipal expressly declares,[ ] and cilicia and the east of asia were subject. this follows, without a doubt, from the circumstance that ardys, king of lydia, who succeeded his father gyges on the throne in the year b.c., soon after recognised anew the supremacy of assurbanipal, in order to obtain his aid against the cimmerians, who again heavily oppressed lydia from the halys. assurbanipal had not only maintained the kingdom against the revolt of samul-sum-ukin, he had strengthened it by the overthrow of elam, established the supremacy of assyria in hither asia, and extended it to the west of asia minor. we do not hear anything of an attempt to renew the vassalage of egypt, though the war against the nabatæans and kedarites brought assurbanipal to the borders of egypt. we may suppose that the resistance of the regions of akko and hosah (to the south of tyre[ ]) possibly rested on the expectation of egyptian assistance. but the inscriptions of assurbanipal end with the war against the arabians; beyond this we have no accounts of assyrian origin. the struggles of assurbanipal with the nebaiyoth and the kedarites on the borders of ammon and moab, the reduction of akko, are the last acts of the assyrians in syria, of which we have any definite information. they must have taken place not long before the year b.c. it will be seen further on that assurbanipal after this time was engaged in the east. the hebrew scriptures also know nothing of any interference of assyria in the fortunes of their race after the reign of manasses of judah, which ended in the year b.c. a statement of herodotus, which is indeed very obscure, makes it possible to conclude that there was a later border war between assyria and egypt. he says: "psammetichus besieged ashdod (azotus), a large city of syria, for years, till he took it." "this city," herodotus adds, "endured the longest siege of any that we know."[ ] psammetichus could not besiege the philistine city of ashdod, until the southern fortresses of the philistines, raphia, gaza and ascalon were in his hands. his object in the attack upon these cities could only be to render the march of the assyrian armies to his land more difficult. these armies would have to collect in the south of philistia, and provide themselves with stores, especially water, before they could begin the march through the desert. in the beginning of this war, at any rate, it could not have been merely the forces of the philistines which psammetichus had to contend with here; there must have been assyrian garrisons and assyrian troops in the cities. diodorus also tells us of the mode in which psammetichus drew out his forces in the battles which he fought in syria.[ ] that the siege of a city should last years is in itself inconceivable; we can only accept the statement of herodotus as meaning that the war for the possession of the cities of the philistines on the coast lasted years. if we calculate this time from the irruption of the scythians into syria, which in any case put an end to this war, _i.e._ from the year b.c., psammetichus rebelled against assyria in the year or b.c., and immediately afterwards desired to establish himself on the borders of syria beyond the desert. if assurbanipal was fighting against arabian tribes, on the borders of edom, just before the year b.c., and took akko, the narrative of this campaign ought also to speak of a collision with the egyptian army, if psammetichus was carrying on war against ashdod as early as this date. we saw above that psammetichus's rebellion against assyria in egypt could not take place later than the year b.c. assurbanipal begins the account of his buildings with a statement of what he had done for the temples of babylon;[ ] he concludes it with a description of his works at nineveh. the walls with which sennacherib had surrounded that city had been injured by heavy falls of rain which bin sent down. assurbanipal strengthened the substructure, and restored them from the foundations to the pinnacles.[ ] he restored, extended, and adorned the palace of his grandfather sennacherib, in which he had grown up: the kings of the arabians whom he had captured in battle had been compelled to work at them. whoever destroys the inscription of his name, or the name of his father and grandfather, and does not set it up along with the inscription of his own name, him will asshur and the rest of the gods, sin, samas, bin, bel, nebo, adar, and nergal punish with the condemnation which will correspond to the glory of his (assurbanipal's) name.[ ] in the ruins of this palace, the ruins of kuyundshik, a number of slabs with reliefs have been preserved, exhibiting the warlike achievements of assurbanipal, with which he caused the halls of this building to be adorned. on them we see the envoys of the kings of ararat paying homage to assurbanipal. urtaki, teumman, and tammaritu are seen in battle against the assyrians; we see the head of teumman of elam brought to assyria, and ummanigas is enthroned at madaktu by an assyrian officer, (p. ). further, a relief shows us assurbanipal sitting under some trees with some women; on one of the trees hangs the head of the descendant of merodach baladan, nabubelzikri.[ ] finally, we find on these reliefs the cities of elam, the city of susa, and their sieges. the inscriptions give the names, and briefly explain the incidents depicted. footnotes: [ ] g. smith, "assyr. canon," p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . e. schrader, "k. a. t." s. . the astronomical canon makes esarhaddon's reign in babylon end with the year b.c. [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] assurbanipal, it is true, says that he has conquered muzur and cush (g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ), which is certainly an exaggeration unless upper egypt is meant by cush. [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] nahum iii. - . [ ] the apis-pillar from the twenty-first year of psammetichus proves that the egyptians put him immediately after tirhaka. as they make the reign of psammetichus commence with the year b.c. the death of tirhaka must fall in this year, and the war of urdamane in the next. [ ] inhabitants of karbit, in the land of halahasta, were brought here; compare cyl. b. in ménant, "ann." p. . if the king of the memorial stone of the ruins of the temple of ammon at napata, whose name is read with much uncertainty as nuat-mi (amun), or amun-merinut, or tonuat-amen, is not one and the same person with the urdamane or undamane (unt-amen?) of assurbanipal, it is very difficult to explain who he is. if the name of the person making dedications beside tirhaka at karnak is the same which the monument gives (mariette, "monum. divers." pl. , sqq.), this would be an important factor for the identification with urdamane, which is also supported by the fact that piker of pasupti is prominent among the opponents of this ethiopian: pakruru of pisaptu has been previously mentioned by assurbanipal. the narrative of the memorial stone would then be the counterpart of the assyrian account; the only striking thing in the narrative of the ethiopian king is that the victory of memphis is mentioned, but not the capture of the assyrians. he ought also, it is true, to have mentioned the retreat forced upon him by the assyrians. the narrative runs: in the year when he came to the throne nuat-amon saw two serpents in a dream, and when he asked the interpretation of the dream, it was announced to him: "he possessed the south, he should conquer the north." he set out, and when he arrived at thebes the prophet of the temple of ammon-ra met him with the astrologers, and the inhabitants who were at first hostile to him were filled with joy. but when nuat-amon approached memphis, the sons of the rebellion marched against him, in order to do battle: he inflicted on them a great defeat, and made himself master of the city of memphis. from memphis he marched out, in order to do battle with the chiefs of the land of the north, but they remained in their walls. when their cities were besieged, they appeared before nuat-amon lying on their bellies, with their faces on the ground, and piker the chief of pasupti said: "thou slayest whom thou wilt, and thou givest life to whom thou wilt, and all vow to be thy servants." the heart of nuat-amon was full of joy when he heard these words. they turned back into their cities and sent all the good things of the north and the south to the lord of upper and lower egypt. maspero, "essai sur la stèle du songe." rev. archéol. , , ff. [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. , . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, "assurb." p. . ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] cylinder b., in g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , . ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , , - . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. , , , . "disc." p. . [ ] above, p. . it is certain that psammetichus's reign ends in the year b.c.; boeckh, "manetho," zeitschr. "für geschich.," s. ff., unger, "manetho," s. . herodotus and manetho allot years to the reign of psammetichus, and an apis-pillar tells us that a new apis was installed in the month athyr of the th year of the reign of psammetichus. necho therefore died before, or in the year b.c. ( + ). [ ] g. smith, "assurb." p. ; "disc." p. . in the computation of herodotus, the accession of gyges of lydia takes place in or , according as the fall of sardis is put in or b.c.; his death takes place in or b.c. in the canon of eusebius, on the same data, he is computed to have ascended the throne in or , and to have reigned till or . in the list of lydian kings (euseb. "chron." i, p. , ed. schöne), he ascended, on the same data, in or , and reigned to or b.c. the latter dates must be accepted if gyges sent help to psammetichus. samul-sum-ukin would not have found it necessary to invite the prince or princes of miluhhi to rebellion, if egypt had revolted from assyria before his rebellion--miluhhi must then be used on the cylinder in a wider sense for egypt and meroe--and gyges could not send any help to psammetichus, if he was not king himself. we are not in a position to fix accurately the date of the rebellion of samul-sum-ukin, since the list of the assyrian rulers breaks off with the year b.c. the fact that it is the sixth war of assurbanipal in which he marches against his brother--i enumerate the wars according to cylinder a--only proves that the war cannot have taken place before b.c. in the astronomical canon the reign of saosduchinus ends with the year b.c.; and we may therefore assume with certainty that the overthrow of samul-sum-ukin took place in this year. how long before this samul-sum-ukin took up arms, we do not know; he may very well have done so in the year b.c. for the rebellion was not brought to a close till after a long siege of babylon: or the rebellion may have commenced even earlier, so that gyges could undoubtedly have sent help to psammetichus in the last years of his reign. the cylinders, which narrate the history of the wars of assurbanipal, date from the year of samasdainani, who in cylinder a is called viceroy of accad, and on the others viceroy of babel. we are not in a position to fix definitely the place of this year. a tablet of erech bears the date of nisan of the twentieth year of assurbanipal in babel (ménant, "annal." p. ff.). as assurbanipal must have dated his rule in babylon from the overthrow of samul-sum-ukin, and assurbanipal himself died in the year b.c., samul-sum-ukin's death must have taken place at least before b.c. on the cylinders and on the reliefs in his palace at nineveh, assurbanipal merely calls himself king of asshur. if in the documents relating to his buildings in babylon as well as on the babylonian brick already mentioned he calls himself king of babel, it follows that these inscriptions belong to the period after the war with his brother. g. smith, "disc." p. , . [ ] g. smith, "assurb." p. ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. ; g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. - , . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. ff. if babylon fell in the sixth war, b.c., the destruction of susa at the end of the eighth war cannot have taken place earlier than in the year b.c. [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. ; "assurb." p. , , , , ; ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ezekiel xxxii. . [ ] g. smith, "assurb." p. ; "assyr. canon," p. . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] joshua xix. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] beginning of cylinder c. in g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] above, p. . g. smith, "assurb." p. . [ ] end of cylinder a. in g. smith, "disc." p. ff. [ ] place, "ninive." pl. . chapter ix. the constitution, army, and art of the assyrians. "asshur was a cedar in lebanon," so the prophet ezekiel tells us; "a shadowing thicket, and of a tall stature, with fair branches, and his top was among the thick boughs. the waters made him great, the flood set him up on high; with her stream she went round about his plants, and sent her conduits unto all the trees of the field. therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were great, and his branches became strong because of the multitude of waters, and spread themselves out. all the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. then was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches. the cedars in the garden of god could not hide him; the cypresses were not like his boughs, and the planes were not like his branches. no tree in the garden of god was like to him in beauty. i (jehovah) have made him fair by the multitude of his branches, and all the trees of eden envied him."[ ] babylon and asshur are two stems springing out of the same root. the younger could borrow from the elder her religion, her ritual, her models in art and industry, and finally her writing; and along with this those scientific acquisitions, by no means contemptible, which had been made on the euphrates. the peculiar characteristic of the younger branch rests on its warlike power, which (nurtured in those long struggles in the zagrus and in the armenian mountains) at last far exceeded the power of the babylonians. there is no state in the ancient east, which, beginning from a reign so small in proportion, and provided with such scanty material means, rose so high as assyria--which from such a basis attained to a wider supremacy, or maintained it so long and so vigorously. by slow and laborious steps this kingdom worked its way upward in frequent and severe conflicts beside babylonia. to reduce and keep in obedience the region round the sources of the euphrates and the tigris, the land of van and ararat, to subjugate the territory of the moschi and tibarenes, required the most severe struggles. the attempt of tiglath pilesar i. to reach the north of syria and the mediterranean was a success, yet it remained without any lasting results. not till the beginning of the ninth century b.c. does the dominion of assyria obtain more important dimensions, not in the north only, but also in the west and east. assurnasirpal reached mount amanus, the orontes, mount lebanon; he received the tribute of the phenician cities. shalmanesar ii. directed his most vigorous efforts against hamath and damascus, while at the same time he reduced the cilicians, as well as the nations of the western table land of iran, to pay tribute. at the division of the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. bin-nirar iii. held sway from the shore of the red sea over edom, on the shore of the mediterranean over the philistines and israel, in the east over mount zagrus and the medes. then after the middle of the eighth century tiglath pilesar ii. forced his way as far as arachosia, and at the least maintained his dominion over the tribes of the medes; in the west he humbled hamath, damascus, samaria; judah paid homage with the philistines and all the princes of syria with the distant tribes of the arabians, to the great king of asshur. he first completely subjugated babylonia, and forced even southern chaldæa to recognise his supremacy. sargon, after him, maintained syria even against the arms of egypt, and added the crown of babylon to the crown of asshur: cyprus as well as the islands of the persian gulf pay homage to him. sennacherib maintains the dominion over babylonia against the most stubborn rebellions, as well as against the elamites, and also the supremacy over media; and if he was not able to maintain syria against egypt, he still retained the upper hand in the eastern half of asia minor. esarhaddon ruled over asshur and babel; he restored the dominion over syria; he conquered egypt. the armies of his successor not only march victoriously into the gates of memphis, thebes, and babylon, but even into the gates of susa. in repeated campaigns he annihilates the ancient kingdom of elam, and receives from the west the homage of lydia. no other kingdom can display so long a series of warlike and active princes, unwearied in conflict, as assyria. they believed that they were fighting not for dominion only, or glory, but also for their gods, for asshur, sin and samas, for istar, bin and adar, against the nations who did not worship these deities. it is this extraordinary activity of the princes which alone explains the long continuance, and the constantly increasing extent, of the assyrian power. for great as is the activity and unwearied perseverance of these princes, there is an equal lack of capability to create any organisation of their dominion and sovereignty which could secure even approximately the dependence of the subject nations. they take the field, defeat the enemy, and rest content if he pays homage and tribute, if the image of the victorious king of asshur is engraved on the rocks of the conquered land, or set up in the city of the enemy. ere long, if the tribute fails, war must be again commenced. the enemy is removed from the government, another prince is set on the throne of the subjugated land; the same game is commenced once more, as soon as there is the least prospect of shaking off the yoke. owing to the stubbornness, more especially of the semitic tribes and the mountaineers in the north, the kings of asshur are condemned to constant campaigns. the defections are punished with savage devastation of the land and destruction of the cities. the rebellious princes and their leading adherents are often put to death with exquisite cruelty; they are flayed, or beheaded, or impaled, and yet such terrorism produces no visible effects. on the other hand, if they submit, they are often pardoned; they are again recognised or set up as princes over their lands, in some cases even after repeated defection. occasionally, in order to maintain independently the assyrian supremacy, assyrian fortresses are planted in the conquered districts; as at the crossings over the euphrates, in the region of the medes, on the borders of elam, and in syria. for the most part it is only over the smaller districts that assyrian viceroys were placed. native kings, chiefs, and princes remain on the throne in the more extensive lands, and over the greater nations, as in the cities and principalities of syria. sometimes an attempt is made to secure the submission of princes by alliance with the royal house of assyria. over babylonia alone were sons and brothers of the king repeatedly placed, and not always with a happy result. if esarhaddon, instead of transferring the government of egypt, under his supremacy, to one prince, divides it among , this organisation was not an assyrian invention; in all essentials it was a transference of the lords of the districts from vassalage to the king of napata to vassalage to the king of assyria. the chief means of the kings of assyria for securing the obedience of the vanquished for the future consisted at all times in carrying away and transplanting parts of the conquered population. the nationalities of hither asia, as far as the table-land of iran, underwent considerable intermixture in consequence of this system, but this means could only work thoroughly in the smaller regions and communities--for the kingdom of israel, for hamath, and the arabian tribes. in such a defective organisation of the empire, while limited to such elementary, and at the same time such unproductive, means, it would be more interesting to find an answer to the question, how the kings of assyria were able to keep their own nation willing to undertake these endless wars; how from their native land, of no great extent, they could obtain the men and the means for such burdensome efforts--and in any crisis this was the only power they could rely upon--how the authority of the crown could be maintained in spite of such heavy requisitions on their subjects;--did our knowledge allow us to give even an approximate explanation. an hereditary succession, interrupted far less than is usual elsewhere in the east, appears to have rendered these tasks easier to the kings of asshur, to have been favourable to the continuance of the kingdom, and to have assisted the rulers in extending their supremacy. tiglath pilesar i. mentions four of his ancestors in unbroken succession on the throne (ii. ). the kings always describe themselves as sons and grandsons of preceding rulers. down to the time of sargon we hear nothing of the murder of kings, and only of one attempt at rebellion on the part of a king's son. with sargon a new dynasty seems to have ascended the throne: he neither calls himself a son of his predecessor (shalmanesar iv.), nor does he mention any other of the earlier rulers as his progenitor. but his race, in its turn, seems to have held the throne till the fall of the kingdom, though he and his son sennacherib fell by assassination, though esarhaddon only acquired the throne after a conflict with the two brothers who had slain their father, and assurbanipal had to defend it against the rebellion of a brother. that the power exercised by the kings of assyria was unlimited even in their own territory is beyond a doubt. the king is the supreme judge, the general in chief, the high-priest. he ascertains the will of the gods, who reveal themselves to him, who send him dreams, assure him of their assistance. it is the gods, their lords, who overthrow the enemy and the rebellious princes before them. the kings offer sacrifice and pour libations in person, not the priests. in his palace at kuyundshik (p. ) sennacherib pours a drink-offering over four lions which he has slain in hunting, and which lie before the altar. other monuments exhibit the king, with a bowl in his hand containing gifts for the gods, or holding up a pine-apple. at the sacrifices the king wears a peculiar priestly robe: small pictures of the sun and moon, with a horned cap, a pitcher, and a two-pronged fork, hang from his neck: in his hand he has a short staff. the priests serve at his side; behind the form of the king on the monuments stand winged spirits, in expectation or protection, at the sacrifices. only the king wears the upright tiara or _kidaris_; a tall conical cap, flattened at the top. he alone speaks in the inscriptions. he frequently relates the deeds of his generals as performed immediately by himself. service about the person of the king is entrusted to eunuchs, who are distinguished on the monuments by corpulence, flat cheeks, beardless chins, and lank hair--while all others wear long hair curling at the end, and long, carefully-trimmed beards. eunuchs carry the parasol and the fan of the king; they are his butlers, and conduct into his presence those who come to pay homage or tribute; they also perform the duties of the royal scribes. we find them equally active as magistrates of the state; and finally we see them on war chariots as commanders of divisions of the troops. on the organisation of the government we have very scanty information. the prophet nahum speaks of the leaders and mighty men of the king of asshur, of the "crowned" of the assyrians who are numerous as the locusts, and the captains whom he compares to a swarm of grasshoppers.[ ] ezekiel mentions the "captains and rulers of assyria gorgeously clothed in blue purple, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men."[ ] from the chronicle of the assyrian kingdom preserved to us from the beginning of the ninth century, b.c. we find that the years were regularly distinguished in a definite series by the names of certain high officers. the beginning is made by the year of turtanu (tartan), the chief-commander of the king; then follows the year of the chief of the palace, the year of the rabbitur, _i.e._ controller of the harem (or this precedes the other), the year of the privy councillor of the king, the year of the overseer of the land, then the years of the prefects of the cities or regions of rezeph, nisibis, arapha; and finally, the year of the prefect of the metropolis, chalah. the viceroys of other cities or districts,_ e.g._ of gozan and amida, were sometimes prefixed to the year; in the second half of the reign of assurbanipal we also find the prefect of babylon in the series of these high officers.[ ] the regular list of the officers, after whom the year is named, and the record of the most important events which took place in the year, placed against the name of the officer, indicate a certain established order in the management of business. that in other respects also records were accurately kept is shown by the inscriptions, not only in the definite chronological statements for remote events, but also in the continued announcements of the numbers of slain enemies, of prisoners, of cattle taken as booty, of men and women removed and transplanted, and tribute received in money and animals. we see on the reliefs (at least on the monuments of the time of sargon and after) the scribes occupied with these enumerations; they put down their notes on strips of leather. short accounts of their successes by generals who have been sent out, reviews of affairs in neighbouring states, invariably directed to the king in person, are still in existence. the informant as a rule refers to the detailed communications which the messengers will make. there is also preserved a fragment of the diplomatic correspondence between assyria and elam, a letter of ummanaldas ii. of elam concerning the descendant of merodach baladan, who fled to him (p. ), and a proclamation of assurbanipal to the subjects of this nabubelzikri, that he had taken them under his protection, and made balibni a viceroy over them.[ ] as to the activity, the forethought, and the results of the regular government, we only learn from the inscriptions of the kings about their buildings, that storehouses were in existence and kept up for the booty taken in war, and the tribute; that horses and beasts of burden were kept for the army. if we may conclude from these lists of the years and officers, these indications and hints, that the government of the native land was duly arranged and discharged its functions regularly, the fact that the army and siege apparatus were perpetually in readiness leads us to assume an active and careful military government. the army no doubt occupied the first place in the attention of the kings. their warlike activity, supported by a force always in readiness, was the only foundation of their power beyond the borders of asshur. of the warriors of assyria isaiah says: "they shall come with speed from the ends of the earth; none shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken; whose arrows are sharp and all their bows bent; their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their chariots like a whirlwind. they shall roar like young lions, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it."[ ] according to the description of herodotus, the assyrians wore brazen helmets worked in a peculiar way; cuirasses of linen, lances, and shields and swords like the egyptians; and besides these, war-clubs with iron heads.[ ] from the evidence of the monuments the assyrian infantry were divided into troops, distinguished by their clothing and armour. the heavy-armed had conical helmets or round caps with a high ridge and cheek-pieces, armour-coats, provided with plates or rings of steel on the breast, or cuirasses of scale armour in the place of these plates and rings, greaves extending from the knee to the ancle, or scale-armour hose. beside this they cover themselves with round or oval shields. their weapons of attack are the lance, and a short sword, straight or crooked, which was carried in the belt. in addition to this heavy infantry there were the light troops; bowmen and slingers. the first were occasionally accompanied by shield-bearers, who carried shields of the height of a man, and planted them before the bowmen. the kings fought from their chariots with bow and arrows. this was the mode of fighting of the princes and captains throughout the semitic warlike states. the kings of elam and ur and those of erech and babel were no doubt the first to take the field with war-chariots; after them the kings of damascus and hamath, and the princes of the philistines. from the syrians the pharaohs borrowed their royal war-chariots and the chariots for their army. so long as the hebrews were husbandmen and breeders of cattle, they fought simply on foot; when they established a monarchy we saw that the first care of the new princes was to provide themselves with chariots of war. from the semites this mode of fighting spread westward, not only to egypt but also to asia minor and hellas, and eastwards to the indians on the ganges. the commanders of the assyrian army also fought from their chariots, which at the same time carried the standards of their divisions. the mass of chariots formed a special portion of the assyrian army. beside the two pole-horses, which are yoked, they are, as a rule, provided with a third or subsidiary horse; on the chariot, as a rule, are three men, a charioteer, and an archer, besides a shield-bearer, provided with coats of mail which leave only the arms free, and scale-armour for the legs. occasionally the charioteer, as well as the archer, has a shield-bearer behind him. cavalry was not wanting in the armies of assyria any more than in the armies of the pharaohs. we see numerous troops of cavalry with well-trained horses, partly armed with the lance and partly with the bow; partly sitting without any saddle on the bare back of the horse, and partly provided with pack saddles. pictures of parade-duty are not uncommon. in these the lance is held free in the right hand, the shield is carried under the left arm. in the camp the rows of tents are separated by a broad gangway, in which rises the great tent of the king. we have already seen the king seated even in the camp on a high seat, with his bow in one hand and his arrow in the other. in the spacious tents, the warriors kindle fire between stones and place pots thereon, while in others the wounded are being tended on beds. we see the assyrian army crossing a river; the king, the chariots and the baggage are rowed over in boats; the horses and the men swim, the latter with the aid of inflated bladders, as is still the custom in mesopotamia. other pictures exhibit ships with two rows of oars. in the battle we see the line of the heavy-armed infantry awaiting the attack of the enemy; the first rank kneel down with outstretched lance; the second rank, in a somewhat crouching position, also hold the lance in rest; while the bowmen in the third rank stand upright and shoot over the two first ranks. then the king, on his splendidly adorned chariot, drawn by richly caparisoned horses, sending forth arrow upon arrow, with the picture of asshur the supreme deity over him, dashes upon the ranks of the enemy. in some reliefs, the infantry, or the cavalry of the enemy, already turned back in flight, shoot their arrows as they fly, an artifice well understood by the cavalry of the medes and persians. we also see the riders on camels defending themselves in this way in their flight. the greater number of reliefs exhibit the enemies of the assyrians in strongly fortified cities, protected by lofty walls and towers, in part with beautifully decorated pinnacles; sometimes two or three walls rise one behind the other. the fortresses lie on heights surrounded by vineyards, or forests of pines and fir-trees, or on rivers by palm-groves, where the fruits occasionally indicate the season of the siege; in other representations the position of the enemy's city on a river or the sea-coast is indicated by creatures of the water or the sea, like tortoises, large fish, etc. the assyrians knew how to throw walls of circumvallation round the hostile city,[ ] to build besieging-towers, to undermine the walls or force their way into the city by means of shafts under the earth.[ ] but the ordinary mode of attack was to fill up the moat and then to make a breach in the walls by battering-rams. the battering-rams stood on wheels, and were protected by a case covered by the skins of animals, or they were placed in the lower story of a moveable wooden tower, the upper part of which is occupied by archers; and the whole is then moved up on wheels to the wall. machines for throwing stones are also to be seen on the monuments. when a breach is made, the infantry advance towards it under the protection of the "tortoise." if an attempt is made to scale the walls by ladders, the bowmen, where possible, from a covered position, such as a wood near the walls, keep up a lively fire upon the turrets of the wall, in order to distress the defenders and drive them from the breastwork, while the heavy-armed plant their ladders. the besieged then attempt to meet the storm by a shower of arrows, by throwing down stones and firebrands. when the walls are scaled we see the besieged pledging submission by raising their hands, the women escaping on mules or camels, or kneeling and praying for mercy. the victors collect the booty: arms, tripods, vessels, beds, stools; guards are set over these, while others bring to their commanders the heads of the slain, the number of which is taken down by the scribes. the flocks and herds of the vanquished, camels, sheep, and goats, are driven away; the prisoners are put in fetters and led before the king, who has ascended the throne. here they appear, some with heavy irons on their hands and feet, some with the hands tied, some led by ropes, which are drawn through holes in their lips and noses, sometimes tied in pairs, sometimes in troops, driven forward with blows by the soldiers in charge. the king plants his foot on the neck of a captive prince; he puts out the eyes of another with his lance; others are impaled. then follows the victorious return; soldiers and music go before the king's chariot, before which, as we already know, the heads of the slain or executed princes of the enemy were occasionally carried. the strength of the chief cities formed in the last resort the support of the kingdom. the walls of these the kings of asshur cannot have neglected to renew and strengthen. in the inscriptions only the buildings of sennacherib and assurbanipal at the walls of nineveh are mentioned. according to the statements of ctesias, preserved in diodorus, the city of nineveh formed a long rectangle of stades ( miles) in the circuit. the walls which inclosed this space were feet high, and were overtopped by towers of double the height.[ ] a writing of the hebrews, which, however, is not earlier than the fourth century b.c., maintains that the circuit of nineveh was three days' journey; , inhabitants lived in the city, who could not distinguish the right hand and the left, _i.e._ children in the earliest years of life. more important is the evidence of nahum, from the middle of the seventh century b.c., that "nineveh is full of men as a pool is full of water; her merchants are more numerous than the stars in heaven."[ ] the position of nineveh is marked by the ruins of kuyundshik and nebbi yunus, opposite mosul; and the remains of the outer wall allow us to fix, with tolerable accuracy, the circuit which it really had. as a fact it formed a long rectangle, somewhat out of the square. on the west the course of the tigris covered the city; the wall on this side of the city extended along the ancient bed of the river for , feet; the wall of the longer eastern side measures , feet; the wall of the north side is exactly feet; that on the short south side is only half this length;[ ] so that the whole circuit of the city does not reach ten miles, _i.e._ does not reach a sixth part of the extent given to it by ctesias. even if we add to this the circuit of the strong outer ramparts which run in a double and sometimes in a quadruple line, on the east side, from the point where the khosr flows into the city, as far as the stream which, emptying into the tigris, covered the southern front of nineveh--even if we reckon in the city of sargon (khorsabad), which lay ten good miles to the north-east of nineveh, on the left bank of the khosr (p. ), the circuit of both cities taken together does not amount to more than miles. xenophon, who was on the spot, and saw the walls of nineveh still standing, gives them a circuit of six parasangs, _i.e._ of miles. according to this, either the fortresses of khorsabad and nineveh were connected, and this circuit is actually given,--or xenophon assumes that they once were in connection. we are hardly justified in excluding the first hypothesis. the lower part of the walls, so xenophon tells us, was built of smoothed shell-stone;[ ] the thickness was about feet, and the height also feet. on this substructure is raised the wall of bricks, which also is feet thick, but feet high. hence these walls were standing years after the fall of nineveh; with the walls of khorsabad, though broken by wide breaches, they were still to be traced through a circuit of miles, and reached the astounding height of feet, _i.e._ higher than ctesias puts them. the remains of the walls of khorsabad possess to this day a thickness of feet, which agrees with xenophon's measure; in the walls of nineveh the substructure of well-hewn limestone can be traced, but the remains of the walls do not rise more than feet above the present surface of the ground. if we are to venture on a supposition about the number of the inhabitants from the extent of the walls of nineveh and khorsabad--the total of the two cities, in which the royal palaces and temples occupied a considerable space, can hardly be put down at more than , . twenty good miles to the south of nineveh lay the other residence of the kings of asshur, chalah, the city founded by shalmanesar i. chalah was naturally even stronger than nineveh. on the west, as at nineveh, the tigris formed the protection; about seven and a half miles to the south the greater zab emptied into the tigris. the course of this from the north-east to the south-west formed on the east also an outer line of defence, which was made still more strong by the fact that a not inconsiderable tributary of the zab, the bumodus (ghasr), which flows from north to south, empties into the zab about ten miles to the east of chalah, just before the latter unites with the tigris. above the mouth of the zab, assurnasirpal carried a canal from that river in a northern direction to chalah (ii. ). the city itself formed, as has been already remarked, a regular square, the extent of which reached about half the circuit of nineveh; the south-west corner of the city was occupied by the royal palace. xenophon gives to the walls of this "large but desolated" city, which he calls larissa, a circuit of two parasangs (seven miles, nearly). the walls also were of less dimensions here. xenophon found the substructure of stones feet high; the walls of burnt bricks on the substructure feet high; the thickness of the walls was feet.[ ] northward of chalah, on the brook shordere, which flows past on the south and east of chalah, are heaps of ruins, extending as far as keremles, and from this point again through the plain as far as the district of khorsabad. it is possible that the line of these forts formed an outer system of defence for nineveh and chalah, and that it lies at the bottom of the story of the miles of circuit of nineveh. the same circuit is given by herodotus for the city of babylon (cf. chap. xv.). of the third chief city, asshur, which stood in ancient times, as we have seen, not only before chalah, but also before nineveh, nothing is left but heaps of refuse, out of which rises a conical hill. the ruins are of brick, among which here and there are seen some stones. the line of the old walls can still be traced. this city also formed a square, not less, but rather longer, in circuit than chalah.[ ] it seems that the kings of assyria laid less weight on the fortification of the city of asshur, than on the strengthening of chalah and nineveh. they saw danger in the west only, from the lower euphrates. the city of asshur, on the western bank of the tigris, was exposed to attacks from the west; chalah and nineveh were covered in this direction by the tigris, which the enemy had to cross. to make the two cities so covered impregnable from the eastern side also was the object of the kings of assyria, especially of sargon, sennacherib, and assurbanipal. the thickness given to the walls of nineveh, khorsabad, and chalah ( to feet), was sufficient to defy the battering-ram--the turrets, raised to the elevation of to feet, were so high that the stones of the slingers and the arrows of the bowmen could not reach them with effect, and no scaling-ladder or besieging-tower could be set up which would carry men to these turrets. what babylon possessed or acquired in science and poetry, assyria did not fail to appropriate, just as she used her divisions of the heavens and the year, her weights and measures, her standard of coinage, and her writing from all antiquity. in the ruins of kuyundshik a great number of tablets have been dug up,[ ] copies of old babylonian originals, which have preserved for us the story of the babylonians about chasisathra (xisuthrus) and the great flood, about the descent of istar to the under world, and other narratives of a mythical character. in addition to this are prayers and poems, with fragments apparently on cosmogonical subjects, very difficult of interpretation, and hardly to be referred to any definite date. of especial value for the deciphering of the babylonian and assyrian cuneiform writing are the clay tablets discovered here, on which the cuneiform symbols are explained by placing beside them the phonetic value of the words and inflections, first of the accadian, that language unknown to us, and then of babylonian-assyrian.[ ] the use of writing was not less extensive in babylonia and assyria than in egypt. the copious application of it for the purposes of government and legal business has been already mentioned. we are indebted to this for the remains of the list of years and rulers, the synchronistic tablets of the kings of asshur and babel, and a long series of private documents from the time of bin-nirar iii. down to the overthrow of the empire. these documents, and the ambition of the kings to retain their names in the buildings which they erected, to set up their images wherever their armies or their dominion advanced, to transfer to the walls of the buildings which they erected their achievements written on cylinders or stone slabs, to adorn the walls of their palaces with pictures of their hunts, their sieges, their victories and triumphs, accompanied by written explanations, have enabled us to restore, at least in its main lines, the lost history of assyria--a history of which the greeks have left and could only leave to us the fact that a kingdom of this name existed, and was the foremost power in hither asia, along with echoes of medo-persian songs about ninus, semiramis, and sardanapalus--from which the hebrews have retained no more than the names and the acts of the rulers who made their influence most deeply felt in the fortunes of israel. yet even the inscriptions of the kings of asshur do not give us the history of assyria undefiled. but whatever care they took to represent their successes in the most brilliant light possible--here and there we are driven to the attempt to bring back these accounts to the fact--they are far removed from the extravagance and the voluble assertions of the inscriptions of the pharaohs. the far more realistic and historical sense of the assyrians is stamped in their monuments and inscriptions. as they allow us to see, year by year, the activity, the untiring perseverance, and warlike skill of the assyrian nation and its princes, even though they magnify their successes--so too the reverse side of these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. the kings constantly boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once to exaggerate them. the rivalry of the long series of the rulers of assyria in building temples and palaces, which begins with the oldest period of the realm, after the pattern of babylonia, has preserved for us no inconsiderable remains of assyrian arts, and ocular evidence of the industry and mode of life, of the character and manners of the assyrians--not indeed in the breadth and unbroken succession of development in which the monuments and the inexhaustible sepulchres on the nile have retained the picture of ancient egypt. for monuments of plastic art, the ruins of erech, and ur, and of babylon, have been investigated almost in vain. the ruins of nineveh and chalah have preserved a considerable series of works of sculpture. if in the ruins of babylon, with the exception of outlines on seals or other cylinders, there is scarcely a single image of a god preserved, there have been discovered at nineveh some statues of gods, and innumerable pictures in relief of gods and demons, on the slabs of the palaces. the most frequent object on these is the image of the god asshur. on a bearded human head, of grave aspect, the god wears a round cap or a helmet, round which are horns; the figure extends only to the knees; it is surrounded by a winged disk to which, from the knees of the god downwards, are attached the tail-feathers of a bird. in battle-pictures the breast of the god is clothed with a cuirass of steel-plates; his bow is in his hand; he shoots his arrows against the enemies of his nation. on the pictures representing a victorious return, and the seal-cylinders of the kings, the bow rests in the hands of the god. nebo, the god of the planet mercury (i. ), is exhibited in standing images, with long beard and bared breast; the robe descends from the breast. of a statue of istar, in her old temple at nineveh, we have at the least the head.[ ] the god bin also is to be seen on cylinders; he holds the trident of his lightning in his hand, a pointed cap is on his head; his robe falls, not from the shoulders, but only from the hips down to his ancles. the moon god sin is seen on assyrian cylinders in a long robe, with a long beard, standing on a half-moon; a second half-moon rises above the tall covering of his head. in a figure swimming in water, with a round horned cap on the head, and ending in the body of a fish from the hips downwards, we may no doubt recognise dagon. the cylinders most frequently exhibit a sun's disk by the side of the images of asshur, the crescent and seven stars.[ ] on the slabs of stone which exhibit to us the forms of the kings, symbolical indications of the chief deities are visible to the left of the kings; we see the sun, the moon, a horned cap, and a winged disk, perhaps the symbol of the god asshur. in the reliefs winged demons are often to be seen. they wear the high round cap, out of which rise four united bull's horns: occasionally the head is uncovered, and then it is surrounded merely with the narrow fillet of the priests; the arms and thighs are always uncovered. these forms also are frequently found in pairs, guarding the entrance to rooms; at times standing or kneeling in an attitude of blessing or prayer, on both sides of a wonderfully-shaped and adorned tree. in the same way two eagle-headed genii often stand opposite each other. human figures, clothed in royal attire, with the head and wings of an eagle, are often found. walking figures of lions with eagle heads and wings, or the back of a man on the legs of a bird surmounted by a lion's head, are found. the gates of the temples and palaces are guarded by winged bulls and lions with human heads. these are always placed in pairs. the height of these images ranges from to feet. at the point where the long, richly-worked wings, which are thrown far back, are joined to the shoulders, rises a grave and solemn countenance, with a strong beard, sometimes wearing a cap, sometimes a tall tiara, round which wind four bull's horns. these figures stand at times entirely detached before the entrance; in others the fore part and fore legs alone are free from the pilasters of the doors, and the figure is continued in relief on the side of the pilaster. plastic art in assyria is less forced and typical in the lines, forms, and figures, than plastic art on the nile: it is not fettered by the unchangeable laws of egyptian art; it is less solemn, and free from the tiresome parallelism of the egyptian forms. the sculpture of assyria is more significant and vigorous. not tied down by the hieratic style, like the egyptian, it also works for the most part in the softer material of limestone, while the egyptians prefer granite, the hardest of all materials. the assyrians do not strive after the gigantic and colossal forms of egypt: the dimensions even of the colossal bulls and lions are on a more moderate scale. far more naïve, they conceive of life more freshly, fully, and powerfully, and aim far more at a true representation of life than the egyptian. egypt prefers the sunk, assyria the raised picture. on the nile the outline is the chief object: in assyria the forms are always modelled full, strong, and round, with energetic expression of the limbs, and muscular to an excess. the movement is more vigorous and full of expression than in egypt, without, however, sacrificing repose and fixedness, and without destroying dignity in the representation of ceremonies. the feet of the figures exhibit the egyptian position in profile, but the upper part of the body is full, rounded, and closely compressed. the tall and thin forms of egypt are not to be found in the monuments of assyria. the clothing is heavy; the position and expression of the face is far more varied than in egypt. the animals are represented plump and full of life, often with startling truth even in the most rapid motion; though not unfrequently with great exaggeration in the muscles. the great guardians of the portals exhibit a beautiful effect in the contrast of their mighty animal energy, and the quiet dignity of their human faces. great practice in the treatment of the forms can hardly be mistaken anywhere; in spite of the dimensions, often colossal, the proportions are correctly preserved; and the larger pictures of camps, battles, and marches, if not better than those of egypt, are more various and free in composition. within the sphere of assyrian art we are in a position to establish a certain distinction, a progress of some importance. the figures in the palaces of assurnasirpal and shalmanesar ii., the two great princes of the ninth century b.c., are stronger and thicker, more coarse, violent, and exaggerated than the reliefs in the buildings of sargon. in the century which passed since that time the plastic art of assyria obviously made technical advances, and attained a more delicate treatment and greater regularity in the exposition. later still, at the height of its development, assyrian art is seen in the figures of the great palace of nineveh (kuyundshik), which sennacherib, esarhaddon, and assurbanipal built in succession (p. ). the architecture of assyria was not essentially different from that of babylonia. the assyrians had brought with them from the lower euphrates the habit of building in bricks, and continued to use this style, though harder material lay at a less distance from them than from the cities of the babylonian plain. the temples and the palaces of asshur, nineveh, and chalah consisted for the most part of unburnt brick-slabs, dried in the sun and mixed with straw. this material made it necessary here, as in babylonia, to make the walls stout, which was also advisable owing to the summer heat. the thickness varies between five and fifteen feet. the stone for the substructure and casing, mostly limestone and shell-stone, was quarried in the adjacent mountains. the buildings were roofed by beams extending from wall to wall: by this necessity the breadth of the rooms was limited. as a rule these are narrow, and the want of breadth is compensated by length. these are the dimensions of the porticoes and galleries which we can trace in the remains of the royal palaces: the great portico of the palace of king assurnasirpal at chalah (ii. ) has only a breadth of feet, with a length of feet; the porticoes in the palace of kuyundshik are from to feet long, and feet in width; the great gallery is only feet broad, but more than feet in length. yet in the palace of king sargon at khorsabad, remains of the bases of pillars have been found. the application of the brick-vaulted roof in the form of pointed and round arches is shown in the narrow passage in the building of shalmanesar ii. at chalah (ii. ), and in some remains of door-arches at khorsabad. the pictures of cities in relief also occasionally exhibit arched gateways. the sculptures in the stone slabs of white, grey, and yellow limestone or alabaster, which cover the walls and chambers to a height of or feet, were painted, as is shown by numerous traces of colour upon them.[ ] the walls of the chambers above the sculptures, where they did not make way for window lights, were decked with burnt and glazed tiles, sometimes coloured and enamelled; the beams of the roofs were adorned with carved work of wood and ivory, with plates of gold and silver, and precious stones.[ ] the outer walls of the palaces must also have been cased with slabs of stone. the wealth of nineveh is called endless by the prophet nahum. he mentions the abundance of carved and molten images, of costly vessels in the "house of their god." the monuments exhibit not only the "carved" images; beside many actual remains, they prove that costly furniture was in extensive use in the temples, at the court, and among the great officers of assyria. the tables, stools, seats, drinking-vessels, vases, harness and bridles of horses, shown in the reliefs of the palace, are wrought with great delicacy and with good taste. the yokes of the chariots, the bows and bow-covers, exhibit very delicate carved work. on the robes of the kings we see groups of wild animals inwoven, partly real in form, as lions, partly mythical, like scenes of hunting and war. the ear-drops, which the kings and other persons of distinction wear, the bands round the arms and wrists, are of artistic work, and generally closed by the heads of lions, rams, and bulls; the weapons also, the handles and sheaths of the swords and daggers, must have been finished with great care and neatness, and in an excellent style. the not inconsiderable number of vessels of copper and bronze, of pitchers, stained glass, ivory articles, necklaces, armrings, and eardrops, which have been preserved in the ruins, prove that the monuments represent the possession of the assyrians, without exaggeration of their beauty, that assyria, besides what was brought to her by trade, possessed a school of artisans long trained in the art, and excellently taught, without which such great and excellent works in architecture and sculpture would have been impossible. of the tombs of the assyrians few have been opened as yet. the coffins, like those in the babylonian sepulchres, are narrow and small, and only contain skeletons, with bands on the arms and neck, and some simple clay vessels beside the coffins.[ ] footnotes: [ ] ezek. xxi. - . [ ] nahum iii. , . [ ] ezek. xxiii. , . [ ] e. schrader, "z. d. m. g." , ff.; g. smith, "assyrian canon;" vol. ii. p. , and above, p. , _note_. [ ] g. smith, "assurb." p. . [ ] isaiah v. - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] isaiah xxxvii. ; cf. kings xix. ; above, p. . [ ] layard, "nineveh," p. . [ ] vol. ii. p. . [ ] nahum ii. ; iii. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarchies," ^ , p. ff. [ ] lyell, 'elements of geology,' ed. . p. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , - . [ ] layard, "nineveh and its remains," , . [ ] the so-called archive of assurbanipal in chambers and on layard's plan. [ ] lénormant, "etudes accadiennes," , , p. ff.; e. schrader, "jen. lit. z." th april, . [ ] g. smith, "disc." p. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarchies," ^ , , ; layard, "mon." pl. _note_, , , . [ ] ezekiel also supports this, xxiii. , . [ ] layard, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] layard, _loc. cit._ p. . chapter x. judah under manasses and josiah. other cares and other efforts than the maintenance of a wide dominion, the erection of splendid palaces, the restoration of impressive works of art, the preparation of magnificent furniture, occupied a small region which obeyed the lords of that military power, and those palaces,--the kings of asshur. the kingdom of israel, though not annihilated by the arms of assyria, was thoroughly broken by them. twenty years after, judah escaped the same disaster, but not without the severest wounds. it was laid waste at that time throughout its whole extent; the cities were taken or garrisoned; , of the inhabitants were carried away. only the metropolis was maintained and saved. afterwards, in the last years of hezekiah, and under the reign of his son manasses (he ascended the throne in b.c.), the land remained unmolested by the assyrians for more than years, till esarhaddon undertook to subjugate syria again to the dominion of assyria, which his father had given up after raising the siege of jerusalem. some years after this manasses joined the attempt of tyre to resist the king of asshur with the help of tirhaka (p. ). we do not know what judah had to suffer for this attempt of the king: we only learn from the hebrews that manasses was carried away captive, but at a later time restored to his kingdom. in any case judah beheld for the space of years the armies of assyria on their march to and from the nile ( - b.c.).[ ] in the first centuries after the settlement of the hebrews in canaan, the rites of the syrians had in isolated instances forced their way in beside the worship of jehovah. under saul, david, and solomon the worship of jehovah was established and organised, and took firm root. the earliest prophets, after the division of the kingdom, opposed the introduction of the worship of baal in israel with the fiercest zeal. in the time of jeroboam ii. and uzziah, the renewed advances of these rites had been successfully met by the great prophets with the deepened and purified conception of the national deity. and now these hostile tendencies once more met in the severest conflict. the hebrew scriptures tell us that manasses did not follow the example of his pious father; that he turned back after the way of his grandfather ahaz; that he restored the worship of baal, dedicated a place for fire-offerings in the valley of ben hinnom, and burnt his son to moloch. on the roof of the royal palace and in the court of the temple altars were set up, and priests established, "who burnt incense to the sun, the moon, the zodiac, and all the host of heaven;" courtesans and women who wove tents dwelt in the buildings of the temple, and the king even set up the statue of astarte (istar) in the temple itself. in vain did the priests set themselves in opposition to this movement; in vain did the prophets announce: "the line and the plummet of destruction will be drawn over jerusalem as over samaria." manasses caused those who opposed his arrangements and innovations to be put to death; he is said to have filled jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. "like a destroying lion," says jeremiah, "the sword devoured your prophets."[ ] the death of manasses and the accession of his son amon brought no improvement. "he did that which was evil, and walked in the way of his father, and served the idols which his father served." the more energetically the prophets condemned the religion of the syrians, the more strongly they contended against all customs and sacrifices, against sensuality, luxury, and debauchery, so much the more closely did the elements thus attacked and almost overcome combine together; the more stubbornly did the opposite party cling to the rites of the neighbours, the more eagerly did they collect all the syrian deities in and round jerusalem. the highest and the lowest religious conceptions,--the worship of the one holy god in heaven, and the rites of sensuality and mutilation--strove once more with each other with all their force; in the one case with the deepest certainty and conviction, in the other with the fierce impulse of the passions, and the support of the crown. the last ten years of the long reign of manasses seem to have brought the severest persecution upon the priests and prophets of jehovah which they ever experienced. and when amon, after two years, was slain in the king's house by a conspiracy of his servants ( b.c.), and the people of the land slew all who had conspired against amon, and raised his son josiah, a boy of eight years old, to the throne, it was natural to the circle of the priests and prophets to guard against the recurrence of such oppression of their faith and lives as had taken place under manasses and amon. this was only possible if the religion which they professed, and for which they suffered, finally obtained a decisive victory, and became the exclusive religion of judah. if the persecution ceased in the minority of the king, the syrian rites continued to exist; and if the young king, when he came of age, should join _that_ side, the times of manasses would recur. neither the organisation of the priesthood of the temple, nor their religious influence, was sufficient to retain the kings in the faith of jehovah, and prevent them from reformations and persecutions in the interest of the syrian rites. what the influence and authority of the priests failed to accomplish, the mighty religious utterance of the prophets in the fulness of their faith was also unable to avert. the tendencies of the priests and prophets were already regarded as in a process of assimilation. the views of the prophets were not without influence on the habits and usages of the priests. the prophetic word had already begun to penetrate the old narrow views of the tribal god of israel, holding a place beside other gods, the rigid rule of external service, the traditions of the priesthood, with its powerful mysticism, inwardness, and deeper idea of god; while, on the other hand, the prophets could borrow from the priests clear and established forms, and thereby felt themselves impelled to fix the relation of inspired religion to the rites of worship. the persecutions of manasses had brought these two directions in which the religious life of judah had developed more closely together than at any previous time. in this union men felt themselves stronger than before. if the crown could be attached to the worship of jehovah, if the lasting support of royal authority could be secured for it, if the worship of jehovah could be elevated to the position of a legally established state-religion,--if by this means it became possible to apply the penalties of the law and religious influence with equal force in favour of the national religion, the hope might be entertained that the religion could be strictly enforced, that the utterances of priests and prophets, naturally supporting each other, and expressed in a popular form, would secure a lasting victory--that the worship of jehovah could be greatly strengthened, the syrian rites for ever excluded, the position of the priesthood secured, and future dangers turned aside from it. the chief aim was to fill the hearts of the king and the people with more lively faith; to attach the king and nation more closely to the worship of jehovah, and, if possible, to pledge them definitely to support it; to gain the power of the state and the force of the law for the maintenance of this worship. the ancient writings of the priests contained, as we saw, in addition to the account of the fortunes of the people in ancient times, the ritual, the rubrics for the priests, the rules of purification, the most ancient legal sentences and canons of blood-vengeance and family law, together with all the usages of justice. the contents of these writings formed a code for the priests rather than the laity; this fact, and the connection in which these regulations stood with the historical narrative, as well as the extent of the whole, made these books ill-adapted for presenting to the king and the nation a synopsis of the most essential duties, and for impressing these duties upon them. the detailed rules for the priests must be removed; a law-book for the laity was required. for this purpose the regulations scattered through the old books were collected and arranged into a compendium of the requirements which every israelite had to fulfil. the new conceptions of the prophets must be assimilated to the old regulations, and these brought into harmony with the deeper views of the prophets. something was also deducted from any excessive and very ideal demands, in order to give a more certain currency to more moderate rules. only of such a law could the hope be entertained that it would find adoption and win hearts, and be recognised by ruler and people as the fixed canon, the principal law of the land, and that it could be strictly enforced. josiah was of age when his kingdom was visited by a heavy calamity. savage tribes from the north suddenly over-flowed syria and judah, laid waste the land far and wide, rolled on to egypt, and then flowed backwards to their homes. if jerusalem resisted, and perhaps the stronger cities also, the land was nevertheless cruelly devastated ( b.c.). judah was again brought to the brink of destruction, as in the days of hezekiah, and again jehovah had not made "a full end;" again he had saved his people. the king caused improvements to be made in the temple; for this purpose the doorkeepers collected money among the sacrificers. when josiah sent his scribe zaphan to the high priest hilkiah to receive the collected money; the high priest said, that "he had found the book of the law in the house of jehovah," and gave the scribe a roll. he brought the book to the king, and read it before him. josiah was deeply moved by the contents, and the threats denounced in it against those who transgressed the law of jehovah. he directed the high priest, zaphan, and some others to "enquire of jehovah about the words of the book that had been discovered." they went to huldah, a prophetess, the wife of shallum, the chamberlain. the prophetess declared the words of the volume to be jehovah's words. then the "king (it was in the year b.c.) assembled the elders of judah and all the people in the house of jehovah, and read in their ears all the words of the book, which was found in the house of jehovah."[ ] according to this book--the second law--moses, after the giving of the law on sinai, had once more, in the land of moab, on the borders of canaan, shortly before his death, proclaimed the law of jehovah, and renewed the covenant of jehovah with israel. the introduction to the book is a speech of moses, which, after the manner of the prophets, is directly addressed to the israelites, and gathers together the kindnesses which jehovah had shown to his people in egypt, and after the exodus from that land. the lofty style of this description, compared with the composition of the older law, is evidence of the effect subsequently exercised by the prophetic mode of conception and expression. but not the form only, the contents also of the new law are determined in essential points by the idea of god developed in the circles of the prophets (p. ). jehovah, who has created earth and heaven,[ ] whose is "the heaven and the heaven of all heavens," "the god of gods and lord of lords,"[ ] who alone is true being, while all besides is transitory appearance, who guides nature and men according to his word and will, "who does justice to the widow and the orphan, and regards the person of no man,"[ ] remains in the new law, as in the old, a jealous god, "who dips his arrows in the blood of his enemies;" but in this law he is also, as the prophets taught, a merciful god who has no pleasure in the punishment of evil-doers, but in their amendment; who, it is true, "visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation, but also has mercy on thousands who love him."[ ] this god may not be worshipped under an image; for, as the book of the law expresses itself in an argument drawn from history: "ye saw no manner of similitude on the day when the lord spoke to you from horeb, out of the midst of the fire."[ ] if the prophets raised their eyes beyond and above the relation of this one lord of heaven and earth to the people of israel to the conception of a divine government of the world; if isaiah had spoken of the plan according to which jehovah had arranged the fortunes of the nations and lands since the beginning of days; the law is naturally confined to the relation of jehovah to israel. but this relation is conceived chiefly in the feeling of the prophets. we saw how the prophets had been led by the conception of the peculiar fortunes experienced by the israelites to reconstruct the relation of the tribal god in such a manner that the one almighty lord of heaven was regarded as having chosen israel as his people: a relation which is brought forward by the prophets in the most various applications. owing to this peculiar relation jehovah gave canaan to the israelites; for this reason he chose sion for his mountain, jerusalem for his dwelling-place, and the temple for his house; for this reason jehovah was, to the prophets, the real king of israel. like the old, the new book of the law regards the relation of jehovah to the israelites as a covenant, a treaty between two parties, each of whom can stand on his rights; jehovah on his worship; israel on the services rendered in return by jehovah, on the land granted to him for the service of jehovah, on the enjoyment of his fields and vineyards, on peace and security against enemies, on the increase of his race and prosperity. jehovah is the master, and israel the servant; the servant must serve, but the master cannot keep back the wages. jehovah has announced his commands to israel; the israelites have pledged themselves to fulfil them, and so long as they perform their obligation, jehovah will not shorten the reward of their service. if on the ground of such a covenant the prophets regard all the evil which overtakes israel as a consequence of the breach of it; if the "strife" between jehovah and israel concerning the observation and non-observation of the contract is a current idea with them, with which is connected the announcement of a day of judgment, and of the severe punishment which jehovah will execute on those who transgress the covenant (p. ); the book of the law is here marked by something of the priestly character, inasmuch as it concludes with the blessing which will attend the maintenance of the covenant, and the curse which will follow upon the breach of it: to which moses adds; "he knows that the israelites will do evil after his death."[ ] in the first case "the fruit of the womb will be blessed in israel," "the fruit of the fields, the increase of the kine, and the lambs of the sheep, the basket, and the kneading trough," and "israel will lend to many nations and borrow of none;"[ ] in the second case jehovah will visit them "with the scab, with boils of egypt on the knees and thighs, from the top of the head to the sole of the foot; with fever, pestilence, consumption, inflammation; with blindness, madness, and astonishment of heart;" "the heaven above them will be of brass, and the earth under them of iron; they will be to all the kingdoms of the earth for oppression, and their carcases will be the food of the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; they will live scattered among all nations from one end of the earth to the other; they will become an astonishment, a by-word, and a derision to the nations."[ ] if the prophets announced the day of judgment and the destruction of the unfaithful, they seldom forgot to describe, in the most glowing colours, israel's restoration; they remained in the firm conviction that jehovah's mercy would be as great as his anger: that jehovah, through the remnant of the faithful and the regenerate israel, would turn all nations to his service; that again in the future "a shoot would spring from the stock of jesse;" that the race of david would reign with a renewed divine power (p. , ). these great ideas of the restoration of the renewed and purified israel, these hopes of the saviour and restorer from the house of david, are wanting in the book of the law. it is simply pointed out, in regard to the kingdom of israel, "that if israel returns, jehovah will lead back the captives, and gather israel again, and circumcise his heart."[ ] if it is a subordinate point of view that the israelites ought to serve jehovah in order that it may be well with them, this conception nevertheless follows necessarily from the position of the tribal god to the tribe recommended to his protection--and to any unfettered mind the assumption is natural that reward should attend good actions; that the good must prosper and the evil suffer on the earth. the centre of this class of conceptions among the israelites is not so much to serve for the sake of the hire, as that the worship of jehovah would have this reward as its immediate consequence. but if at the same time the recompense for service was brought more strongly into prominence among the jews than among any other nation, if in no other people this legal state of the relation between god and man is established so much in the form of a compact, the prophets had already given an inward and moral meaning to the simple relation of contract between jehovah and israel. they looked on it as a marriage (p. ), and consequently they did not merely reprove the breach of the contract as an outrage on right, but branded it as faithlessness. the book of the law also does not remain at the point of the mere contract. the book asks: "whether such a mighty thing was ever done or heard of on the earth, as that a god had attempted to take a people to himself out of the midst of the nations by signs, and wonders, and war, and a strong hand and an outstretched arm, by great and wonderful deeds."[ ] but we are further told, "jehovah has not inclined to you, and chosen you, because ye were more than all nations--ye were the least of the nations--but because jehovah loved you."[ ] "it is the grace of jehovah that he has inclined to the fathers of israel, and to them only, to lead them."[ ] if the relation of the protecting lord to his people thus passes into a relation of free choice and love, the book of the law, on the other hand, requires from the israelites something more than an external worship of jehovah by gifts and sacrifices. "the command which i give thee is not hidden from thee, nor is it far off, that thou shouldst say, who will go up to heaven and bring it down, or who will go over the sea and announce it to us? the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart."[ ] "circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stiff-necked."[ ] "ye will find jehovah if ye seek him with all your heart, and all your soul."[ ] "what does jehovah require of thee? that thou shouldst love him with all thy strength, and walk in his ways."[ ] "love jehovah, thy god, with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments alway."[ ] if the new law seeks to give a value to inwardness, to lifting up the heart, and love to god; if it recognises the moral nature of jehovah in the heart of man, and in this point is fully in harmony with the requirements of the prophets; yet at the same time, in accordance with the view of the priests, the whole sacrificial service was retained, with the regulations for purification. even if the priests had been able to adopt the point of view of the prophets--the conception of purely inward elevation, and service with the heart--how could this have been brought into force, and established among the people, or with the kings, who found it no easy task to keep up the ritual of the service of jehovah beside the sensual syrian rites? the ritual for the priests, the regulations for their rights and duties, were in existence; the new law was not intended to instruct the priests, it was essentially a rule of life for the laity. hence in this respect the new law had only to work its way as a supplement, to impress more definitely on the people unity of the worship, and its concentration in the temple at jerusalem. thus it was decisively commanded that the passover also should be kept by all israelites in jerusalem (ii. ). in order finally to put an end to the ancient custom of worshipping jehovah "in the high places," the rule was enforced that all sacrifices should be offered in the temple at jerusalem: every other place of sacrifice was expressly forbidden, and every sacrifice which was not presented by the priests of the temple. on the other hand, in other departments, the new law exhibits greater moderation. at the festival of the new bread it was enough if every one offered freewill-offerings according to the measure in which "jehovah has blessed him;" but the israelite was not to appear before jehovah with utterly empty hands.[ ] the new. law moderated the demands for giving the tithe to the levites. the tithe of the harvest was still to be offered according to ancient custom as a thank-offering for jehovah in the temple; but it was permitted to redeem the tithe in kind and exchange it for money: finally, the law declared itself content if the tithe were duly paid at least in each third year.[ ] the tithe of cattle was entirely dropped in the book of the law; only the claim of the priests to the male first-born of animals was retained: "with such oxen ye shall not plough: such sheep shall not be shorn; they shall be eaten before jehovah year by year."[ ] the new law provided a compensation for the diminution of the tithe, by allowing the levites, like the priests, to have a share in the sacrifices, if they did service in the temple, and by the rule that the israelites should invite the levites to the sacrificial feasts at the thank-offerings and festivals.[ ] other requirements of the old law--that a part of the spoils of war should be given to the priests--that in enumerations and levies of the people every one should pay a poll-tax to the temple, were not repeated in the new law. the most essential point was to put an end to the canaanitish rites in israel, and prevent their entrance for the future. the new law therefore had to retain in all its sharpness the opposition to the canaanites: in the conquered cities at least all that was male was to be "cursed" with the edge of the sword.[ ] and not less must the strict regulations of the ancient law be kept up about the exclusiveness of israel towards all other nations, the prohibition of marriages with them (a rule only relaxed in the case of women captured in war),[ ] and against receiving strangers as citizens and partners of the community. even the closely-related tribes of the ammonites and moabites were not to be received, though families of these tribes in the tenth generation were living in israel. the only exception allowed by the book of the law was in favour of the edomites, the most closely-related tribe (i. ). "from the edomite thou shalt not turn away; he is thy brother?" edomites were to be received in the third generation. the new law goes further than the old in threatening the worship of every other god than jehovah with the punishment of death, in demanding that every one who served another god should be brought out to death. least of all were the next of kin to spare the apostate: they were rather to take the foremost place in the persecution. he who served other gods was brought before the gate, on the evidence of two or three witnesses, and stoned, the witnesses throwing the first stone at him: but the book of the law says expressly that the evidence of one witness was not enough.[ ] in the same way false prophets, who incited to the worship of other gods, even if they did signs and wonders, were put to death.[ ] "if thy brother," the book continues, "or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thy own soul, entice thee to serve other gods, thou shalt not spare him; thy hand shall be the first upon him to stone him to death."[ ] if a city practises idolatry, the inhabitants and every live thing in the city, even the cattle, are to be "cursed" and put to the edge of the sword; all furniture and property is to be brought into the market-place and burnt as a burnt-offering for jehovah. then the houses are to be destroyed with fire and never rebuilt.[ ] the book of the law sought to avoid the greatest danger of all, by the provision that the people should not choose any stranger to be king. how could a stranger be king in israel when no strangers were to be admitted into the people? the king of the people which jehovah chose must belong to the chosen race. but the new law also adds, that the people are "to make him king whom jehovah shall choose," a regulation which, in so far as it recognises and sanctions the old right of election, must be intended to guard against the influence of the priests on the possession of the throne, and their decision. for the king himself the book lays down the rule: not to multiply horses and wives to himself, that his heart turn not away, as had been the case with solomon and ahab, and not to greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. he is also to make a copy of the law when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that it may be with him, and "he may read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear jehovah, and observe all the words of the law, and that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren."[ ] the old law gave the rules of blood-right, and family-right, and in addition canons on the rights of the person, and the protection of property. in the new law the main object was to secure the carrying out and application of these rules of justice in the practice of the tribunal. for this object a definite influence of the priests on the tribunal was required. in principle the book declares, that "every sentence shall be given after the decision of the priests and levites,"[ ] for practice it is contented to prescribe, that judges and overseers were to be placed at all the gates; and then adds: "if there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment between blood and blood, and between plea and plea, and stroke and stroke in the gates, then thou shalt arise and get thee to the place which jehovah shall choose (the temple), and come to the priests and levites and the judge, who shall be there, and do according to the sentence which they pronounce for thee." the man who will not listen to the priest who stands there to minister before jehovah is to be put to death.[ ] in the judicial process the new law lays emphasis on the rule that only the testimony of two or three witnesses is to be sufficient,[ ] and that the testimony is to be strictly proved. the judges are to inquire, and "if the witness is a false witness, and has spoken falsely against his brother, ye shall do to him as he thought to do to his brother."[ ] like the old law, the new warns the judge to "have no respect of persons," and adds that he is to take no gift, that he is never to give crooked judgments; least of all, in the case of widows and orphans. "cursed is he that perverteth the judgment of the fatherless and widow."[ ] in the canons of law, as in the regulations about the tithes, the new code makes changes only with a view to the carrying out of the law in practice. it goes decidedly beyond the old in the regulations, instituted even in the old law, for the diminution of the severity of the law of debt, and in regard for the oppressed and poor (ii. ). the arrangements about the years of sabbath and of jubilee are dropped as impracticable in the new law, and are reduced to the much simpler rule, that in every seventh year, i.e. in the year of sabbath, an "acquitment is to be made," i.e. every unpaid loan, made before this year, is to be cancelled, with the income upon it. feeling the evil consequences which might spring from this regulation, the book of the law at the same time gives warning that no one is to be misled into refusing loans to the poor from the fear that he could not count on repayment after the year of acquitment.[ ] the older law requires, as has been already remarked, that in lending to the poor no interest should be taken;[ ] the new law went further: interest is not to be taken from any israelite, but only from strangers (_i.e._ phenician merchants).[ ] but here also it is added, that no one for this reason "is to harden his heart, and close his hand before his poor brother; thou shalt lend to him on a pledge (_i.e._ on sufficient security), what is requisite for his need, and jehovah will bless thee in all the work of thy hands."[ ] thus in israel money was, in fact, only lent on pledge. the old law forbids to take the cloak of the poor in pledge;[ ] the new law forbids the creditor, who demands his loan, to enter the house in order to choose a pledge for himself, and lays down the rule that the man who lends money is to wait outside till the debtor brings a pledge. the mill and the mill-stone (as indispensable to every household), and the garment of the widow, are not to be demanded.[ ] the new law repeatedly gives command that the debtor, who from inability to pay has become the slave of his creditor (ii. ), is not to be called upon to perform the duties of a slave, but is rather to be kept in the house as a hired servant and a serf. it requires that all slaves should participate, not only in the rest of the sabbath, but in the enjoyment of the festivals of harvest and vintage. it repeats the command to liberate hebrew slaves in the seventh year, and adds: "and when thou sendest him away free, thou shalt not let him go empty; thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress. remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of egypt, and that jehovah thy god redeemed thee." runaway slaves, who had escaped into another community, were not to be delivered up again to their master, according to the new code.[ ] the old law gave command: "the hire of the day labourer shall not remain with thee till the morning" (ii. ). the new law requires that it shall be paid before sunset: "for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it."[ ] the poor, the widow and the orphan in the land, are not to be oppressed; they must be supported before the court, and the hand opened towards them. at the harvest there is to be no gleaning. the scattered ears are not to be gathered any more than the fallen berries in the vineyard. "hast thou forgotten a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not return to take it; this sheaf shall be, like the gleanings, for the stranger, the widow and the orphan."[ ] strictly as the new law maintained the exclusiveness of israel towards the neighbours (p. ), it is equally emphatic in taking the part of the individual unprotected stranger who dwells in israel. "cursed is he who perverts the judgment of the stranger."[ ] the law forbids the mocking of afflicted persons owing to infirmities of body; the dumb man is not to be reviled, nor a stumblingblock to be placed in the way of the blind; the man is accursed who causes a blind man to go out of his way.[ ] a man shall not see the ox or sheep of his brother go astray without leading it back, or keeping it, if the owner is unknown to him; and the same shall be done with all lost property.[ ] only the young ones are to be taken from the nest of the bird, and not the mother with them.[ ] fruit trees are to be spared even in the land of an enemy.[ ] the mouth of the thrashing-ox is not to be tied, and even animals must rest on the sabbath.[ ] when king josiah had read this book before the assembly of the elders and the people in the house of jehovah (p. ), he vowed that he "would turn after jehovah, and keep his ordinances and commands, and fulfil with all his heart and soul the words of the covenant written in the book." "and all the people entered into the covenant." the king went vigorously to work to destroy the altars, statues, and symbols of foreign rites which remained in jerusalem, in the neighbourhood, and the whole country, from the time of manasses and a yet earlier date. the image of astarte (p. ) was removed from the temple, and burnt on the brook kidron; the altars on the roof of the king's palace, which ahaz had made, as well as those which manasses had set up in the court of the temple, were torn down; the place for offering burnt-offerings to moloch in the valley of ben hinnom; the altars of milcom and camus, which since solomon's time had existed on the high places near jerusalem (ii. ), were purified, "that no one should any more make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire." all the vessels of the worship of baal and the star-gods were removed, and the houses of the male worshippers thrown down. when the king proceeded to put an end to the ancient worship of jehovah on the heights, he found greater resistance than in the removal of these foreign rites and their priests. he commanded all the priests of the cities of judah to come to jerusalem, and purified the high places "from geba to beersheba," even the places at bethel which jeroboam ii. had set up, against which amos and hosea had declaimed.[ ] the priests who did not obey, and continued to sacrifice at the old places of sacrifice, and on the high places, he caused to be slain as sacrifices at the altars which they refused to desert. then the passover was celebrated according to the regulations of the law, "as never before under the kings of israel and judah," and tradition proudly declares of josiah "that before him there arose no king like unto him, nor after him."[ ] footnotes: [ ] above, p. , ff. [ ] kings xxi. - ; xxiii. - , ; xxiv. . jer. ii. ; vii. ; viii. , ; xv. ; xix. , . [ ] kings xxii. - ; deut. xxxi. - . the less weight will be given to the somewhat circumstantial account of the discovery given in chronicles as compared with the books of kings because the details are only a development of what hilkiah says to zaphan. [ ] deut. iv. . [ ] deut. x. , . [ ] deut. x. . [ ] deut. v. . [ ] deut. iv. . [ ] deut. xxxi. . [ ] deut. xxviii. . [ ] deut. xxviii. ; cf. iv. . [ ] deut. xxx. - . [ ] deut. iv. - . [ ] deut. vii. , . [ ] deut. x. , ; iv. . [ ] deut. xxx. - . [ ] deut. x. . [ ] deut. iv. . [ ] deut. xix. ; x. . [ ] deut. xiii. ; xi. ; cf. vi. - . [ ] deut. xii.; xvi. . [ ] deut. xv. , ; iv. - ; xxvi. - . [ ] deut. xii. , , ; xiv. - . [ ] deut. xviii. - . [ ] deut. xx. - . [ ] deut. vii. - . [ ] deut. xvii. - . [ ] deut. xiii. - . [ ] deut. xiii. - . [ ] deut. xiii. - . cf. exod. xxii. , . [ ] deut. xvii. - . [ ] deut. xxi. . [ ] deut. xvi. - ; xix. ; xxv. . [ ] deut. xvii. , ; xix. . [ ] deut. xix. . [ ] deut. xvi. ; xxvii. . [ ] deut. xv. [ ] vol. ii. p. . [ ] deut. xv. ; xxiii. ; xxviii. . [ ] deut. xv. - . [ ] vol. ii. p. . [ ] deut. xxiv. , - , . [ ] deut. xii. ; xvi. , ; xv. - . [ ] deut. xxiv. . [ ] deut. xxiv. - . [ ] deut. xxvii. . [ ] deut. xxvii. . cf. levit. xix. . [ ] deut. xxii. - . [ ] deut. xxi. . [ ] deut. xx. , . [ ] deut. xxv. . [ ] above, p. . [ ] kings xxiii. - . chron. xxxiv.; xxxv. - . jesus, son of sirach, xlix. , . chapter xi. the nations of the north. far from the centres of power and civilisation in hither asia, beyond the caucasus and the black sea, dwelt wandering tribes who, in the accounts of the greeks, were generally denoted by the common name of scyths. it was known at an early time, among the greeks, that these tribes which dwelt to the north of the thracians lived on their herds, especially on the milk of their mares. even the homeric poems make mention of the "'horse-milkers,' of the 'thracians,' who live poorly on milk, the most just of men." the name "scythians" is first found in hesiod, who calls them "horse-milking eaters of milk, who live on waggons." Æschylus says that the hordes of wandering scythians live in desolate plains, on the shore of oceanus, at the farthest, pathless end of the earth, on the lake mæotis (sea of azof), and to the east of it; "they dwell in woven tents, which move on wheels, they eat the cheese of mares, and are armed with far-shooting bows."[ ] the nations of the north come out more plainly in the history of herodotus, who was far better informed about the north than many later authorities. "the caspian sea," he tells us, "is an isolated sea, fifteen days' journey in length, and eight days' journey in breadth, if the oars alone are used." toward the east of this sea are large plains, in which dwell the sacæ, and beyond them, on the jaxartes, the massagetæ; "beyond the massagetæ are the issedones." beyond the issedones dwell the arimaspi.[ ] on the other side, to the west of the caspian sea, is the caucasus, the largest mountain range on the earth in the height and multitude of its mountains. this range is inhabited by many nations. northwards of the caucasus, and to the west as far as the northern point of the mæotis, and to the tanais (don), "a great river," which comes down from the north out of a large lake in the land of the thyssagetæ, and ends in a still larger lake--the lake of mæotis--dwelt the sauromatæ (the sarmatians). their land was one great plain, in which grew neither fruit trees nor forest trees, and it stretched upwards along the tanais for fifteen days' journey. to the north of the land of the sarmatians dwelt the budini, the thyssagetæ, and the iyrcae. among the sarmatians the women, like the men, lived on horseback; they wore the same clothing as the men, and knew how to use the bow and javelin, and went with or without the men to hunt or make war,[ ] and no sarmatian maiden married till she had slain an enemy; for the sarmatians were descendants of the amazons, who fled from the thermodon over the pontus, and there took as husbands young men belonging to these scythians who called themselves scoloti: with these they afterwards marched to the east of the tanais. hence, according to herodotus, we must fix the abode of the sarmatians in the steppes eastward of the lower course of the don, above the lower volga, perhaps as far as the yaik. the scythians, who called themselves scoloti, as herodotus further tells us, had previously dwelt in the east, and afterwards marched to the west, under the pressure of the massagetæ. but aristeas related that the massagetæ had not driven out the scythians, but the arimaspians had driven the issedones out of their land, and then the issedones had expelled the scythians. the scoloti dwelt to the west of the land of the sarmatians, on the western bank of the tanais. their territory extended along the shore of the mæotis and pontus, as far as the mouths of the ister (danube). this, the largest of all rivers "which we know," was said to flow down from the celts, the nation in the extreme west, through the whole of europe, till it finally reached the land of the scythians, where it ran into the pontus by five mouths.[ ] the peninsula on the west side of the mæotis, _i.e._ the crimea, also belonged, so far as it was level, to the scyths; but the tauri dwelt on the mountains in the south-west. the reach from the mouth of the don as far as the mouths of the danube is the length of the land of the scythians; the breadth herodotus puts at twenty days' journey, _i.e._ miles, if you go from the pontus into the main-land to the north. according to this the territory of the scoloti extended from the sea upwards in the east about as far as the bend of the don to the south, and on the dnieper as far as the rapids in this river; _i.e._ it comprised the land of the cossacks on the west of the don, and the steppe, and further to the west the plains of moldavia, as far as the carpathian range.[ ] like the land of the sarmatians, the land of the scoloti was one vast plain, without trees, with the exception of a strip of forest which extended from the sea on the left bank of the borysthenes (dnieper) from three to four days' journey up the river, but rich in grass, as it was watered by large rivers.[ ] to the west of the tanais the first river was the borysthenes, the largest of the scythian rivers, flowing down through the land; and the soil by the river was so good, that when sown it produced the best corn, and where it was not sown there stood tall grass. further to the west the hypanis (bug) flowed out of a lake, round which pastured white horses, through scythia to the pontus; this river had a course of only nine days' journey ( miles), while the borysthenes was navigable for fourteen days' journey from the mouth.[ ] still further to the west was the tyras (dniester), which also flowed out of a lake; by these lakes are doubtless meant the marshes in the upper course of the bug and dniester. to the north, beyond the scoloti, twenty days' journey, according to herodotus, from the land of the tauri, on the west bank of the tanais, dwelt the melanchlæni--so called from the black garments which they wore; they had scythian manners, but were not a tribe of the scythians. to the west of these lived migratory tribes, without law or justice, of far ruder manners than the scoloti; they were the only tribes which ate human flesh, and were in consequence called androphagi. and further yet to the west beside the androphagi dwelt the neuri, northwards of the lake from which the tyras (dniester) springs, a nation of scythian manners. like the scoloti, the neuri were the eastern neighbours of the agathyrsi, through whose land the maris (the theiss with the marosh) flowed down into the danube.[ ] but who dwelt beyond the neuri, the androphagi, and the melanchlæni, and further to the east beyond the argipæans, who dwelt to the north of the iyrcae, at the foot of lofty mountains (up to these the land was level), and wore scythian clothing, and lived on the fruits of trees, and of the issedones, in the north--of this, herodotus assures us, no one knew anything more than "the accounts given by the issedones, the argipæans, and the scythians." the issedones related that beyond them dwelt the arimaspi, one-eyed men, who took the gold from the griffins which were again further to the north. aristeas of proconnesus ( b.c.), who professed to have been among the issedones, had celebrated the arimaspi in verse. he said that "beyond the nation of the issedones, rejoicing in long hair, towards the north, dwelt the arimaspi, rich in horses, sheep, and oxen, the mightiest men of all, but each in his full face had but one eye surrounded with thick hair."[ ] Æschylus calls the arismaspi, "one-eyed riders of horses by the gold-flowing stream;" beside them are the griffins, "the sharp-mouthed, mute hounds of zeus." "oceanus," the god of the water surrounding the earth, Æschylus represents as passing through the air of the north, on a griffin, "the four-legged bird."[ ] according to herodotus, the sarmatians and the scoloti spoke the same language, but the sarmatians spoke it badly. beyond this remark and the statements about the masculine life of the sarmatian women, he gives us no further information about this people. but he speaks at greater length about the scoloti. the nature of the steppes which they possessed did not allow them to lead a more settled life than the sarmatians. it is true that in the spring the herbage grows luxuriantly on these steppes, but it is soon parched by the glow of summer, and after a scanty second growth in the autumn it succumbs to the snow storms of the long winter. thus the scoloti were induced to lead a wandering pastoral life. yet they had passed beyond the stage of a purely nomadic life, at least after the year b.c. if, according to the legend of the scoloti, a golden plough fell down from heaven for their forefathers, the story proves not only the knowledge of agriculture, but the high value placed upon it. the account of herodotus, as well as later statements of the greeks, show us that the scoloti cultivated the land in the depressions at the mouths of their rivers sheltered by strips of forest from the north wind, on the lower course and at the mouths of the borysthenes (dnieper), the hypanis (bug), and the tyras (dniester). here they sowed corn, millet, and hemp. at that time the plains of the crimea also were reckoned as part of the corn land of scythia; they must therefore have been protected by forests against the storms of the north.[ ] the property of the scoloti, with the exception of the tillers of the soil in these districts, consisted in herds of horses and cattle, and flocks of sheep, from the wool of which they prepared felt coverings; their food was cooked flesh.[ ] of wood there was such a scarcity that they could only use brush-wood for cooking; and if this was not to be had, they took the bones of animals for fuel. the men were mostly on horseback; the women and children lived in waggons yoked with oxen;[ ] the waggon, provided with a cover of felt, was at the same time tent and house.[ ] the clothing of the scoloti consisted of skins; beside the upper garment of leather they had wide breeches of the same material. these garments, so astonishing to the greeks, they wore, as herodotus says, "on account of the cold," and in addition a girdle round the body, which they drew tight when they had had nothing to eat for a long time. the horse was the most important animal for the scoloti; they lived in part on horse-flesh; they were fond of mare's milk, and the preparation of acidulated mare's milk (koumyss) was known to them.[ ] the nation was made up of a number of tribes. according to herodotus, the land was divided into cantons, each of which had its own chief, and a place where he pronounced justice; in each canton, besides the residence of the chief, was a place sacred to the god of war, from which it follows that at the time presupposed in the description of herodotus the tribes of the scoloti no longer marched at will through the whole district. this original state was not merely abandoned owing to the settlements in the agricultural districts; even the habit of wandering up and down, the search for pasture and for water, and hunting, were limited among the migratory tribes to a particular district, within which the tribe changed its encampment according to the change of the seasons, and the productiveness of the hunting and pasturage. moreover, the nomadic habit was also so far abandoned that the head of the tribe had a definite place of abode in the canton, and there was a sacred place in each canton. the rulers of the cantons in herodotus were undoubtedly the princes of the tribes, the chiefs of the oldest family, or of the family which once ruled the tribe. even among the tribes themselves there was an order of precedence, which the legend of the scoloti does not carry back to difference of age but to the favour of heaven. the tribe which held the foremost place among the scoloti was, according to herodotus, the tribe called the "royal scythians." this tribe furnished the chief of the whole nation, or rather the chief of this tribe was also the ruler of all the other tribes--the king of all the princes of the tribes. here also, in this subordination of the chieftains and tribes under one liege lord--in this one ruler of the whole nation--we see plainly that the scoloti had left far behind the stage of purely nomadic life. we can establish it as a fact that this monarchy was in existence among the scoloti in the first half of the seventh century b.c., and apparently it existed far earlier. the "royal scythians," _i.e._ the tribe to which the royal house belonged, dwelt, according to the statement of herodotus, on the borysthenes, in the district of gerrhus, fourteen days' journey from the mouth of this river. hence the pastures of the royal horde must be sought on the rapids of the dnieper. before all gods, the scoloti worshipped the sky-god, papæus, and hestia, _i.e._ the genius of the hearth, whom they called tabiti, "the queen of the scoloti," as herodotus says; and beside these two, the god of light, oetosyrus, and the earth-goddess, the spouse of the sky-god, who was called apia.[ ] the scoloti had no images or altars. only the war-god, to whom they offered more sacrifices than to all the rest of the gods, had a sanctuary at the place of assembly for each canton. this was a great heap of bundles of brushwood, three stades in length and breadth, and flat on the top (each year waggon-loads of brushwood were added), in which an iron sword--the symbol of the god--stood erect. to these swords sacrifices were offered yearly, chiefly of horses, though other animals were used. when the scythians sacrificed their prisoners to the war-god (p. ), they poured wine on their heads, and slew them at the base of the heap of brushwood, so that the blood ran into a skin, and the blood was then poured upon the erect sword. after this the right arm was hewn from the corpse of the victim and thrown into the air; it was allowed to remain where it fell.[ ] the scoloti derived the origin of their nation from the gods--from papæus, the god of the sky. this god begot targitæus with the daughter of the river borysthenes. targitæus had three sons, lipoxais, arpoxais, and colaxais. in their days a golden cup, a golden battle-axe, a golden yoke, and a golden plough fell down from heaven. when lipoxais attempted to take the gold it burned; and in the same manner it escaped arpoxais. but the youngest brother was able to take it. so he became king, and from him arose the royal tribe; from the two others sprang the other tribes.[ ] these gifts of heaven were carefully guarded by the kings, and each year the scoloti assembled to offer sacrifices to them. the supreme power was hereditary in the family of colaxais, who was nearest to the sky-god. the son succeeded to the father; but the people, if discontented with the king, chose another member of the same family.[ ] the kings led the army in war, divided the booty, and were the supreme judges in peace.[ ] if a king pronounced sentence of death, not only was the guilty man put to death, but all his family with him.[ ] but if a scolote was condemned to death on the accusation of another scolote, the king handed over the condemned person to the complainant, who put him to death. the kings had several wives, and chose whom they would out of the free scoloti to be their servants. they had cooks, butlers, overseers of their horses, messengers, and a body-guard.[ ] if the king was sick, the scoloti believed that some one among the people had sworn falsely by the spirit of the hearth of the king, which was their most sacred oath, and that this was the cause of the king's sickness.[ ] the king then caused the three most famous soothsayers to come to him, of whom there were many among the scoloti. they divined by separating bundles of withes, or by unrolling and rolling up strips of linden bark. then the three soothsayers named to the king the man who had taken the false oath. if six other soothsayers were of the same opinion, the scolote mentioned by the first was beheaded. if the six were of a different opinion, fresh soothsayers were examined; and if, in the end, the majority declared against the opinion of the three first, these were bound and placed on a waggon filled with brushwood and yoked with oxen; the brushwood was set on fire, and the oxen driven out into the open country. if the king died, his body was embalmed, and carried round through all the hordes. at all the places to which the body came, the scoloti shaved off their hair in sign of mourning, and cut out a piece from the ear. they also wounded themselves in the brow and the nose, and pushed an arrow through the left hand. then, in the land of gerrhus, the district of the royal tribe on the borysthenes, a great square sepulchre was excavated, and the dead king placed in the bottom of it, on a bed of brushwood. lances were thrust into the ground close at hand, and wicker-work placed upon them. one of the wives of the king, his master of the horse, his butler, cook, body-servant, and herald were strangled, and their corpses placed in the grave beside the corpse of the king. the horses of the king also were killed, and thrown with other equipments into the grave. then the grave was filled up, and a tumulus raised above it to as great a height as possible. but after a year's interval fifty young servants were selected from the retinue of the dead, and fifty horses of the king. these were killed in order to serve as guardians round the tomb of the king. when the soft parts had been removed from the bodies of the horses, and replaced by chaff, the carcases were set upright by means of poles driven into the earth. in the same way the dead youths were fixed upon the horses by poles thrust through the spine.[ ] with the scoloti war was the most honourable occupation; those who pursued a handicraft were not held in such respect as the rest;[ ] the wealthier men had numerous slaves to look after their flocks, and do the work in their tents. the scoloti usually fought as bowmen on horseback. their bows were of peculiar form and curvature;[ ] the copper points of their arrows are said to have been poisoned;[ ] beside the bow they carried a battle-axe, sabre, dagger, and lance, with a whip.[ ] their corslets and shields are said to have been made of elk's skin. "no man escapes them," herodotus says; "and no man can overtake them and bring them to hand-conflict, if they do not wish to be overtaken, and their rivers help them." when a scolote slays an enemy for the first time, he drinks of his blood;[ ] he who has slain no enemy receives no wine at the banquet which the chief of the canton gives once in each year, but must sit neglected in a corner; he who has slain many enemies, drinks out of two goblets at once.[ ] the scoloti take the scalps from their slain enemies and hang them on the bridles of the horses, and he who has most of these scalps passes for the bravest. some take the skins from the dead, and make of them covers for their quivers. any one who would have a share in the booty must bring to the king the heads of the enemies he has slain.[ ] they sacrifice every hundredth man among the prisoners, and keep the rest as slaves. if a scolote has a quarrel with another, and receives him from the king to put to death, he preserves his skull, even though he may be a near relation. the poorer people cover these skulls with ox-hide; the wealthier have them gilded, and use them as drinking-vessels: if a stranger comes among them, they exhibit these skulls, and boast of them.[ ] according to this description the scoloti were a people, who, by the pursuit of agriculture at the mouths of their rivers, by some handicraft, by dividing the land into cantons, by fixing sacred places in the cantons, and by a monarchy governing all the tribes, had advanced beyond the nomadic stage. hardened by life in the steppes, accustomed to bear hardships, and content with little, the scoloti are excellent riders, and soldiers of great endurance. the picture which herodotus has given of their manners displays a certain carelessness, kindliness, and sociability, but these qualities are accompanied by traits of horrid barbarism, cruelty, and blood-thirstiness. they can endure hunger and thirst; they take pleasure in banquets and drinking. the head of the tribe assembles his tribe each year for a feast, at which the brave men drink out of two goblets at once. the nearest relatives place the body of the dead on a waggon, and carry it round among their friends, each of whom provides a banquet, at which food is placed for the dead as well as for the living. when forty days have been spent in this manner, the dead person is buried.[ ] when the hellenes introduced wine among the scyths--the introduction perhaps took place after the beginning of the seventh century--men and women drank immoderately of it beside their mare's milk, and became violently intoxicated.[ ] they also lived in great uncleanliness. the want of water in their steppes made cleanliness difficult, but that was no reason for never washing themselves at all, which herodotus tells us was the habit of the scoloti. only the wealthier sort among the scoloti had more than one wife; the women were without rights, and belonged to their husbands in just the same way as any head of their cattle: this right of property in the wife even descended to the sons, who had an hereditary claim and right to their mothers. the execution of the family along with the guilty person; the blinding of slaves, which certainly cannot have been so widely spread as herodotus maintains; the use of scalps for ornaments; and the custom of drinking out of the skulls of slain enemies, are barbarous practices. the self-mutilation at the death of a king, the strangling of the servants of a dead ruler, and of one of his wives, that they may accompany him into the grave, the setting up of horses and men slain for the purpose as a body-guard round the graves of the kings, are indeed a proof of veneration and honour towards the chief of the nation, but the form which this veneration takes is savage and cruel. according to the statement of herodotus, it was after the middle of the seventh century b.c. that the scoloti first came from the east and reached the northern shore of the black sea. this is contradicted by the acquaintance which the homeric poems show with the milkers of horses beyond the thracians; by the narrative of herodotus himself, according to which the amazons, conquered in old days by heracles on the thermodon, fled to the shore of the mæotis, and found the scoloti there, and became the mothers of the sarmatians by the young men of that tribe;[ ] and lastly, by the legend of the scoloti themselves, according to which they were derived from the daughter of the river borysthenes. according to this they regarded themselves in any case as a tribe settled from all antiquity on the borysthenes, and with this the statement of herodotus agrees when he tells us, that the scoloti maintained that years had elapsed since the time of their progenitor, the son of the sky-god, and the daughter of the borysthenes, down to the time of king darius.[ ] herodotus represents the scoloti as driven to the west by the massagetæ, who dwelt in the east, a tribe which we shall have to seek on the jaxartes. in this way the scoloti come into the land of the cimmerians, who inhabit the north shore of the black sea, and the cimmerians fly before them to asia minor. it was shown above that the cimmerians appeared at the mouths of the halys about the year b.c., and that soon after the year b.c. they traversed phrygia, and in the first decade of the seventh century came into collision with the assyrians and the lydians (i. ff.). if we cannot contest the fact with herodotus, that the scoloti formerly came from the east into the steppes above the black sea, his narrative of their actual irruption into the land of the cimmerians is self-contradictory. when the scoloti came from the east, the cimmerians debated on the tyras, _i.e._ on the dniester, whether they should resist or give way; they determined to give way, and fled from this land--not westward to the danube, but eastward along the shore of the black sea to asia. if they wished, when assembled on the dniester, to retire before the enemy coming from the east, they must go to the west: herodotus represents them as going from the dniester to the east directly in the teeth of the advancing enemy in order to reach asia minor round the north and east shores of the black sea. from this contradiction we may gather that the scoloti dwelt for a long time in the steppe to the north of the land of the cimmerians--_i.e._ to the north of the shore of the pontus; that they pressed toward the sea, from a desire to possess themselves of the fruitful region to the south of the forest-tract at the mouths of the dniester, bug and dnieper; and finally overcame the cimmerians, the ancient population of the coast, and compelled them to seek other dwelling-places. only the mountainous district of the crimea was maintained by the tauri (p. ), a tribe of the cimmerians,--and hence the whole peninsula retains the name crimea after this nation--while the scoloti acquired the better land on the coast, about the middle of the eighth century, and became an agricultural people, soon after this time, at the mouths of the rivers and on the plains of the crimea. the exiled cimmerians won new abodes on the south shore of the black sea, at the mouth of the halys, and from this point, in repeated predatory campaigns extending through a century, they laid waste asia minor as far as the west coast--(what the legends of the greeks and herodotus tell us of the manners of the tauri represent to us the cimmerians as crafty barbarians)--until they finally succumbed to the arms of the lydians, and amalgamated with the native tribes of the region into the nation of the cappadocians (i. ). of what origin, of what tribe were the sarmatians, the scoloti, and the people living above them to the north, the neuri, the androphagi, and melanchlæni? according to aristeas, it was the "one-eyed arimaspians," who had given the impulse to the movement of the northern tribes to the west. herodotus maintains that the name arimaspians means "the one-eyed" in the language of the scoloti.[ ] the explanation is false. the word certainly belongs to the western branch of the aryan language, _i.e._ to the family of language prevailing on the table-land of iran and the regions bordering on it; it means those who have obedient horses (_airyamaçpa_). if this was the name by which the arimaspi called themselves, they were a nation of the aryan race; if it was the name by which the sarmatians and scoloti named the nation to the east of them, the sarmatians and scoloti must have spoken an aryan language. herodotus further maintains that the scoloti called the amazons oiorpata, and that this name meant "slayers of men."[ ] this explanation also is false. in old arian (old bactrian) oiorpata would appear as _vayapati_; _vayapati_ does not mean the slayers, but it does mean the lords, of men.[ ] it was the masculine employment of the sarmatian women--their riding, their participation in hunting and warfare, which gained for the women of the sarmatians the name of "lords of men" among their neighbours, the scoloti, with whom women were in a very subordinate position. it was indeed this position and these habits of the sarmatian women which caused the greeks to unite the sarmatians and the amazons, and make the latter the mothers of the sarmatian race. thus, for the greeks, the amazons who disappeared on the thermodon could arise to a new life on the steppes of the don (i. ff.). the names of the progenitors of the scoloti, of the three sons of targitæus; lipoxais, arpoxais, and colaxais (p. ), appear to contain in the second part of the words the old arian word _kshaya_, _i.e._ prince. the two older brothers strive in vain to win the shining gifts which fell from heaven--the golden goblet, the golden battle-axe, the golden yoke, and the golden plough: it is only the youngest who can take them. in the avesta the splendour of majesty recedes three times before yima; the first time mithra seizes it, then thrætaona, then kereçaçpa: the kings of the avesta sacrifice in order that "the mighty royal majesty may unite with them." the turanian frangharçian grasps three times in vain "after the splendour of the majesty of the arian lands."[ ] according to the statement of herodotus the royal tribe of the scoloti, _i.e._ the tribe from which colaxais is sprung, to which the royal house belonged, was called "paralatai." in old aryan this name might mean "the advanced" (_paradhata_) or "the leaders" (_pararata_). nor do the names of the gods of the scoloti contradict the derivation from an aryan stock. tabiti, the name of the goddess of the hearth, means in aryan "the burning," "the illuminating," just as the name of the deity oetosyrus (perhaps _vita-çura_, _i.e._ "strong with the bow") reappears in the persian name artasyrus.[ ] but if the language of the scoloti was aryan, and they were therefore of an aryan stock, the sarmatians must have been of the same stock, for the sarmatians and the scoloti spoke, as herodotus told us (p. ), the same language. and if herodotus adds that the sarmatians spoke the language of the scoloti badly, and their ancestresses, the amazons, learnt it badly from their husbands, this means no more than that they spoke a different dialect of the same language. diodorus calls the sarmatians a branch of the medes planted on the tanais; to pliny the sarmatians are descendants of the medes. these statements show a close relationship between the sarmatians and an aryan nation.[ ] the names and words also, exclusive of those examined, which have been handed down to us as scolotian and sarmatian, can mostly be traced back to aryan roots. the names of the rivers tanais and borysthenes (_vouruçtana_) would mean, in old aryan, the "outstretched," and "having a broad strand." the names spargapeithes, ariapeithes, ariarathes, in use among the scoloti, recur in a similar form in persia. what herodotus tells us of the rites of the scoloti, the worship of the hearth-fire as the "queen of the scythians," corresponds to the worship of the hearth among the aryans in iran, as well as on the indus. at the same time the different name, the female form of the latter, the names of the other deities in herodotus, the barbarous worship of the war-god (p. ), show that the scoloti must have separated themselves from the community of the aryans before the eastern branch were in possession of the punjab, and the middle branch in possession of iran, and there arrived at the religious conceptions expressed in the hymns of the rigveda, and in the creed of iran, as it existed before zarathrustra. as it was the scoloti who gave names from their language to the rivers which flowed through their steppes, they must have pastured their flocks on them from an early period. not less than these names, and the legend of the scoloti about the antiquity of their nation and its origin from the borysthenes, does the comparison of the iranian languages support the conclusion that the sarmatians and the scoloti must have broken off from the tribes of iran at a very early period,[ ] and the scoloti, who are situated further to the west on this side of the don, earlier than the sarmatians. if, therefore, we must recognise in the scolotians and sarmatians people of aryan stock and character, their neighbours in the north, the neuri, the androphagi, and the melanchlæni, must count as the fathers of the sclaves.[ ] footnotes: [ ] "iliad," , , . strabo, p. , . Æsch. "prom." . , , . [ ] herod. , ; , , . on the confusion of the araxes and jaxartes in herodotus, see vol. v. [ ] herod. , , , . cf. strabo, p. - . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] neumann, "die hellenen im scythenlande," s. , . [ ] herod. , . neumann, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , , , , . [ ] tzetzes, "chil." , , . [ ] "prom." , . yet Æschylus appears to place the arimaspi in the north-west, and not in the north-east. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . hippocr. "de aere," p. , ed. coray. strabo, p. . [ ] neumann, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] herod. , . herodotus represents idanthyrsus as saying, "as my lords i acknowledge only zeus (the sky-god), my forefather, and hestia, the queen of the scythians." [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . the series of scythian kings which can be collected from herodotus is: protothyas, about b.c.; madyras, about b.c.; saulius, about b.c.; idanthyrsus, about b.c. herod. i, ; , . beside this succession of kings we may place the pedigree of anacharsis, who came to hellas about b.c., and must, therefore, have been born about b.c. his father, gnurus, was, therefore, born at the latest in b.c.; his grandfather, lycus, in b.c.; and his great-grandfather, spargapeithes, in b.c. [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] cf. curtius, , . [ ] Ælian. "nat. anim." , ; , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; hippocr., "de morb.," , . "de leg." p. . [ ] herod. , . diod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] müllenhoff, "monatsber. b.a." , s. ff, . [ ] zamyad yascht, ff. [ ] müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] diod. , ; plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] müllenhoff, _loc. cit._ s. . chapter xii. the fall of assyria. from modest beginnings, with a land of moderate extent, assyria, after passing through a training of severe warfare against the immediate neighbours, slowly raised herself by unwearied efforts, and extended wider and wider the circle of her dominion. the end of the twelfth century, the course and close of the ninth century, denote the epochs and the halts in this advance, which are followed in turn by periods of decline. with the middle of the eighth century, with the accession of tiglath pilesar ii., assyria, by the subjugation of babylonia and complete overthrow of syria, and by reducing media to a regular payment of tribute, passed beyond any height previously attained. sargon, esarhaddon, and assurbanipal raised assyria yet higher. she ruled over the land of the euphrates as far as the mouth of the river; the east of asia minor and cyprus bring tribute; lydia seeks her support; the pride of babylon is at last broken; egypt is conquered and maintained by repeated conquests; thebes has been pillaged, susa destroyed, and elam annihilated. hardly fifty years after the full tide of these successes--forty years after the overthrow of the strong opponent on the lower tigris, the ancient elam--nineveh had fallen. no slow decline, no gradual extinction after a long period of ripening, during which she grew up to the wide extent of her dominion, was the fortune of assyria:--this iron city of war and conquest, of cruel desolation and bloody punishments, collapsed suddenly. it seems as if the ceaseless efforts of the last century had overstrained and exhausted the power of the state; at any rate, the most thorough establishment of this power in the first half of the reign of assurbanipal--perhaps the most energetic, and certainly the most fierce and bloody, ruler of assyria--was quickly followed by its relaxation and fall. the monuments of assyria naturally give us no information on the fall of the kingdom; and it is not easy to ascertain the true facts from the western writers who narrate the extinction of assyria. the account which ctesias and nicolaus of damascus have preserved of the matter is as follows: sardanapalus was the thirty-sixth ruler of assyria after ninus. he neither carried weapons like his forefathers, nor went to the chase, but he surpassed all his predecessors in luxury and effeminacy. he was never seen outside the palace. he passed his life with the women, shaved his beard, smoothed his skin by rubbing it with pumice-stone, so that it became whiter than milk, painted himself with white lead, coloured his eyes and eyebrows, put on female apparel, and vied with his concubines in adornment, in dressing his hair, and all the arts of courtezans, and lived as effeminately as a woman. he sat among the women, with his legs stretched out before him, wove purple wool with them, imitated the voice of a woman, delighted himself continually with the food and drink most adapted to excite sensual desire, and pursued without shame the pleasures of either sex. at the gate of the palace were the satraps of the nations, who led out the forces prescribed for each year (ii. ); among these was arbaces, the satrap of media, a man of prudent conduct, experienced in affairs, a good hunter and warrior, who had already performed valiant acts, and aimed at something higher still. when he heard of the life and manners of the king, he was of opinion that sardanapalus was only ruler over assyria for lack of a braver man. he was acquainted with belesys, the viceroy of babylon, who waited with him at the door of the king. belesys was of the tribe of the chaldæans, who were the priests, and enjoyed the greatest respect; the babylonians were also the most skilful astronomers, and distinguished by experience in matters divine, in the art of the seer, and the interpretation of dreams and wonders. to this man arbaces imparted his thoughts. once they conversed in the neighbourhood of the palace, near a manger out of which two horses ate, and, as it was noon, they rested there. then belesys saw in a dream that one of the two horses let chaff fall out of his mouth on arbaces, who also was asleep; and the other horse inquired why he had done this. the first horse replied: "because he will rule over all those over whom sardanapalus rules now." then belesys roused arbaces, and invited him to a walk on the bank of the tigris. here he said to him: "what would you give me, arbaces, for the good news, if i told you that sardanapalus had made you viceroy over cilicia?" "why do you mock me?" arbaces replied; "how is he likely to nominate me, and pass over many better men?" "still, if such a thing should happen--i know very well what i am saying," replied the other. "then," said arbaces, "it would not be the lesser part of this sovereignty that would fall to you." "but if," continued the other, "sardanapalus made you satrap of all babylonia, what would you give me then?" "cease to annoy me," answered arbaces; "i am a mede, and not to be scorned by a babylonian." "by the great belus," answered belesys, "i do not say this in mockery, but instructed by signs." then arbaces replied: "if i were satrap of babylonia, i would make you under-governor of the whole satrapy." belesys continued: "but if you were made king of the whole empire which sardanapalus now possesses, what would you do?" "wretch!" said arbaces; "if sardanapalus were to hear this, you and i would perish miserably; how comes it into your mind to talk such nonsense?" but belesys seized his hand, and said: "by this right hand, which is dear to me, and the great belus, i am not speaking in jest, but because i know accurately the things divine." then arbaces replied: "i would give you babylonia to rule over, as long as you live, without tribute." and when belesys required him to join hands over the promise, he gladly gave him his right hand; whereupon belesys answered: "be assured, you shall certainly be king." when they had concluded this, they went back to the gate of the king to perform their ordinary service. when subsequently arbaces became acquainted with sparameizes, one of the most trusted eunuchs of the king, he besought him to allow him to see the king--he desired eagerly to approach his master to see how he lived. when the eunuch replied that this was impossible, and never permitted, arbaces at first desisted; but after a few days he repeated his request more urgently, and added that he would requite the favour with much gold and silver. the eunuch, who was of an easy disposition, was overcome, and promised to think of the matter at a convenient opportunity. arbaces presented him with a golden goblet. sparameizes conversed with the king, and the latter permitted the request. then arbaces saw sardanapalus sitting among the women, spinning purple wool with them, and putting white upon his eyes.[ ] arbaces now knew accurately what the king was, and was more inclined than before to realise the prospect which the chaldæan had opened to him. he entered into a league with the captains of the other nations, and by entertainments and persuasions won the friendship of each. at length he agreed with belesys that he should himself excite the medes and persians to rebellion, while belesys prepared the babylonians for a similar attempt, and persuaded the chiefs of the arabs, with whom he was on friendly terms, to take part in the undertaking. when the year of service was over, and the new troops came in, the troops which had finished service returned as usual to their countries. on this occasion, arbaces succeeded in persuading the medes to rebel against the king, and in gaining the persians for the same object, on condition that they should remain free for the future. in the same way belesys induced the babylonians to rise for their freedom, and by ambassadors prepared the chiefs of the arabians to join in the undertaking. when the year was past they collected the multitude of their warriors together, and marched with their whole force to nineveh, in order, as they gave out, to set themselves free, but in reality to destroy the empire of the assyrians. from the four nations mentioned, about , men were in all collected, and when these were united, the leaders consulted what was to be done. when sardanapalus received the intelligence of their defection, he led the forces of the remaining nations against them. a battle took place in the plain: the rebels were defeated; they lost many men, and were pursued as far as the mountains, which lie at a distance of stades from nineveh; and when they came down a second time into the plain to battle, sardanapalus drew out his army against them, and sent heralds to proclaim that he would give talents of gold to the man who slew arbaces the mede; the man who brought him alive should receive double this sum, and in addition the satrapy of media. the same promise was made to any one who should slay belesys, or bring him alive. these messages remained without effect; sardanapalus attacked, again slew a number of the rebels, and pursued the remainder as far as the camp on the mountains. the rebels, disheartened by two defeats, assembled round arbaces for consultation; the majority were of opinion that every one should return to his own land, occupy fortified places, and provide everything necessary for war: but belesys said, that the signs of the gods announced that they would attain their object by toil and disaster, and thus persuaded them all to persist in the dangerous undertaking. in this way it came to a third battle, in which sardanapalus was again victorious, took the camp of the enemy, and pursued them to the borders of babylonia. arbaces fought with the utmost bravery, and slew many of the assyrians, but was wounded. after so many losses and these repeated defeats, the rebels abandoned all hope, and set themselves to withdraw to their several homes. belesys, who had kept watch in that night, and observed the stars, told the dejected host that if they would only persist for five days, help would come to them spontaneously, and a great change for the better take place. he was assured, from his knowledge of the stars, that the gods announced this to them. let them only remain for so many days, and thus put to the proof the favour of the gods, and his own skill. all were called back to wait for the appointed time, when it was suddenly announced that a large force, sent to sardanapalus from bactria, was marching up hastily, and already close at hand. then arbaces was of opinion that they must go to meet the bactrians with the best and bravest warriors, and if they could not be persuaded to join the rebellion, they must be compelled to do so by force of arms. first, the leaders of the bactrians listened to the proposal for liberation, and then the soldiers also, so that the bactrians united with the rest. the king of the assyrians knew nothing of the defection of the bactrians, and, misled by his good fortune, gave himself over to indolence. he caused a feast to be prepared for his soldiers, with many sacrificial victims, abundance of wine, and other accompaniments. by means of deserters the rebels ascertained the carelessness and intoxication of their enemies, and unexpectedly made an attack in the night. attacking in good order the disordered, well-armed the unarmed, they gained the camp, slew many, and pursued the remainder as far as the city. the king undertook the defence of the city in person, and transferred the command of the army to salæmenes, his wife's brother. but the assyrians were defeated in two battles in the plain before the city; many took to flight, many were driven into the tigris, when their return to the city was cut off, so that the assyrian army was almost entirely destroyed. the number of the slain was so great that the river was stained with blood for a great distance in its course. the king was now shut up in the city, and many of the subject nations revolted to the rebels in order to acquire their freedom. sardanapalus saw that the kingdom was in the greatest danger; he sent his three sons and two daughters, with much treasure, to cottas, the viceroy of paphlagonia, who was the most loyal of his viceroys, and gave with them talents of gold.[ ] at the same time, by sending out messengers with scribes, he gave orders to all his subjects to send forces to his assistance, while he prepared all that was necessary for the siege. he had received an oracle from his forefathers, that nineveh would never be taken till the river became an enemy to the city. since this would never happen, he hoped to be able to maintain the city, and waited for the troops sent by his viceroys. the rebels carried on the siege with vigour, but could not do any harm owing to the strength of the walls, and, thanks to the care of the king, the inhabitants of the city had everything that they required in abundance. hence the only result obtained by two years of siege was that no one left the city. but in the third year it happened that the tigris, swollen by constant rains, overflowed a part of the city, and tore away the walls for a space of stades. then the king knew that the river was an enemy of the city, and abandoned all hope of resistance and rescue.[ ] in order not to fall into the hands of his enemies, he caused an enormous pyre, about feet high, to be built in the royal citadel. upon this was erected a chamber of beams feet in length and breadth. into this chamber were brought golden couches with cushions, and an equal number of golden tables. then million talents of gold, and million talents of silver, and a quantity of robes of all kinds, of mantles and purple stuffs, were placed on the pyre. then sardanapalus took his place in the chamber on one of the couches with his wife, and on the rest were his concubines. the chamber was roofed with long and massive beams, and when wood had been placed in great quantities round it, so that no one could pass out, the king gave command to light the pile of wood. it burned for days. the people in the city wondered at the smoke rising from the royal citadel; but they believed that the king was sacrificing, for only the eunuchs knew the circumstances. thus sardanapalus burnt himself, with all who were in the royal citadel, and, after indulging in pleasure beyond measure, brought his life to a noble end.[ ] when the rebels became acquainted with the death of the king, they took the city by forcing their way through the breach in the wall, arrayed arbaces in the royal robe, saluted him as king, and gave him authority over all. to the captains who had fought with him he gave gifts according to their services, and made them viceroys over the nations. belesys reminded the king of his services, and the promise to make him ruler over babylonia. he had also made a vow to belus in the perils of war, that after the conquest of sardanapalus and the burning of his royal citadel, he would carry the ashes to babylon, and make a heap of them near the temple of belus, on the shore of the euphrates, which should be to all who navigated the euphrates an imperishable memorial of the man who had overthrown the empire of the assyrians. he had ascertained from a eunuch of sardanapalus how much gold and silver was in the ashes of the citadel. arbaces, who knew nothing of this, because all besides were burnt with the king, allowed the ashes to be carried away, and gave belesys babylonia free of tribute. but when the theft was known to the king, he made the captains of the army with whom he had fought against sardanapalus, the judges. belesys acknowledged his fault, and the court condemned him to death. but the king, who was magnanimous, and wished to distinguish the beginning of his reign, not only forgave belesys the penalty, but allowed him to keep the gold and silver, which had been already conveyed to babylon; he did not even take from him the government of babylon, saying that his former services were greater than his recent fault. when this conduct became known, it brought not only good-will, but glory, to arbaces among the nations, for all judged him to be worthy of the kingdom who treated those who had served in such a manner. he was also gentle in his treatment of the inhabitants of nineveh. they were divided into villages, it is true, but each retained his possessions: the city he levelled to the ground. but the gold and silver of the pyre which still remained--and it amounted to many talents--he caused to be carried to ecbatana in media.[ ] after this arbaces reigned years, and was succeeded in the kingdom over the medes by his son mandaces, who was followed by sosarmus, artycas, arbienes, artæus, artynes, astibaras, and aspadas. aspadas was conquered by cyrus the persian, and the dominion passed to the persians.[ ] the account given by herodotus of the fall of the assyrian kingdom is different: "when the assyrians had reigned over upper asia for years the medes were the first to revolt from them, and, as they fought bravely against the assyrians, they obtained their freedom. after them the other nations did what the medes had done. and when all the nations of asia had become independent, they fell under the dominion of one man in this manner. the medes dwelt in villages, and as lawlessness prevailed among them, they chose deioces, the son of phraortes, a man of ability, whose decisions were most sought after for their justice and equity, to be their king. he caused a palace to be built, and surrounded himself with body-guards, and when this was done he compelled the medes to build a city in order to keep their attention from his further designs, and a fortress, which is now called ecbatana. in this way he strengthened his power, and united the median nation. when he had ruled years, he was succeeded by his son phraortes. this prince was not content to rule over the medes only; he marched against the persians, and was the first to make them subject to the medes, and with these two nations, both of which were strong, he subdued asia, advancing from one nation to another, till he finally attacked the assyrians, who possessed nineveh, and had formerly ruled over all. their previous confederates had, it is true, now fallen from them, but they were still in an excellent position. against these phraortes now took the field, but he and the greater part of his army were lost in the attempt, after he had reigned for years. he was succeeded by his son cyaxares. in order to avenge his father cyaxares collected the warriors from all the nations governed by him, and marched against nineveh to destroy the city. he had conquered the assyrians in the battle, and shut up nineveh, when the great army of the scythians came down upon him, led by madyas, the son of protothyas. these had driven the cimmerians out of europe, and entered asia in pursuit of them, and so came to media. from the lake mæotis to the phasis and the colchians it is, for an active man, a journey of thirty days: but from the colchians to media the journey is an easy matter, for there is only one nation between the two--the saspires--when these are crossed you are in media. but the scythians did not enter by this route; they took by mistake the upper route, which is far longer, and has the caucasus on the right hand. then the medes and the scythians encountered each other; and the medes were defeated in the battle, and lost their dominion; the scythians traversed all asia, and then turned towards egypt. when they had reached palestine, psammetichus, the king of egypt, came to meet them, and by presents and entreaties induced them to come no further. they returned and came to ascalon. the greater part of the scythians passed without doing any harm, but the camp-followers plundered the shrine of aphrodite urania. these the goddess punished with a loss of their manhood, and not them only but their descendants after them. for years the scythians were masters in asia, and overturned everything in their arrogance and contempt. beside the tribute which they imposed on all, and what they extorted in addition, they wandered to and fro stealing whatever any one possessed. the greater number were massacred by cyaxares and the medes, after they had entertained them and made them intoxicated. thus the medes won back their dominion, and ruled again over those over whom they had ruled previously, and conquered nineveh--how they conquered the city i shall relate in another account--and made the assyrians their subjects, as far as babylonia."[ ] "but the scythians, who after years returned to their land, were met by a disaster not less than that caused by the medes. in the long period during which their husbands had been absent, the scythian women had lived with their slaves, and from this intercourse a young generation had grown up, who opposed those who returned from media. where the tauric chersonese abuts on lake mæotis, at the point where the lake is broadest, they raised a large dyke, to mark off their territory. when the scythians wished to enter the territory they encamped opposite them and fought. the battles were many, and the scythians could not gain the upper hand, till one of them said: 'our numbers become less in the struggle with our slaves if we fall, and if we continue to slay them we shall have fewer persons to rule over. let us abandon the javelins and arrows, and take every man his whip, and go against them. so long as they see us in arms they think that they are our equals, and of equal birth; they will then know that they are our slaves, and will not stand their ground.' when this was done the others were terrified, abandoned the struggle, and fled. in this way the scythians, after they had governed asia, and had then been again driven out by the medes, came back into their own land."[ ] "of the nomadic scythians," so we are further told in another passage of herodotus, "one tribe separated from the rest, and came into the median territory, and asked for protection, and cyaxares received them well, and held them in high estimation--putting boys in their care to whom they were to teach their language, and the use of the bow. the scythians went out to the chase, and always brought something back. but it happened once that they found nothing, and returned with empty hands. then cyaxares, who was quick of temper, as the incident shows, received them harshly and with contempt. enraged at the unmerited treatment they received the scythians resolved to cut in pieces one of the boys given into their charge for education, and, after preparing him as they were accustomed to prepare venison, to set him before cyaxares as the spoils of the chase, and at once to fly to sardis to alyattes. this was done. cyaxares and those who were at table with him ate of this flesh. when cyaxares demanded their surrender, and alyattes refused it, the result was a war between the lydians and medes, which continued five years. in this war the medes were often victorious, and also the lydians; one battle was fought even by night. in the sixth year, when the armies met, and were already engaged, it happened that the day suddenly changed into night. when the night suddenly came upon them in the daytime, the medes and lydians desisted from the battle. on both sides there was an inclination to peace. but those who brought about a reconciliation were syennesis the cilician, and labynetus the babylonian. through their instrumentality a peace was set on foot, and an intermarriage took place: they arranged that alyattes should give his daughter aryanis to wife to astyages, the son of cyaxares, for without some binding necessity treaties were not wont to continue."[ ] cyaxares was succeeded by astyages on the throne of the medes. when he had reigned years he was defeated by cyrus the persian, and the dominion passed to the persians after the medes had reigned over asia years, beside the period during which the scythians ruled.[ ] we need not point out how widely these accounts of ctesias and herodotus differ from each other. in ctesias the assyrian kingdom is in the fulness of vigour, with an unbroken organisation. it is an effeminate ruler whose weakness rouses the viceroys of two provinces of the kingdom to rebellion, in which this effeminate ruler confronts them with the most masculine energy; and finally succumbs after the bravest resistance and marvellous changes of fortune in the struggle. the empire, the metropolis, the king of assyria perish simultaneously. the viceroy of media takes the place of the king of asshur as the lord of asia. in the narrative of herodotus the empire of the assyrians is first overthrown; in the struggle against this the medes win back their freedom; the remaining nations, who were subject to the assyrians, follow their example, and also attain independence. then out of the anarchy of the medes there springs up a monarchy, of which phraortes is the inheritor. he subdues one nation of asia after the other. when this object has been obtained, he advances to the attack upon the assyrians, and in the struggle against these he perishes. after this the scythians conquer the medes, and overthrow the dominion of the medes over the nations of asia, which phraortes had won. for twenty-eight years they devastate asia as far as the borders of egypt, till the median cyaxares becomes their master by treachery, and again overthrows the assyrians and conquers nineveh. according to this, assyria did not receive the death-blow till the medes and the other nations were liberated from her dominion, and the medes had twice established their supremacy over the rest of the nations. in ctesias it is arbaces who overthrows the kingdom of the assyrians; in herodotus it is phraortes who founds the empire of the medes, and cyaxares, the father of astyages, who conquers nineveh. the dates of the overthrow, no less than the authors of it, differ widely in herodotus and ctesias. in herodotus, cyaxares, the conqueror of nineveh, reigns years, his son astyages years. as the latter was defeated by cyrus in b.c., the reign of cyaxares, and the invasion and conquest of the scythians, the re-establishment of the median kingdom, the war with the lydians, the marriage of astyages with the daughter of the king of lydia, the conquest of nineveh, must fall in the period between and b.c. on the other hand, according to the dates which ctesias gives for aspadas and his predecessors, up to the rebellion of arbaces, arbaces destroyed the kingdom and metropolis of assyria in the year b.c.[ ] let us first examine each of the two accounts separately. in ctesias the motives of the actors, the interpretations of dreams and constellations, all the incidents and occurrences, are known. he is acquainted with the conversations which arbaces and belesys carry on at the gate of the palace at nineveh, and in their walks on the banks of the tigris--and knows how they intend to divide the lion's skin before it is won. the effeminate life and nature of the king of asshur are described in the strongest traits and with the most minute detail. yet this effeminate man has a lawful wife, with whom he ends his existence, three sons and two daughters, whom, in his care for their lives, he sends away before nineveh is shut up. after a life passed in the harem, an effeminate ruler, such as this account describes the last king of assyria to have been, might, under the pressure of great danger, perhaps put himself to death; but he could hardly have the resolution and the capacity to struggle for three years, with heroic courage and obstinacy, for his kingdom and throne. in the narrative of ctesias this effeminate king three times vanquishes his opponents in great battles. the latter are already resolved to abandon their undertaking, when the unexpected desertion of the bactrians to the enemy again raises their courage. this desertion, the successful surprise of the assyrian camp, and the overflow and floods of the tigris, decide against sardanapalus, who now, as ctesias himself says, ends his life in a noble manner. this end takes place in a most remarkable way. in a country without wood, in a besieged city, a wooden mountain feet in height is erected, which must have towered high above all the walls and towers, and have been seen from far by friend and foe. least of all could the inhabitants of nineveh, who saw the pyre building, be astonished at the rising smoke, as the narrative relates (p. ). the narrative allows the pyre to go on burning for fifteen days undisturbed, and though the breach is opened before the building and lighting of the pyre, the besiegers quietly wait till it is burned down before forcing their way into the city. all these contradictions and marvels, combined with the detailed and lively delineation of the life of the king among his women, the full account of the relation of arbaces and belesys, their characteristic traits, and the dramatic description of the battle, where victory hangs by a hair, and the preparations for self-incremation, show us that ctesias has followed a poetical authority in describing the end, no less than the beginning of the assyrian kingdom,--an authority of the same kind as that which could give us such accurate information about the origin, character, and fortunes of semiramis, and the war with the indians. the question about the origin of this authority is easier to answer here than in regard to the former descriptions. it is a mede who is brought to honour, whose force and vigour can overthrow a great kingdom, whose courage and bravery are marked in comparison with the ruler of assyria, no less than his honesty and gentleness puts to shame the treachery and avarice of his babylonian accomplice. on him, the skilful hunter, the brave warrior, when in his service at the gate he hears of the king's effeminate life, the thought forces itself, that there is need of a brave man. the dream of the horse, which lets chaff fall on arbaces, belongs decidedly to the conceptions of the iranian nations, the medes and persians. the interpreter skilled in the stars, the babylonian, knows at once what is the significance of the dream, and hastens to secure his share of the spoil, the satrapy of babylonia, by a solemn promise taken from arbaces. the sight of the king in female adornment, painting himself, which arbaces finally obtains by bribing sparameizes, decides his resolve. he gains the captains of the troops stationed with him at nineveh. the war commences. the rebels are defeated even in the third battle, in spite of the heroic deeds of arbaces and the number of the assyrians slain by him. he is wounded; the army is compelled to retire as far as the borders of babylonia. the babylonian, who, after the second battle, has kept up the courage of the confederates by his astrology, adjures them to remain but five days. in this space of time arbaces, who goes boldly to meet the bactrians, succeeds in winning them, in surprising the assyrian camp, in defeating salarmenes, and destroying the assyrian army in the third battle before the gates. the rebels have lost three battles, now they win three. the old oracle is fulfilled: the river becomes hostile to the city. arbaces takes the place of sardanapalus. the subtilty and cunning of the babylonian, which is brought strongly forward beside his knowledge of the heavens, is contrasted with the uprightness of the mede. belesys has deceived him. when condemned to death arbaces not only gives him his life; he despises the miserable gold, and leaves it to belesys; he keeps strictly the promise he had once made to him on the tigris, and the nations of asia are in consequence compelled to acknowledge that arbaces is worthy to rule them. it is a poetical conception which contrasts the simple character and force of the median servant with the effeminate splendour of the sovereign of assyria, and which places beside the former, to aid and support him, the astrology and cunning of the babylonians. but by this contrast the medo-persian epos obtained another advantage; the completion of the whole poem. a masculine woman, semiramis, had founded the kingdom; an effeminate man brings it to ruin. herodotus does not know the name of sardanapalus. but the name was known to the greeks; before ctesias wrote it had passed into a by-word--"more luxurious than sardanapalus."[ ] the effeminate traits are marked with extraordinary depth in the narrative of ctesias; he not only wears woman's clothes, and does woman's work, but he imitates the voice of a woman, and pursues the pleasures of the male and female. hence we must conclude that as the median minstrels have used the myth and the form of istar, a goddess of the semites, in their delineation of semiramis; so in their delineation of sardanapalus, the opposite of semiramis, they have used the myth of the semitic god, who exchanges his nature with the female goddess placed beside him, who wears the woman's robe, and spins purple wool, just as his worshippers on certain festivals wore women's garments (i. ). but if the god placed by the side of istar assumed the nature of the woman, as istar assumed the nature of the man, the masculine nature was not wholly lost to him. thus the minstrels could represent sardanapalus as taking up arms at the approach of the danger, and fighting bravely. it is no doubt due to this interchange of the masculine and feminine nature that hellanicus and callisthenes maintained that there were two princes of the name of sardanapalus; the one was noble and active; the other sought his happiness in debauchery.[ ] even in the description of the death of sardanapalus incidents in the worship of the syrian goddess seem to have given the type to the median minstrels. at the great festivals vast pyres were built to the sun-god of the syrians; a number of precious goods were heaped upon them, which were set on fire together with an image of the god placed upon the pyre, who was supposed to renew his youth in the conflagration.[ ] lucian's statement that a statue of sardanapalus stood beside that of semiramis in the temple at hierapolis can only support the conclusion that traits of the god united with istar, and of his worship, were employed in the description of sardanapalus. to the greeks sardanapalus became a prophet of the philosophy which teaches us to exhaust life in enjoyment, because it is short, and nothing remains to a man beyond what the body has enjoyed. aristobulus, the companion of alexander, narrates: "near anchiale, where the camp was pitched, is a monument of sardanapalus, on which stands a bronze figure, pressing together the fingers of the right hand, as though snapping them; the inscription says, in assyrian letters: 'sardanapalus, the son of anakyndaraxes, built anchiale and tarsus in a single day. eat, drink, be merry, the rest is not worth so much,' _i.e._ a snap of the fingers."[ ] these words were worked out more fully among the greeks, embodied in verse, and given out as an epitaph composed by sardanapalus for his tomb, and to be found either at anchiale or nineveh.[ ] in the narrative of herodotus also there is more than one difficulty. it is intended, as it states, to show how the nations of asia, after this liberation from the assyrians, again came under one master. the medes, as brave warriors, liberate themselves from the assyrians, but after this liberation they are found in a condition of utter lawlessness. without combination of their powers, without union under one strong leader, could the medes have succeeded in withdrawing themselves from a power so great as the assyrian power was, even in the description of herodotus? this lawlessness is brought to an end, not by a mighty warrior, but by a clever, ambitious village-judge, who by his decisions so gains the affections of the medes, that they elect him to be king. when chosen he knows how to lead them by cunning, or rather to infatuate them into giving him a body-guard and building him a palace. then he compels them to live together in one city, and, in the course of a long reign, establishes the despotic system of asia to its full extent, with all its appliances, among the medes. from this establishment of monarchy among the medes, re-establishment of the despotic government spreads over all asia. phraortes, the son of deioces, subjugates the persians, and then all the nations which obeyed the assyrians, in order finally to turn upon the latter. could the assyrians, who, according to the narrative of herodotus, "were abandoned by their allies, but otherwise in a good state," at the time when herodotus attacked them, have looked on at the successes of phraortes, and quietly waited till they were reached in the series? would they not rather have attempted in good time to meet the rise of the medes, which occurred close upon their borders, and threatened them first of all? phraortes, with the greater part of his army, is slain. to revenge his death, his son cyaxares invests nineveh. but the scoloti have missed their way; they come upon the medes instead of the cimmerians, whom they are pursuing; none the less they begin battle with them, overcome them, and obtain the dominion over asia--which they never desired--from media to egypt. after a part of them had suffered punishment from the goddess of ascalon, they allow themselves to be made drunk by cyaxares. they are massacred in part, and when they have returned to their own land--of which we are not told whether they ever possessed it before--they have to undergo a severe contest with the sons whom their wives have in the mean time brought forth to their slaves. these sons do not meet them on the don, _i.e._ on the border which herodotus fixes for the land of the scoloti, but on the crimea. the returning host bring this struggle, in which they could not conquer by force of arms, to a happy end by raising their whips. after the departure of the scythians, cyaxares again obtains the dominion over the nations which his father previously subjugated, and conquers nineveh. whether the war of cyaxares with the lydians took place before or after the capture of nineveh is not clear from the narrative of herodotus. it is at the least remarkable that cyaxares, after he has escaped from the yoke of the scythians by treachery and violence, should not only receive a troop of the same nation into his country, but show them favour, make them his hunters and the educators of median boys, and then because the lydian king prevents him from avenging a crime of the fugitives, carry on war for five years with the lydians, till a sign from heaven puts an end to it. were lydia and media neighbouring countries after nineveh fell, or before? had cyaxares, when at war with lydia, already recovered the dominion which phraortes had established for the medes over all asia? if this was the case, were there princes of cilicia and babylonia in existence, or in such an independent position that they could come forward to negotiate peace and affinity between the contending states, lydia and media? from this examination of the two accounts as to their separate contents, let us now proceed to inquire whether the statements in them agree with what has come down to us from other sources, and can be deduced from the last monuments of assyria. the narrative of ctesias is based on the view that the assyrian kingdom was arranged in satrapies, like the kingdom of the achæmenids: the inscriptions of the kings of asshur have made it sufficiently clear that this was not the case. we have already seen that neither the statement of ctesias about the duration of the assyrian kingdom, nor that of herodotus about the strength of their dominion, is tenable (ii. , ); not more tenable is the date given by ctesias for the fall of assyria. according to ctesias, arbaces overthrew the assyrian kingdom in the year or b.c. (p. ), and set up the dominion of himself and his descendants, the kings of media, in the place of the dominion of the assyrians. but we found above that assurnasirpal, the son of tiglath adar, ascended the throne of assyria in b.c.--that his campaigns reached the coasts of syria, that at his time media was not yet subject to the assyrian kingdom, that with him the long series of royal princes begins who raised assyria to the height of her power, and that it was the army of his immediate successors which first trod the land of media. herodotus represents the kings of the medes as reigning over asia for years, "deducting the time during which the scythians ruled."[ ] his figures for the reigns of the median kings, from deioces to phraortes, give years from the beginning of deioces down to the overthrow of astyages.[ ] the overthrow of astyages took place in the year b.c., and, therefore, deioces began to reign in b.c. how long before this the medes liberated themselves from the dominion of assyria, how long they lived in their free but lawless condition before electing deioces king, herodotus does not state. enough that the medes must, according to his statement, have liberated themselves in the second half of the eighth century b.c. but at this very time tiglath pilesar ii. and sargon ruled over assyria; at this time the first advanced to arachosia, repeatedly imposed tribute on the chiefs and cities of the land of media (p. ), while sargon receives tribute from , then from , and finally from , chiefs of the medes (p. ). he boasts to be ruler over media as far as the distant city of simaspati, in the east; and the hebrew scriptures told us that the israelites carried away after the capture of samaria ( b.c.) were settled in the cities of the medes (p. ). but not only did the kings of asshur receive or compel acts of obedience from the tribes of the medes at the time when, according to herodotus' statement, deioces ascended the throne of media; sennacherib ( - b.c.) imposes tribute on the distant regions of media; esarhaddon removes distant tribes of media, with their flocks, to assyria, and subjugates cities which, as he maintains, lie far away in the land of media (p. ); and even the inscriptions of assurbanipal, from the period before the year b.c., speak of a captive chief of the medes (p. ). from all this it is clear that the liberation of the medes took place later than herodotus states. in his account, therefore, we can only retain the facts that cyaxares, who, according to his statement, ascended the throne in the year b.c., fought with success against the assyrians--that the invasion of the scythians, and their expulsion, the fall of assyria, the great war with the lydians, and, finally, the capture of nineveh, took place in his reign, _i.e._ in the period from to b.c. (p. ). most remarkable is the sudden incursion of the scythians into media, the ground for which is a pursuit wholly without any reason (p. ), and the missing of the proper route. let us examine the separate statements about this invasion, in order to come, if possible, nearer to the actual facts. the incursion of northern nations into hither asia at the time stated by herodotus, _i.e._ in the second half of the seventh century, is a fact. in the reign of josiah, king of judah ( - b.c.), the prophet zephaniah[ ] announces a great judgment, which will come not only on judah, gaza and ascalon, ashdod and ekron, moab and ammon, egypt and ethiopia, but also on nineveh. hence the prophet cannot have in his eye a punishment coming on syria and egypt from assyria. from the earnest manner in which the prophet exhorts to repentance and improvement, to the purification of the sanctuary, and removal of "the remnant of baal," the servants of baal, it follows that this announcement of a coming judgment belongs to the period in the reign of josiah, which lies before the reform of the worship and the publication of the new law, _i.e._ to the period from to b.c. (p. ). jeremiah speaks more definitely in the thirteenth year of josiah[ ] or soon after, _i.e._ in or immediately after the year b.c. "i will bring evil from the north, and great destruction. the lion is come up from the thicket, and the destroyer of the nations is on his way." "evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction."[ ] "lo! a people cometh from the north, and a great nation riseth from the uttermost end of the earth. it is a mighty nation, whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say. they come on like clouds, like a whirlwind are their chariots; their horses are swifter than eagles. they shall lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no mercy; their voice roareth as the sea, and they ride on horses set in array as men of war against thee. their quiver is an open sepulchre, they are all mighty men. jehovah called the families of the kingdoms of the north; a burning wind comes from the hills of the desert, besiegers come from a distant land. lions shall roar against israel, and shall make his land a desert, his cities shall be burned, empty of inhabitants. declare ye in judah and publish in jerusalem; blow the trumpet in tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in bethhaccerem.[ ] suddenly will the destroyer come upon us, suddenly are the tents spoiled, and the carpets in a moment. every place shall flee before the noise of the horseman and the archer; they shall creep into thickets and climb up the rocks. let us go into the strong cities; go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way: for the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side. our hands are feeble, pain and anguish have taken hold upon us. o my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes. the besiegers come up from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of judah. as keepers of a field they are against jerusalem round about. the shepherds and their flocks shall come to jerusalem, they shall feed every one in his own place. they shall glean the remnant of israel as a vine, saith jehovah of hosts; the land shall be a desert. nevertheless i will not make a full end." from this description, taken in combination with the proclamation of zephaniah against the philistines, against ascalon and egypt, it is clear that the whole of syria, as herodotus told us, as far as the borders of egypt--on which, in his account, the scythians were induced to turn back by the entreaties and presents of psammetichus (p. )--was overrun and laid waste. it is also clear that jerusalem and the fortified cities of syria withstood the invaders, and the storm soon passed by. it is not known whether the name scythopolis, given by the greeks to bethshan, is in any way connected with this incursion of scythians.[ ] the only other author who knows of this incursion of scythians into asia is pompeius trogus. with him it is their third invasion. in the first, which they made before the time of ninus of assyria, the marshes prevented them from invading egypt; on their return from these they spent fifteen years in subjugating asia and imposing a moderate tribute upon the land, the payment of which was brought to an end by ninus. the second invasion was made in aid of the amazons, when hard pressed by heracles and theseus, at their entreaty. on the third campaign against asia they were absent eight years, and on their return had to carry on war against their slaves; in this they finally got the victory by their rods and whips, and all the slaves whom they could capture were crucified.[ ] the chronology which can be deduced from the data found in the announcements of the two prophets gives us the period from to b.c. for the invasion of hither asia by the scythians, and this completely agrees with the statements of herodotus. in order to avenge the death of his father phraortes, who fell, with the greater part of his army, before the assyrians, cyaxares, according to herodotus, immediately after his accession, _i.e._ in the year b.c., set out against nineveh. during his siege of nineveh, the incursion of the scythians into media took place. according to this, herodotus placed the commencement of the invasion of media by the scythians in the year b.c. or b.c. the chronographers, eusebius and hieronymus, put the invasion at the same time; they observe, the first at the year b.c., the second at the year b.c., that "the scythians forced their way as far as palestine." syncellus gives only the general statement, that in the days of king josiah, palestine was overrun by the scythians, and the city of bethshan taken by them, whence its name.[ ] the name scythians, as has been already remarked, was applied by the greeks and romans in a wider sense to all the nomadic and equestrian tribes of the north; it was a comprehensive title for almost all the whole complex of the northern nations. to which nation of the scythians, we may ask, did these hordes belong, which in the period just fixed, _i.e._ between and b.c., invaded and laid waste hither asia, from the caucasus to egypt? according to herodotus, they were the ancestors of the scythians between the danube and the don, the scoloti. herodotus represents them as invading asia in their pursuit of the cimmerians. but what reason was there for the pursuit, when the cimmerians had voluntarily abandoned the land which the scoloti desired? besides, for more than a century before the date at which herodotus represents them as flying to asia before the scythians, the cimmerians were settled on the halys, and must have been well known to the nations of asia minor; and ever since the emigration of the cimmerians, _i.e._ for an equal period, the scoloti had possessed the old abodes of the cimmerians on the pontus. what could have induced the scoloti to undertake such a pursuit a good hundred years later? what made them miss the way, and come into media instead of cappadocia? herodotus tells us that the scoloti had taken a far longer route than that which led past colchis, to asia, so that they came out in media, with the caucasus on the right hand. by this "upper way," the pass of derbend, on the caspian sea, may be meant, which would have brought the hordes of the north into media through the land of the cadusians, who were hostile to the medes; but if we measure from the banks of the don, where, according to herodotus' narrative, we have to conceive the scoloti as situated in their advance upon the cimmerians from the east, this route could hardly be described as much longer than that by colchis. by the upper route herodotus apparently means the route round the caspian sea. the supposed error in the proper route may lead us into the right path, if we assume that the hordes which then invaded media and inundated asia were not mounted nomads from the steppes above the black sea, on the upper course of the don, but nomads dwelling beyond the caspian, in the steppes on the oxus and jaxartes. the legendary poetry of east iran is filled with long and mighty struggles of the ancient heroes with those nations; and ctesias tells us, again, without doubt, following the minstrelsy of west iran, of the severe and doubtful wars which the predecessor of astyages of media, whom he calls artæus, and herodotus cyaxares, carried on against the sacæ, the neighbours of the parthians and hyrcanians in the steppes on the oxus. it was these sacæ who, four centuries after the invasion of media by herodotus' scythians, burst through parthia and hyrcania, possessed themselves of the valleys of the hilmend, the best region in the east of iran, and gave to this region the name of sikashtan, _i.e._ land of the sacæ, now sedshestan. on the earlier occasion the sacæ may have made the same attempt to break into iran. if nations on the steppes on the oxus had overpowered media, if they had also established themselves in hither asia, youthful bands of sarmatians and scoloti might have felt tempted to go out from the pontus and take part in the campaign of plunder. in ascribing the invasion of asia to the scoloti, herodotus no doubt followed the authority of his own people, the greek settlers on the northern coast of the pontus. the cimmerians had once dwelt in these regions, and had retired from them before the scoloti. it happened that at the time of king ardys of lydia (his reign, according to herodotus, extended from b.c. to b.c.), these cimmerians made an incursion into the west of asia minor from the abodes which they had obtained on the halys, and forced their way at that time as far as lydia and the greek cities on the coast. they took sardis, except the acropolis. "it was not a subjugation of the cities," says herodotus, "but only a passing raid."[ ] the narrative of herodotus proves conclusively that he knew nothing of the earlier incursions of the cimmerians into the west of asia minor, and therefore he assumed that this campaign against sardis and the cities of the greeks, in the time of ardys, was identical in date, and, in fact, the same as the incursion of the cimmerians into asia minor. and as herodotus also learnt that cyaxares of media was overthrown by scythian hordes who devastated all asia, and that fugitives of these hordes had also come into the west of asia minor to the grandson of ardys, alyattes of lydia, he represents the cimmerians as being pursued towards asia, along the pontus, by their ancient enemies, the scoloti, who, he thinks, missed their way. he was evidently confirmed in this opinion by the fact that certain families of the scoloti suffered from a loss of sexual power (p. ), a disease which the greeks on the pontus attributed to the anger of aphrodite urania, the goddess of fertility, whose oldest and most famous temple was at ascalon, in syria. hippocrates says that this disease showed itself among the wealthiest families of the scoloti, and not among the poor, because the former were always on horseback;[ ] according to aristotle the disease was hereditary in the royal family of the scythians.[ ] lastly, a story of the slaves of the scythians, who, in the absence of their masters, had made themselves masters, helped to attribute the invasion of asia to this nation of the scythians. the basis of the story, which obviously belongs to the crimea, lies in the fact that after the scoloti had forced the tauri, the ancient inhabitants of the crimea, into the mountains of this peninsula, and had subjugated and made slaves of those who remained behind in the plains, both the one and the other must have seized a favourable opportunity to make themselves again masters of the peninsula, and close it against the scoloti by means of a trench. the supposed effect of the whips is due, no doubt, to the hellenes in scythia, who thus marked the nature and the existence of slavery. the liberation of the medes from the dominion of the assyrians must not only have taken place later, but in a different manner from that narrated by herodotus. the inscriptions of the kings of asshur showed us that the tribes of the medes whom herodotus calls arizantes, busæ, struchatæ, budæans, and parætaceni, lived separately, under a number of princes. not long after the settlement of the israelites in the cities of the medes, in the year b.c., sargon represents a prince dayaukka as carried away captive with his people; and in b.c. he takes the field against bit dayauku, and receives tribute from princes of the medes (p. ). hence among the regions of the chieftains of media, there was a region which the assyrians called the land or house of dayauku, just as with them israel was bit omri. deioces, the prince from whom bit dayauku received its name, who, in herodotus, is a son of phraortes, must in consequence have founded a sovereignty in media, or at any rate have been at the head of a sovereignty derived from his father, about the year b.c. at the lowest. we may without hesitation look for this region in the land of ecbatana, but at that time it cannot have taken up a large part of media. neither the inscriptions of sargon, nor those of his successors, sennacherib, esarhaddon, and assurbanipal, mention deioces or his land either in the payment of tribute by the medes, or in the conquest of the separate tribes. nothing is said of any central monarchy among the medes, or of a kingdom of the medes. if media had been united and free at the time of sennacherib and esarhaddon, sennacherib would not have marched against syria and cilicia, nor esarhaddon against egypt; they would not and could not have left in the rear, in the most threatening proximity, the most dangerous enemy. if we nevertheless assume that during the sway of sennacherib and esarhaddon over assyria the influence of deioces steadily increased, we must concede to herodotus that this higher position was gained not by martial deeds, but by craft and advice urging union. then phraortes, who, according to herodotus, succeeded his father deioces in the year b.c., must have been able formally to assemble the tribes of the medes round bit dayauku, and to organise them: it was he who united media under his dominion. but we cannot place this union earlier than the period at which assurbanipal destroyed elam, and directed his arms against arabia (p. ): _i.e._ it must come after the year b.c. assurbanipal could not possibly employ his troops in repeated campaigns for the maintenance of egypt, the reconquest of babylon, the destruction of elam, and the punishment of the arabians, if a strong and compact force stood behind the passes of the zagrus; still less could he look idly on while phraortes subjugated the persians, and then one nation after another in asia, as herodotus supposes, with the view of throwing himself on assyria--if he could prevent it. the more probable course of events is, that phraortes, as soon as he accomplished the union of the median tribes, had to await and repel the attack of assyria--that the tribes of the persians among whom, precisely about this time, achæmenes obtained the first place,[ ] being threatened by the extension of the dominion of assyria over elam on their borders, combined with phraortes for common defence, and consented to be led by the stronger nation. the tradition of the medes, and their poems, on which the statements of herodotus rest, would naturally antedate the liberation of their nation, and would place it in the times before deioces; they would even ascribe conquests to phraortes, and represent him as falling in an attack on nineveh. it agrees with the position of affairs and the relation of the powers, that phraortes should have fallen with the greater part of his army, as herodotus says, in repulsing assyria and assurbanipal in the year b.c. the first duty of his son cyaxares must have been to avert from media the consequences of the heavy defeat which destroyed his father. that cyaxares, and not phraortes, a century after the death of the latter, passed in the nation of the medes as the founder of the median supremacy, is clear from the fact that phraortes, the head of the rebellion of the medians against darius, lays aside his proper name in order to call himself "kshatrita, descendant of cyaxares," and that at this time the leader of the sagartians also gives himself out as a descendant of cyaxares of media. let us first cling to the fact that in the decade which followed the conquest of elam by assurbanipal ( - b.c.) media united her tribes under a sovereign, and freed herself from the dominion of assyria, and in combination with the persians on the east obtained the position of a considerable power beside assyria. in the west, before this date, assurbanipal had already lost the dominion over egypt, and the advance of psammetichus towards syria (p. ) must have made the obedience of the syrian cities and princes doubtful. the rise of the medes under phraortes, the successful resistance which they made to assyria, must have had a far-reaching influence. after such a long series of successes the arms of assyria could not prevail against this new power. in judah, where the prophets of the hebrews from the second half of the eighth century had looked on assyria as the instrument of jehovah for the visitation of the nations and the punishment of the sins of israel and judah, the position of that power, soon after the year b.c., was seriously shattered or threatened, since the prophet nahum, when looking back on the destruction of thebes by the army of assurbanipal, could already announce that the line of destruction would reach even to assyria and nineveh. the lively description of the defenders and the devastation of thebes, shows that the capture (which had taken place in the year b.c.)[ ] was already fresh in the remembrance of the syrians. "the lion," so we find it in nahum, "did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin. i am against thee, saith jehovah of hosts, and i will burn thy chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions; and i will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messenger shall no more be heard. i will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and i will show the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. i will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile. woe to the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcraft; woe to the bloody city; it is full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not. the noise of the whip, and of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots; the horseman cometh on, the bright sword and glittering spear." "art thou better than no-ammon (thebes) that was situate by the nile?"[ ] "the destroyer is come up before thee, nineveh; keep the munition, watch the way, gird thy loins, fortify thyself mightily. draw thee water for the siege, fortify thy strongholds; go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln. thy mighty men hasten to the walls, but they stumble in their walk. the covering shall be prepared for the besiegers. all thy strongholds shall be fig-trees with the first ripe figs; if they be shaken they shall fall even into the mouth of the eater. fire shall devour thee, and the sword shall cut thee off."[ ] "with an overrunning flood jehovah will make an utter end of her habitations; the gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace dissolved. behold, thy people are women for thy enemies; the gates of thy land shall be set wide open; the fire shall devour thy bars. nineveh was full of men while she stood, but they flee. halt! halt! yet no one turneth; her maids sigh like doves, and beat the breast. take the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; there is no end of the store; abundance of all kinds of costly vessels. she is empty, and void, and waste, and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; there is no end of their corpses. they stumble on the corpses. thy captains fly, o king of assyria, thy mighty men slumber, thy people is scattered on the mountains, and no man gathereth them. where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion, and the lioness, and the lion's whelp walked and none made them afraid? no more of thy name shall be sown; there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous. all that look on thee shall flee from thee and say, nineveh is laid waste; all that hear of thee shall clap their hands over thee, for upon whom has not thy wickedness passed continually?"[ ] how far the successes which cyaxares obtained soon after his accession ( b.c.) in repelling and attacking assyria and assurbanipal carried him--whether even then the army of the medes advanced to the walls of nineveh, as herodotus states, cannot be ascertained, and cannot be denied. whatever advantage media may have obtained at that time it was not only lost, but the median empire collapsed, when cyaxares had vainly attempted to repulse the sacæ ( b.c.). these sacæ, however, were not content with the possession of media; they descended from the table-land of iran into the valley of the tigris and the euphrates, and spread over hither asia. we saw how clearly the prophet zephaniah announced in those days (about b.c.) the great judgments that would come upon nineveh and judah, on gaza and ascalon, on ashdod, and ekron, and ethiopia. "jehovah," he says, "will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy assyria, and will make nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. and flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations; the pelican and the bittern shall lodge in the lintels of it; the birds shall sing in the windows of it; desolation shall be on the thresholds. the cedar work is torn down. all who go by shall hiss and wag the hand. this is the rejoicing city which dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, i am and there is none beside me! how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!"[ ] assurbanipal, as we saw, ascended the throne of assyria in the year b.c., and he retained it till the year b.c. though we have no evidence from assyrian inscriptions to fix the end of his reign, the canon of ptolemy puts the end of the dominion of saosduchin (by whom is meant samul-sum-ukin) in the year b.c., _i.e._ in the year in which assurbanipal crushed his rebellion and took babylon. we also possess an assyrian tablet which dates from the twentieth year of assurbanipal in babylon, and consequently extends his reign in the city from b.c. to b.c. further, the canon of ptolemy represents a new reign as commencing in babylon in the year b.c., and therefore we are certain that assurbanipal remained on the throne for years, down to b.c.[ ] the first half of his reign was filled with the most brilliant successes; his armies marched to thebes, babylon, and susa; but the second half was the reverse of the first. egypt was lost. serious struggles without results were carried on against the medes, though they were once varied by a great victory. the median power advanced nearer and nearer to the native land and the chief cities. the medes had indeed been compelled to turn against the sacæ; but these not only overthrew media, they covered asia, destroyed the cohesion of the assyrian kingdom, and entirely disorganised it. cleitarchus narrated: "sardanapalus (assurbanipal) died in old age, after the dominion of the syrians had been broken down;"[ ] and the syrians, according to the usage of cleitarchus, are the assyrians. ctesias told us above, that the dominion of the assyrians succumbed to the united efforts of the viceroys of media and babylon, the combined efforts of the medes and babylonians. herodotus, as we saw, represents a prince of babylon as negotiating peace between lydia and media. in an excerpt of abydenus which has been preserved we read: "after sardanapalus (assurbanipal), saracus reigned over assyria: when he found that multitudes of a collected horde came up from the sea like locusts, he at once sent busalossorus as commander of the army to babylon. this officer resolved on rebellion, and betrothed his son nabukodrossorus to the daughter of astyages, king of media, amuhea by name."[ ] according to the excerpt of syncellus, alexander polyhistor gave the following account: saracus sent nabopolassar as general, but he married amyite the daughter of astyages, the satrap of the medes, to his son nabuchodonossor, and rebelled against saracus and nineveh.[ ] hence in abydenus and polyhistor, the successor of assurbanipal on the throne of assyria was saracus. against hosts who came from the sea, _i.e._ against the hosts of the sacæ coming up from the caspian sea, or marching, on their return from syria, _i.e._ from the mediterranean, against babylon, he sends the general whom abydenus calls busalossorus, and polyhistor nabopolassar. according to the canon of ptolemy, the reign of nabopolassar in babylon begins in the year b.c. this prince, the nabopolassar of the canon and polyhistor, is not distinct from the busalossorus of abydenus. it is the same name: in the one writer he is the father of nabukodrossorus, in the other the father of nabuchodonossor. nabukodrossorus is nabukudurussur; nabuchodonossor is nebuchadnezzar, the corrupted hebrew form of the name nabukudurussur. the belesys of ctesias, the confederate of the mede, is nabopolassar. in both fragments nabopolassar, whom the king of the assyrians sends as a viceroy or general to babylonia, and whose rule over babylonia begins with the year b.c., resolves to rebel against the king of assyria; with this object he enters into a league with the king or satrap, _i.e._ the assyrian viceroy of media, who in abydenus and polyhistor is called astyages.[ ] in both fragments nabopolassar marries his son nebuchadnezzar to amuhea or amyite, the daughter of the mede. astyages was the son of cyaxares of media, who began to reign in the year b.c. hence in both fragments the father must be put in the place of the son, just as in herodotus the nabopolassar of polyhistor must be put in the place of labynetus. the invasion of the sacæ certainly gave the most severe blow to the assyrian kingdom: it reached the native territory, and broke the cohesion of the kingdom. the lands previously subjugated could not be protected, and therefore could not be maintained. we found above, that about the year b.c., the sacæ marched through syria to the borders of egypt. it is also certain, from the canon of ptolemy, that it was the king of assyria who succeeded assurbanipal on the throne in b.c., who named nabopolassar his viceroy in babylon, in order to protect babylonia against the sacæ. nabopolassar cannot have entered into a league with cyaxares of media; babylonia cannot have broken with assyria; the rebellion against saracus cannot have taken place, till cyaxares was again master in his own land and the sacæ were driven out of media, whether this expulsion took place as recorded in herodotus or in some other way. that nabopolassar felt himself called upon to draw the league with media as close as possible is clear from the fact that he at the same time married his son to the daughter of the king of media. and he not only brought about this marriage, he did away with the war between media and lydia, and established an alliance between the royal families of the two nations. this war must be placed before the destruction of assyria; had it not been necessary to set the forces of media free against assyria, the prince of babylon would have had no interest in reconciling the differences between lydia and babylonia. after the destruction of assyria it would have been much more advisable for babylon that media, whose power surpassed that of babylonia, should be engaged elsewhere. this conclusion is confirmed by the eclipse which separated the armies of the lydians and the medes in the sixth year of the war, in the middle of a battle (p. ). this took place in the year b.c.[ ] the war between cyaxares of media and alyattes of lydia must therefore have begun in the year b.c. but what caused media to be at war with the distant land of lydia? we must assume that cyaxares first succeeded in setting his land free from the hordes of the sacæ. he availed himself of this to give aid to the lands bordering on the west of media, the armenians and cappadocians, against the same plundering tribes; to exhibit himself there as a liberator from the sacæ; and, at the same time, as a liberator from the dominion of the assyrians. in this way he quickly advanced the borders of media to the halys. here he came upon the lydians, who on their part had made use of the convulsion and confusion which had been caused by the advance of the cimmerians as far as the western shore of asia minor, to extend their dominion over phrygia as far as the halys. as the war between him and the lydians commences in the year b.c., cyaxares must have mastered the sacæ in media as early as the year b.c. the dominion of the scythians in asia, which herodotus represents as lasting years, is thus narrowed down to a short ten years--or indeed to eight years, the number given by justin. from this point--the liberation of media from the sacæ, _i.e._ about b.c.,--we have to fix not only the advance of cyaxares to the west, but his league with nabopolassar of babylon, and the marriage of his daughter to nabopolassar's son must be put about the same time. when nabopolassar had arranged the peace between media and lydia, which fixed the halys as the border of the two kingdoms, aryanis, the daughter of alyattes, is married to the son of cyaxares ( b.c.), media and babylonia, cyaxares and nabopolassar, unite their forces against assyria. on the ruins of chalah, in the south-east corner of the terrace, on which stand the palaces of the kings of asshur, to the south of the ruins of the house of samsi-bin iii. (ii. ), are the remains of a not very extensive building; some bricks bear the inscription: "i assur-idil-ili, king of the nations, king of the land of asshur, son of assurbanipal, king of the nations, king of the land of asshur, son of esarhaddon, king of asshur. i caused bricks and beams to be prepared for the building of the house of salvation, situated at chalah: for the life of my soul i did this."[ ] another inscription of assur-idil-ili mentions his restoration of the temple of nebo at chalah.[ ] hence we must assume that assur-idil-ili, the son of assurbanipal, ascended the throne of assyria after the death of his father, in the year b.c.; that it is he who is called saracus in polyhistor, who appointed nabopolassar viceroy of babylonia, in order to maintain babylon against the sacæ; and that about the year b.c. the latter broke away from assur-idil-ili. yet from a broken tablet of assur-idil-ili, recently discovered, we shall gather that he did not ascend the throne immediately after his father's death, but later;[ ] and the opinion is held that the immediate successor of assurbanipal was bel-zakir-iskun, whose name occurs in a cylinder found at kuyundshik. the name of the father of this king is broken off; and he is only placed immediately after assurbanipal because he styles himself, not only king of assyria, but also king of sumir and accad.[ ] but are there not numerous instances to prove that titles of dominion are retained after the lands which they denote as subject have long been lost? lastly, in two fragmentary tablets the name of cyaxares is supposed to be concealed in the form castarit. the first fragment mentions esarhaddon and castarit, the lord of the city of carcassi, beside mamiti-arsu, the lord of the city of the medes. at the very earliest, cyaxares of media cannot have been born when esarhaddon died. the second fragment speaks of a hundred days of prayer and thanksgiving, because castarit with his warriors, and the warriors of the cimmerians, and the warriors of the mannai, had taken the towns of khartam and kissassu. but here also the inscription seems to be speaking of another period, and indeed of conflicts from the days of esarhaddon, when the cimmerians set foot on the southern shore of the black sea; and i would not, on this account, allow myself to be led astray, even if a third tablet, supposed to narrate the same circumstances, should mention castarit as a prince of the medes.[ ] of the incidents of the war, which cyaxares and nabopolassar commenced in the year b.c. against assyria, we have no account. according to the songs of the medes, which lie at the base of the account of ctesias, it continued three years; many severe battles were fought, with varying fortune, before nineveh could be invested. the capture of the city was finally achieved, because the tigris carried away a portion of the city walls. when xenophon marched past chalah, which he calls larissa, years after the fall of nineveh, and found long strips of wall feet high still standing, he was informed that the king of the persians, when he took the dominion from the medes, could not by any means capture the lofty and strong walls of this city of the medes (ii. ). a cloud hid the sun, and made the city invisible till the inhabitants had left it; and thus it was taken. at that time the queen of the medes fled to mespila (the name given by xenophon to nineveh), where he saw the walls still standing of the height of feet. this city the king of the persians could not take, either by length of siege or by storm, till zeus had dazed the inhabitants by lightning: then the city was taken.[ ] the memory of the assyrian kingdom had at that time so entirely disappeared, that xenophon's guides could put the medes in the place of the persians, the persians in the place of the medes, and the king of the persians in the place of cyaxares. in abydenus we are told, after the excerpt of eusebius: nabopolassar (bussalossorus), after marrying his son to the daughter of the king of the medes, marched against nineveh. "when saracus heard of this, he burnt himself and the royal citadel."[ ] polyhistor, following the excerpt of syncellus, tells us: nabopolassar, sent out by saracus as a leader of his army, turned against his master, and marched against nineveh. in fear of his approach, saracus burnt himself with his palace.[ ] strabo tells us: "nineveh was destroyed soon after the break up of the dominion of the medes."[ ] at the year b.c., eusebius and hieronymus observe: "cyaxares the mede destroys nineveh." "because asshur was high of growth," such are the words of jehovah in the prophet ezekiel, "and shot up his top, and his heart was lifted up in its height, i have delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations that he may deal with him at his pleasure; i have driven him out for his wickedness. and strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off and cast him away. upon the mountains and in all vallies his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers in the land. all the people from the earth are gone down from his shadow and have left him. upon his fallen trunk the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches. i made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when i cast him down to hell with those that descend into the pit. in that day i caused a mourning, and restrained the floods round him; the great waters were stayed; i caused lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field lamented him. asshur's grave is made in the depth of the pit, round about are the graves of his host; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living."[ ] media stood triumphant over the kingdom which had so long ruled over hither asia and the western edge of iran; babylon was victorious over the branch which had grown up out of her own root, had far surpassed the mother-stem, and had struck home the mother-country in many a tough struggle. babylon had suffered far more heavily than media. at last retribution had come. chalah and nineveh, which had received the tribute of the nations for so many years, which had seen so many vanquished princes, so many embassies of subjugated lands in their walls, were annihilated. and not the ancient cities only, but the condition of the assyrian nation must have been severely smitten by this war of annihilation. often as babylon had been overthrown by the assyrians--even though mastered by cyrus--she still was able to rise repeatedly in stubborn rebellion against the achæmenids: elam repeatedly attempted to regain her old independence; but of the native land of assyria, which after the fall of nineveh became a part of media, and passed with media under the dominion of the persians, we hear only once that the assyrians, with the armenians, rebelled against king darius. but the picture of behistun, which mentions the double rebellion of babylon, the three rebellions of elam against darius, and exhibits the conquered leaders of these nations, is silent on the rebellion of the assyrians and armenians: it was not of enough importance to be mentioned. the low ruin heaps of nineveh (kuyundshik, nebbi yunus, and khorsabad), of chalah (nimrud), and asshur (kileh shergat), washed down as they are by streams of rain, have yet preserved for us the remains of the buildings and palaces of the kings of asshur, from the days of samsi-bin i., tiglath pilesar i., shalmanesar i., down to assur-idil-ili. set on fire at the time of destruction, the wooden roofs of the palaces were reduced to cinders, and fell in upon the floor of the chambers, where portions of them are still to be found. the upper parts of the brick-walls were then washed down by wind and rain, and covered the lower part of the rooms. even where the fire did not spread, the beams of the roofs at length broke down, the upper layers of the bricks on the walls were gradually washed down, and raised the floors of the chambers, as well as the ground immediately surrounding them. by this process the palaces of nineveh, chalah, and dur sarrukin, were changed into heaps of earth. but while the upper part of the buildings buried the lower in their ruins, the lower part, with all the inscriptions and sculptures contained in it, was saved from further destruction; and these unsightly heaps have preserved to us the civilisation and the characteristics of the assyrians, as truly as the lofty monuments and rock tombs on the nile have preserved the picture of ancient egypt, though they do not present the same breadth, and extend in the same way to every side of life. footnotes: [ ] nicol. dam. frag. , ed. müller. athenæus, p. . diod. , . [ ] athenæus, p. . [ ] diod. , - . [ ] athenæus, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , - . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] or, as in ctesias the victory of cyrus over astyages is placed in b.c.--even in the year b.c. cf. vol. ii., p. . [ ] aristoph. aves, . [ ] hellan. frag. . callisth. frag. , ed. müller. [ ] movers, "relig. der phoeniker," s. . , , , . the pyre which alexander caused to be erected in babylon to hephæstion, after the semitic pattern, was four stades in circuit and feet in height. diod. , . [ ] aristob. frag. , ed. müller. cf. above, p. , . [ ] _e.g._ diod. , ; amyntas in athenæus, p. . [ ] if we assume that the years of the scythian dominion have already been deducted from the years, and must therefore be added to them, b.c. (= + ) is the beginning of the median dominion. in the other case this must have commenced in the year ( + ) b.c. since herodotus represents phraortes as first conquering asia, and represents him as ascending the throne in b.c., the duration of the median empire is not even , but only years. we shall soon see that it was even shorter. [ ] deioces reigned years, phraortes , cyaxares , astyages . each pair of rulers makes up a total of years. [ ] zeph. i. . [ ] jerem. i. ; xxv. . [ ] jerem. iv. . [ ] jerem. vi. . [ ] maccab. xii. . strabo, p. ; joseph. "antiq." , , , etc. pliny, "hist. nat." , ; steph. byzant. [greek: skuthopolis]. [ ] justin, , - . [ ] syncell. "chron." p. , ed. bonn. [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] hippocr. "de aero," c. . [ ] "ethic. nicom." , ( ). [ ] vol. v., chap. . [ ] above, p. . [ ] nahum iii. . [ ] nahum ii. , ; iii. - , - . [ ] nahum i. , ; iii. - ; iii. , . [ ] zeph. ii. - . [ ] in polyhistor sardanapalus reigns over the chaldæans for years after samuges. [ ] in athenæus, p. . [ ] euseb. "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. kiepert, "monatsb. b. a.," , s. . [ ] syncell. "chron." p. , ed. bonn. [ ] asdahag is the armenian form in the armenian eusebius. [ ] as we have the choice between the two eclipses of and b.c. the preference must be given to that of b.c. where the battle was fought between the medes and lydians we do not know; but we do know that in the year b.c. cyaxares and nabopolassar were no longer alive. if we replace these names by astyages and nebuchadnezzar--although the children of the princes who conclude peace and alliance are expressly named as the parties contracting in marriage--and astyages had no son, nineveh had fallen long before b.c., and babylonia would not have had the least interest in bringing about a peace between lydia and media. on the contrary, nebuchadnezzar, who had erected such enormous fortifications against media, in order to secure his own weaker kingdom against any attacks of the median power, would only have been too glad to keep media engaged in the west by the continuance of the lydian war. yet that it was a question of the rescue of lydia in the interest of babylonia cannot be supported in the face of the assertion of herodotus, that the fortune of arms was equal. as the dates given by herodotus for the reigns of the lydian kings have to be replaced by those of eusebius (below, chapter ), the dating of the beginning of the war at the year b.c. would allow the first three years to fall in the reign of sadyattes; but in this there is no difficulty. [ ] e. schrader, "k. a. t.," s. . [ ] g. smith, "disc.," p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] g. smith, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] sayce, "babylon. litterature," p. , _seqq._ [ ] "anab." , , - . [ ] euseb. "chron." i., p. , ed. schöne. [ ] syncell, "chron." p. , ed. bonn. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] ezek. xxxi. - ; xxxii. , . chapter xiii. egypt under psammetichus and necho. according to the account of herodotus, a blind man from the city of anysis, and bearing the same name as his city, ruled over egypt at the time when sabakon marched through the country. he retired before the ethiopians into the marshes, and fled to an island called elbo. the island measured ten stades in every direction, and thither, in obedience to his command, the egyptians by turns secretly brought him nourishment. when fifty years had expired from the time that he made himself master of egypt, sabakon saw in a dream a man who bade him summon all the priests of egypt, and cause each to be cut into two pieces. then sabakon said that the gods had announced to him by this vision that he would by some evil deed bring upon himself severe punishment from the gods or from men. such a deed he would not commit: the time had passed which was allotted to him for the rule of egypt; an oracle in ethiopia had announced to him that he would rule over egypt for fifty years. as this period was now completed, sabakon voluntarily retired from egypt, the blind man returned from the island of elbo, and reigned as before. he was followed by the priest sethos, against whom sennacherib, the king of the arabians and assyrians, marched, but the god of memphis saved him by sending field mice into the camp (p. ). after the death of sethos the egyptians became free, but as they could not live without a king they elected twelve kings, and divided egypt into twelve parts. these twelve kings contracted family alliances with each other, and agreed that none of the twelve should seek greater possessions than another, or attempt to crush the others, but that all should be on the best terms with each other. they then determined to leave behind a common memorial, and with this object built the labyrinth on lake moeris, and ruled with justice. in the course of time it happened that the twelve kings were sacrificing together in the temple--for they came in a body to all sacrifices--and when at the close of the sacrifice they poured libations, the high priest brought only eleven of the golden goblets from which they were wont to pour libations, instead of twelve. the last in the list at this sacrifice was psammetichus of sais, whose father necho had been killed by sabakon. he had himself fled to syria, to escape sabakon, but after the retirement of the ethiopians he had been brought back by the inhabitants of the canton of sais. as no goblet was left for him, he took the brazen helmet from his head and poured the libation from that. then the rest of the princes remembered a prophecy given to them at the very beginning of their reign,--that whosoever among them should pour a libation out of a brazen goblet should be king over all egypt. mindful of this oracle the kings were not inclined to punish psammetichus with death, because they found on inquiry that he had not used his helmet with premeditation; but they took from him the greater part of his power, confined him to the marshes, and bade him not to leave them or trouble himself about the rest of egypt. perceiving that injustice was done to him, psammetichus bethought him how to avenge himself on those who had driven him out; and when he inquired of the oracle of buto he received the answer, "vengeance would come from the sea, when the brazen men appeared." psammetichus did not believe the oracle. but ionians and carians, who had taken ship for plunder, were driven out of their course to egypt. when they got on the shore in their brazen armour, an egyptian announced to psammetichus that brazen men who were come from the sea were laying waste the plains. then psammetichus saw that the oracle was fulfilled. he received the ionians and carians in a friendly manner, and induced them by great promises to stay with him. and with these, and the egyptians who were on his side to help him, he conquered the rest of the kings, and became lord over all egypt.[ ] diodorus gives us a similar account. he celebrates the gentle and wise rule of the ethiopian sabakon, and then continues. "his piety is shown by his conduct in consequence of a dream, and his resignation of the throne. the god of thebes appeared to him in a dream, and said that he could not govern egypt prosperously and for long unless he collected all the priests and cut each into two parts, and marched between the parts with his body-guard. as this dream appeared frequently, he summoned the priests, and said to them, that he should displease the god if he remained longer in the land, or he would never have advised such an act in a dream. he preferred to retire while pure from that guilt, and leave his future to fortune rather than to rule over all egypt by outraging the god, and staining his own life by wicked murder. then he resigned the government of egypt to the egyptians, and retired to ethiopia. but as the people were unquiet, and domestic strife broke out, the most distinguished princes, twelve in number, met at memphis, and made a league, and swore to remain friendly and faithful to each other, and made themselves kings. in pursuance of this agreement they reigned for fifteen years in harmony, and formed the resolution, that as in their lives they shared equal honours, so after death their bodies should rest in the same place, and that a sepulchre built in common should preserve the common fame of the kings buried there. the size of this structure, for which they selected a site on lake moeris, was to surpass the works of all the kings before them. but one of them, psammetichus of sais, who was lord of the coast, secured an extensive trade to all merchants, especially to the phenicians and greeks. by the sale of the products of his canton and his share in that which the foreigners brought he not only obtained greater resources, but he won the friendship of these nations and their princes. roused by envy the rest of the kings made war upon psammetichus, who obtained necessaries from the ionians and carians, and conquered in the battle near the city of momemphis. of the kings, his opponents, some fell in the battle, others fled to libya, and were no longer in a position to contest the throne. thus after fifteen years the sovereignty in egypt again came into the hands of one man."[ ] we saw that the real course of affairs differed widely from the accounts given by the egyptians, from which come the narratives of herodotus and diodorus. manetho's list, at any rate, does not conceal the fact that after king bocchoris had succumbed to the incursion of the ethiopians, three kings of ethiopia ruled over egypt in succession. the hebrew scriptures and the tablets of the assyrians then informed us how israel, trusting in the help of sabakon, refused payment of tribute to nineveh, and what misfortunes punished this rebellion in the year b.c.--how sabakon was defeated two years afterwards at raphia, in the neighbourhood of gaza, by sargon. afterwards sargon could boast of receiving tribute from the successor of sabakon, sevechus, in the year b.c., and later still could demand and obtain the surrender of a fugitive opponent ( b.c.). but tirhaka, the successor of sevechus, fought with success at eltekeh in the year against sennacherib of assyria, and forced him to raise the siege of jerusalem. thirty years afterwards the situation was entirely changed. in order to take from sidon, tyre, judah, and the syrian states their hopes in napata and egypt, which caused their resistance to be constantly bursting into fresh flame, esarhaddon, king of assyria, invaded egypt in the year b.c., and drove tirhaka back to his native land. tirhaka's repeated attempts to win egypt from this position were wrecked like those of his successor, urdamane: they only brought about the sack and devastation of thebes and its sanctuaries ( b.c.). hence it was not of their own free will that the ethiopians retired to their home; the dominion over egypt which the ethiopians of napata, who had long acquired the manners and civilisation of egypt, had exercised for sixty years, was replaced by another and far heavier foreign dominion--the rule of the kings on the tigris. the egyptians did not set up twelve kings after the ethiopians, who pledged themselves to equality and friendship, as herodotus supposes, nor did the twelve leading princes make themselves kings as herodotus supposes. still less did they rule egypt in common; least of all could they erect the structure on lake moeris, the temple of amenemha iii., for it had already been in existence fifteen centuries (i. ). it is the twenty vassal princes, whom esarhaddon and assurbanipal set up over egypt--among whom must have been represented some of the dynastic families which rose under the pharaohs of bubastis and tanis--out of whom the egyptians have constructed the twelve kings. among these princes, by means of the assyrians, necho and his son psammetichus rose into power. it was esarhaddon who entrusted to necho the government of memphis and sais. if herodotus states that sabakon put necho, the father of psammetichus, to death, the inscriptions of assurbanipal prove the contrary. it must, therefore, have been the grandfather of psammetichus, the nechepsus of manetho, who suffered this fate, and he must have suffered at the hands of tirhaka, and not at the hands of sabakon.[ ] the flight of psammetichus before sabakon into syria, which herodotus relates, cannot have taken place till tirhaka's time. in the account given by herodotus only so much can be regarded as certain as is also clear from manetho's list--_i.e._ that necho and psammetichus belonged to the district of sais. though raised by esarhaddon, necho began, after the death of that prince and the first campaign of assurbanipal to egypt, to join in a conspiracy with tirhaka in connection with two of his fellow-vassals. he was taken prisoner and carried to nineveh, but received pardon, and was, at any rate, again placed over sais. his son, who had assumed the assyrian name of neboshezban, received the canton of athribis. necho died towards the year b.c.; his son succeeded him in the administration of the district of sais. ten or twelve years afterwards ( b.c.[ ]), apparently availing himself of the dissension which broke out in the royal house of assyria, the rebellion of samul-sum-ukin against his brother, he undertook to liberate egypt from the dominion of the medes, and at the same time to make himself master of egypt. as to the manner in which this was done, and the means of doing it, we have no information beyond very scanty facts, suppositions, and conclusions. we saw above, from the inscriptions of assurbanipal, that psammetichus acted in concert with gyges of lydia, that "gyges sent his power to aid him in breaking off the yoke of the assyrians" (p. ). the ionians and carians in brazen armour, in herodotus, who come up from the sea, were thus the soldiers whom gyges sent over the sea. he could only send his auxiliaries or ionian vessels; and that he was in close combination with carians will be made clear below. this fact does not make it at all impossible that psammetichus before he revolted did not on his part gain the favour of the ionians and phenicians by opening the harbours of his canton, and favouring their trade, as diodorus states (p. ). this would give the harbour cities of the greeks in asia minor sufficient reason to support strongly the rising of psammetichus. for the independent support of psammetichus by the ionian cities of asia minor we have evidence in a statement of strabo, according to which thirty ships from miletus were active in the cause of psammetichus, and also the position afterwards assigned to the ionians in egypt under the reign of psammetichus. the ships of the milesians are said to have conquered inarus, _i.e._ no doubt one of the princes who opposed the rising of psammetichus, in a naval engagement on the nile.[ ] beyond this we have no further information about the course of the struggle, and its duration. beside inarus we have the name of one other opponent of psammetichus, tementhes.[ ] we do not know whether all the vassals of assyria ranged themselves against psammetichus, or whether some of these princes followed his leadership against assyria and the dependants of assyria. we do not know whether he had merely to contend against his own fellow-princes or against assyrian garrisons also, and assyrian forces. according to polyænus the decisive battle took place in the neighbourhood of memphis, five stadia from the city, near the temple of isis; diodorus puts the battle-field at momemphis in the western delta, between the canopic arm of the nile and the mareotic lake. it is remarkable that the decisive battle should have been fought so far to the west, near the border of libya, but it is not impossible. but we must not overlook the fact, that according to herodotus, a later decisive battle took place at momemphis--and from the circumstances it is clear that this battle must have been fought there--so that a confusion between the two is not impossible. we do not know what claim psammetichus could make to the sovereignty of egypt besides the summons to the liberation from assyria, and the accomplishment of this liberation. his family belonged to the canton of sais, from which, in previous times, tnephachtus and bocchoris had sprung. it would be possible that the house of necho was in some connection with these princes, that necho and psammetichus were successors or descendants of tnephactus. from this we may explain the story that the blind king, who fled before sabakon into the marshes, recovered the throne after the retirement of the ethiopians, and also the persecution which necho and psammetichus had to undergo from the ethiopians. from such a connection we could also explain the fact that necho took the part of assyria against tirhaka in the campaign of esarhaddon, and received in reward from esarhaddon the government of memphis and sais. the subsequent conspiracy of necho with tirhaka, when the latter had been driven back to napata, would then show that necho had attempted first to drive out the ethiopians by the assyrians, and then the assyrians by the ethiopians, and liberate egypt by using one against the other. however this may be, psammetichus, when liberating egypt from assyria, succeeded also in removing and destroying the dynastic families, which had risen up since the times of the pharaohs of bubastis and tanis, and had maintained themselves under the ethiopians and assyrians, though in diminished importance and with a change in the position of their families. thus psammetichus accomplished the work which tnephachtus began and bocchoris was unable to carry on and maintain. according to the indications of an egyptian inscription, psammetichus strengthened his royal position by taking to wife shabanatep, the heiress of a dynasty of thebes. she was, apparently, the daughter of a prince pianchi, who must have governed the canton of thebes under sabakon, and of ameniritis, the sister of sabakon, whom he gave to pianchi to wife.[ ] the independence of egypt was won. after a foreign rule of nearly years (on the lowest calculation the ethiopians had ruled for years, and the assyrians nearly ), egypt was again her own mistress, and obeyed a king taken from her midst. but every one must have made up his mind to see new armies marching from the tigris to the nile, as soon as the rebellion of samul-sum-ukin was crushed, and assurbanipal's hands were free. the question was, whether egypt's power was equal to such a struggle. psammetichus was not put to this trial. after the capture of babylon, assurbanipal turned the full weight of his arms to the subjugation and destruction of elam. the new conflict must have appeared unavoidable when assurbanipal, about the year b.c., punished the arabian tribes on the borders of the ammonites and moabites. if he still omitted the attack on egypt he must have regarded his forces as insufficient for the purpose, or they must have been seriously occupied in another direction. we may assume with tolerable certainty that it was the union of the median tribes by phraortes, the son of deioces, and their combination with the persians, which drew assurbanipal back to the east, and kept him there. according to the statement of herodotus, already considered, psammetichus on his side advanced to the offensive beyond his own borders towards syria. this war of psammetichus in syria, and the supposed long conflict for ashdod, can only mean that psammetichus attempted to bring the cities of the philistines, and especially those of the desert, into his hands, in order to make the march through the desert, which must commence from this point, impossible, or at any rate difficult, for the assyrians. here also we are ignorant whether psammetichus had to contend with the philistines alone or with the assyrian forces also: this only is clear, that he could not besiege ashdod before gaza and ascalon were in his hands. if psammetichus was really moved to this war by the object we impute to him, we must put the war in the period in which there was still danger to be apprehended from the tigris: _i.e._ in the decade from to b.c. according to this, the impossible years which herodotus allows to the siege of ashdod must be reduced to nine years, just as we had to cut down the years which he gives for the dominion of the scythians in hither asia to about ten years. but in the advance of these scythians towards egypt (in the year b.c.), described by herodotus, he does not tell us that ashdod, ascalon, or gaza, were subject to psammetichus; he represents the scythians as passing beyond the cities of the philistines to the borders of egypt, where psammetichus, by gifts and entreaties, induces them to desist from any further advance, and turn back to syria. if the war of psammetichus in syria is placed after the incursion of the scythians, _i.e._ in the last fifteen years of his reign, another event shortly to be mentioned will have also to be placed at the end of his reign,--an event which must certainly have belonged to a previous period. in no case did psammetichus obtain success in syria. if his successor had to conquer gaza, _i.e._ the city nearest egypt, it is obvious that psammetichus maintained none of these border cities, though one or other may have been brought for a time into his power. egypt had been liberated and restored, but not by her own power. we saw that even from the times of the later ramessids the military power of egypt had been replaced by foreign mercenaries, especially by libyans; that the house of the pharaohs of bubastis owed its rise to the command of these troops. we saw how under these pharaohs, and those of the succeeding house of tanis, the leaders of these troops became hereditary lords of the districts--how these dynasties summoned the ethiopians against tnephachtus and bocchoris, and then others, including necho and psammetichus, joined assyria against the ethiopians. before the reign of sabakon it was chiefly libyans on whom the power of the princes rested; under sabakon, sevechus, and tirhaka it was the ethiopians who supported the authority of the crown; and in the same way psammetichus succeeded in breaking loose from assyria, and establishing his authority in egypt, and on the throne of the pharaohs, mainly by strangers and mercenaries, by ionians and carians. psammetichus could not do without them. in his internal administration they were required to keep down the overthrown dynastic families, and he needed them to protect his kingdom from without. his elevation, the foundation of his power, the restoration of egypt, rested on the attempt to establish egypt and his own crown, as against ethiopia and assyria, on a third external power, the mariners of the north. psammetichus therefore was compelled to give preference to ionians and carians over the native soldiers, the warrior caste, who, under the dominion of the kings of napata, must obviously have received a considerable addition of ethiopians from the native land of the kings. in the syrian war also, as diodorus tells us, the ionians and carians received the place of honour on the right wing, in the order of battle. the ionians and carians were entrusted with the protection of the eastern border, the most important border of the kingdom. there they were placed in a standing camp, on the pelusic arm of the nile; on one bank was the camp of the ionians, on the other the camp of the carians.[ ] these ionians and carians--their numbers under the successors of psammetichus reached , men--received valuable allotments of land, and were so handsomely treated that the prophet jeremiah compares them to "stall-fed oxen."[ ] they had also to educate egyptians in their language, their customs, and their mode of war: psammetichus placed in their hands egyptian boys for education and training, and caused even his own sons to be instructed in greek.[ ] the old warrior caste was limited to the protection of the southern and western borders against napata and the libyans, the border service at elephantine and marea. the marked preference shown to the new troops as opposed to the old could not be without an effect on the latter. jealousy and hatred were unavoidable. but they attempted no rebellion. curiously enough, a considerable portion of the old warrior caste contented themselves with abandoning egypt. herodotus tells us: "the egyptians who for years had kept guard at elephantine were not relieved. they consulted together, and unanimously came to the conclusion to revolt from psammetichus, and retire to egypt, being in number , . psammetichus pursued them, and entreated them on many grounds not to desert their wives and children, and the gods of the land. then one of the soldiers exposed himself, and said, that for men there would be no lack of wives and children. when they arrived in ethiopia they put themselves at the service of the king, who bade them drive out the ethiopians with whom he was at variance, and take their land." this was done, and the emigrants dwelt on the nile, days' journey to the south of elephantine.[ ] diodorus tells us: "displeased at the preference shown to the mercenaries, the egyptians, more than , in number, revolted, and marched to ethiopia with the intention of obtaining there a land for themselves. the king first sent some officers to prevent them: when these availed nothing he hastened after them on ship with his most trusted followers. the soldiers marched up the nile, and had already crossed the borders of egypt, when psammetichus entreated them to alter their minds, and reminded them of their father-land, their wives and children. then they struck their lances on their shields, and said that so long as they had these they would easily find a father-land, and raising their coats they said that they should have no lack of wives and children. thus firmly despising what to most men seems of the greatest importance, they took the best part of ethiopia for their dwelling, allotting large portions of land to each other." according to the evidence of eratosthenes the land of the emigrants lay above the confluence of the astaboras and the nile, on an island south-east of the later meroe.[ ] the number of the emigrants in this narrative, which is obviously part of the tradition of egypt, is of course exaggerated. manetho gives the same number ( , ) for the hyksos who emigrated from egypt, and for these emigrants. even diodorus found a difficulty in this number; he diminished it, and says, "more than , ." moreover, in any case, a considerable number of the old military order must have remained in egypt. the successors of psammetichus, who favoured the greek mercenaries as much as psammetichus himself, certainly did not increase the native military order, still less did the persians after their conquest of the land. yet herodotus tells us that about the middle of the fifth century, _i.e._ more than a century and a half after the emigration, the military order in egypt numbered more than , . if the number of the emigrants really reached , men, it is inexplicable why so strong a body did not prefer to make themselves masters of egypt, rather than go in laborious search of uncertain conquests in distant lands. herodotus' statement that it was the garrison at elephantine which emigrated no doubt leads us in the direction of the actual occurrence. this garrison cannot have been , strong, as his narrative states; we cannot assume that it was stronger than the ordinary border garrison against syria, _i.e._ from , to , men. it may have been a part of the army, of about this strength, encamped on the southern border, which deserted to the king of napata, and preferred service with the ethiopians to service with psammetichus. to psammetichus himself it could only appear a desirable thing, if the discontented elements of the old army left the country. but this desertion to the king of napata added considerably to the fighting strength of the latter, and might entice him even into an attack on egypt. the emigration could not be hindered by force; it was the garrison in charge of the border who were emigrating. to pursue the emigrants with a force was only to be too late, and kindle war with napata. it entirely suits this situation that psammetichus should send after the fugitives, and then go in person, in order to induce them to return by gracious promises. according as the syrian war of psammetichus is placed before or after the scythian invasion, this emigration, which in diodorus is a consequence of that war, must be placed after the year b.c. or after the year b.c. the greeks were not favoured in the army only. it was part of the political system of psammetichus to open the mouths of the nile to them and the phenicians, to give them access to all the harbours, and allow them, the "unclean" in the view of the older egyptians, to settle on egyptian soil. the greeks soon came in considerable numbers. the milesians obtained permission to build a citadel on the bolbitinic mouth, and higher up, at the separation of the bolbitinic and canopic arms, they built the city of naucratis, the name of which was taken, no doubt, from the conflict on the nile (p. ). the phenicians obtained a special quarter on the nile, "the camp of the tyrians," in which to erect a temple to the syrian goddess. psammetichus continued to sit on the throne of the pharaohs for years after he had expelled the assyrians, and obtained the absolute power (from - b.c.). how far he succeeded, in this space of time, in healing the grievous wounds inflicted on the country by the alternating struggle of ethiopians and assyrians, and the war of liberation, the civil war,--in restoring memphis, sais, tanis, and thebes, after their destruction, we cannot ascertain. but the impulse given to trade and intercourse by the opening of the harbours, the favour shown to the greeks and phenicians, in any case increased the welfare of egypt, and the industrial and artistic activity which begins in the reign of psammetichus presupposes considerable prosperity in the land. psammetichus knew how to restore the ancient splendour of the double crown. he built at karnac and on the island of philæ. at sais, the home of his family and his residence, he built a splendid residence. the ancient shrine of ptah at memphis he surrounded with a wall, and added a new gate to the temple towards the south. opposite this gate he built a new hall for the apis, the walls of which were covered with sculptures, and the porticoes had colossi cubits in height.[ ] in the burying-ground at memphis he caused the temple of osiris-apis, "his father," the grave-temple on the eminence, to which the double row of sphinxes led from the city (i. ), to be restored; "that it might be as it had been before." as the gallery which ramses ii. had caused to be hewn in the rock for the reception of the apis bulls was no longer sufficient, psammetichus added one still larger and more beautiful. the two apis bulls which died in his reign--in the twentieth and the thirty-fifth year--were buried with due solemnity and pomp, the second being placed in the new gallery.[ ] from no reign is the number of monuments in these tombs of the apis, by which those who dedicated them sought to recommend themselves to the favour of osiris, greater than from the reign of psammetichus. with his buildings egyptian art took a new impulse, which was also the last. the forms are lighter, more delicate, more mobile, and far more natural; the hieroglyphics are carried to a marvellous degree of delicacy. for the statues the artists of this period preferred the black and grey basalt to granite. in the dimensions, sculpture as well as architecture remained far behind the period of the ancient kingdom, behind the period of the tuthmosis and amenophis, of sethos and ramses. the son and successor of psammetichus, who was called necho after his grandfather, followed in the path which his father had pointed out and opened. he paid especial attention to the foreign trade, the arming of egypt on the sea. he hastened to create a navy for egypt on the mediterranean and the red sea. herodotus observes that he had himself seen the docks for the ships on his journey to egypt.[ ] egypt was stronger by sea if the same fleet could be used on the mediterranean and the red sea. thus necho came back to the views of ramses ii., to the great canal for uniting the nile with the red sea. by this the trade of egypt with south arabia, and the trade on the arabian gulf, was brought into direct connection with the marine trade of the mediterranean. necho took up the excavation of the canal commenced by ramses ii., which was at that time carried as far as the region of the bitter lakes. the excavation was first to be carried eastward as far as the bitter lakes, and from this point the land was to be pierced in a southerly direction as far as the apex of the red sea. at the same time the canal was to be widened, and the new watercourse made so broad, that two triremes could easily find a place side by side--an undertaking worthy to be placed by the side of the buildings of the ancient kings. the old canal was soon excavated more completely, the bitter lakes were reached,[ ] but the reach from this point to the red sea remained unaccomplished, though the work was carried on so vigorously and even ruthlessly that, according to herodotus, , men perished there in the desert. according to herodotus too, a prophecy induced the king to desist from the completion of the canal: it was announced to him that he was working for barbarians, but strabo, with greater probability, states that the death of the king interrupted the work. necho did not wait for the completion of the canal in order to explore the coasts of the arabian gulf and the sea in the south. the phenicians who, from the times of solomon in israel, had desired to gain the trade with south arabia by sea, who under solomon, jehoshaphat, and uzziah, had commenced and carried on navigation thither from elath and eziongeber, could now renew these voyages from egypt. with a view of furthering trade and navigation, necho sent, as herodotus tells us, phenicians down the red sea, with the injunction to return through the pillars of heracles. these phenicians, we are told, passed into the south sea; "and when it was autumn they went ashore and sowed the land, whereon they happened to be in libya, and waited for the harvest, and when they had gathered it in, they again went on board ship, so that after they had been two years at sea, they rounded the pillars in the third year, and came to egypt. and they told a story, which to me is incredible, though perhaps not equally so to another. they said that when they sailed round libya, they had the sun on the right hand." by this to him incredible statement herodotus proves the reality of this, the most ancient circumnavigation of africa. as soon as the equator was passed, the expedition would see the sun on the north, _i.e._ on the right hand, which to herodotus, according to the greek conception of the sun and the earth, must have seemed incredible. the kingdom of the assyrians, which for more than a hundred years had threatened egypt, governed her, and threatened her again, was at the last gasp when necho, in the year b.c., ascended the throne of his father. the inundation of the sacæ had shattered the cohesion of the assyrian power; nabopolassar of babylon, and cyaxares of media, had already been united against assyria for ten years past; even now, after nabopolassar had brought about a peace between lydia and media, they set themselves to give the last blow to the fallen remnant of assyria. psammetichus had attempted to establish himself in the south-west corner of syria; a more favourable moment could not come to egypt for winning syria, for repeating the campaigns of the ancient pharaohs to the euphrates, and showing in this direction also the new royal house to be the restorer of the ancient glory. apart from such considerations, prudence bade them not to leave the spoil to the babylonians alone. what would egypt win by the fall of assyria, if babylon took her place in syria and became the neighbour of egypt? necho marched against syria. it seems that in order to avoid the difficult route through the desert, he transported his army on board his fleet to the syrian coast. the landing took place in the neighbourhood of carmel--at any rate we find that the first collision of the egyptians and syrians took place there. twelve years had elapsed since king josiah of judah had introduced the new law, and rigorously enforced the worship of jehovah. the dominion of the kings of nineveh over syria was past: josiah was not inclined to exchange this for the yoke of egypt. had the egyptians come by land, josiah must have met the army of necho in the south of judah. the armies met under carmel on the kishon: the battle broke out in the valley of megiddo. the numbers of the egyptian army ensured victory, they must have been overpowering. the jews were defeated; josiah fell; his corpse was carried from the battle-field by his servants ( b.c.). in the camp at hadad rimmon the remnant of the jewish army lamented over the pious king--who then found his resting-place in the sepulchres of his fathers at jerusalem--and sang songs of lamentation.[ ] passing by the two elder sons of josiah, the people raised to the throne the third son, jehoahaz.[ ] if necho afterwards dedicated the armour which he wore at the victory of megiddo to apollo, in his ancient temple at miletus, where the branchidæ were his ministers, the conclusion may be drawn that the ionian soldiers in his army had especially distinguished themselves in winning the victory. he did not pursue the army of judah, but rather turned to the north, towards damascus. soon after his accession, the successor of josiah repaired to the camp of the pharaoh, to pledge his obedience. necho was encamped at riblah (now ribleh), south of emesa, in a grassy plain on the orontes, where the road which leads from the euphrates to the coast is cut by the road which follows the valley of the orontes. necho caused jehoahaz to be secured, and sent him as a prisoner to egypt. there he remained till his death: he had sat on the throne only three months. the judæans were not permitted to raise any more kings to the throne: on the contrary, necho made jehoiakim, the second son of josiah, prince of judah, and imposed on the land a contribution of kikkar of silver, and one kikkar of gold. of the subsequent achievements of necho in syria, we have precise information only about the capture of gaza. from the subsequent events we must conclude that necho succeeded in subjugating all the syrian states to his supremacy.[ ] meanwhile jehoiakim, set up by necho to be king of judah, undisturbed by his dependence on egypt, or by the contribution which the land had to pay, occupied himself with building palaces in jerusalem, and for that object extorted money and service from his subjects. the prophet jeremiah, who had supported the introduction of the book of the law under the reign of his father, opposed this action of the king without regard to consequences: "weep not for the dead king," jeremiah said to the jews, "neither bemoan him; weep rather for him who is carried away (jehoahaz): he will die there, and see no more his native country. they will not lament for jehoiakim, saying, ah! my brother. woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work. woe to him that saith, i will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows, and it is ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. shalt thou reign because thou contendest with houses of cedar? thy father did eat and drink, but he did judgment and justice; he judged the cause of the poor and needy, and it was well with him. but thine eyes and thy heart are for nought but thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression and violence. he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn forth and cast beyond the gates of jerusalem."[ ] the prophet had to thank the protection of ahikam, a son of the scribe zaphan (p. ), that he escaped the anger of the king. another prophet who prophesied in the same strain, urijah by name, was brought by jehoiakim out of egypt, whither he had fled, and put to death.[ ] while necho, in syria, subjugated one district after another, the babylonians and medes were engaged in a severe struggle with the remnant of assyria. at length nineveh fell. soon after, in the year b.c., necho marched to the euphrates, no doubt with the intention of extending his dominion as far as karchemish. the roads through the deserts, traversed by the caravans, by which the armies of the assyrians had so often travelled, ran from hamath and damascus to thipsach and karchemish, which lay opposite the modern biredshik. nabopolassar of babylon found himself at the goal of his wishes. nineveh was at his feet. when after his long and heavy labour he had entered into the enjoyment of the independent sovereignty over babylon, a new enemy appeared unexpectedly, an army from the nile, in order to encamp on the euphrates, and set foot on the borders of babylon, and endanger the state which nabopolassar had just restored, if he did not actually diminish the results obtained.[ ] he felt himself no longer equal to the toil of war, so berosus tells us, and handed over a part of the army to nebuchadnezzar, who "was in his youthful strength."[ ] nebuchadnezzar and the egyptians met at karchemish. necho suffered a severe defeat, which put a speedy end to all his schemes of conquest. "who is this," exclaims jeremiah, "that cometh up as the nile, whose waters are moved as the rivers? the egyptian cometh up like the nile, and saith, i will go up and will cover the earth, and will destroy the city, and the inhabitants thereof. order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to the battle. harness the horses, and get up, ye horsemen. put on the helmets and the brigandines, and furbish the spears. come up, ye horses, and rage, ye chariots; let the ethiopians come forth that handle the shield, and the libyans that bend the bow. but why have i seen them dismayed and turned back, and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace and look not back? let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; they shall stumble and fall toward the north by the river euphrates, and the sword shall devour, and it shall be made satiate, and shall be drunk with the blood of the egyptians. go up into gilead, and take balm, o virgin daughter of egypt. but there is no medicine for thee. the people have heard thy shame, and thy cry has filled the land."[ ] footnotes: [ ] herod. , ff; ff. [ ] diod. i, , . [ ] manetho's list would put the death of nechepsus in b.c. [ ] above, p. _n._, where the grounds for this date are given. according to the statement of diodorus, the anarchy after the ethiopians lasted two years, the dodecarchy years. if esarhaddon conquered egypt in b.c., years bring us to the year b.c. as the beginning of the defection from assyria. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] polyæn. "strateg.," , . [ ] on the side of the alabaster statue of ameniritis, which was dug up in a chapel at karnak, we find under the name: "the regent of the south and the north, the royal sister of ---- the royal daughter of ----" the names are chiselled out. but a scarabæus of gurnah informs us: "ameniritis, goddess, consort, daughter of kashta;" and legends in the place where the statues were found run thus: "the royal sister of raneserke (sabakon), the royal daughter of kashta, the just." mariette, "revue archæeolog." n.s. , p. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , . [greek: chôran pollên katelêrouchêse.] jerem. xlvi. . [ ] herod. , , ; diod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , ; strabo, p. , . plin. "hist. nat.," , . vol. i. p. . the statement of diodorus repeated in the text--that the greeks had the right wing--might seem to have been borrowed from greek customs, if herodotus did not tell us that the emigrants were called asmach ( , ), which means standing on the left side of the king. the monuments show that the egyptians denoted the order of precedence, according to the right and left side of the king; we find bearers of the fan on the right side and on the left of the king. according to brugsch, asmach really means what is found on the left side. klöder ("das stromsystem des oberen nil," s. ff. ) assumes that the settlement of the emigrant warriors is to be sought at axum. [ ] herod. , , . diod. , . [ ] brugsch "hist. of egypt," , . that the egyptians counted the reign of psammetichus from the end of tirhaka's, _i.e._ from b.c., is proved above, p. _n._ [ ] herod. , . [ ] lepsius, "Ægypt. chronologie," s. . [ ] the chronicles ( , xxxv. ff) represent josiah as dying in jerusalem, but they can hardly be correct. in order to explain the unhappy death of the pious king, who had introduced the book of the law, and destroyed the worship of idols, by a transgression, they represent josiah as not hearkening to the words of necho "out of the mouth of god," and making an attack on the egyptians, who were not at war with them. but though the chronicles represent necho as declaring that he was hastening to the euphrates, it is, on the other hand, clear that he did not march to the euphrates till four years after the battle of megiddo. the magdolus of herodotus is, no doubt, the megiddo of the hebrews. josephus ("antiq." , , ) names mende as the place of the battle. whether the camp of the jews was really pitched at hadad rimmon, to the south-east of megiddo, is not clear. [ ] on the sons of josiah, johanan, jehoiakim, shallum (by zebudah), jehoahaz, and zedekiah (by hamutal), cf. chron. iii. , . [ ] jerem. xlvii. . cadytis in herodotus , is gaza. the name is formed after the egyptian "kazatu." [ ] jerem. xxii. - . [ ] jerem. xxvi. - ; - . [ ] the opinion that necho marched to the euphrates to the relief of nineveh seems to me quite untenable. setting aside the fact that for this object necho must have been at the euphrates earlier,--which he could well have done,--what interest had necho in assyria, from whose power his father had liberated egypt? nor can i adopt the opinion of m. niebuhr that necho marched to assyria merely to defend syria. josephus ("antiq." , , ) tells us, "that necho marched to the euphrates in order to make war upon the medes and babylonians, who had destroyed the assyrian power." this idea of offensive warfare is confirmed by the words in jeremiah: "i will go up and destroy their cities." syria was easier of defence when he had the desert before him, than when it lay behind him. [ ] berosi frag. ed. müller. that in berosus the satrap of syria has taken the place of necho, may be explained by the supposition that nabopolassar had laid claim to syria as an appurtenance of the part of the assyrian kingdom which had fallen to him, and perhaps announced to necho that he was prepared to give him syria as a dependency of babylon--an offer which necho did not accept. but the "satrap" is also sufficiently explained by the point of view of the historian of babylon, who sees the period of nebuchadnezzar in the most brilliant light. [ ] jerem. xlvi. - , , , . chapter xiv. the restoration of babylon. in the median poems, from which ctesias and nicolaus have told us the story of the overthrow of the assyrian kingdom by the combined medes and babylonians, the leader of the medes naturally occupies the most prominent place. from him the prudent and crafty leader of the babylonians obtains the satrapy of his home as the price of his co-operation--co-operation which mainly consists in imparting advice on the ground of his knowledge of astronomy. afterwards he shows himself faithless and thievish, and for this is condemned to death. but the magnanimity of the median prince not only grants his life, but even assigns to him the satrapy of babylonia, which, according to other songs in those poems, remains in the hands of the descendants of the dependant. the poems of the medes could not leave altogether out of sight the co-operation of the babylonians in the overthrow of assyria, but they kept it in the back-ground, and gave their leader a contemptible character. they could not deny that after the fall of nineveh babylonia stood beside media, but they could change this independent kingdom into the principality of a vassal, a satrapy of media without payment of tribute. as a fact it must have been nabopolassar who gave the impulse to a decisive attack upon the remnant of the assyrian kingdom, and took the leading part in the decisive struggle. this position of nabopolassar breaks out even in the median poem, inasmuch as he is the first to rouse the mede, and sustains the courage of the confederates.[ ] sprung from a priestly tribe in babylonia, as the median poems tell us--and other evidence confirms the statement--and in the confidence of the king of assyria, nabopolassar was nominated to be the viceroy of babylonia. for some years he holds this office, and then resolves on a revolt; it is he who sets on foot and accomplishes the union of media and babylonia, and establishes it by the alliance of his own house with that of the median king. it is he who relieves media from the lydian war, and establishes peace and a marriage between media and lydia, so that media can turn with all her power against the remnant of assyria. the share which nabopolassar receives in the prize of victory when the goal has been won corresponds to his share in the decisive struggle. the land of assyria, so herodotus tells us, fell to media, "as far as the babylonian portion." from this it is clear that cyaxares received the assyrian land as far as the tigris. had not this region been under the supremacy of the medes before the persian dominion, the ruins of nineveh and chalah could not have been pointed out to xenophon as the ruins of median cities. the land to the west of the tigris, mesopotamia, as far as the foot of the armenian mountains, fell to the share of nabopolassar. we are definitely told by the hebrews that the region of the chaboras belonged to the new kingdom of babylon,[ ] and, as we saw, it was not the median army which necho met at biredshik, but the babylonians, the army of nabopolassar. whether it was nabopolassar's intention to extend his power to the west beyond the euphrates, and enter upon the inheritance of assyria as the sovereign over syria, or whether it was the advance of necho into syria, and his march to the euphrates, which first called forth this intention, we cannot decide. in no case was he likely to suffer egypt to establish herself in syria. nebuchadnezzar, the son of nabopolassar, after his victory at karchemish, followed the retreating army of egypt. the syrian lands once more looked forward to becoming the scene and seat of the war between babylonia and egypt, as in previous times they had witnessed the war between assyria and egypt. if the dominion of egypt had been recently imposed upon them in the place of the dominion of assyria, it depended on the approaching struggle of arms, whether they were to become the subjects of a new master, of the new crown of babylon. thus the defeat of necho and the retreat of the egyptian army aroused no feelings of delight in jerusalem at the blow which had there fallen upon the lord of the nile. there was a fear of the approach of the babylonians. we saw with what vigour the prophet jeremiah, the son of hilkiah of anathoth, had opposed the careless frivolity of jehoiakim, the king whom necho had placed over the jews (p. ). after the disastrous day at megiddo, the fall of josiah, and carrying away of jehoahaz to egypt, the eye of the prophet had been directed to the dangerous position of the kingdom. necho's army was then in syria; one city after another succumbed to his arms. to the melancholy mind of isaiah the fall of the kingdom seemed unavoidable. this conviction he expressed; he foretold to jehoiakim the most disgraceful fall. in energy and power of thought jeremiah cannot be compared with isaiah, but in the boldness and incisiveness of his opposition to the king and nation he surpasses him. isaiah had firmly held to the preservation and maintenance of the city of jerusalem and the temple, even in the judgment of jehovah on israel and judah. the conception that jehovah's temple, and his habitation in the holy of holies of the temple, was a pledge for the security of the city, that jehovah could not abandon and destroy his temple and shrine, was a fixed idea among most of the prophets and among the people; it was confirmed by the fortunate preservation from the army of sennacherib, and the hordes of the sacæ; and the jews had confidence in the impregnable nature and lasting security of their temple and city. in this confidence jeremiah detected a grave evil. the people trusted to the impregnable nature of the shrine and city; the jews believed that in spite of their errors and sins they would be secure of jerusalem owing to the temple. therefore he set himself energetically to combat this belief. he is filled with the conception of the approaching judgment, which will be brought on by the defection of past times, "when israel like a swift young dromedary went after every stranger;"[ ] and by her unrighteous conversation in the present time. his conception, which in depth of religious feeling is raised above the views of the earlier prophets, is that all external customs and symbols must fall to the ground, not sacrifices only and fasts, but the temple and the ark of the covenant. not till a radical destruction has taken place will the restoration of the people follow, by means of a small remnant of the righteous, and a shoot from the stock of david. in jeremiah's view the people cannot be saved without the stroke of annihilation, "for the ethiop cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots."[ ] but after this judgment jehovah will "make a new covenant" with his people, "which is not like that which he made with their fathers, when he led them out of egypt." "i will put my law in your inward parts," saith jehovah, "and write it in your hearts."[ ] "in those days they will no more speak of the ark of jehovah; it will not come into the mind of any: none will miss it; nor will another be made." then will jehovah set up shepherds after his own heart of the branch of david,[ ] who will pasture israel with wisdom and prudence; and all nations will gather together to the name of jehovah, and will not walk after the hardness of their evil heart. filled with these conceptions, jeremiah cried aloud to the people assembled in the court of the temple: "amend your hearts, and listen to the voice of jehovah, your god. if ye will not walk in his law, which he has set before you, and hearken to the words of the prophets, jehovah will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.[ ] trust not in lying words: this is the temple of jehovah. ye steal, murder, and commit adultery; ye offer incense to baal, and knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven,[ ] and come into this house, which is called by the name of jehovah, and say: we are delivered to do all these abominations. go ye now unto my dwelling-place which was in shiloh, where i set my name at the first, and see what i did to it for the wickedness of my people israel. so will i do to this house in which ye trust, as i did to shiloh, and will cast you out of my sight, as i cast out your brethren, the seed of ephraim."[ ] at these words the priests seized jeremiah, and the people rose in anger to put him to death, because he had announced the fall of the temple. then certain of the elders came forward, and reminded the people that in hezekiah's time the prophet micah had announced: "zion shall be ploughed as a field, and jerusalem shall become a heap of stones,"[ ] and neither the king nor the people had put him to death. jeremiah himself said to the enraged multitude: "behold, i am in your hands; do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you; but know ye for certain that ye will bring innocent blood upon this city; for of a truth jehovah hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears." the people retired from him. after this occurrence in the temple, jeremiah no longer ventured to come forth in public; he contented himself for the present with dictating his warnings and announcements to his scribe baruch. after the battle of karchemish it was clear to him at once that the king of babel would be the instrument of jehovah to accomplish the approaching judgment: the mission which isaiah had assigned to the assyrians years previously--to destroy all nations--jeremiah now saw given to the chaldæans. but as isaiah then prophesied the fall of assyria, when she had accomplished the judgments of jehovah, so, according to the views of jeremiah, the chaldæans are to be destroyed when they have done their work. after a rule of years, _i.e._ after a period of ten sabbath-years (ii. ), this fortune will overtake the babylonians--such is the view of jeremiah. "for years," so jeremiah commanded his scribe baruch to write,[ ] "the word of jehovah hath come to me, and i have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but ye have not hearkened; ye have hearkened to other prophets, not to the servants of jehovah. therefore i will bring nebuchadnezzar my servant against this land and its inhabitants, saith jehovah, and against all the nations round about, and i will destroy out of them the voice of mirth, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill, and the light of the lamp. the whole land shall be a desolation, and these nations shall serve the king of babylon seventy years. take the wine-cup of this fury at my hand, so spake jehovah to me, and cause all the nations to drink it, that they may drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that i will send among them. cause jerusalem to drink it, and the cities of judah, the pharaoh of egypt, and all the kings of the land of the philistines, the kings of tyre and sidon, and the kings of the islands beyond the sea, the edomites, and the moabites, and the kings of arabia who dwell in the deserts, and the kings of media. jehovah shall roar from on high, he shall roar upon his habitation (jerusalem); he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. jehovah will reckon with the nations; he will plead with all flesh, and give them that are wicked to the sword. evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and the slain of jehovah will be in that day from one end of the earth to the other; they shall not be lamented, nor buried, they shall be dung upon the ground."[ ] at karchemish necho had lost all the fruits of his struggles in syria. he did not venture to engage in a second battle for the possession of syria, but retired to the borders of egypt. in jerusalem a day of fasting was kept at the approach of the babylonian army. more than three years and eight months had passed since necho made jehoiakim king of judah.[ ] these and other announcements jeremiah commanded baruch to read before the assembled multitude in the upper court of the temple on the day of fasting. "it may be they will present their supplication before jehovah," he said, "for great is the anger that jehovah hath pronounced upon this people." baruch carried out the command of jeremiah. the letter made a deep impression. baruch had to read it again before the captains of jehoiakim, at their request. these told the king, who was at that time in his winter house, of the prophecies of jeremiah. jehoiakim caused three or four leaves to be read, then seized the roll, cut it with a knife, threw the pieces into the pan of coals which stood before him, and gave orders that jeremiah and his scribe baruch should be brought before him, but both had hidden themselves, and the captains were not inclined to discover them by any strict search.[ ] the babylonian army did not appear before jerusalem. nabopolassar lay sick at babylon; the account of his death summoned nebuchadnezzar back to the metropolis. he hastened with a few companions through the deserts to babylon, in order to take the crown of the new kingdom. the army, with the prisoners and the booty, were to follow ( b.c.). meanwhile the priests at babylon had made provision, and set up a regent from among themselves who governed the kingdom till the return of nebuchadnezzar.[ ] as soon as the first succession to the throne of the new kingdom was happily completed, and nebuchadnezzar saw his position established, he applied his forces to extending and securing his empire. if the new dynasty was to take root, it was incumbent on it to renew the splendour and power of the ancient kingdom of babylon. the successes which nabopolassar had achieved against the assyrians, the splendid victory which nebuchadnezzar had gained against the egyptians, must have confirmed the confidence of the new ruler in his own power, and the strength of his army. yet the first consideration was not merely splendour and glory. egypt could not indeed maintain her place in syria, but she was still in possession of gaza; if the syrian states were not annexed, they would always incline to egypt, and would soon join her again. to abandon syria was equivalent to handing over the country to the egyptians. a further consideration was, that the median power in league with which nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar had risen was far superior to the babylonians. at present, it was true, they were in the closest and best relations with the median and lydian courts--but could they count on the continuance of these relations? was it not advisable to create for the new kingdom of babylon an empire which should form an adequate counterpoise to the power of the medes? the north and east belonged to the medes, the natural direction for the extension of babylon therefore lay to the south, on the coast of the persian gulf, and to the west. the victorious campaigns of the assyrian rulers pointed in this direction; here, on the shore of the mediterranean, lay the cities of the phenicians, who collected within their walls the trade of the world, whose industry and wealth could bring to the new kingdom the greatest sources of help. nebuchadnezzar's first object was to extend his power over the arabians on the lower euphrates, in north arabia, and in the syrian desert. the tribes of the temanites, dedanites, and kedarites were subjugated. the princes of the arabians of dedan, tema, kedar, and hazor, became vassals of babylon.[ ] then arpad, hamath, and damascus, which had resisted assyria so long and stubbornly, succumbed. jerusalem trembled at the fall of the neighbouring nations. "the chaldæans are roused," says the prophet habakkuk; "that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the earth, and shall possess the dwelling-places which are not theirs. their horses are swifter than leopards, and more fierce than evening wolves; proudly their horses spring from far: they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. and they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn to them; they shall deride every stronghold, for they shall heap up earth against it, and take it, and carry off prisoners like sand. then will they go on like a storm-wind, and their might is their god.[ ] my knees quaked that i might look with rest upon the day of trouble, upon the people which oppresses us.[ ] shall they slay the nations continually without punishment? can he not rest who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people? will not the people suddenly rise up and demand usury from thee? will not the nations plunder thee, whom thou hast plundered?"[ ] of nebuchadnezzar, jeremiah says: "like a lion he will come up against the well-stocked pasture.[ ] flee, flee with all your might, ye inhabitants of hazor, for nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, hath taken counsel against you, and hath conceived a purpose against you. get you up to the nation which hath neither gates nor bars, and dwelleth alone; go up to kedar and spoil the men of the east. your tents and your flocks will they take; your curtains and your camels they will carry away; the multitude of your flocks shall be a spoil to them. i will scatter to all the winds of the earth those who cut the corners of their hair (the arabians), saith jehovah, and will bring destruction on them from every side, and hazor shall be a dwelling for the jackal, a desolation for ever.[ ] cry, ye daughters of rabbath (rabbath ammon, ii. ), gird yourselves with sack-cloth, for milcom shall go away into misery, his priests and princes together.[ ] woe to thee, moab; the people of camos (chemosh, i. ) perisheth. he shall fly like an eagle, and spread his wings over moab; the strong places are taken.[ ] hamath is confounded, and arpad. damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee.[ ] thou wert confident, o edom, because thou dwellest on the high rocks and the tops of the mountains. though thou buildest thy nest like the eagle thou shalt be thrown down."[ ] five years had elapsed since the battle of karchemish when nebuchadnezzar crossed the borders of judah ( b.c.).[ ] jehoiakim submitted and thus escaped destruction. after the subjugation of ammon, moab, and judah, nebuchadnezzar could turn his arms against the southern coast of syria. this advance of nebuchadnezzar and the necessity of preventing babylonia from establishing herself on the borders of egypt, could not but bring egypt again into arms. necho had had time to recover from the defeat of karchemish. the hope of aid from egypt induced jehoiakim to renounce his obedience three years after he had submitted to nebuchadnezzar, and to turn his arms against babylonia. at nebuchadnezzar's command the troops of the neighbouring states who had remained loyal, the northern syrians, the ammonites, and moabites, first invaded the land of judah. when the egyptians had been driven back into their borders, and the king of babylon had "taken everything that belonged to the king of egypt from the river euphrates to the brook of egypt," nebuchadnezzar turned his arms back against jerusalem to punish the rebels.[ ] jehoiakim had recently died, and the people had raised to the throne his son jechoniah, a youth of eighteen years old. jerusalem was invested by the babylonian army: nebuchadnezzar came in person to conduct the siege.[ ] "by my life,"--such are the words jeremiah puts in the mouth of jehovah,--"if jechoniah were a signet on my right hand, i would pluck him off, and give him into the hands of those who seek after his life, into the hands of the chaldæans. i cast thee away and thy mother into another land, and they shall not bring thee back unto the land whither thy heart yearns to return."[ ] jechoniah had only sat three months on the throne when he saw himself compelled by the advance of the siege to open the gates of jerusalem to the enemy. with his mother nehustha, who appears to have been regent for him, with the officers of his household and the eunuchs, he went into the camp of the chaldæans to give himself up to the king of babylon ( b.c.).[ ] nebuchadnezzar wished to be secure of the obedience of the jews; he did not intend that the hope of egypt should again bring them under arms. he caused not only the young king and his mother, the courtiers, the treasures, and the best furniture of the temple to be carried to babylon, but also the influential people in the city, the captains of the army, and all the men of war in jerusalem to the number of . in order to disarm the city more completely, the workers in iron, the smiths and lock-smiths, were carried away. in all, , souls were transplanted by nebuchadnezzar to babylonia, only people of no importance are said to have been left in jerusalem. in jechoniah's place nebuchadnezzar set up his uncle zedekiah, the fourth son of josiah, as viceroy, and pledged him to obedience and fidelity by joining hands and taking an oath.[ ] the jews carried away were settled, after the example of the assyrian princes, in babylonia, in part on the chaboras. these rules for securing the obedience of the small territory did not break the tough spirit of the jews, their stubborn resistance, or their eager desire for freedom and independence. zedekiah and those around him felt the disgrace of the yoke which was laid upon them, and shared with the mass of the people the desire to shake it off on the first opportunity. many prophets favoured this tendency and promised victory and success to a new rebellion in arms. not long after zedekiah had been placed on the throne, the prophet hananiah of gibeon announced before all the people in the temple: "in two years jehovah will bring back to this place all the furniture of the temple which nebuchadnezzar has carried to babylon; and i will bring back, saith jehovah, jechoniah the king of judah and all the captives, for i will break the yoke of the king of babylon."[ ] jeremiah came forward in opposition and said: "wooden yokes thou wilt break, and lay on iron yokes. behold, i will remove thee from the earth, saith jehovah; in this year thou shalt die, for thou hast counselled rebellion." and hananiah died, as tradition adds, in the same year, in the seventh month.[ ] jeremiah was never weary of opposing to the uttermost any view of this kind. to him the chaldæans were the instrument of jehovah for the punishment of the nations: to endure their rule was, in his view, the will of jehovah; any one who resisted the chaldæans only brought on himself a heavier yoke, and called down destruction more completely on his head. if isaiah had at least cherished the belief in the continuance of jerusalem and the temple, jeremiah, as we have seen, did not share in this hope. and therefore he preached without ceasing submission to the yoke, and patient obedience; he was unwearied in taking from the people every prospect of rescue; he sent letters to the jews transplanted to babylonia, and urged them not to enter into conspiracies; he went so far as to commend the lot of these captives, and requested them to build houses in babylon, and pray to jehovah for the welfare of that country.[ ] but though the national feelings and impulses of his nation were unknown to a prophet whose eyes were directed upwards, though for him the feeling of nationality was lost in religious conceptions,--the efforts of the people to win back its independent existence, the stubborn tenacity with which the jews were ready to fight for their fatherland, and break the yoke of the foreigner, even when they rested on deceptive calculations, were not less justified than the intelligent calculation of the impossibility of such an attempt; and even from the lofty religious position of jeremiah, who regarded nothing but the inward salvation, the purity, and elevation of the heart, could claim appreciation, since even the common children of earth must have their rights. who could blame those who, even in the most hopeless, desperate condition, estimated more highly the duty of dying for their country, than the advice to submit quietly to the conqueror? that persons who held these views should consider this step on the part of jeremiah as a corrupt movement, should demand that the prophet take the side of his own nation against the foreigner, and brand his predictions as treason to the state, is easily intelligible. in such a sharp opposition of views, and in the strained position of affairs in which judah found herself between babylon and egypt, it was impossible but that heavy accusations should be brought against jeremiah, and a hot persecution set on foot against him. he complains bitterly how he was daily mocked and derided;[ ] he is in despair and laments his destiny; he tells us how he had determined to speak no more in the name of jehovah, but the inward voice compelled him; the fire was kindled in his heart: "i could not stay."[ ] "cursed be the day," he exclaims, "on which i was born! cursed be the man who brought glad tidings to my father, and said unto him, 'a son is born unto thee!' why, jehovah, didst thou not slay me in the womb, that i should see labour and sorrow, and consume my days with shame?"[ ] these moods alternate with a fierce desire for vengeance on his opponents. he is guiltless. jehovah has driven him forth to speak, and put his word in his mouth; he has often besought jehovah to turn away from judah the day of destruction: jehovah, for whom he suffers, must avenge him on his enemies. he is so embittered and angry that he even calls down bloody destruction upon his enemies. "look on me, jehovah," he says, "and avenge me of my persecutors, and know that for thy sake i have suffered rebuke.[ ] i have not desired the woful day, thou knowest: that which came out from my lips was before thee.[ ] if thy words came to me, i took them eagerly, and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart; i sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced. i sat alone, for thou hast filled me with indignation. i was like a lamb led to the slaughter, and knew not that they had devised devices against me.[ ] why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?[ ] wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are they happy that deal very treacherously?[ ] pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of destruction.[ ] consider how i stand before thee, to turn away thy wrath from them. therefore give up their children to the famine, and deliver them to the sword. let their men be the sacrifice of death, and their women bereaved and widows. thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me; forgive them not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight."[ ] jeremiah then received the answer of jehovah, who said to him: "gird thy loins; speak to them all that i bid thee; be not afraid of them. i will make thee a fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land; against the king, the priests, the elders, and the people. they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee; i will save thee from the hand of the wicked, and deliver thee from the grasp of the furious."[ ] so jeremiah prophesied again: "no doubt, their prophets say to them: ye shall not see the sword nor shall ye have famine, but the lord will give you happy days in this land. but jehovah saith: i have not commanded them nor spoken to them; they prophesy a false vision, and the deceit of their heart, and divination. by the sword and famine shall they perish. the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of jerusalem.[ ] they will say: we acknowledge, o jehovah, our iniquity, and the sin of our fathers, but do not abhor us, for thy name's sake; do not disgrace the throne of thy glory; break not thy covenant with us. but jehovah saith to me: pray not for this people; though moses and samuel stood before me, my mind could not be towards them.[ ] sorrow not with them. i have taken from them my salvation, my grace, and mercy. the sin of judah is written with a pen of iron, and graven with the point of a diamond upon the table of their hearts, and upon the horns of their altars."[ ] in such a contest of opposite views, in such an alternation of moods, four years had passed for the jews after zedekiah was placed by nebuchadnezzar upon the throne, when the kings of sidon and tyre sent to jerusalem to call on the jews to revolt against nebuchadnezzar, by whose attack they were threatened. messengers also came from the ammonites and the moabites, who had been in subjection longer than the jews, and from the edomites ( b.c.). if their forces were united there seemed to be a prospect of success in resistance and rebellion, and the reduction of the phenician cities might be prevented. but jeremiah spoke to the envoys in the name of jehovah: "i have made the earth, the man and the beast, and i gave them to whom it seemed meet to me; and now i give all these lands into the hands of nebuchadnezzar, the king of babylon, my servant, and i have given him the beasts of the field also to serve him. and the nation and the kingdom which will not serve nebuchadnezzar,--that nation i will punish with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until i have consumed them by his hand. if ye put your necks in the yoke of babylon, ye shall live."[ ] this time the view of the prophet prevailed; zedekiah repaired in person to babylon obviously to assure nebuchadnezzar of his fidelity.[ ] the phenicians were left to their fate, and subjugated by nebuchadnezzar.[ ] only sidon seems to have made a vigorous resistance.[ ] the island city of tyre retained her independence. in the year b.c., hophrah, the grandson of necho, ascended the throne of egypt. zedekiah soon directed his eyes to the new ruler of the valley of the nile. he showed himself ready to venture on the struggle with nebuchadnezzar. jeremiah dissuaded them: "egypt is a very fair heifer," he exclaims, "but destruction cometh from the north. o thou daughter, dwelling in egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity; for noph (memphis) shall be waste, and burnt, and desolate without an inhabitant. the hired men in the midst of her are like fatted bullocks, for they also are turned back and are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, the time of their visitation. the daughter of egypt shall be confounded. thus saith jehovah of hosts: behold, i will punish ammon of no (thebes), and pharaoh and egypt, with their gods and their kings, even pharaoh and all them that trust in him. and i will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives, and into the hand of nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, and into the hand of his servants."[ ] but the prince and people of judah were not to be restrained. building on the help of egypt, zedekiah, in the year b.c., took up arms against babylonia.[ ] but before hophrah had finished his preparations nebuchadnezzar was in judah with a powerful army.[ ] the strong places were invested: one city after another surrendered, only lachish and aseka resisted for any length of time.[ ] "at the meeting of the ways," says the prophet ezekiel, "the king of babylon halts to make divination; he shakes his arrows, consults with the teraphim, looks in the liver of the victim. in his right hand is the divination for jerusalem, to throw up a wall against jerusalem, to build towers, to appoint battering-rams against the gates, to lift up the voice with shouting. the head-band will be taken, and the crown removed from the prince of israel."[ ] the siege of jerusalem commenced. if in former times, when the assyrians were encamped before jerusalem, isaiah had urged the nation and king to a courageous endurance though arms had been taken up against his advice, the absoluteness of his deep conviction, the certainty which he had received from above, did not permit jeremiah to take up the attitude of his great predecessor; on the contrary, he did not cease even now to condemn the resistance in the strongest terms. in his eyes it was a rebellion against the counsels of god, against the divine order of the world. when zedekiah sent to him, to bid him inquire of jehovah about the issue of the siege, jeremiah answered: "i will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of babylon, and i will bring the chaldæans into the city. i will fight against you with an outstretched arm, and will deliver the city into the hands of the king of babylon, that he may burn it, and i will visit your inhabitants with famine, sword, and pestilence, and those that are left i will give into the hands of nebuchadnezzar, that he may smite them with the edge of the sword. i set before you the way of life and the way of death; he that abideth in the city shall fall by the sword; but he that goeth out and falleth to the chaldæans he shall live."[ ] though these announcements were adapted to undermine the courage and strength of the resistance, and heavy as was the weight given to them by the position which jeremiah held among the prophets, they did not discourage the king and the population of the metropolis. the debtors and all slaves of hebrew birth were set at liberty in order to strengthen the numbers for the defence. success seemed to come to the aid of their endurance and courage. the egyptian army advanced and compelled the chaldæans to raise the siege of jerusalem ( b.c.).[ ] there was time to recover breath. had not jehovah again delivered jerusalem as in the day when sennacherib oppressed the city? jeremiah's dreary proclamations seemed contradicted. but he persisted in his position and announced: "pharaoh's army which is come forth to help you shall return into egypt, and the chaldæans shall come again before the city, and shall take it. and though ye had smitten the whole army of the chaldæans and there remained but wounded men in their tents, they would rise up and burn jerusalem with fire."[ ] it was natural that jeremiah, in consequence of these speeches and predictions, should appear a traitor in the eyes of the nation, who were struggling for freedom and existence. when, availing himself of the raising of the siege, he wished to go to his plot of ground at anathoth, he was seized in the gate as a deserter to the chaldæans and thrown into prison. yet the king allowed him to be kept in less severe custody, and soon set him at liberty.[ ] the prophecy of jeremiah was fulfilled. the egyptians were defeated. invested once more, jerusalem was pressed more severely than ever.[ ] the lines of the chaldæans ran even to the walls of the city,[ ] but the defenders were unwearied. the houses and even the buildings of the palaces were in part pulled down in order to strengthen the shattered walls, or build new portions.[ ] that jeremiah under such circumstances continued to preach the abandonment of the siege, and subjection to the chaldæans, roused at length the captains. they demanded his death from the king: "he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain, and the hands of the people: he seeketh not the welfare of the jews, but the hurt."[ ] as zedekiah allowed them to do with jeremiah according to their pleasure, they seized him, brought him for custody to the hill of zion, and there caused him to be thrown into the well of the prison. but there was only mud in the well, and when an ethiopian eunuch of the king interceded with him for the prophet, zedekiah gave command that jeremiah should be taken out of the well, and confined in the court of the prison.[ ] meantime "the famine prevailed in the city;" the distress rose to the highest pitch. "the priests and the elders," so we are told in the lamentations, "sought food in vain: the sword destroys without, the famine within. the people sought food with sighs, and whatsoever a man had of price he gave for food. the children and the sucklings swooned; they cried to their mothers, where is corn and wine, when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosoms. better was it for those who were slain with the sword than for those who were slain with hunger; the hands of pitiful women have sodden their children for food."[ ] at length the chaldæans, whose attack was directed to the most accessible part, the north side of the city, succeeded in taking the suburb surrounded by the outer wall.[ ] having gained possession of this, they directed their efforts against the middle gate, which guarded the entrance into the city beside the fortress of millo (p. ). led by nergal sarezer, and sarsechim, the captain of the eunuchs, the babylonians took the middle gate in the night by storm, and firmly established themselves there. zedekiah despaired of being able to maintain the city any longer, with the motley crowd of soldiers weakened by hunger, and the inhabitants who doubtless suffered still more in numbers and strength. he attempted to break through with his army. he succeeded in passing the lines and gaining the open country, but the chaldæans in pursuit came up with the troop which had so boldly broken out in the plain of jericho. the troop was dispersed; a part, including zedekiah, was captured, the rest escaped. the inhabitants, even after the king and army had left the city, stubbornly defended themselves in the various parts--in the citadel and the temple--so that some weeks elapsed before the city was completely in the hands of the babylonians (july, b.c.). the siege had lasted one year five months and seven days.[ ] the first rebellion of the jews had been punished by nebuchadnezzar by the dethronement and abduction of the king, by carrying away the influential people and the army of jerusalem, and by disarming the city. these arrangements had not been sufficient to secure the obedience of the little country. for the future egypt was no longer to find confederates in southern syria, and support in jerusalem. the stubborn resistance of the jews was to be broken; an end must be put for ever to their intrigues with egypt. zedekiah, who was placed on the throne by nebuchadnezzar himself, and swore obedience to him, was not to escape the punishment of this breach of faith. nebuchadnezzar was not with the besieging army; he was at riblah, on the orontes, the grassy plain where necho had pitched his camp after the battle of megiddo. thither zedekiah was brought. in his presence were first executed the captive leaders of the jews, and among them his own sons. then his eyes were put out; he was laden with chains, and carried away to babylon. there he died in prison.[ ] the punishment of jerusalem was carried out by nebusaradan, the chief of the body-guard of nebuchadnezzar. the high priest, seraiah, together with the second priest, zephaniah, the overseers of the temple, a number of public officers, and sixty of the most distinguished men in the city, were also taken to riblah, and put to death, seventy-two in number.[ ] the brazen pillars at the entrance to the temple, and the brazen sea (ii. , ), all the vessels and furniture of the temple which still remained, and everything that was to be found of value in the palace, was carried off to babylon.[ ] the chaldæan army levelled the walls; city, palace, and temple were burned to the ground. the inhabitants who survived were carried away, "except the poor people who had nothing;" even from the country the richer men were carried away with their wives and children, and only the common people left behind.[ ] over the remnant of the population a jew, gedaliah, the son of ahikam (p. ), who must previously have given proof of his chaldæan sentiments, was placed as viceroy. he took up his abode in mizpeh, where a babylonian garrison remained.[ ] "o daughter of zion, let thy tears flow like rivers day and night"--so the jews lamented--"give thyself no rest. the kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the besieging army could have entered into the gates of jerusalem. jehovah hath cast off his altar, and abhorred his sanctuary. the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. the lord hath thrown down from heaven to earth the beauty of jerusalem, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. he hath poured out his fury like fire upon the tabernacle of the daughter of zion.[ ] the elders of the daughter of zion sit upon the ground and keep silence; they cast dust upon their heads; they are girded with sackcloth. the virgins of jerusalem hang down their heads to the earth. they that go by strike the hands together, and shake the head over the daughter of jerusalem. is this the city which was called the garland of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? thy enemies shoot out their lips at thee; hiss and say: we have swallowed her up: this is the day that we looked for; we have done it. the gates are desolate; the ways to zion mourn; no one cometh to the festival. behold and see, all ye that pass by, if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.[ ] our possession is fallen to strangers, our houses to aliens; we are orphans without a father; our mothers are like widows. servants rule over us; they weaken our wives and virgins: they hang up the captains: they honour not the faces of the elders; we have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold to us. the young men grind the mill-stones, and the children fall under the wood.[ ] the punishment of my people is greater than the punishment of sodom.[ ] all mine enemies rejoice at my trouble, and laugh at my overthrow, but thou, jehovah, will bring the day when they will be as i am; do to them as thou hast done to me.[ ] our fathers have sinned and are not; we have borne their iniquities. take us again to thee, jehovah; is it right that thou shouldest utterly throw us away and be so wroth with us?"[ ] jeremiah was still a prisoner in the court of the citadel when the chaldæans forced their way into it. with the rest of the inhabitants of jerusalem he had been taken to ramah, in order to be carried away into babylonia from thence, when nebusaradan, at the command of nebuchadnezzar, to whom in the interim jeremiah's conduct must have been known, caused his fetters to be taken off, and gave him the choice whether he would remain or go to babylonia. it was in his power to go where he would: if he went to babylonia he would not be neglected there. jeremiah answered that he wished to remain in the land. nebusaradan then gave him maintenance and a present, and put him in the hands of the viceroy, gedaliah, to convey him to his house at anathoth. gedaliah exercised his new authority in a spirit of conciliation; he attempted to establish order and peace. if nebusaradan, before his departure from the conquered city, had given the unoccupied fields and vineyards before the gates to the people "who had nothing," gedaliah summoned his countrymen who had fled to the ammonites, moabites, and edomites, back to mizpeh, "and they gathered summer fruits and wine in great abundance." he also entered into negotiations with the chieftains and their soldiers, who with zedekiah had broken through the lines and escaped the defeat at jericho, in order to put an end to their plundering in the land; he offered to give up to them the places of which they had taken possession; if they would dwell there and serve the king of babylon it would be well with them.[ ] the greater number accepted these proposals, and put themselves under the rule of gedaliah, whose wise arrangements had their effect, and seemed to promise further success. jeremiah himself remained at mizpeh with gedaliah, to whose action his advice, counsel, and influence could give considerable support.[ ] two months had not passed since the capture of jerusalem, and already a number of men out of samaria, shechem, and shilo, ventured to go to the ruins of jerusalem with frankincense and meat-offerings, in order to sacrifice at the holy place, the seat of the temple. in the hearts of the great majority fierce resentment must have been raging against the destroyers of jerusalem and the temple, against the conquerors of judah. if nebuchadnezzar could not be reached, his viceroy was in the land. a distinguished man of the jewish stock had submitted to be the servant of the deadly enemy. this traitor and servant could be found. ishmael, a man of the royal blood, and of the family of david,[ ] one of the fugitives, came with ten men to mizpeh. he put on the appearance of submission. gedaliah invited him to the banquet, at which with his associates he cut down gedaliah, the chaldæans, and the jews who were present. the king's daughter and others who had been placed in gedaliah's care, the jews who were assembled at mizpeh, followed ishmael. he acted in union with baalis, the king of ammon, with whom he had intended to take refuge. but the other chieftains, who had made their peace with gedaliah, pursued after him, overtook him at the pool of gibeon, and took away the prisoners from him; ishmael himself escaped to the king of ammon. the chiefs of the jews, who were assembled at mizpeh, were afraid that nebuchadnezzar would still avenge on them the murder of gedaliah. they resolved to fly to egypt. jeremiah was to entreat jehovah, and declare his will to them. after ten days the word of the lord came to jeremiah, and he spake: "be not afraid of the king of babylon, for i am with you, saith jehovah, unto whom ye sent me to present your supplication. i am with you to help you, and deliver you from the hand of the king of babylon. if ye will not obey the voice of jehovah, your god, saying: we will go into the land of egypt, where we shall see no war nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of bread; the sword which ye feared shall overtake you there in the land of egypt, and the famine whereof ye were afraid shall follow close upon you, and there shall ye die. jehovah hath spoken to you, ye remnant of judah. go ye not into egypt; know certainly that i have admonished you this day." the warning voice was in vain. with the captains at their head, the fugitives who had assembled at mizpeh, and the king's daughters, men and women, and all whom nebusaradan had left behind with gedaliah, set out to egypt. jeremiah and baruch also followed, apparently under compulsion. the fate which the assyrians had prepared for the state of the ten tribes years previously had now fallen on the kingdom of judah. the temple was destroyed with the metropolis, and with the temple the last hope of the nation was gone; the remainder of the community, founded under joshua's guidance years previously, was annihilated; the sanctuaries were in the hands of the conqueror. like the israelites, the nation of judah was now shattered and torn asunder. by the canals in egypt, and by the waters of babylon, on the chaboras in mesopotamia, and on the mouths of the nile, lingered the fugitives and exiles.[ ] nothing remained to them but the remembrance of david's glory, and sorrow for the fall of israel. but the longer duration which was allowed to the kingdom of judah had borne good fruits. it had given the jews time to strengthen and deepen their religious and national feeling. it was not merely that the throne of judah remained in the possession of the descendants of david, or that the kingdom of judah possessed a highly revered centre in the temple, and thus had maintained a strong organisation of the priesthood; in the sufferings and struggles of the last seventy years these priests, in connection with the prophets, and filled with their views, had learned to regard the faith in jehovah in a more inward manner, and plant it more deeply in the hearts of the people. they had given a legal basis to the worship of jehovah, and exalted it to be the recognised religion of the state. if by this means the state gained nothing in regard to external power and security, an inestimable treasure was gained in regard to the confirmation and development of religious feeling. there was hardly any fear that the captive and fugitive jews would lose themselves in the foreign nations among whom they dwelt, like the israelites, who had been transplanted to assyria and media, or that they would give up their national faith. behind the punishment induced by the sins of the people, the prophets had proclaimed the restoration of the purified israel. the punishment had burst upon them, they did not doubt that the restoration would come. if asshur had fallen, the hour of babylon might strike; jeremiah had already fixed the time for it. thus the destruction of their state and their shrines did not make the jews despair of the help of their god, or cause them to fall from their faith. those who remained behind, no less than those who were driven out, cherished the hope of jehovah's help as deeply as they felt the pain of the fall of jerusalem. jerusalem fell nineteen years after the battle of karchemish. step by step nebuchadnezzar had overcome syria. first arpad, hamath and damascus had succumbed, then the ammonites, moabites and edomites. after judah had recognised his supremacy in the year b.c., the rebellion on which jehoiakim ventured three years afterwards had brought upon that country a severe punishment, and a condition of greater dependence. four years afterwards, b.c., the cities of the phenicians were reduced except tyre. the second rebellion of judah was followed by the annihilation of the country. the prophets of the jews looked forward to the war of nebuchadnezzar against egypt--to the punishment for the campaign which hophrah had undertaken against syria, and which had compelled nebuchadnezzar to raise the siege of jerusalem. ezekiel, who was among the jews carried away with jechoniah in b.c., and with part of them had received a habitation on the chaboras beyond the euphrates, proclaimed the destruction and fall of egypt. "egypt," he says, "has been a staff of reed to the house of israel. when they took hold of thee by the hand then thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou didst break and madest their loins to totter. thou wast as a dragon in the seas, and camest forth in thy rivers. the sword of the king of babylon shall come upon thee. by the swords of the mighty will i cause thy multitudes to fall: and i will water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountain; i will destroy all the beasts thereof from beside the great waters; neither shall the foot of man, nor the hoof of beasts, trouble them any more. go down to them that are sunk in the pit, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised."[ ] the same fortune was announced to the pharaoh hophrah and his land by jeremiah among the emigrants at tachpanhes[ ] on the pelusiac arm of the nile: "behold, i will give pharaoh hophrah, king of egypt, into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life, as i gave zedekiah, king of judah, into the hand of nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, his enemy, that sought his life. behold, i will send and fetch nebuchadnezzar, the king of babylon, my servant. at the entrance of pharaoh's house, in tachpanhes, he will spread out his royal pavilion, and he will come and smite the land of egypt, and deliver to death such as are for death, and to captivity such as are for captivity, and to the sword such as are for the sword. and i will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall break the pillars of bethshemesh (the obelisks of heliopolis), and the houses of the gods of egypt shall he burn with fire."[ ] nebuchadnezzar did not fulfil these expectations. he was not a conqueror who sought to press on beyond all bounds, and extend his power further and further. on the contrary, he sought to keep his empire within the natural boundaries, and not go beyond the desert which separated him from egypt. the subjugation of syria was not complete so long as tyre did not obey his authority. he directed his arms not against hophrah but against tyre. it was difficult to reach the island city without a fleet. nevertheless ezekiel looked forward to the speedy success of the babylonians, and the immediate fall of the great trading city. tyre will fall because she rejoiced over the fall of jerusalem, because she cried: "i shall be full, since thou art desolate."[ ] he describes in a lively manner how nebuchadnezzar will set up his battering-rams against the walls of tyre; how he will throw down their towers with his engines of war; will cast up a trench against them, and raise the shield upon them.[ ] he sees the island already changed into a naked rock for spreading out nets.[ ] these prophecies also were not fulfilled in their whole extent. the siege, after the capture of the old city, was no more than a blockade from the mainland, a cutting off of all intercourse of the city towards the coast, such as had once before been carried on in the time of shalmanesar iv. and assurbanipal of assyria (pp. , ), and now as then it was only feebly sustained from the sea by the ships which the subject neighbour-harbours had to furnish. nebuchadnezzar's troops are said to have remained thirteen years before tyre. the blockade was brought to an end, as it seems, in the year b.c., by an arrangement in which the tyrians recognised the supremacy of the king of babylon. "a heavy service," says the prophet ezekiel, "has nebuchadnezzar compelled his army to perform against tyre. every head is bald, and every shoulder peeled, and there is no wages in his army for tyre." the tyrians, as it seems, allowed nebuchadnezzar to elect their king. ethbaal, king of tyre, resigned the throne, and nebuchadnezzar set up baal in his place.[ ] after repeated struggles nebuchadnezzar had driven the egyptians out of syria, had repulsed their attempts to support the rebellions of the syrians. in addition to the tribes of the arabs between libanus and antilibanus he had brought the states and cities of the syrians to obedience; he had united under his supremacy the semitic tribes from the tigris to the syrian coast, from the persian to the arabian gulf. never had the ancient kingdom of babylon won such power, and taken up such a position. yet this wide extent of dominion scarcely bore comparison with the empire of the medes, in concert with which babylonia had overthrown the assyrians. but the territory of babylon between the mediterranean and the persian gulf, as compared with the long stretch of the median empire, which reached from the halys to the middle, and to the southern edge of the table-land of iran, was better rounded off, and the population of babylonia was more homogeneous. it belonged to one tribe only. these advantages, combined with the profuse fertility and the highly-developed industrial activity of the native land, with the trade and maritime resources of the phenician cities, could compensate to babylonia in intensive power the advantage which media had in extent. for the present the courts of babylon, media, and lydia, were peacefully connected by the ties of relationship. footnotes: [ ] above, p. . joseph. "c. apion.," , . "antiq." , , . [ ] ezek. i. , ; iii. , ; x. ; xx. ; xliii. . [ ] jerem. ii. . [ ] jerem. xiii. . [ ] jerem. xxiii. . [ ] jerem. xxxi. - . [ ] jerem. xxvi. - , . [ ] jerem. vii. . [ ] jerem. vii. - ; viii. ; xxvi. . [ ] micah iii. . [ ] jerem. xxv. - . by this date the identity of these warnings with the writing which, according to xxxvi. , , was read on the fast day, is established, an identity which is also proved by internal reasons. [ ] jerem. ch. xxv. [ ] jerem. xxxvi. , . [ ] jerem. xxxvi. - . [ ] beros. ap. joseph. "antiq." , , . "c. apion," , . in these passages the acts of nebuchadnezzar in syria are put together in such a general way, that from them we cannot draw the conclusion that nebuchadnezzar in his first campaign into syria passed the borders of judah, and that even then he had not only set foot in syria but had incorporated it. the uncertainty of the succession in the new kingdom must have called him back as quickly as possible to his home, and the retirement of the whole army is expressly mentioned. besides, from jeremiah xxxvi. , , , and xxv. , , it follows that nebuchadnezzar, in the years - b.c., and - b.c., _i.e._ in the fourth and fifth of the reign of jehoiakim, had not yet marched with his army through judah. joseph., "antiq." , , , represents nebuchadnezzar as conquering syria, except judah, after the victory of karchemish. the statement in the book of daniel (i. ff) that nebuchadnezzar took jerusalem in the third year of jehoiakim, _i.e._ in the year - b.c., is not a cogent proof. [ ] jerem. xxv. - ; xlix. - . [ ] habakkuk i. - . [ ] habakkuk iii. . [ ] habakkuk i. ; ii. - . [ ] jerem. xlix. . [ ] jerem. xlix. - . [ ] jerem. xlix. . [ ] jerem. xlviii. , . [ ] jerem. xlix. , . [ ] jerem. xlix. . [ ] kings xxiv. if it is stated here that jehoiakim served nebuchadnezzar for three years, and then revolted from him; if the punishment for this revolt falls not on him but on his successor jechoniah, it is clear that these three years must be reckoned from the end of the reign of jehoiakim, so that in this way the first subjugation falls in the year b.c. so josephus ("antiq." , , ,) states that the subjugation of jehoiakim took place in the eighth year of his reign, _i.e._ in - b.c. [ ] kings xxiv. - . that jehoiakim could not have attempted a rebellion without reliance on the help of egypt, is clear without further proof. josephus ("antiq." , , ) says: jehoiakim had revolted because he heard that the egyptians were taking the field against nebuchadnezzar; but the egyptians had not had the courage really to take the field. an attack of nebuchadnezzar on egypt, as well as egyptian prisoners who are led from syria to babylonia, are mentioned in the statements of berosus, quoted by josephus above, p. , _n._ but these statements are so general that they may also be referred to the war which nebuchadnezzar carried on with the egyptians in b.c., p. . nevertheless, the observation in the second book of kings, which follows after jehoiakim's death, "that nebuchadnezzar had taken all the land, as far as the brook of egypt ( xxiv. ), which belonged to the king of egypt," may have reference to a struggle then going on with egypt. beyond their own borders the egyptians could only have maintained gaza, and a few other cities of the phenicians. the statement of the chronicles that jehoiakim was carried to babylon in chains cannot be maintained against the accounts of the books of kings. [ ] kings xxiv. , . [ ] jerem. xxii. - . [ ] this date is fixed by the remark that it occurred in the eighth year of nebuchadnezzar ( kings xxiv. ). [ ] ezekiel xvii. . kings xxiv. - . chron. xxxvi. . in jerem. xxxix. - , and lii. , the number of the captives is given at ; the passages quoted from the books of kings put the number of the soldiers at , of the captives generally at , . [ ] jerem. xxviii. - . [ ] jerem. xxviii. - . [ ] jerem. xxix.; cf. xxiv. ff. [ ] jerem. xx. , . [ ] jerem. xx. . [ ] jerem. xx. - . [ ] jerem. xv. . [ ] jerem. xvii. . [ ] jerem. xi. . [ ] jerem. xv. - . [ ] jerem. xii. . [ ] jerem. xii. . [ ] jerem. xviii. - . [ ] jerem. i. - ; xv. , . [ ] jerem. xiv. - . [ ] jerem. xiv. - ; xv. . [ ] jerem. xvii. . [ ] jerem. xxvii. - . [ ] jerem. li. . [ ] this conclusion is rendered certain by the fact that afterwards the island city of tyre is the only one spoken of as not subjugated. cf. p. . [ ] ezek. xxxii. mentions sidon among the nations which had succumbed to the sword of the king before the twentieth year of nebuchadnezzar. cf. xxviii. - . jerem. xlvii. . [ ] jerem. xlvi. , . the position of affairs shows that this announcement belongs to this date. according to ezek. viii. , zedekiah appears to have had dealings with egypt as early as b.c. cf. joseph. "antiq." , , . [ ] kings xxv. - , . jerem. xxxiv. - . ezek. xxiv. . [ ] kings xxv. . [ ] jerem. xxxiv. . [ ] ezek. xxi. , , , . [ ] jerem. xxi. , . [ ] jerem. xxxvii. . ezekiel prophesies the ruin of the egyptians in the tenth month of the tenth year of his captivity, _i.e._ in the year b.c.; in this year, no doubt, the march of the egyptians took place. [ ] jerem. xxxvii. - . [ ] jerem. xxxvii. - . [ ] joseph. "antiq." , , . ezek. xvii. . at the beginning of the eleventh year of zedekiah ( b.c.), ezekiel says: "i have broken the arm of pharaoh," xxx. ; cf. xxxi. . [ ] kings xxv. - . jerem. lii. , . cf. ezek. iv. ; xvii. ; xxi. . [ ] jerem. xxxiii. . [ ] jerem. xxxviii. . [ ] jerem. xxxvii. ; xxxviii. . [ ] jerem. xix. . ezek. iv. , ; v. , . lamentations i. , ; ii. ; iv. , ; ii. , . [ ] vol. ii., p. . jerem. xxxix. ; lii. , . kings xxv. , . it was this outer wall of which the western front had to be pulled down for cubits under amaziah. vol. ii., p. . [ ] the capture took place in the fourth month of the eleventh year of the reign of zedekiah, in the nineteenth of nebuchadnezzar. cf. ideler, "handbuch der chronologie," , . ezekiel, chap. xii. [ ] jerem. xxxix. , ; lii. . kings xxv. . [ ] jerem. xxxix. , where the statement is quite general, "all the nobles of judah also the king of babylon slew;" and lii. , "all the princes of judah also he slew at riblah." [ ] kings xxv. - . chron. xxxvi. . jerem. lii. - . the ark of the covenant was not mentioned separately; it may have been already taken away in b.c. [ ] kings xxv. - , - . jerem. xxxix. , . [ ] jerem. xl. - . [ ] lamentations iv. ; ii. ; iv. . [ ] lamentations ii. - ; i. . [ ] lamentations v. - . [ ] lamentations iv. . [ ] lamentations i. , , . [ ] lamentations v. , , . [ ] jerem. xl. . [ ] jerem. xl. . [ ] jerem. xl. . [ ] jerem. xxiv. , ; chaps. xl.-xliv. ezek. i. - , &c. [ ] the announcements of ezekiel, chaps, xxix.-xxxii., belong to the period from the tenth to the twelfth year of the captivity, _i.e._ to the years to b.c. [ ] daphne in herod. , , . [ ] jerem. xliii. - ; xliv. . [ ] ezekiel, chaps, xxvi.-xxviii. the prophecy begins in the eleventh year after the captivity of jechoniah, on the first day of the month, and therefore four months before the capture of jerusalem; from xxvi. it is clear that the siege of tyre had not yet begun: because tyre rejoiced in the fall of jerusalem, she also was to be destroyed. afterwards, in the year b.c., ezekiel declares that the chaldæans have received no reward for their heavy service against tyre (xxix. ). hence the siege of tyre, which, according to josephus, lasted for years, falls between - b.c. this result is confirmed by the quotations of josephus from phenician annals ("c. apion." , ; "antiq." , , ). according to these, cyrus ascended the throne in the fourteenth year of hiram, king of tyre. before hiram merbaal reigned for four years; before him the judges mutton and gerastrat, and king balator, for six years, the arch-priest abbar for three months, the judges eknibal and chelbes for months, king baal for years, and before him ithobal, under whom tyre was besieged for years. the reign of cyrus is obviously calculated from the date at which he conquered babylon and the persians took the place of the chaldæans, _i.e._ from the year b.c. if we calculate the dates given by josephus to this point, the siege of tyre came to an end in the year b.c., and began immediately after the conquest of jerusalem in b.c. the addition of josephus that the siege of tyre began in the seventh year of nebuchadnezzar ( b.c.) is a direct contradiction to the other more detailed statements. no doubt we ought to read the seventeenth year of nebuchadnezzar for the seventh year with m. niebuhr ("assur und babel," s. ). [ ] ezek. xxvi. , , . [ ] ezek. xxvi. . [ ] that tyre, though not captured, was subjugated by the babylonians, must be concluded from the statement of berosus, general though that is--that all phoenicia was subjugated by nebuchadnezzar (supr. p. , _n._), and further from the fact that josephus ("c. apion." , ) tells us that merbaal and hiram were fetched by the tyrians from babylon; and, finally, from the circumstance that the reign of ithobal ceases with the end of the siege, and that of baal commences. hence it follows that ithobal was deposed, and his race carried away to babylon. that the deportation of kings and elevation of others in their place was usual among the babylonians, as among the assyrians, is clear from the example of jechoniah, and from kings xxv. . chapter xv. nebuchadnezzar and his successors. assyria had become known to the greeks about the time when tiglath pilesar ii. had reduced syria to submission, and the cities of the phenicians were subject to the kings of asshur--_i.e._ about the middle of the eighth century b.c. hence for them the name assyrians denoted the whole population of asia from the syrian coast to the tigris, and the range of the zagrus: "syrians" is merely an abbreviated form of the name "assyrians." in this sense herodotus says: "after the fall of nineveh babylon was the chief city of the assyrians."[ ] as a fact nebuchadnezzar had united under his dominion the whole of the semitic tribes on both sides of the syrian desert. the stubborn resistance of the phenicians and hebrews had been broken by repeated campaigns; at least, after the subjugation of tyre, we hear no more of rebellion by a syrian tribe against babylonia. nebuchadnezzar was able to complete the work which his father nabopolassar had commenced by liberating babylon from assyria after two centuries of supremacy and one century of dominion, and had secured by it the annihilation of assyria. the second king of this name on the throne of babylon--nebuchadnezzar i. had fought against assyria with some success in the first half of the th century b.c. (ii. )--he was the true founder of the new kingdom. berosus is fully justified in saying of him, that he surpassed the achievements of all the earlier kings of the chaldæans, though the addition that he ruled over egypt, as well phoenicia, syria, and arabia, is to be ascribed to the vainglory of the babylonian.[ ] nebuchadnezzar was indeed a prince of extraordinary gifts. he proved himself a brave warrior in the great victory which he gained over the egyptians at karchemish, and in the subsequent campaigns against the arabians, syrians, and egyptians. the fame of his battles reached the greeks: we find hellenic nobles, as antimenidas of lesbos, the brother of the poet alcæus, in his army.[ ] at karchemish and in the south of judah these had an opportunity of measuring themselves against their countrymen in the service of necho and hophrah. but nebuchadnezzar did not allow the successes of his arms to tempt him beyond the limits which he had fixed for himself. he was not a conqueror in the oriental sense, pressing onward to unlimited dominion. with a clear sense of his power, he placed bounds on his campaigns: as we saw, he refrained from attacking egypt. his chief care was the secure foundation and continuance of his kingdom, and he clearly recognised the conditions which would promote this aim. the object, which he thus set before himself, he sought to realise with wisdom, with unwearied effort, and the greatest perseverance. he did much to promote the welfare of his kingdom; to encourage agriculture and trade; to improve the communications of babylon by land and sea. he secured the strongest protection for his land and metropolis by a magnificent and well-considered system of fortifications. he must be numbered among the foremost princes of the ancient east. an engraved stone in the berlin museum presents us with a head; the cuneiform letters round it tell us: "to merodach nabukudurussur, king of babylon: in his life he prepared it."[ ] it is a portrait in profile, quite different from the only other relief of a babylonian king which has come down to us (i. ); quite different also from the delineations of the assyrian kings. instead of the tall _kidaris_, and the long curled hair and beard, this head wears a closing helmet with a low ridge. the hair can be seen beneath it, but it does not fall on the neck: the face is smooth and beardless. the lines are round and full, the neck strong. under the helmet protrudes the forehead, which slightly recedes; the brows are closely knit; there is a look of authority in the eye. the nose is straight and well-formed: the chin is short and round, and slightly elevated. it is the picture of a strong and even imperious will, a firm self-conscious power. babylon must have suffered severely in the repeated campaigns of tiglath pilesar ii., sargon, sennacherib, and assurbanipal, in the struggle for the possession of the chaldæan districts, for bit yakin and babylon. babylon was besieged and taken by sennacherib, and severely punished. the restorations of esarhaddon were no doubt again destroyed at the second capture of the city by assurbanipal. how far nabopolassar succeeded in securing not babylon only and the larger cities, but the country also from devastation and plunder by the sacæ, we do not know. in any case there must everywhere have been deep and severe wounds in need of healing. we saw that the produce of the agriculture of babylon, the fruit of the field, depended on the irrigation, the system of canals, and the regulation of the overflow of the euphrates. nebuchadnezzar must have commenced his work by putting in order the dams of the euphrates, which it was no easy task to keep up, by providing with water-courses or cleaning out the canals which had become dry or blocked up.[ ] the great canals of the old kings were still in existence, the canal of hammurabi, the narsares, the pallakopas, and the connecting canals between the euphrates and tigris above babylon.[ ] nebuchadnezzar must have taken measures for their restoration. he increased the number of the connections between the euphrates and the tigris, and made them more useful by cutting a new canal from the euphrates to the tigris, of sufficient dimensions to carry the largest vessels. this was the nahr malka, _i.e._ the king's trench. herodotus calls it the largest of the babylonian canals. according to xenophon's statement there were four canals connecting the euphrates and the tigris, one hundred feet in breadth, and deep enough to carry even corn ships. they were bridged over, and about four miles from each other. from these were derived the canals of irrigation, first the large, then the small, and lastly runnels like those in greece for watering the fields of millet. the larger canals of irrigation were so deep that the greeks with clearchus could not cross them without bridges; and for the construction of these the palms which shadowed the banks of the canals were felled. clearchus and xenophon crossed the two northernmost of the connecting canals in order to come from the median wall to sittace on the tigris. the first they crossed by the permanent bridge, the second by a bridge of boats supported by seven merchantmen. the lining of these canals was constructed of bricks, united with asphalt-mortar. there still exist four canals connecting the tigris and the euphrates. the saklawiye is followed by the nahr sersar; further to the south is the nahr malka, which leaves the eastern bank of the euphrates below feludsha, in order to reach the tigris at the point marked by the ruins of seleucia--this is the great canal constructed by nebuchadnezzar: lastly, immediately above babylon, is the nahr kutha, named after the city of kutha. thus nebuchadnezzar completed the old canal system of babylon; he facilitated the communication between the two rivers in the upper part of the land, and increased the irrigation. he also gave attention to the lower land: between the narsares and the pallakopas, which carry away the overflow of the water of the euphrates, below babylon, he made trenches in order to drain the marsh, and he caused dams to be erected on the sea-coast in order to keep out the inundations of the sea.[ ] in order to avoid destructive floods at the time of the yearly inundation, in order to bring about a graduated and regular rise of the euphrates, in order to receive the overflow in the years when the inundation was higher, and apply the water thus stored in the years of drought,--in a word, in order to have the water of the euphrates completely under control, nebuchadnezzar took in hand, and completed, one of the most magnificent of hydraulic works. above babylon, and the four canals which connect the euphrates with the tigris on the northern border of babylonia proper, lay the ancient city of sippara (i. ). near this, on the eastern bank of the euphrates, was excavated a vast basin, not inferior to the artificial lake of amenemha. the circuit of this basin is said to have been stades (_i.e._ miles); the depth reached feet. the trenches and dams, which formed this basin, were cased, on the inclines, with masonry, and the excavated earth was used for the embankment of the euphrates. according to the excerpt in abydenus, berosus allowed a circuit of parasangs, _i.e._ miles, for this basin, with a depth of fathoms, and added that the sluices, which opened and shut of themselves, according to the level of the water in the basin of the euphrates, irrigated the level land. if the circuit of the basin was really miles, we must suppose that here, as in the lake of amenemha, a low-lying strip of land was changed by embankment into a basin or wide reservoir.[ ] with this great undertaking were connected other hydraulic works erected at ardericca. at this place nebuchadnezzar caused a new bed to be excavated for the euphrates, with sharp curves, either to lessen the force of the current, and make navigation up the current possible, or, which is more probable, because it was necessary to moderate the flow of the river in order to conduct the inundation into the basin at sippara.[ ] by means of this basin at sippara nebuchadnezzar really brought the euphrates into his power. even though the excess of the water of the stream might be too much for its large dimensions in any single year, the canals leading to the tigris provided the means of carrying off the excess into that river, and at the same time it was possible owing to the connections to counteract by means of the euphrates the inequality of the water in the lower tigris. the regulation of the inundation, of the bed and level of the euphrates, and of the level of the tigris, was not only an assistance to agriculture, but to trade also, inasmuch as it facilitated the navigation in both streams. in this way trade received considerable support, and nebuchadnezzar also paid attention to it beyond the borders of the babylonian land. to his time apparently belongs the foundation of the babylonian colony of gerrha on the arabian coast of the persian gulf. for the trade of babylonia with south arabia and the products of india which came to south arabia (i. ), it was important to avoid the transport by land and the middle trade of the arabians, and to obtain those wares by direct marine trade with babylonia. the building of the harbour city of teredon at the mouth of the euphrates, miles below babylon, which became the chief centre of the trade in arabian spices, is, as we are definitely informed, the work of nebuchadnezzar, and the dedanites in whose land lay the colony of gerrha (the modern chatif) opposite the bahrain islands, at a distance of miles from teredon, had been subjugated by nebuchadnezzar (p. ). the gerrhæans brought the products and the incense of arabia on board ship to babylon; from hence it was sent up the river to thapsacus, and from thence carried by land in every direction.[ ] in this way the lucrative trade with south arabia by the sea-route of the persian gulf must have been gained for babylon. hence it appears that nebuchadnezzar built teredon and founded gerrha with the same object with which the phenicians--in order to avoid the middle trade of the arabians, and the difficulties of the caravan trade--arranged their navigation from elath to south arabia, in the time of solomon, jehoshaphat, and uzziah of judah. the babylonians were already or subsequently became acquainted with the navigation on the persian gulf. their voyages extended to the bold headland of the mountains of maketa (cape mussendom), where it was possible to enter into direct communication with the indians.[ ] at a later time we hear only of the gerrhæans as middle-men in the trade with the sabæans, while in the hebrew scriptures the rhegmæans and dedanites carry on trade with sabæa. the gerrhæans carried the products of arabia to babylon by sea; then they passed not merely up the euphrates, but also across the desert in a slanting direction to syria. it must have been one of the most beneficial results of the hydraulic works of nebuchadnezzar that the euphrates could be navigated up the stream; and triremes could advance as far as thipsach. trade was greatly facilitated by the fact that the wares of india and arabia could not only be brought by water to babylon, but could also be conveyed along with the products of babylonian industry to that city where the most crowded caravan routes from cilicia, syria, and phoenicia, touched the euphrates,[ ] while, on the other hand, the wares brought along these routes from syria could be carried in return to babylon. by the nahr malka the ships of heaviest burden could then pass from the euphrates into the tigris. if the cities of the phenicians lost their sea trade on the persian gulf by their dependence on babylon--in case the egyptians closed that gulf to the subjects of nebuchadnezzar--they were compensated by the fact that they could obtain the products of south arabia, not only by the caravan route by elath, but also in babylon itself. moreover, the arabian tribes on the euphrates and in the syrian desert, the kedarites and their neighbours, were subject to nebuchadnezzar, and the construction of the roads which led from babylon through the desert to the west, to sela and elath, which provided a far shorter means of connection with syria than the old caravan routes by damascus and tadmor to thipsach, and by riblah and hamath to karchemish, must certainly be ascribed to nebuchadnezzar.[ ] under the protection of the common head the caravans of the phenicians travelled in peace along secure roads from the syrian sea to the euphrates, the tigris, the persian gulf, and the east coast of the red sea. the impulse which the trade thereby acquired might cause the supremacy of nebuchadnezzar to appear to the phenician cities not only tolerable, but advantageous. the easier and more secure connection with babylon might, at any rate, teach them to forget in part the loss which their market had suffered by the fall of nineveh. the increased productiveness of agriculture, the livelier trade, and consequent growth of industry, could not but raise the power and resources of the babylonian kingdom. the more lively the intercourse between the two great halves of the kingdom separated by the desert, the more passable the desert became, the easier was it for troops to march from babylon to gaza, from harran to hamath. and if the canals of the babylonian plain carried the ships of the euphrates to the tigris, and left no field without irrigation, they at the same time largely increased the means of defence in the native land. the numerous invasions which babylonia had suffered from the assyrians must have been held in lively recollection, and the founder of the new kingdom could not omit to bestow his earnest attention on the mode of preventing such dangers for the future. they were only possible on the side of media. so far as the difference of force in comparison with media was not removed by the better frontier, the more homogeneous population, and the greater productive power in babylonia, it was necessary to attempt to remove it by the erection of fortresses in the land. as the attacks of the assyrians had taken place from the north, the attacks of the medes were also to be expected from that quarter. mesopotamia might, in case of necessity, be abandoned, if the native land were made secure. babylonia had excellent bulwarks on the east and west in the euphrates and the tigris; in the north the line of canals, especially the new and broad canal, nahr malka, formed a similar protection. the basin of sippara was not merely constructed with a view to the cultivation of the soil and the navigation; it was at the same time calculated that the supply of water contained in it was sufficient to change the most northern of these canals into deep watercourses. the sluices were guarded by the fortress of sippara.[ ] how destructive this basin would one day be to his metropolis, how it would render vain the fruit of all his labours, nebuchadnezzar never dreamed. if every hostile power in the east and west had to cross a wide river in the face of the babylonian army, the two rivers from sippara downwards could now be filled by opening the great reservoir and by closing the sluices of the pallakopas in such a manner that it became more difficult than ever to cross them. the same was the case with the canals. but the difficulties here were not so great, and they did not satisfy nebuchadnezzar. in order to strengthen the defence of the northern border, in order to protect the basin of sippara, on which depended the filling of the upper canals and the feeding of the lower course of both streams, to make more secure the fertile part of babylonia, nebuchadnezzar built a strong wall, extending from the euphrates to the tigris, above the four canals and the fortified sippara. this fortification the greeks call "the median wall." it was, in fact, intended to meet the attacks of the medes. had nebuchadnezzar chosen for the line of the wall the point at which the two rivers most nearly approach each other, the length of it would have been little more than miles; but as sippara and all the land of the canals had to be protected, the wall must have been placed farther to the north. it appears to have left the euphrates at ssifeira below the modern feludsha, and, extending in a north-easterly direction, it reached the tigris at some distance above the modern bagdad. the length was thus from to miles. the wall was constructed of burnt bricks joined together by mortar of asphalt; according to xenophon,[ ] who saw parts of it still standing, the breadth was feet and the height feet. the native land, the centre of the kingdom, was thus protected; and even when it was lost, in spite of the protection of the two streams, the canals, and the long wall, the metropolis was intended to present impregnable fortresses to the enemy. babylon had no doubt suffered the most severe wounds in all the land of chaldæa through the capture by assurbanipal. berosus says: "nebuchadnezzar restored the old city, and also built a new one, and that the besieger might not enter the city by averting the stream, he surrounded the inner city as well as the outer with three walls, one of burnt bricks, the other two of unburnt bricks and bitumen, and thus he fortified it in a very striking manner, and adorned the gates with great splendour."[ ] herodotus, who saw the city more than one hundred years after the death of nebuchadnezzar, when it had been four times captured by cyrus, darius, and xerxes, describes it thus: "the city is situated in a wide plain, and forms a square of stades on each side, so that the whole circuit reaches stades. it is divided into two parts, and the river euphrates flows through the middle. it is surrounded by a broad and deep trench, which is always filled with water. the soil taken from this trench was made into bricks, and burnt; and these bricks were applied, first to lining the trench and then to building the wall. the wall is babylonian cubits in thickness and cubits in height. the bricks are held together by bitumen-mortar, and at every thirtieth course they are separated by a layer of reeds. on the wall are houses of a single chamber, built on either side opposite each other, and yet sufficient space is left between them for a chariot and four to pass. in the wall are one hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts. the wall has wings which run along the river on either side, and the banks are cased with masonry of burnt bricks. the city itself is filled with houses of three and four stories, through which are straight streets--both those which lead to the river and the rest. those which run down to the river have each a brazen gate in the masonry on the river, through which you pass on steps of burnt brick into the water.[ ] and within this wall, which is as it were the corslet of the city, is another wall, not much inferior in strength to the other, but less in extent. of the two parts of the city the centre of the one is occupied by the royal citadel, the centre of the other by the temple of belus with the gates of brass."[ ] in another passage herodotus gives the names of some of the gates of babylon; he mentions the gate of belus, the gate of semiramis, the gate of ninus, the gate of the chaldæans, and the gate of the cissians. that gates in babylon could not be named after ninus and semiramis, _i.e._ after fictitious rulers, and hardly after the chaldæans, needs no proof in detail. but the narrative of herodotus, in which these names are found, goes back in other respects to medo-persian poems, which, as we already found, could tell of ninus and semiramis. the babylonians were better acquainted with the history of assyria. it is more striking that in the description of the city herodotus speaks of the walls and gates of babylon as if they were uninjured; and yet, some twenty years after the death of nebuchadnezzar, cyrus took babylon by storm; and scarcely twenty years afterwards darius overcame the city, after a siege which lasted nearly two years. a new rebellion quickly followed, to be crushed by a third capture of the city; and even after this a new rising of the babylonians was again repressed by xerxes. after this series of struggles the walls and gates could not have remained uninjured, and herodotus himself tells us that darius destroyed the gates after the long siege.[ ] were cyrus, darius, and xerxes likely to allow the babylonians, after each capture of the city, to restore the walls in which the city trusted?--were they not rather likely to take care that after each capture long portions of the wall should be destroyed, and so remain? next to herodotus in point of time, xenophon and ctesias are our informants about babylon. xenophon did not see the city; he only came within miles of it. he contents himself with remarking that babylon, the wealthiest city in asia, was surrounded by strong and lofty walls; that the euphrates flowed through it; that it contained a palace and citadels, that the doors of the houses were made of palm-wood.[ ] ctesias, who had been in babylon, gives to the wall of the city, "through which the euphrates flows," a circuit of stades ( miles). the wall, built of burnt brick and bitumen, broken by numerous large towers, was fathoms in height; and on either bank of the river ran a protecting wall, equal in strength to the city wall. the length of these walls was about stades. his description of the two royal citadels, "both of which lay on the river," one on the west side, the other on the east--the former was surrounded by a triple wall, and had a circuit of stades, while the other on the east side was only half the size--his description of the golden statues of gods in the temple of belus, and the golden altar and furniture, is already known to us (i. ). about half a century after ctesias, cleitarchus and the companions of alexander of macedon inform us that the wall of babylon had a circuit of stades; the height they give at cubits; the width allowed ample room for two wagons to pass each other. two hundred and fifty towers rose above the wall, of a corresponding height and thickness. between the wall and the houses was left a clear space of two plethra.[ ] that the number of towers was so small in comparison with the circuit of the wall is no reason for wonder--so diodorus or his authority adds--for the city was surrounded by a wide belt of marshes, and it did not appear to be necessary to build towers where the marshes afforded sufficient protection.[ ] the accounts which have been preserved of the stay of alexander of macedon in babylon also prove the existence of two royal citadels, one on each bank of the euphrates. in the last days of his life alexander lived in the king's palace, from which the house of bagoas, with whom on one occasion he banqueted, was distant ten stades.[ ] from the banquet-hall in this palace, where he had given his commands to his generals, and rested till the dusk of the evening, he was carried in a litter to the river, and conducted on board ship to the park on the other side of the river, where he bathed and rested. after spending three days there in his chamber--on the first day he played at dice with medius; on the second he listened to the account of nearchus about the voyage from the indus through the great sea; on the third he bade his generals enter to receive instructions for setting out in three days--he caused himself to be brought into the house near "the large bath;" he gave orders for the generals to keep watch in the portico, and the chiliarchs and the pentacosiarchs before the doors. when more seriously ill he was conveyed from the garden into the more distant royal palace, where the generals entered, and the soldiers forced their way into his presence.[ ] leaving out of sight what may have remained, and did remain uninjured, of the outer walls and towers of the city, when herodotus and ctesias were in babylon, and when the macedonians of alexander saw the city, it is clear that in the fifth and fourth century b.c. so much remained standing that the line of the trenches and the wall could be clearly traced. if the circuit of stades, given by cleitarchus, is clearly a fiction derived from the number of days in the babylonian year, we shall still be able to give the preference to the stades of ctesias over the stades of herodotus, though aristotle remarks, "babylon reached the extent of a nation, not of a city."[ ] since, as ctesias also tells us, the two walls on the euphrates were nearly stades in length, the wall on each bank would be nearly stades in length, _i.e._ about miles. supposing that the euphrates passed diametrically through the city, which was not the case, the city wall, if we also suppose that the city, as herodotus says, was an exact square, would at the utmost have a circuit of stades, _i.e._ of about miles. we cannot therefore avoid the conclusion that in the stades of herodotus the stades of the two walls on the river were included; if he inquired about the total length of the city walls the answer may very well have included the walls by the river. berosus told us above that nebuchadnezzar surrounded the old city as well as the new, the inner city as well as the outer, with a triple wall. by the outer city we must understand the new city, which, according to berosus, nebuchadnezzar built. the old city lay, like the old citadel (i. ), on the west bank of the euphrates. of this old citadel the remains of a square keep on the river, now called abu ghozeilat, are still in existence. herodotus, and the greek authorities after him, know nothing of an old and a new city, they only knew a city divided into two parts by the euphrates. herodotus does not speak of three walls but only of two, an outer and an inner wall, "hardly inferior in strength to the other, but of less extent," (p. ). if to these two walls of herodotus we reckon the walls which enclosed the fortresses on each side of the euphrates, herodotus would be in agreement with berosus. but ctesias and the companions of alexander know of one wall only, enclosing babylon. it would be very remarkable that within half a century or even a century after the time of herodotus, no trace was left of the two inner walls mentioned by him. herodotus allows for the outer wall a height of cubits, _i.e._ of feet, and a breadth of feet: ctesias mentions the same height, ( fathoms). moreover, ctesias allows a similar height for the second wall of the old citadel, and a height of fathoms for the towers; the third wall was higher still (i. ). the companions of alexander allow a height of only cubits for the walls of babylon. the walls of the island city of tyre, on the side turned towards the mainland, were feet in height. xenophon saw strips of wall feet in height still standing on the site of ancient nineveh. we saw above that the median wall of nebuchadnezzar, the first line of defence for the land, was feet in height, and feet in breadth; hence we may conclude that the walls of babylon must certainly have been stronger and higher. a hebrew contemporary of nebuchadnezzar speaks emphatically of the "broad walls," "the lofty gates" of babylon; he tells us that "babylon reached to the heavens, and the height of the fortress none could climb."[ ] as neither cyrus nor darius with all their siege material could make any impression on the walls of babylon; as nebuchadnezzar would certainly make the walls of babylon stronger than the walls of chalah and nineveh, so that neither battering-rams nor besieging-towers could injure them, neither arrows nor scaling-ladders could over-top them, we have good ground for assuming that nebuchadnezzar strengthened the wall already in existence, and raised it to a height of feet, (pliny gives it a height of more than feet);[ ] that the towers rose to feet. it was the standing walls of towers of this height which caused herodotus and ctesias to believe that the wall was once of the same height throughout. a height of feet presupposes a corresponding breadth of about feet, which leaves for the gangway behind the towers breadth sufficient for a chariot and four horses, or for two wagons of burden. we may maintain the assertion of berosus, that it was nebuchadnezzar who added a new city on the eastern bank of the euphrates to the old city on the western bank, so that the euphrates henceforth flowed through the city. we have already seen that the great temple of bel merodach, bit saggatu, the tower of babel, was on the eastern bank of the euphrates, opposite to the old city and the citadel of the ancient kings, who ruled over babylon before the times of the assyrian dominion; we recognised the remains of it in the most northern heap of the ruins of babylon on that bank of the river, the heap of broken bricks now called babil. in the ruins we can recognise the traces of a square structure, the sides of which are directed to the four quarters of the sky. its extent reaches or feet; the ruins now rise feet above the level of the euphrates. herodotus allows a stadium ( feet) for each side of the tower; the outer wall with the gates of brass was two stades on each side.[ ] berosus tells us: "nebuchadnezzar built a second palace beside the palace of his father, which abutted upon it. to describe its height and splendour would be superfluous: it was large and quite extraordinary."[ ] since the bricks of a ruin-heap to the south of the remains of the tower of belus, on the east bank of the euphrates, now called el kasr--bricks which are twelve inches long and as many broad, and three inches in thickness--bear on the under side the stamp of nebuchadnezzar, we are certain that the restorers of the kingdom, nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar, built their residences on this side of the euphrates, opposite to the palace of the ancient kings. it is these which ctesias has described to us as the smaller royal citadel, lying on the eastern bank, and enclosed by a wall of stades in length. he dwells on the statues of brass to be found here, and the descriptions of battles and hunting-scenes (i. ). so far as the fragments allow us to see, the palaces of nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar formed a square structure, which, feet in length, ran from north to south, close along the bank of the river: from the bank towards the east the breadth of the ruins is feet. the remains still rise about feet above the river. slabs of stone discovered in these ruins bear the inscription: "great palace of nebuchadnezzar, king of babel, son of nabopolassar, king of babel, the worshipper of nebo and merodach his lords."[ ] among tiles and bricks, yellow and white, we find here a number of glazed tiles, with brightly-coloured remains of pictures in relief, of horses' hoofs, and lions' paws, of parts of the human body, curled beards, and long hair, which prove that the walls of the palace or the sides of the rooms were adorned with reliefs, in mosaic, of hunting-scenes and battles. like assyrian plastic work, these remains are heavy, and mostly exaggerated in the modelling. the lion of granite, already mentioned, (i. ) was discovered in the ruin-heap of kasr. in this citadel, so berosus informs us, "nebuchadnezzar erected platforms on stone pillars, which he caused to have the appearance of mountains, inasmuch as he so arranged them that they were planted with trees of every kind. this hanging garden (_paradisus_), as it was called, he built to please his wife, who had been brought up in the median district, and wished to have a scene like her own home."[ ] nebuchadnezzar might gladly pay honour to amyite, the daughter of cyaxares, whose hand had been the seal of the league between media and babylonia against assyria. abydenus narrates, after berosus, that "nebuchadnezzar adorned the royal citadel with trees, and called the work the hanging gardens."[ ] diodorus also describes what he too calls the _paradisus_, by the name in use for such things in iran: "to please a persian lady these gardens were intended to imitate the mountain meadows and the tree-gardens of her land." "the _paradisus_" so we are told in diodorus, "was feet on every side; it had an ascent like a mountain, and stories, one over the other, so that it looked like a theatre. under the ascent were vaults, which bore the weight of the garden, in moderate height one over the other. the highest vault, which supported the highest layer of the garden, was cubits in height, so that it was of an equal height with the towers of the outer wall (of the citadel). the walls of the pleasure-garden were artificially strengthened; they were feet in width; the passages were feet in width: the caps of the vaults were covered with stone slabs of feet in length and feet in breadth. on these were layers of reeds, with a large amount of bitumen, and upon this a double layer of burnt tiles united with gypsum; on this followed a third layer of plates of lead, that the moisture of the earth might not penetrate into the masonry. on the lead plates was then placed as much earth as was sufficient for the roots of the largest trees. this earth was then smoothed and planted with trees of every kind, which could give pleasure by their size and grace. in the vaults were various objects of the royal household economy; one of the uppermost contained the machines by which the water was raised through pipes from the river in such a manner that no one could observe it from the outside."[ ] strabo gives the following description: "the garden lies on the river. it is a square plantation, feet on every side. the garden is supported by vaults which rest on arches, one of which is supported on another by means of cube-shaped pillars. the pillars are hollow and filled with earth, so that they can receive the roots of the largest trees. the vaults and arches are built of burnt tiles and bitumen. the uppermost story has an ascent like a stair-case, and abutting on this are pumping-works by which the persons appointed for the office continually raise water from the euphrates into the garden."[ ] this hanging garden is the _paradisus_ into which alexander was brought from the old citadel on the other side of the river. we saw above that one side of the garden adjoined the great bath and the other the palace, _i.e._ the palace of nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar. in the third and most southern heap of ruins in babylon, on the eastern bank of the euphrates, now called amran ibn ali, modern explorers believe that they have discovered the site of the hanging gardens which rose from the euphrates. the bricks of the ruins bear the name of nebuchadnezzar, but one has been found among them bearing the name of esarhaddon of asshur. we saw that esarhaddon built much in babylon, but hardly on this site; the inscription of the brick speaks of buildings at bit saggatu, but the brick itself has no doubt been brought to this site from some other place owing to the changes which babylon underwent after the reign of esarhaddon. according to the position of these ruins the buildings of which they are the remains formed an irregular square; the side on the river measures more than feet in length: the eastern side is about feet, the depth about feet. if this is really the site of the terrace gardens, the other ruins may be the remnants of the great bathing-house, of which we heard above (p. ). the corpses found in the vaults of these ruins, of which the coffins are formed by bricks placed together, belong to the period of the rule of the parthians over babylon.[ ] round the new citadel of nabopolassar and nebuchadnezzar on the eastern bank, round the old, most sacred temple of the city, the temple of merodach, rising on a broad basis in seven receding stories (i. ), which nebuchadnezzar was the first to complete, as we shall soon see, _i.e._ to raise it to its full height of about feet--round these great buildings, on the same side of the river, the new city must have arisen, which, according to the statement of berosus, nebuchadnezzar added to the ancient babylon. as this new city and its fortification date from the time of nebuchadnezzar, the permanent bridge over the euphrates must also be the work of that king. this bridge herodotus ascribes to nitocris, queen of babylon--by whom is meant amyite, the consort of nebuchadnezzar--while ctesias represents it as being built by semiramis, on the ground of the medo-persian songs which were inclined to ascribe everything to the founders of the extinct assyria, but very little to the still existing babylon.[ ] before there was a palace and city and city wall on the eastern bank, a permanent bridge was not merely not required and useless; it would have been a dangerous piece of folly for the city, which would simply have facilitated the approach to an enemy coming from the east. according to the description of the bridge which diodorus has borrowed from ctesias it crossed the euphrates between the two citadels, "which lay on the river in order to overlook the whole city, and formed as it were the keys of the most important parts of it." it was of the length of five stades, and was supported by stone pillars, which stood at a distance of twelve feet from each other, and rested on an artificial foundation in the bed of the river. the stones of the pillars, in order to hold them together, were secured with clamps of iron, and the joints were filled up with lead. on the side which faced the stream the pillars formed sharp but rounded angles, which gradually extended to the width of the pillar, in order that the violence of the stream might be broken, and the rounded edge might moderate its force. the bed on the pillars was feet in breadth and consisted of huge palm trunks and beams of cedar and cypress.[ ] herodotus says: "any one who wished to cross from one side to the other had to go by ship. but as this was found to be troublesome, in my opinion, a remedy was discovered. the euphrates was dried up by diverting all the water into the excavated basin; and nearly in the middle of the city a bridge was built of stones, which were clamped together with iron and lead, and at the same time the banks of the river so far as it flows through the city were cased with burnt bricks, and the descents from the small gates to the river were built up with similar bricks. in the day-time the beams of the bridge were let down so that the babylonians could cross over; at night they were drawn up."[ ] owing to the breadth and size of the stream, and the violence of the current at the time of the inundation, the building of a permanent bridge was no easy task. strabo puts the breadth of the euphrates at babylon at feet, xenophon who saw the river some miles above babylon puts it at twice that breadth.[ ] diodorus has already told us that the bridge was five stades, _i.e._ feet, long. this statement may be exaggerated, yet owing to the heavy flood at the time of the inundation, however this might be moderated by the basin at sippara, the bridge must have been raised so high, the buttresses and shore walls must have been thrown so far back, that a considerably increased body of water could pass down without undermining the casings and the shore walls. that the new basin at sippara was used in order to facilitate the building of the bridge, and erection of the shore walls, in order to reduce as much as possible the amount of water in the stream while the building was going on, as herodotus tells us, is a statement we have no reason to contest. in his time the bridge was still standing: the companions of alexander make no mention of it. nebuchadnezzar's buildings at babylon were intended in the first instance for the protection of the city. sennacherib and assurbanipal had taken babylon; such a misfortune was never to befall the city again. nineveh and chalah had been situated on one side only of the tigris: babylon must be situated on both sides of the euphrates. the city became stronger by being situated on both sides of the river. the investment would be a matter of difficulty, for the investing army had to be divided, and these halves were separated by the euphrates, so that they could with difficulty keep up communications, still less could they render mutual assistance. the investment would become more difficult still if as wide a circuit as possible were given to the city wall. it was not the multitude of inhabitants that required a wall of nearly miles in length--there is here no ground for attributing to the city of babylon a much larger population than that of nineveh, or assuming it to be more than , --the object was to make a blockade difficult or impossible for an enemy. an outer wall of miles is scarcely greater in extent than the outer wall of paris, which was built in the fourth century of our era, and what the states of the most ancient civilisation on the nile, the euphrates, and tigris could do in the way of vast buildings, is shown to us in numerous examples, and remains on an astonishing scale. by thus extending the city walls of babylon strips of arable and pasture land were obtained, which supplemented the stores of the city, and could support the cattle required in a time of siege; an open space was gained for the population of the land, who would fly into the walls of babylon at the approach of an enemy. besides, the walls of babylon must be in a position to receive the babylonian army in the event of a defeat. if the line of the euphrates or the tigris could not be held in a war, if the median wall and the four lines of the canals behind it between the tigris and euphrates were abandoned, if the army were forced behind all these or defeated in open field, it must be sure of finding certain protection behind the walls of the main city. when rested in this great open space, and again thoroughly armed, it could not only hold the walls with ease, for they, as we have seen, were so high and strong, that they almost defended themselves; it could sally forth for new encounters in the open field. if the enemy divided his forces in order to invest the city, the army of babylon could attack either of these halves with the whole force, and thus had the best prospect of a successful battle. it certainly was not the furtherance of intercourse which primarily induced nebuchadnezzar to build the permanent bridge; a bridge such as the enemy could not destroy by putting beams or heavily laden vessels into the river above the city secured for the army when it had retired into the city the speediest means of passing from bank to bank, and put it in a position to make a sudden onset on the right or left bank. even if the worst happened, and the enemy succeeded in gaining possession of the city on the western or eastern bank, the bed of the bridge was easily thrown off, and the defence of the part of the city which was still uncaptured was scarcely rendered at all more difficult by the pillars. the fixing of the foundations of the shore walls which secured the new eastern as well as the old western part of the city against attempts of the enemy on vessels, and from the river, and which was intended to render possible the defence of each part of the city after the loss of the other, would be very difficult: the fixing of the foundations of the pillars of the bridge would be more difficult still, and the bridge could not be rendered secure against the force of the high flood without the basin of sippara. we see how the buildings of nebuchadnezzar hang together; they all spring from one conception, from one connected system. to this extent do the accounts of western authors allow us to survey and criticise the buildings of nebuchadnezzar. from his own inscriptions we gain some further explanations. the cylinder rich informs us that nebuchadnezzar restored a watercourse to the east of babylon, of which the dams had fallen down, and the outlet was stopped up; that he dug a canal in honour of merodach in the neighbourhood of babylon.[ ] on a brick in his buildings at babylon nebuchadnezzar says: "i am nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, restorer of bit saggatu, and bit zida (_i.e._ of the temple of merodach at babylon, and of nebo at borsippa), son of nabopolassar i. i have built a palace for the abode of my kingdom in this city of babel, which is situated in the land of babel. i have laid its foundations deep below the waters of the euphrates, and written the memorial thereof on cylinders. with thy help, o merodach, god of gods, i have built this palace in the midst of babylon. come hither to dwell, increase the number of the births, and through me let the people of babylon be victorious down to the latest days."[ ] on another brick we are told: "nabopolassar, the father who begot me, built the great walls of babylon; he caused the trenches to be cut, and the sides thereof to be firmly covered with bricks and bitumen."[ ] on the other hand, a cylinder discovered at babylon tells us: "i am nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, the glorious prince. i have built imgur bel and nivit bel, the great walls which surround babylon, upon their lines. i have busily constructed the trenches, cased with bricks and bitumen. i have made straight the streets of babylon. i have set up brazen gates in the great porticoes, and i have widened the streets of babylon. i have taken forethought to protect babylon and bit saggatu. merodach, mighty prince, strengthen the work of my hands for glory, increase for the highest honour the course of my days, and my posterity, o lord of lords."[ ] more detailed, and, at the same time, more definite, is the information given on the cylinder philipps; the king has completed the wall round the old city, and built the wall round the new city on the east, and then the remaining works of nebuchadnezzar are enumerated. "i am nebuchadnezzar, king of justice, shepherd of the nations, leader of men, director of the worship of the gods bel, dagon, samas, and merodach. i am he who carries out their counsels. merodach the great lord has raised me to the dominion over the nations. i demeaned myself with humility before the god who created me. babylon is the shrine of the god merodach. i have completed imgur bel, the great wall. i have erected great gates and covered their portals with brass. i have cut great trenches and cased their sides with bricks and bitumen. on the height of the walls i have erected small towers. in order to protect bit saggatu effectually, and defend it against the enemy, and against attacks which might be directed against imperishable babylon, i have built a second wall, at the extreme end of babylon, the wall of the rising sun, which no king had built before me. this wall i caused to be erected to protect the products of the plain of babylon, and to provide a refuge for the land of sumir and accad. i have founded, i have completed bit zida, the eternal house at borsippa. the posts of the shrine of the god nebo i have covered with gold. there are enthroned nebo and nana. at sippara i have founded and built the temple of the day, in honour of the gods samas and bin, my lords. at larsam (senkereh), i have founded and built the temple of the day, in honour of the gods samas and bin. in honour of the god sin, who exalts my kingdom, i have built a temple at ur (mugheir, i. ). at nipur i have founded and built a temple in honour of anu (?), my lord. the glorious treasures of istar of arak (erech), the supreme lady of arak, i have again brought into their place in the city of arak. i have behaved myself as a pious man towards bit saggatu and bit zida. i have exalted the splendour of merodach and nebo, my lords: i have brought to them the booty which i owed to them. i have established the seat of power in babylon; i have founded and built it in babylon. i have brought great cedars from the summits of lebanon, to make beams for it. i have caused an enclosure to be built up, and in the midst i have adorned the abode of my kingdom."[ ] this cylinder proves that nebuchadnezzar's buildings were not confined to babylon. he claims to have founded bit zida, _i.e._ the temple of nebo at borsippa, one of the three chief temples of babylonia (i. ); but this temple had been in existence many centuries before his time. hence founding and building can here mean no more than restoring and completing: just as elsewhere nebuchadnezzar constantly calls himself the restorer of bit zida and bit saggatu. we found already that beside the temple of nebo at borsippa, nebuchadnezzar had restored and completed another temple in that city. this was the tower of borsippa, the temple of the seven lamps, _i.e._ of the seven planets, of the seven stories of which four can still be traced in the great ruins of birs nimrud, some miles to the south-west of the ruin-heaps of babylon (i. ). in the same way it is renovations and restorations of the temples of the ancient princes of ur, erech, and nipur, which are meant when nebuchadnezzar claims to have founded and built temples at sippara and senkereh to samas and bin, at ur to sin, and at nipur to anu. in the very comprehensive inscription, preserved on a stone of black basalt found at babylon--a stone more than three feet in height and breadth--nebuchadnezzar begins with stating that merodach and nebo, the gods which he, like his father and his descendants and successors, worshipped most zealously, had given him the dominion. he points out the extent of his kingdom, speaks of his victories and his buildings, and then passes on to the temples which he has built. after this come the fortresses, the buildings at bit saggatu and at bit zida: the building of the palace completes the list. the chief passages, so far as they are understood with any certainty, are as follows: "i am nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, great, mighty, submissive to merodach, supreme patis (ii. ), suppliant of nebo, day and night taking thought for the restoration of bit saggatu and bit zida, who increase the glory of babylon and borsippa, the eldest son of nabopolassar, king of babylon: i. the god bel created me, and the god merodach placed the germ of my life in my mother. i have restored the shrines of the supreme deity, extended the worship of the god, and spread abroad the worship of the high divinity of nebo. merodach, the great god, has raised my head to the dignity of king; he has given me the dominion over the hosts of men. nebo, who sits on the throne in heaven and upon the earth, has put into my hands the sceptre of justice. the lands from the upper to the lower sea (_i.e._, no doubt, from the persian gulf to the mediterranean) i have kept in obedience; the impassable roads i have made passable. the evil i have punished. i have discovered the plans of the enemies of the land, and made many prisoners: rich booty of silver, gold, and precious metals, costly things in abundance, i have collected in babylon. bit saggatu, the great temple of the might of merodach, i restored and covered with gold, so that it shone like the day: i have dedicated an altar to the god ilu (el). the largest trees from the tops of lebanon i brought down for the portico of merodach. i have been able to complete bit saggatu; to obtain this end i invoked the king of the gods, the lord of lords. bit zida i have set up, and covered the shrine of nebo with gold. i have restored the temple of the seven lamps at borsippa (i. ). in the midst of babylon i have erected a great temple in honour of bilit, the supreme lady, the mother, who created me; i have built a temple in babylon to nebo, who has given me the sceptre of justice, to rule the nations." nebuchadnezzar then enumerates the rest of the gods to whom he has built temples at babylon; the moon-god sin; bin, who gives fruitfulness to his land; the great goddess nana; and, finally, the lady of bit ana. at borsippa he also built temples to the great goddess nana, and to bin; he erected a shrine in bit zida to sin. "imgur bel and nivit bel, the two great walls of babylon, nabopolassar, king of babylon, the father who begot me, had commenced, but he had not completed their beauty. the outer trenches he excavated, and enclosed them with bricks and bitumen, and the banks of the river euphrates he cased with bricks: but he did not complete this and other works. i, his eldest son, the chosen of his heart, have completed imgur bel and nivit bel, the great walls of babylon." nebuchadnezzar further informs us that he set up two mighty casing walls, and united them with the trenches of his father; that he enclosed the water of bursabu with walls for the inhabitants of babylon, and carried the line of these walls to imgur bel and nivit bel. then he mentions the building of great gates in the wall imgur bel and their adornment; then observes that he measured a circuit of _ammat gagar_ (land-cubits), and mentions the building of the mighty wall of the rising sun, _i.e._ the outer wall of the new city on the eastern bank: this wall he surrounded with water: thus had he strengthened the city and protected the land of babylon. next follows an account of two trenches and fortifications, which he erected, in order to render more difficult the attack of the enemy on the wall of imgur bel _ammat_ in length.[ ] finally, nebuchadnezzar tells us that he founded the tabisubur-su, _i.e._ the outer wall of borsippa, and excavated the trenches. "bit saggatu and bit zida, i made to shine as the sun, the temples of the great gods i made to shine as the day. merodach, who raised me to dominion, and nebo, who entrusted me with dominion,--their dwellings have i exalted at babylon and borsippa. nabopolassar, the father who begot me, had begun to build a palace of bricks. i laid the foundations, and made use of great beams of cedar-wood, and collected treasures here. in babylon alone, and in no other city, i exalted the abode of my dominion." "for the admiration of mankind i set up this house; the fear of the power and the presence of my kingdom surround its walls. with thy help, merodach, sublime god, i have erected this dwelling. may i receive in it the rich tribute of the kings of all lands of the world, from the west to the east. may the enemy never triumph, and may men (?) of babylon reign here for my sake down to the most distant days."[ ] in a reign of forty-three years, of which the first three decades, though not each year of them, were occupied by the egyptian, arabian, and syrian wars, nebuchadnezzar succeeded in restoring almost entirely the buildings of the old kings of babylon, the ancient temples of the land. in babylon he completed the great temple of merodach, and built temples there to bilit, nebo, sin, bin, and nana. four cylinders concur in mentioning that he also built a temple there to the goddess zarpanit.[ ] he adorned the temples of babylon, as berosus tells us, and the inscriptions confirm his account, in a costly manner with the booty of his victories.[ ] it is certainly no exaggeration if the hebrews speak of babylon as "the beauty of the kingdoms, the pride and glory of the chaldæans."[ ] from the temple tower of merodach now completed, the lofty signal of the city, the eye must have ranged far over the surrounding walls to the palm groves,[ ] the canals and corn-fields. from the towers of the new citadel, the terrace of the hanging gardens, it must have been possible to survey the city with all its temples, the broad mirror of the euphrates, the busy life in the streets and on the bridge. here, without doubt, nebuchadnezzar might have uttered the saying which a hebrew puts in his mouth: "this is babylon the great, which i have built for myself as a royal habitation, as a sign of my glory." it was not the metropolis only which was restored and exalted to greater splendour than before; the rest of the cities were not forgotten. at borsippa nebuchadnezzar completed the great temple of nebo, restored and completed the temple of the seven planets (of birs nimrud), and also built temples to nana and bin. at sippara he built a temple to the gods samas and bin; the same gods, as he assures us, received a temple at senkereh; and this is confirmed by a cylinder discovered there: he restored the temple of the moon-god at ur, as he tells us, and the bricks of ur confirm his statement;[ ] istar of erech received back her treasures, and the god anu received a temple at nipur. more extensive than the temples are the works of fortification which he erected on a magnificent and well-considered system, the median wall, and the walls of babylon itself. we saw how closely these fortifications were connected with his great hydraulic works for the regulation of the inundation, for the connection of the euphrates and the tigris, for the drainage of the land at the mouth of the euphrates. the same care which he showed in these connections by water, and in planting those harbours on the persian gulf, for the advancement of trade and intercourse, he also showed in making roads by land. he laid almost indestructible foundations for the agriculture of babylonia, the welfare of the native land. after a triple subjection of babylonia the achæmenid kings could still collect talents (more than £ , ) in land-tax from the country; and impose on it for four months in the year the maintenance of the king's table in addition to the support of the satrap, his court, his officers, and the garrisons. the value of the products required each day for this table was rated at from to talents. the babylonians preserved the most grateful memory of nebuchadnezzar. even after the fall of the kingdom the recurrence of his name was enough to bring them twice into arms against the persian dominion. the buildings begun by nebuchadnezzar were not all finished when he died, in the year b.c. none of his successors came near him in military skill, in circumspection and enterprise. the active acquisition and fortification of the empire were followed by supine enjoyment. this was quickly succeeded by neglect of government and obedience, conspiracies of relations and court officers. evilmerodach, the son of nebuchadnezzar, reigned, according to berosus, with caprice and want of intelligence.[ ] towards jechoniah of judah, the son of josiah, whom nebuchadnezzar had carried captive thirty-six years previously to babylon--he had only sat on the throne three months--evilmerodach showed kindness. he released him from his long imprisonment, invited him to his table, and treated him like the other conquered princes, for whom babylon was a compulsory place of residence.[ ] after a reign of two years the son of the great king came to an end by assassination. it was the husband of his sister, his brother-in-law, neriglissar, who removed him out of his way ( b.c.). in the buttresses on the euphrates at babylon we find bricks which show that walls on the river commenced by nabopolassar, and continued but not completed by nebuchadnezzar, were carried on by neriglissar. the stamp of the bricks runs thus: "neriglissar, king of babylon, maintainer of bit saggatu and bit zida."[ ] on a cylinder found at babylon, neriglissar calls himself son of bel-labar-iskun, and speaks of his buildings at bit saggatu, of a water-basin "of the rising sun," of the erection of moats round the royal citadel.[ ] neriglissar died after sitting on the throne for four years: the son whom he left behind, labaessoarach by name, was still a boy. but the great kingdom of the medes had already succumbed to the persians, and babylonia was in need of a man. the chiefs of the court conspired together; labaessoarach was murdered after bearing the title of king for nine months; and the throne was conferred by the common resolution of the conspirators on one of themselves, by name nabonetus ( b.c.).[ ] berosus tells us that nabonetus (nabunahid) built the walls of babylon on the river of burnt bricks and bitumen. a number of these bricks, found in the remains of the bulwarks, confirm the statement: nabonetus as a fact completed the walls of the river. red or gray, and entirely covered with bitumen, they display the stamp: "nabunahid, king of babylon, maintainer of bit saggatu, and bit zida, worshipper of nebo, son of nabubalatirib."[ ] nabonetus did not only build at babylon; bricks at senkereh and ur prove that there also he continued the buildings of nebuchadnezzar.[ ] on an injured cylinder, discovered at ur (mugheir) he tells us that nebuchadnezzar had begun to erect there the temple of samas and sin, his lords; that he, nabonetus, completed the work.[ ] we are acquainted with the heaps of this temple in the north-west of the ruins (i. ). the tiles of the lower story bear the stamp of urukh, those of the upper the stamp of his son dungi; others show the stamp of ismidagon, king of ur, and kurigalzu of babylon, who restored this temple at the end of the fifteenth century.[ ] on four clay cylinders found in these ruins, which repeat the same inscription, nabonetus tells us that the building of the ancient kings, urukh and dungi, in honour of the great goddess (of ur), lay in ruins. this temple he restored on the old foundations, as it had been before, in bricks and bitumen. he had completed this structure in honour of the god sin; might the god grant continuance to his work. at the same time he entreats sin to implant reverence for his great divinity in the heart of his first-born son, bel-sar-ussur (belshazzar).[ ] beyond this we only know of nabonetus that in the year b.c. he made hiram, of the race of ethbaal, whom nebuchadnezzar had carried to babylonia after the blockade of tyre, king of that city, and sent him there.[ ] the most difficult of all tasks was already awaiting nabonetus: he had to meet the storm which convulsed asia. nebuchadnezzar had been ever intent on making the power of his kingdom equal to the power of the medes. media and lydia too were now subject to cyrus. a mightier power than nebuchadnezzar had ever looked forward to had set foot in babylonia, in the east, the north, and the west. "by the waters of babylon sat" the jews whom nebuchadnezzar had carried from their homes. they were men of distinction, the first in rank and culture, and the priests: it was the intellectual nucleus of the people that had been transplanted to babylonia. the danger that this nucleus, in despair of the protection of their own god, should turn to the gods of the conquerors as being more mighty, was not great. jehovah was no longer merely the tribal god of israel, who had been unable to protect his tribe against all other nations: the prophets had announced him as the almighty god of the world, who ruled over the kingdoms of the earth, who would raise up and throw down at his pleasure, who exercises justice. moreover, the captives possessed in the book of the law (deuteronomy) a plain rule of life, which had been wanting to the israelites when transplanted by the assyrian kings. among them were earnest spirits and mighty hearts, who preserved their courage and hope unbroken. opportunities for these qualities were not wanting in their dealings with their countrymen, for the exiles in their differences with each other repaired much more readily to their own countrymen who were skilled in the law, than to the magistrates of the babylonians. among those who were first carried away in the year b.c. (p. ), was the priest ezekiel, who had his dwelling on the chaboras, in mesopotamia. the rulers often came to consult ezekiel, and the elders gathered in his house, "that he might ask jehovah for them."[ ] his announcements are strongly coloured by the priestly point of view on which he takes his stand. he maintains strictly the rubrics and customs of worship, the correct offering of sacrifice. it is a comfort to him in his sorrow to imagine, in minute detail, how the temple is to be restored with all its buildings, the land divided among the tribes, what was to be allotted to the priests, and what duties would devolve upon them, if jehovah should restore israel again out of the captivity.[ ] hence with the firmer conviction could ezekiel say to his people, that they were a people of "an impudent face and hardened heart,"[ ] but that jehovah had no pleasure in the death of the evil-doer, but only in his conversion and improvement;[ ] that jehovah would assemble them out of the lands into which they were scattered. "i will bring you," so jehovah speaks in ezekiel, "into the wilderness of the nations; and there will i plead with you face to face, as i pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of egypt. i will cause you to pass under the rod, and i will bring you into the bond of the covenant. and i will purge out from among you the rebels and them that transgress against me. they shall not return to israel. i will sprinkle pure water over you that ye may be clean. i will put a new heart and a new spirit within you, and will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh out of my spirit, that ye may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances. then shall ye loathe yourselves for the evils which ye have committed in all your abominations; and the ruins of the cities shall be built up and inhabited, and the wilderness shall be as the garden of eden. israel and judah shall no more be two nations; they shall both be my people, and i will be their god, and my servant david shall be king over them, their only shepherd. i will conclude with them an eternal covenant of peace, and establish them in the land wherein their fathers dwelt, and multiply them, and let my sanctuary and my dwelling be for ever among them." prophecies uttered with such conviction and certainty, supported and strengthened the hope of the people in the coming restoration of the kingdom. it was possible by the help of jehovah. it might be expected all the sooner, the more zealously and heartily the exiles worshipped jehovah. the more melancholy the present state of affairs, the greater was the yearning with which the eye was directed upwards. under their foreign rulers the jews became accustomed more and more to think of jehovah as the one and only king of judah who would rescue his faithful people out of their slavery in babylon, even as he had once led them forth with a strong hand and an outstretched arm out of egypt. in the strange land and among strangers, where the jews were kept together by nothing more than their common religion, where besides their religion nothing was left to them, adherence to the old faith struck deeper roots, and the increasing strength of religious conviction saved the nationality. footnotes: [ ] herod. , . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] alcæi fragm. , ed. bergk. [ ] tassie, "catalogue raisonné," p. ; raspe, "planches," , . [ ] cp. strabo, p. . [ ] vol. i. p. . herod. , . arrian, "anab." , . polybius, , . strabo, p. . ammian. marcell. , . ptolem. , . [ ] vol. i. p. . abyden. fragm. , , ed. müller. the position of the [greek: basileios potamos] is fixed by ptolemy, , . that nebuchadnezzar caused the nahr malka to be excavated follows from the words of abydenus in eusebius ("chron." i. p. , ed. schöne): armacalen fluvium ex arazane (euphrate) derivavit: cp. "præp. evang." , . armacale must obviously be the same name as nahr malka. cp. plin. "hist. nat." , ( ). on the position of the nahr malka, xen. "anab." - . ammian. marcell. , ; and that it was navigable, herod. , . [ ] abydenus in eusebius, _loc. cit._ "præp. evang." , . diod. ( , ) ascribes this basin, as he does all the buildings of babylon, with the exception of the hanging gardens, to semiramis. herodotus describes the basin, and considers the maker of it to be, not semiramis, but nitocris, who lived five generations later. to the same queen he ascribes the works in the bed of the euphrates, the embankment of the river, and the bridge over the euphrates, , - . he fixes the date of nitocris more precisely when he states that cyrus marched against her son, who like his father was called labynetus, and took babylon. we know for certain that no woman reigned over babylon from nabopolassar to the overthrow of the kingdom. herodotus' knowledge about the kingdom of babylon is extremely scanty; he obtained his information, it would seem, chiefly through the persians; and it is restricted chiefly to these two names, nitocris and labynetus, for he denotes by the same name the babylonian, who arranged the peace between the medes and the lydians (supr. p. ). in the one case nabopolassar is meant by labynetus, in the other nabonetus; and so nitocris can only be amyite, the daughter of cyaxares, the consort of nebuchadnezzar (p. ). the statement of berosus in abydenus, putting the extent of the basin at parasangs (it is also found in diodorus, , , viz. stades), is so exaggerated that in this particular the statement of herodotus, who allows an extent of stades to the lake, deserves the preference. diodorus, _loc. cit._, gives the depth as stated in the text; according to the armenian eusebius it was cubits; according to the "præp. evang.," which also quote abydenus, it was fathoms, _i.e._ feet. [ ] herod. , . it is clear from the account of herodotus that the artificial bends in the river-bed lay above sippara. the object which herodotus ascribes to these works in the river--that the long and winding navigation and the large lake were intended to hinder the medes from coming to babylon and seeing what took place there--is naïve enough. the ardericca of herodotus is, no doubt, identical with the idikara of ptolemy, which he places more than three-fourths of a degree higher up the euphrates than sippara. ptolem. , , . [ ] aristobulus in strabo, p. . eusebius, "chron." , p. , ed. schöne; "præp. evang." , . dionys. "perieg." v. . ptolem. , . movers' somewhat different view on gerrha is given, "phoenizier," , , . [ ] isaiah xliii. . Æsch. "pers." v. - . arrian, "ind." . strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, _loc. cit._ diodorus, , , . vol. ii. p. . [ ] movers, "phoenizier," , , . this road certainly cannot be carried back to the phenicians; the nearest way, from nineveh to syria, often traversed by the assyrian kings on their campaigns, passed by karchemish on the lower orontes. [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , ( ). [ ] eratosthenes in strabo puts the length of the wall at stades ( miles) only, xenophon at parasangs ( miles), "as it is said:" in his time a part of the wall was still standing, "anab." , ; cp. joseph, "c. apion." , . but it is at the same time clear from the whole narrative of xenophon that the median wall was not situated at the narrowest point, but far higher up, where the distance between the rivers is far wider, _i.e._ above sittace. we have no definite evidence that this wall was built by nebuchadnezzar. if strabo ascribes it to semiramis, that means no more than the fact that the modern inhabitants give the name sidd nimrud to the remains. a wall against attacks from the north, against attacks of the medes, would have no meaning before the rise of the power of the medes; its origin and importance are entirely due to anxiety in regard to the medes, and that such anxiety did exist, was due to the experience which babylonia had had of assyria, and the relative power of the two kingdoms; and it is also shown in the statements of herodotus about the object of the windings in the river and the lake. the successors of nebuchadnezzar were hardly in a position to undertake such works. this could be done at most by nabonetus; but as josephus ("c. apion." , ) quotes from berosus a comparatively unimportant building of this king, the median wall would not have been forgotten if it had arisen from him. on the direction of the wall, cp. grote, "hist. of greece," , . [ ] beros. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , , . "inst. cyr." , , , . [ ] diod. , . cp. arrian, "anab." , , . pseudo-callisthenes ascribes to babylon a diameter of no more than stades and or feet: he ascribes to the city of alexandria in egypt a diameter of - / stades; , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] eumenes in Æl. "var. hist." , . [ ] so the ephemerides in arrian, "anab." , , and in plut. "alex." c. . [ ] "pol." , , . [ ] jerem. li. , . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] oppert, "exped." , ff. [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] euseb. "præp. evang." , , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] oppert, "exped." , ff. [ ] it is the less doubtful that the bridge is the work of nebuchadnezzar, since the basin of sepharvaim is vouched for as his work by berosus. [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "inst. cyri," , . [ ] ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] w. a. inscript. , . no. in ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] colum. , ; , . [ ] ménant, "babylone," p. ff. rodwell, "records of the past," , ff. two private documents of the reign of nebuchadnezzar are in existence, one from the first part of his reign, b.c.; the second from the twentieth, b.c. oppert et ménant, "doc. juridiq." p. ff. [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] isaiah xiii. ff. [ ] arrian, "anab." , , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] berosi fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] kings xxv. - . [ ] oppert, "exped." , , cf. , . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] berosi fragm. , ed. müller. that evilmerodach ascended the throne in b.c. is established, not only by the astronomical canon, but also by the statement of the hebrews that evilmerodach liberated jechoniah in the thirty-seventh year of his imprisonment, kings xxv. . jerem. lii. . between nebuchadnezzar and nabonetus the astronomical canon only mentions evilmerodach and neriglissar, with six years between them. josephus supplements this by the dates of the years in berosus ("c. apion." , ), which in the result agree with the canon. cf. euseb. "chron." , p. , ed. schöne. "præp. evang." , . the accession of nabonetus in the year b.c. is also fixed by the document in oppert et ménant "doc. jurid." p. . the statements of josephus ("antiq." , , ) are entirely false and untenable. the name of the last king nabonetus is established against the labynetus of herodotus ( , ) by the inscriptions. [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._, , , . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._, , , . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._, , ff. [ ] vol. i. ; ii. . ménant, _loc. cit._, pp. , . [ ] oppert, _loc. cit._, , , . schrader, "keilinschr. und a. t." s. . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , , . above, p. , _n._ in the fourteenth year of the reign of this hiram cyrus conquered babylon; he must, therefore, have been placed on the throne in b.c. [ ] _e. g._ ezek. xx. . [ ] ezek. xx. ; chaps. xl.-xlviii. [ ] ezek. ii. . [ ] ezek. xviii. - . chapter xvi. egypt under the last pharaohs. necho's views for subjugating syria to his dominion, and renewing the campaigns of the ancient pharaohs to the euphrates, were wrecked after some successes. the day of karchemish, which he lost to the babylonians, carried with it the loss of the conquests in syria, with perhaps the exception of gaza and one or two other places of the philistines. necho might count himself fortunate that nebuchadnezzar remained within syria. his attempt to support the rebellion of judah against babylon, which king jehoiakim ventured upon in the year b.c., miscarried, as we saw above (p. ). nebuchadnezzar now took all as far as the brook of egypt. necho's son, psammetichus ii., who succeeded his father in the year b.c., took no steps to hinder the fall of the phenician cities, which were subjugated by nebuchadnezzar in the year b.c. of psammetichus' short reign--it lasted only six years--herodotus merely tells us that he undertook a campaign against the ethiopians, and died immediately after it. from this statement we must conclude that since the time of psammetichus i. and the emigration of a part of the warrior caste, egypt had been in strained relations with the kingdom of napata, and the successors of urdamane. from the words of herodotus it would seem that psammetichus made an unprovoked attack on ethiopia; but of the success of the undertaking we know nothing. from some words which greek mercenaries of pharaoh have left behind them, and the place where they were written, it would seem to have been the intention of psammetichus to win back for egypt lower nubia, which, as we have seen, had for centuries been a province of egypt. we know the colossi which ramses ii. caused to be hewn out of the rocks before the entrance of the temple which he excavated at abu simbel.[ ] on the left thigh of the second colossus from the south some greeks, ionians, and dorians, have cut the following words in ionic letters: "when psammetichus came to elephantine, those who came by vessel with psammetichus, the son of theocles, wrote this inscription. they came up above kerkis, as far as the river permitted. the foreigner dechepotasimto, the egyptian amasis. but archon, the son of amoebichus, and pelecus, the son of udames, wrote me." others of the mercenaries, who were acquainted with the art of writing, have also inscribed their names there; we find a helesibius of teos, a telephus of ialysus, a brother of archon, python the son of amoebichus, and three others. the phenician mercenaries were not either now or later behind the greeks: phenician inscriptions are inscribed beside the greek.[ ] those of the greeks prove that psammetichus had encamped with his army at elephantine, that he had sent a part of it up the nile with a greek, the son of theocles, who had already got an egyptian name, psammetichus--(which he must, therefore, have obtained under the reign of psammetichus i.). his object was certainly not to obtain information about the land and the river, which was well enough known to the egyptians as far as napata and above it. but it might very well be necessary to ascertain the views and powers of the opponent in napata. among the names in the inscription first mentioned the name of the "foreigner dechepotasimto"--a name which no doubt belonged to an ethiopian--and the name of the egyptian amasis prove that egyptians and ethiopians acquainted with the land and the river were in the division of the son of theocles. how far to the south this division penetrated, we cannot determine, for the place kerkis, beyond which it passed, is not mentioned elsewhere. on the return the detachment encamped to the north of the falls of wadi halfa at abu simbel, and those among the greeks who knew how to write and wished to do so made use of their stay to perpetuate in this manner their journey and their presence in this distant region. nothing is said of their collision with the ethiopians; it appears that the ruler of napata had then abandoned lower nubia to the egyptians. if this reconnoitering of the enemy by the detachment of theocles took place on the campaign of psammetichus against ethiopia, of which herodotus speaks, we must place it in the year b.c., for psammetichus ii. died "immediately after," in the next year.[ ] nothing is left of the monuments of psammetichus ii.; we merely find his name-shield on the rocks of the islands of elephantine and konosso; they may arise from the time when the king was staying there, and had his head-quarters at elephantine, as the greeks showed us. we are also told by the sarcophagus of an apis, buried under the successor of psammetichus, that this bull was brought into the temple of ptah in the first year of the reign of psammetichus ii.[ ] in spite of the double subjugation ( and b.c.), judah remained in ferment and bitterness against the dominion of babylon. the accession of hophrah, the son of psammetichus ii. (apries of the greeks, uahabra of the inscriptions), aroused in jerusalem, as we saw, the hope of shaking off the yoke of nebuchadnezzar with the aid of egypt. according to the statements in the prophets jeremiah and ezekiel, which are confirmed by the course of events in syria, hophrah must have promised assistance to zedekiah, king of judah. the jews rebelled; but before the egyptians were ready, nebuchadnezzar had already invested the fortified cities of judah, together with the metropolis ( b.c.). in the next year hophrah's army marched to the relief of jerusalem, which held out stubbornly. nebuchadnezzar raised the siege, in order to meet the egyptians with the united force of his army. he compelled the egyptians to retire. after a renewed investment and furious attack, jerusalem fell (p. ). after the fall of jerusalem, as remarked above, the prophets of the jews expected that egypt would be attacked by nebuchadnezzar and subjugated. from the chaboras ezekiel announced to the dwellers on the nile the bloody vengeance and punishment awaiting them because they had been a staff of reed for israel; and jeremiah, who had been carried to egypt a few months after the fall of jerusalem by the jews who took to flight in consequence of the assassination of the viceroy of nebuchadnezzar, and had there found a welcome and protection together with the rest, announced at daphne, on egyptian soil, to hophrah and the egyptians, their destruction by the sword of nebuchadnezzar; he saw the king of babylon already enthroned on his carpet at daphne. but nebuchadnezzar contented himself with maintaining and fortifying still further his dominion over syria. he followed up the capture of jerusalem with the long investment and siege of tyre. when tyre finally submitted ( b.c.), ezekiel again saw nebuchadnezzar's army invading egypt. in reference to the long siege of tyre, and the fact that it ended not in the storming and plundering of the city, but in coming to terms, ezekiel says: "nebuchadnezzar, king of babylon, caused his army to serve a great service against tyre: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled; yet he had no wages, nor his army, from tyre. now will i give to nebuchadnezzar, the king of babylon, the land of egypt, and he shall take her multitude and take her spoil and take her prey, and it shall be the wages for his army. i will give him the land of egypt for his reward, saith jehovah. the king and his people, and with him the mightiest of the nations, shall be led forth for the desolation of egypt. they shall draw their sword against egypt and fill the land with slain. the pride of egypt shall come down; from migdol to syene they shall fall by the sword; and in the same day messengers shall go forth in ships to make the careless ethiopia afraid. i will make the canals dry. i will destroy the idols, and cause the images to cease out of noph (memphis). i will make patrus (upper egypt) desolate, and will set fire to zoan (tanis), and will execute judgments in no (thebes). i will pour my fury upon sin (pelusium), the strength of egypt, and will cut off the multitude of no. i will set fire in egypt; sin shall have great pain, and no shall be rent asunder. the young men of on (heliopolis) and bubastis shall fall by the sword, and at tachpanhes (daphne) the day shall be darkened."[ ] but even after the subjugation of tyre, nebuchadnezzar did not pass beyond syria. herodotus tells us that hophrah marched out against sidon, and fought a battle by sea with the king of tyre. of the results of this battle herodotus says nothing: he only remarks that after his great-grandfather psammetichus, hophrah was the most successful of this family. diodorus narrates: hophrah attacked cyprus and phoenicia with a well-appointed army by land and sea; took the city of sidon by storm, and the rest of phenician cities by the terror of his name; conquered the phenicians and cyprians in a great battle by sea, and then returned to egypt with great spoil.[ ] these accounts are very extraordinary. in the year b.c., tyre and sidon had striven with the ammonites and moabites against nebuchadnezzar; they were defeated. then, as has been already shown, nebuchadnezzar blockaded tyre from b.c. to b.c. we saw that hophrah opposed nebuchadnezzar in the years of the jewish war, _i.e._ from his accession till the fall of jerusalem ( - b.c.). if during this period, or subsequently, when nebuchadnezzar was blockading tyre, he had made war upon sidon and tyre, and the other cities of the phenicians, he would have worked for nebuchadnezzar; whereas, on the contrary, he must have regarded it as of the first importance that the last independent city of syria, tyre, should not be reduced. he must do for tyre what he had done for jerusalem, and for that city also he must venture on war with nebuchadnezzar. hence hophrah can only have carried on war against the phenician cities in the three last years of his reign (between and b.c.), and this again is only conceivable under the hypothesis that hophrah set out with the egyptian fleet against cyprus, which diodorus regards as the object of the campaign, in order to prevent this island as well as tyre from becoming subject to nebuchadnezzar--in order to obtain in this island a counterpoise to the incorporation of syria and the phenician cities in the babylonian kingdom. the war with tyre and sidon would then have broken out because sidon wished to prevent the island from passing under the dominion of egypt. but if hophrah, as diodorus states, had taken the cities of the phenicians, he must have taken them from nebuchadnezzar, which seems highly improbable. if hophrah wished to take them from nebuchadnezzar, he could not be guilty of greater folly than to wait thirteen years, till the submission of tyre, in order to attack the city when it had fallen, and nebuchadnezzar had established a firm foot on the coasts of syria. if he wished to liberate the cities from babylon, they would have been eager, so far as lay in their power, to receive the egyptian garrisons; we must then suppose that in their anxiety not to lose their trade with the lands of the euphrates, they had now vigorously repelled the egyptians. but if this be so, how are we to explain their earlier resistance, and the thirteen years' struggle of tyre against babylon? as already remarked, herodotus tells us nothing of any successes which hophrah gained against tyre and sidon; in diodorus the campaign of hophrah is primarily directed against cyprus, then against sidon and the other cities. hophrah returns home laden with booty; but of permanent successes even diodorus says nothing. herodotus, on the contrary, remarks that the successor of hophrah was the first conqueror of cyprus; and in diodorus it is the successor of hophrah who conquers cyprus. besides, after hophrah's time we find babylonia still in possession of the supremacy over tyre (p. ). it is obviously statements of the egyptians about the achievements of hophrah on the coast of syria, which herodotus and diodorus hand down to us: we know the style of the egyptian accounts of victory; but even according to these, as repeated in diodorus, there was nothing more than a plundering raid.[ ] the power of babylon over syria could not now be shaken. egypt must be content to be free from attacks. but in the west, in libya, there was a better prospect of success than against babylon. some years previously greek settlers had built the city of cyrene, to the east of the great syrtis, and the flourishing condition of this city was hardly contemplated with satisfaction in egypt. its importance was increased by a great number of new settlers, whom battus iii. had summoned to cyrene; and to maintain these a considerable portion of land had been taken from the neighbouring libyans. adikran, the prince of these tribes, summoned hophrah to his assistance against the cyrenæans; for this protection he was prepared to recognise the supremacy of egypt. hophrah sent a strong army against cyrene. but the cyrenæans succeeded in defeating it at the fountain of theste, and in inflicting a severe blow on the egyptians ( b.c.). this disaster caused a new outbreak of ill-feeling on the part of the egyptian military caste against the ionian mercenaries. as these, on whom devolved the protection of the eastern border against the babylonians, had been left behind, the egyptian warriors thought that the pharaoh had purposely sent them to their destruction. on their return the remnant of the army rebelled against the pharaoh; hophrah sent amasis to bring back the troops to obedience.[ ] amasis of siuph in the canton of sais was of humble origin, a man of loose morals, who loved wine, and the pleasures of the table, merriment and riotous living, but still possessed intelligence and ambition. instead of bringing back the rebellious troops to obedience, he allowed himself when he arrived in the camp to be saluted by them as king. hearing of this, pharaoh hophrah put himself at the head of the ionians and carians--they were , in number--and went to meet the rebels, who had already reached the borders of egypt. in spite of the bravest efforts the ionians and carians were defeated by the egyptians at momemphis, as herodotus states, or as diodorus tells us, at marea, on the south-western shore of lake mareotis. hophrah himself was taken prisoner. amasis intended to spare him. he brought him to sais, and there put him in prison in the citadel which his forefather psammetichus had built. but afterwards amasis yielded to the request of the people, and gave up hophrah to the mob who put him to death ( b.c.).[ ] thus ended the race of psammetichus in egypt; in the same region where his great-grandfather is said to have obtained the liberation of egypt and the throne, hophrah had lost it. since the times of the ramessids, the pharaohs of tanis and bubastis had no longer sought their sepulchres at thebes: the family of psammetichus had prepared a sepulchre at sais where his citadel stood. it was situated at the temple of neith the goddess of sais, at the tomb of osiris, where the saites kept the funeral festival of the god: here also was hophrah's body buried.[ ] amasis (ahmes) was raised to the throne by the egyptians against the greeks, to break down the influence and favoured position of the foreigners. his victory over the ionians had brought him to the throne. as soon as he had gained it, he returned back to the system which psammetichus and his successors had followed, and established it yet more firmly. he made ancient egypt an egypto-grecian state. his first care was to conclude peace and alliance with the cyrenæans. to king battus iii. of cyrene he sent a gilded image of the goddess of sais and his own portrait. he took to wife a woman of the house of battus, by name laodice. the ionians and carians conquered by him he removed from the eastern border, from the pelusiac arm of the nile, into the interior to memphis. they were no longer to protect the border of egypt which was most threatened, but the person of the king. he made them his bodyguard.[ ] the greek merchants he allowed to live at naucratis under their own overseers and their own system of justice. the settlers came in greater numbers than ever. greek hetæræe followed trade into the distant land and accumulated treasures in egypt.[ ] the greeks were even allowed to erect altars and temples in the country; the king himself provided the necessary sites; a proceeding which must have filled with horror and dismay the priests of the land, and all egyptians of the old way of thinking. hence the four ionian cities, chios, teos, clazomenæ, phocæa; and the four dorian, cnidus, rhodes, halicarnassus, phaselis, and the Æolian mytilene, built a common shrine for their deities at naucratis. miletus erected a special temple to her deity apollo. samos and Ægina also built special temples. amasis went still further: he honoured the greek gods by dedicatory gifts. two statues of stone, portraits of himself, and a wonderful corslet, as herodotus assures us, he dedicated at cnidus in the temple of athene; and when the delphians made a collection among the settlers in egypt in aid of their temple which had been burnt down, amasis also sent them a contribution.[ ] if amasis allowed such advantages to the greeks, he also knew how to reckon with the old egyptian feeling. besides two greek women, laodice and sebaste, he took to wife two egyptians, of whom one was the daughter of psammetichus ii. the monuments of egypt give us their names, tentchet and anchnas. the latter we see represented at selsilis, beside amasis, pouring libations to ammon, mut, and chons; her sarcophagus is in existence: tentchet is mentioned by the successor of amasis on a monument as his mother; she must therefore have been the sister of hophrah, the daughter of psammetichus ii.[ ] by this union amasis sought to legitimize his dominion and to connect himself with the race of psammetichus: and with this view he also gave to the son whom tentchet bore him the name of his grandfather, psammetichus. thus his rule seemed to be only the continuation of the dominion of the descendants of the liberator of the house of sais. he exhibited a proper reverence for the worship of egypt. in the twelfth year of the reign of hophrah an apis had died, and had been buried in the customary manner at the expense of the king. in the fifth year of the reign of amasis ( b.c.) an apis was again born, to which amasis appears to have paid especial honour. to this bull while yet alive, he presented a large coffin of red granite. the inscription on the cover runs thus: "the king amasis. he has caused this to be made for his memorial of the living apis, this huge sarcophagus of red granite, for his majesty approved the custom that all the kings in all ages had had such made of costly stones. this did he, the bestower of life for ever."[ ] when this apis died in the year b.c., he was buried with extraordinary pomp, and a memorial stone from the new sepulchres of the apis (p. ) informs us what part psammetichus, the son of amasis and heir to the throne, took in this burial, and in all the ceremonials observed during the days of lamentation.[ ] in the effort in which the rulers of egypt resembled each other almost without exception--in the desire to erect great buildings--amasis emulated his predecessors. his buildings began with his accession and ended with his life. sais was adorned by him with the largest and most magnificent works, for which the stones were mostly brought from the quarries at memphis, and the largest from the quarries at elephantine. to the temple of neith at sais he added marvellous propylæa, which, as herodotus says, surpassed all others by their height and size, as well as by the size and beauty of the stones of which they were constructed. here amasis also set up great colossi and sphinxes, and caused to be brought from elephantine a chapel hewn out of a single stone cubits in length, cubits in breadth, and cubits in height, which was set up at sais before the temple of neith. two thousand seamen were occupied for three years in bringing this chapel from elephantine to sais. a similar memorial of amasis lies on the site of the ancient thmuis in the delta. at memphis amasis built a temple to isis; "a work large and worthy to be seen beyond all others," says herodotus, and before the temple of ptah he placed a colossus of feet in height, and on either side of it two statues of ethiopian stone of feet in height. when herodotus visited egypt this mighty colossus lay at memphis thrown down on its back, and one of equal dimensions (no doubt they were portraits of amasis) lay in a similar position at sais. the other temples were not forgotten; amasis caused restorations to be undertaken at thebes, especially at the great temple of karnak: other temples were also restored and adorned with new buildings and statues. his sepulchre amasis built at sais beside the tombs of the race of psammetichus, whose dynasty he wished to continue, just as he continued and completed their system of government. it lies, says herodotus, somewhat farther from the temple than the tomb of hophrah and his forefathers, at the side of the colonnade before the temple. it was a separate colonnade, of which the portico was supported by pillars with capitals carved like palm-branches. in this portico lay the sepulchral chamber, a room of stone closed by double doors.[ ] of the eagerness with which amasis built we have still evidence in the inscriptions found with his name in all the quarries of egypt; in the limestone quarries of memphis, in the granite quarries at hamamat, and in the sandstone quarries at selsilis, and in the quarries of red granite in the south of egypt. the quarries of hamamat also give us the name of the chief architect of amasis, "the chief of all the buildings in upper and lower egypt," and his forefathers to the twenty-fourth generation.[ ] amid the cares of the throne amasis did not forget the easy and cheerful enjoyment of life, which he loved. when he had finished his business in the morning he sat down to table with his friends, drank deeply, and made merry with them without any regard for the ancient ceremonial of the egyptian court, or the remonstrances of his friends, who would recall him to more dignified behaviour. nevertheless, in spite of the favour shown to the greeks, he knew how to win the good-will of the egyptians, by a just, moderate, and mild government, and by regard for the well-being of the land. the tradition of the egyptians counts him among the lawgivers of the land. he is said to have regulated the economical relations and the duties of the nomarchs as well as their power.[ ] with the greeks too he passed as a ruler of extraordinary wisdom. in any case, under his long reign--he sat on the throne for years--egypt attained a high degree of prosperity. the freedom of trade brought in products: agriculture, manufactures, and trade were active. "under amasis," says herodotus, "egypt is said to have been most prosperous, both in regard to that which the river did for the land, and the soil gave to the inhabitants, and at that time there are said to have been , inhabited places in the land."[ ] but these were the last days of egyptian splendour. if babylon had hitherto been a dangerous neighbour, the position of affairs in the east changed in the reign of amasis for the most decided disadvantage to egypt. when cyrus had brought the kingdom of the medes into his power, he reduced the nations on the east and west of persia. at length babylon herself succumbed to the arms of cyrus in the thirty-second year of the reign of amasis. with the fall of babylon syria became subject to him, so that the youthful and mighty kingdom of the persians already bordered on egypt. amasis avoided giving any support to the resistance offered by babylon and lydia to this new power. if he succeeded, after the fall of babylon, in possessing himself of the island of cyprus, and so obtaining a position opposite the syrian coast, which might paralyse the possession of the phenician cities, this success, as opposed to the supremacy of persia, was only of importance in so far as it rendered the use of the phenician fleet difficult for the persians. the close connection also into which amasis entered with polycrates, who in the year b.c. made himself master of the island of samos, and got together a splendid fleet of heavy and light ships of war--for polycrates was threatened more heavily by the neighbourhood of persia than egypt was--could only be of use to egypt in defending her against an attack from the sea; it was useless against the attack of a far superior power by land. if in his last years amasis could take breath for a moment owing to the death of the great conqueror, the anxiety for the future soon returned with double weight. when amasis died ( b.c.) cambyses, the son of cyrus, was already preparing a great armament against egypt. to his son psammetichus iii. (psammenitus) he bequeathed the difficult task of meeting the attack of the persians. footnotes: [ ] vol i. . [ ] they are contemporaneous; if the reading hamsabatichi (psammetichus) is correct. the names of the mercenaries are said to be pethah ben jethar and sillon ben pethiach. blau. "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] if a. kirchhoff's supplement of inscription no. is correct ("studien z. g. d. griechischen alphabets," s. ^ ), "[greek: hoka basileus hêlase ton straton to praton]" the date of the expedition of the son of theocles must be put earlier. cp. ross, "n. jahrbücher f. philolog." , s. ff. the name of the father of theocles determines me in accepting bergk's opinion that these inscriptions of the ethiopian expedition of psammetichus ii. do not belong to the pursuit of the emigrant soldiers of psammetichus i. (above, p. ). [ ] brugsch, "history of egypt," ii. p. . [ ] ezekiel xxix. - ; chap xxx., from the twenty-seventh year of the carrying away captive of ezekiel, _i.e._ from the year b.c. josephus ("antiq." , , ) tells us, it is true, that nebuchadnezzar invaded egypt in the fifth year after the capture of jerusalem, in the twenty-third year of his reign, slew king hophrah, put another king in his place, and carried away as prisoners to babylon the jews who had fled for refuge to egypt. the death of hophrah in battle against or by the hand of nebuchadnezzar contradicts all credible tradition. in the year denoted by josephus there may have been a sharp contest on the borders, which josephus has exaggerated in order to favour the statements of the prophets, if, indeed, the year also is not derived from jeremiah, chap. lii. the carrying away of the jews who had fled to egypt has obviously arisen out of jeremiah's prophecy. [ ] herod. , ; diod. , . [ ] to conclude from the three fragments from aradus of egyptian, and especially saitic style, on one of which psammetichus i. is read, and the bas-relief of byblus (renan, "mission," p. ), with the picture of a pharaoh and hathor (de rougé, "rev. archéol." n.s. , p. ff), that hophrah ruled in aradus and byblus, is more than rash. from all antiquity there was a lively connection between egypt and phoenicia. if the phenicians built temples in egypt, the egyptians might also build temples at byblus. [ ] herod. , , ; , . [ ] herod. , . diod. , . [ ] herod. , . strabo, pp. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] de rougé ("notice") regards anchnas as the daughter of psammetichus ii. [ ] brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. of egypt," pp. , . [ ] herod. , , , ; , . [ ] brugsch, "hist. of egypt," ii. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , . according to diod. , , egypt in the ancient time had , communities, and under the ptolemies , . according to theocritus ("idyll." , ), egypt possessed , communities. chapter xvii. the overthrow of the heracleids in lydia. on the western coast of asia minor the nation of the lydians, which possessed the vallies of the hermus and mæander, had early arrived at a monarchy and a point of civilization far in advance of the stages of primitive life. the ancient royal house of the lydians claimed to be sprung from the gods, from attys, the son of the god manes. the city of sardis is said to have been built under the dominion of this dynasty, to have been dedicated to the sun-god and fortified.[ ] this house of the attyadæ was said to have been followed about the year b.c. by a second dynasty which carried back its genealogy to sandon, the sun-god himself, a deity whom the greeks, according to the various aspects of the nature ascribed to him by the lydians, sometimes identified with their apollo, and at other times with their heracles. as the founder of the new dynasty the greeks call him heracles. agron, the fourth descendant of this sandon-heracles, is said to have ascended the throne of lydia in the year b.c. after him twenty-two kings, the descendants of agron, bore the crown of lydia for a space of years, down to the year b.c.[ ] the power possessed by lydia under this family of rulers cannot have been very considerable. when the greeks forced the phenicians from the islands of the Ægean sea, and then, about the end of the eleventh and beginning of the tenth century b.c., landed on the western coast of asia minor, the lydians were not able any more than the teucrians and mysians in the north, or the carians in the south, to prevent the establishment of the greeks on their coasts, the loss of the ancient native sanctuaries at smyrna, colophon, ephesus, and the founding of greek cities in their land on the mouths of the lydian rivers, the hermus and the cayster, though the greek emigrants came in isolated expeditions over the sea. it was on the lydian coasts that the most important greek cities rose; cyme, phocæa, smyrna, colophon, ephesus. priene, myus, and miletus were on the land of the carians. the homeric poems would hardly have omitted to place a strong body of auxiliaries from mæonia, which is their name for lydia, by the side of the oppressed ilium, if the fame of a powerful lydian kingdom had then existed among the greeks of the coast. the land of the lydians is well-known to the homeric poems; they give a distinct prominence to the trade, wealth, and horse-breeding of the mæonians; but they make no mention of any prominent race of rulers;[ ] and yet the sandonids were on the throne at sardis when the poems were sung, and when they came to an end. the loss of her coasts and the mouths of her rivers must have been heavily felt by lydia. the trade with the sea and beyond it was henceforth only possible by the intervention of the greek cities which had grown up there. of the exploits and fortunes of the kings of the race of sandon we have almost no information. it is only of the five or six last rulers that we have the names and a few traces; and to these we may add two or three very doubtful stories of the fall of the last king of the house. according to eusebius, ardys, sadyattes, meles, and candaules, brought the series of this dynasty to an end: ardys reigned from to b.c.; sadyattes down to ; meles down to the year b.c., and he was then succeeded by candaules.[ ] the fragments of nicolaus of damascus, which must have been derived from the lost history of the lydian xanthus, give us the following account: alyattes, the predecessor of ardys, had left his kingdom jointly to his sons cadys and ardys. cadys soon died, and ardys was driven from the throne by spermus, a relation of cadys, who during the life of cadys had had an intrigue with his wife. ardys with his wife and daughter fled to cyme, and there he lived in such poverty that he worked as a wheelwright. two years after the flight of ardys the usurper was struck down by an assassin whom he had hired against ardys, and the lydians sent messengers to cyme to invite ardys to ascend again the throne of his fathers. when restored to the throne, ardys exercised a mild and just rule, and the lydians had never known such prosperity since the days of the ancient king alkimus (i. ), as they enjoyed under ardys. the army of the lydians also was strong under the rule of this king: it numbered , horsemen.[ ] a fragment of heracleides ponticus also gives us information about the fortunes of ardys at cyme. "severely oppressed by their ruler the lydians sent to cyme, when they found that one of their countrymen was there, to summon him to the throne. the man was the slave of a wheelwright. the lydians paid his price and took him with them. but a cymæan who had ordered a wagon kept him back, and told those who remonstrated with him, to put no hindrances in his way, for he considered it a great thing to possess a wagon which the king of the lydians had made."[ ] herodotus tells us that candaules, whom the greeks call myrsilus, placed the greatest confidence in gyges the son of dascylus, one of his lance-bearers. he went so far in this that he determined to convince gyges by the evidence of his own eyes that the queen, his consort, was the most beautiful of all women. for this purpose he brought gyges one evening into his bed-chamber, and bade him place himself behind the open door, so that when the queen undressed herself he might see her naked. this was done. but the queen saw gyges when he passed out. enraged at the insult offered to her by candaules she sent for gyges on the following morning, and gave him the choice whether he would die on the spot, or slay candaules on the following night. he chose the latter. she gave him a dagger and concealed him behind the door, and gyges stabbed candaules as soon as he was asleep. but the lydians rose in arms to avenge the death of their king. the adherents of gyges and the rest of the lydians came to a compromise, that, if the oracle of the god should declare for gyges as the king of the lydians, he should rule, but if not, gyges was to restore the kingdom to the race of sandon. according to the fragments of nicolaus it was the good king ardys who laid the foundation for the overthrow of the house of the sandonids. in his old age, so we are told, ardys took great delight in a man of the race of the mermnadæ. this was dascylus, the son of gyges. at length ardys handed over to him the entire government. sadyattes, the son and heir of ardys, became apprehensive that, at the death of ardys, dascylus would misuse the great power entrusted to him, in order to establish himself on the throne. he caused dascylus to be secretly put out of the way. filled with grief, the old king caused the lydians to be assembled, had himself carried into the assembly in a litter, bade the lydians discover the murderers, on whose heads he imprecated bitter curses, and ended by saying that any one who discovered them might slay them. but the murderers were not discovered. after the death of ardys, sadyattes ascended the throne, and he was succeeded by meles. in this reign lydia was visited by a severe famine, and an oracle demanded that the death of dascylus should be expiated. the wife of dascylus had fled to phrygia, her home, and had there brought forth a son, with whom she was pregnant at the time of his father's death. she had given him the name of his father. dascylus, who had now grown up, was requested by meles to return to sardis, in order to receive there the atonement for the murder of his father. but dascylus feared to return, and retired to the syrians who dwell in sinope, on the pontus, where he married a syrian woman, who bore him gyges. after the reigns of meles and myrsus, candaules ascended the throne of lydia. then the aged brother of the murdered dascylus, who had remained in sardis and was childless, besought the king that his nephew dascylus might be allowed to return to sardis, that he might adopt him as his son before his death. this prayer the king granted, but dascylus refused to leave his abode; he sent his son gyges, then eighteen years old, to his great-uncle at sardis. gyges was a handsome youth. in riding and in all martial exercises he surpassed his comrades; and he had also proved his bravery in war. owing to his stature and his beauty the king took him into his body-guard, made him his favourite, honoured him before all others, and gave him large presents of land. when candaules would marry tudo, the daughter of arnossus, the king of the mysians, he sent gyges to bring home the bride. while gyges was bringing the princess to sardis in his chariot, he fell violently in love with her, and, no longer master of himself, attempted to embrace her, in spite of her struggles and threats. on her arrival in sardis she did not conceal what gyges had done, and the king swore that the offender should be put to death on the next day. a maid who was devoted to gyges overheard the words of the king and repeated them to gyges on the same night. determined to slay the king rather than allow himself to be slain, gyges collected his nearest friends, besought their assistance, and reminded them of the curse which ardys had laid on the murderers of his grandfather. in arms they hastened into the royal citadel. the maid opened the door of the bed-chamber for gyges, who stabbed the sleeping king with his sword. in the morning a message went forth from the citadel to the chief men in the kingdom; they were to appear before the face of the king. they obeyed without any suspicion, in the belief that they had been summoned by candaules. gyges caused those to be slain who, as he thought, would be his enemies, and gave handsome presents to those whom he hoped to win. he armed all whom he gained to his side: the body-guard also took his part, so that the lydians, when they discovered what had taken place, though they rose against the murderer of the king, did not venture to attack him. but they sent to delphi to inquire whether they should take gyges to be their king; and the god bade them do so, and gyges took tudo to wife.[ ] in the narrative of nicolaus it is the curse which ardys uttered upon the murderers of the first dascylus, and the late vengeance for this murder which comes upon the descendants of sadyattes, and causes the overthrow of the kingdom. but the guilt of sadyattes is not the only cause: ardys himself sinned by the excessive confidence which he reposed in dascylus; and candaules goes further still in his blind confidence in the grandson of dascylus; he gives him land; he sets him above all others; he commissions the youth of twenty years to bring home the royal bride to her marriage. the same fault of excessive and misplaced confidence, though in another direction, is in herodotus the cause of the overthrow of candaules and his house. in a third version, given by plutarch, we still find the same motive. when heracles had slain hippolyte (the queen of the amazons), he gave her battle-axe to omphale. the kings who ruled over lydia after omphale, had carried this battle-axe, each handing it to his successor, down to candaules, who disregarded it and gave it to his favourite to carry; but this favourite in plutarch is not gyges.[ ] the relation into which herodotus represents the wife of candaules as entering, after her dishonour, with gyges, the guard of her husband, appears to be founded on a similar story, which a legend ascribes to an ancestor of gyges. gyges, the forefather of lydus, so we are told in plato, was one of the shepherds of the king of the lydians. after a severe storm of rain and an earthquake, the earth opened where he was keeping his cattle. out of curiosity he descended into the gulf, and saw marvellous things: among others a brazen horse with windows, through which he saw a dead man of superhuman size, who had nothing on beyond a golden ring on his finger. this ring gyges took, and climbed out. when he sat among the rest of the shepherds in order to give the king the monthly account of the condition of the flocks, with this ring on his finger, he happened to turn the stone on it towards himself. then he perceived that the others did not see him, and spoke of him as though absent. when he turned the stone away from himself, he was again seen by them. having assured himself of this fact, he procured that he should be chosen among the messengers sent to the king. there he won the favour of the queen, united with her for the overthrow of the king, slew him, and seized the throne.[ ] we saw that the lydians derived the tribes of their nation from attys and cotys; the sons of the god manes, and from the sons of lydus, torrhebus and asius. if the first gyges could be called an ancestor of lydus, he must have held a high position in the legend of the lydians. this conclusion is confirmed by the homeric poems in which the lake of gyges is the centre of the lydian land and the lydian life. on this lake of gyges the descendants of the youngest gyges, his successors on the throne, which he had won for them, had their tombs; but the graves of the kings before them were also to be sought on the same lake. the race of the mermnadæ, which carried back its origin to the first gyges, must, therefore, have been ancient and important among the lydians. conscious of such a descent, it may have considered itself little inferior to the house of the kings, whose ancestor was the sun-god himself. we might, perhaps, assume that the mermnadæ, in the later days of ardys or after him, attained to prominent importance; that anxiety on account of this prominence brought on them persecution and expulsion on the part of the successors of ardys. the wife of the murdered dascylus flies to the phrygians; her son of the same name takes refuge with the syrians on the pontus, at sinope. hence the exiles sought not only protection but also support among their neighbours against the kings of the lydians. pausanias mentions to us a place belonging to dascylus on the white plain in caria, on the borders of lydia;[ ] and plutarch tells us: "arselis, the carian of mylasa, came to the aid of gyges, the son of dascylus the younger, when he fought against candaules, and helped gyges to victory. arselis slew both candaules and the youth to whom candaules had given the sacred symbol of the royal office of lydia, and placed the battle-axe as an ornament in the hand of the statue of zeus at mylasa." hence gyges was in communication with the carians when he rebelled against candaules. we may go a step further. at the time when candaules reigned over lydia ( - b.c.), the cimmerians invaded phrygia from pontus, the very region to which the younger dascylus, the father of gyges, is said to have fled; king midas took his own life in consequence of this disaster ( b.c.). the magnesians, who inhabited the most inland city of the greeks on the lower mæander, suffered at the hands of the cimmerians a defeat much lamented by the greeks; and the poet callinus of ephesus cried to his countrymen, "the army of the cimmerians, who have done mighty deeds, is approaching," and urged them to brave resistance.[ ] lydia was not spared. sardis was taken by the cimmerians (i. ). the storm passed over, but it had beyond a doubt deeply shaken the lydian kingdom and the position of king candaules. of this king we only know that he paid the greek painter, bularchus, for a picture which represented the battle and defeat of the magnesians with an equal weight of gold, though the picture was of moderate size only. this was a passion for art little in accordance with the position of his kingdom, and it seems to confirm the account of plutarch that candaules reigned with little care, and left the government to a favourite. after the blow which lydia suffered by the invasion of the cimmerians, the mermnadæ must have considered that their time was come. whether they were really allowed to return, whether gyges had a place in the body-guard or not, cannot be decided. what is certain is that he did not attain to the throne without an open struggle, whether it was against candaules himself, or his party, the party of the ancient royal family; it is certain, too, that carian troops supported him, though the arselis in plutarch is not a carian, but the carian war-god, or the axe of this war-god of mylasa.[ ] moreover, it is certain that gyges was not able to overcome by force of arms the resistance of the lydians, who adhered to the ancient royal family. in herodotus, as in nicolaus, the lydians take up arms against gyges; in both the decision which follows is due to the oracle of the god. the arrangement in herodotus--if the oracle of the god declared for gyges he was to reign, and if against him, the kingdom was to go back to the race of heracles, _i.e._ of the sun-god--may be regarded as historical, and that the decision should be sought from the deity, from whom the house hitherto on the throne sprang, shows that the lydians adhered firmly to their ancient royal family. the decision of the civil war in lydia was sought in delphi. the fame of the temple at delphi, which belonged to the light-god of the hellenes, had long reached the lydians and phrygians through the greeks of the coast. before this time midas of phrygia had dedicated a pedestal and other presents at delphi (i. ). as the greeks recognised their apollo and their heracles in the sun-god of the lydians (i. ), so did the lydians regard the god of light, the archer-god of delphi, as their own sun-god. the impartial sun-god of the stranger was to decide whether the descendants of the native sun-god were to lose or keep the throne. the oracle of the god of delphi decided for gyges. in gratitude he sent rich presents, a great mass of silver and gold, to delphi. herodotus mentions especially six golden milk-vessels, thirty talents in weight.[ ] footnotes: [ ] vol. i. p. ff. [ ] herodotus allows years for the mermnadæ, the successors of the heracleidæ of lydia. if the fall of croesus is to be placed, as i shall prove in book viii. chap. , in the year b.c., his ancestor gyges must have ascended the throne in b.c. ( + = ). in the canon of eusebius the series of the lydian kings begins with the sandonid ardys, whose accession eusebius places immediately before olymp. i., and it continues years. in the same canon the date of the mermnadæ begins years before the fall of croesus, and consequently in the year b.c. ( + = ). hence eusebius allows years less then herodotus to the mermnadæ. the fact that herodotus allows years to two rulers of the five mermnadæ, is no reason for departing from his dates. but we have seen above that the first invasion of the west of asia minor by the cimmerians must be placed about the year b.c. the time is fixed more exactly by the fact that midas of phrygia, whose wife was the daughter of agamemnon king of cyme (i. ), who dedicated a throne at delphi, before gyges sent presents there, reigned, in eusebius, from b.c. to b.c., in which year he killed himself by bull's blood, because the cimmerians invaded his land: strabo, p. . it was in this invasion of the cimmerians that magnesia succumbed; the fall of which archilochus mentioned in the line, "i weep for the disaster of the thasians, not of the magnesians," fragm. , ed. bergk. when this happened gyges was not yet king of lydia. candaules, the last sandonid, was still on the throne. "is it not admitted," says pliny, "that the picture of bularchus, which represented the battle of the magnesians, was purchased for its weight in gold by candaules, the last king of the race of the heracleidæ, who is also called myrsilus?" "hist. nat." , ( , in detlefsen). and also "king candaules paid for the picture of bularchus representing the defeat of the magnesians--a work of moderate size--with its weight in gold:" _loc. cit._ , ( , in detlefsen). according to this midas was on the throne before gyges, and magnesia fell before the cimmerians when the last heracleid held sway in lydia; and as the cimmerians could only reach magnesia through phrygia, candaules must have sat on the throne in the year b.c. and later. hence both the numbers of herodotus which give b.c., and those of eusebius which give b.c. for the accession of gyges, are too high. but the latter allow an abbreviation of ten years. in herodotus twelve years are allowed to sadyattes, the third mermnad: in the canon of eusebius he has fifteen years; but in the list of lydian kings in the first book, which in the rest agrees with the canon (it is unimportant that gyges has in the former , in the latter years, ardys in the one and in the other), we find only five years instead of fifteen given to sadyattes. if we accept this abbreviation candaules was still on the throne in the year b.c. gyges ascended the throne after midas and candaules in the year b.c. there are other grounds, beside these quoted, which make this necessary. assurbanipal of asshur told us of his dealings with gyges, of the league between gyges and psammetichus, to whom gyges sent help: assurbanipal began to reign in b.c. psammetichus was first placed over sais as a vassal in assyria in , and could not have rebelled against assyria before b.c. (p. ). but according to the dates of herodotus gyges came to an end in b.c.; and if we follow the date given for the beginning of his reign in eusebius he died in . hence the only possible solution is to assume the numbers of the first book of eusebius, with the reduction for sadyattes. hence the dates for the reigns are as follows: gyges, - ; ardys, - ; sadyattes - ; alyattes, - ; croesus, - b.c. [ ] the catalogue of the ships ("il." . ) mentions only mesthles and antiphos as the leaders of the mæonians, sons of pylæmenes, and the nymph of the lake gygæa. [ ] according to the reduction established above for the third mermnad in the canon, ardys begins b.c. [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] heracl. pont. fragm. , , , ed. müller. [ ] though the last sandonid is also called sadyattes in nicolaus, i have put candaules in the text because he, like the candaules of herodotus, is the son of myrsus. the reign of myrsus is not found in the canon or in the other three lists of lydian kings in eusebius. the four mermnads, gyges, dascylus, dascylus, gyges, must be met by four heracleids, ardys, sadyattes, meles, and candaules. myrsus might have arisen out of the name myrsilus, which the greeks gave to candaules, or candaules was the son of a myrsus who did not reign. that the last sandonid reigned only three years as nicolaus supposes is impossible. according to this gyges gained the throne at years of age. and what we know from other sources of candaules does not agree with so short a reign. we must therefore keep to the statement of eusebius. [ ] vol. i. p. . plutarch, "quæst. græc." . [ ] plato, "de rep." p. , . [ ] pausan. , , . [ ] fragm. , , ed. bergk. [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] herod. , . chapter xviii. lydia under the mermnadÆ. the delphian priesthood did no service to their countrymen on the western shore of asia minor when in the year b.c. they helped gyges to the throne in spite of the resistance of the lydians. the cities of the greeks on these coasts, whose founders had in days past been expelled by war and distress from their cantons, had come to power and prosperity in the course of the three centuries which had since elapsed. forced to a vigorous exercise of their powers, amid an environment of many new impulses, they surpassed the motherland in poetry and art, in navigation and trade. from their harbours they exported the products of phrygia and the manufactures of lydia to the cyclades, to chalcis and eretria, to corinth and the mainland of hellas. thus they gradually grew up into a naval power which drove even the trading ships of the phenicians from the Ægean sea, opened the black sea, and already began to rival the phenicians in the south and west of the mediterranean. springing up on the soil of lydia these cities barred the mouths of the lydian rivers, the highways to the sea, and excluded the lydian people from intercourse with the sea. miletus, myus, and priene commanded the mouth of the mæander; ephesus and colophon the mouth of the cayster; phocæa and cyme the mouth of the hermus. an active prince on the throne of lydia could not endure that the greeks should remain in possession of the coast, which they had taken from the lydians, and keep the lydians for ever cut off from the sea. the new dynasty must attempt to recover the losses which their predecessors had been unable to prevent. when confronted by the power of the lydians collected in the hands of a single warrior, the greek cities could not, for long, avoid falling into a position similar to that in which the phenicians at that time found themselves as opposed to the assyrians. lydia was not indeed so strong as assyria, but it lay nearer at hand; and the resources of phocæa, smyrna, colophon, ephesus, and miletus, could not bear comparison with those of tyre, sidon, and aradus. in spite of their common origin and kindred blood, the greek cities, like those of the phenicians, were without any political combination. it is true that the ionian cities offered each year a common sacrifice to poseidon, on the sea-shore under the spur of mount mycale, but for the rest, not only was each community isolated from the others, but the communities were often at feud among themselves. even in the bosom of the separate cities the opposition of parties was not wanting: it was not long since the nobles had overthrown the monarchy, and taken the government into their own hands. if the citizens ventured to give battle in the open field, and the lydians by means of their superior forces drove them back into their walls, and laid waste their crops, the cities which did not lie immediately on the sea were exposed to continued devastation, and with the greater certainty because these devastations could be made more severe by sieges. even the cities on the sea could hardly support for any length of time the desolation and loss of their land. ephesus had extended her possessions on land from the mouth of the cayster as far northward as tmolus; colophon too had a considerable acreage of land. mysia and the troad were the districts, which, as it seems, gyges first subjugated to his dominion.[ ] the founding of dascyleum beyond the rhyndacus, not far from the shore of the propontis, which bears the name of his father, may be ascribed to him. next he turned against the greek cities, and there he found a vigorous resistance. established at first in conflict with the nations of the coast, these cities had grown up amid feuds and by navigation, and contained in their walls a brave race of men. from the time that gyges opened the attack upon them, one hundred and twenty years passed before they lost their independence in spite of their isolation, though the course of the struggle inflicted various losses upon them. even during the continuance of this struggle they made very considerable progress on the sea, in art and science, and when they fell it was hardly less through the struggles which shattered them from within, than through the arms of the lydians. gyges first attacked magnesia on sipylus, the greek city which lay nearest to sardis. after repeated devastation of the land he finally succeeded in making himself master of the city.[ ] the next attack fell on smyrna. it was a severe struggle. the smyrnæans thought themselves sufficiently strong to meet the lydians in the open field. they withstood their attacks in the plain, and their venturous courage was not without success. on one occasion it happened that they were defeated by gyges and the lydians, and driven into the city. the lydians forced their way into the gates along with the fugitives. but the courage and bravery of the smyrnæans were successful in hurling back the enemies.[ ] nor did any better success attend the attack of gyges on miletus; but against colophon he obtained some advantage.[ ] such are the accounts given by the greeks of the deeds of gyges. from these it appears that gyges justified his usurpation of the throne by attacks, more or less successful, against the ancient opponents who checked the rise of lydia. it is also clear from other sources of information, that he had himself to beat off the attacks of a mighty enemy, and that he was by no means fortunate in withstanding them. among the greeks we have only a brief and accidental statement, from which we could conclude that gyges had to deal with other enemies beside the greek cities. this statement merely tells us that the cimmerians had settled in antandrus on the coast of the troad for a century. the cimmerians are said to have been first driven out by alyattes king of lydia, who reigned down to b.c.; those cimmerians therefore who inhabited antandrus, must have come there at the time of gyges, who reigned from to b.c. that gyges had really to undergo severe struggles with the cimmerians we learn from the distant east, from nineveh. the inscriptions of esarhaddon of asshur ( - b.c.) told us that tiuspa, the chief of the distant land of the cimmerians, had submitted to him (p. ). as the assyrians held the moschi, the tibarenes, and the cilicians in dependence, the cimmerians when settled on the lower halys, which event took place before the year b.c., became neighbours of the assyrian kingdom. assurbanipal of assyria tells us that gyges of lydia submitted to him, that afterwards he was successful against the cimmerians, and sent in chains to nineveh chiefs of the cimmerians whom he had taken in the battle. assurbanipal, as we saw, ascended the throne in b.c.; the reign of gyges came to an end in b.c. hence his messages to assurbanipal could only fall between the years and b.c. it is quite conceivable that gyges when pressed by a new advance of the cimmerians towards the west sought the aid of the king of assyria, the powerful neighbour of the cimmerians in the east, in order that pressure might be put from that side on these enemies of lydia. assurbanipal does not tell us that he sent any assistance to gyges; he merely tells us that gyges after paying homage to him was enabled by the glory of his (assurbanipal's) name to bring the cimmerians to his feet, and fought successfully against them. afterwards gyges hardened his heart, put confidence in his own power, and sent his soldiers to aid pisamilki of egypt, who had thrown off the yoke of assyria. as a punishment for this the cimmerians conquered and devastated his whole land; his body was thrown to his enemies, and his servants were carried away captive. from these statements we must conclude that the wars which gyges carried on against the greek cities belonged to the first twenty years of his reign; that new incursions of the cimmerians into phrygia, and a fresh advance on their part against lydia, put an end to the attacks of gyges on the greeks; and when gyges had summoned the assistance of assyria, the cimmerians were driven back. when delivered from the cimmerians gyges intended no doubt to put an end to his dependence on assyria, and to aid in bringing to destruction this mighty power, which both from cilicia and from the halys might bring ruin upon him. with this object he may have entered into connections with psammetichus, agreeing to send him ionians and carians to overpower his fellow-princes, in order to maintain the contest against assyria at the head of the newly-united egypt. lydia had little to fear from assyria, if egypt revolted at the same time, since it was probable that all the efforts of that country would be directed against the valley of the nile. gyges could not send auxiliary troops into egypt later than the year b.c. (for his reign came to an end in that year). hence his relations to assyria would fall within the years - b.c. whether assurbanipal, in order to punish the defection of gyges, urged the cimmerians to resume the war, we cannot certainly say. we cannot contest the statement of the inscriptions of assurbanipal that gyges fell in this war, though it is remarkable that the greeks know nothing or tell us nothing of such an important occurrence. herodotus tells us expressly that beside the wars against miletus, smyrna, and colophon, gyges performed no action of importance.[ ] of the son and successor of gyges, assurbanipal tells us that he sent to him, disapproved of his father's breach with assyria, and pledged his own submission (p. ). the inscriptions which deal with the relations of assyria and lydia are without dates. but from the connection of the narrative, and with reference to the statement that gyges fell in battle against the cimmerians, we must assume that the accession of ardys, the son of gyges, took place in the midst of the war with the cimmerians, and that he made his pledge of submission to assyria in the first year of his reign, in that time of distress. herodotus tells us that the cimmerians invaded lydia in the reign of ardys--which continued from to b.c.[ ]--and took sardis, except the acropolis; that the cities of the ionians were attacked by the cimmerians, and plundered though not conquered.[ ] it would be easy to connect this second capture of sardis with the narrative of the assyrians and the fall of gyges, and thus place it in the commencement of the reign of ardys. but this connection would destroy the coincidence in time between the scythian invasion of asia and the cimmerian invasion of ionia, which herodotus mentions, and at the same time removes the ground which can alone explain the combination of the two (p. ). herodotus places the incursion of the scythians into media quite definitely in the first year of cyaxares of media, _i.e._ according to his chronology, in the year to b.c. the second capture of sardis, therefore, and the attack on the ionian cities, must have taken place about b.c. it remains to assume that the cimmerians, after inundating lydia in the time of candaules and taking sardis, after repeated wars with varied success against gyges in the last decade of his reign, which finally ended in the death of gyges, were a source of serious danger to ardys in the first and larger half of his reign. concerning the campaign of the cimmerians, which brought sardis for a second time into their hands, we learn from greek accounts that the cimmerians were commanded by lygdamis,[ ] and that they brought ephesus into great straits.[ ] "lygdamis," so callimachus says, "led the army of the horse-milking cimmerians, which lay encamped on the strait of the daughter of inachus," against ephesus; in the plain of the cayster their chariots rested, and he threatened to destroy the temple of artemis, but the goddess protected her shrine. another statement tells us, on the contrary, that lygdamis burnt the temple of artemis.[ ] "it was a passing raid," says herodotus, "not a subjugation of the cities." it is clear that ardys became master of his land, at any rate, in the last third of his reign. in this period, and under his successor sadyattes ( - b.c.), there were no further incursions of the cimmerians, and alyattes, the successor of sadyattes ( - b.c.), succeeded in completely breaking their power. herodotus tells us that alyattes drove the cimmerians out of asia.[ ] this was not the case: elsewhere we find it stated that it was they who again attacked alyattes.[ ] they were no doubt confined by the arms of alyattes to their abode on the banks of the lower halys; they became subject to the lydians, and were lost, as we saw, in the cappadocians, whose name among the armenians is gamir, _i.e._ gimirai, cimmerians.[ ] the repeated incursions of the cimmerians into the west of asia minor in the course of the seventh century had important consequences for the lands affected by them on this side of the halys. the nearest neighbouring states, especially phrygia, were severely shaken by them, more severely, beyond a doubt, than lydia.[ ] from about the year b.c., under the strong guidance of ardys, sadyattes, and alyattes, lydia arose with firmness and energy, and became a protecting power against the cimmerians for the west of asia minor. this position, and the superiority which lydia also possessed in the harder and severer nature of her population, brought about the result that when gyges had subjugated mysia, phrygia as far as the halys became dependent on the lydian kingdom in the last years of ardys, or in the time of his successor sadyattes. for the lydian dominion over asia minor the cimmerians had prepared the way even more thoroughly than the scythians had prepared the way for the medes in the east. as lydia and media were the first to recover, they soon obtained the supremacy in the one case as in the other. if it could be said of alyattes that he expelled the cimmerians from asia minor, the dominion of lydia must at least have extended to the halys. it was on this river that the two new powers, rising on the east and the west, came into collision. the greeks of course can only give us precise information about the struggles of ardys, sadyattes, and alyattes against the cities of the coast. herodotus tells us that ardys like gyges attacked miletus, without achieving any success: he succeeded however in taking priene, opposite miletus, at the entrance of the milesian gulf. other accounts and later events show that this conquest was not maintained.[ ] we must put the attacks of ardys on the greek cities in the last decade of his reign ( - b.c.). sadyattes directed his efforts against smyrna and miletus, which at that time was governed by the tyrant thrasybulus.[ ] the milesians went out to meet the lydian army in the open field. but they were defeated in two great battles, first at limeneum, and then on the mæander, and were thus compelled to shut themselves up in the walls. behind these sadyattes could do them no harm. herodotus tells us that sadyattes contented himself with destroying the harvest of the milesians every year as soon as the corn was ripe in the land of the city, and with cutting down the fruit-trees. this went on for six years till his death, when his son and successor continued the war in the same manner. when at length he believed that the milesians were brought into distress and scarcity by these continual devastations, in the twelfth year of the war, he was deceived by a stratagem of thrasybulus. thrasybulus learnt from corinth that a herald of the king would come into the city to offer a truce. the citizens were commanded, therefore, to bring out into the market-place all the corn which was to be found in the houses, as though it were for sale there, and to keep holiday with banquets and merry-making. convinced by the account of his herald that all his efforts hitherto had been in vain, alyattes concluded a treaty of peace with the milesians.[ ] no weight can be laid on the details of this narrative. in the twelfth year of the war, according to herodotus, when the fields were being laid waste and the corn burned, the temple of athene at assessus was set on fire. alyattes then fell sick, and as he remained sick a long time he sent to delphi to inquire about his recovery. delphi replied: the god would give no answer till the temple was rebuilt. this became known to periander of corinth, and he imparted the information to thrasybulus--such at least, herodotus remarks, is the story of the milesians. thrasybulus assumed that alyattes would ask for an armistice in order that he might be able to rebuild the temple; and made the arrangements already described. in any case alyattes was in a position to obtain more accurate information about the condition of miletus than could be got by a herald. how could it be supposed that there would be a want of provisions in a great trading city like miletus, which alyattes had not debarred and could not debar from intercourse with the sea? when the peace and the treaty had been concluded, and alyattes had built two temples in the place of the one that had been burnt, he recovered his health. it is certain that miletus maintained herself against the attacks of the lydian kings. undisturbed by them she founded parium and lampsacus on the hellespont. in union with phocæa, teos, and clazomenæ, she entered into trade with egypt, whose harbours psammetichus had opened to the ionians; about the year b.c. she sent her fleet to aid the eretrians in euboea, who were engaged in a severe struggle with the chalcidians; about the year b.c. she sent out a new colony to sinope, which had succumbed to the cimmerians (i. ), and built tomi at the mouths of the danube. that the kings of lydia directed their efforts mainly against miletus is intelligible. if the most powerful city of the greeks were subject to them, the others would submit without any further struggle. it is possible that the rebellion of the people against the nobles, the fierce party struggles which followed from these and allowed thrasybulus to establish a tyranny in miletus, may have excited in the lydians the hope of overcoming the city with less difficulty. it speaks much for the strength of miletus that her citizens were able to meet the lydians in the open field. there can hardly be a doubt that the land of the milesians was devastated for several successive years. the lydians must have attempted to wear out the city by this means, to rouse dissatisfaction among the landed proprietors by their losses, and among the lower classes by causing a scarcity. the owners of the land lost each year their crops and their sheep; with these the raw material for the important wool industry of the milesians was destroyed, and trade with the interior was impossible. when, however, the lydians found that the city held out stubbornly they at length desisted, and preferred to win the first city of the greeks by treaty rather than by war. according to the dates which we obtained above for the reign of gyges and his successors, the twelve years' war against miletus mentioned by herodotus must have begun under ardys, and ended under sadyattes. it was in the last years of sadyattes ( - b.c.), in the year b.c., as we saw above, that the great war began between the medes and the lydians, which herodotus puts in the time of alyattes ( - b.c.). the advances of the median power to the west and their approach to the halys must have compelled the lydians to put an end to the war with miletus, in order to protect the eastern border of their kingdom. we know the supposed cause and the course of the war between lydia and media, which went on to the year b.c., with varying fortune, but not to the disadvantage of the lydians.[ ] the lydians, though far weaker in numbers, showed themselves vigorous opponents of the medes. the severe struggle could find no more honourable close for media than the treaty which made the halys the limit between lydia and media, and united the two countries by marriage as well as by treaty. aryanis, the daughter of alyattes, became the wife of astyages, the son of cyaxares of media (p. ). secured in the east by the alliance with media alyattes could direct his whole force to the establishment of the lydian power within the halys. the carians were subjugated.[ ] alyattes did not obtain equal successes over the greek cities, though miletus, true to the treaty, held aloof. his attack on smyrna was perhaps the occasion on which mimnermus repeated in his poems to his countrymen the brave deeds of the smyrnæans in old days against gyges (p. ), and attempted to rouse the courage of the present generation by the memory of the achievements of the past. he reminded the smyrnæans how they had once driven the lydians out of the gates of their city. in some verses which have come down to us he praises the deeds of a hero of olden time, not without a reproachful side-glance at the living generation: "not of such a kind was the courage and the brave heart of the warrior, of whom the forefathers told me, how that they had seen him, spear in hand, on the plain of the hermus, driving before him the troops of the mounted lydians. in the courage of his stout heart pallas athene herself could find nothing to reproach, when in the bloody fight he pressed onward with the foremost, beset with the thick volley of the enemy. never man knew better how to withstand the tumult of battle, so long as the sun shone on him."[ ] perhaps the smyrnæans were no longer fired with the martial courage of old days; in any case the superiority of the lydians was very great. alyattes took smyrna, and in order to keep the city in more complete subjection, he caused the walls to be thrown down, and forced the smyrnæans to dwell in an unfortified place.[ ] colophon was also captured. this was a rich city even before the time of gyges; the greater part of the citizens are said to have been prosperous. xenophanes reproaches his fellow-citizens of colophon that they had learnt luxurious habits from the lydians, that the senators of the city--they were a thousand in number, chosen from all the men of property--came to the market-place in "garments wholly coloured with purple," "pluming themselves on their beautifully-arranged hair, and drenched with the perfumes of costly ointments." according to the account of athenæus the meals of the colophonians began in the morning and continued till the lamps were lit, to the sound of harps and flutes played by women after the manner of the lydians; after this the night was spent in drinking, so that some beheld neither the rising nor the setting sun. in this way the colophonians had lost their old military valour, and had infected the milesians.[ ] we are not in a position to decide whether the fine clothes of the colophonians and their delight in feasting and drinking took the vigour out of their defence of the city or not; this only is clear, that isolated cities like smyrna and colophon, even with the most heroic resistance, must eventually succumb to a kingdom like that of the lydians. in any case we have rather to recognise the resistance which unimportant cities such as priene made, than lament the cowardice of the citizens. theognis of megara remarks that smyrna and colophon, like magnesia before them, came to destruction owing to their excess of valour.[ ] with the subjugation of colophon the successes of alyattes ended. priene resisted a long siege with success: from clazomenæ he was compelled to retire with great losses.[ ] gradually strengthening themselves in severe struggles, the mermnadæ had approved their position as leaders of the lydians. how deeply rooted was the attachment of the nation to the expelled royal family, and what respect the mermnadæ paid to this stubborn preference, is clear from the fact that gyges himself called his son ardys after the name of a king of the ancient house; and in the same way his grandson and great-grandson repeat the ancient names sadyattes and alyattes. the reign of alyattes, extended almost to half a century, appears to have borne good fruits for the domestic relations of lydia. the subject nations, the mysians, bithynians, phrygians, paphlagonians, and carians, must without doubt have paid heavy tribute. from this, from the product of the gold washing in the pactolus, the mines in tmolus and sipylus, alyattes collected a large treasure in the citadel at sardis. the lydians preserved a grateful memory of alyattes,[ ] "the most just and wise of their kings," as xanthus calls him. his guidance had set them entirely free from the risks so often brought upon their country by the cimmerians, had raised them to be the dominant nation in asia minor, and in time of peace the kingdom was no doubt brought into excellent order by him. hipponax of ephesus points out the way to smyrna to a friend by the following marks: "go through the region of the lydians, past the grave of alyattes, past the monument of gyges and the pillars, past the monument of attys, the great king, with your face to the setting sun."[ ] herodotus tells us: "lydia possesses a work which is the greatest of all, except the works of the egyptians and the babylonians, and it is the monument of alyattes. the lower part consists of great stones, six stades and two plethra in circumference ( feet); the remainder is a heap of earth, which the merchants and the traders, the artizans and workmen, and the courtesans built. on the monument above stood, even in my time, five stone pillars, and the inscriptions on these told us what each section had paid, and the measure of that which the courtesans built was the largest."[ ] xenophon also speaks of a large tomb in the neighbourhood of sardis, on the summit of which were five pillars.[ ] the princes of the lydians had their sepulchres beyond the hermus, on a rocky plateau, about five miles to the north of sardis, between the hermus and the southern shore of the great gygæan lake. on this field of the dead, which the osmans call bin tepe, _i.e._ the thousand hills, there rise to this day from sixty to eighty tombs, among which three huge round tumuli stand pre-eminent. the smallest of these is feet in the circuit and feet in height; the largest is more than feet, and rises about feet above the plain. under this mound, right opposite the acropolis of sardis, rested king alyattes. the lydians preferred to bury their dead in chambers of rock; where these were not to be had, they buried them in chambers of strong masonry, over which were placed layers of stone in a circle, to be finally crowned with the sepulchral tumulus. in the same manner, only on a larger scale, the tombs of the kings were prepared; and the statements of herodotus about the origin of the mound of alyattes may have a foundation in so far as the zeal of the people helped to raise it higher than the tombs of his predecessors. in the tomb of alyattes the flat elevation of rock was changed into a large circular surface, but northwards the natural rock was allowed to remain. on this wall of rock, to the south of the centre of the circle, the sepulchral chamber of alyattes was made to extend. it was built of large greyish-white blocks of marble, beautifully polished. these were cut with the greatest regularity, and carefully fitted to each other, and united still more firmly by dovetails of molten lead. the length of this quadrangular chamber is ten feet, the breadth six feet, the height is more than six feet. the entrance lies on the south side towards sardis. this entrance was kept accessible by a portico, which was also paved with squares of marble, furnished on either side with blocks of marble as high as the door, and vaulted over with hewn stones of irregular and angular shapes. the sepulchral chamber and portico were then surrounded by masonry, which filled up the entire area of the circle and was carried up to the same height as the sepulchral chamber and the rock behind it. on this surface the funeral ceremonies were held, and sacrifices offered, as is proved by a layer of cinders two feet thick, which lies on the marble squares of the roof of the sepulchral chamber. when the burial was over, the door of the chamber was closed by marble blocks fitted into it, and other heavy blocks were laid in front of these for the portico. after this the masonry, in order to bear the mound better, was raised above the height of the chamber; and last of all the mound was piled up in regular layers, a layer of lime mixed with sand and large stones, a thinner layer of clay, a layer of earth of equal thickness, on which was again placed a layer of lime and sand broken with large stones. finally the point of the mound was surmounted with strong masonry of huge stones, the five pillars of herodotus, one pillar in each corner, and the fifth in the centre. even now the centre stone lies overthrown on the summit of the mound, half buried in the earth. it is a huge block in the form of a cone, of more than nine feet in diameter, resting on a low base. in the chamber, which had been plundered, there was no longer any sarcophagus; some bones only were found, and beside these jars of alabaster, clay vessels with handles, with remains of other kinds of pottery.[ ] croesus, the son of alyattes, did not ascend the throne in the year b.c. without opposition. his opponents intended to raise pantaleon, another son of alyattes by an ionian wife, to the throne. among these was sadyattes the merchant, the richest man of lydia. croesus caused him to be cruelly executed, his possessions to be confiscated, and his landed property sold.[ ] the new ruler found himself in the bloom of life (he was years of age) at the head of a well-arranged and powerful kingdom. while for half a century, under the old heracleids, lydia had not only been unable to move beyond her ancient borders, but had even lost the land on the coast, she had gradually grown in power since the accession of the mermnadæ. it is true that the incursions of the cimmerians had brought upon gyges and ardys the most dangerous struggles, and had inflicted the heaviest losses on the land; but in the end these had been withstood successfully, and their immediate consequence had been the extension of the lydian power as far as the halys. even from the dangerous trial of the median war lydia had emerged, not only without loss, but even with honour. all asia minor on this side of the halys, with the exception of the greek cities and the secluded mountain territory of the lycians, obeyed the kings of the lydians. their country was on friendly terms with babylon, and in close relationship with media. even against the greek cities, the reduction of smyrna and colophon had at least opened the way to the sea. in such a position, in the possession of such power, it was impossible but that croesus should be filled with the impulse to complete the work of his forefathers, to carry to an end the subjugation of the greek cities, and thus gain for his kingdom in its full extent the harbours and marts allotted to it by nature, together with a magnificent fleet. though for years engaged in contests with the lydians and not spared by the cimmerians, though torn asunder in their domestic relations by the strife of parties, these cities continued to advance. the position and the fortunes of miletus down to the times of alyattes have been mentioned above. ever since the attempt to smoothe the opposition of the nation and the nobles by the rule of the "opulent" was wrecked, the party struggles burst out in wilder fury than before, and passed into revolutions and counter-revolutions. nevertheless, one colony was founded after another: apollonia and ordessus on the thracian coast; panticapæum on the cimmerian bosphorus; olbia and tyras on the mouths of the dniester and the dnieper. the phocæans had at an earlier time discovered the northern waters of the adriatic; they now traded in the land of silver beyond the pillars of hercules, built massalia at the mouth of the rhone, and fought with the carthaginians on the tyrrhenian sea. at the division of the seventh and sixth centuries the samians built a splendid temple to hera, the ephesians began to turn the ancient shrine of artemis into a magnificent structure, and the phocæans to erect a beautiful dwelling for athene. plastic art rose with architecture: in skill the greeks surpassed their lydian teachers, while thales, anaximander, and cadmus of miletus laid the foundations of greek science; the splendour of the epic, the bloom of elegiac poetry in ephesus and smyrna, was followed in lesbos by the bold flight of lyric song; practical and political wisdom found representatives like pittacus and bias. if the greeks were more brilliant, more wealthy than in the days of gyges and ardys, the dominion over them was the more to be coveted. however splendid the resources which they had at command, there was dissension in their midst: their vigorous colonisation, however much it might advance trade, must at the same time weaken their population available for war, and no city supported the other. could such isolated communities withstand the sovereigns who had conquered the cimmerians, and checked the medes? gyges and his successors never intended to make a war of annihilation on the greek cities. we saw that it was only by the support of the delphic oracle that gyges gained the throne; this source of help against his own people he would not and could not give up. it would be utterly lost in a war for life and death with the greek cities. such intentions were not, so far as we can see, in the minds of gyges and his successors, least of all in the mind of croesus. these princes wished to make the harbours subject to their supremacy; they did not intend to put the greeks in a worse position than the lydians. they worshipped the gods of the greeks, and gave them richer presents than any greek city or canton could give. even gyges entered into relations with greek families of distinction, which thus became allied to the royal house; from their cities alyattes took a wife. in sardis interest was shown in greek art; prominent citizens of the greek cities found a welcome at the lydian court. when alyattes recovered from his sickness (p. ), he dedicated a silver mixing-bowl at delphi, the base of which was made by glaucus of chios. herodotus mentions this as worthy of admiration among all the dedicatory offerings at delphi, and pausanias has preserved a description of it. of the works of theodorus of samos, who first practised the founding of brass among the greeks, alyattes obtained a golden and a silver mixing-bowl--the latter contained amphoræ--a golden plane-tree, and a golden vine with bunches of inlaid precious stones. the sculptors, dipoenus and skyllis of crete, were also employed at the lydian court.[ ] if the lydian kings came forward to meet the greeks in this manner, the latter, on their part, were full of admiration for the lydian power, the splendour of the lydian court, and the wealth of the lydian kings. the court of the lydian kings was a seat of the monarchical life and manners of the east, which the greeks saw there in immediate proximity. the "golden sardis," where the treasures of asia minor were gathered, was to the greeks of that time the summit of all imaginable splendour. the palace of the kings on the steep rocks of the citadel on the pactolus, from which the eye ranged far and wide into the country beyond the blooming valley of the hermus, the ancient temple of cybele, were no doubt magnificent buildings, and owing to the great wealth of the land as well as the kings in precious metals, were provided without doubt with ornaments of massive gold, though the houses in the city were built of clay bricks, and roofed with reeds.[ ] as might be expected from the amount of treasure heaped together at sardis, the court of the lydian kings was one of extraordinary splendour. with astonishment the greeks beheld the lydian sovereigns surrounded by their wives, their numerous servants, and a multitude of eunuchs. the lydian alcman who at the end of the seventh century came as a slave to sparta, proudly said, "that he was not of boorish manners, rude and clownish; he was neither a thessalian, nor an acarnanian, nor a shepherd; he came from lofty sardis."[ ] if the greeks were already half overcome by the advances of the lydian kings and their own admiration of lydian power and glory, and lydian gold, the conduct of croesus made resistance more difficult still. he saw that he could never bring matters to an end with great harbour cities, especially with miletus, which could never be invested without a fleet. following the example of his forefathers, he entered into a friendly league with the milesians. the loss of smyrna and colophon had failed to teach the greeks that each city must help the other, that the forces of the cities must be combined into unity, if freedom was to be preserved. even in the teeth of the warlike preparations of croesus they did not listen to the counsel given by one of themselves, which would in all probability have saved them. thales of miletus proposed that each city should name representatives; these were to form a council, to the resolutions of which the separate cities were to be subservient, just as the demes of a city were subservient to the resolutions of the council of the city. the seat of this council was to be teos, because that city was situated in the midst of the ionian cities (which lay to the north and south along the coast). the ionians disregarded the advice of thales; they would not arrange themselves on the basis thus proposed. on the contrary, in spite of the warning of thales, miletus again entered into a league with lydia.[ ] it may be that the peace, which after severe internal struggles the decision of the parians restored to the city, tended to incline them to accept the overtures of the king. they wished to heal the self-inflicted wounds, and shrank from taking upon them a new and serious struggle. croesus strengthened his relations to miletus by sending the most costly offerings to the temple of apollo at miletus, the god of which was not in his eyes different from the lydian sun-god, while the antiquity of the shrine went back beyond the settlement of the ionians. in these offerings the gold alone weighed more than talents.[ ] by this treaty croesus had not only placed miletus on his side, and separated the cities; he had also shown them that good terms could be got. an armed attack must now be employed to induce the rest to adapt themselves to these terms. when the ephesians hesitated to recognise the supremacy of croesus as he demanded, the city was invested, and the walls attacked. when a tower on the walls fell, the ephesians connected the temple of artemis--the new structure was scarcely half finished, and lay paces from the gates in the depression--with the walls by a long rope, in order to put the city under the immediate protection of the deity. nevertheless, the city was compelled to submit.[ ] croesus now aided the building of the temple. he caused the unfinished half of the large monolithic pillars, which were to support the roof of the temple in a double row, to be erected at his own cost, and presented the goddess with golden cattle. after the subjugation of ephesus, croesus proceeded to attack the remaining cities, one after the other; and thus he became master of the whole of the cities, not of the ionian only, but also of the Æolian and dorian. he granted them the most favourable conditions: he did not even require the opening of the cities, or their attendance in war; he contented himself with the recognition of his supremacy and with the yearly payment of tribute.[ ] yet in any case freedom for the trade of the lydians, and protection at law for the lydians in the walls of the greek cities, as well as for the settlement of lydian subjects, must have been secured. some cities on the hellespont, like lampsacus, appear to have remained entirely free.[ ] when the cities of the greeks had recognised his supremacy, croesus is said to have been occupied with the thought how to draw into the circle of his kingdom the rich islands on the coasts--samos, chios, and lesbos. herodotus tells us that croesus asked bias of priene, who was in sardis soon after the subjugation of the greek cities, what was the news among the hellenes? bias answered that the greeks of the islands were getting together a great army of cavalry in order to march against sardis. when croesus said that he should rejoice to hear that the gods had put such thoughts in the minds of the islanders, bias replied that the inhabitants of the islands were no less anxious to measure themselves against him in a battle by sea. at this croesus is said to have abandoned the preparations he was making against the islands. as a fact, croesus could not hide from himself that an attack upon the islands was only possible by means of the naval power of the cities on the coast. even if these supplied ships against their countrymen in the islands, was it to be expected that they would fight vigorously against them?--was there not rather a fear that they would unite their arms with those of the islands against lydia? by a happy combination of war and negotiation, by vigorous attack and far-sighted concession, croesus had put an end to the long struggle, had subjugated the cities to his supremacy, and raised lydia to the summit of her fame and power. if the lydians were the sovereign nation, the greeks were not to be a servile nation. they possessed complete municipal freedom, they had not to render service in war, they had only to pay tribute and give the lydians and the lydian trade as good a position in their gates and harbours as was enjoyed by their own people and their own trade. croesus was at pains in everything to show a favourable inclination to the greeks. it was not merely that he worshipped their gods, and made presents to their shrines. as he had made the most costly presents to apollo of miletus, and artemis of ephesus, so he presented a golden tripod to ismenian apollo at thebes. to apollo of delphi he gave presents as costly as those given to apollo of miletus; to athene of delphi he gave a large shield of gold; to the shrine of amphiaraus at thebes he gave a golden shield and a golden lance. at other times also he showed himself favourable in every way to the greeks. when the spartans wished to erect a golden statue to apollo on the summit of mount thornax, they sent to sardis in order to purchase the necessary gold. croesus gave them as much as they required.[ ] a greek merchant of ephesus, who lent him money before his accession, croesus is said to have brought into the citadel, and given him permission to carry away a cart-load of gold. alcmæon, an athenian noble, who led the athenians in the "sacred war" against crissa, and conquered at olympia with his four-horse chariot, in the year b.c., supported an embassy which croesus sent to delphi. in gratitude croesus invited him to sardis, led him into the treasure-chamber, and allowed him to take as much gold as he pleased. though alcmæon was now advanced in years, and his son megacles was in possession of the rich inheritance of cleisthenes, tyrant of sicyon, he is said to have placed a very free interpretation on this permission of the king. he put on a loose coat and loose half-boots; these he crammed with gold, put gold-dust in his hair, and filled his mouth with it, so that croesus when he saw the old man thus burdened and gilded, burst into laughter and gave him as much again as he carried.[ ] in addition to this unbounded liberality croesus engaged greek artists, and bestowed his favour on eminent men in the greek cities. miltiades of athens, who had emigrated to the chersonese from the tyranny of the pisistratids, and had been taken in war against lampsacus by the lampsacenes, was set at liberty by the powerful interposition of croesus. the greeks were not insensible to the court paid to them by croesus and his gold; they were grateful for his liberality to their temples. pindar in one of his odes exclaims: "the friendly virtue of croesus will not be forgotten."[ ] the greatest of the greeks, whom croesus saw at sardis, was solon of athens.[ ] herodotus tells us, that croesus entertained solon for several days in his palace, and by his servants showed him the splendour of it, the riches and the treasure-chambers, all that he possessed in precious stones, splendid robes, and treasures of art. then in the pride of the greatness of his dominion, the splendour of his throne, the successes which he had obtained, croesus asked solon, whom he, who had travelled so much in the world, considered the most fortunate of men? solon answered, tellus the athenian. tellus lived a happy life, according to human calculation; he had worthy sons and grandsons, not one of whom died in his lifetime. in his day the commonwealth was prosperous, and after a happy life he found a fortunate death; he fell in battle for his father-land, when turning the enemy to flight, and the athenians buried him at the cost of the city, and paid him great honour. tellus had fallen, under solon's eye, at eleusis against the megarians (about b.c.). croesus further inquired, whom solon considered the happiest man after tellus? cleobis and bito, two brothers of argos, solon replied. these had possessions equal to their needs, and were strong of body, so that both won the victory in the games, at one and the same time. and once at the festival of hera, when the mother of the two young men had to go to the temple, and the oxen had not arrived, the sons placed the yoke upon their necks, and drew their mother a distance of stades to the temple. the argives assembled at the festival commended the strength of the young men; the argive women commended the mother who had such sons. but the mother stepped before the statue of the goddess and prayed that she would give to the sons who had done their mother such honour the best reward that could be given to men. when the sacrifice had been offered and the banquet held, the young men went to sleep in the temple, and never woke again. the deed of the two sons of cydippe was highly praised among the greeks. their mother was priestess of the ancient shrine of hera near argos. each year the argives celebrated a great festival in honour of their goddess, to which they marched in procession from the city to the temple, which lay in the road to mycenæ on the height of euboea, at a distance of more than stades from argos. they offered a hecatomb to the goddess. the hundred victims were crowned and led in the front of the procession; the young men followed in their armour, and last of all the priestess of the temple in a car drawn by two cows; the sacrifice was followed by a banquet and games. the place of these animals was taken by cleobis and bito. in remembrance of the noble deed the argives caused statues to be set up for the brothers at delphi, and even at a later date a marble group at argos exhibited the two youths before the chariot of their mother.[ ] astonished at the answer of solon, croesus inquired of the greek, whether he considered the prosperity which had fallen to his (croesus') lot to be nothing, that he did not even place him on a level with common men. then solon answered: you are asking a man about the fortune of men, one who knows well that the deity is envious and destructive. in a long life a man may see much that he would fain not see, and endure much. i put the limit of man's life at years. these years make , days, if the intercalary months are not reckoned in. if every other year receives a month in order that the seasons, as is necessary, correspond, the seventy years allow intercalary months, which make up days. of all these , days each brings something new. hence man is pure chance. you seem to me to be rich and the king of many men, but the question you ask i can only answer when you have brought your life to a happy end. he who has great possessions is no happier than the man who has sufficient for the day, if he do not keep his wealth till the end of life. many wealthy men are unfortunate, and many men of moderate possessions are fortunate. only in two respects is the wealthy but unfortunate man in advance of the man who is prosperous with less wealth. the first can satisfy his desires more and bear misfortune better; the second cannot satisfy his desires to the same degree or resist misfortune so well; but his prosperity defends him from misfortune. he is healthy, has worthy children, and is fair to look upon. if in addition to all this he ends his life well, he is worthy to be called happy. before the end we may call no man happy; we can only say, it is well with him. that a man should attain complete prosperity is impossible; just as a country does not possess everything, but brings forth one product and is in want of another, and the land which possesses the most has the advantage, so it is with man. he does not possess everything: one thing he has, another he has not. he who possesses most to the end of life, and then brings his life to a noble end, he may with justice bear the name of happy. in everything a man must look to the issue, and many to whom the god has shown happiness he has then cast to the ground. in the bloom and vigour of his years, conqueror of the greek cities, victorious over the land of the coast, after bringing to completion the political aims of his forefathers, in possession of an inexhaustible treasure, at the head of a state carried to the limit of its natural frontiers, and flourishing in trade, commanding an excellent army, respected by his subjects, and lord of asia minor--croesus, in the year b.c., had many reasons for counting himself a happy man, a ruler specially favoured by the gods. like all oriental princes he was not without a haughty confidence in his power and his success; he was in a high degree self-conscious. solon, when he saw sardis, was close upon his eightieth year. grown up amid violent commotions in his city, amid the fierce strife of parties, with a deed of blood before his eyes, solon had early had occasion to reflect on the plans and aspirations of men, on their lust of possessions and power, on the fortune allotted to them, on the punishments which though often late the gods awarded to unjust deeds. beyond other men he had devoted his life to his fatherland, a canton of moderate extent. he had refused the position of tyrant in order to serve his country in a much more difficult position with unwearied devotion and perseverance. if by such fidelity he had succeeded in turning destruction aside from his community, and establishing a constitution which ensured order and freedom to it, this constitution, and with it the work of his life, which he had defended with the dedication of all his powers, was wrecked. if the form given by herodotus to the conversation of solon and croesus is a part of his mode of narration, and the observation on the envy of the deity a part of his view of life, solon had nevertheless reason in his own bitter experience to tell the sovereign of asia minor that no one could be accounted happy before the end of life. compared with his own fortune the lot of cleobis and bito, who died immediately after their glorious deed, the death of tellus, who ended a good life by dying in victory for his country, must have appeared a fortune to be envied. footnotes: [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . nicol. damas. fragm. , ed. müller. which magnesia is meant is not clear; magnesia on sipylus is more probable than the other. [ ] herod. , . paus. , , ; , , . [ ] according to herodotus, _loc. cit._ gyges takes the city but not the citadel of colophon; according to athenæus (p. ) he concluded a friendly treaty with colophon. in polyænus also the colophonians remained for a long time in league with the lydians, before alyattes deprived them of their country by treachery; , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] in herod. from to b.c.; cf. _supra_, p. . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] strabo, p. . plut. "marc." c. . [ ] strabo, p. , . athenæus (p. ), it is true, does not entirely agree with this. [ ] callim. "hymn in dian." - . hesych. [greek: lygdamis]. [ ] herod. , . [ ] polyæn. "strateg." , , . [ ] vol. i. p. . [ ] on the long stay of the cimmerians in phrygia, steph. byzant. [greek: syassos]. [ ] herod. , . diog. laert. , . [ ] the attack of sadyattes on smyrna is vouched for by nicolaus, fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , - . [ ] the reasons for which i believe it necessary to maintain this date are given above, p. , _n._ [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. at the time of this carian campaign of alyattes, croesus, according to this fragment, was viceroy of the region of adramytteum. it must therefore be placed about the year , since croesus was born in b.c. adramytteum is said to have been founded by a brother of croesus of the name of adramyttus: steph. byz. _s. v._ in nicolaus adramys is an illegitimate son of sadyattes. the city was certainly much older. athenæus, p. , mentions an old king of lydia of the name of adramyttus. [ ] mimnerm. fragm. , ed. bergk. if mimnermus, the contemporary of solon, is sometimes called a smyrnæan, and sometimes a colophonian, the explanation is that mimnermus derived his race from the colophonians, who had taken smyrna from the achæans. strabo, p. . it is not strange that mimnermus as a boy may have heard the story of the struggles against gyges from his fathers and grandfathers. the attack of alyattes upon smyrna, belongs to the period after , the last decade of alyattes, because croesus continues the war against the greek cities without any break. [ ] herod. , . nic. damasc. frag. . strabo (p. ) tells us that the smyrnæans had been compelled to dwell separately in several open villages, and that they lived in this manner for years, down to the time of antigonus. in this reckoning, in any case, there is a century too much; moreover, pindar (fragm. incert. , ed. dissen) speaks of the charming city of smyrna. hence the view given in the text is taken. [ ] xenophan, fragm. . arist. "pol." , , . athenæus, p. . pausan. , , . [ ] theogn. fragm. , ed. gaisford. [ ] herod. , ; diog. laert. , . [ ] suidas [greek: alyattês]. [ ] hipponact., fragm. , ed. bergk. schneidewin's conjecture to read alyattes for attales ought certainly to be adopted, though alyattes had a son called attales. the way must have been fixed by the largest monument. [greek: attyos] for [greek: Ôtys] seems certain; on the other hand [greek: myrsilou] for [greek: mytalidi] is not permissible. [ ] herod. , . [ ] xenophon makes use of it in the cyropædia for his own object ( , ). clearchus of soli calls the tomb of alyattes "the tomb of the hetæra." athen. p. . gyges loved a paramour so passionately that she governed him and the kingdom. after her death he collected the lydians and heaped up a mound in her honour, which was still called the grave of the hetæra; it was so high that all the lydians had it before their eyes, and every traveller who journeyed within tmolus. all this may be founded on a participation of the numerous lydian hetæræ (vol. i. p. ) in the tomb of alyattes. cf. strabo, p. . [ ] hamilton, "asia minor," p. , . spiegelthal, "monatsber. b. a." , s. ff. olfers, "die lydischen königsgräber, abhandl. b. a." , s. ff. [ ] herod. , . nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] herod. , . pausan. , , , . athen. p. . [ ] aesch. "pers." v. . herod. , ; , . [ ] fragm. , ed. welcker. [ ] herod. , . diog. laert. , . [ ] herod. , , says: "as many as to delphi, and like the delphian presents." [ ] Æl. "var. hist." , . polyæn. "strateg." , . if Ælian tells us that pindarus was at that time tyrant of ephesus, and had received the throne by inheritance, the statement is corrected by the tenor of the narrative in which pindarus gives advice, not orders, to the ephesians. the "tyranny" of pindarus therefore was no more than a prominent position in the city, such as would fall to a man of the race of the basilidæ, who carried the sceptre and wore purple. this does not set aside the fact that melas, the father of pindarus, had to wife a daughter of alyattes: only i observe that nicolaus of damascus calls the milesian, who had to wife a sister of sadyattes, a descendant of melas, the brother-in-law of gyges. [ ] herod. , . that the ionians did not render service in war is clear from the account which herodotus gives of the war of croesus against cyrus. another point is more doubtful. herodotus remarks, , , that the cities at the approach of cyrus had "surrounded themselves with walls." if we take this in the strictest sense, we might draw the conclusion, that the cities had been compelled to throw down their walls when subjugated by croesus. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . if herodotus on this occasion has in his mind the embassy which croesus sent to delphi in b.c., alcmæon must at that time have been at least years old. but croesus had sent to delphi earlier (herod. , ). xenophon ("cyr. inst." , , ) represents croesus as sending to delphi before he had any sons born to him, and again after the death of attys. according to the parian marble, ep. , , the first mission of croesus was years before his overthrow, in the first year of his reign. [ ] pind. "pyth." , . [ ] the chronological difficulties which are brought against this meeting, and to which plutarch refers, "sol." c. , rest on the fact that plutarch, like herodotus, represents solon as going to sardis after the establishment of the athenian constitution. according to this the meeting occurred in , or rather in b.c. either date is impossible: in b.c. croesus was five years old, in b.c. he was fifteen, and he did not ascend the throne till b.c. the meeting with croesus therefore cannot be placed earlier than b.c. when solon left athens after pisistratus became tyrant. after b.c. croesus could no longer count as the happiest of mortals, with whom everything went well, for in b.c. cyrus had already deposed astyages, the connection of croesus. herodotus says ( , , ), that croesus had bewailed the loss of his son attys for two years before the account of the fall of astyages was brought to him; attys must have died in b.c. with this the exact account of phanias of eresus, a scholar of aristotle (suidas, [greek: phanias]), entirely agrees. he tells us that solon did not live two complete years after pisistratus had seized the tyranny, for pisistratus became tyrant under the archonship of comias; solon died under the archonship of hegestratus (plut. "sol." ); the archonship of comias falls in the year b.c. cf. Ælian, "var. hist." , . diogenes laertius, , , , remarks that solon, after pisistratus had become tyrant, went to croesus, to cilicia and cyprus; that he died in cyprus in his eightieth year. if suidas tells us that solon went to soli in cilicia after pisistratus became tyrant, this, like the founding of the city in diogenes, is a confusion with soli in cyprus. solon went to cyprus, where he had been so well received between and b.c., where soli, his own foundation, offered him a worthy refuge. as there can hardly have been direct communication between athens and soli, he went by way of the ionian harbours. the general statement of heracleides of pontus, that solon lived for a long time after the tyranny of pisistratus (plut. "sol." c. ), proves nothing against the precise statement of phanias, and that solon, as plutarch says without giving his authority, died in athens as the adviser of pisistratus, is as much opposed to the character of solon as to the statement that he died in cyprus. [ ] schol. pind. "olymp." , ; aen. tact. c. . pausan. , , . plut. fragm. , , ed. dübner. end of vol. iii. erratum. page , line , _for_ milk-vessels _read_ mixing vessels bungay: clay and taylor, printers. _j. d. & co._ transcriber's notes: . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . carat character is used to indicate subscript in this text version. . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. a manual of ancient history, particularly with regard to the constitutions, the commerce, and the colonies, of the states of antiquity. by a. h. l. heeren; knight of the north star and guelphic order; aulic counsellor and professor of history in the university of goettingen; and member of several other learned societies. translated from the german. the second edition, corrected and improved. oxford: published by d. a. talboys. m dccc xxxiii. oxford: printed by talboys and browne. translator's preface to this edition. it is to the patient industry of the historians of germany, that we are indebted for the first production of manuals of history, and for those synchronistic tables which have so much facilitated the systematic study of ancient history; and among the various and profound treatises of this class which enrich and adorn their literature, the works of heeren are distinguished by their extended range of enquiry, as well as by the minute accuracy of their details. the work before us embodies the result of his laborious researches during the long period in which he has been engaged as public lecturer and professor of history in the university of goettingen; and if it be any recommendation of a work to know that its writer has had ample time, ability, and opportunity to collect and elaborate his materials, it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that the author of the present work possessed all these advantages in an eminent degree. he has spent the greater portion of his life in lecturing upon the subjects of which it treats, and has in every case gone for his information immediately to the fountain head. it forms, too, an important feature of his work, that a list of the original sources, whence his own knowledge has been drawn, is placed at the head of each section; another is added of the principal writers who have touched upon or illustrated the particular portion of history under notice; both being generally accompanied with a few words of judicious criticism, in which the value of the writer's authority is estimated, and his sources, circumstances, and prejudices, briefly, but fairly set forth. besides this advantage, the work possesses the merit of combining the convenience of the manuals with the synchronistic method of instruction; as the geography, chronology, and biography of the countries and states of the ancient world are brought at once under the eye of the reader; and so lucid is the arrangement, that the darkest and most entangled portions of history are seen in a clear and perspicuous light. professor heeren seems, moreover, to possess in a more eminent degree than any other writer, the power of forcing, by a very few words, the attention of the reader upon the most important facts of history; and of conjuring up in his thoughts a train of reflections calculated at once to instruct and enlarge the mind. his work is not only admirably adapted to become a text-book in the study of history, but will be found equally serviceable as a book of reference--it will guide the student in his untried and intricate course, and enable the more advanced scholar to methodize his collected stores. perhaps in no work has so much important information been condensed into so small a compass. the estimation in which this manual is held on the continent, may be gathered from the fact of its having passed through six large editions in german, and two in french, and from its having been translated into almost every language of europe. the rapidity with which the first edition, as well as the other writings of professor heeren, have sold in this country, is a proof that they only required to be known here in order to be appreciated. the favour with which these translations have been received, both by the venerable author himself and by the british public, has been a source of the highest gratification to the publisher. the encouragement, so kindly bestowed, has urged him to new exertions, the fruits of which, he trusts, will be observable in the present volume. the manual has not only been revised and corrected throughout, but has also been diligently compared with the german, and has received such ameliorations as the original text or the english style seemed to demand. when it is added to this that a very numerous body of corrections and improvements have been sent to the publisher by professor heeren himself, who has patiently examined the translation expressly for this edition, he trusts that the public will be satisfied that it is as faithful a copy of the original work as the nature of things will allow. in the preface to the last edition of this manual the publisher announced his intention, should it be favourably received, of following it up by the publication of another elaborate work of the same author, viz. a manual of the history of the states of modern europe and their colonies, as forming one political system. this work will now very shortly appear. as an apology for the delay which has taken place, he begs to call to their notice another equally important work by the same author, which he has published in the mean time; the historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the carthaginians, ethiopians, and egyptians, with a general introduction; the remainder of this work, containing the historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the ancient asiatic nations--the persians, phoenicians, babylonians, scythians, and hindoos, will appear in a few weeks. to add to the usefulness of the work, an analysis of the contents, with dates, has been given in the margin. the # prefixed to some of the books denote that they are written in german. oxford, _march, _. professor heeren's works. the following catalogue of the historical works of professor heeren, has been sent to the publisher by the professor himself. they are uniformly printed in german, in vols. vo. and may always be had together or separate of the publisher of this volume. vol. i. ii. iii. vermischte historische schriften. (miscellaneous historical pieces). vol. i. einleitung. biographische nachrichten über den verfasser. (biographical sketch of heeren's life, by himself.) . entwickelung der politischen folgen der reformation für europa. (development of the consequences of the reformation to the politics of europe). . * versuch einer entwickelung des ursprungs und fortganges der britischen continental-interesse. (essay on the rise and progress of the british continental interests). a translation of this essay will be appended to the manual of the history of modern europe, see vol. viii. ix. below. . ueber den einfluss der politischen theorien auf europa. (of the influence of political theories on europe). vol. ii. . ueber die erhaltung der nationalität besiegter völker. (on the method of preserving the nationality of conquered states.) written in , and suppressed by the french. . entwickelung der folgen der kreuzzüge für europa. (development of the effects of the crusades upon europe: an essay which obtained the prize of the french institute in ). . ueber den einfluss der normannen auf die französische sprache und poësie. (on the influence of the normans on the french language and poetry). . ueber die colonisation von Ægypten, und ihre folgen für europa. (on the colonisation of egypt, and its probable consequences to europe). . der deutsche bund in seinen verhaltnisse zu europa. (the influence of the german federation upon europe). vol. iii. . ueber den historischen werth der biographien plutarch's. (on the historical value of plutarch's lives). . geschichte der bürgerlichen unruhen der gracchen. (history of the civil commotions under the gracchi). . fünf archæologische und antiquarische aufsätze. (five archæological and antiquarian tracts). vol. iv. v. geschichte der classischen litteratur im mittelalter. (history of classical literature during the middle ages). vol. vi. biographische und litterarische denkschriften. (biographical and literary memoirs). . christian gottlob. hëyne, biographisch dargestellt. (biographical memoir of heyne), the father-in-law of heeren. . andenken an deutsche historiker. (memoirs of german historians.) vol. vii. * handbuch der geschichte der staaten des alterthums. (manual of ancient history, of which this volume is the second edition of the english translation). vol. viii. ix. * handbuch der geschichte der europäische staaten-systems und seiner colonien. (manual of the history of the european states-system and their colonies). vol. x. * ideen ueber die politik, den verkehr und den handel des vornehmsten staaten der alten welt. (researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the principal states of antiquity,--asiatic nations). . general introduction; . persians. vol. xi. * ideen, etc. (asiatic nations). . phoenicians; . babylonians; . scythians. vol. xii. * ideen, etc. (asiatic nations). indians. vol. xiii. * ideen, etc. (african nations). . carthaginians; . ethiopians. vol. xiv. * ideen, etc. (african nations). egyptians. vol. xv. * ideen, etc. (european nations). greeks. those with a * prefixed are translated into english, and are either now published or will very shortly be so. preface to the first edition. in adding to the number of manuals on ancient history already published, i feel myself bound to give an account of the plan on which the present has been executed. it was at first designed to be used in my public lectures, and from them it has grown up to what it now is. in them i did not consider it necessary to state all we know or think we know of ancient history. many facts highly interesting to the learned historian are not adapted for public lectures. it was therefore my great object to make choice of such incidents as ought to be known by my pupils in order to the effectual prosecution of their historical studies. consequently i have not extended my labours so far as to give an historical account of every nation, but have limited myself to those most remarkable for their general civilization and political eminence. the subjects to which i have particularly directed my attention are, the formation of states, the changes in their constitution, the routes by which commerce was carried on, the share which the different nations respectively took in its pursuit, and, as immediately connected with that department, their extension severally by means of colonies. the favourable reception which my larger work, executed after a different plan, has met with, would lead me to hope for a like indulgence in this new attempt, even if the spirit of the age did not so loudly call upon every historian to direct his chief attention to these subjects. and for this reason i could not rest satisfied with a mere detail of isolated facts, but have made it my study to follow the course of events, linking them into one connected chain; so as to represent them in a condensed form by continually and carefully forcing together the main circumstances which contributed to the development of the whole. without this, history in general would be but a lifeless study, more especially that of republics, which were so numerous in ancient times, and which, from their constitution being made up of political parties, everywhere present the most difficult problems for the historian's solution. of all the larger divisions of my work, the arrangement of the greek history i have found most troublesome, on account of the number of little states into which it is sub-divided. historians, indeed, lighten this labour by confining themselves merely to athens and sparta; but by so doing they give us a very imperfect knowledge of the subject. i have endeavoured to surmount the difficulty by throwing the account of the smaller states and their colonies into the second period; by which means i have been able in the third and most important portion, the interest of which depends entirely upon the principal states, to carry on my history, as a whole without interruption. but in case others, who wish to make this manual the groundwork of their lectures, should dislike this arrangement, they may very easily attach these notices to the introductory geographical survey; a plan i very often adopt in my own lectures. upon the arrangement of the other parts, i am not aware of the necessity of making any observations. the sources from which i have drawn my materials are specified in every section. particular references do not come within my plan; and if i have referred several times in the first two sections to my larger work, it is only on particular points, explanations of which may be sought for in vain elsewhere. some knowledge of ancient geography and the use of maps[a], if it has not been previously acquired by the student, should, i am convinced, always be connected with lectures on ancient history. that this need not extend to detailed explanations of ancient geography, but that it should be restricted to what is merely useful in the study of history, i have observed in the body of my work. the geographical chapters which are interspersed having been written with this intent, will, i hope, be judged of accordingly. i have taken care to arrange them so as to include the whole of the ancient world; it depends, therefore, only upon the teacher to form a more or less extensive course upon them. [a] i have made use of d'anville. with regard to chronology, i have followed throughout the same uniform plan of computing time, viz. to and from the birth of christ. by preferring this method, so convenient and certain, to the inconvenient and uncertain one of reckoning from the year of the world, i hope i have deserved the thanks of my readers. i relinquish, on the other hand, all claim to merit on the score of having more accurately defined the chronology of events which occur before the time of cyrus. i have, on the contrary, in this part of my labour, often stated round numbers, where, in many modern publications, precise dates may be found. exact determinations of time are only necessary, in my opinion, where a continuous development of circumstances takes place; not where unconnected facts are recorded. the transactions of our own times have thrown a light upon ancient history, and given it an interest which it could not formerly possess. a knowledge of history, if not the only, is at least the most certain means of obtaining a clear and unprejudiced view of the great drama now performing around us. all direct comparisons, notwithstanding the many opportunities which have tempted me, i considered as foreign to my plan; but if, notwithstanding in some chapters of my work, particularly in the history of the roman republic, i may be thought to make a reference to the transactions of the ten years during which this work has been published, i do not consider it necessary to offer any excuse for so doing. of what use is the study of history if it do not make us wiser and better? unless the knowledge of the past teach us to judge more correctly of the present? should i have contributed in any measure to promote this object, and should i be so fortunate as to lead the minds of my young friends to a deeper study of a science which can only in this way reward its admirers, i shall esteem it the most delightful recompense my labour can receive. goettingen, sept. , . preface to the second and following editions. the call for a second edition of my manual imposes upon me an obligation to supply the deficiencies of my former work. corrections have been carefully made, and many parts completely re-written. a select list of books which treat of the respective departments of my subject is now first added; the former edition containing only references to the sources from which my facts were derived. this, i trust, will be considered an essential service to the friends of historical science, more especially the young, for whom and not for the learned these additions have been made. their use in this place is particularly obvious, where it is in every one's power to procure the books referred to[b]. the short criticisms subjoined, where it seemed necessary, will serve as guides for their use. in the author's department of the work but little has been changed, while its form and appearance have been improved by the use of different types, by more accurate running titles, and by ranging the dates in the margin. by the adoption of the latter method the increase in the number of pages is rendered inconsiderable, notwithstanding the numerous additions which have been made to the matter. in its arrangement, this work is the same as my manual of the history of the european states and their colonies. beyond this, however, these works have no relation to each other, but have been executed upon quite different principles; the present as a history of the _separate_ states of the ancient world, and the other as a general history of modern states and their colonies, as forming altogether one political system. each, however, forms a complete work in itself, and it is by no means my intention to fill up the gulf which time has placed between them. [b] [the author alludes to the public library at goettingen. tr.] i regret that the acute researches of m. volney[c], upon the chronology of herodotus before the time of cyrus, came too late into my hands to be made use of in its proper place in my second edition. in the third this has been done. i lay claim, at the same time, to the thanks of the reader for giving, in an appendix, the results of these researches, together with references to the passages by which they are supported; leaving out, however, all extraneous matter, and everything that cannot be proved by the positive assertions of the father of history. [c] chronologie d'herodote, conforme à son texte par c. f. volney. paris, , vols. see the _gött. gel. anz._ for and . i cannot close this preface without again recurring to the advantage of the mode now becoming more and more general, of computing time in ancient history according to the number of years before christ. the fact of its being certain and convenient has often been remarked; but besides this it possesses the great advantage of giving us at once a clear and precise notion of the interval that separates us from the incidents recorded; which it is impossible to obtain by the use of any other era, whether the year of the world, the olympiads, or the year of rome, etc. and yet this peculiar advantage, so great in the eyes of the teacher, has not, to the best of my knowledge, been hitherto made the subject of remark. even for the science of history itself, this circumstance is of greater moment than might be at first supposed. should an enquirer arise who would closely examine all ancient history according to this era--setting out from the generally received year of the birth of christ as from a fixed point, to which the labours of m. volney are a good beginning--the whole science would thereby acquire a firmer consistency. for by this method all dates would not appear equally certain and equally uncertain, as they do in the eras which are computed from the year of the world; but it would be shown what is chronologically certain, what only probable, and what completely uncertain, according as we should recede from the clearer into the more obscure regions of history. the old manner of reckoning from the year of the world, in which congruity was impossible, because there was no agreement upon the point to start from, would certainly be thrown aside; but where is the harm if something better and more certain be substituted in its place? in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, though the increase in the number of pages is small, yet all those additions and corrections which i deemed necessary, and which the progress of knowledge and discovery, as in the case of egypt and other countries, enabled me to effect, have been most carefully and fully made. the importance of these will be best seen by comparison. _goettingen_, . contents. page introduction book i. asiatic and african states previous to cyrus general geographical outline of asia ib. preliminary and general observations upon the history and constitution of the great asiatic empires history of the ancient asiatic kingdoms before the reign of cyrus i. assyrian monarchy ib. ii. median monarchy iii. babylonian monarchy iv. states in asia minor . trojan empire ib. . phrygian empire ib. . lydian empire ib. v. phoenicia vi. syrians vii. jews . period of the nomad state from abraham till the conquest of palestine . period of the federative republic . period of the monarchy from b. c. - the jewish state as one single kingdom ib. the jewish state as a divided kingdom african nations general geographical outline of ancient africa ib. i. egyptians st period. from the earliest times down to the sesostridæ, about b. c. nd period. from the sesostridæ till the sole dominion of psammetichus, b. c. - rd period. from the reign of psammetichus to the persian conquest of egypt by cambyses, b. c. - ii. carthaginians st period. from the foundation of carthage to the wars with syracuse, b. c. - nd period. from the breaking out of the wars with syracuse to the commencement of those with rome, b. c. - rd period. from the beginning of the wars with rome to the downfal of carthage, b. c. - book ii. history of the persian empire from b. c. - book iii. history of the grecian states geographical outline of greece ib. st period. traditional history down to the trojan war, about b. c. nd period. from the trojan war to the breaking out of the persian war, b. c. - history of the hellenic states within greece ib. general history ib. sparta athens principal data for the history of the smaller states: i. within the peloponnesus: _a._ arcadia _b._ argos ib. _c._ corinth _d._ sicyon _e._ achaia ib. _f._ elis ii. central greece, or hellas: _a._ megaris _b._ boeotia _c._ phocis _d._ locris ib. _e._ Ætolia ib. _f._ acarnania iii. northern greece: _a._ thessaly _b._ epirus iv. grecian islands: _a._ corcyra _b._ Ægina ib. _c._ euboea _d._ the cyclades ib. _e._ crete ib. _f._ cyprus history of the grecian colonies general observations ib. colonies on the western coast of asia minor: . Æolian colonies . ionian colonies . dorian colonies colonies on the coast of the propontis and the black sea colonies on the coasts of thrace and macedonia colonies on the western coast of greece grecian settlements in lower italy: _a._ tarentum _b._ croton _c._ sybaris ib. _d._ thurii _e._ locri epizephyrii ib. _f._ rhegium _g._ cumæ ib. grecian settlements in sicily: _a._ syracuse _b._ agrigentum _c._ the smaller sicilian cities colonies in sardinia and corsica ib. colonies in gaul;--massilia colonies in spain;--saguntum ib. colonies in africa;--cyrene ib. period iii. from the breaking out of the persian wars to alexander the great, b. c. - book iv. history of the macedonian monarchy: period i. from its origin to the death of alexander the great, b. c. - period ii. history of the macedonian monarchy, from the death of alexander the great to the battle of ipsus, b. c. - period iii. history of the separate kingdoms and states which arose out of the dismemberment of the macedonian monarchy, after the battle of ipsus i. history of the syrian empire under the seleucidæ b. c. - ii. history of the egyptian kingdom under the ptolemies, b. c. - iii. history of macedonia itself and of greece, from the death of alexander to the roman conquest, b. c. - achæan league Ætolian league iv. history of some smaller or more distant kingdoms and states formed out of the macedonian monarchy the kingdom of pergamus bithynia paphlagonia pontus cappadocia armenia the kingdom of parthia the kingdom of bactria the restored kingdom of the jews . under the persians . under the ptolemies and seleucidæ . under the maccabees . under the family of herod book v. history of the roman state: introductory remarks on the geography of ancient italy period i. from the foundation of rome to the conquest of italy, and the commencement of the wars with carthage, b. c. - , or a. u. c. - period ii. from the commencement of the war with carthage to the rise of the civil broils under the gracchi, b. c. - , or a. u. c. - period iii. from the beginning of the civil broils under the gracchi to the fall of the republic, b. c. - , or a. u. c. - period iv. history of the roman state as a monarchy till the overthrow of the western empire, b. c. -a. c. geographical outline. view of the roman empire and provinces, and other countries connected with it by war or commerce ib. st section. from augustus cæsar to the death of commodus, b. c. -a. c. nd section. from the death of commodus to diocletian, a. c. - rd section. from diocletian to the overthrow of the roman empire in the west, a. c. - appendix. chronology of herodotus from the time of cyrus, according to volney genealogical table of the reigning houses of macedon -------------------------------------------- the seleucidæ -------------------------------------------- the ptolemies -------------------------------------------- the jews -------------------------------------------- the cæsars -------------------------------------------- constantine * * * * * oxford: printed by talboys and browne. * * * * * manual of ancient history. * * * * * introduction. i. the sources of ancient history may be ranged under two heads; the ancient writers, and the monuments still extant. the various writers will be mentioned in their proper places, at the different divisions of this work. a general view of the ancient monuments, so far as they are sources of history, will be found in: oberlin, _orbis antiqui monumentis suis illustrati primæ lineæ_. argentorati, . extremely defective, as many discoveries have been made since it was published. ii. general treatises on ancient history. . _the more voluminous works_ on the subject. these may be divided in two classes: _a._ the part appropriated to ancient history, in the general treatises on universal history; _b._ works exclusively devoted to ancient history. _a._ to the first class belong: _the universal history, ancient and modern; with maps and additions._ lond. , vols. folio. reprinted in vo. in vols. and again in vols. with omissions and additions. this work, compiled by a society of british scholars, has been translated into german, and illustrated with remarks, by siegm. jac. baumgarten. halle, , to. the germans frequently designate it by the name of the halle universal history of the world: the first eighteen vols. comprise the ancient part. will. guthrie, john gray, _etc._ _general history of the world, from the creation to the present time._ london, - , vols. vo. this work, of no estimation in the original, is rendered valuable and useful by the labours of the german translator, c. g. heyne, (_leip._ , vo.) who has corrected the errors, inserted the dates, and added his own observations. _b._ to the second class belong: rollin, _histoire ancienne des egyptiens, des carthaginois, des assyriens, des mèdes el des perses, des macédoniens, des grecs._ paris, , vols. vo.; revue par letronne: the last and best edition. this work, which greatly promoted the study of ancient history in france, still maintains its well-earned reputation. [it was translated into english, : best edition, vols. vo.: frequently reprinted.] the above is generally accompanied by the _histoire romaine_ of the same author. see below, book v. first period, _sources_. jac. ben. bossuet, _discours sur l'histoire universelle_. paris, , vols. frequently reprinted, being considered by the french one of their classics. [english translation, by rich. spencer. london, , vo.] millot, _elémens de l'histoire générale_. paris, , sq. [translated into english, , vols. vo.: and again, an improved edition, with additions.] edinb. , vols. vo. the ancient history is contained in the first two volumes. # joh. matth. schroeckh, _general history of the world_, for the use of children. leipzic, , sq. vols. # j. g. eichhorn, _history of the ancient world_, , third edition, . (first part of the history of the world.) # dan. g. j. huebler, _sketch of the general history of the nations of antiquity, from the birth of states to the end of the roman commonwealth_. freyberg, - . five parts; and a continuation: _history of the romans under the emperors, and of the contemporary nations, until the great migration_, ; three parts. a work rendered extremely useful, by the judicious advantage taken by the author of the labours of other writers. # h. luden, _general history of nations_. ; three parts. # l. von dresch, _general political history_. ; three parts. in each of the above works the first part contains the ancient history, and exhibits the more modern views of the subject. [the following is added, as well deserving the attention of the english student: ralegh (sir walter) _history of the world, part i. extending to the end of the macedonian empire; with his life and trial, by mr. oldys_. lond. , vols. folio. formerly the best edition; but a new and improved one has been printed at the clarendon press. oxford, , vols. vo.] # f. von raumer, _lectures on ancient history_, parts , . berlin, . works furnishing illustrations of the progressive civilization, government, and commerce of early nations, although, strictly speaking, not treatises on ancient history, are nevertheless very closely connected with the subject. among these may be mentioned: goguet, _de l'origine des lois, des arts, et des sciences, et de leurs progrès chèz les anciens peuples; nouv. édit_. paris, . [translated by dr. dunn and mr. speerman. edinb. - , vols. vo.] # a. h. l. heeren, _reflections on the politics, intercourse, and trade of the most eminent nations in the ancient world_. third edition, with many additions. gottingen, , vo.; the third part, . fourth edition. gottingen, . [this edition, the last, contains many improvements and additions, suggested by the great discoveries of modern travellers. part i, asiatic nations, in vols. persians, phoenicians, babylonians, scythians, indians. an english translation of which is at this moment in the press. part ii, african nations, vols. carthaginians, ethiopians, egyptians. part iii, european nations; of which only volume, greeks, has been published.] . _manuals_, or epitomes. the germans are entitled to the merit of having first produced manuals of ancient history, all of them useful, some excellent, in their kind: they are a result of the progress made in this science at the universities. # j. chr. gatterer, _attempt at an universal history of the world to the discovery of america_. gottingen, . he who possesses this, the last and ripest fruit of gatterer's studies, may dispense with the earlier manuals published by that author. # chr. dan. beck, _a short introduction to the knowledge of the universal history of the world and of nature_. leipzic, . the first part connected with our subject extends to a. d. . this volume is enriched with such a copious and critical account of books relating to ancient history, that it may supply the place of a particular work on the subject. # j. a. remer, _manual of the more ancient history, from the creation of the world to the great migration_. fourth edition. brunswick, . # j. m. schroeckh, _manual of universal history_. : latest edition, . # g. s. bredow, _manual of ancient history, with a sketch of the chronology of the ancients_. altona, , vo. [translated into english. lond. , mo. in english we have: _the outlines of history_, in vol. (forming part of lardner's cabinet cyclopædia) by mr. keightly, author of a learned and highly useful work on grecian mythology, is a convenient abridgement. tytler's _elements of general history_, improved and continued by dr. nares. lond. , best edition; owes its reputation and success to the want of a better work on the subject.] . _helps._ among the works subservient to the study of ancient history, the first rank is justly due to the synchronistic tables. # d. g. j. huebler, _synchronistic tables of the history of nations_; arranged principally according to gatterer's _history of the world_. in two numbers. second edit. and . . the object of political history is to recount the destinies of nations, both in respect to their foreign relations and internal affairs. in regard to domestic concerns, one of its most important objects is the _history of governments_: in respect to external affairs, it comprises not only an account of the wars, but likewise of the friendly relations and intercourse with other states. observe here the difference between universal history, or general history of the human race, and the history of nations; the latter forms part of the former. observe also the difference between political history and that of civilization, or of man as a human being: the latter is merely the history of man, as man, without regard to political circumstances. . universal political history is usually divided into three parts: _ancient history_, that of the _middle ages_, and _modern history_. the first extends to the fall of the roman empire in the west, which took place towards the close of the fifth century of the christian era; the second extends to the discovery of america, and of a passage by sea to the east indies, about the end of the fifteenth century; the third extends from the commencement of the sixteenth century to the present time. the propriety of the above division is evinced by the nature of the events which form these epochs. the student will easily perceive that the division of history, into that before and after the birth of christ, is not judicious. . from the definition just given, it follows, that political history does not commence till after the first formation of states. whatever is known, therefore, of the period previous to this, or may be gathered from traditions, respecting individuals or tribes, or their migrations, affinities, or discoveries, forms no part of political history, but must be referred to the general history of man. it is well known that a great deal of information has been preserved in the sacred writings concerning the early fortunes of the human race. from these materials have been compiled what has been called an _historia antediluviana_, sometimes considered as forming a separate division of history. what has been said above will satisfactorily account for the omission of this portion of history in the present work; although none can deny the high importance of such traditions in the investigation of the origin, dispersion, and civilization of the human race. . the sources of history may be ranged under sources of two general heads; _oral traditions_, and _written documents_ of various kinds. the history of every nation usually commences with oral tradition, which remains the only source, until the art of writing becomes known, and in some degree adopted by the people. . under the name of _traditional history_ or _mythology_, is comprehended all the general collection of oral traditions preserved by a nation; and some such traditional history or mythology is to be found among every people in the first stage of their existence as a community. this mythology, however, is by no means confined to events strictly historical, but embraces every branch of information which may appear to a nation in its infancy, of sufficient importance to be preserved and handed down to posterity. hence the mythology of a people is invariably composed of very heterogeneous materials; it not only preserves the remembrance of various kinds of historical facts, but likewise the pervading ideas of the people with respect to the nature and worship of their deities; as well as the notions they had formed from observations and experience respecting astronomy, morals, the arts, etc. all these are handed down in the form of historical narrative; because man, as yet unpractised in abstract thinking, necessarily represents every thing to his mind under the figure of some physical object. it is just as useless, therefore, to attempt to mould the mythology of any people into a consistent and connected whole, or indeed into any scientific system whatsoever, as it is difficult to draw a strict line between what belongs to mythology, and what to pure history. it follows, therefore, that mythology should be employed by the historian with great caution; and not without judicious criticism, and an accurate knowledge of antiquity. these correct views of mythology,--the key to the whole of earlier antiquity,--were first set forth and illustrated by heyne, in his commentaries upon virgil and other poets, in his edition of apollodorus, and in various essays published in the transactions of the gottingen scientific society. it is principally to the aid of these that the germans owe their superiority over other nations in the science of antiquity. . the place of writing among such nations, is generally supplied, in a great measure, by poetry; which being in its origin nothing more than imagery expressed in figurative language, must spontaneously arise among men, as yet wont to represent every thing to their minds under the form of images. hence the subject matter of the poetry of every nation, while in a state of rudeness, is and can be nothing else but its mythology; and the great variety in the materials of which this is composed very naturally gave rise, at the same early period, to various kinds of poetry; as the lyric, the didactic, the epic. the last of these, inasmuch as it contains the historic songs and the epopee, claims in a more especial manner the attention of the historian. the mythi (or fables of which this mythology was composed) were in later times frequently collected from the works of the poets, and committed to writing by grammarians; such as apollodorus and others. this, however, can have had no effect on their original character. . the second source of history, much more copious and important than the former, are the various kinds of written monuments. these may be arranged according to the order of time at which they were brought into use, into three classes; st. inscriptions on public monuments, under which head are included the coins of later date; nd. chronological records of events, under the form of annals and chronicles; rd. real philosophical works on history. . inscriptions on public monuments erected to preserve the remembrance of certain events, though perhaps no more than a stone set upright, or even a bare rock, was used for that purpose, were undoubtedly the most ancient written memorials. these rude monuments became fashioned by art into columns, obelisks, and pyramids, as the taste of the nation became formed; and assumed that definite character which local circumstances and the natural features of the country led it to adopt, as architecture arose and attained to perfection among them. the very object, indeed, for which they were erected--the commemoration of remarkable events,--must have suggested the practice of inscribing upon them some particulars of the facts they were intended to perpetuate. of this nature, no doubt, were the oldest monuments, and more particularly those of egypt. their use was much more general among nations of a later period, especially greece and rome, than among the moderns; yet of the great mass of inscriptions still extant, but few comparatively are of any importance as regards history. the characters engraved on these monuments were either symbolical (hieroglyphics; see below under egypt,) or alphabetical. the invention and transmission of alphabetical writing are commonly ascribed to the phoenicians; although, if we may judge by the shape of the arrow-headed character, it was made, without communication with them, in the interior of asia. the general collections of inscriptions are: lud. ant. muratori, _novus thesaurus veterum inscriptionum_. mediolani, , sq. vols. fol. together with seb. donati, _supplementa_. luccæ, . jan. gruteri, _inscriptiones antiquæ totius orbis romani, cura_ j. g. grÆvii. amstel. , vols. fol. c. a. boekhius, _corpus inscriptionum græcarum, auctoritate et impensis academiæ literarum borussicæ_, vol. . , folio. among the separate monuments, the most important for ancient history is the parian or oxford inscription, _marmora oxoniensia, arundeliana_, edited by selden, ; by prideaux, . the best edition is by rich. chandler, oxf. , fol. a useful and portable edition has been published by fr. ch. wagner, _containing the greek text, with a german translation and notes_. gottingen, , vo. . coins may likewise be regarded as a source of ancient history, as by the light they throw upon genealogy and chronology, the events known from other authorities may be better arranged and understood. the importance of coins, therefore, becomes most sensible in those portions of history where our information, in consequence of the loss of the works of the original historians, is reduced to a few insulated facts and fragments. ez. spanhemii, _dissertatio de usu et præstantia numismatum_. londini, et , vols. fol. the capital work, however, on this subject, and which embraces the whole numismatic science of antiquity is: eckhel, _de doctrina nummorum veterum_. viennæ, - , vols. to. and the epitome: # eckhel, _brief elements of ancient numismatics_. vienna, , vo. another very useful work is: j. c. rasche, _lexicon universæ rei nummariæ veterum_. , sq. vols. vo. . chronicles or annals form the second great division of written historical monuments. these presuppose the invention of letters, and the use of materials for writing upon; consequently they are of a later date than mere inscriptions. they occur, nevertheless, in the earlier periods of nations; and from such annals, indited by public authority (state chronicles,) subsequent historians have generally drawn materials for their works. in many nations, and in nearly all the eastern ones, history has not even yet advanced beyond the composition of such chronicles. . the third great division of historical writings is formed of works composed on philosophical principles, which differ from mere annals by their containing not only a chronological narration of events, but also a development of their connection with one another, their causes and effects. but few nations among the moderns, and we know of none among the ancients, except the greeks and romans, that had any acquaintance with this sort of history. a fact which may be attributed,-- st. to the government; for the more completely the affairs of a nation are under the control of arbitrary power and caprice, whether of one or more individuals, so much the less apparent is a rational internal connection of events. hence philosophical history flourishes most under free governments; and has not even a shadow of existence under pure despotic constitutions. nd. to the degree of civilization to which the nation may have attained: for the observing and unravelling of the political connection of events presupposes a considerable progress in philosophical culture. . since all events are considered in reference to the time and place in which they occur, it follows that geography and chronology are indispensable as auxiliary sciences in the study of history, especially the ancient. these sciences, however, need not, for this purpose, be considered in their full extent and detail, but only so far as they are of use in determining and arranging events according to time and place. a fixed mode of computing time is therefore necessary in ancient history, as well as a continuous geographical description of the countries which were the theatres of the principal events. . no method of computing time was adopted generally in antiquity. each nation, each state, had its own era: yet, in the explication of ancient history, there is an evident necessity that some common era should be fixed upon, by which a synchronistic view of the various events may be obtained. for this purpose, the years may be computed either from the creation of the world, or before and after christ. the latter method has the advantage not only of greater certainty, but also of greater convenience. of the various modes of computing time, the best known are those of the greeks and the romans; the former by olympiads, the latter by years from the foundation of rome. the era of the olympiads commences at b. c. ; that of the foundation of rome commences at b. c. , according to varro; at b. c. , according to cato.--the era of the seleucidæ, in the syrian empire, commences with b. c. .--various other eras, such as that of nabonnassar, commencing with b. c. , are founded on observations preserved by ptolemy, and made known by scaliger, in his _doctrina temporum_. chronology constitutes a distinct science: the best introduction to which will be found in: # j. c. gatterer, _epitome of chronology_. gottingen, . a most excellent criticism on the ancient eras has lately been communicated to the public by: # l. ideler, _historic researches into the astronomical observations of the ancients_. berlin, . # d. h. hegewisch, _introduction to historical chronology_; . a very useful and portable work. [in english we have the laborious work of dr. hales: hales (willm.) _new analysis of chronology, explaining the history and antiquities of the primitive nations of the world, etc._ lond. - , vols. to. new edition, corrected and improved, , vols. vo. blair's _chronology and history of the world, from the creation to the present time_. lond. , folio. and for the brilliant period of greece and rome the satisfactory volumes: h. f. clynton's _fasti hellenici. the civil and literary chronology of greece, from the fifty-fifth to the hundred and twenty-fourth olympiad_. second edition, with additions. oxford, , to. and the continuation of the same work to the death of augustus, oxford, , to. in this valuable work, much light is also thrown upon the chronology of the times anterior to the period with which the first volume is principally occupied.] . in ancient geography there is much care required to distinguish the fabulous from the true. with regard to true geography, as an auxiliary science to history, all that can be expected is some general information respecting the nature and peculiarities of the countries, respecting their political divisions, and finally, respecting the principal cities:--long lists of the names of places would be quite superfluous. fabulous geography constitutes a part of the mythology of every nation, and differs in each, because the ideas formed by every early nation respecting the form and nature of the earth are peculiar to itself. true geography gradually comes to light as civilization increases, and discovery widens its horizon.--necessity of treating it historically, on account of the manifold changes to which the division and the face of the countries of the ancient world have been at various periods subjected. christoph. cellarii _notitia orbis antiqui_. lips. - , vols. to. _cum observat._ j. c. schwarzii. lips. , et iterum . this work was for a long time the only, and is still an indispensable, treatise on ancient geography. # h. mannert, _geography of the greeks and romans_. nuremberg, - . this work, now completed in volumes, may be justly designated classical, from the historical and critical learning which the author has everywhere displayed. vol. i, contains spain; ii, gallia et britain; iii, germania, rhætia, noricum; iv, the northern parts of the world, from the wessel to china; v, india and the persian empire to the euphrates, parts; vi, asia minor, parts; vii, thrace, illyria, macedonia, thessaly, epirus; viii, northern greece, peloponnesus, and the archipelago; ix, italy and sicily, sardinia, etc. parts; x, africa, parts. # f. a. ukert, _geography of the greeks and romans, from the earliest periods to the time of ptolemy_: first part, first division, contains the historical, the second contains the mathematical sections. weimar, ; with maps. gosselin, _géographie des grecs analysée_. paris, , to. a development of the system of mathematical geography among the greeks. partly continued in gosselin, _recherches sur la géographie des anciens_. paris, an. vi. vol. - . j. rennel, _geographical system of herodotus_. lond. , to. [reprinted in vols. vo. lond. , revised. here, too, for the benefit of the english reader may be mentioned: rennel's _treatise on the comparative geography of western asia, with an atlas_. london, , vols. vo.; published since the author's death. and the learned and valuable volumes of dr. cramer, principal of new inn hall, and public orator of the university of oxford; they are, _geographical and historical description of ancient greece, with a map, and plan of athens._ oxford, , vols. vo. _geographical and historical description of ancient italy, with a map._ oxford, , vols. vo. _geographical and historical description of asia minor, with a map._ oxford, , vols. vo. the maps which accompany these works approach very nearly to perfection. as useful compendiums, there are: _an introduction to ancient geography, with copious indexes of ancient and modern names_, by peter ed. laurent, teacher in the royal naval academy at portsmouth. oxford, , vo. _a compendium of ancient and modern geography, for the use of eton school; illustrating the most interesting points in history, poetry, and fable; preceded by an introduction to the study of astronomy, and containing plans of athens, rome, syracuse, and numerous diagrams explanatory of the motions of the heavenly bodies_, by aaron arrowsmith, hydrographer to the king, vol. vo., with or without a copious index. london, . butler's (dr. sam.) _sketch of ancient and modern geography_. seventh edition, vo. also his _atlas of ancient geography_, consisting of twenty-one coloured maps, with a complete accentuated index. vo.] we are indebted to d'anville for the best charts of ancient geography: _atlas orbis antiqui_, twelve leaves, fol. [the eton comparative atlas of ancient and modern geography, with the index, published in several sizes; and the maps published by the society for the promotion of useful knowledge, are very useful and correct.] . ancient history may be treated either ethnographically, that is, according to separate nations and states; or synchronistically, that is, according to certain general epochs. each of these methods has its advantages and its disadvantages. the two, however, may be combined, and formed into one system; and as this seems the most convenient, it has been adopted in the present work, which is accordingly divided as follows: first book.--history of the ancient asiatic and african states and kingdoms anterior to cyrus, or to the rise of the persian monarchy, about the year b. c. : comprising little more than insulated fragments. second book.--history of the persian monarchy, from b. c. to . third book.--history of the grecian states, both in greece and other parts, to the time of alexander, b. c. . fourth book.--history of the macedonian monarchy, and of the kingdoms which arose out of its division, until they merged into the roman empire. fifth book.--history of the roman state, both as a commonwealth and a monarchy, until the fall of the western empire, a. d. . * * * * * manual of ancient history. * * * * * the first book. historical fragments of the earlier asiatic and african kingdoms and states, previous to cyrus, or the rise of the persian monarchy. i.--asiatic nations. _general preliminary remarks on the geography of asia._ see the introduction to heeren's researches into the politics and commerce of the nations of antiquity, prefixed to vol. of the african nations. oxford, . . asia is the largest and the most favourably situated of the great divisions of the globe. its superficial contents are , , square geogr. miles; while those of africa do not exceed , , ; and those of europe are not more than , , . as to situation, it comprises the greatest portion of the northern temperate zone. compare it, in this point of view, with the other quarters of the globe, especially africa.--advantages over the latter, in consequence of the convenience of its indented shores--of its surrounding fruitful islands--of its deep gulfs and large streams--the few sandy deserts in its interior. . natural features, and consequent division of the land, according to the course of the larger mountain chains and of the principal rivers. two great mountain chains run from west to east; in the north, the altai, (nameless in antiquity): in the south, taurus.--branches of both: the caucasus, between the black and caspian seas: imaus extending along the golden desert (desert of cobi): the paropamisus, on the north of india: the ural (nameless in antiquity).--of the rivers remarkable in ancient history, there are four flowing from north to south, namely, the euphrates and tigris, which fall into the persian gulf; the indus and ganges, which fall into the indian sea: two which run from east to west, and discharged their waters into the caspian sea, (but now into the sea of aral,) namely, the oxus (or jihon) and the jaxartes (or sirr). . this quarter of the globe is accordingly divided into northern asia, comprising the regions north of altai; central asia, or the countries between the altai and taurus; and southern asia, or the lands south of taurus. . northern asia, between the th and th parallels of north latitude, (asiatic russia and siberia,) was almost, though not entirely, unknown in antiquity.--some obscure hints, though partly true, respecting it, are found in herodotus, the father of history. . central asia, the regions extending between the th and th degrees of north latitude, scythia and sarmatia asiatica, (great tartary and mongol;) for the most part a boundless, barren table land, devoid of arable fields or forests; and consequently a mere country of pasture.--the inhabitants pastors, (nomads,) without cities or fixed abodes; recognizing no other political association than patriarchal government. peculiar mode of life and character of nomad nations; powerful influence which they have exercised, as conquerors, on political history.--whether we have a right to expect that the civilization of the human race will for ever continue to advance, when we consider that perhaps one half of it has from time immemorial remained, and from its physical situation must for ever remain, in a nomad state. . southern asia, or the regions from the th degree of n. lat. to about the equator.--its natural features altogether different from those of central asia. the great advantages of these regions compared with all other parts of the earth, in possessing a soil and climate highly favourable for agriculture; and an abundance of various costly productions. to these circumstances may be attributed, st. the adoption of fixed habitations and political associations in these countries, from the earliest times. ndly. their becoming the principal seat of trade, from the infancy of civilization to the discovery of america. reflections upon the rise of political associations.--whether, according to the general opinion, they were produced solely by agriculture and the possession of land; or, whether religion, by which i mean the common worship of one divinity as the national god, (communia sacra,) was not the main bond which united the earliest states of antiquity?--how shall we account for the very remarkable fact, that in the earliest civil societies in the world, the priesthood is generally found to be a ruling caste.--reflections on early trade, particularly that of the east, before it was changed, by the discovery of america and the new passage to india, from a land trade to a sea trade.--observations upon ancient commercial routes across asia.--the banks of the large rivers destined by nature to become the seats of commerce for the interior; on the oxus, bactra and maracanda, (samarcand;) on the euphrates and tigris, babylon.--the sea shores on the western coast of asia minor and phoenicia, pointed out also by nature as places of commerce;--line of grecian and phoenician factories. . division of southern asia. st. south-western asia, from the mediterranean to the indus; nd. south-eastern asia, from the indus to the eastern ocean. a. south-western asia is again subdivided into the countries-- st. on this side the euphrates-- ndly. between the euphrates and tigris-- rdly. between the tigris and the indus. . _countries on this side the euphrates._ (_a_) the peninsula of asia minor (natolia). principal rivers: the halys and sangarius. countries: three towards the west, mysia, lydia, caria. along the shore, the greek seaports of phocæa, ephesus, miletus, smyrna, halicarnassus, etc. inland, the cities of sardes in lydia, of pergamus in mysia. three towards the south, lycia, pamphylia, and cilicia, with its capital tarsus. three towards the north, bithynia, paphlagonia, pontus; with the greek ports of heraclea, amisus, and sinope. two inland, phrygia, together with galatia and the capital cities of gordium and celænæ; cappadocia, with the city of mazaca. (_b_) islands along the coast of asia minor: lesbos, with the city of mitylene; chios, samos, cos, rhodes, with cities of the same name. (_c_) syria, together with phoenicia and palestine. st. syria, properly so called. cities: damascus, emessa, heliopolis, (baalbec). in the desert, palmyra. nd. phoenicia, a mountainous tract, extending along the shore. mountains: libanus and antilibanus. cities: tyre, on an island opposite the ancient tyre, which was situate upon the mainland; sidon, byblus, berytus, tripolis, aradus. rd. palestine. mountains: carmel, tabor. river: jordan, which discharges its waters into the dead sea. division of palestine; first, according to the twelve tribes; afterwards into the provinces, of judæa, capital jerusalem: of samaria; cities, samaria, sichem: and of galilee. (_d_) peninsula of arabia, abounding in vast sandy deserts, and almost entirely occupied by nomad tribes. its southern and eastern coasts render it, nevertheless, a most important seat of trade. in the north, arabia petræa, so called from the town of petra. inland, arabia deserta. in the south, arabia felix; rich, both in natural productions, being the native land of almost every kind of perfume, particularly frankincense; and also as being the ancient staple for the merchandise of india. cities: mariaba, aden, etc. in the east, the trading town of gerra, and the islands near the shore, tylos and aradus, (bahrein,) both likewise marts for arabian and indian wares, particularly cinnamon from taprobane (ceylon). . _countries between the euphrates and tigris._ (_a_) mesopotamia; in the interior a sterile table land, entirely occupied by nomad hordes. cities on the euphrates: thapsacus, circesium, cunaxa; in the north, zoba or nisibis. (_b_) armenia, north of the foregoing. very mountainous; for a long time without cities, but at last it had tigranocerta. rivers: the cyrus and araxes, falling into the caspian; and the phasis, falling into the black sea. (_c_) babylonia, the southern part of mesopotamia, from which it was separated by the median wall. a level plain, remarkable for the richness of its soil; formerly, by its high cultivation, its canals and lakes, and the erection of dams, the most fruitful, and, from its situation, the most opulent staple of inner asia. cities: babylon on the euphrates, borsippa. whether the account given by herodotus, as an eyewitness, of the size and splendour of babylon is not exaggerated?--manner in which the great asiatic cities arose out of the royal encampments of the nomad conquerors. . _countries between the tigris and the indus._ (_a_) assyria, or the province of adiabene; a table land. cities: nineveh, (ninus,) arbela. the name of assyria is also frequently taken by the greeks in a wider acceptation, as comprising both mesopotamia and babylonia; it is sometimes even confounded with syria. (_b_) susiana, a fruitful district, with the city susa on the river choaspes, or eulæus (ulai), one of the residences of the persian monarchs. (_c_) persis, rugged and mountainous towards the north; level and fruitful in the centre; sandy towards the south. rivers: the cyrus and araxes. cities: persepolis or pasargada, the national palace and cemetery of the kings of persia. the name of persis was, in ancient as well as in modern geography, taken in a more extensive sense, as comprising all the countries between the tigris and indus, with the exception of assyria. in this sense, it contains three countries towards the south--persis, properly so called; carmania, gedrosia: three central countries--media, aria, arachosia: and three countries towards the north--parthia and hyrcania, bactria, sogdiana. (_d_) carmania, an extensive country, for the most part desert, ranging along the persian gulf and indian sea. cities: carmana, harmozia. (_e_) gedrosia, tract of land running along the coast between carmania and india, and washed by the indian sea. a mere sandy desert; towards the north, mountainous. town, pura. (_f_) media, above persis; an extensive and very fruitful country; mountainous towards the north. rivers: araxes, cyrus, and mardus. cities: ecbatana, rages. the northern district was likewise known by the name of atropatene (azerbeijan), or lesser media. (_g_) aria, a smooth table land, with a lake and river, arius: and one city, aria or artacoana. (_h_) arachosia; a rich and fertile country on the frontiers of india; bounded towards the north by the paropamisus chain. cities: arachotus and prophthasia. the neighbouring highlands, occupied by a numerous population, (now cabul and kandahar,) are often regarded, in consequence of their being subject to the persian dominion, as forming part of persia. they are known by the name of paropamisus. (_i_) parthia and hyrcania, rugged mountainous districts to the north of media; but abounding in magnificent and fertile vales. before and during the predominance of persia, but little known and little valued; and without cities. it was at a considerably later period that the inhabitants of parthia became a dominant nation. (_k_) bactria, the country on the south bank of the oxus; rich in natural productions, and one of the most ancient marts of asia. river: oxus. cities: bactra and zariaspa. bactria lies on the frontier of india, little thibet, bukharia, (the north india of herodotus and ctesias,) and the desert of cobi, (herodotus's golden desert): the road to china runs through this country. nature, by the geographical situation in which she has placed bactria, seems to have destined it to be the great emporium for the wares of south-eastern asia; and in proportion as we penetrate into early history, we become convinced that bactria, like babylon, must have been one of the earliest seats of international commerce, and consequently, if not the birthplace, one of the cradles of infant civilization. (_l_) sogdiana, the territory between the upper oxus and upper jaxartes, the latter dividing it from central asia. (a part of great bukharia.) its peculiarities and advantages similar to those of the neighbouring bactria. capital: maracanda (samarcand). b. south-eastern asia, or asia beyond the indus, offers nothing remarkable for history till a later period. see book v, period iv. _general preliminary observations upon the history and constitution of the great asiatic empires._ . asia contained in ancient times, as it does at present, empires of immense extent, differing materially both in this respect and in their constitution from the civilized nations of europe. changes were frequent; but the form of government continued nearly always the same. some deeply rooted and active principles therefore must have been in constant operation, to have given so repeatedly, in these various revolutions, the same organization to the kingdoms of asia. . the great revolutions of asia, with the exception of that caused by alexander, were effected by the numerous and powerful nomad races which inhabited a large portion of that continent. pressed by necessity or circumstances, they forsook their own seats, founded new kingdoms, and carried war and conquest into the fruitful and cultivated lands of southern asia, until, enervated by luxury, the consequence of the change in their mode of life, they were in their turn, and in a similar manner, subjugated. . this origin, common to all asiatic kingdoms, accounts for their immense extent, their rapid establishment, and their generally brief duration. . the internal organization must, for the same reasons, have been nearly alike in all; and the constant reappearance of despotism is accounted for, partly by the rights of conquest, partly by the vast extent of the subdued countries, which obliged the rulers to have recourse to satrap-government. . to this, it must moreover be added, that among all the considerable nations of inner asia, the paternal government of every household was corrupted by polygamy: where that custom exists, a good political constitution is impossible; fathers being converted into domestic despots, are ready to pay the same abject obedience to their sovereign that they exact from their family and dependants in their domestic economy. to avoid confusion, it will be necessary to define the terms despotism and despotic government. in theory, we must admit three essentially different kinds of government. st. the _despotic_, in which the members of the state are not secured in the possession of their rights as men, (personal freedom and security of property,) nor of their rights as citizens, (active participation in the legislative power). such a constitution exists only by force, and can never be lawful. nd. the _autocratic_, in which the members of the state are in full possession of their rights as men, but not of their rights as citizens. this government, therefore, arises from the union of the legislative and executive powers in the person of the ruler. in form, it is either monarchical or aristocratical (a pure monarchy, or a pure aristocracy). this kind of government is most likely to be established by usurpation; it may, nevertheless, be acquired by succession, or even adopted by common consent: it may therefore be lawful. rd. the _republican_, in which the members of the state are in possession of their rights, both as men and as citizens. this government necessarily presupposes a separation of the legislative and executive powers; and with regard to its form, may be either monarchical or aristocratical, (a moderate monarchy, or a moderate aristocracy).--how far can a pure democracy be called a government, and comprised under any of the foregoing heads?--explanation of the despotism in the asiatic kingdoms, and the attempts made to limit it by religion and religious institutions. . general features in the gradual internal development of all empires formed by nomad conquerors. (_a_) at first the mere occupation of rich territories, and levying of tribute. (_b_) hence the constitutions already established among the conquered or tributary nations generally suffered to remain. (_c_) gradual progress towards the adoption of a fixed abode and the building of cities, together with the assumption of the customs and civilization of the conquered. (_d_) division into provinces, and, as a necessary consequence, the establishment of satrap-government. (_e_) insurrections of the satraps, and the internal ruin of the state prepared thereby. (_f_) the influence of the seraglio on the government has the same effect, for its unavoidable consequences are--effeminacy and indolence in the rulers. (_g_) hence the dissolution of the empire, or its total annihilation by some violent attack from without. _fragments of the history of the ancient asiatic kingdoms previous to cyrus._ sources, and their critical examination: . jewish writings, particularly the books of kings, chroniclers, and the prophets; together with the mosaic records. . greek writers, herodotus, ctesias, and diodorus: later chroniclers, syncellus, eusebius, ptolemy. . native writer, berosus. futility of all endeavours to arrange into one work the accounts of authors so entirely different by birth and the times in which they flourished: a task attempted by the french writers, sevin, freret, and debrosse, in their papers contained in the mém. de l'acad. des inscript. volney, _recherches nouvelles sur l'histoire ancienne_. - : very important and authentic, so far as regards the system of herodotus's chronology. i. _assyrian monarchy._ . with the greeks, assyrian is generally a common name applied to the ruling nations about the euphrates and tigris before the time of cyrus. with the jews, on the contrary, it signifies a distinct nation of conquerors, and the founders of an empire. hence a necessary discrepancy between the grecian and hebrew statements. . assyrian history, according to grecian authorities, particularly ctesias and diodorus, is nothing more than mere traditions of ancient heroes and heroines, who at some early period founded a large kingdom in the countries about the euphrates and tigris; traditions without any chronological data, and in the style of the east. ninus--semiramis--ninyas--sardanapalus. according to herodotus, an assyrian empire of years' duration, - . lists of assyrian kings in the chronicles of syncellus and eusebius. . assyrian history, according to jewish authorities. chronological history of an assyrian empire between b. c. and .--seat of the nation in assyria, properly so called.--capital: nineveh on the tigris.--extension of their dominion as far as syria and phoenicia. line of assyrian kings: . pul, about . invasion of syria. . tiglath-pileser, about . he overthrows the kingdom of damascus. . shalmaneser, about . he destroys the kingdom of samaria. transplantation of the inhabitants into inner asia. . sennacherib, about . mighty expedition against egypt, frustrated by a pestilence. . esarhaddon. _contemporary_: jews, the divided kingdoms of israel and judah.--greeks, decennial archons at athens.--romans, rise of the state and the two first kings. ii. _median monarchy._ . the name of medes is undoubtedly often used by the greeks to designate one nation; it is, however, frequently made use of as a common appellation of the ruling nations in eastern asia, from the tigris to the indus, (or persia, in the more extensive sense of that word,) before cyrus.--with the jews: nothing more than general hints of the medes as a conquering nation. . although the statements of the grecian writers, as well as of the zendavesta, sufficiently prove that long before the rise of the persian power mighty kingdoms existed in these regions; and particularly in the eastern part, or bactria; yet we have no consistent or chronological history of these states: nothing but a few fragments, probably of dynasties which ruled in media, properly so called, immediately previous to the persians. _a._ _herodotus's history of the medes._ herodotus's medes are unquestionably the inhabitants of media, properly so called. division into six tribes: among these, that of the magi.--ruling nation after the overthrow of the assyrians.--capital of their empire, ecbatana.--boundaries: west, the tigris and halys; east, unknown.--internal organization: graduated subjection of the various nations to one another, according to their distance from the seat of empire; rigid despotism; and imposition of tribute. line of kings between b. c. - . deioces, _y._ the founder of ecbatana, _d._ .--phraortes, _y._ down to . he conquers persia. cyaxares i. _y._ down to . he establishes military discipline among the medes. wages war with the lydians, the assyrians.--irruption of the scythians and cimmerians, .--he takes nineveh, . astyages, _y._ down to , when he was dethroned by cyrus. according to xenophon, astyages was followed by another median prince, cyaxares ii. _b. ctesias's history of the medes_, deduced from persian archives, and contained in diodorus. probably a different dynasty in eastern asia. line of kings, between b. c. and . arbaces, conqueror of the assyrians, _y._ mandaucus, _y._ sosarmes, _y._ artias, _y._ arbanes, _y._ artæus, _y._ and artynes, _y._ sanguinary wars with the nomad races of the east, the sacæ, and cadusii. artibarnas, _y._ astyages, the last king. _contemporary_: jews, kingdom of judah alone.--greeks, yearly archons, draco, solon.--romans, kings from tullus hostilius to servius tullius. iii. _babylonian monarchy._ periods: st. previous to the chaldæan conquest, which occurred about . nd. from the chaldæan conquest to the persian, - . . babylon was not only spoken of in the most remote antiquity, but is mentioned in the jewish traditions as the earliest scene of political treaties, and as the most ancient seat of intercourse for the nations of asia. traditions concerning nimrod--and the erection of the tower of babel.--comparison of those traditions with the babylonian mythology in berosus.--scanty historical notices of this period in the later jewish writers; and probable subjection of babylon to the assyrian empire. . in the second period, - , the babylonians were the ruling nation of western asia.--the chaldæans take possession of babylon, there establish themselves, and ultimately extend their empire, by conquest, to the mediterranean. origin of the chaldæans: whether that name was applied to a distinct nation, or to the northern nomads in general?--line of chaldæan kings. in the enumeration of these rulers, as given by ptolemy, this line begins with nabonassar, and the era bearing the name of that sovereign, which commences in the year b. c. : (probably because, under the reign of that prince, the adoption of the egyptian solar year first introduced among the chaldæans an exact method of reckoning time). neither nabonassar himself, nor his twelve immediate successors, are remarkable in history: the six last alone deserve notice. . nabopolassar, - . settlement in babylon; and complete establishment of the chaldæo-babylonian dominion, by his victory over pharaoh-nechoh, near circesium, in . . nebuchadnezzar, - . brilliant period of the chaldæo-babylonian empire. he conquers phoenicia and old tyre about : jerusalem in ; probable irruptions into egypt. construction of immense buildings and canals in and about babylon. rapid decline of the empire after his death, under-- . evil-merodach, - . . neriglissar, (probably the contemporary of herodotus's nitocris;)-- . labosoarchad murdered, after a few months' reign. nabonadius, (herodotus's labynetus; and probably the chaldæan belshazzar;) - . attacked and conquered by cyrus. sack of babylon by the persians, . see the section concerning the babylonians in a. h. l. heeren's _historical researches_, vol. i, part. . _contemporary_: jews, last sovereigns of the kingdom of judah.--greeks, solon, pisistratus.--romans, tarquinius priscus and servius tullius. iv. _states and kingdoms in asia minor._ the number and variety of the inhabitants of this peninsula, was probably the reason why they never became united into one empire. the most important nations among them, were the carians in the west; the phrygians in the centre, reaching as far as the halys; the syro-cappadocians beyond the halys; and the thracians in bithynia. nevertheless we find here but three kingdoms deserving notice--the trojan, the phrygian, and the lydian. . the trojan empire comprised western mysia: its history consists of mere traditions contained in poets, with very uncertain chronological data. kings: teucer, about .--dardanus--erichthonius--tros (troja)--ilus (ilium)--laomedon--priam. the destruction of troy, after a ten years' war, occurred, it is probable, b. c. . _contemporary_: jews, time of the judges: before the foundation of rome, years. . the phrygian empire.--almost all the kings were named midas and gordius; their succession cannot be accurately determined. after the death of the last, called midas v., phrygia became a province of the lydian empire, about . . the lydian empire.--the lydians (mæonians) were a branch of the carian tribe. according to herodotus, three dynasties ruled in lydia; the atyadæ down to ; the heraclidæ down to ; and the mermnadæ down to : the two first are almost wholly fabulous, and the proper history of lydia may be said to commence with the last dynasty. kings: gyges, down to . from this period followed almost uninterrupted wars with the greek settlements on the seacoast. gyges takes colophon. ardys down to . he takes priene. under his reign, an irruption of the cimmerians. sadyattes down to . alyattes down to . expulsion of the cimmerians. capture of smyrna. croesus down to . he takes ephesus, and subjugates asia minor as far as the halys. under his reign, the first rise of a lydian empire, which however is overthrown by cyrus. asia minor becomes a province of the persian empire. _contemporary_ with which, in asia, were the medic and babylonian empires.--among the jews, the last period of the kingdom of judah.--among the greeks, the yearly archons at athens.--with the romans, the kings. v. _phoenicia._ the phoenicians may be regarded as one of the most remarkable nations of asia during this period; yet we have no complete, or even connected history of this people. but though a few scattered fragments are all we possess, we may from these trace out a general outline. the peculiar sources of phoenician history.--how far sanchoniathon deserves to be mentioned here?--hebrew writers, particularly ezekiel; greek writers; josephus--eusebius, etc. and the fragments which he has preserved of menander of ephesus, and dius, historians of tyre. mignot, _mémoires sur les phéniciens_; inserted in _mém. de l'acad. des inscript._ t. xxxiv-xlii. a series of twenty-four papers. the section concerning the phoenicians in a. h. l. heeren's _researches on the politics, etc._ . observations on the internal state of phoenicia. it did not constitute one state, or, at least, one single empire; but consisted of several, and their territories. alliances, however, were naturally formed between them, and hence a kind of supremacy of the more powerful, particularly of tyre. . but though tyre stood at the head, and claimed a certain degree of superiority, each separate state still possessed its own particular government. in all of them we meet with kings, who appear to have possessed but a limited authority, as we always find magistrates associated with them in power. among a mercantile and colonizing people, it was impossible that absolute despotism should endure for any length of time. of the separate states, tyre is the only one of which we possess a series of kings; and even that series is not complete. this line of kings, which we derive from menander through josephus, commences with abical, the contemporary of david, about b. c. . the most remarkable among them are: hiram, the successor of abical;--ethbaal i. about ;--pygmalion, dido's brother, about ;--ethbaal ii. in whose reign tyre was sacked by nebuchadnezzar, .--foundation of new tyre--republican constitution under suffetes: tributary kings under the persian rule;--conquest of new tyre by alexander, . the flourishing period of phoenicia in general, and of tyre in particular, falls therefore between - . _contemporary_ in inner asia: monarchies of the assyrians, medes, and the babylonians. jews: period of the kings after david. greeks: from homer to solon. romans: period of their kings in the last two centuries. . during this period the phoenicians spread themselves by the establishment of colonies; some of which, particularly carthage, became as powerful as the mother states. general ideas concerning colonization.-- . colonies are absolutely necessary to every seafaring and commercial people, whenever their trade extends to distant countries. . they have likewise been established for the purpose of providing for the excessive increase of the poor. . and they have sometimes arisen from political commotion, when the malcontents, either from free will, or force, have forsaken their country, and sought new settlements in distant regions. . geographical sketch of the phoenician colonies. they possessed, at a very early period, most of the islands of the archipelago; from which, however, they were subsequently expelled by the greeks. the principal countries in which they had settlements were the south of spain (tartessus, gades, carteia); the north coast of africa, west of the lesser syrtis (utica, carthage, adrumetum); and the north-western coast of sicily (panormus, lilybæum). it is likewise highly probable that they formed settlements towards the east in the persian gulf, on the islands of tylos and aradus (bahrein). . this sketch of the phoenician colonies will give us some idea of the extent of their sea trade and navigation; which, however, extended much farther than their colonies. among them, as among other nations, commerce took its rise in piracy; even as late as the time of homer, the phoenicians appear to have been freebooters. the principal objects of their commerce were (_a_) the settlements in north africa and spain; the latter more particularly, on account of its rich silver mines. (_b_) beyond the pillars of hercules, the west-coast of africa; britain and the scilly islands, for the purpose of procuring tin, and, very probably, amber. (_c_) from elath and ezion-gebar, ports situate at the northern extremity of the arabian gulph, they undertook, in connection with the jews, voyages to ophir, that is to say, to the rich lands of the south, particularly arabia felix and ethiopia. (_d_) from the persian gulf, they extended their commerce to the western peninsula of india and the island of ceylon. finally, (_e_) they made several extensive voyages of discovery, among which, the most remarkable was the circumnavigation of africa. . of no less importance was the land trade, mostly carried on by caravans. the principal branches of it were: (_a_) the arabian caravan trade for spices and incense, imported from arabia felix, gerra, and the persian gulf. (_b_) the trade through palmyra with babylon, which opened them an indirect communication by way of persia, with lesser bukharia and little thibet, probably even with china itself. (_c_) the trade with armenia and the neighbouring countries in slaves, horses, copper utensils, etc. . to all this must be added their own manufactures, particularly their stuffs and dyes; (the purple, made of the juice of a marine shellfish;) their manufactures of glass and toys, which, in their commerce with uncivilized nations, generally carried on by barter, were turned to good account. many other important discoveries, among which the invention of letters holds the first rank, are attributed to the phoenicians. vi. _syrians._ . the inhabitants of syria dwelt in cities as early as b. c. , when abraham wandered over their country. this country did not form one single state, but consisted of several cities, each of which had its separate territory, and its chief or king; of these cities, damascus, hamath, etc. are mentioned in the most remote antiquity. . the syrians were, however, often subjected by foreign conquerors; and their country was certainly, at least in the time of david, a jewish province. it shook off the yoke, however, in the time of solomon; when rezon, who had formerly been a slave, obtained possession of damascus. . after this, there arose the kingdom of damascus, which comprised the greatest portion of syria, the kings in the other cities becoming tributary to damascus. the boundaries of the empire, too, were extended, and particularly at the expense of the divided kingdoms of judah and israel. the kings, whose names are taken from the books of chronicles, were: rezon, about . benhadad i. about . hazael, about . benhadad ii. about . rezin. under this last, the kingdom of damascus was overthrown by the assyrian conqueror tiglath-pileser, about . _contemporary_ in inner asia: assyrian kingdom. jews: kingdoms of israel and judah. greeks: settlement of the asiatic colonies.--lycurgus. vii. _jews._ the history of the jewish people, begins with abraham the father of their race; that of the jewish state does not commence till after the conquest of palestine. it is divided into three periods. i. history of the jews, as a nomad horde, from abraham till their settlement in palestine, b. c. - . ii. history of the jewish state as a federative republic under the high priests and judges, from b. c. - . iii. history of the jewish state under a monarchical government, from b. c. - , first in one kingdom,-- ; afterwards as two separate kingdoms, israel and judah, until the downfall of the latter, . sources of the jewish history.--their annals:--books of judges, samuel, chronicles, kings. how those books were composed, and whether their authors may be considered as contemporary with the events they relate? how far the hebrew poets, the prophets in particular, may be considered as historical authority?--josephus, as an antiquarian in his _archæologia_, and as a contemporary historian in his _historia belli romani_. unfortunately there is not at present any satisfactory treatise on the jewish history previous to the babylonian captivity; nor one written in an impartial spirit, without credulity or scepticism. the work of berruyer, _histoire du peuple de dieu, depuis son origine jusqu'à la naissance de j. c._ paris, , vols. vo.; and the continuation, _depuis la naissance de j. c._ vols.; and others of the same kind do not answer this description. relandi _antiquit. sacr. heb._ the writings of j. d. michaelis, particularly his # remarks on the translation of the old testament, and his # _mosaic law_; together with # herder, _on the spirit of hebrew poesy_, furnish many excellent materials. i. _period of the nomad state from abraham to the conquest of palestine._--under abraham, isaac, and jacob, nothing more at first than a single nomad family; which, however, during its sojourn in lower egypt, where, during four hundred and thirty, or, according to others, two hundred and fifty years, it roved about in subjection to the egyptian pharaohs,--increased to a nomad nation, divided into twelve tribes. the nation, however, becoming formidable from the great increase of its numbers, the pharaohs, following the usual policy of the egyptians, wished to compel the jews to build and inhabit cities. unaccustomed to restraint, they fled from egypt under the conduct of moses; and conquered, under him and his successor joshua, palestine, the land of promise. moses and his legislation.--what he borrowed and what he did not borrow from the egyptians?--the worship of jehovah in the national sanctuary, and by national festivals, celebrated with ceremonies rigidly prescribed, the point of union for the whole nation, and the political bond which held the tribes together.--the caste of levites, compared with the egyptian caste of priests. j. d. michaelis, _mosaic law_. gottingen, , etc. vols. vo.; translated into english by dr. alexander smith. lond. , vols. vo. the commentator frequently sees more than the lawgiver. ii. _period of the federative republic._ from the occupation of palestine to the establishment of monarchy, - . . general character of this period as the heroic age of the nation, which, after the gradual adoption of fixed dwellings and agriculture, was engaged in constant feuds with its neighbours, the vagrant arabs, the philistines, and the edomites. impossibility of exterminating entirely the ancient inhabitants according to the intention of moses.--hence the worship of jehovah was never the _only_ religion in the land. . political organization. in consequence of the division of land, according to tribes, and their separation from one another, the government long remained patriarchal. each tribe preserved its patriarch or elder, as in the nomad state. all, however, had, in the worship of jehovah, one common bond, uniting them into one federate state. magistrates were likewise appointed in the cities, to whom scribes are conjoined out of the levite caste. . the permanent union of the nation, and preservation of the mosaic law, were likewise promoted by the distribution of the levite caste into forty-eight separate towns, situated in various parts of the country, and by making the high priesthood hereditary in aaron's family. . but when at the death of joshua the people were left without a common ruler, the tie of religion became insufficient to hold them together; especially as the weaker tribes became jealous of the more powerful. at this time the high priests appear to have had but little political influence; and the national bond was only prevented from being dissolved by the dread of a foreign yoke. . the jews were sometimes independent, at other times tributary. in seasons of oppression and distress heroes arose, jealous for the worship of jehovah, to deliver them from bondage. they acted as chief magistrates and rulers of a part, or even the whole of the nation, and as champions of the worship of the true god. the judges, particularly othniel, deborah, and sampson.--concerning the marvellous in their history. . reestablishment of the worship of jehovah by samuel. he becomes judge, and rules as jehovah's minister.--his scheme of making the office of judge hereditary in his own family is defeated by the conduct of his sons. the nation demands a king, whom samuel, as minister of jehovah, is called upon to appoint. his crafty policy in the election, which he cannot impede. he chooses saul, politically speaking, the most insignificant man of the nation; but the tallest and most stately. a formal constitutional act, according to the mosaic command, is drawn up and deposited in the national sanctuary. causes which led the nation to demand a king.--earlier attempts made, particularly by _abimelech_, to obtain regal power. iii. _period of the monarchy from - ._ i. _the jewish state as one single kingdom from ( )- ._ . _saul_, the new king, strengthened himself on the throne by a victory over the ammonites; and a general assembly of the nation, in which samuel laid down his office as judge, unanimously acknowledged his sovereignty. but saul, no sooner became a conqueror than he threw off the tutelage of samuel, and ventured himself to consult jehovah. this was the occasion of a feud between them. samuel, offended, privately anointed another young man, david the son of jesse, as king. david acquires fame and popularity by his heroic conduct; but has much difficulty in escaping the jealousy of saul.--saul sustains himself amid constant wars with the neighbouring nations; but at last defeated, he and all his sons, except one, lose their lives. . state of the nation and constitution under saul.--the king little more than a military leader under the direction of jehovah; without either court or fixed residence.--the people still a mere agricultural and pastoral race, without wealth or luxury; but gradually assuming the character of a warlike nation. . saul was succeeded by david; but not without opposition. eleven tribes declare for ish-bosheth, the remaining son of saul; and david is only acknowledged by his own tribe, judah. it is not till seven years later, and the murder of ish-bosheth by his own people, that david is recognized as king by the whole nation. . complete formation of the nation, and a change of constitution during the reign of david over the united kingdom, which lasted thirty-three years. jerusalem is made the seat of government and of the national sanctuary. rigid observance of the worship of jehovah, the exclusive religion of the nation, considered in respect to its political consequence. . vast aggrandizement of the jewish state by conquest. a war with hadadezer opens the way to the conquest of syria and idumæa. extent of the kingdom from the euphrates to the mediterranean; from phoenicia to the red sea. gradual decline towards despotism and seraglio government; the political consequences of which become apparent about the end of david's reign, in the rebellion of his sons. . reign of solomon. the brilliant government of a despot from the interior of his seraglio; unwarlike, but civilized, and fond of parade. new organization of the kingdom for the support of the court. connections formed with the neighbouring states, particularly with tyre; hence a participation in the southern trade carried on from the ports of the red sea, conquered by david; but only as a monopoly of the court. . the capital enriched by the splendour of the court; but the country oppressed and impoverished, particularly the distant tribes. gradual internal decay hastened by the admixture of the worship of foreign gods with that of jehovah; although solomon, by the erection of the temple according to the plan of his father, seems to have wished to make the worship of the true god the only religion of the country. an unsuccessful attempt at rebellion made by jeroboam; and by the edomites, who remain tributary under their own kings: actual secession, even during the reign of solomon, of the conquered province of syria by the foundation of the kingdom of damascus. . solomon is succeeded by his son rehoboam, who has scarcely ascended the throne, before the malcontents, increased in number by his imprudence, break into open rebellion. jeroboam is recalled from egypt, and ten tribes acknowledge him as their king. only two tribes, judah and benjamin, remain faithful to rehoboam. ii. _the jewish state as a divided kingdom, - ._ . reciprocal relations between the two kingdoms of judah and israel. although israel was more extensive and populous than judah, yet was judah, in consequence of possessing the capital, richest of the two; thus their power was nearly balanced; and hence the struggle between them was the more obstinate. . the kings of israel seek to confirm the political division of the nation, by establishing a new form of worship within their dominions, in order to restrain their subjects from visiting the ancient seat of the national worship at jerusalem; hence they were considered as the enemies of jehovah. several kings, however, even of judah were so impolitic as to mingle the worship of other gods with that of jehovah. but oppression itself serves to sustain the worship of jehovah; the number and political influence of the prophets increase in proportion as men feel, amid the turbulence of the times, need of the counsels of the true god; the idea of some future happier period under a mighty king--the idea of the messiah and of his kingdom--is more fully developed by the lively recollection of the splendid reign of david.--schools of the prophets. . the rivalry and wars between those two states not only continue with slight interruption, but become more and more fraught with danger, in consequence of the alliances entered into with foreign princes, particularly with the kings of damascus and egypt. an end is at length put to these feeble kingdoms by the rise of vast empires in inner asia. most important events in the history of the two kingdoms. . kingdom of israel, - ; under kings, from different families, who succeeded to the throne amid violent revolutions. . jeroboam, _d._ . settlement of the royal residence at shechem; of the sanctuaries at bethel and dan, and appointment of priests, not belonging to the tribe of levi. constant wars with the kings of judah. . nadab, jeroboam's son, murdered in by . baasha, _d._ . this prince, by his alliance with the kings of damascus, brought the kingdom of judah into great danger. . elah murdered in by one of his generals. . zimri, in whose place the army immediately elected . omri: this prince, at the beginning of his reign, had a rival to the throne in tibni, _d._ . omri founded the new capital, samaria, _d._ . he was succeeded by his son . ahab: strong connections by marriage with the kings of sidon; introduction of the phoenician worship of baal. wars with damascus, in which ahab at last perishes, . under ahab a league formed with the king of judah. he is succeeded by his sons, . ahaziah, _d._ , and . jehoram. the league with judah continues. jehoram is murdered by jehu, . . jehu: this king destroys the house of ahab, which had given kings to israel, and does away with the worship of baal. the kings of damascus wrest from the kingdom of israel the lands beyond jordan. jehu, _d._ . he is succeeded by his son . jehoahaz, _d._ . the wars with damascus continue unsuccessful to israel. . jehoash, _d._ . he defeats the kings of damascus and judah. . jeroboam ii. _d._ . he restores the kingdom of israel to its ancient extent. after a turbulent interregnum of years, he is succeeded by his son . zechariah, ; who was assassinated the same year, being the last remnant of the house of jehu, which had given kings to israel. his murderer, . shallum, after a reign of one month, is, in his turn, assassinated by . menahem, _d._ : under his reign the first expedition of the assyrians, headed by pul, whom he buys off by tribute. . his son pekahiah murdered in by . pekah, under whose reign falls the expedition of tiglath-pileser the assyrian, and destruction of damascus. pekah is assassinated in by . hoshea, who, after an anarchy of eight years, obtains possession of the throne. hoshea endeavours, by an alliance with egypt, to shake off the assyrian yoke; but shalmaneser, king of assyria, wages war against him, conquers samaria, and puts an end to the kingdom of israel, whose inhabitants he transplants to media in inner asia, . . kingdom of judah under kings of the house of david, - . the regular line of hereditary succession is generally followed without dispute, and is only twice interrupted by athaliah's usurpation, and the intervention of foreign conquerors. . rehoboam, _d._ . jerusalem is still the seat of government; but even during this reign the worship of jehovah begins to fall into neglect, in consequence of the introduction of foreign gods. besides the war with israel, jerusalem is attacked and plundered by shishak, king of egypt. . abijah, _d._ . . asa. this prince was attacked by the combined kings of israel and damascus, and, no doubt, would have sunk in the conflict, had he not succeeded in breaking their alliance; _d._ . . jehoshaphat, the restorer of the worship of jehovah and framer of a league with the kingdom of israel. his attempt to reestablish the trade to ophir, on the red sea, is unsuccessful, _d._ . . jehoram. the union with israel is confirmed by the marriage of this prince with ahab's daughter, athaliah; but idumæa, under his reign, secedes wholly from the kingdom of judah, _d._ . . his son ahaziah is, in the next year, , assassinated by jehu, the murderer and successor of jehoram king of israel. . his mother, athaliah, takes possession of the throne; murders the whole royal family; only one son of ahaziah, , joash, is, in consequence of his youth, rescued from the carnage, secretly educated in the temple, and after seven years forcibly placed upon the throne, by means of a revolution wrought by the high priest, jehoiada; and athaliah is slaughtered, . joash rules under the tutelage of the priests, which leads to the reestablishment of jehovah's worship. this prince is menaced by hazael king of damascus, and compelled to pay him tribute. slain . . amaziah: he defeats the edomites, and is in his turn defeated by jehoash king of israel, by whom jerusalem itself is sacked. he is slain in , and succeeded . by his son azariah, (or uzziah.) this prince was leprous, and _d._ . his son . jotham, _d._ , became regent during the life of his father. the wars with israel and damascus recommence. . ahaz, _d._ . the league between the kings of damascus and israel induces ahaz to call to his assistance tiglath-pileser king of assyria, who overthrows the kingdom of damascus, and subjects israel and judah to tribute. . hezekiah, _d._ . he shakes off the assyrian yoke: under his reign shalmaneser destroys samaria, : and shalmaneser's successor, sennacherib, undertakes his expedition against egypt, . jerusalem is again besieged, but fortunately relieved by the total failure of the expedition. isaiah prophecies during the reign of this prince. . manasseh, _d._ . during his years' reign, the worship of the phoenician god, baal, becomes general; that of jehovah falls into contempt, and the mosaic law into disuse. . amon, murdered as early as . . josiah restorer of the temple, and of the worship of jehovah. the book of the law, which had been cast aside and neglected, is once more found, and a complete reform instituted according to its principles. palestine however is the first country attacked by necos, king of egypt; and josiah falls in battle, . his son, . jehoahaz, is, after a reign of three months, dethroned by pharaoh-nechoh, and his brother . jehoiakim placed as a tributary prince on the throne. but in consequence of the rise of the chaldæo-babylonian empire, pharaoh-nechoh is deprived of his asiatic conquests by the loss of the battle of circesium, ; and jehoiakim becomes tributary to nebuchadnezzar, _d._ . the prophet jeremiah flourishes. . jehoiachin, son of the former king, after three months' reign, is, together with the greater part of the nation, transplanted into inner asia by nebuchadnezzar, after a second expedition, (commencement of the babylonian captivity,) and, . zedekiah, brother on the father's side to jehoiachin, is seated on the throne as a tributary prince. forming, however, a league with egypt, in order to throw off the babylonian yoke, nebuchadnezzar marches a third time against jerusalem, conquers it, , and delivers it up to pillage and destruction. zedekiah, after being deprived of his eye-sight, and losing all his children by the hands of the executioner, is, together with the remaining portion of the nation, led in captivity to babylon. s. bernhardi _commentatio de causis quibus affectum sit ut regnum judæ diutius persisteret quam regnum israel; cum tabula geographica_, lovanii, , to. a prize essay, containing also several valuable enquiries into the monarchical period of the jewish state. # bauer, _manual of the history of the hebrew nation_, vol. i-iii, . the best introduction hitherto published, not only to the history, but also to the antiquities of the nation, from the rise to the fall of the state. ii. african nations. _general geographical outline of ancient africa._ see a. h. l. heeren's _historical researches_, etc. african nations. vols. vo. oxford, . . although the phoenicians had circumnavigated africa, the northern part only of that quarter of the globe was known to antiquity. with that part, however, the ancients were better acquainted than we are at the present day, the coast being then occupied by civilized and commercial nations, who pushed their excursions far inland. this was the case in early times with the carthaginians and the egyptians; still more so with the macedonian greeks, under the ptolemies, and under the romans. war, hunting, and commerce, were, generally speaking, the objects which gave rise to those excursions. . considered as a whole, africa is very different from asia, both in situation and form. asia lies almost entirely within the temperate, while africa is almost wholly under the torrid zone. asia abounds in deep gulfs and large rivers; africa constitutes a regular triangle, and in its northern half possesses but two large rivers, the nile and the niger. no wonder, then, that this portion of our globe should form, as it were, a world in itself, distinguished by its productions and its inhabitants. . physically considered, northern africa may be divided into three regions, distinguished in early antiquity by separate names. the maritime country along the mediterranean, with the exception of tripolis, or the regio-syrtica, consists principally of very fertile districts, and was consequently, at all times, very thickly inhabited: hence in herodotus it bears the name of the _inhabited africa_; it is now called barbary. above this, and under the th parallel of n. lat., succeeds a mountainous tract, across which stretches the atlas chain of mountains; abounding in wild beasts and dates: hence herodotus calls it the _wild beast africa_: among the arabs it is called the land of dates, (_biledulgerid_.) beyond this, and between the th and th degrees of n. lat. the sandy region extends right across africa and arabia: this part of africa is therefore known, both among the ancients and moderns, under the name of africa deserta, or the sandy desert, (sahara). the fruitful lands beyond the desert, stretching along the banks of the niger, were almost wholly unknown to the greeks: by them these parts were comprehended under the common name of ethiopia, although that name applied more peculiarly to the districts above egypt. the greeks were, however, acquainted with some of the fruitful spots in the desert, the oases; such as augila, ammonium, and the oases, properly so called, in egypt. . there exists no political division which comprises the whole of africa. the north coast alone was inhabited by civilized nations: egyptians, cyrenæans, and carthaginians; of which the first only were aboriginals. the rest of the inhabitants either roved about as nomad hordes, or formed insignificant states, of whose existence we have heard some account, though we possess no history of them. along the shore, reckoning from the plinthinetic gulf, egypt is succeeded by: st. marmarica, a tract without cities, consisting principally of sandy deserts, occupied by nomad hordes: this country extends from the - ° e. long. from ferro. nd. the fertile territory occupied by the greek colonies, called cyrenaïca, extended to the greater syrtis, - ° e. long. cities: cyrene, barca. rd. the territory of carthage, extending from the greater syrtis to the fair promontory, - ° e. long. this territory comprised (_a_) the country between the greater and lesser syrtis, (regio syrtica,) which constitutes the modern kingdom of tripoli; a sandy tract, almost wholly occupied by nomads. (_b_) the territory of carthage, properly so called, (kingdom of tunis). a very fruitful country; the southern part, called byzacena, the northern part zeugitana. cities: carthage, utica, etc. th. numidia and mauritania; occupied during the carthaginian age by nomad races. along the shore some carthaginian settlements. egyptians. preliminary remarks. egypt in its superficial contents is equal to about two-thirds of germany, and may therefore justly be ranked among the more extensive countries of the globe; it greatly varies, however, in its physical properties. the soil is only sufficiently fertile for tillage on the banks of the nile, and as far as the floods of that river extend; beyond that, on the west, is a sandy desert, on the east a chain of rocky mountains. from its entrance into egypt at syene, the nile flows in one undivided stream to the city of cercasorus, geogr. miles above its mouth, directing its source from south to north through a valley from to geogr. miles broad, bounded on the west by deserts of sand, and on the east by mountains of granite. at cercasorus the stream first divides itself into two main branches, which formerly discharged their waters into the mediterranean, the eastern near the city of pelusium, the western near the city of canopus (_ostium pelusiacum et canopicum_;) from these two diverged several intermediate branches; so that in the time of herodotus there existed seven mouths of the nile, but the number has not always remained the same. the tract between the two extreme arms of the nile bears, in consequence of its triangular form, the name of the delta; it was covered with cities, and highly cultivated. the fertile part of egypt, inhabited by civilized men, was therefore confined to the delta and the valley of the nile, on the two banks of the stream from syene to cercasorus; to which must be added some well watered spots in the centre of the western desert, known under the name of the oases. in consequence of the perpetual absence of rain, particularly in upper egypt, the fertility of the delta and the valley of the nile depends on the overflowing of the river, which happens at stated periods. this commences at the beginning of august and continues to the end of october; so that during three whole months the above-mentioned parts of the country are under water. egypt is divided into upper, extending from syene to the city of chemmis, (capital, thebes, or diospolis); central from chemmis to cercasorus, (capital, memphis,) and lower egypt, which comprises the delta, and the land on both sides: it was full of cities, among which the most remarkable was sais. next above egypt lies ethiopia, (_Æthiopia supra Ægyptum_); which, from the earliest times, principally through commerce, appears to have been closely connected with the former country. the regions immediately above egypt, usually called nubia, are little more than deserts of sand, still inhabited by roving hordes of nomad robbers. the rocky mountain chain, which forms the eastern boundary of egypt, stretches along the red sea, and was formerly of great importance to nubia, from its containing, just above the egyptian frontier, productive gold mines. the nile, in this country, makes a wide curve to the west, and becomes so full of shallows as to render navigation difficult. the lands adjoining the river, however, are fertile and well inhabited; and contain numerous ancient monuments. still higher up, reckoning from ° n. lat. the appearance of the country changes; the region of fertility commences, and its costly productions, its gold and its perfumes, gave rise to a profitable commerce. among these countries, meroe, with its capital of the same name, was celebrated in the days of herodotus. by meroe is understood a tract of land bounded by two rivers, the nile on the west, and the astaboras, (tacazze,) which falls into the nile, on the east; for this reason it is frequently, although improperly, called an island. this country extended towards the sources of the nile, or the modern province of gojam, where, under the reign of psammetichus, the egyptian caste of warriors, having for the most part deserted, established themselves. meroe itself, like the egyptian states, was sacerdotal, with a king at its head.--the city of axum, or auxume, is not indeed mentioned at so early a period; but if we may judge by the ruins that still remain, it was of equally high antiquity with the old egyptian towns and with meroe. the same observations apply to adule, the harbour on the arabian gulf. the egyptian history is divided into three periods of unequal duration; the _first_ of which extends from the earliest time down to the sesostridæ, that is to say, to about b.c. : the _second_ comprises the reigns of the sesostridæ, or the brilliant period of egypt, down to psammetichus, - : the _third_ brings us from psammetichus down to the persian conquest, - . first period. _from the earliest times down to the sesostridæ, about b. c. ._ sources: . jewish writers. _moses._ his records contain, no doubt, a faithful picture of the egyptian state in his day; but no continuous history can be deduced from them.--from moses down to solomon (b.c. - .) total silence, with respect to egypt, of the hebrew writers. from solomon down to cyrus, (b.c. - .) a few scanty fragments.--importance and superiority of the jewish accounts, so far as they are _purely historical_. . greek writers. (_a_) _herodotus._ the first who published a history of the egyptians. about seventy years after the destruction of the throne of the pharaohs by the persian conquerors, this author collected, in egypt itself, the earliest accounts of the history of the country; he received his information from the most capable persons, the priests; and wrote down faithfully that information, such as he heard it. if, therefore, we would estimate at their proper worth the accounts given by herodotus, it is necessary to enquire, what did the priests themselves know of their earlier national history? and this question cannot be answered until we have ascertained in what manner the historical records of the earlier periods were preserved among the egyptians. the earliest history of the egyptians, like that of all other nations, was traditional. they adopted, however, before any other nations, a sort of writing, hieroglyphics, or allegorical picture writing; in which the signs borrowed from natural objects served, as modern discoveries have proved, partly to represent sounds, (_hiéroglyphes phonétiques_,) and partly to express ideas; in the latter case they were either representative or allegorical. this mode of writing, by its nature, is not so complete as the purely alphabetical; since, . it can express only a narrow circle of ideas, and these separately, without connection or grammatical inflection, at least with very few exceptions. . as it is not so well adapted to writing as to painting or engraving, it is not so useful for books as for public monuments. . being emblematic, it is not intelligible without the help of a key, which could only be preserved in some tradition connected with the monument, and which was exclusively possessed by the priests; this key, therefore, could hardly be preserved many centuries without falsification. . the same image seems frequently to have been used to express very different objects.--it follows, that the egyptian history, as deduced from the lips of the priests, can hardly have been any thing more than records connected with, and depending upon, public monuments: consisting, therefore, of mere fragments, and reducible to no consistent chronology, it ultimately admitted only of allegorical translation, and consequently was very liable to be misinterpreted. besides their hieroglyphics, the egyptians certainly had two other species of writing: the _hieratic_, confined to the priests, and the _demotic_, used in common life. both, however, seem to have been nothing more than running hands derived from the hieroglyphic system; and we have no instance of the employment of either the one or the other in public monuments of the time of the pharaohs. that the use of papyrus, a material on which all the above kinds of writing were employed, had its origin in the highest antiquity, or at least in the more brilliant period of the pharaohs, we now know for certain, written documents belonging to those times having been obtained from the tombs. champollion le jeune, _précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens egyptiens_. paris, . the main work on this subject, of which the _lettre à m. dacier_, , is but the precursor, and the two _lettres à m. le duc de blacas_ the continuation. the new method of deciphering has received its principal confirmation from the work of the british consul in egypt, salt, _essay on the phonetic system of hieroglyphics_, , on the authority of a comparison with the egyptian monuments themselves. hitherto, however, little more has been made out than the names and titles of the kings, distinguished by being always enclosed within a border. these preliminary remarks on the earlier egyptian history, will derive abundant support from a perusal of the account given by herodotus (ii, - ), of the egyptian kings previous to psammetichus. the study of that author proves beyond all doubt, that: i. the whole history is throughout founded on public monuments, and on monuments too, either in or near _memphis_. we may even restrict ourselves to one single monument at memphis, to the temple of vulcan, or phtha, the chief temple of that city. the history commences with menes, the founder of that edifice, (c. .), and we are informed, respecting each of his successors, what was done towards the augmentation and embellishment of the building: those who made no addition to that temple, but left other monuments, (as the builders of the pyramids,) are denominated oppressors of the people, and contemners of the gods: of those princes who left no monuments at all, the priests could give no other information than a catalogue of names. ii. hence this line of kings, although the priests gave it to herodotus as such, is not without interruptions, but, as is clearly proved by a comparison with diodorus, contains many wide chasms: therefore no chronological system can be erected upon such a basis. iii. the whole history is interwoven with narrations derived from hieroglyphic representations, and for that very reason allegorical, the meaning of which it is no longer possible to unravel, the priests themselves being either unable or unwilling to explain it, and even inclining, it appears, to introduce false interpretations. to this class of narrations belongs, for instance, that of the robbery of rhampsinitus's treasury; that of his journey into hell, where he played at dice with ceres, (c. , ); that concerning the daughter of cheops, (c. .); concerning the blindness of pheron, and the manner in which he was cured, etc. (c. .) to prove that this charge is not without foundation, it will suffice to adduce two examples; one from c. , where herodotus himself observes that such was the case; the other from c. , the true meaning of which we gather from other sources. even in the time of herodotus, it was customary with the priests to endeavour to conciliate the greek and egyptian authorities; a fact in proof of which there are many arguments which cannot escape the critic: such, for instance, as the completely _græcised_ history of king proteus, c. - .--the general result of the above observations on herodotus's egyptian history is, that it is nothing more than a narration connected with public monuments. to this inference but one objection can possibly be made, namely, that the egyptian priests possessed, besides their hieroglyphics, an alphabetical mode of writing; consequently, that, over and above the public monuments, they might likewise refer to written annals; but this objection is overthrown by herodotus himself. all the information the priests could give him beyond what has been above alluded to, consisted in the names of kings subsequent to menes; these they read from a papyrus roll, but knew nothing more of the kings who bore them, because _those sovereigns had left no monuments behind them_, (c. .) (_b_) besides herodotus, _diodorus_ (lib. i.) likewise furnishes us with the names of some egyptian kings. this author, who wrote years subsequently to herodotus, visited egypt, and collected his history, partly from the oral and written documents of the priests of _thebes_, partly from the more ancient greek writers, and particularly hecatæus. if we consider herodotus's line of kings as not continuous or uninterrupted, all appearance of contradiction between the two historians vanishes. diodorus, like herodotus, did not intend to give a complete enumeration of the egyptian kings; but only of the most remarkable; indicating the interruptions by the number of generations which they contained. (_c_) finally, different from both the above is the egyptian _manetho_, high priest at _heliopolis_, who flourished under the reign of ptolemy philadelphus, about b. c. . he wrote the _Ægyptiaca_, of which, besides several fragments in josephus, the enumeration of the kings has been preserved in the chronicles of eusebius and syncellus. this catalogue is divided into three sections, (tomos,) each of which contains several dynasties, in all , enumerated according to the different cities of egypt. in each dynasty the number of kings belonging to it and the years of their reigns are marked. the authenticity of manetho is now completely established; since the names of the pharaohs mentioned by him have been deciphered on the egyptian monuments. to this period belong the first seventeen dynasties; in the eighteenth begins the second and brilliant period, to which the yet remaining monuments of upper egypt, bearing the names of the founders, are to be ascribed. it is worthy of observation, that in herodotus we have the documents of the priests of memphis, in diodorus those of the priests of thebes, in manetho those of the priests of heliopolis--the three principal seats of sacerdotal learning:--perfect consistency cannot, therefore, be expected in the accounts of those historians. the modern writers on egyptian antiquities, from kircher, _oedipus Ægyptiacus_, , to de pauw, _recherches sur les egyptiens et sur les chinois_, , have too often substituted their own dreams and hypotheses for truth. the principal attempts at a chronological arrangement of the dynasties have been made by marsham, in his _canon chronicus_; and by gatterer, in his # _synchronistic history of the world_.--among the principal works on this subject may be reckoned: jablonski _pantheon mythicum Ægyptiacum_, , vo. gatterer, _commentationes de theogonia Ægypt_. in _commentat. societ. gotting._ t. vii. _de origine et usu obeliscorum, auctore_ g. zoega; romæ, . _l'egypte sous les pharaons, ou recherches sur la géographie, la religion, la langue, les ecritures, et l'histoire de l'egypte avant l'invasion de cambyse, par_ champollion le jeune, t. i, ii. . these two volumes, dedicated to the geography, contain the restoration of the ancient egyptian names of provinces and cities deduced from coptic authorities. _commentationes herodoteæ, scribebat_ frid. creuzer. _Ægyptica et hellenica, pars ._ lips. . a series of most acute and learned illustrations of different points in egyptian antiquity, introduced by different passages of herodotus. the volume in heeren's _historical researches_, etc. , vol. ii, concerning the egyptians; and particularly the introduction on hieroglyphic writing. for the best representations of the egyptian monuments, we are indebted to the french expedition. those of denon in his _voyage en egypte_, are far superior to those of pococke and norden; but denon's, in their turn, have been greatly surpassed in the magnificent work: _description de l'egypte, antiquités_, p. i, ii, iii. p. i, contains the monuments of upper egypt, from the frontiers of nubia to thebes; p. ii, iii, contain the monuments of thebes alone. belzoni, _researches in egypt_, london, , with an atlas. # minutoli, _journey to the temple of jupiter ammon, and egypt_, . l. burckhardt, _travels in nubia_, london, . f. c. gau, _antiquités de la nubie_, paris, . a worthy continuation of the great french work on egypt. fr. caillaud, _voyage à méroé et au fleuve blanc_, paris, , contains the description of the monuments of meroe. . political civilization commenced in egypt at a much earlier period than that to which history reaches; for even in the days of abraham, and still more so in those of moses, the government seems to have been so well organized, that a long period must necessarily have elapsed in order to raise the nation to that degree of civilization which we see it had then attained. it may, therefore, be safely asserted, that egypt ranks among the most ancient countries of our globe in which political associations existed; although we cannot determine with equal certainty whether they did not exist still earlier in india. . the causes which contributed to render egypt thus early a civilized state, may be found in the natural features of the country, and its favourable situation, when compared with the rest of africa. it is the only tract in all northern africa situated on a large uninterrupted navigable stream: had it not been for this, it would, like the other parts of africa under the same parallel, have been a mere desert. to this must be added two extraordinary circumstances: on the one hand, the overflowing of the river so perfectly prepares the soil, that to scatter the seed is almost the only labour of the husbandman; and yet, on the other hand, so many obstacles impede the progress of agriculture, (by the necessity of canals, dams, etc.) that the invention of man must necessarily have been awakened. when agriculture, and the kind of knowledge requisite for its ulterior development had introduced a certain degree of civilization into egypt, the situation of that country, between asia and africa, and in the neighbourhood of the rich land of gold and spices, must have been highly favourable to the purposes of international commerce; hence egypt appears in all ages to have been one of the chief seats of the inland or caravan trade. . it is obvious, therefore, that in the fertile valley of the nile, the course of things must have been very different from what it was in the desert of libya. several small states appear to have been formed in this valley long before the existence of any great egyptian kingdom. their origin, as might naturally be supposed, is enveloped in an obscurity, which history can no longer entirely penetrate. it may still, however, be gathered from monuments and records, that upper egypt was first the seat of civilization; which, originating in the south, spread by the settlement of colonies towards the north. it is probable that this took place in consequence of the migration of some tribe, differing from the negroes, as is proved by the representations, both in sculpture and in painting, found on the yet remaining monuments of egypt. . the records of the high antiquity of political civilization, not only in india, but likewise in arabia felix and ethiopia, particularly in meroe, and the evident vestiges of ancient intercourse between the southern nations of our globe, prove with sufficient evidence the truth of such migrations, although they cannot be chronologically determined. it is certain, however, that religion had no small share in producing them. the national bond of union in egypt not only continued in later times, entirely dependent upon religion, but was originally grounded upon it. thus every step in political civilization must have depended, if not solely, at least principally, on the caste of priests and on their extension. general development of the idea of division into castes. originating at first in the variety of tribes settled in one and the same country, and their different modes of life.--its further progress in despotic and in theocratic kingdoms.--application to egypt and to the egyptian caste of priests, as an original, civilized tribe. . the peculiarity of this caste was the worship of certain deities, the principal of which were ammon, osiris, and phtha, confounded by the greeks with their jupiter, bacchus, and vulcan. the spread of this worship, which was always connected with temples, affords, therefore, the most evident vestiges of the spread of the caste itself; and those vestiges combined with the records of the egyptians, lead us to conclude that this caste was a tribe which migrated from the south, from beyond meroe in ethiopia, and by the establishment of inland colonies around the temples founded by them, gradually extended and made the worship of their gods the dominant religion in egypt. proof of the accuracy of the above theory deduced from monuments and express testimonies concerning the origin of thebes and ammon from meroe; it might have been inferred from the preservation of the worship of ammon in the latter place. memphis, again, and other cities in the valley of the nile, are commonly supposed to have been founded by detachments from thebes. . this conjecture, which agrees with the usual progress of population, is corroborated by the very ancient division of the country into districts, or nomes. this division was intimately connected with the chief temples, each of which represented a separate colony of the caste of priests; so that the inhabitants of every home belonged to the chief temple, and joined in the religious worship there performed. . to the gradual extension of this civilized tribe, which comprised, not only the caste of the priests, but certainly also that of the warriors, and perhaps some others, may be attributed the formation of several small states along the banks of the nile; the central point of each being always such a colony as we have just now described; although each state consisted both of the aboriginal tribes of the neighbourhood, and of those that had migrated into the country. the bond which united every separate state was, therefore, as in most of those formed in the infancy of mankind, a common worship, in which all the members participated. but what, by reason of the peculiarities of soil and climate, could not take place in southern africa, took place in egypt: agriculture, and its progressive improvement, became the great support of civilization; and, as being the true foundation of states, formed the principal political object of the ruling caste. refutation of the idea, that the egyptian priests were in possession of great speculative knowledge; since their knowledge rather had constant reference to practical life, and, therefore, was in their hands the _instrumentum dominationis_ over the people, by which they rendered themselves indispensable, and kept the former in a state of dependence.--explanation of the close reference which their gods, their astronomical and mathematical sciences bore to agriculture. . according to manetho's catalogues, these separate egyptian states existed first in upper and middle egypt; in the former were thebes, elephantine, this, and heraclea; in the latter, memphis. it is only in the last division of his work that we meet with states in lower egypt, such as tanis, mendes, bubastis, and sebennytus. to these states, therefore, no doubt, belong the kings after menes, whose names the priests read to herodotus; as also those whom diodorus mentions as reigning previous to sesostris, among whom are remarked busiris ii. founder of thebes, and uchoreus, the founder of memphis. eusebius and syncellus have preserved from manetho the names of several of those kings, which marsham has endeavoured to compare and arrange. . in the absence of a certain and continuous chronology, it is impossible to determine accurately which of these states were contemporary, and which succeeded the others. there can be no question that thebes was one of the earliest, if not indeed the most ancient of them all; certainly prior to memphis, which was founded by it. according to the natural order of things, some of these states became wealthy and mighty, and swallowed up the others. even at this early period, thebes and memphis had obtained a superiority over the rest. this and elephantine appear to have been united to thebes; as were the states of lower egypt to memphis. . the mosaic records prove, that even in joseph's time the state of memphis (the real place, it appears, of his residence, not on, or heliopolis,) comprised middle and lower egypt. it possessed a numerous and brilliant court; castes of priests and warriors. its agriculture flourished, and several of its institutions indicated a deeply-rooted civilization. but after the establishment of vassalage in this state by joseph, when the class of free proprietors was destroyed, by making the king the only landholder except the priests, the troubles which already threatened the kingdom must have assumed a more dangerous and alarming aspect. . these troubles came from abroad. egypt, surrounded on all sides by nomad tribes, had often suffered from their irruptions, which sometimes poured in from the south, sometimes from the east. but never were these invasions so frequent and durable as in the period which immediately followed the administration of joseph. lower egypt was overrun by the bedouin arabs, whose chieftains, called by the egyptians _hyksos_, settled in the country, fortified avaris, or pelusium, and extended their dominion to memphis, which they made probably the seat of their government. they are depicted as the oppressors of religion, and of the caste of priests; but when we consider that moses flourished in their time, we are led to infer that, like the mongols in china, they must have gradually adopted egyptian manners and civilization. they do not appear to have gained possession of thebes in upper egypt; and it seems highly probable, that the long struggle against them was never, or at least but for a short time, suspended. the dominion of the arabian hyksos falls between b. c. - ; and consequently was contemporary with moses and the exodus of the jews. josephus gives years to their dominion, in which he probably comprises the long periods of earlier wars. . defeat, and final expulsion of the hyksos from upper egypt by thutmosis king of thebes. the consequence of this event was not only the restoration of freedom and independence to egypt, but also the union of the different states into one kingdom; as the rulers of thebes now became monarchs over all egypt. this expulsion of the hyksos, which in itself cannot be considered otherwise than as a vast national effort, must have been the more deeply impressed on the memory of the people, as it laid the foundation of the splendid period which immediately followed. the expulsion of the hyksos appears to have been one of the chief subjects on which the egyptian artists exercised their talents: it is supposed to have been represented upon one of the large temples in thebes. denon, plate cxxxiii. second period. _from the sesostridæ until the sole dominion of psammetichus. b. c. - ._ the sources for this period are the same as for the foregoing; and the history still preserves the character of records handed down by hieroglyphics. to this period belongs the line of kings subsequent to sesostris, given both by herodotus and diodorus. those two historians nearly agree, if we regard herodotus's line of kings, not as uninterrupted, but as the fragments of a series deduced solely from public monuments: this will be demonstrated by the following table, in which the predecessors of sesostris have likewise been indicated. herodotus. diodorus. _menes._ _menes._ he was followed by three followed by fifty-two successors, hundred and thirty kings ranging over a period of more belonging to the previous than years. period, concerning which our information is very incomplete: _busiris i._ and eight successors; among those sovereigns were the last of whom was eighteen ethiopians, and one queen named nitocris. _busiris ii._ the founder of thebes. _osymandyas_ and eight successors; the last of whom was _uchoreus_, founder of memphis. _Ægyptus_, grandson of the foregoing. after the lapse of twelve generations, _moeris._ _moeris._ seven generations. _sesostris._ _sesostris_ or _sesoosis_. _pheron_, son of sesostris. _sesostris ii._ son of the foregoing: he assumed his father's name. interval comprising several generations. _amasis_, and the ethiopian, _actisanus._ _mendes_ or _manes_, builder of the labyrinth. anarchy which lasted five generations. _proteus_, in the time of the _proteus_ or _cetes_, in the time trojan war. of the trojan war. _rhampsinitus._ _remphis_, son of the foregoing. seven generations, in the course of which flourished _nileus_, from whom the nile derives its name. _cheops_, builder of the great _chemmis_ or _chembes_, from pyramid. memphis, builder of the great pyramid. _chephres_, brother to the _cephren_, brother to the foregoing, builder of a pyramid. foregoing, builder of a pyramid. _mycerinus_, son of cheops, _mycerinus_, son of chemmis, builder of a pyramid. builder of a pyramid. _asychis_ the legislator. _bochoris_ the legislator. _anysis_, who was blind. interval of several generations. _sabaco_, the ethiopian. _sabaco_, the ethiopian _anysis_, king for the second time. _sethos_, a priest of vulcan. dodecarchy. dodecarchy. _psammetichus_ of sais, sole _psammetichus_ of sais, sole ruler. ruler. this comparative table demonstrates evidently, not only that herodotus's line is often interrupted, but likewise that it is impossible to establish any continuous chronology, since diodorus, more than once leaves the number of generations undetermined. great importance, nevertheless, attaches to the date fixed by herodotus, ii, , where he declares that king moeris flourished years before his own visit to egypt: consequently between b.c. and . and if, as seems highly probable, the age of sesostris was the th century b.c. (see zoega, _de obeliscis_), it cannot be denied but that we have some general epochs; and with these we must remain content until more satisfactory information can be discovered on the monuments. it should likewise be observed, that the discrepancy between the names of the kings mentioned by herodotus and diodorus, and those furnished by manetho, may be accounted for by the fact, that the sovereigns were distinguished by different names on the monuments and in common life. of the dynasties of manetho, the th, th, th, and nd, belong to this period; more especially the two first, which contain the most important of the pharaohs. . the following period, nearly to its termination, was the brilliant age of egypt, during which it formed but one empire; the kings being represented as sovereign lords of the whole country. and, indeed, it was natural that the expulsion of the invaders should be followed by a period in which the military force and ardour of the nation would be developed, and directed to external conquest. the capital of the empire was, no doubt, thebes, the great monuments of which were erected in this period; that honour, however, seems to have alternately belonged to memphis, herodotus's line of kings being deduced from the monuments of that city, and more especially from the temple of phtha. the more powerful of the pharaohs of this period, and the founders of the most important monuments of upper egypt, on which their names are found, are the following: belonging to the th dynasty, somewhere about - . _amenophis i._ his name is likewise found beyond egypt on the temple of amada, in nubia. _thutmosis i._ commencement of the expulsion of the hyksos. _amenophis ii._ the memnon of the greeks. complete expulsion of the hyksos, and commencement of several of the great edifices. his name is also found on the monuments of thebes, elephantine, and even in nubia, on the distant temple of soleb. builder of the palace of luxor. _thutmosis ii._ his name found in carnac, and on the obelisk at the lateran. _ramesses i._ supposed to be the danaus of the greeks. expelled by his brother: _ramesses ii._ miamun. builder of the palace of medinet-abu in thebes. one of the royal graves that have been opened belongs to this king. _amenophis iii._ renewed invasion of the hyksos; he flees before them into ethiopia; but returns victorious with his son ramesses. belonging to the th dynasty, between and . _ramesses iii._, called the great, and sometimes _sesostris_; founder of the dynasty, liberator of egypt, and a great conqueror. his name and titles, his wars and triumphs, are found on the temples and palaces of luxor and carnac, in thebes and nubia. his son and follower: _ramesses iv._ pheron, rules long in peace. his name is found in the great pillared hall of the palace of carnac, and on many other buildings. among his successors but few names have been preserved until we come to scheschonk or sisac, of the nd dynasty, between and ; he took jerusalem under the reign of rehoboam, and therefore furnishes a fixed date. # r. v. l. (ruehle von lilienstern), _graphic illustrations of the most ancient history and geography of egypt and ethiopia, with an atlas, _. a work containing every thing necessary for understanding the discoveries hitherto made in this department of history. . for this splendour, the empire was principally indebted to sesostris, son of amenophis. this prince is justly entitled to the surname of great, which was given him by the egyptians. no one will, to the letter, credit the narrative of his deeds, exaggerated as they were by the traditions of the priests, or represented, as they still appear, on the buildings of thebes; but who can doubt the existence of a monarch of whom so many and such various monuments within and without egypt bear witness? critical examination of the accounts of the nine years' campaign, and conquests of sesostris. his arms were principally directed against wealthy commercial countries; probably by land against ethiopia, asia minor, and part of thrace; by sea against arabia felix, perhaps even the indian peninsula. can the performance of these exploits be deemed improbable, in an age when western asia did not contain a single great empire? the vast undertakings attributed to sesostris in the interior of his dominions; extensive buildings, canals, division of the land, and imposition of taxes, according to a regular survey, prove that he must have been the sovereign of all egypt. . notwithstanding the great changes that were made, the constitution still bore the same general character, that of a sacerdotal aristocracy combined with a monarchy. although the egyptian kings, like the indian princes, were distinct from the priests, yet their power was limited in various ways by that caste. the high priest shared the royal authority; the king was shackled by religious ceremonies, both in public and private life; he was obliged to evince his veneration for the established worship by the erection of public monuments; and all the high offices of state were in the hands of the priests. it cannot be denied that on the personal character of the king depended much of his power; but how strong must have been this aristocracy, when even successful conquerors were obliged to conciliate its approbation! . it was probably about this time that the domestic relations of the people, the division into castes, was completed. the sacerdotal caste being in exclusive possession of all scientific knowledge, remained for that reason in possession of the offices of state. the caste of warriors could hardly have assumed its complete form before the country was united into one empire: in like manner that of the navigators could not have been completely established before the canals were excavated; although the origin of all may have been of a much earlier date. comparison of the accounts given by herodotus and diodorus of the division into castes. not only precedence in time, but likewise the discrepancies between the two, declare in favour of herodotus. . it appears, therefore, that the most prosperous period of the kingdom of the pharaohs must be placed somewhere between b. c. - : although, according to diodorus, even this period was interrupted by a long anarchy. the splendour of the empire was obscured towards the end. sabaco, a foreign conqueror from ethiopia, (probably from meroe,) subjugated egypt; after his departure from the country, sethos, a priest of phtha, contrary to all precedent, seated himself upon the throne. he was, consequently, considered an usurper; he offended the caste of warriors, and could not have escaped the dangers of an irruption threatened by the assyrian, sennacherib, had not a pestilence compelled the invader and his host to retreat. the dynasty of sabaco, seuechus, and tarhaco in meroe, who as conquerors subjected upper egypt, is comprised between b. c. - . their names likewise have been already discovered on monuments; some at abydos in egypt, others in nubia. . the egyptian monarchy, however, at length fell, and was replaced by an oligarchy; (or perhaps a return was only made to the division of the earlier kingdoms;) twelve princes sharing among themselves the sovereign power. a certain degree of unity seems to have existed at first in this government; but quarrels soon sprung up among the princes, and they compelled one of their number, psammetichus of sais, to take flight. the exiled prince, supported by greek and carian mercenaries, contrived to avenge his wrongs; he drove away his rivals, and became the sole ruler. third period. _from the reign of psammetichus as sole monarch to the persian conquest of egypt by cambyses. b. c. - ._ herodotus, (l. ii, c. , etc.) is still the principal authority for this portion of history. his statements, however, are no longer derived from hieroglyphics: they are purely historical. during the reign of psammetichus, the greeks who had migrated into egypt gave rise to the caste of interpreters, [greek: hermêneis], who acted both as ciceroni for strangers, and as brokers between the egyptians and greeks: these people were enabled to give information respecting the history of the country. it is not, therefore, surprising that herodotus should assure us, that from this time the history was authentic.--the names of the succeeding pharaohs are likewise found on the monuments; in the erection of which they rivaled their predecessors. _contemporary_: asia: rise and fall of the chaldæo-babylonian empire; rise of the persian monarchy.--rome: kings from numa pompilius to servius tullius.--athens: draco; solon; pisistratus.--jews: the last period and fall of the kingdom of judah; babylonish captivity. . from this epoch egypt remained uninterruptedly one kingdom, the capital of which was memphis, although sais, in lower egypt, was the general residence of the royal family. strangers, and more particularly greeks, admitted into egypt; partly as mercenaries, partly as merchants. influence of this innovation upon the national character, and upon the political system in particular. a spirit of conquest gradually inherited by the egyptian kings, is directed principally against asia: hence the formation of a navy, and wars with the great rising monarchies of asia. continued, but declining influence of the sacerdotal caste, and proofs of the veneration of the kings for the priesthood deduced from the erection and embellishment of temples, particularly of that consecrated to phtha in memphis. . _psammetichus._ he obtains sole power through the assistance of greek and carian mercenaries, who are continued as a standing army in the country. the caste of egyptian warriors, taking umbrage in consequence, emigrate for the most part to ethiopia, where they settle. the southern portico of the temple of phtha is erected, and projects of conquest are formed against asia. . _neco_, son and successor of psammetichus. his extensive plans of conquest. first formation of a naval power; and unsuccessful attempt to unite by a canal the mediterranean with the red sea. conquests in asia as far as the euphrates; but quick secession of the conquered, in consequence of the loss of the battle of circesium. circumnavigation of africa undertaken at his command by the phoenicians, and successfully performed. . _psammis his son and successor._ expedition against ethiopia, and conquests in the interior of africa. . reign of _apries_, (the pharaoh-hophra of the hebrews). plans of conquest against asia;--siege of sidon, and naval battle with the tyrians;--expedition against cyrene in africa; its fatal result. a revolution caused thereby in egypt, the inhabitants of which were averse to foreign wars, carried on mostly by mercenary aliens: the revolution headed by amasis. in the civil war which apries now wages with his mercenaries against the egyptians commanded by amasis, he loses both his throne and life; and with him ends the family of psammetichus, which had reigned to this time. . the usurper _amasis_ took possession of the sovereign power; and although he had to contend with a strong party, who despised him on account of his low origin, he contrived by popular measures, and by the respect he showed to the sacerdotal caste, to establish himself upon the throne.--his monuments, both at sais and memphis.--the egyptians and greeks become better acquainted and more closely connected with each other, partly in consequence of the marriage of the king with a greek woman; but principally owing to the mouths of the nile being opened to the greek merchants, and the cession of naucratis as a factory for their merchandise. great and beneficial consequences to egypt, which, under the long reign of amasis, reaches its highest pitch of prosperity. this prince had already been engaged in disputes with the persian conqueror, cyrus, whose son and successor, cambyses, led an expedition against egypt, which amasis, however, luckily for himself, escaped by a seasonable death. . his son psammenitus, the last of the egyptian pharaohs, is attacked by cambyses in the very first year of his reign. after a single battle, fought at pelusium, and a short siege of memphis, the empire of the pharaohs is overthrown, and egypt merges into a persian province. the powerful caste of the priests suffered most from the hatred of the conqueror; but the persecution to which they were subjected must be attributed rather to policy than fanaticism. . condition and fate of egypt as a persian province. after the death of cambyses, the country received a persian governor, and consequently became a satrapy. immediately after the first tempest of war had blown over, egypt was treated with mildness by the persians. the country paid a moderate tribute, together with some royal gifts, among others the produce of the fisheries in lake moeris; nevertheless, repeated revolts occurred, which may be principally attributed to the hatred and influence of the sacerdotal caste. the first took place under darius hystaspes, and was quelled by xerxes. an increase of tribute was the consequence. the second, under king inarus, fomented and supported by the athenians, happened during the reign of artaxerxes i.; it was quelled by megabyzus. the third occurred under darius ii. and in consequence of the support which the egyptians received from the greeks, was of longer duration than either of the former, the throne of the pharaoh's being in some measure restored. this third secession of the egyptians lasted till . during this period various kings were appointed; amyrtæus, _d._ ; psammetichus, about ; nephreus, about ; pausiris, _d._ ; nectanebus i. _d._ ; tachos, _d._ ; nectanebus ii. conquered by artaxerxes iii. . carthaginians. sources. the first great republic which ancient records mention as applying both to trade and war, is undoubtedly a phenomenon well deserving the attention of the historical enquirer. our knowledge, however, of carthaginian history is unfortunately very deficient, as we possess no author who has made it the principal object of his attention. the immediate subject of the greek and roman writers was the history of their own country, and they only allude to that of carthage in so far as it is connected with their main topic. this observation applies as well to polybius and diodorus, as to livy and appian. even the information given by justin, the only author who says any thing concerning the early state of carthage, is miserably defective, although taken from theopompus. (cf. _comment. de fontibus_ justini _in commentat. soc. gotting._ vol. xv.) moreover, as herodotus here fails us, we have not the writings of any author whatever who witnessed carthage in the days of her prosperity: polybius did not see that country till after the decline of its power; the other historians, wrote long afterwards. but although an uninterrupted history of carthage does not exist, we are yet able to trace the main outlines of the picture of that state.--the modern writers on carthage are: hendrich, _de republica carthaginiensium_, . a useful compilation. # _history of the republic of carthage_, vols. franckfort, . a mere history of the wars. dampmartin, _histoire de la rivalité de carthage et de rome_, tom. i, ii. very superficial. # w. boetticher, _history of carthage_, part i. berlin, . the best work on the subject; in which use has been made of modern researches. concerning the carthaginians, see heeren's _african nations_, vols. vo. oxford, . the history of carthage is most conveniently divided into three periods: i. from the foundation of the city to the commencement of the wars with syracuse, b. c. - . ii. from the commencement of the wars with syracuse to those with rome, - . iii. from the commencement of the wars with rome to the destruction of carthage, - . first period. _from the foundation of carthage to the wars with syracuse, b. c. - ._ _contemporary_: inner asia: kingdoms of the assyrians, babylonians, and first half of the persian monarchy. greeks: period from lycurgus to themistocles. romans: period of the kings, and of the commonwealth until the establishment of the tribunes of the people. . the foundation and primitive history of carthage, like all very early and important events in national history, have, by long tradition, been wrapt in the veil of romance. the account given of dido, the supposed founder of the city, cannot be reduced to the standard of pure historical truth, though it appears to justify the inference that some political commotions in the mother city, tyre, induced a party of emigrants to proceed to the northern shores of africa; where other phoenician establishments had already taken place: here, by engaging to pay a yearly tribute, they purchased from the natives permission to found a city, the site of which was so happily chosen, that it only depended upon the inhabitants to raise it to that greatness which it afterwards attained. . it is probable that carthage advanced at first by slow steps; yet even at the end of this first period she had reached to such a height of power, that she was mistress of a large territory in africa, and of foreign possessions still more extensive. establishment of the carthaginian dominion in africa by the subjection of the neighbouring aboriginal tribes, and the foundation of carthaginian settlements within their territories; the natives, liby-phoenicians, gradually mingled with the inhabitants of those colonies, and imbibed from them a love of agriculture and fixed abodes. the inhabitants of the fertile territory extending southward as far as the lake triton, were, without exception, carthaginian subjects. . her connection, however, with the ancient phoenician towns along the coast, particularly utica, was of a different nature. for although possessed a certain authority over them, she did not claim absolute dominion, but rather stood at the head of a federation; thus affording a protection which must frequently have degenerated into oppression. . in consequence of a treaty with the neighbouring republic of cyrene, the whole territory extending between the two syrtes was also ceded to the carthaginians. the lotophagi and nasamones, inhabitants of this district, preserved their nomad mode of life; they must, however, from their trade with the interior parts of africa, have been of the highest importance to carthage. . system of colonization, and, as a necessary result, that of conquest without africa. it was evidently the aim of the carthaginians to settle on islands, and to subject them to their dominion. those lying in the western part of the mediterranean occupied the first place in their plan of conquest, which was completely executed in sardinia, the baleares, and other small islands; perhaps in corsica; in sicily, however, they could never succeed to the full extent of their wishes. there is also every probability that the canary islands and madeira were entirely in their possession. on the other hand, the carthaginians, previous to their wars with rome, were in the practice of establishing separate settlements on the main land, partly in spain, and partly on the western shore of africa. in the latter, they adopted the policy of their ancestors, the phoenicians, making the settlements so small, and confining them within such narrow bounds, that the mother country might always ensure their dependence. . the glory of extending the territory of carthage, by important conquests, belongs principally to the family of mago, who, together with his two sons and six grandsons, established the dominion of the republic in sicily, sardinia, and africa. this occurred about the same time that cyrus, cambyses, and darius were laying the foundation of the persian monarchy, with which carthage even then entered into connection. the carthaginians, therefore, made their first appearance, as extensive conquerors, in the fourth century from the foundation of their commonwealth; and it is at this period that mention is made of their first naval engagement, in which the phocæans were their adversaries. in the same period may be dated the establishment of their colonies beyond the pillars of hercules by hanno and himilco--both probably sons of mago;--by the former on the coast of africa, by the latter on that of spain. to the same period likewise is referred the first commercial treaty between the carthaginians and romans, in which the former appear as already masters of sardinia, africa, and a portion of sicily. . to complete these conquests, and to preserve them when completed, the formation and support of vast fleets and armies were indispensably necessary. according to the usual practice of those nations who apply both to trade and to war, the carthaginian armies were composed for the most part of mercenaries. no nation, however, followed this plan so extensively as the carthaginians, for to them half africa and europe furnished warriors.--description of a carthaginian army; development of the advantages and disadvantages of its organization.--organization of their navy. the state supported very numerous fleets of war-ships, with a multitude of slaves who laboured at the oar, and were it seems public property. . the political constitution of carthage, like that of all wealthy trading states, was an aristocracy composed of the noble and the opulent, though at all times combined with a certain admixture of democracy. the affairs of the state were confided to the hands of the two suffetes or kings,--who, in all probability, held their office for life--and to those of the senate ([greek: boulê]) which contained within itself a more select council (the [greek: gerousia]). the privilege of electing the magistrates resided with the people at large, who also shared the legislative power with the suffetes. civil and military power was usually divided: the offices of general and magistrate not being always, as at rome, united in the same individual,--although such an instance might not be of impossible occurrence:--to each military chief, on the contrary, was appointed a committee from the senate, on which he was more or less dependent. . the high state tribunal of the hundred was instituted as a barrier to the constitution against the attempts of the more powerful aristocrats, particularly the military leaders; indeed the brilliancy of mago's conquests seemed to threaten the republic with a military government; and immediately previous to his time one of the generals, malchus, had actually made an attempt to enslave carthage. the object of the institution was no doubt attained; but in later times the council assumed to itself a power which increased to absolute despotism. it is not improbable that this court likewise constituted the select committee (the [greek: gerousia]) of the senate. . our information respecting the financial system of the carthaginians is extremely meagre. the following seem to have been the principal sources of the public revenue. . the tribute drawn from the federate cities, and their african subjects. the former paid in money, the latter for the most part in kind; this tribute was imposed at the will of the government, so that in pressing cases the taxed nations were obliged to give one half of their income. . the case was the same with their external provinces, particularly with sardinia. . the tribute furnished by the nomad hordes, partly by those in the regio-syrtica, and occasionally also by those on the western side. . the customs, which were levied with extreme rigour, not only in carthage, but likewise in all the colonies. . the products of their rich mines, particularly those of spain. in considering the financial system of the carthaginians, it should not be forgotten that many of the nations with whom they traded, or who served in their armies, were unacquainted with the use of money. . system and extent of their commerce. their object was to secure a monopoly of the western trade; hence the practice of restricting the growth of their colonies, and of removing as much as possible all strangers from their commercial marts. their trade was carried on partly by sea, and partly by land. their sea trade, arising from the colonies, extended beyond the mediterranean, certainly as far as the coasts of britain and guinea. their land trade was carried on by caravans, consisting principally of the nomad tribes resident between the syrtes: the caravans travelled eastward to ammonium and upper egypt, southward to the land of the garamantes, (fezzan,) and even still further into the interior of africa. second period. _from the breaking out of the wars with syracuse, to the commencement of those with rome, b. c. - ._ . the great object of carthaginian policy during the whole of the above period, was to subdue sicily; this object the nation pursued with extraordinary pertinacity, often approximating to, but never obtaining, complete success. the growing power of syracuse, which likewise aimed at the sole possession of the island, laid the foundation of that national hatred which now arose between the sicilian greeks and the carthaginians. . first attempt, arising out of the league formed with xerxes i. upon his irruption into greece. gelon of syracuse, in a victory more decisive even than that gained by themistocles over the persians at salamis, routs the carthaginians near himera, and compels them to accede to a disgraceful peace. . this defeat was followed by a period of tranquillity lasting seventy years, during which we know little about carthage. all that we can say with any probability is, that in the mean time the struggle for territory between cyrene and carthage commenced and terminated to the advantage of the latter state, whose dominion was generally extended and confirmed in africa by wars with the aboriginal tribes. . but the accession of dionysius i. to the throne of syracuse, and the ambitious project formed by him and his successors, of subjecting to their rule all sicily and magna-grecia, rekindled once more the embers of war, which had only smouldered for a short time, to burst forth with additional violence. repeated and bloody wars with dionysius i. between the years - . neither party able to expel the other: terms of the last peace; that each party should remain in possession of what he then occupied. second commercial treaty with rome. crafty advantage taken by the carthaginians of the internal commotions at syracuse during and subsequent to the reign of dionysius ii: they endeavour to obtain their end; but are thwarted by the heroism of timoleon, - . a new and frightful war with agathocles, the seat of which is transferred from sicily into africa itself; it at last terminates in favour of carthage, - . the war with pyrrhus, - , whose ambition gave rise to an alliance between carthage and rome, contributed likewise to increase the preponderance of the carthaginians in sicily; and probably the perseverance of that people, and their skill in profiting by circumstances, would at last have enabled them to attain their object, had not the seeds of war been thereby scattered between carthage and rome. . what effect these sicilian wars had upon the state we are not informed. they were probably regarded in carthage as a beneficial channel for carrying off the popular fermentation;--nevertheless, two attempts, both unsuccessful, were made by some of the aristocratical party, to overthrow the constitution; first by hanno, , and afterwards by bomilcar, .--at the breaking out, however, of the war with rome, the commonwealth was so formidable and mighty, that even the finances of the state do not appear to have been at all affected; a circumstance of the highest importance. what consequence was it to carthage whether , barbarians more or less existed in the world, so long as there remained plenty of men willing to suffer themselves to be sold, and she possessed money to purchase them? third period. _from the beginning of the wars with rome, to the downfal of carthage, b. c. - ._ . the wars between carthage and rome were the necessary consequences of a desire of aggrandizement in two conquering nations; any one might have foreseen the struggle between the two rivals as soon as their conquests should once begin to clash. it is, therefore, a question of little importance, to enquire which was the aggressor; and although rome may not be entirely cleared of that charge, we cannot help observing that, according to the principles of sound policy, the security of italy was hardly compatible with the sole dominion of the carthaginians over the island of sicily. first war with rome, - , (twenty-three years,) waged for the possession of sicily, and decided almost at its commencement by hiero's passing over to the roman side. (for the history of it, see below, in the roman history, book v. period ii, parag. sq.) . this war cost the republic, sicily and the sovereignty of the mediterranean, by which the fate of its other external possessions was already predetermined. but that which appeared at the first view to threaten the greatest danger, was the total exhaustion of its finances; a circumstance which will no longer surprise us, when we consider how many fleets had been destroyed and replaced, how many armies had been annihilated and renewed. carthage had never before been engaged in such an obstinate struggle as this; and the immediate consequences were more terrific even than the war itself. . the impossibility of paying the mercenaries produced a mutiny among the troops, which rapidly grew into a rebellion of the subject nations, who had been most cruelly oppressed during the war. the consequence was a civil war of three years and a half, which probably would have spared the romans the trouble of destroying carthage, had not the state been snatched from ruin by the heroism of hamilcar. this war, which lasted from to , produced lasting consequences to the state; it gave rise to the feud between hamilcar and hanno the great, which compelled hamilcar to seek for support against the senate by becoming the leader of a democratic faction. . the revolt spread abroad; it reached sardinia and caused the loss of that most important island, of which the romans, flushed with power, took possession, in spite of the terms of the peace. . the influence of the family of the barcas, supported in their disputes with the senate by the popular party, now got the upper hand in carthage; and the first fruit of their power was the new and gigantic project of repairing the loss of sicily and sardinia by the conquest of spain; a country where the carthaginians already had some possessions and commercial connections. the immediate object of the barcas was the support of their family and party; but the spanish silver mines soon furnished the republic with the means of renewing the contest with rome also. . during the nine years in which hamilcar commanded, and in the following eight in which hasdrubal, his son-in-law and successor, was at the head of the army, the whole of the south of spain, as far as the iberus, was brought under subjection to carthage, either by negotiation or force of arms. the further progress of the carthaginians was only arrested by a treaty with the romans, in which the iberus was fixed upon as a frontier line, and the freedom of saguntum acknowledged by both powers. hasdrubal crowned his victories as a general and as a statesman by the foundation of new carthage, (carthagena,) which was to be the future seat of carthaginian power in the newly-conquered country. hasdrubal having fallen by the hand of an assassin in the year , the party of the barcas succeeded in appointing hamilcar's son, hannibal, a young man of one-and-twenty, for his successor. hannibal found every thing already prepared in spain for the furtherance of the hereditary project of his family, which was a renewal of the contest with rome; and the vigour with which this project was pursued, clearly proves how great must have been the preponderance of the barcine influence, at that time, in carthage. had the commonwealth attended to the marine with the same ardour as their great general did to the land service, the fate of rome would perhaps have been very different. second war with rome, - , (seventeen years,) first in italy and spain, afterwards, from , in africa itself. (see the history of this war below, in the roman history, book v, period ii, parag. sqq.) . until africa became the scene of action, the second war cost the republic much less than the first; the expenses being principally defrayed by spain and italy. hanno, however, was at the head of a powerful party at home, who were clamorous for peace, and who can say they were wrong? as might be expected, the family of the barcas were for war, and their influence carried the day. that general who, with hardly any support from carthage, was yet able to maintain a footing in the country of his powerful foes for no less than fifteen years, and that, too, as much by policy as by force of arms, must extort our admiration. it cannot, however, be denied, that during the struggle one favourable opportunity, at least, was let slip of making peace; a fatal omission, for which the hero of cannæ paid dearly enough, by the failure of his darling project. . by the second peace with rome, carthage was deprived of all her possessions out of africa, and her fleet was delivered into the hands of the romans. she was now to be a mere trading city under the tutelage of rome. but carthage found by this peace her most formidable enemy on the soil of africa itself. massinissa had been elevated to the dignity of king of numidia; and his endeavours to form his nomads into an agricultural people, and to collect them into cities, must have changed the military system that carthage had hitherto followed. roman policy, moreover, had taken care that the article inserted in his favour in the last treaty of peace, should be so ambiguously worded, as to leave abundant openings for dispute. . even after this disgraceful peace, the family of the barcas still preserved their influence, and hannibal was placed as supreme magistrate at the head of the republic. he attempts to reform the constitution and the finances, by destroying the oligarchy of the hundred, by whom the finances had been thrown into confusion. complete as was the success of the first blow, it soon became apparent that aristocratic factions are not so readily annihilated as armies. the democratic faction to which even the barcas owed their first elevation, was the cause of the degeneracy of the carthaginian constitution. by that faction the legislative authority of the senate and magistrates was withdrawn and transferred to the _ordo judicum_--probably the same as the high state tribunal of the hundred--which now assumed the character of an omnipotent national inquisition; and the members being chosen for life exercised oppressive despotism. this tribunal was formed of those who had served the office of ministers of finance, with whom it shared unblushingly the revenues of the state. hannibal destroyed this oligarchy by a law, enacting that the members should hold their office but for one year; whereas before they held it for life. in the reform wrought by this law in the finances it was seen, that after all wars and losses, the revenues of the republic were still sufficient, not only for the usual expenditure and the payment of tribute to rome, but also for leaving a surplus in the public treasury. ten years had hardly elapsed before carthage was enabled to pay down at once the whole of the tribute which she had engaged to furnish by instalments. . the defeated party, whose interests were now the same with those of rome, joined the romans, to whom they discovered hannibal's plan of renewing the war in conjunction with antiochus the great, king of syria. a roman embassy was sent over to africa, under some other pretext, to demand that hannibal should be given up. the carthaginian general secretly fled to king antiochus, at whose court he became the chief fomenter of the war against rome; although unsuccessful in his endeavour to implicate the carthaginian republic in the struggle. see hereafter the history of syria, book iv, period iii, separate kingdoms. i. seleucidæ, parag. ; and book v, period ii, parag. sq. . in consequence of the absence of hannibal, carthage fell once more under the dominion of the romans, who contrived, by taking a crafty advantage of the state of parties, to give a show of generosity to the exercise of their power. even the patriotic faction, if we may judge by the violent steps which they took more than once against massinissa and his partisans, seem to have been but a tool in the hands of rome. . disputes with massinissa, which led to the gradual partition of the carthaginian territory in africa. the manner in which this territory had been acquired, facilitated the discovery of claims upon each of the component parts; and the interference of rome, sometimes disinterested, but oftener swayed by party feeling, ensured the possession of the territory to the numidian. even in , a disadvantageous treaty framed with massinissa for fifty years: nevertheless the rich province of emporia is lost in .--loss of another province unnamed, to which massinissa inherited some claims from his father.--seizure of the province of tysca, with fifty cities, about . probable date of cato's embassy, who returned in disgust, because his decision had been rejected, and became the fomenter of a project to destroy carthage.--new disputes about .--massinissa's party is expelled carthage.--war breaks out in consequence, during which the king in his ninetieth year personally defeats the carthaginians; and what with famine and the sword, hasdrubal's army, which had been surrounded by the enemy, was nearly exterminated; in the mean while the roman ambassadors, who had come to act as mediators, obeying their private instructions, looked on with quiet indifference. . though it is evident that the party spirit raging between cato and scipio nasica had a considerable influence in hastening the destruction of carthage; and though it is equally clear that massinissa's late victory paved the way for the immediate execution of that project; yet it is difficult to unravel the web, by which, long before the declaration of war now about to follow, treachery prepared the final scene of this great tragedy. was the account that cato at his return gave of the resuscitated power of carthage consonant to truth? was not the sudden secession of ariobarzanes, the grandson of syphax, who was to have led a numidian army to defend carthage against massinissa, previously arranged with rome? was not the turbulent gisgo, who first incited the populace to insult the roman ambassadors, and then opportunely rescued them from the fury of the mob, in the pay of rome? these questions give rise to suspicions, although they cannot satisfactorily be answered. at any rate, it may be said, that the conduct of rome, after war had broken out, corroborates the suspicion. the whole history of the last period sufficiently proves, that it was not so much the debased character of the nation, as party spirit, and the avarice of the great, which produced the fall of carthage. advantage was taken of that party spirit and avarice by roman policy, which, although acting according to the dictates of blind passion, knew how to profit by dark and base intrigue. third war with rome and destruction of carthage, - . see hereafter the roman history, book v, period ii, parag. sq. * * * * * second book. _history of the persian empire, from b. c. - ._ sources. preservation of historic records among the persians themselves under the form of royal annals; origin and nature of those annals. as these have been destroyed, we are obliged to deduce the history from foreign writers, some of whom, however, availed themselves of the persian annals. . _greeks_: their authority as writers, contemporary, but not always sufficiently acquainted with the east. (_a_) ctesias. his court history compiled from persian annals, would be the principal work did we possess the whole; we have, however, only an extract from it preserved by photius. (_b_) herodotus: who probably availed himself of similar sources in some portion of his work. (_c_) xenophon. to this period of history belong, not only his anabasis and hellenica, but also his cyropædia, or portraiture of a happy empire and an accomplished ruler, according to eastern ideas, exhibited in the example of cyrus: of use so far as pure historic records are interwoven with the narrative. (_d_) diodorus, etc. . _jewish writers._ the books of esdras and nehemiah; and more particularly that of esther, as containing a faithful representation of the persian court and its manners. . the accounts of the later _persian chroniclers_, mirkhond in particular, who flourished in the thirteenth century of the christian era, can have no weight in the scale of criticism; they are nevertheless interesting, inasmuch as they make us acquainted with the ideas that the inhabitants of the east form of their early history. the modern authors on persian history are principally those who have written on ancient history in general: see p. . a treatise on persian history, deduced from eastern sources, will be found in the _ancient universal history_, vol. iv. brissonius, _de regno persarum_, , vo. a very laborious compilation. the section concerning the persians in # heeren, _ideas_, etc. vol. i, part . [malcolm, sir john, _history of persia_, from the earliest ages to the present times. lond. , to. vols. "a valuable work."] . state of the persian nation previous to cyrus; a highland people, subject to the medes, dwelling in the mountainous parts of the province of persis, and leading wholly, or for the most part, a nomad life. division into ten clans, among which that of the _pasargadæ_, the noblest and ruling horde, is particularly remarkable on account of the figure it makes in subsequent history.--the result of this division was a patriarchal government, the vestiges of which remain visible in the whole of the following history of the persians. permanent distinction between the tribes in reference to their mode of life, observable even during the most flourishing period of the persian state: three of the nobles or warriors, three of the husbandmen, and four of the shepherds. argument thence deduced, that the history of the persians as a dominant nation, _is that of the nobler clans alone, and of the_ pasargadÆ _more especially_. . the personal history of cyrus, the founder of the persian monarchy, was, even in the time of herodotus, so obscured under the veil of romance, that it was no longer possible to detect the real truth. it is, however, evident, that the course of the revolution wrought by him was, on the whole, the same as was followed in all similar empires founded in asia. gengis-khan, in a later age, was placed at the head of all the mogol hordes; in the same manner was cyrus elected chief of all the persian tribes, by whose assistance he became a mighty conqueror, at the time that the babylonian and median kingdoms of inner asia were on the decline, and before the lydian empire, under croesus, had been firmly established. descent of cyrus from the family of achæmenes, (jamshid?). that family belonged to the pasargadæ tribe, and therefore remained the ruling house. . rise of the persian dominion, in consequence of the overthrow of the medo-bactrian empire, after the defeat of astyages at pasargada. rapid extension by further conquest. subjection of asia minor after the victory won by cyrus in person over croesus, and capture of the greek colonies by the generals of the persian monarch. conquest of babylon and all the babylonian provinces. the phoenician cities submit themselves of their own accord. even in cyrus's time, therefore, the frontiers of the persian empire had been extended in southern asia to the mediterranean, to the oxus, and to the indus; but the campaign against the nomad races, inhabiting the steppes of central asia, was unsuccessful; and cyrus himself fell in the contest. it cannot be denied but that in the narration of the separate wars waged by cyrus, discrepancies are found in herodotus and ctesias; those two authors, however, agree in the main facts: and, indeed, the differences which exist between them cannot be considered always as direct contradictions. . immediate consequences of this great revolution in respect both of the conquerors and the conquered. among the former, even in the time of cyrus, the civilization and luxury of the medes, their legislation and national religion, and the sacerdotal caste of the magi, who were guardians of that religion, had been introduced, and the whole system of the persian court had been remodelled upon that of the medes. description of zoroaster's legislation, and of the magian national religion, according to the zend-avesta. how far the dogmas of zoroaster can be considered as dominant among the persians?--proof that they were adopted only by the nobler tribes, more particularly the pasargadæ. their great and beneficial influence on agriculture. anquetil du perron, _zend-avesta, ouvrage de_ zoroastre, _traduit en françois sur l'original zend_. paris, . to. this work has been much improved by the critical discussions added to the german translation by j. l. kleuker. compare the dissertations on zoroaster by meiners and tychsen, in _comment. soc. gotting._ and heeren, _ideas_, etc. vol. i. hyde, _de religione veterum persarum_; oxon. , to. replete with learned research, and the first work that excited enquiry on the subject. # j. s. rhode, _sacred traditions of the east_; breslau, . an excellent work for the study of the zend-avesta, the magian religion, and the antiquities of the medes and persians. . first political constitution of the persian empire under cyrus. no general new organization; but for the most part the original institutions are preserved among the conquered, who are compelled to pay tribute. royal officers, appointed to collect the tribute, are associated with the generals, who with numerous armies keep in subjection the inhabitants of the conquered countries. for the support of the empire large standing armies are kept in pay, besides which, recourse is frequently had to the transplanting of whole nations; while, as was the case with the jews, some who had been formerly transplanted are restored to their country. with the same view injunctions are issued, as in the case of the lydians, to effect the enervation of warlike races by a luxurious and effeminate system of education. . cyrus leaves two sons, the elder of whom, cambyses, succeeds as king; the younger, smerdis, (the _tanyoxarces_ of ctesias,) becomes independent lord of bactria and the eastern territories; but is soon after murdered by the command of his elder brother. . under cambyses the conquering arms of the persians are directed against africa. egypt becomes a persian province, and the neighbouring libya, together with cyrene, assume the yoke of their own accord. but the twofold expedition against the opulent commercial establishments, ammonium in the west, and meroe in the south, is wholly unsuccessful; that against carthage is arrested in its commencement by the refusal of the tyrians to join the naval armament. a colony of six thousand egyptians is transplanted into susiana. . the cruelty with which cambyses is accused of treating the egyptians was directed rather against the powerful caste of the priests, than against the whole nation; and originated more in political than in religious motives. it must be observed, however, that we ought to be particularly on our guard against all the evil that is related of cambyses, inasmuch as our information respecting that prince is derived entirely from his enemies, the egyptian priests. . the usurpation of the pseudo-smerdis, (or _tanyoxarces_,) was an attempt of the magi to replace a median dynasty on the throne, by means of a plot hatched within the seraglio. it was the occasion of an accident which cost cambyses his life, after a reign of seven years and a half: (or, according to ctesias, of eighteen.) . the pseudo-smerdis kept his seat on the throne eight months, during which he attempted to bring over the conquered nations to his interest by a remission of all tribute for three years; but the discovery of his cheat gave rise to a conspiracy of seven of the chief persians, who could not brook the rule of a mede, and the usurper lost his life. . it could not be expected that the political organization of the kingdom should advance to completion during the reign of cambyses, who was almost always absent in the prosecution of war; or during the brief rule of the pseudo-smerdis. it remained, therefore, in the same state as under cyrus. but the introduction of the median court-ceremonial among the ruling tribe of the persians, and the adoption of fixed dwellings by that tribe, rendered it necessary that royal residences should be erected for the reception of the king's court; among these persepolis, (see above, p. ,) probably commenced by cyrus, was completed under darius and xerxes. the best drawings of the monuments of persepolis, remarkable alike for their architecture, their sculpture, and their inscriptions in the arrow-headed character, are to be found in the travels of chardin and niebuhr. illustrations: # herder's _persepolis_, in the collection of his works, vol. i. # heeren, _ideas_, etc. part i. vol. i. great assistance in studying the inscriptions, is furnished by de sacy, _mémoires sur diverses antiquités de la perse_; paris, , to. it must be observed, however, that this work is confined to the illustration of the later monuments, belonging to the _sassanidæ_. the most successful attempt at deciphering the arrow-headed inscriptions of the old persic, since tychsen, muenter, and lichtenstein, will be found in # grotefend, _on the interpretation of the arrow-headed characters, particularly of the inscriptions at persepolis_, contained in the appendix to heeren, _ideas_, etc. vol. ii. with an accompanying zend alphabet. . after a very remarkable debate held by the seven conspirators, concerning the form of of government which should be established, darius, the son of hystaspes, one of the family of the achæmenides, was raised to the throne by an oracle; this king endeavoured to strengthen his right to the sceptre by marrying two of cyrus's daughters. . the reign of darius i. which lasted thirty-six years, (according to ctesias ,) is remarkable for the improvements made both in the external and internal administration of the persian empire. in the former, by the great expeditions and conquests, which extended the persian realm to its utmost limits; in the latter, by several important institutions, established for the internal organization of the state. . the expeditions of the persians under cyrus were directed against the countries of asia; those of cambyses against africa. but those undertaken by darius i. were directed against europe, though the persian territory was at the same time extended in the two other quarters of the world. in the reign of this king likewise commenced those wars with the greeks, so fatal to the persians; constantly fomented and supported by emigrant or exile greeks, who found an asylum in the persian court, and there contrived to raise a party.--first example of the kind exhibited shortly after the accession of darius, in the case of syloson, brother to polycrates, who had been tyrant of samos: at his request the island was taken possession of by the persians, and delivered up to him after the almost total destruction of the male population. . great revolt in babylon, which would not submit tamely to a foreign yoke. after a siege of twenty-one months, darius by stratagem regains possession of the city. the power of babylon and the importance of its situation increased the jealousy with which it was guarded by the persian kings; so much so, that they were wont to reside there a certain portion of the year. . first great expedition of darius undertaken against the scythians inhabiting the lands north of the black sea: the former irruption of the scythians into asia afforded a pretext for the war, which, therefore, was considered as a general national undertaking. unsuccessful as the persian arms were in this vast expedition against the scythians, and disgraceful as was the retreat from the barren steppes of the ukrain, yet the power of darius was established in thrace and macedonia, and the persians obtained firm footing in europe. concerning the peculiar character of the persian national wars, or great campaigns, in which all the conquered nations were obliged to participate, contrasted with the other wars waged by persian troops alone. . the next expedition made by darius was more successful. it was carried on along the banks of the indus, down which river scylax, a greek, had previously sailed on a voyage of discovery. the highlands north of the indus were then subjected to the persian dominion, and the indus became the boundary of the kingdom. about the same time that darius was engaged on the danube and the indus, aryandes, his viceroy in egypt, led an expedition against barca, to avenge the murder of king arcesilaus; a war which terminated in the destruction of the city, and the transplantation of its inhabitants into asia. . however trifling the first occurrence which gave rise to the revolt of the asiatic greeks, it was much more important in its consequences. it was set on foot by aristagoras, lieutenant-governor of miletus, who was secretly supported by his relation, the offended histiæus, then resident at the persian court. the share taken by the athenians in this rebellion, which led to the burning of sardes, was the origin of the national hatred between persia and european greece, and of the long series of wars that ensued. the confederates were this time defeated; but the naval battle off the island of lada, could hardly have had such a fatal result, had not the league been previously corrupted by the craft and gold of persia. be that as it may, this war ended in the reduction of the ionians, and the destruction of miletus, their flourishing capital; a city which in those days, together with tyre and carthage, engrossed the trade of the world. . first attack upon greece, particularly athens. darius, already enraged against the athenians by the firing of sardes, is still further instigated by the suggestions of the banished tyrant of athens, hippias, the son of pisistratus. this prince, who had fled to the persian court, was evidently the animating spirit of the whole undertaking. although the first attempt, made under the command of mardonius, was thwarted by a tempest, yet the mighty expedition which afterwards followed, was undertaken with so much more prudence, and conducted with so much knowledge of the country, that no one can fail to recognize the guiding hand of hippias. even the battle of marathon, which seems to have been but a diversion on the side of the persians, would not have decided the war, had not the activity of miltiades defeated the principal design of the enemy upon athens. . it may be said that darius, by these foreign wars, debilitated the kingdom which he endeavoured to extend; this circumstance, however, it cannot be denied, increases the merit which he has of perfecting the internal organization of the empire. his reign constitutes precisely that period which must enter into the history of every nomad race that has attained to power, and is advancing towards political civilization; a period at which it becomes visible that the nation is endeavouring to obtain a constitution, however gradual the progress towards it. . division of the empire into twenty _satrapies_, and the imposition of a regular tribute on each. this division at first depended solely on that of the various tributary races, but from it gradually arose a geographic division, in which the ancient distinction of countries was for the most part preserved. proofs that the division into satrapies was originally a mere arrangement for the civil government and collection of taxes, distinct from military power. duties of the satraps. the attention they were to pay to the cultivation and improvement of the land; to the collection of the imposts; to the execution of the royal commands relating to provincial affairs. an abuse of this institution, at a later period, placed in the hands of these satraps the command also of the troops.--various means of keeping the satraps in a state of dependence: royal secretaries appointed for each, who were to be the first to receive the king's commands.--periodical visits paid to the provinces by commissioners under the direct appointment of the king, or by the king himself accompanied with an army.--establishment of couriers in every part of the empire, for the purpose of securing a safe and rapid communication with the provinces, as was the case also in the mongol countries; (not a regular post, however, the institution here alluded to being intended only for the court.) . the persian finance continues to preserve those peculiarities which naturally result from the formation of an empire by a nomad race of conquerors, desirous of living at the expense of the conquered, and under a despotic form of government. collection of tribute, mostly in kind, for the support of the court and the armies; and in precious metals, not coined, but in their raw state. application of the treasure thus collected towards constituting a private chest for the king. various other royal imposts.--mode of providing for the public expenditure by assignments on the revenues of one or several places. . organization of the military system, conformably to the primitive state of the nation, and the necessity now felt of keeping the conquered countries in subjection by means of standing armies. military organization of the persian nations, by means of a decimal division pervading the whole.--royal troops cantoned in the open field, according to a certain division of the empire, or stationed as garrisons in the cities, and distinct from the encampments.--manner in which the troops were supported at the cost and by the taxes of the provinces.--introduction of mercenaries and greeks, more particularly among the persians, and fatal consequences of that measure. military household of the satraps and grandees.--institution of a general conscription in national wars. formation of the persian navy, consisting of the phoenician, and not unfrequently of the asiatic greek fleets. . from the time of darius, the court of the kings of persia attained its complete form, and the government soon after was wholly concentrated in the seraglio. yet the mode of life which the kings led, surrounded by a court, taken principally if not wholly from the tribe of the pasargadæ, and changing their residence according to the revolutions of the seasons, still preserved the traces of nomad origin. babylon, susa, and ecbatana, the usual residences; persepolis now used as a royal cemetery. the court supported by the most costly productions of each province; hence arose the rigid ceremonial observed at the royal table.--internal organization of the seraglio.--influence of the eunuchs and queen-mothers on the government. . already had darius commenced preparations to wreak his vengeance on athens, when a revolution broke out in egypt, and hindered him from prosecuting his design. he died after nominating for his successor xerxes i. grandson of cyrus, and his eldest son by a second wife, atossa, whose influence over her husband was boundless. . xerxes i. a prince educated in the seraglio, who knew nothing beyond the art of representing the pomp of royalty. subjection of egypt, and severe treatment of that country under the satrap achæmenes, brother to xerxes. . xerxes' famous expedition against greece was again the result of the cabals and intrigues of the greek exiles, the pisistratidæ, the soothsayer onomacritus, the thessalian princes or aleuadæ, who contrived to exert their influence on the king's mind, and to raise a party in their favour among the grandees. but the progress of the campaign showed that no hippias was at the head of the invading army, although the persian king did certainly succeed in his avowed object, the capture and destruction of athens. critique on the detailed account given by herodotus of this expedition, as a national undertaking in which all the subjugated nations were obliged to take a share.--preparations which last for three years in the persian empire; league framed with carthage for the subjection of the sicilian greeks, - . the expedition itself in ; over asia minor and the hellespont, through thrace and macedonia.--muster of the army and division of the troops according to nations at doriscus; the detailed description of which found in herodotus, was most probably borrowed from some persian document.--the pass of thermopylæ taken by treachery; on the same day a naval engagement off artemisium.--athens captured and burnt. battle of salamis, sept. , . retreat of xerxes; an army of picked men left behind, under the command of mardonius.--fruitless negotiations with the athenians.--second campaign of mardonius: he is routed at platææ, sept. , ; and that event puts an end for ever to the persian irruptions into greece: on the same day the persian army is defeated, and their fleet burnt at mycale in asia minor. . the consequences of these repeated and unsuccessful expeditions, in which almost the whole population was engaged, must be self-evident. the empire was weakened and depopulated. the defensive war which the persians for thirty years were obliged to maintain against the greeks, who aimed at establishing the independence of their asiatic countrymen, completely destroyed the balance of their power, by compelling them to transfer their forces to asia minor, the most distant western province of the empire. . little as the greeks had to fear from the persian arms, the danger with which they were now threatened was much more formidable, when the enemy began to adopt the system of bribing the chieftains of greece; a system which succeeded beyond expectation in the first trial made of it with pausanias, and perhaps was not wholly unsuccessful with themistocles himself.--but the persians soon found in cimon an adversary who deprived them of the sovereignty of the sea; who in one day destroyed both their fleet and their army on the eurymedon; and by the conquest of the thracian chersonese, wrested from them the key of europe. . what little we know further concerning the reign of xerxes, consists in the intrigues of the seraglio, which now, through the machinations of queen amestris, became the theatre of all those horrors which are wont to be exhibited in such places, and to which xerxes himself at last fell a victim, in consequence of the conspiracy of artabanes and the eunuch spamitres. was xerxes the ahasuerus of the jews?--on the difference between the names of the persian kings in persian and chaldee; not to be wondered at when we consider that they were mere titles or surnames, assumed by the sovereigns after their accession. . artaxerxes i. surnamed longimanus. in consequence of the murder of his father and his elder brother, in the conspiracy of artabanes, this prince ascended the throne, but was unable to keep possession of the sceptre without assassinating, in his turn, artabanes. his reign, which lasted forty years, exhibits the first symptoms of the decline of the empire, which this king, although possessed of many good qualities, had not the talent or spirit to arrest. . at the very commencement of his reign rebellions are excited in the provinces; in the mean while the war with athens continues. two battles are required to repress the insurrection of his brother hystaspes in bactria. . second revolt of egypt, excited by the libyan king, inarus of marea, in conjunction with the egyptian, amyrtæus, and supported by an athenian fleet. although the confederates did not make themselves masters of memphis, they defeated the persian army, commanded by the king's brother, achæmenes, who lost his life in the battle; they were at last overpowered by megabyzus, satrap of syria, and shut up together with inarus in the town of byblus. inarus and his party were admitted to capitulation; but amyrtæus, having taken refuge in the morasses, continued to make head against the persians. . the grecian war takes, once more, an unfavourable turn for the persians: cimon defeats the enemy's fleet and army near cyprus. the fear of losing the whole of the island accordingly compels artaxerxes i. to sign a treaty of peace with athens, in which he recognizes the independence of the asiatic greeks, and agrees that his fleet shall not navigate the Ægæan sea, nor his troops approach within three days' march of the coast. . but the haughty and powerful megabyzus, enraged at the execution of inarus, in violation of the promise made by him to that prince, excites a rebellion in syria; repeatedly defeats the royal armies, and prescribes himself the conditions upon which he will be reconciled to his sovereign. this was the first great example of a successful insurrection excited by one of the persian satraps; and chequered as were the subsequent fortunes of megabyzus, his party continued to subsist after his death in the persons of his sons. he possessed in the centre of the court a support in the dowager queen amestris, and the reigning queen amytis; (both notorious for their excesses;) who kept artaxerxes i. in a constant state of tutelage to the hour of his death. . revolutions in the government now succeed each other with rapidity and violence. xerxes ii. the only legitimate son and successor of artaxerxes, is slain, after forty-five days' reign, by his bastard brother sogdianus; the latter, in his turn, after a reign of six months, is deposed by another bastard brother, ochus, who ascends the throne, and assumes the name of darius ii. . darius ii. surnamed the bastard, or nothus. he reigns nineteen years under the tutelage of his wife, parysatis, and of three eunuchs, one of whom, artoxares, even attempts to open a way to the throne, but is put to death. in this period the decline of the state advances with hurried steps; partly by reason of the extinction of the legitimate royal line, partly by the increased practice of placing more than one province, together with the military command, in the hands of the same satrap. although the repeated insurrections of the satraps are repressed, the court, by the breach of faith to which it is obliged to have recourse, in order to succeed in its measures, exhibits to the world a convincing proof of its infirmity. the revolt of arsites, one of the king's brothers, who was supported by a son of megabyzus, and that of pisuthnes, satrap of lydia, are quelled only by obtaining treacherous possession of their persons. . in consequence of the weak state of the empire, the fire, which had hitherto been smouldering under the ashes, burst forth in egypt. amyrtæus, who had remained till now in the morasses, issued forth, supported by the egyptians; and the persians were again expelled the land. obscure as the subsequent history may be, we see that the persians were obliged to acknowledge, not only amyrtæus, but his successors. [see page ]. . the persians must have regarded it as a happy event, that the peloponnesian war, kindled in greece during the reign of artaxerxes, and protracted through the whole of that of darius ii. had prevented the greeks from unitedly falling upon persia. it now became, and henceforward continued to be, the chief policy of the persians to foment quarrels and wars between the grecian republics, by siding at various times with various parties; and the mutual hatred of the greeks rendered this game so easy, that greece could hardly have escaped total destruction, had the persian plans been always as wisely laid as they were by tissaphernes; and had not the caprice and jealousy of the satraps in asia minor generally had more effect than the commands of the court. alliance of the persians with sparta, framed by tissaphernes, ; but in consequence of the policy of alcibiades, and the artful principles of tissaphernes, followed by no important results, until the younger cyrus, satrap of all asia minor, was by lysander, , brought over to the spartan interest. (see below, the grecian history, iii. period, parag. .) . artaxerxes ii. surnamed mnemon. although this prince was the eldest son of darius, his right to the throne might, according to the persian ideas of succession, have appeared dubious, since his younger brother, cyrus, had the advantage over him of being the first born subsequent to the accession of his father. relying on the support of his mother parysatis, cyrus, even without this claim to the throne, would, no doubt, have asserted his pretence to the sovereign power. it would have been, in all probability, a fortunate event for the persian empire, had the fate of battle, in the ensuing war between the two brothers, assigned the throne to him whom nature seems to have pointed out as the fittest person. history of this war according to xenophon. battle of cunaxa, in which cyrus falls, . retreat of the ten thousand greek mercenaries in the service of cyrus, under the guidance of xenophon. . during the whole of this reign, artaxerxes, now firmly seated on the throne, remained under the tutelage of his mother, parysatis, whose inveterate hatred against his wife, statira, and against all who had any share in the death of her darling son, cyrus, converted the seraglio into a theatre of bloody deeds, such as can be conceived and committed only in similar places. . the insurrection and rout of cyrus produced a corresponding change in the political relations between the persian court and sparta: which, however, were now determined, not so much by the will of the monarch himself, as by the satraps of asia minor, tissaphernes and pharnabazus, of whose jealousy sparta knew how to take advantage. the former, by his severity towards the asiatic greeks, who had supported the cause of cyrus, excited a war with sparta, in which he himself fell a victim. the death of the satrap is not, however, succeeded by tranquillity; for agesilaus commands in asia, and threatens to overthrow the persian throne itself. the policy of the persians is shown by the war which they foment in greece against sparta: conon is placed at the head of their fleet, and extricates persia from her difficulties better than could have been done by her own generals; in the peace of antalcidas she herself dictates the terms, by which the grecian colonies of asia minor, together with cyprus and clazomenæ, are again delivered into her possession. the rising power of thebes under epaminondas and pelopidas, with whom persia keeps up a friendly connection, ensures her from any future blow at the hands of the spartans.--war for the possession of cyprus with evagoras, who, however, by the subsequent peace retains the sovereignty of salamis. . the war against the cadusii in the mountains of caucasus, proves that artaxerxes ii. was not fitted for military command; and his attempt to recover egypt from king nectanebus i. which was defeated by the feud between iphicrates and artabazus, evinces that the most numerous persian host could achieve nothing without the assistance of grecian troops and grecian generals.--it could hardly be expected that an empire should endure much longer, when in the court all was ruled by the desire of revenge in the women; when the political organization was already so corrupt, that the satraps waged war against each other; and when those generals who gave any proof of talent received no better reward than that of datames. . in fact, it seemed not unlikely that the persian empire would fall asunder a little before the death of artaxerxes mnemon. a quarrel about the succession arose in the court between the three legitimate sons of the king, the eldest of whom, darius, was put to death: the standard of rebellion was erected in the western half of the empire, and joined by all the governors of asia minor and syria, supported by tachos, king of egypt, to whose assistance the spartans had sent agesilaus. the insurrection, however, was quelled in consequence of the treachery of the chief leader, orontes, who was bribed over to the court. . in the midst of these commotions died artaxerxes ii.: his youngest son, ochus, took possession of the throne, and assumed the name of artaxerxes iii. this king conceived that he could not establish his power but by the total destruction of the royal family, numerous as it was. he was contemporary with philip of macedon, in whom he soon found a more formidable rival than any he could have met with in his own family. . the new insurrection fomented by artabazus in asia minor, was accompanied with success so long as it was backed by the thebans; but the reception which artabazus met with at the hands of philip soon betrayed the secret intentions of the macedonian king. . but the extensive rebellion of the phoenicians and cyprians, in conjunction with egypt, compelled the king to undertake another expedition, which succeeded almost beyond expectation; although in this case the object was again attained principally by treachery and by grecian auxiliaries. treachery of mentor, the leader of the confederates: the consequent capture and destruction of sidon, followed by the subjection of phoenicia, . capture of cyprus by grecian troops, under the command of phocion and the younger evagoras, . expedition of the king in person against egypt: victory of pelusium, won over king nectanebus ii. with the help of grecian mercenaries. egypt becomes, once more, a persian province. . this restoration of the empire to its former limits was followed by a period of tranquillity, the result of force, as mentor and the eunuch bagoas, holding the king in complete dependence, divided the kingdom, as it were, between themselves; until bagoas was pleased, by poison, to remove artaxerxes out of his way. . after the assassination of the royal family, bagoas placed on the throne the king's youngest and only surviving son, arces. bagoas was desirous of reigning in the name of that prince; but after the lapse of two years, he found it necessary to depose him, and to substitute in his place a distant relation of the reigning family, darius codomannus, who commenced his reign by putting to death the wretch himself. . darius iii. codomannus, not having been educated, like his predecessors, in the seraglio, gave proof of virtues which entitled him to a better fate. attacked in the second year of his reign by macedon, against which persia had hitherto made no preparation for resistance,--unless, perhaps, the dagger which pierced philip was pointed by persian hands,--darius was unable at once to reestablish a kingdom which of itself was mouldering away. and yet, had not death defeated the invasion of macedonia by his general, memnon, it might have been matter of doubt, whether alexander would ever have shone as the conqueror of asia.--after the loss of two battles, in which he fought in person, darius iii. fell a victim to the treachery of bessus, and the burning of persepolis made known to asia that the realm of persia was destroyed, and that the east must acknowledge a new lord and master. for the history of the war, see below: the history of macedon. * * * * * third book. history of the grecian states. _geographical outline._ _greece_ is bounded on the north by the cambunian mountains, which separate it from macedonia; on the south and east by the Ægæan, on the west by the ionian sea. greatest length from south to north = geog. miles, greatest breadth from west to east, = geog. miles. superficial contents, = , square miles.--principal rivers: the peneus, which discharges its waters into the Ægæan, and the achelous, which flows into the ionian sea. advantages in respect to fertility, resulting from the mildness of the climate, between - ° n. lat.; from the number of small streams; from the qualities and variety of the soil, in which this country has been so much more blessed by nature than any other of similar extent, that every branch of cultivation may be prosecuted equally and in conjunction.--advantages in reference to navigation and commerce: situated in the vicinity of the three quarters of the world, on three sides washed by the sea, and by reason of its irregular, indented coast, abounding with commodious ports and havens. it may be divided into northern greece, from the north boundary to the chain of oeta and pindus, between the ambracian gulf west, and the maliac east. central greece, or hellas, down to the isthmus of corinth: and the southern peninsula, or peloponnesus. northern greece comprises two countries; thessaly east, epirus west. . thessaly, the largest and one of the most fruitful of the grecian countries. length from north to south geog. miles; breadth from west to east geog. miles. rivers: the peneus, apidanus, and several smaller streams. mountains: olympus, residence of the fabulous gods, and ossa in the north; the chain of oeta, othrys, and pindus in the south. division into five provinces: . estiæotis; cities: gomphi, azorus: . pelasgiotis; cities: larissa, gonni, the vale of tempe: . thessaliotis; cities: pharsalus, etc. . phthiotis; cities: pheræ, etc. . the foreland of magnesia, with a city of the same name. other territories, such as perrhæbia, etc. for instance, derived their names from the non-greek races who inhabited them. . epirus. next to thessaly, the largest, although one of the least cultivated countries of greece: - geog. miles long, and the same in breadth. divisions: molossis; city, ambracia: thesprotia; city, buthrotum; in the interior, dodona. central greece, or hellas, comprises nine countries. . attica, a foreland, extending towards the south-east, and gradually diminishing. length, geog. miles; greatest breadth, geog. miles. rivers: ilissus, cephissus. mountains: hymettus, pentelicus, and the headland of sunium. city: athens, with the harbours piræus, phalereus, and munychius; in the other parts no towns, but hamlets, [greek: dêmoi], such as marathon, eleusis, decelea, etc. . megaris, close to the isthmus of corinth. the smallest of the grecian countries; geog. miles long, and from - broad. city, megara. . boeotia, a mountainous and marshy country, geog. miles long, and from - broad. rivers: asopus, ismenus, and several smaller streams. mountains: helicon, cythæron, etc. lake: copais.--boeotia was, of all the grecian countries, that which contained the greatest number of cities, each having its own separate territory. among these, the first in importance, and frequently mistress of the rest, was thebes on the ismenus. the others, platææ, tanagra, thespiæ, chæronea, lebadea, leuctra, and orchomenus, are all celebrated in grecian history. . phocis, smaller than attica; geog. miles long, from - broad. river: cephissus. mountain: parnassus. cities: delphi, on parnassus, with the celebrated oracle of apollo. crissa, with the harbour of cirrha, and up the country elatea. the other cities are insignificant. , . the two countries called locris. the eastern on the euripus, territory of the locri opuntii and epicnemidii is the lesser of the two; being but little larger than megaris. city: opus; pass, thermopylæ. the western locris on the corinthian gulf, station of the locri ozolæ, is from - geog. miles long, and from - broad. cities: naupactus on the sea, amphissa up the country. . the small country of doris, or the tetrapolis dorica, on the south side of mount oeta, from - geog. miles long, and the same in breadth. . Ætolia, somewhat larger than boeotia; from - geog. miles long, and from - broad; but the least cultivated country of all. rivers: achelous, which skirts acarnania, and the evenus. cities: calydon, thermus. . acarnania, the most western country of hellas, geog. miles long, from - broad. river: achelous. cities: argos amphilochicum, and stratus. the peninsula of peloponnesus contains eight countries. . arcadia, a mountainous country, abounding in pastures, and situate in the centre of the peninsula; greatest length, geog. miles; greatest breadth, geog. miles. mountains: cyllene, erymanthus, etc. rivers: alpheus, erymanthus, and several smaller streams. lake: styx. cities: mantinea, tegea, orchomenus, heræa, psophis; subsequently megalopolis, as a common capital. . laconia, likewise mountainous. greatest length, geog. miles; greatest breadth, geog. miles. river: eurotas. mountains: taygetus, and the headlands malea and tenarium. cities: sparta on the eurotas; other places: amyclæ, sellasia, and others of little importance. . messenia, west of laconia; a more level and extremely fertile country, subject to the spartans from b. c. . greatest length, geog. miles: greatest breadth, geog. miles. city: messene. frontier places, ithome and ira: of the other places, pylus (navarino) and methone are the most celebrated. . elis, with the small territory of triphylia, on the west of the peloponnesus. length, geog. miles: greatest breadth, geog. miles. rivers: alpheus, peneus, sellis, and several smaller streams. cities: in the north, elis, cyllene, and pylus. on the alpheus, pisa and the neighbouring town of olympia. in triphylia, a third pylus. . argolis, on the east side of the peninsula; a foreland opposite to attica, with which it forms the sinus saronicus. length, geog. miles: breadth, from - geog. miles. cities: argos, mycenæ, epidaurus. smaller but remarkable places; nemea, cynuria, troezen. . achaia, originally ionia, called likewise Ægialus, comprises the north coast. length, geog. miles: breadth, from - . it contains twelve cities, of which dyme, patræ, and pellene are the most important. . the little country of sicyonia, geog. miles long, broad, with the cities of sicyon and phlius. . the small territory of corinth, of the same extent as the foregoing, adjoining the isthmus which connects peloponnesus with the main land. city: corinth, originally ephyra, with the ports of lechæum and cenchreæ; the former on the corinthian, the latter on the saronic gulf. the greek islands may be divided into three classes; those which lie immediately off the coasts, those which are collected in groups, and those which lie separate in the open sea. . islands off the coasts. off the west coast in the ionian sea: corcyra, opposite epirus, geog. miles long, from - broad. city: corcyra. a corinthian colony. opposite acarnania; leucadia, with the city and headland of leucas.--cephalonia or same, originally scheria, with the cities of same and cephalonia. in the neighbourhood lies the small island of ithaca.--opposite elis: zacynthus. off the south coast: cythera, with a town of the same name. off the east coast, in the saronic gulf: Ægina and salamis. opposite boeotia, from which it is separated by the strait named euripus, euboea, the most extensive of all; geog. miles long, from - geog. miles broad. cities: oreus, with the headland of artemisium on the north, in the centre chalcis, eretria. off thessaly, scyathus and halonesus. farther north, thasus, imbrus, samothrace, and lemnos. . clusters of islands in the Ægæan sea: the cyclades and sporades; the former of which comprise the western, the latter the eastern islands of the archipelago. the most important among them are, andros, delos, paros, naxos, melos, all with cities of the same names. . the more extensive separate islands: . crete, geog. miles long, from - broad. mountain: ida. cities: cydonia, gortyna, cnossus. . cyprus, geog. miles long, from - broad. cities: salamis, paphos, citium, and several smaller places. concerning the principal greek islands off the coast of asia minor, see above, p. . # fr. carl. herm. kruse, _geographico-antiquarian delineation of ancient greece and its colonies, with reference to modern discoveries_. illustrated with maps and plates: first part, . general geography: second part, first division, . second division, . special geography of central greece. a most minute and careful description of greece, founded on modern discoveries. first period. _the most ancient traditional history, down to the trojan war, about b. c. ._ sources: on the formation and progress of history among the greeks. preliminary enquiry into the peculiarities of grecian mythology in a historical point of view, as comprising the most ancient history of the national tribes and heroes. a history rich in itself, on account of the number of tribes and their leaders; but embellished and altered in various ways by the poets, particularly the great early epic writers, and afterwards by the tragedians.--first advance of history from tradition, wrought by the logographi, especially those of the ionian cities, hecatæus, pherecydes, etc. until herodotus, so justly called the father of history, raised it at once to such a lofty pitch of eminence. (compare # _the historical art of the greeks considered in its rise and progress, by_ g. f. creuzer; .) nevertheless, in herodotus, and even later writers, history continued to savour of its origin; and so far as the realm of tradition extended, even theopompus and ephorus felt no disinclination to borrow their materials from mythologists or poets. it need scarcely be observed, that in this first period the history is merely traditional. among the moderns, the english have most successfully treated the subject of grecian history: the principal works are: john gillies, _the history of ancient greece, its colonies and conquests, from the earliest accounts till the division of the macedonian empire in the east, including the history of literature, philosophy, and the fine arts_. london, , vols. to. and william mitford, _the history of greece_. london, , vols. to. several new editions have since appeared. translated into german, jena, , sqq. by _h. l. eichstädt_. mitford is perhaps superior in learning, copiousness, and solidity, but he certainly is greatly surpassed by gillies in genius and taste, and more especially in a proper conception of the spirit of antiquity. [few english critics will here coincide with our author.] de pauw, _recherches sur les grecs_, , vols. vo. replete with partial views and hypotheses. # heeren, _researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the most celebrated nations of antiquity_: vols. st part, th edit. . [translated into english, oxford, , vo.] many important enquiries on various portions of grecian history and antiquities will be found in the great collection: gronovii, _thesaurus antiquitatum græcarum_, vols. folio. others are contained in the transactions of different learned societies; particularly in _mémoires de l'académie des inscriptions et des belles lettres_, paris, , sqq. vols. to. _commentarii_, ( vols.) _commentarii novi_, ( vols.) _commentationes_, ( vols.) and _commentationes recentiores societatis scientiarum gotting._ ( vols.) . although greece was originally inhabited by several insignificant races, two principal tribes claim our attention, the _pelasgi_ and the _hellenes_. both probably were of asiatic origin; but the difference of their language characterized them as different tribes. the pelasgi were the first that extended their dominion in greece. first seat of the pelasgians in the peloponnesus, under inachus, about b. c. . according to their own traditions, they made their first appearance in this quarter as uncultivated savages; they must, however, at an early period, have made some progress towards civilization, since the most ancient states, argos and sicyon, owed their origin to them; and to them, perhaps, with great probability, are attributed the remains of those most ancient monuments generally termed _cyclopian_.--extension of this tribe towards the north, particularly over attica; settlement in thessaly under their leaders achæus, phthius, and pelasgus; here they learned to apply themselves to agriculture, and remained for a hundred and fifty successive years; about - . . the hellenes,--subsequently so called from hellen, one of their chieftains,--originally the weaker of the two tribes, make their first appearance in phocis, near parnassus, under king deucalion; from whence they are driven by a flood. they migrate into thessaly, and drive out the pelasgi from that territory.--the hellenes soon after this become the most powerful race; and spreading over greece, expel the pelasgi from almost every part. the latter tribe maintain their ground only in arcadia, and the land of dodona; some of them migrate to italy, others to crete, and various islands. . the hellenic tribe is subdivided into four principal branches, the _Æolians_, _ionians_, _dorians_, and _achæans_, which continue afterwards to be distinguished and separated by many peculiarities of speech, customs, and political government. these four tribes, although they must not be considered as comprising all the slender ramifications of the nation, are derived by tradition from deucalion's immediate posterity; with whose personal history, therefore, the history of the tribes themselves and their migrations is interwoven. this derivation of the tribes will be better understood by an inspection of the following genealogical table: deucalion. | hellen. |--------------------|--------------------| dorus. xuthus. Æolus. | |---------|-------------| | dorians. | | Æolians. achÆus. ion. | | achÆans. ionians. . the gradual spread of the various branches of the hellenic tribe over greece was effected by several migrations, between b. c. - ; after which they preserved the settlements they had already obtained until the later migration of the dorians and heraclidæ, about . _principal data for the history of the separate tribes in this period._ . Æolus follows his father hellen into phthiotis, which consequently remains the seat of the Æolians; they spread from thence over western greece, acarnania, Ætolia, phocis, locris, elis in the peloponnesus, and likewise over the western islands. . dorus follows his father into estiæotis, the most ancient seat of the dorians. they are driven from thence after the death of dorus by the perrhæbi; spread over macedonia and crete; part of the tribe return, cross mount oeta, and settle in the tetrapolis dorica, afterwards called doris, where they remain until they migrate into peloponnesus, under the guidance of the heraclidæ; about . (see below, p. ). . xuthus, expelled by his brothers, migrates to athens, where he marries creusa, daughter of erectheus, by whom he has sons, ion and achæus. ion and his tribe, driven out of athens, settle in that part of peloponnesus called Ægialus, a name which by them was converted into ionia, and in later times exchanged for achaia. the achæans preserve their footing in laconia and argos, until the time of the dorian migration. # l. d. huellman, _early grecian history_, . rich in original views and conjectures, beyond which the early history of nations seldom extends. # d. c. otfried mueller, _history of the hellenic tribes and cities_, , vol. . containing, _orchomenus and the minyæ_; vols. , , containing the _dorians_, . . besides these original inhabitants, colonies at the same early period came into greece from civilized countries, from egypt, phoenicia, and mysia. the settlements of these strangers occurred probably between b. c. - . establishment in attica of the colony of cecrops, from sais in egypt, about ; in argos, of the colony of danaus, likewise from egypt, about .--the colony of cadmus, from phoenicia, settles in boeotia about .--the colony of pelops, from mysia, settles in argos about . . the mythology of the hellenes proves beyond a doubt, that they were at first savages, like the pelasgi since they had to learn even the use of fire from prometheus; yet it is equally clear that they must, even in the earliest period, particularly from - , when they had ceased to migrate, have made the first important steps towards the attainment of a certain degree of civilization. about the time of the trojan war they appear to have been still barbarians, though no longer savages. . the origin and progress of this national organization, and the influence wrought upon it by settlers from foreign countries, are difficult subjects to determine. if we allow that cecrops was the first who introduced marriage in attica, and that agriculture and the cultivation of the olive were discovered in that country, it unquestionably follows, that the hellenes were indebted to strangers for the foundation of domestic civilization. and when we consider that the families which subsequently held sway were descended directly from the most powerful of these strangers, their lasting influence can hardly be a matter of doubt. it must, however, be observed, that what the greeks borrowed from foreigners they previously stamped with their own peculiar character, so that it became, as it were, the original property of the nation. the question, therefore, is deprived of much of the importance which it assumes at the first glance. . the case was the same with regard to all branches of intellectual civilization, particularly religion. that many deities and religious rites were introduced into greece from egypt, asia, and thrace, and generally through crete, hardly admits of a doubt; but they did not therefore remain egyptian, asiatic, or thracian; they became grecian gods. hence it appears that the investigation of those relations can hardly lead to any important conclusion. it is a fact, however, of the highest importance, that whatever gods the greeks adopted, no separate order of priesthood was established among them, still less any caste laying claim to the exclusive possession of knowledge. several traces, nevertheless, make it probable, that many of the most ancient sanctuaries were settlements of egyptian, phoenician, or cretan priests, who imported with them their own peculiar forms of worship. and notwithstanding this worship consisted merely of outward ceremonies, many ideas and institutions which were attached to it, became, in this manner, the common property of the nation. . it was principally, therefore, by religion, that the rude mind became in some degree polished. but it was the ancient minstrels, ([greek: aoidoì],) orpheus, linus, etc., who, by disseminating religious principles, contributed so much towards abolishing revenge, and with it the perpetual state of warfare which had hitherto distracted the country. these it was who in their mysteries contrived in some measure to impress the narrow circle of the initiated with the advantages resulting from a civilized life. sainte-croix, _recherches sur les mystères du paganisme_, paris, . translated into german, with valuable observations, by c. g. lenz; gotha, . . the influence of religion, through the medium of oracles, especially those of dodona and delphi, was not less powerful. the two latter, with that of olympia, were perhaps, originally ancient settlements of priests, such as have been already alluded to. the necessity of consulting these sanctuaries naturally led men to regard the oracles as the common property of the nation, to which every one should have access; it followed therefore as an inevitable consequence, that the direction of affairs in which all were engaged, depended principally on those oracles. a. van dalen, _de oraculis veterum ethnicorum dissertationes_ . amstel. . a very valuable work. a comprehensive dissertation on the subject, however, is still wanting: a portion of it is treated of in j. groddek, _de oraculorum veterum, quæ in herodoti libris continentur, natura, commentatio_; gotting. . . it happened with greece as with other countries; the tender plant of civilization grew up under the shelter of the sanctuary. there the festivals were celebrated, and there the people assembled; and there various tribes, who had hitherto been strangers to one another, met in peace, and conversed on their common interests. hence arose spontaneously the first idea of a law of nations, and those connections which led to its development. among these connections, that of the amphictyons at delphi was the most important, and continued the longest: it is probable that it did not assume its complete form till a later period; yet it appears in early times to have adopted the principle, that none of the cities belonging to the league should be destroyed by the others. # fr. wilh. tittmann, _upon the amphictyonic league_; . a dissertation which gained the prize of the academy of sciences at berlin. . to religion must likewise be added navigation, and the consequent intercourse which brought the nation into contact with strangers, and prepared it to receive civilization. it cannot be denied that the navigators continued long to be mere pirates; but as minos of crete cleared the sea of freebooters, the want of another state of things must have been felt long before. . in the mean time the chivalrous spirit of the nation was gradually aroused; and developed the first bloom of its youthful vigour in the heroic ages. an affection for extraordinary undertakings was excited; and conducted the chieftains, not only individually, but also in confederate bodies, beyond the limits of their father-land. these undertakings were not only important in themselves, but their advantages were increased by their being preserved in the songs of their bards by means of a national poesy, such as no other people possessed, and such as contributed to the further development of the national genius. expedition of the argonauts to colchis, somewhere about b. c. ; war of the seven confederate princes against thebes about ; the town, however, was not taken until the second attempt made by the sons of the chiefs (epigoni) in . . thus every thing was now ripe for some great national undertaking of all the combined hellenic nations; and that object was attained in the war against troy. the most important result of that expedition was the kindling of one common national spirit,--a spirit which in spite of dissensions and feuds, was never wholly extinguished, and which must almost necessarily have arisen from an expedition carried on in so distant a field, which lasted ten years, in which all were joined, and which was crowned with such signal success. from the time of the trojan war downwards the hellenes always looked upon themselves as but one people. general view of the political state of greece about the time of the trojan war.--division into several small states, the most powerful of which were argos and mycenæ.--all those states were governed by hereditary chieftains or princes from a certain _family_ (kings, [greek: basileis],) who combined the offices of leaders in war and judges in peace. their authority being more or less extended in proportion to the qualities they possessed, and particularly to their valour in battle.--manner of life among the people: a nation dwelling in cities, but at the same time cultivating the land and tending cattle; applying also to war, and already somewhat advanced in the art of navigation. a. w. schlegel, _de geographia homeri commentatio_. hannov. . a review of the political geography of greece at this period.--on the topography of troy: lechevalier, _description de la plaine de troie_. translated and accompanied with notes by heyne, leipzig, . compare clarke, _travels_, vol. i, c. - , who has thrown doubts on the system of lechevalier, which has, however, been again confirmed by leake, _travels in asia minor_. second period. _from the trojan war to the breaking out of the persian war, b. c. - ._ sources. on no portion of the grecian history is our information so scanty as upon this long period, in which we can be hardly said to have more than a general knowledge of many of the most important events. as in the foregoing period, its commencement is but a traditional and poetical history. it was not till towards the end of it that the use of writing became common among the greeks; add to which the period itself was not rife in great national undertakings, such as might afford appropriate materials for the poet or historian. besides the scattered information which may be gathered from herodotus, plutarch, strabo, and above all from the introduction to thucydides's history, pausanias must not be forgotten; who, in his description of greece, has preserved an abundance of most valuable documents relating to the separate histories of the minor states. the books of diodorus belonging to this period are lost. # fr. wilhelm tittmann, _delineation of the grecian forms of government_, . an industrious collection of all the information we possess respecting this subject. # w. wachsmuth, _grecian antiquities with regard to politics_, vols. an excellent work. . _history of the hellenic states within greece._ . the trojan war was followed by a very stormy period, in consequence of the many disorders prevalent in the ruling families, especially in that of pelops. but more violent commotions soon arose, caused by the attempts of the rude tribes of the north, particularly of the dorians combined with the Ætolians, who, under the guidance of the descendants of hercules, exiled from argos, strove to obtain possession of peloponnesus. those commotions shook greece during a whole century, and as the seats of most of the hellenic tribes were then changed, the consequences were lasting and important. first unsuccessful attempt under hyllus, son of hercules, about .--repeated attempts, until at last the claims of the heraclidæ are made good by the grandsons of hyllus, viz. telephus and cresphontes, together with eurysthenes and procles, sons of their brother aristodemus, . . consequences resulting to the peloponnesus from this migration. the territories of argos, sparta, messene, and corinth, wrested from the achæans who had hitherto inhabited them, become the property of the dorians; elis falls to the share of the Ætolians, who had accompanied the former. the achæans expelled, in their turn expel the ionians and settle in the country since called achaia; the fugitive ionians are received by their ancient kinsmen the athenians.--but among the consequences of this migration of the hellenic races must be reckoned likewise the establishment of greek colonies in asia minor; an occurrence of the highest importance to the ulterior development of the nation. this colonization was commenced by the Æolian hellenes, whose example was soon after followed by the ionians, and even by the dorians. for the history of these colonies, see the following section. . although the effect of these migrations and wars, in which the ruder tribes oppressed the more civilized, must inevitably have been, not only to interrupt the progress of civilization, but even almost entirely to annihilate it, yet in this universal movement the foundation was laid of that constitution of things which afterwards existed in greece. the tribes which had migrated, as well as those which had been expelled, remained at first under the dominion of their hereditary princes, some for a longer, others for a shorter time. in the two centuries, however, immediately subsequent to the migrations, b. c. - , republican constitutions took the place of hereditary clanship in all the grecian countries, the distant epirus excepted. these republics continued to exist amid the various revolutions which happened; and the love of political freedom, deeply impressed on the minds of the people, constituted from this time the principal feature in the national character. . the sequel proves, that the principal cause of this change so important for greece,--this change, by which her future internal policy was for ever determined, originated in the progress made by the newly come tribes towards civic life, and consequently at the same time towards national civilization. in this newly constituted order of things, each city, with the territory around it, formed a separate state, and framed its own constitution; hence there arose as many free states as cities. the notion that greece contained the same number of states as countries is completely false, although it cannot be denied that the mode of expression in most writings upon greek history seems to authorize the assertion. it is true that some of those countries, such as attica, megaris, laconia, may be each regarded as a separate state, because each constituted the territory of one city. the others, however, such as arcadia, boeotia, etc. did not each form one state, but comprised as many separate states as there were free and independent cities, each of which, with its territory, formed one. still, however, it must be observed, (_a_) that the natural ties of kindred subsisted; arcadians, boeotians, etc. spoke of one another as countrymen. (_b_) voluntary connections were entered into between different cities, and sometimes all the cities of a country, as, for instance, in achaia, so that the whole formed one confederation; each individual city nevertheless still preserved its own system of laws and government. again, (_c_) in consequence of a greater share of power, one city assumed a sort of dominion over the other; as, for instance, that of thebes over the boeotian cities. this dominion, however, was always precarious, and depended upon the state of affairs. (_d_) it must likewise be observed, that the constitution of each separate city underwent many changes, wrought generally by influential citizens, (tyrants,) who not only possessed themselves of the supreme power, but also contrived frequently to make it for some time hereditary in their families. every one will easily discern that the above are the fundamental principles of greek history, which cannot be too clearly conceived, or too correctly defined; since it is self-evident what a wide field was by such a constitution of things thrown open to practical politics. the more improbable the attainment of fixed constitutions in the separate cities was, the more frequent must have been the political attempts; (attempts facilitated by the narrow extent of the state;) and the more frequently those attempts failed, the more extensive in this intellectual people became the mass of political ideas; the results of which in later times were the legislative codes of solon and others. . although greece was thus parcelled out into a number of small states, united by no common political bond, yet there existed a certain unity of the hellenic race, a certain national spirit: this was produced in part by national festivals and games, occurring at stated periods, among which those in honour of jupiter at olympia were the chief. the nation at these appeared in all its splendour; and all hellenes, but no others, were allowed to join in them. this union, too, was promoted by the extension of the amphictyonic council: and the reason why this last institution was not followed by all the consequences which might have been expected from it, may perhaps be found in what naturally takes place in every great confederation whenever any of the component states become too powerful. the amphictyonic council was certainly not a states-general, in which all national affairs were discussed. its immediate office was to attend to the temples and the oracles of delphi. but then it must be observed, st, that from this council originated the grecian ideas of the law of nations; over the preservation of which the amphictyons watched. . in consequence of its political influence on the oracle, this council, in certain cases, was enabled to take a share in the affairs of different states. . the amphictyons always formed a national institution, since none but hellenes were admitted. st. croix, _des anciens gouvernemens fédératifs, et de la législation de crète_, paris, . one of the most invaluable inquiries, not only into the institutions of the amphictyons, but also into other matters of grecian history connected with them. . among the different states of greece, sparta and athens, even at this period, became celebrated, not only for their greater power, but also for their superior constitutions and their laws: and though it may not perhaps be strictly true, that the history of the rest of greece is connected with that of these two cities, yet they certainly possess the highest claim to our attention. . history of sparta. the achæans at first were governed by princes of the house of perseus, but after menelaus's accession to the throne in virtue of his wife, by princes of the house of pelops. when the latter had been expelled by the dorians, laconia fell by lot to the sons of aristodemus, procles and eurysthenes, between whose families the royal power was divided, so that two kings constantly reigned in common, one from each family. families of the proclidæ and Ægidæ; the latter so called from agis, the son and successor of eurysthenes. # j. c. f. manso, _an essay on the history and constitution of sparta_, leipzig, sqq. vols. the most important work upon this subject, and which likewise contains much information upon various points of grecian history connected with it. cragius, _de republica lacedæmoniorum_, . meursius, _de regno laconico_; and _miscellanea laconica_. both laborious compilations. . the dorians now gradually conquered, and established themselves in many cities of the peninsula; forming, if not the whole population, at least the only part of it that enjoyed any power, as the achæans that remained were reduced to slavery. no long time, however, elapsed ere the city of sparta usurped an authority over the whole country, which it ever afterwards preserved; the other towns, formerly considerable, becoming unfortified, defenceless, and insignificant. relation between the spartan citizens of the capital as a ruling body, and the lacedæmonians, or [greek: perioikoi], inhabitants of the country, as subjects who paid tribute and military service. even in the time of agis, the successor of eurysthenes, this subjection was effected by force; the inhabitants of helos were made slaves, as a punishment for their opposition; while the others, by the sacrifice of their political freedom, preserved their personal liberty, however confined it might be. . the history of the two following centuries, to the time of lycurgus, exhibits nothing but the repeated wars of the spartans with their neighbours the argives; their domestic broils, occasioned by the too unequal division of property, by the feuds, and the diminished power of the kings, and which lasted until lycurgus, the uncle and guardian of the minor king, charilaus, about the year , gave to sparta that constitution to which she was principally indebted for her subsequent splendour. _illustration of the principal features in the spartan constitution._ some preliminary observations are necessary. (_a_) as the legislation of lycurgus occurred at so early a period, and as his laws were not written, but conveyed in apophthegms, ([greek: rhêtrai],) which were confirmed by the oracle of delphi, many things of later origin have been attributed to lycurgus. (_b_) much that is rightly attributed to him was not original, but deduced from ancient dorian institutions, which being now upon the decline, were reestablished by force of law. hence it follows, that the legislation of lycurgus must naturally have had many points of resemblance with that of the cretans, likewise of dorian origin, although much, as we are told, was directly borrowed from them. (_c_) the principal object of the laws of lycurgus was to ensure the existence of sparta by creating and supporting a vigorous and uncorrupted race of men. hence those laws had a more peculiar reference to private life and physical education, than to the constitution of the state, in which the legislator appears to have introduced but few alterations. in reference to the constitution: . the relation which had hitherto existed between the spartans as a dominant people, and the lacedæmonians as subjects, was preserved. . the two kings, from the two ruling families, were likewise continued, as leaders in war and first magistrates in peace. on the other hand, . to lycurgus is attributed the institution of a senate, ([greek: gerousia],) consisting of twenty-eight members, none of whom could be less than sixty years old, who were to be chosen by the people for life, and were to constitute the king's council in public affairs. . whether the college of the five ephori annually chosen, was originally instituted by lycurgus, or at some later period, is a question impossible to decide, but of little importance, since the great power of this college, to which every thing was finally referred as the highest tribunal of the state, was certainly assumed after the time of lycurgus. . besides the above, there were likewise the popular assemblies, convened according to the division into [greek: phylas] and [greek: ôbas], at which none but spartans could assist: their privileges extended no further than to approve or reject the measures proposed to them by the kings and the senate. in the laws relating to private life, lycurgus aimed at making the spartans a society of citizens, equal as far as possible with respect to their property and mode of life, and each deeply impressed with the conviction that he was the property of his country, to which he was bound to yield an unconditional obedience. hence, . the new division of land, portions to the spartans, and , to the lacedæmonians; permission being given to dispose of those portions by entail or gift, but not by sale. . the removal as far as possible of every species of luxury, particularly by means of the daily public tables ([greek: syssitia]) of all the citizens, according to their divisions, in which the commons were settled by law. . the complete organization of domestic society in relation both to husband and wife, parents and children, which was so framed as to further, even at the cost of morality, the grand political object, the production of vigorous and healthy citizens. . hence, finally, the condition of the slaves, comprehended under the general name of helots, who, although they may be regarded nearly as serfs, were likewise the property of the state, which had the right of claiming their services in war.--easy, however, as it is to enumerate thus generally the principal heads of the spartan constitution, the want of sufficient documents renders it difficult and oftentimes impossible to answer a crowd of questions, which present themselves on our penetrating more deeply into the subject. still, however, its long duration, (nearly four hundred years,) without any observable change, is more remarkable even than the constitution itself. more remarkable, inasmuch as the spartans soon after this time appear as conquerors. indeed, it could no longer be expected that any durable peace should exist in greece, while the centre of the country was occupied by a military commonwealth, whose citizens must have been, by the restlessness common to man, impelled to war, since all the occupations of household life and of agriculture were left to the care of slaves. besides the works mentioned above, p. . heyne, _de spartanorum republica judicium_; inserted in _commentat. soc. gotting._ vol. ix. intended to correct the partial opinions of de pauw. . soon after the time of lycurgus commenced the war of the spartans with their neighbours, the argives, the arcadians, but more particularly the messenians. the wars with these last appear to have originated in an old grudge on the part of the dorian tribe, proceeding from the unequal division of lands at the occupation of peloponnesus: it is nevertheless evident, that the quarrel between the two nations was mainly fostered by the ambition of the spartan kings, who wrought upon a superstitious multitude by oracular responses and interpretations. unimportant wars with tegea and argos; and disputes with messene, - . first messenian war, - , terminated by the capture of the frontier fortress ithome, after the voluntary death of the messenian king, aristodemus.--the messenians become tributary to the spartans, and are obliged to give up one half of the revenues of their lands.--occurrences during this war: . institution, according to some authorities, of the college of ephori as vicegerents of the kings in their absence, and arbitrators in the quarrels which might arise between the kings and the senate. . the power of the people so far limited as to restrain the popular assemblies from making alterations in the resolutions proposed to them by the senate or the kings, and confining them merely to a vote of approval or rejection. . insurrection of the parthenii and helots becomes the motive for sending out colonies; a measure to which sparta had more than once resorted for the purpose of maintaining domestic tranquillity. second messenian war, - , waged by the messenians under the command of their hero aristomenes, by the spartans under that of tyrtæus, who fanned the flame of war until the contest was terminated by the capture of the strong town ira. the messenian territory is divided among the conquerors, and the conquered inhabitants become, like the helots, agricultural slaves. . although the territory of the spartans was greatly increased by these messenian wars, the nation seems to have been a long time before it recovered from the struggle, and to have raised itself by slow steps to the first rank among the dorian states, extending its boundaries at the expense of the argives and arcadians. wars with tegea for the most part unsuccessful; and with argos, for the possession of thyrea and the island of cythera; by the accession of which the spartan territory received an important augmentation, about . . these wars within peloponnesus were not of such a nature as to give rise to any remarkable changes in the spartan constitution, and for a long time the nation refused to take any share in foreign affairs. but no sooner did king cleomenes, who in the end procured the deposition of his colleague, demaratus, interfere in the affairs of the athenians, than the seeds of strife were sown between these two republics. the persian war next ensued, in which sparta was obliged to bear a part, although cleomenes had refused to participate in the insurrection of aristagoras: that struggle, together with the idea of supremacy in greece which now took its rise, introduced a series of political relations before unknown. . the history of athens during this period is rendered important rather by domestic revolutions, which gradually tended to convert the state into a republic, than by external aggrandizement. the situation and peculiarities of attica, which rendered it less exposed than other parts of greece to the attacks and forays of wandering hordes, favoured the gradual and tranquil growth of national prosperity; the traces of which are incontestable, though it would be difficult for the most profound research to point out the whole course of its progress so perspicuously as the historian might wish. the history of athens, of course, constitutes a main part of the works mentioned above, p. . besides which: w. young, _the history of athens politically and philosophically considered_. london, . to. argumentation rather than history. corsini, _fasti attici_. florent. . vols. to. a most careful chronological essay. . period of kingly government down to . the history of athens as a state begins properly with theseus, who succeeded his father Ægeus, about b. c. . although certain institutions, such as that of the areopagus, the division of the people into nobles, ([greek: eupatridai],) husbandmen, ([greek: geôrgoi],) and mechanics: ([greek: dêmiourgoi;]) a division which recals to our memory the egyptian institution of castes, are perhaps of an earlier date, and may be ascribed to the colony of cecrops. theseus was, however, in some measure the founder of the state, since, instead of the four districts, ([greek: dêmoi],) hitherto independent of one another, he constituted the city of athens as the only seat of government. among his successors the attention of the student is directed to mnestheus, who fell before troy; and the last king, codrus, who by a voluntary sacrifice of his life rescued attica from the inroads of the dorians, . . period of archons for life, taken from the family of codrus, thirteen of whom ruled; - . the first was medon, the last, alcmæon. these archons succeeded, like the kings, by inheritance, but were accountable for their administration, ([greek: hypeuthynoi].)--at the commencement of this period occur the migrations of the ionians from attica to asia minor, . see below. . period of the decennial archons, seven of whom succeeded between - . these likewise were taken from the family of codrus. this period is devoid of any remarkable occurrences. . period extending to solon, - . that of nine archons yearly chosen, but so arranged that the prerogatives of the former kings, and the preceding archons, were divided among the three first of the nine. with respect to this, as well as to the other changes above mentioned, we know little of the causes which produced them, or of the manner in which they were brought about. rise of an oppressive aristocracy, (like that of the patricians at rome, immediately after the expulsion of the kings,) both the archons and the members of the areopagus being elected only from noble families. first attempt at legislation by draco, , which appears only to have consisted in a criminal code, rendered unavailing by its severity.--the insurrection of cylon, , in consequence of the manner in which it was quelled, turned out most injurious to the aristocratical party, inasmuch as the nobles drew upon themselves the pollution of blood, which, even after the purification of epimenides, , was long used as a pretext for commotion. the political factions of the pediæi, of the diacrii, and of the parhali, produced an anarchy at athens, during which the neighbouring megarians took possession of the island of salamis; a conquest which, however, was subsequently wrested from them by solon. . from this state of anarchy athens was rescued by solon; a man to whom not only athens, but the whole human race, are deeply indebted. he was chosen archon, and at the same time commissioned to remodel the constitution of athens: and the successful manner in which he executed this task, laid the foundation of the happiness of his native country. _review of the prominent features in solon's legislation._ its main object was to abolish the oppressive aristocracy, without however introducing a pure democracy. . provisional laws: abolition of the statutes of draco, those against murder excepted: law enacted for the relief of debtors, ([greek: seisachtheia], novæ tabulæ,) not so much by cancelling the debts as by diminishing their amount by a rise in the value of money; and likewise by ensuring the personal liberty of the debtor. . fundamental laws, both in reference to the constitution and in reference to private life and private rights.--constitution of the state. (_a_) organization of the people by means of divisions: according to property into four classes; the pentacosimedimni, or those who had a yearly income of medimni; the equites, ([greek: hippeis],) who had ; the zeugitæ, who had ; and the thetes, (capite censi,) whose yearly revenue did not amount to so much.--the ancient divisions according to heads, into wards, ([greek: phylai],) of which there were four, and according to residence into demi, (hundreds,) of which a hundred and seventy are enumerated, were preserved. (_b_) none but citizens of the three first classes could fill all the offices of state; but all were admitted to the popular assemblies, and had a right of voting in the courts of judicature. (_c_) the nine archons annually chosen, who acted as supreme magistrates, although not permitted to assume military office at the same time, remained at the head of the state; the first bearing the name of [greek: epônumos], the second of [greek: basileus], the third of [greek: polemarchos], the remaining six that of [greek: thesmothetai]. combined with the archons was (_d_) the council, ([greek: boulê],) which consisted of a body of four hundred persons annually taken from the three first classes of citizens; (a hundred from each ward;) these were chosen by lot, but were obliged to submit to a rigid examination ([greek: dokimasia]) before they entered upon office. the archons were obliged to consult the four hundred on every occurrence; and nothing could be carried down to the commons until it had been previously debated in this council. (_e_) to the people, consisting of the whole four classes, was reserved the right in its assemblies ([greek: ekklêsiai]) of confirming the laws, of electing the magistrates, of debating all public affairs referred to them by the council, and likewise the public distribution of justice. (_f_) the areopagus was, according to solon's plan, to be the main buttress of the constitution; that tribunal had hitherto been a mere tool in the hands of the aristocracy. it was composed of retired archons, and remained not only the supreme tribunal in capital cases, but likewise was charged with the superintendence of morals, with the censorship upon the conduct of the archons who went out of office, and had the prerogative of amending or rescinding the measures that had been approved of by the commons. the power of this court, which might easily have become equal to the college of ephori at sparta, might at first have been supposed too extensive, had not experience shown the fatal consequences of the reduction of that power by pericles. this alloy of aristocracy and democracy certainly gives proof of a deep insight into the nature of republican constitutions; but solon is not less entitled to praise for his endeavours to place the helm of government in the hands only of the most enlightened and prudent citizens. it must likewise be observed, that the code for private life given by solon exhibits the genius of a man who regarded polity as subordinate to morals, and not, like lycurgus, morals as subordinate to polity. sam. petitus, _de legibus atticis_, . fol. the best compilation and illustration of the fragments remaining of the attic law. chr. bunsen, _de jure atheniensium hereditario, ex isæo cæterisque oratoribus græcis ducto_, goett. . the law of inheritance was a principal feature in solon's legislation; the explanation of it requires a profound acquaintance with the constitution, so far as it was connected with government by clans or families. an explanation of the athenian constitution will be likewise found in the above-mentioned works of tittmann, kruse, and wachsmuth. . the legislation of solon, like all other state reforms, was not followed by the total extinction of party spirit. it was natural that the commons, now free, should wish to try their strength with the aristocratical party, and that, after the defeat of the latter, pisistratus, who headed the commons, should grasp the rudder of the state without, therefore, necessarily abrogating the constitution of solon. modern history has proved with sufficient evidence, that the frame-work of a republic may easily subsist under the rule of an usurper. and would that no republics might fall into the hands of a worse tyrant than pisistratus! first exaltation of pisistratus, , procured by his obtaining a body guard; flight of the alcmæonidæ under megacles. pisistratus expelled, . second exaltation of pisistratus procured by his matrimonial connection with the family of megacles, - .--his second expulsion by megacles, - .--his third exaltation; obtains the power by force of arms, and preserves it to the day of his death, - . flight of the alcmæonidæ into macedonia, where they attach the malcontents to their party. pisistratus is succeeded by his sons hipparchus and hippias, who rule conjointly until , when the elder is murdered by harmodius and aristogiton. the exiled alcmæonidæ, having bribed the delphian oracle, gain over the spartans to their interest: backed by a spartan army, they take possession of athens in ; hippias is deposed, and flies over to the persians. . this return of the alcmæonidæ was followed by a change in the constitution of solon. clisthenes, the son of megacles, with a view of quenching party spirit by a new combination of the citizens, increased the number of wards to ten, and that of the members of the council to five hundred.--but the athenians had to purchase the continuance of their freedom by a struggle with sparta, who, united with the boeotians and chalcidians, and aided by Ægina, sought to reestablish monarchy in attica; first in the person of isagoras, the rival of clisthenes, and afterwards in that of the exiled hippias. but the glorious success of the republic in this first struggle in the cause of liberty, gave an additional impulse to the national spirit. impelled by that spirit, athens suffered herself to be induced to share in the war of freedom carried on by the asiatic greeks under aristagoras; and the audacity which led to the firing of sardis, drew upon attica the vengeance of the persians, without which, doubtless, neither athens or greece would ever have risen to that degree of eminence which they ultimately attained. . of the history of the other states of greece we have at best but few data, and even these in most instances are very scanty. towards the end of this period sparta and athens had, undoubtedly, exalted themselves above the rest, and were recognized, one as the first among the dorian, the latter as the first among the ionian states; yet did sparta more than once meet with rivals in messene, argos, and tegea: while athens had to contend with megara and Ægina. sparta and athens had, nevertheless, not only the best constitutions, but possessed also a more extended territory than any other of the great cities. _principal data for the history of the smaller states._ i. _within the peloponnesus._ _a._ arcadia. the arcadian traditions enumerate a line of kings or hereditary princes, said to have ruled over the whole of arcadia; the line commences with arcas and his son lycaon, whose successors kept possession of the supreme power, and shared more or less in the ancient feuds of the hellenic princes. upon the conquest of peloponnesus by the dorians, arcadia was the only land that did not suffer by the irruption: an advantage for which it was probably indebted more to its mountains, than to the skill of cypselus its king. the successors of that prince took a part in the wars between the messenians and spartans, siding with the former: but in the second messenian war, the last arcadian king, aristocrates ii. having betrayed his allies, was in consequence stoned to death by his subjects, and the regal dignity was abolished in . arcadia now became divided into as many small states as it contained cities with their respective districts; among these tegea and mantinea were the chief, and probably held the others in a certain state of control, without, however, depriving them wholly of their independence. as might have been expected in a pastoral nation, the constitution was democratical. in mantinea there were wardens of the people, ([greek: dêmiourgoi],) and a senate, ([greek: boulê].) the wars of separate cities are frequently mentioned, but no general confederation united them. # see a. von breitenbauch, _history of arcadia_, . _b._ argos. even previously to the dorian migration, the country of argolis was parcelled out into several small kingdoms, such as those of argos, mycenæ, and tiryns. in argos, the oldest grecian state next to sicyon, ruled the forefathers of perseus, who exchanged the kingdom of his ancestors for tiryns: here his successors continued to reign till the time of hercules, whose sons, expelled by eurystheus, sought an asylum among the dorians.--in mycenæ, said to have been built by perseus, the throne was occupied by the family of pelops: and at the period of the trojan war, this little state, to which corinth and sicyon then belonged, was the most powerful in greece, and governed by agamemnon. the migration into this country by pelops from asia minor, must have been attended with important consequences, since it has given a name to the whole peninsula: the object of pelops, as we may infer from the riches he brought with him, was probably to establish a trading settlement.--at the dorian conquest argos fell to the share of temenus, the achæans were expelled, and the country was peopled by dorians. as early as the reign of cisus, son of temenus, the royal power was so limited, that the successors of that prince hardly preserved any thing but the mere name: about the regal dignity was wholly abrogated, and its place supplied by a republican constitution, concerning the domestic organization of which we know nothing more than that at argos the government was in the hands of a senate, ([greek: boulê],) of a college of eighty citizens, ([greek: hoi ogdoêkonta],) and of magistrates, who bore the name of [greek: artynoi]: in epidaurus, however, there was a body of one hundred and eighty citizens who chose from among themselves the senate, the members of which were called [greek: artynoi]. as in the other states of greece so in argolis, there were as many independent states as there were cities; in the north argos, mycenæ, and tiryns; in the south epidaurus and troezen. the two last preserved their independence; but mycenæ was destroyed by the argives in , and the inhabitants of tiryns were forcibly transplanted to argos. the district of argos, therefore, comprised the northern portion of the country called argolis; but not the southern portion, which belonged to the towns situated therein. _c._ corinth. in this place, previous to the time of the dorian migration, the house of sisyphus held the royal power; and even at that early period corinth is extolled by homer for its wealth. the dorians drove out the original inhabitants; and aletes, belonging to the race of hercules, became king about ; the posterity of that prince held the sceptre down to the fifth generation. after the death of the last king, telessus, , the family of the bacchiadæ, likewise a branch of the family of hercules, took possession of the government and introduced an oligarchy, electing annually from among themselves a prytane. at last, in , cypselus got the upper hand; he was succeeded, , by his son periander; both father and son were equally conspicuous for their avarice and cruelty. periander (_d._ ) was succeeded by his nephew psammetichus, who reigned till , when the corinthians asserted their freedom. with regard to the internal organization of the republic, little more is known than that there were at corinth assemblies of the commons and a senate, ([greek: gerousia]): the government appears to have been the aristocracy of a trading state; for even the bacchiadæ, at least some of them, were merchants.--the corinthian commerce consisted chiefly in the exchange of asiatic and italian goods, and therefore was mostly carried on by sea: for such a trade the city of corinth offered many advantages, particularly if we consider the state of navigation in those times; but the sea trade of corinth, however profitable to the citizens, and even to the state, in consequence of the customs, cannot be considered as very extensive.--the colonies of corinth in the west were principally corcyra, epidamnus, leucas, syracuse; in the east potidæa: these colonies would fain have asserted a sort of independence, but never succeeded for any length of time in so doing. from the possession of these colonies, and from the necessity of protecting the trader from pirates, corinth grew to be a naval power; she invented triremes, and at the early date of gave battle to the corcyræans at sea. on the other hand, her wars by land were generally waged with the assistance of foreign subsidiaries; and from the facility with which she was enabled to pay her mercenary troops, she was the more ready to interfere in the domestic wars of greece. _d._ sicyon. tradition represents this state, together with argos, as the most ancient in greece; the catalogues of early kings and princes, who are said to have reigned at this place, make it probable that in early antiquity some settlements of priests were made in this quarter. in the times previous to the migration of the dorians, sicyon was first inhabited by the ionians; at the trojan war, however, it made part of agamemnon's kingdom. at the dorian irruption, phalces, son of temenus, took possession of sicyon, which then became a dorian city. after the abrogation of the kingship, the date of which is not precisely known, the constitution assumed the form of an uncurbed democracy, which, as usual, paved the way for the usurpation of one individual. orthagoras and his posterity, the last and most celebrated of whom was clisthenes, ruled over sicyon during a whole century; - . after the restoration of her freedom, sicyon frequently suffered from revolutions; and the period of her highest splendour was during the latter days of greece, when she became a member of the achæan league. _e._ achaia. during the spread of the hellenes, this country, which till then had borne the name of Ægialus, was taken possession of by ion, who had been expelled from athens, and his tribe, who from their leader took the name of ionians: the country remained in the hands of the ionians until the dorian migration, when the achæans, driven out of argos and laconia, pressed into the northern parts of peloponnesus under tisamenus, son of orestes: they settled in the land of the ionians, and the power of the chieftain descended to his posterity, until the tyranny of the last sovereign of that race, gyges, (of date undetermined,) produced the abolition of monarchy. achaia thereupon was parcelled into twelve small republics, or so many cities with their respective districts, each of which comprised seven or eight cantons. all these republics had democratic constitutions, and were mutually united by a league, founded on the most perfect equality, and which nothing but the policy of the macedonian kings could dissolve; and even this dissolution gave rise to the _achæan_ league, of such high importance in subsequent times. the achæans lived in peace and happiness, inasmuch as they had not the vanity, before the peloponnesian war, to interfere in the affairs of foreign states: their constitutions were so renowned, that they were adopted by several other grecian cities. _f._ elis. the inhabitants in earlier times bore the name of epeans, which, like that of eleans, was traced to one of their ancient kings. the names of their most ancient hereditary princes, endymion, epeus, eleus, augias, are celebrated by the poets. it appears that this country was divided into several small kingdoms, since, at the period of the trojan war it contained four, to which however must be added pylus in triphylia, a territory usually reckoned as belonging to elis. at the epoch of the dorian migration the Ætolians, who had accompanied the dorians, headed by their chieftain oxylus, settled in elis; but permitted the ancient inhabitants to remain in the country. among the successors of oxylus was iphitus the contemporary of lycurgus, and celebrated as the restorer of the olympian games, to the celebration of which elis was indebted for the tranquil splendour that distinguished her from this time: her territory being regarded as sacred, although she had occasional disputes with her neighbours, the arcadians, for precedence at the games. after the abolition of the royal power supreme magistrates were chosen, to whose office was added the charge of superintending the games: (hellanodicæ). these magistrates were at first two; they were afterwards increased to ten, one from each tribe, although their number frequently changed with that of the tribes themselves. there must likewise have been a senate, consisting of ninety persons, who held their places for life, since aristotle makes mention of that branch of the elean constitution. the city of elis was first built in , before which time the eleans resided in several small hamlets. ii. _central greece, or hellas._ _a._ megaris. until the epoch of the dorian migration, this state generally formed part of the domain of the attic kings; or at least was governed by princes of that house. immediately previous to that event, the megarians, after the assassination of their last sovereign, hyperion, placed the government in the hands of magistrates elected for stated periods. at the time of the dorian irruption, under the reign of codrus, megara was occupied by dorians, more especially those of corinth, who consequently reckoned the city among their colonies, and during the sway of the bacchiadæ endeavoured to keep it in a state of dependency; a circumstance which gave rise to several wars. nevertheless megara supported her rank as a separate state, both in those and many subsequent wars among the greeks, in which she took a share both by sea and land. about the year , theagenes, step-father of the athenian cylon, had possessed himself of the supreme power: after the expulsion of that tyrant, the republican constitution was once more restored, but soon after merged into the lowest species of democracy. megara, however, even at the period of the persian war, in which it took a glorious share, appears to have recovered the character of a well-ordered state, although we have no information respecting its internal organization. _b._ boeotia. history mentions several very early races in boeotia, such as the aones, hyantes, etc.; with these were mingled phoenician emigrants, who had come into the country under the guidance of cadmus. the stock of cadmus became the ruling family, and remained so for a long time: the history of his descendants, who were kings of thebes, and comprised under their dominion the greatest part of boeotia, constitutes a main branch of grecian mythology: among them were oedipus, laïus, eteocles, and polynices. after the capture of thebes by the epigoni, , the boeotians were expelled by thracian hordes, and settled at arne in thessaly; at the time of the dorian migration they returned to the land of their forefathers, and mingled with the Æolians of those quarters. not long after, upon the death of xuthus, royalty was abolished, . boeotia was now divided into as many small states as it contained cities; of these, next to thebes, the most eminent were the towns of platææ, thespiæ, tanagra, and chæronea, each of which had its own separate district and peculiar form of government; but all those constitutions appear to have been commuted into oligarchies about the time of the persian war. such had been the case even with thebes, although she had received as a legislator, philolaus from corinth; but the code given by this individual cannot have been attended with the desired effect, as the government was continually fluctuating between a licentious democracy and an overbearing oligarchy. the boeotian cities were, however, mutually united by a league, at the head of which stood thebes, who gradually converted her right of precedence into a right of power, although her ambitious attempts were resisted to the last extremity by the separate cities, and by platææ in particular: hence sprung many wars. the general affairs were decided upon in four assemblies, ([greek: boulai],) held in the four districts into which boeotia was divided; these assemblies in conjunction elected eleven boeotarchs, who stood at the head of the federation as supreme magistrates and field marshals. the great extent and population of their territory might have enabled the boeotians to act the first part on the theatre of greece, had they not been impeded by their pernicious form of government, by the envy felt against thebes, and by the want of union which naturally ensued. yet in subsequent times the example of epaminondas and pelopidas gave proof that the genius of two men was sufficient to surmount all these obstacles. _c._ phocis was originally ruled by kings descended, it is said, from phocus, the leader of a colony from corinth. the sovereign power was abolished about the time of the dorian migration; but the form of the republican constitution which succeeded remains undetermined; and of the undertakings of the phocians previous to the persian invasion, we know nothing more than that they waged war with the thessalians, and were successful. as history never mentions the phocians but in the aggregate, the whole territory must have formed but one independent state. to that state, however, the city of delphi, which had its own constitution, did not belong: the city of crissa with its fertile district, and the harbour of cirrha, constituted a separate state, which became opulent by practising extortions upon the pilgrims to delphi: this state lasted till , when, in consequence of the insults of the crissæans to the delphian oracle, a war was proclaimed against them by the amphictyons, which ended in with the rasing of crissa; the land of which was thenceforward added to the sacred glebe of delphi. _d._ locris. although we learn from early history that the locrians also had their kings,--among whom ajax, the son of oileus, is renowned in the trojan war,--and that they likewise in subsequent times adopted a republican form of government; yet the date of that revolution, and the manner in which it was brought about, are not known. the three tribes of locrians remained politically distinct. the locri ozolæ, west of phocis, possessed the most extensive territory; each city of which stood independent, though amphissa is mentioned as the capital. the country of the locri opuntii, eastward, consisted of the district appertaining to the city of opus; of their domestic organization, as well as that of their neighbours, the locri epicnemidii, we know nothing. _e._ Ætolia. the Ætolians remained the most rude and uncivilized of all the hellenic races; they were little more than a band of freebooters, and carried on their predatory excursions both by sea and land. renowned as are the names of their earliest heroes, Ætolus, peneus, meleager, diomede, the nation has no place in the history of the flourishing times of greece. nor did they acquire any celebrity until the macedo-roman period, when the various insignificant tribes of which they were composed gathered themselves together and chose one common leader, for the purpose of carrying on a war with the achæans. the earlier period of their history seems, however, to afford no previous example of such an union; their political constitution in those times is wholly unknown. _f._ acarnania. this country derived its name from acarnan, son of alcmæon, both of whom are adduced as its earliest kings. in the trojan age it appears beyond a doubt, that some part at least of this country was subject to the governors of the island of ithaca. when and how a republican government was introduced among the acarnanians, and what were the peculiarities of that government we know not. all that can be distinguished through the veil of time is, that here likewise the different cities, the most important of which was stratus, had each its own form of government. those cities upon particular emergencies were wont to combine; and out of that practice in later times, during the macedonian period, grew up a permanent confederation. the city and district of argos amphilochicum constituted a separate state, which endured a long time, and flourished greatly; it derived its name from amphilochus, the founder. the inhabitants, however, being driven out by the ambracians, whom they had themselves called in, sought assistance at the hands of the acarnanians, who with the help of athens, replaced the exiles in possession of their city, which thenceforward was inhabited in common by amphilochians and acarnanians, and was almost constantly engaged in war with ambracia. iii. _northern greece._ _a._ the importance of thessaly in the earliest history of greece, may be gathered from the principal data enumerated above for the history of the pelasgi and the hellenes. from this country it was that the hellenes proceeded and spread over greece; and here likewise they maintained their original seat. in the trojan age thessaly contained ten small kingdoms, governed by hereditary princes, several of whom, such as achilles and philoctetes, were among the most renowned heroes of the time. in the period subsequent to the trojan war and the dorian migration, thessaly must have experienced political revolutions similar to those of the other grecian countries; but neither the time nor the manner in which those revolutions occurred can be ascertained. all that can be deduced from the subsequent history is, that if the thessalian cities ever did recover their political freedom, they were unable to maintain it; for in the two most eminent cities, pheræ and larissa, with whose history that of the whole country is closely connected, the supreme power had fallen into the hands of arbitrary individuals, who appear to have kept possession of it almost without interruption. even before the breaking out of the persian war, larissa was under the rule of the aleuadæ; a family who claimed descent from hercules, and are specially denominated by herodotus kings of the thessalians. they preserved their power until the macedonian period.--in pheræ there arose about the year , a tyrant, by the name of jason, who extended his dominion not only over thessaly, but likewise over several of the neighbouring barbarous tribes. the sceptre of jason passed rapidly and successively into the hands of his three brothers, polydorus, polyphron, and alexander. the last was first driven out of larissa by the aleuadæ, assisted by the macedonians; was afterwards worsted in war by pelopidas; and finally, at the instigation of his wife thebe, was murdered, , by her brothers, lycophron and tisiphonus. the two murderers then assumed the supreme power, but were, in compliance with the request of the aleuadæ, deposed by philip of macedon.--some other such tyrants are met with at intervals in the rest of the thessalian cities, such as _pharsalus_, etc. _b._ epirus. this country was occupied by several tribes, partly greek and partly barbarian. the most powerful of these was that of the molossi, who were governed by kings of the house of the Æacidæ, descendants of pyrrhus, the son of achilles. this greek family was the only one that held the kingly power for a permanency; it must be observed, however, that previous to the macedonian period, those sovereigns were by no means lords of the whole of epirus; for the other non-hellenic races, such as the thesprotii, orestii, etc. had their own separate kings. moreover the corinthian colony of ambracia constituted a distinct state, generally governed as a republic, although sometimes subject to the rule of tyrants. but, in consequence of an alliance framed with the macedonian kings, the whole of epirus, and even ambracia itself, was placed under the sceptre of the molossian kings; and some of those princes, pyrrhus ii. more especially, rose to be mighty conquerors. see below. iv. _grecian islands._ both the islands off the coast of greece, and those of the archipelago, all underwent the same political revolutions as occurred in the states on the main land. but those events did not take place till after the more ancient non-hellenic inhabitants, such as the phoenicians, carians, etc. had been driven out, and the land had been taken possession of by the hellenes. in the more extensive islands, which contained several cities, there generally arose as many small republics as there were towns, and those little states were wont to enter into mutual alliances. the smaller islands, containing but one city, formed each one small independent state, the territory of which comprised the whole island. the respective independence of these islands ceased to exist at the period of the trojan war; for after the athenians had by their success placed themselves at the head of confederate greece, and possessed themselves of the sovereignty of the sea, these smaller states, although called confederates, were treated little better than subjects, except that their political constitutions were not changed.--among the islands of the grecian coast, the most remarkable in history are the following: _a._ corcyra, a colony of corinth, important for its naval power and trade, in which it rivalled the mother state itself: a rivalry which occasioned many feuds and wars, and was even one of the principal motives that led to the peloponnesian war. about the time this struggle began corcyra had attained the height of her power, being able, without foreign aid, to man a fleet of galleys. the constitution appears, as at corinth, to have been aristocratic, or oligarchical: but after the persian war a democratic faction arose, which produced the most violent internal commotions, and ended in the total ruin of corcyra. _b._ Ægina. this small island was, after the dorian migration, occupied by colonists from epidaurus; it however soon shook off the yoke of the mother city, and rapidly grew by commerce and navigation, to be one of the first grecian states. Ægina was for a long time the rival of athens; over whom her naval power enabled her to maintain a superiority until the time of the persian war. humbled, however, by themistocles, , she could no longer support herself against the preponderating influence of athens; and although subsequently she made another stand for independence, , the consequences were but an increase of oppression. neither must it be forgotten, that Ægina suffered much, even before the persian war, from internal broils, caused by the bitterness of party spirit engendered between the aristocratic and democratic factions. c. o. mueller, _Ægineticorum liber_, . this treatise contains not only the political history, but likewise that of trade and arts. _c._ euboea. the different cities of this island, chalcis and eretria in particular, had each its separate domestic constitution: in the two towns above mentioned the constitution was aristocratic, since the government was in the hands of the opulent, (hippobatæ;) nevertheless we hear of tyrants in chalcis. after the persian war euboea became dependent upon athens, which drew from that island a portion of her supplies and provisions. the oppression of the athenians stirred up the minds of the euboeans to rebellion, and the islanders were in the sequel ever ready to throw up their allegiance when a suitable opportunity presented itself; such an opportunity was seized in , when the island was recovered by pericles; and the attempt was renewed in the peloponnesian war. _d._ the cyclades were first colonized by crete, during the reign of minos. the carian race had in earlier times spread over these islands, but were gradually driven out by hellenic invaders, belonging principally to the ionian and dorian families. the most important was delos, chief seat of the ionians. sheltered under the protection of apollo, this place became the centre of an extensive trade, and during the persian war, , was selected for the treasury of greece. next was paros, famed for its marble, and for the stand it made against miltiades, , although it afterwards shared the fate of the other islands, and passed under the dominion of the athenians. we know little of the constitution of the other smaller islands; each of them contained one city of the same name as the island which constituted its territory. _e._ crete. the inhabitants of crete were not pure hellenes, but of alloyed origin, such as curetes, pelasgi, etc. mingled with whom were hellenes, of the dorian and Æolían stock. in the earlier periods, crete had her kings, the most celebrated of whom were minos, about , probably first sovereign of the whole island; his brother rhadamanthus, idomeneus, meriones, who followed idomeneus to the trojan war, and succeeded him upon the throne: the last king etearchus, about , after whose death a republican form of government was introduced. under these kings crete was powerful on sea: to minos is ascribed the honour of having by his fleets purged the Ægæan of pirates, occupied the islands, and ensured security to the mariner. to him likewise is attributed the cretan legislation, the model, it is said, of that given to sparta by lycurgus. but the uncertainty as to what does and what does not belong to minos, is in this case even greater than in that of lycurgus; many of the laws referred to minos are probably nothing more than ancient dorian institutions. the insular situation which in some measure ensured crete from foreign inroads, and the proximity of egypt and phoenicia must indubitably have contributed to expand the germ of political civilization. the abolition of the kingly office seems to have been the effect of internal commotions, to which crete continued to be frequently exposed, even under a republican form of government. those commotions originated in the jealousy between the two largest cities, gortina and cnossus, which, when united, ruled the rest; but when at war, shook the whole island, until the city of cydonia, passing over to one of the sides, gave a turn to the balance. the laws instituted by minos respecting private life were enforced in all the cities of the island; but declined at an earlier period than in the country. each city had its own constitution; each possessed it senate, ([greek: gerousia],) at the head of which were ten censors, ([greek: kosmoi],) chosen from certain families: these cosmi were not only prime magistrates, but likewise invested with the command in war, not often, it is true, waged by the cretans against other nations, but, for that reason, more frequently with one another; a circumstance which must have necessarily contributed to corrupt, not only their constitution, but likewise their national character. meursii _creta, rhodus, cyprus_, , to. very laborious compilations. new light, however, has been thrown upon the subject by the inscriptions published in chishull's _antiq. asiaticæ_; , folio. a work which has been made use of by st. croix, _des anciens gouvernemens_, etc. (see above, p. .) the principal work upon crete. # c. hoeck, crete. an attempt to explain the mythology, history, etc. of this island, . _f._ cyprus. this island, like crete, was inhabited by a race of mixed origin, who, even in the time of herodotus, traced their descent from phoenicians, africans, (ethiopians,) from greeks out of arcadia, attica, and the island of salamis; of which last the city of salamis, founded by teucer about , was a colony. there can be no doubt, that in earlier times the phoenicians were for a long period the dominant race in the island; since in the flourishing days of tyre the cyprians rebelled against their oppressors, at the same time that psalmanezer led an expedition against the former city, about : moreover, even in the present day, phoenician monuments are still found in the island. from that time to the persian period, there appears to have been a close connection between this island and the phoenicians, although the cyprians preserved their independence. several smaller kingdoms afterwards arose in various cities of the island; the number of which in subsequent times amounted to nine, and under amasis, about , were tributary to the egyptians; and under cambyses, , to the persians: notwithstanding this species of subjection, the various states preserved their own kings. during the persian dominion, the cyprians more than once joined in the insurrections against the persians; more particularly the kings of salamis, now become the most powerful. so early as the year , onesilus joined the ionian rebels, but was defeated. in the wars which afterwards ensued between the persians and greeks, cyprus was frequently attacked by the combined grecian fleets; as in by pausanias, and during the reign of evagoras i. , by cimon, who died at the siege of citium; yet the persians were not driven out, but appear to have kept their footing even after the peace of . among the subsequent kings of salamis was evagoras ii. ( - ,) who was master of the greatest portion of the island; but as in the peace of antalcidas cyprus was ceded to the persians, he was obliged to wage a hot war against them, in which he lost every thing but salamis. finally, the cyprians, in , took a part in the insurrection of the phoenicians and egyptians: thereupon the persians sent an army against them, under the command of a younger evagoras, (who had been banished by his uncle protagoras,) and under that of the athenian phocion salamis was besieged, but matters were made up by a negotiation. the nine small kingdoms of the island continued to exist till the time of alexander, whom they voluntarily joined during the siege of tyre, , and thenceforward cyprus constituted a part of the macedonian monarchy. . _history of the grecian colonies._ to assist the student in obtaining a general view of the events connected with the greek colonies, the history of them will be here carried on through the subsequent period. raoul rochette, _histoire critique de l'établissement des colonies grecques_, paris, , vols. the most comprehensive treatise on the subject: it comprises the earlier pelasgian and the later macedonian colonies, as well as those of the hellenes. there is much erudition displayed in this work, but sufficient attention is not paid to the value of the authorities made use of. # d. h. hegewisch, _geographic and historic documents relative to the colonies of the greeks_, altona, , vo. a brief review of the subject. st. croix, _de l'état et du sort des colonies des anciens peuples_, paris, . a series of valuable and important enquiries. . no nation of antiquity ever founded so many colonies as the greeks: these colonies became so important in various respects, that an acquaintance with them is indispensably requisite towards understanding the more early history of the world. not only is the history of the civilization of the mother country and that of early trade intimately connected with these settlements, but some of them grew to such power as to have the greatest influence on political history. . the grecian colonies, to which the following observations apply, are those founded by the hellenes in the time which elapsed between the dorian migration and the macedonian period. it appears certain that before the date of that migration some pelasgian, and perhaps even some hellenic settlers passed over into italy. the history of these colonies however is not only involved in obscurity, but it is besides known that they ceased after a time to be greek. the later settlements of the macedonians were of a quite different nature from those of the hellenes, to which we now allude. . the hellenic race spread alike to the east and to the west of greece, their settlements, however, were confined to the shores of the mediterranean and black sea. the countries in which their principal colonies were established, were asia minor and thrace in the east; the coasts of lower italy and sicily in the west. nevertheless particular settlements were to be found scattered here and there on the shores of most other countries. . the grecian colonies had their origin either in political motives, being generally made in accordance with the express command or advice of an oracle, (for the propagation of the religion of the parent state was always connected therewith,) or, in commercial speculations; the former was the case, almost without exception, with the settlements made by the mother country herself; the latter, with those which had branched out of such colonies as had already exalted themselves by their commerce. in fact, almost all the grecian colonies applied more or less to trade, even when that was not the sole object of their foundation. . the connection existing between the colonies and the mother cities was generally determined by the same causes that led to their foundation. in those cases where a city had been founded by malcontent or banished emigrants, all dependence on the mother country was naturally out of the question; and even in the colonies established for the purposes of trade, that dependence was but feeble and brief; the mother cities failing in power, if not in will, to enforce it. the very independence of so many colonies, made (almost without exception) in countries preeminently favoured by nature in productions and climate, and so situated as to oblige the inhabitants to navigation and commerce, must have given a great impulse to the civilization of the hellenic race, and may be regarded as the main cause of its rapid progress and wide extension; wider indeed than that of any other nation of the ancient world. what a variety of political ideas must have been formed among a people whose settlements, more than a hundred in number, had each its own peculiar form of government. . of the greek colonies, the most ancient, and in many respects the most important, were those along the western coast of asia minor, extending from the hellespont to the boundary of cilicia. here, ever since the trojan war, which first made these countries generally known, hellenes of the three great families, Æolians, ionians, and dorians had planted settlements. these were the most important for trade; and here likewise in the native country of homer, the father of grecian civilization, of alcæus, and of sappho, poesy, both epic and lyric, expanded her first and fairest blossoms; and hence too, the mother country herself received the first impulse of moral and cultivated taste. . the Æolian colonies. their original foundation dates about : they appear to have been a consequence of the dorian migration, having been established during that great movement in greece. the pelopidæ, who had been driven out of peloponnesus, orestes, his son penthilus, his grandson archelaus, and his great grandson grais, successively headed the emigrants, who proceeded slowly by land, divided, it appears, into several companies, with which some boeotians and others gradually coalesced. in asia they occupied the coasts of mysia and caria; a strip of land which from thence derived the appellation of Æolis. they moreover possessed the islands of lesbos, tenedos, and the hecatonnesi. on the main land, in the quarter named from them Æolis, they erected twelve cities, the most eminent of which were cyme and smyrna; the latter, however, afterwards fell into the hands of the ionians. but their chief settlements were on the island of lesbos; here they inhabited five cities, at the head of which, and likewise of all their other colonies, stood mitylene. they had likewise spread inland as far as mount ida. all these towns were independent of one another, and possessed their own peculiar forms of government: our information, however, respecting these constitutions extends no further than to enable us to ascertain that they were subject to many disorders, which it was often attempted to quell by nominating rulers of unlimited power, under the title of Æsymnetæ. these were elected sometimes for a stipulated period, at others for life; the most celebrated of the number was pittacus of mitylene, who flourished about , and was the contemporary of sappho and alcæus. the Æolians maintained their independence till the time of cyrus, with the exception of smyrna, which as early as , was captured and destroyed by the lydians, and not rebuilt till four hundred years afterwards, when it was restored by antigonus, and entered upon its flourishing period. the cities of the main land were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the persian conqueror; but not the islands. the Æolian cities were not leagued together by any permanent bond; it was only in peculiar cases that they debated in common. mitylene, which they all regarded as their capital, was the only one of their colonies that became rich by trade, and formidable by its naval power. yet in it was tributary to athens; having seceded in , at the time of the peloponnesian war, it was recaptured and almost levelled to the earth by the athenians. . the ionian colonies. these were, no doubt, founded at a later period than those of the Æolians; like them, however, they were a consequence of the dorian migration. the ionians, driven out of peloponnesus by the achæans, had withdrawn to athens, from whence, sixty years afterwards, that is to say about , they proceeded by sea to asia, headed by neleus and others of the sons of codrus. they were joined, however, by some thebans, phocians, euboean abantes, and various other greeks. in asia they settled on the southern coast of lydia and the northern shore of caria; which, together with the islands of samos and chios, took from them the name of ionia. here they built twelve cities on the main land; namely, reckoning from north to south, phocæa, erythræ, clazomene, teos, lebedus, colophon, ephesus, priene, myus, miletus, and in the islands, samos and chios. they possessed in common one sanctuary, the panionium temple of neptune, built on the headland of mycale. here they celebrated their festivals, and assembled to deliberate upon matters affecting the general interest, although it must still be remembered that each city was in itself independent. this independence was maintained until the time of the lydian dynasty of the mermnadæ, and that of cyrus, under whose reign they were compelled to submit to the persian yoke. still, under the persian rule, they for the most part preserved their own form of government, and were subject only so much as they had to pay tribute. nevertheless they seized every opportunity of delivering themselves from this species of thraldom; and hence their history in the following period is closely interwoven with that of greece. the political constitution was, no doubt, at an early period republican in all; but these colonies likewise were oppressed by continual factions, and frequently by tyrants. among the towns situate on the continent, the most remarkable were miletus, ephesus, and phocæa. miletus was the principal seat of trade. it had been founded by the carians before the arrival of the ionians; but was by the latter raised to opulence and power. the most flourishing period of its existence was between - : in the latter year it was implicated in the insurrection of aristagoras against the persians, in consequence of which it was destroyed in . from that time miletus never recovered its ancient splendour. nevertheless, in the days of her prosperity miletus was, next to tyre and carthage, the first emporium of the world. her sea trade was chiefly carried on in the euxine, and the palus mæotis, whose shores, on all sides, were occupied by her colonies, amounting, according to some authorities, to more than a hundred. by means of these settlements she monopolized the whole of the northern trade in pulse, dry fish, slaves, and furs. her land trade was carried on by the great _military_ road, constructed by the persians, far into the interior of asia. four harbours admitted her vessels; and her naval power was so great, that she had been known, more than once, to fit out, unaided, fleets of from eighty to a hundred sail.--phocæa. the flourishing period of this establishment was contemporary with that of miletus; but ended at the rise of the persian dominion, , when the phocæans, rather than submit to the persian yoke, chose to forsake the city of their fathers and migrate to corsica, although one half of the inhabitants repented of their resolution and returned. phocæa had the most extensive trade by sea of all the grecian cities; they were to the west what the milesians were to the north. their navigation extended as far as gades; and they not only visited the coasts of italy, gaul, and corsica, but even founded colonies in these countries; as for instance, aleria in corsica, elea in italy, and, above all, massilea, (marseilles,) on the coast of gaul.--ephesus. this city was likewise originally founded by the carians, but subsequently occupied by the ionians. its independence was maintained until the time of croesus, who annexed it to his other conquests about . the constitution was aristocratic; the government being in the hands of a senate, ([greek: gerousia],) combined with the magistrates, ([greek: epiklêtoi]): and the family which had once possessed the throne preserved certain prerogatives. ephesus was not so important in a commercial point of view as phocæa and miletus; but was much celebrated for its temple of diana, which in was fired by erostratus, and afterwards rebuilt with more sumptuous splendour. the flourishing period of ephesus appears to have commenced at this time, long after that of miletus and phocæa had terminated; for both in the macedonian and roman ages ephesus was regarded as the first city of asia minor.--of the cities on the islands, samos was the most important, for its trade, and for its naval power. the period of its splendour was under the reign of the tyrant polycrates, - , whose sway extended over the sea and islets of the neighbourhood. syloson, brother to the tyrant, having by the assistance of the persians, , obtained possession of samos, the island was almost depopulated. soon afterwards samos became dependent upon the athenians, who in introduced a democratic form of government, and made it the rendezvous for her troops and fleets during the war with sparta.--chios was scarcely inferior to samos, either in power or wealth. it submitted to the persian yoke with the rest of the ionian colonies; but was so powerful, that in , at the insurrection of aristagoras, ninety-eight sail of the combined fleet belonged to chios. after the defeat of xerxes, , it entered into the athenian league, from which it endeavoured to secede in the peloponnesian war, . the naval power of the chians was still considerable; and those islanders had the high honour of not suffering prosperity to inflate them with overweening ambition. f. g. rambach, _de mileto ejusque coloniis_, , to. . the dorian colonies. these were situated in asia minor, upon the southern coast of caria, and in the islands of cos and rhodes, but were all planted at a later period than the ionian colonies, and, no doubt, were the result of successive migrations. the dorians appear to have gradually spread beyond peloponnesus, over the islands of the archipelago to the asiatic coast: in rhodes they erected the cities of ialyssus, camirus, and lindus; in cos a city of the same name; on the main land two cities, halicarnassus and cnidus. these six ancient colonies had, like the ionians, one common sanctuary, the temple of apollo triopius, where they celebrated their festivals and held their deliberative assemblies. halicarnassus, however, was afterwards excluded from the confederation. they remained independent until the persian period, although the constitutions of the separate cities were subject to violent revolutions; thus at cnidus the oligarchy was converted into a democracy; halicarnassus was likewise generally subject to the carian sovereigns, among whom mausolus and artemisia are names familiar to all.--the three cities in rhodes appear never to have grown to any importance; that of rhodes, not built till after the irruption of xerxes into greece, , soon eclipsed the others: its flourishing period began after the death of alexander. at no period of early history could the dorian colonies, or those of the Æolians, compete in wealth and commerce with the ionians. . the shores of the propontis, the black sea, and the palus mæotis, were likewise covered with grecian settlements. nearly all these were colonies of the city of miletus alone, and were, without exception, all of them the marts of a prosperous trade. although the date of each cannot be precisely defined, they must have arisen between the eighth and sixth centuries before the christian era. they were not only sovereigns of the black sea, but likewise extended their trade over the whole of southern russia, and eastward to the regions beyond the caspian sea; that is, to great bukharia. on the propontis stood lampsacus (adjoining the hellespont) and cyzicus, on an island connected with the continent by means of bridges. the latter town certainly was one of the most beautiful and flourishing cities of asia; but this did not occur until the roman age, and was in consequence of the fostering protection of the romans.--opposite to cyzicus, on the thracian coast, was perinthus, subsequently called heraclea; at the mouth of the thracian bosporus stood byzantium, over against which was chalcedon. the prosperity of all these towns affords sufficient proof of the skill with which sites were chosen for the establishment of colonies. heyne, _antiquities byzantina: commentationes duæ_, . the first of which contains the fragments of the earlier history of byzantium. the colonies of the black sea were: on the southern coast of bithynia, heraclea, in the territory of the maryandini. this place preserved its republican constitution amid frequent broils and revolutions, brought about by the oligarchic and democratic factions, until about b. c. , when the democrats having gained the upper hand, a path was opened to clearchus, who became tyrant, and abrogated the senate, ([greek: boulê?]) the family of the tyrant continued for a long time in possession of power, after he himself had been murdered by two disciples of plato.--in paphlagonia was sinope, the most powerful of all the grecian settlements on the black sea, of which it long held the sovereignty. the freedom and independence of this place lasted to about , when it fell under the dominion of the kings of pontus, and afterwards under that of the romans. the principal source from which it derived its wealth were the shoals of migratory fish ([greek: pêlamydes],) which, issuing from the palus mæotis, spread along the shore of the black sea down to the thracian bosporus.--in pontus was amisus, the mother city of trapezus, and which shared the fate of sinope.--on the eastern coast stood the cities of phasis, dioscurias, and phanagoria: this last was the principal mart of the slave trade, and, during the macedonian period, the staple for indian commodities imported across the oxus and the caspian sea.--in the chersonesus taurica stood panticapæum, capital city of the little grecian kingdom of bosporus, whose kings (among whom spartacus, about , and more especially leucon, about , are celebrated) remained in alliance with athens till mithridates the great laid there the foundation of his dominion.--on the northern coast was the city of tanais, on the mouth of a river of the same name at the bottom of the palus mæotis. olbia was situated at the mouth of the borysthenes. these two places, and olbia in particular, were of the highest importance for the inland trade, which issuing from thence in a northern and easterly direction, was extended to the very centre of asia.--the colonies of the western coast, such as apollonia, tomi, and salmidessus, were of less notoriety. . the coast of thrace and macedonia, washed by the Ægæan sea, was likewise covered with grecian colonies, from various cities, and especially from corinth and athens. the athenians having obtained in the persian war the sovereignty of the sea, endeavoured to establish their dominion in this part of the world; hence the cities in that quarter were closely implicated in the quarrels and wars excited, first by the jealousy between sparta and athens, and afterwards by that which sprang up between athens and macedonia, in the reign of philip. on the thracian coast of the chersonesus, regarded as the key of europe, and ranging along the hellespont, were the towns of sestos, cardia, and Ægospotamos; farther to the west stood maronea and abdera, the latter a colony of teos. of far greater importance, however, were the towns on the macedonian coast, amphipolis, chalcis, olynthus, potidæa. the first of these towns, founded about b. c. , was a colony from athens, which endeavoured to keep it in a state of dependence. chalcis was a colony from a city of the same name in euboea. in it was dependent on athens; but in , the inhabitants having raised the standard of rebellion, forsook their houses and voluntarily withdrew to olynthus.--olynthus derived its name from the founder, one of the sons of hercules: in the course of time it ranked among the most powerful cities of thrace, although it was tributary to the athenians. it took a share in the war between athens and sparta, and continued to be a flourishing city until , when it was taken by philip of macedon, and destroyed.--potidæa was a colony of corinth, from which it received annual magistrates, ([greek: epidêmiourgoi],) having become tributary to athens after the persian war, it revolted in : obliged to yield to the athenian arms, its inhabitants were expelled, and their place supplied by an athenian colony. it now became a possession of athens, and remained so till it was taken by philip in . . the grecian settlements westward of the mother country were, almost without exception, made at a later period than those in the Ægean and black seas: they reached nevertheless to an equal degree of splendour; and though their trade was not so extensive, it was equally profitable: these colonies not only rivalled those we have above described, in wealth, but surpassed them in power, being generally characterized by the wisdom and prudence displayed in their respective constitutions. the foundation of most of them may be dated between b. c. and ; consequently at a period when all the cities in the mother country had already been republicanized: and at a time when there could be no lack of domestic troubles, which would furnish sufficient motives for emigration. . grecian settlements in lower italy. the most numerous and important of these were scattered around the bay of tarentum; they extended likewise along the western coast of italy up to naples. these colonies were variously traced to the dorian, achæan, and ionian families: they were likewise distinguished by political characteristics, the government in the dorian settlements being generally more aristocratic, in the rest more democratic: it must be observed, however, that, with respect to the various revolutions which the respective constitutions underwent, it is hardly possible to give any general information, excepting so far as regards the earliest times. of dorian origin were tarentum, and its colonies heraclea and brundusium. of achæan origin were sybaris and croton, together with the colonies of the latter, laus, metapontum, posidonia; which last founded in its turn, terina, caulonia, and pandosia. of ionian origin were thurii, (built on the site where sybaris had formerly stood,) rhegium, elea, cumæ, and its branch settlement of neapolis. locri epizephyrii, a colony of the locri ozolæ, may be regarded as an Æolian city. the most remarkable of these cities in respect of general history are: _a._ tarentum, founded by the parthenii, from sparta, about . it waged several wars with the aboriginal tribes in the vicinity, the messapians, lucanians, etc. and grew to be one of the richest and most powerful of the maritime towns. the brilliant period of tarentum appears to have fallen between and . excess of wealth subsequently introduced luxury, which extinguished the national spirit. nevertheless tarentum preserved its independence until , when, after the war with pyrrhus, it fell under the roman dominion. the constitution was originally a moderate aristocracy; but was commuted soon after the persian war into a democracy, which was, however, curbed by prudent restrictions. tarentum had its senate, ([greek: boulê],) without whose consent war could not be undertaken; its magistrates elected half by lot, half by majority of votes given in the assemblies of the commons. among its most celebrated citizens is reckoned the pythagoræan archytas, who, after the year b. c. , was frequently at the head of the state, filling the offices of general and supreme magistrate. the constitution appears to have preserved its form until the roman period, although the national spirit was greatly corrupted by a luxury almost exceeding the limits of credibility. _b._ croton, founded by the achæans, under the guidance of myscellus from rhype in achaia. this city must have attained to very great power during the very first century of its existence; since in the battle of sagra against the locrians, which may with probability be dated about , the crotoniates were able to set on foot an army of , men. neither does the defeat which they there suffered appear to have debilitated the settlement for any length of time; for in , with nearly the same number of forces, they attacked the sybarites, and destroyed their city. the original constitution was, no doubt, a moderate democracy; but we are unacquainted with the details of its organization. pythagoras was the reformer of customs, moral and political, not only at croton, but in several other of the italico-greek cities. this philosopher arrived at croton about , and there laid the foundation of the league or secret association named after him; the object of which was, not to change the form of government in the italian cities, but to create men capable of managing the helm of state. this reform and influence of the pythagoræans lasted about thirty years, when their order underwent the same fate as generally befalls a secret association founded with a political view. probably about the pythagoræean league was broken asunder by the democratic faction under cylon. the consequence was universal anarchy, not only in croton, where, about , a certain clinias usurped the supreme power, but likewise in the other cities: these disorders, however, were quelled by the intervention of the achæans; and the achæan colonies not only adopted the laws of their mother cities, but likewise soon afterwards signed a league in the temple of jupiter homorius, about : it appears that croton, having already recovered from the blow it had received, was at the head of this league. in this happy posture affairs remained till about . after the kings of syracuse had commenced their attacks on magna græcia, croton was repeatedly captured; as in b. c. by dionysius i. and about ; and again, in , by agathocles. finally, after the war with pyrrhus, , it became dependent on rome. _c._ sybaris was founded about , like the foregoing, by the achæans, who were mingled with troezenians: this settlement existed till , when it was destroyed by croton. soon after its foundation it became one of the most extensive, populous, and luxurious cities, so much so, that the effeminacy of the sybarites became proverbial. sybaris appears to have been at the height of her prosperity from about - ; she then possessed a respectable territory, comprising four of the neighbouring tribes, and twenty-five cities or places. the extraordinary fertility of the soil, and the admission of all strangers to the rights of citizenship, tended to increase the population so much, that sybaris, in the war against croton, is said to have brought into the field , men. the vast wealth possessed, not only by sybaris, but by the other cities in this quarter, was probably derived from the great trade in oil and wine carried on with africa and gaul: that such was the case at agrigentum we know with certainty. the constitution of sybaris was likewise, it appears, a moderate democracy: towards the year one telys took possession of the supreme power, and drove out five hundred of the optimates, who fled to croton. the crotoniates received the exiles, and the sybarites having put to death their ambassadors, a war was kindled between the two cities, and ended in by the defeat of the sybarites and the destruction of their city. _d._ thurii, founded near the site of ancient sybaris in by athens, although the inhabitants were of mixed origin; a circumstance which gave rise at first to many domestic broils, the citizens disputing as to who was the real founder; at last, , the delphian oracle declared the city to be a colony of apollo. the constitution was at first a moderate democracy; but this was soon converted into an oligarchy, all the power and the best lands having been taken possession of by the sybarite families who had joined the settlement. the sybarites were, however, again expelled, and thurii grew into importance by the confluence of several new colonies out of greece; its constitution was meliorated by the adoption of the laws of charondas of catana. the principal enemies of the thurians were the lucanians, by whom they were beaten, . the desultory attacks of that tribe obliged them, , to crave the assistance of the romans, which soon after afforded the tarentines an excuse for attacking them. thurii now formed a part of the roman dependencies, and after suffering much in the carthaginian wars, was at last, b. c. , occupied by a roman colony. _e._ locri epizephyrii. the question of their origin is subject to dispute: the causes of this uncertainty are, that here, as in most other of the cities, various bands of colonists arrived at various times, and those bands themselves were composed of a mixture of several grecian stocks. the chief colony was sent out, b. c. , by the locri ozolæ. after suffering much from violent internal commotions, locri found, about , a lawgiver in zaleucus, whose institutions remained more than two centuries inviolate. the constitution was aristocratic, the administration being in the hands of a hundred families. the supreme magistrate was called cosmopolis. the senate consisted of a thousand members, probably elected from the commons, with whom resided, either wholly or partially, the legislative power. the maintenance of the laws was, as in other grecian cities, committed to the nomophylaces. locri was certainly neither so wealthy nor so luxurious as the cities above mentioned; but she was honourably distinguished by the good manners and quiet conduct of her citizens, who were contented with their government. the flourishing period of this city lasted till the time of dionysius ii. who having been driven out of syracuse, fled with his dependents to locri, the native country of his mother: by his insolence and licentiousness of manners the city was brought to the verge of ruin; after his return to syracuse, , the locrians avenged their wrongs upon his family. locri afterward maintained its recovered independence until the time of pyrrhus, who, , placed a garrison in the town; the locrians, however, put the troops to the sword, and passed over to the roman side: the city was in consequence sacked by pyrrhus in . from that time locri remained a confederate town dependent on rome, and suffered much in the second punic war. _f._ rhegium, a colony from chalcis in euboea, : here also the government was aristocratic, the supreme power being in the hands of a council of a thousand men, selected only from messenian families, which had joined the original settlers. hence arose an oligarchy, of which anaxilaus took advantage to assume the sole dominion, , in which he was succeeded by his sons. these having been driven out, , commotions ensued, which, after a time, were quelled by adopting the laws of charondas. rhegium now enjoyed a period of happiness, which lasted till b. c. , when it was captured and destroyed by dionysius i. dionysius ii. restored it in some measure; but in the city was taken possession of by a roman legion, who being sent for the purpose of garrisoning the place, murdered the inhabitants. the soldiers were punished with death, ; but rhegium thenceforth remained in a state of dependence upon rome. _g._ cumæ, founded as early as , from chalcis in euboea. this city attained at an early period to a high degree of power and prosperity; its territory being of considerable extent, its navy respectable, and neapolis and zancle (or messana) among its colonies. the government was a moderate aristocracy: this constitution was subverted about , by the tyrant aristodemus; but restored after his assassination. cumæ was subject to repeated annoyances from the petty italian nations; and in she was invaded and defeated by the etruscans and daunians combined; in she beat the etruscans at sea: but in was captured by the campanians; together with whom she became a dependent of rome in . cumæ, nevertheless, in consequence of its harbour of puteoli, preserved a share of importance, even under the roman dominion. heyne, _prolusiones de civitatum græcarum per magnam græciam et siciliam institutis et legibus_. collected in his _opuscula_, vol. vii. . grecian settlements in sicily. these occupied the eastern and southern shores of the island: they were founded in the same period as those of magna græcia, and belonged partly to the dorian, partly to the ionian stocks. of dorian origin were messana and tyndaris, from messene; syracuse, who in her turn founded acræ, casmenæ, and camarina, from corinth; hybla and thapsus from megara; segesta from thessaly; heraclea minoa from crete; gela, which founded agrigentum, from rhodes; and lipara, on the small island of that name, from cnidus. of ionian origin were naxus, the founder of leontini; catana and tauromenium, from chalcis; zancle, (after its occupation by messenian colonists, called messana,) founded by cumæ, and in its turn founder of himera and mylæ. the most remarkable of these towns in ancient history are: _a._ syracuse, the most powerful of all the greek colonies, and consequently that concerning which our information is the most copious. the history of syracuse, on which, as that town was for a long time mistress of the greatest part of the island, depends nearly the whole history of sicily, comprises four periods. . from the foundation, b. c. , to gelon, ; a space of two hundred and fifty-one years. during this period syracuse was a republic, but does not appear to have risen to any very great height of power: yet she founded the colonies of acræ, , casmenæ, , and camarina, . the assistance of her parent city, corinth, and corcyra, alone prevented her falling a prey to hippocrates, sovereign of gela; and even then she was obliged to cede camarina, . the constitution was aristocratic; but not free from domestic troubles. the administration was in the hands of the opulent, ([greek: gamoroi?]) but these were, about , expelled by the democratic faction and their own mutinous slaves. they fled to casmenæ, and by the help of gelon, sovereign of gela, were restored to their homes; gelon retaining the power in his own hands. . from gelon to the expulsion of thrasybulus, - . the three brothers, gelon, hiero, and thrasybulus, successively ruled over syracuse. gelon, - . he was at once the founder of the greatness of syracuse, and of his own power: this he effected partly by increasing the population, bringing in new inhabitants from other greek cities, and partly by the great victory he won over the carthaginians, in alliance with the persians, . at this early period syracuse was so powerful, both by sea and by land, as to justify gelon in claiming the office of generalissimo of greece, when sparta and athens came to solicit his aid. his beneficent reign not only gained him the love of the syracusans during his life, but likewise procured him heroic honours after death at the hands of a grateful people. he died in , and was succeeded by his brother hiero i. who had till then ruled over gela. the reign of this prince was splendid, his court was brilliant, and a fostering protection was extended to arts and sciences. hiero's power strengthened by the establishment of new citizens, both in syracuse and its subordinate towns of catana and naxus, whose original inhabitants are translated to leontini.--wars waged against thero, , and his son thrasidæus, tyrants of agrigentum: after the expulsion of thrasidæus, that town forms an alliance with syracuse; the syracusan fleet sent to the assistance of cumæ, wins a victory over the etruscans. hiero, dying in , was succeeded by his brother thrasybulus, who, after a short reign of eight months, was expelled for his cruelty by the syracusans and the confederate cities. . from the expulsion of thrasybulus to the elevation of dionysius i.; syracuse a free democratic state: from - . reestablishment of republican forms of government in syracuse and the other grecian cities; accompanied, however, with many commotions and civil wars, proceeding from the expulsion of the new citizens and the restoration of the ancient inhabitants to their property.--increasing power and prosperity of syracuse, who is now at the head of the confederate grecian cities in the island, and soon endeavours to convert her precedence into supremacy. the new democratic constitution quickly suffers from the diseases incident to that form of government; a vain attempt is made to apply a remedy by the introduction of the petalismus, b. c. ; in the mean time the siculi, aboriginal inhabitants of sicily, unite in closer league under their leader ducetius; attempting to expel the greeks, , they engage the syracusans in reiterated wars; the arms of syracuse are successful, her authority is confirmed by the subjection of the ambitious agrigentum, , and by her naval victory over the etruscans. first but unsuccessful attempt of the athenians to interpose in the domestic affairs of sicily, by siding with leontini against syracuse, ; eleven years afterward occurs the great expedition against syracuse, - , caused by the disputes between segesta and selinus; the expedition ends in the total rout of the athenian fleet and army, (see below,) and the power of syracuse reaches its zenith. a constitutional reform takes place, , brought about by diocles, whose laws were subsequently adopted by several other of the sicilian cities. the magistrates were chosen by lot. the rest of the laws, which appear to have had reference to the criminal code, were the production of a committee over which diocles presided; these enactments were so beneficial to syracuse, that the author of them was honoured with a temple after his death. yet as early as , a renewal of the differences between segesta and selinus afforded a pretext for war with carthage, from whom the segestani had besought assistance; by this war the whole state of affairs in sicily was subverted. the rapid strides made by the carthaginians, who, under the command of hannibal the son of gisgo, took, , selinus and himera, and even agrigentum, , engendered domestic factions and commotions within syracuse; and amid those disorders the crafty dionysius succeeded first in obtaining the office of general, and then, after supplanting his colleagues, the sovereign power of syracuse, . . from dionysius i. to the roman occupation, - . dionysius i. - . ominous commencement of his reign, by a defeat at gela and the mutiny of his troops.--a plague wasting the carthaginian army, he is enabled to patch up a peace, b. c. , by which it is agreed, that carthage, besides her territory in the island, shall retain all the conquests made during the war, together with gela and camarina. but the project of expelling the carthaginians out of sicily, in order to subject the whole island, and to fall upon magna grecia, kindles a long series of wars both with carthage and the cities of magna grecia. second war with carthage against hannibal and himilco, - . dionysius loses all that he before had conquered, and is himself besieged in syracuse; but a plague once more attacking the carthaginians, rescues him from his predicament, ; deeds of hostility continued notwithstanding till , when a peace was signed, by which carthage ceded the town of tauromenium.--from , desultory attacks on the confederate grecian cities in lower italy, particularly on rhegium, the chief seat of the syracusan emigrants, which, after repeated invasions, is at last compelled to yield, . third war with carthage, , against mago; dionysius wins a victory, which is however followed by a greater defeat; and the war ends the same year by the adoption of a peace, according to which each party is to retain what he then had; the halycus is fixed as the boundary line; so that selinus and a portion of the territory of agrigentum remain in the hands of the carthaginians. fourth war: inroad upon the carthaginian states; it ends, however, in the signing of a treaty. the decision of these wars generally depended on the side taken by the siculi, the most powerful aboriginal race in sicily. dionysius i. having died by poison, , was succeeded by dionysius ii. his eldest son by one of his two wives, doris of locri, but under the guardianship of his step-uncle dio, the brother of dionysius's other wife aristomache. neither dio or his friend plato, who was three times invited to syracuse, were able to improve the character of a prince whose mind had been corrupted by bad education.--dio is banished, . he returns, , and, in the absence of dionysius, takes possession of syracuse, all but the citadel. dionysius now has recourse to stratagem; he excites in the city distrust of dio, and foments dissension between him and his general heraclidas; meanwhile he himself withdraws to italy, taking with him his treasures. dio is compelled to retire from the city, which is sacked by the troops garrisoned in the citadel; hereupon the syracusans themselves fetch back dio; he possesses himself of the citadel and wishes to restore the republican government, but soon falls a victim to party spirit, being murdered by callipus, b. c. , who usurped the government till , when he is driven out by hipparinus, a brother of dionysius, who keeps possession till . after ten years' absence, dionysius ii. by a sudden attack, becomes once more master of the city, . the tyranny of this prince, and the treachery of icetas of gela, whom the syracusans called in to their assistance, but who leagues himself with the carthaginians, and the formidable attempts of the latter, compel the citizens to apply to the mother city corinth: corinth sends to their assistance timoleon with a small force, . rapid change of affairs wrought by timoleon: he beats icetas and the carthaginians: in dionysius is forced to deliver up the citadel and evacuate the country; he retires to corinth, where he leads a private life. restoration of the republican government, not only in syracuse, where the laws of diocles are reinstituted, but also in the rest of the grecian cities: the revolution confirmed by a great victory over the carthaginians, . in the midst of the execution of his plans timoleon dies, , the most splendid example of a republican that history affords! from - ; almost a chasm in the history of syracuse. wars with agrigentum; the usurpation of sosistratus, disturbs the peace, both external and internal. the character of the syracusans was already too foully corrupted for one to expect that liberty could again be established among them, without the personal superintendence of a timoleon. they deserved the fate that befell them, when, in , that daring adventurer agathocles assumed the sovereign power, which he maintained till . renewal of the plan for expelling the carthaginians from the island, and subjecting magna græcia. hence arises a new war with carthage, in which agathocles is defeated, , and besieged in syracuse: by a bold stroke he passes over into africa, accompanied by part of his fleet and army, and there with general success prosecutes the war until : the insurrection of most of the grecian cities in sicily recalls him from the theatre of war; his views in africa are consequently defeated. in the peace of both parties retain what they had at the beginning of the war. the wars in italy are confined to the sacking of croton, and a victory won over the bruttii; and are rather predatory expeditions than regular wars. in the year , agathocles died by poison, and his murderer, mænon, seized the power; he is expelled by the general icetas, and flies over to the carthaginians. icetas rules as pretor till , when, in his absence, the government is usurped by thynion, who meets with a rival in the person of sosistratus; in the mean while the mercenaries of agathocles (the mamertini) possess themselves of messana, and the carthaginians press forward to the very gates of syracuse. the syracusans invite pyrrhus of epirus over from italy; that prince takes possession of the whole of sicily as far as lilybæum; but having by his haughtiness incurred general hatred and disgust, he is obliged to evacuate the island, b. c. . the syracusans now appoint hiero, a descendant of the ancient royal family, to the office of general: after defeating the mamertini he is called to the throne, . at the breaking out of the war between carthage and rome, the new king forsakes his alliance with carthage, and, passing over to the roman side, thereby purchases a long and tranquil reign until , when he dies of old age. under this wise prince syracuse enjoyed a degree of happiness and prosperity which none of her demagogues had been able to effect. after his death the carthaginian party became predominant; hieronymus the grandson of hiero is murdered, , and hannibal's intrigues enable the carthaginian party to keep the upper hand, by contriving to place at the head of affairs his friends hippocrates and epicydes, who entangle syracuse in a war with rome; and the city, after a long siege, celebrated by the inventions of archimedes, is brought to ruin, .--the history of syracuse is a practical compendium of politics: what other state ever underwent so many and such various revolutions? the history of syracuse was at an early period disfigured by partiality. for the topography, see # bartel's _letters from calabria and sicily_, vol. iii. with a plan. # a. arnold, _history of syracuse, from its foundation to the overthrow of liberty by dionysius_. gotha, . mitford, _history of greece_: the fourth volume contains the history of syracuse, and a defence of the elder dionysius. it would seem that even now it is difficult to write this history in an impartial spirit. _b._ agrigentum, a colony of gela, founded . the first city of sicily next to syracuse, of which it was frequently the rival. its first constitution was that of the mother city; that is to say, dorian or aristocratic. it fell, however, soon after its foundation, under the dominion of tyrants; the first of whom noticed in history is phalaris, who flourished probably - . he was succeeded by alcmanes, - , who was followed by alcander, an indulgent ruler, in whose reign the wealth of agrigentum seems to have already been considerable. more renowned than the foregoing was theron, the contemporary and stepfather of gelon; he ruled from b. c. - : in conjunction with gelon he routed the carthaginian army, , and subjected himera. his son and successor, thrasydæus, was beaten by hiero and expelled, ; whereupon the agrigentines, as allies of syracuse, introduced a democracy. the period following, - , is that in which agrigentum, blessed with political freedom, attained the highest degree of public prosperity. she was one of the most opulent and luxurious cities in the world, and in the display of public monuments one of the most magnificent. for her wealth she was indebted to the vast trade in oil and wine that she carried on with africa and gaul, in neither of which were those productions hitherto naturalized. in the year the agrigentines, excited by envy, fell upon the syracusans, but were defeated. in the war with athens they took no share; but in the carthaginian invasion of sicily, , agrigentum was taken and destroyed; from this blow she recovered but slowly, and never effectually. by timoleon she was, in some measure, restored, ; and under agathocles, , was able to head the cities combined against him, but was beaten. after the death of agathocles, a tyrant, by the name of phintias, took possession of the sovereign power; and was attacked, , by icetas of syracuse. at the breaking out of the first punic war, agrigentum was used by the carthaginians as a military depôt; but was taken by the romans as early as . _c._ the fate of the other sicilian cities was more or less dependent on that of agrigentum and syracuse: they all had originally republican forms of government; but though the ionian colonies had a celebrated legislator in the person of charondas, (probably about ,) they had the same fortune with the rest, of being frequently oppressed by tyrants, either from among their own citizens, or by those of syracuse, who often used to drive out the old inhabitants, and introduce a new population more devoted to their interest: hence must have sprung manifold wars. the foregoing history shows how grievously they likewise suffered in the wars between syracuse and carthage. following the dates of their respective foundations, they may be thus arranged: zancle, (after , known by the name of messana,) the earliest, though of uncertain date; naxus, ; syracuse, hybla, ; leontini, catana, ; gela, ; acræ, b. c. ; casmenæ, ; himera, ; selinus, ; agrigentum, . the dates of the rest cannot be ascertained with any degree of accuracy. . on the other islands and coasts of the mediterranean we meet with various insulated grecian settlements; in sardinia, the cities garalis and olbia: the date of their foundation unknown; in corsica, alaria, (or alalia,) a colony of phocæans founded, ; hither the inhabitants of the mother city betook themselves in ; and subsequently, after the naval engagement with the etruscans and carthaginians, withdrew, some to rhegium, others to massilia, . . on the coast of gaul stood massilia, founded by the phocæans, who had been driven out of corsica after the above mentioned naval engagement, ; or rather, there was on the same site an old settlement which was now increased. massilia rapidly grew in wealth and power. our information respecting the wars she waged on the sea against carthage and the etruscans is but of a general kind. her territory on the main land, although rich in wine and oil, was limited in extent; she established, nevertheless, several colonies along the shores of spain and gaul, among which antipolis, nicæa, and olbia are the best known. the trade of massilia was carried on partly by sea, and partly by land, through the interior of gaul. the constitution was a moderate aristocracy. the chief power was in the hands of six hundred individuals; the members of this council were called timuchi, they held their places for life, were obliged to be married men with families, and descended at least to the third generation from citizens. at the head of this council stood fifteen men, three of whom were chief magistrates. as early as massilia was in alliance with rome, under whose fostering protection she grew in prosperity; her freedom was preserved to her until the war between pompey and cæsar; having sided with the former, she was stormed, , by cæsar's army. she soon retrieved herself, and, under the reign of augustus, massilia was the seat of literature and philosophy, in which public lectures were there given as at athens. aug. bruekner, _historia reipublicæ massiliensium_. gotting. . a prize essay. . on the spanish coast stood saguntum, ([greek: zakunthos],) a colony from the island of zacynthus; the date of its foundation is undetermined. it became opulent by its commerce; but at the opening of the second punic war, b.c. , was destroyed by hannibal, as being an ally of rome. . on the coast of africa lay cyrene, founded at the suggestion of the delphic oracle in , by the island of thera. the constitution was at first monarchical. kings: battus i. the founder, - . in whose family the sceptre remained. arcesilaus i. _d._ . under the reign of his successor, battus ii. surnamed the happy, (_d._ ,) the colony was much strengthened by new comers from greece. the libyans, bereaved of their lands, seek for help at the hands of apries, who is defeated by the cyrenæans, , and in consequence loses his crown.--arcesilaus ii. _d._ . rebellion of his brothers, and foundation of barca, an independent town ruled by its own separate kings. secession of the libyan subjects. he is put to death by his brother or friend learchus, who in his turn is poisoned by eryxo the widow of arcesilaus. her son, battus iii. surnamed the lame, (_d._ about ,) succeeds to the throne. the royal power confined within narrow limits by the laws of demonax of mantinea: the king retains nothing more than the revenue and priestly office. his son arcesilaus iii. becomes of his own accord tributary to the persians; in conjunction with his mother, pheretime, he seeks to reestablish the regal supremacy, but is expelled; nevertheless he regains possession of cyrene. in consequence of his cruelty he is assassinated in barca, about . pheretime seeks for help from the persian satrap of egypt, aryandes, who by craft gets possession of barca; the inhabitants are carried away and translated into bactria, . soon after pheretime dies. it seems probable that another battus iv. and arcesilaus iv. must have reigned at cyrene, to whom pindar's fourth and fifth pythian odes are addressed: their history, however, is veiled in obscurity. cyrene then received a republican constitution, probably somewhere about ; but we are unacquainted with the internal details of the government. yet though plato was invited by the cyrenæans to give them laws, and though they had for their legislator democles of arcadia, they appear never to have been blessed with a good and stable constitution. not only is mention often made of domestic troubles, as in , when amid the uproar excited by ariston most of the aristocratic party were cut off; but we likewise frequently meet with tyrants. concerning the external affairs of this state we know nothing but a few general facts relative to the border wars with carthage. subsequently to alexander, cyrene became a part of the egyptian kingdom; so early as the reign of ptolemy i. it was added to that realm by his general ophellas, about b.c. . it now continued to receive various rulers from the family of the ptolemies (see below) until the reign of ptolemy physcon, when it became a separate state, the bastard son of that prince, apion by name, having made it over to the romans, . cyrene possessed a considerable share of trade, consisting partly in the exportation of country produce, more especially the silphium, (laser,) partly in a varied intercourse with carthage, ammonium, and thence with the interior of africa. the former splendour and importance of this city and the neighbouring country are testified by an abundance of most noble ruins; a more accurate research into which every friend of antiquity must desire. hardion, _histoire de cyrène_, in _mém. de l'académie des inscriptions_, t. iii. j. p. thrige, _historia cyrenes, inde a tempore quo condita urbs est, usque ad ætatem, qua in provinciæ formam a romanis redacta est: particula prior, de initiis coloniæ cyrenen deductæ, et cyrenes battiadis regnantibus historia_. havniæ, . the best work on cyrene. it is hoped that the author will not disapppoint our expectations of the second part, which is to contain the period of republican government. [the whole was completed in . the learned and ingenious author has neglected no authority whether ancient or modern, and is particularly cautious and judicious in his researches.] a ray of light has lately, for the first time, been thrown on the remains still found in cyrenaica by della cella, _viaggio di tripoli_; translated by spieker, in the # _journal of the latest travels by sea and by land_, sept. . w. beechey, _proceedings to explore the northern coast of africa from tripoli eastward_, . f. r. pacho, _relation d'un voyage à marmarique et cyrenaique_, . a most accurate description. t. ehrenberg, _travels through north africa_, in the years - , by dr. w. f. hemprich and dr. c. g. ehrenberg. berlin, . third period. _from the commencement of the persian wars to the time of alexander the great, b. c. - ._ sources. the chief writers in this period are: for the history of the persian wars to the battle of platææ, , herodotus. for the period between and the breaking out of the peloponnesian war, we must, in the absence of contemporary authors, consider diodorus siculus as the principal authority.--the beginning of the th book, which commences with the year , (the th, th, th, th, and th books being lost,) to the middle of the th; the chronology of this author, however, must in several cases be rectified after thucydides's summary in lib. i. for the period of the peloponnesian war, - , the history of thucydides is the capital work; but it must be accompanied by diodorus, from the middle of the th book to the middle of the th.--from the year to the battle of mantinea, , the principal sources are the hellenics of xenophon, and occasionally his anabasis and agesilaus; together with diodorus, from the middle of the th book to the end of the th. for the years intervening from - , no contemporary historian has been preserved; diodorus's th book must therefore here be considered as the chief source: for the times of philip, however, recourse may likewise be had to the speeches of demosthenes and Æschines. the lives of plutarch and nepos often touch upon this period, but cannot be regarded as authentic sources; of still less authority are the abridged documents given by justin and some others. the modern authors on this, the brilliant period of greece, are, of course, the same as have been enumerated above: (see p. .) to whom must here be added: potter, _archæologia græca; or the antiquities of greece:_ vols. vo. lond. . translated into german by j. j. rambach, vols. . barthelemy, _voyage du jeune anacharsis en grèce_. (between the years b. c. and .) paris, , vols. accompanied with charts and plans, illustrating the topography of athens, etc. this work is conspicuous for a rare union of good taste and erudition; unattended, however, with an equal share of critical acumen and a correct appreciation of antiquity. # _history of the origin, progress, and fall of science in greece and rome_, by c. meiners. gottingen, . it contains also a delineation of the political state of affairs; but does not extend beyond the age of philip. the principal works on the monuments of ancient greece are: le roy, _les ruines des plus beaux monumens de la grèce_. paris, , nd edit. , fol. the first in point of time; but far surpassed by: j. stuart, _the antiquities of athens measured and delineated_; vols. lond. : the th vol. published in . in beauty and accuracy of execution superior to all. r. dalton, _antiquities and views of greece and egypt_, , fol. the egyptian monuments are confined to those of lower egypt. r. chandler, _ionian antiquities_. london, , , vols. fol. a worthy companion to stuart. choiseul gouffier, _voyage pittoresque dans la grèce_, vol. i, : vol. ii, . confined principally to the islands and asia minor. . from a multitude of small states, never united but continually distracted by civil broils--and such at the beginning of this period were the states of greece--any thing important could hardly be expected without the occurrence of some external event, which, by rallying the divided forces round one point, and directing them toward one object, should hinder them from mutually exhausting one another. it was the hostile attempt of persia that first laid the foundation of the future splendour of greece; certain states then grew so rapidly in power, that upon their particular history hinges the general history of all the rest. causes which led to the persian war. share taken by athens in the ionian insurrection and firing of sardes, b. c. . (see above, p. .) intrigues of hippias, first with the satraps, and afterwards at the persian court itself.--first expedition, that of mardonius, thwarted by a storm, . . not even the summons to acknowledge the persian authority was sufficient to rouse the national energy of the greeks. all the islands, and most of the states on the main land, submitted to the yoke; sparta and athens alone boldly rejected it. the athenians, unassisted, under their leader miltiades, acquainted from his youth with the persians and their mode of warfare, and with the superiority of the arms of his countrymen, became the saviours of greece. quarrel of athens and sparta with Ægina, which sides with the persians, ; and consequent deposition of demaratus, king of sparta, by his colleague cleomenes. persian expedition of datis and artaphernes under the guidance of hippias: frustrated by the battle of marathon, b. c. sept. , , and the failure of an attempt upon athens. . the immediate consequence of this victory was a naval expedition against the islands, more particularly paros, to which miltiades, out of a private grudge, persuaded the athenians. it was undertaken for the purpose of levying contributions; and seems to have given the athenians the first idea of their subsequent dominion of the sea. the athenians punished miltiades for the failure of this expedition, although the effect of their own folly; yet was this act of injustice a source of happiness to athens; as the fall of miltiades made room for the men who laid the solid foundation of her glory and greatness. . as usual in every democratic state rising to power, the history of athens now becomes that of eminent individuals, standing at the head of affairs, as generals or demagogues. themistocles, who united to an astonishing degree in his own person the most splendid talents of statesman and general, with a spirit of intrigue, and even of egotism; and aristides, whose disinterestedness, even in those days, was singular at athens, were the real founders of the power of this commonwealth. athens, however, was more indebted to the first than to the latter. rivalry of these two men, - . while themistocles at the head of the athenian fleet prosecutes the design of miltiades against the islands, the management of state affairs is confided to aristides. on the return, however, of themistocles as conqueror, aristides is by ostracism banished athens, . themistocles alone, at the head of affairs, pursues his plan for making athens a maritime power. in consequence of a war against the object of popular hatred, Ægina, b. c. , he prevails on the athenians to devote the income from the mines to the formation of a navy. while athens is thus rising to power, sparta suffers from the insanity of one of her kings, cleomenes, (succeeded in by his half brother leonidas,) and the arrogance of the other, leotychides. . the glory of frustrating the second mighty persian invasion of greece under xerxes i. belongs to themistocles alone. not only his great naval victory off salamis, but still more the manner in which he contrived to work upon his countrymen, proves him to have been the greatest man of the age, and the deliverer of greece, now united by one common bond of interest.--all national leagues are weak in themselves: yet how strong may even the weakest be made when held together by one great man, who knows how to animate it with his own spirit! themistocles' plan for the conduct of the war; first, a common union of all the hellenic states; a measure which succeeds to a certain degree, the honour of the command being left to the spartans; secondly, the sea made the theatre of war.--gallant death of leonidas with his three hundred spartans and seven hundred thespians, july , . an example of heroism which contributes as much to the greatness of greece as the victory of salamis. about the same time naval engagements off artemisium in euboea, with two hundred and seventy-one sail. the leaders of the greeks are kept to their posts merely by bribery; the means of purchasing their services being for the most part furnished by themistocles himself.--athens, deserted by its inhabitants, is taken and burnt by xerxes, july . retreat of the grecian fleet into the bay of salamis: revocation of all exiles, aristides among the rest.--politic measures adopted by themistocles to hinder the dispirited greeks from taking flight, and at the same time to secure to himself, in case of need, an asylum with the persian monarch.--naval engagement and victory off salamis, sept. , , with three hundred and eighty sail, (one hundred and eighty of which were athenian,) against the persian fleet, already much weakened: retreat of xerxes.--poets and historians have disfigured these events by fanciful exaggerations: still, however, they may show us how commonly human weakness is attended with human greatness! . the victory of salamis did not conclude the war; but the negotiations entered into during the winter months with the persian general, mardonius, left in thessaly, and with the asiatic greeks, to excite them to throw off the yoke, show how far the confidence of the nation in its own strength had increased. but by the battle fought on land at platææ, under the command of the spartan, pausanias, (guardian to plistarchus, son of leonidas,) and the athenian, aristides; together with the naval battle at mycale on the same day, and the destruction of the persian fleet, the persians are for ever driven from the territory of greece, though the war continues for some time longer. . the expulsion of the persians wrought an entire change in the internal and external relations of greece. from being the aggressed the greeks became the aggressors; to free their asiatic countrymen is now the chief object or pretext for the continuation of a war so profitable; the chief command of which abides with sparta until b. c. . athens rebuilt and fortified by themistocles despite of spartan jealousy, : formation of the piræus, an event of still greater importance, .--naval expedition under pausanias, accompanied by aristides and cimon, undertaken against cyprus and byzantium, for the purpose of expelling the persians, . treachery and fall of pausanias, . in consequence of the spartans' haughtiness, the supreme command devolves upon the athenians. . this transfer of the command to athens had a decided effect on all the subsequent relations of greece, not only because it augmented the jealousy between sparta and athens, but because athens exercised her predominance for a purpose entirely different from that of sparta.--establishment of a permanent confederacy, comprising most of the grecian states without peloponnesus, especially the islands, and an adjustment of the contributions to be annually furnished by each, with the view of prosecuting the persian war, and liberating the asiatic greeks from the persian yoke. although the common treasury was first established at delos, the superintendence of it was confided to athens; and such a manager as aristides was not always to be found.--natural consequence of this new establishment: . what had hitherto been mere military precedence, becomes in the hands of athens a right of political prescription, and that, as usual, is soon converted into a sovereignty. hence her idea of the supremacy of greece, ([greek: archê tês hellados],) as connected with that of the sea, ([greek: thalassokratia].) . the oppression of the athenians, sometimes real, at other times presumed, after a short time, rouses the spirit of discontent and contumacy among several of the confederates: hence, . the gradual formation of a counter league, headed by sparta, who maintains her supremacy over the greatest part of the peloponnesus. . the changes introduced into the internal organization are not to be determined solely by the palpable alterations made in any of lycurgus's or solon's institutions. in sparta, the general frame-work of lycurgus's constitution subsisted; nevertheless the power was virtually in the hands of the ephori, whose dictatorial sway placed sparta in the formidable posture she now assumed.--at athens, in proportion as the importance of foreign relations increased, and amid the protracted struggles between the heads of the democratic and aristocratic parties, the real power, under the outward appearance of a democracy, gradually centered in the hands of the ten annually elected generals, ([greek: stratêgoi],) who with more or less effect played the parts of demagogues. abrogation of the law that excluded the poorer citizens from official situations, b. c. . expulsion of themistocles, implicated in the fall of pausanias, principally through the intrigues of sparta: he is first banished by ostracism, , but in consequence of further persecution he flies over to the persians, . . the following forty years, from - , constitute the flourishing period of athens. a concurrence of fortunate circumstances happening among a people of the highest abilities and promoted by great men, produced here phenomena, such as have never since been witnessed. political greatness was the fundamental principle of the commonwealth; athens had been the guardian, and the champion of greece, and she wished to appear worthy of herself. hence in athens alone were men acquainted with public splendour, exhibited in buildings, in spectacles, and festivals, the acquisition of which was facilitated by private frugality. this public spirit animating every citizen, expanded the blossoms of genius; no broad line of distinction was anxiously drawn between private and public life; whatever great, whatever noble was produced by athens, sprung up verdant and robust out of this harmony, this buxom vigour of the state. far different was the case with sparta; there rude customs and laws arrested the development of genius: there men were taught to die for the land of their forefathers: while at athens they learnt to live for it. . agriculture continued the principal occupation of the citizens of attica; other employments were left to the care of slaves. commerce and navigation were mainly directed towards the thracian coast and the black sea; the spirit of trade, however, was never the prevailing one. as affairs of state became more attractive, and men desired to participate in them, the want of intellectual education began to be felt, and sophists and rhetoricians soon offered their instruction. mental expertness was more coveted than mental knowledge; men wished to learn how to think and to speak. a poetical education had long preceded the rise of this national desire; poesy now lost nothing of its value: as heretofore homer remained the cornerstone of intellectual improvement. could it be that such blossoms would produce other fruits than those which ripened in the school of socrates, in the masterpieces of the tragedians and orators, and in the immortal works of plato? . these flowers of national genius burst forth in spite of many evils, inseparable from such a constitution established among such a people. great men were pushed aside; others took their places. the loss of themistocles was supplied by miltiades's son cimon; who to purer politics united equal talents. he protracted the war against the persians in order to maintain the union of the greeks; and favoured the aristocratic party at the same time that he affected popularity. even his enemies learnt by experience, that the state could not dispense with a leader who seemed to have entered into a compact for life with victory. another expedition under cimon; and victory by sea and land near the eurymedon, b. c. . he takes possession of the hellespontine chersonesus, . some of the athenian confederates already endeavour to secede. hence, , the conquest of caristus in euboea; subjection of naxos, , and from - , siege and capture of thasos, under cimon. the athenians endeavour to obtain a firmer footing on the shore of macedonia; and for that purpose send out a colony to amphipolis, . great earthquake at sparta; gives rise to a ten years' war, viz. the third messenian war or revolt of the helots, who fortify themselves in ithome, - : in this war the athenians, at the instigation of cimon, send assistance to the spartans, , who refuse the proffered aid. the democratic party seize the opportunity of casting on cimon the suspicion of being in the interest of sparta; he is banished by ostracism, . . the death of aristides, and the banishment of cimon, concur in elevating pericles to the head of affairs; a statesman whose influence had begun to operate as early as . less a general than a demagogue, he supported himself in authority during forty years, until the day of his death, and swayed athens without being either archon or member of the areopagus. that under him the constitution must have assumed a more democratic character, is demonstrated by the fact of his exaltation as leader of the democratic party. the aristocrats, however, contrive until to set up rivals against him in the persons of the military leaders, myronides, tolmidas, and more particularly the elder thucydides. change in the spirit of administration under pericles, both in reference to internal and external relations. a brilliant management succeeds to the parsimonious economy of aristides; and yet, after the lapse of thirty years, the state treasury was full.--limitation of the power of the areopagus by ephialtes, b. c. . the withdrawal of various causes which formerly came under the jurisdiction of that tribunal must have diminished its right of moral censorship.--introduction of the practice of paying persons who attended the courts of justice. with regard to external relations, the precedence of the athenians gradually advanced toward supremacy; although their relations with all the confederates were not precisely the same. some were mere confederates; others were subjects.--augmentation in the imposts on the confederates, and transfer of the treasury from delos to athens, . the jealousy of sparta and the discontent of the confederates keep pace with the greatness of athens. unsuccessful attempt to support by the help of an athenian fleet and troops, inarus of egypt in his insurrection against the persians, - . wars in greece: the spartans instigate corinth and epidaurus against athens. the athenians, at first defeated near haliæ, in their turn rout the enemy, , and then carry the war against Ægina, which is subdued, . in the new quarrel between corinth and megara respecting their boundaries, the athenians side with megara; myronides conquers at cimolia, . expedition of the spartans to the support of the dorians against phocis; and hence arises the first rupture between athens, sparta, and boeotia. first battle of tanagra, in which the spartans are victorious in the same year, . the boeotians, incited by the spartans, are in the second battle of tanagra worsted by myronides, . the recall of cimon, at the suggestion of pericles himself, in consequence of the first defeat. . cimon recalled from exile, endeavours to reestablish the domestic tranquillity of greece, and at the same time to renew the war against the persians. he succeeds in his attempt after the lapse of five years; and the consequence is a victorious expedition against the persians. he defeats their fleet off cyprus, and routs their army on the asiatic coast. the fruit of this victory is the celebrated peace with artaxerxes i. (see above, p. .) ere that peace is concluded cimon dies, too soon for his country, while occupied with the siege of citium. termination of the third messenian war in favour of sparta, by the cession of ithome, b. c. . meantime athens continues the war with peloponnesus; tolmidas and pericles making an incursion by sea on the enemy's territory, - . at the same time pericles, by sending out colonies to the hellespont, endeavours to secure more firmly the athenian power in that quarter: a colony is likewise sent out to naxos, .--cimon negotiates a truce, which is adopted first ( ) tacitly, afterwards formally, ( ,) for five years. the result of this truce is his victorious expedition against the persians, and the consequent peace with that nation. although the conditions of the peace prescribed by cimon were sometimes infringed, they appear to have been ratified by all parties. . the conclusion of peace with persia, glorious as it was, and the death of the man whose grand political object was to preserve union among the greeks, again aroused the spirit of internal strife. for notwithstanding nearly twenty years intervened before the tempest burst with all its fury, this period was so turbulent during its course, that greece seldom enjoyed universal peace. while athens by her naval strength was maintaining her ascendancy over the confederates, and while some of those confederates were raising the standard of rebellion and passing over to sparta, every thing was gradually combining towards the formation of a counter league, the necessary consequence of which must have been a war, such as the peloponnesian. up to this time athens was at the height of her power; she was governed by pericles, who, in every thing but the name, was sole ruler during this period, and for that reason she experienced few of the evils resulting from a democratic constitution. who, indeed, could overthrow a demagogue whose presence of mind, even in the greatest good fortune, never once deserted him; who knew how to keep alive among his fellow-citizens the conviction that, however exalted they might be, it was to him alone they were indebted for it? during the five years' truce the sacred war for the possession of the delphian oracle took place, and it is given by the spartans to the city of delphi; but after their return is given back again by the athenians to the phocians, b. c. . the athenians commanded by tolmidas, are defeated by the boeotians, . this expedition, undertaken in opposition to the advice of pericles, contributes to increase his influence; particularly as he reduces to obedience the revolted euboea and megara, . end of the five years' truce with sparta; and renewal of hostilities, ; further warlike proceedings are repressed by a new thirty years' peace, which lasts, however, only fourteen years.--complete suppression of the aristocratic party, by the banishment of the elder thucydides, ; the whole administration of the state consequently centres in the hands of pericles.--democracy in the confederate states favoured; forcibly introduced in samos, which, after a nine months' siege, is obliged to submit to pericles, .--commencement of the war between corinth and corcyra, on the subject of epidamnus, , which the corcyræans take possession of after winning a naval victory, . the athenians take part in the quarrel, and side with the corcyræans, . the rupture with corinth, and the policy of perdiccas ii. king of macedonia, lead to the secession of the corinthian colony of potidæa, which previously belonged to the athenian confederacy: the war thereby is extended to the macedonian coast. engagement near potidæa, and siege of that town, . the corinthians direct their steps to sparta, and excite the spartans to war; which is further accelerated by the attack of the thebans upon platææ, the confederate of athens, . . the history of the twenty-seven years' war, known by the name of the peloponnesian, or great grecian war, which swept away the fairest flowers of greece, is the more deserving attention from its being not merely a struggle between nations, but likewise against certain forms of government. the policy of athens, which to establish or preserve her influence in foreign states, excited the multitude against the higher orders, had on all sides given rise to two factions, the democrat or athenian, and the aristocrat or spartan; and the mutual bitterness of party spirit produced the most violent disorders. . the respective relations of the two head states of greece to their confederates, were at this time of a very opposite nature. athens, as a naval power, was mistress of most of the islands and maritime cities, which, as tributary confederates, rendered for the most part a forced obedience. sparta, as a land power, was allied with most of the states on the continent, which had joined her side of their own accord, and were not subject to tribute. sparta therefore presented herself as the deliverer of greece from the athenian yoke. confederates of the athenians: the islands chios, samos, lesbos, all those of the archipelago, (thera and melos excepted, which stood neutral,) corcyra, zacynthus; the grecian colonies in asia minor, and on the coast of thrace and macedonia; in greece itself, the cities of naupactus, platææ, and those of acarnania.--confederates of the spartans: all the peloponnesians, (argos and achaia excepted, which stood neutral,) megara, locris, phocis, boeotia, the cities of ambracia and anactorium, and the island of leucas. . sketch of the internal state of athens and sparta at this period. the power of athens depended mainly on the state of her finances; without which she could not support a fleet, and without a fleet her ascendancy over the confederates would of course fall to ground. and although pericles, notwithstanding his lavish public expenditure, was able to enter upon the war with , talents in the treasury, experience could not fail to show that, in such a democratic state as athens was now become under pericles, the squandering of the public money was an unavoidable evil. this evil was produced, however, at athens much less by the peculations of individual state officers than by the demands of the multitude, who for the most part lived at the expense of the state treasury. on the other hand, sparta as yet had no finance; and only began to feel the want of it as she began to acquire a naval power, and entered upon undertakings more vast than mere incursions. financial system of the athenians. revenue: . the tribute paid by the confederates ([greek: phoroi]) increased by pericles from four hundred and sixty to six hundred talents. . income from the customs, (which were farmed,) and from the mines at laurium. . the caution money of the non-citizens: ([greek: metoikoi].) . the taxes on the citizens, ([greek: eisphorai],) which fell almost entirely on the rich, more particularly on the first class, the members of which were not only to bear the burthen of fitting out the fleet, ([greek: trierarchiai],) but were likewise to furnish means for the public festivals and spectacles, ([greek: chorêgiai].) the whole income of the republic at this time was estimated at , talents. but the disbursements made to the numerous assistants at the courts of justice (the principal means of existence with the poorer citizens, and which, more than any thing else, contributed to the licentiousness of the democracy and the oppression of the confederates, whose causes were all brought to athens for adjudication,) together with the expenditure for festivals and spectacles, even at this time, absorbed the greatest part of the revenue. # f. boekh, _public economy of the athenians_, parts, berlin, . the chief work on the subject. [ably translated by j. c. lewis, esq. of christ church in this university.] _athenian letters, or the epistolary correspondence of an agent of the king of persia, residing at athens during the peloponnesian war._ london, , vols. to. the production of several young authors; first printed, but not published, in . this sketch comprises, not only greece, but likewise persia and egypt. . first period of the war until the fifty years' peace. beginning of the war unsuccessful to athens during the first three years, under the conduct of pericles, in whose defensive plan we may perhaps discern the infirmities of age. the athenians, however, suffered less from the annual inroads of the spartans than from the plague, to which pericles himself at last fell a victim. the alliance of the athenians with the kings of thrace and macedonia extended the theatre of war; on the other hand, sparta had already conceived the idea of an alliance with persia. . the death of pericles was, for the next seven years, during which the place of that great man was supplied by cleon a currier, followed by all the evils of an uncurbed democracy. the atrocious decrees with respect to mitylene, which after seceding, had been recaptured, and the insurrection of the corcyræan populace against the rich, characterized the party spirit then dominant in greece better than the few insignificant events of a war conducted without any plan. sparta, however, found in young brasidas a general, such as are wont to arise in revolutionary times. his prosecution of the war on the macedonian coast might have brought great danger to athens, had he so early not fallen a victim to his own gallantry. capture of amphipolis by brasidas, and exile of thucydides, . engagement near amphipolis between brasidas and cleon; and death of those two generals, . . the peace now concluded for fifty years could not be of long duration, as many of the confederates on either side were discontented with its terms. all hope of tranquillity must have been at an end when the management of athenian affairs fell into the hands of a youth like alcibiades, in whom vanity and artifice held the place of patriotism and talent, and who thought war the only field in which he could gain credit. against him what availed the prudence of nicias?--happy was it for athens that during the whole of this period sparta never produced one man who could match even with alcibiades! attempt of some states, corinth especially, to set argos at the head of a new confederacy; this measure athens likewise favours, .--violation of the peace, ; the war indirect until , and limited to assisting the confederates on either side.--alcibiades's plan of giving athens the preponderance in peloponnesus, by an alliance with argos, is defeated by the battle of mantinea, .--exterminating war of the athenians waged against the melians, who wish to preserve their neutrality, whereas neutrality in the weaker party now becomes a crime, . . alcibiades's party brings forward at athens the project of conquering sicily, under the pretence of succouring the segestani against the syracusans. this rash expedition, in which the hopes both of the athenians and of its instigator alcibiades were blighted, gave to athens the first great blow, from which she never after, even with the utmost exertion of her strength, recovered; especially as sparta also was now become a naval power. early interference of the athenians with the concerns of the sicilian greeks.--a fleet and army under the command of nicias, lamachus, and alcibiades, sent against sicily, .--accusation, recall, and flight of alcibiades to sparta: formal rupture of the peace by an inroad of the spartans into attica, where they fortify decelea, . unsuccessful siege of syracuse, ; and total annihilation of the athenian fleet and army by the assistance of the spartans under gylippus, . . fatal as in the present circumstances the blow struck in sicily must appear to have been to athens, yet the calamity was surmounted by athenian enthusiasm, never greater than in times of misfortune. they maintained their supremacy over the confederates; but the part which alcibiades, in consequence of the new posture his own personal interest had assumed at sparta, took in their affairs, brought about a twofold domestic revolution, which checked the licentious democracy. alliance of the spartans with the persians, and indecisive engagement off miletus--flight of alcibiades from sparta to tissaphernes; his negotiations to gain the satrap over to the interests of athens, .--equivocal policy of tissaphernes.--negotiations of alcibiades with the chiefs of the athenian army at samos, and the consequent revolution at athens, and overthrow of the democracy by the appointment of the supreme council of four hundred in place of the [greek: boulê], and of a committee of five thousand citizens in place of the popular assembly, .--the army assumes the right of debate; names alcibiades to be its leader; but declares again for democracy.--great commotions at athens in consequence of the discomfiture of the fleet at eretria, and the secession of euboea. deposition of the college of four hundred, after a despotic rule of four months;--reformation of the government;--transfer of the highest power to the hands of the five thousand;--recall of alcibiades, and reconciliation with the army. . brilliant period of alcibiades's command. the reiterated naval victories won by the athenians over the spartans under mindarus, who, mistrusting tissaphernes, now forms an alliance with pharnabazus, satrap of the north of asia minor, oblige the spartans to propose peace, which haughty athens, unluckily for herself, rejects. two naval engagements on the hellespont, .--great victory by sea and land won near cyzicus, .--confirmation of the athenian dominion over ionia and thrace by the capture of byzantium, . alcibiades returns covered with glory; but in the same year is deposed, and submits to a voluntary exile, . . arrival of the younger cyrus in asia minor; the shrewdness of lysander wins him over to the spartan interest. the republican haughtiness of lysander's successor, callicratidas, shown to cyrus, was a serious error in policy; for, unassisted by persian money, sparta was not in a condition to pay her mariners, nor consequently to support her naval establishment. after the defeat and death of callicratidas, the command is restored to lysander, who terminates the twenty seven years' war triumphantly for sparta. naval victory of lysander over the athenians at notium, ; in consequence of which alcibiades is deprived of the command.--appointment of ten new leaders at athens; conon among the number.--naval victory of callicratidas at mitylene; conon is shut up in the harbour of that place, .--great naval victory of the athenians; defeat and death of callicratidas at the Æginussæ islands, near lesbos, .--unjust condemnation of the athenian generals.--second command of lysander, and last _decisive_ victory by sea over the athenians at Ægospotamos on the hellespont, dec. .--the loss of the sovereignty of the sea is accompanied by the defection of the confederates, who are successively subjected by lysander, .--athens is besieged by lysander in the same year, ; the city surrenders in may, .--athens is deprived of her walls; her navy is reduced to twelve sail; and, in obedience to lysander's commands, the constitution is commuted into an oligarchy, under thirty rulers, (tyrants.) . thus ended a war destructive in its moral, still more than in its political, consequences. party spirit had usurped the place of patriotic feeling; as national prejudice had that of national energy. athens being subdued, sparta stood at the head of confederate greece; but greece very soon experienced the yoke of her deliverers to be infinitely more galling than that of the people hitherto called her oppressors. what evils must not have ensued from the revolutions lysander now found it necessary to effect in most of the grecian states, in order to place the helm of government in the hands of his own party under the superintendence of a spartan harmost?--how oppressive must not have been the military rule of the numerous spartan garrisons?--nor could any alleviation of tribute be hoped for, now that in sparta it was acknowledged that the "state must possess an exchequer."--the arrogance and rapacity of the new masters were rendered more grievous by their being more uncivilized and destitute. history of the reign of terror at athens under the thirty tyrants, .--what happened here must likewise have happened more or less in the other grecian cities, which lysander found it necessary to revolutionize. in all quarters his party consisted of men similar to critias and his colleagues, who appear to have been long before united in clubs ([greek: hetaireiai]) intimately connected with each other; from which were now taken the most daring revolutionists, in order to place them everywhere at the head of affairs. . happy revolution in athens, and expulsion of the thirty tyrants by thrasybulus, favoured by the party at sparta opposed to lysander, and headed by king pausanias. restoration and reform of solon's constitution; general amnesty. it was easy to reestablish forms;--to recall the departed spirit of the nation was impossible! ed. ph. hinrichs, _de theramenis, critiæ et thrasybuli, virorum tempore belli peloponnesiaci inter græcos illustrium, rebus et ingenio, commentatio_, hamburgi, . an inquiry which exhibits much research and impartiality. . the defeat of the younger cyrus entangles the spartans in a war with the persians, the same year that, after the death of king agis, agesilaus takes possession of the regal dignity. we willingly forget his usurpation as we follow him in his heroic career. none but a man of genius could have instructed sparta how to support for so long a time the extravagant character which she had now undertaken to play. opening of the war with persia by tissaphernes's attack on the Æolian cities of asia minor, .--command of thimbron, who, , is succeeded by the more successful and fortunate dercyllidas.--availing himself of the jealousy between tissaphernes and artabazus, he persuades the latter to a separate truce, .--command of agesilaus; his expedition into asia, from the spring of until . the conviction which he obtained of the domestic weakness of the persian empire in the successful invasion of phrygia, , seems to have matured in the mind of agesilaus the idea of overturning the persian throne: this design he would have accomplished had not the persians been politic enough to kindle a war against sparta in greece itself. . the corinthian war, waged against sparta by corinth, thebes, and argos, to which athens and the thessalians unite, terminated by the peace of antalcidas. the tyranny of sparta, and more particularly the recent devastation of elis, a sacred territory, were the alleged pretexts; but the bribes of timocrates, the persian envoy, were the real causes of this war. irruption of the spartans into boeotia; they engage and are routed at haliartus, . lysander falls on the field of battle; and agesilaus is recalled out of asia.--his victory at coronea ensures to the spartans the preponderance by land; but the discomfiture of their navy near cnidus at the same time, gives to their enemies the sovereignty of the sea: conon, who commanded the combined persian and athenian fleets, avails himself, with consummate skill, of this success to reestablish the independence of athens, .--sparta endeavours by apparently great sacrifices to bring over the persians to her interests: the peace at last concluded by the efforts of the skilful antalcidas, (see above, book ii, parag. ), was readily agreed to by the spartans, as they gave up only what otherwise they could not have retained. the preponderance of sparta on the continent of greece was established by the article which invested them with the power of seeing the conditions of the treaty fulfilled: the stipulated freedom of the grecian cities was but an apparent disadvantage; and now that the asiatic colonies were given up, the contest for power in greece itself must be decided by land, and not by sea. . the quarrels which, after the peace of antalcidas, sparta began to have with mantinea and phlius, and still more so her participation in those between the macedo-greek cities and the over-powerful olynthus, prove too plainly the arrogance with which sparta behaved to the weaker states. but the arbitrary appropriation of the citadel of thebes by phoebidas,--an act not indeed commanded, yet approved by sparta,--was attended with more serious consequences than were at first expected. would that all authors of similar breaches of good faith and the law of nations were visited with the same vengeance! . period of the rivalry of sparta and thebes, thebes, from the year . the greatness of thebes was the work of two men, who knew how to inspire their fellow-citizens and confederates with their own heroic spirit: with them thebes rose, with them she fell. rarely does history exhibit such a _duumvirate_ as that of epaminondas and pelopidas. how high must our estimation of pythagoras be, even had his philosophy formed but one such man as epaminondas! liberation of thebes from spartan rule by the successful attempt of pelopidas and his fellow-conspirators, . vain attempts against thebes, by the spartans under cleombrotus, , and agesilaus, and . the defensive war conducted by pelopidas, during which he established the theban supremacy in boeotia, and brought over the athenians, (whose fleet, , beat that of the spartans,) deserves our admiration more than the winning of a battle.--the vast plans of thebes were not unfolded, however, till epaminondas was at the head of affairs. seran de la tour, _histoire d'epaminondas_. paris, . # meissner, _life of epaminondas_. prague, , parts. in which the authorities are duly considered. # j. g. scheibel, _essays towards a better understanding of the ancient world_, . the second part contains an essay upon the history of thebes, as the first does on that of corinth. . a general peace is concluded in greece through the mediation of the persians, (who wish to obtain auxiliaries against the egyptians,) under the condition that all the grecian cities shall be free: it is acceded to by sparta and athens, but rejected by thebes, because she cannot admit the condition without again falling under the spartan yoke. in fact, the lofty language used by epaminondas, as envoy to sparta, shows that it was problematic whether sparta or thebes should now be at the head of greece. could the idea, therefore, of a perfect equality between the states of greece be other than chimerical? . the long struggle maintained so gloriously by epaminondas against sparta is remarkable both in a political and military point of view. the power of sparta was abased; epaminondas invented a new system of tactics, (out of which soon after sprang the macedonian art of war;) and as soon as he found confederates in peloponnesus itself, he made his way to the very gates of sparta. victory won by the thebans at leuctra, july , , and annihilation of what hitherto had been called the supremacy of sparta.--first irruption into peloponnesus preceded by alliances with arcadia, elis, and argos.--the attack upon sparta itself is unsuccessful; but the freedom of messene is restored, . . sparta in distress forms an alliance with athens, under the stipulation that the command shall alternately be in the hands of the two confederates; conditions, no doubt, humiliating to spartan pride! it however affords them the means of frustrating epaminondas's new attempt on corinth and the peloponnesus. even dionysius i. of syracuse, thinks himself bound to assist the spartans as being dorians. . thebes played a no less brilliant part in the north than she did in the south. and had the attempts to liberate thessaly from the rule of the tyrant, alexander of pheræ, been attended with success, thebes would have received a vast increase of power. even in macedonia she acted as arbitress. first and successful expedition of pelopidas into thessaly, .--after the decision of the disputed succession to the macedonian throne, young philip is brought as hostage to thebes, and educated in the house of epaminondas.--pelopidas is sent as ambassador, and taken prisoner by alexander; hence the second expedition of the thebans, in which epaminondas rescues the army and delivers his friend, . . alliance of thebes with persia successfully brought about by pelopidas. in the intrigues of the opponents at the persian court, the object of each was to bring that court over to his own interest. yet the domineering tone in which the persians wished to dictate peace, had not the consequences that might have been expected; and although sparta consented to her confederates remaining neutral, she would not forego her claims on messene. the establishment of a navy would have been of more important consequences to thebes than this alliance, had not all these plans, together with the greatness of thebes, been swept away by the premature death of her two leading men. last expedition of pelopidas against alexander of pheræ, in which he himself falls, .--new irruption into peloponnesus caused by the commotions in arcadia.--battle of mantinea, and death of epaminondas, june , .--general peace in greece mediated by the persians; sparta does not assent to it on account of messene, but sends agesilaus to egypt, there to support the insurrection of tachos. . the result of this bloody struggle for the supremacy of greece was, that neither sparta nor thebes obtained it; the former of these states being weakened by the loss of messene, the latter by the loss of its leaders, and both strained by their violent exertions. the situation of greece after this war seems to have been thus far changed, that no state had the predominance; an independence proceeding from enervation. even athens, who by means of her naval power still preserved her influence over the cities on the coast and in the islands, lost the greater part in the war of the allies, together with three of her most celebrated leaders, chabrias, timotheus, and iphicrates, whose places were ill supplied by chares. confederacy of the islands cos, rhodes, and chios, and the city of byzantium; their secession from athens, .--unsuccessful siege of chios, before which chabrias falls, ; of byzantium, . athens suffers a still greater injury from the cabals of chares against his colleagues timotheus and iphicrates, and from her imprudent participation in the insurrection of artabazus, . the threats of artaxerxes iii. force athens to make a peace, in which she is obliged to acknowledge the freedom of her confederates. . at the very time when the growing power of macedonia under philip ought to have united all the grecian states, had such an union been within the range of possibility, greece plunged into another civil war of ten years' duration, which is known by the name of the sacred or phocian war. the amphictyonic assembly, whose duty it was to maintain peace, and whose influence had been in the present circumstances reinstated, abused its authority by kindling discord. the hatred of the thebans, who sought for new opportunities of quarrel with sparta, and the ambition of the phocian philomelus, were the real causes which led to the war, which the policy of philip knew how to prolong till the precise moment favourable to his own particular views arrived. the treasures of delphi circulating in greece, were as injurious to the country as the ravages which it underwent. a war springing out of private passions, fostered by bribes and subsidiary troops, and terminated by the interference of foreign powers, was exactly what was requisite for annihilating the scanty remains of morality and patriotism still existing in greece. sentence of the amphictyons against sparta on account of the former surprise of the citadel of thebes by phoebidas; and against phocis on account of the tillage of the sacred lands of delphi, .--philomelus is elected general of the phocians; the rifling of the treasury of delphi enables him to take into his pay athenian and other auxiliaries, and to carry war against the thebans and their confederates, the locrians, etc. under pretence of their being the executors of the amphictyonic decrees. philomelus having fallen, , is succeeded by his brother onomarchus, more skilful than himself in intrigue and war: but onomarchus having fallen, , in the battle with philip in thessaly, is followed by phayllus. philip even thus early endeavours to push through thermopylæ into greece, but is repelled by the athenians. he executes this plan after his peace with athens, , and having procured the expulsion of the phocians from the amphictyonic council, gets their place and right of vote to be transferred to himself. . from the very first advance of philip, the fate of greece could scarcely afford matter for doubt; although the eloquence of demosthenes warded it off until the second invasion, caused by the amphictyonic sentence passed on the locrians. (see below, book iv. parag. .) the battle of chæronea laid the foundation of macedonia's complete ascendancy over the grecian republics: by the appointment of philip to be generalissimo of greece in the persian war, that ascendancy was, as it were, formally acknowledged; nor did it end with the assassination of that prince. * * * * * fourth book. history of the macedonian monarchy. first period. _from its origin to the death of alexander the great. b. c. - ._ sources. we have no historian who wrote, particularly, on macedonia, before the time of alexander. the facts relative to the earlier history previous to philip are collected from diodorus, justin, thucydides, and arrian; from diodorus more especially. in consequence of the loss of the other historians, diodorus is the chief authority for the history of philip; the speeches of demosthenes and Æschines must likewise be consulted, but not made use of without caution and judicious historical criticism. with respect to alexander the great, as so many writers on his reign have been destroyed by time, arrian must now be considered as the chief authority, on account of the care he has shown in the selection of his authorities, conjointly with the seventeenth book of diodorus. plutarch's biography contains several valuable additional facts; and even the superficial curtius might furnish us with abundance of information, did his accounts offer higher claims to our credit. . an hellenic colony from argos, headed by the temenidæ, a branch of the heraclidæ, settled in emathia, and laid the feeble foundation of the macedonian empire, which was in time to rise to such power. not only did the settlers keep their footing in the country, in spite of the aboriginal inhabitants; but their princes gradually extended their territory, by subjecting or expelling several of the neighbouring tribes. their earlier history, not excepting even the names of their kings, is buried in obscurity till the time of the persian invasions. the three first macedonian kings, caranus said to have ruled twenty-eight years, coenus twenty-three, tyrmas forty-five, were unknown to herodotus, who names as founder of the macedonian monarchy, perdiccas, - . of this prince and his successors argæus, _d._ , philip i. _d._ , Æropus, _d._ , and alcetas, _d._ , nothing more is known than that they waged war, with various success against the neighbouring pierians and illyrians, who had their own kings. . when the persians commenced their incursions into europe, macedonia, by its situation, must have been one of the first countries they ravaged. accordingly, as early as the reign of darius hystaspis, the macedonian kings were tributary to the persians; and were indebted for their deliverance from that yoke, not to their own valour, but to the victories of the greeks. the battle of platææ restored independence to the macedonian kingdom, although that independence was not formally acknowledged by the persians. immediately after the scythian campaign, , amyntas (_d._ ,) became tributary to the persians; his son and successor, alexander, (_d._ ,) was in the same state of subjection, and was even compelled to join the expedition of xerxes. . but the expulsion of the persians still left macedonia exposed to the attacks of other formidable neighbours; on one side there was the thracians, among whom, under sitalces, and his successor, seuthes, arose the powerful kingdom of the odrysæ; on the other, the athenians, who, availing themselves of their extensive navy, reduced to subjection the grecian settlements on the macedonian shores. harassing as these neighbours were to the macedonian kings, they proved to be the very instruments by which macedonia became so early and so deeply involved in the affairs of greece. commencement of the differences with athens, under the reign of perdiccas ii, - ; athens having supported his brother philip against him.--defection of potidæa, and fortification of olynthus, into which the greeks from chalcis and other cities are transplanted, . potidæa being forced to surrender to athens, , perdiccas contrives to play so skilful a part in the peloponnesian war just now commencing, that he outwits the athenians, parrying the attack of sitalces by a marriage of his sister with seuthes, the heir to that prince, . his alliance with sparta, , is very detrimental to the athenians, brasidas wresting amphipolis from their hands; nevertheless perdiccas chooses rather to conclude a peace with athens, , than to throw himself entirely into the arms of his new allies. . archelaus, the successor of perdiccas, introduced agriculture and civilization among the macedonians, who were never, however, recognized by the hellenes as their legitimate brethren: highways and military roads were constructed; forts were erected; and the court became the seat of literature. in these days the macedonian kingdom seems to have comprised emathia, mygdonia, and pelagonia, to which may be added some of the neighbouring tribes, who, although governed by their own kings, were tributary. the power of the kings was insignificant when unaided by the nobles, among whom, as was the case with all the hereditary princes of greece, they merely held the right of precedence. how difficult was it, even in alexander's time, to erase from the minds of the macedonian nobility the recollection of their former importance! . the murder of archelaus was followed by a stormy period, wrapped in obscurity: the unsettled state of the succession raised up many pretenders to the throne, each of whom easily found the means of supporting his claims, either in some of the neighbouring tribes, or in one of the grecian republics. Æropus, as guardian to the young king orestes, usurps the supreme power, b. c. - . after his death, and the murder of his son pausanias, , the throne was seized by amyntas ii. son of philip, and brother to perdiccas ii. who was nevertheless unable to maintain his power until he had gained a victory over argæus, the brother of pausanias, who was backed by the illyrians, - . the war with olynthus, - , could not be brought to a successful conclusion until he had formed an alliance with sparta. . the three sons of amyntas ii, alexander, perdiccas, and philip, successively ascended the throne after the death of their father; but so violent were the commotions during the reigns of the two former, that the future existence of macedonia as a kingdom might have been regarded as problematical: it is certain that they were obliged to submit to the payment of tribute to the illyrians. alexander, in opposition to his rival, ptolemy of alorus, placed on the throne by pelopidas, sends his youngest brother philip as hostage to thebes: in the same year he is deposed by ptolemy, . reign of ptolemy, - , with the stipulation imposed, , by pelopidas, that he shall only hold the sceptre in reserve for the two younger brothers. murder of ptolemy, , by perdiccas iii. who is nearly overwhelmed by pausanias, another and earlier pretender to the crown; he is at last firmly seated on the throne by the athenians, under iphicrates, . but as early as he falls in the war against the illyrians, leaving behind him a son, amyntas, still a minor, and a younger brother philip, who escapes from thebes in order to gain possession of the throne. . the reign of philip, which lasted twenty-four years, is one of the most instructive and interesting in the whole range of history, as well on account of the prudence he displayed, as for the manner in which his plans were arranged and executed. though it may be difficult to trace in his morals the pupil of epaminondas, yet it is impossible to view without feelings of astonishment the brilliant career of a man, who, under the almost hopeless circumstances in which he commenced his course, never lost his firmness of mind, and who in the highest prosperity preserved his coolness of reflection. the history of philip, even in his own days, was distorted to his disadvantage by orators and historians. demosthenes could not, theopompus would not, be impartial; and the information contained in diodorus and justin is mostly derived from the work of the latter. olivier, _histoire de philippe, roi de macédoine_. paris, , vols. vo. a defence of philip. de bury, _histoire de philippe, et d'alexandre le grand_. paris, , to. a very mean performance. th. leland, _the history of the life and reign of philip king of macedon_. london, , to. dry, but exhibiting much reading and strict impartiality. in mitford, _history of greece_, vol. iv, philip has found his most zealous panegyrist and defender. it would seem that, even in the present day, it is impossible to write an impartial history of this monarch. . melancholy posture of the macedonian affairs at the beginning of philip's reign. besides victorious foes abroad, there were at home two pretenders to the throne, argæus, backed by athens, pausanias, supported by thrace; and philip himself, at first, was merely regent, and not king. in the two first years, however, every thing was changed, and macedonia recovered her independence. the newly-created phalanx ensured victory over the barbarians; recourse was had to other means than force for success against the suspiciousness of athens and the neighbouring greek settlements, particularly against the powerful olynthus. it is in the conduct of these affairs that the peculiar sagacity of philip is displayed. after the defeat of argæus, peace is purchased from athens by a momentary recognition of the freedom of amphipolis, .--removal of pausanias by means of an accommodation with thrace.--by the conquest of the pæonians and illyrians, , the boundaries of macedonia are extended to thrace, and westward to the lake lychnitis.--as early as philip was proclaimed king. . development of philip's further plans of aggrandizement.--by the gradual subjection of the macedo-greek cities, he proposed, not only to make himself sole master in macedonia, but also to remove the athenians from his domain.--the first object of his policy against greece was to get himself acknowledged as a hellen, and macedonia as a member of the hellenic league. hence the subsequent tutelage in which macedonia held greece was not converted into a formal subjection, a proceeding which would have savoured too much of barbarian origin.--the execution of all these plans was facilitated by the possession of the thracian gold mines, which enabled philip to create finances as well as the phalanx. capture of amphipolis, ; in the mean while athens is amused with promises, and olynthus with the momentary cession of potidæa, which had likewise been captured: this event is followed by the conquest of the mountainous districts, abounding in gold, which extend from the nestus to the strymon, and furnished an annual income of nearly , talents. . the interference of philip in the affairs of thessaly dates from the year ; the possession of that country was an object equally important for the furtherance of his views upon greece, as for the improvement of his finances. he first stepped forth as the deliverer of thessaly, and ended in making it a province of macedonia. expulsion of the tyrants from pheræ, at the request of the aleuadæ, ; the tyrants, however, receive support in the sacred war from the phocians under onomarchus. the final defeat of onomarchus, , makes philip master of thessaly; he places macedonian garrisons in the three chief places, and thus supports his authority in the country until he is pleased to make it entirely a macedonian province, . . the protraction of the sacred war in greece furnished philip with an excellent opportunity of promoting his views upon that country; although his first attempt at an irruption, too precipitately undertaken, was frustrated by the athenians. the capture of olynthus, notwithstanding the assistance afforded it by the athenians, after a season of apparent inaction, insured the safety of the frontiers in his rear; and by a master stroke of policy, almost at the very moment in which he was driving the athenians out of euboea, he found means to enter with them into negotiations, which, after repeated embassies, were closed by a peace, opening to him the way through thermopylæ, and enabling him to raise a party favourable to himself within the very walls of athens. . first descent of philip into greece, and termination of the sacred war by reducing the phocians. the place which he now obtained in the amphictyonic council, had been the height of his wishes; and the humility of sparta proved how firmly his ascendancy over greece was already established. . brief view of the state of greece, and more particularly of athens, after the sacred war; description of the means by which philip succeeded in creating and supporting parties favourable to his own interests in the grecian states. bribery was not his only instrument; what he gave he borrowed from others; the main feature of his policy was, that he seldom or ever recurred to the same means. scheming and consistent even in his drunken revels, he hardly ever appears under the same form. dreadful consequences to the morals of the greeks, resulting from the spirit of party, the decline of religion, and the vast increase in the circulating medium, produced by the treasures of delphi and macedonia.--estimate of the power of athens during the period of demosthenes and phocion. it seems that, unfortunately, the eloquence and political acuteness of the former was not accompanied with sufficient talents for negotiation; the latter, perhaps, did not place confidence enough in his country, while demosthenes placed too much. in spite of public indolence and effeminacy, athens was still enabled to support her rank as a maritime power, the navy of philip not being equal to hers. # a. g. becker, _demosthenes as a statesman and an orator_. an historico-critical introduction to his works: . a very useful work, both as a history and as an introduction to the political orations of demosthenes. . new conquests of philip in illyria and thrace. the adriatic sea and the danube appear to have been the boundaries of his empire on this side. but the views of the macedonian king were directed less against the thracians, than against the grecian settlements on the hellespont; and the attack of the athenian diopithes furnished him a pretext for making war against them. the siege, however, of perinthus and byzantium, was frustrated by phocion, to the great vexation of philip; an event which aroused the athenians, and even the persians, from their lethargy. . policy of philip after this check.--at the very time that, engaged in a war against the barbarians on the danube, he appears to have wholly lost sight of the affairs of greece, his agents redouble their activity. Æschines, richly paid for his services, proposes in the amphictyonic council, that, to punish the sacrilegious insults of the locrians to the delphian oracle, he should be elected leader of the greeks in this new sacred war. following his usual maxim, philip suffers himself to be entreated. . second expedition of philip into greece. his appropriation of the important frontier town of elatea soon showed that, for this time at least, he was not contending merely for the honour of apollo.--alliance between athens and thebes brought about by demosthenes.--but the defeat of chæronea in the same year decided the dependence of greece. philip now found it easy to play the magnanimous character towards athens. . preparations for the execution of his plan against persia, not as his own undertaking, but as a national war of the hellenes against the barbarians. thus, while philip, by obtaining from the amphictyons the appointment of generalissimo of greece against the persians, secured in an _honourable_ manner the dependence of the country, the splendour of the expedition flattered the nation at whose expense it was to be conducted. it is a question, indeed, whether philip's own private views extended much further! . the internal government of macedonia, under so skilful and successful a conqueror, must necessarily have been absolute. no pretender would dare to rise up against such a ruler, and the body guard ([greek: doryphoroi]) established by him at the beginning of his reign, and taken from the macedonian nobility, contributed much to keep up a proper understanding between the prince and the nobles. the court became a military staff, while the people, from a nation of herdsmen, was converted into a nation of warriors.--philip was unfortunate only in his own family; but the blame is not to be attributed to him if he could not agree with olympias. . philip murdered by pausanias at Ægæ, probably at the instigation of the persians, while celebrating the marriage of his daughter. . the reign of alexander the great, in the eyes of the historical inquirer, derives its great interest, not only from the extent, but from the permanence, of the revolution which he effected in the world. to appreciate properly the character of this prince, who died just as he was about to carry his mighty projects into execution, is no easy task; but it is totally repugnant to common sense to suppose that the pupil of aristotle was nothing more than a wild and reckless conqueror, unguided by any plan. st. croix, _examen critique des anciens historiens d'alexandre-le-grand_, nd. edition, _considérablement augmentée_. paris, , to. the new edition of this, which is the principal work on the history of alexander, and important in more respects than one, contains more than the title implies, though by no means a strictly impartial estimate of that prince's character. . violent commotions at court, in the conquered countries, and in greece, after the death of philip. great as his power appeared to be, the preservation of it depended entirely on the first display of character in his successor. alexander showed himself worthy to inherit the sceptre by his victorious expedition against the thracians; (to whom, and more especially to his alliance with the agrians, he was afterwards indebted for his light horse;) and by the example which he exhibited to greece in his treatment of thebes. . appointment of alexander in the assembly at corinth to be generalissimo of the greeks. yet what his father would probably have turned to a very different account, he allowed to remain a mere nominal office.--development of his plan of attack upon persia.--the want of a navy, soon experienced by alexander, would probably have frustrated his whole project, had not memnon's counterplan of an inroad into macedonia been thwarted by the celerity of the macedonian king. . passage over the hellespont, and commencement of the war. the tranquillity of his kingdom and of greece appeared to be secured, antipater being left at the head of affairs.--the victory on the granicus opens to alexander a path into asia minor; but the death of memnon, which soon after followed, was perhaps a greater advantage than a victory. . the victory of issus, gained over darius in person, appears to have given alexander the first idea of completely overturning the persian throne, as was proved by the rejection of darius's offers of peace. when indeed have not the plans of conquerors been dependent on the course of events? yet alexander must have been pretty certain of his future victory, since he permitted darius to escape, while he sat down seven months before tyre, in order to make himself master of the sea; and, after the conquest of egypt without a battle, to which the possession of tyre opened the way, to build alexandria, and erect to himself a monument more lasting than all his victories. although alexandria perhaps in the end may have surpassed the expectations of the founder, yet the selection of the site, favourable only for navigation and commerce, shows that an eye was originally had to those objects. . invasion of inner asia, facilitated by the tacit submission of the ruling tribes, and by the state of cultivation in which the country was found. on the plains of arbela the macedonian tactics were completely triumphant. it might now be said that the throne of persia was overturned; and the unexpectedly easy capture of babylon, susa, and persepolis, was surely of more importance for the moment than the pursuit of a flying king. insurrection of the greeks quelled by antipater; alexander himself falls in with the malcontent envoys to darius in the interior of asia. . the subjection of the north-eastern provinces of the persian empire would perhaps have been attended with the greatest difficulties, had not the astonishing activity of the conqueror crushed in their birth the schemes of the treacherous bessus, who, after the assassination of darius, wished to erect a separate kingdom in bactria. the jaxartes was now the northern boundary of the macedonian monarchy, as it had hitherto been that of the persian. besides, the possession of the rich trading countries, bactria and sogdiana, was in itself an object of vast importance. during this expedition, the execution of philotas and his father parmenio took place, though both were, probably, guiltless of the conspiracy laid to their charge, . after the death of darius, alexander met with almost constant opposition in his own army: the majority of the troops fancying that that event precluded the necessity of any further exertions. cautious as alexander was in his treatment of the macedonian nobles, we may discern, not however by the mere example of clitus, how difficult they found it to banish from their memory the relations in which they had formerly stood to their kings. . alexander's expedition against india had, no doubt, its origin in that propensity to romantic enterprise which constituted a main feature in his character. yet what could be more natural than that a close view of persian splendour, the conquest of such wealthy countries, and the desire of prosecuting his vast commercial designs, should gradually mature in the mind of the macedonian king the plan of subjecting a country which was represented as the golden land of asia. to this likewise the scantiness of geographic information must have greatly contributed; if he pressed forward to the eastern seas, the circle of his dominion would, it was supposed, be complete.--it appears very certain that alexander was destitute of a sufficient knowledge of the country when he entered upon this expedition. alexander's invasion was directed against northern india, or the panjab; in those days a populous and highly cultivated country; now the seat of the seiks and mahrattas; and then, as now, inhabited by warlike races. he crossed the indus at taxila (attock,) passed the hydaspes (behut or chelum,) and, availing himself of the quarrels between the indian princes, defeated the king, porus. he then proceeded across the acesines (jenaub) and hydraotes (rauvee). the eastern verge reached in this expedition was the river hyphasis (beyah;) here, having already proceeded half way to the ganges, the conqueror was, by a mutiny in his army, compelled to retreat. his return was through the country of the malli (multan) as far as the hydaspes, when the majority of his troops took ship, and were floated along that stream into the acesines, and from thence into the indus, which they followed down to its mouth. rennel, _memoir of a map of hindostan_. london, , ( d. edit.) and st. croix, _examen_, etc. (see p. .) furnish all the necessary historical and geographical explanations relative to the persian and indian campaigns of alexander. . although alexander was obliged to give up the project of conquering india, yet the connection between europe and the east, which has continued from that time, was the work of his hands. while the communication on land was secured by the establishment of various settlements, the communication by sea was opened by the voyage of his admiral, nearchus, from the indus to the euphrates. in the mean time alexander himself proceeded to persis and babylon, across the desert, and the unexplored provinces of gedrosia and carmania. nearchus's voyage (our knowledge of which is derived from his own journal, preserved in arrian's _indica_) lasted from the beginning of october, , to the end of february, : nearly the same time was occupied in the almost incredible land march of the king. vincent, _the voyage of nearchus from the indus to the euphrates_. london, , to. exhibiting the most learned researches, and illustrated with excellent charts. . after the abandonment of india, the whole circuit of alexander's conquests was precisely that of the former persian empire; his later projects were probably directed against arabia alone. however easy it had been to make these conquests, it was a more difficult task to retain them; for macedonia, exhausted by continual levies of men, could not furnish efficient garrisons. alexander removed this difficulty, by protecting the conquered from oppression; by showing proper respect to their religion; by leaving the civil government in the hands of the native rulers who had hitherto possessed it; and by confiding to macedonians the command only of the garrisons left in the chief places, and in the newly established colonies. to alter as little as possible in the internal organization of countries was his fundamental principle. . simple as alexander's plans were in the outset, their simplicity was more than compensated by the magnitude and importance of their results. babylon was to be the capital of his empire, and consequently of the world. the union of the east and the west was to be brought about by the amalgamation of the dominant races by intermarriage, by education, and, more than all, by the ties of commerce, the importance of which much ruder conquerors, in asia itself, soon learnt to appreciate. in nothing probably is the superiority of his genius more brilliantly displayed, than in his exemption from all national prejudice, particularly when we consider that none of his countrymen were in this respect to be compared with him. to refuse him this merit is impossible, whatever judgment we may form of his general character. . sudden death of alexander at babylon by fever; under the peculiar circumstances of the time, the greatest loss mankind could experience. from the indus to the nile the world lay in ruins; and where was now the architect to be found, that could gather up the scattered fragments and restore the edifice? alexander's disorder may be easily accounted for by the hardships he had undergone, and the impure air to which he exposed himself in cleaning out the canals about babylon. he certainly was not poisoned; and in the charge of immoderate drunkenness brought against him, we must take into account the manners of the macedonian and persian courts. was it not the same with peter the great? in estimating his moral character we must bear in mind the natural vehemence of his passions, ever inclined to the most rapid transitions; nor should we forget the unavoidable influence of constant success upon mankind. second period. _history of the macedonian monarchy, from the death of alexander the great to the battle of ipsus, b. c. - ._ to enable the reader to take a general view, the history of the european events is resumed below, under the head of the history of macedonia proper. sources. diodorus, lib. xviii-xx. is the great authority for this portion of history. he compiled mostly, for this period, from a contemporary historian, hieronymus of cardia. he is followed by plutarch in the lives of eumenes, demetrius, and phocion; and by justin, lib. xiii, etc. of arrian's history of alexander's successors, nothing unfortunately remains but a few fragments in photius. # mannert, _history of alexander's successors_. nuremberg, . composed with the usual judgment and learning of that author. . the very first measure adopted after the death of alexander contained within itself the seeds of all the dire revolutions that afterwards ensued. not only were the jealousy and ambition of the nobles aroused, but even the interference of the army was exhibited in the most terrific manner. although the idea of the supremacy of the royal family was cast off only by degrees, yet the dreadfully disturbed state in which that family stood, rendered its fall unavoidable. state of the royal family at the death of alexander. he left his wife roxana pregnant, who at the end of three months brought into the world the rightful heir to the sceptre, alexander; he left likewise an illegitimate son, hercules; a bastard half-brother, arrhidæus; his mother, the haughty and cruel olympias, and a sister, cleopatra, both widows; the artful eurydice, (daughter to cyane, one of philip's sisters,) subsequently married to the king, arrhidæus; and thessalonica, philip's daughter, afterwards united to cassander of macedonia. . the weak arrhidæus, under the name of philip, and the infant alexander were at last proclaimed kings, the _regency_ being placed in the hands of perdiccas, leonnatus, and meleager; the last of whom was quickly cut off at the instigation of perdiccas. meanwhile antipater, with whom craterus had been joined as civil ruler, had the management of affairs in europe. . the sequel of the history becomes naturally that of satraps, who fell out among themselves, all being ambitious to rule, and none willing to obey. twenty-two years elapsed ere any massy edifice arose out of the ruins of the macedonian monarchy. in few periods of history are the revolutions of affairs so violent, in few periods, therefore, is it so difficult to unravel the maze of events. for this purpose the most convenient division of the history is into _three_ periods: the first extending to the death of perdiccas, : the second to the death of eumenes, : the third to the defeat and death of antigonus at the battle of ipsus, . . first grant of the provinces made by perdiccas. the vanity of this man seems to have induced him to select the office of regent, in order that no separate province might fall to his share; he placed his whole reliance on having the command of the royal army, although it had already given so many proofs of its determination to command rather than to obey. in this division ptolemy son of lagus received egypt; leonnatus, mysia; antigonus, phrygia, lycia, and pamphylia; lysymachus, macedonian thrace; antipater and craterus remained in possession of macedonia.--the foreigner, eumenes, would hardly have received cappadocia, although yet to be conquered, had perdiccas been able to dispense with his services. the remaining provinces either did not come under the new division, or else their governors are unworthy of notice. . the first acts of perdiccas's government showed how little dependence he could place on the obedience of men who hitherto had been his colleagues. the general insurrection among the mercenaries who had been settled by alexander in upper asia, and now wished to return to their homes, was, no doubt, quelled by python's destruction of the rebels; but it was not python's fault that he did not make himself independent master of the scene of mutiny. . still more refractory was the behaviour of leonnatus and antigonus, when they received orders to put eumenes in possession of his province. antigonus was too haughty to obey; and leonnatus preferred going over into europe to marry cleopatra; there, however, he almost immediately met with his death in the lamian war. (see below, book iv. period iii. parag. .) perdiccas, therefore, was himself obliged to undertake the expedition with the royal army; he succeeded by the defeat of ariarathes. . ambitious views of perdiccas, who, in order to ascend the throne by a marriage with cleopatra, repudiates nicæa, the daughter of antipater. cleopatra actually came over to asia; but perdiccas, being obliged, at the request of the army, to marry eurydice, philip's niece, after the murder of her mother cyane, to the king arrhidæus, found her a troublesome rival and opponent in the government. . attempts of perdiccas to overthrow antigonus and ptolemy, by accusing them before the army. antigonus passes over to antipater in macedonia; and gives rise to the league between antipater, craterus, and ptolemy, against perdiccas and eumenes. . commencement and termination of the first war. perdiccas himself marches against egypt, leaving his friend eumenes to command in asia minor: meanwhile antipater and craterus fall upon asia; the former advances towards syria against perdiccas; the latter is defeated and slain by eumenes. before the arrival, however, of antipater, perdiccas, after repeated and vain attempts to cross the nile, falls a victim to the insurrection of his own troops.--thus three of the principal personages, perdiccas, craterus, leonnatus, were already removed from the theatre of action; and the victorious eumenes, now master of asia minor, had to maintain, unaided, the struggle against the confederates. . second period, from the death of perdiccas to that of eumenes.--python and arrhidæus quickly resigning the regency, it is assumed by antipater.--new division of the provinces at trisparadisus in syria. seleucus receives babylon; antigonus is promised, besides his former possessions, all those of the outlawed eumenes. . war of antigonus with eumenes. the latter, defeated by treachery, shuts himself up in the mountain fastness of nora, there to await more favourable times; and antigonus remains master of all asia minor: in the mean time ptolemy ventures to take possession of syria and phoenicia. . death of the regent antipater, in the same year, ( ;) he bequeaths the regency to his friend, the aged polysperchon, to the exclusion of his own son cassander. antigonus now begins to unfold his ambitious plans; he endeavours vainly to win over eumenes, who deceives him in the negotiations, and seizes the opportunity of leaving his mountain fastness. . eumenes's plan to strengthen himself in upper asia; as he is on the way he receives tidings of his being appointed generalissimo of the royal troops. what better man could polysperchon have selected for the office than he who in his conduct towards antigonus exhibited so striking an example of attachment to the royal house? . exertions of eumenes to maintain himself in lower asia, ineffectual, the naval victory won by antigonus over the royal fleet, commanded by clitus, depriving him of the empire of the sea. he bursts into upper asia; where, in the spring, he unites with the satraps, who had taken arms against the powerful seleucus of babylon. . antigonus following up the royal general, upper asia becomes the theatre of war. victorious as was at first the stand made by eumenes, neither valour nor talent were of any avail against the insubordination of the royal troops, and the jealousy of the other commanders. attacked in winter quarters by antigonus, he was, after the battle, delivered into the hands of his enemy by the mutinous argyraspidæ, who had lost their baggage: he was put to death, and in him the king's family lost its only loyal supporter. . great changes had also taken place in the royal family. her enemy antipater having deceased, olympias, invited by polysperchon, who wished to strengthen himself against cassander, had returned from epirus, and put to death arrhidæus together with his wife, eurydice: in the year following she was besieged in pydna by cassander, and being obliged to surrender, was in her turn executed; meanwhile cassander held roxana and the young king in his own power. . third period, from the death of eumenes to that of antigonus.--the rout of eumenes seemed to have established for ever the power of antigonus in asia; still animated with the fire of youth, though full of years, he saw himself revived in his son demetrius, fond of boisterous revelry, but gallant and talented.--even seleucus thought it time to consult his safety by flying from babylon into egypt. . changes introduced by antigonus into the upper provinces; return to asia minor, where his presence seemed indispensable, by reason of the aggrandizement of ptolemy in syria and phoenicia, of the macedonian cassander in europe, of lysimachus in mysia, and the carian cassander in asia minor.--he repossesses himself of phoenicia, a country of the first importance for the construction of a fleet. siege of tyre, - : it lasts fourteen months; a proof that the city was certainly not razed by alexander. . the fugitive seleucus forms a league against antigonus and demetrius, between ptolemy, the two cassanders, and lysimachus. but antigonus frustrates their combination, himself driving out the carian cassander, and his son marching against ptolemy. victory won by ptolemy over demetrius at gaza, ; after which seleucus marches back to babylon, and, although subsequently followed up by demetrius, permanently maintains his footing in upper asia.--on the other hand, ptolemy, at the first approach of antigonus with the main body, surrenders back syria and phoenicia, . . a general peace concluded between antigonus and his enemies, seleucus only excepted, from whom upper asia is to be again wrested. the first article, that each should retain what he had, demonstrates pretty evidently that the treaty was dictated solely by antigonus; the second, that the greek cities should be free, was pregnant with the seeds of a new war, ready to burst forth at every favourable opportunity; the third, that the young alexander should be raised to the throne upon attaining his majority, was probably the death warrant of the hapless prince, who, that same year, together with his mother, was murdered by cassander.--shortly after, at the instigation of antigonus, cleopatra was put to death, in order that ptolemy might be thwarted in his object, which depended on a matrimonial connection with that princess. . even the execution of the articles must have given rise to hostilities; ptolemy wishing to force antigonus, and he, on his side, to compel cassander, to withdraw the garrisons from the grecian towns; a condition which neither party felt inclined to fulfil. grecian freedom was now but a name; this, however, is not the only example history furnishes of political ideas making the greatest stir long after they have survived their own existence; for then they become excellent tools in the hands of artful designers. expedition of demetrius to liberate athens, . the day when he announced freedom to the athenians, must have been the happiest of his life! few portions of history present such a scope for the contemplation of human nature as the twofold sojourn of demetrius at athens. . the growing power of ptolemy on the sea, and the capture of cyprus, determines antigonus to an open rupture: he commands his son to drive ptolemy out of the island. naval victory of demetrius off cyprus, , perhaps the greatest and most bloody in history; nevertheless, as little decisive to the general question as are most naval battles. the assumption of the royal title, first by the conqueror, afterwards by the conquered, and ultimately by all the rest, was but a mere form now that the royal family was extirpated. . the conquerors having failed in their project of subduing egypt, made the wealthy republic of the rhodians, as an ally of that country, the victim of their fury. but though in the renowned siege of their capital, demetrius earned his title of poliorcetes, the noble defence of the rhodians afforded an illustrious example of the power of discipline in conjunction with well-guided patriotism. the invitation of the athenians came seasonably to demetrius; he raised the blockade and proceeded to complete the liberation of greece, the necessity of which became every day more pressing. . second sojourn of demetrius in greece. the expulsion of cassander's garrisons from the grecian cities, and more particularly from those in peloponnesus; the appointment of demetrius as generalissimo of greece, for the conquest of macedonia and thrace; proved not only to cassander, but also to the other princes, that their common interest loudly called upon them to resist the over-powerful antigonus. . third grand league of cassander, ptolemy, and seleucus, against antigonus and his son; brought about by cassander. how easily, even after the violent irruption of lysimachus into asia minor, might antigonus have dispersed the gathering storms, had not his presumption led him to place an overweening reliance on his own good fortune! . junction of seleucus of babylon and lysimachus, in phrygia. antigonus, to concentrate his forces, recalls his son, who had pushed on to the borders of macedonia. the cautious ptolemy, on the other hand, is afraid to invade syria; and, in consequence of a false report, that lysimachus had been defeated, retires full of alarm, into egypt. . great and decisive battle fought at ipsus in phrygia, in the spring of , which costs antigonus his life, and annihilates his empire, as the two conquerors divide it between themselves, without taking any account of the absent confederates. asia minor, as far as mount taurus, falls to the share of lysimachus; and all the rest, with the exception of cilicia, which is given to plisthenes, cassander's brother, is left to seleucus.--demetrius, by the help of his navy, escapes into greece. . the almost unbroken series of wars which had raged from the time of alexander, must have precluded the possibility of much being effected with respect to domestic organization. it appears to have been nearly, if not wholly, military. yet were the numerous devastations in some measure compensated by the erection of new cities, in which these princes vied with one another, impelled partly by vanity to immortalize their names, partly by policy to support their dominion, most of the new settlements being military colonies. nevertheless this was but a sorry reparation for the manifold oppressions to which the natives were exposed by the practice of quartering the army upon them. the spread of the language and civilization of the greeks deprived them of all national distinction; their own languages sinking into mere provincial dialects. alexander's monarchy affords a striking example of the little that can be expected from a forced amalgamation of races, when the price of that amalgamation is the obliteration of national character in the individuals. heyne, _opum regni macedonici auctarum, attritarum et eversarum, causæ probabiles; in opusc._ t. iv. this collection contains several other treatises on grecian and macedonian history, which cannot be all separately enumerated. third period. _history of the kingdoms and states which arose upon the dismemberment of the macedonian monarchy after the battle of ipsus._ i. history of the syrian empire under the seleucidÆ, b. c. - . sources. neither for the history of the syrian, nor for that of the egyptian and macedonian kingdoms, has any eminent writer been preserved. the fragments of the lost books of diodorus, and, from the time that these kingdoms became allies of rome, those of polybius, several narratives of livy, the syriaca of appian, and a few of plutarch's lives, are the principal authorities; too frequently we are obliged to rely upon the extracts of justin. for the history of the seleucidæ, in consequence of the political connection between these princes and the jews, the antiquities of josephus and the book of maccabees become of importance. besides these authorities, the many coins that have been preserved of these kings, afford much information respecting their genealogy and chronology. of modern publications on the subject, the principal work is vaillant, _imperium seleucidarum sive historia regum syriæ_, , to. the enquiry is principally grounded on coins, as is the case with froelich, _annales rerum et regum syriæ_. viennæ, . . the kingdom of the seleucidæ was founded in upper asia by seleucus nicator. it was an extensive empire; but, being composed of various countries united only by conquest, it could possess but little internal stability except what it derived from the power of its rulers. that power fell with the founder; and the transfer of the seat of empire from the banks of the tigris to syria, entangled the seleucidæ in all the political disputes of the western world, and facilitated the insurrection of the upper provinces. the history of this kingdom divides itself into the periods before and after the war with rome; although at the breaking out of this war the seeds of its decline and fall had already been sown. seleucus received, , babylon as his province; but after the defeat of eumenes was obliged to take to flight, , in order to avoid subjection to the conqueror antigonus. but his moderate government had rendered him so popular, that after the victory won by ptolemy over demetrius at gaza, , he could safely venture to return with only a few adherents to babylon. in this year commences the kingdom of the seleucidæ. . in the ten following years, and while antigonus was busied in asia minor, seleucus laid the foundation of his power over all upper asia, with a facility to which the detestation excited by the rigid government of antigonus mainly contributed. after his victory over nicanor of media, all in that quarter declared spontaneously for him; and the unsuccessful expedition of demetrius taught antigonus himself, that it would no longer be prudent to assert his claims. as early as , seleucus was in possession of all the countries between the euphrates, indus, and oxus. . great campaign in india undertaken by seleucus against king sandracottus. he penetrated as far as the ganges, and the close alliance he formed with the indian sovereign lasted a long time after, and was kept up by embassies. the great number of elephants which he brought back with him was not the only advantage accruing from this expedition; the intercourse with the east seems to have been permanently reestablished. . by the battle of ipsus seleucus added to his dominions the greater part of the territories of antigonus;--syria, cappadocia, mesopotamia, and armenia. unfortunately syria now became the head province, notwithstanding coele-syria and phoenicia were left in the hands of ptolemy. how widely different would have been the course of historic events, had the seat of empire remained at seleucia on the tigris, and the euphrates continued to be the western boundary of the seleucidæ! . reciprocal relations between the several kings, who now combine in forming a kind of political system, in which continued exertions to maintain a balance of power by alliance and marriage are plainly discernible. connection between seleucus and demetrius poliorcetes, by the marriage of the former with the beautiful stratonice, daughter of the latter; made with the view of counterbalancing a similar connection between ptolemy and lysimachus; lysimachus and his son agathocles having united themselves with two daughters of ptolemy. . the eighteen years of tranquillity enjoyed by asia after the battle of ipsus, prove that seleucus was one of the few followers of alexander who had any genius for the arts of peace. he either founded or embellished a vast number of cities, the most important of which were the capital, antiochia in syria, and the two seleucias, one on the tigris, the other on the orontes: the flourishing prosperity of several of these places was the result of the restoration of eastern trade; new channels for which appear to have been opened at this period on the main streams of asia, and more particularly on the oxus. . the home department of his empire was organized into satrapies, of which there were seventy-two. but alexander's maxim, "to give the satrapies to natives," was wholly forgotten by his followers; and the seleucidæ were not long before they experienced the evil consequences of swerving from that practice. under such a prince as seleucus scarce any kingdom could of itself fall to pieces; but the king himself paved the way for the dismemberment of his empire, by ceding upper asia, together with his consort stratonice, to his son antiochus; not, however, without the previous approbation of the army. . war with lysimachus, kindled by ancient jealousy, and now fomented by family feuds. the battle of curopedion cost lysimachus his throne and his life; and asia minor became a part of the syrian realm. but as seleucus was crossing over to europe, to add macedonia to his dominions, he fell by the hand of an assassin, ptolemy ceraunus, and with him the splendour of his kingdom was extinguished. . the reign of his son, antiochus i. surnamed soter, seemed not unprosperous, inasmuch as the empire preserved its former extension; but in any state founded upon conquest, the failure of new attempts at an increase of territory is a sure token of approaching ruin; and this was the case here.--in such a state, the more immediately all depends on the person of the ruler, the more rapid and sensible are the effects of degeneration in a family like that of the seleucidæ. the late conquests of his father in asia minor entangled antiochus in new wars; although, by the marriage of his stepdaughter phila with antigonus gonatas, he ceded his claims on macedonia, .--fruitless attempt at subjecting bithynia, ; the king of that country, nicomedes, calls in the gauls, who had invaded macedonia, and gives them a settlement in galatia, , where they keep their footing, even after the victory won over them by antiochus, , and by their participation in the wars, as mercenaries, become of importance.--the newly risen state of pergamus likewise thrives, at the expense of the syrian empire, in spite of antiochus's attack, ; and the inroad into egypt, for the purpose of supporting the rebel magas, is anticipated by ptolemy ii. . . antiochus ii. surnamed [greek: theos]. during his reign the sway was in the hands of women; and the diseased state of the interior of the empire became palpable by the secession of various eastern provinces, out of which arose the parthian and bactrian kingdoms. the boundless luxury of the court hurried on the decline of the ruling family; having once begun to sink, it could not without difficulty have retrieved its virtue independently of the matrimonial connections now constantly formed from within itself. ascendancy of his stepsister and wife laodice, and of his sister apame, relict of magas; the latter involves him in war with ptolemy ii. to vindicate her claims upon cyrene; it ends by antiochus's marriage with berenice, daughter of ptolemy, and his repudiation of laodice, - . having, after the death of ptolemy, , put away berenice and taken back laodice; the latter, distrusting his motives, cuts him off by poison.--the secession of parthia happened in consequence of the expulsion of the macedonian governor by arsaces, founder of the house of the arsacidæ: that of bactria, on the other hand, was brought about by the macedonian governor himself, theodotus, who asserted his independence. (concerning these two kingdoms, see below, book iv. period iii. dist. kingdoms iv. parag. , .) at first, the former of these kingdoms comprised but a part of parthia; the latter only bactria, and, perhaps, sogdiana; both, however, were soon enlarged at the expense of the seleucidæ. . seleucus ii. surnamed callinicus. his reign, twenty years in duration, is one unbroken series of wars; in which the kingdom, already enfeebled, was subverted, partly by the struggle with egypt, caused by the hatred between laodice and berenice; partly by the jealousy of his brother antiochus hierax; and partly by vain attempts at recovering the upper provinces. assassination of berenice, and most unfortunate war thereby kindled with ptolemy evergetes of egypt, - . the assistance which seleucus obtains from his junior brother, antiochus, governor of asia minor, induces ptolemy to a truce, ; but another war ensues between the two brothers, in which antiochus, at first conqueror, is himself soon afterwards conquered in his turn, - ; and during this contest, eumenes of pergamus greatly increases his territory at the expense of syria, .--his first campaign against arsaces, who had formed an alliance with the bactrian king, ended in a defeat, , regarded by the parthians as the real epoch of the foundation of their kingdom. in the second campaign, , he himself fell into the hands of the parthians, and remained a prisoner till the day of his death, . . his elder son seleucus iii. surnamed ceraunus, on the point of taking the field against attalus king of pergamus, was removed by poison. but the dominion of the seleucidæ was reestablished in asia minor by his mother's fraternal nephew, achæus; and the crown ensured to the younger brother antiochus, governor of babylon. . the long reign of antiochus iii. surnamed the great, is not only the most eventful in syrian history, but likewise marks an epoch, by the relations now commencing between syria and rome.--to earn the title of _great_ was a task of no extreme difficulty in such a line of princes. . great power of hermias the carian, who soon became so formidable to the young monarch, that he was obliged to rid himself of him by murder. the great stand made by the brothers, molo and alexander, satraps of media and persia, who probably had an understanding with hermias, threatened the king with the loss of all the upper provinces: it ended in the defeat of molo, hermias being at last no longer able to hinder the king from marching against him in person. . the intrigues of hermias excited achæus to rebellion in asia minor: but antiochus held more important, first to execute the plan he had previously traced, of ejecting the ptolemies from their possessions in syria; great as the success which at first attended this expedition, it was completely traversed by the battle of raphia.--combining with attalus of pergamus, antiochus then defeated achæus, who, being shut up in the citadel of sardes, was treacherously delivered into his hands. . great campaign of antiochus in the upper provinces, in consequence of the seizure of media by arsaces iii.--hostilities ended in a compact, by which antiochus agreed formerly to cede parthia and hyrcania; arsaces, on his side, pledging himself to furnish assistance against bactria.--but the war with bactria was also followed by a peace, leaving the king, euthydemus, in possession of his crown and dominions.--the expedition now undertaken by antiochus, in company with demetrius of bactriana, against india, extended, probably far up the country, and was attended with important consequences to bactriana. (see below, history of bactria, book iv. per. iii. dist. kingdoms iv. parag. .) the result of these great expeditions was the establishment of the supremacy of the seleucidæ in upper asia; those countries excepted which had been formally resigned. on his return through arachotus and carmania, where he wintered, he likewise undertook a naval expedition on the persian gulf: here gerrha, in possession of its freedom, appears a flourishing place of trade. . resumption of the plan against egypt, after the death of ptolemy philopator; and alliance with philip of macedonia, then carrying on war in asia. antiochus, it is true, attained his end in the expulsion of the ptolemies from their possessions in syria, coele-syria, and phoenicia; but then, his success brought him in contact with rome, an event of decisive importance to himself and his successors. . growth of the disputes between the king and rome, proceeding from the conquest of the major part of asia minor and the thracian chersonesus; meanwhile hannibal had taken refuge at the syrian court, and the probability daily increased of a great league being formed against rome, although that power, after conquering carthage, , and macedonia, , had succeeded in winning over greece even, by the magic spell of _freedom_. but antiochus ruined all: instead of following hannibal's advice, and attacking the romans on their own ground, he stood on the defensive, and suffered himself to be invaded by them in asia. his defeat at magnesia near mount sipylus compelled him to accede to such conditions as rome chose to dictate, and the power of the syrian empire was for ever broken. for the history of this war, see below in the roman history. book v. per. ii. parag. , . . the conditions of the peace were: st. that antiochus should evacuate asia minor; (asia cis taurum.) nd. that he should pay down , talents; and to eumenes of pergamus four hundred. rd. that hannibal and some others should be delivered up, and the king's younger son antiochus, be given as an hostage.--the loss of the surrendered countries was a consequence of this peace, less disadvantageous to the syrian kings, than the use made of it by the conquerors. by adding the greatest part of the ceded territories to those of the kings of pergamus, the romans raised up alongside of their enemy a rival, whom they might at their own will use as a political engine against him.--rome took care likewise that the stipulated sum should be paid by instalments in twelve years, to the end that syria might be kept in a permanent state of dependence. . murder of the king, . the reign of his elder son, seleucus iv. surnamed philopator, was a period of tranquillity; peace arising from weakness.--though once he unsheathed his sword in defence of pharnaces king of pontus, against eumenes, his fear of rome soon compelled him to restore it to the scabbard. he exchanged his son for his brother at rome; but fell a victim to the ambition of his minister heliodorus. . antiochus iv. surnamed epiphanes. educated at rome, he sought to combine the popular manners of a roman with the ostentatious luxury of a syrian; and thereby became an object of universal hatred and contempt. our information respecting his history is too meagre to allow of our deciding whether most of the evil reported of him, in the jewish accounts especially, may not be exaggerated. at any rate, among all his faults, we may still discern in him the germs of good qualities. . war with egypt, springing out of ptolemy philometor's claims upon coele-syria and palestine. obscure as many parts are in the history of this war yet it is evident that success attended the arms of antiochus, and that he would have become master of egypt had not rome interfered. the pretext for war, on the egyptian side, was, that those provinces had by antiochus iii. been promised as a dowry to cleopatra, sister of antiochus and the mother of philometor: antiochus epiphanes, on his side, laid claim to the regency of egypt, as uncle to the young king, who, however, was soon declared of age.--opening of the war, and victory won by antiochus at pelusium, ; in consequence of which cyprus is betrayed into his hands.--pelusium is fortified with a view of insuring the possession of coele-syria, and of facilitating an irruption into egypt.--another victory, , and egypt subdued as far as alexandria. philometor driven by a sedition out of alexandria, where his brother physcon is seated on the throne, falls into the hands of antiochus, who concludes with him a most advantageous peace, and takes his part against physcon. hence siege is laid to alexandria, ; attended with no success. upon the retreat of antiochus, philometor, concluding a separate peace with his brother, according to which both are to rule in conjunction, is admitted into alexandria. antiochus, bitterly enraged, now declares war against both brothers, who crave assistance from rome: he once more penetrates into egypt, ; where the roman ambassador, popillius, assumes so lofty a tone, that the syrian king is glad to purchase peace by the surrender of cyprus and pelusium. . the religious intolerance of epiphanes, exhibited in his wish to introduce the grecian worship everywhere among the subjects of his empire, is the more remarkable, as such instances were less frequent in those times. this intolerance seems to have taken its rise, not only in the love of pomp, but in the cupidity of the king, who by that means was enabled to appropriate to himself the treasures of the temples, no longer inviolate, since the defeat of his father by rome. the consequent sedition of the jews, under the maccabees, laid the foundation of the future independence of that people, and contributed not a little to weaken the syrian kingdom. see below; history of the jews, book iv. per. iv; small states jews, parag. . the deep decay of the finances of the seleucidæ, palpable from the latter days of antiochus the great, may be accounted for well enough, by the falling off of the revenue, accompanied with increased luxury in the kings, (an instance of which is furnished in the festivals celebrated by antiochus epiphanes at daphne, ,) and in the vast presents constantly sent to rome, in addition to the tribute, for the purpose of keeping up a party there. . his expedition also into upper asia, persis especially, where great disorders were likewise excited by the introduction of the grecian religion, had for its object not only the recovery of armenia, but the rifling of the temples. he died, however, on his way to babylon. . the real heir to the throne, demetrius, being detained at rome as an hostage, epiphanes was first succeeded by his son antiochus v. surnamed eupator, a child nine years old. during his short reign, the quarrels of his guardians, the despotism of the romans, the protracted war with the jews, and the commencing conquests of the parthians, reduced the kingdom of the seleucidæ to a powerless state. contest between lysias, regent in the absence of epiphanes, and philip, appointed by the king, previously to his death, as guardian of the young prince, terminated by the defeat of philip, .--eupator's right acknowledged at rome, in order that the guardianship might fall into the hands of the senate, who administer the government by means of a commission sent over into syria, and completely deprive the king of all power of resistance. octavius, head of the commission, put to death, probably at the instigation of lysias.--while the parthian king, mithridates i. is prosecuting his conquests at the expense of the syrian kingdom in upper asia, demetrius secretly escapes out of rome, takes possession of the throne, and causes eupator and lysias to be put to death, . . demetrius i. surnamed soter. he succeeded in getting himself acknowledged at rome, on which all now depended. the attempts to extend his power, by supporting orofernes, the pretender to the crown of cappadocia, against the king ariarathes, had their origin partly in family relations, but still more, as was the case with almost all political transactions of those times, in bribery. by this act he only drew upon himself the enmity of the kings of egypt and pergamus; as, moreover, he was hated by his subjects on account of his intemperance, the chances of success were greatly in favour of the shameful usurpation of alexander balas, brought about by heraclidas the expelled governor of babylon, and backed by the yet more shameful conduct of the roman senate, who acknowledged his title to the throne. the syrian kingdom was now fallen so low, that both king and usurper were obliged to court the favour of the jews under jonathan, hitherto regarded as rebels. in the second battle demetrius lost his life. . the usurper alexander balas endeavoured to confirm his power by a marriage with cleopatra, daughter of ptolemy philometor: but he soon evinced himself more unworthy even than his predecessor of wielding the sceptre. while he abandoned the government to his favourite, the detested ammonius, the eldest remaining son of demetrius succeeds not only in raising a party against the usurper, but even in prevailing on philometor to side with himself, and give him in marriage cleopatra, whom he takes away from balas. the consequence of this alliance with egypt was the defeat and downfal of balas, although it cost philometor his life. the account, that philometor wished to conquer syria for himself, must probably be understood as meaning that he had formed the design of recovering the ancient egyptian possessions, coele-syria and phoenicia. otherwise, why should he have given his daughter to a second pretender to the throne? . demetrius ii. surnamed nicator, - , and for the second time, - . the disbanding of his father's mercenaries having roused the indignation of the army, the cruelty of his favourite lasthenes kindled a sedition in the capital, which could not be quenched without the assistance of the jews, under their high priest and military chieftain, jonathan.--while affairs were in this posture, diodotus, subsequently called tryphon, a dependent of balas, excited an insurrection, by bringing forward antiochus, the latter's son, and even, with the help of jonathan, seating him on the throne of antioch: soon after, tryphon, having by treachery got jonathan into his power, removed antiochus by murder, and assumed the diadem himself.--notwithstanding demetrius kept his footing only in a part of syria, he was enabled to obey the call of the grecian colonists in upper asia, and support them against the parthians, who had overrun the country as far as the euphrates.--although victorious in the commencement of the contest, he was soon after taken by the parthians, and remained ten years a prisoner, though treated meanwhile as a king. . in order to maintain herself against tryphon, cleopatra marries the younger, and better brother, antiochus of sida, (sidetes); he being at first in alliance with the jews,--who, however, were soon after subdued--defeats and overthrows tryphon. being now lord and master of syria, he undertakes a campaign against the parthians; at the commencement, befriended by the subjects of the parthians, he is successful, but soon afterwards is attacked in winter quarters by those very friends, and cut to pieces, together with all his army. if the accounts of the wanton licentiousness of his army are not exaggerations, they furnish the clearest proof of the military despotism of those times. by continued pillage and extortion, the wealth of the country had been collected in the hands of the soldiers; and the condition of syria must have been pretty nearly the same as that of egypt under the mamluk sultans. . meanwhile demetrius ii. having escaped from prison, again seated himself on the throne. but being now still more overbearing than before, and meddling in the egyptian affairs, ptolemy physcon set up against him a rival in the person of alexander zebinas a pretended son of alexander balas; by him he was defeated and slain. the parthian king phraates ii. had, at first, liberated demetrius, to whom his sister rhodogune was united by marriage, in order that, by appearing in syria, he might oblige antiochus to retreat. antiochus having fallen, phraates would fain have recaptured demetrius, but he escaped. . the ensuing history of the seleucidæ is a picture of civil wars, family feuds, and deeds of horror, such as are scarcely to be paralleled. the utmost verge of the empire was now the euphrates; all upper asia acknowledging the dominion of the parthians. the jews, moreover, having completely vindicated their independence, the kingdom was consequently confined to syria and phoenicia. so thoroughly decayed was the state, that even the romans--whether because there was no longer anything to plunder, or because they conceived it more prudent to suffer the seleucidæ to wear themselves out in mutual quarrels--do not seem to have taken any account of it, until, at the conclusion of the last war with mithridates, they thought proper formally to annex it to their empire as a province. war between alexander zebinas and the ambitious relict of demetrius, cleopatra, who with her own hand murders her eldest son seleucus, b.c. , for pretending to the crown, which she now gives to her younger son, antiochus gryphus; the new king, however, soon saw himself compelled to secure his own life by the murder of his mother, ; alexander zebinas having been the year before, , defeated and put to death. after a peaceful rule of eight years, - , antiochus gryphus is involved in war with his half-brother antiochus cyzicenus, son of cleopatra by antiochus sidetes: it ends, , in a partition of territory. but the war between the brothers soon burst out anew, and just as this hapless kingdom seemed about to crumble into pieces, gryphus was murdered, .--seleucus, the eldest of his five sons, having beaten and slain cyzicenus, ; the eldest son of the latter, antiochus eusebes, prosecuted the war against the sons of gryphus; eusebes being at last defeated, , the surviving sons of gryphus fell to war among themselves, and the struggle continued until the syrians, weary of bloodshed, did what they ought to have done long before, viz. made over the sovereign power to tigranes the king of armenia, . yet eusebes's widow, selene, retained ptolemais till ; and her elder son antiochus asiaticus, at the time that tigranes was beaten by lucullus, in the mithridatic war, took possession of some provinces in syria, ; these were wrested from him after the total defeat of mithridates by pompey, when tigranes was obliged to give up his claim, and syria became a province of the roman empire, . antiochus asiaticus died ; his brother seleucus cybiosactes, having married berenice, was raised to the egyptian throne, but murdered at her command, ; and thus the family of the seleucidæ was completely swept away. ii. _history of the egyptian kingdom under the ptolemies, - ._ the sources of this history are for the most part the same as in the foregoing section; see above, p. ; but unfortunately still more scanty; for in the first place, less information can here be derived from the jewish writers; secondly, as on the coins struck under the ptolemies no continuous series of time is marked, but only the year of the king's reign, they are by no means such safeguards to the chronology as those of the seleucidæ. with respect to some few events, important illustrations are supplied by inscriptions. by modern writers, the history of the ptolemies has been composed under a form almost entirely chronological, and by no means treated of in the spirit which it deserves. vaillant, _historia ptolemæorum_, fol. amstelodam. . illustration by the aid of coins. champolion figeac, _annales des lagides, ou chronologie des rois d'egypte, successeurs d'alexandre le grand_. paris, , vols. this treatise, which was honoured with a prize by the académie des inscriptions, has by no means exhausted the whole of the subject. see j. saint-martin, _examen critique de l'ouvrage de_ m. ch. f. _intitulé annales des lagides_. paris, . letronne, _recherches pour servir à l'histoire de l'egypte pendant la domination des grecs et des romains, tirées des inscriptions grecques et latines, relatives à la chronologie, à l'etat des arts aux usages civils et religieux de ce pays_. paris, . it cannot be denied that the author has thrown a much clearer light on the subjects mentioned in his title. . egypt, under the ptolemies, fulfilled, and perhaps more than fulfilled, the designs projected by alexander; it became not only a mighty kingdom, but likewise the centre of trade, and of science. the history of egypt, however, confines itself, almost solely, to that of the new capital, alexandria; the foundation of that city produced, imperceptibly, a change in the national character, which never could have been wrought by main force. in the enjoyment of civil welfare and religious freedom, the nation sunk into a state of political drowsiness, such as could scarce have been expected in a people who so often rose up against the persians. alexandria, originally, was no doubt a military colony; it was not long, however, before it became a general place of resort for all nations, such as was scarcely to be met with in any other town of that day. the inhabitants were divided into three classes; _alexandrines_, (that is to say, foreigners of all nations, who had settled in the place; next to the greeks, the jews were, it appears, the most numerous,) _egyptians_, and _mercenaries_ in the king's service. the greeks and macedonians divided into wards ([greek: phylas]), constituted the citizens; they were under municipal government; the others, such as the jews, formed bodies corporate according to their respective nations. the more important, in so many respects, that alexandria is for history, the more it is to be regretted that the accounts respecting it, which have reached us, are so far from satisfactory!--concerning the topography of ancient alexandria: bonamy, _description de la ville d'alexandrie_ in the _mém. de l'académie des inscript._ vol. ix. compare: # j. l. f. manso, _letters upon ancient alexandria_, in his _vermischte schriften_, vol. i. . ptolemy i. surnamed soter, the son of lagus, received egypt for his share, at the first division after the death of alexander. aware of the value of his lot, he was the only one of alexander's successors that had the moderation not to aim at grasping all. no doubt he was, by the ambition of the other princes, entangled in their quarrels, but his conduct was so cautious, that egypt itself was never endangered. twice attacked in that country, first by perdiccas, afterwards by antigonus and demetrius, he availed himself successfully of his advantageous position, and moreover, in this period, added to his dominion several countries without africa, such as phoenicia, judæa, coele-syria, and cyprus. the possession of phoenicia and coele-syria, by reason of their forests, was of indispensable necessity to egypt as a naval power. they frequently changed masters. the first occupation of those provinces by the egyptian government, occurred in , soon after the rout of perdiccas by ptolemy's general nicanor, who took the syrian satrap laomedon prisoner, established his footing in the whole of syria, and placed garrisons in the phoenician cities. in it was again lost to antigonus, after his return out of upper asia, and the siege of tyre. ptolemy having defeated demetrius at gaza, , repossessed himself of those countries, but soon after evacuated them on the appearance of antigonus, to whom they were ceded by the peace of . at the conclusion of the last grand league against antigonus, , ptolemy once more occupied them: but alarmed at a false report, that antigonus had gained a victory, he retreated into egypt, leaving nevertheless troops in the cities. after the battle of ipsus, , those countries were made over to him, and continued in the hands of the ptolemies until they were lost at the second invasion of antiochus the great, . cyprus, (see p. ) like most other islands, acknowledged submission to those who possessed the sovereignty of the sea, and therefore could not escape the dominion of the ptolemies. it was taken possession of by ptolemy as early as . still the separate cities of the islands preserved their kings, among whom nicocles of paphos, having entered into a secret league with antigonus, was put to death, . after the great seafight, , cyprus fell into the hands of antigonus and demetrius. subsequently to the battle of ipsus, , it remained indeed at first in the power of demetrius; but that prince being gone over to macedonia, ptolemy, , seized an opportunity of recovering it, and the island from that time remained under the dominion of egypt. availing themselves of their naval strength, the egyptian kings frequently exerted sovereign power over the coasts of asia minor, especially cilicia, caria, and pamphylia, which appear to have absolutely formed a part of their territory under the second ptolemy. it is, however, hardly possible to define with accuracy what were their real possessions in those quarters. . ptolemy likewise extends his territory within africa, by the capture of cyrene; in consequence of which libya, or the neighbouring countries betwixt cyrene and egypt, fell under his dominion. it is probable, also, that even in his reign the frontier of the egyptian empire was advanced into Æthiopia; but for this assertion we have no positive authority. the fall of cyrene was brought about by domestic broils: at the time the place was besieged by thimbron, a portion of the exiled nobles fled to ptolemy; the egyptian prince commanded that they should be reinstated by his general ophellas, who took possession of the town itself, . an insurrection in was quelled by agis, ptolemy's general: nevertheless it would appear that ophellas had almost established his independence, when, by the treachery of agathocles, with whom he had entered into a league against carthage, he perished, about . cyrene was now seized by ptolemy, and given to his son magas, who ruled over it fifty years. . with respect to the internal government of egypt, our information is far from complete. the division into districts or nomes was continued; subject perhaps, in some cases, to alterations. the power of the king appears to have been unlimited; the extreme provinces were administered by governors, appointed by the sovereign; similar officers were probably placed at the head of the various districts of egypt itself; but hardly any document relative to the home department of that country has reached our time. high public situations, at least in the capital, appear exclusively reserved to macedonians or greeks; no egyptian is ever mentioned as holding office. there were four magistrates at alexandria: the exegetes, whose office was to provide for the wants of the city; the chief judge; the hypomnematographus--(registrar of the archives?)--and the [greek: stratêgos nykterinos], no doubt, the supervisor of the police, whose duty it was to watch over the peace of the city at night. we have the express testimony of strabo, that these offices, which continued under the romans, had already existed under the kings; whether their establishment can be dated as far back as the time of ptolemy i. is a question that does not admit of a solution.--the number of the districts or nomes appears to have been augmented; probably with a political view, in order that no governor or monarch should be invested with too great a share of power. . be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact, that the ancient national constitution and administration were not entirely obliterated. the caste of priests, together with the national religion, continued to exist; and though the influence of the former was considerably diminished, it did not entirely cease. a certain sort of worship was, by appointed priests, paid to the kings, both in their lifetime and after their death. memphis, though not the usual residence of the court, remained the capital of the kingdom; there the ceremony of coronation was performed; and its temple of phtha was still the head sanctuary. what influence had not the religion of the egyptians upon that of the greeks! it were difficult to say which nation borrowed most from the other. . the regeneration of egypt from the state of general ruin into which she had been plunged, and the permanent tranquillity she enjoyed during nearly thirty years, the duration of the reign of ptolemy i.--at a time when the rest of the world was harassed by continual wars,--must have heightened her prosperity under so mild and beneficent a ruler. but ptolemy was certainly the only prince who could have taken advantage of these favourable circumstances. though a soldier by profession he was highly accomplished, was himself a writer, and had a genius for all the arts of peace, which he fostered with the open-handed liberality of a king: while amidst all the brilliant splendour of his court, he led himself the life of a private individual. increase of alexandria by the importation of vast numbers of colonists; especially jews.--erection of several superb buildings, more particularly the serapeum.--measures taken for the extension of trade and navigation.--the twofold harbour on the sea, and on the lake mareotis.--the pharus built. . but what more than any thing else distinguished ptolemy from his contemporaries was his regard for the interests of science. the idea of founding the museum sprung out of the necessities of the age, and was suited to the monarchical form of government now prevalent. where in those days of destruction and revolution could the sciences have found a shelter, if not under the protection of a prince? but under ptolemy they found more than a shelter, they found a rallying point. here accordingly the exact sciences were perfected: and although the critic's art which now grew up could not form a homer or a sophocles, should _we_, had it not been for the alexandrines, be at present able to read either homer or sophocles? foundation of the museum, (society of the learned,) and of the first library in bruchium, (afterwards removed to the serapeum;) probably under the direction of demetrius phalereus. a proper estimation of the services rendered by the museum is yet wanting: what academy in modern europe, however, has done so much? heyne, _de genio sæculi ptolemæorum_. _in opuscul._ t. i. matter, _essai historique sur l'école d'alexandrie_, . . ptolemy ii. surnamed philadelphus, son of berenice, the second wife of his father, had ascended the throne in as joint king. his reign, which lasted thirty-eight years, was more peaceful even than that of his predecessor, whose spirit seemed to inspire him in every thing, save that he was not a warrior: but, by that very reason, the arts of peace, trade, and science were promoted with the greater energy. in his reign egypt was the first power by sea, and one of the first by land, in the world; and even though the account given by theocritus of its thirty-three thousand cities may be regarded as the exaggeration of a poet, it is very certain that egypt was in those days the most flourishing country in existence. the commerce of alexandria was divided into three main branches: . the land-trade over asia and africa. . the sea-trade on the mediterranean. . the sea-trade on the arabian gulf, and indian ocean.--with regard to the land-trade of asia, especially that of india carried on by caravans, alexandria was obliged to share it with various cities and countries: since one of its chief routes traversed the oxus, and caspian, to the black sea; while the caravans, travelling through syria and mesopotamia, spread for the most part among the seaports of phoenicia and asia minor.--the trade over africa extended far west, and still farther south. westward it was secured by the close connection between cyrene and alexandria; and no doubt followed the same roads as in earlier times: of far greater importance was that carried on with the southern countries, or Æthiopia, into the interior of which they now penetrated, principally for the purpose of procuring elephants. the navigation on the arabian and indian seas had likewise for its immediate object the Æthiopian trade, rather than the indian.--the measures taken by ptolemy with this view, consisted partly in the building of harbours (berenice, myos hormos) on the arabian gulf; partly in establishing a caravan from berenice to coptos on the nile, down which latter the goods were further transmitted to their destination; for the canal connecting the red sea with the nile, although, perhaps, completed at this time, was nevertheless but little used. the grand deposit for these wares was the lesser harbour of alexandria, united by a canal with the lake mareotis, which in its turn communicated by another canal with the nile; so that the account we receive of the lesser harbour being more thronged and full of bustle than the larger one, need not excite our surprise. with regard to the trade on the mediterranean, it was shared between alexandria, rhodes, corinth, and carthage. the chief manufactories appear to have been those of cotton stuffs, established in or near the temples. the best inquiry into the trade of alexandria will be found in j. c. d. de schmidt, _opuscula, res maxime aegyptiorum illustrantia_, , vo. . it would be important to know what, in a state like egypt, was the system of imposts, which under philadelphus produced , silver talents, (four millions sterling,) without taking into account the toll paid in grain. in the extreme provinces, such as palestine, the taxes were annually farmed to the highest bidder, a mode of levy attended with great oppression to the people. the case appears to have been very different with regard to egypt itself; the customs, however, constituted the main branch of the revenue. . the wars waged by ptolemy ii. were limited to those against antiochus ii. of syria, and magas of cyrene, half-brother to the egyptian king; the former sprung out of the latter. luckily for egypt, ptolemy ii. was of a weak constitution, and by his state of health was incapacitated from commanding his armies in person.--under his reign the first foundation was laid, by means of reciprocal embassies, of that connection with rome which afterwards decided the fate of egypt. magas had, after the defeat of ophellas, received cyrene, . he had married apame, daughter of antiochus i., and in had raised the standard of rebellion with the intention of invading egypt itself, when an insurrection in marmarica compelled him to retreat; he contrived, notwithstanding, to prevail upon his father-in-law to undertake an expedition against egypt, which, however, was frustrated by philadelphus, . to terminate this contest, magas was about to unite his daughter berenice with the eldest son of philadelphus; apame, wishing to thwart the negotiation, fled over to her brother, antiochus ii. whom, after her husband's death, , she excited to a war against egypt, which closed in .--the embassy to rome originated in the victory won by the romans over pyrrhus, ; it was answered by another from the romans, . . the son inherited from his father all but the simplicity of domestic life: under the reign of philadelphus, the court was first thrown open to that effeminate luxury, which soon wrought the destruction of the ptolemies as it had previously done that of the seleucidæ; at the same time was introduced the pernicious practice of intermarriages in the same family, by which the royal blood was more foully contaminated here even than in syria. philadelphus set the first example, by repudiating arsinoe the daughter of lysimachus, and then marrying his own sister, likewise named arsinoe; this princess preserved her influence over the king as long as she lived, although she did not bring him an heir, but adopted the children of her predecessor. . ptolemy iii. surnamed evergetes. under him, egypt, from being merely mercantile, assumed the character of a conquering state; notwithstanding his warlike spirit, he was not uninspired with that genius for the arts of peace peculiar to his family. his conquests were directed partly against asia in the war with seleucus ii. and extended as far as the borders of bactria; and partly, it is probable, against the interior of ethiopia, and the western coast of arabia. countries so wealthy, and with which commerce had made men so well acquainted, could hardly escape the arms of such a formidable power as egypt; yet she seems to have made scarcely any other use of this extension of territory, than to insure the safety of her commercial routes. the main source of the history of ptolemy evergetes, is the inscription on the monument erected by that prince at adule in ethiopia: it contains a chronological list of his conquests, a copy of which has been preserved to us by cosmas indicopleustes; modern researches, however, have shown the probability of its having consisted of two inscriptions, one referring to evergetes, the other to a later king of abyssinia.--according to this monument, ptolemy inherited from his father, besides egypt itself, libya, that is to say, western africa as far as cyrene, coele-syria, phoenicia, lycia, caria, cyprus, and the cyclades.--war with seleucus callinicus caused by the murder of berenice (see above, p. .); lasted until the ten years' truce, - . during this war, he conquered the whole of syria as far as the euphrates, and most of the maritime countries in asia minor, from cilicia to the hellespont: an easy prey to a naval power. whether the conquest of the countries beyond the euphrates, mesopotamia, babylonia, persis, susiana, and media as far as bactria, was effected in these four years, or not till between and , is a question which cannot be determined with certainty. if we may judge by the booty brought back, this campaign was rather a foray than a regular expedition for conquest, though ptolemy, indeed, appointed governors in cilicia and babylonia; yet the peculiar situation of affairs in asia at the time, seleucus being at war with his brother antiochus hierax, and the parthian and bactrian kingdoms being also in a state of infant feebleness, afforded unusual opportunities for an expedition of this sort. the southern conquests, so far as they may be referred to evergetes, were effected during the last period of his reign, in a separate war. they comprised: st. the greatest part of modern abyssinia,--for as the catalogue of nations commences with that of abyssinia, it necessarily follows that nubia had already been subjected to egypt.--the mountain range along the arabian gulf, the plain of sennaar as far as modern darfur, the lofty chain of mountains to the south, beyond the fountains of the nile. all these conquests were made by the king in person; and from those distant lands to egypt, commercial roads were opened. nd. the western coast of arabia, from leuke kome to the southern point of arabia felix, was conquered by his generals and admirals: here, likewise, the security of the commercial roads was established. _monumentum adulitanum_, published in fabricius, _b. græc._ t. ii. montfaucon, _coll. patr._ t. i. and in chishull, _antiquit. asiaticæ_. the assertion that the monument bears two different inscriptions is made by salt, in the narrative of his travels contained in the _travels of lord valentia_. . egypt was singularly blessed in having three great kings, whose reigns filled one whole century. a change now ensued; but that change was brought about by the natural course of events; in fact, it could scarcely be expected that the court should remain untainted by such luxury as must have prevailed in a city, which was the main seat of trade, and the deposit of the treasures of the richest countries. . ptolemy iv. surnamed philopator. a debauchee and a tyrant, who, during the greater portion of his reign, remained under the tutelage of the crafty sosibius, and, after the decease of that individual, fell into the yet more infamous hands of agathocles and his sister agathoclea. philopator being contemporary with antiochus the great, the dangers that threatened egypt under such a reign seemed to be doubled; they were, however, averted by the ill-deserved victory of raphia (see above, p. ). . agathocles and his sister would fain have taken into their own hands the guardianship of his son ptolemy v. surnamed epiphanes, a child only five years old; but the people having risen up and made a terrible example of them, the office of guardian was confided to the younger sosibius and to tlepolemus. the reckless prodigality of the former soon gave rise to a feud between him and his colleague, who was at least cunning enough to keep up appearances. meanwhile the critical posture in which the kingdom was placed, by the attack of the enleagued kings of syria and macedonia, compelled the nation to defer the regency to rome and the senate, who had hitherto carefully cherished an amicable connection with egypt. the regency confided to m. lepidus, , who hands over the administration to aristomenes of acarnania. the sequel will show how decidedly important this step was for the ulterior destinies of egypt. by the war of the romans against philip, and their differences with antiochus, egypt was, no doubt, for the present extricated from her embarrassment; but nevertheless in she lost her syrian possessions, notwithstanding antiochus iii. had promised to give them as a dowry to cleopatra, the affianced bride, and subsequently the consort of the young king of egypt. to this time, or about , belongs the celebrated inscription on the rosetta stone, erected by the caste of priests as a tribute of gratitude for past benefits, after the consecration of the king at memphis upon his coming of age: a monument important alike for palæography, and for the knowledge of egyptian administration. ameilhon, _eclaircissemens sur l'inscription grecque du monument trouvé à rosette_. paris, . heyne, _commentatio de inscriptione græca ex aegypto londinum apportata_, in the _commentat. societ. gotting._ vol. xv. . the hopes conceived of epiphanes, were grievously disappointed as he grew up to manhood. his guardian aristomenes fell a victim to his tyranny; nay, his cruelty drove even the patient egyptians to rebel, although the insurrections were stilled by his counsellor and general polycrates. his reign happened during the period in which rome crushed the power of macedonia and syria; and notwithstanding the close alliance between epiphanes and antiochus iii. the romans succeeded in holding the egyptian king in dependence; he was, however, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, brought to an early grave by intemperance and debauchery. . of his two sons, the elder, a child five years old, was his immediate successor; this prince, by the title of ptolemy vi. surnamed philometor, ascended the throne under the guardianship of his mother cleopatra, who fulfilled the duties of her office to the satisfaction of all, until . but, after her death, the regency having fallen into the hands of eulæus an eunuch, and lenæus, these individuals, asserting their claims to coele-syria and phoenicia, engaged with antiochus epiphanes in a war exceedingly detrimental to egypt, until rome commanded peace to be made. antiochus, after the victory of pelusium, b. c. , and the treacherous surrender of cyprus, having possessed himself of egypt as far as alexandria, a faction arose in the city; philometor was expelled, and his younger brother physcon seated on the throne, .--the exile philometor fell into the power of antiochus, who compelled the fugitive to sign a separate peace, highly injurious to the interests of egypt. the articles were not, however, ratified; philometor secretly entering into an agreement with his brother that they should both rule in common, . antiochus having in consequence again made an inroad into egypt, the two kings addressed themselves for assistance to the achæans and to the romans: the latter forthwith despatched an embassy to antiochus, commanding him to evacuate the territory of their allies, which happened accordingly, . . in the contest, which soon afterwards ensued between the two brothers, the younger was driven out and sought a refuge at rome; when a partition of the kingdom between the princes was determined upon: the senate, however, after due consideration, refused to confirm the decision, so that the disputes between the two kings were rekindled and protracted, until the younger fell into the power of the elder. in the first division, , philometor received egypt and cyprus; and the infamous physcon had for his share cyrene and libya. but, during his stay at rome, physcon, contrary to all justice, obtained the promise of cyprus; philometor refusing to give up that portion of his share, and cyrene having risen up against its king, physcon ran the risk of losing the whole of his dominions. in the war which, supported by rome, he waged against his brother, physcon fell, , into the hands of philometor, who not only forgave him, but, leaving him in possession of cyrene and libya, added some cities in the place of cyprus, and promised him his daughter in marriage. . during the last period of his reign, philometor was almost exclusively busied with syrian affairs. he supported alexander balas against demetrius, and even gave him his daughter cleopatra. nevertheless, he afterwards passed over to the side of demetrius, seated him on the throne, gave him in marriage this same cleopatra, who had been taken away from balas. but in the battle in which balas was overthrown, the egyptian king also received his death wound. he may be regarded as one of the good princes of the ptolemaic dynasty, especially if compared with his brother. . his younger brother ptolemy viii. surnamed physcon, and likewise evergetes ii. a monster both in a moral and a physical sense, who had hitherto been king of cyrene, now possessed himself of the throne of egypt by marrying his predecessor's widow and sister, cleopatra, whom, however, after having murdered her son, he repudiated for her daughter of the same name. this prince accordingly, once more united the divided kingdom; but at the same time that he was purchasing the sanction of rome by vile adulation, he maintained himself at alexandria by means of military law, which soon converted the city into a desert, and obliged him to attract foreign colonists by large promises. another bloody massacre, however, produced an insurrection in the town, which compelled the king to flee to cyprus, the alexandrines, meanwhile, raising to the throne his repudiated wife cleopatra. physcon, nevertheless, with the assistance of his mercenaries, recovered the sceptre, and wielded it to the day of his death. that a prince of such a character should nevertheless be a friend to science, and himself an author, must ever be regarded as a singular phenomenon; yet his exaction of manuscripts, and his treatment of the learned, whole crowds of whom he expelled, betray the despot. . his widow, the younger cleopatra, to gratify the alexandrines, was obliged to place on the throne the elder of her two sons, ptolemy ix. surnamed lathyrus, who was living in a sort of banishment at cyprus: to the younger, ptolemy alexander i. who was her favourite, she accordingly gave the island of cyprus. but lathyrus not choosing to obey her in everything, she compelled him to exchange egypt for cyprus, and gave the former to her younger son. but neither was the new king able to brook the tyranny of his mother: as she threatened even his life, he saw no other means of escape than to anticipate her design; but failing in his project, he was obliged to take to flight, and, after a vain attempt to recover the throne, perished. the alexandrines then reinstated in the government his elder brother lathyrus, who ruled till the year , possessing both egypt and cyprus. revolt and three years' siege of thebes in upper egypt, still one of the most wealthy cities even in those days, but after its capture almost levelled to the earth; about .--complete separation of cyrenaica from egypt: this province had been bequeathed by physcon as a separate branch-state to his illegitimate son, apion, ; that prince, after a tranquil reign, bequeathed it, in his turn, to the romans, , who at first allowed it to retain its independence. . lathyrus left one daughter born in wedlock, berenice, and two illegitimate sons, ptolemy of cyprus and ptolemy auletes. besides the above, there was a lawful son of alexander i. of the same name as his father, and at that time residing at rome with the dictator sylla. the following history is obscured by clouds, which, amid the contradiction of accounts, cannot be entirely dispelled. generally speaking, egypt was now a tool in the hands of powerful individuals at rome, who regarded it but as a financial speculation whether they actually supported a pretender to the egyptian crown, or fed him with vain hopes. all now saw that egypt presented a ripe harvest; but they could not yet agree by whom that harvest should be reaped. the first successor of lathyrus in egypt was his legitimate daughter cleopatra berenice, : at the end of six months, however, sylla, then dictator at rome, sent his client alexander ii. to egypt, ; that prince married berenice, and with her ascended the throne. nineteen days after alexander murdered his consort, and, according to appian, was himself about the same time cut off by the alexandrines, on account of his tyranny. we afterwards hear, notwithstanding, of a king alexander, who reigned until , or, according to others, until ; when, being driven out of egypt, he fled to tyre, and called upon the romans for that aid, which probably through cæsar's intercession, would have been granted, had not the supplicant soon after died at the place of his refuge. he is said to have bequeathed by will his kingdom to rome; and although the senate did not accept the legacy, it does not appear to have formally rejected the offer; in consequence of which, frequent attempts were made at rome for effecting the occupation.--either, therefore, appian's account must be false, and this person was the same alexander ii. or he was some other person bearing that name, and belonging to the royal house.--be this as it may, after the death of lathyrus the kingdom was dismembered: and one of his illegitimate sons, ptolemy, had received cyprus, but that island was taken from him, , and converted into a roman province: the other, ptolemy auletes, seems to have kept his footing either in a part of egypt, or in cyrene, and was probably the cause of alexander's expulsion, at whose decease he ascended the throne; although the syrian queen selene, sister to lathyrus, asserted her son's claims at rome, as legitimate heir to the throne of egypt. with cæsar's assistance, auletes, however, succeeded in obtaining the formal acknowledgment of his right at rome, . but the measures taken by the romans with regard to cyprus, gave rise to a sedition at alexandria, , in consequence of which auletes, being compelled to flee, passed over into italy: or, perhaps, he was ordered to take this step by the intrigues of some roman grandees, anxious of an opportunity to reinstate him. pompey's attempts, with this view, are thwarted by cato, . meanwhile the alexandrines placed berenice, the eldest daughter of auletes, on the throne; she married first seleucus cybiosactes, as being the lawful heir; and after putting that prince to death, united herself to archelaus, .--actual restoration of auletes by the purchased assistance of gabinius, the roman governor of syria; and execution of berenice, whose husband had fallen in the war, . not long after, this miserable prince, no less effeminate than tyrannical, died, . j. r. forster, _commentatio de successoribus ptolemæi vii._ inserted in _comment. soc. gotting._ vol. iii. . auletes endeavoured by his last testament to insure the kingdom to his posterity, nominating as his successor, under the superintendence of the roman nation, his two elder children. ptolemy dionysos, then thirteen years old, and cleopatra, seventeen, who were to be united in wedlock: his two younger children, ptolemy neoteros and arsinoe, he recommended to the roman senate. notwithstanding these measures, egypt would not have escaped her fate upwards of twenty years longer, had not the impending calamities been diverted by the internal posture of affairs at rome, and still more by the charms and policy of cleopatra, who through her alliance with cæsar and antony not only preserved but even aggrandized her kingdom. from this time, however, the history of egypt is most closely implicated with that of rome. feuds between cleopatra and her brother, excited and fomented by the eunuch pothinus, in whose hands the administration was: they lead to open war: cleopatra, driven out, flees to syria, where she levies troops: cæsar in pursuit of the conquered pompey arrives at alexandria, and in the name of rome, assumes the part of arbitrator between the king and queen, but suffers himself to be guided by the artifices of cleopatra, . violent sedition in alexandria, and cæsar besieged in bruchium, the malcontent pothinus having brought achillas, the commander of the royal troops into the city. the hard struggle in which cæsar was now engaged, demonstrates not only the bitterness of the long rankling grudge of the alexandrines against rome, but shows also how decisive, to the whole of egypt, were the revolutions of the capital. ptolemy dionysos having fallen in the war, and cæsar being victorious, the crown fell to cleopatra, , upon condition of marrying her brother, when he should be of age: but as soon as the prince grew to manhood, and had been crowned at memphis, she removed him by poison, . . during the life of cæsar, cleopatra remained under his protection, and consequently in a state of dependence. not only was a roman garrison stationed in the capital city, but the queen herself, together with her brother, were obliged to visit him at rome. after the assassination of cæsar, she took the side of the triumviri, not without endangering egypt, threatened by cassius who commanded in syria; and after the death of her brother, succeeded in getting them to acknowledge as king, ptolemy cæsarion, a son whom she pretended to have had by cæsar.--but the ardent passion conceived by antony for her person, soon after the discomfiture of the republican party, now attached her inseparably to his fortunes; which, after vainly attempting to win over the victorious octavius, she at last shared. the chronology of the ten years in which cleopatra lived, for the most part, with antony, is not without difficulty, but, according to the most probable authorities, may be arranged in the following manner. summoned before his tribunal, on account of the pretended support afforded by some of her generals to cassius, she appears in his presence at tarsus, in the attire, and with the parade, of venus, ; he follows her into egypt. in the year , antony, called back to italy by the breaking out of the perusine war, is there induced, by political motives, to espouse octavia; meanwhile cleopatra abides in egypt. in the autumn of , she goes to meet him in syria, where he was making ready for the war against the parthians, until then prosecuted by his lieutenants; here she obtained at his hands phoenicia--tyre and sidon excepted,--together with cyrene and cyprus; and in went back to alexandria, where she remained during the campaign. the expedition ended, antony returned into egypt and resided at alexandria. from thence it was his intention to attack armenia in ; this design, however, he did not effect until , when, after taking the king prisoner, he returned in triumph to alexandria, and presented to cleopatra, or to his three children by her, all the countries of asia from the mediterranean to the indus, already conquered or to be conquered. preparing then to renew, in conjunction with the king of media, his attack on the parthians, he is prevailed upon by cleopatra to break with octavia, who was to bring over troops to him, . a war between him and octavius being now unavoidable, the parthian campaign already opened is suspended, and cleopatra accompanies antony to samos, , where he formally repudiated octavia. from hence she followed him in his expedition against octavius, which was decided by the battle of actium, fought september , .--octavius having pursued his enemy into egypt, alexandria was besieged, , and after antony had laid violent hands on himself, the place surrendered; and cleopatra, not brooking to be dragged a prisoner to rome, followed the example of her lover, and procured her own death. . even in this last period, egypt appears to have been the seat of unbounded wealth and effeminacy. the line of infamous princes who had succeeded to the third ptolemy were unable to destroy her prosperity. strange, however, as this seems, it may be easily accounted for when we consider that the political revolutions scarcely ever overstepped the walls of the capital, and that an almost perpetual peace ruled in the country: that egypt was the only great theatre of trade; and that that trade must have increased in the same proportion as the spirit of luxury increased in rome, and in the roman empire. the powerful effects wrought on egypt by the growth of roman luxury, are most convincingly demonstrated by the state of that country when it had become a roman province; so far from the trade of alexandria decreasing in that period,--though the city suffered in the first days after the conquest--it subsequently attained an extraordinary and gigantic bulk. iii. _history of macedonia and of greece in general, from the death of alexander to the roman conquest, b. c. - ._ the sources for this history are the same as have been quoted above: see p. . until the battle of ipsus, , diodorus is still our grand authority. but in the period extending from to , we meet with some chasms: here almost our only sources are the fragments of diodorus, a few of plutarch's lives, and the inaccurate accounts of justin. from the year , our main historian is polybius; and even in those parts where we do not possess his work in its complete form, the fragments that have been preserved must always be the first authorities consulted. livy, and other writers on roman history, should accompany polybius. among modern books, besides the general works mentioned above p. . we may here in particular quote: john gast, d. d. _the history of greece, from the accession of alexander of macedon, till the final subjection to the roman power, in eight books._ london, , to. although not a master-piece of composition, yet too important to be passed over in silence. . of the three main kingdoms that arose out of alexander's monarchy, macedonia was the most insignificant, not only in extent,--particularly as till b. c. thrace remained a separate and independent province,--but likewise in population and wealth. yet, being, as it were, the head country of the monarchy, it was considered to hold the first rank; and here at first resided the power which, nominally at least, extended over the whole. as early, however, as the year , upon the total extermination of alexander's family, it became a completely separate kingdom. from that time its sphere of external operation was for the most part confined to greece, the history of which, consequently, is closely interwoven with that of macedonia. posture of affairs in greece at alexander's decease: thebes in ruins: corinth occupied by a macedonian garrison: sparta humiliated by the defeat she had suffered at the hands of antipater in her attempt at a revolt against macedonia, under agis ii. - : athens on the other hand flourishing, and although confined to her own boundaries, still by her fame, and her naval power, the first state in greece. . although at the first division of the provinces, craterus, as civil governor, was united with antipater, the latter had the management of affairs. and the termination, as arduous as it was successful, of the lamian war,--kindled immediately after the death of alexander, by the greeks, enthusiastic in the cause of freedom,--enabled him to rivet the chains of greece more firmly than they had ever been before. the lamian war--the sparks of which had been kindled by alexander's edict, granting leave to all the grecian emigrants, twenty thousand in number, nearly the whole of whom were in the macedonian interest, to return to their native countries,--was fanned to a flame by the democratic party at athens. urged by demosthenes and hyperides, almost all the states of central and northern greece, boeotia excepted, took up arms in the cause; and their example was quickly followed by most of those in peloponnesus, with the exception of sparta, argos, corinth, and the achæans. not even the persian war produced such general unanimity! the gallant leosthenes headed the league.--defeat of antipater, who is shut up in lamia; leosthenes, however, falls in the siege of that place, b. c. , and although leonatus--who with the view of ascending the throne by his marriage with cleopatra, had come to the assistance of the macedonians--was beaten and slain, , the greeks were finally overwhelmed by the reinforcements, brought to antipater out of asia, by craterus. and antipater having fully succeeded in breaking the league, and negotiating with each separate nation, was enabled to dictate the terms. most of the cities opened their gates to macedonian troops; besides this, athens was obliged to purchase peace through the mediation of phocion and demades, by an alteration in her constitution,--the poorer citizens being excluded from all share in the government, and for the most part translated into thrace--and by a pledge to deliver up demosthenes and hyperides; whose place phocion occupied at the head of the state.--the Ætolians, the last against whom the macedonian wars were directed, obtained better terms than they had ventured to expect, antipater and craterus being obliged to hurry over to asia in order to oppose perdiccas. . that hatred which, even in the lifetime of alexander, had sprung up between antipater and olympias, in consequence of his not permitting the dowager queen to rule, induced her to withdraw to epirus; her rankling envy being still more embittered by the influence of the young queen eurydice. see above, p. . antipater, dying shortly after his expedition against perdiccas, in which his colleague craterus had fallen, and he himself had been appointed regent, nominates his friend, the aged polysperchon, to succeed him as regent and head guardian, to the exclusion of his own son cassander. hence arose a series of quarrels between the two, in which, unfortunately for themselves, the royal family were implicated and finally exterminated, cassander obtaining the sovereignty of macedonia. cassander having secured the interest of antigonus and ptolemy, makes his escape to the former, : he had previously endeavoured also to raise a party in macedonia and greece, particularly by getting his friend nicanor to be commander at athens.--measures taken by polysperchon to oppose him; in the first place, he recalls olympias out of epirus, but the princess dares not come without an army; in the next place, he nominates eumenes commander of the royal troops in asia (see above, p. ); he likewise endeavours to gain the grecian cities, by recalling the macedonian garrisons, and changing the governors set over them by antipater. these latter, however, were in most of the cities too firmly established to suffer themselves thus to be deposed; and even the expedition into peloponnesus, undertaken by polysperchon to enforce his injunctions was attended but with partial success.--in the same year occurs a twofold revolution in athens, whither polysperchon had sent his son alexander, nominally for the purpose of driving out nicanor, but virtually to get possession of that important city. in the first place, alexander and nicanor appearing to unite both for the attainment of one and the same object, the democratic party rise up, and overthrow the rulers, hitherto taken from antipater's party, and headed by phocion, who is compelled to swallow poison: soon after, however, cassander occupies the city, excludes from the administration all that possess less than ten mines, and places at the head of affairs demetrius phalereus, who, from to , ruled with great prudence.--not long after, olympias returns with an army from epirus; the macedonian troops of philip and eurydice having passed over to her side, she wreaks her revenge on the royal couple, and on the brother of cassander, all of whom she puts to death, . cassander, nevertheless, having obtained reinforcements in peloponnesus, takes the field against her; she is besieged in pydna, where, disappointed in the hope of being relieved either by polysperchon or by Æacidas of epirus, both of whom were forsaken by their men, she is obliged to surrender, . cassander, having caused her to be condemned by the macedonian people, has her put to death. . cassander being now master, and, from , king of macedonia, confirmed his dominion by a marriage with thessalonice, half-sister to alexander, and at the same time endeavoured to corroborate as far as possible his authority in greece. polysperchon and his son alexander, it is true, still made head in peloponnesus; but the states without the peninsula, Ætolia excepted, were all either allies of cassander, or occupied by macedonian troops. after the defeat of the league against antigonus, in which cassander had borne a part, general peace was concluded, with the proviso, that the grecian cities should be free, and that the young alexander, when of age, should be raised to the throne of macedonia: this induced cassander to rid himself both of the young prince and his mother roxana by murder: but he thereby exposed himself to an attack from polysperchon, who, availing himself of the discontent of the macedonians, brought back hercules, the only remaining illegitimate son of alexander. cassander diverted the storm by a new crime, instigating polysperchon to murder the young hercules, under promise of sharing the government: polysperchon, however, unable to possess himself of the peloponnesus which had been promised him, appears to have preserved but little influence. cassander met likewise with formidable opponents in the persons of antigonus and his son; and although delivered by the breaking out of the war with ptolemy from the danger of the first invasion of greece by demetrius, his situation was more embarrassing at the second irruption; from which, however, he was extricated by the circumstance of antigonus being obliged to recall his son, on account of the newly formed league (see above, p. ). antigonus, on his return from upper asia, declares loudly against cassander, b. c. ; despatches his general aristodemus to peloponnesus, and frames a league with polysperchon and his son alexander; the latter, however, cassander succeeds in winning over by a promise of the command in peloponnesus. alexander was soon after murdered, but his wife cratesipolis succeeded him, and commanded with the spirit of a man. meanwhile, cassander carried war against the Ætolians, who sided with antigonus, ; but antigonus, , having sent his general ptolemy into greece with a fleet and army, cassander lost his supremacy. in the peace of , the freedom of all the grecian cities was stipulated; but this very condition became the pretext of various and permanent feuds; and cassander having murdered the young king, together with his mother, drew upon himself the arms of polysperchon, who wished to place hercules on the throne, ; but the pretender was removed in the manner above described, .--cassander now endeavouring to reestablish his power over greece, demetrius poliorcetes was by his father sent into that country in order to anticipate ptolemy of egypt, in the enforcement of the decree for the freedom of the greeks, ; the result at athens was the restoration of democracy, and the expulsion of demetrius phalereus.--from any further attack of demetrius, cassander was delivered by the war which broke out between antigonus and ptolemy, (see above, p. .) and had the leisure, once more, to strengthen his power in greece, until , when demetrius arrived a second time, and, as generalissimo of liberated greece, pressed forward to the borders of macedonia; demetrius was, however, recalled by his father into asia, and at the battle of ipsus, , lost all his dominions in that quarter of the world. yet although athens closed her harbours against him, he still maintained his possessions in peloponnesus, and even endeavoured to extend them; from thence, in , he sallied forth, and once more took possession of his beloved athens, and after driving out the usurper lachares, forgave her ingratitude. . cassander survived the establishment of his throne by the battle of ipsus only three years: and bequeathed macedonia as an inheritance to his three sons, the eldest of whom, philip, shortly after followed his father to the grave. . the two remaining sons, antipater and alexander, soon worked their own destruction. antipater having murdered his own mother thessalonice, on account of the favour she showed his brother, was obliged to flee; he applied for help to his father-in-law lysimachus of thrace, where he soon after died. meanwhile alexander, fancying that he likewise stood in need of foreign assistance, addressed himself to pyrrhus, king of macedonia, and to demetrius poliorcetes, both of whom obeyed the call only with the expectation of being paid. after various snares reciprocally laid for each other, the king of macedonia was murdered by demetrius, and with him the race of antipater became extinct. . the army proclaimed demetrius king; and in his person the house of antigonus ascended the throne of macedonia, and, after many vicissitudes, established their power. his seven years' reign, in which one project succeeded the other, was a constant series of wars; and as he never could learn how to bear with good fortune, his ambition was at last his ruin. the kingdom of demetrius comprised macedonia, thessaly, and the greatest part of the peloponnesus; he was also master of megara and athens.--twofold capture of thebes, which had been rebuilt by cassander, , and ; unsuccessful attempt upon thrace, . his war with pyrrhus, , in whom men fancied they beheld another alexander, had already alienated the affections of the macedonians; but his grand project for the recovery of asia induced his enemies to get the start of him; and the hatred of his subjects compelled him secretly to escape to peloponnesus, to his son antigonus, . athens, taking advantage of his misfortunes, drove out the macedonian garrison, and, by the election of archons, reestablished her ancient constitution; although demetrius laid siege to the town, he allowed himself to be pacified by crates. having once more attempted to prosecute his plans against asia, he was obliged, , to surrender to seleucus his father-in-law, who, out of charity, kept him till the day of his death, . . two claimants to the vacant throne now arose, viz. pyrrhus of epirus and lysimachus of thrace; but although pyrrhus was first proclaimed king, with the cession of half the dominions, he could not, being a foreigner, support his power any longer than the year , when he was deposed by lysimachus. the sovereigns of epirus, belonging to the family of the Æacidæ, were properly kings of the molossi. see above, p. . they did not become lords of all epirus, nor consequently of any historical importance, until the time of the peloponnesian war. after that period epirus was governed by alcetas i. about , who pretended to be the sixteenth descendant from pyrrhus, the son of achilles; neoptolemus, father to olympias, by whose marriage with philip, , the kings of epirus became intimately connected with macedonia, _d._ ; arymbas, his brother, _d._ ; alexander i. son of neoptolemus, and brother-in-law to alexander the great; he was ambitious to be as great a conqueror in the west as his kinsman was in the east, but he fell in lucania, . Æacides, son of arymbas, _d._ . pyrrhus ii. his son, the ajax of his time, and, we might almost say, rather an adventurer than a king. after uninterrupted wars waged in macedonia, greece, italy, and sicily, he fell at last at the storming of argos, . he was followed by his son alexander ii. in the person of whose successor, pyrrhus iii. , the male line became extinct. although the daughter of this last prince, deidamia, succeeded to the throne, the epirots were not long before they established a democratic government, which endured till such time as they were, together with macedonia and the rest of greece, brought under the roman yoke, . . in consequence of the accession of lysimachus, thrace, and for a short time even asia minor, were annexed to the macedonian kingdom. but rankling hatred and family relations soon afterwards involved lysimachus in a war with seleucus nicator, in which, at battle of curopedion, he lost both his throne and his life. execution of the gallant agathocles, eldest son of lysimachus, at the instigation of his step-mother arsinoe: his widow lysandra and her brother ptolemy ceraunus, who had already been driven out of egypt by his step-mother berenice, go over, followed by a large party, to seleucus, whom they excite to war. . the victorious seleucus, already lord of asia, now causing himself to be proclaimed likewise king of macedonia, it seemed as if that country was again about to become the head seat of the whole monarchy. but shortly after he had crossed over into europe, seleucus fell by the murderous hand of ptolemy ceraunus, who, availing himself of the treasures of his victim, and of the yet remaining troops of lysimachus, took possession of the throne; by another act of treachery he avenged himself of arsinoe, his half-sister; but just as he conceived himself securely established, he lost both his crown and his life by the irruption of the gauls into macedonia. the irruption of the gauls, threatening desolation not only to macedonia but to the whole of greece, took place in three successive expeditions. the first under cambaules, (probably ,) advanced no further than thrace, the invaders not being sufficiently numerous. the second in three bodies; against thrace under ceretrius; against pæonia under brennus and acichorius; against macedonia and illyria under belgius, . by the last-mentioned chieftain ptolemy was defeated; he fell in the contest. in consequence, meleager first, and antipater subsequently, were appointed kings of macedonia; but both, on account of incapacity, being soon afterwards deposed, a macedonian noble, sosthenes, assumed the command, and this time liberated his country. but the year brought with it the main storm, which spent its fury principally on greece: sosthenes was defeated and slain: and although the greeks brought all their united forces into the field, brennus and acichorius burst into greece on two different sides, and pushed on to delphi, the object of their expedition; from hence, however, they were compelled to retreat; and most of them were cut off by hunger, cold, or the sword. nevertheless a portion of those barbarians stood their ground in the interior of thrace, which, consequently, was for the most part lost to macedonia: another portion, consisting of various hordes, the tectosagæ, tolistobii, and trocmi, crossed over to asia minor, where they established themselves in the country called after them galatia (see above, p. ). although there can be no doubt that the tectosagæ must have come from the innermost parts of gaul, the mode of attack demonstrates that the main tide of invaders consisted of the neighbouring races; and, in fact, in those days the countries from the danube to the mediterranean and adriatic were mostly occupied by gauls.--greece, though she strained every nerve, and with the exception of peloponnesus, was united in one league, could scarcely bring forward more than , men to stem the torrent. . antigonus of gonni, son to demetrius, now seated himself on the vacant throne of desolated macedon; he bought off his competitor, antiochus i. named soter, by treaty and marriage. successfully as he opposed the new irruption of the gauls, he was dethroned by pyrrhus, who, on his return from italy, was a second time proclaimed king of macedonia. that prince, however, having formed the design of conquering the peloponnesus, and, after an ineffectual attack on sparta, which was repelled with heroic gallantry, wishing to take possession of argos, fell at the storming of the latter place. extraordinary as these frequent revolutions appear, they may be easily accounted for by the mode of warfare in those days. every thing depended on the armies; and these were composed of mercenaries, ever willing to fight against him they had defended the day before, if they fancied his rival to be a more valiant or fortunate leader. since the death of alexander, the macedonian phalanx was no longer dependent on its captains, but they on their men. the impoverishment of the countries, in consequence of war, was such, that the soldier's was almost the only profitable trade; and none prosecuted that trade more ardently than the gauls, whose services were ever ready for any one who chose to pay for them. . after the death of pyrrhus, antigonus gonnatas recovered the macedonian throne, of which he and his descendants kept uninterrupted possession, yet not till after a violent contest with alexander, the son and successor of pyrrhus. but no sooner were they secure from foreign rivals, than the macedonian policy was again directed against greece, and the capture of corinth seemed to insure the dependence of the whole country, when the formation of the Ætolian, and the yet more important achæan, league, gave rise to relations entirely new, and of the highest interest, even for the universal history of the world. after so many storms, the sun of greece was about to set in all his splendour! the ancient confederacy of the twelve achæan cities (see above, p. .) had subsisted until the death of alexander, but was dissolved in the subsequent commotions; particularly when, after the battle of ipsus, , demetrius and his son made peloponnesus the principal seat of their power. some of these cities were now garrisoned by those princes, while in others arose tyrants, generally favourable to their interests. in , four asserted their freedom and renewed the ancient federation; which, five years afterwards, was gradually joined by the rest, antigonus being busied elsewhere, in consequence of his occupation of the macedonian throne. but the league did not become formidable till the accession of foreign states. this took place, in the first instance, with sicyon, through the exertions of the liberator of that town, aratus, who now became the animating spirit of the federation; and in brought over corinth, after the expulsion of the macedonian garrison, and megara. afterwards the league gradually acquired strength, by the junction of several grecian cities, athens among others, ; and thereby excited the jealousy of the rest. and as aratus, who was more of a statesman than a general, and possessed but little independence, had in the very outset joined the party of ptolemy ii. the league soon became involved in the disputes of the great powers, and was too often but a mere tool in their hands. the main principles on which it was founded were the following: . complete political equality of all the federate cities; in this respect it essentially differed from all the earlier federations in greece. . unconditional preservation of the domestic government in every one of the cities. . the meeting twice a year of deputies from all the cities, at Ægium, and afterwards at corinth; for transacting all business of common interest, particularly foreign affairs, and also for the purpose of electing the strategus, or military leader and head of the union, and the ten demiurgi, or supreme magistrates.--but what more than all contributed to exalt this league, founded on pure liberty, was the virtue of aratus, , philopoemen, , and lycortas, ; men who breathed into it the spirit of union, until, enfeebled by roman policy, it was overthrown. # breitenbauch, _history of the achæans and their league_, . the Ætolian league was formed about , in consequence of the oppressions of the macedonian kings. the Ætolians had likewise a yearly congress, panætolium, at thermus; where they chose a strategus and the apocleti, who constituted the state council. they had, besides, their secretary, [greek: grammateus]; and supervisors, [greek: ephoroi], whose particular functions are, however, matter of doubt. this federation did not increase like the achæan, none but Ætolians being admitted. the more unpolished this piratical nation remained, the more frequently it was used as the tool of foreign, and particularly of roman, policy. . antigonus, in the latter part of his reign, had recourse to various means, and more especially to an alliance with the Ætolians, for the purpose of counterpoising the achæans. he died in his eightieth year, and was succeeded by his son, demetrius ii. who waged war upon the Ætolians, now, however, supported by the achæans; and endeavoured to repress the growth of the latter, by favouring the tyrants of particular cities. the remainder of the reign of this prince is little more than a chasm in history. the vulgar assertion that this prince conquered cyrene and libya, originates in a confusion of names; his uncle demetrius, son of poliorcetes of ptolemais, being mentioned by plutarch as king of cyrene. the history of that town, from to , is enveloped in almost total darkness: cf. prolog. trogi, l. xxvi. ad calcem justini. . demetrius's son philip was passed over; his brother's son, antigonus ii. surnamed doson, being raised to the throne. this king was occupied the most of his time by the events in greece, where a very remarkable revolution at sparta, as we learn from plutarch, had raised up a formidable enemy against the achæans; and so completely altered the relative position of affairs, that the macedonians, from having been opponents, became allies of the achæans. sketch of the situation of spartan affairs at this period: the ancient constitution still continued to exist in form; but the plunder of foreign countries, and particularly the permission to transfer landed estates, obtained by epitadeus, had produced great inequality of property. the restoration of lycurgus's constitution had, therefore, a twofold object; to favour the poor by a new agrarian law and release from debts, and to increase the power of the kings by repressing that of the ephori.--first attempt at reform , by king agis iii; attended in the beginning with partial success, but eventually frustrated by the other king, leonidas, and terminating in the extinction of agis and his family, . leonidas, however, was succeeded, , by his son cleomenes, who victoriously defeated the plans of aratus to force sparta to accede to the achæan league, ; this king, by a forcible revolution, overthrew the ephori, and accomplished the project of agis, at the same time increasing the spartans by the admission of a number of periæci; and enforcing the laws of lycurgus referring to private life; but as in a small republic a revolution cannot be confirmed without some external war, he attacked the achæans as early as ; these being defeated, implored, through aratus, the help of antigonus; cleomenes in consequence was, at the battle of sellasia, , obliged to yield to superior force, and with difficulty escaped over to egypt; while sparta was compelled to acknowledge her independence as a gift at the hands of antigonus. such was the miserable success of this attempt made by a few great men on a nation already degenerate. the quarrels between the ephori and king lycurgus and his successor machanidas, placed sparta in a state of anarchy, which ended, , in the usurpation of the sovereign power by one nabis, who destroyed the ancient form of government. let him who would study great revolutions commence with that just described; insignificant as it is, none perhaps furnishes more instructive lessons. plutarchi _agis et cleomenes_. the information in which is principally drawn from the commentaries of aratus. . philip ii. son of demetrius. he ascended the throne at the early age of sixteen, endowed with many qualities, such as might, under favourable circumstances, have formed a great prince. macedonia had recruited her strength during a long peace; and her grand political aim, the supremacy of greece, secured by the connection of antigonus with the achæans, and by the victory of sellasia, seemed to be already within her grasp. but philip lived in a time when rome was pursuing her formidable plans of aggrandizement: the more vigorous and prompt his efforts were to withstand that power, the more deeply was he entangled in the new maze of events, which embittered the rest of his life, and at last brought him to the grave with a broken heart, converted by misfortune into a despot. . the first five years of philip were occupied by his participation in the war between the achæans and Ætolians, called the war of the two leagues; notwithstanding the treachery of his minister apellas and his dependents, the prince was enabled to dictate the conditions of peace, according to which both parties were to remain in possession of what they then had. the conclusion of this peace was hastened by the news of hannibal's victory at thrasymenus, philip being then instigated to form more extensive projects by demetrius of pharus, who had fled before the romans, and soon acquired unlimited influence with the macedonian king. the war of the two leagues arose out of the piracies of the Ætolians on the messenians, the latter of whom the achæans undertook to protect, . the errors committed by aratus compelled the achæans to have recourse to philip, ; whose progress, however, was for a long time impeded by the artifices of apellas's faction, who wished to overthrow aratus. the acarnanians, epirots, messenians, and scerdilaidas of illyria, (who, however, soon after declared against macedonia,) combined with philip and the achæans; the Ætolians, on the other hand, commanded by their own general, scopas, had for their allies the spartans and eleans.--the most important consequence of this war for macedonia was, that she began again to be a naval power.--about the same time a war broke out between the two trading republics of byzantium and rhodes (the latter supported by prusias i. of bithynia) insignificant in itself, but which, as a commercial war, originating in the duties imposed by the byzantines, was the only one of its kind in this age, . the rhodians, so powerful in those days by sea, compelled their adversaries to submit. . the negotiations between philip and hannibal concluded with an alliance, in which reciprocal help was promised towards annihilating rome. but rome contrived to excite so many foes against philip on the borders of his own kingdom, and availed herself so skilfully of her naval power, that the execution of this plan was prevented until it became possible to attack the macedonian king in greece; where he had made himself many enemies, by the domineering tone he had assumed towards his allies at the time that, sensible of his power, he was about to enter upon a wider sphere of action. commencement of hostilities by rome, against philip: immediately that the alliance of philip and hannibal was known, a squadron with troops on board was stationed off the coast of macedonia, by which the king himself was defeated at apollonia, .--alliance of rome with the Ætolians, joined likewise by sparta and elis, attalus king of pergamus, and scerdilaidas and pleuratus, kings of illyria, . on philip's side were the achæans, with whom philopoemen more than supplied the loss of aratus, occasioned, , by the macedonian king; to them were joined the acarnanians and bæotians.--attacked on every side, philip successfully extricated himself from his difficulties; in the first place, he compelled the Ætolians, who had been abandoned by attalus and rome, to accept separate terms, which, shortly after, rome, consulting her own convenience, converted into a general peace, inclusive of the allies on either side, . . new war of philip against attalus and the rhodians, carried on for the most part in asia minor; and his impolitic alliance with antiochus iii. to attack egypt. but can philip be blamed for his endeavours to disarm the military servants of the romans? rome, however, did not grant him time to effect his designs; the macedonian king was taught at chios, by woeful experience, that his navy had not increased proportionably with that of the rhodians. . the war with rome suddenly hurled the macedonian power from its lofty pitch; and by laying the foundation of roman dominion in the east, wrought a change in almost all the political relations of that quarter. the first two years of the war showed pretty evidently, that mere force could scarcely overturn the macedonian throne. but t. quintius flaminius stepped forward; with the magic spell of freedom he intoxicated the greeks; philip was stripped of his allies; and the battle of cynoscephalæ decided everything. the articles of the peace were: . that all grecian cities in europe and asia should be independent, and philip should withdraw his garrisons. . that he should surrender the whole of his navy, and never afterwards keep more than armed men on foot. . that he should not, without previously informing rome, undertake any war out of macedonia. . that he should pay , talents by instalments, and deliver up his younger son demetrius as an hostage. the roman allies in this war were: the Ætolians, athenians, rhodians, the kings of the athamanes, dardanians, and pergamus.--the achæans at the beginning sided with philip, but were subsequently gained over by flaminius. see below, in the roman history. . soon after, the freedom of greece was solemnly proclaimed at the isthmian games by flaminius: but loud as the greeks were in their exultations, this measure served merely to transfer the supremacy of their country from macedonia to rome: and grecian history, as well as the macedonian, is now interwoven with that of the romans. to foster quarrels between the greek states, with the especial view of hindering the achæans from growing too formidable, now became a fundamental principle at rome; and roman and anti-roman parties having quickly arisen in every city, this political game was easily played. flaminius even took care that the achæans should have an opponent in the person of nabis, although under the necessity of waging war against him previous to his return into italy, .--in , war between nabis and the achæans; followed after the murder of nabis, at the hands of the Ætolians, by the accession of sparta to the achæan league.--but about the same time greece once more became the theatre of foreign war; antiochus having firmly seated himself in the country, and enleagued himself with several tribes, but more particularly the Ætolians, inspired with bitter and long-standing hatred against the romans. these last, however, after the expulsion of antiochus from greece, , paid dearly for their secession; nor was peace granted them by rome till after long and unsuccessful supplications, . . while war was pending between the romans and antiochus, philip, in the character of one of the numerous allies of rome, ventured to increase his territory at the expense of the athamanes, thracians, and thessalians. to keep him in good humour he was permitted to effect those conquests; but after the termination of the war the oppression of rome became so galling, that it could not be otherwise than that all his thoughts should centre in revenge, and all his exertions be directed towards the recovery of power. meanwhile the violent measures adopted for repeopling his exhausted kingdom--such is the punishment of ambition which usually awaits even the victorious!--the transplantation of the inhabitants of whole cities and countries, and the consequent and unavoidable oppression of several of his neighbours, excited universal complaints; and where was the accuser of philip to whom rome would not now lend a ready ear?--his younger son, demetrius, the pupil of rome, and by her intended, it is probable, to succeed to the crown, alone diverted the impending fate of macedonia. but after the return of that prince from his embassy, the envy of his elder and bastard brother, perseus, grew into an inveterate rancour, such as could not be quenched but by the death of the younger. the lot of philip was indeed hard, compelled as a father to judge between his two sons; but the measure of human woe was filled, when after the death of his favourite child he discovered that he was innocent; are we to wonder that sorrow should soon have hurried him to a premature grave! . the same policy which was observed by the romans towards philip, they pursued towards the achæans, with whom, since the termination of the war with antiochus, they had assumed a loftier tone; and this artful game was facilitated by the continual quarrels among the greeks themselves. yet the great philopoemen, worthy of a better age, maintained the dignity of the league at the very time that the romans presumed to speak as arbitrators. after his decease they found it easy to raise a party among the achæans themselves, the venal callicrates offering his services for that purpose. the achæans was continually embroiled either with sparta or with messene: the grounds of difference were, that in both of those states there were factions headed by persons who, out of personal motives, and for the most part hatred to philopoemen, wished to secede from the league; on the other hand, the prevailing idea among the achæans was, that this league ought to comprise the whole of the peloponnesus. in the war against the messenians, , philopoemen, at the age of seventy, was taken prisoner by the enemy and put to death. plutarchi, _philopoemen_. nearly the whole of which is compiled from the lost biography of polybius. . the last macedonian king, perseus, had inherited his father's perfect hatred of the romans, together with talents, if not equal, at least but little inferior. he entered into the speculations of his predecessor, and the first seven years of his reign was occupied in constant exertions to muster forces against rome; with this view he called the bastarnæ out of the north, in order to settle them in the territories of his enemies the dardanians; he endeavoured to form alliances with the kings of illyria, thrace, syria, and bithynia; above all, he strove by negotiations and promises to reestablish the ancient influence of macedonia in greece. the settlement of the bastarnæ (probably a german race, resident beyond the danube) in thrace and dardania, in order with them to carry war against the romans, was one of the plans traced out by philip, and now partially executed by perseus.--in greece the macedonian party, which perseus formed chiefly out of the great number of impoverished citizens in the country, would probably have gained the upper hand, had not the fear inspired by rome, and the active vigilance of that power, interposed an effectual bar. hence the achæans, apparently at least, remained on the roman side; the Ætolians, by domestic factions, had worked their own destruction; the case was the same with the acarnanians; and the federation of the boeotians had been completely dissolved by the romans, . on the other hand, in epirus the macedonian party was superior; thessaly was occupied by perseus; several of the thracian tribes were friendly to him; and in king gentius he found an ally who might have been highly useful, had not the macedonian prince, by an ill-timed avarice, deprived himself of his assistance. . the commencement of open hostilities was hastened by the bitter hatred existing between perseus and eumenes, and by the intrigues of the latter at rome. neglect of the favourable moment for taking the field, and the defensive system, skilfully in other respects as it was planned, caused the ruin of perseus, as it had done that of antiochus. nevertheless he protracted the war to the fourth year, when the battle of pidna decided the fate both of himself and his kingdom. miserable condition of perseus until his capture at samothrace; and afterwards until his death at rome, . . according to the system at that period followed by rome, the conquered kingdom of macedonia was not immediately converted into a province; it was first deprived of all offensive power, by being republicanized and divided into four districts, wholly distinct from one another, and bound to pay rome half the tribute they were before wont to furnish to their kings. . it was in the natural order of things that the independence of greece, and more especially that of the achæan league, should fall with perseus. the political _inquisition_ of the roman commissaries not only visited with punishment the declared partizans of macedonia; but even to have stood neutral was a crime that incurred suspicion. rome, however, amid the rising hatred, did not deem herself secure until by one blow she had rid herself of all opponents of any importance. above a thousand of the most eminent of the achæans were summoned to rome to justify themselves, and there detained seventeen years in prison without a hearing. while at the head of the league, stood the man who had delivered them up, callicrates, (_d._ .) a wretch who could, unmoved, hear "the very boys in the streets taunt him with treachery."--a more tranquil period, it is true, now ensued for greece, but it was the result of very obvious causes. . the ultimate lot both of macedon and was decided by the system now adopted at rome, that of converting the previous dependence of nations into formal subjection. the insurrection of andriscus in macedonia, an individual who pretended to be the son of perseus, was quelled by metellus, the country being constituted a roman province; two years afterwards, at the sack of corinth, vanished the last glimmer of grecian freedom. the last war of the achæans arose out of certain quarrels with sparta, , fomented by diæus, critolaus, and damocritus, who had returned bitterly enraged from the roman prison; in these disputes rome interfered, with the design of wholly dissolving the achæan league. the first pretext that offered for executing this scheme was the ill-treatment of the roman ambassadors at corinth, ; war, however, still raging with carthage and andriscus, the romans preserved for the present a peaceful tone. but the party of diæus and critolaus would have war; the plenipotentiaries of metellus were again insulted, and the achæans declared war against sparta and rome. in the very same year they were routed by metellus, and their leader critolaus fell in the engagement; metellus was replaced in the command by mummius, who defeated diæus the successor of critolaus, took corinth and razed it to the ground, . the consequence was, that greece, under the name of achaia, became a roman province, although to a few cities, such as athens, for instance, some shadow of freedom was still left. iv. _history of some smaller or more distant kingdoms and states erected out of the macedonian monarchy._ sources. besides the writers enumerated above, (see p. .) memnon, an historian of heraclea in pontus, deserves particular mention in this place, (see p. ): some extracts from his work have been preserved to us by photius, cod. . in some individual portions, as, for instance, in the parthian history, justin[a] is our main authority; as are likewise ammianus marcellinus, and the extracts from arrian's _parthica_, found in photius. the coins of the kings are also of great importance; but unfortunately vaillant's essay shows, that even with their assistance the chronology still remains in a very unsettled state. for the jewish history, josephus (see p. .) is the grand writer: of the books of the old testament, those of ezra and nehemiah, together with the maccabees, although the last are not always to be depended upon. the modern writers are enumerated below, under the heads of the different kingdoms. much information is likewise scattered about in the works on ancient numismatics. [a] as justin did no more than extract from trogus pompeius, a question presents itself of great consequence to various portions of ancient history; what authorities did trogus pompeius follow? the answer will be found in two treatises by a. l. l. heeren: _de fontibus et auctoritate trogi pompeii, ejusque epitomatoris justini_, inserted in _comment. soc. gott._ vol. . . besides the three main empires into which the monarchy of alexander was divided, there likewise arose in those extensive regions several branch kingdoms, one of which even grew in time to be among the most powerful in the world. to these belong the kingdoms of, . pergamus. . bithynia. . paphlagonia. . pontus. . cappadocia. . great armenia. . little armenia. . parthia. . bactria. . jewish state subsequent to the maccabees. we are acquainted with the history of these kingdoms, the jewish state alone excepted, only so far forth as they were implicated in the concerns of the greater empires; of their internal history we know little, often nothing. with respect to many of them, therefore, little more can be produced than a series of chronological data, indispensable, notwithstanding, to the general historian. . the kingdom of pergamus, in mysia, arose during the war between seleucus and lysimachus. it owed its origin on the one hand to the prudence of its rulers, the wisest of whom luckily reigned the longest; and, on the other, to the weakness of the seleucidæ: for its progressive increase it was indebted to the romans, who in aggrandizing the power of pergamus acted with a view to their own interest. history exhibits scarcely one subordinate kingdom whose princes took such skilful advantage of the political circumstances of the times; and yet they earned still greater renown by the anxiety they showed, in rivalling the ptolemies, to foster the arts of peace, industry, science, architecture, sculpture, and painting. how dazzling the splendour with which the small state of pergamus outshines many a mighty empire! philetærus, lieutenant of lysimachus, in pergamus, asserts his independence; and maintains possession of the citadel and town, - . his nephew, eumenes i. - , defeats antiochus i. at sardes, , and becomes master of Æolis and the circumjacent country. his nephew, attalus i. - , after his victory over the galatians, , becomes king of pergamus: a noble prince, and one whose genius and activity embraced everything. his wars against achæus brought him in alliance with antiochus iii. . commencement of an alliance with rome, arising out of his participation in the Ætolian league against macedon, , in order to thwart philip's project of conquest. hence, after philip's irruption into asia, , participation on the side of rome, in the macedonian war. his son eumenes ii. the inheritor of all his father's great qualities succeeds him, - . as a reward for his assistance against antiochus the great, the romans presented him with almost all the territories possessed by the vanquished king in asia minor, (phrygia, mysia, lycaonia, lydia, ionia, and a part of caria,) which thereafter constituted the kingdom of pergamus; this prince extended his frontiers, but lost his independence. in the war with perseus he was scarce able to preserve the good will of the senate, and therewith his kingdom. his brother, attalus ii. - , a more faithful dependent of rome, took part in nearly all the concerns of asia minor, more especially bithynia. his nephew, attalus iii. - , a prince of unsound mind, bequeathed his kingdom to the romans, who, after vanquishing the lawful heir, aristonicus, , took possession of it, annexing it to their empire, under the shape of a province called asia.--great discoveries and vast establishments made at pergamus. rich library; subsequently transferred by antony to alexandria, as a present for cleopatra. museum. discovery of parchment, an invaluable auxiliary to the preservation of works of literature. choiseuil gouffier, _voyage pittoresque de la grèce_, vol. ii. . containing excellent observations, both on the monuments and history of pergamus, as well as on those of all the neighbouring coasts and islands. sevin, _recherches sur les rois de pergame_, inserted in the _mém. de l'acad. des inscript._ vol. xii. from the fall of tyre and the unsuccessful attempt of demetrius, b. c. , to the establishment of roman dominion in the east, - , was the brilliant period of rhodes; alike important for political wisdom, naval power, and extensive trade. at the head of the senate ([greek: boulê]) were presidents, ([greek: prytaneis,]) who went out of office every half year, and were honoured with precedence in the meetings of the commons. friendship with all, alliance with none, was the fundamental maxim of rhodian policy, until subverted by rome. thus was preserved the dignity of the state, together with its independence and political activity--where do we not meet with rhodian embassies?--and permanent splendour, resulting from the cultivation of arts and sciences. what proofs of general commiseration did not rhodes enjoy after that dreadful earthquake, which threw down even the famous colossus, ! long did her squadrons command the Ægæan; over that sea, the euxine, and the western parts of the mediterranean as far as sicily, her commerce extended, consisting in the rich exchange of commodities between three quarters of the globe. her revenue proceeded from the customs, and was abundant; until, blinded by avarice, she sought to obtain at peræa a territory on the mainland; an ambition of which the romans availed themselves to her detriment, by presenting her with lycia and caria, . and yet did this republic outlive that of rome! great, indeed, is the chasm left in general history by the loss of the internal history of this island! p. d. ch. paulsen, _commentatio exhibens rhodi descriptionem macedonica ætate, gottingæ_, . a prize essay. . the other small kingdoms of asia minor are fragments rather of the persian than of the macedonian monarchy; for alexander's march following another direction, they were not formally subjugated by that conqueror. the lines of their kings are generally traced back to an early period of the persian age; but, properly speaking, their rulers in those days were nothing more than viceroys: selected indeed, for the most part, from the royal family, they bore the title of princes, and, in the gradual decline of the empire, not unfrequently threw up their allegiance. nevertheless these kingdoms do not appear as really independent until after the time of alexander. connected with the grecian republics heraclea, sinope, byzantium, etc. they formed, both in the macedonian and roman ages, a system of small states, often distracted by internal wars, and still oftener mere tools in the hands of the more powerful. . _bithynia._ as early as the persian period, mention is made of two kings in bithynia, dydalsus and botyras. the son of the latter, bias, b. c. - , made head against caranus, one of alexander's generals; as did also his son zipoetas, _d._ , against lysimachus.--lycomedes i. _d._ . he called the gauls over from thrace, , and with their assistance deposed his brother zipoetas; the gauls in consequence kept their footing in galatia, and were for a long time an object of terror to asia minor. zelas, _d._ about ; established his dominion after a war with his half-brothers. prusias i. son-in-law and ally of philip ii. of macedon, _d._ . he sided with the rhodians in the commercial war against byzantium, , (see above, p. .) and directed his arms, , against heraclea, a grecian city in bithynia, with a respectable territory along shore. prusias ii. waged war against eumenes ii. at the instigation of hannibal, who had fled to his court, ; he was subsequently about to deliver up the fugitive to the romans; had not hannibal put a period to his existence, : this king likewise waged war against attalus ii. ; in both these contests rome acted as mediator. prusias, who had the meanness to style himself a freedman of the romans, was dethroned by his own son, nicomedes ii. _d._ ; a confederate of mithridates the great, with whom, nevertheless, he afterwards fell out concerning the appropriation of paphlagonia and cappadocia. nicomedes was murdered by his son socrates, who was, however, compelled to flee; in consequence of which nicomedes iii. succeeded to the crown. deposed by mithridates, who supported his half-brother socrates, he was reinstated by rome, . having, however, at the instigation of the romans, , attacked mithridates, he was defeated and expelled in the first mithridatic war, now kindled; but in the peace of , he was again reinstated by sulla. at his death, , he bequeathed bithynia to the romans; and this legacy gave rise to the third mithridatic war. vaillant, _imperium arsacidarum_, vol. ii. see below. sevin, _recherches sur les rois de bithynie_; inserted in the _mém. de l'académie des inscript._ vol. xii. . _paphlagonia._ even in the persian age, the rulers of this country were but nominally subject. after alexander's death, b. c. , it fell into the hands of the kings of pontus; it was, however, subsequently, again ruled by its own monarchs; among whom we hear of morzes, about ; pylæmenes i. about : who assisted the romans in the war against aristonicus of pergamus.--pylæmenes ii. _d._ before ; who is said to have bequeathed his kingdom to mithridates v. of pontus. hence paphlagonia came to be implicated in the fortunes of pontus, (see just below,) until after the fall of mithridates the great, , that kingdom was converted into a province, with the exception of one of the southern districts, to which the romans left some shadow of freedom. . _pontus._ the later kings of this country derived their origin from the family of the achæmenidæ, or house of persia. in the persian age they remained dependent or tributary princes: and as such we must consider artabazes, son of hystaspes, _d._ , mithridates i. _d._ , and ariobarzanes, _d._ , mentioned as the earliest kings of pontus. mithridates ii. surnamed ctistes, _d._ , was one of the first to acknowledge subjection to alexander; after the death of the conqueror he sided with antigonus, who treacherously caused him to be murdered. his son, mithridates iii. _d._ , (the ariobarzanes of memnon,) not only maintained himself after the battle of ipsus against lysimachus, but likewise possessed himself of cappadocia and paphlagonia. mithridates iv. father-in-law to antiochus the great, waged an unsuccessful war against sinope. the year of his death is undetermined, pharnaces, _d._ about . he conquered sinope ; and that town then became the royal residence. war with eumenes ii. whom rome had made so powerful, and with his allies; terminated by a treaty, according to which pharnaces ceded paphlagonia, b. c. . mithridates v. _d._ about . he was an ally of the romans, from whom, after the defeat of aristonicus of phrygia, he contrived to obtain great phrygia. mithridates vi. surnamed eupator, about - . he bore the title of great, an epithet to which he was as fully entitled as peter i. in modern history; indeed he resembled the russian prince in almost everything except in good fortune. his reign, although of the highest importance to general history, is, particularly in the portion previous to the wars with rome, replete with chronological difficulties.--at the age of twelve years he inherits from his father not only pontus, but likewise phrygia, and a reversionary title to the throne of paphlagonia, vacated by the death of pylæmenes ii.--during his nonage, - , while by voluntarily inuring himself to hardships, he contrived to elude the treacherous hostility of his guardians, rome deprived him of phrygia. his conquests in colchis and on the eastern side of the black sea, - .--commencement of the scythian wars. called by the greeks of crimea to their assistance, he expelled the scythians; subjected several insignificant scythian princes on the mainland; and entered into alliances with the sarmatic and even germanic races as far as the danube, - , having already a view to the invasion of italy from the north.--this war ended, he travels over asia, (asia minor?) about - .--at his return, after punishing with death his faithless sister and wife, laodice, he makes good his pretensions to paphlagonia, which he divides with nicomedes ii. . the roman senate demanding the restoration of that province, mithridates not only refuses to accede, but likewise takes possession of galatia; meanwhile nicomedes places on the throne of paphlagonia one of his own sons, whom he gives out to be a son of pylæmenes ii. and denominates pylæmenes iii.--rupture with nicomedes ii. ; the subject of dispute, cappadocia, which, after removing the king, ariarathes vii. his brother-in-law, with the assistance of gordius, mithridates himself now wished to possess; he is anticipated, however, by nicomedes ii. who marries laodice, ariarathes's widow.--mithridates, notwithstanding, expels his rival, under pretence of holding the kingdom for his sister's son, ariarathes viii. whom at the end of a few months he puts to death at a private conference, ; he defeats the brother of the murdered prince, ariarathes ix. and then places on the throne, under the name of ariarathes x. his own son, who is given out to be a third son of ariarathes vii; in opposition to whom nicomedes sets up another pretended ariarathes. the roman senate, meanwhile, declare both paphlagonia and cappadocia free, b. c. ; attending, however, to the desires of the cappadocians, they sanction the election of ariobarzanes to the crown; and he is put in possession of the kingdom by sylla, as proprætor of cilicia, likewise in .--mithridates, on the other hand, forms an alliance with the king of armenia, tigranes, to whom he gives his daughter in marriage; and employs him in expelling ariobarzanes.--he himself, after the death of nicomedes ii. , supports the claims of the deceased king's exiled son, socrates chrestus, against the bastard nicomedes iii. and in the mean time takes possession of paphlagonia. nicomedes and ariobarzanes are reinstated by a roman embassy, , mithridates, in order to gain time against rome, causing socrates to be put to death. the hostilities of nicomedes, instituted by rome, gave rise to the first roman war, - , carried on in asia and greece, and brought to a conclusion by sylla. by the peace of , mithridates restores bithynia, cappadocia, and paphlagonia.--war with the revolted colchians and bosporans, .--second war with rome brought about by the roman governor, murena, - . mithridates hereupon appoints his son, machares, king of bosporus, (crimea,) whom he afterwards himself causes to be put to death, ; he was likewise, in all probability, the instigator of the migration of the sarmatæ out of asia into europe, in order to maintain his conquests in that quarter, about . fresh disputes with rome about cappadocia, of which tigranes takes possession, and third war with rome, - . the contest ended in the downfal of mithridates, caused by the treachery of his son pharnaces; pontus became a roman province; although the romans, in the sequel, appointed over a portion of the country princes from the royal house, darius, polemo i. polemo ii. until nero reduced it again wholly to the state of a province. vaillant, _imperium achæmenidarum_ in his _imperium arsacidarum_, tom. ii. with the assistance of the coins. for the history of mithridates the great, previously treated without sufficient chronological accuracy, see de brosses, _histoire de la rép. romaine_, and more especially joan. ernst. woltersdorf, _commentatio vitam mithridatis magni, per annos digestam, sistens; præmio ornata ab a. phil. ord. gottingæ:, a_. . . _cappadocia._ until the time of alexander this country remained a province of the persian empire, although the governors occasionally made attempts at insurrection. the ruling family was here likewise a branch of the royal house; ariarathes i. was particularly distinguished about b. c. . the prince contemporary with alexander was ariarathes ii. who, being attacked by perdiccas and eumenes, fell in the contest, . nevertheless, his son, ariarathes iii. supported by the armenians, recovered the sceptre about . the son of this king, ariaramnes, formed a matrimonial connection with the seleucidæ, uniting his son ariarathes iv. with the daughter of antiochus [greek: theos]. ariarathes iv. during his lifetime, associated in the government his son ariarathes v. _d._ . who married antiochis, daughter to antiochus the great: this princess, finding herself at first barren, procured two supposititious sons, one of whom, orophernes, subsequently wrested the sceptre from the legitimate and later born son, ariarathes vi. but was afterwards expelled by the rightful heir, . in the war against aristonicus of pergamus, , he fell, as an ally of the romans, leaving behind him six sons; five of whom were cut off by his ambitious relict laodice; the sixth however, ariarathes vii. ascended the throne, and was married to laodice, sister of mithridates the great, at whose instigation he was murdered by gordius, under pretence of placing on the throne his sister's son, ariarathes viii; this last prince was soon after treacherously put to death by mithridates, , and his brother ariarathes ix. defeated , died of a broken heart; mithridates then placed on the throne his own son, ariarathes x. a lad eight years old. the independence of cappadocia having meanwhile been proclaimed at rome, the inhabitants of the country, in order to preclude domestic broils, themselves elect a king, appointing to that dignity ariobarzanes i. who was installed by sylla, , and, backed by the romans, kept his footing in the mithridatic wars. in he made the crown over to his son, ariobarzanes ii. who was slain by the army of brutus and cassius, , as was his brother, ariobarzanes iii. , by mark antony; antony then appointed archelaus to be king, who enticed to rome by tiberius, a. d. , was there assassinated; and cappadocia then became a roman province. . _armenia_ was a province of the syrian empire until the defeat of antiochus the great by rome, . that defeat was followed by the accession of antiochus's lieutenants, artaxias and zariadras; and now arose the two kingdoms of armenia major and armenia minor (the latter on the west bank of the upper euphrates). in armenia major the family of artaxias kept possession of the throne, under eight (according to others _ten_) consecutive kings, until b. c. .--the only remarkable prince of this line was tigranes i. - , son-in-law and ally of mithridates the great, and lord of asia minor, cappadocia, and syria. he was, however, at the peace of , obliged to give up all, so that armenia was dependent on the romans, and remained so until b. c. , when it became the object of contention between the romans and parthians, being ruled at intervals by kings appointed by both parties, who endeavoured thereby to protect their own provinces. finally, in a. d. , armenia became a province of the new persian empire.--in asia minor the descendants of zariadras ruled dependently on rome; after its defection under mithridates the great it usually formed part of some one of the neighbouring kingdoms, until in the reign of vespasian it was converted into a province of the roman empire. vaillant, _elenchus regum armeniæ majoris_, in his _hist. imp. arsacidarum_. . besides the above small kingdoms, two mighty empires arose in inner asia, both out of alexander's monarchy, and at the same time: these were the parthian and the bactrian; each having previously constituted a part of the empire of the seleucidæ, from which they seceded under antiochus ii. the parthian kingdom, or that of the arsacidæ, b. c. -a. d. , at the maximum of its extension, comprised the countries between the euphrates and indus. its history, so far as we are acquainted with it, is divided into four periods (see below); but unfortunately our information is so imperfect respecting all that relates to the parthians, except their wars, that even the most important particulars are beyond the reach of conjecture. main facts in the history and constitution of the parthian kingdom. _a._ like the ancient persian empire, the parthian arose out of the conquests made by a rude mountain race of central asia, whose scythian (probably tatarian) origin, betrayed itself even in later times by their speech and mode of life: their conquests, however, were not effected with the same rapidity as those of the persians. _b._ this empire increased at the expense of the syrian in the west, and of the bactrian in the east; but its dominion was never permanently established beyond the euphrates, indus, and oxus. _c._ the wars with rome, commencing in b. c. , and springing out of disputes for the possession of the armenian throne, were for a long time unfortunate for the romans. success did not accompany the arms of rome until she had discovered the art of raising her own parties within the kingdom itself, by lending her support to pretenders, an art rendered comparatively easy, by the unfavourable situation of the parthian capital seleucia and the neighbouring town of ctesiphon, the real head quarters of the court. _d._ the empire was indeed divided into satrapies, eighteen of which are enumerated; nevertheless it comprised likewise several small kingdoms, which preserved their own rulers, only that they were tributary, such, for instance, as persis, etc. the græco-macedonian settlements were also in possession of great privileges, and of their own civic governments; seleucia more especially, where the coins of the parthian sovereigns were struck. _e._ the constitution was monarchal-aristocratic, something like that of the poles, in the period of the jagellons. at the king's side sat a supreme state council, (_senatus_, in all probability what was called the _megistanes_,) who had the power of deposing the king, and the privilege, it is supposed, of confirming his accession previous to the ceremony of coronation, performed by the field-marshals (_surenas_). the right of succession was only so far determined as belonging to the house of the arsacidæ; the many pretenders to which this uncertainty gave rise, produced factions and domestic wars, doubly injurious to the empire when fomented and shared by foreigners. _f._ with regard to asiatic commerce, the parthian supremacy was of importance, inasmuch as it interrupted the direct intercourse between the western and eastern countries: it being a maxim of the parthians not to grant a passage through their country to any stranger. this destruction of the trade occurs in the third period of the empire, being a natural result of the many wars with rome, and the distrust thence ensuing. the east india trade, in consequence, took another road through palmyra and alexandria, which were indebted to it for their splendour and prosperity. _g._ it is probable that this was the reason why excessive luxury took a less hold on the parthians than on the other ruling nations of asia, notwithstanding their predilection for grecian manners and literature, at that time generally prevalent throughout the east. _line of the kings._ i. syrian period; that of reiterated wars with the seleucidæ, until . arsaces i. - , founder of the parthian independence, by procuring the death of the syrian viceroy, agathocles, to which he was instigated by the insult offered to his brother tiridates. arsaces ii. (tiridates i.) brother of the foregoing, _d._ . he possessed himself of hyrcania, about , confirmed the parthian power by a victory on seleucus callinicus, , whom he took prisoner, . arsaces iii. (artabanus i.) _d._ . in his reign occurred the unsuccessful attempt of antiochus iii. who, in the treaty of , was obliged to renounce all claims on parthia and hyrcania, in return for which arsaces lent his assistance to antiochus in the war against bactria. arsaces iv. (priapatius,) _d._ about . arsaces v. (phraates i.) _d._ about ; he conquered the mardians on the caspian. his brother, arsaces vi. (mithridates i.) _d._ . he raised the hitherto confined kingdom of parthia to the rank of a mighty empire, having, after the decease of antiochus epiphanes, , by the capture of media, persis, babylonia, and other countries, extended the frontiers westward to the euphrates, and eastward to the hydaspes, beyond the indus. the invasion of demetrius ii. of syria, supported by an insurrection of the conquered races, ended, , in the capture of the aggressor. arsaces vii. (phraates ii.) _d._ about . invasion of antiochus sidetes, , who was at first successful, but being soon afterwards cut off together with his whole army, , the parthian empire was for ever freed from the attacks of the syrian kings. ii. period of the eastern nomad wars; from - . after the fall of the bactrian empire, which had hitherto formed the eastern rampart of the parthians, violent wars took place with the nomad tribes of central asia (scythæ, dahæ, tochari, etc.) in which arsaces vii. was slain. arsaces viii. (artabanus ii.) shared the same fate about . arsaces ix. (mithridates ii.) _d._ . this prince appears to have restored tranquillity to the east after bloody wars; he met, however, with a powerful rival in tigranes i. of armenia. in his reign occurred the first transactions between the parthians and romans, , sylla being proprætor of cilicia. arsaces x. (mnasciras,) _d._ about , waged a long war for the succession with his follower on the throne, the septuagenarian, arsaces xi. (sinatroces,) _d._ about . unsuccessful war with tigranes i. in consequence of civil wars, and of that with tigranes, together with the formidable power of mithridates the great, the parthian empire was now greatly weakened. arsaces xii. (phraates iii.) _d._ , contemporary with the third mithridatic war. although both parties eagerly courted his alliance, and he himself was engaged in the contest with tigranes, he, notwithstanding, observed an armed neutrality, and made the parthian empire continue to be respected as far as the euphrates. neither lucullus nor pompey durst attack him. the fall of mithridates and of his empire, , constitutes, however, an epoch in the parthian history, the romans and parthians having now become immediate neighbours.--arsaces xiii. (mithridates ii.) _d._ , deposed after several wars, by his younger brother orodes, and at last put to death, after the capture of babylonia, where he had taken refuge. iii. roman period; from b. c. , to a. d. ; comprising the wars with rome. arsaces xiv. (orodes i.) _d._ . in his reign the first war with rome, caused by the invasion of crassus; it ends in the annihilation of the invading army and general, . in consequence of this victory the parthians acquired such preponderance, that during the civil wars they were frequently masters on this side of the euphrates, and in - proceeded to attack syria.--in the war between pompey and cæsar they sided with the former, and thus furnished the latter with a pretext for his parthian expedition, which, however, was prevented by his murder in ; again in the war between the triumviri and brutus and cassius, , they took the republican side. after the defeat of brutus and cassius, the parthians, at the instigation of the roman general and ambassador labienus, and commanded by him and pacorus, (eldest son to arsaces,) spread over the whole of syria and asia minor, ; but, after violent exertions, were driven back by ventidius, antony's general, , ; pacorus lost his life, and his father died of grief. arsaces xv. (phraates iv.) _d._ a. d. , contemporary of augustus. he confirmed his power by murdering his brothers and their dependents; his views were likewise furthered by the failure of antony's expedition, b. c. , which ended pretty nearly in the same manner as that of crassus. the remainder of his reign was disturbed by a pretender to the throne, tiridates, who, after his defeat, , found an asylum at the court of augustus. the threatened attack of augustus was diverted by phraates's restoration of the standards taken from crassus, ; a dispute, however, subsequently arose respecting the possession of the armenian throne, a. d. , on which account caius cæsar was despatched into asia, and accommodated matters by a treaty. the ultimate fate both of the king and the empire was principally decided by a female slave, thermusa, sent as a present from augustus; this woman, wishing to ensure the succession to her own son, prevailed upon the king to send his four sons to rome as hostages, under the pretext of anticipating domestic troubles, .--a practice which from that time became frequent, the parthian kings thinking it a convenient mode of ridding themselves of dangerous competitors, while the romans knew how to make the proper use of them.--thermusa's son having grown up, she removed the king, and seated phraataces on the throne, under the name of arsaces xvi; he was, however, put to death by the parthians, a. d. ; and the crown given to one of the arsacidæ, orodes ii, (arsaces xvii.) who was, however, immediately afterwards slain by reason of his cruelty. in consequence, vonones i. the eldest of the sons of phraates sent to rome, was called back and placed on the throne (arsaces xviii.); but that prince having brought with him roman customs and luxury, was expelled, a. d. , with the assistance of the northern nomads, by artabanes iii. (arsaces xix.) _d._ , a distant relation: the fugitive took possession of the vacant throne of armenia, but was soon after driven from thence likewise by his rival. tiberius took advantage of the consequent disorders to send germanicus into the east, a. d. , from whence he was never to return. the remainder of the reign of artabanus was very stormy, tiberius on the one hand taking advantage of the factions between the nobles to support pretenders to the crown; the revolts of the satraps, on the other hand, giving proof of the declension of the parthian power. after his death war raged between his sons; the second, vardanes, (arsaces xx.) _d._ , made good his pretensions to the crown, and took north media, (atropatene;) he was succeeded by his elder brother gotarzes, (arsaces xxi.) _d._ , to whom claudius unsuccessfully opposed meherdates, educated as an hostage at rome. arsaces xxii. (vonones ii.) succeeded, after a reign of a few months, by arsaces xxiii. (vologeses i.) _d._ . the possession of the armenian throne, given by this prince to his brother tiridates, by the romans to tigranes, grandson of herod the great, excited a series of disputes, which began so early as the reign of claudius, a. d. , and under nero broke out into open war, waged with some success on the roman side by corbulo, - , and closed by tiridates going, after the death of tigranes, to rome, and there accepting the crown of armenia as a gift at the hands of nero, . arsaces xxiv. (pacorus,) _d._ , contemporary with domitian. all that we know of him is, that he embellished the city of ctesiphon. arsaces xxv. (cosroes,) _d._ about . the claims to the throne of armenia implicated him in a war with trajan, , during which armenia, together with mesopotamia and assyria, were converted into roman provinces. trajan's consequent and successful inroad into the interior parts of the parthian dominions, - , followed by the capture of ctesiphon, and the appointment of parthamaspates as king, appears to have been facilitated by the domestic commotions and civil wars which had for a long time harassed the empire. nevertheless, in the following year, , hadrian was compelled to give up all the conquered country; the euphrates was again acknowledged as the boundary; parthamaspates was appointed king of armenia; and cosroes, who had taken refuge in the upper satrapies, was reinstated on the throne, of which he seems ever after to have kept quiet possession. arsaces xxvi. (vologeses ii.) _d._ . parthia under his reign, and rome under that of antoninus pius, remained on good terms. arsaces xxvii. (vologeses iii.) _d._ . under the reign of this king, the contemporary of marcus aurelius and l. verus, the war with rome was again kindled, , by verus, and carried on in armenia and syria; cassius, the legate of verus, at last got possession of seleucia, and demolished that city, .--arsaces xxviii. (ardawan or vologeses iv.) _d._ . this king having taken the part of pescenninus niger, in the war between him and septimius severus, was, after the defeat of his friend, , routed in a war with septimius severus, , and the chief towns of parthia were sacked by the invaders. he is, without authority, represented as succeeded by a pacorus, who took the name of arsaces xxix.: his real successor, however, appears to have been arsaces xxix. (vologeses v.) _d._ . domestic wars among his sons, fomented by caracalla. arsaces xxx. (artabanus iv.) at the beginning of his reign, this prince likewise was contemporary with caracalla, who, in order to pick a quarrel, demanded his daughter in marriage; according to some, arsaces refused her, in consequence of which the roman emperor undertook a campaign into armenia; according to others, arsaces having assented, and escorted his daughter to caracalla, was, by an abominable stroke of treachery, cut off, together with all his train, a. d. . caracalla having been murdered, , his successor, macrinus, signed a peace with the parthians. but arsaces subsequently raised his brother tiridates to the throne of armenia; this act spurred the persian artaxerxes, son of sassan, to rebellion; the parthian king, defeated in three battles, fell in the last, thus putting a period to the family and dominion of the arsacidæ, , and artaxerxes became the founder of the new persian kingdom, or that of the sassanidæ. the revolution was accompanied not only with a change of dynasty, but with a total subversion of the constitution. vaillant, _imperium arsacidarum et achæmenidarum_, paris, , vols. to. the first part comprises the arsacidæ; the second the kings of bithynia, pontus, and bosporus. it is an attempt, not altogether faultless, to arrange the series of kings, by the assistance of coins. # c. f. richter, _historico-critical essay upon the dynasties of the arsacidæ and sassanidæ, according to the persian, grecian, and roman authorities_. a prize essay. leipzic, . a comparative research into the eastern and western sources. the chronology in the above sketch has been corrected by this work, in conjunction with th. chr. tychsen, _commentationes de nummis persarum et arsacidarum_; inserted in _commentat. nov. soc. sc. gotting._ vol. i. iii. . the bactrian kingdom arose nearly at the same time as the parthian, ; its origin, however, was of a different nature,--the independence of this state being asserted by the grecian governor, who was consequently succeeded by greeks;--its duration likewise was much shorter, extending only from b. c. to b. c. . scarce any fragments have been preserved of the history of this empire, the borders of which appear at one time to have extended to the banks of the ganges, and the frontiers of china. founder of the empire, diodatus or theodotus i. b. c. ; he threw off his allegiance to the syrian king, under antiochus ii. he appears to have been master not only of bactria, but also of sogdiana. he likewise threatened the parthians; after his decease, , his son and successor, theodotus ii. signed a treaty and alliance with arsaces ii. but was nevertheless deprived of his crown by euthydemus of magnesia, about . antiochus the great, at the conclusion of the parthian war, directed his arms against euthydemus, - ; the contest ended in a peace, by which euthydemus, after delivering up his elephants, was not only left in possession of the crown, but was allied to the syrian family by the marriage of his son demetrius with a daughter of antiochus. demetrius, though a great conqueror, does not seem to have been king of bactria; his dominions comprised, it is probable, north india and malabar, whose history now becomes closely connected with that of bactria, although consisting only of mere fragments. the throne of bactria fell to apollodotus, and after him to menander, who extended his conquests as far as serica, while demetrius was establishing his dominion in india, [as sovereign of which country he is represented in a medal lately discovered,] and where, about this time, several greek states appear to have existed, perhaps ever since the expedition of antiochus iii. . menander was succeeded, about , by eucratidas, under whose reign the bactrian empire attained its greatest extension; after defeating the indian king, demetrius, who had been the aggressor, he, with the assistance of the parthian conqueror, mithridates, (arsaces vi.) annexed india to his own empire, . on his return, he was murdered by his son; the same, probably, that is mentioned afterwards by the name of eucratidas ii. he was the ally of demetrius ii. of syria, and the main instigator of his expedition against the parthians, ; demetrius being defeated by arsaces vi. eucratidas was, in consequence, deprived of a portion of his territory; overpowered soon after by the nomad races of central asia, the bactrian empire fell to the ground, and bactria itself, together with the other countries on this side of the oxus, became a prey to the parthians. th. sieg. bayer, _historia regni græcorum bactriani_. petropol. , to. the few remaining fragments are in this work collected with industry and arranged with skill. [tod, _account of greek, parthian, and hindu medals_, in _transactions of the r. asiatic society_, vol. i. part ii, p. . tychsen, _de nummis græcis et barbaris in bochara nuper retectis_, in _comment. nov. soc. sc. gotting._ vol. vi.] . the restored kingdom of the jews was likewise a fragment of the macedonian monarchy; and although it ranked only with the smaller states, its history in various respects deserves our attention, few nations having had so powerful an influence on the progress of human civilization. the foundation of the independence of the jews was not, it is true, laid before the year ; yet their domestic constitution had previously assumed its main features, and their history, reckoning from the return of the babylonian captivity, accordingly divides itself into four periods: . under the persian supremacy, - . . under the ptolemies and seleucidæ, - . . under the maccabees, - . . under the herodians and romans, b. c. . to a. d. . first period under the persians. by permission from cyrus, a colony of jews belonging to the tribes of benjamin, judah, and levi, returned to the land of their forefathers, : this colony, headed by zorobabel, of the ancient royal family, and the high priest joshua, consisted of about , souls; the far more important and wealthy portion of the nation preferred to remain on the other side of the euphrates, where they had been settled for seventy years, and continued to be a numerous people. the new settlers found it difficult to keep their footing, principally in consequence of differences, produced by the intolerance they themselves evinced at the building of the temple, with their neighbours and kinsmen the samaritans, to whom the colony was only a cause of expense. the samaritans, subsequently, having erected a separate temple at garizim, near sichem, about , not only separated completely, but laid the foundation of an inveterate hatred between the two nations. hence the prohibition to rebuild the city and temple, brought about by their means, under cambyses, , and smerdis, , and not taken off until , in the reign of darius hystaspes. the new colony did not receive a permanent internal constitution till the time of ezra and nehemiah; both brought in fresh colonists, the former in , the latter in . the country was under the dominion of the satraps of syria; but in the increasing domestic declension of the persian empire, the high priests gradually became the virtual rulers of the nation. nevertheless, even at the time of alexander's conquest, , the jews seem to have manifested proofs of fidelity to the persians. second period under the ptolemies and seleucidæ, - . after the death of alexander, palestine, in consequence of its situation, generally shared the fate of phoenicia and coele-syria, (see above, p. .) being annexed to syria.--capture of jerusalem, and transplantation of a vast colony of jews to alexandria by ptolemy i. ; from thence they spread to cyrene, and gradually over the whole of north africa, and even into Æthiopia. from - the jews remained, however, subject to antigonus. after the overthrow of his empire, they remained, - , under the dominion of the ptolemies; the most conspicuous of their high priests during this interval were simon the just, _d._ , and afterwards his son, onias i. _d._ , who, by withholding the tribute due to ptolemy iii. exposed judæa to imminent danger.--in the second war of antiochus the great against egypt, , the jews, of their own free will, acknowledged themselves his subjects, and assisted in driving out the egyptian troops, who, under their general, scopas, had again possessed themselves of the country, and the citadel of jerusalem, . antiochus confirmed the jews in the possession of all their privileges; and although he promised their country, together with coele-syria and phoenicia, to ptolemy epiphanes, as the future dowry of his daughter, judæa still remained under the syrian supremacy; except that the revenue was for a time divided between the syrian and egyptian kings.--the high priests and self-chosen ethnarchs or alabarchs were at the head of the people; and we now find mention made for the first time of a senate, or the sanhedrim. but the rout of antiochus the great by the romans was also the remote cause of the subsequent misfortunes of the jews. the consequent dearth of money in which the syrian kings found themselves, and the riches of the temple treasures, the accumulation of the sacred income and gifts, made the office of high priest an object of purchase under antiochus epiphanes: hence arose quarrels between the pontifical families, and out of those sprung factions, which antiochus epiphanes was desirous to turn to his own account, by the introduction of grecian institutions among the jews, in order thereby to promote the subjection of that people, now raised by its privileges almost to the rank of a state within that of syria. deposition of the high priest, onias iii. ; his brother jason having obtained the mitre by purchase, and the introduction of grecian customs: jason, however, was in his turn supplanted by his brother menelaus, . during the civil war arising out of these events, antiochus epiphanes, at that time conqueror in egypt, (see above, p. .) takes possession of jerusalem, , being provoked by the behaviour of the jews to menelaus, the high priest of his own appointment: the consequent oppression of the jews, who now were to be hellenized by main force, soon occasioned the rise under the maccabees. third period under the maccabees, - . commencement of the rebellion against antiochus iv. brought about by the priest mattathias, , who was almost immediately succeeded, - , by his son judas maccabæus. supported by the fanaticism of his party, judas defeats in several battles the generals of antiochus, who was absent in upper asia, where he died, ; the jewish leader is even said to have been favoured by rome. the primary object of the insurrection was not, however, political independence; they fought only for religious freedom. under antiochus v. the sedition continued successful, both against the syrian king and the high priest alcimus, his creature, ; judas having died soon after his defeat by demetrius i. was succeeded by his brother jonathan, - . the death of the high priest, alcimus, , opened the path of jonathan to that office, which he received in the ensuing war between demetrius i. and alexander balas, , (see above, p. , .) both rivals courting his alliance: jonathan sided with balas, and consequently, from being merely the leader of a party, came to be head of the nation, which still, nevertheless, continued to pay tribute to the kings. notwithstanding the favour he had shown to balas, after the overthrow of that pretender, he was confirmed in his dignity by demetrius i. ; to whose assistance he marched at the subsequent great revolt in antioch. jonathan however, in , passed over to the side of the usurper, antiochus, the son of balas, (see above, p. .) and was by embassy presented with the friendship of the romans in the same year, but by the treachery of tryphon was taken and put to death, . his brother and successor, simon, - , having declared against tryphon, was by demetrius ii. not only confirmed in his dignity, but excused from paying tribute; he likewise received the title of prince, (ethnarch;) and appears to have struck coins. after the capture of demetrius, antiochus sidetes allowed simon to remain in possession of those privileges so long as he stood in need of his assistance against tryphon; but after the death of that usurper, he caused him, , to be attacked by cendebæus, who was defeated by the sons of simon. simon having been murdered by his son-in-law, ptolemæus, who aspired to the government, , was succeeded by his son, john hyrcanus, - , who was compelled again to acknowledge submission to antiochus sidetes; but after the defeat and death of that prince by the parthians, , he asserted his entire independence. the deep decline of the syrian kingdom, the constant civil wars by which it was distracted, and the renewed league with the romans, not only enabled hyrcanus easily to maintain his independence, but likewise to increase his territory, by the conquest of the samaritans and idumæans. but with him ended the heroic line. scarcely was he delivered from foreign oppression, when domestic broils arose; the pharisees and sadducees had hitherto been mere religious sects, but were converted into political factions by hyrcanus, who, offended with the pharisees, probably in consequence of their wish to separate the pontifical and princely offices, went over to the sadducees; the former sect, the orthodox, were as usual supported by the many; the latter, the innovators, in consequence of the laxity of their principles, were favoured by the wealthy. hyrcanus's eldest son, the cruel aristobulus, , assumed the royal title, but soon after dying, , was succeeded by his younger brother, alexander jannæus, - . his reign was an almost unbroken series of insignificant wars with his neighbours, this prince wishing to play the conqueror; and having likewise had the imprudence to irritate the powerful party of the pharisees, these made him the object of public insult, and excited a tumult, , which was followed by a bloody civil war which lasted six years. jannæus, it is true, maintained himself during the struggle; but the opposite party was so far from being annihilated, that, at his death, when passing over his sons, the feeble hyrcanus (who possessed the pontifical dignity) and the ambitious aristobulus, he bequeathed the crown to his widow alexandra, it was with the understanding that she should join the party of the pharisees: during her reign, therefore, - , the pharisees held the reins of government, and left her only the name. provoked at this, aristobulus, shortly before the death of the queen, endeavoured to obtain possession of the throne, and ultimately obtained his ends, notwithstanding alexandra nominated hyrcanus to be her successor. hyrcanus, at the instigation of his confidant, the idumæan antipater, who was the progenitor of the herodians, and assisted by the arabian prince aretas, waged war against his brother, , and shut him up in jerusalem: but the romans were arbitrators, and pompey, then all-powerful in asia, decided for hyrcanus, ; the party of aristobulus, however, refusing to accede, the roman general took possession of jerusalem; made hyrcanus high priest and prince, under condition that he should pay tribute; and took as prisoners to rome aristobulus and his sons, who, however, subsequently escaped and caused great disturbances. the jewish state being now dependent on rome, remained so, and the yoke was confirmed by the policy of antipater and his sons, who followed the general maxim of entire devotion to rome, in order thereby to succeed in wholly removing the reigning family. as early as , antipater was appointed procurator of judea by cæsar, whom he had supported at alexandria, and his second son herod, governor in galilee, soon became sufficiently powerful to threaten hyrcanus and the sanhedrim, . he gained the favour of antony, and thus maintained himself amid the tempests which, after the assassination of cæsar, , shook the roman world, powerful as the party opposed to him were: that party, however, at last, in lieu of the ill-fated hyrcanus, the only surviving son of aristobulus, placed antigonus at their head, and, assisted by the parthians, then flourishing in power, seated him on the throne, . herod having fled to rome, not only met with a gracious reception at the hands of the triumviri, but was by them appointed king. fourth period under the herodians, b. c. to a. d. . herod the great, b. c. to a. d. . put himself in possession of jerusalem and all judæa, b. c. , and confirmed his power by marrying mariamne of the house of the maccabees. notwithstanding his severity shown to the party of antigonus, and the house of the maccabees, the total extinction of which herod deemed necessary for his own safety; yet so greatly did the wasted country stand in need of peace, that for that very reason his reign may be said to have been a happy one. availing himself of the liberality of augustus, whose favour he contrived to obtain after the defeat of anthony, b.c. , herod gradually increased the extent of his kingdom, which at last comprised judæa, samaria, galilee, and beyond the jordan, peræa, ituræa, and trachonitis, (that is to say, the whole of palestine,) together with idumæa; from these countries he derived his income without being obliged to pay any tribute. the deference consequently shown by herod to rome, was but the effect of a natural policy, and his conduct in that respect could be objected to him only by bigoted jews. to his whole family, rather than to himself individually, are to be attributed the executions which took place among its members; happy had it been if the sword had smitten none but the guilty and spared the innocent. in the last year but one of his reign is placed the birth of christ (according to the usually adopted computation, made in the sixth century by dionysius exiguus. but the more accurate calculations of modern chronologists show that the real date of the saviour's birth was probably four years earlier).--according to his will, with some few alterations made by augustus, his kingdom was divided among his three surviving sons; archelaus, as ethnarch, receiving the greater moiety, judæa, samaria, and idumæa; the two others, as tetrarchs, philip a part of galilee and trachonitis, antipas the other part of galilee, and peræa, together with ituræa; subsequently to which division, the various parts did not, in consequence, all share the same fate.--archelaus, by misgovernment, soon lost his portion, a. d. ; judæa and samaria were consequently annexed as a roman province to syria, and placed under procurators subordinate to the syrian governors: among these procurators, the most famous is pontius pilate, about a.d. - , under whom the founder of our religion appeared and suffered, not as a political--although accused of being so--but as a moral reformer. on the other hand, philip retained his tetrarchy until the day of his death, a. d. , when his country had the same lot with judæa and samaria. soon after, that is to say, in a. d. , it was, however, given by caligula, with the title of king, to agrippa, (grandson of herod by aristobulus,) as a recompense for his attachment to the family of germanicus; and when antipas, who wished to procure a similar favour for himself but instead of it, was deposed, , agrippa received his tetrarchy also, , and soon afterwards, by the possession of the territory which had belonged to archelaus, became master of the whole of palestine. agrippa having died in a. d. , the whole country being appended to syria, became a roman province, and received procurators, although chalcis, , and subsequently also, , philip's tetrarchy, were restored as a kingdom to his son agrippa ii. _d._ . the oppression of the procurators, and of gessius florus in particular, who obtained the office, a. d. , excited the jews to rebellion, which, , ended in the capture and destruction of their city and temple by titus. the spread of the jews over the whole civilized world of that time, although previously commenced, was by this event still further increased; and at the same time the extension of christianity was prepared and facilitated. even after the conquest, jerusalem not only continued to exist as a city, but was also still considered by the nation as a point of union; and the attempt, under adrian, to establish a roman colony there, produced a fearful sedition. basnage, _histoire des juifs depuis j. c. jusqu' à present_. la haye, , vols. mo. the first two parts only, properly speaking, belong to this period; but the others likewise contain several very valuable historical researches. prideaux, _the old and new testament connected in the history of the jews and their neighbouring nations_. lond. , vols. this work, together with that above quoted, have always been esteemed the grand books on the subject. the french translation of prideaux's connection is, by its arrangement, more convenient for use than the original: this translation was published at amsterdam, , vols. vo. under the title of prideaux, _histoire des juifs et des peuples voisins depuis la décadence des royaumes d'israel et de juda, jusqu' à la mort de j. c._ # j. d. michaelis, _translation of the books of esdras, nehemiah, and maccabees_, contains in the observations several historic discussions of high importance. # j. remond, _essay towards a history of the spread of judaism, from cyrus to the total decline of the jewish state_. leipzig, . the industrious work of a young scholar. to the works enumerated p. , , must be added, for the more ancient history of the jews: j. l. bauer, _manual of the history of the hebrew nation, from its rise to the destruction of its state_. nuremberg, , parts, vo. as yet the best critical introduction, not only to the history, but also to the antiquities of the nation. # in the works of j. j. hess, belonging to this subject, namely, _history of moses_; _history of joshua_; _history of the rulers of judah_, parts; _history of the kings of judah and israel_: the history is throughout considered in a theocratic point of view. * * * * * fifth book. history of the roman state. _introductory remarks on the geography of ancient italy._ italy constitutes a peninsula, bounded on the north by the alps, on the west and south by the mediterranean, and on the east by the adriatic sea. its greatest length from north to south is geogr. miles; its greatest breadth, taken at the foot of the alps, is geogr. miles; but that of the peninsula, properly so called, is not more than geogr. miles. superficial contents, , sq. geogr. miles. the principal mountain range is that of the apennines, which, diverging occasionally to the west, or east, stretch from north to south through central and lower italy. in the earlier times of rome, these mountains were covered with thick forests. main streams: the padus (po) and the athesis, (adige,) both of which discharge their waters in the adriatic; and the tiberis, (tiber,) which falls into the mediterranean. the soil, particularly in the plains, is one of the most fertile in europe; on the other hand, many of the mountain tracts admit but of little cultivation. in that period when the mediterranean was the grand theatre of trade, italy, by her situation, seemed destined to become the principal mart of europe; but she never in ancient times availed herself sufficiently of this advantage. it is divided into _upper_ italy, from the alps to the small rivers of rubicon and macra; (this part, however, of italy, until presented with the right of citizenship under cæsar, was, according to the roman political geography, considered as a province;) into _central_ italy, from the rubicon and the macra down to the silarus and frento; and into _lower_ italy from those rivers to the southern land's end. i. _upper italy comprises the two countries, gallia cisalpina and liguria._ . gallia cisalpina, or togata, in contradistinction to gallia transalpina. it bears the name of gallia, in consequence of being for the most part occupied by gallic races. this country is one continuous plain, divided by the padus into two parts, the northernmost of which is therefore denominated gallia transpadana, (inhabited by the taurini, insubres, and cenomani,) while the southern part (inhabited by the boii, senones, and lingones) is known by the name of gallia cispadana. various streams contribute to swell the padus; from the north the duria, (durance,) the ticinus, (tessino,) the addua, (adda,) the ollius, (oglio,) the mintius, (minzio,) and several less important rivers; from the south, the tanarus, (tanaro,) the trebia, etc. the athesis, (adige,) the plavis, (piave,) and a number of smaller mountain streams, roll their waters directly into the adriatic. the cities in gallia cisalpina were, generally speaking, roman colonies; and most of them have preserved to this day their ancient names. among these are reckoned in gallia transpadana, principally, tergeste, aquileia, patavium, (padua,) vincentia, verona, all east of the athesis; mantua, cremona, brixia, (brescia,) mediolanum, (milan,) ticinum, (pavia,) and augusta taurinorum, (turin,) all west of the athesis. in gallia cispadana we meet with ravenna, bononia, (bologna,) mutina, (modena,) parma, placentia, (piacenza). several of the above places received municipal rights from the romans. . liguria. this country deduced its name from the ligures, one of the old italic tribes: it extended from the river varus, by which it was divided from gallia transalpina, down to the river macra; northward it extended to the padus, and comprised the modern territory of genoa.--cities: genua, an extremely ancient place; nicæa, (nice,) a colony of massilia; and asta, (asti.) ii. _central italy comprises six countries; etruria, latium, and campania on the west; umbria, picenum, and samnium on the east._ . etruria, tuscia, or tyrrhenia, was bounded north by the macra, which divided it from liguria; south and east by the tiberis, which separated it from latium and umbria. main river, the arnus, (arno). it is for the most part a mountainous country; the seashore only is level. this country derives its name from the etrusci, a very ancient people, composed, it is probable, of an amalgamation of several races, and even some early grecian colonies, to which latter they were indebted, not indeed for all their arts, but for that of writing; to commerce and navigation the etrusci were indebted for their opulence and consequent splendour. cities: between the macra and arnus, pisæ, (pisa,) florentia, fæsulæ; between the arnus and tiberis, volaterræ, (volterra,) volsinii, (bolsena,) on the lacus volsiniensis, (lago di bolsena,) clusium, (chiusi,) arretium, (arrezzo,) cortona, perusia, (perugia,) in the neighbourhood of which is the lacus thrasimenus, (lago di perugia,) falerii, (falari,) and the wealthy city of veii. each of the above twelve cities had its own individual ruler, _lucumo_; although frequent associations were formed among them, yet no firm and lasting bond seems to have united the nation into one. . latium, properly the residence of the latini, from the tiberis north, to the promontory of circeii, south; hence that country was likewise denominated latium vetus. subsequently, under the name of latium was likewise reckoned the country from circeii, down to the river liris, (latium novum;) so that the boundaries came to be, north, the tiberis, south, the liris: the seat of the latins, properly speaking, was in the fruitful plain extending from the tiber to circeii; around them, however, dwelt various small tribes, some eastward, in the apennines, such as the hernici, sabini, Æqui, and marsi; others southward, such as the volsci, rutuli, and aurunci.--rivers: the anio (teverone) and allia, which fall into the tiber, and the liris, (garigliano,) which empties itself into the mediterranean. cities in latium vetus: rome, tibur, tusculum, alba longa, ostia, lavinium, antium, gabii, velitræ, the capital of the volsci, and several smaller places. in latium novum: fundi, terracina, or anxur, arpinum, minturnæ, formiæ. . campania. the country lying between the liris, north, and the silarus, south. one of the most fruitful plains in the world, but at the same time greatly exposed to volcanic eruptions. rivers: the liris, the vulturnus, (voltorno,) the silarus, (selo). mountain: vesuvius. campania derived its name from the race of the campani. cities: capua the principal one; and also linternum, cumæ, neapolis, herculaneum, pompeii, stabiæ, nola, surrentum, salernum, etc. _the three eastern countries of central italy are as follows_: . umbria. it is bounded, north, by the river rubico, south, by the river Æsis, (gesano,) dividing it from picenum, and by the nar, (nera,) dividing it from the sabine territory. it is for the most part plain. the umbrian race had in early times spread over a much larger portion of italy. cities: ariminium, (rimini,) spoletium, (spoleto,) narnia, (narni,) and ocriculum, (otriculi.) . picenum. bounded, north, by the Æsis, south, by the atarnus, (pescara.) the people are called picentes. this country consists in a fertile plain. cities: ancona and asculum picenum, (ascoli.) . samnium, the name of a mountain tract extending from the atarnus, north, to the frento, south; although that country reckoned among its inhabitants, not only the rude and powerful samnites, but also several less numerous races; for instance, the marrucini and peligni in the north, the frentani in the east, and the hirpini in the south. rivers: the sagrus and the tifernus. cities: allifæ, beneventum, and caudium. iii. _lower italy, or magna grecia, comprised four countries; lucania and bruttium on the western side, apulia and calabria on the eastern._ . lucania. boundaries: north, the silarus, south, the laus. for the most part a mountain tract. it derived its name from the race of the lucani, a branch of the ausones, or chief nation of lower italy. cities: pæstum, or posidonia, still renowned for its ruins, and helia, or velia. . bruttium, (the modern calabria,) or the western tongue of land from the river laus to the southern land's end at rhegium. the river brandanus constitutes the eastern frontier. a mountainous country, deriving its name from the bruttii, (a half savage branch of the ausones,) who dwelt in the mountains, while the seashores were occupied by grecian settlements. cities: consentia, (cosenza,) pandosia, mamertum, and petilia. (concerning the greek colonies see above p. .) . apulia. the country ranging along the eastern coast, from the river frento to the commencement of the eastern tongue of land; an extremely fertile plain, and particularly adapted to grazing cattle. rivers: the aufidus (ofanto) and the cerbalus. this country is divided into two parts by the aufidus, the northern called apulia daunia, the southern called apulia peucetia. cities: in apulia daunia; sipontum and luceria: in apulia peucetia; barium, cannæ, and venusia. . calabria or messapia, the smaller eastern tongue of land, which terminates in the promontory of iapygium. cities: brundusium (brindisi) and callipolis (gallipoli). concerning tarentum and other grecian colonies, see above, p. . three large islands are likewise reckoned as appertaining to italy: they are sicily, sardinia, and corsica. according to the political geography of the romans they were, however, considered as provinces. although the above islands were, along the coast, occupied by aliens, the aboriginals, under their own kings, maintained a footing in the inland parts; among these the siculi, said to have migrated from italy, were the most celebrated; they remained in sicily, and gave their name to the whole island. concerning the cities, the more important of which were, some of phoenician, but the most part of grecian, origin, see above, p. , and p. , sqq. first period. _from the foundation of rome to the conquest of italy and the commencement of the wars with carthage, b. c. - , or a. u. c. - ._ sources. the most copious author, and, if we except his system of deducing everything connected with rome from greece, the most critical of all those who have written on the earlier history of rome and italy, is dionysius halicarnassensis, in his _archæologia_: of this work only the first eleven books, reaching down to the year , have been preserved; to these, however, must be added the fragments of the nine following books, xii-xx. discovered in , and published by the abbate mai of milan. next to dionysius is livy, who as far as lib. iv, c. , is our main authority, till b. c. . of the lives of plutarch the following belong to this period, romulus, numa, coriolanus, poplicola and camillus; which for the knowledge and criticism they display, are perhaps more important even than livy and dionysius, see a. h. l. heeren, _de fontibus et auctoritate vitarum plutarchi_, inserted in _comment recentiores soc. scient. gott. comment. i. ii. græci, iii. iv. romani_; reprinted also as an appendix to the editions of plutarch by reiske and hutten, _gottingen_, , _ap. dieterich_. the sources of the most ancient roman history were extremely various in kind. the traditions of the fathers were preserved in historical ballads; (no mention is ever made of any grand epic poem;) and in this sense there existed a bardic history; by no means, however, wholly poetic, for even the traditions of numa's institutes are without the characteristics of poetry. the art of writing was in italy of earlier origin than the city of rome; how far, consequently, the public annals, such as the _libri pontificum_, extended back in early time remains undetermined. several of the memorials are, beyond a doubt, mere family records, whether preserved by vocal tradition or in written documents. to the above must be added monuments, not only buildings and works of arts, but also treaties engraved on tables; of which, nevertheless, too little use seems to have been made. the romans having learnt the art of writing from the greeks, their history was as frequently written in greek as in latin; and that not only by greeks, such as, in the first place, diocles of peparethus, but likewise by romans, such as fabius pictor, at an early period. from these last sources dionysius and livy compiled. the more ancient roman history given by these authorities rests, therefore, in part, but by no means entirely, on tradition and poetry; still further amplified by the rhetoric style, that of the greeks more especially. at what epoch the roman history lays aside the poetic character can hardly be determined with certainty; it may be traced even in some parts of the period extending from the expulsion of the kings to the conquest by the gauls.--for the purposes of chronology, great importance attaches to the _fasti romani_, contained partly in inscriptions, (_fasti capitolini_,) partly in manuscripts. they have been collected and restored by pighius, noris sigonius, etc. in grÆvii, _thes. a. r._ vol. xi.; likewise in almeloveen, _fast. rom._ i. ii. amstel. , etc. pighii _annales romanorum_. antwerp, , fol. vols. an essay towards a chronological arrangement; it reaches down to vitellius. the roman history has been copiously treated of by the moderns in many works besides those on universal ancient history before enumerated, (p. .). we shall mention only the more important. rollin, _histoire romaine, depuis la foundation de rome jusqu' à la bataille d'actium_. vols. vo. paris, , édit. revue par letronne. this history, which extends to b. c. , has been continued and terminated by crevier. although the critical historian might suggest much that is wanting in this work, it nevertheless contributed to advance the study. ed. ferguson, _the history of the progress and termination of the roman republic_. london, , to. on the whole, the best work on the history of the roman republic; it has superceded the earlier work of goldsmith. p. ch. levesque, _histoire de la république romaine_, vols. paris, . he who would still wish to admire with blind enthusiasm the glory of ancient rome, had better not read this work. b. g. niebuhr, _roman history_. rather criticism than history; the author seems to be perpetually endeavouring to overthrow all that has hitherto been admitted. the spirit of acuteness is not always that of truth; and men do not so lightly assent to the existence of a constitution which not only is contrary to the broad view of antiquity--inferences drawn from some insulated passages not being sufficient to overturn what is corroborated by all the others--but likewise, according to the author's own avowal, stands opposed to all analogy in history. but truth gains even where criticism is wrong; and the value of some deep researches will not for that reason be overlooked.--consult on this subject: # w. wachsmuth, _researches into the more ancient history of rome_. halle, . c. f. th. lachmann, _commentatio de fontibus t. livii in prima historiarum decade_. gottingæ, . a prize essay. for the works upon the roman constitution see below, at the end of this and at the beginning of the third period. abundance of most important writings upon roman antiquities will be found in the great collections: grÆvii _thesaurus antiquitatum romanarum_. lugd. batav. , sq. vols. fol. and likewise in salengre, _thesaurus antiquitatum romanarum_. venet. , vols. fol. many excellent papers, particularly in _mémoires de l'académie des inscriptions_. with the exception of nardini, _roma vetus_, inserted in grÆvii thes. a. r. t. iv. the best work on the topography of ancient rome is venuti, _descrizione topografica delle antichità di roma_. p. i. ii. roma, ; and especially the new edition of that work by visconti, . there is also: # s. h. l. adler, _description of the city of rome_. altona, , to. the best representation of the monuments of ancient rome will be found in piranesi, _antichità di roma_, vols. fol. . in certain respects, the history of rome is always that of one town, inasmuch as until the period of the cæsars, the city continued mistress of her extensive territory. the main parts of the internal constitution of rome were formed during this first period; which, considered in an historical point of view, can hardly be said to be void of interest. whether every fundamental institution had its origin precisely at the epoch to which it is attributed, is a question of little importance; it is sufficient to observe, that they certainly arose in this period; and that the steps by which the constitution was developed are, upon the whole, determined beyond the possibility of a doubt. . exaggerated and embellished as the most ancient traditions of the romans respecting their origin may be, they all agree in this, that the romans belonged to the race of the latini, and that their city was a colony of the neighbouring alba longa. long before this the custom seems to have obtained with the latini, of extending the cultivation of their country by colonies. the primitive history of rome is as difficult to reduce to pure historic truth as that of athens, or any other city of antiquity; this proceeds from its being principally founded on traditions, handled by poets and rhetoricians, and likewise differing from one another; as may be seen in plutarch's romulus. as the knowledge of those traditions, such as they are found in dionysius and livy, attaches to so many other subjects, it would be improper to pass them over in silence; and that they contained truths as well as poetic fictions is proved most evidently by the political institutions of which they narrate the origin, and which certainly reached back to those times. to attempt to draw a line of demarcation between mythical and historic times would be to mistake the real nature of mythology. l. de beaufort, _sur l'incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l'histoire romaine_, nouv. éd. à la haye, , vols. vo. every thing that can be said against the credibility of the primitive roman history has been developed by beaufort with abundant, and often with laboured, acuteness. . during the first two hundred and forty-five years subsequent to its foundation this city was under the rule of governors, denominated kings; these, however, were not hereditary, still less were they invested with unlimited power, although they exerted themselves to become both perpetual and absolute. on the contrary, in this period was framed a municipal constitution, demonstrative of the existence, even at this early date, of a considerable degree of political civilization; in its principal parts this constitution was, no doubt,--as in every colony,--copied from that of the mother city. its principal features were: _a._ establishment and internal organization of the senate. _b._ establishment and progress of the patrician or hereditary nobility, which, supported by the privilege of administering the sacred affairs, and by the introduction of family names, quickly formed, in opposition to the plebeians, a political party ever growing in power, although not, therefore, a mere sacerdotal caste. _c._ organization of the people (_populus_), and modes of popular assembly (_comitia_), founded thereupon; besides the original division according to heads into _tribus_ and _curiæ_, another was subsequently introduced according to property into _classes_ and _centuriæ_, out of which, besides the more ancient _comitia curiata_, arose the very artificially constructed _comitia centuriata_. _d._ religious institutions, (_religiones_,) which being most closely connected with the political constitution, formed a state religion, by means of which everything in the state was attached to determined forms, and received a higher sanction. nor must we omit _e._ the relations in private life established by law, the clientship, marriage, and especially paternal authority. in consequence of those domestic relations, a spirit of subordination and discipline, from the earliest times, pervaded the people; and to that spirit the romans were indebted for the glory to which they attained. . notwithstanding many little wars with their immediate neighbours the sabines, Æqui, and volsci, together with various cities of the etrusci, and even with the latins themselves, rome added but little to her territory: nevertheless she took the first step towards her aggrandizement; from the time of the destruction of alba longa, she aimed at being the head of the collected cities of the latins, and finally attained the object of her ambition. line of kings. romulus, - . first establishment of the colony; augmentation in the number of the citizens, produced by the establishment of an asylum, and an union with part of the sabines. numa pompilius, _d._ . by representing this prince as the founder of the religion of the roman state, that religion received the high sanction of antiquity. tullus hostilius, _d._ . the conquest and destruction of alba lays the foundation of roman supremacy in latium. ancus martius, _d._ . he extends the territory of rome to the sea; the foundation of the port of ostia proves that rome already applied to navigation, the object of which was perhaps as yet rather piracy than trade. tarquinius priscus, _d._ . a grecian by descent. under his conduct rome was already able to enter the field against the confederate etrusci. servius tullius, _d._ . the most remarkable in the line of roman kings. he placed rome at the head of the confederacy of the latins, which he confirmed by _communia sacra_. on his new division of the people according to property were raised the highly important institutions of the _census_ and _comitia centuriata_. the necessity of this measure is demonstrative of the great and increasing prosperity of the roman citizens; there can be no doubt, however, that by its adoption the frame of the republic was already completed. tarquinius superbus, (the tyrant,)-- . this individual, having taken forcible possession of the throne as nephew to priscus, endeavoured to confirm his power by a close connection with the latins and volsci; by this, as well as by his tyranny, he offended both the patrician and plebeian parties. his deposition, and the consequent reformation of the government, were however, properly speaking, brought about by the ambition of the patricians. algarotti, _saggio sopra la durata de' regni de' rè di roma_. (op. t. iii.) chronological doubts. can the raising of difficulties deserve the name of criticism? . the only direct consequence to the internal constitution of rome, proceeding from the abolition of royalty was, that that power, undetermined as it had been while in the hands of the kings, was transferred to two consuls, annually elected. meanwhile the struggle for liberty, in which the new republic was engaged with the etrusci and latins, contributed much to arouse the republican spirit which henceforward was the main feature of the roman character--the evils of popular rule being in times of need remedied by the establishment of the dictatorship. the party, however, which had deposed the ruling family, took wholly into their own hands the helm of state; and the oppression of these aristocrats, shown principally towards their debtors, who had become their slaves, (_nexi_,)--notwithstanding the _lex de provocatione_ established by valerius poplicola, ensuring to the people the highest judicial power--was so galling, that after the lapse of a few years it gave rise to a sedition of the commons, (_plebis_,) the consequence of which was the establishment of annually elected presidents of the people (_tribuni plebis_). first commercial treaty with carthage, , in which rome appears certainly as a free state, but not yet as sovereign of all latium; the most important monument of the authenticity of the earlier roman history. heyne, _foedera carthaginiensium cum romanis super navigatione et mercatura facta_: contained in his opusc. t. iii. cf. # a. h. l. heeren, _ideas_, etc. appendix to the second vol. . the further development of the roman constitution in this period, hinges almost wholly on the struggle between the new presidents of the commons and the hereditary nobility; the tribunes, instead of confining themselves to defend the people from the oppression of the nobles, soon began to act as aggressors, and in a short time so widely overstepped their power, that there remained no chance of putting an end to the struggle but by a complete equalization of rights. a long time elapsed ere this took place; the aristocracy finding a very powerful support both in the clientship and in the religion of the state, operating under the shape of auspices. main facts of the contest: . in the trial of coriolanus the tribunes usurp the right of summoning some patricians before the tribunal of the people.--hence arise the _comitia tributa_; that is to say, either mere assemblies of the commons, or assemblies so organized that the commons had the preponderance. this institution gave the tribunes a share in the legislation, subsequently of such high importance, those officers being allowed to lay proposals before the commons. . more equitable distribution among the poorer classes of the lands conquered from the neighbouring nations, (the most ancient _leges agrariæ_,) suggested by the ambitious attempts of cassius, . . extension of the prerogatives of the _comitia tributa_, more especially in the election of the tribunes, brought about by volero, . . attempts at a legal limitation of the consular power by terentillus, (_lex terentilla_,) , which, after a long struggle, at last leads to the idea of one common written code, , which is likewise realized in spite of the opposition at first made by the patricians. # chr. f. schulze, _struggle between the democracy and aristocracy of rome, or history of the romans from the expulsion of tarquin to the election of the first plebeian consul_. altenburgh, , vo. a most satisfactory development of this portion of roman history. . the code of the twelve tables confirmed the ancient institutions, and was in part completed by the adoption of the laws of the greek republics, among which athens in particular is mentioned, whose counsels were requested by a special deputation. in this, however, two faults were committed; not only were the commissioners charged with drawing up the laws elected from the patricians _alone_, but they were likewise constituted sole magistrates, with _dictatorial_ power, (_sine provocatione_;) whereby a path was opened to them for an usurpation, which could be frustrated only by a sedition of the people. duration of the power of the decemviri, - . the doubts raised as to the deputation sent to athens are not sufficient to invalidate the authenticity of an event so circumstantially detailed. athens, under pericles, was then at the head of greece; and, admitting the proposed design of consulting the greek laws, it was impossible that athens should have been passed over. and indeed, why should it be supposed, that a state which fifty years before had signed a commercial treaty with carthage, and could not be unacquainted with the grecian colonies in lower italy, might not have sent an embassy into greece? the yet remaining fragments of the code of the twelve tables are collected and illustrated in bachii _hist. jurisprudentiæ romanæ_; and in several other works. . by the laws of the twelve tables the legal relations of the citizens were the same for all; but as that code seems to have contained very little in reference to any peculiar constitution of the state, the government not only remained in the hands of the aristocrats, who were in possession of all offices, but the prohibition, according to the new laws of marriage between patricians and plebeians, appeared to have raised an insurmountable barrier between the two classes. no wonder, then, that the tribunes of the people should have immediately renewed their attacks on the patricians; particularly as the power of those popular leaders was not only renewed, but even augmented, as the only limit to their authority was the necessity of their being unanimous in their acts, while each had the right of a negative. besides the other laws made in favour of the people at the renewal of the _tribunicia potestas_, , that which imported _ut quod tributim plebes jussisset, populum teneret_, frequently renewed in subsequent times, and meaning, in modern language, that the citizens constituted themselves, must, it would appear, have thrown the supreme power into the hands of the people; did not the roman history, like that of other free states, afford examples enough of the little authority there is to infer from the enactment of a law that it will be practically enforced. . the main subjects of the new dissensions between patricians and plebeians, excited by the tribune canuleius, were now the _connubia patrum cum plebe_, and the exclusive participation of the patricians in the consulship, of which the tribunes demanded the abolition. the repeal of the former law was obtained as early as , (_lex canuleia_;) the right of admission to the consulship was not extended to the plebeians, till after a struggle annually renewed for eighty years; during which, when, as usually was the case, the tribunes forbade the military enrolment, recourse was had to a transfer of the consular power to the yearly elected commanders of the legions; a place to which plebeians were entitled to aspire, (_tribuni militum consulari potestate._)--establishment of the office of censors, designed at first for nothing more than to regulate the taking of the census, and invested with no higher authority than what that required, but who soon after, by assuming to themselves the _censura morum_, took rank among the most important dignitaries of the state. . meanwhile rome was engaged in wars, insignificant but almost uninterrupted, arising out of the oppression, either real or imaginary, which she exercised as head of the neighbouring federate cities, (_socii_,) comprising not only those of the latins, but likewise, after the victory of lake regillus, those of the other nations: the cities embraced every opportunity of asserting their independence, and the consequent struggles must have depopulated rome, had not that evil been diverted by the maxim of increasing the complement of citizens by admitting the freedmen, and not unfrequently even the conquered, to the enjoyment of civic privileges. little as these feuds, abstractedly considered, deserve our attention, they become of high interest, inasmuch as they were not only the means by which the nation was trained to war, but also led to the foundation of that senatorial power, whose important consequences will be exhibited hereafter. among these wars attention must be directed to the last, that against veii, the richest city in etruria; the siege of that place, which lasted very nearly ten years, - , gave rise to the introduction among the roman military of winter campaigning, and of pay; thus, on the one hand, the prosecution of wars more distant and protracted became possible, while on the other the consequences must have been the levy of higher taxes, (_tributa_). . not long after, however, a tempest from the north had nearly destroyed rome. the sennonian gauls, pressed out of northern italy through etruria, possessed themselves of the city, the capitol excepted, and reduced it to ashes; an event which made so deep an impression on the minds of the romans, that few other occurrences in their history have been more frequently the object of traditional detail. camillus, then the deliverer of rome, and in every respect one of the chief heroes of that period, laid a double claim to the gratitude of his native city, by overruling, after his victory, the proposal of a general migration to veii. . scarcely was rome rebuilt ere the ancient feuds revived, springing out of the poverty of the citizens, produced by an increase of taxation consequent on the establishment of military pay, and by the introduction of gross usury. the tribunes, sextius and licinius, by prolonging their term of office to five years, had established their power; while licinius, by an agrarian law, decreeing that no individual should hold more than five hundred _jugera_ of the national lands, had ensured the popular favour; so that at last they succeeded in obtaining, that one of the consuls should be chosen from the commons; and although the nobility, by the nomination of a prætor from their own body, and of _ædiles curules_, endeavoured to compensate for the sacrifice they were obliged to make, yet the plebeians having once made good a claim to the consulship, their participation in the other magisterial offices, (the dictatorship, , the censorship, , the prætorship, ,) and even the priesthood, ( ,) quickly followed as a matter of course. thus at rome the object of political equality between commons and nobles was attained; and although the difference between the patrician and plebeian families still subsisted, they soon ceased to form political parties. a second commercial treaty entered into with carthage, , demonstrates that even at this time the navy of the romans was anything but contemptible; although its principal object as yet was mere piracy. roman squadrons of war however appear more than once within the next forty years. . far more important than any wars in which rome had hitherto been engaged, were those soon about to commence with the samnites. in former contests the object of rome had been to establish her supremacy over her immediate neighbours; but in these, during a protracted contest of fifty years, she opened a way to the subjugation of italy, and laid the foundation of her future greatness. commencement of the wars against the samnites, the campanians having called the romans to their assistance against that nation, . these wars, carried on with vigorous exertion and various success, lasted, with but short intermissions, till . this is the true heroic age of rome, ennobled by the patriotic valour of decius mus, (father and son, both voluntary victims,) papirius cursor, q. fabius maximus, etc. the consequences of this struggle were: _a._ the romans learnt the art of mountain warfare, and thereby for the first time acquired a peculiar system of military tactics; not, however, till they had been, , obliged to pass under the _furcas caudinas_. _b._ their relations were more firmly established with their neighbours the latins and etrurians, by the complete conquest of the former, , and by repeated victories over the latter, more especially in . _c._ great national federations having arisen in italy, particularly during the last period of the samnite wars, the romans entered into connection with the more distant nations of the country; with the lucanians and apulians, by the first league, , with the umbri, from the year ; and although the nature of this connection frequently varied, the different nations were perpetually struggling for independence, and were consequently at enmity with rome. in this period, moreover, commenced the practical illustration of the leading ideas of rome upon the political relations in which she placed the conquered with regard to herself. . after the subjection of the samnites, rome, wishing to confirm her dominion in lower italy, was thereby, for the first time, entangled in war with a foreign prince; the tarentines, too feeble to maintain alone their footing against the romans, called pyrrhus of epirus to their assistance. he came, indeed, but not so much to further the views of the tarentines as to advance his own; but even in victory, he learnt by experience that the macedonian tactics gave him but a slight preponderance, which the romans soon transferred to their own side, exhibiting the truth of the principle, that a good civic militia, sooner or later, will always get the upper hand of mercenary troops. the idea of calling upon pyrrhus for assistance was the more natural, as the predecessor of that prince, alexander i. (see above p. .) had endeavoured, but without success, to effect conquests in lower italy. in the first war with pyrrhus, - , two battles were fought, the first at pandosia, , the other at asculum, ; in both of which rome was unsuccessful. but pyrrhus, after crossing over into sicily, , (see above, p. , .) once more returned into italy, , when he was defeated by the romans at beneventum, and compelled to evacuate italy, leaving a garrison at tarentum. that city, however, soon afterwards, , fell into the hands of the romans, whose dominion was consequently extended to the extremity of lower italy. . the chief means to which, even from the earliest times, the romans had recourse for the foundation of their dominion over the conquered, and at the same time for the prevention of the too great increase of the needy classes at rome, was the establishment of colonies of their own citizens, which, being settled in the captured cities, served likewise as garrisons. each colony had its own distinct internal constitution, modelled, for the most part, upon that of the mother city itself; hence to keep the colonies in perfect dependence naturally became an object of roman policy. this colonial system of the romans, necessarily and spontaneously arising out of the rude custom of bereaving the conquered of their lands and liberty, assumed its main features in the samnite war, and gradually embraced the whole of italy. closely connected with this system was the construction of military highways, (_viæ militares_,) one of which, the appian way, was constructed so early as , and to this day remains a lasting monument of the greatness of rome at that period. even at the time of hannibal's invasion, the number of roman colonies amounted to : but several which had been settled returned to the mother city. heyne, _de romanorum prudentia in coloniis regendis_: inserted in _opusc._ vol. iii. cf. _prolusiones de veterum coloniarum jure ejusque causis_, in his _opusc._ vol. i. . but the relations existing between rome and the italian nations were extremely various in kind. . a few cities and nations enjoyed the full privileges of roman citizenship; in some instances, however, without the right of voting in the _comitia_ (_municipia_). . the privileges of the colonies (_jus coloniarum_) were of a more restricted nature; the colonists were indeed in possession of their own civic government, but had no further share whatever either in the _comitia_ or magistracies of rome. the other inhabitants of italy were either federates (_socii, foedere juncti_) or subjects (_dedititii_). the first (_a_) preserved their internal form of government; but on the other hand (_b_) were obliged to furnish tribute and auxiliary troops (_tributis et armis juvare rempublicam_). their further relation with rome depended upon the terms of the league. the most advantageous of these terms were . in favour of the latins, although each of their cities had its own separate league (_jus latii_;) as . the rest of the italian nations had their _jus italicum_. on the other hand, . the subjects, _dedititii_, were deprived of their internal constitutions, and were governed by roman magistrates, (_præfecti_,) annually renewed. c. sigonius, _de antiquo jure civium romanorum_; and his treatise _de antiquo jure italiæ_, inserted both in his _opera_ and in grÆvii _thes. ant. rom._ t. ii. contain the most learned researches on the details of these relations. . the internal constitution of rome itself, now completed, bore the character of a democracy, inasmuch as equality of rights existed both for nobles and commons. yet this democracy was modified by expedients so various and wonderful--the rights of the people, of the senate, of the magistrates, fitted so nicely into each other, and were so firmly supported by the national religion, connecting every thing with determinate forms--that there was no reason, at that time, to fear the evils either of anarchy, or, what is much more astonishing when we consider the warlike character of the people, those of military despotism. the rights of the people consisted in the legislative power, so far as fundamental national principles were concerned, and in the election of the magistrates. the distinction between the _comitia tributa_ (as independent of the senate) and the _comitia centuriata_ (as dependent on the senate) still existed as to form, but had lost all its importance, the difference between patricians and plebeians being now merely nominal, and the establishment of the _tribus urbanæ_, , excluding the too great influence of the people (_forensis factio_) upon the _comitia tributa_. the rights of the senate consisted in administering and debating all transitory national affairs, whether foreign relations, (war and peace only excepted, in which the consent of the people was requisite,) financial concerns, or matters regarding domestic peace and security. but the manner in which the senate was supplied must have made it the first political body at that time in the world. the rights and rank of magistrates were founded on their greater or lesser _auspicia_, no public affair being entered upon except _auspicato_. consequently he only who was in possession of the former could hold the highest civic and military power; (_imperium civile et militare; suis auspiciis rem gerere_;) as dictator, consul, prætor; such was not the case with those who had only the lesser _auspicia_. the union of civil and military power in the person of the same individual was not without its inconveniences, but military despotism was in some measure guarded against by the prohibition of any magistrate possessing military command within rome itself. we must not dismiss this subject without observing, that as the roman constitution arose merely out of practice, there never having been any completely written charter, we cannot expect that all the details should be clearly ascertained; to attempt, therefore, in default of such authority, to describe all the minutiæ would be the surest way to fall into error. of the numerous works on the roman constitution and on roman antiquities, we shall mention: de beaufort, _la république romaine, ou plan général de l'ancien gouvernement de rome_. la haye, , vols. to. a most copious work, and one of the most solid in regard to the matters discussed; although it does not embrace the whole of the subject. _histoire critique du gouvernement romain_; paris, . containing some acute observations. _du gouvernement de la republique romaine_, _par_ a. ad. de texier, vols. vo. hamburg, . this contains many enquiries peculiar to the writer. some learned researches respecting the principal points of the roman constitution, as sigonius and gruchius _de comitiis romanorum_, zamocius _de senatu romano_, etc. will be found collected in the first two vols, of grÆvius, _antiq. roman._ for the popular assemblies of the romans, an antiquarian essay by chr. ferd. schulze, gotha, , chiefly according to niebuhr, may be consulted. among the numerous manuals of roman antiquities, nieuport, _explicatio rituum romanorum, ed. gesner_. berol. , promises at least as much as it performs. of those which profess to treat of roman antiquities in general, none have yet risen above mediocrity. jurisprudence, however, has been much more successfully handled. we cite the two following excellent compendiums: bachii, _historia jurisprudentiæ romanæ_. lips. . . # c. hugo, _elements of the roman law_; th edit. berlin, . second period. _from the commencement of the war with carthage to the rise of the civil broils under the gracchi, b. c. - . year of rome, - ._ sources. the principal writer for this highly interesting period, in which was laid the foundation of the universal dominion of rome, is polybius as far as the year , not only in the complete books preserved to us, which come down to , but also in the fragments. he is frequently followed by livy, lib. xxi-xlv. - . appian, who comes next, does not confine himself merely to the history of the war; florus gives us only an abridgement. the lives of plutarch which relate to this portion of history, are fabius maximus, p. Æmilius, marcellus, m. cato, and flaminius. of modern writers we dare only mention one:--and who is worthy to be ranked beside him? montesquieu, _considerations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la décadence des romains_. . the political division of italy laid the foundation for the dominion of rome in that country; the want of union and political relations in the world paved the way to her universal empire. the first step cost her much, the succeeding followed easily and rapidly; and the history of the struggle between rome and carthage only shows on a larger scale what the history of greece exhibits on a smaller. the whole of the following history confirms the fact, that two republics cannot exist near each other, without one being destroyed or subjected: but the vast extent of this struggle, the important consequences which followed, together with the wonderful exertions made, and the great men engaged on both sides, gave it an interest which cannot be found in that of any other nations. though the power and resources of both states were nearly equal in appearance, they were widely different in quality and circumstances. carthage, besides her dominion over the seas, had also a better furnished treasury, by which she was enabled to enlist into her service as many _mercenaries_ as she pleased: rome, on the contrary, _strong in herself_, had all the advantages possessed by a nation of warriors over one partly commercial, partly military. . the first war of twenty-three years between the two republics, arose from very slight causes: it soon, however, became a struggle for the possession of sicily, which in the end naturally extended itself to the dominion of the sea. rome, by the aid of her newly-built fleet, having obtained for some time this power, was enabled to attack africa, and succeeded in driving the carthaginians from sicily. the occupation of messina by the romans, , gave rise to this war. the defection of hiero king of syracuse from the side of carthage, and his joining the romans, first gave the latter the idea of expelling the carthaginians from the island. the victory near agrigentum, and capture of that city in , seemed to facilitate the execution of this project: it also convinced the romans of the necessity of their having a naval power. we shall the less wonder at their forming a fleet in italy, where wood was then plentiful, if we remember their previous experience in naval affairs; these were not the first vessels of war which they constructed, but only the first large ones which they built upon a carthaginian model. the first naval victory of the romans under duilius, by the aid of grappling machines, . the project then conceived of carrying the war into africa was one of the great ideas of the romans, and from that time it became a ruling maxim of the state, to attack the enemy in his own territory. the second and very remarkable naval victory of the romans, , opened the way for them to africa, and shows their naval tactics in a very brilliant light: but the unfortunate issue of their expedition to africa, restored the equilibrium; and the struggle for the dominion of the sea became the more obstinate, as success did not altogether favour one party. the result of the contest appears to have turned upon the possession of the eastern promontories of sicily, drepanum, and lilybæum, which were in a manner the bulwarks of the carthaginians, and seemed impregnable since hamilcar barca had taken the command of them, . the last naval victory of the romans, however, under the consul lutatius, , having cut off the communication between sicily and carthage, and the finances of both parties being completely exhausted, a peace was concluded upon the conditions: . that the carthaginians should evacuate sicily and the small islands adjacent. . that they should pay to rome, by instalments in ten years, for the expenses she had been at in carrying on the war, the sum of , talents. . that they should not make war against hiero king of syracuse. . the issue of this war placed the political connections of rome in a new situation, and necessarily extended her influence abroad. the length of the war and the manner of its conclusion had, moreover, inspired a national hatred, such as is only found in republics; the conviction also that they could not remain independent of one another, must have become much more striking, as the points of contact had greatly increased since the beginning of the war. who does not know the arrogance of a republic after the first essay of her power has been crowned with success! rome gave a striking example of this by her invasion of sardinia in the midst of peace. these successes had also a sensible effect on the roman constitution. for although in appearance its form was not in the least changed, yet the power of the senate now acquired that preponderance which the ruling authority of a republic never fails to do after long and successful wars. origin and nature of the governments of the first roman provinces, in part of sicily and in sardinia. . an opportunity was soon afforded the romans, in the adriatic sea, of making use of their superior naval power, in chastising the pirates of illyria under their queen teuta. by effecting this, they not only secured their authority over that sea, but at the same time formed their first political relations with the grecian states; relations which soon afterwards became of great importance. commencement of the first illyrian war, , which ended with the subjugation of teuta, . the war, however, again broke out, , against demetrius of pharus, who conceived himself inadequately rewarded by rome for the services he had rendered her in the preceding war. the romans found him a much more dangerous adversary than had been expected, even after his expulsion and flight to philip, , (see above, p. .) throughout this war, rome appeared as the deliverer of the grecian states, which had suffered extremely from the plunder of these freebooters; corcyra, apollonia, and other cities placed themselves formally under her protection, while the achæans, Ætolians, and athenians vied with each other in showing their gratitude. . in the mean time, while carthage endeavoured to make up for the loss of sicily and sardinia by extending her spanish dominions, which the jealousy of rome restrained her from carrying beyond the ebro (p. .), rome herself had a new war to maintain against her northern neighbours the gauls, which ended after a violent contest with the establishment of her authority over the north of italy. from the first gallic war to the burning of rome, , the gauls had repeated their attacks in and , even to the conclusion of the peace in . but in the latter part of the samnite war, a formidable confederacy having taken place among the italian tribes, some of the gauls enlisted as mercenaries in the service of the etruscans, while others allied themselves to the samnites. this led them to take part in these wars in , , and , until they were obliged, together with the etruscans, to sue for peace in , before which time the romans had sent a colony into their country, near sena. this peace lasted till , when it was disturbed by the incursion of the transalpine gauls; without, however, their coming to any war with rome. but in , the proposition of flaminius the tribune, (_lex flaminia_), to divide the lands conquered from the senones, became the cause of new disturbances. upon this occasion, the gauls entered into an alliance with their transalpine countrymen, the gæsates on the rhone, who had been accustomed to engage as mercenaries. these having crossed the alps, the dreadful war of six years ( - ) began, in which, after defeating the gauls near clusium, , the romans pursued them into their own territory, and encamped upon the po, . the gauls having been again completely overthrown by marcellus, were obliged to sue for peace; when the roman colonies of placentia and cremona were established. the number of men capable of bearing arms in all italy subject to the romans during this war amounted to , . . before this storm was totally appeased, in which it is probable that carthaginian policy was not altogether inactive, hannibal had obtained the chief command in spain. from the reproach of having first begun the war, he and his party cannot be cleared; rome, in the situation she then was, could hardly desire it; he however who strikes the first blow is not always the real aggressor. the plan of hannibal was the destruction of rome; and by making italy the principal seat of the war, he necessarily turned the scale in his favour; because rome, obliged to defend herself, left to him all the advantages of attack. the preparations she made for defence, show that it was not believed possible he could execute his enterprise by the route which he took. the history of this war, - , of which no later transaction has been able to destroy the interest, is divided into three parts: the history of the war in italy; the contemporary war in spain; and from , the war in africa. hannibal's invasion of italy in the autumn, --engagement near the river ticinus and the battle of trebia, in the same year. battle near the lake thrasymenus in the spring, . seat of the war transferred to lower italy, and the defensive system of the dictator fabius until the end of the year. battle of cannæ, , followed by the conquest of capua and the subjection of the greater part of lower italy. the defensive mode of warfare afterwards adopted by the carthaginian, arose partly from his desire to form a junction with his brother asdrubal and the spanish army, and partly from his expectation of foreign support by means of alliances, with syracuse, after the death of hiero, , and with philip of macedon, . these hopes, however, were frustrated by the romans.--syracuse was besieged and taken, - , (see above, p. .) and philip kept employed in greece, (see above, p. .) in addition to this, the romans retook capua, notwithstanding the audacious march of hannibal towards rome, , and he had now no succour left except the reinforcement which asdrubal was bringing from spain. the latter, however, was attacked immediately upon his arrival in italy, near sena, by the consuls nero and livius, and left dead on the field, . from this time the war in italy became only of secondary importance, as hannibal was obliged to act on the defensive in bruttium. _the course of hannibal over the alps ascertained_, by j. whittaker. london, , vols. vo. the author endeavours to prove that the passage of hannibal was over the great st. bernard, and criticises the opinions of other writers. [we may likewise mention the learned treatise:-- _a dissertation on the passage of hannibal over the alps._ by h. l. wickham, m. a. and the rev. j. a. cramer, m. a. second edition, oxon.] the war in spain began nearly about the same time between asdrubal and the two brothers, cn. and p. cornelius scipio, and was continued, with various success, till the year , the issue depending much upon the disposition of the spaniards themselves. the plan of carthage after the year , was to send asdrubal with the spanish army into italy, and to supply its place by an army from africa; two victories, however, gained by the scipios near the ebro, , and the illiberis, , prevented this from being effected, till at last both fell under the superior power and cunning of the carthaginians, . but the arrival of the youthful p. cornelius scipio, who did not appear merely to his own nation as an extraordinary genius, entirely changed the face of affairs, and the fortunes of rome soon became attached to his name, which alone seemed to promise victory. during his command in spain, - , he won over the inhabitants while he defeated the carthaginians, and for the furtherance of his great design, contracted an alliance with syphax in africa, . he was unable, however, to prevent the march of asdrubal into italy, , which nevertheless rendered it an easy task for him to subdue all carthaginian spain as far as gades, , and thus procured him the consular dignity at his return, . the carrying of the war into africa by scipio, notwithstanding the opposition of the old roman generals, and the desertion of syphax, who at the persuasion of sophonisba again went over to the carthaginians (whose loss however was well repaid by masinissa, whom scipio had won over to his side in spain), was followed by an important consequence; for after he had gained two victories over asdrubal and syphax, , and taken the latter prisoner, the carthaginians found it necessary to recall hannibal from italy, ; and the battle of zama terminated the war, . the following were the conditions of peace: . that the carthaginians should only retain the territory in africa annexed to their government. . that they should give up all their ships of war, except ten triremes, and all their elephants. . that they should pay, at times specified, , talents. . that they should commence no war without the consent of rome. . that they should restore to masinissa all the houses, cities, and lands that had ever been possessed by himself or his ancestors.--the reproach usually cast upon the carthaginians, of having left hannibal unsupported in italy, in a great measure vanishes, if we remember the plan formed in , to send the spanish army into italy, and to replace it by an african one: a plan formed with much ability, and followed with as much constancy. we may add to this, that the barcine faction maintained its influence in the government even to the end of the war. but why they, who by the treaty of peace gave up five hundred vessels of war, suffered scipio to cross over from sicily, without sending one to oppose him, is difficult to explain. . notwithstanding her great loss of men, and the devastation of italy, rome felt herself much more powerful at the end of this war than at the beginning. her dominion was not only established over italy, but extensive foreign countries had been brought under it; her authority over the seas was rendered secure by the destruction of the naval power of the carthaginians. the roman _form_ of government, it is true, underwent no change, but its _spirit_ much, as the power of the senate became almost unlimited; and although the dawn of civilization had broken over rome, since her intercourse with more civilized foreigners, the state still remained altogether a nation of warriors. and now, for the first time, appears in the page of history the fearful phenomenon of a great military republic; and the history of the next ten years, in which rome overthrew so many thrones and free states, gives a striking proof, that such a power is the natural enemy to the independence of all the states within the reach of her arms. the causes which led rome from this time to aspire after the dominion of the world are to be found neither in her geographical situation, which for a conquering power by land seemed rather unfavourable; nor in the inclination of the people, who were opposed to the first war against philip; but singly and entirely in the spirit of her government. the means, however, whereby she obtained her end, must not be sought for merely in the excellence of her armies and generals, but rather in that uniform, sharp-sighted, and dexterous policy, by which she was enabled to frustrate the powerful alliances formed against her, notwithstanding the many adversaries who at that time sought to form new ones. but where could be found such another council of state, embodying such a mass of practical political wisdom, as the roman senate must have been from the very nature of its organization? all this, however, would not have been sufficient to have subjugated the world, if the want of good government, the degeneracy of the military art, and an extremely corrupt state of morals among both rulers and people, in foreign states, had not seconded the efforts of rome. view of the political state of the world at this period. in the west, sicily (the whole island after ), sardinia, and corsica, from the year , and spain, divided into citerior and ulterior (the latter rather in name than in fact), had become roman provinces ; the independence of carthage had been destroyed by the last peace, and her subordination secured by the alliance of rome with masinissa; cisalpine gaul, formed into a province, served as a barrier against the inroads of the more northern barbarians. on the other side, in the east, the kingdom of macedonia, and the free states of greece, forming together a very complicated system, had opened a connection with rome since the illyrian war, , and philip's alliance with hannibal, . of the three powers of the first rank, macedonia, syria, and egypt, the two former were allied against the latter, who, on her part, maintained a good understanding with rome. the states of secondary rank were, those of the Ætolian league, the kings of pergamus, and the republic of rhodes, with some smaller, such as athens: these had allied themselves to rome since the confederacy against philip, . the achæan league, on the contrary, was in the interests of macedonia, which rome always endeavoured to attach to herself, in order to make head against those of the first rank. . a declaration of war against philip, notwithstanding the opposition of the tribunes of the people, and an attack upon macedonia itself, according to the constant maxim of carrying the war into the enemy's country, immediately followed. they could not, however, drive philip so soon from the fastnesses of epirus and thessaly, which were his bulwarks. but rome possessed in t. quintius flaminius, who marched against philip as the deliverer of greece, a statesman and general exactly fitted for a period of great revolutions. by the permanency of his political influence he became indeed the true founder of the roman power in the east. who could better cajole men and nations, while they were erecting altars to him, than t. quintius? so artfully indeed did he assume the character of a great genius, such as had been given by nature to scipio, that he has almost deceived history itself. the struggle between him and philip consisted rather in a display of talents in political stratagem and finesse than in feats of arms: even before the battle of cynoscephalæ had given the finishing stroke, the romans had already turned the balance in their favour, by gaining over the achæan league. the negotiations between rome and macedonia, from the year , give the first striking examples of the ability and address of the romans in foreign policy; and they are the more remarkable, as the treaty with the Ætolians and others, (see above, p. ), was the remote cause of the transactions which afterwards took place in the east. the peculiar system adopted by the romans, of taking the lesser states under their protection as allies, must always have given them an opportunity of making war on the more powerful whenever they chose. this in fact happened in the present case, notwithstanding the peace concluded with philip, . the chief object of the romans in this war, both by sea and land, was to drive philip completely out of greece. the allies on both sides, and the conditions of peace, were similar to those concluded with carthage (see above, p. ). the destruction of the naval power of her conquered enemies became now a maxim of roman policy in making peace; and she thus maintained the dominion of the seas without any great fleet, and without losing the essential character of a dominant power by land. . the expulsion of philip from greece brought that country into a state of dependence upon rome; an event which could not have been better secured than by the present of liberty which t. quintius conferred upon its inhabitants at the isthmian games. the system of surveillance, which the romans had already established in the west over carthage and numidia, was now adopted in the east over greece and macedonia. roman commissioners, under the name of ambassadors, were sent into the country of the nations in alliance, and were the principal means by which this system of espionage was carried on. these however did not fail to give umbrage to the greeks, particularly to the turbulent Ætolians; more especially as the romans seemed in no hurry to withdraw their troops from a country which they had declared to be free. liberty was expressly granted to the state which had taken the part of philip, namely, to the achæans; to the others it was naturally understood to belong. it was nevertheless three years, , before the roman army evacuated greece and withdrew from the fortified places. the conduct of t. quintius during this period fully shows what he was. the greeks indeed had much want of such a guardian if they wished to remain quiet: his conduct, however, in the war against nabis, , shows that he had not really at heart the tranquillity of greece. . the treaty of peace with philip contained the seeds of a new and greater war with syria; but though this seemed inevitable at that time, it did not break out till six years afterwards; and in but few periods of the history of the world is so great a political crisis to be found, as in this short interval. the fall of carthage and macedonia had shown the rest of the world what it had to expect from rome; and there was no lack of great men sufficiently endowed with courage and talents to resist her. the danger of a formidable league between carthage, syria, and perhaps macedonia, was never so much to be feared, as when hannibal, now at the head of affairs, laboured to effect it with all the zeal which his hatred of rome could inspire; and they might calculate with certainty beforehand on the accession of many smaller states. rome, however, by her equally decided and artful policy procured hannibal's banishment from carthage, amused philip by granting him some trifling advantages, and gained over the smaller states by her ambassadors. by these means, and by taking advantage of the intrigues in the court of syria, she prevented this coalition from being formed. antiochus was therefore left without assistance in greece, except from the Ætolians, and a few other unimportant allies; while rome drew from hers, especially the rhodians and eumenes, advantages of the greatest consequence. the first cause of contention between rome and antiochus was the liberty of greece, which the former wished to extend to the grecian cities of asia, and to those in particular which had belonged to philip, and afterwards to antiochus; while the latter contended, that rome had no right to intermeddle with the affairs of asia. the second cause of dispute was the occupation of the thracian chersonesus by antiochus, , in right of some ancient pretensions; and rome, on her part, would not tolerate him in europe. this quarrel therefore commenced as early as , but did not become serious till the year , when in consequence of hannibal's flight to antiochus, together with the turbulence and excitement of the Ætolians, whose object it was to embroil the rival powers, the political horizon was completely overcast. what a fortunate thing it was for rome that such men as hannibal and antiochus could not understand each other! heyne, _de foederum ad romanorum opes imminuendas initorum eventis eorumque causis; in opusc._ vol. iii. . this war was much sooner brought to a termination than the macedonian, owing to the half-measures adopted by antiochus. after having been driven from greece by glabrio, and after two naval victories had opened to the romans the way to asia, he felt inclined to act on the defensive; but in the battle near magnesia at the foot of mount sipylus, l. scipio gathered the laurels which more properly belonged to glabrio. the total expulsion of antiochus from asia minor, even before this victory, had been the chief object of the war. the conditions of peace (see above, p. .) were such, as not only weakened antiochus, but reduced him to a state of dependence. during this contest in the east, a sanguinary war was going on in the west; from the year in spain, where the elder cato commanded; and from in italy itself, against the ligurians. whatever may be said upon the means made use of by rome to increase the number of her citizens, it will always be difficult to comprehend, not only how she could support all these wars without being thereby weakened, but how at the same time she could found so many colonies! . even after the termination of this war, rome refrained with astonishing moderation from appearing in the light of a conqueror: it was only for the liberty of greece, and for her allies, that she had contended! without keeping a foot of land for herself, she divided, with the exception of the free grecian cities, the conquered asia minor between eumenes and the rhodians; the manner, however, in which she dealt with the Ætolians, who after a long supplication for peace were obliged to buy it dearly, shows that she also knew how to treat unfaithful allies. the war against the gauls in asia minor was not less necessary for the preservation of tranquillity in that country, than it was injurious to the morals and military discipline of the roman army. they here learned to levy contributions. . thus, within the short space of ten years, was laid the foundation of the roman authority in the east, and the general state of affairs entirely changed. if rome was not yet the ruler, she was at least the arbitress of the world from the atlantic to the euphrates. the power of the three principal states was so completely humbled, that they durst not, without the permission of rome, begin any new war; the fourth, egypt, had already, in the year , placed herself under the guardianship of rome; and the lesser powers followed of themselves: esteeming it an honour to be called the _allies of rome_. with this name the nations were lulled into security, and brought under the roman yoke; the new political system of rome was founded and strengthened, partly by exciting and supporting the weaker states against the stronger, however unjust the cause of the former might be, and partly by factions which she found means to raise in every state, even the smallest. although the policy of rome extended itself everywhere by means of her commissioners, or ambassadors, yet she kept a more particular guard against carthage by favouring masinissa at her expense, against the achæan league by favouring the spartans, and against philip of macedon by favouring every one who brought any complaint against him (see above, p. ). . although these new connections and this intercourse with foreign nations greatly aided the diffusion of knowledge and science, and was followed by a gradual improvement in her civilization, yet was it nevertheless, in many respects, detrimental to the internal state of rome. the introduction of the scandalous bacchanalia, which were immediately discovered and forbidden, shows how easily great vices may creep in among a people who are only indebted for their morality to their ignorance. among the higher classes also the spirit of intrigue manifested itself to an astonishing degree; particularly by the attacks directed against the scipios by the elder cato, whose restless activity became the instrument of his malignant passions. the severity of his censorship did not repair the evils caused by his immorality and pernicious politics. voluntary exile of scipio africanus to linternum, . he dies there, , the same year in which hannibal falls under the continued persecution of rome. his brother scipio asiaticus is also unable to escape a trial and condemnation, . one would have expected a sensible effect from the exile of these two great men; but, in a state where the ruling power is in the hands of a body like what the roman senate was, the change of individuals is but of little consequence. . fresh disputes arose, as early as , with philip of macedon, who soon found that they had spared him no longer than it suited their own convenience. although the intervention of philip's youngest son, upon whom the romans had formed some design, prevented the powers from coming to an immediate rupture, and war was still further delayed by philip's death, yet the national hatred descended to his successor, and continued to increase, notwithstanding an alliance concluded with him, until the war openly broke out (see above, p. ). the first circumstance which gave umbrage to philip was the small portion they permitted him to conquer in athamania and thessaly during the war against antiochus. but what sharpened his animosity, much more than the object in dispute, was the conduct of the roman commissioners, before whom he, the king, was called upon to defend himself as an accused party, . the exclamation of philip, that "the sun of every day had not yet set," showed his indignation, and at the same time betrayed his intention. the interval previous to the breaking out of the war was anything rather than a time of peace for rome; for besides that the spanish and ligurian wars continued almost without intermission, the revolts which broke out in istria, , and in sardinia and corsica, , produced much bloodshed. . in the second macedonian war, which ended with the destruction of perseus and his kingdom (see above, p. ), it required the active efforts of roman policy to prevent a powerful confederacy from being formed against her; as perseus used all his endeavours to stimulate, not only the grecian states, and thrace and illyria, but also carthage and asia, to enter into alliance with him. where was it that rome did not at this crisis send her ambassadors? she did not, indeed, succeed so far as to leave her enemy quite alone, but prepared new triumphs for herself over the few allies she left him. the devastated epirus, and gentius king of illyria, suffered dearly for the assistance they had lent him; the states also which had remained neuter, the rhodians and eumenes, were made to feel severely that they were the mere creatures of rome. beginning of the macedonian war, , before rome was prepared; a deceitful truce, which raised the indignation even of the elder senators, was the means resorted to for gaining time. notwithstanding this, the war at first, and , was favourable to perseus; but he wanted resolution and judgment to enable him to turn his advantages to account. in , paulus Æmilius, an old general, against the usual custom of the romans, took the command. bloody and decisive battle near pydna, june , . so completely may one day overturn a kingdom which has only an army for its support! contemporary with this war, and highly fortunate for rome, was the war of antiochus epiphanes with egypt. no wonder that rome did not, till , through popilius, command peace between them! (see above, p. .) . the destruction of the macedonian monarchy was attended with consequences equally disastrous to the conquerors and the conquered. to the first it soon gave the notion of becoming the masters of the world, instead of its arbiters; and it exposed the latter, for the next twenty years, to all the evils inseparable from such a catastrophe. the system of politics hitherto pursued by rome could not last much longer; for if nations suffered themselves to be brought under the yoke by force, it was not to be expected that they would long be held in dependence under the specious name of liberty. but the state of things after this war was such as contributed to hasten a change in the form of the relations which existed between rome and her allies. the republican constitution given to the already ruined and devastated macedonians (see above, p. .) and illyrians, and which, according to the decree of the senate, "showed to all people that rome was ready to bestow liberty upon them," was granted upon such hard conditions, that the enfranchised nation soon used every endeavour to procure themselves a king. greece however suffered still more than macedonia. here, during the war, the spirit of faction had risen to the highest pitch; and the arrogant insolence of the roman party, composed for the most part of venal wretches, was so great, that they persecuted not only those who had espoused an opposite faction, but even those who had joined no faction at all. rome nevertheless could not believe herself secure, until she had destroyed, by a cruel artifice, all her adversaries (see above, p. ). . entirely in the same spirit did rome proceed against the other states from whom she had anything to fear. these must be rendered defenceless; and every means of effecting that purpose was considered justifiable by the senate. the quarrels between the successors to the throne of egypt were taken advantage of to cause dissensions in that kingdom (see above, p. ); while syria was retained in a state of tutelage, by keeping the rightful heir to the throne at rome; and its military power neutralized by means of their ambassadors (see above, p. ). . from these facts we may also conclude, that the injuries now meditated against carthage were not separate projects, but rather formed part of the general system of roman policy at this period, although particular events at one time retarded their execution, and at another hastened it. history, in recounting the incredibly bad treatment which carthage had to endure before her fall, seems to have given a warning to those nations who can take it, of what they may expect from the domination of a powerful republic. cato was chief of the party which sought the destruction of carthage, both from a spirit of envy against scipio nasica, whom he hated for his great influence in the senate; and because, when ambassador to carthage, he thought they did not treat him with sufficient respect. but masinissa's victory, (see above, p. ), and the defection of utica, brought this project into immediate play. beginning of the war, , the carthaginians having been previously inveigled out of their arms. the city, however, was not captured and destroyed till , by p. scipio Æmilianus. the carthaginian territory, under the name of africa, was then made a roman province. . during this third war with carthage, hostilities again broke out in macedonia, which brought on a new war with greece, and entirely changed the state of both these countries. in macedonia, an impostor named andriscus, who pretended to be the son of philip, placed himself at the head of that highly disaffected people, assumed the name of philip, and became, particularly by an alliance with the thracians, very formidable to the romans, until overcome by metellus. rome wishing to take advantage of this crisis to dissolve the achæan league, the achæan war broke out (see above, p. ). this war was begun by metellus, and terminated by mummius with the destruction of corinth. by reducing both macedonia and greece to the form of provinces, rome now gave evident proof that no existing relations, nor any form of government, can prevent nations from being subjugated by a warlike republic, whenever circumstances render it possible. it might have been expected, that the destruction of the two first commercial cities in the world, in the same year, would have been followed by important consequences to the course of trade; but the trade of carthage and corinth had already been drawn to alexandria and rhodes, otherwise utica might, in some respects, have supplied the place of carthage. . while rome was thus destroying thrones and republics, she met in spain with an antagonist--a simple spanish countryman named viriathus--whom, after six years' war, she could only rid herself of by assassination. the war, nevertheless, continued after his death against the numantines, who would not be subjected, but were at last destroyed by scipio Æmilianus. the war against the spaniards, who of all the nations subdued by the romans defended their liberty with the greatest obstinacy, began in the year , six years after the total expulsion of the carthaginians from their country, . it was exceedingly obstinate, partly from the natural state of the country, which was thickly populated, and where every place became a fortress; partly from the courage of the inhabitants; but above all, owing to the peculiar policy of the romans, who were wont to employ their allies to subdue other nations. this war continued, almost without interruption, from the year to , and was for the most part carried on at the same time in hispania citerior, where the celtiberi were the most formidable adversaries, and in hispania ulterior, where the lusitani were equally powerful. hostilities were at the highest pitch in , under cato, who reduced hispania citerior to a state of tranquillity - , when the celtiberi were attacked in their native territory; and - , when the romans in both provinces were so often beaten, that nothing was more dreaded by the soldiers at home than to be sent there. the extortions and perfidy of servius galba placed viriathus, in the year , at the head of his nation, the lusitani: the war, however, soon extended itself to hispania citerior, where many nations, particularly the numantines, took up arms against rome, . viriathus, sometimes victorious and sometimes defeated, was never more formidable than in the moment of defeat; because he knew how to take advantage of his knowledge of the country, and of the dispositions of his countrymen. after his murder, caused by the treachery of cæpio, , lusitania was subdued; but the numantine war became still more violent, and the numantines compelled the consul mancinus to a disadvantageous treaty, . when scipio, in the year , put an end to this war, spain was certainly tranquil; the northern parts, however, were still unsubdued, though the romans penetrated as far as galatia. . towards the end of this period, the romans obtained at a much cheaper rate the possession of one of their most important provinces; for the profligate attalus iii. king of pergamus, bequeathing them the whole of his kingdom (on what account is uncertain, see above, p. .), they immediately took possession of it, and kept in spite of the resistance of the legitimate heir aristonicus, merely ceding, as a recompense, phrygia to mithridates v. king of pontus. thus, by a stroke of the pen, the largest and finest part of asia minor became the property of rome. if this extraordinary legacy was the work of roman policy, she paid dearly enough, in the long run, for this accession to her power and riches, by the destruction of her morals, and the dreadful wars to which this legacy gave rise under mithridates. . the foreign possessions of rome, besides italy, comprised at this time under the name of provinces, a name of much higher signification in the latin language than in any other, hispania citerior and ulterior, africa (the territory of carthage), sicily, sardinia and corsica, liguria, and cisalpine gaul, in the west; and in the east, macedonia, achaia, and asia (territory of pergamus). the inhabitants of these countries were entirely subject to rome. the administration of them was carried on by those who had enjoyed the office of consul, and by prætors, subordinate to whom were the quæstors, or collectors of the revenue. the highest military and civil powers were united in these governors; a principal cause of that horrible oppression which was soon felt. troops were always kept up in the provinces; and the latin language everywhere introduced (except only where greek was spoken), that the inhabitants might be made as much like romans as possible. till nearly the end of this period, prætors were expressly appointed to each province. it was not till after the origin of the _quæstiones perpetuæ_, that it became the custom for the prætors who had vacated office, to succeed to the provinces (_proprætores_), a principal cause of the degeneracy of the roman constitution. c. sigonius, _de antiquo jure provinciarum in grævii thes. antiq. rom._ vol. ii. . the acquisition of these rich countries naturally had great influence in augmenting the revenue of the romans. though rome was not indeed a state, like carthage, altogether dependent upon finances, yet she kept these adjusted in a wonderful manner; a spirit of nice order being observed in this as well as in every other department of her administration. if in extraordinary emergencies recourse were had to native loans, to a change in the value of money, or a monopoly of salt, order was soon restored; while the booty obtained from conquered countries was also a great source of the public income so long indeed as it was reserved for the state, and did not become the prey of the generals. sources of the roman revenue (_vectigalia_) were: . tribute _a._ from the roman citizens; that is to say, a property-tax imposed by the senate according to the urgency of the case (which, however, was remitted, for a long time, after the war with perseus, , being no longer necessary). _b._ tribute of the allies (_socii_) in italy: which seems also to have been a property-tax; differing in different places. _c._ tribute of the provinces: in some a heavy poll-tax, in others taxes on property; in all, however, they were paid in natural productions, mostly ordinary, though sometimes extraordinary, as well for the salary of the governor as for the supply of the capital. . the revenue from the national domains (_ager publicus_), both in italy (especially campania) and in the provinces; the tythes (_decumæ_) of which were paid by means of leases for four years, granted by the censors. . the revenue from the customs (_portoria_), collected in the seaports and frontier towns. . the revenue arising from the mines (_metalla_), particularly the spanish silver mines; the proprietors of which were obliged to pay a duty to the state. . the duty upon enfranchised slaves (_aurum vicesimarium_). all receipts flowed into the national treasury, the _ærarium_; all outgoings were exclusively ordered by the senate; and the people were consulted as little with regard to them as they were respecting the imposts. the officers employed were the _quæstores_, under whom were the _scribæ_, divided into _decurias_, who, though certainly subordinate, had nevertheless great influence. their services, as they were not yearly changed, must have been indispensable to the _quæstores_ for the time being; and the whole management of affairs, at least in detail, must have fallen into their hands. upon the finances of rome, the best work at present is:-- p. burmanni, _vectigalia populi romani_. leyden, , to. two excellent treatises have since appeared in german upon this subject:-- # d. h. hegewisch, _essay upon roman finances_. antona, , and # r. bosse, _sketch of the system of finance in the roman state_. brunswick, , parts. both include the periods of the republic and the monarchy. third period. _from the beginning of the civil broils under the gracchi, to the fall of the republic. b. c. - . year of rome, - ._ sources. concerning the first half of this important period of the republic, down to the time of cicero, we are sadly in want of precise information. not one of the contemporary writers has been preserved to us, nor indeed any one of the later historians who have compiled a history of the whole period. appian, _de bellis civilibus_; plutarch, in his _lives of the gracchi_; and the spirited _compendium_ of vel. paterculus, are, for this portion, our principal authorities; and even the imperfect summaries of the lost books of livy, so masterly supplied by freinshemius here become of importance. for the times which follow, the _jugurtha_ and _cataline_ of sallust, are two excellent historical cabinet pieces, and become the more valuable for the insight they at the same time give us of the internal condition of rome. his great work, however, _the histories_, is, with the exception of a few precious fragments, unfortunately lost. for the times of cÆsar and cicero, we have the _commentaries_ of the first, and the _orations_ and _letters_ of the latter; both fertile sources of information. what is left us of dio cassius's _history_, begins with the year before christ. of plutarch's _lives_, besides those of the gracchi, the following are connected with this period: c. marius, sylla, lucullus, crassus, sertorius, cato of utica, cicero, brutus, and antonius. upon the sources for these lives, see my treatises cited above, p. . among the moderns, the greater part of this period is particularly treated of by:-- de brosses, _histoire de la république romaine dans le cours du viie siècle par salluste_, à dijou, , vols. to. in german by j. c. schleuter, , etc. with remarks, vols. the editor of this capital work had an idea of translating sallust, and supplying what is lost. it contains, besides a translation of jugurtha and cataline, the period between both, of which sallust treats in his _histories_: that is, from sylla's abdication, b. c. - ; and is equally important for its own merits and for the period to which it belongs. vertot, _histoire des révolutions arrivées dans le gouvernement de la république romaine_. paris, , vols. mo. although this justly esteemed work includes the foregoing period, it is particularly valuable for the present. mably, _observations sur les romains_. genève, , vols. vo. a survey of the internal history; ingenious, but as superficial as the _observations sur les grecs_ by the same author. . the foregoing period is composed of the history of foreign wars alone; in this, on the contrary, rome appears in a continual state of internal commotion. and if foreign hostilities interrupt this state of things for a short time, it is only that it may be renewed with more violence, till at last it ends in a furious civil war. as the almost boundless power of the senate had laid the foundation of an exceedingly hateful family aristocracy, against which the tribunes of the people arrayed themselves, in the character of powerful demagogues, there arose a new struggle between the aristocratic and democratic parties, which almost immediately grew into two powerful factions. this contest, from its extent and its consequences, soon became much more important than the ancient one between the patricians and the plebeians. this family aristocracy gradually arose from the power of the magistrates, who now not only enjoyed a very high political importance, but, by the government of the provinces, acquired immense wealth. the present aristocracy, then, consisted of the ruling families (_nobiles_) concentrated in the senate. the struggle with the opposite party, the people (_plebs_), became so much the more violent in consequence of the great abuses which had crept into the administration, particularly in the division of the lands of the republic; the ruling families securing to themselves the fruits of all the victories and conquests, while the power of the democracy, by the vast accumulation of people (without the means of livelihood, although voting in the _comitia_), especially of enfranchised slaves, who, though strangers, mostly without power or property, formed, nevertheless, the greater part of what was then called the roman people. g. al. ruperti, _stemmata gentium romanarum_. goett. , vo. almost indispensable for obtaining a clear insight into the history of the roman families, and of course into that of the state. . commencement of the disturbances under the tribunate of tib. sempronius gracchus, whom former connections had long made the man of the people. his desire was to relieve the distress of the lower orders; and the means whereby he hoped to do this was a better division of the lands of the republic, now almost exclusively in the hands of the aristocracy. his reform, therefore, naturally led at once to a struggle with that party. tib. gracchus however soon found, by experience, that a demagogue cannot stop where he would, however pure his intentions may be at first; and no sooner had he obtained a prolongation of his term of office, in opposition to the usual custom, than he fell a sacrifice to his undertaking. the first agrarian law of gracchus was confirmed by the people, notwithstanding the fruitless opposition of his colleague octavius, who was deposed; it decreed, that no person should possess above five hundred acres of land, nor any child above half that quantity. this law was, in fact, only a renewal of the ancient _lex licinia_; in the condition, however, in which rome now was, it bore much harder upon the property usurped by the great families, than it did in former times. appointment of a committee for dividing the national lands, and for enquiring also at the same time which were the property of the state (_ager publicus_) and which were not. new popular propositions of the elder gracchus, especially that for the division of the treasures left by king attalus of pergamus, with the view of securing his continuance in office; great insurrection of the aristocratic party under scipio nasica, and murder of tiberius gracchus, on the day of electing the new tribunes of the people. . the fall of the chief of the new party, however, occasioned any thing rather than its destruction. not only was there no mention of an abrogation of the agrarian law, but the senate was obliged to allow the place in the commission, which had become vacant by the death of gracchus, to be filled up; and scipio nasica himself was sent out of the way, under the pretext of an embassy to asia. the party of the senate did, indeed, find a powerful support for a short time in the return of scipio Æmilianus (_d._ ) from spain; but its greatest support was found in the difficulties of the law itself, which prevented its execution. great revolt of the slaves in sicily under eunus, - . this contributed not a little to keep alive the dissensions, as it showed the necessity of a reform. . evident endeavours of the tribunes of the people to increase their power, gracchus having now awakened them to a sense of it. not satisfied with a seat and voice in the senate, carbo wished that the renewing of their dignity should be passed into a law. by the removal, however, of the chiefs of the lower party, upon honourable pretexts, new troubles were put off for some years. first establishment of the roman power in transalpine gaul by m. fulvius flaccus, on the occasion of his being sent to the assistance of massilia, . southern gaul became a roman province as early as , in consequence of the defeat of the allobrogi and averni by q. fabius, who had been sent against them to support the Ædui, the allies of rome. capture of the balearian isles by metellus, . quæstorship of c. gracchus in sicily, - . . these palliative remedies, however, availed nothing after the return of c. gracchus from sicily with a full determination to tread in the footsteps of his brother. like him, it is true, he fell a victim to his enterprise; but the storm that he raised during the two years of his tribunate fell so much the more heavily, as the popular excitement was more general, and from his possessing more of the shining talents necessary to form a powerful demagogue than his brother. first tribunate of c. gracchus, . renewal of the agrarian law, and rendering its provisions more strict. nevertheless, as he increased the fermentation by his popular measures and by acting the demagogue, and obtained the renewal of the tribunate for the following year, , he so far extended his plan, as to render it not only highly dangerous to the aristocracy, but even to the state itself. establishment of distributions of corn to the poor people. plan for the formation of the knights (_ordo equestris_) into a political body, as a counterbalance to the senate, by conferring on it the right of administering justice, (_judicia_,) which was taken from the senate. still more important project of granting to the italian allies the privileges of roman citizenship; and also the formation of colonies, not only in campania, but also out of italy, in carthage. the highly refined policy of the senate, however, by lessening this man of the people in the eyes of his admirers, through the assistance of the tribune livius drusius, prevented his complete triumph; and, once declining, gracchus soon experienced the fate of every demagogue, whose complete fall is then irretrievable. general insurrection, and assassination of c. gracchus, . . the victory of the aristocratic faction was this time not only much more certain and bloody, they turned the advantages it gave them to such good account, that they eluded the agrarian law of gracchus, and indeed, at last, completely abrogated it. but the seeds of discord already disseminated, especially among the italian allies, could not be so soon checked, when once the subjects of these states had conceived the idea that they were entitled to a share in the government. how soon these party struggles might be renewed, or indeed a civil war break out, depended almost entirely upon foreign circumstances, and the chance of a bolder leader being found. agrarian law evaded: at first by repealing an act which prohibited the transfer of the national lands already divided, whereby the patricians were enabled to buy them again;--afterwards by the _lex thoria:_ complete stop put to all further divisions, a land-tax, to be distributed among the people, being instituted in its stead; but even this latter was very soon annulled. # d. h. hegewisch, _history of the civil wars of the gracchi_. altona, . # _history of the revolution of the gracchi in my miscellaneous historical works._ vol. iii. . . visible effects of this party spirit upon public morals, which now began to decline the more rapidly, in proportion to the increase of foreign connections. neither the severity of the censorship, nor the laws against luxury (_leges sumtuariæ_), nor those which now became necessary against celibacy, could be of much service in this respect. this degeneracy was not only to be found in the cupidity of the higher ranks, but also in the licentiousness of the lower orders. luxury in rome was first displayed in the public administration (owing to the excessive accumulation of wealth in the treasury, especially during the macedonian wars) before it infected private life; and the avarice of the great long preceded the latter. the sources from whence they satisfied this passion were found in the extortions of the governors of provinces, their great power, and the distance from rome rendering the _leges repetundarum_ of but little effect. probably the endeavours of the allied princes and kings to gain a party in the senate was a still more fruitful source, as they could obtain their end only by purchase, and so gave a new impulse to the cupidity and intriguing disposition of the members of that council. but private luxury requires everywhere some time to ripen. it attained its height immediately after the mithridatic wars. # d. meiner, _history of the corruption of the morals and constitution of the romans_. leips. . # meierotto, _morals and manners of the romans at different periods of the republic_. berlin, . which considers the subject in several points of view. # c. a. bottiger, _sabina, or, morning scenes at the toilette of a rich roman lady_. leips. , vols. a true and lively description of the luxury of the roman ladies, but principally at its most brilliant period. it has been translated into french. . this corruption was manifested in a striking manner in the next great war that rome entered into, which was in africa, against jugurtha of numidia, the adopted grandson of masinissa; and soon after against his ally bocchus of mauritania. this war, kindled and maintained by the avarice of the roman nobles, which jugurtha had already had an opportunity of knowing at the siege of numantia, paved the way to the aggrandizement of c. marius, a new demagogue, who, being also a formidable general, did much more harm to the state than even the gracchi. commencement of the quarrel of jugurtha with the two sons of micipsa, and assassination of hiempsal, one of them, .--when the other, adherbal, arrived at rome, , the party of jugurtha had already succeeded, and obtained a partition of the kingdom. new attack upon adherbal, who is besieged in cirta, and, notwithstanding the repeated embassies of rome to jugurtha, is compelled to surrender, and is put to death, . the tribune c. memmius constrains the senate to declare war against jugurtha; but jugurtha purchases a peace of the consul calpurnius piso, .--nevertheless memmius hinders the ratification of the peace, and jugurtha is required to justify himself at rome. he would probably, however, have bought his acquittal, if the murder of his kinsman massiva, , by the help of bomilcar, had not rendered it impossible. the war is renewed under the consul sp. albinus and his brother aulus, , but with very little success, until the incorruptible q. metellus took the command, , who would have put an end to it, notwithstanding the great talents now displayed as a general by jugurtha, and his alliance with bocchus, , had he not been supplanted by marius, who obtains the consulship by his popularity, . marius is obliged to have recourse to perfidy to get jugurtha into his hands, who is betrayed by bocchus, . numidia is divided between bocchus and two grandsons of masinissa, hiempsal and hiarbas. . the elevation of marius to the consulate not only humbled the power of the aristocracy, but also showed, for the first time, that the way was open to a man of low birth (_homo novus_) to the highest offices; the method, however, which he had taken to form his army, entirely against the roman custom, that is, of composing it of the lower orders (_capite censis_) must have rendered him doubly formidable. nevertheless, he would scarcely have effected so great a change in the constitution, if a new and terrible war had not rendered his services indispensable:--this was the threatened invasion of the cimbri and teutones the most powerful nations of the north, during which a new and violent rebellion of the slaves was raging in sicily:--for after the defeat of so many roman armies, the people believed that no one but the conqueror of jugurtha could save italy; and marius knew so well how to turn this to account, that he remained consul during four successive years. the cimbri, or cimmerians, probably a nation of german origin, from beyond the black sea, originated a popular migration which extended from thence as far as spain. their march was perhaps occasioned, or accelerated, by the scythian war of mithridates; and their course, like that of most nomad races, was from east to west along the danube. they had already, in , defeated the consul papirius carbo, near noreia in styria. in their progress towards the west they were joined by german, celtic, and helvetic tribes (the _teutones_, _ambrones_, and _tigurians_).--attack roman gaul, , where they demand settlements and defeat junius silanus the consul.--defeat of l. cassius longinus and m. aurelius scaurus, .--great defeat of the romans in gaul, , occasioned by the disagreement of their generals, the consuls, cn. manlius and q. servius cæpio. marius obtains the command, and remains consul from - . the migrations of the cimbri--a part of whom reach the pyrenees, but are driven back by the celtiberians, --give marius time to complete his army. in , after dividing themselves, they first attempted to penetrate into italy: the teutones through provence, and the cimbri by tyrol.--great defeat and slaughter of the teutones by marius, near aix, .--the cimbri, on the contrary, effect an invasion and make progress till marius comes to the help of catulus. great battle and defeat of the cimbri near the po, july , . j. muller, _bellum cimbricum_. tigur, . a youthful essay of that celebrated historian. compare # mannert, _geography,_ etc. part iii. . although during this war the power of the popular party had sensibly increased, yet the storm did not break out until marius _bought_ his sixth consulate. now, even in rome itself, he wished to avenge himself upon his enemies; and what could the senate do, when it had at its head a demagogue in the consul himself?--his league with the tribune saturnius, and the prætor glaucias, forming already a true triumvirate, would have overthrown the republic after the expulsion of metellus, if the unbridled licentiousness of the rabble connected with his allies had not obliged him to break with them, lest he should sacrifice the whole of his popularity. the measures of this cabal, who wished to appear as if treading in the steps of the gracchi, were principally directed against q. metellus, the chief of the party of the senate, and who, since the african war, had been the mortal foe of marius. after the exile of metellus, occasioned by his opposition to a new agrarian law, this faction usurped the rights of the people, and lorded it in the committees; until, at a new election of consuls, a general revolt, favoured by marius himself, took place of all the well-disposed citizens against them; saturnius and glaucias were besieged in the capitol, forced to surrender, and executed. the return of metellus from his voluntary exile soon followed, , much against the will of marius, who was obliged to retire into asia. . the few years of tranquillity which rome now enjoyed, brought to maturity many benefits and many evils, the seeds of which had been already sown. on one hand the rising eloquence of antonius, crassus, and others, was employed with effect against the oppressors of the provinces in the state trials (_questiones_); and some generous spirits used all their endeavours to heal the wounds of sicily, asia, and other provinces, by a better administration; while, on the other hand, the power of the _ordo equestris_ became a source of much abuse: for besides their right to sit in the tribunals (_judiciis_), which c. gracchus had conferred upon them, they had also obtained the farming of the leases, and thereby the collection of the revenue in the provinces; by which means they were enabled not only to oppose every reform that was attempted in the latter, but even at rome to hold the senate in a state of dependence. the struggle which now arose between them and the senate respecting the _judicia_ (or right to preside in the tribunal), was one of the most fatal to the republic, as this right was abused by them for the purpose of satisfying their personal rancour, and oppressing the greatest men. the tribune m. livius drusus the younger, it is true, wrested from them half their power; but, alas! the manner in which he did it kindled into a flame the fire which had been smouldering from the time of the gracchi. acquisition of cyrene by the testament of king apion, ; notwithstanding which it maintained its independence, although probably by paying a tribute. adjustment of the differences between the kings of asia minor by the prætor sylla, (see above, p. ). . revolt of the italian tribes, who desire to obtain the right of roman citizens; whereupon the bloody _war of the allies_ ensues. although the oppression of rome had been preparing this war for a long time, yet it was an immediate consequence of the intrigues of the roman demagogues, who since the law of the younger gracchus, had, with the view of making themselves popular, continually flattered the allies with the hope of sharing the privileges of roman citizenship. it was however soon seen, that the allies were not at a loss among themselves for leaders, capable of forming great plans and executing them with vigour. italy was about to become a republic, with corfinium for its capital instead of rome. neither could rome have saved herself from such an event, but by gradually permitting the allies to enjoy the complete freedom of the city. after the civil wars of the gracchi, large bands of the allies were continually flocking to rome. these were in the pay of the demagogues, whom the _lex licinia_, , had banished from rome, and thereby laid the foundation of the revolt. from that time the conspiracy among these tribes began, and attained without interruption such a degree of maturity, that the carelessness of rome can only be accounted for from the party fury which then existed, and which the _lex varia_, , enacted against the promoters of rebellion, served only to inflame the more. the murder of the tribune livius drusus, , a very ambiguous character, brought the affair to an open rupture. in this alliance were the marsi, picentes, peligni, marrucini, frentani, the samnites, who played a principal part, the hirpini, apuli, and the lucani. in this war, which was so much the more bloody, as it was mostly composed of separate contests and sieges, especially of the roman colonies, cn. pompeius the elder, l. cato, marius, and, above all, sylla, particularly distinguished themselves on the side of the romans; and among the generals of the allies pompadias, c. papius, etc.--concession of the freedom of the city, first to such allies as remained faithful, the latins, umbrians, etc. by the _lex julia_, ; afterwards, by degrees, to the remainder by the _lex plotia_. some, nevertheless, still continued in arms. heyne, _de belli socialis causis et eventu, in opusc._ t. iii. . the war now just ended, essentially changed the constitution of rome, as she no longer remained, as hitherto, the exclusive head of the whole state; and although the new citizens were only formed into eight tribes, yet their influence must soon have been felt in the committees, on account of the readiness with which they promoted factions. besides this, the long-cherished private hatred between marius and sylla was greatly strengthened by this war, as sylla's fame was considerably raised thereby, while that of marius was proportionably diminished. an opportunity was only wanted, like that which the first pontine war soon furnished, to stir up a new civil war, which threatened to destroy the liberty of rome. . alliance of marius with the tribune sulpicius, with the view of wresting from sylla the command of the forces against mithridates, already conferred upon him by the senate. the ease with which sylla, at the head of an army on which he could depend, expelled the chiefs of this party, seems to have left him ignorant of the fact, that the party itself was not thereby destroyed. however judicious may have been his other measures, the elevation of cinna to the consulship was an error in policy of which italy had still more reason to repent than himself. how much blood might have been spared if sylla had not unseasonably wished to become popular! proposition of sulpicius for an indiscriminate distribution of the new citizens and freemen among all the tribes of italy, that he might thereby gain a strong party in his favour, which, by a violent assembly of the people, transfers the command from sylla to marius. march of sylla upon rome, and expulsion of marius, who, by a series of adventures almost surpassing belief, escapes to africa and is proscribed with his son and ten of his partisans. reestablishment of the power of the senate, whose number is made up by three hundred knights. sylla, after having caused his friend c. octavius and his enemy l. cinna to be elected consuls, hastens back to greece. . first war against mithridates the great. sylla gains several victories over that king's generals in greece; wrests from him all his conquests, and restricts him to his hereditary dominions. rome since the time of hannibal had met with no such powerful opponent as the king of pontus, who in a few months had become master of all asia minor, macedonia, and greece, and threatened even italy itself; we must besides consider, that the war on the side of rome was carried on in a manner altogether different from that of any previous one; as sylla, after the victory of the opposite party, being himself proscribed in rome, was obliged to continue it with his own army, and his own private resources. the unfortunate countries which were the theatre of this war, felt as many calamities during the struggle, as italy was doomed to suffer after its close. commencement of the war by mithridates before the termination of that of the allies, , by taking possession of cappadocia and paphlagonia. he was not less formidable by his alliance with the tribes along the danube, and his navy, than by his land forces; and the irritation of the people of asia against rome rendered his enterprise still more easy. double victory over nicomedes king of bithynia and the roman general m. aquilius, followed by the conquest of all asia minor except the isle of rhodes. massacre of all the roman citizens in the states of asia minor. expedition of the king's army into greece, under the command of his general archelaus, who makes athens the theatre of the war, . siege and capture of that unfortunate town by sylla, st march, . repeated great defeats of mithridates's army under the command of archelaus, near chalcis, and afterwards near orchomenus, by sylla, , whose general plan was formed upon the entire destruction of his enemies. negotiations for peace commenced by archelaus, and finally settled at a personal conference between sylla and mithridates. the adverse party in rome, however, had in the mean time sent a new army into asia minor, to act as well against sylla as against mithridates, under the command of l. valerius flaccus, who, however, is assassinated by his lieutenant fimbria. the latter gains some advantages over the king, but, being shut up by sylla, kills himself. owing to the licentiousness of his army, which sylla dared not restrain; and the heavy contributions exacted by him in asia minor after the peace, in order to carry on the war in italy, ; together with the bodies of pirates formed out of the fleet disbanded by mithridates, these unfortunate countries were almost ruined; the opulent cities more especially. . but during this war a new revolution took place in rome, which not only overthrew the order reestablished by sylla, but also, by the victory of the democratic faction under cinna and marius, gave rise to a wild anarchy of the people, and which the death of marius, alas, too late for rome! only rendered more destructive; as the leaders themselves could no longer restrain the savage hordes of their own party. however dreadful the prospect of the return of sylla might seem, it was nevertheless the only hope that remained for all those who had not joined the popular faction, or had not some connection with its leaders. revolt of cinna, brought on by the proscriptions, soon after the departure of sylla; cinna, by distributing the new citizens into all the tribes, hoped to raise himself a party; but c. octavius, at the head of the senate and ancient citizens, drove him from rome, and forced him to give up the consulship, . he however soon raised a powerful army in campania, and recalled marius from exile. capture and pillage of rome, already weakened by famine, and horrible massacre of the inhabitants; after which marius and cinna name themselves consuls and banish sylla. death of marius, th jan. . c. papirius carbo succeeds him in the consulship. the mediation of the senate is useless, as the chiefs of both parties can only hope for security by the annihilation of their adversaries. the murder of cinna by his own soldiers, , entirely deprives the dominant faction of a competent leader. neither the cowardly carbo, although he remained consul alone, nor the stupid norbanus, nor the youth c. marius (the son), had sufficient personal authority for that purpose; and sertorius leaves italy in good time to kindle a new flame in spain. . return of sylla to italy, and a terrible civil war, which ends only with the extermination of the democratic faction, and his own elevation to the perpetual dictatorship. although his enemies had so much advantage over him in point of numbers, yet their party was so little consolidated, that he with his veterans could not fail to obtain an easy victory. the slaughter during this war fell for the most part upon the italian tribes, who had joined the party of marius, and this afforded sylla the means of giving settlements to his own soldiers; but most of the horrors of this revolution which fell to the share of rome, were reserved till the day of victory was past. sylla's proscription, which should only have punished his personal enemies, was the signal for a general massacre, as every one took that opportunity to rid himself of his private foes; and avarice did as much as vengeance. who in these days, so terrible to italy, was sure of his life or property? and yet, when we consider the dreadful circumstances which attended the foregoing dominion of the people, deduct all that was done without sylla's knowledge, and consider how much he was obliged to do in order to satisfy his army, we shall find it difficult to say how far he deserves the reproach of wanton cruelty. sylla's arrival; victory over norbanus immediately after, and seduction of the army of the consul scipio, . after this almost every person of distinction declared in his favour, and the young pompey having brought to him an army which he had himself raised, his party acquired more consideration, and himself more power. victory over the younger marius, near sacriportum, who throws himself into præneste, where he is besieged. but the great and decisive battle gained before the gates of rome, over the samnites under the command of telisinus, is followed by the fall of præneste and the capture of rome. after the proscription which immediately ensued, sylla is created perpetual dictator, and secures his power in rome by the emancipation of ten thousand slaves, whose masters he had proscribed; and in italy by colonies of his veterans, whom he establishes at the expense of his enemies. . great reform in the constitution during the two years' dictatorship of sylla. the aristocracy of the senate, which he filled up with knights, was not only reestablished, but he also stopped the sources from which the great disorders of the democracy had hitherto proceeded. it seems probable that his natural indolence, which led him to prefer a life of luxurious ease to one of laborious activity, when he was no longer spurred to the latter by his passions, was the chief cause of his voluntary abdication. he had, however, the great advantage over marius, of not being the sport of his own feelings. the conduct of sylla, indeed, was so consistent throughout, that it satisfactorily shows he knew very well what was his ultimate aim--which marius never did. internal regulations of sylla by the _leges corneliæ_. . law to restrain the influence of the tribunes, by taking from them their legislative power. . law respecting the succession to the magistracy; the number of prætors fixed to eight, and the quæstors to twenty. . _lex de majestate_, especially to limit the power of the governors of provinces, and to abolish their exactions. . _lex de judiciis_, whereby the _judicia_ were again restored to the senate. . several police regulations, _de sicariis_, _de veneficiis_, etc. for the preservation and tranquillity of rome, upon which everything depended. . the _lex de civitate_, taking from the latins and several italian cities and tribes the privileges of roman citizens, upon which they set so much store, although we scarcely know in what they consisted. _foreign wars_: war in africa against the leaders of the democratic faction, cn. domitius and king hiarbas, which is ended by a triumph to pompey, . second war against mithridates begun by murena, in hopes of obtaining a triumph, to whom archelaus came over; but which, under the command of sylla, terminates in an accommodation. . nevertheless it was impossible that the enactments of sylla should be long observed; as the evil lay too deep to be eradicated by laws. a free state like that of rome, with no middle class, must, from its nature, be exposed to continual convulsions, and these will be more or less violent in proportion to its greatness. besides, as in the last revolution almost all property had changed hands, there was spread over all italy a powerful party, who desired nothing so much as a counter-revolution. and to this we may add, that there were many young men, such as lucullus, crassus, and above all pompey, who had opened to themselves a career during the late troubles, which they would scarcely yet wish to bring to a close. it will not then appear strange, that immediately after the death of sylla (! ), a consul, m. Æmilius lepidus, should form the design of becoming a second marius; a design which could only be frustrated by the courage and activity of such a patriotic citizen as q. lutatius catulus, his colleague. attempt of lepidus to rescind the acts of sylla, . defeated, first before rome and again in etruria, by catulus and pompey, , after which he dies in sardinia. . but much more dangerous for rome might have been the civil war kindled by sertorius in spain, if the plan of that exalted republican to invade italy had succeeded. even pompey himself, after a six years' struggle, would hardly have prevented it, had it not been for the worthlessness of the roman vagabonds who surrounded him, and his assassination by perpenna. the rapid termination of the war after the fall of its conductor, is a circumstance much more creditable to sertorius than to the conqueror pompey. the forces of sertorius in spain, consisted not only of the party of marius which he had collected, but more essentially of the spaniards, particularly the lusitanians, whom he had inspired with an unbounded confidence in himself. very variable success of the war against metellus and pompey, who receive but very little support from rome, - . negotiation of sertorius with mithridates the great, and interchange of embassies without any important result, . sertorius assassinated by perpenna, . . before, however, the flame of war was totally extinguished in the west, mithridates kindled a new and much fiercer one in the east; at the same time a war of slaves and gladiators was raging with terrible fury in italy itself; and whole fleets of pirates not only ravaged the italian coasts, but threatened rome herself with a famine, and obliged her to have recourse to a mode of naval warfare altogether peculiar. all these enemies were not without intelligence with one another; and colossal as was the power of the republic at that time, and rich as rome was in distinguished men, it seems probable that the storm which beat on every side between - , would have razed her to the ground, if a stricter alliance could have been formed between sertorius, spartacus, and mithridates. but the great difficulty of communication which at that time existed, and without which probably a republic such as the roman never could have been formed, proved of more assistance at this crisis than at any other. the third mithridatic war, occasioned by the will of nicomedes king of bithynia, who had bequeathed his kingdom to rome (see above, p. ), was carried on in asia minor, first by lucullus, - , and afterwards by pompey, - . mithridates, being better prepared, had already concluded an alliance with sertorius in spain, . but the deliverance of cyzicus by lucullus, , and the defeat of the king's fleet, intended to act against italy, not only frustrated all his original plans, but were followed by the occupation of his own dominions, and , by the enemy, notwithstanding a new army which mithridates collected, mostly from the nomad hordes of northern asia. flight of mithridates to tigranes, , who positively refused to deliver him up, and formed an alliance with him, ; while the parthian, arsaces xii. held both parties in suspense by negotiations. victory of lucullus over the allied sovereigns, near tigranocerta, , and artaxata, ; but the mutinies which now broke out among his troops not only hindered him from following up these advantages, but turned the scale so much in mithridates's favour, that in and he quickly regained almost all his dominions, even while the roman commissioners were on their route to take possession of them. lucullus, by his reform in the finances of asia minor, raises a powerful party against himself in rome, and thereby loses his command. . the war of the slaves and gladiators, which happened nearly at the same time, was, from the theatre of action being in its neighbourhood, equally dangerous to rome; it became still more terrible from the violence with which these outraged beings sought to revenge their wrongs, and more formidable from the talents of their leader, spartacus; and the conclusion of this struggle seemed, therefore, of so much importance to rome, that it gave m. crassus a much higher influence in the state than he could ever have obtained by his riches alone. commencement of this war by a number of runaway gladiators, who, being strengthened by an almost general revolt of the slaves in campania, , soon became very formidable. the defeat of four generals, one after the other, throws open to spartacus the road to the alps, and enables him to leave italy; but the greediness of booty manifested by his hordes, who wished to plunder rome, obliged him to return. crassus takes the command and rescues rome, ; upon which spartacus retires into lower italy, hoping to form a junction with the pirates, and to carry the war into sicily, but is deceived by them, . his complete overthrow near the silarus, . pompey, then returning from spain, finds means to seize a sprig of the laurel chaplet which by right should have adorned only the brow of crassus; hence arises a misunderstanding between these two commanders, during their consulate, , which threatened to be dangerous to the state. . the war against the pirates of sicily and isauria was not only very important in itself, but still more so in its consequences. it procured for pompey a legal power such as no roman general had ever before enjoyed; and the quick and glorious manner in which he brought it to a close, opened for him the way to the great object of his ambition--the conduct of the war in asia against mithridates. the extraordinary power acquired by these pirates was owing partly to the great negligence of the romans in sea affairs, (see page ), partly to the war against mithridates, who had taken the pirates into his pay, and partly also to the roman oppressions in asia minor. war had been undertaken against them as early as , by p. servilius; but his victories, though they procured him the title of _isauricus_, did them but little harm. they were to be dreaded, not only for their piracies, but because they also offered an easy means of communication between the other enemies of rome from spain to asia. the new attack of the prætor m. antonius upon crete, proved a complete failure; but it was the cause of that hitherto independent island being again attacked, , by metellus, and reduced to a roman province, . pompey takes the command against the pirates with extraordinary privileges, obtained for him by gabinius, and finishes the war in forty days, . . after these triumphs over so many enemies, mithridates was the only one which now remained; and pompey had here again the good fortune to conclude a struggle already near its end; for notwithstanding his late success, mithridates had never been able completely to recover himself. his fall undoubtedly raised the power of rome in asia minor to its highest pitch; but it brought her, at the same time, into contact with the parthians. pompey obtains the conduct of the war against mithridates with very extensive privileges, procured for him by the tribune manilius (_lex manilia_), notwithstanding the opposition of catulus, . his victory by night, near the euphrates, . subjection of tigranes, while mithridates flies into the crimea, , whence he endeavours to renew the war. campaign of pompey in the countries about the caucasus, ; he marches thence into syria, . mithridates kills himself in consequence of the defection of his son phraates, . settlement of asiatic affairs by pompey: besides the ancient province of asia, the maritime countries of bithynia, nearly all paphlagonia and pontus, are formed into a roman province, under the name of bithynia; while on the southern coast cilicia and pamphylia form another under the name of cilicia; phoenicia and syria compose a third, under the name of syria. on the other hand, great armenia is left to tigranes; cappadocia to ariobarzanes; the bosphorus to pharnaces; judæa to hyrcanus (see page ); and some other small states are also given to petty princes, all of whom remain dependent on rome. the tribes inhabiting thrace during the mithridatic war, were first defeated by sylla, , and their power was afterwards nearly destroyed by the proconsuls of macedonia: as by appius, in ; by curio, who drove them to the danube, - ; and especially by m. lucullus, while his brother was engaged in asia. not only the security of macedonia, but the daring plans of mithridates rendered this necessary. . the fall of mithridates raised the republic to the highest pitch of her power: there was no longer any foreign foe of whom she could be afraid. but her internal administration had undergone great changes during these wars. sylla's aristocratic constitution was shaken by pompey, in a most essential point, by the reestablishment of the power of the tribunes, which was done because neither he nor any leading men could obtain their ends without their assistance. it was by their means that pompey had procured such unlimited power in his two late expeditions, that the existence of the republic was thereby endangered. it was, however, a fortunate circumstance for rome, that pompey's vanity was sufficiently gratified by his being at the head of affairs, where he avoided the appearance of an oppressor. reiterated attempts of the tribune sicinius to annul the constitution of sylla defeated by the senate, . but as early as opimius obtained that the tribunes should not be excluded from honourable offices, and that the judgments (_judicia_) should be restored to the knights (_equites_). the attempts of licinius macer, , to restore the tribunes to all their former powers, encountered but a short opposition; and their complete reestablishment was effected by pompey and crassus during their consulate, in . . this victory of the democratic faction, however, in consequence of the use made of it by some leading men, necessarily led the way to an oligarchy, which after the consulate of pompey and crassus became very oppressive. catiline's conspiracy, which was not matured till after several attempts, would have broken up this confined aristocracy, and placed the helm of state in the hands of another and still more dangerous faction: a faction composed in part of needy profligates and criminals dreading the punishment of their crimes, and partly of ambitious nobles. it occasioned a short civil war; but procured cicero a place in the administration. with what pleasure do we forgive the little weaknesses and failings of one so gifted with talents and great virtues! of one who first taught rome, in so many ways, what it was to be great in the robe of peace! catiline's first conspiracy, in which cæsar and crassus seem to have been implicated, , as well as in the second, : failure of the former by chance--of the latter through piso's death. the third broke out in , as well in rome, where the conspirators, having no armed force, were soon suppressed by the vigilance and activity of cicero, , as in etruria, where a victory of the proconsul antonius over catiline, who was left dead on the field, concluded it, . . the suppression of this conspiracy, however, did not stay the effect which the recently concluded asiatic war had upon roman manners. the luxury of the east, though united with grecian taste, which had been introduced among the great by lucullus; the immense riches poured into the treasury by pompey; the tempting examples of unlimited power, which single citizens had already exercised; the purchase of the magistracy by individuals, in order, like verres, after the squandering of millions, to enrich themselves again in the provinces; the demands of the soldiers upon their generals; and the ease with which an army might be raised by him who had only money enough to pay it; all these circumstances must have foreboded new and approaching convulsions, even if the preceding storms in this colossal republic, in which we must now judge of virtues and vices, as well as of riches and power, by a very magnified standard, had not formed men of that gigantic character they did:--men like cato, who struggled alone to stem the impetuous torrent of the revolution, and was sufficiently powerful to retard its progress for a time; or, like pompey, who by good fortune and the art of acquiring influence, arose to a degree of authority and power never before attained by any citizen of a free state; or, like crassus, "who only considered him as rich that could maintain an army by his own private means," founding their pretensions on wealth; or, finally, like the aspiring and now powerful cæsar, whose boundless ambition could only be surpassed by his talents, and courage, "who would rather be the first in a village than the second in rome." the return of pompey from asia, threatening the senate with a new dictator, appeared an eventful moment. attempt of pompey, through the tribune metellus nepos, to be allowed to return to rome at the head of his army, frustrated by the firmness of cato, . . the arrival of pompey in rome renewed the struggle between the senate and that powerful general, although he had disbanded his army on landing in italy. the ratification of his management of affairs in asia, which was the chief point of contention, was opposed by the leading men of the senate, cato, the two metelli, and lucullus, which induced pompey to attach himself entirely to the popular party, by whose means he hoped to obtain his end; cæsar's return, however, from his province of lusitania, entirely changed the face of affairs. . close union between cæsar, pompey, and crassus; that is, a secret alliance, formed by the interposition of cæsar. that which formed the height of the ambition of pompey and crassus was only regarded by cæsar as the means by which he might be able to effect his. his consulate--a kind of dictatorship under the mask of great popularity--necessarily paved the way to his future career, as by giving him the government of the two gauls and illyria for five years, it opened a wide field for conquest, and gave him an opportunity of forming an army devoted to his will. cæsar's abode and campaign in gaul from the spring of till the end of the year . by arresting the emigration of the helvetians, and by the expulsion of the germans, under ariovistus, from gaul, , cæsar gained an opportunity of intermeddling in the internal affairs of that country, and afterwards of subduing it, which was completed by his victory over the belgæ, , and the aquitani, ; so that cæsar was at liberty to undertake his several expeditions, as well in britain, and , as in germany, and . but the repeated revolts of the gauls, - , especially under vercingetorix, , occasioned a war no less obstinate than their first conquest. roman policy continued the same throughout. the gauls were subdued, by the romans appearing as _their deliverers_; and in the country they found allies in the Ædui, allobroges, etc. . the triumvirate, in order to establish their power upon a solid foundation, took care, by the management of the tribune clodius, to get rid of the leaders of the senate, cato and cicero, before the departure of cæsar; and this they did by giving the former a kingdom to govern, and by procuring the banishment of the latter. they must however soon have discovered, that so bold a demagogue as clodius could not be used as a mere machine. and, indeed, after cæsar's departure he raised himself so much above the triumvirs, that pompey was soon obliged, for his own preservation, to permit cicero to return from exile, which could only be effected by the most violent efforts of the tribune milo. the power of clodius, however, was but little injured thereby, although pompey, to put a stop to the source of these disorders, and revive his own popularity, procured the nomination of himself as _præfectus annonæ_, or superintendent of provisions. exile of cicero, the greater part of which he spent in macedonia, from april, , till th sept. . ptolemy king of cyprus deposed, and that island reduced to a roman province by cato, on the proposition of clodius, (see page ). the personal dislike of clodius and the riches of the king were the causes that brought upon him this misfortune. middleton's _life of cicero_, vols. vo. this work is almost a complete history of rome during the age of cicero; for whom the writer discovers an undue partiality. # m. tullius cicero, _all his letters translated, in chronological order, and illustrated with notes_, by c. m. wieland. zurich, . with a preliminary view of the life of cicero. of all germans the writings of wieland, whether original or translations (and to which can we give the preference?) afford the most lively insight into greek and roman antiquity at various periods. what writer has so truly seized its spirit, and placed it so faithfully and elegantly before his readers? his labours on the letters of cicero (whose foibles he exposes with a rigorous and unflinching hand) serve to make us much better acquainted with rome, as it then was, than any roman history. . a jealousy arises between the triumvirate, as cæsar, though absent, still found means to keep up his party at rome in such watchful activity, that pompey and crassus considered it impossible to maintain their own influence, except by procuring such concessions as had been made to him. harmony once more restored by an accommodation at lucca, as the parties found it necessary to preserve a good understanding with each other. the terms of this accommodation were; that cæsar should have his government prolonged for another five years; and that pompey and crassus should enjoy the consulship for the ensuing year, the former receiving the provinces of spain and africa; and the latter that of syria, for the purpose of carrying on a war against the parthians. in proportion as these conditions were kept secret, there remained less secrecy respecting the alliance itself. . second consulate of pompey and crassus. it was only amidst violent storms that they could effect their purposes; as it depended upon which faction should first gain or keep possession of the forum. the resistance they met with from the inflexible disposition of cato, who in his austere virtue alone found means to secure himself a powerful party, shows how unfairly those judge who consider the power of the triumvirate as unlimited, and the nation as entirely corrupted. campaign of crassus against the parthians, undertaken at his own expense, . instead, however, of gathering laurels like cæsar, he and his whole army were completely overthrown in mesopotamia, ; and the parthians from this time maintain a powerful preponderance in asia (see above, p. ). . as the triumvirate by this failure of crassus was reduced to a duumvirate, pompey (who remained in rome, and governed his provinces by lieutenants), in the midst of continual domestic broils, which he cunningly took care to foment, was evidently aiming to become the acknowledged head of the senate and republic. the idea that a dictator was necessary prevailed more and more during an anarchy of eight months, in which no appointment of a consul could take place; and notwithstanding the opposition of cato, pompey succeeded, after a violent commotion, in which clodius was murdered by milo, in getting himself nominated sole consul; a power equal to that of dictator. consulate of pompey, , in which, at the end of seven months, he took as colleague his father-in-law metellus scipio. the government of his provinces, which afterwards became the chief seat of the republicans, is prolonged for five years. . from this time civil war became inevitable; for not only the chiefs of the parties, but also their adherents desired it. the approach of the time when cæsar's command would expire, necessarily hastened the crisis. could it be supposed that the conqueror of gaul would return to a private life, and leave his rival at the head of the republic? the steps taken on both sides towards an accommodation were only made to escape the odium which would attach to him who struck the first blow. but pompey unfortunately could never understand his opponent, who did all himself, all completely, and all alone. the brilliant light in which pompey now appeared, as _defender of the republic_, delighted him so much, that it made him forget what belonged to its defence; while cæsar avoided, with the greatest care, every appearance of usurpation. the friend, the protector of the people against the usurpations of their enemies, was the character which he now chose to assume. commencement of the contest upon cæsar's demand to be allowed to hold the consulship while absent, . cæsar, by the most lavish corruption, had increased his adherents in rome, gained the tribunes, and among them especially the powerful speaker c. curio (whom he did not think too dearly purchased at the price of about half a million sterling); by this man it was suggested to cæsar that he should give up his command, and leave a successor to be appointed in his place, , if pompey would do the same: a proposition which created a prejudice much in his favour. repeated, but insincere offers of both parties for an accommodation, , till at last a decree of the senate was passed, jan. , , by which cæsar was commanded "to disband his army under the penalty of being declared an enemy to the republic," without regard to the intercessions of the tribunes, whose flight to him gave an appearance of popularity to his party. cæsar crosses the rubicon, the boundary of his province. . the civil war now about to break out, seemed likely to spread over nearly all the countries of the roman empire; as pompey, finding it impossible to maintain himself in italy, had chosen greece for the principal theatre of the war; while his lieutenants, with the armies under their command, occupied spain and africa. cæsar, by the able disposition of his legions, was everywhere present, without exciting beforehand any suspicion of his movements. a combination of circumstances, however, carried the war into alexandria, and even as far as pontus; indeed it might be called rather a series of six successive wars than merely one, all of which cæsar, by flying with his legions from one quarter of the world to the other, ended, within five years, victoriously and in person. rapid occupation of italy in sixty days (when the troops under domitius surrendered at corfinus), which, as well as sicily and sardinia, were subdued by cæsar almost without opposition; pompey, with his troops and adherents, having crossed over to greece. cæsar's first campaign in spain against pompey's generals, afranius and petreius, whom he forces to surrender; this, however, is counterbalanced by the loss of the legions under curio in africa. in december, , however, cæsar is again in italy, and named dictator, which he exchanges for the consulate. spirited expedition into greece with the ships he had been previously collecting together, jan. , . unfortunate engagement at dyrrachium. removal of the war into thessaly, and decisive battle of pharsalia, july , , after which pompey flies to alexandria, where he is killed on his landing. cæsar arrives three days after him at alexandria. . cæsar, after the victory of pharsalia, again nominated dictator, with great privileges. the death of pompey, however, does not destroy his party; and the six months' war of alexandria, as well as the expedition into pontus against pharnaces, gave them time to rally their forces both in africa under cato, and in spain under the sons of pompey. during the alexandrine war (see above, p. ) and the expedition against pharnaces, the son of mithridates,--who had obtained the kingdom of his father, but was slain by cæsar immediately after his arrival, ,--great disorders had broken out in rome, caused by the tribune dolabella's flattering the people with the abolition of debts (_novæ tabulæ_), notwithstanding the military power of m. antony, whom cæsar had sent to rome as master of the horse (_magister equitum_), as this abandoned sensualist at first actually favoured the projects of the tribune. cæsar's return to rome, december, , put an end, it is true, to these disorders; but the increase of the opposite party in africa, and an insurrection among his soldiers, obliged him to set out for africa immediately, january, . victory near thapsus over scipio and juba; after which cato kills himself at utica. numidia, the kingdom of juba, becomes a roman province. cæsar after his return to rome in june, is only able to stay there four months, as, before the end of the year, he is obliged to set out for spain to crush the dangerous efforts of pompey's two sons. bloody battle at munda, march, , after which cneius is killed, but sextus escapes to the celtiberians. . nothing seems more evident than that cæsar did not, like sylla, overthrow the republic for the purpose of reestablishing it; and it is perhaps impossible to say what could be the final views of a childless usurper, who throughout his whole career, seemed only to be guided by an inordinate ambition, springing from a consciousness of superior powers, and to satisfy which, no means seemed to him difficult or unlawful. the period of his dictatorship was so short, and so much interrupted by war, that his ultimate plans had not time for their development. he endeavoured to establish his dominion by popular measures; and although his army must still have been his main support, yet no proscription was granted to satisfy it. the reestablishment of order in the distracted country of italy, and particularly in the capital, was his first care; and he proposed to follow that by an expedition against the powerful parthian empire. his attempts, however, to obtain the diadem, seemed to place it beyond a doubt that he wished to introduce a formal monarchy. but the destruction of the form of the republic was shown to be more dangerous than the overthrow of the republic itself. the following were the honours and privileges granted to cæsar by the senate. after the battle of pharsalia, , he was nominated dictator for one year and consul for five years; and obtained the _potestas tribunicia_, as well as the right of making war and peace, the exclusive right of the committees, with the exception of the tribunes, and the possession of the provinces. the dictatorship was renewed to him, , for ten years, as well as the _præfectura morum_, and was at last, , conferred upon him for ever, with the title of _imperator_. although cæsar thus became absolute master of the republic, it appears to have been done without laying aside the republican forms. . conspiracy against cæsar, formed by brutus and cassius, and terminating in the death of cæsar. men so exalted as were the chiefs of this plot, easily understand one another; and it was quite in accordance with their character not to meditate upon the consequences of their deed. cæsar's death was a great misfortune for rome. experience soon showed that the republic could not be reestablished thereby; and his life might probably have spared the state some of those calamities which now, by its change to a monarchy, became unavoidable. we still want a discriminating life of cæsar, who in modern times has been as extravagantly praised as alexander has been unjustly censured. as generals and conquerors, both were equally great--and little; as a man, however, the macedonian, in the brilliant period of his life, to which cæsar never attained, was superior; to the great political ideas which developed themselves in alexander, we know of none corresponding in cæsar; who knew better than any how to attain dominion, but little of preserving it. _histoire de la vie de jules cæsar_, _par_ m. de bury, paris, , vols. vo. # _life of c. julius cæsar_, _by_ a. g. meissner, _continued by_ j. ch. l. haken, , parts. at present the best. _caius julius cæsar, from original sources_, _by_ professor sÖltl. a short biography, judiciously executed. . notwithstanding the amnesty at first declared, the funeral obsequies of cæsar soon showed, that peace was of all things the least desired by his generals, m. antony and m. lepidus, now become the head of his party; and the arrival of cæsar's nephew, c. octavius (afterwards cæsar octavianus), whom he had adopted in his will, rendered affairs still more complicated, as every one strove for himself; antony's particular object being to raise himself into cæsar's place. however earnestly they sought to gain the people, it was in fact the legions who decided, and the command of them depended, for the most part, upon the possession of the provinces. we cannot therefore wonder, that while they sought to revenge the murder of cæsar, this became the chief cause of the struggle, and in a few months led to a civil war. at the time of cæsar's death, m. antonius was actual consul, and dolabella consul-elect; m. lepidus _magister equitum_ (master of the horse); m. brutus and cassius, prætors (the first, _prætor urbanus_). cæsar had given to the former the province of macedonia, and to the latter that of syria, which had been confirmed to them by the senate. m. lepidus had been nominated to transalpine, and d. brutus to cisalpine gaul. but soon after the murder of cæsar, antony obtained, by a decree of the people, macedonia for himself, and syria for his colleague dolabella, with whom he had formed a close connection; instead of which the senate decreed to cassius cyrene, and to brutus, who now had the important charge of supplying rome with provisions, crete. but soon after (june , ), antony desired, by a new change, to obtain cisalpine gaul for himself, and macedonia for his brother c. antony, both of which he procured from the people. . as m. antony sought by force to establish himself in cisalpine gaul, and d. brutus refused to give it up to him, and retired into mutina, a short, indeed, but very bloody civil war arose, (_bellum mutinense_.) the eloquence of cicero had caused antony to be declared an enemy of the republic; and the two new consuls, hirtius and pansa, together with cæsar octavianus, were sent against him. the defeat of antony compelled him to seek refuge beyond the alps with lepidus; but the two consuls being slain, octavianus at the head of his legions was too importunate to be refused the consulship, and soon convinced the defenceless senate, how impossible it was to reestablish the commonwealth by their powerless decrees. the employment, moreover, of the _magistratus suffecti_, which soon after arose, was in itself a sufficient proof that it was now no more than the shadow of what it had formerly been. the mutine war begins in december, , and closes with the defeat of antony at mutina, april , . octavius obtains the consulate, sept. . . octavianus, deserting the party of the senate, enters into a secret negotiation with antony and lepidus; the consequence of which is a meeting of the parties at bononia, and the formation of a new triumvirate. they declare themselves the chiefs of the republic for five years, under the title of _triumviri reipublicæ constituendæ_; and dividing the provinces among themselves according to their own pleasure, they make the destruction of the republican party their principal object. a new proscription in rome itself, and a declaration of war against the murderers of cæsar, were the means by which they proposed to effect it. the agreement of the triumvirate was concluded nov. , , after which the march of the triumvirs upon rome gives the signal for the massacre of the proscribed, which soon extends all over italy, and in which cicero perishes, dec. . the cause of this new proscription was not party hatred alone, but was as much, perhaps more, owing on the one hand to the want of money for carrying on the war they had undertaken, and on the other to a desire of satisfying the turbulent demands of the legions. where is to be found a time so full of terror as this, when even tears were forbidden? . the civil war, now on the eve of breaking out, may be considered therefore as a war between the oligarchy and the defenders of the republic. the roman world was, as it were, divided between the two; and although the former had possession of italy, and the western provinces, that advantage seemed counterbalanced to the chiefs of the opposite party by the possession of the eastern countries, and the naval power of sextus pompey, which seemed to assure them the dominion of the sea. m. brutus had taken possession of his province of macedonia as early as the autumn of ; while cassius, on the contrary, had to contend for that of syria with dolabella, who by the murder of the proconsul trebonius had possessed himself of asia. being, however, for this offence, declared an enemy by the senate, and shut up in laodicea by cassius, he killed himself, june , . from this time brutus and cassius were masters of all the eastern provinces, at whose expense they maintained their troops, though not without much oppression. s. pompey, after the victory of munda, , having secreted himself in spain, and afterwards become a chief of freebooters, had grown very powerful; when the senate, after cæsar's assassination, having made him commander of the sea-forces, he with them took possession of spain, and, after the conclusion of the triumvirate, of sicily, and then, very soon after, of sardinia and corsica. it was a great thing for the triumvirate, that c. pompey did not know how to reap half the profit he might have done from his power and good fortune. . macedonia became the theatre of the new civil war, and together with the goodness of their cause, superior talents, and greater power both by land and sea, seemed combined to ensure the victory to brutus and cassius. but in the decisive battle at philippi, fortune played one of her most capricious tricks, and with the two chiefs fell the last supporters of the republic. double battle at philippi towards the close of the year ; voluntary death of cassius after the first, and of brutus after the second engagement. plutarchi _vita bruti_; from the narratives of eyewitnesses. . the history of the eleven years intervening between the battle of philippi and that of actium, is little more than an account of the quarrels of the oligarchy among themselves. the most subtle was, in the end, victorious; for m. antony possessed all the sensuality of cæsar, without his genius: and the insignificant lepidus soon fell a sacrifice to his own vanity and weakness. while antony went into asia to arrange the affairs of the eastern provinces, and from thence with cleopatra to alexandria, octavianus returned to rome. but the famine which then reigned in that city through pompey's blockade of the seacoast; the misery spread throughout italy by the wresting of patrimonial lands from the proprietors to distribute among the veterans; and the insatiable covetousness of the latter rendered his situation as dangerous now as it had been before the war. besides all this, the hatred of the enraged consort of antony, who had entered into an alliance with her brother-in-law, the consul l. antony, brought on, towards the end of the year, a civil war, which ended with the surrender and burning of perusium, in which l. antony had shut himself up, and which was already much weakened by famine. the _bellum perusinum_ lasted from the end of the year till april, . . this war, however, had nearly led to one still greater; for m. antony, as the enemy of octavianus, had come to italy in order to assist his brother, and with the intention of forming an alliance with s. pompey against the former. but fortunately for the world, not only was harmony restored between the triumvirs, but on account of the great famine which prevailed at rome, a peace was also concluded with pompey, although it lasted but a very short time. the principal object of the peace between the triumvirs was a new division of the provinces, by which the city of scodra in illyria was fixed upon as the boundary. antony obtained all the eastern provinces; octavianus all the western; and lepidus africa. italy remained in common to them all. the marriage of antony with octavia, fulvia being dead, was intended to cement this agreement. in the peace concluded with s. pompey at misenum, he obtained the islands of sicily, sardinia, and corsica, and the promise of achaia. . pompey, however, was not long in finding that an alliance between him and the triumvirs would only end in his own destruction; and the war which he soon commenced, and which octavianus could not bring to a close but with the assistance of agrippa, was of so much the more importance, as it not only decided the fate of pompey, but by leading to dissensions, and the expulsion of lepidus, reduced the triumvirate to a duumvirate. after a doubtful engagement at sea, , and the formation of a new fleet, pompey was attacked on all sides at the same time; lepidus coming from africa, and antony sending also some ships. final overthrow of pompey, who flies to asia and there perishes.--lepidus wishing to take possession of sicily, octavianus gains over his troops, and obliges him to retire from the triumvirate. . the foreign wars in which octavianus as well as antony were engaged in the following years, prevented for some time their mutual jealousy from coming to an open rupture. octavianus, to tame his unruly legions, employed them with some success against the nations of dalmatia and pannonia; whilst antony undertook an expedition against the powerful parthians and their neighbours. but in offending rome by his conduct in these wars, he only armed his opponent against himself; and his formal separation from octavia, loosened the only tie which had hitherto held together the two masters of the world. after his first stay in alexandria, , antony returned to italy, , and then, having made peace with octavianus, he carried his new wife octavia with him into greece, where he remained till the year . although his lieutenant ventidius had fought with success against the parthians, who had invaded syria (see above, p. .), antony determined to undertake an expedition against them himself, . but although in alliance with artavasdes king of armenia (whom he soon after accused of treachery), in seeking to effect an entrance into parthia, by passing through armenia and media, a different route from that taken by crassus, he was very nearly meeting with the same fate, and the expedition completely failed. he then revenged himself upon artavasdes, who fell into his hands in a fresh expedition which he made, , and deprived him of his kingdom. after his triumphal entrance into alexandria, he made a grant of this as well as other countries to cleopatra and her children. (see above, p. .) in , he intended to renew his expedition against the parthians, in alliance with the king of media; but having, at the instigation of cleopatra, ordered octavia to return home, when she had already come as far as athens on her way to meet him, octavianus and antony reciprocally accused each other before the senate, and war was declared at rome, though only against cleopatra. . greece became again the theatre of war; and although the forces of antony were most considerable, yet octavianus had the advantage of having, at least in appearance, the better cause. the naval victory of actium decided for octavianus, who could scarcely believe it, till he found that antony had forsaken his fleet and army, the latter of which surrendered without striking a blow. the capture of egypt followed, (see above, p. .) and that country was reduced to a roman province; the death of antony and cleopatra ended the war, and left octavianus absolute master of the republic. the history of the last days of antony, principally after his decline, having been written under the rule of his enemies, must be received with that mistrust which all such histories require. it has furnished abundant matter for the retailers of anecdote. the history of cleopatra rests partly on the accounts of her physician olympus, of which plutarch made use. fourth period. history of the roman state as a monarchy to the overthrow of the western empire. b. c. .-a. c. . _geographical outline. view of the roman empire and provinces, and other countries connected with it by war or commerce._ the ordinary boundaries of the roman empire, which, however, it sometimes exceeded, were in europe the two great rivers of the rhine and danube; in asia, the euphrates and the sandy desert of syria; in africa likewise, the sandy regions. it thus included the fairest portions of the earth, surrounding the mediterranean sea. european countries: i. spain (hispania). boundaries: on the east the pyrenees, on the south, north, and west, the sea. principal rivers: the minius (minho), durius (douro), tagus (tejo), anas (guadiana), bætis (guadalquiver), which flow into the atlantic; and the iberus (ebro), which falls into the mediterranean. mountains: besides the pyrenees, the idubeda along the iberus, orospeda (sierra morena). divided into three provinces. . lusitania: northern boundary the durius, southern, the anas. principal tribes: lusitani, turdetani. principal town: augusta emerita. . bætica: boundaries on the north and west the anas, on the east the mountains of orospeda. principal tribes: turduli, bastuli. principal towns: corduba (cordova), hispalis (seville), gades (cadiz), munda. . tarraconensis, all the remainder of spain. principal tribes: callæci, astures, cantabri, vascones, in the north; celtiberi, carpetani, ilergetes, in the interior; indigetes, cosetani, etc. on the mediterranean. chief towns: tarraco (tarragona), cartago nova (carthagena), toletum (toledo), ilerda (lerida); saguntum and numantia (soria) were already destroyed. the balearic isles, major (majorca), and minor (minorca), were considered as belonging to spain. ii. transalpine gaul. boundaries: on the west the pyrenees; on the east the rhine, and a line drawn from its source to the little river varus, together with that river itself; on the north and south the sea. principal rivers: the garumna (garonne), liger (loire), sequana (seine), and scaldis (scheldt), which empty themselves into the ocean; the rhodanus (rhone), which is increased by the arar (saone), and falls into the mediterranean; and the mosella (moselle) and mosa (meuse), which flow into the rhine. mountains: besides the alps, the jura, vogesus (vosge), and cebenna (cevennes). divided into four provinces. . gallia narbonensis, or braccata. boundaries: on the west the pyrenees, on the east the varus, on the north the cevennian mountains. principal tribes: allobroges, volcæ, calyes. principal towns: narbo (narbonne), tolosa (toulouse), nemausus (nîmes), massilia (marseilles), vienna. . gallia lugdunensis, or celtica. boundaries: to the south and west the liger (loire), to the north the sequana, to the east the arar. principal tribes: Ædui, lingones, parisii, cenomani, etc. all of celtic origin. principal towns: lugdunum (lyons), lutetia parisiorum (paris), alesia (alise). . gallia aquitanica. boundaries: the pyrenees on the south, the liger on the north and east. principal tribes: aquitani (of iberian origin), pictones, averni, etc. of celtic descent. principal towns: climberis, burdegala (bourdeaux). . gallia belgica. boundaries: on the north and east the rhine, on the west the arar, on the south the rhodanus as far as lugdunum, so that it comprised at first the countries bordering on the rhine and helvetia. the latter, however, were afterwards separated from it under the names of germania inferior and superior. principal tribes: nervii, bellovaci, etc. in the north, of belgic origin; treviri, ubii, of german origin; sequani, helvetii, in the interior, of celtic origin. principal towns: vesentio (besançon), verodunum (verdun), etc. along the rhine in germania inferior: colonia agrippina (cologne). in germania superior: mogontiacum (mayence, or mentz), and argentoratum (strasburg). iii. gallia cisalpina, or togata (lombardy, see above, p. ). but as from the time of cæsar the inhabitants enjoyed all the privileges of roman citizens, it may be reckoned as forming part of italy. iv. sicilia; divided into syracuse and lilybæum. v. sardinia and corsica, see above, p. . vi. the insulæ britannicæ (british islands); but of these, only england and the southern part of scotland were reduced into a roman province in the time of nero, under the name of britannia romana. principal rivers: tamesis (thames) and sabrina (severn). cities: eboracum (york) in the north, londinum (london) in the south. into scotland, britannia barbaria, or caledonia, the romans often penetrated, but without being ably completely to conquer it; and as for hibernia, ierne (ireland), it was visited by roman merchants, but never by roman legions. vii. the countries south of the danube, which were subdued under augustus and formed into the following provinces: . vindelicia. boundaries: on the north the danube, on the east the Ænus (inn), on the west helvetia, on the south rhætia. principal tribes: vindelici, brigantii, etc. principal towns: augusta vindelicorum (augsburg), brigantia (bregenz). . rhætia. boundaries: on the north vindelicia, on the east the inn and the salza, on the south the chain of the alps from lacus verbanus (lago maggiore) to belinzona, on the west helvetia. principal tribe: rhæti. principal towns: curia (chur), veldidena (wilden), tridentum (trent). . noricum. boundaries: on the north the danube, on the west the Ænus, on the east the mountain cetius (kahlenberg), and on the south the julian alps and the savus (save). principal tribes: boii. cities: jovavum (salzburg), boiodurum (passau). . pannonia superior. boundaries: on the north and east the danube, on the south the arrabo (raab), on the west the mountain cetius. cities: vindobona (vienna), caruntum. . pannonia inferior. boundaries: on the north the arrabo, on the east the danube, on the south the savus. cities: taurunum (belgrade), mursa (esseg), and sirmium. . moesia superior. boundaries: on the north the danube, on the south mount scardus, or scodrus, on the west pannonia, on the east the river cebrus (ischia). cities: singidunum (semlin), and naissus (nissa). . moesia inferior. boundaries: on the north the danube, on the west the cebrus, on the south mount hæmus (the balkan), and on the east the pontus euxinus. cities: odessus (varna), tomi (tomisvar). viii. illyricum, in its most extensive signification, comprised all the provinces south of the danube, together with rhætia and dalmatia: but illyricum proper comprehends only the lands along the coast of the adriatic, from rhætia in italy to the river drinus, and easterly to the savus. principal towns: salona, epidaurus (near the present ragusa), scodra (scutari). ix. macedonia. boundaries: on the north mount scodrus, on the south the cambunian mountains, on the west the adriatic, and on the east the Ægean sea. rivers: the nestus, strymon, and halyacmon, which fall into the Ægean sea, and the apsus and aöus, which fall into the adriatic. principal tribes: pæones in the north, pieres and mygdones in the south. principal towns: pydna, pella, thessalonica, philippi, with other greek colonies (see above, p. ). dyrrachium and apollonia on the western coast. x. thrace had for some time kings of her own, though dependent on rome, and was first reduced to a roman province under claudius. boundaries: on the north mount hæmus, on the west the nestus, on the south and east the sea. river: hebrus. principal tribes: triballi, bessi, and odrysæ. cities: byzantium, apollonia, beroea. xi. achaia (greece), see above, p. . xii. to the north of the danube the province of dacia was brought under the roman empire by trajan. boundaries: on the south the danube, on the west the tibiscus (theiss), in the east the hierasus (pruth), in the north the carpathian mountains. principal tribe: daci. chief cities; ulpia trajana and tibiscum. asiatic provinces: i. asia minor contained the provinces: . asia (see above, p. ). . bithynia, together with paphlagonia and part of pontus. . cilicia, with pisidia (see above, p. .) ii. syria and phoenicia. iii. the isle of cyprus. several other states, likewise dependent, still preserved their kings: as, judæa (became a roman province, a. d. .), commagene (province a. d. , and, together with judæa, added to syria), cappadocia (province a. d. ), pontus (completely a province under nero). free states at this time: rhodes, samos (provinces a. d. ), and lycia (province a. d. ). beyond the euphrates, armenia and mesopotamia were reduced to provinces by trajan, but, as early as the time of adrian, were abandoned. african provinces. i. egypt. ii. cyrenaica, with the isle of crete. iii. africa, numidia (see above, p. ). mauritania still had its separate king, but he was set aside, a. d. , and the country divided into two provinces: . mauritania cæsariensis. boundaries: on the east the river ampsaga, on the west the mulucha. principal places: igilgilis and cæsaria. . mauritania tingitana, from the river mulucha to the atlantic ocean. capital: tingis. principal states on the borders of the empire: i. germania. boundaries: on the south the danube, on the north the sea, on the west the rhine, on the east undetermined, though the vistula is generally regarded as such. principal rivers: the danubius, rhenus (rhine), albis (elbe), visurgis (weser), viadrus (oder), and the vistula; the lupias (lippe) and amisia (ems) are likewise frequently mentioned. mountains and forests: the hercynian forest, a general name for the forest mountains, particularly of eastern germany. melibocus (the hartz), sudetus (the thuringian forest); the forest of teutoburg, to the south of westphalia, etc. it would be useless to seek for a general political division, or for the cities, of ancient germany; we can only point out the situation of the principal tribes. it is necessary, however, to precede this by two observations: . the same territory, in the tide of forcible emigration and conquest, and particularly after the second century, often changed its inhabitants. . the names of some of the principal tribes often became that of a confederacy. the principal tribes in the period of augustus were, in northern germany; the batavi in holland; the frisii in friesland; the bructeri in westphalia; the lesser and larger chauci in oldenburg and bremen; the cherusci, likewise the name of a confederation, in brunswick; the catti in hesse. in southern (central) germany: the hermunduri in franconia; the marcomanni in bohemia. the alemanni, not the name of a single tribe, but of a confederation, are first mentioned in the third century: in the period of augustus these tribes, and the principal of those of eastern germany, which gradually became known, were included under the general name of suevi. the northernmost countries of europe were considered as isles of the german ocean, and therefore regarded as belonging to germany. they were scandinavia, or scandia (southern sweden), nerigon (norway), and eningia, or probably finningia (finland). the northernmost island was called thule. the north of europe, from the vistula to the tanais (don), was comprised under the general name of sarmatia; but beyond the territory about the danube, and especially dacia (see above, p. ), they were only in a slight degree acquainted with the coast of the baltic, by the amber trade. in asia the roman empire was bounded by great armenia (see above, p. , and ), the parthian empire from the euphrates to the indus (see above, p. - ), and the peninsula of arabia (see above, p. ). eastern asia, or india, became known to the romans by a commercial intercourse carried on between them, and which began soon after the conquest of egypt. it was divided into india on this side the ganges, that is: . the territory between the indus and ganges; . the peninsula on this side, the western coast of which in particular (malabar), was very well known; and, . the island of taprobana (ceylon), and india beyond the ganges, to which also the distant serica belonged: but of all these countries they had but a very imperfect knowledge. the boundaries of africa were Æthiopia above egypt, and gætulia and the great sandy desert of libya, above the other provinces. first section. _from augustus cæsar to the death of commodus, b. c. . a. c. ._ sources. for the whole of this period dion cassius, lib. li-lxxx, is our historian; though of his last twenty books we have only the abridgment of xiphilinus. for the history of the emperors from tiberius to the beginning of vespasian's reign, the principal writer is tacitus, in his _annals_, a. c. - ; (of which, however, part of the history of tiberius, - , all of caligula and the first six years of claudius, - , as well as the last year and a half of nero, are unfortunately lost); and in his _history_, of which scarcely the first three years, - , are come down to us. suetonius's _lives of the cæsars_, down to domitian, are so much the more valuable, because in a state like the roman it becomes of importance to know the character and domestic life of the ruling men. for the reigns of augustus and tiberius the _history_ of velleius paterculus is not of less consequence, although written in a court-like tone. the sources for the history of the separate cæsars will be given as we come to them. the following are the labours of modern writers: _histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont régné dans les six premiers siècles de l'eglise_, _par_ m. lenain de tillemont. à bruxelle, , vols. vo. (an earlier edition in to. , vols.) the work of tillemont has some worth as a laborious compilation, but is superseded in its execution by the following: _histoire des empereurs romains, depuis auguste jusqu' à constantin_, _par_ m. crevier. paris, , vols. vo. [translated into english.] a continuation of rollin's roman history (see above, p. ), quite in the spirit of that writer, and by one of his school. dr. goldsmith's _roman history, from the foundation of the city of rome to the destruction of the western empire_. london, , vols. vo. rather a sketch than a detailed history (see above, p. , sqq.). # _history of rome under the emperors, and of the contemporary nations_, _by_ m. d. g. h. hubler. fryburg, , parts. continuation of the work cited p. : it reaches down to constantine. . octavianus cæsar, on whom the senate conferred the honourable title of augustus, which they periodically renewed, and which descended to his successors, possessed the sole dominion of the empire during forty-four years. the government, notwithstanding the great revolutions by which the republic had been converted into a monarchy, was not yet, either in fact or in form, altogether a despotic one. the private interest of the ruler required that the republican form should be preserved to the utmost, as without that he could not make an entire change; and the rest of his history sufficiently shows, that the cruelty with which he may be reproached in the early part of his career, was rather owing to circumstances than to his natural disposition. but during a reign so long, so tranquil, and so fortunate, could it be otherwise than that the republican spirit which at the beginning existed only in a few individuals, should evaporate of itself! the forms under which augustus held the different branches of supreme power (dictatorship excepted) were;--the consulate, which, till b. c. , was annually renewed; and the _potestas consularis_, which, in b. c. , was settled on him for ever;--the _tribunicia potestas_, which was, , granted him for ever, rendered his person sacred (_sacrosancta_), and prepared the way to the _judicia majestatis_ (accusations of high treason). as _imperator_, , he continued commander of all the forces, and obtained the _imperium proconsulare_ (proconsular power) in all the provinces. he assumed the _magistratura morum_ (censorship), ; and became _pontifex maximus_ (high priest), . to avoid all appearances of usurpation, augustus at first accepted the sovereign power only for ten years, and afterwards had it renewed from time to time, for ten or five years, which, at a later period, gave rise to the _sacra decennalia_. . the senate, indeed, remained a permanent council of state, and augustus himself endeavoured to increase its authority by more than one purification (_lectio_); but the connection between him and that assembly seemed of a very fragile nature, as it was undetermined, and could not at this time be settled, whether augustus was over the senate, or the senate over augustus. all matters of state could not be brought before the senate, as even the most important often required secrecy. it naturally followed, that a prince, as yet without a court, and who had no proper minister, but only his friends and freedmen, should consult with those whom he thought most worthy his confidence, a mæcenas, or an agrippa, etc. hence afterwards was formed the secret council of state (_consilium secretum principis_). among the republican magistrates the highest lost most; and as so much now depended upon the preservation of peace in the capital, the offices of præfect of the city (_præfectus urbis_) and præfect of provisions (_præfectus annonæ_) were not only made permanent, but became, especially the former, the principal offices in the state. the spirit of monarchy shows itself in nothing more than in its strict distinction of ranks; hence, therefore, the magistrates, especially the consuls, lost nothing. hence also the long-continued custom of nominating under-consuls (_consules suffecti_,) which in time became merely a formal assumption of the _ornamenta consularia et triumphalia_ (consular and triumphal ornaments). other offices were created for the purpose of rewarding friends and dependents. . the introduction of standing armies, already long prepared, naturally followed a dominion acquired by war; and became, indeed, necessary to guard the frontiers and preserve the newly-made conquests; the establishment of the guards and militia of the city (_cohortes prætorianæ_ and _cohortes urbanæ_) were measures equally necessary for the security of the capital and the throne. the creation of _two_ prætorian præfects, however, instead of _one_, diminished for the present the great importance of that office. distribution of the legions over the provinces in _castra stativa_ (fixed camps), which soon grew into cities, especially along the rhine, the danube, and the euphrates (_legiones germanicæ, illyricæ, et syriacæ_). fleets also were stationed at misenum and ravenna. . the government, as well as the administration and revenue of the provinces, augustus willingly divided with the senate; keeping to himself those on the frontiers (_provinciæ principis_,) in which the legions were quartered, and leaving to that assembly the others (_provinciæ senatûs_). hence his deputies (_legati_, lieutenants) exercised both civil and military authority in his name; while those of the senate, on the contrary (_proconsules_), only administered in civil affairs. both were, in general, attended by commissioners (_procuratores et quæstores_). the provinces were unquestionably gainers by this new arrangement, not only because their governors were more carefully looked after, but because they were paid by the state. the fate of the provinces naturally depended, in a great degree, upon the disposition of the emperor and governor; but there was also an essential difference between the provinces of the emperor and those of the senate (_provinciæ principis et senatûs_): in the latter there was no military oppression as there was in the former; and to that may be ascribed the flourishing state of gaul, spain, africa, etc. . there is little doubt but that the finances of the treasury remained, upon the whole, much the same as before; but in its internal administration augustus made many alterations, of which we have but a very imperfect knowledge. of course there would be at first an obvious difference between the privy and military chest of the emperor (_fiscus_), which was at his immediate disposal, and the state chest (_ærarium_) which he disposed of indirectly through the senate, though it must afterwards follow as a natural consequence of increasing despotism, that the latter should progressively become merged in the former. the great disorder into which the treasury had been thrown during the civil wars, and especially by giving away the state lands in italy to the soldiers, together with the heavy sums required for the maintenance of the standing army now established, must have rendered it much more difficult for augustus to accomplish the reform he so happily executed; and in which it seems to have been his chief aim to place everything, as far as possible, upon a solid and lasting foundation. the principal changes which he made in the old system of taxation seem to have been: . that the tithes hitherto collected in the provinces should be changed into a fixed quota, to be paid by each individual. . the customs, partly by reestablishing former ones, and partly by imposing new ones as well as an excise (_centesima rerum venalium_), were rendered more productive. the possession of egypt, which was the depôt of nearly all the commerce of the east, rendered the customs at this time of great importance to rome. . all the state lands in the provinces were, by degrees, changed into crown lands. of the new taxes the most considerable were the _vigesima hereditatum_ (the twentieth of inheritances), though with important restrictions; and the fines upon celibacy by the _lex julia poppæa_.--the greater part of these state revenues most likely flowed, from the very first, into the _fiscus_: that is, the whole revenues of the _provinciæ principis_, as well as of those parts of the _provinciæ senatûs_ which were appropriated to the maintenance of the troops; the revenues arising from the crown domains; the _vigesima_, etc. to the _ærarium_ (now under three _præfecti ærarii_) remained a part of the revenues of the _provinciæ senatûs_, the customs and the fines. thus it appears that augustus was master of the finances, of the legions, and thereby of the empire. see above, p. , the writings of hegewisch and bosse. . the extension of the roman empire under augustus was very considerable; being generally of such a nature as conduced to the security of the interior, and to the safeguard of the frontiers. the complete subjugation of northern spain, and western gaul, secured the frontiers on that side; as did the threatened but never-executed expedition against the parthians, and the one actually undertaken against armenia, a. c. . but the most important conquest in this quarter was that of the countries south of the danube, viz. rhætia, vindelicia, and noricum, as well as pannonia, and afterwards moesia. to counterbalance these, the expedition against arabia felix completely failed; and that against Æthiopia was of no further consequence than to strengthen the frontiers. . all these conquests together, however, did not cost the romans so much as their fruitless attempt to subjugate germany, first, by the sons-in-law of augustus, drusus and tiberius nero, and afterwards by the son of the former, drusus germanicus. whether or not this undertaking was a political fault, must always remain a problem, as it is now impossible to say how far the security of the frontiers could be preserved without it. rome commenced her hostile attack upon germany under the command of drusus, b. c. ; lower germany (westphalia, lower saxony, and hesse) being in general the theatre of the war: while the lower rhine was attacked both by sea and land at the mouths of the ems, the weser, and the elbe, on account of the great assistance afforded the romans by their alliance with the nations on the coasts, the batavi, frisii, and chauci. the intrepid drusus, in his second expedition, , penetrated as far as the weser, and, , even as far as the elbe, but died on his return. his successors in the command (tiberius, - , domitius, Ænobarbus, - , m. vinicius, -a. c. , then again tiberius, a. c. - , who was followed by quintilius varus, a. c. - ,) endeavoured to build on the foundation laid by drusus, and, by erecting forts and introducing the roman language and laws, gradually to reduce into a province the part of germany they had already subdued; but the craftily organized revolt of the young arminius (hermann,) a prince of the cherusci, son of siegmar, and son-in-law of segestes, a friend of the romans, together with the defeat of varus and his army in the teutoburg wald, or forest, near paderborn, a. c. , rescued germany from slavery, and its language from annihilation. it moreover taught the conquerors (what they never forgot) that the legions were not invincible. augustus immediately despatched tiberius, who had just quelled a furious insurrection in pannonia, together with germanicus, to the rhine; but these confined themselves to simple incursions, till germanicus, a. c. - , again carried his arms further into the country, and certainly penetrated as far as the weser. yet, notwithstanding his victory near idistavisus (minden), the loss of his fleet and part of his army by a tempest on his return, and the jealousy of tiberius at his victory, obliged him to give up his command. from this time the germans were left at rest in this quarter. # mannert, _geography of the greeks and romans_, part iii. . the long, and for italy itself, peaceable reign of augustus, has generally been considered a fortunate and brilliant period of roman history; and, when compared with the times which preceded and followed, it certainly was so. security of person and property were reestablished; the arts of peace flourished under the benign patronage of augustus and his favourite mæcenas; and we may add, that, as the formal restoration of the republic would only have been the signal for new commotions, the government of augustus, if not the very best, was, at least, the best that rome could then bear. should it be said his private life was not blameless, it may be replied, that he inflexibly maintained an outward decency, to which, indeed, he sacrificed his only daughter; and if laws could have bettered the public morals, there was no lack of decrees for that purpose. among his most important laws to this end are, the _lex julia de adulteriis_ and the _lex papia poppæa_ against celibacy. the latter excited many murmurs. . nearly all that remains of the history of augustus, is an account of his domestic troubles; the most unhappy family being that of the emperor. the influence of livia, his second wife, was very great, but does not seem to have been perverted to any worse purpose than raising her sons, tiberius and drusus, to the throne. the naturally unsettled state of the succession, in a government such as that of rome now was, became much increased by circumstances. after the untimely death of his nephew and son-in-law marcellus, whom he had adopted, his widow julia, the only child of augustus by his wife scribonia, was married to agrippa. the two eldest sons of this marriage, c. and l. cæsar, were adopted, upon the death of their father, by the emperor, who showed so much fondness towards them as they grew up, that tiberius, who in the mean time had married their mother, julia,--afterwards banished by augustus for her licentious conduct--left the court in disgust. the death of the two young princes, however, again revived the hopes of tiberius, who was adopted by augustus upon the condition that he should also adopt drusus germanicus, the son of his deceased brother drusus; after which augustus, with the consent of the senate, formally associated him with himself in the government, making him an equal partner in the imperial privileges: called by his successors, _lex regia_. _marmor ancyranum_; or, inscriptions in the temple of augustus at ancyra. a copy of the account given of his government, which augustus latterly caused to be set up at rome as a public memorial: unfortunately much mutilated. it is to be found in chishull, _antiq. asiatic_. _memoirs of the court of augustus, by_ thomas blackwell. london, , vols. to. divided into fifteen books. the last vol. was published after the death of the author, by mr. mills. the last two books of this prolix work contain a description of the contemporary affairs of augustus; the others go back to earlier times. a just appreciation of augustus requires a previous critical examination of the sources from which suetonius has drawn the materials for his biography. _histoire des triumvirats augmentée de l'histoire d'auguste, par_ larry. trevoux, , parts, vo. the last part of this simple narrative contains the history of augustus from the death of catiline. . the reign of tiberius claudius nero, or, as he was called after his adoption, augustus tiberius cæsar, from his fifty-sixth to his seventy-eighth year, changed rather the spirit than the form of the roman constitution. he succeeded quietly to the vacant throne at rome, although the legions in pannonia, and still more in germany, felt that they could make emperors. under him the _comitia_, or assemblies of the people, were reduced to a mere shadow; as he transferred their duties to the senate, which also became the highest tribunal for the state crimes of its own members: this assembly, however, had now been so much accustomed to obey the will of the prince, that everything depended on his personal character. tiberius founded his despotism upon the _judicia majestatis_, or accusations of high treason, now become an engine of terror, the senate also sharing his guilt with a pusillanimity and servility which knew no bounds. this degraded assembly, indeed, from the moment that it ceased to be the ruling authority of a free state, necessarily became the passive instrument of the most brutal tyranny. notwithstanding the military talents and many good qualities of tiberius, his despotic character had been formed long before his fifty-sixth year, when he mounted the throne; although exterior circumstances prevented him from entirely throwing off the mask which he had hitherto worn. the foundation of the _judicia majestatis_, which soon became so terrible by the unfixed state of crime, had been laid during the reign of augustus by the _lex julia de majestate_, and the _cognitiones extraordinariæ_, or commissioners appointed to take cognizance of certain crimes; it was, however, the abuse of them by tiberius and his successors, which rendered them so dreadful. . the principal object of tiberius's suspicion, and therefore of his hate, was germanicus, a man almost adored by the army and the people. this brave general he soon recalled from germany, and sent into syria to quell the disorders of the east. after having successfully put an end to the commotions which called him there, he was poisoned by the contrivances of cn. piso and his wife; and even that did not shelter the numerous family which he left behind, with his widow agrippina, from persecution and ruin. the expeditions of germanicus in the east not only gave a king to armenia, but also reduced cappadocia and commagene to roman provinces, a. c. . _histoire de cæsar germanicus, par_ m. l. d. b. [eaufort]. à leyden, . an unpretending chronological narrative. . rome, however, soon experienced to her cost the powerful ascendancy which l. Ælius sejanus, the præfect of the prætorian guard, had acquired over the mind of tiberius, whose unlimited confidence he possessed the more, as he enjoyed it without a rival. the eight years of his authority were rendered terrible not only by the cantonment of his troops in barracks near the city (_castra prætoriana_), but (having first persuaded tiberius to quit rome for ever, that he might more securely play the tyrant in the isle of capreæ) by his endeavouring to open a way for himself to the throne by villanies and crimes without number, and by his cruel persecution of the family of germanicus. the despotism he had introduced became still more dreadful by his own fall, in which not only his whole party, but every one that could be considered as connected with it, became involved. the picture of the atrocious despotism of tiberius is rendered doubly disgusting by the horrid and unnatural lust which he joined to it in his old age. tiberius's misfortune was, that he came too late to the throne. his early virtues made no compensation for his later cruelties. it is properly the former which vel. paterculus praises, whose flattery of tiberius, in whose reign he flourished, is more easily justified than his praise of sejanus. . at the age of twenty-five caius cæsar caligula, the only remaining son of germanicus, ascended the throne; but the hopes which had been formed of this young prince were soon wofully disappointed. his previous sickness and debaucheries had so distorted his understanding, that his short reign was one tissue of disorder and crime. yet he did still more harm to the state by his besotted profusion than by his tiger-like cruelty. at length, after a career of nearly four years, he was assassinated by cassius chærea and cornelius sabinus, two officers of his guard. . his uncle tiberius claudius cæsar, who, at the age of fifty, succeeded him, was the first emperor raised to the throne by the guards; a favour which he rewarded by granting them a _donative_. too weak to rule of himself, almost imbecile from former neglect, profligate, and cruel from fear, he became the tool of the licentiousness of his wives and freedmen. coupled with the names of messalina and agrippina, we now hear, for the first time in roman history, of a pallas and a narcissus. the dominion of messalina was still more hurtful to the state by her rapacious cupidity, to which everything gave way, than by her dissolute life; and the blow which at last punished her unexampled wantonness, left a still more dangerous woman to supply her place. this was agrippina, her neice, widow of l. domitius, who joined to the vices of her predecessor a boundless ambition, unknown to the former. her chief aim was to procure the succession for domitius nero, her son by a former marriage--who had been adopted by claudius, and married to his daughter octavia--by setting aside britannicus, the son of claudius; and this she hoped to effect, by poisoning claudius, having already gained burrhus, by making him _sole_ præfect of the prætorian guard. notwithstanding the contentions with the germans and parthians (see above, p. ) were only on the frontiers, the boundaries of the roman empire were in many countries extended. commencement of the roman conquests in britain (whither claudius himself went) under a. plautius, from the year a. c. . under the same general, mauritania, a. c. , lycia, , judæa, (see above, p. ), and thrace, , were reduced to roman provinces. he also abolished the præfectures which had hitherto existed in italy. . nero claudius cæsar, supported by agrippina and the prætorian guard, succeeded claudius at the age of seventeen. brought up in the midst of the blackest crimes, and, by a perverted education, formed rather for a professor of music and the fine arts than for an emperor, he ascended the throne like a youth eager for enjoyment; and throughout his whole reign his cruelty appears subordinate to his fondness for debaucheries and revelry. the unsettled state of the succession first called into action his savage disposition; and after the murder of britannicus the sword fell in regular order upon all those who were even remotely connected with the julian family. his vanity as a performer and composer excited in an equal degree his cruelty; and as, among all tyrants, every execution gives occasion for others, we need not wonder at his putting to death every one that excelled him. his connection, however, in the early part of his reign, with agrippina, burrhus, and seneca, during which he introduced some useful regulations into the treasury, kept him within the bounds of decency. but poppæa sabina having driven him on to the murder of his mother and his wife octavia, and tigellinus being made his confident, he felt no longer restrained by the fear of public opinion. the executions of individuals, nearly all of which history has recorded, was not, perhaps, upon the whole, the greatest evil; the plunder of the provinces, not only to support his own loose and effeminate pleasures, but also to maintain the people in a continual state of intoxication, had nearly caused the dissolution of the empire. the last years of nero were marked by a striking and undoubted insanity, which displayed itself in his theatrical performances, and even in the history of his fall. it appears that both around and upon a throne like that of rome, heroes were formed for vice as well as virtue! discovery of the conspiracy of piso, , and the revolt of julius vindex in celtic gaul, , followed by that of galba in spain, who is there proclaimed emperor, and joined by otho, in lusitania. nevertheless, after the defeat of julius vindex in upper germany, by the lieutenant virginius rufus, these insurrections seemed quelled, when the prætorian guard, instigated thereto by nymphidius, broke out into rebellion in rome itself. flight and death of nero, june , . foreign wars during his reign: in britain (occasioned by the revolt of boadicea), great part of which was subdued and reduced to a roman province, by suetonius paulinus; in armenia, under the command of the valiant corbulo, against the parthians (see above, p. ); and in palestine against the jews, . great fire in rome, , which gives rise to the first persecution against the christians. the principal cause why the despotism of nero and his predecessors was so tamely submitted to by the nation, may undoubtedly be found in the fact, that the greater part of it was fed by the emperors. to the monthly distributions of corn were now added the extraordinary _congiaria_ and _viscerationes_ (supplies of wine and meat). the periods of tyranny were very likely the golden days of the people. . by the death of nero the house of cæsar became extinct, and this gave rise to so many commotions, that in somewhat less than two years, four emperors by violence obtained possession of the throne. the right of the senate to name, or at least to confirm, the successors to the throne, was still indeed acknowledged; but as the armies had found out that they could create emperors, the power of the senate dwindled into an empty ceremony. servius sulpicius galba, now seventy-two years of age, having been already proclaimed emperor by the legions in spain, and acknowledged by the senate, gained possession of rome without striking a blow, the attempt of nymphidius having completely failed, and virginius rufus voluntarily submitting to him. galba, however, having given offence both to the prætorian guard and the german legions, was dethroned by the guards, at the instigation of his former friend otho, at the very time when he thought he had secured his throne by adopting the young licinius piso, and had frustrated the hopes of otho. . m. otho, aged thirty-seven, was indeed acknowledged emperor by the senate, but wanted the sanction of the german legions, who, proclaiming their general, a. vitellius, emperor, invaded italy. otho marches against him, but after the loss of the battle of bedriacum kills himself--whether from fear or patriotism, remains uncertain. the special sources for the history of galba and otho, are their _lives_ by plutarch. . vitellius, in his thirty-seventh year, was acknowledged emperor not only by the senate, but likewise in the provinces; his debaucheries and cruelty, however, together with the licentiousness of his troops, having rendered him odious at rome, the syrian legions rebelled and proclaimed their general, t. flavius vespasian, emperor, who, at the solicitation of the powerful mutianus, governor of syria, accepted the imperial diadem. the troops on the danube declaring for him shortly after, and marching into italy under their general antonius primus defeated the army of vitellius at cremona. vitellius was immediately hurled from the throne, though not till after some blood had been spilt by the commotions that took place at rome, in which flavius sabinus, the brother of vespasian, was slain, and the capitol burnt. . flavius vespasian ascended the throne in his fifty-ninth year, and became thereby the founder of a dynasty which gave three emperors to rome. the state, almost ruined by profusion, civil war, and successive revolutions, found in vespasian a monarch well suited to its unhappy condition. he endeavoured, as far as he could, to determine the relations between himself and the senate; while, by a decree, he restored to it all the rights and privileges which had been conferred upon it by his predecessors of the family of cæsar, and settled and added some others (_lex regia_). he made a thorough reform in the completely-exhausted treasury, which he recruited in part by reducing the countries nero had made free, together with some others, into provinces; partly by restoring the ancient customs, by increasing others, and by imposing new ones: without this it would have been impossible for him to have reestablished the discipline of the army. his liberality in the foundation of public buildings, as well in rome as in other cities; and the care with which he promoted education, by granting salaries to public teachers, are sufficient to free him from the reproach of avarice; and although, on account of their dangerous opinions, he banished the stoics (who since the time of nero had become very numerous, and retained nearly all the principles of republicanism), the annulling of the _judicia majestatis_ and the restoration of the authority of the senate show how far he was from being a despot. rhodes, samos, lycia, achaia, thrace, cilicia, and commagene, were brought by vespasian into the condition of provinces. foreign wars: that against the jews, which ended with the destruction of jerusalem, a. c. ; and a much greater war against the batavians and their allies under civilis, who during the late civil wars, sought to shake off the roman yoke, ; but were reduced to an accommodation by cerealis, . expeditions of agricola in britain, - , who not only subdued all england, and introduced the roman manners and customs, but also attacked and sailed round scotland. _d. vespasianus, sive de vita et legislatione t. flavii vespasiani imp. commentarius, auctore_ a. g. cramer. jenæ, . an excellent enquiry, with illustrations of the fragments of the _lex regia_. the second part, _de legislatione_, contains a learned commentary upon the _senatus consulta_, during his reign. . his eldest son, titus flavius vespasian, who in the year had been created cæsar, and reigned from his thirty-ninth to his forty-second year, gives us the rare example of a prince becoming better on the throne. his short and benevolent reign was, indeed, only remarkable for its public calamities: an eruption of mount vesuvius, overwhelming several cities, was followed by a destructive fire, and a dreadful plague at rome. his early death secured him the reputation of being, if not the happiest, at least the best of princes. . his younger brother and successor, l. flavius domitian, who reigned from his thirtieth to his forty-fifth year, gives an example quite opposite to that of titus: beginning with justice and severity, he soon degenerated into the completest despot that ever swayed the roman sceptre. his cruelty, joined to an equal degree of pride, and nourished by suspicion and jealousy, made him the enemy of all who excelled him by their exploits, their riches, or their talents. the mortifications to which his pride must have been subjected in consequence of his unsuccessful wars against the catti, and more particularly the daci, increased his bad disposition. his despotism was founded upon his armies, whose pay he augmented one fourth; and that he might not thereby diminish the treasury, as he had too much done at first, he multiplied the _judicia majestatis_, rendering it still more terrible by the employment of secret informers (_delatores_), in order, by confiscations, to augment the wealth of his private treasury (_fiscus_). by confining his cruelty chiefly to the capital, and by a strict superintendence over the governors of provinces, domitian prevented any such general disorganization of the empire as took place under nero. his fall confirmed the general truth, that tyrants have little to fear from the people, but much from individuals who may think their lives in danger. the foreign wars during this reign are rendered more worthy of remark by being the first in which the barbarians attacked the empire with success. domitian's ridiculous expedition against the catti, , gave the first proof of his boundless vanity; as did the recall of the victorious agricola, , from britain, of his jealousy. his most important war was that against the daci, or getæ, who, under their brave king dercebal, had attacked the roman frontiers; this again occasioned another with their neighbours, the marcomanni, quadi, and jazygi, - , which turned out so unfortunate for rome, that domitian was obliged to purchase a peace of the daci by paying them an annual tribute. . m. cocceius nerva, aged about seventy years was raised to the throne by the murderers of domitian; and now, at last, seemed to break forth the dawn of a more happy period for the empire. the preceding reign of terror completely ceased at once; and he endeavoured to impart fresh vigour to industry, not only by diminishing the taxes, but also by distributing lands to the poor. the insurrection of the guards certainly cost the murderers of domitian their lives; but it was at the same time the cause of nerva's securing the prosperity of the empire after his death, by the adoption of trajan. . m. ulpius trajan (after his adoption, nerva trajan), a spaniard by birth, governed the empire from his forty-second to his sixty-second year. he was the first foreigner who ascended the roman throne, and at the same time the first of their monarchs who was equally great as a ruler, a general, and a man. after completely abolishing the _judicia majestatis_, he made the restoration of the _free roman constitution_, so far as it was compatible with a monarchical form, his peculiar care. he restored the elective power to the _comitia_, complete liberty of speech to the senate, and to the magistrates their former authority; and yet he exercised the art of ruling to a degree and in a detail which few princes have equalled. frugal in his expenses, he was nevertheless splendidly liberal to every useful institution, whether in rome or the provinces, as well as in the foundation of military roads, public monuments, and schools for the instruction of poor children. by his wars he extended the dominion of rome beyond its former boundaries; subduing, in his contests with the daci, their country, and reducing it to a roman province; as he likewise did, in his wars against the armenians and parthians, armenia, mesopotamia, and part of arabia. why was so great a character disfigured by an ambition of conquest? the first war against the daci, in which the shameful tribute was withdrawn and dercebal reduced to subjection, lasted from - . but as dercebal again rebelled, the war was renewed in , and brought to a close in , when dacia was reduced to a roman province, and many roman colonies established therein. the war with the parthians arose from a dispute respecting the possession of the throne of armenia (see above, p. ), - : but although rome was victorious she gained no permanent advantage thereby. the especial source for the history of trajan is the _panegyricus_ of pliny the younger; the correspondence, however, of the same writer, while governor of bithynia, with the emperor, affords us a much deeper insight into the spirit of his government: plinii _epist._ lib. x. who can read it without admiring the royal statesman? rittershusii _trajanus in lucem reproductus_. ambegæ, . a mere collection of passages occurring in ancient authors respecting trajan. _res trajani imperatoris ad danubium gestæ, auctore_ conrad mannert. norimb. : and joh. christ. engel, _commentatio de expeditionibus trajani ad danubium, et origine valachorum_. vindob. .--both learned dissertations, written for the prize offered by the royal society of gottingen; the first of which obtained the prize, and the other the _accessit_, i. e. was declared second best. . by the contrivances of plotina, his wife, trajan was succeeded by his cousin and pupil, whom he is said also to have adopted, p. Ælius adrian, who reigned from his forty-second to his sixty-third year. he was acknowledged at once by the army of asia, with which he then was, and the sanction of the senate followed immediately after. he differed from his predecessor in that his chief aim was the preservation of peace; on which account he gave up (rare moderation!), directly after his accession, the newly conquered provinces of asia, armenia, assyria, and mesopotamia, and so put an end to the parthian war (see above, p. .) he retained, though with some unwillingness, that of dacia, because otherwise the roman colonies would have become exposed. he well made up for his pacific disposition, however, in seeking, by a general and vigorous reform in the internal administration, and by restoring the discipline of the army, to give greater solidity to the empire. for that purpose he visited successively all the provinces of the roman empire; first the eastern, and afterwards the western; making useful regulations and establishing order wherever he came. he improved the roman jurisprudence by the introduction of the _edictum perpetuum_. passionately fond of and well instructed in literature and the fine arts, he gave them his liberal protection, and thus called forth another augustan age. upon the whole, his reign was certainly a salutary one for the empire; and for any single acts of injustice of which he may be accused, he fully compensated by his choice of a successor. after having first adopted l. aurelius verus (afterwards Ælius verus), who fell a sacrifice to his debaucheries, he next adopted t. aurelius antoninus (afterwards t. Ælius adrianus antoninus pius), upon condition that he should again adopt m. aurelius verus (afterwards m. aurelius antoninus), and l. cesonius commodus (afterwards l. verus), the son of Ælius verus. during his reign a great revolt broke out in judæa, under barcochab, - , occasioned by the introduction of pagan worship into the roman colony of _Ælia capitolina_ (the ancient jerusalem). the especial source for the history of adrian, is his _life_ and that of _Ælius verus_ by Ælius spartianus _in script. hist. aug. minores_, already quoted. . the reign of antoninus pius, from his forty-seventh to his seventieth year, was without doubt the happiest period of the roman empire. he found everything already in excellent order; and those ministers which adrian had appointed, he continued in their places. his quiet activity furnishes but little matter for history; and yet he was, perhaps, the most noble character that ever sat upon a throne. although a prince, his life was that of the most blameless individual; while he administered the affairs of the empire as though they were his own. he honoured the senate; and the provinces flourished under him, not only because he kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the governors, but because he made it a maxim of his government to continue in their places all those whose probity he had sufficiently proved. he observed rigid order in the finances, and yet without sparing where it could be of service in the foundation or improvement of useful institutions; as his erection of many buildings, establishment of public teachers with salaries in all the provinces, and other examples fully show. he carried on no war himself; on the contrary, several foreign nations made choice of him to arbitrate their differences. some rebellions which broke out in britain and egypt, and some frontier wars excited by the germans, the daci, the moors, and the alani, were quelled by his lieutenants. the principal and almost the only source for the history of antoninus pius, dion cassius's history of this period being lost, is his _life_ by julius capitolinus in the _script. hist. august._ and even this refers to his private character rather than his public history. compare the excellent _reflections_ of marcus aurelius, i, . upon this prince. _vie des empereurs tite antonin et marc aurele_, _par_ m. gautier de sibert. paris, , vo. a valuable essay on the lives of the two antonines. . he was succeeded by marcus aurelius antoninus, the philosopher (aged - years), who immediately associated with himself, under the title of augustus, l. verus (aged - years, ! ), to whom he gave his daughter in marriage. notwithstanding the differences of their character, the most cordial union existed between them during the whole of their common reign; l. verus, indeed, being almost always absent in the wars, took but a very small share in the government. the reign of m. aurelius was marked by several great calamities: a dreadful pestilence, a famine, and almost continual wars. nothing short of a prince like aurelius, who exhibited to the world the image of wisdom seated on a throne, could have made so much misery tolerable. soon after his accession, the catti made an irruption upon the rhine, and the parthians in asia. l. verus was sent against them. but the wars on the danube with the marcomanni and their allies in pannonia, and other northern nations, who now began to press forward with great force upon dacia, were of much greater consequence. they occupied m. aurelius from the year , with but little intermission, to the end of his reign. he succeeded, indeed, in maintaining the boundaries of the empire; but then he was the first who settled any of the barbarians within it, or took them into the roman service. in the internal administration of affairs he closely followed the steps of his predecessor, except that he was rather too much influenced by his freedmen and family. the only rebellion which broke out against him, was that of avidius cassius, his lieutenant in syria, occasioned by a false report of his death; but it was quelled by the destruction of that general, as soon as the truth was made known. the war against the parthians (see above, p. ) was indeed brought to a successful issue by verus, the principal cities of the parthians falling into the hands of the romans; verus left them, however, to be carried on by his lieutenants, while he rioted in debaucheries at antioch. the first war against the marcomanni, carried on in the beginning and until the death of verus, by the two emperors together, was highly dangerous for rome, as many other nations had joined the marcomanni, particularly the quadi, jazygi, and vandals, and penetrated as far as aquileia. m. aurelius ended this war by a glorious peace, , as he found it necessary to stop the progress of cassius's rebellion; in , however, the marcomanni again commenced hostilities, and before their close m. aurelius died at sirmium. contemporary with these wars, yet, as it seems, without any connection with them, were the attacks of other nations upon dacia, the bastarnæ, alani, etc. who poured in from the north, probably pressed forward by the advance of the goths. _this was the first symptom of the great migration of nations now beginning._ the especial sources for the history of m. aurelius, are the biographies of him and l. verus, written by julius capitolinus, as well as that of avidius cassius, by vulcatius gallicanus in _script. hist. august._ the letters discovered in milan, among and together with the writings of fronto, are of no historical service.--his principles are best learnt from his _meditations on himself_. ch. meiners _de m. aurel. antonini ingenio, moribus, et scriptis, in commentat. soc. gotting._ vol. vi. . by means of adoption the roman empire had been blessed, during the last eighty years, with a succession of rulers such as have not often fell to the lot of any kingdom. but in j. commodus the son of m. aurelius (probably the offspring of a gladiator), who reigned from his nineteenth to his thirty-first year, there ascended the throne a monster of cruelty, insolence, and lewdness. at the commencement of his reign he bought a peace of the marcomanni that he might return to rome. being himself unable to support the burden of government, the helm of state was placed in the hands of the stern and cruel perennis, præfect of the prætorian guard; but who, being murdered by the discontented soldiers, was succeeded by the freedman cleander, who put up all for sale, till he fell a sacrifice to his own insatiable avarice, in a revolt of the people, caused by their want of provisions. the extravagant propensity of commodus for the diversions of the amphitheatres, and the combats of wild beasts and gladiators, wherein he himself usually took a part, in the character of hercules, became a chief cause of his dissipation, and thereby of his cruelty; till at last he was killed at the instigation of his concubine marcia, lætus the præfect of the prætorian guard, and electus. the wars on the frontiers during his reign, in dacia, and especially in britain, were successfully carried on by his lieutenants, generals who belonged to the school of his father. the especial source for the history of commodus is his private life by Æl. lampridius, in the _script. hist. august._--the history of herodian begins with his reign. . the disasters under m. aurelius, and the extravagances of commodus, had injured the empire, but not enfeebled it. towards the close of the period of the antonines it still retained its pristine vigour. if wise regulations, internal peace, moderate taxes, a certain degree of political, and unrestrained civil liberty, are sufficient to form the happiness of a commonwealth, it must have been found in the roman. what a number of advantages did it possess over every other, simply from its situation! proofs of it appear on every side. a vigorous population, rich provinces, flourishing and splendid cities, and a lively internal and foreign trade. but the most solid foundation of the happiness of a nation consists in its moral greatness, and this we here seek for in vain. otherwise the nation would not so easily have suffered itself to be brought under the yoke of commodus by prætorian cohorts and the legions. but what best shows the strength which the empire still retained, is the opposition it continued to make, for two hundred years longer, to the formidable attacks from without. d. h. hegewisch _upon the epochs in roman history most favourable to humanity_. hamburg, - . foreign commerce, so flourishing in this period, could only be carried on, to any extent, with the east--mostly with india--as the roman empire spread over all the west. this trade continued to be carried on through egypt, and also through palmyra and syria. information thereupon will be found in w. robertson's _disquisition concerning the knowledge which the ancients had of india_. london, , to. often reprinted. and particularly upon egypt, in w. vincent, _the periplus of the erythrean sea_. london, , to. vols. a very instructive work. heeren, _commentationes de græcorum et romanorum de india notitia, et cum indis commerciis_: _in commentat. soc. gott._ vol. x. xi. second section. _from the death of commodus to diocletian, a. c. - ._ sources. the extracts of xiphilinus from dion cassius, lib. lxxiii-lxxx. though often imperfect, reach down as low as the consulate of dion himself under alexander severus, .--herodiani _hist._ libri viii. comprise the period from commodus to gordian, - .--the _scriptores historiæ augustæ minores_ contain the private lives of the emperors down to diocletian, by julius capitolinus, flavius vopiscus, etc.--the _breviaria historiæ romanæ_ of eutropius, aurelius victor, and s. rufus are particularly important for this period.--finally, the important information that may be derived from the study of medals and coins, not only for this section, but for the whole history of the emperors, may be best learnt by consulting the writers upon those subjects: j. vaillant, _numismata augustorum et cæsarum_, _cura_ j. f. baldino. rome, , vols. _the medallic history of imperial rome_, by w. cooke. london, , vols.--but above all, the volumes belonging to this period in eckhel, _doctrina nummorum veterum_. with the period of the antonines begins the great work of the british historian: _the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire_, by edward gibbon. oxford, , vols. vo. in worth and extent this work is superior to all others. it embraces the whole period of the middle ages; but only the first part belongs to this period. . the extinction of the race of the antonines by the death of commodus was attended with convulsions similar to those which took place when the house of cæsar became extinct at the death of nero. it is true that p. helvius pertinax, aged sixty-seven, præfect of the city, was raised to the throne by the murderers of commodus; and that he was acknowledged, first by the guards, and afterwards by the senate. but the reform which he was obliged to make at the beginning of his reign in the finances, rendered him so odious to the soldiers and courtiers, that a revolt of the first, excited by lætus, cost him his life before he had reigned quite three months. this was the first commencement of that dreadful military despotism which forms the ruling character of this period; and to none did it become so terrible as to those who wished to make it the main support of their absolute power. the insolence of the prætorian guard had risen very high during the reign of commodus; but it had never, even in the time of the antonines, been entirely suppressed. it was only by large donatives that their consent could be purchased, their caprice satisfied, and their good humour maintained; especially at every new adoption. one of the greatest reproaches to the age of the antonines is, that those great princes, who seem to have had the means so much in their power, did not free themselves from so annoying a dependence. jul. capitolini _pertinax imp. in script. hist. aug._ . when, upon the death of pertinax, the rich and profligate m. didius julianus, aged fifty-seven, had outbid, to the great scandal of the people, all his competitors for the empire, and purchased it of the prætorian guard, an insurrection of the legions, who were better able to create emperors, very naturally followed. but as the army of illyria proclaimed their general septimius severus, the army of syria, pescennius niger, and the army of britain, albinus, nothing less than a series of civil wars could decide who should maintain himself on the throne. Æl. spartiani _didius julianus, in script. hist. aug._ . septimius severus, however, aged - , was the first who got possession of rome, and, after the execution of didius julianus, he was acknowledged by the senate. he dismissed, it is true, the old prætorian guard, but immediately chose, from his own army, one four times more numerous in its stead. and after he had provisionally declared albinus emperor, he marched his army against pescennius niger, already master of the east, whom, after several contests near the issus, he defeated and slew. nevertheless, having first taken and destroyed the strong city of byzantium, a war with albinus soon followed, whom the perfidious severus had already attempted to remove by assassination. after a bloody defeat near lyons, albinus kills himself. these civil wars were followed by hostilities against the parthians, who had taken the part of pescennius, and which ended with the plundering of their principal cities (see above, p. ). severus possessed most of the virtues of a soldier; but the insatiable avarice of his minister plautianus, the formidable captain of the prætorian guard, robbed the empire even of those advantages which may be enjoyed under a military government, until he was put to death at the instigation of caracalla. to keep his legions employed, severus undertook an expedition into britain, where, after extending the boundaries of the empire, he died at york (_eboracum_), leaving his son the maxim, "to enrich the soldiers, and hold the rest for nothing." agricola had already erected a line of fortresses, probably between the firth of clyde and the firth of forth. these were changed by adrian into a wall along the present boundaries of scotland. severus again extended the frontiers, reestablished the fortresses of agricola, and afterwards built a wall from sea to sea; his son, however, gave up the conquered country, and the wall of adrian again became the boundary of the empire. Æl. spartiani _septimius severus et pescennius niger_. jul. capitolini _claudius albinus, in script. hist. aug._ . the deadly hatred which reigned between the two sons of severus, m. aurelius antoninus bassianus caracalla, aged - , and his young step-brother geta, aged twenty-one, led to a dreadful catastrophe; for at their return to rome, and after a fruitless proposition had been made for a division of the empire, geta was assassinated in the arms of his mother julia domna, together with all those who were considered as his friends. the restless spirit of caracalla, however, soon drew him from rome, and in traversing first the provinces along the danube, and then those of the east, he ruined them all by his exactions and cruelty, to which he was driven for money to pay his soldiers, and to purchase peace of his enemies on the frontiers. the same necessity led him to grant the right of citizenship to all the provinces, that he might thereby gain the duty of the _vicesima hereditatum et manumissionum_ (twentieth upon inheritances and enfranchisements), which he very soon afterwards changed into a tenth (_decima_).--with respect to his foreign wars, his first was against the catti and alemanni, among whom he remained a long time, sometimes as a friend and sometimes as an enemy. but his principal efforts, after having previously ordered a dreadful massacre of the inhabitants of alexandria, to satisfy his cruel rapacity, were directed against the parthians (see above, p. ); and in his wars against them he was assassinated by macrinus, the præfect of the prætorian guard. the præfect, or captain, of the prætorian guard became, from the time of severus, the most important officer in the state. besides the command of the guards, the finances were also under his control, together with an extensive criminal jurisdiction. a natural consequence of the continually increasing despotism. Æl. spartiani _antoninus caracalla et ant. geta, in script. hist. aug._ . his murderer, m. opelius macrinus, aged fifty-three, was recognized as emperor by the soldiers, and forthwith acknowledged by the senate. he immediately created his son, m. opelius diadumenus, aged nine years, cæsar, and gave him the name of antoninus. he disgracefully terminated the war against the parthians by purchasing a peace, and changed the _decima_ (tenth) of caracalla again into the _vicesima_ (twentieth). however, while he still remained in asia, bassianus heliogabalus, grand-nephew of julia domna, and high priest in the temple of the sun at emesa, whom his mother gave out for a son of caracalla, was proclaimed emperor by the legions, and, after a combat with the guards, subsequently to which macrinus and his son lost their lives, they raised him to the throne. mæsa, the sister of julia domna, had two daughters, both widows; soæmis, the eldest, was the mother of heliogabalus, mammæa, the youngest, the mother of alexander severus. jul. capitolini _opelius macrinus, in script. hist. aug._ . heliogabalus, aged - , who assumed the additional name of m. aurelius antoninus, brought with him from syria the superstitions and voluptuousness of that country. he introduced the worship of his god heliogabal in rome, and wallowed openly in such brutal and infamous debaucheries, that history can scarcely find a parallel to his dissolute, shameless, and scandalous conduct. how low must the morality of that age have been sunk, in which a boy could so early have ripened into a monster!--the debasement of the senate, and of all important offices, which he filled with the degraded companions of his own lusts and vices, was systematically planned by him; and he deserves no credit even for the adoption of his cousin, the virtuous alexander severus, as he shortly after endeavoured to take away his life, but was himself for that reason assassinated by the prætorian guards. # Æl. lampridii _ant. heliogabalus, in script. hist. aug._ . his young cousin and successor, m. aurelius alexander severus, aged - , who had been carefully educated under the direction of his mother mammæa, proved one of the best princes in an age and upon a throne where virtues were more dangerous than vices. under favour of his youth he endeavoured to effect a reform, in which he was supported by the cooperation of the guards, who had elevated him to the throne. he restored the authority of the senate, from among whom he chose, with rigid justice, his privy council of state, banishing the creatures of heliogabalus from their places. the revolution in the parthian empire, out of which was now formed the new persian, was of so much importance to rome, that it obliged alexander to undertake a war against artaxerxes, in which he was probably victorious. but while marching in haste to protect the frontiers against the advance of the germans upon the rhine, his soldiers, exasperated at the severity of his discipline, and incited by the thracian maximin, murdered him in his own tent. his præfect of the prætorian guard, ulpian, had already, for the same cause, fallen a victim to this spirit of insubordination, which was not checked even by the immediate presence of the emperor himself. the revolution in parthia, whereby a new persian empire was formed (see above, p. .), became a source of almost perpetual war to rome; artaxerxes i. and his successors, the sassanides, claiming to be descendants of the ancient kings of persia, formed pretensions to the possession of all the asiatic provinces of the roman empire. Ælii lampridii _alexander severus_, _in script. hist. aug._ heyne _de alexandro severo judicium_, comment. i. ii. in _opuscula academica_, vol. vi. . the death of a. severus raised military despotism to the highest pitch, as it placed on the throne the half savage c. julius maximinus, by birth a thracian peasant. at first he continued the war against the germans with great success, repulsing them beyond the rhine; and resolved, by crossing pannonia, to carry the war even among the sarmatians. but his insatiable rapacity, which spared neither the capital nor the provinces, made him hateful to all; and gordian, proconsul of africa, in his eightieth year, was, together with his son of the same name, proclaimed augustus by the people, and immediately acknowledged by the senate. upon this, maximinus, eager to take vengeance on the senate, marched directly from sirmium towards italy. in the mean time, the legions of the almost defenceless gordians were defeated in africa, and themselves slain by capellianus the governor of numidia. notwithstanding this, as the senate could expect no mercy, they chose as co-emperors the præfect of the city, maximus pupienus, and clodius balbinus, who, in conformity with the wishes of the people, created the young gordian iii. cæsar. in the meanwhile maximinus, having besieged aquileia, and the enterprise proving unsuccessful, was slain by his own troops. pupienus and balbinus now seemed in quiet possession of the throne; but the guards, who had already been engaged in a bloody feud with the people, and were not willing to receive an emperor of the senate's choosing, killed them both, and proclaimed as augustus, gordian, already created cæsar. jul. capitolini _maximinus gordiani tres, pupienus et balbinus_, _in script. hist. august._ . the reign of the young m. antoninus gordianus lasted from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. he was grandson of the proconsul who had lost his life in africa, and in the early part of his reign, acquired a degree of firmness from the support of his father-in-law, misitheus, præfect of the prætorian guard, as well as from the successful expedition which he undertook into syria against the persians, who had invaded that province. but after the death of misitheus, philip the arabian, being made præfect of the guards in his stead, found means to gain the troops over to himself, and, after driving gordian from the throne, caused him to be assassinated. . the reign of m. julius philippus was interrupted by several insurrections, especially in pannonia; until at length decius, whom he himself had sent thither to quell the rebellion, was compelled by the troops to assume the diadem. philip was soon after defeated by him near verona, where he perished, together with his son of the same name. in this reign the secular games, _ludi sæculares_, were celebrated, one thousand years from the foundation of the city. . under the reign of his successor, trajanus decius, aged fifty, the goths for the first time forced their way into the roman empire by crossing the danube; and although decius in the beginning opposed them with success, he was at last slain by them in thrace, together with his son, cl. herennius decius, already created cæsar. upon this the army proclaimed c. trebonianus gallus emperor, who created his son, volusian, cæsar; and having invited hostilian, the yet remaining son of decius, with the ostensible purpose of securing his cooperation, he nevertheless soon contrived to get rid of him. he purchased a peace of the goths; but, despised by his generals, he became involved in a war with his victorious lieutenant, Æmilius Æmilianus, in moesia, and was slain, together with his son, by his own army. in three months, however, Æmilianus shared the same fate; publius licinius valerianus, the friend and avenger of gallus, advancing against him with the legions stationed in gaul. both the people and army hoped to see the empire restored under valerian, already sixty years of age; but, although his generals defended the frontiers against the germans and goths, he himself had the misfortune to be defeated and taken prisoner by the superior forces of the persians. upon this event his son and associate in the empire, p. licinius gallienus, who knew everything except the art of governing, reigned alone. under his indolent rule the roman empire seemed on one hand ready to be split into a number of small states, while on the other it seemed about to fall a prey to the barbarians; for the lieutenants in most of the provinces declared themselves independent of a prince whom they despised, and to which, indeed, they were driven, like posthumius in gaul, for their own security.--there were nineteen of these; but as many of them named their sons cæsars, this period has been very improperly distinguished by the name of _the thirty tyrants_, although their intolerable oppressions might well justify the latter expression. the persians at the same time were victorious in the east, and the germans in the west. the german nations which were now become so formidable to the roman empire, were: . the great confederation of tribes under the name of _franks_, who spread over gaul along the whole extent of the lower rhine. . the allied nations of the alemanni on the upper rhine. . the goths, the most powerful of all, who had formed a monarchy upon the banks of the lower danube and the northern coasts of the black sea, which soon extended from the boristhenes to the don; and who became formidable, not only by their land forces, but also by their naval power, especially after they had captured the peninsula of crim tartary (_chersonesus taurica_); and by means of their fleets they not only kept the grecian, but likewise the asiatic provinces in a continual state of alarm. trebelli pollionis _valerianus, gallieni duo, triginta tyranni_, _in script. hist. aug._ # _concerning the thirty tyrants under the roman emperor gallienus_, by j. c. f. manso; at the end of his _life of constantine_. . gallienus losing his life before milan, in the war against aureolus an usurper, had nevertheless recommended m. aurelius claudius (aged - ) for his successor. the new augustus reestablished in some degree the tottering empire; not only by taking aureolus prisoner and defeating the alemanni, but also by a decisive victory gained at nissa over the goths, who had invaded moesia. he died, however, soon after, at sirmium, of a pestilential disease, naming for his successor aurelian, a hero like himself, who mounted the throne upon the death of quintillus the late emperor's brother, who had at first proclaimed himself augustus, but afterwards died by his own hand. trebellii pollionis _divus claudius_, _in script. hist. aug._ . during the reign of l. domitius aurelianus, which lasted almost five years, those countries which had been partly or entirely lost to the empire were restored. having first driven back the goths and the alemanni, who had advanced as far as umbria, he undertook his expedition against the celebrated zenobia, queen of palmyra, who at that time possessed syria, egypt, and part of asia minor. these countries he again brought under the dominion of the empire, after having defeated zenobia and made her prisoner. the western provinces of gaul, britain, and spain, which since the time of gallienus had been governed by separate rulers, and were now under the dominion of tetricus, he reduced to their former obedience. dacia, on the contrary, he willingly abandoned; and as he transported the roman inhabitants across the danube into moesia, the latter henceforward bore the name of _dacia aureliani_. hated for his severity, which in a warrior so easily degenerates into cruelty, he was assassinated in illyria at the instigation of his private secretary mnestheus. flav. vopisci _divus aurelianus_, _in script. hist. aug._ palmyra in the syrian desert, enriched by the indian trade, and one of the most ancient cities in the world, became a roman colony in the time of trajan. odenatus, the husband of zenobia, had acquired so much celebrity by his victories over the persians, that gallienus had even named him augustus with himself. he was murdered, however, by his cousin mæonius, . zenobia now took possession of the government for her sons vabalathus, herennianus, and timolaus, without, however, being acknowledged at rome. after this, in the time of claudius, she added egypt to her dominions. aurelian, having first defeated her near antioch and emesa, soon afterwards took palmyra, which, in consequence of a revolt, he destroyed.--even in its ruins palmyra is still magnificent. _the ruins of palmyra_, by r. wood. london, ; and the _ruins of balbec, otherwise heliopolis_, by the same author, london, , give us clear and certain ideas of the splendour and magnitude of these cities. a. h. l. heeren, _de commercio urbis palmyræ vicinarumque urbium_, in _comment. recent. soc. gotting._ vol. vii. and the appendix to heeren's researches. . an interregnum of six months followed upon the death of aurelian, till at length the senate, at the repeated solicitations of the army, ventured to fill up the vacant throne. the object of their choice, however, m. claudius tacitus, the worthiest of the senators, was unfortunately seventy-five years old, and perished after a short reign of six months, in an expedition against the goths. upon this event the army of syria raised m. aurelius probus to the purple; while florianus the brother of tacitus, who had already been acknowledged at rome, was put to death by his own people. flav. vopisci _tacitus; ejusd. florianus_, _in script. hist. aug._ . the six years' reign of probus was a warlike one. he defeated the germans, and forced them beyond the rhine and danube; strengthening the frontiers by building a strong wall from the danube, near regensburg, to the rhine. he also obliged the persians to make peace. nevertheless, the number of towns which he reestablished and peopled with prisoners of war, and the vineyards which he caused his soldiers to plant on the rhine, are proofs that he had taste and inclination for the arts of peace. this policy, however, would not suit the legions! after he had perished, therefore, by the hands of his soldiers, they proclaimed the præfect of the prætorian guard, m. aurelius carus, emperor, who created his two sons cæsars--men very unlike each other in disposition, m. aurelius carinus being one of the greatest reprobates, while m. aurelius numerianus was gentle by nature, and had a mind well formed by study. the new emperor, having defeated the goths, marched against the persians, but was shortly afterwards killed, it is said, by a flash of lightning. nor did his son numerianus long survive him, being murdered by his own father-in-law, arrius aper, the prætorian præfect. flav. vopisci _probus imper. ejusd. carus, numirianus et carinus_, _in script. hist. aug._ . although this period gives us a finished picture of a complete military despotism, it is still evident that this was owing to the entire separation of the military order from the rest of the people, by the introduction of standing armies, and the extinction of all national spirit among the citizens. the legions decided because the people were unarmed. it was, indeed, only among them, situated far from the soft luxuries of the capital, and engaged in almost a continual struggle with the barbarians, that a remnant of the ancient roman character was still preserved. the nomination of their leaders to the purple became a natural consequence, not only of the uncertainty of the succession, which could not be fixed by mere ordinances, but often of necessity, from their being in the field under the pressure of urgent circumstances. thus a succession of distinguished generals came to the throne: what authority, indeed, would an emperor at that time have had who was not a general? all durable reform, however, was rendered quite impossible by the quick succession of rulers. even the best among them could do but very little for the internal administration; as all their energies were required to protect the frontiers, and defend themselves against usurpers, who, with the exception of the formality of being acknowledged by the senate, had claims as well founded as their own. . the decline of the empire also became so much the more rapid, in proportion as in these days of terror luxury had increased not only in the splendour and profligate effeminacy of private life, but more particularly in public, to a pitch almost beyond belief. the latter was especially shown in the exhibitions of the amphitheatre and circus; by which not only every new ruler, but even every new magistrate was obliged to purchase the favour of the people. thus these remnants of a free constitution served only to accelerate the general ruin! what enjoyments, indeed, could be found under the rod of despotism, except those of the grossest sensuality; and to satisfy this, the intellectual amusements of the theatre (mimes and pantomimes), and even those of rhetoric and poetry, were made to contribute. . yet, during this general decay, the gradual spread of the christian religion was working a reform altogether of a different nature. before the end of this period it had opened itself a way into every province, and, notwithstanding the frequent persecutions, had made converts in every rank of society, and was now on the eve of becoming the predominant form of worship. we shall be better able to estimate its value, if we consider it as the vehicle by which civilization made its way among the rude nations that now appeared on the scene, than if we merely consider it as the means of improving the manners and morals of the roman world. in a political view it became of the greatest importance on account of the hierarchy, the frame-work of which was now in a great measure constructed among its professors. it was afterwards adopted as a state religion; and although the ancient creed of rome had formerly been on the same footing, yet it was only calculated for the republic, and not at all for the now existing monarchy. the overthrow of paganism was necessarily attended with some violent convulsions, yet its loss was nothing to be compared with the support which the throne afterwards found in the hierarchy. the dispersion of the jews, and especially the persecutions which were renewed from time to time, after the reign of nero, (but which only served to kindle enthusiasm,) strongly cooperated in spreading the christian religion. these persecutions were principally called forth against the christians on account of their forming themselves into a separate society, which caused them to be regarded as a dangerous sect at rome, notwithstanding the general toleration granted to every other system of religious belief. although towards the end of this period, only a very small proportion of the inhabitants of the roman empire as yet professed the christian faith, it nevertheless had followers in every province. # _history of the social constitution of the christian church_, by d. g. j. planck, parts, . it is the first part of this excellent work which relates to this period. third section. _from diocletian to the overthrow of the roman empire in the west, a. c. - ._ sources. it now becomes of importance to enquire whether the historians were christians or pagans. zosimus, the imitator of polybius, belonged to the last. he describes the fall of the roman state, as his model does the previous part. of his _histories_ only five books and a half, to the time of gratian, , have descended to us. he was certainly a violent antagonist of the christians, yet, nevertheless, the best writer of this period. ammiani marcellini _historiarum_, lib. xiv-xxxi. from the year - (the first thirteen books are lost). probably a christian, but yet no flatterer; and, notwithstanding his tiresome prolixity, highly instructive. together with the writers of general history already noticed at p. , we must here especially add to the abbreviators, pauli orosii _hist._ lib. vii. and zonarÆ _annales_. the _panegyrici veteres_, from diocletian to theodosius, can only be used with circumspection.--the writers of church history, such as eusebius, in his _hist. eccles._ lib. x. and in his _vita constantini magni_, lib. v. as well as his continuators, socrates, theodoret, sozomenus, and evagrius, are also highly important for the political history of this period, though, from their partiality towards the christian emperors, they should rather be classed with the panegyrists than the historians. to these may be added another principal source, viz. the _constitutions_ of the emperors, which have been preserved in the _codex theodosianus_ and _justinianeus_, from the time of constantine the great. besides the works quoted at pages , , the byzantine historians here become of importance. we shall mention also: _histoire du bas-empire depuis constantin_, _par_ m. le beau, _continuée par_ m. ameilhon. paris, , vols. vo. the first seven parts only belong to this period. # the german translation of guthrie and gray's _universal history_, sections, vol. leipsic, . rendered very useful by the labours of ritter. _histoire du bas-empire, depuis constantin jusqu' à la prise de constantinople en _, _par_ carentin royou. paris, , vols. vo. a useful abridgement, without much research. . the reign of c. valerius diocletian, aged - , proclaimed emperor after the murder of numerianus, by the troops in chalcedon, begins a new section in roman history. to the period of military despotism succeeded the period of partitions. after diocletian had defeated carinus the yet remaining cæsar, in upper moesia, where he was assassinated, he made m. valerius maximianus herculius, a rough warrior who had hitherto been his comrade in arms, the sharer of his throne. herculius now contended with the alemanni and burgundians on the banks of the rhine, while diocletian himself made head against the persians. nevertheless, the two augusti soon found themselves unable to withstand the barbarians, who were pressing forward on every side, more especially as carausius had usurped and maintained the title of cæsar in britain. each of them, therefore, created a cæsar: diocletian chose c. galerius, and maximianus flavius constantius chlorus, both of whom had distinguished themselves as generals, at that time the only road to advancement. the whole empire was now divided between these four rulers; so that each had certain provinces to govern and defend; without detriment, however, to the unity of the whole, or to the dependence in which a cæsar stood as the subordinate assistant and future successor of his augustus. in the partition, , diocletian possessed the eastern provinces; galerius, thrace, and the countries on the danube (illyricum); maximianus, italy, africa, and the islands; and constantius, the western provinces of gaul, spain, britain, and mauritania. . this new system could not but have a striking effect upon the spirit of the government. it was now not only in fact, but also in form, entirely in the hands of the rulers. by their continual absence from rome they became freed from that moral restraint in which the authority of the senate, and the name of the republic, not yet entirely laid aside, had held before them. diocletian formally assumed the diadem, and, with the ornaments of the east, introduced its luxuries into his court. thus was laid the foundation of that structure which constantine the great had to complete. . the consequences of this new system became also oppressive to the provinces, inasmuch as they had now to maintain four rulers, with their courts, and as many armies. but however loud might be the complaints of the oppression occasioned thereby, it was, perhaps, the only means of deferring the final overthrow of the whole edifice. in fact, they succeeded not only in defeating the usurpers, allectus in britain (who had murdered carausius in ), julian in africa, and achilleus in egypt; but also in defending the frontiers, which, indeed, by the victories of galerius over the persians, they extended as far as the tigris. did not, however, the gloomy perspective present itself, that among so many rulers, and the undefined relations which existed between the cæsars and the emperors, the union could not be of long continuance? . diocletian voluntarily abdicated the throne (although the growing power and encroaching disposition of galerius might perhaps have had some influence), and obliged his colleague maximianus to do the same. the two cæsars, constantius and galerius, were proclaimed augusti, and altered the division of the empire, so that the former possessed all the western countries, of which, however, he freely ceded italy and africa to galerius, who had all the remaining provinces. the latter, during the same year, created flavius severus, cæsar, and confided to him the government of italy and africa; as he did also c. galerius maximin, to whom he gave the asiatic provinces. the administration of the two emperors, however, was very different; constantius was as much beloved for his mild and disinterested government, as galerius was hated for his harshness and prodigality. constantius died very soon after at york, leaving his son constantine heir to his dominions, who was immediately proclaimed augustus by the legions, although galerius would only acknowledge him as cæsar. . thus constantine, who afterwards obtained the surname of great, began to rule, aged - , though at first only over britain, spain, and gaul; nevertheless, after seventeen years of violence and warfare, he succeeded in opening himself a way to the sole dominion of the empire. the rulers disagreed among themselves; and formidable usurpers started up and rendered war inevitable. the history of the first seven years of constantine, - , is very complicated; after that, he had only one rival to struggle with, - . at his accession, galerius, as augustus, was in possession of all the other provinces; of which, however, he had given to cæsar maximin the government of those of asia, and to cæsar severus, now created augustus, italy and africa. the latter, however, rendering himself odious by his oppression, maxentius, the son of the former emperor, maximianus, assumed the title of augustus at rome (oct. , ), and associated his father with himself in the government; so that at this time there were six rulers: galerius, severus, constantine, maximin, and the usurpers maxentius and his father maximianus. but in the year , severus, wishing to oppose maxentius, was abandoned by his own troops, upon which he surrendered himself to maximianus, who caused him to be executed. in his place galerius created his friend licinius, augustus; and maximin obtained the same dignity from his army in asia. in the mean time, maximianus, after having endeavoured to supplant his own son in rome, fled to constantine, who had crossed over into gaul and there defeated the franks, ; but having made an attempt upon the life of constantine, who had married his daughter fausta, that emperor caused him to be put to death, . as the excesses of galerius soon brought him to the grave, , there only remained constantine, licinius, and maximin, and the usurper maxentius. the latter was soon defeated and slain, , before the gates of rome, by constantine, who thereby became master of italy and the capital. a war having broken out about the same time between maximin and licinius, maximin was defeated near adrianople, and then killed himself, . the year brought on a war between the two remaining emperors, constantine and licinius, which, however, ended the same year in an accommodation, by which constantine obtained all the countries on the south bank of the danube, as well as thrace and moesia inferior; it broke out again, however, in , and was finally terminated by a decisive victory in bithynia, and the total overthrow of licinius, whom constantine put to death, . . however opposite may be the opinions formed respecting the reign of constantine the great, its consequences are perfectly plain. although he annihilated military despotism, he established in its stead, if not completely, yet in great measure, the despotism of the court, and likewise the power of the hierarchy. he had already, during his expedition against maxentius, decided in favour of the christian religion; and since he thereby gained a vast number of partisans in all the provinces, and weakened at the same time the power of his co-emperors, or competitors, it was the surest way he could have taken to obtain sole dominion, the great object of his ambition. this change must nevertheless have had very considerable influence on every part of the government, as he found in the previously established hierarchy a powerful support of the throne; and since he, in concert with it, settled what was, and what was not the orthodox doctrine, he introduced a spirit of persecution heretofore unknown. at a period in which religious parties must almost necessarily have become political parties, we can by no means venture to judge of the importance of the sect by the importance of their points of doctrine. the quarrels of the arians, which arose at this time, gave constantine, by the council of nice, , the opportunity he wished for, of making good his authority in religious legislation. . the removal of the seat of empire from rome to constantinople was connected with this change in the form of worship--as a christian court would have been awkwardly situated in a city still altogether pagan--although the need there was of protecting the frontiers against the goths and persians had a considerable share therein. it did, indeed, become the principal means of establishing the despotism of the court; but those who regard it as one of the causes of the decline of the empire, should remember, that for an empire fallen so low as the roman was at this time, despotism was almost the only support that remained. the various partitions of the empire from the time of diocletian, had led the way to this change of the capital; because a natural result of that system was, that the emperors and cæsars, when not with the army as they usually were, would reside in different cities. the seat of diocletian's government was at nicomedia; of maximian's, at milan; even constantine himself remained but very little at rome. in these new residences they felt themselves unfettered; and therefore, although the roman senate existed till after the time of constantine, its authority must have fallen of itself from the time of diocletian. . we ought not, therefore, to wonder that the consequence of this removal was so complete a change in the whole form of government, that after a short time it seemed to be altogether a different state. a partition of the empire was made, which, though it might in part have been founded on those which had previously existed, was yet so different, that it not only changed the ancient divisions of the provinces, but completely altered their mode of government.--the court, with the exception of polygamy, assumed entirely the form of an eastern court.--a revolution also had taken place in the military system, by the complete separation of the civil and military authorities, which the prætorian præfects had hitherto possessed, but who now became merely civil governors. according to the new division the whole empire was divided into four _præfectures_, each of which had its _dioceses_, and each diocese its _provinces_. the præfectures were: i. the eastern (_præfectura orientis_); it contained five dioceses; . _orientis_; . _Ægypti_; . _asiæ_; . _ponti_; . _thraciæ_; forming altogether forty-eight provinces, and comprising all the countries of asia and egypt, together with the frontier countries of libya and thrace. ii. _præfectura illyrici_, containing two dioceses; . _macedoniæ_; . _daciæ_; forming eleven provinces, and comprising moesia, macedon, greece, and crete. iii. _præfectura italiæ_, containing three dioceses; . _italiæ_; . _illyrici_; . _africæ_; forming twenty-nine provinces, and comprising italy, the countries on the south of the danube, as far as the boundaries of moesia; the islands of sicily, sardinia, and corsica, and the african provinces of the syrtis. iv. _præfectura galliarum_, containing three dioceses; . _galliæ_; . _hispaniæ_; . _britanniæ_; forming altogether twenty-eight provinces, and comprising spain and the balearian islands, gaul, helvetia, and britain.--each of these præfectures was under a _præfectus prætorio_ (prætorian præfect), but who was merely a civil governor, and had under him _vicarios_, in the dioceses, as well as the _rectores provinciarum_, of various ranks and titles. they were named _proconsules præsides_, etc. besides these, rome and constantinople, not being included in any of the four præfectures, had each its præfect. as principal officers of state and the court (_s. cubiculi_), we now for the first time meet with the _præpositus s. cubiculi_ (grand-chamberlain), under whom were all the _comites palatii_ and _cubicularii_, in four divisions; these, at a later period, were frequently eunuchs of great influence; the _magister officiorum_ (chancellor, minister of the interior); the _comes sacrarum largitiorum_ (minister of the finances); the _quæstor_ (the organ of the emperors in legislation; minister of justice and secretary of state); the _comes rei principis_ (minister of the crown-treasury) [privy-purse]; the two _comites domesticorum_ (commander of the household guards), each of whom had his corps (_scholas_) under him. the number of the state officers and courtiers was continually increasing. if the good of a commonwealth consisted in forms, ranks, and titles, the roman empire must at this time have been truly happy! at the head of the troops were the _magistri peditum_ (masters of the infantry) and the _magistri equitum_ (masters of the horse), under the _magister utriusque militæ_ (general in chief of the whole army). their subordinate commanders were called _comites_ and _duces_. constantine considerably reduced the army. in the arrangement of the troops he also made great alterations; these, however, were but of slight consequence compared with that which was produced by admitting into the service a continually increasing number of barbarians. _notitia dignitatem utriusque imperii cum not._ pancirolli grÆv. _thesaur. antiquitat. rom._ vol. vii. . it would naturally be expected that these great changes should lead to others in the system of taxation. new taxes, or old ones revived, were added to those already existing, and became, by the manner in which they were collected, doubly oppressive. we shall particularly notice, _a._ the annual land-tax (_indictio_). _b._ the tax upon trade (_aurum lustrale_). _c._ the free gift (_don. gratuit._), now grown into an obligatory tax (_aurum coronarium_). to these we must add the municipal expenses, which fell entirely upon the citizens, and especially upon the civic officers (_decuriones_), places which must have been generally held by the rich, as constantine had in great measure appropriated the wealth of the cities to the endowment of churches, and the support of the clergy. _a._ the land-tax, or _indiction_, which if not first introduced by constantine was entirely regulated under him, was collected after an exact register, or public valuation, of all the landed estates. its amount was yearly fixed and prescribed by the emperor (_indicebatur_), and levied by the rectors of provinces and the decurions; an arbitrary standard (_caput_) being taken as the rate of assessment. as this register was probably reviewed every fifteen years, it gave rise to the _cycle of indictions_ of fifteen years, which became the common era, beginning from september , . in this manner the tax included all those who were possessed of property. _b._ the tax on commerce; which was levied on almost every kind of trade. it was collected every four years, whence the _aurum lustrale_. _c._ the _aurum coronarium_ grew out of the custom which obtained of presenting the emperors with golden crowns on particular occasions; the value of which was at last exacted in money. every considerable city was obliged to pay it. . the rapid spread of the christian religion, the promulgation of which was enforced as a duty upon all its professors, was now accelerated by the endeavours of the court. constantine forbade sacrifices, and shut up the temples; and the violent zeal of his successors unfortunately soon turned them into ruins. _histoire de constantin-le-grand_, _par le_ r. p. bern. de varenne. paris, , to. _vita di constantino il grande dell'_ abb. fr. gusta. fuligno, . both these works, especially the first, are written in a tone of panegyric; the latest, and by far the best, is # _life of constantine the great_, by j. c. f. manso. bresl. . with several very learned appendixes, which clear up some particular points. . the three cæsars and sons of constantine the great, constantine, - ; constantius, - ; and constans, - ; had been carefully educated, and yet resembled one another as much in their vices as they did in their names. they indeed divided the empire again upon the death of their father; but were so eager after territory, which neither of them was qualified to govern, that a series of wars followed for the next twelve years, till at last constantius was left master of the whole; and by the murder of most of his relations secured the throne to himself. in the partition of the empire constantine obtained the _præfectura galliarum_, constans the _præfectura italiæ et illyrici_, and constantius the _præfectura orientis_. but as constantine desired to add italy and africa to his portion, he attacked constans, and thereby lost his life, so that constans came into thee possession of the western countries. in consequence, however, of his wretched misgovernment, magnentius, a general, proclaimed himself emperor in gaul, and constans was slain in endeavouring to escape, . a war with constantius, who was then occupied in the east, became inevitable, and broke out . the usurper was defeated first at mursa in pannonia, then retreating into gaul he was again defeated, ; upon which he slew himself, together with his family. . as constantius, however--sunk in effeminacy and debauchery, and surrounded and governed by eunuchs--was unable to sustain the weight of government alone, he took his cousin constantius gallus, hitherto a state prisoner, and whose father he had formerly slain, to his assistance, created him cæsar, and sent him into the east against the parthians. but his excessive arrogance, which was fomented by his wife constantina, rendered him so dangerous that constantius recalled him, and caused him, upon his return, to be put to death in istria. his younger brother fl. julian, from whom the suspicious constantius believed he had nothing to fear, was promoted in his place, created cæsar, and sent to defend the frontiers on the rhine. although julian passed suddenly from study to warfare, he not only fought against the germans with success, but also made a deep inroad into their country. in the mean time constantius, after his generals had been beaten by the persians, who wished to reconquer the provinces they had ceded, was preparing an expedition against them in person, and with that view endeavoured gradually to withdraw the troops of julian, in consequence of which the latter, suspecting his design, was induced to accept the diadem presented by his soldiers. while marching, however, along the danube against constantius, he received information of that prince's death in asia. . fl. julian, (the apostate,) who reigned from his twenty-ninth to his thirty-second year, was the last and most highly gifted prince of the house of constantine. instructed by misfortunes and study, he yet had some faults, though certainly free from great vices. he began with reforming the luxury of the court. his abjuration of the religion now become dominant, and which he wished to annihilate by degrees, was an error in policy, which he must have discovered to his cost had his reign been prolonged. wishing, however, to terminate the war against the persians, he penetrated as far as the tigris, where he lost his life in an engagement, after a reign of three years. # _the emperor julian and his times_, by august. neander. leipsic, . an historical sketch. . fl. jovianus, now thirty-three years of age, was immediately raised to the purple by the army. he concluded a peace with the persians, by which he restored them all the territory that had been conquered from them since the year . after a short reign of eight months he was carried off by a sudden disorder; and the army proclaimed fl. valentinian at nice in his stead, valentinian almost immediately associated his brother valens with himself in the government, and divided the empire by giving him the _præfectura orientis_, and retaining the rest for himself. . the reign of valentinian i. in the east, who, in the year , created his son gratian augustus with himself, is distinguished by the system of toleration which he followed with regard to the affairs of religion, though in other respects a cruel prince. nearly the whole of his reign was taken up in almost continual struggles with the german nations, who had recovered from the losses they had suffered under julian. his first efforts were directed against the franks, the saxons, and the alemanni on the rhine; and afterwards against the quadi and other nations on the danube; where he died of apoplexy at guntz in hungary. . in the mean time his brother valens (aged - years) had to contend with a powerful insurrection which had broken out in the east. a certain procopius had instigated the people to this, by taking advantage of the discontent occasioned by the oppression of valens, who, having adopted the opinion of the arians, was more disliked in the east than his brother was in the west. his war against the persians ended with a truce. but the most important event that happened during his reign, was the entrance of the huns into europe, which took place towards its close. this in its turn gave rise to the great popular migration, by which the roman empire in the west may properly be said to have been overthrown. the immediate consequence was the admission of the greater part of the visigoths into the roman empire, and this occasioned a war which cost valens his life. the huns, a nomad people of asia, belonged to the great mongolian race. having penetrated to the don, , they subdued the goths upon that river as far as the theiss. the goths, divided into ostrogoths and visigoths, were separated from one another by the dnieper. the former, driven from their country, fell upon the visigoths, in consequence of which the emperor valens was requested by the latter to grant them admission into the roman empire, and with the exception of the vandals, who had been seated in pannonia from the time of constantine, they were the first barbarian nation that had been settled within the boundaries of the empire. the scandalous oppression of the roman governor, however, drove them into rebellion; and as valens marched against them, he was defeated near adrianople and lost his life, . . during these events, gratian (aged - years) succeeded his father valentinian i. in the west, and immediately associated his brother, valentinian ii. (aged - years) with himself in the empire; giving him, though under his own superintendence, the _præfectura italiæ et illyrici_. gratian set forward to the assistance of his uncle valens against the goths, but receiving on his march an account of his defeat and death, and fearing the east might fall a prey to the goths, he raised theodosius, a spaniard, who had already distinguished himself as a warrior, to the purple, and gave him the _præfectura orientis et illyrici_. . the indolent reign of gratian led to the rebellion of maximus, a commander in britain, who, crossing into gaul, was so strongly supported by the defection of the gallic legions, that gratian was obliged to seek safety in flight. he was, however, overtaken and put to death at lyons. by this event maximus found himself in possession of all the _præfectura galliarum_; and by promising theodosius not to interfere with the young valentinian ii. in italy, he prevailed upon him to acknowledge him emperor. but having broken his promise by the invasion of italy, he was defeated and made prisoner by theodosius in pannonia, and soon after executed. upon this valentinian ii. a youth of whom great hopes were entertained, became again master of all the west. but, unfortunately, he was murdered by the offended arbogast, his _magister militum_; who, thereupon, raised to the throne his own friend eugenius, _magister officiorum_. theodosius, however, so far from acknowledging, declared war against him and made him prisoner. he himself thus became master of the whole empire, but died in the following year. . the vigorous reign of theodosius in the east, from his thirty-fourth to his fiftieth year, was not less devoted to politics than to religion. the dexterity with which he at first broke the power of the victorious goths (though they still preserved their quarters in the provinces on the danube), procured him considerable influence, which the strength and activity of his character enabled him easily to maintain. the blind zeal, however, with which he persecuted arianism, now the prevailing creed in the east, and restored the orthodox belief, as well as the persecutions which he directed against the pagans and the destruction of their temples, occasioned the most dreadful convulsions. his efforts to preserve the boundaries of the empire, not a province of which was lost before his death, required an increase of taxes; and however oppressive this might be, we cannot impute it to the ruler as a crime. in an empire so enfeebled in itself, and which, nevertheless, had powerful foes on every side to contend with, it followed that every active reign would be oppressive. yet never before had the internal depopulation of the empire made it necessary to take so many barbarians into roman pay, as under this reign; whence naturally followed a change in the arms and tactics of the roman armies. p. erasm. muller, _de genio sæculi theodosiani_. havniæ, , vols. a very learned and in every respect excellent description of the deeply-decayed roman world as it now stood. . theodosius left two sons, between whom the empire was divided. both parts, however, were certainly considered as forming but one empire--an opinion which afterwards prevailed, and even till late in the middle ages had important consequences--yet never since this period have they been reunited under one ruler. the eastern empire, comprising the _præfectura orientis et illyrici_, was allotted to the eldest son, arcadius (aged - ) under the guardianship of rufinus the gaul. the western, or the _præfectura galliarum et italiæ_, to the younger, honorius, aged - , under the guardianship of the vandal stilico. . the western empire, to the history of which we shall now confine ourselves, suffered such violent shocks during the reign of honorius, as made its approaching fall plainly visible. the intrigues of stilico to procure himself the government of the whole empire, opened a way for the goths into its interior, just at a time when they were doubly formidable, fortune having given them a leader greatly superior to any they had hitherto had. alaric king of the visigoths established himself and his people in the roman empire, became master of rome, and mounted the throne: it was the mere effect of chance that he did not overthrow it altogether. both honorius and arcadius, especially the latter, belonged to that class of men who never come to years of maturity; their favourites and ministers therefore governed according to their own inclination. stilico, who made honorius his son-in-law, was not deficient, indeed, in abilities for governing; and his endeavour to obtain the management of the whole empire, arose, perhaps, from the conviction that it was necessary he should have it. he could not, however, gain his object by intrigue; for after the murder of rufinus; , he found a still more powerful opponent in the eunuch eutropius, his successor in the east. under the regency of stilico, gaul, in consequence of its troops being withdrawn to oppose alaric, , was inundated by german tribes--by vandals, alani, and suevi--who from thence penetrated even into spain. nevertheless, he preserved italy from their attacks by the victory which he gained, , over alaric at verona; and again over radagaisus, , who had advanced with other german hordes as far as florence. but stilico, having entered into a secret alliance with alaric, for the purpose of wresting eastern illyrica from the empire of the east, was overreached by the intrigues of the new favourite olympius, whose cabal knew how to take advantage of the weakness of honorius, and of the jealousy of the roman and foreign soldiers. stilico was accused of aspiring to the throne, and was executed august , . rome lost in him the only general that was left to defend her. alaric invaded italy the same year, , and the besieged rome was obliged to purchase peace; the conditions, however, not being fulfilled, he was again, , before rome, became master of the city, and created attalus, the præfect of the city, emperor instead of honorius, who had shut himself up in ravenna. in he assumed the diadem; and, making himself master of the city by force, gave it up to be plundered by his troops. soon afterwards, while projecting the capture of sicily and africa, he died in lower italy. his brother-in-law and successor, adolphus, together with his goths, left italy, now completely exhausted, , went into gaul, and from thence proceeding into spain, founded there the empire of the visigoths: he carried with him, however, placidia the sister of honorius, either as prisoner or as hostage, and married her in gaul. during these events an usurper arose in britain and gaul named constantine, : he was vanquished, and put to death, , by constantius, one of honorius's generals. this latter prince not only gave constantius his sister placidia, who had become a widow and was restored in , in marriage, but also named him augustus in . he died, however, a few months after, so that placidia henceforward had a considerable share in the government. she went nevertheless, , to constantinople, where she remained until the death of honorius. # _fl. stilico, or the wallenstein of antiquity_, by chr. fr. schulze, . not written by way of comparison. . in this manner was a great part of spain, and part of gaul, cut off from the roman empire during the reign of honorius. after his death the secretary john usurped the government, but was defeated by the eastern emperor theodosius ii. the nephew of honorius, valentinian iii. a minor (aged - ), was then raised to the throne, under the guardian care of his mother placidia (! ). under his miserable reign the western empire was stripped of almost all her provinces with the exception of italy. yet the government of his mother, and afterwards his own incapacity, were as much the cause as the stormy migration of barbarous tribes, which now convulsed all europe. britain had been voluntarily left by the romans since . in africa, the governor boniface having been driven into rebellion by the intrigues of the roman general Ætius, who possessed the ear of placidia, invited the vandals from spain, under the command of genseric, to come to his assistance. the latter then obtained possession of the country, - ; indeed, even as early as , valentinian was obliged to make a formal cession of it to them. valentinian's wife eudoxia, a grecian princess, was purchased by the cession of western illyricum (pannonia, dalmatia, and noricum); so that of all the countries south of the danube there now only remained those which belonged to the præfecture of italy: rhætia and vindelicia. on the south-east of gaul was formed, , the kingdom of the burgundians, which, besides the south-east part of france, comprised also switzerland and savoy. the south-west was under the dominion of the visigoths. there remained only the territory north of the loire which still submitted to the roman governors; the last of whom, syagrius, survived the fall of the empire itself; holding out till the year , when he was defeated near soissons by clodovicus, or clovis, king of the franks. . but while the western empire seemed thus of itself almost to fall to pieces, another impetuous rush of nations took place, which threatened the whole of western europe. the victorious hordes of huns who now occupied the territory formerly the seat of the goths, between the don and the theiss, and even as far as the volga, had united themselves, since the year , under one common chief, attila; who, by this union and his own superior talents as a warrior and ruler, became the most powerful prince of his time. the eastern empire having bought a peace by paying him a yearly tribute, he fell with a mighty army upon the western provinces. the united forces, however, of the romans under Ætius and the visigoths, obliged him near chalons (_in campis catalaunicis_) to retreat. nevertheless, the following year he again invaded italy, where he had a secret understanding with the licentious honoria, valentinian's sister. the cause of his second retreat, which was soon followed by his death, is unknown. the miserable valentinian soon after deprived the roman empire of its best general, being led by his suspicions to put Ætius to death. he himself, however, was soon doomed to undergo the punishment of his debaucheries, being murdered in a conspiracy formed by petronius maximus, whose wife he had dishonoured, and some friends of Ætius, whom he had executed. . the twenty years which intervened between the assassination of valentinian, and the final destruction of the roman empire in the west, was nearly one continued series of intestine revolutions. no less than nine sovereigns rapidly succeeded one another. these changes, indeed, were but of little importance in this troublesome period, compared to the terror with which genseric king of the vandals filled the roman empire: he by his naval power having become master of the mediterranean and sicily, could ravage the coasts of the defenceless italy at his pleasure, and even capture rome itself. while in italy, the german ricimer, general of the foreign troops in roman pay, permitted a series of emperors to reign in his name. it would have been his lot to put an end to this series of augusti, but for mere accident, which reserved that glory for his son and successor, odoacer, four years after his father's death. after the death of valentinian, maximus was proclaimed emperor; but as he wished to compel eudoxia, valentinian's widow, to marry him, she called over genseric from africa, who took and pillaged rome, and maximus perished after a reign of three months, . he was succeeded by m. avitus, who ascended the throne at arles; and he again was soon deposed by ricimer, , who, just before, had defeated the fleet of the vandals. ricimer now placed upon the throne, first julianus majorianus, april , ; but he, having distinguished himself in the wars against the vandals, , was set aside, and libius severus put in his place, who, however, died in , probably of poison. his death was followed by an interregnum of two years, during which ricimer ruled, though without the title of emperor. at length the patrician anthemius, then at constantinople (where they never gave up their pretensions to the right of naming or confirming the sovereigns of the west), was, though not without the consent of the powerful ricimer, named emperor of the west, april , , by the emperor leo. but differences having arisen between him and ricimer, the latter retired to milan, , and commenced a war, in which he took and pillaged rome, and anthemius was slain. ricimer himself followed soon after, ! aug. , . upon this, anicius olybrius, son-in-law of valentinian iii. was proclaimed augustus, but dying in three months, oct. , glycerius assumed the purple at ravenna, without, however, being acknowledged at constantinople, where they in preference named julius nepos augustus. the latter, in , having expelled glycerius, became also in his turn expelled by his own general orestes, , who gave the diadem to his son romulus momyllus, who, as the last in the succession of augusti, acquired the surname of augustulus. in , however, odoacer, the leader of the germans in the roman pay at rome, sent him, after the execution of orestes, into captivity, and allowed him a pension. odoacer now remained master of italy till the year , when the ostrogoths, under their king theodoric, founded there a new empire. . thus fell the roman empire of the west, while that of the east, pressed on every side, and in a situation almost similar, endured a thousand years, notwithstanding its intestine broils, which would alone have sufficed to destroy any other, and the hosts of barbarians who attacked it during the middle ages. the impregnable situation of its capital, which usually decides the fate of such kingdoms, joined to its despotism, which is not unfrequently the main support of a kingdom in its decline, can alone, in some measure, explain a phenomenon which has no equal in the history of the world. appendix. chronology of herodotus to the time of cyrus, extracted from the researches of m. volney. see preface. although herodotus did not write his work in chronological order, yet we cannot doubt that he had some general plan of computing time. by carefully selecting and comparing the separate data scattered through his work, this plan to a certain extent may be traced out, and early history, with regard to settled chronology, must necessarily gain a good deal. the following essay is founded upon a procedure of this kind; it is drawn entirely from herodotus, and only from data which he has precisely determined, the passages of his work being always referred to. the year b. c. , in which the fall of astyages and the median empire took place, as may be proved from herodotus himself, is a fixed point of time from which we may ascend into higher antiquity. this point of time may be determined by the chronological data respecting the battle of marathon, four years before the death of darius (herodotus vii. . .) agreeing with the general data of the greeks, who fix it in the third year of the nd olymp. b. c. . by adding to this the thirty-two years of darius's reign that had already elapsed (herodotus, ibid.), the eight months of smerdis (herodotus, iii. .), the seven years and five months of cambyses (herodotus iii. .), and the twenty-nine years of cyrus (herodotus, i. .), we obtain the year as the first year of cyrus. i. chronology of the median empire. b. c. end of the median empire . duration of the median empire one hundred and fifty-six years (herodotus, i, .) the beginning of it, therefore, after their separation from the assyrians, would be . in this period, at first, six years of anarchy[a] - . reign of deioces fifty-three years (herodotus, i. .) - . reign of phraortes, twenty-two years (ibid.) - . cyaxares, forty years (i. .) - . irruption and dominion of the scythians, twenty-eight years (i. . .) - . conquest of nineveh (i. .) . astyages reigned thirty-five years (i. .) - . the succession of median kings given by ctesias, which entirely differs from this, the author thinks might be explained by a duplication; see # _gott. gel. anz._ , p. . [a] these are certainly not determined from herodotus; but they remain after subtracting the one hundred and fifty years' reign of the four median kings. ii. chronology of the assyrian empire. the dominion of the assyrians over asia, or their empire, ended with the revolt of the medes (herodotus, i. .); although the existence of their state did not then end, but terminated with the capture of nineveh by cyaxares, b. c. . b. c. revolt of the medes, as above . the dominion of the assyrians had endured five hundred and twenty years (herodotus, i. .) the assyrian empire lasted therefore from - . as herodotus intended to write the history of this empire in a separate work (i. .), he only casually mentions (i. .) its founder ninus, who began to reign ; and afterwards sennacherib and his expedition (ii. .); and the last king, sardanapalus (ii. .). the mention of sennacherib and his expedition furnishes a point of time for comparing the chronology of herodotus with that of the bible, or the jews. according to the latter, sennacherib's expedition took place b. c. . (see above, p. .); his death takes place immediately after, and he has for his successor esar-haddon, kings, xix. . here then is certainly a contradiction, since, according to herodotus, the assyrian dominion had ceased three years before, namely, . m. volney endeavours to reconcile this difficulty by the restoration of an ancient reading in the sacred text; according to which amon, king of judæa, reigned twelve years instead of two ( kings, xxi. .); from which it would follow, that the expedition of sennacherib took place in . as this would leave seven years after his death for his successor esar-haddon, who agrees both in time and name with the sardanapalus of the greeks (the greek name being formed from esar-haddon-pal, i. e. esar, the lord, son of pal), the two chronologies are thus made to agree exactly. but even in following the ancient usual reading, the greatest difference between the two statements is only ten years; quite as little as can be reasonably expected under such circumstances. with regard to the assyrian chronology of ctesias, m. volney has satisfactorily shown that it is full of contradictions, and unworthy of any credit. iii. chronology of the lydian empire. the arrangement of the lydian chronology rests upon the settlement of two principal facts: first, the great eclipse of the sun under alyattes, foretold by thales (herodotus, i. .); and secondly, the conquest of sardes, and overthrow of the empire under croesus, by cyrus; both of which herodotus certainly mentions, but without assigning any precise date. but by a careful comparison of all the data it has been proved, that the great eclipse in asia minor (according to the tables of pingré) happened in the year ; and the conquest of sardes, and the end of the lydian empire, b. c. , or in the fourth year of cyrus. therefore: b. c. end of the lydian empire . it subsisted under three houses; under that of the atyadæ (fabulous and uncertain); under that of the heraclidæ, five hundred and five years (herodotus, i. .); and under the last, that of the mermnadæ, one hundred and seventy years. the heraclidæ and mermnadæ, then, reigned altogether six hundred and seventy-five years. therefore: b. c. commencement of the reign of the heraclidæ, with agron the son of ninus (i. .) . end of this house with the murder of candaules, by gyges . by fixings the time of agron, son of ninus, herodotus verifies himself (i. .); as, by the preceding data, ninus began his reign in assyria, ; consequently, it must have been in the fifth year of his reign that he conquered lydia, and placed his son agron upon the throne. b. c. dominion of the mermnadæ, one hundred and seventy years, under kings of that house - . gyges, thirty-eight years (herodotus, i. .) - . ardys, forty-nine years (herodotus, i. .) - . first irruption of the cimmerians . sadyattes, twelve years (herodotus, i. .) - . alyattes, fifty-seven years (herodotus, i. .) - . war with cyaxares, ending with the great eclipse, and second irruption of the cimmerians . croesus, fourteen years and fourteen days (herodotus, i. .) - . iv. chronology of the babylonians. for this as well as for the egyptians there is no evidence to guide us, the data being very scanty, and taken from herodotus alone. the chronology of the babylonians, according to the canon of ptolemy, begins with nabonassar, , who was succeeded by twelve kings (mentioned in the same canon), down to nabopolassar; (see above, p. .) b. c. nabopolassar - . nebuchadnezzar - . evil-merodach - . neriglissar - . labynetus - . conquest of babylon by cyrus . v. chronology of the egyptians. m. volney very properly commences this with the dodecarchy--as of the earlier periods only the time of sesostris, , is ascertained;--and arranges it in the following manner. b. c. dodecarchy - . psammetichus's sole dominion thirty-nine years - . reign of neco, sixteen years - . -------- psammis, six years - . -------- apries, twenty-five years - . -------- amasis, forty-four years - . psammenitus, six months . conquest of egypt by cambyses * * * * * i. the reigning houses of macedon. i. house of alexander the great. philip ! . married, . olympias. . cleopatra. ( . concubines.) | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . . cleopatra. . . | | | | alexander the great ! . philip arrhidÆus ! . | married, . roxana. ( . barsine.) married eurydice. | | | +--------------------------------------+ thessalonice. | . . | married cassander. alexander ! . hercules ! . ii. house of antipater. antipater ! . | cassander ! , married thessalonice. | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | philip ! . antipater ! . alexander ! . | iii. house of antigonus. antigonus ! . | demetrius i. poliorcetes ! . | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | stratonice. antigonus i. gonatas ! . | married, . seleucus i. | . antiochus i. +-------------------------------------+ | demetrius ii. ! . alcyoneus. | | | +-------------------+ +---------------+ | philip ii. ! . | | antigonus ii. | | doson ! +------------------------------------+ | perseus ! . demetrius ! . | ii. genealogical table of the seleucidÆ. seleucus i. nicator ! . married, . apame. . stratonice, daughter of demetrius poliorcetes. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . . | antiochus i. soter ! . married, phila married . stratonice, his mother-in-law. . anonymous. antigonus gonatas | king of macedon. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . . . | antiochus ii. theos ! . apame laodice. married, married magas . laodice, his sister-in-law. of cyrene. . berenice, daughter of ptol. philad. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . . . | seleucus ii. callinicus ! . antiochus stratonice married married laodice, hierax. ariarathes iv. of daughter of andromachus, cappadocia. father of achæus. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | seleucus iii. stratonice married antiochus iii. the great ! .| ceraunus ! . mithridates iv. married laodice, daughter of of pontus. mithridates iv. of pontus. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | antiochus laodice. | antiochus iv. cleopatra antiochis | ! . | epiphanes ! . married married | | ptolemy v. ariarathes v. | | of cappad. | +-----------------------------+ | | antiochus v. eupator ! . | | seleucus iv. philopator ! . married his sister laodice. | +------------------------------------------------------+ | demetrius i. laodice | ! . married perseus king of maced. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | demetrius ii. nicator ! . married, antiochus sidetes ! . | . cleopatra, daughter of ptol. philom. married his . rhodogyne. | daughter-in-law, cleopatra. | | +-------------------------------------+ +---------------------------+ |seleucus v. antiochus gryphus ! . | | antiochus cyzicenus ! . | ! . married cleopatra selene, married cleopatra, daughter of ptol. phys. daughter of ptol. phys. | | | +----------------------------+ | | antiochus eusebes ! c. . | | married cleopatra selene. | | | +---------------------------------------+ | | antiochus seleucus cybiosactes | | asiaticus ! . ! . married | berenice, daughter | of ptol. auletes. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | seleucus antioch. philippus demetr. antioch. | epiph. ! . epiph. ! . epiph. ! . eucar. dionys. ! c. . ! . iii. genealogical table of the ptolemies. ptolemy i. son of lagus ! . married, . eurydice, daughter of antipater. . berenice. ( . concubines.) | +-----------------------------------------------------+ | | | | . | | | ptol. ceraunus ! . | . | king of macedonia. | arsinoe | . | ptol. ii. philadelphus ! . . married, . arsinoe, daughter magas of cyrene. of lysimachus. | . his sister arsinoe. +-------------+ | berenice | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | ptol. iii. evergetes ! . berenice married | married berenice, antiochus theos. daughter of magas. | +-------------------------------------------------------------+ | ptol. iv. philopator ! . magas. arsinoe. | married, . his sister arsinoe. ( . agathoclea.) | +----------------------------+ | ptol. v. ephiphanes ! . | married cleopatra, daughter of antiochus the great. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | ptol. vi. philometor ! . cleopatra. ptol. vii. physcon ! .| married his sister cleopatra. married, | . his sister cleopatra. | . cleopatra the younger. | ( . irene.) cleopatra the younger. | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . | . | . | ptol. viii. | ptol. alexander | ptol. apion. lathyrus ! . | i. ! . | king of cyrene, married, | married cleopatra, | ! . , . his two sisters. | daughter of | ( . concubines.) | ptol. lathyrus. | | | | | . . | cleop. selene. cleopatra. | +------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | . | . | | | | cl. berenice. | ptol. of cyprus | ptol. alexander | | | ! . | ii. ! . | | | | married | | | | cleop. berenice. | . . . | cleopatra ! . ptol. auletes ! . cleopatra. ptol. alex. married married, iii. ! . alex. i. . his sister cleop. . unknown. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . | . | arsinoe | berenice ! . | ptol. dionysius ! . | ! . married, | married cleopatra. | . seleucus cybios. | | . archelaus. . . cleopatra ! . ptol. the younger ! . married, married cleopatra. . . her brothers. ( . jul. cæsar.) . antony iv. the reigning houses of the jews. house of the maccabees. mattathias ! b. c. . | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | judas maccabæus, jonathan, simon, high priest | general of the army high priest ! . and ethnarch, ! . ! . | +----------------------+ | john hyrcanus ! . | | +------------------------------------------------+ | aristobulus i. ! , alex. i. jannæus ! . | king and high priest. married alexandra. | +------------------------------------------------+ | hyrcanus ii. ! . aristobulus. | high priest and ethnarch. ! . | +-----------------------------------------+ | alexander ii. ! . antigonus ! . | | +-----------------------------------------------+ | aristobulus ! . mariamne ! . | married herod the great. ii. house of herod. antipater ! . | +----------------------------------------------------------+ | salome. herod the great ! a. c. . | married, . doris. . mariamne. . many others. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | antipater alexander aristobulus archelaus, | philip, | ! a. c. . ! b. c. . ! b. c. . ethnarch, | tetrarch, | deposed | ! a. c. . +-------------------+ a. c. . | | herod ii. agrippa | | ! a. c. . antipas, tetrarch, | deposed a. c. . +---------------+ married herodias. | herod agrippa | ! a. c. . v. genealogical table of the cÆsars. i. c. julius cæsar, prætor, ! . | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | c. julius cÆsar, dictator, julia ! . | ! . married accius balbus. | | +-----------------------------+ +-----------------------+ | julia ! . married pompey. | | accia ! , | married c. octavius. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | octavia the elder | c. octavius (cÆsar augustus) | married m. marcellus. | ! a. c. (see no. ii.) | octavia the younger married, . c. marcellus. . pompey. . m. antony. ii. cÆsar octavianus augustus ! a. c. . married, . scribonia. . livia, widow of tiberius claudius nero. | | | +------------------------------------------------------+ | | tiberius nero ! a.c. . nero claudius drusus ! . | | married, . vipsania. married antonia | . julia. the younger. | | | | +--------------------------+ | | | drusus cÆsar ! a. c. . | | | | | +---------------------------------------------------+ | | germanicus claudius ! a. c. . | | ! a. c. . married, . messalina. | married agrippina. . agrippina. | | | | | +------------------------------------+ | | | . britannicus . octavia | | | ! a. c. . ! a. c. . | | married nero. | | | +-------------------------------------------------------+ | | nero drusus | agrippina | | ! a. c. . ! a. c. . | married, | | . cn. domitius. | caius caligula . claudius. | ! a. c. . | | | | +---------------------------------------+ | | . | | domitius nero ! a. c. . | married, . octavia. . poppæa sabina | +----------------------------------------------------------+ | . | julia ! a. c. . married, . ! m. cl. marcellus. . agrippa. . tiberius. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | . . . . . | c. cæsar l. cæsar agrippina julia agrippa ! a. c. . ! a. c. . ! a. c. . ! a. c. . posthumus married ! a. c. . germanicus. vi. genealogical table of the house of constantine. constantius chlorus ! . married, . helena. . theodora. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ constantine the great ! . | jul. constantius | married, . minervina. | ! . married, | . fausta. constantia . galla. | | married . basilina. | | c. valer licinius, | | | cæsar, ! +----------+ | +--------------------------+ | fl. valer. | . | . | +--------------+ licinius | crispus | constantius | . . ! . | ! . | ! . | gallus julian | . . ! . (the apostate) | constantine constans ! . | ! . ! . annibalianus. | +-----------------------------+ | dalmatius annibalianus | cæsar ! . ! . printed by talboys and browne, oxford. * * * * * transcriber's note: the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these words have been replaced with transliterations. the dagger symbol (indicating death) has been replaced by ! within this text version. also, sidenotes have been removed to ease readability of the text. transcriber's note: . text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). . a carat character is used to denote superscription. a single character following the carat is superscripted (example: ^ ). . mixed fractions in this text version are indicated with a hyphen and forward slash. for example, four and a half is represented by - / . . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., ll.d., fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford. vol. iv. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . bungay: clay and taylor, printers. contents. book v. _the arians on the indus and the ganges._ chapter i. page the land and the people chapter ii. the aryas on the indus chapter iii. the conquest of the land of the ganges chapter iv. the formation and arrangement of the orders chapter v. the old and the new religion chapter vi. the constitution and law of the indians chapter vii. the castes and the family chapter viii. the theology and philosophy of the brahmans book vi. _buddhists and brahmans._ chapter i. the states on the ganges in the sixth century b.c. chapter ii. buddha's life and teaching chapter iii. the kingdom of magadha and the settlements in the south chapter iv. the nations and princes of the land of the indus chapter v. the political and social life of the indians in the fourth century b.c. chapter vi. chandragupta of magadha chapter vii. the religion of the buddhists chapter viii. the reforms of the brahmans chapter ix. aÇoka of magadha chapter x. retrospect book v. the arians on the indus and the ganges. india. chapter i. the land and the people. it was not only in the lower valley of the nile, on the banks of the euphrates and the tigris, and along the coast and on the heights of syria that independent forms of intellectual and civic life grew up in antiquity. by the side of the early civilisation of egypt, and the hardly later civilisation of that unknown people from which elam, babylon, and asshur borrowed such important factors in the development of their own capacities; along with the civilisation of the semites of the east and west, who here observed the heavens, there busily explored the shores of the sea; here erected massive buildings, and there were so earnestly occupied with the study of their own inward nature, are found forms of culture later in their origin, and represented by a different family of nations. this family, the indo-european, extends over a far larger area than the semitic. we find branches of it in the wide districts to the east of the semitic nations, on the table-land of iran, in the valleys of the indus and the ganges. other branches we have already encountered on the heights of armenia, and the table-land of asia minor (i. , ). others again obtained possession of the plains above the black sea; others, of the peninsulas of greece and italy. nations of this stock have forced their way to the shores of the atlantic ocean; we find them settled on the western coast of the spanish peninsula, from the mouth of the garonne to the channel, in britain and ireland no less than in scandinavia, on the shores of the north sea and the baltic. those branches of the family which took up their abodes the farthest to the east exhibit the most independent and peculiar form of civilisation. the mutual relationship of the arian, greek, italian, letto-sclavonian, germanic, and celtic languages proves the relationship of the nations who have spoken and still speak them; it proves that all these nations have a common origin and descent. the words, of which the roots in these languages exhibit complete phonetic agreement, must be considered as a common possession, acquired before the separation; and from this we can discover at what stage of life the nation from which these languages derive their origin stood at the time when it was not yet divided into these six great branches, and separated into the nations which subsequently occupied abodes so extensive and remote from each other. we find common terms for members of the family, for house, yard, garden, and citadel; common words for horses, cattle, dogs, swine, sheep, goats, mice, geese, ducks; common roots for wool, hemp or flax, corn (_i.e._ wheat, spelt, or barley), for ploughing, grinding, and weaving, for certain metals (copper or iron), for some weapons and tools, for waggon, boat and rudder, for the elementary numbers, and the division of the year according to the moon.[ ] hence the stock, whose branches and shoots have spread over the whole continent of europe and asia from ceylon to britain and scandinavia, cannot, even before the separation, have been without a certain degree of civilisation. on the contrary, this common fund of words proves that even in that early time it tilled the field, and reared cattle; that it could build waggons and boats, and forge weapons, and if the general name for the gods and some names of special deities are the same in widely remote branches of this stock,--in india, iran, greece, and italy, and even on the plains of lithuania,--it follows that the notions which lie at the base of these names must also be counted among the common possessions existing before the separation. we can hardly venture a conjecture as to the region in which the fathers of the indo-european nations attained to this degree of cultivation. it must have been of such a nature as to admit of agriculture beside the breeding of cattle. the varieties of produce mentioned and the domestic animals point to a northern district, which, however, cannot have reached down to the ocean, inasmuch as no common roots are in existence to denote the sea. this proof is strengthened by the fact that in all the branches the wolf and bear alone among beasts of prey are designated by common roots. if we combine these considerations with the equal extension of the tribes of this nation towards east and west, we may assume that an elevated district in the middle of the eastern continent was the abode of the nation while yet undivided. the branches which occupied the table-land of iran and the valley of the indus were the first to rise from the basis acquired in common to a higher civilisation; and even they did not attain to this till long after the time when egypt, under the ancient kingdom of memphis, found herself in the possession of a many-sided culture, after babylon had become the centre of a different conception of life and development. the western branches of the indo-europeans remained at various stages behind their eastern fellow-tribesmen in regard to the epochs of their higher culture. if the greeks, who were brought into frequent contact with the civilisation of the semites, came next in point of time after the eastern tribes, and the italians next to the greeks, it was only through conflict and contact with the culture of greece and rome that the western branches reached a higher stage, while the dwellers on the plains of the baltic owe their cultivation to the influences of germanic life. finally, when the west european branches, the indo-germans, had developed independently their capacities and their nature, when in different phases they had received and assimilated what had been left behind by their greek and roman kinsmen, and formed it into the civilisation of the modern world, their distant navigation came into contact with the ancient civilisation, to which their fellow-tribesmen in the distant east had finally attained some years previously. with wonder and astonishment the long-separated, long-estranged relatives looked each other in the face. but even now the ancient, deeply-rooted, and variously-developed civilisation of the eastern branch maintains its place with tough endurance beside the mobile, comprehensive, and restlessly-advancing civilisation of the west. on the southern edge of the great table-land which forms the nucleus of the districts of asia, the range of the himalayas rises in parallel lines. the range runs from north-west to south-east, with a breadth of from to miles, and a length of about miles. it presents the highest elevations on the surface of the earth. covered with boundless fields of snow and extensive glaciers, the sharp edges and points of the highest ridge rise gleaming into the tropic sky; no sound breaks the deep silence of this solemn alpine wild. to the south of these mighty white towers, in the second range, is a multitude of summits, separated by rugged ravines. here also is neither moss nor herb, for this range also rises above the limits of vegetation. much lower down, a third range, of which the average elevation rises to more than , feet, displays up to the summits forests of a european kind; in the cool, fresh air the ridges are clothed with birches, pines, and oaks. beneath this girdle of northern growths, on the heights which gradually sink down from an elevation of feet, are thick forests of indian fig-trees of gigantic size. under the forest there commences in the west a hilly region, in the east a marshy district broken by lakes which the mountain waters leave behind in the depression, and covered with impenetrable thickets, tall jungles, and rank grass--a district oppressive and unhealthy, inhabited by herds of elephants, crocodiles, and large snakes. the mighty wall of the himalayas decides the nature and life of the extensive land which lies before it to the south in the same way as the peninsula of italy lies before the european alps. it protects hill and plain from the raw winds which blow from the north over the table-land of central asia; it checks the rain-clouds, the collected moisture of the ocean brought up by the trade winds from the south sea. these clouds are compelled to pour their water into the plains at the foot of the himalayas, and change the glow of the sun into coolness, the parched vegetation into fresh green. owing to their extraordinary elevation, the mountain masses of the himalayas, in spite of their southern situation, preserve such enormous fields of ice and snow that they are able to discharge into the plains the mightiest rivers in the world. from the central block flow the indus, the ganges, and the brahmaputra, _i.e._ the son of brahma. springing from fields of snow, which surround alpine lakes, the indus descends from an elevated mountain plain to the south of the highest ridge. at first the river flows in a westerly direction through a cleft between parallel rows of mountains. in spite of the long and severe winter of this region, mountain sheep and goats flourish here, and the sandy soil contains gold-dust. to the south of the course of the river we find depressions in the mountains, where the climate is happily tempered by the nature of the sky and the elevation of the soil. the largest of these is the valley of cashmere, surrounded by an oval of snowy mountains. to the west of cashmere the indus turns its course suddenly to the south; it breaks through the mountain ranges which bar its way, and from this point to the mouth accompanies the eastern slope of the table-land of iran. as soon as the himalayas are left behind, a hilly land commences on the left bank, of moderate warmth and fruitful vegetation, spreading out far to the east between the tributaries of the stream. the river now receives the panjab, and the valley is narrowed in the west by the closer approach of the mountains of iran; in the east by a wide, waterless steppe, descending from the spurs of the himalayas to the sea, which affords nothing beyond a scanty maintenance for herds of buffaloes, asses, and camels. the heat becomes greater as the land becomes flatter, and the river more southerly in its course; in the dry months the earth cracks and vegetation is at a standstill. any overflow from the river, which might give it new vigour, on the melting of the snow in the upper mountains, is prevented for long distances by the elevation of the banks. the delta formed by the indus at its mouth, after a course of miles, contains only a few islands of good marsh soil. the sea comes up over the flat shore for a long distance, and higher up the arms of the river a thick growth of reeds and rushes hinders cultivation, while the want of fresh water makes a numerous population impossible. not far from the sources of the indus, at the very nucleus of the highest summits of the himalayas, rise the yamuna (jumna) and the ganges. the ganges flows out of fields of snow beneath unsurmountable summits of more than , feet in height, and breaking through the mountains to the south reaches the plains; here the course of the river is turned to the east by the broad and thickly-wooded girdle of the vindhyas, the mountain range which rises to the south of the plains. enlarged by a number of tributaries from north and south, it pours from year to year copious inundations over the low banks, and thus creates for the plains through which it flows a fruitful soil where tropic vegetation can flourish in the most luxuriant wildness. this is the land of rice, of cotton, of sugar-canes, of the blue lotus, the edible banana, the gigantic fig-tree. on the lower course of the river, where it approaches the brahmaputra, which also at first flows between the parallel ranges of the himalayas towards the east, in the same way as the indus flows to the west, there commences a hot, moist, and luxuriant plain (bengal) of enervating climate, covered with coco and arica palms, with the tendrils of the betel, and the stalks of the cinnamon, with endless creepers overgrowing the trunks of the trees, and ascending even to their topmost branches. here the river is so broad that the eye can no longer reach from one bank to the other. in the region at the mouth, where the ganges unites with the brahmaputra, and then splits into many arms, the numerous waters create hot marshes; and here the vegetation is so abundant, the jungles of bamboo so thick and impenetrable, that they are abandoned to the rhinoceros, the elephant, and the tiger, whose proper home is in these wooded morasses. into this wide region, which in length, from north to south, exceeds the distance from cape skagen to cape spartivento, and in breadth, from east to west, is about equal to the distance from bayonne to odessa, came a branch of the family, whose common origin has been noticed, and their civilisation previous to the separation of the members sketched. the members of this branch called themselves arya, _i.e._ the noble, or the ruling. in the oldest existing monuments of their language and poetry these aryas are found invoking their gods to grant them room against the dasyus,[ ] to make a distinction between arya and dasyu, to place the dasyus on the left hand, to turn away the arms of the dasyus from the aryas, to make the hostile nations of the dasyus bow down before the aryas, to increase the might and glory of the aryas, to subjugate the "black-skins" to them.[ ] in the epic poetry of the indians we find mention of black inhabitants of himavat (_i.e._ inhabitants of the snowy mountains, the himalayas), and of "black Çudra" beyond the delta of the indus. by the same name, Çudra, the aryas designated the population which became subject to them in the valley of the ganges; and when they advanced from the valleys of the indus and the ganges towards the south, to the coasts of the deccan, they found there also populations of a similar kind. even at the present day the inhabitants of india fall into two great masses, essentially distinguished from each other by the formation of their bodies and their language. in the broad and inaccessible belt of the vindhya mountains, which separates the peninsula of the deccan from the plains of the two rivers, are situated the tribes of the gondas, men of a deep-black colour, with thick, long, and black hair, barbarous manners, and a peculiar language. closely allied to these nations are the slim and black bhillas, of small stature, who inhabit the western slopes of the vindhyas to the sea; and the kolas, who dwell in the mountainous district of surashtra (guzerat), and to this day form two-thirds of the inhabitants of this district.[ ] on the eastern declivities and spurs of the vindhyas we find in the south the kandas, in the north the paharias, nations also of a dark colour and thick long hair. distinct from these rude savages, less dark in colour, and exhibiting other modes of life, are the tribes which possess the coasts of the deccan, the carnatas, tuluwas, and malabars on the west, the tamilas and telingas on the east. opposed to all these tribes are the aryas, with their light colour and decisively caucasian stamp. these once spoke sanskrit, and are still acquainted with the language, and to them is due the development of civilisation in these wide districts. this juxtaposition of two populations, of which one is in possession of the best districts in the country, while of the other only fragments are in existence (combined masses are not found except in the most inaccessible regions),--the indications supplied by these invocations, according to which the light-coloured population on the indus was in conflict with the "black-skins,"--the fact that the light-coloured population, both on the ganges and the coasts of the deccan, has always taken up an exclusive and contemptuous position towards the darker tribes existing there, justify the conclusion that the whole region from the indus to the mouths of the ganges, from the himalayas to cape comorin, once belonged to the dark population, and that the aryas are immigrants. these immigrants partly drove back the ancient population, and confined it in hardly accessible mountains or morasses, partly forced it to submit to their rule and accept their civilisation, partly allowed it to live among them, as now, in a despicable and subordinate position. in historical times we can trace this process, by which the old population was driven back or civilised, on the coasts of the deccan and in ceylon. from the position of the remnant of this population on the ganges, and these invocations of the aryas, which spring from a time when they were not yet established in the land of the ganges, we may conclude that a similar process went on in a severer form on the indus. following the example of the indians, modern science collects the languages of these inhabitants of india, who are found under and among the aryas, so far as they at present exist, under the names of the nishada and dravida languages.[ ] the language of the brahuis to the west of the indus,--they were settled there, or at least retired from thence, at the time of the immigration of the aryas,--the canaresian, the malayalam, the language of the tamilas, of the telingas, the badaga of the inhabitants of the nilgiri, on the southern apex of the deccan, are closely related, but to which of the great stems of language they are to be apportioned is not determined.[ ] the immigration of the aryas into india took place from the west. they stand in the closest relation to the inhabitants of the table-land of iran, especially the inhabitants of the eastern half. these also call themselves aryas, though among them the word becomes airya, or ariya, and among the greeks arioi. the language of the aryas is in the closest connection with that of the avesta, the religious books of iran, and in very close connection with the language of the monuments of darius and xerxes, in the western half of that region. the religious conceptions of the iranians and indians exhibit striking traits of a homogeneous character. a considerable number of the names of gods, of myths, sacrifices, and customs, occurs in both nations, though the meaning is not always the same, and is sometimes diametrically opposed. moreover, the aryas in india are at first confined to the borders of iran, the region of the indus, and the panjab. here, in the west, the aryas had their most extensive settlements, and their oldest monuments frequently mention the indus, but not the ganges.[ ] even the name by which the aryas denote the land to the south of the vindhyas, dakshinapatha (deccan), _i.e._ path to the right[ ], confirms the fact already established, that the aryas came from the west. from this it is beyond a doubt that the aryas, descending from the heights of iran, first occupied the valley of the indus and the five tributary streams, which combine and flow into the river from the north-east, and they spread as far as they found pastures and arable land, _i.e._ as far eastward as the desert which separates the valley of the indus from the ganges. the river which irrigated their land, watered their pastures, and shaped the course of their lives they called sindhu (in pliny, sindus), _i.e._ the river[ ]. it is, no doubt, the region of the indus, with the panjab, which is meant in the avesta by the land _hapta hindu_ (_hendu_), i.e. the seven streams. the inscriptions of darius call the dwellers on the indus idhus. these names the greeks render by indos and indoi. can we fix the time at which the aryas immigrated into india and occupied the valley of the indus? as we proceed it will become clear that it was not till a late period that the nation began to record the names of the kings of their states, that they never wrote down in a satisfactory matter their legends and the facts of their history, and that we cannot find among them any trustworthy chronology. even with the assistance of the statements of western writers, we can only go back with any certainty to the year b.c. for the dynasties of the kingdom of magadha, the most important kingdom in ancient times on the ganges. but if at this period the aryas held sway not on the upper ganges only, but also on the lower, they must have been already settled on the indus for centuries. if the narratives already given of the foundation of the assyrian kingdom and the war of semiramis on the indus (ii. ff) were historical, the aryas must have been settled in that country even at this date, _i.e._ about b.c. they must have lived there under a monarchy which could place great forces in the field, and they must have been already acquainted with the use of elephants in war. stabrobates, the name of the king of the indians who met semiramis and repulsed her, would become Çtaorapati, _i.e._ lord of oxen, in the language of the aryas. but after what has been previously said (ii. ff), we can only allow this narrative to have a value for the conceptions existing in persian epic poetry about the foundation of the empire of assyria, and the campaigns of assyrian rulers to the distant east. in their statements about india we can only, at most, expect to find a repetition of the information existing about that country in the western half of iran in the seventh or sixth century, and even this takes a form corresponding to the views expressed in the poems. in the monuments of the kings of assyria we found the elephant and the rhinoceros among the tribute offered to shalmanesar ii., who reigned from - b.c. (ii. ); the inscriptions of bin-nirar iii. ( - b.c.) pointed to campaigns of this king extending as far as bactria (ii. ); we were able to follow the marches of tiglath pilesar ii. ( - b.c.) in the table-land of iran as far as arachosia (iii. ). hence the assyrian tablets do not as yet supply any definite information about the land of the indus. arrian has preserved a notice according to which the astacenes and assacanes, indian nations on the right bank of the indus, between the river and cophen (cabul), were once subject to the assyrians.[ ] the indian epics extol the horses of the açvakas, who, in them also, are an indian nation, and we may venture to regard them as the assacenes of arrian. alexander of macedon found them in that region; they could place many warriors in the field against him on their high mountain uplands. but the observation in arrian, even if we attach weight to it, does not carry us far in answering the question when the aryas came into the valley of the indus, for it does not make it clear at what period the açvakas were subject to the assyrians. more may be gained, perhaps, from the hebrew scriptures. we saw that about b.c. solomon of israel and hiram of tyre caused ships to be built and equipped at elath, on the north-east point of the arabian gulf. these ships were to visit the lands of the south, and we saw what wealth they brought back from ophir after an absence of three years (ii. ). they are laden with gold, silver, precious stones, and sandal-wood in abundance, the like of which was not seen afterwards; peacocks, apes, and ivory.[ ] now ivory, sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks are the products of india, and peacocks and sandal-wood belong to that land exclusively. it is true that they might have been transported to the south coast of arabia or the somali coast of east africa by the trade of the arabians, or even of the indians (i. ); but the ships of solomon and hiram would not need to be absent for three years in order to obtain them there. for our question it is decisive that the names with which the hebrews denote apes, peacocks, and sandal-wood, _kophim_, _tukijim_, _almugim_, are sanskrit (_kapi_, _çikhi_, _valgu_), and from this it follows that the aryas must have been in possession, at any rate, of the land of the indus and the coast of that region as early as b.c. the book of the law of the aryas mentions a nation abhira. according to the aryan epics this nation possessed cows, goats, sheep, and camels. ptolemy places a land abiria at the mouth of the indus, and to this day a tribe of the name of ahir possesses the coast of the peninsula of cashtha (kattywar).[ ] these abhiras may therefore have been meant by the ophir of the hebrews. it is true that the genealogical table in genesis puts ophir among the tribes which are said to spring from joktan, but no doubt it includes under the name of joktan all the nations of the south-east known to the hebrews. if the ships of hiram brought back gold in abundance from their voyages to the mouth of the indus, this can only have been conveyed to the lower indus, where there is no gold, from the upper indus, which is rich in gold, and from other upland valleys in the himalayas, where the mountain streams carry down this metal. hence about the year b.c. there must have been a lively trade between the upper and lower indus. further, if the phenicians and hebrews purchased sandal-wood among the abhiras, this can only have been transported to the mouth of the indus by sea, and the coast navigation, which is rendered easy in the indian sea by the regular occurrence of the monsoons, for sandal-wood nowhere flourishes except in the glowing sun of the malabar coast. whatever may have been the case with this trade, products of india, and among them such as do not belong to the land of the indus, were exported from the land about b.c., under names given to them by the aryas, and therefore the aryas must have been settled there for centuries previously. for this reason, and it is confirmed by facts which will appear further on, we may assume that the aryas descended into the valley of the indus about the year b.c., _i.e._ about the time when the kingdom of elam was predominant in the valley of the euphrates and tigris, when assyria still stood under the dominion of babylon, and the kingdom of memphis was ruled by the hyksos. we have no further accounts from the west about the aryas till the year b.c., and later. it is not improbable that the arms of cyrus reached the indus. the astacenes and assacanes are said to have been subject to the medes after the assyrians; then cyrus, the son of cambyses, imposed tribute upon them.[ ] as cyrus subjugated bactria, fought in arachosia, and marched through gedrosia, we may assume that he compelled the nations of the aryas on the right bank of the indus to pay tribute. it was in conflict with the derbiccians, to whom the indians sent elephants as auxiliaries, that cyrus, according to the account of ctesias, was slain. darius, as herodotus tells us, sent messengers to explore the land of the indus. setting out from arachosia, they proceeded from caspapyrus (kaçpapura), a city which, according to hecatæus, belonged to the gandarii[ ]--_i.e._ without doubt from kabura (cabul) down the indus to the sea. according to herodotus' account the gandarii, together with the arachoti and sattagydæ, paid talents of gold yearly; the rest of the indians paid a larger tribute than any other satrapy-- talents of gold.[ ] the indians who paid this tribute were, according to herodotus, the most northerly and the most warlike of this great nation. they dwelt near the city of caspapyrus, _i.e._ near cabul; their mode of life was like that of the bactrians, and they obtained the gold from a sandy desert, where ants, smaller than dogs, but larger than foxes, dug up the gold-dust.[ ] darius tells us himself, in the inscriptions of persepolis, that the gandarii and the indians were subject to him. like herodotus, these inscriptions comprise the tribes of the aryas on the right bank of the indus as far down as cabul under the name of indians, so that the açvakas were included among them. the gandarii, as is shown by their vicinity to and connection with the arachoti, lay to the south of cabul. in the epos of the indians the daughter of the king of the gandharas is married to the king of the bharatas, who lie between the yamuna and the ganges, and the buddhist writings speak of the brahmans of the gandarii as the worst in india.[ ] in the campaign of xerxes, herodotus separates the gandarii from the rest of the indians who are subject to the persian kingdom. the first, he says, were armed like the bactrians; with the rest marched the ethiopians of the east, equipped almost like the indians; but on their heads they had the skins of horses' heads, with the ears and mane erect, and their shields were made from the skins of cranes. these ethiopians of the east were not distinguished from the others in form and character, but by their language and hair. the libyan ethiopians, _i.e._ the negroes, had the curliest hair of all men; but the hair of the eastern branch was straight.[ ] we have already observed that now, as in the days of xerxes, remains of the dark-coloured pre-aryan population of india are found on the right bank of the indus (p. ). of the indians "who never obeyed darius,"[ ] herodotus tells us that they lived the furthest to the east of all the nations about which anything definite was known. still further in that direction were sandy deserts. the indians were the largest of all nations, and the indus was the only river beside the nile in which crocodiles are found (they are alligators).[ ] the remotest parts of the earth have always the best products, and india, the remotest inhabited land to the east, was no exception. the birds and the quadrupeds were far greater in size here than elsewhere, with the exception of the horse; for the nisæan horses of the medes were larger than the horses of the indians. moreover, india possessed an extraordinary abundance of gold, of which some was dug up from mines, and some brought down by the rivers, and some obtained from the deserts. the wild trees also produced a wool which in beauty and excellence surpassed the wool of sheep; this the indians used for clothing. there were many nations of the indians, and they spoke different languages. some were stationary; some dwelt in the marshes of the rivers, and lived on raw fish, which they caught in canoes made of reeds, and every joint of the reed made a canoe. these indians wore garments of bark, which they wove like cloths, and then drew on like coats of mail. eastward of these dwelt the padæans, a migratory tribe, who ate raw flesh; and when any one, even the nearest relative, among them was sick, they slew him, in order to eat the corpse. this custom was also observed by the women. even the few who attained to old age they killed, in order to eat them. other indian nations lived only on herbs, which they ate cooked, and troubled themselves neither about their sick nor their dead, whom they carried out, like the sick, into desert places. all the nations spoken of were black in colour.[ ] these, the oldest accounts from the west on the ancient pre-aryan population of india, and on the black-skins of the rigveda, we owe to herodotus. his statements about their physical formation are correct; those on their savage life may be exaggerated; but even to this day a part of these nations live in the marshes and mountains in a condition hardly removed from that of animals. the contrast between the light-coloured and dark population of india, between the aryas and the ancient inhabitants, did not escape ctesias. india, he maintained, was as large as the rest of asia, and the inhabitants of india almost as numerous as all the other nations put together. the indians were both white and black. he had himself seen white indians, five men and two women. the sun in india appeared ten times as large as in other lands, and the heat was suffocating. the indus was a great river flowing through mountains and plains; in the narrowest places the water occupied a space of stades, or five miles, in the broadest it reached stades.[ ] the river watered the land. in india it did not rain, and there were no storms there, though there were violent whirlwinds which carried everything before them.[ ] on the indus grew reeds small and great; the stoutest reeds could not be spanned by two men, and the height of the largest was equal to the mast of a ship.[ ] the fruit of the palms also in india was three times as large as in babylonia, and the sheep and goats there were equal in size to asses elsewhere, and had such enormous tails that they had to be cut off to enable them to walk. ctesias goes on to describe the large cocks of india, with their beautiful combs, and broad tails of gold, dark-blue, and emerald; the peacocks, the many-coloured birds with red faces, dark-blue necks, and black beards, which had a human tongue, and could speak indian, and would speak greek if they were taught; the little apes with tails four cubits long.[ ] he was the first to describe the elephant to the greeks.[ ] he had seen these animals, and had been present in babylon when the elephants of the persian king had torn up palm trees with their roots out of the ground. these animals could even throw down the walls of cities. in war the king of india was preceded by , elephants, and of the strongest and bravest followed him.[ ] after the army of alexander of macedon had encamped in the panjab, the greeks could give more accurate accounts of india. megasthenes assures us that india reached in breadth, from west to east, an extent of from , to , stades ( to miles), while the length, from north to south, was , stades ( miles);[ ] and in these distances he is not very greatly in error, for, measured in a direct line, the breadth is , stades ( miles), and the length , stades ( miles). to the north india was bounded by lofty mountains, which the greeks called caucasus, and the indians paropamisos (paropanishadha[ ]), and emodos, or imaos. emodos, like imaos, is the greek form of the old indian name for the himalayas, haimavata (himavat).[ ] in india there were many great mountains, but still greater plains; and even the mountains were covered with fruit-trees, and contained in their bowels precious stones of various kinds--crystals, carbuncles, and others. gold also and silver, metals and salt, could be obtained from the mines,[ ] and the rivers carried down gold from the mountains.[ ] the streams of india were the largest and the most numerous in the world. the indus was larger than the nile, and all the rivers of asia; the ganges, which took an easterly direction on reaching the plains, was a great river even at its source, and reached a width of stades, or - / miles. in many places it formed lakes, so that one bank could not be seen from the other, and its depth reached fathoms.[ ] the first statement is exaggerated, the second is correct for the lower course of the river. the indus, according to megasthenes, had navigable affluents, and the ganges , the names of which he could enumerate.[ ] in all there were navigable rivers in india. this abundance of streams in india the greeks explained by the fact that the lands which surrounded the country--ariana, as the greeks call eastern iran, bactria, and the land of the scythians--were higher than india, so that the waters from them flowed down, and were collected there.[ ] the water was also the cause of the great fertility of india, which the greeks unite in extolling. the rivers not only brought down, as nearchus observes, soft and good earth into the land from the hills,[ ] but they traversed it in such a manner that, from the universal irrigation, it was turned into a fruit garden.[ ] onesicritus tells us that india is better irrigated by its rivers than egypt by its canals. the nile flows straight on through a long and narrow land, and so is continually passing into a different climate and different air, while the indian rivers flow through much larger and broader plains, and continue long in the same region. hence they are more nourishing than the nile, and the fish are larger than the fish in the nile;[ ] they also refresh the land better by their moist exhalations.[ ] besides, there were the inundations caused by the rivers; and the land was also watered by the heavy rains, which fell constantly each year at a fixed period with the regular winds, so that the rivers rose fully cubits above their beds,--a statement quite accurate,--and in many places the plains were changed into marshes,[ ] in consequence of which the indus had sometimes taken a new channel through them.[ ] since, then, the warmth of the sun was the same in india as in arabia and ethiopia,--for india lay far to the south, and in the most southern parts of the land the constellation of the bear was seen no longer, and the shadows fell in the other direction, i.e. to the south,--[ ]while in india there was more water and a moister atmosphere than in those other countries, the creatures of the water, air, and land were much larger and stronger in india than anywhere else.[ ] further, as the water in the river and that which fell from heaven was tempered by the sun's heat, the growth of the roots and plants was extraordinarily vigorous. the strength of the tiger, which, according to megasthenes, is twice the size of the lion, the docility of the elephant, the splendour of the birds, were the admiration of the greeks. with horror they saw the whale for the first time in the indian waters. nearchus caused his ship to be rowed forward at double speed to contend with this peaceful monster of the deep. according to the statement of megasthenes--which for the land of the ganges is quite correct--there are two harvests in india. for the winter sowing rice and barley were used, and other kinds of fruit unknown to the greeks; for the summer sowing, sesame, rice, and bosmoron; while during the rainy season flax and millet were planted, so that in india want and famine were unknown.[ ] equally luxuriant in growth were the herbs and reeds. there was a reed there which produced honey without bees (the sugar-cane); and in southern india cinnamon, nard, and the rest of the spices grew as well as in arabia and ethiopia.[ ] the greeks did not know that the cinnamon is a native of india only, and that the bark came to them from that country, though it came through arabia. the marshes of india were filled with roots, wholesome or deadly; the trees there grew to a larger size than elsewhere; some were so tall that an arrow could not be shot over them, and the leaves were as large as shields. there were other trees there of which the trunks could not be spanned by five men, and the branches, as though bent, grew downwards till they touched the earth, and then, springing up anew, formed fresh trunks, to send out other arches, so that from one tree was formed a grove, not unlike a tent supported by many poles. fifty or even horsemen could take their mid-day rest under such a tree. nearchus even goes so far as to say that there were trees of this kind under which there was room for , men.[ ] there were also trees in india which produced intoxicating fruits. this description of the indian fig tree and the statements about the shelter its branches afford are not exaggerated. by intoxicating fruits the coco and fan-palms are, no doubt, meant, from which palm-wine is made.[ ] the northern, _i.e._ the light-coloured, indians, or aryas, are said by the greeks of this period to have most closely resembled the egyptians in the colour of their skin and their shape. they were light, delicate, and slim of body, and not so heavy as other nations. they were free from diseases, for their climate was healthy, and their land possessed good air, pure water, and wholesome fruits. the southern indians, _i.e._ the non-aryan population, who were at that time far less broken up in the deccan by aryan and other settlers than now, and must therefore have existed in far greater masses, were not quite so black as the ethiopians (the negroes), and had not, like them, a snub nose and woolly hair. strabo was of opinion that their colour was not so black owing to the moist air of india, which also caused the hair of the inhabitants to be straight.[ ] of the millions, at which the population of india is now estimated, more then millions either spring from the aryas or have adopted their civilisation. the number of the dark-coloured races, dwelling in the mountains and broad marshes, who have remained free from the dominion of the aryas, the mohammedans, and the english, and are, therefore, strangers to their civilisation, is estimated at millions. footnotes: [ ] whitney, "language," p. ; benfey, "geschichte der sprachwissenchaft," s. . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , ; , , . cf. manu, , . that in the rigveda the dasyus are always enemies, and even evil spirits, is beyond a doubt, and cannot excite any wonder when we remember how the indians confound the natural and supernatural; muir, "sanskrit texts," ^ , ff. on the original meaning of the word dasyu, and its signification in the mahabharata, cf. lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] according to whitney ("language," p. ), the language of the kolas and santals is quite distinct from the dravidian languages. lassen's view on the relation of the vindhya tribes to the dravida and the nishada is given, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] the ganges (ganga) is mentioned only twice in the rigveda, and then without any emphasis or epithet; "rigveda," , , ; , . this book is of later origin; roth, "zur literatur und geschichte des veda," s. , , , . [ ] this name, it is true, may also have arisen from the fact that the indians turned to the east when praying. [ ] the root _syand_ means "to flow." [ ] arrian, "ind." , ; "anab." , . [ ] kings ix. - ; x. , , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ff.; ^ , ff. [ ] arrian, "ind." , . [ ] steph. _sub. voc._ [ ] herod. , , ; , . [ ] herod. , ff. [ ] "mahavança," ed. turnour, p. . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] herod. , , ff. [ ] ctes. "ecl." . [ ] "ecl." , . [ ] "ecl." . [ ] ctes. "ecl." ; aelian, , . [ ] herodotus only makes a passing mention of the elephant in libya, , . [ ] Ælian , . arrian also ("anab." , ) maintains that the indus is stades in breadth, and even broader; megasthenes also relates that the elephants tore down walls, and that the bamboo was a fathom in thickness. strabo, p. . that ctesias followed persian-bactrian accounts is clear from the fact that the scene of all his history is the north-west of india. he knows that india is a civilised land, though he also believes that it obeys only one king; he knows the veneration of the indians for their kings, their contempt of death, and some products of indian industry. the fabulous stories of the pygmæans, dog-heads, shovel-eared, shadow-feet, and macrobii he did not invent, but copied. similar marvels of men with dogs' heads, and without a head, and of unicorns, are narrated by herodotus, only he ascribes these stories to the western ethiopians, not to the eastern ( , ). homer had already sung of the pygmæans ("il." , ). hecatæus had spoken of the shovel-eared and shadow-feet (fragm. , , ed. klausen), and also aristophanes ("aves," ). of the griffins, the one-eyed arimaspians, the long-lived, happy hyperboreans, aristeas of proconnesus had told and Æschylus had sung long before ctesias (above, iii. ). megasthenes repeats the legends of the pygmæans, shovel-eared, shadow-feet, dog-heads, and adds accounts of men without mouths, and other marvels. ctesias, therefore, had predecessors as well as followers in these stories. the fantastic world with which the indians surrounded themselves, the nicknames and strange peculiarities which they ascribed to some of the old population and to distant nations, reached the persians, and through them the greeks. "kirata" of small stature in the eastern himalayas, against which vishnu's bird fights, Çunamukhas (dog-heads), "brow-eyed" cannibals, "one-footed" men, who bring as tribute very swift horses, occur in the indian epics, and in other writings. on the divine mountain meru, according to the indians, dwell the uttara kuru, _i.e._ the northern kurus, who live for , years, among whom is no heat, where the streams flow in golden beds, and roll down pearls and precious stones instead of gravel. lassen, "ind. alterth." , ; , , ff.; muir, _loc. cit._ ^ , ff. according to the cosmology of the buddhists, whose sutras also knew these uttara kuru, mount meru is the centre of the world. to the south of meru is yambudvipa, to the north the region of the uttara kuru, who live for years, while the inhabitants of yambudvipa only live for years. burnouf, "introduction à l'histoire du bouddhisme," p. ; koppen, "buddh." p. . ptolemy, obviously following indian sources, puts the [greek: ottora korra] to the north of the imaus, beyond the highest range, which with the indians is a spur of the divine mountain meru. this land and nation is obviously the garden of yima and his elect, whom the myth of iran places on the divine hill. these are the long-lived hyperboreans of the greeks, who dwell in the remote north beyond the rhipaean mountains--one of the old common myths of the aryan and greek branch of the indo-germanic stock. [ ] megasthenes and eratosthenes in strabo, pp. , ; arrian, "ind." , . [ ] lassen explains paropamisus as paropa-nishadha, "lower mountain," in opposition to nishadha, "high mountain," by which the high ridge of the hindu kush is meant, _loc. cit._ ^ , , _n._ . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," ^ , , . [ ] strabo, pp. , . [ ] diod. , ; strabo, pp. , . [ ] megasthenes in strabo, pp. , ; cf. arrian, "ind." . diodorus allows the upper ganges a breadth of stades, at palibothra a breadth of stades-- , ; , . [ ] arrian, "ind." . [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, pp. , . [ ] aristobulus in strabo, pp. , ; cf. curtius, , , ed. mützell. [ ] these statements, which are quite correct, are found in megasthenes in strabo, p. ; diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; diod. , . [ ] strabo, pp. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. ; arrian, "ind." . [ ] strabo, pp. , . arrian ("ind." ) mentions the sanskrit name of the umbrella palm, _tala_, and tells us that the shoots were eaten, which is also correct. [ ] arrian, "ind." , ; strabo, pp. , , , , , . chapter ii. the aryas on the indus. we have already examined the earliest date at which the kings who reigned in antiquity in the lower valley of nile attempted to bring their actions into everlasting remembrance by pictures and writing. the oldest inscription preserved there dates from the period immediately preceding the erection of the great pyramids. the same impulse swayed the rulers of babylon and asshur, of whom we possess monuments reaching beyond the year b.c. the hebrews also began at a very early time to record the fortunes of their progenitors and their nation. with the indians the reverse is the case. here neither prince nor people show the least interest in preserving the memory of their actions or fortunes. no other nation has been so late in recording their traditions, and has been content to leave them in so fragmentary a condition. for this reason, fancy is in india more lively, the treasures of poetry are more rich and inexhaustible. thus it becomes the object of our investigation, from the remains of this poetry, and the wrecks of literature, to ascertain and reconstruct, as far as possible, the history of the indians. from the first the want of fixed tradition precludes the attempt to establish in detail the course of the history of the aryan states and their rulers. our attempts are essentially limited to the discovery of the stages in the advance of the power of the aryas in the regions where they first set foot, to the deciphering of the successive steps through which their religious views and intellectual culture were developed. and when we have thus exhumed the buried history of the indians, we are assisted in determining its periods by the contact of the indians with their western neighbours, the persian kingdom, and the greeks, and by the accounts of western writers on these events. the oldest evidence of the life of the aryas, whose immigration into the region of the indus and settlement there we have been able to fix about _b.c._, is given in a collection of prayers and hymns of praise, the rigveda, _i.e._ "the knowledge of thanksgiving." it is a selection or collection of poems and invocations in the possession of the priestly families, of hymns and prayers arising in these families, and sung and preserved by them. in the ten books which make up this collection, the poems of the first book are ascribed to minstrels of various families; in some the minstrel is even named. "this song was made by dirghatamas, of the race of angiras;" "this new hymn was composed by nodhas, a descendant of gautama." of the other books, each is ascribed to a single family of priests--to the gritsamadas, viçvamitras, vamadevas, atris, bharadvajas, vasishthas, and kanvas. the tenth book contains isolated pieces which found no place in the earlier books; several of these pieces bear the stamp of a later origin, as they exhibit a more complicated ritual, the operation of various classes of priests, and reflections of an abstract character.[ ] we see, then, that from ancient times there were among the aryas families in possession of effectual invocations of the gods, who knew how to pronounce and sing the prayers at sacrifice, and offer the sacrifice in due form. we may gather further from the rigveda that these families were distinguished by special symbols. the family of vasishtha had a coil or knot of hair on the right side,[ ] the family of atri had three knots, the family of angiras five locks, while the bhrigus shaved their hair.[ ] sung for centuries in these families, in these circles of minstrels and priests, these poems were thus revised and preserved, until at length out of the possessions of these schools arose the collection which we have in the rigveda. we find frequent mention in the poems of the invocations of ancient time, of the prayers of the fathers, and hence what is in itself probable becomes certain--that we have united in the rigveda poems of various dates, and invocations divided in their origin by centuries. though the minstrels of the poems of the rigveda could look back on a distant past, though they could distinguish the sages of the ancient, the earlier time, and the present, and the men of old from those of the later and most recent times,[ ] there is yet nothing in these poems to point to an earlier home, to older habitations, or previous fortunes of the nation, unless, indeed, we ought to find an indication of life in a more northern region in the fact that the older poems in the collection count by winters, and the later by autumns.[ ] in any case there is no remembrance of earlier abodes, and therefore we must conclude that even the oldest of these poems had been sung long after the immigration. if the assumption established above, that the immigration took place soon after _b.c._, is approximately probable, the extinction of any memory of earlier abodes and fortunes will hardly allow us to carry back the origin of the oldest songs of the veda beyond the sixteenth century _b.c._ on the other hand, the hymns of the veda contain conceptions of the creation and early ages of the world, the outlines of which, like the conception of the contrast between the men of the old time and the present, must have been brought by the aryas into the land of the indus from the common possession of the aryan tribes. the oldest man, the father and progenitor of the aryas, is, in the hymns of the veda, manu, the son of vivasvat, _i.e._ "the illuminating," the sun. frequent mention occurs in these poems of the "father manu," of "our father manu," "the paternal path which manu trod," "the children of manu," "the people of manu." manu brought the first offering to the gods of light; with atharvan and dadhyanch he kindled the first sacrificial fire; he has set agni to give light to all the people, and to summon the gods, and prayed to him with bhrigu and angiras.[ ] five races of men sprung from agni--the yadus, the turvaças, druhyus, anus, and purus.[ ] beside manu stands yama (_geminus_), like manu, the son of vivasvat. in the hymns of the rigveda he is the assembler of the people, the king, the pattern of just dealing. he "has discovered the path which leads from the deeps to the heights;" he "has removed the darkness," and "made smooth the path of the godly." he first discovered the resting-place from which no one drives out those who are there. from the depth of the earth he first ascended to the heights of heaven; he has had experience of death, he has entered into heaven, and there gathered round him all the godly and brave. "he went before us, and found for us a dwelling-place on a plain, which no one takes from us, whither the fathers of old time have gone; thither his path guides every child of earth."[ ] manu and yama are not unknown to the mythology of the nations of iran. with the iranians yama is yima; his father, according to the laws of the bactrian, the language of east iran, is not vivasvat, but vivanghat. the meaning is of course the same. according to the myths of iran, yima is the sovereign who first established the _cultus_ of fire, and first tilled the field with the plough. in his reign of years there was neither heat nor cold, hunger nor thirst, age nor sickness, hate nor strife. and when this golden age came to an end, yima continued to live an equally happy life in his garden on the mountain of the gods (_i.e._ in heaven), where the sun, moon, and stars shone together, where there was neither night nor darkness, in everlasting light with the elect. in the rigveda the sacrificers of old time, who kindled the fire with manu, and offered the first sacrifice,--angiras, bhrigu, atharvan, and their families,--are half divine creatures, though not quite on an equal with manu and yama. they were ranged with the spirits of light, and shone like them, though with less brilliancy.[ ] in the faith of the aryas the good and pious deed confers supernatural power; it makes the body light, and therefore like the body of the gods. the myths of iran also praise certain heroes and sages of old time, who sacrificed first after yima. we can ascertain with exactness the region in which the greater number of these poems grew up. the indus is especially the object of praise; the "seven rivers" are mentioned as the dwelling-place of the aryas. this aggregate of seven is made up of the indus itself and the five streams which unite and flow into it from the east--the vitasta, asikni, iravati, vipaça, Çatadru. the seventh river is the sarasvati, which is expressly named "the seven-sistered." the land of the seven rivers is, as has already been remarked, known to the iranians. the "_sapta sindhava_" of the rigveda are, no doubt, the _hapta hendu_ of the avesta, and in the form harahvaiti, the arachotus of the greeks, we again find the sarasvati in the east of the table-land of iran. as the yamuna and the ganges are only mentioned in passing (p. ), and the vindhya mountains and narmadas are not mentioned at all, the conclusion is certain that, at the time when the songs of the aryas were composed, the nation was confined to the land of the panjab, though they may have already begun to move eastward beyond the valley of the sarasvati.[ ] we gather from the songs of the rigveda that the aryas on the indus were not one civic community. they were governed by a number of princes (_raja_). some of these ruled on the bank of the indus, others in the neighbourhood of the sarasvati.[ ] they sometimes combined; they also fought not against the dasyus only, but against each other. they ruled over villages (_grama_), and fortified walled places (_pura_), of which overseers are mentioned (_gramani_, _purpati_).[ ] we find minstrels and priests in their retinue. "glorious songs of praise," says one of them, "did i frame by my skill for svanaya, the son of bavya, who dwells on the indus, the unconquerable prince." other poems in the veda tell us that the princes make presents to the minstrels and priests of cows, chariots, robes, slave-women, and bars of gold. whatever we may have to deduct from these statements on the score of poetical exaggeration, they still show that the court and possessions of the princes cannot have been utterly insignificant. the descriptions of the ornaments and weapons of the gods in the rigveda are without a doubt merely enlarged copies of the style and habit of the princes. the gods travel in golden coats of mail, on splendid chariots, yoked with horses; they have palaces with a thousand pillars and a thousand gates; they linger among the lights of the sky, like a king among his wives.[ ] from these pictures, by reducing the scale, we may represent to ourselves the life and customs of the princes in the land of the indus. from the numerous invocations for victory and booty, it follows that the life of the aryas in the panjab was disturbed by wars, that raids and feuds must have been frequent. war-chariots, and infantry, standard-bearers, bows, spears, swords, axes, and trumpets are mentioned.[ ] we learn that those who fought in chariots were superior to the foot-soldiers. "there appears like the lustre of a cloud when the mailed warrior stalks into the heart of the combat. conquer with an unscathed body; let the might of thine armour protect thee. with the bow may we conquer cattle; with the bow may we conquer in the struggle for the mastery, and in the sharp conflicts. the bow frustrates the desire of our enemy; with the bow may we conquer all the regions round. the bow-string approaches close to the bowman's ear, as if to speak to or embrace a dear friend; strung upon the bow, it twangs like the scream of a woman, and carries the warrior safely through the battle. standing on the chariot, the skilful charioteer directs the horses whithersoever he wills. laud the power of the reins, which far behind control the impulse of the horses. the strong-hoofed steeds, rushing on with the chariots, utter shrill neighings; trampling the foe with their hoofs, they crush them, never receding." again and again are the gods invoked that the bow-strings of the enemy may be snapped.[ ] the poems of the veda distinguish the rich from the poor. the cultivation of the land is practised and recommended. corn (_dhana_), barley, beans, and sesame were sown, but the rice of the ganges valley is unknown. channels also are mentioned for leading water on the land. healing herbs are not unknown to the poems, nor the person who is skilled in applying them, the physician. we find in them the desire for health and a long life,[ ] blessed with abundance, with sons and daughters. beautiful garments, precious stones, adorned women with four knots of hair, dancers, wine-houses, and dice are repeatedly mentioned. weaving and leather-work are known, and also the crafts of the smith, the carpenter, the wheelwright, and the shipbuilder.[ ] among the aryas of those days more attention must have been given to the breeding of cattle than to the cultivation of the field. a great number of similes and metaphors in the hymns of the veda show that the aryas must have lived long with their flocks, and that they stood to them in relations of the closest familiarity. the daughter is the milkmaid (_duhitar_), the consort of the prince is even in later poems the buffalo-cow (_mahishî_), the prince is at times the cow-herd, or protector of cows (_gôpa_), the assembly of the tribe and the fold which encloses the cows are called by the same name (_gôshtha_), and the word expressing a feud (_gavisshthi_) denotes in the first instance the desire for cows. similes are taken especially from cows and horses. beside cattle and horses, buffaloes, sheep, and goats are mentioned. the gods are invoked to protect and feed the cows, to increase the herds, to make the cows full of milk, and satisfy the horses, to lead the herds to good pastures, and protect them from misfortune on the way. at the sacrifices parched corn was sprinkled for the horses of the gods.[ ] in regard to the ethical feeling and attitude of the nation, we learn from the hymns of the rigveda that it was filled at that time with a courageous and warlike spirit, with freshness and enjoyment of life. liberality and fidelity were highly praised; theft and plunder held in contempt; faithlessness and lying severely condemned. the friend of the gods could look forward to horses, chariots, and cows. beautiful to look upon, and filled with vigorous strength, he will shine in the assembly of the people. there is a lively feeling that the gods feel themselves injured by untruth and falsehood, by neglect and improper offering of the sacrifice, and the conscience is awake. the gods are earnestly entreated to forgive the sins of the fathers, and those committed by the suppliants, in wine, play, or heedlessness, to soften their anger, and spare the transgressor from punishment or death. if princes and nobles did not content themselves with one wife, monogamy was nevertheless the rule, so far as we can see. the beautiful maiden is accounted happy because she can choose her husband in the nation. many a one certainly would be content with the wealth of him who seeks her. in the beneficent forces and phenomena of nature, which are friendly and helpful to men, the religious conceptions of the aryas see the power of kindly deities; and in all the influences and phenomena which injure the prosperity and possessions of men they see the rule of evil deities. to the aryas light was joy and life, darkness fear and death; the night and the gloom filled them with alarm, the light cheered them. with gladsome hearts they greeted the returning glow of morning, the beams of the sun, which awaken us to life. the obscuring of the sun by dark clouds raised the apprehension that the heavenly light might be taken from them. in the heat of the summer the springs and streams were dried up, the pastures were withered, the herds suffered from want, and therefore the more fervent were the thanks of the aryas to the spirits who poured down fructifying water from heaven, and caused the springs, streams, and rivers again to flow full in their banks. the basis of these views the aryas brought with them into the valley of the indus. their name for the deity of light--_deva_, from _div_, to shine--is found among the greek, italian, lettish, and celtic nations in the forms [greek: theoi], _dii_, _diewas_, and _dia_; it recurs in the zeus (_dyaus_) of the greeks, and the jupiter (_dyauspitar_) of the romans. the god of the upper air is with the aryas varuna, the uranos of the greeks. and these were not the only ideas possessed by the aryas before their immigration. when they had broken off from the original stem of the indo-european tribes, they must for a time have lived in union with another branch of the same stem, which inhabited the table-land of iran, and only after a long period of union did they become a nation, and emigrate to the east. the nucleus of the view of the nature and action of the gods is identical in the aryas and the tribes of iran to such a degree that it can only have grown up in a common life. in both it lies in the struggle and opposition in which the spirits of light stand to the spirits of darkness, the spirits who give water to the spirits who parch up all things--in the contest of good and evil gods. it is assistance and protection against the evil spirits, the boon of light and water, which is sought for in the worship of both nations. the names of the deities of light, which the indians and the iranians serve, are the same. mitra, aryaman, bhaga, ushas are invoked on the indus and sarasvati as well as on the hilmend, in bactria and media. here, as there, the beneficent morning wind which drives away the clouds of night is called vayu; the same drink offerings were offered under the same names in both nations to the good gods. with the indians atharvan lights the sacrificial fire;[ ] among the iranians the fire priests are called athravas. the chief of the evil spirits, against which the good spirits have to contend, is called veretra among the iranians, and vritra among the indians; another evil spirit is called azhi (_aji_) in one nation, ahi in the other. such was the development given to the common inheritance from the parent stock, attained while the airyas and aryas lived together; and after the community was broken up, and the two nations became separated, those views received a peculiar shape in each. the point in this special development reached by the aryas while yet in the panjab we know from the poems of the rigveda. to the iranians, as to the aryas, the brightness of fire was a friendly spirit which gave light in darkness. to it, among both nations, almost the first place was allotted. by far the greatest number of invocations in the rigveda are addressed to this spirit, agni (_ignis_). when the darkness of evening came on, the glowing fire scared the beasts of prey from the encampment of men and the herds, and so far as the flame shone it drove back the evil spirits of the night.[ ] then the demons were seen from a distance hovering round the kindled fire, and the changing outlines of their forms were seen on the skirts of the darkness. thus in the rigveda, the fire-god is a bringer of light, who overpowers the night with red hues, who drives away the rakshasas, or evil spirits; he is the conqueror and slayer of demons, with sharp teeth and keen weapons, a beautiful youth of mighty power. but the fire of the hearth also unites the family, and provides them with nourishment. as such agni is the gleaming guest of men, the dear friend and companion of men, the far-seeing house-lord, who dwells in every house, and despises none; a god, giving food and wealth;[ ] the protector, leader, and guide of his nation. as his power carries the sacrificial gifts to the gods, he is also the priest of the house; to the sensuous conception of the aryas he is the messenger of men to the gods; his gleam leads the eye of the gods to the sacrifice of men; hence he is himself a priest, the first of priests, the true offerer of sacrifice, the mediator between heaven and earth, the lord of all religious duties, the protector and supporter of the worship. with his far-reaching tongue, the smoke of the kindled fire of sacrifice, he announces to the gods the gifts offered, the prayers which accompany the sacrifice, and brings the gods to the place of offering. through agni they consume their food. he is to the gods what the goblet is to the mouth of men.[ ] with a thousand eyes agni watches over him who brings him food, _i.e._ wood, and pours fat and clarified butter into his mouth; he rejects not the gifts of him who possesses neither cow nor axe, and brings but small pieces of wood; he protects him from hunger, and sends him all kinds of good; in the battle he fights among the foremost, and consumes the enemy like dry underwood. when he yokes to his chariot the red, wind-driven horses, he roars like a bull; the birds are terror-stricken when his sparks come consuming the grass; when, like a lion, he blackens the forest with his tongue, and seizes it with his flames, which sound like the waves of the sea; when he shears off the hair of the earth, as a man shaves his beard, and marks his path with blackness. nothing can withstand the lightning of the sky, the sounding winds, and agni; by his power the gods varuna, mitra, and aryaman are victorious.[ ] in the conception of the indians agni was born from the double wood; in this he lay concealed. they kindled fire by friction. a short staff was fixed in a round disc of wood, and whirled quickly round till fire was kindled.[ ] this process was the birth of agni. the disc was compared to the mother, the staff to the father; the disc was impregnated by friction, and soon a living creature springs forth from the dry wood. at the moment of birth this golden-haired child begins to consume his parents; he grows up in marvellous wise, like the offspring of serpents, without a mother to give suck. eagerly he stretches forth his sharp tongue to the wood of the sacrifices; with gnashing and neighing he springs up like a horse on high, when the priests sprinkle melted butter; streaming brightly forth, he rolls up the sacred smoke, and touches the sky with his hair, uniting with the sun.[ ] yet not on earth only is agni born; he is born in the air and the sky by the lightning; in the lightning he descends to earth, and he is thus the twice-born. but as the lightning descends in the torrents of the storm, agni is also born from the water of the sky, and is thus the triple-born; he is also named the bull begotten in the bed of water.[ ] "we call on agni, who gives food, with solemn songs," we are told in a hymn. "we choose thee as a messenger to the all-knowing; thy rising gleam shines far into the sky. to thee, rich youth, is every sacrifice offered; be gracious to us to-day, and for the future. sacrifice thyself to the mightiest gods; bring our sacrifice to the gods. mighty as a horse, who neighs in the battle, give rich gifts, o agni, to the suppliant. bring thyself to us, o mighty one; shine, most beloved of the gods; let the winged smoke ascend. bring thyself to us, thou whom the gods once gave to man upon the earth. give us treasures; gladden us. come, ascending at once to help us, like savitar; shine and protect us from sin by knowledge; make us strong for action and life; destroy our enemies; protect us, agni, from the rakshasas; protect us from the murderer and cruel bird of prey, and from the enemy who plans our destruction, thou shining youth. strike down the enemies who bring no gifts, who sharpen their arrows against us, thou who art armed with a gleaming beam as with a club, that our enemies may never rule over us. no one can approach thy darting, strong, fearful flames; burn the evil spirits, and every enemy."[ ] if agni scared away the spirits of the night for the aryas, they greeted with the liveliest joy the earliest light, the approach of breaking day, the first white rays of the dawn, which assured them that the night had not been victorious over the light, that the daylight was returning. these rays are for them a beautiful pair of twins, the brothers of ushas, the morning glow, the sons of the sky.[ ] they are named the two açvins, _i.e._ the swift, the horsemen; and also nasatyas, _i.e._ apparently, the trustworthy, or guileless. swift spirits, they hasten on before the dawn. as they pass onward victorious against the spirits of the night, and each morning assist the earth against the darkness, they are the helpers and protectors of men. that this conception of the açvins springs from the common possession of the parent-stock of the indo-europeans, is proved by the dioscuri of the greeks. dioskouroi means, "the young sons of the sky," and in the myth of the greeks they are the brothers of helena, _i.e._ of the bright one, the light; and if, in this myth, they live alternately in heaven and in the gloom of the under-world, this fact is no doubt founded in the idea that the first beams which break forth from the night belong to the darkness as much as to the light. in the rigveda, the açvins are compared to two swans, two falcons, two deer, two buffaloes, two watchful hounds. they are invoked to harness their light cars, drawn by swan-like, falcon-like, golden-winged horses, to descend and drink the morning offering with ushas (the [greek: auôs, eôs] of the greeks.) they heal the sick, the blind, the lame, and make the old young again, and strong; they give wealth and nourishment, they accompany ships over the wide sea, and protect them. in invocations in the rigveda to the açvins, in which the benefits done by them to the forefathers are extolled and enumerated, we find: "açvins, come on your chariot which is yoked with the good horses, which flies like the falcon, and is swifter than the wind, or the thoughts of men, on which ye visit the houses of pious men; come to our dwelling. on the chariot, whose triple wheel hastens through the triple world (the indians distinguish the heaven of light, the region of the atmosphere and the clouds, and the earth as three worlds) approach us. make the cows full of milk, and feed our horses, and give us goodly progeny. approach in swift, fair-coursing chariots; listen, ye bounteous, to my prayer; ye açvins, whom the men of old extol as driving away want. the falcons, the swift-winged ones, who fly like the vultures in the sky, may they bring you, ye nasatyas, like water streaming from heaven, to the sacrifice. in old days ye gave nourishment to manu; ye speedily brought food to atri in the dark dungeon, and freed him from his bonds; ye restored light to the blind kanva, ye bounteous ones, whom we love to praise. with your onward flying horses ye brought bhujyu without harm from the wide pathless sea; for Çayu, when he prayed to you, ye filled the cow with milk, and gave to pedu the white horse, clear-neighing, fearful, who is victorious over enemies, and defeats them. even as ye were of old, we invoke you, beautiful-born, to come to our help; come with the swift flight of the falcons to us, for i summon you to a sacrifice prepared at the first light of the eternal dawn."[ ] this dawn is in the hymns of the veda a ruddy cow, a tawny mare, a beautiful maiden, who is born anew every day, when the açvins yoke their chariot.[ ] many are the generations of men that she has seen, yet she grows not old. like a maiden robed for the dance, like a daughter adorned by her mother, as a loving wife approaches her husband, as a woman rising in beauty from the bath, smiling and trusting to her irresistible charms, unveils her bosom to the eye of the beholder, so does ushas divide the darkness and unveil the wealth hidden therein. from the far east she travels on her gleaming car, which the ruddy horses and ruddy cows bring swiftly over thirty yojanas, and illumines the world to the uttermost end. she looses the cows (_i.e._ the bright clouds) from the stall, and causes the birds to fly from their nests; she awakes the five tribes (p. ), as an active housewife wakes her household, and sets each to his work; she passes by no house, but everywhere kindles the sacrificial fire, and gives breath and life to all. occasionally the hymns call upon her to accelerate her awakening, to linger no longer, to hasten that the sun may not wither her away.[ ] "come, ushas," we find in invocations, "descend from the light of the sky on gracious paths: let the red cows lead thee into the house of the sacrificer. the light cows bring in the gleaming ushas; her beams appear in the east. as bold warriors flash their swords, the ruddy cows press on; already they are shining clear. the bright beam of ushas breaks through the dark veil of black night at the edge of heaven. we are beyond the darkness. rise up. the light is there. thou hast opened the path for the sun; rise up, awakening glad voices. listen to our prayer, o giver of all good; increase our progeny."[ ] the god of the sun was invoked under the names surya and savitar (savitri), _i.e._ "the impeller." the first name seems to belong specially to the rising, the second to the sinking, sun. "already," the hymn tells us, "the beams raise up surya, so that all see him. with the night, the stars retire like thieves before surya, the all-seeing. his beams shine clear over the nations, like glowing flames. before gods and men thou risest up, surya. with thy glance thou lookest over the nations, wanderest through heaven, the broad clouds, measuring the day and the night. thy chariot, bright surya, far-seeing one with the gleaming hair, seven yellow horses draw. looking on thee after the darkness, we invoke thee, the highest light. banish the pain and fear of my heart; pale fear we give to the thrushes and parrots. the sun of aditi has arisen with all his victorious power;[ ] he bows down the enemy before me."[ ] a hymn says to savitar: "i summon savitar to help, who calls all gods and men to their place, when he returns to the dark heaven. he goes on the ascending path, and on the sinking one; shining from far, he removes transgression. the god ascends the great gold-adorned chariot, armed with the golden goad. the yellow horses with the white feet bring on the light, drawing the golden yoke. with golden hands savitar advances between heaven and earth. golden-handed, renewer, rich one, come to us; beat off from us the rakshasas; come, thou who art invoked every night on thine old firm paths through the air, which are free from dust; protect us to-day also."[ ] in an evening song to savitar we find: "with the swift horses which savitar unyokes, he brings even the course of the swift one to a stand: the weaving woman rolls up her web; the workman stops in the middle of his work; where men dwell, the glimmer of the house fire is spread here and there; the mother puts the best piece before the son; he who has gone abroad for gain returns, and every wanderer yearns for home; the bird seeks the nest, the herd the stall. from the sky, from the water, and the earth, savitar caused gifts to come to us, to bless the suppliant as well as thy friend, the minstrel, whose words sound far."[ ] a third god of light, who seems to stand in some relation to the sun, especially the setting sun, is pushan, _i.e._ "the nourisher." he pastures the cows of the sky, the bright clouds, and leads them back into the stall; he never loses one; he is the protector and increaser of cattle; he weaves a garment for the sheep; he protects the horses; he is also lord and keeper of the path of heaven and earth; he protects and guides the wanderers in their paths; he brings the bride to the bridegroom, and leads the souls of the dead into the other world.[ ] above the spirits of fire, of the first streaks of light, of the dawn, and the sun, are those gods of the clear sky, with which we have already made acquaintance, as belonging partly to the undivided possessions of the indo-europeans, and partly to the undivided possessions of the aryas in iran and on the indus. though still enthroned in the highest light and the highest sky, these spirits are nevertheless, in the minds of the aryas, expelled from the central position in their religious conceptions and worship, by a form which, though it did not spring up in the land of the indus, first attained this pre-eminent position among the aryas there. with the tribes of iran, the god of the clear sky, the god of light, is mitra, the victorious champion against darkness and demons. it is he who has overcome veretra, the prince of the evil ones, the demon of darkness; as a warrior-god, he is for the iranians the god of battles, the giver of victory. the nature of the land of the panjab was calculated to give a special development and peculiar traits to the ancient conception of the struggle of the god of light against the demon of darkness. there the pastures were parched in the height of summer, the fields burnt, the springs and streams dried up, until at length, long awaited and desired, the storms bring the rain. phenomena of so violent a nature as the tropical storms were unknown to the aryas before they entered this region. the deluge of water in storm and tempest, the return of the clear sky and sunlight after the dense blackness of the storm, could not be without influence on the existing conceptions of the struggle with the spirits. in the heavy black clouds which came before the storm, the aryas saw the dark spirits, vritra and ahi, who would change the light of the sky into night, quench the sun, and carry off the water of the sky. the tempest which preceded the outbreak of the storm, the lightning which parted the heavy clouds, and caused the rain to stream down, the returning light of the sun in the sky, these must be the beneficent saving acts of a victorious god, who rendered vain the object of the demons, wrested from them the waters they had carried off, rekindled the light of the sun, sent the waters on the earth, caused streams and rivers to flow with renewed vigour, and gave fresh life to the withered pastures and parched fields. these conceptions underlie the mighty form into which the struggle of the demons grew up among the aryas on the indus, the god of storm and tempest--indra. the army of the winds fights at his side, just as the wild army surrounds the storm-god of the germans. indra is a warrior, who bears the spear; heaven and earth tremble at the sound of his spear. this sound is the thunder, his good spear is the lightning; with this he smites the black clouds, the black bodies of the demons which have sucked up the water of the sky; with it he rekindles the sun.[ ] with it he milks the cows, _i.e._ the clouds; shatters the towers of the demons, _i.e._ the tempests which gather round the mountain top; and hurls back the demons when they would ascend heaven.[ ] "i will sing of the victories of indra, which the god with the spear carried off," so we read in the hymns of the veda. "on the mountain he smote ahi; he poured out the waters, and let the river flow from the mountains; like calves to cows, so do the waters hasten to the sea. like a bull, indra dashed upon the sacrifice, and drank thrice of the prepared drink, then he smote the first-born of the evil one. when thou, indra, didst smite them, thou didst overcome the craft of the guileful: thou didst beget the sun, the day, and the dawn. with a mighty cast indra smote the dark vritra, so that he broke his shoulders; like a tree felled with an axe ahi sank to the earth. the waters now run over the corpse of ahi, and the enemy of indra sleeps there in the long darkness."[ ] "thou hast opened the cave of vritra rich in cattle; the fetters of the streams thou hast burnt asunder."[ ] on a golden chariot, drawn by horses, yellow or ruddy, cream-coloured or chestnut, indra approaches;[ ] his skilful driver is vayu, _i.e._ "the blowing," the spirit of the morning wind,[ ] which, hastening before the morning glow, frees the nocturnal sky from dark clouds. indra is followed by rudra, _i.e._ the terrible, the spirit of the mighty wind, the destroying, but also beneficent storm, and the whistling winds, the swift, strong maruts, who fight with indra against the demons. these are twenty-seven, or thirty-six in number, the sons of rudra. their chariots are drawn by dappled horses; they wear golden helmets, and greaves, and spears on their shoulders. they dwell in the mountains, open the path for the sun, break down the branches of the trees like wild elephants, and when indra has overpowered vritra, they tear him to pieces. to indra, as to mitra, horses were sacrificed, and bulls also, and the libation of soma was offered.[ ] indra is the deity addressed in the greater part of the poems of the rigveda. himself a king, hero, and conqueror, he is invoked by minstrels to give victory to their princes. they entreat him "to harness the shrill-neighing, peacock-tailed pair of cream-coloured horses;" to come into the ranks of the warriors, like a wild, terrible lion from the mountains; to approach with sharp spear and knotty club; to give the hosts of the enemy to the vultures for food. the warriors are urged to follow indra's victorious chariot, to vie with indra: he who does not flinch in the battle will fight before them; he will strike back the arrows of the enemies. indra destroys the towers and fortresses of the enemies; he casts down twenty kings; he smites the opponents by fifties and sixties of thousands.[ ] the prayer has already been mentioned in which indra is invoked to give the aryas victory against the dasyus. "lead us, o indra," we read in an invocation of the samaveda; "let the troop of the maruts go before the overpowering, victorious arms of the god. raise up the weapons, o wealthy god; raise up the souls of our warriors; strengthen the vigour of the strong; let the cry of victory rise from the chariots. be with us, indra, when the banners wave; let our arrows be victorious; give our warriors the supremacy; protect us, ye gods, in the battle. fear, seize the hearts of our enemies, and take possession of their limbs."[ ] the old arian conception of mitra as the highest god of light, may still be recognised in the rigveda; the hymns declare that his stature transcends the sky, and his glory spreads beyond the earth. he sustains heaven and earth; with never-closing eyes he looks down on all creatures. he whom mitra, the mighty helper, protects, no evil will touch, from far or from near; he will not be conquered or slain. a mighty, strong, and wise king, mitra summons men to activity.[ ] driven back by the predominance of indra, the functions of mitra in the rigveda are found amalgamated with those of varuna, but even in this amalgamation the nature of light is completely victorious. in the conception of the arians light is not only the power that awakens and gives health and prosperity, it is also the pure and the good, not merely in the natural, but also in the moral sense, the true, the honourable, just and faithful. thus mitra, removed from immediate conflict with the evil spirits, is combined with varuna, the god of the highest heaven, and the life-giving water which springs from the heaven; and becomes the guardian of truth, fidelity, justice, and the duties of men to the gods. the sun is the eye of mitra and varuna; they have placed him in the sky; at their command the sky is bright; they send down the rain. even the gods cannot withstand their will. they are the guardians of the world; they look down on men as on herds of cattle.[ ] the light sees all, illuminates all: hence mitra and varuna know what takes place on earth; the most secret thing escapes them not. they are angry, terrible deities; they punish those who do not honour the gods; they avenge falsehood and sin. but to those who serve them, they forgive their transgressions. varuna, whose special duty it is to punish the offences of men, is entreated in the hymns, with the greatest earnestness, to pardon transgression and sin. in the conception of the hymns of the rigveda, he is the highest lord of heaven and earth. in the waters of heaven he dwells in a golden coat of mail, in his spacious golden house with a thousand doors. he has shown to the sun his path; he has excavated their beds for the rivers, and causes them to flow into the sea; his breath sounds with invigorating force through the breezes. he knows the way of the winds, and the flight of birds, and the course of ships on the sea. he knows all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. even he who would fly further than the sky extends is not beyond his power. he numbers the glances of the eyes of men; where two men sit together and converse, king varuna is a third among them.[ ] he knows the truth and falsehood of men; he knows their thoughts, and watches them as a herdman his herd. his coils, threefold and sevenfold, embrace them who speak lies. "may he remain unscathed by them who speak truth," is the prayer of the invocations. "was it for an old sin, varuna," we read in a prayer, "that thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who praises thee? absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those which we committed with our own bodies. release vasishtha, o king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release him like a calf from the rope. it was not our own doing that led us astray, o varuna, it was necessity (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. the old is there to mislead the young; even sleep brings unrighteousness. through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have i gone wrong: have mercy, almighty, have mercy. i go along trembling, like a cloud driven before the wind; let not us guilty ones reap the fruit of our sin. let me not yet enter into the house of clay, king varuna. protect, o wise god, him who praises thee. whenever we men, o varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness, have mercy, almighty, have mercy."[ ] the chief offering which the aryas made to the spirits of the sky, was of ancient origin; even before they entered the land of the indus, at the time when they were one nation with their fellow-tribesmen of iran--this libation had been established. it was a drink-offering, the juice of a mountain plant, the soma, or haoma of the irans, which they offered. the expressed sap of this plant, which is the _asclepias acida_ of our botanists, mixed with milk, narcotic and intoxicating, was to the arya the strongest, most exhilarating liquor, a drink fit for their gods. according to the rigveda, a tamed falcon brought the soma from the summit of the sky, or from the tops of the mountains, where varuna had placed it. the drink of the soma inspires the songs of the poet, heals the sick, prolongs life, and makes the poor believe themselves rich. the rites of preparing the soma were already widely developed when the songs of the rigveda over the offering were composed. the sacrificial vessels were washed out with kuça-grass, and with "the sacred word," _i.e._ with traditional forms of words. the plants of the soma--according to the rubrics of later times, they are to be collected by moonlight on the hills,[ ]--were crushed between stones. in the veda we are told that the suppliants "squeeze the soma with stones." the liquor thus obtained was then strained through a sieve, with songs and incantations. the sieve appears to have been made out of the hairs of a ram's tail, and the juice is pressed through it with the ten sisters, _i.e._ with the fingers; "it rushes to the milk as fiercely as the bull to the cow." the sound of the drops of the golden fluid falling into the metal vessels is the roaring of the bulls, the neighing of the horses of indra, "the hymn of praise, which the song of the minstrel accompanies."[ ] the drink thus prepared was then placed in the sacrificial vessel, on outspread, delicate grass, over which was laid a cloth. then the açvins, vayu, the maruts, indra were invoked to descend, to place themselves at the sacrificial cloth, and drink the draught prepared for them. according to the faith of the aryas, indra fights on the side of the tribe whose soma offering he has drunk, and gives the victory to them. the invocations to indra, to the maruts, and the açvins, who were considered mightiest and most influential in inviting and bringing down the gods to the sacrifice, are preserved in the rigveda. it would be futile to attempt to distinguish in detail the exuberant abundance of conceptions and pictures which the young and vigorous fancy of the indians has embodied in the songs of the veda. one poetical idea presses on another; scarcely a single image is retained for any length of time, so that we not unfrequently receive the impression of a restless variety, of uncertain effort, of flux and confusion. on the other hand, it is impossible to deny that in these poems there is a freshness and vigour of thought, a wide sympathy and moral earnestness. beside the most lively conceptions of the phenomena of the heavens, the formation of clouds and storms; besides deep delight in nature, and a sensuous view of natural life, we find attempts to form a comprehensive, exhaustive idea of the nature of god, the beginnings of reflection and abstraction. if this contrast proves that the poems of the veda were divided in their origin by intervals of time, we can hardly be wrong if we look upon the _naïve_, coarse and sensuous conceptions as the older, and the attempts at combination and abstraction as of later origin. yet the basis of that conception of moral purity, of the just avenging power of the high deities of light, mitra and varuna, cannot be regarded as of later date, since it occurs also in the mitra of the iranians. we can hardly find a more _naïve_ conception than the view expressed in the poems of the veda that the sacrifice not only gives food and drink to the hungry deities, but also gives them the power to fulfil their duties. the offering of soma strengthens indra in the battles which he has to fight against the evil spirits; it invigorates him for the struggle against the enemies of the tribe whose offering he drinks. the god requires strength for the contest; and this, according to the peculiar view of the indians, is increased by the offering of soma made to him. and not only does the offering give strength, it inspires the god for battle. just as men sought courage in drinking, so does indra drink courage from the sacrificial goblet. if indra is to give wealth and blessing, if he is to fight victoriously his ever-recurring struggle against vritra and ahi, to win the fructifying moisture, and contend in the ranks of the tribe, the "honey-sweet" soma must be prepared for him without ceasing, he must be invoked to harness his horses, and place himself at the meal of the sacrifice, and exhilarate himself with the drink prepared for him; in his exhilaration, victory over the demons is certain; he will fight invincibly before the ranks of his friends. his enemies, we are told of indra, he overcomes in the inspiration of the soma. "drink, indra, of the soma like a wise man, delighting thyself in the mead; it is good for exhilaration. come down, indra, who art truly a bull, and drink thyself full; drink the most inspiring of drinks. the intoxicating drink of the rich gives bulls."[ ] by the side of conceptions such as this, the invocation praises the lofty power, the sublime nature of the gods, in moving images, which attempt, to the utmost degree, to glorify the power of the god to whom they are addressed. they elevate him and his power above the other gods, and concentrate the divine action in the deity to whom the prayer or thanksgiving is made, at the expense of his divine compeers. the object was to win by prayer and sacrifice the grace of the deity who was invoked. in this manner agni, surya, indra, mitra, and varuna are celebrated as the highest deities. of indra we are told that none of the gods is like him; that none can contend with him; that before him, the thunderer, all worlds tremble. he is the lord of all; the king of the firm land and flowing water; his power has set up the ancient hills, and causes the streams to flow; he sustains the earth, the nourisher of all; he has created the sky, the sun, the dawn; he has fixed the lights of the sky; should he desire to take up both worlds--the heaven and earth--it would be but a handful for him. who of the seers of old has seen the limits of his power?[ ] as we have observed, the form of the mighty storm-god which grew up in the land of the indus, had driven back the ancient forms of mitra and varuna, and thus the minstrels found a strong tendency to unite in the mighty warrior, the thunderer, the sum total of divine power. but mitra and varuna were not forgotten; and as the warlike life fell into the back-ground, and the impulse to seize the unity of the divine nature became stronger, these ancient forms were in their turn more easily idealized, and framed into a higher ethical conception than was possible with the peculiarly warlike nature of indra. in the songs of praise addressed to varuna, which have been quoted, it is impossible not to see the effort to concentrate in him as the highest god the highest divine power. if in the conception of the gods in the veda we find besides sensuous views important ethical elements, and traits transcending sense, we also find in the worship of the aryas, in the relation of man to the gods, a certain simplicity coexisting with sharply defined ethical perception. men pray to the gods for protection against the evil spirits, for the preservation and increase of the herd, for help in sickness, and long life, for victory in battle. it is allowed that sacrifices are offered in order to obtain treasures and wealth. indra is to "give gift for gift;" he is to send wealth "so that one may wade therein to the knee." from this the god will obtain his advantage in turn; if indra gives horses, chariots and bulls, sacrifices will be offered without ceasing.[ ] like flies round a jar of honey, we are told in another place, do the suppliants sit round the bowl of the offering; as a man sets his foot in the chariot, so does the host of minstrels longing for treasure place their confidence in indra.[ ] in a hymn, the minstrel says to indra: "if i were the lord of cattle, master of such wealth as thou art, indra, then would i assist the minstrel; i would not leave him in need."[ ] but, on the other hand, it is emphatically stated that indra rejects the wicked, as a man spurns a toadstool with his foot;[ ] that no evil is concealed from mitra and varuna. it is left to indra to give to the sacrificer whatever he considers best and most valuable; he is entreated to instruct the sacrificer, to give him wisdom, as a father to his child.[ ] stress is laid on the fact that sacrifice can remove a multitude of sins, and purify him who offers it, and we saw how earnestly varuna was invoked to forgive the guilt that had been incurred. the _naïve_ conception that the god drank vigour and courage out of the sacrificial bowl is developed among the aryas in a very peculiar manner. from this fact they derived the idea that the sacrifice gave power to the gods generally to increase their strength; that the gods "grew" by prayer and sacrifice. thus we read: "the suppliants, extolling indra by their songs of praise, have strengthened him, to slay ahi. increase, o hero indra, in thy body, praised with piety, and impelled by our prayers. the hymns whet thy great strength, thy courage, thy power, thy glorious thunder-club."[ ] as it is men who offer sacrifice to the gods, this conception gives mankind a certain power over the deities; it lies with them to strengthen the gods by sacrifice and gifts; they can compel the gods to be helpful to them, if only they understand how to invoke them rightly. the holy words, _i.e._ the invocations, are, in the conception of the veda, "a voyage which leads to heaven." hence those who are acquainted with the correct mode of prayer and offering become magicians, who are in a position to exercise force over the gods. the idea that man has power to compel the gods is very _naïve_, childlike, and childish; in its most elementary form it lies at the root of fetishism. in other nations also great weight is laid on the correct mode of offering sacrifices, as the essential condition of winning the grace of the gods; but the conception that a hearing must attend a sacrifice and prayer correctly made is far more strongly present in the indians, than in any other civilised people. yet the hymns of the veda are far above fetishism, which attempts to exercise direct external compulsion upon the gods. the indian faith is rather that this effect is obtained not merely by the custom of sacrifice, but by the intensity of invocation, by the power of meditation, by elevation of spirit, by the passionate force of prayer, which will not leave the god till he has given his blessing. it is inward, not outward compulsion that they would exercise. developed in a peculiar direction, this mode of conception is of deep and decisive importance for the religious and civic views of the indians. the power ascribed to the sacrificial prayers of bringing down the gods from heaven; the eager desire of every man to invite the gods effectually to his own sacrifice, in order that he may scorn the sacrifice of his enemy; the notion that it was possible by the correct and pleasing invocation to disturb the sacrifice of the enemy and make it inoperative, had their natural effect. the singers of these prayers, who knew the strongest forms of invocation, or could "weave" them--the priests--early obtained a position of importance. it has been already remarked what rich presents they boast to have received from the princes. the minstrel kakshivat tells us that king svanaya had presented him with one hundred bars of gold, ten chariots with four horses each, a hundred bulls and a thousand cows.[ ] other songs advise the princes to place before them a pious suppliant at the sacrifice, and to reward him liberally. these suppliants or priests were called _purohita_, _i.e._ "men placed before." "he dwells happily in his house," we are told; "to him the earth brings fruit at all times; to that king all families willingly give way, who is preceded by the suppliant; that king is protected by the gods, who liberally rewards the suppliant who seeks food."[ ] the invocations which have drawn down the gods and have obtained an answer to the prayer of the sacrificer, are repeatedly used, and handed down by the minstrel to his descendants. this explains the fact that even in the veda we find these families of minstrels; that some of the hymns are said to spring from the ancestors of these races, while others are mentioned as the new compositions of members of these families; that the supposed ancestors are considered the first and oldest minstrels and suppliants, and have already become mythical and half-divine forms, of whom some kindled the first sacrificial fire, and offered the first sacrifice with manu, the progenitor of the aryas. the hymns of the veda make frequent mention of the dead. they are invited to the sacrificial meal; they are said to sit at the fire; to eat and drink the gifts set before them on the grass. those who have attained "life," are entreated to protect the invocations of their descendants, to ward off the evil spirits, to give wealth to their descendants. we know from a later period that daily libations were offered "to the fathers," and special gifts were given at the new moon; that a banquet of the dead was kept. in iran also similar honours were given to the spirits of the dead. yama, who first experienced death, who ascended from the depths of the earth to the summit of heaven, has discovered the path for mortals (p. ). he dwells with varuna in the third heaven, the heaven of light. to him, in this heaven of light, come the heroes who are slain in battle, the pious who are distinguished by sacrifices and knowledge, who have trodden the path of virtue, who have observed justice and have been liberal, _i.e._ all those who have lived a holy and pure life, and have thus purified their own bodies. in this body of light they walk in the heaven of yama. according to the mahabharata, the heroes and saints of ancient days shine in heaven in a light of their own (chapter viii.). in the heaven of yama is milk, butter, honey, and soma, the drink of the gods, in large vats.[ ] here the weak no longer pay tribute to the strong;[ ] here those whom death has separated are again united; here they live with yama in feasting and rejoicing. the souls of the wicked, on the other hand, fall into darkness.[ ] according to an old commentary on the rigveda, the heaven of yama is in the south-east, one thousand days journey on horse from the earth.[ ] the aryas buried their dead, a custom which was also observed in old time among the arians of iran. a form of words, to be spoken at the burial, which is preserved among the more recent hymns of the veda, shows that even at this period burial was practised. the bow was taken from the hand of the dead; a sacrifice was offered, in which the widow of the dead and the wives of the family took part, and during the ceremony a stone was set up as a symbol between the dead and the living. "get thee gone, death, on thy way,"--such is this form of words--"which lies apart from the way of the gods. thou seest, thou canst hear what i say to thee; injure not the children nor the men. i set this wall of separation (the stone) for those that live, that no one may hasten to that goal; they must cover death with this rock, and live a hundred autumns. he comes to a length of years, free from the weakness of age. the women here, who are wives not widows, glad in their husbands, advance with sacrificial fat and butter, and without tears; cheerful, and beautifully adorned, they climb the steps of the altar. exalt thyself, o woman, to the world of life. the breath of him, by whom thou art sitting, is gone; the marriage with him who once took thy hand, and desired thee, is completed. i take the bow out of the hand of the dead--the symbol of honour, of courage, of lordship. we here and thou there, we would with force and vigour drive back every enemy and every onset. approach to mother earth; she opens to receive thee kindly; may she protect thee henceforth from destruction. open, o earth; be not too narrow for him; cover him like the mother who folds her son in her garment. henceforth thou hast thy house and thy prosperity here; may yama procure thee an abode there."[ ] the arians in iran gave up the burial of their corpses, and exposed them on the mountains; the arians on the indus burnt them. for some time burial and cremation went on side by side in the valley of the indus. "may the fathers," we are told in an invocation, "have joy in our offering whether they have undergone cremation or not."[ ] in other prayers agni is entreated to do no harm to the dead, to make the body ripe, to carry the "unborn" part into heaven where the righteous keep festival with the gods; where yama says: "i will give this home to the man who comes hither if he is mine."[ ] "warm, o agni," so we are told in one of these prayers, "warm with thy glance and thy glow the immortal part of him; bear it gently away to the world of the righteous. let him rejoin the fathers, for he drew near to thee with the libation of sacrifice. may the maruts carry thee upwards and bedew thee with rain. may the wise pushan (p. ) lead thee hence, the shepherd of the world, who never lost one of his flock. pushan alone knows all those spaces; he will lead us on a secure path. he will carefully go before as a lamp, a complete hero, a giver of rich blessing. enter, therefore, on the old path on which our fathers have gone. thou shalt see varuna and yama, the two kings, the drinkers of libations. go to the fathers; there abide with yama in the highest heaven, even as thou well deservest. on the right path escape the two hounds--the brood of sarama--of the four eyes. then proceed onward to the wise fathers who take delight in happy union with yama. thou wilt find a home among the fathers; prosper among the people of yama. surround him, yama, with thy protection against the hounds who watch for thee, the guardians of thy path, and give him health and painless life. with wide nostrils, eager for men, with blood-brown hair, yama's two messengers go round among men. o that they may again grant us the pleasant breath of life to-day, and that we may see the sun!"[ ] in other invocations of the rigveda the object of the prayer is "to reach to the imperishable, unchangeable world, where is eternal light and splendour; to become immortal, where king vaivasvata (yama) dwells, where is the sanctuary of heaven, where the great waters flow, where is ambrosia (_amrita_) and peacefulness, joy and delight, where wishes and desires are fulfilled."[ ] footnotes: [ ] max müller, "hist. of sanskrit liter." p. ff. kaegi, "rigveda," , ff. [ ] roth, "literatur des veda," s. . [ ] in the later hymns of the rigveda, angiras and bhrigu are combined with other sages and minstrels of old time into a septad of saints ( , , ), and designated the great saints. they are, beside bhrigu and angiras, viçvamitra, vasishtha, kaçyapa, atri, agastya. the eight saints from whom the eight tribes of the brahman priests now in existence are derived are: jamadagni, gautama, bharadvaja, viçvamitra, vasishtha, kaçyapa, atri, agastya. jamadagni is said to have sprung from bhrigu; gautama and bharadvaja from angiras. [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff.; ff. [ ] a. weber, "ind. studien," . . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," ^ , ff. [ ] kuhn in weber, "ind. stud." . . the Çatapatha-brahmana (weber, "ind. stud." . ) tells us that manu, when washing his hands in the morning, took a fish in his hands, which said to him--"spare me, and i will save thee; a flood will wash away all creatures." the fish grew to a monstrous size, and manu brought him to the ocean; and it bid manu build a ship, and embark on the ocean. when the flood rose, the fish swam beside the ship, and manu attached it by a rope to the horn of the fish. thus the ship passed over the northern mountains. and the fish told manu that he had saved him, and bade him fasten the ship to a tree. so manu went up as the waters sank from the northern hills. the flood carried away all creatures; manu alone remained. eager for posterity, manu offered sacrifice, and threw clarified butter, curdled milk, and whey into the water. after a year a woman rose out of the water, with clarified butter under her feet. mitra and varuna asked her whether she was their daughter, but she replied that she was the daughter of manu, who had begotten her, and she went to manu and told him that he had begotten her by the sacrifice which he had thrown into the water. he was to conduct her to the sacrifice, and he would then receive posterity and herds. and manu did so, and lived with her with sacrifice and strict meditation, and through her began the posterity of manu. cf. m. müller, "hist. of sanskrit liter." p. ff. the later form of the indian legend of the flood is found in an episode of the maha-bharata. here the fish appears to manu when he is performing some expiatory rites on the shore of a river. the fish grew so mighty that manu was compelled to bring it into the ganges, and when it became too large for this into the ocean. when swimming in the ocean the fish announced the flood, and bade manu and the seven saints (rishis) ascend the ship, and take with them all kinds of seeds. then the fish drew the ship attached to his horn through the ocean, and there was no more land to be seen; for several years all was water and sky. at last the fish drew the ship to the highest part of the himavat, and with a smile bade the rishis bind the ship to this, which to this day bears the name of naubandhana (ship-binding). then the fish revealed himself to the seven saints as brahman, and commanded manu to create all living creatures, gods, asuras, and men, and all things movable and immovable; which command manu performed. the legend overlooks the fact that the new creation was unnecessary, as we have already been told that manu brought seeds of everything on board ship. the poems of the rigveda present no trace of the legend of the flood. it may have arisen in the land of the ganges, from the experience of the floods there, unless it is simply borrowed from external sources. in any case it is of later date; the Çatapatha-brahmana is one of the later brahmanas. weber, "ind. stud." , ; kuhn, "beiträge," , . i cannot follow de gubernatis, "letture," p. , ff, _seqq._ [ ] kaegi, "rigveda," , . [ ] on the bhrigus see a. weber, "z. d. m. g." , . kuhn, "herabkunft," s. ff. [ ] on the sarayu, which is mentioned, "rigveda," , , , and , , , cf. lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , . [ ] "rigveda." , , in muir, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] roth, "das lied des arztes," "rigveda," , . "z. d. m. g." , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "rigveda," , , . above, p. . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , . [ ] "samaveda," by benfey, , , , . [ ] "samaveda," by benfey, , , , ; , , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] kuhn, "herabkunft des feuers," s. ff., ff., ff. [ ] kaegi, "rigveda," , . [ ] the triple birth is explained differently in the poems of the rigveda and in the brahmanas. [ ] "rigveda," , ; cf. , , , . [ ] _divo napata_: "rigveda," , , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , , , , , according to roth's rendering; cf. benfey's translation, "orient," , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , ; , ; , ; , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , ; , ; , , ; , , in benfey's rendering, "orient," , ; , ; , . the three skilful ribhus, who are frequently mentioned in the rigveda, are assistants of the spirits of light. they assist the gods to liberate the cows, which the spirits of the night have fastened in the rock-stable, _i.e._ the bright clouds. [ ] the spirits of light are called sons of aditi, _i.e._ of the eternal, unlimited, infinite; seven or eight sons are ascribed to her; hillebrandt, "die göttin aditi." originally aditi meant, in mythology, merely the non-ending, the imperishable, in opposition to the perishable world, and the gods are called the sons of immortality because they cannot die. darmesteter, "haurvatat," p. . [ ] "rigveda," , , according to sonne's translation in kuhn, "z. v. spr." , ff.; cf. benfey's rendering, "orient," , . [ ] "rigveda," , , according to roth's translation; cf. benfey, "orient," , . [ ] "rigveda," , , according to roth's translation, "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. kaegi, "rigveda," , . [ ] kuhn, "herabkunft des feuers," s. . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , according to roth's translation; cf. benfey, "orient," , . [ ] "rigveda," , ; , . [ ] indra is derived by benfey from _syand_, "to flow," "to drop," in which case we shall have to refer it to the rain-bringing power of the god. others have proposed a derivation from _idh_, _indh_, "to kindle;" others from _indra_, "blue." in any case, andra, the corresponding name in the rigveda, must not be left out of consideration. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] roth, "zwei lieder des rigveda, z. d. m. g.," , ff. muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , ; "samaveda," benfey, , , , . , , , . [ ] "samaveda," benfey, _loc. cit._ [ ] "rigveda," , , in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "rigveda," , , in benfey; "orient," , ; "rigveda," , , ; , , ; , , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "atharvaveda," , , according to m. müller's translation "essays," , , . cf. roth, "atharvaveda," . . [ ] "rigveda," , , , according to müller's rendering, "essays," , , ; cf. muir's translation, _loc. cit._ , ff. [who reads "like an inflated skin" for "like a cloud," etc.] [ ] windischmann, "abh. der münch. akademie," , s. . [ ] "samaveda," , , , ; "rigveda," , , ; , , , and elsewhere. [ ] "samaveda," benfey, , , , ; , , , , , and elsewhere. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , ff. [ ] "samaveda," benfey, , , , . [ ] "samaveda," , , , . [ ] "samaveda," , , , ; , , , . [ ] "samaveda," , , , . [ ] "rigveda," , ; "samaveda," , , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , ; , , ; , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , , . [ ] "rigveda," , , , . roth, "z. d. m. g.," , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] m. müller, "z. d. m. g.," , . these bright bodies of the fathers led to the idea that the souls of the fathers had adorned the heaven with stars, and that they were these stars. "rigveda," , , . [ ] "atharvaveda," , , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , , . in the later portion of the rigveda, , , the old conception of the fathers is already changed. three classes of fathers are distinguished, and burning and non-burning are mentioned side by side. [ ] "aitareya-brahmana," , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "rigveda," , ; according to roth's rendering, "z. d. m. g.," , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "atharvaveda," , , ; in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] m. müller, "die todtenbestattung der brahmanen," s. ff. [ ] "rigveda," , , ff. chapter iii. the conquest of the land of the ganges. the life of the aryas in the panjab was manly and warlike. from the songs of the rigveda we saw how familiar they were with the bow and the chariot, how frequent were the feuds between the princes, and the prayers offered to the gods for victory. such a life could, no doubt, increase the pleasure in martial achievements, and lead to further enterprises, even if the plains and pastures of the panjab had not been too narrow for the inhabitants. we remember the prayer in which the war-god was invoked to grant the arian tribes room against the black-skins (p. ). as a fact the aryas extended their settlements to the east beyond the sarasvati; and as on the lower indus the broad deserts checked any progress towards the region of the yamuna and the ganges, the advance from the sarasvati to the yamuna must have taken place in the north along the spurs of the himalayas. from the hymns of the rigveda we can ascertain that the arian tribes pressed on each other, and that the tribes settled in the east were pushed forward in that direction by tribes in the west. ten tribes of the panjab, who appear to have occupied the region of the iravati,[ ]--the bharatas, matsyas, anus, and druhyus, are specially mentioned among them--united for a campaign against king sudas, the son of divodasa, the descendant of pijavana, who ruled over the tritsus on the sarasvati. on the side of the united tribes was the priest viçvamitra of the race of the kuçikas; on the side of the tritsus the family of vasishtha.[ ] the bharatas, matsyas, anus, and druhyus, must have crossed the vipaça and the Çatadru in order to attack the tritsus. the rigveda mentions a prayer addressed by viçvamitra to these two streams. "forth from the slopes of the mountains; full of desire, like horses loosed in the course, like bright-coloured cows to their calves, vipaça and Çatadru hasten with their waves. impelled by indra, seeking an outlet to the sea, ye roll onward like warriors in chariots of war: in united course with swelling waves ye roll into each other, ye clear ones. listen joyfully to my pleasant speech, for a moment. o abounding in waters, halt on your steps to the sea. with strong earnestness, crying for help, i entreat you, i, the son of kuçika. listen to the minstrel, ye sisters; he has come from far with horse and chariot. incline yourselves, that ye may be crossed; your waves, ye streams, must not reach the axles. when the bharatas have crossed you, the mounted host, goaded by indra, then run on in your renewed course." after the two rivers were crossed a battle took place. viçvamitra uttered the prayer for the bharatas: "indra, approach us with manifold choice help; great hero, be friendly. may he who hates us fall at our feet; may he whom we hate, be deserted by the breath of life. as the tree falls beneath the axe, as a man breaks asunder a husk, as a boiling kettle throws off the foam, so deal thou, o indra, with them. these sons of bharata, o indra, know the battle. they spur their horses; they carry the strong bow like an eternal enemy, looking round in the battle."[ ] in spite of the prayer of viçvamitra the bharatas and their confederates were defeated; sudas was even able to invade their land, to capture and plunder several places. the song of victory of the tritsus, which a minstrel of sudas may have composed after their success, runs thus: "two hundred cows, two chariots with women, allotted as booty to sudas, i step round with praises, as the priests step round the place of sacrifice. to sudas indra gave the flourishing race of his enemies, the vain boasters among men. even with poor men indra has done marvellous deeds; by the weak he has struck down the lion-like. with a needle indra has broken spears; all kinds of good things he has given to sudas. ten kings, holding themselves invincible in battle, could not strive against sudas, indra, and varuna; the song of them who brought food-offerings was effectual. where men meet with raised banner in the battle-field, where evil of every kind happens, where all creatures are afraid, there have ye, indra and varuna, spoken (words of) courage above us, as we looked upwards. the tritsus in whose ranks indra entered went onward like downward streaming water: their enemies, like hucksters when dealing, leave all their goods to sudas. as sudas laid low twenty-one enemies in glorious strife, as the sacrificer strews holy grass on the place of sacrifice, so did indra the hero pour out the winds. sixty hundred of the mounted anus and druhyus perished; sixty and six heroes fell before the righteous sudas. these are the heroic deeds, all of which indra has done. without delay, indra destroyed all the fortresses of the enemy, and divided the goods of the anus in battle to the tritsus. the four horses of sudas, the coursers worthy of praise, richly adorned, stamping the ground, will bring race against race to glory. ye strong maruts, be gracious to him as to his father divodasa, preserve to him the house of pijavana, and let the power of the righteous king continue uninjured." in another song of the rigveda the glory of this victory of king sudas is especially ascribed to vasishtha and his sons "in white robes with the knot on the right side" (p. ). they were seen surrounded in the battle of the ten kings, then indra heard vasishtha's song of praise, and the bharatas were broken like the staffs of the ox-driver. the vasishthas had brought the mighty indra from far by their soma-offering, by the power of their prayer; then had indra given glory to the tritsus, and their tribes had extended.[ ] the extension of the aryas in the rich plains of the yamuna and the ganges must in the first place have followed the course of the former river towards the south, and then reached over the land between the two rivers, until the immigrants arrived further and further to the east on the banks of the ganges. we have no historical information about the facts of these migrations and conquests, of the occupation of the valleys of the yamuna, the upper and middle ganges; we can only ascertain that the valley of the yamuna, and the doab of the two rivers were first occupied and most thickly colonised. it is not till we come lower down the course of the ganges, that we find a large number of the old population in a position of subjection to the arian settlers. lastly, as we learn from the indian epos, the aryas had not merely to contend against the old population at the time of their settlement; nor did they merely press upon one another, while those who came last sought to push forward the early immigrants, as we concluded to be the case from the hymns quoted from the rigveda; they also engaged in conflicts among themselves for the possession of the best land between the yamuna and the ganges. in these struggles the tribes of the immigrants became amalgamated into large communities or nations, and the successful leaders found themselves at the head of important states. the conquest and colonisation of such large regions, the limitation and arrangement of the new states founded in them, could only be accomplished in a long space of time. according to the epos and the puranas, _i.e._ the very late and untrustworthy collections of indian legends and traditions, it was after a great war among the aryas in the doab of the yamuna and ganges, in which the family of pandu obtained the crown of the bharatas on the upper ganges, that the commotion ceased, and the newly founded states enjoyed a state of peace. in the rigveda, the bharatas are to the west of the vipaça, in the epos we find them dwelling on the upper ganges; on the yamuna are settled the nations of the matsyas, and the yadavas; between the upper yamuna and the ganges are the panchalas, _i.e._ the five tribes; eastward of the bharatas on the sarayu, down to the ganges, are the koçalas. still further to the east and north of the ganges are the videhas; on the ganges itself are the kaçis and the angas, and to the south of the ganges the magadhas. are we in a position to fix even approximately the period at which the settlement of the aryas in the valley of the ganges took place, and the struggles connected with this movement came to an end? the law-book of the indians tells us that the world has gone through four ages; the age of perfection, _kritayuga_; the age of the three fires of sacrifice, _i.e._ of the complete observance of all sacred duties, _tritayuga_; the age of doubt, _dvaparayuga_, in which the knowledge of divine things became obscured; and lastly the age of sin, the present age of the world, _kaliyuga_. between the end of one period and the beginning of the next there came in each case a period of dimness and twilight. if this period is reckoned in, the first age lasted divine years, or , , human years; the life of men in this age reached years. the second age lasted divine years, or , , human years, and life reached years. the third age lasted divine years, or , human years, and men only lived to the age of years. the present age will last divine years, or , human years, and men will never live beyond the age of years.[ ] this scheme is obviously an invention intended to represent the decline of the better world and the increase of evil, in proportion to the distance from the divine origin. in the matter of numbers the indians are always inclined to reckon with large figures, and nothing is gained by setting forth the calculations in greater detail. from the rigveda it is clear that the year of the indians contained days in twelve months of days. in order to bring this year into accordance with the natural time, a month of thirty days was inserted in each fifth year as a thirteenth month although the actual excess in five years only amounted to - / days. twelve of these cycles of five years were then united into a period of years, _i.e._ x , and both the smaller and the larger periods were called _yuga_.[ ] on this analogy the world-periods were formed. by multiplying the age of sin by ten we get the whole duration of the world; the perfect age is four times as long as the age of sin.[ ] a year with the gods is as long as a day with men; hence a divine year contains years of men, and the world-period, _i.e._ the great world-year, is completed in cycles each of divine years, _i.e._ , human years. in the first age, the age of perfection, yama and manu walked and lived on earth with their half-divine companions (p. ); in the age of the three fires of sacrifice, _i.e._ of the strict fulfilment of sacred duties, lived pururavas, who kindled the triple sacrificial fire,[ ] and the great sacrificers or minstrels, the seven or ten rishis (p. _n._ ); the period of darkness and doubt was the age of the great heroes. with the priests who invented this system of ages the period of the great heroes was naturally placed lower than that of the great sacrificers and saints. the historical value attaching to this scheme lies in the fact that the epos places the great war of the pandus and kurus in the period of transition between the age of doubt and the age of evil, in the twilight of the kaliyuga, and the puranas in consequence make the beginning of the reign of the first pandu over the bharatas after the great war, the accession of parikshit, coincide with the commencement of the kaliyuga.[ ] now according to the date of the puranas the kaliyuga begins in the year b.c. on this calculation the great movement towards the east and in the east came to an end about this time. that the indians once contented themselves with smaller numbers in fixing the ages than those which we find in the book of the law and the puranas, we may conclude from the statements of the greek megasthenes, who drew up his account at the court of chandragupta (sandrakottos) of magadha at the end of the fourth century b.c. this author tells us that in ancient times the indians were nomads, clothed in the skins of animals, and eating raw flesh, till dionysus came to them and taught them the tillage of the field, the care of vines, and the worship of the gods. on leaving india he made spatembas king, who reigned years; after him his son budyas reigned for years, who was in turn succeeded by his son kradeuas, and so the sceptre descended from father to son; but if a king died without children the indians selected the best man to be king. from dionysus to sandrakottos the indians calculated kings, and years. in this period the line had been broken three times; the second interruption lasted years, the third years.[ ] what particular rite among the indians caused the greeks to represent dionysus as visiting india and to make him the founder of indian civilisation, will become clear further on. putting this aside, the account of megasthenes of the triple break in the series of kings shows that the system of the four ages was in vogue among the indians even at that time. if megasthenes speaks of a single line of indian kings ruling over the whole of india from the very beginning, the reason is obviously that he transfers to the past the condition in which india was at the time when he abode on the ganges. chandragupta did what had never been done before; he united under his dominion all the regions of india from the panjab to the mouth of the ganges, from the himalayas to the vindhyas. but the close of this series of kings at which sandrakottos is himself placed shows us plainly that the royal line of megasthenes is no other than the royal line of magadha. the puranas of the indians also carry back the line of magadha to the ancient heroes, and through them to the progenitors of the nation. spatembas, with whom the series of indian kings commences in megasthenes, may be the manu svayambhuva whom the cosmogonic systems of the priests had meanwhile placed before manu vaivasvata, the son of vivasvat. budyas the successor of spatembas may have been the budha of the indians who is with them the father of pururavas, the kindler of the triple fire of sacrifice: and pururavas himself may be concealed under the kradeuas of the manuscripts, which is possibly prareuas, the grecised form of the indian name. however this may be, the statements of megasthenes present us with far smaller and more intelligible numbers for the periods of indian history than those obtained from manu's book of the law and the puranas.[ ] the year in which chandragupta conquered palibothra, and so ascended the throne of magadha, can be fixed with accuracy from the accounts of western writers. it was the year b.c. as years are supposed to elapse between spatembas and the accession of sandrakottos, spatembas must have begun to reign over the indians in the year b.c. but this date it is impossible to maintain. in the first place it is impossible that reigns should have filled up a space of years. this would allow each king a reign of years, or of about years if we deduct years for the three interruptions in the series. moreover, the indian lists of kings, at any rate as we now find them in the epos and in the puranas, present a smaller total of kings than , whether they come down to chandragupta himself, or to his age. from chandragupta to brihadratha, the supposed founder of the race, the lists of the kings of magadha give kings according to the lesser total and according to the larger. if to these lists we add the rulers who unite the kings of magadha to the family of kuru, and those who carry back the family of kuru to manu, we are still able to add no more than or kings according as we take the shorter or longer lists. hence in these lists, instead of kings, we get at most only , as reigning before chandragupta. the list given in the vishnu purana for the kings of the koçalas is somewhat longer; it enumerates kings from manu to prasenajit, whose reign fills the interval between and b.c. if we add or reigns for the period between prasenajit and the accession of chandragupta, the longest of the lists preserved by the indians would still only present reigns before the time of chandragupta.[ ] it is not clear from the account of megasthenes, or at any rate from the excerpts which have come down to us, what was the extent of the period which elapsed between the last interruption in the list of kings and sandrakottos. hence we are not in a position to ascertain the duration of the fourth age, or kaliyuga, as it was fixed among the indians in his time; we must therefore have recourse to other proofs in order to discover whether the year given in the puranas, b.c., may be taken for the commencement of a new period, _i.e._ the post-epic, or historic, in the valley of the ganges. the fixed point from which we must start is the year of the accession of sandrakottos, a date rendered certain by the accounts of the greeks. in the period before this date, the lists of the brahmans taken together with the lists of buddhists carry back the series of the kings of magadha, which was the most important kingdom on the ganges long before sandrakottos, with tolerable certainty as far as the year b.c., _i.e._ to the beginning of the sway of the dynasty of the pradyotas over magadha.[ ] can we ascend beyond this point? according to the puranas, the race of the barhadrathas had ruled over magadha before the pradyotas, from somapi to ripunjaya, the last of the family, and their sway had continued years. of this family the vayu-purana enumerates kings, and the matsya-purana kings. this domination of a thousand years is obviously a round, cyclic sum: and both in the vayu-purana and the matsya-purana the total of the reigns given for the several rulers of this dynasty falls below the sum of years. if we take years, the highest possible average for each reign, reigns or years will only bring us to the year b.c. ( + ). at this date, then, the barhadrathas may have begun to reign over magadha. if, on the other hand, we keep as the number of these kings, and an average of only years is allotted to the several reigns--an average usually correct in long lists of reigns in the east--we arrive at b.c. as the date of the beginning of the reign of the barhadrathas ( + ). to this date, or near it, we come, if we test the lists of kings supplied by the puranas for the series of the kings of the koçalas and the bharatas in the land of the ganges. the time at which prasenajit was king of the koçalas can be fixed at the first half of the sixth century b.c. (see below). before him the vishnu-purana gives a series of kings down to the close of the great war. twenty-three reigns, allowing an average of years for each, carry us years beyond the commencement of prasenajit, _i.e._ up to b.c. ( + ). in the list of the rulers of hastinapura, for which throne the great war was waged, Çatanika appears as the twenty-fourth successor of parikshit, to whom, as we found, this throne fell, after the conclusion of the great war. as Çatanika died about the year b.c. (cf. book vi. chap, i.), reigns of years before him would bring us to the year b.c. as the beginning of the year of parikshit. the statement of the puranas that he ascended the throne in the year b.c. and that the kaliyuga began with that year cannot therefore be maintained. and this date is contradicted not only by the results of an examination of the lists of the kings of magadha, of the koçalas and bharatas, but also by a statement in the vishnu-purana. this tells us that, from the beginning of the kaliyuga to the date when the first nanda ascended the throne of magadha, a period of years elapsed.[ ] the accession of this king we can place with tolerable certainty in the year b.c.; and thus, even on the evidence of the vishnu-purana, the kaliyuga began in the year b.c., and parikshit ascended the throne of the bharatas in that year. it is not impossible, therefore, that the reigns which the matsya-purana gives to the barhadrathas may have filled up the time from the year to the year b.c. ( years).[ ] before the first barhadrathas, sahadeva, jarasandha, and brihadratha are said to have reigned over magadha. hence the foundation of the kingdom of magadha would have to be placed, at the earliest, in the year b.c., and not earlier; but rather, if we follow the comparison of the parallel reigns as above, a century later. if the great movement towards the east and in the east was brought to an end at the accession of parikshit and the commencement of the kaliyuga in the year b.c., and thus in the course of the fifteenth or fourteenth century the foundation could be laid for the kingdom of magadha, _i.e._ for a great civic community far to the east, the migration into the regions of the yamuna and the upper ganges must have commenced at the least about the year b.c. we have already referred to the fact that the colonisation of such extensive districts, the foundation and fortification of large kingdoms in them, which was moreover rendered still more difficult by severe contests among the immigrants, could not have been the work of a few decades of years. if the immigration of the aryas into the land of the ganges took place about b.c. we should have a point whereby to fix the time at which the hymns of the veda were composed, for in them, as has been already remarked, the ganges is rarely mentioned. the great number of the hymns must therefore have received the form in which they were retained and handed down by the families of minstrels before the year b.c. the period of migration brought with it more serious and earnest tasks than had occupied the aryas in the panjab. the struggles against the old population, the wars of the newly-established states with one another, claimed the whole power of the emigrants. hence the duties of the sacrificial songs or of hymns of thanksgiving were thrown into the background by the imperative necessities of the moment. men were contented with the invocations of the gods which lived in the memory of the minstrel-families, and had been brought from the ancient home. the minstrels also, who led the emigrant princes and tribes, naturally gave their attention to songs of war and victory--songs of which the fragment preserved from the wars of the bharatas against the tritsus is an example (p. ). when at length the period of emigration, of settlement, and struggle was over, with the advent of more peaceful times, the excitement of the moment gave place to reflection and to the remembrance of the great deeds of the ancestors. the inspired flights, the pressure of immediate feeling which had prompted the songs before the battle and after the victory, were followed by a more peaceful and narrative tone. hence grew up a series of songs of the marvels and deeds of the heroes who had conquered the land in the yamuna and ganges, and had founded states and cities there. as the heroes and events thus celebrated passed into the background, as the intervening periods became wider, the greater was the tendency of this mass of song to gather round a few great names and incidents. the less prominent forms and struggles disappeared, and in the centuries which followed the strain of settlement and establishment an artificial culture of this warlike minstrelsy united the whole recollections of the heroic times into the narrative of the great war, the mahabharata. if we could present to ourselves this epos of the indians in the form which it may have assumed two or three centuries after the close of the great migrations and struggles, _i.e._ about the eleventh century b.c., it would still be a valuable source of historical knowledge. we could not indeed have taken the occurrences described in it as historical facts, without criticism, but we should have possessed a tradition of which the outline would have been approximately correct, and a description of manners historically true for the period when the poems arose and were thrown into shape--though untrue for the period depicted in the poem--after deducting what was due to the idealism of the poet. unfortunately, repeated revisions and alterations have almost effaced the original lines; each new stage of civilisation attained by the indians has eagerly sought to infuse its ideas and conceptions into the national tradition; older and later elements lie side by side often without any attempt at reconciliation, sometimes in direct opposition. the original warlike character of the poetry is forced into the background by the priestly point of view of a later age. in the poems in their present form there is none of that freshness of feeling and impression which is so vividly expressed in the prayers of the priests of the bharatas, and the songs of the tritsus; there is no immediate recollection at work. the effort to comprise all the stories and legends of the nation into a whole, to bring forward in these poems, as in a pattern and mirror of virtue, every lesson of religion and morals, and unite them into one great body of doctrine, has swelled the indian epos into a heavy and enormous mass, an encyclopædia, in which it is not possible without great labour to discover the connecting links of the narrative in the endless chaos of interpolations and episodes, the varying accounts of one and the same event. the epos has thus become a tangle in which we cannot discover the original threads. it received its present form in the last centuries b.c.[ ] in the poem of the great war once waged by the kings of the aryas on the yamuna and the upper ganges the tritsus are no longer found on the sarasvati or the yamuna. the enemies at this period are the matsyas and the bharatas, the former on the yamuna, the latter further to the east on the upper ganges. the tritsus have been forced further to the east, and have become lost among the koçalas, who are situated on the sarayu, or have taken that name; at any rate, the name of sudas appears in the genealogical table of the rulers of the koçalas, and in the ramayana, as in other traditions, vasishtha, who (or whose family) then gained victory by his prayers for sudas, is the wisest priest among the koçalas.[ ] hence we may conclude that at a later time the bharatas were more fortunate in their advance to the east. the struggle for their country and throne is the central point in the poem. according to the mahabharata the rulers of the bharatas spring from manu. with ila, the daughter of manu, budha the son of the moon, begot the 'pious' pururavas, _i.e._ the far-famed. pururavas is succeeded by ayus, nahusha, and yayati. from yayati's elder sons, anu, druhyu, yadu, spring the anus, the drahyus, and the yadavas,[ ] of whom we already have the two first as confederates of the bharatas.[ ] yayati was followed on the throne by his youngest son puru. dushyanta, one of the successors of puru, married Çakuntala, the daughter of the priest viçvamitra. to him she bore bharata, who reduced all nations, and was lord of the whole earth. after bharata, bhumanyu, suhotra, ajamidha, and samvarana, occupied the throne of hastinapura, the chief city of the kingdom on the upper ganges.[ ] in samvarana's reign the kingdom was attacked by droughts, famine, and pestilence; and the king of the panchalas advanced with a mighty host, and conquered samvarana in the battle, who fled with his wife tapati, his children and dependants, to the west, and took up his abode in a forest hut in the neighbourhood of the indus. there the bharatas lived for a long time, protected by the impenetrable country. afterwards samvarana reconquered the glorious city which he had previously inhabited, and tapati bore him kuru, whom the nation chose to be king. kuru was succeeded on the throne of hastinapura by viduratha, anaçvan, parikshit, pratiçravas, pratipa and Çantanu. the names which the poem places at the head of the genealogical tree of the rulers of the bharatas are taken from the veda. yayati, like pururavas, is commended in the rigveda as a sacrificer. the name of yayati's son, puru, is borrowed from a name which in the veda designates the bharatas, who in these poems are variously called purus and bharatas.[ ] the tribes of the anus, and the druhyus, whom the rigveda presented to us as confederates of the bharatas, are in the epos united with them by their ancestors. we have become acquainted with viçvamitra as a priest and minstrel of the bharatas, when they crossed the vipaça against the tritsus. in the epos a descendant of puru begets bharata, _i.e._ the second eponymous hero of the tribe, with the daughter of viçvamitra. in order to glorify the position of this priest, and secure his blessing for the royal race of the puru-bharatas, he becomes, in the epos, by his daughter, the progenitor of king bharata, to whom at the same time is ascribed the dominion over the whole earth. thus far, it is obvious, the epos goes to work upon the names of the tribes, and changes them into the names of heroes or kings. apart from any poetical exaggeration, the wide dominion of the mythical king bharata is, no doubt, an anticipation of the predominance to which the bharatas attained at a later time on the upper ganges. at any rate, according to the epos, samvarana, the descendant of bharata, was compelled to return once more to the indus, and there take up his abode for a long time. the statement that it is the panchalas who conquer samvarana is no doubt an invention based on the attitude of the panchalas towards the bharatas in the great war (p. ). with kuru, the successor of samvarana, it is obvious that a new dynasty begins to reign over the bharatas. this is obviously the first dynasty, whose achievements were widely felt, to which the epic poetry could attach itself. owing to his justice, kuru is chosen by the nation of the bharatas to be their king; this, of itself, is evidence of a new beginning. but kuru is also said to be of divine origin, like pururavas, the progenitor of his supposed ancestors. pururavas is the child of the son of the moon and the daughter of manu; kuru is the child of samvarana and the sister of manu, the daughter of the god of light. manu was the son of vivasvat (p. ); tapati, the mother of kuru, is the daughter of vivasvat.[ ] the name kurukshetra, _i.e._ land or kingdom of kuru, which adheres to the region between the drishadvati and the yamuna, is evidence that the bharatas, under the guidance of the kings descended from kuru, first conquered this region and settled in it. when they had been there long enough to give to the country as a lasting name a title derived from their kings, they extended their settlements from the yamuna further to the north-east. here, on the upper ganges, hastinapura became the abode of their kings of the stock of kuru, whose name now passed over to the people, so that the bharatas, who, in the veda, are called purus and bharatas, are now called kurus after their royal family. with the bharatas, or soon after them, other arian tribes advance to the yamuna; here we meet in the epos the tribes which, according to the rigveda, once fought with the bharatas against the tritsus, the matsyas, and the yadavas, the latter lower down on the yamuna. hence we may conclude with tolerable certainty that the bharatas, under the guidance of the kurus, succeeded in driving further to the east the tribes which had previously emigrated in that direction--the tritsus (_i.e._ the koçalas), angas, videhas, and magadhas (as they were afterwards called), and that it was the family of the kurus who established the first extensive dominion among the indians on the upper ganges. it is the struggles of the tribes, who once in part united with the bharatas, and followed them into the valley of yamuna, against the kingdom of the kurus which are described in the mahabharata. Çantanu, the descendant of kuru, had a son bhishma, so we are told in this poem. when Çantanu was old he wished to marry a young wife, satyavati; but her parents refused their consent, because the sons of their daughter could not inherit the throne. then bhishma vowed never to marry, and to give up his claim to the throne. satyavati became the wife of Çantanu, and bore him two sons. the oldest of these bhishma placed, after Çantanu's death, on the throne, and, when he fell in war, he placed the younger son, vijitravirya, to whom he married two daughters of the king of the kaçis, a people situated on the ganges (in the neighbourhood of varanasi or benares). but the king died without children. anxious that the race of kuru should not die out, satyavati bade the wise priest vyasa, the son of her love, whom she had borne before her marriage with Çantanu, raise up children to the two widows of vijitravirya. when the first widow saw the holy man approach by the light of the lamp, with knots in his hair, with flashing eyes, and bushy brows, she trembled and closed her eyes. the second widow became pale with fear; and so it befell that the son of the first, dhritarashtra, was born blind, and the son of the second, pandu, was a pale man. bhishma took both under his care. he married dhritarashtra to gandhari, the daughter of the king of the gandharas, on the indus; for pandu he chose the daughter of a prince of the bodshas, kunti; and with gold and precious stones, bhishma also purchased for him a second wife, madri, the sister of the prince of the madras. as dhritarashtra was blind, bhishma made pandu king of hastinapura, and he became a mighty warrior; under him the kingdom was as powerful as under bharata. but he loved hunting even more than war. he went with his wives to the himalayas in order to hunt, and there he died at an early age. the blind dhritarashtra now reigned over the bharatas. his wife gandhari had first borne him duryodhana and then ninety-nine sons; but on the same day on which duryodhana saw the light kunti had borne yudhishthira to pandu, and after him arjuna and bhima. madri bore twins to pandu, nakula and sahadeva. with these five sons kunti returned to hastinapura after pandu's death. dhritarashtra received them into the palace, and they became strong and brave, and showed their power and skill in arms at a great tournament, which dhritarashtra caused to be held at hastinapura. the martial skill exhibited in this tournament by the sons of pandu, and a victory which they obtained against the panchalas, who had defeated duryodhana, induced dhritarashtra to fix on yudhishthira as his successor. but duryodhana would not allow the throne to be taken from him. at his instigation dhritarashtra removed the sons of pandu from hastinapura to varanavata at the confluence of the yamuna and the ganges. even here duryodhana's hatred pursued them; he caused their house to be set on fire, so that they with difficulty escaped from the flames. they fled into the wilderness. as they wandered up and down, they heard that drupada, the king of the panchalas, against whom they had fought for dhritarashtra, had made proclamation, that whosoever could bend his great bow and hit the mark, should win his daughter. in vain did all kings and heroes try their strength on this bow, till arjuna came. he strung the bow, hit the mark, and so won the king's daughter to wife--whom he shared with his four brothers. when the kurus discovered that the sons of pandu were alive and had become the sons-in-law of the king of the panchalas, they were afraid, and in order to avoid a war between the panchalas and bharatas, dhritarashtra divided his kingdom with the sons of pandu. as dhritarashtra's royal abode was at hastinapura, on the ganges, the sons of pandu founded the city of indraprashtha in their portion of the kingdom (it lay to the south-west of hastinapura on the yamuna), conquered the surrounding people, and amassed great wealth in their new city, so that yudhishthira offered the great royal sacrifice. this aroused the envy and anxiety of duryodhana. he caused the sons of pandu to be invited to hastinapura to a game of dice. as Çakuni, the brother of his mother gandhari, was very skilful in throwing the dice and always won, duryodhana hoped to be able to gain back his kingdom from yudishthira. the sons of pandu came. yudishthira lost his kingdom and his goods, his slaves, himself, and finally he lost draupadi. duryodhana bade the latter, as a slave, sweep the room; and when she refused, dushana, one of his brothers, dragged her by her long black hair. then the blind dhritarashtra came, and said that his sons had done wrong; the pandus should return into their kingdom and forget what had happened on this day. when they returned home, duryodhana induced his father to allow a second game of dice against the pandus, as he and his brothers were not allowed to take up arms against them; the defeated party was to go into banishment for twelve years. this was done, and Çakuni, who again threw the dice for duryodhana, was once more victorious. for twelve years the pandus wandered with draupadi into the desert, and lived by the chase. in the thirteenth they went in disguise to virata the king of the matsyas, and became his servants. yudishthira was his instructor in the game of dice; arjuna, clothed as a eunuch, taught dancing and music in the women's apartment; bhima was cook; nakula and sahadeva were overseers of the horses and cattle; draupadi was the queen's maid. when duryodhana invaded the land of the matsyas and lifted their cattle, arjuna recovered the booty, and in reward, when the pandus had made themselves known, he received the king's daughter as a wife for his son abhimanyu. on the day after the marriage a consultation was held how the pandus could recover their sovereignty, as the time of exile was now over. an embassy was sent to hastinapura to demand the part of the kingdom possessed by the pandus. through duryodhana's efforts the request was refused. the pandus and kurus prepared for war. the armies met in the plain of kurukshetra, in the ancient territory of the kuru-bharatas, between the drishadvati and the yamuna. the bharatas were led by the aged bhishma, Çantanu's eldest son, with whom was associated his grand-nephew duryodhana, the oldest son of dhritarashtra and the bitter foe of his cousins. with the bharatas were the Çurasenas, whom we afterwards find on the yamuna, the madras, the koçalas, the videhas and the angas--who were situated on the eastern affluents of the ganges, and the northern bank of the river. the pandus were supported by the matsyas, the king of the panchalas, drupada, with his young son Çikhandin, and his people, the kaçis from the ganges, and krishna, a hero of the yadavas, with a part of his people; the remainder fought for the kurus. in front of the army of the pandus were seen the five brothers on their chariots of war, from which waved their standards. before the banner of yudishthira, who stood upon his chariot, slim of shape, in garments of yellow and gold, with a nose like the flower of prachandala, the two drums sounded; beside him was the long-armed bhima, holding in his hand his iron club adorned with gold, with dark glance and knitted brows. the third was the bearer of the great bow, arjuna, with an ape on his banner, the steadfast hero of men, who reverenced the men of old, the destroyer of the troops of the enemy, who banished the fears of the fearful. last were seen nakula who fought with the sword, and sahadeva. opposite them bhishma's banner waved from his chariot on a golden palm-stem; it displayed five silver stars. when the armies approached each other bhishma cried with a voice of thunder to his warriors: "to-day the gates of heaven are opened for the brave; go ye the way which your fathers and ancestors have gone to heaven, by falling gloriously. would ye rather end life on a sick-bed in pain? only in the field may the kshatriya (warrior) fall." then he seized the great gold-adorned shell and blew for onset. as the sea surges to and fro in a storm when driven by roaring winds, the armies dashed upon each other; from afar the ravens screamed and the wolves howled, announcing a great slaughter, and heaps of carcasses. the heroes fight against the hostile heroes; rarely do they spring down from their chariots, and scatter the "heads of the foot soldiers like seed." the princes mutually cover each other with clouds of arrows; they shoot down the hostile charioteers, so that the horses rage uncontrolled hither and thither in the battle; if the elephants are driven against the chariots in order to overthrow them, the riders shoot them like "peacocks from trees," or they seize the great swords and hew off their trunks, at the root, close by the tusks, so that "the harnessed elephants" raise a great roar. in their turn they tear the warriors from their chariots; they press on irresistibly through the ranks of the warriors, like streams "leaping from rock to rock;" they check the advance of the enemy "as rocks beat back the waves of the sea." covered with arrows they drop blood, till, deeply wounded in the head and neck, they fall to the ground, or turn raging on their own army. when the heroes have shot forth their arrows, their bows broken, the missiles driven through their coats of mail, so that the warriors "blossom like rose-trees," they leap down from their chariots, seize their great painted shields of hide, raise aloft their war-clubs and rush like buffalo-bulls upon each other. at one time in attack, at another in defence, they circle round each other, and spy out a moment to give a deadly blow. if the shields are destroyed and the clubs broken, they rush like "maddened tigers" to wrestle and fight hand to hand, till one sinks to earth pouring out blood, like a tree of which the root has been hewn through. thus, for nine days, the contest went on between the two armies. the army of the kurus had the advantage; no one ventured to meet the aged bhishma. then krishna, the driver of arjuna, advised him to mount the chariot of Çikhandin, the young son of drupada, the prince of the panchalas, on the following morning and to put on his armour. the aged bhishma would not fight against Çikhandin; he held it beneath him to fight against children. when he saw arjuna approach him with the ensigns of Çikhandin, and in his armour, he cried out, "attack me as you will, i will not fight with you." then arjuna laid the smooth arrows of reed, furnished with feathers from the heron and points of iron, on the string of the bow, and covered bhishma with arrows as a cloud in summer pours its rain on the mountain. the invincible old man looked up with astonishment, and cried: "like a row of swarming bees, arrow hisses after arrow through the air. as the lightning of indra travels to earth, so do these arrows fly. they are not the arrows of Çikhandin. like thunder-bolts shattering all they pierce through my mail and shield into my limbs. like poisonous snakes darting their tongues in anger, their arrows bite me and drink my heart's blood. they are not the arrows of Çikhandin; they are yama's messengers (p. ); they bring the death i have long desired; they are the arrows of arjuna." head foremost, streaming with blood, bhishma fell from the chariot. delighted at this victory, arjuna cried aloud with a clear lion's cry, and the army of the pandus shouted for joy and blew their shells. duryodhana's warriors were seized with panic; their tower and defence was gone. drona, whom the sons of pandu had once instructed in the use of arms, now led the army of the kurus; and a second time they gained the advantage. bhima sought in vain to overcome drona; then the brother of draupadi attacked him, and at krishna's advice, yudishthira and bhima called to drona that his son açvatthaman had fallen. deceived by this craft, drona allowed his arms to drop, and draupadi's brother smote off his head. after his fall, the kurus were led by karna, the prince of the angas. he passed as the son of a waggoner; his real father, the sun-god surya, appeared to him in the night, and warned him against arjuna; he would meet his death. glory was sweet to the living, when parents, children, and friends surrounded him with pride, and kings celebrated his courage; but what was honour and glory to the withered man who had become ashes?--it was only the flowers and the chaplets placed on his corpse to adorn it. karna answered: he had no friend, no wife nor child; he feared not death, and would gladly sacrifice his body in the battle; but arjuna would not conquer him. on the next morning he prudently besought Çalya, the prince of the madyas, to guide his horses, since krishna, the best of charioteers, guided the horses of arjuna. at the instance of duryodhana, Çalya undertook to do this, but his heart was angered at the degrading thought that he was guiding the horses of a waggoner, and he guided them so that while karna was fighting against arjuna, and had wounded him with his arrows, the chariot sank in a marsh. as karna sprang down in order to draw the chariot out, arjuna, at krishna's instigation, shot a deadly arrow into the hero's back. then one hero of the kurus fell after the other. on the eighteenth day of the struggle, duryodhana and bhima met. as two raging elephants goad each other for the possession of a female elephant, so did these princes meet with their battle-clubs, whirling round sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, each seeking the unprotected part of his opponent, and brandishing his club in the air. duryodhana has the advantage. he has retired before a stroke of bhima's club, which has thus spent itself on the ground; seeing the unprotected state of his opponent, he has dealt him a mighty blow on the breast. then, on krishna's advice, bhima dealt a blow at duryodhana's thigh, broke the bone, and the two fell to the earth. the army of the pandus shouted for joy, but duryodhana spoke with his dying voice: "we have always fought honourably, and, therefore, the honour remains with us. you have won by craft and dishonour, and dishonour attends your victory. in honourable fight you would never have conquered us. in the garments of Çikhandin, arjuna slew bhishma when defenceless. to drona ye cried in subtlety that his son was dead, and slew him as he dropped his arms. karna, arjuna slew by a shameful blow from behind; by dishonour bhima brings me to the ground, for it is said, 'in battle with the club it is dishonourable to strike below the navel.'" red with rage, bhima stepped up to the king-lion who lay outstretched, with his club beside him, beat in his skull with his foot, and said: "we have not laid fire to burn our enemies, nor cheated them in the game, nor outraged their wives; by the strength of our arms alone we destroy our enemies." on the evening of the eighteenth day of the battle, all the brothers of duryodhana, all the princes who fought for the kurus, and all the warriors of the kurus were dead. the victors blew their shells, called yudishthira to the king, and obtained as booty numberless treasures in gold and silver, in precious stones, in cloths, skins, and slave-women. then all is sunk in deep slumber. but three warriors of the army of the kurus have escaped into the forest; açvatthaman, the son of the slain drona, kritavarman and kripa. sorrow for his father made rest impossible for açvatthaman; on the branches of the fig-tree under which he lay he saw a troop of crows asleep; an owl softly flew up and slew one crow after the other. açvatthaman set out with his companions and penetrated into the camp of the pandus. first he slays the brother of draupadi who had killed his father; then he throws fire into the camp, and slays the five sons of draupadi, and all the matsyas and panchalas. then he hastens to the place where duryodhana lies. "thou art still living," he says to duryodhana; "listen, then, to a word which will be pleasing to thine ear: all the panchalas, all the matsyas, all the sons of draupadi are dead." only the four brothers, the sons of pandu, krishna and his charioteer, escaped this nocturnal massacre. then the dead were buried on the field of kurukshetra: the sons of pandu knelt before dhritarashtra, and vyasa reconciled the old king with the sons of his step-brother; but gandhari cursed krishna, who by his devices had brought her sons to death. then the pandus made their entrance into hastinapura, and yudishthira was consecrated king under the guidance of krishna. he treated the old king as a son treats his father, but the latter could not forget the death of duryodhana and his other sons: he went with gandhari into the jungles on the ganges, and with her he perished, when the jungle was set on fire. at vyasa's command yudishthira offered a sacrifice of horses, and then obtained the dominion over the whole earth. following the course of the sacrificial horse (chap. viii.) arjuna conquered for him the magadhas on the south bank of the ganges, the chedis, the nishadas, the saindhavas, _i.e._ the inhabitants of the indus, and the gandharas, beyond the indus.[ ] afterwards all the conquered kings presented themselves at this sacrifice of the horse in hastinapura, and acknowledged yudishthira as their lord. he sat on the throne of hastinapura for years, and then heard that the curse which gandhari had pronounced upon krishna was fulfilled. at a great festival of the yadavas the reproach was made against açvatthaman that he had basely slain the heroes in their sleep, after the great battle. then there arose a strife among the princes of the yadavas. they seized their weapons and mutually slaughtered each other. distressed at the loss of his people krishna retired into the wilderness, and there he was slain by the arrow of a hunter who took him for an antelope. the death of the hero to whom he owed his victory filled yudishthira and his brothers with deep sorrow. on vyasa's advice they determined to withdraw with draupadi into the forest. all her sons had fallen in the great battle; but the wife of one (abhimanyu), who was the daughter of the king of the matsyas, had borne a son, parikshit, after the death of her husband. when he had been consecrated at hastinapura, the sons of pandu went on a pilgrimage to the east, to the himalayas, and beyond this to the holy mountain, meru. draupadi was the first to succumb, then nakula and sahadeva; last of all arjuna and bhima fell exhausted. yudishthira climbed on, till indra met him with his chariot, and carried him with his body to the imperishable world, the heaven of the heroes; there he would again behold his brothers and his wife, when their souls had been freed from the earthly impurity still adhering to them. for bhima had trusted too much to his bodily power, and had eaten too much. arjuna had loved battle too well, and had been too harsh against his enemies; sahadeva was too proud of his wisdom, nakula of his beauty; and draupadi had loved arjuna too dearly. but parikshit reigned in hastinapura years. he died from the bite of a snake. hence his son, janamejaya, caused all the snakes to be burned in one great fire of sacrifice. on this occasion he asked vyasa how the strife had arisen in old times between the kurus and the pandus, for vyasa had been a witness: "i would hear from thee, brahman, the story of the fortunes of the kurus and pandus." so the king concludes. then vyasa bids vaiçampayana repeat the great poem which he had taught him. janamejaya was succeeded by Çatanika, açvamedhadatta, asimakrishna, and nichakra, in his sway over the bharatas, nichakra changed the place of residence from hastinapura to kauçambi lower down the ganges. and after nichakra kings of the race of pandu reigned over the bharatas. no words are needed to point out the absurdity and recent origin of an arrangement which not only ascribes to vyasa the reconciliation of the last kurus with the pandus, but also makes him the father of the progenitors of the two hostile houses of dhritarashtra and pandu, and the author of the great poem. the name vyasa means collector, arranger; and if the arranger of the poem is also the father of the ancestors of the contending tribes, this expression can only mean, that poetry has invented the whole legend. but a more minute examination limits this interpretation to a _naïve_ confession on the part of poetry, that she and not tradition has transferred the origin of the pandus to the race of the kurus, and has represented the progenitors of the hostile races as brothers. we can do no more than make hypotheses about the original contents of the poem on the great war. against the kurus, who, at the head of the bharatas, maintained their supremacy on the upper course of the yamuna and the ganges, there rises in rebellion a younger race, the pandus, who have risen into note among the panchalas. the sons of pandu receive in marriage the daughter of the king of the panchalas, who are situated to the south of the bharatas on the confluence of the yamuna and the ganges; and they are aided by the king of the matsyas. it is krishna, a hero of the yadavas, to whom the pandus owe their success in council and action. the epos represents the pandus as growing up in their childhood in the forest, and afterwards again making their home in the wilderness; they receive half of the kingdom of the bharatas, and then lose it; and in their half they found indraprastha to the west of hastinapura on the yamuna. from this we may conclude that the supremacy of the bharatas established by the kurus was resisted by the panchalas and matsyas and a part of the yadavas--the yadavas fight in the epos partly for the kurus and partly against them--and that a family among these nations, apparently a family of the panchalas, succeeded in combining this resistance and establishing another kingdom, with indraprastha as a centre, beside the kingdom of hastinapura, from which they finally conquered the bharatas. this struggle of the panchalas and matsyas against the bharatas is the nucleus of the epos. a tradition may lie at the base of the statement in the poems, that the nations of the east, the madras, koçalas, videhas and angas (in north-western bengal), fight beside the kurus against the panchalas and matsyas: at any rate it would be to the interest of the previous settlers on the ganges to repel the advance of later immigrants. on the other hand, the kaçis, in the region of the later benares, may have fought against the bharatas. however this may be, the race of the kurus disappeared in a great war, and kings of the race of pandu ascended the throne of hastinapura. if, as we have assumed, the bharatas had previously forced the tritsus from the sarasvati to the yamuna, and from the yamuna to the upper ganges, and from the upper ganges further east to the sarayu, they were now, in turn, not indeed expelled, but over-mastered, by the tribes which had followed them and settled on the yamuna. the metropolis of the kingdom which arose out of these struggles was hastinapura, the chief city of the bharatas; under the rule of the race of pandu it comprised the bharatas and the panchalas; in the old ritual of consecration we find the formula: "this is your king, ye kurus, ye panchalas."[ ] the original poem no doubt took the part of the kurus against the pandus, of the bharatas against the panchalas. in some passages of the old poem, which have remained intact, duryodhana, _i.e._ bad-fighter, is called suyodhana, _i.e._ good-fighter. it is not by their bravery but by their cunning that the pandus were victorious. the words of the dying duryodhana: "the pandus have fought with subtlety and shame, and by shame have obtained the victory," are an invention made from this point of view. the vengeance which follows close after the victory of the pandus, the massacre of their army in the following night, through which the life of the dying duryodhana is prolonged; the fulfilment of the curse which the mother of duryodhana pronounces upon krishna and the yadavas--at a later time the tribes of the yadavas disappeared, at any rate in these regions--all enable us to detect the original form and object of the poem. it was the lament over the fall of the famous race of the kurus, which had founded the oldest kingdom in india, over the death of bhishma and his hundred sons, and the narration of the vengeance which overtook the crime of krishna and the pandus. in any case certain traits which reappear in the epic poetry of the greeks and the germans--the contest with the bow for draupadi, the death of the young hero of half-divine descent by an arrow shot in secret, the fall of an ancient hero with his hundred sons, the destruction even of the victors in the great battle--are evidence that old indo-germanic conceptions must have formed the basis of the original poem. even in the form in which we now have them they remind us of the grand, mighty, rude style of the oldest epic poetry. in other respects also traits of antiquity are not wanting--the marriage of five brothers with one wife, the hazard of goods, kingdom, wife, and even personal liberty, on a single throw of the dice, which is an outcome of the passionate nature already known to us through the songs of the vedas. in the songs of the conquests and struggles on the yamuna and ganges, sung by the minstrels to the princes and nobles of these new states, these elements became amalgamated with the praises of the deeds achieved by their ancestors at their first foundation. this is proved by the tone of the poem, which penetrates even the description of the great war. it was only before princes who made war and battle their noblest occupation, before assemblies of a warlike nobility, and in the spirit of such circles, that songs could be recited, telling of the contests in all knightly accomplishments--the wooing of the king's daughter by the bow, the choice of a husband by the princess, who gives her hand to the noblest knight. only there could such lively and detailed descriptions of single contests and battles be given, and the laws of knightly honour and warfare be extolled with such enthusiasm. these must have penetrated deeply into the minds of the hearers, when the decision in the great battle could be brought about by a breach of these laws, and the destruction of the yadavas accounted for by a quarrel arising out of a question of this kind. even the law-book which bears the name of manu places great value on the laws of honourable contest.[ ] hence we may with certainty assume that the songs of the princes who conquered the land on the yamuna and the ganges, were sung at the courts of their descendants, at the time when the latter, surrounded by an armed nobility, ruled on the ganges. there, after the tumult of the first period of the settlement had subsided, these songs of the marvels and achievements of ancient heroes, coloured with mythical conceptions, were united into a great poem, the original epos of the great war, and in this the living heroic song came to an end. in the german epos, the nibelungen, we find a foundation of mythical elements, together with historical reminiscences of the wars of dietrich of bern, overgrown by the conflicts and destruction of the burgundians. at a much later time the epos of the great war passed from the tradition of the minstrels into the hands of the priests, by whom it was recorded and revised from a priestly point of view. descendants of the pandus who had overthrown the ancient famous race of the kurus, and had gained in their place the kingdom of hastinapura, are said to have remained on the throne for generations in that city, and afterwards at kauçambi. from other sources we can establish the fact, that at least in the sixth century b.c. the sovereignty among the kuru-panchalas belonged to kings who traced their descent from pandu; and even in the fourth century we have mention of families of nakula, and sahadeva, and among the eastern bharatas, of descendants of yudhishthira and arjuna.[ ] hence the rulers of the tribe of pandu must have thought it of much importance not to appear as evil-doers and rebels, and to invent some justification of their attack on the kurus, and the throne of hastinapura. in this way they would appear both to the panchalas and the bharatas as legitimate princes sprung from noble ancestors, and would share wherever possible in the ancient glory of the kings of the bharatas, who were sprung from the race of kuru. this end it was attempted to gain by revision and interpolation; and the views of the priests, which were of later origin, have no doubt supported the subsequent justification of the usurpation of the race of the pandus. the priestly order might think it desirable to win the favour of the pandu-kings of kauçambi. of this they were secure if they united the ancestors of the race with the family of the kurus, while at the same time they brought the kings of the bharatas and panchalas into connection with priestly views of life by representing their ancestors as patterns of piety, virtue, and respect for priests. in the old poem, bhishma, the descendant of kuru on the throne of the bharatas, perished, at an advanced age, with his son suyodhana, and his ninety-nine brothers, in stout conflict against the pandus, who were at the head of the panchalas; but his fall was due to the craft of the latter. on the other hand, the revision maintains that king Çantanu was the last legitimate kuru; that his son bhishma renounced the throne, marriage, and children; that Çantanu's younger son died childless; and represents the dritarashtras and the pandus as his illegitimate descendants. thus the pandus are brought into the race of kuru, and the claims of the descendants of dhritarashtra and pandu are placed on an equality. it was an old custom among the indians, not wholly removed by the law-book of the priests, even in the later form of the regulation, that if a father remained without a son his brother or some other relation might raise up a son to him by his wife or widow.[ ] according to the poem, the wife of Çantanu charged her nearest relation, her natural son, to raise up children to the two childless widows of her son born in marriage. agreeably to the tendency of the revision, this son is a very sacred and wise person; and thus it is proved that it was within the power of the priests to summon into life the most famous royal families. but great as the freedom of the revision is, it does not venture to deny the right of birth of the kurus. dhritarashtra is the older, pandu is the younger, of the two sons. in order to clear the younger brother, dhritarashtra is afflicted with blindness, because his mother could not endure the sight of the great brahman. even the son of dhritarashtra, duryodhana, is allowed to have the right of birth; it is only maintained that yudhishthira, pandu's elder son, was born on the same day. that this insertion of the pandus into the race of the kurus in the epic poem was completed in the fourth century b.c. we can prove.[ ] the revision then represents dhritarashtra as voluntarily surrendering half his kingdom to the sons of pandu, and this is a great help towards their legitimacy. when the pandus are resolved on war, krishna removes yudhishthira's scruples by asserting "that even in times gone by it has not always been the eldest son who has sat on the throne of hastinapura." these traits are all tolerably transparent. how weak the position of the pandus was in the legend, how little could be told of their ancestors and of pandu himself, is shown in the poem by the fact that the want of ancestors can only be supplemented by inserting the family in the race of the kurus, and that no definite achievement of pandu is mentioned. he is allowed to die early, and his sons grow up in the forest. so transparent is the veil thrown over the fact that an unknown family rose to be the leaders of the panchalas. the insertion of dhritarashtra is caused by the insertion of pandu. the indian poetry of the later period is not troubled by the fact that bhishma, Çantanu's eldest son, renounces the throne in order to allow a blind nephew to reign in his place; that even as a great-uncle he is the mightiest hero of the kurus, and can only be slain on the battle-field by treachery. thus, rightly or wrongly, the pandus were brought into the family of the kurus. but why should the elder branch make way for the younger? to explain this circumstance, the blind king, the honourable dhritarashtra, _i.e._ "firmly holding to the kingdom," must first fix on yudhishthira as his successor, to the exclusion of his own sons, and then, even in his own lifetime, divide the kingdom with yudhishthira. hence the pandus could advance claims, and the more fiercely duryodhana opposed the surrender of his legitimate right, the more does he lose ground from a moral standard against the pandus. his persecutions and villainies provide the revision with the means to bring the pandus repeatedly into banishment, and into the forest, from which in the old poem they had been brought to stand at the head of the panchalas. it is duryodhana who causes the house of pandu to be set on fire, who by false play wins draupadi from yudhishthira, and treats her despitefully, and takes from him the half of the kingdom. on the other hand, the sons of the pandus, so far as the lines of the old poem allow, are changed into persecuted innocents, patterns of piety, virtue, and obedience to the brahmans. it is naturally the form of yudhishthira which undergoes the main change from these points of view, since he twice succumbs to the passion for the game. by these interpolations his brother bhima is fortunately put in a position to answer the reproach of the dying duryodhana--that the pandus had conquered by treachery and shame--by asserting that they had not laid fire for their enemies as he had, or cheated them in the game, or outraged their women. the revision carries the justification and legitimisation of the pandus even beyond the destruction of duryodhana and the kurus. owing to his blindness the king dhritarashtra could not be brought into the battle and slain there. where the old poem represents the mother of the slain kurus as cursing krishna, the revision interpolates a reconciliation between the aged dhritarashtra and the destroyers of his race, a reconciliation naturally accomplished through the instrumentality of a brahman. hence yudhishthira is allowed to ascend the throne of hastinapura with the consent of the legitimate king, and reign in his name. lastly, in order to remove every stain from the pandus, they are represented as renouncing the world, and dying on a pious pilgrimage to the divine mountain. a second revision of the poem--which, as will become clear below, cannot, in any case, have been made before the seventh century b.c.--represents the pandus as becoming the sons of gods, and thus makes still easier the task of their justification. it was not by pandu that kunti became the mother of yudhishthira, arjuna, and bhima, but the first and most just of all rulers she bore to the very god of justice. hence his claim to the throne and his righteous life were established from the first. the second brother, the great warrior arjuna, owed his birth to indra; the third, bhima, to the strong wind-god, vayu; the twin-sons of madri are then naturally the children of the twins in heaven, the two açvins. more serious is the change of krishna, _i.e._ the black, into the god vishnu, assumed in a third revision, which was completed in the course of the fourth century b.c. (book vi. chap. viii.). krishna, after whom the city of krishnapura on the yamuna is said to have been named,[ ] belongs to the tribe of the yadavas, who were settled on the yamuna, in the district of mathura. he is the son of the cow-herd nanda and his wife yaçoda; he is himself a cow-herd, drives off herds of cows, carries away the clothes of the daughters of the herdsmen while they are bathing, and engages in many other exploits of a similar kind. he rebels against the king of mathura, and slays him. his crafty and treacherous plans then bring the heroes of the kurus to destruction; at length, with his whole nation, he succumbs to the curse hurled against him by the mother of duryodhana. out of this form of the ancient poem the later revision has made an incarnation of vishnu, the beneficent, sustaining god. the child of vasudeva and devaki, who bears all the marks of vishnu, is no other than vishnu, who permits himself to be born from devaki; he is changed with the child of yaçoda, which was born in the same night. but these new points of view are not thoroughly carried out; the mahabharata is not consistent about the origin of krishna or his divine nature. at one time he is a human warrior, at another the highest of the gods, and the original position both of krishna and the pandus is still perceptible.[ ] the second great epic of the indians--the ramayana--is essentially distinguished from the poems of the great war. here also a legend, or ancient ballads, may have formed the basis; here, too, it is clear that a later redaction has changed the hero of the poem into an incarnation of a god. but the legend is already changed into the fairy tale, of which the scene is principally the deccan, the banks of the godavari, the island of lanka (ceylon) where the aryas first arrived about the year b.c. the cast of the poem as a whole is essentially different from that of the mahabharata. the old legend may have related the story of a prince who wins his wife by his power to string the great bow of her father, and who, when banished from the banks of the sarayu, contends in the himavat, or in the south of the ganges, against the giants dwelling there. these giants carried off his wife from the forest hut, and he is only able to regain her after severe struggles. rama, the banished prince, is supposed to be a son of a king of the koçalas (the tritsus of the rigveda), who had taken up their abode on the sarayu. daçaratha, the father of rama, had apparently reigned a long time before the great war; he was descended from ikshvaku, the son of manu. according to the vishnu-purana, daçaratha is the sixtieth king of this family, the eleventh after sudas, who repelled the attack of the bharatas.[ ] in their battle the tritsus were aided by the priest vasishtha, to whom in the poem of rama the same place is allotted which in the mahabharata is first allotted to viçvamitra and then to vyasa. without regard to the ancient poems and their strongly-marked traits of great battles and mighty contests, the priests entirely transformed the legend of rama from their point of view into the form in which it now lies before us; and this took place at a period of indian life, when the warlike impulse had long given way to peaceful institutions, and the requirements of the priests had driven out the military code of honour and martial glory--a time when the weaker sides of the aryan disposition, submission and sacrifice, had won the victory over the hard and masculine qualities of activity and self-assertion. the ramayana gives expression to the feeling of calm subjection, virtuous renunciation, passionless performance of duties, patient obedience, unbroken reticence. throughout, prominence is given to the system of priestly asceticism, of the eremite's life in the forest, of voluntary suicide. here we can scarcely find any echoes of that desire of honour, that jealousy, that lust of battle, and eagerness for revenge, which occur unmistakably in the mahabharata; nothing remains of the knightly pride which scorns to give a blow forbidden by the rules of the battle. the hero of the ramayana is a hero of virtue, not of the battle. he commends without ceasing renunciation and the fulfilment of duties; he abandons throne and kingdom; he gives up his right out of obedience to his father, and respect for a promise made by him; his wife leads him against his will into the desert, because she also knows her duties. respect, devotion, and sacrifice in the relation of children to their parents, of younger brothers to the elder, of the wife to her husband, of subjects to their lords, are described with great poetical beauty and power, but often with the weakest sentimentality. the mission of the hero in his banishment is the defence of the settlements of holy penitents against the giants. but his battles are no merely human struggle; he not only strings the bow of Çiva, he breaks it, so that it sounds like the fall of a mountain or like indra's thunder. he fights with the bow of indra and the arrows of brahman, and at length even with the chariot of indra against the giants. these battles are no less legendary than are his confederates' against the giants of lanka, the vulture jatayu, the apes and bears, which build him a bridge into that island. these are all described with an exaggeration and monstrous unreality into which indian poetry only strayed after traversing many stages. we do indeed once hear, even in the ramayana, of heroes "who never turned in the battle, and fell struck in front." even here, in isolated passages, the old manly independence breaks forth, which, conscious of its strength, beats down injustice instead of enduring it, and makes a path for itself, but only in order to place in a still clearer light a quick compliance, a patient fulfilment of duties, and thus allow to the latter a greater advantage. at this day epic poetry lives in india in full force, just as it left the hands of the priests. at the close of the mahabharata we are told: "what the brahman is to the rest of mankind, the cow to all quadrupeds, the ocean to the pool, such is the mahabharata in comparison with all other histories." to the readers and hearers of the mahabharata and ramayana the best rewards in this life and the next are promised: wealth, forgiveness of sins, entrance into heaven. at all festivals and fairs, at the marriages of the wealthy, episodes from one of the two poems are recited to the eager crowd of assembled hearers; the audience accompany the acts and sufferings of the heroes with cries of joy or signs of sorrow, with laughter or tears. in the village, the brahman, sitting beneath a fig-tree, recites the great poems, in the order of the events no doubt, to the community. the interest of the audience never flags. if the piece recited touches on happy incidents--on victory, triumph, happy return home, the marriage or consecration of the heroes, the village is adorned with crowns as at a festival. the indians live with the forms of their epos; they know the fortunes of these heroes, and look on them as a pattern or a warning. the priests have fully realised their intention of setting before the nation in these poems a mirror of manners and virtue. footnotes: [ ] this follows from the fact that the army of the confederates had to cross the vipaça and Çatadru in order to reach the tritsus. [ ] in the rigveda king sudas is at once a son of divodasa and a scion of the house of the pijavanas, possibly because pijavana was the father or some ancestor of divodasa. in the samaveda ( , , , ) divodasa is called the noble. in the book of manu ( , ; , ) sudasa is the son of pijavana. in the genealogy of the kings of the koçalas, by whom the tritsus were destroyed, the vishnu-purana mentions in the fiftieth generation after ikshvaku, the founder of the race, a king sudasa, the son of sarvakama, grandson of rituparna. so also the harivança, and in the vishnu-purana (ed. wilson, p. ) vasishtha is the priest of king sudas as well as of nimi, the son of ikshvaku. on the other hand the vishnu-purana (p. , ) is aware of a second sudas, the grandson of divodasa, in the race of the moon. viçvamitra is himself called a bharata; we shall see below that the mahabharata connects viçvamitra with the genealogy of the kings of the bharata. cp. roth, "zur literatur," s. ff. [on the names of indian rivers, see muir, _loc. cit._ , ff.] [ ] cf. muir, _loc. cit._ ^ , , where the hymn is translated. [ ] roth, "zur literatur," s. , ff. [rigveda, , ; , . muir, _loc. cit._ , .] [ ] manu, , ff. [muir, , ff.] [ ] weber, "jyotisham, abh. d. berl. akad." , s. ff. and below. [ ] with similar exaggeration "duty" tells king parikshit at the close of the mahabharata that her four feet measured yodhanas in the first age, in the second, in the third, whereas now in the kaliyuga they only measure four yodhanas. the whole narrative is intended to point out that in the kaliyuga even Çudras could become kings. the vishnu-purana (ed. wilson, p. ) calls the first nanda who ascended the throne of magadha in b.c. the son of a Çudra woman. [ ] "bhagavata-purana," , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] arrian, "ind." , , . plin. , , . solin. , . as to the numbers, bunsen, "Ægypt." , ; von gutschmid, "beiträge," s. . the duration of the first interruption is lost; but it was less than the second, for arrian says that the second continued as much as years. perhaps the number of the first and third interruptions taken together are as long as the second. diodorus ( , , ) allots the years to dionysus, which arrian gives to spatembas. [ ] that the kalpa--_i.e._ the great world-period--was a current conception in the third century b.c. is proved by the inscriptions of açoka at girnar. lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] not more than nine names can be given to the dynasty of the nandas, which reigned for years before chandragupta; seventeen for the dynasty of the Çaiçunagas, even if kalaçoka's sons are all counted as independent regents; and five for the pradyotas. for the barhadrathas the vayu and vishnu-puranas give kings after sahadeva, the bhagavata-purana , the matsya-purana . hence, taking the highest figures, the united dynasties number reigns. to these are to be added the seven names which connect brihadratha with kuru, and the or names given in the longer and shorter lists of the mahabharata between kuru and manu. [ ] von gutschmid, "beiträge," s. ff. see below. [ ] p. , ed. wilson. [ ] von gutschmid, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] that the main portions of the epos in their present form cannot be older, is clear from the views of the worship of vishnu and Çiva which prevail in the poem. these forms of worship first obtained currency in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. (see below). it is also clear from the identification of vishnu and krishna, of rama and vishnu; the deeply felt brahmanic anti-buddhist tendencies, seen in such a marked manner in the ramayana; the form of philosophic speculation, and the application of astrology, which are characteristic of the epos in its present state; and finally from the mention of the yavanas as the allies of the kurus, and dattamira, _i.e._ demetrius, the king of the yavanas. this king reigned in bactria in the first half of the second century b.c. (lassen, _loc. cit._ , ). another king of the yavanas who is mentioned is bhagadatta, _i.e._ apparently, apollodotus, the founder of the græco-indian kingdom in the second half of the first century b.c. (von gutschmid, "beiträge," s. ). we are led to the same result by the descriptions of indian buildings, of paved roads and lofty temples, which were first built by the brahmans in opposition to the stupas of the buddhists. lassen places the important pieces of the mahabharata, in their present form, between kalaçoka and chandragupta, _i.e._ between - b.c. (_loc. cit._ ^ , ff.) benfey places them in the third century b.c., a. weber in the first century. the mahabharata, which according to the statement found in the poem ( , ) originally had only , double-verses, now numbers , : a. weber, "acad. vorlesungen," s. . the old form of the mahabharata is much anterior to the fifth century b.c.; certain passages of the present poem are much later: a. weber, "indische skizzen," s. , . when dion chrysostom remarks ( , , ed. reiske) that the homeric poems were sung by the indians in their own language--the sorrows of priam, the lamentation of hecuba and andromache, the bravery of achilles and hector--lassen is undoubtedly right in referring this statement to the mahabharata, and putting dhritarashtra in the place of priam, gandhari and draupadi in the place of andromache and hecuba, arjuna and suyodhana or karna in the place of achilles and hector ("alterth." ^ , ). it is doubtful whether the remark of chrysostom is taken from megasthenes. that the ramayana is later in style than the mahabharata will become clear below. [ ] "vishnu-purana," ed. wilson, p. , _seqq._ [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , anhang xviii. n. . [ ] in the rigveda we find: "if you, indra and agni, are among the druhyus, anus or purus, come forth." [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ , xxii. n. . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; , , ; , , . [ ] according to the brahmanic recension of the poem which we now possess, samvarana is able to obtain the daughter of the god only by the mediation of a sacred priest. the king therefore bethinks him of vasishtha, who ascends to the god of light and obtains his daughter for the king. lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , anhang xxvi. [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , n. and ^ . [ ] a. weber, "ind. literaturgesch." s. ^ . [ ] manu, , , . yajnavalkya, , - . [ ] panini in m. müller, "hist. of anc. sanskrit literature," p. , _n._ . [ ] manu, , . [ ] m. müller, _loc. cit._ [ ] "vishnu-purana," ed. wilson, p. . lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , ff. [ ] in panini krishna is called a god, but also a hero. m. müller, "hist. of anc. sanskrit lit." p. _n._ [ ] on the form of the rama legend in the daçaratha-jataka, cf. a. weber, "abh. berl akad." . the vishnu-purana enumerates kings of the koçalas from daçaratha to brihadbala, who falls in the great battle on the side of the kurus. including these this purana makes kings between manu and daçaratha. for the same interval the ramayana has only names, of which some, like yagati, nahusha, bharata, are taken from the genealogical table of the kings of the bharata, others, like pritha and triçanku, belong to the veda. we have already seen that the series of the bharata kings give about ten generations between the time when they gained the upper hand on the yamuna and upper ganges, _i.e._ the time of kuru and duryodhana. the koçalas forced eastward by the bharatas would thus have existed on the sarayu from generations before kuru. wilson, "vishnu-purana," p. . chapter iv. the formation and arrangement of the orders. the aryas had now advanced far beyond the borders of their ancient territory; from the land of the panjab they had conquered and occupied the valley of the ganges. the plundering raids and feuds which had occupied the tribes on the indus had passed away, and in their place came the migration, conquest, settlement, the conflict for the conquered districts, and a warlike life of considerable duration. it was only when attempted in large masses that attack or defence could be successful. by this means the tribes grew up into larger communities; the small unions of tribes became nations, which divided the land of the ganges among them. the tribal princes were changed into leaders of great armies. the serious and important nature of the tasks imposed upon them by the conquest and the settlement, by the need of security against the ancient inhabitants or the pressure of their own countrymen, placed in the hands of these princes a military dictatorship; so that in the new districts which were won and maintained under their guidance, the princes had a much greater weight, and a far wider power, than the heads of the tribes on the indus, surrounded by the warriors of their nations, had ever ventured to exercise. thus arose a number of monarchies in the conquered land. beside the matsyas on the western bank of the yamuna, and the Çurasenas, who lay to the south in the cities of mathura and krishnapura (in the place of the yadavas), stood the kingdom of the bharatas and panchalas on the upper course of the yamuna and ganges. these nations were governed by the dynasty of pandu, at first from hastinapura on the upper ganges, and afterwards, apparently after the accession of the eighth successor of parikshit, from kauçambi, which lies on the lower yamuna, about miles above the confluence of the yamuna and the ganges.[ ] further to the east, and to the north of the ganges, the koçalas were situated on the sarayu; the seat of their kingdom was ayodhya. still further to the east were the videhas, whose rulers resided at mithila (tirhat). on the ganges, below the confluence with the yamuna, were the kings of the kaçis at varanasi (benares), and farther to the east still, the kings of the angas at champa, also on the ganges. to the south of the river the magadhas had won a large district; their kings resided at rajagriha (king's house) on the sumagadhi.[ ] thus in the east there was a complex of tolerably extensive states, under a monarchy which owed its origin to military leadership in the war, and its permanence to the success of the settlement; a state of things forming a complete contrast to the old life of the tribes of the aryas in the land of the panjab. such a powerful, extensive, and complete alteration of the forms of the civic community, combined with the new conditions of life rendered necessary on the ganges, must have exercised a deeply-felt influence on the aryas. the conquest, establishment, and arrangement of extensive dominions had created the monarchy, but at the same time a warlike nobility had sprung up beside the princes in these contests. the land of the ganges had been won by the sword and divided among the victors. no doubt those who had achieved most in the battles, and stood nearest to the princes, received the best reward in land and slaves, in captives or dependants among the old population. in this way a number of families with larger possessions became distinguished from the mass of the population. in these the delight in arms and war became hereditary; the feeling of the father passed to his son along with his booty, his horses, and his weapons. he could apply himself to the chase, or to the exercise of arms; he was raised above all care for his maintenance, or the necessity of work. he possessed land and slaves to tend his herds or till his fields. from the later position of this order, we might assume that a nobility practised in the use of arms, the rajnayas, _i.e._ the princely, the kshatriyas, _i.e._ the wealthy or powerful, surrounded the princes in the ganges in greater numbers and with greater importance than the warriors of pre-eminent position, who in the land of the indus had aided the tribal princes in battle, in council, and in giving judgment. the battles for the possession of the new territory were over, and the mutual pressure of the arian tribes had come to an end. war was no longer a constant occupation, or carried on for existence; it was only at a distance, on the borders of the new states, that battles took place, either to check the incursions of the old inhabitants from the mountains or to extend the territory already possessed. hence the majority of the settlers preferred to till their lands in peace, and left it to those for whom booty or glory had a charm, to follow their kings in beating back the enemy at the borders, or making an attack on foreign tribes and countries. those who had to work the soil with their own hands gladly gave up the precedence to this military nobility; the king might fight out his wars with their help, if under such protection the herds could pasture in peace, or the fields be tilled without interruption. it was time enough for the peasants to take arms when the nobles who surrounded the princes were no longer able to keep off the attacks of the enemy. no doubt the kshatriyas formed a still more favourable estimate of themselves and their position. busied with their arms, their horses, or the chase, they became proud, and despised the work of the peasant, paying little respect to that laborious occupation in comparison with their own free and adventurous life. owing to their close relation to the king, to their weapons, and their possessions, the kshatriyas took the first place in the new states on the ganges. this they maintained beyond a doubt for centuries in the kingdom of the bharatas, among the matsyas and Çurasenas, the koçalas, kaçis, videhas, magadhas. in the royal houses and the families of the kshatriyas the achievements of the forefathers continued to live; they preserved the recollection of the wars of conquest, the struggles for the possession of the lands, which they now held. at their festivals and banquets the minstrels sang to them the songs of the ancient heroes, their ancestors, their mighty deeds, their sufferings and death; they extolled the delight in battle and the martial spirit, the knightly temper and mode of combat, and thus at length arose the poem of the great war. if our assumption, that the conquest of the land on the ganges may have been completed about the year b.c., is tenable, we might ascribe to the two following centuries the rise of the kshatriyas, the establishment of their prominent position in the newly-conquered territory, and to the next century the composition of the songs of the great war in their oldest form. in the development of other nations the periods of wide expansion, the rise of the military element, and protracted war, usually repress the influence and importance of the priesthood, but among the emigrant aryas this could not have been the case. we have already seen that among them the contest of sacrifices preceded the contest of arms. the victory fell to the side whose sacrificial bowl indra had drained. as the correct offering and correct invocation compelled the gods to come down and fight for the nation whose sacrifice they received, the priests were naturally most indispensable in the time of war. the singers of the sacrificial hymns which caused the gods to come down were identical among the indians with the priests, and were in fact the priests in the stricter sense. with them, minstrel and priest had one name--brahmana, _i.e._ one who prays. the hymns of the vedas showed us how the princes were commanded to set before them at the sacrifice a holy minstrel to offer prayer, and to be liberal to him. the minstrels who accompanied the emigrant tribes to the yamuna and ganges had, in those turbulent times, to sing songs of war and victory, as well as to offer prayers at sacrifice, and afterwards to compose the poems on the deeds of the heroes. if the result was that no more new invocations were composed in the period of heroic song, the minstrels nevertheless preserved the old invocations which they had brought with them from the land of the indus very faithfully. they had imported the ancient worship of their native deities into the new land; they had to preserve the old faith and the old rites at a distance from their ancient home, to offer sacrifice in the old fashion, and thus to win and retain the favour of the gods for the emigrants in their new abode. in the families which claimed to spring from atri and agastya, from bhrigu and gautama, from kaçyapa and vasishtha, one generation handed down by tradition to another the prayers which they had preserved as effectual, and which had been composed, or were thought to have been composed, by these celebrated minstrels, the rites which were considered requisite for the efficacy of the sacrifice, for winning the favour and help of heaven. it is obvious that these families did not consist exclusively of the actual descendants of the supposed tribal ancestor. in ancient times the family is the only form, as yet known, of community and instruction. as the prayers pleasing to the gods and the form of sacrifice could only be learnt from a minstrel and priest, those who had this object in view must seek for admittance into a priestly family, and must be adopted as disciples by a priest in the place of sons.[ ] such admittance was naturally most sought after in the case of that race which bore the most famous name, which was supposed to spring from the most celebrated sacrificer of early times, and claimed to possess his songs. among the "sons of vasishtha," who, according to the hymn of the veda (p. ), sacrificed for the tritsus, in the race of the kuçikas to which viçvamitra belonged, and the other priestly races mentioned in the veda, we must consider that we have just as much disciples claiming to be descended, or being actually descended, from these supposed ancestors, as relations connected by blood. the importance of these families who preserved the ancient customs and prayers, and worshipped the ancient gods, must have risen in the new territory in proportion to the length of the period between the emigration from the indus and the present. in different districts the kings regarded the sacrifice and supplication of different races as the most pleasing to the gods. among the koçalas, according to the ramayana and the puranas, vasishtha was the priest of the kings; among the bharatas, the kuçikas; among the videhas and angas, the gautamas.[ ] the amalgamation of the various tribes into larger nations had the effect of bringing the priestly families into combination and union, and thus they had the opportunity of exchanging the knowledge of their possession of hymns and ritual. this union taught them to regard themselves as a peculiar order. princes and nations are always inclined to recognise the merit of those who know how to win for them the favour of the gods, good fortune and health by prayer and sacrifice. the ancient population of the new states on the ganges was not entirely extirpated, expelled, or enslaved. life and freedom were allowed to those who submitted and conformed to the law of the conqueror; they might pass their lives as servants on the farms of the aryas.[ ] but though this remnant of the population was spared, the whole body of the immigrants looked down on them with the pride of conquerors--of superiority in arms, blood, and character--and in contrast to them they called themselves vaiçyas, _i.e._ tribesmen, comrades--in other words, those who belong to the community or body of rulers.[ ] whether the vaiçya belonged to the order of the nobles, the minstrels and priests, or peasants, was a matter of indifference; he regarded the old inhabitants as an inferior species of mankind. in the land of the ganges down to the lower course of the river this class of inhabitants bears the common name of Çudras, and as this word is unknown to sanskrit we must assume that it was the original name of the ancient population of the ganges, just as the tribes of the vindhyas bear to this day the common name of gondas. in the new states on the ganges, therefore, the population was separated into two sharply-divided masses. how could the conquerors mix with the conquered?--how could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants? and even if they had been willing to unite, would not the language and character of the immigrants be lost and destroyed in this mixture with tribes of rude customs and manners? as the conquered territory became more extensive, and the old inhabitants more numerous--for many were spared by the numerically weaker immigrants and continued to live among them as slaves or free out-door servants, while others hung upon the borders of the conquered regions--the more pressing was the danger that the noble blood and superior character of the immigrants, and the worship of the ancient gods, might be lost in mingling with this mass of servants. this danger co-operated with the natural pride of the conqueror, and his feeling of superiority, to place a strongly-marked separation between the Çudras and the aryas. in every nation which has gone beyond the primitive stages of life, wealth and occupation form the basis of a division into more or less fixed forms, more or less close orders. the states on the ganges were no exception. here, beside the kshatriyas, beside the minstrels and priests, or brahmans, stood the bulk of the immigrant aryas, whose land required the personal labour of the owner, to whom the name vaiçya, at first common to all, gradually passed as a special name. below these three orders were the Çudras. the name given by the indians to their orders, _varna_, _i.e._ colour, proves that the difference between the light skin of the immigrants and the dark colour of the native population was of considerable influence, and if a doubt were raised whether or not another population is concealed in the fourth order or Çudras, it would be removed by the close union of the three orders against the fourth, the uncompromising exclusion of the latter in all matters of religion, and the fact that the law of east iran (the avesta) as well as that of the ganges, recognises warriors, priests, and peasants, but no fourth order. the sharp distinction between the aryas and Çudras may subsequently have had an influence on the orders of the aryas, so as to mark the divisions more strongly; resting on such a foundation, the division of orders might strike deeper roots on the ganges than elsewhere. the higher and more favoured strata of society will seldom be free from the desire to bequeath to posterity the advantages they possess; and this feeling makes itself felt with greater force in earlier stages of civilisation than in later. as the possessions and occupation of the father descend to the son who grows up in them, the favoured orders are inclined to maintain this natural relation, and elevate it into a legal rule; they believe that the qualification for their special calling depends on birth in it, or better blood, and make it so to depend. in the states on the ganges these tendencies must have been the more strongly marked, as in this case the aryas saw beneath them, in the Çudras, a class of men less capable and less cultivated than themselves; to descend to this class and mingle with it, seemed to them as disgraceful as it was dangerous to the maintenance of their empire over these men. here it was more natural than elsewhere to pursue this analogy further--to regard even the classes of their own tribe, according to their more or less honourable occupation, as separate circles, as races having different characters and higher or lower gifts, and to transform these distinctions of occupation and social position into rigid castes. thus the kshatriyas, in the full consciousness of their aristocratic life, proud of their brave deeds and noble feeling, must have rendered difficult or impossible all approach to their occupation and order; they regarded the minstrels and the priests, and the vaiçyas, as classes of inferior birth. when the minstrels had sung the praises of the ancient heroic age in the poem of the marvels of the heroes, in the epos in its earliest form, and so arrived at more peaceful times in which everything no longer depended on the sword, a feeling of their importance and dignity must have grown up among the priests. without them, without the accurate knowledge of the old songs and customs of sacrifice, as given by manu and pururavas,--without precise acquaintance with the prayers in which efficacy rested, efficient sacrifices could not be offered. we have already remarked that the amalgamation of the emigrant tribes, and the formation of the new kingdoms, brought the priests, who had hitherto belonged to the separate tribes, into closer connection and combination, and made them into a separate order. at the same time, their importance as preserving the old rites and the old faith tended to increase. the community thus arising between the priestly families led of necessity to an interchange of forms of prayer and invocations, of songs, and poems, and customs of sacrifice, the exclusive possession of which had hitherto belonged to each of these families or schools. thus in each of the new states the priestly families attained a larger collection of songs, and a ritual which was the natural product of the liturgies of the various families, the observances regarded by one or other of these as traditional and indispensable. the traditional prayers and songs of praise were regarded as magical spells, of which even the gods could not escape the power. this exchange and combination of spells and rubrics of sacrifice no doubt made the ritual more complicated. the strictly-preserved and now extended possession of these prayers, invocations, and customs, which were known to the priests, separated that order from the kshatriyas, and the vaiçyas; they stood in opposition to the other orders, as the exclusive possessors of the knowledge of the customs of sacrifice, and efficient invocations. it was only among the members of this order that the correct observances and invocations were known; how could the kshatriya or the vaiçya avoid errors in his offering or invocation, such as would remove their efficacy and change them into their opposite? the constant increase of the prayers and forms accompanying every step in the sacrifice occupied more priests: the _hotar_ offered the invitation to the god to come down and receive the sacrifice; the _udgatar_ accompanied the preparation of the offering with the solemn forms and prayers; the _adhvaryu_ performed the actual rite. thus an equality of knowledge, advantage, and interests united the priests against the kshatriyas, vaiçyas, and Çudras. by the consciousness that they were in possession of the means to win the favour of the gods for the king, the nobles, and the people, the pious feeling aroused among them was greatly assisted towards gaining the recognition of the other orders. like the kshatriyas, they must have scorned to descend to the occupations of the vaiçyas; they must have felt that only the priest born a priest could perform the priestly service, or offer pleasing sacrifice to the gods. they must have maintained that birth alone in the order could confer the capacity for so important and lofty a calling as theirs. if nobles and priests debarred the vaiçyas from entrance into their order, their occupations, and modes of life, they must have been no less careful to maintain the advantages of their birth against the Çudras. if the separation of the orders was the result of a natural progress, if the effort of the favoured classes to close their circles was essentially promoted by the common contrast of the immigrants to the remnant of the old population, the natural conditions in which the aryas were placed on the ganges were not without an influence on the maintenance of the separation when once introduced. in the land of the indus the aryas had not learned to endure such a climate and such heat as they found on the ganges. the atmosphere began by degrees to undermine the active and vigorous feeling of the aryas, to lead them to a life of greater calm and rest, which inclined them to retain the conditions and circumstances once introduced. the orders attain complete exclusiveness and become castes when not only the change from one to another is forbidden, but when even marriage between the members of different orders is either impossible, or if allowed entails the loss of order, and other disadvantages. we do not exactly know to what extent the mutual exclusiveness of the kshatriyas, the brahmans, and the vaiçyas was carried; we only know that these distinctions existed, and that marriages between the orders took place at the time when the priests succeeded in wresting the first place on the throne and in the state from the kshatriyas, who had maintained it for centuries. the priests would never have succeeded in raising themselves above the kshatriyas and repressing the ancient pre-eminence of the armed nobility so closely connected with the kings, who belonged to their order, and were their born chiefs, had they not succeeded in convincing the people on the ganges, that the effectual sacrifice was the most important and all-decisive act; that the position in which men stood to the gods was a matter far transcending all other relations. they must have transformed the old religious conceptions by a new doctrine, and by means of this transformation given to themselves a special position, with a peculiar sanction from above. this rise of the priesthood, and their elevation to the first order, is the decisive point in the development of the arians in india. it was a revolution of indian life, of the indian state, of indian history, of which the effects still continue. it has been observed that the peculiar relations of the tribes on the ganges, and the nature of the land, tended to fix more strongly there than elsewhere the separation between the orders. but that this division is the sharpest known in history; that the orders became castes, sub-divided in turn into a number of hereditary under-castes; that this unnatural social system has continued in spite of the severest attacks and most violent shocks, and still does continue in unbroken force--this is due to a development of the religious views supplied by the priests, and to the position of the priesthood which was founded on this transformation. the victory over the kshatriyas was the first step on this path. it was won by means of a new conception of the idea of god, and a scheme of the origin of the world, and the stages of created beings established thereon. on this foundation it was that the priests obtained the highest position. when the priestly families on the ganges passed beyond the borders of their several states in their contact with each other, they perceived the extent of the whole treasure of sacrificial song and forms of prayer, which the races had brought over in separate portions from the indus. the confusing multitude of deities and their attributes, which now forced themselves upon the priests, led to the attempt to discover some unity in the mass. the astonishing abundance of conceptions and the number of the supreme deities in the old prayers were essentially due, as has already been pointed out, to the fact that the indians desired to render to every god whom they invoked the proper and the highest honour. with this object the number of attributes was increased, and the god in question endowed to a greater or less degree with the power and peculiarities of other deities; and in order to win the favour of the deity to whom the sacrifice was offered, men were inclined to praise him as the highest and mightiest of all gods. this inclination was supported by the circumstance that the quick and lively fancy of the indians never fixed the outlines of their deities or separated them as individuals, and further, by the blind impulse already noticed, to concentrate the power of the gods in one highest god, and seize the unity of the divine nature. thus we saw that indra and agni, mitra and varuna, were in turns extolled as the highest deity. the task now before the priests was to understand the meaning of these old prayers, to grasp the point of agreement in these various invocations, the unity in these wide attributes, ascribed sometimes to one god and sometimes to another. this gave a strong impulse to the reflective mind of the brahmans, and no sooner did the indians begin to meditate than their fancy became powerful. the form of indra, and the conception lying at the base of his divinity--the struggle against the black spirits of darkness--faded away in the land of the ganges. in that region tempests do not come on with the same violence as in the panjab; the hot season is followed by the rainy season and the inundation without any convulsions of the atmosphere. again, as the life of war fell into the background, the position of indra as a god of war and victory became less prominent. least of all could the priests in a time of peace recognise the god of their order in the god of war, and in any case the national, warlike, heroic character of indra could offer few points of contact with priestly meditation. if in consequence of the new circumstances and relations of life, indra passed into the background--the old gods of light, the common possession of the aryas in iran and india, mitra, aryaman, varuna, beside and above whom indra had risen, were again allowed to come into prominence. the effort to grasp the unity of the divine power seemed to find a satisfactory basis in the form of varuna, who from his lofty watch-tower beholds all things, is present everywhere, and sits throned in unapproachable light on the waters of heaven, and in the ethical conceptions embodied in the nature of this deity. the brahmans struck out another path: they set aside altogether aditi, _i.e._ the imperishable, who in the old poems of the veda is the mother of the gods of light, _i.e._ of "the immortal" (p. , _n._ ), and in other poems is extolled as the heaven and the firmament, as procreation and birth, as well as other attempts to conceive this unity. the effort to grasp the unity of the divine being, the attempt to comprehend its nature, took quite another direction--highly significant and important for the character and development of the indians. the soma was offered most frequently to indra, the açvins, and the maruts, and by it they are strengthened and nourished. the drink which gave strength to men and intoxicated them nourished and inspired the gods also in the faith of the indians; it gave them strength, and thus won for men the blessing of the gods. to the indians it appeared that a potency so effectual must itself be divine--a deity. hence the soma itself is invoked as a god, and by consistently following out the conception, the indians see in it the nourisher and even the creator of the gods. "the soma streams forth," we are told in some songs of the rigveda, "the creator of heaven and the creator of earth, of agni and of the sun, the creator of indra and of thoughts." the soma-plants are now the "udders of the sky;" the god is pressed for the gods, and he is offered as drink, who in his liquor contains the universe.[ ] the sacrificial drink which nourishes the gods, or the spirit of it, is thus exalted to be the most bountiful giver of blessings, the bravest warrior, the conqueror of darkness, the slayer of vritra, the lord of created things, and even to be the supreme power over the gods, the creator of the sun, the creator and father of indra and the gods;[ ] and so the highest power could be ascribed with greater justice to the correct invocations, the efficacious prayers which, according to the ancient faith of the indians, compelled the gods to come down to the sacrificial meal, and hear the prayers of men. if man could induce or compel the gods to obey the will of men, the means by which this operation was attained must of itself be obviously of a divine and supernatural character. only a divine power can exercise force over the mighty gods. we saw above how the spirit of fire, which carried the offerings to the sky, was to the indian the mediator between earth and heaven. but the gifts were accompanied by prayers, and these, according to the idealistic tendencies of the indians and the opinion of their priests, were the most efficacious part of the sacrifice; in them was contained the elevation of the mind to heaven; and therefore to the indian the priest was one who offered prayer; and the songs of the veda lay the greatest weight on "the holy word," _i.e._ on the prayer, which with them "was the chariot which leads to heaven." thus a second spirit was placed beside agni, the bearer of gifts, and this spirit carried prayer into heaven, and was the means by which the priests influenced the gods, the power which compelled the gods to listen to them. this spirit is the personification of the cultus, the power of meditation. it lives in the acts of worship, in the prayers; it is the spirit which in these prayers is the constraining power upon the gods. in the faith of the indians the gods grow by invocations and prayers; this spirit, therefore, gives them vigour and strength, and as he is able to compel the gods, he must himself be a mighty god. this spirit of prayer is a creation of the priestly families, a reflected expression of that power and compulsion which from all antiquity the indians believed could be exercised upon spirits, and which they attribute to the power of meditation. the name of this deity no less than his abstract nature is a proof of his later origin. he is called brahmanaspati, _i.e._ lord of prayer. "brahmanaspati," we are told in the vedas, "pronounces the potent form of prayer, where indra, varuna, mitra, and the gods have made their dwellings."[ ] the lord of prayer, the leader of songs, the creator of the songs by which the gods grow, and who gives them power, the "bright, gold-coloured," has in reality done the deeds of indra. "he has cleft the clouds with his lightning, opened the rich hollow of the mountains (the hidden streams), driven the cows from the mountains, poured forth streams of water, chased away the darkness with his rays, has brought into being the dawn, the clear sky, and fire."[ ] thus did the priests transfer the achievements of the old god of storm and battle to their new god, their own especial protector, whom they now make the possessor of all divine attributes, and the father of gods. as this spirit was concealed, and lived in the acts of sacrifice, in the priests who offered it, in their prayers and meditations, and, on the other hand, had a power over the gods, guiding them and compelling them, brahmanaspati, the spirit of the cultus, the mysterious force, the magic power of the rite, became with the priests the holy, an impersonal essence, which at last was looked on by the priests as "brahman."[ ] it was not with the lightning, but with the brahman, _i.e._ with the power of the holy, that indra burst asunder the cave of vritra.[ ] in brahmanaspati the priests found a special god for their order and vocation; they were also at the same time carried beyond the circle of the ancient gods, whose forms had sprung up on a basis of natural powers; they had arrived at a transcendental deity emanating from the mysterious secret of their worship. it was a step further on the same path to resolve brahmanaspati into brahman, the sacred being. nevertheless, even in the latest poems of the veda, brahman still coincides with brahmanaspati, with the power of meditation and prayer.[ ] but by degrees, in the eager desire to detach the unity of the divine power from the plurality of divine shapes, and find the one in the other, brahman is elevated far above this signification; it becomes the ideal union of all that is sacred and divine, and is elevated into the highest divine power. if the holy nourishes, leads, and constrains the gods, it is mightier than the gods, the mightiest deity, and therefore the most divine. if the holy constrains the gods, and at the same time gives them power, in it alone the special power of the gods can rest, in so far as it is in them: the greater the portion they have in it, the mightier are they. the self-concentrated holy is the mightiest power, the essence of all gods, the deity itself. thus the oneness of nature in the gods, their unity and the connection between them, was discovered. yet, this holy, or brahman, was not in heaven only, but also existed on earth; it lived in the holy acts and in those who performed them; in the ritual and prayer, in meditation and heaven-ward elevation of spirit, in the priests. thus there stood upon the earth a holy and an unholy world in opposition to each other; the world of the priests and of the laity, the holy order of the priests and the unholy orders of the kshatriyas, vaiçyas, and Çudras. it was the power of meditation and prayer, of the holy word, which with the priests had shaped itself into the divine power, the essence of the divine, and had thus driven out the more ancient gods. from another side this change was aided by ideas which the nature of the land of the ganges forced upon the aryas. it was not merely that the climate compelled them to rest, and thus won, for the priests more especially, leisure for contemplation, reflection, and minute investigation--all tendencies natural to the aryas. little care for his maintenance was required from the man who went into the forest to pursue his thoughts and dreams. there, instead of the hot sun which ripened the sugar-cane and shone on the fields of rice, was cool shade under the vast bananas and fig-trees; in the fruits growing wild in the forest, he found sufficient food. the gods invoked in the land of the indus had been the spirits of light, of the clear sky, of the winds, the helpful force of fire, the rain-giving power of the storm-god. it was the bright, friendly, beneficial phenomena and gifts of the heavens and nature which were honoured in indra and mitra, in varuna, surya, and agni. on the ganges the aryas found themselves surrounded by a far more vigorous natural life. they were in the midst of magnificent forms of landscape, the loftiest mountains, the mightiest rivers; around them was a vegetation unwearied in the luxuriance of its ceaseless growth, throwing up gigantic leaves and stems, and creepers immeasurable. they saw on every side a bright-coloured and marvellous animal world; glittering birds, hissing serpents, the colossal shapes of the elephant and rhinoceros. the multifarious forms of their gods had impelled them to seek for a single source, a point of unity among them, and the same impulse was roused by the wealth, variety, and bewildering abundance of this natural life, which in quick alternation of blossom and decay, went on creating without rest, under shapes the most various. the more variegated the pictures formed by this rich nature in the lively fancy of the indians, the more confusing this change and multitude, the stronger was the effort required of the mind in order to grasp the unity, the single source, of all this mighty stream of life. to the old gods the phenomena and operations of a wholly different region and climate had been ascribed, but here life was far more varied and luxuriant; here there was no contest of fruitful land with desert, of the spirits of drought with the god of the storm. on the contrary, the inundations of the ganges displayed a fixed and regular revolution, and in every kind of growth and decay there was a constant unalterable order. who, then, was the author and lord of these mighty pulses of life, and this order, which seemed to exist of themselves? what was the element of existence and continuance in this alternation of growth and decay? when once men had come to regard the wonderful life of the ganges as a whole picture, as one, that life was naturally ascribed to some one comprehensive form of deity, to one great god. the meditation of the priests finally brought them to the result that the dust, earth, and ashes, into which men, animals, and plants fell and disappeared could be neither the cause and seat of their own life, nor of the general life. behind the material and the phenomenon, which could be grasped and seen by the senses, must lie the dim and secret source of existence; behind the external side must be another, inward, immaterial, and invisible. thus not man only, but all nature, fell into two parts, body and soul. as behind the body of men, so also behind the perishable outward side of nature, there seemed to live a great soul, penetrating through all phenomena, the source and fountain of their being. the priests discovered that behind all the changing phenomena there must exist a single breath, a soul, atman--it is also called mahanatma, paramatman, _i.e._ "the great soul"[ ]--and this must be the creative, sustaining, divine power, the source and seat of the life which we behold at one time rising in gladness, at another sinking in exhaustion. this world-soul was amalgamated with brahman and denoted by that name. in and behind the prayers and sacred acts an invisible spirit had been discovered, which gave them their power and efficacy, and this holy spirit ruled over the deities, inasmuch as it compelled them to listen to the prayers of men. behind, above, and in the gods, the nature of the holy was all-powerful; and it was the divine, the highest form of deity. the same spirit must be sought for behind the great and various phenomena of the life of nature. there must be the same spirit ruling in both spheres, a spirit which existed at once in heaven and on earth, which gave force to the prayers of the brahmans, and summoned into life the phenomena of nature, and caused the latter to move in definite cycles, which was also the highest god and the lord of the gods. thus the sacred spirit ruling over the gods became extended into a world-soul, penetrating through all the phenomena of nature, inspiring and sustaining life. from prayer and meditation, which are mightier than the power of the gods, from this inward concentration, which, according to the faith of the indians, reaches even unto heaven, the priests arrived at the idea of a deity which no longer rested on any basis in the phenomena of nature, but was ultimately regarded as the holy in the general sense of the word. to them this holy was the soul of the world, and the creator of it, or rather, not so much the creator as the cause and basis. from it the world emanated as the stream from the spring. the brahman, the 'that' (_tat_), does not stand to the world in the contrast of genus and species; it has developed into the world. in the latest hymns of the veda we read: "let us set forth the births of the gods in songs of praise and thanksgiving. brahmanaspati blew forth these births like a smith. in the first age of the gods being sprang out of not-being. there was neither being nor not-being, neither air nor heaven overhead, neither death nor immortality, no division of day or night, darkness existed, and this universe was indistinguishable waters. but the 'that' (from which was nothing different, and nothing was above it), breathed without respiration, but self-supported. then rose desire (_kama_) in it; this was the germ which by their wisdom the wise discovered in their hearts as the link uniting not-being and being; this was the original creative seed. who knows, who can declare, whence has sprung this creation?--the gods are subsequent to this, who then knows whence it arose?"[ ] we see how, in spite of consistency, brahman is retained beside the purely spiritual potency, the fructifying water of heaven beside not-being, as the material in existence from the first. from the point of view which the priests gained by this conception of brahman, a new idea of the world lay open to them. behind and above the gods stood an invisible, pure, and holy spirit, which was at once the germ and source of the whole world, the life of nature's life; in brahman the world and all that was in it had their origin; there was no difference between the nature of brahman and the world. brahman was the efficient and material cause of the world, but while brahman streamed forth into the world and became at every step further removed from itself, its products became less clear and pure, less like the perfection of its nature. beginning from a spiritual being, suprasensual, transcendental, and yet existing in the world, the indians ended in discovering a theory of creation, according to which all creatures proceeded from this highest being in such a manner, that the most spiritual forms were the nearest to him, while the most material, sensual, and rude were the most remote. there was a graduated scale of beings from brahman down to the stones, and from these again to the holy and pure, the only true and real, self-existent, eternal being of this world-soul. in the first instance the gods had sprung from brahman. from brahman the impersonal world-soul, the self-existent holy, a personal brahman, first streamed forth, who was the highest deity. the personal brahman was followed by the origin of the old gods. after the gods the spirits of the air are said to have flowed from brahman, and after them the holy and pure men, the castes in their order, according as they are nearer to the sanctity of brahman or more remote. men were succeeded by the beasts according to their various kinds, by trees, plants, herbs, stones, and the lifeless matter. in this way all created things emanated from brahman, and to each class and kind a definite occupation was appointed, to perform which was the duty of the class in the universal system. thus the life of all creatures was defined, and their vocation assigned to them in such a manner that they must fulfil it even in subsequent births.[ ] the orders of priests, kshatriyas, vaiçyas, and Çudras, were a part in the divine order of the world; the distinction between them, the nature and relative position of each, emanated from brahman. they are, therefore, distinct steps in the development of brahman, and, for this reason, distinct occupations are apportioned to them. thus there now stood, side by side, among the indians, four classes or varieties of men, separated by god, and each provided by him with a different function. henceforth no change was possible for one class into another, no mixture of one with another could be endured. the limits drawn by god were not to be broken through. the brahmans are nearest to brahman; in them the essence of brahman, the holy spirit, the power of sanctification, lives in greater force than in the rest; they emanated from brahman before the others; they are the first-born order. in one of the latest songs of the rigveda, the purusha-suktas, we are told of the world-spirit: "the brahman was his mouth, the rajnaya (kshatriya) his arm, the vaiçya his thigh, the Çudra his foot." this is a parable: the brahman was his mouth, because the brahmans are in possession of the prayers and holy hymns; whether the arm or the mouth, strength or speech, was preferable, is a question which remains unanswered. more distinctly and with special insistance that the mouth of brahman is the best part of him, the law book of the priests tells us: brahman first allowed the brahmans to proceed from his mouth; then the kshatriyas from his arms; next the vaiçyas from his thigh; and lastly, the Çudras from his foot.[ ] the duties fixed by brahman for the brahmans were sacrifice, the study and teaching of the veda, to give justice and receive it. the duty of the kshatriyas is to protect the people; of the vaiçyas to tend the herds, till the fields, and carry on trade; the Çudras were only pledged to serve the three other orders.[ ] it is a duty for the kshatriyas and vaiçyas to be reverent, submissive, and liberal to the brahmans or first-born caste. the vocation of man is to adapt himself to the existing order of the world, to fulfil the particular mission assigned to him at birth. any rebellion against the order of the castes is a rebellion against the divine order of the world. this new view of the world, at which, beginning from the conception of the holy and the world-soul, the meditation of the priests had arrived, was at variance with the old faith. the new idea of god and the doctrine of the world-soul, in its abstract and speculative form, could have but little influence on the kings, the nobles, the peasants, and the people. as a fact, it shattered almost too violently the belief of the aryas in the ancient gods. with the people indra continued to be the highest god, and still, as before, the spirits of light, of the wind, of fire were invoked. but even without the new doctrine the forms of the ancient gods were fainter in the minds of the nobles and people, partly in consequence of the change in climate and country, and partly because the old impulses which had given the first place in heaven to the gods of battle no longer moved the heart so strongly, when the aryas lived in larger states and under more peaceful relations. the atmosphere of the valley of the ganges also required a more passive life, and the ideas of the people, no less than the fancy of the priests, must have received from the gigantic forms of the landscape, and the rich and marvellous animal world of the new region, a direction and elevation quite different from that felt in the land of the indus. more especially, the reasons noticed above--the contrast between the aryas on the one hand and the Çudras on the other--facilitated the reception of the doctrine maintained by the priests of the division of castes. the pious feeling which penetrated the indians would, moreover, have found it difficult to resist the conviction that the first place must invariably belong to the relation to the gods. hence ready credence was given to the priests when they spoke of their order as the first-born and nearest to the gods. it was not in the sphere of religion or worship, but in ethics, that the doctrine of the priests attained to a thorough practical influence on the state and life of the indians, and this complete victory was due to the consequences which the priests derived from it for the life of the soul after death. we are acquainted with the ancient ideas cherished by the aryas in the panjab on the future of the soul after death; the spirits of the brave and pious passed into the bright heaven of yama, where they lived in happiness and joy on soma, milk, and honey; those who had done evil passed into thickest darkness. yama allowed or refused entrance into his heaven; his two hounds kept watch (p. ). the descendants duly sprinkled water for the spirits of their ancestors, and their families brought libations at the new moon, when the souls of the fathers came in troops and enjoyed food and drink. in the oldest brahmanas, yama holds a formal judgment on the souls. the actions of the dead were weighed in a balance; the good deeds allowed the scale to rise; the evil deeds were threatened with definite punishments and torments in the place of darkness. the body of light which the pious souls are said to have received in heaven, required, according to this new conception, a less amount of food, or no food at all. but the deeper change rests in the fact that the heaven of yama, the son of the deity of light, can now no longer be the reward of those who have lived a purer life, and approached to the sanctity and perfection of brahman. they had raised themselves in the scale of existence, and must therefore return into the bosom of the pure being from which they had emanated. the souls which have attained to complete purity pass after death into brahman. thus the heaven of yama was rendered unnecessary, and was, in fact, set aside. the sinner who has not lived according to the vocation which he received at birth, has neither offered sacrifice nor purified himself, must be severely punished, and it is yama--now transformed from a judge of the dead into a prince of darkness, and having his abode in hell--who imposes on sinners the torments which they must endure after death for their guilt. the fancy of the indians depicted, in great detail, according to the various torments, the place of darkness, the hell, situated deep below the earth. as among the egyptians, and all nations living in a hot climate, so in the hell of the indians fierce heat is the chief means of punishment. in one place is the region of darkness, and the place of tears, the forest where the leaves are swords. in another the souls are torn by owls and ravens; in another their heads are struck every day by the guardians of hell with great hammers. in another and yet worse hell they are broiled in pans; here they have to eat hot coals; there they walk on burning sand and glowing iron; in another place hot copper is poured into their necks.[ ] for the kings and warriors, on the other hand, the heaven of indra takes the place of the heaven of yama; and into this the brave warriors enter. in the epos, indra laments that "none of the beloved guests come, who dedicate their lives to the battle, and find death without an averted countenance." we have already seen how indra meets yudhishthira in order to conduct him into the heaven of the heroes, the imperishable world, where he will see his brothers and his wife, when they are freed from the earthly impurity still clinging to them. the torments provided in hell for the sinners could not satisfy the system which the priests had established in the doctrine of the world-soul. in this the holy and pure being had allowed the world to emanate from itself; the further this world was removed from its origin and source, the more melancholy and gloomy it became. if the gods, the holy and pious men in the past, and the heaven of light of indra, were nearest to the purity of brahman, the pure nature of this being became seriously adulterated in the lower stages of removal. in the present world, purity and impurity, virtue and passion, wisdom and folly, were at least in equipoise. the worlds of animals, plants, and dead matter were obviously still further removed from the pure brahman. if, according to this view, the world was an adulterated, broken, impure brahman, it received, along with this corruption, the duty of regaining its original purity. all beings had received their origin from brahman, and to him all must return. from this point of view, and the requirement that every being must work out its way to perfection, in order to be adapted to its perfect origin, the priests arrived at the idea that every creature must go through all the gradations of being as they emanated from brahman, before it could attain to rest. the Çudra must become a vaiçya, the vaiçya a kshatriya, the kshatriya a brahman, and the brahman a wholly sinless and sacred man, a pure spirit, before he can pass into brahman. from the necessity that every one should work up to brahman, arose the monstrous doctrine of regenerations. the Çudra who had lived a virtuous life, was, it was thought, by the power of this virtue and the practice of it, changed in his nature, and born anew in the higher existence of a vaiçya; the kshatriya became a brahman, and so on.[ ] in this manner the pure and holy life, according as it was freed from all sensuality and corporeality, from the whole material world, succeeded in winning a return to supersensual and incorporeal brahman. conversely, the impure, spotted, and sinful were born again in a lower order, and in the worst shape according to the measure of the offence--sometimes they did not even become men at all, but animals--in order to struggle back again through unutterable torments, and innumerable regenerations, to their former condition, and finally to brahman. thus a wide field was opened to the fancy of the indians, on which it soon erected a complete system of regenerations; and into this the theory of hell was adopted. the man who had committed grievous sins, sinks after death into hell, and for long periods is tortured in the various departments there, that thus, after expiation of his sins, he may begin again the scale of migration from the lowest and worst form of existence. one who was guilty of less serious offences was born again according to their measure as a Çudra or an elephant, a lion or a tiger, a bird or a dancer.[ ] one who had committed acts of cruelty was re-born as a beast of prey.[ ] one who had attempted the murder of a brahman was punished in hell one hundred or a thousand years, according to the progress of the attempt, and then saw the light of the world in twenty-one births, each time proceeding from the body of some common animal. he who had shed the blood of a brahman, was torn in hell by beasts of prey for so many years as the flowing blood had touched grains of sand; and if any one had slain a brahman his soul was born again in the bodies of the animals held in greatest contempt on the ganges, the dog and the goat.[ ] if any one had stolen a cow he was born again as a crocodile, or a lizard; if corn, as a rat;[ ] if fruits and roots, as an ape.[ ] he who defiled his father's bed was to be born a hundred times as a herb, or a liana--the creepers embracing the trees;[ ] the brahman who is guilty of a fault in the sacrifice is born again for a hundred years as a crow or kite, and those who eat forbidden food will again see light as worms. he who reproaches a free man with being the son of a slave-woman, will himself be born five times from the body of a slave.[ ] in this manner, partly fanciful, partly pedantic, the priests built up the system of regenerations. according to the law-book of the priests, inorganic matter, worms, insects, frogs, rats, crows, swine, dogs, and asses, were on the lowest stage in the scale of creation; above them came first, elephants, horses, lions, boars, the Çudras and the mlechhas; _i.e._ the nations who did not speak sanskrit. above these were rogues, players, demons (raksheras), piçachas, _i.e._ blood-suckers, vampyres; above these wrestlers and boxers, dancers, armour-smiths, drunkards, and vaiçyas; above them the kshatriyas and the kings, the men eminent in battle and speech, the genii of heaven, the gandharvas and apsarasas. above these were the brahmans, the pious penitents, the gods, the great saints, and finally, brahman. thus the new system effaced the specific distinctions between plants and beasts, men and gods. everywhere it saw nothing but spirits, which have to work their way in a similar manner from greater or less impurity to purity, from incompleteness to completeness and the original source of their existence. the souls, when they had once been created and had emanated from brahman, found no rest or end till they had returned once more to this their starting-point; and this they were unable to do till they had been raised to the purity and sanctity of brahman. however indifferent the kings, nobles, and peasants may have been to this doctrine of the world-soul and brahman, these new, severe, and terrible consequences, derived from it by the priests for the life after death, could not be without a deep impression. they operated with immense force on the spirit of the indians. to endure the torments of hell in continuous heat, while even on earth the warmth of the climate was so hard to bear, was a terrible prospect. but even this appeared only as the lesser evil. along with and after the torments of hell those who committed grievous sins had to expect a ceaseless regeneration in the bodies of men and animals until they had worked their way up to brahman. at the same time the priests took care to impress upon the hearts of the people the fate which awaited those who did not follow their ordinances. they reminded them perpetually of "the casting of the soul into hell and hell-torments." the sinner was to think, "what migrations the soul would have to undergo owing to his sin; of the regeneration through ten thousand millions of mothers."[ ] these endless terrors and torments now in prospect for the man who did not fulfil the vocation assigned to him by the creator at birth, or the prescripts of the priests, were only too well adapted to win respect for their requirements. who would venture to trespass on the divine arrangement of the world, according to which the first place was secured on earth to the brahman in preference to the wealthy armed noble, the peasant, and the miserable Çudra, who was only on a level with the higher order of animals? who would not look up with reverence to the purer incarnation of the world-soul, the holier spirit, which dwelt in the brahmans? even though the theory of the world-soul remained unintelligible to the many, they understood that the brahmans, who busied themselves with sacrifice, prayers, and sacred things, stood nearer to the deity than they did; they understood that if they misconducted themselves towards the sacred race or disregarded the vocation of birth, they must expect endless torments in hell, and endless regenerations in the most loathsome worms and insects, or in the despised class of the Çudras--"those animals in human form." the priesthood cannot have succeeded in making good their claims to superiority over the kshatriyas, their new doctrine and ethics, without long-continued struggles and contests. if the two first centuries after the foundation of the states--the period between and b.c.--were occupied, as we assumed above, with the arrangement and consolidation of the new kingdom, the establishment of the position of the nobles, and the composition of songs of heroism and victory, we may assign to the next two centuries--from to b.c.--the sharper distinction of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, the amalgamation of the families of minstrels and priests into an order; the rise of this order in the states on the ganges as the preserver of the ancient faith and ancient mode of worship; the combination of the customs, formulæ, and invocations hitherto handed down separately in the separate states. if in the first period the immigrant aryas separated themselves as a common race from the Çudras, in the next the three orders of the aryas became distinguished. only the man who was born a kshatriya could partake in the honour of this order; only one who sprung from a family of priests could be allowed to assist in the holy acts of sacrifice; and he who was born a vaiçya must continue to till the field. at the beginning of the ensuing century--_i.e._ in the period from b.c. downwards--the priests, now in possession of all the ancient invocations and formulæ, may have begun their meditations with the comparison of the invocations, the attempt to find out the right meaning of them, and to grasp the unity of the divine nature. the hymns of the latest portion of the vedas, which are obviously a product of these meditations, may perhaps have arisen in the first half of this period. from the mysterious secret of the worship, the spirit of prayer, and the idea of the mighty, ever-recurring stream of birth and decay in the land of the ganges, the brahmans arrived at the idea of brahman, the world-soul, and from this deduced its consequences. we may with certainty presuppose a long and severe struggle of the nobles against the dominion of the priests--a struggle which went on for several generations. even the vaiçyas can hardly have submitted without resistance to all the requirements of the brahmans. the impassable gulf between the orders, the exclusion of intermarriage, was only carried out, as we can show, with difficulty; and even the ethics of the new doctrine must have met with resistance. we have already referred to the circumstances which rendered victory easier to the brahmans, to the changed conditions of life, and the nature of the land of the ganges. another fact in their favour was that the new doctrines of the brahmans did not attack the monarchy. this continued to remain in the order of the kshatriyas, and no essential limitation of their powers was required by the new doctrine from the princes on the ganges. it is true that it demanded recognition of the superiority of the brahmans to the other orders, and acknowledgment of the special sanctity of the order even from the kings; it required reverence, respect, and liberality, towards the brahmans; yet in all other respects the new system was calculated to increase rather than diminish the power of the kings. the rule of unconditional submission to the existing order must have strengthened considerably the authority of the kings, and assisted them in removing the limitations hitherto, without doubt, imposed upon them by the importance of the kshatriyas; and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that the kingdom on the ganges was first raised by the new doctrine to absolute power; on this foundation it became a despotism. we may feel confident in assuming that the victory of the brahmans in the land of the ganges was completed about the time when the dynasty of the pradyotas ascended the throne of magadha, _i.e._ about the year b.c.[ ] the districts from the sarasvati eastward as far as the upper ganges are after that time a sacred land to the indians. the country between the sarasvati and the drishadvati is called brahmavarta, _i.e._ brahma-land. kurukshetra (between the drishadvati and the yamuna), the districts of the bharatas and panchalas, of the matsyas and Çurasenas, _i.e._ the entire doab of the yamuna and the ganges, are comprised under the name brahmarshideça, _i.e._ the land of the holy sages. here were situated the famous residences of the kurus and pandus, hastinapura, indraprastha, kauçambi, and on the confluence of the yamuna and ganges, pratishthana; here, finally, was the city of krishna, krishnapura, and the sacred mathura on the yamuna; and elsewhere also in this district we find consecrated places and shrines of pilgrimage. it is maintained that the bravest kshatriyas and the holiest priests are to be found in this district; the customs and observances here are regarded as the best, and as giving the rule to the remainder. the law-book of the priests requires that every arya shall learn the right walk in life from a brahman born in brahmarshideça, and that, properly, all aryas should live there.[ ] it cannot have been any reminiscence of the great war which caused the priests to set such a value on these regions, and make these demands, nor even the fact that these districts were the first occupied by the emigrants from the indus, so that here first in the new country were consecrated places set up for the worship of the immigrants, and the least intermixture took place with the ancient population. it is due rather to the fact that in these regions the civilisation and culture of the indians were consolidated in an especial degree; here the priestly reform of the religion, if it did not receive the first impulse, yet acquired the victory and became supreme, owing perhaps to the support of the princes of the dynasty of pandu, who reigned at kauçambi. as these were the regions in which the priests first regulated the ancient customs of worship, morals, and justice according to the new doctrine, they could afterwards serve as a pattern for all the rest. if the brahmans, soon after they had succeeded in carrying through their demands here, revised the epos of the great war in the light of their new system, they could claim the thanks of the kings of the bharatas for their support, they could show that the kings who in ancient times had won the dominion in these lands, the ancestors of the race then on the throne, had even in early times obediently followed the commands of the priests, and they could set up the conquerors in that struggle as patterns of the proper conduct of kings to brahmans (p. ). hence we may perhaps assume that it was in the districts on the upper yamuna and the upper ganges that the priesthood first got the upper hand, and the same change followed in the lands still further to the east, after the great priestly families, with more or less difficulty, delay and completeness, established themselves among the kshatriyas of these districts--the vasishthas with the kings of the koçalas, the gautamas with the kings of the videhas, to whom no doubt they made very clear the services their forefathers had rendered to the predecessors on the throne. according as the previous circumstances offered more resistance in one place, and less in another, the new system was sometimes carried out more rapidly and thoroughly, and at others more slowly and with less severity. no historical tradition has come down to us of the resistance made by the nobles to the priestly order in defence of their possession, or by the kings in questions affecting their power. it was the interest of the brahmans to establish and describe the position they had won by conquest as occupied by them from the first. no nation has gone so far as the indians in their eagerness to forget the old condition of affairs in every succeeding evolution, and to establish the new point of view as one existing from the first. the liveliness and force of their fancy must have unconsciously led them to regard the new and the present as the old and the original after comparatively short intervals of time. in some episodes of the epos and narratives of the puranas we find legends of kings and warriors who because they did not show the proper respect for the brahmans, or opposed them, were severely punished, and of saintly heroes who slew the kshatriyas. we cannot, however, assume, that in the one or the other there is concealed any historic reminiscence. they are merely intended to set up terrifying examples of the lot which awaited kings and kshatriyas who ventured to disregard the brahmans. the book of the law tells us that the wise king vena became infirm in mind owing to sensuality, and in this condition he brought about the mixture of the orders.[ ] king nahusha, sudas, the son of pijavana, and nimi perished through want of humility, but viçvamitra by his humility was raised to the rank of a brahman.[ ] all these names are taken from the legend as it existed previously to the great war. in the rigveda, vena is mentioned as the father of prithu;[ ] the ramayana enumerates vena and his son prithu among the first successors of ikshvaku, the progenitor of the kings of the koçalas (p. ). the vishnu-purana, which assigns the same position to vena, tells us that he took upon himself to arrange the duties of men, and forbade the brahmans to sacrifice to the gods; no one might be worshipped but himself. then the holy brahmans slew the sinner with swords of the sacred sacrificial grass, which had been purified by invocations. and when, on the death of the king, robbers sprung up on every side, the brahmans rubbed the right arm of the dead king, and from it sprung the pious and wise prithu, who shone like agni; he ruled between the yamuna and ganges, and subdued the earth, and by this noble son vena's soul was freed from hell. the mahabharata tells us that prithu inquired with folded hands of the great saints about his duties, and that they bade him maintain the veda, abstain from punishing brahmans, and protect society from the intermixture of the castes.[ ] king nahusha belongs to the royal race of the bharatas; he is mentioned as the second successor of pururavas (p. ). the mahabharata tells us that he was a mighty king, but he laid tribute on the saints, and forced them to carry him. once he caused his palanquin to be carried by a thousand great sages, and because they did not go fast enough, he struck with his foot the holy agastya who was among them. then agastya cursed him and he was changed into a serpent.[ ] nimi, according to the ramayana, is a son of ikshvaku, the progenitor of the koçalas. he bade vasishtha his priest offer a sacrifice for him, and vasishtha undertook to perform the second half of it. but the king caused the sacrifice to be offered by another saint, by gautama. when vasishtha heard this he pronounced a curse on nimi that he should lose his body, and nimi forthwith died. he was not punished for rebellion against a brahman, but because he had not submitted himself with absolute obedience to his own priest. lastly viçvamitra is said to have obtained the rank of a brahman by humility. viçvamitra is known to us from the hymns of the seventh book of the rigveda as offering sacrifice for the bharatas, while vasishtha or his race offer prayer and sacrifice for their opponent, sudas, the king of the tritsus, who afterwards settle on the sarayu and bear the name of koçalas (p. ). but the ramayana and the puranas also place vasishtha at the side of the kings of the koçalas, not at the time of nimi only, as we have seen, who is the son of the tribal ancestor ikshvaku, but at the side of ikshvaku's descendants in the fifth century, like vena, and even in the twentieth and fiftieth generations. the imagination of the indians was not disturbed by such things in the case of a great priest of the old time. yet in other parts of the rigveda besides those quoted above, in the third book, we find prayers offered by viçvamitra for sudas, and some obscure expressions may be regarded as curses directed by vasishtha against viçvamitra. from the circumstance that viçvamitra at one time offers prayers for the king of the tritsus, and at another for the king of the bharatas, we may draw the conclusion, that the family of the kuçikas to which viçvamitra belonged was driven out among the tritsus by another family--that of vasishtha, and that afterwards the kuçikas offered their services to the kings of the bharatas, and were allowed to perform them. out of the opposition of viçvamitra and vasishtha, indicated in the rigveda, the priestly literature of the indians has invented a great contest between viçvamitra and the kshatriyas, in order to bring to light the superiority of the brahmans. even with the aid of his weapons, viçvamitra the kshatriya cannot prevail against the brahman vasishtha. at length he recognises the majesty of the brahman, submits to brahmanic ordinances, and distinguishes himself by sanctity to such a degree "that he became like a brahman, and possessed all the qualifications of one."[ ] in the vishnu-purana sudas is the fiftieth successor of ikshvaku on the throne of the koçalas. his priest was vasishtha; and viçvamitra, the son of a great kshatriya, the king of kanyakubja (kanoja), wished to drive him out. one day, while hunting, sudas met a brahman, who would not move out of the way for him, and he struck him with his whip. the brahman was Çakti, the eldest of vasishtha's hundred sons. Çakti pronounced on the king the curse that he should become a cannibal, and the curse was fulfilled. but by the help of an evil spirit viçvamitra was able to bring the consequences of the curse on the sons of vasishtha; Çakti himself and all his brothers were eaten by the king. in despair at the death of his sons, vasishtha sought to put an end to his own life, but in vain. when at length he returned to his settlement, he found that the widow of his eldest son was pregnant; and when she brought forth paraçara the hope of progeny revived in him. but sudas desired to eat paraçara also. then the holy vasishtha blew on sudas, sprinkled him with holy water, and took the curse from him, and in return the king promised never to despise brahmans, to obey their commands, and show them all honour. and when paraçara grew up, and wished to avenge the death of his father, vasishtha told him that under the rule of kritavirya (he is said to have reigned over a tribe of the yadavas) the bhrigus, the priests of the king, had become rich in corn and gold by his liberality. arjuna, the successor of kritavirya, had fallen into distress, and sought aid from the bhrigus. then some of them buried their possessions out of fear of the kshatriyas, and when by accident a kshatriya discovered the treasure hidden in the house of a bhrigu they slew all the bhrigus. but their widows fled to the himalayas, and there one of them brought forth aurva, who desired to avenge the death of the bhrigus by the slaughter of the kshatriyas. but the spirits of the holy bhrigus warned him to give up his passion, and curb his anger; by concealment they had roused the anger of the kshatriyas, in order to arrive the sooner in heaven. in like manner paraçara abandoned the idea of avenging his father. no greater historical value is to be attached to a legend of the destruction of the kshatriyas by a brahman. gadhi, the father of viçvamitra, had given his daughter to wife to a saint, richika, the son of aurva, of the race of the bhrigus. she bore jamadagni to richika, who lived as an eremite after the example of his father. one day arjuna came to the abode of jamadagni, and though he received the king with honour, arjuna caused the calf of his cow to be carried away. then paraçurama, _i.e._ rama with the axe, the youngest son of jamadagni, slew the king, and the king's sons slew jamadagni. to avenge the death of his father, paraçurama swore to destroy all the kshatriyas from the earth. thrice seven times with his irresistible axe he cut down the kshatriyas, and appeased the manes of jamadagni and the bhrigus with the blood of the slain. then he offered a great sacrifice to indra, and presented the earth to the saint kaçyapa. but kaçyapa gave it to the brahmans, and went into the forest. then the stronger oppressed the weaker, and the vaiçyas and Çudras behaved themselves wickedly towards the wives of the brahmans, and the earth besought kaçyapa for a protector and a king; a few kshatriyas were still left among the women; and paraçara had brought up sarvakarma, the son of sudas. and kaçyapa did as the earth entreated him, and made the son of sudas and the other kshatriyas to be kings. this was long before the great war.[ ] in the ramayana, paraçurama rebels when rama has broken Çiva's great bow. all were in terror lest he should again destroy the kshatriyas. but rama also strings paraçurama's great bow, shoots the arrow to the sky, not towards paraçurama, "because he was a brahman," and paraçurama returned to mount mahendra. footnotes: [ ] cunningham, "survey," . ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , _n._ [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , , . [ ] manu, . . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , _n._ [ ] "samaveda," , , , , , in benfey's translation. [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , , , in muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] "rigveda," , , ff. roth, "z. d. m. g." . . [ ] _brahmán_, from the root _barh_, connected with the root _vardh_ (to become, to grow), means to raise, to elevate. the masc. _brahmán_ means "he who elevates, makes to increase;" the neuter _bráhman_ means first, "growth," the "creative power," and then, "the elevating and elevated mood," the prayer and sacred form of words, the creative, reproducing power. a. weber, "ind. studien," , ; , . [ ] roth, _loc. cit._ . . [ ]muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] so in manu, _e.g._ . . _atman_ means "_breathing_;" _paramatman_ "the highest breathing." [ ] "rigveda," , , - ; , , - , in muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] "rigveda," , ; manu, , and in the puranas; muir, "sanskrit texts," , . a. weber, "ind. studien," , . [ ] manu, , - , and in many other places. [ ] in manu, , - (cf. , , ) eight hells are mentioned and described, in each of which the torments grow worse as the offences are more serious. the buddhists retain these eight hot hells, and add eight cold; burnouf, "introduction à l'histoire du bouddhisme," p. , , , . the singhalese have increased the number to , the siamese to . koppen, "relig. des buddha," s. . cf. a. weber, in "z. d. m. g." , . [ ] _e.g._ manu, , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . burnouf, "introduction," p. . bohlen has already observed that many of these regenerations are merely fanciful, "indien," . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] in the sixth century b.c. the brahmanic arrangement of the state was in full force in the cities on the ganges, and carried out most strictly. hence it must have obtained the upper hand about b.c. at the latest. it was not only established by law about the year b.c., but the doctrine of the brahmans had already created scholastic and heterodox systems of philosophy. before this system could become current, the idea of brahman must have been discovered; the strong elements of resistance in the ancient life and faith must have been overcome. this would occupy a space of about two centuries, and may therefore have filled the period from to b.c., as assumed in the text. buddhism required a space of three centuries in order to become the recognised religion in the kingdom of magadha. before the idea of the world-soul could be discovered, the hymns of the veda must have reached a certain point of combination and synopsis, and the confusing multitude of divine forms must have been sufficiently felt to call forth the opposite idea of unity. from the book of the law it is clear that the three vedas were in existence before it was drawn up. it refers perpetually to the triple veda. the evidence of the sutras proves that four vedas existed at the time of the appearance of buddha. if these were in existence in the sixth century the three which are acknowledged to be older must have existed as early as the seventh century b.c. [ ] manu, , , , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - , , . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , . chapter v. the old and the new religion. in the land of the ganges the brahmans had gained a great victory and carried out a great reform. a new god had thrown the old gods into the background, and with the conception of this new god was connected a new view of the world, at once abstract and fantastic. from this in turn followed a new arrangement of the state, and of the orders, which were now of divine origin, as direct products of creation, and thus became irrevocably fixed. the monarchy itself was of humbler descent than the brahmans, the first of the earth; to them the warlike nobles were made inferior, while the doctrines of hell and regeneration, which the brahmans put in the place of the old ideas of life after death, must gradually have brought about the subjugation of the national mind and heart to the new religion. when the brahmans succeeded in establishing their claims in the land of the ganges about the year b.c. (as we ventured to assume), the old sacrificial songs and invocations, which they had imported with them from the land of the indus, were no doubt to a great extent already written down. when the various families of minstrels and priests had first exchanged with each other their special treasures of ancient prayers; when the brahmans, passing beyond the borders of the separate states, had become amalgamated into one order, and had thus consolidated the existing stock of traditional formulæ and ritual--it must have been felt necessary to preserve this valuable treasure in its greatest possible extent, and, considering the belief of the aryas in the magical power of these forms, as securely as possible from any change. whatever might be the assistance which the compact form of these invocations lent to the memory, the body of songs which had now passed from tradition and the possession of the separate families into the general possession of the orders, was too various and comprehensive,--minute and verbal accuracy was too important,--for the resources of even the most careful oral teaching, the strongest and most practised memory. but the process of writing them down was not accomplished at once. in the first case, no doubt, each family added to its own possessions the store of the family most closely connected with it.[ ] beginning from different points, after manifold delays, extensions, and enlargements from the invocations first composed in the land of the ganges, which allow us to trace the change from the old views to the new system, the collection must at last have comprised all that was essential in the forms and prayers used at offerings and sacrifices. we do not know how far back the use of writing extends with the indians. according to the account of nearchus, they wrote on cotton, beaten hard; other greeks speak of the bark of trees, while native evidence teaches us that the leaves of the umbrella palm were used for the purpose. modern enquirers are of opinion that the indian alphabet is not an invention of the people, but borrowed from the phenician.[ ] as we have shown, the phenicians reached the mouth of the indus in the tenth century. but about this time, or perhaps before it, there existed a marine trade between the indians and sabæans, on the coasts of south arabia. granting the origin of the indian alphabet from the phenician, it is thus rendered more probable that it was taken from the south arabian alphabet, which in its turn rose out of the aramaic alphabet, than that it was borrowed directly from the phenician. in the latter case we should have to presuppose a trade between babylonia and india by means of the persian gulf (in babylonia the aramaic alphabet was in use beside the cuneiform in the eighth century b.c. at the latest) as a more probable means of communication than the voyages of the phenicians to elath, which had already been given up. but from whatever branch of the semitic races the indian letters may have been taken, the general use of them cannot be put much earlier than b.c. the oldest inscriptions of the indians which have come down to us, are those of açoka, king of magadha, and belong to the middle of the third century b.c. they exhibit a complete alphabetic use of writing, and the forms of the letters are not very different from those employed at a later time.[ ] among the indians the collection of their old songs and forms is known as the veda, _i.e._ knowledge: it forms the knowledge of the priest. we possess these songs in three groups. the oldest, and no doubt the original group, the rigveda, _i.e._ the knowledge of thanksgiving, comprises in ten books more than a thousand of the traditional poems and sacrificial songs. for the most part they are arranged according to a certain recurring order in the deities invoked; and, as we have seen, some poems are included which could never have been sung at sacrifices at all. besides this collection there are two collections of the liturgic prayers which ought to accompany the performance of sacrifice. the samaveda comprises the prayers sung at the offering of the soma; they are verses taken from the rigveda, and the collection is a book of songs or hymns.[ ] the yajur-veda contains the formulæ and ritual which must be chanted at the dedication of the altar, the kindling of the fire, and every act of every sacrifice. thus the samaveda supplied the knowledge of the udgatar, the prayers during the sacrifice of soma, the yajur-veda supplied the knowledge of the adhvaryu, who had to perform the material part of the sacrificial service, the ritual for the separate acts of the ceremony. compared with these two books the rigveda was the book of the hotar, _i.e._ of the chief priest, who had to conduct the sacrifice, and invoke the gods to come down to it.[ ] if in the parts of the hymns of praise and invitations, which are repeated from the rigveda in the samaveda, the style and tone is often more archaic than in the rigveda, the explanation is that the prayer at the sacrifice was no doubt preserved with more liturgic accuracy, than the invitation to the god, which preceded the sacrifice. the yajur-veda is preserved in a double form; of which one, the black yajus, is shown to be the older by its want of systematic sequence; but even in this older form we find, as in the tenth book of the rigveda,[ ] pieces of later origin, the outcome of priestly meditation. the writing down of these invocations and the possession of the sacred books formed a new bond to unite the brahmans into an order distinct from the others. the superior knowledge of the priestly families became of still greater importance. by appealing to these writings, which in the first instance were only accessible to the members of their order, they were enabled to find a considerable support in asserting their claims against the kings, kshatriyas and vaiçyas, though their contents told against rather than for the new doctrine. strong though the impulse might be, which the variety of these invocations had supplied to advance the new conception of god, this body of ritual, with the exception of a few later pieces, was strongly opposed to the new doctrine. it was filled with praise of those very gods, which, in the view of the brahmans, had given way to their new god. the way in which the brahmans harmonised the songs of the veda, where varuna, mitra, agni, and indra are each praised in turn as the highest deity, with their new idea of god, was a matter for their modes of interpretation and their schools. for the nation the chief object was to remove or conceal the striking discord between the doctrine of the new god and the old faith, a task all the more difficult, as the nation clung more closely to the old forms of the gods, though some, as has been remarked, were almost obliterated by the natural characteristics of the land of the ganges, and the novel conditions of life in the new states. small as the space was which the battles of indra could claim in the eyes of the brahmans beside their own brahman, they could not resist the veda, which testified to his existence in every part of the work, nor the belief of the nation, so far as to set aside either this deity or the rest. on the other hand, it was easy to subordinate the old gods to brahman on the system of the emanation of everything in the world from brahman. they were degraded into a class of higher beings, which had emanated from brahman before men, _i.e._ immediately before the brahmans. from brahman the brahmans first allowed a personal brahman to emanate, unless indeed this personification had already proceeded from brahmanaspati (p. ), and was in existence beside the sacred world-soul, the impersonal brahman. the personal brahman was a deity like the old gods, but far more full of life. to him neither shrines were dedicated nor sacrifices offered,[ ] yet before meals corns of rice were to be scattered for him as for the rest of the gods, and spirits. the personal brahman, like the impersonal, was the result of theory and meditation; in both brahman was a product of reflection, without life and ethical force, without participation in the fortunes of men and states, without love and anger, without sympathy and pity: a colourless, abstract, super-personal and therefore impersonal being, the strictest opposite of that mighty personality into which the jehovah of the hebrews grew, owing to the historical, practical, and ethical development of the conception. brahman was not so much above the natural world which he has created by his command, as its lord and master. brahman was within it and inwoven in it, and yet at the same time outside it, the hollow form of a being, at once self-originating and returning into itself; or as a personal brahman he was the president of a meaningless council of heavenly spirits. the old deities, the beings who stood first in the scale of emanations from brahman, surrounded this personal brahman as a court surrounds a king. like other beings, they also have their duties assigned to them; some of the old deities are raised into prominence, and to them is given the old mission of conflict against the evil spirits. they are to defend the eight regions of the earth entrusted to their care against the attacks of the asuras, or evil spirits. at the head of these eight protectors indra is naturally placed. to his keeping is assigned the most sacred district, the north-east, where beyond the himalayas is the divine mountain meru, which illuminates the northern region, and round which move the sun, moon, and constellations. on this mountain, according to the oldest conceptions of the aryas, indra has his abode with the spirits of light. yama is now king of the south-east, where in the old religion his heaven of light lay with the kingdom of the blessed spirits. varuna, who previously was throned in the height of heaven on the great waters, and sent sickness and death on sinners, is now the deity of the distant ocean. of the old gods of light, surya, the sun-god, found a place among the eight protectors of the world, and at his side was chandra, the moon-god. the remaining regions belong to vayu the wind-god, and kuvera, the god of the inundation. attempts to localise the highest deities, though first carried out in the law book of the priests, are found in the yajur-veda.[ ] another classification of the gods mentions indra in the first series, and afterwards the eight vasus, the "givers of good;" among whom are agni and soma, whose apotheosis has been already mentioned--then rudra, the father of the winds, with the ten maruts, and after them the spirits of light, the adityas (the sons of aditi), of which in the older period seven or eight are enumerated. the hymns of the veda sometimes mention a total of thirty-three gods, eleven in heaven, eleven in the clouds, and eleven on earth,[ ] a total found also among the aryas in iran, and afterwards retained by the buddhists.[ ] but the indians could not remain contented with such a moderate number of gods; the more each deity was deprived of honour, the higher became the total. even in the rigveda we find: "three hundred, three thousand, thirty and nine gods honoured agni." in the older commentaries this number of is regarded as the total sum of gods; but in later writings it is raised to , .[ ] the people troubled themselves little about brahman or the positions which the brahmans assigned to the gods, their classes or their number. they continued to invoke indra and agni, surya and aryaman, as their helpers and protectors. the removal of sacrifice was less to be thought of by the brahmans than the removal of the ancient gods, even if they had maintained the strictest consistency in their conception of brahman. the rigveda was mainly a collection of sacrificial chants and ritual. brahmans no less then kshatriyas and vaiçyas were accustomed to invoke the spirits of light in the early dawn, to offer gifts at morning, mid-day, and evening to agni; to lay wood on the fire, or throw milk and butter into it; above all, to celebrate sacrifices at the changes of the moon or the seasons. it was not these sacrifices only, or the offering of the soma-juice, which the brahmans retained, but the whole service of sacrifice, for which instructions were found in the sentences of the veda. the idea that every sacrifice when offered correctly was efficacious, that a magic power resided in it, that the assistance and therefore a part of the divine power or nature was gained by the sacrifice, could not fail to retain the service of sacrifice in full force in the new doctrines. according to this the divine nature was present, and existed in the world in different degrees of purity or dimness, of power or weakness, and owing to the direction taken in the development of the new idea of god, it was especially alive in the sentences and acts of sacrifice; so that the efficacy of the correct sacrifice must apply a portion of the divine nature to the person sacrificing. hence the invocation of the old gods was allowed to remain; sacrifice to them was still meritorious, and necessary for this world as well as the other. we know from the rigveda the old sentences used at burial, which were supposed to avert death from the living, the prayers that the soul of the dead might be taken up into yama's heaven of light (p. ff.). we saw with what reverence the living thought of the spirits of their forefathers; how careful the aryas were to offer gifts to them, so that their food and clothing might never fail. it was customary to sprinkle water for the spirits of the forefathers, and in the land of the ganges to scatter grains of rice; at the funeral feast of the dead, kept by the families on each new moon, three furrows were made, in which every member of the family placed three cakes, for the father, the grandfather, and great-grandfather; the cakes were then covered with locks of wool, and the ancestors invoked to clothe themselves with it. on the death-day of any member of the family, or a certain time after, the family assembled, in order to offer fruits and flesh to his spirit. there was now no longer any light heaven of yama; he was the prince of the hot hell (p. ), where souls are tormented after death, and then born again to a new life in plants, animals, and men: the chief object now was to attain the end of all life and regeneration by a return into brahman. so far as they could, the brahmans reconciled the old and new conceptions. the heaven of indra (p. ) was substituted for the old heaven of yama. it was not the pure heaven of brahman, but a higher, brighter world. the soul of the virtuous passes into this outer heaven; the soul of the sinner sinks into hell. but the merit of good works is consumed, as the guilt of sin is expiated, by the lapse of time, by a shorter or longer participation in the joys of the heaven of indra, a shorter or longer torment in hell. then begins for the souls who have thus received only the first reward of their lives a series of regenerations. the old chants of burial could only be rendered in the sense of the new system by the most violent interpretations. the belief in the spirits of the ancestors, and the pious worship of them, had struck roots far too deep and ancient into the heart of the nation for the brahmans to think of removing these services, the libations to the spirits, or the funeral feast of the families, at which they invoked their ancestors to come down and enjoy themselves at the banquet with their descendants. libation and feast continued to exist without molestation. the brahmans contented themselves with ordaining that at the sacrifice to the dead, the fire dakshina, _i.e._ the fire to the right, was indispensable. when yama's abode had been removed to the hot south, the sacrificial fires for his kingdom must burn to the right, _i.e._ towards the south. the theory of the priests then declared these sacrifices to the dead to be indispensable in order to liberate the souls out of certain spaces in hell; they also laid down the rule that a brahman should always be present at the funeral feast. the book of the law gives very definite warnings of the evil consequences resulting from funeral feasts celebrated without brahmans, _i.e._ in the old traditional manner. the elder of the family is to conduct the requisite three brahmans to his abode; the first brahman after the necessary prayers throws rice for the dead into the sacrificial fire; he then makes funeral cakes of rice and butter, of which each member of the family sacrifices three for his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. then food is set forth, of which the brahmans first eat, with uncovered heads and feet, and in silence, in order that the spirits may participate in the meal; after the brahmans the rest partake. according to the book of the law, cows' milk, and food made from it, if set forth at the funeral feast, liberated the spirits of the ancestors for a whole year; the flesh of horses and tortoises for eleven months; of buffaloes for ten; of rams for nine; of antelopes for eight; of deer for seven; of goats for six; of the permitted birds for five; of wethers for four; game for three; fish for two--while water, rice, barley, sesame were efficacious for one month only.[ ] though the brahmans changed the funeral feasts into banquets for the members of their own order, yet the fact that they were retained, and with them the connection of the families, the maintenance of this old form of worship, though in reality at variance with the new arrangement of these unions of the families and forms of ancient life, brought other and very important advantages to the new system. the old religion rested on the contrast between the friendly spirits who gave light and water, and the demons of darkness and drought. from this arose the conception that certain objects belonged to the gloomy spirits and were pleasing to them; that by contact or defilement with them a man gave the evil spirits power over him. contact with corpses, dead hair, skin, or bones, defilement with the impurities of the body, spittle, urine, excrement, &c., gave the evil powers authority over the person so defiled. this faith we find in full force and the widest extent among the arians of iran; but it must have existed in a degree hardly less among the aryas on the indus and the ganges. according to the new views of the brahmans, the two sides of nature--the bright, pure, and clear side belonging to good spirits, and the foul and dark side belonging to evil spirits--existed no longer; all nature had become dark and defiled; even the brahmans, the best part of creation, participated, like the other orders, though in a less degree, in this defilement and gloom. in the new doctrine the world fell into two halves, a supersensual and a sensual. the first was indeed supposed to be present in the second, but only in a corrupt and adulterated form; the sensual side had, at bottom, no right to exist; it must be utterly removed and elevated into brahman. as corrupted brahman the whole sensual world was imperfect and transitory, wavering between growth and destruction, and filled with evil because through its own nature it was impure. the new system required, therefore, in order to be consistent, that man should not only keep himself removed from all impurity, but should also free himself from all the vileness of nature which clung to him; that he should liberate himself from nature herself, and the whole realm of sense. as the whole existing world was more or less impure, consistency required that all ancient customs of purification, all usages intended to remove defilements when incurred, must be allowed to drop in order to proclaim the elevation and destruction of sensual nature as the only duty of man. nevertheless the brahmans allowed the old rites of purification to exist beside the old sacrifice. as the latter is efficacious for salvation and increase of power in the person sacrificing, so is the old purification meritorious, not because it keeps the evil at a distance, but because it removes the grossest defilement; and from this point of view it is developed by the brahmans to a far wider extent. he who could not attain to the highest must be content with something less. the performance of these duties of purification is, according to the doctrine of the brahmans, an act of merit for this world and the next, and saving for the soul. sacrifice and purity form the circle of the good works, which, according to the measure of completeness, lead souls for a longer or shorter time into the heaven of indra, while disregard of them brings men into hell for long periods and severe torments. all the objects which a man touches, even the earth, can be impure, _i.e._ defiled by spittle, blood, skin, bones, &c.; everything must therefore be purified before it is taken into use. the earth is purified by allowing a cow to lie on it for the night, the floors of houses by throwing cow-dung upon them, clothes and woven-stuffs by sprinkling them with the urine of a cow. to the indians the cow was so sacred and highly-revered an animal, that the same things, which in men and beasts were considered most unclean, were regarded as means of purification when coming from a cow. we have already seen how highly cows were prized by the aryas in the panjab. the cow, the "highest of all animals," as she is styled in the mahabharata, was to them not only an emblem of fruitfulness and bounteous nourishment; they compared her to the nourishing earth, which is often spoken of as a cow. moreover, the cow provided food even for the gods, inasmuch as milk and especially butter were offered to them. the patient, quiet existence of the cow is also the pattern of the obedient and patient life now recommended by the brahmans. any contact with a corpse causes defilement. a death in a family makes it unclean for ten days, during which the relatives of the dead must sleep on the earth, each by himself, and eat uncooked rice only. the brahman then purifies himself by touching water; the kshatriya, by taking hold of his weapons, his horse, or elephant; the vaiçya, by seizing the reins of his oxen, &c. the old customs of purity were considerably extended by the ordinances of food, the rules about clean eating, laid down by the brahmans. according to their belief the whole world of animals was peopled with the souls of the dead. in every tiger, elephant, ox, antelope, locust, and ant, might be living the soul of a man, perhaps the soul of a friend, relation, or ancestor. it was with aversion that any one brought himself to make an attack on any creature, or any living animal. from this point of view the brahmans had to forbid entirely the eating of flesh, whether of wild or domestic animals. they repressed hunting as strictly as they could: "the man who slew animals for his pleasure would not increase his happiness in life or death. he who slew an animal had a share in its death no less than the man who dismembered it, or sold it, or ate it." above all, a brahman himself was not to slay any animal except for the purpose of sacrifice; and the sacrifice of animals never prevailed to any great extent among the indians. the brahman who offended against this law would in his regenerations die by a violent death as many times as there were hairs on the skin of the slain animal. but the brahmans could not carry out the prohibition either of hunting or eating flesh. they contented themselves with laying stress on the advantages of nourishment by milk and vegetables; they limited themselves to insisting that no ox-flesh should be eaten; birds of prey, some kinds of the fish and the animals already mentioned, could be used. the flesh of the rhinoceros also and the crocodile was not forbidden. but even the flesh of the permitted kinds could only be eaten after it had been offered to the gods or the ancestors, and the man who ate no flesh at all would acquire a merit equal to a hundred festival sacrifices.[ ] here, again, we see that the book of the law seeks to bring the new doctrine into force, without having the courage entirely to remove the old ways of life. at a later time the prohibition of flesh was more strict. of vegetables, leeks, garlic, and onions were forbidden, and also all plants which had grown up among impure matter. drink of any kind must be purified before use by being cleared with the stalks of kuça grass. food could only be eaten at morning and evening; always in moderation and with complete repose of mind. the sight of food must give pleasure, and man must regard it with veneration; then it will give muscular power and manly energy. before each meal grains of rice are to be sprinkled by the dvija before the door, with the words: "i greet you, ye maruts;" and other grains must be thrown into the water with the words: "i greet you, ye water-gods." on the pestle and mortar grains of rice must be strewn with the words: "i greet you, ye deities of the great trees." grains of rice are also to be thrown into the air for all the gods; into the middle of the house for the protecting deity of the house, and brahman; on the top of the house or behind it for all living creatures; and the remainder must be strewn for the ancestors with the face turned to the south. any one who omits these offerings before eating is a sinner.[ ] at sunrise and sunset the dvija is to pronounce the prayer gayatri on pain of losing caste;[ ] and every day he must pour libations to the saints, the gods, the spirits, the ancestors, and strangers. the forms of purification underwent further change and important extension. the new system, unlike the old custom, was not contented to remove defilement, when incurred, by the use of rules of purification, in which, in certain cases, traditional prayers and formulæ had to be pronounced in order to obviate the evil consequences, or drive away the bad spirits. in a large number of defilements the brahmans saw something more than mere impurity; they were sins which must be removed by expiation. their desire was not to expel the black spirits, but to eradicated and quench the false and sinful feelings in men, which gave rise to impurity. from the same point of view, and following the same path, they required that a man who had committed an offence, should not wait for the penalty of the court, but should punish himself, do penance of his own will, and by this voluntary punishment and expiation remove the consequences of his offence, not in this world only but in the next. the forms of expiation instituted by the brahmans for the removal of impurity and offences consist of prayers, which at times have to be repeated a thousand times daily, of fasts more or less severe, and occupying more or less time, of corporal punishments, and in the case of grievous offences, of voluntary death or suicide. any one who by misadventure has eaten forbidden food must perform the expiation of the moon, or the santapana. the expiation of the moon consists in eating nothing but rice for a whole month; on the first day of the waning moon fifteen mouthfuls are to be taken, and a mouthful less each day till the sixteenth, when a total fast is to be kept; from this time for each day of the increase of the moon a mouthful more is to be taken till the fifteenth day.[ ] the santapana requires that the penitent should live for a day on the urine and dung of cows mingled with milk, and drink water boiled with kuça-grass; the day following he is to fast.[ ] to atone for the forbidden food eaten unintentionally by an arya in the course of a year, it was necessary to perform the penance of prajapatya for twelve days.[ ] on the first three days he eats in the morning only; on the next three, in the evening only; on the seventh, eighth, and ninth day he eats only what strangers give him, without asking; on the last three days he keeps a strict fast. any one who intentionally eats what is forbidden is expelled by the members of his family from the family and caste. the brahmans punished indulgence in intoxicating drinks with severe penalties; we saw how much inclined the aryas were to excess in this respect. the excited and passionate state, induced by such liquors, was diametrically opposed to the quiet, patient existence, which was now the ideal of the brahmans. any one who wilfully became intoxicated was to go on drinking boiling rice-water till his body was entirely consumed; then only was he free from his sin. this offence could also be expiated by drinking the boiling urine of a cow, or boiling liquid of cow-dung, till death ensued. drunkenness was not the only sin on which the brahmans imposed a penalty of voluntary death. any one who unintentionally killed a cow, was to shave his head, put on as a garment the skin of the dead cow, repair to the pasture, salute the cows and wait upon them, and then perform his ablutions with the urine of cows instead of water. he must follow the cows step by step, swallow the dust which they raise, bring them into shelter in bad weather and guard them. if a cow is attacked by a beast of prey he must defend it with his life. if he does not perish in the service, cow-keeping of this nature continued for three months atones for his offence.[ ] if a vaiçya or a kshatriya unintentionally kills a brahman, he must wander over a hundred yodhanas, constantly reciting one of the three vedas. if a kshatriya intentionally slays a brahman, he must allow himself to be shot down by arrows, or throw himself head-foremost three times into the fire till death ensues. any one who has defiled the bed of his father or teacher must lie on a red-hot bed of iron, or expiate his offence by self-mutilation, and death.[ ] the purity and daily duties which the brahmans imposed on themselves, partly from custom, partly as a part of their new doctrine, were more strict than those required from the other orders. the brahman must rise before the dawn, and repeat the gayatri; _i.e._ the following words of the veda: "we have received the glorious splendour from the divine savitar (p. ); may he strengthen our understanding;"[ ] and purify himself by a bath. long prayers in the morning and the evening ensure long life. he must never omit to perform the five daily duties--the offering to the saints, the gods, the spirits, the ancestors, and the strange guests. each day he must bring gifts to agni, the sun, prajapati, dyaus, and prithivi (the spirits of the heaven and the earth), the fire of the good sacrifice, indra, yama, varuna, and soma.[ ] each day he must repeat the mystical name of brahman, _om_ (in the older form _am_, _i.e._ "yes," "certainly"), and the other three sacred words, _bhar_, _bhuva_, and _svar_, which, according to the commentators, are to be regarded as the spirits of the earth, the air, and the heaven.[ ] fire he must always consider as sacred. he may not fan it with his breath, or step over it. he may not warm his feet at it, or place it in a brazier under his bed or under his feet. he must not throw any refuse into it. offal, the remains of food, and water which has been used for a bath or the feet, must be removed far away from the fire. nor was the brahman allowed to throw refuse into water, or pour blood or any drink into it, still less to vomit into it; he might not look at the reflection of his body in water, or drink water in the hollow of his hand. the clothes of a brahman must be always clean and white, and never worn by another. his hair, nails, beard, must be cut; but he may not cut them himself (for so he would be defiled), nor gnaw his nails with his teeth. in his ears he must wear very bright gold rings. he must wear a wreath on his head, and in one hand carry a staff of bamboo, in the other kuça-grass and a pitcher for his ablutions. he may not play at dice, or dance or sing except at the sacrifice, when required to do so by the ritual: he may not grind his teeth, or scratch his head with his hands, or beat himself on the head, or take the wreath from his head with his own hands. he must always so place himself that on his right hand there may be an elevation of the earth, a cow, a jar of butter, a crossroad, or a sacred tree. he may not tread on ashes, hair, bones, cotton-stems, or sprouting corn. he may never step over a rope to which a cow is tethered, or disturb a cow when drinking. at morning, evening, and midday, he may not look at the sun. before an altar of agni, in a fold of cows, when with brahmans, or reading the sacred scriptures, or eating, he must leave the right arm uncovered. he may not wash his feet in a brazen vessel, or bathe naked, or sleep naked on the earth, or run when it rains. if the use of flesh as food could not be entirely forbidden to the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, the brahman must live on milk and vegetables. but he might not drink the milk of a cow when in heat, or that has lately calved, or of a cow which had lost her calf, the milk of a camel, the red gum which exudes from trees, or anything from which oil has been pressed, or with which sesame has been mixed, or anything that from sweet has become sour. he might not eat anything kept over night, or any food into which lice have fallen, or which a cow has smelt, or anything touched by a dog. he might not take the food of a criminal, or prisoner, or usurer, or rogue, or hunter, or dog-trainer, or Çudra, or dancer, or washer-woman; or of a man who is submissive to his wife, or allows her infidelity, or into whose house the wife's paramour comes. all such food is unclean for the brahman; and so also is food offered to him in anger, and that touched by a madman. any one eating such things feeds on "bones, hair, and skin." with the same minute exactness, regulations are laid down for the brahman as to the mode and position in which he is to take the permitted kinds of food; with what parts of the hand or finger he is to perform his ablutions, how he is to demean himself on all the occasions of life, when travelling, etc., in order to preserve his purity and sanctity. with equal detail we are told how the brahman is to perform the natural requirements of the body, and the purifications thereby rendered necessary.[ ] the least neglect in the fulfilment of these endless duties, which it was impossible to keep in view at once, and more impossible still to bear in mind at every moment, even with the most devoted attention, might bring on centuries of punishment and endless regenerations, unless it was expiated. the prescripts of the brahmans have been thoroughly carried out, and even the other orders to this time fulfil their daily duties. the brahman utters his morning prayer, bathes in the stream, the fountain, the pool, or in his house, performs the invocations to the gods, spirits, and ancestors, and then with his wife and child, who also have bathed, offers prayers and gifts to the protecting deities of the house.[ ] among wealthy families of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas the morning prayers after the bath are performed under the guidance of the priest of the house. no one eats the morning meal till the grains of rice have been scattered for the maruts, the gods of water and trees, and the special deity of the house. no hindoo proceeds to his work till he has purified himself and performed his devotions. the brahman does not open his book, neither smith nor carpenter takes in hand his tool, till he has uttered prayers. they neither stand up nor sit down, nor leave the room, nor sneeze, nor vomit, without the prescribed formula. thus the new doctrine of the brahmans removed the old gods and sacrifices, and gave to the old customs of purification a further extension, and in part a new meaning, inasmuch as it developed them into a wide system of expiation; but the change wrought in the sphere of morals was far more radical. the moral law of the brahmans is distinctly in opposition to the requirements of the old time. war and heroism are no longer the highest aim of life, but patience, obedience, sanctification. as all animals have their origin from brahman, and to each, at creation, is allotted a special mission, as brahman is this order of the world, it is man's task to adapt himself obediently to this arrangement of gods, and fulfil the duties laid upon him at birth. at the same time, no one is to disturb another in the fulfilment of his duties. he must injure neither man nor beast; he must spare even the plants and trees. no one must go beyond the limits allotted to him, but lead a quiet and peaceful life within them. without ceasing, the Çudras must serve the three higher orders; the vaiçyas must till the field, and tend the herds, and carry on trade, and bestow gifts; the kshatriyas must protect the people, give alms, and sacrifice; the brahman must read the veda, and teach it, offer sacrifice for himself and others, and receive gifts, if poor. it is the duty of each of the lower orders to reverence the higher; the vaiçyas and kshatriyas must bow before the brahmans, and heap gifts upon them.[ ] in opposition to the Çudras, who, as we saw, ranged with beasts (p. ), brahmans, kshatriyas, and vaiçyas were united by community of blood and common superiority of caste. the three upper orders are distinguished from the Çudras as the "dvijas," the twice-born, in the phrase of the brahmans. this second birth is performed by investiture with the holy girdle. in old times this ceremony was no doubt the symbol of the reception of boys and youths into the union of the family; at present the girdle is not only the distinguishing sign of the three upper orders, but from the brahman point of view the pledge of higher illumination. it is put on with solemn consecration, accompanied by the most sacred prayer, and the second, higher birth consists in the mystical operation of this ceremony. but the upper orders were not merely united by origin, by superiority in rank, and this symbol of superiority; the dvijas alone had access to the worship, the sacrifice, and the veda. the care of the doctrine and worship belongs especially to the brahmans. they have not only to attend to a special, higher purity; they must above all things acquire a knowledge of the positive basis of doctrine and worship, of revelation. for in the teaching of the brahmans the veda was revealed: the hymns and prayers in it are created and given by the gods; they are the divine word.[ ] the study of the veda is the first and foremost duty of the brahman. he must never omit to read the book at the appointed day, at the appointed hour. he is not old, we are told in the book of the law, whose hair is gray, but he who when young has studied the holy scriptures will be regarded by the gods as full of years and honour. the brahman who does not study the veda is like an elephant of wood, or a deer of leather. hence among the brahmans those who are learned in the scriptures take the first rank. the book of the law ordains that every young brahman must be attached as a pupil to a learned brahman. this "spiritual father" he is to love and reverence above all beside, above his natural father, "for the spiritual birth is not for this world only but for the next." the strictest ceremonial of reverence and respect for the teacher, the careful observance of these duties, and the accurate knowledge of the veda, is intended to train the young brahmans to become worthy representatives of their order. a peculiar garb and special reserve are prescribed for the novice. he must first learn the rules for purity, for keeping up the sacred fire, and then the religious duties of morning, mid-day, and evening. after this begin the readings in the veda. before each reading the pupil must purify himself with water, rub his hands with kuça-grass, and then perform obeisance to the holy text. next he prostrates himself before his tutor, and touches his feet with his hands. clad in a pure garment, with kuça-grass in his hands, he then sits down on kuça-grass with his face to the east. before beginning to read he draws in his breath three times, and then pronounces the mysterious name of brahman, om. the lesson then begins. even the wife of his teacher must be saluted by the pupil on his knees; and these customs are still to a great extent preserved in the schools of the brahmans.[ ] the time of instruction begins immediately after the ceremony of investing with the sacred girdle; it must continue nine, eighteen, or thirty-six years, in each case until the pupil knows the veda by heart. then he may take a wife, and set up his house.[ ] not only the young brahmans--though the main object was to educate them as representatives and teachers of the new doctrine--were expected to go through the period of instruction and the school of the learned brahmans; even the sons of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas were instructed in the religious duties and the veda: in fact religious instruction was to include all the dvijas. every young dvija must become a pupil of a brahman (brahmacharin) after being invested with the girdle. but the brahmans alone enjoyed the privilege of teaching and interpreting the veda. without this interpretation it was probable that a result would be attained the opposite of that which this general instruction and catechising of every dvija was intended to effect: the pupils would have quickly learnt other things from the hymns of the veda besides the tenets of the brahmans. no doubt the pious performance of the daily customs, the offering of sacrifice, the observance of the rules of purity, the voluntary performance of expiations and penalties, the practice of duties imposed on every caste and every being by the order of the universe, a respect for the obligations and life of fellow-men, the peaceful conduct, the regard for plants and animals, the eager study of the veda,--the "holiness of works" might lead a man into the heaven of indra and the gods, while the opposite conduct would plunge him into hell. but the merit of works no less than the punishment of sins was exhausted in time: it was no protection against new regenerations; it could indeed shorten the process through which the soul must pass in order to attain complete purity, but it did not cancel regeneration. that was only excluded by attaining perfect purity and holiness, for then the process of purification was complete, and with the return to brahman, its divine source, the existence of the soul ended. to bring about this return is of all duties the highest; it is above the sanctity of works. brahman was an incorporeal, immaterial being. when changed into the world, brahman becomes ever more adulterated, dark, and impure, in these successive emanations; it descends from the pure sanctity of itself, of its undisturbed being. in this state of removal and alienation, the world and mankind do not correspond to their origin, the nature of brahman, and in this condition man cannot return to brahman. the better side of men, the immaterial side closely akin to brahman, the divine elements, must become the ruling power; the impurity of matter, of the sensual world, and the body must be done away. the rules of purification only removed the grosser forms of defilement. the more that men succeeded in doing away with the whole impurity of nature, the shorter was the path of the soul after death to brahman. it is, therefore, a universal requirement of the brahmanic system--a requirement laid upon all, but more especially on the brahmans--that the soul is not to be over-grown, bound, and imprisoned by the body, the mind by the senses. the sensual needs must be held in restraint; no great space must be allowed to them. men must be on their guard against the charms of sense; sensual excesses are not to be indulged; to be lord of the senses is the chief commandment. even the affections and passions, which, in the opinion of the brahmans, sprang from the charm of the senses, must be held in check. every man must preserve a quiet calm, and dominion over his passions, and the impressions which come from without and stir the senses. but as it is the mission of every creature to return to his divine origin, as no living being can find rest till it is purified for this return, as brahman is pure spirit--spirit, that is, and not nature--it follows that no one can enter into brahman who has not been able entirely to free his soul from sensuality, to get rid utterly of his body, and transform himself entirely into pure soul. from this point of view all relations to the sensual world must appear as fetters of the spirit, and the body as the prison of the soul. the brahmans did not hesitate to draw these last conclusions from their doctrine of brahman. "this habitation of men," they said, "of which the framework is the bones, the bands the muscles; this vessel filled with flesh and blood, and covered with skin; this impure dwelling, which contains its own defilement, and is subject to age, sickness, and trouble, to sorrows of every kind, and passions; this habitation, destined to decay, must be abandoned with joy by him who assumes it." but the main point was not to await with calmness and yearning the breaking of these fetters of the soul, it was the manner in which they were broken in order that the soul might go forth free to brahman, to eternal rest, to union with the highest spirit. for this it was necessary, when a man had learned to live obediently, and to govern his senses and passions, to put aside the world altogether, and direct the eye to heaven alone. this duty is completed when the brahman, the dvija, leaves house and home, in order to become an eremite in the forest (_vanaprastha_). he clothes himself in a garment of bark, or in the skin of the black gazelle; his bed must be the earth; he lives on fruits which have fallen from the trees, or on the roots found in the forest, and on water, which he previously pours through a woollen cloth, in order to avoid killing the little insects which may happen to be in the water. he performs the service of the sacred fire, and the five daily offerings; bathes three times each day, reads the veda, and devotes himself to the contemplation of the highest being. by this means he will purify his body, increase his knowledge, and bring his spirit nearer to perfection. his hair, beard, and nails must be allowed to grow; he must fast frequently, live aloof from all desires, and be complete master of his sensual impulses; he must not allow himself to be disturbed in any way by the world, or by any accident which overtakes him. from this condition he will advance still further towards perfection, if he proceeds to reduce his body by mortification. he should roll on the ground; or stand all day long on his toes, or be continually getting up and sitting down. by degrees the eremite ought to increase the severity of these penances. in the cold season of the year he should always wear a wet garment; in the rainy season he should expose himself naked to the tempest of rain. in the warm season he must sit between four fires in the hot rays of the sun.[ ] by the eagerness and fervour of devotion which leads the ascetic to these self-tortures, and enables him to endure them, by these mortifications (_tapas_, _i.e._ heat) he must show that the pain of the body cannot trouble the soul, that nothing which befalls the one can influence the other, that he is liberated from his body. when the eremite had reduced his body by mortifications gradually increasing in severity, and attained complete mastery of the soul over the flesh, he enters into the last stage, that of the _sannyasin_, who attempts by thought to be absorbed into the world-soul, to die while yet alive in the body, by completing his return to brahman. for this stage the regulation is that the penitent is to wish for nothing, and expect nothing, to observe silence, to live absolutely alone, in ceaseless repose, in the society of his own soul. he must think of the misery of the body, the migrations of the soul, which result from sin, and the existence of the world-soul in the highest and lowest things; he must suppress all qualities in himself which are opposed to the divine nature of brahman, and think of brahman only. brahman must be contemplated in "the slumber of the most inward meditation, as being finer than an atom, and more brilliant than gold!" by thus plunging in the deepest reflection the penitent will succeed in carrying back his soul to its original source: he will attain to union with brahman, and will himself become brahman, from which he has emanated.[ ] with such consistency did the brahmans develop their system; such was the ideal which they put before the indians of the holy life, leading to union with brahman. when the dvija had set up his house, and married and begot a son, when he had fulfilled his duties as grihastha (house master), when he was old and saw "the posterity of his posterity," he must go into the forest--so the law of the priests bade,--in order to become a vanaprastha and sannyasin. indeed the importance which the system ascribed to the spiritual as opposed to the sensual, to super-sensual holiness as opposed to the unholy world of sense, even led them to declare marriage and the family as unnecessary, disturbing, and unholy; and with strict consistency they gave command to repair to the forest at once, and forswear the world from the first. even in the law-book of the priests this was permitted; but as an exception. the brahmacharin could, when he had finished his long period of instruction, go at once into the forest as an eremite and penitent.[ ] the large majority neither could nor did observe such commands, but, so far as we can see, the number of penitents was not inconsiderable soon after b.c.--and the ordinary people recognised the peculiar merit of those who went into the forest. they looked on the penitents with respect. and even to this day it is observed, that in the later years of life, when the time approaches for receiving the reward or punishment of their deeds, the hindoos devote themselves with redoubled eagerness to their religious duties. the ramayana describes the abodes in the forest and the life of the penitents. there are some who live constantly in the open air; others who dwell on the tops of the mountains; others who sleep on the places of sacrifice, or on the naked earth, or who do not sleep at all; some only eat during one month in the year; others eat rice with the husks; others feed only on uncooked nutriment, leaves, or water; others do not eat at all, but live on the air and the beams of the sun and the moon. some constantly repeat the name of the same deity; others read the vedas without ceasing; the greater part wear clothes of bark; others wear wet garments perpetually; other stand up to the neck in water; others have fire on every side and the sun overhead; others stand perpetually on one leg; others on the tips of their great toes; others on their heads; others hang by their heels on the branches of trees.[ ] when this passage of the ramayana was composed or altered, the practices of the ascetics had already gone beyond the rules prescribed in the book of the law. beginning with the idea of a holy spirit, without admixture of anything material, and forming the abstract opposite of nature, the brahmans had discovered that it is the duty of man to raise the spiritual above the corporeal. the more excitable the nerves, the more receptive the senses, the warmer the passions in that climate and nation, the more energetic was the reaction of the spirit against the flesh, the more stringent the command to become master of the senses and the body, to annihilate the senses. it is true that the material world also had emanated from brahman; even matter had come from him. but this was an adulteration of the pure brahman; it was the non-sensual, not the material side of the world which was the pure brahman. hence for the brahmans these two factors, the material and spiritual side, were again completely separated. hence the ethical problem was not to arrange the world of sense for the objects of the spirit, to raise the soul to the mastery over the body, and purify the sensual action by the spirit, but the annihilation of the sensual elements by the soul, the removal and destruction of the body--in a word, asceticism. out of the absolute annihilation of the material existence of man, his true intellectual being--his real nature, _i.e._ brahman--is to arise; it is only after the complete destruction of the life of sense and the body that man can plunge into the pure spirit. as this pure spirit could only be looked upon as a negation of nature and the world, and was only regarded in that light, and as it had no other quality but that of being non-material, the command to think of brahman and nothing but brahman, amounted to nothing less than this: on the one hand, every distinct individual intuition was to be rejected and avoided; on the other, it was a duty to develop the conception of an indefinite and indefinable unity, in opposition to the multitudinous variety of the world and nature. a conception of unity which altogether disregards the plurality comprising it is nothing more than persistence in vacuity. thus the negation of the spiritual life was demanded beside that of the bodily life; and this command was equivalent to bodily and spiritual self-annihilation. the doctrine of brahman, with the practical and ethical requirements included in it, along with the command of obedience to the existing order of the world, of subjugation of the senses and renouncement, of severe treatment of self, and tender feeling for plants and cows, finally of annihilation of the body by asceticism, were in sharp contrast to the earlier motives which governed the life of the indians of the heroic age. nothing was to be left of the old vigour in action, the old warrior life, and heroic deeds; and as a fact, in spite of earnest attempts in other directions, nothing did remain beyond the courage for lingering suicide by mortification, the reckless asceticism in which the indians are not surpassed by any nation, and which increased as the centuries went on, and ever assumed more fantastic forms. footnotes: [ ] the participation of all the gotras of the brahmans, who claim to be derived from the rishis, in the composition of the rigveda, has been acutely and convincingly proved by m. müller. "hist. of sansk. lit." p. ff. [ ] a. weber, "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] strabo, p. . lassen, "ind. alterth." , ; , - . m. müller considers that the use of writing was known to the indians before b.c., but nevertheless is of opinion that the veda was written down later, and allows no written work to the indians before b.c., the date at which he fixes panini: "hist. of sansk. lit." p. , p. ff. since, however, the brahmanas date from between and b.c., which is m. müller's opinion, it is hardly credible that controversies, and discussions, and examples, such as we find largely in the brahmanas, could have received a fixed form if they merely referred to groups of poems retained in the memory only, though of considerable extent. that the brahmanas existed in memory only seems to me to be quite impossible, considering their form. how could Çaunaka, about the year b.c. as m. müller supposes, write sutras to facilitate the understanding of the brahmanas, if the latter were not in existence in writing? a. weber has observed that in panini the pathas of the first nine books of the Çatapatha-brahmana are quoted, and the and adhyayas of the aitareya and kaushitaki-brahmanas. in my opinion, the fact so acutely and convincingly proved by m. müller--that the rigveda is allotted to all the gotras of the brahmans, is strongly in favour of the composition of the vedas in a written form; the tradition of the gotras and the schools would never have given equal attention to all. if the brahmanas, which cite the vedas accurately in their present arrangement, and speak not only of syllables but of letters, arose between and b.c., it appears to me an inevitable conclusion that the vedas must have existed in writing about the year b.c. [ ] kaegi, "rigveda," s. . [ ] madhusudana, in m. müller, "hist. of sansk. lit." p. ; cf. p. , . [ ] roth, "zur literatur des veda," s. . a. weber, "vorlesungen," s. , . westergaard, "aeltester zeitraum der ind. gesch." s. . for the legends of the puranas on the origin of the black and white yajus, which allow the superior antiquity of the first, see m. müller, _loc. cit._ p. , ff. [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , . [ ] a. weber, "vajasaneya-sanhitæ specimen," p. . [ ] "rigveda," , , "ye açvins, come with the three and thirty gods." [ ] burnouf, "commentaire sur le yaçna," p. ff., and below. [ ] "rigveda," , , ; a. weber, "ind. studien," , . yajnavalkya gives , gods; later we find millions. [ ] manu, , - , - , , - , - , , . , , . , . of. roth in "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] manu, , - ; - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . even to this day it is a custom in bengal for a man whose cow has died to wander from house to house with a rope round his neck, to imitate the lowing of a cow, and without uttering a word go on begging until he has collected enough to buy a substitute. [ ] oder sich selbst entmannen, und seine scham in der hand südostwärts (d. h. dem reiche jama's zu) wandern, bis er todt hinstürzt. [cf. manu, , , .] [ ] "rigveda," , . [ ] manu, , ff. [ ] manu, , - ; a. weber, "ind. studien," , , . [ ] der, welcher im angesicht des feuers, der sonne, des mondes, einer cisterne, einer kuh, eines dvidscha, oder gegen den wind urinirt, wird seiner ganzen schriftgelehrsamkeit beraubt werden. der brahmane darf seinen urin nicht lassen, und seine excremente nicht niederlegen, weder auf den weg noch auf asche, noch auf eine kuhweide, noch auf einen ameisenhügel, noch auf den gipfel eines berges, noch in ein loch, welches lebende wesen bewohnen können, weder gehend noch stehend. nachdem er die erde mit holz und blättern und trockenen kraütern bedeckt hat, kann er seine bedürfnisse schweigend, in sein gewand gehüllt und verhüllten hauptes, verrichten. bei tage muss er dabei sein gesicht nach norden wenden, bei nacht gegen süden. lassen sich die himmelsgegenden in der dunkelheit gar nicht unterscheiden, oder hat der brahmane einen ueberfall durch räuber oder wilde thiere zu befürchten, so kann er sein angesicht dahin richten, wohin es ihm beliebt. niemals aber darf er excremente ansehen, weder seine eigenen noch fremde. [manu, , ff.] [ ] the daily duties which the brahmans have now to perform, are given in belnos, "daily prayers of the brahmins." [ ] manu, . - ; , , . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , , . [ ] manu, , - ; - ; - . on the reading of the veda in the schools cf. roth, "zur literatur und geschichte des veda," s. . [ ] manu, , , ; , . [ ] manu, , - , , , , . [ ] manu, , , - , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] talboys wheeler, "hist. of india," , . chapter vi. the constitution and law of the indians. the requirements of the new doctrine extended throughout the whole circle of life. the establishment of the arrangement into castes struck deep into the sphere of the family, of civic society, and the state; the old rules for purification were enlarged to suit the new system, and changed into rubrics for expiation and penance, touching almost at every step upon daily life. the ethical notions of the old time had to make room for a new ideal of the life pleasing to god. how could the ancient customs of the tribes, which hitherto had been the rule and standard of family and inheritance, of _meum_ and _tuum_, resist such a sweeping alteration of the social, religious, and moral basis of life? how could the traditional punishments of transgressions and offences continue in existence? marriage and inheritance must be arranged so as to suit the system of the castes; punishment must be dealt out according to the rank of the castes, and the religious sin involved in each offence; the administration of justice must take account of the new religious system in which actions, hitherto regarded as permissible, were looked on as offences. the monarchy had new duties to fulfil towards the brahmans and the new faith; the authority of the state, the power of inflicting punishment, must side with the true faith, with the interests of the priests, and the maintenance of the orders established by god. in the circles of the brahmans there must have been a lively desire to establish the legal arrangement of the state on the basis of the divine arrangement of the world; to regulate the state in all its departments in a manner suitable to the nature of brahman. the traditional observances and legal customs, the usages of the families, races, and districts, must be brought into harmony with the new doctrine; as an almost inevitable consequence, a rule was set up for correct morals, usages, and life, corresponding to the divine nature and will; a pattern was drawn of the manner in which individual family and state might act in every matter in accordance with the nature of brahman. the commands resulting from the system of the divine order of the world were combined into one standard, set forth in a scheme universally accepted, and thus elevated above all doubt and contradiction, and in this way the brahmans passed beyond the differences which could not but remain among them in respect to this or that point, and did actually remain in the schools of the priests, as the brahmanas show. moreover, unanimous prescripts, a comprehensive and revered canon of law and morals, were naturally an advantage to the position of the brahmans; their status was thus rendered more secure and distinctive; and success was more certain. the priesthoods of the various districts must have made a beginning by influencing and modifying in the spirit of the new doctrine the customs and usages of the land; they then proceeded to draw up the customs of family law, of marriage and inheritance, the rights and duties of the castes. in this compilation it was inevitable that the hereditary customs should be revised in the spirit of the priesthood. collections of this kind serving as rules for certain departments of life have been preserved in certain _grihya-sutras_, _i.e._ books of household customs, and _dharma-sutras_, _i.e._ catalogues or tables of laws.[ ] out of the oldest records of household customs and legal usages, altered and systematised in the spirit of the priests, out of the collections and revisions of the customs of law and morals made in various schools of priests, a book of law at last grew up for the brahmans, which comprised both the civic and religious life, and in all relations set forth the ideal scheme, according to which they should be arranged in the spirit of the priesthood, _i.e._ in a manner suitable to the divine will. this book of the law bears the name of manu, the first man, the progenitor of the race. it has been shown above that the victory of the brahmans, the new faith and code of morals, was first won in the regions between the yamuna and the ganges, in the land of the bharatas, panchalas, matsyas, and Çurasenas. as it was there that the pre-eminence of the brahmans was first completely acknowledged, it was there that they were first able to exercise an influence on the customs and ordinances of law; there also that the need of a comprehensive regulation of life upon the brahman view was most strongly felt. "the land between the sarasvati and the drishadvati was created by the gods (_devata_); and therefore the sages give it the name of brahmavarta"--so we are told in the book of the law. the custom of brahmavarta (_achara_), preserved unbroken in this land, is for the book of the law the right custom, the correct law. hence it follows that the rules given in that book rest on the observances which grew up in this region under the predominating influence of the brahmans. the book further tells us that on the borders of brahmavarta is brahmarshideça, _i.e._ the land of the brahmanic saints; this includes the land of the kurus (kurukshetra) and that of the panchalas, matsyas, and Çurasenas. from a brahman born in this land all men are to learn their right conduct upon earth. the "land of the middle" (madhyadeça), according to the book, extends from vinaçana in the west to prayaga, _i.e._ to the confluence of the yamuna and the ganges; but the law is to prevail from the vindhyas to the himalayas, from the western to the eastern sea, over the whole of aryavarta (_i.e._ the land of the aryas): "wherever the black gazelle is found, an efficacious sacrifice can always be offered." in that land the dvijas are to dwell; "but the Çudra who cannot obtain sustenance there may dwell elsewhere."[ ] the book of the law naturally declares the revelation (_Çruti_), the threefold veda, to be the main source of law. the second source is immemorial tradition or the custom (_smriti_) of the good, which is found in its typical form in brahmavarta; in the third degree are the utterances of the old priests and sages, who are in part quoted by name and cited--vasishtha, atri, gautama, bhrigu, and Çaunaka.[ ] but the book of the law is also not inclined utterly to reject the ancient observances and customs; on the contrary, all usages of families, races, and districts remain in force, provided that they are not contradictory to this code.[ ] the brahmans were wisely prepared to content themselves with this looser form of unity; by thus sparing local life, they might hope to gain the ascendant more easily and readily in the points of chief importance. this regard for local law is counterbalanced by the fact that the book includes in its sphere religious duties, morals, and worship, and the entire arrangement of the state; in all these departments it lays down the scheme on which they are to be regulated in the spirit of the priesthood. the book is as copious on the doctrine as on the practice; it contains the punishments of heaven as well as those on earth; the arrangement of expiations and penalties as well as of regulations for the trade of the market; the principles of a vigorous management of the state, and the description of hell; the rules for living the brahman's life and conducting war successfully; the decision of the judge on earth and beneath it. it is not content with establishing rules of law, or commands of moral duty, it includes among its ordinances moral maxims, a number of proverbs and rules of wisdom; it not only shows how heaven is gained but also the proper demeanour in society; a compendium of diplomacy follows the system of regenerations. hence this book gives striking evidence of the mixture characteristic of the indian nature, a mixture of superstitious fancy and keen distinction, of vague cloudiness and punctilious systematising, of soaring theory and subtle craft, of sound sense and over-refinement in reflection. if from these indications about the customs of brahmavarta and the brahmans of brahmarshideça we can determine with tolerable certainty the region in which the book of the law has grown up, it follows from the introduction in which the holy bhrigu recites the law as "manu had revealed it to him at his prayer," and from the close where we are again told that this is "the law announced by bhrigu,"[ ] that the collection of brahmanic rules contained in this book have been preserved in the form and revision received in the school derived from bhrigu, and connected with the old minstrel race of the bhrigus.[ ] it is more difficult to find the date at which the germ of this collection of law may have been brought to completion. even if we set aside the introduction and the close which are in no connection with the body of the work, the book is still wanting in unity: it contains longer and shorter rules on the same subject, is sometimes milder, sometimes more severe; a fact in favour of the gradual origin of the book, which indeed, as has been observed, is necessitated by the nature of the case. the indians possess a series of books of law, which, like that called after manu, bear the name of a saint or seer of antiquity, or of a god. one is named after gautama, another after vasishtha, a third after apastamba, a fourth after yajnavalkya; others after bandhayana and vishnu. according to the tradition of the indians the law of manu is the oldest and most honourable, and this statement is confirmed by a comparison of the contents and system of the rules contained in it with those of the other books.[ ] not to mention the fact that a considerable number of the rules in the book of manu are repeated verbally in the other collections, the legal doctrine of the indians is seen even in the older of these collections, in the book of vishnu, which belongs to the brahman school of the kathakas, in that of gautama, and finally in that of yajnavalkya, which with the book of gautama is nearest in point of date to the book of manu--in a far more developed state, and with much more straw-splitting refinement. the book which is named after yajnavalkya of the race of vajasani belongs to the eastern regions of the ganges, the kingdom of mithila. it is based on a doctrine which, unknown to manu's law, came into existence in the fourth century b.c.; the system of mixed castes and trade law is far more developed in it than in manu. we shall see below that this doctrine cannot be placed much further back than the year b.c.,[ ] and it is assumed that the laws of yajnavalkya in their present form may date from the third century of our era. if manu's law is older than yajnavalkya's, and the latter rests on a doctrine, the rise of which we can fix about the year b.c., while manu's doctrine is older, there are other indications to be gathered from manu's work which enable us to fix the date more clearly. manu's law, as we have seen, limits the habitations of the aryas to the land north of the vindhyas--from which we may conclude that this view belongs to a period when the aryas had not yet set a firm foot on the coast of the deccan. this extension of the aryas to the south of the vindhyas began, as will be seen below, after the year b.c. soon after this year we find the states on the ganges completely arranged according to the brahmanic law, and the prescripts of the laws of manu; even in the first half of the sixth century we find a stricter practice in regard to marriages outside the order, and a severer asceticism than the law-book requires. the conclusion is therefore inevitable that the decisive precepts, which we find in the collection, must have been put together and written down about the year .[ ] the introduction belongs undoubtedly to a later period. manu is seated in solitary meditation, and there come to him the ten great saints--the book mentions marichi, atri, angiras, pulastya, pulaha, kratu, daksha, vasishtha, bhrigu, narada[ ]--and say: "thou alone, lord, knowest the distinction of the pure and impure castes, the true meaning of this universal order, which is self-existent; deign to explain it to us with clearness and in order." manu then first narrates to the saints the story of creation. the highest being first created the water, and cast into it procreative seed, which became an egg, bright as gold and gleaming like the sun, and in this egg the highest being was born in the shape of brahman. then brahman caused the egg to divide and formed from it the heaven and the earth and the great waters. he then divided himself into a man and a woman, and the male half (brahman viraj) produced him, manu, who fashioned all things and created the ten rishis, and the seven manus, who in turn created animals and plants. then the highest being caused him (manu) to learn the book of the law by heart: he imparted it to the great saints and taught it to bhrigu, who would recite it. then bhrigu takes up the word and says: "learn from me the law as manu has revealed it at my prayer." bhrigu then narrates how the seven manus had created various beings each in his age, and recites the doctrine of the four great periods of the world (p. ), of the origin of the four castes and the majesty of the brahmans.[ ] it is no doubt a somewhat late form of brahmanic cosmogony which is recited in this introduction. we hear no more of the manu of the rigveda, the progenitor of the aryas; he is elevated in the priestly system to be the first being beside brahman, and made the creator of the world. he is now called manu svayambhu, _i.e._ the self-existent manu, and creates from himself the ten rishis, the seven other manus, who in their turn create living creatures and plants. the seven manus are all denoted by special epithets--the seventh is known as the ancient manu; he is called the son of vivasvat, vivasvata (p. ). if manu svayambhu had already imparted the law to the great saints, to whose number bhrigu belongs, and taught it especially to bhrigu, it was unnecessary for the great saints to ask it from manu once more. this difficulty is as little felt in the book as the still more striking contradiction that the collection, though emanating from the first manu or brahman, is based upon and even expressly appeals to the utterances of vasishtha, atri, gautama, bhrigu. this is further explained by the fact that the introduction is completely ignored in the text of the book. in the text we see the civic polity on the ganges at an advanced stage. the monarchy which rose up from the leadership of the immigrant hordes, in conflict partly against the old inhabitants and partly against the newly-founded states, has maintained this supreme position, and extended it to absolute domination. it is in full possession of despotic power. the brahmanic theory, so far from destroying it, has, on the contrary, extended and strengthened it. the brahmans, it is true, demanded that the king should regulate worship, law, and morals according to their views and requirements; they imposed upon him duties in reference to their own order, but, on the other hand, they were much in need of the civic power to help them in carrying through their demands against the other orders. this doctrine of submission to the fortune of birth, of patient obedience, of a quiet and passive life, in connection with the reference to the punishments after death, and the evils to come, were highly calculated to elevate the power of the kings, and lull to sleep energy, independence of feeling and attitude, boldness and enterprise, in the castes of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas. the interest in another world and occupation with the future must thus have become more prominent than the participation in this world or care for the present. in such circumstances the world was gladly left to those who had once taken in hand the government of it. when the nation had gradually become unnerved by such doctrines and cares, the monarchy had an easy game to play. its rule might be as capricious as it chose. in weaker nations, unaccustomed to action, the need of order and protection is so great that not only acts of violence against individuals but even the oppression felt by the whole is gladly endured for the sake of the security enjoyed in other respects by the entire population. the book compares the kings with the gods. "he who by his beneficence spreads abroad the blessings of prosperity, and by his anger gives death, by his bravery decides the victory, without doubt unites in himself the whole majesty of the protectors of the world."[ ] brahman created the king, the book tells us, by taking portions from the substance of the eight protectors of the world, and these the king now unites in his person.[ ] "as indra is the bright firmament, so does the king surpass in splendour all mortal beings; as indra pours water from heaven for four months (the indians on the ganges reckoned the rainy season at four months), so must he heap benefits on his people. like surya (the sun-god) the king beams into the eyes and hearts of all; no one can look into his countenance. as surya by his rays draws the moisture out of the earth for eight months, so may the king draw the legal taxes from his subjects. as vayu flies round the earth and all creatures and penetrates them, so should the power of the king penetrate through all. like yama in the under world, the king is lord of justice; as yama when the time is come judges friends and enemies, those who honour him and those who despise him, so shall the king hold captive the transgressors. as varuna fetters and binds the guilty, so must the king imprison criminals. like agni, the king is the holy fire: with the flame of his anger he must annihilate all transgressors, their families and all that they have, their flocks, and herds, and he must be inexorable towards his ministers. as men rejoice at the sight of the moon-god (chandra), so do they take pleasure in the sight of the good ruler; as kuvera spreads abundance, so does the gracious look of the king give blessing and prosperity.[ ] the sovereign is never to be despised, not even when he is a child; for a great divinity dwells in this human form."[ ] the king also represents, according to manu, the four ages of the world. on his sleeping and waking and action depends the condition of the land. "if the king does what is good, it is kritayuga (the age of perfection); if he acts with energy, it is tritayaga (the age of the sacrificial fires); if he is awake, it is dvaparayuga (the period of doubt); if he sleeps it is kaliyuga (the period of sin)."[ ] we have already become acquainted with the deification of kings in a still more pronounced form in the inscriptions on the temples and palaces of egypt. it will always be found where there is nothing to oppose the authority of the king but the impotence of subjects who possess no rights, when life and death depend on his nod, and above all where a divine order supposed to be gathered from the commands of heaven is realised on earth in the state, and there are no institutions to carry it out, but only the person of the king as the single incarnation of power. however high the brahmans placed the sanctity and dignity of their own order above that of the kshatriyas, the book makes no attempt to bring the monarchy into the hands of the brahmans. it lays down the rule that the kings must belong to the order of the kshatriyas;[ ] and leaves the throne to them, without feeling the contradiction that by this means a member of a subordinate caste receives dominion over the first-born of brahman. it was part of the conception of the brahmans that each order had a definite obligation. the kshatriyas must protect the other orders; and therefore the chief protector must belong to this caste. but the book does not even aim at confining the royal power of the kshatriyas in narrower limits for the benefit of the brahmans. the kings are merely commanded to be obedient to the law of the priests; the order of brahmans is declared to be especially adapted for public offices, without excluding the rest of the dvija from them. the king is further recommended to advise chiefly with brahmans on affairs of state, and to allow brahmans to pronounce sentence in his place.[ ] for the great sacrifices he must have a brahman to represent him (purohita); and for household devotion and daily ritual he must keep a chaplain (ritvij). agreeably to the brahmanic conception of the world, the maintenance of the established order is the especial duty of the king. he must take care that all creatures do what is required of them and perform their duties. he must also protect his subjects, their persons, property, and rights. he must reward the good and punish the bad. justice is the first duty of the king. by justice the book understands chiefly the maintenance of authority and order by terror, by sharp repression and severe punishment. the power of inflicting punishment is regarded as the best part of the kingly office; the king must especially occupy himself with pronouncing judgment, and punish without respect of persons. the terror spread by punishment, and the apportionment of it in particular cases, are the principles of the law of penalties. the brahmans had gained recognition for their doctrine mainly by the fear of the penalties of hell, and the regenerations; they thought that nothing but fear governs the world, and by that means only could order be maintained in the state. the more the brahmanic doctrine drained the marrow out of the bones and the force out of the souls of the people, the more dependent and incapable of self-help the subjects were made by the severe oppression and tutelage of the kings, the more necessary it became, as no one could now defend or help himself, to have an effectual protection for persons and property, and this the book finds only in the power of punishment exercised by the king. we find a complete theory of the preservative power of punishment, before which all distinctions of criminal and civil process disappear, and it becomes a matter of indifference whether an offence has taken place from a doubtful claim, from error, carelessness, or evil intention. "a man who does good by nature," so we are told in the book, "is rarely found. even the gods, the gandharvas, the giants, the serpents perform their functions only from fear of punishment. it is this which prevents all creatures from abandoning their duties, and puts them in a position to enjoy what is properly their own. punishment is justice, as the sages say; punishment governs the world; it is a mighty power, a strong king, a wise expounder of law. when all things sleep, punishment is awake. if the king did not ceaselessly punish those who deserve it, the stronger would eat up the weak; property would cease to exist; the crow would pick up the rice of the sacrifice, and the dog lick the clarified butter. only when black punishment with red eyes annihilates the transgressors, do men feel no anxiety." the services rendered by the king in the exercise of justice and the maintenance of order and the system of caste thus attained, are naturally rated very highly by the book of law, in accordance with its general tendency. "by the suppression of the evil and protection of the good, the king purifies himself like a brahman by sacrifice." "then his kingdom flourishes like a tree that is watered continually;" through the protection which the king secures for the good by punishment, he acquires a portion of the merits of the good. the portion of these merits thus allotted to the king is determined by arithmetical calculations. "the king who collects the sixth part of the harvest and protects his people by punishment, obtains a sixth part of the merit of all pious actions, and the sixth part of all rewards allotted by the heavenly beings to the nation for their sacrifices and gifts to the gods, and for the reading of the holy scriptures. but the king who does not protect his people, and yet takes the sixth, goes into hell; as does also the king who punishes the innocent and not the transgressors. even if the king has not himself pronounced the unjust sentence, a part of the guilt falls upon him. the fourth part of the injustice of the sentence falls on him who began the suit, a fourth on the false witnesses, a fourth on the judge, a fourth on the king. a pure prince, who is truthful, who knows the holy scriptures, and does not disregard the laws, which he has himself given, is regarded by the sages as capable of regulating punishment, of imposing it evenly, and thus he increases the virtue, the wealth, and prosperity of his subjects (the three means of happiness)." "to the prince who decides a case righteously, the people will flock like the rivers to the ocean, and when he has thus obtained the good-will of the nation"--so the book continues--"he must attempt to subjugate the lands which do not obey him."[ ] accompanied by brahmans and experienced councillors, the king is to repair without magnificence to the court of justice. after invoking the protectors of the world, he begins, standing or seated, with the right hand raised, and his attention fixed, to examine the case according to the rank of the castes. like yama, the judge of the under world, the king must renounce all thoughts of what is pleasing to him; he must follow the example of the judge of all men, suppress his anger, and put a bridle on his senses. if right wounded by wrong enters the court and the king does not draw out the arrow he is himself wounded. from the attitude of the litigants, the colour of their faces, and the tone of their voices, their appearance and gestures, the king must ascertain their thoughts and attain to truth, as the hunter reaches the lair of the wild beast which he has wounded by following up the traces of its blood. beside these indications, witnesses are required for proof; and if these are not forthcoming, oaths or the "divine declaration." respectable men of all the orders are allowed as witnesses, especially the fathers of families; if these are not to be obtained, the friends or enemies of the accused, his servants, or such as are in need and poverty, and are afflicted with sickness. in cases of necessity the evidence of a woman, a child, and a slave can be taken.[ ] the book repeatedly and with great urgency exhorts the witnesses to speak the truth, and threatens false witnesses with hell and a terrible series of regenerations. in the presence of the accuser and accused the king calls on the witness to tell the truth: to the brahman he says, "speak;" to the kshatriya, "tell the truth;" to the vaiçya, he points out that false witness is as great a crime as theft of corn, cattle, and gold.[ ] "the wicked think," says manu, "no one sees us if we give false witness. but the protectors of the world know the actions of all living creatures, and the gods see all men. the soul also is its own witness; a severe judge and unbending avenger dwells in thine heart. the soul is a part of the highest spirit, the attentive and silent observer of all that is good and evil." the false witness will not only come to misfortune in his life, so that, deprived of his sight, with a potsherd in his hand he will beg for morsels in the house of his enemy--for all the good that a man has done in his life at once departs into dogs by false witness--in a hundred migrations he will fall into the toils of varuna, and at last will be thrown head foremost into the darkest abyss of hell. even his family and kindred are brought into hell by the false witness. for further elucidation the book provides a scale; by false witness about oxen five, about cows ten, about horses a hundred, and about men a thousand members of the family of the false witness are thrown into hell.[ ] if no witnesses are forthcoming the king must endeavour to find out the truth by the oaths of the accuser or the accused, which in cases of special importance he may test and confirm by the "divine declaration." even the brahmans could not refuse the oath; for vasishtha had sworn to the son of pijavana (sudas). the brahman swore by his truthfulness; the kshatriya by his weapons, his horses, and elephants; the vaiçya by his cows, his corn, his grass; the Çudra, when taking an oath, must invoke all sins on his own head.[ ] if the king desires the "divine revelation" on the truth of the oath, the person taking it must lay his hand, while swearing, on the head of his wife, or the heads of his children; or after taking it, he must undergo the test of fire and water or fire; i.e. he is thrown into water and he must touch fire with his hand. if in the second case no immediate harm follows, if in the first the witness sinks like any other person, if in the third he is not injured by the fire, the oath is correct. fire, so the book proceeds, is to be the test of guilt or innocence for all men; the holy vatsa once demonstrated his innocence by walking through fire without a hair of his head being consumed.[ ] when we consider the inclination of the indians to the marvellous, and their belief in the perpetual interference of the gods, it cannot surprise us that these regulations about the divine declaration--which are all that are found in the book of the law--became at a later time much more extended and complicated; it is also possible that the book has omitted certain hereditary forms of the divine sentence, such as the carrying of hot iron, though they continue to exist.[ ] when the king had thus come to a conclusion about the matter and its position by means of indications, evidence, oaths, and "divine declaration," when he had considered the extenuating or aggravating circumstances, _e.g._ special qualities in the criminal, or repeated convictions, and reflected on the prescriptions given by the law, he is to cause punishment to be inflicted on the guilty. the book acknowledges that the king alone is not sufficient for the burden of pronouncing justice; it is open to him to name a representative, and the necessary judges from the number of the twice-born; no exclusive right in this respect is reserved for the brahmans, but they are especially recommended. "a court of law, assembled by the king, and consisting of a very learned brahman and three brahmans acquainted with writing, is called by the sages the court of brahman with four faces." a Çudra can never be named by the king as his representative in a court of law. if such a thing were to happen, the kingdom would be in the unfortunate position of a cow which had fallen into a morass.[ ] the doctrine of the brahmans that no living creature is to be killed is little attended to in respect of human life either in their penal code or in their asceticism. the punishment of death is perhaps less frequently imposed than elsewhere in the east, but mutilations are only the more common, and at times they are employed to aggravate the sentence of death, which is inflicted by beheading and impalement.[ ] the legends of the buddhists show that cruel mutilations were not uncommon. men of the despised classes, especially chandalas, served as executioners.[ ] the brahmans are to be free from all bodily punishment; the other castes could be punished either by loss of life, or of the sexual organs, or in the belly, the tongue, feet and hands, eyes and nose, and were distinguished by different brands on the forehead.[ ] but the book of the law adds a rule of some importance intended to win respect and legal value for the priestly arrangements of penances: all criminals, who perform the religious expiations prescribed for their offence, are not to be punished in the body, but only condemned to pay a fine. next to corporal punishments, fines are the most frequent; but imprisonment is mentioned; this was carried out in gaols, which were to be erected on the highways "to spread terror." the book allows the kings absolute power to punish with capricious severity and with death any attempt and even "any hostile feeling" against themselves. this is necessitated by the position of the despotic ruler whose throne depends on keeping alive the sense of fear in his subjects. "he who in the confusion of his mind betrays hatred against his king must die; the king must at once occupy himself with the means to bring about his destruction." any one who has refused obedience to the king or robbed the king's treasury must be put to death with tortures.[ ] he who forges royal orders, puts strife between the ministers of the king, appropriates the royal property, has any understanding with the enemies of the king, and inspires them with courage, must die. so also must the man who has killed a brahman, a woman, or a child,[ ] who has broken down a dyke, so that the water in the reservoir is lost.[ ] adultery under certain circumstances is punished with death. robbery, arson, attacks with violence on persons or property, are punished very severely, for such crimes "spread alarm among all creatures."[ ] the punishments prescribed by the law for the protection of property are, comparatively, the most severe; it seems that the brahmanic view, which allots to each creature his sphere of rights, regarded property, the extended circle of the person, as an appurtenance deserving the strictest respect, and that the brahmans looked on the protection of property as an essential part of a good arrangement of the state, which must secure his own to every man and maintain him in the possession of it. the king is to suppress theft with the greatest vigour. in order to discover the thief, no less than the gambler and cheat, the law recommends him to avail himself of the espionage of those who apparently pursue the same occupation. these spies are to be taken from all orders, and must watch especially the open places, wells, and houses of courtesans in the cities, and in the country the sacred trees, the crossways, the public gardens, and parks of the princes. the king must cause every one to be executed who is caught on the spot with the property upon him, and the concealers of the thief must be punished as severely as the thief himself.[ ] any one who steals more than ten kumbhas worth of corn is to be punished with death; theft of a less value is followed by loss of hand or foot. petty stealing, _e.g._ of flowers, or of as much corn as a man can carry, is to be punished by fines, in which the vaiçya has to pay twice as much as the Çudra, the kshatriya four times, the brahman eight or a hundred times. burglary is a capital offence; the sentence is carried out by impalement, after the hands of the victim have been cut off.[ ] a cut-purse loses two fingers; on a second offence a hand and a foot; if the offence is repeated he must die.[ ] in regard to property, manu's laws are so severe that they not only put the sale of another's goods, but even the loosing of a tied ox, or the tying of one which is loose, the use of the slave, horse, or carriage of another on the same level as theft. on the other hand, it is permissible to take roots, and fruits, and even wood for sacrifice out of any unfenced field; the hungry traveller, if a dvija, may break two sugarcanes, but not more.[ ] gamblers are punished like thieves, and any one who keeps a gambling house must undergo corporal punishment; drunkards are branded in the forehead. the law of contract and debt, the breach of covenants, the non-payment of wages when due, the annulling of a purchase or sale, the law of deposits, the collection of outstanding accounts, gambling debts and wages, are discussed at some length. the views and regulations in the book of law about the unlimited power of the king and the exercise of the right of punishment might appear to be of a later date than has been assumed, if the sutras of the buddhists and the accounts of the greeks from the end of the fourth century b.c. did not exhibit the monarchy of india in the full possession of unlimited power; the latter also mention the careful regard paid by the kings to the administration of justice. hence we can hardly be wrong in assuming that the arians in india were not later than their kindred in iran in reaching this form of constitution. along with the absolute power of punishment the law allows the kings a very liberal right of imposing taxes. the taxes were regarded as the recompense which the subjects have to pay for the protection which the king extends to them. however high the quota of taxes may be which the king has the right to raise, the law calls attention to the fact that it is not good "to exhaust the realm by taxes." the impositions are to be arranged in such a way that the subjects may confess that king and nation find "the just reward of their labour." the king is never to cut off his own roots by raising no taxes at all on a super-abundance of possessions, nor may he from covetousness demand too heavy a tribute, and so cut off the roots of his subjects. as the exhaustion of the body destroys the life of the animated creature, so does the exhaustion of the kingdom destroy the life of the king. as a rule, he may only demand the twelfth part of the harvest, _i.e._ above eight per cent., and the fiftieth, _i.e._ two per cent., of animals and incomes in gold and silver.[ ] yet the eighth or sixth corn could be demanded according to the quality of the soil and the amount of labour required upon it, and the fifth part of the increase in cattle and in gold and silver. in cases of necessity the fourth part of the harvest could be demanded, "when the king is protecting his people with all his power." of the gain on fruit-trees, herbs, flowers, perfumes and honey the king can take the sixth part. from the wares of the merchant which come to be sold, the king may take the twentieth;[ ] and those who live by retail trade may be compelled to pay a moderate tax. artisans, day-labourers, and Çudras who earn too little to be able to pay taxes, the king compels to work for him one day in each month.[ ] from this it is clear how extensive was the circle from which taxes were paid; all incomes, whether from the soil and under it, even to flowers and honey, or from the breeding of cattle, all purchases and sales were taxed, and the rates at which the taxes were levied were high. there were besides presents in kind. if we add to these the exactions of the tax-gatherer, which in the east have rarely been wanting, the burdens prescribed and imposed by the laws must have been very considerable. it would afford little protection to those who had to pay that manu's laws required that the taxes should be collected by men of good family whose characters were free from avarice.[ ] yet these and other rules in the book show that an attempt was made to introduce order, and, at any rate, a certain moderation into the taxation. the good advice given in conclusion to the king, that he should collect his yearly tribute in small portions, even as the bee and the leech suck in their nourishment gradually,[ ] is rather evidence of machiavellian policy than of good feeling towards the taxpayers, while the open reference to the leech as a pattern of moderation is equivalent to an acknowledgment of the draining process of which we find evidence elsewhere. from the general duty of paying taxes the "learned brahman" is alone exempted; from him the king is never to take tribute even though he were dying of hunger;[ ] the brahmans, as we shall see, paid their sixth in intercessions.[ ] the rules given in the law for taxation are not of recent date. the sixth part of the harvest is there prescribed as the rule. from the accounts of the greeks about the year b.c. the fourth part of the harvest was collected, and a tenth from trade.[ ] according to the sutras of the buddhists the pressure of taxes in some states on the ganges became exhausting. subsequently, the princes of the mahrattas took a fifth of the harvest, which seems to have become the rule in later times, and occasionally a fourth, in corn or coin. the sultan akhbar caused the whole land to be measured and the value of the produce to be calculated on an average of the harvests of nineteen years, and the size of the farm; then he took the third part of the produce thus estimated in gold, with entire release from all other taxes. lands in the possession of the brahmans partially enjoy even to this day the traditional freedom from taxation. as it is difficult for one man to govern a great kingdom the book advises the king to choose seven or eight ministers from men whose fathers have already been in the service of the crown, persons of good family, of knowledge of the law, bold and skilful in the use of weapons.[ ] he is to secure their fidelity by an oath. with them he is to consider all affairs, first with each singly, then with all together; after this he may do what seems to him best. on matters of great importance the king must always ask the advice of one brahman of eminence, and consider the affair with him as his first minister.[ ] the sutras of the buddhists as well as the epic poems show us the court of the king arranged according to these rules; in the ramayana, king daçaratha of ayodhya has eight ministers together with his parohita and ritvij.[ ] the plan presented by the law for the management of the state is very simple. the king is to place officers (_pati_, lords) over every village, and again over every ten or twenty villages (_grama_), so that these places with their acreage formed together a district. five or ten such districts form a canton, which contains a hundred communities, and over this in turn the king places a higher magistrate. ten of these cantons form a region, which thus comprised a thousand villages, and this is administered by a governor.[ ] the overseers of districts are to have divisions of soldiers at their disposal to maintain order in their districts. thefts and robbery which they are unable to prevent with their own forces they must report to the overseers of cantons.[ ] thus the states of india were governed by a complicated series of royal magistrates subordinated to each other, which is of itself evidence of an advanced stage of administration. whether the kings of india adopted this or some other plan for the management of their states, which in the first instance were of no great extent, experience must have taught, before manu's laws received their present form, that these magistrates did not always discharge their duties faithfully, but were guilty of caprice and oppression. the subordination of the magistrates is intended to supply a means of control; but the law also requires regular payment of officers. "those whom the king employs for the security of the land," we are told, "are as a rule knaves, who gladly appropriate the property of the subjects."[ ] in order to prevent this as far as possible regular payment is absolutely necessary. the fourth class (the overseers of the villages) is to receive what the village has to contribute to the king in rice, wood, and drink; the third class (the overseers of districts) must receive as pay the produce of an estate, which requires twelve steers to cultivate it; the second class must receive the produce of a plot five times as large, &c.[ ] moreover, in every great city the king must nominate a head overseer, and must from time to time cause reports to be made by special commissaries of the manner in which the magistrates perform their duties; and those who take money from the people with whom they have to do, the king must drive out of the land and confiscate their property.[ ] the advice which the book imparts to the kings on the duties they have to fulfil beside the protection of the subjects, the maintenance of order, and the supervision of their magistrates; the art of government sketched for them, the regulations for personal security put into their hand, are the result of an unfettered reflection on all these relations for which no limitations and principles are in existence, except the interest of uncontrolled dominion, and the respect due to the brahmans. the king is to take up his abode in a healthy and rich district, inhabited by loyal people, who get their living easily, and surrounded by peaceful neighbours. in such a district he is to choose a place difficult of access owing to deserts or forest. if these are not to be found the king must build his citadel on a mountain, or he must make it inaccessible by specially strong walls of stone or brick, or by trenches filled with water. as a man can do nothing to a wild animal when in its hole, so the king has nothing to fear in an inaccessible place. in the midst of such a fortress the king must build his palace with the necessary spaces properly divided in such a manner that it can be inhabited at any period of the year. the palace must be provided with water and surrounded with trees, the entire dwelling must then be enclosed by trenches and walls. the citadel, in which the palace lies, must be well provided with arms, supplies, beasts of burden, fodder, machines, and brahmans. one archer behind the breast of the wall easily holds a hundred enemies in check.[ ] the guard in the interior of the palace is to be trusted only to men of little spirit, for brave men, seeing the king frequently alone or surrounded by women, could easily slay him at the instigation of his enemies. it is best to pay regularly the servants of the palace; the chief servants are to receive six panas a day, six dronas of corn a month, and six suits of clothes in the year; the lowest receive one pana a day, one drona of corn a month, and an upper and under garment twice in the year.[ ] the king, his council, his treasure, his metropolis, his land, army, and confederates--these are, according to the book of the law, the seven parts of the kingdom, which ought mutually to support each other. the king is the most important part, "because through him all the other parts are set in motion;" his destruction brings with it the ruin of the rest. hence the king must take thought for his preservation. for this object the book advises him--besides securing the metropolis, the citadel, and the people in it--to pay attention to a good arrangement of the day. with early dawn he is to rise and purify himself, in deep meditation to offer his sacrifice to agni, and show his respect for the brahmans who know the three holy books.[ ] then he must go to the magnificent hall of reception, and there delight his subjects by gracious words and looks. after administering justice he is to consult with his ministers in some secret place where he cannot be overheard, on a lonely terrace or on the top of a mountain. in the middle of the day, if he is free from disquiet and weariness (or in the middle of the night), he must reflect on virtue, content, and riches, on war and peace, on the prospect of success in his undertakings. then he must bathe, take such exercise as becomes a king, and then repair to the meal in his inner chambers. there he must take food prepared for him by old, faithful, and trustworthy servants, but previously tested with the help of a partridge, whose eyes become red if there is poison in the dish. he must consecrate the food by prayers, which will destroy the poison contained in it. he must at all times carry precious stones with him, to counteract the effect of poison, and must mix antidotes with his food.[ ] after dinner the women make their appearance to fan him, and sprinkle him with water and perfumes, but not till their ornaments and dress have been carefully searched to see that neither weapons nor poison are hidden in them. when the king has passed the suitable time with his wives, he occupies himself anew with public business. he puts on his armour, and reviews his warriors, elephants, horses, chariots, and arms.[ ] in the evening, after sacrifice, he repairs in his armour to a remote part of the palace, in order to receive the accounts of his spies. then he takes his evening meal in his innermost chambers, at which his wives attend him. after a light repast and some music, he lies down to rest at the proper time, and rises refreshed in the morning.[ ] the book advises the king to make conquests, and gives him counsel on the conduct of war. this may be explained as a survival of the old warlike feeling of the people, or as the result of the duty imposed on the kshatriyas, or from the encyclopædic nature of the book, which includes all sides of civic life. the ideal of the brahmans lay no doubt in a quiet and peaceful life, but like other priesthoods they were inclined to leave the state a free course in its desire for extension of power so long as it satisfied the requirements they laid upon it. conquests, the book tells us, cannot be made till a treasure has been collected and the troops carefully exercised.[ ] every neighbour is to be regarded as an enemy, but the neighbour of a neighbour as a friend. while the king must carefully conceal the weaknesses of his own kingdom, he must spy out the weakness of the enemy; he must send spies into the enemy's land, just as he uses them to detect gambling, theft, and cheating in his own. the persons best suited for this purpose are fictitious penitents, degraded eremites, broken merchants, starving peasants, and finally young men of bold and acute spirit; these must collect accurate information concerning the ministers, treasures, and army of the hostile state.[ ] the choice of the ambassador sent to the enemy's coast is of the first importance both for knowing the country, and ascertaining the views of the prince. he must be a man of high birth, of acuteness and honesty, friendly in his manners. in negotiations with the hostile prince, this envoy must be able to judge of his intentions from his conduct, tone, attitude, and demeanour; he must detect his plans by secretly bribing a covetous minister.[ ] when acquainted with the strength and designs of the enemy, the king must attempt to weaken their power and strengthen his own. for this purpose he must by all possible means create dissension in the enemy's country, or foster a dissension already existing; he must gain over relatives of the prince who prefer a claim to the throne, or discontented and displaced ministers; and make presents to the subjects of the hostile prince. finally, he must conclude treaties with the ambitious neighbours of the hostile state, and attempt to break off his alliances, by creating personal dissensions between the princes.[ ] the issue of all things in this world, the book says, depends on the laws of fate, which are regulated according to the acts of men in their former existence. these laws are concealed from us; we must therefore hold to things which are accessible. it is enough if the king keeps three things before him in these undertakings; himself, the object he has in view, the means of attaining it. starting from the experience of the past and the present situation of affairs, he must attempt to discover the probable issue. he who can foresee the use or harm of any resolution, who decides quickly at a given moment, and can see the consequences of any event, will never be overcome. a prince who is firm in his views, liberal and grateful to all who serve him, bold, skilful, and fearless, will, in the opinion of the sages, hardly be overcome. fortune attends the enterprising and enduring prince, and he who keeps his counsels secret will extend his power over the whole earth.[ ] if the king is attacked unexpectedly he must take refuge in negotiations; in such a case he must also make up his mind to endure some slight injury, and even sacrifice a part of his kingdom. but if he has made all his preparations and concealed them, if he has drawn all the parts of his kingdom into himself like a tortoise; if the fortresses are armed and garrisoned, if the six divisions of the army--the elephants, chariots, cavalry, foot-soldiers, generals, and baggage--are ready, and he has made arrangements for his absence, he must consider like a hawk the best mode of attack, the object of which must be the metropolis of the enemy, and make it suddenly at a favourable time of the year. if the strength of his army consists in chariots, elephants, and cavalry, he must set out in november (margaçirsha) or in february (phalguna) in order to find the autumn or spring harvest in the fields, in case some special misfortune has befallen the enemy, or the victory is for general reasons beyond a doubt. the march must be secured by making roads, by spies, and good advanced troops who know the signals, for which purpose daring men, of whom it is known that they will not desert, must be sought out. battles must be avoided as much as possible if the object can be attained by other means, for the issue of a battle can never be foreseen. but if it is found impossible to compel the enemy to make peace by devastating his land, by taking up strong positions and an entrenched camp, or by blockading him in his camp, and cutting him off from supplies--water, and wood for firing, by provoking him by day, and attacking him by night--if a battle is unavoidable, it is best in a plain to fight with cavalry and chariots, in a well watered region with elephants, in a woodland district with archers, on open ground with sword and shield. the kshatriyas of brahmavarta and brahmarshideça, from the lands of the matsyas, panchalas, and Çurasenas were to be placed in the front ranks, or if these were not forthcoming, tall and skilful men of other regions. poisoned arrows and fire arrows are not to be used. a man on a chariot or a horse is not to attack a foot-soldier; an enemy is not to be attacked who is already engaged with an opponent, or has lost his arms, or is wounded. these rules, like the precept that the king is never to turn his back when the army has been set in array, are results of the old warlike and knightly feeling united with the view of the brahmans, that each order should fulfil its proper office. it is the duty of the kshatriyas not to fly, says the book, but much more of the king; kings who fight with great courage in the battle, eager to overcome each other, and do not turn aside their heads, go straight into heaven when they fall. those who pray for life with folded hands, the severely wounded, and those who fly, are not to be slain.[ ] according to these regulations the regions of brahmavarta and brahmarshideça produce not only the best brahmans but the best kshatriyas. the accounts of the greeks from the fourth century b.c. prove that at any rate the princes of the land of the indus knew how to fight bravely. megasthenes tells us that they rarely came to close conflict, but generally carried on the contest with large bows at a distance. when victory has been won, the law advises the king, however weary he may be, to follow it up quickly. according to the regulations of the veda, gold and silver found in the booty belong to the king, everything else to the man who has taken it. if the enemy's land is conquered an attempt must be made to secure the possession of it. the king must issue a proclamation to relieve all the inhabitants from alarm; he must worship the deities worshipped by the conquered land, and pay respect to the virtuous brahmans in it. under certain circumstances it is good to make distributions to the people; to carry off treasures arouses hatred, to distribute them excites love; each is worthy of praise or blame according to circumstances. finally, the book utterly disregards the possible result of the excellent advice given by laying down the rule that the king may hand over the conquered district to a prince of the royal blood, and prescribe certain conditions with which he is to rule there as a vassal king. it is obvious that such relations must soon end in revolts. the position of the vassal king is too strong for obedience, and his strength is a temptation to acquire complete freedom and independence. manu's doctrines are intended for these vassal kings also; they may apply them like the chief kings for their own benefit. no regulations are given in the book for the succession to the throne. it only requires that a consecration shall take place on the accession of a new king. if the king feels that his end is near, he must distribute his treasures to the brahmans; hand over the kingdom to his son, and seek death in battle; if there is no war, the old king must end his life by starvation. the precept that the king should seek death in battle is again a remnant of the old feeling; he must live and die like a kshatriya. the epos and legends of the brahmans are in complete agreement with the book of the law as to the necessity of monarchy, its objects and duties. it has been mentioned already how the brahmans created a new king out of the body of the dead king vena (p. ), as a protection against the robbers who rose up on all hands. a land without a king, we are told in the ramayana, is like a cow without a bull, a herd without a herdsman, a night without a moon, a woman who has lost her husband. there is then no property; men consume each other as one fish eats another. when there is no king indra does not water the plains, the fields are not sown, the son does not obey the father, no rich man builds houses and lays out parks; no priest skilled in sacrifice brings offerings to the gods. the people do not dance at the festival, the minstrels are not surrounded by an audience. no maiden adorned with gold walks in the evening in the gardens, no elephant sixty years old stands in the ways with tusks adorned with bells. the peasant and the herdman cannot sleep securely with open doors; the traders are not safe in the streets. when there is no king the ceaseless sound of archers practising for battle is never heard.[ ] in the mahabharata we are told of yudhishthira's reign at indraprastha that he ruled with great justice, protected his subjects as his sons, and conquered his enemies round about, so that every one in the land was without fear or distress, and could apply his whole mind to the fulfilment of religious duties. the kingdom received an abundance of rain at the proper time; all the inhabitants were rich, and testified to the virtues of the king in the abundance of the harvests, in the increase of the flocks, and in the great growth of trade. there was neither drought nor inundation; the parrots did not eat the corn; there were no swindlers, liars, or thieves in the land. in the epos also we find the kings dwelling in fortified cities and citadels. according to the ramayana, ayodhya is a city surrounded by high walls, with broad and deep trenches and strong gates; the gateways and the towers on the walls are occupied with archers; in the midst of the city was the royal citadel surrounded by walls, so lofty that no bird could fly over it, watched by a thousand warriors strong and courageous as lions. in the three first of the five courts of this citadel, young soldiers kept watch; in the two last, where the king and his wives dwelt, were old men. in the epos the kings when old lay aside their crowns, as the book commands, and resign them to their sons. the aged dhritarashtra of hastinapura resigns the throne to yudhishthira; daçratba of ayodhya wishes to give it up to rama. dhritarashtha and yudhishthira end their days in the wilderness as vanaprasthas, or penitents, in the manner prescribed in the book for every dvija in his old age (p. ). the ceremonial of consecration required by the book is described at great length in the mahabharata and the ramayana. rice, white flowers, clods of earth, pieces of silver and gold, and precious stones are brought to yudhishthira; he touches them in the traditional manner. then fire, milk, honey, curdled milk, purified butter, the holy goblets, leaves and twigs of the sacred trees, and vessels with consecrated water are placed before the king. when the sacrificial fire has been kindled, yudhishthira with draupadi seats himself before it on a tiger's skin; the consecrating brahman pours the libations into the sacrificial fire--cow's milk, sweet and curdled, and melted butter--and in order to purify the king and queen he pours the urine of cows on their heads and then lays cowdung upon them. then the consecrated water is poured over them, and after this the music begins to sound, and the minstrels sing the praises of yudhishthira and his ancestors. at the consecration of rama the golden throne is set up, the yellow parasol and the two flappers of buffalo-tails, the tiger-skin, bow and sword are brought forward. the four-yoked chariots, the elephants, the great white buffalo, the lion with strong mane, the cows with golden ornaments on their horns, the flowers and the jars filled with water from the ganges and the holy springs and pools, are made ready.[ ] rama and sita place themselves in beautiful garments in the portico of the palace, their faces to the east, and the people cry aloud: long live the maharaja (great-king) rama; may his reign be prosperous and continue for ever! then the rishis come with jars full of consecrated water, say the solemn words, and pour the water upon the heads of rama and sita. then the brahmans do the same, the kshatriyas, vaiçyas, and Çudras, and all the remaining classes of the people. when rama and sita have changed their garments they return to their place in the portico; the yellow parasol is spread over rama, and he is fanned with the two flappers. and the brahmans and the people of ayodhya came to bless rama, and scattered rice in the husk and kuça-grass on his head, and rama sent away the brahmans with rich gifts, and the minstrels and dancers and dancing-girls were rewarded. the sutras of the buddhists mention as the symbols of monarchy the turban and tiara, the sword, the yellow parasol, the flappers of buffalo-tails, and the parti-coloured shoes.[ ] in the ramayana, bharata, the younger brother, will not accept the throne in the place of his elder brother rama, though commanded to do so by his father. then rama takes off the gilded shoes and hands them to bharata, a symbol of his renunciation of the throne, which was in use even among the germans.[ ] the virtuous bharata is now compelled to reign; but he places the shoes on the throne, holds the yellow parasol over them, and causes them to be fanned by the first ministers, and before these shoes of his brother he takes counsel and administers justice. the lecture which rama gives his brother on the art of government is in complete harmony with the doctrines of the book of the law. he asks bharata whether he is protecting the city of ayodhya and all the cantons of his kingdom in a proper manner; whether he pays due respect to householders and proprietors, whether his judges give them justice? is an accused chief set at liberty through bribery? are the judges in any matter of law between rich and poor raised above the desire of gain? o bharata, the tears shed by those who have been condemned unjustly, destroy the children and the flocks of him who governs with partiality. he asks further whether bharata despises the brahmans who are so given up to the satisfaction of the senses and the enjoyment of the world that they do not trouble themselves about the things of heaven--whether he despises men eminent in useless knowledge, and those who profess to be wise without having learned anything: whether he prefers one learned man to a thousand of the unlearned; ten thousand of the ignorant multitude will not be able to render him any service in his government. does he employ distinguished servants in great matters, men of lower degree in smaller affairs, and the lowest in the least important? in affairs of great moment he must employ only those who have served his father and grandfather, who have not opened their hand to bribes; heroic and learned men, who are masters of their senses, and able to untie a knot. dost thou despise the counsel of women, and conceal from them thy secrets? or do thine own counsellors contemn thee, and the people, oppressed by excessive punishments? dost thou honour those who are bold and skilful? do thy servants and troops receive pay at the proper time? are thy fortresses well provided with corn, water, weapons, and archers? is the forest, where the royal elephants are kept, well chosen? art thou well equipped with horses and female elephants? hast thou store of young milch-cows? is thy expenditure less than thy income? dost thou bestow thy wealth on brahmans, kshatriyas, needy strangers? or lavish it on thy friends? dost thou wake at the right time? canst thou overcome sleep? dost thou divide thy time properly between recreation, state business, and religious duties? dost thou think at the end of the night on the way to become prosperous? dost thou take counsel with thyself and with others also? are thy resolutions kept secret? do other princes know thy aims? art thou acquainted with that which they would undertake? are the plans formed in the councils of other princes known to thee and thy counsellors? the concealment of his counsels by his ministers is the source of success for a prince. he who does not remove an ambitious and covetous minister, who maligns others, will be himself removed. is thine envoy a well-instructed, active man, able to answer any question on the moment? is he a man of judgment who knows how to deliver a message in the words in which it is given to him? art thou certain that thy officers are on thy side, if sent into foreign lands, and if none knows the commission given to another? dost thou think lightly of enemies who, though weak and expelled from their country, may easily return? dost thou seek to obtain land and wealth by all honest means? dost thou bow down before thy spiritual leaders; before the aged, the penitent, the gods, strangers; before the holy groves and all instructed brahmans? dost thou sacrifice wealth to virtue, or virtue to wealth, or both to favouritism, covetousness, and sensuality? the prince who rules a kingdom with justice, when surrounded with difficulties, wins heaven when he leaves this world. we can only fix in a very general way the date at which these prescripts of the book on the art of government, and the doctrines of the epos so completely in agreement with them, came into existence. the sutras of the buddhists and the accounts of the greeks from the end of the fourth century b.c. exhibit to us the kingdom of india occupied with efforts which correspond in some degree to the views of the book and the descriptions of the epos. if however we were to conclude from the despotic power to which the monarchy attained in the states on the ganges, that the subject populations at that time or later were disconnected and reduced, without independent movement in any sphere of life--our conclusion would be completely wrong. as traditions, modes of worship and customs of the ancient time maintained themselves beside and in spite of the new doctrine of the brahmans, so did remains of the old communities, of the old social and political life, maintain themselves against the omnipotence of the kings. these were the clans of the minstrels, formed naturally or by the adoption of pupils--which brought the old invocations from the indus and preserved them--which on the ganges sang the heroic songs, the epos in its earliest form, and afterwards became combined into the priestly order, out of whose meditations rose the new system. these clans continued in the new states. the names represent in part different traditions of the doctrine, various schools and views. but even the clans of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, united by the common worship of ancestors, existed on the ganges. only in them or in close local communities could those customs of law grow up and perpetuate themselves, to which reference is so frequently made in the book of the law. the spread of the system of castes, the accompanying tendency to perpetuate what has once come into existence, was not likely to injure the continuance of these clans. they exercised a very important supervision over the members; and by bringing the brahmans to the funeral meals of the families, as prescribed in the book (p. ), this supervision became an advantage to the new doctrine, and in any case assisted the brahmans essentially in carrying out their system, just as to this day it helps in a higher degree to maintain that system. the book of the law lays down detailed regulations who is to be invited to the funeral feasts and the festivals for the souls of the departed, and who is to be excluded. those are to be excluded who are not true to the mission of their caste, and neglect its obligations, who do not fulfil their religious duties, who pursue forbidden and impure occupations, _e.g._ the burying of the dead for hire, dancing as a trade, dog-breaking, buffalo-catching, etc.; those who suffer from certain bodily infirmities, and finally those who lead an immoral life; usurers, drunkards, gamblers, keepers of gambling and drinking houses, adulterers and burglars, thieves and incendiaries, every one of bad reputation and character.[ ] in this way the clans under the guidance of the brahman assessors possessed the most complete censorship over the lives of the members, and a power of punishment from which there was no escape. the families could impose expiations and fines on any member who transgressed or failed to fulfil his religious, moral, or caste duties; if he refused to submit to these they could at a certain time expel him for ever out of the community, by excluding him from the funeral feast. the latter resolution of the family deprived the person on whom it fell of his entire social position; in fact, of his economical existence. it implied exclusion from the caste. no one could have any dealings with a person so expelled, otherwise he became infected by communion with him. he could not get his children married; after his decease no sacrifice for the dead assuaged the punishments which awaited him in the other world. now as ever, the clans perform the ceremony of adopting the young dvija into the caste and family by investiture with the sacred girdle; they still exercise this jurisdiction, and as a penalty for breach of the arrangement of castes, neglect of religious duties, drunkenness, slander, and other moral errors, they impose exclusion from the family and caste by overturning the water-jar and exclusion from the funeral feast. a sentence of social extinction is thus pronounced upon the expelled person. he is civically dead and despised. no one associates with him in any one relation; no one holds any communion with him. the members of his own family will not give him a draught of water after his expulsion; no member even of the lowest order shelters him, for by doing so he would break the law of caste. it is only by this self-government, this censorship of the clans, that the system of caste has been able to strike such deep roots, to resist every new doctrine, and the severest attacks of foreign tyranny; that the religion, character, and civilisation of the indians continue to exist after centuries of oppression. the corporate form of the village communities were not of a much later date than the authority of the clans over their members. its early stages must go back at least as far as the settlement of the aryas in the land of the ganges, for we find it in the same form in the districts which were not occupied by the aryas till later, in malava (malva), surashtra (guzerat), and to a considerable extent in the provinces of the deccan. the village community possesses a definite property (mark) consisting of arable land, pasture, forest, and uncultivated soil. the book of the law orders the overseers of districts to take care that the boundaries of the properties are marked out by the planting of trees, by wells and altars. if a contention arises between two villages about the borders, they must be marked out afresh, according to the traces which can be discovered, and the declaration of witnesses taken in the presence of inhabitants of the village. these witnesses must take their oaths in red garments, with crowns of red flowers on their heads. if witnesses cannot be found in the contending neighbouring villages, the people who dwell in the open land, or the forest, must be taken; the cowherds, fishermen, hunters, bird-catchers, snake-hunters; and on their declaration the borders must be fixed and set down in writing.[ ] the community has its overseers, and the office is hereditary. he divides the quotas among the villagers, according to the measure and productiveness of the land; he also divides the uncultivated land and fixes the share in water allotted to each. he settles differences between the villagers, and manages the police, having even the power of imprisonment. as a reward for the labours of the office the overseer is in possession of a larger share in land, and receives taxes from the villagers, one or two handfuls, as a rule, from every measure of corn or rice in the harvest. but the overseer does not govern the community by his own power; he exercises all his functions surrounded by the community, who assemble under the great tree, and provide him with assessors, or deputies for settling quarrels. beside the overseer the community has its brahman, who has to point out the proper time for beginning every business--without such certainty the hindu undertakes nothing--who narrates stories to the peasants from the epos and legends, and in modern times at any rate is the school-master of the village. there are also other officers, the smith, and guardian of the soil, and even a dancing-girl, to whom, along with the overseer, land and taxes are allotted.[ ] in the sutras of the buddhists we also hear of resolutions of the communities in cities, and corporations of merchants, who compel the members to pay respect to their rules by imposing fines;[ ] and megasthenes tells us that the cities in the kingdom of magadha were governed by six independent colleges. from this we may assume that the impulse to form associations and corporations was not unknown to the cities on the ganges: we are however without any information as to the extent of these corporations, or the length of time during which they were able to maintain themselves against the power of the kings. the advice of the book that the king should place chief overseers over the cities has been mentioned above (p. ). on the other hand, the village communities remain intact in their old form till this day, and they with the clans form the principal entrenchment behind which the old indian character has maintained itself against native and foreign despotism. the change of princes or government has little influence on the village communities; they manage their own affairs independently: the business rarely amounts to more than an increase or diminution in taxes. the violence of the princes fell on the surrounding districts, not on quiet humble villages; it was only the tax-gatherer and the overseer of the districts that they had to fear. but even if specially bad times came, if invasion reached and devastated the village, and the inhabitants were slaughtered or driven out, all who survived the sword and famine returned, or their children returned, to the land they had left, rebuilt their huts, and began again to cultivate the fields which their fathers had cultivated from immemorial antiquity. in spite of the violence and barbarity of native kings and foreign conquerors, and the severe claims made upon them here and there, the indians in their clans and village communities possessed a considerable share of freedom and self-government in the personal relations of life; this was the case with the majority of the cultivators of the soil, and the householders of all the upper castes. from the worship of the ancestors, the combination of families, there grew up within the castes of the brahmans, the kshatriyas, and the vaiçyas a pre-eminence and favoured position for those families which claimed to be not only of purer, but also of older and nobler origin than the rest. in the circles of the separate castes this aristocracy took the place of the ancient aristocracy of the kshatriyas. however little weight might be attributed to it by the kings, the example and pattern of these families had great influence on the lower members of the caste. in later centuries the importance of this aristocratic element was strengthened by the fact, that in the land of the ganges the office became hereditary to which the princes had to transfer the collection of land-taxes or taxes generally in the various districts of the land. thus the tax-gatherers were enabled to perpetuate their functions in these families; they oppressed the village communities, from which they took the taxes till they became their serfs, and thus in course of time they reached an influential and important position, which they were able to maintain with success, and have maintained in all essentials to this day. footnotes: [ ] müller, "hist. of anc. sansk. lit." ff; ff. lassen, "ind. alterth." , ; johaentgen, "gesetzbuch des manu," s. , . [ ] manu, , , , - , . [ ] manu, , ; , . if vasishtha and Çaunaka, as lawgivers, did not mean the old rishis and, apparently, some traditional statements of theirs, but the first name referred to the vasishtha-dharma-çastra, and thus to the teacher of açvalayana, these quotations like many passages would be interpolations; and those of Çaunaka would not be very late, for m. müller places this Çaunaka about _b.c._ "hist. of sansk. lit." p. ff. [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , ; , . [ ] there was a school of brahmans, the manavas, belonging to the madhyandinas, whose text-book was the black yajus. from the name manava, johaentgen concludes that it is the redaction of the manava-school in which we have these laws, and that manu's book is really the book of the manavas. according to the tradition of the indians, there ought to be three redactions of manu, of which one numbers verses. the copies known as yet, and accessible to us, have only verses. [ ] jolly, "z. vgl. richtsw., die systematik des indischen rechts." [ ] cf. stenzler, "indische studien," , , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] buddha's active life falls, as we shall see, in the period from to b.c. according to the sutras of the buddhists, the brahmanic law was then in full force; in fact in the districts mentioned in the text stricter rules were in force than those of the laws of manu. the law is cited in the legends of the buddhists, _e.g._ burnouf, "introduct. à l'histoire du boud." p. ; cf. manu, , . it is true we possess the old sutras of the buddhists in the form which they received in the third century b.c.; but buddha's appearance presupposes the prevalence of the brahmanic system, the supremacy of the doctrine and practice of it. in opposition to buddhism the system of castes has not been softened by the brahmans, but demonstrably strengthened. moreover, the description of the legal and social conditions given in the sutras cannot be suspected to be mere inventions. the book of the law knows three vedas only (cf. manu, , ); the sutras always quote four. in manu the sentence of the atharvan is mentioned once only ( , ); hence the atharva-veda seems to be later than manu's law. in the buddhist sutras the worship of Çiva is mentioned very frequently as in common use (burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ); but the book of the law knows neither the name nor the god. from the accounts of the greeks it is further clear that the worship of vishnu was widely spread towards the end of the fourth century. this name the book contains only once, in the concluding part ( , - ), which has very little connection with the body of the book; and even here the word is used in the same sense as in the rigveda ( , ). while ceylon was occupied by the aryas about the year b.c. and the southern mathura was founded even earlier, the knowledge of places in manu's law does not really go beyond the vindhyas towards the south: the odras and dravidas are merely mentioned in a general enumeration of nations ( , ), and the andhras as an impure caste ( , , ). the kingdoms of mathura and kerala would certainly have been mentioned if they had been in existence. the book of the law mentions the nyaya (logic), the system of mimansa, though only in the suspected conclusion ( , , ), but not the buddhists. it is true expressions occur, like liars (nastika, , ), revilers of the veda (vedanindaka), but we know that before buddha the sankhya doctrine denied both the gods and the veda. i can, therefore, concede to johaentgen (who places the book between and b.c.) that germs and analogies from the sankhya doctrine occur in it, especially in the doctrine given in the introduction of the elements and properties ( , - ); this requires no alteration in the date. it ought to be observed that in the book of the law the kings and heroes of the epos are not mentioned at all, but names of kings are found which occur in the vedas: vena, nahusha, pijavana, sumukha, nimi, prithu (manu, , , ; , , ); hence we may conclude that the book was brought to a close before the revision of the epos from a priestly point of view was accomplished, or at any rate became a common possession of all. m. müller's position, that the _anushtubh çlòka_ was first used in the last centuries b.c., would affect only the form of the book, not the rules themselves; and goldstücker is of opinion that this metre is of a far older date. however this may be, the metrical redaction of the manava-dharma-çastra is not its original form: it is based upon a non-metrical dharma-sutram. that the oldest grihya-sutras and Çrauta-sutras are older than the first dharma-sutra is allowed; but this does not prove the modern origin of the latter. a complete civilisation like that exhibited to us in the philosophy and grammar of the indians before buddha, by the sutras of the buddhists and the accounts of the greek, was certainly not without a systematic canon to answer the questions in life for the brahmans. they required the power of the state, and could not leave it without a guide. it would be inconceivable how the condition of india, which buddha finds, could have grown up without such a guide for princes and judges. müller himself maintains that the distinction of Çruti and smriti existed before buddha; that it was the Çruti already containing mantras and brahmanas, which gave the impulse to his reforms. "hist. of sansk. lit." p. ff,; p. , , . if Çaunaka wrote, as müller concludes, about the year _b.c._, his sutras for the elucidation of the understanding of the brahmanas, and açvalayana wrote the sutras of ritual about the year , and panini his grammar, far more important dharma-sutras must have been written for the brahmans before this time, and thus the grounds given above and taken for the contents of the book are in my judgment supported. from these contents, and these essential precepts, two or three prohibitions might be made to count for a later origin (manu, , , ; , ), precepts aimed at buddhism, but which may also have had other heterodoxy in view. there is also the mention of the name of yavana. the yavanas are mentioned among the nations who have sunk owing to omission of the sacred customs, along with the odras, dravidas, kambojas, duradas, Çakas and pahlavas ( , ). supposing that this list came from an older time, the yavanas Çakas and pahlavas may easily have been interpolated at a later period for the sake of completeness. in any case it is clear that the laws of manu are the oldest book of law in india in their contents and theory of law, and that the material in it is in part older than the material in the dharma-sutras which have come down to us; jolly, _loc. cit._ it is only in regard to the law of debt that jolly seems to find older regulations in the book of gautama than in that of manu. "abh. m. a." , s. . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - , ; , . the four periods of the world are mentioned in kaushitaki-brahmana, in m. müller, "hist. of sansk. lit." p. . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] _e.g._ manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , , , ; , ; , . [ ] manu, , - , - ; - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , - . a. weber, "ind. stud." , , . [ ] in yajnavalka, , , we find: "the balance, fire, water, poison, and lustral water are the judgment of the gods for purification; these are applied in great charges, if the accuser is prepared for a fine." the later law knows nine divine judgments; it adds the corns of rice, the hot piece of gold, the ploughshare, and the lot. brahmans, women, children, old men, sick persons, and the weak are to be tested by the balance; the kshatriya by the fire, the vaiçya by water, the Çudra by poison. in the test of the balance (yama weighed the souls on scales, _supr._ p. ), the point was that the person to be tested should be found lighter on the second weighing than on the first; in the test of fire, a piece of red-hot iron, covered with leaves, must be carried seven paces forward; each burn was a mark of guilt. the red-hot ploughshare must be licked by the accused person; if his tongue was not burnt he was acquitted; a piece of gold must be picked out of boiling oil and the hand must show no marks. the taking of a particular poison which ought to have no evil effects on the accused, and the drinking of lustral water poured over the images of the gods, which was not to be followed by any evil effects, and the piece of gold in the boiling oil are later additions. according to an upanishad to the samaveda, guilt or innocence is proved by the grasping a red-hot axe; a burn is a proof of guilt. stenzler, in "z. d. m. g." , ff. a. weber, "vorles." s. ^ . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . yet aryas are found also, burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] manu, , , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , ; , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] bohlen, "indien," , . [ ] megasthenes, in strabo, p. and below. [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] ramayana, ed. schlegel, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , . the indians learned to coin money from the greeks after the year b.c.; till that time their coinage consisted of weighed pieces of copper, silver, and gold, with the mark of the weight as a stamp. the _pana_ is a copper weight of this kind; to this day the name denotes copper money in india. the _drona_ is a weight of about pounds. cf. lassen, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , , - , . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] ramayana, , . [ ] ramayana, , - . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , , . the ritual for the consecration of kings, according to the aitareya-brahmana, is given in colebrooke, "asiatic researches," , ff. cf. schlegel, "ind. bibliothek," , , and lassen, "alterth." , , . [ ] grimm, "rechtsalterthümer," s. ff. [ ] manu, , ff. [ ] manu, , - . [ ] mill, "history of british india," , . montgom. martin, "political constitution of the anglo-eastern empire," p. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , , . chapter vii. the castes and the family. the book of the law was the canon of pure conduct, and the holy order of the state and society, which the brahmans held up before the princes and nations on the ganges. they made no attempt to get the throne into their own hands; they had no thought of giving an effective political organisation to their caste; they did not seek to set up a hierarchy which should take its place by the side of the state, or rise superior to it, and thus secure such obedience for their demands among clergy and laity as would ensure the carrying out of the commands of the book. for this the brahmans had not sufficient practical or political capacity; they were too deeply plunged in their hair-splitting and fanciful speculations, in their ceremonial and their penances. they were content with demanding the place of assessor or president at the funeral feasts in the families of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, the influence of which position went far beyond their expectations; with recommending members of their order as ministers, judges, and magistrates to the king; with requiring that he should protect the brahmans as his sons, provide for their support, be greatly liberal to them, abstain from imposing taxes on learned brahmans, and maintain their advantages and rights against the other classes. if a brahman had no heirs, the king must not take his property, but present it to the members of the order, and give to a brahman any treasure which he may happen to find. in the epic poetry an exaggerated attempt is made to bring this liberality plainly before the mind: the brahmans acquire hundreds of thousands of cows, treasures without end, and the whole earth.[ ] but all these commands are only wishes; as a fact the brahmans had no other status as against the kings than the respect which their educational knowledge of the doctrine, their acquaintance with the forms and ritual of sacrifice, gave them: they had only the moral influence which their dogma and their exhortations could exercise on the heart of the king, the power of the faith which they could excite in their disciples. their power, as we have seen, they knew how to support by their views on the merit acquired by the king in this and the next world by reason of his good works towards the brahmans, by the fear of the punishments in hell and the regenerations, with which the book of the law so liberally threatens all who despise brahmans. but they had no external means for enforcing obedience to their law, respect for their purifications, expiations, and penances, in case it was not rendered willingly. they did not extend their power beyond the limits of the conscience of the king and the people. they were as absolutely the subjects of the king as the other orders; no political limitations, no institutions, checked the authority of the king in its operations on the brahmans; and the knowledge of the veda and the law was accessible to him. the princes held up in the epos as patterns are praised for their knowledge of the holy scriptures and the law. the kings, not the brahmans, offer the great sacrifices; but they cannot offer them without the brahmans, the purohita (p. ), and other priests. this position of the brahmans at the side of the king, and that which they subsequently obtained by the side of the people in the clans, enabled them by moral means, by conviction and faith, to shape the life and politics of the indians according to their system, and establish a lasting dominion over them. if the brahmans had no rights upward, they had at any rate forced the kshatriyas out of the first place; and they did not intend that the aristocratic position which they had obtained over the other orders, their privileges and advantages in regard to those beneath them, should rest on moral authority merely. the book of the law is never weary of impressing in every direction the pre-eminence of the brahmans, the subjection of the other orders. but as the wisdom of the brahmans was throughout unacquainted with the foundations and supports used by aristocracies elsewhere to acquire and maintain their position--as they were unable to create institutions of this kind--only one real and effective means remained for legalising and securing their importance, position, and privileges--and this was the exercise of penal jurisdiction. in the division of penances and punishments, according to the various orders, they attempted to bring the pre-eminence of their own order into a position recognised and established by law. this fact no doubt helped in causing the brahmans to estimate the power of punishment so highly. "punishment alone," says the book, "guarantees the fulfilment of duties according to the four castes; without punishment a man out of the lower caste could take the place of the highest." but here again there was a difficulty; it was not the brahmans but the kings who in the first instance had to dispense justice; the application of the law depended on the princes. though, in general, it is a supreme principle of law that it shall be administered without respect of persons, that the same punishment for the same offence shall overtake every offender, be his rank and position what it may, the system of caste leads to an arrangement diametrically opposite. throughout, the book of the law measures out punishment unequally, according to the rank of the castes, so that in an equal offence the highest order has as a rule to undergo the least punishment. this apportionment of punishment according to the castes is most striking in the case of injuries and outrages inflicted by members of the lower orders on the members of the higher. the brahmans, and in a less degree the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, are protected by threats of barbarous punishments. the Çudra who has been guilty of injuring a dvija by dangerous language, is to have his tongue clipped; if he has spoken disrespectfully of him, a hot iron is to be thrust into his mouth, and boiling oil poured into his mouth and ears. if a Çudra ventures to sit on a seat with a "twice-born," he is to be branded; if he lays hold of a brahman, both hands are to be amputated; if he spits at a brahman, his lips are cut off, etc. in actual injuries done to members of the higher castes by the lower, the members of the latter are doomed in each case to lose the offending member: he who has lifted up his hand, or a stick, loses his hand; he who has lifted up his foot, loses the foot. for slighter offences of language against a brahman the Çudra is whipped, the vaiçya is fined panas, the kshatriya, . if, on the contrary, a brahman injures one of the lower castes he pays panas to the kshatriya, to the vaiçya, and to the Çudra. if members of the same caste injure each other in word, small fines of or at most panas are sufficient. more unfair still are other privileges secured by the law to the brahmans,--that in suits for debt they are never to be given up as slaves to the creditors; that no crime or transgression on the part of a brahman is to be punished by confiscation of his property, or by corporal punishment. he is never, even for the worst crime, to be condemned to death; at the utmost he can only be banished.[ ] on the other hand, as has been remarked in the case of theft, the fine increases according to the caste of the offender, so that here we have a gradation in the opposite direction: the brahman is fined eight-fold the sum paid by the Çudra in a similar case; and in loans the brahman is allowed to receive only the lowest rate of interest--two per cent. in courts of law the brahman was addressed differently, and asked to give his evidence differently, from the other orders; his oath is given in different terms. with brahmans, who naturally come to maturity sooner than the other orders, the consecration by investiture takes place in the eighth year, with the kshatriyas in the eleventh, with the vaiçyas not till the twelfth. the holy girdle, the common symbol of the dvija as opposed to the Çudra, must consist with the brahmans of three threads of cotton, with the kshatriyas of three threads of hemp, with the vaiçyas of three threads of sheep's wool. the brahman wears a belt of sugar-cane, and carries a bamboo staff; the kshatriya has a belt of bow-strings, and a staff of banana-wood; the vaiçya a girdle of hemp, and a staff of fig-wood. the staff of the brahman reaches to his hair, that of the kshatriya to the brow, that of the vaiçya to the tip of his nose. this staff must be covered with the bark, must be straight, pleasing to the eye, and have nothing terrifying about it. the brahman wears a shirt of fine hemp, and as a mantle the skin of the gazelle; the kshatriya a shirt of linen, and the skin of a deer as a cloak; the vaiçya a woollen shirt, and a goat-skin. any one who is inclined to do a civility, must, says the book, ask the brahman whether he is advancing in sanctity, the kshatriya whether he suffers in his wounds, the vaiçya whether his property is thriving, the Çudra whether he is in health.[ ] we cannot exactly ascertain what position the old nobility, the kshatriyas, took up after the establishment of the new system. the increased power of the kings, the elevation of the priesthood, the change in the whole view of life, diminished their importance to a considerable degree. if in some small tribes the warlike nobility on the ganges maintained its old position so far as to prevent the establishment of the monarchy, or removed it altogether, this was an exception.[ ] in the panjab, which did not completely follow the development achieved in the regions on the ganges, it was more generally the case that the nobility overpowered the monarchy, and drove out the old princes. this took place, no doubt, when the latter showed a desire to take up a despotic position. in the fourth century we find among "the free indians," as the greeks call them, numerous noble families in a prominent position. the book of the law allows that the brahmans cannot exist without the kshatriyas, but neither could the kshatriyas without the brahmans; salvation is only to be obtained by a union of the two orders: by this were brahmans and kshatriyas exalted in this world and the next.[ ] we have already remarked, that within their own caste the old families of the kshatriyas occupy a prominent place. according to the book, the members of all the castes, like every created being, fulfil duties imposed upon them, _i.e._ carry on the occupations allotted to them. the life of the brahmans is to be devoted to the holy scriptures, the sacred services, the teaching of the veda and the law (the latter could be taught by none but brahmans), and, finally, to contemplation and penance in the forest. but how was it possible to keep the whole order of the brahmans to the study of the veda, to sacrifice and worship, when it was also necessary for them to find support? how could the whole order disregard the care of their maintenance, especially when it was a duty to bring up a numerous family, or give up every desire to amass property? true it is, that liberality to the brahmans was impressed on the kings and the other castes as a supreme duty; the pupils of the brahmans were bidden to support their teachers by gifts; and the law permitted the brahmans to live by gifts, to beg, to gather corn or ears of rice. from the buddhist sutras we know that the kings followed the commands of the law, and that a multitude of brahmans lived at the royal courts. we also know from the greeks that every house was open to the wandering brahman, and in the market they were overburdened with presents of the necessaries of life. greek and indian accounts inform us that troops of brahmans wandered through the land--a mode of life which in india is not the most unpleasant; and it is certain that a considerable number lived as anchorites in the forests. but these habits required that a man should give up all thoughts of wife and child, house and home; and this all could not undertake to do. on what, then, were the brahman householders to live, who possessed nothing, and were without land sufficient for their support? there were only two means for keeping the whole order to the study of the veda and the performance of sacrifice; either they must be provided with sufficient land, or they must be maintained at the cost of the state. among the egyptians the priesthood lived on the land of the temples; among the phenicians and hebrews, on the tithes of the harvest, paid to the temples; in the middle ages our hierarchy lived on its own land and people, on tithes and other taxes: but all these were political institutions, and the brahman lawgivers had neither the capacity to discover them, nor had their states the power to establish and maintain them. still less could refuge be taken in a law forbidding to marry; all brahmans could not be allowed to live from youth up as anchorites in the forest, if the brahmans were to continue to exist as a caste by birth, and it was on superiority of blood that their whole position rested. practical life bid complete defiance to doctrine. the law must be content to moderate in part, and in part to give up entirely the ideal demands, the principles and results of system in favour of the necessity for maintenance. it must allow that the brahman householders, who possessed no property, might lead the life of the kshatriya. this permission has been and is still used; at this time a great part of the native anglo-indian army consists of born brahmans. if a brahman could not earn a livelihood by service in war, he might lead the life of a vaiçya, and attempt to maintain himself by tilling the land and keeping flocks. but if possible the brahman must avoid tilling the field himself; "the work of the field depends on the help of cattle; the ploughshare cleaves the soil and kills the living creatures contained in it." if the brahman cannot live as a farmer, or a herdman, he may live even by the "truth and falsehood of trade." but in regard to certain articles of trade, the book is inexorable, and though it cannot threaten trade in these with punishments from the state, it holds up the melancholy consequences of such an occupation as a terror. trade in intoxicating drinks, juices of plants, perfumes, butter, honey, linen and woollen cloths, turns the brahman in seven nights into a vaiçya: trade in milk makes him a Çudra in three days. the brahman who sells sesame-seeds will be born again as a worm in the excrement of dogs; and the punishment will even come upon his ancestors. the brahman merchant, like the vaiçya, must never lend money on interest--in other places, as has been mentioned, the law allows a low rate of interest (p. )--no brahman must attempt to gain a living by seductive arts, singing and music, and he must never live by "the work of the slave--the life of the dog."[ ] the same exceptions are allowed by the law for the kshatriya as for the brahman, if he possesses no property and cannot acquire anything by the profession of arms. the vaiçya, who cannot live by agriculture, or trade, or handicraft, is allowed to live the life of a Çudra. hence there are the brahmans of the holy scriptures and brahmans by birth,[ ] and also kshatriyas and vaiçyas who belong to these orders by birth only, not by occupation. thus new distinctions arose which must soon have become fixed and current. if the law is compelled to make these large concessions, so contradictory to the system, it seeks in the opposite direction to maintain the distinctions of the castes as strongly as possible; the higher castes may descend to the lower, but no lower caste can ever engage in the occupation of the higher. such interference is punished with confiscation of property and banishment. still, even here, the law allows an exception, and that in favour of the lowest caste, the Çudras, whom the law rigidly keeps in the servitude imposed upon them by force of arms. the Çudra is meant for a servant; he who is not born a slave is to serve voluntarily for hire; he must first seek service with a brahman, then with kshatriyas, then with vaiçyas. blind submission to the command of his master is the duty of the Çudra. yet if he cannot find service anywhere, he may support himself by handicraft; but the law adds, "it is not good for a Çudra to acquire wealth, for he will use it in order to raise himself to an equality with the other orders." the impure castes among the Çudras are not, for this very reason, to be employed among the dvijas for labour in the house and field. in the law the four castes are races divided from each other by creation. as in all distinctions of orders, so in india, the separation first applied to the men. the final point was not reached, the rigidity of the order was not complete, the caste did not exist, till the women also were included in the division, till the marriages between the orders ceased and were forbidden, till the free circulation of blood among the people was thus checked, and the classes stood towards each other as distinct races and tribes of alien blood. in the book of manu we find two views on the connubium of the orders existing side by side, one more strict than the other. from the nature of the case, and the position which it occupies in the book of the law, the milder view is the older, the more strict the later. according to the older view caste is determined by descent from the father; a man belonging to the three upper castes, _i.e._ a dvija, may take a wife from the brahmans, kshatriyas, or vaiçyas, as he pleases; Çudra women only are excluded. in this sense the law lays down that Çudra wives are not suitable for men of the three upper classes, and wives of the three upper castes are not suitable for Çudra husbands. in order to transform this, the current custom, into a more severe practice, the law does not indeed forbid marriage with women from any other of the three higher castes, but it recommends that a maid of a man's own caste should be taken as his first wife; and after this he may proceed according to the rank of the castes. this recommendation met with more favour, it would seem, because a Çudra woman could be taken as a second wife. it is obvious that only a wife of equal birth could perform the sacrifices of the house with the lord.[ ] a Çudra woman could not be the first, _i.e._ the legitimate wife; the brahman who married a woman of that caste would be expelled from his own.[ ] the essential rule, by which the later and stricter view seeks to remove the connubium existing among the three castes of the dvijas is this: in all orders, without exception, the children born of women of that order remain participators in the order of the father. when this rule was carried out, the castes were finally closed. the law supported it by the doctrine that the children of mixed marriages, according as the father or mother belonged to this or that order, formed new divisions of the people. these divisions are impure because arising out of a sinful union, and they perpetuate the stain of their origin.[ ] the law mentions by name a whole series of impure castes of this kind, which must have been already in existence; it shows from what combinations they have arisen, and sets them up as a warning example against mixed marriages. these impure castes, which are said to have arisen from the mutual connubium of the orders, were really, in part, tribes of the ancient population, who did not submit, like the majority of the Çudras, to the aryas, and accept their law and mode of life, but either amalgamated with them and lived on in poverty after the manner of their fathers, or preserved a certain independence in inaccessible regions; in part they were aryan tribes, which did not follow the development on the ganges, and never adapted their mode of life to the brahmanic system. these tribes are commanded by the law to carry on occupations which did not become the dvijas,[ ] for some it prescribes that they must only make nets and catch fish; for others, that they must occupy themselves with hunting;[ ] from which it is clear that these were the original occupations of such branches of the population. from the marriage of a brahman with a vaiçya wife spring, according to the law, the ambashthas,[ ] who in the epos are spoken of as nations fighting in the ancient manner with clubs.[ ] from the marriage of a brahman with a Çudra woman spring the nishadas, whose vocation, according to the law, it is to catch fish.[ ] from the marriage of a kshatriya with Çudra wives come the ugras, who are to catch and kill animals living in holes;[ ] from the marriage of a brahman with an ambashtha, the abhiras, whom we have already mentioned as cowherds at the mouths of the indus;[ ] from the marriage of a Çudra with a brahman woman comes the chandala, "the most contemptible mortal." the chandalas are a numerous non-aryan tribe on the ganges. the book lays down the rule that they are not to live in villages or cities, or to have any settled habitation at all. a brahman is polluted by meeting them; they are distinguished by marks fixed for them by the king; and must not come into the towns except in the daytime, in order that they may be avoided. they cannot possess any but the most contemptible animals, dogs and asses, nor any harness that is not broken; they can only marry with each other. no one can have any dealings with them. if a dvija wishes to give food to a chandala beggar, he may not do it with his own hand, but must send it by a servant on a potsherd. executions--which in the minds of the aryans and the brahmans were impure actions--were to be carried out by chandalas, and the clothes of the persons executed are to be given to them; these and the clothes of the dead are the only garments which they may wear.[ ] we can easily see that the rank, allotted by the law to the so-called mixed castes, is taken from the degree of impurity assigned by the brahmans to the mode of life followed by them. by excluding them from the other orders they compelled them to pursue these occupations for ever, and so kept them in their despised condition. as they were all branded with the stain of sinful intercourse between the castes, men shrank from marriages outside their own caste, and if such connections did take place, the children were thrust into the ranks of these despised orders, they were compelled to adopt their modes of life and occupations, and transmit them to their descendants. according to the theory lying at the base of these regulations on the mixed castes, the mixture is comparatively less impure in which men of higher castes are connected with women of lower, and that mixture is the worst and most impure in which women of the highest castes are united with men of the lowest. the children of a brahman by a wife of the kshatriya caste stand on the highest level, those of a Çudra by a brahman on the lowest.[ ] the mixed castes, in their disposition and character, correspond to the better or worse combination, just as in their duties the vocation of the paternal caste is to be preserved in a descending line, and lower degree, _e.g._ the ugra--the son of a kshatriya by a Çudra--is to live by hunting, which is the vocation of a kshatriya, but he is only to hunt animals which live in holes, etc. the mixture of the impure castes with the pure and other impure castes produces in turn new classes of men with special duties and special dispositions, such as the abhiras. the system of mixed and consequently impure origin could not be very well applied to nations which, though notoriously of arian origin, or forming independent states, led a life unsuited to the brahmanic law; these the law allows to be of a pure stock, but considers that they are corrupted by neglect of their sacred duties. among the degraded families of the kshatriyas the law-book reckons the cambojas, the daradas, and the khaças.[ ] the cambojas were settled in the west, the daradas to the north of cashmere; the khaças must be sought to the east of cashmere in the himalayas.[ ] with these views and fictions, with the actual and legal consequences assigned to them, the system of castes was consistently developed and extended over the whole population. all modes of life, classes, and occupations were brought into its sphere; the remnant of the natives, the refractory tribes of the aryas, received their position in the brahman state; and the Çudras were followed by a long list of orders in a yet more degraded position. from the contradictory views of the book on the connubium of the orders it follows clearly that the castes were not completely closed at the time when the book was finished; but they were closed, and, it would seem, not long after. when the advantage of blood has been once brought into such striking significance it must go on making further divisions; new circles, distinguished by descent or vocation, must be marked off from others as superior, and form an order; similar vocations, when the occupation has once been connected with the caste, and the vocation with descent, combine within the castes into new hereditary corporations. this tendency to make new separations is supported by the law when it arranges those tribes as new castes beside the four orders, and allots to them on a certain system the descendants of mixed marriages, thus creating a number of new castes by origin and descent. this was further increased by a division of vocations within the chief orders. the brahmans, who also clung to the veda and the worship, naturally regarded themselves as in a better and higher position than those who descended to the occupations of the kshatriyas and vaiçyas, and kept themselves apart. the opposition between the schools which inevitably grew up among the priestly brahmans in course of time, gradually caused the adherents of one school to close their ranks against the adherents of another. the kshatriyas, who remained warriors, stood apart from those who became husbandmen; among the vaiçyas, the merchants, the handicraftsmen, and the husbandmen formed separate classes. hence the different professions and schools of the brahmans and the kshatriyas: the merchants, smiths, carpenters, weavers, potters, etc. separated themselves each from the other as hereditary societies, and as they only married within the society, they became in turn subordinate castes, in reference to each other. and as in spite of all commands marriages took place outside the castes, those who were rejected in consequence of such marriages, and the children of them, could only rank with others in a similar position, and must form a new caste. if the marriage took place outside the main caste the descendants of the person thus excluded from his old caste must join the impure castes, which were, or were supposed to be, of similar origin. the hereditary professional societies within the four castes remained members of them in so far as they carried on occupations approved by the book of the law; but such members as pursued forbidden and impure trades and transmitted them to their descendants, stood outside and far below the main castes, like the castes arising out of mixtures, partly real and partly fictitious. at present the brahmans are divided into twenty-five different societies, which do not intermarry, and in part refuse to eat with each other; the kshatriyas are divided into thirty-six societies similarly closed; the pure and impure vaiçyas, the better and worse Çudras, are divided into some hundred groups.[ ] on a rough calculation it is assumed that now only about a tenth of the brahmanic population of india carries on the occupation assigned in the law to the four great orders; the great majority in these castes has descended to the permitted vocations, and the greater part of the whole population belongs to the classes below the four chief orders. we have already stated how closely the clans held together. the weight given by the caste system to pure blood did not suppress even among the brahmans the pride in ancient and distinguished family descent. in the fourth century b.c. the brahmans who continued to be occupied with the veda and the sacred worship fell into forty-nine clans, which claimed to be derived from the saints of old time: jamadagni, gautama, bharadvaja, viçvamitra, vasishtha, kaçyapa, atri, and agastya. they were arranged in eight large tribes (_gotra_) named after these progenitors. at the consecration of the sacrificial fire the members of these clans invoked the series of their ancestors.[ ] we may assume the same pride in descent among the kshatriyas. we shall see how definitely the book of the law and the forms of ritual require that the ancestors should be mentioned up to the great-great-grandfather in the suit for any maiden, and at this day the wealthy families in all the castes are desirous to conclude alliances with houses of ancient origin for their children. according to the law every man ought to marry; he must have a son who may one day pour for him the libations for the dead. without sacrifice for the dead performed by a son, the soul of the father can never be liberated from a certain place in hell--from _put_. the law distinguishes various kinds of marriage, and promises greater or less blessings to the descendants according as the marriage celebrated is of a more or less holy kind. the son born of the better kinds of marriage can purify a larger number of the members of the family upwards and downwards, _i.e._ of those already dead and those still to be born. if a father gives his daughter, bathed and adorned, to a husband learned in writing whom he has honourably invited and received into his house, the marriage is a brahman-marriage. the son born of such a wife purifies ten members upwards and downwards both on the father's and the mother's side. when the father gives his daughter to the priest at the sacrifice it is a divine marriage; the son purifies seven members upwards and downwards on either side. if the father gives the daughter to the bridegroom with the words: "fulfil ye all duties which devolve on you;" it is a _prajapati_ marriage, and the son purifies six members upwards and downwards. if the bridegroom has given a pair of cattle (a bull and cow) for religious objects, the marriage of the rishis is celebrated; the son purifies three members upwards and downwards. these are the good forms of marriage, the four which follow are bad. marriage from mutual inclination on either side is the marriage of the heavenly musicians, the gandharvas. if the father has sold his daughter or taken gifts for her, it is the marriage of the asuras, or evil spirits. still worse is the marriage by abduction--the marriage of the rakshasas; and the worst form of all is when the bride is previously intoxicated by drugs. this is the marriage of the blood-suckers (piçacha). these kinds of marriages have no expiatory power for the ancestors or descendants; none but cruel, lying, and veda-despising sons can spring from them.[ ] to these rules on the form of marriage the law adds that the younger sister is not to be married before the elder--nor can the younger brother marry before the elder--and advises that a wife be not taken from families too nearly related, such as those belonging to the same tribe (_gotra_); or from those which neglect the sacred rites, or those in which diseases prevail. a girl of eight years old is suitable for a husband of twenty-four; a girl of twelve for a husband of thirty. the later collections of laws repeat the rule that marriages are not to be celebrated with families which invoke the same ancestors.[ ] the views lying at the base of these regulations of the law about the various forms of marriage were transparent. here, as everywhere, the brahmans are, above all, to be favoured. the learned brahman is to receive the girl from her father "adorned," _i.e._, no doubt, well equipped. the brahman, who officiates at the sacrifice, receives her as a gift; in this way the father and the daughter have the happy prospect of obtaining a blessing for ten or seven members of the family upwards and downwards. but other forms of marriage--by purchase, inclination, abduction--the law wishes to prevent, from which we may conclude that these forms of marriage were in existence, a fact sufficiently established by other evidence. the time, it is true, was long gone by when the aryan brothers had only one wife; in the epos only do we find traces of this custom. draupadi is the wife of the five sons of pandu; and in the ramayana the brothers rama and lakshmana are attacked with the reproach--fictitious, it is true--that they have only one wife between them. the abduction of maidens and wives is more frequent in the epos. in the mahabharata, bhishma carries off the three daughters of the king of the kaçis and marries the two younger to his step-brother vijatravirya; jayadaratha, the prince of the indus, lifts draupadi into his chariot and drives away with her, though her guardian cries out to him, that according to the custom of the kshatriyas he cannot carry her off till he has conquered her husband in battle. it is skill in arms and strength which gains their wives for the heroes of the epos. arjuna wins draupadi because he can bend the bow of her father, the king of the panchalas (p. ). rama wins sita by mastering the bow of Çiva. we also see in the epos that princes allow their daughters the free choice of a husband, and the suitors appear on a definite day. thus kunti chooses pandu for her husband; damayanti, in her father's hall, places the garland of flowers on nala's neck, and declares that he is her husband. the greeks tell us that among the cathæans, a tribe of the panjab, young men and maidens chose each other for marriage. the purchase of brides is also mentioned in the epos. bhishma purchases the daughter of the prince of the madras for pandu with gold and precious stones. in ancient times, we can hardly doubt, purchase of the bride was the rule, except in the case of princes, and those who carried off their wives or gained them in battle.[ ] the children, according to the conceptions peculiar to primitive conditions, belong to the father; he must be recompensed for the loss, and receive some return for the services which his daughter can no longer render him. if the law declares that form of marriage to be permissible in which a pair of cattle (a bull and a cow) are given--it is true with the addition, "for religious objects"--we may conclude that this was the customary price, and the law attempts to embody the custom into its system by the additional proviso, that the price is to be given "for religious objects." but the turn thus given in the law to the purchase of the bride was slow in being carried out, and was never carried out thoroughly. the greeks at one time maintain that among the indians the bridegroom gave the father a yoke of oxen; at another, that in contracting a marriage nothing was given or taken.[ ] the custom of giving a pair of oxen for the bride follows from the rites of marriage still in existence,[ ] and even now it is found in some regions of india. marriage from inclination is also not regarded with favour in the law; such marriages might easily endanger the order of the castes, and introduce mixed connections. still as the law allows the purchase of the bride under a very slight cover, so it allows the girl the free choice of a husband in exceptional cases. it is a father's duty to have his daughter married, for in the order of things she is intended to be a mother. if in three years after the daughter is of age for marriage the father makes no provision for giving her to a proper husband, she may choose a husband for herself out of the men of her caste; neither she nor the husband thus chosen are guilty in this matter. but the ornaments which she has received from her father, mother, and brothers she may not, in this case, carry into her new home; in doing so she would commit a theft. on the other hand, the husband whom she chooses has not to make any presents; the father has lost his right over his daughter by keeping her back beyond the time at which she could be a mother.[ ] it was precisely in this sphere that the old customs and poetry, the worship of the old gods, the old delight in life, were retained under the law and the brahmanic system, or even in spite of it. not the least proof of this is found in the prayers, formulas, and blessings in use at marriages. these occur for the most part in the atharvaveda. the grihya-sutras of açvalayana from the middle of the fourth century b.c. give the ritual which must be observed on these occasions.[ ] the playmates of a girl, who desire a husband for her, must, according to the atharvaveda, speak thus: "o agni, may the suitor come to this maid to our delight; may happiness come to her quickly by a husband; may savitar bring to you the man who answers to your wishes! there comes the bridegroom, with hair-knot loosed in front. she was weary, o bridegroom, of going to the marriage of other maidens."[ ] according to the sutras the man who desired a woman in marriage sent two of his friends to her father to ask for her. then the family assembles and sits down opposite the two envoys, with their faces to the east. the envoys extol the family of the suitor, enumerate his forefathers, and ask for the bride. if the request is granted, "a bowl filled with fruits and gold is placed on the head of the bride, and the envoys say: 'we honour aryaman, the kind friend, who brings the husband. i set thee (the bride) free from this place (the house of her father) as the gourd from the stem, not from thence.'" then the bride is prepared for the arrival of the bridegroom by consecration and the bath. marriage ought to take place in the autumn or the winter, but never when the moon is waning. at the bathing of the bride, the water is drawn with blessings; after it she is clad in the bridal garments with the following words: "may the goddesses, who spun and wove it, stretched it and folded the ends round about, clothe thee even to old age. put on this garment, and long be thy years. whatever charm there is in dice or wine, whatever charm in oxen, whatever charm in beauty--with this, ye açvins, adorn her. so do we deck this wife for her husband; indra, agni, varuna, bhaga, soma, may they enrich her with children." then the bridegroom, accompanied by his friends, comes to the house of the bride, where he is courteously received by the father, and entertained with a draught of milk and honey. the bridegroom hands over the bridal gift (at this day garments and mantles are indispensable for this purpose), and when the family of the bride have placed a dark-red neck-band adorned with three precious stones on her, the brahman unlooses two locks of hair and says: "i loose thee now from the bands of varuna, with which the sublime savitar bound thee. i loose thee from this place (the house of her father), not from thence, that she may, o indra, giver of blessings, be rich in sons and prosperity." when the bands, which connect the bride with the house of her father, have thus been loosed, the father with his face turned to the north, with kuça-grass, water, and grain in his hand, hands over the maid to the bridegroom with these words: "to thee, the son, grandson, and great-grandson, of such and such a man, i give this maiden of this family and this race," and then he places her hand on the right hand of the bridegroom. the bridegroom has previously placed a stone on the ground, not far from the sacrificial fire; when receiving the hand of the bride he says: "for health and prosperity i take thy hand here. bhaga, aryaman, pushan, savitar, the gods give thee to me to govern my house." when the father has sprinkled the bride with melted butter, the bridegroom leads her to the stone, causes her to place the tip of her right foot on it, and says: "this sure and faithful stone i lay down for thy children on the lap of the divine earth; step on it with joy and looks of gladness. as agni has taken the right hand of this earth, so did i take thy right hand. fail not, united with me, in prosperity and progeny. bhaga took thy right hand here, and savitar. thou art now my lawful wife; i am thy lord. rich in children, live with me as thy husband for the space of a hundred autumns."[ ] when the bride has thrown corn into the fire, the marriage contract is sealed by the "seven steps" which she makes, led by the bridegroom, towards the right, round the fire. at each step he recites the proper sentence. with the seventh the marriage is completed; and the brahman sprinkles the youthful pair with lustral water.[ ] after a festival, at which young men and girls dance and sing for three days, the husband conducts his wife to the car yoked with a pair of oxen, which is to carry her to her new house.[ ] when ascending the chariot, the bride is thus addressed: "ascend the gay, well-furnished car, the place of delight, and make the journey a glad one for thy husband. viçvavasa (the spirit of virginity) depart from hence, for she has now a husband; let the husband and wife unite. may pushan (p. ) lead thee hence by the hand; may the açvins conduct thee with the chariot; go hence to the house, to be the lady therein. lift her up (upon the chariot); beat away the rakshasas; let king bhaga advance. whatever diseases follow after the glad bridal procession, may the holy gods send them back whence they came; may the robbers who lie in wait for the wedded pair fail to find them; may they go on a secure path and escape danger. this wife is here beautifully adorned. come all, and look on her. give her your blessing, and then disperse to your homes."[ ] in the house of the bridegroom his family awaited the youthful pair, and then prayed: "kind to the brother, the cattle, and her husband, o indra, bring her rich in sons to us here, o savitar. stay not the maid on her way, o divinely-planted pair of pillars (the posts of the door of the house). may this wife enter the house for good, for the good of all two-footed and four-footed creatures. look with no evil eye, slay not the husband, be gracious, powerful, gentle with the people of the house and propitious. harm not thy relations by marriage, nor thy husband. be bright, and of cheerful spirit; bring forth sons that are heroes; love the gods, and with friendly spirit tend the fire of this house. make her, indra, rich in sons; place ten sons in her. may ye never separate; enjoy your whole lives playing with sons and grandsons, rejoicing in your house." when the young wife has entered the house, her husband leads her to the dung-heap in the court, then round the fire of the new hearth, which is either kindled by friction, or taken from a fire which has last been used for sacrifice, and there causes her to offer the first sacrifice, at which she receives the courteous greeting of the assembled family of her husband. when ascending the marriage bed, the bride is thus addressed: "ascend the bridal bed with joy. wise and prudent as indrani (indra's wife) and careful, wake with the first beams of morning." on the following morning the married pair give away their bridal garments; the bridegroom's friend puts on a woollen garment, saying: "whatever evil deed, whatever thing requiring expiation, has been done at this marriage, or on the journey, we cast it on the robe of the bridegroom's friend." when dressing himself the young husband says: "freshly clad, i rise up to the beaming day; as the bird leaves the egg, so i slip from all guilt of sin." then both husband and wife are thus addressed: "waking up from happy union, rich in cows, sons, and gear, may ye live through many beaming dawns." the law impresses on wives the greatest devotion and subjection to their husbands. never, we are told, is the woman independent. in her childhood she depends on her father, then on her husband, and if he dies, on her sons. the sister is in the tutelage and power of the brother. so long as the husband lives, the wife is in a condition of subjection to him day and night; neither in his life nor after his death must she do anything displeasing to him, even though he is not irreproachable in his life, and gives himself to other loves; she must be good-tempered, careful and thrifty for house and home. she must honour her husband as a god; if she honours him on earth, she will herself be honoured in heaven; if she has kept her body, thoughts, and life pure, she receives one abode with him in heaven. the epos presents beautiful and touching pictures of indian wives, who follow their husbands into the wilderness, and when in the power of the enemy keep their faith to their husbands, and without doubt possess the qualities of devotion and self-sacrifice, which, inherent in the disposition of the aryas, were so greatly developed in the brahmanic system, and found in india their most beautiful realisation in the character of women, to which indeed they chiefly belong. though in the law the husband is beyond question the master in the house,--in case of resistance on the part of the wife, she may be punished even with blows of the bamboo,--he is nevertheless bound on his part to reverence and honour his wife; he must make her presents that she may adorn herself; and he must not vex her, for where the wife is vexed, the fire on the hearth soon goes out (it was quenched at the death of the wife), and when the wife curses a house it will soon fall to ruin.[ ] adultery is in some cases threatened with very heavy penalties by the law. but here also the brahman, when guilty, escapes with the least punishment, and the severest threats are directed against the members of the lower castes who have seduced a brahman wife. if a brahman commits adultery of the kind, which in the members of other castes is punished with death, he is to be shaven as a mark of disgrace, and the king must banish him out of the land; but his property is not to be taken from him; he may depart unharmed beyond the borders. but if kshatriyas and vaiçyas commit adultery with a brahman woman of good family, they are to be burnt, and the woman is to be torn to pieces by dogs in a public place. as in these rules for punishment two views are intermixed, we can only ascertain that the later conception permits milder punishment in the case of wives who are not watched. if a brahman has a criminal connection with a wife that is watched with her consent he must pay panas, if against her consent, panas. if a kshatriya has a similar connection with a brahman woman who is watched, he is to be drenched with the urine of asses and pay panas. a vaiçya is to be imprisoned for a year, and lose his whole property. if the wife was not watched, the kshatriya pays panas, the vaiçya panas.[ ] the Çudra who is guilty of adultery with the wife of a dvija must die, if she was watched; if not, he loses his sexual organs. every approach to the wife of another man is looked on as equivalent to an adulterous inclination. secret conversations in pleasure-gardens or in the forest, the sending of flowers and perfumes, and still more any touching of a married woman, or suffering oneself to be touched by her, or joking or playing with her, are proofs of adulterous love. even the man who speaks with the wife of another, if a beggar, minstrel, sacrificer, cook, or artisan, is to be fined. the violation of a virgin, and the attempt on the part of a man of lower caste to seduce a virgin belonging to a higher caste are to be punished with death. it has been already remarked that the hymns of the rigveda speak of more than one wife among the princes of the aryas. in one of these poems we find that svanaya, who reigned on the bank of the indus (p. ), gave his ten daughters in marriage to the minstrel kakshivat. but in the hymns of burial we hear of one wife only. in the epos, daçaratha, king of ayodhya, has three wives, pandu has two, and vijitravirya has also two. in manu's law also, as the rules already quoted show (p. ), husbands are allowed to marry more than one wife. still, not to mention the fact that this was only possible for men of fortune, the book states very distinctly that one only is the proper legitimate wife, that she alone can offer the sacrifice of the house with her husband; more plainly still does the law require that the king shall marry a wife from his own caste; his other wives are merely concubines.[ ] the ritual observed at marriage recognises one wife only. if monogamy is not so strictly insisted on in the law, the reason is that the attempted removal of connubium between the three upper orders was made more possible by allowing several wives; for in this way it became more possible to insist that the first or legitimate wife, at any rate, should be taken from a similar caste, even by those whose obedience could not otherwise be gained. but the chief reason was that a son must necessarily be born to the father to offer libations for the dead to him. if the legitimate wife was barren, or brought forth daughters only, the defect must be remedied by a second wife. even now, hindoo wives, in a similar case, are urgent with their husbands to associate a second wife with them, in order that they may not die without male issue. how strongly the necessity was felt in ancient times is shown by an indication of the rigveda, where the childless widow summons her brother-in-law to her bed,[ ] and by the narrative in the epos of the widows of the king who died without a son, for whom children are raised up by a relation, and these children pass for the issue of the dead king (p. , ). the law shows that such a custom did exist, and is not a poetic invention. it permits a son to be begotten by the brother of the husband, or the nearest of kin after him; in any case by a man of the same race (_gotra_), even in the lifetime of the husband with his consent. after the death of the husband this can be done by his younger brother, but at all times it must be without carnal desire and only in the sacred wish to raise up a male descendant for his relation. when a son is born any further commerce is forbidden under pain of losing caste. it is remarked, however, that learned brahmans disapproved of this custom. it might be omitted when there was a daughter's son in existence, who could offer the funeral cakes for his maternal grandfather; the younger son of another father could also be adopted, but he must be entirely separated from his own family. at present the old custom only exists among the Çudras and the classes below these; among the dvijas adoption takes place.[ ] in the burial hymns in the rigveda the marriage is declared to be at an end, when the widow has accompanied the corpse of her dead husband to the place of rest; after the funeral was over, the widow was required to "elevate herself to the world of life." the law ordains that the widow shall not marry again after the death of her husband, even though she has had no children by him. if she does marry, she falls into contempt in this world, and in the next will be excluded from the abode of her husband. the widow is to remain alone, and not to utter the name of another man. she is to starve herself, living only on flowers, roots, and fruits; if in addition to this she avoids all sensual pleasure to the end of her life, pardons every injustice, and performs pious works and expiations, she ascends after death to heaven, even though she has never borne a child.[ ] these are the simple rules of the law concerning widowhood. the dvija, whose wife dies before him, is to bury her, if she has lived virtuously according to rule, with sacred fire and suitable sacrifice. when the funeral is over he is permitted by the law to marry again and kindle the marriage fire.[ ] on children the law impresses the greatest reverence towards parents; and this respect is carried to a great extent in the epos, where it appears in that exaggerated and caricatured form into which the good elements in the indian character were driven by the victory of the brahmans. rama, "who conquers his parents by obedience, and turns them in the right way," greets his father and mother by falling down before them, and kissing their feet; he then places himself with folded hands at their side, in order to listen to what they have to say.[ ] he practises obedience with the utmost punctiliousness, as well as the renunciation in which brahmans saw the summit of all virtue. even in the law the pupil kneels before the brahman and his wife; and the buddhist legends show us the sons lying at the feet of their fathers in order to greet them. the younger brother must kneel before the elder if he would give him a solemn salutation.[ ] the old legal customs of the aryas knew only of the family property as undivided and in the possession of the father. wife, sons, daughters, and slaves have no property; they are in fact themselves pieces of property.[ ] if the father dies, his place is taken by the eldest son, at the head of the house; and if the mother is alive, she is in his tutelage. that the right of the person to share in the property was already felt against this old custom is shown in the book of the law by the regulation that the sons, after the death of the father, are not to share during the lifetime of the mother. even when both parents are dead it is best for the sons not to divide the property, but to live together under the eldest as the head of the family. the doctrines of the law in favour of maintaining the old custom of a family property were not, as it seems, without results. in the sutras of the buddhists the fathers urge their sons not to divide the property after their decease. that when a division did take place, custom gave a pre-eminence to the eldest son[ ] is clear from the rule given in the law: the eldest son can only demand the best piece when he is more learned and virtuous than the rest; otherwise it must not be divided. another view expressed in the law, which militated against the connubium of the three orders, attempts in this case also to bring in the division of castes: if the father has several wives of different castes, the sons of those who belong to the higher castes have the advantage. if, for instance, a brahman has wives from all the four castes the inheritance is to be divided into ten parts: the son of the brahman woman receives four parts, the son of the kshatriya three, the son of the vaiçya two, of the Çudra only one.[ ] landed property in india is inherited and always has been by males only; but if there are no sons, a daughter may be put in as heir. in other cases women have only a claim to maintenance out of the family property. the distinction between inherited and acquired property is first recognised in the later law of india, but even now the father has only the right of disposal over the latter when he divides it in his own lifetime among his children. at present the unmarried daughters, and quite recently widows, have a right to a son's portion instead of maintenance out of the family property.[ ] in india, family life has in all essentials healthily developed and maintained itself on the basis which we can detect in the sentences of the marriage ceremony. the fortunate birth of a child, purification after child-bed, and naming of the child--according to the law the name of a boy ought to express among the brahmans some helpful greeting, among the kshatriyas power, among the vaiçyas wealth, among the Çudras subjection[ ]--the first cutting of the hair, the investiture of the sons with the sacred girdle, the birthdays, betrothals, and marriages are great festivals among the families, kept with considerable expense. the indians love their children; their maintenance and marriage form at present the chief care of wealthy parents. the law allows a man to give his daughter even to the poorest husband of his own caste; but now the main effort of the family is not indeed to obtain the wealthiest husband for a daughter, but to obtain one of at least equal wealth with their own, and whenever possible of better descent. the claims of the priestly brahmans belonging to those eight tribes which carried back their origin to the great saints, tribes existing in the fourth century b.c., are in existence still;[ ] but the number of the clans has increased. the ceremonies at marriages are still essentially those of the old ritual. before walking round the fire the hands of the bride and bridegroom are united with kuça-grass, and the points of their garments tied together. it has long been a custom and a rule that the bride should be equipped by her father, and the splendour with which marriages are celebrated makes the wedding of a daughter a heavy burden on families that are not wealthy. the kshatriyas more especially suffer in this respect, since they are peculiarly apt to seek after connections with ancient families. in families of this caste it sometimes happens that daughters are exposed or otherwise put out of the way in order to escape the cost of their future equipment and marriage.[ ] footnotes: [ ] _e.g._ "ramayana," , , , ed. schlegel. [ ] manu, , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] manu, , - , ; , - , - . [ ] manu, , - ; , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , , _n._ . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , ; (above, p. ). [ ] manu, , - ; (above, p. ). [ ] manu, , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , , , . [ ] sherring, "hindu castes and tribes," - ; , . [ ] "açvalayana Çrauta-sutra," book , in m. müller, "hist. of sanskrit lit." p. . [ ] manu, , - , , ; , , ff. the analogous series in the açvalayana in a. weber, "indische studien," , . [ ] açvalayana, yajnavalkya, apastamba in m. müller, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] a. weber, "indische studien," , , , . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." . [ ] "açvalayana," , , in a. weber, _loc. cit._ [ ] manu, , - . [ ] açvalayana says: "there are many different customs in different districts and towns; we only give what is common." haas and a. weber in the "indische studien," , . [ ] weber, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] a. weber, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] haas, _loc. cit._ , , cp. however, p. . [ ] a. weber, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] the first part of the sentence is from the latest part of the rigveda ( , ), the second from the atharvaveda, , ; , . in a. weber, "ind. studien," , , , . [ ] manu, , - ; , - ; - ; , - , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , , . [ ] rigveda, , in aurel mayr, "indisches erbrecht," s. . [ ] manu, , - , - . aurel mayr, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] manu, , - . [ ] _e.g._ "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , , . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] aurel mayr, "indisches erbrecht," s. ff. [ ] aurel mayr, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] manu, , - . burnouf, "introduction," p. . in the sutras we are told of a division in a merchant's family, after the brothers have united; in this the oldest retains the house and lands, the other the shops, the third the stock, beside land. burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] aurel mayr, _loc. cit._ , , ff. [ ] manu, , - . [ ] above, p. . m. müller, "hist. of anc. sanskrit lit." p. , ff. [ ] sherring, _loc. cit._ p. . chapter viii. the theology and philosophy of the brahmans. the unity in regard to law and morals, which the book of the law sought to establish throughout all the regions of india, between the vindhyas and himalayas, was never carried out to this extent. indeed, the book itself is wanting in unity owing to the gradual accumulation of different strata in it, and the various rules which it contains for the same circle of life. nor did it even attempt to remove the usages of brahmavarta, or the customs of "the good" in general. in other points its requirements were pitched much too high, and were too ideal for princes and judges to feel bound by them, directly and immediately, or to guide their conduct by such rules, though on the whole they regarded the book as a standard. even on the ganges some districts resisted the law of the brahmans, and took their law from their old customs,[ ] while on the other hand, in the land of the indus, only a few regions followed the development attained in the life of the emigrants on the yamuna and the ganges; in these the elevation of the priestly order, the reform of religion, and the exclusiveness of the castes were very fitfully carried out. they clung obstinately to the older forms of indian life, and submitted but partially to the reaction which the land of the ganges exercised on the ancient home of the race. in other nations and ages the priests have turned their attention to the past history of their states, and have recorded their fortunes, but on the ganges the victory of the priests threw the past entirely aside, and established the brahmanic system as the religion existing from the beginning. why should the brahmans trouble themselves with the deeds of ancient kings and heroes? these could only attract their attention in so far as the action of the gods was seen in them, or when they could be asked to prove that the power of the brahmans had been from the first greater than the power of the kings and the kshatriyas. or need the brahmans write the history of their own order? from this point of view that order had always been what it now was; it formed no organised corporation, no centralised system; the only points that could come into question were the acts of the great saints, the ancestors of the brahman class, or the claim and advantage of being descended from this or that priest of the old time. ought the brahmans to inquire into the laws of nature? in their view the life of nature was as little independent, as little founded on laws of its own, as the life and actions of men. nature was absorbed into the world-soul; the efficacy of sacrifices and penalties could, in the opinion of the brahmans, remove the laws of nature at any moment. where the order of the moral and physical world is broken and subdued at will by the supernatural, no account can be made of the actions of men, or the facts of nature, of history or natural science; theology and things divine are the only possible subjects of study. the brahmans occupied themselves very earnestly with the study of revelation, with the veda, and with meditation on the highest being. if the first was the peculiar task of the schools of the brahmans, the second was the essential duty of the anchorites in the forest. moreover, it was advantageous for the teaching of the people to interpolate the new religion into the old epos, and there also to exalt the acts of the great saints above the acts of the ancient heroes. we have already referred to the contradiction existing between the new doctrine and the veda, on which it was founded, and which it set forth as a divine revelation. the invocations and prayers of the veda arose out of the circle of different tribes, and from different dates; in their origin and tradition they proceeded from distinct races of priests. they were due to a conception wholly at variance with that of the brahmans. how could these contradictions be removed? the contradiction between old and new was aggravated by numerous differences in the ritual. along with the veda the brahmans regarded the sayings and conduct of the holy men of old, the great saints, as sufficient authorities. but the ritual was not the same in all the races of the brahmans; and even customs and tradition had, as we have seen, a claim in the eyes of the brahmans. every priestly school, or family, appealed in its ritual to the custom or word of the supposed progenitor, or to some other great saint. in order to fix the correct ceremonial of the sacrifice, the true ritual for purification, expiation, and penance, amid such varieties of practice, it was necessary to go back to the veda. but in the veda nothing was found on the greater part of the questions at issue, and only contradictory statements on others. which was the true ritual, the form pleasing to the gods and therefore efficacious? which were the decisive passages in the veda, and what was their true explanation? to the difficult task of bringing the veda into harmony with the idea of brahman, and the system of castes, and finding a proof for both in the veda, in which castes and brahman as the world-soul were unknown, was added the further difficulty of establishing the ritual so securely, as to leave no doubt about the practice of it, and to make it quite certain what liturgy was to be applied in each case, at every act. owing to the indian belief in the mystic power of the sacrifice and each single operation in it, this question was of very great importance. the sacrifice was invalid unless the ritual given by revelation or by the great priests of ancient times was used in it. from these questions and investigations rose commentaries on the vedas;--the brahmanas, which in part are still preserved to our times, the first compositions of the indians in prose. they are reflections and rules of a liturgical and theological nature, and proceed on a plan somewhat of the following kind. after mentioning the rite and the sacrifice in question, the meaning of the words in the veda which are supposed to refer to it is given, generally in a singular form; the various modes of performing the sacrifice are then mentioned, the sayings of the ancient saints in favour of this or that form are quoted; and then follows a regular solution, supported by legends from the history of the saints. we see from the rules of the brahmanas that offerings, consecrations, and sacrifices were not diminished but rather increased by the idea of brahman, and the number of the sacrificing priests was greater; a fourth priest was added to the hotar, udgatar, and adhvaryu of the older period, whose duty it was to superintend the whole sacrifice, to guard against mistakes, and remedy them when made; at the greater sacrifices sixteen or seventeen priests officiated, besides those who were required for the supplementary duties; and beside the three daily sacrifices at morning, midday, and evening, the sacrifices of the new moon and full moon, the sacrifices to the ancestors, to fire, and the soma, there were rites which lasted from two to eleven days, and others which occupied fourteen to one hundred days.[ ] the brahmanas fix the object and operation of every sacrifice; they show how the place of sacrifice is to be prepared and measured; how the altar is to be erected; how the vessels and instruments of sacrifice were to be prepared; what sort of wood and water is required, and the length of the pieces of wood which are to be placed on the fire. then follow the invocations and the sentences at the use of the instruments of sacrifice, the paces and functions incumbent on the four classes of priests, what one has to say and another to answer. not only each word but even the tone and gesture is given formally at great length. an incorrect word, a false intonation may destroy the efficacy of the entire sacrifice. for this reason the rules for the great sacrifice, especially for the sacrifice of horses, fill up whole books of the brahmanas. like the arians of iran, and the germans, the arians on the indus sacrificed horses to the gods. "may mitra, aryaman, indra and the maruts," so we read in the rigveda, "not rebuke us because we shall proclaim at the sacrifice the virtues of the swift horse, sprung from the gods, when the spotted goat is led before the horse adorned with ornaments of pure gold. if thrice at the proper seasons men lead around the sacrificial horse, which goes to the gods,--the goat, pushan's share, goes first (p. ). she goes along the path which indra and pushan love, and announces the sacrifice to the gods. may ye, o hotar, adhvaryu--the names of the remaining officiating priests follow--fill the streams (round the altar) with a well-prepared and well-accomplished sacrifice! they who cut the sacrificial post, and they who make the ring for the post of the horse, may their work be with us. my prayer has been well performed: the bright-backed horse goes to the regions of the gods, where poets celebrate him, and we have won a good friend among the gods. the halter of the swift one, the heel-ropes of the horse, the girdle, the bridle, and even the grass that has been put into his mouth, may all these which belong to thee be with the gods. the ordure that runs from the belly, and the smallest particle of raw flesh, may the immolators well prepare all this, and dress the sacrifice till it is well cooked. the juice that flows from thy roasted limb on the spit after thou hast been killed, may it not run on the earth or the grass; may it be given to the gods who desire it. they who examine the horse when it is roasted, they who say 'it smells well, take it away;' they who serve the distribution of the meat, may their work also be with us. the ladle of the pot where the meat is cooked, and the vessels for sprinkling the juice, the covers of the vessels, the shears, and the knives, they adorn the horse. where he walks, where he stands, where he lies, what he drinks, and what he eats, may all these which belong to thee, be with the gods. may not the fire with smoky smell make thee hiss, may not the glowing cauldron swell and burst. the gods accept the horse if it is offered to them in due form. the cover which they stretch over the horse and the golden ornaments, the head-ropes of the horse, and the foot-ropes, all these which are dear to the gods, they offer to them. if some one strike thee with the heel or the whip that thou mayest lie down, and thou art shouting with all thy might, then i purify all this with my prayer, as with a spoon of clarified butter at the sacrifices. the axe approaches the thirty-four ribs of the quick horse, beloved of the gods. do you wisely keep the limbs whole; find out each joint and ligament. one strikes the horse, two hold it; this is the custom. may the axe not stick to thy body; may no greedy and unskilful immolator, missing with the sword, throw thy mangled limbs together. may not thy dear soul burn thee while thou art coming near. indeed thou diest not, thou sufferest not, thou goest to the gods on easy paths. may this horse give us cattle and horses, men, progeny, and all-sustaining wealth. may the horse of this sacrifice give us strength."[ ] this was the foundation on which the brahmanas construct an endless ritual for the sacrifice of horses, "the king of sacrifices," as the book of the law calls it. at the sacrifice of the horse, so we are told in the Çatapatha-brahmana, the adhvaryu on the first day calls on the players on the flute to celebrate the king who offers the sacrifice, and with him the virtuous princes of ancient days. the priest narrates the history begun by manu vaivasvata. on the second day he narrates the history begun by yama vaivasvata, and on the third day that begun by varuna aditya (p. ); on the fourth day he narrates that begun by soma vaishnava, etc.; on the tenth day that begun by dharma indra, and sings the soma, _i.e._ the hymns of the samaveda.[ ] in the mahabharata, yudhishthira, after ascending the throne of hastinapura, offers a sacrifice of horses, in order to assuage his grief at the loss of his heroes, and to extend his dominion. the brahman vyasa tells the king that this sacrifice is very difficult; that he must sleep the whole year through on the ground, with his wife at his side, and a naked sword between them; if he does not keep his desires in subjection during the whole of this time, the entire efficacy of the sacrifice is lost. the horse with the necessary marks is found and brought forward. according to the poem it must be as white as the moon, with a yellow tail, and the right ear must be black; the horse can also be entirely black. on a certain day, determined by the moon, the horse is let loose. it bears a gold plate on its forehead with the name of the king to whom it belongs, and the announcement that an army is following it, and any one who detains the horse, or leads it astray, will be compelled by force of arms to set it at liberty, and after the end of the year to appear at the sacrifice of the horse. arjuna overcomes all the princes who would retain the horse. then the princes who have submitted or been conquered assemble at hastinapura; yudhishthira and draupadi take a bath for purification; the king ploughs the place of sacrifice with a golden plough; draupadi sows it to the accompaniment of the prayers of the brahmans; then the midst of the space is covered with four hundred golden tiles, and round about these are set up eight posts, eight trenches for the preparation of the curdled milk, clarified butter, and soma, and provided with eight great spoons, in order to bring the sacrificial gifts into the fire. yudhishthira takes his place on the throne of gold and sandal-wood; twenty-four princes and rishis go to the ganges in order to bring water for the sacrifice in pitchers on their heads. when the king has been purified by this water, the horse is brought, and it also is purified by having the water poured upon it. then the priests pressed the ear of the horse, and as milk ran out from it, it was proved that the horse was pure; so bhima smote off the head with his sword. then the priest held the flesh in the spoon over the fire, and made homa out of it, and the flesh smelt of camphor, and he cried, "indra, receive this flesh which has become camphor." to each of the brahmans who had officiated at the sacrifice yudhishthira gave a chariot, an elephant, ten horses, one hundred milch-cows, and slaves and gold and pearls, and had them entertained. in the ramayana, king daçaratha of ayodhya offers a sacrifice of horses to obtain a son. at the appointed time the horse was set at liberty for a year; and a brahman accompanied it. all the preparatory sacrifices were offered; the place was made ready on the northern banks of the sarayu; twenty-one sacrificial posts were set up, and decked with flowers and ornaments, and twenty-one trenches were dug when the horse returned. the brahmans kindle the sacred fire, the horse is led round it, and slain with the consecrated sword, while the udgatar recites the sentences. the hotar and the ritvij bring the pieces of the horse according to the custom to the fire, and the ritvij pronounces the sentences while placing the flesh in the fire. then the first and second wives of the king are brought to the horse and pass the night near it.[ ] rama offers a horse sacrifice for another reason; he wishes to make atonement for the offence which he has committed by the slaughter of the great giant ravana of lanka, who was a descendant of the holy agastya, and consequently a brahman. according to the narratives of the vishnu-purana, king pushpamitra, who sat on the throne of magadha in the first half of the second century b.c., offered a horse sacrifice. the horse when set at liberty was carried off on the right bank of the indus by an army of the yavanas (greeks), but was again liberated by the attendants. as a fact the land of the indus as well as the panjab was at that time under the dominion of the greek princes of bactria. from the period of the dynasty of the guptas, who acquired the throne of magadha about the year b.c., a coin has been preserved to our time, relating to the efficacy of the horse sacrifice; it depicts an unsaddled horse before an altar.[ ] not long after the time when the commentaries on the vedas, or brahmanas, arose in the schools of the brahmans, a fourth veda was added to the three collections of sacred songs and prayers already in existence. ancient poems were preserved which had not been received into the rigveda. these were not songs of praise or thanksgiving, prayers or sentences intended to accompany the sacrificial acts, but charms to avert evil, danger, sickness, or death, formulæ relating to life in the house and family, bringing blessing or a curse. when the fourth superintending priest was added to the three already officiating, and the latter was charged with the office of avoiding the mistakes which might be committed in it, and atoning for those which had been committed by counter-charms and acts of expiation--a collection of the sentences required, a book of prayers, seems to have been given to this priest also, just as the hotar had his rigveda, the udgatar his samaveda, the adhvaryu his yajurveda. thus the sentences of this kind already living in tradition may have been collected together, so as to form a fourth veda. that some of the exorcisms and incantations belonging to this collection are also found in the rigveda, that meditative hymns of later date are received into the fourth veda together with pieces of very great antiquity, may count rather for than against this mode of origin. the new collection was called the atharvaveda after the ancient priest atharvan, who is said first to have enticed the fire from the pieces of wood.[ ] the atharvaveda contains a number of ancient charms against sickness and death. it is the healing powers of waters and plants which are first invoked for assistance. in the rigveda also all remedies are found in waters and plants, both of which come from the sky.[ ] "may the waters of himavat be blessed for thee," so we are told in the atharvaveda; "the waters of the springs, the waters of the rain, the waters of the steppe, the waters of the cisterns, the waters of the pitchers. we bless the best healers, the waters. the waters should heal thee when pain overcomes thee; they should drive out thy sickness."[ ] plants are not less efficacious. they pass into the limbs of the sick, they expel the sickness victoriously from the body, they unite with their king soma in order to fight against the sickness; they obey the voice of the priest, rescue the sick person from pain, and set free the foot of man from the toils of yama.[ ] the atharvaveda emphasises the peculiar healing power of a plant against the rakshasas (the evil spirits); with this kaçiapa, kanva, agastya, and the son of atharvan had defeated the rakshasas. "liberate," so the priest says to it, "liberate this man from the spirits of the rakshasas; lead him back into the company of the living."[ ] in other sentences of this veda we are told: "with this sacrificial butter i liberate thee, so that thou mayest live; when the captor has seized him, do ye set him free, indra and agni. if his life is failing i draw him back from the brink of destruction unharmed for a hundred autumns" (p. ). if the sickness is a punishment from the gods, the offence must be wiped out by sacrifice, prayer, and expiations; if it is the result of a charm, it must be driven into another creature by a counter-charm. the atharvaveda gives us the following sentence against the demon takman, who brings fever: "may refusal meet takman, who has glowing weapons. o takman, go to the mujavant or further. attack the Çudra woman, the teeming one; shake her, o takman. the gandharas, the angas, the magadhas, we give over to takman as servants, or a treasure."[ ] the ague is banished into the frog, the jaundice into yellow birds. in the rigveda the jaundice is put away into parrots and thrushes; consumption is to fly away with the blue jay. the custom of supporting the exorcism by laying down a leaf or a herb, which is taught in the atharvaveda, is not unknown to the rigveda.[ ] the atharva-veda also supplies charms against sprains, worms, and other evils.[ ] the brahmanas of the various schools of priests were not merely rules for ritual, but also exegetical and dogmatic commentaries on the separate vedas, each destined for one of the three classes of priests who were allotted to the rigveda, samaveda, and yajurveda. of these commentaries on the rigveda, two, differing in their arrangement, have been preserved to us; the aitareya-brahmana, and the kaushitaki-brahmana, _i.e._ the commentaries of the schools of aitareya and kaushitaka: for the samaveda we have the chandoga-brahmana, and the tandya-brahmana; for the yajurveda the taittiriya-brahmana and the Çatapatha-brahmana, _i.e._ the commentaries of the schools of tittiri and vajasaneya. in one or two of these brahmanas we have additions at the end of a speculative character. the compressed and difficult language of these books, the abstruse dogmatism, the abundance of examples and legends, made the brahmanas so difficult to understand that explanations of them were soon written in a more synoptical arrangement, an easier style, and shorter form. these explanations were called sutras, _i.e._ clues. if they were intended to explain the veda, _i.e._ revelation, they were known as Çrauta-sutras; if they collected in a synoptical form the rules for the ritual given in the brahmanas, they were known as kalpa-sutras. the oldest sutras of this kind, which have come down to us, are supposed to have been written about the year b.c.[ ] from the duty of properly intoning and pronouncing the prescribed words of the veda, marking the metre, correctly understanding the ancient vedic language which had subsequently taken the form of sanskrit, and gone through other changes in the mouth of the people, and fixing the correct time for the sacrifice, there grew up among the schools of the brahmans the beginnings of metrical, grammatical, etymological, and astronomical inquiries. as the people in the land of the ganges had ceased to understand sanskrit in the sixth century _b.c._, while the brahmans were compelled to preserve it for the vedas and the brahmanas, and as a learned and theological language, it became necessary to learn it from teachers. the sutras of the buddhists speak of a grammar of indra, which is also mentioned by the chinese hiuan-thsang as the earliest indian grammar; from the fourth century b.c. we have the grammatical rules of panini remaining, which, based on the previous Çrauta-sutras, present us with a complete grammatical system, provided with an artificial terminology.[ ] the desire to offer sacrifices to the gods at the correct and acceptable time did not permit the brahmans entirely to neglect the observation of the heavens. their attention was directed principally to the moon, to the courses of the planets they paid no particular regard. according to the advance of the moon in the heavens they distinguished twenty-seven, and at a later period twenty-eight stations in the sky (_nakshatra_). "the moon," we are told, "follows the course of the nakshatras." the year of the indians was divided into twelve months of thirty days; the month was divided into two halves of fifteen days each, and the day into hours (_muhurta_). in order to bring this year of days into harmony with the natural time, the brahmans established a quinquennial cycle of lunar days. three years had months of lunar days; the third and fifth year of the cycle had thirteen months of the same number of days. the brahmans do not seem to have perceived that by this arrangement the cycle contained almost four days in excess of the astronomical time; and indeed they were not very skilful astronomers. twelve quinquennial cycles were united into a greater period (_yuga_) of sixty years.[ ] it was an old belief of the indians that sacrifices and important affairs in domestic and family life should only be engaged in when the position of the sky was favourable--when the moon was waxing, or the sun moving to the north. at a later time it was also believed that the constellation, under which a child saw the light, was of good or evil influence on his fortunes. charms are preserved, which are supposed to avert evil influences of this kind.[ ] some time after the seventh century the brahmans began to foretell the fortunes of children from the position of the stars of their parents, to look for the marks of good and bad fortune on the human body as well as in the sky, and to question the stars about the favourable hours for the transactions or festivals of the house, and the labours of the field, voyages and travels. though the book of the law declares astrology to be a wicked occupation,[ ] it was carried on to a considerable extent in the fifth and fourth centuries. but this astrological superstition has nevertheless remained without effect in advancing the astronomy of the brahmans; further advance was due to the foreign help gained by closer contact with the kingdom of the seleucids, and the influence of the græco-bactrian kingdom, which extended its power to the east beyond the indus, and the græco-indian kingdom which succeeded it in the second century.[ ] the result of their grammatical and astronomical studies were collected by the brahmans as auxiliary sciences to the explanation and interpretation of the veda; and they termed them the members of the veda (vedanga). they enumerated six of such members; the doctrine of pronunciation and intonation, the doctrine of metres, grammar, etymology, the ritual, and astronomy. the two first were declared to be indispensable for the reading of the veda, the third and fourth for understanding the veda, the fifth and sixth for the performance of sacrifice.[ ] from all antiquity, as has been already observed, the indians were greatly given to magic. it was the mysterious secret of the worship, the power of the rightly-offered prayer, which exercised compulsion on the gods. out of this power grew their brahmanaspati, and then brahman. consequently, the brahmans ascribed the greatest efficacy to the severities of asceticism, the annihilation of the body. the sacrifice of sensual enjoyment was more meritorious and powerful than all other sacrifices. was it not this devotion, this mortification, this concentration, which annihilated the unholy part in men? did not a man by these means approach the holy nature of brahman--did he not thus draw into himself brahman and its power? the brahmans were convinced that great penances and absorption into brahman conferred a supernatural power and a command over nature; and imparted to the penitent a superhuman and even superdivine power, like that of brahman. the indians invariably transferred the new point of view to the past. the past was with them a mirror of the present, and therefore the ancient priests who were supposed to have sung the hymns of the veda, the mythical ancestors of the leading priestly families, were not only patterns of brahmanic wisdom, but also great ascetics, examples of energetic penances. by such penances these ancient saints, the maharshis, _i.e._ the great sages as they were now called, had obtained power over men and gods, and even creative force. hence in the order of beings the seven or ten great saints received the place nearest to brahman, above the gods--a change which was rendered easier to the brahmans because passages in the rigveda spoke of the "ancient-born sages" as illuminated, as seers and friends of the gods.[ ] with the brahmans the force of asceticism was so preponderant, and absorbed the divine nature to such a degree, that it was soon regarded by them as the highest divine potency; in their view the gods and brahman itself exercised creative power only by virtue of ascetic concentration on self, and severe penances. the theory of creation was modified from this point of view. creation was not any longer the act of the ancient gods, though they are praised as creators in the veda; it no longer took place by the emanation of being out of brahman. according to the analogy of the asceticism of the brahmans, the gods and the personal brahman who proceeded out of the impersonal brahman must have rendered themselves capable of creation by penance, and gained their peculiar power in this way. in the black yajurveda we are told: "this world was at first water; in this moved the lord of creation, who had become air. then he formed the earth and created the gods. the gods said: how can we form creatures? he replied: as i formed you by the glow of my meditation (_tapas_), so do ye seek in deep meditation the means of bringing forth creatures."[ ] the introduction to the book of the law goes further still in the theory of creation given above. when brahman had proceeded from the egg (p. ), he subjects himself to severe penance and so creates manu. then manu begins the most severe exercises, and by them creates the ten great sages, and seven new manus. the ten great saints, the lords of creatures, on their part bring all created things into being. by the force of their penances they create the gods and their different heavens, then the other saints who possess unbounded power, the spirits of the earth (yakshas), the giants (rakshasas), and the evil spirits (asuras), the blood-suckers (piçachas), the serpent spirits (nagas), the heavenly genii (the gandharvas and apsarasas), and the spirits of the ancestors; after them the thunder, the lightning, and the clouds, the wild animals, and last of all the whole mass of creatures living and lifeless.[ ] according to this theory, brahman has only given the impulse to creation; it is completed by the penances of manu and the other saints. the gods are deposed, and the brahmans, through their forefathers, the great saints, become the authors of the gods and the world, the sovereign lords of creation. the brahman, learned or not, such is the teaching of the book of the law, is always a mighty deity, just as fire, whether consecrated or not, is always a mighty deity. creation belongs to the brahman, and consequently all property is his; it is by his magnanimity that the rest of the orders enjoy the goods of this world. who would venture to injure a brahman, by whose sacrifice the gods live and the world exists? any one who harms a brahman will be at once annihilated by the power of his curse; even a king who ventures on such a thing will perish with his army and their armour by the word of a brahman.[ ] the schools of the brahmans sought to establish their ritual beyond the power of doubt, to understand the veda in its interpretation, as well as in its etymology and grammar; they raised the centre of their ethics, their asceticism, high above the gods of the veda, and they also attempted to embody their views and their whole system in the poems of their epos. the pre-eminence of their order must have been established even in the ancient times; even then the brahmans must have stood far above the kshatriyas; and the princes and heroes, of whom the epos told us, must have been patterns of reverence towards the brahmans; they must have walked in the paths which the theory of the brahmans subsequently prescribed. in this feeling the brahmans proceeded to revise the epos. in contradiction to the ancient poem the princes of the pandus were placed in the best light, and, so far as was possible, were made eager worshippers or obedient pupils of the brahmans. we have already pointed out what an opposition the brahmans had invented between vasishtha and viçvamitra from a few hints given by the rigveda; how from this point of view, viçvamitra is made into a kshatriya, in order to be able to point out from the example of his ruin as a kshatriya in opposition to vasishtha the superiority of the brahmans over the kshatriyas. but the veda contains hymns by viçvamitra; he belonged, like vasishtha, to the great saints; the one no less than the other was the progenitor of an ancient and eminent branch of the brahmans. hence the kshatriya viçvamitra must be changed again into a brahman, and this could only be done by penances of the most severe kind. as the most powerful effects were attributed to these penances, the kuçikas and the other races derived from viçvamitra were indemnified for the previous defeat of viçvamitra when he was still a kshatriya. the description of the feeble conflict of the kshatriya against the brahman, of the prince against the rishi, the marvellous exaltation of the kshatriya and the prince by submission to the brahman law and severe penances, are here set forth in the utmost detail and inserted in the epos. king viçvamitra had ruled over the earth for several thousand years. on one occasion he came with his warriors to the abode of vasishtha in the forest, who hospitably received and entertained him and his army. vasishtha possessed a marvellous cow--a wishing cow--which brought forth whatever vasishtha desired; she produced food and drink for viçvamitra and his army. this cow viçvamitra wished to possess, and offered , ordinary cows in exchange. it was a jewel, he said, and the king has a right to all jewels found in his country; hence the cow belonged of right to him, a deduction which is not contrary to certain rules in the book of the law. vasishtha refuses to part with the cow; and viçvamitra resolves to take her by force from the saint. the cow urges her master to resist; wide and powerful as viçvamitra's rule may be, he is not more mighty than vasishtha is; the wise praise not the might of the warriors, the power of the brahmans is greater. instead of the means of subsistence, with the production of which she has hitherto been contented, she now brings forth different armies from the different parts of her body; and when these are conquered by the warriors of viçvamitra, she goes on producing new armies till the host of the king is destroyed. then the hundred sons of viçvamitra filled with rage rush on vasishtha; but the saint consumes them by the flame of meditation which proceeds from his mouth. viçvamitra acknowledges with shame the superiority of the brahman over the kshatriya; he resolves to overcome vasishtha by penances. he goes into the forest, stands on his toes for one hundred years, lives on air only, and in this way acquires the possession of heavenly arms. with these he hastens to the settlement of vasishtha; sets it on fire by the heavenly arrows, and then hurls a fiery weapon at the brahman. vasishtha cries aloud: "vile kshatriya, now will i show thee what the strength of a warrior is!" and with his staff easily wards off even the arms of the gods. with no better success viçvamitra throws the toils of varuna, and even brahman's dreadful weapons against vasishtha, who beats them away with his staff, "which burned like a second sceptre of yama." with sighs viçvamitra acknowledges that the might of kings and warriors is nothing, that only the brahmans possess true power, and now attempts by severe penances to elevate himself to be a brahman. he proceeds to the south, and undergoes the severest mortifications. after a thousand years of penance brahman allows him the rank of a wise king. but he wishes to be a brahman, and therefore begins his penances over again. triçanku, the son of prithu, the pious king of the koçalas (p. ), had bidden his priest vasishtha exalt him with his living body to heaven by a great sacrifice. vasishtha declares that this is impossible. triçanku repairs to viçvamitra, who offers the sacrifice. but the gods do not descend to the sacrificial meal. then viçvamitra in anger seizes the ladle, and says to triçanku: "by my own power i will exalt you to heaven. receive the power of sanctity which i have gained by my penances. i have certainly earned some reward for them." triçanku at once rose to heaven; but indra refused him admittance, and triçanku began to sink again. in anger viçvamitra begins to found another heaven in the south, new gods and new stars. then the gods humbly entreat the saint to desist from conveying triçanku into heaven, but viçvamitra had given his promise to triçanku; he must keep his word, and the gods must receive triçanku. then viçvamitra repairs to the west in order to begin further penances. after a thousand years brahman hails him as a sage. but viçvamitra is resolved to be a brahman. he begins his penances once more, but is disturbed by the sight of an apsarasa, whom he sees bathing in the lake of pushkara, and for ten years he lies in her toils. disgusted at his weakness viçvamitra repairs to the northern mountain, and there again undergoes yet severer penances for a thousand years. brahman now greets him as a great sage; but viçvamitra wishes to have the incomparable title of a wise brahman. this brahman refuses because he has not yet fully mastered his sensual desires. new penances begin; viçvamitra raises his arms aloft, stands on one leg, remains immovable as a post, feeds on nothing but air, is surrounded in the hot season by four fires, and in the cold by water, etc.--all which goes on for a thousand years. the gods are alarmed at the power which viçvamitra obtains by such penances, and indra sends the apsarasa rambha to seduce the penitent. viçvamitra resists, but allows himself to be transported with rage, and turns the nymph into a stone. but anger also belongs to the sensual man, and must be subdued. he leaves the himalayas, repairs to the east, and there resolves to perform the most severe penance; he will not speak a word, and this penance he performs for a thousand years, standing on one leg like a statue. the gods now beseech brahman to make viçvamitra a brahman, otherwise by the power of his penances he will bring the three worlds to destruction; soon would the sun be quenched before the majesty of the penitent. brahman consents; all the gods go to viçvamitra, pay him homage and salute him: "hail, wise brahman!" vasishtha hears of this new dignity of viçvamitra, and both now stand on the same footing. this narrative teaches us not only that the power of the gods was nothing as against the brahmans, but also that it was easier to exercise compulsion upon the gods, to create new gods and new stars, than for any one to attain the rank of a brahman who had been born as a kshatriya.[ ] like viçvamitra the heroes of antiquity were thought to have obtained divine power by their penances. an episode, inserted by the brahmans into the mahabharata, tells us how arjuna, when the pandus had been banished into the forest after the second game of dice at hastinapura, practises severe penances on the himavat, in order to obtain the weapons of the gods for the conflict against the kurus. indra sends his chariot in order to convey him to heaven, and there, in the heaven of indra, everything shines with a peculiar splendour. here are the gods, the heroes fallen in battle, sages and penitents by hundreds, who have attained to the height of indra, but not, as yet, to brahman. instead of the blowing winds, his old companions in the fight, indra is now surrounded by troops of the gandharvas, the heavenly musicians, and by the apsarasas. the gods and saints greet arjuna to the sound of shells and drums, and, as servants, wash his feet and mouth. indra sits like the king of the indians under the yellow umbrella, with a golden staff in his hands; he gives his bow to arjuna; yama, varuna, and kuvera (p. ) also give him their weapons. thus armed, arjuna subdues in the first place the danavas, the sons of danu (the evil spirits of darkness and drought), whom indra himself cannot overcome. for this object indra gives him his chariot, which is now yoked with ten thousand yellow horses, and harness impenetrable as the air. beyond the sea arjuna comes upon the hosts of the danavas. they cover him with missiles, and then contend with magic arts, with rain of stones and water and storms, and shroud everything in darkness. arjuna is victorious, though the danavas, at last changed into mountains, throw themselves upon him; and thus, as is expressly said, he surpasses the achievements of indra. indra's conflicts with the demons are transferred to arjuna. we see to what an extent the soaring fancy of the brahmans has crushed and distorted by these extravagances the simple and beautiful conception of indra in conflict with vritra and atri, the poetry of the ancient myth of indra's battle in the storm[ ] (p. ). it was a marvellous world which the imagination of the brahmans had created. the gay pictures, excited and nourished in the mind of the indians by the nature of the ganges valley, became reflected in more and more distorted and peculiar forms in the legends and wonders of the great saints and heroes of the ancient time. the gods and spirits are perpetually interfering in the life and actions of men. the saints without intermission convulsed the sky, and played at will with the laws of nature. the more the desire for the marvellous was satisfied, the stronger it became. in order to go beyond what had been already achieved brighter colours must be laid on; the power of the imagination must be excited more vigorously, so as to enchain once more the over-excited and wearied spirit. thus, for the indians, the boundaries of heaven and earth gradually disappeared; the world of gods and that of men became confounded in a formless chaos. the arrangement of the orders was of divine origin; the gradations of being reached from the world-soul, through the saints, the gods and spirits, down to plants and animals. the earth was peopled with wandering souls; sacrifice, asceticism, and meditation set man free not only from the impurity of sin, but also from the laws of nature. they gave him powers transcending nature, which raised him above the earth and the gods, secured divine power for him, and carried him back to the origin and essence of all things. however fantastic this structure, the positive basis of it was supposed to be revelation or the veda. extensive as the commentaries became owing to the rivalry of the schools, vast as were the accumulations of ritual and legends, of verbal explanations and sentences of the saints--the main questions became only the more obscure. what saint was qualified to decide? which school taught the correct doctrine? by whom and in what way was the veda revealed? were the words or the sense of the poems decisive? how were the undeniable contradictions, the opposition between various passages, to be removed? in order to obtain a firm footing the brahmans found themselves invariably driven back to the idea of the world-soul. if in the interpretation of the words and the meaning of the veda, in the effort to smoothe down the contradictions between them, and the necessity of finding a consistent mode of explanation and proof, the indian acuteness and delicate power of distinction grew into a hair-splitting division of words and ideas, into the most minute and complicated logic, the conception of the world-soul, the theories of the creation, impelled them, on the other hand, to explain the whole life of the world from one source, and to compass it with one measure. forced as they were in these two directions, they were unavoidably brought at last to attempt to establish the theory independently, to construct brahman and the world out of their nature and ideas. in all advanced stages of rational thought, fancy, or its reverse-side, abstraction, has seldom omitted to reflect the whole world as an organised unity in the brain of man, and to bring the oppressive multitude of things under some general conceptions and points of view. in the schools of the brahmans it was the formal side of these philosophical efforts, the method of inquiry and investigation, in connection with the sacred scriptures, religious traditions, and the attempts to fix the interpretation of them, which was specially developed. on the other hand, the anchorites in the forest opposed these efforts from the opposite direction with the combined body of religious conceptions, with their views of brahman. the highest object of the eremite was meditation, absorption in brahman. the more uniform their own lives, the stiller the life around them, the greater the ferment in their minds. when these penitents were weary of the world of gods and marvels which occupied their dreams, when the endless multitude of bright pictures confounded their senses, they turned to the central conception of the world-soul, and attempted to think of this more deeply, acutely, comprehensively, to see the connection of brahman and the world more clearly, and explain it more distinctly. as the fancy, and consequently the abstracting power of the indians, was always superior to the power of division, and remained the basis of their view of the world, their constructive speculation, which was occupied with the contents of their religious conceptions, surpasses their powers of formal thought. the latter had indeed no other office than to arrange and organise the pictures supplied by the former. the attempt to construct a world on general principles was neither peculiarly bold nor peculiarly new. the way was prepared by the idea of the world-soul as the origin and essence of the gods and the world, and the path was opened for a constructive philosophy, developing the world out of ideas and thoughts by this abstract single deity existing beside and above the plurality of mythological forms, the exaltation of the saints above the gods, and the consequent degradation of the latter, the perpetual suspension of the natural order of things by the transcendental and mystical world of the gods and saints, the removal of the boundaries between heaven and earth, and the constant confusion of the two worlds. after this, there was nothing remarkable in putting abstract ideas in the place of the gods, and removing entirely the distinction between the transcendental world and the world of sense. in fact, the philosophy of the indians is, in the first instance, nothing but the dogmatism of the brahmans translated into abstractions--nothing but scholasticism, and their philosophical ethics no less than their religious require the liberation from the body. like all the productions of the indian mind, with the exception of the veda, the philosophical systems of the indians, which arose in the seventh and sixth century b.c., are no longer before us in their original shape. we only possess them in a pointed compendious form which could not have been obtained without long labours, many revisions and reconstructions--and which is in reality of quite recent date. we are not in a position to ascertain the previous or intermediate stages through which the brahmans passed before they brought their system to a close; here, as everywhere in india, the later forms have completely absorbed their predecessors, the fathers are lost in the children. hence we can only guess at the original form of these philosophical systems. still the order of succession, and the essential contents, are fixed not only on internal evidence--by the unalterable progress of development, which cannot be passed over--but also by the fragments of genuine old indian philosophy contained in the system of buddha, and in their turn presupposing the existence of certain ideas and points of view.[ ] the oldest system of the indians contains much more theology than philosophy. in part proceeding from the sacred scriptures and the traditional side of religion, it is an explanation of the veda; in part it is an attempt to found a dogma on a basis of its own, on philosophical construction. in this sense, regarded as exegetical theology brought to a close by philosophical proof of dogma, this system is denoted by the name vedanta, _i.e._ end or object of the veda. combined with the portion explanatory of the veda, it is also called mimansa, _i.e._ inquiry; and the section which expounds the ceremonial side of religion bears the name of the first or work-investigation--karma-mimansa; the speculative part is called uttara-mimansa (metaphysics), or brahma-mimansa, _i.e._ investigation of brahman. the method of the first part, the investigation of works, is obviously taken from the requirements of the situation at the moment, and the process common in the schools of the brahmans; the object was to establish a definite kind of interpretation for explanation and exegesis, and the development of dogma from the passages in the veda. on the consideration of a subject follows the doubt or the contradiction, which has been or can be raised on the other side. the contradiction is met by refutation on counter-grounds. this negative proof is followed by positive proof, that the view of the opponents is in itself untenable and worthless, and last comes the final proof of the thesis maintained by demonstration that it agrees with the whole system. in this manner we find philosophy treating first the authority of revealed scriptures, the veda, then the relation of tradition to it, the statements of the sages, the commentary on the revelation. then the variations and coincidences of revelation and their inner connection are developed, and so the system passes on to the explanation of the veda. it is shown that all passages in the veda point directly or indirectly to the one brahman. at certain passages it is shown how a part of these plainly and another part obscurely refer to brahman, though even the latter refer to it as a being worthy of divine reverence; another part of the passages in the veda point to brahman as something beyond our knowledge. the contradictions between the passages in the veda are proved to be only apparent. these explanations of the passages in the veda are followed by the doctrine of good works, as the means of salvation, which are either external, like the observation of the ceremonial, the laws of purification, or internal like the quieting and taming of the senses, the hearing and understanding of revelation, and the acknowledgment of brahman.[ ] the other part of the system, the vedanta, leaves out of sight the difficult task of proving the idea of brahman from the veda, and bringing the two into harmony; it attempts to derive the existence and nature of brahman from the idea. brahman--such is the line of argument in the vedanta--is the one eternal, self-existent essence, unalterable and unchangeable. it developes into the world, and is thus creative and created. as milk curdles, as water becomes snow and ice, brahman congeals into matter. it becomes first ether, then air, then fire, then water, and then from water it becomes earth. from these elements arise the finer and coarser bodies, with which the souls of the gods, spirits, men and animals are clothed. these souls go forth from brahman like sparks from a crackling fire--a metaphor common in the book of the law--they are of one essence with brahman, and parts of the great world-soul. this soul is in the world, but also outside and above it; to it must everything return, for all that is not brahman is impure, without foundation, and perishable. in this view there lies a contradiction which could not escape the keen penetration of a reflective spirit. brahman is intended to be not only the intellectual but also the material basis of the world. it is regarded as absolutely non-material, eternal, and unchangeable, and yet the material, changeable world is to rise out of it; the sensible out of the non-sensible and the material out of the immaterial. in order to remove this dualism and contradiction which the orthodox doctrine introduced into brahman, the speculation of the brahmans seized upon a means which if simple was certainly bold: they denied the whole sensible world; they allowed matter to be lost in brahman. there is only one being; this is the highest soul (_paramatman_, p. ), and besides this there is nothing: what seems to exist beyond this is mere illusion. the world, _i.e._ matter, does not exist, but only seems to exist, and the cause of this illusion is maya or deception. of this the sensible world is a product, like the reflection of the moon in water, and the mirage in the desert. nature is nothing but the play of illusion, appearing in splendour and then disappearing. it is deception and nothing else which presents various forms to men, where there is only unity without distinction. the movement and action of living beings is not caused by the sparks of brahman dwelling in them--for brahman is consistently regarded as single and at rest--but by the bodies and senses, which being of themselves appearance and deception, adopt and reflect the deception of maya. by this appearance the soul of man is kept in darkness, _i.e._ in the belief that the external world exists, and the man is subject to the emotions of pain and joy. in his actions man is determined by appearance and by the perception arising out of appearance. in truth brahman alone exists. it is only deception which allows the soul to believe that it has a separate existence, or that the perceptible world exists, or that there is an existent manifold world. this deceptive appearance of the world, which seems to darken the pure brahman as the clouds darken the brightness of the sun, must be removed by the investigation which teaches us the truth, that the only existing being is the highest being, the world-soul. in this way the delusion of a multiform world disappears. as the sunlight dispels mists, true knowledge dispels ignorance, and destroys the glamour of maya. this knowledge is the way to liberation and the highest salvation. the liberation of men from appearance, from the senses and the world of the sense, from the emotions arising from these, is the knowledge that this world of the senses does not exist, that the soul of a man is not separated from the highest soul. thus man finds the direct path from the sensible world, the body and separate existence, to brahman, by active thought which penetrates deception. the sage declares: "it is not so, it is not so;" he knows that the highest soul is all, and that he himself is brahman. recognising himself as the eternal, changeless brahman, he passes into the world-soul; he who knows brahman reposes in it beyond reach of error. as the rivers flowing to the ocean disappear in it, losing their names and form, so the man of knowledge liberated from his name and his form passes into the highest eternal spirit. he who knows this highest brahman is freed from trouble and sin; from the bonds of the body and the eye; he is lost in brahman, and becomes himself brahman.[ ] we cannot but acknowledge the capacity of the indians for philosophic speculations, and the vigour of thought which for the first time in history maintained the thesis that our senses deceive us; that all which surrounds us is appearance and deception--which denies the whole world of things, and in opposition to the evidence of the tangible and actual world, boldly sets up the inward capacity of knowledge, as a criterion against which the evidence of the senses is not to be taken into consideration. for a long time the actual world had been resolved into the transcendental world of gods and saints; this is now contracted into a simple substance, beyond and besides which nothing exists but appearance. instead of the appearance of the sensible world, in which there is no being, there exists one real being, the one invisible world-soul, which allows the corporeal world to arise into appearance from it like airy bladders, and then again to sink back whence it came. this universal deity is conceived as a being at rest; its activity and development into a sensible world is only apparent. it is a pantheism which annihilates the world; matter and nature are completely absorbed by the world-soul, are plunged and buried in it; the soul of a man is a being only apparently separated from the world-soul. from these notions the mission of a man becomes clear. he must turn from appearance; he must unite with the world-soul by recognising the fact that all perceptions and emotions come from the world of phenomena, and therefore do not really exist; he must rise to the conception that only brahman exists, and that man is brahman. if from an ancient period the indians were of opinion that they could draw down the gods to men by the holy spirit ruling in their prayers and sacrifices--if the mortification of the flesh in penances can give divine power and force to men--their philosophy is no more than consistent, when by recognising the worthlessness of sensible existence it allows brahman to wake in the human spirit, and thus re-establishes the unity of man with brahman. the system of the vedanta carried out the idea of brahman so consistently that the entire actual existence of the world is thus annihilated. when once interest in speculation had been aroused, the reaction against positions of this kind was inevitable. the reality of actual things, the existence of matter, the certainty of the individual existence, must be defended against such a doctrine. on these factors was founded a new system, of which the founder in the tradition of the brahmans is called the rishi kapila. the name sankhya given to this system means "enumeration," "consideration." it maintains that reason alone is in a position to lead man to a right view, to truth and liberation.[ ] it also exhibits the boldness arising from the fanciful nature of the indians; and as the vedanta took up a position on the idea of brahman in order to wrest the world from its foundations, the sankhya system stands on the idea of the soul (_purusha_) and of nature or matter (_prakriti, pradhana_). these two alone have existed from the beginning, uncreated and eternal. nature is uncreated and eternal, creative and without cognition; the soul is also uncreated and eternal; it is not creative but has cognition. all that exists is the effect of a cause. the effect is limited in time and extension, subject to change, and can be resolved into its origin, _i.e._ into its cause. as every effect supposes a cause, every product supposes a producing force, every limited an unlimited. if the limited or product is pursued from cause to cause, there results the unlimited, eternal, creative, _i.e._ producing, nature as the first cause of all that is produced and limited. but beside nature there exists a second first cause. nature is blind, _i.e._ without cognition; "light cannot arise out of darkness," intelligence cannot be the effect of nature. the cause of intelligence is the soul, which though completely distinct from nature exists beside it. nature is eternal and one; the soul is also eternal, but manifold. were the soul one, it could not feel pain in one man at the same time that it feels joy in another. the soul exists as the plurality of individual souls; these existed from the beginning, and are eternal beside nature. but they also entered into nature from the beginning. their first case is the primeval body (_linga_), which consists essentially of "i-making" (_ahankara_), _i.e._ individualisation, and the primeval elements; the second material body consists of the five coarse elements of ether, air, light, water, earth. neither the soul nor the primeval body dies, but only the material body.[ ] the primeval body accompanies the soul through all its migrations; the material body is created anew at the regenerations, _i.e._ the soul and the primeval body are constantly clothed anew with new materials. the soul itself is uncreated, unchangeable amidst all mutations, and eternal, but it does not carry the consciousness of itself from one body to another. the soul is not creative; it exercises no influence on nature; it is only perceptive, observant, cognising, only a witness of nature. nature is illumined by the proximity of the soul, and the soul gives witness of nature; nature takes its light from the soul, just as a white crystal appears red in the proximity of a red substance.[ ] the object of human life is to obtain liberation from the fetters of the body which bind the soul. the office of true knowledge is to set the soul free from the body, from nature. man must grasp the difference of the soul and the body; he must understand that beside the body and nature, the soul is a completely self-existent being. the union of the soul and the body is nothing but deception, error, appearance. "in truth, the soul is neither bound nor free, nor a wanderer; nature alone is bound or free or migratory."[ ] the soul seems to be bound to nature, but is not so. this appearance must be removed; the soul must recognise that it is not nature. when the soul has once penetrated nature it turns from it, and nature turns from the soul. the "unveiling of the spirit" from the case of nature is the liberation of the soul; by knowledge "release is brought about; by its opposite bondage."[ ] by conceiving the absolute independence of the soul, man sets himself free from nature and his body; the idea of this independence is release. with this idea the man of knowledge surrenders his body; he is no longer affected or disturbed by it; even though his natural life continues, he looks on the body only "as on the movement of the wheel by virtue of the impulse once communicated to it."[ ] in spite of the sharp contrast in which the doctrine of kapila stands to the system of the vedanta, it works, in the last resort, with analogous factors, only it applies them differently. the soul and nature were put in the place of brahman and maya. instead of the one intelligent principle, which the vedanta establishes in the world-soul, kapila maintains the plurality of individual spirits. in the vedanta, it is true, nature exists as an illusion only: still it is a factor, which though it is also appearance, is nevertheless an existence, and in the last resort exists in brahman; it has ever to be overcome anew, and thus in this system of unity, the basis is really a dualism. in the sankhya doctrine nature is actually and materially existent; but the intelligent principle has to discover that this actually existent matter is, in truth, not existent for it, and cannot fetter the soul. if in the orthodox system the illusion of nature is to be annihilated by the free passage of the individual into brahman, the doctrine of kapila requires in the same way that man should rise to the idea that he is not nature, that the body is not his being, that he is not matter; it requires that man should be conscious of his freedom from nature, that he should return to his independence, in the same way as the vedanta requires the absorption into brahman. then in the one case, as in the other, the individual escapes the restless movement of the world. in both systems the connection of the spirits and nature is only apparent, and the power of this deception in the spirit is removed by knowledge. both proceed from the idea of an eternal being, self-contained, at rest, unmoved, self-sufficient; this the vedanta ascribes to brahman, while the sankhya explains it as the nature of the soul. nevertheless there is an important difference. in the sankhya the intellectual principle is not the divine world-soul, which permits everything to emanate from itself and return to itself; it is the individual self, and besides this and material nature there is no real being, no real essence. if in the vedanta liberation is the identification with the world-soul or the godhead, liberation in the sankhya is the retirement of the soul into itself. according to the vedanta the liberated man says, i am brahman; according to the sankhya, i am not body nor nature.[ ] in the certainty of conviction which the sankhya doctrine opposed to the orthodox system, in the clearness with which it drew out the consequences of its point of view, in the boldness of scepticism concerning the gods and revelation, in the courage with which it protested against the regulations of the priests, and the whole religious tradition of the people, lies its importance. by following the rules of the veda, so said the adherents of this philosophy, no peace can be obtained; the means prescribed by the veda are neither pure nor of sufficient efficacy. how could it be a pure act to shed blood?--how could sacrifices and ceremonies be of sufficient force? if they really conferred the blessing of heaven, it could only be for a short time; the blessing would merely last till the soul assumed a new body. temporal means could not give any eternal liberation from evil. the adherents of kapila explained the gods, including brahman, to be souls, not much distinguished from the souls of men; the more advanced denied their existence altogether. there was no supreme soul, they said, and no god. even if there were a god, he must either be free from the world, or connected with it. he cannot be free, for in that case nothing would move him to creation, and if he were connected with the world he would be limited by it, and could not be omniscient.[ ] thus not only were the whole doctrine of brahman and the whole system of gods overthrown, but the authority of the veda was annihilated on which the brahmans founded their belief no less than the worship by sacrifice, and with it all revelation, all the positive basis of religious life. the doctrine of kapila found adherents. from orthodox scholasticism the indian philosophy very rapidly arrived at rationalism and scepticism, though the latter, like the correct system, moved in scholastic forms and ended with an unsolved dualism. while in this manner one constructive system superseded the other, the formal side of knowledge did not remain without a keen and penetrating examination. the objects and means of knowledge were tested; men occupied themselves with fixing the categories of the idea, of doubt, of contradiction, of fallacies, of false generalisation, and conversion; and at last inquiries were made into the syllogism and the members of it, and more especially into the categories of cause and effect. researches of this kind quickly grew into a system, the nyaya or logic, which chiefly used the results of the theory of knowledge to establish the authority of the veda, and overthrow the arguments brought against the revelation of it.[ ] in themselves, at any rate in the late form in which we have them, the logical researches of the indians are scarcely behind the similar works of modern times in the acuteness and subtilty of their categories. in the period between the years and b.c. the valley of the ganges must have been filled with the stir of intellectual life. no doubt the times were long past when the ancient hymns of the veda were sung at the place of sacrifice, when the poems of victory and the heroic deeds of men--the epos in its original form--were recited at the courts of princes or the banquets of the military nobility--the kshatriyas. the contest of the brahmans and the kshatriyas was also over; the brahmans had not only gained currency for their teaching in the sphere of religion and the state, but had already developed it to its consequences. they put before the princes and the people the canon of correct life, of purity, of sins and penalties, of punishments beyond the grave and regenerations, and held up the true law to the state. they revised the epos from their point of view; they established the ritual, they justified every declaration and every ordinance in it from the veda, the sacred history; they explained the words and the sense of the veda; they went beyond the opposition of schools and authorities to independent examination of the idea of brahman, of the causes and connection of the world, and to speculative philosophy. they have so far succeeded that no nation has devoted its interest and power to religion to the same degree as the indians. the longer they lingered in the magic world of gods and spirits, into which they were plunged by the sacrifices, legends, and doctrines of the brahmans, the more familiar they became with these dreams, the more passive must they have grown to the actual and prosaic connection of things, the more indifferent to the processes going on in the world of reality. hence in the end the indians knew more of the world of the gods than of the things of the earth; they lived in the next world rather than in this. the world of fancy became their fatherland, and heaven was their home. the more immutable the limits of the castes, the heavier the taxation of the state, the greater the caprice of the officers, the less the space left for the will or act of the individual, the more uniform the life,--the more did the people become accustomed to seek their fears and hopes in the kingdom of fancies and dreams, in the world to come. excluded from action in the state, the indians turned the more eagerly to the questions of worship and dogma; for that was the only sphere in which movement found nothing to check it, and the separation of the people into a number of tribes, the mutual exclusiveness of the castes and local communities limited the common feeling of the nation on the ganges to the faith which they all acknowledged. footnotes: [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , . [ ] m. müller, "hist. anc. skt. lit." p. ff. [ ] "rigveda," , , according to m. müller's translation, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] "Çatapatha-brahmana," , , , , in m. müller, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , ff. a. weber, "vorles." s. ^ . [ ] "vishnu-purana," ed. wilson, p. , . lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , , , , . [ ] m. müller has placed the period of the origin of the brahmanas in the period from to b.c.--very successfully, so far as i can see. the collection of the atharvan will belong to the end of this period, but not merely on the internal ground of the increase in the ceremonial brought about with and through the brahmanas. the book of the law consistently cites the triple veda; the sutras of the buddhists and the epos as consistently cite four. that the magic formulas of atharvan and angiras are quoted in manu , , and not those of the atharvaveda, seems also to prove that the latter collection was not made when the citations were written. cp. a. weber, "vorl." s. ^ . [ ] "rigveda," , , - . [ ] "atharvaveda," , , , - . [ ] darmesteter, "haurvatat," p. . [ ] "atharvaveda," , . [ ] "atharvaveda," , , , , quoted by grohmann in weber's "ind. stud." , , , ff. if takman is called deva, this is due to the connection in which he is placed with varuna. varuna sends diseases as punishments, dropsy, as a water-god, but fever also, and thus takman can be called the son of varuna. [ ] "rigveda," , , , ; , . [ ] kuhn in his "zeitschrift f. v. s." , ff., where the coincidence of the german language is pointed out. [ ] m. müller, "hist. anc. skt. lit." p. ff.; ff. a. weber, "vorles." s. ^ . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . m. müller, _loc. cit._ p. . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] in the brahmanas we only find traces of a quinquennial or sexennial cycle. a. weber, in "z. d. m. g." , . the worship of the nakshatras, or houses of the moon, _i.e._ the division of the sky into (later ) parts by means of certain constellations as marks, is first found in a developed form in buddha's time, as is proved by burnouf and a. weber ("abh. d. berl. akad.," , s. ). weber does not believe in the indian origin of these stations of the moon; he regards them as semitic, and borrowed from babylonia, _loc. cit._ s. . the inquiry at what time these marks for the course of the moon according to the position of the stars were made astronomical has led to various results. biot regards the year b.c. as the earliest point (the original number of stations was increased to about the year b.c.). a. weber thinks that the period between and b.c. is the space within which the observation of the jyotisha was fixed ("studien," , , , . "abh. d. berl. akad." , s. ; , s. , ), and shows that the use of these houses of the moon in china, in the order usual there, cannot be proved before b.c. the chinese order corresponds to the latest indian arrangement of the nakshatras, cf. "ind. stud." , ff., whereas the length given in the jyotisha for the longest and shortest day, suits the position of babylon, _loc. cit._ , s. . the veda knows the nakshatras as stars but not as stations of the moon, though they are known as the latter in the brahmanas. the vedic names of several of the gods who preside over the stations (aryaman, bhaga, etc.) prove a tolerably ancient origin for the nakshatras. the civic computation of time among the buddhists is founded on them. hence we may assume that this division of the sky was perhaps current among the indians in the tenth century b.c. [ ] a. weber, in "abh. d. berl. akad." , s. . [ ] manu, , ; , . [ ] a. weber, "vorl." s. ff. the first traces of astrology in the strict sense besides the mention in the book of the law are found in the sutras of the buddhists, _e.g._ in burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , if we do not prefer the accounts of the greeks to those legends which were written in magadhi (pali) the native language of magadha, and the central ganges in general, and have come down in the form which they received in the middle of the third century b.c., but also contain fragments of far greater antiquity. in any case, preference must be given to the simple sutras (burn. _loc. cit._ p. ), and these lay great stress on the astrology and soothsaying of the brahmans. after this we meet with numerous traces of astrology in the epos; but the law-book of yajnavalkya is the first to command the worship of planets. [ ] m. müller, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff. [ ] a. weber, "indische studien," , , , . [ ] manu, , - , , ff. [ ] manu, , - ; - . [ ] "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , - . in this extended form this episode may, it is true, have first arisen at a much later time, as is shown by the mention of vishnu and Çiva, and the yavanas (greeks). if in spite of these additions which are not important, i confidently place it at this date, i do so because the importance of the penitent and his power over the gods, the creation of beings by the penance of saints, _i.e._ the degradation of the gods, must be placed before the appearance of buddha. this is the essential hypothesis for the religion which the doctrine of buddha found in existence. in the mahabharata this legend is told more briefly. muir, "sanskrit texts," ff. [ ] a. weber, "ind. stud." , . [ ] the sankhya system, which buddha found in existence, presupposes the vedanta system. the latter system must therefore have been in existence before buddha; roer, "lecture on the sankhya philosophy," calcutta, , p. . the vedanta is expressly mentioned in manu, , , as belonging to the study of the veda. the names mimansa and nyaya are also mentioned in manu, but only in the final part, which is very loosely connected with the whole ( , , ). [ ] colebrooke, "miscellaneous essays," , ff. m. müller, "beiträge zur kenntniss der indischen philosophie" in z. d. m. g. , , . [ ] colebrooke, "transactions of the royal asiatic society," ii, . vans kennedy, "asiatic journal," , p. ff. köppen, "religion des buddha," s. ff. wuttke, "geschichte des heidenthums," , , , [ ] it is in the later upanishads that we first find the doctrine of kapila called by the name sankhya, weber, "vorles." s. ; "ind. stud." , . as with the vedanta system, so also with the sankhya: in the sankhya-karika we have only a very late and compressed exposition in çlokas; but as buddhism is founded on this system we are more certain about the earlier form of it than in the case of the vedanta. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] roer, "lecture," p. ; köppen, "religion des buddha," s. . [ ] "sankhya-karika," çl. . [ ] "sankhya-karika," çl. . burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] "sankhya-karika," çl. . by the side of this keen scepticism the system of the sankhya allows the gradation of creatures as fixed by the brahmans to remain, and the migration of souls with some slight modifications. the lowest stage is formed by the minerals; above these are the plants, reptiles, birds, wild animals, domestic animals. these are followed by men in the order of the castes; and then come the regenerations in the form of demons, piçachas, rakshasas, yakshas and gandharvas; and last in the form of indra, soma, prajapati, brahman. barthelemy st. hilaire, "sur le sankhya," p. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] roer, "lecture on the sankhya phil." p. ; "introduction to the Çvetaçvatara-upanishad," p. ; cf. "sankhya-karika," çl. - . muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. book vi. buddhists and brahmans. chapter i. the states on the ganges in the sixth century b.c. the list of the kings of magadha, preserved not only among the brahmans, but from the seventh century b.c. downwards among the buddhists who then came forward to oppose them, allow us to assert with tolerable accuracy that the dynasty of the pradyotas, which ascended the throne of magadha in the year b.c., was succeeded in b.c. by another family, known to the brahmans as the Çaiçunagas.[ ] the first two kings of this house were kshemadharman and bhattya (the kshatraujas of the brahmans). in b.c. bhattya was succeeded by his son bimbisara. in the reign of this king, according to the ancient sutras of the buddhists, justice, morals, and religion were regulated in magadha and the neighbouring states according to the wishes of the brahmans. in these narratives we find the rules of the law-book generally recognised and carried out in all essential points, and in some respects they are even transcended. the system of exclusive castes is complete. the stricter marriage law, forbidding union with a woman of another caste, is victorious over the more liberal view that the husband fixed the caste. "brahmans marry brahmans only, nobles only nobles; a man takes a wife only from an equal family."[ ] within the castes those of equal position are divided into separate corporations. among the vaiçyas and Çudras, merchants, artisans, barbers, form special castes, in which the occupation of the father descends to the son; the son of a merchant is a merchant, and the son of a butcher a butcher.[ ] the laws on the order of the castes and forbidden food were strictly observed. the lower and impure castes thoroughly believe in their vocation. the kshatriya, though sick to death, refuses to take even as a remedy the forbidden onion (p. ), which the physician hands to him.[ ] the chandalas give notice of their approach that the higher castes may not be rendered impure by contact with them; they eat dog's flesh as the law requires, and carry the dead out beyond the gates of the city.[ ] invested with the holy girdle, the brahmans, as the law directs (p. ), bear continually in their hands the staff of bamboo and the pitcher of water for purification. the learned among them are occupied with the study of the veda; they recite the hymns, instruct pupils, and hold discussions on theology and philosophy. occasionally the princes take an interest in these learned contests, and cause the disputations to go on at their courts in their presence; one king favours this system, another that; one protects this school, the other a different school. the penitent brahmans live as anchorites in the forest, in the mountains, on the holy lakes ravanahadra and manasa, under kailasa, the lofty peak of the himalayas. some live in complete solitude, others dwell in such a manner that a whole circle of settlements lie close together.[ ] the neighbours now and then combine for disputation, others give themselves up in deep solitude to meditation and mortification. at that time hundreds of these penitents are said to have lived on the holy lakes, and the severity of their exercises appears already to have exceeded the requirements of the book of the law. some fast, others sit between four fires, others perpetually hold their hands above their heads, others lie on hot ashes, others on a wooden bed covered with sharp points.[ ] other brahmans, and it would appear a considerable number, wander as mendicants through the land; others pursue the newly-discovered avocations of astrology and sooth-saying;[ ] others avail themselves of the permission of the book of the law to drive the plough, and carry on the business of a merchant.[ ] others think that they will find an easier path to maintenance and money if they present the kings with poems written in their praise, or give their daughters to be received into the harem of princes. not all brahmans could read and write: many confounded _om_ and _bhur_.[ ] the life of the opulent classes, had become, it is said, easy and luxurious. in such circles no one went without a servant to carry the parasol and keep off the flies. the physician was sent for in every case of sickness, and poor men entreated him not to order too costly remedies. the lot of the beggar was considered miserable, because he could not have a physician in sickness, or obtain medicine.[ ] industry and trade flourished in spite of the hindrances thrown in the way by the system of caste, or the taxation, which, as is shown by many indications beside the directions in the book of the law, was severe. that magadha, even before the sixth century, was the seat of a lively trade, we may conclude from the fact that the merchants are called simply "magadhas" in the book of the law. caravans under the guidance of a chief convey the wares from one city to another on camels, elephants, oxen, and asses, or on the shoulders of bearers, till the sea-coast is reached. stuffs and woven cloths, especially silk of varanasi, sandal-wood, saffron and camphor, horses from the north, "noble sindhu horses," are mentioned as the commonest articles of traffic.[ ] as the most important the book of the law enumerates precious stones, pearls, corals, iron, woven cloths, perfumes and spices, and advises the man who wishes to amass money quickly to go to sea; "he who will obtain wealth most quickly must not despise the dangers and misery of the great ocean." according to the statements of the sutras the merchants go by hundreds over the sea. the costly sandal-woods of the malabar coasts are embarked at Çurparaka (which must no doubt be looked for at the mouth of the krishna); from thence men sailed past tamraparni (ceylon) in order to buy precious stones on a distant island.[ ] in the larger cities the merchants formed corporations, the chiefs of which treat with the kings in the names of the whole;[ ] some especially-favoured merchants obtained the privilege of receiving their wares free of toll. the great merchants in the cities did not find it necessary to pay at once for the wares which came from a distance. they printed their seal on the bales which they would buy, and paid a small deposit.[ ] the members of the family work at their occupation in common; while one brother stays at home and attends to the sale, the others go with the caravans or are at sea.[ ] in these circles no one marries till he has amassed a certain sum of money. the profits of the merchants appear to have been easy and large, though their journeys were attended with danger. they were not only threatened with the exactions of tax-gatherers and attacks of robbers, but were exposed to great temptations in the cities. mistresses could be found there, "whose bodies were soft as the lotus flower, and shone in gay attire." these, no doubt, gave themselves up to the young travellers at no inconsiderable price.[ ] the kings of magadha resided at rajagriha, _i.e._ the king's house, a city which lay to the south of the ganges and the east of the Çona. the sutras mention prasenajit, king of the koçalas, who, as already remarked, lay on the sarayu, and vatsa, the son of Çatanika, king of the bharatas, as contemporaries of bimbisara, king of magadha, and his son ajataçatru. hence the reigns of prasenajit and vatsa may be placed in the first half and about the middle of the sixth century b.c. both princes are mentioned in the tradition of the brahmans. in the vishnu-purana, prasenajit is the twenty-third ruler of the koçalas after the great war. vatsa is the twenty-fifth successor of parikshit, who is said to have ascended the throne of hastinapura after the victory and abdication of the sons of pandu.[ ] the kings of the koçalas had built a new city, Çravasti, to the north of their ancient capital ayodhya; the kings of the bharatas resided at kauçambi on the ganges. to the north of the kingdom of magadha, on the other bank of the ganges, lay the commonwealth of the vrijis on the gogari, and the kingdom of mithila; to the east on both shores of the ganges were the angas, whose capital appears to have been champa (in the neighbourhood of the modern bhagalpur); to the west of magadha on the ganges were the kaçis, whose capital was varanasi (benares). the colonies of the arians had advanced and their territory had been extended to the south both on the east and west. this is not merely proved by the mention of Çurparaka, for the sutras of the buddhists tell us of a great arian kingdom on the northern spur of the vindhyas, the metropolis of which was ujjayini (ozene in western writers) on the sipra, and adjoining this on the coast was the kingdom of surashtra (guzerat).[ ] the life of the kings on the ganges is described by our authorities in glowing colours. their palaces are spacious, provided with gardens and terraces for promenading. besides the women and servants, the bodyguard and the executioners clothed in blue are domiciled in the royal citadels. the princes eat off silver and gold, and are clothed in silk of varanasi. friendly princes make handsome presents to each other, _e.g._ suits of armour adorned with precious stones.[ ] their edicts and commands are composed in writing and stamped with the seal of ivory.[ ] the labours of government are relieved by the pleasures of the chase. in sickness the princes are served with the most select remedies. when bimbisari's son and successor fell down one day in a swoon, he was placed in six tubs full of fresh butter, and afterwards in a seventh filled with the most costly sandal-wood.[ ] the harem of the king was numerous, and the women had great influence; the children which they bore were suckled by nurses, of whom one child had at times eight.[ ] any one who ventured to cast a look upon one of the wives of the king forfeited his life. when one of the wives of prasenajit, king of the koçalas, was walking in the evening on the terrace of the palace she saw the handsome brother of the king, and threw him a bouquet; when this came to the ears of prasenajit, he caused the feet and hands of his brother to be cut off.[ ] the same cruel and barbarous character marks all the punishments inflicted by the king. on the order of a king whose mildness and justice are commended, all the inhabitants of the city are said to have been put to death on account of an error committed by one of them.[ ] if any one had to make a communication to the king, or lay any matter before him, he first besought that he might not be punished for his words. no one approached the king without a present; least of all merchants. happy events were announced by princes to their cities by the sound of bells. stones, gravel, and dirt were then removed from the streets, which were sprinkled with sandal-water and strewed with flowers and garlands, and silken stuffs were hung along them. at certain distances jars filled with frankincense were placed; and if a guest of distinction was to be received the ways were cleansed for a considerable space before the gates, smoothed, and perfumed, and furnished with standards, parasols, and resting-places of flowers.[ ] we have already remarked how unfamiliar the abstract god which the brahmans had placed at the head of their theory remained to the people, both in his impersonal and personal form. they had been more deeply influenced by the degradation of the old gods, introduced by the brahmans in consequence of their religious system (p. ). yet it was not so much these doctrines which caused the old gods to lose their primitive power, and complete charm over the hearts of men, as the fact that the motives which now governed the life of the aryas were wholly different from those which had filled them in old days on the indus. indra, the hurler of the thunder-bolt, had fought with the tribes whose offering of soma he had drunk. the storm of the elements characteristic of the panjab was unknown on the ganges; and in the civilised conditions of a peaceful, obedient, quiet life the old slayer of the demons could no longer excite the lively feelings of the people. the brahmans might recede ever further from nature; the people, the peasants and herdmen, remained in constant contact with her, and with the phenomena of the sky and the vegetative life of the earth; they felt themselves continually surrounded by the mighty operations of nature. the feeling and faith of the people required a more personal, present, living power, which assured them of help and protection. while the brahmans wearied themselves with abstractions and philosophic systems, the needs of the multitude, the poetical vein of the indian nation, its realism as opposed to the spiritualism of the priests and brahmans, struck out new paths. so it came about that as the supreme deities of the most ancient and the early periods faded away more and more, as mitra and varuna, indra and ushas passed into the background, forms hitherto little regarded rose up out of the circle of these spirits, which were akin to the present instincts and needs of the nation, the immediate modes of feeling, and in closer relation to them. this movement was not confined to the people; within the circles of the brahmans, who were not wholly given up to abstractions, the want of a living power, governing the world, could not but be felt.[ ] in the hymns of the rigveda a god vishnu is invoked, though but little prominence is given to him. he is called a friend and comrade of indra; it said of him that he walks over the seven parts of the earth; that he plants his foot in three places. the "far-stepping" vishnu is invited with mitra, varuna, and aryaman to give salvation. he dwells in the height; his exalted habitation, where honey flows, beams with clear light. he sustains trebly the sky, the earth, and all worlds; he walks with three steps through the wide firmament. he walks through the worlds to secure long life for men. not even the soaring winged birds could reach up to his third step. he hastens on to ally himself with the beneficent indra; he favours and protects the aryas. fired by hymns of praise vishnu himself yokes the mighty mares, and dashes into the battle in his youth and strength, accompanied by the maruts. "friend vishnu," said indra, when planning the death of vritra, "step out wide; thou heaven, give room, that the thunder-club may descend; let us smite vritra and set the waters free. o strong god (indra), in concert with vishnu thou hast smitten vritra; thou hast smitten ahi who held back the waters." "ye two heroes, who bring to nought the magic powers of the hostile spirits, to you i bring songs of praise and sacrifice. ye have always conquered, ye have never been overcome. come ye, indra and vishnu, to the draught of soma, bring treasures with you; may your mares, which overpower the foe, sharing in your victories, bring you hither; may our songs anoint you with the ointment of prayer. rejoiced by the draught of soma, take ye your wide steps; make wide the atmosphere and spread out the earth. grant us rich sustenance in our houses." "no mortal, o vishnu, knows the uttermost limits of thy greatness; thou hast surrounded the earth on both sides with beams of light. never does the man repent it, who serves the far-stepping vishnu with all his heart, and makes the mighty one favourable. grant us, o swift god, thy favour graciously, which includes all men; thy favouring glance, that abundance, treasures, and horses may be ours. thrice the swift god stepped through the earth that he might make it to be a dwelling for men."[ ] hence we must regard vishnu, whose dwelling is in the height of heaven, as a swift spirit of light. invoked in the hymns of the veda beside the adityas or spirits of light, he is not definitely named as such, though we cannot refuse to him a close connection with the sun when we consider the further development of the conception formed of him. as he supports indra in the battle against the demons, he must be regarded, like him, as a protector against the evil ones, a giver of water and wealth. his kindly feeling towards men, his beneficent acts are brought into prominence. hence from the early point of view he was a god bringing blessing and help. the three steps are explained by the mahabharata as the earth, the air, and the heavens;[ ] other explanations refer them to the light of the sun at morning, noon, and evening. the brahmanas reckon vishnu among their twelve adityas (instead of the seven or eight of the rigveda), and give a myth of vishnu. the aitareya-brahmana calls him the gate-keeper, but also the highest deity, as agni is the lowest; the rest of the gods are between them. leaning on his bow vishnu stood, as the Çatapatha-brahmana relates, while the rest of the gods sacrificed to kurukshetra; the ants ate through the string, the bow sprung back and tore off vishnu's head, which now flew through heaven and earth. the body was divided by the gods into three parts; agni took the morning sacrifice, indra that at mid-day, and all the rest the third sacrifice. but they received no blessing from their headless sacrifice, till the açvins, who were skilled in the art of healing, put back the head on the sacrifice. further, by sacrifice and penance vishnu became the first of the gods; in order to wrest this place from him the other gods caused the ants to eat through the string and then divided vishnu, the sacrifice, into three parts.[ ] here the gods are found sacrificing a god, but the self-sacrifice of the gods is common in the brahmanas. mystical conceptions of this kind naturally remained outside the national religion. the view of the aitareya-brahmana is nearer the popular mind--that vishnu took away from the asuras the world of which they had possessed themselves, and gave it back to the gods. this idea is carried out in the epos: bali, a great asura, had gained the dominion over the earth, and conquered the gods; in order to help the gods out of their distress vishnu assumes the form of a dwarf, and entreats bali to allow him space for three steps of his dwarfish feet. having obtained his request he takes possession of earth, air, and heaven in three great steps, hurls the asura into hell, and thus, by the liberation of the world and the gods, he became the younger brother of indra.[ ] this mighty god, the ruler of earth and heaven, this swift, bright, friendly helper of gods and men, was invoked by the nation on the ganges as their best protecting deity. it was no doubt the helpful nature of vishnu, the characteristic celebrated in the songs of the veda and in the legends, which permitted this change. in the plains of the ganges fruit and increase naturally depended on the period of rain, on the regular rise and overflow of the river, not on violent crises in the sky, or the tempestuous storm in which indra was still the ruling deity; in this district the blessing of the land, the life-giving, fructifying power of nature, could be ascribed to a deity who worked his beneficial will in a ceaseless persistent course. in the book of the law vishnu is hardly mentioned; only once, in the addition at the close, is reference made to his swift approach;[ ] on the other hand, in the ancient sutras of the buddhists, vishnu appears under the names hari and janardana as a widely-honoured deity.[ ] rudra, the god of the storm, is repeatedly invoked in the rigveda. derived from the tumult of the tempest, the name signifies "the roarer," "the howler." he is the father of the maruts, or winds, the god whom no other surpasses in strength, terrible as a wild beast, as the boar of the sky. red or brown in colour, he wears his hair closely braided (an idea no doubt taken from the clouds gathered together by the storm-wind); the swift strong arrows from his mighty bow force their way from heaven to earth; he is the lord of the heroes, the slayer of men. "bring to the venerable rudra the draught of the soma; i have praised him with the heroes of the sky,"--so we are told in some prayers of the rigveda. "submissively we call on the red boar of the sky; be gracious to us, to our children and descendants! smite neither the great nor the small among us, neither father nor mother, neither our cattle nor our horses. listen to our prayers, father of the maruts." "may rudra's arrow pass by us; may the spear which travels over the earth touch us not. may the weapons which slay men and cows remain far from us! grant us refuge and protection; take thou our side. remove from us sickness and want, thou who art easily entreated. thou bearest in thy hand a thousand remedies; these i desire with the favour of rudra. be gracious to the wandering sources of our nourishment; let our cows eat strengthening plants, and drink abundant life-giving water. for our men and women, for our horses, rams, sheep and cows, rudra secures health and prosperity".[ ] it is the wild injurious force of the storm, the force that carries off men and animals, which these prayers would avert, and the beneficial consequences of this storm, the filling of springs and streams, the refreshment of the meadows, the cooling and purification of the air, are the blessings which these prayers would win from the double nature of the easily entreated god. by the remedies which rudra carries in his hand along with the mighty bow the beneficial consequences of the storm are no doubt to be understood. in the atharvaveda, rudra with bhava is invoked under the name of Çarva as a mighty, darkly-glancing archer, with black hair, a thrower of the spear, who dashes on with a thousand eyes, and slays the andhakas. here also he is entreated not to be angry, not to smite men nor cattle, to hurl his heavenly weapons against others and not against his suppliant.[ ] he is more highly exalted still in the Çatapatha-brahmana, which unites in him the attributes and functions of various gods, of vayu, chandra, bhava, parjanya, _i.e._ the rain-god, and of agni, represents the gods as afraid of his power, and denotes him by the name mahadeva (great god). a long and extraordinary prayer which this brahmana prescribes for appeasing him, ascribes to him the most extensive power: it calls him the inhabitant, the lord of the mountains, forests, and fields, of the wild beasts, of the streets and hosts, who slays from before and from behind, red in colour, with a blue neck. if the anger of the mighty deity is appeased, he brings rain and blessing, and then he is the gracious one, Çiva. the fruitfulness of this deity and the necessity of propitiating him appear to have brought it about that this name, which is found as an epithet of other gods, became his peculiar title. in the old sutras of the buddhists he is thus called, though he more frequently bears the name Çankara, _i.e._ bringer of happiness. we see that the deity whose strong power drove up the rain-clouds to the coast of surashtra (guzerat) and the heights of the himalayas was victorious over the ancient god of tempest. in this god there was a destroying power, but his anger and rage were followed by the fructifying showers of rain, causing vegetation to revive and the springs to flow, cooling the air and refreshing man and beast. so the nation looked up with thankful eyes to the god of storm who had now, in reality, become a god of increase and prosperity, a healer of wounds and sickness, as was already indicated in the poems of the rigveda. among his retinue is a being of the name of nandin, who appears later as a bull, and is without doubt nothing more than an indication of the wild force of the storm, and its fruitful operation.[ ] as he is more especially a lord of the mountains, and is said to be throned on kailasa, and the ganges flows down over his head, as the epos represents the heroes as going to the himalayas to worship Çiva, and the storm rages fiercest in the hills, we may assume that it was the inhabitants of the western himalayas who elevated rudra-Çiva to be their protecting deity, just as vishnu became the god of the nations on the ganges.[ ] footnotes: [ ] cp. p. , , . [ ] burnouf, "introduction à l'histoire du bouddhisme," p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . lassen, "ind. alterth." , - . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . _supra_, p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , ff. "dhammapadam," translated by a. weber, . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] above, p. . our chronology for the epochs of indian history depends essentially on fixing two points. the first is the accession of chandragupta in magadha, already mentioned, from which the year b.c. is certain (cp. _infra_); the second point is the year of buddha's death. the bhagavata-purana puts buddha's death years after the beginning of the kaliyuga (_supra_, p. ); such a round number and so general a date cannot lay claim to credibility. besides this we have a number of other brahmanic statements about the date of buddha's life, varying more or less, but equally untrustworthy. more weight would naturally be ascribed to the statements of the buddhists; yet even these differ widely from each other. the thibetans have fourteen different statements about the year of buddha's death, which cover the interval from to or b.c. the chinese buddhists as a rule assign buddha's death to the year b.c., but buddhism did not reach the chinese till after the birth of christ. the most trustworthy statement seems to be that of the singhalese. buddhism reached them soon after the year b.c.; from the year b.c. their chronology agrees with existing inscriptions: their chronological system and their era is based on the year of buddha's death, which they place in b.c. if this date is compared with the brahmanic list of kings of magadha we get the following results: before chandragupta the dynasty of the nandas reigned for years according to the brahmanic accounts, and according to the singhalese. on this point i agree with lassen and gutschmid in preferring the statement of the brahmans, because the error of the singhalese may very easily have arisen from the fact that the reign of years, which they give to the sons of kalaçoka, was incorrectly repeated for the following dynasty. according to this the first nanda ascended the throne of magadha in the year ( + ). from this year the items on the singhalese list carry us up to the year b.c. for the accession of kshemadharman (Çiçunaga), and the year b.c. for the commencement of the reign of bimbisara (gutschmid, "beiträge," s. ff.), who is succeeded by ajataçatru eight years before buddha's nirvana ("mahavança," , , p. , ed. turnour), which thus falls in the year b.c. if we keep to the singhalese date for the nanda dynasty, we arrive at the year b.c. for buddha's death. bimbisara ascended the throne years according to the matsya-purana, and years according to the vayu-purana, before the first nanda. if the year b.c. marks the accession of the nandas, bimbisara according to the matsya-purana began to reign in b.c., and according to the vayu-purana in b.c. between bimbisara's accession in b.c. and the end of açoka of magadha there intervene, according to the statements of the buddhists, years. if with this we compare the dates of the reigns in the list of kings in the vayu-purana from bimbisara to açoka, we get years from the first year of bimbisara to the last year of açoka. there is also another fact which agrees with the era _b.c._ according to the statements of the singhalese the second synod of the buddhists was held or years after buddha's death, in the reign of kalaçoka, _i.e._ in or b.c. ("mahavança," ed. turnour, p. ). of these two statements it is obvious that the more definite, years, is more deserving of credit. according to the detailed statements of the singhalese for the time of the separate reigns, kalaçoka's reign begins years after buddha's death, _i.e._ ; he reigns years according to the singhalese, _i.e._ if we reckon up the single items from chandragupta (the nandas , and kalaçoka's sons years) from to b.c. in this way the era of the singhalese and the year of buddha's death are completely justified. still the year is not wholly beyond a doubt. according to the statement of the native singhalese, chandragupta ascended the throne years (and the various items agree with this total) after buddha's death, _i.e._ years after the year b.c., and therefore in the year b.c., but we know that his accession took place in b.c. here we find an error of years, which however we have already removed by adopting the brahmanic statement of years for the dynasty of the nandas instead of the years of the singhalese. further, it does not agree with the era of b.c., when we are told by the singhalese that the third buddhist synod was held years after the second, _i.e._ years after buddha's death. we know from inscriptions that this synod met in the seventeenth year of açoka, chandragupta's second successor. açoka reigned from to , or from to b.c.: his seventeenth year reckoned from would be b.c.; if we add to this years we get b.c. for the year of buddha's death; thus we have here again the same error of years. lastly, it does not agree with the era of b.c. when we are told that the fourth buddhist synod was held years after the death of buddha, under kanishka, king of cashmere. kanishka is a contemporary of augustus and antonius (lassen, "ind. alterth." , , ); and according to this statement, therefore, buddha would have died about the year b.c. as the number of years given for the fourth synod is nevertheless designedly a round number, little weight is to be placed upon it, and the year can be kept as the year of buddha's death. before the dynasty of the nandas in magadha ( - b.c.) the throne was occupied by the kshatrabandhus or Çaiçunagas for years ( - b.c.); before these came the pradyotas with years ( - b.c.), who were again preceded (as is shown above, p. ) by the barhadrathas with years, _i.e._ from to b.c. (cf. gutschmid in "beiträge zur geschichte des alten orients," s. , , and in "zeitschrift d. d. m. g." , ff.) [ ] as the arian colonists go from surashtra to ceylon about the year b.c., this kingdom must have been in existence in the sixth century b.c. burnouf, "introduction," p. ff. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] if i ascribe the rise of vishnu and Çiva primarily to the people, this is done because the need pointed out must have been felt most deeply by them; two rival deities would never have been elevated to supreme positions if the movement had not begun from beneath, and the life in two different districts had not formed the starting-point. [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff. [ ] "vanaparvan," ff. in muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff., . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , ff. the epithet of vishnu, upendra, _i.e._ beside-indra, points to this position. [ ] manu, , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ; a. weber, "ind. studien," , ; lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , - . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , , , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . on the seats of the worship of Çiva on the coasts of the deccan in the mahabharata, cp. muir, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] _nandin_ means having delight, delighted. [ ] in the book of the law vishnu is mentioned once only ( , ), and Çiva not at all. the old sutras of the buddhists, on the other hand, as has been stated, mentioned Çiva frequently under the name Çankara, and vishnu under the names hari and janardana. lassen has rightly perceived that the narayana of the ancient sutras and of the law-book was not yet vishnu, but brahman, and narayana was not transferred to vishnu till later ("alterth." ^ , ; ^ , ). the mahavança ( , , ed. turnour) mentions vishnu as the tutelary deity of the earliest settlers in ceylon. this settlement took place about b.c., while Çiva appears as the tutelary deity of the somewhat more ancient mathura in the south. the rise of the worship of Çiva and vishnu according to these indications must be placed between and b.c. panini is acquainted with avataras of vishnu (lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ); in the accounts of the greeks krishna is already identified with vishnu, and is widely worshipped both in the valley of the ganges and in the extreme south of india, while Çiva is worshipped in the mountains. the development of this worship must therefore have taken place between and b.c., and no doubt chiefly in the second part of this period. chapter ii. buddha's life and teaching. so far as we can ascertain the conditions of the states on the ganges in the sixth century b.c. the population suffered under grievous oppression. to the capricious nature of the sentences pronounced by the kings and the cruelty of their punishments were added taxes and exactions, which must have been severely felt over wide circles. the sutras tell us that a king who required money received this answer from his two first ministers: "it is with the land as with grains of sesame; it produces no oil unless it is pressed, cut, burnt, or pounded."[ ] the arrangement of castes now stamped in all its completeness on the population of the ganges; the irrevocable mission apportioned to each person at his birth; the regulations for expiation and penance, which the brahmans had introduced; the enormous amount of daily offerings and duties; the laws of purification and food, the neglect or breach of which involved the most serious consequences, unless averted by the most painful expiations, were serious burdens in addition to the oppression exercised by the state. if the expiation of offences often unavoidable was difficult, the most carefully-regulated life, the most pious fulfilment of all offerings and penances, did not protect men from evil regenerations. for time consumed the merit of good works, and man was born again to a new life, _i.e._ to new misery. thus not even death brought the end of sorrow; it was not enough to bring to a close a laborious life; even if after this life a man were not tormented in hell for unexpiated transgressions, he was born again to ever new sorrows and pains. one way only was known to the brahmans by which a man might possibly escape this fate;--flight from the world; the voluntary acceptance of the most severe unbroken torture imposed upon the body; the annihilation of the body and finally of the soul by absorption through meditation into brahman. did a man really arrive at the goal by this rough way?--did he by inexorable persecution of himself to the extremest limits become elevated above a new birth, and so above a new torture of life? the conception of such endless torment must have pressed the more heavily upon the people as the hot climate in which they lived naturally awaked in them the desire for repose, a desire which increased with the increasing oppression of the state and religious duties, and was strengthened by the fact that these causes at the same time allowed the resistance which every healthy and strong nation can make to such oppressions and demands to slumber. but complaint was inadmissible. all the misfortune which a man had to bear now and expect in the future was not an unmerited disaster, but a just ordinance of the righteous arrangement of the world, the verdict and expression of divine justice itself. whether any one was born as a man or an animal, his position and caste, and the conditions of his birth, the fortune he experienced, were consequences, the reward or punishment, of actions done in a previous state of existence; they were the sentences of a justice which none could escape, of the divine order of the world, to which a man must submit without murmurs. the brahmans were right, the world was full of evils; life was a chain of miseries, and the earth a vale of misery. pity and grace were nowhere to be found, only justice and punishment, only righteous retribution. in past days, indeed, the aryas had cried to varuna to be gracious, to pardon and blot out the offences which men had committed against the gods, intentionally or involuntarily, from an evil heart or from weakness and seduction (p. ). but the theory which the brahmans had subsequently elevated to be the highest duty was without sympathy or pity; it could only allot to every man, in the alternation of birth and decay, the fruits of his deeds. no doubt the people, impelled by the necessity to have above them conceivable, comprehensible, helpful spirits, elevated vishnu and Çiva from among the faded and dishonoured forms of the ancient deities to be the protecting powers of their life in opposition to the god of the brahmans; but though these gave rain and increase to the pastures and the fields, though they cherished kindly feelings towards men, they were powerless against the punishments after death, against regenerations, or the existing order of the world, against the merciless justice of the gods, which recompensed every one inexorably according to his works, and caused every one to be born again without end to new torments. the old healthy pleasure in life which would live for a hundred autumns, and then looked forward to an entrance into the heaven of yama, and participation in the joys of that heaven with the company of the fathers, was past. while all other nations almost without exception regarded death as the worst of evils, and painfully sought to secure continuance after death, the indians were now tortured by the apprehension that they could not die, that they must live for ever, they filled with terrors their conception of life after death, of the endless series of regenerations to a perpetually new life. was there really no mercy on earth or in heaven, no grace, no means of release from these never-ending torments? was the long series of sacrifices with their endless prescripts for every step, the multitude of rules of purification, the performance of penance for every stain, absolutely indispensable if the brahmans themselves allowed that this whole sanctity of works merely bestowed merits of a second rank, and that the treasure even of good works could be exhausted by time? was this arrangement of castes and the observance of their duties absolutely irrevocable? the brahmans required the study of the veda not only from their own order but also from the kshatriyas and the vaiçyas. did not the book of the law contain the requirement (p. ) that every dvija, after satisfying the duties of his order, and of the father of a family (grihastha) should become an eremite (vanaprastha) and penitent (sannyasin)? had not the sankhya, the doctrine of kapila, called in question the merit of the sacrifice and the customs of purification? asceticism, it is true, again removed the distinctions of the orders; the power of penance, the mortification of the pleasures of sense and the body, carried back the members of the three upper orders in a similar way by sanctification, through a greater or less application of penance, into brahman; the legends and the epos showed by the example of viçvamitra that a man could rise by the power of penance from a kshatriya to a brahman. hence all dvijas, in strictly logical sequence, could reach supreme salvation by mortification of the body; and it was easy from these premisses to draw the conclusion that little or nothing depended on descent; that the degree of asceticism and the depth of meditation was everything. if this was the case with sanctification by works; if birth in any one of the three higher orders did not prevent a man from attaining the highest sanctification by asceticism, could the castes be really different races, different emanations from brahman, and distinct forms of his being? was the nucleus of the system, the doctrine of the world-soul, so firmly established as the brahmans maintained? had not the philosophy of the brahmans already passed from scholasticism to heterodoxy? did it not deny, in the sankhya doctrine, the authority of the veda, the existence of the gods, and the brahmanic world-soul? as we have seen, the teaching of kapila left only two existences; nature and the individual spirit. in the north-east of the land of the koçalas, on the spurs of the himalayas, by the river rohini, which falls into the Çaravati (rapti), a tributary of the sarayu, in the neighbourhood of the modern gorakhpur, lay a small principality named kapilavastu, after the metropolis.[ ] it was the kingdom of the race of the Çakyas, who are said to have migrated from potala in the delta of the indus into the land of the koçalas. like the kings of the koçalas the race traced its descent to ikshvaku, the son of manu. and just as great priests of the ancient times were woven into the list of the ancestors of the kings of the bharatas, so the Çakyas of kapilavastu are said to have reckoned gautama, one of the great saints (p. ), among their forefathers; they called themselves gautamas after the family derived from this priest. at the present time a rajaputra family in the district, in which the Çakyas reigned, call themselves gautamiyas.[ ] to the house of the Çakyas belonged king Çuddhodana, who sat on the throne of kapilavastu in the second half of the seventh century b.c. of the son born to this prince in b.c. the legend tells us that he received the name sarvathasiddha (siddhartha), _i.e._ perfect in all things, and that asita, a penitent from the himalayas, announced to the parents that a very high vocation lay before the boy. the young prince was brought up to succeed to the throne; he was instructed in the use of arms, and in all that it became one of his rank to know. after overcoming all the youths of the family of the Çakyas in the contest in his sixteenth year, his father chose yaçodhara as his wife, and beside her he had two other wives and a number of concubines, with whom he lived in luxury and delight in his palaces. thus he lived till his th year, when he saw, while on a journey to a pleasure-garden, an old man with bald head, bent body, and trembling limbs. on a second journey he met one incurably diseased, covered with leprosy and sores, shattered by fever, without any guide or assistance; on a third he saw by the wayside a corpse eaten by worms and decaying. he asked himself what was the value of pleasure, youth, and joy if they were subject to sickness, age, and death? he fell into reflection on the evils which fill the world, and resolved to abandon his palace, his wives, and the son who had just been born to him, and retire into solitude, that he might inquire into the cause of the evils which torment mankind, and meditate on their alleviation. the legends tell us that Çuddhodana opposed this design; he would not allow his son, the kshatriya and successor to his throne, to depart, and commanded festivals to be held to retain him. siddhartha is surrounded by song, dance, and play, which are to enliven and change his mood. but in the night he mounted his horse and left the palace secretly, accompanied by one servant. after riding all night towards the east, he reached the land of the mallas (on the spurs of the himalayas, upon the hiranyavati); there, in the neighbourhood of kuçinagara, the metropolis of the mallas (some miles to the north-east of patna), he gave in the morning his attire to his servant and sent him back with the horses. he retained only the yellow garment which he was wearing (yellow is the royal colour in india), and cut his hair short, in order to live henceforth as a mendicant. after concealing himself for seven days he passed on, begging his way to vaiçali (to the south of kuçinagara) and from vaiçali down the hiranyavati to the ganges; beyond the ganges he turned his course to the metropolis of magadha, rajagriha, near which were the settlements and schools of the most famous brahmans.[ ] here he quickly learned all that the chiefs of the schools, arada kalama, rudraka, and others could teach him, and understood their doctrines; but they could not adequately explain to him the origin of the sorrows of men, nor give him any assistance. dissatisfied with their instruction and doctrines siddhartha resolved to retire wholly from the world, and live in the forest without fire, in order to penetrate to the truth by the most severe penances, the most profound meditations. he now called himself Çakyamuni, _i.e._ anchorite of the family of the Çakyas, went to the southern magadha, and there, near the village of uruvilva on the nairanjana (an affluent of the phalgu) he devoted himself to the most severe exercises. seated without motion he endures heat and cold, storm and rain, hunger and thirst; he eats each day no more than a grain of rice or sesame. for six years he continues these mortifications, and still the ultimate truths refuse to disclose themselves to his reflections; at length he seemed to himself to observe that hunger weakened the power of his mind, and resolved to take moderate nourishment, honey, milk, and rice, which were brought to him by the maidens of uruvilva.[ ] then he went to gaya in the neighbourhood of uruvilva, and there sank under a fig-tree into the deepest meditation. about the last watch in the night, when he had once more in spirit overcome all the temptations of the world, fear, and desire, when he had found that longing could never be laid to rest, only increased with satisfaction, as thirst that is quenched by drinking salt water--when he had called to mind his earlier births, and gathered up the whole world in one survey, revelation and complete illumination were vouchsafed to him. for forty-nine or fifty days, as the legends assure us, siddartha considered in his own mind whether he should publish this revelation, since it was difficult to understand, and men were in the bonds of ignorance and sin. at last he determined to proclaim to the world the law of salvation. when he had explained it to two merchants, travelling with their caravans through the forest of gaya, he took his way first to varanasi (benares) on the ganges ( b.c.). in the deer-park near this city he preached for the first time, and though several of the hearers were astonished and said, "the king's son has lost his reason," he won over the first five disciples for his doctrine.[ ] from this time the 'enlightened' (buddha), as the legends call him after the complete revelation was vouchsafed to him,[ ] wandered as a mendicant, with a jar in his hand for collecting alms, through the districts of india, from ujjayini (ozene) at the foot of the western vindhyas[ ] as far as champa on the ganges, the metropolis of the angas, in order to proclaim everywhere the truth and the law of salvation. "many," so buddha preached, "impelled by distress, seek refuge in the mountains and forests, in settlements and under sacred trees. this is not the refuge which liberates from pain. he that comes to me for refuge will learn the four highest truths: pain, the origin of pain, the annihilation of pain, and the way that leads to the annihilation of pain. whoever knows these truths is in possession of the highest refuge."[ ] twelve years had elapsed since buddha left his paternal city kapilavastu, when at his father's invitation he returned thither; and his father, his kindred, the whole family of the Çakyas and many of his countrymen became converts to his doctrine. surrounded by the most eager of his disciples, he proceeded onward, and was among them, as the legends say, "like the bull among the cows, like the elephant among his young ones, like the moon in the lunar houses, the physician among his patients."[ ] varanasi in the land of the kaçis, mithila in the land of the videhas, Çravasti (to the north of ayodhya) in the land of the koçalas, mathura in the land of the Çurasenas, kauçambi in the land of the bharatas, were the chief scenes of his activity. buddha was deeply penetrated by the conviction that the earth was a vale of misery, and the world nothing but a "mass of pain."[ ] the sorrows which torture mankind excited his deepest compassion; he would fain help men in their distress. above all he was oppressed with the thought that sorrows do not end with this life; that man is ever born again to new misery, driven without rest through an eternal alternation of birth and death, in order to find new sorrows without end, but no repose. he was tortured by this "restless revolution of the wheel of the world," by the torments of resurrection from another womb to new and greater pains; more eagerly than any other, buddha sought repose, peace, and death without any resurrection. with the utmost eagerness he plunged into the brahmanic theory and speculation; it did not satisfy him; in it, and by it, he found no alleviation, no end of the evil; he submitted to the severest asceticism of the brahmans; it crushed his spirit without giving him rest. he therefore turned from the orthodox systems to the heterodox doctrine of kapila. even that failed to satisfy him; but he followed still further the path which it pointed out, in order to discover the liberation from evil which he sought so earnestly. at last he believed himself to be possessed of the delivering truth. with the adherents of the sankhya doctrine buddha believed himself to have ascertained that neither the gods nor a supreme all-pervading world-soul exists. he also, in opposition to the orthodox doctrine, makes the individual soul his starting-point, and the multitude of individual spirits, which alone have true existence and reality. but if the doctrine of kapila found the liberation from nature and the body in the fact that the soul attains the consciousness of her independent existence in opposition to nature, discovers her own absolute position as opposed to the body, and merely contemplates the latter, buddha struck out a far more radical way for the liberation from evil and the freedom of the soul. buddha first establishes the fact that evil exists; then he inquires why it exists and must always exist; he attempts to prove that it can and ought to be annihilated, and finally he occupies himself with the means of this annihilation.[ ] he who will ascertain truth and acquire freedom from evil, has first to convince himself that evil exists. evil is birth, sickness, the weakness of age, the restlessness and torment of our projects and efforts, the inability to attain what we strive for, the separation from that which we love, the contact with that which we do not love. in this world of existence all is vanity. happiness is followed by misfortune; even the happiness and power of kings flows away more rapidly than running water.[ ] mutability is the last and worst evil; it is the fire which consumes the three worlds.[ ] birth is changeable and worthless, for it leads to death; youth, for it becomes age; health, for it is subject to sickness. all that exists, passes away. this ceaseless change is bound up with pain and sorrow. childhood suffers the pain of weakness; youth is impelled by desires which cannot be fulfilled, and which cause pain if unfulfilled. age suffers the pain of decay and sickness, and of death; with death begins a new life through regeneration to the same or even greater torments. to this evil of mutability, and consequently to pain, all living creatures without exception are subject. evil and pain are universal; men are destined to lose what is dearest to them; and animals are destined to be eaten by each other. from the knowledge that evil exists, that all living creatures are subject to evil, follows the truth that men must strive to liberate themselves from evil. after setting forth his problem in this formal and minutely systematic manner, buddha goes still further. if man will free himself from pain, pain must be annihilated. in order to attain this end the cause of it must be discovered. this cause is desire (_trishna_). desire is the passion which man feels to attain content and satisfaction, the ever-renewed impulse to have pleasant sensations and avoid the unpleasant, which is sometimes satisfied, but more frequently the reverse.[ ] if pain is to be annihilated, desire must be annihilated. the cause of desire is sensation, and if we inquire into sensation we find on reflection that it is something transitory. when we have the sensation of what is pleasant, the sensation of what is unpleasant does not exist any longer, and _vice versâ_; sensation therefore is subject to annihilation, and in consequence is not permanent, nor has it any real existence. sensation is, as the buddhists say, "empty and without substance."[ ] it does not belong to the nature of the soul. as soon as we can say of sensation or of any other object, "i am not this, this is not my soul," we are free from it; and when we have attained this knowledge, no sensation whatever, nor conception, nor perception, exercises any charm over man.[ ] if this knowledge is acquired, man is in a position to "unbind" himself from sensation, and as soon as he has unbound himself from sensation he has liberated himself from it; he feels neither inclination nor disinclination; neither restlessness nor pain, nor despair;[ ] his heart no longer clings to the "causes of content, which were at the same time the causes of discontent, more closely than drops of rain to the leaf of the lotus."[ ] if we go further in this direction and instruct ourselves by meditation that even the senses, eyes, ears, etc., are perishable,[ ] that the body is subject to birth and death, and consequently that it is something transitory and without permanence, we are freed from the body and henceforth merely contemplate it. from this point of view we perceive that the body of a man is his executioner; and in the senses we recognise desolated villages, in the things of the external world, the enemies and plunderers which perpetually attack men, disquiet and ravage them.[ ] whatever a man has hitherto felt of dependence and inclination, of care and submissiveness to the body; whatever content and satisfaction he has felt through the body in the body,--is now annihilated by the knowledge that the body is nothing real, that it is not the soul. when we have reached this point, pain is removed, because the cause of it is removed; man is no longer dazzled by desire, and therefore no longer distressed; he is now lord of his senses and lord of himself. freed from all bonds, from all inclinations to, and dependence on, the world, he feels the happiness and joy of repose.[ ] thus far buddha has agreed with the doctrine of kapila that the soul must be separated and set free from the body, in his results, if the mode of development be different; he now proceeds in his speculations far beyond the sankhya system. he was not content to have discovered the path of liberation from the torments of sensuality, of the body, and the external world; he asked further, how can man be raised above the necessity of perpetually renewing this process of the liberation of the soul from the body after new regenerations? if the sankhya doctrine established nature and matter as an eternal potency beside the plurality of individual souls, and derived all existence from the creative power of matter, buddha rather saw the creative power, the basis of all existence, in the individual souls, in the "breathing beings," and from this view arrived at a different, more thorough means of liberation. according to the legends the way to this liberation was revealed to buddha in the night under the fig-tree of gaya, when in the deepest meditation he represented to himself the web of regenerations, how many and what dwellings he had inhabited previously, and how many had been the dwellings of other creatures; how he and the rest of the world lived through a hundred thousand millions of existences--when he called to mind the periods of destruction and the periods of regeneration. "there," he said, "was i, in that place; i bore this name; i was of this tribe and that family, and this caste; i lived so many years; i experienced this happiness and that misfortune.[ ] after my death i was born again; i lived through these fortunes, and here, at last, i have again come to the light. is there then no means of escaping this world, which is born, changes, and dies, and again grows up? are there no limits to this accumulation of sorrows?" at last, attaining to immobility in thought about the last watch, just before the break of day, he once more collected his powers and asked himself:[ ] what is the cause of age, death, and all pain? birth. what is the cause of birth? existence. what is the cause of existence? attachment to existence. what is the cause of this attachment? desire. what is the cause of desire? sensation. of sensation what is the cause? the contact of a man with things excites in him this or that sensation, sensation generally.[ ] what is the cause of contact? the senses. what is the cause of the senses? name and shape, _i.e._ the individual existence. what is the cause of this? consciousness. and of consciousness, what? the existing not-knowledge,[ ] i.e. the intellectual capacity; this is no other than the soul itself. in order to annihilate pain, birth must be annihilated; the annihilation of birth requires the annihilation of existence; this requires the destruction of attachment to existence; and to accomplish this destruction desire and sensation must be annihilated; and this again requires the annihilation of contact with the world. but as contact with the world rests on the receptivity of the senses, which in turn rests on the individual existence, this existence rests on consciousness, and consciousness on the not-knowledge, _i.e._ on the possibility of not-knowledge in the individual spirit, on the intellectual state; not-knowledge must in the end be annihilated. this takes place by the true knowledge, which shows that the sensations of men are only of a transitory nature, illusions, not belonging to his true being; thus it is that the individual is loosed from pain and the body, or merely contemplates it as it contemplates all existence; and thus dependence on existence and desire are softened or removed. the same result is also attained by the annihilation of not-knowledge as the basis of individual existence, by the quenching of the individual, by nirvana, _i.e._ the extinction, the "blowing away" by which the individual "falls into the void," and cannot be born again. from the annihilation of the basis of existence follows the annihilation of existence; it cannot arise again when the basis is destroyed. though this series of causes and effects may first have received the form in which we have it in the schools of the adherents of buddha, the nucleus belongs beyond a doubt to the founder of the doctrine. it shows sufficiently with what dialectical consistency--though proceeding like all the products of the indian mind from fantastic hypotheses, and coloured with fantastic elements, so that sequence of time is often taken for the relation of cause and effect--buddha attempted to penetrate to final causes and ultimate aims. evil is existence generally. if evil is to be removed, existence must be removed, and not existence only but the roots of it. this proposition is the leading motive in his reasoning. he keeps steadily to the logical formula that all existence is the operation of a cause, and consequently existence can only be destroyed when the cause of it is destroyed. the nucleus of his argument is: whence do men come? they arise out of their nature, which is the existing not-knowing, or, as we should say, the substratum of knowing, the intellectual capacity. where do men go in death? this intellectual basis is compelled by its own nature to assume ever new forms, to put on a new robe from the material of nature or the elements. how can the soul, the intellectual capacity, be checked in this? by self-annihilation. here buddha found himself at the most difficult problem of indian speculation, which failed to find an internal transition from not-being to being, from being to not-being, so that in it the principles always remain the same, and cause and effect are equally eternal. hence in order to be consistent, he must seek the solution of his problem, the cessation of the regenerations, in the annihilation of the cause of these regenerations; and this cause was in his view the intellectual capacity. as the soul is first set free from sensation, and then from the body, so man must finally be set free from the soul, the self, the _ego_, by destroying the basis and possibility of this; while the adherents of the sankhya doctrine merely separated the soul from the body, merely looked on at the revolution of the wheel of nature; and the brahmans would plunge the soul in brahman. at a later time a great deal of controversy arose as to what buddha meant by nirvana, and persons of great eminence in the buddhist church have had recourse to the explanation that he alone knows what nirvana is who finds himself in that state. yet from the process and tendency of buddha's philosophy, as well as from the most ancient definitions, it is sufficiently clear what condition, what results, were meant to be attained by nirvana. the most ancient explanations term it, "the cessation of thought, when its causes are suppressed:" they denote it as a condition, "in which nothing remains of that which constitutes existence."[ ] with the impossibility of feeling impressions, of knowing anything, and therefore of desiring anything, the being of the individual also ceases, according to buddha's view, and it was the extinction of this at which he aimed. in nirvana, according to the older legends, nothing remains but "emptiness;" it is frequently compared with "the exhaustion of a lamp when it goes out."[ ] but how this condition is brought about we are not told; we only know that all contact, external or internal, with the world must be removed.[ ] when every distinct conception, and even everything that may give rise to such a conception, had been avoided; when a man had put aside every thought, and every excitement of the spirit, he ought to succeed in destroying the thinking principle within him. the man of knowledge has discovered that all which is, is worthless; that nothing exists really and essentially; he has broken through the shells of deception and ignorance. he has diverted and liberated his feeling from these frivolities, and now passes into the condition in which he has nothing more to think of, nothing more to feel, and consequently nothing more to desire; that is, he has attained a state in which feeling and thoughts are extinguished, and continue extinguished. if any feeling or conception remains in this condition, the _ego_ in nirvana would feel peace and joy at the thought that nothing any longer existed, that itself ceased to exist. thus it becomes clear what was the object sought in nirvana, and we cannot have any doubt that this attempt at annihilation, if made in earnest, must practically lead to the same results as the absorption of the brahmans in brahman--that it caused men to become dull, stupid, and brutalised.[ ] buddha was of opinion that through this series of thoughts he had discovered the final causes, the absolute truth as well as absolute liberation. when he has arrived at the final ground of existence, the man of meditation can say to himself, according to the legends: "the dreadful night of error is taken from the soul, the sun of knowledge has risen,[ ] the gates of the false path which lead to existences filled with misery are closed.[ ] i am on the further shore; the pure way to heaven is opened; i have entered upon the way of nirvana.[ ] on this way are dried up the ocean of blood and of tears, the mountains of human bones are broken through, and the army of death is annihilated, as an elephant throws down a hut of reeds.[ ] he who follows this path without faltering, escapes from pain, from mutability, from the changes of the world, and the wheel of revolution, the regenerations. he can boast: 'i have done my duty; i have annihilated existence for myself. i cannot be born again; i am free; i shall see no other existence after this.'"[ ] an old formula of faith, which is often found under pictures of buddha, runs thus: "the beings which proceed from a cause, their cause he who pointed out the way (tathagata) has explained, and what prevents their operation the great Çramana has also explained."[ ] had buddha contented himself with the results of his speculation, the only consequence of his doctrine would have been this; he would have added one more to the philosophical systems of the indians; he would have founded a new philosophical system, a subdivision of the heterodox sankhya doctrine. the question was really the same, whether the soul was destroyed when in the one case it was plunged in brahman, and in the other annihilated by nirvana; whether those who sought after liberation had to become masters of their senses like the brahmans, or to release themselves from sensation and the body and existence like buddha. for both methods the profoundest meditation was necessary as a means; the final manipulations and results were mystical on both sides; the only difference was that the logical consistency of buddha was more simple and acute, the dialectics of the orthodox system more varied and fantastic; the penances of the brahmans were severe and painful, while buddha contented himself with a moderate asceticism. from his disciples who would attain the highest liberation he demanded nothing more than that they should renounce the world, _i.e._ should devote themselves to a life of chastity and poverty. then like their master they must shave head and chin, while the brahman penitents wore a tail of hair, put on a robe of yellow colour, such as buddha wore,--a garment of sewn rags was best--take a jar in their hands for the collection of alms, and go round the country begging, after the example of buddha, in order to point out to people the way of salvation. only the rainy season might be spent in retirement, in common discussion on the highest truths, or in lonely meditation on the way of nirvana. this new mode of asceticism would not have gone beyond the limits of the school, had not buddha added a moral for the whole world to his philosophy for the initiated. as we have in the sankhya system a kind of rationalistic reaction, after the indian measure it is true, against the flighty theorems of the brahmans, so in the practice of buddha the prominent features are more simple, healthy, and sensible. the sankhya system places liberation essentially in the release of the spirit from nature by the power of knowledge; according to buddha's doctrine liberation must be sought not only in the path of knowledge but also in the will and temper. when the temper is rendered peaceful; when desire ceases, and the withering of the soul comes to an end, then knowledge can begin.[ ] in this repose of the passions, which arise from egoism, there is a very definite practical and moral feature, of great importance for development and edification. buddha allowed that every one could not attain the highest liberation by the mode of asceticism and meditation which he taught; but he did not therefore leave the people to their fate, like those who preceded him in philosophy; he did not, like these, point to the sacrifices, customs, purifications, and penances. even for those who were not in a position to liberate themselves wholly from the misery of the earth and the torments of regenerations, by entering into the way of illumination, were to have their pains and sorrows alleviated as far as possible. the desire to do away with the passions, and with selfishness, the lively sympathy, the earnest effort to alleviate the sorrows of men, from which buddha's philosophy starts, are also the source of his ethics, which are to be preached to the whole nation. as contact with the world is the chief cause of desire, and therefore of the pain and distress which come upon men, the main object is to come into contact with the world as little as possible, to live as far as may be in peace and quietness. the requirement of a still and quiet life is the first principle of the ethics of buddha. even the layman must bring repose into his senses. he must moderate his impulses and passions, his wishes and his desires, if he cannot annihilate them. he must guard against the excitement of passions, for these are the chief cause of the pains which torment mankind. he must be chaste and continent within the limits of reason; he must drink no intoxicating liquor; at the accustomed hours he must take the necessary food (otherwise the belly causes a multitude of sins[ ]); he must clothe himself simply. he must not attempt to amass much silver and gold, or waste the property which he has, in order to procure enjoyment. in a word, "he must turn his back on pain, ambition, and satisfaction."[ ] the evils which are unavoidable in spite of a simple, moderate, and passionless life, he must bear with patience, for in this way they become most tolerable. injustice coming from others must also be received with patience; ill-treatment, even mutilation and death, must be borne quietly, without hatred towards those who inflict them: "mutilation liberates a man from members which are perishable, execution from this filthy body, which dies." those who treat us in this manner are not to be hated, because all that comes upon a man is a punishment or reward for actions done in this or a previous life.[ ] though buddha adheres to the conception of the brahmans, which had long been the common property of the nation, that a man's lot in this world is the consequence of actions done in an earlier existence, he could nevertheless point to further alleviations of the evils of life than those attained by moderation and patience. all men without regard to caste, birth, and nation, form in buddha's view a great society of suffering in the earthly vale of misery; it is their duty not mutually to add other sorrows to those already imposed upon them by their existence; on the contrary, they ought mutually to alleviate the burden of unavoidable misery. as every man ought to attempt to lessen the pains of existence for himself, so it is also his duty to lessen those of his fellows. in buddha's doctrine not our own sorrows but the sorrows of our fellow-men are a cause for distress.[ ] from this principle buddha derived the commands of regard, assistance, sympathy, mercy, love, brotherly kindness towards all men. if, according to the doctrine of the brahmans, and of buddha also, there was no love, no grace, and no pity in heaven, they are henceforth to exist on earth. the love which buddha preaches is essentially sympathy; it arises from another source than the love of christianity. it is not in buddhism the highest commandment for its own sake alone: it is not the liberating, active, creative, ethical power, which not only removes selfishness from the negative side, but also positively transforms the natural into the moral man, and exalts the family, community, and state into moral communities. in buddhism love wishes above all things to lament with others, and by helpful communion to make life more endurable; it is simply the means to alleviate the sorrows of the world. hence buddha commands us to be without selfishness towards all men, to spend nothing on ourselves that is intended for another. to speak hard words to a fellow-man is a great sin; no one is to be injured by scornful speeches.[ ] what can be done must be done for the amelioration of a fellow-man and the promotion of his prosperity. a man must be liberal towards his relations and friends; gentle towards his servants; he must give alms without any intermission, and practise works of mercy;[ ] he must provide nourishment for the poor; and must take care of the sick and alleviate their sorrows. he must plant wholesome herbs, trees, and groves, especially on the roads, that the poor and the pilgrims may find nourishment and shade; he must dig wells for them, receive travellers hospitably, for that is a sacred duty, and erect inns for them.[ ] if the brahmans are cautioned against the killing of animals, and the eating of flesh is restricted among them as much as possible (p. ), buddha is still more strict in this respect. nothing that has life is to be put to death, neither man nor animal; pain is not to be inflicted on any living creature; a man must have sympathy with the sufferings even of animals, and tend such as are old and weak. consistent in his attempt to discover the alleviation of pain in the heart and mind of man, buddha remits even the sins of commission by internal change and improvement of mind. if a man has committed a sin of thought, word, or act,[ ] he must repent and acknowledge it before his co-religionists, and those who have attained a higher degree of liberation. repentance and confession diminish or blot out the sin, according to the degree of their depth and sincerity, and not painful penances and expiations, which only increase the torments of the body, the thing which we desire to diminish.[ ] no one is to make a parade of good works; these he should conceal, and publish his failings.[ ] thus the ethics of buddha are comprehended in the three principles of chastity, patience, and mercy, _i.e._ of a moderate and passionless life, of ready and willing submission to any annoyance or unavoidable evil, and finally of sympathy and active assistance for our fellow-men. an old formula tells us: "the eschewing of evil, the doing of good, the taming of our own thoughts, this is the doctrine of buddha."[ ] the legends tell us of a great disputation held at Çravasti (the metropolis of the koçalas), in which buddha was victorious over six holy penitents of the brahmans; the leading brahman even took his own life in disgust and disappointment. as the legends relate, the brahmans were afraid that buddha's doctrine would diminish their honour and importance, that they would receive fewer gifts and presents; they were distressed that buddha allowed even the lowest and impure castes to enter the order of penitents. according to the statement of the sutras the brahmans caused the communities to inflict fines on such persons as listened to buddha's words, and from the kings of certain districts they procured edicts forbidding his doctrine. though the brahmans may have succeeded in prejudicing one or two princes against buddha and his doctrine, in other regions of india, not to mention his own home, he did not miss the effectual protection of the secular arm. from the very first year of the public appearance of buddha, bimbisara king of magadha is said to have given him his protection and support, and to have assigned to his disciples the bamboo-garden, near the metropolis rajagriha, for their residence. the king of the koçalas also, prasenajit, supported buddha, and his metropolis, Çravasti, became a favourite residence of buddha in the rainy season, a centre of the new doctrine, to the north of the ganges, as rajagriha was on the south of the river. lastly, the legends speak of vatsa, the king of the bharatas, who resided at kauçambi, and pradyota of ujjayini, and rudrayana of roruka, a region which apparently lay to the east of magadha, among the protectors of buddha. towards the princes buddha's conduct was prudent and circumspect; he did not impart to any of their magistrates or servants the initiation of the beggar; he adopted none of them into the community of the initiated without the express sanction of the king.[ ] on the people his appearance and disputations with the brahmans could hardly make any other impression than that he also was one of the philosophising penitents who wandered through the lands of the ganges, teaching and begging, with or without disciples.[ ] if the brahmans persecuted buddha, they called out to them: what would ye have?--he is a mendicant like yourselves! buddha is said to have suffered the most severe persecution, when past his seventieth year, from devadatta, a near relation. even in youth the eager rival of siddartha in martial exercises, devadatta is said to have been filled with cruel envy by the success of buddha's teaching. so he determined to appear as a teacher in buddha's place, and for this object he united himself with ajataçatru, the son of bimbisara of magadha. the latter was to murder his father, the protector of buddha; devadatta desired to assassinate buddha himself, and then the two, by mutual support, would hold the first place. devadatta assembled disciples; ajataçatru, in the year b.c., dethroned his father, and according to the legends of the buddhists caused him to die of starvation in a dungeon. after the death of his protector the enlightened was to perish also. from the top of the vulture mountain near rajagriha, devadatta hurls a stone on buddha as he passes by underneath; but he merely wounded him slightly on the toes; in vain is an elephant maddened with palm wine let loose upon buddha, the raging animal kneels down before him. to escape these persecutions buddha leaves magadha and turns to Çravasti. devadatta pursues him, in order to attack him afresh there, and destroy him by the poisoned nails of his fingers; but when he approaches buddha he sinks into hell, while king ajataçatru is converted, and from a persecutor of buddha becomes a zealous protector of his doctrine.[ ] this legend is obviously told in order to glorify the victorious sanctity of buddha, nevertheless it contains a certain nucleus of history. at a very early time there was a division among the adherents of buddha; the author and leader of this division was called devadatta. even in the seventh century a.d. there were monasteries in india which followed the doctrine and rules of devadatta. among the eight disciples of buddha, according to the legends, Çariputra and maudgalyayana, young brahmans of the village of nalanda near rajagriha, took the first place. after these the sutras mention kaçyapa a brahman, upali a Çudra, who had been a barber, _i.e._ who had carried on one of the lowest, most impure, and contemptible occupations before he followed buddha, and two nephews of buddha of the race of Çakya, anuruddha and ananda. ananda is said to have accompanied buddha for twenty-five years without interruption; to "have heard the most, and kept the best what he heard." after these, nanda, a step-brother of buddha, and buddha's own son, rahula, are mentioned in the first rank. it was not the favour or dislike of princes, nor the speculative power of his doctrine, nor the devotion of his nearest scholars, which procured a reception for buddha's doctrine. on the contrary, the success of buddha rests precisely on the fact that his teaching is not restricted to doctrine, nor to a school. he ventured to step out of the circle of the brahmans, and the learned in the veda, beyond the lonely life in the forest; he was bold enough to break through the limitations imposed upon instruction by tradition and law. he did not, like the brahmanic teacher, hold sittings with his pupils, at which they alone were present; he spoke in the open market place, and addressed his words not only to the dvijas, but to the Çudras and chandalas also--an unheard-of event: for this purpose he speaks the language of the people, not sanskrit, the language of the brahmanas and the learned; he preached in a popular style, while the doctrines of the brahmans, set forth in the formulas of the schools, must have remained unintelligible to the people, even if repeated in their language. with the people buddha dwelt far more on his ethics than on his metaphysics, though he did not exclude the latter, and his ethical lectures in each case developed the principle in application to the particular instance.[ ] in other respects his method of teaching must have been the most effective which could be applied in india, unless we are deceived by the legends. by means of the complete illumination vouchsafed to buddha, he saw through the web of regenerations. for every man he deduced the circumstances of his present life, his good or evil fortune, from the virtues and sins of a previous existence. to a man whose eyes had been put out by the order of a king he revealed the fact that in a previous existence he had torn out the eyes of many gazelles; but as he had also done good deeds in that life he had been born again in a good family, with a handsome exterior.[ ] he told another that in a previous existence he had killed an anchorite, and for this he had already suffered punishment in hell for several thousand years; he would also lose his head in this life, and would suffer the same misfortune for four hundred successive existences.[ ] however effective buddha's method may have been, it was the tendency of his doctrine which could not fail sooner or later to open the hearts of the people. the lower castes were subject to the ill treatment and exactions of the state, to the haughty pride of the brahmans; they were pressed into the unalterable arrangement of the castes, and thus branded by law and custom, they were exposed to the severest oppression. the doctrine of morals was resolved into the observance of the duties of caste, into the endless series of offerings and sacrifice, purifications and expiations; thus it became degraded into an artificial and painful sanctification by works, which no one could ever satisfy. religion was lost in a confused medley of gods and magic on the one hand, and of obscure and unintelligible speculation on the other. in opposition to these circumstances, requirements, and doctrines, buddha declared that no one, not even the lowest and most contemptible castes, were excluded from hearing and finding the truth; that alleviation of pain and rest, salvation and liberation, could be acquired by any one. instead of the observance of the duties of caste he required the brotherly love of all men; in opposition to distorted ethics he restores its due rights to natural feeling. the sacrifice and sanctification by works of the brahmans is replaced by the taming of the passions, and sympathy, by the fulfilment of simple duties, painful penances by easy asceticism, by the plain morality of patience and quietism; the veda and gods of the brahmans by a theory at any rate more intelligible, accompanied by the doctrine that even without this theory every one of his own heart and will could enter upon the way of salvation, and by such conduct alleviate his fortune in this and the following courses of life, while the initiated could at once force their way to death without regeneration. any man could assume the yellow robe if he vowed to live in poverty and chastity, and wander through the land as a mendicant, a mode of obtaining a livelihood which is not difficult in india. if the doctrine of the brahmans had banished mercy out of heaven, it had reappeared on earth in the "enlightened," the "pointer of the way," who met the pride and haughtiness of the brahmans with gentleness and humility; who showed sympathetic pity for the lowest and poorest, for all the weary and heavy-laden;[ ] who in the midst of oppressed nations taught how unavoidable evils could be borne most easily; how they could be alleviated by mutual help; who called on all to ameliorate their lot by their own power, and considered it the highest duty to obtain this amelioration for ourselves and provide it for others. according to buddha's view the castes must fall to the ground. there was no world-soul from which all creatures emanated, and therefore the distinctions which rested on the succession of these emanations did not exist. in the first instance, however, he attacked the castes from the point of view that the body can only have a subordinate value. "he who looks closely at the body," he said, "will find no difference between the body of the slave and the body of the prince. the best soul can dwell in the worst body." "the body must be valued or despised in respect of the spirit which is in it. the virtues do not inquire after the castes."[ ] but he also applied the distinction of castes to show that in fact they give a higher or lower position to men; that the arrangement brings external advantages or disadvantages. it was the conception of the more or less favourable regenerations which caused him to assume these distinctions and bring them into the series of regenerations. he allowed that there was a gradation leading from the chandalas to the brahmans, that birth in a higher or lower position was a consequence of the virtues or failings of earlier existences; but the distinctions were not of such a kind that they limited the spirit; that they could in any way prevent even the least and lowest from hearing the true doctrine and understanding it, and attaining salvation and liberation. hence while the castes do indeed form distinctions among men, these distinctions are not essential, but in reality indifferent. if the brahmans reproached buddha that he preached to the impure, he replied: "my law is a law of grace for all."[ ] he received Çudras and chandalas, barbers and street-sweepers, slaves and remorseful criminals, among his disciples and initiated.[ ] nor did he exclude women; even to them he imparted the initiation of the mendicant.[ ] on one occasion ananda, the scholar of buddha, met a chandala maiden drawing water at a fountain, and asked to drink. she replied that she was a chandala and might not touch him. ananda answered: "my sister, i do not ask about your caste, nor about your family; i ask you for water if you can give it me." buddha is then said to have received the maiden among his initiated.[ ] for twenty-four years, we are told, buddha wandered from one place to another, to preach his doctrine, to strengthen his disciples in their faith, to arrange their condition, and in the rainy season to show to the initiated the way to the highest liberation, to death without regeneration. according to the legends of the northern buddhists, he saw towards the end of his days the overthrow of his ancestral city, and the defeat of his adherents. the Çakyas of kapilavastu are said to have become odious to virudhaka (kshudraka in the vishnu-purana), the successor of king prasenajit on the throne of the koçalas. he marched against them with his army; obtained possession of the city of kapilavastu, and caused the inhabitants to be massacred. buddha is said to have heard the noise of the conquest, and the cry of the dying. when the king of the koçalas had marched away with his army, buddha, we are told, wandered in the night through the ruined corpse-strewn streets of his home. in the pleasure-garden of his father's palace, where he had played as a boy, lay maidens with hands and feet cut off, of whom some were still alive; buddha gave them his sympathy and comforted them. the massacre of kapilavastu, the slaughter of the Çakyas, if it took place at all, cannot have been complete, for at a later time the race is mentioned as existing and active. in the eightieth year of his life buddha is said to have visited rajagriha and nalanda in the land of magadha; afterwards he crossed the ganges, and announced to his disciples in vaiçali, the metropolis of the tribe of the vrijis (p. ), that he should die in three months. he exhorted them to redoubled zeal, begged them, when he was no more, to collect his commands, and preach them to the world. accompanied by his pupils ananda and anuruddha he then set out to the north, to the land of the mallas, and kuçinagara, where in former days he had laid aside the royal dress and assumed the condition of a mendicant. falling sick on the way, he came exhausted into the neighbourhood of kuçinagara, where ananda prepared a bed for him in a grove. here he said farewell, sank into meditation, and died with the words "nothing continues," never to be born again. at ananda's suggestion the mallas buried the dead enlightened with the burial of a king. after preparations lasting through seven days the corpse was placed in a golden coffin, carried in solemn procession before the eastern gate of kuçinagara, and laid on a wooden pyre. the ashes were placed in a golden urn, and for seven days festivals were held in honour of the "compassionate buddha, the man free from stain" ( b.c.).[ ] footnotes: [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] köppen, "religion des buddha," s. . kapilavastu means habitation of kapila. it was the philosophy of kapila which lay at the base of the teaching of buddha. [ ] the gautamas were the most important priestly family among the videhas. lassen, "ind. alterth." , ; , ; burnouf, "introduction," p. ; a. weber, "ind. studien," , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] köppen, on the ground that ujjayini is not mentioned among the southern buddhists, limits the sphere of the activity of buddha to the triangle formed by champa, kanyakubja, and Çravasti. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] _e.g._ burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] these are the four sublime truths (_aryani satyani_) of buddhism; pain, the creation of pain, the annihilation of pain, and the way which leads to the annihilation of pain. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. - . for further information about the series of the causes of being (_nidana_), which is not very intelligible, see köppen, s. . my object is merely to indicate the line of argument. [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , , ff. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] schlagintweit, "buddhism in tibet," p. ff. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] köppen, s. . [ ] köppen, s. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . köppen, s. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] köppen, s. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , , , , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ; lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . chapter iii. the kingdom of magadha and the settlements in the south. king ajataçatru of magadha, who is said to have dethroned his father bimbisara in the the year b.c. and put him to death, to have persecuted the "enlightened," and then, from a persecutor to have changed into a zealous follower, demanded, according to the legends of the buddhists, that the mallas should give up to him the remains of buddha (the ashes and the bones of his corpse) for preservation. but the mallas refused to do this. the Çakyas also laid claim to them because buddha sprang from their family; the warrior families of the vrijis of vaiçali because buddha was a kshatriya; and finally the koçalas of ramagrama demanded them. ajataçatru intended to possess himself of them by force. then a learned brahman succeeded in preventing the decision by an appeal to arms; the remains were divided into eight portions, and distributed among the different claimants, of whom each erected a memorial for his portion. ajataçatru buried his portion under a stupa, _i.e._ a tower with a cupola, near his metropolis rajagriha.[ ] of the further deeds of ajataçatru we only learn that he subjugated to his dominion the vrijis, who were governed by a council formed of the elders of their families.[ ] of the immediate successors of ajataçatru in magadha, udayabhadra ( - b.c.), anuruddhaka ( - b.c.), and nagadasaka ( - b.c.), nothing further is known than that each murdered his father.[ ] nagadasaka, the great-grandson of ajataçatru, is said to have been dethroned by the people, who set up in his place Çiçunaga a son of ajataçatru, who seems to have previously ruled as a vassal king in the city of the vrijis, the conquered vaiçali.[ ] this Çiçunaga, who ruled over magadha from the year to b.c., was succeeded on the throne by his son, kalaçoka.[ ] from this subjugation and conquest of the territory of the vrijis, from a statement of the legend of the buddhists, according to which kalaçoka inflicts punishments in mathura on the yamuna,[ ]--and further from the fact that the lists of the brahmans for the kingdoms of the bharatas and the koçalas, and the territories of varanasi and mithila, end with the third or fourth successor of the princes who reigned, according to the legend of the buddhists, at the time of the enlightened--we may assume that after the reign of ajataçatru the power of the kings of magadha increased, and continued to extend till the neighbouring states on the north and west of magadha were gradually embodied in this kingdom. kalaçoka provided a new metropolis; he left rajagriha and took up his abode in a city of his own building, pataliputra. the name means son of the trumpet-flower. it lay to the north-west of rajagriha on the confluence of the Çona and the ganges, on the bank of the great river, a little above the modern patna. megasthenes, who spent some time in this city a century and a half after it was built, tells us that palibothra (such is the form he gives to the name) was the greatest and most famous city of india. in shape it was a long rectangle, with a circuit of about miles. the longer sides were , the shorter sides , stades in length. sixty-four gates allowed entrance through the wooden wall, pierced by windows for archers, and was surrounded by a wonderful trench, feet broad, and cubits deep, which was filled by the waters of the ganges and the Çona; the wall was in addition flanked by towers. the royal palace in the city was splendid, and the inhabitants very numerous.[ ] we have already learnt from the sutras the circuit, equipment, and wealth of the royal citadels. that palibothra, at the time when it was the metropolis not only of the whole land of the ganges but also of the valley of the indus, was only protected by a wooden wall, provided, it is true, with many towers, _i.e._ by a palisade, is remarkable, for it is sufficiently proved that the cities and citadels of the panjab in the fourth century b.c. were surrounded by walls of bricks or masonry. in the sutras of the buddhists we have already seen that the arian life and civilisation extended in the first half of the sixth century from the panjab to the mouth of the ganges, and also that the north-western spurs of the vindhyas, no less than the coast of guzerat (surashtra) were occupied by arian states. the ancient inhabitants of these regions, the bhillas and kolas (kulis), occupied here the same contemptible and degraded position which the chandalas occupied on the ganges. in the course of the sixth and in the fifth century b.c. the colonisation and conquests of the arian indians made even more important advances. the southern regions of the deccan were appropriated, and the island of ceylon conquered. it has been observed that at an early time a trade existed by sea between the land of the indus and the malabar coast; in this way alone could the sandal-wood, which flourishes nowhere but this coast, have reached the mouth of the indus as early as b.c. (p. ). the tradition of the brahmans assigns the colonisation of the malabar coast, not of the northern part only, but even of kerala, in the south, to the twelfth century b.c. we shall be more secure if we assume that the arian settlements were not pushed further to the south till arian states arose on the coast of surashtra. the first settlements on the west coast are said to have been founded by brahmans: an expedition of brahmans is said to have reached far to the south, and to have founded settlements there; to have converted the inhabitants to brahmanism, and in this way to have founded the kingdom of kerala (on the sources of the kaveri).[ ] on the eastern shore of the deccan the arian civilisation passed from the mouths of the ganges to the south. we do not know in what manner the odras, who dwelt in the valley and on the mouths of the mahanadi, were gained over by the brahmans. in the book of the law they are reckoned among the degenerate warriors.[ ] but in this region the change to the arian life must have been very complete; there are no remains of an older language in the dialect of orissa. the language exhibits the stamp of sanskrit, and the brahmanic system was afterwards carried out even more strictly here than in the valley of the ganges. even on the coromandel coast the southern parts are said to have been colonised earlier than the centre. the first arian settlers are said to have landed on the island of rameçvara, which lies off the mouth of the vaigaru, in the sixth century b.c., and then to have passed over to the mainland, which was occupied by the tribes of the tamilas, to have eradicated the forests, and cultivated the land.[ ] one of these settlers, pandya by name, is said to have obtained the dominion, and to have given his name to the land, sampanna-pandya, _i.e._ the fortunate pandya; one of the successors of this pandya built a palace further up the vaigaru, and called the new city mathura. from this name we may conclude that at least a part of the settlers who colonised the south coast of the deccan sprang from the banks of the yamuna, and named the new habitation after the sacred city of the ancient fatherland, just as the name of the ruling family points to the pandus, the ancient dynasty, which for four generations after buddha, _i.e._ down to the time of kalaçoka, ruled over the bharatas between the yamuna and the upper ganges. hither also, to the distant south of the deccan, the arian settlers brought the system of castes and the brahmanic arrangements of the state, which were carried out with greater strictness, as is invariably the case when an arrangement already developed into a complete and close system is authoritatively applied to new conditions. the immigrants were brahmans and kshatriyas; they took possession of considerable portions of land. the ancient inhabitants, who did not adapt themselves to the brahmanic law, occupied on the south of the coromandel coast, where the tamil language is spoken, as the colonies spread, a position even worse than the chandalas on the ganges; even to this day, under the name of pariahs, they are more utterly despised, more harshly oppressed, than the chandalas. even now the brahman is allowed without penalty to strike down the pariah who has the impudence to enter his house;[ ] and contact of a member of the higher castes with a pariah involves the expulsion of the person thus rendered impure. the books of the singhalese, the oldest, and consequently the most trustworthy, among all the historical sources of india, preserve the following tradition about the arrival of the arians on the island of ceylon. vijaya was the son of the king of sinhapura (lion city) in surashtra.[ ] as the king was guilty of many violent actions, the nation required him to put his son to death. the king instead placed him on board a ship with seven hundred companions, and the ship was sent to sea. these exiles called themselves sinhalas, i.e. lions, after their home, the lion city. the ship arrived at the island of lanka. vijaya with his comrades overcame the original inhabitants, who are described as strong beings (yakshas); on the western coast of the island, at the place where his ship touched the shore, he founded the city of tamraparni, and named the island, which now belonged to the victorious lions of surashtra, sinhaladvipa, _i.e._ lion island. but vijaya and his companions had been banished from home without wives, and they would not mingle their pure blood with the bad on the island. so he sent to the opposite coast of the mainland, to mathura on the vaigaru, where pandava was king at that time, and besought his daughter in marriage, and pandava gave him his daughter with seven hundred other women for his companions, and he in return sent to his father-in-law each year , mussels and pearls. the marriage of vijaya was childless, and when he felt himself near his end, he sent to his brother sumitra, who meanwhile had succeeded his father on the throne of sinhapura, to come to lanka, in order to govern the new kingdom. sumitra preferred to keep his ancestral throne, but sent his youngest son, panduvançadeva, who reigned over the island for years, and founded the new metropolis of anuradhapura in the interior of the island. pandukabhya, the second successor of panduvançadeva, arranged the constitution of the kingdom. he set up a brahman as high priest, and had the boundaries of the villages measured. when enlarging the metropolis, he caused dwellings to be erected for the brahmans, before the city, as the law requires, and made a place for corpses, and near it built a special village for the impure persons who tend the dead. settlements were also erected for the penitents. the immigrants formed the castes of the brahmans and the kshatriyas; the original inhabitants, who submitted to the brahman law, formed the castes of the vaiçyas and Çudras; a special caste, the paravas, we find, at any rate at a later time, entrusted with the pearl fisheries. but pandukabhya is said not to have confined himself to the arians in conferring offices; tradition expressly informs us that chiefs of the ancient inhabitants received prominent posts in the new constitution.[ ] we should deceive ourselves if we found in this tradition a credible and certain narrative of the colonisation of ceylon. the name of the discoverer vijaya, means victory and conquest; that of his successor, panduvançadeva, means god of the race of pandu. in this tradition we can only maintain the fact that the first settlers came from the west of india, the coast of guzerat; that a family from this region, which claimed descent from the celebrated pandu, acquired the dominion over the island (the greeks are acquainted with a kingdom of pandus on the peninsula of guzerat, and the kingdom of pandæa on the southern apex of india); that the settlers in ceylon entered into combination with the older colony on the south coast of the deccan, and, in contrast to these, their fellow-tribesmen, formed a friendly relation with the whole of the ancient inhabitants. nor can we repose absolute faith in the tradition of the singhalese, which places the arrival of the first settlers in the year b.c. this year, which is the year of buddha's death, is obviously chosen because ceylon from the middle of the third century b.c. was a chief seat of buddhism, and continued to be so when their doctrine had been repressed and annihilated by the brahmans in the land of the ganges, and on the whole mainland of india. down to the period of the introduction of buddhism into ceylon, and even for fully a hundred years afterwards, the chronology of singhalese authorities abounds with impossibilities, contradictions, and demonstrable mistakes.[ ] we must therefore content ourselves with the assumption that the first arian immigrants landed in ceylon about the year b.c. though the life, manners, and religion of the indians became firmly rooted on both coasts of the deccan, and beyond it, the centre of the peninsula remained for the time untouched by arian colonisation. here the wild pathless ranges of the vindhyas opposed insuperable obstacles to the advance of the arian colonisation from the north, running as they do right across the middle of the land from sea to sea. thus even to this day the tribes of the black gondas (p. ) inhabit the almost inaccessible valleys and gorges of the broad mountain region, in their original barbarism, with their old language and old worship of the earth-god, to whom the tribes bordering on orissa offered human sacrifice even in our times. among other tribes on the narmada, the custom which herodotus ascribes to certain indian tribes (p. ) is still in use: they slay old and weak members of the family, and eat them.[ ] on the other hand, brahmanic manners and civilisation penetrated gradually from the coromandel coast to the godavari, the krishna, the palaru, and the kaveri. supported by the arms and weight of the increasing power of magadha, the influence of the arian nation became powerful enough to subjugate the kalingas, the telingas, and the tamilas, to the religious doctrine and life of the brahmans. yet even here the telingas and the tamilas, like the karnatas, the tuluvas, and the malabars on the western side, maintained their languages, though transformed, it is true, and intermingled with sanskrit. the southern apex of the deccan has remained entirely untouched by arian colonisation. the sunken plateau, running from the western ghats to the east coast, which fills up the entire peninsula of the deccan, here ends in a lofty group of mountains, the niligiris (neelgherries), _i.e._ the blue mountains. through a deep depression filled with marsh and jungle, which is limited and intersected to the north, this mountain-range rises far above the plateau to a height of - feet. the proximity of the equator, combined with the cooling influence of the surrounding ocean, assures at such an elevation the clearest sky, an eternal spring, and a completely european vegetation, in the midst of which a handsome and vigorous race of men, the tudas, still live and flourish in complete isolation. the settlements on the coast of the deccan and on the island of ceylon must have given a new impulse to the trade of india. the pearls, which are found only on the north-west coast and in the straits of ceylon, on the numerous coral-banks of that region--the book of the law quotes them, together with coral, among the most important articles of trade of which the merchant ought to know the price--were not only an ordinary ornament at the courts of indian princes in the fourth century b.c., but were even brought to the west about this period. the companions of alexander of macedon tell us that the persians and medes weighed pearls with gold, and valued pearl ornaments more than gold ornaments. onesicritus, the pilot of alexander, tells us that the island of taprobane (tamraparni) was , stades in the circuit; that there were many elephants there, which were the bravest and strongest in india, and amphibious animals, some like cows, others like horses. taprobane was twenty days' journey from the southern shore of india in the main sea; but the ships of the indians sailed badly, for they were ill built and without decks.[ ] megasthenes tells us that taprobane is richer in gold and pearls even than india. the pearl oysters, which lay close together, were brought up out of the sea with nets; the fleshy part was thrown away, but the bones of the animals were the pearls, and the price was three times as much as the price of gold.[ ] the death of the enlightened had not checked the adoption of his doctrine in the land of the ganges. the legend, mentioned above, of the contest of princes, nations, and families on the middle ganges for the relics of buddha, may have owed its origin to the worship of relics, which became current among the buddhists some considerable time after their master's death. on the other hand, the further narrative, that after buddha's death, a number of his disciples met to establish the main doctrines of their master, cannot be brought into doubt. as has been already remarked, buddha is said to have commanded his disciples to collect his doctrines after his death. obedient to this injunction, kaçyapa, to whom buddha formerly gave up the half of his possessions and whom he clothed with his mendicant's garb, caused five hundred believers (_sthavira_) in the enlightened to be gathered together. ajataçatru of magadha had caused a special hall to be built for their discussions at rajagriha, at the entrance of the niagrodha cave. here the assembly charged upali (p. ) with the duty of drawing up the prescripts of the discipline (_vinaya_), "the soul of the law," of which buddha had declared upali to have the best knowledge. ananda was to collect the law (_dharma_). _i.e._ the words of the master; he knew them all by heart. kaçyapa was to undertake the philosophical system (_abhidharma_); and each was to place his collection before the assembly for criticism and approval. these works are said to have occupied seven months.[ ] in the doctrine of buddha a comparatively simple meaning prevailed, which by its contrast to the fancifulness of the brahmans must have excited the desire to collect and retain what was in existence. moreover, the faith and conduct of the buddhists had their starting-points and centre so eminently in the life, example, and doctrine of the master, that a meeting of disciples at the very moment when their living centre was lost appears thoroughly probable. the need of possessing the pure and entire doctrine of the master for support and guidance, now that he was present in person no more, must have been very deeply felt. but the tradition is obviously wrong in ascribing to the earliest council the compilation of the entire canon of the buddhist scriptures as they were known at a later period, in the three divisions of discipline, commands, and speculation. this assembly could do no more than collect the speeches, doctrine, and rules of the master from memory, and establish a correct copy of them by mutual control. it is the words and commands, the sutras of buddha, which were established and collected at this meeting. unfortunately we do not possess them in their oldest and simplest form, since at a later time the occasion and situation and place at which the master had spoken this or that sentence, had uttered this or that doctrine, were added to the words of buddha. but in part at least it is possible to distinguish the old simple nucleus from these additions.[ ] buddha had imparted to all who wished to tread the path of liberation, who undertook vows of poverty and chastity, the initiation of the bhikshu, _i.e._ of the mendicant, of the Çramana, _i.e._ the ascetic, the priest of his new religion. these Çramanas he had recommended to withdraw themselves from the world, and live after his own example in solitary meditation on the four truths: pain, the origin of pain, the annihilation of pain, and the way which leads to this. but his eremites were not to live the life of the eremite continuously any more than himself. even the mere fact that they had to make a livelihood by begging excluded any long-continued isolation and settled residence; and along with renunciation buddha's doctrine taught sympathy and help to all creatures. this sympathy the bhikshus were to carry out in act; more especially they were bound to impart to the brethren who received initiation and to the people the healing truths, which had disclosed themselves to their meditation, in the same way as buddha had done. according to the command of the master, they might not, like the brahman penitents, spend the rainy season in the forest; they must pass it together in protected places, in caves, villages or cities, at friendly houses: in this season they must mutually instruct each other and confess their sins. complete isolation of the initiated would have been opposed to the whole tendency of the doctrine and the pattern of the master. the bhikshus, who came from various circles of life, and different castes, and had abandoned the hereditary and customary law of the castes, could not but feel the need of assuring themselves mutually of the new law now governing their life, of observing and developing it in common. the adherents, and above all the representatives, of any new doctrine always feel it incumbent on them to keep alive and nourish the sense of their fellowship and mutual support as against existing authority. these motives early led to a monastic life among the adherents of buddha who had received the initiation of the mendicant, and wished to advance to complete liberation from regeneration. the places of refuge and shelter in which they passed the rainy season were regularly visited. there they resided; but in the finer season of the year they left them in order to beg in the country and to preach, or to meditate in the forest; and at the beginning of the rains (which in the buddhist calendar extended from the full moon of july to the full moon of november) they again returned to the accustomed shelter. these retreats were partly rocky caves, partly detached buildings, of which a hall of assembly (_vihara_) must form part. at the time when king kalaçoka sat on the throne of magadha ( b.c.- b.c.) the initiated in a monastery in the city of vaiçali are said not to have strictly kept the rules and commands of the enlightened, and to have abandoned the correct mode of conduct. they permitted themselves to sit on carpets, to drink intoxicating liquors, and to receive gold and precious things as alms. relying on the protection of king kalaçoka, they disregarded the exhortations of pious men. to put an end to this scandal, revata, who surpassed all the buddhists in the depth of his knowledge and the purity of his conduct, warned, as it is said, by a dream, declared himself against these deviations, and summoned a great council of bhikshus to vaiçali. with the usual exaggeration of the indians the legends maintain that more than a million of the initiated met together. revata chose four of the wisest sthaviras of the west and four of the east, and with these he retired into the balukarama-vihara, a sequestered monastery at vaiçali, in order to ascertain whether the conduct of the monastery could be maintained in the face of the teaching of buddha or not. the result of the investigation was, that the teaching of buddha did not permit such proceedings, and that the monastery must be expelled from the community of the faithful. in order to establish this decision, to revise the discipline, and "maintain the good law," seven hundred initiated were selected from the great assembly and met in the vihara under the presidency of sarvakami. this more limited council is said to have ordered the exclusion of , ecclesiastics of vaiçali as heterodox and sinners from the community of the believers in buddha, and to have established the general rule that everything which agreed with the prescripts of the ethics and spirit of the doctrine of buddha, must be recognised as legal, whether it dates from an ancient period or comes into existence in the future; all that contradicts this, even though already in existence, is to be rejected. whatever be the case with the separate facts in this tradition, we may regard it as certain that when the first assembly of sthaviras after buddha's death had collected his sayings, this second council undertook the first statement in detail of the rules of discipline (_vinaya_). the council was held one hundred and ten years after the death of the enlightened, in the year b.c., in vaiçali, _i.e._ in the territory of magadha, and consequently under the protection of king kalaçoka; their labours are said to have lasted eight months.[ ] owing to the protection which kalaçoka extended to buddhism he is called among the brahmans, kakavarna, _i.e._ raven-black.[ ] kalaçoka was succeeded on the throne of magadha by his sons bhadrasena, nandivardhana, and pinjamakha.[ ] pinjamakha, according to the statements of the buddhists, was deposed by a robber of the name of nanda. the band to which nanda belonged is said to have attacked and plundered villages after kalaçoka's time. when the chief was killed in an attack, nanda became the leader, and set before his companions a higher aim in the acquisition of the throne. strengthened by reinforcements, he formed an army, conquered a city, and there caused himself to be proclaimed king. advancing further, and favoured by success, he finally took palibothra, and with the city he gained the kingdom. this nanda, who ascended the throne of magadha in the year b.c., is called by the brahmans ugrasena, _i.e._ leader of the terrible army, or mahapadmapati, _i.e._ lord of the innumerable army, and they maintain that he was the son of the last king of kalaçoka's tribe, who had begotten him with a Çudra woman.[ ] this statement and the epithets quoted at any rate confirm the usurpation and the fact that it was accomplished by force. nanda's successors did not maintain themselves on the throne of magadha beyond the middle of the fourth century. we are without definite information about their achievements, and can only conclude from the renown of the kingdom at this time, that the supreme power which magadha had acquired in the land of the ganges, under ajataçatru and kalaçoka, was not lost under their dominion; and from the confusion in the statements of the buddhists about this dynasty we may gather that they favoured the brahmans. the last genuine nanda was daçasiddhika. he was deposed and murdered by the paramour of his wife, sunanda, a barber, who is sometimes called indradatta, and sometimes kaivarta after his despised caste. indradatta bequeathed the crown thus obtained to his son, whom the buddhists called dhanananda, _i.e._ the rich nanda, or dhanapala, _i.e._ the rich ruler, and the brahmans hiranyagupta, _i.e._ the man protected by gold. his reign lasted from the year b.c. to b.c., and he is said to have amassed great treasures. western writers called this king xandrames or agrames, and his kingdom the kingdom of the prasians, _i.e._ of the prachyas (the easterns) or the gangarides. they tell that xandrames was of such a low and contemptible origin that he was said to be the son of a barber. but his father had been a man of extraordinary beauty, and by this means had won the heart of the queen, who by craft killed her husband, the king. in this way the father of xandrames acquired the throne of the prasians, and he bequeathed it to his son, who nevertheless was detested and despised for his low origin and his wickedness. at the same time the greeks tell us that xandrames could put into the field an army of , foot soldiers, , horses, elephants, and more than chariots of war; others raise the number of the horse to , , of the elephants to , and put the chariots at .[ ] from these statements of the greeks and what they tell us elsewhere of the kingdom of the prasians or gangarides, the western border of which is the yamuna, it follows that neither the change in the dynasty owing to the accession of the first nanda, nor the usurpation of indradatta, interrupted the rise of the power of magadha, which had begun under ajataçatru, and attained greater dimensions under kalaçoka. not the army only but the gold of dhanapala-xandrames, the son of indradatta, is evidence of the splendour and extent of the kingdom, which must have comprised the whole valley of the ganges to the east of the yamuna. footnotes: [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , . lassen, "ind. alterth." , ff. köppen, "rel. d. buddha," s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] von gutschmid, "beiträge," s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . _n._ . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] diod. , . strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." , , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , , . [ ] manu, , . [ ] the date follows from the fact that the settlers who are said to have landed in ceylon in b.c. according to the era of the singhalese, find the kingdom of the pandus and the city of mathura in existence. lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ff; ff; cp. _infr._ p. . [ ] benfey, "indien," s. . neither the book of the law nor the sutras of the buddhists mention the pariahs, often as they speak of the chandalas. [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , ff., ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , , _n._ , ^ , ff. the island then received from the city of tamraparni the name which is still in use among the natives; tamraparni is in pali, tambapanni; and from this is formed the taprobane of the greeks. lanka is no doubt the older name, but like sinhala it is still in use. [ ] westergaard, "ueber buddha's todesjahr," s. ff. lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ff. [ ] ritter, "geographie," , , - . lassen, "ind. alterth." . . these are, no doubt, the padæans and calatians of herodotus ( , , ff.). lassen explains this name by _padya_, bad, and _kala_, black. [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] arrian, "ind." ; plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. , . köppen, "religion des buddha," s. . on the forms of the sanskrit in which the old sutras were written, burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. ff. lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . lassen, _loc. cit._ , , . köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] according to the mahavança, kalaçoka is succeeded by his ten sons, who are followed by the nine nandas. but as the commentary only allows twelve rulers between kalaçoka and açoka it will suffice to mention the eldest son, and the two last in the list of the brothers, whose names are given by the scholia of the mahavança, as these correspond to nandivardhana and mahanandi among the brahmans. "vishnu-purana," ed. wilson, p. ; cf. von gutschmid, "beiträge," s. , ff. [ ] lassen, "ind, alterth." ^ , . von gutschmid, _loc. cit._ [ ] diod. , . plut. "alex." . curt. , . chapter iv. the nations and princes of the land of the indus. the examination of the accounts of exploits said to have been performed by cyrus (kuru), the founder of the persian kingdom, in the region of the indus, showed us above (p. ) that it was the gandarians, the neighbours of the arachoti, whom cyrus subjugated. hence the spies of darius could travel from caspapyrus, _i.e._ from the city of cabul (kabura) down the cabul and the indus; from the mouth of the latter they sailed round arabia and returned home by the arabian gulf. not quite thirty years after the death of the enlightened, towards the year b.c., darius subjugated the tribes dwelling to the north of cabul on the right bank of the indus, the "northern indians," as herodotus calls them, as far as the upper course of the indus. his inscriptions at persepolis add the "idhus" to the gandarians and arachoti, who are mentioned in previous inscriptions as subjugated.[ ] the gandarians were united with the arachoti and sattagydæ into a satrapy of the persian kingdom; the açvakas, who dwell on the left bank of the cabul, formed with the tribes who dwell further north up the course of the indus a separate satrapy, the satrapy of the indians. by the successor of darius the soldiers in both satrapies were summoned to take part in the campaign against hellas. herodotus, who wrote at the time when kalaçoka sat on the throne of magadha, tells us that the gandarians, who were commanded by artyphius, the son of artabanes, were armed like the bactrians; the indians, led by pharnazathres, were clothed in garments of cotton or bark, and armed with bows of reed, and arrows of reed tipped with iron points. the horsemen among the indians were clothed and armed like the foot-soldiers, their chariots of war were equipped partly by horses and partly by wild asses.[ ] they marched over the bridges of the hellespont, and sixty years after the death of the enlightened they trod the soil of hellas. they saw the temple of athens in flames; the infantry, horse, and chariots of the indians wintered in thessaly, and were then defeated on the asopus.[ ] according to herodotus the satrapy of the indians paid the highest tribute in the whole persian kingdom; each year it had to deliver talents of gold to the king. the gold for this payment was obtained, as herodotus tells us, from a great desert, which lay to the east beyond the indus. of that region no one could give any account. where the desert began there were ants, smaller than dogs and larger than foxes, which dug up gold sand, when after the manner of ants they excavated their nests in the ground. this sand the indians took, put in sacks, and carried it off as quickly as possible on the swiftest camels; for should the ants overtake them, neither man nor beast could escape; occasionally ants of the kind were captured and brought to the persian king.[ ] this marvellous story is repeated by megasthenes with even more definite statements; the indians who dwelt in the mountains of that region are called derdæ; the mountain plain, in which the ants are found, is three thousand stades (about miles) in circuit; the sand thrown up by these animals requires but little smelting; and nearchus assures us that the skins of the ants are like those of panthers.[ ] that the greeks are not relating a fable of their own invention is proved by the mahabharata, according to which the tribes which dwell in the mountains of the north bring "ant gold" to yudhishthira as a tribute.[ ] the derdæ of megasthenes must be the daradas, whom the book of the law counts among the degenerate races of warriors.[ ] even at this day the dardus dwell on the upper course of the indus to the north of cashmere, in the valley of the nagar, which flows into the indus from the north, to the east of the highest summits as far as iskardu, on the darda-himalayas (so called after the tribe), and speak a dialect of sanskrit.[ ] adjacent to this almost inaccessible mountain-land are table-lands, where the sandy soil contains gold-dust. numerous marmot-like animals with spotted skins, of which the largest are about two feet long,[ ] burrow in this soil. the traveller who first penetrated this region in our times informs us: "the red soil was pierced by these animals, which sat on their hind legs before their holes, and seemed to protect them."[ ] we may assume that the daradas carried away the loose sand which these animals threw up in making their winter holes, in order to extract the gold from it; and the aryas on the lower indus and the ganges, who did not know the marmot, compared them with the ants, which, among them, built and dug holes in the earth, and assuming that they were a large species of ant, called the gold of the north after them (_pipilika_). what the greeks tell us of the swiftness and dangerous nature of these animals is fabulous. what effect the subjugation of the aryas on the right bank of the indus, and their dependence on the persian kingdom, exercised upon them, we cannot ascertain. that they were not greatly alienated from the community of their own nation may be concluded from the fact that in the aitareya-brahmana and in the mahabharata, a king of the gandharas is mentioned, nagnajit by name;[ ] that in the epos the daughter of the king of the gandharas is married to the king of the bharatas, and krishna relates that he has overcome all the sons of nagnajit,[ ] the king of the gandharas. a rishi and brahmans of the gandharas are also mentioned, the latter with the addition that they are the lowest of all the brahmans.[ ] of the tribes to the north of the cabul, the açvakas, the assacanes of the greeks, are merely alluded to by name. whether the persian kings maintained their dominion on the western bank of the indus down to the fall of the kingdom, is not certain. the products and animals of india which ctesias saw at the persian court are described as gifts of the king of the indians. according to arrian, the indians "from this side of the indus" fought with some fifteen elephants in the army of the last persian king at arbela; according to megasthenes these were the oxydrakes (kshudrakas), soldiers raised on the other side of the stream.[ ] from the time that the hymns of the veda were sung in the land of the panjab we are without any information about the life in these regions. from the brahmans of the land of the ganges and the writings of the buddhists we hardly learn more about the nations of the panjab and their fortunes than about the aryas of the right bank of the indus. the Çatapatha-brahmana and the ramayana mention the nation of the kaikeyas, whose abodes are to be sought on the upper course of the iravati and the vipaça. both authorities denote the king of the kaikeyas by the title açvapati, _i.e._ lord of horses.[ ] the horses of the land of the indus were considered the best in india (p. ). the metropolis of the kaikeyas is called in the ramayana girivraja, and the daughter of açvapati is given to wife to king daçaratha of ayodhya. the distance from girivraja to ayodhya is fixed in the poem at seven days' journey in a chariot on a paved road.[ ] the sutras of the buddhists mention a region lying still further to the west. not very far from the left bank of the indus was the city of takshaçila. in this, according to the sutras, the law of the brahmans was current; chandalas are said to have performed the duties of executioners and buriers of the dead. according to the mahavança, brahmans march in the fourth century b.c. from palibothra to takshaçila, and from thence to palibothra.[ ] the chronicle in this work, which it is true was not completed till the twelfth century a.d., tells us that king gopaditya, who must be placed in the fourth century b.c., presented brahmans from aryadeça with lands, that he observed the castes, and introduced the worship of Çiva.[ ] the brahmans of the ganges looked down with scorn on the ancient home, and the region of the seven streams, where the arrangement of the castes and the brahmanic law had not been brought into full recognition and currency, where there were tribes and even whole nations, who lived not only without brahmans, but even without kings. we know the views of the brahmans concerning the necessity of the power of punishment, the royal power, "since it is only from fear that all creatures fulfil their duties." in regard to the fact that the brahmanic arrangement, which with them is the original arrangement given by god, was not entirely observed in the panjab, the inhabitants of the land are for the most part called vratyas, _i.e._ heretics; bahikas, _i.e._ excluded; and the tribes without kings arattas, _i.e._ kingless. of the vratyas the tandya-brahmana tells us: "they come on in uncovered chariots of war, armed with bows and lances; they wear turbans and garments with a red hem, fluttering points, and double sheepskins. their leaders are distinguished by a brown robe and silver ornaments for the neck. they neither till the field nor carry on trade. in regard to law, they live in perpetual confusion; they do indeed speak the same language with the brahmanic initiated; but what is easily spoken they call hard to be spoken."[ ] according to the evidence of panini, the bahikas dwelt in villages, were without kings and brahmans, and lived by war; the kshudrakas and malavas were the mightiest among those who had no king.[ ] in the mahabharata we are told that they are excluded from the himavat, the yamuna and the sarasvati; impure in manners and character, they must be avoided. their sacred fig-tree is called cow-slaughter, and their market-place is full of drinking-vessels. the wicked drink the intoxicating liquor of rice and sugar; they eat the flesh of oxen with garlic, and other flesh with forbidden herbs. the women wander through the streets and fields adorned with garlands, intoxicated and without garments. with cries like the noise of horses and asses they run to the bathing-places. they shout and curse, intoxicated with wine. what is taught by those acquainted with the sacred books passes elsewhere for law, but here, he who is born a brahman passes into the rank of the kshatriya or vaiçya and Çudra, and the priest may become a barber, the barber a kshatriya. nowhere can the priest live according to his pleasure; only among the gandharas, kshudrakas and bahikas is this reversal of everything a custom.[ ] the path of their development had carried the brahmans on the ganges so far from the original basis and motives of the old arian life, that now they hardly could or would find any common link between themselves and these tribes. but even from their own point of view their attacks are exaggerated. the accounts of western writers from the last third of the fourth century b.c. show us that in the larger states and monarchies on the indus and in the panjab the doctrines of the brahmans were known and practised. they were honoured and influential, though their rules were not entirely observed, least of all, it would seem, in the arrangement and closeness of the castes. from the same accounts we perceive what form of life and civilisation had been attained in the region of the panjab since the time when the hymns of the veda were sung there. a considerable number of smaller and larger principalities had arisen on the upper and lower indus, and on the heights in the panjab. between these, on the spurs of the himalayas, on the middle and lower course of the five streams, lay nations governed by overseers of cantons, chiefs of cities and districts, among which, with the exception of some pastoral tribes, the noble families were numerous and warlike. the territory of the princes no less than that of the free nations was thickly inhabited; even the latter possessed a considerable number of fortified towns. not only the great principalities but even the free nations could put in the field armies of , men; and there were cities among them where , men could be made captive. in the monarchies between the indus and the vitasta brahmans are found busied with penitential exercises, and they are of influence in the councils of the princes on the lower indus. but even in one of the free nations a city of brahmans is mentioned. the princes kept without exception a number of elephants for use in war; the ancient chariots were employed in their armies. the free nations were without elephants, but had hundreds and even thousands of chariots, in which, we cannot doubt, the noble families went to battle. there was no lack of martial vigour and spirit in the region of the indus. with the exception of some minor princes and tribes and one or two larger states who asked for favour and help, the nations knew how to defend themselves with the utmost stubbornness. when defeated in the field, they maintained their cities, which were surrounded by walls and towers, chiefly, it appears, built of bricks, but also of masonry, and containing no doubt a citadel within them. yet the walls of the cities cannot have been very strong, nor the citadels very high; if they forced the enemy to a regular siege, the walls did not long withstand the missiles and powerful besieging engines, and when the walls were surmounted it was possible to leap down without injury from the rampart to the ground. the dominion of the persians cannot have exercised any deep influence on the life of the aryas on the right bank of the indus, and still less on the nations beyond the river. a new enemy, a dangerous neighbour, came upon the indians from the distant west, who brought upon their states the first serious disaster from without. the extensive persian kingdom was broken before the mighty arm of alexander of macedon. his expedition came from a greater distance than the armies of the kings of asshur, of cyrus, and darius; it penetrated further to the east than the assyrians and persians had ever done, and brought with it important consequences, which extended over the whole land of the indus. what essentially tended to make the attack of these enemies easier was the discord among the states and tribes of the land of the indus. the mightiest kingdom on this side of the indus was the kingdom of cashmere, whose princes had extended their territory over the mountains in the south, and the land of abhisara. they were in excellent relations with the princely race of the pauravas, which reigned between the upper course of the vitasta and the asikni. in common both states had sought to subjugate the free nations between their territories and on the borders of the pauravas. they marched out with a great army, but they were unable to accomplish anything.[ ] in the land of the panjab the pauravas possessed the most important warlike power; a neighbouring family of the same name ruled between the upper asikni and the iravati. such a power was dangerous to the kingdom of takshaçila, which lay to the west between the upper iravati and the indus; the princes of this state had long been at enmity with their neighbours, the pauravas. a similar feud on the lower indus separated the princes of the mushikas and those of the region of sindimana, which lay opposite, on the right bank of the indus. of the free nations the kshudrakas and malavas could together put , warriors in the field, but they were in a state of feud and hostility. alexander assembled his army for the march against the indians at bactra, whither, according to the epos of the persians, semiramis had once summoned her troops against the indian king stabrobates. in the spring of the year b.c. he crossed the hindu kush with , foot soldiers and , horse,[ ] and when he arrived at cabul he began the reduction of the aryas, who dwelt on the right bank of the indus.[ ] at the confluence of the cabul and the indus lay the city of pushkala, of which the territory was called among the greeks penkelaotis (pushkalavati), and the prince astes.[ ] this city could not be reduced without a siege of days. to the north of the cabul the açvakas, to the south the gandarians had to be overpowered. of the war against the gandarians we know very little; the açvakas made such a stubborn resistance that they were not completely subjugated till the winter. the greeks call the açvakas assacanes, aspasians, and hippasians. they were under a king, who resided in the city of maçaka (massaga) on the maçakavati,[ ] no doubt an affluent of the suvastu; lived in fruitful valleys, and kept horses and numerous herds of cattle on the high mountain pastures.[ ] beside the metropolis there were other walled cities and rocky citadels in the land of the açvakas. at the approach of alexander they fled to the mountains and to their fortified cities. when the macedonians had taken the outer walls of the first city which they attacked, and the assault on the second seemed likely to succeed, the besieged sallied forth from the gates, and the majority escaped to the nearest mountains. retiring with his army to the mountains from the open field before the macedonians, the king of the açvakas (western writers call him like his people assacanus) fell in single combat; his people made the most violent efforts to recover his corpse from the enemies, but in vain.[ ] then, by means of a surprise at night, alexander succeeded after a severe battle in dispersing the army of the açvakas; forty thousand indians are said to have been made prisoners, and above , cattle were taken as booty.[ ] before maçaka, where the mother of the fallen king (the greeks call her cleophis) had assumed the conduct of affairs,[ ] alexander found an army of , foot soldiers, horse, elephants, and men raised in the further part of india. by pretending to retire alexander induced the açvakas to advance further from the walls of the city, but though he made the movement he had prepared with all speed, he did not succeed in slaying more then men. the walls of the city, it is true, gave way before his battering-rams on the very first day, yet he could not take the place, though the assault was carried on with the utmost vigour for four successive days. then a shot from an engine killed the commander of the besieged; and they began to negociate. alexander merely required that the mercenaries from the interior of india should leave the city and take service with him. the condition was accepted; the mercenaries marched out of the city and encamped on a hill opposite the macedonian camp. then, according to the greek account, they intended to return to their homes in the night, to avoid bearing arms against their own nation. this intention was made known to alexander, who caused the hill to be surrounded by his whole army, cut down the indians to the last man, and then took the city by storm; the mother and daughter of assacanus were captured. whatever may have been the case with the supposed intention of the indian mercenaries, and the intelligence which alexander is said to have received of this intention--the city had fulfilled the condition imposed upon it, and had given up the mercenaries, why then was it attacked in this unexpected and unmerited manner against the terms of the capitulation? alexander hoped that the fall of the metropolis would terrify the remaining cities into submission. but ora had in turn to be regularly invested, and when this had been done alexander in person took the city by storm. lines were constructed against bazira during the siege of ora in order to cut off the supplies of the inhabitants. but on receiving the intelligence that ora had fallen the inhabitants of bazira left their city, and with many of their people sought refuge in the citadel of aornus (no doubt _avarana_, protection), which is said to have been situated close to the indus not far from its confluence with the cabul, on an isolated hill, above feet in height, and above twenty miles in circuit at the foot. what is meant is apparently the steep height on the indus, on which the citadel of ranigat now lies.[ ] though indians were found to point out to the macedonians a hidden path to the summit of the hill, and select macedonian troops thus reached a rock opposite the citadel, concealed themselves there during the night by a barricade of trees, and occupied the defenders by their unexpected attack, alexander on the other side of the mountain could not force his way up. when the indians had driven him back, they attempted to overpower the troops on the rock. to save these, alexander had to take the same path which they had taken; after a severe struggle, which lasted from early dawn to night, he succeeded in joining his troops on this side. then he caused his army to labour incessantly for four days in constructing a dam of wood-work and stones across the gorge which separated the ridge of rock from the citadel. as the work rapidly extended to a second eminence, which the macedonians could now occupy, close to the citadel, the indians abandoned the latter. but even so the war against the açvakas was not ended. the brother of the fallen king (diodorus calls him aphricus, and curtius eryx) had taken the government into his hands, and got together a new force of , men and elephants in the north of the land. alexander marched against it to dyrta. he found the city abandoned; even the population of the surrounding country had fled. prisoners declared that the king, and the whole nation with him, had sought refuge beyond the indus with abhisares, _i.e._ in the region of cashmere.[ ] alexander was pursuing him, when the king's head and armour were brought in by some of his people. when a few of his elephants had been captured, alexander returned in sixteen marches to pushkala on the bank of the indus, and his army wintered in the land of the açvakas.[ ] early in the year b.c. alexander prepared to cross the indus in order finally to measure himself against the fellow-tribesmen of the nations who had so long detained his arms on the right bank of the river. even when he was in sogdiana, mophis the son of the prince of the indians, who ruled between the indus and the vitasta (the greeks call his territory the kingdom of taxiles after the metropolis takshaçila), sent envoys requesting that he would take his part and receive him as a vassal.[ ] mophis was moved to this step by the ancient feud between the kingdom of takshaçila and the greater empire of the pauravas between the vitasta and the asikni (the greeks call this the empire of porus). in the meantime the father of mophis had died, and alexander now received as the sign of submission on the part of the new prince, bulls, , sheep, elephants, and about talents of silver. he directed his march against the city of takshaçila which lay half way between the indus and vitasta.[ ] mophis came to meet him with his warriors and elephants, and led him into his metropolis.[ ] this city, the greeks tell us, was large (the largest between the indus and the vitasta) and flourishing, and its constitution well arranged. the land, which sank gradually to the plain, was cultivated and very fruitful.[ ] the king of cashmere had sent his brother to takshaçila to announce his submission; some smaller princes, neighbours of the territory of takshaçila, came in person to pay homage to alexander. at takshaçila the greeks found "wise men" of the indians. aristobulus tells that he had there seen two brahmans, one older and shaven, the other younger and wearing his hair. both had been accompanied by their pupils. in the market-place they could take what pleased them, so that they had abundant food of honey and sesame without any cost, and everyone whom they approached drenched them so plentifully with sesame oil that it ran down into their eyes. not far from the city they had given an example of endurance; the older, lying on the earth, exposed himself to the heat of the sun and then to torrents of rain; the younger went even further, for he stood on one leg and with both hands supported a log of wood three cubits in length, and when one limb was tired, he stood on the other, and continued standing the whole day long. alexander desired to have one of these sages, who were in the greatest repute there,[ ] about him, that he might learn their doctrine.[ ] the younger one accompanied him a short time, but soon returned to his home; the older one remained with alexander, and changed his clothing and mode of life; to those who reproached him on this account he replied that the forty years for which he had vowed asceticism (p. ) were past.[ ] onesicritus relates that he had found fifteen of these sages to the south of the city, each in a different position, one sitting, another standing, a third naked and lying immovable on the ground till evening. the severest trial was the endurance of the heat, which at midday was so great that no one else could touch the ground with the naked foot. among these sages, lying on stones, was the calanus who afterwards followed alexander, and subsequently ended his life in persia. but mandanis,[ ] who was the first among them in age and wisdom, had said: that doctrine was the best which removed pleasure and pain from the soul; pain and effort were different things; effort was the friend, pain the enemy of the soul; they exercised the body by toil and nakedness and scanty nourishment, in order to stablish the spirit, that so the division between them might be ended, and they might give the best counsel to everyone. that house was the best which required the least furniture.[ ] megasthenes assures us that the sages of the indians reproached calanus because he renounced the blessedness which he might have enjoyed among them, in order to serve another master than god.[ ] these accounts of the greeks fully confirm the statements of the buddhists given above (p. ), that the law and order of the brahmans were current in takshaçila. beyond the vitasta (hydaspes) was the kingdom of porus, as the greeks called the ruler of it. he derived his race, as plutarch says, from gegasius, by whom may be meant the yayati of the rigveda and the mahabharata (p. ). the name porus has been taken by the greeks from the dynasty; the mahabharata speaks of a kingdom of the pauravas or pauras, in the neighbourhood of cashmere.[ ] the territory of porus extended to the east as far as the asikni. spittakes the nephew of porus ruled over a small region on the west bank of the vitasta; his cousin reigned in the east between the asikni and iravati. in the north the territory of porus was separated from that of the king of cashmere by a few small tribes. according to the greeks the kingdom of porus was superior to that of cashmere; three hundred cities are enumerated in it. porus could bring into the field elephants, chariots of war, horse, and about , foot soldiers. alexander encamped opposite the army of porus, who held the left bank of the vitasta; though far superior in numbers--his army was twice as strong and had been yet further increased by indians from mophis and some smaller princes--alexander for a long time hesitated to cross the river in the face of porus. at last he was decided by the information that the king of cashmere, notwithstanding his embassy, was marching to join porus, with an army not much weaker than his own, and was only miles distant. alexander divided his troops, left half opposite the camp of porus, and with the other half hastened to cross the river higher up in order to defeat porus before the army of cashmere arrived. the crossing was accomplished in the neighbourhood of the modern jalam.[ ] porus also divided his army; with all his elephants, chariots, and cavalry, and the greater part of his infantry, he marched against alexander. two hundred elephants in a long row with intervals of a hundred feet, as arrian states, formed his first rank; the infantry formed the second rank, the cavalry and chariots were on the wings. after a fluctuating and desperate conflict the macedonians were victorious. porus, wounded in the right shoulder, was among the last to retire on his elephant. when his old enemy the prince of takshaçila called on him to desist from the battle,[ ] he answered by raising his javelin. the other retired hastily on his horse. requested a second time by an indian, a friend of old days, and afterwards at the command of alexander, to lay down his weapons, he checked his elephants, quenched his thirst, and then allowed himself to be brought before alexander, from whom his indomitable bearing and lofty form won respect. to alexander's question how he wished to be treated, he replied: like a king. his two sons and his nephew spittakes had fallen; of his army, according to the greeks, , in some accounts and , in others were slain (end of april or beginning of may, b.c.).[ ] the defeat of porus terrified the king of cashmere. he did not venture to oppose alexander unaided; at any rate he sought to avert the threatening storm for the moment; he sent his brother with forty elephants and other presents to appease alexander by these tokens of submission. alexander required that he should pay homage in person; otherwise he would visit him in his own land. he kept his word. the cousin of porus, whose territory lay between the upper course of the asikni and the iravati--he had rendered no assistance to his kinsman against alexander--fled out of his land with a part of his army at alexander's approach,[ ] and the glaukas (glausai, glaukanikai among the greeks,) who inhabited thirty-seven considerable towns and many villages on the heights to the north of the kingdom of the conquered porus, submitted. beyond the indus the açvakas were again in open revolt, and after crossing the asikni, marching through the land of the fugitive prince, and advancing beyond the iravati, alexander found the most stubborn resistance among the khattias (the kathaioi of the greeks),[ ] who dwelt to the south of the kaikeyas between the iravati and vipaça, and like the glaukas obeyed no king. the kshudrakas and malavas, dwelling in the lower land on the asikni and the Çatadru, had sent assistance to them. hence the khattias awaited the attack of the foreigners at their chief city Çakala (sangala), the modern amritsir. near this spacious city, which abutted on a lake and was surrounded by a wall of bricks, they were encamped on a gentle eminence behind a triple row of packed waggons. after a bloody battle they were driven into the city, and alexander then began the regular investment of the city by throwing up a double trench round it so far as the lake did not prevent him. an attempt on the part of the besieged to break through, of which alexander received timely information by deserters, was abandoned after a loss of men. the engines were set up, the battering-rams and wooden towers were prepared, when breaches appeared in the wall, which had been already undermined. the army of alexander made the assault, the ladders were placed, the city taken. at this capture , indians are said to have been slain; the remainder of the army and the entire population of the city, amounting together to , men, were made prisoners. among the captive soldiers were horsemen; and chariots were taken. the city was levelled to the ground. this siege is said to have cost the macedonians slain and , wounded.[ ] as the fate of Çakala did not terrify the remaining cities of the khattias into submission, alexander caused the inhabitants of two other cities, who fled at his approach, to be vigorously pursued; some hundreds who failed to escape were overtaken and cut down. the remaining places then submitted without opposition. alexander had not merely restored porus to his throne after the battle on the vitasta, but had even increased his power; he assigned to him the territory of the glaukas, and of his fugitive cousin, together with the recently-conquered land of the khattias, so that porus, according to the greeks, now reigned over seven nations, and more than two thousand considerable towns beside many villages.[ ] the northern neighbours of the khattias were the kaikeyas, whose prince--the açvapati of the time (p. ), but the greeks call him sopeithes--welcomed alexander, and thus as well as by presents gave evidence of his submission. the greeks extol the good laws of this nation, and their vigorous dogs, a cross breed between tigers and dogs, as some thought. the ramayana mentions among the kaikeyas, "the dogs bred in the palace, gifted with the strength of the tiger, and of huge body." alexander received of these animals as a present from açvapati.[ ] from the land of the kaikeyas the macedonians reached the eastern stream of the panjab, which the greeks call hyphasis (it is the vipaça of the indians), above the confluence with the Çatadru. when alexander had received here a further embassy from the king of cashmere, which was accompanied by a fresh present of elephants, and the homage of the prince of uraça, whose territory lay to the west of cashmere on the himalayas,[ ] he returned in the autumn of the year b.c. to the vitasta (hydaspes); from hence he descended, sending part of his army on board ship down the river, and taking the remainder along the banks, in order to come to and along the asikni, and from this to the indus. before he reached the asikni his army, on the right bank of the lower vitasta, came upon the nation of the Çibis; east of these, on the confluence of the vitasta and the asikni, were the kshudrakas (the greeks call them oxydrakes), and still further to the east between the asikni and the iravati the agalassians, while beyond the iravati as far as the Çatadru were the malavas, who like the kshudrakas had already sent help to the khattias against alexander. the Çibis, a pastoral people, who carried the skins of animals and used clubs as weapons, were overcome with little resistance, or submitted without a struggle.[ ] the agalassians, who had put in the field some thousands of infantry and horse, were severely defeated by alexander, and their cities conquered. the kshudrakas and malavas forgetting their ancient hostility had now combined against the foe, and together could bring into the field , foot soldiers, , cavalry, and chariots of war.[ ] but the leaders whom the kshudrakas put at the head of their forces were not true to the malavas; they retired into their cities. these, unexpectedly attacked by alexander, were taken one after the other; one of them is mentioned expressly as a brahman city.[ ] the largest city was found to be deserted; but on the banks of the iravati , malavas, it is said, had collected. they were put to flight, and sought protection in a neighbouring fortified place on the western bank of the iravati. alexander followed them. the attack on the city began. the indians retired into the citadel from the walls of the city; this also alexander at once attacked, and with his own hands seized on a scaling-ladder and ascended; peukestes the shield-bearer of the king, abreas and leonnatus follow him; he gains the parapet and stands on the gangway when the ladder breaks. as in that position he was too prominent a mark, owing to the splendour of his armour, for the shots of the indians, especially from the two nearest towers, he leaps from the gangway down into the citadel. the indians press upon him; he beats down some of the assailants. peukestes, abreas and leonnatus follow his example, and fight at his side, when an arrow pierces alexander's mail and penetrates his breast. the king falls; abreas falls also, struck in the face. with extreme effort peukestes covers alexander with the shield of athene of ilium, leonnatus assisting on the other side, till at length the macedonians force their way in, and put to death every living creature in the citadel, men, women, and children.[ ] then envoys came from the malavas and promised the submission of the whole people. they were followed by the overseers of the cities and cantons of the kshudrakas, accompanied by chiefs of note, who pledged absolute obedience. alexander required nobles as hostages. they were sent with yoked and manned chariots of war, which the kshudrakas added. the chariots alexander retained in his army, the hostages he sent back. these contests against the free indians had occupied the autumn and winter. not till the second month in the year b.c.[ ] did alexander set out from his camp at the mouth of the iravati to the asikni, and sail up the latter to the indus. the tribes on the panjab and the indus, the abastanes, the vasatyas, who lived according to brahmanic laws (the greeks call them the ossadians[ ]), and the kshatris were easily reduced or submitted without a struggle. arrived in the valley of the lower indus the macedonians again came upon principalities. there the nearest inhabitants on both sides of the river were the Çudras, whom the greeks call the sodroi or sogdoi, governed by a king; then on the western shore followed the kingdom of sambus, who at first submitted, and then at the instigation of the brahmans seized his weapons, but soon fled over the indus with elephants. his metropolis, sindimana, opened its gates; the other cities had to be taken by storm. in one of these brahmans were captured, and those of them who had advised the king to revolt were executed. the whole land was laid waste; above , men are said to have been slain, and the rest sold as slaves.[ ] opposite the principality of sambus, on the eastern bank, dwelt the mushikas, whose king the greeks call musikanos, after his people; he abandoned every thought of resistance, as the macedonians appeared on his borders earlier than he expected. when he had submitted, he also, on the instigation of the brahmans, attempted to liberate himself by arms. he was defeated and crucified along with his brahmans. to the south of the mushikas lay the prasthas,[ ] on the eastern bank. the city, into which the prince had retired, was taken on the third day; the walls of the citadel soon collapsed, the prince fell in battle, the city was sacked. at the point where the indus divides into two great arms on its course towards the sea, lay the great city of potala, _i.e._ ship-station, the pattala of the greeks.[ ] at alexander's approach the prince of this region fled, the city was abandoned by the inhabitants, the surrounding country by the husbandmen. it was alexander's intention to maintain his conquests in india. on the vitasta he had built bucephala and nicæa, on the asikni a third fortress of the name of alexandria, on the confluence of the panjab and the indus a fourth of the same name. pattala was transformed into a well-fortified harbour; he ordered a citadel to be erected there, a harbour and docks. as satrap of the district of the panjab he appointed philippus; as satrap of the region on the lower course of the indus peithon, the son of agenor. garrisons were placed in the most important cities. alexander moreover counted on the fidelity and the interest of the princes, mophis and porus, whose territories he had enlarged. when he had navigated the two mighty arms of the indus, and examined their outlets, he set out towards the end of august, b.c.[ ], with the greater part of his army, , men strong, to march through gedrosia to persia. in september nearchus left the indus with the fleet, carrying the rest of the army, in order to explore the unknown sea and return to the persian gulf. footnotes: [ ] the inscription of behistun speaks of harauvatis and gandara as subjugated; the inscription of persepolis of harauvatis, idhus, and gandara. hence harauvatis and gandhara belong to the hereditary part of the kingdom; idhus (indun in the balylonian form) was an addition. as herodotus speaks of caspapyrus along with pactyike, and hecatæus gives caspapyrus to the gandarians, the place may be identified with cabul. [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. , . cf. arrian, "anab." , ; plin. "hist. nat." , ; , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] above, p. . manu, , - . [ ] ritter, "asien," , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] moorcroft, "asiatic researches," , ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ; ^ , , n. . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . "mahavança," p. . [ ] "anab." , . strabo, p. . [ ] a. weber, "vorles." s. ^ . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . "mahavança," ed. turnour, p. ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ; cf. ^ , . [ ] a. weber, "vorlesungen," ^ , ^ . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ; ^ , . [ ] lassen, "de pentapotamia indica," p. , : "alterthumskunde," , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , ; curt. , , . [ ] droysen, "alexander," s. . [ ] the kophaios of the greeks is obviously the prince who reigns at kophen, _i.e._ at cabul. [ ] droysen explains this name, no doubt correctly, from the name of the river astacenus; _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] aristobulus in strabo, p. , tells us that the army wintered in the mountain land of the hippasians and the assacanus (so we must read here for [greek: mousikanos]). the guræans must be considered a tribe of the açvakas. [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] curt. , ; justin, , ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] cunningham, "survey," , ff. the accompanying sketch gives a clear idea of the gorge over which alexander laid the dam, in order to reach the walls of the citadel. [ ] the abissareans of arrian ("ind." , ), from whose mountains the soanas flows into the indus, can only be the inhabitants of the district called abhisara, which comprises the ranges of the himalayas in the region of the sources of the vitasta; ritter, "erdkunde," , ff. according to droysen ("alexander," s. ), lassen ("alterth." ^ , ), and the statements of onesicritus (in strabo, p. ) on the serpents of abisares, we must assume that abhisara belonged to cashmere, and was at that time the seat of the king of cashmere, and the greeks took the name of the prince from the name of the land. [ ] arrian, "anab." , , . strabo, p. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] cunningham, "geogr." p. , considers the ruins near the modern shahderi to mark the site of the ancient takshaçila. [ ] diod. , . [ ] arrian. "anab." , . strabo, p. . [ ] onesicritus in strabo, p. [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] aristobulus in strabo, p. . [ ] in arrian ("anab." , ) and plutarch ("alex." ) dandamis. [ ] onesicritus in strabo, p. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] plutarch, "de fluviis," . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ; ^ , . [ ] droysen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] droysen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , [ ] lassen, ^ , ; , ^ , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . according to plutarch ("alex." ) there were nations and cities. [ ] diod. , . "ramayana," , , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] arrian, "ind." , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] diod. , . curt. , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , , ; droysen, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] droysen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] "brahma-vasatya" in the mahabharata; lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] praesti; curt. , . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] droysen, _loc. cit._ , . chapter v. political and social life of the indians in the fourth century b.c. the arians on the indus and in the panjab had remained more true to the old tendencies of life than their tribesmen who had turned towards the east. in the variety of the forms of their political life and their stimulating influence on each other, in healthy simple feeling, in warlike energy and martial spirit they were in advance of the land of the ganges. great as was the number of the tribes and states which filled the region of the indus, and thickly as the land was populated, wide and many-sided as was the civilisation, in the development of religious and intellectual life, in industrial and mercantile activity, in civilisation of external life, in comfort and wealth, the land of the ganges was undoubtedly in advance of the indus. after alexander's army trod the soil of the panjab, the eastern district also became better known to the greeks. megasthenes tells us that india was inhabited by nations; the cities were so numerous that it was impossible to know and enumerate them.[ ] beyond the desert which extends from the vipaça and Çatadru to the lands of the east,--the breadth is put by the greeks at twelve days' journey--on the navigable yamuna (yomanes) dwelt the Çurasenas, whose cities were mathura and krishnapura;[ ] further to the east were the panchalas. at the head of this tribe, as we have seen, the pandus once deposed the kurus, the dominant family of the bharatas, and took their place. hence the name panchalas was used instead of the name bharatas for the tribes governed by the pandus, first from hastinapura and then from kauçambi, as we assumed from native accounts (p. ).[ ] it has been remarked above (p. ) that the dynasty of the pandus came to an end about the middle of the fifth century, and the Çurasenas and panchalas became subject to the kings of magadha. in the south-west, on the hill and mountain territory, which gradually rises to the spurs of the vindhyas, lay the mavellas, according to the account of the greeks, whose prince possessed five hundred elephants;[ ] on the gulf of cambay reigned kings, who resided in the city of automela, which must have been a considerable place of trade. lastly, in the peninsula of surashtra (guzerat) was a kingdom where the ruling family according to the greeks bore the name of pandus, and who therefore were connected by their lineage with pandu, the father of yudhishthira and arjuna. the pandus of surashtra are said to have reigned over cities and to have possessed elephants of war.[ ] if a branch of the house of pandu, which ruled over the panchalas and bharatas, had founded the second mathura on the south side of the deccan, it was colonists from surashtra who made ceylon subject to the brahmanic law (p. , ). we have already stated what was known to alexander and his companions of the inhabitants of the ganges, the kingdom of the gangarides, the prasians (prachyas), _i.e._ the men of the east, as they call themselves, obviously after the name common in the land of the indus. the ample resources and powerful army which were ascribed in the land of the indus to the ruler of this kingdom, the well-known magadha, may have contributed in no small measure to the fact that alexander's campaign came to an end on the vipaça. in any case the accounts which the greeks received in the land of the indus about magadha, confirm the predominant position which our inferences from native authorities compel us to ascribe to this kingdom after the time of king kalaçoka, in the land of the ganges. however exaggerated the statement of the greeks about the power of the king of the prasians may be, they give us the further proof that the consequence and power of magadha under the nandas in the first half of the fourth century b.c. had rather increased than diminished; they show us, finally, that even the usurper who overthrew the nandas, and the dhanapala who sat on the throne of magadha at the time when alexander marched through the indus--the greeks call him xandrames--maintained the ruling position of magadha on the ganges. of the nations which lay to the west of the gangarides, _i.e._ to the east of magadha, the greeks can mention few. first come the kalingas who dwelt on "the other sea," below the mouths of the ganges. the kings of this nation were masters of , foot soldiers and elephants. next to them dwelt the andhras in numerous villages and thirty cities with walls and towers; these were followed by the most southern realm in india, the land of pandæa[ ]--the kingdom of the southern mathura, the southern pandus (p. ) is meant--and the great island of taprobane, which lay off the southern shore of india. the mention of the kalingas and andhras shows that the arian colonisation must have made considerable advances in the course of the fourth century in the region between orissa (p. ) and the southern mathura. to grasp clearly the picture which the contemporaries of alexander received of the life and pursuits of the indians in its essential lines, in order to compare it with the native traditions and to supplement them, is of great importance owing to the peculiar nature of the latter. the splendour of the indian princes is described by the greeks in glowing colours. gold and silver, elephants, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were possessed by them in abundance. their robes were adorned with gold and purple, even the soles of their shoes glittered with precious stones.[ ] in their ears they carried precious stones of peculiar size and brilliance; the upper and lower arm no less than the neck were surrounded by pearls, and a golden staff was the symbol of their rank.[ ] every one showed them the greatest reverence; men not only prostrated themselves before them but even prayed to them.[ ] nevertheless conspiracies against them were common. for this reason the kings were waited upon by women only, who had been purchased from their parents. these had to prepare the food, bring the wine, and accompany them to the bed-chamber, which for the sake of security was frequently changed. in the daytime the kings of the indians did not venture to sleep.[ ] even when hunting the king was accompanied by his wives, who were in turn surrounded by his bodyguards. any one who ventured to advance as far as the women lost his life. if the king hunted in a park, he shot from a framework, on which stood also two or three women, equipped for hunting; if in the open, he was still followed by the women, partly in chariots, partly like the king himself on elephants. in the same way women accompanied the indian kings to war.[ ] except for hunting and war the kings only left the palace to offer sacrifice. then they appeared in a beautifully-flowered robe.[ ] drum-beaters and bell-players preceded them; then came elephants adorned with gold and silver, four-yoked chariots, and others yoked with pairs of oxen. the soldiers marched out in the best armour; gold utensils, great kettles and dishes quite a fathom in diameter--tables, seats, and water-basins of indian copper, set with precious stones, emeralds, beryls, and carbuncles, and gay robes adorned with gold were carried in procession. after these wild animals were brought out--buffaloes, panthers, and bound lions and tigers.[ ] on waggons of four wheels stood trees with large leaves, on which were various kinds of tame birds, some distinguished by their gorgeous plumage, others by their fine voices.[ ] the splendour of the princes, the hundreds of "lotus-eyed" women who surrounded and waited on them, no less than their anxious cares for their own safety are well-known to us from the native authorities; and the change in the succession, which we have so frequently met with, proves that these precautions were not superfluous.[ ] the sutras describe how the kings at festivals march out on elephants to the sound of all kinds of instruments, amid the scent of perfumes and clouds of frankincense, accompanied by their ministers and multitudes of people. an inscription of açoka of magadha ordains processions of elephants and festal chariots, "announced by trumpets;"[ ] and the epos goes to great length in the description of the processions of the princes for the consecration of the king (p. ), and on other occasions of a similar kind. according to the greeks the kings of the indians gave great attention to justice; they occupied themselves with it almost the whole day. the other judges were also conscientious, and the guilty were severely punished.[ ] we remember how urgently the book of the law impressed on the princes the duty of dispensing justice, the protection of persons and property, the awarding of punishment (p. ). the indians were, the greeks assure us, honest in trade, and had few lawsuits. personal assaults were forbidden; no one might offer or receive them; and so the indians were accustomed to bring charges merely for wounding and murder. theft was rare, though little was locked up in the houses. any one who mutilated another was mutilated in the same manner and lost a hand in addition; but any one who deprived an artisan of a hand or an eye must be put to death. false witness was punished with loss of the hand or foot; the worst criminals were punished at the king's order by flaying.[ ] the indian nation was divided, we are told, into seven tribes. the first was formed by the sages; in numbers it was the weakest, but in importance and honour the most considerable. the second by the magistrates, who "distinguished themselves by wisdom and justice." out of this order the kings, no less than the free nations of india, took their supreme council; from them the kings also selected the overseers of the cantons, the judges and leaders in war. the third was the order of spies, whose business it was to find out everything that took place in the cities and in the country; the kings maintained them for their own safety, and the spies were assisted by the public women, both those in the cities and those who in time of war went out in the camps. the fourth order, that of the warriors, was numerous. it enjoyed great liberty, and was the most prosperous, inasmuch as it had no other duty but to practise the use of arms. the warriors were paid out of the treasury of the king, and so liberally that they could even support others on their pay. the armour, horses and elephants which they required they received from the king, together with the necessary servants, so that others forged their weapons for them, tended and led their horses, adorned and drove their chariots and guided their elephants. in time of war the soldiers fought; in time of peace they lived in idleness and enjoyment, in pleasure and festivity. those also who practised arts and handicraft, or carried on trade, formed in india a separate order (the fifth). of these some made what the husbandmen required, others were makers of armour and builders of ships. most of them were subject to taxes and had to give service beside; only the artisans who manufactured implements of war, and the carpenters who built ships were free not only from service and taxes but even received maintenance from the king, for whom alone they were permitted to work.[ ] the most numerous order by far was that of the husbandmen (the sixth). these never went to war, nor possessed weapons, nor were employed in other public services; they even withdrew from dealings with the cities. the indian peasant lived undisturbed with his wife and children on his farm, occupied only with the tillage of the field. even the outbreak of a war did not disturb his employment; under the protection of the kings he carried on his labours quietly.[ ] some accounts of the greeks go so far as to assure us that the farms were sacred and inviolable; that even the soldiers of the enemy were not permitted to lay them waste, to burn trees and houses and lay hand on the people, so that the peasants fearlessly followed the plough amid the arrangements of battle and warfare, got in their harvest, and gathered the fruits of the field.[ ] the seventh and last class of the indians consisted of the hunters and herdmen. the herdmen led a wandering life in the mountain regions and lived on their cattle, from which they had to pay tribute to the king; the hunters were bound to cleanse the land of wild animals, and protect the crops of the husbandmen against them.[ ] these seven orders of the indians might not contract marriage with each other, nor was it permitted to pass from one order into another, or to carry on the occupation of two orders at once. only those who belonged to the first order could carry on the occupation of any other, just as any one in any order could enter the order of the sages. this conception of the indian castes is idealized in some points, and in others falls into errors, of which the causes are easily detected and pardonable. the happy, careless, and free life of the kshatriyas is obviously exaggerated for all the states in which they had not maintained the position of a landed warlike nobility, as they did in the free nations,[ ] unless indeed among the monarchies a king sat on the throne who especially favoured the kshatriyas, and was in a position to treat handsomely the soldiers in service, or registered for service. it has already been mentioned that all kshatriyas did not serve (p. ); and it would not occur to any prince to pay men who were not in service. still less do the idyllic descriptions of the honoured and inviolable life of the husbandmen agree with the taxes and exactions and miserable position of the villagers, to which we find such frequent references in the native authorities. it is true that the brahmanic law laid emphasis on settled life, and gave the preference to agriculture over trade and handicraft (p. ), but of such a respect for husbandry as the greeks describe we often find the opposite. these and similar traits in the greek accounts owe in part their origin to the exaggerated picture of this distant land, which the fame of indian marvels, of the wisdom and justice of the indian nation, had produced among the greeks. yet we must not overlook the fact that agriculture _was_ carried on with industry and care, that these accounts are essentially based on the impression which megasthenes received of the condition of india circumstances in the period soon after alexander, when a great prince on the throne of magadha maintained peace and order in his wide dominions with a powerful hand. even the sutras of the buddhists dwell on the flourishing condition of agriculture at this period. if the greeks give seven orders instead of four, if they speak of the magistrates, spies, handicraftsmen, and finally of the hunters and herdmen, as separate tribes beside the priests, warriors, and husbandmen, the error is founded in the fact that they had a tendency to find the distinction of castes everywhere. beside the chief castes were the castes of mixed origin, and it has been observed above how strong was the tendency of persons engaged in similar occupations to form into separate bodies within the castes. it was natural for an observant foreigner to think that the retired life of the sages was separated from the busy occupation of the magistrates by a sharper line, and to make the special calling of the magistrates into a caste, though on the other hand it did not escape the greeks that the sages also were counsellors of the kings. manu's law had wisely prescribed that kings should diligently avail themselves of the help of spies, whom they must select out of all the orders; these spies were more especially to watch the courtesans,[ ] and the ramayana extols the ministers of king daçaratha of ayodhya for their skill in giving information of everything that went on in the land.[ ] if the greeks could regard these spies as a special caste, many persons must have been employed by the system of secret police in the fourth century b.c. in india. that the unity of the caste, which comprised agriculturists, merchants, and handicraftsmen, and on the other hand the distinction between the vaiçyas and the Çudras, was overlooked, is easily to be explained, for even manu's law permitted the Çudras to be handicraftsmen, and the brahmans and kshatriyas to descend to the occupation of the other castes (p. ), a permission which, in the case of the brahmans, did not escape the greeks. that the handicraftsmen and others had to perform tax-labour for the king, is an arrangement fixed by the book of the law (p. ). lastly, the greeks apparently included among the hunters and the herdmen the impure and despised castes; the book of the law had also fixed what castes, _i.e._ what tribes of the pre-arian or arian population, were to occupy themselves with hunting and the capture of wild animals.[ ] of the order of the sages the greeks tell us that it assisted the king in the conduct of sacred worship, as the magians assisted the persians. nor was it kings only, but communities and individuals who employed the services of these sages at sacrifices, because they stood nearest the gods, to whom a sacrifice offered by others could not be acceptable. together with the sacrifice the sages conducted the burial and worship of the dead, as they were acquainted with the under world. they even occupied themselves with prediction, and soothsaying was in their hands. they rarely told individual persons their fate, for this was too insignificant and beneath the dignity of prophecy, but they foretold the fortunes of the state. at the new year the kings annually summoned the sages and a great assembly, when they announced whether the year would be good or bad, dry or wet; whether there would be sickness or not. at this assembly any sage also stated what he had observed that was of use in the affairs of the community, to promote the prosperity of the fruits and animals, etc. if any one prophesied falsely, no punishment awaited him; but any one who for the third time announced what did not take place was bound to keep silence for ever, a penalty so strictly observed by those on whom it was imposed, that nothing in the world could move them to utter another word.[ ] the life of these sages was no easy one; on the contrary, it was the most burdensome of all. from their earliest childhood they were brought up to wisdom; nay, even before their birth guardians from among the sages were allotted to them, who visited the mothers in order to ensure them a happy delivery by magic arts; so at least it was believed; as a fact they gave them wise exhortations. after birth other sages undertook the education of the children, and with advancing years the boys ever received better instructors. when grown up they lived for the most part in groves, in solitary isolation from the cities, lay on the earth, clothed themselves with the skins of animals, ate nothing that had life, refrained from sexual intercourse, and exercised great firmness both in bearing pain and in endurance, inasmuch as they sometimes remained in one position for the whole day, or stood for a long time on one leg, and carried on conversations on important matters. these could be listened to even by the common people; but such listeners must sit in profound silence; they must neither speak nor cough nor spit. any sage who had lived in this manner for thirty-six or forty years, which they call the years of practice (p. ), departs to his possessions and henceforth lives a less severe life. he wears garments of cotton, and rings of gold of moderate size on his hands and in his ears; he may eat the flesh of animals which are useless, but he may not eat acid food. the sages then take several wives, because it is important to have many children, in order to propagate wisdom the better. others, clad in cotton garments, wander through the cities and teach, and are accompanied by pupils. the greater part of the time they spend in the market-place, where they are visited by many persons for advice. others again live in the forest under the huge trees and eat nothing but bark and ripe herbs. in summer they endured without clothing the burning heat of the midday sun, and the winter also they passed in the open air, amid torrents of rain. the sages who live in the forest do not go to the kings, even though requested to do so; but the kings from time to time ask questions of them by messengers, and entreat them to call upon and worship the gods on their behalf. others of the sages, however, manage the business of the state, and accompany the kings as counsellors; others are physicians, who live simply on rice and barley, and heal sickness by diet more than by any other means;[ ] others again are soothsayers and magicians, and acquainted with the sacrifices to the dead and the ritual, and go about begging among the villages and cities. these were the least cultivated of the sages, but even the others did not contradict the fables of the under-world, "because they advanced piety and sanctity."[ ] the sages were one and all highly honoured by the kings and the nation. they paid no taxes, they had no duties and services to perform, but on the contrary received valuable presents. those who lived in the cities and gave advice in the market-place could take whatever and as much as they pleased of the food exposed for sale there, especially of oil and sesame; any one who is carrying figs or grapes gives to them of his store without payment. all whom they visit feel themselves honoured, and every house is open to them, except the apartments of the women; they enter when they choose, and take part in the conversation and the meal. even the physicians among the sages are hospitably entertained in all the houses, and receive rice and barley wherever they lodge.[ ] megasthenes tells us that the sages were divided into two sects, of which the one was called brahmans, the other sarmans. there was also a third sect, wrangling and quarrelsome men, whom the brahmans regarded as vain boasters and fools.[ ] the brahmans were held in higher estimation than the sarmans, because there was more agreement in their doctrines. they occupied themselves with researches into nature, and the knowledge of the stars, and taught everything like the hellenes; maintaining that the world was created, and globular, and perishable, permeated by the deity who created and governed it. the earth was the centre of the universe. in addition to the four elements of the hellenes the sages of the indians assumed a fifth, out of which arose the sky and the stars. about the nature of the soul, also, the indians had the same notions as the hellenes; but like plato they interspersed many fables on the imperishable nature of the soul, on the judgment which will be held in the under-world on the souls, and other things of the kind. as a rule their acts were better than their words; their proofs were generally supported by the narration of extraordinary stories. they maintained that in itself there was nothing good or bad; otherwise it would be impossible that some persons should be in trouble about an event while others felt delighted at it; that even the same persons should be distressed and then in turn delighted at the selfsame occurrence.[ ] according to the account of onesicritus quoted above (p. ), the brahmans of takshaçila considered that doctrine the best which removed joy and sadness utterly from the soul. in order to attain this the body must be accustomed to pain that the power of the soul may thus be strengthened. that man is the best who has the fewest needs; he is the most free who needs neither presents nor anything else from another; who has to fear no threats; he who equally disregarded pleasure and toil and life and death will be second to no other. the brahmans spoke a good deal of death, which they regarded as a deliverance from the flesh when rendered useless by age. life on earth they regarded merely as the completion of birth in the flesh, death as the birth to true life, and to happiness for the wise. diseases of the body appeared to them dishonourable; and if a man fell into sickness, he anointed himself, caused a pyre to be erected, placed himself on it, gave orders that it should be kindled, and was burnt, without moving. others put an end to their lives by throwing themselves into water, or over precipices; others by hanging or by the sword. yet megasthenes maintains that suicide was no article in the indian creed.[ ] in all essential points these accounts agree with the native authorities, though the view taken is here and there too favourable, in some points too advanced, in others not sufficiently discriminating. it is true that the brahmans and the initiated of the enlightened, the Çramanas, are confounded in the order of the sages; this is shown by the statement that any one could enter into this order.[ ] it would have required peculiar acuteness on the part of a stranger to distinguish matters so closely resembling each other in their external appearances; and the one were mendicants no less than the others. it is evidence of clear observation that the brahmans like the bhikshus were regarded by the greeks as philosophers rather than priests; they give prominence to their position as advisers of the king and soothsayers as well as their philosophical inquiries and conduct of sacrifices. the custom of advising the princes agrees with the rules which are known to us from the book of the law, the statements of the sutras, the epos, the puranas, and the incidents in the land of the indus which have been mentioned above (p. ); and with regard to soothsaying we have already seen from the sutras how much the brahmans were given to astrology after the year b.c.; how they suggested fortunate names to parents for their children, and favourable times for investiture with the sacred girdle, for cutting the hair, and for marriage. the assemblies at the new year, of which the greeks tell us, have reference no doubt to the establishment of the calendar, _i.e._ to the fixing of the proper and fortunate days for sacrifice and festivity, for seedtime, etc., as is done at this day in every village by the brahmans, and for the court and kingdom by the brahmans of the king. even now nothing of importance is undertaken in the state or in the house, before the brahmans have declared the signs of heaven to be favourable. as to the sacrifices to the departed, we are acquainted with the meals for the dead, and their importance, which the brahmans retained, while the bhikshus, as we shall see, had meanwhile gone so far as to worship the manes of buddha and his chief disciples. the sutras have already informed us of the frequent use of physicians; they were brahmans who carried on the art of healing on the basis of the atharvaveda. the care of the young brahmans and their instruction is correctly stated; the time of teaching which the book of the law fixes at thirty-six years (p. ) is not forgotten; even among the bhikshus a noviciate was customary. in the description of the life of the ascetics and wandering sages, the brahmans and bhikshus are again confounded, and if the greeks tell us that the severe sages of the forest were too proud to go to the court at the request of the king, the statement holds good according to the evidence of the epos of the brahmanic saints, and the sutras of the great teachers among the buddhists.[ ] in the examination of the doctrines of the indian sages megasthenes distinguished the brahmans and the buddhists, inasmuch as he opposes the less honoured sects to the first, and declares the brahmans to be the most important. from his whole account it is clear that at his date, _i.e._ about the year b.c., the brahmans had distinctly the upper hand. but, according to him, the Çramanas took the next place to the brahmans, among the less honoured sects. among the buddhists Çramana is the ordinary name for their clergy (p. ). the doctrines of the brahmans of the world-soul and the five elements (by the fifth, with which the greeks were not acquainted, the æther or akaça of the brahmans is meant), the dogmas of liberation from sensuality and the body, are rightly stated by megasthenes in all essentials, and his assertion that the brahmans for the most part narrated fabulous stories in support of their doctrines is based very correctly on the numerous brahman legends about the great saints. megasthenes takes too favourable a view of the object of brahmanic asceticism, but he brings out with sufficient prominence the mortification of the flesh, and remarks the diversity of the views on voluntary death or suicide, which, as we have seen, the book of the law, in case of incapacity, regards as a meritorious end to the later years of life, while the buddhists condemned it altogether. of the religion of the indians the greeks ascertained that they worshipped zeus, who brought the rain, and other native, _i.e._ peculiar, deities, and the ganges. of the gods of the greeks dionysus was the first to come to india; he instructed the indians in the culture of the field and the vine, founded the monarchy, and taught them how to wear the mitra and to dance the cordax (a bacchic dance).[ ] heracles also had been in india, but fifteen generations later than dionysus. the indians called heracles one of the earth-born, who had attained divine honours after his death, because he surpassed all men in power and boldness. this indian heracles had cleared land and sea from wild and hurtful animals, and, like the theban heracles, had carried the lion's skin and club. he had many sons, among whom india was equally divided, and these had bequeathed their dominions to many descendants, from generation to generation; some of these kingdoms existed even when alexander came to india. beside these sons heracles had one daughter, pandæa, whom he had also made a queen, and had given her for a kingdom the land in which she was born, the most southern part of india;[ ] and when on one of his voyages heracles had discovered pearls he gathered together all that could be found in the indian sea in order to adorn his daughter with them. as he had never seen a man worthy of her, when in old age he made her though but seven years old of full age for marriage in order that he might beget with her a successor for her land. after this time, all the women in the land named after her were of marriageable age in their seventh year.[ ] the indians on the mountains worshipped dionysus, those in the plains heracles;[ ] the latter was chiefly worshipped among the Çurasenas on the yamuna,[ ] and the Çibis (p. ), who wore the skins of animals and carried clubs like heracles, and branded their oxen and mules with the mark of a club.[ ] the indians did not slaughter the animals for sacrifice, but strangled them.[ ] the rain-bringing zeus is the ancient sky-god of the indians, indra, who cleaves the clouds with the lightning, and sends down the fructifying water, even as he causes the springs imprisoned in the rocks to bubble forth in freedom. concerning the sacredness of the ganges we are sufficiently instructed in indian authorities. with regard to dionysus, the greeks tell us that when alexander was in the land of the açvakas, an embassy came from the nysæans with the message that dionysus had founded their city, had given it the name of nysa, and had called the neighbouring hill meron. in the valleys and on the hills of the açvakas the greeks saw the vine growing wild, the thick creepers of a plant not unlike ivy, myrtles, bay, box-trees, and other evergreens, along with luxuriant orchards,[ ] a vegetation which reminded them of their own homes and the sacred places of dionysus. when in the hindu kush they heard the name of the tribe of the nishadas and of the divine mountain meru, which with the indians lay beyond the himalayas (the highest ranges were with them the southern slopes of the divine mountain), there was no longer any doubt that the god of nysa, who had grown up in the nysæan cave, and on the nysæan mountain, had marched to india, just as he had reduced the nations of asia minor as far as the euphrates.[ ] in this way the nysæan mountain, which the greeks first placed in boeotia and thrace, was then removed to the borders of egypt, afterwards to arabia and ethiopia,[ ] and even to india. to the greeks the nishadas were nysæans and their city nysa; they were at once convinced that meru received the name from dionysus or in honour of dionysus, whom his divine father had once carried in his thigh ([greek: mêros]).[ ] diodorus, after his manner, gives this pragmatic explanation of the story: dionysus was compelled to refresh his wearied army on a mountain, which was then called meros after him. further, the processions of the indian princes to sacrifices and the chase reminded the greeks of the dionysiac processions at home. they caught the sound of cymbals and drums; they saw the number of the royal women with their female servants in these trains; the king and his company in their long gay and flowered robes, with turbans on their heads,[ ] which reminded them of the fillet of dionysus; they saw great cups and goblets, the treasures of the king's palace, and finally, lions and panthers, the animals of dionysus, brought forth in these processions; coloured masks and beards, just as the greeks were accustomed to paint the face at the festival of dionysus.[ ] among the indians, as we saw, in the course of the sixth century, the worship of rudra-Çiva grew up first and chiefly in the high mountains and valleys, where the storms were the most violent. he was a wild deity like dionysus; like him he was invoked as "lord of the hills" (p. ), a god of increase and fertility, of nature creating through moisture, of reproduction. and if ecstasy and frenzy were peculiar to the worship of dionysus, there was also a certain wildness in the nature of Çiva-rudra, a trait which gradually became more strongly marked among the indians in contrast to the form of vishnu. the culture of the vine on the indus, the green mountain valleys, the sound of the names nishada and meru, the procession of the indian kings, and the worship of Çiva, convinced the greeks that they had found the worship of their god. that they restricted this to the inhabitants of the mountains is due, no doubt, to the fact that they were more closely acquainted with the mountain land of the west, that the vine-clad valleys and the names nysa and meru belonged to the region of the high mountains, that even in the land of the ganges the himalayas passed as the abode of Çiva (p. ). moreover, the plains of india did not produce the vine, which indeed does not nourish in india, with the exception of some districts on the indus, and the inhabitants of the ganges valley did not drink wine. as the indians of the mountains, according to the account of the greeks, worshipped dionysus, so were the indians of the plains worshippers of heracles. according to the statement of megasthenes, he was worshipped especially among the Çurasenas on the yamuna and in the cities of mathura and krishnapura, and therefore krishna must be meant (p. ). among the indians vishnu-krishna carries the club, which varuna once gave to him, and is called the club-bearer (_gadadhara_); with the club krishna smote the wild tribes, the heroes, and the monsters. the weapon carried by krishna's nation, the extinct yadavas, was the club. the greeks tell us that the indian heracles begot many sons; in the mahabharata krishna entreats mahadeva, _i.e._ Çiva, the god of fertility, for hundreds of sons; the vishnu-purana ascribes to krishna , wives and , sons.[ ] according to the greeks, krishna was first placed among the gods after his death; in the ancient conception of the indians, krishna, as we know, was a strong herdman, who overcame bulls, kings, and giants, gave crafty counsel in the great wars, and at length died, wounded by the arrows of a hunter (p. ); he becomes a deity by amalgamation with vishnu. that the greeks overlook the peaceful side of the deity in the incarnations of vishnu as paraçurama, rama, and krishna, and their heroic achievements, is easily explained from their tendency to find their native gods in india. the derivation of the royal races of india from heracles has reference only to the dynasties which claimed to be derived from the pandus, the extinct royal houses of the bharatas and panchalas, the pandus in guzerat and southern mathura, whose ancestors the epos places in such close connection with vishnu-krishna. this derivation might easily be extended to the families which carried their lineage beyond the pandus to kuru, puru, and pururavas, like the pauravas on the panjab (p. ), and the oldest dynasty of the kings of magadha (p. ). the most southern part of india is said to have fallen to pandæa, the daughter of heracles, and to have received its name from her; the pearls were procured from the sea for her adornment. we know that a pandu family ruled there; among the heroic achievements of krishna, the mahabharata mentions the conquest of the giant panchajana;[ ] vishnu is the bearer of the mussel, the lord of the jewel, and the pearl fishery can only be carried on in the gulf between mathura and ceylon. that a daughter and not a son of heracles founded the kingdom here, is perhaps due to an indian legend, woven into the history of this kingdom of mathura. sampanna-pandya, the king mentioned above, worshipped the protecting goddess of the city so zealously that in order to reward him she caused herself to be born as his daughter. she succeeds her father on the throne, marches through india performing great deeds as far as the lake of kailasa, the lofty himalayas, where she overcomes even Çiva by her beauty, so that he follows her to mathura, and there reigns at sundara-pandya (_i.e._ the beautiful pandya), and gives prosperity to the land.[ ] hence it is possible that the protecting deity of mathura and her warlike achievements are the basis underlying the story of the daughter of heracles. if heracles begets a son with this daughter in her seventh year, and all the women of the land became henceforth marriageable at that age, the latter part of the statement is correct; the fact is due to the position of the country under the equator. even the law of manu, which is adapted to the land on the central ganges, permits marriage in the twelfth and even in the eighth year (p. ). whatever may be the case with regard to the several items of the statements of the greeks about the worship of dionysus and heracles, they make it certain that in the fourth century b.c. the worship of indra was indeed in existence, but not prominent, while the worship of rudra-Çiva and vishnu was in the foremost position. the worship of vishnu was the chief worship of the indians of the plains, _i.e._ of the land of the ganges, and krishna and rama, the figures in the epos, were already transformed into incarnations of vishnu. of the justice of the indians, their contempt of death, and reverence towards the kings, ctesias has much to tell.[ ] the companions of alexander extol their love of truth; no indian was ever accused of a lie. megasthenes adds that the indians lent money without witnesses or seals; a man ought to know whom he could trust; if he made a mistake he must bear the loss with equanimity. wives were generally bought of their parents for a yoke of oxen; but megasthenes assures us that in magadha marriages were made without giving or receiving.[ ] in that case the rule of the book of the law (p. ), had become current here. the indian wives were faithful and chaste, though it was the custom to have more than one. the greeks also extol the moderation of the indians in eating and drinking. the majority ate nothing but a little rice and fruits of the field; the mountaineers alone lived on the flesh of the wild animals which they caught in the chase. so little importance did they ascribe to eating that they had no fixed hour for meals. nor did the inhabitants of the plains drink wine except at sacrifices, and this was not prepared from the grape but from rice.[ ] at the banquets of the rich a separate table was set apart for each guest, with a golden cup; in this first rice and then other vegetables were brought, which the indians were very skilful in cooking.[ ] they were partial to singing and dancing, and paid great attention to beauty and the care of the body. they anointed themselves and had their bodies frequently rubbed; even when the king was dispensing justice four men frequently rubbed him with strigils. the hair of the indians was plaited, and a band worn like the persian mitre. they preferred white garments, which among them seemed brighter than with other nations, either because cotton was whiter than linen or because they appeared brighter owing to the dark colour of the indians.[ ] over the cotton shirt, reaching half way down the thigh, many threw a mantle, which was fastened under the right shoulder. many also wore linen clothes instead of cotton, and gay garments embroidered with flowers. their shoes were of white leather, delicate in workmanship, and provided with high parti-coloured heels, that the figure might appear taller. they allowed the beard to grow, and tended it carefully; some tribes even stained the beard with various lively hues--white, green, dark-blue, and purple-red--and the country provided excellent colours for this purpose. the richer men had rings of gold and ivory in their ears and on their hands; they had beautiful parasols held over them, and did everything that could enhance the beauty of their appearance.[ ] persons of importance rode only in chariots with four horses; it was thought mean to make a journey on horseback without a retinue.[ ] we remember with what emphasis the hymns of the veda inculcated honour, fidelity, truth, and the eschewal of lying; and without doubt in the ancient period the aryas on the indus laid as much weight on truthfulness as the airyas of iran. but some observations in the book of the law showed us that this virtue no longer entirely prevailed in the land of the ganges. buddhism earnestly reiterates the precept not to lie, and in spite of the conduct of the king of cashmere and other princes on the indus towards alexander, as related to us by the greeks, we can believe their assertions that at that time these virtues prevailed through far larger circles than at present. the moderation of the indians in eating and drinking is due primarily, no doubt, to the climate of the ganges; in a less degree the laws of the brahmans respecting food, and the moderation preached by buddha, must have operated to the same end, and above all must have tended to remove the old love of drinking among the aryas. the love of the aryas for dress and adornment we know from the sutras; they showed us that the richer men wore costly ear-rings of diamonds, and the poorer wore ornaments of wood or lead.[ ] of ayodhya the ramayana boasts that no one was seen there without ear-rings and a necklace, without a chaplet on the head and perfumes.[ ] the dress of the women was naturally still more costly and stately. the epos is acquainted with the custom of colouring the hands and feet with sandal or lac;[ ] in the later poems of the indians we have endless praises of the jingling of the anklets, the shrill-sounding girdles, glittering with precious stones; the adornments of the neck, the eye-brows and forehead coloured with musk, antimony, and lac, the locks of hair and crowns of flowers. in all these matters the hindus have not changed. even now they love to wear snow-white garments, and next to these such as are of a brilliant colour; they carry gracefully the ample garment in which they wrap themselves; they dress their hair, and anoint it with palm oil, and though they no longer stain their beards blue and red, they paint on the forehead the symbol of the deity which each person specially worships. the turban, for which in some districts material interwoven with gold is preferred, is still picturesquely coiled round the head; by the different modes of wrapping may be distinguished the inhabitants of different districts. a poor man would rather give up anything than the silver ornaments of his girdle, and the poorest porter is rarely without a gold ear-ring. weavers of garlands and silversmiths are still to be found in the most wretched villages, and any one would rather go without a dinner than without perfumes. according to the greeks the rites of burial were plain and simple. it was the custom of the indians to burn the dead on pyres. as we have seen, cremation was for a long time the universal practice. it took place before the gates of the cities, where there were special places for the purpose; the corpses were wrapped in linen, and carried out on cushions amid hymns and prayers, some of the oldest of which we know (p. ).[ ] the bones and anything else which remained unburnt were thrown into the water. aristobulus says that he had heard that among some indians the widows burned themselves voluntarily with the corpses of their husbands, and those who refused to do so were held in less estimation.[ ] the greeks also observe, quite correctly, that it was not the custom among the indians to erect mounds. in the fourth century, it is true, the followers of buddha had erected stupas for his relics (p. ), and possibly for those of his greatest disciples; but in any case these were so rare and so unimportant that they would hardly strike the eye; one greek authority nevertheless asserts that there were small tumuli in india. the reason given for this omission which seemed so strange to the greeks, is that the indians were of opinion that the remembrance of the virtues of a man together with the hymns sung in his honour (by which can only be meant the ritual of the burial and the funeral feast) were sufficient to preserve his memory.[ ] the industrial skill of the indians was not unknown to the greeks. as early as the fifth century fine indian clothes, silken garments called _sindones_ or tyrian robes, were brought by the trade of the phenicians to hellas. ctesias praises the swords of indian steel of special excellence and rare quality, which were worn at the persian court. other evidence also shows that the indians at an early time understood the preparation and working of steel.[ ] mining, on the other hand, according to the greeks, they understood but ill, and their copper vessels, which were cast, not beaten, were fragile and brittle. at the sources of a river which flowed through lofty mountains into the indus there grew, as ctesias tells us, a kind of tree, called siptachora, on the leaves of which lived small creatures like beetles, with long legs, and soft like caterpillars. they spoiled the fruit of the trees just as the woodlice spoiled the vines in hellas, but from the insects when pounded came a purple colour, which gave a more beautiful and brilliant dye than the purple of the hellenes.[ ] these insects of ctesias are the beetles of the lac-tree, which suck the juice of the bark and leaves, and so provide the lac-dye. the home of this tree is the north, more especially the mountain-range on the upper indus above cashmere. ctesias' statement proves that the indians knew how to prepare the lac-dye in the fifth century b.c. the same authority mentions an ointment of the indians, which gave the most excellent perfume; it might be perceived at a distance of four stades. this ointment, which they prepared from the resin of a kind of cedar with leaves like a palm, the indians called karpion. possibly cinnamon-oil is meant, which is obtained from the outer-bark of the cinnamon tree.[ ] of the military affairs of the indians, besides what has been already quoted about the order of soldiers, the greeks tell us that the bow was their favourite weapon. in the veda and the epos we found this to be the chief arm (p. , ), and the good management of it was the first qualification of a hero. the greeks tell us that the indian bow, made of reed, was as tall as the man who carried it. in stringing it the indians placed the lower end of the bow against the earth, and drew the string back while pressing with the left foot against the bow; their arrows were almost three cubits long. nothing withstood these arrows; they penetrated shield and cuirass.[ ] others were armed with javelins instead of the bow, and with shields of untanned ox-hide, somewhat narrower than a man but not less tall. when it came to a hand-to-hand contest, which was rarely the case among the indians, they drew the broad-sword three cubits in length, which every one carried, and which must have been wielded with both hands. the indians rode without a saddle; the horses were held in with bits, which took the form of a lance. to these the reins were fastened, but along with them a curb of leather, in which occasionally iron, and among the wealthier people ivory points, were placed, so as to pierce the lips of the horse when the rein was drawn.[ ] the indian horsemen carried two lances and a shield smaller than that of the foot soldier. in every chariot of war besides the driver were two combatants, and on the elephants three besides the driver. on the march the chariots were drawn by oxen, and the horses led in halters, so that they came into the battle-field with vigour undiminished.[ ] the beating of drums and the sound of cymbals and shells, which were blown, gave the signal of attack to the army.[ ] the epos exhibits to us the kings for the most part in their chariots, and in these and on the elephants it places but one combatant beside the driver. the oldest trace of the use of elephants in war is not to be found in the battle-pieces of the epos, into which the elephants were introduced at a later time. we hear nothing of elephants in the single contests of the heroes, but it is said that in the year b.c. an indian nation put elephants in the field against cyrus (p. ). at a later time ctesias is our first authority for this practice; he describes it, about the year b.c., as the fixed custom of the indians. footnotes: [ ] arrian, "ind." . plin. "hist. nat." , , . [ ] [greek: methora te kai kleisobora.] arrian, "ind." , . [ ] [greek: pazalai] in arrian, "ind." , . ptolem. , . passalæ in plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , , "gentes montanæ inter oppidum potala et jomanem." lassen, "alterthum." , , _n._ . [ ] lassen, _loc cit._ pliny, _loc. cit._ [ ] megasthenes in pliny, "hist. nat." , , . arrian, "ind." . lassen, _loc. cit._ , , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] curtius, , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . curtius, , . [ ] strabo, p. . cf. curt. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] megasthenes in strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] _supra_, p. , etc. burnouf, "introduction," p. . [ ] lassen, "alterth." , . [ ] strabo, p. . diod. , . [ ] megasthenes, fragm. , ed. schwanbeck. [ ] arrian, "ind." , - . strabo, p. - . diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] diod. , , . arrian, "ind." , . [ ] arrian, "ind." , . diod. , . strabo, p. . [ ] like the warriors among the vrijis, glaukas, khattias, malavas kshudrakas, etc. cf. _supra_, p. ff. [ ] manu, , ; _supra_, p. . [ ] _supra_, p. , . "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , . [ ] the following are the castes who ought to hunt wild animals according to the book of the law: the medas, andhras, chunchus, kshattars, ugras, and pukkasas. manu, , - ; cf. _supra_, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." . diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. - . arrian, "ind." , , ; , , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . diod. , . [ ] in strabo, p. (cf. , ), as in clem. alex. "strom." p. , we must obviously read [greek: sarmanai] for [greek: garmanai]. the third sect is called by strabo [greek: pramnai]; perhaps with lassen we ought to explain it by _pramana_, _i.e._ logicians. [ ] megasthenis fragm. ed. schwanbeck, p. ; cf. manu, , . strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , , , . arrian, "anab." , . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." , , . curt. , . [ ] _e.g._ burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] arrian, "ind." ; diod. , , ; polyæn. "strateg." , ; _supra_, p. . [ ] arrian, "ind." , , , ; , - . [ ] arrian, "ind." _loc. cit._ the remark in pliny that among the pandas (in guzerat) women ruled, owing to the daughter of heracles, obviously refers to this story: "hist. nat." , . [ ] megasthenes in strabo, p. . but others derived even the oxydrakes from dionysus, simply for the reason that wine was produced in this district; strabo, p. , . [ ] arrian, "ind." , . [ ] strabo, p. . curtius, , . arrian, "ind." , . diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , . plin, "h. n." , . if strabo observes that wine is never brought to maturity in this district (_i.e._ north cabulistan) the observation only holds good for the more elevated valleys. [ ] arrian, "anab." , ; curt. , ; plut. "alex." c. ; diod. , , . here diodorus also mentions the names of the indian kings whom dionysus has conquered, myrrhanus and desiades, while in , he has stated that the indians before dionysus had no kings at all. [ ] "il." , ; , . homeric hymn in diod. , ; , . cf. strabo, p. ; herod. , ; diod. , , ; herod. , ; , , and steph. byz. [greek: nysa]. euripides is the first to speak of dionysus' march to persia and bactria. strabo, p. . [ ] lassen, as already remarked, opposes nishada and parapanishada as the upper and lower mountain range. nearly in the same region, but apparently in the range between cashmere and the kingdom of paurava (_supra_, p. ), _i.e._ to the east of the indus, legend speaks of the utsavasanketa, who, as their name implies, passed their lives in feasting and conviviality (_utsava_, festival; _sanketa_, meeting). lassen, , ; wilson, vishnu-purana, p. ff.; and the places in the mahabharata, in lassen, _loc. cit._ modern travellers maintain that some tribes in the hindu kush are very partial to the wine which is produced abundantly in the mountains, and lead a life of joviality. ritter, "asien," th. . bd. , , . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." , . [ ] strabo, p. , , . [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , . "vishnu-purana," ed. wilson, p. . [ ] _infra_, chap. viii. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] ctesias, "ind. ecl." . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] megasthenes in athen. p. , ed. schweigh. [ ] arrian, "ind." , - . [ ] strabo, p. , , , , . arrian, "ind." , . [ ] arrian, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , . [ ] "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] it is clear that this statement cannot refer to the inhabitants of takshaçila, for aristobulus rather ascribes to them the custom of the iranians, who exposed corpses for vultures to eat them. aristobulus in strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . arrian, "ind." . manu, , . [ ] ctes. "ind. ecl." . ritter, "erdkunde," , , . humboldt, "kosmos," , . [ ] ctesias, _loc. cit._ "ecl." - . aelian, "hist. anim." , . [ ] ctesias, _loc. cit._ "ecl." . lassen, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] strabo. p. . arrian, "ind." , ; _supra_, p. . [ ] arrian, "ind." , . strabo, p. . aelian, "hist. anim." , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , . arrian, "ind." , . curtius, , , _supra_, p. . chapter vi. chandragupta of magadha. the life of the indians had developed without interference from without, following the nature of the country and the impulse of their own dispositions. neither cyrus nor darius had crossed the indus. the arms of the macedonians were the first to reach and subjugate the land of the panjab. the character and manners of another nation, whose skill in war, power, and importance only made themselves felt too plainly, and to whom civilisation and success could not be denied, were not only suddenly brought into immediate proximity to the indians, but had the most direct influence upon them. we saw how earnestly alexander's views were directed to the lasting maintenance of his conquests, even in the distant east. far-seeing as were his arrangements for this purpose, strong and compact as they appeared to be, they were not able long to resist the national aversion of the indians to foreign rule, after alexander's untimely death. philippus, whom he had nominated satrap of the panjab, was attacked and slain by mutinous mercenaries, soon after alexander's departure from india. these soldiers had been defeated by the macedonians of philippus, in whose place eudemus together, with mophis the prince of takshaçila was charged with the temporary government of this satrapy.[ ] after alexander's death (june , b.c.), perdiccas, the administrator of the empire, published an edict from babylon, that "mophis and porus," so diodorus tells us, "should continue to be sovereigns of these lands in the same manner as alexander had arranged." according to justin also the satraps already in existence were retained in india; peithon, whom alexander had made satrap of the lower indus, received the command of the colonies founded there.[ ] in the division of the satrapies made by antipater at triparadeisus in the year b.c., peithon is said to have received the satrapy of upper india, while the lower region of the indus and the city of pattala were allotted to porus, whose kingdom was thus largely extended. the land of mophis, in the vitasta, was also considerably increased. "they could not be overcome without a large army and an eminent general," says diodorus; "it would not have been easy to remove them," arrian tells us, "for they had considerable power."[ ] porus, at any rate, was removed in another manner. eudemus, whom alexander had made temporary governor of the satrapy of the panjab, must have maintained his position; he caused porus to be murdered, and seized his elephants for himself.[ ] sandrakottos, an indian of humble origin, so justin relates, had offended king nandrus by his impudence,[ ] and the king gave orders for his execution. but his swiftness of foot saved him. wearied with the exertion he fell asleep; a great lion approached and licked the sweat from him, and when sandrakottos awoke the lion left him, fawning as he went. this miracle convinced sandrakottos that he was destined for the throne. he collected a troop of robbers, called on the indians to join him, and became the author of their liberation. when he prepared for war with the viceroy of alexander, a wild elephant of monstrous size came up, took him on his back, and bore him on fighting bravely in the war and the battle. but the liberation which sandrakottos obtained for the indians was soon changed into slavery; he subjugated to his own power the nation he had set free from the dominion of strangers. at the time when seleucus was laying the foundation of his future greatness, sandrakottos was already in possession of india.[ ] plutarch observes that sandrakottos had seen alexander in his early years, and afterwards used to say that the latter could have easily subdued the prasians, _i.e._ the kingdom of magadha, as the king, owing to his wickedness and low origin, was hated and despised. not long after sandrakottos conquered the whole of india with an army of , men.[ ] according to this, sandrakottos, while still a youth, must have been in the panjab and the land of the indus in the years and b.c. when, as we have seen, alexander marched through them. he may therefore be regarded as a native of those regions. soon afterwards he must have entered the service of king nandrus, who cannot be any other than the dhanananda of magadha, already known to us, whom the greeks call xandrames, and at a later time he must have escaped from his master to his own home, the land of the indus. here he found adherents and summoned his countrymen to their liberation. they followed him; he fought with success against the viceroys, including, no doubt, mophis of takshaçila, and after expelling them he gained the dominion over the whole land of the indus. the miracles recorded by justin point to native tradition; we have seen how readily the warriors of india compared themselves with lions. and when sandrakottos called out his people against the greeks, it is the beast of india, the elephant, which takes him on his back and carries him on the way to victory. chandragupta's martial achievements and successes surpassed all that had previously taken place in india; it is sufficiently intelligible that the tradition of the indians should represent his rapid elevation as indicated by marvels, and surround it with such. we can fix with tolerable exactness the date at which sandrakottos destroyed the satrapies established in the land of the indus by alexander. in the year b.c. eudemus is in susiana, in the camp of eumenes, who at that time was fighting against antigonus for the integrity of the kingdom. the three or four thousand macedonians, with elephants, which eudemus brings to eumenes, appear to be the remains of the macedonian power on the eastern bank of the indus. peithon, agenor's son (p. ), we find in the year b.c. as the satrap of antigonus in babylon.[ ] hence the power of the greeks in the panjab must have come to an end in the year b.c. eudemus could not have removed porus before the year b.c., for, as has been observed, porus is mentioned in as the reigning prince. hence we may assume that in the period between and b.c. sandrakottos was in the service of the king of magadha, dhanananda-nandrus, that in or immediately after the year he fled to the indus, and there, possibly availing himself of the murder of porus, summoned the indians to fight against the greeks, and became the sovereign of them and of mophis by the year b.c. when master of the land of the indus, sandrakottos turned with the forces he had gained against the kingdom of magadha. the weakness of the rule of dhanananda was no doubt well known to him from personal experience; here also he was victorious. with a very large army he then proceeded to carry his conquests beyond the borders of magadha. justin tells us that he was in possession of the whole of india when seleucus laid the foundations of his power. seleucus, formerly in the troop of the 'companions' of alexander, the son of antiochus, founded his power when he gained babylon, fighting with ptolemy against antigonus in b.c., which city peithon was unable to retain, and afterwards, in the same year, conquered the satraps of iran. hence in the year b.c. sandrakottos must have conquered magadha and ascended the throne of palibothra, since as early as he could undertake further conquests, and by that time, according to justin, had brought the whole of india, _i.e._ the entire land of the ganges, under his dominion. according to the accounts of the buddhists, chandragupta (sandrakottos) sprang from the house of the mauryas. at the time when viradhaka, the king of the koçalas, destroyed kapilavastu, the home of the enlightened (p. ), a branch of the royal race of the Çakyas had fled to the himalayas, and there founded a small kingdom in a mountain valley. the valley was named after the numerous peacocks (_mayura_) found in it; and the family who migrated there took the name of maurya from the land. when chandragupta's father reigned in this valley, powerful enemies invaded it; the father was killed, the mother escaped to palibothra with her unborn child. when she had brought forth a boy there, she exposed him in the neighbourhood of a solitary fold. a bull, called chandra (moon) from a white spot in his forehead, protected the child till the herdman found it, and gave it the name of chandragupta, _i.e._ protected by the moon. the herdman reared the boy, but when no longer a child he handed him over to a hunter. while with the latter he played with the boys of the village, and held a court of justice like a king; the accused were brought forward, and one lost a hand, another a foot. chanakya, a brahman of takshaçila, observed the conduct of the boy, and concluded that he was destined for great achievements. he bought chandragupta from the herdman, discovered that he was a maurya, and determined to make him the instrument of his revenge on king dhanananda who had done him a great injury. in the hall of the king's palace chanakya had once taken the seat set apart for the chief brahman, but the king had driven him out of it. when chandragupta had grown up, chanakya placed him at the head of an armed troop, which he had formed by the help of money hoarded for the purpose, and raised a rebellion in magadha. chandragupta was defeated, and compelled to fly with chanakya into the wilderness. not discouraged by this failure the rebels struck out another plan. chandragupta began a new attack from the borders, conquered one city after another, and at last palibothra. dhanananda was slain; and chandragupta ascended the throne of magadha.[ ] besides the greatness of chandragupta, the buddhists had a special reason for glorifying the descent and origin of the founder of a dynasty which afterwards did so much to advance their creed. from this point of view it was very natural for the followers of buddha to bring a ruler, whose grandson adopted buddha's doctrines, into direct relation with the founder of their faith, to represent him as springing from the same family to which buddha had belonged. chandragupta's family was called the mauryas; the buddhists transformed the Çakyas into mauryas. we shall be on much more certain ground if we adhere to justin's statement that chandragupta was sprung from a humble family until then unknown. the marvels with which the buddhists surrounded his youth are easily explained from the effort to bring into prominence the lofty vocation of the founder of the dominion of the mauryas. his mother escapes destruction. a bull protects the infant, guards the days of the child who is to be mightier than any ruler of india before him. in the game of the boys, chandragupta shows the vocation for which he is intended. though the buddhist tradition puts the birth of the future king of palibothra in that city, it allows us nevertheless to discover that chandragupta belongs to the land of the indus by making him the slave and instrument of a man of the indus, chanakya of takshaçila. and as justin represents chandragupta as injuring the king of magadha, and escaping death only by the most rapid flight, so does the tradition of the buddhists represent him as having excited a rebellion in magadha, the utter failure of which compels him to take refuge in flight. in all that is essential to the story there is scarcely any contradiction between the narration of justin and the buddhists. we may grant to the latter that sandrakottos, relying too much on the weakness of the throne of magadha, raised a rebellion there, which failed of success. he flies for refuge into the land of the indus. successful there, and finally master of the whole, he is encouraged by his great triumphs to attack magadha from the borders, _i.e._ from the land of the indus, and now he captures one city after the other, until at length he takes palibothra. this means that when he had become lord of the land of the indus by the conquest of the greeks and their vassals, he accomplishes, with the help of the forces of this region, what he had failed to carry out with his adherents in magadha. we may certainly believe the tradition of the buddhists that dhanananda was slain at or after the capture of palibothra.[ ] in ancient times the tribes of the aryas had migrated from the panjab into the valley of the ganges; advancing by degrees they had colonised it as far as the mouth of the river. these colonists had now been conquered from their ancient home. for the first time the land of the indus stood under one prince, for the first time the indus and the ganges were united into one state. after sandrakottos had summoned the nations of the west against the greeks, he conquered the nations of the east with their assistance. it was an empire such as no indian king had possessed before, extending from the indus to the mouth of the ganges, over the whole of aryavarta from the himalayas to the vindhyas. in the south-west it reached beyond the kingdom of the western pandus to the peninsula of guzerat, beyond the city of automela (p. ), and the kingdom of ujjayini; in the south-east it went beyond orissa to the borders of the kalingas (p. ). in regard to the management of this wide empire founded by chandragupta, megasthenes tells us that the king was surrounded by supreme counsellors, treasurers, and overseers of the army. besides these there were numerous officers. the management of the army was carried on in divisions, which cannot surprise us after the statements of the greeks about the strength of the army which chandragupta maintained; megasthenes puts it at , , and plutarch at , .[ ] one division attended to the elephants, another to the horses, which like the former were kept in the royal stables; the third to the chariots of war. the fourth was charged with the arming of the infantry and the care of the armoury; at the end of each campaign the soldiers had to return their weapons. the fifth division undertook the supervision of the army, the baggage, the drummers, the cymbal-bearers, the oxen for drawing the provision-waggons;[ ] and the sixth was charged with the care of the fleet. manu's law has mentioned to us six branches of the army, beside the four divisions of the battle array; elephants, horsemen, chariots of war, and foot soldiers, the baggage as the fifth, and the officers as the sixth member (p. ). the land was divided into districts, which were governed by head officers and their subordinates; we remember that the book of the law advised the kings to divide their states into smaller and larger districts of ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand places (p. ). besides the officers of the districts, the judges and tax-gatherers, there were, according to megasthenes, overseers of the mines, the woodcutters, and the tillers of the land. other officers had the care of the rivers and the roads. these caused the highways to be made or improved, measured them, and at each ten stades, _i.e._ at each yodhana ( - / mile) set up a pillar to show the distances and the direction. the great road from the indus to palibothra was measured by the chain; in length it was ten thousand stades, _i.e._ miles, a statement which will not be far wrong if this road left the indus near the height of takshaçila, as we may assume that it did.[ ] the book of the priests is acquainted with royal highways, and forbids their defilement; as we have seen, trade was vigorous in the land of the ganges as early as the sixth century b.c.; the sutras of the buddhists, no less than the epos, often mention good roads extending for long distances.[ ] the magistrates who had care of the rivers had to provide that the canals and conduits were in good order, so that every one might have the water necessary for irrigation. the cities in turn had other officers, who superintended the handicrafts, fixed the measures, and collected the taxes in them. of these officers there were thirty in every city, and they were divided into six distinct colleges of five members each. the first superintended the handicraftsmen, the second the aliens, who were carefully watched, but supported even in cases of sickness, buried when dead, and their property conveyed to their heirs. the third college kept the list of taxes and the register of births and deaths, in order that the taxes might be properly raised. the fourth managed the inns, and trade, in order that correct measures might be used, and fruits sold by stamped weights. the same tradesman could not sell different wares without paying a double tax. the fifth college superintended the products of the handicraftsmen and their sale, and marked the old and new goods; the sixth collected the tenth on all buying and selling.[ ] according to the book of the priests the king was to fix the measures and weights, and have them examined every six months; the same is to be done with the value of the precious metals. it ordains penalties for those who use false weights, conceal deficiencies in their wares, or sell what is adulterated. the market price for necessaries is to be settled and published every five or at any rate every fourteen days. after a computation of the cost of production and transport, and consultation with those who are skilled in the matter, the king is to fix the price of their wares for merchants, for purchase and sale; trade in certain things he can reserve for himself and declare to belong to the king, just as in some passages of the book of the law mining is reserved for the king, and in others he receives the half of all produce from mines of gold, silver, and precious stones. the king can take a twentieth of the profit of the merchant for a tax. in order to facilitate navigation in the great rivers certain rates were fixed, which differed according to the distance and the time of the year. the waggon filled with merchandise had to pay for the use of the roads according to the value of the goods; an empty waggon paid only the small sum of a pana, a porter half a pana, an animal a quarter, a man without any burden an eighth, etc. any one who undertook to deliver wares in a definite time at a definite place, and failed to do so, was not to receive the freight. the price of transport by sea could not be fixed by law; when differences arose the decisions of men who were acquainted with navigation were to be valid. the book of the law requires from the merchants a knowledge of the measures and weights, of the price of precious stones, pearls, corals, iron, stuffs, perfumes, and spices. they must know how the goods are to be kept, and what wages to pay the servants. lastly, they must have a knowledge of various languages.[ ] megasthenes' account of the management of the cities shows that these precepts were carried out to a considerable extent; that trade was under superintendence, and taxed with a tenth instead of a twentieth, and that a strict supervision was maintained over the market. we have already heard the greeks commending the severity and wisdom of the administration of justice. megasthenes assures us that in the camp of chandragupta, in which , men were gathered together, not more than two hundred drachmas' worth (£ _s._) of stolen property was registered every day. if we combine this with the protection which the farmers enjoyed, according to the greeks, we may conclude that under chandragupta's reign the security of property was very efficiently guarded by the activity of the magistrates, the police, and the courts. from all these statements, and from the narratives given above of the luxurious life of the kings, which can only refer to the times of chandragupta and his immediate successor, so far as they are trustworthy, it follows that chandragupta knew how to rule with a vigorous and careful hand; and that he could maintain peace and order. he protected trade, which for centuries had been carried on in a remarkably vigorous manner, took care of the roads, navigation, and the irrigation of the land, upheld justice and security, organised skilfully the management of the cities and the army, paid his soldiers liberally, and promoted the tillage of the soil. the buddhists confirm what megasthenes states of the flourishing condition of agriculture, of the honest conduct of the indians, and their great regard for justice; they assure us that under the second successor of chandragupta the land was flourishing and thickly populated; that the earth was covered with rice, sugarcanes, and cows; that strife, outrage, assault, theft, and robbery were unknown.[ ] at the same time the taxes which chandragupta raised were not inconsiderable, as we may see from the fact that in the cities a tenth was taken on purchases and sales, that those who offered wares for sale had to pay licenses and tolls; in addition to these a poll-tax was raised, otherwise the register of births and deaths would be useless. husbandmen had to give up the fourth part of the harvest as taxes, while the book of the law prescribes the sixth only of the harvest, and the twentieth on purchases and sales (p. ). when in the contest of the companions of alexander for the empire and supremacy seleucus had become master of babylon, he left the war against antigonus in the west, who did not threaten him for the moment, to ptolemy and cassander, established his dominion in the land of the euphrates over persia and media, and reduced the land of iran to subjection (alexander had previously given him the daughter of the bactrian spitamenes to wife).[ ] when he had succeeded in this, he intended to re-establish the supremacy of the greeks in the valley of the indus and the panjab, and to take the place of alexander. about the year b.c.[ ] he crossed the indus and again trod the soil on which twenty years before he had been engaged in severe conflict by the side of alexander on the vitasta against porus (p. ). he no longer found the country divided into principalities and free states; he encountered the mighty army of chandragupta. in regard to the war we only know that it was brought to an end by treaty and alliance. that the course of it was not favourable to seleucus we may gather from the fact that he not only made no conquests beyond the indus, but even gave up to chandragupta considerable districts on the western shore, the land of the paropamisades, _i.e._ the southern slopes of the hindu kush as far as the confluence of the cabul and indus, the eastern regions of arachosia and gedrosia. the present of elephants, given in exchange by chandragupta, was no equivalent for the failure of hopes and the loss of so much territory,[ ] though these animals a few years later decided the day of ipsus in phrygia against antigonus,[ ] a victory which secured to seleucus the dominion over syria and the east of asia minor in addition to the dominion over iran, and the tigris and euphrates. chandragupta had not only maintained the land of the indus, he had gained considerable districts beyond the river. the man who annihilated alexander's work and defeated seleucus, who united india from the hindu kush to the mouth of the ganges, from guzerat to orissa, under one dominion, who established and promoted peace, order, and prosperity in those wide regions, did not live to old age. if he was really a youth, as the greeks state, at the time when alexander trod the banks of the indus, he can scarcely have reached his fifty-fifth year when he died in b.c. the extensive kingdom which he had founded by his power he left to his son vindusara. of his reign we learn from indian tradition that takshaçila rebelled in it, but submitted without resistance at the approach of his army, and that he made his son açoka viceroy of ujjayini.[ ] the greeks call vindusara, amitrochates, _i.e._, no doubt, amitraghata, a name which signifies "slayer of the enemies." this is obviously an honourable epithet which the indians give to vindusara, or which he gave to himself. we may conclude, not only from the fact that he is known to the greeks, but from other circumstances, that vindusara maintained to its full extent the kingdom founded by his father. the successors of alexander sought to keep up friendly relations with him, and his heir was able to make considerable additions to the empire of chandragupta. after the treaty already mentioned, megasthenes represented seleucus on the ganges; with vindusara, antiochus, the son and successor of seleucus, was represented by daimachus, and the ruler of egypt, ptolemy ii., sent dionysius to the court of palibothra.[ ] footnotes: [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] diod. , . justin, , ; _supra_, p. . [ ] diod. , . arrian, "succ. alex." ; cf. "ind." , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] von gutschmid has rightly shown that nandrus must be read for alexander in justin ( , ); "rhein. mus." , . [ ] justin, , . [ ] "alex." c. . [ ] droysen, "hellenismus," , . [ ] "mahavanaça," ed. turnour, p. ff. westergaard, "buddha's todesjahr," s. . [ ] we can hardly make any use of the description in the drama of mudra-rakshasa, which was composed after a.d. (in lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , ), for the history of chandragupta. [ ] pliny ("hist. nat." , ) gives , foot soldiers, , horse, and elephants. [ ] megasthenes in strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , , . [ ] manu, , ; _supra_, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] manu, , , , , , ; , , - . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . droysen, "alex." s. . [ ] the date of the campaign of seleucus can only be fixed so far that it must be placed between and b.c., and as the subjugation of eastern iran must have taken up some time, the campaign to india may be placed nearer the year b.c.; we are also compelled to do this by justin's words ( , ); cum sandracotto facta pactione compositisque in oriente rebus, in bellum antigoni descendit, _i.e._ to the battle of ipsus. [ ] justin, , . appian, "de reb. syr." c. . strabo, p. , . pliny, "hist. nat." , . athenæus, p. . [ ] diod. exc. vat. p. . plut. "demetr." c. . [ ] "açoka-avadana," in burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] strabo, p. . athenæeus, p. . pliny, "hist. nat." , . chapter vii. the religion of the buddhists. in the century and a half which passed between the date of kalaçoka of magadha, the council of the sthaviras at vaiçali, and the reign of vindusara, the doctrine of the enlightened had continued to extend, and had gained so many adherents that megasthenes could speak of the buddhist mendicants as a sect of the brahmans. the rulers of magadha who followed kalaçoka, the house of the nandas, which deposed his son, and the succeeding princes of that house, indradatta and dhanananda, were not favourable to buddhism, as we conjectured above. if the buddhist tradition quoted extols and consecrates the descent and usurpation of chandragupta, this must be rather due to the services his grandson rendered the believers in buddha than to any merits of his own in that respect. the accounts of the greeks about the religious services of the indians towards the end of the fourth century b.c., the description given by megasthenes of the indian philosophers and their doctrines, as well as his express statement that the brahmans were the more highly honoured among the indian sages, leave no doubt that the brahmans maintained their supremacy under the reign of chandragupta. of vindusara the buddhists tell us that he daily fed , brahmans. in the doctrine of buddha the philosophy of the indians had made the boldest step. it had broken with the results of the history of the arians on the indus and the ganges, with the development of a thousand years. it had declared internecine war against the ancient religion, and called in question the consecrated order of society. the philosophy capable of such audacity was a scepticism which denied everything except the thinking _ego_, which emptied heaven and declared nature to be worthless. armed with the results of an unorthodox speculation, and pushing them still further, buddha had drawn a cancelling line through the entire religious past of the indian nation. the world-soul of the brahmans existed no longer; heaven was rendered desolate; its inhabitants and all the myths attaching to them were set aside. no reading, no exposition of the veda was required; no inquiry about the ancient hymns and customs. the contention of the schools about this or that rite might slumber, and no sacrifice could be offered to gods who did not exist. dogmatism was banished in all its positions and doctrines; the endless laws about purity and food, the torturing penances and expiations, the entire ceremonial was without value and superfluous. the peculiar sanctity of the brahmans, the mediatory position which they occupied in the worship between the gods and the nation, were valueless, and the advantages of the upper castes fell to the ground. and this doctrine, which annihilated the entire ancient religion and the basis of existing society, and put in their place nothing but a new speculation and a new morality, had come into the world without divine revelation, and was without a supreme deity, or indeed any deity whatever. its authority rested solely on the dicta of a man, who declared that he had discovered truth by his own power, and maintained that every man could find it. that such a doctrine found adherence and ever increasing adherence is a fact without a parallel in history. the success of it would indeed be inconceivable, if the brahmans had not themselves long prepared the way for buddha, if the harsh contrast in which buddha placed himself to the brahmans had not been in some degree a consequence of brahmanism. the wildly-luxuriant and confused imagination of the brahmans had produced a moderation, a rationalistic reaction in faith, worship, and morality no less than in social life. the speculative conception of brahman had never become familiar to the people. the ceaseless increase in the number of gods and spirits, their endless multitude, had lessened the value of the individual forms and the reverence felt for them. the acts of the great saints of the brahmans went far beyond the power and creative force of the gods. the saints made the gods their playthings. could it excite any great shock when these playthings were set aside? the brahmans dethroned the gods, and themselves fell in this dethronement. they allowed that sacrifice and ritual, and the pious fulfilment of duties and expiations, the entire sanctification by works, was not the highest aim that men could and ought to attain; that asceticism, penance, and meditation ensured something higher, and could alone lead back to brahman; was it not a simple consequence of this view that buddha should set aside the whole service of sacrifice and form of worship? the brahmans granted that the distinction of caste could be removed, at any rate in the three higher orders, by the work of inward sanctification; was it not logical that buddha should declare the distinction of castes altogether to be unessential? according to the brahmans nothing but deep and earnest meditation on brahman could raise man to the highest point, to reabsorption into brahman, and therefore the sankhya doctrine could consistently maintain that meditation free from all tradition was the highest aim, that only by unfettered knowledge could liberation from nature be attained; while buddha was enabled to find ready credence to his position that neither asceticism nor penance, neither sacrifice nor works, but the knowledge of the true connection of things guided men to salvation. from all antiquity the indians had allowed human devotion to have a certain influence on the gods; in the oldest poems of the veda we find the belief that the correct invocation brings down the deities and exercises compulsion over them. following out this view, the brahmans had developed the compulsion exercised upon the gods to such a degree that fervour of asceticism and holiness conferred divine power--power over nature; they held that man could attain the highest point by penance and meditation; that he could draw into himself and concentrate there the divine power and essence. was it not an easy step further in the same path when buddha taught that the highest, the only divine result, which he admitted, the knowledge of truth, could be attained by man's own power; that his adherents and followers, when the rishis of the brahmans had been gifted with so many mighty, divine, and super-divine powers, had not the least difficulty in believing that the enlightened had found absolute truth; that by his own power he had attained the highest wisdom and truth? if the man who had duly sanctified himself, attained, according to the brahmanic doctrine, divine power and wisdom, buddha on his part required no revelation from above. by his own nature and his own power, by sanctification, man could work his way upwards to divine absolute liberty and wisdom. to religious tradition and the veda buddha opposed individual knowledge; to revelation of the gods the truth discovered by men, to the dogmatism of the brahmanic schools the doctrine of duties; to sacrifice and expiation the practice of morality; to the claims of the castes personal merit; to lonely asceticism common training; to the caste of the priests a spiritual brotherhood formed by free choice and independent impulse. but two essential points in the brahmanic view of the world, that the body and the _ego_ are the fetters of the soul, that the soul must migrate without rest, he not only allowed to stand, but even insisted on them more sharply to the conclusion that existence is the greatest evil and annihilation the greatest blessing for men, inasmuch as freedom from evil can only be attained by freedom from existence, and freedom from existence only by annihilation of self. salvation is the negation of existence. but not only the bodily life of the individual must be annihilated, the spiritual root of his existence must be torn up and utterly destroyed. "what wilt thou with the knot of hair, or with the apron (_i.e._ with the brahmanic asceticism); thou art touching merely the outside; the gulf is within thee?"[ ] the sankhya doctrine had announced that brahman and the gods did not exist, but only nature and the soul. buddha in reality struck out nature also. according to his doctrine there was neither creation nor creator. the existence of the world is merely an illusion; there is nothing but a restless change of generation and decay, an eternal revolution (_sansara_). hence the world is no more than a total of things past and perishable, in which there is but one reality, one active agency. this is the souls of men and animals, breathing creatures. these have been existent from the first, and remain in existence till they find the means of their annihilation and accomplish it. they have created the corporeal world, by clothing themselves with matter, and this robe they change again and again. the brahmans had taught that "the desire which is in the world-soul is the creative seed of the world" (p. ). buddha, transferring this to the individual souls, taught that the desire and yearning for existence, by which individual creatures were impelled, produced existence. existences are the fruit of the inalienable impulse inherent in the soul; this brings the evil of existence upon the soul, and causes it in spite of itself to cleave thereto; "it is the chain of being" in which the soul is fettered. this desire (_kama_) is a mistake; it rests on an inability to perceive the true connection between the nature of existence and the world; it is not only a mistake but a sin, nay, sin itself, from which all other sins arise; desire is the great, original sin, hereditary sin (_kleça_).[ ] hence the existence of men is in itself the product of sin. the perpetual yearning for existence ever draws the soul after the death of the body into new existence, impels it into the corporeal world, and clothes it with a new body. "all garments are perishable, all are full of pain, and subject to another."[ ] each new bodily life of the soul is the fruit of former existences. the merit or the guilt which the soul has acquired in earlier existences, or brought upon itself, is rewarded or punished in later existences; here also buddhism retains the doctrine of the brahmans that the prosperity or misfortune of man is regulated according to the acts of a former existence. the total of merit and guilt accumulated in earlier existences determines the fortune of the individual; it forms the rule governing the kind of regeneration, the happy or unhappy life, the fate which rules each soul, the moral order of the world. if the merit is greater than the guilt, man is not born as an animal but as a man, and in better circumstances, with less trouble and sorrow to go through; and according as a man bears these, and practises virtue in this life, are the future existences defined. it is the duty of man to acquire a tolerable existence for himself by his merit, and also to remove the active guilt of earlier deeds, which are not always punished in the next but often in far later existences, and to destroy the yearning after existence in the soul. this is done by the knowledge which perceives that existence is evil, that all is worthless, and consequently lessens and removes the yearning after existence. this removal is rendered more complete by renunciation, the resolution to receive no conceptions or impressions, and hence to feel no desire for anything; by placing ourselves in a condition where we are incapable of feeling, and therefore incapable of desire. with this annihilation of desire the fetters of the soul are broken; man is separated from the revolution of the world, the alternation of births, because nothing more remains of that which makes up the soul, and thus there is no substratum left for a new existence.[ ] there were converted brahmans who declared that a penance of twelve years did not confer so much repose as the truths which buddha taught.[ ] for the satisfaction of the interest in philosophic inquiry, to which earnest minds among the brahmans were accustomed, the speculative foundation of buddha's doctrine provided amply and with sufficient subtilty. others might be attracted by the wish to be relieved from tormenting themselves any longer with the formulas of the schools and the commentaries on the veda. and if the brahmans objected to the disciples of buddha that they punished themselves too little, there were without doubt members of the order who found the buddhist asceticism more agreeable than the brahmanic. but the most efficient spring of the success of buddha's doctrine did not lie in this. it lay in the practical consequences which he derived from his speculation or connected with it. the prospect of liberation from regeneration, of death without resurrection, the gospel of annihilation, was that which led the indians to believe in buddha. to the initiated he opened out the prospect that this life would be the last; to the laity he gave the hope of alleviation in the number and kind of regenerations. and as this doctrine proclaimed to all without exception an amelioration in their future fortunes, and declared that every one was capable of liberation, it was at the same time a gospel of social reform. even among the kshatriyas and vaiçyas there were, no doubt, many who were quite agreed that the privilege of birth, which the brahmans claimed in such an extravagant manner, ought to give way to personal merit. to all who were oppressed or pushed into the background the way was pointed out, to withdraw from the stress of the circumstances which confined and burdened them; every one found a way open for him to escape from the trammels of caste. the doctrine of the brahmans excluded the Çudras entirely from good works and liberation. the doctrine of buddha was addressed to all the castes, and destroyed the monopoly of the brahmans even in regard to teaching. the natural and equal right of every man, whatever be his origin, to sanctification and liberation from evil was recognised; the buddhist clergy were recruited from all the orders. the Çudra and even the chandala received the initiation of the bhikshu. the attraction of this universality was all the greater, especially for the lower orders, because buddha, following the whole tendency of his doctrine, turned more especially to the most heavily laden; in his view wealth and rank were stronger fetters to bind men to the world than distress and misery. "it is hard," the enlightened is declared to have said, "to be rich and to learn the way;" and in a buddhist inscription of the third century b.c. we read, "it is difficult both for the ordinary and important person to attain to eternal salvation, but for the important person it is certainly most difficult."[ ] finally, the doctrine of buddha was also a gospel of peaceful life, of mutual help and brotherly love. the quietistic morality of obedience, of silent endurance, which the disciples of buddha preached, corresponded to the patient character which the indians on the ganges had gained under the training of the brahmans and their despotic princes, and to the instinct of the nation at the time. as buddha's doctrine justified and confirmed submission towards oppression, it also pointed out the way in which to alleviate an oppressed life for ourselves and for others. the gentleness and compassion which buddha required towards men and animals, suited the prevailing tone of the people; men were prepared to avail themselves of them as the means of salvation; and this patient sympathetic life, without the torments of penances and expiations, without the burden of the laws of purification and food, without sacrifice and ceremonial, was enough to guide future regenerations into the "better" way. the brahmans had never established a hierarchical organisation; they had contented themselves with the liturgical monopoly of their order, with their aristocratic position and claims against the other castes. it was only as presidents at the feasts of the dead in the clans that they exercised a powerful censorship over their fellows, as we have seen; a censorship involving the most serious civic consequences for those on whom its sentence fell. at the head of the buddhists there was no order of birth; the first place was taken by those who lived by alms, and were content to abandon the establishment of a family. the two vows of poverty and chastity withdrew the initiated among the buddhists from the acquisition of property, from the family, and life in the world; their maintenance consisted in the alms offered to them. in this way they were gained for the interests and the work of their religion to an extent that never was and never could be the case with the brahmans who did not remove the obstacles of the family by celibacy, and indeed could not do so, because their pre-eminence was founded on birth. the brahman was and must be the father of a family; he must provide for himself and his family, while the bhikshus without care for themselves or their families gave themselves up exclusively to their spiritual duties. all the legal precepts of the brahmans, which made the maintenance of their order by gifts the duty of the other castes, could not set their families free from the care of their support and property; even the book of the law was obliged to allow the brahman to carry on other occupations besides the sacrifice and study of the veda; it could do no more than demand that the brahman father, when he had begotten his children and established his house, should retire into solitude to do penance and meditate (p. , ). buddhism excluded its clergy entirely from the family and social life; it permitted them to live together in communities, combined all the initiated into one great brotherhood, and thus gained a firmer connection, a better organisation of its representatives, a body engaged in constant work and preparation without any other interests than those of religion. "he is not a brahman," we are told in an old buddhist formula, 'the foot-prints of the law,' "who is born as a brahman." "he is a brahman who is lean, and wears dusty rags, who possesses nothing, and is free from fetters."[ ] the entrance into this community was open; buddha imparted the consecration of the mendicant to every one in whom he found belief in his doctrine and the desire to renounce the world; and said, "come hither; enter into the spiritual life." with this simple formula the reception was complete.[ ] this pillar of buddhism was never shaken, though after the second council of vaiçali ( b.c.) a certain knowledge of the canonic scriptures, the sutras and the vinaya, as fixed by that assembly, was required in addition to the qualifications of poverty and chastity. buddha had fixed that admission into the clerical order could not take place before the twentieth year. after the pattern of the brahman schools (p. ) it was the custom to receive boys and youths as novices as soon as the parents gave permission, and one of the consecrated was found willing to undertake the instruction of the novice. at a later time this institution of the noviciate found a far more solid basis in the monastic life of the bhikshus than that which the isolated brahman could offer to the pupils in his own house. the novice (_Çramanera_) might not kill anything, or steal, or lie; he must commit no act of unchastity, drink no intoxicating liquor, eat nothing after mid-day, neither sing nor dance, neither adorn nor anoint himself, and receive no gold or silver. when the period of instruction was over, the admission took place in the presence of the assembled clergy of the monastery. when he had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the newly-initiated received the yellow robe and the mendicant's jar with the admonition: "to have no intercourse with any woman, to take away nothing in secret, to wear a dusty garment, to dwell at the roots of trees, to eat only what others had left, and use the urine of cows as a medicine."[ ] with his entrance into the community of the initiated, the bhikshu had left the world behind, and broken the fetters which bound him to his kindred. if married before his admission, he was no longer to trouble himself for his family: "those who cling to wife and child are, as it were, in the jaws of the tiger." he is separated from his brothers and sisters, and great as is the importance elsewhere attached in buddhism to filial affection, he is not to lament the death of his father or mother. he is free from love; he holds nothing dear; for "love brings sorrow, and the loss of the loved is painful."[ ] he is without relations; nothing but his mendicant's robe is his own; he may not work. not even labour in a garden is permitted to him; worms might be killed in turning up the earth. thus for the initiated the fetters of family, possessions, and the acquisition of property, which bind us most strongly to life, are burst asunder. he has nothing of his own, and consequently can feel no desire to keep his possessions, or pain at their loss; he inhabits an "empty house."[ ] the rules of external discipline were not too many. beard, eye-brows, and hair were to be shaved, a regulation which arose in contrast to the various hair-knots of the brahmanic schools and sects, and was an extension of the brahmanic view of the impurity of hair. with the buddhists the hairs are an impure excretion of the skin, refuse which must be thrown away; the tonsure was performed at every new and full moon.[ ] the bhikshu was never to ask for a gift, he must receive in silence what is offered. if he receive more than he requires, he must give the remainder to others. he must never eat more than is required for his necessities, nor after midday, nor may he eat flesh. even among the buddhists the rules of food are tolerably minute, and many of the prescripts of the brahmans were adopted by them. essential importance was attributed to moderation; desires were not to be excited by unnecessary satisfaction. the bhikshu must especially guard against women. he must not receive alms from the hand of a woman, or look on the women he meets, or speak with them, or dream of them. "so long as the least particle of the desire which attracts the man to the woman remains undestroyed, so long is he fettered like the calf to the cow;"[ ] and buddha is said to have declared that if there were a second passion as strong as the passion for women no one would ever attain liberation. it was reasons of this kind, of modesty and chastity, which made it a rule for the bhikshus, in contrast to the nudity of the brahmanic penitent, never to lay aside his garments: his shirt and yellow garment which came over the shirt as far as the knee--the rule required that it should be made of sewn rags--and his mantle, worn over the left shoulder. the bhikshu is to watch himself like a tower on the borders, without a moment's intermission,[ ] and bridle his desires with a strong hand, as the leader holds back the raging elephant with the spear.[ ] he must always bear in mind that the body is a tower of bones, smeared with flesh and blood, the nest of diseases; that it conceals old age and death, pride and flattery; that life in this mass of uncleanness is death.[ ] in contrast to the multitude who are driven by desire like hunted hares,[ ] he is to live without desire among those who are filled with desire; the passions which run hither and thither like the ape seeking fruit in the forest, which spring up again and again like creeping-plants if they are not taken at the roots, he must tear up root and all, and strive after the sundering of the toils, the conquest of mara (p. ) and his troop. freedom from desire is "the highest duty; and he is the most victorious who conquers himself."[ ] victory is won by taming the senses, and schooling the soul; no rain penetrates the well-roofed house, no passion the well-schooled spirit.[ ] "a man is not made a bhikshu by tonsure," nor by begging of another, nor by faith in the doctrine, but only by constant watchfulness and work. the bhikshu who fails in these had better eat hot iron than the fruits of the field; the "ill practised restraint of the senses leads into hell."[ ] we know that the bhikshus had to support each other mutually in this work. following the pattern of the master they passed the rainy season, in common shelter, in monasteries. these, as we saw (p. ), existed as early as the reign of kalaçoka. at first they sought protection in hollows of the mountains like the cave of niagrodha, near rajagriha. then these caves were extended artificially, and in this way they came by degrees to be cave cloisters with halls for assembly of considerable extent. in the detached monasteries the halls were the central points, and the monks had separate cells on the surrounding wall. the description given in the sutras of these viharas is far from discouraging. platforms, balustrades, lattice-windows were provided, and good places for sleeping. the sound of metal cymbals or bells summoned the monks to prayer or to meeting. in these monasteries the elders instructed the disciples, those who had advanced on the way of liberation, the less advanced. the four 'truths' were considered in common (p. ); in common the attempt was made "to cleave the twenty summits of uncertainty with the lightning of knowledge." in the place of the sacrifice, expiations, and penances by which the brahmans held that crimes, and sins, and transgressions of the rules of purity could be done away, buddha had established the confession of sin before the brethren. had a brother failed in the control of desire, and been over-mastered by his impulses, he was to acknowledge his error before the rest. as buddha removed painful asceticism, so he desired no external and torturing expiations. "not nakedness," we are told in the footsteps of the law, "nor knots of hair (such as the brahman penitents wore), nor filthiness, nor fasting, nor lying on the earth, nor rubbing in of dust, nor motionless position, purify a man;"[ ] the only purification is the conquest of lust, the amelioration of the mind. not on works, but on the spirit from which they proceed, does buddha lay the chief weight. sins when committed could be removed only by improvement of spirit, by the pain of remorse. confession was the proof and confirmation of remorse, and thus the confirmation of a good mind. in buddha's view confession removed the sin when committed, and was immediately followed by absolution.[ ] in the monasteries the initiated fasted in the days of the new and full moon, and after the fast came the confessional. the list of duties was read;[ ] after every section the question was thrice asked whether each of those present had lived according to the precepts before them. if a confession was made that this had not been the case, the offence was investigated, and absolution given by the president of the meeting. in accordance with buddha's command a common confession of all the brethren in every monastery took place after the rainy season before the mendicants recommenced their travels.[ ] at a later time it was common at confession to divide the offences into such as received simple absolution, such as required reproof before absolution, such as were subject to penance, and lastly such as involved temporary or entire expulsion from the community. obstinate heresy and unchastity entailed complete expulsion; the man who indulged in sexual intercourse could no longer be a disciple of buddha. the penances imposed for errors of a coarser kind were very slight and are so still; the performance of the more menial services in the monastery, otherwise discharged by the novices, or the repetition of a forced number of prayers. no one was compelled because he had once taken a vow to observe it for ever; any initiated person could and still can come back into the world at any moment. the vow was not binding for the whole of life, and no one was to discharge his duties against his will. among the bhikshus the authority of age was maintained; respect was paid to experience, proved virtue, and wisdom; the teacher ranked above the pupil, the older believer before the younger. hence the sthaviras, _i.e._ the elders, held the foremost place among them. still it was not years, but liberation from the evil of the world, that made the sthavira.[ ] each monastery had a sthavira at the head, whom the bhikshus had to obey, for in addition to vows of poverty and chastity they took vows of obedience. nevertheless buddhism gave the greater weight to the feeling and sense of equality and brotherly love. authority resided less in the sthavira than in the assembly of the initiated. had not the first disciples of buddha established his sayings in common at the first council at rajagriha, even though one of his most beloved followers presided over them? the second synod at vaiçali was conducted in the same way; the community of the bhikshus (_sangha_, the assembly) had given their authoritative sanction to the rules of discipline, which were to have general currency, after they had been fixed by the elders. the monasteries were similarly organised; there also the community gave the consecration of the priest, heard confession, imposed penances, ordered temporary or complete expulsion under the presidency of the sthavira. there were merits of another kind among the bhikshus which transcended the rank of the teachers, of the elder, of the head of the monastery. these were the merits of religious service, of deeper knowledge, of more complete conquest over the natural man, the _ego_. the aryas, _i.e._ the honourable or the rulers, who had learned "the four truths" (p. ), formed a privileged class of the bhikshus. on the path "which is hard to tread,"[ ] the path of nirvana, the buddhists distinguish four stages. the first and lowest has been entered upon by the Çrotaapanna; he cannot any longer be born again as an evil spirit or an animal; and has only seven regenerations to pass through.[ ] the second stage is reached by the sakridagamin, _i.e._ "the once-returning;" who will only be born once after his death. the third stage is that of the anagamin, the not-returning, who has to expect his regeneration in the higher regions only, not as a man. on the highest stage stands the arhat; he has entered on the path which neither the gods nor the gandharvas know; his senses have entered into rest; he has overcome the impulse to evil as well as the impulse to good; he desires nothing more, neither here nor in heaven. he has "left behind every habitation, as the flamingo takes his way from the sea;"[ ] the gods envy him; he has attained the end after which all the bhikshus strive; he has arrived at nirvana, and is in the possession of supernatural powers. when he wills, he dies, never to be born again. like the brahmans the buddhists attempted to express in numbers the eminence and value of those who had gone through the four stages. the Çrotaapanna surpasses the ordinary man ten thousand-fold; the sakridagamin is a hundred thousand times higher than the Çrotaapanna, the anagamin a million times higher than the sakridagamin. the arhat is free from ignorance, free from hereditary sin, _i.e._ free from desire, and attachment to existence; he is free from the limitation of existence, and therefore from the conditions of it. he possesses the power to do miracles, the capacity of surveying in one view all creatures and all worlds; of hearing all the sounds and words in all the worlds; he has knowledge of the thoughts of all creatures, and remembrance of the earlier habitations, _i.e._ of the past existences of all creatures.[ ] buddha's system required, at bottom, that every man should renounce the world, and take the mendicant's robes, in order to enter upon the path of liberation. this requirement could not be realised any more than the demand of the brahmans that every dvija should go into the forest at the end of his life and live as a penitent; the catholic view of the advantage of monastic over secular life has not brought all catholics into monasteries; how could the church live and the world exist if every one abandoned the world? yet the enlightened was of opinion that help might be given even to those who could not leave the world. in contrast to the pride and exclusiveness of the brahmans it was precisely the promise of help to all, the strongly-marked tendency to relieve every one, even the meanest, the sympathy with the sorrows of the oppressed, the turning aside from the powerful and rich to the lonely and poor,--it was the fact that mendicants took the highest place in the new church--which won adherents to buddha's teaching from the oppressed classes of the people. if the layman, so buddha thought, resolved to live according to the precepts of his ethics, he would not only lighten the burden of existence for himself and others; by the practice of these virtues he attained such merit that his regenerations became more favourable, and followed in "good paths," so that he was allowed eventually to receive initiation and thus attain the end of sorrows, death without any return to life. he who would adopt this doctrine, had only to declare that it was his will to perform the commands of its ethics. the formula of entrance and adoption into the community of the believers in buddha ran thus: "i take my refuge in buddha; i take my refuge in the law (_dharma_); i take my refuge in the community (_sangha_)," _i.e._ of the believers. with this declaration the convert took a pledge not to kill anything that had life, not to steal, to commit no act of unchastity, not to babble, nor lie, nor calumniate, nor disparage, nor curse; not to be passionate, greedy, envious, angry, revengeful. the layman is to control his appetites as far as possible, to moderate his selfishness, and in the place of his natural corrupt desires to put the right feeling of contentment and submission, of beneficence, and pity, and love to his neighbour, a feeling out of which, in buddha's view, "the avoidance of evil and doing of good" spontaneously arose. this repose, patience, and moderation would cause even the laymen to bear the evils of existence more lightly, and keep themselves as far as possible from the complications of the world. his adherence to the doctrines of buddha was to be shown in the first instance by gifts to the clergy. the church had no means of subsistence except the alms of the laymen; their gifts, in the eyes of the buddhists, bring salvation for the giver no less than the receiver; the latter ought humbly to beg the clergy to accept their presents.[ ] buddha's doctrine acknowledged no god. it was man who by the power of his knowledge could attain to absolute truth; who by the force of his will, the eradication of desire, the sacrifice of his goods and his body for his nearest relations, the annihilation of his own self, would win complete virtue and sanctity. "self is the protector and the refuge of self,"[ ] but were the inculcation of prayers and precepts, the discussion of the sayings of buddha, on which they rested, enough to make the laity and clergy able and willing to observe and perform them? must there not be some proof that these doctrines could be carried out, that they had the most beneficial results, that the object at which they aimed was really attainable? clergy as well as laity needed a living pattern to strive after, a fixed support and rule on which they could lean in their conscience, their thoughts, actions, and sufferings, and by which they could measure themselves. this pattern was given in the person of the master, in his life, his acts, his end. his life and actions were to be the subject of meditation; on this a man might raise and elevate himself; after that pattern every one should guide his acts and thoughts. if the initiated clung to his lofty wisdom which saw through the web of the worlds, and could liberate self from nature and annihilate it, the picture of the mendicant prince, who had left palace and wife and child and kingdom and treasures in order to share and alleviate the lot of the poorest, could not be of less influence on the hearts of the laity. this wonderful religion had no object of worship beside the person of the founder; on this it must be concentrated. the pious remembrance of the profound teacher, thankfulness for the salvation which he brought into the world, the study of the pattern of wisdom and truth which he gave, of the ideal of perfect sanctification and liberation, displayed in him,--these motives quickly made buddha an object of reverence, and ere long of worship, though to himself and his disciples he was no more than a mere man. in this religion of man-worship buddha took the place of god; he was god to his believers. but the religion could not long remain contented with a thoughtful remembrance, a vague recollection, and assurances of reverence towards the departed as the means of arousing the heart and elevating the spirit. some external excitement, some symbol or sensuous sign was needed, however rationalistic in other respects buddha's doctrine might be. but he who brought salvation and liberation into the world lived no longer in the other world; he was dead, never to rise again. nothing was left of him but the bones and ashes of his body. we know that in ancient times the aryas buried their dead; and afterwards they burned them. the additional emphasis which the old conceptions of the impurity of the corpse, the worthlessness of the flesh, had received in the system of the brahmans, was no doubt the reason why they sought to remove the remains of the cremation, the ashes and bones, by throwing them into water. buddha did not treat the body better than the brahmans; with him, though not strictly the cause, it was the bearer and medium of the destruction and pain of mankind, inasmuch as in his eyes the perverse direction of the soul and its dependence on existence were destruction. this body, which brahmans and buddhists vied with each other in regarding as a perishable and worthless vessel containing the ego, which a man must either break asunder, or liberate himself from it, the relics of which had been considered for so many centuries as impure and spreading impurity, received quite a new importance in the buddhist religion. not long after the death of the enlightened, when the generation of disciples who had seen him and lived with him had passed away, the need of some representation and idea of the pattern and centre of these thoughts and efforts, of the person of their teacher, impelled the believers to pay honour to his ashes and bones, to his relics. this honour was soon extended to the bones of his leading disciples, a form of worship which must have been shocking to the brahmans. similar honour was then paid to the robes and vessels which buddha had used, to his mendicant's garment, his staff, his jar for alms and pitcher, and also to the places which he had sanctified by his presence. two centuries after the death of the enlightened, this worship of relics and pilgrimage to the holy places were established customs. the believers in buddha travelled to kapilavastu, his father's city. there they beheld the garden in which buddha had seen the light, the pool in which he was washed, the ground on which he had contended in exercises with his fellows, the places where he had seen the old man, the sick man, and the corpse. in the neighbourhood of uruvilva on the nairanjana pilgrims visited the dwellings where buddha had lived for six years as an ascetic, at gaya the sacred fig-tree under which in the night truth was revealed to him. not far from thence was the place where the maiden of uruvilva had given food to the son of Çakya, where he had first announced his doctrine to the two merchants. at rajagriha the stone was pointed out which devadatta had hurled from the height of the vulture mountain on buddha. even the bamboo garden at this city, which buddha was said to have taken pleasure in frequenting, and the place at Çravasti where he had held his disputations with the brahmanic penitents, were shrines of pilgrimage.[ ] from the same need of representing and realising the religious example, and of elevating the heart and spirit to that pattern, which gave rise to the worship of relics and shrines, there sprang, in addition, the worship of the pictures of buddha. he who had placed the body of man so low was now thought to have had a body of the greatest beauty; his perfect wisdom and virtue had found expression in the most perfect body. the sutras compare buddha's gentle eye with the lotus; they even tell us of the thirty-two signs of complete beauty, and the eighty-four marks of physical perfection in his body.[ ] buddha's doctrine was definitely based on the fact that man must liberate himself by his own power and wisdom, and to himself and his disciples buddha was a man and no more, but in a nation so eager for miracles and inclined to believe in them, buddha's life and actions inevitably became surrounded with the supernatural. he could not remain behind the brahman penitents and saints, who had done great miracles. could anything so great as buddha's life and doctrine have occurred without a miracle; was a mission possible without miracles; could the greatest mission, the liberation of the world from misery, have taken place without being accredited by miracles? could he who had reached the summit of wisdom and virtue have been without supernatural powers? that sanctification and meditation were and must be followed by such powers, was a matter of course among the indians. even in the third century b.c. miraculous powers were ascribed to the bhikshus who had attained the fourth stage in the path, and therefore the same must have been done even earlier for buddha himself. the same legends which represent buddha as saying to king prasenajit of ayodhya: "i do not bid my disciples perform miracles; i tell them; live so that your good deeds may remain concealed, your errors confessed,"[ ] surround his birth and his penances at gaya (p. ff. ) with miraculous signs; and in the disputations with the brahmans they represent him as contending in miracles also, and gaining the victory. but these and other miracles of buddha, though he travels with his disciples through the air, are nevertheless not to be compared with the achievements of the brahmanic penitents, narrated in the brahmanas and the epos. they are for the most part the healing of disease and restoration to life, intended to bring out his compassion for living creatures,[ ] and beside these the exercise of the miraculous powers which the buddhists ascribe to all who have attained the fourth stage in the path (p. ). it was not only the miraculous acts of the saints which forced their way from brahmanism into buddhism; even the gods and spirits, the heaven and hell of the brahmans, had a place in the new religion. the old divinities of the indian nation, as we have seen, could only maintain a very subordinate position in the system of the world-soul, inferior to that soul and to the great power of the rishis. they also had become emanations of the world-soul; though ranked among the earliest of these, they came immediately after the great saints of old time. but every penitent who by his asceticism concentrated a larger part of the power of the world-soul in himself, became superior to indra and to the personal brahman. the same position in respect to the ancient deities and the personal brahman was allotted to buddha. from the beginning of the third century b.c. he appears to have been worshipped by his followers as a god.[ ] this was due not merely to the desire to place the power of the penitent, of meditation and knowledge, higher than the power of the gods, but also to the deep necessity on the part of the new religion and the believers in buddha to possess a god. later legends put the deities far below buddha. he converts the spirits of the earth, of the air, of the serpents to his doctrine, and in return these spirits serve and obey him. even the great gods come and listen to his words, and buddha declares the new law to brahman and to indra.[ ] in the relic-cell of a stupa of the second century b.c. brahman is holding a parasol over buddha, and indra anoints him out of a large shell to be king of gods and men.[ ] thus to his believers buddha is not only the lion, the bull, and the elephant, stronger than the strongest, mightier than the mightiest, surpassing all men in compassion and good works, beautiful beyond the most beautiful of mankind; not only is he the king of doctrine, the ocean of grace, the founder of the eternal pilgrimages, he is also the father of the world, redeemer and ruler of all creatures, god of gods, indra of indras, brahman of brahmans. nothing, of course, is now said of independent action, or power on the part of these indras and brahmans. to later buddhism they are a higher but completely human class of beings; in the retinue of buddha they are only a troop of supernumerary figures whose essential importance consists merely in bowing themselves before buddha, serving him, and placing in the fullest light his power and greatness. like men, these deities have to seek the light of higher wisdom, the salvation of liberation by effort and labour. to indra, for instance, the buddhists assign no higher dignity than that of the first stage of illumination; he stands on the level of the Çrotaapanna.[ ] in this transformation, which we find in the later writings of the buddhists, the entire indian and brahmanic view of the world reappears in its widest extent. the divine mountain meru forms the centre of the earth. beneath it, in the deepest abyss, is hell. the buddhists are even more minute than the brahmans in describing the torments and subdivisions of hell, and with them also yama is the god of death and the under world.[ ] on the summit of meru indra is enthroned, who with the buddhists also is the special protector of kings, and with him are the thirty-three gods of light (p. ). in the buddhist mythology the evil spirits, the asuras, attack indra and the bright spirits, as in the vedic conception; but the asuras could not advance further than the third of the four stages which the buddhists ascribed to meru, after the analogy of the four truths and the four stages of sanctification. the gandharvas have to defend the eastern side of meru against the asuras; the yakshas (the spirits of the god kuvera, p. ), the northern; the kumbhandas (the dwarfs), the southern; and the nagas or serpent spirits, the western side. in the buddhist view the earth, the divine mountain, and the heaven of indra above it make up the world of desire and sin. indra and his deities are supreme over certain supernatural powers, but they are powerless against the man who has controlled himself;[ ] they propagate themselves like men, are subject to the doom of regeneration, and can decline into lower existences. in this sense, with the buddhists, the evil spirit of desire and sensual pleasure is enthroned over the heaven of indra; his name is kama or mara; he is the cause of all generation, and hence of the restless revolution of the world, and of all misery. above this heaven of the god of sin, which is filled with innumerable troops of the spirits of desires, begin the four upper heavens, the heaven of the liberated, into which those pass who have delivered themselves from sensual appetite, desire, and existence.[ ] among the buddhists there could be no question of the worship of these unreal deities, without power to bless or destroy. their cultus was limited to the person of the founder, the symbols and memorials of his life, the relics of his body, the places sanctified by his presence. but they could not slay animals in sacrifice to the relics or the manes of buddha, nor invite the extinguished etherealized dead to the enjoyment of the soma. of what value was the blood or flesh of victims to one who would never wake again; and how could they offer bloody sacrifices to one with whom it was the first commandment not to slay any living thing? agni could carry no gift up to him who was perfected; and moreover buddha had himself expressly forbidden sacrifice by fire; the buddhists were to tend the law as the brahmans tended the fire.[ ] they could only place offerings of flowers, fruits, and perfumes at the sacred shrines, before the relics of the enlightened, as signs of thankfulness and reverence, as symbols of worship (_puja_). prayer was in reality unknown to a cultus which was directed to a deceased man, and not to a deity. believers must be content with the symbols of reverence, with singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the enlightened, for having discovered truth, proclaimed liberation, shown pity, and brought help to all creatures; they must limit themselves to the confessions which these doctrines comprised, to hearing moral exhortations, to pronouncing and wishing blessings: "that all creatures may be free from sickness and wicked pleasure, that every man may become an arhat in the future regeneration."[ ] the gradual elevation of the position of buddha, and the more complete apotheosis which was granted to him, led to direct invocations of the enlightened. as the benefactor of all creatures he was besought for his blessing; as the liberator he was entreated to confer the power of liberation, and liberation. when after the end of the third century b.c. statues of buddha stood in the halls of the viharas, it became usual to invoke buddha to be present in these statues. by the consecration which they underwent at the hands of the priests they received a ray of the spirit of buddha, and thus acquired a beneficent miraculous power. at morning, midday, and evening, _i.e._ at the times when it was customary among the aryas to offer prayers, or gifts, or strew grains of corn, the monks of the enlightened were summoned to prayers. at the new and full moon, when the bhikshus fasted, and met for confession, the laity also discontinued their occupations, assembled to read the law, or hear preachers, or utter prayers. in no religious community was prayer so frequent and so mechanical as among the buddhists, and this is still the case. greater festivals were celebrated at the beginning of the spring, in the later spring, and at the end of the rainy season. the festival held at the new moon in the first month of spring, is said to have been a festival in commemoration of the victory which buddha won in the disputation and contest of miracles with the brahmanic penitents (p. ). buddha himself is said to have indulged in secular enjoyment for eight days after this success. as a fact, it was, no doubt, the customary spring festival--a remnant of the old arian custom, to celebrate in the spring the victory gained by the spirits of light and the clear air over the gloom of the winter--which the buddhists now celebrated in honour of their great teacher. at the full moon of the month vaiçakha in the later spring, the day was celebrated on which the enlightened saw the light for the salvation of the world. with the buddhists the rainy season was the sacred season, the time for reflection and retirement. at the end of the rains buddha had always revisited the world, in order to announce to it salvation; and like him, his followers, the bhikshus, who could not leave the vihara in the rainy season, returned on this day to the world, in order to recommence their wanderings and preaching for the salvation of living creatures. this return of the teachers to the world was marked by a great festival, at which the bhikshus received presents from the laity; sermons were preached, and processions held in which the lamps, no doubt, represented the light returning after the gloom of the rains, or the light of salvation which buddha had kindled for the world. the combination of the clergy and laity in the buddhist church was even less close than the connection of the brahmanic priesthood with the other orders. in their traditional position at the funeral feasts of the families the brahmans retained the guidance of certain corporations. with the buddhists the care of souls lay entirely in the hands of the wandering bhikshus, the mendicant monks, unless indeed in a few cases laymen attached themselves of their own free will to some not too distant monastery. but the separation of the bhikshus from the family and house, their exclusive devotion to teaching and religion, the constant mission and preaching which occupied them for two-thirds of the year, throughout the spring and the hot season, quickly showed itself more efficacious than the sacrificial service of the brahmans, which was linked with house and home. these travelling monks, who could enter into closer relations with the people because they had no impurities to avoid, such as in many cases entirely excluded the brahmans from the lower castes, caused their exhortations and counsel to be heard in every house; they were asked about the names to be given to new-born children; they assisted at the ceremony of the cutting of the hair of boys when they reached the age of puberty, at marriages and burials, and undertook prayers for the happy regeneration of the dead. and not only were the bhikshus nearer the people, and more easily brought into relations with them, but they obtained far greater hold on their conscience than the brahmans. this was not merely due to the precepts of their practical morality, which included the whole life and activity of the believers, and of the application and observance of which they took account in the confessional--a duty devolving on the laity as well as the clergy--the doctrine of regeneration was developed more fully in buddhism, and formed more distinctly the centre of the system than among the brahmans. we saw that it was the active force of merit or guilt in earlier existences which fixed the fate of the individual in the kind of regeneration, in the happiness or misfortune of his life. in the same way the good and evil of this life had its effects. "he who goes out of the world, him his deeds await"[ ]--such is the formula of the buddhists. the various divisions of hell, the distinctions of the castes, which with the buddhists counted as gradations of rank among men (p. ), the heavenly spirits and the ancient gods, which had been received into the buddhist heaven, served to increase the graduated series of regenerations to a considerable degree. "he who has lived foolishly goes into hell after the dissolution of the body;"[ ] he is born again as a creature of hell in a department of greater or less torment according to his guilt. the less guilty are born again as evil spirits. higher in the scale stood regeneration as an animal; among animal regenerations the buddhists counted birth as an ant, louse, bug, or worm the worst. among mankind men were born again in a bad or good way, in a lower or higher caste, under easier or harder circumstances, according to their guilt or merit. birth as a heavenly spirit counted higher than any human regeneration; higher still was birth as a god. but even when born again as a god, man was still under the dominion of desire; as we have seen, indra only held the rank of a Çrotaapanna. from this stage it was possible to decline; it was by further conquest and liberation that a man must work his way upwards. above the heaven of indra and mara, in the four high heavens, dwelt the spirits which had liberated themselves from desire and existence; in the lowest of these were the spirits who, though free from desire, are fettered by plurality, _i.e._ by ignorance; in the next, the heaven of clearer light, are those who, though free from desire and ignorance, are not so free that they cannot again sink under their dominion; the highest heaven but one receives the spirits who have no relapse to fear; and in the highest of all are the arhats who have exhausted existence. as we see, the buddhists avail themselves of the brahmanic heaven and hell, and the intervals which the brahmans place between regenerations in hell or in indra's heaven, in order to construct out of them a more complete system. in this the process of the purification of the soul ascends from the lowest place in hell through the evil spirits, the creeping, flying, and four-footed animals, through men of all positions in life, and then through the heavenly spirits and deities to the highest heaven, till the point is reached at which all earlier guilt is exhausted, and the total of merit so extended that the original sin of the soul, desire and its possibility, is removed; and thus liberation from existence takes place, the _ego_ is extinguished. it is an inconsistency, no doubt, that those who have annihilated themselves and the roots of their existence by attaining nirvana, shall still have a kind of existence in the highest heaven; but by this means the system was made more complete and realistic. and not merely this wide development of the system of regenerations, but the practical application of it must have given the bhikshus greater power over the consciences and heart of the nation than that exercised by the brahmans. buddha had known his own earlier existences. the tradition of the singhalese ascribes to him earlier lives before he saw the light as the son of Çuddhodana. he had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god indra, and four times as mahabrahman. buddha had not only known his own earlier existences (p. ), but those of all other living creatures; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience was, as we have seen, ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of arhats. though it did not reside in the full extent in anagamins, sakridagamins, Çrotaapannas, and still less in all the bhikshus, it was nevertheless found in an imperfect degree in all "who advanced on the way." the people believed that the Çramanas could not only foretell from the present conduct of a man his future lot, and his regenerations in hell, among animals or men, but that they could also declare his future in this life from his previous existences. hence the bhikshus were masters not of the future only but also of the past of every man; and as they had his fate completely in view, the rules which they laid down from this point received an importance calculated to ensure their observance.[ ] it was no hindrance to morality that in this doctrine every man had his fate in his own hands at least so far that he could alleviate it for the future, and the practical results which the ethics of the buddhists achieved on the basis of this imaginary background of regeneration are far from contemptible. the essential points in the buddhist ethics, the moderate, passionless life, and patience and sympathy, have been dwelt upon (p. ). it was not without value that the buddhists taught, that no fire was like hatred and passion, and no stream like desire;[ ] that the desires bring little pleasure and much pain; only he who controlled himself lived in happiness, and contentment is the best treasure.[ ] he who merely saw the deficiencies of others, his offences would increase; and he who was always thinking: such a man injured me, annoyed me, will never attain repose. hard words were answered with hard words; therefore a man should bear slighting speeches patiently, as an elephant endures arrows in the battle, and lives without enmity among his enemies.[ ] to tend fire for a hundred years, or offer sacrifice for a thousand,[ ] was of no avail; neither the penance of the moon nor sacrifice changes anything in the evil act, even though it were offered for a year.[ ] those who lie and deny the acts they have done will go into hell.[ ] the evil act pursues the doer; there is no place in the world in which to escape it; it destroys the doer unless it is conquered and covered by good deeds.[ ] duties come from the heart; if the act is good it leaves no remorse in the heart. a man should give alms though he has but little; the covetous will not come into the world of the gods. these earnest exhortations to acquire before all things the feeling which gives rise to good works, to extinguish offences by confession and good actions, to moderate greed and covetousness, to live contentedly and peaceably, to be gentle in our deeds, could not be without effect. this peaceableness the buddhists showed in the tolerance they extended to those who were of a different faith than their own; and for the family the rules of affection impressed on children towards their parents, of chastity and forbearance impressed on husbands and wives, were wholesome and advantageous in their results.[ ] the limitations set up by the arrangement of the castes, worship, and custom of the brahmans began to waver; man was guided from the fortune of birth, the sanctification of works, to his inward effort, and led to the moral education of self. disposition and personal merit obtained the first place in the community, and fixed a man's fortune in a future life. thus the pride of higher birth as against the lower born has to give way; and hence slaves were treated with greater kindness. fantastic as was the heaven and hell reconstructed by the buddhists, marvellous as was the elevation of a man to be god, superstitious as was the worship of relics, exaggerated as was the conception of the way, the increasing supernatural power of him who was attaining liberation, and indubitable as was the tendency of nirvana to end in the last instance in mere stolid indifference--the individual and morality were again restored by this doctrine and placed in their rights; society could again acquire free movement in personal intercourse and free choice of a vocation; all men were in reality equal, and could help each other as brothers. footnotes: [ ] "dhammapadam," translated by a. weber, v. . [ ] köppen, "religion des buddha," s. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] _supra_, p. . "dhammapadam," v. . köppen, _loc. cit._ ff. [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] köppen, "religion des buddha," s. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] köppen, "rel. des buddha," s. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] there are commands and prohibitions among the singhalese at the present day, and among the tibetans. [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] schlagintweit, "buddhism in tibet," p. ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , , . cf. v. . [ ] köppen, "relig. des buddha," s. . the supernatural powers of the arhats are mentioned in the inscriptions of açoka, and the ordination service of the Çramanas forbade them to boast falsely of supernatural powers. köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] _supra_, p. , . köppen, _loc. cit._ s. - . [ ] burnouf, "introduction," p. . köppen is undoubtedly right in regarding the worship of relics as older than the worship of images. the worship of relics and pilgrimages was in vogue when açoka became a convert to buddhism, but nothing is there said of the worship of images. i do not think it a certain fact that there were no images in the grottoes of buddhagaya which date from açoka and his grandson daçaratha; sockets and niches for images are found there (cunningham, "survey," , ), and the images may have been removed later; it is more decisive that in the transference of buddhism to ceylon, nothing is said of the transportation of images, though we do hear of relics. rajendralala mitra ("antiq. of orissa," p. ), concludes from panini, who as we have seen lived, according to m. müller and lassen, in the second half of the fourth century b.c., that at that time there were little idols of vasadeva, vishnu, Çiva, and the adityas. we may assume that the worship of images came into vogue towards the end of the third century, and afterwards rose rapidly. [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. , , . [ ] this date would be fixed if the passage in clement of alexandria: "the indians who follow the doctrines of butta, whom they regard with the greatest reverence as a god," certainly came from megasthenes. megasth. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] this is the mahastupa of king dushatagamani of ceylon. lassen, _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] köppen, "relig. des buddha," s. , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. , ff. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , and at the beginning. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. ; _supra_, p. f. [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. , , . [ ] "dhammapadam," v. . köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . chapter viii. the reforms of the brahmans. a doctrine coming forward with so much self-confidence and force as buddhism, touching such essential sides of the indian national spirit, and meeting such distinct needs of the heart and of society, could not but react on the system which opposed it, which it fought against and strove to remove, _i.e._ on brahmanism. we cannot suppose that the brahmans looked supinely on at the advances of buddhism. the accounts which we received from the greeks about the various forms of worship dominant about the year b.c. among the indians (p. ) show us that the brahmanic heaven and the order of the world did not remain untouched; that there had crept in considerable variations from the ideas which the ancient sutras mention as current among the brahmans at the time of the appearance of the enlightened. we can confidently conclude that this change in the brahmanic idea of god--important as we shall find it to be, and accomplished in part unconsciously and in part with a definite purpose--was brought about through buddhism, by the inward value of the new doctrine, the struggle it entered into with brahmanism, the necessity of opposing and checking its advances. we have shown above how the subordination of the gods to brahman and the great saints, the degradation of the ancient deities, must have aroused especially in the people the need of living divine powers. thus forms hitherto little noticed in the series of the ancient deities became prominent, in which the people, conforming to the change in their instincts and the new demands of the heart, recognised the ruling and protecting powers of their life, and which they invoked especially as helpers and benefactors. these forms were vishnu, the god of light, who even in the veda is extolled for his friendly feeling to man, and Çiva, the mighty god of the storm-wind. in vishnu the people found the spirit of the beneficent and uniform nature of the district of the ganges; in Çiva, the lord of the storm-swept summits of the himalayas, the ruler of mountains. each was equally in their eyes the life-giving, sovereign power of nature. the system of the world-soul had left the gods a place little to be envied in the series of the emanations of brahman, and had thrust back nature to a distance; the favour which vishnu and Çiva found among the people showed the brahmans that the worship of real and living deities was indispensable, that the life of nature could not be entirely excluded from the forms of the deities. to overcome the tide of popular feeling in the direction of vishnu and Çiva, and the doctrine of buddha at one and the same time, was a victory which the brahmans could the less hope for, as the tendency towards a more personal supreme being than brahman was not unknown in their own schools, so far as these were not devoted to strict meditation and philosophy. thus the brahmans followed the movement excited within the circle of the ancient religion; they aimed at satisfying both the nation and themselves by the worship of more personal living gods. in one place vishnu, in another Çiva, was adopted into the system of the brahmans (p. , ), which in this way underwent a very essential change and assumed an entirely novel point of view. if the adoption of vishnu into the brahmanic system in the form given to him by the people on the ganges, who reproduced in the epithets ascribed to the god their own quiet sensuous nature, was to be efficacious, he could not be allowed to play the unimportant part to which the brahmans had condemned the ancient gods; they must make him the centre of heaven in the place of the feeble personal or impersonal brahman; he must become the living lord of nature and the world. from the indications of the brahmans quoted above, we may draw, though in wavering lines, a sketch of the gradations through which by a gradual elevation vishnu obtained the precedence even over brahman. brahman finally became the quiescent, vishnu the active, substance of the world. the latter contains the former, and is therefore the higher power. vishnu personifies the world-soul; but he also comprises the whole life of nature; he takes the place of the sun-gods surya, savitar, pushan, and even the place of indra, who has to offer sacrifice to him, and purify himself before him,[ ] until at length in the revisions of the epos he is regarded no longer as the quiescent cause but as the active lord of nature, and of the whole life of the spirits, and is elevated to be the creator and governor of the universe. in him, the lord of all beings, so we are told in the mahabharata, all beings are contained as his attributes, like precious stones on a string; on him rests the universe existent and non-existent. hari (vishnu) with a thousand heads, a thousand feet, a thousand eyes, gleams with a thousand faces; the god, pre-eminent above all, the smallest of the small, the widest of the wide, the greatest of the great, supreme among the supreme, is the soul of all; he, the all-knowing, all-observing, is the author of all; in him the world swims like birds in water.[ ] vishnu is without beginning and without end, the source of the existence of all beings. from the thousand-armed vishnu, the head and the lord of the world, all creatures sprang in the beginning of time, and to him all return at the end of time. hari is the eternal spirit, glittering as gold, as the sun in a cloudless sky. brahman sprung from his body, and dwells in it with the rest of the gods; the lights of the sky are the hairs of his head. he, the lotus-eyed god, is extolled by the eternal brahman; to him the gods pray.[ ] when vishnu unveils himself to arjuna at his prayer, and shows himself in his real form, in which no man had yet seen him, he is seen reaching up to the sky without beginning, middle, or end, with many heads, eyes, and arms, uniting in himself thousands of faces; all gods, animals, and serpents are to be seen in him; brahman shows himself in the lotus-cup of the navel of vishnu.[ ] thus did the brahmans place vishnu on the throne of brahman; brahman, impersonal and personal, passed into him. these pictures are attempts to represent the creative power, the supreme god, the world-soul, the cause which sustains and comprises all, as a sensuous union of all divine shapes, of all the forms of the world into one frame. the worship offered to this supreme deity consisted in definite prayers, which had to be spoken at morning, midday, and evening; in offerings of flowers, and fruits, and libations of water.[ ] what attracted the people to the doctrine of buddha was obviously, to no inconsiderable extent, the fact that the highest wisdom and goodness were personified in buddha; that there was again mercy and grace, on earth, if not in heaven; that the king's son had become a mendicant in order to alleviate the sorrows of the world. the brahmans, therefore, had to prove that love and pity existed in their heaven; it was of importance for them to show the people that the gods, whom the adherents of the old religion worshipped, had compassion for men, and knew how to help them, that even among them the divine wisdom and perfection had assumed a human shape out of love to mankind. if the brahmans had so long taught that man could make himself into god by meditation, penance, and sanctity, why should not the gods have made themselves into men? the new god of the land of the ganges was a gentle and helpful deity; his government of the world and beneficent acts were not only shown in the life of nature, and in the light which he sent daily, or the purifying water which he sent yearly in the rainy season, and the inundation of the ganges, but also in the fortunes of men. the brahmans obtained historical points of connection for the new god, and re-established a personal and living relation, which had been entirely lost in the brahmanic system, between man and the gods, by representing vishnu as gracious even in past days, as descending from heaven from time to time, and walking on earth for the help of men. from motives of this kind or because the conception of the beneficent acts of vishnu came into the foreground, because they wished to see and believed that they saw his influence operating everywhere, there came the result that the achievements of the heroes which in the epos are the centres of the action, krishna and rama, were transferred to the god vishnu, and these heroic figures were supposed to be appearances of the god, so that by degrees a number of incarnations (_avatara_) are ascribed to vishnu, in which he visited earth and did great deeds for men. according to this new system it was vishnu who assisted the brahmans to their supremacy, and therefore consecrated it, who taking the bodily form of paraçurama annihilated the proud races of the kshatriyas (p. ). thus the brahmans transformed the god of beneficent nature, when they adopted him into their system, into the founder of the brahmanic order of the world, a pattern of brahmanic sanctity and virtue, and thus they sought to close the path against any counter-movement. in this way vishnu appeared in the light of a perpetual benefactor, constantly assuming the human form anew, whenever mischief, evil, and sin had got the upper hand, in order to remove them, and then to reascend into heaven. "whenever justice falls asleep and injustice arises, i create myself," are the words of vishnu in the bhagavad-gita; "for the liberation of the good and the annihilation of the evil i was born in each age of the world."[ ] in the epos, as has been observed, vishnu took the form of a dwarf in order to rescue the world from the asura, bali. according to the vishnu-purana, he had, even before the creation of the world, taken the form of a boar in order to raise the earth out of the waters. in the matsya-purana, beside three heavenly incarnations as dharma, a dwarf, and a man-lion, he underwent seven earthly incarnations in consequence of a curse, as is strangely asserted, which an asura had pronounced upon him, when vishnu had slain the asura's mother in order to aid indra against him.[ ] the bhagavata-purana ascribes twenty incarnations to vishnu; as creator, a boar, tortoise, fish, man-lion; as a sacrifice, a dwarf; as paraçurama, rama, balarama, krishna, etc.--twice more would he appear on the earth--and then it is added: "but the incarnations of vishnu are innumerable as the streams which flow down from an inexhaustible lake; all saints and gods are parts of him."[ ] in order to transform the heroes of the ramayana into incarnations of vishnu, vigorous interpolations were required in the body of the poem. according to the old poem, king daçaratha offered a horse-sacrifice in order to procure posterity (p. ). when this sacrifice has been accurately described in all its parts, and we have been informed that the gods appeared and received each his portion, a second sacrifice is inserted because daçaratha wished to have a famous son born to him.[ ] while rishyaçringa is advising the king to make this new sacrifice and beginning it, the gods complain to brahman that the rakshasa ravana of lanka has subjugated them and made them his slaves; he oppressed the gods, the brahmans, and the cows. ravana's son, indrashit, had conquered indra himself, a victory which brahman explains to be the consequence of the seduction of a rishi's wife by indra.[ ] brahman then announces to the helpless deities that ravana had besought him that he might be invulnerable to gandharvas, yakshas, gods, danavas, and rakshasas, and had obtained his request; as he despised men he had not asked to be invulnerable to men, and this favour had not been granted to him. when the gods with indra at their head heard this they were delighted. at that moment came the famous vishnu, with the shell, the discus, the sun's disk, and the club in his hand, in a yellow robe, on the garuda (his bird), like the sun sitting on the clouds, with a bracelet of fine gold, invoked by the head of the gods. the gods fell down before him and said: "thou art he who removest the sorrows of the distressed worlds. we entreat thee, be our refuge, o unconquerable one." then they besought him to take upon himself the son-ship of daçaratha. when changed into a man, he might slay ravana, the powerful enemy of the worlds, whom the gods could not overcome. he alone in the hosts of heaven can slay the wicked one. then vishnu, the "lord of the gods, the greatest of the immortals, entreated of all worlds," soothes the gods, and promises them to slay ravana, and reign on earth for eleven thousand years.[ ] meanwhile rishyaçringa at ayodhya is ready with the sacrifice, and out of the fire there appears a being of a brightness incomparable, clear as a burning flame, strong as a tiger, and his shoulders were as the shoulders of a lion; his garment was red, and his teeth like the stars in heaven; in both hands he held a golden cup, and spake to king daçaratha: "receive this draught, maharaja, which the gods have prepared; it is the fruit of the sacrifice, let thy fair wives enjoy it; then wilt thou receive the sons for whom thou hast offered the sacrifice."[ ] then kauçalya bore rama, the lord of the world, entreated of all worlds, and gained glory by this son of unlimited power, even as aditi did by the birth of the chief of the gods, who brandishes the club; and kaikeyi bore bharata, who was the fourth part of vishnu, and sumitra bore lakshmana and Çatrughna, each of whom was the eighth part of vishnu. this division of vishnu according to the valour of the sons, and the more or less prominent parts which they play in the poem, is entirely forgotten in the course of it; even rama himself is entirely uninfluenced by this new introduction; when fighting with magic weapons and arts he feels as a virtuous man and an obedient son.[ ] towards the end of the poem brahman and the gods come in order to tell rama who he is; the original creator of the universe and the worlds, the head of the divine host, whose eyes are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the açvins. brahman himself then declares to him: "thou, o being of primal force, thou art the famous lord armed with the discus, thou art the boar with one horn, the conqueror of present and future enemies, the true and imperishable brahman in the middle and at the end. thou art the supreme order of the world, the bearer of the bow, the supreme spirit, the unconquered, the brandisher of the sword. thou art wisdom, patience, self-control. thou art the source of birth, the cause of decay. thou art mahendra, the greater indra; thou performest the functions of indra. thou hast formed the vedas; they are thy thoughts, thou first-born, thou self-dependent lord. thou art in all creatures, in the brahmans and the cows; thou sustainest creatures and the earth with its hills; thou art at the end of the earth, in the waters, a mighty serpent which supports the three worlds. the whole world is thy body, agni is thy anger, soma thy joy, and i (brahman) am thy heart."[ ] rama is here identified with vishnu, and the latter is at the same time set forth as including brahman and all nature, as the world-soul and a personal god. the form of krishna goes through the same change in the mahabharata, though the position, acts and counsels which the old poem ascribed to this hero of the tribe of the yadavas were often, as we saw, neither honourable nor praiseworthy. besides his relation to the sons of pandu, the mahabharata ascribed to him a long series of earlier achievements. while yet among the herdmen, he had slain haya among the forests on the yamuna, and overcome the mischievous bull which slew the oxen. then he slew pralambha, naraka, jambha, and pitha, the great asura, and conquered kansa, king of mathura, in battle. supported by his brother balarama, he overcame kansa's brother, the bold prince of the Çurasenas. jarasandha also, the king of magadha and of the chedis, was defeated by krishna, and the victory over panchajana who lived in patala brought him into the possession of his divine shell. this assisted krishna in his suit for the daughter of the king of the gandharas, for no prince was his equal in weapons; he yoked the conquered princes to his bridal car.[ ] in the ancient form of the poem, krishna was the son of the cowherd nanda, and his wife yaçoda. it is already an alteration of his original position when he is described as a son of vasudeva and devaki, who was changed with the child of the herdman's wife. in the chandogya-upanishad krishna is still no more than the son of devaki.[ ] afterwards, the prayers of the gods to vishnu that he would allow himself to be born upon earth, were inserted into the mahabharata. vishnu plucks out two hairs from himself, one white, the other black; these two hairs pass into two women of the tribe of yadavas, the two wives of vasudeva, devaki and rohini. from the white hair rohini brought forth balarama, and from the black devaki brought forth krishna.[ ] hence krishna is merely one part of vishnu, and balarama another; but of this no further notice is taken; wherever krishna is treated as a god in the poem, he is the whole god. in the other parts of the poem he is no more than a mortal; in the earliest revision he fights his fight with the arms and the blessing of the gods, of which he would have no need if he were himself the supreme god; in the last revision he is the supreme god. then it is imparted to him that in the beginning of days brahman, who is the whole world, sprang from the lotus of his navel; that the lords of the gods proceeded from his body and carry out his commands.[ ] brahman says to the gods: "ye must worship this vasudeva, whose son i, brahman, the lord of the worlds, am. never, ye great gods, can the mighty bearer of the shell, the discus, and the club be regarded as merely a mortal." this being is the supreme mystery, the supreme existence, the supreme brahman, the supreme power, the supreme joy, the supreme truth. it is the imperishable, the indivisible, the eternal. vasudeva (krishna) of unlimited power cannot therefore be despised by the gods, nor by indra, nor by the asuras, as merely a man. "he who says that he is only a man, his understanding is perverted; he who despises krishna will be called the lowest of mankind. he who despises vasudeva is full of darkness; as also is the man who knows not the glorious god whose self is the world. the man who despises this great being, who bears crowns and jewels, and liberates his worshippers from fear, is plunged into deep darkness."[ ] assertions and statements of this kind show clearly that at the time of their insertion into the mahabharata the deification of krishna was by no means universally recognised.[ ] while a tendency at work within the circle of the brahmans put vishnu in the place of brahman, another impulse was not less eagerly occupied in elevating the old storm-god rudra-Çiva to be the highest deity. in the poem of the veda the storm-god wears the plaited hair. he is called kapardin, _i.e._ the bearer of the locks, an idea no doubt borrowed from the collected clouds driven by the storm. as the old priestly families plaited their hair in different ways (p. ), and all penitents wore their hair in knots, the storm-god also became a penitent with the brahman, and as the divine power resided pre-eminently in penance, and Çiva was so strong and mighty a god, he became the greatest of all penitents. the old conception of rudra assisted to retain for this mighty deity an angry and destructive aspect; but as rain and fructification also came from the storm Çiva was placed in relation to procreation. if vishnu is celebrated in the passages quoted from the ramayana and mahabharata, the same honour is allotted in other parts of the same poems to Çiva, who is now called mahadeva, _i.e._ the great god. he also is the source, the unborn cause of the world, the framer of the all, the beginning of all beings, the shaper of the gods, the uncreated, imperishable lord, the origin of the past, the present, and the future. he is the highest spirit, the home of the lights, the sky, the wind, the creator of the ocean, the substance of the earth, brahman itself. but he is also the supreme anger, the creator of the world and its destroyer.[ ] he, the all-penetrating god, is the creator and lord of brahman, vishnu, and indra; they serve him, who extends beyond matter and spirit, who at once is and is not. when by his power he set matter and spirit in motion, Çiva, the god of the gods, the creator (prajapati),[ ] created brahman from his right side and vishnu from his left. his attributes could not be set forth in a hundred years. he is indra, he is agni, he is the açvins, he is surya, he is varuna. nothing is above him, and nothing can withstand his divinity; the heart of the gods is terrified in the battle when they hear his awful voice; none can endure the sight of the angry bearer of the bow. he has two bodies, and these assume marvellous shapes. one of the bodies is full of sorrow, the other is gracious. if angry and passionate, he is an eater of flesh, blood, and marrow, and then he is called rudra. when he is angry, all worlds are confounded at the sound of his bow-string, gods and asuras are defeated and helpless, the waters are in tumult, and the earth quakes, the mountains sink, the light of the sun is quenched, heaven is torn asunder and veiled in thick darkness.[ ] there were three cities of the mighty asuras which indra could not overcome. at the entreaty of the gods that he would liberate the world Çiva made vishnu his arrow, agni the barbs, yama the feathers, all the vedas his bow, and the gayatris (p. ) his bow-string; brahman was the leader of his chariot, and he burnt the three cities and the asuras with the arrow of triple barbs, of the colour of the sun, and glowing like fire, which consumes the world.[ ] Çiva is the soul of all worlds; he dwells in the heart of all creatures, he knows all desires, he is visible and invisible; serpents are his girdle and the skins of serpents his robe; he carries the discus, the club, sword, and axe. he assumes the form of brahman and vishnu, of all gods, spirits, and demons, of all kinds of men. he laughs, and weeps, and hops, and dances, and sings, and speaks softly, and then again with the voice of a drunkard. naked, with excited glances, he plays with the maidens.[ ] thus does the epos describe the forms of vishnu and Çiva. the brahmans had allowed the pure world-soul to drop out, in order to return again to living deities; nature, which was nothing but deception as opposed to brahman, they had again assumed in the being of the new gods; the two new supreme deities absorbed brahman, each into himself; each was also brahman; each had given forth from himself all living and lifeless beings, the whole of nature; each governs and rules the life of nature, and is the cause of growth and decay. these were attempts made in combination with the national faith to personify once more the pantheism of the brahmanic system, without excluding the life of nature, to represent the divine power to the religious consciousness in an active, direct, living, impressive, helpful way. this process and change of the brahmanic system took place about the same time that the buddhists began to pay divine honour to the founder of their doctrine, and exalt him to the highest deity, or perhaps a little earlier. as compared with buddhism the new conception of the brahmanic idea of god had the disadvantage that there were two supreme deities which contended side by side with brahman for the first place. the worshippers of the one and the other equally inserted into the epos their great deity and his praises. the exaltation of vishnu and of Çiva, the repression of the idea of brahman, cannot have begun later than the beginning of the fourth century b.c., since, as the greeks have already told us, it was towards the end of the fourth century, about the year b.c., that Çiva and vishnu were worshipped by the indians as their chief deities, the first by the inhabitants of the mountains, the second by the dwellers in the plains. at the same time it is clear, from the accounts of the greeks, that the incarnations of vishnu, assumed in order to benefit the world, in paraçurama, rama, and krishna had already obtained recognition at the time mentioned, and received expression in the epos and the worship. in any other case it would have been impossible for the greeks to have regarded vishnu as their own heracles. from certain quotations in panini, who lived about the middle or the last third of the fourth century,[ ] it follows that krishna and vishnu were identified about this time, and vishnu was described by the name vasudeva, the family name of krishna.[ ] buddhism appears to have had a two-fold influence on the ethical demands of the brahmans; on the one hand, it challenged and therefore intensified them; on the other, it softened and diminished their force. according to the book of the law the dvija satisfied the highest requirements of religion, when, after founding his house and seeing the children of his children, he renounced the world, retired into the forest, and there, occupied only with divine things, with salvation for the future, sought his return to brahman by penances and meditation. it was the duty of the king when he became old and weak and was no longer in a position to protect his subjects and inflict punishment, as he ought, to seek death in battle, or if no war was being waged at the time, to put an end to his life by starvation. in a few cases the book allows suicide as a punishment for grievous offences. in the epos we find an advance in this direction. traits are introduced into it which represent voluntary death as the greatest act of merit, as the summit and perfection of asceticism. while yet in full vigour and equal to their duties, yudhishthira and his brothers abandon their throne and kingdom, in order to seek and find death on a pilgrimage to the holy mountain, and by such penances and such an end to be rid of the earthly grossness still clinging to them. when rama, even after his father daçaratha is dead, refuses to ascend the throne, because he must keep the promise made to his dead father that he would live fourteen years in exile, the younger brother bharata, conscientiously respecting the right of the elder, will not assume the government; for these fourteen years he lives in the garment of a penitent with a penitent's knot of hair, and five days after rama's return from banishment, he "goes into the fire." the anchorite Çarabhanga, who by severe penances has obtained the highest reward, erects a pyre for himself, kindles it with his own hands, and burns himself in the presence of rama in order to pass into the heaven of brahman, for which in other revisions of the poem is substituted the heaven of vishnu. the greeks have already told us that the sages among the indians regarded disease and weakness as disgraceful; if one of them fell ill he burned himself on a pyre (p. ). the companions of alexander of macedon tell us that calanus, one of the brahmans of takshaçila, whom alexander had induced to join him (p. ), fell sick in persia and became weak. alexander in vain attempted to move him from his resolution to burn himself. too feeble to walk, calanus was carried to the pyre, crowned after the indian manner, and singing hymns in the indian language. when the funeral pyre was kindled, he lay down without shrinking in the midst of the flames.[ ] according to the statement of megasthenes the indian sages put an end to their lives not by fire only but also by throwing themselves from a precipice or into water.[ ] by this kind of sacrifice can only be meant suicide or pilgrimage to the sacred places in the himalayas, near the pools, to which a peculiar power of purification was ascribed. pilgrimages to the sacred waters are mentioned even in manu's laws. bathing in the ganges, in the lakes of the himalayas, which lay near the holy mountain, in the confluence of the yamuna and ganges, was supposed to have the power of washing away many sins, and thus relieving men from the torturing penances imposed by the brahmans. "if," we are told in the book of the law, "thou art not at variance with vivasvati's son yama, who dwells in thy heart (_i.e._ with thy conscience), go not to the ganges nor the kurus." in the lands formerly governed by the kurus, lay the places of sacrifice of the ancient kings; there, at this or that place, the great rishis of the ancient time were said to have sacrificed; on the lakes ravanahrada and manasa, in the high himalayas, under kailasa, the old sutras of the buddhists showed us the settlements of penitent brahmans. we cannot doubt that the pilgrimage of the buddhists to the places where buddha lived, preached, and died, increased the pilgrimages of the brahmans, and that, to match the blessing which the buddhists attached to their journeys, they estimated and commended more highly than before the expiating and redeeming power of their holy shrines. in the mahabharata a considerable number of shrines of pilgrimage are mentioned together with their legends; the visitation of these seems to be quite common; the especial effects of the various places are stated;[ ] in fact, the pilgrimages to the sacred pools and places of purification must have been so common and so zealously undertaken among the brahmans that about the middle of the third century _b.c._ the buddhists denote their brahmanic opponents by the names tirthyas and tirthikas, _i.e._ men who live at the pools of purification or hold them in especial estimation.[ ] not merely to bathe in the waters at the sacred places, which take away sins, but to end life there, could not but have a most efficacious and meritorious influence on the future of the soul in the next world, and the regenerations. hence sinners would seek death in the sacred waters as the best and most perfect expiation; and even those who did not think themselves under the burden of special offences could find in a voluntary death in the sacred flood the highest expiation for the impurity entailed upon them, according to the brahmanic system, by their life in the body. thus even then, as now, many died by a voluntary death at these places. the strict consequences of the brahmanic system pointed to suicide. did not the ethical aim of the brahmans consist in the elevation of the _ego_ by meditation, in the annihilation of the body by asceticism? it was a step farther to end and escape the torments of long penances at a single bound. the more prominence the buddhists gave to the fact that their doctrine ensured liberation from regenerations, the keener must be the attention paid by the brahmans to this object. according to their view of the world, and the basis of their system--that the body was the adulteration of brahman in men, the hindrance in the way of his return to brahman--the end of the bodily life, which they had constantly sought to subdue, at a consecrated place, by a holy act in the midst of purification in the sacred bath, could not but bring salvation; the man who offered his body and himself for sacrifice was at once purified for his return into the world-soul. if the buddhists avoided regenerations by taming desire, and annihilating the soul, the brahmans could now prevent them by the sacrifice of the body at a holy place. that all brahmans were not of this opinion we may conclude from the assertion of megasthenes that death by suicide was not a dogma of the indian sages; those who put themselves to death were looked on as rash and perverse. there was, therefore, an opposite view. nor was it the buddhists only, who, in accordance with the whole conception of their faith, represented this opposition; even among the brahmanic castes, as we shall see, there was a variety of opinions. the companions of alexander tell us that among some indians widows voluntarily burnt themselves with the corpses of their husbands, and those who did not do this were in no esteem.[ ] among the indians, says nicolaus of damascus, the favourite wife was burnt with the dead husband. the wives contended for this mark of honour with the greatest eagerness, and each was supported by her friends.[ ] the captain of the indians who with eudemus attacked the army of eumenes (p. )--the greeks call him ceteus--fell in the battle, which took place between eumenes and antigonus in parætacene in the year b.c. the two wives of ceteus had accompanied him to the field and now contended for the honour of being burnt with him, since the law of the indians, as diodorus observes, allowed one wife only to be so burnt. the younger of the two maintained that the elder was pregnant; the elder declared that precedence in years carried precedence in honour. when the pregnancy of the elder had been established, the captains of the army decided that the younger was to ascend the pyre. "then the elder took the diadem from her head, tore her hair and cried aloud, as though she had met with a great misfortune, while the younger, rejoicing in her victory, went to the funeral pile, crowned and adorned as if for marriage, accompanied by her women, who sang a hymn. when she approached the pyre, she divided her ornaments among her relations, servants, and friends, as memorials of herself: a number of rings set with precious stones of various colours, gold stars with brilliant stones from her head-dress, and a great quantity of necklaces, large and small. when she had bidden farewell to her relations and servants, her brother conducted her to the pyre; she bowed herself before the corpse of her husband, and when the flames blazed up she uttered no sound of lamentation. in such a heroic manner did she end her life, and moved all who saw her death to sympathy or admiration."[ ] western accounts from the first century b.c. and later times represent the burning of widows as an established custom.[ ] we are acquainted with the hymns of the rigveda in which the widow, when she has led her husband to the place of burial, is exhorted to "elevate herself to the world of life," for her marriage is at an end; we know the rule in the law that a widow should not marry again after the death of her husband; if she did so, she would fall into disrepute in this world, and in the next be excluded from the abode of her husband. she must live alone, avoid all sensual pleasure, starve herself, and do acts of piety, then after her death she would ascend to heaven. neither the sutras of the buddhists nor the brahmanas mention the burning of widows. on the other hand, in the mahabharata the two wives of pandu, kunti and madri, contend after his death precisely as the two wives of ceteus, which is to ascend the pyre. kunti founds her claims on the fact that she had been the wife of pandu before madri, and his first queen; madri asserts that pandu had loved her more than kunti, that she had been his favourite wife. the brahmans decide that madri is to go. in the ramayana the burial of king daçaratha is described in great detail, but none of his wives, neither kauçalya, nor kaikeyi, nor sumitra is burnt with him. in other passages also the epos speaks of widowed queens with all honour. if, then, the epos of the indians, even in the form in which we have it, wavers about the custom of the cremation of widows, and on the other hand the greeks assert and prove the existence of the custom in the last thirty years of the fourth century b.c., we may assume that the sacrifice of widows came into practice in the course of the fourth century b.c. in connection with the increase in the requirements of self-annihilation, of which we have just read. it was, no doubt, the consequence derived from the unconditional dependence of the wife on the husband, required by the indians, and the command to bear any fortune joyfully together with the husband, of that extreme wifely love and devotion, of which we have found touching examples in the epos. from the idea of self-annihilation, which was the summit of all good actions, the brahmans might arrive at the demand that women also ought in certain cases to practise such annihilation; that a widow must sacrifice herself on the pyre of her husband as an offering for his sins. this is never stated as a law, but at a subsequent time the demand of the brahmans obtained general observance and recognition, supported as it was by the doctrine that only the widow, who burnt herself with the corpse of her husband, found an entrance into the better world. according to the rules, which have come down to us from a later time, the widow of the dvija, when she had bathed and anointed herself, coloured herself with sandal wood, and put on her ornaments, more especially her jewels, with butter, kuça-grass, and sesame in her hands, offered a prayer to all the gods, with the reflection that her life was nothing, that her lord was her all. then she walks round the pyre, gives her jewels to the brahmans, comforts her relatives, and bids farewell to her friends. afterwards she says: "that i may enjoy the happiness of heaven with my husband and purify my ancestors and his i ascend the pyre in expiation of the sins of my husband, even though he has murdered a brahman, torn asunder the bonds of gratitude, or slain a friend. on you i call, ye eight protectors of the world (p. ), as witnesses of this action, ye sun and moon, air, fire, earth, æther, and water. be witnesses, my own soul and conscience, and thou, yama, day and night, and ushas, be ye witnesses, be witnesses! i follow the corpse of my husband to the burning pyre." then the widow ascends the pile of wood, which must be kindled by her son or her nearest relation, embraces the corpse of her husband, with the words, i pray, adoration, and commits herself to the flames, crying satya, satya, satya.[ ] in opposition to buddhism, the chief point was not only to keep the hearts of the people true to the brahmanic arrangement of life by the adoption and exaltation of the deities to which their religious feeling was directed; at the same time a counterpoise must be provided to the speculation and scepticism of the buddhists; they must be met by an orthodox system of philosophy. the question was, whether the existence of the individual soul beside nature, on which the sankhya doctrine no less than buddha laid such stress, was incompatible with the idea of brahman; whether death without regeneration, the highest good and supreme object of the buddhists, could not be shown to be attainable by the fulfilment of the duties prescribed by the brahmans, by brahmanic speculation and meditation. these were the questions which a new system, the yoga, sought to solve. the author of this is said by the indians to be yajnavalkya, whose life is placed in the fourth century b.c. the oldest form in which the principles of this new system are known to us does not go back beyond the year b.c.[ ] he attempts to fix the idea of the world-soul or brahman more clearly than had been done in earlier theories. this soul is now regarded as present everywhere in the world, but also as existing for itself. in opposition to the sankhya and the buddhists the separate existences and souls of men could be now explained as something more than parts of brahman; their individual existence must be conceded, and proof given that they were still parts of brahman. this system therefore teaches us: whatever gives to each thing its leading characteristic or quality, that is the world-soul in it. but though this living world-soul is divided into all creatures and exists in all, it must nevertheless be one and therefore indivisible. in opposition to heterodox systems brahmanic speculation was no longer bold enough to deny entirely the existence of matter, and to explain it as appearance or deception; on the contrary, it now borrows from the sankya doctrine the dogma of the eternity of matter. matter is no less eternal than the world-soul. it is true that it changes, but it is not destroyed; the destruction of matter is only a change, in which a new birth follows on apparent decay. it is allowed that the souls of men which proceed out of brahman, "as sparks out of a piece of hot iron," exist independently; when one is worn out they perpetually provide themselves with a new body, a new garment, for the souls and the elements, _i.e._ nature, are real;[ ] but since these souls proceed from the divinity they can go back to the world-soul. in this we find an unmistakable attempt to harmonise the old brahmanic system with the axioms of the buddhist theory, the buddhist principles of the permanent existence of the soul with the theory of the world-soul. the essential question was a practical one; how this new theory of the brahmans would bring about the liberation from regeneration, which buddha realised in the last instance by the extinction of the ground of existence in the soul, of desire. like the buddhists it assumed the eternal change, the restless revolution of birth and decay; it naturally maintained the old brahmanic position that the soul is followed by its actions into another world; that by these the new births were fixed; what means did it provide for an escape from this revolution? like the buddhists it taught that only the knowledge of the true connection of things can lead to liberation. but the spirit furnished with immature instruments is as incapable of knowledge as an unclean mirror is incapable of reflecting forms. by subduing the senses, removing passions, avoiding love or hate, by purifying the mind, the instruments of knowledge must be sharpened. as the soul is infected with matter, the requirements of nature must be satisfied with moderation; as man is in the world, he must fulfil the duties which fall to every man in the order of the world. he must act, but in such a manner as if he were not acting; he must be indifferent to the results of the action, and acquire freedom from doubleness, _i.e._ from the prosperous or unfortunate result. filled with darkness and passion man is driven round like a wheel. truth, which consists in "casting aside the net of folly," liberates men, and the net is cast aside by distinguishing between the cognitive faculty and nature or change.[ ] as the æther, though isolated in various jars, is still one, so is the spirit at the same time one and many, just as the sun is reflected in various masses of water.[ ] the being who dwells like a lamp in the heart has beams innumerable; from this one darts upward, piercing the sun's disk, to the world of brahman. with eyes closed in repose, with veiled face avoiding every charm of the senses, holding in check his appetites, on a scale neither too high nor too low, let him who has brought to perfection the instruments of knowledge, and purified his spirit, who will find truth, hold his breath twice or thrice. then let him think on the lord who is the lamp in his heart, and with all his heart keep his mind fixed on this. meditation is brought about by the realisation of true being. the symbol of the perfection of meditation is the power to create and disappear, to leave one's own body and enter another. he whose spirit at the dissolution of his body is firmly fixed in the truth in regard to the lord, whose conviction remains unshaken, attains to the remembrance of his births, and he who leaves the body in complete meditation (_yoga_) becomes an inhabitant of brahman's world; there is no return for him; he is never born again.[ ] thus in the place of the annihilation of the body and consciousness required by the old system, in the place of the extinction of the _ego_ by the annihilation of its basis taught by the buddhists, the new speculation of the brahmans puts the mystical union of the _ego_ with the supreme by meditation, by elevation and concentration of the spirit, when the path has been prepared for such union by retirement from the world, by the removal of the passions, and conquest over the appetites. the fruits of this act of union with the god-head are in the first instance the same supernatural powers which the buddhists ascribed to the arhat, the man "advanced in the path" (p. ), and finally the freedom from regeneration, the highest object of all. more important than the speculation which founded this new way to liberation were the practical consequences, the ethical rules which resulted from this theory of the brahmans. it was now possible to identify vishnu or Çiva with brahman. if a certain attitude of the soul, an inward deed, an act of the spirit, meditation, was the highest aim, the first place could no longer be ascribed to sacrifice, penance, and asceticism. the order of the world ascribed to the creator, the rights and duties of the castes, could not be altered in any way; the castes were still special emanations and forms of the supreme. even sacrifice is still to be offered, expiations and penances are to be observed. but their effects must not be over-estimated. the exclusive value ascribed to them, so the new theory maintains, is exaggerated, as is the reward which men promise themselves from such works.[ ] in reality, the wise man ought only to perform them in order not to deceive the people. he must do the works by which the ancient sages attained perfection, and fulfil all ceremonies for the edification of men. the people would become corrupt if they performed no pious works, the castes would be mixed, creatures thrown into confusion.[ ] thus in reality the new system maintains works simply because the position of the brahmans, the order of the castes, cannot be tampered with or overthrown. but at the same time asceticism is essentially softened, and an approach made to the milder buddhist form of it. it is a proof of incomplete knowledge to starve oneself, pass into fire, or plunge into water.[ ] no doubt the dvija in his later years ought to go into the forest accompanied by his wife, or when he has left her in the charge of his sons, and there practise the prescribed exercises.[ ] but the anchorite's life is not the cause of virtue, and those who seek salvation by gifts, sacrifice, and penances do indeed attain to the heaven of the fathers, but they return to this world.[ ] if the yoga, by ascribing this position to penance, approaches the doctrine of buddha, the same is done in a still higher degree in the rules of its ethics. here the new brahmanic teaching is wholly in harmony with the buddhists; it requires gentleness and kindness to all creatures, truthfulness, control of the appetites; it forbids theft and hatred: that is the sum of virtue. nevertheless, the greatest concession made to buddhism lies in the removal of the boundary which had been set up in regard to religion between the dvija and the Çudra. it is true that neither all the castes nor all men are permitted in the yoga, as they are in buddhism, to find salvation and liberation. but the Çudras are no longer excluded as hitherto from the veda and the worship; they too may learn the veda,[ ] and in the bhagavad-gita it is openly stated that even the Çudra may attain the highest point.[ ] the principles of the new doctrine appeared so important to the circles of the brahmans, to which they owed their origin and observance, that they attempted to obtain recognition for them among princes and people by a new book of the law. this book originated in mithala (tirhat), and like the yoga bears the name of yajnavalkya. setting aside the worship of the deities of the planets--star-worship came into vogue after the sixth century b.c.--and the rules for asceticism, ethics, and the way of salvation, the new book is distinguished from the old by its compressed compendious form, and by the clearer composition of the separate rules. its regulations for trade and conduct are more detailed than in the book of manu. if the latter mentions written stipulations, the new speaks of the preparation of documents on metal plates. the modes of the divine judgments are increased,[ ] and gambling-houses are permitted. all the rules for purity, expiations, and penance given in the older book are repeated with the restrictions given above, that they have beneficial results, but do not exclude regenerations, and that penance must not be carried to the point of self-annihilation. the duties of the monarchy are given accurately according to the old law; the arrangement of the castes and the ancient law of marriage are retained, with the advantages, privileges, and exemptions of the brahmans. some new subordinate and mixed castes are added. the opposition to the buddhists is vigorously expressed, and mention is made of men with shorn heads and yellow garments.[ ] the kings are required to erect buildings in the cities and put brahmans in them to form societies for the study of the veda; these the king is to support with the exhortation that they must fulfil their duties.[ ] hence it appears that the brahmans considered it advisable to erect brahmanic monasteries in opposition to the viharas of the buddhists, and to support them at the cost of the state. footnotes: [ ] muir, "sanskrit texts," , ff. [ ] "mahabharata Çantiparvan," in muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] w. von humboldt, "bhagavad-gita," s. , . [ ] rajendralala mitra, "antiq. of orissa," p. . [ ] bhagavad-gita, , , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] "ramayana," ed. schlegel, , . [ ] on the variations in the different recensions of the ramayana in this narrative; see muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] lassen's view inclines also to the supposition that krishna's deification belongs to the time after buddha, "ind. alterth." ^ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] rajendralala mitra, "antiq. of orissa," p. . m. müller, "hist, of anc. sanskrit lit." p. . the name of the sinha princes, who ruled in guzerat between b.c. and a.d. (lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ); rudrasinha, rudrathaman, içvaradatta, prove that the worship of Çiva was in vogue in this region at the time mentioned. the coins of the turushas exhibit Çiva and his bull, while others bear buddha's name; lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , , . the coins of the older guptas exhibit vishnu's bird garuda, the goddess lakshmi, vishnu's female side, who is churned out of the sea of milk, rama, and sita, and Çiva's bull; lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . onesicr. fragm. , ed. müller. plut. "alex." c. . [ ] cf. _infra_, p. . curt. , . plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] burnouf, "introd." p. . lassen, _loc, cit._ ^ , . [ ] aristobulus in strabo, p. . _supra_, p. . [ ] nicol. dam. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] diod. , , . the narrative is apparently taken from duris of samos, who wrote soon after the year _b.c._ [ ] cic. "tuscul." , . plut. "vitios." c. . aelian, "var. hist." , . [ ] colebrooke, "asiatic researches," , - . [ ] lassen puts yajnavalkya about the year b.c., and patanjali, the author of the yogaçastra, between and b.c., _loc. cit._ ^ , , , and ^ , . we must also agree with lassen, that in the theory which mandanis developes from onesicritus (frag. , ed. müller), the principles of the yoga can be traced. the opposition also in which this mandanis places himself to calanus, the adherent to strict asceticism, is in favour of the view. as panini also mentions the yoga (lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , ), it was in existence towards the end of the fourth century. in the same way i can only agree with lassen that the book which bears yajnavalkya's name, and according to the commentators was composed by a pupil of his, cannot be put earlier than b.c. it is the next oldest to manu (stenzler, "yajnavalkya," s. x.). in it the opposition to the buddhists is vigorous, the yoga is presented in a simpler form than in the bhagavad-gita and patanjalis, and it is free from the mysticism afterwards adopted into the system. the reign of açoka and his immediate successors could not give any room for the brahmans to hope for assistance from the state. [ ] yajnavalkya, , , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , , , , , . [ ] "bhagavad-gita," in muir, "sanskrit texts," , . [ ] "bhagavad-gita," in muir, "sanskrit texts," , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , - , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , . [ ] muir, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] _supra_, p. , _n._ [ ] yajnavalkya, , , . [ ] yajnavalkya, , . chapter ix. aÇoka of magadha. the brahmans had reason to expect favourable effects from the changes they had made in their doctrine and ethics. they had taken account of the desire for the worship of more real and living deities, and in order to satisfy this they had pushed brahman into the background; they were zealous in giving tangible shape to the benefits which their deities had bestowed upon men; they ascribed the best results to pilgrimages, and if on the one hand they intensified the merits and efficacy of penance, they allowed on the other hand the merit of works to fall into the background, and moderated asceticism. they sought to reconcile the elements of buddhist speculation with their ancient system, and increased the circle of the men admitted to salvation. in the yoga they had as a fact found a deeper solution of the problem of the liberation of the individual than buddha had pointed out in his doctrine. then it happened that so far from obtaining the assistance and support from the state which the new law claimed, the power of the throne which ruled all india ranged itself on the opposite side. as we have seen, chandragupta's great kingdom was maintained in its full extent by his son vindusara, and the relations to the west became more extensive under his reign. when vindusara was in his last sickness, his son açoka, the viceroy of ujjayini, hastened to palibothra, as the buddhists inform us, possessed himself of the throne, and caused his brothers to be put to death, with the exception of one born from the same mother as himself.[ ] like his father vindusara, he daily fed , brahmans, ruled with a severe and cruel hand, and himself carried out the execution of those who had incurred his anger. after three years of this savage conduct he was converted, according to the account of the singhalese, by nigrodha the son of sumana, one of the brothers murdered by him, to whom the sthaviras had granted the initiation of the novice (p. ). according to the account of the northern buddhists, a buddhist samudra, a merchant of Çravasti, who had come to palibothra, was thrown at açoka's order into a vessel full of boiling fat and water. samudra felt no pain, and when the fire under the kettle could not be kindled by any means, the king was summoned to see the marvel. this sight and samudra's exhortation converted the king to buddhism. açoka entreated the holy man to forgive him his sinful acts, took his refuge in the law of the enlightened, and promised to fill the earth with chaityas (monuments) in honour of buddha. he caused a large monastery, the açokarama-vihara, to be built for the bhikshus at palibothra,[ ] and instructed his viceroys to erect viharas in all his cities. the relics of buddha, which had been divided after his death and placed in eight monuments (p. ), açoka caused to be taken away; only the part which the koçalas had received from ramagrama and concealed there, remained untouched. the other relics of the enlightened were divided into , parts, and placed in cases of gold, silver, crystal, and lapis-lazuli, so that each of the great, middle-sized, and small cities in the kingdom of açoka might receive a relic of buddha. in order to preserve these, , stupas, _i.e._ domes with coverings over them, together with as many viharas, were built at açoka's command.[ ] thus the king adorned the surface of the earth with beautiful stupas, which were like the summits of the mountains, and furnished them with precious stones, parasols, and standards,[ ] and travelled to every place where buddha had stayed and preached, and announced his determination to honour these places also by monuments. in all the cities of the kingdom the law of the enlightened was proclaimed in the name of the king;[ ] the son of the king, mahendra, and his daughter sanghamitra, who was born to him before his accession to the throne, renounced the world and received the consecration of the mendicant, the son in the twentieth, the daughter in the eighteenth year of her age; even tishya, the brother of açoka, who alone had been spared, became a bhikshu, and entered the açokarama.[ ] as errors had crept in and the true law was not observed everywhere in the viharas, the king took the advice of the sthavira maudgaliputra,[ ] sat on the same seat with him, and assembled in council the orthodox and heterodox bhikshus. when the purity of the sacred law had again been established by the assembly, maudgaliputra perceived that the time had come to spread abroad the doctrine of the enlightened. he sent the sthavira mahadeva into the land of mahisha (a region on the narmada);[ ] mahadharmarakshita into the land of maharashtra (the upper godavari); dharmarakshita into the land of aparantaka,[ ] Çona and uttara into the gold-district of suvarnabhumi; madhyama and kaçyapa into the himavat; and madhyantika into the land of cashmere and the gandharas. mahendra, the king's son, set out in person to preach the good law in lanka, when açoka had explained to the envoys, whom devanampriya-tishya, the king of lanka, had sent to him at palibothra, that the king might enlighten his spirit and seek refuge with the best means of salvation, even as he (açoka) had sought refuge with buddha and the dharma (law) and the sangha (community). when mahendra arrived at ceylon, devanampriya-tishya received him hospitably, gave him the garden of mahamegha near the metropolis anuradhapura for a habitation, and there built him a vihara.[ ] he converted the inhabitants of lanka by thousands. at his request açoka sent him the alms-jar of buddha, and his right shoulder bone, which the king of lanka deposited in a stupa, built on mount missaka, near anuradhapura, and mahendra's sister sanghamitra followed her brother to lanka with eleven other initiated women, in order to convey there a branch of the sacred fig-tree of gaya, under which enlightenment was vouchsafed to buddha (p. ). mahendra received five hundred kshatriyas of the island into the sacred order; sanghamitra initiated five hundred maidens and as many women of the royal palace as mendicants; and when the branch was planted in the soil of the garden of mahamegha, it grew up into a great tree. açoka daily supported , bhikshus by alms,[ ] and during the rainy season, , religious persons and novices; and gave all his treasures, his ministers, his kingdom, his wives, and finally himself to the assembly of the aryas.[ ] such is the account of açoka given in the tradition of the buddhists. we can establish the fact that he succeeded his father on the throne of magadha in the year b.c. and retained it till b.c.[ ] his inscriptions, the oldest which have come down to us, enable us to test more closely the narration of the buddhists, who had every reason to honour the memory of the great king, who became a convert to their religion, and gave it a pre-eminent position throughout his vast empire. both in the neighbourhood of the modern peshawur, at kapur-i-giri, to the north of cabul, and near girnar (girinagara) on the peninsula of guzerat, and on the rocks of dhauli in the neighbourhood of bhuvaneçvara, the metropolis of orissa, near khalsi on the right bank of the yamuna, at delhi (the ancient indraprastha), at allahabad, bakhra, and bhabra in the neighbourhood of the ancient palibothra, the modern patna, and finally at mathiah and radhya,[ ] in the valley of the upper gandaki on the borders of nepal, we find inscriptions of this king. some are hewn in the rocks, others engraved on separate monolithic pillars, about forty feet in height; pillars of the law they are called by him who erected them. carefully rounded and smoothed they carry above the capital of beautiful pendent lotus leaves, on a square slab, lions of excellent execution, without doubt the symbol of the lion of the tribe of the Çakyas, of Çakyasinha, buddha. two pillars of this kind, the one entire the other broken, are at delhi; the other four are at allahabad, bakhra, mathiah, and radhya. if açoka caused inscriptions to be engraved at peshawur, beyond the indus, the regions which seleucus had given up to chandragupta must have been retained by vindusara and açoka. the inscriptions on the peninsula of guzerat (they speak of buildings at Çirinagara which açoka had caused to be erected there by his viceroy tuhuspa),[ ] and those at bhuvaneçvara, on the mouths of the mahanadi, as well as those on the borders of nepal, prove that açoka's dominion reached from the himalayas to the mouths of the narmada and mahanadi. according to the tradition of cashmere açoka reigned over that land also, extended the metropolis, Çirinagara, built two palaces there, caused a lofty chaitya to be erected, and covered mount Çushkala near Çirinagara with stupas.[ ] the inscriptions of açoka himself inform us that he carried on war against the land of kalinga in the south of orissa, on the lower course of the godavari (p. ), and subjugated the inhabitants to his power;[ ] and that he ruled over the gandharas, cambojas and yamunas, the rashtrikas and the petenikas. under the name of cambojas are comprised the aryas on the right bank of the indus. to the south as far down as the cabul, the yavanas are evidently the greeks, with whom alexander had peopled the three cities called after him, which he founded in arachosia (on the arghandab and the turnuk, where the modern kandahar and ghazna stand), and on the southern slope of the hindu kush at the entrance of the path leading to the north into bactria.[ ] the rashtrikas are the inhabitants of the coast of guzerat, the petenikas are the inhabitants of the city and land of paithana on the upper godavari.[ ] hence the dominion of açoka extended from kandahar, ghazna, and the hindu kush, as far as the mouth of the ganges, from cashmere down to the upper and lower course of the godavari. according to his inscriptions the influence of açoka extended even beyond these wide limits. at the boundaries of the earth, so we are told, were to be found the two cures established by him, the cure for men and the cure for animals. wherever healing herbs, roots, and fruit trees were not in existence, they were brought and planted by his order, and wells were dug by the wayside. this was done among the cholas and pidas, in the kingdom of keralaputra, and on tamraparni (ceylon). even antiyaka, the king of the yavanas, and four other kings, turamaya, antigona, maga, and alissanda, "had followed the precept of the king beloved of heaven," _i.e._ of açoka.[ ] the cholas and pidas lay to the south of the deccan, the former on the upper krishna, the latter on the palaru. keralaputra, _i.e._ son of kerala,[ ] is the ruler of the state founded by brahmans on the southern half of the malabar coast (p. ). it is clear from this, no less than from the conquest of kalinga by açoka, how successful in the times of the earliest rulers of the house of the mauryas, was the power of arian india collected in that kingdom in forcing its way to the south, both on the coasts and in the interior of the deccan; and at the same time these inscriptions confirm the statements of singhalese tradition about the connection in which açoka stood with this island. they also show us that açoka not only maintained but extended the relations into which his grandfather had entered with the kingdom of the seleucidæ, and his father with the kingdom of the ptolemies. açoka is not only in connection with antiyaka, _i.e._ with his neighbour antiochus, who sat on the throne from to b.c., and with turamaya, _i.e._ with ptolemy philadelphus of egypt ( - b.c.), but also with antigonus gonnatas of macedonia ( - b.c.), with alissanda, _i.e._ alexander of epirus ( - b.c.), and even with magas, king of cyrene. the seleucidæ, it is true, had reason to keep on a good footing with the powerful king of india; and the ptolemies took a lively interest in the trade of india and egypt. but the kings of macedonia, epirus, and cyrene were unconcerned with such matters. it is mere oriental extravagance that açoka causes these princes to obey his commands, though the fact that açoka is acquainted with epirus and cyrene shows how greatly the horizon of the indians had extended since the time that alexander trod the panjab. not merely were these lands of the distant west known, açoka was in connection with them. ambassadors were sent to their princes and are said to have received the assurance that no hindrance would be placed in the way of the preaching of the doctrine of buddha.[ ] the inscriptions of açoka contradict the tradition which represents him as becoming a convert to the doctrine of buddha in the third year of his reign. it is possible that he may have shown himself favourable to the buddhists a few years after his accession; but it is clear from the inscriptions at delhi that he did not openly profess their doctrine till after long consideration, and the inscriptions at girnar inform us that he took this step in the tenth year after his consecration, _i.e._ no doubt, after his accession, consequently in the year b.c., and that he did not take it without special regard to the ancient religion and the brahmans. the king, we are told in that inscription, was no longer given up to the chase of animals, but to the chase of the law, to making presents to brahmans and Çramanas, to searching out and proclaiming the law. this conversion is said to have been announced by sound of drum, with trains of festal cars, elephants, and fires; many divine forms were also displayed to the people.[ ] in an edict published two years later açoka gives command that in the kingdom which he has conquered and the territories in union with him assemblies shall be held in every fifth year, at which the laws are to be read and explained: obedience to father and mother, liberality to the nearest relations and friends, to brahmans and Çramanas, economy, avoidance of calumny and the slaying of any living creature; after this confessions were to be made.[ ] these are, as we have seen, the fundamental ethical rules of the enlightened. in buddha's doctrine good actions come from the feelings and heart; the right feeling of the heart is to show sympathy and pity to all living creatures, and to alleviate their lot. this precept also açoka was at pains to fulfil; in all his inscriptions he calls himself not açoka but devanampraiya priyadarçin, _i.e._ the man of loving spirit beloved by the gods. though the doctrine of buddha had received a firm basis immediately after the death of the master by the collection of his sayings, and the rules of ethics and discipline had been gathered together at greater length and in an authentic form at the synod of vaiçali in b.c., different tendencies and views inevitably arose among the believers as time went on. some kept strictly to the sayings of the master, the principles of the synod; others commented on the traditions, and deduced consequences from the principles given. the speculative basis of the doctrine gave sufficient occasion to further research and meditation, and hence to the formation of different schools, which as they rose became rivals. the school of the sautrantikas acknowledged only the authority of the sutras, the sayings of the master collected at the first synod, and abandoned any independent speculation. the school of the vaibhashikas, _i.e._ the school of dilemma, drew speculative consequences from tradition, and ascribed canonical value to philosophical treatises (_abhidarma_), which were thought to come from the immediate disciples of buddha, more especially from his son rahula and from Çariputra. to these were added serious disputes on the discipline. the bhikshus of vaiçali who had been excluded from the community of the faithful by the second synod, are said to have adhered to their explanation of the discipline, and to have supported it by corresponding principles. this teaching of theirs, and the more lax observance of duties, they naturally explained to be the true doctrine of buddha, and found adherents. at any rate we may easily see, that in the first half of the third century two hostile parties stood opposed in the buddhist church, the orthodox party, the party of the sthaviras, and their opponents, who were denoted by the name maha-sanghikas, _i.e._ adherents to the great assembly. the more lax discipline which they preached, the more convenient mode of life which they permitted, are said to have brought numerous followers to this party. brahmans are said to have taken the yellow robe without seeking for consecration, to have settled themselves in the monasteries, and filled everything with confusion and heresy.[ ] it is, no doubt, credible that when açoka had openly gone over to the doctrine of buddha, when he caused it to be preached with the authority of the state, and gave valuable gifts to the clergy, brahmans would enter the viharas for other than spiritual reasons. we may further concede to tradition that it was maudgaliputra, the head of the açokarama, the monastery founded by açoka at palibothra, who caused a new synod to be assembled in order to establish the discipline and put an end to disputes. that such a synod did meet in the year b.c. is proved by a letter which açoka sent to this meeting in the seventeenth year of his reign at palibothra; it has been preserved for us in the inscription of bhabra (p. ). "king priyadarçin"--so the letter runs--"greets the assembly of magadha, and wishes it light labour and prosperity. it is well known how great is my faith and reverence for buddha, for the law and the community (_sangha_). all that the blessed buddha has said, and this alone, is well said. it is for you, my masters, to say what authority there is for this; then will the good law be more lasting. the objects which the law comprises are the limits prescribed by the discipline, the supernatural qualities of the aryas, the dangers of the future (_i.e._ of regenerations in their various stages), the sayings of buddha, and the sutras of buddha, the investigation of Çariputra and the instructions of rahula with refutation of false doctrine: this is what the blessed buddha taught. these subjects comprised by the law it is my wish that the initiated men and women hear, and ponder continually, and also the faithful of both sexes. this is the fame on which i lay the greatest weight. hence i have caused this letter to be written to you which is my will and my declaration."[ ] tradition tells us that at this synod the question was put to every bhikshu: "what is the doctrine of buddha?" and all who did not answer it satisfactorily or answered it in a sectarian sense, to the number of , , were expelled from the community of the faithful. then maudgaliputra selected a thousand out of the number of the orthodox bhikshus, men distinguished by virtue and true knowledge of the holy scriptures, that he might with them re-establish the purity of the sutras and the vinaya, _i.e._ the rules of discipline. we cannot doubt that the synod at the açokarama had revised the collection of sayings and rules of discipline established by the first two councils in order to excise interpolations and cut off false requirements; but this revision did not exclude extensions and additions which had been made in order to fill up in something more than a negative manner the ground occupied by the errors and heresies that had crept in. by this council, no doubt, the speculative part of the doctrine of buddha received its first canonical basis. this may be inferred both from the mention of the investigation of Çariputra and the instructions of rahula in the letter of açoka to the assembly, and from the statement that the president of this council, maudgaliputra, had founded a new school in order to unite the doctrines of the sthaviras and the mahasanghikas.[ ] what we possess of the canonical writings of the buddhists does not go back in form or condition beyond this synod; yet it has been already remarked that in the sutras we can distinguish the older nucleus from the additions made to it, and retained or first added in the redaction of the third council. the assembly is said by the singhalese to have occupied nine months in this new settlement of the canonical writings of the 'triple basket' (_sutras_, _vinaya_, _abhidarma_). açoka was in earnest with the doctrine of buddha. "the man of loving spirit, beloved of the gods," we are told in the inscriptions at girnar, "causes the observance of the law to increase, and the king's grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson will cause the law to increase, and continuing stedfast down to the end of the kalpa in law and virtue will observe the law."[ ] "in past days the transaction of business and the announcement of it did not take place at all times. therefore i did as follows. at any hour, even when recreating myself with my wives in their chamber, or with my children, when conversing, riding, or in the garden, pratidevakas (men who announce) were appointed with orders to announce to me the affairs of the people, and at all times i pay attention to their affairs."[ ] "i find no satisfaction in the effort to accomplish business; the salvation of the world is the thing most worth doing. the cause of this is the effort to accomplish business. there is no higher duty than the salvation of the whole world. my whole care is directed to the discharge of my debt to all creatures, that i may make them happy on earth, and that hereafter they may gain heaven. for this object i have caused this inscription of the law to be written. may they continue long, and may my grandson and great-grandson also strive after the salvation of the whole world. this it is difficult to do without the most resolute effort."[ ] in other inscriptions açoka declares it to be his glory that he has administered justice properly, and inflicted punishment with gentleness; as we have seen, the book of the law required that it should be administered with severity. the growth of the law, king açoka says, is brought about by submission to it, and the removal of burdens. "my rajakas (overseers) are placed over many hundreds of thousands of my people, and their corrections and punishments are inflicted without pain. more especially i would have the rajakas transact business in the neighbourhood of the açvatthas (fig-trees), and bring happiness and prosperity to the people. i would have them be friendly, ascertain misfortune and prosperity, and speak to the people, as the law directs, saying: receive with favour the law that has been given and established. in such a way are my rajakas established for the good of the people, that they may transact their business in the neighbourhood of the açvatthas quietly and without disinclination; for this reason painless corrections and punishments are prescribed for them."[ ] açoka further informs us that in the war against the kalingas he neither carried away the prisoners nor put them to death. for many offences he had abolished capital punishment. in the thirty-first year of his reign he appears to have abolished it altogether. the criminals condemned to death, he tells us in an inscription, must to the day of their death give the gifts that relate to a future life, and fast.[ ] according to the teaching of buddha no animal is to be put to death. in earlier times, we are told in buddha's inscriptions, for many centuries the killing of living things and the injuring of creatures had increased, as well as contempt for relations, and disregard for brahmans and Çramanas; at one time even in his, priyadarçin's, kitchen a hundred thousand animals were daily slaughtered for food. now this was abolished. he absolutely forbade the slaying of certain animals, and everywhere introduced the two cures for sick men and animals, caused shelters to be erected for men and animals, fig-trees and groves of mangoes to be planted, wells to be dug on the highways, and resting-places for the night to be built.[ ] himself anxious to follow the law of buddha, he wished it also to be spread abroad and practised in his kingdom among his subjects. we have already mentioned the assemblies held at his command every fifth year, at which the chief rules of morals were taught to the people. in addition he nominated dharmamahamatras, _i.e._ masters of the law, for the cities of his kingdom, the lands of the vratyas (p. ), and the territories dependent on him, whose duty it was to forward the reception and observance of the law. according to the inscriptions there were magistrates of this kind even at the court, to "divide gifts to the sons and other princes for the purpose of the observance of the law," and these magistrates had to perform the same duties in the chambers of the queens.[ ] what the tradition of the buddhists tells us of the inexhaustible liberality of açoka is exaggerated beyond all measure. the strangest statement of all, that he presented his kingdom to the bhikshus, seems to find some sort of confirmation in the assertion of the chinese pilgrim fa-hian, who was on the ganges towards the year a.d. he tells us that he had seen a pillar at palibothra on which the inscription related that açoka had presented all india, his wives and his servants, thrice to the bhikshus, and had only retained his treasures, in order to purchase again these gifts. if this was really stated in the inscription, the matter can only have had a symbolical meaning; the king in this expressed figuratively his submission to the law of buddha, and recognised it as his duty to allow the initiated, the representatives and preachers of this law, to suffer no want. açoka's extant inscriptions prove that he not only exhorted his subjects to give (p. ), but made presents to the sthaviras, and commanded his masters of the law to divide gifts.[ ] how eagerly he strove to realise buddha's precept to be helpful to every one, is proved by a sentence in the inscriptions of dhauli in which the king says: "every good man is my descendant."[ ] however foolish may be the tradition that açoka built , stupas and as many viharas, it is true that he did erect numerous buildings which were mainly intended to glorify the enlightened. mention has already been made of the açokarama at palibothra, and tradition is not wrong in saying that the king honoured the places at which buddha stayed by the erection of monuments. of his buildings at gaya we have, it is true, only the remains of pillars and other ruins.[ ] some miles to the north of gaya, on the bank of the phalgu, in the rocks of the heights now called barabar and nagarjuni, are artificial grottoes. they are hewn in the granite, simple in plan and moderate in dimensions, but of very careful execution. the inscription on one tells us that it was consecrated by açoka in the twelfth year of his reign, and on the other that açoka caused it to be excavated in the nineteenth year of his reign.[ ] at kuçinagara, on the place where the enlightened slept never to wake again, the chinese traveller hiuan-thsang found a pillar of açoka's with inscriptions.[ ] the number of the monasteries or viharas in the territory of magadha was so great that the old name of the country was changed for a name derived from them; it was called the land of monasteries: vihara (behar). the inscriptions already mentioned at bhuvaneçvara refer to a stupa which açoka built at tosali in orissa. according to the account of hiuan-thsang stupas of açoka existed at his time in the deccan among the andhras and cholas, the kanchis and konkanas; in nagara he saw a stupa, and in udyana a vihara of açoka.[ ] the inscriptions of açoka at girinagara show that he erected a large bridge there and other buildings. hence there is no reason to doubt the construction of considerable buildings in cashmere, ascribed to him by the tradition of the land. on the northern slope of the vindhyas, to the east of ujjayini, at sanchi, in the neighbourhood of the ancient bidiça (now bhilsa), there are nearly thirty stupas of very various sizes, standing in five groups. the longest of them rises on a substructure of more than one hundred feet in diameter to an elevation of sixty feet. the simplicity and unadorned dignity of the building mark this, the largest of the stupas, as also the oldest, and we may the more certainly regard it as a work of açoka because relics are found in the neighbouring stupas which the inscriptions state to be those of Çariputra and maudgalyayana, the eminent disciples of buddha; others again which are said to be the relics of gotriputra the teacher of maudgaliputra, who presided over the third synod.[ ] the wall surrounding the great stupa presents an entrance through four noble portals of slender pilasters, united by cross-beams of singular workmanship. on the eastern gate there is found an inscription from the second century a.d. it is therefore possible that the outer wall dates from that time, though the inscription merely speaks of the presentation of a vihara situated there.[ ] however great açoka's zeal for buddha's doctrine might be, however numerous and splendid the buildings erected in honour of the enlightened, he allowed complete toleration to prevail, partly from obedience to the gentleness which pervades buddha's doctrine, but not less from motives of political sagacity. there was no oppression, no persecution of the brahmans or their religion. it can hardly be called a proof of this feeling and attitude, that a ruined temple of indra was restored at his command, for we have seen that buddhism adopted the ancient gods of the brahmans as subordinate spirits, yet as beings of a higher order, into its system. but in a part of his edicts açoka mentions the brahmans even before the Çramanas (in others the Çramanas have the first place); like the Çramanas the brahmans are to be honoured and to receive presents. the inscription of delhi declares that even those who are of another religion than the brahmans and buddhists are to live undisturbed; that all possessed sacred books and saving revelations. in one of the inscriptions at girnar we are told: "priyadarçin, the king beloved by the gods, honours all religions, as well as the mendicants and householders, by alms and other tokens of respect. every one should honour his own religion, without reviling that religion of others. only reverence makes pious. may the professors of every religion be rich in wisdom and happy through virtue."[ ] with all this toleration and gentleness there is no doubt that the reign of açoka did the greatest service in promoting the spread of buddhism through his wide kingdom. whether and to what extent political motives could and did operate on his conversion we cannot even guess. in any case buddha's doctrine released the ruler of the mighty kingdom from a very burdensome ceremonial; it put an end to the contrast in which the free life of the indus stood to the restricted life of the ganges; it counteracted the pride with which the brahmans looked down on the not unimportant tribes on the indus, placed the arians on the indus with equal rights at the side of the twice-born of aryavarta, allowed the king to deal equally with all aryas, all castes, and even with the non-arian tribes of his kingdom; and not only permitted but commanded him to interest himself specially in the oppressed classes. the care, which his grandfather had already bestowed on husbandmen, açoka could exercise over a wider territory and with greater earnestness; and that he did this, as well as how he did it, has been shown by his inscriptions (p. ). tradition tells us that after the council of palibothra, the sthavira madhyantika was sent into cashmere and the land of the gandharas to convert them, and the buddhists could boast that the inhabitants of these districts received the law which madhyantika preached to them; "that the gandharas and kaçmiras henceforth shone in yellow garments (the colour of the bhikshus), and remained true to the three branches of the law."[ ] as a fact cashmere became and remained a prominent seat of buddhism. at the same time, according to tradition, madhyama and kaçyapa were sent to convert the himalayas. in one of the smaller stupas at sanchi chests of relics were found, the inscriptions on which describe one as containing the remains "of the excellent man of the race of kaçyapa, the teacher of the whole of haimavata;" the other as containing the remains of madhyama.[ ] the conversion of the island of ceylon at the time of açoka, which was supported and advanced by açoka's power and his relation to the king of the island, devanampriya-tishya, the successor of vijaya, panduvançadeva, and pandukabhaya--who reigned from b.c.[ ] to b.c.--is a fact. like cashmere in the north, ceylon became in the south a centre of the buddhist faith, the mother-church of lower india and the lands of the east. it has been shown in detail above how the worship of relics arose among the buddhists. açoka's stupas exhibit it in the fullest bloom, and this form of worship is prominent in the tradition of the conversion of ceylon. beside the branch of the sacred tree of buddha, which took root in the mahamegha-garden at anuradhapura, ceylon boasts since that time the possession of the alms-jar of buddha and his right shoulder-bone, to which his water-jug was added, and five hundred years later his left eye-tooth. this had previously been among the kalingas, then in palibothra, whence it was taken back to the kalingas, from whence it was carried to ceylon, after escaping the attempts made by the brahman king of magadha to destroy it. saved at a later time from the arms of the portuguese, it is preserved at the present day as the most sacred relic of the buddhist church, and carried yearly in solemn procession.[ ] buddhism had removed the privilege of birth. as it summoned the men of all castes equally to liberation, so it did not confine its gospel to the nation of the aryas. when it had broken through the limits of caste it broke for the first time in history through the limits of nationality. all men, of whatever order, language, and nation, are in equal distress and misery; they are brothers, and intended to assist each other as such. to all, therefore, must be preached the message of renunciation and pity, of liberation from pain and regeneration. the tradition of the buddhists has already told us that after the third synod messengers of the new religion were sent into the western land to the yavanas, and into the gold land; and açoka's inscriptions showed us that he had entered into connections not only with his neighbour, antiochus theos, but also with the kings of macedonia and epirus, of egypt and cyrene, concerning the good law. it is not likely that buddhism was preached in the west beyond the eastern half of iran and bactria; but it found adherents there. tradition tells us that a century after the council in the açokarama at palibothra belief in the enlightened flourished in "alassadda,"[ ] by which is obviously meant one of the three alexandrias founded by alexander in the east, apparently the alexandria on the southern slope of the hindu kush nearest to cashmere. when in the seventh century of our era the chinese hiuan-thsang climbed the heights of the hindu kush on his pilgrimage to cabul and india, he found the inhabitants of the city of bamyan high up in the mountains zealously devoted to the religion of the enlightened; he found ten viharas and a large stone image of buddha in the city, covered with gold and other ornaments.[ ] on an isolated mountain wall in the midst of the mountain valley of bamyan we find in a deep niche excavated in the wall a statue, now mutilated, feet in height, and at a distance of two hundred paces, a second somewhat smaller statue of the same kind. in the broad lips and drooping ears of these statues our travellers seem to find portraits of buddha. if this religion penetrated west of cabul, in the hindu kush and to bactria, it also extended from cashmere to nepal and tibet, and from ceylon struck root in lower india. footnotes: [ ] "mahavança," p. . burnouf, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "mahavança," p. . [ ] "mahavança," p. . burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] "mahavança," p. , . [ ] "mahavança," p. , , , . [ ] lassen, "ind. alterth." ^ , , _n._ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , and ^ , regards aparantaka as the western border land of india. [ ] "mahavança," p. ff. [ ] "mahavança," p. . [ ] "açoka-avadana," in burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. , ; for these aryas see above, p. . [ ] in opposition to westergaard, who thinks it necessary to put açoka's accession back to the year b.c., i can only agree with von gutschmid that the statements of the buddhists on the subject require at the most the year b.c. "zeitschrift d. m. g." , . on the other hand, from the reasons given above (p. ), i cannot put chandragupta's accession at magadha before b.c. if, therefore, the years which the buddhists give to chandragupta and vindusara are to be maintained, açoka ascended the throne in b.c. on the other hand, the brahmans only allow years to varisara, as they call vindusara; and according to this the accession of açoka must have taken place in the year b.c. [ ] cunningham, "survey," , ff; ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] "raja tarang." ed. troyer, , ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] droysen, "hellenismus," , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] inscriptions of girnar, and kapur-i-giri, in lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] in ptolemy [greek: kêrobothrês], lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] the inscriptions of açoka date from various years, or at any rate mention regulations from various years; they speak of the tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, nineteenth, twenty-third, twenty-sixth, and thirty-first years after the coronation. according to the singhalese the coronation did not take place till the fourth year after vindusara's death. the inscriptions in which the greek kings are mentioned date from the thirteenth year after the coronation, _i.e._ from the sixteenth or seventeenth year of the reign. the festival of the complete adoption of the law of buddha by açoka would thus have taken place in the thirteenth year of the reign, _i.e._ b.c. if the statement of the singhalese ("mahavança," p. ) were correct, that açoka's consecration did not take place till the fourth year of his reign, which is quite contrary to indian custom, and seems to have arisen from the desire to make the coronation synchronise with the conversion to buddhism (according to the "açoka-avadana," açoka put on the royal head-dress at the moment when vindusara died, burnouf, _loc. cit._ ), there would be a chronological difficulty. alexander of epirus died about the year b.c.; magas of cyrene in that year; consequently both were dead in the thirteenth year after the coronation, the seventeenth year of açoka, if he ascended the throne in the year . the buddhists have already told us that açoka showed himself favourable to their religion in the third year after his accession, though it was not till the year or that he formally went over. hence, arrangements may have been made even earlier with the kings of the west in favour of the spread of buddhism, and they may have been first mentioned in or b.c. von gutschmid, "z. d. m. g." , . he might also mention kings of the distant west with whom he had had dealings, though they were dead, especially if he was without intelligence of their death. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] "mahavança," p. . köppen, "rel. des buddha," s. ff. [ ] burnouf, "lotus de la bonne loi," p. , . cf. "mahavança," ed. turnour, p. . a. weber, "ind. studien," , . [ ] köppen, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] girnar, : in lassen, ^ , , _n._ . [ ] girnar, : in lassen, ^ , , _n._ . [ ] delhi, : in lassen, ^ , , _n._ . [ ] delhi, : in lassen, ^ , , _n._ . [ ] inscription at delhi, lassen, ^ , . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] inscriptions at girnar, and . [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] now buddhagaya to the north-east of the modern gaya; cunningham, "survey," , , ff. [ ] cunningham, _loc. cit._ , ff. [ ] on the elephant pillars at sankisa, cunningham, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] hiuan-thsang, in lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] cunningham, "j. r. as. soc." , ff. [ ] lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , . [ ] burnouf, "lotus de la bonne loi," p. . lassen, _loc. cit._ ^ , , . [ ] "mahavança," ed. turnour, p. .^ [ ] cunningham, "j. r. as. soc." , ff. [ ] _supra_, p. , . in consequence of the difference explained above (p. , _n._) the singhalese place his reign years too early, from to b.c. [ ] mutu coomara dathavança. köppen, "rel. des buddha," s. ff. [ ] "mahavança," p. . [ ] stan. julien, "hiuen-thsang," p. . chapter x. retrospect. the arians in india at an early time developed important spheres of human nature into peculiar forms. in that tribal life, by no means feeble of its kind, which they lived in the land of the panjab, they worshipped the spirits of fire, of light, of water; with deep religious feeling they invoked these helpers, protectors, and judges, with earnestness, zeal, and lively imagination. the movements of the emigration and conquest of the ganges, the acquisition of extensive regions, led them forward on new paths. the emigrant tribes grew into nations; greater monarchies grew up in the conquered territories. the achievements of the forefathers were sung in heroic minstrelsy before the princes and their companions, the wealthy warriors, the priests, and the minstrels separated themselves from the peasants. the contrast between the new masters of the valley of the ganges and the ancient population assisted in intensifying the distinction of orders among the arians. the fear of the spirits of night and drought, the conception of the struggle of good and evil spirits, gave way before the abundance and fertility of these new possessions. in the land of the ganges the sensuous perception of nature passed into fantastic ideas; the climate inflamed the susceptible senses of the nation, while at the same time it checked bodily activity and invited to contemplativeness. in opposition to the multitude of the ancient divine forms and the gorgeous variety of the new impressions of nature, rose the impulse to find the unity of the divine essence, the need of combination. abstraction reacted on imagination, the spirit on the senses. the spirit in prayer, the holy spirit, and the world-soul, that mighty breath which the brahmans seemed to find behind the changing phenomena of nature, were amalgamated by the priesthood, and elevated to be the highest deity: indra, varuna, mitra must give way to brahman as the nobles gave way to the priests. together with the new deity, who was at the same time the order of the world, the brahmans won for themselves the first position in the state. the theory of the emanation of the world from brahman established for ever the arrangement of the castes by the different participation of the various orders in brahman--an arrangement which otherwise, being the result of natural changes, would in turn have been removed in the course of development. the law and the state were arranged on the plan of the divine order of the world which had assigned to every being his duties. with the emanation of beings from brahman came the demand for their return thither, and the doctrine of regenerations, which were to cleanse the creatures rendered impure by their nature and their sins till they attained the purity of the world-soul. as brahman was essentially conceived as not-matter, not-nature, a severance of nature and spirit, a contrast of the natural and the intellectual man was set up, which subsequently became the turning-point in the religious and moral development of the indians. ethics passed into asceticism, the courage of battle into the heroism of penance. but man could not rest content with the avoidance of sensuality or the mortification of the flesh. it was not enough to torment and crush the body, the _ego_, the consciousness, must pass into brahman. but, inasmuch as brahman was all things and again nothing definite, it possessed no quality to be apprehended by thought; and along with the annihilation of individual being absorption in this impersonal deity required the surrender of the consciousness and perception of self, of the _ego_ in order to obtain a passage into this substance. thus the crushing of the body by a pitiless asceticism, the destruction of the soul by meditation without any object, became the highest command, the ethical ideal of the indians; the devotion natural to their disposition became a self-annihilating absorption into a soul-less world-soul. the energy of the indians began to consume itself in this contest; it was applied to the conquest of the appetites, the crushing of the body, the annihilation of the soul. under the most smiling sky, in the midst of a luxuriant vegetation, was enthroned a melancholy, gloomy, monastic view of the absolute corruption of the flesh, the misery of life on earth. the theory that every creature must fulfil the vocation imposed upon it at birth, the commands of submissive observance of duties and patient obedience placed absolute and despotic power in the hands of the kings the more firmly because they also undermined activity and independence of feeling; and owing to the extent of the ceremonial, the usages of purification and penance, and the awful consequences of their neglect, the people became accustomed to think more of the next world than of this. as heaven alone was their home, the indians had scarcely a real world, or practical objects which it was worth while to strive after. without purpose or activity they were perpetually changing, they obeyed an oppressive and exhausting despotism, which the theory of the brahmans justified as divine, and provided with the most acute regulations for the maintenance and extension of its power. thus the most beautiful and luxuriant land on earth seemed really to become a vale of misery. the scholasticism of the indians concentrated their efforts on framing ever new conceptions of the categories of spirit and nature, of matter and the _ego_, which perpetually changed without ever breaking loose from them. their philosophy gained no object beyond establishing more firmly their hypothesis, separating ever more widely nature and spirit, body and soul, the fleshly and the supernatural, and rooting more deeply a perverse view of nature. no doubt the appetites compensated themselves for the pain and privation of penances, for the torments of asceticism, in luxurious enjoyment; the imagination sought relief from the necessity of thinking of brahman and nothing but brahman in painting a motley world of spirits beside and below brahman, by confounding heaven and earth, by the restless invention of grotesque charms and miracles, by brilliant pictures on a measureless scale. in the same way the reason compensated itself for its exclusion from philosophy and the compulsion exercised upon it by the most acute distinctions; yet no healthy advance could be made by the alternation of asceticism and enjoyment, by oscillation between hollow abstractions and unbridled imagination, the most irrational view of the world and the most subtle reflections. full of compassion for the sorrows of the multitude, distressed at the sight of the oppression under which the people lay, repelled by the cruel asceticism, the pride and exclusive scholasticism of the brahmans, buddha undertook to provide the people with alleviation and bring help to their pains. with him the world is evil, and regeneration is the eternity of evil. in order to escape this, as he was himself confined to the current view of the world and philosophical systems, he could only overthrow brahman along with the gods; he could merely recommend the restraint of the appetites and desires, patient suffering and renunciation, flight from the world and the _ego_, and in the last instance a more complete annihilation of the _ego_. it was nevertheless a great gain that the body need no longer be tormented and destroyed, that the difference of the castes was thrown into the background, that the contempt of the higher born for the lower was laid aside. in the place of an exclusive sense of caste came equality and brotherly love; tolerance and gentleness in the place of ceremonial; expiations and penances were superseded by a rational morality, and beneficial sympathy with all creatures. to counteract the new doctrine which threatened the entire position obtained after long struggles by the brahmans, the latter allowed the idea of brahman to fall into the background, in order to restore to the people the worship of living personal deities; they were at pains to show that their deities also had the weal and woe of mankind at heart; and if on the one hand they increased the merit of asceticism and its requirements, they reduced on the other the value of good works; they attempted to amalgamate brahman and the theory of the buddhists by new speculations, and by means of a simple asceticism and a mystical act of the spirit, to obtain readmission into the highest being, and reunion with the world-soul. but even buddhism provided its doctrine, and its scepticism which denied everything beside matter and the _ego_, with a form of worship, not in the pilgrimages only, and the worship of the relics of the enlightened, but also in the apotheosis of the teacher, and his elevation above the gods of the brahmans. while the doctrines of the brahmans and buddhism strove with each other, the extension of the aryas in the south and the occupation of the coasts of the deccan went steadily on, and the first shock which an external enemy brought upon india, the attack upon and reduction of the land of the indus by alexander the great, after the most vigorous resistance, exercised the most beneficial influence on the states of india. chandragupta succeeded not only in breaking down the rule of the foreigner over the indus, but in uniting the territory of india from the indus to the gulf of bengal, from the himalayas to the vindhyas, into one mighty kingdom. his grandson extended his kingdom over surashtra, orissa, kalinga; in the south his influence extended beyond the godavari. from this throne, three hundred years after the death of the enlightened, he announced his conversion to his faith, and proclaimed his rules as laws of the state. this seemed to be the dawn of a happy day for india. the combination of all the tribes could not but secure the independence of the country; the oppression of the hereditary despotism seemed to be softened by the prescripts of a rational morality; a brisk trade with the west appeared to give the last blow to the exclusiveness and rigidity of brahmanism, and the religion of equality and brotherly love seemed to assure the rise of a new social order and a free movement of the intellectual powers of the people. a sterner fate overtook the indians. it is true that even at the time of açoka the powerful neighbouring kingdom of the seleucidæ had begun to fall to pieces; parthia and bactria had already attempted to assert their independence, and though antiochus the great once more succeeded in subjugating bactria, and in the year b.c. appeared with a powerful army in the region of the indus, açoka's son and successor subhagasena (polybius calls him sophagasenus) was able at the price of a number of elephants and some treasure to renew the league which his grandfather chandragupta had concluded with the first seleucus, the great-grandfather of antiochus.[ ] the re-established authority of the seleucidæ over bactria was of very brief continuance. it was not attacks from without, but the dissensions of the grandsons of açoka that rent asunder the great indian empire; the dynasty of the mauryas fell. a new race, that of the Çungas, ascended the throne of magadha in the year b.c. with the kings pushpamitra and agnimitra, which thirty years after had in turn to give place to the guptas. neither the power of the Çungas nor that of the guptas was sufficient to maintain the national unity, and protect the regions of the west from the foreigner. the greek princes who ruled in bactria conquered the lands of the indus--native indian tradition presents us with armies of yavanas on the right bank of the indus at this time[ ]--and established a græco-indian empire, which in the course of the second century b. c. carried its arms to the yamuna, and subjugated cashmere as well as surashtra to its rule.[ ] from the supremacy of greek princes and the greek character india received various impulses of the most lively kind, especially in architecture and plastic art; the influence of the greek models extends not only over the panjab but even to cashmere. this dominion of the greeks over the west of india was succeeded by other foreign empires, that of the sacæ from arachosia (sejestan), that of the tibetan nomads, the yuechis, the indo-scyths from bactria. if buddhism had advanced to bactria under the mauryas, elements of the religious views of iran now forced their way from sejestan, the worship of the god mithra, on which they laid especial stress, by means of the maga-brahmans, _i.e._ the magian brahmans, into the panjab and cashmere.[ ] but the land of the ganges maintained its independence, the civilisation of the deccan was not interrupted, and the national forces still sufficed to remove at length the power of the foreigner even in the west. for centuries after this date buddhists and brahmans stood side by side in the indian states of the west and east. only the guptas of magadha had worshipped vishnu and Çiva;[ ] the sacan and indo-scythian princes of the west were devoted to buddhism. yet buddhism was unable finally to triumph over the reformed doctrine of the brahmans, supported as this was by the worship of vishnu or Çiva and the speculation and mysticism of the yoga. it had become divided into sects, of which the bases were almost wholly of a dogmatic character; they rested on the different philosophic foundations of the system. but the adherents of these sects hated each other more than they hated the brahmans, and the ethics of the buddhists preached only obedience, patience, submission, and retirement from the world. it was no more adapted than the ethics of the brahmans to supply new impulses to the volition and activity of the indians, and in the end the bright world of gods and spirits of brahmanism, the magic powers and miracles of their ancient saints, exercised a greater power of attraction on the hearts of the indians than the simpler doctrine of the buddhists. the veda, the epos, and all tradition was on the side of the brahmans. the genuine kshatriya could not be satisfied with buddha's peaceful doctrine; the brahmans maintained their position as presidents at the funeral feasts of the tribes, and common interests of a very practical nature kept the sects and even the schools of the brahmans more closely together than was possible among the various divisions of the buddhists. when it had been shown that buddhism was not strong enough to overpower the old system, the brahmans succeeded in entirely overthrowing and expelling that religion. the faith of the enlightened maintained its ground in cashmere and ceylon alone. before its expulsion from its native home it had taken such firm root in nepal and tibet, in further india and china, that it was able from thence to humanise the manners of the nomads of upper asia, and in the east to gain the most numerous adherents for the religion of patience. in the extent of their territory and the numbers of the population the indians possessed an adequate natural basis for periodical regenerations. the despotic power which the princes had attained not without the assistance of the brahmans, and which had the more injurious consequences, the more completely the will of the subjects was absorbed in the governing caprice rather than elevated to any moral communion, found on the one hand a certain counterpoise in the close communities and families, and on the other was far from being strong enough, from having sufficient activity and development, to repress and dominate all spheres of life. it had not kept the rich gifts of the indians at the point which they reached at the time of the conquest of buddhism; it had not been able to prevent new attempts, a new rise, and the elevation of the depressed powers of will and body. the strongest check was the establishment of the system of castes in full power, the restriction of the circulation of the blood in the body of the nation, the severe repression of free activity and purpose by the supposed divine arrangement of the vocations and orders, the exclusive direction of the heart and will to objects beyond this world. in this way a lasting prohibition was imposed on the free play of the powers, and a false aim was set up; while the physical health of the national body, the moral health of the national spirit, which can only be maintained by the counterpoise and reciprocal action of moral and intellectual impulses, and the exertion of the will for attainable objects, was destroyed and undermined to such a degree that stagnation prevailed and the soil became sterile. thus it happened that the state of the aryans in the divided condition in which they found themselves, and the limitations to which the brahmans had condemned their powers of will, in spite of the protected position of their country and the numbers of the population, had not the power to resist the attacks of islam, and to prevent the erection of a lasting alien empire on their soil, which finally subjugated the lands of the indus and the ganges, and even the deccan to a large extent, almost indeed the whole of india, while it transplanted to the soil numerous hordes of a foreign population. precisely these districts which had given the impulse to the development of the indian nature, became in the end the centre of this foreign dominion, while regions of the deccan peopled mainly by non-arian races, who had been won over at a comparatively late period by colonisation, made the most stubborn resistance. the empire of the great mogul in the deccan was able only for a brief period to pass the krishna to the south. though the indians were not powerful enough to resist the arms of islam they did resist its mania for conversion. heavily as this pressed upon them from time to time, the habit of asceticism, the hope of escaping from the fetters of the soul with the death of the body, enabled them to withstand the fiercest tyranny. even now the most cowardly bengalee can die with the most dauntless courage. thus the indians were able to maintain their religion, the results of their history and civilisation, their whole intellectual possessions, against their moslem masters. it is true that all advance was at an end, that the limits were fixed irrevocably, and could not be overstepped; but the mobility of the indian spirit within these was not suppressed. indian poetry could develop into artistic lyrics, into the drama, and didactic works; the formal subtlety of the nation laboured with effect in grammar, algebra, and logic. even if the services of philosophy were mainly extensions, developments, and variations of the old ideas, though theology maintained her supremacy, and put and discussed anew the old questions, by such activity and such labours, the intellectual life of the indians was preserved from sterility; they have placed the indians in possession of a considerable literature of the second growth, and maintained unbroken their peculiar civilisation. the pharaohs engraved the memorials of their reigns on artificial mountains of stone, in order to preserve their deeds to the most remote future; their subjects chiselled, painted, and wrote the remembrance of their lives in their tombs, in order that no incident that had befallen the dead might be forgotten. the indians have not written their history, because at a very early period they began to dedicate their lives to the future world, and convinced themselves that the state was nothing and religion everything. if among the egyptians the name of a man was to live for ever, and his body was to rest to all eternity in its rocky grave, the indians were tormented with exactly the opposite desire: they wished to attain the end of the individual as quickly as possible, to blot out existence without any return, and destroy the remains of it as completely and rapidly as possible. the egyptians became painters, builders, masons, and sculptors; the indians were philosophers, ascetics, interpreters of dreams, mendicants, and poets. the history of the indians has passed into the acts of gods and saints; it is lost in the chaos in which heaven and earth are confounded. only at home in heaven, in poetry, in philosophy, and imaginary systems, the indians had no ethical world on this side the grave, and therefore no achievements of their princes, statesmen, or nations were worth the trouble of recording. religion has dominated the life of the indians more thoroughly than that of almost any other nation. this result would not have been attained by the brahmans, who never rose to an organised hierarchy, and were always limited to the advantages of their order, the influence of worship and doctrine, had not the feeling and heart of the people met them half way. the victory of brahman over indra decided the fate of the indians. all attempts, even the most vigorous, to abandon brahman merely led to modifications of the leading idea; they did not remove it. this pantheistic theory weakened the resolution of the indians in the region of politics and action; the consequences so severely and zealously drawn from it have checked the ethical productiveness of the indian spirit and prevented its advance. the foundations of the brahmanic system remain unmoved to this day. in worship the brahmans are tolerant. every one is free to choose his protecting deity; he may invoke vishnu or Çiva, or any other god; he may or may not go a pilgrimage to the ganges, to hurdwar, jagannatha, and other holy places; he may practise asceticism or omit it. in their philosophy and schools they are also tolerant; one man may follow this system, another that, provided that the world-soul is still retained. but in the question of purification and the social question of caste they are intolerant. the fixed scheme of the chief castes, to which the dvija is linked by investiture with the holy girdle, together with the lower castes, the close castes of occupation within the main and subordinate castes, and their numberless gradations, still remains. even now the castes which manu's law destined to be servants observe this command both towards natives of higher caste and foreigners. this unnatural system is retained because in the eyes of the indians it is neither unrighteous nor unjust, but is rather the expression of divine justice; birth in a higher or lower caste is the recompense for merit or sin in earlier existences. moreover, with the exception of the lowest classes, the pariahs and chandalas, every man has an advantage over some other class, and would lose by expulsion from his birthright as well as by the suppression of the whole system. in india expulsion from the caste means the surrender of all the relations of life; the loss of social existence, of family, of the nearest connections; it implies a fall to the lowest level, that of the expelled casteless man. no man has any dealings with the expelled person; even his nearest relatives would be denied if they gave him a draught of water. so careful are the indians of purity. the lowest bengalee at the present day does not hesitate, courteously but decidedly, to request the officer of the ruling nation who visits his hut to leave it, that it may not be defiled. in their national life the indians have exhibited down to our days their long-practised and often-tried courage of patience. as the old system of religion and morals has bidden defiance to centuries, so do we find in the indians that tenacity which long and severe oppression is wont to create in originally vigorous natures, that power of resistance which bends but does not break, united with a cunning and love of intrigue by which the oppressed revenges himself on the oppressor, against whom force avails nothing. with this they have retained a costly possession, that inclination towards the highest intellectual attainments which runs through their whole history. this treasure is still vigorous in the hearts of the best indians, and appears the more certainly to promise a brighter future, as the government which now controls the nation has come to an earnest though late resolution to rule with the help of the indians for the good of the people, while the intellectual force and cultivation of their western tribesmen are disclosing themselves ever more clearly to the eager activity of eminent hindus. footnotes: [ ] polyb. , . _supra_, . [ ] wilson, "vishnu-purana," p. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] communication from prof. albrecht weber. [ ] _supra_, p. , _n._ end of vol. iv. bungay: clay and taylor, printers. _j. d. & co._ * * * * * * transcriber's note: . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. the history of antiquity. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. i. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . preface to the english edition. fifty years ago, the opinion was held by some that we could watch, in the tradition of the most ancient realms of the east, the first awkward steps in the childhood of the human race, while others believed that it was possible to discover there the remnants of an original wisdom, received by mankind at the beginning of their course immediately from the hand of heaven. the monuments of the east, subsequently discovered and investigated by the combined labour of english, german, and french scholars, have added an unexpected abundance of fresh information to the hebrew scriptures and the narratives of the greeks, which, till then, were almost our only resource. no one can any longer be ignorant that hither asia at a very remote period was in possession of a rich and many-sided civilisation. the earliest stages of that civilisation in the valley of the nile, of the euphrates and the tigris, on the coasts and in the interior of syria are, it is true, entirely hidden from our knowledge; even the far more recent culture of the aryan tribes we can only trace with the help of the veda and the avesta back to the point at which they were already acquainted with agriculture, and possessed considerable artistic skill. our object in regard to the ancient east is not to retrace the beginning of human civilization, but rather to understand and establish the value and extent of those early phases of civilisation to which the entire development of the human race goes back. the way to this aim is clearly sketched out for us. a minute comparison of tradition with the results of the successful advance of oriental studies, a conscientious examination of the one by the other, opens out to us the prospect of discerning more precisely the nature of those ancient constitutions and modes of life. to this purpose i have undertaken to contribute by a descriptive treatment of the subject. such an attempt appeared to me indicated by the consideration that the fragments of our knowledge--and more than fragments we do not at present possess, and never shall possess, even though we assume that the number of monuments be considerably increased--if conscientiously brought together, would produce the most effective impression by exhibiting the connection of all the various sides of those ancient civilisations--and if to this collection were added the conclusions that can be drawn from it and from the monuments about the political life, the religion, the manners and laws, the art and trade of those nations. how to offer in a general survey the sum total of these fragments of the ancient east is a problem attended with difficulties which i have felt at every step in my work. there are not many corner-stones immovably fixed; the outlines are often to be drawn with a wavering pen; the unavoidable explanations of the gaps to be filled up admit of a variety of opinions. hence it is often--only too often--necessary to interrupt the narrative by comments, in order to support the view taken by the author, or refute other views, or arrive at the conclusion that there is no sufficient evidence for a final decision. the best mode of remedying these disagreeable interruptions was first to state the tradition, which is generally closely connected with the peculiar nature of the people whose fortunes it narrates, and if not actually true, is nevertheless characteristic of the manners and views of the nation, and then to examine this tradition in and by itself, and in conjunction with the monuments; to state the opposite interpretations; and, finally, to give the results thus obtained. in this way narrative and investigation are combined in such a manner that the reader is enabled to pursue the inquiry. the data and the critical examination of them, and lastly the results obtained, are put before him for his own decision. the objections, made of late to the results of assyrian researches, touch certain points only, in which over-hasty conclusions have prematurely declared the enigma to be solved. whatever doubts may still remain, i have felt the more confidence in following the main results, because wherever asshur and israel come into contact the hebrew scriptures agree with the records of the kings of asshur. who could understand the meaning of the verses of nahum (iii. - ), of the fate of "no-ammon, to whose aid came ethiopians, arabians, and libyans," till g. smith discovered the document of assurbanipal relating to the capture of thebes? who could explain the words of ezekiel about the grave of elam (xxxii. ) till the tiles of babylonia and assyria told us of the ancient supremacy and power of this kingdom, and of its battles with the assyrians, and subjugation by their arms? if, in chronology, i have given the preference to the tablets of the assyrian archons over the books of kings, i have done so, not because i hold the former to be infallible, but because the chronological dates in the books of kings prove, by more than one contradiction, that they have not come down to us intact. my narrative embraces those independent civilisations of the ancient east which came to exercise a mutual influence on each other. first we follow the realm on the nile and the kingdoms of hither asia as far as the point where the nations of iran began to influence their destinies. then i attempt to set forth the peculiar development of the aryan tribes in the valleys of the indus and the ganges, down to the times of tshandragupta and asoka. then follows the history of the bactrians, the medes, and the persians, until the period when the nations of the table-land of iran were united by cyrus and darius with the countries of western asia, when aryan life and aryan civilisation gained the supremacy over the whole region from ceylon to the nile and the hellespont. the forms of life at which the great empires of asia had arrived are finally brought face to face with the more youthful civilisation attained by the hellenes in their mountain cantons. this new development we follow down to the first great shock when east and west met in conflict, and the achæmenids sought to crush the hellenes under the weight of asia. with the failure of this attempt my history of the ancient world concludes. max duncker. berlin, _march_, . contents. book i. _egypt._ chapter i. page the land and the people chapter ii. the antiquity of the civilisation in the valley of the nile chapter iii. the religion of the egyptians chapter iv. the kingdom of memphis chapter v. the hyksos and the restoration of the egyptian kingdom chapter vi. the house of ramses chapter vii. the monuments of the house of ramses chapter viii. life and manners of the egyptians book ii. _the semitic nations._ chapter i. the ancient kingdom of babylon chapter ii. the religion and science of the chaldÆans chapter iii. the art and trade of babylonia chapter iv. the arabs chapter v. the canaanites chapter vi. the religious rites of the canaanites chapter vii. the origin and descent of the hebrews chapter viii. the hebrews in egypt chapter ix. the liberation of the hebrews chapter x. the hebrews in the desert chapter xi. the hebrew invasion of canaan chapter xii. the nations of asia minor errata. page , line from bottom, _for_ "chalk rock" _read_ "lime-stone." " , " " _for_ "sun-globe" _read_ "sun-mountain." " , " " _for_ "horologe" _read_ "sun-mountain." " , " " _for_ "_savans_" _read_ "_savants_." book i. egypt. egypt. chapter i. the land and the people. history knows nothing of her infancy. the beginning of the development of the human race lies beyond the sphere of memory, and so also do the first steps in that development. the early stages of culture--whether in nations or individuals--are unconscious, and unobservant of self; they are therefore without the conditions which make remembrance possible. the original forms of social life in the family and in the tribe, the movement of wandering hunters and shepherds, the earliest steps in agriculture, could leave behind them neither monuments nor records. it is true no gifted or favoured nation, which has raised itself above these beginnings to civic life and independent culture, has neglected to cast a backward glance upon the history of its past. everywhere the attempt has been made to present the past from the later point of culture. whether the memory reaches but a little way, or goes back far into the past, it is always enriched by ideas taken from religious conceptions, or national pride, from reflection or theory. such reconstructions are significant of the nature and character of the people for whom they replace the history of their youth, but they have no claim to represent the actual course of their development. the case is different when the growing culture of a people is observed by nations already at a higher grade of civilisation. the romans were in a position to leave behind a picture of the youthful german tribes; the byzantines could inform us of the movements of the slaves; modern europe could observe the tribes of america, the nomadic shepherds of asia, and the islanders of the south sea from a higher and riper point of development. the oldest kingdoms of which tradition and monuments preserve any information passed unobserved through the earliest stages of their culture. tradition and the earliest monuments present them already in the possession of a many-sided and highly-developed civilisation. in what way these nations, the oldest representatives of the culture of mankind, arrived at their possession, we can only deduce from such evidence as is before us anterior to tradition and independent of it--from the nature of the regions where these civilisations sprung up, from the physical character and constitution of the nations which developed them, from their languages and their religious ideas. the history of antiquity is the description of the forms of culture first attained by the human race. if it is impossible to discover the origin of these forms historically, and the attempt is made to indicate their preliminary stages, so far as the recorded elements allow connected conclusions, it becomes the chief object of such a history to recover from the fragments of monuments and tradition the culture of the ancient east, and of the hellenes so closely connected with the east: to reconstruct from isolated relics and myths the image of that rich and ample life which filled the east in religion and state, in art and industry, in research and commerce, in political struggles and intense religious devotion, long before the time when solon gave laws to the athenians, and the army of cyrus trod the shore of the Ægean sea. the oldest civilisation, the oldest state grew up on that quarter of the globe which seems least favourable to the development of mankind. on either side of the equator, africa stretches out in huge land-locked masses. a vast table-land occupies the whole south of the continent, and in the north sinks down to a plain more impassable even than the broad seas which wash the coasts of africa on the west, south, and east. this plain--the bed of a dry sea--lies in the burning sun without vegetation. only where springs water the thirsty soil do fruitful islands rise out of the moving sand, the lonely waste of ravines, the craggy ridges, and bald platforms of rock. as the sea nowhere indents the coasts of africa with deep bays, the rivers cannot excavate broad and fruitful valleys, and provide means of access to the interior. the high table-land is surrounded by a steep rampart of mountains, which descend in terraces to the coast, and here, almost without exception, leave narrow strips of low and marshy land. through the barrier drawn around them by this rampart the rivers must force their path in a violent course, in waterfalls and rapids, in order to fall into the sea after a short, and proportionately more sluggish course through the narrow strip on the shore. the table-land, its rampart of mountains, and the long lines of coast, are, with the exception of the southern apex and the alpine territory of abyssinia in the east, the dwelling-places of the black race--the negro. however great the number of negro nations and tribes, however much they differ in physical form and in dialect--living as they do beneath a vertical sun, in regions difficult of access--they have never risen beyond the infancy of human civilisation--a rude worship of gods. wherever they have not been powerfully affected by the introduction of foreign elements, generation has followed generation without remembrance or essential alteration. the north coast of africa is of a different character to the rest of the continent. while the western coast looks to the broad atlantic ocean, and the waves which break on the southern apex lead to the ice of the pole, the north coast is separated from the neighbouring shores by a basin of moderate extent. it is a mountainous district which fills up the space between the sahara and the mediterranean. towards the west the peaks of atlas reach, even in this climate, to the region of eternal snow; on the east, towards the mouths of the nile, the hills gradually sink down, and the plain of barca rises little more than , feet above the sea level. numerous chains of hills, at one time pressing close upon the sea, at another leaving more extensive plains upon the coast, cover the northern edge, which along the deep valleys of the mountain streams exhibits that vigorous and luxuriant vegetation so characteristic of africa when not checked by want of water, although even these fruitful valleys are again in their turn broken by droughty, and therefore bare, table-lands and depressions. on this northern coast, toward the mediterranean, opens the valley which, in extent of fruitful territory, is the largest in the whole continent. it occupies the north-east corner of africa, which is only separated from arabia by a narrow strip of sea, and carries its gleaming waters through the wide space from the subsidence of the table-land down to the coast, where for almost its whole remaining breadth the continent is filled up with the desert of sahara. from the north-east spur of the table-land, out of vast lakes (ukerewe), fed from the glaciers and snows of huge mountains lying under the equator, and passing through the lower lake mwutan, flows the western arm of the nile, the white nile, bahr-el-abiad. after bursting through the terraces of the mountain, it reaches, at the foot, a woody morass, filled with thickets of tamarisks and sycamores, of bamboo and reeds and tall creepers, inhabited by the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the crocodile, the zebra and hyena, by antelopes and snakes. then the stream passes into broad savannas, covered here and there with tropic forests, and while flowing through a mountainous district of moderate elevation, it unites with the eastern arm, the blue nile, bahr-el-azrak, which, rising further to the east out of the abyssinian plateau, brings down a far smaller bulk of water from the alpine glades of the snowy mountain samen. combined into one stream, these waters flow through a broad expanse of rock and desert, covered with conical stones of volcanic origin. the lines of hills running parallel to the terraces of the mountain rampart lie athwart the river; and through this barrier it breaks in numerous cataracts. only in the depressions between them can the soil, refreshed with water, support vegetation. finally, at syene the nile passes through the last cataract. henceforward the structure of the mountains is changed. a fissure in the rock about miles long opens on the mediterranean; and through this the mighty river--at the last cataract it is , feet in breadth--can flow onward in undisturbed peace to the ocean. out of this fissure the nile has created a narrow strip of fruitful soil--the valley is not more than three or four hours in breadth on an average--which is secured by the heights on the west from the moving sand and the storms of the great desert, and is separated by the mountain on the east from the rocky crags, the desolate flats, and sandy dunes which fill up the space between the valley of the river and the red sea. to this valley the mighty river not only gives a refreshing coolness and moisture by the mass of its waters, it fertilises and manures it from year to year by its overflow. at the summer solstice, when the snow on the peaks of the lofty mountains, in which the two arms of the nile take their rise, is melting, and the tropical rains fall upon its upper course, the waters of the river slowly and gradually rise. towards the end of july it passes over the banks and overflows the whole valley as far as the enclosing lines of hills, so that towards the end of september it stands more than twenty feet above the lowest water level. falling as gradually as it rose after more than four months it sinks back to the ordinary level. wherever the overflowing waters have covered the land, there is left behind a fertilising mud or slime. this is the soil which the two rivers before uniting have washed from the upper hills. carried down by the stream, it is deposited by the gentle flow of the waters on the surface of the valley. the refreshment of the earth by the inundation, the fertilisation by this slime, and the cooling of the air by the immense body of water, are the essential advantages which egypt owes to her river, and hence, even as early as herodotus, egypt seemed to be the gift of the nile. the watering of the soil and the cooling of the air just in the very hottest months of the year, are the more invaluable because the blue and gleaming sky of the upper valley is never darkened by rain clouds, while the heat is severe, and the storms from the south-west occasionally carry the sand and the dust over the libyan hills into the nile. in the delta, the region along the lowest course of the nile, showers occasionally rise from the neighbouring sea; and through eight months of the year the whole valley opening on the mediterranean is fanned by refreshing winds from the north, which also facilitate navigation against the stream. this river-valley, the like of which in nature and formation is not to be found in the whole globe, offered in its seclusion a peculiarly favoured spot. it was a small green oasis of luxuriant fertility and grateful coolness in the midst of boundless deserts. the dwellers in a land whose soil was every year newly manured by nature, which brought forth abundantly almost without labour, must very soon have abandoned a pastoral life for agriculture, and in consequence have acquired fixed abodes and settled possessions. but the yearly inundation compelled them also at an early period to protect their flocks from the water, to secure their habitations, to observe the periods of the rising and falling of the stream. the long duration of the overflow made it necessary to provide for the support of man and beast. they had to learn how to carry on their dealings with each other upon the water, when the whole valley was still filled with the river, and to mark out firmly the limits of their plots, so that they might again take possession of them after the inundation. in nubia the cataracts stopped the navigation of the river, and the lines of rock and strips of desert made intercourse difficult, and confined the life of the tribes within the limits of the native valley to their separate possessions. in egypt, within the two lines of hills, land and river created no hindrance. a region so concentrated could not but carry the tribes beyond the limits of separate existence; the very land forced them to live a life more in common. there was only a slight natural distinction between the more secluded upper valley and the lower opening in the delta about the mouths of the nile; and this could merely have a stimulating effect upon the development of culture, without interfering in any way with its unity. nevertheless the community of life in the valley of the nile was not caused solely by the nature of the land. the tribes of the deserts around this long and narrow oasis must have had all the more lively a sense of the charm of the favoured valley owing to the difficulty with which they procured their own subsistence. against these plundering neighbours, and their attempts to force themselves into the valley of blessing and abundance, the inhabitants of egypt had to combine their forces. they needed a strong centralized command, a warlike monarchy, to which here, earlier than elsewhere, the patriarchal government of the tribes would therefore give way. egypt kept her inhabitants secluded within hard and fast limits; beyond the hills began the desert. with the increasing number of inhabitants the attempt must have been made to set low-lying marshy districts free from the excess of water, and to make fruitful the higher parts of the valley beyond the reach of the inundations by bringing the water upon them. experience quickly taught that the plot produced the most abundant fruits on which the inundation had continued longest, and consequently had time to deposit the thickest layer of mud. hence the attempt was made to keep the water longer on the soil by means of dykes. these objects, in regard to which the interests of the several districts differed, and which required the combination of large masses of operatives to carry them out, must have made the need of a supreme decisive and executive power felt earlier in egypt than in other lands. the inhabitants of egypt found themselves surrounded by a solemn landscape, before fixed and unchanging forms and outlines, in the midst of natural phenomena, recurring with invariable regularity and always in the same succession. such surroundings and impressions must have stamped on the young life of a ripening nation a settled, stern, and unvarying character. when the original unity and society of life, which comprises all members of the family and in the tribe, has been broken through--when at the beginning of their settled life some have turned their attention to agriculture and cattle, others to hunting and war, others again to the fulfilment of religious duties--the sons are wont to carry on the vocation of the fathers. this is the rule often in far more advanced periods; and simpler conditions of life compel the son to carry on the life of the father, in whose occupation he has grown up. in such times there is no mode of teaching and instruction but through the family. in this way the tribes and the nation part into separate circles, which carry on as an inheritance the mode of life derived from their forefathers. these divisions of occupation, of vocation, and mode of life could be carried out earlier and with greater sharpness in egypt than in other lands. as life becomes more settled and developed, there are always found families with an especial liking for war. they are enriched by the spoil which is the fruit of their bravery, and protect the agricultural and pastoral part of their tribe from the attacks of plunderers. every nation gives willing honour to the brave warriors among them, and gladly recognises the superiority of a mode of life which puts life to the risk over other occupations. and when, from the early simple stage, in which every head of a family approaches the gods with his offerings in trust and confidence, religion has developed into a body of usages and customs which must be performed and followed out if any share is to be obtained in the grace of the gods, the exact knowledge of these can only be handed down from father to son. and if the mass of the population gives honour to the warriors, how much more readily will it bow down before those who, by their prayers, libations, and offerings, can bring them the fruits of the field and the blessing of the gods--protection in this world and salvation in the next! moreover, if the families of warriors and priests, filled with the conviction of their own higher worth, disdain the occupations of the rest of the people; if they are convinced that they are of a better kind than the rest, that only from the noble and good can the noble and good arise--that better blood gives better feelings, and better birth better men--then in this feeling, so natural to a primitive era, they allow their occupation to be shared only by those who belong to their race; they take wives from their own class only, not from others; they give their daughters in marriage to their own people only. thus the various modes of life and orders which naturally come into existence end in castes. the more fruitful the land of egypt, the richer the products of the soil, and the more frequent the necessity of repelling the plundering inroads of the desert tribes, the more rapidly did the distinction between the agricultural and military orders spring up. and the greater the pride with which the inhabitants of this favoured land might and did look down upon the miserable tribes of the desert, the more grateful were the looks turned towards the gods, who had given them so beautiful and productive a land in the midst of the desert, who supplied them with water, fertilised their soil, cooled the heat of the atmosphere and gave them life and plenty, while all around them reigned desolation and death. to these beneficent powers the inhabitants of the valley of the nile could not refuse an earnest service of thanksgiving for blessings so rich and so ceaselessly renewed; by their piety they had also to provide that the gods would graciously preserve these blessings to them. it is obvious that a tone and feeling like this, arising in the population from the very nature of the land, must have been in a high degree conducive to the rise of a priestly order in egypt. egypt had excellent natural boundaries. if the forces of the land were once united in a single hand, there could be no difficulty in repelling the tribes of the desert. thenceforward there would be little reason to fear an enemy on this side of the boundary hills. no rival power could arise in the neighbouring deserts, and should any victorious state arise at a distance, the deserts checked the advance of their armies. it was much more probable that the united forces of the river-valley should subjugate the tribes of the surrounding desert. hence the position of their land allowed the inhabitants of the valley to develop undisturbed. the culture once obtained could be quietly transmitted to others, and constantly extended. this circumstance, in connection with the domestic peace of the country under a monarchy, allowed the priesthood to extend their lore in unbroken tradition from generation to generation, while quietly amassing stores of knowledge; and with the increase of the population all the hands not required for agriculture--and in egypt this claims but a small amount of labour--had to devote themselves to trade and manufacture. and even these arts were likely to attain the greater excellence in so far as the artisans and tillers of the ground were less disturbed by war and military service. the more distinct the boundaries of the land, the less to conquer and occupy outside them, the more industrious, amid the growing population, must have been the culture of the ground and the irrigation of it, the more actively must the artisans have pursued their trade, and industry must have developed with a greater vigour as the number of mouths requiring food increased. so far as our knowledge reaches, the northern edge of africa, like the valley of the nile as far as the marshes at the foot of the abyssinian hills, was inhabited by nations who in colour, language, and customs were sharply distinguished from the negro. these nations belong to the whites: their languages were most closely allied to the semitic.[ ] from this, and from their physical peculiarities, the conclusion has been drawn that these nations at some time migrated from asia to the soil of africa. they formed a vast family, whose dialects still continue in the language of the berbers. assisted by the favourable conditions of their land, the tribe which settled on the lower nile quickly left their kinsmen far behind. indeed the latter hardly rose above a pastoral life. the descendants of these old inhabitants of the valley of the nile, in spite of the numerous layers which the course of centuries has subsequently laid upon the soil of the land, still form the larger part of the population of egypt, and the ancient language is preserved in the dialect of the copts.[ ] footnotes: [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," , , ff.; ebers, "Ægypten and die bücher moses," p. ; renan ("histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques") will not admit this close connection. [ ] brugsch ("histoire d'egypte," pp. , ) explains the name egypt by _ha-ka-ptah_, _i.e._ "the precinct of ptah." as ptah was more especially the god of memphis, this name would have come from memphis. the attempt has been repeatedly made to derive the civilisation of egypt from ethiopia and meroe. but the problem of the origin of a given civilisation is not solved by removing it from the locality where it exists in full bloom to another, and as a rule more unknown, district. in the case before us this assumption is met by the peculiar difficulty, that the culture of egypt is influenced essentially by the nature of the land, and therefore can hardly have had an external origin. it cannot be removed from a highly favoured locality into a district extremely hot, and fruitful only in detached oases, without making the explanation of its origin much more difficult. moreover, the lower valley of the nile has always ruled over the upper: even in mediæval and modern times. the inscriptions of sargon, king of assyria ( - b.c.), mention the king of meroe (miluhhi); those of sennacherib ( - b.c.) tell us, "the kings of egypt have summoned the archers, the chariots, the horses of the king of miluhhi." the inscriptions of esarhaddon ( - b.c.) speak of the "king of egypt and miluhhi," whom they also name "king of egypt and cush;" and the successor of esarhaddon directed his first campaign against "tarku" (thirhaka) "of egypt and miluhhi." the word meroe, therefore, as the name of a kingdom lying above egypt on the nile, must have been in use in syria, even in the eighth century b.c. hence the greeks denote by this name an island, and also a city of the upper nile. according to herodotus ( , ) the great city meroe, "which ought to be the chief city of the rest of the ethiopians" (_i.e._ of those of whom the egyptians were not the immediate neighbours), was forty days' journey and twelve days' sail (_i.e._ over , stadia) above syene. later authorities, eratosthenes, artemidorus, strabo, pliny, ptolemy reduce the distance by nearly one-half; they regard the distance between meroe and syene as nearly equal to the distance from syene to alexandria, and fix the whole distance from alexandria to meroe at , to , stadia. as the town and island of meroe must be south of the junction of the astaboras (atbara), (strabo, p. ), we must look for the island between the atbara and the blue nile, and for the city in the ruins at the modern begerauieh. yet the chief town of the kingdom of meroe, when it takes an active part in history, is not begerauieh. king thirhaka's residence lay near the modern meraui under mount barkal. the name in inscriptions is neb, and, consequently, in greek and latin napata. even under the sesurtesen and amenemha, egypt ruled over nubia as far as semne and kumna, under amenophis iii. as far as soleb, and under ramses ii. as far as mt. barkal. the oldest ruins at this spot belong to a temple dedicated by this king to ammon (lepsius, "reisebriefe," s. ); next come the ruins of the buildings of thirhaka, which differ as little from egyptian buildings as those which he and his two ethiopian predecessors erected in egypt. moreover, the later ruins found at napata, especially some twenty small pyramids, are feeble imitations of egyptian art. the same character of imitation is stamped upon the monuments of begerauieh, though here it is mingled with foreign elements. this place, further removed from egypt, and therefore more secure, was beyond doubt the residence of the kings of meroe, at least from the time of cambyses, and it was named after the country. herodotus points out that zeus and dionysus, _i.e._ osiris, were worshipped here, and that the oracle of zeus, _i.e._ of ammon, extended its authority over the ethiopians: the further accounts which diodorus preserves of this priesthood give a poor idea of their cultivation ( , ff. strabo, pp. , ). at the time of the second ptolemy, this priesthood was destroyed by the king, ergamenes, whose name (arkamen) lepsius has discovered on ruins at mt. barkal, as well as begerauieh, and an independent monarchy was established. hence we must entirely give up the idea of deriving the supposed supremacy of the priesthood in egypt, a supremacy which never existed here, from the priesthood formed at begerauieh after the time of thirhaka and psammetichus (in the days of psammetichus, herodotus tells us that a king of the ethiopians received strangers without an oracle, and gave them land, , ); that is, in the sixth century b.c., which continued to exist till b.c. still less reason is there to suppose that the so-called indian supremacy of the priesthood came through meroe into egypt. rather we may feel ourselves justified in assuming that the elements of civilisation which took root on the middle nile passed from egypt to that district. in the inscriptions of begerauieh the name meroe occurs as meru, and merua, _i.e._ "white rock"; lepsius, _l. c._ - . as the banks of the nile, here and also at mt. barkal, consist of whitish-yellow chalk rocks, the name of the land and its southern metropolis, of which the existence since the sixth century b.c. is demonstrated, may have been named from this peculiarity of the land. chapter ii. the antiquity of the civilisation in the valley of the nile. in the eighteenth century b.c., according to their reckoning, the tradition of the hebrews presents us with a complete picture of court and civic life in the valley of the nile, and it tells us of the building of cities in the east of the delta, which, according to the same computation, must have been founded about the year b.c. the homeric poems contain accounts of the land of Ægyptus, of the fair-flowing zeus-born river of the same name, of the very beautiful fields and cities of egypt, of princes who fought from their chariots, and finally of "egyptian thebes, where in the palaces lie the greatest treasures; a city with a hundred gates, from each of which go forth two hundred men with horses and chariots." they also add "that the fruitful earth bears abundance of drugs in egypt, some mingled for good, others for evil, and there every one is a physician and has acquaintance with men; they are all sprung from the god of healing."[ ] according to the account given by the greeks the egyptians boasted to be the oldest of mankind, and to possess the most ancient traditions.[ ] their priests believed that they could compute the history of egypt by thousands of years. when herodotus was in egypt about the middle of the fifth century b.c., the priests at thebes read to him from a book the names of kings who had reigned from menes, the first ruler of egypt, and the founder of memphis, down to moeris inclusive; among these were eighteen ethiopians, and one queen; the rest were egyptians. after moeris came sesostris, pheron, proteus, rhampsinitus, cheops and chephren, mycerinus, asychis, anysis, sabakon, and sethos, so that from menes to sethos kings had reigned over egypt in as many generations. herodotus remarks that the priests assured him that they had an accurate knowledge of what they said, for the years were always enumerated and put down. to convince him they carried him into the great temple at thebes and showed him there wooden colossi of the chief priests who had presided over the temple through as many generations, in regular succession from father to son; for every chief priest placed his statue here during his own life-time. before these kings and chief priests the gods had ruled over egypt; first the eight gods, then the twelve, then osiris the greek dionysus, after him typhon, and, last of all, horus. from the time of king amasis ( - b.c.) to the time of osiris , years had passed, but from the time of the twelve gods to amasis , years.[ ] herodotus does not conceal the doubts raised in his mind by the high antiquity claimed in these accounts by the priests. he found an especial difficulty in the fact that dionysus osiris, who, according to his computation, was born , years at the most before his own time (_i.e._ about b.c.), must have lived more than , years earlier, according to the assertion of the egyptians. by their account kings reigned from menes to sethos; and on this basis herodotus reckoned the duration and commencement of the egyptian kingdom. he took - / years as the length of a generation, and thus menes must have begun to reign generations, or , years before the accession of sethos. further, herodotus placed over years between the accession of sethos and the death of amasis, and thus according to his data we get the enormous total of , years for the duration of the egyptian kingdom from menes till its overthrow by the persians. menes therefore must have ascended the throne before the year b.c.; the rule of osiris commenced b.c.; and that of the twelve gods b.c. if we leave the gods out of the question, and reduce the length of a generation, which herodotus has put too high, to its real average of twenty-five years, the generations with those of sethos, psammetichus, necho, psammetichus ii., apries, and amasis, make up , years, and since the persians took egypt in b.c., the beginning of the reign of menes still falls in the year b.c. this incredible fact is not made more credible because plato represents an egyptian priest asserting to solon that the annals of sais reached back , years; or speaks in the "laws" of works of egyptian art, ten thousand years old.[ ] four hundred years after herodotus, diodorus travelled to egypt.[ ] he tells that, according to some fabulous accounts, gods and heroes first ruled over egypt for something less than , years. the last of these was horus, the son of isis. after these came native kings, of whom the first was menes, before the time of the macedonian and persian rule, and also four ethiopian kings and five queens. the ethiopians did not immediately succeed each other, but at intervals, and their united reigns amounted to a little less than thirty-six years. "of all these kings the priests have sketches in their holy books, handed down through successive generations from extreme antiquity, showing how tall each king was, what he was like, and what he accomplished in his reign." if we place the reign of menes generations before cambyses, this computation, on the reckoning of herodotus, would place the accession of menes in the year b.c.; taking a shorter average length for the generations, we may bring it to the year b.c. but diodorus shows from other accounts that this mode of computation is inadmissible. he tells us that the priests of egypt numbered about , [ ] years from the reign of helius or hephæstus, who, according to other priests, was the first of the gods to reign,[ ] till the entrance of alexander into asia ( b.c.). if of this total we allow about , years to the gods, the accession of menes would have to be placed about the year b.c.[ ] but as diodorus also says that something less than , years had elapsed since the first human king to his arrival in egypt, menes' reign would fall about the year b.c. diodorus fixes the accession of this king even more closely when he remarks, in a third passage, that the egyptians assured him that, "for more than , years, kings, mostly natives, had ruled, and the land had prospered greatly under them."[ ] with this agrees the further account given by diodorus, that according to some the largest pyramid was built , years before his time. according to this menes cannot be carried back further than , years b.c. if menes founded the kingdom of egypt , years b.c., it continued for , years under native kings; and if in this period kings ascended the throne, as herodotus says, or , as diodorus, the average duration of each reign would be in the first case more than twelve years, in the second less than nine, which contradicts all credible history. the lowest average of oriental reigns is fifteen years. still, from these accounts of herodotus and diodorus it is clear that the priests of egypt possessed lists of the kings in long series, and that, according to their view, gods and demigods had ruled over egypt for thousands of years before the earliest of these kings. after greek princes had ascended the throne of the pharaohs, and egypt with its monuments and writings was opened to the research of the greeks, eratosthenes, who was the head of the library at alexandria in the second half of the third century b.c., studied the history of these old kings--at "the royal request," as georgius syncellus tells us--in the old annals and lists of the egyptians, and transcribed these lists in the hellenic language.[ ] this compilation of eratosthenes contained the names and reigns of thirty-eight kings of thebes. syncellus repeats the list, and adds: "here ended the rule of the thirty-eight kings who were called theban in egypt, whose names eratosthenes collected out of the sacred books of thebes and translated into the hellenic language. the names of the fifty-three theban kings who followed these have been also preserved by apollodorus; but we consider it superfluous to add them, for even the list of the first is of no use."[ ] thus the researches of the alexandrine greeks had brought together a list of ninety-one kings, ninety successors of menes, out of the writings of the priests of thebes. as early as the time of eratosthenes the egyptians assisted the researches of the greeks. about the middle of the third century b.c., that is, in the time of the second and third ptolemy, an egyptian named manetho (_ma-n-thoth_ = "loved by thoth"), of sebennytus, and apparently scribe to the temple at thebes,[ ] composed in greek a work on the history of egypt in three books. "obviously possessed of hellenic culture"--so we find it in josephus--"manetho wrote the history of his country in greek, translating it, as he tells us, from the sacred writings; he undertook to interpret egyptian history from the sacred writings."[ ] this work of manetho was lost at an early period; all that remains is the list of the dynasties, a third part of the names of the kings, and a few fragments; and even these remnants we possess only in excerpts by a second or third hand. manetho begins his history of egypt with the rule of the gods. first came ptah, the creative god of light, and the great gods, then the demigods, and manes. after these had ruled over egypt for , egyptian years, according to the excerpt of africanus, that is for , julian years, the rule of human kings begins with menes, and these continued through thirty dynasties for , years. as manetho closes his list of the kings of egypt with the last year of nectanebos, who rebelled against artaxerxes ochus--_i.e._ with the year b.c.--menes must have founded the kingdom in the year b.c., or rather, if we reduce the egyptian years of manetho's reckoning to julian years, in the year b.c.[ ] this statement carries us back to a far less remote antiquity than the computation of the date of menes by generations previous to cambyses; on the other hand, it goes years higher than the date which we deduced from diodorus. what amount of authority should be ascribed to the lists of manetho? did the priests really possess sketches of kings and accounts of their reigns reaching back more than , years? in order to believe this, must we not allow that at such a remote time as the reign of menes, or soon after it, writing was known and in use in egypt? and granting this, must not the first beginning of culture in egypt be carried back at least years before menes? moreover, the lists do not correspond with the number of the kings given by herodotus, or by diodorus. herodotus, as we said, put generations before the time of cambyses, diodorus gave kings before the same date. the excerpt of africanus from manetho, even if we substitute the smaller numbers given in the excerpt of eusebius in all the dynasties, of which only the total sum of the rulers is stated, still gives us kings from menes to cambyses.[ ] if these discrepancies awaken the suspicion that the number and the succession of the kings was not agreed upon even by the priests themselves, the suspicion is increased by the fact that the lists do not tally in the various excerpts in which they have come down to us. what weight can be given to a list which, in the excerpt from africanus, allows years (or at the least) to the rule of the hyksos, and in the excerpt of eusebius allows years, and again years in the excerpt of josephus? still greater discrepancies appear if we compare the list of eratosthenes with the names and numbers handed down to us from manetho's work. both lists begin with menes; both allow him a reign of sixty-two years; but eratosthenes describes his thirty-eight kings as of theban origin or race, while in manetho the first theban dynasty began to reign , years after menes.[ ] nevertheless the names of the first three or four rulers in eratosthenes agree with those in manetho. then the coincidence breaks off till the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth names in eratosthenes, to which corresponding names are found in manetho's list, but in the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth places; and from this point to the end of the list of eratosthenes there are only two or three names to which corresponding names are found in manetho, and these occur at far greater intervals in the series. the last name in eratosthenes nearly corresponds to the name of the king, in manetho, under whom the invasion of the hyksos took place. if, therefore, we assume that the list of eratosthenes was intended to enumerate the kings who ruled over egypt to this date, we find thirty-eight kings who must have reigned through years; and, as parallel to these, we find in manetho fourteen dynasties with at least kings, occupying a period of , years. scarcely less striking are the contradictions in the monuments themselves. in the temple of ammon at karnak, which was extended on a magnificent scale by tuthmosis iii. ( - b.c.),[ ] the king is delineated twice in a colossal form on the back wall of a chamber. between the two pictures sit sixty-four kings in four rows one over the other. the inscription, "a royal offering for the kings of both egypts," as well as the position of tuthmosis, shows that he is offering prayer and sacrifice to his predecessors in the kingdom. of these sixty-four kings, three are the immediate predecessors of tuthmosis, tuthmosis i., ii., and amosis. before amosis this table puts fifty-seven kings; the name of menes is wanting; but in manetho's list there are nevertheless no fewer than kings,[ ] from menes to amosis, with whom, in the excerpt of africanus, the eighteenth dynasty begins. in the great temple built by sethos i. ( - , b.c.) at abydus in honour of osiris, this prince, with his son ramses, may be seen on the wall of a passage offering prayer and incense to his predecessors in the kingdom. there are seventy-six shields with names, beginning with the shield of menes. the last is the shield of sethos, who in this way is represented as offering prayer to himself, among the rest. down to amenemha iv., the close of the twelfth dynasty ( - b.c.), there reigned, according to manetho's list kings, but the table of sethos gives sixty-five shields for the interval from menes to amenemha iv. from this king to sethos, the first prince of the nineteenth dynasty, manetho's list gives kings, excluding the shepherd kings, whereas the table of sethos shows only ten shields for this interval.[ ] nothing in the way of explanation is to be obtained from the monuments of this kind belonging to the time of ramses ii. ( - b.c.) on the wall of the portico between the first and second court of the ramesseum, the great temple built by ramses ii. at thebes, on the left bank of the nile, there is a picture in which the statues of thirteen predecessors in the kingdom are carried in procession before the king. there are eleven kings up to amosis; before him is the figure of mentuophis; then menes. in the little temple built by ramses ii. at abydus in honour of osiris, there is a tablet, on which ramses is represented offering adoration to the manes of his predecessors. on this we can make out fifty shields, but only about thirty are sufficiently uninjured to be legible; so far as we can tell this table is only a repetition of the table of sethos in the great temple of abydus. a third series of the kings of this period has been discovered in the tombs at sakkarah. in the tomb of tunari, the kings' scribe and architect, there is a representation of the sacrifice of ramses ii. for the deceased kings of upper and lower egypt. here we find fifty-seven shields; immediately before ramses ii. is sethos, ramses i., and horus, then six illegible names; and before these amosis. before amosis are forty-six shields, of which the first can perhaps be compared with the king mentioned in the sixth place after menes in manetho's list.[ ] the variations of these tables from the lists may be explained by assuming that it depended on the particular view and peculiar object of the kings who erected these monuments, which of their predecessors they wished to honour, and which they wished to exclude. but even a manuscript list of kings, which has come down to us, exhibits numerous and very considerable variations from manetho's lists. this list is a papyrus, now in turin, supposed to belong to the period - b.c. it begins with the rule of the gods; then follow the names of the kings, with the length of their reigns in years, months, and days, down to the time of the tuthmosis; and thus it includes the first seventeen dynasties of manetho's list. it has been much damaged, and therefore we can only discover that about names were given, of which, however, about are entirely gone; and of the others the lesser half at least is hardly legible. as has been remarked, manetho numbers at least kings to the eighteenth dynasty. moreover, the papyrus does not agree with manetho in the division of the dynasties; at certain places, which do not coincide with the sections of manetho, totals are given of the preceding reigns. the first king after the gods is mena (menes), but of the names which follow only a few agree with those in manetho, and a few more with those of the tables of karnak, abydus, and sakkarah.[ ] but here also the same names occupy different places in the series. if in addition to all these variations and discrepancies we add the fact that even in the contemporary monuments and inscriptions which have come down to us there is no lack of contradictions to manetho's statements--if too these monuments have not been erected or preserved in sufficient continuity, nor are of a sufficiently ample kind, to form an adequate check upon the papyrus of turin, or the tables of kings or the list of manetho--we must give up the hope of ascertaining the antiquity and course of egyptian history on such data. one thing only comes out clear and irrefragable from the tables of karnak, abydus, and sakkarah, no less than the turin papyrus. long before herodotus was in egypt, long before manetho wrote his egyptian history, in the fifteenth century b.c. menes was considered the first king of egypt. even then lists of the kings were in existence, and the priests had made a sketch of the history of their land, in which the rule of the gods preceded the rule of human kings. modern research has attempted in various ways to find the key to the puzzle of these long and confused series of kings made by the egyptian priests. assuming that the names of the kings and the length of their reigns, and the number of reigns belonging to each dynasty, has been handed down correctly by manetho, but that some of these dynasties were contemporaneous, the attempt has been made to give such a selection from the dynasties of manetho as would supply a continuous thread for egyptian history. thus from the dynasties expressly marked as memphitic, or theban, a series may be formed which shortens the calculation of manetho by at least , years. we might proceed further in this direction, and reduce manetho's list by , or , years. according to the separate items in the excerpts preserved, manetho's thirty dynasties include a series of , egyptian years (from the year to the year b.c.); nevertheless, syncellus, in a passage of his chronology, has observed that the whole period of history treated by manetho in his three books covered , years.[ ] this observation has been used to prove that manetho himself arranged several dynasties contemporaneously; and thus, by taking the whole total of years given by syncellus as a basis, the year b.c. has been fixed as the first year of the reign of menes. no doubt a selection may be made from the dynasties of manetho in such a way that the sum total of the reigns included in it will carry us no farther back than this year.[ ] but it is clear from the accounts of herodotus and diodorus that the series of kings made by the egyptian priests were strictly successive; and this fact is abundantly confirmed by the turin papyrus and the excerpts preserved from manetho himself. the , years which syncellus brings forward cannot, in the face of his own excerpt, be taken as a number really derived from manetho, and with this number all the calculations founded upon it fall to the ground.[ ] a second path, which has lately been struck out for the reduction of manetho's dynasties, is based upon the list of eratosthenes. the thirty-eight kings enumerated in this list are placed beside the first fourteen dynasties of manetho. it is assumed that only the names quoted in eratosthenes are the names of real monarchs, and that we must look for similar names in the list of manetho. by this assumption, it is true, we are compelled to set aside several of manetho's dynasties, and even to throw away the greater part of the kings of the dynasties which are allowed to count in the series.[ ] but even when we have overcome all the difficulties in the way of this system, we are still without the means to define accurately the duration of the rule of the alien kings, which, as has been already remarked, according to the various excerpts from the list of manetho, continued , or , or years; nor is there any fixed point immediately before the alien monarchy to enable us to succeed in establishing the antiquity and commencement of the egyptian series of kings. all attempts to arrive at the antiquity of the civilisation and history of egypt by these means are the more doubtful, because in egypt there is no fixed era to form a basis for calculation. the time is reckoned by the reigns of the kings. in such a case even the most cautious inquiry of the priests could hardly have arrived at a satisfactory chronology for the oldest period. though they had before them far more numerous monuments than we have, and though the lists of the various dominant families began to be kept at a very early period, it was no longer possible at the time when the lists of the turin papyrus were made out, to discover in what order the families came, or which ruled contemporaneously before the time of the alien kings. the mere arrangement of our materials in the order of succession cannot fail to give an entirely false picture of the history of egypt, while on the other hand the national pride of the egyptians, and the vanity of the priests, found a great satisfaction in exaggerating the antiquity of their history by such enumerations, even where it was known that any families of kings were contemporaneous. with what pride and complacency would they exhibit this endless list of kings to the travelling strangers from greece! besides the want of a fixed era, and the insufficient knowledge of the ancient period, and of the alien monarchy--besides the motives of national vanity, there was another remarkable circumstance connected with the priests of egypt which was calculated to lead them far away from historical truth. the egyptians measured time by a solar year of days, divided into twelve months of thirty days. it was early observed that this year did not correspond to the sun's orbit; and therefore five additional days were added. the decisive event of the egyptian year was the inundation. the nile began to rise at the time of the summer solstice, and was coincident with the rising of the dog-star (sothis), the brightest star in the egyptian sky. the dog-star proclaimed the approach of the inundation and the new fertilization of the soil, and by proclaiming caused it. thus to the egyptians this star sothis was "the lady of the beginning." the rising of the star denoted the new year; which therefore must have begun on the th july, the first of thoth in the egyptian calendar. but since, in the egyptian year, a quarter of a day was wanting, in spite of the additional five years, to make up the true astronomical year, the beginning of every fourth year must have been a day in advance of the true year, and the seasons, of which the egyptians made three of four months each, the months, and the festivals anticipated more and more the true time of the year. this advance could not have escaped the priests; they must soon have observed that a period of , egyptian years must elapse in order to allow the egyptian year to coincide with astronomical time. for in , egyptian years the additional quarter of a day in the astronomical year would amount to whole days--_i.e._ to an egyptian year; and at the end of this year the beginning of the next was again coincident with the rising of the dog-star, as seen from lower egypt, and the commencement of the inundation. thus in a period of , years the year was again brought to its true beginning.[ ] since the fruitfulness and life of the egyptian land depended on the inundation, and the inundation began with the rising of the dog-star, the history of egypt must also have begun with a similar rising. if after , egyptian years the rising of the dog-star again coincided with the beginning of the civic year, the priests would regard this restoration of the natural order as the completion of a great cycle of events. the dog-star brought the inundation, and with it the fruits and life of egypt. it was the awakener of life. it must therefore have brought life to the world also; time must have begun with the rising of sirius. porphyrius tells us that to the egyptians the rising of the dog-star was the beginning of the world.[ ] hence the periods of the world must proceed according to a number of periods fixed by the dog-star. it seems that the priests comprised the whole duration of the world in twenty-five sothis periods, _i.e._ in , egyptian years. regarded in this light, the sothis periods of the priests of egypt must lead to a cyclic treatment of their history, to which also the want of any definite era was forcing them, while the antiquity and number of the lists of kings offered abundant material for it. the history of egypt must comprise a definite number of sothis periods. it was known that in the fourteenth century b.c. such a period ended, and a new one commenced; the difficulty was to fill up two or three periods anterior to this. before the sothis period of the kings, the gods had ruled over egypt, to whom, therefore, a number of sothis cycles, naturally more extensive than those given to the rule of men, was allotted. thus the priests of thebes were able to tell herodotus that, from the time when the twelve gods ruled over egypt, down to the days of king amosis, , years had passed; that from menes, down to sethos, kings ruled in succession over egypt, and that in this space of time the sun had four times risen in an unusual way--it had twice risen where it then set, and had twice set where it then rose; and nothing in egypt had been changed by this, either in the gifts of the earth or the river, in sickness or in mortality.[ ] this change of the rising and setting of the sun is nothing more than the symbolical astrology of the priests, who must have expressed the completion of the movable solar year by the opposite quarters of the sky; and it means no more than that two sothis periods had elapsed between menes and sethos; but to herodotus the statement as given naturally appeared quite incredible.[ ] what the priests told herodotus, manetho, following far older authorities, had already fixed in a systematic form before diodorus found that the gods ruled , years, and the human kings had begun to reign , years before his arrival in egypt. to the gods and demigods manetho allows twelve sothis periods, _i.e._ , julian years. then follows the history of the men, the beginning of which manetho places in the commencement of that period of the dog-star which begins with the year b.c. from this point the series of kings runs through three complete sothis periods down to menephta; in the fourth period manetho closed the lists of his thirty dynasties with the last native ruler in b.c., the th year of the fourth sothis period of the human kings. thus it would be possible to make the scheme clear on which the priests of egypt dealt with the history of their land, and the lists of manetho would then lay claim to complete historical credibility for the ancient periods in isolated items, though certainly not in their combination as a whole. with this result before us the only course open is to seek for external evidence, and attempt to ascertain the antiquity of the civilisation of egypt independently of the priests and their traditions. the first fixed point in egyptian chronology is given by the campaign of pharaoh sisak against judah and jerusalem. sisak caused a sketch of his enterprise to be delineated on the wall of a structure erected by him in the temple at karnak. according to manetho's list, sisak (sesonchis), the first ruler of his twenty-second dynasty, begins his reign in the year b.c.[ ] but the chronology of the hebrews, which from the establishment of the monarchy downwards coincides within a few insignificant variations with the assyrian records, proves that sisak must have been king in the first half of the tenth century b.c. the campaign against judah falls in the middle of this century. from sisak to the expulsion of the hyksos there was an interval of at least years, as we may maintain approximately from the names of kings and their reigns recorded on monuments. if therefore we accept the excerpt from manetho's history given in josephus (and that excerpt was made precisely for this period, and has come down to us in the best shape), and allow years for the reign of the hyksos, we arrive at the year b.c. as the end of the old monarchy. from this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to the amenemha, and sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of manetho; and again to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in egypt, the pyramids of memphis, which, according to manetho's list, are the work of the fourth dynasty. these pyramids therefore may have been built about the year b.c. the plan and execution of these monuments presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. and independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities. so long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed the valley of the nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such structures were impossible. they presuppose a settled population, accustomed to work, and skilled in it. and more than this. the whole population could not any longer be occupied in agricultural work; there must have been a considerable amount of superfluous labour, living upon the productions obtained from the earth by others. such structures required the united force of many thousands, the continued efforts of long years. and as the use of complex machinery for moving and raising the heavy materials was unknown to the egyptians, and remained unknown, as we see from the monuments, a still greater force of men and beasts of draught were necessary to move such huge squares and blocks by means of a simple lever and rollers. finally, the combination and continued employment of such forces presupposes that society has been subordinated to a superior direction and power, which could apply those forces as it chose; in a word, it presupposes an economical, political, and technical civilisation, removed by at least years from pastoral life and patriarchal rule. if therefore we may assume that the great pyramids were erected about the year b.c., the beginning of higher civilisation in the valley of the nile must not be placed later than the year b.c. this assumption is confirmed by the fact that the oldest monuments of egypt--and they are also the oldest in the world--exhibit the egyptians in possession of the art of writing. all writing proceeds from pictures. the writing of the egyptians and babylonians, like that of the chinese, mexicans, and the tribes of north america, was in the first instance no more than speaking pictures. the egyptians engraved on the stone of their rocks pictures of the objects and events of which they wished to preserve the remembrance. as this use of pictures to assist the memory became more common and more regular, from external no less than internal reasons, it quickly acquired certain abbreviations and combinations. the frequent repetition of a picture led to its abbreviation. the picture of a house dwindled into a square; water is not so much sketched as indicated by waved lines; instead of a forest we have the outline of a tree--in egypt we find the sycamore, the most common tree in the country. thus from actual imitative pictures we arrive at indicatory pictures. but how could the various kinds of fluid, for instance, be represented in these indicatory pictures? the three waved lines indicating water were retained, but beside them was sketched a wine-jar or water-pot, and thus the desired end was attained. by adding the picture of a god to the square, a temple was distinguished from a house. by such means the objects of the visible world could be reproduced in pictures more or less abbreviated. even the actions and conditions of men which do not come immediately under the eye could be represented in this abbreviated metaphorical manner. giving could be represented by an outstretched arm with a loaf; opening, by a door; going, by a road planted with trees; travelling, by a walking bird; battle, by an arm equipped with shield and lance; binding and fastening, by a coiled rope; destruction, by a prostrate man. it was more difficult to represent conditions which do not show themselves to the eye, as, for instance, hunger and thirst. to express thirst the egyptians chose the symbol of water and a calf running to it; hunger they represented by a hand conveyed to the mouth, and this was also the symbol of eating. but the most difficult task for this picture-writing was the description of objects transcending sense, and abstract ideas. for the gods, it is true, popular notions and the fancy of the priests had supplied fixed forms which only required to be abbreviated for the picture-writing. the picture of the sky-goddess served as a symbol for the sky. the egyptians regarded the sky as arched over the earth; the feet of the goddess rested on one extremity, and her hands on the other. instead of the complete figure of the goddess in this arched attitude, they drew a line of a similar kind, and this was the abbreviated picture of the sky. if the sun or a star was combined with this line, the picture represented the day and the night. but the abstract ideas of law and justice, truth, protection, good, evil, life, &c., could only be represented in this picture-writing by sensuous images. in egypt power was represented by a brandished whip, or poleaxe; justice, by the cubit, or symbol of equal measurement; good, by the symbol of sound, in order perhaps to indicate harmony; evil, by the picture of an unclean fish; truth, by an ostrich feather--the feathers of this bird are said to remain unchanged; protection, by a soaring vulture, &c., &c. though the possession of such indicatory or symbolic pictures enabled men to describe a series of objects and conditions, and even certain classes of conceptions--this picture-writing was nevertheless far removed from the expression of a definite and intelligible speech. it was a great step in the egyptian writing when to their simple metaphorical and symbolical pictures phonetic pictures were added. from the actual picture by means of abbreviation, by indicatory signs and symbols, they had arrived at picture-signs, and had succeeded in expressing a certain feeling by means of figures; but now the indication of the sound was added to the representation of the sense. the picture-writing could only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow the symbols for sound. hence the sound a was denoted by a symbol which signified an object of which the name began with a; for this in egypt the symbol of an eagle (_achem_), or of a reed (_ak_), might be, and was selected. thus in order to express words which could not be made plain by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. hence arose a class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to express the meaning. to make the meaning yet more clear, it was found necessary to add key-signs, indicating the class and nature of the word in question. thus with the pictorial and phonetic signs for day and hour was combined the sign of the sun, and to the names of countries and rivers the sign for land and water. moreover these key-signs showed whether the word symbolised by a sound or a picture denoted an animal, a plant, a kind of stone, or belonged to a particular class of conditions and actions. yet in this combination of real and phonetic pictures, it always remained uncertain whether a picture or symbol was to be taken for its real meaning, or was to be regarded as a phonetic symbol. this, then, is the difficult writing of the egyptians; these are the hieroglyphics as presented even on those great monuments. even here we find this method of writing applied in the same forms, and with the same mixture of pictorial and phonetic signs, which it retained in egypt, with slight modifications (see below). without doubt, the development of this complicated system was the work of centuries. in the infancy of history, special insight and capability is obtained and handed down only within the limits of certain circles. there could be no regular application and development of this system of writing before the formation of a priestly order. and again, the separation of such an order from the rest of the people could only take place gradually; it must go through a number of stages to raise it above the primitive conditions of life. when this point of culture was reached, a considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we see it on the pyramids. in those nations whose progress we can follow with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. yet in egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. in the picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of definite speech, is attained. an advanced stage of reflection and abstraction is required in order to step from the picture of an occurrence to picture-signs and images of sense, and again from these to phonetic symbols. the symbols for an incident, and for an idea and a sound, are separated by a wide gulf. independently of these internal requirements for the advance of picture-writing, the external form in which the oldest hieroglyphics are represented, their even, harmonious, clearly-cut and unalterable forms, are evidence not only of an industrious and careful application of these signs, but also of a tolerably long use. the oldest hieroglyphics of the date of the great pyramids are for the most part embossed; but even the engraved work of a date very little more recent is not surpassed by later times in artistic excellence, in sharpness and neatness of execution. the study of the calendar of egypt, no less than the use of writing upon the great monuments, carries us back to an early date for the beginning of egyptian civilization. we saw that the priests, by adding five days to the old year of days, had come tolerably near to the natural year, and had fixed the beginning of their year by the rising of sirius. monuments of the age of the amenemha and sesurtesen show that even then the rising of sirius had been observed and noted. nevertheless, the beginning of their short civic year tended to anticipate the natural year; and thus the egyptian year was always in advance of the solar. but if it was observed and noted down by the egyptians, that in the year of their reckoning, corresponding to the julian year b.c., the beginning of the year had again fallen on the right day, that is, on the rising of sirius, so that the first day of thoth in the movable year coincided with the first day of thoth in the solar year, which was the th of july, it follows that the fixing of the beginning of the year on july , and of the length of the year at days, had taken place , years (p. ) before the date b.c., _i.e._ in the year b.c. this conclusion is supported by another consideration. our astronomers have calculated that it was only in the two or three centuries preceding and following the year b.c. that the rising of sirius so exactly coincided with the summer solstice and the rise of the nile; and therefore in this epoch only could the observation have been made that sirius brought the inundation. hence in this period only could the beginning of the year have been fixed at the rising of sirius. but if the egyptians could set aside an old calendar and introduce a new arrangement requiring attention and long-continued observations, somewhere about the year b.c., it is clear that the beginnings of higher culture in egypt cannot be later than b.c.[ ] valuable as this result is, we are nevertheless carried back to hypotheses and combinations in order to fix the various epochs, and more especially before the reign of the hyksos. and as an arrangement of history is impossible without chronology, divisions must be assumed here and there where it is impossible to establish them satisfactorily. the arrangement of egyptian chronology proposed by lepsius has for the first time introduced a well-considered system into the whole. hence, in spite of the objections already brought forward against the basis of this arrangement, and the proved uncertainties and contradictions of tradition and the monuments, which the progress of inquiry into the older periods may indeed lessen but cannot remove, i follow the data given by lepsius for the epochs of egyptian history, and the duration of the reigns which come under our notice. footnotes: [ ] "il." , ; "od." , ff. , . , , ff. , . [ ] herod. , ; diod. , , ; plat. tim. p. . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] plato, "tim." p. ; "de leg." p. . [ ] diodorus, , , , olympiad , _i.e._ between and b.c. [ ] or, according to another version, more than , years from osiris to alexander. more than , years had passed, according to the egyptians, since the creation of the first man.--diod. , , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] ibid. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] syncell. p. , ed. goar. [ ] syncell. p. . [ ] boeckh, "manetho," p. . [ ] "c. apion." c. , . [ ] boeckh, "manetho," p. ff. [ ] reinisch reckons kings from menes to cambyses, "zeitschrift d. d. m. ges." , ; brugsch's table gives royal shields from menes to cambyses. [ ] according to boeckh's "kanon des africanus." [ ] this, like the following dates, is from lepsius, see below. [ ] not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added the number reaches . [ ] dümichen and lepsius, "zeitschrift für aegyptische sprache," , p. ff. deveria and mariette, "revue archéolog." , p. ff; ( ), p. ff. [ ] mariette in "revue archéolog.," ( ), p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. , , ; devéria, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] p. . [ ] gutschmid in the "philologus," , . [ ] the number of generations, which syncellus gives as contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of manetho; moreover, gutschmid has shown from what items the number , in syncellus has arisen in "beiträge zur geschichte des alten orients," s. . [ ] on this rests the difference of the systems of lepsius and bunsen. taking the total given by syncellus from manetho of , years before nektanebös, lepsius arrives at the years , b.c. bunsen also considers the number , to be from manetho, but without historical value. he insists on this number because he allows manetho to reckon , years for the new monarchy, years for the hyksos, and , years for the old monarchy; but for these , years he substitutes the , years of eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of menes. according to this, menes began to reign in the year b.c. from this, reinisch ("zeitschrift der deutschen morgenl. gesell." , ff.) has attempted to reconcile the systems of bunsen and lepsius. he retains the total of , years, and the year , b.c. for menes; to the , years given by eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds four years for skemiophris, thus making , years, fixes the middle monarchy--the hyksos--at , years, or down to the era [greek: apo menophreôs] at , , and the new monarchy down to nektanebos at years. [ ] boeckh, "manetho," s. ; lepsius, "chronologie," s. ff. th. martin "mém de l'acad. d'inscr," ( ), ff. [ ] boeckh, "manetho," s. . in the decree of kanopus, belonging to the ninth year of the reign of ptolemy euergetes, _i.e._ to the year b.c., we find as follows (lepsius, "das bilingue decret von kanopus"): "in order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts which ought to be celebrated in winter may not be celebrated in summer, because the star advances one day in every four years, while others which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is to be composed of days, and the five days usually added, from henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the divi euergetes, every fourth year after the intercalary days, before the new year." that the discovery of the want of a quarter of a day was made before the time of ptolemæus euergetes i., and that for a long time computations were made by the fixed year with an intercalary cycle every fourth year, as well as by the movable year, is beyond doubt. the decree did not become of universal application till b.c. [ ] herod. , . [ ] boeckh, "manetho," s. ; lepsius, "chronologie," s. . [ ] according to boeckh's "kanon des africanus." [ ] lepsius, "königsbuch," s. . biot, "l'année vague," p. ; cf. however h. martin, "mém. de l'acad. des inscript." , pp. , , . chapter iii. the religion of the egyptians. next to its language the oldest possession of a nation is its religion. living in a country of very distinct outlines and characteristic forms, where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before the view than in other countries, the egyptians at an early period arrived at a fixed expression of their religious feelings and of the forms of their gods. their original conceptions are unknown to us. the oldest monuments, our earliest sources of information, present us with a numerous assemblage of gods, and the conclusions drawn from these carry us back to views far removed from primitive forms of worship. they indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. we can only attempt from the fragments of that system preserved in inscriptions and manuscripts, and the very late accounts of the greeks, to deduce conclusions concerning the religious notions which originally predominated. the distinction in the nature of the upper and lower valley, already referred to, cannot have been without influence upon the direction of civic life among the egyptians, and the formation of their religious ideas. so far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same time in the upper and lower country. in both districts peculiar forms were retained at the most prominent centres of religious worship, until after the union of the country they became amalgamated in all essential points. memphis worshipped the god ptah. the great sanctuary of the god at that city was held to be as ancient as the city itself. so far back as our knowledge extends, the pharaohs were occupied with the extension and adornment of this temple. among the greeks the god of memphis was known as hephæstus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of ptah stood in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.[ ] the name hephæstus, and the further statement of the greeks, that this god was the father of the sun-god, prove that in ptah the egyptians worshipped not only fire, but the spirit of warmth and light generally; and that they must have regarded him as the origin and source of light. manetho puts ptah at the head of the dynasties of the gods. he ruled for , years before the other gods. inscriptions name ptah "the lord of truth," the "father of truth," the "ruler of the sky," "the king of both worlds." as the god of the light which shows everything in its true form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky, he is the lord of heaven. the inscriptions also say that ptah "moves the egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the beginnings," the "god who rolls his egg in the sky." consequently, to the egyptians ptah was the mover of the luminaries, a formative, creative spirit, and as he is called in the inscriptions "the father of the father of the gods," he must have been to them the first and oldest god, the beginning of the gods and of all things. the egyptians believed that a kind of beetle peculiar to their country (_scarabæus sacer_) was propagated without the female sex; they saw the mode of its reproduction in the balls of dung which the beetles occasionally pushed before them. hence they consecrated this insect to their god of beginning and creation, and on monuments and records we find the god ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a human head. as the god of the beginning he appears on monuments in the shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable god, he is wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the whip and sceptre, or the so-called nile-gauge, a ring with parallel cross bars, in his hand, in order to denote him as the god who gives to all things measure, order, and law. he is also coloured green, to signify, as it would seem, that lie is a god favourable to vegetation, and possessed of a fertilising power. thus ptah was one of the forms under which the egyptians invoked the creator, the highest god. on a pillar of memphis, now in the berlin museum, belonging to the time of the nineteenth dynasty, he is called "the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the god who made himself to be god, who exists by himself, the double being, the begetter of the first beginning." other inscriptions and records denote him as "the creator in heaven and on earth, who has made all things, the lord of all that is, and is not."[ ] below memphis lay on, the city of the sun (heliopolis). here the spirit of the sun, ra, was the pre-eminent god. in manetho's list ra succeeds ptah in the kingdom. "the egyptians," says plutarch, "regard the sun as the body of the beneficent power, the visible form of a being only comprehensible to thought. the morning sun they represented as a new-born child seated on a lotus leaf, and thrice each day--at sunrise, noon, and sunset--they offered incense to helius."[ ] we also find that the egyptians represented the sun of the winter months as a little child, the sun of the vernal equinox as a youth, that of the summer solstice as a bearded man, and again, the sun of the autumnal equinox as an old man.[ ] hence they looked at the yearly course of the sun under the allegory of human life. plutarch's remark about the morning sun shows that they regarded the daily course of the sun from the same point of view, and when he tells us that according to egyptian story, apopis made war against the god of the sky,[ ] his statements are confirmed by the monuments. according to the inscriptions ra is "revealed in the abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his egg." "a supplication to ra"--such are the words of a prayer--"who each day by himself brings himself to a new birth. ra has created all that is in the abysses of the sky."[ ] in the tombs of the ramesids, at thebes, the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night. on the form of the blue outstretched goddess of the sky appears the boat of the sun, for the egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in a skiff, as they navigated the nile; and in the boat is ra, a child with finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. as the day goes on the child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the boat are changed. in the hours of the afternoon the evil serpent, apep, the darkness, the apopis of plutarch, attempts to swallow the sun, but twelve spirits draw the serpent by ropes to the side. in the hours of the night the sun-god is inclosed in his shrine on the boat, which is carried along by spirits changing every hour over the waters of the under world to the east--just as the boats on the nile are drawn against the stream--so that he may again shine out in the east on the next morning. the hieroglyphics accompanying the navigation of the night hours contain seventy-four invocations of ra in amenti, _i.e._ in his concealment. in a similar way the monuments of edfu exhibit the growth of the sun-god through the twelve hours of the day from a child to a youth and a man, and an old man bowed with age, leaning upon a staff. this last is called in the inscriptions, "the old man who becomes again a child."[ ] the monuments exhibit ra in red, with the sun's orb on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and the symbol of life in the other. the cat, the tawny bull, and the hawk are the chosen creatures of ra; often he is found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's orb. all the entrances of the temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity, the sun's orb, supported by two wings. from the sun-god the kings of egypt derived their might and power. they generally call themselves "the sons of ra," and they rule over egypt as ra rules over the world. hence we can assume that to the minds of the priests ptah was essentially the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. ra again was the propagating and sustaining power of the divinity embodied in the sun. at hermopolis (ashmunein), besides thoth, whom the greeks compared to their hermes, and the inscriptions name the "lord of divine truth," the "scribe of truth," to whom the white ibis with black neck and beak is sacred, the "children of ptah" were worshipped. these were eight gods in four pairs. owing to this worship hermopolis was known to the egyptians as pe-sesennu, _i.e._ "the city of reverence." these children of ptah seem to have been spirits of the elements. in an inscription at edfu we find, "the eight gods, the very great, who are from the beginning, created before the gods, the children of ptah, arising through him, begotten of him, to take possession of the south and the north, to create in the thebaid, and fashion in the land of memphis. when they arose the stream flowed out from the young waters, the child of the lotus flower rose up in the boat, the beautiful one, making this earth bright by his beams."[ ] at sais, at buto, on the sebennytic mouth, and at bubastis (tel basta), on the pelusiac arm of the nile, female goddesses were worshipped. to the feast of the goddess of sais, whom the greeks called athene, the egyptians came from the whole country, as herodotus tells us, to sais, and lighted lamps on the appointed night, and even those who did not come to sais lit lamps, so that lamps were burning throughout all egypt.[ ] jamblichus and proclus tell us that the goddess of sais, the neith of the egyptians, was the mother of the sun-god; the inscriptions call neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun," "mother of the gods." hence we may assume that neith was associated with ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the creative power of nature was personified in her under a female form. the feast of lamps may have symbolised the birth of light, and its rise from the darkness.[ ] the goddess of buto, who was also worshipped at letopolis, near memphis, was compared by the greeks with their goddess leto, whose child was apollo, the spirit of light, because at buto the victorious god of light of the egyptians, of whom we shall speak below, was said to have grown up.[ ] the sanctuary of the goddess at bubastis was, according to herodotus' account, the most delightful, though not the largest or most costly, in the whole of egypt. it was situated in the middle of the city, and could be seen from every side. "beyond the market-place a paved road, about forty feet in width, leads to the shrine, which is overshadowed by trees on both sides. the precincts, a place of about a stadium square, is surrounded with a trench one hundred feet broad; this is connected with the nile, and also planted with trees. the portico is ten fathoms high, and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth description. on the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and the temple in which the statue of the goddess stands is also surrounded by very lofty trees. at the festival of the goddess the egyptians from all the land go down in boats to bubastis: in every boat is a number of men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have castanets, and strike them; the rest sing and clap their hands. the boat touches at every city on the river bank; and here also the women sing and strike their castanets, while others follow the women of the city with shouts and raillery; others, again, dance; others expose themselves. on arriving at bubastis, they bring large offerings to the goddess, and drink more wine at this festival than in all the rest of the year. according to the accounts of the egyptians, about , men and women are collected at this festival, without counting children.[ ] herodotus calls the goddess of bubastis artemis: her egyptian name was bast and pacht; and the city was called after her pa-bast, _i.e._ "abode of bast." on monuments this goddess has the sun's disk upon her head, or, in the place of a human head, the head of a cat, which animal was sacred to her. at heliopolis there was a picture of ra in the form of a he-cat;[ ] and in the inscription pacht is called the daughter of ra. ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat, who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to tread upon the path of the sun-god, and to defile the limbs of the holy she-cat.[ ] in the sketches in the "book of the dead" we find a she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the left a broad knife, with which she is cutting off the head of the serpent.[ ] the account given by herodotus of the customs observed at the festival are confirmed from other sources. the monuments exhibit musicians, whose music is accompanied by the audience with clapping of the hands; and plutarch describes the castanets of the egyptians adorned with the figure of a human-headed she-cat, the sound of which was intended to scare away the evil spirit.[ ] in the upper country other deities were worshipped. at thebes, amun, known to the greeks as ammon, took the place occupied by ptah at memphis. hecatæus of abdera relates that the egyptians identified their supreme god with the universe, but the god was invisible and concealed.[ ] amun, as a fact, signifies "the concealed" or "veiled." the monuments of thebes exhibit him as a creative god with the phallus, as a ruling deity either standing or sitting on a throne; on his royal head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the egyptians were the symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are the sceptre and the symbol of life. his colour is blue. by his side stands the goddess mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the inscriptions[ ] style her. she wears on her head the vulture, or the crown of upper egypt. she is also found on inscriptions with the head of a vulture, the bird sacred to her, instead of a human head; and in pictures of battles the vulture of mut hovers over the pharaoh as the symbol of protection. the son of ammon and mut is shu (sosis, sos), the spirit of the atmosphere, "the bearer of heaven," as the inscriptions name him.[ ] this (thinis) and abydus were the chief seats of his worship. in manetho's list the reign of shu follows on those of ptah and ra. in the place of ammon we often find another divinity, tum (atmu.) this was the sun-god in a special form. in upper egypt the spirit of the sun was invoked under the names tum and mentu. of these names the first signified the declining sun, the sun of the west, the sun of concealment, the sun in the under world; the second the rising sun, the sun of the east, the sun of the day, the bright sun-god. tum also wears the double crown, and the two feathers of ammon, or in the place of them the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both kingdoms. like ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot himself," "the father of the gods;" like him also he is formed with the beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative god he is the creator of his name, _i.e._ of his properties; he is the primæval night, the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. to him also belonged the primæval water. according to plutarch, the egyptians believed that the sun arose out of moisture, that it sprang up out of water, and was nourished by it, and therefore water was the beginning and origin of things. this account is confirmed by the monuments. as light in the process of production, tum is called "ra in his egg;" and as the spirit of light arising out of darkness and water, the horologe and the sun-dial are his insignia.[ ] at coptus, in upper egypt, a phallic god was worshipped under the name chem, whom the greeks compared to their god pan, and at the falls of syene a ram-headed god, chnum (chnemu, chnuphis, kneph), who in inscriptions is named the lord of the "inundations," of the "outpouring of the waters."[ ] as a giver of fruits, the colour of his pictures on the monuments is generally green. in the eyes of the inhabitants of upper egypt chnum was, according to the account of plutarch, an uncreated eternal spirit.[ ] we must therefore regard him as a peculiar form of the life-giving god. chnum was often united with ammon, inasmuch as the latter assumes the attributes of chnum, the ram's horns or even head.[ ] as the worship of ammon passed beyond egypt up the nile as far as meroe, so the worship of ammon-chnum spread westward in the libyan desert as far as the oasis of siwa, where the inhabitants were called by the greeks ammonians. here, even now, in the vicinity of a clear pool surrounded by lofty palms, the remains of a considerable temple are to be seen, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the picture of the ram-headed deity.[ ] the worship of the goddess hathor was widely diffused both in upper and lower egypt. the most renowned seats of the cultus were aphroditopolis, near memphis; edfu and dendera, in upper egypt. she is called in the inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. from this and from her grecian name we may conclude that she was the egyptian goddess of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. she is represented with the horns of a cow--her sacred animal--on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. in the rock-temple at abusimbel, which the wife of ramses ii. dedicated to hathor, she is represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches. to this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.[ ] in the temple at edfu, a structure of the ptolemies, local forms of hathor are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially prominent. it was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which the egyptians worshipped in these divinities--water, light, the clear heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. but the phenomena and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent. night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. beside the waters and the black fruitful soil of egypt lay the boundless yellow desert, from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. in the hot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life. through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a circular course from life to death, and death to life, the egyptians succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. they personified this strife in certain divine forms. the beneficent power, the divinity of life was allowed to succumb, and then to rise from apparent death into a new life. only for a moment could the evil powers vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the gods of beneficence. after helius, hephæstus, ammon, and hermes, says diodorus,[ ] cronos and his sister rhea ruled. these became the parents of isis and osiris, of typhon, apollo, and aphrodite. plutarch tells us that, according to the legend of the egyptians, rhea and cronos were the parents of osiris and isis, of typhon and nephthys. osiris ruled happily over egypt; but typhon conspired against him with seventy-two associates; they inclosed osiris in a chest and threw it into the nile, and the stream carried it down to the sea. when isis heard of it, she put on mourning, and sought with lamentation the body of osiris. at last she found the chest in the neighbourhood of byblus, where the sea had cast it up; she mourned over the corpse and carried it back to egypt. and when horus, the son of isis and osiris, who grew up in buto, came to his full strength, he prepared to avenge the wrong which typhon had done to his father and mother. thrice he fought with typhon; the battle raged for many days, and horus conquered.[ ] according to the accounts of herodotus and diodorus, osiris (dionysus) and horus (the apollo of the greeks) were the last rulers of the divine race.[ ] in the list of manetho, ptah was followed in the kingdom by ra and shu (or, according to the theban account, by ammon, tum, and shu), cronos, osiris, typhon, and horus. these then are the younger gods; the evidence of the monuments shows that they were connected by race with each other, but not akin to the three gods who ruled before them. and as we also find that the five supplementary days added in the egyptian year to the original number of (p. ) were dedicated to these gods, the first to osiris, the second to horus, the third to typhon, the fourth to isis, the fifth to nephthys--the natural conclusion is that these gods were of later origin.[ ] on the other hand it is clear that the belief in osiris and his power had already arisen at the time when the great pyramids were erected. the two gods at the head of this circle, whom diodorus and plutarch call cronos and rhea, were known to the egyptians under the names seb and nut.[ ] they are the spirits of the earth and sky. osiris himself in the inscriptions and records is called "the king of the gods," "the lord of unnumbered days," "the king of life," "the regulator of eternity." the inscription on the lid of a coffin runs thus--"ra gave thee the richly streaming light which gleams in thy eyes. shu gave thee the pleasant air which in thy lifetime was inhaled in thy nostrils. seb gave thee all fruits whereon thou livest. osiris gave thee the nile-water whereon thou livest."[ ] as a life-giving god, the colour of osiris is green; his sacred tree is the evergreen tamarisk; and his sacred bird a kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers at the back of the head. osiris is always represented in a human form, and with a human head. the chief seats of the worship of osiris were philæ and abydus, in upper egypt. in the temple on the island of philæ, formed by the nile above syene, the history of the god was represented.[ ] on a little island close by, where only the priests might tread, lay the grave of osiris, overshadowed by tamarisks;[ ] here were libations offered to him, and diodorus tells us that in upper egypt no more sacred form of oath was known than the oath by osiris who rests at philæ.[ ] in the temple of osiris at abydus (arabat-el-medfuneh) the wealthy egyptians sought to be buried, that they might rest in the vicinity of the god's grave. in lower egypt osiris[ ] was worshipped in the cities of memphis, sais,[ ] and busiris. at busiris (the name pe-osiri meant "abode of osiris"), on the sebennytic arm of the nile, in the middle of the delta--it was the chief city of the district of busiris--was situated the largest temple of isis, as we learn from herodotus, and here also, according to other evidence, the grave of osiris was to be found.[ ] here the whole land worshipped this god and goddess.[ ] thousands of men and women assembled, according to herodotus, made lamentation for osiris, and brought an offering to the greatest goddess (isis). amid prayers the bull was flayed, the thighs and other parts cut out, and a part of the belly filled with bread, honey, and incense; these were drenched plentifully with oil, and set on fire, and so long as the sacrifice burned the people lamented. when the lamentation ended, the remainder of the sacrifice was eaten.[ ] plutarch says that with osiris the egyptians lamented the receding of the nile, the ceasing of the cool north wind, the death of vegetation, and decrease in the length of the day. on the th athyr, the day on which typhon slew osiris (on this day the sun passes through the scorpion), the priests instituted rites of lamentation, and, among other things, as a sign of the sorrow of isis, they exhibited for four days a gilded cow, covered with a black veil of byssus--for the cow was the egyptian symbol of this goddess. on the th athyr, in the night, they went down to the sea, and the priests brought out the chest, and the congregation cried, "osiris is found!"[ ] moreover, according to plutarch, the holy rites represented the burial of osiris: in these the wood was cut for the chest, the linen torn for cerements, and libations poured. a serpent was also slain in effigy.[ ] about the time of the winter solstice, as plutarch tells us in another place, the egyptians carried "the cow," _i.e._ isis, seven times round the temple, and this procession was called the search for osiris.[ ] on the monuments the isis worshipped with osiris appears generally in a youthful shape, with the horns of a cow on her head, the moon's disk between the horns, with the flower-sceptre and symbol of life in her hands. the inscriptions denote her as the "royal consort," the "great goddess." an image in which she was represented in the form of a cow was seen by herodotus in the royal palace of the last pharaohs at sais. "in a beautifully-adorned chamber lay the wooden image of a cow, resting on her knees, not larger than a full-grown cow. the body was covered with a purple robe; on the neck and head could be seen the thick gilding, and between the horns a golden disk. every day incense was burned before the image; and at night a lamp was kindled before it. once a year," continues herodotus, "this cow was carried out into the open, when the egyptians lamented the god, whose name i do not think proper to mention now."[ ] osiris and isis, the spirits of blessing and life, were attacked by typhon. plutarch observes that the egyptians called typhon set,[ ] and this statement is confirmed by the inscriptions. the colour of set was burning red,[ ] like the glowing sun in the dust of the desert; the ass was the sacred animal of this god, and a peculiarly-formed animal his symbol on the monuments. in poisonous serpents also the egyptians saw this destructive deity, and they brought the crocodile and hippopotamus into association with him. the third of the five additional days of the year (p. ), which belonged to set, was to the egyptians an unlucky day.[ ] on a papyrus he is called "the almighty destroyer and blighter,"[ ] and with this agrees the statement of plutarch, that typhon, according to the egyptians, had filled the whole earth and sea--which they call "the foam of typhon"--with evils; and they considered all animals, trees, and vegetables, all incidents of a harmful and destructive nature to be works, parts and actions of typhon.[ ] the evil god can limit and overcome the beneficent power of nature, but not for ever. osiris had left behind a young son, who could hold typhon in check, though unable to suppress him entirely. horus, as plutarch tells us, was born about the time of the winter solstice, and the festival of the delivery of isis was celebrated at the time of the vernal equinox.[ ] on the monuments we find horus (har), "the avenger of his father osiris," as the inscriptions call him, represented as a naked child, with finger on lip, sitting on a lotus-leaf, or on a crook, the symbol of dominion. hence he is the young horus, the harpocrates of the greeks, the harpechruti--_i.e._, "har, the child"--of the egyptians. then, according to the legend, he grows up at buto; he becomes a handsome youth, the strong horus (har-ver, arveris of the greeks), the "great helper," the "pillar of the world." in the temple at philæ we see him pouring libations before the bier of osiris; on other monuments he guides the sun's bark through the hours of the day.[ ] at hermopolis, as plutarch tells us, a hippopotamus was to be seen, on which a hawk--the sacred bird of horus, in which form the god is often represented--fought with a serpent; and, according to the belief of the egyptians, typhon escaped from horus in the shape of a crocodile.[ ] the monuments represent horus on the sun-boat in the act of stabbing a serpent with a human head,[ ] _i.e._, apopis, the serpent apep; or standing on crocodiles with serpents in his hands; or as a winged sun's disk contending with a hippopotamus. in an invocation of horus, belonging to the fourth century b.c., we find the following: "come to me quickly on this day to guide the holy bark (the sun's-boat), to force back all lions to the land of egypt, and all crocodiles into the nile. shamelessness and sin (?) come and appear upon earth; but when horus is invoked he destroys them. all mankind rejoice when they see the sun. they praise the son of osiris, and the serpent turns back."[ ] hence to the egyptians horus was the triumphant god of light (har-phre, horus-sun), who subdues gloom, and winter, and drought. as a victorious god arousing fresh life, he gives to the kings of egypt life and victory. the greeks called the egyptian ra helius, and horus apollo; and these names correspond to the egyptian conception of these deities. the chief seats of the worship of horus were the two cities which the greeks called the great and little cities of apollo (edfu and kus) and ombus. at edfu hathor was worshipped beside horus (p. ). plutarch tells us that isis, in the minds of the egyptians, was the female receptive part of nature. osiris was the light, typhon the darkness, the obscuration of the sun and the moon; osiris was the fruit-giving nile-water, typhon the salt and barren sea; osiris was moisture, typhon drought, the parching wind, which overcomes and consumes moisture; osiris was health, typhon disease; osiris was the orderly, unchanging; typhon the passionate, irrational, and giant-like; disturbances, blight, and tempest.[ ] it is incorrect, plutarch observes, in conclusion, to call water, the sun, or the earth and sky osiris and isis; and not less so to call the glowing sun and hot wind typhon. if we merely ascribe to typhon all that is immoderate or irregular in these, whether in the way of excess or defect, and hold in reverence and honour all that is orderly and good and useful as the work of isis, as the image, likeness, and essence of osiris, we shall hardly go wrong.[ ] thus there can be little doubt about the meaning of the myth. when the nile receded and the sirocco from the south drove back the refreshing north wind, when the hot days--for these are the seventy-two fellow-conspirators of typhon--parched up the soil; then had typhon struck down osiris. then, as plutarch says, "the egyptians bewailed the decay of the fruits, and prayed the gods to send new in the place of those that were gone, and allow them to spring forth again." when the seed was cast into the ground, the egyptians buried osiris: but the sacred rites were an imitation of the sufferings of isis, and the incidents which occurred when the body was deposited in the tomb. the progressive decay of productive power towards the north during the hot days, and the winter, which was indicated in the myth by the carrying of the corpse of osiris to the sea, and the custom of carrying the chest to the coast (p. ), is part of the egyptian conception; that isis discovers the body at byblus on the phenician coast is probably an invention of the greeks, who confounded the phenician horned goddess astarte, ashtaroth karnaim, with isis. when egypt was again fertilised by the inundation, when the days began to lengthen after the winter solstice, when the sun shone with fresh brightness, and the new fruit budded forth, then horus, the child born about the winter solstice, waxed strong at buto in the north of egypt--then he overcame typhon. the renewed power of the sun, the returning life of nature, the fresh blessings of the new year--these are the avenging son of osiris. when the creative and receptive powers of nature had thus been comprehended in the forms of osiris and isis, the divinities in whom creative power and receptivity had hitherto been perceived naturally coalesced with these forms to a greater or less degree. thus ptah of memphis, tum of thebes, the sun-god of heliopolis, are combined with osiris (the title ptah-osiris is not uncommon in the inscriptions,) though they are also retained as separate deities. thus also isis is identified with neith of sais, with mut of thebes, with hathor, with bast,[ ] the goddess of bubastis. horus, again, is identified with chem and ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful, vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. plutarch is certainly right in his remark that the egyptians regard osiris as the personification of everything in heaven and the under world.[ ] all the other deities were transfigurations and manifestations of osiris, mere modifications of his nature. when osiris is called the soul of ra,[ ] this can hardly have any other meaning but this, that the appearance of the sun-god in the visible world is an incarnation of the invisible nature of osiris. the egyptians often represented their deities with the heads, or in the shape of, the animals sacred to them; that is, they recognised the nature of the deities who were primarily conceived under the form of men, in the races of the beasts which they allotted to them. to the egyptians these animals must have appeared so closely and intimately connected with the deity to which they belonged, that the nature of the deity was better expressed and made more visible in the shape of the beast than in the shape of man. we must assume that the predominance of a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the mind of the egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action, an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. the force of nature, the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesced in the egyptian mind with the blind, unchanging action of animals. yet animals were also seen to possess freedom and movement, and an individual existence. this combination of the type and the individual must have seemed to the egyptians to correspond to the nature of their deities. the mystery of life, the natural law, which lay at the base of their worship, must for them have reached its most distinct and lively realisation in these animals. the bull is the sacred animal of the creative gods: the cow of the goddesses of birth and receptivity; the ram is sacred to chnum; the hawk and the cat to the deities of light and the sun; the beetle to ptah; a kind of heron to osiris; the vulture to ptah and isis; a kind of ibis to thoth; the dog-ape to anubis, the "ruler in the west;[ ]" the crocodile to the god sebek, who was worshipped at arsinoe, &c., &c. herodotus tells us that when a cat died in a house, all the inhabitants shaved their eyebrows; and that at conflagrations the egyptians directed all their attention to saving the cats, not to quenching the flames, and if, in spite of their efforts, a cat leapt into the flames and was burnt, the egyptians made a great lamentation.[ ] "to each of the races of the sacred animals," says diodorus, "a certain piece of land is consecrated, the products of which suffice for the food and tending of the race. those entrusted with the care of each race have to feed them. to feed the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till they come and take their food. the cats they coax by giving them bread and milk, or chopped fish from the nile, and thus provide them with suitable food. these duties they do not scruple to perform before the whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. with special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage. if one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and, amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to embalment. steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy sepulchres. anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punished with death; and everyone who has caused the death of an ibis or a cat, intentionally or unintentionally, must die, and is often killed in the most cruel manner, without any sentence passed upon him, by the collected mob. so deeply rooted is the reverence for sacred animals in the feeling of the people, so persistently does everyone cling to the worship of them, that even at the time when ptolemy was not yet declared an ally by the romans, and the nation was most anxious to pay respect to visitors from italy, and to give no cause for war, when a roman had unintentionally killed a cat, the mob gathered at his house, and neither the officers sent by the king to quiet them, nor the prevailing awe of the romans, could protect him from their vengeance. this fact i have not received from hearsay: i was in egypt and saw the occurrence. but what is done for the animals which are kept in the temples is easy to narrate, but difficult for anyone to believe who has not seen it."[ ] among the races of animals which, according to egyptian belief, shared in the nature of the deities to which they were sacred, were certain pre-eminent specimens. these were recognised by certain signs by the priests, and passed for a special incarnation of the deity. they were brought into his temple, and there worshipped and prayed to as his manifestation. the most sacred among these selected animals was apis, the bull, in the temple of ptah, at memphis. according to the account of herodotus, the egyptians believed that a ray of light from heaven had impregnated the cow, which brought forth an apis: by plutarch, the impregnation is said to take place by a ray of the moon.[ ] the priests recognized apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred beetle of ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and bi-coloured hairs in the tail.[ ] when an apis was found, he was, says diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the meadow of the "city of the nile" (nilopolis), where women were shown to him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the apis. then he was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of ptah, at memphis. there he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed, and the most precious frankincense was constantly burned before him. he received the most beautiful garments, the richest bedding-places, and the most handsome cows as his "bed-fellows"; the most distinguished men provided him with the best food at a very great expense. when the apis died of old age he was honoured with a splendid funeral. "when, on the death of alexander, ptolemy, the son of lagus, made himself master of egypt, it happened that the apis died, and the person entrusted with his care not only spent his own large fortune upon his burial, but borrowed, in addition, fifty talents from ptolemy. even in my own times certain feeders of the sacred animals have spent not less than one hundred talents on a single funeral."[ ] "the egyptians," diodorus remarks, "are of opinion that the soul of the dead osiris passed into this bull, and thus continues among them, and will so continue among their descendants." plutarch says that the apis at memphis was an image of the soul of osiris. according to the usual account of the priests, osiris and apis were one; for they taught that the apis was to be regarded as a fair image of the soul of osiris. strabo tells us, "the bull apis, which is revered as a god, is the same as osiris. the temple in which the apis was kept stands beside the temple of hephæstus (ptah). there is also a temple of serapis in that city, before which we saw sphinxes, buried in the sand, some to the middle, some to the neck."[ ] evidence from other sources, no less than the monuments, confirms these accounts of diodorus and plutarch. the monuments exhibit the apis with the sun's disk and the royal serpent between his horns, and greek papyri tell us that the keeper with whom the apis was placed was known as the "herdman of osorapi," _i.e._ of osiris-apis (osarhapi).[ ] we may assume that this osorapi was the serapis or sarapis of the greeks, and the temple of serapis a temple of osorapi. the sphinxes buried in sand at memphis have been discovered on the plateau on which the inhabitants buried their dead to the west of the ruins of this city. they are found here in two rows as often before the entrance of temples between abusir and sakkarah. it is by following this path of sphinxes that the discoverers were recently enabled to find the ruins of the temple of serapis, _i.e._ the temple of the grave of osiris-apis, and the sepulchral chambers of the apis-bulls hewn in the rocks around it. the oldest of the tombs hitherto opened belongs, according to the inscriptions, to an apis buried in the time of amenophis iii. ( - b.c.). above ground rises a massive structure, truncated at the top, and decorated with reliefs. this is the mortuary chapel. a sloping passage, the entrance to which lies before this structure, leads beneath the earth to a sepulchral chamber, where stands a sarcophagus with the mummy of the apis. the relief on the structure above exhibits the king bringing a drink-offering to the apis. beside the picture of the bull we read, "the living osiris, the lord of the sky: he is tum (p. ): his feathers are upon him: he gives life for evermore." on the sarcophagus of an apis buried in a similar tomb in the reign of horus ( - b.c.), we read:--"apis-osiris, the great deity who dwells in amenti, the ever-living lord." king ramses ii. ( - b.c.), in the second half of his reign, caused a broad gallery to be excavated under the rock, on both sides of which chambers of about twenty feet high were subsequently cut out as occasion required; in these were placed the remains of the dead apis-bulls in sarcophagi of basalt or granite. when the gallery of ramses was no longer sufficient, psammetichus i. caused a gallery still larger and more beautiful to be excavated, and provided with handsome cells. after darius had extended this second gallery, the bodies of the bulls were buried in the chambers of it down to the times of the latest ptolemies. as yet sixty-four tombs in all have been discovered; but of these only four were uninjured. all the rest had been already opened by the arabs, plundered, and in part destroyed. the inscriptions on the tombs in the galleries give the same representation of the apis as the older sepulchres. he is "the osiris again restored to life," the "revived apis of ptah," "the living apis, which is osiris abiding in amenti," the "second ptah." on a sarcophagus we read:--"here is osiris apis, who dwells in amenti, the great god, the eternal lord, the ruler for all time." another inscription remarks "that he had been sought for three months in the valleys of upper egypt, and on the islands of lower egypt. when found he had been brought to his throne in the temple, to his father ptah, in such and such a year, on such and such a day. the happy duration of his life had been six-and-twenty years; then the deity had been carried to burial, as he had established himself in the good amenti in order to unite himself on his eternal throne with the house of centuries." or, as it is said in another inscription, "the holiness of apis has been brought to unite himself with the good amenti."[ ] by this constantly renewed incarnation in the form of a bull, the emblem of generation, the god of life gave the egyptians a guarantee for the continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this world and the next. whether other forms of incarnation beside this were ascribed to the god cannot be determined. at the time when the nile began to rise, or shortly before it, there appeared in egypt from year to year a peculiar kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers on the back of the head.[ ] this was known to the egyptians as bennu. this bird, which announced or caused the fertilisation or new life of the land, could not but belong to the god of life. the whole race, or a select specimen, appears in special connection with osiris, and the temple at heliopolis. in the oldest portions of the book of the dead, which belong to the time of the amenemha and sesurtesen, we find, "i am that great bennu of on" (heliopolis); and the commentary adds, "bennu is osiris, viz., the osiris in on."[ ] the inscriptions say of the great bennu that "it was self-begotten," that "it caused the divisions of time to arise."[ ] this production of himself signifies the creative power of osiris, and the origin of the seasons might well be attributed to the bird which regularly appeared announcing the return of the period of fertilization. with the cultus of the bennu at heliopolis is connected the story of the phoenix. herodotus tells us that he was informed by the inhabitants of heliopolis that a bird, which, if it resembled the pictures, was gold-coloured and red, and like an eagle in shape and size, came from arabia to their city once in every years, and buried the corpse of his father in myrrh in the sanctuary of the sun-god.[ ] from later accounts we learn that the phoenix, on reaching the age of years, prepared a funeral pile of spices, and burned himself upon it; then he recreated himself, and carried the remains of his old body to heliopolis.[ ] tacitus says: "in the consulship of paulus fabius and lucius vitellius (_i.e._ in the year a.d.) after a lapse of centuries, the phoenix appeared in egypt. this bird, which was sacred to the sun, returned after an interval of years, according to the most common accounts; according to others after an interval of years. the first phoenix appeared in the reign of sesostris; the second under amasis; the third in the time of the third ptolemy; and as there was only a lapse of years between this ptolemy and the reign of tiberius, some regarded the last phoenix as a spurious one."[ ] Ælian remarks: "the egyptians are not agreed when the years are completed; and the priests were at variance whether the bird would appear then or later, and when he ought to come; but amid their dissensions the bird suddenly appeared at the right time."[ ] pliny informs us that the cycle of the great year was connected with the life of this bird, and with his return the stars came again into their old position.[ ] horapollo maintains that the phoenix was a symbol of the sun, and signified one who returned after a long time from a far country.[ ] there is no doubt, therefore, that the alleged appearance of the phoenix signified to the egyptians the close of an astronomical period. on the monuments the planet venus is described as the "star of bennu-osiris." as the morning star announced the day, the light returning out of darkness, it could easily be appropriated to osiris, and that period might be connected with the cycles of the planet venus.[ ] the selected cats of the sun-god and his daughter, the goddess of bubastis, the hawk of horus, the ibis of thoth, the vulture of mut, were regarded by the egyptians with no less veneration than the bulls of osiris. in a hymn to a male cat, which was kept for ra at heliopolis--the hymn is to be found on a memorial pillar of the fourth century b.c.--we read: "thy head is the head of the sun-god; thy nose is the nose of thoth, the twice mighty lord of hermopolis. thy ears are the ears of osiris, who hears the voice of all who call upon him; thy mouth is the mouth of the god tum, the lord of life, he has preserved thee from every stain. thy heart is the heart of ptah; he has purified thee from every stain of evil in thy members: thy teeth are the teeth of the god chunsu (the moon-god). thy thighs are the thighs of the god horus, the avenger of his father osiris, who has retaliated upon set the mischief he purposed against osiris."[ ] selected crocodiles--and even the crocodile was worshipped, at least in some regions, as in the thebais and around the lake of moeris--were to be found at thebes and arsinoe. "for both these animals," says herodotus "(and they are so tame that they allow themselves to be touched), the priests put ornaments of glass and gold in their ears, and bracelets on their fore-feet, and give them the best of food both of meal and from the sacrifices, and attend to them with the utmost care. when they die they are embalmed, and buried in the sacred tombs."[ ] strabo, who travelled through egypt more than four hundred years later than herodotus, narrates that a sacred crocodile was kept in the lake of moeris, which was tame to the priests. he was fed with the bread, wine, and flesh brought to him by visitors. "our host," strabo continues, "a man of distinction at arsinoe, who showed us the sacred things of the city, took cakes, roast meat, and a drink mixed with honey, and went with us to the lake. on the shore lay the crocodile; the priests went up to him, two of them opened his jaws; and the third put in first the cakes, then the meat, and last of all he gave him the drink. then the crocodile ran into the water and swam to the opposite bank. another stranger came with similar presents: the priests took them, ran round the lake and offered them to the crocodile, when they had found him, in the same manner as before."[ ] clement of alexandria describes the glory of the egyptian temples, and then continues thus: "the innermost shrine is veiled with a curtain of cloth of gold; when the priest removes the veil you see a cat, a crocodile, or a serpent of the land rolling on a purple coverlet." according to the account of herodotus, the dead cats were embalmed in sacred tombs at bubastis, the hawks at buto, the ibis at hermopolis.[ ] mummies of cats have been discovered at thebes and sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vultures at thebes and sioot; of hawks and ibises at thebes, hermopolis, abydus, and memphis; of crocodiles at thebes and manfalut.[ ] this reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried, would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. in the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself. the consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken series of incarnations of the deity. in a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes of the egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. if we set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their attributes. yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to arrive at a complete divine existence. the primary result of this feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. no nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the egyptians. it was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. and with his body must be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life: his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse. pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give an account of it. "the egyptians," says diodorus, "speak of the dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in hades. hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they furnish in a most extraordinary manner."[ ] the tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the libyan mountains. those of the wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower, or a front and a back one. the upper or front chamber is furnished with a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. it served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. in the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. the corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the common sepulchres. the preservation of the corpse was accomplished in various ways. either the entrails were taken out through an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre. like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. the dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. on the breast was generally depicted the beetle of ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of osiris. this receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which were made of more or less costly wood. rich persons added to their coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be opened without destroying the whole. the sarcophagus was carried to the sepulchre in solemn procession, led by the temple-servants, with the necessary implements, and the bull destined for sacrifice to the dead. next were seen the implements used by the deceased in his lifetime; the insignia of his order, if he had been a priest, or in any office; or, if he had held any military command, his chariot followed. after this came the waiting-women, hired for this purpose according to the custom of the east; and men with palm-branches, the servants of the dead, and the priests; last of all followed the sarcophagus on a boat--for the soul of the dead passed like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. this boat was on rollers, and drawn by oxen. the procession was closed by the mourners of the family and the friends. when the bull had been sacrificed and frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the dead. he was praised, as diodorus assures us, not because he was born of a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well instructed, because he had been pious towards the gods, and had lived a just and sober life. then the kinsfolk implored the gods to receive the dead into the society of the good. the accompanying multitude joined in the prayer, and extolled the faith of the deceased, who now would for ever pass his life in the company of the good.[ ] the coffin was then brought into the upper chamber, and from thence, when the ceremonies were completed, it was carried to its proper resting-place, and placed on the west side of it; the place was then closed and sealed. according to the egyptian story, osiris was not slain by typhon. he did not die; he was only taken away from men, as diodorus says;[ ] he descended into the under world; he passed away into the invisible region, while in the visible world he continued to live and work in the vigorous strength of his son horus. in the shape of horus, or ra, osiris wandered through the visible world. he changed only his name and shape when, every evening, he went back to his distant home in order to be alone. thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful ra, his son horus, the empire of this world. as the sun goes down every evening, and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new life, so to the minds of the egyptians death, in all its shapes, was only death in appearance, in reality it was a transition to a new life. and as osiris remained alive in death, and was the source of new life, so through him and in him the soul of man was aroused out of death to a new life. the sacred animals and men were of divine nature and origin; they could not, therefore, end with death; death could only carry them back to their divine origin, to that other world, from which they had come; and in that other world they must awake to a new life. owing to this power of awakening life out of death, osiris became to the egyptians the special god of the human soul. as lord of the under world, osiris is often found on the monuments in the shape of a mummy. his colour was in this case black, like his bull in memphis; his clothing was white;[ ] his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second beholding of light. in this form of osiris the greeks recognised the dionysus of their mysteries, whom they could also compare with osiris as the giver of fruits.[ ] the egyptians, says herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul of man was immortal.[ ] plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us that to the egyptian osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "his soul," he continues, "was regarded by the egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, osiris ruled over the dead, as hades and pluto among the greeks. in reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. when men are delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and invisible world, where pain is unknown, then osiris becomes their king and leader. they are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. this is the explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."[ ] the inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the so-called "book of the dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable accuracy the views of the egyptians on the fate of the soul after death. the greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the seventh or sixth century b.c. the contents show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. all the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of these manuscripts all the names under which osiris can be invoked--and they are more than a hundred--are gathered together. but fragments of this book of the dead, or, more strictly, this book of the resurrection, which forms the core of the egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are found hewn in sarcophagi--already with a triple commentary--which belong to a date previous to the year b.c. after death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the earth into the nether world. here, on the day of the "valuation of words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its actions weighed in the hall of double justice, _i.e._ the justice which rewards and the justice which punishes. osiris, with a crown upon his head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers. beside him sit forty-two spirits; anubis, the god with a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. the god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. as osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by horus and thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. the deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. he has done no wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their linen wraps. the departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of ra. he must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, and which he now again assumes. as in him divinity has been made human, so is he now in turn deified. to secure this knowledge for the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin. if the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was pure,[ ] he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of life and the sky--hathor and nut--poured out upon him the water of life. his prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach the fields of the sun-god.[ ] here the blessed planted the heavenly wheat--of which the ears were two cubits in length--wandered at will in shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water. arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various existences--that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it sprang. hence to the egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the "entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."[ ] the first chapter of the book of the dead was to be pronounced by the deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance there. "by learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be thrust back. food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the table of ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of aanro (paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." on the day of justification, the dead has to say: "i am one of the initiated; thy name i know; i know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." then comes the answer: "enter! thou knowest us."[ ] on a sarcophagus of the time of the amenemha and sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the book of the dead. "i am tum (p. ), a being, which i alone am. i am ra in his first sovereignty. i am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. i was yesterday; i know the morrow. when i spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. i know the name of that great god who is there. glory of ra is his name. i am the great bennu which is worshipped in on. i am chem in his manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; i have arrived at my land, i have arrived at my dwelling-place."[ ] "the sun-mountain (horizon) of his father tum is meant,"--so run the commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that the great god, existing by his own power, is osiris; and the great bennu also is osiris (p. ). by chem is meant chemhor, _i.e._, the horus, who by his own power renews his own youth every day. on the cover of the sarcophagus we find the formula, "when this chapter has been pronounced, he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."[ ] thus we must assume that the egyptians believed in man's return to his divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified that it could adopt divine attributes and power, and even assume a divine title. according to the account of herodotus, the egyptians believed that the soul of the dead passed into an animal, born at the time; from this it wandered into all the other animals on earth, in the air and the sea, and after , years it was again born with a human body.[ ] that this account is incorrect is proved by the records already quoted; it may perhaps have arisen from the egyptian conception that the soul of the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. but a purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. if a pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts was really regarded by the egyptians as a course of punishment and amelioration, the beasts meant can only be such as were not sacred. but as yet the examination of the monuments and records has by no means completely cleared up the relation of the soul to the body it has left, nor has it attained to any result on the fate in store for the souls which were found wanting when weighed in the balance. footnotes: [ ] herod. , . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , . [ ] "de isid." c. , ; "de pyth. oraculis," p. . [ ] macrob. "sat." , . [ ] "de isid." c. . [ ] de rougé, "zeitsch. d. d. m. gesellschaft," after a sepulchral pillar in the berlin museum, , . [ ] champollion, monuments, pl. _seq._ dümichen, "tempelinschriften." , . lepsius, "aelteste texte des todtenbuchs," s. . [ ] lepsius, "die götter der vier elemente;" dümichen, in "zeitsch. für ægyptische sprache," s. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] the identification of neith with athene (herod. , ; plat. "tim." p. ) rests on the similarity of the name, on the torch-races in honour of pallas at athens, and the feast of lamps at sais. gutschmid, "beiträge zur geschichte des alten orients," s. , ff., has shown that neith and athene cannot be brought into agreement in points of language. the inscription on the throne of neith at sais, given by plutarch ("de isid." c. ), "i am all that has been, is, will be, and no mortal has lifted my robe," does not in the first part of it contradict certain applications of the oldest text of the "book of the dead" (see below). on the other hand, the second part is doubtful. in any case, the fact that the _peplos_ has not been raised does not refer to the inconceivable nature of the goddess, but to seclusion from sexual intercourse. it can only mean that neith was born from her own creative force. [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] horapoll. , . [ ] brugsch, "zeitschr. d. d. morgenland. gesellschaft," , . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , . [ ] plutarch, "de isid." c. ; cf. eber's "gosen," s. . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," i, . [ ] lepsius in "zeitschrift für æg. sprache," , s. . [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. , , ; "götterkreis," s. - . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] ibid. c. . [ ] wilkinson, , , , . [ ] parthey, "abh. der berl. akademie," ; minutoli, "reise zum tempel des ammon;" cf. herod. . . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," , ; lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. - . [ ] herod. , ; diod. , , . [ ] compare the beautiful explanation given by lepsius of the game at dice between hermes and selene, narrated in plutarch, _loc. cit._ [ ] lepsius, "chronol." , . as to the meaning of seb, i should be inclined to give the preference to the view of brugsch. [ ] brugsch and lepsius in "zeitschrift für æg. sprache," , s. ff. [ ] wilkinson, "ancient egypt," , . [ ] lepsius, "götterkreis," s. ; "briefe," - . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. [ ] plut. _ib._ - ; strab. p. . [ ] herod. , ; plut. _loc. cit._ ; diod. , . [ ] busiris was the name of several towns in lower egypt; we must assume that the chief town of the district of this name was the scene of the festival. how the greeks turned the name of this town into a king busiris who used to slay strangers, i cannot explain. eratosthenes in strabo, p. , says: "there never was a king busiris; the story may have been invented owing to the inhospitality of the inhabitants of busiris;" and diodorus observes: "it was not a king who was called busiris, but the grave of osiris was so named in the native language" ( , ), which is near the truth. [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. , . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ c. . the inscriptions on the temple at dendera prescribe a seven days' lamentation for osiris, beginning on the th choiak, and give full directions for the burial. lauth, in the "zeitschr. f. æg. sprache," , s. ff. [ ] herod. , , . [ ] "de isid." c. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plutarch, _loc. cit._ c. . [ ] lepsius, "götterkreis," s. . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ c. , , . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ c. . [ ] parthey, on plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ . [ ] wilkinson, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] brugsch in the "zeitschr. d. d. m. gesellschaft," , , c. ff. [ ] plut. "de isid." c. , , , , , , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] diod. , ; plut. "de isid." c. , , . [ ] plut. _loc. cit._ c. . [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. . [ ] birch. "gall." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] herod. , ; Ælian ("de nat. anim." , ) speaks of twenty-nine marks of apis; cf plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] diod. , ; plut. "de iside." c. ; strabo, p. . [ ] "mém. pres. à l'acad. des inscript." sér. , , p. . [ ] mariette, "bulletin de l'athén-français," oct. , p. ; juill. nov. , pp. , , . [ ] "ardea purpurea;" lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. . [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. , , . [ ] brugsch in "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , ; cf. , ; pompon. mela. , . [ ] "annal." , . [ ] "de nat. anim." , . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] ibid. , , . [ ] brugsch, "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , ff.; lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. ; de rougé, "bulletin de l'athén. français," , p. _seqq._ [ ] brugsch, "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] wilkinson, "egypt," . , , ff. [ ] diod. , , cf. . [ ] diod. , ; wilkinson, "egypt," sec. ser. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "de iside," c. , . [ ] herod. , ; diod. , , , . [ ] ibid. , . [ ] "de iside," c. , , , . [ ] pierret, "traduct. du chap. i. du livre des morts;" "zeitsch. für æg. sprache," , s. ; , s. ff. [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , p. ff. [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. . [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. , . [ ] lepsius, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. . [ ] herod. , . chapter iv. the kingdom of memphis. the lists of the egyptians place menes (mena) at the head of their series of kings. they describe him as a native of this, a place in the neighbourhood of abydus, below thebes, a district which diodorus considers the oldest part of egypt. menes passes for the founder of the kingdom and the builder of memphis (mennefer); he is said to have taught the egyptians the worship of the gods and the offering of sacrifice.[ ] herodotus informs us that he learnt from the egyptian priests that menes had thrown a dam across the nile about stades above memphis, and thus forced the stream which previously flowed at the foot of the libyan chain of hills to leave its ancient channel, and flow at an equal distance between the two ranges. when the land thus gained by the dam had become firm, he built upon it the city, now called memphis, and still situated in the narrow part of egypt. towards the north and west sides of the city, menes had excavated a lake, and filled it with water from the river--which was itself a protection to the city on the east,--and in the city he built the greatest and most remarkable temple of hephæstus (ptah).[ ] diodorus observes:--the founder of memphis, the most splendid city in egypt, selected the most suitable site by founding the city in the place where the nile separates into several arms, so that the city, lying on the pass, commanded the navigation up the nile. he also obtained for the place a wonderful advantage and security by throwing a huge dam in front of it towards the south, as the nile at the time of inundation overflows the district. this dam was a protection against the rising water, and at the same time served as an acropolis and defence from the attack of enemies. on all the other sides of the city he caused a large and deep lake to be excavated, which received the overflow of the water and afforded the strongest protection for the city. the circuit of the city he placed at stades, and owing to the excellence of the situation, memphis was generally chosen by the kings as their place of residence.[ ] the situation, just a little above the place where the river-valley, hitherto enclosed between the two ranges of hills, opens out into the delta, was certainly the best adapted to form the centre of an empire extending over the narrow valley of the upper river and the broader district of the delta, with its wealth of corn-land and meadows, and to check the entrance of enemies who came from the north-west or the north-east into the upper valley, even when it was no longer possible to maintain the delta against them. about fifteen miles above memphis, at kafr-el-yat, the nile makes a considerable bend to the east, and modern investigations claim to have discovered traces showing that this curve is due to the hand of man. menes, whose accession, according to the arrangement of lepsius, would fall in the year b.c., was followed on the throne by king athotis (ateta), who was said to have built the citadel at memphis. next came kenkenes, whose successor was uenephes, to whom is ascribed the erection of the pyramids. we have seen what care and labour the egyptians devoted to their tombs, their "everlasting houses." the west, where the sun sets, and the desert spreads out in boundless expanse beyond the libyan range, belonged in their minds to the gods of night, of the under-world, and of death. about ten miles to the west of memphis there rises a desolate and barren plateau of rock, which for many miles runs parallel to the river, about feet above the blooming and animated valley through which the nile takes its course. in that rocky soil, which separates the fruitful land from the desert, the bodies of the dead were placed in chambers, either hewn in the solid stone, or, where the soil was less firm, built of masonry, and thus secured even from the overflow of the river. even the kings sought their resting-places on this plateau of rock. they, above all, gave attention to the solidity and durability of their tombs; and in death, as in life, they wished to be kings. the place where a king rested must be marked as royal, and visible from a distance; the grave of a king must tower over the rest; his chamber must be of all most difficult to open. thus at first blocks of stone were rolled upon the closed burial-place of a king, or a mound of earth was raised over it, if sand and soil were to be obtained in the neighbourhood. the strong winds which blew from the desert made it, however, necessary to secure these mounds, and cover them with stone. hence by degrees the sepulchral heaps acquired a definite shape: they were rectangular structures, lessening toward the apex; then, by extending the base and sharpening the gradient, they were brought into the form of pyramids, and thus obtained the greatest possible firmness and solidity. for a similar reason the core, or central part, was no longer made of earth, but of brick; where blocks of stone could be obtained they were fitted into the core with more and more regularity, until at last these structures were completed within and without of rectangular hewn blocks of stone in regular layers, and artificial mountains of stone towered over the sepulchral chambers of the kings. "at a distance of forty stades from memphis," strabo tells us, "is a range of hills, on which stand the pyramids, or sepulchres of the kings. among these, three are especially deserving of notice. rectangular in shape, they are about one stadium high; and the height is slightly less than the length of either side. the sides are not equal, one is a little longer than the other, and near the middle of the longer side is a stone, which can be taken out. behind this a winding, hollow passage leads to the tomb. two of these pyramids stand close to each other on the same level; at a distance, on a higher level, rises the third, which, though much smaller, has been erected at much greater cost." "like mountains," says tacitus, "the pyramids have been raised amid impassable quicksands by the emulation and power of the kings."[ ] about seventy of these structures, which rise in a long line on the plateau of memphis, from abu roash to dahshur,[ ] remain as witnesses of the rulers of the old kingdom of memphis and their dependants, of the artistic skill and laborious industry of their nation. of some only the bases and a few fragments are in existence; of the largest, the points, and at least a part of the casing, are either decayed, fallen down, or broken off; for at a later time the arabs used these monuments as quarries. three pyramids which stand in the neighbourhood of the modern abusir are formed of rough blocks of stone, both in the cores and in the passages to the sepulchral chambers; and these blocks are fastened together by mud from the nile poured in between them; their casings, now decayed, were of lime-stone blocks, and in height they extended from to feet. others, originally at least, of an equal height, of which the core was regularly built of brick, are found farther to the south near dahshur. the architecture of these remains shows that the kings of memphis commenced building their tombs soon after their accession. they began, it would seem, with a core of moderate size, and in this they probably constructed a sort of temporary chamber. if time sufficed, the first plan was overlaid with new strata, and thus it gradually increased in size. should the builder die before the whole was completed, the casing of the structure thus raised in the form of steps was left to the successor.[ ] between seven smaller pyramids, built regularly of stone blocks, which are about feet in height, and of similar plan and structure, rise the three largest at gizeh; the highest was originally feet in height, though now it measures only feet; the next greatest, standing south-west of the highest, is now feet, and was originally feet in height; the third measures but feet. the second largest, originally twenty-three feet lower than the largest, is on a slightly higher level, the masonry is inferior to the largest, and the chamber lies immediately under the area of the structure. the largest measures feet, or egyptian cubits,[ ] on each side of the area; the height along the slope is feet, and the structure contains about ninety million cubic feet of masonry. fifty feet above the original area, now covered with the sand of the desert, in the middle of the north side, there commences a gradually descending passage, about three feet broad and four feet high, leading to a chamber hewn deep in the foundation rock. this chamber lies more than one hundred feet below the level of the pyramid, exactly feet under the apex, and in a perpendicular line with it; it is thirty-six feet above the level of the nile. from this passage to the chamber there branches off, just behind the entrance, a horizontal shaft, and from this rises an ascending passage leading to two chambers, one over the other, which, like the sepulchral chamber below, lie in the axis of the pyramid. the third and smaller pyramid--its sides measure feet, and the height of the slope is feet--being built upon looser soil, required a greater substructure, on which it rose in five or six perpendicular and gradually diminishing stories, the spaces between being filled up with bevelled masonry. up to a considerable height the casing consists of polished slabs of granite. under this structure in the native rock lies a larger chamber, and behind this the sepulchral chamber. when herodotus visited egypt about the middle of the fifth century b.c., and questioned his interpreter and guide about the builders of these three pyramids, he was told in answer that they were built by cheops, chephren, and mycerinus. he was told that cheops first caused a road to be made from the stone quarries in the arabian chain of hills--the range east of the nile--down to the river, and again from the west side of the river to the high ground above memphis. the road was built of smoothed stones five stades in length, ten fathoms broad, and at the highest places thirty-two fathoms high; and it was intended to convey the materials from the arabian side of the river. in making this road and building the subterranean chamber for the grave of cheops ten years were consumed, although , men were constantly employed upon it by spaces of three months, when they were relieved by an equal number of fresh workmen. twenty years were then spent upon the pyramid, of which each side and the height measured feet; it was built in such a manner that the structure was carried out by landings and steps, like a staircase. when the proper height was reached, the landings were covered from top to bottom with smoothed and carefully-fitted stones, and no stone is less than thirty feet. under the surface was a canal carried in masonry from the nile round the subterranean chamber. "it is also inscribed on the pyramid," herodotus continues, "what the workmen consumed in radishes, onions, and garlic, and on these, as i well remember, the interpreter who read the letters told me, , talents of silver were spent. if this is true, what must have been expended upon iron for the tools, and on food and clothing for the workmen?" when cheops had reigned fifty years he was succeeded by his brother chephren, who also built a pyramid, though not equal in size to the other, and without any chamber or subterranean canal. "both pyramids stand on the same elevation, of about one hundred feet; but the second is forty feet lower than the first; the lower stratum is built of vari-coloured ethiopian stone." when chephren had reigned fifty-six years, he was followed by mycerinus, the son of cheops. this king also left a pyramid behind him, "but his pyramid was much smaller than that built by his father: the sides are only feet in length; the lower half is built of ethiopian stone."[ ] the account of diodorus is as follows:--king chemmis of memphis reigned fifty years, and built the largest of the three pyramids, which in height measures more than six plethra, and along the sides more than seven plethra. it is entirely constructed of solid stone, very difficult to work, and therefore of endless durability. even now, although not less than a thousand, or as some say even more than , , years have passed, the structure is uninjured, and the joints of the stones unloosened. besides, we are told that these stones were brought from a considerable distance out of arabia, and the structure was carried to its present height by means of mounds of earth. most wonderful of all, no traces of these mounds, no fragments from the hewing and smoothing of the stones remain; so that it would seem that this work was not accomplished gradually by the hand of man, but was planted complete by a god in the midst of the surrounding sand. though it is said that , men bestowed their labour on the structure, the work can hardly have been finished in twenty years, and the number of men who erected it must also have removed the mounds of earth and excavated material, and put everything in its original condition. chemmis was followed by his brother kephren, who reigned fifty-six years. other accounts tell us that the kingdom descended on his son, chabryes, and not on his brother. but all agree that he built the second pyramid, which resembles the first in the art of the execution, though much inferior in size, since on the sides it measures only one stadium (or, according to recent measurement, exactly - / greek feet). and while the money spent in radishes and garden herbs for the builders is inscribed on the larger one, the smaller remains without any inscription. though both these kings had destined these tombs for their place of burial, neither is buried there. roused by the burden of their labours, the cruelty and violence of these kings--and in herodotus also cheops and chephren appear as wicked and godless kings--the people threatened to take their bodies out of their graves and insult them. terrified by this threat, each of the kings in his last moments bade his relations bury him privately in a secret place. after kephren reigned mycerinus, whom others call mencherinus, the son of chemmis. he built the smallest pyramid. though less in size, it surpasses the others in the excellence of the work and the beauty of the stone; up to the fifteenth layer it consists of black stone resembling the stone of thebes; from thence to the top the stone is the same as in the other pyramids. on the north side is written the name of the builder, mycerinus. abhorring the cruelty of his predecessors, mycerinus, as we learn, sought to make his rule moderate and beneficent to his subjects, and did everything to gain the affections of the nation. he paid great attention to the administration of justice; and to the common people who had not received from the tribunals such a sentence as seemed just to him, he made presents. "but as to the building of the pyramids, there is no agreement either among the egyptians or their historians; some ascribe them to the kings i have mentioned; some to other kings."[ ] the accounts given by herodotus and diodorus of the structure of the largest pyramid are completely confirmed by modern researches. even now it is thought that traces can be recognised of the causeway which served for the transport of the materials from the left bank of the nile to the plateau.[ ] the pyramid itself is built in large regular steps constructed of squares of granite. the yellow lime-stone of the casing must also have been really brought from the arabian side of the nile, because better stone of that kind was found there.[ ] on the other hand, the account of a subterranean canal round the grave chamber is merely a legend of the people, who desired to adorn with new marvels the structure already so marvellous; it is impossible, simply because the lower chamber, and not only the area of the pyramid, is above the lower level of the nile. the , workmen of herodotus, changed every three months, and the , of diodorus--a number formed from the days in the old egyptian year--have arisen out of the free invention of later times, although the building must certainly have occupied more than a decade of years. inscriptions are not found now on the external side of the pyramid. if such were in existence at the time of herodotus, they certainly contained other things than those which the interpreter pretended to read there. the interpreters who served as guides to the travellers of that day in egypt, as the dragoman does now, could hardly have read the hieroglyphics; they contented themselves with narrating the traditions and stories popularly connected with the great monuments of past time, not without certain exaggerations and additions.[ ] but the names of the builders of the three largest pyramids, which these interpreters mentioned to the greeks, are confirmed by the monuments. in the deep chamber of the largest pyramid there is no sarcophagus; in the upper of the two chambers which lie in the axis of the pyramid there has been found, it is true, a simple sarcophagus of red granite, but it bears no inscription. above these chambers, however, there are certain small spaces left open, with a view no doubt of diminishing the pressure of the stone-work upon them, and on the walls of these spaces is written the name, chufu, chnemu chufu, in hieratic characters.[ ] the same name frequently recurs in the tombs surrounding this pyramid, in which, according to the inscriptions, the wives, sons, officers, and priests of chufu were buried; and among them the scribe of the buildings of the kings and the priest of apis, who was at the same time keeper of the gates and of the palace. in this inscription the pyramid of chufu is called "chut." on a monumental stone found in the apis tombs--now in cairo--we read, "the living horus, the king of egypt, chufu, has built a temple to isis near the temple of the sphinx, north of the temple of osiris, and has erected his pyramid beside the temple of isis."[ ] chufu himself is not found in egypt, but in the peninsula of sinai he is pictured in relief on the rocks in the wadi maghara. he is represented as lifting his war-club against an enemy whom he has forced upon his knee and seized by the head-dress with the left hand.[ ] in an inscription in the same valley, the oldest which we possess, his predecessor snefru claims to have subjugated these regions. in the second pyramid, in the chamber under the surface, a sarcophagus of granite has been discovered on the floor without any inscription. but in the inscriptions on the graves, especially on the grave of the architect of king chafra, his pyramid is mentioned as "the great pyramid." between the paws of the sphinx which stands to the north of the second pyramid, hewn out of the living rock, is a monumental stone, on which is read the name chafra,[ ] and in the ruins of a temple lying near the sphinx--the same without doubt which is mentioned in the stone at cairo--seven statues have been exhumed, the inscriptions on which prove that they represent "the master and gold horus, chafra, the good god, the lord of the crown," _i.e._, king chafra himself.[ ] and lastly, the inscriptions on the tomb of a woman whose name is read as mertitef, prove that she was the chief favourite of snefru and of chufu, and had been united to chafra.[ ] hence chafra must have succeeded chufu, and the "great" pyramid built by him can hardly have been any other than that which now holds the second place. in the sepulchral chamber of the third pyramid, it is known in the inscriptions as "har," _i.e._, "the supreme," the sarcophagus of king menkera with his mummy has been discovered. it is made of blue basalt, and bears the following inscription:--"o osiris, king menkera, ever living one; begotten of the sky, carried in the bosom of nut, scion of seb (p. ). thy mother nut is outstretched over thee, in her name of the mystery of the sky may she deify thee and destroy thy enemies, king menkera, ever living one."[ ] it is therefore an ascertained fact that chufu, chafra, and menkera were the builders of the three great pyramids. in the mouth of the greeks the name chufu passed into cheops, and by a farther change into suphis. the name chemmis in diodorus has arisen out of the name chnemu in the form chnemu chufu; from chafra naturally arose chephren, kephren, and chabryes. in the list of kings in eratosthenes, the fourteenth successor of menes is saophis; eratosthenes allows him a reign of twenty-nine years. his successor, who has a reign of twenty-seven years, bears the same name. the second saophis is followed by moscheres with a reign of thirty-one years. manetho's list gives the name suphis to the twenty-seventh king after menes, and he is said to have reigned sixty-three years. then follows a second suphis, with a reign of sixty-six years, and this king is succeeded by menchres, who reigned sixty-three years. on the first suphis in manetho's list the excerpt of africanus remarks: "this king built the largest pyramid, which herodotus assigns to the time of cheops;" in the excerpt of eusebius, both in the greek text and the armenian translation, this remark is made on the second suphis. hence we can have no hesitation in identifying the cheops and chephren of herodotus, the chemmis and kephren of diodorus, with the first and second saophis and sufis of the lists, the chufu and chafra of the inscriptions; and the mycerinus of herodotus and diodorus is beyond doubt the same as the moscheres of eratosthenes, the mencheres of manetho, and the menkera of the sarcophagus in the third pyramid. in the national tradition of the egyptians, as received by the greeks, cheops and chephren were called brothers, and this is no doubt mainly due to the fact that the monuments of these two kings surpassed all the other pyramids, and were of nearly the same height and size. it is impossible that cheops should have reigned fifty years, and his brother chephren who succeeded him, fifty-six years, as herodotus and diodorus tell us--the inscription quoted above makes the same woman the favourite of the predecessor of chufu, of chufu, and chafra also; even more impossible is it that the first suphis should have reigned sixty-three years, and the second sixty-six, as given in the list of manetho, if they were brothers; or that mycerinus, whom herodotus as well as diodorus calls the son of cheops, should have succeeded chephren with a reign of sixty-three years, as manetho tells us. like their brotherhood, the wickedness of cheops and chephren is due to the popular legends of later times. the sight of the enormous structures forced on later generations the reflection what labour, what stupendous efforts must have been necessary for their erection. this reflection united with certain dim memories, and gathered round the rule of the strangers, the shepherd-tribes, which for a long time afflicted egypt, as is clear enough from a trait in the narrative of herodotus. he assures us that the egyptians could scarcely be induced to mention the names of the kings who built the great pyramids: they spoke of them as the works of the shepherd philitis.[ ] in the eyes of the egyptians of the olden time, tombs would never have appeared to be works of impiety and wickedness, realising as they did in such an extraordinary degree the object most eagerly desired, a secure and indestructible resting-place for the dead: with them they would rather pass as works of singular piety. without doubt it is the older tradition, that of the priests, which meets us in the observation appended in the list of manetho and the excerpt of africanus to the first suphis, and in the excerpt of eusebius, both in the greek text and armenian translation, to the second suphis, in which we are told that this king had composed a sacred book, and the egyptians regarded it as a very great treasure. according to the inscription, chufu had erected a temple to isis by the side of the temple of the sphinx, and therefore the latter temple must have been already in existence. and as a fact the ruins still found beside the great sphinx give evidence of very ancient workmanship. there was a court, the ante-court of the temple, which surrounded a portico supported on twelve square pillars; next came a hall supported on monoliths, the temple itself, and finally the holy of holies, surrounded by small chambers. the material used in building was limestone and granite. the symbolic form of the deity, to whom the temple belonged, was the enormous sphinx, feet in length, hewn out of the rock, with the body of a lion and the head of a man. from the memorial stone before it we learn that it symbolized the god harmachu (armachis of the greeks), _i.e._ horus in splendour (_har-em-chu_).[ ] from the inscription on this stone, which dates from the time of tuthmosis iv., it seems to follow that it was chafra, who caused this shape to be hewn out of the rock and consecrated it to the god. other inscriptions inform us that the pyramids were regarded as sepulchral temples, and that there were priests for the service of the princes who were buried there, and had attained to a divine nature, and these services were still in existence at the time of the ptolemies. one of the tombs at gizeh belongs to a priest, a relation of chafra, whose duty it was to "honour the pyramid uer (the great) of king chafra;" another is found at sakkarah belonging to "a priest of chufu, and chafra."[ ] on a monumental stone of the time of the ptolemies (found in the serapeum, and now in the louvre) mention is made of the temple of harmachu on the south of the house of isis, and of a certain psamtik, the prophet of isis, of osarhapi (p. ), of harmachu, of chufu and chafra.[ ] the temples of osiris and isis, near the three great pyramids, and the inscription on the sarcophagus of king menkera are evidence that the cultus of osiris, the belief in his rule in the next world, in the return of the soul to her divine origin, and her deification after death, was already in existence at the time when these monuments were erected. the use not of hieroglyphics only, but also of the hieratic alphabet, in red and black colours, in the pyramid of chufu, and the graves around it, in the sculptures of which writing materials and rolls of papyrus are frequently engraved, the forms of domestic and household life, of agriculture and the cultivation of the vine, of hunting and fishing, preserved on the tombs of gizeh, are evidence of the long existence and manifold development of civilisation, no less than those great monuments, or even the graves themselves with their artistic mode of construction, their severe and simple style of execution, and the pleasing forms of their ornaments. of the seven statues of chafra, discovered in the temple of the sphinx, one, chiselled out of hard green and yellow basalt, has been preserved uninjured. the king is represented sitting, and naked, with the exception of a covering on the head and a girdle round the loins. the lower arms rest on the thighs, the left hand is outstretched, the right holds a fillet. the sides of the cube, on which chafra is seated, are formed by lions, between the feet of which are stems of papyrus. on the high back of the chair, behind the head of the king, sits the hawk of horus, whose wings are spread forwards in an attitude of protection. the execution of the statue of the king is a proof of long practice in sculpture. the natural form is truly and accurately rendered, and though even here egyptian art displays its characteristic inclination to severity, and correctness in the proportions of the body, to repose and dignity, yet in the head there is an unmistakable attempt to individualize an outline already fixed--an attempt not without success. still more distinctly individual are two statues found near the pyramids of meidum, from the reign of the predecessor of chufu, a wooden statue, and certain pictures in relief from the tombs near the great pyramids. the architecture, no less than the sculpture, of these most ancient monuments, displays a high degree of experience and a knowledge of the principles of art, a conscious purpose and effort existing together with a fixed obedience to rule. we learnt from diodorus that the great pyramids were erected , , or, according to some, , years before his time. according to the list of manetho, cheops, chephren, and mycerinus belonged to the fourth dynasty. if we accept the incredible reigns of sixty-three, sixty-six, and again, sixty-three years, which manetho allows to those three kings, they reigned over egypt, according to lepsius' dates, from the year b.c., to b.c. at a period subsequent to these kings the list of manetho speaks in the sixth dynasty of a king phiops, who came to the throne as a child in his sixth year, and lived to be years old. the list of erastosthenes mentions a king apappus, who reigned for years. the monuments show us a king pepi, in whom we recognise phiops and apappus, and in consequence a reign of ninety-five years is assigned to him ( - b.c.). yet hitherto the sixteenth year is the highest found on the monuments for the reign of pepi; and in the inscription on a tomb at abydus, now in the museum at cairo, a man of the name of una declares that he had filled the highest offices in the kingdom under teta, the predecessor of pepi, under pepi, and again under his successor, merenra. if one person could be the minister of three successive rulers, it is clear that the second of these reigns could not have lasted or years. under the reign of pepi, as well as his immediate predecessors and successors, _i.e._, in the sixth dynasty of manetho, the development of egypt must have undergone a certain change. the kings, previous to this family, are represented on the monuments with a cap falling to one side, or with a tall head-dress; pepi is represented on one relief with this head-dress, but on another with one of a lower shape. the tall white cap is the crown of upper egypt, the lower red one is the crown of lower egypt. it is no longer on the plateau of memphis, and among the tombs there, but in middle egypt, near el kab, and in the valley of hamamat, which leads from coptus to the red sea, that we find the monuments of pepi and his race, and the tombs of their priests and magistrates are at abydus. under this dynasty, therefore, the central point of the kingdom appears to have been moved from memphis in the direction of middle egypt. on the west coast of the peninsula of sinai, in the wadi maghara, pepi is seen striking down an enemy; and from the inscription on the tomb of una, it is clear that pepi's kingdom extended up the nile as far as the negroes, that his successor caused dockyards to be built in nubia, and that una had to procure blocks of fine stone for the sarcophagus of pepi and his successor, and also for the pyramid of the latter.[ ] the removal of the centre of the kingdom from memphis, which is noticeable under the family of pepi, was completely carried out under a later house, which is stated in the lists to belong to thebes--the eleventh and twelfth dynasty of manetho. upper egypt became the seat of the royal power; thebes (the no-amon, _i.e._ possession of ammon, of the hebrews) took her place beside memphis. the princes of this new dynasty are no longer called in the monuments the lords of upper and lower egypt, but the "lords of both lands;" they always wear both crowns. hence it is possible that this royal house in the first instance ruled over upper egypt only from thebes, and that for a long time upper and lower egypt existed side by side independently, till the kings of thebes succeeded in reducing lower egypt under their dominion. of amenemha, the first king of this house, who ruled over upper and lower egypt ( - b.c.), a colossal figure of red granite is still in existence, which was discovered in lower egypt at tanis (san), not far from lake menzaleh.[ ] his power must have extended up the nile over the adjacent part of nubia, for a pillar discovered there informs us that he intrusted an officer with the superintendence of the gold mines in nubia.[ ] his successor, sesurtesen i. ( - b.c.), erected a temple to ammon at thebes, and set up obelisks, _i.e._ pointed monolithic pillars, dedicated to the sun-god, in lower egypt, in fayum, and at heliopolis. the obelisk at fayum, not far from the ancient arsinoe, was about forty feet in height; it has been broken by the fall into two pieces. the obelisk of heliopolis is sixty feet in height; it still towers over the ruins of this city, near the village of matarieh. it is not the first obelisk erected in egypt, for the inscriptions of chufu mention an obelisk erected by that king, but it is the oldest which has come down to our time. the inscription, repeated on all four sides, runs thus:--"horus, the life of that which is born, the child of the sun, sesurtesen, who is beloved by the spirits of heliopolis, who will live for ever, the golden hawk, the life of that which is born, this gracious god has erected this obelisk at the beginning of the great festival. he has erected it who assures us of life for ever."[ ] that this king also ruled in nubia, and forced his way far up the nile above egypt, is proved by a monument in nubia on the cataracts of the wadi halfa; a pillar, on which is depicted sesurtesen, representing nubians and negroes, the prisoners of eight nations or tribes, to the god horus.[ ] in the rock tombs of beni hassan is buried an officer of this king, amenj, overseer of the canton of hermopolis (ashmunein). the inscription tells us that amenj had served the king when on a campaign to destroy his enemies; that he had approached the land of cush, and reached the limits of the earth. the king had returned in peace after the overthrow of his enemies. afterwards amenj with warriors had conveyed the produce of the goldmines from the canton of hermopolis to the stronghold of coptus. he had loved his canton; and all the works required for the house of the king he had carried out in his canton by his own arm, and had paid in the tribute. he had laboured, and the canton had been in full activity. he had not afflicted the children, or ill-treated the widows; he had not disturbed the fishermen, or hindered the herdsmen. famine had never prevailed, because every plot had been planted. he had caused the inhabitants to live, had given gifts without regarding the great before the small.[ ] the fragment of a seated colossus of sesurtesen i., of black granite, is to be seen in the museum at berlin; his colossus of red granite is at tanis. a third statue of this king has been found at abydus.[ ] amenemha ii. and sesurtesen ii. carried on the campaigns of the first sesurtesen in the south of egypt. a monument in the valley of hamamat exhibits battles with the punt, _i.e._ with the tribes of the arabians and the negroes.[ ] sesurtesen iii., who succeeded sesurtesen ii., completed the subjugation of lower nubia. to protect the new border of the kingdom, he caused fortresses to be erected a little above the falls of the wadi halfa, at semne and kumne, about miles south of syene. a pillar discovered in this district has the following inscription:--"southern border; erected in the eighth year, under the rule of his holiness king sesurtesen iii., who gives life for all eternity. no negro shall pass over it on his way, except the boats laden with the oxen, goats, and asses of the negroes."[ ] the third sesurtesen was followed by the third amenemha ( to b.c.). inscriptions in the wadi maghara, in the peninsula of sinai, tell us that amenemha iii. caused the copper to be conveyed from the mines there by soldiers, in the second year of his reign; and inscriptions in the valley of hamamat show that the quarries there were frequently used by this king.[ ] near the fortifications of his predecessor, on the rocks of semne and kumne, are found numerous records of the height reached by the nile in the reign of amenemha iii. here we read--"level of hapi (the nile) in the fourteenth, sixteenth, thirtieth years, &c., under his holiness king amenemha iii., who lives for ever." from these observations we find that the average height of the inundations at that time was more than twenty-four feet higher than at present; and the greatest height reached under amenemha iii. was twenty-seven feet above the greatest height of modern times.[ ] herodotus tells us the following story;--among the successors of menes, moeris carried out some remarkable works; he built the north gateway in the temple of hephaestus, excavated a great lake, and erected pyramids in it. "the priests told me that under the rule of moeris, the nile overflowed the land below memphis, although it had only risen to the height of eight cubits, but now the water does not cover the land unless it reaches a height of sixteen or at least fifteen cubits; and it seems to me that if the land were raised again in the same proportion, the egyptians who live in the delta below the lake of moeris would be in distress. the circuit of the lake of moeris is about , stades, or sixty schoenes, and the depth in the deepest place about fifty fathoms. the lake extends from north to south. that it was the work of human hands, is clear from the nature of it. about the middle are two pyramids, each of which rises about fifty fathoms out of the water, and on each is a stone colossus seated on a throne. the water of the lake does not arise from springs, for the whole district there is entirely without water, it is introduced by a canal from the nile. for six months the water flows from the nile into the lake, and again for six months from the lake into the nile. while it runs out the fishery brings in a talent of silver a day for the king's treasury; but when the water flows into the lake the product is a third of a talent only.[ ]" diodorus tells us that king moeris erected the north gateway at memphis, the splendour of which excelled all others; and above the city at about ten schoenes distance he excavated a lake of marvellous utility and incredible size. the circuit was , stades, and the depth in most places was fifty fathoms. "who would not ask, when contemplating the vast extent of this work, how many myriads of men were required to complete it, and for how many years? but no one could ever speak in worthy terms of the utility of the lake and the advantage it is to the inhabitants of egypt and the wise prudence of the king in making it. as the nile does not rise evenly, and the fruitfulness of the land depends on the evenness of the overflow, moeris excavated this lake to receive the superfluous water, in order that an excessive inundation might not create marshes and morasses, or a deficiency of water imperil the fruitfulness of the soil. he carried a canal feet in breadth from the river for eighty stades (about ten miles) to the lake, through which he first admitted the superfluous water and then drew it off. in this way he procured for the tillers of the soil the desired medium in the water, since the mouth of the canal was sometimes closed, sometimes opened, which was both a difficult and costly thing to do. the lake has remained to our time, and is still called by the name of the constructor, the lake of moeris. in the middle, the king who excavated it left a place on which he built his own tomb, and two pyramids. one was erected for himself, the other for his wife. on these he placed stone statues of himself and his wife, sitting on thrones, in the impression that by means of this work he would be for ever held in grateful remembrance."[ ] of the lake above memphis, strabo gives the following account:--"the canton of the city arsinoe, which was formerly known as the city of crocodiles, surpasses all others in the beauty of its appearance, in fruitfulness, and also in the wonders to be seen there. it alone is covered with green and large olive trees, whereas there are no olives in the rest of egypt; it produces a considerable amount of wine, and corn, and pulse, and many other cereals. in it also lies the wonderful lake of moeris, which in size and colour is like a sea, and has shores like the shores of the sea. owing to its size and depth this lake is able to receive the superfluous water at the time of the inundation, so that it does not overflow the inhabited and planted districts. on the other hand, when the river begins to subside, after it has poured the overflow into one of the two mouths of the canal, the lake and the canal together retain the water required for irrigation. this takes place in the natural course of things, but there are also artificial sluices at both mouths of the canal, by which the persons in charge regulate the rise and fall of the water." tacitus also mentions "the excavated lake which receives the overflow of the nile."[ ] from these accounts the object of the work is clear. it was intended to regulate the inundation by a large reservoir, and so to increase its beneficent effects upon the soil of egypt. the inundation was to be reduced for the delta by drawing off a part of the water, which had risen into this basin in the neighbourhood of memphis, in order that the land in this district might not be rendered swampy, and the marshes might have time to dry. this basin could also retain a portion of water in the superabundant years of excessive inundation, in order to supply the deficiencies of other years when the water did not reach the highest plots. further, the reservoir might be used to irrigate the arable land in the neighbourhood during the waterless months, when there was no inundation. a few miles above memphis the libyan range is divided by a depression. this cleft leads from the nile into a spacious urn-shaped valley, now called fayum, of which the western part is filled by a large lake. on the ruins near this lake, the name of king amenemha iii. is frequently read. if we remember that the careful observations of the rise of the nile from the reign of this king tend to show that he was busily engaged with the irrigation of the land, that the egyptians call this lake the lake of inundation (_meri_), and that the king moeris of the greeks owes his name to this title (_suten en meri_), we may regard amenemha iii. as the author of the wonderful hydraulic structures at fayum. the great reservoir, which he constructed, is no longer in existence, but the remains of it can be traced in dams and in the modern lake of fayum, the birket-el-kerun. the urn-shaped valley of fayum offered a situation for a basin near the nile, which might receive and preserve part of the inundation, and the depression in the libyan range secured a natural path for the canal, required to feed the basin from the nile, and the nile from the basin. for the site of the basin the nearest part of the valley was selected; it was enough that the bed of the reservoir was not lower than the lowest level of the nile. no deep excavations were needed; all that was required was to enclose a large part of the valley with strong dams; and the earth necessary for erecting these could be taken out of the enclosed space. these dams must have been massive enough to retain a large body of water, and prevent it from breaking out into the western, and far lower part of the valley, and at the same time of sufficient height to prevent any overflow even in the times of the highest inundations. at the eastern entrance into fayum we find running from the valley of the nile the remains of long, rectilinear, and very massive banks, in which modern research has recognised the original enclosure of the lake of moeris. the breadth of the dams appears to have been carried to feet; whereas the height can hardly have exceeded thirty feet.[ ] when herodotus tells us that the depth of the basin in the deepest part was fifty fathoms, it is obvious that the statement rests on the computation that the two pyramids in the middle of the lake were of the same height under as above the surface. the same authority allows a circuit of about miles for the lake, but from the remains we cannot allow a greater circuit than miles.[ ] the egyptians were sufficiently skilled in the erection of strong dams, and structures of such an extent could not be in excess of the resources of a country which had erected the great pyramids. finally, when herodotus asks what had become of the earth dug out of this great lake, the answer is that there was no complete excavation, but merely the enclosure of a certain space of land, and what was taken out of this was at once applied to the construction of the dams. the statement of the priests about the height of the inundation in the reign of moeris, which herodotus has preserved for us, and from which he has drawn the conclusion that the soil of lower egypt must have risen since that reign from seven to eight cubits in height, is much exaggerated. the deposit of mud in consequence of the inundation raises the soil only about four inches in years, that is, about three-and-a-quarter feet in , years. supposing the basin of amenemha to have been completed , years before herodotus travelled in egypt, the difference in the required height of the inundation might reach three or four cubits, but not seven or eight. yet the raising of the soil, and more especially of the bed of the great basin, which rose far more rapidly than the surface of the land, brought about the decay, and at last the ruin, of this reservoir. the bed of the basin in which the water remained the whole year through, and not for three or four months only, must have been raised by the deposit at a peculiarly rapid rate; at the present time it shows a height of eleven feet as compared with the land outside the remains of the dams.[ ] with this rise in the bed, the value of the basin diminished in proportion as the amount of water which the reservoir was capable of receiving was lessened. it was useless to raise the height of the dams, for the influx of the water from the nile depended on the level of the bed of the connecting canal, and of the basin. these causes along with the disaffection of later times must have brought about the decay of the reservoir, the value of which diodorus places so high, and which was in existence in the time of tacitus. at a later period the dams must have been neglected, so that at the time of some extraordinary inundation, a breach was made towards the west, which filled the western and lowest part of fayum with water. this is the origin of the birket-el-kerun, the water of which is still sufficient to convert the largest part of fayum into one of the most fertile and blooming districts of egypt. the level of the birket-el-kerun is seventy feet lower than the canal which once connected the reservoir with the nile.[ ] "a little above lake moeris," herodotus tells us, "at the so-called city of the crocodiles, is the labyrinth. i have seen it, and it outdoes its reputation. if any one were to put together the walls and buildings of the hellenes, he would find that they were surpassed in labour and cost by this labyrinth alone, although the temples at ephesus and samos are certainly well worth speaking of. the pyramids are indeed beyond all description, and each of them is equivalent to many of the greatest works of hellas, but the labyrinth surpasses even the pyramids. it contains twelve roofed courts, abutting on each other, the entrances to which are opposite, six to the north and six to the south. externally they are all included in one wall. the chambers are of two kinds, some are under the ground, others visible above it; of each kind there are , . those above ground i have passed through, and can speak of them from eyesight; those under the ground the egyptian overseers could not be induced to show me, because, as they said, they contained the sepulchres of the kings who built the labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. of these, therefore, i can only speak from hearsay: but the chambers above ground, which i saw, are a superhuman work. the entrances through the covered spaces, and the windings through the courts are very complicated, and excite infinite wonder, as you pass from the courts into the chambers, and from the chambers into colonnades, and from these into other covered spaces, and from the chambers into other courts. on all these spaces lies a roof of stone, similar to the walls; the walls are covered with carved pictures, and each court is surrounded on the inside with pillars of white stones, excellently fitted together. in the angle where the labyrinth ends there is a pyramid forty fathoms high, with large figures cut into it. the entrance to this is under the surface."[ ] diodorus says:--"one of the old kings, named menas, built on the lake of moeris, the city of crocodiles, a tomb for himself, a square pyramid, and the marvellous labyrinth." in another passage he says: "king mendes, whom some call marrhus, was not distinguished by any military achievements, but he built for his tomb the so-called labyrinth, which is marvellous not so much for its size as for the inimitable art of the structure. without a thoroughly competent guide, it would not be easy for any one to find his way out." and in a third passage we are told: "the labyrinth at the entrance into lake moeris is a square structure--each side measuring a stadium--built of the most beautiful stone, unsurpassed in the sculptures and the art bestowed upon it." "passing through the enclosure, you see a house surrounded with pillars, forty on each side, and with a roof of a single stone, adorned with mullions in relief, and various paintings. it also contains the monuments of the twelve provinces of egypt of their sacred relics and sacrifices, all represented in the most excellent pictures."[ ] strabo's account is as follows:--"at the sluices (of the canal connecting the basin and the lake) is the labyrinth, a work as great as the pyramids, and moreover the grave of the king who built it. about thirty or forty stades above the mouth of the canal is a table-land, on which lies a hamlet and a palace made up of as many palaces as there are districts in egypt. for so many in number are the colonnaded courts, adjoining each other in a row, and abutting on a partition against which they are built as against a long wall.[ ] the entrances which lead to them are over against the wall. before these entrances lie dark chambers, long in shape, and numerous, which are connected with each other by winding passages, so that without a guide it is impossible for the stranger to find the entrance or exit belonging to each court. the most marvellous thing is that the roof of each chamber consists of a single stone. even the dark passages (before the entrances into the courts) are covered with slabs of a single stone, from side to side, without use of wood or other support, and these slabs are of extraordinary size. if you go out on the roof, and as there is but one story, it is not high, you find before you a plateau of stones of this kind. if from this point you look again into the courts, you see them twenty-seven in number in a row, supported by pillars of a single stone. the walls also are of stones not less in size. this number of courts are said to have been erected because it was the custom for all the districts to assemble here by their representatives, with their priests and animals for sacrifice, in order to offer sacrifice and decide matters of the greatest importance. each district thus met in its own court. at the end of the structure, which extends over more than a stadium (in the square), lies the tomb, a square pyramid, of which each side is about a plethron in length and the same in height. the king buried there is called ismandes."[ ] "the labyrinth," remarks pliny, "is still existing in egypt, though it is said to have been erected more than , years. lykeas calls it the tomb of moeris; some authorities assert that it is a shrine of the sun-god, and this is the general belief. the entrance was built of parian marble, which is astonishing to me, the remainder of joined blocks of granite, which centuries have not been able to destroy, albeit assisted by the inhabitants of heracleopolis, who regard this structure with the greatest detestation, and treat it accordingly. the plan of the whole and the various parts it is impossible to describe. it is divided according to the districts and prefectures, which they call nomes; these are twenty-five in number, and their names are given to an equal number of large buildings. besides this it contains a temple of all the gods of egypt, and includes above , small buildings. the chambers are lofty, and each colonnade is ascended by a flight of ninety steps. within are pillars of porphyry, images of the gods, statues of the kings, and monstrous shapes. through the greater part you pass in darkness. from the wing attached to the labyrinth, passages lead through the rock to underground chambers, and there is also a pyramid belonging to it."[ ] as we have seen, diodorus in one passage ascribes the building of the labyrinth to the ancient king menas, and in another to king mendes, whom other authorities call marrhus, and at last he says that the twelve kings, who reigned in egypt after the dominion of the ethiopians, built the labyrinth for their common sepulchre. four hundred years before his time herodotus had stated that the twelve kings built it as a common memorial of their reign. lykeas mentioned king moeris as the builder, and strabo told us that the king buried in it was ismandes, a name which would agree with the mendes of diodorus. according to the lists of manetho, it was the fourth ruler of the twelfth dynasty--lacharis in the excerpt of africanus, and lamaris in that of eusebius--who built the labyrinth in the province of arsinoe for his own sepulchre. the menas of diodorus may be an abbreviation of amenemha, and this supposition becomes the more probable because the king called moeris by the greeks is mentioned as a builder of the labyrinth. the remains of the building, on the north side of which the pyramid is still standing, raise this supposition into a certainty. at the entrance to this pyramid, on the pillars and architraves in the ruins, the name of amenemha iii. is repeatedly found.[ ] we must assume, therefore, that in the district which he had recovered from the desert by means of his large reservoir, king amenemha built a large national temple close to the basin, and in this temple it was intended that all the provinces of upper and lower egypt should see the deities of their land reproduced in separate courts and temples. then the egyptians may have ascribed a restoration of this imperial temple, this pantheon, to the supposed twelve kings who were thought to have reigned after the ethiopian dominion. this tradition is obviously at the bottom of the accounts of herodotus and diodorus, who carry the building back to the seventh century b.c. the ruins of the labyrinth lie near the modern village of hauara, among orchards and palm groves, beside rose gardens and sugar plantations, surrounded by fruitful fields, in a district which is still flourishing and covered with villages, bounded to the west by naked ridges of rock and the sand of the desert. they consist of blocks of granite and dazzling white limestone, which explains the supposed parian marble in pliny, the remains of walls and the capitals of pillars. the extent of the structure reaches feet in length and in width; the traces of numerous chambers, some large and some very small, but all rectangular, are still visible both above and under the ground. in the centre is a clear space, once perhaps filled by the courts, of which herodotus enumerates twelve and strabo twenty-seven. the pyramid consists of a core built of bricks, and was cased with sculptures, of which, however, there are very slight remains; each side measured feet in length. it was the sepulchre of amenemha; here, among his great creations, he lay at rest. in addition to the monuments in nubia, and this great building, the lake which ripples against the labyrinth is a most eloquent witness of the prosperity to which this dynasty of the amenemha and sesurtesen raised egypt. the population must have been already very numerous when it came to recovering fresh land from the desert, and attention was turned towards increasing and improving the rich fertilization which nature every year secured for egypt. the picture of the richly developed cultivation, of which these structures exhibit the highest point, is supplemented by the insight into the details of the circumstances of the country permitted by the rock tombs of beni hassan, bersheh, and sioot (in central egypt), which belong to this period of egyptian history. at beni hassan, where the tombs go back to the reign of the first sesurtesen, we see the entire process of agriculture. oxen or slaves are drawing the ploughs, of which five different kinds are in use. sheep and goats tread the seed into the ground. the corn when cut is gathered into sheaves, trodden out by oxen, measured, and carried in sacks to the granary. the flax is packed upon the backs of asses, the lotus, the vintage, and the figs are gathered in. the vintage is partly trodden out, partly squeezed in a press moved by a lever; the wine is poured into jars, and carried into a cellar. we see the irrigation of the fields, the planting of the gardens, the cultivation of onions, the overseer and his clerks. the overseer passes sentence on the lazy and negligent slaves: when he has heard the complaint and the answer, he orders the bastinado to be applied to the culprits, and hands to his master the written account of the matter. with equal minuteness we can follow the breeding of cattle. we see fine herds of oxen, cows, and calves, asses, sheep, and goats in the stalls or at pasture with their keepers; we see the cows milked, the butter and cheese prepared. the fowl-yards are filled with a multitude of different ducks and geese. in the same way by following the pictures on the graves at beni hassan we can obtain an accurate view of the process of the various manufactures. we see the spinners and weavers at work; we can follow the potter through all the stages of his work, from the first kneading of the clay to the burning of the finished jar. the carpenter and joiner, the currier, the shoemaker, the smith and goldsmith, the mason and painter, pursue their occupations before our eyes. we see rudders, lances, javelins, bows and arrows, clubs and war-axes preparing: and lastly we have the manufacture of glass, even the blowing, in all the various operations before us. with similar minuteness we can see the interior of the egyptian house, simply or splendidly furnished, with all the movable goods, the dogs, cats, and apes belonging to the inhabitants; there are the servants at their work, and the operations of the kitchen in great detail. further we find soldiers of every rank, and with all kinds of weapons; we see them exercising military drill; the battle, the siege, the ram, which is brought up against the walls of the enemy, the roof of shields under which the besieging army advanced to storm the wall--all these are before us. birding is carried on by means of traps and nets, angling by hooks and spears of two or three tines; there is hunting in its various modes. long rows of wrestlers exhibit all the various positions of their sport, which seems to have been much in vogue; along with this various games exhibiting strength or endurance were carried on; among others, games of ball and mora. we see dancers, male and female, in various and sometimes very intricate positions; harps and flutes of very different shapes are played upon. a singer is accompanied by a musician on a harp, and the concert is completed by two choruses, one of men, the other of women, who clap their hands. the better class are depicted in gaily-coloured skiffs and palanquins, surrounded by numerous servants, among whom may be observed a considerable number of negroes. dwarfs and deformed persons are also found in their train. the most splendid tomb at beni hassan belongs to chnumhotep, the son of nehera, who, as the inscriptions tell us, was a minister of amenemha ii. and sesurtesen ii. like amenj before him, he was the overseer of the province of hermopolis (ashmunein). a picture on his tomb exhibits a huge portrait of chnumhotep, with a staff in his hand, and a scribe at his side; before him are a number of smaller figures, who, to judge from their shape and clothing, are foreigners. the chief among the foreigners, clad in a gay garment, leads forward an antelope and makes a reverential obeisance before the minister. his companions are more simply clad, and armed with lances and bows; one of them is striking a lute with the plectrum. four women follow, in long gaily embroidered garments, with their heads veiled. an ass driven by a boy with a lance carries two children, and a second ass arms and utensils. the leaf of papyrus, which the scribe of chnumhotep is handing to his master informs us that abusa (abscha) with thirty-six companions from the nation of the aamu (nomads of the east), had brought presents to the minister of the province of hermopolis in the sixth year of sesurtesen iii.[ ] if we compare the works of that epoch, which saw the erection of the great pyramids, in technical and artistic value with the remains which have come down from the time of the amenemha and sesurtesen--according to the chronology of lepsius the two periods are separated by an interval of six centuries--we find in the great monuments of the first epoch, in their passages and chambers, a dexterity in the use of stone for building, which has never been surpassed. the sculptures exhibit broader and stouter forms, with more strongly-marked but well-shaped muscles. the ornaments consist of simple, straight lines, besides which scarcely any other adornment is found beyond the lotus leaf. the style is composed and full of repose; it remains nearer nature than in the later works. in the monuments of the time of the sesurtesen and amenemha the ornamentation has already become far richer. the pillars are massive, fluted, and crowned by a simple cube. the sculptured forms are taller and thinner; the work in relief, carried out with much industry and delicacy, displays at times very happy moments of natural grace and truth of expression, although perspective is entirely left out of sight. such work is always carefully painted. the statues of limestone are also painted throughout; in those of granite, only the clothing, the eyes and the hair are coloured.[ ] footnotes: [ ] diod. , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , . he ascribes the foundation of the city to a later king, whom he calls uchoreus. [ ] strabo, p. ; tac. "ann." , . [ ] lepsius asserts that he found traces and remains of sixty-seven pyramids. "briefe aus Ægypten," s. . [ ] lepsius, "abh. der berl. akad." , s. ff. [ ] boeckh, "metrologie," s. . [ ] herod. , - , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] cf. strabo. p. . [ ] lepsius, "chronologie," s. , . gutschmid has supported the herodotean inscription on the strength of papyri from the times of ramses miamen in philologus, , ; the "talents" in any case must be left for the dragoman. [ ] lepsius, "denkmale," , , plate ii. [ ] de rougé, "monuments des six premières dynasties; mémoires de l'institut," , , ff. [ ] lepsius, "denkmale," , , plate ii. [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] brugsch, "zeitschrift für aegyptische sprache," , s. . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] herod. , . m. büdinger ("zur ægypt. forschung herodot's." s. ) identifies this philitis with the shepherd-king salatis; cf. infra. [ ] cf. above, p. . mariette, "revue archéol." , p. . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] "revue archéolog." , p. . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] rosellini, "monumenti storici," , . brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] rosellini, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] "revue archéolog." , p. ; , p. . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypt." , ; lepsius, "chronolog." s. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe aus Ægypten," s. . on the fortifications, de vogüé, "athen. franz." sept. , p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. , . [ ] lepsius, _loc. cit._ s, ; brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] diod. , , . "this is what the egyptians tell of moeris." [ ] strabo. p. - . tac. annal. , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] linant, "mémoire sur le lac moeris." [ ] lepsius, _loc. cit._ [ ] linant, _loc. cit._ [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , , , . [ ] strabo. p. ; for [greek: teichous mikrou] we must obviously read [greek: makrou], and for [greek: echontes, echontos]. [ ] strabo. p. ; cf. . [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , . as the building was actually not more than a stadium square, the statement of herodotus that there were chambers above the earth--quite irrespective of the underground--is inexplicable, unless the chambers were very small. in pliny we must read for , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe aus Ægypten," s. ff. [ ] brugsch, "histoire d'egypte," p. ; ebers, "die bücher mose's," s. . [ ] de rougé in brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . chapter v. the hyksos and the restoration of the egyptian kingdom. in spite of the union of upper and lower egypt, and the extension of the egyptian dominion up the nile as far as semne and kumne, the kingdom of the pyramids, of the lake of moeris, and the labyrinth succumbed to the attack of a foreign enemy. according to josephus, manetho, in the second book of his egyptian history, gave the following account: "there was a king amyntimaeus. in his reign the divine power, i know not why, was ungracious. from the east came an unexpected swarm of men belonging to a tribe of no great reputation, with a bold resolution of taking the country. this they succeeded in doing without much trouble. they made themselves masters of the ruling princes, ruthlessly set fire to the cities, and destroyed the shrines of the gods. towards the inhabitants they behaved in a most hostile manner; some they put to the sword, from others they carried away their wives and children into slavery. at last they made one of their own number, by name salatis, their king. he took up his abode at memphis, collected tribute from the upper and lower country, and placed garrisons in the most suitable places. the eastern districts were fortified most strongly, since he foresaw that the assyrians, who were then growing in power, would be seized with the desire of invading his country. in the saitic (sethroitic) province he found a city excellently adapted for his purpose, lying eastwards of the river from bubastis, and called avaris, from some old legend or another. this he surrounded with the strongest walls, filled it with inhabitants, and placed there the bulk of his armed soldiers, , men, as a garrison. in the summer he visited this stronghold to measure the corn, pay his soldiers, and exercise his troops in order to strike fear in those who dwelt beyond the fortress. after a reign of nineteen years salatis died. after him reigned a king of the name of beon, for forty-four years, then apachnas for thirty-six years and seven months, then apophis for sixty-one years, and annas for fifty years and one month, and finally assis for forty-nine years and two months. these six were their first rulers, and they sought more and more to destroy egypt to the very root. the whole tribe was called hyksos, _i.e._ shepherd kings. for in the sacred language _hyk_ means 'king,' and _sos_ in the ordinary dialect is 'a shepherd,' and from composition of the two comes the word hyksos. some authorities say that they were arabs." "the shepherd kings named above and their descendants are supposed by manetho to have ruled over egypt for years. yet he afterwards tells us that kings arose in the district of thebes and the rest of egypt, between whom and the shepherds there was a long and severe struggle. in the reign of a king named misphragmuthosis the shepherds were defeated by the king, driven out of egypt, and confined in one place, , arouræ in extent, the name of which was avaris. this space, as manetho tells us, the shepherds surrounded with a great and strong wall, in order to preserve their possessions and their booty in security. but tuthmosis, the son of misphragmuthosis, attempted to take avaris by force, and led out , men before the walls. when he found that the investment made but little way, he came to terms with the shepherds, permitting them to leave egypt uninjured and go whither they would. on these terms they departed from egypt with their families, and goods, not less than , strong, and went into the syrian desert, and through fear of the assyrians, who were then the great power in asia, they built a city in the land now called judæa, large enough to contain their numbers, and named it jerusalem." the short excerpts made by africanus and eusebius from the egyptian history of manetho only tell that "there were certain foreign kings, phenicians, who took memphis, and built a city in the sethroitic province, from which they went forth and subdued the egyptians." africanus gives six, eusebius four, names of these foreign kings, which are somewhat the same in sound as those in josephus, only in africanus apophis is the last in the list, not last but two.[ ] if josephus has transcribed and reproduced manetho correctly there is an obvious contradiction in his narrative. the first shepherd king, salatis, fortified and peopled avaris, and placed there a garrison of , men, for protection against the assyrians. then after a lapse of (or according to the excerpt of africanus of ) years, when the shepherds had lost egypt they were shut up in a place containing , arouræ, _i.e._ a square of twenty-five miles, of the name of avaris, which they surrounded with a strong wall in order to keep their possessions and booty in security. at last they were compelled to retire even from this, and march out in just the same strength as the garrison which salatis had placed so long before at avaris, towards judæa, and here they founded a second city of jerusalem, also for protection against the assyrians. we may leave the assyrians out of the question, and assume that the reference to them has been transferred by manetho from the later position which assyria took up towards syria and egypt in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c. to those earlier times; we may also regard the turn of the narrative, which makes the shepherds the ancestors of the jews and builders of jerusalem, as a combination invented by manetho, for in the tradition of the hebrews there is no hint that their ancestors had once ruled over egypt for centuries, and jerusalem down to the time of david was merely the stronghold of a small tribe, the jebusites. still it remains inexplicable that these shepherds, who, after they had taken egypt, or, in order to take it, fortified avaris, and garrisoned it with , men, should fortify avaris a second time centuries later, in order to maintain their last possession in egypt, and at last march out of avaris in exactly the same numbers as the garrison originally settled there. shepherds, _i.e._ nomads, do not make war by building fortresses as a base of operations for extending their conquests; they had nothing to gain by conquering egypt for the mere purpose of shutting up the whole or the greater part of their numbers with their flocks in a fortified place. on the other hand, it might have seemed advisable to them, when they had subjugated egypt, to possess a fortified place on the eastern border, in order to keep up a connection with their tribe; and it was natural that the shepherds, when the egyptians had risen against them with success, and they were no longer able to hold the delta, should attempt to maintain themselves in the flats and swamps of the eastern delta; and when forced to act on the defensive should fortify their camp at avaris in this district. in the narrative of manetho we can accept no more than the facts that egypt succumbed to the attack of the shepherds, and that they, to take the lower estimate, ruled over egypt for five centuries. herodotus also learnt in egypt that the shepherd philitis had once pastured his flocks at memphis. there is nothing wonderful in such an occurrence. nomad tribes dwelt in the deserts on the east and west of egypt, to whose poverty and scanty means of subsistence the abundance and cultivation of egypt must have presented a continual temptation. that temptation would increase in force when the tribes became more numerous, when unusual heat diminished the springs in the oases, and robbed these shepherds of the produce of their scanty agriculture. the tradition of the hebrews tells us that their ancestor abraham went to egypt when "there was a famine in the land," and the sons of jacob bought corn in egypt. according to manetho's account, the tribes from whom the attack proceeded were not famous, and he regarded the invaders as coming from the east. the peninsula of sinai, northern arabia, and the syrian desert sheltered in the amalekites, horites, edomites, and midianites, tribes who were rendered hardy and warlike by life in the desert, tribal feuds, and raids for plunder; and these may very well have united in considerable number under some leader of military genius, and attempted the invasion of the rich river-valley in their neighbourhood. according to manetho, the invaders were phenicians or arabians. the name of the shepherd philitis, given by herodotus, points to a semitic tribe, and one immediately bordering on egypt on the syrian coast--the philistines (pelischtim), from whom the whole syrian coast was called by the greeks palæstina. the name of the stronghold of the shepherds, avaris, or abaris, recurs in hauara, a town of arabia on the shore of the red sea.[ ] if the shepherds who conquered egypt had not been semitic, and closely related to the hebrews, manetho would not have made them the ancestors of the hebrews and founders of jerusalem after their expulsion from egypt. after the conquest, the chiefs of the shepherds ruled over egypt. the inscriptions on the monuments repeatedly denote certain tribes in the east of egypt by the name schasu, which in the later language is contracted into sôs. _schasu_ means shepherds. moreover, in old egyptian, the head of a family, a tribe, and a province is called _hak_, and hyksos thus can be explained by _haku-schasu_, chiefs of the shepherds, shepherd kings, as josephus, eusebius, and africanus render it.[ ] what manetho tells us of the destruction of the cities and shrines, the slaughter and enslaving of the egyptians may be correct for the time of the war and conquest. but this hostility and destruction cannot, as he intimates, have gone on for centuries, for, on the restoration of the pharaohs, we find ancient egypt unimpaired in population, unchanged in language, customs, and manners, in civilisation and art. if the national development was interrupted and repressed by the hyksos, it still remained uninjured at the core, so far as we have the means of judging. when at a subsequent period the kings of ethiopia subjugated egypt, the warrior caste, the soldiers settled in the country by the pharaohs, were deprived of their lands. the same thing may have taken place on the irruption of the shepherds. the warriors of the pharaohs fell in battle, were carried away as prisoners, or deprived of their weapons; and in their place came the victorious army of the shepherds. of these many would soon return home laden with the booty of egypt, others pitched their tents in the conquered land, and settled in the greenest meadows, more especially in the eastern provinces of the delta, nearest their own home, on the tanitic and pelusiac arms of the nile, and lake menzaleh. the chief of the immigrants became the head of the conquerors and the conquered. the latter would render the same abject homage to their new masters as they rendered before and after to their native kings; and the power which the conquered willingly acknowledged in the chief would exalt his position even among the conquerors. as time went on, the culture and civilisation of egypt had their natural effect on the barbarous invaders, and when the storm of conquest was over, we may assume that egypt was no worse off under the rule of the shepherd kings than at later periods under the rule of the persians, the ptolemies, and the romans. that the new princes, soon after the conquest, attempted to approximate their position as much as possible to that of the ancient pharaohs may be concluded from the mere fact that manetho was in a position to give a catalogue of their reigns by years and months. but this is proved more definitely still by certain monuments. in the neighbourhood of lake menzaleh, among the ruins of the ancient tanis, the modern san, two old statues have been discovered, the forms and lineaments of which exhibit a physique different from the egyptian. in the heads of four sphinxes, discovered in the same place, it is thought that we may recognise the portraits of four shepherd kings, and a colossus discovered at tel mokdam is said to bear the following inscription:--"the good god, the star of both worlds, the child of the sun, sel salati, beloved by sutech, the lord of hauar.[ ]" the six shepherd kings enumerated by josephus from the egyptian history of manetho reigned, according to the dates given by the latter, for years, _i.e._ from the year b.c., in which, on lepsius's arrangement, the irruption of the shepherds took place, till the year b.c. their successors must therefore have ruled over egypt for years more, _i.e._, down to the year b.c. but in the time of the later shepherd kings, native princes again arose in upper egypt, although subject to tribute. a papyrus of the british museum tells us: "it so happened that the land of egypt became the possession of her enemies, and when this took place there was no king. and behold raskenen became king of the country in the south. the enemy were in possession of the fortress of aamu (p. ), and their chief, ra apepi was at hauar. the whole land paid tribute to him, and rendered service of all kinds, and brought to him the produce of lower egypt. king apepi chose sutech as his lord, and served no other god, and built him a temple of firm and lasting structure."[ ] the power of the native princes at thebes must have been gradually strengthened till the successors of raskenen were in a position to press forward towards lower egypt, and place limits on the sway of the shepherd kings, and finally to drive them entirely out of egypt. josephus has already told us from manetho that the princes of thebes and the rest of egypt rose up against the shepherds, and in consequence a long and severe struggle took place between them. in manetho's list the series of shepherd kings is followed by amosis of thebes ( - b.c.). hence we may assume that it was under this prince that the kingdom of thebes got the upper hand, and the power of the shepherd kings was restricted to the eastern delta. this conclusion is established by the evidence of monuments. there amosis is again mentioned as king of upper and lower egypt, and two inscriptions of the twenty-second year of amosis ( b.c.), in the quarries of massara, inform us that these quarries were opened to restore the temples at memphis and the temple of ammon at thebes.[ ] hence by this time amosis had again rescued the old capital, memphis, from the shepherds; that he also forced his way beyond memphis, and attacked the shepherds at avaris, is proved by the inscription of a tomb at el kab, in upper egypt. it is the tomb of aahmes, the son of abuna, the chief of the steersmen. the inscription tells us that, at the time of amosis, aahmes, with his father on the boat, had ministered to "the calf." he had not yet seen any woman, and wore the clothing of the young men, when hauar was attacked. when he had won a hand, he received the king's commendation, and the golden necklace in token of his bravery. in a second and third battle at hauar he had again won a hand, and made a prisoner, and he received the chain for the second and third time.[ ] from the accounts given in josephus and the excerpts of africanus and eusebius, avaris lay eastward of the tanitic arm of the nile, in the province of sethroe. consequently we must look for this fortified camp of the shepherds on the eastern shore of the lake menzaleh, perhaps on the site of the later pelusium. in the lists of kings amosis is followed by amenophis i., then follows tuthmosis i., then tuthmosis ii. and iii., under the regency of misphra ( - b.c.). from this connection has arisen the king misphragmuthosis, who, in josephus, defeats the shepherds, drives them out of the rest of egypt, and shuts them up in avaris. hence it must have been tuthmosis iii., after the rise of the independent monarchy ( - ), who led the great host of , men against the shepherds in avaris, and failing to enter the place by storm, allowed them to depart unharmed, whereupon the strangers, to the number of , , retired into the syrian desert ( b.c.). yet the inscriptions do not agree with this account. from the inscription of aahmes already quoted, it seems more probable that amosis had already taken avaris, and that tuthmosis i. had marched through syria to naharina, _i.e._ to mesopotamia, a fact which is confirmed by the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii., though here also there are accounts of battles fought by tuthmosis ii. against the schasu, or shepherds.[ ] however this may be, after a long subjection to foreign rulers, and weary struggles against them, the whole land of egypt was again governed by native kings. these battles must have invigorated the military strength of the egyptians; and the happy result could not but increase the self-confidence of the new dynasty to which egypt owed her liberation. the mighty impulse thus given carried the kingdom quickly to the height of its power and greatness. tuthmosis iii. caused an enumeration to be made of the conquests which he won from the twenty-second to the forty-second year of his reign, and the tribute which he received in this period. in this enumeration sixteen or seventeen campaigns are mentioned. in the twenty-third year the king marched against the retennu (syrians). from kazatu (gaza) beyond taanaka (taanach) he reached maketi (megiddo). here, on the twenty-ninth of the month pachor he defeated his enemies. the conflict was not sanguinary. only eighty-three of the enemy were slain. the king made prisoners, but took at the same time chariots and , horses. megiddo surrendered, and tuthmosis was able to lead back , prisoners into egypt. after this cities and places in syria surrendered, kadeschu (kades), tevekhu (tibshath on the orontes), maram (merom), tamesku (damascus), atara (ataroth), hamtu (perhaps hamath), kaanu (kanah), masaar (misheal), astartu (astaroth karnaim), hutar (hazor), kennarut (kinneroth), aksap (achshaph), bar semas (beth shemesh), atuma (adamah), ranama (rimmon), japu (joppa), harar (har el), rabbau (rabbah), baratu (berothai, berytus), sarta, &c.[ ] thus the coast of syria and the mountain district as far as damascus and hamath on the orontes would have become subject to the pharaohs. this subjection, however, does not seem to have gone beyond payment of tribute. the following campaigns of the king were again for the most part directed against the retennu; a battle was fought at aratu (aradus). the sums which tuthmosis received in tribute from the cheta (hittites) are enumerated. afterwards the king made repeated expeditions against naharina (arem naharaim), _i.e._ against the land of the two rivers, mesopotamia, and here also he levied tribute. then the tribute is given in the list, which the king received from the punt (the arabians). that lower nubia, as far as the old boundary at semne, was subject to tuthmosis iii. is beyond a doubt. an inscription found at ellesieh in nubia informs us that nahi, the governor of nubia, has sent the tribute of the lands of the south to the king in gold, ebony, and ivory,[ ] and the list quoted mentions tribes or places subdued by tuthmosis in the south of egypt.[ ] of amenophis ii., the successor of tuthmosis iii. ( - b.c.), inscriptions at amada in nubia declare that he fought against the retennu (syrians), and slew seven kings, and that in the south he forced his way as far as napata, _i.e._ up the nile as far as mount barkal.[ ] his successor, tuthmosis iv., appears on monuments of the island konosso, near philæ, as victorious over the negroes.[ ] and after him amenophis iii. ( - b.c.) again directed his arms in his first campaign against the negroes; a memorial stone at semne tells us that he traversed abha, the land of the negroes. that the power of amenophis iii. extended to the south far beyond semne is proved by the ruins of a temple which he built at soleb on the nile, "to his image living upon earth," _i.e._ to the copy or manifestation of his divine nature, his own divinity,[ ] and inscriptions on certain scarabæi assure us that amenophis ruled from naharina, _i.e._ mesopotamia, to the land of karu in the south.[ ] thebes was the point from which the liberation of the land began. here the new dynasty who had restored the kingdom, driven out the enemy, and carried the arms of egypt far to the south and east, took up their lasting abode, and this city became the brilliant centre of the new kingdom. here, also, the new pharaohs glorified themselves by mighty works, as the old kings had done in the city of memphis and the burial-place adjacent. and along with the warlike vigour displayed by the people, the art and civilisation of egypt, under the series of kings extending from amosis to amenophis iii. ( - b.c.), reached the highest perfection which the position and character of the nation permitted. on the right bank of the nile, on a terrace near the modern village of karnak, the first sesurtesen ( - b.c.), built a temple of moderate size to ammon (p. ). to this tuthmosis i. ( - b.c.) added a splendid gateway, a lofty gate between two broad wings, which rise in the form of truncated pyramids, and behind this gateway he built an oblong court, encircled by a portico supported on pillars. against these pillars leaned karyatids, images of osiris, with the hands, in which is the cross with handles, crossed upon the breast. of these four remain still uninjured. before the entrance of the gateway he erected two obelisks of red granite, of which one, sixty-nine feet in height, is still standing. the inscription runs thus:--"the mighty horus, the friend of truth, the king tutmes, the mighty sun, which is given to the world, whom ammon establishes, has erected this firm structure in honour of his father ammon ra, the protector of the world, and has placed two large obelisks before the double gates."[ ] the queen misphra (ramake), who was regent for tuthmosis ii., and in the early years of tuthmosis iii. ( - b.c.), erected in the oblong court of tuthmosis i. the two second largest obelisks known. of these also one is still uninjured, and stands ninety feet high, the other has fallen, and lies on the ground. the inscription tells us that the queen whom ammon himself had placed on the throne and chosen as the protectress of egypt, had resolved in her heart to erect two great obelisks, the tops of which should reach to heaven, in honour of the god ammon and in remembrance of her father tuthmosis i., in order that her name might continue in the temple of ammon for ever and ever. each obelisk was to be of a single stone of red granite. her holiness had commenced the work in her fifteenth year, and completed it in her sixteenth, seven months after the work was commenced in the mountain quarry.[ ] to this court tuthmosis iii. added a gateway towards the south, and surrounded the ancient sanctuary of sesurtesen with a circle of huge buildings. these consisted of two halls, each of twelve pillars, to the right and left of the entrance, on which abut chambers, great or small as the walls which surround the old temple allow. on the walls which close these halls and chambers towards the old building, the king recorded the events of his reign from the twenty-second to the forty-second year, from which everything has already been given which up to this time can be regarded as certain. the two largest obelisks also, of which the largest is now standing in rome before the lateran, and the other is destroyed, were erected by tuthmosis iii., and placed, as it would seem, before the entrance into the old temple of sesurtesen. the obelisk now at constantinople is also a work of this prince. the inscription says that tuthmosis iii. "extended his dominion from mount apta (in the south) to the uttermost habitations of mesopotamia."[ ] on the east side of the enlarged temple of sesurtesen, he built a splendid hall, the roof of which is supported by fifty-six pillars. besides this he built additions to the temple of ra at heliopolis, restored the temple at dendera, apparently after a plan sketched on a goatskin, which, belonging to the time of chufu (p. ) was rediscovered under king phiops (p. ),[ ] and finally he erected shrines to the sun-god mentu at hermonthis, near thebes, the god sebek at ombos, chnum at letopolis (esneh), and on the island of elephantine. in nubia he erected temples at pselchis, korte, amada, and semne. the temple at semne he consecrated to chnum and sesurtesen iii., who extended the borders of egypt to this point (p. ), in order that "the king might live again in this memorial."[ ] before the great sphinx, near the second pyramid, tuthmosis iv. erected the memorial stone already mentioned (p. ); it represents the king worshipping the sphinx. in the inscription the sphinx addresses the king, and says, "i, thy father harmachu, give thee the dominion, the world in all its length and breadth, rich tribute from all nations, and a long life of many years."[ ] the buildings of amenophis iii. are not inferior to those of tuthmosis iii. in extent or magnificence. half an hour southward of the gateways, court, and porticoes of the temple at karnak, close on the right bank of the nile, at the modern village of luxor, amenophis built a second temple to ammon, the god of thebes. in a court surrounded by colonnades, the "court of sacrifice" joined the antechamber of the temple, or outer temple, then came the temple with the holy of holies, built in the form invariably used in egypt after the restoration.[ ] only the spacious antechamber, a hall with a roof supported on pillars and lighted by windows in the wall, or by the spaces between the front pillars, could be entered by laymen. the inner temple, reserved for the priests, to which a second gate led from the antechamber, was a smaller hall of the same kind, which received only a moderate light through openings made high up in the side walls. from this half-darkened room the holy of holies was again separated by a court, and the entrance was through a door. two other doors led by means of a passage running round the holy of holies into the chamber surrounding it. the holy of holies, together with the chambers abutting upon it, was surrounded by a high wall and formed a separate temple of small dimensions. the masonry is heavy, and narrows toward the top. here in the gloom dwelt the hidden spirit of the god. the heavy, solemn, mysterious character of the egyptian temple naturally makes itself most strongly felt in these spaces or rooms. on the inner walls of the temple the sacrifices and worship rendered by the king are represented, on the outer walls we see his achievements in war. what still remains of the building of amenophis--and it was subsequently enlarged--allows us only to conjecture upon the original plan. yet about pillars and shafts still rise out of the ruins. the reliefs on the outer walls of the temple, and in the chambers round the holy of holies, are in the best state of preservation. on the walls of one of these chambers we see the scribe of heaven, thoth, announcing to mutemua, the mother of amenophis, the birth of her son. then the ram-god and the goddess hathor lead the queen into the lying-in chamber; another goddess supports the queen during the birth. then four heavenly spirits, the two spirits of the south and the two spirits of the north, carry amenophis, already grown into a youth, to a throne in the presence of ammon ra, who anoints him king. then the gods promise gifts, honour, and power to the new king. they declare that the retennu, the "nine nations," _i.e._ the nations bordering on egypt, and all people, shall be subject to him.[ ] far fewer--not more than a great heap of ruins with a few pillars and memorial stones--are the remains of a second great work of amenophis iii., which he built opposite the temple of karnak on the west bank of the nile not far from the modern village of medinet habu. we learn from pliny that it was a temple of serapis, _i.e._ of osarhapi, osiris-apis.[ ] we have already mentioned the shrine of the same goddess, which was situated among the tombs near memphis (p. ), and we know that in the view of the egyptians the west belonged to the setting sun, the sun of the under world. the statement of pliny is also confirmed by two memorial stones among the ruins, from which we gather that osiris and ammon ra were the lords of the temple; and it is not strange that the tutelary god of thebes should be associated with osiris. before the entrance to this sanctuary amenophis caused two statues to be erected, which still rise like steep cliffs above the flat level of the bank by the side of a palm forest. they are two seated figures, and the inscriptions tell us that both represent amenophis. the king is in a quiet attitude, the hands rest on the knees. the front parts of the throne are formed by statues of the mother and wife of amenophis, which reach up to the knees of the king. the statues were chiselled out of a single block, as also the bases. the height of the whole is towards sixty feet.[ ] the power to which tuthmosis iii. and amenophis iii. exalted egypt appears to have declined under their successors, or at least it did not advance. the monuments prove to us that amenophis iv. ( - b.c.) began certain religious innovations. he paid excessive or exclusive reverence to the sun-god, and attempted to found a new capital in the neighbourhood of the modern amarna, in central egypt, which was no doubt intended to be the centre of the new cult. if, at the same time, as the monuments show, he was able, like his predecessor, to build at soleb, in dongola, it follows that the supremacy of egypt was maintained, at any rate in the south. footnotes: [ ] joseph. c. apion , ; cf. , ; afric. et euseb. ap. sync., p. , ; schol. plat. , , ed. bekker. [ ] caussin de perceval, "hist. des arab." , , . that the tradition of the arabs about the amalika is worthless has been proved by nöldeke ("ueber die amalekiter"). [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] ebers, _loc. cit._ s. , ; mariette, "revue archéol." , p. ff.; , p. ff. from a memorial-stone discovered at tanis we find that years before a certain year, which is not named, in the reign of ramses ii. _i.e._, about b.c. (according to lepsius's data for ramses ii.), the shepherd king nubti held sway; that he introduced certain regulations in egypt for the province of tanis, the special home of the shepherds; and that ramses ii. when erecting his buildings, which in any case were sufficiently durable, at tanis (see below), referred back to this king. further conclusions, which have been deduced from the inscription on this stone, have been completely overthrown in my opinion by mariette.--"revue archéol." , , ff. [ ] de rougé, "athén. franç." , p. ; brugsch, in the "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , ff.; "hist. d'eg." p. . brugsch assumes that ra apepi was a later apophis, and not the apophis who is the fourth shepherd king in josephus, and sixth in africanus, for according to the inscription on the tomb of aahmes, amosis followed raskenen. on the inscription apepi on a colossus of ramses ii., cf. _infra._ [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. - . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. , ; de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , ff. [ ] de rougé, "divers monuments de tutmes;" "revue archéol." , , ff. ff. [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe aus Ægypten," s. ; brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] rosellini, "monumenti storici," , , , ff. [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. , : cf. rosellini, "monumenti storici," , , , , and lepsius, "königsbuch," s. . [ ] brugsch, _loc cit._ pp. , . [ ] dümichen, "bauurkunde von dendera;" chabas in "zeitschr. für ægypt. sprache," , s. ff. [ ] lepsius, "briefe aus Ægypten," s. ; brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. , . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , ff.; dümichen, "bauurkunde von edfu;" brugsch, "bau und masse des tempels von edfu;" "zeitschr. für ægypt. sprache," , s. ff; , s. , ff. [ ] champollion, "lettres," p. ; rosell. m. st. , , , , . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] rosell. _loc. cit._ , , . the greeks regarded the northern colossus as the statue of memnon. the ruins of this temple, and other buildings on the west bank of the nile, were called by them "memnoneia."--diod. , ; strabo, pp. , . the name is strictly limited to the temples and palaces on the west bank. yet even the fortress of susa is called "the memnonia."--herod. , , , ; strabo, p. ; diod. , ; paus. , . the name as applied to the egyptian monuments may be a corruption of amenophis, so that the name of the buildings of amenophis has given the analogy for other similar structures. still, it is more probable that the connection of these buildings with the divinity of the under world, and the death of osiris, to which the death of memnon was compared, is at the root of this nomenclature of the greeks. the story of the ethiopian memnon, the son of the morning, _i.e._ of the east, who came to aid the trojans and found an early death before troy, is known to the odyssey ( , , , ), the homeric hymns ("in ven." - ) and the theogony (l. ), and was treated in detail by arktinus of miletus about b.c. in homer's view the ethiopians dwell in the far east, at the rising of the sun, beyond the amazons, whose abode was on the thermodon. hence the ancient susa, far in the east, the subsequent capital of the achæmenids, might have been the dwelling of the son of the east. when it was known that the ethiopians inhabited the upper nile, and the name memnon was found in egypt, the greeks, after the time of herodotus, began to search for the homeric ethiopians and memnon, in and above egypt. that the name is given to the northern colossus only is due to the following reasons. in the year b.c. an earthquake broke this northern colossus and threw the upper parts to the ground. then the pedestal and trunk occasionally gave forth a metallic sound at sunrise.--tac. "annal." , . this, in the poetic minds of the greeks, was the greeting of the son to his divine mother, the morning, while she in her sorrow for the early death of her son moistened the statue every morning with tears of dew. greek inscriptions on the pedestal from the time of nero give the names of witnesses who had heard the sound. pausanias, who was of this date, tells us, _loc. cit._--"at thebes, in egypt, is the sounding statue of a seated man, whom most authorities call memnon, and say that he forced his way from ethiopia to egypt and susa. the inhabitants of thebes, however, deny that it is memnon. they regard it as the statue of phamenoph, a native egyptian." ph-amenoph is amenophis with the egyptian article. the sounding statue was long regarded as a fable, until the _savans_ of the french expedition, in the early morning, when the hot sunbeams followed on the cool of the night, as is usual in the climate of africa, perceived in the great egyptian buildings a small whispering, or singing tone, which must be due to those physical influences. this phenomenon may have been especially striking in the mutilated statue of amenophis. in the time of septimius severus, when the colossus was restored--the upper parts are now composed of four pieces--the inscriptions and the marvel came to an end. the new weight placed upon the pedestal appears to have checked the vibrations. at present no sound is heard.--letronne, "la statue vocal de memnon." chapter vi. the house of ramses. the greeks inform us that sesostris, or sesosis, was the greatest warrior among the kings of egypt. herodotus was told by the priests that he was the first who set out with ships of war from the arabian gulf, and reduced the dwellers by the red sea, until he was checked by waters which were too shallow for navigation. on his return from this expedition, sesostris, as the priests said, gathered together a great army, invaded the continent, and reduced every nation in his path. in the conquered lands he set up pillars, on which were inscribed his name and country, and that he had reduced the nation by his power. wherever he found but little resistance he also caused female emblems to be engraved on the pillars. "so he passed from asia into europe, and reduced the scythians and thracians. beyond these the egyptian army did not, in my opinion, pass; for in the country of the thracians the pillars of sesostris are found, but not farther. the greater number of these pillars are no longer in existence; yet in syrian palestine i have myself seen them with the inscriptions and emblems. in ionia also there are two images of this king hewn in the rock, one on the way from ephesus to phocæa, the other on the way from sardis to smyrna. at both places there is the figure of a man, - / cubits high, with a spear in the right hand and a bow in the left, armed partly as an egyptian and partly as an ethiopian. across the breast, from one shoulder to the other, run egyptian sacred letters, saying: 'i have conquered this land with my arms.' who he is and from whence he comes, sesostris does not tell us here, but on the other pillars. when sesostris returned, he brought with him many prisoners from the tribes, and his brother, to whom sesostris had entrusted egypt, gave him a hospitable reception at pelusium. but round the house in which sesostris was with his wife and children he caused wood to be heaped, and set on fire. then the queen cried out to sesostris to take two of her six sons, throw them on the burning wood, and pass over their bodies as over a bridge. this was done. the two sons were burnt, but the others with their father escaped. after taking revenge on his brother, sesostris employed the masses of prisoners in drawing enormous stones to the temple of hephæstus, and in digging all the canals which now intersect egypt. by these the land, hitherto an open field for chariots and horses, was made less accessible. the king's object in making them was that the cities which were not on the river should have more water at the time when the floods were not out. then sesostris is said to have divided the arable land of egypt into equal rectangular portions, and to have allotted to every man an equal portion. and if the inundation washed away any part of this allotment, the king returned the owner a corresponding part of his tax. sesostris was the only king of egypt who also ruled over ethiopia. as a memorial of his reign, he left six large statues before the temple of hephæstus--images of himself, his wife, and his four sons; the two first are thirty, the four last twenty cubits high. long after, when darius wished to place his own statue in front of these, the priest of hephæstus forbade him, because darius had not achieved such mighty deeds as sesostris. he had reduced the scythians, whom darius had failed to reduce. this indignity, they say, darius pardoned."[ ] diodorus assures us that sesostris had surpassed the greatest and most glorious deeds of his predecessors. "but inasmuch as not only the greek writers are far from agreeing in their accounts of this king, but even the egyptian priests, and those who sing of his deeds are at variance, we shall attempt to give the most probable account and that which is most in agreement with the monuments still existing in egypt." when sesosis was born, his father gathered together all the boys born on the same day, more than in number, and caused them to be brought up in the same manner as his own son, in the impression that they would thus become his most loyal and bravest comrades in battle. with these companions he first despatched him against the arabs, and sesosis subjugated the whole country of the arabs, which no one had ever subjugated before. in the next place, his father sent him against the tribes in the west, and sesosis, although still quite young, subjugated a great part of libya. on the death of his father, sesosis, relying on the results of previous campaigns, formed the resolution of subjugating the whole earth. having gained the good will of the egyptians by gentleness, remission of punishments, and presents, he gathered together a great army of the mightiest men, an army of , infantry, , cavalry, and , chariots. the various divisions of this great host he placed under the command of those who had been educated with him, to whom at the same time he allotted the most fruitful lands in egypt. with this host sesosis first reduced the ethiopians, who dwelt in the south, and imposed upon them a tribute of gold, ebony, and ivory. then he sent a fleet of four hundred ships into the red sea--he was the first egyptian to build ships of war--and by means of these he subjugated to his dominion all the islands and sea-coasts, as far as india. meanwhile he marched out in person with his army, and reduced the whole of asia. he crossed the ganges and passed through india to the ocean. then he subjugated the nations of scythia as far as the tanais, which divides europe and asia. in the same manner he reduced the rest of asia, and then passed into europe. but in thrace he was in great danger of losing his army through want of food and the severity of the climate. so he put an end to the campaign in thrace, after erecting pillars at many places in the countries he had subjugated. on these was engraved, in the character which the egyptians called sacred, the following inscription:--"this land sesosis, the king of kings and lord of lords, conquered with his arms." at some places also he set up his own statue in stone, with a bow and lance, four cubits and four hands high, for this was his own height. after completing these campaigns in nine years, sesosis returned with his prisoners and untold spoil. when at pelusium, his brother formed a plan for his destruction. he invited sesosis to a banquet, and in the night, when all were asleep after their wine, he heaped up reeds round the king's tent and set them on fire. when the flames suddenly sprang up, the retinue, heavy with wine, could render little service, but sesosis lifted up his hands and besought the gods to save his wife and children, and with them he happily escaped from the flames. in gratitude for this rescue he honoured the gods with dedicatory statues, more especially the god hephæstus, as it was by him that he was saved. in his temple at memphis he placed statues of himself and his wife, monoliths of thirty cubits high, and also statues of his four sons, twenty cubits in height. the princes whom he placed over the conquered nations, or allowed to retain their thrones, came with presents to egypt at the appointed time. sesosis received them with honour and distinction. but whenever he went into a temple or a city he caused his horses to be unyoked from his chariot, and in their place the princes and rulers were yoked four abreast, in order to show to all that he was the mightiest and had conquered the bravest, so that no one was his equal in valour. having ended his wars, sesosis began to erect great works for his own glory and the security of egypt. in every city he erected a temple to the divinity chiefly worshipped there. on these works no egyptian was employed; they were entirely completed by his prisoners. moreover, for the cities which lay too low sesosis caused many large dams to be made, to which he transferred the cities, so that they were secure from the inundations of the nile. from memphis downwards he carried a number of canals through the whole land, partly to facilitate commerce, partly to make invasion more difficult to the enemy. up to this time the best part of egypt was an open field for the movements of cavalry and chariots; after this it became almost impassable, owing to the number of canals. in addition the king built a wall , stades in length, from pelusium to heliopolis, as a security against inroads from syria and arabia. to the god held in chief honour at the city of thebes he presented a ship of cedar wood, cubits in length, of which the visible part was overlaid on the inside with silver and on the outside with gold, and in his honour he also erected two obelisks of hard stone, cubits high, on which he caused to be inscribed the greatness of his power, the number of the subjugated nations, and the amount of his income. when he had reigned thirty-three years his eyesight began to fail, and he voluntarily put an end to his own life. many generations after, when darius wished to set up his own image in front of sesosis, the high priest forbade him in the assembly of priests, and explained that darius had not surpassed the deeds of sesosis. so far from being enraged, darius was pleased at his freedom, and said that he would henceforth make it his object, should an equal length of life be given him, to fall below sesosis in no respect.[ ] strabo says: sesostris appears first of all to have conquered the land of the ethiopians and troglodytes; on the coast of the arabian gulf, between the harbour of the protectress and the elephant-hunt, there stood on a hill a temple built by sesostris in honour of isis. he succeeded in reaching the land of cinnamon, where pillars and inscriptions are shown as monuments of his campaign. then he crossed over to arabia, and it is said that in the narrow part of ethiopia towards arabia, on the promontory of dirê, there was a pillar giving an account of his crossing. from arabia he went on to invade the whole of asia, and even forced his way into europe. in many places ramparts and temples of the egyptian style are shown as the work of sesostris. in egypt he undertook the construction of a canal from the nile into the arabian gulf and the red sea.[ ] when germanicus, the son of drusus, travelled in egypt, he saw large remains of ancient thebes. on the mighty walls, so tacitus continues, the egyptian inscriptions still remained, telling of their former magnificence. one of the older priests was bidden to translate the egyptian inscriptions, and he informed them that once there had been , men of military age in the kingdom, and with this army ramses had subjugated libya and ethiopia, the medes, persians, bactrians, and scythians, and in addition to these had ruled over the lands from the bithynian to the lycian seas, which are inhabited by the syrians, the armenians, and their neighbours, the cappadocians. the amount of tribute also imposed upon the nations was read, the weight of silver and gold, the number of weapons and horses, the presents of ivory and frankincense for the temples, and how much each nation had to contribute in corn and goods--an amount no less than that which is now imposed by the power of the parthians or the romans.[ ] josephus, on the authority of manetho's egyptian history, tells us that sethosis, who was called ramesses, possessed a great force in cavalry and ships. after leaving his brother armais as governor of egypt, and placing the royal power in his hands,--with the restrictions that he was not to wear the crown, or do any injury to the queen-mother and her children, or approach the king's concubines,--he marched against cyprus and the phenicians, and afterwards against the assyrians and the medes, and subjugated them all, some by his arms, others by the fear of his great power. fired with ambition by these successes, he pressed boldly onward to reduce the cities and lands of the east. thus his absence was prolonged, and his brother armais, without the least shame, disregarded all the restrictions laid upon him. he violated the queen, lay with the concubines of the king, allowed himself to be persuaded by his friends into wearing the crown, and rebelled against his brother. but the person who was in authority over the sanctuaries of egypt wrote to the king and disclosed all that his brother had done against him. sethosis at once turned back to pelusium, and established himself again in possession of the dominion which belonged to him.[ ] thus, according to the accounts of tacitus and josephus, the warrior whom herodotus, diodorus, and strabo call sesostris or sesosis, was known to the egyptians as ramses, ramesses, or sethosis. let us now inquire whether the monuments present us with princes and achievements which confirm the narratives of the greeks, the account of manetho, and the evidence of tacitus. according to these it may be assumed that horus (hor, - b.c.) whom the sculptures of a temple hewn in the rock in the valley of the nile at selseleh represent as a conqueror over the negroes,[ ] was succeeded by ramses i. ( - b.c.) who was followed by sethos i. ( - b.c.). of him we are told in the inscriptions on the outer wall of the great colonnade which he erected at karnak (p. ) that in the first year of his reign he had attacked the schasu, from the fortress of tar as far as kanana;[ ] his holiness had startled them like a lion, and made a great slaughter. on a mountain fortress to which the defeated enemy fled is read, "fortress of the land of kanana (canaan)." after this there were expeditions against the schasu, and the tribute which they paid to sethos is mentioned. the schasu are the nomad tribes in the desert between egypt and canaan, which had previously conquered and ruled over egypt. the inscriptions also remark that sethos had twice desolated the land of cheta with fire, and had taken kadeshu (kades).[ ] the cheta are the chittim, or hittites, who possessed the south of canaan. then the sculptures represent the victory of the king over the retennu, _i.e._ over the tribes of syria, and inscriptions celebrate the victories which sethos had gained over the "nine nations,"[ ] _i.e._ over all the nations bordering on egypt. on the upper nile also sethos had fought and established his dominion, as is proved by the ruins of a temple on mount sese in dongola above the buildings of amenophis ii. and iii. at soleb.[ ] the representations of the achievements of sethos at karnak are brought to a close by the victorious return of the king with "innumerable" prisoners and rich booty, and by two enormous figures of the king, in each of which he is holding nine prisoners. the list of the conquered nations first mentions the tribes of cush, _i.e._ of the south; then follow the schasu, the cheta, and naharina (the inhabitants of mesopotamia), and last of all the "punt," _i.e._ the tribes of arabia. these names are followed by the observation;--"this is the list of the nations of the south and the north, which his holiness has subdued: the number of prisoners conveyed into the temple of ammon ra cannot be given."[ ] from these monuments we gather that sethos carried on a number of successful campaigns which begin with battles against the nomad tribes on the eastern borders of egypt, then extend to the south and north of syria, and finally to mesopotamia, while in the other direction he reduced the tribes of arabia, and carried the sway of egypt beyond dongola, farther to the south than before. sethos was followed by his son ramses ii. ( - b.c.).[ ] we learnt from herodotus that sesostris had set up pillars in the conquered lands in remembrance of his campaigns: in syrian palestine herodotus had himself seen such pillars, and in ionia there were two figures of this king hewn in the rock. as a fact a rock half way between smyrna and sardis to this day presents a relief of an armed warrior. in style and attitude it is certainly not egyptian, and therefore cannot have been the work of a pharaoh. on the other hand, the rocks on the phenician coast which run into the sea at the mouth of the nahr-el-kelb, near the ancient berytus, the modern beyrout, have egyptian sculptures upon them. these are three figures of ramses ii. in one he is carrying an enemy into the presence of ammon. in the two others he is striking down an enemy before the gods ptah and ra. though to a great extent destroyed, the inscriptions still show that the achievements, of which these sculptures are intended to immortalise the memory, belonged to the second and fourth year of ramses ii. his arms had therefore reached the coast of phenicia, northward of tyre and sidon, and he maintained his ground so far or so long, that he could set up this memorial of his victory. in the ruins of a temple built or restored by ramses at tanis (san), we find an inscription which ascribes to him the subjugation of the land of kaft, _i.e._ of phenicia, of nebinai, which is explained to be cyprus, and lastly of the upper retennu, _i.e._ of eastern syria.[ ] inscriptions on the building of ramses ii. at karnak, near medinet habu (the so-called ramesseum), and in his rock temple at abu simbel in nubia, inform us that he again fought in syria in the fifth year of his reign. eighteen nations, tribes, or cities are mentioned which were opposed to the egyptians. here, also, the cheta, _i.e._ the hittites, are first mentioned, then the karkisa (perhaps the girgasites),[ ] kadeshu (kades, either kadesh barnea in the south, or kadesh in the north of canaan), aratu (aradus), chirbu (perhaps chelbon, aleppo), kirkamisha (karchemish), and naharina (mesopotamia). at kadesh ramses was victorious and thence he returned to egypt.[ ] in the eighth year of his reign he was again in canaan. he took maram (merom), dapurr (perhaps debir), in the land of the amari (amorites), and salam,[ ] and on the walls of the ramesseum, as also on a large memorial stone in the ruins of karnak, there is a treaty of the twenty-first year of ramses ii., between "ramses, the son of the great prince sethos the brave, the son of the great prince ramses i." and "chetasar (_i.e._, the prince of the cheta), son of the great prince maursar the brave, son of the great prince sepalulu." it is concluded "on good terms for eternal peace and friendship, that this may be a beginning for all eternity according to the intention of the great king of egypt." after reference to former treaties, the great king of the cheta pledges himself never to invade egypt to inflict injury, and a similar promise is made by ramses. both kings are to send back those of their subjects who wish to take service with the other. either is to help the other when attacked by enemies. the treaty is ratified by oaths on either side; and sutech (baal) appears as the tutelary god of the cheta.[ ] such is the information we can gain from monuments of the achievements of ramses ii. in syria. his campaigns in the south appear to have been attended by more important results. sculptures in the temple at abu simbel display the king sitting on his chariot, and leading back as prisoners red figures, which here are probably nubians, and negroes with ropes round their necks: both tribes have no other garments but the skins of wild animals. in another temple hewn in the rock of the western bank at beth-el-walli, a little above syene, we see ramses ii. standing alone upon his war chariot, rushing with drawn bow on a crowd of negroes, who are armed with very long bows, but clothed only with skins. they fall before the horses of the king. thus defeated, they fly to their villages, which lie in a valley shadowed by cocoa-palms, in the tops of which apes are climbing. women and children come forth in distress to meet the fugitives. the prisoners and the booty are brought before the king, chieftains in fetters, and negroes carrying elephants' tusks and ebony; others lead lions, panthers, antelopes, gazelles, ostriches, and a giraffe, the animal of central africa.[ ] besides this ramses ii. founded the furthest monument of egyptian dominion up the stream of the nile, so that he must have ruled further to the south than his father sethos. beyond soleb, under the steep spur of mount barkal, miles or more above syene, lie the ruins of a temple which ramses built in honour of ammon.[ ] symbolical representations of the temple already mentioned at abu simbel on the right and left of the entrance collect all the victories which ramses won. before the god ammon, who hands to the king the scythe of battle, ramses is brandishing his club upon a crowd of kneeling enemies, whom he has seized by the forelock. among these are three negroes, three red and beardless men, and four forms which are yellow and bearded. ammon speaks thus: "i give thee the scythe, slay with it; i give thee the south for subjection, and the north for conquest, and to put to flight all the tribes of the perverse nations, and to extend the fabric of thy dominion to the pillars of the sky."[ ] on this evidence we find that the narratives of the greeks of the deeds of sesostris, with whom tradition has amalgamated sethos and ramses ii., and also manetho's account of the exploits of ramses, and what the priest read about them to germanicus at thebes, are all violent exaggerations. of the battles in the north-east and in asia, we find in the inscriptions only the battles fought by sethos against the shepherds, between egypt and syria, against the schasu, against the hittites, against the retennu, and finally a campaign to mesopotamia, or at least battles against princes of the euphrates. of ramses ii. we find that he forced his way as far as berytus in syria, and fought against syrian tribes and cities, with whom karchemish on the euphrates, and other princes of the euphrates (naharina) are said to have been united. even as early as tuthmosis i. and iii., and amenophis iii., the inscriptions mention campaigns to mesopotamia. they tell us that tuthmosis iii. forced his way into the interior of mesopotamia, and enumerate the regions which he compelled to pay tribute. with regard to ramses ii. the monuments prove no more than that he temporarily reduced syria, including the phenician cities and the island of cyprus, which was probably already dependent upon them. the subsequent battles and the treaty of ramses ii. with the cheta, prove how slight were the successes so highly extolled in the inscriptions. if the hittites were never reduced to obedience, all the more distant campaigns into syria, and all attempts against mesopotamia had only a momentary result, and could hardly have been more than mere raids. in the inscriptions, every pharaoh, from amosis onward, is found fighting against the same nations, the schasu, the cheta, the retennu, the punt, the cushites, &c., and each time we are assured that the "eight" or "nine nations," "the lands of the north and south," the earth from one end to the other has been subdued. it is by no means remarkable that the recollections of the campaigns of the third tuthmothis and amenophis, of the achievements of sethos, and of ramses ii. and of ramses iii., of which we have still to speak, supported as they were by the flattery and exaggeration of the inscriptions, should combine in the tradition of the egyptians into a monarch who subdued the whole earth, of whom certain accounts and these, as diodorus says, by no means accordant, passed to the greeks. and diodorus observes expressly that these contradictions were not due to the greeks, but to the egyptian priests and those who sang of the exploits of sesostris. as we have seen, this tradition lays especial weight on the achievements of sesostris in ethiopia, in the red sea, and in arabia. herodotus tells us that the priests assured him that the king--at first sailing with ships of war out of the arabian gulf--had subjugated the inhabitants of the red sea. he was, they said, the only king who had ruled at once over egypt and ethiopia. in diodorus we find that he first reduces the whole of arabia, which had never before been conquered, and the greater part of libya, and the ethiopians in the south of egypt. afterwards he--first of the egyptians--built ships of war, and sent them into the red sea, and with these reduced all the coasts and islands as far as india. in strabo sesostris first marches against ethiopia, forces his way as far as the land of cinnamon, then crosses the straits of bab-el-mandeb, reduces arabia, and commences the digging of a canal from the nile to the arabian gulf. the monuments confirm the statement that sethos fought with the punt, _i.e._ the arabs, that he pushed farther than his predecessors into the territory of the negroes, and that ramses ii. (in whose reign the monuments mention governors of ethiopia)[ ] established a lasting supremacy as far as mount barkal. thus it is established that the dominion of egypt under ramses ii. extended beyond nubia and dongola, and reached the territory of the negroes, while at the same time the tribes of the arabian peninsula may have been to a great extent reduced to pay tribute; and from this we may draw the conclusion that the attention of sethos and ramses was mainly directed to these regions. the products which they could obtain by tribute or by trade with these tribes--slaves, gold, ebony, ivory, frankincense, spices, gum--were of great value for egypt, and ships of war were needed both to keep in submission the tribes which may have been subjugated on the coasts of arabia, and to maintain the trading stations settled on the east coast of africa. for the fleet of ramses herodotus refers to the evidence of the priests. such a fleet is, as a fact, exhibited on the monuments of ramses iii., and the tradition of the hebrews tells us of trading ships which, about the year b.c., sailed from elath out of the arabian sea, and reached the mouth of the indus, no doubt on routes the egyptian trade had already laid down to the straits of bab-el-mandeb and the southern coast of arabia. in connection with these efforts, directed towards the establishment of trade and authority on the arabian sea, it seems intelligible that sethos and his son ramses should have entertained the idea of establishing a water communication between the nile and this sea, and should have actually commenced the work. remains of a canal, beginning on the nile at bubastis, above the city, ran through the valley of tumilat, a depression of the arabian hills towards the east, in the direction of the lake of crocodiles and the bitter lakes. on these remains at tel-el-kebir and abu kesheb are the ruins of egyptian buildings. at the second place an image of ramses ii. has been found, worshipping tum and ammon. we may assume that the ruins at tel-el-kebir are those of the city of pithom (patumos, _pa-tum_, _i.e._ habitation of tum), which we learn from herodotus lay on this canal, and those at abu kesheb are the ruins of the city of ramses (_pa-rameses_), names preserved to us in the tradition of the hebrews, and that sethos and ramses ii. had built both these cities.[ ] the hebrews, whose forefathers had broken off from the edomites, the settlers on mount seir, which runs from the north-east point of the red sea to the dead sea, and pastured their flocks on the pelusiac arm of the nile under egyptian protection, have a tradition that it was they who were compelled to build pithom and ramses for the pharaoh. the canal remained unfinished; at that time it apparently reached only to the lake of crocodile. seven hundred years later necho carried it as far as the bitter lakes; it was finished by king darius and the ptolemies, who completed what the pharaohs were unable to carry out. the tradition of the mighty deeds of sesostris in asia contradicts itself in the most glaring manner, inasmuch as it likewise tells us that he dug a number of canals from memphis downwards to the sea, in order to fortify the land and make the approach difficult for enemies. the eastern side of egypt also he fortified against the inroads of arabians and syrians, by building a wall of about , stades long through the desert from pelusium to heliopolis. and the inscriptions on the building of sethos at karnak are believed to tell us that this prince had erected "the double walls against the lands of the impure."[ ] no line of fortification was required against the nomads on the eastern border, if these were sufficiently held in check by the egyptian arms, or had been thoroughly subjugated. this great fortification which passed beyond the protecting arm of the nile from bubastis in a slanting direction through the desert, from the sea to heliopolis, along a line of about , stades, may very likely have been connected with the making of the canal. the trade on the canal would be protected against predatory attacks, and the territory rescued from the desert by its construction, and the cities adjacent would be protected. the city which ramses built on the canal and named by his own name apparently belonged to those fortifications. it was a border fortress against the desert and the attacks of syrian tribes. of menephta, _i.e._ beloved of ptah ( - b.c.), the son and successor of ramses ii., josephus, following manetho, gives us the following account:--"like horus, who had been king before him, menephta desired to see the gods. this wish he confided to a wise prophet, the son of papius. the prophet told him that he would see the gods if he cleared the whole land of leprous and unclean persons. then the king collected out of egypt all who were diseased in their bodies, to the number of , , and threw them into the stone quarries east of the nile, that they might labour there along with the other egyptians condemned to similar toil. but as among the diseased persons were certain men of learning and priests who had been attacked by leprosy, the son of papius feared the anger of the gods would descend upon himself and the king if holy men were forced into slavish tasks, and he foresaw that others would come to the aid of these impure persons, and rule over egypt for thirteen years. he did not venture to tell this to the king, but wrote it down, and then put an end to his own life. filled with anxiety, when the lepers had suffered long enough in the stone quarries, the king gave them avaris, the city abandoned by the shepherds, as a refuge and protection. but according to the old mythology this city belonged to typho. when the unclean persons came to avaris, and were in possession of a centre to support any disaffection, they chose osarsiph, one of the priests at heliopolis, as their leader, and swore to obey him in everything. the first law he gave them was to offer prayer to no god, and to abstain from no animal held sacred in egypt, but to sacrifice them all and eat them, and to hold communion with none but those who had taken the oath. after giving these and many other laws, diametrically opposed to the egyptian customs, osarsiph bade them fortify the city, and arm themselves against menephta, while he took counsel with certain priests and infected persons, and sent an embassy to jerusalem, to the shepherds driven out by tuthmosis. he told them what an outrage had been done to him and his associates, and called on them to march against egypt with the same intentions as himself. avaris, the city of their forefathers, would first open its gates to them and give freely whatever they needed, and whenever necessary he would fight at their head and easily subdue the land for them. delighted at the message, the shepherds all set out with eagerness, about , strong, and were soon in avaris. when menephta heard of their approach, he was seized with alarm, for he bethought him of the prophecy of the son of papius. it is true he gathered together about , of the flower of the egyptian army, but when the enemy met him, he would not join battle, fearing to fight against the gods. after taking counsel with his officers, he gave orders for the sacred animals, which were held in especial honour, to be brought to him, and bade the priests secure the images of the gods with the greatest care; and when he had placed his son sethos, now five years old, in security with a friend, he turned back to memphis. then he took apis and the other sacred animals, which the priests had brought to memphis, with him, and retired with his army and the bulk of the egyptians to ethiopia. the king of ethiopia, who was under a debt of gratitude to menephta, received him and the multitude with him, provided for the egyptians, and allotted them cities and villages sufficient to support them for the thirteen years, and caused the ethiopian army to keep watch on the borders of egypt. but the men of jerusalem and the unclean invaded egypt, and displayed such impious rage against the egyptians, that to those who witnessed their wickedness their dominion seemed the worst of all. they were not content with burning cities and villages, with plundering the sanctuaries, and destroying the images of the gods, they even compelled the priests and prophets to sacrifice and strangle the sacred animals, and then they thrust them naked out of the temples, and ate the animals if at all good for food. but in time menephta returned with a great host from ethiopia, and his son ramses also with an army. both attacked the unclean and the shepherds, and overcame them. many they slew, and the rest they pursued as far as the borders of syria. it is said that the priest who gave them their constitution and laws, a native of heliopolis, and called osarsiph, from osiris, the god worshipped there, changed his name from osarsiph to moses."[ ] from the tradition of the hebrews we learn that their ancestors, after pasturing their flocks for a long time, under egyptian protection, on the pelusiac arm of the nile, in the land of goshen, became weary of the task-work imposed upon them, and set forth out of egypt, in order to feed their flocks in freedom in the peninsula of sinai, to the east of the dead sea. the oppression of these shepherds by egypt may, of course, be connected with the fortification of the border towards syria, the construction of the canal, and the erection of the cities for trade, and the border fortresses on this canal. accordingly there seems no reason to contest the tradition of the egyptians that the exodus of the hebrews took place under menephta. that the egyptian tradition regards these hebrews as leprous and unclean egyptians is of no importance. the cession of avaris and invitation of the hyksos is mere imagination, arising from the somewhat analogous event of former times. the most improbable fact is the voluntary departure of menephta to the allied king of the ethiopians, and the abandonment of egypt without a struggle to her fiercest foe. under ramses ii., as we have seen, ethiopia, as far as mount barkal, became an egyptian province. far more credible is the tradition of the hebrews that the army of the pharaoh met with a heavy reverse in the attempt to check the exodus of the hebrews, and their union with the hostile tribes of the desert. it is possible that, in consequence of this disaster, a king was set up in opposition to menephta, and that menephta retired before him to ethiopia, from whence he afterwards recovered egypt. in the excerpt of eusebius we find, after the name menephta, a king amenemes, and on the monuments amenemessu, whose shields, though chiselled out, can still be recognised.[ ] of all these things the monuments of menephta know nothing. on the contrary, a long inscription in the small court, on the southern wall of the temple at karnak, tells us of a victory which menephta had obtained over the libyan tribes. these are the lubu (libyans), maschawascha (who may be explained as the maxyans, a tribe which, as herodotus tells us, dwelt near lake triton, on the north coast of africa), the kesak, and from the "regions on the sea," the tuirscha, sakalascha, schardaina, akaiwascha, and leku. they had crossed the western border and forced their way, not into the land only, but down to the river, and had pitched their camp in the territory of the city paali. the king was obliged to protect the city of tum and the sanctuary of ptah tatamen (perhaps memphis). on the first of epiphi--the year of the reign of menephta was not given, or at any rate is not found now--a battle took place. of the lubu , were slain; of hands belonging to the sakalascha were counted, and belonging to the tuirscha. fourteen pairs of horses were taken, belonging to the chief of the leku and his sons, and , swords of the maschawascha.[ ] menephta was succeeded by sethos ii. and menephta ii. then followed ramses iii. ( - _b.c._). the warlike exploits which this king has commemorated on his temple at medinet habu appear from the inscriptions to have been hardly inferior to those of sethos i. and ramses ii. in the reliefs of this temple is seen an egyptian fleet and the engagement with the ships of the enemy. on a picture on a wall are collected all the campaigns of the king; the chiefs of the conquered tribes are represented by fourteen figures, and the accompanying hieroglyphics give us the names of their tribes. two of these names are destroyed, and a third is illegible. the first figure is the chief of the "evil land of cush." two of the figures are negroes, and their tribes are mentioned. then follow the lord "of the hostile schasu," _i.e._ the shepherds of the syrian border, the "evil chief of the cheta," against whom the inscription observes that he was taken alive, the "evil chief of the amari" (amorites), the sovereign of the lubu (libyans), the sovereign of the maschawascha, the coast-land tuirscha, the coast-land schardaina, and the "lord of the hostile zakkarj."[ ] the first menephta, as we have seen, had been compelled to fight against the lubu, maschawascha, tuirscha, and schardaina. the remaining figures prove that ramses iii. carried on war on the upper nile against the nubians and negro tribes, and in the north-east he had to contend with the schasu, _i.e._ the descendants of the hyksos, the hittites, and the amorites, the old enemies against whom his forefathers took the field. to these the pulista, _i.e._ the philistines, who are here mentioned for the first time, are added in a list of the nations reduced by the king in the eighth and ninth years of his reign, inscribed on the right wing of the gateway which leads into the second court of the temple. in the second court four pictures represent the achievements of the king in the fifth year of his reign against the lubu (libyans), and ten pictures on the outer side of the north wall give the achievements of the eighth and ninth years. first there is a great slaughter of the temhu, apparently the general name under which the egyptians comprehended the libyan tribes. the enumeration of hands and members gives a total of , for each, and the scribe on the picture is taking this down. on the eighth picture the egyptian ships, with beaks ending in lions' heads, and mastheads manned by archers, are manoeuvring with sails and oars to thrust the enemy's ships upon the shore, on which is drawn up the egyptian army with arrows also directed against the hostile ships. the inscriptions tell us that these are the ships of the zakkarj. at a fortress over which is written magadil (migdol?) the captive zakkarj are brought before the king. this is on the ninth picture; on the tenth the king celebrates his return to thebes.[ ] ramses iii. was followed by eleven kings of the same name ( - _b.c._). but the days of warlike expeditions were over. the inscriptions which have come down to us from these rulers only prove that their sovereignty was maintained over nubia, and tell us of certain buildings which these princes also erected at memphis.[ ] of ramses xii. a memorial stone found in the temple of the moon-god chunsu at karnak--a deity to whom the house of ramses paid especial honour--informs us that he elevated the daughter of the lord of the land of buchten (or bachtan) to be queen of egypt. when afterwards another daughter of the chief fell ill, he besought the king of egypt for a wise man to cure her. the priest, whom ramses sent, found the king's daughter possessed by a spirit, but he was too weak to contend with it. then the chief of buchten besought ramses to send him a god to overcome the spirit. and ramses sent the image of the god chunsu from the temple at thebes in a large boat, accompanied by five small boats and a chariot. the spirit gave way before the god, and the chieftain was in great joy, and refused to allow the god to return to egypt, until in a dream he saw a golden hawk, which spread out its wings to fly to egypt. on awaking he found himself seized by an illness. so he allowed the god to return to egypt after he had kept him three years and nine months, and gave him many rich presents for the journey.[ ] footnotes: [ ] herod. , - . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] strabo, pp. , , , , , . [ ] tac. "annal." , . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , ; euseb. "arm." ed. aucher, p. ; "sethos qui et rameses." [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] ebers, "Ægypten," s. . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] rosell. "mon. stor." , , ff. [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] rosell. "mon. stor." , , ff.; bunsen, "Ægypten," , ; brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. ff.; cf. brugsch, "recueil," p. . [ ] the lists allow him a reign of , , or years. according to a memorial-stone discovered by mariette at abydus he reigned years; cf. p. , note . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. , and "monatsberichte des berl. akad." , s. , ff. [ ] gen. , ; joshua , . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , . [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , ; brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] rosell. "mon. stor." , , - , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] rosell. "mon. stor." , , , , . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] herod. , ; aristot. "metereol." . ; lepsius, "chronolog." s. ff. ; ebers ("durch gosen," s. ) finds pithom in abu soliman. [ ] rosell. "mon. stor." , ff.; ebers ("Ægypten," s. ), relying on the berlin papyrus i., regards the fortification as much older, and carries it as far as suez. [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , , ; lepsius ("chronologie," s. , ) has sufficiently proved that we ought to read menephtes instead of amenophis and menophis. a similar story is in chæremon, a contemporary of aelius gallus.--joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," , . brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. , . [ ] de rougé, "revue archéolog." , , ff., ff; lauth, "sitzungsberichte" of the academy at munich, , , ff. the explanation of the tuirscha as tyrsenians, of the sakalascha as sikels, of the schardaina as sardinians, and the akaiwascha as achæans, appears to me very doubtful. the locality points to libyan tribes. brugsch ("hist. d'egypte," p. ) reads qairdina for schardaina, qawascha for akaiwascha. on the weapons and features of the schardaina, see rougé, _loc. cit._ pp. , . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte." p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. ff. [ ] brugsch, _loc. cit._ p. ; mariette, "ath. franç." , oct. p. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . chapter vii. the monuments of the house of ramses. more than ten centuries seem to have elapsed from the founding of the kingdom of memphis before egypt ventured beyond her natural borders. the peninsula of sinai, the shores of the red sea opposite thebes, and semne in nubia were the extreme limits in the times of the kings who built the pyramids, of the sesurtesen and amenemha. the impulse given by the successful war of liberation carried egypt beyond these boundaries. when amosis and tuthmosis iii. had restored the kingdom, it reached the summit of its greatness and splendour under the latter and amenophis iii., sethos i., and ramses ii., while ramses iii. strengthened anew and maintained the position which his great forefathers had obtained for egypt. four centuries of glory and victory had now passed over egypt ( - ), the victorious arms of the pharaohs had been carried to nubia and dongola, to the negroes, to libya and syria in repeated campaigns; more than once the euphrates had seen the egyptian armies. in these centuries egypt was the first kingdom in the ancient world, not in civilisation merely, or in art, but in military power, though her lasting acquisitions were limited to the upper nile. for yet another century and a half the successors of ramses iii. could enjoy undisturbed the fruits of the exertions of their ancestors. as the new kingdom surpassed the old in power, so did the new capital thebes eclipse the older memphis. none of these princes neglected to offer his booty to ammon of thebes; from the time of tuthmosis i. to ramses iii. no king omitted to adorn thebes with new buildings. the city must have presented a most marvellous appearance when the works of the tuthmosis and amenophis, of sethos, of ramses ii. and iii. stood erect and rose up from the earth solid and massive as rocks on either bank of the nile, while the multitude of obelisks and colossi towered up like a forest of stone. fancy might imagine that she looked upon a city built by giants. the houses of the people also, though built of brick only, as diodorus tells us, were three or four stories high. diodorus fixes the circuit of the city at more than fifteen miles; for us it is still marked by the remains of the temples of karnak, luxor, gurnah, and medinet habu.[ ] we have spoken above of the buildings erected by tuthmosis i. and iii. at karnak, and amenophis iii. at luxor and medinet habu. it was sethos i. who on the west of the oblong court, the gateway, and obelisks of tuthmosis i. at karnak, added a hall on the most magnificent scale, the entrance to which is also formed by a gateway. this hall, the most splendid monument of egyptian architecture, is feet long, and over feet broad; the roof rests on pillars, which on each side towards the north and south form seven naves, each of nine pillars. the central space, supported on either side by six pillars of feet in diameter and feet in height, rises higher than the naves at the side. on the external wall of this hall are displayed the triumphs of sethos over the schasu, the cheta, and the retennu; there are recorded the campaigns already mentioned against the tribes of cush, the punt, and the naharina. opposite karnak, on the left bank of the nile, north east from the colossi of amenophis iii., at the village of gurnah, he built a temple to ammon, and at abydus a large sanctuary to osiris.[ ] none of the pharaohs undertook such numerous works and left behind so many monuments as ramses ii. he completed the hall of his father at karnak,[ ] and extended on a magnificent scale the temple of amenophis iii. at luxor, by adding on the north-east a second court, and adorning the entrance to it by a lofty gateway. before this he placed two seated colossi, statues of himself--at present, like the lower parts of all the ruins at luxor, they are covered to a considerable height with sand--and two obelisks of red granite, of which one still rises in splendour to the blue sky, and displays the long, sharply-cut rows of the hieroglyphics in all the brightness of the uninjured polish. the other is at paris, in the place de la concorde. on the left bank of the nile, between the colossi of amenophis iii. and his father's temple, a little further to the west, and immediately at the foot of the libyan range, he built a large temple. a massive gateway rises on a slightly elevated terrace, leading to a rectangular court. this is surrounded by a double row of pillars supporting the portico, of which two only are now standing. on this follows a second court, of which the portico is supported on the right and left by double pillars, on the front transverse side by single pilasters, and on the back by double pilasters, against the first row of which lean colossal images of osiris. at the entrance from the first into the second court, on the left, was the greatest of all the detached colossi in egypt, the seated statue of ramses, hewn out of a block of red granite from syene. sixty feet in height, this statue once overlooked both courts; now it lies prostrate on the ground. the length of the middle finger is four feet. there was apparently a second colossus on the other side of the entrance corresponding to this. from the second court, in which are the remains of two smaller colossi, three gates of black granite led into a great hall, built on a higher level. the roof of this, the remains of which exhibit a blue ground with gold stars, was supported by sixty pillars in ten rows. of these rows four are still standing; the pillars are feet in height and six feet in diameter. on this great hall adjoin three smaller ones, on both sides of which lay chambers, and the roof of one is adorned with a large astronomical painting. the back part of the building was formed by vaulted porticoes of brick, and each brick is stamped with the name-shield of ramses ii.[ ] the inscriptions on the second court and in the hall tell us, "that the gracious god, _i.e._ the king, erected this great structure in honour of his father ammon-ra, the king of the gods: by his own arm he has erected it, the royal sun, the champion of justice, established by ra, the child of the sun, ramses, beloved of ammon, beloved of the goddess mut." on the walls of the portico between the first and second court is represented a great procession to the altar of ammon. two rows of men carry the statues of thirteen predecessors of ramses on their shoulders (p. ). further on the king, with a sickle, is cutting a sheaf of corn from the field, a priest receives this from the hand of the king, and offers it to a white bull. then the priest bids the four geese belonging to the four spirits of the quarters of the sky to fly south, north, east, and west, in order to announce to the gods of each quarter, "that horus the son of osiris, that king ramses, established by ra, has put on the double crown."[ ] the sculptures of the front side of the gateway exhibit the king in intercourse with the gods, and symbolise the divine expressions of favour towards ramses. gods lead him to the greater gods. the god tum places him before mentu (p. ). mentu takes the hand of the king, and says, "come to the heavenly mansions, to behold thy father the king of the gods, who will bestow upon thee length of days, to rule over the world and reign upon the throne of horus." mentu leads the king to ammon, over whose figure we read, "ammon-ra, king of the gods, who dwells in ramses' house at thebes, speaks thus: beloved son of my race, ramses, lord of the world, my heart is glad in that i behold thy good works; thou hast built me this house; i grant thee a pure life to live upon the throne of seb" (p. ). in the hall ammon is holding the crook from his throne towards the king, and says, "i certify that thy building shall continue as the heavens." the goddess bast (p. ) lifts her right hand to the head of the king, and says, "i have prepared for thee the diadem of the sun, that this helmet should remain upon thy brow, where i have placed it." on another sketch in this hall ammon is giving to ramses the scythe, the whip, and the crook (the symbols of dominion), and says, "take the scythe of battle to subdue the nations without, and to smite off the head of the unclean; take the whip and the crook to rule over chemi (egypt)." on the exterior of the wings of the gateway are represented the wars which in the fifth year of his reign ramses carried on against the cheta, and in the eighth year against maram, dapur, and salam (p. ). in one of the side chambers of the hall ramses and his consort, together with the moon-god, chunsu, and the goddess mut, are carried to ammon by the priests. the goddess mut says: "i come to pay worship to the king of the gods, that he may secure long years to his son, to king ramses, who loves him." chunsu says: "we come to honour thee, ammon, king of the gods; grant to thy son who loves thee, the king of the world, a safe and pure life." the king and queen also speak to ammon; ramses says: "i come to my father escorted by the gods whom he at all times allows in his presence." and over the queen we read: "behold what the divine consort says, the royal mother, the mighty mistress of the world:--i come to worship my father ammon the king of the gods; my heart is gladdened by thy favour. o thou who hast established the seat of thy power in the dwelling of thy son ramses, lord of the world, grant to him a safe and pure life, and let his years be numbered by the periods of the festivals." finally, ramses is represented under an arbor vitæ (persea) before the throne of tum. tum and thoth write the name of the king on leaves of the arbor vitæ, and tum says to ramses: "i write thy name for a series of days that it may be upon the divine tree." in another chamber we find the figures of the children of ramses; twenty-three sons and more than thirteen daughters are mentioned in the inscription.[ ] this is the structure of which diodorus gives the following account, though he had not seen the work himself. "the entrance to the monument of the king whom they call osymandyas--such is the account in diodorus--was formed by a gateway covered with sculptures, feet broad, and forty-five cubits in height; through this you passed into a rectangular court surrounded by pillars, measuring feet on each side, but in the place of pillars are statues sixteen cubits high, each hewn in the antique style out of a single block. the roof of the portico is two fathoms in width; it also is built of monoliths painted with stars upon a blue ground. behind this court there is a second gateway similar to the first, but adorned with still richer sculptures. at the entrance stand three monolithic statues. the middle one is the seated image of osymandyas, the largest in all egypt, for the feet are more than seven cubits in length; the two others, on the right and left, which represent the wife and daughter of the king, are inferior in height. this statue is not only remarkable for the size, but also for the excellence of the art and the nature of the stone. in spite of the enormous size, a chip or split is not to be found in it. there, too, is the statue of the mother of osymandyas, twenty cubits high, and also a monolith. behind this gateway is a second court, more marvellous even than the first, in which various sculptures represent the war against the bactrians. this nation had revolted from the king, but with , foot and , horse he marched out against them, divided his army into four parts, and put each under the command of one of his four sons. on the first wall we see the king fighting at the head of his army against a fortress surrounded by a river; a lion is seen at his side assisting him (as a fact in the picture of the great battle against the cheta on the gateway a lion is found beside the chariot of the king.) on the second wall the prisoners are brought forward: they are without their hands and members, in order to indicate that they fought without spirit. the third wall contains reliefs of various kinds and sketches representing the king's sacrifice of bulls, and his triumphant return. in the middle of the court stands an altar of marvellous size and workmanship. before the fourth wall are two seated colossi cubits high, and beside these three entrances lead into a colonnade, of which the sides measure feet. in this hall are a number of statues of wood representing men in expectation of the decision of their law-suits, and looking towards the judges. these, thirty in number, are engraved on one of the walls; in their midst is the chief judge, on whose neck hangs a picture of truth with closed eyes; beside him lie a great quantity of books. then you pass into a space intended for walking, where are represented many of the most delicate kinds of food. here also the image of the king is engraved, and brightly coloured, showing how he offered to the god the gold and silver which came to him year by year from the mines of egypt, and the total is written down close by; estimated in silver, it amounted to , minæ. then follows the sacred library, and after this the images of all the gods of egypt, and of the king, who offers to each god the appropriate gifts, in order as it were to show to osiris and his assessors in the under world that the king had lived a life just towards men and pious towards the gods. on the walls of the library abuts another building, in which are twenty couches, the images of zeus and hera, and the images of the king. in this chamber the king appears to be buried. in a circle round this chamber are yet many other rooms containing very beautiful pictures of all the animals worshipped in egypt. through these chambers we reach the top of the sepulchre, a golden circle cubits in circumference, and one cubit thick. on this circle are marked divisions for every day in the year, and in each is noted the rising and setting of the stars, and the influence which the egyptian astrologers attributed to these constellations."[ ] the temple built by ramses ii. to ammon, in dongola, on mount barkal, has been mentioned before (p. ). a memorial stone discovered at dakkeh tells us that he caused wells to be dug in ethiopia.[ ] in nubia also, five or six days' journey to the south of dakkeh, at abu simbel, on the left bank of the nile, a small valley with almost perpendicular walls of rock breaks at right angles the ridge running by the river side. in these walls of brownish yellow sandstone two temples have been cut. the northern and larger is dedicated to ra by ramses; the smaller, on the opposite side, is dedicated by ramses' wife, nefruari, to the goddess hathor. before the temple of hathor are six colossi, three on either side of the entrance. in each triad the middle statue represents the queen, the two others the kings. before the temple of ramses are four seated colossi, with the arms upon the hips, hewn out of the natural rock. all are statues of ramses, and in height are over sixty, or, counting the thrones, over seventy feet. the breadth across the shoulders is twenty-five feet; from the elbow to the tip of the finger measures fifteen feet. seen from a distance, these statues are very impressive, owing to their severe and calm beauty, and the correctness of the proportions, notwithstanding the enormous scale. the entrance to the temple lies deep down between the thrones of the colossi. first we pass into a spacious portico, of which the roof is supported by eight pillars, against which lean as many standing colossi about feet high, with arms crossed, the whip and the symbol of life in their hands. all are images of osiris. from this portico, out of which doors open on either hand into side halls, we arrive through two chambers into the sanctuary of the goddess, which lies feet deep in the rock. the whole excavation consists of fourteen chambers. the sculptures, painted throughout, are uninjured still, and of the most brilliant colours. the most striking pictures among them have been mentioned above (pp. , ). below abu simbel, at derr sebua and gerf hussein, on the nile, ramses ii. built temples to ra, ammon, and ptah. here, as at abu simbel, new cities rose round the temples.[ ] further downwards at beth-el-walli, a temple was hewn in the rocks at the west side of the nile, the sculptures of which exhibit the exploits of ramses ii. against the negroes, and the booty of these campaigns--gazelles, ostriches, giraffes (p. ); while the ruins of the temple which he built beside the larger one of his father to osiris at abydus, is evidence of the honour which he paid to his predecessors in the kingdom (pp. , ). herodotus and diodorus told us that sesostris had set up before the temple of hephæstus (_i.e._ of ptah) at memphis statues of himself, his wife, and his sons, on a colossal scale (p. ). in the ruins of memphis (at the village of mitrahinneh) there lies, surrounded by green turf and tall palms, in a depression, the prostrate statue of ramses ii. hewn out of a single block. the feet are wanting, the head wears the crown of upper and lower egypt; in the middle of the girdle are engraved the words mi amun ramses, _i.e._ ramses beloved of ammon. from the knees upwards the fragment measures thirty-five feet; on this scale the total height must have reached forty-two or forty-three feet. at tanis in the delta, ramses ii. built or restored a great temple, and erected obelisks. the inscriptions on the ruins speak of his victories in syria. here also lies a prostrate and shattered colossus; the name-shields on the back of the throne are those of the second ramses.[ ] of the buildings of this king for the sepulchral chambers of the apis bulls at memphis, the fortification of the border towards syria, and the canal, we have spoken above (pp. , ). on the left bank of the nile, westwards of the temple and the two colossi of amenophis iii., at medinet habu, ramses iii. built a splendid temple. a magnificent gate flanked by broad wings sixty-six feet in height leads from the east to the first ante-court, which, as always, is surrounded by a portico, partly supported by massive pillars, and partly by statues of osiris. from this court a second somewhat smaller gateway leads into a second court; the portico surrounding this is supported to the right and left on strong columns, of seven feet in diameter, the capitals of which are formed by lotus-leaves, and on each of the other sides by eight osiris pillars. the columns and pillars, in spite of their massiveness, do not seem too heavy to support the blocks which form the roof of the portico. in this court we find the four pictures which represent the war of ramses iii. against the libyans (p. ). the ante-temple, to which the entrance lay between the osiris pillars just mentioned, the inner temple, and the shrine, are in ruins; the bases only and the foundations can still be traced. in the ten reliefs mentioned above the external wall of the second court displays in the most brilliant colours the warlike achievements of ramses iii. against the temhu and zakkarj (p. ). about steps to the south-east of the first gateway are the ruins of another structure of this king, which appears to have been his palace. two obliquely rising towers enclose a court, surrounded by a building several stories high. the rooms still remaining are paved with slabs; the windows are square. the reliefs represent the king surrounded by his wives, and then at draughts, the instruction which his children receive in reading and writing from a priest, and other household matters. on the right bank of the nile at the south-west edge of the terrace of karnak, ramses iii. began to build a temple to the moon-god chunsu, which was completed by ramses iv.; and at karnak itself, in the court before the great hall of sethos i., he erected a smaller temple, cutting the southern portico of this temple at right angles, which he dedicated to "ammon ra, his father," to whom the whole sanctuary belonged.[ ] as at memphis, so also at thebes, great care was taken for the dead. not far from the city, in the first libyan range of hills, which here rise feet out of the plain, lie the tombs of the inhabitants of thebes, running on into these hills for two hours' distance in an unbroken series of catacombs. the graves, and the passages which lead to them, are all hewn in the rock, sometimes to a considerable depth. several rows of chambers lie one over the other. in the lower rows, where the richer class are buried, the chambers are larger and more handsome; those in the upper rows are simpler, smaller, and meaner. staircases, straight or winding, connect these stories and chambers with each other. galleries, gangways, and perpendicular shafts break the rows of excavations, and give to this city of the dead the features of an inextricable labyrinth. these catacombs, with their thousands of mummies, innumerable chambers full of papyrus rolls and amulets buried with the corpses, with their sculptures and frescoes on the walls and roofs, which are for the most part preserved in marvellous brilliancy and represent in the truest and most varied manner the occupation of every person buried there of the higher orders, are an almost inexhaustible source for the knowledge of the life and the habits of that distant time. separated from the first range of hills by a lonely and desolate ravine, there rises further to the west a second wall of rock, which the arabs call biban-el-moluk, _i.e._ the gates of the kings. in this lie the largest and most richly-furnished tombs. the kings of the old monarchy heaped mountains of stone over their graves at memphis, and in like manner the princes of the new kingdom caused vaults and porticoes to be hewn in the rocks for their sepulchral chambers. here in antiquity forty tombs were enumerated,[ ] and the latest investigations have confirmed this enumeration. spacious, but often barred, passages lead sometimes only fifty, sometimes feet into the rock. the greater part of the tombs consist of a suite of galleries, chambers, and chapels for the offering of sacrifices to the dead; these are followed by the sepulchral chamber, where rests the sarcophagus, sometimes in a deep niche. the pharaohs of thebes appear to have carried on their work upon these burying-places in the same manner as the princes of the old kingdom proceeded with the building of their pyramids. they commenced with the entrance, the ante-chapel (a broad and not very long portico, generally supported on pillars), and a small chamber, the real sepulchre.[ ] if the length of the reign sufficed, a new passage was driven deeper into the rock from the chamber, a new and larger ante-chapel, a wider and higher sepulchral chamber was excavated. all the graves as yet opened and examined in this wall of rock are entered by square doors of uniform shape, with simple ornamentation. at one time they were provided with wings for security in closing. behind them the corridor descends somewhat rapidly into the deep rock. as a rule the sculptures on the inner walls begin from the doors immediately behind this entrance. the colouring is still lively, not to say harsh. the oldest tombs lie to the north-east; but as yet only two chambers have been opened here, one of which is large in size and adorned with beautiful, though very much injured sculptures, the grave of amenophis iii.[ ] the tombs of the tuthmosis have not yet been found. next, on the south-west, lies the tomb of ramses i. the rock chamber and the granite sarcophagus, which is still standing there, are without any ornament whatever except a few pictures on the walls, in which the god tum and the goddess neith, the great mother, the lady of heaven, the queen of the deities, lead the king before osiris. the king speaks, "i have come to thee, lord of the gods, mighty god, master of the sky," while neith says to the king, "i secure to thee the throne of osiris, on which thou shalt sit for ever."[ ] the grave of his successor, sethos i., consists of a suite of galleries, chambers, and chapels. a corridor leads to a staircase, which ends in a chamber; from this a second staircase leads to a portico, on which abuts a great hall, the roof of which is supported by four pillars. a third staircase leads from this hall on the left into one similarly adorned, of which the pictures remain unfinished, and on the right into a broad vaulted portico sunk more than feet deep into the rock. the roof of this portico is supported by six pillars. here the corpse of the king rested in a sarcophagus of alabaster, which is covered with sculptures. the sarcophagus, now in the british museum, was empty when found, and the cover was broken. the sculptures of the first hall display on every side of the pillars the king and a deity. those on the walls represent the stations of the nightly course of the sun and the hindrances thrown in the way of the sun by the serpent apep (p. ), the judgment in the under world, the reward of the good, the punishment of the bad, the constellations of the sky, the five planets in their boats, and the four tribes into which the egyptians divided mankind. each tribe is represented by four figures. of the grave of ramses ii. but few chambers have as yet been opened.[ ] the grave of his son menephta presents nothing more than a picture referring to the under world. beside menephta, amenmessu (p. ) and menephta's son, sethos ii., found their resting places in these rocks, which also conceal menephta ii. (p. ). the grave of sethos ii. is distinguished by paintings and sculptures. the sarcophagus of red granite is intended to exhibit on the lid the image of the king, but this remained unfinished.[ ] the grave of ramses iii. comes nearest to that of sethos i. in size and splendour of adornment. galleries following one upon the other, on the side of which are small chambers, lead to a large portico in which rests the sarcophagus. the sculptures in these chambers exhibit scenes of court life, of agriculture, of the banquet, musicians, boats, and weapons; those of the galleries and the portico represent scenes of the under world and existence beyond the grave. the grave of ramses iv., far smaller and incomplete, still contains the shattered sarcophagus of granite.[ ] on the other hand, the tomb of ramses v., one of the most handsome, displays on the arching of the roof of the great portico, where the sarcophagus stood, the outstretched form of the goddess of the sky, in which are enclosed the stars. on the walls are depicted the fortunes of the soul in the next world, and the king in the boat of the sun-god. these representations of the judgment in the under-world, which recur perpetually in the tombs at biban-el-moluk, and of the life to come, are wholly unknown to the pyramids and the tombs surrounding them, the burying-places of the ancient kingdom. footnotes: [ ] diod. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. ; mariette, "revue arch." , , ; _cf. supra_, p. , . [ ] lepsius, _loc. cit._ s. , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. ; "denkmale aus Ægypten und nubien," , , , ; brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] rosell. "monum. stor." , , . [ ] champollion, "lettres," p. - ; brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," pp. - . [ ] diod. , - . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. - , , , . [ ] as this statue bears on the right shoulder the shield ra apepi, or apepa, it has been thought to be the statue of the shepherd king apepi (p. ). lepsius regards it as a statue of ramses ii.--"königsbuch," s. . [ ] brugsch, hist. d'egypte, pp. , . [ ] strabo, p. , puts the number of the royal sepulchres at forty. diodorus, on the authority of the sacred records, speaks of forty-seven graves. at the time of ptolemy i. only seventeen were in existence (diod. , ), and of these, at the time when diodorus travelled in egypt, the greater part were destroyed. lepsius gives twenty-five graves of kings, and fifteen graves of the wives of the kings ("briefe," s. ). [ ] brugsch, "reiseberichte," s. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. ; rosellini, "mon. stor." , , . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," , . [ ] on the sketch of this tomb on a turin papyrus, cf. lepsius, "abh. der berl. akad." . chapter viii. life and manners of the egyptians. we have already called attention to the peculiar features in the position and nature of their country which favoured the development of the egyptians. the shape of the land, so conducive to unity, must have led at an early time to a community of life; the protection of this favoured valley against the plundering tribes of the desert must have called into existence a military monarchy. but it is no longer in the form of a patriarchal rule or military chieftainship that the monuments and tradition display the government of egypt. it is the form of despotism peculiar to the east, which meets us at the threshold of history, meets us, too, in a very sharply-defined form. herodotus says that the egyptians could not have lived without a king, and diodorus tells us that the egyptians worshipped their kings, and prostrated themselves before them as though they were really gods. of men who could confer such great blessings as their kings the egyptians assumed that they partook of the nature of gods.[ ] as a fact, we see on the monuments not only the commanders and magistrates of the districts, but even the priests, in the dust before the kings. it is true that it was the universal custom in the east to approach the ruler kneeling, as one on whose nod depended the life and death of every subject at every moment of his existence; but the egyptians, led by their peculiar religious views, have gone further than any other nation in the exaltation of the power of the monarch; they worshipped their kings as the deities of the land. as in the beginning, according to the teaching of the priests, the gods ruled over egypt, so in subsequent times the pharaohs occupy the place of the gods. they do not merely spring from the gods; they are themselves gods of the land. they are not only called children of the sun; but to their subjects they are the "sun itself, which is given to the world," which beams over the land and gives blessing and increase; they are the "outpourers of life," like the gods. like the gods, they are lords of truth and justice; they preserve order, punish the bad, and reward the good, and keep away the unclean enemies; through their care it is that their subjects share in the fruits of the earth, hence they cause egypt to live. the king of egypt is called, and is, "the mighty horus," the god who gives blessing to the land. if to the egyptians animals and men were the manifestations of the divine nature, must they not recognise such manifestations in peculiar potency in the life of the king, in the ruling, arranging, and sustaining power of the king over the whole land? this conception of the king as a god on earth has been already brought before us in the inscription on the statue of chafra, the builder of the second largest pyramid, which describes him as the "good god, the master and gold horus" (p. ). it continues unchanged to the last centuries of the kingdom, and even survives the independence of egypt. in the inscriptions of the temples the ptolemies and roman cæsars are named by the same solemn titles as the ancient pharaohs.[ ] we saw that priests were allotted to the spirits of the buried kings (p. ). in the ruins at luxor, spirits of heaven are carrying amenophis iii. into the presence of ammon, who consecrates him king (p. ). in the ramesseum and in the palace at medinet habu we have pictures of the coronation of ramses ii. and ramses iii. in both, the four geese of the four spirits of heaven are bidden by the priest to announce to the spirits of the east and west, of the north and the south, that the king has put on the double crown. in the rock temple at selseleh (p. ), the goddess anuke gives her breast to king horus, who is depicted as already grown into a youth; in the rock temple at beth-el-walli, isis and anuke allow ramses ii. to suck at their breasts. in the ramesseum, ramses ii. is led by the gods mentu and chunsu and the goddess mut before ammon (p. ). these pictures, in which gods bring the kings before ammon, and worship him, that he may bestow life and purity on the princes presented by them, are constantly recurring. on the monuments the kings are found sacrificing, not only to their divine forefathers, but also to themselves and their own divinity (p. ). tuthmosis iii. dedicated a temple to the god sesurtesen iii., and ordained regular sacrifices to him; and amenophis iii. built a temple in nubia to his own divinity (pp. , ). nowhere do we find a trace to show that the kings stood in need of the intervention of the priests in order to approach the gods, and without such intervention there can be no supremacy of the priests over the sovereigns of the state. everywhere the kings come independently before the gods. everywhere we find the sacrifices of the kings, not of the priests, offered. it is the kings who consecrate temples to the gods, in order that the king may obtain "lasting life and purity." it is the pharaohs and not the priests who represent the state and people before the gods. the kings are at the same time the high priests, and stand at the head of religion as at the head of the state; their sons and grandsons, their mothers, wives, and daughters, are, according to the inscriptions, the priests of this or that god or goddess. the kings, as diodorus assures us, were not waited upon by slaves, but by the sons of the most distinguished priests; by priests only could the ruling god of the country be served--and the priests did not omit to mention on their tombs, even at a very early period, the king in whose service they were prophets, scribes, and minstrels. in a word, the pharaoh was not merely the head of the state, but also of the church, if such an expression may be allowed, and the power of the priests, without any real and ceremonial support, does not extend beyond the moral influence which religion exercised upon the heart of the king. finally, it is the kings who are celebrated as the lawgivers of the land, and this excludes any thought of a supremacy of priests. yet the influence of religion and of the priesthood on the king is not to be contested, although, under the military princes who governed egypt after the expulsion of the hyksos, the priests had to share their influence with the leaders of the army. not till the time of menephta, do we observe a more influential position assumed by the high priests at thebes. this influence goes on increasing under the weak successors of ramses iii., and reaches its summit under the first princes of the dynasty of tanis. then it declined, and afterwards only came into operation under foreign supremacy. if further proof were needed for the unlimited power of the kings than their representation of ra and horus, and the menial position of the priests, we should find it in the gigantic structures which the pharaohs left behind them. to carry out works of this kind is impossible unless the monarch has absolute disposal of the labour of his subjects. but these buildings were undoubtedly the main interest and the main occupation of the kings. in this they follow the characteristic traits of the whole nation. in building temples and erecting images, their object was just as much to confer honour on the gods as to preserve the remembrance of the homage which they had offered to them. the preservation of their own actions and names, which these buildings in the eyes of the egyptians "caused to live," is the main object of the structure, and along with the sacrifices of the kings, and the evidence of the favour of the gods, the sculptures on the temples display the martial exploits of the kings. if the kings erected pyramid tombs, it was in order that their corpses might rest in security, and the tumulus "cause their name to live" in the generations to come. if they built temples, it was that the gates, walls, frescoes, and inscriptions might preserve their acts for posterity. the buildings of the pharaohs are the history of their reigns written in stone. the ceremonial which surrounded the life of the pharaohs is described by diodorus. in the morning the king first read the communications received from every quarter; then he performed his ablutions, put on his robes, and offered sacrifice to the gods. while the sacrificial animal was being led to the altar the high priest offered prayer to the gods, beseeching them to grant life and all good things to the king, as he was a righteous ruler. he was pious to the gods, gentle towards men, strong, just, and courageous, an enemy of lies, a sharer of his goods with others, and master of his desires; one who did not punish the wicked so severely as they deserved, and gave to the good more than their proportionate share. then the priest laid the punishment of any error into which the king might have fallen on his servants, and urged him to a pious life, "not by reproaches," as diodorus expressly observes, "but by commendations." when the sacrifice was finished, the priest read to the king the apothegms and achievements of distinguished men, that is, no doubt, of previous kings, out of the sacred books. we know that poems of considerable extent on historical subjects were in existence.[ ] in the same way the remaining part of the day was allotted to definite occupations. for walking, for bathing, even for sleeping with the queen, definite hours were appointed. the king might only eat the flesh of calves and geese--the food of the priests--and take a fixed portion of wine. diodorus regards it as wonderful that the kings should have subjected themselves to this ceremonial. in this he leaves out of sight the fact that the god of the land was expected to lead the life of a god, and also, a thing which could not indeed be so obvious to him, that all periods present proofs to what oppressive rules of state and etiquette rulers are willing to subject themselves in order to exhibit their dignity and majesty. yet this was not the object chiefly held in view in the regulation of the king's life, nor was it the love of the egyptians for systematic and fixed arrangements. the king was at the same time the first priest of the land; and therefore the regulations of the priestly life applied to him also. moreover, the egyptians were extremely careful to keep themselves pure from the unclean, in order by such purity to preserve life and salvation. with this object, priests and laity alike regulated all their actions, their eating and drinking, feeding and clothing, by a minute ritual. it was the first duty of the king to protect the purity of egypt. he was the horus of the land, who had struck down disorder, impurity, and evil, and therefore, like the victorious god, he must shine out in the brightness of unsullied purity. thus the king had to lead the pure life of a priest; he could eat none but the priestly food, and every duty must be performed at a favourable moment, for the egyptians were under the dominion of a widespread astrological superstition. this system further required that every fault he might happen to commit should be taken from him and laid upon others. it is probably the plan sketched by the priests for the king's life, of which diodorus has preserved some traces; we know that among the sacred books those of the minstrels contained regulations for the life of the king. whatever flattery and homage was thus intended for the great and gracious king, the pharaohs no doubt observed so much as seemed suitable to them. of a later king, amasis, we are told that he emancipated himself from the customary ceremonial, and when business was over, gave himself up to relaxation and enjoyment. yet his reign was a long one, and regarded with affection by the egyptians. the pharaohs were surrounded with all the state of oriental despots. on the picture of the coronation, the assumption of the pschent by ramses iii. at medinet habu, the procession is led by trumpeters, who are followed by commanders and magistrates. twenty-two priests lead the statue of ammon, who is followed by a priest with incense, and a scribe who appears to read a proclamation. the king is then carried in by twelve richly-attired men on a throne under a canopy. beside the throne walk certain officers, who cool the king with large fans; others carry the weapons of the king and the insignia of his power. behind follow the captains of the army and the body-guard. then a white bull is led in the procession by priests, and the whole closes with priests carrying the name-shields of the predecessors of the king. on descending from the throne the king makes a libation towards ammon, burns incense to him, and cuts off some ears of corn with a golden sickle.[ ] the court was numerous: fan-bearers on the right, and fan-bearers on the left, bearers of the parasol, keepers of the king's bow, captains of the body-guard, overseers of the palace, overseers of the buildings in upper and lower egypt, overseers of the horses, books, and music, stewards of the granaries in upper and lower egypt, stewards of the royal flocks, treasurers, butlers of the palace, and other officers are mentioned.[ ] according to the monuments, the king's household furniture was profuse in silver and gold. the gondolas were gilded, with variegated sails, the trappings of the horses were splendidly ornamented, the stuffed seats curiously carved and richly decked; and of the complicated occupations of the royal kitchen, of the number of people employed, of cup-bearers and master cooks, as well as of the preparation of the food--the monuments give us a very complete idea. the death of the king was mourned for seventy days, like the death of an apis. during this time everyone had to abstain from baths, from flesh and wine, until the son of the ruler, who had entered into amenti, ascended the throne as a new horus and giver of life to the land, and the visage of the new lord again "beamed like a sun over both the lands of egypt" after the days of lamentation. the succession, so far as we can see, was not infrequently broken by usurpations, which have always been inseparable from the despotic form of government.[ ] it is characteristic of the all-absorbing power of the monarchy in egypt that tradition can scarcely mention a single eminent person beside the names of the kings. we hear nothing of generals or statesmen, and scarcely of priests. all stood in equal subjection to the king. though families may have at one time arisen from the nation, which were in a position, from wealth and inclination, to undertake the defence of the valley of the nile against the tribes of the desert, and though the monarchy may have arisen out of the ranks of this military nobility, which in bygone times united the valley of the nile into a kingdom, still, so far as the monuments allow us to see, there is no trace left of the eminent position of any nobility, whether military or hereditary. the military order, as presented to us on the monuments, and by the tradition of the greeks, no longer consisted of wealthy landowners who went to war at the bidding of the king with their chariots and horses and retainers; they are merely soldiers--families, who for a certain portion of land given to them by the state are pledged to service in war, and who receive their weapons from the armouries of the state. such are the warriors on the monuments even in the times of the amenemha and sesurtesen, and also under ramses iii. herodotus tells us that each family of warriors possessed twelve measures of good land, free of taxes, the measure being egyptian cubits in length and breadth. this would make the allotment more than twelve acres. these families, according to herodotus, could, even about the middle of the fifth century b.c., put in the field , men, although two hundred years before, under psammetichus i., a large number of them, it is said more than , , migrated into ethiopia. the military order was divided into two classes: the hermotybians, numbering at most , men, and the kalasirians, about , strong. in the time of herodotus, the first were settled in upper egypt in the province of chemmis, and mainly in the western delta; the kalasirians were in the province of thebes, and in the central and eastern delta.[ ] each division furnished yearly , men for the bodyguard of the king, who were handsomely provided for, and the garrisons in the border towns and strongholds, which were also relieved year by year. from the masses of the two divisions so many may have been told off for field duty as were considered necessary. from the numbers which herodotus gives it is not impossible that the armies of sethos and ramses ii., when all the soldiers were called out, were, if not , , yet from , to , strong. under ptolemy philadelphus ( - b.c.) the army of egypt was estimated at , men. the monuments prove that even at the time of the sesurtesen and amenemha, war was scientifically carried on, and the soldiers regularly drilled. from the royal armouries the infantry were provided with bows, helmets, shields, lances, and crooked knives, and were divided into battalions, each carrying its own ensign. the heavy infantry moved in ranks to the sound of trumpets. attacks were not made on fortified cities without the ram, and sheds to protect the attacking party. instead of cavalry, which never occur on the monuments, we find, though not till after the time of the hyksos, numerous war-chariots in use. those who fought in the chariots, as the kings, who are invariably represented as fighting from a chariot, made use of bows. the monuments often exhibit practice in archery. with the egyptians, as with the whole of the east in antiquity, the bow was the favourite weapon. to the priestly order egypt owed the growth and establishment of her cultus, the peculiar turn of her religious conceptions, her moral law, her writings, her art, and her science. the piety of the people and the kings had amply endowed the temples. "the priests eat nothing of their own," says herodotus; "sacred bread is daily baked for them, and they obtain vegetables, geese, calves' flesh, and wine in sufficient quantities."[ ] diodorus tells us that the land in ancient egypt was divided into three portions, of which a third belonged to the kings, a third to the priests for their support and the maintenance of the sacrifices and festivals, and another third to the military order, and that all the farmers in egypt held on leases;[ ] and we have already seen that at any rate a part of the land, though by no means so much as a third, was really allotted to the soldiers, who could scarcely have leased their small patches, but must have cultivated them in person if they wished to live upon them with their families. another part of the land was marked off for the maintenance of the priests and the expenses of public worship; but it appears that this land also belonged to the king, for herodotus speaks of the incomes of the priests as gifts received from the king;[ ] and the hebrew scriptures also tell us that "the priests had a portion assigned them of pharaoh, and did eat their portion which pharaoh gave them."[ ] from these data--even if the statement of herodotus, that sesostris (ramses ii.) had given an equal square of land to every egyptian, must be limited to a measurement of the land, in order to regulate the taxes[ ]--it appears that the pharaohs looked on themselves as the proprietors of the soil--a view by no means strange to the despotisms of the east--and in consequence they allotted to the soldiers so much as was necessary, and of the rest allowed a great portion, which was estimated at a third of the whole, to pay taxes to the temples, while the remainder contributed to themselves. according to the statements of the hebrews the taxes amounted to a fifth of the produce,[ ] and hence all the farmers could with justice be considered leaseholders, or at any rate as having copyhold estates. it is expressly observed that only the farms of the soldiers were free from taxes,[ ] and that the land which was taxed for the temples contributed nothing to pharaoh.[ ] at the same time it is easily intelligible that the piety of the subjects provided additional incomes for the priests, and that, so far as it was possible to make any arrangements of the kind, land and revenues were presented to the temples.[ ] the maintenance which they derived from the incomes and contributions of the temple-lands, in corn, wine, and animals for sacrifice, enabled the priests to live for their religious duties, for the complete performance of their customs in regard to purification and food, and for the study of the holy scriptures. they were divided into various classes and corporations. in every temple there was one upper priest,--the head of the temple--the prophet,[ ] a temple scribe, who was especially skilled in writing, and managed the temple property, a chamberlain, who took care of the clothing of the images, the sacrifices, and the ritual, an astronomer, who had to observe the heavens, and a minstrel. in the processions the prophet carried the jar of water for purifications; the chamberlain carried the cubit of justice and a basin for sprinkling water; the scribe can be recognised by the feather in his head-dress, the roll of books in one hand, and the pen in the other; the astronomer by an hour-glass and a palm branch, the symbol of the seasons among the egyptians. these higher classes of the priesthood were followed by the lower; the pastophors, who carried the images in the processions, and practised medicine, the attendants, male and female ("the nurses"), of the sacred animals, the persons whose duty it was to select and seal the animals for sacrifice, the embalmers, and lastly, the temple-servants, who were responsible for the purifications. the first sanctuaries in egypt were the temples of ammon at thebes, of ptah at memphis, and of ra at heliopolis. the colleges at these temples were the most important centres of priestly life and doctrine. so long as thebes was the metropolis of the kingdom, the high priest of ammon at thebes was the first priest in the land. herodotus tells us from the lips of the priests of thebes that the office of high priest descended from father to son, and diodorus maintains that the same was the case with all the officers of the temples.[ ] these statements are contradicted by the inscriptions. they mention five places in the temples through which all "fifth priests" must pass. from a memorial stone of a priest, bakenchunsu, we learn that for fifteen years he was third priest, and for twelve years second priest of ammon at thebes; then he became first priest of this god, and continued to be so to the end of his life. the priests had to lead a holier and purer life than the laity. the ritual, the rules for purification and food, which the priests laid upon themselves, were stricter than those expected from the rest of the people. the priest must wash twice in each day and each night. every third day he must shave his whole body, more especially his eyebrows and beard. he might only wear linen clothing (byssus), and shoes of papyrus. any other clothing, and especially the hair and skins of beasts, defiled a priest; though on monuments the priests of osiris wear leopard skins, especially at the ceremony of the burial. the flesh of sheep, swine, and most other animals was forbidden to the priests; they might never touch fish. pulse they might not eat, and beans were not even to be looked at. they observed frequent fasts. from time to time they underwent certain mortifications, which in one instance continued for forty-two days, in order to destroy in themselves the forty-two deadly sins. finally the priests could only marry one wife; while the laity were allowed to have other wives beside the first. the kings had more than one wife, and this was the rule among the wealthier class in egypt.[ ] we are not informed how sharply the different orders in egypt were separated, or how far the different occupations were distinguished among the labouring or trading population in addition to the classes of priests and soldiers. we do not know, for instance, in what degree the tiller of the soil was distinguished from the artizan. we are only told that the people were divided into husbandmen, artizans, and shepherds, and the shepherds were regarded as the lowest class. but we learn that no one was allowed to follow any other occupation than that derived from his father.[ ] the inscriptions tell us that the same office, as for instance that of architect, remained in the same family for twenty-three generations;[ ] and in the seventh century b.c. a kind of caste grew up out of a number of egyptian boys, whom psammetichus handed over to his ionian mercenaries. hence we may conclude that the impulse to perpetuate types and lock up occupations in hereditary circles and fixed families was very strong, as was natural enough with the fixed and conservative character of the egyptians. but however strong the impulse, however deeply rooted the custom for the son to follow the father's profession, there was in egypt no caste in the strict sense of the term. marriages between the orders were not forbidden, and it is exclusiveness in this point which completes the idea of caste. moreover in egypt there were adoptions and transitions from one order to another. the sepulchral pillars never lay any weight on birth in a certain order, but rather show that members of the same family had belonged to different orders--that a man could be at once a priest and a soldier, and diodorus remarks that in egypt all were regarded as of equally honourable birth. the statement that the shepherds were held in the least estimation is probably correct, for the reason that their unrestrained occupation was least adapted for subjection to fixed rules of life and a strict ritual; but that statement, like the assertion in genesis that "cowherds were an abomination to the egyptians," is not to be taken in reference to the breeders of oxen and the care of flocks, which was carried on with great vigour among the egyptians, but to the nomadic tribes who wandered with their flocks on the broad marshes of the delta, or on the pastures of the libyan and arabian ranges, and were wholly strangers to all settled life. when we are told that the swineherds were held in especial contempt, we must remember that to the egyptians the swine was an unclean animal.[ ] hence we may consider it as certain that custom required the egyptian to follow the trade of his father, and caused the father to live again in his son, but no law of religion or state turned the orders into castes, and that the various classes of trades and professions were neither haughty and exclusive, nor servile and submissive towards each other, but all lived together on a tolerable equality. beside the respect and weight which the religious importance of their order, their general knowledge and science gave to the priests, it was to them more especially that the honour of serving the king fell. we cannot doubt that the public officers were mainly taken from the order of priests, which was also the order of scribes. egypt was not, like the great monarchies of the ancient east, a state founded by conquest, in which the lord of the victorious people was master of the conquerors and the conquered also, and in which it was all-important to retain the conquered nation in subjection; it was a compact district inhabited by the same tribe. here, if we make an exception in favour of the transitory conquests in nubia and arabia, there were no extensive and distant provinces to be held in check. the departments in the land were small, their number reached forty-four;[ ] the officers, whom the king set over them, were in his sight, they could not assume the position of refractory pashas. they were nominated out of the members of the royal house (the monuments furnish instances), the priests, the soldiers, and also out of the people. royal scribes and judges, "scribes of justice," were allotted to these prefects. as the egyptians early arrived at a written law, as religion and justice were closely connected, and the priests were acquainted with the art of writing, the prefects of the provinces were without doubt assisted by men from the priestly order in the exercise of their judicial duties. besides the maintenance of the peace and the administration of justice, it was their duty to provide for the cultivation of the land, the collection and transmission of the taxes to the king. even the soldiers settled in the provinces seem to have been subject to their rule. the gold and copper mines on the upper nile and in sinai appear to have been put under the care of special officers, and the products were conveyed under military protection to the treasury of the king (p. ). the officers of the central government surrounded the person of the king (p. ). even the administration of justice, according to diodorus, was centred in a supreme court, consisting of thirty judges, ten of the best men from heliopolis, ten from memphis, and ten from thebes. without doubt these judges belonged to the three priestly colleges of memphis, thebes, and heliopolis. from these thirty the president was chosen, and on his breast, attached to a golden chain, he wore a shield of precious stones, beautifully wrought, which the egyptians named "truth" (p. ). this court of the thirty no doubt gave very honourable decisions, and in accordance with law, unless the king were interested in the result, or preferred to pass sentence himself. diodorus further informs us that the laws of the egyptians were collected in eight books, and were always kept at hand by the judges. the first written laws were given by menes to the egyptians, who declared that he had received them from the god thoth. these laws had been enlarged by "sasychis," who at the same time left the most accurate rubrics for the service of the gods, discovered geometry, and taught astronomy. then sesosis (sesostris) laid down the laws for the kings, and the army. finally the kings bocchoris and amasis completed the laws of egypt. herodotus praises a king "asychis," whom he places after menkera (p. ), as the giver of the laws of mortgage. from diodorus we also learn, and the monuments confirm his statement, that a written process went on before the court, that plaint and answer, rejoinder and reply, were given in, in writing; and this custom, considering the delight of the egyptians in writing, did not appear for the first time in the later period of legal administration. the contracts and bills of sale found in tombs of the time of the ptolemies are drawn up with the most circumstantial accuracy, and furnished with the signatures of many witnesses.[ ] what diodorus tells us of the law of egypt with respect to _meum_ and _tuum_ gives evidence of a certain gentleness and humanity. the interest was never to exceed the amount of the capital. slavery for debt was not allowed; the sons of all the wives shared equally in the inheritance. the murder of a slave was punished with death, just as the murder of an egyptian. perjury was threatened with the same penalty. anyone who falsified documents or measures had his hand cut off. in the confession which the souls made before osiris (p. ), especial emphasis is laid on the fact that the dead man had not falsified measures or seals, that he had practised no deceit in the law court, and had lent no money upon usury. the punishments inflicted on the guilty are characteristic of the east: the stocks, compulsory labour at the mines and quarries, loss of the nose, excision of the tongue, and mutilation were the usual penalties.[ ] beside the law of the state stood the law of religion, of the priests. it was not sufficient to offer bread, and geese, and thighs of bulls, to pour drink-offerings of milk and wine, and "all things whereon the divine nature lives," to burn frankincense before the images of the gods, to offer the firstlings of the fruits, figs, onions, and flowers, to set up in the temples dedicatory offerings, small statues, crowns, and rings, to celebrate in honour of the gods of the district the great and small festivals, to honour the dead and bring sacrifice to them at the beginning and end of the year, at the festivals of the great and the little heat, on the monthly and fortnightly festivals (the calendars of the festivals on the monuments exhibit an almost unbroken series of sacrifices), to attend to the animals of the sacred kinds and bury them handsomely, "to give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and shelter to the wanderer"--the whole life must be a religious service. in their favoured land the egyptians considered themselves a favoured people. full of gratitude to the gods who had given them this land and this life, they looked with contempt on the unclean and perverse nations who dwelt beyond the valley of the nile. to keep themselves clean from the unclean is the essential task of their lives. to the merely superficial view, cleanliness of body and clothing seems cleanliness of soul and life. but this purity, which the law of the priests required from every egyptian, and above all and in an especial degree from the priests, was not limited to simple and natural cleanliness. there were beneficent life-giving gods, and there were also evil and destructive deities. to these belonged the side of nature which seemed to correspond to their being. contact with this side of nature is not only displeasing to the good and pure gods, it gives the evil influences power over the men contaminated by it. hence for the salvation of men such contact must be shunned. certain things must be avoided for clothing and others for nourishment, certain impulses must not be satisfied, or must at any rate be limited. this conception introduced certain usages and customs, which were developed by the priests into a system of rules for purification and food. herodotus says, "the egyptians are the most religious of all men; they have a severe and strict service, and many sacred customs." the boys were circumcised. beans, rye, and barley might not be eaten; the flesh of many animals and many kinds of fish was forbidden. it was not lawful to eat the head of any animal. the animals for sacrifice must first be examined by the priests, to see that they did not belong to the sacred kinds--to sacrifice these was an inexpiable offence--and whether in other respects they were without blemish and pleasing to the gods. this examination was the duty of the class of temple-servants already mentioned, and it devolved on them to mark the animals found to be clean with a seal, which in bulls was placed on the horns. the egyptians never ate at the same table with strangers, nor used a cup from which a stranger had drunk, nor ate flesh cooked in the vessel of a stranger and cut with a stranger's knife; all strangers and their utensils were unclean. nothing woollen might be taken into a temple or a tomb. the egyptians always wore newly-washed under-clothing of linen; they were obliged frequently to wash their bodies, and for three days in each month they used means of evacuation, clysters and emetics, in order to cleanse the body internally.[ ] these statements are confirmed by papyrus rolls containing medicinal precepts. if the king, a sacred animal, or a member of the family died, no one was allowed to wear white or bright-coloured clothes; he must shave his eyebrows, and abstain from intercourse with his wife and from baths. men and women threw dust on their heads and faces, and the women ran to and fro wailing with bare breasts.[ ] if an egyptian had not committed murder, theft, or adultery, if he had not defamed the gods nor the king, nor those in authority over him, nor his own father, if he were not guilty of lying or slandering, if he had deceived neither gods nor men, nor oppressed his workmen in their daily tasks, nor drawn off the water, if he had allowed no one to be hungry, and caused no one to weep, if he were not slothful and idle in his occupation, if he sacrificed to the gods at the appointed time, and poured libations and observed all the regulations for cleanliness, then he might hope to find grace in the presence of the twenty-four judges before osiris on the day of judgment in amenti (p. ). in order to gain by such conduct and careful observation of the laws of cleanliness and the ritual, a long life in this world, rest in the grave, and eternal life in the fields of the sun-god, the egyptians worshipped their gods with unwearied zeal, while their kings raised temple upon temple of enormous blocks in honour of the life-giving powers of heaven. we cannot rate the knowledge and science of the egyptians very low, however absurd and singular much in it appears to be. the early discovery of writing, however unwieldy the form, gave them the means of preserving not only invocations and incidents, but also the results of observation and experience, and of increasing slowly and surely their stock of knowledge. they made an unusually extensive use of writing. the walls of the temples are covered with inscriptions, which often enough only repeat once more what has been repeated already innumerable times. even in the tombs at beni hassan from the time of the amenemha and sesurtesen, we find scribes engaged in numbering the flocks and ticketing the sacks of corn. the scribes of the king registered the game obtained in hunting, the number of hands hewn off after a victory, and of prisoners, and calculated the amount of the booty. the temple-scribes are seen in the processions with pen in hand, and on the monuments the gods note down the years of the kings on the leaves of the arbor vitæ. everything is to be enumerated, registered, and entered. even ornaments and utensils are covered with inscriptions. as the hieroglyphics on the walls explained the images in the temples, and the hieroglyphics on the sides of the sepulchral chambers recorded the race and achievements of eminent persons and officers, so did the priests write down their wisdom, and private people their documents on a lighter material, the leaves of the papyrus, a tall reed growing in abundance in the swamps of egypt. notwithstanding this extensive use, the system of writing among the egyptians continued to the end a clumsy and difficult system, partly owing to the number of pictures and symbols, and partly to the variety of the phonetic pictures. the unchanging character of the egyptians, the symbolical and mystic sense concealed in the hieroglyphics, the religious character of these old and sacred signs, stood in the way of the change to a more simple and phonetic mode of writing. yet the effort to obtain such a system is unmistakable. after the year b.c. a number of picture symbols were used as phonetic symbols, which up to that time had no phonetic value, and this change becomes more and more frequent in the last centuries b.c. the habit of writing the hieroglyphics on the papyrus had early led to abbreviation in writing; the pictures were represented by simple outlines more adapted to the hand; and hence arose a cursive mode of writing the hieroglyphics, the so-called "hieratic" writing, which we already (pp. , ) found in use on the pyramids under the old kingdom, and which was in use on an extensive scale at the time when the new kingdom was at its height. finally, from the hieratic writing arose a third and more abbreviated kind, the demotic, which represented the language of ordinary intercourse and the national dialect. this was in existence when herodotus travelled in egypt. here we see the most marked effort to avoid the ideographic element and picture signs, and to extend the use of the phonetic symbols. beside the remains of the picture symbols, the demotic writing employs seventeen simple phonetic symbols and some fifty symbols of syllables. the hieroglyphic and hieratic modes of writing are called on the monuments the "writing of the gods," the demotic is "the writing of the books." for us the difficulty of the hieroglyphics is materially increased by the fact that the coptic language in the form accessible to us is removed by thousands of years from the form of words represented by the hieroglyphics of the old and new kingdom. the forms which we obtain from the records preserved in the demotic writing are about midway between those in the hieroglyphics and the forms retained in the coptic translation of the scriptures, and in some books of liturgies, which belong to the first centuries a.d.[ ] in the circles of the priests the traditional invocations of the gods, the rules for the proper conduct of sacrifices and feasts, for the pure conversation which is the way to life and salvation in this world and the next, were without doubt committed to writing at a very early period. when gradually extended and continued, those writings grew into a liturgical canon and ecclesiastical codex of religious and moral law, and a comprehensive collection of all the wisdom known to the priests. we learn that the egyptian priests possessed forty-two sacred books. regarded as a collection of religious rules in every department of civilisation and life, as the measure of holy and upright conversation, and as rules of civil law, these books passed as the writings of the god thoth, the scribe of heaven, the god of truth and justice. the civil law also was grounded upon the rules and axioms of religion; from these it arose, and the books of civil law without doubt formed a part of the sacred law, and of the books of the priests. of these forty-two books ten belonged to the high priest, of which eight may have been the eight books of civil law (p. ). in that case the two others would contain the doctrine concerning the gods, and the instruction of the priests. ten other books belonged to the temple-scribe. of these the first contained the rules for the sacred writing; the second the geography and cosmogony; the third and fourth the arrangement of the sun, moon, and five planets; the fifth and sixth the description of egypt and the nile; the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, the weights and measures, the mode of registering the temple furniture and property. again, ten books belonged to the chamberlain. these taught the ritual and the liturgy, the offering of first-fruits and sacrifices, hymns and prayers, together with the conduct of festivals and other things of the kind, and, finally, discipline and the rules for examining the animals for sacrifices. the two books of the minstrel contained the hymns and the contemplation of the life proper for a king (p. ). the four books of the astrologer concluded the narrower circle of the sacred writings. of these, the first contained the arrangement of the fixed stars; the second and third the coincidences of the orbits of the sun and moon; the fourth, the rising of the constellations. besides these sacred books the pastophors (p. ) had six books which taught the principles and practice of medicine;[ ] for the art of healing, _i.e._ of preserving life, also belonged to the priests. the medicine of the egyptians is commended as early as the homeric poems (p. ). herodotus assures us that in egypt every kind of sickness had a special physician, and diodorus states that the art was carried out strictly according to the written principles, _i.e._ no doubt, according to these six sacred books. a hieratic papyrus on the subject of medicine has been recently found at thebes, which is supposed to belong to the first centuries of the restoration of the monarchy. a section of this deals with diseases of the eye.[ ] egyptian physicians were much sought after in the east (the founder of the persian kingdom, cyrus, procured an oculist from egypt), until the fame of the greek medicine about b.c. threw egyptian physicians into the shade.[ ] in the sacred books of the priests was drawn up the religious system into which the original conceptions of the gods were shaped and developed in the circles of the priests. the gods who passed for the greatest and mightiest in the various districts out of which egypt was made up, the protecting deities of the separate localities, were here arranged in definite ranks and classes. and if, nevertheless, considerable differences can be observed in the teaching of the priests of memphis and thebes, they are sufficiently explained by the mode in which religion and state were developed in egypt, and the rival position of the two great centres of ecclesiastical life. according to the doctrine of memphis the seven highest deities were ptah, the creative god of light of the lower country; ra, the sun-god of heliopolis; and shu (sosis, p. ), the deity of the clear air; these three were followed by the forms belonging to the osiris circle, on whose nature rested the moral basis of the life of the egyptians; seb, the father of osiris; osiris himself; then his opposite, typhon; and lastly, horus, the conqueror of typhon.[ ] the doctrine of thebes placed ammon at the head instead of ptah, and in the place of ra stood the two sun-gods of upper egypt, tum (atum, p. ) and mentu; these were followed by shu, and the gods of the osiris circle. to the seven or eight great gods was appended a circle of twelve gods, and among these thoth and anubis. the twelve were followed by a number of spirits, genii and demigods. with this system of gods the doctrine of the priests was connected. even from the attributes of ptah, neith, and other deities, it is clear that there was among the priests a strong tendency to gather up the divine powers into the forms of ptah, tum, osiris, and ra. the teaching of the priests evidently desired to grasp the connection of life, and attain to a theogony and a theory of creation. it has been already pointed out on the authority of documents belonging to the times of the amenemha and sesurtesen, that the priests in their doctrine were at pains to discover the unity of the divine spirits, and to conceive the forms of the gods as manifestations of one being. they regarded the animals as the manifestations of special characteristics of the gods, and men as phænomena of a divine origin and nature, who would return to the place whence they came. to go further and grasp the heart of the system is impossible in the present condition of our researches. conceptions and inferences of the græco-egyptian speculation of the time of the ptolemies and the first centuries after christ cannot be accepted as the true form of the old egyptian religion, or as the doctrine of the priests of ancient egypt. with the egyptians, as with other nations, poetry probably arose out of the invocations of the gods and hymns of praise and thanksgiving. religious poetry had a fixed canon in the books of the minstrels. that national songs were also in vogue is shown by the monuments (p. ). diodorus told us above that the achievements of sesostris were celebrated in poetry (p. ). the description of a deed of arms of ramses ii. which he must have regarded as of considerable importance has been preserved. the battle he fought with the cheta in the fifth year of his reign (p. ), he caused to be represented in the rock temple at abu simbel and in the ramesseum, and a description of it is engraved in these temples, as at luxor and beth-el-walli, and in the walls of the great temple at karnak. it is found in still greater detail in a papyrus of the british museum.[ ] at the end is the observation that the scribe pentaur composed it in the seventh year of the reign of ramses ii. in this poem we are told that the chief of the cheta had come with his archers and chariots, three men on each chariot. north-west of kadesh they lay in ambush. the king, urging on his chariot, pressed into the midst of the miserable cheta. he found himself surrounded by , chariots. "my bowmen and my chariots have abandoned me, this is what the king said; none of them is here to fight beside me. what is the will of my father ammon? is he a father who denies his son? or have i followed my own thoughts? did i not set forth at thy command; has not thy mouth led my armies, and thy counsel guided them? have i not celebrated many brilliant festivals, and filled thy house with booty? thirty thousand bulls i have sacrificed with odorous herbs and perfumes of all kinds. i have built thee temples of stone, i bring obelisks from elephantine, and cause the everlasting stones to be carried down. for thee--the great ships swim upon the sea, to bring thee the tribute of the nations. has the like been done before? ruin on him who opposes thee: salvation to him who comprehends thee, ammon. on thee i call. i am alone before thee in the midst of unknown nations. my bowmen and chariots left me when i called; no one heard me when i cried for help. but i choose ammon before thousands of bowmen and millions of chariots. the devices of men are nothing; ammon will deliver from them. these words echoed in hermonthis. ra comes to him who calls upon him. he reaches to thee his hand. he flies to thee, ramses miamun. i am with thee, i am thy father, the sun, and my hand is with thee. their hearts shall waver in their breasts and all their limbs shall fail. they shall not shoot their arrows; their lances they shall not be able to hold. the chief of the cheta sent princes, the prince of aratus (aradus) and the prince of kirkamischa (karchemish). my charioteer was weak, and a great terror came upon his limbs. he said, brave king, hold, and let us save the breath of our lives. what can we do, noble lord, ramses miamun? mark what his majesty answered to his charioteer. courage! stablish thine heart, my charioteer. like the divine hawk, i will swoop into their midst, they shall be overthrown and hewn down into the dust. ammon were no god if he glorified not my face before their countless hosts. the king pressed into the midst of the miserable cheta, six times he pressed into their midst. my bowmen and charioteers came at the hour of evening from their camp: they found the whole region covered with dead bathed in their blood. his holiness answered his army and the captains who had not fought. ye did not well to leave me alone in the midst of the enemies. i have fought, i have beaten back thousands of enemies, and i was alone. the horses which drew me were 'might in thebes,' and 'rest in the upper land.' as soon as i am within my royal gates, i command that they have corn every day before the god ra. when the earth again became light, he began the conflict again; he dashed into the battle like a bull, which hurls himself upon geese, and with him the mighty lion beside his horses. rage inflamed all his limbs. they were hewn in pieces before his mares. the chief of the miserable cheta sent to call upon the great name of his majesty. thou art the sun, the god of both worlds, thou art sutech the great conqueror, the son of heaven. baal is in all thy limbs. terror is upon the land of cheta; thou hast possessed thyself of their inwards for ever. the slave said, as he spoke to pharaoh: since ammon has granted to thee that egypt and the nation of the cheta shall be slaves at thy feet, and ra has granted thee the dominion over them, thou canst slay thy slaves; they are in thy power; we lie bowed to the earth, ready to obey thy command. o brave king, delight of the warriors, grant us the breath of our lives! the king summoned his generals in order to hear the message and write an answer, and toward midday he took ship. he returned in peace with his army to egypt. the whole earth has subjected itself to his name, and the princes, lying on the ground, worship his countenance."[ ] not only certain turns in this description, but passages in invocations which have come down to us, show that in expressing themselves, the egyptians, in spite of the predominant vein of reflection, were not without force of imagination, or striking figures, or largeness and vigour of conception. that they are not free from bombast, foolish exaggeration, and incessant repetition, any more, or even so little, as the other nations of the east, is proved more especially by the inscriptions in the temples recording the mighty deeds of the kings. our knowledge of the manuscripts does not as yet allow us to pass a more definite judgment. yet it is beyond doubt that even in the centuries immediately preceding the irruption of the hyksos, under the sesurtesen and amenemha, they were in possession of a written literature, that even then the oldest parts of the "book of the dead" were not only in existence, but already commentated upon, and that after the restoration of the kingdom, beside the comprehensive books of the priests, and manuscripts on medicine (p. ), there was at any rate after the fourteenth century b.c., and the reign of ramses ii., a literature of a considerable extent. there is a second papyrus in existence by the author of the description of the battle, of which the title runs, "beginning of the rudiments of the art of letter-writing by the scribe pentaur, composed in the th year of ramses ii."[ ] the fifth letter of this collection is addressed by ameneman, the head of the keepers of the archives of the treasure of the king, to pentaur; it is said that pentaur has turned his back on the sacred writings, and applied himself to agriculture. the farmer has to fear grubs and rats, sparrows and locusts for his crops; and thieves too. implements and horses wear out. the scribes come and demand the taxes, and the neighbours are away and busy with the harvest. on the other hand, the work of the scribe is the highest of all, and the scribe has no taxes to pay.[ ] on a third papyrus a hymn, addressed by ramses iii. to ammon, is said to have been found.[ ] a fourth has the name-shields of sethos ii. (p. ). it is a composition by a scribe of the name of enna, and contains the story of the fate of two brothers.[ ] a fifth papyrus, which is also attributed to the time of successors of ramses ii., has preserved a collection of apothegms.[ ] in a country which placed such importance on preserving every incident, on enumerating, recording, and registering everything, care must have been taken to record the series of the kings. when the shepherds were driven out, the liberation from foreign dominion would give a strong impulse toward the attempt to keep firmly before the eyes the old days of independent egypt. at the same time these attempts must have met with serious hindrances. the destruction which came upon numerous records and monuments of those old times, and the want of any definite æra of chronology, made it difficult to obtain a really correct order of succession, or a historical picture of the ancient period. the historical truth of the writings, which, in spite of these difficulties, were undertaken, as is shown by the monuments mentioned above, and the turin papyrus (p. ), was still more seriously impaired by the fact that the views of the priests were governed by the conception that the course of certain periods was allotted to the world by the gods, and in these periods the fortunes of egypt had reached their fulfilment, and would continue to reach it. we have already become acquainted with this sothis period (p. ff). from the gods came life and the world. so the gods were said to have reigned in person over egypt, before the kings, their divine successors, ruled over men. hence the priests of lower egypt commenced the reign of the seven great gods with the beginning of a sothis period. the seven great gods were followed by the twelve gods of the second rank, thoth, anubis, chunsu, &c., in reigns of gradually diminishing length through a certain number of sothis periods. according to the scheme still preserved, ptah reigned , years, and the last of the gods only seventy years, so that on an average each occupies exactly half a sothis period, or of our years. these nineteen gods were followed by thirty demigods; to each of whom was allotted the twelfth part of a sothis period for a reign, so that the whole period of the reign of the gods takes up twelve sothis periods, or , years. after this, according to some authorities, began the period of human rulers; others allotted four sothis periods, _i.e._ years, to another set of demigods. then followed, beginning like the rest with the beginning of a sothis period, the rule of human kings. this sothis period commenced either in the year b.c., or, according to the arrangement of lepsius, with the year b.c. this year, therefore, was the first of the history of egypt. to menes the priests attached the long list of names in one continuous series, without in the least regarding whether the dynasties were contemporaneous or successive, whether they ruled in upper or lower egypt, over the whole land, or in certain districts only. if we calculate the rule of the human kings from the first of the dates given, the first sothis period of men came to an end, according to the canon of manetho, in b.c.; the second in b.c. the third ended in the time of menephta i., in whose reign as a fact the egyptian year did again coincide with the natural year.[ ] the egyptians were devoted more than other nations to the contemplation of the heavens. the constellations announced to them the approach of the inundation, its height, and its decline. moreover, their religion was to a great extent a worship of light and the sun, and as they plainly perceived the influence of the stars on the country in the rise and fall of the water, the increase and abatement of the heat, &c., it was natural that they should ascribe to the constellations and the movements of the heavenly bodies similar influences on the life and growth, the happiness and misery, of mankind; and this belief must in turn have contributed to the assiduous and accurate observation of the heavens. "if anywhere," says diodorus, "it is in egypt that the most accurate observation of the position and movements of the stars have been made. of each of these they have records extending over an incredible series of years, the courses and positions of the planets also they have accurately observed, and they can accurately predict the eclipses of the sun and the moon."[ ] astronomical pictures are not uncommon on the monuments belonging to the period after the expulsion of the hyksos. fragments of a calendar of festivals from the time of ramses ii. are found on a gateway of the ramesseum. the outer walls of the temple at medinet habu give a complete calendar of the festivals from the time of ramses iii. in the tomb of sethos i. are pictures and names of the five divinities of the planets known to the egyptians, mercury, venus (the star of the bennu, p. ), mars, jupiter, and saturn; the same picture is found on the roof of the astronomical hall in the ramesseum at thebes, and on two pictures in the tombs of ramses v. and ix. the painting in the ramesseum--though the circle of cubits, which, according to diodorus, was once on the roof of the ramesseum (p. ), is wanting, being removed by cambyses--presents a complete map of the egyptian sky. the pictures in the tombs of the two kings give the rising of the stars at intervals of a fortnight. in the tomb of ramses iv. the thirty-six decan stars are given together with their deities.[ ] the importance placed by the egyptian priests on the knowledge of the sky is shown not only by the monuments, but also by the four books of the astrologer, and the third and fourth books of the temple scribe; and that their astronomical science was by no means slight is sufficiently proved by their early establishment of a solar year of , and then of days, and by the observation and establishment of the sothis periods. this fact is confirmed by the lists of the rising of the stars already mentioned. yet the astronomical knowledge of the priests of egypt cannot be placed beside that of the babylonians. representations of the zodiac are not found on the monuments till the time of the ptolemies,[ ] and ptolemy, himself an egyptian, has preserved for us observations of the chaldees, but none made by his own countrymen. the greater part of the attention which the priests of egypt bestowed upon the heavens was given in the interests of astrology rather than astronomy. as the months in the year belonged to certain gods, the first to thoth, the third (athyr) to hathor, the last to horus, so the days of the month had their deities. the first day belonged to thoth, the second to horus, the third to osiris, &c.; and lastly, every hour of the day was allotted to a special influence. from the importance thus given to the days and hours the astrologers could foretell the fortune of life; they could ascertain what issue awaited any enterprise--whether the day and hour were favourable or not for this or that occupation or undertaking. for this object they possessed tables worked out in extensive detail. for instance, anyone born on the th of athyr, the day when typhon was said to have slain osiris, had to expect a violent death; anyone born on the rd of phaophi was doomed to be killed by a crocodile; and anyone born on the th of the same month, by a serpent. on the other hand, a child born on the th of phaophi might look forward to a long life. in the tables of the hours we find for a given day--first hour, orion is lord of the left elbow; second hour, the twins have influence on the left ear; fifth hour, the pleiads(?) are sovereign over both chambers of the heart; tenth hour, the feet of the swine predominate over the left eye, &c.[ ] in the achievement won by egyptian art the priests took a leading part. the buildings of the temples and the tombs of the kings could only be erected after their designs; for in these essentially sacred things, sacred measures and numbers, were concerned, and, like architecture, sculpture and painting were primarily employed in the service of religion. as we might expect from the character of the people, the architecture of the egyptians aimed at the firm and durable. the structures rise up simple in their lines, like the ridges of rock which are the boundaries of egypt, broad and massive. the pyramids, with great simplicity of form, were found to display a considerable skill in dealing with and uniting large masses of stone. following this path, the architecture of egypt has always preserved a severity and simplicity of outline even when employing richer forms and ornaments. among the egyptians sculpture and painting never attained independence; it was their vocation to support architecture, and assist her in preserving in the stream of time the picture of the king, his sacrifices, and his achievements, and this or that incident of his reign. the sculpture of the egyptians exhibits a vigorous attempt to grasp the forms in a naive, but prosaic and merely intellectual manner; it preserves them free from any fanciful use of symbols, and conceives the human form in fixed proportions and characteristic expression of movement, while it is still more happy in the form and character of the animals. like architecture, sculpture prefers to work in the hardest and most lasting material. but, as in all other departments of life, so here; the type when once fixed, the canon of proportion when once discovered, the mode of treatment and the law of form is rigorously retained. with complete accuracy of execution in the most difficult material, sculpture constantly repeats the same figures, geometrical rather than natural in form. yet in spite of this typical character, in sculpture and painting, as in architecture, a considerable development took place. the statues of the times of the pyramids, the amenemha and sesurtesen, exhibit, comparatively speaking, very correct forms, lively energy in the expression of action, and a strong treatment of the muscles; but the sculptures of the new kingdom are distinguished by greater variety of forms, a larger wealth of lines, and a delicacy of outline; the drawing of the figures is far more slender, and there is considerable grace in the treatment of massive pillars and capitals. the tuthmosis and amenophis, the sethos, and the earliest ramses, imposed upon egyptian art an almost oppressive number of tasks, and in performing them she touched her highest point. but the amount of work must of itself have introduced a more and more conventional treatment within the limits of the typical circle in which sculpture moved; and at last this treatment was content with mere precision of outlines. this is the character of the sculpture of the times of ramses iii. down to the days of psammetichus, in which, by a truer imitation of nature, and greater grace in the form of the bodies, it once more attained to a beautiful after-growth. the industry and skill with which the cultivation of the land and of the vine, and the breeding of cattle and sheep, was carried on in egypt even before the invasion of the hyksos, has been already seen on the monuments of the time of the sesurtesen and amenemha (p. ). the fields were tilled with ploughs drawn by oxen, or with the hoe. it was not in every case necessary to make furrows. in december and january, when the water had run off, the seed was cast into the moist ground and trodden in, as we see from the monuments, by sheep and goats. everywhere the overseer is in the field with the labourers and herdmen. by the end of march harvest was ready; wheat and maize were cut with the sickle, and then the grain was trodden out by oxen. meanwhile the thrasher sang, according to the inscription on a rock tomb at el kab (above thebes), "thrash for yourselves, oxen, thrash for yourselves; thrash bushels for your masters."[ ] diodorus remarks that it was marvellous with what care and skill the herds were tended by their keepers in egypt, what knowledge of healing plants and of food was to be found in these keepers, how their occupation came to them from their forefathers, with a large stock of experience and manual skill; and how their knowledge increased to an incredible degree the propagation of the animals.[ ] on the monuments we find not only great herds of cattle, asses, sheep, and goats, but also whole droves of hens, ducks, and geese. poultry-sellers and depots of poultry are often found. these sculptures confirm the statements of diodorus of the careful tending of the animals; they also show us the medicinal treatment of ailing animals. beside this wealth of cattle, there was an abundance of fish, provided by the nile. these were caught partly with hooks, and partly with large nets. the upper classes fished for pleasure. yet most kinds of fish were forbidden food: the priests, as we have seen, were not allowed to taste fish at all. the monuments also teach us that hunting was not neglected by the egyptians. hares, foxes, antelopes, gazelles, hyænas, buffaloes, and lions were driven into inclosures surrounded by nets, or chased with the bow and arrow and dogs, or with the chariot and hounds. gazelles and buffaloes were also taken with the lasso; traps were set for the hyænas; the hippopotamus was attacked with a spear from a boat.[ ] of the industry of the egyptians in trade we have already had striking evidence in the monuments of the old kingdom. there we saw all kinds of manufactures in the various stages; we found on them the simple weaver's loom, which produced the robes of byssus, so highly valued in antiquity,--the lasting fabric which may still be examined in the clothing of mummies. the early development of technical skill meets us more especially in the pictures of the preparation of glass on the tombs at beni hassan. glass cups and vessels are frequently found in the tombs, and strabo observes that the earth required for making glass is among the products of egypt.[ ] the working of the copper mines in the mountains of sinai goes considerably further back than the date of the tombs at beni hassan. they were open as early as the times of snefru and chufu.[ ] yet by far the greatest proportion of hands must have been employed upon the buildings of the kings and the tombs of the wealthy. on the monuments we see the masons in all their various occupations; painters and statuaries also are represented there in the different moments of their work; and the tables of proportion which they followed are still preserved. even before the invasion of the hyksos, as we saw from the tombs at beni hassan, the life of the wealthy egyptian was surrounded by considerable elegance (p. ). the houses of the rich, built, according to the pictures on the monuments, in a light and graceful style, in contrast to the heavy structure of the temples, had several stories, and were provided with the galleries and terraces still usual in the east. houses in the country had shady avenues of trees, planted in exact rows, and neat beds of flowers, graceful pavilions, and fountains of water. the common national dress was a linen shirt, and over it a woollen cloak; the labourer and the lowest class had only an apron round the body; but the clothing of the higher classes was choice and delicate. the women, who enjoyed considerable freedom in egypt, wore various ornaments--necklaces, eardrops, and bracelets; rings of the most various shape adorned almost every finger. their hair was carefully dressed; they bathed frequently, and made a considerable use of ointments. life was sociable in ancient egypt. in the tombs at beni hassan we find men carried in a palanquin to a social meeting; and in the tombs at thebes they are driving in chariots to a similar gathering. gaily-dressed men and women meet and converse with each other in the hall; slaves, light-coloured and black, in part handsomely-dressed, hand them garlands and cups. the table is spread. bread, figs, and grapes are set out in baskets, wine in glass bottles; vegetables and poultry are also there. the solid food was eaten with the hand, liquids were taken with spoons. at these banquets the egyptians do not seem to have been very moderate. herodotus tells us that a small wooden image of a mummy was carried round at their entertainments, with the exhortation, "look on this, drink and be merry. when dead, thou wilt be as this is!"[ ] this admonition was not without its results. in the pictures on monuments we find not only men, but women, throwing up the surfeit of food and wine; others are carried away home by their servants. indeed, excess and drunkenness are quoted among the forty-two chief sins of the egyptians. during the meal dancers were introduced, and bands of musicians, male and female, who played on harps, guitars, and flutes; among which was mingled the sound of the tambourine. a chorus also sang to the harp. the company also played and danced.[ ] we have already seen that games of ball and mora were played under the old monarchy. among the recreations of the new monarchy draughts are found. we often find on the monuments sketches of men and women who exhibit contortions of their bodies and feats of strength. sham-fights at sea also occur, and wrestling matches are very common. proudly as the egyptians, in the consciousness of their purity and culture, looked down on "the unclean and perverse" nations outside their land, and rarely as they travelled into other countries, egypt was nevertheless the centre of a considerable trade. china and japan also for a long time shut themselves up from the outer world, yet their trade was considerable, though permitted only at certain fixed places. the egyptians also caused the products which they needed to be brought, without themselves going to seek them. egypt required wood for the building of houses and ships, brass, ivory, slaves, and incense. even before the year b.c., arabian caravans carried the products of the south coast of arabia to syria and egypt.[ ] the wandering tribes of libya, syria, and arabia required corn, weapons, utensils, and implements, which they could buy in egypt. then at a later period came the trade of the phenicians with egypt. they could bring wood from the forests of lebanon--wine, oil, slaves, amber, and tin, and exchange them for the manufactures of egypt; for retail goods, glass, drugs, which egypt produced in great quantities, fish, egyptian fabrics, linen, and material prepared from the papyrus. the greeks called fabrics made from this plant, "byblian," from the city byblus, a proof that they first became acquainted with these egyptian wares through the phenicians, and mainly through the ships of byblus, and received them from this quarter. horses, also, and chariots were brought as articles of trade from egypt to syria about the year b.c.; at that time a chariot cost in egypt shekels, and a horse .[ ] so far as we can gather from the legends of the greeks, the trading ships could only enter the canopic mouth of the nile, and intercourse with foreign merchants could only take place on the little island of pharos, opposite the city of thonis. here the mariners of that day, the phenicians, and with them, and after them, the ionians, carried on their trade with the egyptians. on land the only entrance was by pelusium; and here as also at pharos, an entrance-tax had apparently to be paid. from the homeric poems we may conclude that there was then a trade with egypt, and not only piratical descents upon the coasts; but when the ionians, about the middle of the eighth century, began to enter into dangerous competition with the phenicians, the latter seem to have succeeded in getting the greeks excluded from egypt, and obtaining for themselves the monopoly of the sea--a privilege which, however, they did not maintain for more than a century.[ ] such was ancient egypt, the land of marvel, whose richly developed civilization lies on the threshold of historical life. excellently furnished by nature, and placed in a peculiarly favoured land, the copts have transferred to their own lives and civilization the grave and solemn character of their sky and their country. their conservative feeling is directed towards fixed and unalterable order; the sons repeat the lives of their fathers, and the nation is divided into various classes and corporations, which carry on the same occupations from generation to generation. the beneficent powers of nature, the mystery of life, the life returning out of death--these are the forces and laws which the egyptians worshipped as their good gods, whose creation is the fruitful world, who manifest themselves in good creatures, whose unchangeable nature they seemed to recognise as embodied in the instinctive and unalterable life of certain animals. the life of the nation adapts itself also to priestly rules, which operate without alteration, like the laws of nature. as the heart of this people was set upon the continuance of the race and occupation, on rule and law, so also was it their desire to prolong the existence of the individual. this impulse towards the preservation of self operated so strongly that the egyptians busied themselves with the future quite as much as with the past. it was this trait in their character which caused the egyptians to rescue their dead from corruption, and occupied the living with the construction of "eternal dwellings for the dead." this it was which made them a nation of scribes, builders, painters and sculptors. these efforts culminate in the buildings of the kings, who could command the whole powers of the land in preserving their names. the egyptians were loath to end with death. it was the true vocation of every man worthily to build and "adorn his tomb;" and the essential object of life is--not to lose the everlasting life after death by unclean and unlawful conversation--to win a return to the divine origin of life. with the simple confidence of childhood, with the patient endurance of a man, and with iron perseverance, the egyptians attempted to redeem the existence of man from destruction and decay, and rescue his life from oblivion. the power of the egyptians exhausted itself in this toil after continuance of life. but however eager a man might be to preserve his own individuality, he loses it in the presence of his ruler, who gathers up in his own person the whole political life of the nation, and exhausts it. like a god, or an incarnate destiny, the pharaoh stands in absolute supremacy over the land; "his countenance beams over egypt as the sun;" before him all distinctions fade away, and all bow down in equal obedience. but even though the perishable was preserved, and made as lasting as the rocks of the land--though in the ceremonial, the ritual, and the rules of life the same unalterable constancy prevailed as in the laws of nature, there was still room beside fixed prescription and the will of the divine ruler for the vigorous pursuit of an industry which was not far behind that of modern europe, for an enjoyment of life in the oriental manner, which was not only social, but even luxurious and sensual. the efforts of the egyptians to preserve themselves and their actions, and to cause their names to live in the mouths of the generations after them, have not been without a result. what the greeks and romans knew of their history were traditions attached to the great monuments. before our researches the egyptian nation has literally risen from the tomb; the pyramids tell us the history of the old monarchy, and the temples at thebes the history of the new. without these monuments the kings of manetho would have remained an empty and unintelligible echo. these mountains of stone at the threshold of history, these chronicles of hieroglyphics, this nation of mummies proclaim, beyond contradiction, that nations do succeed in outliving themselves by their works, but also that their life reaches only so far as their development. footnotes: [ ] diod. , . [ ] thus, _e.g._ in the rosetta inscription the order is given that in every temple an image is to be set up to the "god epiphanes, the avenger of egypt," to whom the principal deity of the temple presents the arms of victory. three times in every day the image of epiphanes is to be worshipped, and on the great festivals the same honours are to be paid to him as to the rest of the gods. in addition, a special festival is solemnized every year to the god epiphanes, and a special order of priests established for him. this resolution of the collected priests was ordered to be engraved on hard stone and set up in all the temples of the first, second, and third class. the full title of epiphanes is: "son of ptah, beloved of ammon and ra, the child of the sun, the eternal." [ ] diod. , ; plut. "de isid." c. , ; and below, p. ff. [ ] wilkinson, "manners and customs," suppl. pl. ; champollion, "lettres," p. ff. [ ] in the inscriptions of the graves and sarcophagi of the berlin museum; cf. ebers, "Ægypten," s. . [ ] what synesius (op. p. ) tells us of the election of the kings is so astounding that it can hardly have been part of any plan of the priests; the whole history of egypt contradicts an elective monarchy of such a kind. these supposed elections were said to have taken place on the libyan mountains, near thebes; the priests mentioned the names of the candidates for whom the votes were to be given. the votes of the prophets had the value of one hundred, those of the lower priests of twenty, of the servants of the temple of ten, and of the warrior class of one. [ ] kalasiris was the name given by the egyptians to a linen coat, with fringe round the thighs (herod. , ). the name hermotybian has been derived from [greek: hêmitybion], a kind of apron. [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] genesis xlvii. , . [ ] herod. , _supra_, p. . [ ] genesis xlvii. , . [ ] herod. . . [ ] genesis xlvii. . [ ] even the land which the pharaohs allotted to the temples with a tax of a fifth belonged to them in a certain sense. we have tolerably ancient records on papyrus, on which are given the incomes of the temples, with the names of the tax-payers, and the things given in taxation. when the ptolemies ruled over egypt the land which paid to the temples belonged actually to the temples as property, but as property revocable at will, and the kings on their side taxed the temples just as the islamite princes are accustomed to tax their mosques. in the rosetta inscription, under date march , b.c., the prophets, upper priests, chamberlains, pastophors, and scribes, explain that the king (ptolemy epiphanes) had given an order that the incomes of the temples and the land-taxes paid to them yearly, and the portions reserved for the gods in the vineyards and other property, should continue to be paid. at the same time we see from the sequel of this inscription, as well as from other sources, that these incomes were not sufficient to keep the temples in good order, and the king was compelled to make additions. yet, in any case, the ptolemies by their state taxes withdrew from the temples a portion of their incomes. from every plot of corn-land ([greek: aroura]) the temples were to pay to the king an _artabe_ of corn, and from every plot of vineyard an amphora of wine. besides this, they had to pay a money-tax and a certain amount of byssus cloth. [ ] clemens ("strom." p. ff. ed. pott) expressly says that the prophet was the overseer of the temple; on the other hand, in the inscription of rosetta, the high priests and prophets stand side by side. [ ] herod. , , ; diod. , . [ ] diod. , ; herod. , , ; diog. laert. , ; porphyr. "de abst." , . [ ] diod. , , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe." s. , ; brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] herod. , ; aelian, "de nat. an." , . as herodotus tells us that the swineherds married in their own order only, it follows that the other orders married with each other. the attempt has often been made to explain the so-called divisions of the egyptians into castes by the immigration of foreign tribes. this conception places in mechanical layers what is really an organic development. in india such an assumption has a certain historical foundation. there, there was a servile class (the sudra) under three superior classes; the first was composed of the original inhabitants, the others of the aryan immigrants. this kind of division is wholly wanting in egypt, and not less so any historical or physiological foundation for the immigrations. strabo knows three orders only in egypt; the priests, the soldiers, and the population engaged in work or trades. diodorus ( , ) speaks of five orders; _i.e._ in addition to the first two, husbandmen, artizans, and shepherds. plato ("timæus," p. ) mentions priests, soldiers, artizans, shepherds, and hunters; herodotus mentions priests, warriors, cowherds, swineherds, merchants, interpreters, and mariners. in plato and diodorus we miss the merchants, who certainly were not wanting in egypt, and in herodotus the husbandmen and artizans. nothing therefore remains but the natural assumption that the labouring masses were chiefly divided into shepherds, artizans, and husbandmen; and these were again broken into many divisions according to their different vocations, and each of our authorities has brought into prominence those distinctions which especially came under his notice. as herodotus especially notices cowherds, we must suppose that those herdsmen are probably meant who derived a living from the buffalo herds, which they pastured in the swampy flats of the delta, on the border of egypt, and lived in huts of reeds.--diod. , . [ ] the number of provinces in egypt under the old kingdom appears to have been twenty-seven, according to the myth of the hewing of the body of osiris into twenty-seven pieces, and the distribution of them to all the priests of the land for burial, which diodorus has preserved. from this may be derived the number of twenty-seven courts in the labyrinth given by strabo, p. , and twenty-five in pliny, pp. , ; as a fact the building had only twelve courts. yet strabo mentions thirty-six provinces (p. ). later coins give forty-six provinces, and ptolemy forty-seven. forty-four nomes, twenty-two for upper egypt and as many for lower egypt, can be established, together with their names.--brugsch, "hist. d'egypte," p. . [ ] diod. , , , ; herod. , ; plut. "de isid." ; chabas, "mél." , . [ ] diod. , ff. [ ] herod. , , , , ; genesis xliii. . [ ] herod. , , ; diod. , , . [ ] lepsius, "aelteste texte," s. ; brugsch, "grammaire démotique." [ ] clem. alex. "strom." p. , ed. pott; cf. diod. , . [ ] ebers, "augsburger allg. zt." . on a papyrus of a medicinal character of the period from the twentieth to the twenty-second dynasty, see birch, "zeitschrift für ægyptische sprache," , s. . [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] lepsius, "götterkreis," s. ; bunsen, "Ægypten," , , ff. [ ] papyrus, sallier iii. [ ] de rougé, "recueil de travaux," , ff.; chabas, "revue archéol." . [ ] on the papyrus sallier i.; "revue archéol." , , . [ ] goodwin-chabas, _loc. cit._ , , ff. [ ] _loc. cit._ , , . [ ] de rougé, _loc. cit._ . on another very marvellous narrative on a papyrus in the demotic character, see brugsch, _loc. cit._ , , ff. this papyrus brugsch, on paleographical grounds, places in the third or second centuries b.c. [ ] lauth, "sitzungsberichte der akademie, zu münchen," , ff, and his "abhandlung über den papyrus sallier ii. und anastasi iii.;" _ibid._ p. ff.; cf. chabas, "voyage d'un egyptien," and goodwin, "saneha." [ ] boeckh, "manetho und die hundsternperiode;" lepsius, "chronologie," s. ff. and _supra_, p. . [ ] diod. . . [ ] brugsch, "zeitschrift d. d. m. s." , ff. [ ] the egyptians then compared certain constellations in their spheres with the signs of the zodiac. the crab they denoted by the scarabæus, the lion by the knife, the scales became the "sun-mountain," the scorpion became the snake. the kid was with them "the life," the ram "the slain" &c.--brugsch, _loc. cit._ [ ] champollion, "lettres," p. ; lepsius, "chronologie," s. , ; cf. _supra_, p. . [ ] champollion, "lettres," p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] wilkinson, "manners and customs," , . [ ] strabo, p. ; cf. p. . [ ] _supra_, p. ; ebers, "durch gosen," s. ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] wilkinson, "manners and customs," , . [ ] cf. _infra_, book ii. cap. . [ ] kings x. , ; chronicles i. , ; ix. . [ ] "od." , ; , , ; , ; movers, "phoenizier," , . book ii. the semitic nations. the semitic nations. chapter i. the ancient kingdom of babylon. the neighbours of egypt on the east were the syrians and arabians. herodotus gives the name of syrians to the inhabitants of the syrian coasts and mount lebanon, the settlers on the euphrates and tigris, and the population of the eastern districts of asia minor. in xenophon the babylonians speak syriac. strabo remarks that the syrians and arabians are closely related in language, mode of life, and physique--that syrians dwelt on both sides of the taurus--that the same language was spoken on both sides of the euphrates--that babylon and nineveh were cities of the syrians--that the assyrian kingdom was a kingdom of syrians, and that the inhabitants of the kingdom of babylon and nineveh were called syrians by their own historians.[ ] as a fact tribes closely related in language and nature--which we denote by the general term semitic--invaded with their armies the broad steppes of arabia, and the syrian desert, occupied the coasts of syria and a part of asia minor, and inhabited the district of the euphrates and tigris, from the mountains of armenia to the persian gulf on the south, and the tableland of iran on the east. the languages of the arabians, the semitic tribes of the south, the aramæans and canaanites in the west, and the babylonians and assyrians in the east, are three ramifications springing from one and the same stem of language, which spreads from the black sea and the mediterranean to the arabian and persian gulfs. living under different conditions, the semitic nations attained to different degrees of civilization. the tribes of the desert did not go beyond the simplest and most primitive forms, at which point a considerable portion of them still remain; but the inhabitants of more favoured districts developed independently, and in the course of time these developments operated on each other, and thus led to a far more varied, and, in certain directions, far more vigorous culture, than the isolated, exclusive, and self-concentrated civilization of egypt. the two rivers which determine the character and nature of the depression between the syrian plateau and the tableland of iran rise at no great distance from each other on the mountains of armenia. the euphrates rises to the north, the tigris to the south. after leaving the mountains of armenia--the euphrates, by a broad circuit to the west, the tigris by a direct course to the south--both rivers enter a tolerably lofty steppe, where the uniform surface is broken by ridges of rock, by ranges of hills, pastures, and fruitful strips of land, while the banks of the rivers are overgrown with forests of plane-trees, tamarisks, and cypresses, and shut in by meadows. as the soil becomes more level, these fruitful depressions by the rivers become somewhat broader, but the land between the streams becomes more sterile and treeless, and supports only nomad tribes and herds of wild asses, ostriches, and bustards.[ ] when the euphrates has left behind the last spurs of this desolate hill country, at the place where the two rivers approach each other most nearly--about miles from their mouths--there commences a plain of brown rich soil. through this the euphrates passes with a quiet stream, but the tigris hurries to the sea down a bed which is both narrower, and often inclosed by rocks, while at the same time the river is increased by copious additions from the western edge of the tableland of iran. in spite of the excellent soil this flat would remain unfruitful unless the two rivers, year by year, when the snow melted on the armenian mountains, overflowed their banks, and thus irrigated the land for the summer. in the tigris the inundation commences about the beginning of june, in the euphrates, whose sources lie far higher, about the beginning of july. but this inundation does not take place nearly so calmly and regularly as that in the nile. instead of fertilising water, the tigris often sends down destructive floods over the plain, and changes it, down to the marshy delta at the mouth, into a broad and rolling sea. by its simple structure and the absence of any internal limitations, this low-lying land on the euphrates and tigris was favourable to the development of great kingdoms, and was hardly behind the nile in incentives and instigations to a civilised life. the writers of antiquity celebrate the fruitfulness and natural wealth of these flats. while on the other side of the euphrates, so writes a babylonian historian of his own home, the land as far as arabia is without water and fruits, and on the other side of the tigris the land is indeed fruitful but rocky; in the land between the streams wheat and barley, linseed beans and sesame grow wild; both in the marshes and the reeds of the river nourishing roots are found in abundance, as valuable for food as barley. besides these there are dates, and apples, and other different fruits, and abundance of fish and birds in the marsh and on the land. herodotus commends the wealth of the land in wheat and palms in the strongest terms; xenophon speaks in admiration of the size and beauty of the dates.[ ] even now the palm-forests which run without interruption along the lower course of both rivers produce dates in abundance, and with their slender forms and lofty tops give a picturesqueness to the otherwise uniform landscape. this vigorous vegetation, together with the peculiar character of the land, must have early incited a capable population to a regular cultivation and a higher civilization. the protection of the land against the rapid overflow, the conducting of the water to the higher districts, and the removal of water from the marshes, must have led to measures calculated to produce and develop a fertility of technical resources. basins were required of more considerable extent, longer canals, and stronger dams against the violent inundations, and more extensive conduits, in order to convey the water into the middle of the land, than were necessary in egypt. long before egypt had reached the height of her power and prosperity under the tuthmosis and amenophis and the early ramessids, the inhabitants of this plain had attained to a peculiar culture and civilisation. the accounts which the greeks have handed down to us of the fortunes of these districts in ancient times are meagre and defective. the power of the semitic empires on the euphrates and tigris had fallen long before inquisitive greeks penetrated the east, and the persians, who were the rulers at that time, had little interest in instructing the greeks in the former splendour of their opponents and ancient masters. herodotus intended to write the history of the assyrians; if ever composed, it has not come down to our times. on the other hand, he has described the land, manners, and customs of the babylonians; of their history, however, he only tells us that many kings and two queens ruled over babylon.[ ] aristotle remarks that in babylon astronomical observations were said to exist extending back , years from the time of alexander the great.[ ] diodorus tells us that the priests of babylon declared that they had observed the heavens for , years. cicero speaks of the shamelessness of the chaldæans in boasting that they possessed records for more than , years. julius africanus gives , years, and pliny even , years as the period for which observations of the heavens burnt upon tiles were in existence.[ ] about the time when manetho compiled his list of egyptian sovereigns, under the rule of antiochus soter ( - b.c.) berosus, a priest of the temple of bel at babylon, composed a history of his country in greek in three books.[ ] only a few fragments of this work have come down to us. berosus commenced with the creation of the world. "once all was darkness and water. in this chaos lived horrid animals, and men with two wings, and others with four wings and two faces, and others again with double organs male and female. others had the thighs of goats, and horns on their heads; others had horses' feet, or were formed behind like a horse and in front like a man. there were bulls with human heads, and horses and men with the heads of dogs, and other animals of human shape with fins like fishes, and fishes like sirens, and dragons, and creeping things, and serpents and wild creatures, the images of which are to be found in the temple of bel. over all these ruled a woman of the name of omorka. but bel divided the darkness and clove the woman asunder, and of one part he made the earth, and of the other the sun and moon and planets, and he drew off the water,[ ] and apportioned it to the land, and prepared and arranged the world. but those creatures could not endure the light of the sun, and became extinct. when bel saw the land uninhabited and fruitful, he smote off his head and bade one of the gods mingle the blood which flowed from his head with earth, and form therewith men and animals and wild creatures, who could support the atmosphere. a great multitude of men of various tribes inhabited chaldæa, but they lived without any order, like the animals. then there appeared to them from the sea, on the shore of babylonia, a fearful animal of the name of oan. its body was that of a fish, but under the fish's head another head was attached, and on the fins were feet like those of a man, and it had a man's voice. its image is still preserved. the animal came at morning and passed the day with men. but it took no nourishment, and at sunset went again into the sea, and there remained for the night. this animal taught men language and science, the harvesting of seeds and fruits, the rules for the boundaries of land, the mode of building cities and temples, arts and writing, and all that pertains to the civilisation of human life."[ ] the first sovereign of babylon was alorus, a chaldæan of the city of babylon, whom the god had himself pointed out to the nation as a shepherd. his reign continued for , years. after the death of alorus, his son alaparus ruled for , years. he was succeeded by almelon from the chaldæans, of the city of sippara, for , years, and almelon by ammenon, a chaldæan of the same city for , years. under his rule there came out of the sea an animal, combining, like oan, the shape of a fish and a man, and called idotion.[ ] after ammenon came amegalarus, of the city of sippara, for , years, and after him daonus, also from sippara, for , years. in his reign there again appeared from the red sea four animals in the shape of men and fish. these were euedokus, eneugamus, eneubulus, and anementus. daonus was followed by edorankhus, from sippara, who ruled for , years, and in his time appeared another monster of the same kind, named odakon. these explained in detail what oan had given in the sum. after edorankhus came amempsinus, a chaldæan of larancha for , years,[ ] and after him otiartes (ubaratulu),[ ] a chaldæan of the same city for , years. otiartes was followed by his son xisuthrus who reigned , years. from the first year of alorus to the last year of xisuthrus , years had elapsed. "in this year the god bel revealed to xisuthrus in a dream that in the fifteenth year of the month daësius there would be a great storm of rain, and men would be destroyed by the flood of waters. he bade him bury all written records, the ancient, mediæval, and modern, in sippara, the city of the sun, and build a ship and embark in it with his kindred and nearest friends. he was also to take food and drink into the ship, and carry into it all creatures winged and four-footed. xisuthrus did as he was bidden, and built a boat fifteen stadia long,[ ] and two stadia in breadth, and placed in it his wife and child, his relations and friends. then the inundation came. when the rain ceased, xisuthrus sent out some birds, but they returned back to the ship, as they could find nothing to eat and no place of rest. after a few days he sent out other birds. these also returned, but with mud on their feet. then xisuthrus sent yet others, and they never returned. xisuthrus knew that the earth had appeared. he took out a part of the roof of his boat, and perceived that it had settled down on a mountain. then he went out with his wife and daughter and the architect of the boat. he worshipped the earth, and built an altar, offered sacrifice to the gods, and then disappeared together with those whom he had brought out of the boat. when his companions, whom he had left in the boat, had gone out, and were in search of xisuthrus, his voice called to them out of the air, saying that the gods had carried him away in reward for his piety; that he with his daughter and the architect were dwelling among the gods. but the others were to return from armenia, where they then were, to babylon, and, in obedience to the command of the gods, dig up the books buried at sippara, and give them to mankind. they obeyed these instructions. they sacrificed to the gods, and returned by land to babylon. they dug up the sacred books, erected many cities and temples, and rebuilt babylon. on the gordyæan mountains, where it settled, remains of the boat of xisuthrus were in existence for a long time afterwards.[ ] in lucian xisuthrus is called sisythes; and he with wives and children is said to have escaped, in the great ark, the flood which destroyed everything else. after the flood euexius reigned over the land of the chaldæans for , years. he was followed by his son chomasbelus, who reigned , years; and after him came eighty-four kings, who, if we reckon in the reigns of euexius and chomasbelus, ruled for , years.[ ] then the medes gathered together an army against babylon, and took the land, and set up tyrants from among their own people. these, eight in number, reigned over babylon for years. after that eleven kings reigned for years; then followed the chaldæans, with forty-nine kings, who ruled over babylon for years. these were followed by nine arabian kings for years, and then came forty-five assyrian kings for years. these were followed by sennacherib, asordan, samuges, and his brother, and afterwards by nabopolassar. after nabopolassar, nabukudurussar (nebuchadnezzar) and his successor reigned for sixty-seven years.[ ] such is the essential information contained in the fragments of berosus which have come down to us. they give us a tolerably clear view of the system of cosmogony set up by the priests of babylon, of the way in which order and civilisation arose among men by successive revelations from divine creatures coming out of the sea, and a sketch, though a very meagre one, of the dynasties which reigned over babylon down to the time of cyrus. the enormous number of , years, which the fragments allot to the ten rulers of the first dynasty, and the , years of the second dynasty, which came immediately after the flood, show that the statements of diodorus, cicero, and pliny are not mere imagination, though these totals are perhaps scarcely intended to give the period during which observations were made by the chaldæans, but the antiquity ascribed by the babylonian priests to the existence of the world before and after the flood. accounts of the great flood are also to be seen on tablets, copied from old babylonian originals, which have been discovered in the ruins of the palace of assurbanipal, king of assyria. disregarding the strange beginning, and still stranger close, we find on these tablets that the god hea had commanded sisit (xisuthrus) of surippak to build a ship, so many cubits in length, breadth, and height, and to launch it on the deep, for it was his intention to destroy sinners. "when the flood comes, which i will send, thou shalt enter into the ship, and into the midst of it thou shalt bring thy corn, thy goods, thy gods, thy gold and silver, thy slaves male and female, the sons of the army, the wild and tame animals, and all that thou hearest thou shalt do." sisit found it difficult to carry out this command, but at last he yielded, and gathered together all his possessions of silver and gold, all that he had of the seeds of life, and caused all his slaves, male and female, to go into the ship. the wild and tame beasts of the field also he caused to enter, and all the sons of the army. "and samas (the god of the sun) made a flood, and said: i will cause rain to fall heavily from heaven; go into the ship, and shut to the door. overcome with fear, sisit entered into the ship, and on the morning of the day fixed by samas the storm began to blow from the ends of heaven, and bin thundered in the midst of heaven, and nebo came forth, and over the mountains and plains came the gods, and nergal, the destroyer, overthrew, and adar came forth and dashed down: the gods made ruin; in their brightness they swept over the earth. the storm went over the nations; the flood of bin reached up to heaven; brother did not see brother; the lightsome earth became a desert, and the flood destroyed all living things from the face of the earth. even the gods were afraid of the storm, and sought refuge in the heaven of anu; like hounds drawing in their tails, the gods seated themselves on their thrones, and istar the great goddess spake. the world has turned to sin, and therefore i have proclaimed destruction, but i have begotten men, and now they fill the sea, like the children of fishes. and the gods upon their seats wept with her. on the seventh day the storm abated, which had destroyed like an earthquake, and the sea began to be dry. sisit perceived the movement of the sea. like reeds floated the corpses of the evil-doers and all who had turned to sin. then sisit opened the window, and the light fell upon his face, and the ship was stayed upon mount nizir, and could not pass over it. then on the seventh day sisit sent forth a dove, but she found no place of rest, and returned. then he sent a swallow, which also returned, and again a raven, which saw the corpses in the water, and ate them, and returned no more. then sisit released the beasts to the four winds of heaven, and poured a libation and built an altar on the top of the mountain, and cut seven herbs, and the sweet savour of the sacrifice caused the gods to assemble, and sisit prayed that bel (el) might not come to the altar. for bel (el) had made the storm and sunk the people in the deep, and wished in his anger to destroy the ship and allow no man to escape. adar opened his mouth and spoke to the warrior bel (el): who would then be left? and hea spoke to him: captain of the gods, instead of the storm, let lions and leopards increase, and diminish mankind; let famine and pestilence desolate the land and destroy mankind. when the sentence of the gods was passed, bel (el) came into the midst of the ship and took sisit by the hand and conducted him forth, and caused his wife to be brought to his side, and purified the earth, and made a covenant, and sisit and his wife and his people were carried away like gods, and sisit dwelt in a distant land at the mouth of the rivers."[ ] the correspondence to the hebrew tradition of the flood, the coincidence of certain points, and striking contrast of others, both in the narrative of berosus and in this account of the great flood, need not be pointed out. in number, at any rate, the ten kings whom berosus places before the flood correspond to the ten patriarchs from adam to noah.[ ] in berosus the boat of xisuthrus lands in armenia on the mountains of the gordyæans; noah's ark landed on the mountains of the land of ararat. like sisit, xisuthrus builds an altar and offers sacrifice; when he has left the boat he disappears, and bids his followers return to chaldæa. they obey, and rebuild babylon. noah, after leaving the ark, builds an altar to the lord and offers burnt sacrifice, and concludes the new covenant with jehovah. then noah became a husbandman, and lived for three hundred and fifty years after the flood; but when the generations of his sons "journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of shinar, _i.e._ in babylonia, and there they dwelt and built the city called babylon."[ ] it is clear that these legends formed an ancient common possession of the semitic tribes of the lands of the euphrates and tigris. in the scriptures of the hebrews we find this in a purified and deepened form. the reason for the legend of the flood is found in the nature of the land of babylon. as has been remarked, it is inundated yearly; it is also occasionally desolated by fierce floods, which change the whole of the lower land as far as the sea into a broad sheet of water. similar legends are found in all regions exposed to floods, in armenia, thessaly, boeotia, and in india. let us now attempt to ascertain what may be gained historically from the fragments of berosus. the seven fish-men rise out of the sea of babylonia, i.e., out of the persian gulf. they teach language, agriculture, the building of temples and cities, and writing; and what the first gave in general terms the others expound in detail. hence it would appear that civilisation, culture, and writing came to the chaldæans from the south, from the shore of the persian gulf. the sevenfold revelation points to the seven sacred books of the priesthood, of which the last six explained by special rules the doctrine contained in the first. the fragments lay especial weight on the fact that the sacred books were already in existence before the flood, were saved from it, and again dug up at sippara. pliny remarks that the mysteries of the chaldæans were taught at sippara.[ ] beside this city (the site is marked by the mounds at sifeira, above babylon, on the euphrates) the fragments mention larancha and babylon. the first two kings before the flood were chaldæans of babylon, the next five, chaldæans of sippara, the last three, chaldæans of larancha. if we set aside the time before the flood, we find that the first dynasty of eighty-six kings after the flood reigned for , years; more than , years are allotted to the first two kings; and about , are left for the remaining eighty-four. looking at these numbers, and remembering that the babylonians reckoned by certain cycles of years, sosses of years, neres of , and sares of , , we may suppose that the priests brought the times before and after the flood into a certain number of sares. the , years before the flood make up sares (the , years of pliny would make sares). the period after the flood may have been fixed at a tenth part of that sum, _i.e._, at sares, or , years. the , years allotted to the first dynasty after the flood do not come out in any round number of sares. if we suppose that these cycles were first instituted after babylon had succumbed to the attack of cyrus, and that the fall of babylon before his arms coincided with the end of the tenth sarus after the flood, then of the , years, which, according to the opinion we ascribe to the babylonian priests, had elapsed from the flood to the conquest of babylon in the year b.c., , belong to the mythical dynasty after the flood, and , years are left for the historical times down to this date. the taking of babylon is a known date, and if to it we add , years, we get the year b.c. as the first year of the historical period. the first ruler of the third dynasty of berosus began to reign in the year b.c.[ ] the same result and number of years comes out if we add up the separate items in the dynasties, given in the fragments, from the year b.c. to the first king of the third dynasty, and leave out of sight the very striking fact that the fragments break off the assyrian dynasty before sennacherib, esarhaddon, and samuges, who certainly belong to it, and fill up the chasm thus made in the succession of dynasties by the years which the canon of ptolemy show to have preceded the accession of nebuchadnezzar--a canon which has no historical object in view, no dynasties to tabulate, but is merely intended to fix the years from which observations made by the chaldæans were in existence. if this is the right method[ ] of ascertaining the first established starting-point for the history of the lower land upon the two streams, the beginnings of civilisation in these districts may be placed not much below the year b.c. life must have become richer in babylonia before the tribes of the iranian uplands were roused to obtain the sovereignty of that country. still it remains a remarkable fact that the history of babylonia begins with the dominion of strangers, and that the native tradition, as we can show from the fragments of it remaining to our times, had nothing to place before the strangers, except the two mythical dynasties of babylonian princes before and after the flood. in the fragments the first native dynasty of historical times, the dynasty of the chaldæan princes, comes in the fifth place; according to the calculation given above, their supremacy began in the year b.c., and already in b.c. it gave place first to the nine arabian, and then to the assyrian kings. the statement of the fragments, that forty-nine native kings reigned, in the years from b.c. to b.c., is also remarkable, since it allows for the reign of each of the kings of this dynasty the brief average of a little more than nine years. but perhaps the scriptures of the hebrews, and the monuments of babylonia and assyria, present sufficient material to supplement these meagre results in the way of confirmation or contradiction? according to genesis, the sons of shem, the eldest son of noah, were "elam and asshur, and arphaxad, and lud, and aram." and the eldest son of ham, noah's second son, was cush, and cush begat nimrod; the same "began to be a mighty one in the earth, and the beginning of his kingdom was babel, and erech, and accad, and calneh, in the land of shinar."[ ] from this we see not only the close relationship between the hebrews and the population of mesopotamia, but also the precedence in high antiquity allowed by the hebrews to the tribes of the tigris and euphrates. the hebrews derived their own origin from noah, shem, and arphaxad; but before arphaxad they place the two elder sons of shem, elam and asshur. the first is the representative of the nation and land of elam on the lower tigris, while asshur represents the assyrians of the upper tigris. but, strangely enough, the babylonians were not reckoned in the generations of shem, although, as we know perfectly well, the chaldæans were semitic, and spoke a semitic language closely resembling hebrew. on the contrary, the founding of the kingdom of babylon is ascribed to another stock, the eldest son of cush, and grandson of ham. as genesis, like the hebrews of later date, includes under the name of cush the nations dwelling to the south, the nubians, ethiopians, and tribes of south arabia, we may here take the son of cush, who founded babylon, to represent a southern tribe, dwelling perhaps on the shore of the persian gulf. thus as the fragments of berosus derive the civilisation of babylon from the south sea and the south, so also does genesis point to a southern origin for babylonia. and at the same time genesis calls a tribe dwelling on the lower tigris, between the river and the mountains of iran, the elamites, the oldest son of shem. among the greeks the land of the elamites was known as kissia, and afterwards as susiana, from the name of the capital. it was also called elymais, and, in the inscriptions of the achæmenids, uwazha. the greeks describe this district as a hot but very fruitful plain, well watered by the tributaries of the tigris from the mountains of persia. there the land brought forth two or even three hundredfold. according to strabo the land was inhabited by two tribes, the kissians and elymæans. the chief city, susa, lay between the shapur and dizful.[ ] with the greeks it passed as the fortress of memnon, the son of the dawn, who came to the aid of the trojans in their distress--"the ancient mighty city," as Æschylus calls it.[ ] the inscriptions of the assyrian kings give us some information of the fortunes of the kingdom of elam, which is not contradicted by such isolated indications as we can gather from the inscriptions of babylonia. this evidence shows that in elam from the year b.c. a political constitution was in existence, and that the kings of elam invaded babylonia before the year b.c., and about this time ruled over babylonia and mesopotamia as far as syria. hence before the year b.c. there was some kind of constitution in babylonia, and, as we shall see, it was accompanied by a certain amount of culture. the dominion of elam over babylon was of short duration, and babylon soon recovered her independence. when, about the year b.c., assyria rose into an independent state, and her power, after b.c., became dangerous to the neighbouring states--when babylonia, after the middle of the eighth century b.c., was no longer a match for assyria,--elam continued to maintain her independence in spite of numerous attacks from the assyrians. it was not till the subjection of babylonia was complete that the assyrian king assurbanipal succeeded in reducing elam, and in taking and destroying susa, the ancient metropolis of the country. in his inscriptions this king of assyria informs us that king kudur-nanchundi[ ] of elam laid his hand on the temples of accad (p. ); two neres, seven sosses, and fifteen years,--_i.e._, , years previously, he carried away the image of the goddess nana. he (assurbanipal) brought her back; on the first of the month kisallu (kislev) the goddess was conducted back to erech (p. ); in bithiliana he built for her a lasting sanctuary. as elam was not completely subdued by assurbanipal till the year b.c., we may place the recovery of the statue of nana in this year.[ ] hence the date of kudur-nanchundi of elam, whom an inscription of susa calls the son of sutruk-nanchundi, would fall in the year b.c., and if about this time it was possible to carry away images of gods from babylonia, we cannot place the beginnings of civilisation in babylonia later than the year b.c. tiles found at mugheir, at no great distance from the mouth of the euphrates in babylonia, belong to a second king with a name of similar formation--kudur-mabuk. his inscriptions tell us that kudur-mabuk, lord of the west-land (martu), had erected a shrine to the god "sin, his king, for prolonging his own life and that of his son, zikar-sin."[ ] on a statuette of bronze, now in the louvre, we also read the name of kudur-mabuk and his son. babylonian inscriptions speak of battles of hammurabi king of babylon against kudur-mabuk and against elam.[ ] the tradition of the hebrews tells us that the kings of sodom and gomorrah, the kings of adama, zeboiim, and zoar, _i.e._ the princes of the land of jordan, whose names are quoted, had served kedor-laomer, king of elam, for twelve years, and when they revolted, kedor-laomer and the princes with him, amraphel of shinar, arioch and tidal, had come down and conquered the horites, the amalekites, and the amorites, _i.e._ the tribes of the syrian desert, the land of aram between sinai and hermon; and the kings of jordan were defeated in the valley of siddim. the first part of the name kedor-laomer corresponds to kudur in the name kudur-nanchundi and kudur-mabuk. the second part recurs in the name lagamar, which is the name of a god worshipped by the elamites.[ ] according to this, the kudurids, or kings of elam, of whom sutruk and kudur-nanchundi, kudur-mabuk, and kudur-lagamar are known by name, first attacked babylonia, then became rulers of babylonia, and at one time extended their dominion to the west as far as syria. according to the computations of the hebrews, the campaign of kedor-laomer to syria would take place about the year b.c. the inscription would carry the beginning of the rule of the kudurids in elam to the year b.c., and consequently the beginning of a political constitution in elam may be assumed to be prior to the year b.c., and the sovereignty of the kudurids over babylon and in the west may be placed about the year b.c. if elam was once more powerful than babylon it may have been also older--as among the hebrews elam is the eldest son of shem--the civilisation of the elamites may have developed earlier than that of the babylonians. but although a number of names of kings have been handed down to us on assyrian tablets, which also tell us of ceaseless battles with elam, we are in almost total darkness about the nature and direction of the civilisation of elam. our first notice is the assyrian account of the fall of the kingdom and the capture of the capital, and from this we learn that the conditions and mode of life in the capital of the elamites were not very different from those of babylon and nineveh. a picture of the city (found in the palace of assurbanipal), shows it to us between the two rivers (p. ), oblong in shape, and surrounded by high walls with numerous towers. outside the city, between the walls and the rivers are palms, and some dwelling-houses.[ ] assurbanipal narrates: "shushan, the great city, the abode of their gods, the seat of their oracle, i took. i entered into their palaces and opened their treasure-houses. gold and silver, and furniture, and goods, gathered together by the kings of elam in times past and in the present, the brass and precious stones with which the kings of accad, samuges, and those before him had paid their mercenaries--the treasures on which no enemy before me had laid a hand, i brought forth to assyria. i destroyed the tower of shushan. the god of their oracles, who dwelt in the groves, whose image no man had seen, and the images of the gods sumudu, lagamar and the others (nineteen are mentioned), which the kings of elam worshipped, i conveyed with their priests to assyria. thirty-two statues of the kings in silver, brass, and alabaster, i took from shushan. madaktu and huradi, and the statues of ummanigas, of istar-nanchundi, halludus, and tammaritu the younger, i carried to assyria. i broke the winged lions and bulls which guarded the temple, and removed the winged bulls which stood at the gates of the temples of elam. their gods and goddesses i sent into captivity."[ ] more than a hundred years after this time the elamites had not forgotten their independence, and they attempted to recover it by repeated rebellions against the persians. the inscriptions in which the kings of persia spoke to the nations of their wide empire are of a triple character. three different kinds of cuneiform writing repeat the same matter in three different languages. the first gives the inscription in the persian language, the language of the king and dominant people, the third repeats it in the babylonian-assyrian language. the second, we may suppose, gives the inscription in the language of elam, for the persian kings resided in susa, and in the enumeration of the subject territories, susiana and babylonia as a rule come after persia. the forms of the language in cuneiform inscriptions on bricks and tiles discovered in the ruins of susa are closely related to the language of the cuneiform inscriptions of the second kind in the inscriptions of the achæmenids.[ ] so far as these have been deciphered the language contained in them seems for the most part to be closely related to the turkish-tatar languages,[ ] while the names of the elamite gods preserved in assyrian inscriptions, although different from those of babylonia and assyria, and also the names of the kings of elam, have more of a semitic than a turkish-tatar sound. on assyrian tablets, beside the assyrian and babylonian names of the month, which are also the hebrew names, we find names in another language unknown to us;[ ] and the symbols of the assyrian cuneiform writing are not only explained by the addition of the phonetic value and actual meaning, but before the substantives, verb-forms, and declensions of the babylonian-assyrian language are placed the corresponding words and inflections of another language, which is decidedly of a non-semitic character, and also seems to belong to the turkish-tatar branch of language.[ ] if it was considered necessary in babylonia and assyria to place another language before or beside their own, the relation of this language to that spoken by the babylonians and assyrians must have been very close. the most probable supposition is that it was the language of the ancient population of the land about the lower course of the two streams, which afterwards became subjected to semitic immigrants. whatever be the value of this supposition, we may in any case assume that the semitic races found older inhabitants and an older civilisation on the lower euphrates and tigris. this older population was even then in possession of a system of writing, and this civilisation and writing was adopted by the semitic races, just as at a later time the armenians, medes, and persians borrowed their cuneiform writing from the inhabitants of babylonia, assyria, and susiana. the precedence of elam in hebrew tradition, the statement of berosus that civilisation came from the persian gulf, the ancient supremacy of elam over babylonia, which we can discover from the hebrew tradition, and more plainly from the inscriptions, are so many proofs that the oldest seats of culture in the lower lands of the euphrates and tigris lay at the mouths of the two rivers. and this conclusion receives further support from the fact that the oldest centres of the babylonian state were nearer the mouth of the euphrates. perhaps we may even go a step further. the hebrews ascribe the foundation of the babylonian kingdom to a son of the south. the language and religious conceptions of the babylonians and assyrians show a close relationship with the language and religion of the tribes of south arabia; some of these tribes are in genesis variously enrolled among the descendants of shem and of cush. hence we may perhaps assume that arabian tribes on the sea-shore forced their way eastward, to the land at the mouth of the euphrates and tigris, and then, passing up the stream, settled in the valley of the two rivers, as far as the southern offshoots of the armenian mountains.[ ] of these semitic tribes those which remained on the lower tigris and subjected the old population of susiana, could not absorb the conquered kissians (p. ). the old language retained the upper hand, and developed; and the ruling tribe, the semitic elamites, were amalgamated with the ancient population. it was otherwise on the lower euphrates, where the semitic immigrants succeeded--probably in a long process of time, since it was late and by slow degrees that they gained the upper hand--in absorbing the old turanian population, and formed a separate semitic community, when they had borrowed from their predecessors the basis of civilisation and the system of cuneiform writing which was invented for another language. in the fragments of berosus the inhabitants of babylonia are called chaldees, a name which western writers give especially to the priests of babylon, though even to them a district on the lower euphrates is known as chaldæa.[ ] the inscriptions of the assyrian kings name the whole land kaldi, and the inhabitants kaldiai.[ ] to the hebrews, as has been observed (p. ), erech, accad, and calneh were the beginning of the kingdom of nimrod. in the fragments of berosus, babylon, the bab-ilu of the inscriptions, _i.e._ "gate of il (el)," sippara and larancha are supposed to be in existence before the flood. erech, the orchoe of the greeks, and arku of the inscriptions, is the modern warka, to the south of babylon on the eastern bank of the euphrates, where vast heaps of ruins remain to testify to the former importance of the city. the site of calneh and of the larancha mentioned in the fragments cannot be ascertained, unless the latter city is the same as the larsam mentioned in the inscriptions. in these the name accad occurs very frequently. the kings of babylon, and after them the kings of assyria, who ruled over babylon, called themselves kings of babel, of sumir, and accad, names which are used to denote the districts (perhaps upper and lower babylonia) and their inhabitants. sippara, the city of the sacred books and mystic lore of the chaldæans (p. ), is called by the hebrews, sepharvaim, _i.e._ "the two sepher." sepher means "writing." it was therefore the babylonian city of scriptures. the hebrews were aware that this city worshipped the gods adar and anu, adrammelech and anammelech. the inscriptions also mention two cities of the name of sippara, or as they give the word, shipar; they distinguish the shipar of the god anu from the shipar of samas, the sun-god. the cuneiform symbol for sippara means "city of the sun of the four quarters of the earth," and the euphrates is denoted by a symbol which means "river of sippara."[ ] from this it is clear what position this city once took in babylonia. the ur kasdim, _i.e._ "ur of the chaldæans" in the hebrew scriptures, is the modern mugheir, south-east of babylon; on clay-tablets discovered in the ruins of this place we find cuneiform symbols, which are to be read as "uru."[ ] the kutha and telassar of the hebrews also recur in the kuthi and tel assur of the inscriptions. in his inscriptions sennacherib boasts that in the year b.c. he took eighty-nine fortified cities and places in babylonia, beside babylon itself.[ ] the tumuli covering the ruins of these cities and the assyrian inscriptions have preserved for us the names of more than fifty of the kings who once ruled over babylon. the fragments of berosus limit the period of the independence of babylon to the years from b.c., to b.c. (p. ), and after the chaldæan kings of this period they place arabian kings down to b.c., who in turn are followed by the assyrian kings. these statements are flatly contradicted by the inscriptions of babylonia and assyria. we have already seen that in the period from about the year b.c. to b.c., elam had the preponderance, and in part the sovereignty, over babylonia. afterwards babylon became independent, and maintained her position even against assyria, until, after the ninth century before christ, the latter gained the upper hand; and then, from the beginning of the seventh century, for a period of seventy or eighty years, the independence of babylon was entirely destroyed. as yet it is not possible to arrange the names preserved in the inscriptions in a definite order. we can only perceive that in the oldest period babylon was not yet the capital of the kingdom. erech, ur, and nipur, _i.e._ cities lying to the south, were the seat of government. we find also that the power of the ancient princes must have extended to the mouth of the euphrates, and afterwards over a part of mesopotamia, and over the assyrian district on the upper tigris, till assyria, about the year b.c., became an independent kingdom. that the region of the upper euphrates did not belong to babylonia, but was the seat of independent princes, more especially at karchemish, is shown by the campaigns of the pharaohs against naharina, _i.e._ mesopotamia, which fall in the period between b.c. and b.c., and the assistance which was rendered at this time by the princes of the upper euphrates to the syrians against the egyptians.[ ] afterwards the assyrians forced their way over the upper euphrates towards syria, without coming in conflict with the babylonians. at a later period the lower part of chaldæa separated from babylon, and independent princes established themselves on the lower euphrates--a fact which obviously was of great assistance to the assyrians in gaining the upper hand over babylon. among the ancient princes of babylon one of the first places must be allotted to a king whose name is read as urukh. on tiles discovered at warka (erech) we find that the "king of ur, king of sumir and accad, has built a temple to his lady, the goddess nana;" on tiles discovered at mugheir (ur), it is said that "urukh has built the temple and fortress of ur in honour of his lord, the god sin;" and finally on an inscription of nabonetus, the last king of babylon, which he had surrendered as far as ur, we are told that urukh began to build a temple here to the great goddess, and that his son ilgi completed it. at nipur (niffer), urukh built temples to bel and bilit, and a temple to the god samas at the modern senkereh.[ ] on a cylinder of urukh we find three beardless forms, apparently the king, his son, and the queen, holding up their hands to an aged long-bearded and seated figure, which the new moon visible above him denotes as the moon-god sin; the inscription, written in the older form of cuneiform writing (see below), runs thus: "of urukh, the mighty lord, the king of ur,..." another cylinder belongs to the time of his son ilgi. it bears the inscription: "for saving the life of ilgi, from the mighty lord, the king of ur, son of urukh. may his name continue!" inscriptions on tiles inform us that he built a temple at mugheir.[ ] king ismidagon (_i.e._ "dagon hears"), whose name is also found on tiles of mugheir, is entitled on them, "lord of nipur,[ ] king of sumir, and accad." of king sarruk (_i.e._ "strong is the king") an inscription tells us that he built the city of agane, and the tablets of prognostication announce to him, that he will conquer elam, and subjugate the whole of babylonia and syria.[ ] the inscriptions of king hammurabi (_i.e._ "the sun-god is great") discovered at babylon, zerghul, and tell sifr, tell us that the gods el and bel had delivered the inhabitants of sumir and accad to his dominion, that he had overthrown elam, and conquered mabuk (p. ), and that he had caused the river hammurabi (_i.e._ the canal of that name) to be dug for the benefit of the babylonians, and had provided a constant supply of water for sumir and accad. at the command of merodach he had erected a fortress on this canal, of which the towers were as high as mountains, and had named it after the name of his father dur-ummubanit.[ ] hammurabi is the first who, according to his inscriptions, resided at babylon. if sarrukin and he succeeded in breaking down the supremacy of elam, we must put hammurabi at the head of the dynasty which reigned over babylon, according to berosus, from - b.c. (p. ). in an assyrian list of the kings of babylon, belonging to the times of assurbanipal, we find, after hammurabi, the names of more than fifteen kings, and opposite the last of these, king binsumnasir of babylon, two kings of assyria, assurnirar and nabudan, are placed as contemporaries (between and b.c.; see below).[ ] then karatadas, of babylon, makes an alliance with assurbel-nisi, king of assyria, and the friendship was continued under their successors, purnapuryas of babylon, and busurassur of assyria (about to b.c.) assuruballit, the successor of busurassur, made war upon nazibugas, the usurper who succeeded purnapuryas, and raised to the throne in his place kurigalzu, a son of purnapuryas (about b.c.) tiles at senkereh inform us that purnapuryas, "king of babylon, of sumir and accad," restored the great temple which urukh had built for the sun-god samas. tiles are found at ur (mugheir) with the name kurigalzu; and the fortress dur-kurigalzu (akerkuf), which is often mentioned in later assyrian inscriptions, and spoken of as "the key of babylonia," was built, as is proved by the stamp on the tiles, in the reign of this king.[ ] an ornament, now in the british museum, has the inscription: "kurigalzu, son of purnapuryas, king of babel."[ ] the grandson of kurigalzu was merodach-baladan (marduk-habaliddina, _i.e._ "merodach presented the son").[ ] then about the year b.c., tiglath adar (tuklat adar), of assyria, attacked the babylonians, at first, as it seems, with success, but at last he lost his seal in this war, and for years it was preserved in the treasury at babylon. still more unfortunate was belkudurussur of assyria in his attempt on babylon. he was defeated, and fell himself in the battle (about b.c.); his successor also, adarpalbitkur, barely succeeded in defending himself from the attacks of the babylonians. when afterwards the first nebuchadnezzar (nabukudurussur) of babylon twice invaded assyria, assur-ris-ilim, king of assyria (between - b.c.), succeeded in repulsing him, and nebuchadnezzar lost forty war-chariots and a standard. tiglath pilesar i. (tuklat-habal-assar, about b.c.), the successor of assur-ris-ilim, fought against the babylonians, and, like tiglath adar, he was at first successful. assyrian tablets boast that in two successive years he had taken dur-kurigalzu, both sipparas (p. ), and even babylon. but the result of the war was that marduknadinakh, king of babylon, about the year b.c., carried off images of gods from assyria to babylon.[ ] assur-bel-kala of assyria ( - b.c.) had to fight against another marduk of babylon. two hundred years later nebubaladan of babylon repulsed the attacks of assurnasirpal of assyria ( - b.c.) then shalmaneser ii. of assyria made such excellent use of a contention for the throne of babylonia, that in the year b.c. he offered sacrifice at babylon, borsippa, and kutha. but it was not till the year or b.c. that the seal of tiglath adar and the images lost by tiglath pilesar i. were carried back to assyria. footnotes: [ ] xenoph. "cyrop." , ; strabo, pp. , , , , . [ ] strabo, p. ; xenoph. "anab." , , ff.; g. hertzberg, "feldzug der zehntausend," s. ff. [ ] beros. ap. sync. p. ; herod. , ; "anab." , . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] "de coelo," p. . [ ] diod. , ; cic. "de divin." , ; jul. afric. ap. syncell. p. ; plin. "hist. nat." , ; cf. h. martin, "revue archéol." , , . [ ] between - b.c. clinton, "fasti hell." ad ann. . [ ] abydeni fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] berosi fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] abyd. fragm. , , ed. müller; berosi fragm. . [ ] in the armenian eusebius, p. , ed. schoene, the name is lancharis. [ ] g. smith, "bibl. arch." , . [ ] so in the armenian eusebius; in syncellus it is five stadia, _i.e._ , feet long. [ ] eusebius, p. , ed. mai; syncell. p. ; abydeni fragm. ed. müller; lucian, "de dea syria," . [ ] eusebius gives , . as syncellus enumerates the sares, neres, and sosses, the number given in the text is the correct one, or must be replaced by , . the basis of the calculation which syncellus has adopted in the four first dynasties of berosus has been thoroughly established by lepsius ("chronol. der Ægypter," s. ). [ ] the period of the fourth dynasty, the eleven kings, is filled up to years from the marginal note on the armenian manuscripts of eusebius. [ ] g. smith, "assyrian discoveries," p. - . i retain the reading "sisit" as against hasisadra because of the "sisythes" of lucian. [ ] according to bunsen, "Ægypt." , , ff., the hebrews originally were acquainted with only seven patriarchs before the flood; see below. [ ] gen. ix. , ; xi. - . [ ] plin. "hist. nat." , . hipparenum can be nothing but sipparenum, or sipparenorum. [ ] if the number , be correct (p. , note ), the year b.c. would be the first year of the historical era. [ ] it is pointed out by von gutschmid in the rhein. mus. , . [ ] gen. x. ; x. , . [ ] menke, "jahrb. für classiche philologie," , s. . [ ] aesch. "pers." . [ ] the name nanchundi occurs also in the compounds istar-nanchundi, p. . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. , - , - . as in two passages , years are given with quotation of the neres and sosses, this number must be kept in the third passage instead of , years. the conquest of susa did not follow immediately on the conquest of babylon, in the year ; see below. [ ] sayce, "bibl. arch." , ; oppert, "empires de chaldée et d'assyrie," p. . [ ] g. smith, "discov." p. ; "early hist." p. . [ ] genesis, xiv. - ; g. smith, "assurb." p. . [ ] also in ménant, "les achémenides," p. . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. , ff. [ ] sayce, "transact. bibl. arch." , , . [ ] so rawlinson, norris, mordtmann, "zeitschrift d. d. m. g." , s. , , and sayce, _loc. cit._ [ ] norris, "dict." i. . [ ] such is also the opinion of eberhard schrader. [ ] schrader, "abstammung und ursitze der chaldæer," s. ff., ff. [ ] strabo, p. , , ; pliny, "hist. nat." , , . , . [ ] on the correct interpretation of the passage, isaiah xxiii. , see schrader, "keilschriften und alt. test." s. ; on the armenian chaldæans, the chalybian chaldæans, schrader, "abstammung der chaldæer," s. , . the former are to be sought for in the valley of the lycus, and are known to the armenians as chalti: kiepert, "monats-berichte der b. akad. d. w." . arphaxad, _i.e._ the high mountain district albak (kiepert, _loc. cit_. s. ), on the upper zab, was on the other hand undoubtedly colonised by semitic tribes; but these probably came from mesopotamia and assyria. arphaxad is the younger brother of elam and asshur. where to look for kir, whence, according to amos ix. ; i. , the syrians came, we do not know. [ ] schrader, "assyrisch-babyl. keilschriften," s. , , , , . [ ] schrader, "keilschriften und alt. test." s. . [ ] oppert, "inscript. des sargonides," p. ff. [ ] above, pp. , , . from naharina tuthmosis iii. received, among other things, forty-seven tiles of lead, forty-five pounds of gold, eighty-one mana (minæ) of spice.--de rougé, "notice," pp. , . [ ] oppert, "empires," pp. , ; g. rawlinson, "five monarchies," , , , ; ménant, "babylone," pp. , , . [ ] g. smith, "early history," p. ; g. rawlinson, "five monarchies," pp. , , ff. [ ] oppert, "empires," p. . [ ] schrader, "keilsch. und alt. test." s. ; "assyrisch-babylonische keilschriften," s. ; sayce, "zeitschrift für ægypt. sprache," , s. ; ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] oppert, "empires," p. . [ ] lenormant, "lettres assyr." , . [ ] oppert, "empires," p. ; ménant, "babylone," pp. , . [ ] g. rawlinson, "five monarchies," pp. , . [ ] g. smith, "discov." p. ff., gives a deed of gift of merodach-baladan, the son of milihiru, the grandson of kurigalzu. [ ] ménant, "babylone," pp. , . chapter ii. the religion and science of the chaldÆans. in the period from to b.c., babylonia under hammurabi, nebuchadnezzar, and marduknadinakh, was already the foremost state of hither asia in power, science, and skill in art. her civilisation had developed without external assistance. if the first foundations were borrowed, and not laid by the babylonians, they certainly were not due to the egyptians. the religious views of the babylonians and the egyptians rest on an entirely different basis. in egypt the heavens were carefully observed; but the chaldæans arrived at a different division of the heavens, of the year, and month, and day, and the results of their astronomy were far clearer and more exact. in egypt, weights and measures were regulated by the priests; the chaldæans established a much more accurate and consistent system, which prevailed far beyond the borders of babylonia. the egyptians reached the highest point that could be reached by the art of building in stone; but the buildings of the chaldæans in brick are unsurpassed in size, strength, and height by any nation or period. to what antiquity the hydraulic works of the chaldæans reached we do not know (the canal of hammurabi has been mentioned above); but we find that in size and variety they were not behind those of egypt. their sculpture cannot be compared with the egyptian in artistic finish; but the few fragments which remain exhibit a style which, while thoroughly independent, is more vigorous and complete, and shows a greater freedom of conception than the egyptian. the babylonians, as we learn from diodorus, worshipped twelve gods as lords of the sky. to each of these a sign in the zodiac and a month in the year were dedicated.[ ] these statements are supported by the inscriptions. the supreme god of the babylonians was el (il), after whom they named their capital, babel, "gate of el." after el came the gods anu, bel (bil), hea, sin, samas, and bin; and after these the gods of the planets; adar, merodach, nergal, istar, and nebo. of el we only know that he was the supreme god, who sat enthroned above the other gods. what peculiar importance and power is ascribed to him is the more difficult to ascertain, as the name of the third deity, bel, simply means "lord," and by this title not only bel himself, but el and other gods also are invoked. in his inscription, king hammurabi says "that el and bel have given over to his rule the inhabitants of sumir and accad." in the story of the flood, quoted above, el is called "the prince of the gods," "the warrior." in assyrian inscriptions he is the "lamp of the gods," "the lord of the universe." the greeks give us accounts of the great temple of belus at babylon, and represent the babylonians as swearing "by the great belus."[ ] in the fragments of berosus it was belus who smote asunder the primæval darkness, and divided omorka, and caused the creation of men and beasts; while according to the clay tablets of the flood, el was unwilling to save even sisit. of the god hea we can at present ascertain no more from the inscriptions than that he is the "lord of the earth," "the king of rivers;" and that it is he who announced the coming flood to sisit, and pointed out the means of safety. anu, the god who follows next after el, was sovereign of the upper realms of the sky. in the narrative of the flood given on the clay tablets the gods fled horror-stricken before the storm into the heaven of anu. in assyrian inscriptions the god has frequently the epithet malik (_i.e._ "king"). as the hebrews inform us that the men of sepharvaim worshipped anammelech, it is obvious that anumalik and anammelech are one and the same deity. the creature, who brought the first revelations of language and writing, is called in berosus oan, by others, yan.[ ] as these revelations reached sepharvaim, and the sacred books were preserved there (p. ), we may venture to assume that the oan of berosus and the anu of the inscriptions are the same god. the nature of the next deities, sin, samas, and bin, is more intelligible. sin is the god of the moon. on monuments the new moon is often found beside his bearded image. the inscriptions provide him with "white-beaming horns." the main seat of his worship is ur (mugheir), where, as we have seen, urukh built him a temple, and nabonetus, the last king of babylon, prays this god "to plant in the heart of his first-born a reverence for his great divinity, that he might not yield to sin, or favour the unfaithful."[ ] the sun-god samas is distinguished by sign of the circle; according to the inscription he illuminates "heaven and earth," and is the "lord of the day." beside sin and samas the babylonians worshipped a deity of the heaven, bin, the god who "thunders in the midst of the sky," who holds "a flaming sword in his hand," "who holds the lightning," "who is the giver of abundance, the lord of fertility."[ ] at the head of the five spirits of the planets stands the lord of saturn (the kaivanu of the babylonians), the most distant and highest of all. this is the god adar, _i.e._ "the sublime." his name was given to the last month in the babylonian year. in the inscriptions the epithet malik is often joined to adar; sakkut adar also is a name given in the inscriptions to this god. the hebrews tell us that the men of sepharvaim worshipped adrammelech; and this can hardly be any other deity than the adar-malik of the inscriptions. they also add that children were burned to adrammelech,[ ] and hence we may conclude that the adar of the babylonians was a harsh and cruel deity, averse to generation, whose wrath had to be appeased by human sacrifice. when the prophet amos announces to the israelites that they would "carry siccuth their king, and kewan (chiun) their star-god, their images which they had made,"[ ] sichuth-melech can be no other god than sakkut-malik, _i.e._ adar, and by kewan is meant the kaivanu (saturn) of the inscriptions.[ ] nebo (nabu), the god of borsippa, was the lord of the planet mercury. according to the inscriptions of babylonia, he ruled over the hosts of heaven and earth. his image on the cylinder of urukh has been mentioned above (p. ). statues of nebo with long beard and hair, and a robe from the breast downwards, have been found in the ruins of nineveh. assyrian inscriptions entitle him the "prince of the gods." his name means the "revealer," and what we learn from western writers about a special school of chaldaic priests at borsippa agrees very well with this. the lord of mars, nergal, was worshipped at the city of kutha. the inscriptions name him the "king of the battle," the "ruler of the storm," or simply the "lion-god."[ ] hence the winged lions with a human head at the temples and palace gates of susa and nineveh (p. ) were his images, and stood no doubt at babylon and kutha also, while the winged bulls must have been the images of adar. in the narrative of the flood on assyrian tablets, it is adar who overthrows and nergal who destroys (p. ). after the restoration of the babylonian kingdom, the kings are named after nebo and nergal. yet the inscriptions of nebuchadnezzar ii. celebrate above all other deities the lord of jupiter, merodach, as belrabu, i.e. the "great lord," the "highest god," the "lord of heaven and earth."[ ] to this circle of planet-gods belongs also the female deity, whom the babylonians worshipped with much zeal--the goddess bilit, _i.e._ "lady," the mylitta of herodotus. her star is venus. the inscriptions name her "queen of the gods," "mother of the gods." as she is also called the "lady of offspring," it is clear that she was regarded by the babylonians as the goddess of fertility and birth. they recognised the power of the goddess in the charm and beauty of vegetative nature. within the wall of her temple at babylon a grove afforded a cool shade, and a cistern reminded the worshippers of the mistress of the fertilizing water. the creatures sacred to her were fish, as the inhabitants of water, and remarkable for vigorous propagation, and the dove.[ ] according to the account of herodotus the maidens of babylonia had to worship the goddess by the sacrifice of their virginity; once in her life each was expected to sell her body in honour of the goddess, and thus to redeem herself. hence on the festivals of mylitta the maidens of babylon sat in long rows in the grove of the goddess, with chaplets of cord upon their heads. even the daughters of the wealthy came in covered cars with a numerous body of attendants. here they had to remain till one of the pilgrims, who came to worship the goddess, cast a piece of gold into their laps, with the words, "in the name of mylitta." then the maiden was compelled to follow him, and comply with his wishes. the money thus earned she gave to the temple-treasury, and was henceforth freed from her obligation to the goddess. "the good-looking and graceful maidens," adds herodotus, "quickly found a pilgrim, but the ugly ones could not satisfy the law, and often remained in the temple three or four years."[ ] the hebrew scriptures confirm the statements of herodotus. they tell us of the babylonians, "that their women, with cords about them (they were bound to the goddess), sat by the wayside, and burnt bran for perfume, and she who was drawn away by the passer-by reproached her fellow that she had not been thought worthy of the honour, and that her cord was not broken."[ ] the goddess nana, whose image, as we have seen, was carried away at an ancient period from erech to susa, and to whom it is nebuchadnezzar's boast that he built temples at babylon and borsippa,[ ] was hardly distinguished from bilit or mylitta. opposed to the goddess of fertility, procreation, and birth, stood istar, the goddess of war, of ruin, and destruction. she is often mentioned in inscriptions as "the queen of babylon;" according to assyrian inscriptions she carries a bow, and western writers tell us of the worship of artemis by the babylonians. that this goddess united with bilit, and sent alternately blessing and fruit, death and ruin, is placed beyond doubt, by the analogous worship of baltis, ashera, and astarte by the syrians, and more especially by the phoenicians and carthaginians. moreover the planet venus belonged to this goddess in both her forms. in the tablets of the flood, istar boasts that men owed their existence to her (p. ), and an assyrian syllabarium tells us that "the star of venus (dilbat, the delephat of the greeks), at sunrise, is istar among the gods; the same star at sunset is bilit among the gods."[ ] on assyrian tablets is found a narrative of the journey of istar to the under-world. she determines to go down to the house of the departed, to the abode of the god irkalla, to the house which has no exit, to the road which leads not back, to the place where the entrance is without light, where dust is their nourishment and mould their food, where light is not seen, where they dwell in darkness, where the arches are filled with spirits like birds; over the gate and the panels dust is strewed. "watchman of the waters," said istar, "open thy gate, that i may enter. if thou openest not, i will break thy gate, and burst asunder the bars; i will shatter the threshold and destroy the doors." the watchman opened the gate, and as she passed through he took the great crown from her head; and when she passed through the second gate he took the rings from her ears; and when she passed through the third gate he took the necklace from her neck; and when she passed through the fourth gate he took the ornaments from her breast; and when she passed through the fifth gate he took the girdle of her robe; and when she passed through the sixth gate he took the rings from her arms and legs; and when she passed through the seventh gate he took the mantle from her neck and said, "thus does ninkigal to those who come to her." arrived in the under-world, istar was grievously afflicted in the eyes, on the hips, feet, heart, head, and whole body. but the world above could not bear the loss of istar, "the bull sought not the cow, nor the male ass the female," and the god hea sent a message to ninkigal, the lady of the under-world, to set her free. ninkigal caused the water of life to pour out over istar. then the seven doors of the under-world were again opened for her, and before each she received back what had been taken from her at her entrance.[ ] in the fragments of berosus the last of the fish-men is called odakon (p. ). inscriptions of hammurabi and nebuchadnezzar ii. of babylon mention a god dakan, or dagani; and we also meet the name of this god in the name of the king ismidagon, whom we found it necessary to place before the year b.c. assurbanipal of assyria boasts of the favour of anu and dagon. these two gods appear in the same connection in other inscriptions. sargon, king of assyria, calls himself "the apple of the eye of anu and dagon."[ ] male figures, with a horned cap on the head, and ending in a fish, and priests with fishskins hung above them, are often found on the monuments of nineveh. as the word dag means "fish," we may with confidence find in the god dakan the fish-god of the babylonians; the god who out of moisture gives plenty, fertility, and increase. that the canaanites also worshipped dagon is proved by the names beth-dagon and kaphar-dagon, which occur near joppa and sichem. the philistines also on the coast of the mediterranean invoked the same god. his image in the temple at ashdod had the face and hands of a man, the body of a fish, and the feet of a man (see below). the seven fish-men who rose out of the persian gulf were therefore seven manifestations, or revelations, of the gods oan and dagon, anu and dakan. the chief seats of the religious worship of the babylonians were babylon itself, when it had become the metropolis of the land, borsippa and kutha. the kings of assyria, who succeeded in entering babylonia, or in subjugating it, remark more than once that they have sacrificed at babylon, borsippa, and kutha, to bel, nebo, and nergal, and assurbanipal tells us that his rebellious brother, the viceroy of babylon, had purchased the help of the elamites with the treasures of the temple of bel at babylon, of nebo at borsippa, and nergal at kutha.[ ] hence these temples must have been the most considerable, and the treasures in them the largest. beside these temples, as has been remarked, erech was of importance, as the seat of the worship of nana, ur contained the temple of the moon-god, and sepharvaim was the abode of anu and samas, and the city of the sacred scriptures. the relation of the deities to the luminaries of the sky occupied a very prominent place in the minds of the babylonians. the powerful operation of the sun was due to the god samas; the moon, as we have seen, belonged to sin, saturn to adar, jupiter to merodach, mercury to nebo, mars to the war-god nergal, venus to istar-bilit. from the inscriptions of nebuchadnezzar ii. we learn that there existed at borsippa, the seat of the worship of nebo, an ancient temple to "the seven lamps of the earth." the horizon of the babylonian plain was very extensive; the more uniform and boundless the expanse of earth, the more did the eye turn upwards towards the changes, movements, and life of the sky. in the clear atmosphere the eye followed the regular paths of the planets, and discovered each morning new stars, while others disappeared every evening. with the higher or lower position of the sun, or of this or that star, a new season commenced, or changes took place in the natural world; the inundation rose, and vegetation began to awaken or decay. on the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and the stars, the life of mankind, their waking and sleeping, their vigour and weariness, depended; the seasons of budding and ripening fruit, of favourable or unfavourable navigation, commenced with the appearance of certain stars and ended with their disappearance. it was natural, amid such conceptions, to believe that the whole life of nature and man depended on the luminaries of the sky, and that the earth and mankind received their laws from above, from the gleaming paths of the constellations. the good or evil effect which these stars were thought to exercise upon the life of nature, applied also to their influence on the life of man. within the circle of such conceptions the planets naturally occupied a prominent place. the greeks inform us that the chaldæans called these stars "interpreters," as proclaiming the will of the gods.[ ] among them jupiter and venus (merodach and istar-bilit) passed with the later astrologers as luck-bringing powers. jupiter was supposed to bring the beneficent and genial warmth of the atmosphere, while venus, the star of evening (bilit), poured forth the cool fructifying dew. saturn (adar) was an unlucky star, the great evil; and this confirms the conclusion already drawn that adar was thought to be a god averse to generation, and hostile. mars (nergal) was also a pernicious planet: his fiery glow brought scorching heat, and he is the lesser evil of astrologers. mercury, the moon, and the sun, _i.e._ nebo, sin, and samas, stood midway between the good and evil stars; they were of an intermediate undefined character.[ ] but according to the chaldæans the planets also assumed the influence and character of the constellations in which they passed over the earth. they divided the path of the sun into twelve stations or houses, according to the constellations which it passes through in its course. the sun's proper house was its highest position in the sign of leo. the paths of the planets were divided in a similar way; and to the chaldæan these "houses of the planets" became divine powers, because they altered and defined the character and operation of the planets. hence they even call them "lords of the gods."[ ] on the other hand thirty other fixed stars are "counselling gods," because they were thought to exercise only a secondary influence on the planets; and lastly, twelve fixed stars in the northern sky, and twelve in the southern were called the "judges." of these twenty-four stars, those which were visible decided on the fortunes of the living, and those which were invisible on the fortunes of the dead.[ ] the inscriptions also distinguish two classes of twelve stars each; of which one is named "the stars of accad," the other "the stars of the west."[ ] each month of the year belonged to a god; the first to the god anu: the seven days of the week belonged to the sun, moon, and five planets; after the moon came mars, then mercury, then jupiter, then venus, and last of all saturn. the day belonged to the planet to which the first hour after midnight was allotted; in the next hour the planet ruled which came next in proximity to the sun; and in the same way followed the remaining planets, first in a solar, then in a lunar series. thus the chaldæans worshipped "the sun, and the moon, and the zodiac;" thus they offered incense, as the hebrews say, to the "houses of the planets, and the whole host of heaven."[ ] this lore was the work of the priests, who accordingly understood how to read the will of the gods in the constellations of the sky, and to foretell the fate of life from the hour of birth, and from the ever-changing position of the stars to fix the suitable moment for commencing any task or undertaking. how the stars passed through the sky, how they approached each other, or diverged, imparted or withdrew their operation, were found in equipoise or opposition--on this depended the prosperity or misfortune of the kingdom, the king, the year, the day, the hour. moreover it was of importance at what season of the year, and in what quarter of the sky the stars rose, or disappeared, and what colours they displayed.[ ] to the east belonged withering heat, to the south warmth, to the west fertilising moisture, and to the north cold; and the planets exercised greater or less power as they stood higher or lower.[ ] tablets discovered at nineveh allow us a closer insight into the system of these constellations. on some of these we find written as follows:--"if jupiter is seen in the month of tammuz, there will be corpses." "if venus comes opposite the star of the fish, there will be devastation." "if the star of the great lion is gloomy, the heart of the people will not rejoice." "if the moon is seen on the first day of the month, accad will prosper." one tablet supplies information for all the periods of the day and night in the days of the year, telling us what day and what period is favourable or unfavourable for commencing a campaign, or a siege, for storming the enemy's walls, or for defence.[ ] such was the faith and doctrine of the babylonians. in the original conception of el as lord of the sky, and adar as the highest of the star gods, there may have been nobler and simpler traits, yet even these early views were not without their harshness and cruelty, as we are forced to conclude from the hebrew accounts of the sacrifices offered to adar. such traits are also more than outweighed by the licentious worship of mylitta, in which the sensual elements of the semitic character are seen in all their coarseness. with the growth of the kingdom, and the consequent effeminacy and luxury of life in babylonia, this side of their religion must have become predominant, while, on the other hand, the great conception of a world ruled and governed by the movements of the stars tended in time to degenerate into mere astrological computations and fortune-telling. our knowledge of the life and position of the priests of babylon is scanty. the greeks tell us that they took the same place as in egypt. their rank was hereditary; the son was instructed by the father from an early age. some occupied themselves with the offerings and purifications; others strove to avert existing or threatening evils by expiations and charms; others explained any miraculous phenomena of nature, interpreted dreams, and prophesied from the flight of birds. the hebrew scriptures speak of interpreters of stars and signs, magicians and prophets.[ ] according to the accounts of western writers, the priests at babylon inhabited a special quarter of the city, and there were schools of priests at sippara.[ ] the fragments of berosus pointed out babylon, sippara, and larancha (p. ) as centres of priestly wisdom even before the flood, inasmuch as they attribute to these places special revelations of the gods anu and dakan. they speak of the sacred books saved in sippara from the flood. these books they divide into ancient, mediæval, and modern. by the "ancient" books we must understand the announcements which the god anu caused to be made to the two earliest kings, alorus and alaparus, of babylon. under the "mediæval" are comprised the revelations received by ammenon and daonus of sippara, and lastly, under the "modern" the mysteries disclosed by dagon to edorankhus of sippara (p. ). hence we may assume that the priests of babylon arrived at an early age at a code which included their creed and ritual, as it would seem, in seven books (p. ). how high the cosmogonies go, of which the most essential traits were found in the fragments of berosus (p. ), we cannot decide. in the conception which lies at the base of them the forces of nature are seen pouring forth in wild confusion. the name of the woman who rules these forces, or of this chaos inhabited by monsters, omorka, has been explained as "homer-kai," _i.e._, "material of the egg," the world-egg, but more recently by "um uruk," _i.e._ "the mother," the "great goddess of erech." in the cosmogony of berosus we can see, though in a very rude and contradictory shape, the opposition of a material and intellectual, a natural and supernatural principle, and later accounts maintain that the babylonians regarded the world as arising out of fire and water, that chaos and love were the parents of life and contention, and of life and contention bel was the son.[ ] more important and far more valuable than these abstractions, to which the babylonians obviously attained only at a late period, and in all probability under the influence of greek ideas, are the results which their knowledge and acuteness gained in other fields. the cuneiform writing, according to the conclusions we have already been compelled to draw, was borrowed by the elamites and babylonians from the earlier inhabitants of the lower districts. it was originally a picture-writing, which, like the egyptian, passed from real pictures to indicatory and symbolic pictures or picture-signs. the necessity of abbreviating and compressing the picture-signs was here far more keenly felt than in egypt, quite irrespective of the fact that the strong pictorial tendency of the egyptians was probably wanting on the lower tigris. the stones and slabs on which the egyptians engraved their hieroglyphics were not to be found in the plains of the two rivers, and the slabs of mud, clay, and brick on which they were compelled to write (the pictures and symbols were written on the soft slabs with the style, and these were then burnt), were ill-adapted for sketches. such obstinate material made the abbreviation of the symbols an imperative necessity; and it was by sharp and straight strokes that the signs could be most easily traced upon slabs of mud and clay. the oldest bricks in the ruins of mugheir, warka, and senkereh display pictures in outline; then beside bricks with inscriptions of this kind we find others repeating the same inscription in cuneiform signs, which now form a completely ideographic system of writing. the immediate comprehension of picture signs by the senses died away owing to abbreviations of the kind mentioned, and the picture-writing became symbolic writing. this writing, which consisted of groups of cuneiform symbols, attained a higher stage of development when a phonetic value was attributed to a part of the cuneiform groups, whether used to signify nouns or verbs and adjectives, or new groups were formed for this purpose. by cuneiform groups both simple and compound syllables are expressed. for simple syllables, _i.e._ for those consisting of a single consonant with a vowel before or after it in order to give the consonant a sound, the cuneiform writing of babylon and assyria possesses about one hundred groups, and several hundred groups for compound syllables, _i.e._ for those which have more than one consonant. side by side with this syllabic writing the old abbreviated picture-writing was retained. certain words of frequent occurrence, as king, battle, month, were always represented by picture signs, or ideograms, and so also were the names of deities and most proper names. the greater number of the cuneiform groups were then used in a phonetic as well as an ideographic sense, and without any correlation between the phonetic and actual meaning. thus the symbol for the word "father" had the phonetic value of the syllable _at_, but "father" in the babylonian language is _abu_. in babylon this system of writing became even more complicated by the fact that different meanings and different phonetic values were ascribed to the same cuneiform groups. there are symbols which have four different phonetic values and four different meanings.[ ] in order to lessen to some degree the great difficulty in understanding the meaning which was caused by the varying use of the same symbol as an ideogram and a sound, and the multiplicity of meanings and sounds attached to certain signs--key-symbols were placed before the names of gods, lands, cities, and persons, and occasionally one or more syllables were attached to ideograms of more than one meaning, which formed the termination of the word intended to be expressed by the ideogram in the particular instance. complicated and difficult as this writing was, it was applied on a considerable scale in assyria and babylonia, and it remained in use even after the fall of the babylonian empire, as is shown by bricks and tablets of the time of cyrus, cambyses, artaxerxes i., and the seleucidæ.[ ] these are principally records of business or legal matters, of which, in this way, a selection has come down to us extending from the times of hammurabi (p. ) to the first century b.c. the armenians adopted this system from the babylonians and assyrians; and they also made it shorter and simpler. in the same way the medes and persians borrowed it. but in the persian inscriptions of the achæmenids it has already become a mere phonetic mode of writing but little removed from an ordinary alphabet. beyond doubt the babylonian system was known to the western semitic tribes; it even passed over from syria to cyprus, where we find it assuming a peculiar form, and displaying throughout the character of a syllabic mode of writing. at the same time among the syrians and phenicians a cursive method was developed, just as in egypt the hieratic writing grew up beside the hieroglyphic. this cursive writing of the western semitic nations has not, however, arisen out of the cuneiform symbols, but out of the hieratic writing of the egyptians. the phenicians must claim the merit of having abbreviated still further, for their own use, the cursive writing of the egyptians. but the picture-symbols of the hieratic writing were not merely contracted and simplified; the mixture of pictorial, syllabic, and alphabetic symbols--beyond which the egyptians did not rise--was abandoned, and then for the first time an alphabet was discovered. this phenician alphabet was in use in syria as early as the year b.c.[ ] in babylonia also this alphabetic writing was in use beside the cuneiform. we find it in babylon side by side with the corresponding cuneiform on a weight, of which the inscription tells us: "thirty minæ of standard weight: the palace of irba merodach (marduk) king of babylon." the exact date of this king cannot be ascertained: we only know that he must have belonged to the old kingdom. assyrian weights with inscriptions in the phenician alphabet, beside the cuneiform inscriptions, are found of the eighth century b.c., the time of king tiglath pilesar ii., shalmanesar iv., and sennacherib.[ ] "it can be maintained with good reason," says diodorus, "that the chaldæans are far before all other nations in their knowledge of the heavens; and that they devoted the greatest attention and labour to this science." at an early period, by comparing the course of the sun with that of the moon, they had perceived that the sun returned to the same position after passing through about twelve cycles of the moon; hence they fixed the year at twelve months of thirty days, which they, by intercalations of various kinds, brought into harmony with the astronomical year of - / days.[ ] the observation, that the sun after a course of twelve months returns to the same constellation, led them on to determine the changing position of the sun in the other months by constellations. thus the babylonians marked off the constellations which seemed to touch nearest upon the course of the sun, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac. each of these twelve stations through which the sun passed they again divided into thirty parts. the week they fixed at seven days by the course of the moon; to the day they allotted twelve hours, to correspond to the twelve months of the year; the hours they divided into sixty parts, and each of these sixtieths was again subdivided into sixty parts. their measures were also duodecimal. the cubit was twenty-four finger-breadths; and on the same system, their numerals were based upon the _sossus_, or sixty,--a derivative from twelve, and the _sarus_, or square of the _sossus_. when they attempted to fix the position and intervals of the stars in the sky, the basis taken for their measurements was the diameter of the sun. they divided the daily course of the sun, like the ecliptic, into parts, and then attempted to measure these at the equinox. at the moment when the sun was seen in the sky on the morning of the equinox, a jar filled with water was opened. from this the water was allowed to run into a second small jar, till the orb of the sun was completely visible; then it ran into a third and larger jar, till the sun was again seen on the horizon on the following morning. they concluded that the diameter of the sun must stand in the same proportion to the cycle it passed through as the water in the small jar stood to the water in the large one. hence they found that the diameter of the sun was contained times in its course, and this diameter they fixed at / of an hour.[ ] the observation that an active foot-courier could accomplish a certain distance in the thirtieth part of an equinoctial hour, and thirty times as much in the whole hour, supplied the chaldæans with a longitudinal measurement on the same basis. the measure of the hour was the parasang ( / of a geographical mile), and the thirtieth part of the parasang was the stadium. till we obtain help from the inscriptions we must remain acquainted only with the persian name of the first measure and the greek name of the second. at the equator the sun was supposed in every hour to traverse a distance of thirty stadia. on this system also the chaldæans fixed the length of their cubit. the stadium was divided into cubits, and the sixth part of the stadium, or plethron, into sixty cubits, and the foot was fixed at / of this cubit. consequently the babylonian cubit was fixed at twenty-one inches of our measure ( millimeters).[ ] from this division of the sphere the babylonians, though aided by very simple instruments, the polus and gnomon,[ ] arrived at very exact astronomical observations and results. they discovered a period of months, within which all eclipses of the moon occurred in a similar number and equal extent. by means of this period they fixed the average length of the synodic and periodic month with such accuracy that our astronomers here found the first to be too large by four seconds only, and the last by one second. their observations of ten lunar eclipses, and three conjunctions of planets and fixed stars, have come down to us. the oldest of these observations is that of a lunar eclipse of the year b.c., which took place "a good hour after midnight." the second took place in b.c., "about midnight;" the third in the same year "after the rising of the moon." in these observations also our astronomers have found but little to correct. as the chaldæans brought their measures of the sphere, of time and length into correlation, so also they attempted to preserve the same relation in their cubic measures and weights. for their weights and cubic measures the division of the units into sixtieths (minæ, _i.e._ parts) was retained. the quadrantal, or _maris_, contained one babylonian cubic foot, and the sixtieth part of this was the _log_. the weight in water of a babylonian cubic foot was, according to the statistics of our physicists, about sixty-six pounds ( , kilogrammes), but the chaldæans reckoned it at only - / pounds ( , kilogrammes).[ ] the weight of the cubic measure was also the standard for imperial weight in babylonia. the oldest weight which we know dates from the time of ilgi, king of ur. the stone, which in shape is not unlike a duck, has the inscription: "ten minæ of ilgi."[ ] there was a heavy talent (kikkar, _i.e._ "orb") arranged to weigh twice as much as the quadrantal. hence it weighed - / pounds ( , kils.), and the sixtieth, or mina, weighed over two pounds. the light talent weighed one quadrantal, according to the estimate of the chaldæans, _i.e._ - / pounds, and the mina was a little heavier than a pound of our weight. but in weighing the precious metals, the chaldæans used units, which differed from the imperial weights in use for all other purposes. they calculated by little circular pieces, or rings, or bars (tongues) of silver and gold, and the smallest of these was equivalent to the shekel, or sixtieth part of the mina of the heavy talent. these shekels were the commonest and most indispensable measure of value. it was found easier to reckon by units of , shekels, than by units of , . and so it came about that the mina contained fifty shekels instead of sixty, and the talent , shekels instead of , . the three thousand shekels as a whole, no longer weighed - / pounds, but only pounds, and the mina, or sixtieth part, instead of weighing fully two pounds, weighed only about - / pounds.[ ] this weight, or the half of it ( - / pounds), was retained for the heavy and light gold talent. in the weight of silver trade caused a further deviation. it was necessary to exchange gold and silver, and in the east in antiquity the value of gold and silver was estimated at : , or more accurately - / : .[ ] by making the silver shekel (_i.e._ the fiftieth part of the silver mina), which corresponded to the weight of the light gold talent, a little heavier, a silver coin was obtained which stood to the fiftieth of the light gold mina, nearly in the ratio of : . ten silver shekels of this weight could therefore without any further trouble be exchanged for the fiftieth of the gold mina, or gold shekel of the light gold talent. hence arose a silver talent of - / pounds ( , kil.), a silver mina of - / pound, and a silver shekel of about eleven milligrammes. footnotes: [ ] diod. , . [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , , ed. müller. [ ] pindari fragm. adesp. , ed. bergk. [ ] schrader, "assyr.-babyl. keilschriften," s. ; "keilschriften und alt. test." s. . [ ] g. rawlinson, "five monarchies," p. . [ ] kings xvii. . [ ] amos v. . [ ] eberhard schrader, "theologg. studien und kritiken," , , ff. [ ] schrader, "keilschriften und alt. test." s. , ; "assyr.-babyl. keilschriften," s. , , . [ ] ménant, "babylone," pp. - . [ ] munter, "religion der babylonier," s. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] baruch, vi. , (ep. jerem.); cf. genesis xxxviii. ff. [ ] ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] schrader, "abstammung der chaldæer," s. . so, too, istar of agane is opposed to istar of erech. [ ] g. smith, "discov." p. ; schrader, "höllenfahrt," p. ff. [ ] schrader, "keilschriften und alt. test." s. , , . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plutarch, "de isid." c. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] sayce, "bibl. arch." , p. . [ ] kings xxiii. - . [ ] diod. , . [ ] stuhr, "die religionsysteme der völker des orients," , . [ ] sayce, "bibl. archæol." , p. . [ ] diod. , , ; daniel , . [ ] above, p. ; strabo, p. . [ ] movers, "religion der phoenizier," , , . [ ] schrader, "assyrisch. babyl. keilschriften," s. . [ ] g. smith, "discov." pp. , ; ménant, "les achæmenides." recently a tablet has been found, supposed to belong to the time of cæsar. [ ] de rougé, "sur l'origine egyptienne de l'alphabet phénicien;" lauth, "sitzungsber. d. bair. akad. d." , , pp. - . the inscription of mesha, king of moab, proves by the formation and use of the letters that this alphabet had been known for a long time. [ ] the basalt duck of irba marduk--no doubt a piece of babylonian booty--was found at nineveh.--layard, "discoveries," p. ; schrader, "assyr. babyl. keilschrift," s. ; de vogué, "rev. arch." , . [ ] ideler, "handbuch der chronologie," , ; sayce, "bibl. arch." , p. . [ ] ideler, "sternkunde der chaldaer," s. . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen vorderasiens," s. ff. [ ] george smith, "records of the past." , . [ ] these statements are founded on the more recent forms established by brandis, "münzwesen vorderasiens," s. , ff. [ ] brandis, _loc. cit._ s. . chapter iii. the art and trade of babylonia. like the pharaohs, the rulers of babylon sought their fame in magnificent buildings. but their works have not been able to withstand the ravages of time with the same durability as the stone mountains and porticoes on the nile. the lower euphrates does not lie, like the nile, between walls of rocks, from which the most beautiful and hardest stone could be obtained. the plain of babylonia afforded nothing but earth for the bricks, which were sometimes burnt, sometimes dried in the sun; and excellent mortar was to be obtained from the large asphalt pits on the euphrates, especially at hit. hence it was necessary to unite the walls more strongly. in the palaces, and temples, the walls of brick were covered with slabs of gypsum, or limestone, which must often have been brought from a distance, and these slabs were then covered with sculptures, like the stone walls of the egyptian buildings. but more commonly the ornaments on the inner walls, and occasionally even those on the outer walls, consist of bricks coloured and glazed. though the material in babylonia was more fragile than the granite of egypt, the extent, scale, and splendour of these buildings were so great, that remains even of the oldest have come down to our time. the upper portions of the brick walls have fallen down, and the ruins of the babylonian cities have thus for the most part become unsightly enough; but not the less do they point out the positions of the old buildings, and under the heaps are hidden the most valuable remains of those ancient periods. as has been already remarked, the cities in the south of babylonia are the first to emerge in the progress of the country. the oldest princes call themselves kings of ur and nipur; they build at ur, at nipur, at erech, and at senkereh, between erech and ur. not till the time of hammurabi, and perhaps through his power, did babylon become the centre and metropolis of the kingdom. he and his successors built at babylon, borsippa, sippara, and kutha, as well as in the southern cities. the universal characteristic of these buildings, so far as the remains allow us to pass any judgment, is the extraordinary strength of the walls and the obvious effort to obtain, by placing one story of solid masonry upon another, higher positions, better air, and a more extensive view in the level plain. the temples seem almost universally to be built in this tower-like style, either in order to be nearer the gods in the purer and higher air, or because the gods, as spirits of the heaven, and as bright luminaries of the sky, received the sacrifices here offered to them, and the prayers hence addressed to them with greater favour. on the inside their structures were built of square bricks three or four inches in thickness, and on the outside these bricks are lined with burnt tiles. the tiles almost invariably carry in the middle the impression of the stamp of the king who used them. the ruins of ur (mugheir), on the western bank of the euphrates, occupy a considerable space, shut in by the remains still traceable, of a wall, running in an oval shape, and from three to four miles in circumference. amid these ruins rises, to the north-west, a heap of bricks and broken tiles, which is even now about feet above the surface of the plain. on a plateau about feet in height is a rectangular building, with the four sides directed exactly to the four quarters of the sky. the two longer sides are about feet in length, the shorter sides are about feet. it was a solid mass of brick, joined with bitumen, about feet high; the outer walls, of burnt tiles, are about feet thick. buttresses of eight feet in breadth surround the whole story at short distances. the centre of the structure is pierced by narrow air-passages extending from one side to the other. on this story is a second, feet in length by feet in breadth, and even now about feet high. the ruins lying on this point to a third story, which may have contained the actual temple. there are traces still remaining of the entrance, which led up from the outside. the tiles of the lower story bear the stamp, "urukh, king of ur, has erected the temple of the god sin;" on those of the upper story we find, "ilgi, king of ur, king of sumir, and accad." this building was, therefore, the temple of sin, which urukh commenced and his son ilgi continued and completed--a fact which is further proved by the inscriptions of nabonetus, the last king of babylon, which were found in these ruins. to the south-east of this structure lies a platform, faced with tiles, feet in circuit, which probably supported another temple or a palace. the foundation walls of various chambers can still be traced. similar structures are found in the ruins of abu shahrein, south of mugheir on the euphrates. from a wide platform rises a square structure surrounded by a wall, in which are the remains of decorated chambers. north of ur, on the east bank of the euphrates, the remains of senkereh form a circular plateau, not quite five miles in circumference; the ruins rise gradually towards the centre, which is marked by the remains of a structure feet long and broad, the walls of which, on one side, still rise feet over the plain. in these and the other ruins of senkereh inscriptions are found in considerable numbers, which give us the names of kings from urukh to cambyses. in the ruins of erech (uruk, warka), above senkereh, on the eastern bank of the euphrates, are found the remains of an outer wall, broken by semicircular towers open to the city. this wall forms an irregular circle of more than five miles in circumference. here and there the ruins are still about feet high. within the wall are three heaps of ruins. on the highest, which forms an exact square of more than feet at the base, we may trace the ruins of a second story. this heap is about feet in height. it consists of bricks alternating with layers of reeds at intervals of four or five feet in height. here also there are buttresses, in which the tiles are cemented with bitumen. to the west lie the remains of an oblong structure of double the size. the ruins of nipur are sixty miles to the north of erech, in the land between the euphrates and the tigris. here are several rounded heaps, but they are of less extent than the remains of ur, senkereh, and erech. the heaps of ruins which rise out of the plains some miles to the south-west of babylon--the arabs call them birs nimrud, _i.e._ "the fortress of nimrod"--exhibit the same plan of structure as the ruins of the temples at ur and erech. within a square wall, on a platform of brick, rises a square story, feet on every side, and feet in height; over this is a second story, of the same height, but forming a square of feet only, and not placed exactly in the middle of the lower story, but in such a manner that on one side it recedes feet only, but on the other feet from the edge of the lower plateau. in the same way the third and still smaller story rests on the second. it is of the same height as the others. the fourth story is only feet in height. the loose mass of ruins does not allow us to trace any more stories. hence the building in all probability consisted of seven stories. it appears that these ruins, like the extensive heaps of remains lying to the east of them (tel ibrahim), mark the site of the ancient borsippa. the tiles of the stories, which lie one over the other, bear the stamp of nebuchadnezzar ii., and in the angles of the building cylinders have been discovered,[ ] on which nebuchadnezzar relates that the temple of the seven lamps of the earth, the tower of borsippa, which an earlier king had commenced but not completed, and which had fallen into decay for many years, was again erected by him, and the pinnacles covered with copper. in his great inscription of babylon, nebuchadnezzar further tells us that he "restored the marvel of borsippa, the temple of the seven spheres of the sky and of the earth, and covered the pinnacles with copper." in the same inscription it is said that nebuchadnezzar built temples at borsippa to the goddess nana, to adar, bin, and sin, and that he restored and completed beth-sida, _i.e._ the chief temple of nebo at borsippa; nevertheless we may be certain, from the cylinders actually found in the ruins, that the remains are those of the temple of the seven lamps.[ ] turning from borsippa to babylon, we find herodotus describing the largest temple of the city in the following manner:--"the sanctuary of zeus belus--it is in existence still--forms a square of two stadia on every side, and is furnished with iron gates. in the midst is a massive tower, a stadium in the square. over this tower stands another, and again another, till there are eight towers, one over the other. they are ascended from the outside, and the ascent goes up round all the towers. half-way up there is a resting-place, and seats for those who are ascending. on the highest tower is a large temple, and in the temple a large and beautifully-prepared bed, and beside it a golden table. there is no image there, nor does anyone watch there through the night except a woman of the country, whom, as the chaldæan priests say, their god has chosen out of all the land. they also declare, though i do not believe it, that the god sometimes comes into the temple and rests on the bed. in this sanctuary there is also another temple below, and in this there is a great image of the seated zeus, of gold, and a large golden table; the footstool and seat are also of gold; and altogether, as the chaldæans say, the amount of gold used is talents. outside this temple is a golden altar, on which only sucking creatures may be sacrificed, and also a larger altar, where the full-grown animals are sacrificed. on this the chaldæans burn in every year , talents of incense when they celebrate the festival of the god. here was another golden image of the god, cubits high. but this i did not see; i only repeat what the chaldæans told me. this image xerxes had taken away. such were the adornments of the temple, and besides these there were in it many dedicatory offerings given by individuals."[ ] diodorus, who wrote four hundred years later than herodotus, relates:--"in the middle of the city was the sanctuary of zeus, whom the babylonians call belus. but as the writers give different accounts of the temple, and the structure has fallen from age, it is not possible to say anything certain about it. yet they agree that it was extremely high, and that the chaldæans here made their observations of the stars, as the height of the building enabled them to observe accurately their rising and setting. the whole building is said to have been constructed of burnt brick and bitumen, with great skill and much ornament. on the top were three statues of zeus, hera, and rhea, of beaten gold. the statue of zeus represented him standing and advancing. it was feet high and , babylonian talents in weight. of the same weight was the statue of rhea, in which the goddess was seated on a golden throne. beside her knees were two lions, and close at hand two very large serpents of silver, each weighing talents. the standing figure of hera weighed talents; in her right hand she held a serpent by the head, and in the left a sceptre studded with precious stones. before these statues was a common table of beaten gold, feet long and feet broad, and talents in weight. on the table were two chalices, each talents in weight. there also were two vessels for incense, each talents in weight, and three great jars, of which that consecrated to zeus was , talents in weight, and the two others talents each."[ ] strabo contents himself with the remark: "the now ruined grave of belus was a square pyramid of burnt bricks. it was a stadium in height, and a stadium on every side. alexander intended to rebuild it, but the work was enormous, and required a long time; the removal of the debris alone employed , workmen for two months, so that he could not bring it to an end, for soon after he fell sick and died."[ ] what diodorus tells us of the many thousand talents of gold, of the statues and utensils on the top of the temple-tower, is borrowed from ctesias, and belongs to the romance or poetry of the east from the time of the empire of the medes. but we cannot doubt that there was a considerable amount of gold in the greatest sanctuary at babel. the seated image of gold in the lower temple, which herodotus saw, weighed, according to the chaldæans, talents, _i.e._, on the light imperial scale, , pounds. it was this magnificent temple at babylon to which the tradition of the hebrews has attached the account of the building of that tower in the plain of shinar of which the top should reach heaven. the mighty men, the giants of the ancient days, desired to climb heaven. their insolence and wicked purpose was punished by the confusion of language and the dispersion of mankind. josephus makes nimrod, as the founder of the kingdom of babylon, the promoter of this wicked scheme. nimrod intended the tower to be so high that a second flood could not reach the top, and thus men would be able to bid defiance to the gods, and yet be secure against a second destruction.[ ] let us now inquire what conclusions, if any, can be derived from the inscriptions about the great temple of babylon. from ancient times there was at this place a sanctuary of the name of beth-sagall, or beth-saggatu, _i.e._ "house of the height." whether this was erected as early as hammurabi is doubtful; but an inscription of his successor tells us that he set up the image of the god merodach (marduk) in beth-sagall.[ ] these inscriptions of king esarhaddon, who ruled over assyria and babylonia from b.c. to b.c., tell us that "he caused tiles to be made in babylon for beth-saggatu, the temple of the great gods."[ ] after the restoration of the babylonian empire nebuchadnezzar always calls himself in his inscriptions, "supporter of beth-saggatu, and beth-sida." beth-sida, _i.e._ "house of prosperity," or "house of the right hand," was the name of the rich temple of nebo at borsippa. "like a pious man," says nebuchadnezzar in one of his inscriptions, "i have dealt towards beth-saggatu, and towards beth-sida. i have magnified the splendour of the god merodach, and the god nebo, my lords: i have completed beth-sida, the eternal house, where nebo and nana are enthroned, at borsippa."[ ] "i have set up beth-saggatu, and beautified it; beth-sida i have completed."[ ] on the cylinders found in the ruins of the temple of the seven lamps, nebuchadnezzar says: "beth-saggatu is the temple of the heaven and the earth, the dwelling of merodach, the lord of the gods, and with pure gold have i caused the temple to be covered, where his splendour rests; the temple of the foundations of the earth, the tower of babylon, i have restored, with tiles and copper i have completed it, and raised its summit."[ ] the chief inscription on the stone of black basalt relates at greater length how nebuchadnezzar adorned the sanctuary in beth-saggatu, where merodach rested; how he set up the marvel of babylon, the temple of the foundations of the heaven and the earth; how he raised the summit with tiles and copper. the description of this erection concludes with the satisfaction felt in seeing that beth-saggatu was now completed.[ ] and not only does nebuchadnezzar boast of the care and attention bestowed by him on beth-sida and beth-saggatu. the prince before whose arms the creation of nebuchadnezzar, the restored kingdom of babylon, was overthrown--cyrus, the persian, calls himself on the stamp of a tile at senkereh, "kuru, supporter of beth-saggatu and beth-sida, son of kambuzija."[ ] this series of evidence shows that the lofty temple of belus, which herodotus has described for us above, was to the babylonians "the house of the height," the temple of bel merodach (p. ), and that it was the first of the three temples in which the kings of assyria sacrificed when they trod the soil of babylon at the head of their victorious armies, or as sovereigns; and that of these three rich temples, _i.e._ the temple of nergal at kutha, beth-sida, the temple of nebo at borsippa, and beth-saggatu, the temple of merodach at babel, the latter was certainly the most wealthy. moreover, the inscriptions show that the foundation goes back as far as the times of king hammurabi, whose accession we found it possible--on hypothesis only, it is true--to place in the year b.c. but even the hebrew narrative of the building of the tower of babel, which must have been written down before , b.c. (below, chap. vii.) proves, in this respect harmonising with the inscriptions, that long before this time there must have been in babylon a structure of great height, but unfinished. herodotus, in his description of babylon, tells us that the tower of belus was on one side of the euphrates, and the royal castle on the other. on which side each of these lay, he does not state. xenophon speaks of the palace of babylon, and beside this of special castles.[ ] from the accounts of those who accompanied alexander, it is clear that there were two royal castles in babylon, one on the right hand and one on the left of the euphrates, which certainly were not built under the achæmenids. berosus tells us that nebuchadnezzar built himself a palace beside that of his father nabopolassar. the inscriptions of nebuchadnezzar speak repeatedly of the continuation of the palace at babylon which his father had begun.[ ] as the two great heaps of ruins on the eastern bank of the euphrates, el kasr and amran ibn ali, exhibit on the tiles found there the stamp of nebuchadnezzar, this palace of the ruler of the restored kingdom must have lain on the east bank of the euphrates. diodorus describes the two castles of babylon, of which one was on the east and the other on the west bank of the river; while both were adorned with various ornaments. "that in the part lying towards the west" had a circuit of sixty stades, inclosed by lofty and costly walls. these were followed by a second circular wall, on the rude bricks of which various kinds of animals were stamped, and brought into a resemblance with the reality by the painter's art. the circumference was forty stades in length, and the wall was three hundred bricks in thickness; the height, according to ctesias, was fifty fathoms, and the tower rose to sixty fathoms. the third interior wall which surrounded the buildings was twenty stades in circuit, but in height and thickness it surpassed the middle wall. on this and the towers belonging to it animals of all kinds were depicted with considerable skill in form and colour. the whole exhibited a chase, full of many different animals, which were of more than four cubits in size. among these was a queen on horseback, who threw her dart at a panther; and at hand was the king, who thrust at a lion with his lance. this palace surpassed both in size and beauty the palace on the other side of the euphrates. here the exterior wall of burnt tiles was only thirty stades in circumference, and instead of the numerous animals were bronze statues of a king and a queen and of governors, and also a bronze statue of zeus, whom the babylonians call belus. but in the interior were military evolutions and hunting scenes of every kind, which gave varied amusement to the spectator.[ ] ctesias, whom diodorus followed in his description of the palace on the west bank, as in his account of the treasures in the tower of belus (p. ), has also borrowed, in his description of this castle, the erection of which he ascribes to ninus, from the medo-persian epos, and this, as i shall show below, endeavoured to place the glory of ninus and semiramis in the most brilliant light. hence, though here, as in the account of the treasures, considerable deductions are to be made, we can nevertheless recognise the fact that the castle of the ancient kings of babylon on the western bank of the euphrates was of considerable size, magnificent, and well fortified, although the remains now in existence are fewer and far smaller than those of the palace of nebuchadnezzar on the eastern bank of the euphrates, where the painted and glazed tiles also confirm what diodorus says of the battle and hunting scenes of this palace. if the ancient royal castle lay on the western bank, the tower of belus rose opposite it on the eastern bank. this is proved by an inscription of nebuchadnezzar, in which we are told:--"in order to protect beth-saggatu more strongly, and secure it from the attack of the enemy, i have erected a second wall, the wall of the rising sun, which no king had built before me."[ ] hence we may with certainty affirm that the most northern of the heaps on the eastern bank of the euphrates, the heap of babil, the summit of which still rises feet above the river, is the remains of the great tower of bel merodach. the ancient kings of babylon, hammurabi and his successors, not only built temples and palaces, but also fortresses. hammurabi has himself already told us, that he built the fortress of ummubanit, "the towers of which were as high as mountains." kurigalzu built the fortress of this name (akerkuf, p. ). of the extensive walls of ur and erech we have already spoken, and sennacherib could boast of having taken eighty-nine fortresses in babylonia (p. ). herodotus observes that in babylonia the river (euphrates) does not overflow into the fields spontaneously, as in egypt. it is not so active as the nile, and the water has to be raised artificially by hand, and by wheels.[ ] the provision of a sufficient supply of water for the land was not neglected by the kings. we have already seen (p. ) that king hammurabi boasted to have supplied sumir and accad with water for ever. the canal system of babylonia began about miles above the metropolis.[ ] the main object was to protect the plain from the rapid floods of the euphrates by dams, and to moderate the flow of the inundation. reservoirs were required to receive the water of the overflow, and preserve it against the time of drought. it was also necessary to carry the water as far as the middle of the plain, which in ordinary years it failed to reach, to form a network of canals to convey water from the euphrates even when there was no inundation, and finally to dig trenches to remove the water from districts where it lay too long, and to drain the broad marshes on the lower river near the mouth of the euphrates. from the inscription of hammurabi, and the numerous remains of dams and canals, we may conclude that the kings of babylon constructed large and comprehensive works of this kind, which were of use not in agriculture only, but for commerce also. the brief duration of the later restoration of the kingdom could not allow time to complete the greater part of the vast structures and conduits, of which traces and ruins are still in existence. the canal naarsares, which was carried from the euphrates above babylon toward the west, and ran parallel to the stream till within a short distance of the mouth; the canal pallakopas, which was derived from the main stream miles below babylon, and emptied into the chaldæan lakes, in order to convey to them the excess of water from the euphrates; and three junction canals above babylon between the euphrates and tigris, from which trenches branched off for irrigation, appear to belong to the time of the ancient kingdom (see below). these labours of the princes, the numerous dams and "waters of babylon," attained their object. babylonia was a garden where the land brought forth more abundant fruits than in egypt. very few relics are left of the sculpture of the babylonians. if we set aside a few sketches on cylinders and seals, we have no means of knowing at first hand the images of their gods. the form of the god nebo on the cylinder of urukh has been already mentioned (p. ). the finished statues cannot have been very different from the images of the assyrian gods and the statues of nebo (p. ). the remains of the ornaments of the friezes in the palaces of babylon are scarcely to be distinguished from assyrian sculptures. they are bearded, long-haired heads of serious expression, with tall, upright headdresses. beyond these only a few figures in clay have been preserved, which are not without a certain truth of nature, though exaggerated, and a rude though powerful lion of stone standing over a prostrate man, from the ruins of babylon. whether we regard it as unfinished, or as belonging to the infancy of art, this work is all that we possess of full figures in stone, except a duck, intended for use as a weight (p. ). the human forms on the numerous seal cylinders are often sketched in rude, childish outlines. on the other hand, the single relief of a king of babylon hitherto discovered, though massive, is of artistic and neat workmanship. the king wears a long and very richly-adorned robe with close sleeves, which are fastened by bracelets round the knuckles. the robe reaches to the ankles, over which come the richly embroidered shoes. the head is covered by a tall, upright tiara, on which are horses with wings and horns. the king has a bow in his left hand, and two arrows in his right; in his girdle is a dagger. it appears to be an image of mardukidinakh, the opponent of tiglath pilesar i. of assyria (p. ). the forms of the animals in the reliefs, and the cylinders, are lively in conception and vigorous in workmanship; they consist of dogs, birds, apes, deer, and antelopes. humorous sketches of animals in caricature are also found on cylinders, and the earrings and ornaments, found in the ruins, are, in part, of delicate workmanship. the most remarkable remains in the ruins of ur and erech are the tombs. at ur, outside the wall already mentioned, there is a broad band of sepulchres encircling the ruins of the wall. the tombs are chambers of seven feet in length, three to four feet in breadth, and five feet in height. the roofs are formed by tiles projecting in successive layers over the walls, and thus gradually approaching each other. the floors are also covered with tiles. on the tiles lay a mat of reeds, and on this the corpse was placed, generally turned to the left side, with the head on a brick; the right arm, laid towards the left over the breast, rests the fingers on the edge of a copper saucer. clay vessels for food and drink are found on the walls. in the ruins of erech the whole space between the three prominent heaps of ruins and the external walls is filled with tombs, bones, and relics of the dead. the coffins here are receptacles partly oval, made of burnt clay in a single piece, about seven feet long, two and a half broad, and two to three feet high, contracting towards the top; and partly narrow funnel-shaped vessels of clay rounded off at both ends and united in the middle, in which the body was closely fitted. the position of the skeletons and objects round them are the same in the oval coffins as in the brick vaults. as a rule these coffins are not found under the surface, but in raised brick buildings. they lie thickly together, and often in several rows, one upon the other. relics of weapons, necklaces, and bracelets, gold and silver rings for the fingers and toes, and other ornaments, are found in these sepulchres.[ ] the industry of the babylonians quickly attained great skill and wide development. they were famous for their weaving in wool and linen. the nations of the west agree in acknowledging the excellence of the cloths and coloured stuffs of babylonia. their pottery was excellent and the manufacture active; the preparation of glass was not unknown; the ointments prepared in babylon were famous and much sought after, and the stones cut there were highly valued. the products of babylonian skill and industry were first brought to their kinsmen in syria, who could offer oil and wine in exchange. in the hebrew scriptures we find babylonian cloaks in use in syria before the immigration of the hebrews into canaan.[ ] how active the commerce between babylonia and syria was even before that date is proved by the circumstance that the tribute which in the sixteenth century b.c. was received by tuthmosis iii. from syria is put down on the inscriptions at karnak (p. ) in part in weight by the mina, and in part, when reduced from the egyptian to the babylonian weight, gives round sums corresponding to the babylonian weight, from which the conclusion can be drawn that the imperial babylonian weight and the babylonian money weight were already in use in syria about this time. that the trade mina of the syrians was the sixtieth part of the heavy (weight) talent of the babylonians is ascertained; but the heavy and light gold talent, as well as the silver talent of - / pounds, must, according to these deductions, have been known to the syrians about this date.[ ] afterwards the hebrews put their gold shekel, on the basis of the heavy gold talent of babylon, at the fiftieth part of the mina of this talent. besides the silver talent of babylonia, there was also a heavy silver talent of about ninety pounds ( , kil.) in use in syria. this came into existence because in syria fifteen, and not ten, silver pieces (fiftieths of the mina) were equal to the fiftieth of the heavy gold mina ( - / pounds), (p. ).[ ] along with their weights the syrians also adopted the cubic measures of the babylonians. the rough material required by babylonian industry was supplied in the first place by the arabs, who exchanged their animals, skins, and wool for corn and weapons. wine, and more especially wood, of which there was none in babylonia, were brought by the armenians from their valleys in the north down the euphrates to babylon.[ ] before b.c. the commerce of the arabs brought the products of south arabia, the spices of yemen, and even the products and manufactures of india, especially their silks, which reached the coasts of southern arabia (see below), to babylon. the babylonians required the perfumes of arabia and india to prepare their ointments. in order to prepare the best or royal ointment, twenty-five of the most precious perfumes were mixed together.[ ] when the cities of phenicia became great centres of trade which carried the wares of babylonia by sea to the west in order to obtain copper in exchange, the trade between babylonia and syria must have become more lively still. it was the ships of the phenicians which brought the cubic measure, and the weights, and the cubit of babylonia to the shores of greece, and caused them to be adopted there. in the ninth or eighth century b.c. the greeks completely dropped their old measures of length and superficies, and fixed their stadium at babylonian cubits, their plethrum at the length and the square of sixty babylonian cubits, and regulated the greek foot by the babylonian at a measure from to millimeters, and made their cubit equal to one and a half of these feet.[ ] the light babylonian talent became known in greece under the name of the euboeic talent, while the greek city phocæa, on the shores of asia minor, struck the oldest greek coin, the phocæan stater, at the value of a fiftieth of the heavy gold mina of babylon ( - / pounds). chios, clazomenæ, and lampsacus followed the heavy syrian silver talent in their coinage; and lastly, croesus made his gold stater equal to the fiftieth part of the mina of the light babylonian gold talent ( - / pounds), and his silver stater equal to the fiftieth part of the mina of the babylonian silver talent of - / pounds.[ ] footnotes: [ ] h. rawlinson, "journ. asiat. soc." , , ff. [ ] the assumption that the birs nimrud is the temple beth-sida at borsippa is contradicted by the inscriptions. the measurements of the temple give no support for such a theory, even if the forty-two cubits of the cylinders of rawlinson are interpreted with norris, "dict." p. , by amatgagar; for we do not know the value of this measure exactly. i cannot regard borsippa as a part of babylon in the teeth of the direct testimony of strabo (p. ), justin ( , ), and ptolemy ( , ). the inscriptions of the assyrians, and, not least, those of nebuchadnezzar himself, always mention borsippa beside babylon. if it be maintained that in spite of this nebuchadnezzar might have included borsippa in the walls of babylon, the theory is contradicted by berosus (joseph, "c. apion." , ), according to whom cyrus besieges and takes babylon while nabonetus is blocked up in borsippa, and by nebuchadnezzar himself, who, after speaking of the great walls of babylon, adds:--"i also laid the foundations of the walls of borsippa, the tabi-subur-su" (ménant, "babylone," p. ). [ ] herod. , - . [ ] diod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] "antiq." , . [ ] g. smith, "records of the past," , , . [ ] aberdeen inscription in ménant, "annal." p. . [ ] cylinder phillips in ménant, "babylone," pp. , . [ ] cylinder of the british museum in ménant, p. . [ ] ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] ménant, _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] "transactions bibl. arch." , . [ ] "cyr. inst." , . [ ] cylinder grotefend, in oppert, "exped." , . chief inscription in ménant, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] cylinder phillips, in ménant, "babylone," p. . [ ] herod. , . , . [ ] xen. "anab." , ; ammian, , ; strabo, p. , puts the borders of babylon at a canal, schoenes, _i.e._ miles above seleucia, and seleucia was somewhat higher than babylon. [ ] w. k. loftus, "warka, its ruins and remains;" "transactions of the royal society," , , - . [ ] joshua, vii. . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen." s. . [ ] brandis, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] movers, "phoenizier," , , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. ff. [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. , , . chapter iv. the arabs. the arabian peninsula is a repetition of africa on a smaller scale and in more moderate proportions, without a river-valley like that of the nile. the centre is occupied by a table-land, which presents a few well-watered depressions lying under a burning sky between naked deserts, plains of sand, cliffs, and bald peaks. thus, in spite of the great extent of the country (more than , , square miles), there are few districts in the interior of arabia suitable for agriculture. but towards the south, on the indian ocean, the plateau sinks down to the sea in broad mountain terraces. here are extremely fertile valleys, and the most valuable fruits grow on the terraces in the tropic atmosphere, which is cooled by the elevation of the mountains and the winds blowing from the ocean. this is the land of frankincense, of the sugarcane and coffee-tree, of pomegranates, figs, and dates, of wheat and maize. herodotus, who follows all antiquity in extending the name arabia to the deserts of syria and sinai, gives us but few notices of the inhabitants of this wide district. "the arabs," he tells us, "wear long garments, and on the right side carry large bows, which can be strung on either side, and travel on swift camels. they have only two gods--dionysus, whom they call urotal; and urania, whom they call alilat. urania is known to the babylonians as mylitta, to the arabs as alilat. bargains are struck in the following manner. a third person makes an incision in the hand near the thumb of each of the two persons who wish to enter into the compact, and with the blood he smears seven stones lying between them; calling at the same time on urotal and alilat. these compacts are observed with a sanctity unknown to any other nation."[ ] eratosthenes tells us that the arab tribes lying next to the syrians and jews were agricultural, but beyond them lay a sandy and poor soil, with nothing but a few palms, acacias, tamarisks, and wells of water. this district, as far as the euphrates, was inhabited by the nabatæans, agræans, and chaulotæans, tribes who kept camels and lived in tents.[ ] artemidorus of ephesus calls arabia rich in cattle, lions, panthers, wolves, wild asses, and camels; the inhabitants were wandering herdmen, who gained a subsistence from their camels; on them they rode, from them they fought, and on their milk and flesh they lived. the names of the arabian tribes he is unwilling to mention, because of their insignificance and harsh sound.[ ] diodorus also tells us that the inhabitants of the part of arabia towards syria lived by agriculture and trade, but with the nabatæans the land began to be arid and barren; and they led the life of robbers, plundering their neighbours far and wide; no one had succeeded in conquering them.[ ] the interior of arabia, and the western side, were occupied by plains of sand of enormous extent. on these it was only possible to travel as on the sea, by taking the great bear as a guide. in the whole of the interior there were no cities, but only dwellers in tents, and the most part of the arabian tribes led a nomadic life, for arabia was very rich in animals of various kinds, so that the arabs could easily live on them without cultivating corn. they had large herds of cattle, and with these they wandered over immeasurable plains. in conclusion, diodorus praises the fertility and beauty of a well-watered palm-grove in the peninsula between the northern bays of the arabian sea, which the barbarians had very justly consecrated to the gods, as it lay in the midst of a very hot and desert land, surrounded by a wilderness. there was an old altar there of hard stone inscribed with very ancient letters, which no one could read. a man and woman presided for life as priests over this holy palm-grove, and every four years the neighbouring arab tribes sacrificed hecatombs of goodly camels there.[ ] pliny observes: "strange to say, the arabs live about equally on plunder and on trade; what they get from their forests (by which is meant the products of the date-palms and the fruit-trees of south arabia) and from the sea they sell; but they purchase nothing in return."[ ] "the arabs," says ammianus marcellinus, "extend from the euphrates to egypt. they are half-naked, with only a coloured apron round the body reaching to the middle. every man is a warrior. on their swift fine-limbed horses and their camels they ride in every direction. they do not continue long in any one place: without settled abodes they wander to and fro, and their whole life is nothing but a flight. of bread and wine the most part of them know nothing whatever."[ ] of the southern coasts of arabia the accounts are different. it is a remark of herodotus that the fairest blessings are allotted to the extreme limits of the earth; and among other places to arabia, the southern extremity of the inhabited world. here only, in all the earth, grow frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and ladanum; here are sheep with such thick tails, that carriages have to be fastened behind them. but the frankincense trees are watched by winged serpents, and the cassia by bats. cinnamon does not grow in arabia, but large carnivorous birds of prey brought branches of cinnamon for their nests,--from which direction the arabs could not tell.[ ] heraclides of cyme gave an account of the wealth of the king of the land of frankincense. he pretended to know that the expenses for the king, his wife, and friends, amounted each day to the sum of fifteen babylonian talents. living an effeminate and luxurious life, he always remained in the palace; he did nothing, and was never seen by the people; but if anyone went into the palace to complain of a decision at law, the king himself passed sentence.[ ] through the trade connection of alexandria eratosthenes obtained better information on these districts, and was enabled to mention the tribes who possessed the south. "in the extreme end of arabia next the sea dwell the minæans, whose metropolis is karna; after these come the sabæans, whose metropolis is mariaba; further to the west, as far as the corner of the arabian gulf, are the cattabani, whose kings dwell at thamna; finally, the chatramites are furthest to the east, and their city is sabbatha. each of these four districts is larger than the delta of egypt; they have rain in the summer, and rivers which lose themselves in the plains and lakes. hence the land is so fruitful that seed is sown twice in the year. the land of the cattabani supplies incense, the chatramites produce myrrh; but elsewhere also fruits of every kind are plentiful and cattle abundant. from the chatramites it is a journey of forty days to the sabæans; from the minæans the merchants go in seventy days to aela (elath). the cities of the chatramites, cattabani, sabæans, and minæans are rich, and adorned with temples and royal palaces."[ ] the sabæans, the most numerous tribe of arabia, according to agatharchides, who wrote in the second half of the second century b.c., inhabited the so-called arabia felix. here grew the most beautiful fruits without number; here was an inexhaustible abundance of animals of every kind. in the strips of land by the sea grew balsam and cassia, and another plant most beautiful to the eye. in the interior were thick forests of tall frankincense and myrrh-trees, and also cinnamon-trees, palm and calmus, and trees of a similar kind, which, like the others, send forth the sweetest odour. owing to the innumerable multitude, it is not possible to name and describe every species. the perfume is divine and beyond all words. even those who go past on the coast, at a distance from the land, enjoy this perfume, if the wind is blowing off shore. for there the spices are not cut and old and stored up, but in fresh vigour and bloom, so that those who sail along the coast believe that they are enjoying ambrosia, since no other word can express the extraordinary power and strength of the odour. the monarchy among the sabæans is hereditary. their chief city, mariaba, lies on a mountain; here lives the king, who pronounces justice for the people, but he is never allowed to leave his palace. if he acts otherwise, he is stoned by the people, in obedience to an ancient oracle. the sabæans are the richest people in the world. for a few goods silver and gold are brought in quantities, and flow in from every side; while, owing to their remote situation, they have never been conquered by any one. hence, especially in the metropolis, they have a number of vessels of silver and gold and couches, and porticoes, the pillars of which are gilded in the shaft, and the capitals are adorned with silver ornaments, while the architraves and doors are finished with gold and precious stones. on these structures they bestow great care and industry.[ ] artemidorus of ephesus, who wrote somewhat later than agatharchides of cnidus, represents the king of the sabæans and his court as living at mariaba, which lay on a wooded mountain, in effeminate luxury. owing to the abundance of fruit the people were lazy and inactive, and reclined on the roots of the spice-trees. for fire-wood they used cinnamon and cassia. the occupation of the people was partly agriculture, and partly trade in spices, both native and imported from the opposite coast of Æthiopia (africa), whither the sabæans passed over the inlet of the sea in boats of skins. the neighbouring tribes received the wares from the sabæans, and then passed them on to their neighbours, till they reached syria and mesopotamia.[ ] pliny tells us that the sabæans were the most famous of the arabians, owing to their frankincense, and their land reached from sea to sea. their cities lay on the sea and in the interior, the chief city being mariaba. one portion of the sabæans were called the chatramites, and their chief city, sabbatha, had sixty temples within its walls; further to the east were the cattabani, whose city, thamna, could enumerate sixty-five temples. the minæans lay in the interior beyond the chatramites. the frankincense was collected and brought to sabbatha, and could not be purchased and taken away by strangers till the priests had set apart a tenth for the god of sabbatha. the only passage for exportation was through the land of the cattabani, to the king of which imposts had to be paid. the priests also and the scribes of the king received presents, and the doorkeepers, bodyguard, and escort. thamna, the chief city of the cattabani, was distant seventy-five days' journey from gaza. and as payments had to be made, at one place for pasturage, at another for water, at a third for the stage, and again for the convoy, the cost for each camel as far as the syrian desert amounted to denarii.[ ] according to the hebrew scriptures the sheba, _i.e._ the sabæans, "a distant people, rich in frankincense, spices, gold, and precious stones," were to be sought in the south of arabia.[ ] the tribe or locality of uzal, which genesis and ezekiel mention beside the sabæans, is the older name of the later sanaa. the chief city of the sabæans, which western writers call mariaba, is the maryab of the inscriptions. to the east of the sabæans, on the south coast, were situated the hazarmaweth of the hebrews, the chatramites of the western nations, in the district of hadramaut, which still preserves the name. the rhegmæans of the western nations, the sons of rama among the hebrews, are to be sought in the neighbourhood of the persian gulf, in oman, the south-east of arabia. further to the north-east, on the shore of this gulf, were the dedanites; and yet further to the north-east the havila appear to have dwelt, who are perhaps the chaulotæans, whom eratosthenes places towards the lower euphrates. the hebrew scriptures repeatedly mention the hagarites, the nebajoth (the agræans and nabatæans of eratosthenes), and further towards the interior of arabia the kedarites and temanites; and lastly, on the peninsula of sinai, and on the borders of canaan, the amalekites, edomites, and midianites. the hebrews mention two chiefs of the midianites, whose names were "wolf" and "raven," the leather tents of this people, the number of their dromedaries, and the moons which their camels carried as ornaments. next are mentioned the flocks of the nebajoth, the black tents of the kedarites, their wealth in cattle (large and small), and their brave bowmen.[ ] the inscriptions of egypt from the time of the tuthmosis and the first ramses celebrate achievements performed, as it is said, by these pharaohs against the punt, _i.e._ against the arabs; but with one exception, they do not supply any information of the land and the tribes of this people. a daughter of tuthmosis i., queen misphra (hatasu, ramake), who was regent first for her brother tuthmosis ii., and during a considerable time for tuthmosis iii. ( - b.c.), wished to become acquainted with "the land of punt, as far as the uttermost end of to-neter." she equipped a fleet on the red sea, and led it in person to the coast of arabia. the inhabitants of the coast on which she landed submitted, and she returned to egypt with rich spoil, in which were thirty-two spice-trees.[ ] the inscriptions of the kings of asshur supply further information: among the tribes of the arabians they mention in the first place the pekod, the hagarites, whom they place in the neighbourhood of the lands of hauran, moab and zoba, the kedarites, thamudenes, nabatæans, and finally the sabæans. the hebrew scriptures bring the queen of sheba to solomon at jerusalem, and represent her as offering rich presents in gold and frankincense, and similarly tiglath-pilesar ii., king of assyria, tells us that in the year b.c. he had received tribute from zabibieh, the queen of arabia (aribi), and in the year b.c. he had taken from samsieh, queen of the arabs, , camels and , oxen, and further, that he had subjugated the people of saba, the city of the sabæans. sargon boasts that he had subdued the people of thammud (the thamudenes), tasid, ibadid, marsiman, chayapa, the distant arbæans, and the inhabitants of the land of bari, "which was unknown to the learned and to the scribes," and that he received the tribute of samsieh, queen of the arabs, and of yathamir, the sabæan (sabahi) in gold, spices, and camels (in the year b.c.). he mentions the land of agag, "on the borders of the arabs toward the rising sun," _i.e._ the eastern arabs.[ ] king sennacherib took from the pekod, the hagarites, nabatæans, and some other tribes, , camels and , head of small cattle ( b.c.), and in the time of assurbanipal (about b.c.) adiya, the queen of the arabs, and ammuladin, the king of the kedarites, were brought in chains to nineveh; the "innumerable troops" of another prince, uaiti, were defeated and his tents burnt. abiyateh also, who was leagued against assyria, first with uaiti, and then with nadnu (nathan), the king of the nabatæans, was conquered, together with these allies, and the worshippers of atar samain (istar). assurbanipal tells us that out of the booty of this campaign he distributed camels like sheep, and that at the gate of nineveh camels had been sold for half a silver shekel (from _s._ _d._ to _s._).[ ] the position of arabia, between the valleys of the nile and the euphrates and tigris, where agriculture and civilisation came into bloom at an early period, and which were the oldest seats of trade and industry, brought the arab tribes who wandered along the borders of these river valleys into connection with egypt and babylon. barter had to supply all that could not be obtained by freebooting. the nomads required corn, implements, and weapons; egypt and babylon were in need of horses, sheep, goats, and camels. the arabians, therefore, could exchange their animals for corn, weapons, and implements, and supply the industry of babylon and egypt with a part of the necessary raw products, more especially skins and wool. the tradition of the hebrews represents abraham as going to egypt, and the sons of jacob buy corn in egypt when "there was a famine in the land." on the other hand, egypt, as has been already remarked, had already, under snefru, the predecessor of chufu, _i.e._ about the year b.c., fixed herself in the peninsula of sinai, and when, a thousand years later, nomad tribes of the north-west of arabia obtained the supremacy in the valley of the nile, and maintained it for centuries (p. ), their supremacy could only develop further the trade between egypt and the arabs, between the ruling tribe in egypt and their kinsmen at home, and thus the contact with the civilisation of egypt and babylonia was not without effect on the arabs. this contact increased their wants, and therefore increased their trading intercourse. the arabs could offer not merely the products of their herds, they could exchange the costly spices and perfumes from the southern coast of their land with each other, and so convey them to the egyptians and babylonians. the hebrew scriptures make keturah, _i.e._ "incense," the wife of abraham, and from this connection spring the midianites and the dedanites; to esau, the son of isaac, the progenitor of the edomites, they give a wife of the name of basmath, _i.e._ "perfume,"[ ] and in the twentieth century b.c., according to their reckoning, we find a caravan of ishmaelites, with camels, carrying spices, balsam, and ladanum, and midianites going for purposes of trade to egypt. the trade of egypt and babylonia with the south of arabia, through the medium of the arab tribes, certainly goes back to the year b.c., if the attempt was made in egypt about the year b.c. to reduce southern arabia. not long after his campaigns in syria and mesopotamia, tuthmosis iii. imposed on the syrians a tribute of minæ, and on the naharina a tribute of minæ of spices;[ ] hence such spices must not only have found their way into these districts at this time, but must have been already known as ordinary articles of trade. how strongly egypt felt her need of the products of south arabia is most strikingly shown by the fact that the egyptians were very anxious to obtain these products by the direct route over the arabian gulf; the canal which ramses ii. began to make towards the gulf (p. ) could have no other object in view than to facilitate the communication between the nile and the coast of south arabia and east africa, by the red sea. under ramses iii. ( - b.c.) a great fleet is said to have sailed for a second time to to-neter, and to have returned to coptus with the tribute of these lands and a rich freight.[ ] the need of incense was not less in babylon than in egypt. we saw that the preparation of ointments was a main branch of babylonian industry, and herodotus tells us that at the feast of belus, at babylon, a thousand talents of incense, which according to the light babylonian weight is more than , pounds, was burnt on the altar of the great temple. as the temanites, kedarites, nebajoth, and midianites formed the medium of trade between south arabia and egypt, so were the rhegmæans and dedanites the communicating link between south arabia and babylonia. among the sabæans the babylonian talent was current.[ ] this carrying trade between south arabia, egypt, syria, and mesopotamia must have increased when the cities of the phenicians on the syrian coast became centres of trade which carried the manufactures of babylonia, as well as the products of their own industry, over the sea to the west, and when the tribes of greece and italy began to desire the incense and spices of arabia. and it was not only the products of south arabia which the arabs brought to syria, egypt, and babylonia, but also those of the south coast of africa, and even of india. artemidorus told us that the sabæans crossed the arabian gulf on boats of skins in order to bring back the products of ethiopia. though it was possible to cross the narrow basin by these means of transit, the mouths of the indus and the coasts of malabar were beyond the reach of such skiffs. if in the course of time indian wares reached syria through the sabæans, they must have been brought by the indians themselves to the coasts of the sabæans. at the beginning of the second century b.c. the island dioscoridis, off the coast of somali, which was known to the west as the land of cinnamon, formed the centre of the trade between egypt, south arabia, and india. to this island the ships of the indians brought the products of their land. in the first instance the arabs transported the goods from south arabia to the euphrates and the nile on their camels, and afterwards it lay with them to permit or refuse a passage for the caravans of the babylonians and phenicians. first one tribe and then another lay in wait for the caravans, plundered them, or allowed them to buy a passage, convoy, or guide.[ ] eratosthenes has already told us that the merchants took seventy days in going from the minæans to aela, _i.e._ to elath, on the north-east point of the arabian gulf, and pliny fixes the distance from gaza to thamna, the chief city of the cattabani, at seventy-five days' journey. of the caravan road which led from the sabæans, _i.e._ in all probability from maryab to elath, we only know that it ran along the coast, then passed from elath by sela and bosra into the mountains of the edomites, then divided the land of the moabites and ammonites, passed by kir moab (charak moab) and rabbat ammon, edrei and ashtaroth karnaim, through the land of the jeturites, to damascus, and finally, from this place reached the cities of the phenicians. a second road led apparently past the oasis of duma (dumætha of ptolemy, dumat-el-dshandal) straight to damascus. in the east the dedanites brought the products of south arabia through the desert, by the land of the temanites and kedarites, to the lower euphrates.[ ] the goods not required for babylonia then passed up the euphrates to harran (charræ). from this point the caravans turned to the west, and in twenty days arrived through the desert at the coasts of the phenicians.[ ] how active the trade with the land of frankincense was is shown by the words of the hebrew prophet, who proclaims to the new jerusalem: "a multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of midian and ephah (see below); all they from shebah shall come; they shall bring gold and incense. all the flocks of kedar shall be gathered together unto thee; the rams of nebajoth shall minister unto thee."[ ] the arabs, when conquered by the persians, were compelled to pay a yearly tribute of , talents of incense,[ ] _i.e._ at least , pounds. this they could only obtain from south arabia, and to western nations the connection between damascus and south arabia appeared so close, that they represented the sabæans as colonists of the egyptians, ninus and semiramis having sent colonies from damascus to arabia felix. though the phenicians could receive the products of south arabia and the somali coast by the high road of elath, and from the euphrates by harran, they were nevertheless eager to have a connection by sea with these regions. they availed themselves of the relations in which they stood to solomon, king of israel, in order to send ships from eziongeber down the arabian gulf, to ophir, as far as the mouth of the indus. these ships brought back sandalwood, apes, peacocks, and gold. this trade fell with the decline of the kingdom of judah, after the time of jehoshaphat. but when amaziah of judah again subjugated the edomites, about the year b.c., and after him his son uzziah again advanced the borders of judah to the red sea, the phenicians also resumed their connection with the kings of judah and the trade to ophir.[ ] afterwards pharaoh necho gave them an opportunity for a short time to set out upon their voyages in the arabian gulf, not, indeed, from the north-east, but from the north-west corner of the red sea. but immediately afterwards nebuchadnezzar of babylon, by subduing the dedanites and planting babylonian centres of trade on the coast of dedan and at the mouth of the euphrates, succeeded in transplanting the marine trade with south arabia to the persian gulf, while the conquest of the kedarites also put him in a position to strike a road across the desert from babylon to sela (in the land of the edomites, see below). darius or the ptolemies were the first to succeed in the attempt made by rameses ii. and necho, and concentrated in the bay of heroonpolis the trade of egypt and syria with south arabia. soon after the year b.c.--so we must conclude--the tribes of south arabia delivered their spices to the egyptians, syrians, and babylonians, and their incense, which eastern nations, and in time western nations also, burned upon the altars of their gods. then they imported the products of the opposite shore of africa, a region no less fruitful than south arabia, and at length the ships of the indians brought to them the products of the indus and the ganges. thus south arabia not only exported her own fruits, she became the central mart of east african and indian products, the point of connection between eastern and western asia. owing to the fertility of their valleys and terraces, and their old and extensive trade, the tribes of the south soon acquired a more fixed form of constitution and a more advanced civilisation. numerous remains of magnificent stone structures, ruins of aqueducts, canals, basins, and dams, built with the object of preserving and collecting the water which streamed down the terraces of the mountains and in the valleys, still excite the astonishment of our travellers for the excellence of the plan as well as for the strength of the masonry. the ruins of nedshran, sirwah, ghorab, nakb-el-hadshar, and misenat, and those of maryab, the old metropolis of the sabæans, confirm what western writers and arab tradition tell us of the glorious palaces of the ancient time and the mighty dams built in the valley of maryab.[ ] the remains of the dams prove that south arabia, like egypt and babylonia, was far better cultivated in those distant times than now; that there also the greatest importance was attached to irrigation, and the inhabitants understood how to preserve and use the water from the mountain-streams on the terraces. the natural assumption that at one time the cultivation of valuable fruits was far more extensive in south arabia than at present can hardly be incorrect. the inscriptions found in those ruins and elsewhere in the south-west of yemen, though they do not, so far as is at present ascertained, go back beyond the year b.c.,[ ] give us some insight into the nature of the civilisation of these tribes and the ancient form of the south arabian language and alphabet, which must have grown out of the phenician at an early date, and then have developed independently beside it.[ ] of a still more recent date, from the first century a.d., we find in the opposite north-west corner of arabia numerous inscriptions on the rocks in the region of sinai, written in the north arabian language and alphabet.[ ] the hebrew scriptures divide the tribes of the arabs into four groups--the joktanites, among whom tribes of the south and east take the lead; the keturites, among whom are tribes of western and eastern arabia; the ishmaelites, including tribes of the table-land of the interior and north arabia; and finally, the group of tribes who settled and wandered on the eastern borders of canaan--the amalekites, moabites, ammonites, and edomites. the hebrews derive the origin of the arabs from the progenitors from whom they were themselves sprung. to shem, the son of noha, so genesis tells us, arphaxad was born, and "arphaxad begat salah, and salah begat eber, and eber begat peleg and joktan. and joktan begat almodad, and sheleph, and hazarmaveth (the chatramites, in hadramaut, p. ), and jerah, and hadoram, and uzal (sanaa), and diklah, and obal, and abimael, and sheba (the sabæans), and ophir and havilah (the chaulotæans), and jobab (the jobarites of ptolemy, on the south coast), and their dwelling was from mesha (maishan, mesene on the euphrates) towards sephar (dshafar, to the south of sanaa and maryab), a mount of the east." peleg, the elder brother of joktan, was the father of reu, reu, of serug; then followed nahor and terah. terah's sons were abraham, nahor, and haran. to abraham hagar, his egyptian bond-servant, bore ishmael. abraham sent hagar and ishmael into the deserts of beersheba, but "god was with the lad, and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness of paran, and was an archer, and his mother took him a wife from the land of egypt, and his first-born was nebajoth (the nabatæans, p. ), and his sons were kedar (the kedarites) and adbeel, and mibsam, and mishma, and dumah (p. ), and massa (the masanians of ptolemy), and hadar, and thema (the themanites, p. ), and jetur (the jeturites, near damascus, p. ), and naphish, and kedemiah, twelve princes; and the descendants of ishmael dwelt from shur, which is before egypt, and from havilah (p. ) to asshur." "and again abraham took a wife, whose name was keturah, and she bare him zimran, and jokshan, and medan, and midian (the midianites) and ishbak, and shuah. and joksham begat dedan, and the sons of midian were ephah and epher (p. ). and abraham gave them gifts and sent them away into the east country."[ ] abraham's son was isaac, isaac's oldest son was esau, the father of the edomites, and esau's grandson, amalek, was the progenitor of the amalekites.[ ] haran, the brother of abraham, begat lot, and lot's sons were moab and ammon (the moabites and ammonites). from these genealogies it is clear that the hebrews looked on the arabs almost without exception as kinsmen of their own,[ ] and as kinsmen of a more ancient branch, for the hebrews were descended from the second son of isaac. the place nearest to themselves they give to the ishmaelites, who were divided into twelve tribes, the descendants of the twelve princes, the sons of ishmael--and next in order came the edomites, ammonites, and moabites. the native tradition of the arabs is without historical value. their recollections hardly go back as far as the beginning of the christian era, and all that their historians who began to write after mohammed knew of the older fortunes of their race is either borrowed from the hebrews or mere imagination. the amalekites, whom they found in the hebrew scriptures, they took for their original stock, and represented them as dwelling in canaan and damascus, as well as in the land of mecca and oman, and even as ruling over egypt. these amalekites--the tasmites and dshadi, the a'adites and dshorhomites--they consider as the genuine arabs; to whom god had taught arabic after the confusion of speech. but the tasmites and dshadi are as little historic as amalek in the arabian tradition; their names signify "the extinct" and "the lost;" the a'adites are a purely fabulous nation, and the dshorhomites (near mecca) are a tribe of no great antiquity.[ ] the progenitor of the southern tribes of yemen is, in the arabian tradition, kachtan, the son of eber, and great-grandson of noah. this is the joktan of genesis. kachtan's son, j'arab, founded the monarchy of the kachtanids, in south arabia; abd-shams-sabah, the grandson of j'arab, built the city of mareb, the chief city of the sabæans, according to the greeks. this founder of the monarchy of the sabæans left two sons, himyar and kachlan. the first was the progenitor of the himyarites, who are mentioned even by western writers, but not till the first century a.d., and then on the south coast between mareb and hadramaut. the name himyarites includes the tribes of the chatramites, the codaa, the kinana, the dshoheina, &c. kachlan founded dshafar (p. ), and was the progenitor of the kachlanids, _i.e._ the hamdanids, the badshila, the odthan, the chozaa, and other tribes. to the kingdom of mareb, founded by abd-shams-sabah, the arab tradition ascribes a long list of princes. but even if we ascribe a period of more than thirty years to every name in this series, the date of kachtan is not carried back beyond b.c.[ ] abd-shams-sabah is said to have built not only mareb, but also a great dam for the irrigation of the country. the excellent dams, canals, and sluices at sanaa (the uzal of the hebrews, westward of mareb) are said to have been built by asad.[ ] the castles of sahlin and bainun (at sanaa) are said to have been built by demons at the bidding of solomon for belkis, queen of shebah. besides these the arabs talk of numerous castles and fortresses in the south. towards the year b.c. harith, a descendant of himyar, obtained the throne of the sabæans; and the place of the sabæans is taken by the himyarites, the homerites of western nations, who henceforth are the ruling nation in yemen, a change for which arab tradition prepares the way by making himyar the son and successor of abd-shams-sabah. harith's successors fixed their residence first at dshafar (dhu raidan), then at mareb, and finally at sanaa.[ ] the tribes of the high land of the interior, whom the arabs call neshd, _i.e._ "the high people," and certain tribes of hidyaz, are derived by tradition from adnan, a grandson of ishmael. when ibrahim (abraham) had sent away hagar and her son, and hagar was about to perish in the desert, the child ishmael struck the earth with his foot, and from it sprang the fountain of zamzam, close to mecca. amalekites, in search of their lost camels, found the spring, settled down beside it, and worshipped ishmael as the lord of the spring. then came tribes from the south, the dshorhomites and katura, to the fountain; and ishmael married the daughter of the chief of the dshorhomites and begot nabit (the nebajoth) and kaidar (the kedarites). the amalekites and katura were then driven away, and the dshorhomites remained alone in possession of the fountain of zamzam. kaidar's son was adnan. from adnan sprang the benu bekr, the taghlib, the temim, the takif, the gatafan, &c. if we ascend the genealogies which arab tradition gives to the princes of the tribes sprung from ishmael, in twenty generations, ending with adnan, the grandson of ishmael, we only arrive at the end of the second century b.c., even if we allow thirty years for each generation.[ ] the few facts which we can make out about the religious worship of the southern arabs (they belong almost exclusively to the period in which the himyarites obtained the supremacy in south arabia) exhibit a certain connection with the worship of the babylonians; but we cannot ascertain whether this coincidence, like the close relationship of the south arabian and babylonian languages (p. ), is due to original unity or later intercourse. the byzantines tell us that the himyarites worshipped the sun, the moon, and certain demons of the land. the tradition of the arabs mentions abd-shams-sabah as the founder of the kingdom of the sabæans, and the name abd-shams signifies the servant of the sun-god, and hence in the eyes of the arabs the worship of the sun-god must have occupied a very prominent place in the religion of the sabæans--a fact which is confirmed by the inscriptions. they mention the sun-god (shams, shamas), the moon-god al-makak, and the gods aththor, haubas, and dhu samavi.[ ] the himyarites are said to have worshipped the sun under the form of an eagle (nasr), and the hamdanids (who dwelt to the north of sanaa and mareb) under the form of a horse; a third tribe in yemen are said to have worshipped him in the form of a lion.[ ] the accounts which we have of the religion of the tribes who in the second century of our era, in consequence of the bursting of a great dam at mareb, according to arab tradition, migrated to the north, and by this migration destroyed or drove out or amalgamated with the new-comers a considerable number of the old tribes of this region, prove that the immigrants worshipped certain stars as their protecting deities. the tadshi immigrants from the south, who pastured their flocks on the oasis of duma (p. ), worshipped canopus; the lachmites, who were driven towards hira, on the lower euphrates, worshipped the fortunate star jupiter; and the chozaa, who settled to the north of mecca, worshipped sirius.[ ] with regard to the religious rites of the tribes derived by the arabs from adnan, we learn that the benu bekr, who forced their way from neshd towards the euphrates, worshipped the god audh, _i.e._ the burning one; an ancient form of oath used by this tribe runs as follows--"i swear by the blood streams round audh and the stones set up beside suair." the kinana and the benu gatafan in hidyaz worshipped the goddess uzza, a name which is said to signify "the mighty one" in a sacred tree.[ ] the tribe of the takif (near taif, southward of mecca) worshipped the goddess allat, in whose name we can, without difficulty, recognise the alilat of herodotus: alilahat means "the goddess." among the palms of the valley of nachlah rose the mighty tree of the goddess, "presented with sacred offerings;" but the takif also prayed to this goddess under the form of a white stone. a third goddess, of the name of manat, held sway in the district of medinah; she was worshipped in a black shapeless stone. the kuraish swore by allat, uzza, and manat.[ ] among other tribes of the desert the goddess halasah, or venus, was worshipped. according to the western writers the nabatæans are said to have worshipped the sun and the war-god dusares.[ ] "his image is a black, undressed, rectangular stone, four feet high and two feet broad, on a pedestal of beaten gold. to this stone they offer sacrifice and pour libations with the blood of the victims; such are their libations; the whole temple is filled with gold and votive offerings." modern scholars identify this god dusares with the du'sharah of arabian writers.[ ] herodotus has already told us that on the conclusion of agreements the stones between the two parties were smeared with blood; and, as according to this evidence, the idols also were sprinkled with the blood of the victims, we can explain the oath of benu bekr by the bloodstreams round audh. the statement of herodotus that the arabs worshipped urotal and alilat only, and the statements of strabo and arrian that they worshipped zeus, and dionysus, and the sky, must apparently be limited to the migratory tribes of the north. of the gods worshipped by the tribes bordering on syria we have more definite knowledge. the midianites and amalekites who possessed the sandstone plateau of sinai, and the deserts of shur in the north, and sin in the south, worshipped on the highest peaks of that district which the hebrews called horeb and sinai (_i.e._ the sinian), the god baal, who was also worshipped by the syrians. at the foot of sinai there still remains the well-watered palm grove, with its rich black earth, of which agatharchides and diodorus told us above (p. ). it is the oasis of firan, and from the palms the mountain above it is still called serbal, _i.e._ "the palm forest of baal."[ ] the moabites invoked baal on mount peor, and in times of distress appeased his wrath by human sacrifices. in the same way the ammonites worshipped their god milkom; the female deity of the moabites was astor, the astarte of the syrians, who was also worshipped by the kedarites.[ ] that the baal of sinai was a god who gave fruits and water in the desert is clear from the fact that herodotus could compare the god of the arabs with dionysus, and strabo and arrian could ascribe the worship of dionysus to the arabs. from a general view of these scanty notices it becomes clear that the basis of the religious conceptions current among the semitic tribes of arabia was not widely different from that of the semitic tribes by the euphrates and tigris, or in syria, which will be found to be connected with each other. it is easy to understand that the rites of the tribes bordering on syria were nearer to the rites of the syrians, and it has been already remarked that the worship of the southern tribes appears to be most closely allied to the rites of the babylonians. here, as there, we find the worship of astarte; herodotus expressly calls the goddess of the arabs by the name of mylitta, the bilit of the babylonians, whom, as we shall see, the canaanites also worshipped with much zeal. we saw that in babylon her power was recognized in the evening gleam of the planet venus, that all young things, fountains, and pools, belonged to this goddess; and we shall find her worshipped in syria on the shady heights of lebanon. the tribes of the arabian deserts also consecrated lofty trees to this goddess, their allat, or halasah; and just as they believed that the power of this, as of other deities, was present in stones, so shall we find a similar custom prevailing among the syrians. that the tribes of the deserts should pay especial reverence to the deities of the stars--we have seen how systematised was the worship of stars in babylon--cannot surprise us. with the refreshing dew of evening not venus only or the moon, but the whole glory of the starry heaven met the eye and touched the spirit of the arabs. high above the tents and resting flocks, above the nocturnal ride and waiting ambuscade, and all the doings of men the stars passed along on their glittering courses. they guided the arabs on their way through the deserts; certain constellations announced the wished-for rain, others the wild storms, the changes of the seasons, the time for breeding in their herds and flocks. as these stars at one time brought abundance and good pastures for their flocks, and at another dried up the springs and scorched the meadows, so could they also bring joy and happiness or trouble and pain to men. hence to the tribes of the desert especially brilliant stars appeared as living spirits, as rulers over nature and the fortunes of mankind. the life of the roving tribes in the interior whom the arabs denote by the general name of badawi (bedouins), _i.e._ "sons of the desert," has undergone few changes; at the present day but slight deviations have been made from the customs and conditions of the ancient time. their life was regulated according to their descent in patriarchal forms, and the basis of it was the natural affection of the family. at the head of the tribe stood the chief of the oldest family, from which the rest derived their origin. all descendants of the patriarch who had given the name to the tribe gave a willing obedience to his nearest descendants, for the claims of primogeniture were sacred. the wealth in horses of excellent breed, camels, and cattle is the pride of these tribal chiefs and the symbol of their supremacy. surrounded by the council of the elders, the heads of the other families, the chiefs maintained peace in the tribe, settled quarrels, led out the youth of the tribe on plundering expeditions and in feuds, and divided the spoil. they alone had the right to assemble the tribe, to carry the standards under which the tribe fought, and give the command in battle. in rare instances the remembrance of a common origin keeps several tribes together in a kind of union under the chief of the oldest tribe, from which the others have branched off, but as a rule the tribes hold proudly aloof and are hostile to each other. they attack each other, plunder the tents, carry off the women, children, and servants, and drive away the flocks. when a feud has once broken out and members of a tribe have been slain, it is incumbent on the family and tribe to which the dead belonged to revenge the fallen, and kill at least as many members of the hostile tribe. this duty of revenge is hereditary on either side, and descends from generation to generation until the chief of a third tribe is chosen to decide the quarrel and become a peace-maker by fixing a fine of cattle or other property. in such a mode of life, which, in its general features, has remained unchanged for thousands of years, the arabs of the desert exercised the virtues of reverence, piety, and attachment to their tribal chiefs; thus there grew up among them a steadfast, manly character; they were true to their promise when once given, and displayed a noble hospitality. if any one came in peace to their tents, drink was given to him by the daughters of the tribe from the fountains, the men took him as a friend into their tents and shared their store of dates with him, or entertained him with a sheep from the flock. when the stranger had once set his foot in the tent, the host guaranteed his safety with his own life. when the night came on with her refreshing coolness, the stranger was required to sit in the starlight in the circle of the tribesmen. he was expected to tell of his origin, his race, and tribe; and then the hosts also told the fame of their ancestors and sang the deeds of their fathers and themselves, the feuds and encounters in which their tribe had been victorious, the virtues of their favourite horses, and the swiftness of their camels. poetry was the only form of intellectual life known to the tribes of the desert. the bedouins had a lively sense of the incidents which broke the simple loneliness of their lives, and gave them a vigorous and even a fiery expression. the artless song was the expression of feelings deeply stirred by sorrow or joy. such songs were equally adapted for calling to mind their own deeds and fortunes or those of the tribe, and for moral exhortation. they were "occasional" pieces. lament for the dead, praise of the noblest warrior, the battles and exaltation of the tribe, the generosity and courage of their own tribe or hatred of the hostile tribe, derision of the enemy, hunting, weapons, rides through the desert, horses and camels, are the subjects of this poetry, which is expressed in short iambic verses. tradition mentions lokman as the oldest poet. he is supposed to be a contemporary of david; and round his name is gathered a number of proverbs, gnomes, and fables. the short poems lived on in the tribe, they were sung again and again, extended and recast. at a later time there were also rhapsodes who could repeat a store of such poems. the arabs have developed in the most healthy and marked manner the characteristic features of the semitic race. their roving life in the deserts under the burning sun and amid tempests and whirlwinds of sand has strengthened and hardened them. surrounded in pathless isolation by beasts of prey and hostile tribes, every one was dependent on his own watchfulness and keenness, on his courage and resolution, on his horse and his lance. on a frugal and scanty sustenance the body became lean and thin, but supple, muscular, and capable of endurance; and in these hardy bodies dwelt a resolute spirit. thus the arabs display a freer attitude, a more steadfast repose, a more haughty pride, a greater love of independence, and a more adventurous boldness than their kinsmen. their land and their mode of life have saved them from the greedy avarice, from the luxury and debauchery, into which the semitic nations on the euphrates and tigris, as on the mediterranean, often fell, though they share in the cruelty and bloodthirstiness common to their race. it was the arabs on whose virgin strength a new semitic empire and civilization was able to be founded in the middle ages, when babel and asshur, tyre and carthage, jerusalem and palmyra had long passed away. footnotes: [ ] herod. , ; , ; , , . [ ] eratosthenes in strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] diod. , ; , . [ ] diod. , , , ; , , . the accounts of the grove are taken from agatharchides.--strabo, p. . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] amm. marcell. , . [ ] herod. , - . [ ] heracl. cuman. fragm. . ed. müller. [ ] apud strabon. p. ff. [ ] agatharch. "de mari erythr.;" apud diod. , - , and the excerpt of photius in müller, "geogr. gr. min." , ff.; cf. strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] "hist. nat." , ; , seq. [ ] the queen of sheba, who brings such large gifts of gold and spices to solomon, must in any case be regarded as the queen of the rich spice land, and with this account agree other passages in which sheba is mentioned. to the seba, who are mentioned in psalm lxxii. , , as rich in gold along with the sheba, and are described in isaiah as people of great stature (xlv. ; cf. xliii. ), and are placed in genesis x. among the children of cush, i cannot assign any place. prideaux assumes that the two nations became amalgamated; "trans. bibl. arch." , . [ ] isaiah xxi. , , . [ ] dümichen, "die flotte einer ægyptischen königin." [ ] g. smith, "assyr. discov." p. ; schrader, "keilschriften und alt. test." s. , , . [ ] g. smith, "assurbanipal," pp. , , . [ ] gen. xxv. - ; xxvi. ; xxxvi. . [ ] birch, "the annals of tutmes iii.;" "archæolog." vol. xlv. [ ] papyrus harris in chabas, "recherches sur la dynastie ," p. . [ ] movers, "phoenizier," , , . [ ] strabo, p. ; pliny, "hist. nat." , . [ ] isaiah xxi. , . [ ] movers, "phoenizier," , , . [ ] isaiah lx. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] kings xxii. ; , xiv. , ; chronicles xvii.; , xxvi. , . under ahaz, the grandson of uzziah, elath was again lost.-- kings xvi. . [ ] caussin de percival, "histoire des arabes," , , ; wellsted, "reisen in arabien, von e. rödiger," , . [ ] prideaux, "trans. bibl. arch." , . [ ] d. h. müller, "zeit. d. d. m. gesellschaft," , s. ff. [ ] osiander in the "zeit. d. d. m. gesellschaft," , - ; praetorius, _loc. cit._ , ff; gildemeister and levy, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] genesis xxv. - . [ ] genesis xxxvi. - . [ ] the table in genesis x. , places ramah, shebah, dedan, havilah, among the sons of cush, but in the genealogy of the arabs (c. xxv.) shebah and dedan are given to joktan and midian. [ ] nöldeke. "ueber die amalekiter," s. ff. [ ] caussin, "histoire des arabes," , , arrives at the year for the birth of j'arab, by allotting thirty-three years to each generation. wüstenfeld, in his genealogical tables, gives from thirty to thirty-four generations between kachtan and mohammed, and thus, though he allows forty years for each generation, cannot reach beyond the year b.c. for kachtan. [ ] osiander, in "zeitschr. d. d. morgen. gesellschaft," , . [ ] caussin, "histoire des arabes," , - ; prideaux, "trans. bibl. arch." , . [ ] caussin, "hist. des arabes," , ff. wüstenfeld ("genealogische tabellen") reaches higher, because, as already remarked, he allows forty years for a generation. [ ] krehl, "religion der araber," s. , ; lenormant, "lett. assyr." , . [ ] osiander, "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , ; , ; , ; lenormant, _loc. cit._ ; caussin, _loc. cit._ , ; prideaux, "trans. bibl. arch." , . [ ] krehl, "religion der araber," , ; osiander, "zeitschr. d. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] osiander, _loc. cit._ , . on a stone image we find a cow and a calf with the inscription "uzza." [ ] krehl, "religion der araber," s. , . on the seven black stones of the planets at erech.--"w. a. j." , . on the stones of the kaabah, lenormant, "lettres assyr." , ff.; caussin, "hist. des arabes," , , ff. [ ] strabo, p. ; suid. [greek: theos arês]; steph. byz. [greek: dousarê]. [ ] krehl, _loc. cit._ s. . see _ibid._ on the worship of alful, sahd, and sahid. [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. ff. [ ] nöldeke, "inschrift. des mesa," s. . the amalgamation of astarte with camus, like the amalgamation with melkarth among the phenicians presupposes the separate worship of the goddess.--g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. . chapter v. the canaanites. between the basin of the euphrates and tigris and the mediterranean rise the mountains of syria, an elevated plateau which ascends gradually from the right bank of the euphrates and descends steeply on the sea-coast. a peculiar depression, known as hollow syria,[ ] divides this region in its entire length from north to south--from the taurus to the n.e. point of the red sea, and separates the plateau into an eastern and a western half. the bed of the narrow valley reaches its greatest elevation in the neighbourhood of the city of baalbec (heliopolis). from this point the orontes flows towards the north and irrigates the green gardens of emesa and hamath, till it turns westward and finds a way toward the sea at antioch; the leontes and the jordan flow towards the south. between steep walls of rock the jordan hurries down the gorge, and passes in a rapid course through the lakes of merom and kinneroth (gennesareth), which are formed by the streams from the mountains on either side. the deeper the bed of the valley the more valuable are the fruits growing in the tropic atmosphere. the country round jericho, the city of palms, sheltered from the winds of the table-land and heated by the rays refracted from the walls of rock, produces grapes and figs for ten months in the year; its wealth in dates and balsam was rated high in antiquity.[ ] the course of the jordan ends in the dead sea, the surface of which is about , feet below the level of the mediterranean. out of hollow syria rises on the east like a wall of rock the plateau of aram,[ ] in naked, wild, and broken ridges, which, in antilibanus, the highest point, reaches , feet. on the back of the mountains we find at first green pastures overshadowed by forests of oak, but further towards the east the heights become bald and desolate, until the land, as it sinks towards the euphrates, gradually assumes the character of the deserts, which are broken only by the fruitful depressions of damascus, hieropolis (membidsh), and tadmor (palmyra). on the west of the fissure the land is differently shaped. the coast is a narrow strip of land, which only extends into small plains at the mouths of the mountain streams; it is hot, moist, and unhealthy, but of great fertility. soon the white and yellow limestone rocks of the mountains begin to rise. on these heights the air is purer and cooler, and terraces planted with myrtles and oleanders, with pines, fig-trees, and mulberries, alternate with vineyards. on the broad slopes of the loftier mountain ridges rise splendid forests of tamarisks, planes, cypresses and nut-trees, and above all magnificent cedars. even now some trees are found here forty feet in girth and ninety feet in height.[ ] just in front of the highest ridges of rock lie green slopes, on which feed numerous flocks of black goats, disturbed by jackals, bears, and lions, dwelling in the desolate gorges. between the mouth of the orontes and the promontory of carmel, which runs out far into the sea, this mountain wall, which stretches out to the sea, reaches its greatest height in the peaks of libanus (over , feet) of which tacitus remarks with astonishment that they retained the snow even in that hot climate.[ ] rising above the green pastures and forests, the cultivated and watered fields, this ridge with its white mantle of snow gives the appearance of a winter landscape above perpetual spring. southward of carmel the mountains become lower, and at the same time less precipitous and picturesque. the coast is broader and more sandy, flatter, and with fewer harbours. in the place of the steep ridges is a grassy depression (esdraelon, galilee), overtopped by one or two peaks only, like tabor ( , feet). then parallel ridges again form valleys, broad and fruitful and overshadowed by forests (samaria), until the land between the dead sea and the coast assumes a severer and wilder character. there the table-land is rough and bare, the valleys are narrow and deep clefts, the soil is stony. from libanus the eye looks out on the most various groups of wooded promontories and a smiling coast, but in judæa the landscape exhibits none but severe and simple outlines. on the wide expanses only a few bushes of pale olives arise, or transparent groups of a few palm-trees. the grassy plains have made way for steppes or downs, and even the bed of the valleys is covered with fresh green only in the brief rainy season. the region round the dead sea is wholly desolate. springs of sulphur and beds of bitumen point to a volcanic origin; the large proportion of salt contained in the water makes it impossible for fish to live in the lake, and the deposits of salt which cover the country round restrict the vegetation. in contrast to the vast and uniform regions of the tigris and euphrates and arabia, the western mountains of syria exhibit change and variety. the narrowness of the coast forces the inhabitants upon the sea, the luxuriant fertility of the deeper valleys invites to cultivation of the land and the planting of vines and orchards, while the upland valleys and mountain slopes permit nothing but pastoral life, combined with a little agriculture. there is no central district from which these numerous and for the most part secluded mountain cantons can be brought into unity and governed. in the place of the uniform development of large masses of people we have here to expect a variety of modes of culture; in the place of one huge despotic kingdom, and the uniform movement of wandering tribes a more independent and unfettered development of small communities; sharp contrasts appear in the place of a general civilisation. at the same time these syrian coasts by the sea and mountain air, by life on the ocean and among the hills, compensate to a great degree the enervating influences of the eastern sun, and thus the elements are combined which are wont to keep fresh and vigorous the life and power of the inhabitants. as the sea attracted the inhabitants to distant regions, and trained upon its waves a mobile, enterprising, active population, so on the other hand did the severe formation of the hills and the seclusion of the valleys lead to a uniform unchanging mode of life and a desire to retain what was customary and traditional. the nearer these opposites approached each other the more energetic must have been their mutual operation, the more lively the process of intellectual life, and the more productive its results. the mountain district extending on the west of the fissure from mount hermon and the sources of the orontes southward as far as the desert which divides syria from egypt was by its inhabitants called canaan. we met with this name already in the inscriptions of sethos i. it means lower land, and has obviously been transferred from the coast to the interior. among the greeks the southern strip of coast was named palæstina, after the philistines (the pelishtim) who possessed it; the northern part, from carmel to the eleutherus (nahr-el-kebir) was phenicia; among the egyptians the coast was known as kaft; the tribes of the interior, and more especially those of northern syria, were known as retennu.[ ] the oldest information about these districts which has come down to us is contained in the statements about the campaigns which kudur-lagamer and kudur-mabuk of elam are said to have undertaken against syria (p. ). if we might regard the kings of elam, who extended their power over babylonia, and then forced their way to syria, as belonging to the fourth dynasty of berosus, the campaign of kudur-lagamer and kudur-mabuk could be placed about the year b.c. when babylonia under sarrukin and hammurabi shook off the supremacy of elam, sarrukin is said to have advanced towards syria as far as the "western sea" (p. ). three centuries later syria was attacked from the western or opposite side. as soon as the kings of upper egypt had succeeded in expelling the hyksos from the land, they carried their arms towards syria, and in these campaigns repeatedly touched the euphrates. in the times of tuthmosis i. ( - b.c.) we are told that he traversed syria towards the north, advanced as far as the euphrates, and set up a column there. tuthmosis iii. ( - b.c.) marched seven times against syria; in the fourth campaign ( b.c.) he reached and crossed the euphrates; then he appears to have advanced through mesopotamia as far as the tigris, and to have collected tribute there.[ ] more than one hundred and fifty years later sethos i. ( - b.c.) fought against the schasu, _i.e._ the shepherds, "who extend as far as canana," the cheta (hittites), and the retennu, _i.e._ the syrians. ramses ii. ( - b.c.) invaded the land of kaft, and caused memorials of his victories to be engraved upon the rocks at nahr-el-kelb, in the neighbourhood of berytus, fought against the hittites and their allies from the euphrates, the prince of karchemish, and then concluded peace and entered into friendship with the prince of the cheta (p. ff). the campaigns of ramses iii. ( - b.c.) were also directed against the schasu, the cheta, whose prince he took alive, the amari (the amorites) and the pulista (the philistines, p. ). the inscriptions of these pharaohs prove that the tribes of syria, even as early as the sixteenth century b.c., had arrived not only at a settled mode of life, but at a vigorous trade and a civilisation far from contemptible. the princes of syria met tuthmosis iii. with numerous war-chariots, of which in the battle of megiddo they lost (p. ). if tuthmosis can mention cities from hamath in the north to gaza in the south which he had subjugated, the population must have been already more numerous and the land more thickly inhabited. the names quoted prove that gaza (kazatu), damascus (tamesku), hamath (hamtu), joppa (japu), berothai (berytus), kades (kadeshu), ashtaroth karnaim (astartu), and many cities frequently mentioned at a later date, were already in existence: several of them are represented to us on the monuments of the pharaohs, as situated on heights and surrounded by strong walls. the tribute received by tuthmosis iii. from syria is sufficient evidence that the valleys of canaan were well cultivated, that extensive trade relations had already been formed, and that metals were in use to a considerable amount. syria contributed to tuthmosis not wine only, honey and dates, but also considerable quantities of spices. the retennu contributed at one time , minæ of sweet wine. the hittites contributed silver rings, weighing in all egyptian pounds, and egyptian pounds of gold; the retennu paid bars, and afterwards bars (bricks) of iron; on one occasion they contributed egyptian pounds, and in another year , pounds of silver and pounds of gold.[ ] it was remarked above (p. ) that these tributes also prove that the measures and weights of babylon were already in use in syria at that time. the monuments of the pharaohs also prove that the land was divided into independent districts, governed by hereditary princes. the leading and most powerful tribe at the time of the ramessids was that of the hittites in the south of canaan. in the fourteenth century b.c. this tribe, with its confederates, could place , war chariots in the field. we have already seen (p. ) that the king of the hittites, the son of maursar and grandson of sepalulu, entered into an alliance and compact with rameses ii., as one power with another. in the records of the egyptians the court and army of the hittites are found well arranged. generals of the cavalry, masters of the horse, and scribes are mentioned, and the sculptures of the pharaohs exhibit the hittites in their chariots in magnificent clothing and armour. the inscriptions of rameses ii. mention baal and astarte as gods of the hittites--deities which we have already found at babylon under the names of bel and istar. we have less information of the land of kaft, of the amari, and finally of the pulista, who are first mentioned under rameses iii., and of the tribes of the retennu to the north of the cheta. as was remarked above, the pharaohs did not succeed in establishing a lasting supremacy over syria. even tuthmosis iii., who achieved the greatest successes, did no more than force the syrian princes to pay him tribute for a short series of years. thus the beginnings of settled life, of agriculture, of cities and trade in canaan cannot be placed later than the year , b.c., and this result is confirmed by the tradition of the hebrews. according to genesis, ham, the second son of noah, begat canaan, and canaan begat sidon, his firstborn, and heth, and amori, and hivi, and arvadi, and hamathi, and afterwards the families of the canaanites were spread abroad.[ ] hence, with the hebrews, the sidonians passed for the oldest canaanites. the name means fishcatcher, and a tribe limited to a narrow strip of coast may soon have betaken themselves to the sea. the primogeniture of the sidonians was afterwards explained to mean that the origin of their city, sidon, belonged to the oldest period. that the second city of this tribe, sor (tyre), "the daughter of sidon,"[ ] was proud of her great antiquity, we learn from other sources. when herodotus was there, and inquired about the erection of the most sacred temple in the city, the temple of melkarth, he received the answer that this shrine had been built, together with the city, about , years before his time, i.e. about the year , b.c. lucian also assures us that the temples of phenicia and the temple of melkarth at tyre were founded not much later than the oldest egyptian temples.[ ] northward of sidon, at the mouths of the nahr ibrahim and the nahr-el-kelb (adonis and lycus), was settled the tribe of the giblites, _i.e._ the mountaineers, whose cities were gebal (byblus) and berothai (berytus). byblus claimed to be the oldest city in the land--older than sidon--and to have been built by el, the supreme deity. at any rate, as we have already seen, it was in existence at the time of tuthmosis iii., whose inscriptions also mention the city of a third tribe, that of arvadi, _i.e._ the arvadites, whom the hebrews mention among the sons of canaan. this tribe was in possession of a considerable district to the north of byblus, on the mouth of the nahr-el-kebir (eleutherus), and of a rocky island off the coast, on which lay their city arvad, the aratu of the egyptians, the aradus of the greeks. the tradition of the hebrews derived the hittites from heth, the second son of canaan. the centre of their land, which stretched from the coast to the jordan, was formed by the bare and stony mountains round hebron. here, according to hebrew story, giants once dwelt--the anakim--whose father and chief was arba; after this prince, hebron was formerly called kirjath-arba. to this city also the hebrews ascribe a great antiquity; it was built seven years earlier than zoan (tanis) in egypt.[ ] we do not know the date of the building of zoan, but the name occurs as early as the inscriptions of sesurtesen i., whose reign we must place about the year , b.c.[ ] with the hittites of hebron the hebrew scriptures represent their own forefathers as living in peaceful and friendly intercourse in the century - _b.c._ we have already seen what a sustained resistance the disciplined forces of the princes of the hittites were able to make against the attacks of egypt for two centuries--from the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. war against the cheta is a standing item in the inscriptions of the ramessids. northward of the hittites lay the tribes which the tradition of the hebrews derives from hivi and amori, the younger sons of canaan, the hivites and amorites--the former in the beautiful mountain valleys round gibeon and sichem, northwards as far as mount hermon; the latter, a numerous and powerful tribe, outside the land of canaan, north-east of jordan, from the jabbok in the south to hermon in the north.[ ] the amorites, as we may venture to assume, were the amari of egyptian inscriptions. furthest to the north, in the valley of the orontes, were the hamathites, whom the hebrews also reckon among the sons of canaan. on the other hand, the damascenes, the northern neighbours of the amorites, whose city is mentioned by the egyptians with hamath as early as the sixteenth century, and who in the ninth and eighth centuries b.c. were the centre of the most powerful community in the syrian interior, were not reckoned by the hebrews among the sons of canaan; and the inscriptions of the assyrians also place the damascenes among the arimi, _i.e._ aramaeens. nor are the old inhabitants of the valley of the jordan included by hebrew tradition among the canaanites, which is here associated with the principalities of sodom and gomorrah, of adamah, zeboim, and zoar, and the names of the princes who once fought against kedor laomer in the valley of siddim. but jehovah caused fire and brimstone to rain upon sodom and gomorrah owing to the sins of the inhabitants, and destroyed these cities and the whole region. the philistines also, whom we find in possession of the coast from gaza in the south to carmel in the north, were not counted by the hebrews among the sons of canaan. it has been remarked that the name occurs for the first time in egyptian inscriptions in the first half of the thirteenth century b.c. the hebrews tell us that the philistines marched from caphtor and overcame the avites, who dwell "in villages as far as gaza." by caphtor we should probably understand the eastern sea coast of egypt, the north-east of the delta, where a semitic population may have established itself firmly from the time of the hyksos, and may have been able to maintain themselves after their expulsion. yet there is nothing to contradict the assumption that, at the time of their expulsion by amosis and the tuthmosis, a part of the hyksos turned towards syria, and that the philistines were sprung from these. we may remember that manetho terms the hyksos phenicians, or kinsmen of the phenicians, and tells us that they retired in the direction of syria, and herodotus represents the shepherd philitis as pasturing his flocks at memphis.[ ] in the eleventh century b.c. we find the philistines under the dominion of the princes of the cities of gaza, ascalon, ashdod, gath, and ekron. the princes had their palaces; the cities were protected by walls and towers, and possessed extensive temples, in which were images of wood and iron, and rich offerings. the five cities formed a federation, their princes (seranim) sat in a common council, led out their armies in common, and in common offered thankofferings for the victories won. they could bring into the field a splendid army of chariots, horsemen, heavy-armed soldiers, and bowmen; the soldiers were divided into troops of hundreds and thousands.[ ] towards the middle of the thirteenth century a considerable alteration took place in the interior of canaan, between the coast of the philistines and the valley of the jordan. the amorites advanced towards the south over the jabbok, and subjugated the moabites, who dwelt in this district to the east of the dead sea, as far as the arnon. they spread westwards over the jordan, and overthrew the ancient federation of the hittites. these were either subjugated or driven out; only in some mountain cantons did the hittites maintain themselves. in their place the amorites ruled between the coast and the dead sea, and this district was now known as the "mountain of the amorites."[ ] northwards also the amorites pressed forward against the hittites, and took possession of their land as far as lake merom.[ ] it was only in gibeon and the surrounding districts that the hivites held their own;[ ] and all the hittites and hivites who refused subjugation and slavery were compelled to retire to the coast. it must have been a heavy blow that could shatter the power of the hittites; while the collection of a numerous population on the coast, which was caused by the new supremacy of the amorites, was in its turn of important consequence for the cities of phenicia. but the new masters of the southern land did not form a consolidated power, like the hittites before them; they were broken up into separate tribes, so that among them, and the remnants of the hittites and hivites, there were about thirty small principalities. the ancient power of the hittites must have been important enough to leave behind a very lasting impression. the book of joshua uses the expression "land of the hittites," for the whole region from the sea to the euphrates, and the assyrian inscriptions of the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries include beside the land of arimi, _i.e._ of the aramæans the whole of canaan from hamath to the sea and southwards as far as egypt, under the name of the "land of chatti."[ ] footnotes: [ ] strabo, p. . "it is true that the whole land from seleucis to egypt and arabia is also called hollow syria, but strictly speaking the name is given only to the land between libanus and antilibanus." [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] genesis xxxi. - ; strabo, pp. , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] tacit. "histor." , . [ ] ebers, "Ægypten und die bücher mose's," s. ff. [ ] de rougé, "annales de toutmes;" cf. _supra_ p. . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. , . [ ] genesis x. - . [ ] isaiah xxiii. ; justin, , . [ ] herod. , ; lucian, "de dea syria," , . [ ] judges i. ; joshua xiv. , ; xv. , ; numbers xiii. . [ ] ebers, "Ægypten," s. . [ ] genesis xv. ; xxxiv. ; joshua iii. ; xi. ; jud. iii. . [ ] above, p. ; gen. x. , ; amos ix. ; deut. ii. ; jeremiah xlvii. ; stark, "gaza," s. ff. ebers explains kaphtor by _kaft-ur_, _i.e._ great kaft, great phenicia. to ai-kaphtor the egyptian aa-kaft, _i.e._ island and coast land, curved coast land would correspond.--"Ægypten," s. ff. [ ] stark, "gaza," s. - , ff. [ ] deut. i. , , ; joshua x. , ; xi. . the jebusites who possessed the jerusalem of later times were a tribe of the amorites. they and their king are expressly mentioned as amorites. [ ] in the book of joshua, as well as in the prophet amos, it is the amorites whom the hebrews have to contend against, mingled with scanty remnants of the hittites and hivites. besides this, the advance of the amorites against the moabites is sufficiently proved (_vide_ exodus, numbers, and deuteronomy), and the migration of the hittites by their settlement in cyprus. [ ] joshua ix. , . [ ] joshua i. ; schrader, "keilsch. und alt. test," s. . chapter vi. the religious rites of the canaanites. our knowledge of the religious conceptions of the canaanites consists of scattered and meagre statements. yet these statements are enough to show with certainty that the ideas of the syrians about the powers of heaven rested on the same basis as the worship of the babylonians. but the sensual and lascivious side of this worship, no less than the cruel and bloody side, is more strongly and broadly developed in syria than in babylonia, while, on the other hand, the complete development of the star-worship, as we found it on the lower euphrates, is unknown in syria. the gods who were regarded as alien and hostile to natural life were worshipped by the canaanites with severe abstinence and harsh asceticism, with self-mutilation and human sacrifices; while the deities of procreation and birth, who were considered favourable to life, were worshipped with the most shameless prostitution and the most unbridled debauchery. indeed these rites, distinguished by sensual excess and bloody asceticism, were united by that mysterious link which in the human breast brings debauchery and pain into close connection; and hence this worship is a true copy of the semitic mode of feeling, which wavers between luxurious enjoyment and fanatical destruction, between cringing servility and stiff-necked obstinacy, between effeminate retirement in the harem, and bold achievements in the battle-field. the phenicians are said to have possessed sacred scriptures of very great antiquity. in babylonia we found a city to which the sacred scriptures were specially allotted, sepharvaim on the euphrates; in canaan, debir, in the neighbourhood of hebron, was at one time called kiriath sepher, _i.e._ "city of scriptures." the scriptures of the phenicians are said to be derived from esmun one of their gods, or from a series of hierophants, thabion, isiris, sanchuniathon and mochus. according to the evidence of poseidonius, mochus lived before the trojan war.[ ] sanchuniathon also, a sidonian according to some, according to others a syrian, and to others a berytean, is said to have lived before or during the time of the trojan war. he is said to have collected his writings from the archives of the phenician cities, from the records in the temples, and a document of hierombal which had been placed by the latter before abelbaal, king of berytus, and had met with approval, and it is maintained from the catalogue of the phenician kings that hierombal and sanchuniathon lived before the trojan war.[ ] of the writings of sanchuniathon, philo of byblus, who wrote in the first half of the second century, b.c., is said to have given a greek translation in his _history of the phenicians_. of this supposed translation of a supposed original, discovered after much research by philo, besides which he pretended to have made use of the sacred scriptures of the egyptians, the books of thoth, some excerpts and fragments have come down to us. scanty and unconnected as these are, they show us at once that philo, whatever his original may have been, was far removed from any mere repetition of old religious views, that the syncretistic culture of his time had exercised a strong influence on his own ideas, and that his whole point of view belongs to that kind of enlightenment which pretended to find in the gods a number of deified kings, who had once ruled over the land in ancient days. yet philo also allowed that, over and above these, the sun, moon, planets, and certain elements were worshipped as gods.[ ] following the cosmogonic systems, as they may have been drawn out with greater definiteness after the hellenistic period, philo assumes as the beginning of all things an obscure and moving atmosphere, and a dark and melancholy chaos. when the wind of his beginning felt the yearning of love, a mixture took place, and this combination was named desire. desire is the beginning of all things. from the union of the wind with itself arose mot, which some explain as mud, others as putrefaction of a watery mixture. out of this arose the seeds of all and the origin of all things. mot was fashioned after the form of an egg. "and then shone forth the sun and moon, and the great constellations. as the air now sent forth a fiery glow, winds and clouds arose from the kindling of the sea and the earth, and vast tempests of rain streamed down; and when all this dashed together, there followed thunderings and lightning, by which the creatures were awaked, and on the earth and in the sea the male and the female elements began to move.[ ] and from the wind kolpia and his wife baau, which means night, aeon and protogonus, mortal men, were begotten. aeon discovered the nourishment obtained from trees. and aeon and protogonus begot genos and genea, who dwelt in phoenicia; and when the fierce heat came they stretched out their hands to the sky and the sun. as they regarded the sun as the only lord of the sky, they called him belsamen, which among the phenicians means lord of the sky, and among the greeks zeus." but aeon and protogonus had also begotten children, called by the names of phos (light), pyr (fire), and phlox (flame). these discovered fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and taught the use of fire, and begot children who surpassed all others in size and stature. the names of these giants were given to the mountains of which they possessed themselves, to casius, libanus, anti-libanus, and brathy (tabor?). the giants begot samemrumus, who is also called hypsuranius, and usous. these made a traffic of their mothers, for it was the custom in those days for the women to associate with any one. samemrumus lived at tyre, and discovered the art of making huts out of reeds and sedge, while usous invented clothing made of the skins of the beasts which he knew how to slay. samemrumus rebelled against usous, but the latter took a tree and divested it of the branches, and was the first who went on board a vessel. then he dedicated two pillars to the fire and the wind, and offered to these the blood of the beasts which he had taken. when the brothers were dead, prayers were offered to the pillars, and each year a festival was celebrated in honour of them. and for a long time afterwards agreus (the hunter) was among the descendants of usous, and halieus (the fisher) among those of samemrumus. from these sprung two brothers, of whom the one was chusor, _i.e._ hephaestus, who discovered the working of iron, and the other, who invented the fish-hook and was the first navigator, was named zeus meilichius;[ ] and the two together discovered the building of walls by bricks. from these came agros (the field), and agrotes (the husbandman), who was worshipped in phoenicia as a god, and was called the greatest god in byblus. from these sprung misor and sydyk; from sydyk came the cabiri, who invented the ship. about this time eljon, named "the highest," was born, and a woman of the name of beruth; and these two dwelt at byblus. they begot uranus and ge, and when "the highest" fell in conflict with wild beasts, he was worshipped by his children as a god with libation and sacrifices. but uranus succeeded his father in the kingdom, and took his sister ge to wife, and with her begot el, who is also called cronus, dagon, who, after discovering corn and the plough, was called zeus arotrius, and atlas. but as uranus begot children with other women, el, when he was grown up, determined to revenge the slight put upon his mother. he provided himself with a sickle and a lance of iron, attacked uranus, drove him from his throne, expelled him from the land, and took the kingdom for himself. he surrounded his house with a wall, and built byblus, the first city of the phenicians. his brother atlas, whom he suspected, he threw into the abyss, and covered him with earth; his son he slew with the sword, and cut off his daughter's head. when in the thirty-second year of his reign he had laid an ambush for his father uranus in the interior of the land, and in this way had got him into his power, he cut off his genitals, close by some springs and rivers. the blood flowed into these springs and streams, and this place became sacred, and is shown even at the present day. at the wish of el, "astarte the great," the daughter of uranus, and zeus demarus, the son of uranus by a concubine, and adodus "the king of the gods," ruled over the land. as a symbol of her supremacy, astarte placed the head of an ox on her own head, and when she had wandered over the whole earth she found a star fallen from heaven, took it, and dedicated it at tyre on the sacred island. but when a pestilence came, and a mortality, el burnt his only son in royal robes as a sacrifice to uranus on the altar which he had erected, and circumcised himself and forced his comrades to do the same. the city of byblus he handed over to the goddess baaltis, berytus to the sea-god, to the cabiri, and to the descendants of agrotes (the husbandman) and of halieus (the fisher), and when el came into the land of the south, he gave all egypt over to taauthus to be a royal habitation for him. to el, after his death, was consecrated the star named after him.[ ] we should indeed be in an evil case if we were restricted for our knowledge of canaanitish rites to these fragments, which carry so plainly on the front of them their late origin, their fictitious genealogical combinations, into which the gods are brought, their over-subtle euhemerism, and their mixture with greek and egyptian ideas. that threads of various systems of cosmogony intertwine and cross each other in these fragments is proved by the derivation of the origin of the world, first from the wind, and next from chaos, and then from kolpia and baau, and by the repetition even to the third time of the discovery of hunting, agriculture, and navigation. happily there are other sources of information which allow us to bring the statements of philo into some sort of order, and to supplement them in very essential points. we saw that the highest god of the babylonians was el. if philo tells us that the star known by his name, _i.e._ the planet saturn, was consecrated to king el after his death, and if this king allows astarte, demarus, and even adodus, the king of the gods, to rule after his death,--if he apportions cities and provinces to baaltis and the cabiri,--it becomes clear enough that for the canaanites also el was the ruling god, and that in syria also the planet saturn belonged to him. but from the contest of el with uranus, _i.e._ with the sky-god, in philo, we may also with certainty conclude, that among the canaanites also the highest place was allotted to baal-samim, _i.e._ to the lord of the sky, as philo rightly explains that name; philo denotes him as the god worshipped by the earliest generations of mankind. among the greeks also there was a myth, borrowed no doubt from the east, that zeus (baal) had once striven with el-cronus.[ ] as the god of saturn, the el of the canaanites would have to be placed beside the adar of the eastern semitic nations. the inscriptions of ramses ii. have already mentioned baal as the god of the cheta. we also saw that the nomads of the peninsula of sinai consecrated their highest mountain summit to the god of this name. the moabites invoked baal on mount peor. in canaan also the mountain summits were sacred to this deity; in the south of the land the lonely peak of casius on the serbonian lake, then carmel, tabor, and hermon. the philistines worshipped him at ekron; the names of numerous places in canaan,--baal hamon, baal hazor, baal meon, baal gad, baal perazim, baal tamar, baalath, baalbec, &c.,--give us sufficient proof of the widespread worship of baal in canaan. we shall not go wrong if we regard him as the deity of the beneficent operation of the sun. if el cuts off the genitals of uranus, _i.e._ of baal-samim, and the blood flows into the springs and streams, the meaning of the myth is without doubt that the beneficent god has imparted his life-giving, creating power to the fertilising water. among the phenicians springs and streams were sacred. the carthaginian hannibal swore to his compact with philip king of macedonia before "the rivers, meadows, and waters," and the zeus demarus of philo must be explained as baal tamar, _i.e._ baal in the procreative power. northward of sidon there falls into the sea a river especially sacred to baal tamar, which the greeks called tamyras (now nahr damur). it marks, no doubt, the spot where the act in the myth was localised, which, as philo observes, was still pointed out. pliny tells us that with the belus, _i.e._ baal (sihor libnath of the hebrews), a mountain stream falling into the sea southward of sidon, after a brief, and in the plain, a sluggish course from the parent lake, customs of a very sacred nature were connected.[ ] the goddess whom the syrians invoked, beside the sun-god, had various names. according to the fragments of philo, el had handed over the government of the city of byblus to baaltis, _i.e._ to bilit, the "mistress." at ascalon she was known as derceto, at hierapolis (bambyke, membidsh) as atargatis;[ ] the hebrews call her ashera. herodotus calls the goddess of ascalon aphrodite urania; he also denotes her as the goddess of the sexual impulse and of procreation, and mentions the temple at ascalon, as the oldest temple of this goddess which he knew; "from this comes the shrine of urania in cyprus, as the cyprians themselves said; and the phenicians, who also belonged to syria, founded the temple of urania on cythera." pausanias observes that the assyrians had been the first among men to worship urania, and after the assyrians came the paphians in cyprus, and the phenicians at ascalon.[ ] hence we may conclude that baaltis, in nature or in name, was not far removed from the bilit or mylitta of the babylonians, and this conclusion is sufficiently confirmed by all that we know of the worship of baaltis. cinyras, the first king of byblus, is said to have erected shrines to aphrodite at byblus and in cyprus, and his daughters are said to have paid service to the goddess with their persons. the maidens of byblus waited for strangers in the market-places, just as the maidens of babylon waited in the temple (p. ), and the price of compliance was paid, as in babylon, to aphrodite.[ ] of the maidens of cyprus we are told that they went down to the sea shore in order to sell themselves to the sailors on landing.[ ] we also find that sacred servants, male and female, who dedicated themselves to this form of worship, were always to be found in the temples of the syrian goddess, and even married women entered their ranks at certain times.[ ] the hebrews tell us that the women wove tents for ashera, and that paramours, male and female, were in her sanctuaries.[ ] in shady groves, on green hills, and among the mountain forests of libanus, sacrifice was offered to this goddess. the lofty trees, the terebinth, the evergreen pine and the cypress were sacred to her; the pomegranate, the symbol of fruitfulness, was her peculiar fruit. the ram, the he-goat, and the dove, especially the white dove, animals of vigorous procreation and reproduction, were dedicated to her, and formed the most welcome offerings. in the temples of the goddess before the cell in which she was worshipped under the form of conical stones or upright pillars of wood, were dove-cotes and pools of water.[ ] fish also were dedicated to this goddess; and certain kinds of fish were sacred among the syrians. these were not to be injured, and enjoyed divine honours.[ ] beside the rich and ancient temple of derceto at ascalon was a lake abounding in fish. at hierapolis the image of atargatis, which had a dove on the head, was carried down to the lake near the temple. this image of "the assyrian urania" was also carried down to the sea, amid a great crowd collected from syria, arabia, and mesopotamia.[ ] the image of derceto at ascalon, on the shore of the sea, in that temple which was the oldest of urania, known to herodotus, was a woman as far as the waist, but from the thighs downwards she had the body of a fish.[ ] from the custom of carrying the image of the goddess to pools of water, and the form of the goddess at ascalon, has arisen the legend of the greeks, that at ascalon or hierapolis she threw herself into the water, and was changed into a fish. the colonies of the phenicians worshipped a venus marina, and the goddess of berytus is said to have come from the sea; with the greeks the goddess of cyprus and cythera is said to have risen from the sea.[ ] appian remarks that the goddess of hierapolis was regarded by some as aphrodite, by others as hera, and by others again as the source and spring of all that came out of moisture.[ ] hence the bilit (baaltis) of byblus, the derceto of ascalon, the atargatis of hierapolis, the ashera of the hebrews, was a deity favourable to birth and fertility, the power of nature which creates from moisture and water. a male deity also, who gave fruit and increase from water, was worshipped by the canaanites. at gaza and ashdod, the cities of the philistines, and near the coast, at beth-dagon, and kaphar-dagon, the god dagon was invoked, whom philo mentioned as the zeus arotrius, the zeus of the field, the god of nourishment. his temple at gaza was the pre-eminent shrine of the philistines, the centre of their federation. the image of dagon in his temple at ashdod had the face and hands of a man, the body of a fish, and again the feet of a man.[ ] philo's account denotes dagon as the discoverer of the plough and the god of nourishment, as the giver of corn and protector of the field, and therefore he must in any case have been a spirit of increase and fertility. we found the name of this god in babylonian inscriptions of the time of hammurabi, and before it, his image, and that of his priests, among the monuments of assyria. we saw that his name designated him as a fish-god, and know that babylonian legends connected him with the sea, and represented him as arising from the sea (p. ). by the side of the deities of the beneficent powers of nature and of birth, the canaanites placed severe and gloomy deities, who were averse and hostile to the bloom of nature, the life and generation of mankind. these were moloch and astarte. the first is known to the greeks under the name of cronus, and from philo's account of el we must deduce the relation of this god to saturn. the moloch of the canaanites is the cruel destroying god of war; fire in its consuming, though also in its purifying properties, was his element. he is said to have been represented in the form of a bull or with a bull's head or horns.[ ] among the booty which sethos i. ( - b.c.) brought back from his campaigns against the cheta and retennu we may see, in the sculptures at karnak (p. ), the image of a bull.[ ] the canaanites offered human sacrifices to moloch. if we remember that the sepharvites of babylonia offered up men to adrammelech, _i.e._ "to king adar," the spirit of the planet saturn, we may venture to regard the moloch of the canaanites as the god of saturn, without excluding the possibility that the burning glow of the midsummer sun may have lain at the root of the canaanite conception of this god.[ ] not only were captives, often to the number of thousands, sacrificed to moloch in gratitude for the victory bestowed;[ ] but also at the beginning of an important undertaking, or the opening of a campaign, his favour was sought by human sacrifices. these were indispensable in order to appease his wrath, and turn destruction from all upon the head of a few.[ ] if the crops withered, or a pestilence devastated the cities, or great reverses fell upon the land in war, human victims were burned as expiatory offerings.[ ] such offerings could only be taken from among the native families. pure victims as yet undefiled by sexual intercourse, children and youths, were, as it seems, the most welcome sacrifice. the dearest possession was the most powerful expiation. the best beloved children, the firstborn or only son, must be offered to the god "as a ransom."[ ] we have seen above (p. ), how philo represents el himself as performing this sacrifice of a son. only the surrender of what was dearest could touch the cruel feeling of the relentless god, and turn his wrath upon the enemy so that he laid his curse upon him. thus it came to pass that the eldest son of the king was clothed with purple and burned to moloch in the place of the ruler of the land. when joram, king of israel, had shut up the king of moab in kir harosheth, "the moabite took his firstborn son, who would have been king in his place, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering upon the wall. then there was great indignation against israel, and israel turned back to his own land."[ ] hamilcar, hanno's son, burnt himself in the year b.c., when the battle of himera went against the carthaginians; and when himilco, in the year b.c., besieged agrigentum, and a pestilence came upon the army, he sacrificed a boy to cronus, in order to stay the plague.[ ] when agathocles of syracuse, after landing in africa had defeated the carthaginian army, and encamped under the walls of carthage, the carthaginians believed that they had brought the anger of the god upon them because of late, instead of sacrificing the children of the noblest citizens, they had secretly purchased and substituted other children. inquiry showed that this had been done in some cases. in expiation, boys of the first families were selected as victims, and the families, who were suspected of previously withdrawing their children from the god, now spontaneously brought forward children. "in carthage," so diodorus, who tells us this incident, continues, "there was an iron image of cronus, which held out the hands in a downward position, so that the victim placed upon them rolled into a cavity filled with fire."[ ] the cries of the victims, plutarch tells us, were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes; the mothers were compelled to stand by without lamentation or sighing. if a sigh or a tear escaped them, they were regarded as dishonoured; but the child was burnt just the same. a roman poet gives an invocation to the "paternal gods" of carthage, whose temples are cleansed by murder, and who rejoice in being worshipped by the agony of mothers.[ ] the inscriptions of ramses ii. mentioned astarte as the goddess of the hittites; the name of their city astaroth we have already found in the form of astartu in the inscriptions of tuthmosis iii. (p. ). the philistines worshipped astarte; for the sidonians, the "great astarte" was the goddess of their city. "a virgin-goddess"[ ] she ruled over the fortune of battle; she is the goddess of war, bringing death and destruction, the goddess of death. coins of sidon represent her with a spear in her hand. as the goddess of war she carried a spear in her temples in cyprus and cythera.[ ] in her temple on the ancient fortress of carthage, she was represented riding on a lion, with a spear in her hand. the istar of the babylonians and assyrians carried the bow (p. ). when the philistines carried off the armour of saul, king of israel, they dedicated it in the house of astarte. if astarte, according to philo, consecrates a star on the island of tyre, we have already seen (p. ) that venus when rising was the star of istar at babylon. yet the astarte of the syrians stood in a closer relation to the moon. philo told us that she carried on her head the head of an ox. the monuments of sethos display, beside the bull's image of baal, a cow's head with a segment of the moon; and on carthaginian stones we find the full moon between the horns of an ox. with the horns of the moon the goddess is known as astaroth karnaim, _i.e._ the horned astarte. the priests of astarte were pledged to continence and celibacy, and on the priestesses of the "heavenly maiden," the "maiden of the sky,"[ ] virginity was imposed. no married woman could enter her temples. in her temples, as in those of moloch, burned the eternal fire.[ ] like moloch, astarte also received human sacrifices. to the virgin-goddess the youthful were offered, and maidens and women were burned.[ ] as in the worship of ashera the syrians attempted to transfuse themselves into the nature of the goddess, to sink and pass into her being, so also the worship of astarte required that they should become like the goddess, and that lust should be killed in them. it was the highest and most acceptable sacrifice, if priests and laymen made themselves eunuchs in honour of the virgin-goddess. during the festival of astarte it was the custom, while the congregated people were thrown into excitement and frenzy by the sound of cymbals, drums, and double pipes, for young men to spring forward, seize the ancient sword which lay on the altar of the goddess, and therewith to mutilate themselves.[ ] at a later time there were thousands of eunuch-attendants in the temples of astarte, while others went about through the land in female clothing, their faces painted after the manner of women, begging and mortifying their flesh. to the sound of drums and pipes they whirled round with wild movements and contortions of the body, and bent their heads to the ground, so that their hair trailed in the mire. at the same time they bit their arms and cut themselves with swords. the most frenzied began to moan and prophesy. at last he bewailed his sins, took up the knotted whip, and beat himself on the back till the blood ran down. when the dancing and the scourging was ended, the eunuchs collected subscriptions from the bystanders. some gave money; others, milk, wine, cheese, and meal. these they hastily gathered together in order to compensate, by a hearty meal at evening in their retreat, for the torments of the day.[ ] these friendly and hostile, creative and destructive, natural and supernatural powers stood mutually opposed in the religious consciousness of the syrians. just as the egyptians went forward, and saw in the myth of osiris the beneficent deity as the conqueror of the evil god in the process of vegetative life and in the revolution of the year, so did the semitic nations unite the beneficent and destructive powers of heaven in the same deities, who in turn dispensed blessing and destruction, and by themselves and in themselves overcame the destructive element. this combination is obvious in the form of baal of tyre, whom the tyrians invoked as the king and protector of their city under the name of melkarth,_ i.e._ city-king.[ ] the greeks identified this god with their own heracles; but as the protector of navigation and the god of the sea, they are acquainted with melkarth, under his native name of melicertes. herodotus was astonished at the splendour of the ancient temple of this god at tyre, at the richness and beauty of the votive offerings, and the two rectangular pillars in the temple, the one of pure gold, the other of emerald, and so large that it shone by night.[ ] hiram, king of tyre, had dedicated the first about the year , b.c. to melkarth. to the phenicians baal melkarth was a labouring and conquering deity, who creates new life out of destruction, vanquishes the baneful signs in the zodiac, brings back the sun from perigee and apogee, from excessive heat and wintry cold, to beneficial operation, whose life is seen in the sun's course.[ ] when the sun burned with the fiercest glow, and stood in the sign of the lion, then the good sun-god must vanquish the lion or symbol of fiery heat; he pressed the lion to his own breast, forced back into himself the fiery beams, and consumed himself in his own heat. the good sun-god must overcome the evil sun-god, or he must consume himself, so that with renewed youth he may again secure gentler warmth for the earth. when the sun appeared most remote from the earth, baal of tyre had gone on a journey or was asleep. in the phenician colonies in the west, in crete, sicily, and at gades, in the distant land of the setting sun, were pointed out the resting-places of the deity, from which he arose with the vernal sun to new activity and life. at the end of february or the beginning of march the festival of the awakening of the god took place;[ ] and if the greeks tell us that iolaus awoke the god, iolaus is merely a grecised form of jubal, _i.e._ the beauty of baal, and therefore only a mythical expression for the god himself as re-awakening with the beautiful vernal sun.[ ] from these ideas of strife and conquest melkarth could become in the eyes of the phenicians a warrior-hero, who was thought to have wandered over the earth, as the sun revolves round it, in order to set it free from hostile powers. with this conception may be connected the story that the procreative power was taken from uranus and transferred to the springs and rivers, and that el's brother atlas, _i.e._ atel, a name which perhaps may be explained as meaning darkness, is overthrown and cast into the abyss. in the legends of the phenicians it was melkarth who reduced the barbarous tribes of the distant coasts, who founded the ancient colonies of the phenicians on the western coasts of the mediterranean, and set up, as the boundary stone of his wanderings, the two great pillars at the end of the earth, the rocks of calpe and abyle on the straits of gibraltar. as the restrainer of the burning heat, of the lion, and of giants, melkarth is the heracles of the greeks; as a wandering god who gives order to the life of mankind, he bears, in greece, the names minos and cadmus (the name kadmon means, "the man of the east"), by which forms they expressed not the deity only, but the old supremacy of the phenicians, and their settlements on their islands and coasts. the hebrews tell us that once, when a great drought attacked the land, the priests of baal assembled at carmel and invoked the god to consume with his rays the bull which they placed as a sacrifice on the billets of the altar. but the god heard them not. then elijah, the prophet of the jews, mocked them. "call louder," he said: "perhaps he is meditating or hath a pursuit; he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up again." the priests called louder, and became frantic, and cut themselves with knives and lancets, so that the blood gushed out.[ ] as baal and moloch, the beneficent and the baneful powers, were united in baal of tyre, and in the form of melkarth, so also was the goddess of reproduction, of birth, and procreation amalgamated with the warrior goddess, the maiden who brought death. it was this deity which in turn gave blessing and destruction, sensual enjoyment and war, birth and death. she inspired consuming sensual passion, and then caused death to overtake her lover, even if she did not slay him herself. thus a roman poet can put into the mouth of a carthaginian the invocation, "goddess astarte, power of gods and men, life and safety, and again destruction, death, and dissolution."[ ] we find that the venus of tyre was called astarte, that at ashtaroth karnaim, the ancient seat of the worship of the horned astarte, the maiden with the horns of the moon, there was a sanctuary of atargatis,[ ] and that fire-festivals were celebrated at hierapolis in the sanctuary of atargatis, which festivals belonged to astarte; that the urania, _i.e._ the birth-goddess, of ascalon, cyprus, and cythera became an aphrodite areia, _i.e._ a warlike aphrodite;[ ] that after cinyras, the king of byblus, whose daughters paid service to the goddess of byblus with their bodies, pygmalion became king, and he regarded with abhorrence the unchaste daughters of cinyras, and worshipped the pure goddess of heaven, and taught how to appease her anger by human sacrifices.[ ] at carthage a good goddess of the sky (_bona coelestis_) was worshipped beside an evil one (_inferna coelestis_). if human sacrifices were here burnt to the goddess dido, just as the supposed foundress of carthage is said to have burnt herself,[ ] her sister anna, _i.e._ the charming one, was worshipped with cheerful rites. other accounts mention that the two sisters dido and anna were one and the same goddess. without doubt they are right. we saw that with the babylonians the planet venus, when rising, was the war-goddess istar, and, when setting, she was mylitta, the goddess of love (p. ). the relation of the tyrian goddess astarte to the moon has already been touched upon. as goddess of the moon, she was a changing, wandering deity. with the waning light of the moon she retired into the gloom of the west, the region of the setting sun; and on the disappearance of the goddess on the "bad evening," the tyrians performed rites of mourning. as a "wandering goddess,"[ ] astarte was called among the phenicians dido, _i.e._ the rover, and among the westerns europa, _i.e._ the dark one.[ ] with the retirement of the goddess was connected the legend how her destructive power was overcome; it showed how astarte could be worshipped in tyre as the wife of melkarth, as milkath (melecheth, _i.e._ queen).[ ] the wandering sun-god went in search of the lost goddess. at length he found her in the remote distance, and loosed her girdle; the goddess surrendered herself to him, and sacred marriage changed the warlike goddess into the friendly deity favourable to procreation, astarte into ashera, dido into anna, artemis or athena into atargatis. the "maiden of the sky" is now the wife of the god of tyre, the hera of the sky, the ada (athe) of the syrians. from the embraces of melkarth and astarte, the sun-god and the moon-goddess, and the conquest of the cruel goddess of war, spring life, order, and law. the sacred marriage is said to have taken place in the west, at samothrace, and further still, on the cadmeia, the citadel of cadmus,[ ] _i.e._ of the searching melkarth, and finally beyond the pillars of the god, on the happy islands of the western sea, where all fruits of every kind grew spontaneously, especially the apples of life, the pomegranates of ashera, the apples of the hesperides,--the pledge of love, the symbol of life and light returning out of darkness. here also melkarth sank down to rest in the streams of the western sea, which his beams had warmed.[ ] the syrians did not remain content with combining the beneficent and destructive powers into one form only, into baal-melkarth and astarte-ashera. while searching for the unity of the divine powers and the divine nature, they also combined the male and female deities into one figure, and the creative and receptive powers were amalgamated in one and the same form. as the combination of mighty heroic power with luxurious sensuality is the practical ideal of the east, so in theory also the highest union of the powers of nature and divine being, the amalgamation of male and female is attained by the same combination. when astarte had become ashera, and had surrendered herself to the god, the god in turn surrendered himself to the goddess. he plied female tasks, she carried the weapons. but even their nature became one, their forms were combined. astarte and the baal placed at her side became one deity. the male deity of the moabites was camos. when mesha, king of moab, took nebo from the israelites, he dedicated it to ashtor-camos.[ ] at carthage dido-astarte was represented with the beard of melkarth.[ ] at paphos there was a standing image of the bearded aphrodite, which was worshipped as a great divinity. it is this unification which lies at the root of the legends of heracles (melkarth) and omphale (perhaps, mother[ ]), of semiramis and sardanapalus. at certain festivals of baal the priests and worshippers of the androgynous deity appeared in red transparent female garments, and were otherwise dressed as women, while the women were dressed as men, and carried swords and lances.[ ] the law of the jews strictly forbids the erection of astartes and pillars, the bringing of the hire of the harlot or the pay of the fornicator into the house of jehovah, the tearing of the skin, or the cutting of the hair (which was customary among the syrians in different ways as the symbol of the worship of certain deities), and insists that no eunuch shall come into the people of jehovah, that no woman shall wear a man's clothes, and no man the clothes of a woman.[ ] philo told us above (p. ) that eljon of byblus, who was called the highest, was slain in conflict with wild beasts, and was worshipped by after generations with libations and sacrifice. in byblus, under the name adonis (adon, _i.e._ lord), a god was worshipped, who was thought to have disappeared, or to have been carried off in the bloom of youth. eljon and adonis are one and the same form. when the maritime river named after this deity, the adonis (now nahr ibrahim), near byblus, began to run red in july (thammuz), owing to the red earth washed down from the mountains, then it was believed that the beautiful adonis was slain on libanus by the savage boar of the war-god. with lamentations and cries the women sat in the shrine at byblus; or lingered by the wayside lamenting the death of adonis. they cut off their hair, tore their breasts, and cried out--ailanu, ailanu (woe to us). adonis was lost, and was now called thammuz (the departed).[ ] a time of lamentation was observed, during which his wooden image was washed and anointed, and laid upon a bier, which the priests carried about with their garments rent and beards shorn. but the god appeared again; he came to life again, as it seems, with the new spring. and as the lamentations for his death had been excessive, so also was the sensuality with which his return to life was celebrated.[ ] hence we must assume that in adonis was personified the vernal sun, the bloom of vegetation, which so soon begins to droop. if it was the boar of the war-god, _i.e._ of moloch, which slew adonis, as one account maintains, then in the minds of the syrians the destructive sun-god, the glow of the midsummer sun which makes vegetation wither, was the cause of the death of adonis. philo further told us of the two sons of the giants, the brothers samemrumus and usous, at tyre (p. ). the name samemrumus means the high one of the sky, a meaning which is clearly confirmed by the greek attribute hypsuranius. hence samemrumus was the god, the baal of tyre, baal melkarth. that usous also was a god of tyre is clear from the observation of eusebius, that usous, a man of little account, had been deified at tyre beside melicertes.[ ] usous, who knew how to catch and destroy wild animals, and clad himself in their skins, the ancestor of hunters, reminds us of the esau of hebrew tradition. compared in point of language the names of usous and esau coincide: "usous" (usov) means, like "esav," the hairy one. completely reversing the natural connection, philo ascribes to usous the erection of the pillars which belong to his brother, and represents the hunter as embarking on the earliest ship, whereas samemrumus, the father of the fisherman, must have embarked on the first ship. we saw that the name sidon means "fish-catchers" (p. ). hence the legends of the phenicians carried back the origin of the sidonians, to whom not only the city of sidon but also tyre belonged, to baal melkarth. from this god the tribe of the sidonians, as it seems, pretended to have sprung. at a later period the mariners of the coast, _i.e._ the population of the harbour towns, looked down with scorn on the shepherds and hunters of the mountains, although they could not refuse to recognise the greater antiquity of this mode of life. usous, therefore, must be regarded as the elder brother, the hunter of the mountains, like the esau of the hebrews, while the younger melkarth takes up his abode in tyre. that usous is the firstborn is clear from philo's remark, that samemrumus rebelled against his brother. the contrast between the two brothers is marked by the statement of eusebius, that usous was of little account, more strongly than in philo. from this we may perhaps conclude that usous, the older god, was originally looked upon as a hostile power, as baal moloch; while in samemrumus the friendly, helpful, beneficent power of the deity was personified as baal melkarth. an obscure trace of the contrast of the two gods is to be found also in the name surmubel, _i.e._ opponent of baal, in philo, which seems to belong to baal melkarth in opposition to baal moloch.[ ] the gods, whom the various cities of the phenicians worshipped as their tutelary deities, were placed side by side as soon as the feeling of community in the cities became more lively, and intercourse between them more vigorous. hence it came about that a common worship was also paid to these tutelary deities. beside their significance in the natural and moral world, there resided from antiquity in certain deities peculiar relations to hunting and agriculture, and it was natural that as naval occupations, trade, and industry developed in the cities, the gods should be brought into relation to these spheres of activity also. in the same degree as it was felt that trade and commerce could only prosper amid internal peace and security in the cities, and under the protection of law and justice, the gods who maintained order in the world must become the protectors of order and law in the cities. in this feeling, and starting from conceptions of this kind, the priests of the phenicians brought the gods of their cities into a connected system which, following the sacred number seven, included seven gods. the deities brought into this circle were known by the collective name cabirim, i.e. the "powerful," the "great." among the descendants of the "field" and the "husbandman," philo has already mentioned misor, _i.e._ sydyk (justice). as powers ruling in justice, law, and equity, and maintaining order in the cities, the cabiri are the children of sydyk. the greeks call them children of the sun-god, _i.e._ of baal samim; and if others connect the cabiri with ptah, the god of light among the egyptians, the conclusion to be drawn is, that it was baal samim who, in his relation to the cabiri, was denoted by the name of the just, the supreme champion of justice. from the hunter and the fisher philo derives chusor, who discovered the working of iron; he calls him hephæstus (p. ). chusor, so far as we can tell, was the foremost deity within the circle of the cabiri. phenician coins exhibit him with a leather apron, hammer, and tongs; the name seems to denote "arranger." he was the tutelary god of the life of the cities occupied in navigation and handicraft. next to chusor came a female deity, chusarthis, also called turo (thorah, law), whom the greeks call by the name harmonia. as the same deity is also called the goddess of the moon, we cannot doubt that chusarthis is astarte, which is also sufficiently clear from other evidence; only in the new system the severe goddess was connected in a definite manner with the upholding of justice and preservation of law. next to astarte in the series of the cabiri comes baal melkarth of tyre, who is known to the greeks under the name of cadmus. he is regarded as the discoverer of mining and masonry and the inventor of writing. he searches for the lost harmonia, and with her when found celebrates the sacred marriage. hence cadmus could be worshipped in this system as a life-awakening, phallic god, as well as the tutelar god of marriage. a peculiar reverence was enjoyed among the cabiri by the deity who was added as an eighth to these seven; his name was esmun, _i.e._ the eighth. in this form it seems that the peculiarities of the seven gods were taken up and gathered together. at any rate in carthage the temple of esmun stood in the byrsa, and on the highest part of it. in this temple the holiest relics of the city were preserved and the most important deliberations held. the greeks call esmun by the name of asclepius, but also add that he was different from the greek asclepius. he was, it appears, a healing, _i.e._ an appeasing deity, like jasion in the cabiric mysteries of samothrace. esmun is also compared and confounded with hermes, as with the thoth of the egyptians. just as thoth revealed the sacred books of the egyptians, did esmun reveal the sacred books of the phenicians. esmun was represented with a serpent in his hand as the serpent-holder (ophiuchus), and his head as surrounded by eight rays. the forms of the eight tutelar gods were carved by the phenicians on the prows of their ships; it was the cabiri, as philo told us, who discovered the ship. even now phenician coins exhibit the cabiri in that dwarfed and distorted form in which the phenicians loved to represent the nature and superhuman power of the gods.[ ] from the circumstance that the greeks, when settling in lemnos, imbros, samothrace, and rhodes, found the worship of the cabiri in existence, and adopted it, though not without certain alterations, we may conclude that the cabiric system was established before the year b.c. in the tutelary gods of the sea-loving nation of the phenicians the greeks recognised and worshipped the deities favourable to mariners, and from this side they combined them with their own dioscuri. on the other side the myth of melkarth and astarte, who were adopted into this circle of divinities, the myth of melkarth, who discovers the lost moon-goddess in the land of gloom, and returns thence with her to new light and life, and who wakes to new life after the slumber of the winter, gave the greeks an opportunity of connecting with the mysteries of the cabiri those conceptions of the life after death, which grew up among them after the beginning of the sixth century. when the great deities had been combined with the circle of the cabiri, the subordinate spirits followed in their course. by degrees a scheme of thrice seven was reached, a scheme of twenty-one or rather twenty-two deities, since an eighth was added to the seven cabiri. these, beginning with el, were arranged according to the twenty-two letters of the phenician alphabet, and stood in a certain relation to them. from this number of deities, their various names, and the order of succession, various schemes of the origin of the gods were developed, and with the help of these genealogies certain systems of theogony and cosmogony were formed, of which the dislocated and confused fragments were found in philo; and the chief of them i have given above. the wind kolpia (p. ) modern research would explain by kol-pyah, _i.e._ "breath of the month;" baau, the wife of this wind, by bohu, _i.e._ chaos, the tohu-wa-bohu of the hebrews. the more abstract the potentialities with which these systems begin, the later we may assume their origin to be. like the arabs, the syrians originally worshipped their gods upon the mountains and in stones; then they erected pillars of wood and stone to them, and images, figures of bulls, or shapes combined from the forms of men and fish. they also erected statues male and female, or androgynous. at the great festivals the sacred tents and chests in which ancient symbols and tokens of the deities were preserved, or the images of the gods, were carried round in solemn procession.[ ] of the festival in the temple of atargatis, at hierapolis, we have already spoken (p. ); of the fire-festival which the tyrians held in the spring, lucian tells us: "they trim great trees, set them up in the court of the temple, and bring goats, sheep, birds, and other victims. these they fasten to the trees, and in addition, clothes and gold and silver jewellery. after these preliminaries they carry the images of the gods round the trees; the pyre is then kindled, and all consumed."[ ] as we may conclude from lucian's account and from ruins, the temples were on a tolerably extensive scale. there were two or three courts, one after the other, either rectangular as at paphus and marathus, or oval, as at malta and gaulus, surrounded by strong walls, and furnished with pillars, altars, and pools of water. with these was connected a narrow and small shrine, containing the sacred stone or image. the tithes belonged to the gods. every year, at the festival of melkarth, in tyre, an embassy appeared from carthage which offered to the god of the mother city the tenth of the revenue of their state, and after great victories the carthaginians probably sent a tenth of the spoil to the gods of tyre.[ ] the number of priests was great; we often find hundreds engaged in a single sacrifice,[ ] and the ritual was complicated. the human sacrifices, mutilation, and prostitution, by which the syrians sought to win the favour of their deities, we have already heard of. at a later time at all the great sanctuaries there were thousands of male and female servants beside the priests. the priests lived on the tithes, the temple lands, and the part which fell to them in the sacrifices. the ritual distinguished burnt offerings, offerings of purification, expiatory offerings, and offerings of the first fruits; besides animals and the firstlings of the field, sacrificial cakes were frequently offered. the bull was the most acceptable victim; cows were not sacrificed, nor the flesh eaten. beside bulls, rams and he-goats, and of birds, the dove, the partridge, the quail, and the goose were offered. the animals were required to be pure, without blemish, of the male sex, and capable of procreation. to guard against the offering of unclean beasts, the priests of hierapolis refused to sacrifice any but those bought from themselves.[ ] two phenician inscriptions of massilia and carthage have come down to us from the fourth century b.c., containing the edicts of the carthaginian suffetes about the part of the sacrifice belonging to the priests, the fee to be paid for the sacrifice, and finally the price of the victims purchased of the priests. the carthaginian inscription lays down the rule that of a bull, a ram, or a goat, offered as a burnt-offering, the skin was to be the property of the priests and the inwards the property of the person presenting the victim. moreover, of every victim offered, the cut and roasted flesh went to the priests. on the other hand, the inscription of massilia gives the skin to those who present the victim (the law of the hebrews also gives the skin of a burnt-offering to the man who offers the victim), but according to this decree the victims must be bought from the priests. for a bull ten shekels were to be paid to them, and though the tariff at carthage lays upon the sacrificer a fee of only _sus_ for each head of fowl sacrificed, the inscription of massilia raises the fee to / of a shekel and sus.[ ] footnotes: [ ] in strabo, p. . [ ] philo. frag. . ed. müller. [ ] philon. frag. , , , ed. müller. [ ] _loc. cit._ , - , ed. müller; cf. bunsen, "Ægypten," , , ff. [ ] such is obviously the meaning of this passage.--baudissin, "abh. z. semit. relig." s. . [ ] fragm. , , , ed. müller. [ ] pausan. , , . [ ] "hist. nat." , . [ ] athar-ath, _i.e._ astarte-athe; brandis, "münzwesen," s. . diod. , , . maccab. xi. . [ ] herod. , . pausan. , , . [ ] lucian, "de dea syria," c. . the cutting off of the hair which lucian mentions is also a vicarious custom. [ ] justin. , . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." encycl. v. ersch. s. , ff. [ ] kings xxiii. . ezek. xxiii. , ff. [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , , ; munter, "tempel der göttin von paphos," and the syrian coins in de luynes, "numismatique," pl. . lucian, "de dea syr." , . on the pillars of marathus and paphos, gerhard, "kunst der phoeniker," s. . [ ] xenoph. "anab." , ; diod. , ; lucian, _loc. cit._ . [ ] lucian, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] stark, "forschungen," s. , ff. [ ] avien. "ora maritima," v. . [ ] de bell. parth. . [ ] judges xiv. ; samuel, v. ff. [ ] gesenius, "monum. tab." . silius ital. pun. , . [ ] osborne, "egypt," p. . [ ] baudissin ("jahve et moloch," p. ) regards the amalgamation of moloch and adar as of later origin; to me the connection between saturn and the sun (diod. , ) appears of later origin. [ ] _e.g._ diod. , . [ ] justin. , . , ; plin. "h. n." , . [ ] curtius, , , ed. mützell; "porphyr. de abstinentiâ," , . [ ] euseb. "præcept. evang." , . [ ] kings iii. ; see below. [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] plut. "de superstitione," p. ; sil. ital. , . [ ] numen virginale; virgo cælestis. [ ] de luynes, "numism." pl. v.; hockh. "kreta," , . [ ] lucian, "de dea syria," , ; augustin, "de civitate dei," , . [ ] movers, "religion der phoen." s. , , ff. [ ] procop. "de bello persico," , . [ ] lucian, "de dea syr." , , , , . [ ] movers, "religion der phoen.," s. . [ ] "our lord melkarth, baal of tyre," as he is called in an inscription found at malta. [ ] herod. , ; plin. h. n. , ; theophr. "de lap." . [ ] thus virgil says of the minstrel of dido: "canit errantem lunam, solisque labores," Æn. , . [ ] joseph. ant. , ; movers, "religion der phoenizier," s. . [ ] athen. p. ; movers, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] kings xviii. . [ ] plaut. "merc." , . [ ] cic. "de nat. deorum," , ; macc. v. ; , xii. . [ ] pausan. , , . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." , . [ ] sil. ital. , , ; justin. , . [ ] virg. "Æn." , . [ ] hesychius: "[greek: eurôpon skoteinon platy. eurôpê hê chôra tês dyseôs ê skoteinê."] that europe is astarte follows from hesychius: [greek: "hellôpia, heortê eurôpês en krêtê]." the "etymolog. mag." pp. , , says: "europa was anciently called hellotia, '[greek: hoti hoi phoinikes tên parthenon hellôtian klousin].'" eloth signifies "goddess." [ ] jeremiah vii. ; xliv. - . [ ] pindar, "pyth." , ; cic. "de nat. deor." , . [ ] appian, "de reb. hisp." c. ; movers, "kolonieen der phoenizier," s. ff. we shall see below what a conglomeration of fables the greeks have gathered round the wandering astarte, who rides on a bull and is represented with the crescent of the moon, and a cow's horns. with them she is not only europe whom the bull-zeus carries from phoenicia, who is sought by cadmus the son of phoenix. in her crescent and cow's horns they also recognise their argive moon-goddess, io, and represent her as wandering to phoenicia and egypt, where isis, who here again wears the cow's horns or head, or is entirely represented as a cow, becomes their io. the wanderings of dido-astarte then became confused with the stories of helena, with the wanderings and fortunes of the foundress of carthage, and the travels of Æneas, the favourite of aphrodite, were directed to the most famous seats of the worship of ashera. [ ] nöldeke, "inschrift des mesa." [ ] serv. ad Æn. , ; gerhard, "kunst der phoeniker," s. , . [ ] according to lenormant, _um-pali_, "mother of the sword." [ ] joh. lyd. "de mensibus," , . [ ] lev. xix, - ; deut. xiv. ; xxii. ; xvi. ; xxiii. . [ ] ezek. viii. . [ ] lucian, "de dea syria," c. ; strabo, p. . [ ] "de laudib. constant." c. . [ ] bunsen, "Ægypten," , , . [ ] herod. , ; gerhard, "kunst der phoenicker taf." , ; movers, "phoenizier," , - ; "phoeniz." in ersch. s. ff. [ ] jerem. x. ; baruch, vi. , xxv. ; diod. , . [ ] lucian, "de dea syria," c. . [ ] polyb. , ; diod. , ; just. , ; curt, , . [ ] kings xviii. - . [ ] movers, "phoeniz." in ersch. s. . [ ] movers, "opferwesen der karthager," s. ; blau, "opfertarif von karthago;" zeitschrift d. d. m. g. , . chapter vii. the origin and descent of the hebrews. the tradition of the hebrews of the early history and fortunes of their people previous to the settlement in canaan is contained in the books of the pentateuch. after they had settled in that land and had passed beyond the loose combination of their tribes to the unity of civic life, after a monarchy had been established, and under it a metropolis and a centre for the national religion had been founded, the priesthood engaged in this worship began to collect together ritualistic observances and customs of law, and to write them down in combination with anything still living about their early history in the traditions of their families. the hebrews had found existing in canaan that ancient and many-sided civilisation the nature and extent of which we have already attempted to describe. of their own history they could have preserved nothing but prominent facts and decisive crises. songs of praise and victory which celebrated the great events of the hebrew past, such as the exodus from egypt and the victories won over the canaanites, of which some were already written down,[ ] forms of blessing, genealogies,[ ] isolated fragments of the moral law, or time-honoured sacrificial custom, or ancient rules of justice,[ ] and finally narration of the wars,[ ] constituted fixed points of connection in this tradition. at the new centre of religious worship the whole stock of existing ritual and custom had to be brought under review, and from hence provision made for the use of the true and acceptable kind of sacrifice, and sentence of law. the consideration of the marvellous lot which had fallen to the hebrews, the rise of a feeble shepherd tribe under the powerful protection of egypt, the liberation from the dominion of this great kingdom, the conquest of canaan, the capture of ancient and strongly-fortified cities, "of fields which they had not tilled, of vineyards and olive-gardens which they had not planted, of wells which they had not dug, of cities which they had not builded," caused the hebrews to recognise in the favour which had attended them the direct guidance of their deity. this grace would remain with them if they continued to worship the god of their fathers according to his will, in the way acceptable to him. thus to the priests, who undertook the task of writing down the tradition, the nation appeared as a chosen people from the beginning, to whom their god had early given his blessing. in return for such grace and beneficence the hebrews had to obey his law. this is the "covenant" which jehovah has made with them.[ ] this law, therefore, must be carefully recorded, in order that it may be obeyed exactly in every particular by the priests themselves, as by the judges and all the nation. on the basis of this tradition, these songs and poems, genealogies and ancient records, and under the guidance of the views just pointed out, there arose at hebron, in the first decade of the reign of david, within the circle of a priestly family, which apparently claimed to be sprung from aaron, the brother of moses, the judæan text of the pentateuch, and the book of joshua.[ ] composed as annals, this text deals primarily with the connection and course of the fortunes of israel; the central point is the covenant between jehovah (elohim) and israel, israel and jehovah, and the law, which is the body of this covenant.[ ] the unity of religious worship and the centralisation of it at one place and one only is brought prominently forward, and this could not have happened till political unity had been obtained, a metropolis founded, and a seat erected there for the worship of the whole nation, or at least contemplated, if not erected. the law for the priests, the minute details of ritual which make up the chief part of this text, were, in the view of the priests, given at that mighty time when moses led the people; though, as a matter of fact, only a few of the fundamental precepts reached so far back (see below). the centralisation of the worship also at one place of sacrifice, the command to have a common place of worship, was thought to have been in existence as early as the time of moses, and to have been prescribed even when the hebrews were in the desert. and the priests were more inclined to believe that the ideal sought after for their religion, for church and state, belonged to the time of moses, because in those days of piety and exaltation the true ordinances must have been in existence, and certain sacrificial institutions, certain principles of law and morality, actually came down from that period. not long after this first text arose a second, which, however, can hardly have been composed in priestly circles, and certainly did not come from judah. with the author of this second text, it is not the collection and establishment of the law, and the desire to insist on the obedience to it, which is the main point. it is rather the personal fortunes of the fathers of the race, in which the divine guidance is shown, the manifestations of the deity in their favour, the revelations made to them by divine messengers, the importance of old customs and old names, on which he lays especial weight. he also availed himself of older written sources.[ ] the language and style of this second text are more lively, versatile, and distinct than those of the first; and the importance which he ascribes to the fortunes of joseph and the tribes of ephraim confirms the assumption that the author belonged to this tribe. the origin of this second text falls in the second half of solomon's reign, or immediately after it--in the decades from to b.c.[ ] about a hundred years later, towards the middle of the ninth century b.c., both these texts were combined and transformed into one work. the author of this combined text (the jahvist) was guided by the feelings and views of the prophets. he is superior to the authors of the two texts in versatility, in reflection, and vivid power of imagination. not only did he work up the two texts into one and insert into the whole his own views, but he has added some sections, the materials of which must have been furnished partly by tradition and partly by written records.[ ] in this shape were the first four books of the pentateuch, the beginning and the end of the fifth book, and the book of joshua, at the time of the prophets amos and hosea. the "second law," _i.e._ the main portion of the fifth book of the pentateuch,[ ] on the other hand, was not written till the time of king josiah, about b.c., and was then added to the rest. the author of this second law also revised the book of joshua.[ ] if we compare the hebrew account of the creation with the cosmogonies of berosus and philo (pp. , ), and the narrative of noah's deluge with the description of the flood on the assyrian tablets and in berosus (p. ff.), we see at the first glance how far asunder the conceptions lie--with what clearness and vigour the hebrews have succeeded in purifying and exalting the rude fancies of the nations so closely akin to them--the ancient common possession of the eastern semitic tribes, from whom the hebrews were sprung. this power--the patient labour, the serious and thoughtful effort to deepen the traditions of the past into an ethical significance, to sublimate legends into simple moral teaching, and transplant the myth into the region of moral earnestness and moral purpose--to pass beyond the rude naturalism of their kinsmen into the supernatural--from the varied polytheism of babel and canaan to monotheism--this it is which gives to the hebrews the first place, and not among semitic nations only, in the sphere of religious feeling and development. at a later period the greeks understood how to breathe life, beauty and nobility into the gods of the phenicians, whose rites came over to hellas; they could change ashera-bilit, the goddess of prostitution, into the youthful aphrodite, the goddess of blooming grace, and the highest charm of love; but the hebrews practised the severer, sterner, and loftier task of carrying religious feeling beyond the life of nature, of conceiving the highest power as morally in opposition to natural impulses and forces, of publishing the supremacy of the intellectual and moral over the natural being. adam begot seth, so we are told in the first book of the pentateuch, and seth begot enos, and enos begot kenan, and kenan begot mahalaleel, and mahalaleel begot jared, and jared begot enoch, and enoch begot methuselah, and methuselah begot lamech, and lamech begot noah, and noah begot shem, ham, and japheth. the earth was full of evil, but noah walked with god. then god said to noah: make for thyself an ark of gopher-wood, cubits in length, cubits in breadth, and cubits in height. for i will send a flood upon the earth to destroy under the heaven all flesh wherein is the breath of life. but with thee i make my covenant; and thou shalt go into the ark, thou and thy three sons and thy wife, and the three wives of thy sons with thee. and of all living creatures thou shalt bring two into the ark, male and female shall they be. and noah did as god commanded him. when noah was years old, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the fountains of the deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and there was rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and the waters rose and lifted the ark. and the flood was mighty, and all the high mountains that are under heaven were covered; the water rose fifteen cubits above the tops of the mountains. for days the flood was mighty on the earth. then god caused a wind to blow, and the waters sank. and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested on the mountains of the land of ararat; and in the tenth month, on the first day, the tops of the mountains appeared. it came to pass after forty days, that noah opened the window of the ark, and sent out a raven; but it flew to and fro. then he sent out a dove, to see whether the water had retired from the earth. but the dove found no place of rest, and returned to the ark. and noah remained seven days more, and again sent out the dove. then the dove came to him at evening, and lo! a fresh olive-branch was in her mouth. and he remained yet seven days, and again sent out the dove, but she returned to him no more. then noah opened the door of the ark and looked out, and lo! the earth was dry. and in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the earth was dry. and noah went out of the ark, and his sons, and his wife, and the wives of his sons, and he built an altar to jehovah, and took of all clean beasts and birds and offered a burnt sacrifice upon the altar. after the flood sons were born to the sons of noah. the sons of shem were elam and asshur, and arphaxad, and lud and aram. arphaxad begot salah, and salah begot eber. eber had two sons, the name of the one was peleg, and the name of the other joktan. peleg begot reu, and reu begot serug, and serug begot nahor, and nahor begot terah. terah dwelt in the land of his nativity at ur in chaldæa, and his sons were abraham, nahor, and haran. haran begot lot and milcah and iscah, and died before his father at ur in chaldæa. nahor took milcah to wife, and abraham took sarah. and terah went with abraham his son, and lot the son of haran, from ur in chaldæa to haran and dwelt there. but jehovah said to abraham: "go from thy land, and thy home, and thy father's house, to a land which i will show thee." then abraham took sarah his wife, and lot, his brother's son, and all their goods, and the souls born to them in haran, and went forth from haran. he came unto the land of canaan as far as sichem and to the oak moreh, and there he built to jehovah an altar; and afterwards he went towards the mountain and pitched his tent between bethel and ai, and there he built an altar to jehovah, and journeyed towards the south. and when the famine was sore in the land, abraham, and lot with him, went to egypt, and pharaoh, for sarah's sake, gave abraham sheep and oxen and asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels. but jehovah smote pharaoh with great plagues, so that he let abraham and sarah go, and bade men guide him. then abraham dwelt again at bethel, and was very rich in flocks, in silver and gold. lot also had tents and sheep and oxen, and there was a strife between the shepherds of abraham and the shepherds of lot. then abraham said to lot: "let there be no strife between my shepherds and thine, for we are brethren. if thou wilt go to the left hand, i will go to the right." then lot lifted up his eyes, and saw the land of jordan, that it was watered as a garden of the lord; and he set forth at morning, and pitched his tents at sodom. but jehovah said to abraham: "lift up thine eyes; the whole land which thou seest i will give to thee and thy seed for ever; rise up and go through the length and breadth of the land, for i will give it to thee." and abraham pitched his tents under the oaks, which are at kirjath-arba (hebron), and there built an altar to jehovah. for twelve years the kings of sodom and gomorrah, of adamah, zeboiim and zoar, had served kedor-laomer, king of elam. then they rebelled; and in the fourteenth year kedor-laomer, and the kings who were with him, amraphel, king of shinar, and tidal and arioch of elassar, smote the rephaims at ashtaroth-karnaim, the zuzims at ham, and the emims at shaveh-kiriathaim, and the horites on their mountain of seir, and smote the whole land of the amalekites and amorites. the kings of sodom and gomorrah also, of adamah, zeboiim and zoar, who had drawn out against them in the valley of siddim, were put to flight, and fled to the mountains, and all the goods and all the food in sodom and gomorrah were taken, and they also took lot and his goods. when abraham heard that his brother's son was carried away, he set forth with his servants, in number, and fell upon them by night at dan, and pursued them as far as hobah, which is to the west of damascus, and brought back all the goods and lot and the people that were captured. the king of sodom came to him and said: give me the souls, and take the goods for thyself. but abraham said: i lift up my hand to jehovah that i will take nothing of thee, save what my servants have eaten. abraham dwelt ten years in the land of canaan, but his wife bore him no son. but he had an egyptian maid-servant whose name was hagar. her sarah gave him to wife, and hagar was with child, and the angel of jehovah announced to her that she should bear a son who would be like a wild ass, and his hand would be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he would dwell to the east of his brethren. and hagar bore abraham a son, and abraham named him ishmael. then he received the promise that sarah also should bear a son, "from whom should arise kings and nations;" and when he was years old, and in the south between kadesh and sur, sarah bore him a son. abraham named him isaac, and circumcised him when he was eight days old. the year before he had circumcised ishmael, for god had said: this is the covenant which thou shalt keep between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, that every male shall be circumcised. when isaac grew up and sarah saw the son of the egyptian woman, she said to abraham: thrust out this woman and her son; ishmael shall not be heir with isaac. then abraham gave hagar bread and a bottle of water on her shoulders, and sent her forth with her child. she wandered into the desert of beersheba, i.e. the well of the seven, and when the water was spent, and the child was fainting with thirst, she laid him down under a bush, and sat down a bow-shot from him, and said: "let me not see the death of the child." then jehovah heard the voice of the child, and his angel called to hagar out of heaven: "fear not, rise up, and take the boy in thy hand, jehovah will make him a great people." and jehovah opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and filled the bottle, and gave her child drink. and jehovah was with him; he grew up in the desert, and was an archer, and dwelt in the desert of paran, and his mother took him a wife out of egypt, and ishmael begot nebajoth, and kedar, and adbeel, and mibsam, and mishma, and dumah, and massa, and hadar, and tema, and jetur, and naphish, and kedemah, twelve princes. and ishmael died years old, and his descendants dwelt to the east of his brethren from shur, which lies before egypt, to havilah, and towards asshur. abraham abode a long time in the land of the philistines. and god tempted abraham, and bade him sacrifice his only son isaac, in the land of moriah, as a burnt offering. but when abraham had built the altar on the top of the mountain, and laid the wood upon it, and bound isaac and laid him on the altar, and taken the knife and stretched forth his hand to slay his son, the angel of jehovah called from heaven, saying: lay not thine hand on the lad, for now i know that thou fearest god; thou hast not refused him thine only son. and abraham saw a ram caught in the thicket, and he sacrificed him. when sarah died at hebron, abraham spoke to the hittites among whom he dwelt: i am a stranger and a sojourner among you; give me a burying-place for my people among you, that i may put away my dead from me. speak for me with ephron, the son of zohar, that he give me the cave of machpelah which is his, at the corner of his field; let him give it to me for a burying-place at its full worth in money. ephron agreed, and abraham weighed the money to ephron, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. and thus the field of ephron at machpelah, to the east of mamre, that is hebron, the field and the cave, and all the trees on the field and round it, were given to abraham before the eyes of the hittites, and the eyes of all who went into the gates of the city. and abraham buried sarah in the cave of the field of machpelah. then abraham took another wife, whose name was keturah, and she bore him zimram, and jokshan, and medan, and midian, and ishbak, and shuah. but isaac had grown a man, and abraham said to his servant, the oldest in his house, eliezer of damascus: lay thy hand under my thigh; i charge thee that thou take not to my son a wife from the daughters of the canaanites, among whom we dwell; to my fatherland and my home thou shalt go, and there seek a wife for isaac. then the servant took ten camels from the camels of his master, and goods of every kind, and passed over the euphrates towards mesopotamia, to the city of nahor, the brother of abraham. to nahor his wife milcah, the daughter of haran, had borne eight sons. the youngest was bethuel, and bethuel's son was laban, and his daughter rebekah. eliezer came to the city of nahor at evening, and halted his camels at the well outside the city. then came a maiden, fair to behold, with her pitcher on her shoulder, to the well. when she had filled her pitcher and come up from the well, the servant went to her and said: bend down thy pitcher and let me drink a little water. drink, my lord, she answered, and quickly took the pitcher in her hand, and gave him to drink. then she said: i will draw also for thy camels, and stepped down again to the well. eliezer marvelled at her; and when all the camels had drunk, he took a golden ring, half a shekel in weight, and two golden bracelets, ten shekels in weight, and put the ring in her nose, and the bracelets on her arm, and then inquired whose daughter she was, and whether there was room in her father's house to shelter him and the camels. and she answered: i am rebekah, the daughter of bethuel, the son of nahor; straw and fodder is in abundance with us, and room for the camels. and her brother laban came to the well, and led eliezer to the house, and laban took the saddles from the camels, spread straw for them, and gave them fodder and brought water for his guest to wash his feet, and food. but eliezer said: i will not eat till i have given my message. i am the servant of abraham, and jehovah has blessed my master, so that he has become great, and he has given him sheep and oxen, and silver and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels and asses. and sarah has borne a son to my master in his old age, and i have sworn to seek a wife for his son from his home and his own people; and jehovah led me in the right path in order to take the granddaughter of the brother of my master for his son. if ye are willing to plight troth and love with abraham, say it. then said bethuel, rebekah's father, and laban her brother: behold, the maiden stands before thee, take her and go. then eliezer brought forth gold and silver ornaments, and garments, and gave them to rebekah; to her brother also and her mother he gave gifts. and when laban and his mother sent away rebekah with her nurse deborah, and abraham's servant eliezer, they blessed rebekah, and said: become a thousand times a thousand, and may thy seed possess the gate of thy enemies. when eliezer returned home, he told all that he had done, and isaac received rebekah into the tent of his mother, and she became his wife, and he loved her. and abraham gave all that he had to isaac; but to ishmael and the sons of keturah he gave gifts, and sent them away from his son isaac into the land to the east. then abraham, after he had lived years, died at a good old age, and his sons isaac and ishmael buried him in the cave of machpelah. these narratives show that the hebrews derived the origin of their nation from the land of the euphrates and tigris. we remarked above that the legend of the deluge could only have arisen in river valleys, exposed to severe inundations (p. ). if we set aside the additions made in the prophetic revision, the narrative of the flood belongs to the first text; in this text therefore the nations of the earth were derived from the sons of noah. the revision adds that the descendants of noah, in their journey from the east, found a plain in the land of shinar, i.e. babylonia, and dwelt there, and erected a city and a tower, intended to reach to heaven. then jehovah confounded their language and scattered them over the earth.[ ] but it is the first text which gives the genealogy of abraham, according to which the descendant of noah, terah, the father of abraham, dwells in the land of his nativity, at ur in chaldæa. we found that ur lay on the lower euphrates, where the ruins of mugheir mark its site, that the oldest buildings in babylonia belong to this place, and the oldest sovereigns on the euphrates called themselves kings of ur (p. ). from ur terah, according to the first text, journeyed with his family to haran.[ ] haran lies in a wide plain surrounded by hills on the skirtos, a tributary of the belik, at no great distance from the euphrates; it is the carrhae of western writers. from haran abraham turns towards canaan; but his brother's tribe remains in haran. hence, as the oldest writings of the hebrews without any doubt derive the progenitors of the nation from ur and carrhae in the land of the euphrates, so later authorities maintain, as an absolute certainty, that "the fathers dwelt beyond the river," _i.e._ the euphrates. in the "second law" abraham is called a "wandering aramæan," and ezekiel calls chaldæa "the birthplace of the hebrews."[ ] the name "hebrews" confirms this statement and view. heber means "that which is beyond," "those who dwell beyond." the hebrews call themselves the sons of israel; the name of hebrews they received from the canaanites, into whose land they forced a way, though the canaanites, no doubt, meant no more by the name than that the sons of israel dwelt on the other side of the jordan, before they set foot in canaan. but the genealogy of the hebrews goes far beyond carrhæ and ur. after enumerating the ten patriarchs from adam, _i.e._ from the man "formed of earth" (adama) to noah, and giving the age of these patriarchs in hundreds of years (the highest age is , and the lowest is the seventh, ), the first text enumerates another set of ten patriarchs from the sons of noah down to abraham, and of these the age gradually dwindles from to years.[ ] the head of this series, shem, the eldest son of noah, the friend of god, is the immediate progenitor of the hebrews. that the recollection and feeling of the relationship with the inhabitants of the land of the two streams, and with the population of aram, _i.e._ of the upper land between the tigris and euphrates, the euphrates and the jordan, and with portions of the inhabitants of arabia and asia minor, was alive and present in the minds of the hebrews, is clear from the fact that these nations, akin in tribe and blood and language, were carried back to shem. from arphaxad, the third son of shem, sprang the fathers of the hebrews; the two first sons elam and asshur, we already know as the progenitors of the elamites and assyrians. from lud and aram, the fourth and fifth sons of shem, the lydians and aramæeans were derived, a genealogy which certainly belongs to the ephraimitic, if not to the judæan text. in arphaxad, the name of the third son, we cannot mistake the name of a district any more than in the names of the other sons. arphaxad is a mountain canton of south armenia, between the lakes of van and urumiah,--the arrapachitis[ ] of the greeks, the alpak of the armenians, the modern albak--and lies more than , feet high, at the source of the great zab, which also flows through it.[ ] the son of arphaxad is salah, _i.e._ "leaving," "departure," and the son of salah is eber, in whom we have the later name of the israelites, transformed into a patriarch. to eber two sons are allotted. the name of the elder, peleg, means division, "because in his time the earth was divided." from this we may draw the conclusion that the division of the descendants of noah and the separation of the nations was transferred to the fifth generation after him. but another meaning may also be given on linguistic grounds to the name peleg (phaleg), and at the juncture of the chaboras and the euphrates we find a place of the name of phalga.[ ] joktan, the second son of eber, we know already as the father of those arabian tribes who dwell from mesha to dshafar, and in kachtan we have already found his name in arab tradition (p. ). the descendants of peleg, the elder son of eber, are reu, and serug the son of reu. the name serug appears to have been retained in the district of serug, and the modern serudsh, south-west of edessa, in the neighbourhood of the euphrates. western writers speak of the district of osrhoene, and give this name to the south-west of mesopotamia.[ ] serug's son is nahor, _i.e._ "the river," the euphrates. nahor is followed by terah, who had his home at ur. if this series of the first text preserved a genuine historical recollection, a portion of a semitic tribe, settled in the mountains of south armenia, or even the whole tribe--the sons of arphaxad--journeyed to the south, after leaving nothing but their name in the mountain valley. the separation from their kindred was signified by the name salah, _i.e._ "leaving." at first the sons of arphaxad pastured their flocks at serudsh, in the north-west of mesopotamia, and from thence they passed to ur on the lower euphrates, while another branch, the sons of joktan, turned away from the mouth of the euphrates in the direction of arabia. at a later time the sons of arphaxad settled at ur must again have marched up the euphrates to carrhae. then followed a second division; one portion, the nahorites, _i.e._ the people of the river, remained at carrhae, while others, the abrahamites, wandered to canaan, or rather into the deserts bordering on canaan. moreover, since the first text denotes abraham's eldest son ishmael, as the progenitor of the ishmaelites, _i.e._ of a considerable number of tribes of north and central arabia, and since the revision derives the midianites, who wandered on the peninsula of sinai, and further in the east, and other arabian tribes, from the sons of keturah, the younger sons of abraham (pp. , ), it follows that on the borders of canaan a portion of the abrahamites must again have broken off, and passed on to the peninsula of arabia. however this may be, the kinship of the hebrews with the babylonians, assyrians, and aramæans, the derivation of their tribe from the river-land of the euphrates and tigris, is beyond a doubt, and we must regard the districts of arphaxad and serug, of ur and carrhæ, as the original home of the tribe, which afterwards grew up to be the hebrews. in any case it is clear from this genealogical table that the hebrews considered themselves closely allied to the nahorites of haran, but more especially to a considerable number of the arabian tribes, or ishmaelites, _i.e._ the nebajoths, the kedarites, the temanites, the jeturites, and finally the midianites. this is proved, not only by the derivation of the ishmaelites from the eldest son of abraham, but also by the close relationship in which the edomites, the brothers of the hebrews, are represented as standing to the ishmaelites. the names ishmael and israel are similarly formed; the first means "god (el) hears," the second, "god strives," or "god rules." within this circle of kindred nations, the hebrews occupy the foremost place. the ishmaelites are descended, it is true, from the eldest son of abraham; but not from a legitimate or equal marriage; the mother of their tribe is a maid-servant and an egyptian. ishmael's wife also came from egypt, and, in this there may linger a dim recollection of the ancient supremacy of the hyksos in egypt.[ ] the midianites, on the other hand, spring from a younger branch than the hebrews; and they too are not born from the true wife of abraham, and hence are not his genuine heirs. to the moabites also, who pastured their flocks to the east of the dead sea, and the ammonites, whose land lay to the north-east of this sea, the hebrews held themselves akin. these tribes are the descendants of lot, abraham's brother's son; and therefore they, like the hebrews themselves, spring from those who had moved from carrhae to the west. but lot had separated from abraham, and chosen the region of jordan. and when jehovah rained fire and brimstone upon sodom and gomorrah, because the sins of their inhabitants were grievous, and overthrew these cities, and the whole land around them, lot with his two daughters escaped towards the east; but because all the men of sodom were destroyed, there was no man to dwell with lot's daughters. then they gave their father wine to drink, and lay with him, and the elder bore moab, and the younger ammon. thus although the moabites and ammonites are closely allied to the hebrews, and are of the pure stock--they were begotten in incest. a dark stain rests on their origin. obviously the bitter hostility which afterwards prevailed between the hebrews, and the moabites and ammonites, and the severe wounds which the hebrews suffered from the attacks of these nations, have had their influence in forming and moulding the story of their origin. the judæan text narrated quite simply the separation of abraham and lot, the choice of the land of jordan, the destruction of the cities, and lot's escape.[ ] the broader details and motives given in the narrative are the work of the prophetic revision, to which the account of the origin of the moabites and ammonites exclusively belongs. to the hebrews, the wanderings and fortunes of their forefathers appeared compressed into the lives of the patriarchs, whose mighty forms are also to them the patterns of morality, piety, and a life pleasing to god, the expression of the genuine national character. the name abraham means, in the form ab-ram, "high father;" in the form ab-raham, "father of the multitude." sarah means "princess." their right to the possessions, which they won in canaan by the sword, they saw in the command given to their ancestors to go thither, and in the promise that the land should belong to his seed, which is given to abraham, even in the first text. moreover, the purchase which abraham concluded with the hittites of hebron of a burying-place for his wife and himself in the cave of machpelah--this narrative is a part of the judæan text--and the services rendered by abraham to canaan gave to his descendants a claim to the possession of canaan. abraham planted the trees at beersheba, and dug wells; he defended canaan against kedor-laomer, and recovered from the kings of the east the booty taken, without keeping back any for himself. these services of the progenitor also constituted a claim for his descendants. the accounts in genesis[ ] of campaigns of elamite rulers towards the west, and the supremacy of a king of elam, one of the kudurids, over syria, are founded on events and circumstances which occurred about the year b.c., as has been already pointed out in detail (p. ). the connection into which abraham is brought with them is the work of the hebrews, and belongs to the ephraimitic text.[ ] the account which puts the horites, who occupied mount seir before the edomites, among the nations conquered by the elamites, and beside these certain extinct and mythical tribes--the rephaites, susites, and emites--shows plainly that the events must belong to a very distant past. when the rights of the hebrews to canaan had been proved, when at the same time it was ascertained that the kindred tribes of moab and ammon could establish no claim to the land, after the voluntary renunciation of their progenitor, it remained to be shown that the ancient inhabitants of the land, the canaanites themselves, had been from the first destined to give way to the hebrews. we found that the canaanites, like the hebrews, belonged to the great family of the semitic nations; but they were distinguished from them in character, in dialect, and religious conceptions. hence they were not derived from shem, but from noah's second son, ham; and they were also burdened with the curse of noah--a trait which the prophetic reviser has added to the narrative.[ ] after the flood, noah planted a vineyard, and he became drunken, and uncovered himself in his tent; and ham, the father of canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, but shem and japhet went backwards and covered him. and when noah heard what ham had done, he said, "cursed be ham; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren." abraham passed through the length and breadth of canaan, the land which his descendants were destined to possess. at shechem and hebron, and then in the south, at kadesh (barnea) and shur, he abode longest; at hebron, and between bethel and ai, he built an altar to jehovah. the presence of the patriarchs consecrated the places where his descendants were to dwell; among the hittites and the canaanites abraham remained true to the god who had led him into canaan; he rendered a willing obedience even to the harshest command. at the places where abraham had set up altars, and where he had offered sacrifice, we find at a later period centres of hebrew worship: by abraham's sacrifices they were already consecrated. the judæan text places the abode of abraham mainly in the south of canaan, at hebron; the south belonged mainly to the tribe of judah, and hebron was david's royal abode till he conquered jerusalem from the jebusites. the ephraimitic text placed abraham mainly at shechem, the chief city of the tribe of ephraim, and gives especial prominence to the sacred place at bethel. the wandering of abraham from the south of canaan to egypt, where the pharaoh, warned by plagues from jehovah, sends him away with valuable presents and in peace, is the work of the reviser. it is an anticipation of the later sojourn of the hebrews in egypt, and forms at the same time a contrast to the widely different circumstances of their exodus. after long waiting, the true son is at length born to the patriarch from his wife, of the blood of his fathers in haran.[ ] in order to preserve the blood of the hebrews pure, a wife is not taken from canaan for this son, isaac, but the care of the father provides a wife from among his kindred, the tribe of the nahorites, on the euphrates. the first text tells us quite briefly, "isaac was forty years old when he took to wife rebekah, the daughter of bethuel, the aramæan of mesopotamia, the sister of laban the aramæan."[ ] the lively description of the journey and the suit of eliezer is the work of the reviser of the two original texts. after thus providing for the continuance of the pure stock, when the oldest son, the child of hagar, and the younger sons, the children of keturah, had been sent away with presents, as the law of the hebrews afterwards ordained for the sons of concubines, and directed to the east, when he had given everything into the hand of isaac, abraham died full of years and blessings. isaac was now sixty years old--such is the account given in genesis--and his wife rebekah, the daughter of bethuel, the sister of laban, had borne him no son. then isaac besought jehovah for his wife, and jehovah heard him. rebekah became with child, and lo! there were twins in her womb, and the children strove in her womb; and jehovah said to her: two nations are in thy body, and two people shall separate from thy bosom. the first boy was red in colour, and hairy, and she called him esau; and afterwards his brother came out, and his hand was upon esau's heel, and he was called jacob, _i.e._ "one that holds the heel." and the boys grew; and esau was a hunter, but jacob abode in the tents, and his mother loved him. once esau returned weary from hunting, as jacob was making a mess of pottage. and esau said: give me to eat. and jacob replied: sell me first thy birthright, and pledge it to me. and esau swore, and sold his birthright, and ate and drank, and went his way. thus esau despised his birthright; and when he was forty years old, he took to wife judith, the daughter of beeri the hittite, and basmath (bashemath), the daughter of elon the hittite, and afterwards mahalath, the daughter of ishmael, nebajoth's sister. there was a famine in canaan, and isaac went to gerar in the land of the philistines, and there dwelt, and sowed in that land, and received a hundredfold, for jehovah blessed him. he became more and more mighty, and had sheep, and oxen, and many servants. and isaac dug out the wells which abraham's servants had made, and which the philistines had filled up after the death of abraham. and the shepherds of gerar strove with the shepherds of isaac, and isaac called the name of the wells esek (contention) and sitnah (hatred); but to the third, for which the shepherds of gerar had not striven, he gave the name rehoboth (room). from thence he went to beersheba, and there he set up an altar. when isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, he said to esau: take thy bow and quiver, hunt venison for me, and make a savoury dish such as i love, that i may eat, and my soul may bless thee before i die. esau went forth, but rebekah, who had heard isaac's speech, said to jacob: go to the flock and bring me two kids. i will prepare them for a savoury dish for thy father, that he may bless thee instead of esau. jacob obeyed, and rebekah put on him the clothes of esau, and placed on his neck and hands the skins of the kids, that his father, if he touched him, might not know jacob by his smooth skin. then jacob went in to his father, and said: i am esau, thy firstborn; eat of my venison. how hast thou found it so quickly, my son? asked the father. jehovah, thy god, put it into my hand, he replied. the voice is the voice of jacob, the father said, but the hands are the hands of esau. he ate, and jacob brought him wine, and he drank. then isaac said: come near, and kiss me, my son. god give thee the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and abundance of corn and wine. be thou lord over thy brethren, and let the sons of thy mother bow before thee. cursed be they who curse thee, and blessed be they who bless thee. and when jacob had gone away from his father with this blessing, esau came with his venison. isaac trembled and said: thy brother has come with subtilty, and taken away thy blessing. then esau lifted up his voice and wept, and said: my birthright has he taken from me, and now thy blessing also. bless me, even me also, o my father. what can i do for thee? answered isaac. lo! i have made him thy lord, and all his brethren i have given him for servants, and i have given him corn and wine. hast thou but one blessing? said esau, and wept. then isaac said: thy dwelling shall be without the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven. by thy sword thou shalt live; thou shalt serve thy brother, but his yoke thou shalt break from off thy neck. esau was at enmity with jacob, because he had deceived him in his father's blessing; and esau said in his heart: the days of mourning for my father will come, for i will slay jacob. then rebekah said to jacob: arise and flee to laban, my brother, in haran, till the anger of thy brother is turned away. and rebekah spoke to isaac, that jacob should not take a wife from the daughters of the hittites; and isaac bade jacob go to mesopotamia, to the house of bethuel, the father of his mother, and there take a wife from the daughters of laban. then jacob went from beersheba to haran. and when he abode for the night at the city of luz, he put a stone under his head, and there rested. then in a dream he saw a ladder placed upon the earth, the end of which touched heaven, and the angels of god went up and down upon the ladder. jehovah stood over it, and said: i am the god of abraham thy father and of isaac; the land whereon thou sleepest i will give to thee and thy seed. and in the morning jacob arose, and set up the stone which he had placed under his head for a sign, and poured oil on the stone, and called the name of the place bethel. in the land of the children of the east jacob saw a well, round which lay three flocks of sheep. then jacob said to the shepherds: whence are ye, my brethren? they answered, from haran. jacob asked again: know ye laban, nahor's son? and they said: we know him; it is well with him, and lo! there is rachel, his daughter, with the sheep of her father. and jacob rolled away the great stone, which lay at the mouth of the well, and watered rachel's sheep; and laban came, and took his sister's son into his house. laban had two daughters: leah the eldest had dim eyes, but rachel was fair to look upon; and jacob said to laban: i will serve seven years for rachel. and these seven years were as seven days in jacob's eyes, because he loved rachel. when the time was past, laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. but in the dark of the evening he brought leah instead of rachel to jacob, and it was not till the morning that jacob knew leah. why hast thou deceived me? jacob asked of laban; have i not served thee seven years for rachel? laban answered, it is not so done in our country, to give the younger daughter before the firstborn. serve me yet seven years, and thou shalt have rachel also to wife. so jacob abode seven years more with laban, and gained rachel for his second wife, and he kept laban's flock for six years more, and the sheep increased under jacob's hand. leah bore jacob four sons; reuben, simeon, levi, and judah. but rachel was barren and bore not. then rachel gave her maid bilhah to jacob, and bilhah bore two sons, dan and naphtali. leah also gave her maid zilpah to jacob, and she bore gad and asher. then leah bore issachar and zebulon; and jehovah heard rachel, and sent her a son, whom she called joseph. when joseph was born, jacob said to laban: for twenty years i have been with thee; thy sheep and thy goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock i have not eaten. let me depart that i may go to my own land, with my wives and children, and give me my hire. what shall i give thee? asked laban. set aside all that are striped and spotted among thy sheep and goats, and whatever is afterwards born striped or spotted among thy sheep and goats, that shall be my hire, said jacob. and laban said: be it according to thy word. then jacob set apart the coloured sheep and goats; and when the time of generation came, he took fresh wands of maple and almond-wood, and made white strips in them, by peeling off the bark, and cast them into the wells and runnels, where laban's sheep and goats were watered; and everything was born spotted, and fell to jacob's share, so that he became mighty, and gained many sheep and camels, and asses, and maid-servants, and men-servants. but laban's countenance was not towards him as heretofore; and laban's sons were angry and said: he has got his wealth from that which is our father's. then jacob arose, when laban was gone to the shearing, and set forth secretly with his wives and children, and flocks; and rachel took the images from the house of her father, and carried them with her, and jacob fled over the river, and set his face towards mount gilead. then laban hastened after him, and came up with him on mount gilead, and said: "why art thou fleeing secretly before me, so that i cannot accompany thee with drums, and music, and singing? why hast thou not allowed me to kiss my daughters, and why hast thou taken my gods?" jacob answered: "i was afraid, for i thought thou wouldest take thy daughters from me." and jacob set up a stone on mount gilead, and they made a heap of stones, and offered sacrifice on the heap, and laban said: "the god of abraham and the god of nahor be judge between us, and guardian that thou do not afflict my daughters, or take other wives to them; and this heap be witness that i go not after thee for evil, nor shalt thou come beyond this sign after me for evil." and jacob swore by him, whom his father feared, and offered sacrifice on the mountain. and the heap of stones was called galeed (heap of witness), and mizpah (watch tower), because laban had said that jehovah should be guardian if they were separated one from the other. and jacob sent messengers before him to appease his brother esau, to mount seir, with ewes, and rams, and she-goats, and he-goats, and camels with their colts, and cows, and bulls, and she-asses, and asses, as a gift to esau; and he divided his flocks into two parts, that the one might escape, if esau came against the other; for he was sore afraid. he rose in the night and took his two wives, and his two maids, and his eleven children, and carried them through the ford of the jabbok, but he himself remained behind. then a man wrestled with him till the morning broke, and smote the socket of his hip, and jacob's hip was out of joint. and he said: "let me go, for the morning is breaking." but jacob said: "i will not let thee go, till thou blessest me." then he said: "thy name shall be jacob no longer, but israel; for thou hast striven with god, and with men, and hast overcome," and he blessed him there. and jacob named the place peniel (god's visage), and the sun arose as he passed beyond peniel. jacob lifted up his eyes, and lo! esau came, and with him four hundred men. then jacob assigned his children to leah and rachel and the two maids, and the maids and their children he put in the front, and next leah and her children, and last of all rachel with her son. he went before them and bowed himself seven times before his brother. but esau embraced him, and kissed him, and they wept. the present of cattle esau would not accept. "i have enough, my brother," he said, "keep what is thine." but jacob urged him to take them as a proof that he had found grace in his eyes. then esau took them and parted in peace from his brother, and on the same day turned back on his way to mount seir. but jacob went to shechem, and bought the field where he had pitched his tent, and there set up an altar; and from shechem he went to bethel, and there also he built an altar; and from bethel jacob returned to hebron to his father isaac. as we have seen, the arabs and phenicians believed that the power and might of the gods was present in certain stones, which they worshipped in their sanctuaries (pp. , ). the hebrews also were acquainted with this worship. the first text tells us that god appeared to jacob when he returned out of mesopotamia, that he blessed him, and said: henceforth israel shall be thy name. and god went up from the place where he had spoken with him, and jacob set up a stone as a sign on the place, and poured oil on it, and called the name of the place bethel (house of god).[ ] in the older mode of conception, the stone was itself the house of god. the ephraimitic text represents jacob as resting on the stone when he went to mesopotamia, and as seeing in a dream the ladder on which the angels went up and down;[ ] the appearance of jehovah at the top of the ladder, as well as the form of the blessing, belongs to the revision.[ ] the change of the name jacob into israel is referred by the ephraimitic text to a definite occasion. to the hebrews, in the old time, the god of their tribe was a jealous and fearful deity, averse to the life of nature,--a god who exercised dominion above in the highest heaven, who rode on the clouds, and announced himself in thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, who appeared in flames of fire, whom the eye of mortal man could not behold and live.[ ] the supernatural god can in the first instance be conceived and regarded only in contrast to nature, and the life of nature. but inasmuch as the natural life can only come into being and continue to exist by his permission, and with his consent, that life must be redeemed and purchased. hence according to the primitive conception of the hebrews, everything that was brought to the birth belonged to their god, the firstlings of the field, and of beast, the first-born male of the woman. abraham was ready to sacrifice the firstborn son of his wife, the son of his own heart. but he was not permitted to slay him. he had already offered the sacrifice, inasmuch as he was resolved to sacrifice what was dearest, in obedience to the bidding of god. so runs the ephraimitic text. as jacob was returning from the euphrates he came upon a place in gilead, known as "god's visage." here, in the dark of the night, a man wrestled with jacob till the morning broke, and jacob would not let him go till he had blessed him; "thou hast striven with god and men, and overcome; therefore, henceforth thy name shall be israel."[ ] in the myth of the phenicians, the power of destruction is taken from the hostile god, when the friendly god wrestles with him. the hebrews changed the wrestling between the hostile and friendly deities, into a wrestling between the servant and the master, between the patriarch of the tribe and his god, a struggle from which the former does not let the god go till he has obtained a pledge, that he will spare him and his tribe, and send increase and blessing to him and his tribe. the contrast of hostile and friendly deities, and their struggle with each other, the hebrew conceives as the work, the toil, the struggle of men, _i.e._ strenuous wrestling to win the blessing of god. jacob carried away the injury to his thigh, but he won the blessing of jehovah. with this conception of the hebrews, that the first-born belonged to jehovah, is connected the ordinance that a ransom must be offered for him. moreover, in every spring the paschal lamb was offered as a sin-offering for the redemption of the house, along with the firstlings of the field. the use of circumcision also, as it seems, stood with the hebrews in close connection with the idea that the life of boys must be ransomed by a bloody sacrifice. jehovah is said to have commanded abraham to circumcise his family in token of the covenant which he had made with him and his seed (p. ). this custom was also in use among the edomites and certain other arabian and syrian tribes.[ ] according to the genealogy of the hebrews we had to assume that the semitic tribes from arphaxad first went to serug, and afterwards to ur in chaldæa; and that these immigrants, or a branch of them, passed from ur to haran. while the nahorites remained behind at haran, the abrahamites turned towards the southern border of canaan, where the ammonites and moabites, the ishmaelites and midianites, separated, and took possession of the centre of arabia, the peninsula of sinai, and the land eastward of the jordan. from the narrative of isaac, esau, and jacob, it further follows that not only those nations but also the sons of esau, the edomites, were descendants of abraham, and the hebrews were a branch of the edomites who had separated from them. hence the hebrews were the youngest scion of the stock which once came from the mountains of arphaxad to ur, to mesopotamia, and then into the deserts of arabia and syria. if, however, we allow that the genealogies of the hebrews express the position which they took up or wished to take up towards the kindred semitic nations, the assyrians, babylonians, mesopotamians, the arabians, midianites, moabites, and ammonites, and did not attempt to place facts of history beyond doubt, yet we must not refuse to recognise a definite historical basis in the relation of the hebrews to the edomites. the edomites possessed mount seir, which runs from the southern extremity of the dead sea to the north-east corner of the red sea. before them the horites possessed this mountain (p. ).[ ] according to the hebrew tradition the patriarch of the edomites was esau. he "was red in colour and hairy." though this is not the meaning of the name esau, the name edomites does actually mean the "red people," and the name of their mountain seir means, "to be hairy," a name which could very well be given to a mountain covered with briars and brushwood. the edomites were fond of the chase and of war; their progenitor is a hunter and warrior; and to this, his eldest son, isaac foretells that his dwelling should be without the fatness of the earth; by his sword should he live. only a slight advantage in age is allowed to esau: he is merely the firstborn of twins; and even at birth his brother jacob held him by the heel. the pre-eminence which isaac gives to the younger son is explained in the judæan text merely by the fact, that esau had taken wives from the hittites. "and when esau saw that isaac had blessed jacob and sent him to mesopotamia in order to take a wife from thence, esau saw that the daughters of canaan displeased his father, and he went to ishmael, and took mahalath, the daughter of ishmael, the son of abraham, the sister of nebajoth, to wife to his other wives."[ ] all the further details of the relations between the two brothers, the sale of the birthright, the obtaining of the blessing, and the form of the blessing, belong to the revision. this text and this only could make isaac say to esau, "thou shalt serve thy brother, but shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." saul conquered, and david subjugated the edomites; it was not till the time of joram, king of judah, in the first half of the ninth century b.c., that they recovered their independence. the description of the journey of jacob to the euphrates, his service with laban, and his flight, come from the ephraimitic text: the revision has only extended the introduction, and here and there inserted an interpolation. to the same text belongs the peaceful departure from the nahorites, the setting up of a token on the east of jordan to fix how far the borders of the israelites, beyond which the nahorites were not to go, were to extend in this direction, and finally jacob's reconciliation with esau. with the daughters of canaan whom he took to wife, esau could only beget an impure race, and even with the daughter of ishmael his race would not be wholly pure, while jacob served patiently for fourteen years in order to obtain wives of the genuine blood. by this, and by the blessing of isaac, the pre-eminence of the younger israelites is established over the edomites; but the brothers parted in peace. esau received rich gifts. thus they separated on the ford of the jabbok at the sacred place of peniel. the one went to seir, the other to shechem in canaan. hence the edomites had no reason to cherish resentment against the sons of jacob. isaac and jacob abode in canaan at hebron, beersheba, and shechem. here isaac again dug out the wells which abraham's servants had previously made. the quarrel of his servants about the wells with the philistines of gerar is based on the severe battles afterwards fought between the philistines and israel. as abraham had set up pillars, so does isaac build an altar at beersheba,[ ] and jacob sets up a sacred stone at bethel. as abraham, according to the first text, buys the burying-place at hebron, so jacob, according to this same text, bought the field at shechem, where he had pitched his tent. thus isaac and jacob also have acquired possessions in canaan, and have rendered services to the land; they also have prepared the way for the rule of their descendants in canaan, and have consecrated the places at which the hebrews were destined to worship the gods of their fathers. the three patriarchs strictly carry out the commands of jehovah, from which their descendants swerved often and long. to the hebrews they are patterns of the purity of their race; their descendants did not always keep themselves free from mixture with the canaanites. but they are not only patterns of the fear of god, and piety, of correct faith and right dealing with the canaanites; they also exhibit to the hebrews the moral ideal of their conduct. abraham is distinguished by the virtues of faithfulness, of unselfishness, and friendliness to his brother's family, and, in return, the blessing of jehovah rests upon him. other virtues are brought into prominence by the tradition in jacob, the most immediate ancestor of the hebrews. if abraham knew how to raise the sword, and esau lived a wild hunter's life, jacob is a peaceable, faithful shepherd, who patiently endures heat and cold, who is ever wide awake, under whose hand the flocks increase, and whose care prevents the sheep and goats from casting their young. when jacob had served fourteen years for his wives, he still continued to serve six years for hire. among the hebrews the life of a hired servant is not considered a degradation; and continuance in service for the sake of hire is not looked down upon with contempt. jehovah rewards the industrious servant, the active workman. with his staff in his hand jacob passed over the euphrates; but he returned rich in flocks and goods, blessed with wife and child. in his pliancy, his quiet, peaceful trust in god, his wrestling for the blessing of god, jacob is the genuine warrior of god (israel), who is rescued, and gains the victory. beside these stand realistic traits peculiar to the east and the hebrew character. jacob is a cunning man, who knows how to invent clever devices. with the help of his mother he gains from his brother the blessing of the firstborn. at first laban outwits him, but in the end jacob's cunning is victorious. he knows how to pacify his brother by subjection. to bow before the mighty in order to save property and life has not always appeared dishonourable to the oriental. footnotes: [ ] numbers xxi. ; joshua x. ; genesis xlviii. , . in proof that genesis xlix. belongs to the time of the judges, cf. ewald, "gesch. israel's," , . [ ] gen. xxxvi. ; xlvi. ff.; exod. vi. ff.; numb. iii. - ; xxvii. . [ ] nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] numb. xxi. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. , . [ ] dillmann-knobel, "genesis," s. . [ ] gen. x. ; exod. xv. - ; numb. xxi. - ; cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . [ ] de wette-schrader, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," , . [ ] chap. iv., --c. xxviii, . [ ] de wette-schrader, _loc. cit._ s. ff. [ ] gen. xi. - . [ ] gen. xi. - . [ ] ezek. xxiii. ; deut. xxvi. ; joshua xxiv. . [ ] these are the numbers in the hebrew text; in the samaritan and septuagint they are altered.--nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . to the first text, chap, ii., - and iii., were added by the reviser; he inserted another genealogical table below the series of patriarchs in the original text from adam to noah (iv. ff), and this table does not run like the first: adam, seth, enos, kenan, mahalaleel, jared, enoch, methusalah, lamech, noah, but gives the following order: (enos) adam, cain, enoch, irad, mahajael, methusael, lamech. to lamech this narrator attached the origin of the shepherds, players on instruments, and workers in brass. bunsen ("Ægypten," , , ff), has drawn from this the conclusion that the hebrews had really only seven patriarchs before the flood. [ ] ptolemy. , . [ ] kiepert, "monatsberichte der berl. akademie," , s. . [ ] stephan. byz. s. v. from arrian; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] buttmann, "mythol." , ; procop. "de bell. p." , ; ewald, "gesch. der v. israel," , , ; bunsen, "Ægypten," , . [ ] the narrative of hagar (gen. xvi.) belongs to the first text; the additions to the revision; the account of the expulsion of ishmael (gen. xxi.) is from the ephraimitic text. [ ] gen. xiii. , , ; xix. . [ ] gen. xvii. [ ] gen. xiv. de wette-schrader thinks the derivation from a written source probable ("einleitung," s. ). [ ] gen. ix. - ; schrader, "studien und kritiken," s. ff. [ ] gen. xxv. . [ ] dillmann-knobel, "genesis," p. . [ ] gen. xxxv. - . [ ] gen. xxviii. , , - . [ ] gen. xxviii. - . [ ] exod. xxiv. , "and the sight of the glory of the lord was like devouring fire." exod. xix. , , "there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. and mount sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly." exod. xl. , "for the cloud of the lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night;" cf. numbers ix. , . deut. iv. , "on the day that the lord spake unto you in horeb out of the midst of the fire." job i. , "the fire of god is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them." numb. xvi. , "and there came out a fire from the lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense." lev. x. , "and there went out a fire from the lord and devoured them, and they died before the lord." exod. xxxiii. , "i will not go up in the midst of thee lest i consume thee in the way." exod. xxxiii. , "thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live." deut. v. , "who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived." lev. xvi. , "speak unto aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place ... that he die not." exod. xix. , "charge the people, lest they break through unto the lord to gaze, and many of them perish." exod. xx. , "let not god speak with us, lest we die." judges xiii. , "we shall surely die, because we have seen god." sam. vi. , "and he smote the men of beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the lord." [ ] gen. xxxii. - . [ ] exod. iv. ; xii. - ; xiii. , - ; xxxiv. ; xxx. - . from the sacrifice of isaac, the redemption of the firstborn and the paschal offering, the conclusion may be drawn that in the oldest times human sacrifices were not unknown to the hebrews. if such took place they were not offered in the same manner as the moloch-offerings of the canaanites. if jehovah appears in fire, the fire is not, to the hebrews, his essence, but only a form or mode of appearance. sacrifices like those offered to moloch were forbidden by the earliest text (levit. xviii. ; xx. ) under pain of death. the narrative of jephthah's daughter lays especial stress on the sanctity of the vow. of the other passages which come into consideration only one or two deal with sacrifices; the remainder have reference to executions. in numbers xxv. , we find, "take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the lord may be turned away from israel." jephthah vowed his daughter and sacrificed her, judges xi. , . "and samuel hewed agag in pieces before the lord in gilgal," samuel xv. . in samuel xxi. - , the gibeonites say, "give us seven men of his sons that we may hang them before the lord in gibeah. and they hanged them up on the mountain before jehovah." [ ] gen. xiv. ; deut. ii. , . [ ] gen. xxviii. - ; gen. xxxvi. , , calls the daughter of ishmael, basmath; cf. _supra_, pp. , . [ ] gen. xlviii. . on the places of worship at beersheba and the "heights of isaac" in amos, cf. a. bernstein, "ursprung der sagen," s. , . chapter viii. the hebrews in egypt. when the progenitors of the hebrews had come from the euphrates to canaan, and had taken up their abode there at hebron and shechem, when jacob and esau had parted in peace, and the latter had gone to mount seir, jacob, with all his sons, went to egypt. jacob dwelt at hebron--so runs the narrative--when he sent joseph, the son of rachel, to his elder brethren in shechem, to see if all was well with them and their flocks. but his brethren hated joseph, because his father loved him more than them; and when they saw him coming, they said: we will slay him. but the eldest, reuben, said: shed no blood, but throw him into the pit yonder. this they did; they took from joseph the coat which his father had made for him, and thrust him into the pit. then there came a caravan of ishmaelites from gilead; their camels carried spices, balsam, and myrrh to egypt. and his brethren took joseph again out of the pit, and sold him to the ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. then they slew a goat, and dipped the coat in the blood, and brought it to their father. jacob knew the coat, and cried: an evil beast has eaten my son, and torn his garments; and he would not be comforted, but said: in sorrow will i go down to the grave to my son. but joseph was carried away to egypt, and was bought by potiphar, an egyptian in the service of the king, and captain of the body-guard, from the ishmaelites. joseph found grace in the eyes of his master; and as everything which he undertook prospered, potiphar set him over his house. joseph was goodly to look upon, and the wife of his master cast her eyes upon him. but he resisted her, and when she caught him by his garment, he left his garment in her hand, and fled out. then she kept joseph's garment by her till potiphar returned, and said to him: the hebrew servant, whom thou has brought to us, came to me to mock me; and when i lifted up my voice, he fled away and left his garment. then potiphar was angry, and took joseph and cast him into the house of bondage, where were the prisoners of the king. and it came to pass that the chief butler and the chief baker sinned against the king, and pharaoh put them in prison. each of these had a dream in the night, and joseph interpreted the dreams; and it came to pass, as he foretold, that the chief baker was hanged, but the chief butler was restored by pharaoh to his office, on his birthday, so that, as before, he gave the cup into his hand. two years afterwards, the king of egypt saw in a dream seven fat kine come up out of the nile, and after them seven lean kine, and the lean kine ate up the fat. as none of the interpreters and wise men of egypt could interpret this dream, the chief butler bethought him of the young man of the tribe of the hebrews, who had interpreted his own dream in the prison, and told pharaoh what had befallen him. then pharaoh sent, and joseph was quickly brought out of prison, and shaved himself, changed his garments, and came before pharaoh and said: seven years of abundance will come in the land of egypt, and after them seven years of famine. let pharaoh collect food in the good years, and gather together corn, and keep it against the years of famine, that the land be not destroyed. then pharaoh took his ring from his hand and placed it on the hand of joseph, and clothed him in garments of linen, and placed a golden chain upon his neck, and said: i place thee over the whole land of egypt, only by my throne will i be above thee. and pharaoh called joseph zaphnath-paaneah, and gave him asenath, the daughter of the priest at on, to wife, and caused him to ride in his second chariot, and the people cried before him: bow the knee. when the seven years of abundance came, joseph collected food, and gathered up corn in the cities, without number, as the sand of the sea. and when the years of famine came, there was no bread in the land, and the people were compelled to buy bread from the granaries of pharaoh; and when their money failed, they brought their horses, cattle, sheep, and asses to buy food from joseph, and all the cattle in the land came to the king. and when they had no cattle left to buy corn, they gave their land and fields. thus joseph bought the land for pharaoh, and the country became pharaoh's, and joseph said: here is seed for you; sow your fields, and at the time of harvest, give the fifth to pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own for food, for yourselves and your children, and those in your houses. thus joseph laid on the land of the egyptians a tax of the fifth, until this day. the famine was sore in all lands, and in the land of canaan, and when jacob saw that there was corn in egypt, he said to his sons: go down and buy for us there, that we die not. then the brethren of joseph went down; but benjamin, whom rachel had borne after joseph, jacob sent not with them, for he feared that some evil might happen to him. joseph, who sold corn to the people, knew his brethren when they bowed themselves to the earth before him, and remembered how he once dreamed at hebron that he was binding sheaves with his brethren in the field, and his sheaf stood upright, and the sheaves of his brethren bowed before it; and that the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed before him. the interpreter was between them, and he dealt roughly with his brethren, and said: ye are spies, who are come to see the weakness of the land. no, my lord, they answered, we are true men, twelve brethren, the sons of one father in the land of canaan. the youngest has remained with our father, and one is not. then joseph took simeon, and bound him and said: take corn for the need of your house, and then bring your youngest brother with you, that i may see that ye are not spies; then will i give you back your brother, and ye shall deal in our land. when jacob heard this, he said to his sons: ye make me childless; joseph is no more, and simeon is no more, and benjamin ye would take from me. all these things are against me. but when the corn was eaten which they brought out of egypt, he sent his sons a second time to buy food; and benjamin was with them. judah had promised his father to be surety for him. joseph caused them to be brought into his house, and gave them water to wash their feet, and food for their asses, and restored simeon to them, and bade them eat at his table. and food was placed for the brethren by themselves, and for joseph and the egyptians by themselves. and joseph caused presents to be given to them, and benjamin's present was the largest; and they were drunken in his house. then joseph caused his steward to fill the sacks of the strangers with corn, and to replace the purchase money in each sack, and in benjamin's sack to place his own cup of silver. when the morning came, and the brethren went forth from the city with their sacks and their asses, joseph's steward overtook them not far from the city, and demanded the silver and gold which they had stolen, and found the cup in benjamin's sack. the brethren rent their garments and turned back, and cast themselves on the earth before joseph. but he said: with whomsoever the cup was found he shall be my servant; the rest may go in peace. then judah came forward and said: when we set forth our father said, if ye take benjamin also from me, and any evil happen to him, ye will bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. if then we go back to our father, thy servant, and the boy is not with us, he will die, for his soul hangs upon him; let me remain here in his place, and be thy servant, that i may not see the sorrow of my father. then joseph could no longer restrain himself: he caused the egyptians to go out from his presence, and lifted up his voice with tears, and said: i am joseph, your brother, whom ye sold. hasten, and go to my father, and tell him of all my glory. bid him come to me, and you shall dwell here with your possessions. but jacob did not believe the words of his sons, till he saw the chariots which pharaoh had sent to carry him to egypt. and jacob set out with his sons, their wives and their children, seventy souls, with his flocks, and his goods, to egypt; and joseph came to meet him in his chariot, and wept long on the neck of his father, and gave to his kindred food, and a dwelling-place in the land of goshen. when jacob's days came to a close, he called his son joseph, and said to him: thy two sons, born to thee in the land of egypt, shall be mine; ephraim and manasseh shall be to me as reuben and simeon. and he laid his right hand on ephraim, and named ephraim the younger before manasseh, and said: in thee shall israel bless and say: god make thee like ephraim and manasseh. and thus jacob blessed his other sons also, and to judah he said: the sceptre shall not depart from judah, nor the staff of the ruler from between his feet; he shall bind his ass to the vine, and the colt of his she-ass to the choice vine; he shall wash his garment in wine, and his robe in the blood of the grape; his eyes are red with wine, and his teeth white with milk. but joseph is the son of a fruit-tree by a well. the branches ran over the wall; the archers provoke and follow him, but his bow remains firm, and the strength of his hands is supple. so he blessed them, and said to joseph: bury me not in egypt; bury me with my fathers in the cave which abraham bought of ephron the hittite, where abraham, and sarah, and isaac, and rebekah are buried, and where i buried leah. then joseph fell on the face of his father and wept, and the egyptians mourned seventy days for jacob, and joseph carried the body with pharaoh's servants, and the elders of pharaoh's house and of all egypt, and with all his brethren, and the whole house of jacob to canaan, and buried him in the cave of machpelah. but joseph dwelt in egypt till his death, and he saw the sons of ephraim till the third generation, and the sons of machir, the son of manasseh, were born on his knees. joseph died years old, and they embalmed him, and placed him in a sepulchre in egypt. and all joseph's brethren died. but their sons were fruitful and increased, and the land was full of them. then there arose a new king in egypt who knew not joseph, and he said: the children of israel are mighty; we shall be wise to prevent their increase, that they join not with our enemies if a war arise. and the egyptians put taskmasters over the children of israel, in order to oppress them with burdens. the children of israel were compelled to perform heavy tasks in the field, and taskwork in clay and bricks; and they built for pharaoh the treasure cities of pithom and ramses, and pharaoh commanded all his people to throw into the nile all the male children born to the israelites, but to let the daughters live. it is no longer possible to discover what motives were given in the judæan text for the settlement of jacob and his sons in egypt. in it the land thus apportioned to the hebrews is not called goshen, but ramses. yet it is clear that even in that account it was joseph who procured a habitation and possessions for his father and brethren in egypt.[ ] the reasons given for the change in the narrative, as it now stands, are taken from the ephraimitic text, which describes in the most lively manner, the virtues and glory of the ancestor of this tribe. the prophetic revision only added a few details, and sharpened a few of the traits. the second text represented joseph as falling into the hands of midianite merchants, the revision added ishmaelites. according to the second text, joseph was a servant in the house of potiphar, in whose house as captain of the body-guard the butler and baker of pharaoh were imprisoned, and there joseph interpreted their dreams. the revision inserts the temptation of joseph by potiphar's wife, and makes him, owing to her false accusation, a fellow-prisoner of the butler and baker.[ ] thus it was able to exalt joseph, not from servitude only, but from the misery of imprisonment to the steps of the throne. the ethical traits of the narrative, the national and religious views underlying it, are obvious. the evil of which his brothers are guilty towards joseph, without any offence on his part, he bears with submission. in the service of the egyptian he shows himself a faithful slave; he withstands the most enticing temptation. in return for this faithful honesty he is compelled again to suffer innocently. after long endurance he receives the highest exaltation; from prison he is summoned to be ruler of the land, and second only to pharaoh. as he had been a faithful steward to potiphar in small things, he is now a faithful servant to pharaoh in great things; all the events, which he correctly foresaw, he knew how to turn to the advantage of his master. when he has shown his brothers, in order to touch their consciences for the evil they had done to him, how men may innocently fall into suspicion, punishment, and misfortune, he generously pardons them. in this pardon, this rescue of the whole tribe by the man whom they had attempted to destroy, rests the true punishment laid upon the brothers. it is the wonderful guidance of jehovah which assists the innocent out of misery and distress, which turns the evil, which the brothers had committed against joseph, in such a direction that in the grievous years of famine the race of jacob finds a helper and protector near the throne of egypt, who is able to give food and a habitation to that tribe, and allot to their flocks the magnificent pastures of the land of goshen. the carrying of the corpse of jacob to hebron is intended to signify that canaan, and not egypt, was to be the lasting abode of the posterity of jacob. at the same time the tradition of the hebrews shows the benefits which a man of their race conferred upon the egyptians in a time of evil; it marks how egypt, owing to his foresight, was saved from destruction, in order at the same time to show how little the egyptians regarded these benefits, and how great is the contrast presented by their subsequent conduct towards the hebrews. the description of egypt corresponds exactly to the circumstances of the land as we have found them before. both the author of the ephraimitic text and the reviser were well acquainted with the life and customs of egypt. we have found captains of the body guard in the retinue of pharaoh (p. ), a chief baker is also to be seen on the monuments, and although we cannot point to any butler of the king upon them, we know that in egypt wine was not wanting at the table of pharaoh, any more than among his workmen.[ ] in the whole of the east, and demonstrably in egypt, great importance was attached to dreams.[ ] by knowing how to explain their meaning more correctly than the wise men and interpreters of egypt--_i.e._ than the prophets, and temple-scribes of the egyptian priesthood[ ]--joseph is liberated from prison, and raised to the position of grand vizier. the robes of byssus, in which joseph is now clad, we have found to be the prescribed dress of the priests (p. ), and if pharaoh puts a golden chain round his neck, we have already met with an instance of this kind of distinction (p. ). that the pharaohs regarded themselves as proprietors of the soil, that they collected a land-tax, and that the fields would require to be measured in order to collect this tax, has been already stated (p. ). this tax, so surprising to them, the hebrews explained by assuming that the egyptians sold their plots to joseph in the time of the famine, which were then given back to the proprietors in return for a fifth of the yearly produce. hereby the services of joseph to the throne are placed in the clearest light. we saw above that it was the first object of pharaoh and his ministers to provide egypt with life and sustenance (pp. , ). joseph's wisdom and providence put pharaoh in a position to attain this object, even in the years of the famine. the names also quoted in the hebrew narrative seem to correspond to the ancient egyptian. the name potiphar may be explained by petphra, _i.e._ "dedicated to ra," or by puti-phra, _i.e._ "given by ra." the name of the daughter of the priest at on (heliopolis), asenath, whom joseph took to wife, can be explained by as-neith, and the egyptian name of joseph, zaphnath-paaneah, by zpentpouch, _i.e._ "creator of life" (in the time of famine).[ ] setting aside these points in the narrative, what historical value can be given to the tradition that the children of jacob went from the south of canaan to the east of egypt, that they remained there years, according to the older text, and in this period increased into a mighty people?[ ] the district given to the children of jacob for their abode lies, as the tradition plainly shows, in the lower country east of the nile, beyond the eastern or tanitic mouth. the name goshen, given in the ephraimitic text, appears to correspond to keshem, the name of a province in lower egypt.[ ] the chain of mountains running on the east of the nile, sinks down between the tanitic arm and the north-west corner of the arabian gulf, and on the slopes nearer the river presents a flat extent of pasture land. in egypt a tribe of shepherds could have no share in the regular system of cultivation, and the fixed order of egyptian life; a district suitable for the maintenance of their flocks would be allotted to them, and nothing more. on the north of this district, the nearest of the great cities of egypt was tanis (zoan), on the south, heliopolis (on, anu), with which we have become acquainted as a great centre of religion, and the seat of the worship of the sun god ra, and the god of life bennu-osiris (pp. , ). hence with perfect consistency, the hebrew tradition narrates that the daughter of a priest of heliopolis was given to joseph to wife. but what could induce the children of jacob to go to egypt, or the egyptians to give them a pasture-land on their north-eastern border? we arrived above at the conclusion that the tribe of jacob was a branch of the edomites, whose dwelling-place is fixed by tradition in the mountains between the north-east point of the arabian gulf and the dead sea, where in fact we find them in historical times. this tribe, therefore, both at the time when in union with the edomites it passed along the eastern and southern borders of canaan, and after separating from the edomites--who may have already taken mount seir from the horites, or have pastured their flocks in the vicinity--was at no great distance from egypt. when divided from the edomites, the fear of the stronger part of the tribe from which they had separated, and the desire to find more fruitful pastures in the neighbourhood of the nile, or want of corn, as the tradition says, might have induced the sons of jacob to leave the borders of canaan for the borders of egypt. the tribes, or families of shepherds, who pastured their flocks in the neighbourhood of canaan, may have been accustomed to purchase corn when their own cultivation was insufficient, from the corn-growers in canaan. a blight in canaan would therefore compel them to turn to the abundance of corn in egypt. and to a shepherd tribe, which sought her protection, and submitted voluntarily to her rule, egypt would be the more inclined to give up the pastures beyond the nile, if this tribe was in unfriendly or hostile relations to the semitic tribes in the neighbourhood. if we attempt to fix the date at which the tribe of jacob may have exchanged the pastures on the border of canaan for the more fruitful regions on the tanitic arm of the nile, it soon becomes clear that the accounts of the hebrews cannot be maintained. the older text puts years between the time when abraham entered canaan and the arrival of the sons of jacob into egypt, and exactly twice this amount between their arrival in and exodus from egypt. the fixed proportion between the two numbers, and the further circumstance that tradition can only mention a few generations of the sons of jacob,[ ] leads to the conclusion that those numbers do not spring from any record or actual remembrance, but have been invented upon reflection. the date of the exodus also is fixed by a round sum; from the exodus to the building of the temple years are said to have elapsed.[ ] the hebrews reckoned years to the generation; hence they put twelve generations between the exodus and the building of the temple, and fixed the interval on this computation; yet their scriptures could only mention by name nine or ten generations in this period.[ ] hence the dates b.c., and b.c., which are deduced from the older text for the entrance of abraham into canaan, and of jacob into egypt, if the beginning of the building of the temple is fixed according to traditional assumption in the year b.c., must be given up, as well as the year b.c. for the entrance of abraham into canaan, and the year b.c. for the settlement of jacob in egypt, which results from the fixing the beginning of the building of the temple in the year b.c. the only fact in the ancient tradition which admits of an approximate date is the campaign of kudur-lagamer of elam, mentioned in the ephraimitic text. this campaign we ventured to place about the year b.c. genesis represents him as defeating the nations on the east and south of canaan, and the horites on mount seir, while at the separation of esau and jacob mount seir is no longer the abode of the horites, but of the tribe of esau. but we must contest the claim of tradition to bring the history of abraham into connection with this campaign of the elamites to the west. on the other hand we may regard it as settled that the tribe of jacob did not arrive in egypt at the time when the valley of the nile was under the dominion of the hyksos, _i.e._ in the period from b.c. to b.c., which we have assumed for this dominion, and that during this time it did not dwell in egypt. the tradition of the hebrews was not likely to forget that their ancestors came to the nile, not as fugitives, but as kinsmen of the ruler of egypt, or that their race had once shared in the rule over egypt, and thus they might have dropped the slavery and imprisonment, and the position of joseph in pharaoh's service. and if these grounds are not held to be sufficient--if the tribe of jacob was in egypt under the dominion of the hyksos, it must have been involved in their overthrow and expulsion. thus it may be assumed as proved that the admission of the sons of jacob into egypt did not take place till after the complete expulsion of the hyksos, _i.e._ till tuthmosis iii. had forced the shepherds to leave the region to which they were at last confined, _i.e._ till after the year b.c. and it can hardly have taken place immediately after this event. we cannot suppose any inclination among the egyptians, immediately after the expulsion of foreign shepherd tribes, to admit shepherds of the same nationality to the nile. but when tuthmosis iii. had carried his weapons as far as the euphrates, and received yearly tribute from the syrians, the cheta, and the retennu, there would be no scruples felt about allotting pastures on the edge of the desert to an inconsiderable shepherd tribe. hence the settlement of the sons of jacob in goshen may be placed about the middle of the sixteenth century b.c. the tradition of the hebrews informed us that their ancestors were compelled to build the two treasure-cities pithom and ramses for pharaoh. this statement is in the ephraimitic text, while the judæan text calls the land given to the hebrews ramses.[ ] the ruins of pithom and of ramses we found on the canal which sethos i. and ramses ii. intended to carry from the nile at bubastis into the arabian gulf, and which was completed as far as the lake of crocodiles (p. ). the depression of the wadi tumilat, which the canal followed, crosses the land of goshen. cities could not be founded here till the canal from the nile had provided water in sufficient quantity. a city of the name of pa-rameses, _i.e._ abode of ramses, could only be founded by a prince of that name. being situated on the canal of ramses ii. and further to the east than pithom, the city could only have been built by the prince whose reign we have placed from b.c. to b.c. as a fact his image is found here on a block of granite in the ruins between the gods ra and tum, and the bricks in the remains of the outer walls are mixed with cut straw, the use of which in moulding the bricks for these buildings is mentioned by the revision.[ ] this city of ramses must have been of considerable importance for the district allotted to the hebrews, as the whole region was called after it. hence the sons of jacob were in the land of goshen in the reign of ramses ii. the tradition allows them to remain unmolested in egypt for a long time--"not till the land was full of them," so runs the older text, without ascribing any other motive, "did the egyptians force the children of israel to work in clay and brick, and in the fields."[ ] in the former class of works comes the building of these two cities. hence the israelites must have reached goshen before the time of ramses ii. the desired evidence of the presence of the children of jacob in egypt could be obtained from egyptian writings and monuments if it were certain that a name used in them referred to the hebrews. on a hieratic papyrus (now at leyden) an officer intreats his superiors to give him corn "for the soldiers and the apuriuu who drag stones to the great fortress of the house of ramses, beloved of ammon," _i.e._ king ramses ii.[ ] in other places in the same papyrus the name occurs as apruu. another papyrus observes under date of ramses iii. (p. )--" apruu at this place" _i.e._ at heliopolis.[ ] in an inscription in the quarries at hamamat it is said that apuriu or apriu are mentioned as workmen.[ ] but is the egyptian name of the hebrews really apru or apuriu? the wife of potiphar, it is true, calls joseph "the hebrew servant" (p. ); but did the sons of jacob really bear the name of hebrews--_i.e._ men of the other side--when they came to egypt? does not the meaning of the name in the places quoted seem rather to be of a general kind, than to denote any one particular stock? the kings sethos i. and ramses ii. ( - b.c.) were engaged in battle, as we have seen, with the schasu, _i.e._ the shepherd tribes between egypt and canaan, with the hittites, who possessed the south of canaan, and other tribes of syria (p. ). even though they obtained successes over these nations, and sethos i. once forced his way to the euphrates, and ramses ii. as far as the coasts of the phenicians, yet the schasu, like the cheta, continued to be dangerous enemies of egypt. if this were not so, why should sethos have hit upon the plan of protecting the eastern frontier from pelusium to heliopolis, by a vast fortification? what induced ramses, after several campaigns in syria, to conclude a peace with the cheta in the year _b.c._ (p. ), in which the advantage was not with egypt? ramses iii. had again to fight with the schasu, the hittites, the amorites, and the philistines (p. ). but if egypt had to take measures to keep off the shepherds and the syrians, they would hardly suffer doubtful subjects of the same nation within their own borders; in the peace just mentioned it was expressly stipulated that neither party should receive the subjects coming to him from the other side (p. ). under such circumstances it was necessary to take measures that the hebrews should "not join with the enemies," as the second text says.[ ] the attempt had to be made to settle and assimilate them, and make them egyptians. the fortifications from pelusium to heliopolis included just the region allotted to the hebrews. these works required hands to build them. there was also the project of the canal from the nile to the arabian gulf. as the fortification surrounded goshen, so the canal ran athwart it, from bubastis to the lake of crocodiles. if this canal, as well as the fortifications, required a great number of hands--and naturally those who were nearest would be first employed--the water brought by the canal made it possible to change the pastures along the canal into arable land, and to build cities upon it. from all this it is not improbable that the oppression of which the hebrews speak commenced under the reign of sethos i. continued under ramses ii, and was increased by the building of those two cities. the tradition of the hebrews maintains that the hebrew nation arose in egypt; in that country the family became a nation. the egyptians could endure a tribe of shepherds on their borders, but not a powerful nation. with seventy souls, according to the first text, jacob came into egypt, and at the end of their sojourn the hebrews, according to the same authority, had increased to , men, besides women and children.[ ] supposing the seventy to be a sacred number, and reckoning into the total "a number of strangers," who according to the revision joined the hebrews, it is still quite impossible, even if the tribe which, as we assume, exchanged the pastures of the south of canaan for those on the nile about the middle of the sixteenth century numbered its thousands at the time of the change, that they should have increased to , full-grown men, _i.e._ to more than two millions of souls, within the given period of something less than the years, to which the length of their settlement on the nile will be shown to be limited. even if we assume that the strangers made up a third of the whole total, this is impossible. at a much later time the number of the fighting men among the hebrews can scarcely be reckoned higher than from two to three hundred thousand. even if we regard the total as including the whole population, and not confined to the fighting men, it still appears very high. granting, too, that an enumeration was not in itself impossible (the hebrews had long had before them the pattern of the enumerations in egypt), yet a closer examination shows, that the total is founded upon an average of , souls for each of the twelve tribes. this total therefore must be given up as a mere attempt to glorify the ancient times.[ ] the events which follow show that the israelites did really increase from a tribe to a nation under the protection of egypt, and could put in the field from fifty to sixty thousand warriors,--a growth and increase which in their old pastures, the proximity of the far more powerful edomites, hittites, midianites, and amalekites, could hardly have allowed sufficient space. the twelve tribes, into which the nation of the hebrews was divided, were carried back to the sons of jacob, who were thought to be their ancestors. this fact has obviously influenced the number and position of these sons in the tradition. the tribes which claimed to be the oldest must have sprung from the oldest sons of jacob; those who boasted of the purest descent must have for their progenitors sons born in lawful marriage; those whose blood was less pure were derived from sons born to jacob by the handmaids of his wives. we found above (p. ) that leah, sprung from the true blood of the fathers, while yet in haran, had borne reuben, simeon, levi, judah, issachar, and zebulon. the oldest families of the hebrews were named after reuben. these, "the sons of reuben," were "brave men who carried the sword and the shield, and drew the bow, and were skilful in war;"[ ] but even in later times they still pursued the old pastoral mode of life in the mountain glades on the east of jordan, and hence had no important influence on the development of the nation. this remarkable insignificance of the oldest tribe is accounted for in the revision by a sin of the ancestor, who lay with bilhah, his father's handmaid.[ ] according to the same prophetic authority, simeon and levi also had done an unclean deed, and judah had once been equally guilty.[ ] it is for his account of judah only that we must make this narrator entirely responsible. for the deeds of reuben, simeon, and levi, he has merely developed hints contained in the "blessings of jacob," a poem of the time of the judges, which he found existing in the ephraimitic text.[ ] that poem says expressly that reuben, though the firstborn, was not to have the pre-eminence; and simeon and levi, "because in their anger they slew a man, and in their passion lamed a bull," were to be scattered in israel, _i.e._ were to have no district specially their own. in contrast to the tribes of reuben, simeon, and levi, this poem celebrated the tribe of joseph--under which name the tribes of ephraim and manasseh were included--whose praise has been already given, and it brings into prominence the tribe of judah. the strength of the nation rested on the tribes of ephraim and judah; they had done the best service at the conquest of canaan, and were the foremost in defending the land. the tribe of ephraim was first in battle, and it retained this superiority for centuries. the tribe was not sprung from the oldest, but from the most beloved son of jacob, the late-born son of rachel. ephraim was the younger of the two sons born to joseph by the egyptian woman, but jacob had placed his right hand on the head of the younger son, and said, "by thee shall israel bless."[ ] such is the account of the ephraimitic text. in the judæan jacob is made to say, "ephraim and manasseh shall be as my two firstborn."[ ] the fathers of the tribes of dan, naphtali, gad, and asher were considered to have been born to jacob by his handmaids. footnotes: [ ] nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. ff. [ ] ebers, "durch gosen," s. ; "Ægypt. und die bücher moses," s. , ff. [ ] ebers, "Ægypt. und die bücher moses," s. , . [ ] above p. ; ebers, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] lepsius, "chronol." s. ; ebers, "Ægypten und die bücher moses," s. ; lauth, "moses," s. . [ ] exod. xii. . [ ] ebers, "durch gosen," s. ff. [ ] generally only two or three. the longest genealogy is that of joshua: ephraim, beriah, rephah, telah, tahan, laadan, ammihud, elishama, nun ( chron. vii. ff; cf. numb. xxvi. ; vii. ; x. ), from which, if it were to be regarded as certain (ewald, "gesch. israel's," , , thinks that it is certain), it would follow that the hebrews were over years in egypt, assuming years as the length of a generation. [ ] kings vi. . [ ] lepsius, "chronolog." s. . on the possible twelve representatives of those twelve generations, nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] exod. i. ; gen. xlvii. . [ ] exod. v. - . [ ] exod. i. , , . [ ] chabas, "mélang. égypt." pp. , ff. that _lutu_ means "egyptians," as ebers ("Ægypt." s. ) thinks, is by no means certain. [ ] ebers, "durch gosen." p. . [ ] lauth, "moses," s. . [ ] exod. i. . [ ] exod. xii. . numb. i. . [ ] "with , men, besides the children," exod. xii. , . numbers i. - , enumerates , fighting men, who could take the field, in the total sum, and in the totals for the several tribes, to which must be added , male levites, men and boys, numb. iii. . the question seems to me to be settled by nöldeke ("untersuchungen," s. ). [ ] chron. vi. . [ ] above, p. ; gen. xxxv. . [ ] gen. xxxiv. , - , xxxviii. [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. , n. . [ ] gen. xlviii, . [ ] gen. xlviii. ; above, p. . chapter ix. the liberation of the hebrews. the oppression which, according to the pentateuch, the egyptians exercised upon the sons of jacob when settled in the land of goshen, by field-labour and tasks of building, may be regarded as a historical fact. it is proved by the position of egypt and her relations to her neighbours on the north-east in the fourteenth century b.c., and it agrees with the arrangements and aims entertained and carried out in this border-land by sethos i. and ramses ii. it must have been a grievous burden for the hebrews to pass from the easy life of shepherds to the work of agriculture, and abandon the old life with their flocks. in addition there were the heavy tasks of the fortifications, the canal, and the new cities. were they to give up the memory of their fathers, and their attachment to their customary mode of life, in order to perform taskwork for the egyptians and become egyptians? was it possible to escape this grievous oppression? how could they be freed from the mighty power of the pharaohs? could the hebrews, a peaceful nation and without practice in war, venture to resist the numerous, disciplined, and drilled armies of egypt? the hebrew tradition gives the following account of the liberation of their forefathers, connecting it with the supposed command of pharaoh to throw into the nile all the male children born to the israelites, and to allow the daughters only to live. the son of levi, the son of jacob, was kahath, and kahath's son was amram. amram had a son born to him by his wife jochebed. when jochebed saw that the boy was fair, she hid him for three months; and when she could hide him no longer, she took an ark of reeds and daubed it with resin and pitch, and placed the boy in it, and put the ark in the reeds on the bank of the nile, and the boy's sister was placed near to see what would come to pass. then pharaoh's daughter came with her maidens to bathe in the river. she saw the ark, and caused it to be brought to her, and when she opened it the boy wept. it is one of the children of the hebrews, she said, and had pity on it. then the sister came and offered to find a nursing-woman from among the hebrews, and brought her mother. when the child grew up, pharaoh's daughter took him for her son, and called him moses. one day moses went out to his brethren and saw their burdens, and when an egyptian smote a hebrew, and moses perceived that no one was at hand, he slew the egyptian, and fled before pharaoh into the land of midian. and as he rested at a well, the seven daughters of jethro came to water the sheep of their father, but the other shepherd prevented them, and drove them away. then moses came to their help, and watered their sheep, and their father jethro took him in, and moses found favour in his eyes, and took zipporah, one of his daughters, to wife, and kept jethro's sheep. after many days the king of egypt died, and the sons of israel sighed by reason of their burdens; and god heard their complaint, and thought of his covenant with abraham, isaac, and jacob. then moses, as he was keeping the flocks of jethro, and led them behind the desert, and came to mount horeb, saw a bush burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. and moses approached, and jehovah spoke to him out of the bush, and said: i am the god of abraham, isaac, and jacob; come not near; put thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground. then moses veiled his face, for he was afraid to look upon god. then jehovah said: i have seen the misery of my people in egypt, and i will deliver them. thou shalt go to pharaoh and lead my people away to canaan, to a land flowing with milk and honey. moses answered: o my lord, i am not a man of words; i cannot speak to the children of israel, for i am dull of speech and heavy of tongue. go, said jehovah, i will be with thy lips, and will teach thee what to say; and aaron thy brother, the priest, can speak. then moses took his wife and his sons and put them upon the ass, and turned back to egypt, and aaron his elder brother met him in the desert. moses told him the commands of jehovah, and they gathered the elders of israel together, and the people believed their words. then moses and aaron came into the presence of the king of egypt, and said: let us go with our people three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice to our god jehovah, that he may not visit us with the pestilence or the sword. the king answered: would ye free the people from their tasks? go to your work. and he ordered the taskmasters and the overseers to increase the work of the israelites, and make their service heavier, and to give them no more straw for their bricks, so that they might be compelled to gather straw for themselves. but the daily tale of bricks remained the same, and the chiefs of the israelites were beaten because they could not make up the sum. then moses and aaron went again to pharaoh, and aaron threw down his rod before the king, and lo! it became a serpent. then the wise men and magicians of egypt cast their rods down, and they also became serpents, but aaron's serpent consumed the rest. and aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of egypt, and the water in the stream was turned into blood, and the fish died, and the water became foul and noisome. but the magicians of egypt did the same by their art. then aaron stretched out his hand over the stream, and the frogs came up over the fields, into the houses, the chambers, the beds, the ovens and kneading-troughs. then pharaoh called moses and aaron to take away the frogs from him and his land; he was willing to let them go. and the frogs died away out of the houses, the courts, and the fields. but when pharaoh was delivered he hardened his heart, and would not let the hebrews go. then aaron turned the dust of the earth into flies, and moses and aaron took at jehovah's bidding ashes of the oven and sprinkled them in the air, and the dust of the ashes became boils and blains, breaking out on man and beast, on the magicians, and all the egyptians. and moses stretched out his hand to heaven, and jehovah caused it to thunder and hail, and fire came down, and the hail smote all that was in the field, man and beast, and all the herbs of the field; and all the trees were destroyed; only in the land of goshen there was no hail. and moses stretched out his hand over all egypt, and jehovah brought the east wind, and in the morning the east wind brought swarms of locusts, and they ate up all that the hail had left in the field: there was nothing green in the field and in the trees. and moses stretched his hand towards heaven, and there was a thick darkness in the land of egypt for three days. and now the king was willing to let israel go, but their flocks and herds must remain behind. moses answered that not a single hoof should remain, and went in wrath from the presence of pharaoh. but to the israelites he said: at midnight jehovah will go forth and smite all the firstborn of egypt, from the firstborn of pharaoh to the firstborn of the woman behind the mill, and all the firstborn of cattle. but they were to slay a yearling lamb without blemish for each household, and to eat it roast, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. with loins girded, with shoes on their feet, and staff in hand, they were to keep the feast. with the blood of the lamb they were to strike the door-posts and the lintel of their houses, that jehovah might see the blood and pass by their doors. in the morning there was not a house of the egyptians in which there was not one dead. there was a great cry in egypt, and the king called moses and aaron and said: depart with your people, your flocks, and your herds. then the children of israel set forth from ramses to succoth-- , men on foot, besides children. and with them went a number of strangers, and many flocks and herds. and they went from succoth, and encamped at etham, on the edge of the desert; and from etham they went to pihahiroth, and encamped over against baalzephon. but pharaoh was grieved that he had let the people go from their service; he pursued them with all his chariots, his horsemen, and his army, and found them encamped on the sea at pihahiroth, over against baalzephon. but moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind through the whole night, and made the sea into dry land, and the israelites passed through the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall upon their right hand and a wall upon their left. and the egyptians pursued and came after them with their chariots and their horsemen into the sea. then moses again stretched out his hand, and the sea returned towards morning into its bed, and covered the chariots and the horsemen of pharaoh, so that not one of them was left. and moses and the children of israel sang: i will sing of jehovah, for he is glorious; the horses and chariots he whelms in the sea; jehovah, the god of my father, will i praise. jehovah is a man of war; thy right hand, o jehovah, shatters the enemy. the chariots of pharaoh and his might he threw into the sea; his chosen charioteers were drowned in the reed-sea. the floods covered them; like stones they sank in the pit. at the breath of thy nostrils the waters rose in a heap; the floods stood like a bank; the floods ran in the midst of the sea. the enemy said: i will pursue, and overtake, and divide the spoil; i will satisfy my lust upon them; i will draw my sword, and destroy them with my hand. thou didst blow with thy mouth, o jehovah, and the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters. who among the gods is like unto thee, jehovah?[ ] the older text narrated in a simple manner, that the hebrews multiplied greatly in egypt, and the egyptians vexed them with heavy burdens, and god heard their cry, and thought of his covenant with abraham, isaac, and jacob. then god spoke to moses: he would take israel for his people, and lead them out of egypt, and moses spoke to the children of israel, but they did not listen to him. then the command came to moses to speak to pharaoh, and aaron was to speak for him. afterwards came the plagues (to which the revision has added the hail, the locusts, and the darkness),[ ] the slaying of the firstborn, the march through the sea as described.[ ] the text of the tribes of joseph is far better instructed, or, at any rate, far more detailed in its account of moses, no less than in that of joseph. to it belongs the command of pharaoh to slay the children of the hebrews, the rescue of moses, the history of his youth, his flight into the desert, his connection with jethro, the appearance of god on sinai, and certain traits in the dealings with pharaoh, and the direct action of god in the march through the sea and the desert. of both these narratives the tendency is the same, it is only more strongly marked and broadly realised in the second. the god of the hebrews has pity on the sufferings of his people. he provides and arouses their leader. to him and to aaron he imparts the power of working miracles which the magicians of egypt can only imitate up to a certain point. yet the power of working miracles given to moses and aaron is not enough to overcome pharaoh. the decisive stroke is given by jehovah himself, inasmuch as he smites the firstborn among the egyptians of man and beast. and when pharaoh hastens after the hebrews jehovah causes the sea to retire before them, and finally buries pharaoh and his host under the returning waves. thus has jehovah led his people out of egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. the narrative of the slaying of the firstborn of the egyptians and the mode in which the hebrews protected themselves from the visitation are borrowed from the hebrew ritual. we saw above that the firstlings of the fruits, and "all that first opens the womb, man or beast," belonged to the god of the hebrews.[ ] this firstborn must be sacrificed, or ransomed by a vicarious sacrifice. in the spring the sacrifice of the firstfruits was offered from an ancient period, and unleavened bread eaten, as was usual with shepherds.[ ] the spring, the time when nature has borne anew, was also the right time to offer the sacrifice for the redemption of the house. the head of the family at the spring festival slew a lamb without breaking any bone, and with the blood he smeared the lintel and door-posts. hence the offering in the spring was also the festival of redemption and purification--the passover, the _passah_ of jehovah, who had spared the house for the lamb. to this old spring sacrifice, which was celebrated in the month nisan, the first month of the hebrew year (it was the year of the babylonians), at the time of the full moon, when the sun was in the ram, the first text has already attached a historical background and meaning. it was in the night following this sacrifice that the exodus from egypt took place. the unleavened bread of the ancient custom was explained by the haste of the exodus; and as signs of the readiness to go forth, the girdle round the loins, the shoes upon the feet, and the staff in the hand were added to the old ritual; the smearing of the lintel with the blood was done in order that the angel of jehovah might distinguish the doors of the israelites from those of the egyptians. tradition turned the spring festival and sacrifice into a feast of thanksgiving for the protection of the firstborn of the israelites while jehovah carried off those of the egyptians, a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the nation out of egypt. the lofty calling of the man whom jehovah summoned to be the instrument of the deliverance is shown in the ephraimitic text by the marvellous fortune which attended him even in his earliest years. the daughter of pharaoh himself, disregarding her father's commands, rescues the boy, brings him up, takes him for her son, and gives the name to the man who is destined to liberate the hebrews and bring so much misfortune upon egypt. amid the kindness shown to him by the egyptians moses does not forget the people to whom he belongs. the sight of the oppressions which his people suffer kindles his heart. a rash action, by which he avenges the ill-treatment of a hebrew, compels him to fly into the desert. here he founds a family by taking a midianitish woman, a daughter of the desert, to wife. in the second text the father of his wife is called jethro, in the revision reuel.[ ] when he has begotten sons here, and is advanced in years, his mission is revealed to him on the mountain of god. in both texts he hesitates to undertake it, but finally carries it resolutely to the end. as in the narrative of joseph, so here, all that is said of egypt agrees with what we know from other sources of that country. as the hebrews were settled to the east of the tanitic arm of the nile, the locality of the exposure in the meaning of the ephraimitic text must be sought in the neighbourhood of tanis. we saw above that ramses ii. erected considerable buildings in this district (p. ). the name moses, which the king's daughter is said to have given to the rescued boy, may be connected without violence with the egyptian messu, _i.e._ the child. the plagues too which tradition represents as coming upon egypt are suited to the nature of the land. even now the water of the nile becomes at times red and disagreeable in smell; often after the inundation swarms of frogs cover the fields, and at the same time myriads of marsh-gnats and flies rise out of the mud, and locusts from time to time in thick devastating swarms cover the fields in the valley of the nile.[ ] eruptions of the skin also occur after the inundation, and sometimes grow into large boils. storms of hail, though not entirely unknown, are yet extremely rare in egypt, and storms from the south-west, which in the spring blow over the great desert, are one of the worst plagues in egypt; they bring with them violent heat and thick dust, which darkens the sky. if we attempt to ascertain the historical value of these narratives, it follows from the helpless position of the hebrews in regard to the egyptians which we have already described, that the idea of rescuing them from the dominion of egypt could only have been entertained by a resolute spirit, and the undertaking begun by a leader who was prepared to make the highest venture in order to preserve the highest prize--nationality and religion. among the hebrews there could be no other thought but to leave the borders of egypt in order to resume the old mode of life in the deserts of syria, and there to worship their old god in the old manner. in harmony with the situation the ephraimitic text represents the resolution to make an exodus as growing up after long hesitation and grave thought in the soul of a man who, owing to the oppression of his people, had come into the sharpest conflict with egypt, had fled into the desert in order to save his life, and there had again seen and lived the free life of the kindred tribes. if the hebrews intended to leave egypt it was necessary to know certainly that the tribes of the desert, or at least a part, would receive them, and that they would not one and all oppose them. by combination with the midianites the conditions most needed for the exodus could be supplied. if of the midianites and the amalekites, the desert tribes who dwelt nearest to egypt, the first were gained for the hebrews, and from them support, assistance, and alliance in repulsing an egyptian attack might be expected, then it was possible to hope for success in the venture. the ephraimitic text represents the hebrews as choosing that moment for carrying out the exodus in which there was a change of the succession in egypt, and it is obvious that a change of this kind, the commencement of a new and perhaps contested dominion, secured better prospects for the hebrews than an established rule when obedience was unchallenged. according to the older text the israelites gathered together near the city of ramses (abu kesheb) for the exodus. we have seen that this city was built on the canal, nearly in the middle of the district allotted to the hebrews; it was therefore the natural place for meeting. from this the israelites took a southern direction towards the north-west point of the arabian gulf, which is known to the hebrews as the reed-sea. this was the shortest way of reaching the deserts of the peninsula of sinai and the pastures of the midianites, and on this line the hebrews had the bitter lakes at hand, from which could be obtained what water was absolutely necessary. when they had passed succoth, etham, pihahiroth, and had reached the corner of the reed-sea, as the first text describes, the pursuit overtook them, which pharaoh had begun with a hastily-collected force. southward of the extreme point of the reed-sea, in the neighbourhood of suez, there are firths which can be crossed at the ebb, especially if a strong north-east wind drives back the waves to the south-west. by a strong east wind, blowing through the whole night, jehovah caused the sea to retire, and turned it into dry land; and the water became a wall on the right hand and the left, as we learnt from the oldest account. the extreme point of the reed-sea, _i.e._ the sea on the left of the firth, is too deep to be crossed, on the right the wind and the ebb kept the waters back.[ ] thus it was not in itself impossible that the hebrews reached the other shore, _i.e._ the peninsula of sinai, by passing through the firth and cutting off the extreme point of the sea; and not impossible that the egyptian army in their eagerness to overtake the hebrews, or afraid that the marshes at the head of the sea would detain them so long that they could not come up with them before the desert made pursuit very difficult, attempted to cross the sea when the water had already returned. the narrative is supported to some extent by the ancient song of victory (p. ). this song, it is true, cannot be proved to belong to that period, but it is nevertheless of very ancient origin.[ ] the account which the egyptians and manetho give of the exodus of the hebrews has been already related. according to it the hebrews are impure and leprous egyptians whom pharaoh had banished to the quarries east of the nile, and made to work there, like other egyptians employed in that task. that the hebrews are egyptians, and leprous egyptians, in the egyptian tradition, need excite no astonishment; white leprosy was a disease from which the israelites frequently suffered. we cannot contest the number of the lepers, which manetho puts at , , though we have already seen that the hebrews at the time of the exodus could hardly have approached this number of men capable of work. the hebrew tradition in both texts represents the tribes of ephraim and manasseh, the descendants of joseph and an egyptian woman, as growing up during the settlement in egypt; the revision adds that a "number of strangers" left egypt with their forefathers. moses, the leader of the lepers, is described by manetho as an egyptian priest of heliopolis, of the name of osarsiph. we saw that heliopolis was the nearest centre of egyptian religious worship to the land of goshen, and that the second text gives the daughter of a priest of heliopolis to joseph to wife. according to this text also moses is brought up by the egyptians, and the revision calls him an "egyptian."[ ] hence we can at once accept the statement of manetho that the leader of the hebrews was skilled in the wisdom of the egyptian priests.[ ] on the other hand the more detailed narrative of manetho is in itself far more improbable, more full of contradictions and impossibilities, than the account of the hebrews. it does not agree with the tenor of manetho's narrative when we find pharaoh giving over the fortified city of avaris to the leprous egyptians whom he had banished to the stone quarries. in that city the lepers rebel, there they make the priest of heliopolis, osarsiph, their leader, and osarsiph gives them the law, to worship no god, to eat the most sacred animals, and to have dealings only with their confederates. from hence he summons the hyksos, who had been driven out of avaris a long time before, and had meanwhile built jerusalem. pharaoh goes with an army of , of the best warriors of egypt against the conspirators, , unclean persons and , shepherds, yet turns back voluntarily, and flies towards ethiopia, while the confederates desolate egypt without pity for thirteen years. it is hardly credible that a king of egypt should abandon his kingdom without a struggle to lepers and the descendants of the hyksos. and if anyone is inclined to assume that the hebrews did actually combine, not with the supposed hyksos of jerusalem, but perhaps with the midianites, and conquer egypt and force the king into ethiopia, and so rule over egypt for thirteen years--their tradition would not have forgotten or suppressed such a glorious achievement of the nation, such a proof of the power of jehovah. compared with this wholly purposeless exile of the king, the account of the hebrews seems far more credible--that pharaoh did make the attempt to stop the migration, but that the attempt was without success. it remains to fix the date at which the hebrews succeeded in escaping from the dominion of egypt, and resuming their old mode of life in the deserts of syria. it has already been proved that sethos i. and ramses ii. were the pharaohs who oppressed the hebrews; and it is in harmony with the whole situation to assume that the attempt to escape from this oppression would be made under a less powerful successor. if, as is shown above (p. ), the pharaoh of manetho, who banished the lepers and retired before them, was menephta, the son and successor of ramses ii., it would be ramses ii. before whom moses fled into the desert, and after his death he would have returned and carried out against his son the attempt he could not have ventured upon against so powerful a ruler as ramses ii. menephta's rule falls in the years to b.c. hence the exodus of the hebrews must be placed in this period, about the year b.c.[ ] the immigration into the land of goshen, we found that we might place about the year b.c. (p. ). hence they dwelt there about years, and this lapse of time corresponds pretty closely to the eight generations which the table of the leader under whom the hebrews afterwards conquered canaan gave for the sojourn in egypt (p. ). when the hebrews, after retiring from egypt, wished to give up the peninsula of sinai, and settle themselves in the east of jordan, they besought "the king of edom," according to the second text, for a free passage through his country. the first text knows and mentions eight kings who had ruled over edom "before kings ruled over israel." as the monarchy was established in israel about the year b.c. (see below), eight generations would carry us two centuries beyond the date of saul, king of israel, if this list could be regarded as historical, but the two first names in it seem of a mythical rather than a historical kind.[ ] the oldest accounts of western writers of the fortunes of the hebrews date from the time of the successors of alexander of macedon. they were founded partly on accounts of the egyptians, and partly on accounts of the hebrews themselves. the narrative of hecataeus of abdera, who was in egypt in the time of ptolemy i., and wrote an egyptian history, gives us the most unprejudiced account, composed from the widest point of view, and connects the emigration of the hebrews, whom he does not consider egyptians, with the supposed emigration from egypt to greece. "once, when a pestilence had broken out in egypt, the cause of the visitation was generally ascribed to the anger of the gods. as many strangers of various extraction dwelt in egypt, and observed different customs in religion and sacrifice, it came to pass that the hereditary worship of the gods was being given up in egypt. the egyptians, therefore, were of opinion that they would obtain no alleviation of the evil unless they removed the people of foreign extraction. when they were driven out, the noblest and bravest part of them, as some say, under noble and renowned leaders, danaus and cadmus, came to hellas; but the great bulk of them migrated into the land, not far removed from egypt, which is now called judæa, and was at that time without inhabitants. these emigrants were led by moses, who was the most distinguished among them for wisdom and bravery. when he had settled in the land he built several cities, among them jerusalem, which is now the most famous. he also built the most celebrated temples, taught the worship of the god, and the ritual, and arranged the constitution, and gave laws. he divided the people into twelve tribes, because this number is the most complete, and corresponds to the number of the months which make up the year. the most handsome men, who could also at the same time guide the united people best, he made priests, and arranged that they should concern themselves with all that was sacred, the religious worship and the sacrifices, and at the same time he made them judges in the most important matters, and put into their hands the preservation of the laws and customs. he erected no images of the gods, because he did not believe that god had the form of men; he rather believed that the heaven which surrounds the earth was alone god and lord of all things. the sacrifices, too, and manner of life he arranged unlike those of other people; owing to their own banishment, he introduced among them a misanthropic and inhospitable life. at the end of his laws is written: this moses has heard from god, and tells it to the jews. this lawgiver also made provision for war, and compelled the young men to exercise themselves in strength and manliness, and the endurance of privations. he undertook campaigns against the neighbouring nations, and divided the conquered land by lot, and gave to the priests larger lots than to the rest. but no one was permitted to trade with his lot, in order that none might from avarice buy up the lots and drive away the more needy (by this is meant no doubt the hebrew year of jubilee). he forced the people also to bring up their children, and as it was possible to do this with little cost, the tribes of the jews were always numerous. about their marriages and their burials he laid down quite different laws from those in use among other nations."[ ] when antiochus sidetes besieged jerusalem in the year b.c., and began to treat with the city, the greater part of the counsellors of the king (so diodorus tells us) were of opinion that the jews ought to be destroyed, for of all nations they were the only one who had no community with others, and contracted no marriages with them, and regarded them all as enemies. their forefathers had been banished out of the whole of egypt as godless men, and abhorred of heaven. at that time all who had white leprosy, and scales upon the body, were collected as being under a curse and sent over the border in order to purify the land. the expelled persons had then gathered together and formed the nation of the jews; they had taken the districts round about jerusalem, and propagated their hatred of mankind. hence they had adopted wholly different laws from others. they were not to eat with strangers at one table, or bear them any friendly feeling. when antiochus epiphanes conquered the jews ( b.c.), he went into the innermost shrine of the temple, which only the priests might enter, and there he found the stone image of a man with a long beard, who was riding on an ass with a book in his hand. this statue he took for an image of moses, who had founded jerusalem, gathered the people together, and given the wicked and misanthropic laws.[ ] strabo remarks that southern syria "was inhabited by mixed tribes of egyptian, arabian, and phenician origin, but the prevailing legend of the temple at jerusalem called the ancestors of the jews egyptians. for moses, one of the egyptian priests, who occupied a part of this land, and was dissatisfied with his condition, removed from that country, and many who worshipped the deity emigrated with him, and moses told them and taught that the egyptians were not right in representing the divinity as a wild or domesticated animal, nor the libyans, nor were the hellenes wise in giving gods the form of men. for only the one was god which surrounds us all and the earth and the sea, and who was called uranus and cosmos, and the nature of things. how could any reasoning creature venture to make an image which should truly represent this nature? all making of images must be cast aside, a sacred place must be marked off, and a temple erected, and prayers offered without any image. in order to have fortunate dreams it was needful to sleep in the sanctuary, and those who were wise and lived with justice could always expect signs and gifts from god. by such doctrines moses convinced not a few men of reason, and led them to the place where jerusalem now is. he easily obtained possession of the land, because it was not sufficiently valuable for anyone to fight vigorously for it. it is rocky, and the district round the city is without water. at the same time he pretended to take it for the sake of the sanctity of the place, and the deity for whom he sought a dwelling, and established such a ritual and such sacrificial customs, that the worshippers were not compelled to undergo great expense, or vex themselves by any ecstasies, contortions of the body, or vile occupation. as this was well received, moses established no unimportant dominion, for those who dwelt round about were induced by his speeches and promises to join him. but at a later time superstitious and even tyrannical men acquired the priesthood, and from superstition the abstinences from food, circumcision, and mutilation and other things of the kind became law, and are observed even to this day. the capricious nature of the ruling power ended in robbery, for the insurgents plundered the land. but those who were with the rulers subjugated even the border territories, and conquered a good deal of syria and phoenicia. yet the fortress, which, instead of treating it as a place of confinement they worshipped as a temple, retained a certain dignity."[ ] better acquainted with the traditions of the hebrews, nicolaus of damascus tells us that abraham came with an army out of chaldæa, which lies beyond babylon, and ruled over damascus. not long after he again set out from this place with his people, and established himself in the land which was then called chananæa, and afterwards judæa. here he dwelt and his numerous posterity. "the name of abraham is still praised in the region of damascus, and a village is pointed out which is called abraham's dwelling, after him."[ ] this account, of which the continuation in the writings of nicolaus is lost, was used, as it seems, by trogus pompeius. his account survives only in the excerpt of justinus. "the jews," so we find in this excerpt, "derive their origin from damascus, the most famous city of syria. this city took its name from king damascus, in whose honour the syrians revered the tomb of his wife astarte as a temple, and worshipped her as a goddess in the most sacred manner. after damascus, azelus reigned, then adores, then abraham, and lastly israhel. israhel became more famous than his predecessors, for he had ten sons to help him. so he left the nation divided into ten kingdoms to his sons, and called them after the name of juda, who died after the division, judæans, and commanded that his memory should be held in honour by all, because his share had profited all the others. the youngest of the brothers was joseph. the others were afraid of his pre-eminent gifts, and secretly they got him into their power, and sold him to foreign merchants. by these he was carried to egypt, and as he gave his mind eagerly to the magic arts of the place, he was soon in high estimation even with the king. for he was the most acute expounder of signs and wonders, and first founded the interpretation of dreams. nothing in divine or human ordinances seemed hidden from him; he even foresaw the unfruitfulness of the land many years before it came. the whole of egypt would have been destroyed by famine had not the king, at joseph's suggestion, ordered corn to be laid by for many years previously, and he gave such proofs of his wisdom that his answers seemed to be those of a god and not of a man. his son was moses, who in addition to the inheritance of his father's wisdom, received also great beauty of person. but at the bidding of an oracle the egyptians banished him, because they were afflicted with scab and leprosy, with all the diseased persons beyond their borders, so that he might not infect more. chosen to be leader of the exiles, moses took from the egyptians their sacred things. the egyptians rose to recover them by force of arms, but were compelled to return by storms. then moses as he turned towards his old fatherland, damascus, settled on mount syna. as he came there with his people exhausted after seven days' privations in the deserts of arabia, he consecrated each seventh day a fast for all time. after the manner of the people this day was called sabbata, because it had put an end to the hunger and wandering. and when they remembered that they had been driven out of egypt from fear of contamination, they were careful that they should not be hated by the inhabitants from the same causes and had no dealings with them, which rule in time became a strict custom and religious observance. after moses, his son arvas became priest of the egyptian sacred things, and was soon after chosen to be king. since then it became a custom among the jews that their priests should be at the same time kings, and their duties as judges, combined with the worship of the god, held the nation uncommonly close together."[ ] the most marvellous story is that of lysimachus of alexandria, who brings down the exodus of the jews to the eighth century b.c. "at the time of king bocchoris, unclean and leprous men had come into the temples to beg for food. hence there was a blight in the land; and bocchoris received a response from ammon, that the temples must be purified. the lepers, as if the sun were angry at their existence, were to be plunged into the sea, and the unclean were to be driven out of the land. hence the lepers were tied to plates of lead, and thrown into the sea; but the unclean were driven out helpless into the desert. these met together in council; in the night they lit fires and lights, and called, fasting, upon the gods to save them. then a certain moses advised them to go through the desert till they came to inhabited regions, but at the same time required them to show kindness to no man, to advise every one for the worst, and to destroy all altars and temples upon which they came. the exiles approved, and after many hardships came through the desert to an inhabited land, and after treating the men cruelly, robbing and burning the temples, they established a city hierosyla (temple-plunder) in judæa, and afterwards, to lessen the disgrace, the name was slightly altered into hierosolyma (jerusalem)."[ ] even this narrative was accepted and believed. tacitus first enumerated the different views of the writers on the origin of the jews, in order finally to agree in all essential points with the narrative of lysimachus. "according to the view of some," tacitus says, "the jews were descendants of the ethiopians, whom fear and disinclination compelled, at the time of king kepheus, to change their dwelling; others say that a horde coming from assyria gained possession of a part of egypt, and soon after passed into the neighbouring parts of syria, and inhabited the hebrew land and cities." the latter statement obviously confounds the immigration of the hyksos and the jews, and makes them a mingled horde of assyrians, but still is nearest the truth. "others, again," tacitus continues, "are of opinion that under the rule of isis in egypt, the number of men became too great, and the superfluous multitudes were settled under the leadership of hierosolymus and judah in the neighbouring lands. but most authorities agree that under king bocchoris a contagious disease raged in egypt, and the oracle of ammon bade them purify the kingdom and remove the diseased persons out of the land as a race hated by the gods. hence the unclean were collected and left behind in the desert. amid their idle lamentations one of the exiles, moses, warned them that they had no assistance to expect from gods or men, for they were abandoned by both, but they were to trust to him as a heavenly leader by whose assistance they might be rescued from their present calamities. to this they agreed, and in complete ignorance struck out a path at random. the want of water distressed them most, and almost at death's door they sank upon the ground, when a herd of wild asses ran from the pasture to a rock covered with trees. moses followed them, and found copious streams of water. this saved them, and after a march of six days they came on the seventh day to a region where, when they had expelled the inhabitants, they founded a city and a temple. in order to strengthen the nation and establish his own supremacy, moses gave them new customs, quite opposed to the usages of the rest of the world. what we consider sacred, they regard as profane; and what is permitted to us is forbidden to them. the image of the animal which had shown them an escape from their wanderings, and put an end to their thirst, they placed in the innermost shrine, after they had slain a ram. in order, as it were, to throw contempt upon ammon. they abstained from swine's flesh in remembrance of the misery which the leprosy, to which this animal is subject, had once brought upon them. the long hunger which they then endured they still avow by frequent fasts; and as a proof of the fruits once stolen, their bread is unleavened. on the seventh day they rest, because the seventh day brought them to an end of their labours; the seventh year also, induced by their laziness, they have given up to inaction. others are of opinion that this is done in honour of saturn, because saturn completes the highest circle of all the seven stars which rule the fortunes of men, and is of pre-eminent power, and most constellations accomplish their influence and their orbits by the number seven. "other abominable customs have come into force owing to their vile corruption. for all the worst of men, despising their hereditary religions, brought money and contributions to them; and because among them stiffnecked belief and ready assistance was to be found, and deadly hatred towards the rest of the world, their power increased. they do not eat with strangers or make marriages with them; and this nation, otherwise most prone to debauchery, abstains from all strange women. they have introduced circumcision in order to distinguish themselves thereby; and those who have adopted their customs follow this practice. the first lesson learnt by their youth is to hate the gods, to despise their country, to disregard parents, children, and brothers. yet they take considerable care to increase their numbers. it is a sin to slay a kinsman, and the souls of all slain in battle and by execution they consider immortal. hence they have a lively impulse to beget children, and they hold death in contempt. the custom of burying the dead, instead of burning them, they have borrowed from the egyptians; on the other hand, the jews alone worship in the spirit a single deity, while the egyptians offer prayer to many animals and composite images. they also consider it profane to make any images of god out of perishable material in the form of men, for the deity is the highest, the eternal, the unchangeable and imperishable. hence in their cities and temples there are no images. as their priests use the music of flutes and drums, and wear crowns of ivy, and a golden vine was found in the temple, some have thought that they worshipped the conqueror of the east, the god bacchus. but the rites are widely different. bacchus inaugurated blithe and merry festivals; but the customs of the jews are absurd and melancholy.[ ]" footnotes: [ ] exod. xv. - ; cf. joshua xxiv. . [ ] nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] exod. i. - , , ; ii. , ; vi. - , - ; vii. - , - ; viii. - , - ; ix. - ; xii. - , , - ; xiii. ; xiv. , , - , - , . [ ] exod. xiii. ; xxii. , ; xxxiv. , . "the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt give to me. likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen, and thy sheep. all that openeth the matrix is mine, all thy cattle that is male. all the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem." cf. exod. xxx. - . [ ] ewald, "alterthümer des volkes israel," s. ff. [ ] de wette-schrader. "einleitung," s. , , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. , . [ ] ebers. "durch gosen." s. ff. [ ] nöldeke. "untersuchungen," s. . according to de wette-schrader, from the second text ("einleitung," ), verses - may be an addition; verses - obviously come from the revision. [ ] exod. ii. . [ ] büdinger ("akad. d. wissenschaft zu wien," sitzung vom, october, ) regards moses and aaron as of egyptian origin, as egyptian priests, and finds the tribe of levi in the leprous egyptians who went out with the hebrews. lauth ("moses der hebraeer," and "zeitsch. d. d. m. g." , s. ff) inclines to recognise moses in the mohar, sotem (scribe) and messu of the papyrus anastasi i., who would thus have been one of the egyptian scholars, and employed by ramses ii. in matters of state and war. this view is opposed by pleyte ("zeitschr. f. aeg. sprache," , s. , ff.); he reads the name ptah-messu. lauth, at the same time, refuses to derive the name osarsiph from osiris; he considers it to be semitic, and explains it as a-sar-suph, _i.e._ "rush-basket." [ ] lepsius, "königsbuch der Ægypten," s. - . maspero objects that egypt in the time of menephta was still too powerful for the israelites to carry out their exodus. such a plan was possible for the first time in the last years of sethos ii. (above, p. ), or shortly after his death ("hist. ancienne," p. ). these considerations are of too general a nature to allow any definite conclusions to be founded upon them; and if josephus or his copyist changed the menephtes of manetho into the much better known amenophis, or mistook one for the other, a similar interchange cannot so easily be assumed for the names sethos and menephtes. [ ] gen. xxxvi. - ; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] diod. , frag. . [ ] diod. , frag. . [ ] strabo, p. , . [ ] fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] justin. "hist." , . [ ] joseph. "c. apion." , . [ ] "hist." , - . chapter x. the hebrews in the desert. the fortunes and achievements of the israelites after leaving egypt and escaping the pursuit of the egyptians, are narrated in the second, third, and fourth books of the pentateuch in the following manner. from the reed-sea the israelites marched into the wilderness of shur, and for three days found no water. when they came to marah, they could not drink the water there, because it was bitter. then jehovah showed moses a piece of wood, and he threw it into the water, so that the water became sweet. from marah they came to elim, where were twelve wells and seventy palm-trees, and they encamped there by the water. from elim they came into the wilderness of sin, and the people murmured against moses, because there was no food to be found; but at evening jehovah caused swarms of quails to rise which covered the camp, and in the morning manna had fallen, which lay like hoar frost upon the ground, and the people were allowed to gather manna for six days, but on the seventh they were not allowed to gather it. and israel set forth from the wilderness of sin and encamped at rephidim. there there was no water to drink, and the people were angry with moses; but jehovah said to moses: take thy staff with which thou didst smite the nile; thou shalt smite the rock, and the water shall flow forth. and moses did so before all israel, and they called the name of the place massah and meribah. and amalek came and strove with israel in rephidim, and was smitten down with the edge of the sword. and jethro, the priest of midian, the father-in-law of moses, came and advised moses to choose valiant men for his helpers, as overseers over the people and judges for the matters of smaller moment. and moses did so. in the third month after the exodus from egypt, the israelites set forth from rephidim, and came into the desert of sinai, and encamped over against the mountain. the people were commanded to purify themselves and wash their garments, and moses forbad any one to approach the mountain. on the third day, when it was morning, there was thunder and lightning, and a thick cloud stood upon the mountain, and there was a mighty sound of trumpets. and all the people heard the thunder and saw the flames and the smoking mountain, and the mountain quaked, and all trembled. but moses led them to meet jehovah at the foot of the mountain. and jehovah came down to the top of the mountain, and moses went up. for forty days and forty nights moses was on the mountain, and jehovah revealed to him his laws, and the finger of god wrote them on two stone tables. and jehovah spoke to moses out of the darkness, and told him all the ordinances which he should lay upon the people. but the cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of jehovah was a consuming fire on the top of the mountain. when the people saw that moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people said to aaron: we know not what has happened to the man who led us out of egypt; make us a god to go before us. and aaron said to them: take off the golden rings which are in the ears of your wives, your daughters, and your sons. they brought him the rings, and he made of them a golden calf, and built an altar before the calf. then they said: that is the god, who led us out of egypt; and aaron caused a festival to be proclaimed to jehovah, and they brought a thank-offering to the calf, and the people ate and drank and stood up to dance. but when moses came down from the mountain with the stone tablets in his hand, and heard the singing and shouting, and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger was kindled. he cast the tables out of his hand, and broke them at the foot of the mountain, and took the calf, and burned it with fire, and ground it to dust, and strewed it on the water, and made the children of israel drink it. and moses came into the entrance of the camp and cried: come to me, all who belong to jehovah. then the descendants of levi gathered round him. take everyone his sword at his side, he said to them; go from one gate of the camp to the other, and slay every man his brother, his friend, and his neighbour. and there fell on that day about , men of the people. on the next morning moses said: ye have sinned a great sin; i will go up to jehovah, perhaps i can appease him for your sin. and jehovah said to moses: hew two stone tables like the others, and be ready in the morning, and appear before me on the top of the mountain. and moses was there with jehovah forty days and forty nights, and ate no bread, and drank no water, and he wrote on the tables the ten commandments. then he came down with the two tables of the law in his hand, and told the people the commandments which jehovah had given him, and the laws; and the people answered: all that jehovah has commanded we will do. then moses built an altar and twelve pillars for the twelve tribes. and the young men slew burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, and the half of the blood moses sprinkled on the altar, and with the other half he sprinkled the people, and said: this is the blood of the covenant which jehovah makes with you over all laws. then moses set up the tent of the assembly for a sanctuary of jehovah, that he might dwell in their midst, as jehovah had commanded, with planks of acacia wood on silver feet, and fastened them with silver bars; and on them he placed a cover of woven cloth of byssus, of a purple colour, and over this a second roof of red sheep-skins and seal-skins, and divided the tent by a curtain of blue and red purple, and carmine, and byssus, with cherubs woven upon it. and in the tent behind the second curtain he placed the ark of the law, as jehovah had commanded, of acacia wood, overlaid with pure gold, and placed the law in the ark. then moses made a table of acacia wood, overlaid with pure gold, and placed bowls of pure gold upon it for the drink-offerings, and laid the sacrificial bread upon the table. and he made a candlestick of pure gold, with seven lamps, three on the one side and three on the other side of the candlestick. then he made the altar of incense of acacia wood, overlaid with gold; and the altar of burnt sacrifice of acacia wood, as jehovah commanded, and overlaid it with copper; and made the curtains for the court and the poles for the curtains of copper. the israelites brought what was necessary for the erection and adornment of the shrine, and gave their nose-rings, ear-rings, seals, and ear-drops. and moses made aaron and his sons priests, and anointed the altars and all utensils with holy ointment, and sanctified the fire on the altar, and offered burnt-offerings. but two sons of aaron, nadab and abihu, brought strange fire before jehovah; then fire went forth from jehovah and consumed them, and they died before him. and the glory of jehovah filled his habitation, and the cloud covered the tent of assembly; and when the cloud rose, the children of israel set forth, and by night there was fire in the cloud. in the second year after the exodus from egypt, in the second month, on the twentieth day of the month, the cloud rose from the dwelling of the law, and the children of israel set forth on their march out of the desert of sinai, from the mountain of jehovah, and they went three days' journey, and the cloud halted in the wilderness of paran. and jehovah bade moses send men to search out the land of canaan--one for each tribe from among the leaders. and from ephraim moses sent joshua the son of nun; and from the tribe of judah, caleb the son of jephunneh. then the twelve princes set forth at the time of the first grapes, and came to hebron and to the valley of eshcol, and there cut a bunch of grapes and a vine, and carried them on a pole between two; and they also took of the pomegranates and the figs. after forty days they returned, and said to the people: the land into which you sent us flows with milk and honey, and these are its fruits. but the people is mighty, and their cities are large and fortified, and amalek dwells in the land to the south, and the hittites, and jebusites, and amorites dwell on the mountains, and the canaanites dwell by the sea and on the side of jordan. and caleb said: we will go up and overpower them; but the others said: we cannot go up against that people, for they are mightier than we; and the sons of israel cried: why should we fall by the sword, and our wives and children fall into the hand of the enemy; is it not better to return to egypt? then jehovah said to moses: all those who have murmured against me shall not enter into the land wherein i have lifted up my hand to cause you to dwell. your bodies shall lie in the desert, save caleb, the son of jephunneh, and joshua, the son of nun; and your children shall pasture their flocks in the desert forty years: forty years shall my face be turned from you. and moses told these words to the children of israel. but the israelites ventured to rise up and went to the heights of the mountains on the way towards atharim. but the amalekites and canaanites who dwelt on the mountains came down and smote them, and scattered them as far as hormah. and korah of the tribe of levi, and dathan and abiram of the tribe of reuben, and two hundred and fifty of the foremost men, heads of families and officers of the community, assembled themselves against moses and aaron, and said: why do ye lift yourselves up against the people? and to moses they said: is it not enough that thou hast led us out of egypt, to slay us in the desert? wilt thou also make thyself a ruler over us? but the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up. on the next morning the people murmured in the assembly against moses and aaron, and said: ye have slain them. but jehovah said to moses: go out from this company; i will destroy them suddenly. then the plague began. at moses' command aaron took the censer of incense and offered incense to purify the children of israel; and he stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed. but there died fourteen thousand and seven hundred. the children of israel came into the wilderness of sin, and moses sent messengers to the king of edom, saying: let us pass through thy land; we will go along the highway, and turn neither to the right hand nor to the left. but edom went to meet them with mighty hosts and a powerful hand, and israel retired before him, and went from kadesh to mount hor, and from mount hor to the reed-sea. then the people became impatient on the way, and murmured against moses, and jehovah sent the serpents, the saraphs, among the people, and many died. then the israelites saw that they had sinned, and moses prayed for the people and made a serpent of copper, and set it up on a pole, and all who were bitten by the serpents and looked upon the image of copper were saved. from the reed-sea the israelites went again to the north, towards oboth and beer, to the well which the princes dug. then israel sang: "rise up, o fountain, meet him with songs; o well which the princes dug, which the nobles of the people hollowed out with their sceptre and their staves." and from beer they went to bamoth, and from bamoth to pisgah, which rises over the desert. and sihon, king of the amorites, who dwelt in his city at heshbon, gathered all his people and went to meet israel in the desert, and came towards jahaz, and strove with israel. then israel smote him with the edge of the sword, laid waste the land, and took the cities. and israel sang: "fire went forth from heshbon, and flames from the city of sihon; we shot at them, we laid waste the land to nophah, we burnt it with fire to medeba." then the israelites turned and went up against og, the king of the amorites of bashan, who was at ashtaroth karnaim, and smote him at edrei, and his sons and all his people, and his cities were taken, and not a fugitive escaped. from bashan israel went southwards, and encamped in the plains of moab at shittim; and they began to commit whoredom with the daughters of moab, and served baal peor. and phinehas, the grandson of aaron, pierced with his spear zimri, a captain of the tribe of simeon, as he lay with a midianitish woman, and slew both with one thrust through the belly. and jehovah said to moses: go up to mount abarim and see the land which i have given to the children of israel, and when thou hast seen it, thou shalt be gathered to thy people. take joshua, the son of nun, and lay thy hand on him, and place him before eleazar the priest (the son of aaron), and before all the people, so that all may obey him; and eleazar shall inquire of jehovah for him, and as he commands he shall go out and in. and moses did as jehovah commanded. and the sons of reuben and gad said to moses: the land which jehovah has smitten before israel is a land for flocks, and thy servants have flocks; and to them, and half of the tribe of manasseh, moses gave the land of gilead. and moses went up from the plains of moab to the top of pisgah, over against jericho, and jehovah caused him to see the whole land from gilead to dan, and from jericho to zoar. and there moses died, a hundred and twenty years old. but his eyes were not dim, nor had his strength forsaken him. the israelites mourned for moses thirty days in the plains of moab, and henceforth there was no prophet in israel like moses; and to this day no man knows the grave of moses. in those portions which deal with the abode and fortunes of the hebrews in the desert, the two texts were less closely combined, and the contradictions are more numerous, than in the other parts. the two narratives are interpolated each into the other, and the additions of the reviser are more prominent than elsewhere. an ancient record, embodied in the first text, gives a list of the places where the israelites pitched their tents between egypt and the jordan. the statements do not agree with the narrative in its present condition. in the first text the midianites manifestly dwell to the east of the jordan. it represents the israelites as taking vengeance upon them, because they had seduced israel to a heathenish ritual; first by the act of phinehas, the grandson of aaron, whose seed in consequence received "the everlasting covenant of the priesthood," and then by the war which cost the midianites a vast booty of sheep, oxen, asses, and thousands of prisoners.[ ] in the ephraimitic text the midianites dwell on sinai; hither moses fled to the midianites from egypt; he married the daughter of the priest of the midianites, and stands in most friendly relations with them. this text represents the seduction of the israelites as the work not of the midianites, but of the moabites; and subsequently narrates the victories over the moabites of heshbon and bashan. how the first text described the conquest of the land of gilead we cannot any longer ascertain; that it dealt with the subject is beyond question.[ ] the setting up of the golden calf at sinai is inconceivable in the connection in which the narrative places it. while jehovah's glory is visible on sinai, and proclaims itself in thunder and lightning, would the people, and aaron at their head, have required an image of god, and offered prayer to it? when after the death of solomon the ten tribes founded their independent kingdom jehovah was worshipped among them in the form of a bull, in contrast to the worship of the kingdom of judah. to stigmatise this worship, wherein priests of the family which claimed to be derived from aaron may have taken part from the first, as objectionable, the prophetic revision has interpolated the adoration of the golden calf and the punishment of such idolatry; and from this the second ascent of sinai by moses came into the narrative. the account of the saraphs and the setting up of the brazen serpent belongs to the ephraimitic text.[ ] at jerusalem there was a serpent of brass, which was thought to have come down from moses.[ ] it was the fixed belief of the hebrews that it was only by the immediate help of jehovah that their forefathers had been able to escape the power of egypt. and this was not the only thing done for their fathers; they had afterwards gained abodes to the east and west of the jordan, and from the wilderness they had come into a land flowing with milk and honey. here, also, the help of jehovah had been shown forth mightily for his people, against the old and powerful cities, and the mountain fortresses of canaan. obviously jehovah had delivered his people out of egypt, in order to give them this beautiful and rich land for a dwelling. but why had he not at once led them thither? why did the israelites remain so long in the miserable wilderness? the israelites--so the first text explains this delay--received the account of the spies with fear. this cowardly generation, therefore, must die out. we saw above that the hebrews reckoned the length of a generation at forty years, and so the first text puts the sojourn in the desert at forty years. we shall see below that this period is too short by some decads of years. moses and aaron also did not reach canaan, because, as the first text says, "they sinned against jehovah at the water of strife, at kadesh, in the wilderness of sin," because "they rebelled against his command at the water," an obstinacy which cannot be any longer found in the revised narrative of this occurrence.[ ] if joshua and caleb are exempted from this decree, if they alone reach canaan, it was certain that joshua had undertaken and carried out the attack upon canaan, that caleb conquered hebron and subjected the surrounding district; his descendants were living there even in david's time in princely wealth. in the desert also jehovah had taken care of his people; he had not allowed them to perish there; he had sent quails and given them manna. even now long lines of quails pass over the syrian steppes and the wilderness of sinai, and in the neighbourhood of firan, manna, i.e. the juice running from the branches and leaves of the tamarisk, is still gathered.[ ] nor had jehovah allowed water to fail in the midst of the desert. moses changed a bitter spring into sweet water. the story rests, no doubt, on the name of the spring. marah means bitter. at another spring of the name of meribah, _i.e._ strife (here jehovah bade the rocks give water), the rebellion of moses and aaron is said to have taken place. the well of beer, which the princes dug, cannot be any other than the well of beer elim, _i.e._ the well of the strong,[ ] and the song which tradition connects with this place (p. ) is certainly very old, if not contemporary. the law made known to moses on sinai forms the main portion of the second, third, and fourth books of the pentateuch. it not only contains the fundamental moral rules, the ordinances of the law of family and blood-feud, and the rubrics for the national worship; it is rather a law for the priesthood, given in systematic detail, which fixes their position, rights, and honours, the dress of their office, and the fees for the sacrifice--a wide collection of regulations for the ritual of sacrifice, descending into the smallest minutiæ, the place of worship, the instruments of sacrifice, the celebration of festivals, and the arrangement of life in the future dwellings of the tribes. could tribes wandering in the desert have made rules for the celebration of the festivals of sowing, of harvest, and of the vintage? could they have settled what part of the produce of the field should be given to the priests, and how they should deal with the fallow time of the seventh year of rest, and the reversion of the alienated land in the year of jubilee? could dwellers in tents make regulations about receiving the stranger in their gates, about cities of refuge and cities of the levites? and even if this had really taken place, how are we to explain the fact that whole groups of arrangements for worship and life which these laws prescribe were demonstrably not in existence among the hebrews in the centuries following their wandering? laws are never created except in connection with definite circumstances; no lawgiver can anticipate the relations which the future will bring into existence, and answer, _à priori_, the questions which will then arise. it is therefore beyond doubt that views and tendencies of later development and the results of a long course of growth have been transferred to early times, the times of the exodus from egypt. those early days had been an era of original piety, and the time of the exodus had been a period in which the god of the fathers had guided and led them with a mighty hand, in which he had announced to them his will directly and without deception. the condition of religious service and life, therefore, which was held to be the true and proper kind must have been prescribed in those early days and have existed then; the ideal after which men were to strive, and in the pursuit of which every hindrance was to be removed, must have already existed in those days of direct divine guidance. thus ordinances and usages which arose successively after the settlement in canaan, were amalgamated with older customs and rules, and united into one system, which seemed to the priests the necessary system, appointed by god and pleasing to him. the position which the first text ascribes to aaron, and which the laws attached to that text, give to the priests and levites the prominence of a centralised, rich, and even splendid ritual, and of a single place for the worship of jehovah, display the tendency which was active in the priesthood, to concentrate the worship of jehovah on a single spot, and to obtain power in the state for the chief priests. the gorgeous tabernacle erected near mount sinai with the portable altars for burnt sacrifice and incense, the implements of sacrifice and the candlestick of seven branches, can only have been taken from the tabernacle erected by david, and afterwards from the temple of solomon and its glory, the sacred pattern of which ought to be recognised in the movable sanctuary already erected by moses on mount sinai. at the same time the rich adornment of this pattern by the voluntary offerings of the israelites proved how ready the nation was at that time to honour their god and dedicate their property to him. for these descriptions there was a historical foundation in the fact that the israelites had carried their national sanctuary, the sacred ark, the ark of the covenant, into the desert, that it had been placed under a movable tent, and before the tent the heads of the tribes and the nation had gathered for sacrifice and counsel. in the position of aaron and his family we have a pattern which brings clearly into light the attributes and advantages, the rights and honours, which belonged to the chief priests and priests in contrast to the levites or servants of the temple. the fearful punishments which awaited offences against ritual and neglect of the priestly rules were strongly marked. even two sons of aaron, nadab and abihu, die because they approach jehovah with unconsecrated fire; and when the levite korah, and dathan and abiram of the tribe of reuben, rebel against moses and aaron, they were swallowed up by the earth, and jehovah smites the people who follow them.[ ] it is the ideal picture of the priesthood, and arrangement of the church, which those laws exhibit, and transfer to that mighty time when jehovah spoke to the israelites through moses. the intention of the israelites in the exodus from egypt could not at first go further than the attempt to escape from the dominion of egypt, and resume the old free life in the desert. that the line of march at first attempted to pass along the western shore of the reed-sea, and reach the south of the peninsula of sinai, in order to get as far as possible from egypt, place the whole length of the protecting arm of the sea between the emigrants and egypt, and reach the pasture lands of the apparently friendly midianites, corresponds to the situation. nor can it in any way surprise us that the amalekites, as the ephraimitic text states, opposed the hebrews, _i.e._ contested the possession of the pasture-lands and oases of the wildernesses of shur and paran, with the new-comers. the israelites obtained the victory. so they arrived at sinai, the sacred mountain of the wilderness of sin. between the two bays with which the sea encloses this peninsula, that mountain rises, a naked granite ridge, with five steep peaks, united into a mighty crown, above the plateau of sandstone which occupies the whole peninsula. the height is , feet, and the wild and rugged mass overlooks in sublime solitude the broad and desert flats in the north, and the waves of the sea in the south. the beautiful oasis at the foot of the mountain (wadi firan) affords nourishment for a large number of men and beasts.[ ] on the old and sacred mountain the israelites might believe that they approached nearer to their deity; that here thanksgiving and sacrifice for their happy deliverance could best be offered to him. then the israelites would pasture their flocks on the slopes and glades of the peninsula. but they may have found but scanty food beside the flocks of the midianites, and the security from egypt would be greater, if they removed to a greater distance from that country. on the southern borders of canaan, at kadesh and hormah, they sought better pastures. yet they were driven back, and pursued as far as hormah. after this misadventure, the israelites, according to the ephraimitic text, besought the king of edom to allow them a peaceful passage through edom, "on the road of the king, they would not turn either to the right or the left." hence the defeat must have been a serious one.[ ] the object of this march through edom can only have been to find new pasture-lands in the syrian steppes beyond mount seir on the east. the wide extent of the syrian desert would certainly supply sufficient pastures, and the distance from the nile was a good protection from egypt. as the edomites refused the demand, and showed themselves prepared to resist the march by force of arms, the israelites did not venture to give battle; they preferred to retire to the south, and make a long circuit round the territory of the edomites, by marching through the whole length of the valley of arabah southward to elath, as far as the north-east point of the reed-sea. from this point they passed to the other side of mount seir, past punon and oboth, towards the arnon, which falls into the dead sea. if they could at first maintain themselves on the east, in the desert, the uplands on the left bank of the jordan were far better than the steppes of the desert. the arms of the israelites were here more fortunate than on the other side of the dead sea. the amorites of heshbon, eastward of the dead sea, were defeated at jahaz, and their cities taken. the song which celebrates this victory (p. ) is old, and above suspicion. from this point, out of the newly-conquered land, from the top of pisgah--a mountain near heshbon--moses is said to have seen the promised land. a second victory over the amorites lying to the north beyond the jabbok, the people of edrei and ashtaroth karnaim, opened ample pasture-lands to the israelites, and also some well-watered valleys on the wide plateau to the east of the jordan. their territory now reached from the arnon northwards to the jarmuk. here the nation remained; the greater part tended their flocks as hitherto, the lesser part applied themselves to agriculture in exceptionally fruitful valleys. though a peaceful race of shepherds and unused to arms, the hebrews had bidden defiance to the strong arm of pharaoh; with bold resolution they had successfully delivered themselves from a cruel slavery; and had preserved their freedom, their national character, and their religion. beyond the borders of egypt and the reed-sea, the lively perception of their liberation, and the recovery of their ancient mode of life, and of the visible protection of their god, must have aroused a mighty impulse, especially in their great leader. it was a moment of great elevation. together with the valley of the nile, they had left behind the gods of egypt; and they returned to the worship of their old deity with strengthened and deepened feelings. thus on sinai moses could inculcate the exclusive worship of jehovah--a worship without images--and the consecration of the seventh day.[ ] these were commands consciously and diametrically opposed to the multitude of egyptian gods, the variety of their forms and modes of worship, and the times of their festivals. in connection with these commands, and the customs of sacrifice in use among the israelites, regulations were given for purification, and rules, telling how to proceed at the erection of altars, at purifications and expiations, at burnt-offerings, thank-offerings, and offerings of corn and meal; rules which were preserved and developed in the family of aaron.[ ] even for the establishment of this ritual the contrast to the egyptian was not without influence. this contrast was in fact so strong that what was best in the egyptian religion--the belief in the existence of the soul after death, and in its awaking from death to a new life, was not adopted by the israelites. of the care shown to the corpses of the dead in egypt, we find no trace. we saw what a long series of moral rules were set up in egypt. for his people moses collected the foundations of moral and religious law into a simpler, purer, deeper, and more earnest form, in the ten commandments.[ ] in connecting the moral law with the worship of jehovah, its inseparable foundation, and setting it up with passionate earnestness as the immediate command of the god of israel, moses imparted to his people that character of religious earnestness, and ethical struggling, which distinguishes their history from that of every other nation. with the decalogue were connected the regulations for peace in the nation, the law of the family, and the avenging of blood. one who curses father or mother must be put to death. one who strikes father or mother must be put to death. one who strikes a man so that he dies must be put to death. one who has slain a man without intention, by misadventure, must flee to the altar. but if anyone sins against another so as to slay him by craft, thou shalt take him from the altar that he may die. if men strive with one another, and one is injured, thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise. if any man strike his man-servant or his maid-servant with his staff, and they die under his hand, vengeance must be taken. if thou buyest a hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go free. the long service in egypt was still held in lively remembrance.[ ] just as the ordinances of moses for religious worship again brought into prominence the ancient customs of the hebrews, purified and developed them, so his regulations for peace, for revenge, and expiation, for injury to the person, and theft, were connected with ancient customs of the children of jacob, which could hardly have been entirely forgotten in egypt. as moses attached his law to the old customs, permeating them with the depth of his own ethical point of view, a certain stock of sayings must have been formed, which were preserved and further developed by the decisions of the heads of the tribes, the leaders of families, and the elders and the priests. the code in exodus is taken from an old document, though apparently first inserted by the revision.[ ] the israelites had risen from a tribe into a nation, which stood in need of organisation when it was no longer under egyptian dominion. this arrangement must be founded upon the connection of families and races, on respect for the tie of blood, and reverence for age. no other political division was known but community of family and descent. affinities and races were in existence which carried back their origin to one patriarch, they followed the head of the oldest family, from whom the rest were derived, or thought that they were derived, and usually obeyed his decision. some of these races carried their pedigree back to jacob and his sons. after the pattern of these connections, and by adopting and adding to them, the whole nation was brought into ties of relationship. strangers and families without a name must have here been in part allotted to the affinities already in existence, and partly formed into new corporations, and new affinities, so that in the total there were some seventy groups of families. those derived from the old stocks, who carried their origin back to the same son of jacob, formed together a large community, or tribe, and were accustomed to obey the nearest descendant of the patriarch, the son of his oldest son, from first-born to first-born, and thus the head of the oldest family in the whole community, as their tribal prince and leader by birth. in the same manner, also, the new groups of families became amalgamated into tribes, and older families were put at their head as chiefs of the tribe, in such a manner that from three to ten groups of families formed a tribe.[ ] thus twelve tribes were formed. even the nations most closely allied to the hebrews, the nahorites, and ishmaelites, were divided into twelve tribes; the edomites were apparently divided into sixteen. the tribes already in existence were derived from definite progenitors, the sons of jacob; and also for the new tribes one of the sons of jacob, the number of whom has thus been fixed, was allotted as a patriarch. reuben, simeon, and judah, were jacob's eldest sons, borne by leah his first wife in lawful marriage. from these three the oldest groups were derived. with the tribes of issachar and zebulon families were connected, whose antiquity did not go so far back, and thus issachar and zebulon were held to be younger sons of jacob by the same wife. the tribes of dan, naphtali, gad, and asher, were not considered equally pure; perhaps because additional families had been incorporated in them: hence, as we saw, their progenitors are said to be the sons of jacob by his handmaids. the tribes of ephraim, manasseh, and benjamin, are marked as of later origin by the fact that they are carried back to jacob and rachel; and if joseph begot his sons ephraim and manasseh with the daughter of the priest of heliopolis, this leads to the conclusion that the families incorporated into the tribes of ephraim and manasseh had grown up in egypt, and had egyptian blood in their veins. but ephraim was at the same time the strongest tribe, which in numbers and bravery outstripped the rest, and the later origin is compensated by the importance of rachel and joseph. the egyptian element which ephraim and manasseh introduced among the hebrews cannot have been of any importance, for neither the language nor the ideas of the hebrews incorporated elements from egypt. only a few external touches in the dress of the priests can be carried back with certainty to egyptian influence. of the two sons of joseph, manasseh is the elder, ephraim the younger. hence the groups of families incorporated into the first, must have been considered the older, or the tribe of manasseh must at one time have had precedence of ephraim, which may have been the case about the time of gideon. if in the place of joseph, the eleventh son of jacob, two grandsons are adopted into the number of the patriarchs, room is made by excluding levi, a son of jacob's first marriage, from the series of the tribes. tradition places him among the oldest sons, between simeon and judah. but the tribes deduced from this ancestor won no territory like the rest: they were scattered among the other tribes. we may assume that the priestly families, who from antiquity had discharged the sacred duty at the main seats of worship, the race of kohath (to which belonged the sons of aaron), with the priestly families of the other altars (the races of gershom and merari), and the families of the temple-servants connected with them, were not combined into a tribe till a late period. the name "levi" may mean "bound," _i.e._ bound to a shrine, and hence a temple-servant. the separation of this tribe from the rest, and its dedication to the sacred service, is brought forward with great emphasis in the first text, which was composed from the point of view of the priests. jehovah takes the levites in the place of the first-born of israel, and this same text allots to the levites forty-eight cities of canaan which they never possessed, and never inhabited either exclusively or in preponderant numbers.[ ] but while in this text the adoption of the levites by jehovah, and their "possession of the sacrifice" in the place of a territory, is regarded and extolled as a privilege of this tribe, we found above (p. ) that an old poem spoke of the "division of the levites in jacob and their scattering in israel" as the punishment of the sin which their progenitor had once committed. hence we must assume that the groups of races, to which the foremost families of the priests belonged, once formed a connected tribe like the rest, and the breaking up of this tribe was brought about after the settlement in canaan by causes unknown to us. footnotes: [ ] numb. xxiv. , c. xxxi. [ ] numb. xxxii. ; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. ; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] kings xviii. . [ ] numb. xx. - , - ; deut. xxxii. - . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] isaiah xv. . [ ] on the mutual interpolations of the narratives, both in regard to the rebels and the mode of their destruction, see nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. , . [ ] lepsius, "briefe," s. . [ ] numb. xxxiii. (the first text); numb. xxi. - , and xiv. , , belong to the second text; de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. ; deut. i. ; joshua xii. ; judges i. . cf. nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. , on the tenacity with which unsuccessful battles are remembered in these districts. [ ] nöldeke explains exod. xx. - and xxi. -xxiii. , as in substance and in part a composition of great antiquity, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] nöldeke ("untersuchungen," s. ff.) proves that levit. i.-xxvi. , and xxvii., with the exception of a few additions, especially cc. xviii.-xx. belong to the first text; and de wette-schrader ("einleitung," s. ff.) proves the same for nearly the whole book. moreover, he shows at length, pp. , , that many of the ceremonial ordinances and the faith of the land in general goes back to moses, or the mosaic times. [ ] the mosaic origin of the decalogue (exod. xx. - ; deut. v. - ) is proved in de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. . the original form of it, it is true, is no longer in existence. [ ] so the old codex, exod. xxi. - . the priestly law on the other hand puts off the liberation till the year of jubilee, levit. xxv. ff. [ ] on exod. xxi.-xxiii. , cf. de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. , , and nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. , ff. [ ] gen. xlvi. - numb. ii - ; chron. ii . [ ] nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. , , . chapter xi. the hebrew invasion of canaan. when the israelites had delivered themselves from the dominion of egypt, they pastured their flocks on the peninsula of sinai. afterwards they wandered further to the north-east into the syrian desert, and at length, as the oases in this district were few, and the wells insufficient, they threw themselves upon the rich uplands on the east of the jordan. from the table-land, which they had conquered, they saw before them the happy valley of the jordan, the fig-trees and pomegranates, the vines and green glades in the valleys beyond it. the sight roused the greater portion of the israelites to descend into the valley, and invade the land beyond the river, in order to win settled abodes where milk and honey were said to flow. we have already examined the circumstances of canaan. the amorites had destroyed the power of the hittites; and in conjunction with the remnants of the hittites and hivites, they possessed the land. they lived separately in the various mountain cantons, under small princes from thirty to forty in number. but their cities were old and well fortified; the nature of the land was in favour of defence, and on the coasts lay the strong cities of the phenicians and the philistines. it was no light undertaking. the israelites had left egypt a nation of peaceful shepherds, but the sixty or seventy years which they subsequently passed in the desert, and on the uplands beyond the jordan, had hardened them and made them into warriors. the successes which they gained against the amalekites, the amorites of heshbon, and bashan must have roused their courage. if they combined in an attack on the isolated cantons of canaan, they might hope to become masters even of the fortified walls, and perhaps they even found assistance among the hittites and hivites, who lived under the oppressive rule of the amorites. about the middle of the thirteenth century b.c., the greater part of the israelites marched towards the jordan. joshua, the prince of the tribe of ephraim, led the army. the tribes of reuben and gad, and a part of the tribe of manasseh, remained behind on the other side of the jordan.[ ] the book of joshua gives the following account of the conquest of canaan by the hebrews: it came to pass after the death of moses, that jehovah spoke to joshua the son of nun: up, cross over jordan, thou and all the people, into a land which i will give thee. then joshua commanded the leaders of the people: go through the camp and say, make ready your provisions; in three days ye shall cross the jordan. when the people set out from their tents at shittim, and reached the jordan with the priests carrying the ark before them, and the feet of the priests, who carried the ark, touched the water of jordan, the water which flowed from above stood up, and the water which flowed downwards to the dead sea parted from the upper water, till the ark of jehovah and the people of israel had passed over on dry land. and the people encamped at gilgal, on the tenth day of the first month, and joshua made sharp knives and circumcised the children of israel, the whole nation that was born in the desert, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening in the plain of jericho. and jehovah said to joshua: see, i have given jericho and her king into thy hand. go round the city for six days, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets before the ark, and on the seventh day ye shall go round the city seven times, and the priests shall blow upon the trumpets. and when ye hear the sound of the trumpets, all the people shall make a great cry, and the walls of the city will fall down, and the people shall pass over them, every man straight before him. joshua fulfilled the command of jehovah, and when the people marched round the walls of jericho for the seventh time on the seventh day, joshua said: cry aloud, for jehovah has given the city to you, and it shall be sacred, it and all that is in it, to jehovah, and all the silver and gold, and all the vessels of copper and iron shall belong to jehovah, and shall go into his treasury. when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, they made a great cry, and the walls fell down, and the people went up into the city and took it. and they set apart all that was in the city from the man to the woman, from the boy to the old man, from the oxen to the sheep, and slew them with the edge of the sword. then joshua sent spies to ai. when they returned they said to joshua: let not the whole people go up; two or three thousand men can smite ai, for they are few. joshua sent three thousand, but the men of ai overcame them, and pursued them as far as shebarim, and smote them on the slope of the mountain. then joshua rent his garments and fell upon his face. but jehovah said to him: israel has taken of the forbidden spoil; the children of israel cannot stand before their enemies, if that which is forbidden is not destroyed from their midst. they must come forth according to their tribes, races, and houses, and the house, which jehovah shall choose, shall come forward man by man. and whoever shall be found with that which is forbidden, shall be burnt with fire and all that belongs to him. joshua caused israel to come forward, according to their tribes, and the lot fell on the tribe of judah, and race of serah; and in the race of serah the lot fell upon the house of sabdi, and of the men of the house of sabdi the lot fell upon achan, the son of charmi. then achan confessed that he had taken a beautiful mantle of shinar, and shekels of silver, and a bar of gold fifty shekels in weight, and had hidden them in his tent. and achan the son of charmi was led out "with his sons and daughters, his oxen and asses, his tent and all that he had, and all israel stoned them, and they burnt them with fire, and covered them with stones, and then erected there a great heap of stones." but joshua set out towards ai, with all the people, and chose , men of war, and sent them out in the night, and said to them: go ye and lie in ambush at the back of the city, between ai and bethel. i and all the people that is with me will draw near towards the city, and if they come out to meet us, we will fly before them. then be ye ready and rise up out of your ambush and set fire to the city. when israel went forth towards ai, the king of ai came to meet them for battle; but joshua turned with his people and fled, and all the people of ai pursued them, and left the city open. then the men in ambush rose, and set fire to the town; and when the men of ai looked behind them, the smoke of their houses rose to heaven; and israel turned upon their pursuers and slew the men of ai, who were between the israelites on this side, and the israelites on that side, so that none remained beside the king whom they took alive. afterwards the women and children in ai were put to the sword, and of the slain on this day there were , . and joshua hanged the king of ai on a tree till evening. then they took the corpse down from the tree, and cast it at the entrance of the gate, and erected over it a great heap of stones till this day: but the city remained a heap of desolation. when the men of gibeon--a great city like one of the king's cities, it was greater than ai, and all the inhabitants were men of war--and the men of chephirah, beeroth, and kirjath-jearim, heard what joshua had done, they sent to him, and the messengers put old shoes and clouted on their feet, and old clothes on their bodies, and took old sacks on their asses, and patched wine skins, and the bread of their provisions was old and mouldy. thus they came into the camp of israel at gilgal, and said to joshua: we are come from a far country to make a covenant with thee; behold, the wine skins are torn which we filled new, our bread is dry and mouldy, our clothes and our shoes are old by reason of the length of the way. and joshua made a covenant with them to let them live, and the princes of the people made an oath with them. but when the children of israel set forth from gilgal, they came on the third day to their cities. then joshua called them and said: why have ye deceived us and said, we are far from you. be ye now accursed, and may ye never cease to be servants, and drawers of water, and hewers of wood for the house of my god. thus he did to them, and saved them from the hand of the children of israel that they slew them not. adoni-zedec, king of jerusalem, heard what joshua had done to jericho and her king, and to ai and her king, and that gibeon had made peace with joshua. he sent to hoham, king of hebron; and to piram, king of jarmuth; and to japhia, king of lachish; and to debir, king of eglon, and they gathered themselves and went forth, five kings of the amorites, and encamped against gibeon. then joshua set forth from gilgal, and all the men of war with him. and jehovah caused the amorites to flee before the children of israel, and joshua cried: sun, stand thou still upon gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of ajalon. and the sun stood still, and the moon waned not, till the people took vengeance on their enemies, and before this was no day like it, nor after it. and the five kings fled and hid themselves in the cave at makkedah; and when it was told to joshua, that the kings were hidden there, he said: roll great stones before the cave, and set men there to watch it. but do ye halt not, but pursue your enemies, and smite the rear guard, and let them not come into the cities. and israel accomplished the slaughter, and turned back to the camp at makkedah. and joshua caused the five kings to come forth out of the cave, and called to the leaders of his warriors and said: come forward and set your feet on the necks of these kings. and when this had been done, joshua smote the kings, and hanged them on five trees, and they hung on the trees till evening. then joshua commanded to take them down, and they cast them into the cave, and laid great stones on the mouth of the cave till this day. then joshua took makkedah, and libnah, and lachish, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and let no fugitive escape in makkedah, libnah, and lachish; and did to the kings of makkedah and libnah as he had done to the king of jericho. horam, king of gezer, went out to help lachish, but joshua defeated him and went from lachish against eglon, and from hebron against debir; and he set apart eglon, and hebron, and debir, all the souls that were therein, and smote the kings of hebron and debir with the edge of the sword, and returned to the camp at gilgal. but jabin, king of hazor, gathered together the kings of madon, shimron, and achshaph, and the kings of the north, who dwell towards the midnight, on the mountain and in the plain, and they encamped a great nation as the sands on the shore of the sea in multitude, with chariots and horses on lake merom. then joshua with all his men of war fell upon them suddenly, and smote them, and pursued them as far as sidon, and to the valley of mizpeh, and lamed their horses, and burned their chariots with fire. then he took hazor, the chief city of all these kingdoms, and smote their king with the sword, and all the souls that were therein; and all the booty of these cities, and all the cattle, the israelites took for spoil. for a long time joshua made war with all these kings, and he expelled the anakites from the mountains of hebron, from debir and anab, from the mountain of judah and the mountain of israel; with their cities he destroyed them. and there was no city which surrendered peacefully to the hebrews except that of the hivites of gibeon. joshua was old and stricken in years, and jehovah said to him: divide this land among the nine tribes and the half-tribe of manasseh. and eleazar the priest and joshua the son of nun, and the chiefs of the tribes of the children of israel divided the land by lot. and the lot of the children of judah was in the south, as far as the wilderness of sin and the brook of egypt, and in the east as far as the dead sea and to the end of jordan, and in the north the border was gilgal and the valley of ben hinnom, and beth shemesh, and the western border was the great sea. and the lot came forth for the children of joseph, and their borders on the south ran from the water of jericho over toward bethhoron, and from bethhoron toward the sea. the land toward the south fell to ephraim, and the land toward the north to manasseh. and the whole community of the children of israel were gathered together at shiloh, and there they set up the holy tent, and joshua spake to the seven tribes, whose possessions were not yet allotted: choose three men out of each tribe to write down the land, for i will cast lots for you here at shiloh before jehovah. and so the men went and wrote down the land according to the cities, in seven parts, and joshua cast lots at shiloh, and divided the land to the children of israel according to their divisions. but jehovah commanded joshua that he should speak to the children of israel, and tell them to fix the cities of refuge, to which the homicide was to fly who slew a man in misadventure, in order that the elders of the city might receive him, and if the avenger pursued him, they were not to deliver him into his hand till he had been brought before the people. and they consecrated kadesh, and shechem, and hebron, and bezer, and ramoth in gilead, and golan. and the chiefs of the tribe of the levites went to eleazar the priest and joshua the son of nun, and asked for cities to dwell in, and land for their cattle; and the israelites gave them forty-eight cities and their land for their possession. and joshua gathered the elders of israel, and his leaders and judges, and gave law and justice at shechem; and he died one hundred and ten years old, and they buried him in the land of his possession at timnath-serah, on the mountain of israel; and the bones of joseph, which the children of israel brought up out of egypt, they buried at shechem, on the piece of the field which jacob bought (pp. , ), and the children of joseph kept the place for a possession. and eleazar, the son of aaron, died, and they buried him in gibeah, the city of phinehas, his son, which was given to him on the mountain of ephraim. the conception of the covenant between jehovah and israel, and of the arrangement of law, as it existed in complete perfection in later times, dominates the two texts of the pentateuch and the book of joshua, no less than the prophetic revision of these texts (p. ), and could not but exercise an influence on the narrative of the conquest of canaan, _i.e._, the fulfilment of the prophecies. even in the first text it is the direct command of jehovah which leads joshua to set out towards the jordan; and it is the priestly ideas of this text which come out strongly in the feast of the passover and the circumcision before the conquest of jericho. the miraculous passage of the jordan is a repetition of the passage through the reed-sea. this narrative belongs, as it seems, to the second text, and is further amplified by the reviser.[ ] the overthrow of the walls of jericho, when the priests had blown their trumpets and the people raised the war-cry, is briefly narrated in the first text; here also the details are the work of the reviser. if the walls of jericho were mounted at the first onset, tradition might well recount the story that they were broken down before the war-cry of israel; and from this the farther account could be framed. the law of the priests ordained: "all that is devoted (_cherem_), what every man dedicates to jehovah from all that is his, from men, or cattle, or the field of his possession, that cannot be bought or redeemed. all that is devoted is holy to jehovah."[ ] joshua had devoted jericho and all that was in the city to jehovah. but one of the nation had taken something for himself from this devoted spoil. the punishment comes upon the whole people, and the first attempt on ai is a failure. the more complete is the victory when that transgressor and his house is stoned to death. by this narrative the observance of the command was deeply impressed on all. when it was found long after the settlement in canaan what pernicious results for life, morals, and religious worship followed from the fact that portions of the old population were allowed to remain among them, it appeared to the priestly mind that the due regulation and purity of the hebrew nature required the extinction of the earlier inhabitants, and even before they took possession of canaan, jehovah must have given the command to make neither covenant nor marriage with the canaanites, to destroy their altars and images, and to extirpate the nation.[ ] without doubt, at the time of the conquest a considerable number of the old population were not only driven out, but were put to death; and it is certain that when cities were taken by storm their inhabitants "from man to woman, from child to old man," were slain with the edge of the sword; but a systematic extirpation did not take place. of the four cities of the hivites--gibeon, chephirah, beeroth, and kirjath-jearim--gibeon, two good hours north-west of jebus, was the most important. these four cities joined the hebrews against the ruling amorites,[ ] and combined with them. the craft of the gibeonites, by which they succeeded in deceiving joshua about their canaanitic descent, is intended to explain the sparing of such an important part of the old population in opposition to the pre-dated command of extirpation. and if to this is added the fact that joshua, when he had once sworn to grant their lives, made them hewers of wood and drawers of water for the whole community, this, no doubt, rests on the fact that at a later time king saul, "in his zeal for israel," intended to extirpate all the gibeonites, and did extirpate part, "though israel had sworn to them;" that david favoured them, but solomon made "all that was left of the amorites, jebusites, hittites, perizzites, and hivites bond-servants to this day."[ ] the king adoni-zedek of jerusalem, who, startled by the fall of jericho and ai, and "the peace which gibeon had made with joshua," brings about the league of the amorite princes in the south against the invasion of the hebrews, belongs to the prophetic revision; in the first text the jerusalem of later times is still the city of the jebusites. the description of the great battle and of the miracle at gibeon against the amorites belongs to the second text. the miracle is founded merely on the poetical expression in the israelite song of victory, "the sun stood still and the moon stayed till the people had punished their enemies," which meant no more than that the day had been long enough, and the moon had shone long enough, to allow them to achieve a great defeat of the amorites, and to pursue them a considerable distance. after this day joshua is said to have taken hebron, debir, libnah, and lachish, to have conquered the kings of northern canaan in a great battle, and to have gained their cities, including hazor. this narrative with its particulars, according to which the conquest of canaan took place in consequence of the battle of gibeon and a second great victory of the israelites at lake merom, belongs to the revision,[ ] and is open to serious difficulties. in the first place we are told that joshua, for a long time, had fought against all the kings; but hazor, the abode of jabin, which joshua had attacked, we find shortly after as again the abode of jabin. a large number of places which joshua is said to have taken are subsequently not in the hands of israel, and both in the book of joshua and the book of judges mention is made of separate battles of the tribes among which the battle about hebron, which the tribe of judah obtained, is the most conspicuous.[ ] it was the view of both texts that the whole land was promised and plighted to the hebrews. they did not dwell on particulars in order to bring out more definitely and clearly the community of the tribes, the divinely-arranged and righteous division of the land among them. after the war, in the traditional account, had continued about five years, and joshua was eighty-five years old, he and eleazar, the son of aaron, divide by lot the territory gained on this side of the jordan. the first text here defines the portion of the tribe of judah with special minuteness, the second dwells upon the importance of the tribe of ephraim. last of all, the forty-eight cities, on an average four in each tribe, were set apart for the levites. of these forty-eight thirteen are mentioned as allotted to the families of the priests of the tribe of levi. these lie entirely in the territory of judah, simeon, and benjamin, while the ark of the covenant evidently was placed at shiloh in the territory of ephraim. in the neighbourhood of this sanctuary, therefore, the priests must have had their dwellings. on the other hand, nob, which in saul's time was called a city of the priests,[ ] was not among these thirteen cities. and among the thirty-five cities which are said to have been given to the levite ministers, several are found which were not conquered by the israelites, such as taanach, gezer, jibleam, and nahalal. of the thirteen towns of the priests and the six cities of refuge, which were partly cities of the priests and partly of the temple-servants, hebron, the first-mentioned, was, as has been already remarked, conquered later on, and not by joshua. these arrangements have arisen out of ideals; there never were levite cities in israel, and the right of asylum in the cities of refuge was not recognised till a later time. even if we set aside the sacerdotal scheme for the distribution of the land, we cannot repose complete confidence in an apparently ancient enumeration of the conquered kings and cities given in the book of joshua. allowing that it belonged to one of the two original texts, it has been altered and interpolated.[ ] cities are mentioned as conquered which are not mentioned in the preceding narrative; others are quoted as subjugated which evidently remained long after in the hand of the canaanites, like taanach and megiddo.[ ] adopting, therefore, as our principal basis the accounts which are in existence about the battles of the various tribes, we shall have to assume that the course of affairs was somewhat of this kind. the two tribes of reuben and gad and the greater part of the tribe of manasseh preferred to remain on the east of the jordan. the fertile depression round jericho naturally formed the first object of attack. jericho was taken. but the destruction of the city can hardly have been completely carried out; for not very long after we find it again inhabited.[ ] that the hebrews after taking jericho established themselves at gilgal, and from this place undertook flying campaigns against the cities of the amorites, are statements which, as to the fact, need not excite any doubts. the covenant with the neighbouring four cities of the hivites, which was appealed to even in the time of the kings, proves evidently that these cities united with the israelites and fought on their side against the amorites. in order to defend gibeon against the amorites, who wished to punish their defection, the great battle against the amorites took place near this city, which is proved to be a fact by the old song of victory. by this overthrow the power of the amorites seems to have been broken. their defence henceforth is confined to each of the cities maintaining itself. but the attacking party also lost their unity. the various tribes of the israelites attempted to conquer the districts which pleased them; and the campaign of conquest broke up into local conflicts. the tribe of ephraim, accompanied by the greater part of the remaining tribes, turned northwards to the green heights and shady valleys of shiloh and shechem. here, on "the mountain of ephraim," the ephraimites settled; the sacred ark was placed at shiloh, and here at timnath-serah, "which he had sought from the people and had obtained," joshua took up his abode, and built the city and dwelt therein. round the fortress of the prince the best part of the tribe must have settled. on the same mountains lay the portion of land which belonged to the priest of the sacred ark, phinehas, the grandson of aaron.[ ] near a sanctuary at shechem, under the oak, the priests and elders of the tribe assembled for the administration of law and justice. the ephraimitic text represents the sons of joseph as saying to joshua that they were a numerous people, and that mount ephraim was too narrow for them. joshua replied, go up to the forest, and hew out for yourselves there in the land of the perizzites and rephaims, if mount ephraim is too narrow for you. they answered: the mountain will not be gained by us; there are iron chariots among all the canaanites who dwell in the land of the valley at beth-shean, and in the valley of jezreel. but joshua said: the mountain shall belong to thee. it is forest, hew it down, and the outgoings shall belong to thee. thou shalt drive out the canaanites.[ ] the tribes of judah and simeon turned to the south after the battle of gibeon, and settled in the mountain land of hebron; here they succeeded in acquiring a considerable territory. but it was only by slow degrees, through long and severe battles, that the two tribes advanced. the tribe of judah first overcame the king of bezek, and took him prisoner. from the king as from the rest of the prisoners the thumbs and the great toes were cut off. then the king of bezek said: three score and ten kings having their thumbs and their great toes cut off gathered what fell from my table; now i have been requited.[ ] of more importance was it that caleb the son of jephunneh established himself in hebron, the old metropolis of the land of the south (p. ), and independently subjugated the surrounding territory.[ ] to the man who should conquer debir he promised his daughter achsah to wife, and othniel his brother's son gained the city and the woman. from debir the tribe of judah pressed on to the south, and conquered zephath and hormah. "and jehovah"--so we find it in the book of judges--"was with judah, and he took the mountain and possessed it, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the low ground because they had chariots of iron."[ ] the inhabitants of the low ground are the philistines on the coast, whose power was undoubtedly superior to that of the tribes of judah and simeon. the simeonites, a tribe by no means numerous, settled themselves under the tribe of judah, and had to be content with the least fertile districts on the southern border. the tribe of manasseh, so nearly related to ephraim, had in part remained beyond the jordan; the other part settled under the ephraimites, on their northern border in the region from hadad rimmon to the mouth of the kishon, but they were unable to gain the mastery over the greater number of the cities of the canaanites situated in this district. the little tribe of benjamin had settled round gibeon, perhaps immediately after the battle, between bethhoron and jericho, on the southern border of ephraim. the tribes of issachar and zebulon, asher and naphtali were the last to acquire settled abodes. issachar conquered the heights of tirzah and gilboa, as far as tabor; zebulon planted himself between the right bank of the kishon and the lake of kinneroth, in the region of jokneam and beth arbel. westward of the lakes of kinneroth and merom lay the tribes of naphtali and asher; the first was nearest to the lake of merom, in the district of the northern kadesh; asher was further to the west, on the borders of the land of tyre. the tribe of dan attempted to gain the spurs of the mountain westward of benjamin towards the sea. for a long time it encamped against the amorites and the northern cities of the philistines, ekron and gath, but though occasionally supported by ephraim and judah, it never gained territory enough for its numbers. when the others had long been fixed in settled abodes, a part of the danites, finding it impossible to advance to the coast, set out to the north, and took the city of laish, northward of kadesh and the land of naphtali, which belonged to the sidonians,[ ] gave it the name of dan, and here, as they had become more warlike than the rest, owing to their prolonged battles, maintained the northernmost point of the land of israel. the conquest was completed. in the middle of the thirteenth century b.c. the israelites had broken the power of the amorites in canaan, and gained a considerable territory (about , square miles), of which one-half lay on the nearer and the other on the farther side of the jordan. but this land, divided by the jordan, was neither a whole united from within, nor protected by natural boundaries from without. as the israelites immediately after their first successes became again disunited, and the attack became less powerful at every step in advance, the canaanites maintained themselves in independence, in separate valleys or heights difficult of approach, and in strong fortresses. remnants of the canaanites remained everywhere among and between the israelites. beside the benjamites the jebusites (a tribe of the amorites) maintained themselves, and at gibeon, kirjath-jearim, chephirah, and beeroth were the hivites, who had made peace with the israelites. in the land of ephraim the canaanites held their ground at gezer and bethel, until the latter--it was an important city--was stormed by the ephraimites.[ ] among the tribe of manasseh the canaanites were settled at beth shean, dan, taanach, jibleam, megiddo and their districts,[ ] and in the northern tribes the canaanites were still more numerous. it was not till long after the immigration of the hebrews that they were made in part tributary.[ ] the land of the israelites beyond the jordan, where the tribe of manasseh possessed the north, gad the centre, and reuben the south as far as the arnon, was exposed to the attacks of the ammonites and moabites, and the migratory tribes of the syrian desert, and must have had the greater attraction for them, as better pastures were to be found in the heights of gilead, and the valleys there were more fruitful. to the west only the tribe of ephraim reached the sea, and became master of a harbourless strip of coast. the remaining part of the coast and all the harbours remained in the hands of the powerful cities of the philistines and the phenicians. no attempt was made to conquer these, although border-conflicts took place between the tribes of judah, dan, and asher, and philistines and sidonians. such an attempt could only have been made if the israelites had remained united, and even then the powers of the israelites would hardly have sufficed to overthrow the walls of gaza, ascalon, and ashdod, of tyre, sidon, and byblus. yet the invasion of the israelites was not without results for the cities of the coast: it forced a large part of the population to assemble in them, and we shall see below how rapid and powerful is the growth of the strength and importance of tyre in the time immediately following the incursion of the israelites, _i.e._ immediately after the middle of the thirteenth century. as the population and in consequence the power of the cities on the coast increased, owing to the collection of the ancient population on the shore of the sea, those cities became all the more dangerous neighbours for the israelites. it was a misfortune for the new territory which the israelites had won by the sword that it was without the protection of natural boundaries on the north and east, that the cities of the philistines and phenicians barred it towards the sea, and in the interior remnants of the canaanites still maintained their place. yet it was a far more serious danger for the immigrants that they were without unity, connection, or guidance, for they had already given up these before the conflict was ended. undoubtedly a vigorous leadership in the war of conquest against the canaanites might have established a military monarchy which would have provided better for the maintenance of the borders and the security of the land than was done in its absence. but the isolated defence made by the canaanites permitted the attacking party also to isolate themselves. the new masters of the land lived, like the canaanites before and among them, in separate cantons; the mountain land which they possessed was much broken up, and without any natural centre, and though there were dangerous neighbours, there was no single concentrated aggressive power in the neighbourhood, now that egypt remained in her borders. the cities of the philistines formed a federation merely, though a federation far more strongly organised than the tribes of the israelites. under these circumstances political unity was not an immediately pressing question among the israelites; but owing to the dispersion in which they lived, and the open borders of their new kingdom, the question seriously arose whether they could enjoy in peace the land they had won. whatever the weight with which the want of internal concentration and external repulsion might be felt, whatever the difficulties arising from the remnant of canaanites left in the land, and however unsatisfactory the maintenance of the borders of the land, these political drawbacks were only so many advantages for the development of the religious and moral life of the israelites. footnotes: [ ] that the chronological statements in the book of judges afford no fixed point for deciding the date of the invasion of canaan by the hebrews is proved by nöldeke ("chronologie der richterzeit"). the genealogical tables give only six or seven generations down to eli and samuel, and these cannot fill a longer space than of to years. as ramses iii. whose reign according to lepsius falls in the years - b.c. fought against the pulista, cheta, and amari, _i.e._ the philistines, hittites, and amorites, within the first nine years of his reign (p. ) without meeting the hebrews among them, we may assume that their settlement in canaan did not take place till after the year b.c., about the middle of the thirteenth century, b.c. [ ] cf. nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] lev. xxvii. , . [ ] in the form of a vow, numb. xxi. - , from the second text; in the form of a command, exod. xxiii. , ; xxxiv. , from the revision. [ ] if the hivites are counted in samuel xxi. among the amorites, the reason is to be sought in the comprehensive meaning here given to the name amorites. [ ] sam. xxi. - ; kings ix. ; cf. joshua xvii. . [ ] de wette-schrader, "einleitung," s. , ; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] joshua xi. , , ; xii. ; xix. ; judges iv. , ; sam. xii. [ ] sam. xxi. - ; xxii. - . [ ] joshua xii.; nöldeke, "untersuchungen," s. . [ ] judges i. - . [ ] judges i. ; iii. . [ ] joshua xix. , ; xxiv. , both from the first text; joshua xvii. - . [ ] joshua xvii. - . [ ] judges i. . [ ] judges i. - , ; jesus, , . [ ] judges i. . [ ] joshua xix. ; judges xviii. [ ] judges i. , . [ ] judges i. . [ ] judges i. - . chapter xii. the nations of asia minor. the peninsula of asia minor is a table-land of about miles in length by in breadth, lying between the black sea, the Ægean, and the mediterranean. this table-land reaches its highest level in the south; here run along the mediterranean, from east to west, parallel ranges of mountains, the chain of taurus, and under the snow-clad heights lie green alpine pastures, while the slopes are filled with the most beautiful wood. under these mountains on the sea we find here and there narrow and hot but fruitful plains, which are separated into several sharply-divided districts by the spurs of the taurus, which run athwart them into the sea. northward of the peaks of taurus the soil gradually sinks to the black sea, so that while the southern coast possesses only short streams, with the exception of the sarus and pyramus, the larger arteries of the land empty into the black sea--the iris, the halys, the billæus, the sangarius, and the rhyndakus. these rivers take their course, partly through rocky districts, partly through extremely fruitful valleys. the centre of the land, from the middle course of the halys to the sangarius in the west, is taken up with a wide treeless desert, the great salt-steppe, the edges of which are formed by a mass of volcanic craters, by deep ravines and large lakes. further to the west the waters streaming from the table-land find their way to the Ægean, down a series of mountain terraces, so that the valleys of the mæander and the hermus are at the same time the highways which connect the coast with the interior. these terraces sometimes advance to the western shore, with steep limestone rocks and precipitous promontories running out into the bright blue sea; at other times they approach the coast with softer outlines; in one place broader, in others narrower plains are left, which, owing to the great fertility of the soil, are covered with orchards and vineyards. further inland, on the rising heights, is a splendid forest of oaks, firs, and planes, broken by mountain pastures, over which rise the jagged rocks of ida, tmolus, messogis, and latmus; in the far distance the snow-capped peaks of taurus fill the horizon. on the western coast the proximity of the ocean softens the heat of summer and the cold of winter; and the combination of sea and mountain, of ocean breezes and upland air, the connection opened to the table-land on the east by the hermus and mæander and the calm sea on the west, which forms a passage to a number of adjacent islands--make these districts on the shore of the Ægean sea the favoured home of civilisation in asia minor. on the north-east, where the peninsula joins the broad mountain land of the isthmus between the black sea and the caspian, around the sources of the euphrates and tigris, on the course of the araxes, which falls into the caspian sea, and the high table-land of lake van, lay the home of the armenians. according to strabo, their customs were like those of the medes, who were the neighbours of the armenians, to the east of the lake of urumiah, and at the mouth of the araxes. and if, according to the same evidence, the armenians paid the greatest reverence to the goddess anaitis,[ ] the goddess anahita held a prominent position in the worship of the nations of the table-land of iran. moreover, even in modern armenian, the affinity with the iranian languages is predominant; and there is therefore no doubt that the armenians belong to the indo-germanic stock, and are a nation of aryan descent. on the southern slope of the group of mountains which they possessed south-east of the lake of van, on the upper course of the great zab, lay the district of arphaxad, with which we have already become acquainted from semitic sources; south of the lake lay the carduchi, whom the later greeks call the gordyæans and gordyenes; but among the armenians they were known as kordu, among the syrians as kardu.[ ] these are the ancestors of the modern kurds, a nation also of the aryan stock, whose language is even nearer to those of iran than the armenian. westward of the carduchi, at the confluence of the two streams of the euphrates, we again meet with a semitic race.[ ] the north-western slope of the armenian mountains, as far as the phasis and the black sea, was the home of the muskai of the assyrian inscriptions, the mesech of the hebrews, the moschi of the greeks. beside them, further to the west, on the coast, were the tabal of the assyrians, the tubal of the hebrews, the tibarenes of the greeks; westward from these, as far as the mouth of the iris, were the chalti of the armenians, the chalybians (chaldæans) of the greeks. of the origin and language of the moschi and tibarenes we know nothing further; the genealogies of the hebrews placed mesech and tubal among the sons of japhet. the territory of the armenians round lake van lies , feet high. the only extensive plain among the mountains which are the home of the armenians is the valley on the middle course of the araxes, which is separated from the district of the van by the range of the masis (ararat). the highest peak of this range, a mighty cone of dark rock, veiled by wide glaciers, rises to a height of , feet. only the valley of the araxes allowed agriculture on any extensive scale; it only brought forth abundant produce. other more protected and warmer depressions, though small in extent, on the southern slopes, permitted the culture of the vine. the inhabitants of the heights followed a pastoral life, and the mountain pastures supported splendid horses and mules. moses of chorni (khorene), who wrote the history of armenia in the years - of our era,[ ] tells us as follows:--japhet, the third son of noah, had a son gomer; gomer's son was thiras; thiras had a son thorgom; thorgom's son haik, together with his son armenak and all his family, emigrated from babylon to the plain of airarat, in order to escape the tyranny of belus, the king of babel. this plain haik then left to cadmus, his grandson, the son of armenak, and himself, with armenak, passed on to the west, and founded haikashen. but when the army of the babylonians marched out to attack airarat, haik came to the assistance of his grandson, and defeated belus on the shore of lake van. then armenak marched eastwards from haikashen into the plain at the foot of the aragazd, where at a later time armajis, the son of armenak, built the city of armavir. the son of armajis was amasiaj, and of amasiaj, arast. the grandson of arast was aram, who undertook distant campaigns, and subjugated syria and cappadocia to his rule. with him ninus, king of assyria, out of respect to his power and bravery, made a league. aram's son and successor was araj, whose beauty inflamed shamiram (semiramis), the queen of assyria. when araj resisted her inclinations, shamiram, at the head of her army, invaded armenia, but, before the battle, she bade her soldiers spare araj. the armenians were defeated, and in spite of the command of shamiram, araj was slain in the _mêlée_, and she attempted in vain to resuscitate the corpse by magic arts. then shamiram caused builders to come from assyria to armenia, and with the help of these she erected a splendid city, shamiramakert (city of semiramis), on the shore of the lake of van, in order to dwell in the cool air of the mountains during the heat of the summer months; and the throne of armenia she gave to cardus, the son of araj. but he rebelled against her, fought without success, and, like his father, fell in battle. at last the medes rebelled against shamiram, and after defeat she fled to armenia. on the shores of lake van she was overtaken by her pursuers, and when she had thrown her necklace and her ornaments into the water, she was slain. then her son zames (ninyas) ascended the throne of assyria, and for twenty-six generations the descendants of cardus were vassals of the kings of assyria.[ ] after these twenty-six kings, whose names are given by moses, when nineveh had fallen, barbakis (arbaces) the mede, crowned baroir king of armenia, and his descendants ruled as independent princes. the ninth successor of baroir was tigran (tigranes). he conquered azdahag (astyages), the king of the medes, and pierced him through with his lance in the battle. owing to tigran's bravery and victory, the prince of the persians became the lord of the medes.[ ] we can trace the elements out of which this account has arisen. the names japhet, gomer, and thiras are borrowed from the hebrew scriptures, from the genealogy of the japhetic nations in genesis; but the order of succession is altered. to the same book belongs thorgom, the son of thiras, and father of haik; in the hebrew his name is torgarmah. torgarmah was the name of armenia among the syrians;[ ] the hebrews appear to have used the word to denote the district of van. the native name of the armenians was haikh, and of the land, haiastan. from these names is derived haik, the son of thorgom, the progenitor of the race. the emigration from babylon is no doubt an invention arising out of some early contact, out of the trade of armenia with babylonia, and intended to give the armenians a share in the splendour of that ancient centre of the civilisation of hither asia, from which, as a fact, they derived such important elements of culture as their system of writing. eastward of lake van haik defeats the babylonians, for here lay haik's fortress; in armenian haikabjerd, _i.e._ fortress of the armenians, and hajots-dsor, _i.e._ valley of the armenians. northeast of this lake lies the canton of harkth, _i.e._ the fathers, the canton of the fathers;[ ] and in this, on the eastern euphrates, is haikashen, _i.e._ haik's building, which haik is said to have founded, and where his grave was reported to be. as the name of haik, _i.e._ the name of the nation, clings especially to the neighbourhood of lake van, so are the names of his supposed successors, his son armenak, and grandsons cadmos and amajis, attached to the district of airarat, to mount aragadz, and the city of armavir. the land of airarat, _i.e._ the fruitful plain, on the middle course of the araxes, was, as we have heard, the first object of the immigrants, who must have come, not from the south, as the story represents, but from the east, from media, and must have reached the valley of the araxes from the shore of the caspian sea. as haikh is the name by which the armenians called themselves, so armenak is obviously formed from the name armina, which the medes and persians gave to the armenians. cadmus, the son of armenak, is inserted in the story; and has been borrowed, as the form of the name shows, from grecian sources, perhaps to represent the semitic population in the south of armenia. that in this learned construction of the armenian myth the eastern, and not the southern, district of armenia is given to cadmus, is due, no doubt, to the fact that the semitic word _kedem_ could hardly have any other meaning than that of "the east." armenak's grandson and great-grandson, amasiaj and arast, represent respectively the mountain chain of masis and the river araxes; in old armenian the name of the latter was eras'ch.[ ] the division of the two centres of the armenian land and armenian life--the land in the east and the land in the west, the land of ararat on the araxes, and the district of van--is strongly marked in this tradition, and not less so in the assyrian inscriptions and the scriptures of the hebrews. the first text of the pentateuch represents noah's ship as landing on mount ararat, and this text or the second mentions togarmah beside gomer. the prophet ezekiel speaks of the horses and mules which came from togarmah, the land of mountain pastures, to tyre.[ ] the assyrian inscriptions mention the land of van (_mat vannai_) beside the land of urarti, _i.e._ ararat; each is ruled by its own prince. king aram represents the land of aram, the aramæans, whose neighbours the armenians were, and with whom they came into frequent contact. the oldest historical recollections of the armenians might perhaps go back to the times when the kings of assyria made an inroad into their mountains and reduced their princes to tribute and obedience. but when moses of chorni tells us of the meetings of aram, araj, and cardus with ninus, semiramis, and ninyas, of the twenty-six kings who governed under assyrian dominion, and of the liberation of the land by arbaces, these supposed names of the assyrian riders are enough to prove that the narratives were framed upon the accounts of the greeks, especially the greek chronographers. on the other hand, the story of the city of semiramis on lake van is grounded upon the assyrian images and ruins, which are still found in various parts of armenia, especially at van, bitlis, karkar, egil, and achlat, as also upon monuments of the persian kings, and xerxes in particular; but no doubt it is due in the greatest extent to the monuments of the native princes, of whom inscriptions are in existence belonging to the end of the seventh and the sixth century b.c. later historians knew nothing of these princes, and were unable to read the inscriptions. the long list of armenian kings in moses of chorni does not contain a single name of the armenian princes mentioned in the inscriptions of the assyrian kings, or in the native inscriptions of these princes. the narrative of king tigran appears to be of an earlier date than the rest of the material from which moses of chorni compiled his history of armenia in the older period. tigran is said to have ruled over armenia at the time of cyrus, with whom he entered into a league; he overcame astyages (azdahag) of media in battle, and slew him in single combat. the first wife of astyages and a number of his children, together with other captives, tigran then conducted to armenia, and there he settled them in the neighbourhood of koghten. in the songs of the people of koghten the descendants of astyages are "allegorically" spoken of as the descendants of the dragon, "for azdahag," moses adds, "signifies a dragon in our language."[ ] hence it is clear that the armenians claimed the glory of having conquered the medes and overthrown their supremacy. and if they called the descendants of astyages the descendants of the dragon, they obviously contracted the old cloud-demon of the avesta, azhi-dahaka, into azdahag, and confounded him with astyages. xenophon in his romance of cyrus calls tigranes the son of the king of armenia, and represents him as paying the most considerable services to cyrus. it may have been the case that xenophon in his march through armenia, when he crossed the snowclad heights of this mountain region, and entered the mud huts of the mountaineers, and was hospitably entertained by them with barley-wine, _i.e._ with beer, heard the name and deeds of tigranes.[ ] the kings of assyria at an early period turned their arms to the north. on the zibene-su, the eastern source of the western tigris, the likeness of tiglath pilesar i. ( - b.c.) has been found engraved on the rocks at karkar. the inscription tells us that he had overcome the land of nairi, _i.e._ in all probability the land of the rivers (euphrates and tigris), and that he had defeated the muskai (p. ), who had not paid their tribute for fifty years, and had invaded kumukh (commagene). more than years later, tiglath adar ii. ( to b.c.) caused his image to be hewn in the rocks here beside that of the first tiglath pilesar. tiglath adar's successor, assurnasirpal ( - b.c.), made repeated campaigns against the nairi, destroyed of their towns, slew many of their princes, and set up his image beside those of tiglath adar and tiglath pilesar. in his tenth campaign he took amida (diabekr) on the tigris. below this city, at kurkh, there is a second image of this king. his successor also, shalmanesar ii. ( - b.c.), fought against the nairi, set up his image at the source of the tigris, and in the year defeated the king of urarti. in the year his troops again defeated a king of urarti, of another name than the first; in the year b.c. they laid waste the land of king udaki of van, and in the following campaign fifty places in urarti were burnt. bin nirar iii., king of asshur ( - b.c.), marched twice against the district of lake van, and seven times against the nairi; he boasts that he has taken possession of the land of the nairi throughout its whole extent.[ ] shalmanesar iii. ( - b.c.) led his army six times against urarti. then tiglath pilesar ii. ( - b.c.), in the year , defeated king sarda, or sarduri, of urarti, with his confederates; in the year b.c. removed vassarmi from tubal, and placed chulli on the throne in his stead. in the time of sargon of assyria ( - b.c.), aza, the prince of the land of van, who, like his predecessor iranzu, was a tributary to assyria, was murdered. his brother ullusun, whom sargon put in his place, combined with urza, prince of ararat, and the prince of mount mildis against assyria. sargon was victorious; ullusun submitted ( b.c.); but urza maintained himself in ararat, and although sargon boasts to have burnt fifty of his townships, he combined with urzana of musasir, _i.e._ probably of arsissa on lake van, with mita, prince of the moschi, with ambris, prince of tubal, the son of chulli, whom sargon had allowed to succeed his father on the throne of the tibarenes, and to whom at the same time he had entrusted the sovereignty over cilicia, and had given his daughter in marriage.[ ] the confederates were defeated; ambris was carried prisoner to assyria, a part of his nation were transplanted to assyria, and assyrians settled at tubal in his place. mita submitted. arsissa was captured; , prisoners, their treasures, the gods haldia (?) and bagamazda (?), with the holy vessels, were carried away. when urza perceived this, he took away his own life ( b.c.).[ ] in the seventh century esarhaddon of assyria had to fight against the cilicians, the tibarenes, and the mannai; the last name seems to denote the armenian district of minyas, on the upper course of the eastern euphrates, of which the chief city was manavazakert; manavaz, the son of haik, is said to have built this city.[ ] against the mannai, or the minni of ezekiel, esarhaddon's successor, assurbanipal ( - b.c.), also directed his weapons. in the course of this war asheri, the prince of the minni, was slain by his own dependents, and his son ualli submitted; the previous tribute of the minni was raised by thirty horses; and mugalla, king of tubal, and sandasarmi of cilicia voluntarily submitted to assurbanipal.[ ] the mountains of armenia, as these narratives prove, were divided into several principalities. the assyrians first attacked the land to the south of the high mountain-range, _i.e._, in the first instance the land of ararat, the most powerful of these armenian principalities. on either side of the mountain, in the basin of lake van, and in the valley of the araxes, the armenians made a vigorous resistance, so that the obedience of the armenian chieftains never seemed to be secured for any length of time. in spite of this resistance, the civilisation of the assyrians exercised great influence on the armenians. this is not merely shown in the adoption of the system of cuneiform writing on the part of the armenians; sargon caused the capture of arsissa to be represented in his palace at khorsabad. if these reliefs are true representations, the style of architecture and the plan of the armenian temples were not essentially different from the assyrian. the altars also, the ornaments, and the weapons appear to be similar.[ ] on the other hand it would admit of no doubt that the armenians, in spite of this influence, retained the worship of their iranian gods without any foreign admixture, if the name of that armenian deity bagamazda, _i.e._ the great god, were read correctly. that deity would at the same time afford a new proof that the deities of iran were worshipped in armenia also. strabo, as already (p. ) remarked, gives an account of the worship of anaitis, the water-giving goddess, the anahita of the iranians, among the armenians; and the name of this goddess is found, in the form "anaid," in the cuneiform inscriptions of the armenian princes. unfortunately these inscriptions, which mainly belong to the land of van, have not as yet been sufficiently deciphered. the names of the kings, from which they come, are read as bagridur, isbuinis, minuas, argistis ii. and bagridur ii.[ ] these kings reigned successively; each calls himself the son of his predecessor. an older argistis of ararat is mentioned after the time of urza in an inscription of sargon, king of assyria, belonging apparently to the year b.c. the inscriptions of the kings of armenia from the first to the second bagridur are filled with the wars which they carried on, the numbers of the slain, of the captives, the cattle in the spoil, the towns and temples destroyed. as asshur is mentioned in the inscriptions of argistis ii., and in those of his successor bagridur ii. a war against babylon is narrated,[ ] these two kings must have been contemporaries of the last ruler of assyria, assuridilili ( - b.c.), and nebuchadnezzar ii. of babylon ( - b.c.), and their three predecessors contemporaries of sennacherib, esarhaddon, and assurbanipal. the central plain of the table-land of asia minor, from the valley of the halys and the great salt lake to the cadmus and the mysian olympus, north-westwards as far as the coasts of the propontis, was inhabited by the phrygians. according to herodotus the thracians asserted that the phrygians had once dwelt in their land under the name of briges. hence they had passed through thrace to asia, though a part, who still preserved the name of briges, had remained behind in thrace. of those who arrived in asia, some passed still further to the east; and the armenians were colonists of the phrygians.[ ] in strabo also the phrygians are immigrants, and come from thrace.[ ] in any case the bithynians, who were settled on the lower course of the sangarius from the mouth of this stream westward as far as the bosporus, were of thracian descent; they are said to have emigrated from the strymon to asia.[ ] on the other hand, the phrygians themselves maintained that they were not an offshoot from the thracian briges, but the briges in thracia had emigrated from them.[ ] if the affinity of the armenians, the phrygians, and thracians is established, the phrygians must be considered in the right. these migrations could not have proceeded from the strymon, they must rather have taken place from the east to the west, from armenia to thrace, and the thracians rather than the armenians were the last link in this emigration. as the modern science of language finds indo-germanic roots in the slight remains of the phrygian language which have come down to us,[ ] we must assume that the progenitors of the phrygians and thracians passed from the armenian mountains in the east towards the west. the ancestors of the phrygians remained on the table-land of asia minor, those of the thracians went further to the north-west, towards bithynia, over the bosporus, which the greeks named after the thracians; and beyond the strait they inhabited the land under the balkan from the black sea to the shores of the adriatic. the character of the language of the thracians and illyrians, remains of which are preserved in rumanisch and albanian, places it in the indo-germanic family. the phrygians are said to have been a very ancient nation.[ ] according to the accounts of the greeks, the legends of the phrygians began the history of their country with gordius and midas. gordius, it was said, was a poor farmer, who possessed only two yoke of oxen. at that time the phrygians were divided by factions, and in order to restore peace, the deity commanded that they should elect as king the man whom they first met on a waggon on the way to the shrine of zeus. then they met gordius on his waggon and greeted him as king. gordius built the city of gordium at the confluence of the scopas and sangarius, and dedicated in the temple of zeus on the citadel of gordium the chariot which carried him to the throne. after gordius's death the throne descended to his son midas, to whose lips, when a boy, ants had carried grains of corn. midas is said to have founded the city of gordiutichus in the south of the land, on the borders of phrygia, and ancyra in the north: at pessinus on the slope of mount agdus he built a temple to the goddess of phrygia and established the sacrifices.[ ] he was the richest king who ever lived. everything that he touched turned to gold. once he bathed in the pactolus, and ever since the sands washed down by the river became sands of gold. when pan blew his shepherd's pipe, and apollo touched his lyre, midas preferred the music of pan. in revenge, apollo caused asses' ears to grow upon midas, and he covered them with a tall cap. but the barber of midas knew the secret, and told it into a pit; and some rushes grew in the pit, and whispered "midas has asses' ears."[ ] the gold of midas and his power of changing everything into that metal comes from the greeks, whose legends desired to celebrate and explain the ancient wealth of the kings of phrygia. from the same source are the asses' ears and the whispering rushes. the use of the pan's pipe, though not of the shepherd's pipe, was learnt by the greeks through their colonists in asia minor from the phrygians. the reed (or flute) was called "eleg" among the armenians: its notes first accompanied the elegies of callinus of ephesus, and archilochus of paros, to which it gave the name. among the greeks many judges, and those by no means of the least reputation, gave the most decided preference to the music of the cithara, the lyre of apollo, over the flute. in the same feeling which prompted this judgment, the want of taste in finding the tones of the flute more beautiful than those of the cithara is visited by a punishment which at the same time is intended to explain the origin of the tall phrygian cap. the reeds belong to a brook in the vicinity of celænæ in phrygia, which the greeks called "the flute-spring" (aulokrenê) because the reeds growing on the shores were used as wind-instruments. there is another story in which the greeks have expressed the contrast between the quiet and composed tones of the cithara, and the wild music of the phrygian flutes--the phrygian harmonies to which they ascribed the power of rousing the feelings into a passionate excitement of pain or delight.[ ] the music of the flute was introduced into choric poetry in the first half of the sixth century by polymnestus of colophon, and sakadas of argos. among the phrygians, marsyas, a faithful and chaste companion of their national goddess, was the genius of flute-music.[ ] a brook which flowed into the mæander through the city apamæa cibotus, in the neighbourhood of celænæ, was named after marsyas. the greeks had a story that their god apollo had overcome with his cithara the flute-player of the phrygians, and had flayed him in punishment for his presumption in entering on the contest. at celænæ a bottle of marsyas was exhibited, on which the story of the flaying of marsyas may have been founded.[ ] after removing the fictions and additions of the greeks, the characteristic trait of the phrygian story still remains, that their monarchs arose out of the agricultural class, that grains of corn were carried into the lips of the son of the first ruler, and that the king of phrygia loved the pan's pipe of the shepherds. elsewhere also the respect of the phrygians for the agricultural life is brought into prominence. nicolaus of damascus tells us of a law of the phrygians by which the slaughter of the ploughing ox, or the theft of agricultural implements, was punished with death.[ ] in the fourth century b.c. the waggon of gordius was still standing on the citadel of gordium. the yoke was bound so fast to the pole with the bark of dog-wood--the knot is reported to been tied by gordius himself--that it was said in phrygia that the man who should untie this knot would rule over all asia. the name gordius should apparently be traced back to the armenian "gords," i.e. labour, or "day labour."[ ] that side by side with these traits the national tradition ascribed the erection of the ancient cities and temples, the building of gordium, gordiuteichus, and ancyra to the earliest princes, is only natural. the names of the cities manegordum (near ancyra) and midaëum also point to these. the phrygians obeyed a dynasty which saw its ancestors in the kings gordius and midas, and called themselves alternately by these names. the first king of whom we have any more definite information was midas, the son of gordius, who ascended the throne of phrygia in the year b.c. according to the date of eusebius. his wife was damodice, the daughter of agamemnon, the king of the greek city of cyme, who is said to have been a woman distinguished by beauty and wisdom.[ ] the seat on which he used to dispense justice, a work well worth seeing, as herodotus says, he consecrated at delphi. when phrygia was attacked by the first great invasion of the cimmerians, he took away his own life by drinking bull's blood ( b.c.).[ ] of a third midas, who reigned apparently about a century later, we learn that his tomb was adorned with the image of a maiden in brass, and that a greek poet composed as an inscription for this monument the following verses:-- "i am a maiden of brass, i lie on the tomb of midas; while waters flow, and tall trees grow, on midas' tearful tomb i lie. i say to every passer by, 'here midas sleeps in earth below.'"[ ] with the descendants of this midas, gordius and his son adrastus, this dynasty came to an end in the sixth century b.c.[ ] between prymnessus and midaëum (jazili kaja and sidi ghazi), in the valley of doganlu, lie the tombs of these kings, sepulchral chambers, which are hewn in the perpendicular walls of red sandstone. on the face of the rock there is no trace of any entrance; and the corpses must have been lowered down behind the exterior front. the walls of rock are changed into sculptures, in imitation of the outlines and rudiments of a light wooden building. in low relief a framework of beams is sketched, and over this a low-pitched gable rises. such are the simplest of these façades, which apparently we must also consider the oldest. others display a frieze of palm leaves in the upper field of the framework. others again put the figures of animals in the gable, _e.g._ two horses, between which is an obelisk, and exhibit traces of hellenic influence, while another presents a perfect imitation of the doric arrangement of pillars. among these sepulchres may once have been the tomb with the maiden of brass. the inscriptions found on some, or in the neighbourhood, are phrygian, but written in greek characters. the most important tomb is that of a more ancient midas at kümbet. the façade of this monument, which is in framework of the phrygian style, covers about sixty square feet of the hundred feet of the rock. the space in the field of the framework is entirely filled up with rectangular ornaments and a kind of scroll, while the tympanum of the gable is covered with a key pattern.[ ] other remarkable remains of buildings are found in phrygia. strabo tells us of a tribe on the borders of cilicia who lived in the arches and hollows of the rocks above the fruitful valley which they cultivated; till conquered by the romans the tribe was considered invincible, and vitruvius remarks that the phrygians excavated the natural hills, cut passages in them, and extended the spaces into dwellings as far as the nature of the place allowed.[ ] on the rhyndakus, in the district of the ancient prymnessus, at beibazar, on lake egerdir, to the east near iconium, numerous habitations are found excavated in the rocks, so that it really seems that the phrygians dwelt in the walls of their mountains.[ ] lofty walls of rock, thousands of isolated cones, and some mighty mountain summits are excavated into dwellings, into rock cities--a task which was rendered easier by the softness of the stone (peperino and tufa). steep and at times wonderfully jagged rocks, overhanging picturesque valleys, are chiselled out for one or two hundred feet in height in such a manner that several galleries of habitations lie one upon the other. these are lighted by openings in the front, and connected with each other by shafts and staircases: of seats, hearths, or couches there is no trace whatever--only niches and recesses are found. yet in some of the rock cities an advance may be observed. in these the entrances to some extent exhibit indications of pillars, architraves, portals, and the like, so that the habitations of this kind seem to have been built at a later period. the ruins of the cities of the phrygians, the remains of gordium, midaëum, pessinus, prymnessus, and ancyra allow us to see the so-called cyclopian style.[ ] our knowledge of the religious rites of the phrygians is extremely scanty. they are said to have invoked the god men, or manes under various titles,[ ] and the names of the cities manegordum and manesium seem to go back to this deity. whether this is the god whom the greeks called the phrygian zeus is not clear. the goddess, whom the greeks called rhea or cybele, dindymene, agdistis, after the mountains sacred to her, is said to have been called amma by the phrygians.[ ] the chief home of her rites was that sanctuary on mount agdus near pessinus, which the first midas is said to have dedicated to her (p. ). here she was worshipped in a shapeless stone of no great size, not larger than a man could lift. at the side of her statue in the temple lions and panthers are said to have stood.[ ] her priests were eunuchs, who waited on the goddess in gaily coloured vestments. the chief priest at pessinus, or archigallus, is afterwards found holding a princely position. at the festivals of the goddess, which were celebrated every year, it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a sharp shell, crying out at the same time, "take this, agdistis." then they went round the country asking alms in the name of the goddess, and they were known to the greeks as "metragyrtes," _i.e._ "beggars of the mother;"[ ] for the goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and whose service demanded the sacrifice of sex, was called by the greeks the "great mother," the "mountain mother," the "nourishing earth," the "giver of all." she must, therefore, have been regarded as the maternal power of the earth, the power of nature, which gives life. it is especially stated that she gave increase to the flocks,[ ] and since she was named after different mountains we may assume that high places and mountains were the chosen seats of her worship. in greek and roman art the phrygian goddess is represented as sitting on a chariot drawn by lions and panthers, with a cymbal in her hand, and wearing on her head the mural crown as the goddess of the earth which supports cities. by the side of the great mother stands the god atys, whom herodotus calls a son of manes.[ ] he grew up with the shepherds among the goats of the forest. the goddess loved him, but he fled away into the mountains, and there, under a fir-tree, into which his spirit passed, he made himself an eunuch. in search of him amma roams over the hills in frantic grief, and carries into her cave the tree into which his spirit passed. the emasculation and death of atys, as also his resurrection, were celebrated by the phrygians.[ ] at these festivals a fir-tree was felled, crowned with violets, twined with garlands, and carried into the sanctuary of the goddess. afterwards atys was sought in the mountains with wild music and frenzy, as amma had sought him. the third day of the festival was "the day of blood," i.e. of the mutilation and death of atys, who was bewailed with despairing grief, amid rending of the hair and beating of the breast. then followed a happier scene, the festival of "the resurrection," and the washing of the stone of the goddess.[ ] we learn further that atys was also called papas among the phrygians. he is also entitled the goat-herd and neat-herd; the plastic art of greece and rome represents him as a youthful shepherd with the pan's-pipe, and by his side is a pine and a ram. according to later accounts he was the "shepherd of the bright stars."[ ] hence we must assume that in atys the phrygians personified the youthful bloom of nature, the bloom of the spring, and they mourned the disappearance of this, just as, according to the greeks, they sang a piercing wail--the lityerses--at the time of corn-cutting. they lamented the death of the spring, and the fall of the fruit; the youthful god had resigned his own power; the creative vigour continued only to exist in the tree of atys, the ever-green fir. in the spring time it awoke again; this was the day of the resurrection with its joy and pleasure. this orgiastic worship, and roaming with wild cries over the heights and in the ravines of the mountains, sometimes in wailing and lamentation, sometimes in joy, is peculiar to the religion of the phrygians. the central point of the phrygian kingdom lay westwards of the great salt plain in the region between gordium and ancyra, between midaëum and pessinus in the valley of the sangarius, on whose banks the homeric poems place the phrygians, who are the possessors of "well-walled cities."[ ] if the majority of the phrygians remained farmers and shepherds, they nevertheless arrived at an early date at a monarchy, and under this they reached a civilisation by no means contemptible, a national culture, with an architecture and music of their own. on the religion of the phrygians the rites of their semitic neighbours on the north and south no doubt exercised a strong influence. the combination of the creative power and the power hostile to procreation into one deity, and the custom of mutilation, are conceptions and rites unknown to the aryan nations. but they are closely connected with the forms and worship of astarte-ashera, just as atys resembles the adonis of the syrians. on the other hand, as was remarked above, the phrygians adopted the greek alphabet on their monuments, and greek verses were composed for the tomb of midas (p. ). in return the greeks adopted the phrygian flute, and along with it the form of the elegy and the phrygian harmonies. nor were these all. the wild roaming, the unchecked sorrow and joy, the tambourines and drums of the phrygian festivals passed without doubt in the first instance to the greek colonies in the propontis, and more especially to cyzicus, and from thence to the mother country at the celebration of certain festivals of demeter and dionysus. "take," says euripides in the _bacchæ_, "take the drums, the invention of the phrygians and the mother rhea. long ago the corybantes (the attendants of the great mother) devised the mighty circle of the stretched hide and placed in rhea's hand, with the loud, sweet-sounding tone of phrygian flutes, the thunder for the festal song."[ ] towards the east, the south coast of asia minor was inhabited by the cilicians and the solymi. to the former belonged the slopes of taurus and the coast to the right bank of the kalykadnus. towards the west came the solymi, in a wild and broken mountain country. they took their name from the solyma mountains (_sallum_ = steps), which they inhabited, and according to choerilus of samos, they spoke the language of the phenicians.[ ] "the pass," so xenophon tells us, "which leads to cilicia (from the interior of asia minor) is very steep, and only broad enough for a single waggon. on descending from it you come into a well-watered plain by the sea, which is inclosed from one end to the other by lofty and precipitous mountains. but the plain itself is large and beautiful, and filled with trees of every kind, and with vines. it produces much sesame, wheat, millet, and barley."[ ] in addition to these advantages the slopes of taurus offered splendid pastures for horses, and on the coast were excellent harbours. the inhabitants of this favoured land, known in assyrian inscriptions as chillakai, and on the coins of the district from the persian times as chelech,[ ] belonged, like their neighbours on the orontes and on the upper euphrates, to the semitic stock. this is proved by the names of their districts and places of their gods, and by the inscriptions on their coins. the semitic stamp of names of places like amanus (_amana_, firm), adana (_eden_, delight), mallus (_maa'la_, height), tarsus (_tars_, dry) is beyond a doubt.[ ] herodotus tells us that the cilicians wore woollen clothes, and peculiar helmets of ox-leather, and carried swords and spears like the egyptians, and he maintained that they were descended from cilix, the son of agenor, a phenician. their princes were always styled syennesis.[ ] this standing name was, without doubt, the title given by the princes of cilicia to themselves: it must have been _schu'a nasi_, _i.e._ "noble prince."[ ] hellanicus tells us that of the two kings of the name of sardanapalus, who ruled over assyria, one had built the two cities of tarsus and anchiale in cilicia in one day.[ ] on the other hand berosus informs us that sennacherib ( - b.c.) had heard in assyria that an army of greeks had landed in cilicia; against this he marched and defeated it, but with heavy loss. as a memorial of this victory he caused his image to be set up there, and afterwards the city of tarsus was built in such a way that the cydnus flowed through the middle of it. the temple at anchiale (west of tarsus, on the sea) was also founded by sennacherib.[ ] when alexander of macedonia reached cilicia his attendants found that the circuit and towers of the walls of anchiale proved that the city was planned on a large scale. near the walls they saw the statue of an assyrian king. his right hand was raised, and the inscription in assyrian letters is said to have called him sardanapalus, the son of anakyndaraxes.[ ] no king of the name of anakyndaraxes or sardanapalus ever ruled over assyria, unless perhaps by the latter is meant assurbanipal (assurbanhabal), the son of esarhaddon. on the other hand, the inscriptions of shalmanesar ii. of asshur ( - b.c.) mention the fact that he had overcome "pikhirim the chief of the land of chilakku (cilicia)," and sargon, king of assyria ( - b.c.), tells us that the cilicians had not been subject to his father, and that he had transferred the dominion over cilicia to ambris, king of tubal. hence cilicia must have become subject to sargon in the earliest years of his reign. in consequence of the revolt, which ambris undertook with urza of ararat, and mita, the king of moschi, as we saw above (p. ), ambris was taken captive and dethroned in the year b.c. sennacherib, the successor of sargon ( - b.c.), informs us that in the very first years of his reign he had caused rebellious cilicians to be removed: the inscriptions of the later years of his reign remark that the cities of the cilicians were destroyed and burnt, and the cilicians in the forests were reduced. after this the inscriptions of esarhaddon ( - b.c.) assure us that he reduced the cilicians; and assurbanipal recounts that sandasarmi of cilicia, who had not submitted to the kings his fathers, and fulfilled their commands, sent his daughter with many presents to nineveh for the harem of assurbanipal, and kissed his feet.[ ] the fall of the assyrian kingdom restored their freedom to the cilicians, and they appear to have maintained it till the times of cyrus. after that time the princes of cilicia were merely the viceroys of the kings of persia. to these sovereigns cilicia paid each year babylonian talents of silver and selected horses. the harbours, which carried on a lively trade, were able, at the beginning of the fifth century b.c., to equip and man a hundred ships of war (triremes).[ ] the coins which have come down to us from the supremacy of the persians allow us to form some conclusions about the religious rites of the cilician cities. they represent baal, the sun-god of the syrians, on the throne, with grapes and ears of corn in his right hand, and sometimes an eagle at his side. others exhibit heracles attacking a lion with his club. the inscriptions name the god thus represented bal tars, _i.e._ baal of tarsus. a coin of mallus also exhibits heracles strangling the lion, i.e. the beneficent sun-god who overcomes the terrible sun-god in the sign of the lion, the consuming glow of the sun. on other coins we can trace the war-goddess, on others the birth-goddess of the syrians, or her cow; some coins of celenderis exhibit the goat of this goddess.[ ] the land of the cilicians must at one time have stretched northwards over the taurus range to the inner table-land as far as the sources of the sarus, to the watershed between the mediterranean and the black sea, or even further. sargon could not have transferred the sovereignty over cilicia to the king of tubal if his territory was not contiguous to cilicia. and if we assume that the land of tubal reached at that time as far as the taurus, we are met by the objection that even herodotus represents the halys as passing through the land of the cilicians on its way from armenia.[ ] hence the land afterwards called cataonia, between taurus and antitaurus and the northern spur of the latter range, must, even in the time of herodotus, have belonged to cilicia. on the north-western slope of the armenian mountains toward the black sea we have already found the moschi and tibarenes, whom the hebrews counted among the sons of japhet. the western neighbours of the tibarenes on the coasts of the black sea were the chalybians. it is the land of the chalybians of which the homeric poems speak, when they mention the city of alybe--"where is the birth of silver."[ ] but it is not only the obtaining of silver that is ascribed by the greeks to the chalybians; they are also the discoverers of the working of iron; and steel, which the greeks obtained from this coast, was named after the chalybians. Æschylus calls the chalybians "barbarous workers in brass, men averse to foreigners."[ ] in the scriptures of the hebrews tubal-cain, a name of which the first part seems to denote the tibarenes, is the father of the smiths in brass and iron. hence it is clear that the mines of ore and iron in the land of the tibarenes and chalybians must have been opened at a very early period. as a fact the ore lies at a very slight depth in the mountains. even now large masses of copper are discovered along the coast to the west of trebizond; beside copper, the mines of gümüsh khane, two days' journey in the interior from trebizond, even now yield lead containing silver, which is also found in the mines of baibut and tokat, further to the south.[ ] hence these districts could furnish not only iron and steel, but silver also; elsewhere silver was only to be got in the mines on mount ida till the phenicians imported this metal in large quantities from tartessus. westward of the chalybians on the thermodon, the iris, and the lower course of the halys, dwelt a population which, setting aside any later admixture, were of semitic origin. herodotus calls the inhabitants of the land which reaches from armenia on the east to the halys on the west, from the coast of the black sea southwards as far as cilicia, syrians, and remarks that this was the name of the people in use among the greeks.[ ] pindar speaks of "a spear-armed syrian host" on the mouth of the thermodon.[ ] the greek colony of sinope west of the mouth of the halys is said to have been founded in the land of the syrians of noble stock.[ ] a promontory running into the sea to the north of sinope is called syrias.[ ] the greeks derived the people in this district from syrus, a son of apollo.[ ] scylax of caryanda names the coast of the black sea, from the chalybians to armene, westward of the promontory of syrias, assyria.[ ] strabo states that these syrians, who extended from the taurus northwards as far as the pontus, were named leuco-syrians, _i.e._ white syrians, to distinguish them from the true syrians, and that the cataonians (p. ) spoke the same language with them.[ ] the coins struck at sinope (sanab), side and kotyora (gazir), in the fourth century b.c., have aramaic legends, and we can trace on them the name and form of the god baal.[ ] the persians called these people cappadocians (katapatuka), and extend the name to cilicia also. if the phrygians when marching westwards from armenia not only traversed but took possession of the land, the phrygians who remained in the country must have retired to the west before the semitic tribe, which forced its way from cilicia and the upper euphrates, or have been absorbed by them. in the eighth century b.c. the syrians between the lower halys and armenia received a peculiar admixture. "on the shore of the pontus, where the scythians now dwell"--such is the account of herodotus--"it is said that the territory of the cimmerians lay, and in scythia the cimmerian bosporus and cimmerian walls and harbours remain, and a region which is called cimmeria. when the scythians who once dwelt in the east were driven out by the massagetes or the issedones, they came into the land of the cimmerians. the latter took counsel on the river tyras, and one part were inclined with the kings to fight against the scythians, but the others wished to abandon the land. thus a strife arose between the two parties, and those who wished to retire from the land defeated the king and all who were of the same opinion with him, and buried the slain on the tyras, where their grave is still to be seen. then the remainder fled before the scythians along the sea to asia, and settled on the peninsula, where sinope, the city of the greeks, is now built. but the scythians took their land in possession, and, led by their king madyas, they pursued the retreating cimmerians, but missed them, as they took the upper road, which is far longer, and keeps the caucasus on the right."[ ] we shall return to the scythians again; for the present we may leave them out of the question. in homer the cimmerians, "miserable men, who are veiled in cloud, darkness, and night, and are never illuminated by the sun," dwell "at the end of earth and oceanus, where is the opening of the entrance into the under-world."[ ] as guardians of the under-world aristophanes calls them after the dog of hades, cerberians.[ ] following the guidance of the homeric poems, the cimmerians were sought in the west, where the sun sinks, and the entrance to the under-world was supposed to be; they were placed in the neighbourhood of the italic kyme.[ ] when the milesians, about the middle of the eighth century, discovered the north shore of the black sea, they found in the extreme north, at the end of the earth, a nation whom the greeks called cimmerians. thus the entrance into lake mæotis obtained among the greeks the name of the bosporus of the cimmerians, in contrast to the bosporus of the thracians. at a later time the cimmerians were identified with the germanic cimbri and the celtic kymri. hence the decision would seem to be correct that the cimmerians ought to be struck out of history as a mythical nation and a mythical name, which was perhaps intended to correspond to the misty, wintry nature of some remote lands, did not the poet callinus of ephesus, whose date falls about the year b.c., speak of "the approaching army of the cimmerians, who achieved mighty deeds:" did not herodotus himself tell us that the expelled cimmerians "settled on the peninsula at the place where the greek city of sinope now stands"; and also narrate that the cimmerians, while king ardys ruled over the lydians ( - b.c.), invaded lydia, and captured sardis, the metropolis, except the citadel; and that alyattes king of lydia ( - b.c.) first expelled the cimmerians entirely out of asia minor:[ ] did not aristotle tell us that the cimmerians had been settled for a hundred years in antandros, on the trojan coast, and scymnus of chius, that the milesian abron, who founded sinope, was said to have been slain by the cimmerians, that coes and cretines founded the city anew, "after the cimmerians, when their array traversed asia"?[ ] the cimmerians then were not a legendary fiction: the cimmerian bosporus really owed its name to a people who called themselves, or were known to the greeks, by this name, as also the hamlet of cimmerikum on the crimea, and cimmerium on the peninsula of kertch. strabo, the best authority on the eastern districts of asia minor, of which he was a native, says: "the wanderings of the scythian madys (it is the madyas of herodotus) and of kobos the trerian are unknown to most people. the cimmerians, who are called treres,[ ] or a tribe of them, dwelt on the gloomy bosporus. they came from a far distant region, and are said to have been driven out by the scythians. they have often attacked the right side, _i.e._ the eastern side of the pontus, and fought against the cappadocians, paphlagonians, and phrygians;[ ] they crossed the halys, and forced their way as far as the ionian cities.[ ] their first invasion is placed by the chronologers in the time of midas, who put an end to his life by drinking bull's blood, _i.e._ as we saw above (p. ) in the period from to b.c., or according to others, in the time of homer, or shortly before him.[ ] but lygdamis, with a horde of his own, forced his way to lydia and ionia, and conquered sardis, though he remained in cilicia.[ ] callisthenes says that sardis was first taken by the cimmerians, then by the treres, and finally by cyrus. the first capture is also proved by callinus. at length the treres, under kobos, are said to have been driven out by the scythians under madys."[ ] from this account it is clear that the cimmerians, or a part of them, were called treres, a name also given to a thracian tribe between the skomius and hebrus, on the bistonian lake;[ ] that they made at least two invasions into the west of asia minor; that the second of these, which in strabo is undertaken under the command of lygdamis, is the same as the invasion of the cimmerians which herodotus places in the time of king ardys of lydia. in both writers this invasion extends to sardis and to some of the greek cities on the coast, and plutarch expressly establishes the identity of the invasion of the treres under lygdamis with that of the cimmerians in herodotus, on ancient authorities.[ ] justin calls the cimmerians a part of the scythians, who, owing to their internal contentions, migrated under the leadership of ilinus and scolopitus, and established themselves on the coast of cappadocia.[ ] the incursion of the scythians into media, with which herodotus has combined the migration of the cimmerians, took place, as we shall show from herodotus' own statement, about the year b.c. but if alyattes of lydia was the first to expel the cimmerians from the west of asia minor after they had been settled for a century in antandros, these cimmerians must have been in asia at least as early as b.c., since alyattes reigned till b.c. further, if herodotus only mentions the destruction of sardis, which took place about b.c., and is wholly silent on the first destruction by the cimmerians, this first capture must have taken place before the time from which he commences his accurate account of lydian history, _i.e._ before the accession of gyges in the year b.c., or, according to the data of herodotus, even before b.c. this capture of sardis is the only one which could have been known to callinus. further, the cimmerians are said to have invaded phrygia at the time of that midas who put himself to death in the year b.c. hence they must have been in asia minor before this year, and if they overpowered phrygia, they could easily at the same time have forced their way as far as the western coast. moreover, strabo remarks that the milesians built sinope, when they had become acquainted with the favourable position of the place and the weakness of the people, but the people were not weak after the cimmerians had occupied the mouth of the halys. the first foundation of sinope under abron must therefore be placed before the arrival of the cimmerians in asia minor. the ancient sinope founded the city of trapezus in the year b.c.,[ ] and therefore that city must have been founded at least ten years earlier, and its destruction by the cimmerians must be placed after the year b.c. hence the cimmerians might have reached the mouth of the halys about b.c., though they cannot have come along the coast from colchis, but over the sea. with this agrees the statement that the cimmerians forced their way into asia minor in the year .[ ] from this investigation it follows that the cimmerians once possessed the north shore of the black sea on the straits from kaffa, westward perhaps as far as the mouth of the danube. since the treres, a thracian nation, are always mentioned in connexion with the cimmerians, and it is ascertained that thracian tribes possessed the western coast of pontus from the thracian bosporus northwards as far as the mouth of the danube, and as the agathyrsi in transylvania are also called thracians, there can hardly be any doubt remaining that the cimmerians were of thracian origin, or at least nearly related to the thracians. according to the account of herodotus the cimmerians held a consultation on the tyras (dniester), their kings were said to have been killed there, and in confirmation of the story he appeals to the tumuli which were still to be seen on the dniester. the only certain conclusion to be drawn from this statement is that mounds on the dniester were shown to herodotus as coming down from an older population of those districts. the cimmerians, who arrived in asia minor (the tauri, on the peninsula which was named after them, appear to be a remnant of this nation, who maintained their old settlements, and the modern name crimea goes back to the cimmerians), must have been a numerous and martial people, if they were able not only to establish themselves firmly in the east on the halys, but also to force their way to the western coast, there to settle down in several places and maintain themselves in these, and to capture twice the fortified metropolis of the lydians, the most warlike nation in asia minor. according to the genealogy in genesis, gomer is the eldest son of japhet. this name is without doubt the semitic term for the population on the north shore of the pontus, who were known to the greeks as cimmerians. in the sixth century b.c. the prophet ezekiel mentions gomer beside togarmah.[ ] esarhaddon, king of assyria ( - b.c.), tells us that tiuspa from the distant land of the cimmerians (gimirai) submitted to him with his army. assurbanipal ( - b.c.) relates: "the cimmerians were not afraid of my fathers or of me, and would not take the yoke of my sovereignty. gugu (gyges), king of ludi (lydia), a land beyond the sea, a distant region, of which my fathers had not heard the name, sent a messenger into my presence, in order to implore my friendship and kiss my feet. from the day on which he accepted my yoke, he took cimmerians, desolators of his land, alive in the battle with his own hand. from the number of the captured leaders he bound two with strong fetters of iron, and sent them with numerous presents to nineveh, the city of my dominion. he constantly sent messengers to ask for my friendship. he omitted to do so when he disregarded the will of asshur, the god, my creator, trusted to his own power, and hardened his heart. he sent his forces to aid pisamilki (psammetichus), king of egypt, who had thrown off the yoke of my sovereignty. i heard this, and prayed to asshur and istar thus: may his body be cast out to his enemies, and his servants be carried away captive. asshur answered me: his body shall be cast out to his enemies, and his servants carried away captive. the cimmerians, whom he had brought under his feet by the renown of my name, conquered and laid waste his whole land. his son (ardys) sat upon his throne. he sent to me and received the yoke of my supremacy, saying thus: i am thy subject and servant, and my people will do all thy will."[ ] thus the account of the greeks is completely established. to be subjugated by esarhaddon the cimmerians must have been in asia minor in the first decades of the seventh century b.c., they must also have got the upper hand here to such a degree that gyges, king of lydia, found it impossible to defend himself against them without the help of the assyrians. the first capture of sardis must have taken place before the accession of gyges, on that campaign which the cimmerians made in the year b.c. to phrygia. on the other hand it may be that the cimmerians had got possession of the city of antandrus in the reign of gyges. when gyges had repulsed the cimmerians he thought that he had no longer any need of assyria. for this, according to assurbanipal, he was punished by a second invasion of the cimmerians, who desolated his land; he lost his life in the battle, of which the greeks know nothing, and his son and successor ardys was again forced to submit to assyria. that ardys had to fight severe battles with the cimmerians is proved by the second capture of sardis, which took place in his reign about the year b.c. while the cimmerians were thus engaged in the west, the city of miletus, or some exiled milesians, seized the opportunity to re-found sinope. alyattes succeeded in forcing back the cimmerians and attacking them with such vigour that they were no longer able to undertake any invasions to the west. even sinope had no more to fear from them, although their settlements lay in the neighbourhood of this city. at a subsequent period in the third century b.c. the invading celts threw the whole of asia minor into a panic, and plundered it, until they were confined to galatia; and the invasion of the cimmerians appears to have taken a similar course. the celts, however, maintained themselves within a limited district; the cimmerians disappeared so entirely among the cappadocians, that syncellus calls gomer the progenitor of the cappadocians, and the armenians denote the cappadocians by the name gamir.[ ] in cappadocia also, rock tombs, sculptures, and fragments of buildings have been discovered, the authors of which and the date of their erection we cannot ascertain even approximately. near amasia, on the middle course of the iris, we find graves hewn in the rocks, of which those lying nearest the city may have belonged to the first kings of pontus. near aladja also the façade of a large rock-tomb may be seen. near uejük, on an elevated terrace, are the ruins of a palace, the lower part of which is formed by great blocks worked and joined in the cyclopian style, and the blocks are in part covered with sculptures. in the middle of the south front is a spacious doorway guarded by two pairs of lions; one pair is detached, the other is worked out of the stone posts of the doorway, like the protecting figures in the palaces of nineveh.[ ] near boghaskoi, which is perhaps the site of the ancient city of pteria, at the foot of a lofty limestone plateau, overhung by cones of rock, in the fork of a mountain stream which flows northward to the halys, are the remains of a building about feet in length and feet in breadth. a broad staircase leads from the river to a terrace, on which rises the palace surrounded by a wall. as at uejük, the lower part of the structure consists of cyclopian blocks of fifteen to twenty feet in length, and some six feet in depth. about thirty chambers, greater or smaller, surround the court of this structure. the ground plan is like that of the palaces of nineveh; in the sculptures a resemblance has been traced to the reliefs of the buildings of the achæmenids. pteria was afterwards the abode of a persian commander. on the rocky plateau over the palace we see the remains of two citadels, surrounded by lines of fortification, of which the cyclopian foundations may still be traced.[ ] two miles and a half to the north-west of the ruins of the citadels, in the rocks surrounding the plateau, remarkable sculptures have been discovered. in a deep recess of the rocks the rough walls, which have been but slightly hewn and smoothed, are covered with reliefs. there are two rows of figures which meet each other. they advance from the outer curve of the niche along the side-walls, on the right and left, towards the back wall. while the figures in these rows are only from two to three feet high, the shapes on the back wall, which form the centre of the picture, are of the size of life, and indeed the main figure is even larger. all the figures are in profile. the main figure, which moves from left to right, as does the long row of figures following it on the left side of the niche, is a bearded warrior, who steps over, or even upon, two bending figures with high and pointed caps, falling over in front, and in garments which fall in folds from the girdle. in his right hand he carries a sceptre, the left hand, which is not very distinct, holds a flower out of which peers a circle, or an oval ring. his doublet hardly reaches to the knee; the head is covered with a tall conical cap, and on the feet are pointed shoes. he is followed by two male figures suitably clothed, who stand on mountain summits; then between two winged genii are two figures with round caps, who carry bowls, and behind them a form in a long garment, with a bent staff in his hand, and a winged circle on his head. then follow warriors armed with sabres, or clubs, in the same short doublet and the same pointed shoes as the three leaders, and between them are two demons, the only figures presenting a full face, with round, broad faces, who carry two segments of a circle, one upon the other. they were followed by warriors and two priests with pointed caps falling over in front. the end of the row on the left entrance is formed by a series of twelve warriors, who march on without armour, close together, and with even step. on the right side of the niche is another row, coming to meet the row described. opposite the leader of the warriors, in the middle of the north wall, is a large female figure, who advances from the right to the left on a lion or leopard, whose feet rest on four mountain summits. she wears a long robe falling in folds to her ankles; her hair streams down, and upon it is a cylindrical head-dress; the right hand carries a staff, while the left, which holds something similar to the ring already mentioned, is held out towards the outstretched left hand of the leader of the warriors. behind her, on a smaller scale, but also riding on a lion with the feet resting on mountain summits, is a youthful warrior, without a beard, in the clothing of the main figure; the head is covered with a lofty pointed cap, the shoes are also pointed; in the girdle is the two-edged bill, in the left hand a long battle-axe, and in the right a staff. he is followed by two female figures above a double eagle, in the dress of the main female figure; behind them come thirteen more female figures of a similar kind, with staves or harps in their hands. the whole picture contains more than sixty figures. in a niche receding to the back we find, beside a demon of remarkable shape, a young beardless man with an exceedingly tall conical cap; in his outstretched right hand he appears to carry the picture of a temple; and with his left he embraces the neck of a very youthful female form, whose head-dress and robe fall down in numerous folds. beside them march twelve warriors with lower caps than those in the main recess, and scythe swords in their right hands; the left arm is raised as high as the shoulder, since they are treading on the left heel, and the top of the right foot.[ ] if this great rock picture is not intended to represent some act of religious worship, it might depict the conclusion of a treaty between two nations. in this case it might belong to the period in which media, under cyaxares, extended her borders to the halys, and came into fierce conflict with the lydians. this war was brought to an end by a treaty of peace, accompanied by the betrothal of the daughter of alyattes of lydia to the son of cyaxares. the picture might be explained in reference to this treaty and betrothal, did not the style and manner appear closely allied to the figure near smyrna (p. ), and a relief not far from ancyra.[ ] as to the religious rites of the cappadocians, we know that they worshipped the god men, who is called a moon-god, and a female deity, mene, or ma. on the lycus, an affluent of the iris, at cabeira, stood the sanctuary of men in the middle of large precincts; the sanctuary of mene was at comana, on the iris, and was the oldest, richest, and most important sanctuary in the land. ma, or mene, was a war-goddess whom greeks and romans called enyo and bellona; to strabo she is known as artemis, and this name is evidence of her relation to the moon, no less than of her position as a war-goddess. that relation is confirmed by further evidence. comana, says strabo, is thickly populated; but the inhabitants are effeminate; the greater part are fanatics or religious maniacs, and there is also a number of women who serve the goddess with their bodies, of whom the greater part are dedicated to the temple. here, twice in the year, the "exodus of the goddess" was celebrated. to this festival pilgrims, male and female, came from every side, and in frenzy and ecstasy performed certain sacred customs, which consisted partly in wounding themselves with swords, and partly in sensual excesses. in the south of cappadocia, on the upper sarus, there was a second city of comana, which also possessed a sanctuary of ma. here, as at comana on the iris, six thousand servants are said to have attended upon ma.[ ] we know the tendencies of the syrian worship, to bring man, by means of certain services, nearer to the deity to whom the services are performed, and make him resemble the peculiar nature of the deity whom he worships. the maidens who served the maiden goddess in her temples on the pontus carried weapons like the goddess, and honoured her by dancing in armour. out of these armed maidens in the temples of ma there grew up among the greeks a peculiar and widely-developed legend--the legend of the warlike tribe of the amazons. when the greek colonists landed on the western coast of asia minor, they found, in the land of the lydians, where they built smyrna, cyme, and ephesus, seats of the worship of a goddess whom they compared to their artemis, and whose attendants were eunuchs and armed maidens (p. ). they next perceived that similar seats of worship were to be found in the east also, on the coasts of the pontus. thus the homeric poems already placed the "amazons equal to men" on the east of the phrygians, and represented king priam as meeting them with his men on the banks of the sangarius.[ ] as natives of asia minor the amazons must have fought with the trojans against the greeks. arctinus represented the amazons as coming to troy after the death of hector, and distressing the greeks till achilles slew their queen, the beautiful "penthesilea, the daughter of the dread, manslaying ares." the cyclic poets knew the abode of the amazons more accurately than homer; they place them at themiscyra, on the thermodon;[ ] and at this place pindar represents them as drawing up their army. Æschylus also places the amazons on the thermodon;[ ] according to pherecydes the war-god begot the amazons with harmonia on the thermodon.[ ] we have seen that the greeks gave the name harmonia to astarte, the moon-goddess of the phenicians. when the greeks at the time of arctinus had founded sinope and trapezus in those regions, they believed that they were in the land of the amazons; and sinope was thought to have been previously inhabited by the amazons.[ ] the places at which the greeks here founded a new home were thought to have been named and sanctified long before their arrival, not only by the voyage of the argonauts, for heracles, theseus, and peirithous were said to have set foot there, in order to perform their mighty deeds against the amazons. at the command of eurystheus heracles had been compelled to bring the girdle from hippolyte, the queen of the amazons, for admete. theseus and peirithous had carried off antiope. among the phenicians, as we have seen, baal-melkarth looses the girdle of the moon-goddess; the greeks transferred the legend of melicertes to their heracles. even as early as the thirteenth or twelfth century b.c. the ships of the phenicians had probably brought the worship of the warlike moon-goddess to the coast of attica. at any rate, at a later time, tombs of the amazons, _i.e._ abandoned seats of the worship of the artemis of syria and asia minor, were shown there. after the attic territory was united under the rule of a military monarchy, of which, among the ionians, theseus was the embodiment, the phenicians were driven back from the coasts of the greeks: theseus was said to have conquered the minotaur and the amazons. in order to establish the existence of amazons in attica, theseus was said to have carried off antiope. to avenge this wrong, the amazons marched from their distant home on the thermodon to attica; and the athenians considered it one of their greatest services towards their common fatherland that they had conquered the amazons, "an enemy who threatened all hellas."[ ] out of these elements the greeks framed a circumstantial history of the amazons. even among the historians, their home is the land of the thermodon. here the amazons dwelt, according to herodotus, diodorus, and strabo, and here, as diodorus tells us, they offered splendid sacrifices to ares and artemis tauropolus. their first queen is said to have been the daughter of ares, and she built the great city of themiscyra; the second queen extended the dominion of the amazons as far as syria; and finally queen myrina reduced the whole of syria, and received the voluntary submission of the cilicians.[ ] it is obvious that the amazons founded all the cities where the worship of the maiden war-goddess flourished or had ever existed. roused by the crime of theseus, they marched to the west, founded the sanctuary of ephesus, where "they set up the image of the goddess under the trunk of an elm, and, armed with shields, danced the war-dance, so that their quivers sounded."[ ] then they marched to the north, and founded smyrna, myrina, and cyme.[ ] analogous rites proved that they were also in lesbos and samothrace. through thrace and thessaly, and finally across euboea, they are said to have marched to attica; tombs of the amazons were shown at scotussa and cynoscephalæ, in thessaly, and at chalcis, in euboea.[ ] after returning home, the amazons next marched to the aid of the trojans, and were conquered by achilles. when the greeks had founded cyrene on the coast of attica, and found, among the libyan tribes of the surrounding district, the worship of a female war-goddess--when they found the libyan women wearing corslets of goatskins, they came to the conclusion that the amazons once dwelt on the tritonian lake in libya.[ ] a nation of heroines was certainly never found by the greeks on the thermodon. on the other hand, they received accounts of the warlike queens of the saces and massagetæ, of zarinæa, sparethra, and tomyris, who fought against the medes and persians; and on the coasts of the black sea, in the colonies of the milesians, they heard of the riding, the archery, and hunting of the women of the sauromatæ. hence the greeks resolved to make the amazons the ancestors of the sarmatians. they were represented as taking ship from the thermodon across the black sea to the coast of the mæotis, because here, in the crimea, on the "promontory of the maiden," a cruel maiden goddess, who was also called artemis tauropolus by the greeks, was worshipped. herodotus, and after him ephorus, tells us that the amazons fled over the pontus from the thermodon, and landed on the shore of the mæotis. here they took the young men among the scythians, who, according to herodotus, were settled between the mouths of the danube and the don, as their husbands, and with them marched eastwards over the tanais (don), beyond which river and north of the caucasus lay, according to herodotus, the dwellings of the sauromatæ, whom later writers call the sarmatians. hence the sarmatian women still preserved the customs of the amazons; they carried bows and javelins, and wore the same clothing as the men, sat on horseback, and rode with or without their husbands to the chase or to battle, and no maiden married till she had slain an enemy; "so that some never married at all, because they were unable to satisfy this rule." the language of the sauromatæ was the same as the language of the scythians, but they spoke it badly, because the amazons had never perfectly learned it. these statements, and especially the assertion that the sarmatian women fought as long as they were maidens, were repeated by greek writers--in other respects very trustworthy--in the fifth and fourth century b.c. others also maintained that the women were rulers among the sarmatians.[ ] poetry and plastic art had stamped the legend of the amazons so firmly on the greeks that they could not break loose from it. several of the historians of alexander of macedon tell us that the queen thalestris, with amazons, sought out alexander from a great distance, and made a proposal of marriage to him, on his return from hyrcania,[ ] a story which has perhaps arisen out of the fact that the satrap atropates of media sent mounted women to alexander.[ ] when at a later time pompey fought in the caucasus, and women were found among the wounded, it was thought that the real amazons were at last found;[ ] and the story was now told that the amazons dwelt northward of the gelen (in ghilan), on the southern foot of the caucasus. in order to solve the difficulty of their propagation of the race, the story was invented that for two months in the spring they met the gargareans--a neighbouring tribe--on the mountains by night, and associated with them, as accident might determine. the boys were then sent to the gargareans, who brought them up in common; the daughters were retained by the amazons.[ ] in order to explain the name amazon, which in greek can mean "without a breast," the story was invented that they burnt off the right breast of the maidens, so that they might use the right arm better, and draw the bow--a story which hippocrates had already told about the daughters of the sarmatians.[ ] on the monuments of plastic art the amazons have both breasts; the older period represents them with a broad girdle, an ample robe, and a phrygian cap, a crescent shield (the symbol of the moon-goddess), a bow, and a battle-axe. in later sculptures the amazons, when they had been connected with the scythians and the sarmatians, were generally represented on horseback, in a doric tunic, with naked arms and thighs, a helmet on the head, and a spear in the hand. on the western slopes of the table-land of asia minor, in the river valleys of the hermus and mæander, the lydians were settled. their land reached from the sources of the hermus in mount dindymon to the Ægean sea, from messogis and cadmus in the south to the temnus range in the north. the valley of the hermus was exuberantly fertile, and still more luxuriant was the vegetation in the district round the gygæan lake. the mountain pastures supported herds of powerful horses and numerous flocks of sheep. the pactolus brought sands of gold down from tmolus; in the rocks of this range and its western continuation, sipylus, rich veins of gold are said to have been found.[ ] but little has been preserved of the legendary accounts of the lydians about their rulers in the earliest times. about the middle of the fifth century b.c. the lydian xanthus, the son of candaules, wrote the history of his people in four books, in the greek language. of this some fragments have come down to us, which can here and there be supplemented by the statements of herodotus. from both we learn that the lydians traced back the origin of their royal house to the gods. atys, the son of the god manes, was the first sovereign of the lydians; after him came his son lydus, who gave the name to the people. from the brother of lydus, whom xanthus calls torrhebus, and herodotus tyrsenus, the tribe of the torrhebians or tyrsenians was derived. the territory of the torrhebi lay on the upper cayster. from asius, the son of cotys, the son of atys, sprang the tribe of the asionæans, who inhabited the asian meadow.[ ] from atys, their progenitor, the first king, his successors, the first house of lydian kings, were called atyads. among the successors of lydus the most pious and just was alkimus. during his reign there was peace and quiet in lydia; every man lived securely and without fear, and all things prospered. after him reigned king akiamus, who sent ascalus with an army to syria. there ascalus founded the city of ascalon. after this, as herodotus narrates, a lion was born to king meles from his concubine, and this lion, in obedience to an oracle, he caused to be carried round the walls of sardis, his metropolis, in order that they might be impregnable.[ ] according to xanthus, meles, who was a tyrannous and cruel king, was overthrown by moxus, a very just and brave man, after he had vowed to the gods that, in gratitude for their deliverance, the lydians should henceforth offer to them a tenth of all their animals. then moxus marched to syria, and there took atargatis captive, with her son ichthys (fish). as a punishment for her rebellion she was thrown into the lake of ascalon, and eaten by the fish. then king cambletes reigned, who sacrificed his wife, and ate her, and then slew himself with his sword before all the people. after him jardanus, who had been an enemy of cambletes, ruled over lydia.[ ] jardanus was followed by his daughter omphale.[ ] to avenge the insult which had been paid to her before she ascended the throne of lydia, she compelled the maidens of the land to give themselves up to the slaves at an appointed place, and slew the strangers whom she entertained, when she had lain with them.[ ] after omphale, tylon reigned, who died from the bite of a snake, but was again restored to life by a marvellous herb.[ ] but with the slave-girl of jardanus, according to herodotus, or, according to others, with omphale, heracles begot alcæus; the son of alcæus was belus; the son of belus was ninus, and the son of ninus was agron. with the accession of agron the dominion of the atyads came to an end, and that of the heracleids commenced, who then continued to rule over lydia for years.[ ] manes and atys are already known to us as deities of the phrygians; they must therefore have been worshipped by the lydians also. lydus, the second king of the land, is taken from the name of the nation. the prosperous, peaceful reign of the good king alkimus is no doubt founded on some conception of an early happy age. the story of the lion of meles obviously goes back to the relations in which the lion was placed, in the religious rites of the syrians, to the sun-god, who was also worshipped with zeal by the lydians. we learn from a lydian that the name sardis was given to the city in honour of the sun-god.[ ] the coins of sardis which have been preserved regularly present the image of a lion and a bull.[ ] the vow of moxus is intended to explain the blood-tithe, which we have already found in use among the tribes of syria. still more definite are the references to syrian rites in the supposed marches of moxus and ascalus to syria, and the prominent position of atargatis[ ] and the temple of ascalon, and the children of atargatis, the fish. we know atargatis, the astarte of the assyrians, as transformed into hera, and the temple at ascalon, the city of the philistines, as the oldest and most famous sanctuary of the syrian goddess of fertility. the name of the king jardanus does not differ from "jarden" (river), and if omphale is said to have forced the maidens of the land to prostitute themselves at a fixed place, we have already found this prostitution in the worship of the syrian goddess of birth and the babylonian mylitta. the new dynasty which ascends the throne of lydia after the atyads with agron is again derived from a god, according to the accounts of the greeks, from heracles and omphale. the greeks narrated that omphale carried the lion's skin and club of heracles, and that she clothed the hero in a transparent female robe of scarlet, and caused him to card wool and spin as her slave.[ ] lydian coins exhibit a female form with the lion's skin and the bow.[ ] it was shown above that the greeks connected melkarth (melicertes) with their heracles, and that according to the mythus of the syrians, the sun-god finds and overpowers the moon-goddess; that after the holy marriage, the god on his part succumbs to the goddess, and changes his nature with her; he assumes the female nature, she the male; she carries the weapons, while he performs woman's work. we saw that the syrians symbolised the pre-eminent nature, the unity of the deity, in this amalgamation of the sexes--this female manhood and male womanhood. johannes lydus tells us that the lydians worshipped the sun-god under the name sandon, and adds, that because sandon had lived as a woman, the men at the mysteries of the god clothed themselves in women's clothes, and put on transparent crimson garments, coloured with vermilion.[ ] thus the greeks put their hero in the place of the lydian sun-god, who overwhelms the lion, and changes his nature with the goddess; and if they farther tell us that omphale gave her love to strangers, but also slew all who lay with her, this also is a trait which had already met us in the syrian astarte, in the nature of ashera-astarte, which at one time grants the enjoyment of love, and at another brings destruction. the result of these considerations proves that the traits of the lydian legends, which have been preserved, present us with very little beyond mere mythical elements. the connection of the lydian worship with the worship of the syrians comes plainly to the surface, and this connection is confirmed by all that we know from other sources of the rites of the lydians. the name of their sun-god sandon[ ] recurs on assyrian monuments, where it appears as sandan.[ ] in the semitic languages the word means "helper," and is used as an attribute of the god adar, with whom we are already acquainted as the god of the planet saturn.[ ] it is obvious that the title "helper" could be given not to adar only, but to any other god, from whom special favour and assistance might be expected. the lydians gave the title to the good sun-god, who vanquishes the glowing heat--the terrible sun-god--who looses the girdle of the moon-goddess, and changes his nature with her. when the greek colonists landed on the coast of lydia, they at first recognised their own apollo, i.e. their god of light, in the lydian god. they allowed the sanctuary of the lydian god at miletus to remain in the hands of a family of native priests, the branchidæ. as god of the country and protector of the coast, the homeric poems give to apollo the foremost place among the deities who defend troy. the lydians also on their side recognised the connection between their sun-god and the apollo of the greeks; gyges and croesus send rich presents to delphi. but when the greeks of the coast became more accurately acquainted with the nature and the myths of the lydian sun-god, that side which chiefly corresponded to their heracles, and the image of heracles developed under the influence of the phenician melkarth, came into prominence. the nature of the female goddess also, whom the lydians chiefly worshipped, is beyond doubt. herodotus tells us that all the daughters of the lydians sold themselves, and in this way collected their dowries; others narrate that they received slaves or foreigners in the groves and porticoes of the temples.[ ] as we have seen, tradition connects this prostitution with the rule of omphale, and johannes lydus assures us that the goddess blatta worshipped in lydia was the same as the mylitta of the babylonians. hence the worship of bilit, the ashera of the syrians, prevailed also among the lydians, a fact which the campaigns (already mentioned) of ascalus and moxus to the shrine of derceto at ascalon also prove. that this goddess of the lydians was not without her destructive side--the power and nature of astarte--we could already infer from the bloody acts of omphale (p. ). at the mouths of the cayster and the hermus the greeks found the shrines of a goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and who was at the same time honoured with dances in armour by maidens, as the moon and war-goddess of the cappadocians.[ ] this goddess of the coasts of lydia was called by the greeks artemis, and this name distinguishes her as at once a maiden goddess and the goddess of the moon and of war. and if at the same time the image of artemis of ephesus was represented with large breasts, the obvious conclusion is that in the goddess of lydia, as in the goddesses of babylonia and syria, the two opposites, of continence and sensual enjoyment, of fertility and of destruction, were united. the forms of religious worship also would appear to have been in all essentials the same among the lydians and the syrians. mutilation (which we know was practised very widely among the lydians),[ ] and the prostitution of girls, were common to both countries. we found above that the arabs and syrians believed their gods to be present in stones, and prayed to them in that shape. not far from magnesia on sipylus, a stone, some twenty feet in height, juts out of a wall of marble, and this in ancient times must have been regarded with veneration as the idol of a native goddess. even in the homeric poems we find mention of this stone, and the legend connected with it by the greek colonists. "i have seen the stone of niobe on sipylus," said pausanias. "at a near view it is a fragment of stone, which does not look like a woman or a person weeping; but from a distance you might believe that you saw a weeping and mourning woman."[ ] the essential result of the examination of lydian legend and lydian worship is the obvious and very close relationship between the lydian and syrian deities and rites. moreover, the mountain range which bounds the valley of the mæander to the south, bears the semitic name of cadmus, _i.e._ "the eastern;" and at the foot of the range lies the city of ninoë (nineveh, _i.e._ "to dwell.")[ ] again, from one side the languages of the phrygians and lydians are said to be distinctly different; on the other hand, most of the lydian words which have been preserved to us by the greeks--it is true they are not numerous--can be traced back to semitic roots;[ ] and the national genealogy of the hebrews enumerates lud among the sons of shem, together with elam, asshur, arphaxad, and aram. yet, so far as the lydian language allows us to form an opinion, elements of a different character are not entirely wanting. the gods manes and atys, from whom the first royal house was derived, and after whom it was named, the goddess cybele, whose temple stood at sardis,[ ] do not belong to the circle of semitic deities. manes, as well as atys, we found in phrygia. hence, looking back at the connection between the armenians, phrygians, and thracians, already brought into prominence we may suppose that the original population of the river valley of the hermus was phrygian, and that semitic invaders from the east subjugated these phrygians and absorbed them; but not without adopting on their part some elements of the phrygian language and worship. that a monarchy was in existence among the lydians before the first heracleid ascended the throne cannot be doubted. in the time of the heracleids we find mention made of the descendants of tylon (p. ), a king who is said to have belonged to the family of the atyads. the foundation and fortification of sardis also seem to belong to the period before the heracleids, the period of the atyads. herodotus tells us that the second dynasty, the supposed descendants of sandon-heracles, gave twenty-two sovereigns to the lydians, who ruled over lydia for years.[ ] however astonishing the pedigree which herodotus gives to these heracleids (the son of heracles, alcæus, begets belus, belus begets ninus, and ninus agron),[ ] we may regard his statement of the period for which this dynasty lasted, of which several later members are established, as historical. and since, after the heracleids, the family of gyges ruled for years down to the time when cyrus took sardis, and since the taking of sardis fell in the year b.c., the heracleids must have ascended the throne of lydia years previously, _i.e._ in the year b.c.[ ] what degree of civilisation had been reached by the lydians about the year b.c. we can only conclude from the fact that the greek settlers on their coasts found money already coined by the lydians, and therefore ascribe to them the invention of the art of coining.[ ] the art of dying wool also was, in the opinion of the greeks, an invention of the lydians; and games at ball as well as at dice were thought to have been learnt from the lydians by the greeks.[ ] that the greeks made use of the lydian flute, and subsequently of the lydian cithara (both the cithara with three strings and that with twenty strings), and the lydian harmonies to enrich their own music, is an established fact.[ ] the homeric poems describe the lydians (mæonians) as an "armed equestrian people," and mention their trade and wealth.[ ] north of the lydians, in the river valleys of the caïcus macestus and rhyndacus, were settled the mysians. according to strabo, they spoke a language of mixed phrygian and lydian elements.[ ] it was apparently the mysian legend which told of king tantalus, who possessed the greatest treasures, who slew his son and offered him for a banquet, _i.e._ for a sacrifice to the gods. his grave was shown on sipylus.[ ] before the greek colonists took the coasts from them, the mysians may have risen to the first elements of civilisation; but when they were debarred from the sea, they remained within the limits of their mountains, pursuing an agricultural and pastoral life. about the year b.c. their armour was still a small round shield and javelins, the points of which were hardened in the fire.[ ] in spite of these miserable weapons they gave a good deal of trouble to the satraps of the persian king, and even at a later time desolated the fruitful plains on the coasts by marauding inroads. of their worship we only know that the greeks found the rites of a god of light on the coasts at thymbra, chryse, and cilla, who was invoked under the title smintheus, a word which is said to mean the expeller or destroyer of field-mice;[ ] and that a goddess of procreation and fertility was worshipped on ida.[ ] in the homeric poems it is aphrodite, by the side of apollo, who protects ilium, and favours capys and the sons of priam in the dells of ida. the coast of asia minor, to the south of the lydians, was in the possession of the carians. herodotus tells us that, according to the legends of the cretans, the carians were, in the most ancient times, called leleges, and inhabited the islands of the Ægean at the time when minos reigned in crete. they were compelled to man the fleet of minos. a long time afterwards they were driven out of the islands by the ionians and dorians, and migrated to asia minor. but the carians themselves maintained that they had always lived in the land which they possessed.[ ] we cannot hesitate to give the preference to the assertion of the carians. from the numerous harbours of their coast they could easily cross to the neighbouring islands, and thus they could populate rhodes samos and chios.[ ] advancing from one to another in the numerous islands of this sea, they reached the cyclades and settled there. the most ancient population of crete, called by the greeks eteocretes, may very likely have consisted of carians only, as is proved by the position which greek legend gives to the carians in reference to minos, as well as by other evidence. this occupation of the islands of the Ægean sea by the carians must be placed about the year b.c. for when the phenicians colonised these islands in the thirteenth century, they were occupied by carians. the carian population became dependent on the phenicians. subsequently, about the year b.c., the hellenes landed on the islands of the Ægean, and drove out the carians. the carians lost even samos and chios; they were again confined to their old home, and they could not even maintain themselves in that, for the best harbours of their coasts passed into the hands of the greeks. yet the carians continued to be seamen and pirates. they lay in wait, as before, for the merchants, and overran the rich coast land. even in the seventh century we meet with carian pirates and mercenaries, and these not only on the mouths and banks of the nile; and the chronographers mention, apparently, a hegemony of the carians on the sea, which is placed in the interval from the year to the year b.c.[ ] the carians had no monarchy embracing the whole of their territory. but here also, so far as we can see, princes stood at the head of the various cities. a kind of confederation united the several places. about the year we hear of assemblies of carians on the banks of the marsyas near the white pillars, and afterwards we find common sacrifices of the carian cities, and days of meeting in the temple of zeus chrysaor, which was situated in the neighbourhood of mylasa (now milas) at lagina (now leïna).[ ] among the carians the greek colonists found a style of armour superior to their own, and they adopted it. the "catalogue of ships," in homer, represents the leader of the carians as going into battle decked with gold.[ ] in alcæus "the carian helmet laments," and anacreon speaks "of putting the hand upon the well-fitted carian haft." herodotus tells us that the greeks learned from the carians to wear plumes upon their helmets, to paint devices upon their shields, and to furnish them with fixed handles,--in homer the shields are carried over the shoulder by straps. greaves also are said to have been invented by the carians.[ ] we are unable to tell with certainty the origin or the national characteristics of the carians, though herodotus maintains that the lydians, mysians, and carians spoke the same language. of the religious worship of the carians he tells us that they were the only nation who worshipped zeus as a warrior. mylasa was the centre of their worship. on the heights which tower over the plain of mylasa, in a forest of plane-trees, near labranda, lay the temple of "zeus stratius." the image of the god is said to have carried the double axe. carian coins of the fourth century b.c. display the image of a god with a double axe.[ ] the same axe is also found on the remains of carian altars. the greeks even maintain that the god was named after this axe, that his national name was labrandeus, and that in lydian and carian _labrys_ meant a battle-axe. plutarch says:--arselis, the carian of mylasa, marched to the aid of candaules, king of lydia (he ruled about the year b.c.), and afterwards he left the sacred axe of the kings of lydia to the god of labranda.[ ] this giving up of the battle-axe to the god of the battle-axe allows us to suppose that the god of mylasa is meant by the carian of mylasa; and that arselis may have been the name or attribute of this god--a supposition which is changed into a certainty by the fact that in semitic languages, chars-el means "axe of el," "axe of god."[ ] beside this warrior zeus, a warlike aphrodite was also worshipped at mylasa,[ ] and if strabo calls the goddess of leïna hecate, the reason of the name may be the death-bringing power of the goddess astarte-ashera. the sacred fish who were to be found in a pool at mylasa, with gold rings round the neck, would then be evidence of the bountiful, increase-giving side of the nature of this goddess.[ ] east of the carians, on the south coast, in the valley of the xanthus, were the settlements of the lycians. the range of taurus, which here rises to a height of , feet, sinks down in fields of snow and alpine pastures to the course of the xanthus. the sides of this valley, mounts kragus and anti-kragus, are beautifully wooded, and traversed by sounding rills. the view extends from the upper course of the river over the luxuriant vegetation of the plain down to the sea. herodotus tells us that this district was once known as milyas, and that the lycians, who were originally called termilians, immigrated from crete. sarpedon and minos contended for the throne, and as minos got the upper hand, sarpedon went with the termilians to asia, and took possession of milyas. afterwards lycus, the son of the attic king pandion, when driven out by his brother aegeus, came to sarpedon, and from him the termilians got the name of lycians. their laws were cretan and carian. they wore hats adorned with feathers, goat skins round their shoulders, sickle-shaped swords and daggers, coats of mail, greaves, bows, and arrows of reeds. they were named after the mother, and not after the father, and spoke of the mothers of their mothers as their ancestors. the son of a free woman and a slave was free and passed for a well-born man; but if a free man, even the first among them, begot children with a foreign woman or a concubine, these were outlaws.[ ] heraclides of pontus extends these statements so far as to assert that the lycians from ancient times had been under the dominion of their wives; nicolaus, of damascus tells us that the daughters of the lycians, and not the sons, took the inheritance.[ ] in the homeric poems, proetus, king of argos, sends bellerophontes of ephyra (corinth) to the king of the lycians, to be put to death. the king bade him slay the chimæra, a monster which was a lion in front, a goat in the middle part, and a dragon behind, and when he succeeded in this he sent him to fight against the solymi and the amazons. but afterwards he gave him half his kingdom and his daughter, who bore him hippolochus and laodameia. the son of hippolochus was glaucus, and the son of laodameia was sarpedon, the chieftains who led the lycians to the aid of the trojans. beside the supposed immigration of the lycians from crete and the poetry of homer we know nothing of the history of the lycians beyond the fact that they did not submit to the army of cyrus without a most obstinate resistance. and even under the supremacy of the persians the lycians managed their internal affairs independently. they formed a federation which was in existence at strabo's time, and then included twenty-three places. each city was represented at the assembly; the six larger cities had three votes each, the next largest had two, and the smaller cities had one.[ ] the name milyas, which, according to herodotus, was borne by the valley of the xanthus, clung even in later times to the spur under the ridge of mount taurus, which runs out eastward towards mount solyma. hence the lycians could easily be represented as in conflict with the solymi. the name chimæra is given to a high mountain valley on mount kragus.[ ] if the greeks call the inhabitants of the valley of the xanthus lycians, the name has not arisen among them from the supposed lycus, the brother of Ægeus, but rather from the grecian god of light, apollo lyceus. according to the mythus of the greeks, apollo bellerophontes (who was worshipped at corinth), dashes down from his cloud-horse and with his crown of rays breaks through the thick clouds which obscure the sun; he overcomes bellerus, the spirit of darkness. in the mind of the greeks, lycia was free from the clouds of winter; and, as a fact, the climate of the valley of the xanthus is excellent. into this bright land, therefore, the god was thought to have marched when he had become a hero; here he overcame the chimæra, the creature of mist and cloud. the greeks went still further in this conception. the east, the land of sunrise, was in itself the land of light, of the god of light, lyceus. the god of light was thought to pass the winter in the brighter east, in the home of the sun. when the greek colonists had settled on the western coasts of asia minor, they regarded the valley of the xanthus as the eastern land of light, they gave it this name, and supposed that apollo passed the winter in lycia, and gave oracles during the six winter months at patara in lycia.[ ] in spite of the eastern situation and the climate of lycia, this idea would hardly have taken root had not the lycians at patara, and probably at other places in lycia, worshipped a god in whom the greeks could recognise their own god of light. the homeric poems place the lycians in the closest connection with the teucrians. there is a xanthus in lycia and in the troad, and the name tros seems to be identical with the name of the lycian city of tlos, which lies high up in the valley of the xanthus under taurus. in any case, from this close combination of the teucrians and lycians in homer, we may conclude that with the greeks of the coast the lycians passed for a tribe who had already been for a long time in possession of their settlements. none but native asiatic tribes could be represented as fighting beside the native teucrians as their closest confederates. the lycians developed a peculiar civilisation and a peculiar art, of which numerous monuments, and many of them accompanied by inscriptions, have come down to us. the alphabet in these inscriptions closely resembles the greek. with the aid of some inscriptions written in the greek and lycian languages, scholars have succeeded in fixing the value of the lycian letters--of which there are ten for vowels and diphthongs, and twenty for consonants.[ ] by this means we have become acquainted with the name by which the lycians called themselves. they were not merely called termilians, as herodotus supposed, in the most ancient times, but even in their own inscriptions they call themselves tramele. the city which the greeks calls xanthus is in the language of the tramele, arna; the city of patara is pttarazu; pegasa is begssere.[ ] in fixing the character of the lycian language, it was at first supposed that the lycians might have been a branch of the phrygians, who had forced their way over the taurus to the south coast--an assumption which seems to be supported by the fact that the lycian monuments resemble the phrygian in plan and style; and that the lycians, like the phrygians, loved to excavate walls of rock and that in lycia, as in phrygia, the influence of the greeks was felt at an early time. but the lycian idiom, so far as the remains of it have been examined at present, was distinctly different from the phrygian language. while some of our scholars find in the lycian language words and inflexions allied to the albanian, _i.e._ to the remains of the language of the ancient illyrians, others are more inclined to place the lycian in close connection with the iranian languages.[ ] in either case the lycians, like the armenians and phrygians, belong to the indo-germanic stock, and not only the armenians and phrygians, but along with them the forefathers of the lycians came into asia minor from the north-east. the lycians were settled in a region of strong natural boundaries, and of a very defined and picturesque form. the position of their land, protected as it was by strong natural boundaries, secured for them a more undisturbed development than was possible to the other tribes of asia minor. their cities and towers, xanthus, phellus, myra, telmissus, patara, pinara, and tlos were surrounded by strong walls of cyclopian architecture, and the splendid remains are evidence of great skill in masonry. the noble ruins of xanthus, not far from the mouth of the river of the same name, still proclaim, even at a distance, the ancient metropolis of the lycians. how far back the monuments of lycia extend cannot be determined as yet. the oldest of which the date can be fixed go back to the reign of darius ii., the itariayush of lycian inscriptions. the reliefs exhibit the chimæra, as described in homer; and they repeatedly exhibit a lion slaying a bull.[ ] the lycians themselves are represented in long garments, just as in works of greek art; and even to this day the peasants on the xanthus are to be seen in the caftan.[ ] pictures of battles, of agricultural and pastoral occupations are frequent on the monuments; but so far as the inscriptions have been deciphered at present, they afford no single instance in support of the statement of herodotus that the lycians were not named after the father, but after the mother.[ ] the most important remains are the tombs, which are evidence of the great industry and care which the lycians devoted to the repose and memory of the dead. a considerable number of these tombs lie within the walls of the city, and are surrounded by the ruins of other buildings. hence the dwellings of the dead and of the living were not separated among the lycians. besides sarcophagi, made of blocks brought for the purpose, we also find detached rocks, which are changed into great sarcophagi, rocky peaks transformed into sepulchres, and extensive walls of rock, in which grave-chambers have been cut. the face of the rocky wall, thus hollowed out for tombs, is provided with façades which rise up in rich variety to the number of many thousands, over and alongside of each other, sometimes advancing, sometimes receding, according to the nature of the rock. the style of these tombs, which is for the most part very delicate and slender, is an imitation of a kind of wooden structure, which must have been common in lycia in ancient times, and the simplest forms of which are still in use among the peasants of the region which corresponds to lycia;[ ] sometimes the structure is simpler, at others more complicated, and the effect is strengthened by delicate and luxuriant ornamentation. the faces of the rock-tombs sometimes end with a flat framework of beams, at others with a gable in low relief. the detached sepulchres exhibit the same imitation of a wooden building. many of these sepulchres are obviously intended for three corpses; in the single chamber included in them are generally found two stone benches in the sides and at the back a receptacle for a corpse in a recess.[ ] the detached sarcophagi are the most numerous. on a sub-structure, or immediately on the ground, stands a long stone coffin, closed by a high massive cover, the section of which exhibits a gothic pointed arch. on these sarcophagi also the ornamentation is almost always rich, and carried out with neatness even to the smallest detail. beside the sarcophagi we also find pillars and obelisks among the ruins. the tympana, friezes, and surfaces of all these monuments are covered with reliefs, which represent with much truth and liveliness the life of animals as well as the life of men. evident remains of colouring on all the monuments show us that a layer of lively and even startling colours was laid upon these buildings. the reliefs also were painted, and some are treated almost as pictures. the inscriptions upon the tombs prove that the lycians erected these tombs in their lifetime for themselves, wives, and children, and that this was done by several families in common; they invoke the anger of a goddess phate--whom the greeks call leto--on those who might dare to violate them. from the nature and solidity of these tombs and sarcophagi, it is clear that the lycians were almost at as much trouble to give a secure resting-place to their dead as the egyptians were to give rest to their mummies, while the ornaments show that the lycians must have regarded the life after death as a state of peaceful repose; the sculptures on the tombs invariably represent friendly scenes of family life, of occupation in the country, of social life or festal enjoyment. we see mothers with their children, carriage journeys, riders, processions, banquets, and feasts, and finally battle-pieces, in which the combatants are partly armed as lycians and partly as greeks. nothing, not even in the pictures of battles, reminds us of the horrors of death, or of a judgment in the under world. the monuments of lycia prove that the supremacy of the persians did not interrupt the progress of lycian art. but the creations of the later period enable us to see that greek art, in her bloom, obtained and exercised the strongest influence over the lycians. the most beautiful monument of lycia, the tomb of harpagus, the persian satrap, which belongs to the first half of the fourth century, exhibits a preponderance of greek forms. footnotes: [ ] strabo, pp. , , , . [ ] kiepert, "monatsberichte der b. akad.," , s. . [ ] kiepert, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] von gutschmid, "sächs. gesell. d. w." , p. , _seqq._ [ ] mos. chor. , - . [ ] mos. chor. , - . [ ] kiepert, "monatsberichte der b. akad.," , s. . [ ] kiepert, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] kiepert, "monatsberichte der b. akad.," , s. . [ ] jer. li. ; ezek. xxvii. ; xxxviii. . [ ] moses chor. c. - , in le vaillant's translation. [ ] anab. , . [ ] g. rawlinson, "monarch.," , , ; ménant, "annal.," pp. , , , . [ ] g. smith, "zeit. fur. ægypt. sprache," , s. - , . [ ] oppert, "inscript. des sargonid.," p. , _et seq._, ; "inscript. de dursarkayan", pp. , . g. rawlinson, "monarchies," , . according to oppert's reading the two gods of arsissa were called haldia and bagabarta. [ ] joseph. "antiq.," , , ; kiepert, "monatsberichte der b. akad.," , s. . [ ] g. smith, "assurb.," , , _seqq._ [ ] botta, "monum. de ninive," , pl. , . [ ] lenormant, "lettr. assyr." , , , reads belitdur and menuas hincks read niriduris and kinuas. [ ] mordtmann, "zeit. d. d. m. g.," , ff. [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , ; thucyd. , ; xenoph. "anab." , , ; strabo, p. , . [ ] otto abel, "makedonien," s. ff. [ ] lassen, "zeit. d. d. m. g.," , ff. [ ] herod. , . [ ] justin, "hist.," , ; plut. "alex.," c. ; arrian, "anab.," , ; steph. byzant, [greek: gordieion]; pausan. , , . [ ] aristoph. "plut.," ; ovid, "metamorph.," , . [ ] arist. "pol." , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , ; xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] a communication from kiepert. [ ] pollux, , ; heracl. pont. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] euseb. "chron." , , ed. schöne. [ ] [plato, "phaedr." d. (jowett.)] [ ] diog. laert. , ; simonid. fragm. , ed. bergk; herod. , , ; strabo, p. ; "bergk-griech. litteratur-gesch." , . the date of the second midas is fixed by the observation of herodotus that the dedicatory offerings of midas were older than those of gyges, and by the date of the first invasion of the cimmerians, which will be ascertained below: the second invasion of the cimmerians took place far later, in the time of ardys of lydia, _i.e._ at a time when monarchy was no longer in existence in the greek cities. hence i believe that the midas of the tomb must be distinguished from the midas of the dedicatory offering. [ ] the upper inscription of this tomb is as follows: "ates arkiaevos akenanogavos midai lavaltaie vanaktei edaes;" the lower is: "baba memavais proitavos kphizan avozos sikeman edaes."--leake, "asia minor," p. - ; barth, in petermann "geog. mittheilungen," , s. - ; lassen, in "zeit. d. d. m. g." , . for "lavaltaie" r. stuart reads "na-" or "gavaltaie." [ ] strabo, p. ; vitruvius, , , . [ ] perrot, "exploration," pp. , . [ ] hamilton, "asia minor," , - , , ; , - . [ ] lucian, "jup. trag." c. . . [ ] etym. magn. [greek: amma.] [ ] diod. , ; livy, , . [ ] arist. "rhet." , ; ovid. "fast." , ; arnoh. "adv. gent." , , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , . in hippolytus ("philosoph." , , p. , ed. miller) atys is called the sun of rhea. agdistis appears to have been androgynous; paus. , , . hesych. [greek: agdistis]. the chief priests at pessinus were always called atys, according to the inscriptions of sivrihissar, cf. polyb. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." . [ ] arnob. "adv. gent." , ; herodian, , . [ ] hippolyt. _loc. cit._, p. . [ ] "il." , ; hym. ven. . [ ] "bacch." ff., ff.; diod. , . [ ] herod. , , and h. stein _ad loc._; choerilus in "joseph. c. apion." , . [ ] "anab." , , ff. [ ] blau, "num. achaem. aram-persic," p. . [ ] lassen, "zeit. d. d. m. g." , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; , ; xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] h. stein, on herodotus, , . [ ] hellan. fragm. , ed müller. [ ] berosi fragm. , ed. müller; abyd. fragm. , ed. müller. that anchialensium should be read instead of atheniensium need not be proved at length. [ ] arrian, "anab." , ; athen. p. ; steph. byz. [greek: anchialê]. [ ] ménant, "annal." pp. , , , ; g. smith, "assurbanipal," p. . [ ] Æsch. "persae," ; herod. , ; , , ; xenoph. "anab." , , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. ff., , ff., . [ ] , ; cf. , . [ ] "il." , . [ ] "prom. vinct." - . [ ] sandwich, "siege of kars," p. of translation. on the murad tshai, near charput, the best iron is still procured. [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] fragm. incert. , ed. bergk. [ ] scymn. ch. . [ ] "peripl. p. e." c. , ed. müller. [ ] plut. "lucull," . [ ] c. , . [ ] strabo, p. , , ; cf. schol. apoll. rhod. , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," , ; blau, "phoeniz. münzkunde," , , . these, and the reasons given above, seem to me sufficient to prevent my agreeing to lassen's opinion ("zeit. d. d. m. g." , ) that the cappadocians were an indo-germanic tribe. [ ] herod. , , - ; , , . [ ] "odyss." , - . [ ] "ranae," . [ ] scym. ch. , ; strabo, ; virgil, "aen." , ; plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] callinus, apud strabo, ; herod. , , , ; , . [ ] aristot. apud steph. byz. [greek: antandros]: scymn. ch. . [ ] [greek: trêres]. [ ] strabo, p. , , . on p. we find "the treres, a cimmerian nation." [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. , , . [a] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, pp. , , . that in this passage, where madys is mentioned a second time with the epithet: the cimmerian, [greek: skythês] must be read instead of madys, as madys has been mentioned just before, is self-evident. [ ] thuc. , ; strabo, p. ; theopomp (fragm. , ed. müller) call them trares. [ ] herod. , ; plut. "marius," . [ ] justin. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; euseb. "chron." ann., ; syncell. p. , ed. dind. cf. xenophon, "anab." , ; steph. byzant. [greek: trapezous]. [ ] orosius, , : "anno ante urbem conditam tricesimo" (orosius follows the catonian era), "tunc etiam amazonum gentis et cimmeriorum in asiam repentinus incursus plurimam diu lateque vastationem et stragem edidit." grote ("history of greece," , ) objects that if this statement is allowed to hold good for the cimmerians, we are justified in making the same conclusions for the amazons, who would thus become historical. the amazons are connected with the cimmerians because the land round sinope was the abode of the cimmerians, and it was in this place that the amazons were said to have dwelt. i too should be inclined to give the less weight to the testimony of orosius, as the number may be a corruption for . but the other evidence given is enough to prove that the cimmerians immigrated into asia minor in the period between and b.c., and settled round the halys at the mouth of the river. [ ] above, p. . [ ] ménant, "annal." p. ; g. smith, "assurbanipal," pp. - . [ ] syncell. "chron." p. ; kiepert, "monatsber. berl. akad." , p. . [ ] perrot, "explor. archéol. de la galatie," pp. , , . [ ] h. barth, "reise von trapezunt nach skutari," s. ff; perrot, _loc. cit._ p. ff. [ ] barth, "monatsberichte der berl. akad." , s. ff.; perrot, "explor. archéol. de la galatie," pp. ff. - . [ ] perrot, "explor. archéol. de la galatie," p. . [ ] diod. , ; strabo, pp. - , , ; plut. "sulla," c. ; hirt. "bell. alex." . [ ] "il." , - . [ ] pausan. , , ; appian, "bell. mithrid." . [ ] "prom. vinct." , suppl. . in other passages, following the later view, he places them in scythia. [ ] frag. , ed. müller. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , ; plut. "menex." p. ; isocr. "panegyr." . [ ] diod. , , ; , ; strabo, p. ; schol. apoll. rhod. , . [ ] callim. "in dian." . [ ] "il." , ; ephori fragm. , ed. müller; pausan. , , . according to diodorus, priene and pitane were also founded by the amazon myrina, , . [ ] plut. "thes." , ; pausan. , ; , ; diod. , . [ ] herod. , ; diod. , - . [ ] herod. , - ; plato, "legg." p. ; hippocr. "de aere," c. ; ephor. fragm. , , ed. müller; ctes. fragm. - , ed. müller. justinus ( , ), as remarked, represents ilinus, and skolopitus, as making their way from scythia to the thermodon, and when these scythians had for many years plundered their neighbours from this centre, they were attacked and cut down by the conspirators among their neighbours. their wives remained; they seized the weapons, and founded a female kingdom. in order to preserve the race, they came together with the neighbouring people, but they slew all the male children. marpesia and lampedo, who called themselves daughters of mars, ruled over this female kingdom. then lampedo with a part of the amazons marched out and founded ephesus, and many other cities; over those who remained behind, when marpesia was slain, antiope and oreithyia reigned; and in their time heracles and theseus came and carried off two sisters of antiope. to avenge this act oreithyia marched against athens, supported by the scythian king sagillus, and his son panasagorus. after oreithyia, penthesilea reigned; after her reign the power of the amazons declined. cf. steph. byzant, _s. v._ [greek: amazones], where the story which herodotus ( , - ) tells of the returning scythians of madyas is turned to the advantage of the amazons. [ ] plut. "alex." ; curtius, , ; diod. , ; strabo, p. ; justin, , ; , . cf. arrian, "anab." , . [ ] arrian, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] plut. "pompeius," c. ; appian, "bell. mithrid." c. . [ ] strab, pp. - , , , . [ ] hippoc. "de aere," c. , . if the name amazon were greek, it could only have been invented in a contrast to [greek: polymazos], "with many breasts," the epithet of the ephesian artemis, as the goddess of birth, to denote the maidens devoted to chastity. [ ] strabo, pp. , . [ ] herod. , , ; , ; dion. hal. , , ; "il." , ; strabo, p. ; steph. byz. [greek: asia]. [ ] herod. , ; xanth. fragm. ; nicol. damasc. fragm. , , ed. müller. the legend of meles is obviously connected with the founding of sardis. this meles therefore cannot be identified with the heracleid (the last but two) of the same name. in nicolaus, moxus is the successor of meles; fragm. , . [ ] xanth. fragm. , ; nicol. dam. fragm. , , ed. müller. [ ] diod. , . [ ] ephor. fragm. ; pherecyd. fragm. , ; mæandri mil. fragm. ; clearch. sol. fragm. , ed. müller; apollod. , , . [ ] pliny, "hist. nat." , . cf. nicol., dam. fragm. , ed. müller, where sadyuttes and lixus are mentioned in the place of the heracleidæ as the successors of tylon, _loc. cit._ p. , . [ ] herod. , . according to apollodorus ( , , ), the son of omphale and heracles was agelaus; according to diodorus ( , ) heracles first begot cleodæus with a slave, and then lamus with omphale. others call the son of omphale and heracles meleus (meles). others again represent sandon, the son of heracles, as the father of damalisandus, or dalisandus, by damalis. cf. müller, on nicol. fragm. . [ ] joh. lyd. "de mens." , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. , . [ ] hesych. [greek: attagathê atharê para tô xanthô.] the native name athar-ath is found on a coin of bambyke, in brandis, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] joh. lyd. "de mag." , ; plut. "quæst. graec." c. ; "an seni resp." c. ; clearch. sol. fragm. , ed. müller; ovid. "heroid." - ; "fast." , . [ ] hupfeld, "res lyd." pp. , , . [ ] joh. lyd. "de mens." , ; lucian. "dial. deor." , . [ ] compare the lydian names sandonis and sandoces in herod. , ; , . [ ] oppert, "expéd. en mesopot." , . [ ] e. schrader, "theol. studien und kritiken," , , . [ ] herod. , ; athen. pp. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; paus. , , . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] paus. , ; kiepert, "monatsberichte d. berl. akademie," , s. . [ ] steph. byz. _s. v._ [ ] lassen, "z. d. d. m. g." , ff; cf. g. curtius, "grundzüge." [ ] herod. , . [ ] herodotus ( , ) says twenty-two generations. but as these, according to the length which he assumes for a generation, would give a much longer interval than years, he can only mean twenty-two sovereigns. that lists of kings existed in lydia is proved by the considerable number of names of atyadæ given in xanthus. [ ] cf. h. stein on the passages of herodotus quoted; in one class of mss. alcæus, belus, and ninus are not found. the city of ninoë has been already mentioned (p. ). [ ] the year b.c., the year of the capture of sardis, will be proved below. i believe that we ought to maintain this statement. herodotus' total of years for the dynasty of gyges is untenable in the face of the assyrian monuments. according to them gyges and ardys were contemporaries of assurbanipal, who reigns from to b.c. hence for the years of herodotus we must adopt the number given by eusebius, which is years less, and the separate dates of the latter. [ ] boeckh, "metrologie," s. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] plut. "de mus." ; steph. byz. [greek: asias]. [ ] "il." , ; , . [ ] p. . [ ] pausan. , , ; , , . [ ] Æsch. "pers." ; herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. , , ; pausan. , , . [ ] strabo, p. ; plut. "de fluviis," c. . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] thuc. , ; isoc. "panath." p. . on the carians in samos and chios, see diod. , ; strabo, p. , - , ; paus. , , , , , . [ ] archiloch. fragm. , ed. bergk; euseb. "chron." , , ed. auch.; cf. bunsen, "Ægypten," , , , s. . [ ] herod. , , ; strabo, p. . [ ] "il." , . [ ] alcæus and anacreon in strabo, p. ; herod. , . [ ] brandis, "münzwesen," s. . [ ] "quæst. græcæ," c. . [ ] lassen, "zeit. d. d. m. g.," , . [ ] boeckh, "corp. inscript." , . [ ] Ælian, "hist. anim." , . [ ] , ; , . [ ] heracl. pont. fragm. ; nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , ; serv. ad Æneid, , . pausanias ( , , ) says that the lyceum at athens was a sanctuary of apollo lyceus; the "iliad" ( , ) represents lycaon as ruling in lycia. [ ] lassen, "z. d. d. m. g." , ff; blau, _ibid._ , . [ ] steph. byzant., [greek: arna]: fellowes, "lyc. coins," pl. , . [ ] blau ("z. d. d. m. g." , ff) sustains the first view, savelsberg and m. schmidt the second; m. schmidt, "lyc. inscript." [ ] fellowes, "account," p. , ; "lyc. coins," pl. x. , , . [ ] ross, "kleinasien," s. . [ ] lassen, "z. d. d. m. g." , . [ ] ross, "kleinasien," s. . [ ] ross, _loc. cit._ s. . the end. london: r. clay, sons, and taylor, printers, bread street hill, queen victoria street. * * * * * by professor mommsen. the history of rome, from the earliest time to the period of its decline. by theodor mommsen. _translated with the author's sanction, and additions by the_ rev. p. w. dickson; _to which is added an introduction by_ dr. schmitz. =the library edition=, in four vols., demy vo., with index, _s._ the index ( vo.) separately, _s._ _d._; but the volumes not sold separately. =the people's edition=, in four vols., crown vo., with index, _s._ _d._; or the volumes sold separately: vols. i. and ii., _s._; vol. iii., _s._ _d._; vol. iv., with index, _s._ the index (crown vo.) separately, _s._ _d._ "a work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact and profound; its narrative full of genius and skill; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid. we wish to place on record our opinion that dr. mommsen's is by far the best history of the decline and fall of the roman commonwealth."--_times._ "since the days of niebuhr, no work on roman history has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and charm the reader. its style--a rare quality in a german author--is vigorous, spirited, and animated. professor mommsen's work can stand a comparison with the noblest productions of modern history."--_dr. schmitz._ "this is the best history of the roman republic, taking the work on the whole; the author's complete mastery of his subject, the variety of his gifts and acquirements, his graphic power in the delineation of natural and individual character, and the vivid interest which he inspires in every portion of his book. he is without an equal in his own sphere. the work may be read in the translation (executed with the sanction of the author) not only with instruction, but with great pleasure."--_edinburgh review._ "a book of deepest interest, and which ought to be translated."--_dean trench._ "beyond all doubt to be ranked among those really great historical works which do so much honour to our own day. we can have little hesitation in pronouncing this work to be the best complete roman history in existence. in short, we have now, for the first time, the complete history of the roman republic, really written in a way worthy of the greatness of the subject. dr. mommson is a real historian; his powers of research and judgment are of a very high order; he is skilful in the grasp of his whole subject, and vigorous and independent in his way of dealing with particular questions. and an english critic may be allowed to add, that his book is far easier and more pleasant to read than many of the productions of his fellow-countrymen."--_national review._ "an original work, from the pen of a master. the style is nervous and lively, and its vigour fully sustained. this english translation fills up a gap in our literature. it will give the school-boy and the older student of antiquity a history of rome up to the mark of present german scholarship, and at the same time serve as a sample of historical inquiry for all ages and all lands."--_westminster review._ at all booksellers. the history of greece. from the german of professor ernst curtius. by a. w. ward, m.a. in five vols., demy vo., _s._: or separately, vols. i. and ii., each _s._; vols. iii., iv., and v., with index, each _s._ "a history known to scholars as one of the profoundest, most original, and instructive of modern times."--_globe._ "we cannot express our opinion of dr. curtius' book better than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with theodor mommsen's great work."--_spectator._ richard bentley and son, new burlington street. publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. * * * * * transcriber's notes: . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . mixed fractions in this text version are indicated with a hyphen and forward slash. for example, four and a half is represented by - / . . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. the history of antiquity. from the german of professor max duncker, by evelyn abbott, m.a., ll.d., _fellow and tutor of balliol college, oxford._ vol. v. london: richard bentley & son, new burlington street, publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen. . bungay: clay and taylor, printers. contents. book vii. _the arians of eastern iran._ chapter i. page the land and the tribes chapter ii. the kingdom of the bactrians chapter iii. the scriptures of iran chapter iv. zarathrustra and the date of the composition of the avesta chapter v. the gods of the arians in iran chapter vi. the reform of the faith chapter vii. the doctrine of the avesta chapter viii. the priesthood of iran chapter ix. the law of the priests chapter x. the later development of eastern iran book viii. _the empire of the medes and persians._ chapter i. the foundation of the median kingdom chapter ii. the empire of the medes chapter iii. the tribes of the persians chapter iv. the fall of the median kingdom chapter v. the rise of the persian kingdom book vii. the arians of eastern iran. eastern iran. chapter i. the land and the tribes. between the valley of the indus and the land of the euphrates and tigris, bounded on the south by the ocean and the persian gulf, on the north by the broad steppes which the oxus and jaxartes vainly attempt to fertilise, by the caspian sea and the valley of the aras, lies the table-land of iran. rising to an average height of feet above the level of the sea, it forms an oblong, the length of which from east to west is something more than miles. the breadth in the east is about miles, but at the narrowest point, from the caspian sea to the persian gulf, it is not much more than miles; while the western edge, reaching from the persian gulf to the mountains of aderbeijan, again extends over a distance of about miles. in this seclusion, neither penetrated by bays of the sea nor traversed by mighty rivers, the region exhibits a certain similarity to the highlands of arabia. the centre of the iranian land, like that of arabia, is occupied by a great desert where only nomadic life is possible. but the soil of iran is more diversified in regard to elevation and depression. the northern half of the land is higher than the southern, the centre is hollowed out in the form of a trough, so that in the east, at any rate, the waters from the inner slopes of the mountainous rim fall into the depression, and collect in fructifying lakes. the oases and fertile valleys are more numerous and extensive than in arabia, and though the rivers of the inner table-land, like the streams of the northern edge, which flow to the north, are lost in the sand or end in unimportant lakes, they nevertheless render agriculture possible over wide tracts of country. the northern side is more diversified and superior in formation to the south. the southern edge, which sinks down to the ocean, closely resembles arabia in the climate and the nature of the country; the mountains of the north, on the other hand, exhibit green pastures and splendid forests where arabia has nothing but bare peaks: in the hindu kush, and elburz on the caspian sea, as well as in aderbeijan, they rise into vast alpine districts. the eastern edge, extending over a distance of miles, rises like a steep wall out of the valley of the indus; a few long and difficult passes lead from the indus to the high ground, which on the north commences with cold bare flats, and on the south with slopes still more desolate and barren, and at the same time intolerably hot. only the terraces of the valley of the cabul, which flows down into the indus, allow a convenient exit towards the north, and present a soil to a great extent so fertile that three harvests can be reaped in the year. the western edge of iran, on the other hand, is formed by parallel ridges running from the north-west to the south-east, between which, beside extensive mountain pastures, lie narrow and well-watered valleys. in the north-west the low-lying regions are rich in meadows and forest; while those between the abutting ridges of the western and southern edge are warm, and even hot, in climate, rich and luxuriant in vegetation. on this table-land the heat is softened, though not entirely, by the elevation of the soil. after violent storms in the spring, no cloud darkens the sky from may to september; the atmosphere is peculiarly dry and clear, and through the fine air can be seen, bright and sharp, the outlines of the mountains and the whole country, while at night the star-lit sky almost replaces the light of day. the changes in temperature are sudden and severe. from cold, snow-covered terraces, feet in height, we suddenly descend to the glowing heat of the plains, lying barely feet above the sea. in the north-east oppressive heat alternates with great cold; the north suffers from a severe winter, with heavy falls of snow and icy storms, blowing over the caspian sea and the broad steppes; in the south the air is filled with the dust of the desert, here extraordinarily fine, and the hot winds give the heaps of sand the appearance of changing waves, and roll masses of it to the sky.[ ] as far back as our information extends, we find the table-land of iran occupied by a group of nations closely related to each other, and speaking dialects of the same language. on the edges of that great desert, which occupies the centre of the land, are tracts of pasture, and further inland, treeless steppes, which, however, are watered here and there by brackish pools, and produce a salt vegetation barely sufficient to provide buffaloes and camels with sustenance, until the soil becomes entirely barren. in the western part of these steppes wandered a pastoral people, whom herodotus calls sagartians. they were horsemen, but, according to the historian's statement, carried no weapons of attack beyond a dagger and a rope of twisted straps, at one end of which was a loop. in this they placed their confidence in battle; they threw it over men and horses, and so dragged them down and strangled them. in the inscriptions of the achæmenids this nation is called _açagarta_.[ ] close to the indus, and beyond the bare, hot, treeless shores of the ocean, the southern part of the plain consists of sandy flats, in which nothing grows but prickly herbs and a few palms. the springs are a day's journey from each other, and often more. this region was possessed by a people whom herodotus calls sattagydæ, and the companions of alexander of macedonia, gedrosians.[ ] among the nations of the east who were subject to them, the inscriptions of the achæmenids mention the "_thataghus_," which the greeks understood as sattagush and gadrush. neighbours of the gandarians, who, as we know, dwelt on the right bank of the indus down to the cabul, the gedrosians led a wandering, predatory life; under the persian kings they were united into one satrapy with the gandarians.[ ] to the south of the gedrosians, on the coast, there dwelt, according to the greeks, a miserable race, eaters of fish and tortoises, who built their houses of the bones of whales thrown up by the sea. they wove their nets from the bark of palms, and their weapons were javelins hardened in the fire.[ ] the edge on the south allows no streams of any size to flow to the sea, so that even to this day this coast presents only a few small fertile spots. about equally distant from the northern and southern edge of the table-land, to the east of the desert of the interior, lies a considerable lake, now called hamun, but known to the greeks as areios. it forms the centre of a cultivated district, though the storms from the west often drive the sand of the desert to its shores. this basin is formed by and receives important streams flowing from the inner slopes of the northern and eastern edge. from the southern spurs of the hindu kush comes the hilmend, the haetumat of the avesta, _i.e._ rich in bridges, the etymandros of the greeks, which has a course of about miles, and before falling into the lake is joined by the arghandab. the lora, which flows from the east, but further to the south, does not now reach the lake. from the north flow the harut and chashrud. round this lake, and on the banks of the hilmend, the arghandab, and the lora, lies a fruitful region; higher up the walls of the valleys are covered with forests, until towards the east the upper course of the rivers is enclosed by bare cliffs. on the shores of the hamun, and in the valley of the hilmend, dwelt a people whom the inscriptions of the achæmenids call _zaraka_, i.e. dwellers on the lake. a lake in old persian is _daraya_; in the ancient language of the east, _zarayanh_; in modern persian, _zareh_. hence we understand why herodotus calls this nation sarangians, the later greeks, zarangians and drangians. according to the greeks the zarakas were a warlike nation, armed with median bows and spears, unsurpassed in battle on horseback; and a tribe of them which lived under good and equitable laws bore the name of ariaçpians.[ ] the ruins of cities and works of irrigation testify to the former prosperity of this region. east of the zarakas, up the valley of the arghandab, dwelt the arachoti. in the inscriptions of the achæmenids they are called _harauvati_; in the avesta, _harahvaiti_, i.e. the rich in water. these names the arachoti received from the river on which they were settled, the older name of which was arachotus (_sarasvati_).[ ] herodotus does not designate the arachoti by this name derived from the river of their land, but by the tribal name of pactyes; he tells us that they wore peculiar bows, daggers, and skins.[ ] the afghans, who in ancient times occupied the region from the suleiman mountains on the east as far as the arghandab on the west, shorawak on the south, the cabul and the range of the sefid-kuh on the north, and in the middle ages forced their way to cabul and peshawur, still call themselves pashtun and pakhtun, or rohilo, _i.e._ mountaineers. they still speak their old rough mountain language, which is closely connected with the dialects of the arian tribes on the indus.[ ] eastward of elburz, the point where the northern edge of iran again rises into a lofty range to the west (demavend is more than , feet in height), and then sinks down to the caspian sea, lay the hyrcanians. in the inscriptions of the achæmenids their land is known as _varkana_; the modern name is jorjan. here, according to the greeks, the mountains were covered with forests of oaks, where swarms of wild bees had their hives; in the valleys vines and fig-trees flourished, and the soil down to the sea was so luxuriant that corn grew from the fallen grains without any special sowing.[ ] the description is hardly exaggerated. the waters pouring from the heights and snow-fields of elburz water the soil of the coast so thoroughly, that a tropical growth flourishes in jorjan, taberistan, and ghilan, the luxuriance of which is assisted by the volcanic heat of the earth. the lagunes of the coast are succeeded by marsh forests; higher up are fields of rice and plantations of sugarcane, and beyond these fertile meadows, above which splendid forests of oaks, planes, and elms clothe the heights of elburz. there is abundance of water fruits, figs and mulberries, olives and oranges, and the vigorous creepers of the vines run even to the summits of the trees.[ ] nevertheless, these favoured regions have a darker side. frequent earthquakes disturb the soil; in the winter furious north winds blowing over the caspian rage along the walls of elburz, and even on the outlying spurs the snow falls to the depth of several fathoms; the rain-clouds, hemmed in by the mountain ranges, often burst in water-spouts, which lay the land far and wide under water, and roll as torrents down the gorges; the marsh air blanches the inhabitants, while in the summer the hot and moist climate breeds deadly fever. further to the east, where the caspian sea ends and the mountains of iran descend towards the desolate, pathless steppes of the oxus, is a wild, hilly country. in the depressions, and there only, the region of the parthians (_parthava_ in the inscriptions of the achæmenids[ ]) exhibits fruitful lands, and, further eastward still, agriculture is favoured by the long, narrow valley of the areios (herirud). springing from the southern slope of the hindu kush, the river flows towards the west along the inner edge of the table-land, till it bursts through the northern barrier in order to lose itself in the sand of the steppes. in this valley the district of the modern herat, lay the areians, who are called _haraiva_ in the inscriptions of the persian kings. the name points to the possession of water. to the north of the areians, in the valley of the margos (now murghab), which rises in the northern edge of the table-land, and flows to the north-west, where it also ends in the sands of the desert, in margiana (old persian, marghush; bactrian, mouru; modern merv), lay the margiani, in a well-cultivated region, rich in vineyards, with numerous cities and a large population. but the fertility only extends so far as the soil can be watered from the margos and the neighbouring streams. at the foot of the mountain barrier, towards the northern steppes, and on the edge of the steppes of the oxus, to the north of the hyrcanians, parthians, and margiani, in a land which only partially admits of agriculture, lay the chorasmians, a people partly stationary and partly migratory--the _uvarazmiya_ of the achæmenids, the _hvairizem_ of the avesta. further to the east, where the edge rises to the lofty hindu kush, there lies on its northern slope a favoured district in the region of the upper oxus. that river flows from the table-land of pamire, which lies more than , feet above the sea, exactly at the point where the hindu kush abuts on the belurdagh, the western edge of the central table-land. on the banks of the river, which flows in a north-westerly direction, extend broad mountain pastures, where support is found in the fresh mountain air for numerous herds of horses and sheep, and beneath the wooded hills are blooming valleys. on these slopes of the hindu kush, the middle stage between the table-land and the deep plain of the caspian sea, lay the bactrians--the _bakhtri_ of the achæmenids, the _bakhdhi_ of the avesta. curtius, following the accounts of the companions of alexander, tells us of the land of the bactrians that it was much diversified in character; in one part were pastures, another was rich in beautiful fruit-trees and vines, and frequent springs watered the rich soil, on which corn was cultivated. these districts supported a large number of oxen and horses. under the range of paropanisos (_i.e._ on the slope of the hindu kush) lay the city of bactra, on the river of the same name, which washed its walls. but a great part of the country was covered with waste tracts of sand. if the winds blew from the caspian sea, they swept the sand into high hills, under which not only did every trace of the road disappear, but travellers were at times overwhelmed; and, as if voyaging by sea, it was necessary to guide the course by the stars.[ ] strabo remarks, after apollodorus of artemita, that bactria was the best part of east iran (ariana). in ancient times the bactrians were hardly distinguished from nomads; but their land was extensive, and produced fruits of all kinds, with the exception of the vine. the fertility of the land enabled the hellenic princes to make great conquests. their cities were bactra, traversed by the river of the same name, darapsa, aornus (_avarana_, _i.e._ protection), kariata, and many others, and besides these cities, the bactrians had citadels on lofty rocks.[ ] according to strabo, bactra was also called zariaspa, and pliny asserts that at any rate in earlier times it was called by that name. in arrian zariaspa is the largest city of bactria, while ptolemy places zariaspa to the north of bactra, on the bank of the oxus. zariaspa means golden horse. a river might possibly be known by such a name, but hardly a city, unless it belonged to a tribe of the name of zariaspians, and was inhabited by them. in fact ptolemy places the tribe of the zariaspians in his zariaspa.[ ] the air on these north-western terraces of the hindu kush is warm, and the soil sufficiently vigorous, under irrigation, to produce rice and southern fruits. eight leagues below the snow-fields of the mountains, which resist even the hottest months of the year, two good leagues to the north of the place where the dehas, after forcing a passage through the last heights, reaches the plains, lies the city of balkh, on the banks of that river. at this day it is a town only partially inhabited; but the ruins of the ancient city are said to cover a circuit of several leagues. the adjacent soil is now well cultivated; the fields are thickly planted with trees, and beside old water-courses, now dried up, and extensive ruins of yet older aqueducts, eighteen channels still convey their rills to fields under active cultivation.[ ] north of the bactrians, beyond the oxus, on the western slope of belurdagh, in the valley of the polytimetus (zarefshan, _i.e._ strewing gold), which flows towards the oxus from the east, but, instead of joining it, ends in lake dengiz, lay the sogdiani of the greeks, the _suguda_ of the old persian inscriptions, and _Çughdha_ of the avesta, in the region of the modern sogd. as the oxus in its upper course separates the bactrians from the sogdiani, the jaxartes, further to the north, separates the latter from the scyths. according to strabo, the manners of the bactrians and sogdiani were similar, but the bactrians were less rude.[ ] maracanda (samarcand), the chief city of the sogdiani, on the polytimetus, is said to have had a circuit of stades in the fourth century b.c. the soil is not without fertility, but the climate varies between great heat and severe cold. herodotus observes that the bactrians, who carried bows of reed and short lances, closely resembled the northern indians in armour, clothing, and mode of life, and then informs us that the areians, parthians, sogdiani, and chorasmians resembled the bactrians. all these tribes of the east, according to the account of herodotus, carried the indian bow of reed; the areians alone used the median bow, which herodotus states to have been in vogue not only among the medes, but also among all the nations of western iran. he adds that in ancient times the medes were called areians by all men. strabo uses the name ariana for the land of all the nations of iran, except that of the medes and persians, _i.e._ for the whole eastern half of iran.[ ] in diodorus also the nations of eastern iran are arians.[ ] the avesta, which, as we shall show, belongs to the east of iran, calls its native land _airyao dahvyu_, i.e. abode of the airyas; or _airyao danhavo_, _i.e._ land of the airyas, in contrast to the _anairyao danhavo_, i.e. the non-arian lands.[ ] in his inscriptions king darius styles himself "a persian, son of a persian, an arian (_ariya_) of an arian tribe,"[ ] and therefore the name must have held good of the west of iran also, and have included all the nations of iran, though afterwards it continued in use more especially for the tribes of the east. the inhabitants of the modern persian kingdom call their kingdom by the general name of iran. iran is only the regular new persian form of the old name, which in the west was pronounced ariyana, and in the east airyana. we remember that the ruling nation of india called themselves arya, and this name compared with airya and ariya shows us that the nations of iran assumed the same title with very little difference. among the greeks ariya and airya became areioi and arioi, and the name of the land, ariyana and airyana, became ariana. we have learnt the meaning of the names aryas, ariyas, airyas; they signify "the noble or ruling people" (iv. ). much the same is the sense of the name artæans,[ ] which, according to the assertion of herodotus, was the title by which the persians called themselves; it signifies "the exalted," or "mighty." the persians may have assumed it after they became the ruling people in iran and hither asia. these distinctions show us that the aryas whom we found on the indus and in the panjab, and who forced their way from thence to the conquest and colonisation of the valley of the ganges, and then extended their dominion over the deccan, and imported their religion and their civilisation into those wide regions, were closely connected with the group of nations which occupied the table-land of iran. it is obvious that this relationship was most strictly maintained and most strongly marked where the intercourse between the neighbouring nations was most lively, _i.e._ among the nations of eastern iran. the conclusion drawn from the common title of the two nations on the west and east of the indus, and from the statements of herodotus about the manners of the eastern and the name of the western nations of iran, is confirmed by the examination of the existing remnants of the ancient languages of iran, whether spoken in the east or the west. this evidence derived from the names and the language is confirmed yet further by the coincidence in certain traits of religion and worship. we are not in a position to fix the place from which and the time when the arian tribes entered the table-land of iran and peopled it. that iran was not their native country is clear from the divergence of the arian stock from the common stem of the indo-europeans (iv. ). still less can we decide whether the arians found an older population already settled in iran. so far as the ancient monuments of east and west allow us to form an opinion, there exist no elements of an alien language from which we could deduce the existence of an earlier population, which the arians conquered. yet we cannot deny that tribes of an alien origin and character were settled on the western spurs of the mountain wall of iran, in the north no less than in the south.[ ] the foreign elements which the later forms of the language of iran have adopted are due to the influence which the semitic neighbours of the arians on the west, and the dominion of the arabs, exercised on iran. as to the direction in which the arians entered iran, we can only conclude, from their close relationship to the arians of india, that they peopled the east of iran before the west. if the arians of india came into the panjab, as we assumed, soon after b.c., the arians of iran entered the eastern part of that country at a date certainly not later. according to the list of dynasties furnished by berosus, the arians about b.c. were not only settled in iran, but already possessed the western part of the country. he represents the medes as conquering babylonia in b.c., and from this date down to b.c. mentions eight median kings as ruling over babylon (i. , ). in spite of their cruel treatment, the nucleus of the ancient arian population of iran has not succumbed to the alien dynasties, the seleucids, arabs, and mongols who have invaded the land since the fall of the achæmenids; and the ancient territory has been maintained, with some losses, even against the incursions and immigrations of the sacæ, yuëchis, and turkish hordes. as in the vast regions of the indus and the ganges, so in iran the ancient language still lives on the lips of the modern population. yet the changes have been great. under the arsacids the old persian passed into middle persian, which at a later time was known by the name of the parthians, the tribe at that time supreme in persia. pahlav and pehlevi mean parthian, and, as applied to language, the language of the parthians, _i.e._ of the parthian era.[ ] in the west this older middle persian grew up out of the old persian, in the east out of the old bactrian. in the latest period of the dominion of the sassanids, the recent middle persian or parsee took the place of pehlevi. when the kingdom of the sassanids succumbed to the arabs, and arabic became the language of the ruling people in iran, the reaction which took place in the eastern districts of the country against the dominion of the abbasids brought about the formation of the new persian, which was finally completed when the national reaction broke out in the beginning of the eleventh century of our era. beginning from merv, balkh, and sejestan (the ancient haetumat), that rising found its strongest point in ghasna and cabul. it did not preserve the religion, but it saved the language, nationality, and independence of iran. the change from the middle persian to the modern began with the north-eastern dialects; in the south-east the afghans and beluchees still speak in ancient forms, closely akin to the dialects of the peasants of the panjab. to this day the greater part of the entire population of iran consists of the descendants of the arians, in spite of all the distress and ruin which the land has suffered,[ ] though the residuum of foreign elements is larger here than beyond the indus, especially in the north-west, in aderbeijan, and above all in bactria and sogdiana, in the north-east. the descendants of the arians are still recognised by the formation of their bodies, which appeared so striking to western nations in antiquity--the slender growth, the semicircular, united eyebrows, and the yellow skin, which becomes browner towards the east. the persians and afghans still possess a sound judgment, a keen intelligence, and lively sense of poetry--characteristics which, as we saw, belonged in a pre-eminent degree to the arians of india. footnotes: [ ] ritter, "erdkunde," , - ; , . [ ] herod. , ; , ; lassen, "z. d. m. g." , . herodotus reckons the paretaceni among the tribes of the medes ( , ); the sagartians, whom he represents as armed partly like persians, partly like pactyans, with the carmanians, he places among the persians. yet the nomad sagartians seem rather to have had relations with the medes than the persians; for, according to the inscription of behistun, a rebel obtains a following among the sagartians by giving himself out to be a descendant of cyaxares, the median king. ptolemy places the sagartians in media; cf. plin. "hist. nat." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , ff.; "ind." , ; curtius, , , . [ ] behistun, , ; persep. , ; herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; arrian, "ind." , ; "anab." , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , ; diod. , ; strabo, p. . [ ] vol. iv. p. . [ ] the city of kapisakani, which darius, according to the inscription of behistun ( , , ), conquered in the land of the arachoti, is no doubt the capissa of pliny, in the district of capissene; "hist. nat." , . pliny speaks of the city and river of cabul as belonging to the arachoti. the inhabitants of the southern slope of the hindu kush are known to the greeks as paropanisadæ. the explanation of the name by paropanisos (paropamisus), paropanishadha, given by lassen, is quoted in vol. iv. p. , _n._ . in the babylonian text of the inscription of behistun, the gandaras of the persian text are called parupanisana. in the narrower sense the name denotes the south-western part of the range of the hindu kush, the group which forms the cradle of the herirud and hilmend, the modern ghuristan, to the west of the plateau of ghasna. [ ] lassen, "indische alterthumskunde," , . fr. müller ("ueber die sprache der afghanen") is of the opinion that the afghan does not come between indian and persian, but belongs to the iranian stem, and the afghan has preserved the old bactrian relations of sound more faithfully than the persian, and thus shows itself to be a direct descendant of the old eastern dialect of iran. trump proves that afghan is an ancient independent language of strong indian type. "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] strabo, pp. , , ; plin. "hist. nat." , ; diod. , . [ ] ritter, "erdkunde," , ff. [ ] isid. "charac. mans. parth." - . the parthians rose with the hyrcanians against darius; parthians and hyrcanians formed one satrapy. the parthians are the pahlav of moses of khorene, the pehlew of later writers. the mention of them in the inscriptions of darius proves that they are not a later immigrant scythian, _i.e._ non-arian, nation, as justin, strabo, and others maintain. the cities which the inscription of behistun mentions in parthia ( , ; , ), viçpauzatis and patigrabana, we cannot fix more definitely; ammian ( , ) mentions patigran in media. parthunisa, with the graves of the parthian kings, mentioned in isidorus, "which the greeks call nisæa," is parthava-niçaya, and must be sought for near the modern nishapur. it must be the niça which the vendidad places between mouru and bakhdhi. justi, "beitrage," , compares isidorus' [greek: batzigraban, ho esti telônion]. [ ] curt. , . [ ] strabo, pp. , , ; arrian, "anab." , . on aornus, cf. vol. iv. p. . [ ] ptolem. , ; , ; strabo, pp. , ; arrian, "anab." , ; , , , ; plin. "hist. nat." , , ; steph. byz. _sub voc._ firdusi mentions a hero zarasp. [ ] elphinstone, "kabul," , , . [ ] strabo, _loc. cit._ [ ] herod. , ; strabo (pp. , , ) includes in ariana, gedrosia, arachosia, drangiana, paropanisus, aria, parthia, and caramania. cf. pausan. , , . [ ] diod. , . damascius ("de primis principiis," p. ) speaks of the [greek: magoi de kai pan to arion genos]. [ ] "vendid." , ; "mihr yasht," , ; "tistar yasht," , , . [ ] naksh-i-rustem, a., . [ ] herod. , . cf. steph. byz. [greek: artaia]. [ ] on the tribe of the brahuis in the south-east, on this side of the indus, cf. vol. iv. p. . [ ] haug, "the book of arda viraf," p. xxv. mordtmann has shown on the coins of the arsacids and sassanids the stages between the older forms and the language of firdusi; "z. d. m. g." , ff., , ff. on the forms of the old bactrian on the coins of the græco-bactrian and indo-scythian princes: lassen, "indische alterthum." ^ , ff. spiegel, "parsigrammatik," s. ff. [ ] it has been recently proved that the inhabitants of the mountain country between cabul and herat, the aimaks and hazares, speak persian. chapter ii. the kingdom of the bactrians. among the ruins of the residence of the kings of asshur at chalah, on the confluence of the greater zab and the tigris, was discovered the obelisk which shalmanesar ii., who reigned from to b.c. over assyria, erected in memory of his successes. in the tribute offered to him we find the rhinoceros, the elephant, the humped ox, and the camel with two humps (ii. ). this species of camel and the yak are found in bactria, on the southern edge of the caspian sea, and in tartary, and we afterwards find elephants in the possession of the rulers of bactria.[ ] hence, in order to obtain these animals for tribute, the armies of shalmanesar must have advanced as far as the eastern tribes of the iranian table-land. from the inscriptions of tiglath pilesar ii., it is clear that he advanced along the same table-land as far as the hilmend and the arachoti, if not as far as bactria. among the lands subjugated in b.c., he enumerates nisaa, zikruti, and arakuttu. in nisaa we cannot mistake nisæa in the east of media (p. ). the zikruti were no doubt the sagartians of herodotus, the açagarta of the old persian inscriptions.[ ] arakuttu represents in a semitic form the name of the arachoti, the harauvati of the achæmenids (p. ). so far as we can at present judge from inscriptions, the successors of tiglath pilesar did not carry their campaigns further to the east of iran, and we can assert with certainty of both the sovereigns who raised the power of assyria to its summit, esarhaddon and assurbanipal ( - b.c.), that they made no conquests in this direction. if the inscriptions of the assyrians leave us in almost total darkness about bactria, the medo-persian epic poetry can give us full information about the country. when ninus, king of assyria, had subjugated all the nations of asia as far as the nile and the tanais, he made an attempt upon bactria, but without success. the entrance into the land was difficult, the number of warriors great, and they knew how to fight bravely. then ninus collected an army of two millions of soldiers, which was opposed by oxyartes, the king of the bactrians, with , men. when the assyrian army came in detachments out of the passes, oxyartes attacked and drove them back into the mountains with the loss of , men. the army of ninus then combined, outnumbered and overcame the bactrians, and scattered them into their cities, which ninus took with little trouble. but bactra, where was the palace of the kings, was large and well supplied, and had a very strong citadel in a high position, while the city extended over the plain. it resisted for a long time, till semiramis ascended the citadel, and ninus was enabled to take possession of the treasures of gold and silver which were in bactra. at a later time semiramis collected her vast army for the invasion of india in bactria, and returned to bactra after she had been defeated on the indus, and had lost two-thirds of her army (ii. ). such are the descriptions given by the epic poetry of the medes and persians, in the account of the rise of assyria and subjugation of bactria. the bactrians are again brought forward in the narrative of the overthrow of assyria, which was the proper theme of these poems. when sardanapalus has already thrice defeated the medes and babylonians, a strong force comes to his assistance from bactria. the leader of the medes determines to attack this first, if it would not join in the contest for freedom against assyria. the bactrians joined the medes, the power of assyria was broken, and nineveh destroyed (iii. ). from these poems it follows that in the first half of the sixth century b.c., in which the medo-persian epic attained its original form, the tradition, or at any rate the opinion, existed among the minstrels of media that a powerful kingdom and large metropolis once existed in bactria, the situation of which is correctly described. this kingdom possessed a strong citadel and abundant treasures, and could put in the field a large army of brave warriors. without such a conception they could not represent the first attack of the assyrians on bactria as a failure, the second as successful only after considerable time and trouble had been spent, and the conquest as the last and greatest achievement of ninus, the mightiest sovereign of assyria, which he only performed with the aid of semiramis. the inscriptions of the assyrians have already informed us that no dominion of assyria over eastern iran existed in the earliest period of the kingdom; on the contrary, even when her power was at the highest assyria could only carry on temporary excursions into that region. the western part of the country was first trodden by the armies of shalmanesar ii.; his inscriptions mention tribute of the medes, and from the inscriptions of his successors it is distinctly clear that only the nations of western iran were tributary dependants of the kings of asshur from the period of tiglath pilesar, _i.e._ from the middle of the eighth century b.c., till the period of phraortes and cyaxares of media, _i.e._ till the middle of the seventh century b.c.[ ] the conquests of cyrus, who overthrew the power of the medes, founded the persian empire, and extended it to the east, would give us more accurate information about eastern iran if connected accounts of these were in existence. herodotus contents himself with stating that cyrus, after subjugating the lydians, determined to march against the bactrians and sacæ. he conquered all the nations of upper asia, one after the other, without omitting any.[ ] ctesias relates that the bactrians after a doubtful battle submitted voluntarily to cyrus. according to the account of xenophon, the hyrcanians, cadusians, and sacæ joined cyrus, and in the fragments of nicolaus also the hyrcanians, parthians, and "the other nations" passed over to cyrus immediately after the conquest of the medes. however this may be, there is no doubt that the east of iran was subject to cyrus. he marched through the land of the arachoti, entered into relations with the ariaçpas (p. ), and subjugated the gandarians on the south of the cabul. he is also said to have imposed tribute on the açvakas to the north of the river (iv. ). the sogdiani, in any case, were his vassals. on a stream which flows into the jaxartes he built a fortress called by his own name, known to the greeks as cyresbata (_ultima cyra_, or with others cyropolis), _i.e._ the furthest cyrus. the walls and citadels were strong and spacious, and in the neighbourhood were six other citadels.[ ] the value placed by cyrus on the regions of eastern iran is not only clear from these fortresses, but may be deduced from the statement that his second son bardya, whom the greeks call smerdis, was intrusted with the government of bactria, if indeed the statement is genuine.[ ] the nations and condition of eastern iran can be ascertained more clearly from the inscriptions of darius. according to his inscription at behistun, his empire in that direction comprised the parthians, sarangians, areians, chorasmians, bactrians, sogdiani, gandarii, sattagydæ, arachoti, and sacæ; and to these the idhus, _i.e._ the indians on the right bank of the upper course of the indus, are added in the inscriptions of persepolis and naksh-i-rustem.[ ] further information is preserved by herodotus with respect to the tribute imposed by darius on these nations. as these statements are undoubtedly derived from persian tribute lists, they serve to throw a side light on the state of civilisation existing in the east of iran at the division of the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. the sarangians, who, as we have seen (p. ), inhabited the fertile land round lake areios (hamun), together with the sagartians and some neighbouring nations on the south, paid yearly babylonian talents into the treasury of the king. the areians (haraivas), parthians, sogdiani, and chorasmians, who formed the sixteenth satrapy of the persian empire, had to pay talents; the gedrosians and gandarians together paid talents; the caspiani (_i.e._ no doubt, the tapurians and other tribes on the southern shore of the caspian sea) and the sacæ, who traversed the steppes of the oxus, _i.e._ the fifteenth satrapy, paid talents; and the bactrians, the twelfth satrapy of the empire, paid talents.[ ] these sums, which do not include the whole of the burdens of the provinces, but are only the land taxes which they had to pay,--in addition, tolls were levied and contributions in kind to the court of the king and the satraps, as well as for the maintenance of the army,--show that at the time of darius agriculture and wealth had proceeded far beyond the earliest stages in the eastern districts of iran. the babylonian silver talent amounts to more than thalers ( shillings).[ ] if a sum of more than , , thalers (£ , ) could be raised every year in land tax from the districts round lake hamun, extensive though they were, and , thalers (£ , ) in a similar manner from the land of the bactrians, the gardens, fields, and pastures of these regions must have been considerable in breadth, and of great fertility. beyond this indication of the state of the civilisation in these districts, we learn but little of their fortunes under the dominion of the persians. darius ( - b.c.) informs us, at the beginning of his reign, that his father hystaspes (vistaçpa), his viceroy in persia, the native land of the kingdom, and with him vivana the persian, the satrap of arachosia, and dadarshis the persian, the satrap of bactria, had quelled the rebellions of the parthians, hyrcanians, and margiani; that the mede takhmaçpada had conquered the rebellious sagartians, and captured their leader, chitratakhma, whom he, darius, had crucified at arbela. the army of the second pseudo-smerdis, which attempted to gain possession of arachosia, vivana had defeated at the fortress of kapisakani, in arachosia, and the leaders, with their chief associates, had been captured in the fortress of arsada and put to death. hystaspes had slain men of the parthians and hyrcanians, and taken of them captives. dadarshis had subjugated the mardians by slaying of them in battle, and taking of them captive.[ ] xerxes, the successor of darius, successively intrusted two of his brothers, masistes and then hystaspes, with the government of bactria.[ ] in the great campaign against hellas, the bactrians, like all the other nations of the kingdom, had to furnish their contingent; and when mardonius had to select the best troops in the army in hellas, in order to winter with them in thessaly, he retained, besides the persians and medes, the infantry and cavalry of the bactrians, sacæ, and indians.[ ] the bactrians, under their viceroy hystaspes, revolted against artaxerxes, the brother of hystaspes. the first battle was not decisive; in the second artaxerxes conquered, "because the wind blew in the face of the bactrians," and subjugated the land.[ ] to the army of darius iii. with which he met the macedonians in assyria, the bactrians contributed , cavalry; and in the battle of arbela they fought with the arachoti on the left wing. accompanied by bactrian horsemen, darius escaped from the field of battle to media, and sought afterwards to maintain his position in their country. the caspian gates, the pass of damaghan, were gained, when the satrap of bactria got possession of the king, and put him to death before he reached bactria. the satrap hoped to establish an independent power there,[ ] but without success. though alexander at first overcame the bactrians, who were astonished at his rapid approach, he soon found a stubborn resistance in sogdiana and bactria, which occupied him for two years.[ ] not till then could he make his preparations in bactria for the invasion of india, and collect at bactra the army intended for the subjugation of that country, in order to pass over the hindu kush into the valley of the cabul. in the contests which the successors of alexander carried on for the supremacy after his death, the valley of the euphrates and tigris, and the table-land of iran, finally fell to the lot of seleucus. but in the middle of the third century ( b.c.), arsaces in parthia and the satrap diodotus in bactria rebelled against the second successor, antiochus theos. the descendants of arsaces not only succeeded in maintaining their independence against the seleucids, in spite of severe reverses, but mithridates i., the sixth arsacid ( - b.c.), united all iran under his dominion. the greeks lost their supremacy, and iran again became subject to native princes. meanwhile diodotus had founded an independent supremacy in bactria. his son, of the same name, was succeeded by euthydemus, against whom, towards the year b.c., antiochus iii. marched, in order to force bactria to submission. euthydemus was defeated at the river areios (p. ), and fled to zariaspa. by the surrender of his elephants he obtained an established recognition from antiochus. demetrius and eucratides, the successors of euthydemus (after b.c.), extended the sphere of their dominion to the east over the land on the cabul to the indus. the kingdom of chandragupta, vindusara, and açoka, which, as we know, included the east of iran, and has left us inscriptions at peshawur (iv. ), fell to pieces under açoka's grandsons. apollodorus of artemita told us above that the fertility of the bactrian soil enabled the greek rulers to make important conquests (p. ); he informs us that eucratides founded the city of eucratideia in bactria, and subjugated a thousand cities in india. we may assume that bactria under these princes was not merely powerful, but prosperous. according to the statement of justin, a thousand cities were at that time enumerated in bactria,[ ] and we possess satisfactory evidence that these rulers and their courts, and the greek settlements which alexander founded in the distant east, were able permanently to establish the style and art of hellas. the coins of these princes, who are designated in greek as "kings," "great," "invincible," rival the best work which proceeded from greek mints. the faces present the heads of the princes, in characteristic and individual portraits; the reverses exhibit heracles, athena, apollo with a crown of rays, the dioscuri on horseback, lance in hand. but by degrees the national types of the east are again employed on these coins. the reverse presents the galloping horse, the animal of bactria, the elephant, and the humped ox.[ ] the head of demetrius, who first conquered territory in india, and that of some of his descendants, is covered by a helmet adorned with the tusks and trunk of an elephant. besides the round, numbers of rectangular coins have also been found, from which we can discover the native traditional form of the bactrian coinage. after the reign of eucratides these rectangular coins present on one side greek inscriptions, which are repeated in other characters on the reverse. to the inscriptions of king açoka at kapur-i-giri, and to these coins, together with those of the græco-indian kings, and some later coins belonging to the arsacids and the indo-scythian princes, we owe the information that the east of iran possessed a peculiar alphabet and mode of writing, while the medes and persians of the west borrowed their earliest letters from the assyrio-babylonian cuneiform writing, and afterwards, from about the fourth century b.c., adopted the cursive character of the aramæans. although, as we may conclude from these indications, the greek sovereigns of bactria resolved to pay a certain respect to the civilisation of their subjects, their kingdom was short-lived. the nations of the steppes of the oxus, themselves under pressure, began to advance to the south (after b.c.); in the west the parthians rose into power. mithridates i. of parthia incorporated bactria in his kingdom about b.c., and bactria subsequently became a part of the parthian empire. heliocles, the son of eucratides, was thus limited to the land of the cabul and indus, but on the borders of india the power and influence of the greeks remained unbroken. greek captains--menander, and after him apollodotus, who had previously no doubt been subject to the bactrians--issued from the southern slope of the hindu kush in the last decades of the second century b.c., and conquered the land of the indus as far as the mouth of the river, and the panjab. they advanced to the yamuna, and reduced surashtra (guzerat) and cashmere to dependence. even at the end of the first century b.c. coins of these princes were current on the coast of surashtra, and they are still found on the banks of the yamuna.[ ] on the western coast of india, from the gulf of cambay to bombay, we find from one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand families whose ancestors migrated thither from iran. the tradition among them is, that at the time when the arabs, after conquering iran and becoming sovereigns there, persecuted and eradicated the old religion, faithful adherents of the creed fled to the mountains of kerman. driven from these by the arabs (in kerman and yezd a few hundred families are still found who maintain the ancient faith[ ]), they retired to the island of hormuz (a small island close by the southern coast, at the entrance to the persian gulf). from hence they migrated to din (on the coast of guzerat), and then passed over to the opposite shore. in the neighbourhood of bombay and in the south of india inscriptions have been found which prove that these settlers reached the coast in the tenth century of our era.[ ] at the present time their descendants form a considerable part of the population of surat, bombay, and ahmadabad; they call themselves, after their ancient home, parsees, and speak the later middle persian (the parsee, p. ). their worship and life they regulate by the rules given in certain scriptures which they brought with them from their ancient home. these are fragments of a much larger whole, part of a book of law, and a collection of sacrificial songs and prayers. the parsees no longer speak or understand the language of these scriptures (the avesta), and even the priests, who use them every day, ascertain the meaning through an accompanying translation into the later language. that these scriptures arose in the east of iran is clear from the language of the avesta. it exhibits a close relationship with the forms of the veda and sanskrit, the ancient language of the arians in india. if, on the other hand, we compare the language of the avesta with the ancient language of western iran as we possess it in the inscriptions of the achæmenids, we find that both are merely different dialects of one language, but they differ in such a manner that the language of the inscriptions of darius and xerxes is less closely connected with sanskrit than the language of the avesta. this language then we may regard as the ancient speech of eastern iran, and this assumption is raised into evidence by the contents of the avesta. these prove that the avesta arose in the east of iran, with even greater certainty than the songs of the rigveda prove that that collection arose in the land of the indus and the panjab. the avesta entirely ignores the west of iran. no mention is made of ecbatana and pasargadæ, the abode of the median and the persian kings, though they reigned over the whole of iran and hither asia; nor even of the nations of the west, the medes and persians. it speaks of the land of the seven streams, _i.e._ india (iv. ), and the heat which prevails in that land;[ ] it mentions the beautiful harahvaiti (arachosia) and haetumat (afterwards sejestan[ ]): the latter is extolled as a beaming, glowing, brilliant country.[ ] the knowledge of the avesta is most accurate in the north-east. here we find airyana vaeja, _i.e._ home or canton of the airyas,[ ] Çughdha (sogdiana), bakhdhi (baktra), mouru (margiana, merv[ ]), niça, between bakhdhi and mouru, haraeva (haraiva in the inscriptions; herat, the land of the areians), and vehrkana, _i.e._ land of wolves (hyrcania).[ ] the furthest point known to the west is ragha in media, which, according to the avesta, consists of three citadels or tribes.[ ] these statements carry us very distinctly to the east of iran, the region from ragha to the indus. mouru is "the high," "the holy," and bakhdhi's "high banner" is extolled. in this way this city was no doubt marked out as the seat of an important dominion, the centre of a kingdom. if we might assume that in these fragments of the sacred books of the parsees we have not only the ancient language, but also the ancient religion of eastern iran before us, we might also hope that we should meet in them with remnants of the tradition, with native accounts of the fortunes of the country, enabling us to supplement the scanty information which we could glean from the inscriptions of the assyrians and darius, and the accounts of western writers. leaving out of sight for the present the question, at what period did these writings come into existence? we may collect what we can find in them on the early history of iran. in the avesta the god haoma says, vivanghana was the first who crushed out the juice of the haoma. as a reward there was born to him the brilliant yima, the lord of the nations, the most famous of all who have seen the sun. while yima kshaeta (yima the king) reigned there was neither cold nor excessive heat, neither age nor death, nor envy, caused by the evil spirits: fathers and sons equally had the vigour of men of fifty years. yima caused the means of support for mankind to be inexhaustible; he liberated the waters and trees from drought, and the herds from death.[ ] in an invocation to the goddess ardviçura, the giver of water, to whom yima sacrifices a hundred horses, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand head of small cattle on hukairya, the summit of the divine mountain, he prays, "grant to me, saviour ardviçura, that i may be the sovereign of all lands, that i may carry away from the daevas (the evil spirits) increase and health, fodder and herds, joy and glory." to the goddess ashi vanguhi, yima also offers a prayer "that he may bring food and flocks to the creatures of mazda, and immortality, and may remove hunger and thirst, age and death, the hot wind and the cold from the creatures of mazda for a thousand years." and the morning wind, vayu, is entreated that "yima may be the most merciful of all creatures, and that under his dominion he may make cattle and mankind immortal, that the waters and trees may never dry up and wither." in the fragments of the book of the law in the avesta, zarathrustra inquires of auramazda to whom he (the god) had first revealed the true doctrine. auramazda answers, "i spoke first with yima, the excellent one. i said to him, yima, thou beautiful son of vivanghana, be thou the preacher and bearer of my doctrine. but yima answered, i am not fitted to be the preacher of the doctrine. then i, auramazda, spoke and said, if thou wilt not obey me, yima, to be the bearer of my law, yet make my world fruitful; be the keeper of my earthly creatures, their protector and lord. and yima, the excellent one, answered, i will cause thy creatures to prosper and increase; i will be the keeper, protector, and lord of them. therefore i, auramazda, gave to him two instruments, a golden staff and an ox goad adorned with gold, and three hundred years passed by. and the land was full of herds and beasts of draught, of men, and dogs, and birds, and red flaming fires. and there was no more any room for the flocks, and men, and beasts of draught. then i warned yima: o yima, excellent one, son of vivanghana, there is no more any room for the herds, and beasts of draught, and men. and yima went forth to meet the stars and the path of the sun (_i.e._ towards the east). he struck with the golden staff upon the earth, and smote it with the goad, and said, Çpenta armaiti (o holy earth), arise, part thyself asunder, thou bearer of animals and of men. and yima pushed the earth asunder so that it was a third part greater than before. then the flocks found a home, the beasts of draught, and men, according to their wish and desire." again three hundred years passed, and there was no more any room for herds, beasts, and men; and at auramazda's command yima again caused the earth to stretch asunder, and it became two-thirds greater than before; and after another three hundred years yima caused the earth to become as large again as before.[ ] then a thousand years passed, and auramazda said to yima, "bitter cold and sharp frost will fall upon the earth, and the snow will lie deep on the summits of the mountains and in the clefts of the valleys. make an enclosure (_vara_) of the length of a horse's course on each of the four sides. bring into it a stock of herds and beasts of draught, of men and dogs, and birds and red flaming fires, and make the enclosure to be a dwelling for men and a stall for the cattle. carry water thither, and build houses and tombs, and a fortification and palisade round about, and drive them with the golden staff into the citadel, and shut to the door. and yima made a citadel of the length of a horse's course. thither he brought a stock of all men and women who were the tallest, best, and most beautiful of earth, and a brood of all animals which were largest, best, and most beautiful, and the seeds of all fruits and growths which were best and most beautiful. and he provided that a pair were ever together. there was no evil speaking there, nor strife, nor injury, nor deception, nor meanness; nothing crooked, no mal-formation of teeth, no crippled form, nor any other of the signs which are the signs of angromainyu. in this enclosure which yima made men lived the happiest life. a year was a day, and every forty years two children, a male and a female, were born from each pair of human creatures, and so also of each kind of animal."[ ] in an invocation in the avesta we are told that the bright gleaming majesty in the form of the bird varaghna had passed from yima when he began to love lying speech. yima fell terrified to earth, and mithra, the lord of wide pastures, seized the majesty. when it passed a second time from yima, thraetaona seized it, and when it passed a third time, kereçaçpa seized it. the second who crushed the juice of the haoma was athwya. hence there was born to him a son, thraetaona, in the land of varena. the evil spirit angromainyu had created a wicked being, "with three heads, three throats, six eyes, and a thousand strengths"--the azhi dahaka, _i.e._ the biting serpent, which swallowed horses and men, and threatened to desolate the world. but thraetaona sacrificed a hundred horses to ardviçura, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand head of small cattle, and called on the goddess, and with bound bundle of rods, on vayu on his golden throne, with golden footstool and golden canopy, to grant that he might smite the strong druj, which angromainyu had created as the strongest to bring death upon the pure world; and he overcame the monster, because verethraghna was with him, the most victorious of mortals.[ ] and thraetaona obtained the splendour of the dominion when it departed a second time from yima. in the prayers of the avesta, thraetaona, who has slain the great serpent, is invoked as helper against the "pain which is caused by the serpent," against fever and sickness.[ ] the third who crushed the juice of the haoma for the sacrifice was thrita, of the race of Çama. thrita was the first who by skill in medicine kept back sickness and death from the bodies of men. he wished for means to withstand the pains, the sickness, the death, the hot and cold fever which angromainyu had created for the bodies of men. "then i, auramazda, caused healing plants to grow by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands around the one gaokerena." and in reward for his offering of haoma two sons were born to thrita--urvakshaya, who put in order the law, and kereçaçpa (_i.e._ having slim horses), the youth of beautiful form, the bearer of the weapon gaeçu.[ ] kereçaçpa smote the poisonous green serpent Çruvara, on which flowed poison to the thickness of a thumb, and it swallowed men and horses. afterwards, after he had sacrificed to ardviçura on the shore of lake piçano (_i.e._, no doubt, in the valley of pishin in sejestan), he smote the giant gandarewa, who dwelt in lake vourukasha, and the descendants of the nine robbers, and Çnavidhaka, who had attempted to overcome auramazda and angromainyu. and when his brother urvakshaya had been slain by hitaçpa, kereçaçpa besought the wind, who works on high, to grant to him to slay hitaçpa in revenge for the death of his brother. and he conquered him, and yoked him to his chariot. when for the third time the majesty departed from yima, kereçaçpa seized it, the strongest of men after zarathrustra. in the prayers of the avesta, kereçaçpa's help is invoked against robbers and hostile hosts.[ ] yima, thraetaona, kereçaçpa, and the forms which are genealogically connected with them, vivanghana, athwya, Çama, thrita, and urvakshaya, are collected by the avesta under the name _paradhata_, i.e. those who first exercised dominion.[ ] indications in our fragments show that other names were also included in them. thraetaona's son was airyu, and airyu's son was manuschithra.[ ] these most ancient sovereigns were followed by a second group, whose distinguishing mark is the surname _kava_. the first of these kavas, whom the avesta mentions merely as the wearer of the divine majesty, is kava kavata.[ ] he is succeeded by the agile, brilliant kava uça, who sacrifices to ardviçura on mount erezifya in order to obtain the dominion over all lands, over daevas and men, wizards and pairikas, and this favour the goddess granted him. after uça the royal majesty united itself, to use the phrase in the avesta, with the beautiful pure body of kava Çyavarshana. he died by a violent death.[ ] his son was kava huçrava, "the brave uniter of the arian lands into one kingdom," as the avesta tells us, which then goes on to relate that he was without sickness or death. he had to contend against the destructive franghraçianas, the turanians (_tura_, _tuirya_). he besought ardviçura that it "might be granted to him to put an end to the long dimness, and bind the franghraçianas in their abundance and pride." this prayer the goddess granted. haoma himself desired "to bind the destructive, murderous franghraçiana and carry him away as a captive of the king huçrava, and that kava huçrava should slay him behind the lake chaechaçta, the deep lake with broad waters."[ ] kava huçrava was followed by king aurvataçpa, the son of naotara, the son of manuschithra, the son of airyu; and aurvataçpa was succeeded by his son the strong and warlike vistaçpa.[ ] of the twenty-nine sons of this king, the avesta mentions the strong Çpentodata, and informs us that frashaostra and his brother jamaçpa, of the race of hvova, were men of importance with the king. like huçrava, vistaçpa had to contend with a turanian, arejataçpa, _i.e._ the winner of horses, who sacrificed to ardviçura in order to obtain the victory over kava vistaçpa and the warrior on horseback, zarivairi (the brother of vistaçpa). the goddess heard him not, but heard vistaçpa when he sacrificed to her behind the water of frazdana, in order to overcome the hostile arejataçpa, born of darkness, skilled in evil, who sought to smite the lands of the arians.[ ] but zarathrustra, the son of pourushaçpa, of the race of haechataçpa, sacrificed to ardviçura that he might unite with the mighty vistaçpa, the son of aurvataçpa, and to drvaçpa, "that he might unite with hutaoça, and she might impress on his memory the good law."[ ] zarathrustra proclaimed a new law, the law of auramazda. the heroes and kings before him were known in the avesta by the name _paoiryotkaesha_, i.e. the men of the earliest custom, the earliest law. these are all the traits and pictures of the antiquity of east iran, of any importance, which can be gathered from the remaining fragments of the avesta. of the antiquity and genuineness of the narrative there is no doubt. the close relationship and coincidence which they exhibit with the form and views of the veda are proved on both sides. as we saw, the veda distinguishes the sacrificers and sages of the ancient time, the earlier time, and the present (iv. .) the god haoma is the well-known god soma of the arians in india, the variation in the name being due to the change of sounds which distinguishes the old bactrian from the language of the veda. here, as there, he is the sacrificial libation, and at the same time the god who pours the libation, and is its power. the great heroes yima, thraetaona, kereçaçpa and zarathrustra were born to their fathers as a reward for offering the libation of soma. king yima (yima kshaeta) in the avesta is no other than the yama (yama rajan) of the veda. yama is the son of vivasvat, the brilliant, the shining, the giver of light; and in the avesta yima is the son of vivanghana. in the veda he is the assembler of the people, the first king, the first mortal who shows to men the way which leads from the depths to the height of heaven; who first experiences death, but returns into heaven as the son of the god of light, where he gathers round him the brave and pious for new life in imperishable joy (iv. ). yima is also the assembler of men, the first king; he rules with the golden staff; he founds the religious worship, a merit which in the veda belongs to manu. under yima the earth is filled with red-glowing fires; he worships vayu and ardviçura. he is the representative of the golden age; in his reign there is neither heat nor cold, age nor death, hate nor strife; and his dominion continues a thousand years. it was the first happy period of the world, which men passed under the dominion of the son of the god of light. at what an elevation yima must have been placed in the oldest form of the mythus of east iran is clear from the fact that creative acts and the triple extension of the earth are ascribed to him. after the close of this golden period, winter comes upon the earth, heat and cold, strife, sickness, and death. the happy life of the golden age only continues within certain limits, in the enclosure of yima, where he carries on the blessed and immortal life with selected men, trees, animals, and food. here yima is to live till the end of all things, when his companions will again people the earth. as in this garden of yima the sun, moon, and stars shine together,[ ] it must be sought in the sky, or at any rate on the bright, divine mountain hukairya, where there is neither night nor gloom, and which is at the same time described as yima's place of sacrifice. if the indians have placed the old arian legend of a golden age on earth in the days of yima's reign, they have also, after their manner, depicted his heavenly kingdom with brighter colours, while among the iranians this part of the legend is combined with the heavenly garden into which yima receives the men he has selected as the best. nevertheless, a reminiscence of yima's garden has remained beyond the indus in the story of the uttara kurus, who dwell beyond the holy mountains to the north.[ ] the most striking variation from the common arian myth in the avesta is the statement that yima is subordinate to a deity, auramazda, of whom the arians of india knew nothing. the old legend is thus brought within the sphere of new views, which must have exercised still further influence upon it. it is auramazda who places in the hand of yima the control, superintendence, and protection of animals and men. it is not through yima's own desire, as was certainly the case in the old legend, but at auramazda's bidding, that the enclosure is made, and the selected men, animals, and trees brought into it. the main reason for this change was the necessity of giving an answer to the question, why did not the golden age continue? and if, long after yima, zarathrustra proclaimed a new and better law, why had not auramazda revealed this law to the favoured yima? in order to answer this riddle, the avesta represents auramazda as asking yima to become "the preacher and bearer of his doctrine," and yima refuses to accept this mission. hence yima becomes guilty of a fault, and a reason is given why the golden age, the thousand years of the reign of yima, came to an end. without the good doctrine, the invasion of evil spirits, and with them of heat and cold, sickness and death, strife and blight, could not be kept back from the earth. this trait of the guilt of yima, which is entirely unknown to the earlier legend, is carried out still further. according to the prayer in the avesta (p. ) blessing and immortality continued in the kingdom of yima, "till he began to love lying speech." when he had rejected auramazda's law he cannot himself resist the seduction of evil spirits. the first offence brings on the second, and this causes the triple loss of majesty, which at length ends in the fall and violent death of yima, an incident already indicated in the avesta.[ ] how this form of the legend allowed the garden of yima to be placed on the divine mountain, and whether the contradiction was removed or not, our fragments do not enable us to decide. in the veda it was indra who had to contend against vritra and ahi, _i.e._ the serpents, and the black spirits, which desired to drink up the water of the sky and veil its light. in iran, as we shall see, this office is transferred to other spirits, and also to thraetaona. the azhi dahaka of the avesta is the ahi of the veda. ahi and azhi are the same word, with the same meaning; the addition _dahaka_ refers to the destructive power of this demon. verethraghna, _i.e._ the slayer of vritra, stands in the avesta at the side of thraetaona in his struggle with azhi (p. ), and the morning wind supports him just as in the veda the winds assist indra against ahi and vritra. among the indians, traitana is a spirit of the air, who dwells in the remotest regions of the sky, who hews off the head of a giant from his shoulders, and in the veda, trita, the son of aptya, drinks the draught of soma, in order to win strength for the slaying of vritra; he slays the snake with three heads and seven tails; with his iron club he splits the hollows in the rock in which the demons have hidden the cows of the heaven (the rain clouds).[ ] in the veda, aptya is the father of trita; in the avesta, athwya is the father of thraetaona. of trita, whom it represents as sprung from Çama, the avesta declares that he was the first physician; in the veda we are told of trita he knew how to heal sickness as the gods had taken his sickness from him; that he bestowed long life.[ ] the two figures of trita and traitana gradually unite in the veda; in the avesta, thrita and thraetaona remain separate persons. the kereçaçpa of the avesta seems to correspond to the kriçaçva of the indians, whom we first find in the epos, where he is celebrated as a warlike rishi.[ ] if the paradhatas, yima, athwya, thraetaona, thrita, and kereçaçpa in the original conception are spirits of the sky, if the monsters with which thraetaona and kereçaçpa struggle are not to be sought on earth but in the heavens, if in these dragons we find once more the cloud-serpents, against which indra and his company have to contend--we do not at once set foot upon earth, when we come to the kavanians. according to the later tradition of iran, kava kavata was fetched from the divine mountain in order to reign over the country; two white falcons bring him a golden crown. the rigveda mentions kavya uçanas, _i.e._ uçanas, the son of kavi, who brings the cows of the sky, _i.e._ the clouds, to the pasture.[ ] in the avesta, kava uça sacrifices not only to rule over the whole earth but also over the spirits. according to a later tradition this sovereign--now called kai kaus--causes beautiful castles to be built on the divine mountain by the demons, and is then carried by four eagles into heaven. kava huçrava, for whom in the avesta the god haoma contends, is without sickness and death (p. ). in the later tradition, in which he is known as kai chosru, he begins a pilgrimage to heaven after conquering and slaying his opponent the turanian franghaçiana, like the sons of pandu in the mahabharata after their victory over the kurus and their happy reign. like them also, kai chosru climbs the mountains and disappears from his companions at a well. against his command they seek him in the mountains, and are all buried in a great snow-storm. from the name manuschithra (p. ), _i.e._ scion of manu, we may conclude that the twin brother of yama, "father manu," was not unknown to the arians of iran. but the genealogy in which the avesta has preserved these names has no greater claims to historical value than the figures which have passed in review before us. airyu is the son of thraetaona; _i.e._ from the mightiest hero, the slayer of the great dragon, are sprung the sovereigns and the nation of the airyas; the son of airyu is manuschithra; from whose son, naotara, are derived the two last kavas, aurvataçpa and vistaçpa. if the coincidence of the forms from yima to kava huçrava with the veda is a proof of the antiquity and genuineness of the tradition of the avesta, the gain for history becomes less instead of greater. no one would take mythical persons for historical. yet the style and form in which we find these traditional statements in the fragments of the avesta supply certain guides for the lost history of eastern iran. the splendour of the royal majesty is so often and so distinctly brought into prominence, that the conclusion forces itself upon us, that the regions in which the avesta arose, _i.e._ the north-east of iran, must have been acquainted with a powerful and highly-respected monarchy. the ancient spirits of the sky are changed in the avesta into mighty warriors and far-ruling kings, a circumstance in favour of the supposition that an empire once existed here, the image of which is reflected on prehistoric times. it is in epic poems that the spirits of the first sky become heroes, and epic poetry only arises in and follows on periods of war and conflict. the fact that the forms of the spirits thus changed into heroes by epic song are turned into the forefathers of the kings and progenitors of the nation, further establishes the conclusion that a military monarchy must have been in existence here; only warlike princes could appear as the heirs of heroes. moreover, the avesta extols the high banner of bakhdhi and speaks of the neighbouring regions as favoured; the later tradition of iran marks out bactria very clearly as the abode of aurvataçpa and vistaçpa; in the third century b.c. bactria supplied its princes with means not merely to achieve their own independence, but to maintain it against the great kingdom of the seleucids and to subjugate the land of the indus (p. ff.); and if, in addition to these facts, we bear in mind the conceptions found in the median poems of the great power of the kings of the bactrians, their treasures in gold and silver, their fortified city, the conquest of which was the greatest achievement of ninus--we may venture to assume that before the days of the medes, _i.e._ before the year b.c., there must have existed an important monarchy in the north-east of iran. with the assistance of the avesta we may go a step further. we saw that kava huçrava no less than vistaçpa is represented as fighting against the turas or tuiryas. who were these enemies? in old-bactrian the word means the enemy, the oppressor. strabo speaks of a region of turuia in the north of parthia, towards the steppes of the oxus.[ ] in the later tradition of iran the turanians are the constant and most dangerous enemies of the kings of bactria. the steppes of the oxus and jaxartes were inhabited by nations to whom the persians gave the collective name of sacæ, while the greeks called them scythians. they found but scanty pasture on the steppes, and it was natural that they should look with longing eyes on the more fertile regions of bactria and sogdiana. it has already been mentioned how careful cyrus was to protect these countries, when he had conquered them, against the nations of the steppes. at a later time, from the middle of the second century b.c. downwards (p. ), we have definite information of the pressure of these nations on parthia, margiana, and bactria. when freed from the attacks of the seleucids on the west, the arsacids had to defend the east of the kingdom. phraates ii. and artabanus ii. fell in battle against the nomads; mithridates ii. succeeded in protecting parthia, but about the year b.c. the sacæ were able to force a way through bactria. they possessed themselves of the best land in the east of iran, the valleys of the hilmend (p. ), bequeathed their name to the country (sikashtan, sejestan), and from the valley of the cabul extended their dominion beyond the indus. the white huns, or yuëchis, followed the sacæ; and they also reached the indus. is there any reason to doubt the avesta that even before the medes and cyrus the princes of bactria and sogdiana were occupied with beating back the tribes of the steppes? in ancient times, as strabo tells us, the bactrians and sogdiani were little removed from wandering shepherds. the avesta exhibits them in close connection with horses. the names compounded with _açpa_ (horse) are common; kereçaçpa, aurvataçpa, vistaçpa, haechataçpa, jamaçpa, pourushaçpa. of zariaçpa and the zariaçpians we have already spoken. the most important source of wealth must have consisted in horses, for which the mountains supplied ample pasture. the horse-sacrifice is the chief sacrifice of the avesta. one hundred horses were equal to oxen, and , head of small cattle. we found that bactria could furnish the last darius with , cavalry, and the horse was the symbol of bactria on the coins of the greek princes of the land (p. ). from all these indications we may assume that when the arians had settled in margiana, bactria, and sogdiana, and agriculture became of importance beside the breeding of cattle, the necessity of protection against the migratory tribes of the endless plains stretching to the north, created among the arians a warlike nobility who took upon themselves the duty of defence. the valley of the zarefshan (sogdiana), the terrace of bactria, the region of merv, became in the hands of the arians advanced posts of civilisation in the desert. if western iran was protected in the north by the alps of aderbeijan and the caspian sea against attacks from that quarter, eastern iran lay open to the nomads of the steppes, and had nothing but arms to defend its cultivated lands. we have already seen that bactria even in the sixth century had passed beyond the earliest stages of civilisation (p. ). but even a less degree of prosperity was sufficient to excite the sons of the desert to invasion. hence we may assume that the incursions and raids of the nomads of the steppes began with the increase of the flocks and the prosperity of agriculture in the valleys of merv, bactria, and sogdiana. the increasing severity of these attacks compelled the bactrian soldiery to collect their forces for more successful resistance, and to place the best warriors at the head of the community. thus it was not by spontaneous development, but rather by the opposition to the nations of the steppes, that the north-east of iran first outgrew the tribal life, and became transformed into a larger state. of this kingdom aurvataçpa and vistaçpa became the rulers; in the avesta they are distinguished from the paradhatas and from kava kavata, kava uça, and kava huçrava, by a new addition to the name and other peculiar traits, and form a third group. the progress of our investigation will show that the formation of this bactrian kingdom cannot be placed later than b.c.; the date of vistaçpa must be put about b.c., and it was the successors of vistaçpa who sent to shalmanesar ii. the tribute of camels with two humps, and yaks (about b.c.), who found themselves menaced once more by the advances of tiglath pilesar ii. to arachosia in the year b.c., and at length succumbed to cyrus. we shall find that this kingdom was not without its warlike races and priestly families, that zariaçpa and bactria were the centres of it, and that the sovereigns attained despotic power. yet the old warlike families must have preserved a certain importance under the monarchy, unless they regained it when lost under the viceroys of the achæmenids. it was the chieftains of the bactrians whom alexander summoned to zariaçpa, and who with the sogdiani at their side took the lead in resistance. the most powerful of them stubbornly defended their rocky citadels against the macedonians. footnotes: [ ] polyb. fragm. f.; below, p. . [ ] above, p. ; vol. iii. p. , "zikruti in rugged media i added to the land of assyria;" _ib._ p. . [ ] vol. iii. p. . [ ] herod. , , , , . [ ] strabo, p. ; arrian, "anab." , ; plin. "h. n." , ; ptolem. , . [ ] ctes. fragm. pers. c. . [ ] behist. , ; persep. ; naksh-i-rustem, - . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] vol. i. p. . the amount is about thalers. [ ] behist. , - ; , - . [ ] herod. , , ; , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] diod. , ; ctes. pers. ecl. . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] arrian, _loc. cit._ , . [ ] justin. , . [ ] as was shown in vol. iv. p. , the vishnu purana represents the sacrificial horse of pushpamitra, who sat on the throne of magadha between and b.c. (vol. iv. p. ), to have been carried off by an army of yavanas on the right bank of the indus, and then restored. the dominion of the græco-bactrian princes in the east existed from to b.c. [ ] strabo, p. . i need not prove that [greek: iômanês] must be read here for [greek: isamos], or that [greek: saraostou paralia] is surashtra; cf. wilson, "ariana antiq." p. . apollodotus, apaladata on the arian legends of his coins, is no doubt the bhagadatta of the mahabharata, just as the dattamitra there mentioned is demetrius; vol. iv. p. , _n_. among the indians menander appears in the form milinda. [ ] in the year there were about guebre families in yezd, and a hundred in kerman. westergaard, "avesta," , : the persecution of considerably reduced their numbers. [ ] haug, "pahlavi-pazand glossary," pp. , . [ ] "vendid." , - . [ ] "vendid." , . [ ] "vendid." , ; , . [ ] burnouf, "jour. asiat." , pp. , . it seems to me doubtful whether we should look for airyana vaeja on the sources of the oxus. the statement in the bundehesh that airyana vaeja was situated beside atropatene is, however, of very little weight against the fact that the arians of east iran are nearest to the arians of india. i shall return to this point below. the remark in stephanus, "[greek: ariania], a nation among the cadusians," would be of some importance if it were taken from apollodorus of artemita, and not from the grammarian of that name. the district of arran on the kur may possibly be meant. [ ] "vendid." , - . [ ] "vendid." , , . [ ] "vendid." , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "vendid." , - , after karl geldner's translation. [cf. darmesteter's translation in m. müller's 'sacred books of the east,' vol. iv.] [ ] "vendid." , - . [ ] "aban yasht," ; "farvardin yasht," ; "bahram yasht," ; "ram yasht," . [ ] "farvardin yasht," ff. [ ] "yaçna," , ; "vendid." , ff. [ ] "vendid." ; "yaçna," , , ; "ram yasht," , ; "farvardin yasht," ; "zamyad yasht," ff. according to the "mainyo-i-khard," kereçaçpa, besides slaying the serpent Çruvar, slew the wolf kapod, the water demon gandarsi, the bird kamak, and kept back much oppression from the world. west, "mainyo-i-khard," c. . [ ] justi, "handbuch," _s. voc._ [ ] "farvardin yasht," . [ ] "farvardin yasht," ; "zamyad yasht," . [ ] "gosh yasht," ; "ashi yasht," . [ ] "aban yasht," ; "gosh yasht," ; "ashi yasht," ; "afrin zartusht," ; "zamyad yasht," ; "ram yasht," . [ ] "aban yasht," , ; "ashi yasht," ; "farvardin yasht," ; "ram yasht," . [ ] "aban yasht," , ; "farvardin yasht," ; "gosh yasht," , ; "ashi yasht," , ; "zamyad yasht," . [ ] "aban yasht," - ; "farvardin yasht," ; "gosh yasht," ; "ram yasht," . [ ] "vendid." , , . [ ] vol. iv. _n._ spiegel, "avesta," , einl. s. . the favourite comparison of the enclosure of yima with the deluge of the hebrews appears to me anything but apposite. iran, and still more bactria, is unsuited to give rise to the legend of a flood. nor is there any question of the destruction of evil men (if there had been, yima would have been the most guilty and the least deserving of pardon), but of the end of the golden age, as is shown in the vendidad, the yaçna, and the yashts: the earth becomes more thickly peopled, men and animals do not grow old or die. if we must bring together things which have really no relation to each other, it would be more apposite to compare the paradise of the hebrews. the reason for the end of the golden age is the guilt of yima. [cf. kuenen, "religion of israel," , c. , e. t.] [ ] "zamyad yasht," . [ ] "rigveda," , ; , , . [ ] westergaard in weber's "ind. studien," , ff., ff. kuhn combines trita with triton and tritogeneia; hofer's "zeitschrift," , , . [ ] haug, "essays," pp. , . [ ] kuhn, "beiträge," , ; haug, "essays," pp. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [[greek: toriouan] is a _v. l._ for [greek: tapurian].] chapter iii. the scriptures of iran.[ ] the statements of the avesta concerning the ancient rulers of eastern iran were proved to be without historical value, yet we found in them an ancient and genuine tradition, the form of which allowed us to draw certain conclusions about the political condition of that region in a period for which we have no other records except the poetry of western iran. but what the avesta tells us of the rulers of ancient days is of secondary importance for the book, which comprises the doctrines and ordinances of the faith proclaimed by zarathrustra, and the rules of life which he is said to have laid down. may we assume that we possess these in a genuine and unaltered form in the avesta, though they have only come down to us in fragments? a book of the parsees of india, which tells the story of their flight from their ancient home, relates that iskander (alexander of macedon) burned the revealed scriptures, and the faithful were persecuted for years. when ardeshir (the first sassanid) ascended the throne, the true faith was restored, under the superintendence of arda viraf. after this the true religion was again suspended till king shapur (shapur ii.) rose and once more made the faith famous, and aderbat mahresfant girded his loins in the good cause. the same account is given in the book of arda viraf, also a book of the parsees of india. from this we learn that the religion received by the pious zarathrustra lasted for years in purity. then the evil one stirred up iskander rumi, so that he spread war and devastation over iran, and slew the rulers of the land. the avesta which was preserved at stakhar papakan (persepolis), written on cow-skins with golden ink, he burned, and put to death many priests and judges, pillars of the faith, and spread hatred, strife, and confusion among the people of iran. they had now no lord, guide, and high priest, who knew their religion; they were full of doubts and had different modes of belief and worship of various kinds, and different laws prevailed in the world till the time when ardeshir came to the throne and listened to the words of the holy arda viraf and believed him. but after ardeshir's death a schism broke out, and more than , souls fell away from the true faith, till the day when the holy aderbat mahresfant arose.[ ] an older writing of the parsees, the dinkart (composed under the sassanids), tells us, apparently on the ground of a proclamation of the sassanid chosru parvez ( - a.d.) that king vistaçpa of bactria had commanded that all books which were written in the language of the magians should be collected, in order that the faith of the worshippers of auramazda might have some support, and all men were to go to frashaostra (whom the avesta mentions as a companion of zarathrustra) to be instructed in the faith. and darai, the son of darai (darius hystaspis is meant), commanded that two copies of the entire avesta, precisely as zarathrustra had received it from auramazda, should be preserved, the one in the treasury at shapikan, and the other in the city of scriptures. then valkosh (vologeses), the descendant of ashkan (arsaces), gave orders that so much of the avesta as had escaped destruction and the ravages of iskander and the warriors of rum, and existed in fragments or in oral tradition, should be sought out and brought from every city. and king artakshatr (ardeshir) summoned the herbedh (_i.e._ the priest)[ ] tosar with the holy scriptures, which were scattered, to his residence, and when tosar came he gave command to the other priests that everything, which differed from that which was now considered to be knowledge and wisdom, should be suppressed. the son of artakshatr, shapuhar ( - a.d.), the king of kings, gave command that all writings on medicine or astronomy or other subjects in hindostan, rum, and other lands, should be collected, and again united with the avesta, and that an exact copy should be deposited in the treasury of shapikan. lastly atropat (aderbat) in the reign of shapuhar (shapur ii, - a.d.), the son of auharmazdi, purified the sayings of zarathrustra and enumerated the nosks (chapters) of the sacred scriptures.[ ] in the rivayats of the parsees in india, _i.e._ in the collections of the sayings of the priests on their doctrine, we find an enumeration of these sections of the scriptures. at each book this list notes how many chapters were re-discovered "after alexander." according to this enumeration the scriptures of iran consisted of twenty-one books.[ ] the first book contained the songs of praise to the supreme spirits in chapters; the second ( chapters) treated of good works; the third ( chapters) of the sacred word; the fourth ( chapters) of the gods; the fifth ( chapters) of the earth, of water, of trees, of wild animals; the sixth ( chapters) of the heavens and the stars; the seventh ( chapters) of pure and impure kinds of food, and of the celebration of the great festivals; the eighth ( chapters) of the kings and priests, of pure and impure animals; the ninth ( chapters) of the laws according to which the kings and judges were to give sentence; the tenth ( chapters) of virtue and wisdom; the eleventh ( chapters) of the reign and conversion of king vistaçpa; the twelfth taught agriculture in chapters, the planting of trees, the duty of the priests and laity, and treated of the orders; the thirteenth ( chapters) was occupied with the sacred sciences, the teachers and pupils, and the miracles which zarathrustra worked; the fourteenth book ( chapters) spoke of the life of men from birth to death; the fifteenth ( chapters) contained songs of praise; the sixteenth ( chapters) laid down rules for what was permitted and what was not; the seventeenth ( chapters) contained the doctrines of medicine and astronomy; the eighteenth ( chapters) the doctrine respecting animals and their treatment; the nineteenth ( chapters) contained the civil and criminal law; the twentieth ( chapters) the rubrics for the removal of impurity; the twenty-first gave in chapters the history of creation.[ ] according to this list the scriptures of iran must have been of very considerable extent. the arabian author masudi, who lived about the middle of the tenth century a.d., also puts the number of books at twenty-one. "zartusht," he says, "gave the parsees the book which is called the avesta. it consisted of twenty-one sections, of which each amounted to pages. this book was written in the character which zartusht invented and which the magians call the religious character, on , cow-hides, and these were kept together by bands of gold. it was composed in the old persian language, which no one now understands."[ ] from the list of the books and chapters it is clear that these writings comprised not only the religious doctrine and law, together with the rules for correct conversation, but also the rubrics for the liturgy and ritual. they were at the same time the code of criminal and civic law, and in them was deposited what was known of medicine and agriculture, and the sum total of the science of their authors. can we assume that writings of this importance, nature, and extent existed in iran before alexander of macedon overthrew the kingdom of the achæmenids? herodotus tells us that the magians or priests of the persians recited the theogony, _i.e._ long poems, at their sacrifices. the disciples of the sophist prodicus are said to have asserted that they were in possession of writings of zoroaster, who taught the persians their religion.[ ] hermippus of smyrna, who wrote in the second half of the third century b.c., and devoted especial attention to the religions of the east, stated that the magians maintained two principles, a good and an evil deity; the one they called zeus and oromasdes, the other hades and areimanius.[ ] zoroaster, who founded the doctrine of the magians, had composed twenty books, each of , lines, and hermippus gave the contents of the various books and quoted regulations from them. pliny tells us: "the doctrine of the magians prevails to this day among a great part of the nations, and in the east is supreme over the king of kings" (_i.e._ the arsacids); and vouches for hermippus that he had written with great care about the magians,[ ] from whose work no doubt he quotes some particulars of the doctrine of zoroaster. according to zoroaster's rule the sowing of the fields should take place when the moon is in the sign of taurus; and it was forbidden to expose the person before the sun or moon, or to defile a man's shadow. pliny also mentions the precious stones, of which zoroaster had extolled the brilliance; the herbs, used by the magians; and enumerates a number of remedies, which they applied. finally, he speaks of the nyktegertos, a herb growing in gedrosia, which the magians used when making vows.[ ] philo of byblus quotes a passage, apparently from "the sacred collection of zoroaster," on the nature of the deity, and assures us that the persian osthanes maintained the same in the octateuch.[ ] plutarch gives us a short but accurate account of the system of zoroaster; his contemporary dio chrysostom asserts that zoroaster and the sons of the magians had sung of the balance of zeus and the constellation of the day in strains more sublime than those of homer or hesiod;[ ] and pausanias relates that at the kindling of the sacrificial fire the invocation was sung by the magians from a book in a barbarous language wholly unintelligible to the greeks.[ ] this evidence from the west confirms the existence of sacred writings in iran after the time of alexander, and also indicates that they existed previously to that date; it contradicts the story of their destruction by the macedonians. the books must have been in existence when hermippus could speak of their extent, and quote rules from them; and writings of the kind must have been known when, in the days of pausanias, the magians could sing their invocations from a book. from other sources we are sufficiently informed that alexander's efforts were not directed towards destroying the national character and traditional religion of the persians. arrian tells us that magians no less than greek soothsayers took part in their festivals.[ ] nor were the seleucids more desirous than alexander to effect the destruction of the iranian nationality; just as the ptolemies never attempted to set aside the egyptian religion and life. even if they had cherished such views, they were far from being strong enough to carry them out, for the greek empire over iran lasted in its integrity only eighty years. the arsacids also, who recovered iran from the seleucids, were not averse to the greek nation. they called themselves friends of the hellenes, and not only was greek spoken, but even the tragedies of euripides were acted at their courts. the scanty remains of the monuments present us with echoes of greek;[ ] their coins, with few exceptions, bear greek legends like those of the bactrian princes whom they overcame. but though the influence of the hellenic character continued under the arsacids, and at the same time the aramæan language and manners obtained even greater recognition than hellenism during their dominion, the reign of the arsacids was a restoration and revivification of the iranian nationality. according to the evidence of western writers the magians together with the members of the royal race formed the council of the arsacids.[ ] pliny has already told us that these princes obeyed the rules of the magians, and we also find that they invoked mithra as the achæmenids had done, and "saluted the sun."[ ] like the achæmenids, too, they would not permit their armies to fight by night, and we are told that in their time the greatest weight was given to the love of truth and fidelity, _i.e._ to the virtues which, according to herodotus, the persians of his time considered the most important, and on which the avesta insists above all others.[ ] we also learn from western writers that the founder of the kingdom (arsaces i.) was a descendant of phriapites (friyapaiti), and with his brother tiridates and five others he slew the satrap of antiochus theos, and drove out the macedonians;[ ] just as darius with the six persian princes overthrew the dominion of gaumata; and the arabs relate that the arsacids trace back their stock to Çyavarshana, the son of kava uça, a story which cannot have been invented in arabia.[ ] in the list of the arsacids we also find the name chosru ( - a.d.), the kava huçrava of the old legend (p. ); on the coins we find a vologeses and a phraates before the fire-altar, the characteristic symbol of the ancient worship of iran. just as the old arian character appears beside the greek on the coins of the greek princes of bactria, the greek character on the coins of the arsacids gradually degenerates until at length it gives way to a new iranian character and language. the tradition sketched in the dinkart, as we have seen, represents the arsacid vologeses (which of the four princes of the name is meant is not clear)[ ] as collecting what fragments remained of the holy scriptures in the memory of the priests. the burning of the scriptures by alexander, as related in the books of the parsees on their exodus and the arda viraf, is merely a transference to him of the conduct of the moslems on their conquest of iran. of the continuance of the ancient religion of iran under the arsacids there can be no doubt, though it is true that along with it, in the greek cities which alexander and the seleucids founded, and which were independent within their walls even under the parthians, hellenic rites were practised. in these cities syrian modes of worship were also permitted, and the aramaic language and culture found entrance into iran.[ ] in the land of persia, among the persians whom mithridates i. subjugated to the dominion of the arsacids, reminiscences of the ancient time, of the splendour and glory of the achæmenids, were naturally more lively than in parthia, which was formerly subject to the persians, and now under the arasacids stood at the head of iran. in persia, artakshatr (ardeshir), the son of papaki, the grandson of sassan, rebelled against king artabanus iv. in three great battles the persians contended with the parthians; the latter were conquered, and artabanus fell, and with him the kingdom of the arsacids after a continuance of years ( a.d.). with the reign of ardeshir began a more energetic restoration of iran. he and his successors after him revered the memory of the achæmenids, and strove to continue their achievements[ ]. we again hear of seven houses, and seven princes who had the right to wear diadems beside the king, like the seven tribal princes of the old persian kingdom;[ ] we find the fire-altar before the tent of the sassanids as well as the achæmenids; and in the army of the sassanids, no less than in that of darius and xerxes, was a troop of "immortals." ardeshir, like the founder of the persian empire, caused a portrait of himself on horseback to be cut in a rock-wall to the north-west of persepolis (naksh-i-rustem) in remembrance of the achievements which established his kingdom--the rock on which years before darius had marked his tomb by a portrait and inscription. the inscription under this portrait (in the pehlevi of east and west iran, with a greek translation) runs thus: "portrait of the worshipper of mazda, the god artakshatr (artaxares in the greek), the king of kings of the arians (of the kings of airan, in the pehlevi texts), the scion of the sky (_minu chitri_), the son of the god papaki, the king."[ ] ardeshir's son, shapur i. ( - a.d.), caused his victory over valerian and his capture of the emperor to be recorded on the same rock; we see shapur on horseback, and valerian kneeling before him, a representation which recurs at the old persian city of darabgerd. at naksh-i-rejeb, between the rock-wall of naksh-i-rustem and mount nachmed, on which abutted persepolis, the proud citadel of the achæmenids, and in the grotto of haiyabad, we find in the one case a portrait of shapur, and in the other inscriptions which mention this ruler and king varahran. at kermanshah, on the western side of mount behistun, on the eastern side of which mountain darius inscribed the proudest memorial of his achievements, we see king ardeshir, and beneath him the corpse of artabanus; behind the king is mithra with the club which gave him victory, and before him auramazda who presents the ring of empire to ardeshir. not far from this portrait shapur ii. ( - a.d.) caused a grotto to be excavated in the rock. in the sculpture of this cave we see the goddess anahita, who presents to the king the ring of empire; at some distance are the hunting expeditions of the king; a second grotto close to this exhibits the pictures of king auharmazdi ii., the father of shapur ii., and of shapur iii. his second successor.[ ] though the sassanids sought to restore the kingdom of the achæmenids, and immortalise their own achievements beside those of the early kings, the religious revival which they undertook was far more thorough than the political. in this direction they went further than the achæmenids; they caused the forms which the old faith of iran had retained and forced on the east, to be current throughout the whole kingdom. agathias assures us that ardeshir was eagerly devoted to the study of the doctrine of the magians, who since his accession had gained an importance such as they never enjoyed before. the business of the state was decided upon their advice and predictions; they assisted individual persons in their private matters and suits at law, and the persians did not regard anything as legal and right which was not confirmed by a magian.[ ] at the head of the magians, we are told in another account coming from a western source, a grand magian was placed under the sassanids,[ ] and as a fact the magians now received a thorough organisation. at the head of their caste was the high magian (_magupat_, mobedh); and over all the high magians was the grand magian (_magupatan magupat_); to the magians belonged the judicial power; and the grand magian performed the coronation of the king. the sassanids erected fire-temples in persia no less than in aderbeijan; their coins always exhibit the fire-altar, and as a rule two priests before it. they carried their genealogy beyond sassan through Çpentodata (p. ) to vistaçpa of bactria, who is now said to have established the seven princes; they call themselves by the names of the ancient heroes who met us in the avesta; kavadh (kava kavata) and chosru (kava huçrava). while styling themselves the worshippers of mazda (auramazda) like the founders of their empire, they went so far as to assume the names of the gods of the avesta; some even called themselves after verethraghna (varahran, bahram), others auharmazdi after auramazda himself. the numerous christians on the euphrates and tigris as well as in armenia had to undergo severe persecutions; especially under shapur ii., varahran v., and yezdegerd ii. ( - a.d.), whose viceroy declared to the armenian christians that the daevas (dews) of ahriman had deceived them; it was not the good god who had created evil and death but the wicked spirit. defection from the faith of auramazda was punished with death. in the treaties of the years , , and a.d. theodosius ii. and justinian obtained the concession that the christians in the kingdom of the sassanids should not be compelled to conform to the rules of the magians; they were to be at liberty to bury their dead,[ ] whereas the doctrine of zarathrustra required that the corpses should be exposed. as such was the attitude of the house of the sassanids, we may believe the books of the parsees that ardeshir eagerly took in hand the revival of the true faith, and that he was assisted in this by competent magians; by arda viraf, according to the book of the exodus and of arda viraf (p. ); according to the dinkart, by the herbedh tosar. the book of arda viraf relates at length how he fell asleep in the assembly of priests before ardeshir, and his soul was carried by the god Çraosha through heaven and hell. and when the dinkart represents a standard of true religion as being set up under ardeshir, there is no reason to doubt the statement. after the reign of ardeshir, we are told in the book of the exodus, the true religion was again suspended, or, as the book of arda viraf tells us, a schism arose. the cause of this division is sufficiently known from other sources. in the reign of shapur i. ( - a.d.) a native of ctesiphon, of the name of mani, came forward with a new doctrine which attempted to mingle chaldæan, jewish, and christian elements in the faith of iran, and to resolve it into abstractions. he found numerous adherents.[ ] varahran ii. ( - a.d.) allowed him to dispute with the magians, and then put him to death. under shapur ii., who succeeded his father auharmazdi ii. as a posthumous child ( - a.d.), in order to check manicheism and the advance of christianity, it was necessary to go back to the principles of the old faith, and to invigorate these by the collection and establishment of the sacred scriptures. we may therefore have the fullest confidence in accepting from these three books of the parsees the facts that shapur "made the sacred faith to be famous;" that aderbat, whose work under shapur is confirmed by hamza of isfahan, collected the scriptures, purified the sayings of zarathrustra, and enumerated the chapters. it is on this redaction of the canon by aderbat mahresfant under shapur ii. that the list of the books and chapters rests, distinguishing what were originally in existence and what were then preserved. what was not discovered "after alexander" means what was not discovered or not accepted at this redaction. instead of the chapters which the avesta is said to have previously contained, the new canon amounted to only chapters. that aderbat was the founder of this canon is clear not only from the epithet which the books of the parsees give him (mahresfant, old bactrian manthraçpenta, meaning "the sacred word,") but also from the confession of faith still in use among the parsees: "i abide in the law which zarathrustra taught to vistaçpa, to frashaostra, to jamaçpa, and Çpentodata, which came in the succession of generations to aderbat, who duly corrected and purified it."[ ] it was shown above that the language of the sacred books thus again collected was that of eastern iran (p. ). when aderbat revised the canon it had long ceased to be spoken. but there were already translations of the sacred books into the later forms which the language of iran had received in the time of the parthians, or at any rate such translations were made after the revision of the canon.[ ] masudi informed us that the avesta was composed in the old persian language, which at that time (tenth century a.d.) was no longer understood. ibn haukal, who travelled in persia in the same century, tells us: "in fars three languages are in use; the farsi, in which the inhabitants converse with each other; the pehlevi, which was the language of the ancient persians, and in which the magians wrote their historical books, but which in our time is no longer understood by the inhabitants of fars without a translation; and the arabian.[ ]" when aderbat revised the avesta in the middle of the fourth century b.c., the parsi (farsi), _i.e._ the later middle persian, was still in formation; the older middle persian or pehlevi was still intelligible, but translations of the avesta into this language did not make clear to every one the meaning of the ancient language in which the scriptures were composed. in the time of the parthian empire the old mode of writing was given up in the west as well as in the east of iran, and exchanged for new methods. in the west a cuneiform character derived from the writing of babylon and assyria had been adopted; the east used the arian alphabet. under the arsacids the pehlevi became common. like the old persian cuneiform this is borrowed from a semitic pattern. the chief city of the parthians lay on the tigris in the midst of a semitic population. the cursive character of the aramæans, as we find it on the coins of the satraps of the achæmenids of the fourth century b.c., with a few modifications, forms the base of the pehlevi; and the earlier shapes of this character are seen in the coins of the arsacids of the first century a.d. but it is not the character which forms the peculiar mark of pehlevi. along with the aramaic letters the parthians took the aramaic vocabulary; they wrote the aramaic word instead of the persian, and to this they attached the termination or case-ending of the corresponding persian word; the reader must understand aramaic and substitute the persian word for the aramaic when reading.[ ] hence pehlevi was in reality a secret mode of writing, intended exclusively for the learned, _i.e._ for the priests. it is a proof of the close connection between the priests of the east and west that this character, which arose in the west out of the contact with the aramaic population on the euphrates and tigris, spread to the east also and was adopted by the scholars there. nor was this all. the variations in the eastern dialect brought about certain modifications in the forms of the letters, and thus there arose an eastern alphabet of pehlevi beside the western alphabet. when ardeshir destroyed the empire of the parthians in the year a.d. these two alphabets were in existence. the eastern alphabet finally triumphed over the western. it became the royal mode of writing, and as such was used on the coins. the letters in the manuscripts of the pehlevi translation of the avesta in the possession of the parsees agree throughout with the characters on the legends of the coins of the sassanids about the year a.d.[ ] the characters also, in which the text of the avesta is written in the manuscripts of the parsees, belong to the later east-pehlevi alphabet, which, owing to the greater wealth of the old bactrian alphabet in sounds, especially in vowels, possesses a greater number of letters.[ ] the coincidence of the letters in the manuscripts of the parsees with those on the coins of the later sassanids, proves beyond contradiction that although the oldest existing manuscripts belong to the fourteenth century of our era,[ ] they are nevertheless true copies of the characters in which the avesta was written in the last century of the empire of the sassanids. all that the parsees of india now possess are some not very extensive remains of the revision of the sacred scriptures made in the reign of shapur ii. the existing part of the laws corresponds in the title, the divisions and their arrangements, with the twentieth book of the text (p. ). it contains the rubrics for purification, for repelling and removing the evil spirits. the title is the vendîdad, or, in the older form, the vidaevodata, _i.e._ "given against the daevas," or evil spirits. obviously this book was regarded as the most important and valuable part of the law, and to this circumstance it owes its preservation. besides this we have invocations and prayers, chiefly belonging to the liturgy. they form a considerable collection, known by the title of yaçna, _i.e._ worship. the remainder of the chapters was lost in the invasion of the arabs into iran, owing to their fanatical zeal for conversion.[ ] though we were able to establish the fact that these fragments belonged in their language, their contents, and their written character to eastern iran, and the evidence of western writers proved to us that at the time when alexander of macedon overthrew the kingdom of the achæmenids, there were sacred scriptures of considerable extent in iran--this does not enable us to decide the date of the origin of these scriptures. we have to inquire whether these writings were known in the west of iran also, before the date of the sassanids; whether the new collection and revision about the year of our era was satisfied with faithfully representing the old condition of the scriptures, so far as it could be discovered, or whether it altered their contents; whether the influence exercised by hellenic and aramaic elements in the time of the seleucids and parthians--so obvious in the one case and so searching in the other--affected the contents of the avesta.[ ] this question cannot be set aside, because even under the sassanids, in spite of their zeal for the avesta and for iran, these elements were not unknown. we are aware that greek and jewish schools flourished in syria and mesopotamia at the date of the sassanids, that chosru nushirvan ( - a.d.) gave his protection to damascius and the platonists in his kingdom, and caused greek works to be translated. however much other virtues, required in the avesta, were extolled in this ruler, such as the foundation of fire-temples, and appointment of sacristans for them, the promotion of agriculture (no temple was to be without cultivated lands) and of marriages--nevertheless sects sprung up within the true religion. even in official documents of the fifth century we find a certain deviation from the doctrine of the avesta; under king kavadh ( - a.d.), mazdak, who proclaimed the community of goods and women, found adherents, and the arabs speak of sects in iran which opposed the teaching of the magians.[ ] they mention the zarvanites, the gayomarthians, and others, of whom the zarvanites sought to derive the good and evil deity from some higher abstraction,[ ] while the gayomarthians represented the evil deity as proceeding from the thought of the good deity. had conceptions of this kind, and other later views which we find in their doctrines, influence on the restoration of the canon? the fact that the sacred writings were composed in a language no longer current, when the canon was restored, is not a complete safeguard against changes and interpolations, for the priests at that time may have understood the language, and therefore may possibly have been able to compose in it. footnotes: [ ] [cf. darmesteter, "zend-avesta," introduction, c. iii.] [ ] haug, "the book of arda viraf," p. ff. [ ] herbedh is the old bactrian _athrapaiti_. [ ] haug, "pahlavi-pazand glossary," p. , . [ ] it is found in the so-called "great rivayat." [ ] vullers, "fragmente über die religion zoroasters," s. - ; haug, "essays," p. . [ ] quatremère, "journ. des savants," , p. . [ ] clemens alex. "strom." p. . [ ] diogen. laert. prooem. the corrupt passage in athenæus (p. ) is not a sufficient reason for refusing to accept hermippus of smyrna as the author of the treatise on the magians. pliny could not quote the berytian hermippus. [ ] plin. "h. n." , . [ ] "h. n." , , , ; , ; , ; , , ; , ; , . [ ] philon. bybl. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] dio chrysost, ed. dind. , . [ ] pausan. , , . [ ] "anab." , , . [ ] _e.g._ the bas-relief on mount behistun in the winged victory, which refers to the battle between vardanes and gotarzes, between and a.d. [cf. rawlinson, "sixth monarchy," p. , where a sketch of the relief is given.] [ ] poseidonius in strabo, p. ; justin, , . [ ] herodian, , . [ ] plut. "crassus," c. ; "anton." c. ; joseph. "antiq." , , ; justin ( , ), and horace ("ep." , , ), are of another opinion in regard to the latter point. [ ] above, p. . arrian, "parth." , ed. müller; eunap. p. . [ ] al biruni in droyson, "hellenismus," ^ , . [ ] vologeses i. reigned - a.d.; vologeses ii. - a.d.; vologeses iii. and iv. - a.d.; the son of the fourth, also vologeses, reigned beside artabanus iv. [ ] joseph. "ant." , , ; "bell. jud." prooem. , ; ammian. marcell. , . [ ] ammian. marcell. , . [ ] nöldeke, "tabari." s. . [ ] de sacy, "memoires de l'institut cl. hist." , - . [rawlinson, "seventh monarchy," p. , .] [ ] rawlinson, _loc. cit._ p. , , ff. [ ] agathias, , . [ ] sozomen, "h. eccl." , , . [ ] menandri protect. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] [cf. rawlinson, "seventh monarchy," p. ff.] [ ] spiegel, avesta, , , , , . [ ] above, p. . on the date of these translations, haug, "pahlavi-pazand glossary," p. . [ ] quatreinère, "journal des savants," , p. . [ ] haug, "pahlavi-pazand glossary," p. ff.; ff. west, "pahlavi texts," part . introd. § . [ ] lepsius, "zendalphabet, abh. b. akad." , s. ; lenormant, "sur l'alphabet pehlevi journ. asiat. ^{er}." , , ff.; levy, "beiträge z. d. m. g.", , ff. from ardeshir down to narses, _i.e._ from to a.d., the writing on the coins agrees with the west pehlevi of the monuments of the sassanids. from to a.d. the character on the coins is different. from the writing on the coins agrees with the mss. of the parsees; mordtmann, "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] lepsius, _loc. cit._ s. . [ ] westergaard, "avesta," , ff. [ ] that the author or authors of the bundehesh,--for the work consists of a collection of fragments of various character,--had before them larger remains of the avesta, or a commentary which included more than our fragments, may be conceded. the composition of the work cannot be placed before the time of the arabs, for the whole period of the sassanid empire is given, and even on an extended scale (p. ), mention is made of the empire of the arabs, and arabian words occur. cf. justi, "bundehesh," p. ix. ff; cf. below, p. . [west, "pahlavi texts," , introd. p. xci. ff]. [ ] on the aramean sketch of the dialectic of aristotle which was written for ohoeru, cf. renan, "journ. asiat." , p. . [ ] [cf. rawlinson, _loc. cit._ ff.; ff.] [ ] "sharastani," by haarbrücker, , . the son of mihr narses is called zarvandadh. chapter iv. zarathrustra and the date of the composition of the avesta.[ ] the examination of the difficult questions, whether, from what period, and to what extent, the avesta was known in western iran before the time of alexander, when the book came into existence, whether its contents have come down uninjured from an ancient period, or whether it underwent alterations in the time of the parthians and the sassanids, will be best opened by collecting and testing the accounts which have been preserved in the west about zarathrustra and his work. herodotus does not mention him, but xanthus the lydian is said to have spoken of him, before the date of herodotus. plato describes zoroaster as the founder of the doctrine of the magians, and calls him a son of oromazes.[ ] with hermodorus, a pupil of plato, zoroaster is a persian, the first magian.[ ] deinon concludes from the name that he was a worshipper of the stars. hermippus of smyrna speaks of him as a bactrian, and is said to have described him as a pupil of azonakes (or agonakes).[ ] diodorus informs us that zoroaster gave out among the arians that the good spirit had revealed to him the laws which he published.[ ] trogus pompeius relates that ninus finally carried on war with zoroaster the king of the bactrians, who discovered the art of the magians, and inquired accurately into the primal forces of the world, and the movements of the stars; he was slain by ninus.[ ] pliny observes that zoroaster, the founder of the doctrine of the magians, smiled on the day of his birth, and beat his head vigorously as a symbol of his wisdom; for thirty years he lived in the desert on cheese. plutarch's account is that zoroaster took no other food or drink all his life but milk, and like lycurgus and numa, he associated with the divine being.[ ] dio chrysostom tells us that zoroaster from his love for wisdom and justice lived remote from men in solitude on a mountain, which had been kindled by fire from above, and burned continuously, and when the king approached the mountain with his leading men to offer prayer to the god, zoroaster came unharmed out of the fire, and bade them offer sacrifice for the god had visited the place. after this zoroaster did not associate with all men, but only with those who were most adapted to receive the truth and converse with the god, whom the persians called magians, _i.e._ those who have skill to serve the divine being.[ ] kephalion asserted that zoroaster the magian, the king of the bactrians, fought with semiramis and was vanquished by her.[ ] theon of alexandria also speaks of the conflict between semiramis and the bactrian zoroaster. arnobius is aware of the battle of ninus with zoroaster and the bactrians,[ ] and in eusebius zoroaster, the magian, the king of the bactrians, fights against ninus.[ ] according to the treatise of eubulus of athens on mithras, porphyrius related that zoroaster had consecrated a natural cave, in which were flowers and springs, in the neighbouring mountains of persia, in honour of mithra, the creator and father of all, and since that time the favour of the god had been sought in a cave.[ ] ammianus marcellinus calls zoroaster a bactrian, and tells us that hystaspes, the father of darius, spread abroad the doctrine of the magians.[ ] agathias remarks that the persians of his time asserted that zoroaster, or zaradus, as they called him, who gave them their religious doctrine and law, the son of oromasdes, lived at the time of hystaspes; but they made the assertion in such a manner that no man knew whether this hystaspes was the father of darius or some other of the name. but whatever the date of his life, he changed the earlier forms of worship, and was the discoverer of the doctrine of the magians.[ ] suidas distinguishes between the perso-mede zoroaster, the chief of the magians, and the astronomer of the same name, an assyrian, who lived at the time of ninus.[ ] in syncellus, zoroaster is the first of the eight median kings, who, according to the statement of berosus, reigned over babylonia from to b.c.[ ] these statements do not amount to much. yet we find the tradition maintained from the pupils of plato down to agathias, that zoroaster founded the doctrine of the magians; diodorus, plutarch, and dio mention the intercourse of zoroaster with the good spirit or the deity. diodorus calls him an arian, _i.e._ an inhabitant of eastern iran. hermippus, trogus pompeius, kephalion, theon, arnobius, and eusebius speak of him as a bactrian, and the king of the bactrians, and represent him as fighting with ninus or semiramis, which is also asserted by moses of khorene.[ ] hence in the last two centuries b.c. it must have been known in the west that zoroaster belonged to the east of iran, and thus he was brought into connection with the most prominent fact known in the history of bactria, the contest of the bactrians against ninus and semiramis. this story, as we said, comes from the medo-persian epos, and moreover the epos did not authorise this connection of ninus and zoroaster. the opponent of ninus, who reigned over bactria, was, according to diodorus, oxyartes or exaortes (p. ). the fact that zoroaster was the most important name in the antiquity of iran among western nations obviously induced syncellus to put him at the head of the supposed ancient median dynasty. if zoroaster, as pliny and plutarch think, lived only on milk and cheese, and passed thirty years in the wilderness, these are merely traits taken from the lives of the brahman ascetics. the story in dio chrysostom, that zoroaster came unharmed from the fire, and the opposite statements of the chronicle of alexandria and of suidas, that he brought down fire from heaven and was consumed by it, or struck by lightning, contain traits which have obviously sprung from the importance which the doctrine of zoroaster and the magians ascribe to the worship of fire, and from the division between the fire of lightning and earthly fire, of which we shall speak below. the narrative of eubulus is founded on the mysteries of mithra, which came into the west in the first century b.c.[ ] these mysteries are due to the confusion of the mithra of the iranians with the sun-god of the syrians; the mystæ were consecrated in caves, or in places called caves, and there underwent their probation. as the god of light and the soul mithra slays in the cave, that is in the world of gloom and matter, the bull which is the symbol of matter, as opposed to light, in its creative power, and conveys the soul, the side of man akin to light, out of the gloom of matter through the heaven of the fixed stars, and then through the heaven of the planets, to the light.[ ] ammianus marcellinus and agathias have better information about zoroaster. they are aware that he stands in some relation to hystaspes. ammianus, though he expressly describes zoroaster as a bactrian, puts hystaspes the well-known father of darius, as the supporter of the doctrine of the magians, in the place of the vistaçpa of the avesta, who opens a wide path for the teaching of zoroaster; agathias, on the other hand, expresses himself with greater circumspectness; he cannot decide whether the father of darius or some other hystaspes is meant. the result is this: before the time of alexander of macedon, at the latest in the first half of the fourth century b.c., the greeks were aware that zoroaster had founded the doctrine of the magians; in the last centuries b.c. and onwards it was known that he belonged to bactria and eastern iran; but it was not till the fourth century a.d. that he was known to have lived under king hystaspes; at any rate we have no older evidence on this point. much more recent in date, and of far less value, is the information derived from the east, with the exception of the avesta, on zarathrustra. it does not go back beyond the period of the arabian empire over iran. the bundehesh, written in this period (p. , _n._ ), contains a genealogy, which carries zarathrustra's origin beyond pourushaçpa and haechataçpa, from whom, according to the avesta, he was sprung (p. ), through twelve generations to manuschithra (minocher). in the avesta, the soul of the pure manuschithra, the son of airyu, is invoked;[ ] it has been observed above that the national genealogy in iran placed thraetaona, and not manu, at the head; airyu, the son of thraetaona, was the proper progenitor of the airyas. with the name manuschithra, _i.e._ scion of manu, who is now the son of airyu, this table passed back into the old arian conception of the father manu (p. ). in the avesta, zarathrustra is connected by his father, the fourth sacrificer of the haoma, with the old sacrificers; and by deriving his family from manuschithra the bundehesh places him in the closest relation to the progenitors of the airyas. for the rest this book has little to say about the life of zoroaster. it informs us that the house of pourushaçpa lay on a hill on the river daraja, a river which we cannot identify;[ ] the bundehesh places it in airyana vaeja (airanvij), in a district which we must place in the high region of the hindu kush, on the sources of the oxus (p. , _n_. ), though the bundehesh informs us that "it lay by the side of atropatene." according to another passage in the book, airyana vaeja lay near the garden of yima and cashmere. in a third passage the garden of yima, which we are compelled by unmistakable indications in the avesta, to seek on the divine mountain, lies in the centre of iran, under mount damkan.[ ] atropatene, as a name for the alpine land in the north-west of iran (now aderbeijan), came into use in the time of the greek empire; at any rate we cannot trace it earlier.[ ] _athrapaiti_ means "lord of fire"; _athrapata_, "one protected by fire"; in the remote mountains of this district the old fire-worship was preserved with peculiar zeal under the seleucids; from the time of ardeshir the sassanids venerated the fire-temple adar guçasp (near takht-i-soliman), which lay in this region, above all others, and this was the reason why in the time of the arabs it was thought that airyana vaeja must be sought there.[ ] in any case it is impossible, out of regard to the bundehesh and even later statements of the moslem period, to place zarathrustra in the north-west of iran in order to represent him as a foreigner, reforming the religion of the north-east, when the avesta, which distinctly places him in the east and puts him among the sacrificers and heroes of the east and rulers of bactria, together with the older and more important evidence of the west, is on the opposite side. the "book of zartusht," one of the most recent books of the parsees (it dates from the thirteenth century of our era), can only tell us of the marvellous preservation of zarathrustra and the miracles which he wrought. the first miracle recorded in it is the fact that zoroaster smiled at his birth. but the wicked king duransarun sought to murder the newly-born child in his cradle. his arm is paralysed, and he cannot strike the blow home. then the evil spirits steal the child, kindle a great fire in the desert, and throw him into it. but he sleeps peacefully in the fire, and his mother recovers him without injury. a herd of cattle are about to trample him on a narrow path, when the largest one stands over and protects him, till the herd have passed by. in a similar manner he is preserved when a pair of wild horses are driven over him. even the wolves will not eat him. when he has reached his thirtieth year these trials are over, and zarathrustra emigrates with his followers. on reaching iran the good spirit vohu mano appeared and conducted him to auramazda. he had to pass over a fiery mountain, but the fire did not singe a hair; molten metal was poured on his breast, and he felt it not; his entrails were removed and then replaced without injury to him. auramazda gave him the avesta and commanded him to go to king vistaçpa (now kai gushtaçp) to balkh, and proclaim it to him. in balkh zoroaster overcame the sages of the king in argument, but they maligned him before their master as a wizard, and he was put in prison. then the feet of the king's horse were drawn up into its belly, and the king bade zarathrustra heal his horse. he required the king to believe in him and his doctrine; and when the king had acknowledged the new faith, one of the horse's feet was restored to it. zarathrustra further demanded that vistaçpa's son Çpentodata (isfendyar) should consecrate himself to the defence of the new faith, that the king's consort should adopt the law, and those who maligned him should be punished. when these three requests had been complied with, the horse recovered all its four feet. after this vistaçpa did nothing without the advice of zarathrustra, and built fire-altars and fire-temples. and zarathrustra showed the king the place he would one day occupy in heaven, and made Çpentodata invulnerable.[ ] hence from the bundehesh we obtain no more than the genealogical tree of zarathrustra, which though characteristic for the place allotted to him, is without historical value; and from the zartusht nameh, sharastani, and mirkhond, which repeat some miracles more or less similar to those quoted, we gather nothing beyond certain traits: the smiling at birth, the fiery mountain, the preservation of zarathrustra in the fire, which pliny and dio chrysostom had already made known to us, and which belong to the ancient tradition of iran. in the miracles which take place by means of oxen and horses, we can merely recognise the ancient and close relation of the arians in iran to these animals, a relation which has already been remarked (p. ). we might perhaps add that firdusi represents zarathrustra, whom he puts beside vistaçpa, as having been killed at a fire in balkh when the city was captured by turanians. the intercourse of zarathrustra with auramazda was known to western writers, as we saw, at a far earlier date. if we can hardly glean anything worth notice from these accounts about zarathrustra's life and work, we may perhaps gain some information about his date. the evidence of ammianus marcellinus and agathias, when they represent him as a contemporary of hystaspes, in whom we recognise vistaçpa of bactria, carries us no further than the avesta, which places him in the closest relation to this prince (p. ), because his date is equally uncertain. trogus pompeius, kephalion, theon, and eusebius make zarathrustra an opponent and therefore a contemporary of ninus and semiramis. but as neither semiramis nor ninus ruled over asshur, and they are to be regarded as the personification of the rise of the power and dominion of that country (ii. ), we must substitute for this king and queen the ruler or rulers of asshur of whom it is certain that their campaigns reached the east of iran. we found that so far as we can at present judge from the monuments it was only shalmanesar ii. who received tribute from the eastern lands, and that the armies of tiglath pilesar ii. trod the soil of arachosia (p. ). if we could assume that the contests of ninus and semiramis have taken the place of the achievements of these rulers in the east of iran, the date of vistaçpa and zarathrustra would have to be placed between and b.c. but this supposition is really without any basis. the more ancient statements of the greeks carry us much further back than the reasoning of trogus pompeius and his successors. if we set pliny aside, who asserts "that the kind of magism established by zoroaster was many years older than that taught by moses," hermippus of smyrna puts zoroaster years before the trojan war. even before hermippus, theopompus of chios, and hermodorus, the pupil of plato, had ascribed the same date to him. eudoxus of cnidus, the contemporary of plato, placed him still higher; he thought that zoroaster lived years before the death of plato. according to pliny, aristotle ascribed to him the same antiquity, and, as we learn from diogenes laertius, maintained that the magians were older than the egyptians. and even in the fifth century b.c., xanthus the lydian is said to have written that from the time when zoroaster lived to the march of xerxes against hellas a period of years had elapsed.[ ] through these statements there runs, beyond all doubt, a system, the knowledge of which began in the fifth century b.c. among the greeks and continued beyond the time of alexander. whether we take years before the trojan war, or years before plato's death, we are equally brought back into the seventh millennium b.c. if the later statements of the west, which make zoroaster a contemporary of ninus and semiramis, are the results of combining the most prominent name in bactria with the conquest of bactria by the founder of the assyrian power, as related in the medo-persian epos, the fixing of zoroaster's date so many thousand years previously must have been taken by the greeks from the persians. in these dates we seem to be dealing with certain cyclic periods. we learn from theopompus of chios, that according to the doctrine of the magians, one of the two gods oromazdes and areimanius would reign and the other be subject for years; for another years they would be in conflict, and one destroy the works of the other, until at length areimanius would succumb and men become happy.[ ] from this we may with certainty conclude that periods of years were in use among the priests of iran to denote certain spaces of time, and that these cycles form the base of the statements of the older greeks, if we can prove the use of such periods in the avesta or in the books of the parsees. in the fragments of the avesta which have come down to us we find invocations addressed to the "time without beginning," "the time that rules the long periods."[ ] but the fact that yima's reign is fixed at years shows that the priests of iran reckoned by long periods, and other expressions in the avesta (p. ) prove that triple multiplications were in use,[ ] which agrees with the periods given by theopompus. if, therefore, the greeks of the fifth and fourth century b.c. relate that zarathrustra lived about years before their time, a system must by that time have been current among the priests of iran in which two cycles of years were supposed to have elapsed since the time of the prophet, and the third cycle had commenced. a book of the parsees, the mainyo-i-khard, which appears to have been written towards the close of the empire of the sassanids,[ ] tells us that angromainyu made a compact with auramazda for winters, and when these winters were past, angromainyu would be destroyed, and the creation and all creatures would be as auramazda had made them.[ ] the bundehesh also speaks of a similar compact, but divides the years in a different manner. all time consists of , years. in the first auramazda reigned alone with the creatures which he had created in an invisible manner; for the first of the next everything went according to the will of auramazda; for the second the will of auramazda was crossed by that of angromainyu, but for the last angromainyu will be powerless. the bundehesh goes into yet further detail in these matters: in the first years the heavenly creation was secure from attack; in the next gayo maretan and the ox, _i.e._ the first man and the first bull, came into existence. after these years the enemy arose and slew the first man and the first bull. the reign of yima is placed by the bundehesh in the first millennium of the new period, but this reign extends only to years, the first years of the thousand being filled with creatures prior to yima. the second millennium of the period is occupied with the reign of thraetaona, manuschithra, kava kavata, uça, huçrava, and aurvataçpa, and the early part of the reign of kava vistaçpa, whose thirtieth year coincides with the end of the second millennium.[ ] at the beginning of the third millennium, _i.e._ a thousand years after the death of yima, zarathrustra appears; and the period of more successful opposition to the evil spirits begins. according to the more ancient conception, which may still be plainly traced in the avesta, the world began with the happy age of yima; it is owing to later views formed within priestly circles that earlier creatures such as the first man and first bull are placed before this period; but it will be shown below that these views existed when the avesta was written down. a later book of the parsees, the sad-der-bundehesh, puts the period of the conflict between the good and evil deity at years, and places zarathrustra exactly in the middle of it; he was created years after the period of gayo maretan, and years before his own resurrection.[ ] hence it is clear that the formation of these cycles rose among the priests of iran from the necessity of limiting the period of the old and new law, and of conflict between the good and evil spirits, and the desire to fix the date of the more successful repulse of evil which came in with zarathrustra. the abbreviation of the period of yima shows us that the cycles in the bundehesh do not throughout agree with those of the avesta. but it is sufficient to establish the fact that periods of years were in use, and that zarathrustra appeared at the beginning of a new millennium, in order to understand that the persians could speak to the greeks of millenniums in this sense, and of one or two cycles which had elapsed since zarathrustra's time. the idea and tendency of such a scheme for the history of the world are easily understood: these periods of years, which can be increased or diminished without alteration of the sense, have only a dogmatic value. we cannot obtain from them any chronological date for the appearance of zarathrustra, nor can we obtain such a date by the attempt to go back from the chronological statements in recent parsee works to the older periods. we may leave unnoticed the assertion in the book of arda viraf that the true faith had existed in purity for years down to the time that alexander came into iran (p. ), which would thus bring zarathrustra into the seventh century b.c. the bundehesh allows years for the reigns of the sassanids, for the askanids, _i.e._ the arsacids, for alexander, before whom come darai the son of darai with years, darai chirazatan with , huma (a queen) with , vohumano with , and vistaçpa with ,--all subsequent to the appearance of zarathrustra.[ ] according to this, years elapsed between zarathrustra and the fall of the sassanids, and he would thus, if we reckon from the battle of nahavend ( a.d.), be placed in the year b.c., in the reign of artaxerxes ochus. but even if we alter the incorrect items in the text of the bundehesh in accordance with our better knowledge, we do not arrive at any result which is even apparently certain. the dominion of the sassanids, down to the date of the battle, did not last but only years; on the other hand, the arsacids reigned for years, not for .[ ] the empire of alexander, if we add the reigns of the seleucidæ to his own, occupied years instead of , and if in the place of the years of the two darais of the bundehesh, who represent the kingdom of the ancient achæmenids, we put the old persian kingdom with years, and add to these items the numbers given in the bundehesh for huma, vohumano, and vistaçpa, after the appearance of zarathrustra, which amount to years, zarathrustra would have commenced his work years before the battle of nahavend, _i.e._ in the year b.c. but who can guarantee that cyrus, the persian, overthrew the empire of the medes in the year when huma, the supposed daughter of vohumano, died; or that huma reigned for years? how could vohumano, the grandson of vistaçpa, and son of Çpentodata (p. ), have reigned years, and vistaçpa himself years after the appearance of zarathrustra? huma is not merely a doubtful person, she is altogether fictitious. she is said to have been the mother of darai chirazatan, _i.e._ darius i., and to have been called shamirain, _i.e._ semiramis, but her brother was the first sassan, the ancestor of the sassanids. as the later arabs and persians, including firdousi, are no better informed,[ ] we see clearly that the remembrance of the achæmenids had almost entirely died out at the time when these writings were composed; only the name of darius remained, and an attempt was made to connect this name with vistaçpa by two fictitious names, vohumano, _i.e._ the good spirit, and huma. besides vistaçpa's son Çpentodata (isfendyar) and hutaoça, the wife of vistaçpa, the avesta mentions a woman, "the pure huma,"[ ] out of whom this queen must have been formed. it is clear that the tradition of the east, like the avesta, broke off in the generation after vistaçpa, and that in the arabian period only the names darai and iskander could be placed between vistaçpa and the arsacids. we must attempt to reach the goal by another path. i have already shown what was the condition of the sacred scriptures in iran at the date of alexander and the seleucids (p. ). even before hermippus of smyrna, aristotle had taught that the magians considered that to be the best in the first instance which was first created, and maintained two principles, a good and evil deity, oromazdes and areimanius.[ ] theopompus mentioned both these deities and the strife between them, and when he adds that there would one day be a time when the dead would rise again, and men would be immortal and able to withstand everything by their prayers--that after the victory of oromazdes men would be happy and need no longer any sustenance, and would cast no shadow[ ]--it will be seen below how definitely and exactly the doctrine of the avesta is here reproduced. hermodorus mentions a series of teachers, who succeeded the first teacher of the magians, the "persian zoroaster," down to the campaign of alexander of macedon.[ ] with eudoxus of cnidus zoroaster was the founder of the most beneficent wisdom; the pupils of prodicus claimed to be acquainted with the writings of zoroaster (p. ). plato calls him the son of oromazdes, and adds that the heir to the throne was instructed in magism as well as in the duty of being true during the whole of his life.[ ] the importance which the avesta ascribes to truthfulness will become clear hereafter. if the greeks of the fourth century could speak of zoroaster as the teacher of the persians, and put him in the closest relation with auramazda, if they could reproduce correctly the names of the good and evil spirits and the main doctrines of the avesta, it is an inevitable conclusion that the religion of zarathrustra must have prevailed in the kingdom of the achæmenids. this result is confirmed by all the further information which we obtain from the greeks. in plutarch the last darius calls on an eunuch, "to tell the truth in reverence for the great light of mithra"; the eunuch replies that the king has no reason to accuse the evil spirit, and entreats "lord oromazdes," "that he may cause the light of the king to shine again."[ ] artaxerxes ii. was informed by his mother parysatis that the persians had received the law which distinguished good and evil from god. he swears "by mithra," and plutarch tells us how some related that when darius, the eldest son of artaxerxes, who sought his life, was slain, artaxerxes went into the court of the palace and cried aloud to the persians: "rejoice, ye persians, and tell it to others, that the great oromazdes has executed judgment on those who imagined crime and wickedness."[ ] in plutarch, artaxerxes i. says to themistocles: "may areimanius ever implant such a disposition in my enemies that they may drive from themselves their best and bravest men."[ ] according to deinon the magians prophesied with branches in their hands, sacrificed under the open sky, and looked on fire and water as the only symbols of the divinity.[ ] xenophon represents cyrus as praising the gods and sacrificing to them every morning according to the instructions of the magians.[ ] though herodotus does not mention either the name of zarathrustra or of auramazda, what he says of the rites of the medes and persians agrees exactly with the rules given in the avesta. "temples, images, and altars," he says, "are not erected by the persians, because, as it seems to me, they do not believe like the hellenes that the gods have the form and nature of men. they call the whole circle of heaven zeus, and offer sacrifice to him after ascending the summits of mountains. besides zeus they have from ancient days sacrificed to the sun, the moon, the earth, water, winds, and fire, which among the persians is a deity:[ ] the winds they also charm by songs. when offering sacrifice they build no altar and kindle no fire, nor pour libations, nor make any use of flutes, or cakes, or barley meal. if any one wishes to offer sacrifice he brings the victim to an open space, and calls on the god, after crowning his tiara with branches of myrtle. after cutting the animal in pieces, and cooking the flesh, he spreads out the most delicate grass, chiefly trefoil, and lays the flesh upon it. the magian who stands by sings the theogony over it, for such, according to the persians, is the nature of the prayer. after some time, the person who has made the sacrifice carries the flesh away and uses it for a feast. the magians, in whose control is the worship by sacrifice, make it a great object to kill ants, serpents, and other creeping winged things: dogs and men only do they spare. no persian may pollute a river, nor even wash in it, nor will they allow any one else to do so, for they have a great reverence for rivers. the bodies of the dead may not be burned; it is said indeed that the corpse of a persian cannot be buried till it has been torn by a dog or a bird, and among the magians this is an acknowledged practice. it is a meritorious act among the persians to have many children, and he who can show the most receives gifts each year from the king. each man celebrates the day on which he was born above all other days. what may not be done, may not be spoken of amongst the persians: the most shameful action is lying, and the next to this is borrowing, for the reason that a man who has debts is generally compelled to lie. any one afflicted by the itch or the leprosy may not come into the cities or mix with other persians; and it is believed that such persons have sinned against the sun-god. lepers from foreign lands are driven out of the country." when xerxes came to the hellespont, and was about to cross the bridge, herodotus represents him as praying to the sun-god, pouring libations from a golden cup, and throwing it with a golden goblet and a persian sword into the sea.[ ] we shall see hereafter to what a degree the killing of noxious animals, the reverence for rivers, the expulsion of lepers, the delight in life and the increase of life, the exposing of dead bodies, and singing of the theogony at sacrifices, correspond to the rules and doctrines of the avesta. in one point only is herodotus mistaken: he states that the persians worshipped a female deity called mithra. from this array of witnesses belonging to the west it follows that the doctrines of the avesta, and the religion of zarathrustra, were current among the persians and in western iran at any rate after the beginning of the fifth century b.c., and they must therefore have been in existence in eastern iran at a still earlier date. the inscriptions of the achæmenids prove that the doctrine of the avesta was maintained among the persians with even greater clearness and for a period more ancient. artaxerxes ochus prays to auramazda, anahita, and mithra for their protection, and in like manner artaxerxes mnemon prays to auramazda and mithra. in the inscriptions on mount behistun, darius i., the son of hystaspes, styles auramazda "the greatest of the gods" (_mathista baganam_). besides auramazda, "the rest of the gods" are repeatedly mentioned, and denoted by the name baga. of auramazda, darius and xerxes say in their inscriptions: "a great god is auramazda; he has created the heaven and the earth; he has created man and all that is good for men." after crushing in the beginning of his reign the rebellion of nearly all the lands which cyrus had reduced, darius repeatedly records his thanks: "that auramazda had granted him assistance; that his army had been victorious by the grace of auramazda." he and his successors acknowledge that they have received their throne and their kingdom from auramazda; by his grace they are kings.[ ] the reason why auramazda has assisted him darius finds in the fact that he has not been a "liar," and has committed no sin. he entreats auramazda to protect the land against the invasion of hostile armies, against blight, and "the lie" (_drauga_). he asserts that "the lie" caused the provinces which had revolted to be rebellious, and declares that the land of persia, which auramazda has granted to him, which is beautiful, rich in horses, and well populated, has no fear of enemies owing to auramazda's grace, and his own. he commends his inscription at behistun to the protection of his successors, with the words: "if thou destroyest not this tablet then may auramazda be thy friend; may thy descendants be numerous, and thy life be long, and whatsoever thou undertakest, may auramazda cause it to succeed. but if thou destroyest it, may auramazda smite thee, and thy house perish; and whatever thou doest, may auramazda render it of no effect."[ ] on his tomb darius says: "what i have done i have done by the grace of auramazda. o man, this is the prayer of auramazda; think no evil, leave not the right way, sin not." the inscriptions of xerxes regularly end with the invocation: "may auramazda protect me, with all the gods; me, my kingdom, and my work." as we shall see, the fundamental principle of the religion of zarathrustra is that a supreme god stands over all gods, and to him is ascribed the work of creation. in entire belief in the power of this supreme deity, whom the achæmenids invoke by the name which is given to him in the avesta, "who has created heaven and earth and all that is good for men," darius ascribes to auramazda victory in battles, the power of granting or refusing success to the king's undertakings, of protecting the land against hostile invasions, blight, and lies. to those who live according to his commands he grants long life and numerous descendants. the rebellion of the provinces is with darius the work of the lie, the lie of him who had given himself out to be the son of cyrus, and the lie of those who had claimed to be the descendants of nebuchadnezzar and cyaxares. we have already observed what "the lie" meant in the avesta. in the same spirit--the spirit of the principal rules of the avesta--darius adjures his persians to think no evil, and not to leave the right path. nicolaus of damascus assures us that the persians were acquainted with the sayings of zoroaster. he and others relate that cyrus or his father was called atradates, _i.e._ given by fire,[ ] and that he had given to the areians (p. ), who provided his famished army with sustenance, the honourable title of orosangians, i.e. _huverezànha_ (benefactors). it is in harmony with the doctrine of the avesta that cyrus should be represented by such a descent or name as the gift and nursling of fire, and we shall see with what emphasis the avesta marks and distinguishes good thoughts, words, and actions. from these facts and the inscriptions of darius there can be no doubt that zarathrustra's doctrine was current among the persians at the time of cyrus. but if it was in force in the west of iran in the sixth century b.c. the fact that herodotus, in his account of the period during which the medes obtained the dominion, down to the time of cyrus, speaks of no change in religion, either among the persians or the medes, is evidence that this religion existed at any rate before the time of phraortes. the statement found in herodotus that deioces had forbidden any one to spit in his presence, reminds us of the rules of the avesta, by which no one was allowed to approach the sacred fire and gods with uncovered mouth, and on the sculptures of persepolis the bearer of the fan stands with covered mouth beside darius. the seven walls which herodotus represents deioces as building round ecbatana, the seven tribes of the persians, remind us of the seven girdles of the earth in the avesta; the king of the persians surrounded by the six tribal princes is the symbol of auramazda and the six gods who are about him. hence we may assume that the doctrine of zarathrustra had reached the west of iran at the time when phraortes united the tribes of the medes (about b.c.), and was known among the medes when they were still living under their tribal chiefs and paid tribute to asshur, or, in case of refusal, were attacked by the assyrian armies, which, as we ascertained from the inscriptions of the kings of asshur, was the case from the time of tiglath pilesar ii. to the time of assurbanipal, _i.e._ from the middle of the eighth to the middle of the seventh century b.c. a statement in herodotus seems to lead us still further back. he calls the magians a race or tribe of the medes. according to his narrative this tribe was in existence in the time of deioces, _i.e._ about the year b.c. herodotus could only speak of the magians as a tribe or family when they had become an hereditary order. at that time, therefore, there must have been among the medes a priesthood who perpetuated in their families their worship by sacrifice, their doctrine and wisdom, as well as their social importance. like all greeks, herodotus ascribes the discharge of the religious functions among the persians and medes to the magians, and we find that what herodotus quotes of their rites agrees with the rules of the avesta. the rise and separation of a peculiar order of priests, their more or less sharply marked distinction from the remaining orders, can never be the work of a short space of time, and such separation can only take place when the worship of the gods requires a knowledge which is not easily accessible or obtainable, when doctrine has obtained a place by the side of belief, when ritual has become developed, and particular duties and rules are prescribed for the life of the priests. when the worship of the gods requires the use of long and definite prayers, the knowledge of complicated usages, on which depends the effect of the sacrifices, and the observation of numerous rules of purification,--such knowledge is only perpetuated in families of hierophants or priests, or in schools which take the place of such families. the formation of a distinct hereditary order on such grounds can hardly have occupied less than a century from the time when the doctrine, on which it is formed, was introduced. hence we may assume that the doctrine known as zarathrustra's reached the medes before the year b.c., _i.e._ before the date of tiglath pilesar ii. of assyria. let us hold firmly to the facts that the worship of auramazda was current among the persians about the middle of the sixth century b.c., that the same worship was in force among the medes at least a century earlier, about b.c., and that if an hereditary priesthood was in existence about this time among the medes who performed and conducted the worship, the doctrine which this priesthood represented must have been adopted before the year b.c. in this way we obtain a proof that the doctrine of zarathrustra was not only in existence in the east of iran about the year b.c., but was the dominant creed there, and had force enough to penetrate to the west, and win over the neighbouring tribes of the medes and persians. we cannot explain more exactly how the doctrine of zarathrustra reached the nations of the west of iran. pliny, it is true, exclaims: "who knows the medes, who were taught by zoroaster, apusorus, and zaratus, even by hearsay, for no memorials of them are left?"[ ] according to this the religion of zoroaster spread even in the west by the influence of eminent men among the medes. but the date of the persons mentioned cannot be fixed, though porphyry represents pythagoras as going to the chaldæans and zabratus, by whom he was purified from the evil of his former life, and instructed as to the things from which the disciple should restrain himself, and about the nature and beginning of all things,[ ] and this zaratus or zabratus may be intended for zarathrustra himself. hermodorus tells us that zarathrustra had been followed by many magians as teachers, one after the other, down to the time when alexander marched against persia: these teachers were osthanes, astrampsychus, gobryas, and pazates.[ ] others also assert that zoroaster was followed "by osthanes and astrampsychus."[ ] pliny observes that so far as he could discover, osthanes who accompanied xerxes in the war against the hellenes, was the first who had written on the doctrine of the magians. the second osthanes, whom alexander had received among his followers, had caused this religion to be of great importance. from the work of one of these two persons, philo of byblus quotes a passage--the work he calls the octateuch--and pliny notes down apparently some of the doctrines of the first osthanes. if then there were men under the achæmenids in the west of iran who could write on the doctrine of zarathrustra from the beginning of the fifth century b.c., we can without hesitation believe the statement that long before this time there were prophets and teachers of the doctrine among the medes and the persians. can we go beyond the result thus gained by our investigation?--that the doctrine of zoroaster flourished in eastern iran about b.c., and advanced towards the west from this period; may we assume that at this date it was already in possession of written monuments, and even that the fragments of the avesta which still remain were in existence then? we must first answer the question whether the use of writing in iran, especially in the east, goes back so far. according to the statements of herodotus, the west of iran was not only in possession of the art of writing by the year b.c., but made considerable use of it. he tells us that deioces required complaints to be sent in to him in writing, and gave out his decisions also in writing. if processes at law were conducted in writing in media about the year b.c., it cannot be surprising that herodotus should also inform us that letters passed between media and persia about the year b.c.[ ] we learn from the hebrew scriptures that when cyrus allowed the jews, whom nebuchadnezzar had removed to babylon, to return to their homes, he gave his permission for the restoration of the temple in writing. this document was afterwards discovered in the archives of ecbatana.[ ] we know it for a fact that darius i. gave his orders to the satraps in writing, and we are acquainted with the seal of darius by which they were authenticated. the oldest inscriptions which have come down to us from the achæmenids, not to mention a seal of cyrus from senkereh, belong, if not to cyrus himself, to darius, and begin about the last quarter of the sixth century b.c. it is the cuneiform writing of assyria and babylon which forms the basis of the writing in these inscriptions, but with considerable alterations. the highly complicated syllabarium of the eastern semites is reduced to a phonetic system; we might almost say to an alphabet of about letters. a change of this kind can hardly have been made at one stroke. if it was after they entered into closer combination with assyria, _i.e._ after their dependence on the king of asshur, which began with the accession of tiglath pilesar ii. ( b.c.), that the medes became acquainted with the assyrian system of writing, this must have been completely mastered before it could be abbreviated and altered, as it was altered by the medes, whose changes were adopted by the persians. the cuneiform writing of western iran, as we find it in the inscriptions of darius, can therefore hardly have been established before the year b.c. however this may be, the facts mentioned prove that the writing of the assyrians in the seventh century b.c. was not unknown in the west of iran. this would therefore have passed into the east of iran in its original or simplified form, either at some earlier period, or when the east came under the dominion of the achæmenids. but it did not, and this is a plain proof that the east, when the cuneiform writing of the west came in that direction, was already in possession of another kind of writing. this eastern mode of writing, the arian, which rests on an entirely different basis from the cuneiform, is first known to us from coins and inscriptions of the third century b.c.; but it certainly would not have maintained its ground under the achæmenids against the writing of the west, and of the rulers, magistrates, and dominant nation, unless it had been in vigorous use before, this period. we must therefore assume that the arian character was in use in the east of iran a considerable time before the date of cyrus, and hence we have no reason to deny the existence of it in that region in the eighth century b.c., since we must allow the neighbouring arians of india to have been in possession of their written characters from the year b.c. at the least (iv. ). if we may assume that the arian character was in use in the east of iran about the year b.c., the prayers and sayings of zarathrustra might have been written down about this date, and the doctrine might have passed on to the west supported by written documents. but the fact that the prayers might have been written down is in no way a proof that they were so written. it is true that at first sight it seems that the part of the law which has come down to us (the vendidad) leads to the conclusion that it was written down long before the persians gained the dominion over iran, and media became a powerful state under cyaxares. the book does not mention the name of the persians or the medes, of ecbatana or persepolis, while bactria is spoken of as the seat of the empire; the most westerly district mentioned in the vendidad is ragha in eastern media.[ ] if we add that the book reproaches certain districts in the east, the land of the arachoti and others, with deviations from the doctrine of zarathrustra, and that ragha is indeed zoroastrian but wavering in its fidelity, we may easily conclude that the vendidad was written when the doctrine of zarathrustra had not as yet thoroughly penetrated the east, and was still unknown in the west, when it had just reached, but had not yet completely conquered, the district of ragha. the medes were still dependent on asshur, living separately according to their tribes, ecbatana was not yet the centre and metropolis of media, and the kingdom of bactra was still in existence in the east. this points to a date about b.c. as the time when this doctrine must have spread widely over media; at any rate to a date before the rise of the median power, _i.e._ before b.c. this conclusion is not, however, absolutely certain. the silence of the vendidad and of the avesta generally on ecbatana and persepolis, the medes and the persians, can be explained in another though a more artificial manner. the nations and chief cities of the west were unknown to the tradition of eastern iran, and the royal abodes of the medes and persians were not consecrated by the action of zarathrustra. in the accounts given by the greeks of the worship of these nations, in spite of much agreement, points are found at variance with the rules of the avesta, and as a fact certain distinctions did prevail. the doctrine had arisen in the east, and the priesthood there was in possession of the purer and more orthodox dogma. if persia and media did not follow this in all respects, it was convenient to be silent about the differences in the time of the achæmenids, or if any one desired to brand them, to mark out the median ragha as the seat of heresy, rather than pasargadæ or persepolis. this explanation it is true is somewhat far fetched. the result that the religion known by the name of zarathrustra had reached the medes and persians by the middle of the eighth century b.c. is in no way weakened by it, though the assumption that at this period written documents of this doctrine were in existence, and that the book of the law of which we have fragments arose in the first half of the eighth century b.c., is rendered more doubtful if such a mode of interpretation is admitted. the forms of language preserved in the avesta have not survived with sufficient distinctness to assist us in fixing the time at which it was written down. as was shown above (p. ), the manuscripts date from the later period of the sassanids; they are written in the later east-pehlevi character, and at a time when the old forms must have undergone changes owing to the language which had come into use in the mean time, and can in fact be proved to have undergone them. the old sounds are obviously modified and confounded,[ ] so that the language of the avesta, when compared with that of the inscriptions of the achæmenids, exhibits forms less ancient and fixed, and indeed in some cases it is more recent than the language of the legends of the græco-bactrian coins (p. ). nor can any certain conclusions be drawn from the condition of political and social life shown in the avesta. it is only the splendour of regal power in general, the old sacrificers, heroes, and kings that are extolled in it; a sacrificial prayer to mithra speaks of the abode of the arians, where "horse-guiding rulers govern noble troops;" for the rest we hear only of lords of villages, of tribes or cantons, and provinces, and of three orders into which the people are divided. the vendidad, it is true, reckons by winters and nights, not by years and days; the amount of fines and punishments is computed in animals, goats, sheep, oxen, horses, or camels; and these facts point to an ancient period, but they may have been handed down by tradition. we also hear of the value of these animals and of money (_shaeta_).[ ] this is the less surprising as the vendidad speaks of palaces and pillars and various works of art, and mentions smelting-ovens and even ovens for making glass. we found that the greek princes of bactria struck square coins, which they would not have done if this had not been the traditional form in bactria (p. ). the achæmenids did not strike coins of this kind, and this shape must therefore have come down from a period anterior to them. the frequent mention of the physician, on the other hand, ought not to be regarded as a proof of later composition, for we hear of the physician and his remedies in ancient poems of the veda (iv. ). in regard to the antiquity of the avesta, then, we can only build upon the simple facts that it cannot have been written down for the first time when the buddhists found adherents in bactria (iv. ), or when the kingdom of the greek princes arose in bactria, or when the seleucidæ and alexander, before them, reigned over iran. it has been proved that the avesta was in existence before alexander overthrew the kingdom of the achæmenids. the series of the successors of zarathrustra, which western writers could trace backwards from this point--osthanes ii., pazates, gobryas, osthanes i., astrampsychus, apusodorus--plainly shows that even under the achæmenids the west was seriously occupied with religious questions. as osthanes i. had written on the doctrine of zoroaster about the time of xerxes (p. ), it is at least more probable than not that the avesta was already in existence at that time. if in the west there was a series, and as the greeks point out, a continuous series, of priestly teachers, round whom naturally pupils and schools grew up, and after the beginning of the fifth century a theological literature, similar teachers and schools must have existed long before in the east, and this greatly strengthens the conclusion drawn from the contents of the vendidad, that it must have been written down before the rise of the medes. but for any more precise determination of the date of the avesta between the two limits obtained--the year b.c., _i.e._ the beginning of the formation of a priesthood in the west and the contemporary use of writing in the east, and the year b.c.--we are confined wholly to internal evidence. scriptures of such extent as the avesta is shown to have been, by the accounts of the greeks and arabs, and the list of contents (p. ), and the existing fragments, could not have been written down at once or within a brief space of time. we saw (p. ) that it set up a religious canon, which not only regulated the doctrine and the worship, the duties of priests and laity, but also comprised the law, and in a word all the relations of life. a codification of this kind is only possible when belief and doctrine, culture and ritual, have arrived at fixed and complete formulæ, have been arranged in a system and developed, and the consequences bearing on life, morality, and law have been drawn from them by an active and influential priesthood. hence before the avesta was written down and collected there must have been a priestly order in the east, in the circles of which the doctrine and practice went through this developing, revising, and fixing process. various sketches, lists of prayers for certain offerings, collections of rules belonging to this or that priesthood or school, must have been in existence, and combinations of the traditional material must have been made, before a canon comprising the whole wisdom of the priests, and far exceeding in extent the law of manu, could have been compiled. among the existing invocations of the avesta we find sacrificial prayers of a primitive character; but the greater part of the prayers and thanksgivings are without religious feeling or poetical power, and very far removed from the richness and abundance, the beauty and freshness of conception, which streams through the majority of the hymns of the veda. there are not wanting _naïve_ and poetical pieces which have obviously been handed down and preserved by their use at sacrifices, but these are frequently spoiled by later interpolations, and the form of the whole is generally dry and prosaic. we find but scanty relics of any vigorous conception of the gods, of a living mythology; on the whole the mythical element is faded, and the sacrifice of animals thrown into the background. the greater part of the prayers receive their value from a certain system and completeness; the object is to bring forward all the characteristics of the deity to which they are addressed, and to invoke him by all his names. thus laudations and epithets are repeated without end. a good many of the prayers are mere nomenclatures, and repeat the same forms in varying order. besides this tendency, which is far removed from the original simplicity of religious meditation, a value is ascribed to the repetition of certain prayers. some are to be said a hundred, or a thousand times. in the same way the liturgies are long and full of detail, and sometimes take the form of responses between the celebrant and the ministering priest; they are extremely careful to neglect none of the heavenly spirits or genii, or to injure them by omission, or treat them with less respect than others. beside the faded colours of the mythology, the decreasing importance of animal sacrifice, and the formalism of the prayers, we observe in the five gathas, the invocations which alone have preserved the verse-measure, and present older forms of language than the rest, a tendency to speculation. not only are the good and evil spirits combined under one head, as is always the case in the avesta, but the gathas attempt to resolve the contrast of the beneficial and harmful sides of nature, of the good and evil spirits, into the reciprocal play of two fundamental forces; they identify the prosperity and destruction of nature with moral good and evil, and combine the one with truth, the other with falsehood. the good spirits are the truth, the evil are the lie. the life of appearance and of falsehood is distinguished from the true life, and the service of truth promises life not in this world only but in the next. it is in harmony with these tendencies to abstraction that, according to other passages of the avesta, heaven is filled with a multitude of the most lifeless personifications of ideas and realities. could the doctrine of a new religion in an early period come forward with such a spiritualised system, with such elevated moral demands, such abstract conceptions? could prayers of such a kind have been composed or written down in a primitive age? the existing fragment of the book of the law is composed in the form of a dialogue, and is for the most part filled with conversations which zarathrustra carries on with auramazda. zarathrustra inquires what is to be done in certain cases against the evil spirits, the daevas, on the commission of certain sins and impurities. what must be done when a woman is in labour, etc., or when any one has made himself impure by touching a corpse, or has slain a water-dog (otter)? is the rain impure which has fallen on a corpse and then runs off from it, etc.? these questions auramazda answers very precisely, and when it is a matter for expiation and purification, he fixes the number of stripes with the horse-whip or the whip of the sacred Çraosha (Çraosha-charana) which the penitent is to receive. it is a theory and practice of purity, on a level with the analogous rules in the laws of manu, and in some points even more subtle and casuistical. the offences have already been brought under definite categories, and in like manner the purifications and punishments fall into a number of distinct classes. not only are expiations required for all sins and prescribed down to the minutest details, but the offences must also be repented of; certain formulæ of confession and repentance are prescribed. we need not stop to prove that a book of laws in this form could not have been written down _à priori_. the rules for punishment and purification must have grown up in long practice, before they could be put in the mouth of the deity; difficulties and doubts must have been weighed before solutions could be proposed. the book contains the dialogues and inquiries which were held in the schools of the priests on questions of this kind, the practice which prevailed in the schools and the catechisation of the pupils. the answer is naturally placed in the mouth of auramazda, for it was the answer which he once gave to the question when asked by zarathrustra. the fragments of the vendidad are a catechism, the result of the labour of the priestly schools, a system of rules and regulations which marks and postulates the same stage of development for iran as was reached for the indians on the ganges by the law of manu. many periods in the religious life must have been passed through before the religious consciousness was no longer shocked by the fact that the supreme deity in person answered petty questions of ritual, and dictated in the most exact gradation and with regard to every possible variety of circumstance, the number of stripes required for the criminals. this faded mythology and formalised worship, these speculative attempts and casuistry of law, are accompanied by a completely-arranged scheme of certain abstract categories already established. throughout the whole avesta runs the division between this world and the next, between the corporeal and incorporeal world, truth and falsehood, and the triple distinction of thinking, speaking, and acting, of thought, word, and deed. and when we further consider that rewards are attached to the reading of sections of the avesta, that the "long study" of the "thoughts of the pure man," "the excellent knowledge, thought, and conception" are praised and invoked as divine powers, no one will be inclined to see in the avesta the product of _naïve_ religious feeling, or the deposit of a priestly civilisation which is as yet in its early stages. still, if we wish to avoid making any false steps in the conclusions to be drawn from the nature of the avesta about the time of its composition, we must bear in mind that it contains some conceptions which are the exact opposite of the characteristics just noticed. the myth of yima, the form of mithra, the descent of plants, prove older traits in the avesta than we find in the veda; the old gods still occupy a large space beside auramazda and the abstract forms of heaven, and strict unity of system is not yet attained. we must remember also at what an early date the neighbours of eastern iran, the arians of india, arrived at meditation and abstraction; how quickly and entirely they allowed animal sacrifice to pass into the background; with what breadth and detail they developed the rules for purification; how numerous were the daily prayers and repetitions, before the religious feeling became weakened. in the avesta the time without limit is frequently invoked; among the indians the gods of light are even in the oldest hymns of the veda the sons of aditi, _i.e._ of the eternal or the infinite. and if the attitude of the avesta is for the most part by far more flat and prosaic than that of the veda, the arians of iran were of a more logical nature, and the glow of imagination which the land of the ganges kindled in their kindred tribes did not exist in iran. for this reason the consideration of the character of the avesta can only lead us to the result that a period of several centuries must have elapsed between the rise of the religion named after zarathrustra and the writing down of the avesta; that lists of prayers and rubrics must have been in existence about the year b.c.; that the extensive books which then formed the avesta may have been written in the first half of the period, which we ascribed to them, extending from to b.c. in any case we can maintain that the gathas were composed, and that the avesta existed in its essential parts in the east of iran, before cyrus put the empire of the persians in the place of the empire of the medes, and all the various parts were collected together before the "enlightened" began to preach on the ganges, _i.e._ about the year b.c. we have already remarked the importance which the achæmenids ascribed to the possession of bactria (p. ); and we were able at any rate to guess at the civilisation of that district about the year b.c., from the amount of the tribute imposed upon it by darius. that the economic civilisation was not behind the material was shown by indications in the avesta. the kingdom which grew up there, as we saw (p. ), long before the days of the medes, and in which about the year b.c. the doctrine of zarathrustra was current, succumbed to cyrus, the great founder of the persian empire. if we place the beginning of the doctrine of zarathrustra, which first made its appearance there, before the middle of the ninth century b.c., at which time the armies of shalmanesar ii. reached the east of iran, and assume that it came forward about b.c., we shall hardly place its rise too high. we remember that about this time occurred the great change in the religious conceptions of the arians in india, the repression and degradation of the old gods by brahman. it was an analogous development when the good and evil spirits of bactria were combined into unities, and placed under leaders, when the chief of the deities of light was made the creator of the heaven and the earth, and surrounded with abstract forms, which contest the traditional place and honour of the old god. it is the same religious impulse, the desire to grasp the unity of the divine nature, the same line of combination that we observed in its beginning and progress in india, which comes to the surface in the doctrine of zarathrustra. we have no reason to contest with the avesta the fact that vistaçpa ruled over bactria when this change took place, or that zarathrustra, a man of the race of haechataçpa, gave the impulse to the reform, and that the leading idea in it belongs to him. if vistaçpa ruled over bactria about the year b.c. the growth of the bactrian monarchy must be placed at least a century before this time, _i.e._ about the year b.c. footnotes: [ ] [cf. darmesteter, "zend-avesta," introduct., c. iv. § , and c. iii.] [ ] plato. "alcib. i." p. . [ ] diog. laert. prooem. [ ] plin. "h. n." , . [ ] , . [ ] justin, , . [ ] "numa," c. ; "quaest. sympos." , . [the reading [greek: zôroastrên] is doubtful; cf. wyttenbach.] [ ] dio chrys. , , ed. dind. [ ] euseb. "chron." ed. auch. p. ; cf. georg. syncell. p. . [greek: batou] after zoroaster should here be changed into [greek: baktrou] rather than [greek: magou]. [ ] arnob. "adv. gent." , . [ ] euseb. _loc. cit._ p. . [ ] porphyr. "de antro nymph." c. . [ ] ammian. marcell. , . [ ] agathias, , . [ ] suidas, [greek: magoi, zôroastrês]. [ ] above, p. . georg. sync. p. , . vol. i. p. , . [ ] yet with moses zoroaster is a mede, i. p. . [ ] plut. "pomp." c. . [ ] cf. von gutschmid, "die sage vom heiligen georg;" sächsische gesellschaft d. w., , s. . [ ] "farvardin yasht," . [ ] c. in justi, [c. ; § west]; cf. "vend." , . [ ] c. , cf. above, p. . [c. , § , west.] [ ] strabo, p. , derives it from atropates, whom alexander made satrap there. [ ] still less important than the bundehesh is the gloss on "vend." , . "many say that zartusht was from rak in atropatan." ragha is not in atropatene. [ ] spiegel, "eran," , ff. [ ] plin. "h. n." , . diogen. laert. prooem. the different readings of years in suidas and in diogenes, as compared with and in the other mss., can hardly be maintained against the uniform evidence of other witnesses. [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] "vend." , ; spiegel, "avesta," , , , . [ ] "ashi yasht," ; "vend." , ff. [ ] west, "mainyo-i-khard," p. x. [ ] west, _loc. cit._ c. . [ ] justi, "bundehesh," c. , , . [cf. west's commentary on c. .] [ ] spiegel, "eran," , . [ ] justi, "bundehesh," c. . [ ] if the rise of arsaces is put in the year b.c. it makes no difference in the total if we choose the year b.c. for the beginning of the arsacids. [ ] blau, "z. d. m. g." , . von gutschmid, _ibid._ [ ] "farvardin yasht," . [ ] aristot. "metaph." , . diogen. laert. prooem. [ ] theopom. fragm. , , ed. müller. [ ] diogen. laert. prooem., cf. suidas, [greek: magoi]. [ ] "alcib. i." p. . [ ] plut. "alex." c. . [ ] plut. "artax." c. , , . [ ] "themistocl." c. . [ ] dinon, fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , , - ; , , , , ; , . [ ] inscription of darius at elvend in spiegel, "keilinscriften," s. , . [ ] behistun, , - ; - ; persop. [ ] strabo, p. ; nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] plin. "h. n." , ; , . [ ] "vita pythag." . [ ] diogen. laert prooem. [ ] suidas, [greek: magoi]. [ ] herod. , , , . [ ] ezra, c. v., vi. [ ] the niça of the vendidad is the eastern niça, parthorum nisæa, not very far from merv; above, p. , _n._ . [ ] lepsius, "ueber das ursprungliche zendalphabet," abh. b. akad. , s. , , . [ ] "vendid." , ; astad yasht, . chapter v. the gods of the arians in iran. the examination of the traditions of the east and west has simply led to the confirmation of the result, which we gain from the avesta--that the name and the doctrine of zarathrustra belong to bactria. with regard to the antiquity of the doctrine, the inscriptions of darius and the statements of the greeks allowed us to draw the conclusion that it became current and dominant in bactria about the year b.c.; and from the analogy of the development of the arians on both sides of the ganges we assumed that it was possible to place the date of zarathrustra himself about two centuries earlier. that the arians of iran were not without gods and religious worship before zarathrustra, if the fact needed proof, might be shown from the statements in the avesta regarding the time previous to zarathrustra. the examination of the legends of this time established kindred forms and traits in the avesta and the veda, and if, following this path further, we find in the avesta views of the nature and character of the gods corresponding to those of the veda, we might be confident in regarding them as the traditional possession of the arians, and their earliest forms of religion. if, in fine, the coincidence of the avesta with the veda, on the one hand, and with the accounts of the greeks on the other, extended to all the essential points in the doctrine and the law, the question stated above--whether in the restoration of the canon of the sacred writings in the midst of the fourth century of our era, under king shapur ii., the avesta underwent material alterations, would have to be answered in the negative. the poems of the veda showed us in what directions the religious feeling of the indians in the panjab moved. drought, gloom, and night were numbered among the injurious forces; the clear sky, the light, and fertilising water were beneficent. the high spirits of light, which gave new courage to the heart each morning, and exhibited the world in fresh brilliance, were praised with thanksgivings; the spirits of the highest heaven, mitra and varuna, the guardians of the world, the protectors of purity and justice, were invoked earnestly, but less frequently than the warlike victorious god who gave water, the god of storm and tempest, who defeated the demons which obscured the sky and wished to carry away the water (iv. ). his comrades in the fight were the morning wind which drove away the clouds of night, the winds which shattered the gloomy clouds, and swept them from the sky. the spirit of fire, who by his brilliant glow in the darkness of night kept off the beasts of prey and fiends, who gathered men round the hearth, and summoned the gods to the sacrifice, and carried up to them the food of the sacrifice, received zealous worship in the hymns of the veda. we can call to mind the invocations of the rigveda to ushas, the goddess of the dawn, who drives forth on the sky with red cows; to surya and savitar, the spirits of the sun (iv. , ). in the avesta, prayers are addressed to ushahina and hvare kshaeta, the bright sun-god. ushahina is here the pure spirit of the celestial dawn, "who is possessed of bright horses." of the sun-god we are told: "mount, bright sun, with thy swift horses, and shine for all creatures on the way which auramazda has created in the air, the way rich in water which the gods have created;"[ ] just as in the veda the sun is invoked to approach on his ancient firm paths in the air, which are free from dust (iv. ). sacrifice is offered to the sun, according to the avesta, when he rises above hara berezaiti (the divine mountain).[ ] the prayer to mithra is as follows: "to the mighty yazata (_i.e._ the worthy of prayer), the strong one, who brings good, will i offer sacrifice with libations; i will encompass him with songs of thanksgiving. with libations we offer sacrifice to mithra, the lord of wide pastures, who speaketh true things, the wise one, comely in shape, of a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, standing on a broad tower, strong, sleepless, and watchful, who mounts above hara berezaiti before the immortal sun, the guider of horses--he who first in a form of gold ascends the beautiful summits. for him the creator auramazda has prepared a dwelling above hara berezaiti, where is neither night, nor darkness, nor winds chilling nor scorching, nor the corruption of the slain; no filth created of demons nor vapours ascend hara berezaiti. from thence the giver of good beholds the abode of the arians, whose horse-guiding lords govern splendid hosts, whose high mountains, rich in water and in pastures, supply nourishment for the ox, where are deep lakes with broad streams, and wide navigable rivers burst forth in tumult, on iskata and pourata,[ ] on mouru (merv), haraeva (p. ), and gao, Çughdha (sogdiana), and hvairiza (choaresm). where first they sacrifice to him, there mithra, the lord of wide pastures, descends with the victorious wind. from anguish and pain, o mithra, carry us, undeceived. come to us for our protection; come to us with joy; come to us with mercy; come to us with healing; come to us with purification, the mighty, the strong, the all-knowing, the tamer of dragons, the undeceived. never lulled to sleep, mithra protects with his weapon the creatures of auramazda. on him the lord of the land, of the canton, the village, the house, calls for help with uplifted hands, whose voice of woe, whether his voice be loud or soft, reaches up to the stars and down to the earth. he to whom mithra is favourable, to him he cometh with aid; but with whomsoever he is angry he destroys his house and village and canton and land, and the glory of the land. mithra gives swift horses to those who do not deceive him; to the habitation in which he is satisfied he gives troops of cattle and men. the fire of auramazda gives the straightest path to those who do not deceive mithra. but if the lord of the house, the village, the canton, the land deceives him, then mithra in anger destroys house and village, canton and land. not all evil deeds, not all deception, are seen by mithra, saith the wicked man. but mithra sees all that is between heaven and earth. with ten thousand eyes he beholds the man who hates and deceives him. his long arms with the might of mithra grasp what is in eastern india (hendu), and what is in western, and what is in the midst of this earth. the swiftest deceivers of mithra do not reach the goal; they do not escape on horseback, nor reach the goal in chariots. "mithra, the lord of lands, whose countenance beams like the star tistrya, travels forth to the right end of the earth from the brilliant garonmana (the abode of the gods), equipped with golden helmet, and silver coat of mail, with sharp long-shafted lance and swinging arrow, on a beautiful chariot with a golden wheel and silver spokes, which four white horses draw, their fore-hoofs shod with gold, their hinder hoofs with silver, harnessed in the yoke which is bent over them. in his hand is a club with a hundred studs, and a hundred blades, heavy at the end, making havoc of men; bound with brass on the handle, mighty and golden, the strongest and most victorious of weapons. before him goes verethraghna in the form of a boar, sharp of tusk, fat, enraged, striking at once with feet, claws, tail, and back of brass.[ ] next to him goes the kindled fire, the strong, royal grace. as a protection of the chariot are a thousand bows of bone, whose strings are made of the sinews of oxen, a thousand arrows plumed with feathers of the kahrkaça, with golden points and wooden shafts, and flakes of bone and iron, a thousand lances with sharp points, a thousand missiles of copper, a thousand two-edged swords. strong as spirits they travel onward, strong as spirits they fall on the skulls of the daevas. "before him of a truth, angromainyu (the evil spirit) trembles, the deadly one; before him trembles aeshma, the wicked-minded, and body-destroying; before him trembles bushyançta, the long of hand, and all invisible daevas and the sinners from varena. when the evil one, who works wickedness, runs forth with swift step, mithra, the lord of wide pastures, swiftly harnesses his chariot, and Çraosha, the pure and strong, and nairyoçangha, the herald, beats him and his ranks. when mithra comes where the lands are against him (_i.e._ do not honour him) he brings down his club on horse and rider. against them he brings mighty destruction and terror; he bears away the heads of the men who deceive mithra. their arrows, swift-feathered, sent swiftly forth by the string from the well-stretched bow, strike the air only; the lances, sharp and running out with long shafts from the arm, strike the air only; the missiles from the strings strike the air only; the well-directed swords and well-slung clubs beat the air only; meanwhile, angry, enraged, and not propitiated, mithra approaches, the lord of wide pastures. thou, o mithra, angry and mighty, takest the force from their arms; thou takest the force from their arms, and the sight from their eyes, and the hearing from their ears. the wind carries away the lances which the opponents of mithra throw; even though he throws well and hits the body he inflicts no wound. standing on the field of battle mithra annihilates the ranks; the wings quake, and he makes the centre to tremble. they say: our war-horses were led away by mithra; by him were our strong arms and swords annihilated. mithra scares men before and behind; Çraosha, the pure, assists in slaying on all sides. mithra sweeps them away, slaying them by fifties and by hundreds; by hundreds and by thousands; by thousands and tens of thousands, and without number. we cannot sustain the weight of the angry lord who with the force of a thousand meets the foe; who dashes on in his rage, and rests not from the slaughter; who destroys all at a blow. may not the mightiest, the swiftest, the most victorious of the yazatas fall upon us. come to our help, o mithra, high lord, when the arrow hisses aloud and the horse neighs in his nostrils, and the missiles whizz, and the strings speed forth the sharp, bony arrows. whomsoever mithra protects, him the well-sharpened lance cannot reach, nor the arrow flying past him. "in his might mithra approaches; in power he goes forth to dominion, and beholding from afar directs his glance with his eyes. thou protectest the lands which seek after the beneficence of mithra, lord of wide pastures; thou destroyest the lands which are wicked. o mithra, lord of wide pastures, master of the house, of the villages, the land!--let us be protectors of thy fields, not the destroyers of them. as the sun arises above hara berezaiti so may i obtain my desires over the evil angromainyu. with uplifted arms, mithra, the lord of wide pastures, conveys us to immortality. with sacrifice named by name, with becoming speech, o strong mithra, will i make offerings to thee with libations. listen, o mithra, to our sacrifice. come to our sacrifice; come to our libations. carry them away to the place of meeting (_chinvat_); deposit them in garonmana. thou, o mithra, art the saviour and helper of lands and men. thou makest the dwellings, from which impurity is removed, famous for women and chariots. thou hast power over the peace and the disquiet of lands; prosperous art thou in the battle, and strong. give us the gifts for which we entreat thee; abundance and power, prosperity and purity, renown and bravery, and victory given by ahura, the overwhelming power of the highest purity (_asha vahista_), and instruction in the sacred word, that so we may slay all enemies and haters, and annihilate the hate of men and daevas, of magicians and pairikas, of the violent, blind, and deaf. stretch out thy widely grasping hand, o mithra; thou art the protector of the dwelling, and of them that deceive not. protect us in both worlds, the corporeal and incorporeal, from the evil death, the evil aeshma, the evil hosts, who seek to raise their cruel banners, from the attacks which aeshma may make with vidhatu the daeva-created."[ ] the modern traits which have been introduced into this poem are easily distinguished and removed. the relation in which mithra is placed to auramazda, the chief of the good spirits, to the corporeal and incorporeal world and the maintenance of the law, to rashnu, the spirit of justice, and other spirits of an abstract nature, and to the instruction in the sacred word, are like the "western and eastern india," obviously of the later origin. setting them aside, the old form of the god of light of the arians in iran meets us in vigorous and powerful outlines. indeed we have here more original conceptions of mithra than in the veda, and find that idea of the god which formed part of the yet undivided stock of the arians in iran and on the indus (iv. ). in the avesta mithra is still in direct conflict with the evil spirits, from which in the veda he is displaced by the storm-god, who first came into prominence in the panjab. that mithra was once the supreme deity of the arians of iran, is clear, not only from his position as the most victorious opponent of the demons, but also from the difficulty--which the avesta betrays in more than one passage--of subordinating him to auramazda, who subsequently became supreme, and establishing the precedence of the latter. in mithra's habitation it is never night. highest of the spirits of light, he goes before the sun, and first plants himself on the summits of the mountains. he is the mightiest warrior against night and the spirits of night who tremble before him. his light overpowers and destroys them. thus he is able to give victory in the battle to the army which worships him in truth; the host with which he fights he fills with courage and power; that with which he is angry he fills with terror, and causes their arrows to fly forth in vain. in brilliant armour he travels onward, his club in his hand; before him is victory, and beside him is fire. mithra's club is called vazra, indra's club is vajra; the word is the same, the distinction is due to the change of sound which separates the old bactrian from the language of the veda and sanskrit.[ ] lord of the lands and nations, he looks down on the abode of the arians; most brilliant of deities, he sees all that is between heaven and earth. he cannot be deceived and beguiled; the most secret wickedness is not hidden from him; the swiftest criminal does not escape from him, and the strongest succumbs to his anger. god of purity and truth, he watches over purity and truth among men, punishes falsehood, rewards justice and fidelity; he blesses the nations and houses which worship him with goodly increase in men and flocks. we saw what importance the veda ascribed to the conquest over vritra, the cloud serpent, the black demon. the arians in iran also are acquainted with the slaying of vritra. the prayer to mithra represents verethraghna as going before mithra's victorious car (p. ). verethraghna means slayer of verethra, or vritra, and is the same word as vritrahan. hence the attribute of indra, which denotes the most important achievement among his actions, is among the iranians an independent spirit. as the club of indra belongs in the avesta to mithra, so is verethraghna his companion. no doubt at one time mithra had himself the surname verethraghna in iran, the attribute signifying the conqueror of the worst and strongest of the evil spirits. but just as in the panjab, owing to the tropical storms of that region, the form of vritra came into prominence, and with it the form of indra, so in the avesta did verethraghna fade away when separated from mithra. here verethraghna is only the victorious strength, the conquest and slaughter of the enemy,--victory itself. verethraghna is the best armed of the heavenly spirits, the strongest in might, the most victorious. yet even in the avesta the soma is offered to verethraghna before the battle, as in the veda it is offered to indra. auramazda says to zarathrustra: "when the armies meet in battle, the orderly ranks are not defeated in which sacrifice is liberally offered to verethraghna, whom ahura created. the arian lands should offer him sacrifice, and strew sacrificial branches for him. they should offer beasts to him, bright and gold-coloured." "to him the pure zarathrustra offered sacrifice, and verethraghna came to him in the form of a strong wind, in the form of a beautiful bull with golden ears and golden hoofs, in the form of a shining horse, of a large, biting, and fierce camel, in the form of a boar with strong tusks (as also in the prayer to mithra), in the form of a youth, in the form of a man carrying a sword with a golden handle, in the form of the swiftest and largest of birds, in the form of a ram, and a fighting goat. and verethraghna gave zarathrustra strength of arms, health and vigour of body, and power of vision, like that of the horse which sees in the night, and the gold-coloured vulture." in the battle verethraghna hastens through the ranks and inquires with mithra and rashnu: "who lies against mithra? to whom shall i give death and destruction, for i have the power?" "verethraghna, the created of ahura, the bearer of splendour, i will praise"--such is a prayer in the avesta--"with audible praise, with offering. to verethraghna will i sacrifice. i will bring haoma in order that i may conquer this army, which comes up behind me. verethraghna holds back the hands of the ranks of the men who lie against mithra; he veils their sight, and dulls their ears, and suffers not their feet to advance. verethraghna brings the ranks together in battle; he destroys the ranks, and annihilates them."[ ] in the veda, the winds, the swift and strong maruts, aided indra against the demons; vayu, _i.e._ the blowing, the morning wind which chases away the dark clouds, was indra's charioteer (iv. ). in the avesta also, vayu, who blows before the morning light and the sun, and scares away the goblins of the night, who first drinks "the soma draught at the morning sacrifice," takes a prominent position, and under his vedic name. the heroes of ancient days cried aloud to vayu for victory, and he brought help to them all. he is the strongest of the strong, the swiftest of the swift, girded up and active, higher in stature, broader in the hips and shoulders, than the rest of the gods. he sits on a golden throne (p. ); wears a golden helmet, golden armour, a girdle and neckband of gold, and rides on a golden chariot. he says to zarathrustra: "i am called the beneficent, because i do good for auramazda. i am called the pure, the strong-winged, the mightiest, the swiftest, the powerful for defeat, the expeller of the daevas. i am called the hurling one, the biting one, the sharp lance, the flashing lance. i am called the conqueror. these names must thou invoke at the shock of the ranks in battle, in the stress of the conflict."[ ] in the avesta, as we saw, verethragna also appears in the form of the wind. the "pure swift winds," the air, "which works on high, which purifies the heaven from the right hand," are frequently invoked; the "strong wind, created by ahura," brings the rain-clouds which tistrya (p. ) has liberated over the earth; the wind carries away the lances, which those hurl who are hostile to mithra. we saw above, how the bactrians were defeated by artaxerxes i., "because the wind blew in their faces" (p. ). if in the avesta, in accordance with the character of the doctrine, the purifying force of the winds and fresh air is made prominent, the other traits quoted are sufficient to permit us to recognise the original conception formed by the iranians of the spirits of the winds. the pure waters, the well-flowing, the waters of the springs, pools, and rivers are often mentioned in the avesta and highly extolled. as with the arians in india, so in the avesta, the great waters are placed high up in the sky. the stars contain the seed of water; just as among the arians in india certain constellations at the appearance of which rain fell, were considered to be the home of the waters. in the avesta also the water of the sky is the source and origin of the waters on earth. in that book a female deity is the guardian of these waters, the goddess ardviçura anahita, _i.e._ the lofty, stainless one, "to whom auramazda gave the waters in charge." she is at one and the same time the source of the heavenly water, which springs up on the golden height of hukairya, the summit of the divine mountain, and the spirit of this source and of the water coming from it. at the height of a thousand men, the spring ardviçura flows down from the golden hukairya; it has a thousand basins, and a thousand streams, each stream is forty days' journey in length for an active traveller.[ ] the goddess who pours out this water is a strong, well-grown maiden of brilliant countenance, and beautiful arms, which are more brilliant and larger than horses. on her brow she bears a golden diadem, adorned with a hundred stars; she has golden ear-rings and neck-band, a flowing lower garment with many folds of gold, and golden shoes on her feet. her breasts fall down over her girdle; her upper robe is of bright otter skins, _i.e._ of the smooth skins of the animal of the water. she carries a golden paitidana, and holds the reins of her chariot which is drawn by four white beasts of draught. the deity of the water of the sky is in the avesta the most beneficent of the goddesses; the source of water is also the source of fruitfulness and life. she cleanses the seed of men, and gives a happy delivery to women; those who are with child entreat her assistance. to men she gives swift horses and strong comrades, if duly invoked and worshipped. we have already seen how the heroes of old days, yima, thraetaona, kereçaçpa, kava uça, kava huçrava, vistaçpa, sacrificed horses, cows, and smaller cattle to ardviçura, in order to win victory over the evil spirits, the dragons, the giants, and the enemies of iran (p. , ff.). zarathrustra asks the stainless ardviçura what sacrifice he must offer to her, in order that auramazda may not hold back his course in the height above the sun, that serpents may not injure the water by their sweat and poison. and ardviçura gave command that prayer and sacrifice should be offered to her from the ascent of the sun till daybreak; the sacrifice was to be consumed by the sacrificers and priests in honour of the goddess; the impure, blind, dumb, and all afflicted with infirmities were to be kept far from it. "come to me, come down, ardviçura," is the invocation, "from the stars to the earth which auramazda made; to thee, the excellent, mighty lords of the lands, the sons of the lords of the lands, will offer sacrifice."[ ] the divine mountain, on which the ardviçura rises, is in the avesta "the mighty navel of water (_apam napal_)," "in a course swift as the horse, auramazda causes the water to stream forth from it." on this mountain is the deep lake vourukasha, _i.e._ having wide shores, in which the waters collect together. out of this lake the water-clouds rise, which are to bring the fertilising rain to the earth. though the tropic storms are wanting in iran, the fertilising of the land by the water of the springs, rivers, and lakes, and by rain was of no less importance there than in the panjab. hence in the avesta we again meet with the contest of the good spirits against vritra, and in iran also these spirits are opposed to the demons of blight. it is demons of this kind, which, according to the avesta, keep back the rain-clouds above vourukasha, and men say: "when will tistrya (sirius) rise, the bright, the majestic, the lord of the stars? when will the streams of water flow which are stronger than horses?" and tistrya, whom angromainyu slays not, nor the magicians and pairikas, nor the magicians among men, gleams forth from the navel of the waters; he runs to lake vourukasha like an arrow, in the form of a horse, a beautiful brilliant horse, with yellow ears, and golden horse-cloth. auramazda and mithra prepare the way for him. ashi vanguhi and parendi follow in his wake with swift chariots. there goes to meet him the daeva apaosha, _i.e._ the witherer, in the form of a black, bald horse, with bald ears, bald back and tail, and ugly brand. for three days and three nights they struggle; and the daeva apaosha scares away the brilliant tistrya from lake vourukasha for the distance of a _hathra_. and tistrya speaks and says: "if men honour me with the sacrifice named by name, with duly performed sacrifice, and prayer, then at the appointed time i shall come to the pure men; hostile chariots and uplifted banners will not come nigh to the arian lands, and i shall have gained the strength of ten horses, ten bulls, ten mountains, and ten flowing waters." and auramazda sacrificed to tistrya and brought him that strength, and tistrya fought with the daeva apaosha till midday, and conquered and overpowered him, and scared him away from vourukasha. and tistrya announced blessing for the waters and the trees; the streams of the waters will come to you without opposition, the cloud rises out of lake vourukasha, and the vapours gather above on mount hendava in the midst of lake vourukasha, and tistrya drives forth the vapours, the pure ones, whence clouds are formed, and the strong wind drives clouds and rain to the villages and hamlets, to the seven kareshvare (the seven parts of the earth). and auramazda gave command to zarathrustra that the arian lands should offer sacrifice to tistrya, should sprinkle sacrificial rice, and sacrifice a bright, light-hued, haoma-coloured animal in order that he might withstand the pairika dushyairya (_i.e._ blight). "if i had not created tistrya," auramazda says, "this pairika would have carried on war day and night, but tistrya binds her with two and three fetters." "we praise tistrya, the brilliant majestic star, which drives away the pairika; he blows her away from lake vourukasha; then the clouds draw up, spreading themselves afar, which contain the fertilising water."[ ] another spirit which fights against the demons in the avesta is called Çraosha. on the divine mountain stands "his triumphant dwelling with a thousand pillars, on the topmost height of the great mountain, illumined within with a light of its own, decked with stars without;" his chariot is drawn by four spotless horses, which are swifter than clouds, swifter than winds, swifter than storms, swifter than birds with strong wings. a strong, well-armed, victorious youth, the strongest and swiftest among young men, who fears not the daevas, and before whom they fly in terror to the darkness, Çraosha is the companion of mithra; with him he overthrows the ranks of the hosts with whom mithra is angry (p. ). thrice in each day he comes to smite the daevas, with the axe of a woodman in his hand. thus he fights against the evil angromainyu, against aeshma, and the daevas kunda, banga, and vibanga; thus he forces the conquered daevi druj to answer him. in the dark he is wakeful against the evil ones; he protects the world from them when the sun has set; in each night he comes thrice upon the earth with his weapons in his hand. about the third watch of the night he arouses the bird parodarsh, _i.e._ the cock, that by his cry he may scare away the goblins of the night, and may banish the daevi bushyançta, which holds men imprisoned in sleep.[ ] Çraosha, moreover, protects the sacrifices which are offered to the good gods, and which the evil one would carry away or defile. one of the priests who took part in the sacred ceremonies held a club, the Çraosha-club, in his hand, in order to scare the demons and keep them back. of the two instruments which in the book of the law are used for flagellation, and by which the evil spirits are driven from the bodies of men, one is called the Çraosha-whip (_Çraosha charana_). we remember the numerous hymns of the veda which celebrate the benefits conferred upon men by agni, the spirit of fire, who is born from the double wood, and descends to earth in the lightning from the water-bed of the storm-cloud; the glow of this bright youth preserves men from beasts of prey, from murderers and evil spirits, helps the gods to victory, and contends in battle in the van; at the same time a royal house-lord and priest, agni is in the veda the upholder of the religious worship, the mediator between heaven and earth (iv. ). the avesta is filled with similar conceptions, though less poetical in form. here the power as victorious of fire against the demon takes the first place. we saw that mithra's chariot carried the kindled fire. "the sacred, strong fire" is invoked as a "warrior," as a "protector," as a slayer of the evil spirits, as the giver of good. to whatever side, we are told in the book of the law, the wind carries the smoke of the fire, it comes back thence as a slayer of thousands. "happy is the man," we are told in an invocation, "to whom thou comest in strength, o fire, son of auramazda, more friendly than the friendliest, worthy beyond others of supplication. o fire, we approach thee with perfect purity, with a good spirit; mayest thou come down to us bringing help."[ ] he who uses dry selected wood for the fire, him the fire blesses, saying: "may herds of cattle gather round thee, and abundance of men; may all things succeed according to the wish of thy soul. live out thy life happily to the full extent to which thou wilt live. the fire speaks with all those for whom it shines the whole night through, and cooks food; from all it demands good nourishment. the fire looks on the hands of all who come; what does the friend bring to the friend, he who approaches to him who sits alone?[ ]" the gathas of the avesta also speak of the pieces of wood for friction, out of which springs the fire that shows the way;[ ] and in another passage we hear of the fire urvazista which dwells in wood. the avesta distinguishes between the fire Çpenista, _i.e._ the house-lord, the hearth-fire (it is the same name that is given to the hearth-fire in india), the most victorious fire verethraghna, which slays all the demons, and by which, according to the custom of the parsees, the fires of the hearth must be renewed year by year, and the fire of lightning, which is called vazista. this last, which comes down direct from heaven, is the "most sacred of all fires, which slays the demon Çpenjaghra."[ ] in the avesta the priests are called athravas, a name which, no doubt, goes back to the worship of fire (_athar_); among the indians atharvan entices the fire from the wood, and together with manu and dadhyanch kindles the first sacrificial fire; the fourth veda is called after him (iv. ). in the avesta also the red glowing fires, which gleamed on the earth in the days of king yima, are repeatedly mentioned (p. ); it extols "the brilliance of the arian lands," denotes the fire-priests as possessors of the true faith, and assures us that what is right may be known from the clear, blazing flames.[ ] the sacrifice offered by the arians beyond the indus to indra, the maruts, and spirits of light, to strengthen them against the demons, the draught prepared from the soma, is known to us; we have shown how this soma which strengthens the gods became itself a god in the fancy of the indians--a mighty nourisher and sustainer of the gods. the same custom and deity are found in the avesta, only the name has become haoma, according to the phonetic laws of the bactrian language. the legend has already shown us what importance was ascribed in iran to the worship of the god haoma, and the sacrifice of this liquor. yima was born to vivanghana as a reward because he had first poured out the haoma and worshipped the god. to athwya, the second worshipper of haoma, thraetaona was born; and to thrita, the third, kereçaçpa, the hero (p. , ). to zarathrustra, who was born to pourushaçpa for a similar service, when he is dressing the sacred fire at the break of dawn, and singing the sacred hymns, the god haoma appears: "who art thou," asks zarathrustra, "who appearest to my sight as the most perfect in the corporeal world, with thy brilliant, immortal body?" haoma answered him: "i am the pure haoma, who protect men from evil. call on me, press out my juice in order to enjoy me; praise me as all other fire-priests praise me." then said zarathrustra: "supplication to haoma! haoma, the good, is well-created; duly-created is he, and gives health; he bestows kindness, is victorious, and of golden colour. thy wisdom, o golden one, i praise; thy strength, thy victory, thy healing power, thy greatness. i praise the mountains, the high ones, where thou, haoma, growest; i praise the earth, the wide and patient, thy mother, o pure haoma. mayest thou grow on the paths of the birds. to the horsemen, who spur their horses, haoma gives power and strength; to the maidens who have long remained unmarried, he gives true and vigorous husbands, gifted with good understanding, and to wives beautiful children and a pure posterity. to those who repeat the naçkas (the chapters of the avesta) he gives sanctity and greatness. praise to thee, haoma; thou knowest the words which are spoken with truth. praise to thee, haoma, who by thine own power art a mighty king. to thee auramazda first gave the girdle glittering with stars; girt with this thou lingerest on the summits of the mountains in order to maintain in sincerity the commands of the sacred sayings. o haoma, lord of the house, of the village, of the land, lord of wisdom, i call on thee for greatness and victory, for favour to my body, and rich food. o thou who art of golden colour, i entreat thee for skill and power, passing through the whole body, for beauty and health, for prosperity and increase, for greatness spreading over the whole form. the first boon for which i entreat thee, o haoma, who removest death, is that i may attain to the excellent habitation of the saints, the bright dwelling where there is abundance of all good things; the second boon is that this body may endure; the third, that my life may be long; the fourth, that i may go through the earth powerful and glad, troubling the tormentors, and slaying the druj; the fifth is that i may walk victorious on the earth and slay the evil. for this thing also, as a sixth boon, o haoma, who removest death, i entreat thee: may i be the first to see the thief, the murderer, and the wolf: may none of these previously see me. keep far from us the hatred of those who hate us; tear out the hearts of those who give poison. if in this house, this place, this village, this sacrifice, there is a man who does harm, take from him the power to go, obscure his reason, break asunder his heart with the commandment. let him not be mighty in the feet, let him not be mighty in the hands. o haoma, i make a prayer to thee, that thou mayest go a sovereign lord through the worlds, triumphing over hatred and the evil. thou shouldest triumph over the hatred of all who hate thee, over the hatred of the daevas and men, the evil spirits and magicians, the perverse, blind, and dumb, the two-footed murderers and insidious creatures, the four-footed wolves, and the numerous hosts which creep and fly."[ ] further, we find in the avesta that the "priest" offers haoma to mithra, Çraosha, and drvaçpa on the divine mountain.[ ] the plant of which this god is the genius, grows, according to the books of the parsees, as white heavenly haoma only on the tree gaokerena, _i.e._ the heavenly tree which stands on the divine mountain or in the spring ardviçura; the yellow haoma which grows upon the earth is only a copy or descendant of the white haoma. in iran also the preparation and expression of the haoma juice is accompanied by a long and minute ritual; and the offering of the sacrifice, which is still performed among the parsees of india, requires long invocations and responses between the celebrant and the ministering priests. at the present day the parsees send from time to time one of their priests to kerman in order to bring from their ancient home twigs of haoma for the sacrifice. the coincidence which we find above, in the forms of the legend, between the avesta and the veda--vivanghana, yima, athwya, thrita, kereçaçpa, and uça are found in both--is not less marked in the conceptions of the gods and their functions, and in the character of the worship. there can be no doubt that the arians of iran believed themselves to be protected and injured by the same spirits as the arians in the panjab. if on the indus invocations were addressed to vritrahan, vayu, the maruts, and mitra, in iran men prayed to verethraghna, vayu, and mithra. in both places vritra and ahi are the opponents of the god of light; in both fire was worshipped; in both the power of the sacrificial liquor was elevated into a mighty life-giving god. among the indians, as we saw, the priest who addresses the invocation to the god at the sacrifice is called hotar; in the avesta the zaotar utters the prayers. further coincidences in the number and nature of the gods, in the worship, in the laws and forms of purification, in the ceremonial, and even in the shape of the universe, will show themselves as we proceed. it is true that differences may also be found. many of the numerous spirits of the rigveda are wanting in the avesta; and again, some spirits in the avesta, such as anahita, Çraosha, tistrya, are unknown to the indians. variations such as these must occur where there has been a separate development from a common root. but the factors in the coincidence of the most important forms of the gods and heroes, and the distinctive modes of worship, in the avesta and the rigveda, the very oldest monument of the arians in india, are so great that any doubt whether the avesta remained free from alterations and influences of an alien or later nature in the revision under shapur ii., is entirely removed, and we know that we possess in it the remains of an original document of iran, going back beyond the time of cyrus. in the avesta we have before us the faithful expression of the ancient iranian faith. though not in its original form this result is the more certain, because on the one hand some deities, as for instance mithra, and some myths like that of yima, exhibit older forms in the avesta than in the rigveda, while in others we have almost an identity of language between the two. in the avesta as in the veda the soma is praised as "gold-coloured;" in both fire is the "house-lord;" the sun goes on his "path free from dust;" the power of the gods is increased by the sacrifice (p. ). in both one god offers sacrifice to another, in order to strengthen him; and the invocations of the avesta, like those of the rigveda, ask for health and long life for the suppliant; for possessions and wealth and favour, for the power to see the thief, the murderer, and the wolf before they are seen by him. footnotes: [ ] "gah ushahin," ; "mihr yasht," , . [ ] "mihr yasht," . [ ] pouruta may be referred to the [greek: paryêtai] of ptolemy, whom he places in the north of arachosia. [ ] cf. "mihr yasht," , where the boar is not verethraghna but the "curse of the sage." [ ] windischmann, "mithra; abhl. für kunde des morgenlandes," , ff. [ ] haug, "essays," p. . the sassanids also carry the club now called _guzr_. [ ] "yasht bahram," - . burnouf, "commentaire sur le yaçna," p. . [ ] "ram yasht," - . [ ] "aban yasht," ff.; "yaçna," . [ ] hang, "essays," p. . the passages given in the text from the aban yasht, notwithstanding the swelling breasts, shows how definitely the form of anahita belongs to the iranian conception, how peculiarly this goddess of fountains is represented in this form, and how intimately connected she is with the whole iranian system of the boon of water, and the legends of the heroes. a brass tablet found at grächwyl in the canton of berne, which exhibits the persian artemis with swelling breasts, surrounded by four lions, with a bird of prey on her head and serpents instead of ears, and wings on the shoulders, has decided j. stickel ("de monumento graechwyliano") to regard the persian artemis as identical with the semitic goddess of birth. this tablet is due to the syncretism of roman times. certain similarities between the syrian goddess of birth and fertility, mylitta-derceto, and the persian goddess of water, might lead to such a syncretism even under the achæmenids, and this coincidence might determine artaxerxes mnemon to erect images of anahita in ecbatana and susa after the pattern of the semites. beros. fragm., ed. müller, and below. [ ] "tistar yasht," ff., , - . [ ] "yaçna," ; "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , - ; "yaçna," , , ; "yasht farvardin," . [ ] "vend." , - , , . [ ] roth, "ueber yaçna, ," tübingen, , s. , . [ ] "vend." , ; "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , , . [ ] "yaçna," , , according to burnouf, "journ. asiat." - . cf. spiegel "avesta," , ff. [ ] "gosh yasht," ; "mihr yasht," ; "yaçna," , . chapter vi. the reform of the faith. in the gathas of the avesta the spirit who keeps watch over the increase of the flocks speaks to the heavenly powers, saying: "all creatures are distressed; whom have ye for their assistance?" auramazda makes answer: "i have one only who has received my commands, the holy zarathrustra; he will proclaim my exhortations and those of mazda and asha, for i will make him practised in speech."[ ] then auramazda sacrificed to ardviçura that he might unite with zarathrustra the son of pourushaçpa, to the end that the latter might think, speak, and act according to the law.[ ] pourushaçpa, _i.e._ rich in horses, of the race of haechataçpa,[ ] was the fourth who offered the sacrifice of haoma in airyana vaeja after vivanghana, athwya, and thrita. for this zarathrustra was born to him.[ ] at his birth and his growth the grass and the trees increased, and all the creatures of auramazda greeted each other because the priest had been created who would sacrifice for them and spread abroad the law of auramazda, over the seven kareshvare of the earth.[ ] Çraosha, accompanied by the sublime asha, appeared to zarathrustra, and the latter declared himself ready to swear enmity against the liars, and to be a mighty source of help to the truth. and the god haoma appeared to zarathrustra and commanded him to press out his juice and to praise him, as other fire-priests praise him. and zarathrustra praised haoma and his mother the earth, and addressed six prayers to him (p. ). ashi vanguhi also came at zarathrustra's command on her chariot, and inquired: "who art thou who callest on me, whose speech is the most beautiful which i have heard from all those who invoke me? come nearer to me; approach my chariot." then she surrounded him with her right arm and her left and said: "beautiful art thou, zarathrustra, well grown, with strong legs and long arms. to thy body has been given brilliance, and to thy soul long prosperity."[ ] and when zarathrustra sacrificed to verethraghna, he granted him strength of arm, health, and vigour of body, and power of vision, such as that of the horse, which sees by night, and the gold-coloured vulture.[ ] but auramazda taught zarathrustra "the best words," prayers, and invocations, and charms against the evil spirits.[ ] "how," zarathrustra inquires of auramazda, "how ought i to protect the creatures from the evil spirits, from the wicked angromainyu?" then auramazda answers: "praise auramazda, the creator of the pure creation; praise the victorious mithra; praise the amesha Çpentas (the immortal saints), which rule over the seven parts of the earth; praise the holy Çraosha, who holds the club against the head of the daevas; praise verethraghna, created by ahura, the bearer of the splendour; praise the shining heavens, and the glowing tistrya; praise vayu, the swift; praise Çpenta armaiti (the holy earth), the beautiful daughter of auramazda. praise the tree, the good, the pure, created by ahura, the well-grown and strong; praise the glittering haetumant (etymandros); praise yima kshaeta, the possessor of good herds. praise the good laws, the law against the daevas, the law of the worshippers of auramazda; praise the splendour of the arian land; praise the abode of the pure. praise the fire vazista (p. ), which smites the daeva Çpenjaghra. bring hard wood and perfumes, and water of purification to the fire."[ ] zarathrustra first proclaimed the words which auramazda had taught him to maidhyomao,[ ] the son of araçta, his father's brother, and spoke to the members of his race, the haechataçpas: "ye holy haechataçpas, to you will i speak; ye distinguish the right and the wrong." the announcement did not remain confined to the circle of the family and the race: "to you that come," we are told in another passage, "i will announce the praises of the all-wise lord, and the praises of vohumano. look on the beams of fire with pious mind. the fair sayings of the fire-priests are the way of vohumano. thou gavest ancient sayings, o ahura; by these will i annihilate among you the sacrifices of the lying gods. the worshipper of fire should accurately understand the correct words which have come from vohumano (the good disposition and its spirit) in order that truth may be his portion." in other poems zarathrustra laments: "the liar possesses the fields of the true man, who protects the earth; none of the servants worship me; none of the lords of the land, who are unbelievers. the dominion is in the hands of the priests and prophets of the lying gods; whither shall i go for refuge?--to what land shall i turn? i cry for help for frashaostra and myself. may the fire grant this help to both of us."[ ] frashaostra of the race of hvova, is mentioned in the avesta as the closest adherent of zarathrustra, and often in connection with jamaçpa. the help for which zarathrustra cried in this invocation was granted to him by king vistaçpa. zarathrustra offered the haoma draught in airyana vaeja to ardviçura, and prayed to her: "grant to me that i may combine with the son of aurvataçpa, the strong kava vistaçpa, to the end that he may think, speak, and act according to the law;" and the goddess granted him this favour.[ ] and zarathrustra sacrificed to the drvaçpa (the goddess of flocks) in airyana vaeja, to the end that he might unite with the good and noble hutaoça (the wife of vistaçpa), that she might impress the good law on her memory.[ ] finally, we read: "who is thy true friend on the great earth; who will proclaim it? kava vistaçpa, the warlike, will do this."[ ] of king vistaçpa and frashaostra the avesta then tells us, "that they prepared the right path for the faith which ahura gave to the fire-priests." in the prayers kava vistaçpa is praised because as an arm, an assister, and helper, he has subjected himself to the law of ahura, the law of zarathrustra; because he has opened a wide path for purity, and has established the law in the world. the mighty brilliance of the ruler supported zarathrustra, "in establishing the law and making it highly esteemed."[ ] when jamaçpa saw the army of the daeva-worshippers approach, he sacrificed to ardviçura a hundred horses, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand head of small cattle, and ardviçura granted to him to fight victoriously against all the non-arians. and zairivairi, the brother of vistaçpa, besought ardviçura that he might smite the skilful peshana, who worshipped the daevas, and arejataçpa. kava vistaçpa himself offered sacrifice in order to obtain the victory over asta-aurva, over the daeva worshippers Çpinjauruska, and darsinika, and the murderous arejataçpa.[ ] and vistaçpa smote peshana and arejataçpa, and zarathrustra blessed him: "i praise thee, o ruler of the lands. may life be given to thy wives and thy children, which shall be born from thy body. be thou possessed of swift horses, like the sun, shining like the moon, glowing as fire, sharp as mithra, a conqueror of enemies like verethraghna, well grown and victorious as Çraosha. mayest thou be a ruler like yima; mayest thou be victorious and rich in cattle like thraetaona, bold and strong as kereçaçpa, wise as urvakshaya, brilliant as kava uça, without sickness and death, like kava huçrava, stainless as Çyavarshana, rich in horses as pourushaçpa, a friend of the heavenly ones, and conqueror of men."[ ] the avesta gives zarathrustra three sons: urvatatnara, hvareçithra, daevotbi (punisher of the daevas); and three daughters: freni, thriti, and pourushiçta.[ ] his work is summed up in the fact that he compelled the daevas, who previously had been in human form upon the earth, to hide themselves in the earth.[ ] his doctrine prevents the daevas from injuring the creation, as before, and gives to all the creatures of the good god the means of protecting themselves more effectually against the evil. hence zarathrustra is the increaser of life; in this sense he is described, invoked, and worshipped as the lord and master of all created life. but in time Çaoshyant will be born, who will make the evil creatures wholly powerless, and bring on for man the time of undisturbed happiness, in which there will no more be any battle; the time of uninterrupted life, _i.e._ of immortality. in this period all who once had life will have life again; _i.e._ the life destroyed by angromainyu and the evil spirits will be restored, and the dead will rise to a new life. zarathrustra's birth and growth struck terror into the evil spirit angromainyu. "the yazatas" (the gods), he exclaimed, "have not forced me from the earth, crossed with paths, round, and wide-reaching; but zarathrustra will drive me from it."[ ] and the daevas took counsel on the summit of arezura, whither they are wont to come together from their caves with the druj: "alas! in the dwelling of pourushaçpa the pure zarathrustra has been born. he is the weapon with which the daevas are smitten; he takes away the power from the daevi druj, and the daevi naçu ([greek: nekys], _i.e._ the spirit of the dead), and the false lies; how shall we compass his death?" and from the region of the north angromainyu dashed forward, who is full of death, the daeva of daevas, and said: "o druj, go up and slay the pure zarathrustra." and "zarathrustra said in the spirit: the wicked, evil-minded daevas are considering my death. and he arose and went forth, bearing in his hand stones of the size of a kata, which he had received from the creator auramazda, and he praised the good waters of the good creation, and the law of the worshippers of auramazda, and uttered the prayer: _yatha ahu vairyo_. the druj ran round about him, and the daeva buiti, the deceiver of mortals; and the druj ran in alarm from him and said to angromainyu, the tormentor: in him, in the holy zarathrustra, i see no death. and zarathrustra said to angromainyu: evil-minded angromainyu, i will smite the creation which is created by the daevas; i will smite the spirit of the dead which the daevas have created, until Çaoshyant the victorious shall be born from the water of kançava, in the region of the east. angromainyu answered him: wherewith wilt thou smite my creatures? with what weapons wilt thou destroy them? then spake zarathrustra: the pestle, the bowl, the haoma, these are my best weapons, and the words which auramazda has spoken. by this sacred word will i annihilate thy creatures, o evil angromainyu. slay not my creatures, o pure zarathrustra, answered angromainyu. thou art the son of pourushaçpa, and hast life from a mother. curse the good law of the worshippers of auramazda, and attain the prosperity which vadhaghna has attained, the ruler of the lands. but zarathrustra spake: i will not curse the good law of the worshippers of auramazda; no, not though my bones and soul and power of life were torn asunder. then the evil daevas ran and took counsel on the summit of arezura, and angromainyu spoke: what will the daevas bring thither? but they said: 'the evil eye;' and hastened to the bottom of hell, the dark, the evil, the wicked."[ ] with zarathrustra, according to the avesta, a new era begins. he is the proclaimer of a new law. but along with this we are told that even in yima's time the earth glowed with red fires; the power of the old sayings of the fire-priests is extolled; the professors of the first, and those of the new law receive commendation. zarathrustra is born to his father as a reward for offering an ancient sacrifice, the sacrifice of haoma. he himself dresses the fire at daybreak before he comes forth to announce his new doctrine; and even while announcing it he sacrifices to the old gods verethraghna and ardviçura; the gods whom the heroes of the old days invoke appear to him also, the prophet of the new teaching; they demand that he shall offer sacrifice, and insist on their worship; they grant him favour and gifts. it is precisely the ancient sacrifice of haoma, the common possession of the arians in iran and india, which is declared by zarathrustra to be the best means of repelling the evil ones, and not zarathrustra only, but also auramazda sacrifices to an ancient divinity that the son of pourushaçpa may be obedient to his commands, and then directs the latter to invoke the ancient gods, mithra, verethragna, Çraosha, vayu, and tistrya, and to worship fire. hence it was no new religion which zarathrustra taught; it was nothing more than a reform of the ancient faith, and traditional modes of worship. we were able definitely to ascertain from the fragments of the avesta that it arose in the east of iran; the districts of the north-east are especially prominent in it. it denotes bactra as the abode of dominion (p. ). a doctrine which, as we shall see, lays the greatest stress on the cultivation of the land, could not have grown up in the deserts of the gedrosians, or the steppes of the sagartians. if, according to the avesta, "the evil custom of the burial of the dead prevails" in arachosia (harahvaiti);[ ] if haetumat (drangiana) is reproved for the sins which are practised there;[ ] if we are told of haraeva (the land of the arians) that it is indeed rich in houses but full of poverty and idleness,[ ] and of ragha that it is indeed zoroastian but full of utter unbelief[ ]--if the sin of burning corpses prevails in chakhra (chirhem?),[ ] it is clear that these lands are distinct from the region in which the pure doctrine of zarathrustra, proclaimed in the avesta, arose, and became so firmly established as to be universally current. hence of all the lands in iran, mentioned in the avesta, only airyana vaeja, margiana, sogdiana, and bactria remain. in the avesta zarathrustra is famous in airyana vaeja; in that land he sacrifices; and, as the avesta allots but two months of summer and ten months of cold winter to this region, we must look for it on the high mountain range of the north-east (p. ). zarathrustra stands in a close relation to queen hutaoça and king vistaçpa, who fights against the worshippers of the daevas and arejataçpa, and prepares a way for the new doctrine. among the heroes of the ancient time and the spirits of the pious who are invoked in the prayers of the avesta, the immortal part of king vistaçpa is repeatedly invoked besides zarathrustra and frashaostra. we have already shown in what a contrast the bactrians and sogdiani stood to the nations of the steppes of the oxus, and what a position is allotted to king vistaçpa as repelling the iranians. in thus celebrating him as the protector of zarathrustra, the avesta plainly puts zarathrustra himself in bactria. if we may assume the fact that the reform of the religion must have proceeded from bactria and sogdiana in the north-east of iran, the next question to be decided is, whether it is possible to determine the meaning and import of this reform. the forms and views, which are found to agree in the avesta and rigveda, we have already established, with complete certainty, to be the ancient possession of the arians of iran. the elements of the religious conception, and several very definite forms and traits in the belief and worship, were the same in the panjab and iran. the leading principle was the contrast of the bright beneficent powers who give life and increase and the evil spirits of darkness, drought, and death. this possession was therefore in existence before the reform. this principle must have become more prominent among the arians of iran owing to the nature of their country. the fertile land and the desert were in far greater proximity there than in the panjab. the centre of iran was filled with a vast desert; wide and barren table-lands spread out on north and south; the most favoured regions were almost like oases. closely adjacent to the most fruitful valleys and slopes lay endless steppes; blooming plains, shaded by thick groups of trees, were surrounded by hot deserts of sand. if the alpine districts of the north possessed the most splendid forests and luxuriant pastures, yet the snow fell early, and the winter was severe; if vegetation ran riot on the fringe of the caspian, fever and reptiles infested the marshy plains. close beside abundant productiveness lay drought and desert, bare flats of rock, deserts of sand, and fields of snow. the inhabitants of iran had not only to suffer from the heat of summer but also from the cold of winter, from the scorching winds of the desert as well as from the snow-storms which came from the table-lands of the north. on the one hand, pastures and fields were covered for many weeks with snow; on the other, sand-storms from the desert ruined the tillage; in one district camels succumbed to the cold of the lofty terraces, or slipped from the icy slopes down the precipices; in another, the desert wind dried up fountains and springs. here the winter, "which flies past to slay the herds, and is full of snow," as the avesta says, was "of endless duration;" it was "on the water, the trees, and the field," and "its cold penetrated to the heart of the earth;" there the herds were tormented by the fly in the heat, bears and wolves fell upon the folds, and it was necessary to find protection against serpents and ravenous beasts of prey.[ ] in this land life was a conflict against the heat of summer and the south, against the chill of winter and the mountain heights, a struggle for the maintenance and protection of the herds; and as soon as these tribes had become settled in the more favoured regions and passed over to agriculture, there began on the edge of those oases the struggle against the desert and the steppe. here water must be conveyed to the dry earth, there the tillage must be protected against the sand-storms of the desert. to these difficulties and contrasts in the nature of the land was added a contrast in the mode of life of the population. the majority of the tribes of the table-land of the interior, and a part of the inhabitants of the mountainous rim, could not, owing to the nature of the land, pass beyond a nomadic pastoral life, and even to this day the population of iran is to a considerable extent nomadic;[ ] while other tribes toiled laboriously in the sweat of their brows, these wandered with their herds in idleness, ever ready for battle; and thus there could be no lack of ambuscades and plunder, of attacks and raids on the cultivated districts. all these contrasts are most marked on the slopes of the north-eastern edge, in margiana, bactria, and sogdiana, which lay open to the steppes of the caspian sea. here were fruitful, blooming valleys with luxuriant vegetation on the banks of the mountain streams, yet, wherever the mountains receded, the endless desert at once began. if the stars shone clear through the night on mountains and table-lands, in the pure and vapourless atmosphere of iran, sand-storms and mist lay on the northern desert. the winds blowing from the north brought icy cold in the winter; in the summer they drove the sand of the deserts over the fruitful fields, to which water has to be laboriously conveyed in the time of the greatest heat, while eternal winter reigned in the heights of belurdagh and hindu kush. there was also the continual fear of the nomads who dwelt on the steppes to the north, who made attacks on the fruitful slopes and valleys. we have already shown that it was precisely on the slopes of the hindu kush that the necessity of protection against the nations of the steppes led to a combination of the forces of the tribes who were settled there, and gave the impulse to the formation of a larger polity. in such a territory, when the tribes had once become settled in the more favoured regions, amid such struggles against nature and the plundering neighbours, it is clear that the conception of the contrast between good and evil spirits must become more widely developed and sharply pointed--that it should indeed form the hinge of all religious ideas. the good spirits had given fruit and increase to many excellent lands; but the evil spirits destroyed these blessings with their storms of sand and snow, their cold and heat, their beasts of prey and serpents. wherever the herds throve and the fields were fruitful, there the good spirits were gracious; where the pastures withered, and the fields were covered with sand, the wicked spirits had maliciously rendered of no avail the labours of men. in the valleys of bactria and sogdiana there was labour, industry, increase and fruit; beyond, in the steppe, all was barren; the storms went whirling round, and wild hordes of robbers roamed to and fro. thus in these regions the conception of the struggle of the good spirits, and the evil, which injure, torment, punish and murder men, was most lively, the religious feeling of these conceptions most completely penetrated and governed the minds of men. all creatures were oppressed by the evil spirits, so the avesta told us (p. ); and therefore auramazda determines to teach zarathrustra "the wise sayings." no new belief or new forms of worship are to be introduced; the means of protection against the evil ones were to be multiplied and strengthened. we know what importance the arians in india ascribed to the correct prayer and invocation, what power over the spirits and indeed over the deities themselves they ascribed to the correct words, what a defensive power they attributed to the sayings of the atharvan. the same ideas were current among the arians of iran. the heaven of the good god and holy spirits is, in the avesta, the "dwelling of invocations" (garonmana). hence the first point in the reform was that new formulæ and prayers should be added to the old prayers and incantations. the fire that slays demons is to burn day and night on the hearth, and must always be tended with hard, dry, well-hewn wood; the spirits of light, the great mithra, the sun, the stars, are to be earnestly invoked along with the victorious verethraghna, and Çraosha the slayer of demons, the life-giving god, to whom haoma is to be offered; and the libation of haoma is to be frequently offered to the spirits of light. if men prayed constantly to the good spirits, and cursed the evil, if they made use of the holy sayings when they observed that the evil beings came, then wicked creatures would certainly remain far from house, and farm, and field. according to the avesta, zarathrustra first uttered the ahuna vairya, and angromainyu says that though the deities have not been able to drive him from the earth, zarathrustra will smite him with the ahuna vairya.[ ] in the minds of the priests of the avesta, this prayer is itself a mighty being to which worship is to be offered, just as in the vedas the holy prayers and some parts of the ritual--nay even the verse-measure of the hymns--are treated as divine powers. it was an old arian conception, which we have observed widely spread on the ganges, that filth and pollution and contact with what is impure and dead gave the evil spirit power over those who had contracted such defilement. this uncleanness must be removed, and its operation checked. the reform, which bears the name of zarathrustra, must have extended and increased in iran the rules for purification and the removal of uncleanness. these regulations, carried out in long and wearisome detail on the basis of this new movement, are before us in the vendidad. the avesta says: zarathrustra was the first who praised the asha vahista (_i.e._ the best truthfulness which is at the same time the highest purity) and represents angromainyu as exclaiming; "that zarathrustra made him as hot by the ashi vahista as metal is made in the melting."[ ] whatever gave increase and life, water and trees and good soil, and the animals which were useful to men, were the work of the good spirits, the good creation; the steppes, the desert, the heat, the fierce cold, the beasts of prey, these were the work of the evil ones, the bad creation. did not a man increase life and growth if he industriously cultivated his field, watered it well, and extended it towards the desert, if he destroyed the animals and insects which did harm to the fields and trees, if he gave room to fruitfulness against unfertility? did he not extend and sustain the good creation, and lessen the evil, if he planted and watered, and diminished the harmful animals, the serpents, the worms, and beasts of prey? by such work a man took the side of the good spirits against the evil, and fought with them. it was in the will and power of man by the act of his hands, by labour and effort, to strengthen the good creation. the importance which the avesta ascribes to the cultivation of the land, we may regard as a prominent trait of the reform, as an essential part of its ethical importance. beside warriors and priests the avesta knows only the agricultural class. in the veda the gods of the light and the highest heaven, mithra and varuna, are the guardians of truth and purity, the avengers and punishers of evil deeds. the invocation of mithra in the avesta, given above, showed us that the arians of iran recognised in this deity the spirit of purity, the inevitable avenger of injustice. with his all-penetrating eye he watches, not only over purity of body, but also over purity of soul. we may regard it as certain that the reform carried a long step forward the ethical impulse which lay in this conception of mithra--a conception current on both sides of the indus. this view is supported by the great importance which the avesta ascribes to truthfulness, in the decisive value given to this virtue for the purity of the soul, and the identification of purity with truthfulness. as filth defiles the body, so, according to the avesta, does a lie defile the soul. lying and deception are the worst sins of which a man can be guilty. the ethical advance is obvious when the evil spirits are not merely regarded as doing harm to men, but it is emphatically stated that they deceive men, and a lie is the essence of the evil spirits. in the avesta a part of them have simply the name of the spirits of deception, of the druj. the suppliants of the true gods are called _ashavan, i.e._ the true, the pure; the worshippers of the evil spirits are liars. the ideas of the veda about the hosts of the spirits of ancestors, and the entrance of the good and pious into the heaven of light, are also current among the arians of iran. these the reform could not leave untouched. from the ethical characteristic which marks them, from the severe inculcation of a pure, true, active life, it proceeded to the idea of a sort of judgment on the souls after death. the detailed form in which this idea is presented to us in the avesta will be given below. in all religions, when they have reached a certain stage of development, the impulse arises to find the unity of the divine being among the multifarious crowd of deities. on the ganges the brahmans or priests attained to this unity by elevating the power of the holy acts which controlled the deities, and was mightier than they, into the lord of the gods, by uniting with this conception the great breath or world-soul, the source of life springing up in nature. in iran the reform did not look on nature as one, like the brahmans on the ganges, and owing to the character of the land and the strong contrasts there met with it could not easily perceive in it any single whole; on the contrary, it comprehended in unity, on the one hand, the good beneficent side of nature, which gives increase, light, and life to men; and, on the other, ranged the harmful powers together in opposition to the good. hence it came about that the spirits which worked on either side were, so to speak, combined, and the two totals came forward in opposition. to these totals the reform sought to give unity by placing a chieftain at the head of each, the good and the bad. the chief of the good was ahura, _i.e._ the lord, who is also denoted by the name mazda, _i.e._ the wise, but he is generally invoked by the united title ahura mazda (auramazda in the dialect of western iran), the wise lord; occasionally, in the avesta, he is called Çpentomainyu, _i.e._ the spirit of holy mind, the holy spirit. in the rigveda the name ahura mazda, in the form asura medha, is used for more than one god of light. the chief of the evil spirits was angromainyu, _i.e._ he that thinks evil, the destroying spirit. the good and the evil spirits are regarded as active, the one on the beneficent, the other on the injurious side of nature. it was a step in advance when the reform arrived at the conception, that as the good and evil spirits ruled the life of nature and man, so in the beginning of the world, at the time of its origin, the good and evil spirits must have been active; the good was from the beginning the work of the good; the evil the work of the evil. as the heavenly and infernal spirits were regarded as in perpetual activity, the reform could not here, as in india, look on nature and men as emanations from a being in repose--from the world-soul--the nature of which became ever less pure and bright, less really itself, as the emanations advanced. instead of an emanation, the active force and contrast of the spirits gave rise to the idea that the world was brought into being by the will and power of the two supreme spirits to a creation of the world. the good side of the world must have been the work of the chief of the good spirits, the evil side the work of the evil. auramazda created the good, but immediately he created it, angromainyu created the evil in order to destroy the good. and as at the creation, so also in the created world, the mutual opposition of the good and evil god, the struggle of their hosts, goes on. there is no direct contest between auramazda and angromainyu; they operate against each other for increase and destruction, life and death, and for the souls of men; the direct conflict against evil remains, even after the reform, with the old spirits, with mithra, verethragna, Çraosha, and tistrya. from this we may without hesitation draw the inference that auramazda and angromainyu did not belong to the original belief of the arians of iran. from the absence of any myth about auramazda, and the character of the names, "the wise lord," "the destroying spirit," it further follows that the gods thus named could not be the creation of any primitive religious feeling. these names belong to a period of reflection, which strives to make a presentment of the general operation of the good and evil powers, of their intellectual and ethical characteristics, and at the same time seeks to express their nature, as well as their relation to the world. finally, the wavering position which auramazda takes up in the avesta towards the old deities, shows that he is of later origin. though now the supreme deity, he sacrifices to tistrya, in order to give him strength for the victory over apaosha (p. ); to ardviçura, that zarathrustra may be obedient to him (p. ); and to other gods of the old period. beside him mithra is praised in the old style as the highest power; he instructs zarathrustra to invoke the old gods, who still continue in their traditionary activity. but we have express evidence that auramazda belongs to the reform. "the first man," so the avesta says, "who sacrificed to auramazda was the sacred zarathrustra."[ ] in the transformation, however loose, of the divine nature into "the wise lord," with his change from a natural force to an ethical and intellectual power, and elevation to be the creator "of the heaven and the earth" (p. ), lay the most decisive step taken by the reform; by these conceptions it had raised the ancient possession of the arians of iran to a new stage. it is a remarkable fact that the evil spirits in the avesta bear the name of daevas. the arians of india called their good gods, the gods of light, devas; from the same root has sprung the general name of the gods among the greeks, italians, and the celts. hence among the arians of iran also it must once have been in use for the spirits of light. why the names bagha and yazata became used in the avesta for the good gods, while the evil spirits received the name of daevas we cannot discover; nor can we decide whether this change of name came in with the reform. we can only discover that an analogous change has taken place in india also. in the rigveda the good gods are comprised under the name asura (old bactrian ahura), _i.e._ the lord; at a later time the evil spirits among the indians were always called asuras, while in iran the name is allotted to the highest among the good spirits. footnotes: [ ] "yaçna," ; roth; "z. d. m. g." , ff. _geus urva_ means soul of the bull; the priests identified the soul of the first created bull with the protectress of the flocks, the drvaçpa, _i.e._ having mighty horses. spiegel, "avesta," , . [ ] "aban yasht," - . [ ] "afrin zartusht," . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "farvardin yasht," , . [ ] "ashi yasht," ff. [ ] "bahram yasht," - . [ ] "yaçna," , ; , ; , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "farvardin yasht," . [ ] "yaçna," , , , ; , - ; , ; , , , according to haug's translation, which however has been called in question. [ ] "aban yasht," - . [ ] "gosh yasht;" cf. "ram yasht," ; "farvardin yasht," . [ ] "yaçna," , ff. [ ] "farvardin yasht," ; "zamyad yasht," ff. [ ] "ashi yasht," ; "aban yasht," . [ ] "afrin zartusht," - . [ ] "yaçna," , ; "farvardin yasht," . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "ashi yasht," . [ ] "vend." , ; , - , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "yaçna," , , ; "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - , ; , . [ ] herodotus states expressly that some tribes of the persians were nomads ( , ); beside the sagartians nomadic tribes are also mentioned among the carmanians, areians, etc. [ ] "yaçna," , ; "ashi yasht," . [ ] "ashi yasht," . [ ] "ashi yasht," . chapter vii. the doctrine of the avesta. when the tribes of the aryas advanced from the panjab towards the east, and established themselves on the ganges, the gods to whom they had offered prayers on the indus faded away amid the abundant fertility of the new land; and the lively perception of the struggle of the gods of light against the spirits of darkness made room for the conception of the world-soul, from which nature and all living creatures were thought to have emanated. similar religious principles led the arians in iran to a religious reform of an opposite kind. the idea of an emanation of the world, proceeding without any opposition, could not maintain itself in a life occupied in labour for the means of sustenance, in toiling and struggling against nature. luxuriant growth and dreary desolation, scorching heat and severe winter, such as were found alternating in iran, could not flow from one and the same source. there man must be active and brave, and therefore the divine being could not be regarded as existing in repose. the nature of the table-land, divided between fertile tillage and desert, between heat and cold, not merely caused the old idea of the conflict between good and evil spirits to continue, but even increased and extended it. all nature was made subject to this opposing action of the gods, and the old conception of the conflict was developed into a complete system. with the extension of the operation of the beneficent and harmful power over the whole of nature, man was drawn into the conflict as active force. he must not only invoke the assistance of the good spirits; he must himself take part in the struggle of the good against the evil. in this way he provided for his soul and salvation better than by prayer and sacrifice; he strengthened so far as in him lay the life and increase of the world, and lessened the sphere in which the power of the evil spirits could operate. if the indians by the elevation of brahman arrived only at the great contrast between nature and spirit, between soul and body; if all nature was regarded as something evil and to be annihilated, so that the mortification and torturing of the body and annihilation of self became the highest ethical aims--the bactrians or arians in iran were directed by their reform to more energetic work and activity against the harmful side of nature, and the evil part of the soul. with the free choice of this or that side, with the duty of working on nature, and educating self, the conditions of a more happy and powerful development were given them. it was the duty of any earnest and eminent adherents of the reform, and afterwards of the priestly races who joined it, or grew up in it, to guide the impulse it had given, and bring the new ideas and the rules to be deduced from them into harmony with the old conceptions. if the contrast between the beneficent and harmful powers once took the shape of opposing spirits, the next object was to represent more exactly the character and nature of these spirits, and define more closely the good and evil deity. as the reform tended to elevate the natural side in these shapes into ethical qualities, it was inevitable that advance in this direction should lead at an early time to abstract views--that both spirits should be identified with the pure contrast of light and darkness, of truth and lying, of moral good and moral evil. if the good spirit was supreme purity and truth, he must originally have created the world in accordance with his nature. whence then came the injurious, the evil? had the evil spirit also a creative power? or was the evil first introduced after the creation of the world? if this was the case, and evil was not always in the world, then it must again disappear from it; if the pure god was the more powerful, he must again overcome the resistance of the evil. moreover, with the subordination of the light and dark powers to auramazda and angromainyu, and their combination into these two forms, an impulse was given which gradually forced the ancient deities into the background. the first point was, to put the latter in the right relation to the new god, who had created heaven and earth, and even these ancient gods. in the same way the old arian legend of the golden age of yima must be harmonised with the new doctrine of the creation, and a relation must be established between the sacrificers of the old days, who were without the good law of zarathrustra, and the latter. the sayings which held in check the evil spirits, and which the reform took from the body of ancient invocations or added to them in their spirit, must be accurately preserved if they were not to lose their force, especially the prayers and incantations which zarathrustra himself had spoken or was thought to have spoken. lastly, the mode of worship must be regulated in accordance with the tendencies of the reform. which and what kind of sacrifices, which invocations and songs of praise were the most efficacious, was a matter which required settling. the old customs of purification so indispensable for keeping at a distance the evil spirits, which the reform, as we ventured to assume, largely increased by new prescripts, must be united with the increased importance attached to truth and purity and combined into a comprehensive rule for the life pleasing to auramazda. what means were there for wiping out offences against this rule, and sins when committed, for turning aside the anger of mithra, for expiating falsehood, lying, and deception? we have already indicated (p. ) how numerous and complicated were the duties of the priesthood arising out of pollution and its removal. the answers which the priesthood of iran gave to all the questions which successively arose have been collected in the avesta. the gathas of the avesta, in which the metre has been retained, and along with it the older forms of the language--poems which, according to another part of the avesta (the Çrosh yasht), zarathrustra composed and Çraosha first sang[ ]--are the most speculative part of the book. they tell of the existence of the good and evil spirits, place both in the beginning of things, identify auramazda with the truth and angromainyu with the lie, bring forward auramazda as the creator of the world and of living creatures, as the source of what is good in man and nature, and describe the duties of the true worshippers and the rewards which they may expect, together with the punishments which will come upon the worshippers of the daevas. the ancient gods, mithra, haoma, tistrya, anahita and drvaçpa are not mentioned in the gathas; though emphasis is laid on the blessing of the "imperishable red fire of auramazda." in their place we have asha (truthfulness), and vohumano (good disposition), armaiti (piety), and kshathra (dominion); these are at times merely ideas, at times they are personified beside auramazda. in these poems zarathrustra addresses a number of questions to auramazda: "this question i will ask of thee; answer it truly, o ahura. who is the first father and begetter of truth? who created their paths for the sun and stars? who causes the moon to wax and wane? who sustains the earth and holds the clouds above it? who created the water and the trees of the field? who is in the wind and the storms that they move so swiftly? who created the beneficent lights and the darkness? for whom didst thou create the imperishable cow ranyoçkereti (the earth)? who formed the earth with its great blessings? who are the daevas, which fight against the good creation? who slew the hostile demons? who is the truthful one, who is the liar? how are we to chase away the lies, how shall i put the lies into the hand of asha (truthfulness)? how can i come to your dwelling (the dwelling of the gods), and to your song? give me now the command, what ought to be and what ought not to be, in such a way that we attentive ones may understand it, o mazda, with the tongue of thy mouth, how am i to convert all living creatures, and guide them to the right path, which leads to him who hears the praises of the truly pious in heaven (garonmana). tell me clearly, what ye command me as the best, that i may keep it in my heart, and remember what has been forgotten, mazda ahura, all that ought to be, and ought not to be. teach us, o true one, the way of vohumano created by thee. let us, o mazda, receive thy sayings which bring blessing." "on thee have i looked as the source in the creation of life, because thou, o rich in gifts, didst establish the sacred customs and announce the words. he who first willed that the spaces of the sky should clothe themselves with lights, he in his wisdom establishes the law of duty for the pious. in the spirit a man must think of thee that thou art ever the same, ahura. i regarded thee as the most excellent, o mazda, whom thy people have to worship in spirit, as the father of the pious, since i saw thee with my eye, as the eternal law-giver of the world, living in his works. since thou of old, o mazda, didst create all beings and spirits according to thy will, and gave them reason and a material body, all men, the wise and the unwise, cause their voices to sound, each according to his heart and mind; he who strives after wisdom proves in his spirit on which side is error. all gleaming bodies with their manifestations, everything that by vohumano has a bright eye, the stars and the sun, the herald of the day, move for thy praise, o mazda. in thee the holy earth exists, and the highly-intelligent framer of the body of the earth, o living spirit mazda. thou didst create the world, the earth with the fire that rests in its bosom. with pleasant fields thou didst adorn it, after taking counsel with vohumano, o mazda. thou didst first create the fields, and didst devise the sayings by thy spirit, and the various kinds of knowledge; thou didst then create this world of existence, by holy acts and speeches. to mazda belongs this kingdom which he causes to grow by his grace."[ ] "to you, all ye that come, i will announce the praises of mazda the all-wise lord, and the hymns to vohumano. o wise asha, i will entreat that friendship may display itself through the stars. hear with your ears the glorious, see with your spirit the clear, that every one for himself may choose his faith before the great work begins. those two primæval spirits, which are twins, represent themselves in thought, words, and works as this dualism, the good and the evil, and between both the virtuous know how to decide, but not the evil. when these two deities first came together, they created the good creatures and the bad, and (arranged) that at the last hell should be awarded to the bad and blessedness to the good. of these two spirits the evil one chooses the worst way of action; but the increase-giving spirit chooses virtue, he whose robe is the firm heaven,--and those who in faith make auramazda content by truthful acts. between them the worshippers of the daevas, the deceived, cannot rightly decide; they chose the worst disposition, and came to the evil ones when in council, and together they hastened to aeshma, that by him they might bring plagues upon the life of men. but when the punishment of their evil deeds shall be accomplished, and thy kingdom as the reward of piety shall come upon those who put the druj (the lie) in the hands of asha (truthfulness), then destruction overtake the destroying druj; but those who possess high renown will gather as immortal in the beautiful dwellings of vohumano, of mazda, and asha. thus then let us work to make this world eternal, o auramazda, o asha that givest blessing; may our thoughts be there, where wisdom is enthroned."[ ] "teach me to know both, that i may walk in the way of vohumano, the sacrifice, o mazda, which is fit for a god like thee, and the pure words of thanksgiving; give me the duration over which ameretat presides, and the blessings of haurvatat.[ ] may he be praised, who in complete truth, so far as he knows it, will tell the charm of asha, the utterance of prosperity (haurvatat, _i.e._ health--and afterwards the spirit of prosperity and the waters) and of immortality (ameretat immortality, and afterwards the spirit of long life and good plants)."[ ] "the acts, words, and sacrifices by which i, o mazda, might attain immortality, purity, and power over haurvatat, i will, so far as i can, perform for thee.[ ] grant to me, o most holy spirit, mazda, thou who didst create the cow, the waters, and the plants, grant me immortality and health, power and duration, that i may follow the doctrine of vohumano."[ ] "from thee comes the nourishment of haurvatat and ameretat; may piety (armaiti) increase with truth under the dominion of vohumano, and power and continuance as a counter-protection."[ ] "send us the blessing of a long life."[ ] "i ask thee, answer me truly, ahura, when shall i win this reward by truthfulness?--ten mares with their stallions and a camel, that haurvatat and ameretat may be in my possession, and i make an offering to thee of their blessings."[ ] "i will proclaim what the most holy one says to me, the best word for mortals to hear; those who for its sake lend ear to me, to those will haurvatat and ameretat come." "to every one who is a friend to him in thought and word, auramazda has given power over the rich haurvatat (health), over the rich ameretat (freedom from death); he has given him dominion and independence and the riches of vohumano."[ ] "let none of you listen to the counsel and command of the evil one, for he brings farm and community, canton and land, into distress and ruin, but punish him with the weapon."[ ] "on the day when asha will slay the druj, on the day of immortality, when that comes forth, that was denied, when the daevas and men will receive their reward; then, o ahura, a mighty song of praise will be raised to thee."[ ] "to thy kingdom and thy truth, i offer praise, ahura, asha. listen to this with kindly spirit, mazda; incline thine ear, ahura. let the worshippers of the liar be few; may all these turn themselves to the priests of the truthful fire! the good must rule over us, not the evil! ahura, the all-knowing, cannot be deceived. i will think of thee, most glorious one, at the final departure of life. with prayers, o mazda, asha, will i come forward to praise thee, and with the works of vohumano. in your dwelling, o wise one, sound the praises of them that give thanks. i will be called the singer of thy praises, and will continue to be so as long as i can, by advancing the laws of life, that the life of the world may continue of itself. with the verses which have been composed and handed down for your praise, i will approach both of you, and with uplifted hands. as a worshipper i will invoke you one and all, ye who give blessing, as well as all those who attain to the strong bridges of your blessedness, auramazda, asha, and vohumano; those bridges which belong to you. come ye to my aid."[ ] these are the essential traits of the doctrine of the gathas. auramazda, himself a shining one (_hvathra_), has created the shining bodies of the heaven, the earth, the waters, the trees, and men; he has appointed their paths for the stars. he is the sustainer of the world, inasmuch as he devises the good sayings (_daena_) for the protection of the good creation. he is light and truth, and therefore is not to be deceived; he shows the right way to zarathrustra, and gives him the proper charms against the evil spirits. that at this stage of ideas there can be no myth attached to auramazda, _i.e._ to the concentrated essence of the gods of light, is obvious. in the gathas it is only the quite abstract forces of vohumano and asha, of good disposition and truthfulness, which stand beside him. auramazda is simply the creator and lord; and the same position is ascribed to him as we saw (p. ) in the inscriptions of the achæmenids. in spite of the strongly-marked trait of spiritualisation and abstraction which runs through the gathas, there is no lack in them of unreflecting and naïve conceptions, which have come down to us from ancient days. it is true that the contrasts in nature and men are elevated to the opposition of truth and falsehood, and the service of truth is proclaimed as the highest command; but on the other hand, it is the strong fire of auramazda which causes the right to be recognised, and gives the decision in battle.[ ] it is the good sayings which sustain the world, _i.e._ the old magic of prayers and invocations is to keep off the evil, and increase the strength of the good, spirits. however high may be the conception of auramazda, he who walks in his way, and performs the commands of purity, not only expects his reward, but insists on it; he desires to obtain ten mares and stallions, and at least one camel; he wishes for the blessings of haurvatat in order to sacrifice from them; he desires continuance and power, health and long life. in these traits the old contrast between powers that give increase, blessing, and life, and powers of destruction, is plainly retained. from the beginning the evil one was ranged over against auramazda as his twin brother. he has created all that is evil, but nevertheless he is without any independent power of creation. if the gathas express this merely in such a manner that they give prominence to auramazda as the creator, they were as far from setting up a dualism of equally-balanced forces, as any other religion has been from attempting such a task, and carrying it out. the other fragments of the avesta leave no doubt of the fact, that angromainyu was not in a position to create the world according to his own will; he can only implant the form of evil in the good creation of auramazda; he puts desolation, destruction, and death in the place of increase. the vendidad quotes a whole series of lands which auramazda created good, and enumerates the evils which the deadly angromainyu brought into each:--into one winter, into another excessive heat; in one case vermin, in another disease, in a third beasts of prey. in the same way, in opposition to moral good, the evil one creates idleness, lies, lust, doubt, disbelief. an equally poised power of the two deities would have led to a direct conflict between them, which occurs nowhere in the avesta; god and the devil only contend for the increase and injury of the world, and for the souls of men. the relative inferiority of the evil deity has not escaped the greeks. "some are of opinion," plutarch says, "that there are two opposite deities, one of which framed the good, the other the evil. others, however, name the better power the god, the other the demon, as zoroaster the magian. he calls one oromazdes, the other areimanius, and states that oromazdes most resembles light among perceptible things, and areimanius gloom and uncertainty."[ ] it is a later speculation, diverging from the avesta, which formed the good and evil spirits into simple forces, and ranged them against each other with equal powers.[ ] in the gathas we have the nucleus of the conceptions from which the reform of the ancient faith of iran arose, but not in their original state. on the contrary, they have been systematised in the circles of the priests. hence the contents and prescripts of other parts of the avesta, which do not present a speculative tendency, are not on that account to be regarded as of later origin than the gathas--least of all the invocations to the ancient deities. it was an essential object of priestly meditation to bring these old gods, which existed vividly before the soul of the nation, into harmony with the new faith. on every page of the avesta it is clear that the priests of eastern iran did not attain to an accepted system in this direction; that the old gods remained in existence beside auramazda, and the direct contest against the evil spirits, after the reform as before it, was carried on by mithra, verethraghna, and vayu, tistrya and Çraosha, while auramazda is in the background, and sits somewhat passively on his golden throne in the heaven of garonmana. when the avesta was written down and collected, the ideas of the priests were still so naïve, or still preserved such a respect for the traditional forms of the gods of light and water, as they obviously lived in the mind of the people, that they represent auramazda himself as offering sacrifice to mithra,[ ] anahita, vayu, and tistrya, with haoma and the sacred bundle of twigs, in order to strengthen their power or carry out his own wishes, just as the gods of the aryas in india offer sacrifices to one another. in india the old gods received a subordinate position as protectors of the world after the rise of brahman, but in iran this was not the case; nor were they brought into any genealogical connection with their new head auramazda, though fire is occasionally spoken of in a figure as the son of auramazda, and the earth (armaiti) is once or twice called his daughter.[ ] the only bond of union between the new god and the old gods in the avesta is the fact that auramazda is made the creator of the old gods, and even of mithra. yet the old position of mithra appears, when auramazda says to zarathrustra: "when i created mithra, the lord of wide pastures, i created him as mighty to pray to, mighty to worship as myself." tistrya also was created by auramazda as worthy of adoration and praise as himself.[ ] we are already acquainted with auramazda's command to zarathrustra to invoke and worship mithra, vayu, the other ancient gods, and fire (p. ). the existence and extent of this worship is proved not only by the prayers of the yaçna, but also by the accounts of western writers which we have already examined. as a compensation for the independent life of the ancient gods by the side of auramazda, the priests surrounded his throne with six spirits, who were his associates and helpers. these are called amesha Çpentas, _i.e._ the holy immortals; as good and wise kings they rule with auramazda over the seven girdles of the earth,[ ] as in india the eight protectors of the world rule over the eight zones. the views out of which these spirits arose are found in the gathas, but they did not receive their complete form till the gathas had been composed and generally received. plutarch tells us that, according to the faith of the persians, oromazdes had created six gods: the first, the god of good disposition ([greek: eunoia]); the second, the god of truth ([greek: alêtheia]); the third, the god of order and law ([greek: eunomia]); the three remaining deities were the gods of wisdom ([greek: sophia]), of wealth ([greek: ploutos]), and of delight in the beautiful ([greek: epi tois kalois hêdeôn]). the two first, good disposition (vohumano), and truth or truthfulness, we already found frequently mentioned in the gathas, but chiefly as ideas rather than persons. with the priests vohumano and asha vahista (the most excellent truthfulness) became the amesha Çpentas, who stand next to auramazda. the avesta speaks not only of the good way of vohumano, but also of his acts, his dwelling, and his kingdom. according to the books of the parsees it is his duty to protect the flocks. asha vahista, as the truthful one, is the protector of fire, which points the right path, and, according to the gathas, gives the decision in the contest against the liars. according to the books of the parsees, asha builds the bridge of chinvat, to which the souls come after death, making it wide when the pious souls step upon it. not less correctly does plutarch describe the third amesha Çpenta as the spirit of order and law. kshathra, _i.e._ the kingdom, the dominion, is mentioned impersonally in the gathas; and this idea the priests have elevated into kshathra vairya, _i.e._ the good spirit of the desired dominion, of good order and law, which is the third amesha Çpenta. metals were allotted to him as the king of the ameshas.[ ] the fourth figure in this circle, which plutarch correctly describes as the spirit of wisdom, though he is wrong in calling it a god, is the earth spirit armaiti. in the rigveda aramati (the earth) is a maiden worthy of praise, who, morning and evening, brings butter to agni. in the avesta armaiti is "the beautiful daughter of auramazda, the bearer (_barethri_) of cattle, of beasts of draught, and men;" with "her hands auramazda performs pure actions," while the gathas also ascribe to her special relations to the corporeal world.[ ] among the priests the spirit of the "patient humble earth" has become the spirit of humility and piety. according to the books of the parsees armaiti gives patience and firmness.[ ] the fifth and sixth spirits also, whom plutarch calls the gods of wealth and delight in the beautiful, were found in existence by the priests, and merely ranged by them in the circle of the amesha Çpentas. these are haurvatat and ameretat. we saw how earnestly the arians of india besought the gods for wealth and length of life; and in this matter the arians of iran were not behind them. here, as there, the powers which could grant such gifts were elevated into special spirits, to whom, naturally, all that gave wealth and long life, good and healing plants and refreshing water, belonged. the good plants were the kingdom of ameretat, refreshing water the domain of haurvatat. in the fancy of the arians of iran good plants sprang from the tree of heaven, the gaokerena, which grew in ardviçura (p. ); the water flowed down from this source in heaven, or came from vourukasha, the lake on the divine mountain. those two spirits, who ruled over plants and water, were brought by the system of the priests into the circle of the amesha Çpentas; the province over which they ruled had long been apportioned to them. they were distinguished from the first four by the fact that those were personifications of moral ideas, these two were personifications of real goods.[ ] with wealth, prosperity and happy life is given, with length of life the complete enjoyment of its blessings, and so the greeks could arrive at the conclusion that these two spirits were gods of wealth and delight in beauty. thus auramazda now ruled surrounded by six sacred forms. the semblance of this circle on earth was the throne of cyrus and his successors, which was surrounded by the six tribal princes of the persians. the personification of ideas--the process of transforming old figures, and changing them into abstractions--did not come to an end with the amesha Çpentas. we are acquainted with Çraosha, the warrior against the daevas, his habitation on the divine mountain, his horses, his club, and how he fights at the side of mithra, and keeps watch in the dark of the night against the demons (p. ). now it is he who first sang the sacred four gathas of zarathrustra, who first bound the sacred withes, "three twigs, five twigs, seven twigs;" he not only knows the sacred word; the sacred word is the body of Çraosha. instead of the club which he held raised against the head of the daevas, the invocations of the avesta and the prayer ahuna vairya are now the weapons with which he, "the pure lord of the pure," "advances the world." we remember the process by which the arians in india came to represent indra as smiting vritra, and shattering his cave, not as formerly with the lightning, but with brahman, the power of the prayer and the sacred acts. obviously we have some influence of these old arian conceptions of the mysterious power of prayer, and the control of the spirits possessed by the correct invocations and sayings against gods and spectres, when we find Çraosha fighting with the prayers of the avesta, and in the avesta the sacred word is praised as a divine power--[ ] when zarathrustra offers sacrifice to the good law.[ ] more liberal creations on the part of the system of the priests are the elevation of "excellent thought, knowledge, and conception," of "the long study," "and the thought of the pure man," which are invoked and praised in the avesta, into divine powers. of not less abstract nature are other forms, like rashnu razista, _i.e._ the most straight-forward justice,[ ] which, according to the dinkart, tests the souls on the bridge of chinvat; time, which is invoked as unlimited, as the ruler of the long periods, and like the genius of the five portions into which the priests divided the day. of older origin, though also modified by the reform, is the invocation of the heights, which mithra first illuminated with his light. in the avesta this invocation is mainly addressed to the high "navel of the waters," the divine mountain, which reaches to the sky, "on which were asked the holy questions," _i.e._ on which zarathrustra has received the revelation; "by reason of the revelation of the sacred word we invoke the height, which preserved the knowledge."[ ] many of the traditional forms of ancient times were partly modified by the priests and partly allowed to fade away. the goddess drvaçpa, to whom the ancient heroes had sacrificed, they changed into the soul of the primeval bull, which angromainyu had slain.[ ] nairyoçangha, the naraçansa of the veda, an ancient name of the spirit of fire, which we learned to know in the veda as the messenger of men to the heavenly beings, as priest and mediator between heaven and earth (iv. ), appears in the avesta merely as the messenger of the gods.[ ] the form of vayu, the more ancient conception of which still plainly breaks through (p. ), becomes merely the air "whose operation is on high;" and ashi vanguhi, whom the ancient sacrificers and heroes invoked, together with ardviçura, for victory, bears traces which can hardly any longer be recognised. we merely perceive that she could once confer power, fertility, beauty, and wealth. we saw above how she called zarathrustra to her chariot, and promised splendour to his body, and long prosperity to his soul (p. ). if the luminaries of heaven, in spite of the creation described to auramazda, are extolled as "having no beginning," we have in this fact a glimpse of the old position of the spirits of light. the struggles of tistrya against the demons of drought were allowed to remain (p. ). plutarch observes that, according to the doctrine of the magians, oromazdes had placed sirius (tistrya) as a watchman and advanced guard. on the other hand, the worship of the sun-god appears but faintly in the avesta--in our fragments at any rate. yet herodotus informs us that with the persians the neighing of horses at sunrise was regarded as a favourable sign from the gods, and xenophon states that the magians offered bulls to zeus, but horses to the sun-god, and that on the journeys of the achæmenids the chariot of zeus went first, then that of the sun-god; both were white and crowned; and these were followed by a third chariot covered with purple, which as it seems was the chariot of fire. in the march of xerxes to hellas, according to the account of herodotus, a sacred car, yoked with eight white horses, went before him; and ten sacred horses were led, clothed in the most beautiful trappings. curtius represents the emblem of the sun as glowing over the tent of the last darius, who invokes "the sun, mithra, and the sacred eternal fire;" and he tells us of the chariot of zeus in the army, yoked with white horses, behind which was led a horse of remarkable size, the horse of the sun, with golden bridle and white covering, like those before the chariot. dio chrysostom tells us that the magians reared a yoke of nisaean horses for zeus, _i.e._ for mithra, which were the largest and most beautiful in all asia, and a horse for helius.[ ] we can call to mind the battle-chariot of mithra, "with golden wheels and silver spokes" (p. ). these were imitations of the divine chariots of which the greeks tell us, and if they were not in a position to distinguish accurately what belonged to mithra (auramazda does not come into the question), and what to hvare kshaeta (the sun-god)--strabo is of opinion that the persians called the sun mithras[ ]--we may still conclude with certainty from these statements, that the worship of mithra and the sun-god remained more vigorous and effectual among the princes and nations of iran than our fragments of the avesta would allow us to assume, if the old invocations to mithra, tistrya, haoma, vayu, and verethraghna had not been preserved in them. yet the fragments do present us with an invocation to the sun-god, though weakened, it is true, and adapted to the new faith. "we celebrate the brilliant, immortal sun, whose horses are unwearied. when the sun gleams in heaven, the heavenly spirits come by hundreds and thousands, and spread the light over the earth for the salvation of the pure world, for the salvation of the pure bodies. as the sun rises, the earth purifies herself, and the fructifying waters of the springs, pools and lakes; the sun-god purifies all creatures that belong to Çpentomainyu. if the sun came not, the daevas would slay all that inhabits the seven girdles of the earth, and the heavenly beings would not be able to withstand them; they could not drive them away. he who sacrifices to the sun in order to withstand the dark daevas, the thieves and robbers, he sacrifices to auramazda, to the amesha Çpentas and to his own soul."[ ] in the time of the sassanids, the worship of the sun comes definitely forward. plutarch states that the demon areimanius had created an equal number of evil spirits to match the six good gods of oromazdes, _i.e._ the amesha Çpentas. the vendidad mentions five of them: andra, Çaurva, naonghaithya, tauru, and zairicha,[ ] to which we have only to add akomano, which has been mentioned already in the gathas, in order to make up the number. they are all of them creations of the priests, partly invented to match the amesha Çpentas, partly borrowed from older forms, which had lost their brightness among the arians of iran. akomano, _i.e._ bad disposition, is naturally the counterpart of vohumano, or good disposition: opposite asha vahista, _i.e._ the most excellent truthfulness, the priests placed the demon andra (indra), _i.e._ an old arian name which the arians beyond the indus had elevated to be the best warrior against the demons, the god of the storm. no special qualities of andra are known or mentioned in the avesta; the books of the parsees can only say that he brings care and sorrow of heart to men, and makes narrow the bridge of chinvat. the demon Çaurva is the opponent of kshathra vairya, of order and law, of good dominion; hence, according to the sad-der-bundehesh, he leads kings astray into despotism, and nations into lawlessness and robbery. naonghaithya is the opponent of armaiti, the spirit of humility and piety; this spirit therefore, as the bundehesh maintains, makes men impatient and proud; the science of languages claims to find in this name a vedic name for the two açvins,--nasatya (iv. ). only the last two opposing spirits of the amesha Çpentas, the opponents of haurvatat and ameretat, display, like these beings, real characteristics. if they are the spirits of water and plants, of prosperity and long life or immortality, then tauru is the spirit of thirst and sickness, and zairicha of hunger and death.[ ] if the ancient gods have preserved more lively traits than the amesha Çpentas, the old demons have also more definite outlines than the opposing spirits. such are the daeva apaosha, who parches up the land and keeps back the water from the earth; Çpenjaghra, the comrade of him who was struck by lightning; zemaka, the spirit of the cold winter; and finally azhi, who seeks to steal away the fire from men in the night. among these evil spirits may further be reckoned a female demon bushyançta, with long hands and of a yellow hue, who leads men astray into much sleep and idleness, who does not allow them to see the rise of the sun, and shortens the joy of existence;[ ] the three daevas of drunkenness, kunda, banga, and vibanga; the daeva buiti, the spirit of lies and falsehood, who deceives men;[ ] the spirit of flattery, ashemaogha;[ ] and the very wicked ashma "of evil glance," who attempts to slay the sleeping, and withstands Çraosha by night with terrible weapons.[ ] very evil also is açtovidhotu, _i.e._ the destroyer of bodies, and a female goblin, the spirit of the daevas, the druj naçu. this spirit enters the body immediately after death, and exercises power over all who come in contact with it. under auramazda are united the gods, the amesha Çpentas, the rest of the yazatas (those worthy of adoration), in opposition to the troops of hell, the daevas, druj, pairikas and jainis, which are led by angromainyu. the first are found in the light of sunrise, in the clear gleam of the pure sky; the latter in the gloom of sunset, or in the distant clouds of the north; in burial-places, and where the dead are placed; in all corners into which the light of heaven does not pierce; in the dark abyss under earth; in "the worst place."[ ] on the summit of the mountain arezura (demavend, apparently), they take counsel how they are to turn the evil eye on men; how they can injure and slay them.[ ] to them belong gloom, cold, drought, the barren land and the wilderness, thorns and poisonous herbs, hunger and thirst, sickness, death, dirt, laziness, lying, sin. theirs are the harmful beasts, the khrafçtras; beasts of prey, wolves, serpents; all animals which live in holes and corners, lizards, scorpions, toads, frogs, rats, mice, gnats, and lastly mosquitoes, lice, and fleas.[ ] to the good spirits belong light, water, springs, rivers, the fruitful earth, good plants,[ ] trees, fields, pastures, good food, purity, truth, life in this world and the next; and theirs are the good animals, the animals of the flocks, the birds which nestle on the heights, and live in the clear air. the dog and the cock are worshipped in the avesta as fighting with men against the daevas. the first protects the flocks against the beasts of prey of angromainyu. of the cock the avesta says: "the bird parodarsh, which evil-speaking men call kahzkataç (_i.e._ kikeriki or the like), lifts up his voice in the last third of the night, roused by the holy Çraosha at every divine dawn. he cries: 'rise up, ye men; praise the most excellent truth; drive away the daevas.' who gives a pair of these birds to a pure man, in purity and kindness, gives as much as if he had given a palace with a thousand pillars and a thousand beams, ten thousand windows, and a hundred thousand turrets." "and whoever gives to a pure man as much meat as makes the size of a parodarsh"--the book of auramazda tells us in another place--"i who am auramazda will ask him no other question on his way to paradise."[ ] according to the avesta the dog and cock unite their powers against the druj.[ ] the bird asho-zusta fights against the daevas, and the bird karshipta (the sacred hawk) announces the good law in the garden of yima. two other mythical birds, the two eagles (_çaena_) of the sky, amru and chamru, are invoked as helpful powers.[ ] they nestle on the tree of life in the heaven. besides the tree gaokerena, which grows in ardviçura and bears the heavenly haoma, the avesta has also the tree viçpataokhma, which grows in the lake vourukasha, and bears all seeds. when amru sits on this tree, the seeds fall down, and chamru carries them away where tistrya collects the water, who then rains down the seed with the water to the earth. in the book of kings of firdusi, simurgh (Çinmurv), the king of the birds, carries rustem on his pinions over the broad earth as far as the sea of chin (china) to the tree of life.[ ] a prophet of the hebrews represents jehovah as saying of cyrus: "i summoned from the east the eagle, the man of my counsel."[ ] xenophon tells us that cyrus, and the achæmenids who succeeded him, carried as a standard a golden eagle on a tall lance;[ ] and curtius says, that a golden eagle with outspread wings was attached to the chariots of the persian king.[ ] the fragments of the avesta which have been preserved do not give us very full information on the sacrifices. the essential matters are hymns of praise and prayers. the chief sacrifice is offered to one of the old deities, haoma, the supporter and protector of life. when plutarch represents the magi as pounding a certain herb of the name of omomi in a mortar, with invocations to avert hades, he gives a correct account of the supposed tendency of this sacrifice. according to the avesta the utensils for this sacrifice--the mortar, cup and bundle of twigs--were found in every house. the sacrifice consisted in the offering, _i.e._ the elevation of the cup filled with the juice of the haoma, during the recitation of the proper prayers. beside this offering, which even now is offered twice each day by the priests of the parsees, the fire is to be kept up perpetually, and fed with good dry wood and perfumes. the flesh of the sacrifice (_myazda_) is not often mentioned; yet the book of the law provides that a thousand head of small cattle must be offered in expiation of certain offences,[ ] and we are told in the invocations that the heroes of old time, from thraetaona down to king vistaçpa, had offered great sacrifices of animals to ardviçura and drvaçpa, in order to gain the victory, viz. horses, cattle, and , head of small cattle. herodotus tells us that the magians, when xerxes marched into hellas, sacrificed oxen on the summit of pergamus to athene of ilium, and at a later time white horses in thrace; xenophon maintains that the persians sacrificed beautiful bulls to zeus, _i.e._ to auramazda, and horses to the sun, and burnt them whole; athenæus tells that with the king of the persians a thousand animals were daily slaughtered as sacrifices; camels, horses, oxen, apes, deer, and especially sheep. according to arrian, the magians who kept guard over the burial-place of cyrus received a horse every month, and a sheep every day, for sacrifice.[ ] herodotus has already told us, that the animals were led to a pure place, and when the sacrificer had invoked the god were killed, cut up, cooked, and then laid out on delicate grass. the magian then sang the theogony, and after some time, the person who offered the sacrifice "carried away the flesh, and used it at his pleasure" (p. ). herodotus is better informed than xenophon; according to the avesta only the head of the animal belongs to the gods.[ ] obviously, as the nature of the gods became more spiritualised--and the reform prepared the way for this--the sacrifice of animals was restricted in this manner, so that it consisted essentially in the offering of the animals, _i.e._ in the consecration of the flesh. we may conclude from the statement in athenæus, that only consecrated flesh could be eaten at the court of the kings. xerxes certainly would not have sacrificed to athene, "a lying deity" of the greeks, on the summit of ilium; but he might very well have selected the last eminence in asia minor, "the many-fountained ida," in order to offer there a sacrifice of oxen to ardviçura for his victory beyond the sea--a sacrifice which corresponds exactly to the first offering made by kava huçrava and kava vistaçpa to the same goddess for victory over the turanians.[ ] temples and images are unknown to the avesta. the reform preserved for the nations of iran the traditional form of worship without images, on which it was founded. the accounts of western writers, from herodotus and xenophon downwards, establish the fact that there were only sacrificial places on the heights and consecrated fire-altars in iran.[ ] but this must not be taken to mean that the forms of worship and the images of the nations with which the persians became acquainted after the foundation of their supremacy, especially of their nearest neighbours, the semites on the tigris and euphrates, remained without influence on them. on the monuments of darius we see the picture of auramazda, cut exactly after the pattern which the assyrian monuments exhibit in the portraiture of their god asshur. we are also told of images of anahita. berosus maintains that artaxerxes mnemon erected statues to aphrodite anaitis at babylon, ecbatana, and susa, and taught this form of worship to the damascenes and lydians.[ ] from this statement, taken in connection with the account of herodotus that the persians had learnt to sacrifice to mylitta,[ ] the conclusion has been drawn that artaxerxes ii. introduced the worship of bilit among the persians. but it was not necessary to teach this worship to the damascenes and lydians (i. , ), and even in the avesta, anahita as the goddess of the heavenly water is the goddess of fertility. hence the statues made by artaxerxes were, no doubt, images of anahita the goddess, whom he invokes along with auramazda and mithra in his inscription at susa. strabo describes the worship of the magians at the fire-altars of cappadocia in a manner which completely agrees with the accounts given in the avesta, and then adds that these functions were also performed in the enclosures ([greek: sêkoi]) which were consecrated there to anaitis, amardatus, and omanus, and the image of omanus was carried round in processions. he concludes with the words: "this (_i.e._ the form of worship described) i have myself seen."[ ] according to this account, then, amardate,[ ] _i.e._ the amesha Çpenta ameretat, who averts death, was worshipped there beside anahita, and omanus, _i.e._ the amesha Çpenta vohumano, the protector of the flocks, had an image. as this is all that we can discover about the image-worship of the persians, it is clear that the influence of the picture-worship of hither asia and egypt had no great influence even on the western nations of iran. it is limited to the facts that darius added the symbolical picture of auramazda to his inscriptions without, however, building him a temple; that a century after him artaxerxes ii. erected statues and a temple to anahita at ecbatana; and that at a later time a portable image of vohumano was in existence in cappadocia. the nucleus of the old religious conceptions of the arians--the desire to obtain increase and life from the gods--has been sufficiently disclosed; and that which could not be obtained in this world, the continuance of the individual life, heaven was to bestow upon them. this line was followed up by the reform; the spirits of health and long life were added by the priests to the circle of the amesha Çpentas. when zarathrustra had increased the means for the protection and support of life; when it became a fixed maxim that purity preserved life in this world and ensured it after death; the sharp insistence on the command of the pure and active and truthful life which men ought to lead in this world, became developed into the conception of a judgment on the souls after death. he who had lived purely, and given the daevas no room to exercise their power on his body, became himself pure and bright, and could therefore enter after death as a pure spirit among the spirits of light. thus the avesta announces that "when body and soul have separated," the soul on the third night after death, as soon as the brilliant sun arises, and the victorious mithra seats himself with "pure brilliance" on the mountains, comes over the hara berezaiti to the bridge of chinvat, _i.e._ the bridge of assembly or of assembling, which leads to garonmana, _i.e._ to the dwelling of hymns, the abode of the good gods. here the daevas and the gods contend for the soul;[ ] the judgment of the souls takes place;[ ] here auramazda asks the souls about their conduct.[ ] the pure soul, whose odour the daevas dread,[ ] which approaches with virtue and sanctity, is joined by the other pure souls and by the souls of the dogs which keep watch over the bridge of chinvat,[ ] and the host of the heavenly yazatas brings the soul of the good over the bridge into heaven. in contentment the pure soul goes to the golden throne of auramazda, to the thrones of the amesha Çpentas, to the dwelling of the pure. and vohumano rises from his golden throne and inquires of the pure one: "how hast thou, o pure one, come hither out of the perishable to the imperishable world?"[ ] but the souls which come to the bridge full of terror and sick, find no friend there; the evil spirits, vizaresha by name, lead them bound down into the place of the bad, into the darkness, the dwelling of the druj.[ ] in the veda the spirits of the fathers are invited to the sacrificial meal; they are to enjoy the gifts which are laid for them on the grass, to support the prayers of their descendants, to keep away the evil spirits, and to increase wealth. each day water was poured there for the forefathers, and corns of rice were scattered for them; on the new moon the clans held the funeral feast for the dead; and we are acquainted with the consequences which attended expulsion from this banquet.[ ] the belief in the spirits of the ancestors, and their continued relation to their descendants, existed also among the arians of iran, and the avesta alters it only so far as to limit consistently the assistance given by the spirits of the fathers to the souls of those who have lived in truth and purity, and have thus found entrance into heaven. according to the avesta the fravashis of the pure--this is the name given to the pitaras, or fathers of the indians--protect their descendants against the daevas, help them in distress and danger, and fight for their families on the day of battle, if they are honoured and satisfied by their descendants. it is only an old conception, repeated in the avesta, when we are told: "we invoke the good, strong, holy fravashis. where strong men fight in severe conflict, there come the fravashis with strong shield, iron helmet, and iron weapons; with mithra and the victorious wind they go forward; strong warriors against the enemies, they are mighty saviours; strong conquerors, they destroy the victory of the enemy--the turas (turanians)."[ ] it is due to the additions and modifications introduced by the priests that we hear that the hosts of the fravashis watch the body of kereçaçpa till the resurrection, and the seed of zarathrustra, and protect the sleepers from the rising of the stars till midnight.[ ] as among the arians of india the ancient belief in the fathers was retained in spite of all changes of the religious system, so also in iran. at the close of the year, on the intercalary days which were added to it, the fravashis come to their families, abide among them for ten nights, and ask: "who will receive us, and sacrifice to us, and praise us?" and "if any one offers to them prayers and flesh and clothes, him they bless, and in his dwelling there will be abundance of oxen and men, swift horses and a strong car."[ ] the greeks had therefore reason to say that according to the doctrine of the magians the air was full of spirits.[ ] in another direction the system of the priests deviated far more widely from the ancient conception of the spirits of the ancestors. they held that only the pure and bright part of the soul could live on after death. hence, even in the living they distinguished this part from the polluted part, and in the pure immortal half they saw the side created by the good gods, its true being, the fravashi or protecting spirit allotted to each man. in the avesta therefore rules can be given for the invocation of this pure part and nature of the individual soul, of the separate fravashis. the priests then transferred this notion to the heavenly spirits, and even to auramazda himself. his purest nature, his best self, must be praised and invoked for aid. auramazda says to zarathrustra in the book of the law: "o zarathrustra, praise thou my fravashi, the fravashi of auramazda, the greatest, best, most intelligent, best-formed, highest in holiness, whose soul is the holy word."[ ] and in the prayers we are told: "we praise the fravashis of the amesha Çpentas, of the holy Çraosha, of mithra, together with all the fravashis of the heavenly yazatas. i invoke the fravashi of the holy zarathrustra, the fravashis of the men of the ancient law, and the fravashis of the men of the new law, the good mighty fravashis of the pure, of the nearest relations, and of my own soul."[ ] the persians at the king's gate, according to the greeks, set apart a separate table at each meal with bread and food for the "demon" of the king, and at a persian banquet the host, according to plutarch, calls on his guests, "to honour the demon of king artaxerxes." hence it clearly follows that the priestly doctrine of the fravashis of the living was current even in western iran under the achæmenids.[ ] zarathrustra had increased the means for keeping off the evil ones, and had made the struggle against the wicked spirits easier for men. but the time will come when the struggle will be no longer necessary, and the bright spirits alone will rule. this doctrine is indicated even in the gathas.[ ] in the book of the law zarathrustra says to angromainyu: he will smite the daevas till Çaoshyant is born from the water of kançava in the eastern region.[ ] Çaoshyant, _i.e._ the useful, the saviour, is called in the avesta, "the sublime, the victorious;" he will smite the druj, and aeshma will bow before him. he will make the world to live for ever, without age and death; the dead will rise again, and the living will be immortal. vohumano will smite akomano, asha will kill the lies. haurvatat and ameretat will destroy thirst and hunger: "the evil-doer angromainyu, robbed of his dominion, bows himself."[ ] this doctrine of the avesta also was well known to the western world. in herodotus prexaspes tells cambyses that when the dead rise again he will see smerdis and astyages.[ ] theopompus of chios tells us: zoroaster had proclaimed that there would be a time in which the dead will arise, and men will be immortal, and everything will be done by their invocations. last of all, hades will pass away; men will then be happy; they will need no nourishment, and throw no shadows, and the god who will accomplish this rests for a time, but not a long time for a god.[ ] it is true that men required no nourishment when Çaoshyant had appeared, in the meaning of the avesta, for haurvatat and ameretat had overcome hunger and thirst as well as sickness and death; and as the dark side of man was taken away, and only the bright side remained, they could not cast any shadows. as already remarked, it was part of the duty of the priests to bring the ancient legends of the old time into harmony with the new doctrine. we saw that the legends of iran began with the happy age of yima, and his reign of a thousand years full of increase and blessing. this conception of a perfect age for the creatures of earth at the very beginning of things did not suit with the struggle, which, according to the new doctrine, angromainyu commenced immediately after the creation. the priests, therefore, conceived the beginning of things in a different manner. in their system auramazda first created the heaven, then the water, then the earth and the trees, and after these the four-footed bull, and the two-legged pure man gayo maretan.[ ] in the avesta the primeval bull and man are at the head, and time extends from gayo maretan to Çaoshyant.[ ] the books of the parsees then tell us that angromainyu killed the primeval man and bull, but from the seed of the bull proceeded a pair of oxen, and then all kinds of good animals; and out of the seed of gayo maretan grew up the first man and the first woman. as we have already remarked, our fragments of the avesta identify the soul of the first created bull with the drvaçpa, the ancient guardian spirit of the flocks; next to gayo maretan they place haoshyangha, the paradhata (p. ), and represent him as sacrificing to ardviçura, vayu, and ashi vanguhi, in order to obtain the dominion over the evil spirits.[ ] after him takhmo urupa rules the earth of seven parts; he sacrifices to vayu in order to obtain grace to restrain angromainyu for thirty years.[ ] then, according to the system of the priests, follows the dominion of yima the son of vivanghana, during which there was no cold and no heat, no age and no death, as was represented in the old views. yima kindles the red-glowing fire. flocks and men, _i.e._ life, increase; and the earth must be made larger. the end of this happy period, and the death of yima, is brought about, according to the priests, by the fact that yima refused to be the preacher of the doctrine of auramazda, that he was unable to maintain purity and truth, and began to "love lying speech" (p. ). as yima was born to vivanghana as a reward for his haoma sacrifice, there follows a series of those who have offered the sacrifice: athwya, thrita, pourushaçpa, and their sons. to the first thraetaona was born, who smites the serpent dahaka; to thrita kereçaçpa, who smites the serpent Çruvara; and to pourushaçpa was born zarathrustra, who receives the law of auramazda and proclaims it; by this law the daevas will be warded off till Çaoshyant appears, when everything which has once had life will come to life again. footnotes: [ ] "yaçna," , , - . [ ] "yaçna," , , , , , , according to haug's translation, which is not universally accepted; "yaçna," after roth. "z. d. m. g." , ff. [ ] "yaçna," , after hübschmann's rendering. [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , , ; cf. , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . the passages in the text concerning haurvatat and ameretat are given after darmesteter, "haurvatat et ameretat," p. ff. [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," , . [ ] "yaçna," - , according to haug's translation. [ ] "yaçna," , , ; , ; , . [ ] plut. "de isid." . [ ] from the invocation of the time without limit, _zrvana akarana_, in the avesta (p. ), some have sought to draw the conclusion, that this is the supreme principle, and that auramazda and angromainyu proceeded from it. this is no less incorrect than if it were maintained that according to the christian dogma god and the devil owed their origin to eternity. in the avesta zrvana akarana does not assume an important place either at the creation or in the worship. i have already remarked above, that the spirits of light are called in the rigveda sons of aditi, _i.e._ of the unlimited, the eternal. parallel similitudes which, however, mean no more than the eternity of the gods, could be made even among the arians of iran. but there is a difference between speaking in similes, and derivation from a principle. the faith of iran was not a philosophical system, but a religion; a religion cannot combine the good and evil god into one unity. it is only when speculation becomes master over religion, that conceptions of this kind can find a place; and this speculation, which sought for primeval cosmical unity, arrived as a fact at an identical origin for the good and evil spirit; but this was not the case with the avesta. centuries after the establishment of the canon we find the oldest form of such teaching in a demand made to the armenian christians that they should join the faith of auramazda. in this we are told that the great deity zrovan had sacrificed for a thousand years, and had received two sons, ormuzd and ahriman. the first had created heaven and earth, the other had opposed him with evil works. about the same time theodorus of mopsuestia in cilicia (phot. "biblioth." p. , ed. bekker), tells us: "zoroaster called the creator of all things zaruam, and described him as fate;" and in the sixth century damascius ("de prim. princip." p. ) writes: "the magi and the whole arian nation call the whole and one in thought, space and time respectively; from this one arose the good and evil god, oromasdes and areimanius, or as others say light and darkness were divided before these." the sect of the zarvanites, who deviated from the faith of zoroaster, inasmuch as they carried these principles still further, has been already mentioned (p. ). [ ] "mihr yasht," . [ ] ashi vanguhi is in one passage called the daughter of auramazda and armaiti; "yaçna," , ; "vend." , ; "ashi yasht," . [ ] "tistar yasht," . [ ] "vend." , ; "yaçna," , , . [ ] "vispered," , . [ ] "yaçna," , ; , ; , ; "vend." , ; haug, "essays," p. . [ ] spiegel, "eran," , . [ ] darmesteter, "haurvatat et ameretat," p. , ff. [ ] "vend." , - , . [ ] "din yasht," . [ ] "rashnu yasht," . [ ] burnouf, _l. c._ p. , . [ ] "gosh yasht;" yaçna, ; , . [ ] "vend." , , ; , . [ ] herod. , , ; xenoph. "cyr. inst." , , ; curtius, , , ; , , . dio chrysost. , , ed. dindorf. [ ] p. . [ ] "khorshed yasht," in de harlez, "avesta," p. . [ ] , , . [ ] "zamyad yasht," ; darmesteter, _l. c._ p. . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] burnouf, "journ. asiatic," , p. . [ ] "vend." , . windischmann, "zoroastrische studien," s. . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , , ; , ff.; plut. "de isid." c. ; agath. , . [ ] plut. "de isid." c. . [ ] "vend" , - ; - . [ ] cf. "bundehesh," c. . [ ] "yasht farvardin," ; "yasht bahram," - . [ ] kuhn, "herabkunft des feuers," s. ; darmesteter, _loc. cit._ p. . Çinmurv has arisen out of _Çaena (Çin), i.e._ eagle, and _meregha_, "bird;" middle pers. _murv_; new pers. _murgh_. in new pers. Çinmurv becomes simurgh. [ ] isaiah xlvi. . in aeschylus also an eagle represents the persians and a falcon the hellenes; "pers." - . [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] , . [ ] "vend." , , , . [ ] xenophon, "cyri instit." , , , ; athen. p. ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] "yaçna," . , , . strabo, p. , tells us that the deity of the persians received nothing from the sacrifice. [ ] what herodotus tells us of the sacrifice of girls and boys by the magi in thrace contradicts his own statement that the magi did not venture to kill any one, and the whole conception of the avesta. if cambyses is said to have caused twelve persians to be buried alive, this is not to be regarded as a sacrifice, but as a barbarous form of execution, which occurs also under the sassanids. what herodotus says of the fourteen boys offered by amestris as a sacrifice, if true, must have its origin in some other superstition, not in the avesta; and the actions of amestris and parysatis in this direction, as recorded by ctesias, were in any cases crimes, not sacrifices. [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] windischmann has shown, "abh. bair. akad. phil. philol. kl." , , , that, [greek: amardatos] must be read for [greek: anandatos]. [ ] "vend." , - ; , - . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , , ; , ; cf. , - . in the dinkart the proceedings on the bridge are related at greater length. [ ] vol. iv., , , . [ ] "farvardin yasht," - , , . [ ] "farvardin yasht," , . [ ] "farvardin yasht," - . [ ] diogen. laert. "prooem." . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "yaçna," , ; , ; burnouf, "commentaire," p. . [ ] plut. "artax." ; theopomp. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] "yaçna," , ; , ; above, p. . [ ] "vend." , - ; above, p. . [ ] "zamyad yasht," , , . [ ] , . [ ] theopomp. fragm. , , ed. müller. [ ] "yaçna," , - . [ ] "yaçna," , ; "farvardin yasht," . [ ] "aban yasht," - ; "farvardin yasht," ; "ashi yasht," ; "zamyad yasht," . [ ] "ram yasht," ; "zamyad yasht," . chapter viii. the priesthood of iran in the form in which we have them the books of the avesta are the work of the priests of eastern iran. according to the evidence repeatedly furnished by them, there were three orders in sogdiana and bactria: priests, warriors, and husbandmen. this sequence, which is uniformly preserved both in the invocations and in the book of the law, shows that the priests had risen above the warriors, and claimed to be the first of the three orders.[ ] in considering the civilisation of the bactrian kingdom we found ourselves compelled by the proximity of the nations of the steppes to assume, that when the arians had become established there, the tribes which had a capacity or love for battle, undertook the protection of the land, the flocks and fields, against the incursions of the nomads of the north, and made battle and strife their special vocation. such attacks increased with the increasing culture of bactria, and led to a consolidation of powers; these clans raised one of their number distinguished in battle to be their leader, or followed him, and thus was laid the basis for the foundation of a great state. the importance ascribed in the avesta to the splendour of majesty--we find the personification of good government in the avesta among the amesha Çpentas--in combination with the battles which, as we learn from the book, the princes of bactria carried on against the turanians, and with the statements in the west iranian epos about the kingdom of the bactrians, together with the later condition of the country, allowed us to draw the conclusion that at one time the kings of bactria were not without power and importance. they reigned, surrounded by the families of the warriors, who were enabled by their possessions in lands and flocks, to devote themselves to the practice of arms and to battle. the invocations to mithra, verethraghna, and vayu, bear upon them very evident traces of a war-like spirit (p. , ). that the spirits of the sky, which once fought with the cloud-dragons, have become mortal heroes in the avesta, also proves--since even among other nations the epic poetry which follows periods of warlike excitement transforms shapes of the sky into heroes of old time--that once on a time bactria had experienced a period of warfare, when difficulties arose which it was mainly the business of the monarchy and the nobles to settle. the avesta can tell us of arms and robes as well as of palaces with pillars and turrets; of earthen, iron, silver and golden vessels; of mats, carpets, and adornments of gold,[ ] such as are found among noble families; and those hecatombs of horses, cattle, and sheep which the heroes in the avesta sacrifice to anahita and drvaçpa, in order to obtain their favour by victory, are no doubt borrowed from the sacrifices which princes and nobles were wont to offer in cases where the numbers must be enlarged in honour of the heroes. yet we see that xerxes orders a thousand oxen to be sacrificed at one time. we have already shown (iv. ), how important and pre-eminent was the position which the races of the warriors, "the princes," occupied on the indus and the ganges, and what respect they commanded among "the free indians" in the panjab, even in the fourth century b.c. that a warlike nobility of a similar character, attitude, and position, existed in eastern iran, is the less to be doubted, as the order of warriors in the avesta is denoted by a name (_rathaestar_) which goes back to the chariots of war. the husbandmen, who were settled beside and among them, bear in the avesta the name of vaçtrya,[ ] but the word vaeçu is also used for them, which simply repeats the name of the indian vaiçyas. like the arians of india, the arians of iran believed in the power of the correct invocations, prayers, and sacrifice; among them also the sacrifice strengthens the gods and increases their power. in india too, the priests, and minstrels, and sacrificers handed down in their families the knowledge of the effective invocations and ceremonies which exercised compulsion on the gods, and the same was the case in eastern iran; priestly families arose at a very early period. they did not here retain the name of supplicators, as in india; but are called athravas in the avesta. in the veda atharvan kindles the sacrificial fire, and among the arians of india the incantations of the race of atharvan passed from the most powerful. in a similar way powerful invocations and sentences were handed down in iran from father to son in the race of the athravas. these families preserved the ancient invocations to mithra, verethraghna, anahita, tistrya, which are preserved to us in the avesta, though in a modified form. the god haoma instructs zarathrustra to praise him, as the other fire-priests had done (p. ). the reform which bears the name of zarathrustra cannot have left the condition of the priests unchanged. the doctrine may, as invocations in the avesta would seem to show, have first found adherents in the race of haechataçpa, to which zarathrustra belonged, and to which he first proclaimed his law ( ), and next in the race of jamaçpa and frashaostra, who are spoken of as zarathrustra's most zealous followers. according to the creed of the parsees the good law also came to aderbat mahresfant by family descent (p. ). these new races of priests, who knew the sayings, invocations, and prayers of zarathrustra, would then be joined by those among the races of the old fire-priests who approved of the reform, and the priesthood thus formed would be further strengthened by those who, deeply impressed by the new doctrine, sought and found reception as pupils into a family of the priests, thus entering into their circle, and becoming members of their families. united by a new doctrine and settled tenets, the priests who represented the reform would become united together more firmly than the priestly families of the old time. the priesthood could very well claim precedence of the warriors; on their prayers and sayings, their knowledge of the custom of sacrifice, depended the favour of the gods, the power of averting evil spirits, the removal of pollution, salvation in this world and the next. yet they could not obtain such a position as the brahmans held on the ganges after the reform of the ancient faith, and the victory of brahman over indra. for in iran there was no order of Çudras, no vanquished remnant of an old population, which created a sharp line of division even among the orders of the aryas; and moreover the brahmans were the first-born of brahman, a purer incarnation of the divine nature than any other order. the world had not emanated from auramazda; there were in iran no gradations of beings in which the divine essence existed in a more or less pure condition. all had to fight against evil deities and against evil; the priests were the leaders in this struggle--this leadership and nothing more could they claim. in their lives they studied especial purity of body and mind; and they were pre-eminently "the pure men." only by their means, at any rate with their assistance, could sacrifice be offered; from their mouths alone could the correct invocations be uttered to the gods, and the evil ones be driven away. men were compelled to submit to the rules of the life acceptable to the gods of light, of pure conversation, which were accurately known to the priests only; they had to take upon themselves the expiations which the priests prescribed, in order to wipe out offences and sins and their consequences--but they had not to reverence in them, as was the case beyond the indus, a class of creatures raised by birth to a higher level. hence the sharp separation of the priesthood from the rest of the orders, in the brahmanic fashion, was at once placed out of the question. the priesthood of iran perpetuated their knowledge and wisdom in their families; but they had not the right to bar all entrance into their families or their order on the score of higher birth, or to prohibit the marriage of priests with women of other orders, on the ground of their superior nature. from our fragments of the avesta we may assume that although, as is obvious, the precedence of the priests above the remaining orders was strongly marked, and they were especially denoted as "pure men," the limits of their political and social position were far more modest than those of the brahmans. so far as we can see, the avesta allots no special income to the priests beyond the camels, horses, or small cattle given to them by warriors and husbandmen in quittance for the purifications they have performed. the penalties also which have to be paid in expiation of certain offences are to be given to "the pure men," and the avesta repeatedly recommends the presentation of gifts to them. on the other hand, the priests do not possess the exclusive right to perform purifications. the vendidad merely says that any one who wishes to perform purifications must have learned the law from one of the purifiers, _i.e._ it is only the instruction of the priest which is indispensable in this matter. any one who performs purification without such instruction (except in the case of necessary purifications, p. ), will take away from the places where it is performed, "food and fatness, health and all remedies, prosperity, luxuriance and growth, and increase of corn and fodder; and corn and fodder will not return to such places until for three days and nights the holy Çraosha has been praised at the burning fire with bound withes and uplifted haoma." the uncertified purifier is to be put in chains, his clothes taken from him, and his head cut off.[ ] if it was permitted to learn the purifications, it follows that men not of priestly descent could enter the order of the athravas, and the boundary line between this order and the rest was not impassable. among the parsees of india any one can become a priest. the duties of the priest, according to the book of the law, consist in watching and tending the sacred fire, in praising the good spirits, in offering sacrifice, and performing purifications, and in the ceaseless study of the holy scriptures. the priest is to be provided with a mortar made according to certain rules, a cup (for the haoma sacrifice), the snake-switch (a stick for killing impure animals), and the paitidana, _i.e._ a piece of cloth for veiling the mouth, in order that he may not approach the sacred fire with breath that is possibly impure. for the rest, the vendidad lays down the rule that the priests are to be patient and content, and satisfied with a little bread, and they ought to eat what is offered to them.[ ] auramazda says; "many men, o zarathrustra, carry the paitidana, the serpent-switch, the sacred bundle of twigs, without being guided according to the law. these are wrongly called priests; do not thou call them priests, o zarathrustra. he who lies the whole night without praising or hearing, or reciting, or learning, or teaching--call not such an one a priest. call him a priest, o pure zarathrustra, who inquires of the pure intelligence the whole night, of the wisdom which purifies from sins and makes the heart wide, which has merits in store on the bridge of chinvat, and causes us to attain the purity and bliss of paradise."[ ] the avesta distinguishes different classes of priests, but the distinction only rests on the various acts which they perform in the sacred rites. the first rank is taken by the zaotar, who utters the prayers and invocations (the hotar, _i.e._ the repeater of the veda); next to him apparently is the Çraoshavareza, "who speaks very wise and truthful things;"[ ] he bears the club of Çraosha, in order to keep the evil spirits at a distance from the sacred acts; then comes the atarevaksha, _i.e._ the priest who causes the fire to increase, and attends to the worship of it; then the açnatar (the washer), who has to cleanse the instruments of sacrifice to keep them from pollution; the frabaretar, _i.e._ the carrier, etc. in the modern ritual of the parsees all the duties of the sacred service have been transferred to the zaotar and the raçpi, which latter discharges the functions of ministering priest. if we were only approximately correct in placing the date of zarathrustra and the reform of the ancient faith at b.c., the formation of this priestly order, which took place on the basis of the new doctrine, may have come to an end about the year b.c. we saw that from this date onwards the spread of the new doctrine must have begun in the west of iran towards the medes and persians, since there existed among the medes from b.c. an hereditary priesthood, charged with the worship of the gods according to the regulations of zarathrustra, and in this century it was already sufficiently numerous to be placed as an equal division beside the tribes of the medes. we have no better information about the priests of the west than we have on the political and social position of the priests of eastern iran. they are not called athravas but magush. this name is first found in the inscription which darius caused to be cut on the rock-wall of behistun; afterwards it was consistently used by western writers, from herodotus to agathias, for the priests of iran. the avesta has the words _magha_ and _maghavan_, i.e. the powerful, the great,[ ] but does not use it of the priests, which are always called athravas. if the last title is taken from the fire-worship, the first allows us to see the importance of the priests. he who can use incantations to the gods and spirits--can summon or remove them--is the mighty one, the powerful. if in this name we have evidence of the respect with which the laity of western iran looked up to the priests, the difference between the names in the east and west shows that there were priestly races among the medes and persians before the religion of zarathrustra reached them. had not such existed before the reform, and had they not possessed a definite name in the west--had priestly families become known there for the first time at the rise of the reform--they would never have had any other name than that of athravas. even without this positive proof we might assume that from all antiquity there had been priests among the medes and persians who understood how to invoke the gods of light in the old arian faith--mithra and verethraghna, vayu and tistrya--and tend the fire which destroyed demons. when the new doctrine reached from the east to ragha and then to media (p. ), the old races who passed over to the new faith united with the families the members of which were the prophets of the new doctrine. the teachers of the medes in old times, which pliny called successors of zarathrustra, might have stood at the head of this transformation of the ancient priestly families, of the creation of the median priesthood on the basis of the new religion (p. ). however this may have been, the priestly families among the medes were so numerous, their connection and union so close and firmly fixed, that they could be counted as a sixth tribe beside the other five median tribes. among the tribes of the persians herodotus mentions no tribe of magi. it would be a mistake to conclude from this that there were originally no priests among the persians, and to put faith in xenophon's statement that cyrus was the first to give the magians the care of the sacred fire, "because he preferred to go on board with the pious rather than the impious."[ ] no one will maintain that the persians in ancient times were without worship and religious rites, or that when they accepted the doctrine of zarathrustra, which did not permit sacrifice without magians, they used the services of none but alien priests. such a proceeding would be absurd. the proper conclusion from the fact that herodotus does not mention a tribe of magians among the persians is that the priestly families there were less numerous; they had not broken away from the tribal connections to which they originally belonged, and formed themselves into a separate community. further, from the fact that the priestly families of the persians in old times had not formed themselves into a separate community, we may conclude--and indeed the conclusion follows from the position of media and the notice in the avesta about ragha, and the observation about the ancient teachers of the medes, who are said to have been followers of zarathrustra--that the reform of the faith first came from bactria to the medes, that it was adopted and more strongly represented among them, and so passed on to the persians. we cannot doubt that there were persians belonging to the order of magians. if plato and his pupils call zoroaster the "teacher of the magians," and at the same time "a persian," they must assume that there were magians among the persians; if, according to plato's statement, the four teachers of the heirs to the persian throne, of which one had to teach the magism of zoroaster, were selected out of "all the persians;"--if at the time of xerxes there were persians who wrote on the doctrine of zoroaster, they must have been initiated in the wisdom and knowledge of the magians, and have known their invocations and customs; the contents of the holy scriptures and the scriptures themselves can hardly have been hidden from them. in order to prove that the magians, _i.e._ the priests, belonged exclusively to the medes, the fact has been brought forward that the persians, after darius had dethroned the pseudo-smerdis, celebrated each year the feast of the slaughter of the magians, at which no magian allowed himself to be seen, but all were obliged to remain at home.[ ] the magophonia was not the celebration of a victory over the magi generally, but over the removal of a usurper, and the restoration of the dominion to the achæmenids, which had been taken from them by one who happened to be a magian. herodotus at any rate calls this magian a mede.[ ] darius contents himself with calling him the "magian." hence there is no ground to doubt that both before and after the reform, families of the persians were charged with the worship of the gods; the less so because plato, as already remarked, represents the heirs to the throne in persia as being instructed in the doctrine of zoroaster, while strabo and pausanias speak expressly of "persian magi," and the chief magian is enumerated among the tribes "which dwell in the districts of persis."[ ] when the dominion of the achæmenids had been established over iran, the priestly families of all the west must have been united into one community. there is no doubt that this remained an order in which the priestly wisdom and knowledge were traditional. strabo, like herodotus, calls the magians a tribe; he adds that the members of it sought after a holy life. the tribe was large, he tells us in another place; magians could be found even in cappadocia. ammianus also informs us that the magians handed down their doctrines to later times, each by his descendants. growing up through centuries from a small number, the magians became a nation, and being regarded as dedicated to the service of the gods, they had acquired respect through their religion. they inhabited open villages, lived according to a law of their own, and possessed fruitful fields in the district called nisæa. agathias also calls the magians a tribe.[ ] but the separation of the priestly order in the west cannot have been more strict than that of the athravas in the east. marriage with the women of other orders was not forbidden, nor transition from other orders into that of the medes. the avesta speaks of the teacher and the pupil (p. ); and it is expressly said--though the statement comes from the beginning of the third century of our era--that the magians among the persians, _i.e._ the magians under the arsacids, instructed even those who were not persians in their doctrine, but only at the special command of the king.[ ] we find the magians in close proximity to the rulers of the medes and persians; they were not without importance and influence. in herodotus they tell astyages that they had and would have great honours from him.[ ] xenophon speaks of them as determining, at the time of cyrus, which god is to be honoured on each day.[ ] cambyses charges magians with the duty of watching the grave of cyrus, and this office became hereditary in their families;[ ] he also entrusts a magian with the care of the royal household, while he marches with the army into the remote parts of egypt and nubia. the inscriptions of darius showed us how much in earnest he was with the doctrines and regulations of the religion--how lively was his faith. on his march to hellas, xerxes was accompanied by osthanes, a man skilled in the priestly dogmas, and by magians; they offer sacrifice, and charm the storms.[ ] the sacred fire which was carried before the kings[ ] was conducted by magians, and so also were the sacred chariot, the sacred horses of mithra and the sun-god, in the campaigns of the achæmenids (p. ). of greater importance was it that the heirs to the throne in persia were instructed, as plato tells us, in the magism of zoroaster,[ ] which could only be done by magians. nicolaus of damascus relates that the persian princes were instructed by the magians in truthfulness, justice, and the laws of their country;[ ] and, according to plutarch, magians were the educators of the persian princes; magians also under the achæmenids performed the consecration at the accession of a new king.[ ] we are also told that this king of the medes and that of the persians, took the advice of the magians on important occasions. under the arsacids they formed, along with the members of the race of the kings, the supreme council of the kingdom; in the time when this dynasty was at its height they ruled, as pliny told us, "over the king of kings;" and we have seen (p. ) that their influence under the sassanids, at court, in the administration of law, and in politics, was even more powerful. herodotus maintains that the magians also occupied themselves with soothsaying and prophecy; like ctesias, he ascribes to the medes the interpretation of certain dreams and other miraculous acts. of such interpretations and prophesying on the part of the priests the avesta knows nothing, and those greeks who were better informed, warmly contested the assertion that the magians were occupied with such things. plato tells us: "the magism of zoroaster is the worship of the gods;" and aristotle assures us that the magians knew nothing of soothsaying.[ ] what herodotus tells us, on the other side, he certainly did not invent, but repeats after his informants. the medo-persian epos, which, though indirectly, forms the basis of herodotus' account of the rise of cyrus and the death of cambyses, allowed a wide field, even in the account of the fall of the assyrian empire (iii. ), to the astrological and prophetic wisdom of the chaldæans. from this we may conclude that prophecies of the chaldæans were not left out of sight at the overthrow of astyages. in nicolaus of damascus it is a chaldæan of babylon who expounds her dream to the mother of cyrus,[ ] and possibly the kings of the medes followed the example of the assyrian and babylonian courts in having astrologers and interpreters of dreams from babylon about them. whatever was the influence employed by the magians at the court of the achæmenids, the arsacids and sassanids, their influence was of a moral nature; it was only through the effect of religion on the heart and conscience of the king, that they could work; their position did not rest on any hierarchical institutions. in iran the priesthood had no real means of power which permitted it to come forward in opposition to the power of the state. the priest was a subject of the king like any one else. it was within the king's power to proceed at his pleasure with the severest corporal punishment against the magi, and it is abundantly clear that the kings did not shrink from inflicting such punishments, even if we do not regard as established facts the stories that astyages impaled the magians who had given him a false report, and that darius caused forty magians to be executed at once.[ ] diogenes laertius relates that the magians lived on lentils, bread and cheese, which agrees with the avesta to the extent that the priests are there commanded to be content with a little food.[ ] what herodotus tells us of the duties and occupation of the magians agrees entirely with the rules given in the avesta for the athravas. no one could sacrifice without a magian; the sacrifices were offered on high places (in this xenophon agrees[ ]) or in "pure places;" the most delicate grass was spread--we remember the importance of the kuça-grass in the veda and the brahmanas--on this grass the flesh of the sacrifice was laid; the magians sang the theogony, _i.e._ long sacrificial prayers, and the sacred rite is fulfilled. herodotus also asserts that the magians took great pride in killing serpents, ants, and other winged and creeping things with their own hands; that human life was greatly respected by them; that the dog was held in high honour (p. ); and the corpses of the magians were exposed to dogs or birds of prey. this he declares that he knows to be the truth; xenophon represents the magians as beginning their songs of praise with the break of day, and as offering their sacrifices at certain places, which were selected for the gods. curtius relates that they sang native songs.[ ] strabo told us above that the magians sought after a holy life; he observes also that whatever was the god to which they sacrificed they first prayed to fire. at every sacrifice the magians conducted the sacred rite; the victims were not slain with the knife but struck down with a club. no part of the flesh of the victim was set apart for the deity, for they declared that the god required only the soul of the animal; yet according to some they placed a small portion of the fat in the fire. "in cappadocia there were enclosed places," strabo continues, "in the midst of which was an altar, heaped up with ashes. on this the magians kept up the unquenchable fire. each day they went and sang for an hour before the fire, holding in their hands a bundle of twigs. on their heads they wore tiaras of felt, which fell down on both sides so far that the side-pieces covered the lips."[ ] pausanias, who observed the worship of the magians in the cities of lydia, says: "at both places there was a shrine with a cell, and in the cell is an altar; on this are ashes the colour of which is not the ordinary colour of ashes. when the magian comes into the cell, he lays the dry wood on the altar, puts the tiara on his head, and sings the invocation to some god or another, in a barbarian manner, quite unintelligible to the hellenes; but he sings from a book. then the pieces of wood, without being kindled, ought to become lighted, and a flame from them should flash all round the cell."[ ] footnotes: [ ] "vend." , - ; "yaçna," , - . if in "yaçna," , four occupations are mentioned instead of the four orders, and artisans are added to the husbandmen, this is only another theory, which does not, however, alter the series and system; in india the order of vaiçyas comprises husbandmen, merchants, and artisans. [ ] "vond." , . [ ] under the sassanids we find a chief of the husbandmen (_vaçtriosan_), and a chief of the warriors (_arthestaran_); nöldeke, "tabari," s. . [ ] "vend." , - , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vispered," , , . above, p. . [ ] the mobedh of middle persian is _magupat_, i.e. lord of the magians (p. ). the derivation of the name magus from the turanian _imga_ (apparently = honourable) can only be adopted by those who regard the magians as descendants of the turanians, or at any rate as containing a strong admixture of turanians; a view which rests on the theory that the second series in the inscriptions of the achæmenids is the median translation of the persian inscriptions. with this view i cannot agree; all that we learn from the greeks of the customs, manners, and names of the medes bears the mark of an arian origin, and is in harmony with what is attributed to the persians. in the inscription of the second class at behistun, gaumata is not called _imga_ but _magush_. [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. ; pausanias, , , . [ ] ammian. , , - ; agathias, , . [ ] philostratus in rapp, "z. d. m. g." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , ; , , . [ ] arrian, "anab." , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] curtius, , ; ammian. , , . [ ] "alcibiad. i." p. . [ ] nic. dam. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] plut. "artaxerxes," c. . [ ] diog. laert. prooem. . [ ] fragm. , ed. müller; cf. infra bk. , c. . [ ] herod. , ; ctes. "pers." . the excerpt says chaldæans, but obviously magi are here meant. [ ] prooem. . above, p. . the further statements of diogenes about the white robes of the magians, their avoidance of all ornament and gold, of their lying on the ground, and staff of reed, deserve little notice, inasmuch as the source whence they are derived is unknown. [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , ; , , ; , , ; curtius, , , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] pausan. , , , . chapter ix. the law of the priests. the rules concerning purity and purification, the expiations and penances necessary to avert the daevas, which we possess in the vendidad of the avesta, are only the remnant of a far more comprehensive law. from the list of books and chapters traditional among the parsees, we can see that it was intended to include not only all the invocations and prayers which the worship required, the rules of sacrifice, and the entire ritual, together with the calendar of the year of the church, but also the arrangement of the process of law, the civil and criminal code, and, moreover, rules for agriculture and medicine. if to this we add the statements and quotations of the greeks (p. ), we may assume that the scriptures of eastern iran comprised the whole sum of the knowledge of the priests. in the avesta the athravas had sketched the ideal picture of the correct conduct pleasing to auramazda in every department of life. how far the princes of bactria and the viceroys of cyaxares and the achæmenids, or even these princes themselves, and the judges, wished or allowed themselves to be bound in their decisions by these regulations of the priests, may be left out of the question. the priests here, like the brahmans in india, could only influence the action of the state and those charged with it, so far as the reverence for the principles of religion and the force of their own authority extended. the existing part of the law has obviously arisen out of the questions and considerations sketched above, which in consequence of the reform must have forced themselves into the circles of the priests. the reform also required above all things purity from men, but no supernatural purity, such as the brahmans demanded. the body is not in the avesta, as it was to the brahmans and after them to the buddhists, the impure prison of the soul which must be abandoned; on the contrary the avesta rejoices in its health and vigour. it requires that the body should be kept pure from filth, from contamination by the impure, which gives the daevas power over mankind, _i.e._ it demands the exclusion of the harmful side of nature; it desires that the soul should be pure from pollution, freed from untruthfulness, lying, and deceit, which are contradictory to the nature of the clear bright gods, and auramazda, and make men companions of the daevas, and sharers in their nature. in other words, it demands the invigoration of the light and wholesome side of man. the kingdom of the good spirits is truth, increase, and life; the kingdom of the evil is deception and falsehood, lying, destruction, and death. the avesta praises auramazda as purity itself; and next to him asha vahista, _i.e._ the best purity; the gods are chiefly extolled as "the pure," and zarathrustra as the master and teacher of purity. the avesta repeatedly declares "that purity after birth is the best thing for men." hence it is the foremost of all duties to keep the soul and body pure. the worshipper of auramazda must preserve his purity by good thoughts, words, and works; truth is required in thinking, speaking, and acting; uprightness and honesty in all the relations of life; the sacredness of promises and pledges, and solemn assurances, at which mithra is summoned to bear witness. it is an old function of the god which appears here. he is the guardian of the word, and the compact. "mithra is twenty-fold between friends and kinsmen, thirty-fold between tradespeople, forty-fold between companions who live together, fifty-fold between man and wife, sixty-fold between associates in sacrifice, seventy-fold between scholar and teacher, eighty-fold between step-son and step-parents, ninety-fold between brothers, a hundred-fold between son and father." "miserable are the houses, without descendants the dwellings, inhabited by those who deceive mithra. miserably does the cloven-footed cow go on the wrong path, which is oppressed by the burden of mithra-deceiving men."[ ] in accordance with this view deception is in the eyes of the law the worst offence; worse than robbery or theft. evil-speaking and calumny also are, according to the vendidad, "lies and sins" against mithra. the gravest offence of this kind is the calumny by which "a pure man" is disparaged "with a man of another religion," for this sin is committed with full knowledge, and by a man's own intelligence; and the worst of all lies is teaching a false law. "one who teaches such a law," says the vendidad, "does no better than if he killed a thousand horses, slew the men in a village inhabited by worshippers of auramazda, or carried off the cows on the wrong way."[ ] it is not the least proof of the currency of the doctrines of the avesta in the west of iran that their ethical side, which gathers round the command of truthfulness, was there most distinctly recognised. king darius has already told us that "the lie" had brought his kingdom into rebellion; the leaders of the rebellious lands, who gave themselves out to be descendants of the ancient royal families, he calls "liars against the kingdom." from their youth up, herodotus tells us, the children of the persians were instructed in truthfulness. he adds: among the persians it was forbidden to speak of that which it was forbidden to do; the avesta requires truth "in thought, speech, and action." lying and borrowing, herodotus says, passed with the persians for the most disgraceful acts, for they were of opinion that any one who contracted debts was generally compelled to tell lies. the avesta says: "he who does not restore that which has been borrowed, seeks day and night to deceive the creditor." plato states that the heirs to the persian throne had, besides three others, a teacher whose special business it was to instruct them in truth. xenophon assures us that pledges and oaths were religiously kept among the persians; and diodorus, that the pledge of hands was the strongest security among them.[ ] practice in persia was, it is true, not equal to these injunctions, however sharply expressed; on the contrary, we often find the two in the most glaring contradiction. not falsehood and lies only, but also laziness and sloth pollute the soul of man. the pious man must rise early. Çraosha awakes the bird parodarsh, we are told in the book of the law. at the return of the divine ushahina, _i.e._ of the morning (p. ), this bird speaks to those who are in their beds: "friend, up, arise. praise purity, and the daevas will fly away. long sleep, o man, is not good for thee. the bushyançta runs up to thee, who lays again in sleep the whole corporeal world. turn yourselves not away from the three best things: good thinking, speaking, and acting. he who rises first will come into paradise; he who first brings pure, dry, old, well-hewn wood to the fire of auramazda, him will the fire bless (p. )."[ ] the pious man should be industrious and work; the best work is that which increases nourishment and fruit for men and animals, which furthers the increase and life of the world, and thus diminishes the kingdom of the evil, the power of the dark spirits. for this reason running water and growing fruits should be spread over the earth; "the field should be tilled, and trees planted which produce food." "when there are shoots," the law-book says, "the daevas are in alarm; when there are stalks, the daevas weep; when there are ears, the daevas hiss; when there are grains, the daevas fly."[ ] "in the house where there are most ears, the daevas are smitten most heavily." "the earth is not glad which lies untilled. the greatest pleasure is given to the earth where a pure man builds his house, provided with fire and cattle, and good flocks, with wife and child, where most corn, fodder, and grain is produced by husbandry, where the dry land is most watered, where fruit-bearing trees are planted, where cattle and beasts of draught leave the most urine."[ ] "he who plants fruits and trees, who gives water to the earth where it is needed, and takes it away where too abundant, he worships the earth." when a man tills the earth she bestows life upon him; "as a friend to a beloved friend, she gives him descendants and wealth." to him who tills her, the earth says: "o man, who tillest me with the left arm and the right, with the right arm and the left, in love will i bear thee all kinds of fruit." but to him who tills her not the earth says: "thou wilt go to the doors of others and there stand, in order to beg for food; in idleness thou wilt ask for it and get but little." he who sows corn, sows purity; the law of auramazda increases with the fruits of the field; they extend the law of auramazda by , , and , meritorious works. these regulations of the avesta were fully accepted in the west. the great reverence paid to splendid trees by the achæmenids is shown by herodotus' story of xerxes, that he furnished a beautiful plane tree, which he saw in lydia, with golden ornaments, and appointed a perpetual guardian for it.[ ] ameretat, as already observed, was the special protecting spirit of trees (p. ). xenophon tells us that the persian kings gave special attention to agriculture; on their journeys they inquired into the tillage of the land, and demanded similar attention from their satraps. round their palaces and wherever they came they caused the most beautiful gardens to be laid out, planted with trees and all the most excellent shrubs in the world.[ ] the satraps also had gardens of this kind (_pairidaeza_) round their residences, and the younger cyrus assures lysander, "in the name of mithra," that he never took food before he had induced perspiration by work in the garden or exercise in arms.[ ] the satraps, says xenophon, whose provinces were found deficient in population and poorly cultivated, were punished and removed from their office, while those whose provinces were in good order, were rewarded by presents. when the king of the persians conferred distinctions, those were summoned first who had distinguished themselves in war, and next came those whose districts were best cultivated.[ ] respect and reverence for trees was so deeply rooted in iran, that even islam did not extirpate the feeling. to this day in shiraz old trees are presented with dedicatory offerings, and hung with amulets; and the pious prefer to pray under tall trees rather than in the neighbouring mosques; while in the barren regions of iran even groups of bushes receive offerings.[ ] besides the care of trees, plants, and the soil, the labour of mankind must be directed to the care of the flocks, to the increase of the animals of the good god, and the destruction of the khrafçtras, or animals belonging to the evil spirit (p. ). cows are not held in such veneration in iran as beyond the indus, yet even here the "cow is not to be driven on the wrong way," and gomez (the urine of oxen) is the most effectual means of purification; in the theory of the priests auramazda began the creation of living things with the bull. we have already mentioned the rank taken among the animals of auramazda by the cock and dog. in the vendidad auramazda says: "i have created the dog with clothes and shoes of his own, with keen scent and sharp teeth, attached to men, savage against the enemy, for the protection of the flocks. no thief or wolf comes to the village or the fold and carries away anything unobserved, if the dog is healthy, in good voice, and among the flocks. the houses would not stand firm upon the earth if there were not dogs in the villages and flocks. the dog is patient, contented, and satisfied with little food, like a priest; he goes forward, and is before and behind the house, like a warrior; he sleeps less than the husbandmen, is talkative like a child, and friendly as a mistress."[ ] the dogs are to receive good food, "for of all the creatures of auramazda old age comes upon them the most quickly;" especially must the watch-dog be provided with milk, fat, and flesh, "the proper food" for a dog; and a dog must never be among those who are eating without receiving something to eat. any one who gives unbroken bones or hot food to a sheep-dog or house-dog, and the bones injure him, and the hot food burns his mouth and tongue, so that he dies--is worthy of death.[ ] dogs with young are treated with the same care as pregnant women. it is a sin to chase or beat a dog which has brought forth; if she is injured or dies in running the sinner is worthy of death; and any one who beats a pregnant dog is to receive twice seven hundred stripes. it is the duty of every man to bring up for six months the dogs born on his ground, until they are able to run round in a circuit of twice seven houses.[ ] sick dogs are treated with the same remedies as rich men; and to the question of zarathrustra--"if the dog will not take the remedies?" auramazda answers that in this case "the dog can be tied, and its mouth opened with a flat piece of wood."[ ] wounds inflicted on dogs are to be punished with stripes to the number of twice eight hundred;[ ] and besides this, compensation is to be given for the damage which thieves or wolves do to the village so long as the dog is prevented by his injuries from keeping watch. the book of the law everywhere threatens all those men who beat dogs that their souls will go from this world full of terror, and sick. to kill a water-dog is the greatest crime;[ ] and is menaced with the worst penalties and expiations known to the vendidad. as a general rule punishments do not go beyond stripes, or the necessity of killing noxious animals; but the slayer of the water-dog is to receive , stripes. besides this, if he would save his soul, he must give , parcels of hard wood, well hewn and dried, for the fire of auramazda, and also , parcels of soft, fragrant wood; he must kill , snakes, and an equal number of tortoises, lizards, and water-lizards, ants, flies, and rats. he must fill up , impure holes in the earth; give to the priests all the utensils required for the holy rites; to a warrior a complete set of armour; to a husbandman he must give all that is needed for agriculture: a house, provided with a beautiful mat, and arable land for tillage. in addition, he must give, as an expiation for his soul, fourteen head of small cattle to the "pure men," and bring up fourteen young dogs, and build fourteen bridges over running water. he must cleanse eighteen dogs from fleas, and make eighteen bones into edible food; and satisfy eighteen "pure men" with wine and flesh. if he does not perform these expiations he will go into the dwelling of the druj, and "the heat which is injurious to the pasture will not depart from his dwelling until he has offered sacrifice for three days and nights for the pure soul of the water-dog, on the burning fire, with bound rods and uplifted haoma."[ ] in order to extirpate the animals of angromainyu, the priest is to be provided with a stick, the khrafçtra-killer. herodotus has already told us, that the magians held it a duty to kill serpents, ants, and other creeping and winged insects. for the expiation of sins the avesta universally requires the killing of serpents, lizards, and ants; rats and mice, which do harm to the crops; flies, midges, fleas, lice, and other vermin. plutarch tells us that the persians count him a happy man who slays most water-mice; agathias observes that in honour of the chief festival in persia every one killed as many snakes, and beasts of prey, and animals living in the desert, as possible, and then brought them to the magians as a proof of his piety. in this way they believed that they did what was pleasing to the good god, while they injured and distressed arimanes.[ ] according to the avesta, the soul of man is kept pure by truthfulness, industry, and diligence, by good thoughts, good words and acts, which advance the kingdom of life; the body is to be kept free from dirt and the house from filth and dead creatures; from all that belongs to the evil spirits and is in their power. the soul of man is created pure; but from the first the body has certain impure parts, and the defilement which angromainyu brought into the bodies of men. this defilement consists in the spittle, the excrements, dead skin, sores, etc; in everything that has an unpleasant smell, or is removed from the living body, like the hair and nails. these when cut are dead, and therefore belong to the kingdom of darkness; hence in iran as in india they are impure things. "wherever cut hair and nails lie," says the book of the law, "there the daevas gather to these unholy places; there the impure animals come, which men call lice. therefore carry away--so saith auramazda--cut hair and nails, ten paces from the pure men, twenty from the fire, thirty from the water, fifty from the sacred bundle of rods. dig a hole below the house in the earth, pronounce the prayer ahunavairya thrice, six times, nine times, and then say: to thee, o bird, asho-zusta, i show these nails. these nails i dedicate to thee; may they be thy lances, thy swords, thy bow, thy swift-flying arrows, thy sling-stones against the mazanian daevas. if these nails are not announced to the bird asho-zusta, they are weapons for, not against, the daevas."[ ] spittle is among the worst impurities. the priests could only approach the fire with veiled mouth, and even now the parsees invariably cover the mouth in praying. they eat in silence, and two never use the same spoon, because the food would then be polluted by spittle. the removal of the excrements requires as much care in the avesta as it did in the brahmanic law, and the vendidad gives minute regulations in regard to these matters.[ ] a man is rendered impure by excess and debauchery; a woman by her courses, "by marks and blood," and by the birth of a child. she must be carried to an elevated place in the dwelling, which is strewn with dry sand, fifteen paces from the fire, from water, and the sacred bundle of rods, "at a distance also from the trees," and so placed that she cannot see the fire on the hearth. no one may touch her. only a definite amount of certain kinds of food can be given to her, and that in metal jars, because these contract the least amount of impurity, and are most easily cleansed; the person who brings the food must remain three paces distant from her bed. after childbirth a woman is unclean for three days; then she must wash her body with water and gomez. if she has had a miscarriage her body is also polluted by the dead child: she must be placed thirty paces away from the fire and the sacred objects of the house, and must pass a longer period on her dust-bed--at the present time forty-one days are required. the first thing she is allowed to taste is ashes mixed with gomez--three, six, and then nine drops. the nine apertures of her body--that number is common to the indians and iranians--must be washed with ashes and gomez. she may not drink any water out of her impure hand; if she does so, she must receive two hundred blows with the rod, and two hundred with the whip.[ ] fire and water, springs, streams and rivers, the best gifts of the good gods, must, like the human body, be carefully preserved from all filth and defilement. the accounts of western writers prove that the persians and medes observed the rules of purification given in the book of the law; it was not the custom among the persians to spit in the presence of another, still less to sneeze, etc. they avoided the defilement of a river, or of the shadow of a man; and it was forbidden to uncover in the sight of the sun or moon.[ ] "the sun, the moon, the stars shine unwillingly," we are told in the vendidad, "on the polluted man."[ ] "the impure takes away prosperity and increase; he brings sickness and death; after death he will not go into heaven."[ ] "but whatever pollution a man has contracted, and whatever sin he has committed, the good law quenches all impurity and sin, if the purifications, expiations, and penalties which it prescribes are performed and paid; for the good law of auramazda surpasses all others in greatness, goodness, and salvation, as far as the heaven rises above the earth, and as the sea of vourukasha includes all other waters."[ ] "the good law of auramazda takes from the man who praises it and commits no evil actions afterwards, his deception; it takes away the murder of the pure man, and the burial of the dead; it takes away inexpiable actions, and accumulated guilt; it takes away all evil words, thoughts, and actions, even as the strong swift wind purifies heaven from the right side."[ ] slight pollution is removed by washing with pure water accompanied by certain prayers and imprecations on the daevas, such as: "i contend with thee, o evil angromainyu; away from this dwelling, away from the fire, the water, from this place, from all the blessings which auramazda has created. i contend against pollution, direct and indirect; against the unclean spirits; i contend against the daeva andra, Çaurva, zairicha (p. ); against the pairika, who goes to the water, the earth, cattle, and trees," etc.[ ] more serious impurities require ablutions with gomez, which in certain cases have to be repeated thirty times, with various prayers.[ ] the most efficacious purification, which removes even the worst taint, is that of the nine nights. this can only be performed by a priest, who knows the law accurately, can repeat the sacred word by heart, and speaks the truth. a special place must be constructed for it; thirty paces (which are equal to ninety times the length of the foot) from the fire, the water, and the sacred bundle of rods. in the middle of this space nine pits are dug in the earth, and round them twelve furrows are drawn with a metal instrument. the purifier sprinkles the person who requires cleansing (who is entirely naked) with gomez, from a leaden vessel, with many prayers. he is then rubbed fifteen times with earth; he must then wash himself at each of the nine pits once, twice, thrice with water, after which he is fumigated with fragrant wood. then follow washings with water and gomez in the third, sixth, and ninth night. "after this," says the book, "the purified person shall bring water of purification to the fire, hard wood, and perfumes; he is to utter praises to auramazda, to the amesha Çpentas, and to the rest of the pure ones--so will the man be purified." the purifier must be rewarded for this purification; according to the measure of the man's property the payment rises from small cattle and cows to camels; "in order that the purifier may go away contented and without hatred." instead of cattle, goods of another description can be given. "but if the purifier goes away discontented, the wicked spirit of impurity comes again into the purified persons, and they are impure for evermore."[ ] in the view of the avesta impurity consists essentially in that which is opposed to life; hence there is no worse form of uncleanness than that caused by the corpse. the body, as soon as the soul has left it, belongs to angromainyu. the fiend of death, the druj naçu, obtains possession of it, and from it she springs on all who touch it, or come near it. if a man dies, or a dog--and in this matter dogs are put quite on a level with men--and other men and women are in the same house--two, five, fifty, or a hundred--the druj naçu comes immediately from the north in the form of a fly, and settles on all the inhabitants of the house and makes them impure with infection, pollution, and uncleanness.[ ] in the first instance she is to be met by incantations--the gathas, bisamruta, thrisamruta, chathrasamruta, must be repeated; then the fiend falls to pieces like grass that has been dead a year.[ ] after this the hearth-fire must be removed from the house of the dead, and the sacred utensils--the mortar, the cup, the sacred bundle of rods, and the haoma. in winter the fire can be kindled again upon the hearth after nine nights; in summer, when the need for warmth and cooked food is less pressing, after a month; any one who does not observe these periods is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[ ] after purification the kinsmen are to utter prayers for the departed, and the number of these is fixed, in the vendidad, in the same fanciful manner which is so often met with in the book of manu. the number decreases according to the degree of relationship; for the nearest kinsmen thirty prayers are spoken; for the most remote, five; if the dead man has led an impure life the number of prayers is doubled in order to give efficacy to the petition.[ ] the preservation and increase of life is the foundation of the teaching of the avesta. the good life of nature is promoted by planting and agriculture, by tending the useful and destroying the pernicious animals; and by posterity provision is to be made for the life of men. from this point of view the vendidad lays especial weight on marriage. "i declare," auramazda says, "that the married is before the unmarried, and he that has a house before him that has none, and the father of children before the childless."[ ] we can only ascertain very incompletely from the remaining fragments of the avesta the rules which it prescribed for family life. we see that bringing about a marriage was regarded as a meritorious work, and marriage between close relations was considered happy. yet maidens are not to be given in marriage before their fifteenth year.[ ] to those who have long remained unmarried the god haoma, the special protector of life, sends truthful, active husbands, gifted with good understanding (p. ). we never hear of any difference of the orders in contracting marriage; nor is there the least hint that the priest can only marry a wife of priestly blood, or the husbandman a wife of his own class. on the other hand, the strictest directions are given that the worshippers of auramazda are only to marry among themselves; marriage with those of an alien religion is severely reprobated. "a man who mingles the seed of the faithful and the unbelievers, the seed of the worshippers of the daevas with the worshippers of mazda, keeps back a third part of the flowing water, a third part of the increase of the blooming plants, and their golden fruits; he annihilates a third part of the clothing of Çpenta armaiti (the earth); he robs the just men of a third part of their power, their merits, their purity. they who do this are more destructive than forked serpents, than howling wolves, than the she-wolf which rushes on the flocks, than the thousand-fold brood of the lizard, which pollutes the water."[ ] the vendidad gives the house-father a similar power over his wife and children to that given in manu's law--so far as we can conclude from certain indications. he is to be spoken of with the same reverence as the house-father on the ganges; the wife is to be honoured, but is to "be watched perpetually, like the fire of auramazda."[ ] with regard to the education of children, we can only gather from the vendidad they were to be tended for seven years; "protect dogs for six months, children for seven years;"[ ] and boys are to be invested in their fifteenth year with the sacred girdle.[ ] we remember the sacred girdle which the three upper castes wore and still wear beyond the ganges; the investiture with this, and adoption into the family and caste--"the second birth" takes place, according to manu's law, among the brahman boys in the eighth year, among the kshatryas, in the eleventh, and the vaiçyas in the twelfth. the habit of wearing the girdle, which prevails on both sides of the indus, proves that this custom was in use before the two branches of the arians separated. originally the girdle was intended to be a protection or amulet against the evil spirits.[ ] in the girdle which the priests prepare with traditional ceremonies, and put on boys in their seventh or tenth year, the modern parsees see the bond which encloses and unites the worshippers of auramazda. if i attempt to supplement the scanty hints of the avesta on family life from the accounts preserved to us on this subject by western writers, it must be remembered that the more ancient of these statements hold good only of the west of iran. but as we have hitherto found the worship and manners of the persians and medes, as described by the greeks, agreeing with the rules of the avesta, we may suppose that in this province also east and west were in agreement. herodotus states that the persians married many wives, and had concubines in addition. they considered it honourable and right to have as many children as possible; next to bravery in war it was the greatest merit to have many children, and the king sent presents every year to the man who had most.[ ] of all days the persians celebrated most the day on which they were born. a more abundant meal was served on this day: among the wealthy an ox, a horse, or a camel was roasted whole; and smaller animals among those who were poorer. plato adds: "when the first son, the heir of the kingdom, was born to the king of persia, all the subjects of the king celebrated the day, and on the birthday of the king there were festivals and sacrifices throughout all asia."[ ] herodotus observes, that the respect of children for their parents was great. the persians regarded the murder of parents by a son as impossible; if such a thing happened they believed that the child was supposititious.[ ] aristotle tells us that the power of the father over the sons among the persians was tyrannical, _i.e._ unlimited; he treated them as slaves.[ ] that the mother was also treated with respect follows from the statement that the son might not remain seated when the mother entered, and could only resume his seat at her permission. at the court of the achæmenids the mother of the king had the first place, the king the second.[ ] that the queen-mother often exercised great influence is shown by the history of this ruling family. of the careful education of the heir to the throne, the other princes, and the sons of the wealthy persians, both in the exercise and strengthening of their bodies and in moral training, the western writers had much to tell. what the greeks narrate respecting the celebration of the birthday among the persians, the distinction of the satraps whose provinces were best cultivated and populated, and the rewards given to those who had most children, agrees entirely with the delight in life which runs through the avesta, and the exhortations to increase life everywhere present in that book. the avesta always speaks of one wife only. the polygamy noticed by the greeks was limited to the rich (the number of wives among the persians, says ammian, was regulated by property[ ]); in consequence of the religious feeling just noticed, it prevailed, no doubt, far more extensively among the arians of iran than among the indians. yet the harems of the indian princes were large. however numerous the harems of the achæmenids, only one wife was the lawful wife; and she alone, as in india, bore the name of queen: only her sons could be considered heirs to the throne. the other wives greeted the queen on their knees: the queen must belong to the race of the achæmenids, or at any rate to one of the six tribal princes.[ ] the same was the case among the rest of the persians who had several wives; one only was the house-wife. the avesta told us above that the wife must be watched. according to plutarch the persians were more strict in this matter than the rest of the barbarians; they kept not only the wife but the concubines shut up, and they left the houses in covered cars only.[ ] manu's law also requires that women should be watched (iv. ). the power of the father, and the respectful attitude of the children to the mother, correspond to the principles of family life which we have seen beyond the indus. yet, so far as we can see, marriage was not in iran so close and firmly established a relation as among the arians of india, where the wife belonged absolutely to the man, and surrendered herself in complete devotion to him; nor did the relation of children to parents in iran experience that excellent and happy development which on the whole attended it in india, and of which we can still perceive the results. if western writers maintain that it was the custom among the persians to take the nearest relations in marriage, so that even the brother married the sister (of which herodotus gives an example in cambyses) and the son the mother after the father's death (the latter is said to have prevailed especially among the magi)[ ]--the avesta, as we have seen, declared marriages between near relations to be good, and the history of the achæmenids mentions marriage with sisters more than once. the more extreme assertions, especially in regard to the magi, are to be regarded as exaggerations of the greeks, and owed their origin to their astonishment at a custom which was more than revolting. on the relation of the sexes both before and after marriage, and other matters connected with procreation, the vendidad supplies a number of minute regulations.[ ] the preservation of life also receives great attention in the avesta. we remember the incantations of the rigveda which banish sickness into thrushes and woodpeckers, and the sentences of the atharvaveda against sickness and death (iv. ). the remedies of the veda are water and plants. all remedies are in water; the waters of the springs and the waters of the rivers drive away sickness. the plants said, when they came from heaven, that they descended from the water of the sky. "the mortal whom we touch will suffer no harm." "may agni protect me with the waters, and soma with the plants," we are told in the veda; and again: "the plants whose king is soma, have rescued me from death."[ ] the priest who knows the sentences is at the same time the physician, though the rigveda has a separate name for the latter (iv. ). how highly the indians respected doctors and physicians at a later time, in spite of the theory of the brahmans of the unworthiness of the body, and how it was the custom there in the sixth century b.c. to send for the physician in every sickness, has been mentioned in its place (iv. ). proceeding from precisely the same conceptions, the avesta went on to fill several books with medical remedies. the best mode of healing is that by charms, and the sacred word. in such incantations of the avesta we are told: "i contend against sickness, i contend against death, i contend against pain, i contend against fever, i contend against the corruption and pollution which angromainyu has created in the body of men. sickness, i curse thee; fever, i curse thee; death, i curse thee."[ ] the sacred word is invoked to heal by its power. "mayst thou heal me, o manthra Çpenta. as a recompense i will give to thee a thousand stall-fed oxen, a thousand spotless cattle, a thousand swiftly-running horses, a thousand camels, swift and with strong backs. i will bless thee with beautiful, pious blessings; with dear, pious blessings, which make the deficient full, and the full to overflow, which bind the friend and make the bond firm."[ ] as in the veda, the remedies are water and plants, "draw up, ye clouds, draw up," we are told in the vendidad; "let the water fall as thousand-fold, ten thousand-fold rain, to drive away sickness, to drive away corruption, to drive away death. may it rain for the renewal of the waters, the earth, the plants, the means of healing."[ ] as in the veda soma is the king of plants, so in iran haoma, the god of life, is the lord of plants.[ ] the white heavenly haoma grows, as we have seen, on the gaokerena, the tree of heaven; from it springs the earthly haoma and all plants of which the seed falls from the tree viçpotaokhma in vourukasha, which the bird chamru carries where tistrya collects the clouds, in order to let the seed fall down from them to the earth.[ ] "i, who am the giver of all blessings," says auramazda, "created this dwelling (the earth), the beautiful, brilliant, and noteworthy; then angromainyu, who is full of death, created nine diseases, ninety diseases, nine hundred diseases, nine thousand diseases, nine and ninety thousand diseases. thrita desired as a favour a means to withstand death, to withstand pain, to withstand the heat of fever, and the evil corruptions and filth which angromainyu has brought into the body of men. then i, who am auramazda, brought forth the healing plants, many hundreds, many thousands, many tens of thousands, around the one gaokerena." the invocation then follows: "we bless thee, we invoke thee, we worship thee for the healing of the body of men, in order to drive away sickness, in order to drive away death, the hot fever and the cold fever."[ ] thrita, a spirit of heaven, who has a place among the sages and sacrificers of old time (p. ) was, in the avesta, the first physician who kept back disease and death; and every one who follows in his course, every physician, must appear as a willing combatant, an active co-operator against the evil spirits, from whom death and disease proceed. according to the vendidad, those have the first place among the physicians who heal by charms, _i.e._ by the sacred word, the words of the law; these are the "physicians of physicians;" next come the physicians who heal by remedies; and last of all, those who heal by the knife.[ ] these latter must first use the knife on the worshippers of the daevas; when they have done so three times, and the patient has died each time, they are incapable for ever of practising the art of healing. but if they have healed three worshippers of the daevas, they are capable of "healing the worshippers of auramazda, and they can try their skill upon them as they please." the physician is not only to heal sick men, but sick animals also, and above all the sick dog. the vendidad fixes the sum which the physician is to receive for his services. he is to heal a priest, and ask for no more than his blessing. for healing the overseer of a district he is to receive a yoke of four oxen, and for his wife a she-camel; the overseer of a canton is to pay a large beast of draught, and his wife a mare; the head of a village pays a smaller beast, and his wife a cow; the head of a house a small beast, and his wife a she-ass. for healing a large beast of draught the price is a beast of moderate size; and for one of moderate size, a head of small cattle, etc.[ ] pliny quotes a number of remedies and means of cure used by the magi, some of them of an extraordinary character; indeed, the impression made on pliny by the importance ascribed to medicine in the doctrine of zarathrustra was so great, that he maintained that the magism of zoroaster had arisen out of the art of healing, and had introduced, as it were, a higher and sacred medicine. to this was subsequently added the power of religion, and the mathematical arts of investigating the future by the heavens, so that zoroaster's doctrine had taken possession of the mind of men by a three-fold bond.[ ] how greatly he is mistaken in ascribing to the magians the astrology of the chaldæans, has been remarked above; the mistake is explained by the fact, that the avesta includes the astronomical knowledge of the priests of iran in the books which treated of medicine (p. ). the astronomical chapters are lost as well as those on medicine. from our fragments we cannot so much as fix the year by which the avesta reckons. we merely perceive that it counted by nights, not by days. it is from the bundehesh that we first learn that the year of eastern iran is made up of days in twelve months of thirty days, with five additional days. this year is said to have begun with the vernal equinox, _i.e._ the period when the vigour of nature again shows itself. in the last five nights of the old year, and the first five nights of the new one, the spirits of the forefathers, the fravashis, come to their descendants in the houses; they awake with nature to new life (p. ). the first month is called farvardin after these spirits; of the remaining eleven, six are called after the amesha Çpentas, and the remaining five, which are inserted between the six, after mithra, tistrya, the spirits of fire and water, and lastly after the law (din). the inscriptions of the achæmenids give us nine names of months entirely different from these. hence the west had its own calendar, as well as its own alphabet, and made use of it as early as the year b.c. in the east the calendar of the avesta was in use; and this seems to have been current in the west also in the first half of the fourth century b.c. there is no doubt whatever that it was the standard for all iran at the time of the sassanids.[ ] we have already set forth in detail what weight the avesta lays on purity, and the avoidance of contact with dead matter, which has fallen into the power of the daevas. from these points of view, in consequence of the reform, the priests in iran came to adopt a peculiar mode of burial. among the arians of the panjab the oldest form of burial was interment, and in time cremation came into use (iv. ). but could the athravas allow anything so unclean as a corpse to be laid on fire, the pure "son of auramazda"? if the corpse was thrown into water the pure water was defiled; if buried in the earth pollution was cast on the beautiful, submissive daughter of auramazda. nothing therefore remained for the priests but to leave the corpse above the earth; in this case it served the pure animals, the birds and dogs, for nourishment, and was thus destroyed in the best manner. to throw a corpse into water, to bury or burn it, are great sins, actions which do not admit of expiation,[ ] and those who do such things "help the drought which destroys the pasture, and the evil onsweeping winter, which kills the flock, and is full of snow; such men are impure for ever."[ ] any one who buries a dead dog or a dead man in the earth, and does not dig the body up again within half a year, is to receive twice five hundred stripes; any one who allows it to remain in the earth for a year, is to receive twice a thousand stripes; but if a man leaves a corpse in the earth for more than two years, there is for him neither penalty, nor expiation, nor purification.[ ] the dead are to be carried away on peculiarly dry paths, little trodden by cattle, beasts of draught, and pure men, and laid on the driest and barest places in the earth, on the highest eminences where carnivorous birds and dogs may most easily see them.[ ] the soil is to be dug out, waist deep, if the earth is soft; if hard, to the depth of half a foot, and this depression is to be filled with tiles, stones, and dust; for damp earth contracts pollution most readily, whereas stones, tiles, and dust contract it very slowly. to this place (dakhma) the naked corpse is to be taken on a bier, which has a foundation of stones or tiles, by two strong men--never by one: one bearer would pollute himself for ever, and the druj naçu would never leave him. any one who throws a cloth on the dead must be punished with twice four hundred, or twice a thousand stripes, according to the size of the cloth. the corpse is to be placed on the dakhma, with the face turned to the sun (any one who does not place the body with its face to the sun, is to pay the same penalty as is prescribed for the murder of a pure man[ ]): the corpse is then to be secured in its place by iron, stones, or lead, attached to the feet or hair, in order that the birds and dogs may not carry away the bones and remains to water and trees: the neglect of these fastenings is to be punished with twice two hundred stripes.[ ] if it rains or snows, or the wind is strong, so that the necessary preparations cannot be made on the day of death, the corpse can be carried on its own bed and mat to the dakhma.[ ] at these burial-places the daevas hold their meetings; there they propagate and assemble, "in order to bring to death, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, an innumerable host of men;" there the daevas are most dangerous and deadly to men: for in the places of burial are "infection, disease, fever, impurity, ague, trembling, and old hair." a dakhma is not pure till the body has been eaten by dogs and birds, till the remains have entirely changed into dust, and become utterly mixed up with the foundation of mortar, tiles, and stones. when this point has been reached, the dakhma should be levelled. such destruction of the place of burial is regarded by the law-book as the annihilation of death itself; as one of the highest virtues of the faithful. "he who levels only so much as the size of his own body of a burial-place," says the book of the law, "has repented of all his sins which he has committed in thought, speech, and action; he has not only repented of them, but he has expiated them, and the two heavenly powers will not begin a contest about his entrance into paradise."[ ] the prescriptions of the law for the purification of the vessels and clothes which have touched the corpse, are given from regard to utility, and from the point of view of a certain simple rationalism, which forms an advantageous contrast between iran and india. vessels of lead, wood, and earth, are impure for ever; vessels of gold and silver can be taken into use again after a number of washings with gomez. garments on which spittle, moisture, or dung have fallen are to be cut in pieces and buried; in other cases they can be purified with gomez, water, and earth, and aired, and then again taken into use for women at the time of impurity. the house of the dead is pure when the period for the extinction of the fire is over, when the prayers appointed for the dead have been said, and the inhabitants of the house have had their bodies and clothes washed three times, and the sacred hymns have been sung (p. ). for the bearers, who have carried a corpse to the dakhma, and those who in any way have come into contact with a corpse, special forms of purification are necessary. the washing of the bearers must be begun immediately after the corpse has been deposited. for this purpose the gomez of the nearest male and female relation of the dead is required as well as that of "cattle and beasts of draught." at the last washing the druj naçu springs out of the forehead between the eyebrows, from thence to the shoulders and under the arms, until at length by continued ablutions she is driven into the left toes, and is compelled to pass away from there to the north in the form of a fly.[ ] in order to purify the way on which the dead has been carried to the dakhma, a dog must be led along it, three times, six times, and nine times. then a priest must walk along it, who pronounces the "victorious words," _i.e._ certain exorcisms. "i drive back the daevi druj, so that she flies to the north. avaunt! she must not slay the corporeal world of the pure. may auramazda and Çpenta armaiti protect us from our enemies; may Çraosha come, and vohumano."[ ] the worst of all forms of pollution is that contracted by touching a corpse in a distant place in solitude, for here the power of the demon was greatest. any one to whom this has happened, is to wash himself fifteen times with water, and rub himself an equal number of times with earth, to hurry away from the spot, and call out to every one whom he meets: "i have touched a dead body, without wishing it in thought, word, or deed; my desire is purification." every one is to avoid him unless he wishes to bring on himself the guilt of the impure man.[ ] pools and streams are polluted by corpses till the corpses have been removed and rain has thrice fallen upon the water; after this cattle and men can again drink of the water. so long as the corpse lies in a river, the fiend of death extends over nine paces above and three paces below it, and six paces on either side; in a pool the domain of the fiend is six paces in every direction; in snow and ice-water it is three paces. when zarathrustra asks, whether the water which falls from heaven on the corpse is impure, the god answers, "i, auramazda, allow the water to go forth from lake vourukasha, with storms and clouds, and to fall on a corpse; i, auramazda, and to flow upon a burial-place, and upon a dung-heap, and carry away a bone, and wash all into lake puitika (the pool of purification in heaven). when purified the waters flow from lake puitika into lake vourukasha. i, auramazda, rain down herbs of all kinds, to be food for the pious men, food for the useful cattle. with such speeches auramazda appeased the just zarathrustra."[ ] zarathrustra further inquires, whether corpses which have been carried by dogs, wolves, and panthers to a field make the field and men impure? auramazda, as frequently happens in such cases, argues from the point of view of the possible and attainable. "if such corpses," says the god, "rendered men impure, all mankind would quickly be rendered impure owing to the multitude of the corpses which are upon the earth." but zarathrustra is not satisfied; he says: "a man dies in the hollow of a valley; from the heights of the mountains a bird flies down to the valley, and then back to the summit of a mountain, and alights on a tree of hard or soft wood. there he is sick and voids excrements. then a man goes up from the valley to the summit of the mountain, and comes to the tree, on which the bird has sat, and seeks fuel for his fire. he cuts the tree down, splits it up, and kindles a fire with it. what is his penalty?" auramazda again replies that nothing carried away by wolves, dogs, birds, flies, or winds pollutes men. but now it occurs to zarathrustra, or rather to the priests who have written these things down, whether the animals which have eaten the corpses are not impure. this difficulty auramazda solves by declaring the animals pure; but no flesh of such animals is to be eaten within a year, or offered for sacrifice.[ ] with the exception of herodotus, strabo, and agathias, the western writers give us only very exaggerated accounts of the peculiar mode of burial in use among the persians. herodotus has already told us that the corpses of the magians were exposed to dogs and birds; with regard to the corpses of the rest he had no accurate knowledge, for a mystery was made of the matter.[ ] onesicritus relates that those bactrians, who were weakened by disease and age, were thrown to dogs brought up for the purpose and called buriers of the dead; and strabo says that among the caspians, parents, when they had reached seventy years of age, were shut up by their children, and so killed by starvation;[ ] though he also observes that the magians gave over the corpses to birds.[ ] cicero narrates that it was not the custom of the magians to bury the corpses of their dead before they had been torn by wild animals: in hyrcania a peculiar kind of dog was reared--by the lower classes in common; of the wealthier men each had his own--by which they might be torn after death, and this was considered the best kind of burial.[ ] from eusebius we hear that the medes gave the dying to carefully-reared dogs; the hyrcanians and caspians those who were still alive; the bactrians the old; others the dead.[ ] agathias, on the other hand, tells us, that the dead among the persians were carried out before the gates of the cities naked and without a coffin, and eaten by dogs, so that the bones lay about in the fields. if any man's corpse was not at once eaten, the persians believed that he had been of an unholy mind, that his soul was unjust and wicked, and so had come into the power of the evil spirits, and would be carried into hell. such men were lamented by their friends, because they had no part in the better lot. those who were most quickly eaten up, the persians praised as fortunate; they called their souls the best, and like the gods, and said of them that they had gone into the good land.[ ] the greeks maintained that the achæmenids were buried at pasargadae and persepolis, and that the corpse of cyrus rested at pasargadae.[ ] of darius we are told that even in his lifetime he caused his tomb to be prepared on the summit of a mountain. the corpses of artaxerxes i. of damaspia, and of his son xerxes, were buried, according to ctesias, in persia.[ ] the last darius was buried by alexander in the royal sepulchre, when he had already given the honours of burial to the persian queen statera.[ ] diodorus tells us that these tombs were on the eastern side of the citadel of persepolis, at a distance of four hundred feet, in the "royal mountain." the rock was hewn out, and contained several chambers. but these tombs had no entrance; the corpses were drawn up by machines to the summit, and so laid in them.[ ] the burial-places of the rulers of ancient persia can still be recognised. some hundred paces to the east of the remains of the royal palace at persepolis, towards the rising of the sun, precisely as diodorus describes the place, are three stone pictures in mount rachmed. sculptures which begin three hundred feet above the ground on the perpendicular front of the mountain form three high façades, with pillars, which present a gateway with woodwork, supporting a large canopy, on which are seen several rows of dogs; the same animals are to be seen on the lower lines of ornamentation. within this framework are the pictures of the buried sovereigns. in the left hand is the bow without a string; the right is raised in an attitude of prayer, and the figures are standing before an altar of burning fire. the king is supported on a foundation upheld by the arms of several rows of men, who represent the conquered lands. two leagues to the north of persepolis are four great sculptures, now called naksh-i-rustem, _i.e._ pictures of rustem, of a similar kind, but beginning only sixty or seventy feet from the ground, deeply cut in the perpendicular wall of two hundred feet in length. three of these pictures are close together; the fourth is on a spur of the rock, at right angles to the other three. the centre of the three marks the tomb of darius, the son of hystaspes. it is the only one among the seven monuments which has inscriptions.[ ] the corpses of the princes might have been exposed to the sun, the dogs, and birds on the summit above these pictures. in that case they would merely mark the place of exposure, and these rocks would be burial-places like those of the modern parsees in bombay. but behind the sculptures, though not accessible from them, sepulchral chambers have been discovered. from this, and from the description which the greeks give us of the tomb of cyrus, we must draw the conclusion that the persian custom of burial did not agree with the rule of the avesta--with the exception of the priests, whose corpses, as herodotus expressly states, were exposed. the vendidad laments that in certain districts of the east, arachosia and chakhra, the dead were burned, or buried.[ ] under the sassanids exposure was strictly observed both in the east and west, as is clear from the account of agathias already quoted, and all the statements which relate to this later period. the regulations of the book of the law with regard to the burial of corpses and the places of exposure are still strictly observed by the parsees. great care is taken at the erection of a dakhma that the rain-water can run off from the bier of the corpse. at the last moment a dog is brought into the presence of the dying person, so that its eye may be directed on him; and when a woman with child dies two dogs are brought, because two lives are in question. the eye of the dog has the power to keep the evil spirits at a distance. but every one must remain at nine paces distance from the dying person. after death the two corpse-bearers at once strip the body--their hands are protected from immediate contact by napkins made of old clothes--and carry it on a bier of iron--for metal contracts less pollution than wood--accompanied by the prayers of the priests, to the place of burial. the kinspeople follow the corpse in silence to within ninety paces of the dakhma. for the first three nights the priests and kinsmen repeat continually the prescribed prayers for the soul of the dead; in the third night the decision is made at the bridge of chinvat (p. ). the burial-places of the parsees at bombay are situated on a mountain on the coast, on the summit of which several hollows have been cut. from a distance the relatives look eagerly to this summit, to see whether the vultures are already attacking the corpse, and which part of it they first consume. for the first year after death a prayer is said daily before meals for the soul of the dead to the fravashis of the pure,[ ] and a service is held on the day of the month on which the death took place. in the years that follow, on the fourth, tenth, and thirtieth day of each month, as the book prescribes, but above all on the festival of all souls--_i.e._ on the feast of the ten nights during which the fravashis come down (p. )--prayers are said for the dead. it is hardly possible to ascertain the arrangement and life of the state from the very scanty and obscure traits in the existing fragments of the law. we have no rules on the rights and duties of the monarchy, though these were included in the avesta, if we may trust the list of contents.[ ] but the splendour of majesty as it dwelt with the rulers of old time, with yima, thraetaona, and kereçaçpa, and was imparted to Çyavarshana and vistaçpa, is brought strongly into prominence; and among the amesha Çpentas we found the spirit of good order, of good government. of the position of the orders so much only is clear--that the priests claimed precedence over the warriors and husbandmen; that the avesta allows them certain privileges of moderate extent (p. ); and that the priestly families did not form exclusive castes, though the priestly functions were hereditary in them. still less can we learn of the families of the warriors. we do not hear that they enjoyed a favoured position; they are merely mentioned before the husbandmen; and the vendidad also gives us some information about their armour. it should consist of a coat of mail and helmet, a girdle and greaves, a bow with thirty arrows, a sling with thirty stones, a sword, a club, and a lance.[ ] under the achæmenids there were rich families in bactria and sogdiana, in which we may no doubt venture to find descendants of the old military families, enjoying an influential position in politics; under the sassanids the knightly nobility of iran comes plainly to the front. the avesta speaks of great and intermediate houses, of important and unimportant inhabitants of the villages. we also read of rich and poor, men who have property and beggars; and mention is made of tradespeople and slaves. the avesta rises from the lord of the house to the lord of the village or community (_viç_), then to the lord of the tribe or canton (_zantu_) and to the lord of the province (_danhu_); an arrangement which corresponds to the indian government as fixed by manu's regulations. when alexander of macedon forced his way to bactria and sogdiana, he met with resistance from the native overseers of cantons or chieftains, whom he had summoned to zariaspa, "the largest city" in bactria (p. ).[ ] when the castles of the most powerful had been taken, and their lords had submitted, he sought to gain them by marrying their daughters to the captains of his army, while he himself took to wife the daughter of the bactrian oxyartes. the protection of property is obviously a matter of great importance in the avesta. the utility of dogs is frequently mentioned, which protect flocks and villages from thieves and wolves. theft is looked on as especially wicked, because the thief leads a roving life, eats raw and unprepared food, and carries on his evil work in the darkness.[ ] in regard to contracts the vendidad distinguishes six kinds, according as they are concluded by word, by the pledge of hands, and are concerned with the value of a head of small cattle, a beast of draught, a man (_i.e._ a slave), and a piece of land. anyone who violates the first kind is to receive blows with the rod, and with the whip, and the punishment increases in the violation of the other kinds up to stripes with both instruments.[ ] to check injury of the person the vendidad lays down the rule, that anyone who lifts up his weapon against a man without beating him, is to receive twice five stripes the first time, and twice two hundred on the seventh occasion of committing the offence, if he has not expiated the preceding six offences; if he has expiated them, the measure of the first offence is dealt out on each occasion. anyone who attacks another not in anger but with malice, is to be punished with twice fifteen, and on the sixth occasion with stripes, in case he has not expiated the former offences. anyone who inflicts a wound on another, is punished the first time with twice thirty, the fifth time with twice two hundred stripes. the same punishment is inflicted on a man who breaks the bones of another, if he does not expiate the offence. if the wound proves fatal, he is to be punished with twice ninety stripes, and on a second offence with twice two hundred.[ ] we have but few indications in the avesta from which to draw conclusions as to the state of civilisation. the amounts to be paid to the purifier and the physician are given in animals; the series of contracts is determined according to the value of small cattle, beasts of draught, slaves, and landed property. but other property may be given in place of the animals; we find mention of money (_shaeta_),[ ] and, as has been observed, of tradespeople; of mats and carpets, vessels of earth, silver, and gold, rich garments, palaces with pillars and turrets, ovens for smelting and for glass. the art of the physician cannot have been in a primitive stage, when so much space is devoted to remedies (p. ), and the physicians who heal with the knife are designated as a separate class. so far as i can see, the avesta betrays a state of civilisation, which, beginning from the pastoral condition, has remained in close connection with cattle-breeding and agriculture, but has also reached a more advanced stage. the unions of the tribes seem dissolved, and neither the previous importance of the warlike families nor their present position is brought prominently forward. this, no less than the liberal imposition of bodily punishment, shows that long before the dominion of the achæmenids, the east of iran must have been in the hands of princes who ruled with despotic power. footnotes: [ ] "mihr yasht," , , . [ ] "vend." , , ; , - . [ ] herod. , ; plato, "alcib. i." p. ; xen. "cyri instit." , , ; diod. , . [ ] "vend." , - ; - . [ ] "vend." , ff. [ ] _loc. cit._ , - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "oeconom." , ff. [ ] ibid. , - . [ ] ibid. , - ; "cyri instit." , , . [ ] darmesteter, "haurvatat et ameretat," p. ff. [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , , , . [ ] "vend." , , , , according to goldner's translation. [cf. darmesteter.] [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] it is not certain whether the _udra_ of the vendidad is the water-dog (spaniel?) or the otter. [ ] "vend." , - ; , - . [ ] agath. , . [ ] "vend." farg. . [ ] "wer den urin mit vorgestrecktem fusse lässt macht die drudsch schwanger," so dass sie neue unholde gebären. [ ] "vend." , - , - ; , - . [ ] herod. , ; xen. "cyri instit." , , ; , , ; plin. "h. n." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - ; , . [ ] "vend." , , , , , - . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "vend." , - ; , - . [ ] "vend." , - ; , ff. [ ] "vend." , - ; farg. . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - , after harlez' translation. [cf. darmesteter.] [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] plato, "aloib. i."; p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "ethic. nicom." , , ed. zell. [ ] curt. , ; plut. "artax." c. . [ ] ammian, , . [ ] herod. , , ; dinon. fragm. , ed. müller; ctes. "pers. ecl." . [ ] plut. "themist." c. . [ ] herod. , ; diogen. laert. prooem. ; plut. "artax." c. ; ctes. "pers. ecl." ; agathias, , ; heracl. cum. fragm. ed. müller. [ ] the regulations respecting sexual intercourse, abortion, etc., which here follow in the german text will be found in "vend." , - ; , - , , ; _ib._ , - , ; , ; _ib._ , - ; _ib._ , - ; _ib._ , - . [ ] "rigveda," , , ; "atharvaveda," , , ; , , in darmesteter _loc. cit._ , . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] justi, "bundehesh," c. . [ ] west, "mainyo-i-khard," c. . above, p. . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "vend." , , . [ ] "h. n." , . [ ] von gutschmid ("das iranische wandeljahr, berichte der k. sächsischen gesellschaft der wiss." ) places the establishment of the cycle, by which, in order to bring the year of days into agreement with the natural time, a month was inserted every years, and consequently the introduction of the east iranian calendar into the whole kingdom, in the year , or between and b.c. that the beginning of the year was universally placed in the spring after the introduction of this calendar, and fixed between march and the middle of june, would follow from the importance of the farvardin festival, even if it were not sufficiently vouched for by other evidence. the bundehesh (c. ) speaks of the year as fixed, inasmuch as it reckons the shortening of the days from a certain day in the month of tir, and puts the shortest day on the th of the month of din, yet it adds that the priests reckoned on this basis, and that the lunar year did not correspond to the year thus calculated. the cappadocian names for the months are those of the east iranian calendar; and the cappadocians cannot have obtained these till the calendar was current throughout the whole kingdom of the achæmenids. on this ground also von gutschmid's dates do not seem to be too high. [ ] "vend." , ; , and _loc. cit._ [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - ; , ; , - . [ ] "vend." , , , , . [ ] "vend." , ff. [ ] "vend." , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - ; - . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - ; , - . [ ] "vend." , - , according to geldner's rendering. [ ] "vend." , - ; , - . [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] strabo, p. . cf. p. . [ ] "quaest. tuscul." , . [ ] euseb. "praep. evang." p. . [ ] agath. , . [ ] diod. , ; arrian, "anab." , ; , . [ ] ctes. "pers. ecl." , ; strabo, p. . [ ] arrian, l. c.; justin, , ; aelian, "var. hist." , ; plut. "alex." c. . [ ] diod. , ; cf. ctes. "pers. ecl." . [ ] k. niebuhr, "reise," , ff. [ ] "vend." , , , , ; cf. above, p. , . [ ] "yaçna," . [ ] above, p. . the mainyo-i-khard contains some rules on the duties of the king. the prince is to defend the city and land against enemies and risings, to respect water and fire, to keep at a distance bad laws and customs, and promote the worship of auramazda, and good works, and to bring back to the right way those who have left it. a king of this kind is like the yazatas and amesha Çpentas: c. , , , , ed. west. [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] arrian, "anab." , , . [ ] "vend." , - . [ ] "vend." , - according to harlez. [ ] "vend." , - . even after all that has been advanced by de harlez, "avesta," p. , i cannot convince myself that the stripes appointed here and elsewhere in the vendidad are to fall, not on the guilty, but on animals of angromainyu. if animals are to be killed, we are told so expressly in the vendidad, and this duty is often mentioned along with the stripes (p. ). to kill twice or flies or lizards is no equivalent for murdering a man. i allow that no one could endure blows by thousands, if they were given in earnest, yet in running a "muck" five and six hundred very severe blows have been endured. in my opinion the punishments of the avesta are not intended for legal penalties; they mark what was needed, in the opinion of the priests, to expel the evil disposition, which could recur again and again. [ ] "vend." , ; "astad yasht," ; justi, "handbuch," _sub. voc._ chapter x. the later development of eastern iran. of the tribes of the arians occupying the table-land called by their name, those which had their habitations on the northern slope of the hindu kush, in the valleys of the murghab and zarefshan, outstripped the rest in combining their forces, and uniting into a larger community. in these regions they held advanced posts over against the steppes and the migratory nations of the low plains stretching before them without limit towards the north. we had good reason to suppose that it was the repulsion of the attacks of the nomads from the steppes of the oxus and jaxartes, which brought these tribes, whose possessions consisted of flocks and pastures, into the habit of living in arms, and of undertaking the protection of the country. from their midst arose the monarchy intended to lead and combine the defence, the formation of which we placed about the year b.c., and having its centre at bactria and zariaspa. the tribes of the west, on the other hand, for four centuries after this time lived in isolation under their chieftains. the continuance of the struggles which bactria had to undergo, even after the formation of the monarchy, is proved, not only by the proximity of the nomads of the steppes, but also by the traits of warlike feeling preserved in the avesta; by the order of warriors which existed beside the orders of priests and husbandmen; by the chieftains and their citadels, which we found here in the fourth century b.c.; and lastly, by the circumstance, that the old shapes of the myth of the arians, the spirits of the sky which smite the demons, are changed in the avesta not merely into ideal patterns, but even into ancestors of the bactrian kings, and connected with the genealogical tree of the nation. yima, thraetaona, manuschithra, airyu, uça, and huçrava, are changed into ancestors of the kings and the people. like the aryas in the panjab, the tribes of the airyas in iran prayed to mithra, to the spirits of light, the clear air, the wind, and fire, which protected them against the demons of the night and gloom, and gave increase to their pastures and flocks, and recovered the water of the sky which the demons sought to carry away. as in india, the juice of the soma plant was the principal offering presented to the gods; as soma was not only the king of plants, the lord of nourishment and life--so the liquor which gave strength to the gods was here also a god, haoma. the belief in the opposition of the spirits of light and the spirits of destruction, in the power of the correct sacrifice, in the influence of the good sayings, the sacred words, was on both sides of the indus, the starting-point of religious ideas, and in iran it became the hinge on which they turned. iran was divided into fertile land and deserts; next to the most luxuriant growth lay wide tracts, in which heat or cold, morass or drought, storms of sand or of snow, made life and agriculture impossible. these contrasts were most striking on the upper oxus, in sogdiana and margiana. hence it came to pass that in bactria the ancient belief in the struggle of the good and evil spirits made an essential advance. the old gods and spirits, the ancient worship of fire, were not indeed overthrown by the doctrine of zarathrustra; on the contrary, the struggle between the good and evil powers was spread over the whole of nature, and the means of repelling the evil ones were increased. the good and evil spirits were respectively ranged under chiefs, on the counter-operation of whom and their spirit-armies rests the life of nature; and on this life depends the life of man. henceforth man must not merely keep the evil ones from himself, he must take part in the struggle of the good against the evil powers, increase so far as he can the good creation which now belongs to auramazda and has proceeded from him; and thus restrict the sphere in which the evil spirit exercises his power. after death he will receive the reward of his conflict; and if in and through this struggle he has been made a participator in the nature of the pure and bright deities, he will continue to live in their heaven of light. this development of the old arian views and reform of the religion received the impulse which eventually called it into life at the time when vistaçpa was king of bactria. it must have taken place about the year b.c., _i.e._ about the time when the brahmans on the ganges came to reform their ancient faith, and exalted brahman above indra and the ancient deities. from the idea of this new god, in which the power of the holy and the world-soul were equal factors, the brahmans arrived at a sharp distinction between spirit and matter. their ethics, beginning with the rejection of nature, could not but require the annihilation of the body as their final goal, and this led to the vain pursuit of impossibilities, to the ascetic suicide of body and soul. the doctrine of zarathrustra does not recognise the contradiction of spirit and matter. the good god has not created the world in order to entangle men in evil and wickedness, but in order to give to it and to mankind life and increase. it is only one side of nature, not the whole of it, and that side harmful to men, which has proceeded from evil, and this evil does not come from the good, but from the wicked spirit. evil is here limited to gloom, desolation, drought and death. as it is this part, and this only in nature, which has to be removed, man is not called upon to lay aside his whole nature, but on the contrary to rejoice in the beneficial side of it. this he must tend and strengthen in himself, while he keeps the harmful side at a distance, struggles against and annihilates it so far as possible both in himself and all around him. he must strengthen the light side of his soul against the dark, and make it the master of the dark; he must banish from his soul lying and deceit, idleness and filthiness; purity of soul consists in truthfulness. thus must a man watch and work with the good gods and under their eyes. it is not contemplation, meditation, or asceticism, as in the doctrine of the brahmans; it is practical activity and inward effort that the teaching of zarathrustra requires from men; the object it placed before men was not self-annihilation, but the purification of soul and body, and true assertion of self. if a man kept his body and soul pure; if he was truthful in word and work, and increased the good creation in meadow, field, and forest; if he slew the animals of the evil spirits, then all would be well with him; he would have abundance of cattle and descendants, long life in this world, and eternal life in the heaven of the spirits of light. this reform had been accomplished in its fundamental principles in bactria, and auramazda had been elevated above mithra as the creator of heaven, of the gods, and the earth, when about the middle of the ninth century b.c. the armies of shalmanesar ii. of asshur invaded the east of iran. about this time, or soon after, the order of athravas was formed. it rose, on the one hand, out of the ancient families of the fire-priests, who understood the custom of sacrifice, and had preserved the efficacious prayers to mithra, verethraghna, haoma, and tistrya, to ardviçura and drvaçpa down to the period of the reform, so far as they came over to the new doctrine; and on the other hand, out of the race of zarathrustra, and the families of the zealous adherents of the new doctrine, who devoted themselves to the service of religion. this order of priests, which handed down in its families the sayings of zarathrustra and those of old days, the ancient invocations as well as those of the new teaching, took precedence of the families of the nobles, warriors, and husbandmen, though they were not separated from them by any rights of connubium or other privileges. from the whole tendency of the reform there could not be any thought of acquiring such a position as that which the brahmans--the first created of brahman--attained among the orders of india. when the army of tiglath-pilesar ii. entered arachosia about the middle of the eighth century b.c. the new doctrine had already advanced to the west. it was represented among the medes by eminent teachers. in this region, at the time when the medes were under the supremacy of assyria, a priestly order grew up out of the old families of the priests or magians, _i.e._ the powerful, and adherents of the new doctrine; the families of this order abandoned their tribal connection among the medes, and thus formed an hereditary caste, which preserved the name already in use in the west for the priests, and became so numerous that it could be ranked as a tribe among the other tribes of the medes. the formation of this order was already complete when, after the middle of the seventh century b.c., the medes rebelled against the kings of asshur. meanwhile the athravas of the east were busily occupied in developing and fixing the contents and meaning of the new idea of god, and of the ethics resulting from it. they ranged the old gods under the new doctrine, and determined their relation to the new supreme deity; they peopled heaven with shapes corresponding to the reformed teaching, and brought mythology into harmony with it; from the commands of purity they developed in the spirit of the reformed religion the rules of purification and the removal of impurities as required in every occurrence of life. thus, beside the old invocations of the gods, arose theories of a speculative cast which sought to regard the gods as ethical forces, and prayers of a formal character; from the dialectic of the priestly schools was developed a very complicated system of purity of life, of rubrics for expiation and purification, in which formalism and casuistry were not wanting. enquiries arose how law and justice should be shaped so as to conform to the rules of religion; while, on the other hand, the old sacrificial songs were collected, the liturgy was fixed, as well as the order of the festivals and sacrifices for the new moon and full moon, and the course of the year; the prescriptions of medicine were written down, and those cycles formed which comprised the battle between auramazda and angromainyu down to the last and eternal victory of light and life. after various attempts at compilation, the priests of the east finally succeeded in uniting the sum of these labours into one great whole, which was the canon of the sacred scriptures. we may assume that the labours of the priesthood of bactria, which came to an end with this result, may have occupied the same space of time as the growth and writing down of the brahmanas on the ganges. there are good reasons for supposing that the canon was finally established about the year b.c., and therefore, on the calculation given, the labours of the priests upon it must have commenced about the year b.c. like the kindred tribes in india, the arians in iran were not destitute of imagination and a tendency to abstraction. but from the first these qualities were restrained within narrower limits owing to the nature of the land,--while the scenery and phenomena of the ganges tended to develop them,--and the teaching of zarathrustra provided a counterpoise in the practical requirements which it set up. labour took the place of idle dreaming, conflict and energetic activity the place of asceticism, and the imagination received impulses to simple and great conceptions. the ethics of this religion guaranteed the conditions of a healthy human existence; man's effort was essentially directed to this present world, and the duties imposed upon him were such as he could fulfil. thus they led to results different from the introspection, quietism, and asceticism of the indians, and the relapse into sensuality which was the inseparable concomitant of the latter. the doctrine of zarathrustra contributed essentially to educate the tribes which followed it in truthfulness and manliness, and to qualify them for energy and action. in their sensible, intelligent view of the world, in putting theory below practice, and aiming at an active life, the iranians are as far before the indians as the romans are before the greeks. if eastern iran, in the first instance, discharged a religious mission, the duty of politics was undertaken by the west. the empire of the medes and of the persians rose and fell, but the religion of auramazda survived the fall of the achæmenids. it rose to renewed life with the empire of the arsacids and sassanids. the national reaction against the dominion of the seleucids began with the parthians; the empire of the sassanids, which subsequently took the place of that of the arsacids, was supported in the first place by the tribes of the persians, and was connected with the remembrance of the achæmenids. yet from the first the sassanids were prepared to deal equal measure to the east and west of iran; in opposition to any attempt at religious innovation they held firmly to the tradition of the east. when after a rule of more than four centuries the sassanids succumbed to the invasion of the arabs, yezdegerd iii. attempted to maintain himself in merv, as darius iii. had attempted to maintain himself in bactria. the attempt failed. iran succumbed to islam. yet it was the east from which, not quite two centuries after the fall of the sassanids, a reaction commenced against the arabs, and this gradually increased till it rescued the nationality and the language of iran. it was the viceroys in the districts of the east who rebelled against the chalifate, and they found support in the population of their provinces. a process similar to that which had previously broken down the dominion of the seleucids over iran shattered the empire of the abbasids. the impulse to this movement rose in taberistan, where the taherids appeared, as independent princes soon after the death of harun-al-rashid; some decads later the soffarids rebelled in sejestan, and towards the end of the ninth century the power of the samanids sprang up in sogdiana, balkh, and merv, and founded seats in samarcand and bokhara. not long after the ziads obtained an independent position in dilem and jorjan (the ancient hyrcania). towards the end of the tenth century the ghasnavids, who had hitherto been the servants and captains of the samanids, threw off their allegiance; and united under their dominion all the lands which had been subject to the soffarids, the samanids, and ziads. soon after the year b.c. they ruled from their abode in ghasna over cabul, balkh, merv, and chovaresm to the north, and over sejestan and afghanistan to the south, and to the west over the lands of elburz, while their armies crossed the indus to the east, and advanced beyond the panjab to the valley of the ganges. the ancient religion of iran was not wholly lost even in the time of harun-al-rashid; magians were tolerated at the court of the chalifs for the sake of their skill in medicine. the barmecides, who came from balkh, displayed, even under the chalifate, a partiality for the legends and the religion of iran. the samanids boasted to be sprung from the sassanids, the ziads were reproached with being idolaters in heart and moslem in tongue. they called themselves once more by the names celebrated in the legends of eastern iran: minocher after manuschithra, kai kobad after kava kavata, kai kaus after kava uça, isfendyar after Çpentodata; and in the list of the ghasnavids, the afghan princes in india, we meet at a later time with the name of kava huçrava (chosru). the regeneration of old iran, in opposition to the arabs, found its firmest stronghold in ghasna. the deeds of the achæmenids were completely forgotten in the east which had no part in them; but the legends of yima, thraetaona, kava huçrava, and kava vistaçpa, had lived on under the dominion of the achæmenids, the seleucids, the greek princes of balkh and cabul, and under the arsacids. then came the revival of the avesta under shapur ii. about the middle of the fourth century a.d. (p. ). the first chosru ( - a.d.) caused the legends and traditions of the nation and the priests to be collected and copied; a comprehensive exposition of the whole was made under the last yezdegerd. thus as early as the last days of the sassanids the tradition of iran was collected and fixed, and this, transcribed in pehlevi, outlived the fall of the kingdom, and descended as a legacy of ancient glory to the soffarids, samanids, and ghasnavids.[ ] on the basis of this "book of kings," which he possessed in an arabic translation, firdusi of tus on the tejend, a city of which at the present day some scanty ruins remain not far from meshhed, undertook to restore to life the remembrance of the past of eastern iran and the fame of her ancient heroes in a great epic poem. he gathered together the entire existing tradition, and under the dominion of islam cast a new glory on the ancient belief in auramazda, who was now known as yazdan. this poem, the book of kings (shahnameh) exhibits at the same time the new persian language in its pure form, developed out of the eastern dialects, and not yet contaminated with aramæan and arabic elements. the first king in firdusi is gayumart. he assembles men and animals, and teaches the first to hide their nakedness with the skins of leopards. his son siyamek is torn in pieces by a demon. we are acquainted with the primeval man gayo maretan; whom the priests placed at the beginning of things (p. ). then king hoshang taught men to harness the bull, to tame the horse, to forge iron, to till the field, and introduced the worship of fire. after hoshang king tahmurath reigned, who overcame the divs (daevas), and compelled them to teach him the art of writing. he taught his people the art of weaving, and rode round the world on angromainyu (now ahriman) till the latter threw him off on elburz, and so killed him. in the avesta haoshyangha sacrifices in order to obtain power over the evil spirits, and takhmo urupa also sacrifices in order to curb angromainyu for the space of thirty years (p. ). after tahmurath, jemshid (yima) is king. he teaches the art of forging weapons and weaving precious stuffs, divides men into priests, warriors, husbandmen, and artisans; discovers the art of healing, and compels the demons to build houses, and erect for him a splendid palace and a gorgeous throne adorned with gold and precious stones. three hundred years passed away while he was king, in which the divs were bound, and death could not approach mankind. then jemshid boasted that he had saved the world by his remedies from sickness and death, and demanded divine honours. this sin alienated from him the princes of his kingdom. jemshid was compelled to fly before zohak, the king of babylon. zohak pursued him. in the remote east, on the sea of china, jemshid was overtaken and slain. the old arian legend of the happy age of yima shows itself even yet through firdusi's version. death could not approach men under his dominion; there was no sickness, and therefore jemshid is said to have discovered the art of healing. the avesta had already found a motive for the fall of yima in the fact that he had refused to announce the law, and at length had begun to love lies (p. ). the zohak of firdusi is no other than the ancient cloud dragon, azhi dahaka, which attempts to carry away the waters of the sky, and swallows up men and horses. he is now a foreign, hostile, bloodthirsty king, who puts an end to the blessings of yima's reign in order to bring the reverse of blessing upon iran. azhi dahaka had three heads and three throats; zohak has two serpents growing from his shoulders, to which by degrees thousands fall as sacrifices, for they are fed with the brains of men, and for this purpose two youths are slaughtered every day. that zohak is called king of babylon is due to a reminiscence of the fact that the assyrians ruled over western iran, and the seleucids and chalifs over the whole country. zohak persecutes severely the descendants of jemshid. abtin, the last of these, finally falls into his power; he causes him to be slain for his serpents; but abtin's wife carries off his young son feridun in safety to elburz. when the latter is sixteen years of age his mother discloses to him the fate of his father; the discontented gather round him, and the angel serosh teaches him how to overcome the magician zohak. in the citadel at babylon feridun strikes zohak to the ground with a blow of the club which kave, the smith, has forged for him. but serosh bids him not to kill zohak, who is now chained in a deep cave in elburz, under demavend, the highest summit on the chain. abtin, the descendant of jemshid, is the athwya of the avesta; feridun is thraetaona, the son of athwya, the slayer of dahaka; the angel serosh is the well-known god Çraosha. feridun is not permitted to slay zohak, because azhi dahaka is also a demon. feridun has three sons--salm (Çairima), tur (tuirya), and yrej (airyu); to the last, who was the youngest, feridun gives iran, the best part of his dominions, while salm receives the west and tur the north. filled with envy at the favour shown to their youngest brother, salm and tur slay the pious yrej. feridun is deeply moved; but he gives the daughter whom yrej has left in marriage to pesheng. the son of pesheng is minocher, who grows up to avenge his grandfather's death. in order to prevent this, salm and tur invade iran. the battle continues for three days, till minocher has slain tur with his own hand. he also overtakes salm in flight, and slays him. feridun can now die in peace, as he has seen the kingdom handed over to minocher. after the death of the latter the kingdom descended to his son naudar.[ ] then afrasiab of turan, the great-grandson of tur, whom minocher had slain, invaded iran to avenge the death of his ancestor on the descendant of minocher. naudar's army was defeated; he was taken captive with many princes of iran, and beheaded by the order of afrasiab. besides the race of abtin, jemshid had left other descendants. in union with the daughter of the king of cabul, whose kingdom extends from bost on the hilmend to ghasna (and consequently includes the region of sejestan, the ancient haetumat),[ ] he had begotten gershasp, a mighty hero who stood by the side of minocher in the struggle against salm and tur; the sons of gershasp are neriman and sam, and his grandson is zal. the gershasp of firdusi is the kereçaçpa of the avesta, the son of thrita, of the race of Çama (p. ), who slays the serpent Çruvara and the giant gandarewa. the avesta gives him the epithet nairimanao, _i.e._ the man-hearted, heroic, and represents him as seizing the brilliance of majesty, when it departed for the third time from yima (p. ). this hint was enough to give the royal power to kereçaçpa; his epithet and his tribal name are personified, and become his descendants neriman and sam. in accordance with their origin these princes from zabul are in firdusi the most faithful adherents of the race of feridun, which has rewarded them with the dominion over the south. in this way the legend of sejestan is woven into the closest connection with the legend of the avesta. the power of the descendants of feridun is extinguished with naudar, from whose sons "the splendour of the royal majesty shines no longer;" thus does firdusi repeat the metaphor current in the avesta. the princes of zabul now take their place as the protectors and guardians of iran. the son of king sam of zabul is zal. after naudar's melancholy fall he makes peace between iran and turan; the oxus is fixed as the boundary, afrasiab returns to his own country, and in the place of the sons of naudar zal allows zav to be chosen king of iran. zav is already aged and soon dies; afrasiab invades iran again. then zal deliberates with the mobedhs (_i.e._ with the chiefs of the magians, p. ), who is to be king of iran. it is resolved to raise kai kobad to the throne, who like feridun before him dwells on elburz. zal sends his son rustem (moses of khorene is the first who mentions the persian legend of rustem), a youth of great strength, who as a boy had slain an infuriated elephant, to fetch kai kobad from elburz. rustem finds him prepared, for he has seen in a dream two white falcons who place a golden crown upon his head. afrasiab's army, which opposes him, is defeated; kai kobad ascends the throne of iran, the turanians are defeated in a great battle, rustem seizes afrasiab by his girdle and drags him from his horse; but the girdle breaks, afrasiab falls to the ground, and is saved by his own people. in the peace the oxus is once more fixed as the boundary between iran and turan. kai kobad is followed by his son kai kaus. against the advice of his vassals and of zal he leads his army against mazanderan, a land inhabited by demons, which take the king captive with his whole army. a single warrior escapes to bring the terrible news to zal. as zal is now years old, rustem undertakes to liberate the king. he has to overcome seven terrible monsters before he can arrive at the demons. at last he makes his way to them, and on his horse reksh, he destroys the army of the demons. then he slays their chief, the white demon, in the dark cave, and liberates kai kaus and the army of iran. kai kaus now causes the conquered demons to build him splendid palaces on elburz, and resolves to fly up to heaven, in order to see the course of the sun. four eagles bound to his throne carry him upwards, but then allow him to fall to earth. ashamed at his pride he humbles himself, and his penance appeases the wrath of heaven. when afrasiab breaks the peace and again invades iran, kai kaus sends his son siavaksh, under the guidance of rustem, against the turanians. for three days the battle rages at the gates of balkh, and at length siavaksh is victorious. afrasiab sues for peace, siavaksh concludes a treaty; but kai kaus will not confirm it. that he may not break his word, siavaksh gives himself up to the turanians. afrasiab receives him with honour, and gives him his daughter feringis to wife. subsequently he harbours suspicion against him, causes him to be executed, and the son, whom feringis bears after the execution of her husband, to be brought up among the shepherds without any knowledge of his birth. to this son an abode is then allotted in a remote region of turan. to avenge the execution of siavaksh rustem invades turan. victorious in the battle he causes surkha, the son of afrasiab, whom he captures in the battle, to be put to death in the same way as siavaksh, pursues afrasiab to the extreme border of his kingdom, and does not return till the whole of turan has been laid waste: the booty is immense. many years afterwards it was revealed in a dream to guderz (gotarzes), a descendant of that kave, who had once forged for feridun the club used against zohak, that a son of siavaksh survived. gev, the son of guderz, arose to seek in turan the right heir to the throne of iran. for seven years he seeks in vain. at length he discovers kai chosru, to whom his mother feringis has already revealed the secret of his birth. in spite of the most severe persecution on the part of afrasiab, gev succeeds in carrying away mother and son to iran; they swim through the swollen oxus on horseback. but when kai kaus wishes to make the grandson so happily discovered his successor, tur, the son of king naudar, opposes the elevation of a king who has turanian blood in his veins. kai chosru proves his higher claim by capturing a citadel of the demons, and erecting a fire-altar in its place. then he sets himself to avenge the death of his father on afrasiab. but the first army of the iranians under tur is defeated; and when feriborz receives the command the warriors of iran are again severely beaten in the valley of peshen; a third army is shut up on mount hamaven. to liberate this rustem sets forth, and conquers in the most terrible battle which he has ever fought. at length afrasiab and kai chosru take the lead of their armies. after a bloody struggle the turanians are compelled to retire, first beyond the oxus, and then beyond the jaxartes. afrasiab flies for refuge to his fortified city kang bihist; the city is taken, but he escapes into a cave. kai kaus and kai chosru entreat the fire adar guçasp, that afrasiab may not escape them. a pious penitent, hom, who hears the lament of afrasiab in his cave, recognises him, overpowers and binds him, and leads him forth. afrasiab entreats the penitent to loose his bonds, and then escapes once more, into a lake. the pious hom obtains possession of him again, and hands him over to kai chosru, who has his head cut off in revenge for his father siavaksh. kai kaus has now seen the fulfilment of vengeance on afrasiab for the death of siavaksh; his days draw to a close. for sixty years after him, kai chosru rules over iran in peace, and then resolves to enter on a pilgrimage to heaven. when the angel serosh has bidden him nominate lohrasp as his successor, he fulfils this injunction, establishes rustem as general-in-chief of the kingdom and successor of his father zal in the kingdom of the south, and after long meditation, accompanied by the sons of naudar, tus and gustehem, and the heroes gev and feriborz, he begins the pilgrimage to the east. when high up in the mountains he advises his companions to return; soon they will see him no more. he disappears after bathing in a spring; his heroes, in spite of the command to return, seek for him, and are buried in a storm of snow. we saw above that in the avesta, manuschithra and airyu are connected with thraetaona, and that the group of the paradhatas comes to an end with these names. hence firdusi also represents the crown as being brought to the first ruler of the new group, kai kobad, _i.e._ the kava kavata of the avesta, from the sky by two falcons; he also represents him as being fetched from elburz, _i.e._ from the holy mountain of the old legend, in order to overcome zohak, just as thraetaona descended from the same mountain. kai kaus, the kava uça of the avesta, who succeeded kai kobad, betrays his divine nature in firdusi by his march against the demons, by the castles which these demons build for him on elburz, and by his attempt to fly into heaven. in the avesta kava uça offers sacrifice, in order to obtain the dominion over men and daevas, and this favour is granted to him. that the march against the demons is made in the direction of mazanderan is due no doubt to the frequent mention of the mazanian devs in the avesta. siavaksh, the son of kai kaus, who honourably gives himself up to the turanians, is the Çyavarshana of the avesta--from which we merely learn that he was spotless, and that after kava uça the royal majesty united with the beautiful body of Çyavarshana, and that he died by a violent death (p. ). the destructive turanian franghraçyana, who is now called afrasiab, is known to the avesta. "thrice," we are told, "he sought after the royal majesty which belongs to the arian lands, but he found it not."[ ] kai chosru, _i.e._ kava huçrava, is in the avesta also the son of Çyavarshana; he offers sacrifice, in order that it may be granted to him "to put an end to the long period of dimness," "to bind the franghraçyana filled with abundance;" he is said to be "without sickness and death." firdusi's poem neglects none of these traits. after the triple war which, kindled by afrasiab, has lasted for a long time, firdusi represents chosru as invoking the fire guçasp, that afrasiab may not escape him. in the avesta the god haoma is said himself to bind franghraçyana, and to carry him away as a captive of king huçrava, in order that the latter may slay him beyond the lake chaechaçta (p. ). in firdusi the pious hom discovers the hiding-place of afrasiab; he binds him and carries him away a prisoner. afrasiab escapes; but hom captures him once more in lake kanyesht. as huçrava is "without sickness and death," firdusi represents him as vanishing on a pilgrimage to heaven. in firdusi, lohrasp, whom chosru has made his successor, erects a fire-temple at balkh, his royal abode, and after reigning years, abdicates in favour of gushtasp, his elder son, in order to devote his life to pious exercises at his temple. when zartusht proclaims the avesta, gushtasp and his wife receive the new doctrine. but arjasp, the king of turan, sent gushtasp a command not to listen to the words of zartusht. to this request gushtasp did not accede; a battle took place on the banks of the oxus, which turned in favour of iran, owing to the bravery of zarir, the brother of gushtasp. an arrow from an ambush lays the hero low at the moment of victory. his death terrifies the iranians; not one of them ventures to avenge it till gushtasp promises isfendyar, the strongest and bravest of his sons, that he will give him the crown if he succeeds in avenging the death of zarir. isfendyar overthrows the warriors of iran, brings the arms and horse of zarir into the camp of iran, and arjasp retires into his land. in the place of the promised crown, isfendyar receives from his father the high mission of spreading abroad the new faith. by means of a chain which he places on his neck, zartusht makes isfendyar invulnerable, and surrounds him with a charm so that anyone who slays him will himself quickly die. when isfendyar returns home after a long time, his mission fully accomplished, as all have received the law of zartusht, accusations are made against him that he is collecting an army to dethrone his father. on this unfounded charge gushtasp causes isfendyar to be cast into prison. but while he remains in zabul, the turanians attack balkh. the aged lohrasp takes up arms; he cannot check the turanians; he falls; the city is taken: zartusht with the fire-priests is slain in the fire-temple, the sacred fire is quenched in their blood, and two daughters of gushtasp are carried away to turan. in vain does gushtasp hasten up, when he has collected his army; thirty-eight of his sons are slain in the battle against the turanians. gushtasp takes to flight, and with his warriors finds refuge in a mountain which is quickly invested by arjasp. then jamasp, the faithful adviser of gushtasp, passes in disguise through the camp of the turanians, to fetch isfendyar out of prison, and urge him to save his father and iran. forgetting his deep injury and wrong, isfendyar forces a way through the camp of arjasp, and in the subsequent battle slaughters so many of the enemy's men that he takes to flight. but the task is not yet accomplished; it still remains to set at liberty the two sisters whom the turanians had carried away from balkh, and whom arjasp keeps imprisoned in "the brazen fortress." after seven conflicts, corresponding to those which rustem had to undergo, when he liberated kai kaus from the power of the demons, isfendyar reaches the fortress. he sends his army back, and in the guise of a merchant obtains entrance into the citadel. here he asks arjasp, to whom he is unknown, for permission to give a feast to the principal men on the turrets of the citadel. when the wine has done its work, isfendyar gives the signal of fire already agreed upon to his followers; the garrison is overpowered; arjasp is slain by isfendyar in single combat, and isfendyar returns victorious with his sisters to balkh. here a new and yet more dangerous task awaits him. rustem, who made kai kobad ruler of iran, and has since done such good service, and achieved such noble acts for kai kaus and kai chosru, remains at a distance from the court and army of king gushtasp. he despises the doctrine of zartusht. at gushtasp's bidding isfendyar must break down this opposition, and bring him to the king. isfendyar marches out and commands rustem to follow him in chains to the court. with a heavy heart rustem seeks to withdraw from the contest; he treats with isfendyar; but the latter obstinately insists on his terms. nothing remains for the aged hero but to give battle against his will. isfendyar's invulnerable body resists his blows, and reksh, the horse of rustem, is wounded; rustem is himself wounded and compelled to retire. he has no hope of conquering in the battle which is to begin again on the next day. in his deep distress he calls to the bird simurgh, who comes, sucks the blood from his wound, and heals the horse. simurgh is acquainted with the future, and advises a compromise: there is indeed a way of overcoming isfendyar, but anyone who takes his life "must not expect salvation in this world or the next." rustem cannot bring himself to suffer defeat in the battle, and therefore in the night simurgh carries him away to the tree of life, on the sea of china, and bids him break off the branch to which isfendyar's life is bound. out of this branch is cut the death-arrow for the conflict of the morrow. with it rustem hits the place in the eye in which alone isfendyar is vulnerable. but for rustem also the lot of death is cast. he is invited by the king of cabul, a tributary prince, to hunt; and the king's son-in-law, sheghad, prepares a pit filled with swords and lances, for the destruction of the aged hero. into this rustem falls with his horse, but even in the moment of death his arrow hits sheghad, who had concealed himself in a hollow tree, in order to watch the success of his scheme. rustem's son feramorz avenges the murder of his father on the king of cabul; but gushtasp renounces the world, and transfers the government to his grandson bahman, the son of isfendyar. here also we find traces of the avesta underlying the poem. in the avesta aurvataçpa, now lohrasp, and vistaçpa, now gushtasp, form a group distinct from the most ancient princes. firdusi represents kai chosru as making lohrasp his successor in spite of the murmurs of the nobles. arejataçpa, now arjasp, the turanian, sacrifices in the avesta in order to obtain victory over vistaçpa, and the great equestrian, zairivairi, the brother of vistaçpa. in firdusi this brother, the bravest warrior of iran against turan, is zarir. in the avesta vistaçpa conquers arejataçpa; in firdusi arjasp finally succumbs in the conflict. in the avesta jamaçpa is a prince of great influence with vistaçpa; in firdusi he is his faithful counsellor. in the avesta zarathrustra offers sacrifice that he may unite with the warlike vistaçpa, and that the king's consort hutaoça may impress the law on her memory (p. ); in firdusi gushtasp and his wife receive the new law. according to the avesta vistaçpa has given his support and protection to the law, has set up the law in the world, and given it a high position, and made the path broad for purity. in firdusi isfendyar is sent to spread abroad the new law over the earth. the avesta mentions twenty-nine sons of vistaçpa, firdusi even more; in both Çpentodata (isfendyar) has the first place. in the avesta zarathrustra pronounces a blessing on vistaçpa, in firdusi he pronounces it on isfendyar. that the latter was extolled, even in the avesta, as supporting the faith and spreading it abroad--though our fragments do not allow us to draw any further conclusions--is nevertheless clear from the creed of the parsees: "i abide in the law which the lord ormuzd taught to zartusht, and zartusht to king gushtasp, and gushtasp to frashaostra (p. ), jamasp, and isfendyar, and these to all the faithful in the world." firdusi has made use of the spread of the new law by isfendyar, in order to bring to a conclusion the legend of sejestan which he connects with the tradition of the avesta, and to provide an adequate motive for the fall of the mighty rustem of ghasna, the descendant of the mighty kereçaçpa. in his zeal for the faith, isfendyar demands more than rustem can grant; the champion of the faith is stronger in the conflict than rustem; and the latter, in order to keep his honour, avails himself of wicked magical arts. we have seen what was the occupation of the two eagles of the sky, amru and chamru, at the tree in lake vourukasha, which bears the seeds of all life (p. ). to these arts the champion of the faith succumbs, but by his success the victor has pronounced judgment on himself. in the form which firdusi has given them, the legends of ancient iran have to some extent continued to live among the people, and to some extent they have failed. the shahnameh celebrates jemshid's (yima's) glittering palace and splendid throne; hence the ruins of the great palace of the achæmenids at persepolis have gained the name of the throne of jemshid; ruins near bamiyan in the hindu-kush, on the road from balkh to cabul, are still called zohak's castle. the smoke rising out of the crater of demavend is the breath of zohak chained in the depths of the mountain. each year, on the last day of august, the inhabitants of elburz celebrate the festival of the overthrow of zohak with bonfires on every height, and demonstrations of joy. the ruins of takt-i-bostan are called the garden of kai chosru, and in iran balkh is still the mother of cities.[ ] a lofty and steep rock in lake zirreh in sejestan is said to have been crowned with the castle of rustem, and the site of a second castle is pointed out at aivan. aqueducts and dams pass for works of rustem. in the desert of beluchistan, the ancient gedrosia, the tracks of the camels of rustem are still shown by large stones in the sand. in mazanderan is the battle-field where rustem defeated the divs in order to liberate kai kaus (p. ). the sculptures of the achæmenids on the tombs at persepolis are called pictures of rustem (naksh-i-rustem), and in the bed of the hilmend his grave is shown. when timour's mongols devastated sejestan in the fourteenth century, the people called on rustem to raise his head from the grave, and behold iran in the hand of his enemy, the warrior of turan. by a strange misconception the nobles in mazanderan assume the name div as a title of honour. a large family of nobles in sejestan call themselves kaïanids, and boast of their descent from jemshid and the ancient kings, and to this family, down to the most recent times, the viceroyalty of sejestan belonged as an hereditary office. when the holder of it died, the eldest of the family went to court in order to apply for the office, and was duly installed by investment with the robe of honour and armour.[ ] while the ancient legends have lived on in iran, the religion of zoroaster has passed beyond iran, and survives on the malabar coast. every day the parsees utter their invocations before the sacred fire, and present bowls filled with the juice of the haoma. each month, as we have seen, belongs to one of the heavenly deities, who is then specially invoked; each of the thirty days of the month has its own protecting spirit, who is especially honoured on his own day. six yearly festivals, each of five days, celebrate the creation of the heaven, water, the earth, the trees, animals, and men (p. ); on each of which special prayers are said. at the close of the year the parsees purify and adorn their houses, in order to receive worthily the souls of their ancestors: sacrificial bread, fruits, milk, wine, and meat are put ready for them. the fravashis, now called farvars, are invoked "to receive the sacrifice, to lift up their hands to it, and depart in peace from the dwelling."[ ] on these days the priests read the liturgies appointed as prayers for the souls of the damned, and for ten days the laity have to repeat many thousands of times the prayers "ahuna-vairya" and "ashem vohu." each morning, on waking, the parsee prays: "the best purity is to the just, who is pure. he is pure who does pure works. i pray with purity of thought, of word, and act." when removing, and again when putting on, his girdle (p. ), he says, with face turned to the east: "may ormuzd be king; may ahriman be defeated and destroyed; may the enemies be confounded, and remain far off; of all my sins i repent." then he takes gomez for ablutions, washes his face and hands with it, rubs himself with earth, and with gomez in his hand says: "may ahriman be destroyed; may the thirty-three amshaspands and ormuzd be victorious and pure." after a prayer to Çrosh (Çraosha)--"the pure and strong, may he increase to greater majesty, whose body is the word, and whose club is victorious"--follows ablution with water, dressing of the fire with wood and perfumes, and the proper morning prayer to ushahin, the spirit of the morning: "praise to thee, high dawn." when it is light, a prayer is offered to mithra, and two others at midday and sunset. in the morning a prayer to ormuzd is recited, in which all his names and qualities are enumerated. before eating, the parsee must wash himself and pronounce the prayer "ahuna-vairya," and after eating, the prayer "king ormuzd." when the parsee goes to rest he must arrange his bed in such a way that he lies towards the fire, or the moon, or the east. before sleeping, a prayer is offered to ormuzd. on turning over in bed, sneezing, the discharge of natural or sexual functions, kindling a light, approaching water or fire, special prayers are uttered, and the sum of daily duties is increased on many occasions in family life--at the time of a birth, or death, or festivals, and when impurities have been incurred. however external and formal these numerous prayers and rituals may appear, the parsee forms of confession are nevertheless evidence of the depth of their religious feeling, and their retention in the family and social life proves that the ancient religion still possesses a powerful influence. footnotes: [ ] flügel, "mani," s. ; mohl, "livre des rois," intro. mordtmann, "z. d. m. g." , ff; nöldeke, "tabari," s. xv. [ ] nohodares in ammian, , , ; , , . [ ] spiegel, "eran," , . [ ] "zamyad yasht," ff. above, p. . [ ] ritter, "erdkunde," , , , , . [ ] chanikof, in spiegel, "eran," , . [ ] "farvardin yasht," . book viii. the empire of the medes and persians. the empire of the medes and persians. chapter i. the foundation of the median kingdom. on the northern edge of the table-land of iran, where the mountains descend to the caspian sea, we found dwelling towards the east the hyrcanians (_vehrkana_ in the avesta, _varkana_ in the inscriptions of darius).[ ] their territory may have corresponded to the modern district of jorjan, which has preserved their name (p. ). to the west of the hyrcanians, between elburz and the caspian, lay the tapurians, whose name has survived in the modern taberistan, and further yet, on the sea-coast, and at the mouth of the mardus (now safidrud), were the mardians. adjacent to these, on the shores of the caspian sea as far as the mouth of the cyrus, lay the nation whom the greeks called cadusians, but whose native name was gaels[ ]--a name still preserved in the name of the district of ghilan.[ ] to the south of these tribes--the tapurians, mardians, and cadusians--the north-west of the table-land was entirely occupied by the medes. the country of the medes, herodotus tells us, is very high and mountainous in the north towards the euxine, and covered with forests, but the remainder of it is flat.[ ] polybius gives a more minute description of the nature of media. "it is difficult to speak adequately of the natural strength and of the extent of the country of the medes. it lies in the centre of asia, and in the size and elevation of the land surpasses all other parts, while the situation enables it to govern the strongest and most populous nations. towards the east it is protected by the desert which lies between persia and parthia, it has control of the caspian gates, and abuts on the mountains of the tapurians, which are not far distant from the hyrcanian sea. towards the north it is bounded by the matieni and cadusians, on the west it extends to the saspeires, who dwell close to the tribes which lie on the euxine. towards the south it extends to mesopotamia and abuts on persia; on this side it is protected by the range of the zagrus, which reaches an elevation of one hundred stadia, and is broken into various ranges and groups, separated by deep valleys and open plains, in which dwell the carchi, cossaei, and other warlike tribes. media itself is traversed by several ranges in the direction from east to west, but between them are plains filled with cities and villages. the medes possess corn and cattle in untold abundance, and in horses their country is superior to the whole of asia, so that it takes the first place, not only in virtue of its extent, but also owing to the number and excellence of the men and horses."[ ] strabo allows media an extent of stades ( miles) in length and breadth. it reached from the zagrus to the caspian gates. the greater part of the land was high and cold, but the district below the caspian gates on the lower ground was very fertile. even in the rest of the land, with the exception of some mountain districts, there was no lack of the means of subsistence, and everywhere on the high ground there was excellent pasture for horses.[ ] the nation of the medes belongs to the group of the arian tribes, which occupied the table-land of iran. this has been already proved by the statement of herodotus that in ancient time the medians were called areans by all men (p. ), by the religion of the medes, and by all the median words and names that have come down to us.[ ] according to herodotus the nation consisted of six tribes: the arizanti, busae, struchates, budii, paraetaceni, and magi. whether certain parts of the land belonged to these tribes as their habitation, is not clear from this statement. the magians we have already found to be a hereditary order of priests (p. ), and therefore we can hardly assume a separate part of the country as their habitation. the question thus becomes limited to the remaining five tribes. the name of the paraetaceni occurs in the mountain district, which the later greeks call paraetacene. this district separated media from persia, and there is therefore nothing remarkable in the fact that the paraetaceni are counted among the persians or spoken of as an independent tribe.[ ] if the paraetaceni had a special province, we shall be all the more justified in allotting the same to the arizanti, the budii, struchates, and busae, as the tribe of the matieni, which strabo reckons among the medes,[ ] had a special habitation and territory in the district of matiene, _i.e._ in the region which after the time of the seleucids was known as atropatene; and the tribes of the persians, who were closely akin to the medes, were also settled in special regions, or marched through them with their flocks. the name arizanti (_arizantu_) might signify the noble families, _i.e._ an eminent tribe, which tribe might nevertheless possess a separate habitation. among the persians there was a privileged tribe, to which the royal family belonged, which ruled over all the tribes, and this tribe like the rest had a special territory. the districts of media, as we know them from the accounts of later writers, are beside atropatene: choromithrene, nisaea, rhagiana, cambadene, and bagistana.[ ] atropatene is the elevated plain which spreads round the lake which ptolemy calls the matienian lake (now urumiah). the inscriptions of the kings of asshur call the inhabitants of this land mati and mala.[ ] shut in by mighty summits which reach a height of more than , feet, naked ridges, fields of snow, mountain pastures, green forests and meadows here make up the wildest, but at the same time most beautiful, alpine landscape in the west of iran. the snow lies on the backs of the heights for about nine months, but in the valleys there reigns for the most part uninterrupted spring; in the deeper clefts the summer is hot, and the naphtha springs must have caused this region to appear as one highly favoured by the gods in the eyes of such zealous worshippers of fire as the arians of iran. we have already seen (p. ) that the name atropatene, which in middle persian is aturpatkan, and modern persian aderbeijan, means "protected by fire." in the ranges of the zagrus, which, running from the alps of atropatene to the south-east, separate the table-land of iran from the valley of the tigris--these summits rise above the hilly land of assyria to a height of , feet--we must seek the territory which ptolemy calls choromithrene, _i.e._ by a name which beyond doubt goes back to the worship of mithra. further to the east, beyond the isolated mountain-group of elvend, on the eastern foot of the mountains, lay the territory where ecbatana was subsequently built. to the south-east were the "nisæan plains" of herodotus, on which, as he tells us, were kept the most beautiful and largest horses, superior to those of the indians.[ ] polybius has already stated, that in regard to horses media surpassed the rest of asia; the mares of the parthian kings were kept in media owing to the excellent pastures. according to strabo, there were , mares on the "horse pastures" in the time of the achæmenids; these pastures any one going from babylonia and persia to the caspian gates, _i.e._ to the sirdarra-pass in elburz, would cross. diodorus places them seven days' march to the east of behistun, and tells us that at one time there were , wild horses here, though alexander found only , . arrian puts the previous number at , , and the number found by alexander at , , as the greater part had been carried off by robbers.[ ] that herodotus has given the name of this region correctly is shown by the inscriptions of darius, which speak of a province of niçaya in media.[ ] to the north-east of the region of ecbatana, on an elevated plateau, lay the district of raghiana. it takes its name from the metropolis ragha, a city on the southern foot of elburz, mentioned both in the avesta and the inscriptions. under the arsacids ragha was the largest city of media. its later name was rai; the ruins (near the modern teheran) are said to cover the land for leagues. besides ragha there were at one time numerous flourishing cities in raghiana.[ ] campadene,[ ] the campada of the inscriptions of darius, we must look for in the south of media, to the east of the zagrus; it is no doubt the district now called chamabatan.[ ] according to the statement of the greeks, the district of bagistana extended to a mountain which was sacred to zeus. as diodorus says, it was a region fit for the gods, filled with fruit-trees and every other kind that ministers to delight and enjoyment.[ ] the name of the mountain consecrated to zeus, bagistana, and the similar name of the district, go back to the title under which the gods are comprised in the avesta and the inscriptions of darius (old bactr. _bagha_, old pers. _baga_, new pers. _bag_); and if diodorus tells us that the region was a land fit for the gods, the name bagistana means the abode of the gods. the district may have been held peculiarly sacred by the medes, or the name may have been intended to express their gratitude for its fertility and beauty. we can fix precisely the position of this district by the hill consecrated to zeus near the modern behistun. it lies south-west of elvend, between that mountain and the zagrus in the valley of the choaspes, and is the district now known as kirmenshah. according to the statements of berosus, the historian of babylon, the medes in the most ancient period had already reigned over babylonia for more than two centuries. they had suddenly collected an army, reduced babylonia, and there set up tyrants of their own people. according to the succession of the dynasties which berosus represents as ruling over babylonia, the beginning of this supremacy of the medes fell, as has been shown (i. , ), in the year b.c. the first of the medes who thus ruled in babylon is called zoroaster by syncellus, after polyhistor; according to this writer the seven medes reign till the year b.c. whether berosus called the first median king who reigned in babylon zoroaster, or polyhistor has ascribed that position to him as the most famous name in iran, or the only name known in antiquity, must be left undecided, no less than the actual fact of the median supremacy. the medo-persian epos told us that ninus of asshur, after subjugating babylonia and armenia, attacked the medes. pharnus, their king, met him with a mighty army, but was nevertheless beaten. he was crucified with his wife and seven children by ninus; one of his retinue was made viceroy of media; and for many years the medes were subject to the successors of ninus on the throne of assyria (ii. ff). herodotus' account is as follows: "when the assyrians had reigned over upper asia for years, the medes were the first to revolt, and as they fought bravely for their freedom against the assyrians, they succeeded in escaping slavery and liberating themselves. afterwards the rest of the nations did what the medes had done. and as all the nations of the mainland lived according to laws of their own, they again fell under a tyranny in the following manner:--among the medes was a man of ability, called deioces, the son of phraortes. he desired the tyranny, and did as follows: the medes dwelt in villages, and deioces, who was previously a man of importance, set himself more and more zealously to the task of doing justice, since lawlessness reigned throughout the whole of media. when the medes of his village discovered these qualities in him, they chose him for their judge. and as his heart was already set on the empire, he acted justly and rightly, and thus got no small credit among his fellow-citizens, so that the men from other villages, when they found that deioces alone judged rightly, gladly resorted to him, since hitherto they had had to endure unjust sentences, and at last they would not go to any one else. as the number of the applicants became greater, and deioces found that everything depended upon him, he refused to sit any longer in court and pronounce sentence, saying, that it was of no advantage to himself to neglect his own business and spend the day in settling the disputes of others. then robbery and lawlessness became more rife than ever in the villages, and the medes gathered together and consulted on the position of affairs. in my belief the friends of deioces were the first to speak: 'as things are, it is impossible to live in the land; let us choose some one to be king, and thus the land will obtain good government. we can occupy ourselves with our own business, and shall not be compelled to wander from home.' with these words they persuaded the medes to set up a monarchy. and when they at once began the discussion who should be king, deioces was highly commended and put forward by every one, so that at last he was chosen by all to be king. then deioces commanded the medes to build him a palace suitable for a king, and strengthen his power by a body-guard. this they did, and built a great and strong palace, on the place which deioces pointed out to them, and allowed him to choose his lance-bearers out of all the nation. when he had obtained the sovereign power he at once compelled the medes to build him a large city, in order that, being thus occupied, they might trouble him less about other things; and when the medes obeyed him in this matter also, he erected the great and strong citadel now known as ecbatana. the walls formed seven circles, in such a manner that the inner was always higher by the turrets than the next outer circle, an arrangement assisted by the locality, for the town was situated on a hill. in the seventh wall was the palace and the treasure-house of deioces. after erecting this fortification for himself, and his palace, the king commanded the people to settle round the citadel. when the building was completed deioces first made the arrangement that no one should enter in to the king, but every thing was done by messengers, in order that those who had grown up with him, and were of similar age, equal in descent and bravery, might not envy him, and set conspiracies on foot, but that by being invisible he might appear a different being; it was also disgraceful to laugh or spit, or do anything of that kind in his presence. when he had made these arrangements, and thus strengthened his tyranny, he adhered strictly to justice. plaints had to be sent in to him in writing, and he sent back the sentence. thus he managed this and all other matters, and if he found that any one was guilty of insolence, and did violence to others, he punished him according to the measure of his offence, and his spies and emissaries were everywhere in the land.[ ] in this manner deioces united the medes, and governed them for years. after his death, his son phraortes succeeded to the throne. not content with ruling over the medes only, he marched against the persians, and first made them subject to the medes. when he had become master of these two powerful nations, he subjugated all asia, attacking one nation after another. finally, he marched against the assyrians, who had previously ruled over all men, but, though otherwise in excellent condition, were then abandoned by their allies, who had revolted. in the war against these phraortes fell, after a reign of years, and with him the greatest part of his army."[ ] the account of the history of the medes given by ctesias is wholly different. as their subjugation to assyria is coeval with the founding of that kingdom, so is their liberation coeval with the fall of it. when the medes, after their conquest by ninus, had been subject to the rulers of asshur, down to his thirty-sixth successor, arbaces, the viceroy of media, with belesys, the viceroy of babylonia, revolted from the assyrian king. the kingdom of assyria still remains unbroken; it is only after severe struggles, and in consequence of the desertion of the bactrians and other nations during the conflict, that it is overthrown. after the capture of nineveh, arbaces, as supreme lord, takes the place of the king of asshur. according to the dates of herodotus deioces ascended the throne of media in the year or b.c.[ ] the time which elapsed between the liberation of the medes and deioces' elevation is not given by him. according to ctesias arbaces established the dominion of the medes at least years before the date given by herodotus for deioces. in herodotus phraortes, cyaxares, and astyages follow deioces in the dominion over the medes, with a total of years. in ctesias the successors of arbaces, who reigns years, are mandaces with a reign of years, sosarmus with , artycas with , arbianes with , artaeus with , artynes with , astibaras with , and finally aspadas with years. on this calculation the dominion of the median kings lasted years, and consequently arbaces must have overthrown the assyrian and established the median empire in the year b.c.; or as ctesias puts the fall of the last median king in , and not in b.c.--in the year b.c.--_i.e._ precisely at the time when assyria began to rise into the position of a widely dominant power (iii. , ). in the list of kings given by ctesias mandaces and artycas each rule fifty years, arbianes and artynes years, artaeus and astibaras years. this uniformity points to an artificial extension of the series by duplicates.[ ] if it is reduced by striking out the three seconds in these pairs, and arbaces is followed by mandaces with years, sosarmus with years, arbianes with years, artaeus with years, and aspadas with years, we obtain a period of years for the kings of the medes, and so arrive at a point nearer that given by herodotus for the commencement of the median kingdom, the year b.c. ( + ), as the first year of arbaces. yet even so we do not find any coincidence whatever between the two narratives. in the narrative of herodotus we find with surprise that the medes attained their liberation without any combination in the people; without the leadership of a single head. yet soon after the time at which he describes the medes as revolting from the assyrians, herodotus tells us that sennacherib marched against egypt, and asserts that for years after the accession of deioces, "the assyrians were indeed without allies, since they had revolted, but were otherwise in a good condition," so that phraortes and the greatest part of his army fell in battle against them. if after acquiring their freedom the medes lived isolated in villages, as herodotus states, would not the assyrians have made use of this anarchy close upon their borders in order to reduce the medes again to subjection, rather than engage in campaigns against syria and egypt? according to the account of herodotus, it was the justice of deioces which won for him ever-increasing importance, and finally helped him to the throne. but had deioces, who sits on the throne for years afterwards, sufficient time before his elevation to make himself known for his love of justice throughout all media, unless we are willing to assign him a very unusual age?[ ] and if such dire anarchy did indeed prevail among the medes, what man in such times submits to even the most righteous sentence? least of all are the mighty and powerful willing to do so. how did deioces obtain the means of compelling the insubordinate to obey his sentence?--how could he give protection to the accused, oppressed, and weak against their opponents? and supposing that he was able to do this, would he have been unanimously elected king? herodotus himself remarks that deioces knew that "the unjust are the enemies of the just."[ ] moreover, if the medes at that time lived in the simplest manner, how could a sovereign elected from their midst change these conditions at a single stroke, or at any rate in the course of a single reign, though a long one, so entirely as herodotus supposes? village life is changed into city life, the medes are settled in one city round the royal fortress, and in the place of a patriarchal government over a simple people, deioces, "as the first," establishes the whole apparatus of oriental tyranny. immense palaces, citadels, and walls are built; the wide outer walls are adorned with gold and silver; the secluded life of the sovereign in the palace becomes the established law; the legal process is carried on by writing; and a system of espionage is introduced over the whole country. it is obvious that in this narrative elements, belonging to the tradition of the medes, have been taken by herodotus and mingled with the views of the greeks, who were familiar with the combination of villages into one canton, and the union of hamlets into a city, and had experience of the establishment of a monarchy by setting up a tyranny in consequence of the services rendered by the aspirant to the multitude. herodotus expressly calls the dominion of deioces a tyranny. it is a fact beyond dispute that herodotus was influenced by such conceptions in shaping and forming the material which came to him from tradition. apart from the motives which influenced him in describing the elevation of deioces, herodotus wishes to show how the nations of asia obtained their freedom, and subsequently lost it. he begins with the statement, that the medes revolted from assyria, and all the nations of asia followed their example. according to his dates, which have been already mentioned, the medes must have revolted precisely at the time when tiglath pilesar ii. and sargon reigned over assyria, _i.e._ in the period between and b.c. the liberation of the remaining nations must therefore have taken place under sargon or his successors, sennacherib and esarhaddon, _i.e._ between the year and b.c. that this general liberation from the sovereignty of the assyrians did not take place at this period is abundantly clear from the inscriptions of the kings and the hebrew scriptures. we have seen above to what an extent tiglath pilesar caused the whole of syria to feel the weight of the assyrian arms; he reduced babylonia to dependence as far as the persian gulf; sargon was sovereign of babylonia, maintained syria, and received the homage of the island of cyprus, and the islands of the persian gulf. his successor, sennacherib, though unable to protect syria against egypt, yet retained babylonia and the eastern half of asia minor under his dominion. esarhaddon united the crowns of asshur and babel, restored the supremacy of assyria over syria, subjugated a part of arabia and the whole of egypt.[ ] hence it is clear, that precisely at the time when, according to herodotus, the rest of the nations following the example of the medes threw off the assyrian yoke, that kingdom reached a wider extent than at any previous time. if, nevertheless, we wish to maintain the statement that the rest of the nations followed the example which the medes are supposed to have set about the year b.c.,[ ] we must place these events in the last decade of the reign of assurbanipal, _i.e._ in the period between and b.c. we must therefore bring them down a full century, and this was a very late result of the action of the medes. let us attempt, by a comparison of the statements of the assyrian inscriptions on the events which took place on the table-land of iran and the narrative of herodotus, to ascertain the real facts of the liberation of the medes. we saw above (p. ) that shalmanesar ii. of asshur ( - b.c.) carried his campaigns as far as the east of iran. in the year b.c. he imposed tribute on twenty-seven princes of the land of parsua, and "turned against the plains of the land of amadai;" in b.c. his general-in-chief, dayan asshur, went down into the land of parsua, and laid tribute on the land of parsua, "which did not worship asshur," obtained possession of the cities, and sent their people and treasures into the land of assyria.[ ] tiglath pilesar ii. ( - b.c.), in the campaign which carried him to arachosia, subjugated "the land of nisaa" and "the cities of the land of media (madai)." in the following year he occupied "the land of parsua;" "zikruti in rugged media, i added to the land of assyria; i received the tribute of media;" and on his ninth campaign he again marched into "the land of media." in an inscription which sums up all his achievements, he declares that he has imposed tribute "on the land of parsua," the city of zikruti, "which depends on the land of the medes," and on the chieftains of "the land of media."[ ] the books of the hebrews tell us that after the fall of samaria in b.c. "the king of assyria carried israel away, and gave them habitations in chalah, and in the cities of the medes." it was sargon ( - b.c.) to whom samaria yielded.[ ] his inscriptions also tell us that he carried away the inhabitants of samaria, and they make mention of the cities of the medes. according to them, he received heavy tribute from twenty-five chiefs of the medes in the year b.c., and set up his royal image in the midst of their cities. in the next year he carried away captive "dayauku with his people and his family, and caused him to dwell in the land of amat," built fortresses in order to control media, received tribute from twenty-two chiefs of the medes, conquered thirty-four cities in media, and united them with assyria. in the year b.c. he marched against bit dayauku, reduced the chief districts of media, which had cast off the yoke of assyria, and received tribute from forty-five median chiefs; horses, asses, and sheep in great abundance. sargon repeatedly boasts that "he has reduced the distant land of media, all the places of distant media, as far as the borders of the land of bikni; that he brought them under the dominion of asshur; and that his power extended as far as the city of simaspati, which belonged to distant media in the east."[ ] the inscriptions of his successor sennacherib ( - b.c.) tell us that on his return from his second campaign (against the land of ellip), he received the heavy tribute of the distant land of media, and subjugated the land to his dominion.[ ] esarhaddon ( - b.c.), the successor of sennacherib, according to the hebrew scriptures, deported people from persia to samaria. he tells us himself: "the land of patusarra, a district in the region of ----, in the midst of distant media, on the border of the land of bikni, the copper mountains. none of the kings my forefathers had subjugated this land. sitirparna and iparna, the chiefs of the fortified places, had not bowed before me. i carried them away with their subjects, horses, chariots, oxen, sheep, asses, as rich booty to assyria." "the chiefs of the cities of partakka, partukka, and uraka-zabarna, in the land of media, who lay far off, and in the days of the kings my forefathers had not trodden the soil of assyria--them the fear of asshur, my lord, threw to the ground; they brought for me, to my city nineveh, their great animals, copper, the product of their mines, bowed themselves with folded hands before me, and besought my favour. i put my viceroys over them, who united the inhabitants of these regions with my kingdom; i imposed services upon them, and a fixed tribute."[ ] the period at which this tribute was imposed on the most distant part of media can only be so far fixed that it must lie between and b.c. assurbanipal, who succeeded esarhaddon ( - b.c.), tells us: "i captured birizchadri, the warden of the city of madai (?); sariti and pariza, the sons of gagi, the warden of the cities of the land of sakhi, and citadels had cast off the yoke of my dominion; i took the cities; the chiefs fell alive into my hands; i sent them to nineveh my metropolis." these events belong to the period between the years and b.c.[ ] to weaken the contradiction between this series of statements and the narrative of herodotus, we may call to mind the gross exaggerations in which the kings of assyria indulge in describing their acts and successes, and the grandiloquence which we have already noticed more than once in the statements of assyrian history (iii. , ). but however great or however small may have been the success of the campaigns of tiglath pilesar ii., sargon, sennacherib, esarhaddon and assurbanipal against the chiefs of the medes, it cannot be denied that these campaigns took place. and if from the very frequency of such campaigns, after the reign of tiglath pilesar, we are inclined to draw the conclusion that they are a proof of the lax and nominal character of the dominion of assyria over media, this conclusion proves too much. the same repetition of warlike enterprises on the part of the kings of asshur takes place, as we saw, in every direction. we shall have as much right to conclude that there was no such thing as an assyrian empire, either before the year or after it, over the medes or any other nation. as i have shown (iii. ), the assyrian kingdom never acquired a firm dominion over the subjugated nations, still less an organisation of the empire, like the subsequent kingdom of the achæmenids. their sovereignty consisted almost exclusively in the collection of tribute by force of arms, in the subjugation or removal of the princes who refused it, and setting up of others, who in turn soon withheld it. at the most, assyrian fortresses were planted here and there; and no doubt assyrian viceroys were placed over smaller regions. the same procedure is seen in the inscriptions as in use towards the medes; and if this is not regarded as the sovereignty of assyria, no such sovereignty existed before tiglath pilesar. if, to meet this objection, the existence of an assyrian dominion is allowed, in the very lax form which is everywhere characteristic of it, we may, from the same frequency of the campaigns against media, draw the opposite conclusion, that the medes had struggled very vigorously for freedom, that in the first place the most remote tribes acquired it, and for them the liberation gradually spread, and the tradition of the medes has accepted the beginning of the movement as the completion of it. setting aside any conclusions of this kind, even tradition can only have regarded the beginning of the struggle for freedom as the beginning of liberation, if it covered the nucleus of a firm resistance, either in some definite district, or in a dynasty which took the lead in the struggle and carried it on. herodotus is not acquainted with any leader in the struggle and does not mention any, while the campaigns of the assyrians are always directed against a greater or less number of princes and cities; sometimes they fall on this chieftain and sometimes on that.[ ] if, moreover, the fact that sargon receives tribute from twenty-five, then from twenty-two, and then from forty-five chieftains, is brought forward to confirm the narratives of herodotus about the anarchy which prevailed among the medes, it is not the separation of the medes under different chiefs which constitutes the anarchy as described by herodotus, but actual lawlessness. his description gives us no chieftains in media, ruling their lands as captains in war and judges in peace. the medes dwell in villages, and the inhabitants choose the village judge, though it is in their power to go for decision to another village. chieftains, even if they had not forbidden their tribes to seek for justice out of the tribe, would in any case have left the decision of deioces unnoticed. however this may be, one harsh contradiction between the narrative of herodotus and the inscriptions cannot be removed by any exposition or any deductions. according to herodotus deioces reigned from the year to b.c., phraortes from to b.c., over the whole of media. the inscriptions of sennacherib mention the great payment of tribute by the distant land of media, and its subjugation under sennacherib (p. ); esarhaddon removes two chieftains with their flocks and subjects out of media from the border of the land of bikni to asshur, and three chiefs from the same district bring their tribute to nineveh; he places his viceroys over them, and they unite this district with assyria. after the year b.c. assurbanipal is said to have taken a chieftain of media captive; and in the inscriptions there is nowhere any mention of deioces, phraortes, and the median kingdom. the inscriptions extend the land of the medes to the east as far as the copper mountains, or borders of the land of bikni.[ ] the people lived separately under a considerable number of chieftains. the five tribes of the median nation, enumerated by herodotus, if they also possessed separate territory, were not isolated groups, but on the contrary broken up into yet smaller divisions. the booty taken by the assyrians from the medes, the tribute imposed upon them, consists chiefly in oxen, asses, sheep, and horses. the number of horses given by the chieftains to sargon allows on an average a hundred for each, and we also hear of other property, treasures, and the product of copper mines. we have repeated mention of the cities of media and their governors; sargon conquers thirty-four cities. though we ought to regard these mainly as citadels, yet civic life cannot have been so unknown to the medes as the narrative of herodotus would compel us to suppose. other elements of civilisation also are known to the medes at this time, _i.e._ in the second half of the eighth and first half of the seventh century b.c. it has been proved above that at the beginning of this period the doctrine of zoroaster must have reached them, and the names could be given of the men in media who published it; and the priests of the new religion became formed during this century into an order which perpetuated in their families the knowledge of the good sayings and the customs of sacrifice. to this order we may also attribute what the medes acquired of the superior civilisation and skill of assyria, especially the knowledge of the assyrian cuneiform writing, which underwent a change in the hands of the magians, and assumed the form known to us from the achæmenid inscriptions of the first class. when herodotus ascribes the introduction of written process at law to deioces, the tradition presupposes an established and extensive use of writing. the dominion of the princes under which the medes stood is followed by the dominion of the monarchy, which must have arisen out of it. one of the families of these princes must have succeeded in obtaining influence and power over the others. the position of deioces and phraortes must have arisen and developed itself in this manner. whether the dayauku, whom sargon carried off in the year b.c. with his followers to amat, is one and the same person with the prince of bit dayauku, against whom the assyrian king marched in the year b.c. (p. ), would be difficult to decide; and even if the matter could be determined with certainty, it would not be of great importance. we often find the kings of asshur replacing conquered and captive princes in their dominions. on the other hand, it is of importance that there was a region of media, which could be called bit dayauku, _i.e._ the land of dayauku, by the assyrians in the year b.c. there must have existed at this time a principality of deioces among other principalities, and the beginning of this must be put earlier than the date allowed by herodotus for the election, _i.e._ at the latest at b.c. in course of time the land of deioces may have increased in extent, and the importance of the ruler may have grown--though he may not, after the conflict of b.c., have taken any leading part in the resistance to the payment of tribute, the conflicts and successes of other chieftains against the assyrians; at any rate, there is no subsequent mention of the land in the inscriptions. neither deioces nor his land is mentioned when sennacherib speaks of the tribute of the whole of media, and the subjugation of the country under his dominion; nor even when esarhaddon speaks of the conquest of the most distant princes. hence we can only grant to the narrative of herodotus that, in the times of sennacherib and esarhaddon, deioces, the son of phraortes, had a considerable territory among the chiefs of the medes, and greater importance than others, and we have no reason to look for his dominion elsewhere than at ecbatana. his son phraortes (fravartis), who according to herodotus came to the throne in the year b.c., must have succeeded in uniting the chiefs of the medes under his sway, and combining with the tribes of the persians, among whom at that time the race of the achæmenids had acquired a prominent position,[ ] in order to maintain their independence against assyria. from this point downwards we can date the union and independence of media. had the country been free and united at the time of sargon, sennacherib, and esarhaddon, the rulers of assyria would not have marched against syria and cilicia, or undertaken the conquest of egypt. assurbanipal could not have employed the forces of the kingdom to maintain egypt, or reduce babylon, or annihilate edom, or make campaigns to the distant parts of arabia, if the united power of media had existed behind the zagrus, close on the borders of his native land, the very centre of the assyrian power. still less could he have looked on in inaction, while phraortes, as herodotus tells us, conquered the persians, and attacked one nation after another till he had subjugated asia. on the other hand, the annihilation of elam by assurbanipal, and consequent strengthening of the assyrian power on the borders of persia, may well have determined the persians to unite with the medes, and accept a position under phraortes. in considering the situation and importance of the powers, we may assume that phraortes, in the first instance, thought rather of defence than of any attack on assyria, and for this object undertook the fortification of ecbatana on a large scale. what could have induced him to abandon the protecting line of the zagrus, in order to attack under the massive walls of its metropolis the power which had just dealt such heavy and destructive blows on ancient states like babylonia and elam, unless we attribute to him the most reckless audacity? nor, on the other hand, can we suppose that an ancient ruler like assurbanipal, who had held his own successfully against the searching attack of his brother, and finally gained important conquests, would have allowed the formation of the median power in the closest proximity, and its combination with the persians, without the least attempt to prevent it. it was in repulsing this attack that phraortes fell.[ ] if this inquiry leads us to attribute to phraortes the foundation of a consolidated government, the establishment of monarchy in media, the union of the persians and medes, and the subordination of the former to phraortes, we can yet understand that the traditions of the medes, anxious to increase the glory of the country, threw the monarchy further back, ascribed to deioces, the father of phraortes, the consolidation of media, and represented the liberation from the sway of assyria as prior to the foundation of the monarchy. what median poems can do for the glorification of their country, even in the teeth of the established facts of history, will soon become even more clear. how this tradition explained the elevation of deioces we cannot now discover; it is clear that herodotus gives a greek turn to this part of the story (p. ). and if tradition ascribes to deioces the extensive and strong fortifications of ecbatana, which more correctly belong to phraortes and his successors, it is herodotus who credits him with the discovery of the mode of life usual among oriental monarchs. the medo-persian epos shows us the successors of semiramis in the seclusion of the palace. on the other hand, the median tradition must have ascribed the reduction of asia to phraortes. we have already remarked (iii. ), that towards the close of the sixth century b.c. cyaxares and not phraortes was regarded by the nation as the founder of the power and greatness of media. herodotus himself tells us "that cyaxares was far more powerful than his predecessors." hence the later legend, which herodotus reproduces, ascribed the foundation to phraortes, and the extension of the median power to cyaxares. but if phraortes was to be the conqueror of asia, he must "when he had attacked and conquered the other nations one after the other," have finally marched against the assyrians, against whom he did in fact contend. footnotes: [ ] "vend." , ; behist. , . [ ] plin. "h. n." , , ( ). [ ] alexander came from hyrcania and parthia to the land of the tapurians. according to arrian's statements, the hyrcanians, parthians and tapurians were all under one leader in the army of darius iii. "anab." , , ; , , ; strabo, p. , , , ; justin, , ; , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] polyb. , ; , . cf. curt. , ff. [ ] strabo, p. - . [ ] in the most recent times it has been maintained that the medes were of turkish-tatar (altaic) family, but this view rests simply on the assumption that the inscriptions of the second class in the inscriptions of the achæmenids must have been written in the language of the medes. this hypothesis contradicts everything that has come down to us of median names and works, and the close relationship between the medes and persians. whether the arians, on immigrating into media, found there turkish-tatar tribes, overpowered, expelled or subjugated them, is another question. if this were the case, the fragments of the population could hardly have exercised any influence worth mentioning on the arian medes. [ ] paraetacene is derived no doubt from _parvata_, mountain, or _parvataka_, mountainous. strabo remarks that when the persians had conquered the medes, they took some land from them. the distance between persepolis and ecbatana was twenty marches; alexander reached the borders of media on the twelfth day after leaving persepolis. arrian, "anab." , . [ ] strabo, p. ; . [ ] under the sassanids media (mah) consisted of four regions: aderbeijan, rai (rhagiana), hamadan (ecbatana), isfahan. [ ] herodotus allows the matieni a considerable extent, for he includes under the name the armenians and the inhabitants of atropatene. later authors confine the matieni to the region round the lake of urumiah; in this sense, polybius, quoted above in the text, limits media in the north by the cadusians and matieni. [ ] herod. , ; , . [ ] strabo, p. ; diod. , ; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] behist. , . strabo's [greek: nêsaia] (p. , ), the nisiaea of pliny ( , ), the parthaunisa of isidore of charax, must be sought in the neighbourhood of nishapur, which was built by shapur ii. the avesta puts niça between merv and balkh. [ ] diod. , . alexander in eleven forced marches advanced from ecbatana to ragha. [ ] isid. ch. "m. p." c. . [ ] mordtmann, "b. d. bair. akademie," , s. . [ ] diod. , ; , . the city of baptana, which isidore (c. ) mentions "as situated on a mountain in cambadene," is in any case bagistana (behistun). [ ] herodotus, , - . [ ] herod. , . [ ] vol. iii. ff. according to the reigns which herodotus allows to deioces and his successors, years before the overthrow of astyages, which took place b.c., _i.e._ , but, according to the total given by herodotus-- years, b.c. [ ] volney, "recherches," , ff. [ ] in order to remove this objection, the dates of deioces and phraortes must be transposed, and the years of phraortes given to the former, the years of deioces to the latter. phraortes would then have marched out against the assyrians in extreme old age, and fallen in the battle. [ ] herod. , . [ ] vol. iii. bk. ; chaps. , , - . [ ] according to von gutschmid. cf. _supr._ p. . [ ] vol. ii. p. . i cannot accept the theory which lenormant has attempted to establish on the geographical differences in the inscriptions of shalmanesar ii. and tiglath pilesar ii.--that the medes and persians obtained possession of western iran shortly before the middle of the eighth century. "lettres assyriolog." and "z. aegypt. spr." , s. ff. [ ] vol. iii. - . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] vol. iii. . [ ] that is the reason why i cannot regard the parallels which von gutshchmid suggests ("neue beiträge," s. ff.) of the struggle between the arsacids and seleucids, and the relations between the great mogul and the mahrattas, as pertinent. [ ] the patusarra of esarhaddon might be the patisuvari of darius; the pateischoreans, whom strabo quotes among the tribes of the persians; von gutschmid, _loc. cit._ s. , but in the babylonian version of the inscription of behistun the pateischoreans are called _pidishuris_. [ ] von gutschmid, _loc. cit._ s. ; below, c. . [ ] vol. iii. . the assyrian inscriptions are silent from b.c. downwards. von gutschmid, "neue beitr." s. . from this silence i have concluded, and still conclude, that the liberation of the medes took place towards b.c., and moreover that the victory of the assyrians over phraortes, and his death in battle did not bring about a decisive change in favour of the assyrians. chapter ii. the empire of the medes. "when phraortes had fallen, he was succeeded by his son cyaxares. this prince collected all his subjects and marched against nineveh, in order to avenge the death of his father and destroy the city. he defeated the assyrians, and while encamped before nineveh, there came upon him the vast army of the scythians, led by their king madyas, the son of protothyas, who invaded asia in pursuit of the cimmerians, and as they did not come through the land of the saspeires, but kept the caucasus to the right, they reached the median country. here they attacked the medes, and the latter being conquered in the battle lost their empire; the scythians became masters of the whole of asia, and ruled over it for years. with reckless cruelty they laid everything waste; they not only imposed tribute on all the nations, but went round and took from every one all that he possessed. but cyaxares and the medes massacred the greater part of them after making them intoxicated at a banquet, and in this way the medes recovered their empire, and again governed those who had previously been subject to them. then a horde of scythians, which had separated from the rest and put themselves under the protection of cyaxares, were guilty of a crime against a median boy who had been entrusted to them, and fled for refuge to alyattes, king of lydia, who refused to give them up. this led to a war between media and lydia which continued for five years, and was brought to an end by a treaty in which alyattes gave his daughter aryanis to wife to the son of cyaxares. cyaxares was master of all asia beyond the halys, took nineveh, and subjugated the assyrians, with the exception of the babylonian portion." such is the history, given by herodotus, of cyaxares, who, on his reckoning, ascended the throne of media in the year b.c. if phraortes had fallen in battle against the assyrians with the greater part of his army, cyaxares (uvakshathra) could hardly have at once undertaken an attack on nineveh, with a view of avenging his father's death by the destruction of that city; his first care, on the contrary, would have been to prevent the assyrians from making use of their great victory, to guard against further advances on their part, and to maintain the freedom of media. this struggle cyaxares passed through with success; that his good fortune carried him as far as the walls of nineveh, is indeed possible, but not probable; according to herodotus the collision of the scythians and medes did not take place in the land of asshur, but further to the east, in media. the facts about the pursuit of the cimmerians and the invasion of the scythians have been already examined, and it has been shown that herodotus has connected the immigration of the cimmerians into asia minor, which took place in the eighth century b.c., with the incursion of sacian tribes from the oxus into media, about the year b.c. he was deceived by the circumstance that the cimmerians from their abode on the lower halys penetrated to sardis and the cities of the western coast, about the time when the sacæ invaded media and inundated hither asia (iii. ). the truth is that the hordes of the sacæ not only overthrew media, but passed through mesopotamia into syria as far as the borders of egypt. their attack shattered and destroyed the cohesion of the assyrian empire. about the year cyaxares succeeded in overpowering the section of the scythians which remained in media (these hordes were no doubt widely dispersed), and again became master in his own dominions. he made use of his advantageous position as the first who could again direct the forces of his people. he showed himself to the armenians and cappadocians as a champion to defend them from the plundering scythians, and at the same time aided in liberating them from the dominion of the assyrians. the incursion of the scythians had prepared the way for him; in a few years he was able to extend his power to the west as far as the halys.[ ] nabopolassar, the viceroy of assyria in babylon, who had determined to turn to account the severe blow which the incursion of the scyths had given to the assyrian kingdom, had already offered him his hand in alliance. amyite, the daughter of cyaxares, had become the wife of nebuchadnezzar, the son of nabopolassar. but in asia minor, far to the west, the princes of the lydians had taken advantage of the disturbance and confusion which the advance of the cimmerians had carried to the western coast, to extend their power over phrygia as far as the halys (iii. ). here the two rapidly-developing powers met. though inferior in numbers the lydians showed themselves a match for the medes. after a war of five years, peace was established between them by nabopolassar of babylon and syennesis of cilicia, in order to set the power of media free to act against nineveh. the halys became the boundary of the two kingdoms, and the peace was confirmed by an alliance. alyattes of lydia gave his daughter aryanis to wife to astyages the son of cyaxares ( b.c.[ ]). media and babylonia now thought themselves strong enough to undertake the contest against the remains of the assyrian kingdom. cyaxares led out the medes, nabopolassar the babylonians against king assur-idil-ili. the latter offered a long and stubborn defence, and when at length the walls of nineveh were broken through, he burnt himself in the citadel. the assyrian country as far as the tigris fell to the share of media; mesopotamia was united with the new kingdom of babylon ( b.c.[ ]). thus media and babylonia took the place of assyria; and babylon, as herodotus says, was now the chief city of the assyrians. when the kingdom had fallen which for three centuries had ruled in the east and west, cyaxares might indulge the thought of making his empire more complete on the table-land of iran. according to the story which ctesias has preserved for us from the medo-persian epos of the fall of assyria (iii. ), the bactrians had been prevailed upon to join the medes and babylonians in the course of the war against assyria, and the persian songs which describe the contest of cyrus and astyages, represent the hyrcanians, parthians, bactrians, and other nations of the east, as ruled by viceroys of the median king.[ ] we may regard it as certain that cyaxares succeeded in subjugating the table-land of iran to a considerable extent. no slight proof is afforded of the increase and greatness of the median kingdom in his reign by the unusual care and extraordinary efforts of the successor of nabopolassar to protect babylonia and babylon by fortifications against the event of a struggle between the two powers, whose united exertions had destroyed assyria (iii. ). the position which the medo-persian poems assign to the chief of the babylonians beside the chief of the medes, during and after the common struggle, has been already explained. the babylonian is the astrologer, the adviser, the helper; the mede is the man of action. in the event of success against assyria he promises the babylonian the viceroyalty of babylon, and has already given it to him, free of tribute, when the fraud is discovered by which the cunning babylonian has acquired the most valuable part of the spoil of nineveh. for this offence the chief is condemned to death; but the mede pardons him, and in consideration of his former services and the promise made, leaves him the viceroyalty. so eager were the median minstrels to conceal the independence of babylonia beside media, and represent a power as great as babylon was under nebuchadnezzar as a satrapy of their kings. this fiction is maintained in other episodes of the medo-persian epos which have come down to us. we are told of the stubborn resistance which the cadusians made to the medes; and an explanation is given how this unimportant nation on the shore of the caspian (p. ) could withstand the mighty kingdom of the medes. this episode has come to us in the persian form. it is the fault of the median king that the cadusians have become stubborn and successful enemies. he failed to help to his rights a brave warrior in his service; this warrior betook himself to the cadusians, and became their chief, led them well, and bequeathed his thirst for vengeance to his descendants. from such a point of view even a median minstrel could lament the perversity of the median king, and the power of babylonian gold, the abundance of which is strongly marked in the narrative, could praise the ancient simplicity of the medes: "who took no heed of silver, and did not regard gold," as we are told in the hebrew scriptures, and reprobate the victory of gold over strict justice. but it is a persian to whom the wrong is done, who summons the cadusians to freedom; and the resistance of the cadusians to the median kingdom, thus brought about by a persian, subsequently furnishes cyrus with a pretext for arming the persians, and also provides him with allies in the cadusians. it was the merit of a brave persian to have provided this assistance for his people long before. the king of the medes who was guilty of this mistake is called in ctesias artaeus; we have seen (p. ) that artaeus and astibaras, who reigned years each, are but one and the same person; and as the reign of cyaxares occupies years in herodotus, we may conjecture that he is the king hidden behind the artaeus-astibaras of ctesias. the king of babylon, the satrap of the episode, is brought in as a descendant of belesys (nabopolassar), and described as an effeminate man. his name, in the form given by ctesias, is annarus. evilmerodach or neriglissar of babylon must be meant; but, without doubt, we are dealing with mere fiction. the episode is as follows: there was a persian of the name of parsondes, in the service of the king of the medes, an eager huntsman, and active warrior on foot and in the chariot, distinguished in council and in the field, and of influence with the king. parsondes often urged the king to make him satrap of babylon in the place of annarus, who wore women's clothes and ornaments, but the king always put the petition aside, for it could not be granted without breaking the promise which his ancestor had made to belesys (p. ). annarus discovered the intentions of parsondes, and sought to secure himself against him, and to take vengeance. he promised great rewards to the cooks who were in the train of the king, if they succeeded in seizing parsondes and giving him up. one day parsondes in the heat of the chase strayed far from the king. he had already killed many boars and deer, when the pursuit of a wild ass (the sassanids also hunt this animal) carried him to a great distance. at last he came upon the cooks, who were occupied in preparations for the king's table. being thirsty, parsondes asked for wine; they gave it, took care of his horse, and invited him to take food--an invitation agreeable to parsondes, who had been hunting the whole day. he bade them send the ass which he had captured to the king, and tell his own servants where he was. then he ate of the various kinds of food set before him, and drank abundantly of the excellent wine, and at last asked for his horse in order to return to the king. but they brought beautiful women to him, and urged him to remain for the night. he agreed, and as soon as, overcome by hunting, wine, and love he had fallen into a deep sleep, the cooks bound him, and brought him to annarus. annarus reproached him with calling him an effeminate man, and seeking to obtain his satrapy; he had the king to thank that the satrapy granted to his ancestors had not been taken from him. parsondes replied that he considered himself more worthy of the office, because he was more manly and more useful to the king. but annarus swore by bel and mylitta that parsondes should be softer and whiter than a woman, called for the eunuch who was over the female players, and bade him shave the body of parsondes and bathe and anoint him every day, put women's clothes on him, plait his hair after the manner of women, paint his face, and place him among the women, who played the guitar and sang, and to teach him their arts. this was done, and soon parsondes played and sang better at the table of annarus than any of the women. meanwhile the king of the medes had caused search to be made everywhere for parsondes, and since he could nowhere be found, and nothing could be heard of him, he believed that a lion or some other wild animal had torn him when out hunting, and lamented for his loss. parsondes had lived for seven years as a woman in babylon, when annarus caused an eunuch to be scourged and grievously maltreated. this eunuch parsondes induced by large presents to retire to media and tell the king the misfortune which had come upon him. then the king sent a message commanding annarus to give up parsondes. annarus declared that he had never seen him. but the king sent a second messenger charging him to bring annarus to be put to death if he did not surrender parsondes. annarus entertained the messenger of the king, and when the meal was brought, women entered, of whom some played the guitar while others blew the flute. at the end of the meal annarus asked the king's envoy which of all the women was the most beautiful and had played best. the envoy pointed to parsondes. annarus laughed long and said, "that is the person whom you seek," and released parsondes, who on the next day returned home with the envoy to the king in a chariot. the king was astonished at the sight of him, and asked why he had not avoided such disgrace by death? parsondes answered: "in order that i might see you again, and by you execute vengeance on annarus, which could never have been mine had i taken my life." the king promised him that his hope should not be deceived, as soon as he came to babylon. but when he came there, annarus defended himself on the ground that parsondes, though in no way injured by him, had maligned him, and sought to obtain the satrapy over babylonia. the king pointed out that he had made himself judge in his own cause, and had imposed a punishment of a degrading character; in ten days he would pronounce sentence upon him for his conduct. in terror annarus hastened to mitraphernes, the eunuch of greatest influence with the king, and promised him the most liberal rewards ( talents of gold and talents of silver, golden and silver bowls) if he could induce the king to spare his life and retain him in the satrapy of babylonia. he was prepared to give the king talents of gold, talents of silver, golden and silver bowls, and costly robes with other gifts; parsondes also should receive talents of silver and costly robes. after many entreaties mitraphernes persuaded the king not to command the execution of annarus, as he had not killed parsondes, but to condemn him in the penalty which he was prepared to pay parsondes and the king. annarus in gratitude threw himself at the feet of the king, but parsondes said: "cursed be the man who first brought gold among men; for the sake of gold i have been made a mockery to the babylonians." the eunuch advised him to lay aside his anger, and be reconciled with annarus, for that was what the king desired; but parsondes determined to take vengeance for the sentence of the king, and waited for a favourable opportunity in order to fly with a thousand horse and three thousand infantry to the cadusians, whose most distinguished chief had married his sister. then he persuaded the cadusians to revolt from the medes, and was elected to be their general. when the king of the medes armed against them, parsondes armed in return, and occupied the passes into the country with , warriors. though the median king brought up , men, parsondes nevertheless put him to flight, and slew , medes. in admiration of such noble deeds, the cadusians made parsondes king, and they often invaded media and laid it waste. at the end of his days, parsondes commanded his successor to remain an enemy of the medes, and pronounced a curse: "if ever peace should be concluded between the medes and the cadusians, might his race and the whole nation of the cadusians perish." this is the reason why the cadusians remained the enemies of the medes, and were never subject to them.[ ] another episode tells us of the contests which the medes had to sustain under the dominion of astibaras-artaeus, _i.e._ of cyaxares, against the parthians and the sacæ. the parthians, whose chief was marmares, revolted from the medes, but handed over their land and city to the king of the sacæ, cydraeus, that he might protect them against the medes; and the sister of cydraeus, zarinaea (zaranya, _i.e._ the golden), who was distinguished for her beauty and wisdom, her boldness and bravery (for the women of the sacæ took the field with the men), became the wife of marmares. as the medians intended to reduce the parthians again to subjection, a war broke out between them and the parthians and sacæ, which lasted for several years, and led to battles in which many fell on one side and the other. in one of these battles zarinaea was wounded. stryangaeus, the mede, to whom cyaxares had given his daughter rhoetæa to wife, pursued, overtook, and threw her from her horse. but the sight of her beauty and youth, and her entreaties, moved him; he allowed her to escape. not long afterwards stryangaeus with other medes was taken captive by the parthians. marmares wished to put him to death, and though zarinaea entreated for his life, insisted on his execution. then zarinaea loosed the bonds of the captive medes, caused marmares to be put to death by them, and allowed stryangaeus to escape. when, after the death of her brother cydraeus, she ascended the throne of the sacæ, she sent messengers to the king of the medes to conclude peace and friendship. the parthians were to return under the sovereignty of the medes, the sacæ and medes were to keep what previously belonged to them, and to be friends and allies for ever. this was done. stryangaeus, the real author of this treaty, ever since the battle in which he had first seen zarinaea, had been possessed with violent love for her, and went to roxanace (_i.e._ the brilliant),[ ] where was the royal citadel of the sacæ, in order to see the beloved princess once more. zarinaea, who returned his affection, came to see him full of joy, received him and his attendants in the most splendid manner, kissed him in the sight of all, and ascended his chariot, and thus, while conversing with each other they arrived in the palace. here stryangaeus sighed in the chambers assigned to him, and could not resist the violence of his passion. at length he took counsel with the most faithful of his eunuchs, who encouraged him to discover his passion to zarinaea. easily persuaded, stryangaeus hastened to the queen, and after much delay and many sighs, sometimes blushing and again turning pale, he ventured to declare that he was consumed with love for her. zarinaea answered quietly and gently that it would be shameful and fatal for her to surrender herself to him, and far more shameful and dangerous for stryangaeus, as his wife was the daughter of the king of the medes, and, as she heard, more beautiful than herself and many other women. he must be brave, not only against his enemies, but against himself, and not bring about a long calamity for the sake of a brief enjoyment. no other wish of his but this should remain unsatisfied. stryangaeus was silent for a long time, then embraced and kissed the queen, and departed. he was far more dejected than before, and determined to take his life. "thou hast been saved by me," he wrote to zarinaea, "but through thee i am destroyed. if in this thou hast done justly, then may all good things be thine, and mayest thou be happy; if thou hast done evil, may a passion like mine overtake thee." when he had bound the eunuch by an oath to give this letter to zarinaea immediately after his death, he lay back on his cushions and demanded his sword. as the eunuch refused to give it, he ended his days by starvation. zarinaea ruled over the sacæ with wisdom and power. she conquered the neighbouring nations who sought to subjugate her people, caused a great part of the land to be cultivated, and built a considerable number of cities, and brought the sacæ into greater prosperity. in gratitude for the benefits received from her, and in remembrance of her virtues, the sacæ erected on her grave a three-sided pyramid, three stades in length on each side, and ending in a point a stadum in height, on which was placed a colossal golden statue of the queen. worship was also offered to her as to a hero, so that she received greater honours than any of her predecessors.[ ] we have already acquainted ourselves with the land of the parthians (p. ). the sacæ were neighbours of the hyrcanians, the parthians, and the bactrians in the steppes of the oxus. herodotus tells us that the sacæ were a nation of the tribe of the scyths, and that their proper name was amyrgians; the persians called all the scythians sacæ. the inscriptions of darius speak of Çaka humavarka; in the second version the name is omuvargap, and in the babylonian-assyrian version umurga. according to the account of herodotus the sacæ wore trousers, and upright, pointed caps, and carried bows of a peculiar character, battle-axes and daggers. they fought as mounted bowmen. on the monument of darius at behistun Çakuka,[ ] the leader of the sacæ, wears a tall pointed cap. in the army of xerxes the sacæ were ranged with the bactrians. what our episode tells us of the royal citadel and the cities built by zarinæa does not harmonise with the nature of the steppe-country of the sacæ, and the statement of the greeks, that the sacæ lived in variegated tents, and that their wealth consisted in flocks of sheep, but it does agree with the fact that the women went to battle on horseback with the men. the companions of alexander describe the sacæ as strong, warlike, well-grown men, with flowing hair; the macedonians only came up to their shoulders. later accounts speak of heavy-armed horse among them; both horse and rider were covered with armour, and the weapons of attack were long lances.[ ] from the narratives given in the episodes we may retain the fact that although the persians followed the lead of the medes from the time of phraortes, cyaxares, even after the fall of nineveh, did not succeed in subjugating the remaining nations of iran without severe struggles. there is no reason to doubt that the cadusians made an obstinate resistance, and maintained their independence: the parthians were able to combine with the sacæ in order to preserve their freedom, and did not become subject to cyaxares without severe contests. that the sagartians on the edge of the great desert (p. ) were subject to cyaxares, is clear from the inscription of darius at behistun. if the medes had to fight with the sacæ, who were settled on the oxus, bactria must have been reduced to form a part of their kingdom. beside the hyrcanians, parthians, and "other nations," the bactrians and sacæ are specially mentioned as subjects of the median kings,[ ] and arrian assures us that the açvakas, whom we found north of the cabul on the right bank of the indus (iv. ), were subjects of the medes.[ ] herodotus tells us that cyaxares was the first to separate the lance-bearers, archers, and horsemen, and combine them into divisions; that is, he introduced a better and more manageable arrangement of the army. to the same prince, no doubt, is due the completion of the fortifications of ecbatana, which we found had been strengthened by his predecessor phraortes. when the fortifications were first begun, the place was merely intended as a point of defence against assyria; but as soon as it became destined to aid in the maintenance of independence, it was necessary that it should be capable of offering refuge and support to the median army, if hard pressed. the mountains of the zagrus form the boundary wall, and at the same time the line of division between the medes and assyrians. as polybius told us (p. ), it was an ascent of twelve miles--_i.e._ four leagues--to the top of the pass. if the medes failed to hold these passes, and were then defeated in their own table-land, the mountains of the orontes formed a new point of protection to their retreat. the orontes (old persian, _urvanda_; now elvend) is a steep range of mountains, traversing media from north-west to south-east; the heights of the passes are given by travellers at or , feet; ctesias puts the ascent at twenty-five stades;[ ] recent explorers fix the time at four hours. on the eastern spur of this mountain wall, in a fertile plain, six leagues long and four leagues broad, lay ecbatana, old persian _hangmatana, i.e._ place of assembly, the achmeta of the hebrews. if the orontes could not be held, the fortifications of ecbatana formed a last point of protection for the median army. from the assyrians there was nothing more to be feared after the fall of nineveh, but cyaxares had no doubt felt, in the inundation of media by the nomadic tribes of the sacæ, and then in the final battles against asshur, what a support was given by a strong metropolis; what good service the walls of nineveh had rendered to the enemy, even in his decline. he saw what measures were being taken by nebuchadnezzar, his step-son, to make his metropolis secure, and determined that the kingdom, which he had so rapidly and brilliantly erected and developed, should not be without the nucleus of an impregnable fortress and royal citadel. the booty in silver and gold, which the medes gained in nineveh, and of which we hear not in the median poems only, but also from the hebrew prophets who lived at the time of the fall of the city, provided no doubt ample means both for the erection of the strongest works, and for the adornment of these as well as the citadel. ctesias tells us that semiramis built a splendid palace at ecbatana, a city lying in a plain, and as there were no springs near, she cut through the roots of the range of mountains, twelve stades distant from the city (the orontes), on the farther side of which was a lake flowing into a river, in order to convey the water of the river into the city. for this object a tunnel was cut through the mountain, fifteen feet in breadth and forty feet in depth, and through it the river was carried into ecbatana.[ ] if ctesias ascribes the palace of ecbatana and the tunnel, like other monuments of media, to semiramis, we have already seen that the queen is no more than a poetical fiction; nor could any of the sovereigns who ruled over assyria entertain the project of building citadels and conduits for the median kings. these could only be the work of median princes, who resided in ecbatana; and as phraortes could hardly have had the means and the time for such important structures, we must ascribe both the completion and adornment of the royal citadel, as well as the tunnel, to cyaxares, unless we are to reject the latter as a pure invention, for which there seems to me no sufficient proof. "when the palace had been built at ecbatana, it was surrounded with large and strong walls," herodotus tells us, "of which one encircled another, in such a manner that the inner overtopped the outer by the height of the turret. the situation, which was on a hill, contributed to this result, and the natural elevation was artificially increased. in all there were seven circles; the innermost contained the king's dwelling and treasure-house; the outermost wall was of about the extent of the wall of athens. the towers of the first circle were white, of the second black, of the third red-purple, of the fourth blue-purple, of the fifth red; the towers of the sixth are covered with silver; and those of the seventh, which surrounds the buildings of the palace, with gold. the city was built round the outermost wall."[ ] polybius describes the situation of ecbatana and the palace as they were under the achæmenids, who were wont to pass some of the hot summer months in the cool and fresh air of ecbatana. "ecbatana lies in the northern regions of media, and commands the parts of asia which look towards the maeotis and the euxine. the city was in old days the royal abode of the median kings, and it appears to have far surpassed all other cities in wealth and in the splendour of its buildings. it is built under the spurs of the orontes. though without walls, it possesses a citadel built by the hand of man, of surprising strength. below the citadel is the palace, which it is as difficult to speak of in detail as to pass over in silence. ecbatana is an excellent theme for those who love to tell of marvellous things with adornment and exaggeration; but those who enter with caution on anything which goes beyond the ordinary intelligence find themselves in difficulties. the circuit of the palace is about seven stades, and the rich ornamentation of the various parts proves how flourishing was the condition of those who founded it. though the entire wood-work consists of cedar and cypress, this is never allowed to appear; on the contrary, the beams of the roof and the panelling, the pillars in the chambers and halls, are covered with gold or silver plates, and the roof consists wholly of silver tiles. most of these were carried off at the time of the expedition of alexander, and the remainder in the reign of antigonus and seleucus-nicanor. nevertheless the temple of aine (_i.e._ of anahita) at the time when antiochus theos ( - b.c.) came to ecbatana, had gilded pillars round it; and some of the gold plates in the side-walls were still remaining, and the greater part of the silver plates, while the silver tiles of the roof were still there in considerable quantities."[ ] at the time of alexander, diodorus allows the city of ecbatana a circuit of stades, _i.e._ of more than miles.[ ] isidore of charax mentions the treasure-house at ecbatana, the metropolis of media and the shrine of anaitis, in which sacrifice was constantly offered.[ ] it is not clear from these descriptions whether the fortifications at that time included the whole city or not. herodotus only speaks of the fortifications of the citadel, and represents the city as built at the foot of its walls. yet we may assume that phraortes and cyaxares followed the pattern of the chief cities of assyria and babylonia in placing a strong wall round their city. a late and very uncertain authority, the book of judith, states that the walls of ecbatana consisted of splendid masonry, and reached a height of seventy cubits (about feet); the towers of these walls were a hundred cubits in height, and there were gates in them.[ ] when the medes lost their empire and became subject to the achæmenids, it was to their interest that the metropolis of the medes should not be fortified, but that the citadel should be in the hands of a persian garrison. cyrus himself, therefore, after the conquest of astyages, or darius, after suppressing the rebellion of the medes, may have thrown down the walls which surrounded ecbatana. the silence of herodotus respecting them would then be explained by the fact that they were no longer in existence in his time. the circuit of the external wall herodotus compares with the circuit of the city of athens, which, exclusive of the harbour cities but including the space between the phaleric and the long walls, reached stades, or ½ miles.[ ] if we chose to assume that herodotus included the phaleric and long walls in the circuit, the total extent would be ½ miles, an incredible length for the wall of a citadel. of the outer walls of the royal citadels at babylon, diodorus puts those on the one bank of the euphrates at stades, and those on the other at , and of the two inner walls of the latter the first was stades in length and the second .[ ] the circuit of ½ miles may, therefore, refer only to the whole extent of the citadel and city of ecbatana, and it would then come near the statement of diodorus, who puts the circuit of ecbatana at stades. the royal citadel of the achæmenids at persepolis was surrounded, according to diodorus, with a triple wall; the first wall was , the second , the third cubits in height. these walls were decorated with great expense, and adorned with towers. the citadel of ecbatana is said to have had seven walls, and, however strange this may appear, religious no less than military motives might have led to that number. we know the importance ascribed in the avesta to the number seven--the seven supreme deities, and the seven girdles of the earth. on the other hand, if we leave out of sight the hill on which the citadel was built, the elevated plateau of ecbatana did not present the natural difficulties such as rivers and heights, which strengthened the fortification of the assyrian metropolis and the walls of babylon; hence it was more important to meet this deficiency by the number of towers and walls. the successive walls would have been of little service had not each inner one been higher than the outer, and they would have been the reverse of serviceable, had not the distance between them been so great that the arrows and missiles of the enemy, when they had gained the outer walls, failed to reach from it to the next, so that the assault of the next wall had to be begun afresh after the capture of the adjacent outer wall, without any cover. if we might assume that the words of polybius: "the palaces, of which the extent reaches to about seven stades, lie below the citadel," are to be interpreted as meaning that these buildings lay under the protection of the walls of the citadel, _i.e._ behind them--and it is scarcely conceivable that the achæmenids should have chosen an unprotected palace in media for a constant residence, and deposited there large treasures, and the archives of the kingdom--the circuit of the buildings of the palace and that of the external wall of stadia would give a space between the walls of each of about feet; a distance not much in excess of that absolutely required. hence the circuit of stadia from the outer wall does not appear too large. more astonishing still is the account given by herodotus of the ornamentation of the turrets of these walls--the colours of the turrets of the first five, the silver and gold of the two last. the attempt has been made to explain these statements as a legendary echo of the fame of the splendour of ecbatana in the time of cyaxares and his successor astyages. but polybius tells us very distinctly that the roof of the palace and that of the temple of anahita consisted of silver tiles at the time of the achæmenids, that the beams and panels of the roofs as well as the pillars were entirely covered with gold and silver plates, and that these decorations remained in the temple of anahita at the time of antiochus theos. this ornamentation might be extended to the turrets of the inner walls. considering the amount of the spoil of nineveh, it cannot be regarded as an impossibility that the ramparts of the interior walls, the length of which, according to the statement of polybius, did not reach more than feet, were covered with plates of gold, and of the next with plates of silver, when the roof of the palace could consist of silver tiles. that the overthrow of the assyrian kingdom and the spoil of the cities brought considerable possessions to the median nation may be concluded from the remark of herodotus that the persians had adopted better clothing and more luxurious habits from the medes. the kings would without doubt receive the richest part of the spoil. the decoration of the turrets was possibly rude, but it exhibited in a striking manner the splendour and exaltation of the kingdom, which was thus encased in gold and silver, while the sovereign dwelt in gold and silver chambers. such a parade of royal magnificence is not out of harmony with the character of the ancient east. to those who were not allowed to enter the wide and high gates of the palace, these turrets showed far and wide, through city and country, the splendour of the citadel. the colours of the five outer walls would be given by glazed tiles, such as those found in the ruins of nineveh and chalah, of babylon and mugheir. we may assume with certainty that cyaxares desired to give to his palace and citadel a splendour no less than that displayed by the palaces of nineveh, or the royal citadel of nebuchadnezzar in babylon, or the golden citadel in sardis. religious conceptions may also have determined the colours of the decoration as well as the number of the walls. as auramazda sat in pure light, on a golden throne on the golden hukairya, so was the ruler on earth to dwell in his palace of ecbatana in golden chambers surrounded by golden walls. the avesta exhibits mithra with a golden helmet and silver coat of mail, the wheels of his chariots are of gold, his horses are greys,[ ] shod on the fore hoofs with gold, and on the hinder hoofs with silver; in like manner the upper turrets of the citadel must shine with silver and the highest with gold. we have seen that the metals, owing to the brilliance inherent in them, belonged in the ideas of the iranians to the good spirits. and as the splendour of gold and silver belonged to the highest gods, so must the colours of the other turrets have been assigned to the good spirits, to whose protection each separate wall was entrusted.[ ] the account which polybius gives of the structure of the palace, the cedar and cypress wood of which the door-posts, pillars, roofs, and panels in the walls were made, shows that wood was employed in building in media, which agrees with the habits of mountaineers. in teheran and ispahan buildings of wood of this kind are still in use, and no doubt the mountain forests of northern media provided better materials in ancient times than now. the noblest trunks and best kinds of wood were sought out for the royal house. the kings of asshur, and nebuchadnezzar tell us in their inscriptions that they have caused trees to be cut down on this or that mountain for their buildings. the wooden palace, which deioces, and perhaps phraortes, first erected, must have been extended by cyaxares, and may have been furnished by him or his successor with the brilliant ornamentation. the inner walls of the palace of the achæmenids at persepolis, if we may draw this conclusion from the metal supports which are found in the remains of the stone walls, were decorated in a similar manner. when the palace of the median kings at ecbatana had become the summer residence and treasure-house of the persian monarchs, it would, no doubt, be enriched and adorned yet more. the temple of anahita, connected with the palace, which polybius has described above, is the work of artaxerxes ii. alexander caused the spoil he had taken in babylon, susa, persepolis, and pasargadæ, to be brought to ecbatana, where he is said to have collected , talents in gold and silver.[ ] at a later time, the arsacids are said to have resided at ecbatana during the summer like the achæmenids.[ ] at the present day, hamadan, which is built high up on a slope of elvend, marks the site of the ancient ecbatana. it contains about , inhabitants; the ruins of the ancient city have not yet been satisfactorily explored. the slender pillars with lotus-like capitals, discovered here, are like the pillars of persepolis, and therefore might be the work of the achæmenids; what has been discovered in engraved stones and coins comes from the time of the arsacids and sassanids. some cylinders covered with cuneiform inscriptions have not yet been examined. cyaxares had rescued media from the most extreme peril. the consequences of the defeat, in which his father, with the greatest part of his army, fell before the assyrians, had been averted. though subsequently overpowered by the scythians, he yet became once more sovereign in his own country. this rise of media, and the weakening of the assyrian kingdom by the inundation of the scythians, he used in order to subjugate armenia and cappadocia. and though he was not able to achieve anything decisive against the lydians, he attained a greater success; in combination with babylonia he avenged on the assyrians the supremacy they had exercised over media; he overthrew the remnant of that kingdom, whose tough vigour showed itself even at the final hour in an obstinate resistance. it was a great achievement and at the same time an important extension of the median dominions, not merely by the whole extent of the assyrian country on the left bank of the tigris, which fell to media, but also by the closer connection which cyaxares thus obtained with armenia and cappadocia, the subject lands to the west. then followed the spread of the median power over the kindred nations in the north and east of iran. the persians were already subjected to phraortes, and cyaxares brought under his sovereignty the sagartians, hyrcanians, parthians, and bactrians; he made the sacæ dependant on him, and in the east perhaps extended his power as far as the indus. from his proud citadel at ecbatana he ruled from the halys to the oxus. it was a powerful empire. herodotus depicts the reign of cyaxares when he says: "he was far more powerful than his predecessors." with the medes he passes as the founder of their sovereignty; and his reign must have been held in grateful remembrance, not by the medes only, but also by the subject nations. those who afterwards attempted to bring the medes and sagartians under arms against the dominion of the persians, called themselves the descendants of cyaxares--and one even laid aside his own name, phraortes, to do so. after the fall of assyria the leading portion passed to media, babylonia, and lydia. as the two first had united for the overthrow of assyria, and had come to terms with lydia for this object, so in other respects they displayed a friendly feeling towards each other. the daughter of cyaxares became the consort of nebuchadnezzar of babylon, and the daughter of alyattes, king of lydia, was married to his son astyages. afterwards, babylon prevented the attempt of egypt to unite syria with the land of the nile; it was eagerly occupied with subjugating mesopotamia and syria, while lydia established its power over the tribes and cities of asia minor as far as the halys. neither media nor lydia thought of putting any hindrances in the way of the extension of the babylonian dominion over syria and phoenicia. of these three kingdoms, thus connected by mutual alliances, media was the strongest. babylonia and lydia were not equal either in extent of country or amount of population; lydia was perhaps inferior in the vigour of the ruling tribe, and babylonia certainly inferior in the military strength of the population. even when united they did not reach the size or strength of the median power, whose army cyaxares had arranged, and for which he had provided at ecbatana a strongly fortified centre, equidistant from the halys and the oxus. when astyages ascended the throne, on the death of his father in b.c., he entered upon the inheritance of a secure dominion in peaceful and friendly relations to all the neighbouring powers. while his father-in-law, alyattes of lydia, and his son croesus were occupied in subjugating the carians and the greek cities on the west coast of anatolia (iii. ), and nebuchadnezzar carried on one campaign after another in order to incorporate in his kingdom the great trading marts of the syrian coasts, astyages could enjoy, for more than thirty years, the fruits of the efforts by which his father had founded and established the median empire. footnotes: [ ] herod. , . in xenophon, who represents astyages as reigning before cyaxares, astyages had subjugated the king of armenia; the rebellion of this king was afterwards repressed by cyaxares. "cyri instit." , , ff. [ ] vol. iii. , . even after the discussions of gelzer ("rheinisches museum," , s. ff.) on the date of the eclipse, i believe that oltmann and bailly's calculation may hold good for it, until it is proved astronomically that in the year b.c. an eclipse of the sun would not have been visible in asia minor. if this were proved, herodotus' dates for cyaxares, who not only in his work but on the evidence of the inscription of behistun, was the founder of the median empire, would have to be thrown back more than half a century, which the date of cyrus does not allow. to assume a confusion of cyaxares with astyages in herodotus, is impossible, for cyaxares is twice expressly mentioned ( , , and ), and moreover astyages is spoken of as the son of cyaxares to whom aryanis was married. nor can i regard it as finally proved that the double capture of sardis rests simply on callisthenes, and a deduction from strabo. gelzer agrees that the incursions of the cimmerians into asia minor and their establishment in cappadocia must be placed at the least before the year b.c. ("z. aegypt. sprache," , s. ); the devastation of phrygia by the cimmerians he puts in the year or b.c. according to the dates of eusebius midas (the husband of damodike) began to reign in olymp. , = , and took his own life in ol. , = (euseb. ed. schöne, , , ); his reign extended therefore from to b.c. hence the devastation of phrygia by the cimmerians must have taken place in the year . if they were masters of phrygia at this date, it is not easy to see why these successes did not carry them on into lydia. as a fact, this is far from improbable; and if the image at nymsi is their work, they would not have had any time for it in b.c., for that incursion was merely a "plundering raid," and the change in the dynasty of lydia, the accession of gyges in the year b.c. (vol. iii. ), seems to me to point to some previous violent change. besides, strabo's words, p. , and p. , are plain and conclusive enough, so that i see no reason to attach much weight to the interpretation of the passage, p. . cf. cæsar, "ind. lect. marb. sem. aestivum," . [ ] vol. iii. ff., . [ ] diod. , ; nicol. damasc. fragm. . [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , , ed. müller; diod. , ; ctes. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] roxane and roxanace are both formed from the old bactrian _raokshna_. müllenhoff, "monatsberichte berl. akadem." , s. . [ ] ctes. fragm. - , ed. müller; nic. damasc. fragm. ed. müller. [ ] oppert gives the form of the second version as Çakuka iskunka. [ ] choerilus in strabo, p. ; herod. , ; , ; , ; ptolem. , ; curtius, , , ; arrian, "anab." , ; cf. plut. "crassus," . [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller. [ ] "ind." , . [ ] diod. , ; , ; strabo, p. . [ ] diod. , . [ ] herod. , , . [ ] polyb. , . [ ] , . [ ] "mans. parth." c. . [ ] judith, i. - . on the date of the composition of this book, cf. volkmar. "rheinisches museum," , . in any case it dates from the end of the first or the second century of our reckoning. [ ] thuc. , , and the scholia. [ ] diod. , . [ ] diod. , . [ ] hence i see no reason for connecting the colours of the turrets with the babylonian star-worship. the only fact in favour of this is the black of the second wall; but as the highest turrets exhibited the two most precious metals, the others may have received the colours of the remaining five, over all of which kshathra vairya presided, and in the order of the avesta in which silver and copper follow gold, while iron and steel end the list. it can hardly be proved that babylonian star-worship had a decisive influence among the medes at the time of cyaxares. isaiah xiii. might be quoted against the wealth of ecbatana, but this passage only gives the idea of the writer that the medes would not be bought off by babylonian money, and abandons the destruction of babylon for the sake of gold. setting this aside, the episodes quoted above show that at the time of astyages men could regret the loss of ancient simplicity in media, and extol it against the gold which had come from nineveh to ecbatana, and against the gold of babylon (p. ). the nation may also have remained in simple habits of life however brilliant the royal citadel may have been. yet it has already been observed in the text that at the time of cyaxares and astyages the upper classes lived in wealth and comfort. [ ] diod. , , ; , ; strabo, p. ; plut. "alex." . [ ] strabo, p. . chapter iii. the tribes of the persians. the oldest subjects in the median kingdom were the persians. their country lay in the south-west corner of the table-land of iran. the heights of the zagrus, which run down to the sea in a south-easterly direction, divide it from the ancient kingdom of elam, and the land of the tigris, just as in the north they divide the land of the medes from the valley of the two rivers. the eastern border of the persian territory was formed, almost down to the coast, by the great desert, which fills the centre of iran; the northern boundary towards the land of the medes is marked by the range which the greeks call parachoatras; the name would be _kuruhvathra_, _i.e._ very brilliant, in old persian. the southern boundary of persia was the sea. nearchus, who sailed along the coast of persia, gives it an extent of stades, _i.e._ miles; their land began at the mouth of the oroatis (old persian, _aurvaiti_, _i.e._ the swift),[ ] the tsab, which falls into the persian gulf below the modern hindian, and reached to the east almost as far as the entrance into this gulf, where it ended opposite the island of coloë (kishm).[ ] euripides contrasts the sun-lit mountain flats of persia with the wintry land of media and the citadels of bactria.[ ] according to strabo the coast of persia was hot and sandy, and, with the exception of some palms, produced no fruit. but beyond the coast was a land of very great fertility, abounding in lakes and rivers, and providing the most excellent pasture. further to the north, the persian land became cold and mountainous, and supported nothing but droves of camels and their keepers. arrian tells us that to the north of the coast of persia the air was temperate, and the land traversed by the clearest streams, in addition to which there were also lakes; the meadows were grassy and well watered, and provided excellent pastures for horses and other beasts of draught. the soil produced all kinds of fruits and even wine, but not olives. the forests were extensive and rich in game, and all kinds of water-fowl were to be found there. but further to the north the land of the persians was wintry and full of snow.[ ] what the greeks relate of the desolation of the persian coast is still applicable; it consists of naked sand-flats, broken only by scanty groves of palms. above this coast the soil rises in terraces, which are separated from each other by yet higher ranges. further to the north the slopes of the mountains provide excellent pastures, till the ground becomes more bare as we approach media, while on the east it gradually passes into the great desert of the centre. on the mountain terraces and in the depressions between them are some favoured lands and valleys. the warmth of the southern situation is tempered by the elevation of the soil and the winds blowing from the sea. this happy climate allows a perpetual spring to reign, and increases the fertility which the abundant mountain springs produce in such a degree that groves of orchard trees, cypresses, and myrtles alternate with vineyards and carpets of flowers. the beauty of persia and the fertility of the vegetation is concentrated in the valleys of kazerun, shiras, and merdasht, which lie in stages one above the other, between mountain walls which rise to a height of feet. the most extensive and at the same time the highest valley is that of merdasht. it is traversed by the murghab, which brings an abundant supply of water from the snow-covered heights in the north-west. the upper course is surrounded by steep cones, and jagged walls of rock; in the lower part it takes another name, and is called the pulwar. further down, it unites with the kum-i-firuz (the araxes of the greeks), and from this confluence down to the mouth in the great lake of bakhtegan it is known as the bendemir. the greeks called the pulwar the medus, and the bendemir, which is also known as the kur in modern times, they named the cyrus.[ ] according to herodotus the persians regarded their land as of moderate extent, poorly equipped, and filled with rocks. in the books of the laws which are ascribed to plato, we are told that the persian land is naturally adapted to produce strong shepherds, and as they had to watch their flocks night and day, they were thus in a position to do good service in war. as a fact persia is a mountainous country; the slopes are admirably fitted for cattle breeding, but there is little room or encouragement for agriculture. according to xenophon's description, the persians in ancient times were much occupied in the chase, and in riding; they only ate once in the day, and at their banquets goblets might indeed be seen, but no pitchers of wine. strabo remarks, with reference to a later period, that the persian youth remained long in the open air with their flocks, and were eager hunters; when thus engaged, their only drink was water, their food bread, flesh, and salt. the greeks with one consent describe the persians of ancient times as simple, hardy, self-controlled men, of great endurance and martial vigour, with few requirements. they were also called "eaters of terebinths," in order to mark the scantiness of their food: their drink was water; and their clothing, coats as well as trousers, were of leather.[ ] the nation of the persians consisted of various tribes. herodotus gives a special prominence to three, on which the rest were dependent. these were the pasargadae, the maraphians, and the maspians. "other tribes are the panthialaei, the derrusiaei, the germanii, all of which are agricultural; while the remainder, the dai, mardi, dropici, and sagartii are nomads."[ ] according to this statement six of the persian tribes carried on agriculture, and four were pastoral. but the germanians and sagartians were distinguished from the tribes of the persians in the narrower sense. the sagartians (açagarta) are spoken of in the inscriptions of darius, and by herodotus himself in other passages, as a separate nation; we have already found their country on the western edge of the great desert, and observed its character (p. ). the germanians of herodotus are the carmanians of the later greeks, who also passed with them as a separate nation, though closely allied to the persians and medes.[ ] they wandered to and fro to the east of persia in the district now called kirman. the number of the tribes mentioned by herodotus would therefore have to be reduced to the pasargadae, maraphians, maspians, panthialaeans, derusiaeans, dai, mardi, and dropici, if we did not hear of two others in the inscriptions of darius, the yutiyas and the patisuvaris, whose names were known to the later greeks in the form utei and pateischorei. these later authorities tell us also of other persian tribes: kyrtians, rhapaesans, stobaeans, suzaeans, etc. they also reckon the paraetaci, or paraetaceni, among the persians.[ ] the mardians of herodotus are also called amardians by later writers, who place them in the west, among the mountains which divide persia from elam.[ ] with regard to the position of the rest of the tribes, we can only ascertain that the pasargadae occupied the best part of the persian land--the valley of the pulwar; that the maraphians[ ] and the maspians were their neighbours, and the land of the pateischorei followed next after that of the pasargadae on the eastern side, towards carmania. besides these three chief tribes, the pasargadae, maraphians, and maspians, the persian nation, according to these statements, was made up of a considerable number of more or less powerful tribes, of whom each one, like the chief tribes themselves, must have had a separate territory, or, at any rate, a pasture for its flocks. if the name parsua could signify persians, the inscriptions of the kings of asshur would confirm the division of the persians into several tribes. shalmanesar ii. tells us, that in the year b.c. he received tribute from the heads of the parsuas, as the inscription says: from twenty-seven princes of the parsuas. afterwards tiglath pilesar ii. traversed the land of the parsuas and imposed tribute upon them ( b.c.).[ ] the books of the hebrews confirm esarhaddon's dominion over persia, inasmuch as they tell us that he settled persians and dai (dahas) in samaria (iii. ). it must have been in the period of the supremacy of assyria, at the latest in the first half of the seventh century b.c., that the worship of the gods, which the persians shared from all antiquity with their fellow-tribesmen on the table-land of iran, the worship of mithra, vayu, anahita, and fire, underwent the change which bears the name of zarathrustra. as we saw good reason to assume, the new doctrine first came to the medes from the north-east; from the medes it passed, without doubt, to the persians. if herodotus places the magians, or special priestly order, among the tribes of the medes and not among those of the persians, among whom strabo is the first to mention them, the conclusion is, as has been sufficiently proved, not that the persians were without priests before and after the reform, but rather that even after the reform the priestly families remained in their natural unions, and did not form themselves into a special tribe (p. ). the supremacy of assyria over the west of iran came to an end when phraortes united the tribes of the medes under his leadership, and, towards the year b.c., undertook to maintain the independence of media against assurbanipal, the successor of esarhaddon. in this struggle the persians joined the medes and ranged themselves under them. herodotus, who obviously follows the tradition of the medes, represents phraortes as marching against the persians, conquering and subjugating them; according to the persian account, which is preserved in ctesias, the chief of the medes induced the persians to revolt against the assyrians, and to join him, by the promise that they should remain free under his leadership (iii. ). the situation of affairs agrees better with the second version than with the first. considering the enormous power which assyria under assurbanipal possessed down to the middle of the seventh century, it is hardly probable that phraortes would have inaugurated the recent independence of media by an attack on the persians, which might, and indeed must, drive them into the arms of the assyrians. it is far more probable that the two nations formed a league against assyria. as already observed, the annihilation of the kingdom of elam, which assurbanipal accomplished in the year b.c., would supply the persians with a strong incentive to unite themselves with the kindred and more powerful nation of the medes. of the three tribes of the pasargadae, maraphians, and maspians, the most prominent--so herodotus tells us--are the pasargadae.[ ] to them belongs the race of the achæmenids, from which sprang the persian kings. in the inscription of behistun, king darius says: "from old time we were kings; eight of my family have been kings (kshayathiya), i am the ninth; from very ancient times we have been kings."[ ] he enumerates his ancestors: "my father was vistaçpa, the father of vistaçpa was arsama, the father of arsama was ariyaramna, the father of ariyaramna was khaispis, the father of khaispis was hakhamanis; hence we are called hakhamanisiya (achæmenids)." in these words darius gives the tree of his own family up to khaispis; this was the younger branch of the achæmenids. teispes, the son of achæmenes, had two sons; the elder was cambyses (kambujiya), the younger ariamnes; the son of cambyses was cyrus (kurus), the son of cyrus was cambyses ii.[ ] hence darius could indeed maintain, that eight princes of his family had preceded him; but it was not correct to maintain that they had been kings before him, and that he was the ninth king.[ ] in this series of the ancestors of darius we find names belonging not only to the east of iran, but also to the arians of india. the name cambyses (kambujiya) points to the cambojas, a nation which we found in the north-west of india (iv. ); the name cyrus (kurus) to the ancestors of the ancient princely race who founded the first great empire in the land of the ganges on the upper course of the river, whose contest with and overthrow by the pandus is celebrated by the indian epic, while the name vistaçpa repeats the name of the king of bactria, whom the prayers of the avesta extol as the protector of zarathrustra (p. ). of achæmenes we are told that an eagle nourished him;[ ] a prophet of the hebrews calls cyrus "the eagle;" we know the importance which the avesta ascribes to the two eagles of the sky, and the modern persian epic to simurgh; and we have seen that the standard of the achæmenids was an eagle (p. ). hence from this notice we may with certainty conclude that the tradition of the persians ascribed to this ancestor of their kings a youth distinguished by the favour of heaven. as cambyses the father of cyrus is a contemporary of astyages of media, teispes the father of cambyses must be reckoned a contemporary of cyaxares, and achæmenes, the father of teispes, as a contemporary of phraortes.[ ] we must therefore assume either that achæmenes was at the head of the persians, at the time when they joined media, or that he was established by phraortes as the chief of persia and his vassal-king, and that his throne passed with the duties of vassalage to his descendants teispes and cambyses. it is not very probable that the traditions of the persians should have accorded signs of divine favour to the youth of a man, who had been placed over them after their subjugation as viceroy of media. moreover, we find among the persians, according to this tradition, a form of constitution, such as a median viceroy would hardly have established, even for the object of overthrowing the median power. the race of the achæmenids belonged to the tribe of the pasargadae; we may therefore assume that achæmenes was the first to become chief of this tribe. aeschylus enumerates the seven men who stand at the side of the king of the persians.[ ] josephus says that the "seven houses" of the persians had named darius as king. as a fact we see that when darius, after the extinction of the older line of the descendants of achæmenes, sets himself to ascend the throne, six men stand at his side, whom herodotus distinguishes as the "first of the persians." the laws ascribed to plato say that the empire was then divided into seven parts between darius and the six, and that a relic of this division was still in existence.[ ] in regard to the privileges of the six and their descendants we find that they consisted in the right of free access to the king, and that the king could choose his chief wife only from their families;[ ] the descendants of the six had also the right to wear the head-dress of the king, the upright _kidaris_, which was the symbol of royal dignity. in the kingdom of the sassanids, we find seven hereditary princes under the king; these princes, like the king, wear crowns, but their crowns are lower than that of the king; the "sons of the houses," _i.e._ the members of these seven families, form the highest rank of the nobility. hence in these six chieftains of the persians standing at the side of and beneath the seventh, who is the prince of the pasargadae, we may suppose that we have the princes of the remaining tribes.[ ] and in respect of the privileges of the six co-chieftains in the kingdom of the achæmenids we may assume that they originally occupied a position close to the king, and formed the council and court of the chief tribal prince. these privileges the greeks ascribe to the services which the six rendered at the time when darius ascended the throne. but as the seven houses existed before, and the six had previously been "the first of the persians," their privileged position must have been of an older date; it must have been introduced by cyrus or be of even more remote origin. it is not probable that such a mighty warrior prince as cyrus would, after the reduction of the medes, impose limitations on his power by sharing the symbols of royalty and hereditary privileges. according to the narrative of herodotus, cyrus does not simply command the persians to take up arms against the medes, but he assembles the tribes, and ascertains their feeling. in considering the peculiar position of these six families we may certainly assume, that under the ancestors of cyrus there were chiefs among the persians with whom the achæmenids had to deal. if the achæmenids were the heads of the tribe of the pasargadae, the other tribes would have chiefs also. yet we only hear of "six princes" besides the achæmenids, though we have seen that the number of the persian tribes was considerably more than seven. following the indications thus given, we may sketch the course of events as follows. when achæmenes had acquired the headship of the tribe of the pasargadae, he must have combined the two neighbouring tribes, the maraphians and maspians, whom herodotus classes with the pasargadae as the most important among the persians, into closer union, perhaps by some understanding with the chiefs. supported by these three tribes, who possessed the favoured regions of kazerun, shiras, and merdasht, achæmenes must then have subjugated the remainder to his power. herodotus told us above that the remaining tribes depended on the three mentioned. they must, therefore, have been combined into larger groups, and in fact into four communities. to the chiefs who became the heads of these new combinations, a position must have been accorded similar to that enjoyed by the maraphians and maspians beside achæmenes--above all, the right to bequeath the chieftainship to their descendants. when the chiefs of the persians, now seven in number, mutually guaranteed to each other their position, the foundation was laid of a community of interests, and thus of a community of the persian nation. that the princes of the four new combinations of tribes belonged to those tribes, and not to the three first, is proved by the inscription of darius at naksh-i-rustem, where one of the princes of the date of darius is called a pateischorean. in some such way as this achæmenes may have brought about the union of the persian tribes, and at the same time have obtained the leadership of them. his position thus rested essentially on the relation of the prince of the pasargadae to the other six tribal princes, a relation of which we find no trace in the medes. that the number seven was normal for the combinations of the tribes we may ascribe to the influence of the recently-introduced doctrine of zarathrustra, of which we found echoes in the legend of achæmenes. achæmenes and his race after him must have had their dwelling in the canton of the tribe to which they belonged, at the place of assembly of the pasargadae, the chief town, which bore the name of the tribe. supported by this tribe, achæmenes succeeded in uniting the people; on it and the neighbouring marapheans and maspians depended the importance of the achæmenids. strabo calls pasargadae the ancient seat, and with persepolis the patriarchal abode of the persian kings,[ ] and here, on ascending the throne, they were consecrated. here cyrus deposited his treasures; here he found his last resting-place. we must look for this place in "hollow persia," as the greeks call it, in the plain of merdasht, to the east of the later istakhr, the city of the sassanids, below the confluence of the medus and cyrus (_i.e._ the pulwar and kum-i-firuz) in the land of the bendemir.[ ] when achæmenes had united the tribes of the persians by means of the new hereditary chieftainships, and got into his hands the supreme power with the co-operation of the six princes in council and jurisdiction, he joined the king of the medes, who had also united the tribes of his people, soon after the year b.c., as we were compelled to assume, for common defence against assyria. being weaker than the median king, he ranged himself under his leadership and power, agreed to follow him in war, and accepted the position of his general and vassal. the relation must have been similar to that which firdusi represents as existing between his kings and the princes of sejestan (p. ). in this combination the persians shared the dangers of the war against king assurbanipal, and the defeat of phraortes, no less than the defeat of cyaxares by the scythians; on the other hand, they were the comrades of cyaxares in his struggles against the lydians, and in his victory over assyria, while they took an active part in the annihilation of nineveh. at the same time we may assume that this dependent position became more strongly marked as the power of media increased, and we may believe herodotus that their soldiers joined in subjugating the other tribes of the table-land of iran, and marched with the armies of the medes to the wars which cyaxares carried on in the east. the episode of parsondes exhibits a persian at the court, in the council, and in the army of the median king; and the position of the persians under the successors of achæmenes, teispes, and cambyses, must have closely resembled the position of the other nations subject to the median power. cyaxares and his successor astyages would have regarded teispes and cambyses merely as their viceroys over persia, though they did not disturb the succession in the tribe of achæmenes. if darius still calls all his ancestors kings, and extends this title to his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, who were not viceroys, that is merely the custom and view of the east; even under the great king, the king of kings, a vassal is still a king. the hereditary viceroys of persia under the arsacids, one and all, put the title "king" on their coins. when papek, and ardeshir after him, had taken their place, they call themselves kings; ardeshir, the founder of the dominion of the sassanids, designates himself as "king," "king of the divine stock," even before he has overthrown his own king, artabanus, the arsacid. as the youth of achæmenes is ennobled in the older tradition, so later legends surrounded the life of the progenitor of the sassanids with premonitory indications. footnotes: [ ] burnouf, "commentaire sur le yaçna," p. . [ ] arrian, "ind." - ; strabo, p. , , ; plin. "h. n." , ; cf. ptol. , , . [ ] "bacch." - . [ ] arrian, "ind." . [ ] spiegel, "eran," , . [ ] herod. , , , ; nicol. damasc. fragm. , ed. müller; xenophon, "cyri instit." , , ; , , - ; plato, "legg." p. ; strabo, p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] above, p. . strabo, p. , ; ptol. , . [ ] arrian, "ind." ; strabo, p. . [ ] aeschylus speaks of a maraphis among the kings of the persians, "pers." . [ ] above, p. . [ ] the place has the same name as the tribe; pasargadae cannot in any case mean "persian camp," as anaximenes maintains in stephanus. oppert believes that he has discovered in the pisiyauvada of the inscription of behistun the original form of the name pasargadae, which is the greek form of the persian word. pisiyauvada (_paisi gauvuda_) means "valley of springs;" "peuple des medes," p. . [ ] so rawlinson and spiegel. e. schrader translates iii. of the babylonian version: "from old from the fathers we were kings." _abutav_ appears as a fact to leave no doubt about this sense. oppert now translates _duvitataranam_ (iv. of the persian text) by twice, _i.e._ in two epochs we were kings: "rec. of the past," , ; but his previous translation, "in two tribes" (_i.e._ in the older and younger line), we were kings, exactly corresponds to the facts. [ ] the list of the achæmenids, which we obtain from a comparison of herodotus ( , ), and the inscription of behistun , - , is as follows: achæmenes (hakhamanis). | teispes (khaispis). | +--------------+-------------+ | | (kambujiya) cambyses. ariamnes (ariyaramna). | | (kurus) cyrus. arsames (arsama). | | (kambujiya) cambyses. hystaspes (vistaçpa). | darius (darayavus). [ ] if darius calls himself the ninth achæmenid, xerxes also in herodotus enumerates nine achæmenids as his predecessors, in which enumeration, it is true, cambyses occurs but once, while teispes is twice mentioned, once as the ancestor of the older line, and then as the ancestor of the younger. on a broken cylinder which has just been brought from babylon by rassam, the genealogy of cyrus is said to be given thus: achæmenes, teispes, cyrus, cambyses, cyrus,--so the journals tell us. in this the older line has one member more as against the younger. till the cylinder is published we must keep to the inscription of behistun and herodotus. [ ] aelian, "hist. anim." , . [ ] cyrus is said to have been forty years old in b.c., so that he must have been born in b.c., from which it follows that his father cambyses was born in at the latest. astyages was married in , and must therefore have been born about b.c. [ ] "persae," - . [ ] joseph. "antiq." , ; herod. , ; plat. "legg." p. . [ ] herod. , . [ ] this highest rank of nobility is called _waspur_ in pehlevi, and _bar bithan_ is aramaic. the book of esther mentions the seven princes of the persians and medes, "who may behold the countenance of the king and have the first place in the kingdom," i. . the names of the six who aided darius in slaying gaumata, as given in herodotus, agree with the inscription of behistun, with the exception of one name. herodotus gives aspathines for the ardumanis of darius. the list of ctesias is wholly different. if we examine them more closely we find that ctesias has given the names of the sons of the comrades of darius for the comrades themselves. instead of gobryas he puts mardonius the son of gobryas, instead of otanes anaphes (so we must read the name onophes); anaphes, according to herod. , , is the son of otanes. the name hydarnes agrees with the inscription and with herodotus, but the son of hydarnes had the same name as his father (herod. , , ). the barisses of ctesias must be the eldest son of intaphernes whom darius allowed to live; he was called after his grandfather, vayaçpara, as was often the case with the persians. the ariarathes, who afterwards governed cappadocia, claimed to have sprung from anaphes, whom darius made satrap or king of cappadocia. anaphes was succeeded by a son of the same name; after him came datames, ariamnes, ariarathes i., who governed cappadocia at the time of artaxerxes ochus; his son ariathes ii. crucified perdiccas in the year b.c. when he had conquered him, though an old man of years; droysen, "hellenismus," ^ , . the norondobates in ctesias i cannot explain, unless we ought to read rhodobates. mithridates, who in xenophon's time had been governor of lycaonia from about b.c., is called a son of rhodobates (diog. laert. , ), and his father and grandfather are said to have been viceroys of pontus. the ancestor would be one of the seven, to whom the kingdom of pontus was given for his services; polyb. , . mithridates eupator calls himself the sixteenth after darius; appian, "bell. mith." c. ; cf. justin, , . these quotations will be sufficient to show that the rank of the six tribal princes of the persians, like that of the chief princes, was originally hereditary, as the governorships left to their descendants outside persia must have remained in their families. [ ] p. , . [ ] strabo, p. , puts pasargadae on the cyrus. stephanus ([greek: passargadai]) following anaximenes of lampsacus, represents pasargadae as first built by cyrus; so curt. , : cyrus pasargadum urbem condiderat. it cannot be doubted that cyrus built there, and alexander, according to arrian ( , ), found there the treasures of cyrus. strabo also tells us that cyrus built the city and citadel, p. . from the accounts of the march of alexander from persepolis to pasargadae, and from his return from the indus to pasargadae and persepolis, it is clear that pasargadae lay to the east or south-east of persepolis. if pasargadae is placed at murghab, the only reason is the statement that the grave of cyrus was at pasargadae, and this grave has been identified with the pyramid of murghab, in the immediate proximity of which a relief exhibits the picture of cyrus. but the portrait of cyrus there is very different from the portrait of darius and his successors on the tombs at rachmed, and naksh-i-rustem; and the building at murghab may have served another purpose. according to pliny ("h. n." , , ) we ought to look for pasargadae to the south of lake bakhtegan, near fasa, or darabgerd; flumen sitioganus, quo pasargadas septimo die navigatur. sitioganus is the modern sitaragan. ptolemy puts pasargadae in the neighbourhood of caramania, and oppert therefore identifies it with the ruins of tell-i-zohak near fasa, and looks for the mountain paraga of the inscriptions in the modern forg: "journal asiat." , p. . chapter iv. the fall of the median kingdom. "cyaxares was succeeded by his son astyages on the throne of the medes"--such is the narrative of herodotus--"and the latter had a daughter named mandane. once he saw his daughter in a dream, and water came from her in such quantities that all asia was inundated. this vision astyages laid before the interpreters of dreams, among the magians, and their interpretation alarmed him. to guard against the event portended, he gave his daughter, who was already of marriageable age, to none of the medes of suitable rank, but to a persian of the name of cambyses, the son of cyrus, who was of a good family, but quiet in disposition; he regarded him as of less account than a mede of the middle class. mandane had not been married a year when astyages had a second vision; from his daughter's womb there grew up a vine-tree which overshadowed all asia. this dream also he laid before the interpreters, and caused his daughter, who was with child, to be brought from the land of the persians and be kept under watch; his intention was to kill the child, which, as the magians said, was destined to reign in his place. when mandane bore a son, astyages sent for harpagus, a man akin to the royal household,[ ] the most faithful of his servants, in whose care he trusted on all occasions, and bade him take mandane's child to his house and there kill it, and bury it, in whatever way he chose. when the boy was given to him, dressed as if for a funeral, harpagus went in tears to his house, told his wife the orders of astyages, and declared that he would not be the perpetrator of this murder even though astyages should lose his reason more utterly than at present, and fall into worse madness: 'the child is akin to me; astyages is old and without male heirs, if the throne passes to the daughter, whose child he is now putting to death by my hands, i shall find myself in the greatest danger. inasmuch as my present safety demands it the child must die. but the murder must be done by one of the people of astyages, not by any one of mine.' without delay he sent a messenger to one of the cowherds of the king, mithradates by name, whose pastures lay on mountains to the north of ecbatana, where wild beasts are numerous. when the herdman came he found the whole house of harpagus filled with lamentation, and saw a struggling and screaming child adorned with gold and variegated robes, and harpagus said to him: 'astyages commands you to expose this child on the most desolate mountains, in order that it may die as quickly as possible.' the herdman believed that the child belonged to one of the household of harpagus, and took it, but from the servant who accompanied him out of the city he ascertained that it was the child of mandane and cambyses. returning to his hut, he found that his wife spako (the medes call a dog spako) had just brought forth a dead child, and when she saw the well-grown and beautiful child which her husband showed her, she clasped his knees in tears, and entreated him not to expose it, but to take away her dead child in its place, and bring it up as her own son:[ ] thus doing you will not be guilty of wrong towards your master; the dead child will receive a splendid funeral, and the other will not lose his life. the herdman took his wife's advice, and did as she bade him. he placed his own dead child in the basket, put on him all the ornaments of the other, and placed him on the wildest mountain. three days after he told harpagus that he was ready to show him the corpse of the child. harpagus sent the most trustworthy of his bodyguard, and buried the herdman's child. but the herdman's wife brought up the other child, and gave him some other name than cyrus, by which he was afterwards called. when he was ten years old an incident happened which caused him to be known. he was playing with his comrades, in the village in which the herdman lived, in the street, and his playfellows had chosen him whom they considered the herdman's son to be king. he assigned to every one his work, and bade one build houses, and another to be a lance-bearer; one he made 'the king's eye,' and another 'the bearer of his messages.' among the boys who were playing with him was the son of artembares, a man of high rank in media. this boy failed to do what cyrus ordered; and cyrus bade the others take him, and whipped him severely. the boy hastened to the city and complained to his father of the treatment he had received from the son of the cowherd. his father took him to the king and showed his son's shoulders, and said: 'this insult we have received from thy servant, the son of the cowherd.' astyages summoned mithradates and his son. when astyages asked the latter how he dared so to insult the son of a man in such high favour with the king as artembares, the lad maintained that he was right in acting as he did, but if he was to blame he was ready to bear the penalty. astyages was surprised by the likeness of the boy to his own family, and the freedom of his reply. after applying the torture to mithradates, he soon discovered the truth. he was more enraged at harpagus than at mithradates, but concealed his resentment. when harpagus at his request had acknowledged what he had done, astyages said: 'the boy was alive, and all that had been done was well. let harpagus send his own son to join the new-comer, and also come himself to the banquet.' as soon as the son of harpagus, a boy of thirteen years, was in the palace, astyages caused him to be slain, and the dismembered limbs were boiled and roasted, while the head, hands, and feet, were put in a covered basket. at the banquet harpagus was served with the flesh of his own son, while the other guests ate the flesh of sheep. when harpagus had eaten, astyages inquired whether he had enjoyed the meal, and when he replied that he had enjoyed it greatly, the servants of the king brought him the basket, bade him uncover it and take what he would. harpagus controlled himself, and said that whatever the king did was best. then astyages took counsel with the magians who had interpreted the dreams: they were to consider everything, and give him the advice best for himself and his house. the magians declared that they had it much at heart that the dominion of astyages should continue; for if the throne passed to the boy who was a persian, the medes would be governed by others, 'but if thou remainest king we are rulers in our degree, and have great honour from thee.' but as the boy had already been king in the game, the dream was fulfilled; the king might send him back to persia to his parents. astyages did so. when cyrus came to the house of cambyses, his parents received him with great joy, when they found who he was, since they believed that he was already dead, and desired to know how he had been preserved. he told them that he had been supposed to be the son of the cowherd, but on the way he had ascertained everything from the convoy which astyages had sent with him. he related how the wife of the herdman had brought him up, and praised her much, and spako (the dog) was always on his lips. his parents seized on the name in order that the preservation of the boy might appear to be the work of the gods, and laid the foundation for the legend that a dog had suckled cyrus when exposed." "when cyrus came to manhood and was the bravest and best-beloved of his comrades, harpagus sought to win him by presents with a view to vengeance on astyages, for he regarded the injury done to cyrus as no less than that done to himself. he had already prepared his revenge. as astyages was severe towards the medes, he had secretly persuaded the chief men among them, one by one, that an end must be put to the rule of astyages, and that cyrus must be raised to the throne. when this was done and all was ready, he wished to discover his views to cyrus, who was then in persia. as the roads were guarded, he invented the following stratagem: he prepared a hare by cutting open the belly without further injury to the skin, inserted a letter, and then again closed the opening. this hare he gave with some nets to the most faithful of his slaves, and sent him, as though he were a hunter, to persia, with a command to take the hare to cyrus, and at the same time to tell him that he must open it himself and let no one be present at the time. cyrus opened the hare, and found written: 'son of cambyses, the gods regard thee with favour, or thou hadst not attained to such good fortune. avenge thy death on astyages, for dead thou art in his intention; it is through the gods and me that thou livest. long ago thou hast learnt all that befell thee, and what i have suffered at the hands of the king because i did not slay thee, but gave thee to the cowherd. if thou wilt follow my counsel, thou shalt rule over all the land over which astyages was ruler. persuade the persians to revolt, and march against media, and if i or any other chief man among the medes is appointed by astyages to lead the army against thee, all will be as thou wilt. they will revolt from the king, and by passing over to thee attempt to dethrone him. all is ready here; act therefore, and act quickly.' "cyrus considered in what way he could best persuade the persians to revolt, and when he discovered what he believed to be the best plan, he wrote down his intentions in a letter and summoned an assembly of the persians. in their presence he opened the letter, and read out, that astyages had appointed him general of the persians; then he added: 'i command that every one of you appear with a sickle.' and when they were all assembled, furnished with sickles, cyrus bade them clear a bushy tract of land about twenty stades in length and breadth, and make it fit for cultivation in a single day. when they had done this, he bade them assemble on the next day; every one was to come bathed. then he caused all the goats, sheep, and oxen of his father to be got together, slaughtered and dressed, and prepared in addition wine and other excellent food, and entertained the whole of the persians in a meadow; after the meal he asked them which they preferred, the entertainment of that day, or the work of the day before? they replied that the difference was great: yesterday they had nothing that was good, to-day nothing that was bad. cyrus took up this reply, and discovered his aims, saying: 'o persians, thus it is with you. if ye will follow me, ye shall have these blessings and many others, without any service; if ye will not, ye will have troubles without number like those of yesterday. follow me, and ye will be free. i believe that i was born by the favour of heaven to take this work in hand, and i do not count you as less than the medes, in war or any other service. since this is so, revolt at once from astyages.' the persians were quite ready to liberate themselves; they only required a leader, and had long borne the yoke of the medes with dissatisfaction." "when astyages found what cyrus had done, he summoned him into his presence by a messenger. cyrus bade the messenger reply that he would come before astyages wished. then the king armed all the medes, and, as though blinded by the gods, he named harpagus as general, entirely forgetting the injury he had done to him. when the medes and persians met, some of the medes, who were not in the conspiracy fought, but the greater part made no resistance and fled. thus the median army was shamefully put to rout. but astyages threatened cyrus and said, that even so he should not accomplish his purpose. the interpreters of dreams among the magicians who had advised him to let cyrus go he impaled, and then armed all who had remained in the city, young and old, and led them out. he was defeated, lost those whom he commanded, and was himself taken captive. harpagus spoke harsh words to him, and asked how he liked slavery instead of monarchy with reference to that banquet. astyages replied by asking, whether the insurrection was his own work or that of cyrus. harpagus answered that he had written the letter, and the insurrection was therefore his doing. then astyages said that he was the most foolish and unjust of men; the most foolish because when he might have been king, if what had been done had been his doing, he had given up his power to another; the most unjust because in revenge for that banquet he had brought the medes into slavery; if the throne must pass to another it would be more just that it should go to a mede than a persian, but now the innocent medes were slaves instead of masters, and the persians, who had previously been the servants of the medes, were their masters. thus astyages lost the throne, after a reign of thirty-five years, and in consequence of his cruelty the medes became subject to the persians. cyrus did no injury to astyages, but kept him with him till his death." in the persian history of ctesias the narrative of the fall of astyages occupied more than one book. but we only know that it contradicted the story of herodotus, that the daughter of astyages was not called mandane but amytis, that she was married to the median spitamas, not to the persian cambyses, and that it was not the median harpagus but the persian oebares who was cyrus' counsellor.[ ] the loss of these books of ctesias is compensated by a fragment of nicolaus of damascus, which seems to give the narrative in a compressed form. it is only in a few unimportant points at the close that the fragment differs from the excerpt of ctesias which has come down to us. "astyages," so we are told in nicolaus, "was the noblest king of the medes after arbaces. in his reign occurred the great revolution by which the dominion passed from the medes to the persians; and the cause was as follows:--it was a law among the medes that a poor man who went to a rich man to gain a livelihood, and gave himself up to him, should be fed and clothed and kept as a slave; if the rich man did not do his duty in this respect, the poor man might go on to another. in this way a boy named cyrus, a mardian by birth, came to the servant of the king who was placed over the sweepers of the palace. he was the son of atradates, whose poverty forced him to live by plunder, and argoste his mother lived by keeping goats. he gave himself up to the servant for bread, and assisted in cleaning the palace, and as he was industrious the overseer gave him better clothing, and brought him from among those who swept outside to those who cleaned the interior, and put him under their overseer. this man was severe, and often whipped cyrus. cyrus left him, and went to the lighter of the lamps, who showed him kindness, and brought him nearer to the king by placing him among those who bore the lights. as cyrus distinguished himself there also, he came to artembares, the chief butler, who gave the king his wine. he gladly received cyrus, and allowed him to wait on those who ate at the king's table. ere long astyages remarked how deftly cyrus waited, and with what a stately air he handed the goblets, and asked artembares whence the youth came who waited so well. 'o king,' he replied, 'he is thy slave, a persian by race, of the tribe of the mardians, who has given himself over to me in order to gain a livelihood.' artembares was old, and once, when suffering from a fever, he entreated the king to be allowed to remain at home till he was cured; 'in my place the youth, whom thou didst praise, will hand the wine, and if he find favour in thy eyes as cupbearer, then will i, a eunuch, adopt him as my son.' astyages consented, and artembares gave much advice to cyrus, as if to his own son. cyrus now stood at the side of the king, and served him by day and by night, and showed much good sense and skill. and astyages allowed him as the son of artembares to receive his income, and gave him many gifts in addition, and cyrus became great, and his name was heard everywhere." "astyages had a very noble and beautiful daughter, whom he gave to spitamas the mede, adding the whole of media as a dowry. then cyrus caused his father and mother to come from the land of the medians, and they rejoiced at the greatness of their son, and his mother told him the dream which she had while he was yet an unborn child. she had fallen asleep in the sanctuary when tending her goats, and in her dream water flowed from her in such quantities that it became a great stream, and inundated all asia, and flowed down to the sea. when the father heard this, he ordered the dream to be laid before the chaldæans in babylon. cyrus sent for the most skilful of them and laid the dream before him. he declared that the dream portended great good fortune for cyrus, and the highest place in asia; astyages was to know nothing of it, 'otherwise he will put you to death in some shameful manner, and me also,' the babylonian said. they mutually swore to impart to no one this great and unparalleled vision. cyrus afterwards came to yet greater honours, and made his father satrap of persia, and his mother one of the first among the women in persia in wealth and position." "the cadusians were at enmity with astyages. their leader was onaphernes, who was a traitor to his people in the interests of astyages, and he despatched a messenger saying, that he must send a trusty person with whom to confer about the surrender. astyages sent cyrus to arrange everything with onaphernes, bidding him be back again in ecbatana on the fortieth day. the interpreter of dreams urged cyrus to go to the cadusians, and filled him with confidence. cyrus, who was of a noble and ambitious nature, intended, with the help of heaven, to bring the persians to revolt, to attempt the overthrow of astyages, and place confidence in the babylonian, who was better acquainted than others with the will of heaven. they consulted with each other; the babylonian told cyrus that it was destined that he should overthrow astyages and his dominion, he knew this for certain; and cyrus promised the babylonian that if this turned out to be true and he became king, he would make him a great reward. cyrus remembered how arbaces had previously overthrown sardanapalus, and obtained his dominion, and yet the medes, by whom he was supported, were not stronger than the persians. arbaces was not stronger than himself, and to him, as to the other, his fortune had been foretold. with such thoughts cyrus passed the boundaries of the land of the cadusians. here he was met by a man who had been whipped, and carried dung in a basket. cyrus took this for a sign, and inquired of the babylonian, who told him to ask the man who he was and whence he came. the man replied that he was a persian of the name of oebares. then cyrus was greatly pleased; for oebares signifies one who brings good news. and the babylonian told cyrus that the other signs were most favourable--both that he was a countryman of cyrus, and that he was carrying horse-dung, which portended dominion and power. cyrus without delay took the man with him." "then he came to onaphernes, and when the treachery had been arranged by mutual concessions, he set out on the way back to persia. he had given oebares a horse and persian clothing, and being convinced of his friendly disposition he often conversed with him. once he said: 'how hard it is to see the persians ill-treated by the medes, and yet they are as good as they!' 'o cyrus,' replied the other, 'there is no great-hearted, high-minded man, to put an end to the dominion of the medes over better men than themselves.' 'why should there not be such a man?' asked cyrus. 'perhaps there is such an one,' oebares replied, 'but want of courage does not allow him to do it, though he could.' cyrus pushed his questions further: 'if such a venturesome man should appear, how might he accomplish his aim?' 'the first step,' oebares answered, 'would be to unite with the cadusians, who would be willing to join him, for they love the persians, and hate the medes; then he must rouse the persians, who are about , in number, and arm them; their treatment by the medes will prepare them for this. their land also is most suitable, being full of mountains and rocks, and even if the medes should invade it, they will be driven back with loss.' then cyrus asked: 'suppose that this man should appear, would you join in the danger with him?' oebares replied: 'most readily, if you were the man to take the matter in hand; your father is the ruler of persia, so that you have the best place of refuge, and are the strongest. if not you, who is it to be?' as cyrus saw from this that oebares was a cautious and brave man, who placed all his hopes in him, he revealed his plan and consulted him. oebares encouraged him, and gave him good counsel to guide him. he urged cyrus to send to his father atradates and entreat him to arm the persians, apparently to aid the king against the cadusians, but in truth to revolt against astyages; then he must ask astyages for permission to visit persia for some days, in order to offer the sacrifice which he had vowed for the safety of the king, and at the same time for his father who was sick. if he obtained his request he must set manfully to work; when a man ventures in a great enterprise it is no hardship to venture his life, and if need be to lose it, for this happens even to those who do nothing. cyrus was pleased at the man's resolute frame of mind, and now told him his mother's dream and the interpretation of the babylonian. oebares then inflamed his spirit yet more, but cunning as he was, he bade him take care that the babylonian did not tell the dream to the king--'if you will not permit his death, which would be the safest thing.' 'that be far from me,' said cyrus. filled with alarm that the babylonian would betray the dream to astyages, oebares gave out that according to ancestral custom he would offer sacrifice to the goddess of the moon at night, and obtained of cyrus all that he required for the purpose--incense, wine, and pillows--and arranged that cyrus should take no part in the sacrifice. in his tent he dug a deep trench, put thick pillows over it, and invited the babylonian to a banquet, and made him intoxicated. when he sank down on the pillows, he threw him into the trench, and his servants with him. in the morning, oebares went quietly on with cyrus, who soon inquired for the babylonian. oebares acknowledged what he had done; he could find no other way of escape for cyrus and his children. cyrus was deeply distressed, and even more angry, and would not see oebares any more, but at length he again placed his confidence in him." "when cyrus was again with astyages, oebares reminded him of his advice. cyrus followed it, sent to persia, and when he found that all was ready, asked astyages, under the pretext that oebares had suggested, for permission to go to persia. the king would not let him go. then cyrus betook himself to the most trusty of the eunuchs; when a favourable moment came, he was to obtain permission for the journey to persia. one day when cyrus found the king in the best of humours and cheered with wine, he gave the eunuch a sign, and the latter said to the king: 'cyrus asks to perform the sacrifice, which he has vowed for thee in persia, that thou mightest continue gracious to him, and for permission to visit his sick father.' the king called for cyrus, and with a smile, gave him permission of absence for five months; in the sixth month he was to return. cyrus bowed in gratitude before the king, appointed tiridates as butler to the king during his absence, and early on the next morning he set out to persia." "in vain had the wife of the slain babylonian waited for his return to ecbatana; oebares told her that robbers had killed him. then she became the wife of the brother of her husband, and when she heard that cyrus had gone to persia, she remembered that her first husband had once confided to her the dream of the mother of cyrus, and its interpretation. she related this to her husband, who at once went to astyages, told him all, and added that cyrus had obviously gone to persia with a view of preparing for the execution of that which the dream had portended. the king was seized with great anxiety, and the babylonian advised him to put cyrus to death as soon as he returned. towards evening astyages caused his concubines to dance and play before him while drinking wine. one of the players sang: 'the lion has let the boar which he had in his power go forth to the pasture. there he will become strong and give great trouble to the lion, and at length he, the weaker, will overcome the stronger.' astyages applied this song to himself and cyrus, and on the spot sent horsemen to bring him back; if he would not obey they were to cut off his head and bring that. when the horsemen brought to cyrus the commands of astyages, he answered cunningly, perhaps on the advice of oebares: 'why should i not return as my lord summons me? to-day we will feast; to-morrow morning we will set out.' this met with their approval. after the manner of the persians, cyrus caused many oxen and other animals to be slain in sacrifice, feasted the horsemen, and made them intoxicated; at the same time he sent a message to his father to send at once cavalry and foot-soldiers to the city of hyrba which lay on the way, and to arm the rest of the persians as quickly as possible in such a way that it should seem to be done by command of the king. his true aims he did not communicate to him. in the night he and oebares took horse, just as they were, hastened to hyrba, armed the inhabitants, and drew out those whom atradates had sent in order for battle. when the horsemen of astyages had slept off their debauch on the following morning, and found that cyrus had disappeared, they pursued him and came to hyrba. here cyrus first displayed his bravery, for with his persians he slew of the horse of astyages. the remainder escaped, and brought the news to astyages. 'woe is me!' cried the king striking his thigh, 'that i, well knowing that we should not do good to the evil, have allowed myself to be carried away by clever speeches, and have raised up this mardian to be such a mischief to me. still, he shall not succeed.' he called his generals and bade them assemble the army, and led out against the persians nearly , , foot-soldiers, , horse, and chariots." "meanwhile the army under atradates, who was now fully instructed, was collected: , infantry, , horse, and chariots. cyrus encouraged the persians, and oebares seized the passes of the mountain and the heights, built lines, and brought the people from the open cities into such as were well fortified. astyages burned down the abandoned cities, summoned atradates and cyrus to submission, and taunted them with their former beggary. cyrus replied that astyages did not recognise the power of the gods, which forced them, goat-herds as they were, to accomplish what was destined to be done. as he had done them kindness, they bade him lead back the medes, and give their freedom to the persians who were better than the medes. thus it came to a battle. astyages, surrounded by , of his body-guard, looked on: among the persians atradates had the right, and oebares the left, wing; cyrus, surrounded by the bravest warriors, was in the centre. the persians defended themselves bravely, and slew many of the medes, so that astyages cried out on his throne: 'how bravely these "terebinth-eaters" fight!' but at length the persians were overpowered by numbers, and driven into the city before which they fought. cyrus and oebares advised to send the women and children to pasargadae, which is the loftiest mountain, and renew the battle on the next day: 'if we are defeated we must all die, and if that must be so it is better to fall in victory and for the freedom of our country.' then all were filled with hatred and anger against the medes, and when the morning came and the gates were opened, all marched out; atradates alone remained with the old men in the city to defend the walls. but while cyrus and oebares were fighting in the field, astyages caused , men to go round and attack the persian army in the rear. the attack succeeded. atradates fell covered with wounds into the hands of the medes. astyages said to him: 'an excellent satrap are you; is it thus that you thank me, you and your son, for what i have done for you?' atradates, almost at the last gasp, replied: 'i know not, o king, what deity has roused this frenzy in my son; put me not to the torture, i shall soon die.' astyages had compassion on him and said: 'i will not put you to the torture; i know that if your son had followed your advice, he would not have done such things.' atradates died, and astyages gave him an honourable burial. meanwhile cyrus and oebares after a brave struggle had been compelled to retire to pasargadae. the mountain was very high and with steep sides, and the way to it led through narrow passes, which were here and there overtopped by high walls of rock. oebares defended the passes with , heavy-armed men. as it was impossible to force a way through, astyages gave command that , men should go round the mountain, and seek for a pass there and climb the mountain. this movement compelled cyrus and oebares to seek shelter during the night on a lower hill for the army, together with the women and children. astyages followed quickly, and his army was already between the two mountains, and bravely attacked that held by the persians, the approach to which, lying through deep gorges, thick oak forests, and wild olive trees, was very difficult. the persians fought still more bravely; in one place cyrus dashed forward, and in another oebares, who urged them not to let their wives, mothers, and old men be massacred and tortured by the medes. so they rushed down with a cry, and when their javelins failed, they threw down stones in great numbers. the medes were driven back, and cyrus chanced to come to the house in which he once lived with his father as a boy, when he pastured goats. he kindled a fire of cypress and laurel-wood, and offered the sacrifice of the man who is distressed and in desperate circumstances. then followed thunder and lightning, and when cyrus sank down in prayer, birds of good omen settled on the roof, as a sign that he would again reach pasargadae. so the persians remained for the night on the mountain, and when on the following morning the medes renewed the attack, they fought yet more bravely, relying on the happy omens. but astyages placed , men at the foot of the mountain behind those who were attacking, and bade them slay all who came down. thus pressed, the medes fought more zealously than on the previous day, and the persians retired to the top of the mountain on which were their women and children. these ran to meet the fugitives, and cried out to them, 'cowards, whither would ye fly, will ye creep back into the bosoms that bore you?' seized with shame, the persians turned, and in one onslaught drove the medes down the mountain, and slew sixty thousand of them." "but astyages did not retire from the siege of the mountain. cyrus had still need of much cunning and bravery before he succeeded in defeating astyages and taking the camp of the medes. on that day, cyrus went into the tent of astyages, seated himself on his throne, and took the sceptre amid the acclamations of the persians; and oebares put the king's kidaris on his head with the words: 'thou art more worthy to bear it; the gods give it to thee for thy virtue, and grant the persians to rule over the medes.' the treasures of astyages, which the persians found in the camp of the medes, were brought to pasargadae under the care of oebares; but even those which they found in the tents of the other medes were enormous. it was not long before the intelligence of the defeat and flight of astyages spread abroad, and nations as well as individuals deserted him. first of all artasyras, the chief of the hyrcanians, came, with , men, and recognised cyrus as king; afterwards came the chiefs of the parthians, sacæ, bactrians, and other nations, each seeking to arrive before the other. only a few faithful men remained with astyages, and when cyrus marched against him he was easily overcome. then cyrus gained possession of ecbatana. there the daughter of astyages and her husband spitamas were taken captive with their two sons. but astyages could not be found; amytis and spitamas had hidden him in the palace in the woodwork of the roof. then cyrus commanded that amytis, her husband, and her children should be tortured that they might confess where astyages was, but he came forward of his own will to prevent the torture. spitamas was beheaded, because he had lied, and said that he did not know the hiding-place of astyages; amytis cyrus took for his wife. he loosed from astyages the heavy chains which oebares had put upon him, honoured him as a father, and made him satrap of the barcanians."[ ] according to deinon, who wrote in the first half of the fourth century b.c., cyrus was first governor of the staff-bearers of astyages, and then of his body-guard. in a dream he had thrice seen the sun at his feet, and thrice stretched out his arms to grasp it, and the magicians had interpreted this dream to the effect that he would reign for thrice ten years. when astyages had given cyrus leave to go to persia, and he had availed himself of it, the king sent for angares, the most famous of the median minstrels, in order to sing before him and his company at the banquet. after reciting the usual songs, angares at last said: "the great beast of prey, more mighty than a wild boar, is let loose in the swamps; when he is master of his land, he will with ease fight against many." and when astyages asked, "what wild beast is this?" angares answered: "cyrus the persian." then astyages, regarding the suspicion as well-founded, sent to fetch cyrus back, but failed to recover him.[ ] the narrative of pompeius trogus has been preserved in excerpts only. astyages had a daughter, but no male heirs. from her bosom, he saw, in a dream, a vine growing, of which the branches overshadowed all asia. the interpreters of dreams declared that this vision portended the greatness of the grandson whom his daughter would bring forth, but it also involved the loss of the empire to him. to be rid of this fear, astyages had not given his daughter to any eminent man, nor even to a mede--that there might not be rank on the father's side as well as on the mother's, to excite the ambition of his grandson--but to cambyses, a man of middle station, in the then unknown nation of the persians. even this did not remove the alarm of astyages; when his daughter was pregnant he sent for her in order to have her child put to death before his eyes. when a boy was born he gave him to harpagus, his trusted friend, to be put to death. but harpagus, fearing that the daughter of astyages if she should come to the throne would avenge on him the death of her son, gave the child to the herdman of the king, and bade him expose it. the herdman obeyed, but when his wife heard of the matter, she urged her husband to fetch the child and show it to her. wearied by her entreaties, the herdman went back into the forest, and there found a dog beside the child, suckling it, and defending it from the beasts of prey. he took it up and carried it to his fold, while the dog followed in much distress. when the herdman's wife took it in her arms, the child smiled on her as though it had known her, and it was so full of life and sweet smiles that the woman induced her husband to expose her own child in place of the grandson of the king. after this the excerpt goes on to relate, like herodotus, the game of the boys, the answer of cyrus, the revenge of astyages on harpagus, the letter in the hare's belly, in which harpagus imparts to cyrus his plan for the desertion of the medes to the persians. when cyrus had received and read this letter in persepolis, a dream also urged the enterprise upon him, but at the same time bade him take as his associate the man whom he met first on the following day. next day, before dawn, cyrus went on a journey, and met a slave of the name of oebares, belonging to the house of a mede. when cyrus found that he was a persian by birth, he took his chains off and turned back with him to persepolis. cyrus then assembled the persians. on the first day he made them cut down a wood on the way, and on the second he entertained them. astyages sends harpagus against them, and he passes over to their side with the army entrusted to him. astyages now marches out in person, after summoning all his forces, against persia. the struggle was severe. astyages placed a portion of his army in the rear of his forces, and told the latter that they must try whether they could not break through the ranks of the enemy in battle more easily than through the ranks behind them in flight. the medes attacked with great spirit; the persians were forced back to their wives and children, by whom they were again driven into the battle with the cry: would they fly for refuge into the bosoms of their mothers and wives? they put the medes to flight. here the excerpt of justin breaks off, though he represents astyages as having been taken prisoner in this battle after the rout. cyrus merely took the government from him; he treated him as his grandfather, and made him satrap of the hyrcanians; oebares he made ruler of persia, and gave him his sister in marriage.[ ] polyaenus repeats the narrative of herodotus about the manner in which cyrus induced the persians to revolt. then followed a war between the medes and persians, and cyrus was three times defeated. as the women and children of the persians were at pasargadae, cyrus was compelled to risk another battle in the neighbourhood of this place. the persians were again put to flight; oebares was retreating when the women met the fugitives, with the cry already quoted. the persians halted; and as the medes were pursuing without order, the persians gained such a victory that no further battle was needed to decide the question of the throne.[ ] anaximenes of lampsacus also relates that cyrus had built pasargadae at the place where he had overcome astyages in battle. strabo tells us: "cyrus held pasargadae in honour, for it was there that he conquered astyages in the final battle, and became ruler of all asia in his place, and he built a city and a palace in remembrance of the victory."[ ] plutarch tells us: when cyrus revolted from astyages and the medes he was three times conquered in battle, and when the persians fled into the city, the enemy had almost succeeded in forcing an entrance with them, when the women came out to meet them. the cry of the women brought about a change in the battle, and for this reason cyrus made a law that as often as the king came into the city of pasargadae, every woman should receive a piece of gold. ochus marched past the city to evade the law; but alexander twice entered pasargadae, and gave double to all the women that were with child.[ ] in all these narratives the land of the persians is the scene of the decisive conflict. only a few short fragments remain of the account given by diodorus of the overthrow of astyages. with him cyrus is the son of mandane, the daughter of astyages, and cambyses. his father brought him up as a king, and inflamed him with a desire for the mightiest achievements. as a young man he displayed a capacity in advance of his years, and clearly showed that he would undertake the most important enterprises. he was the first man of his time in bravery, wisdom, and all other virtues. another fragment obviously comes after the defeat, which, according to nicolaus, astyages suffered in the final battle at pasargadae. when defeated, astyages, though he had himself disgracefully turned and fled, showed ferocious anger against his army. he deposed all the commanders and elected others in their place. those who were to blame for the flight, he executed one and all, thinking that he should thus compel the others to show themselves brave men in danger. "for he was cruel and harsh in character. but he did not terrify the multitude by this severity; on the other hand, by the exasperation which such violence and caprice excited in every one, he roused them to a desire for revolution and deposition. the troops met in their divisions; treasonable speeches were uttered, and the majority urged each other to vengeance."[ ] xenophon, it is true, has not written a history of cyrus, but has given a description of his life from his knowledge of the persian life and character, and the conclusions he deduced therefrom, as to the possible origin of the empire, in order to explain and realise to the greeks the difficulty which they found it so hard to solve--the manner in which great nations could form one community and be governed by one person. with him cyrus is the son of cambyses, who is the king of the persians, and mandane the daughter of astyages of media, whom xenophon represents as reigning before cyaxares. when cyrus was twelve years of age, his mother went with him to media, in order to show him to his grandfather, whom the boy astonished by his apt answers. at the age of sixteen, cyrus performs his first deeds of arms. when astyages died, he was succeeded on the throne by his son cyaxares, the brother of mandane. he entreats cambyses to aid him against the assyrians; cambyses sends cyrus, by whose services the medes are defeated. after this he conquered the lydians, who had come to aid the assyrians against the medes, and took babylon; and his uncle cyaxares, whom xenophon does not describe as a pattern ruler, gives him his daughter in marriage, and media as a dowry, for he was without male children. cambyses and mandane assented to this arrangement. after the death of cambyses, cyrus became king of persia, and on the death of cyaxares, media also became his. the armenians also narrate the fall of astyages. moses of chorene (i. ) tells us that he only related the stories of the persians to please his patron sahak (isaac) bagratuni, and gave them a meaning which they did not possess. biurasp asdahag lived at the time of nimrod, and the person whom the persians in their stories call the child of satan, served him; and with regard to the dragon, or the changing of asdahag into a dragon, the truth was that he sacrificed men in infinite numbers to the dragon, till the multitude grew weary, overpowered him, and threw him into a trench filled with bitumen. moses further tells us: the ninth descendant of baroir of armenia (i. ), king tigran, was the mightiest of all the princes of armenia, and helped cyrus to overthrow the kingdom of the medes. tigran was pledged by treaties to asdahag (astyages) the king of the medians, and when he united with cyrus, astyages had an evil dream. he saw a high mountain surrounded by snow and ice, as in the land of the son of haikhs (i. ). on the summit of the mountain, a woman in purple, covered with a sky-blue veil, brought forth three heroes at once: one, carried on a lion, dashed toward the west; the second, on a leopard, to the north; the third, on a monstrous dragon, to media. with this asdahag fought in the dream: they shed a sea of blood, and pierced each other with their lances. asdahag explained this dream to mean that he had to expect an attack from tigran, the king of armenia. to prevent this, and secretly to destroy tigran, asdahag sought tigran's sister, tigranuhi, in marriage, obtained her, and held her in great honour. then he asked for a meeting with tigran. but tigranuhi had perceived the duplicity of asdahag, and warned her brother. he collected the best warriors of great and little armenia, and marched against the medes. the war continued for four months, till tigran in a hand-to-hand conflict pierced the iron armour of asdahag with his lance. the death of asdahag put an end to the battle and the war, and tigran led his sister back to armenia, where she became the ancestress of the race of osdan. anuish (aryanis), the first wife of astyages, and a number of young princesses and boys, more than , in all, tigranes brought to armenia, and settled there to the east of the great mountain, towards the land of koghten, in the plain of ajtnayan, as far as nakhjevan. in the songs of the people of koghten, the descendants of astyages are spoken of in an allegorical manner, as the descendants of the dragon; for astyages (asdahag) in our language means the dragon.[ ] as has been shown, the armenians were closely allied to the people of iran in language, character, and religious worship. it cannot therefore astonish us that the legends of iran are known to them. what moses tells us of biurasp asdahag and his serpents rests on the myth in the avesta of the serpent azhi dahaka, the zohak of the later form of iranian legend (p. ). the epithet which moses gives to asdahag, biurasp, is also of iranian origin; baevaraçpa means the lord of , horses. that the descendants of astyages are spoken of in the national legend of armenia as the descendants of the dragon, shows that the armenians had confounded astyages of media with azhi dahaka or zohak. the armenians can only claim as their own the legend of king tigran, who overcomes and slays asdahag of media. they ascribe to their princes the overthrow of the medes. as already remarked, the armenian legend of tigran must come down from an early date. xenophon makes tigran the son of the king of armenia, the most faithful helper and associate of cyrus.[ ] leaving out of sight the romance of xenophon, and the armenian tradition, which involve special hypotheses, the accounts in the west of the fall of astyages go back to two distinct versions, one of which we have in the narrative of herodotus, the other in the narrative of ctesias-nicolaus, which is presupposed in deinon and polyaenus. in trogus we have a third version, which combines the two. so far as justin's excerpt allows us to form an opinion, this version, and the fragments of diodorus, are based upon the persian history of deinon. the introduction is distinguished from the account of herodotus by the fact that only one dream of astyages is mentioned; that cyrus is already exposed, and a dog is suckling him before the herdsman's wife, whose name was "dog," brings him up; then follows the story of herodotus, including the letter, which harpagus sends to cyrus in the hare's belly. at this point trogus passes into the account of nicolaus; he represents cyrus as receiving in a dream the exhortation to rise against astyages, and to take the first man he meets as his associate. cyrus meets oebares, though not, it is true, on the borders of the cadusians. the place of the horsemen, who in nicolaus are first sent by astyages, is taken in trogus by the march of harpagus, and his desertion to cyrus; then follows the narrative of the war, which in the most essential traits agrees with the version of ctesias-nicolaus. from deinon's fragments we shall add to the excerpt from trogus, that cyrus before his rebellion had served at the court of astyages as overseer of the staff-bearers, and then of the body-guard; that astyages was warned by angares; and, finally, the defection of the medes after the battle of pasargadae, as given in the fragments of diodorus. the detail and liveliness of the traits in the accounts of herodotus and ctesias-nicolaus, in the fragment of deinon, and the narrative of trogus--the warnings and portents--the dialogues and speeches of the action--the letter:--all these point to poetical sources. we found that the accounts of ctesias of the foundation, rise, and fall of assyria, and of the rise of media, were based upon poems, and here also, beyond doubt, poetic traditions form the groundwork. herodotus, at the beginning of his narrative, tells us: "i write these matters from the accounts given by some of the persians, who do not exaggerate the life of cyrus, but wish to narrate the order of events; i am aware that three other different accounts of the life of cyrus are in existence."[ ] xenophon tells us that cyrus "is even now the theme of song among the barbarians."[ ] in deinon's fragment it is angares, the most famous of the median minstrels, who, while singing at the table of astyages, warns him in a poetical figure against cyrus (p. ); in the account of nicolaus it is one of the singing women, from whom, at the same time and in a similar figure, this warning comes. at the court of the sassanids there were singing women who sang to the kings the achievements of old days. ibn-al-hareth brought women of this kind from the court of chosru nushirvan to the koreishites, and they sang the deeds of rustem.[ ] according to these statements and indications we may regard it as certain that the elevation of cyrus and the fall of astyages was celebrated in song among the persians and medes. in spite of the differences between the three narratives, certain traits are common to all. in all dreams announce the future greatness of cyrus; in herodotus these appear to astyages; in nicolaus, to the mother of cyrus; in deinon and trogus, to cyrus also. in herodotus cambyses is rich in flocks, in nicolaus the mother of cyrus tends goats; in herodotus cambyses is of a quiet disposition, in nicolaus he is driven by his son to revolt, and finally disowns the enterprise. all three narratives lay stress on the warnings given to astyages against cyrus, though in different ways; all mark strongly the early personal valour of cyrus, which xenophon also celebrates. artembares the mede is found both in herodotus and nicolaus, though in a different relation to cyrus. in all three accounts a counsellor--harpagus in the one case, oebares in the other--exercises the greatest influence on the resolutions of cyrus. herodotus and nicolaus mark the cunning of cyrus as opposed to astyages; in both cyrus gives out that he is carrying out the king's orders in arming the persians. in herodotus cyrus tells the persians that he does not consider them worse men than the medes, and they revolt "because they have now got a leader in cyrus." in nicolaus cyrus asks whether there is not a leader who can put an end to the rule of the medes over better men than themselves. in both the dominion of the medes has long been hated by the persians. in both before the beginning of the struggle astyages commands cyrus to appear before him. in herodotus astyages says, when harpagus has passed over to cyrus and the median army has broken up, that "he shall not succeed;" and in nicolaus he uses the same words after the first defeat of his horsemen. in herodotus it is the cruelty of astyages to harpagus, and his severity towards the medes, which cost him his throne; in diodorus the army revolts, even after brave fighting, from astyages because he cruelly revenges upon them the defeat at pasargadae. in all three accounts cyrus does no harm to astyages after his victory. let us set aside the poetical colours in the account of herodotus in order to test its coherence. what alarm could astyages, who was without male heirs, feel at the announcement that his daughter's son would one day rule over all asia, _i.e._ would still further extend the dominion of the medes? in the second dream, which portends no more than the first, a reason is given for the alarm; the interpreters declare that the dream signifies that astyages will lose his throne. if astyages had reason to fear the yet unborn child of his daughter, the obvious remedy was not to allow her to marry. nevertheless she is married, not to a mede, but to a man of the subject races, a persian of a good family, _i.e._ of noble descent, wealthy, but "quiet in his disposition." this was equivalent to taking the persian into the royal family, giving up to him or his son the right of succession, bringing the crown of media into the possession of a stranger, and allowing the kingdom to pass from the medes to the persians. even if such perversity could occur to astyages the medes were not likely to permit it, when the magians tell astyages, in herodotus, how anxious they are that the dominion should not fall into the hands of a persian. it is true that herodotus represents harpagus some twenty or thirty years later as persuading the chief medes, and persuading them singly, that astyages must be overthrown, and the persian made king, but this is simply incredible. after this marvellous marriage of the heiress to the throne with a persian, cambyses is not brought to ecbatana to the court, but remains in persia, and no harm is done to the dreaded son of the marriage, even when his real origin has been discovered. nay, more, the boy who at an early age discovers high aims, and a resolute will, is not even brought to the court to be under the eye of astyages, but is sent back to persia to his father, and by his means harpagus is able to bring persia to revolt. the letter hidden in the hare's belly obviously arose from an anticipation of the supervision of the great roads which was introduced at a later time by the achæmenids. but what reason had cyrus to cause the persians to revolt? according to herodotus cambyses is the son-in-law, and hence the heir, of astyages. cyrus will succeed his father as heir to the median throne, why then should he rebel against his aged grandfather?--why should he seek by hazard, danger, and bloodshed, a crown which by inheritance must soon come to cambyses or cyrus?[ ] in the narrative of herodotus cyrus is no more than an instrument in the hands of harpagus. the crime of astyages against harpagus; the well-merited punishment of this crime by his own imprisonment and loss of empire, form the hinge of the narrative, which at the same time brings into prominence the doctrine that no one, even though warned, can escape his doom. it is not probable that there were songs among the persians or medes, which illustrated herodotus' view of the unavoidable _nemesis_ which governs the actions and fortunes of men; or that persian poems would represent cyrus as the son of a median mother. in them the persians merely glorified the founder of their freedom and supremacy, of whom, as we know, they cherished the most grateful memories. but the medes might possess poems in which the change of empire was treated from their point of view; they might attempt to make the loss of empire appear less painful, the dishonour of defeat by the persians less degrading. to be overthrown by a man belonging to the subject race was bitter. hence the medes could avail themselves of a change frequent in the east, and represent cyrus as a scion of their own royal house. the egyptians maintained that cambyses, the son of cyrus, who reduced them to subjection, was the son of cyrus and the daughter of their own pharaoh hophra.[ ] this was mere invention; and the medes must have found their version the more easy to maintain, because cyrus spared astyages after the defeat, and took his daughter into his harem. and if it was not the arms of the persians, but rather the treachery of a distinguished mede, the discontent of the chiefs of media with a cruel king, that decided the struggle between the persians and medes, the submission became thus less intolerable to the pride of the medes. if a distinguished mede had been at variance with astyages, and in the last moment of the battle had gone over to cyrus,--much could be made of the desertion in median poems. if after his victory cyrus reposed great confidence in an eminent mede, this might be made a ground for previous treachery to astyages. a few years after his victory cyrus entrusted to the mede harpagus, the leadership of the army, the subjugation and maintenance of far distant regions. if the legend of the persians represented achæmenes, the ancestor of their princely race, as being fed by an eagle (p. ), their poems would speak of the founder of their dominion as distinguished by divine honours, and surround his birth and youth with happy omens of the future. these traits the medes could use for their own purposes as warnings vouchsafed to astyages. if the persians represented cyrus as suckled by a dog, the favoured creature of auramazda, the medes carried the subject further, and spoke of the exposing of cyrus, which was then brought into combination with the enmity of harpagus to astyages; the origin of this was the refusal of harpagus to put the persian boy to death, which astyages punished by the thyestean banquet. thus owing to the crime of astyages, harpagus their own countryman became filled with desire for vengeance; he is the counsellor of cyrus, the author and leader of the revolt. median poetry of this kind has been followed by herodotus. he has told us already that he would narrate the life of cyrus as it was given by the persians, who had no desire to exaggerate their account, but these persians are undoubtedly the medes. the median origin of his story is placed beyond doubt by the words which the captive astyages addresses to harpagus, and by the fact that with him it is a mede who is the decisive counsellor and guide of cyrus, while in the other version it is a persian. beside the reason given by herodotus himself for choosing this version, others no doubt had influence. the delphian oracle bade croesus take to flight "whenever a mule should govern the medes." according to the medes cyrus was the son of a persian father and median mother. the sufferings and acts of harpagus formed the centre of the median version, and he was only too well known to the greeks on the west coast of asia minor. with the warning portents, and the exposure of cyrus, the median version brought herodotus on the familiar ground of greek legend, in which similar oracles, futile exposing of children, and deceptive explanations were common. finally, the vengeance which overtook astyages suits the ethical feeling of herodotus. we may assume therefore that his narrative faithfully represents the contents of median poems. these could already have changed the dog which was said to have suckled cyrus into the herdman's wife, who was called by the name of "dog." but inasmuch as herodotus does not "intend to exaggerate," as he observes that "the dog was everything in the mouth of cyrus," and "his parents caught this up in order to represent the preservation of cyrus as a work of the gods,"--as he further remarks "that cyrus owing to his origin was regarded as more than human,"[ ]--this rationalising turn may have proceeded from the historian himself. in the persian tradition cyrus was certainly suckled and guarded by the dog, and this trait is retained in the account of deinon-trogus, though united with the story of the exposure. but deinon has at the same time proved the exposure impossible, for he states that cyrus came to the throne in his fortieth year, and lived till his seventieth.[ ] if this were true, the exposure and the command of astyages respecting it would fall to the ground, for cyrus would have seen the light in the year b.c., _i.e._ some years before the accession of astyages, even if we allow the latter the longer reign which eusebius assigns to him. if the story of herodotus is governed by the conception of the unavoidable punishment of crime, the connecting clue in the story of nicolaus is the rise of a beggar-boy of the lowest origin by skill and industry, by cunning and bravery, by endurance in the greatest danger, and final victory in the most severe struggles. cyrus is the son of humble parents; his father is driven by want to robbery, his mother tends goats; they belong to the lowest tribe of the persians, the marauding mardians whom we have found in the mountains of south-western persia (p. ). hunger drives the boy from the goat-pasture to ecbatana. beginning as a sweeper of the palace, he works his way step by step upwards by address and industry to the highest offices at the court, so that he can make his father satrap of persia and his mother the most distinguished lady in persia. then the dream of his mother, and the interpretation given of it by the babylonian, plant ambition in his soul, which is strengthened by the happy portent, vouchsafed to him on his mission to the chief of the cadusians, and the advice of oebares. he succeeds in persuading astyages to grant him permission to visit his parents in persia; when too late, astyages is warned by the wife of the babylonian, and the words of the singing-woman (angares in deinon). a fierce war breaks out. the father of cyrus is taken captive, and in his last moments disavows the attempt of his son. defeated again and again, the persians in their last refuge at pasargadae are reduced to the greatest distress. then fortune turns; the medes are driven back and defeated in numerous engagements, and oebares can at length place the crown on the head of cyrus in the tent of astyages. if xenophon in his book on cyrus sought to make it clear to the greeks, by what personal and material means cyrus was able to conquer asia, ctesias or nicolaus will show pragmatically how a beggar-boy rose step by step to be lord of the continent. he says nothing of the relationship of astyages and cyrus, or of the princely origin of cyrus, or of his exposure, or of the dog: cyrus owes his successes to himself and the gods. however impossible it may be that this introduction and the whole tendency of the narrative can be borrowed from the tradition of the persians; however certain that cyrus the beggar-boy is an invention of the greeks, to point the contrast between beginning and end, and make the subject more interesting; yet if only we give another turn to the introduction, we have the persian account before us in the narrative of nicolaus, as we have the median in the account of herodotus--and a mixture of the two in the excerpt from trogus. the persian version is from the first marked in ctesias and nicolaus by the fact that they do not represent cyrus as the descendant of astyages. moreover, the parallel between the fall of the assyrians and the fall of the median empire cannot be mistaken. "we must narrate the great change brought about by the transition of the dominion to the persians"--such is the beginning of the account of nicolaus. this parallel can only have arisen from persian minstrels. they had to show that the task of cyrus was great, and more difficult than that of arbaces. they had to lay the greatest stress on the personal excellence of cyrus in order to raise him above the level of arbaces. the latter, guided by the advice of the viceroy of babylon and aided by the babylonians, had proved the conqueror. the arts of the chaldæans were certainly respected and used in iran; they must have been sought after and employed as a poetic motive. it was to carry out the parallel that the persian songs gave cyrus a babylonian adviser; yet they represent the counsel and influence of this babylonian as entirely removed by a persian of far greater importance, and utterly thrown into the shade. the emphasis which the persian songs laid on the personal virtue of cyrus misled the greeks into making an attempt at the biography of the beggar-boy, and so rendered this change easier. atradates, the name given by nicolaus to the father of cyrus, is no doubt taken from an epithet of cyrus himself. strabo tells us that cyrus was originally called atradates; the word is the old persian _atriyadata_, old bactrian, _ataredata_; the avesta recommends the name as good and saving. the parents of cyrus are said to belong to the tribe of the mardians, but later on nicolaus himself shows that cyrus' ancestral home is at pasargadae (p. ). in contempt the medes might unite the whole persian nation under the name of their poorest tribes. "why have i raised up these mardians for such mischief?" astyages asks in nicolaus. the goat-tending of the mother of cyrus is due to the same cause. in the account of herodotus cambyses is said to be rich in herds; among the persians the care of flocks occupied a large place, and at a later time the tending and protection of the flocks was one of the means employed for strengthening and hardening the persian youth. cyrus himself, in the narrative of nicolaus, calls himself and his father goat-herds. when arsaces of armenia visited the court of the sassanid shapur ii. one of the first officers at the court of shapur insolently said: "will the king of the goats pasture on our slopes?"[ ] such traits as these in the persian poems, connected with the poverty and simplicity of the life of the "terebinth-eating" persians (which nicolaus also, following the tradition, brings into such prominence), supplied the greek revision with the necessary support for changing cyrus into a mardian goat-herd and beggar-boy. yet the true position of the parents of cyrus breaks through in the statement that the father of cyrus was satrap of persia, and his mother the first lady in the land, a position which also appears in the statement in herodotus of the noble descent and wealth of cambyses, and is even more plainly marked in other passages in which the taunt is hurled at cyrus: that the son of cambyses ought not to give way to a woman,--and traces the lineage of cyrus back to achæmenes, though in the account of the rebellion of cyrus he calls his grandfather also cyrus. the rise of cyrus at the court of astyages was borrowed from another trait in the persian poems. the custom of the east, that the sons of distinguished princes and nobles should perform certain courtly and honourable services at the gate of the king, must have been current in media also. the persian poems must have proudly declared how cyrus distinguished himself there in his youth in the duties of the court or of arms. this description was changed into the series of stages by which the beggar-boy rose to the highest office at the court of the king. the persian account is obviously preserved here in deinon's narrative--like the suckling and protection of cyrus by the dog--in which cyrus before the rebellion is chief of the staff-bearers and the body-guard of the king. when cyrus had won the favour of astyages, nicolaus is obviously more true to the persian account. in old days the chaff of horses announced his elevation to arbaces, and to cyrus it is announced by horse-dung, which is carried to him by a persian, the slave of a mede, who has been recently whipped; and as to arbaces, so to cyrus, a babylonian announces that the throne is destined for him. as arbaces is instigated and encouraged by belesys, so is cyrus by the interpreter of dreams from babylon, and cyrus promises him great rewards if he reaches the throne, as arbaces had promised belesys. the conversations of arbaces with belesys correspond exactly to the conversations of cyrus with the babylonian and oebares. in nicolaus cyrus says, that arbaces who overthrew sardanapalus was not wiser than himself, nor were the medes better warriors than the persians. but if the median empire was founded with the help of the babylonian, the persian must rise without such assistance. arbaces had to concede to belesys and his successors the hereditary dominion over babylonia; on this occasion oebares takes care that in the future empire of the persians, babylonia shall not be in the way as an hereditary monarchy given in reward of services; he removes the babylonian against the wishes of cyrus. if the medes had formerly been able to conquer assyria with the aid of the babylonians, the persians now defeat the medes unaided, and if sardanapalus was effeminate, astyages, according to nicolaus, is the bravest king of the medes after arbaces. to treat the struggle so briefly as herodotus does was impossible for nicolaus, as the object of his narrative was to bring out the valour of cyrus. so we may assume that the persian songs gave similar prominence to the contests before nineveh and pasargadæ. arbaces is thrice defeated before nineveh, and inclined to retire. astyages leads against cyrus the whole forces of his kingdom--more than a million soldiers. in spite of the excellent arrangements of oebares and the utmost bravery, cyrus is three times defeated:--he is already reduced to extremities in the fourth conflict, when the cry of the women restores the fight. at length oebares is able to place the median crown on the head of cyrus in the tent of astyages. with such servants the throne and kingdom of the persians is more firmly established than that of the medes. this inquiry enables us to reconstruct in its main outlines the tradition of the persians. cambyses, the descendant of achæmenes, was the chief of the persians. before the birth of cyrus his wife had a dream that so much water came from her "that it was like a great river which inundated all asia, and flowed into the sea." we know what reverence the avesta pays to the dog, and the importance it ascribes to its glance (p. ). the suckling of the boy cyrus by a dog is the sign of the most bounteous favour and most secure protection on the part of the gods. herodotus told us above that owing to his origin cyrus counted himself as more than a man, and xenophon represents him as begotten by gods, springing from a line of kings, and practised from his youth up in bravery and virtue.[ ] in accordance with the custom of the persians the son of the prince grows up among the flocks. mithradates, which herodotus gives as the name of the herdsman with whom the boy is brought up, means "given by mithra;" the favourite of the god, who increases the flocks of the farms where men worship him, and gives victory in battles, is the protector of cyrus. in the game of the boys he shows by cleverness and unbroken resolution the great destiny to which he was called. then he goes into service at the court of the median king; where the persian poems have already shown us parsondes at the time of cyaxares, who subsequently made the cadusians enemies of the medes.[ ] eminent in every position, cyrus wins the confidence of astyages, and becomes the chief of his bodyguard. then according to deinon's fragments he sees the sun in a dream thrice inclining towards him. it was the brilliance or majesty of the king which cyrus is represented as beholding. in the avesta thraetaona and kereçaçpa seize the majesty when it departs from yima, and the turanian franghraçyan seeks thrice to grasp the glance of the majesty.[ ] then a persian, the slave of a mede, brings a new sign of good fortune to cyrus when far from his fatherland on the borders of the cadusians. oebares (hubara, the good bearer) is the first persian whom cyrus liberates from the service of the medes; and thus he has gained his most faithful helper. angares the mede, who warns astyages, calls cyrus "more mighty than a wild boar." the singing girl also calls cyrus a "boar." we saw above that the victorious god verethraghna appears in the form of a boar, and in that shape accompanies the chariot of mithra.[ ] the battle in the mountains of persia, as described by nicolaus, belongs in all essential traits to the persian legend. it is precisely at pasargadae, at the house of cyrus, _i.e._ of achæmenes, that the fortune of arms changes. the proclamation of cyrus in the tent of astyages, and his coronation by the persians, which first made him a free man instead of a median slave, is throughout in accordance with the meaning and tendency of the persian legend. the gentleness of cyrus towards astyages is the counterpart of the generosity which the median king who conquered nineveh once displayed towards belesys. oebares undoubtedly belongs to the persian epos; he is the faithful servant who upholds the interest of the kingdom even against the will of the king, and sacrifices himself for it. the persians of the best time held it a duty to sacrifice themselves for the king. the overthrow of the parthian empire is explained in the same way as the overthrow of the medes. papak, the prince of fars, sees in a dream the sun illuminating the world from the head of his herdman sassan. his daughter brings forth ardeshir to sassan; ardeshir serves at the court of the parthian king artaban, and shoots wild asses better than anyone else. on an announcement of the interpreters of stars, ardeshir flies from the court and arms the persians. artaban abuses him as an impudent kurd, and sends the prince of susiana to fetch him, but this prince, and then artaban himself, are overcome. shapur, the son of ardeshir, is restored to life against his command, and his grandson auharmazdi is brought up secretly, and recognised by his conduct in the play of the boys. in both, dreams and letters and the inborn majesty of the royal children play their part.[ ] astyages, who ascended the throne in the year b.c., ruled over the median empire for more than years; he had already reached a great age when the persians rebelled against him. aristotle remarks that his effeminate life and the carelessness of his government inspired cyrus with courage.[ ] the daughter of alyattes of lydia, whom he had married in his youth, had brought him no son; both the median version of herodotus, and the persian in trogus and ctesias, allow astyages a daughter only--mandane in the one case, in the other amytis, the name of the sister of astyages, whom nebuchadnezzar married. this daughter, according to ctesias and nicolaus, astyages marries to spitamas, the mede (Çpitama, _i.e._ the excellent) and at the same time gives him "all media as a dowry." marriage with the heiress to the throne gave her husband the claim and right to succession. the daughter of the king bore two sons to spitamas: spitaces and magabernes.[ ] about the origin of cyrus there is no doubt. he was the son of cambyses, the grandson of teispes, the great-grandson of achaemenes, who united the persian tribes under his leadership, and recognised the sovereignty of phraortes the median king. as cyaxares and astyages followed phraortes on the throne of media, so did teispes and cambyses follow achaemenes as his viceroys or vassal kings over persia. it may have been the case that, as already remarked, after the consolidation of the median empire, the sovereignty became more oppressive for the persians, and the links of their dependence were drawn closer. according to the previous custom, the viceroyalty of persia would descend, at the death of cambyses, to his son cyrus. if the custom which subsequently prevailed in the persian kingdom was current among the medes, and the sons of the satraps or princes of the subject lands had to wait at the king's gate, and perform courtly or martial service as hostages for the fidelity of their fathers, and at the same time to learn obedience and submission in order to find favour with the king when in his immediate presence and covered by the splendour of his power--cyrus must also have served at the court of astyages, and may have filled the office of the staff-bearer, body-guard, or of butler, an honourable position at the court of the medes and persians. in ecbatana he had no doubt an opportunity of comparing the simple manners, the capacity and vigour of his persians, with the splendour of the court, and the luxurious life of the median chiefs. moreover, the great advantage which spitamas had gained by marriage with the daughter of the king must have excited the jealousy and ambition of other medes who considered themselves to have a better claim, or even raised their eyes to the throne. in the account of herodotus, harpagus is said to be akin to the family of astyages. it is possible that cyrus contemplated a breach between persia and media on the death of astyages, when he would find his opportunity in a contested and previously disputed succession. it may be a fact that astyages had his suspicions, that he summoned cyrus who had already left the court before him, and cyrus was thus compelled to break with him sooner than he intended. it seems more certain that cambyses was still alive, than that the persians took up arms against astyages at the instigation of cyrus, who was, as we have remarked, at that time in his fortieth year.[ ] it follows from the position of affairs that the persians awaited the attack of the medes in their own country. it was only in the defence of the passes of their mountains that they could hope to make a stand against the overwhelming power of their enemies. in this we may put confidence in the persian tradition, as well as in all that it has to say of a character unfavourable to the persians; above all, in the fact that the war was long and severe. as a fact the medes appear to have twice penetrated into the heart of the persian land. not only nicolaus, pompeius trogus, and polyaenus tell us that the struggle took place at first in persia, and that the battle which saved the country was fought at pasargadae, but also an authority of importance, anaximenes of lampsacus, the contemporary of aristotle and strabo (p. ). "in reward for the services which the women rendered in that battle," says nicolaus, "the women of persia each received, when the king came to pasargadae, a gold coin of the value of twenty attic drachmas." plutarch, as has been observed,[ ] confirms this statement, on the ground of the accounts of the companions of alexander, in a very definite way. we must assume, therefore, that cyrus maintained the independence of persia in a very severe struggle. when success had been obtained, he went on to attack media, whether it was that he did not consider the freedom of persia secure without the overthrow of that country, or that he at once formed the most ambitious designs. after a battle in media had given cyrus the victory in this new war, the chiefs of the nations subject to the medes, the hyrcanians, parthians, sacæ, and bactrians, and finally a part of the medes, must have abandoned astyages, who, after a second defeat, fell into the hands of cyrus either in the encounter itself or at the capture of ecbatana. the walls of ecbatana and the seven rings round the citadel could not avert his fate ( b.c.).[ ] footnotes: [ ] herod. , , . [ ] herod. , , [greek: pistotatous tôn doryphorôn], while in the recapitulation, , , we have [greek: pistotatous tôn eunouchôn]. [ ] ctesias, "fragm. pers." , . [ ] nicol. damasc. fragm. ; ctes. "fragm. pers." , ; tzetz. "chil." , , ff. [ ] athen. p. ; cic. "de divin." , . [ ] justin, , - ; cf. , . [ ] polyæn. "strat." , ; , . but he also explains the change of fortune at pasargadae in another way. when cyrus fled to that place after his retreat, and many persians deserted to the medes, he spread abroad a report that on the following day , enemies of the medes (cadusians?) would come to his assistance; every man was to prepare a bundle of faggots for the allies. the deserter told this to the medes, and when cyrus in the night caused all the bundles to be lighted, the medes, thinking that the persians had received substantial assistance, deserted. [ ] strabo, p. , . steph. byzant. [greek: passargadai]. [ ] "de mulier. virtute," . [ ] diod. "ex. de virt. et vit." p. , (= , ); cf. , . [ ] moses choren. , - , and appendix to the first book, according to le vaillant's translation. [ ] the form and explanation of the legend of asdahag in moses, as well as the mention of rustem sakjig, who has the strength of ten elephants ( , ), _i.e._ of rustem of sejestan, prove that the east-iranian legend, as we find it in firdusi, must have been current in western iran in the fourth century at the latest, if it came into armenia in the fifth century. i do not think it probable that moses took the legend of tigran from xenophon's narrative. the vision in a dream and the duel point to armenian tradition. [ ] , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] j. mohl, "livre des rois," introd. p. . [ ] it has been objected to this analysis that the marriage with the heiress may not have conveyed the throne _ipso facto_ to the husband; it may have been open to the chieftains to elect a king out of the members of the royal family. this may be correct for the election of the afghan chiefs at the present day by the heads of the families. how the succession to the throne was arranged among the medes we do not know in any detail, or whether their chiefs had any importance at all; but we do see that the crown went from father to son from deioces downwards. in any case, even under that hypothesis, the husband of the heiress had a nearer claim. [ ] herod. , . so deinon and lyceas of naucratis in athenaeus, p. . [ ] herod. , ; , ; , . [ ] cicero, "de divin." , . [ ] st. martin on lebeau, "bas empire," , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] above, p. ff. [ ] above, p. , , , . [ ] above, p. . cf. windischmann, "zoroastrische studien," s. . [ ] nöldeke, "tabari," p. ; karnamak, s. . [ ] "politic." , , . [ ] if astyages was married to the daughter of alyattes in the year b.c. he must have been or years old at that time; between and the year of his fall there are years. moreover, according to ctesias, astyages outlived his fall at least ten years ("fragm. pers." ). if this were the case, and astyages did not die till , he cannot well have been born before b.c. in herodotus and pompeius trogus it is expressly said that astyages had no son, and this is the motive which induces harpagus not to put cyrus to death, as he would in that case expose himself to the vengeance of the mother, the heiress to the throne. in nicolaus also the daughter comes distinctly forward, and in ctesias she is also the heiress (_e.g._ "pers." ); in the history of the overthrow and the death of astyages, we hear of her constantly. at the death of cyrus, her sons by the first marriage receive satrapies. in ctesias, it is true, a brother of amytis is incidentally mentioned, on the occasion of a later war of cyrus ("pers." ). but as ctesias is here following a median version, and after the death of astyages the husband of amytis and not her supposed brother is removed out of the way, no importance can be attached to this. [ ] above, p. . [ ] above, p. . nicol. dam. fragm. ; plut "alex." c. ; plut. "de mul. virt." . [ ] according to the canon of ptolemy, cyrus dies b.c. we arrive at the same year if we reckon back from the death of darius. this took place five years after the battle of marathon (herod. , - ), _i.e._ b.c. darius reigned years according to herodotus and the canon of ptolemy. an egyptian pillar gives the year , a demotic contract the year of his reign: he ascended the throne therefore in b.c. before him the magian reigned for seven months, cambyses for seven years and five months (herod. , , ). the canon of ptolemy omits the magian and gives cambyses eight years, because it reckons by complete years; hence cambyses ascended the throne in . as cyrus, according to herodotus, reigned years after his accession ( , ), the beginning of his reign over media must be placed in . if ctesias gives cyrus a reign of years ("pers." ), like deinon (p. ), and justin ( , ), and eusebius a reign of years, these statements may be reconciled by the fact that cyrus may have taken up arms against media or years before his death, and reigned years after the overthrow of astyages. diodorus puts the beginning of cyrus: olymp. , = b.c. africanus in euseb. "præp. evang." , p. . chapter v. the rise of the persian kingdom. the median empire was not of long duration. little more than a century had passed since phraortes succeeded deioces in the government of the land of ecbatana, little more than eighty since phraortes had united the tribes of the medes under his leadership, about sixty since cyaxares had expelled the scythians, and not quite fifty since nineveh had succumbed to the arms of the medes and babylonians. in the overthrow of so mighty a power, cyrus had achieved a great, and, so far as we can tell, an unexpected, success. scanty as our information is, we can still perceive that he used the victory with circumspection and moderation. herodotus told us that he did no injury to the captive astyages, and kept him with him till his death. ctesias relates that at the command of cyrus, the heavy chains, which oebares had put on astyages, were quickly taken off; that he honoured him as a father; and entrusted him with the government of the barcanians. according to the statement of pompeius trogus, cyrus allowed him to be viceroy of the hyrcanians. the same nation may be meant by these two names; in the inscriptions of darius hyrcania is called varkana, in the avesta vehrkana.[ ] ctesias further tells us that cyrus put to death the mede spitamas, whom astyages had married to his daughter amytis, and then made his successor, and that after treating amytis for some time as his mother he subsequently made her his wife. no harm was done to megabernes and spitaces, the sons of her marriage with spitamas; on the contrary, the first was placed by the wish of cyrus in the satrapy of the barcanians, the second in the satrapy of the derbiccians. cyrus must have made it his object to reconcile the medes to their defeat and loss of empire. if he could make the house of astyages his own, and take his daughter to wife, the edge of the change was softened, and the more apparent it was that this marriage had the consent of astyages, the more legitimate would his rule be in the eyes of the medes, the less could they regard it as the dominion of a stranger. it was of importance to gain the assent of the medes to the new kingdom, and support this if possible on the united power of medes and persians. moreover, the relations of alliance in which astyages stood to the princely houses of lydia and babylonia made it advisable to deal carefully with astyages and his kindred. astyages was still alive in b.c.,[ ] according to herodotus and ctesias. whatever may be the case as to the connection of cyrus with amytis, his legitimate wife was cassandane, the daughter of the persian pharnaspes, who according to herodotus was an achæmenid, and was in fact one of the six tribal princes. cassandane bore cyrus two sons, cambyses and bardiya, whom herodotus calls smerdis; ctesias, tanyoxarkes; and xenophon, tanaoxares. the death of cassandane was a great grief to cyrus; he caused the whole kingdom to go into mourning for her.[ ] with respect to the position which cyrus took up in regard to the royal family of media, and amytis more especially, ctesias has preserved a somewhat incredible story. this narrative, which again is obviously taken from a poetical source, ascribes the death of astyages to oebares, to whom, according to trogus, cyrus had given the government of persia and his sister in marriage, as a reward for his services, who in the beginning of his reign had been his associate in all his dangers, and whom, according to ctesias, he had afterwards to thank for the capture of sardis. the motive of this act, according to the drift of these poems, can only have been anxiety on the part of oebares lest the influence of astyages and his friends should endanger the succession of the house of cyrus in the persian kingdom and the dominion of the persians. oebares had previously murdered the babylonian who possessed the secret which controlled the future of persia, against the wishes and without the knowledge of cyrus (p. ), and he now acts in a similar manner towards astyages. cyrus, so we are told in our excerpt,[ ] after the lydian war sent the eunuch petesaces to bring astyages from the barcanians, as both he and amytis wished to see him. oebares advised petesaces to abandon astyages on the way in some desert place, to perish by starvation. this was done. the crime was revealed by dreams, and cyrus, on the repeated entreaty of amytis, gave petesaces up to her for punishment. she caused him to be blinded, flayed, and crucified. oebares, fearing that a similar lot was in store for him, though cyrus assured him that he should not permit anything of the kind, refused all nourishment for ten days, and so put an end to his life. the corpse of astyages received a splendid burial. lions had guarded it in the desert place in which it had been abandoned, until petesaces returned and carried it away. in the poem in which the singing woman warns astyages against cyrus he is compared to a lion (p. ). whether the lions performed this service to the corpse of astyages in the source from which ctesias copied--it could scarcely by such an incident exhibit him as a man favoured by heaven--or whether the lions dealt with the corpse in a manner more in accordance with the views of eastern iran, we must leave out of the question. what is more certain is, that the most zealous persian could have no real reason for putting astyages to death, for after the lydian war he would be in his eightieth year. the importance ascribed to amytis points to a median version; the death of oebares is accounted for in a manner suitable to his life and his fidelity. in herodotus the persians, on the instigation of artembares, one of their tribesmen, say to cyrus: "since zeus gives the sovereignty to the persians, and above all to thee, cyrus, who hast overthrown astyages, so let it be thy care that we leave our land and obtain a better, for our country is small and wild. many better regions are close at hand, many at a distance, and if we gain one of them, we shall be more admired in the eyes of men. to do this is proper for men who possess the dominion, and when can it be done better than now, when we have so many men, and rule over all asia?" when cyrus heard this he expressed no astonishment, but said simply: they might do so, but they must be prepared to be rulers no longer, but subjects; the same land could not produce the noblest fruits and warlike men. the persians saw that cyrus' view was the better, and chose to inhabit and rule over a scanty land, rather than be the slaves of others.[ ] the distinct opposition of cyrus and artembares seems to carry us back to persian poems, otherwise the narrative is less likely to belong to the tradition of persia than to arise out of the necessity which the greeks felt for explaining how the persians succeeded in founding so mighty an empire from a mountain country so moderate in extent. in any case the persians, after the overthrow of media, were far from possessing the dominion over asia. in nicolaus, it is true, when the news is spread abroad that astyages has retired from persia and has fled before cyrus in the first battle in media, the chief of the hyrcanians comes with , men, to pay homage to cyrus as king; he is followed by the chiefs of the parthians, sacæ, and bactrians, and then by the remaining nations. but as a fact the course of things seems to have been different. if the princes and natives who were subject to the medes were ready to throw off their dominion as soon as they were defeated by the persians, they were hardly inclined to recognise cyrus as sovereign in the room of astyages. herodotus tells us that cyrus subjugated the bactrians and sacæ, and upper asia, one nation after the other, and puts these conquests after the lydian war.[ ] xenophon represents the hyrcanians as joining cyrus at an early date, and the cadusians follow their example, which harmonises with the view taken in the persian poems of the hatred of the cadusians to the medes. in xenophon and ctesias the sacæ are the allies of cyrus as early as b.c.[ ] if astyages receives the satrapy of the hyrcanians in justin, this nation and the parthians, who were still nearer neighbours of media, must have been among those who were subject to cyrus. in ctesias, cyrus after the conquest of astyages marches against the bactrians; the battle was undecided. but when they found that astyages was the father and amytis the wife of cyrus, the bactrians voluntarily submitted to amytis and cyrus. then cyrus conquered the sacæ, and took their king amorges captive. we remember that, according to herodotus' statement, the proper name of the sacæ was amyrgians, and in the inscriptions of darius we found the Çaka humavarka. the name amorges seems to be borrowed from the amyrgians. when amorges had been defeated and taken captive by cyrus, his wife sparethra, as she is called in ctesias, collected the sacæ and took the field with them. zarinaea, a princess of the sacæ, had previously fought with great bravery against the medes, but her achievements are far surpassed by those of sparethra. with , men and , armed women, she went against the persians, and defeated cyrus, taking many captives, among whom were medes of distinction. as a ransom for these amorges was restored to sparethra, and there was friendship between cyrus and the king of the sacæ, and the latter marched with him to the war against the lydians. strabo also speaks of a battle in which cyrus was defeated by the sacæ. being hard pressed on his retreat he abandoned his camp with large stores of every kind, especially of wine. when the sacæ had enjoyed their spoil, cyrus fell upon them and massacred nearly all.[ ] trogus following deinon tells us that the nations who were subject to the medes did not submit to cyrus. hence arose many wars. the greater part of these nations he had already overpowered, before he marched against the lydians, _i.e._ in the first eight years after the overthrow of astyages. we may assume that cyrus, immediately after the dethronement of astyages, was occupied with bringing the neighbours of media on the east, north, and west into obedience to the new kingdom. so long as the parthians, hyrcanians, armenians, were independent or in arms against cyrus, the medes must be strongly tempted to recover their lost dominion. the cadusians in ghilan were subjects of cyrus; at any rate the name of the city cyropolis on the caspian sea, on the coast of the cadusians, is a proof that cyrus placed a fortress there, in order to keep them or their neighbours in check; and under the successors of cyrus the cadusians are always mentioned as subjects.[ ] then he took the same line towards the west, on which cyaxares of media had advanced sixty years previously after driving out the scythians; he gained armenia and cappadocia, and made the halys the border of his kingdom towards lydia. in his narrative of the events of the year b.c., herodotus remarks that the cappadocians were subject to cyrus, having previously been subjects of the medes. it is clear from repeated statements that at this time the halys was the western border of the empire of cyrus.[ ] xenophon reckons the subjugation of the armenians, who had been subjects of the medes, among the earliest achievements of cyrus; he tells the story in his own manner, and places after this the subjection of the neighbours on the south, the chaldæans (gordyæans) who dwelt in the mountains which separate the table-land of armenia from the hilly country of assyria. the legends of the cappadocians conceal their subjugation to cyrus under supposed links of alliance; cambyses, the father of cyrus, had given his own sister atossa in marriage to pharnaces, the king of the cappadocians.[ ] the extension of the persian dominion to the east over parthia and hyrcania, the subjugation of the drangians, gedrosians, and arachoti, must, in consideration of the observation of herodotus, that in b.c. cyrus was intent on military preparations against the bactrians and sacæ, and the urgent difficulties which at that time summoned him to the east, be placed in the later years of his reign; in fact, they cannot come earlier than the second decade; which does not, however, make it impossible that cyrus should have fought against the bactrians and sacæ in the first decade.[ ] cyrus must have arranged his court and state after the pattern of media, which in its turn was a copy of the court of the kings of asshur and babylon. ctesias asserts that petesaces, the eunuch, and after his death bagapates, another eunuch, had great influence with cyrus.[ ] the abode of achæmenes, teispes, and carabyses, the ancient place of assembly and metropolis of the tribe of the pasargadæ, was changed by cyrus into a city and fortress; there he built his palace, in which he deposited the spoil of his wars, and collected his treasures.[ ] the new kingdom rested on the power of the persians; they alone had to pay no tribute to the king; they formed the nucleus of the army; the leaders and satraps were mainly chosen from them. but cyrus was obviously anxious to reconcile the medes, next to the persians, with the change in affairs, and win their aid. this design lay at the base of his treatment of astyages and the marriage with his daughter, and scarcely ten years after the fall of the median kingdom, we find medes at the head of the army of cyrus. the clemency of cyrus towards the other subject nations is also extolled. herodotus vouches for the fact that he laid no fixed tribute upon them, but left it to themselves to fix the amount of their yearly contributions. of all men, xenophon says, cyrus made the largest presents, and exhibited the greatest liberality towards those who had done him good service, and in this the subsequent kings of persia followed his example. according to xenophon's description, cyrus was of a kindly disposition, eager to instruct himself, and so ambitious that he shrank from no effort and no danger.[ ] with the greeks he passes not only for the founder of the dominion of the persians, but for the author of excellent arrangements in the kingdom. from this point of view xenophon wrote his treatise on cyrus. by his example he wished to prove to the greeks how the empire over nations could be gained, how a great kingdom could be founded and maintained, how a ruler could command obedience even among those who had never seen him and were separated by great distances. it is a historical romance which he has written on cyrus; but he knew the persian empire, and could not advance anything absolutely in contradiction to the current opinion of the greeks about cyrus. according to him the relation of cyrus to the persians rested on a kind of compact. when his son had subjugated the nations far and wide, cambyses collected the elders of the persians and the officers who held the highest places, and told them the persians had elected cyrus to be their general, and given him the army; cyrus had extended their power over asia, and gained glory among all men; he had made the bravest men in the army rich, and found pay and food for all the soldiers. if this relation were maintained it would be for the advantage of both parties; if, on the other hand, cyrus sought to rule over the persians with the same caprice as over other nations, or the persians should attempt to take the command from him, each would do the greatest harm to the other. let cyrus, therefore, undertake to protect persia and uphold the persian laws, and the persians to render cyrus any service that he needed against rebellion and enemies. "after me," cambyses concludes, "cyrus will be king, and whenever he comes to persia he will offer for you the sacrifice which i am offering now. if he is in a foreign land, it will be best for the noblest of our family to offer sacrifices to the gods." "what cambyses proposed was approved by cyrus and the persians with invocations to the gods, and the arrangement is still observed on both sides."[ ] plato even puts cyrus on the same level as lycurgus, the founder of the constitution of sparta. he gives dion the choice of rivalling the ancient lycurgus or cyrus, or any one else who may be distinguished by moral excellence and political wisdom.[ ] according to the laws, cyrus, brought up from his youth in the camp and surrounded by danger, became a skilful general, and as a ruler kept before his eyes the prosperity of the state. in the same book we are told that the monarchical form of government attained its most complete state among the persians, and the democratic among the athenians. but as the persian state pursued absolute dominion, and the attic uncontrolled freedom, neither discovered the correct limit; though in ancient times they had observed due moderation. at the time of cyrus the persians were midway between slavery and freedom. at first they were free, then they became the lords of others. but while ruling they had given the subjects a share in freedom, and treated them on an equal footing. for this reason the warriors were devoted to their general and ready to plunge into danger. and if an intelligent man appeared, who could give wise counsel, cyrus gave him liberty to speak; and as he honoured those who knew how to give advise, every opinion was made use of for the common good, and the persians of that day succeeded in everything by freedom, concord, and common deliberation.[ ] footnotes: [ ] ctes. "pers. ecl." ; tzetz. "chil." , , ; justin, , . yet diodorus mentions the barcanians together with the hyrcanians ( , ); curtius ( , ) represents the barcanians as providing , men for the last darius; stephanus of byzantium ([greek: barkanioi]) puts them beside the hyrcanians. yet all these statements may rest on the same misconception. [ ] herod. , ; above, p. , _note_. [ ] herod. , ; , ; , . [ ] ctesias, "pers." . the narrative of the death of astyages follows the narrative of the wars against the bactrians and sacæ, and against croesus, and precedes the wars against the derbiccians. [ ] herod. , . [ ] herod. , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] strabo, p. . [ ] ptolem. , ; ammian, , . the rebellion of the cadusians at a later time was mentioned by xenoph. "hellen." , , ; plut. "artaxerx." ; diod. , ; justin, , . they fought with the last darius at arbela; arrian, "anab." , . [ ] croesus, when he has crossed the halys, is at once in persian territory; herod. , , . [ ] xenoph. "cyri instit." , ; , , , ; , , ; diod. , . [ ] the serious difficulty of cyrus is shown by his rapid march back from sardis with much the larger part of his army before the greek cities, the lycians and carians were reduced. cp. vol. vi. chapters and . [ ] "persic." . [ ] strabo, p. ; curt. , , ; arrian, "anab." , , . the observation in xenophon ("cyri instit." , , ), that cyrus whenever he trod the soil of persia gave a piece of gold to each persian man and woman, may have arisen from the presents to the women of pasargadæ. [ ] "cyri instit." , , . [ ] "cyri instit." , , ff. [ ] plato, "epp." , p. . cf. "menexen." p. . [ ] "legg." p. , . cicero, ("de republ." , , ), calls cyrus the most just, wise, and amiable of rulers. end of vol. v. bungay: clay and taylor, printers. _j. d. & co._ transcriber's notes: . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . carat character is used to indicate subscript in this text version. . footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapters in this text version. . the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. . certain words use oe ligature in the original. . obvious errors in punctuation have been silently corrected. . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. transcriber's note: italic text has been marked with _underscores_. please see the end of this book for further notes. human origins _human origins._ published july , copies. reprinted august , copies. reprinted september , copies. human origins by s. laing author of "problems of the future," "modern science and modern thought," "a modern zoroastrian," etc. with illustrations _fifth thousand_ london: chapman and hall, ld. [_all rights reserved_] richard clay & sons, limited, london & bungay. contents. page introduction part i.--evidence from history. chapter i. egypt. historical standard of time--short date inconsistent with evolution--laws of historical evidence--history begins with authentic records--records of egypt oldest--manetho's lists--confirmed by hieroglyphics--origin of writing--the alphabet--phonetic writing--clue to hieroglyphics--the rosetta stone--champollion--principles of hieroglyphic writing--language coptic--can be read with certainty--confirmed by monuments--manetho's date for menes b.c.--old, middle, and new empires--old empire, menes, to end of sixth dynasty--break between old and middle empires--works of twelfth dynasty--fayoum--thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties--hyksos conquests--duration of hyksos rule--their expulsion and foundation of new empire--conquests in asia of seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties--wars with hittites and assyrians--persian and greek dynasties--summary of evidence for date of menes--period prior to menes--horsheshu--sphynx--stone age--neolithic and palæolithic remains--horner, haynes, and pitt-rivers chapter ii. chaldÆa. chronology--berosus--his dates mythical--dates in genesis--synchronisms with egypt and assyria--monuments--cuneiform inscriptions--how deciphered--behistan inscription--grotefend and rawlinson--layard--library of koyunjik--how preserved--accadian translations and grammars--historical dates--elamite conquest--commencement of modern history--ur-ea and dungi--nabonidus--sargon i., b.c.--ur of the chaldees--sharrukin's cylinder--his library--his son naram-sin--semites and accadians--accadians and chinese--period before sargon i.--patesi--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--gud-ea, to b.c.--advance of delta--astronomical records--chaldæa and egypt give similar results---historic period or years--and no trace of a beginning chapter iii. other historical records. _china_--oldest existing civilization--but records much later than those of egypt and chaldæa--language and traditions accadian--communication how effected. _elam_--very early civilization--susa, an old city in first chaldæan records--conquered chaldæa in b.c.--conquered by assyrians b.c.--statue of nana--cyrus an elamite king--his cylinder--teaches untrustworthiness of legendary history. _phoenicia_--great influence on western civilization--but date comparatively late--traditions of origin--first distinct mention in egyptian monuments b.c.--great movements of maritime nations--invasions of egypt by sea and land, under menepthah, b.c., and ramses iii., b.c.--lists of nations--show advanced civilization and intercourse--but nothing beyond or b.c. _hittites_--great empire in asia minor and syria--turanian race--origin cappadocia--great wars with egypt--battle of kadesh--treaty with ramses ii.--power rapidly declined--but only finally destroyed b.c. by sargon ii.--capital carchemish--great commercial emporium--hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and monuments--only recently and partially deciphered--results. _arabia_--recent discoveries--inscriptions--sabæa--minæans--thirty-two kings known--ancient commerce and trade-routes--incense and spices--literature--old traditions--oannes--punt--seat of semites--arabian alphabet--older than phoenician--bearing on old testament histories. _troy and mycenæ_--dr. schliemann's excavations--hissarlik--buried fortifications, palaces, and treasures of ancient troy--mycenæ and tiryns--proof of civilization and commerce--tombs--absence of inscriptions and religious symbols--date of mycenæan civilization--school of art--pictures on vases--type of race chapter iv. ancient religions. egypt--book of the dead--its morality--metaphysical character--origins of religions--ghosts--animism--astronomy and astrology--morality--pantheism and polytheism--egyptian ideas of future life and judgment--egyptian genesis--divine emanations--plurality of gods and animal worship--sun worship and solar myths--knowledge of astronomy--orientation of pyramids--theory of future life--the ka--the soul--confession of faith before osiris. chaldæan religion--oldest form accadian--shamanism--growth of philosophical religion--astronomy and astrology--accadian trinities--anu, mull-il, ea--twelve great gods--bel-ishtar--merodach--assur--pantheism--wordsworth--magic and omens--penitential psalms--conclusions from chapter v. ancient science and art. evidence of antiquity--pyramids and temples--arithmetic--decimal and duodecimal scales--astronomy--geometry reached in egypt at earliest dates--great pyramid--piazzi smyth and pyramid-religion--pyramids formerly royal tombs, but built on scientific plans--exact orientation on meridian--centre in ° n. latitude--tunnel points to pole--possible use as an observatory--procter--probably astrological--planetary influences--signs of the zodiac--mathematical coincidences of great pyramid--chaldæan astronomy--ziggurats--tower of babel--different orientation from egyptian pyramids--astronomical treatise from library of sargon i., b.c.--eclipses and phases of venus--measures of time from old chaldæan--moon and sun--found among so many distant races--implies commerce and intercourse--art and industry--embankment of menes--sphynx--industrial arts--fine arts--sculpture and painting--the oldest art the best--chaldæan art--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--statues and works of art--imply long use of bronze--whence came the copper and tin--phoenician and etruscan commerce--bronze known years earlier--same alloy everywhere--possible sources of supply--age of copper--names of copper and tin--domestic animals--horse--ox and ass--agriculture--all proves extreme antiquity chapter vi. prehistoric traditions. short duration of tradition--no recollection of stone age--celts taken for thunderbolts--stone age in egypt--palæolithic implements--earliest egyptian traditions--extinct animals forgotten--their bones attributed to giants--chinese and american traditions--traditions of origin of man--philosophical myths--cruder myths from stones, trees, and animals--totems--recent events soon forgotten--autochthonous nations--wide diffusion of prehistoric myths--the deluge--importance of, as test of inspiration--more definite than legend of creation--what the account of the deluge in genesis really says--date--extent--duration--all life destroyed except pairs preserved in the ark--such a deluge impossible--contradicted by physical science--by geology--by zoology--by ethnology--by history--how deluge myths arise--local floods--sea shells on mountains--solar myths--deluge of hasisadra--noah's deluge copied from it--revised in a monotheistic sense at a comparatively late period--conclusion--rational view of inspiration chapter vii. the historical element in the old testament. moral and religious distinct from historical inspiration--myth and allegory--the higher criticism--all ancient history unconfirmed by monuments untrustworthy--cyrus--old testament and monuments--jerusalem--tablet of tell-el-amarna--flinders petrie's exploration of pre-hebrew cities--ramses and pi-thom--first certain synchronism rehoboam--composite structure of old testament--elohist and jehovist--priests' code--canon driver--results--book of chronicles--methods of jewish historians--post-exilic references--tradition of esdras--nehemiah and ezra--foundation of modern judaism--different from pre-exilic--discovery of book of the law under josiah--deuteronomy--earliest sacred writings--conclusions--aristocratic and prophetic schools--triumph of pietism with exile--both compiled partly from old materials--crudeness and barbarism of parts--pre-abrahamic period clearly mythical--derived from chaldæa--abraham--unhistoric character--his age--lot's wife--his double adventure with sarah--abraham to moses--sojourn in egypt--discordant chronology--josephus' quotation from manetho--small traces of egyptian influence--future life--legend of joseph--moses--osarsiph--life of moses full of fabulous legends--his birth--plagues of egypt--the exodus--colenso--contradictions and impossibilities--immoralities--massacres--joshua and the judges--barbarisms and absurdities--only safe conclusion no history before the monarchy--david and solomon--comparatively modern date part ii.--evidence from science. chapter viii. geology and palÆontology. proved by contemporary monuments--as in history--summary of historical evidence--geological evidence of human periods--neolithic period--palæolithic or quaternary--tertiary--secondary and older periods--the recent or post-glacial period--lake-villages--bronze age--kitchen-middens--scandinavian peat-mosses--neolithic remains comparatively modern--definition of post-glacial period--its duration--mellard read's estimate--submerged forests--changes in physical geography--huxley--objections from america--niagara--quaternary period--immense antiquity--presence of man throughout--first glacial period--scandinavian and laurentian ice-caps--immense extent--mass of _débris_--elevation and depression--in britain--inter-glacial and second glacial periods--antiquity measured by changes of land--lyell's estimate--glacial _débris_ and loess--recent erosion--bournemouth--evans--prestwich--wealden ridge and southern drift--contain human implements--evidence from new world--california chapter ix. the glacial period and croll's theory. causes of glacial periods--actual conditions of existing glacial regions--high land in high latitudes--cold alone insufficient--large evaporation required--formation of glaciers--they flow like rivers--icebergs--greenland and antarctic circle--geographical and cosmic causes--cooling of earth and sun, cold spaces in space, and change in earth's axis, reviewed and rejected--precession alone insufficient--unless with high eccentricity--geographical causes, elevation of land--aërial and oceanic currents--gulf stream and trade winds--evidence for greater elevation of land in america, europe, and asia--depression--warmer tertiary climates--alps and himalayas--wallace's _island life_--lyell--croll's theory--sir r. ball--former glacial periods--correspondence with croll's theory--length of the different phases--summary--croll's theory a secondary cause--conclusions as to man's antiquity chapter x. quaternary man. no longer doubted--men not only existed, but in numbers and widely spread--palæolithic implements of similar type found everywhere--progress shown--tests of antiquity--position of strata--fauna--oldest types--mixed northern and southern species--reindeer period--correspondence of human remains with these three periods--advance of civilization--clothing and barbed arrows--drawing and sculpture--passage into neolithic and recent periods--corresponding progress of physical man--distinct races--how tested--tests applied to historical, neolithic, and palæolithic man--long heads and broad heads--aryan controversy--primitive european types--canon taylor--huxley--preservation of human remains depends mainly on burials--about forty skulls and skeletons known from quaternary times--summary of results--quatrefages and hamy--races of canstadt--cro-magnon--furfooz--truchere--skeletons of neanderthal and spy--canstadt type oldest--cro-magnon type next--skeleton of cro-magnon--broad-headed and short race resembling lapps--american type--no evidence from asia, africa, india, polynesia, and australia--negroes, negrillos, and negritos--summary of results chapter xi. tertiary man. definition of periods--passage from pliocene to quaternary--scarcity of human remains in tertiary--denudation--evidence from caves wanting--tertiary man a necessary inference from widespread existence of quaternary man--both equally inconsistent with genesis--was the first great glaciation pliocene or quaternary?--section of perrier--confirms croll's theory--elephas meridionalis--mammoth--st. prest--cut bones--instances of tertiary man--halitherium--balæonotus--puy-courny--thenay--evidence for--proofs of human agency--latest conclusions--gaudry's theory--dryopithecus--type of tertiary man--skeleton of castelnedolo--shows no approach to the missing link--contrary to theory of evolution--must be sought in the eocene--evidence from the new world--glacial period in america--palæolithic implements--quaternary man--similar to europe--california--conditions different--auriferous gravels--volcanic eruptions--enormous denudation--great antiquity--flora and fauna--point to tertiary age--discovery of human remains--table mountain--latest finds--calaveras skull--summary of evidence--other evidence--tuolumne--brazil--buenos ayres--nampa images--take us farther from first origins and the missing link--if darwin's theory applies to man, must go back to the eocene chapter xii. races of mankind. monogeny or polygeny--darwin--existing races--colour--hair--skulls and brains--dolichocephali and brachycephali--jaws and teeth--stature--other tests--isaac taylor--prehistoric types in europe--huxley's classification--language no test of race--egyptian monuments--human and animal races unchanged for years--neolithic races--palæolithic--different races of man as far back as we can trace--types of canstadt, cro-magnon, and furfooz--oldest races dolichocephalic--skulls of neanderthal and spy--simian characters--objections--evidence confined to europe--american man--calaveras skull--tertiary man--skull of castelnedolo--leaves monogeny or polygeny an open question--arguments on each side--old arguments from the bible and philology exploded--what darwinian theory requires--animal types traced up to the eocene--secondary origins--dog and horse--fertility of races--question of hybridity--application to man--difference of constitutions--negro and white--bearing on question of migration--apes and monkeys--question of original locality of man--asiatic theory--eur-african--american--arctic--none based on sufficient evidence--mere speculations--conclusion--summary of evidence as to human origins illustrations tablet of snefura at wady magerah specimen of hieroglyphic alphabet pyramids of gizeh and sphynx fellah woman and head of second hyksos statue hyksos sphynx statue of prince rahotep's wife khufu-ankh and his servants--early egyptians cuneiform symbols cylinder seal of sargon i head of ancient chaldÆan statue of gud-ea, with inscription sea-fight in the time of ramses iii king of the hittites chief of punt and two men queen sending warrior to battle adam, eve, and the serpent judgment of the soul by osiris pyramid ziggurat restored the village sheik palÆolithic celt palÆolithic celt in argillite palÆolithic flint celt palÆolithic celt of quartzite from natal portrait of mammoth earliest portrait of a man with serpents and horses' heads reindeer feeding arrow-heads cuts with flint knife on rib of balÆonotus--pliocene cut magnified by microscope flint scraper from high level drift, kent upper miocene implements. puy courny copare quaternary implements section at thenay middle miocene implements middle miocene implements compare quaternary implements section of great californian lava stream, cut through by rivers section across table mountain, tuolumne county, california the nampa image l'homme avant l'histoire human origins. introduction. the reception which has been given to my former works leads me to believe that they have had a certain educational value for those who, without being specialists, wish to keep themselves abreast of the culture of the day, and to understand the leading results and pending problems of modern science. of these results the most interesting are those which bear upon the origin and evolution of the human race. in my former works i have treated of these mainly from the point of view of geology and palæontology, and have hardly touched on the province which lies nearest to us, that of history and of prehistoric traditions. in this province, however, a revolution has been effected by the discoveries of the present century, which is no less important than that made by geological research and by the doctrine of evolution. down to the middle of the nineteenth century, and to a considerable extent down to the present day, the hebrew bible was held to be the sole and sufficient authority as to the early history of the human race. it was believed, with a certainty which made doubt impious, that the first man adam was created in or about the year b.c., or not quite years ago; and that all human and other life was destroyed by a universal deluge, years later, with the exception of noah and his wife, their sons and their wives, and pairs of all living creatures, by whom the earth was repeopled from the mountain-peak of ararat as a centre. the latest conclusions of modern science show that uninterrupted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments, carry history back at least years before the supposed creation of man, and years before the date of the deluge, and show then no trace of a commencement; but populous cities, celebrated temples, great engineering works, and a high state of the arts and of civilization, already existing. this is of the highest interest, both as bearing on the dogma of the divine inspiration of the historical and scientific, as distinguished from the moral and religious, portions of the bible, and on the still more important question of the true theory of man's origin and relations to the universe. the so-called conflict between religion and science is at bottom one between two conflicting theories of the universe--the first that it is the creation of a personal god who constantly interferes by miracles to correct his original work; the second, that whether the first cause be a personal god or something inscrutable to human faculties, the work was originally so perfect that the whole succession of subsequent events has followed by evolution acting by invariable laws. the former is the theory of orthodox believers, the latter that of men of science, and of liberal theologians who, like bishop temple, find that the theory of "original impress" is more in accordance with the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient creator, to whom "a thousand years are as a day," than the traditional theory of a creator constantly interfering to supplement and amend his original creation by supernatural interferences. it is evidently important for all who desire to arrive at truth, and to keep abreast of the culture of the day, to have some clear conception of what historical and geological records really teach, and what sort of a standard or measuring-rod they supply in attempting to carry back our researches into the depths of prehistoric and of geological time. i have therefore in this work begun with the historic period, as giving us a solid foundation and standard of time, by which to gauge the vastly longer periods which lie behind, and ascended from this by successive steps through the neolithic and palæolithic ages, and the quaternary and tertiary periods, so far as the most recent discoveries throw any light on the mysterious question of "human origins." if i have succeeded in stimulating some minds, especially those of my younger readers, and of the working-classes who are striving after culture, to feel an interest in these subjects, and to pursue them further, my object will have been attained. they have been to me the solace of a long life, the delight of many quiet days, and the soother of many troubled ones, and i should be glad to think that i had been the means, however humble, of introducing to others what i have found such a source of enjoyment, and enlisting, if it were only a few, in the service of that "divine philosophy," in which i have ever found, as wordsworth did in nature, "the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being." part i.--history. chapter i. egypt. historical standard of time--short date inconsistent with evolution--laws of historical evidence--history begins with authentic records--records of egypt oldest--manetho's lists--confirmed by hieroglyphics--origin of writing--the alphabet--phonetic writing--clue to hieroglyphics--the rosetta stone--champollion--principles of hieroglyphic writing--language coptic--can be read with certainty--confirmed by monuments--manetho's date for menes b.c.--old, middle, and new empires--old empire, menes, to end of sixth dynasty--break between old and middle empires--works of twelfth dynasty--fayoum--thirteenth and fourteenth dynasties--hyksos conquests--duration of hyksos rule--their expulsion and foundation of new empire--conquests in asia of seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties--wars with hittites and assyrians--persian and greek dynasties--summary of evidence for date of menes--period prior to menes--horsheshu--sphynx--stone age--neolithic and palæolithic remains--horner, haynes, and pitt-rivers. in measuring the dimensions of space we have to start from some fixed standard, such as the foot or yard, taken originally from the experience of our ordinary senses and capable of accurate verification. from this we arrive by successive inductions at the size of the earth, the distance of the sun, moon, and planets, and finally at the parallax of the fixed stars. so in speculations as to the origin and evolution of the human race, history affords the standard from which we start, through the successive stages of prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man, until we pass into the wider ranges of geological time. any error in the original standard becomes magnified indefinitely, whether in space or time, as we extend our researches backwards into remoter regions. thus whether the authentic records of history extend only for some years backwards from the present time to the scriptural date of noah's flood, as was universally assumed to be the case until quite recently; or whether egyptian and chaldæan records carry us back for years, and show us then a dense population, powerful empires, large cities, and generally a highly advanced civilization already existing, makes a wonderful difference in the standpoint from which we view the course of human evolution. to begin with, a short date necessitates supernatural interferences. it is quite impossible that if man and all animal life were created only about years b.c., and were then all destroyed save the few pairs saved in noah's ark, and made a fresh start from a single centre some years later, there can be any truth in darwin's theory of evolution. we know for a certainty from the concurrent testimony of all history, and from egyptian monuments, that the different races of men and animals were in existence years ago as they are at the present day; and that no fresh creations or marked changes of type have taken place during that period. if then all these types, and all the different races and nations of men, sprung up in the interval of less than years, which is the longest that can by any possibility be allowed between the biblical date of the deluge and the clash of the mighty monarchies of assyria and egypt in palestine, the date of which is proved both by the bible and by profane historians, it is obviously impossible that such a state of things could have been brought about by natural causes. but if authentic historical records carry us back not for or , but for or years, and then show no trace of a beginning, the case is altered, and we may assume an almost unlimited duration of time, through historical, prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic ages, during which evolution may have operated. it is of the first importance therefore to inquire what these records really teach in the light of modern research, and what is the evidence for the longer dates which are now generally accepted. furnished with such a measuring-rod it becomes easier to attempt to bring into some sort of co-ordination the vast mass of facts which have been accumulated in recent years as to prehistoric, neolithic, and palæolithic man; and the glimpses of light respecting the origin, antiquity, and early history of the human race, which have come in from other sciences such as astronomy, geology, zoology, and philology. to do this exhaustively would be an encyclopædic task which i do not pretend to accomplish, but i am not without hope that the following chapters, connected as they are by the one leading idea of tracing human origins backward to their source, may assist inquiry, and create an interest in this most interesting of all questions, especially among the young who are striving after knowledge, and the millions who, not having the time and opportunity for reading technical works, feel a desire to keep themselves abreast of modern thought and of the advanced culture of the close of the nineteenth century. before examining these records in detail it is well to begin with the general laws upon which historical evidence is based. history begins with writings. all experience shows that what may be transmitted by memory and word of mouth, consists mainly of hymns and portions of ritual, such as the vedas of the hindoos; and to a certain extent of heroic poems and ballads in which the historical element is so overlaid by mythology and poetry, that it is impossible to discriminate between fact and fancy. thus the legend of hercules is evidently in the main a solar myth, and his twelve labours are related to the signs of the zodiac, but it is possible that there may have been a real hercules, the actual or eponymic ancestor of the tribe of heraclides. so, at a later period, the descent of the romans from the pious Æneas, and of the britons from another trojan hero brute, are obviously fabulous; and at a still more recent date, our own arthurian legends are evidently a mediæval romance, though it is possible that there may have been a chief of that name of the christianized romano-britons, who opposed a gallant resistance to the flood of saxon invasion. but to make real history we require something very different; concurrent and uninterrupted testimony of known historians; absence of impossible and obviously fabulous dates and events; and, above all, contemporary records, written or engraved on tombs, temples, and monuments, or preserved in papyri or clay cylinders. another remark is, that these authentic records of early history only begin to appear when civilization is so far advanced as to have established powerful dynasties and priestly organizations. the history of a nation is at first the history of its kings, and its records are enumerations of their genealogies, successive reigns, foundation or repair of temples, great industrial works, and warlike exploits. these are made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact. before the establishment of such historical dynasties we have nothing but legends and traditions, which are vague and mythical, the mythological element rapidly predominating as we go backwards in time, until we soon arrive at reigns of gods, and lives of thousands of years. but as we approach the period of historical dynasties the mythological element diminishes, and we pass from gods reigning , years, and patriarchs living to , to later patriarchs living or years, and finally to mortal men, living, and kings reigning, to natural ages. in fact, with the first appearance of authentic records the supernatural disappears, and the average duration of lives, reigns, and dynasties, and the general course of events, are much the same as at present, and fully confirm, the statement of the egyptian priests to herodotus, that during the long succession of ages of the high priests of heliopolis, whose statues they showed him in the great temple of the sun, there had been no change in the length of human life or in the course of nature, and each one of the had been a _piromis_, or mortal man, the son of a _piromis_. the first question is how far back these authentic historical records can be traced, and egypt affords the first answer. the first step in the inquiry as to egyptian antiquity is afforded by the history of manetho. ptolemy philadelphus, whose reign began b.c., was an enlightened king. he founded the great alexandrian library, and was specially curious in collecting everything which bore on the early history of his own and other countries. with this view he had the greek translation, known as the septuagint, made of the sacred books of the hebrews, and he commissioned manetho to compile a history of egypt from the earliest times, from the most authentic temple records and other sources of information. manetho was eminently qualified for such a task, being a learned and judicious man, and a priest of sebennytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples. the history of manetho is unfortunately lost, being probably the greatest loss the world has sustained by the burning of the alexandrian library, but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of josephus, eusebius, julius africanus and syncellus, of whom eusebius and africanus profess to give manetho's lists and dates of dynasties and kings from the first king menes down to the conquest of alexander the great in b.c. with the curious want of critical faculty of almost all the christian fathers, these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book, contain many inconsistencies, and in several instances they have obviously been tampered with, especially by eusebius, in order to bring their chronology more in accordance with that of the old testament. but enough remains to show that manetho's lists comprised thirty-one dynasties, and about kings, whose successive reigns extended over a period of about years, from the accession of menes to the conquest of egypt by alexander the great in b.c., making the date of the first historical king who united upper and lower egypt, about b.c. there may be some doubt as to the precise dates, for the lists, of manetho have obviously been tampered with to some extent by the christian fathers who quoted them, but there can be no doubt that his original work assigned an antiquity to menes of over b.c. the only other historical information as to the history of ancient egypt was gleaned from references to it in the extant works of josephus and of greek authors, especially homer, herodotus, and diodorus siculus. josephus, in his _antiquity of the jews_, quotes passages from manetho, but they only extend to the period of the hyksos invasion, the captivity of the jews, and the exodus, which are all comparatively recent events in manetho's annals. homer's account of hundred-gated thebes does not carry us back beyond the echo which had reached ionian greece of the splendours of the nineteenth dynasty. herodotus visited egypt about b.c., and wrote a description of it from what he saw and heard on the spot. it contains a good deal of valuable information, for he was a shrewd observer. but he was credulous, and not very critical in distinguishing between fact and fable, and it is evident that his sources of information were often not much better than vague popular traditions, or the tales told by guides, and even the more authentic information is so disconnected and mixed with fable, that it can hardly be accepted as material for history. as far as it goes, however, it tends to confirm manetho, as, for instance, in giving the names correctly of the kings who built the three great pyramids, and in saying that he saw the statues of successive high priests of the great temple of heliopolis, which correspond very well with manetho's lists of kings. diodorus gives us very much the same narratives as those of herodotus; and, on the whole, we had to fall back on manetho as the only authority for anything like precise dates and connected history. manetho's dates, however, were so inconsistent with preconceived ideas based on the chronology of the bible, that they were universally thought to be fabulous. they were believed either to represent the exaggerations of egyptian priests desirous of magnifying the antiquity of their country, or, if historical, to give in succession the names of a number of kings and dynasties who had really reigned simultaneously in different provinces. so stood the question until the discovery of reading hieroglyphics enabled us to test the accuracy of manetho's lists by the light of contemporary monuments and manuscripts. this discovery is of such supreme importance that it may be well to begin at the beginning, and lay a solid foundation by showing how it was made, and the demonstration on which it rests. reading presupposes writing, as writing presupposes speech. ideas are conveyed from one mind to another in speech through the ear, in writing through the eye. the origin of the latter method is doubtless to be found in picture-writing. the palæolithic savage who drew a mammoth with the point of a flint on a piece of ivory, was attempting to write, in his rude way, a record of some memorable chase. and the accounts of the old empires of mexico and peru at the time of the spanish conquest, show that a considerable amount of civilization can be attained and information conveyed by this primitive method. but for the purpose of historical record more is required. it is essential to have a system of signs and symbols which shall be generally understood, and by which knowledge shall be handed down unchanged to successive generations. all experience shows that before knowledge is thus fixed and recorded, anything that may be transmitted by memory and word of mouth, fades off almost immediately into myth, and leaves no certain record of time, place, and circumstance. a few religious hymns and prayers like those of the vedas, a few heroic ballads like those of homer, a few genealogies like those of agamemnon or abraham, may be thus preserved, but nothing definite or accurate in the way of fact and date. history, therefore, begins with writing, and writing begins with the invention of fixed signs to represent words. a system of writing is possible, like the chinese, in which each separate word has its own separate sign, but this is extremely cumbrous, and quite unintelligible to those who have not got a living key to explain the meaning of each symbol. it is calculated that an educated chinese has to learn by heart the meaning of some , separate signs before he can read and write correctly. we have a trace of this ideographic system in our own language, as where arbitrary signs such as , , , represent not the sounds of one, two, and three, but the ideas conveyed by them. but for all practical purposes, intelligible writing has to be phonetic, that is, representing spoken words, not by the ideas they convey, but by the sounds of which they are composed. in other words there must be an alphabet. the alphabet is the first lesson of childhood, and it seems such a simple thing that we are apt to forget that it is one of the most important and original inventions of the human intellect. some prehistoric genius, musing on the meaning of spoken words, has seen that they might all be analyzed into a few simple sounds. to make this more easily intelligible, i will suppose the illustrations to be taken from our own language. "dog" and "dig" express very different ideas; but a little reflection will show that the primary sounds made by the tongue, teeth, and palate, viz. 'd' and 'g,' are the same in each, and that they differ only by a slight variation in the soft breathing or vowel, which connects them and renders them vocal. the next step would be to see that such words as "good" or "god," consisted of the same root-sounds, only transposed and connected with a slight vowel difference. pursuing the analysis, it would finally be discovered that the many thousand words of spoken language could all be resolved into a very small number of radical sounds, each of which might be represented and suggested to the mind through the eye instead of the ear by some conventional sign or symbol. here is the alphabet, and here the art of writing. this great achievement of the human intellect appears to have been made in prehistoric times; and where not obviously imported from a foreign source, as in the phoenician alphabet from the egyptian and the greek from the phoenician, it is attributed to some god, that is, to an unknown antiquity. thus in egypt, thoth the second, known to the greeks as hermes trismegistus, a fabulous demi-god of the period succeeding the reign of the great gods, is said to have invented the alphabet and the art of writing. the analysis of primary sounds varies a little in different times and countries in order to suit peculiarities in the pronunciation of different races and convenience in writing; but about sixteen primitive sounds, which is the number of the letters of the first alphabet brought by cadmus to greece, are always its basis. in our own alphabet it is easy to see that it is not formed on strictly scientific principles, some of the letters being redundant. thus the soft sound of 'c' is expressed by 's,' and the hard sound by 'k'; and 'x' is an abbreviation of three other letters, 'eks.' some letters also express sounds which run so closely into one another that in some alphabets they are not distinguished, as 'f' and 'v,' 'd' and 't', 'l' and 'r'; while some races have guttural and other sounds, such as 'kh' and 'sj,' which occur so frequently as to require separate signs, while they baffle the vocal organs of other races, and in some cases syllables which frequently occur, instead of being spelt out alphabetically, are represented by single signs. but these are mere details, the question substantially is this--if a collection of unknown signs is phonetic, and we can get any clue to its alphabet, it can be read; if not it must remain a sealed book. to apply this to hieroglyphics; it had been long known that the monuments of ancient egypt were carved with mysterious figures, representing commonly birds, animals, and other natural objects, but all clue to their meaning had been lost. it seemed more natural to suppose that they were ideographic; that a lion for instance represented a real lion, or some quality associated with him, such as fierceness, valour, and kingly aspect, rather than that his picture stood simply for our letter 'l.' the long-desired clue was afforded by the famous rosetta stone. this is a mutilated block of black basalt, which was discovered in by an engineer officer of the french expedition, in digging the foundations of a fort near rosetta. it was captured, with other trophies, by the british army, when the french were driven out of egypt, and is now lodged at the british museum. it bears on it three inscriptions, one in hieroglyphics, the second in the demotic egyptian character employed for popular use, and the third in greek. the greek can of course be read, and it is an inscription commemorating the coronation of ptolemy epiphanes and his queen arsinoe, in the year b.c. it was an obvious conjecture that the two egyptian inscriptions were to the same effect, and that the greek was a literal translation of this. to turn this conjecture, however, into a demonstration, a great deal of ingenuity and patient research were required. the principle upon which all interpretation of unknown signs rests may be most easily understood by taking an illustration from our own language. the first step in the problem is to know whether these unknown signs are ideographic or phonetic. thus if we have two groups of signs, one of which we have reason to know stands for "ptolemy" and the other for "cleopatra," if they are phonetic, the first sign in ptolemy will correspond with the fifth in cleopatra; the second with the seventh, the third with the fourth, the fourth with the second, and the fifth with the third; and we shall have established five letters of the unknown alphabet, 'p, t, o, l,' and 'e.' other names will give other letters, as if we know "arsinoe," its comparison with "cleopatra" will give 'a' and 'r,' and confirm the former induction as to 'o' and 'e.' and it will be extremely probable that the two last signs in ptolemy represent 'm' and 'y'; the first in cleopatra 'c'; and the third, fourth, and fifth in arsinoe, 's, i,' and 'n.' suppose now that we find in an inscription on an ancient temple at thebes, a name which begins with our known sign for 'r,' followed by our known 'a,' then by our conjectural 'm,' then by the sign which we find third in arsinoe, or 's,' then by our known 'e,' and ending with a repetition of 's,' we have no difficulty in reading "ramses," and identifying it with one of the kings of that name mentioned by manetho as reigning at thebes. the identification of letters was facilitated by the custom of inclosing the names of kings in what is called a cartouche or oval. [illustration: tablet of snefura at wady magerah. (the oldest inscription in the world, probably years old. the king conquering an arabian or asiatic enemy.)] this name reads "snefura," which is the name of the king of the third dynasty who reigned about b.c., or before the building of the great pyramids, which inscription is the earliest contemporary one of an egyptian king as yet discovered. it was found at the copper mines of wady magerah, in the peninsula of sinai, and represents the victory of the king over an arabian or asiatic enemy. the first step towards the decipherment of the hieroglyphics on the rosetta stone was made in by dr. young, who was one of the most ingenious and original thinkers of the nineteenth century, and is also famous as the first discoverer of the undulatory theory of light. but in both cases he merely indicated the right path and laid down the correct principles. the development of his theories was reserved for two frenchmen; fresnel in the case of light, and champollion in that of hieroglyphics. the task was one which required immense patience and ingenuity, for the hieroglyphic alphabet turned out to be one of great complexity. not only were many of the signs not phonetic, but ideographic or determinative; and some of them standing for syllables and not letters; but the letters themselves were not represented, as in modern languages, each by a single sign or at most by two signs, as a and a, but by several different signs. the egyptian alphabet was in fact constructed very much as young children often learn theirs, by-- a was an apple-pie, b bit it, c cut it; with this difference, that several objects, whose names begin with a and other letters, might be used to represent them. thus some of the hieroglyphic letters had as many as twenty-five different signs or homophones. it is as if we could write for 'a,' the picture either of an apple, or of an ass, archer, arrow, anchor, or any word beginning with 'a.' however, champollion with infinite difficulty, and aided by the constant discovery of fresh inscriptions, solved the problem, and succeeded in producing a complete alphabet of hieroglyphics comprising all the various signs, thus enabling us to translate every hieroglyphic sign into its corresponding sound or spoken word. the next question was, what did these words mean, and could they be recognized in any known language? the answer to this was easy; the egyptians spoke egyptic, or as it is abbreviated coptic, a modern form of which is almost a living language, and is preserved in translations of the bible still in use and studied by the aid of coptic dictionaries and grammars. this enabled champollion to construct a hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar, which have been so completed by the labours of subsequent egyptologists, that it is not too much to say that any inscription or manuscript in hieroglyphics can be read with nearly as much certainty as if it had been written in greek or in hebrew. [illustration: specimen of hieroglyphic alphabet. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] the above illustrations from english characters are only given as the simplest way of conveying to the minds of those who have had no previous acquaintance with the subject, an idea of the nature of the process and force of the evidence, upon which the decipherment of hieroglyphic inscriptions is based. in reality the process was far from being so simple. though many of the hieroglyphics are phonetics, like our letters of the alphabet, they are not all so, and many of them are purely ideographic, as when we write , , , for one, two, and three. all writing has begun with picture-writing, and each character was originally a likeness of the object which it was wished to represent. the next stage was to use the character not only for the material object, but as a symbol for some abstract idea associated with it. thus the picture of a lion might stand either for an actual lion, or for fierceness, courage, majesty, or other attribute of the king of animals. in this way it became possible to convey meanings to the mind through the eye, but it involved both an enormous number of characters, and the use of homophones, _i.e._ of single characters standing for a number of separate ideas. to obviate this, what are called "determinatives" were invented, _i.e._ special signs affixed to characters or groups of characters to determine the sense in which they were to be taken. for instance, the picture of a star (*) affixed to a group of hieroglyphics may be used to denote that they represent the name of a god, or some divine or heavenly attribute; and the picture of rippling water ~~~~~~~~ to show that the group means something connected with water, as a sea or river. beyond this the chinese have hardly gone, and it is reckoned that it requires some separate characters, or conventionalized pictures, taken in distinct groups, to be able to read and write correctly the , words in the chinese language. even for the ordinary purposes of life a chinaman instead of committing to memory twenty-six letters of the alphabet, like an english child, has to learn by heart some or groups of characters often distinguished only by slight dots and dashes. such a system is cumbrous in the extreme, and involves spending many of the best years of life in acquiring the first rudiments of knowledge. indeed it is only possible when not only writing but speech has been arrested at the first stage of its development, and a nation speaks a language of monosyllables. in the case of egypt and other ancient nations the standpoint of writing went further, and the symbolic pictures came to represent phonograms, _i.e._ sounds or spoken words instead of ideas or objects; and these again were further analyzed into syllabaries, or the component articulate sounds which make up words; and these finally into their ultimate elements of a few simple sounds, or letters of an alphabet, the various combinations of which will express all the complex sounds or words of a spoken language. now in the hieroglyphic writing of ancient egypt, along with those pure phonetics or letters of an alphabet, are found numerous survivals of the older systems from which they sprung, and champollion, who first attempted the task of forming a hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar, had to contend with all the difficulties of ideograms, polyphones, determinatives, and other obstacles. those who wish to pursue this interesting subject further will do well to read dr. isaac taylor's book on the alphabet, and sayce on the science of writing; but for my present purpose it is sufficient to establish the scientific certainty of the process by which hieroglyphic texts are read. with this key a vast mass of constantly accumulating evidence has been brought to light, illustrating not only the chronology and history of ancient egypt, but also its social and political condition, its literature and religion, science and art. the first question naturally was how far the monuments confirmed or disproved the lists of manetho. manetho was a learned priest of a celebrated temple, who must have had access to all the temple and royal records and other literature of egypt, and who must have been also conversant with foreign literature, to have been selected as the best man to write a complete history of his native country for the royal library in greek. manetho's lists of the reigns of dynasties and kings when summed up show a date of b.c. for the foundation of the united egyptian empire by menes, a date which is of course absolutely inconsistent with those given by genesis, not only for the deluge, but for the original creation. it is evident that the monuments alone could confirm or contradict these lists, and give a solid basis for egyptian chronology and history. this has now been done to such an extent that it may fairly be said that manetho has been confirmed, and it is fully established, as a fact acquired by science, that nearly all his kings and dynasties are proved by monuments to have existed, and that successively and not simultaneously, so that the margin of uncertainty as to the date of menes is reduced to one of a few hundred years on one side or other of b.c. mariette, who is the best and latest authority, and who has done so much to discover monuments of the earlier dynasties, concludes, as the result of a careful revision of manetho's lists, and of the authentic records from temples, tombs, and papyri, that b.c. is the most probable date for the accession of menes, and this date is generally adopted by modern egyptologists. some make it rather longer, as boeck b.c., and unger b.c.; while others make it a little shorter, as maspero b.c., and brugsch[ ] ; but it is to be observed that the date has always lengthened with the progress of discovery. thus the earlier egyptologists such as wilkinson, birch, and poole assigned a date not exceeding b.c. for the accession of menes; twenty years later bunsen and lepsius gave respectively and b.c.; and since the latest discoveries, no competent scholar assigns a lower date than b.c., while some go up to b.c., and that most generally accepted is b.c. it is safe to conclude, therefore, that about b.c., or very nearly years before the present time, may be taken provisionally as the date of the commencement of authentic egyptian history, and that if this date be corrected by future discoveries it is more likely to be increased than diminished. [ ] brugsch, however, confines himself mainly to kings whose names are confirmed by monuments, and takes no account of the numerous names of unknown kings in royal genealogies, of which no confirmation has yet been found, so that practically his estimate is not inconsistent with that of mariette. this immensely long period of egyptian history is divided into three stages--the old, the middle, and the new empires. the old empire began with menes, and lasted without interruption for about years, under six dynasties of kings, who ruled over the whole of egypt. it was a period of peace, prosperity, and progress, during which the pyramids, the greatest of all human works, were built, literature flourished, and the industrial and fine arts attained a high degree of perfection. at the very commencement of this period we find the first king menes carrying out a great work of hydraulic engineering, by which the course of the nile was diverted, and a site obtained on its western banks for the new capital of memphis. his immediate successor is said to have written a celebrated treatise on medicine, and the extremely life-like portrait-statues and wooden statuettes, which were never equalled in any subsequent stage of egyptian art, date back to the fourth dynasty. [illustration: pyramids of gizeh and sphynx. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] it is singular that this extremely ancient period is the one of which, although the oldest, we know most, for the monuments, the papyri, and especially the tombs in the great cemeteries of sakkarah and ghizeh, give us the fullest details of the political and social life of egypt during the fourth, fifth, and sixth dynasties, with sufficient information as to the three first dynasties to check and confirm the lists of manetho. we really know the life of memphis years ago better than we do that of london under the saxon kings, or of paris under the descendants of clovis. the sixth dynasty was succeeded by a period which seems to have been one of civil war and anarchy, during which there was a complete cessation of monuments; or, if they existed, they have not yet been discovered. the probable duration of this eclipse of egyptian records is somewhat uncertain, as we cannot be sure, in the absence of monuments, that the four dynasties of short reigns assigned to the interval between the sixth and the eleventh dynasties by manetho, and the numerous names of unknown kings on the tablets, were successive sovereigns who reigned over united egypt, or local chiefs who got possession of power in different parts of the empire. all we can see is that the supremacy of memphis declined, and that its last great dynasty was replaced, either in whole or in part, by a rebellion in upper egypt which introduced two dynasties whose seat was at heracleopolis on the middle nile, in any case the duration of this period must have been very long, for the eclipse was very complete, and when we once more find ourselves in the presence of records in the eleventh dynasty, the seat of empire is established at thebes, and the state of the arts, religion, and civilization are different and much ruder than they were at the close of the great memphite empire with the sixth dynasty. mariette says, "when egypt, with the eleventh dynasty, awoke from its long sleep, the ancient traditions were forgotten. the proper names of the kings and ancient nobility, the titles of the high functionaries, the style of the hieroglyphic writing, and even the religion, all seemed new. the monuments are rude, primitive, and sometimes even barbarous, and to see them one would be inclined to think that egypt under the eleventh dynasty was beginning again the period of infancy which it had already passed through years earlier under the third." the tomb of one of these kings of the eleventh dynasty, entef i., is remarkable as showing on a funeral pillar the sportsman-king surrounded by his four favourite dogs, whose names are given, and which are of different breeds, from a large greyhound to a small turnspit. however, the chronology of this eleventh dynasty is well attested, its kings are known, and under them upper and lower egypt were once more consolidated into a single state, forming what is known as the middle empire. under the twelfth dynasty, which succeeded it, this empire bloomed rapidly into one of the greatest and most glorious periods of egyptian history. the dynasty only lasted for years, under seven kings, whose names were all either amenemes or osirtasen; but during their reigns the frontiers of egypt were extended far to the south, nubia was incorporated with the empire, and egyptian influence extended over the whole soudan, and perhaps nearly to the equator on the one hand, and over southern syria on the other. but the dynasty was still more famous for the arts of peace. one of the greatest works of hydraulic engineering which the world has seen was carried out by amenemes iii., who took advantage of a depression in the desert limestone near the basin of fayoum, to form a large artificial lake connected with the nile by canals, tunnelled through rocky ridges and provided with sluices, so as to admit the water when the river rose too high, and let it out when it fell too low, and thus regulate the inundation of a great part of middle and lower egypt, independently of the seasons. connected with this lake moeris was the famous labyrinth, which herodotus pronounced to be a greater wonder than even the great pyramid. it was a vast square building erected on a small plateau on the east side of the lake, constructed of blocks of granite which must have been brought from syene, with a façade of white limestone; and containing in the interior a vast number of small square chambers and vaults--herodotus says --each roofed with a single large slab of stone, and connected by narrow passages, so intricate that a stranger entering without a clue would be infallibly lost. the object seems to have been to provide a safe repository for statues of gods and kings and other precious objects. in the centre was a court containing twelve hypostyle chapels, six facing the south and six the north, and at the north angle of the square was a pyramid of brick faced with stone forming the tomb of amenemes iii. in addition to this colossal work, the kings of this dynasty built and restored many of the most famous temples and erected statues and obelisks, among the latter the one now standing at heliopolis. it was also an age of great literary activity, and the biographies of many of the priests, nobles, and high officers, inscribed on their tombs and recorded in papyri, give us the most minute knowledge of the history and social life of this remote period. the prosperity of egypt during the middle empire was continued under the thirteenth dynasty of sixty theban kings, to whom manetho assigns the period of years. less is known of this period than of the great twelfth dynasty which preceded it, but a sufficient number of monuments have been preserved to confirm the general accuracy of manetho's statements. a colossal statue of the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth king, sevckhotef vi., found on the island of argo near dongola, shows that the frontier fixed by the conquests of amenemes at semneh, had not only been maintained, but extended nearly fifty leagues to the south into the heart of ethiopia; and another statue found at tanis shows that the rule of this dynasty was firmly established in lower egypt. but the scarcity of the monuments, and the inferior execution of the works of art, show that this long dynasty was one of gradual decline, and the rise of the next or fourteenth dynasty at xois, transferring the seat of power from thebes to the delta, points to civil wars and revolutions. [illustration: fellah woman and head of second hyksos statue. (from photograph by naville in _harper's magazine_.)] [illustration: hyksos sphynx. (from photograph by naville in _harper's magazine_.)] manetho assigns seventy-five kings and years to the fourteenth dynasty, and it is to this period that a good deal of uncertainty attaches, for there are no monuments, and nothing to confirm manetho's lists, except a number of unknown names of kings of the dynasty enumerated among the royal ancestors in the papyrus of turin. if manetho's figures are correct, the period must have been one of anarchy and civil war, for the average duration of each reign is less than six and a half years, while that of the twelfth and other well-known historical dynasties exceeds thirty years. the same remark applies to the thirteenth dynasty, the reigns of whose sixty kings average only seven and a half years each, and it is probable that the end of this dynasty and the whole of the fourteenth was a period of anarchy, during which so-called kings rose and fell in rapid succession, as in the case of our own dynasties of lancaster and york, and the annals are so confused that the dates are unreliable. what is certain is that the great middle empire sank rapidly into a state of anarchy and impotence, which prepared the way for a great catastrophe. this catastrophe came in the form of an invasion of foreigners, who, about the year b.c., broke through the eastern frontier of the delta, and apparently without much resistance, conquered the whole of lower egypt up to memphis, and reduced the princes of the upper provinces to a state of vassalage. there is considerable doubt who these invaders were, who were known as hyksos or shepherd kings. they consisted probably, mainly of nomad tribes of canaanites, arabians, and other semitic races, but the turanian hittites seem to have been associated with them, and the leaders to have been turanian, judging from the portrait-statues of two of the later kings of the hyksos dynasty which have been recently discovered by naville at bubastis, and which are unmistakably turanian and even chinese in type. our information as to this hyksos conquest is derived mainly from fragments of manetho quoted by josephus, and from traditions repeated by herodotus, and is very vague and imperfect. but this much seems certain, that at first the hyksos acted as savage barbarians, burning cities, demolishing temples, and massacring part of the population and reducing the rest to slavery. but, as in the parallel case of the tartar conquest of china, as time went on they adopted the superior civilization of their subjects, and the later kings were transformed into genuine pharaohs, differing but little from those of the old national dynasties. this is conclusively proved by the discoveries recently made at tanis and bubastis, which have revealed important monuments of this dynasty. at tanis an avenue of sphynxes was discovered, copied evidently from those at thebes and from the great sphynx at gizeh, with lion bodies and human heads, the latter with a different head-dress from the egyptian, and a different type of feature. at bubastis two colossal statues of hyksos kings, with their heads broken off, but one of them nearly perfect, were unexpectedly discovered by naville in , and it was proved that they had stood on each side of the entrance to an addition made by those kings to the ancient and celebrated temple of the egyptian goddess bast, thus proving that the hyksos had adopted not only the civilization but also the religion of the egyptian nation. there are but few inscriptions known of the hyksos dynasty, for their cartouches have generally been effaced, and those of later kings chiselled over them; but enough remains to show that they were in the hieroglyphic character, and the names of two or three of their kings can still be deciphered, among which are two apepis, the second probably the last of the dynasty. it was probably under one of these hyksos kings that joseph came to egypt, and the tribes of israel settled on its eastern frontier. the duration of the hyksos rule is thus left in some uncertainty. manetho, if correctly quoted by josephus, says they ruled over egypt for years, though his lists only show one dynasty of years, and then the theban dynasty, who reigned over upper egypt for years contemporaneously with hyksos kings in lower egypt. we regain, however, firm historical ground with the rise of the eighteenth theban dynasty of native egyptian kings, who finally expelled the hyksos, after a long war, and founded what is known as the new empire. the date of this event is fixed by the best authorities at about b.c., and from this time downwards we have an uninterrupted succession of undoubted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments and by the annals of other nations, down to the christian era. the reaction which followed the expulsion of the hyksos led to campaigns in asia on a great scale, in which egypt came into collision with powerful nations, and for a long time was the dominant power in western asia, extending its conquests from the persian gulf to the black sea and mediterranean, and receiving tribute from babylon and nineveh. then followed wars, waged on more equal terms, with the hittites, who had founded a great empire in asia minor and syria; and as their power declined and that of assyria rose, with the long series of warlike assyrian monarchs, who gradually obtained the ascendency, and not only stripped egypt of its foreign conquests, but on more than one occasion invaded its territory and captured its principal cities. it is during this period that we find the first of the certain synchronisms between egyptian history and the old testament, beginning with the capture of jerusalem by shishak in the reign of rehoboam, and ending with the captivity of the jews and temporary conquest of egypt by nebuchadnezzar. then came the persian conquest by cambyses and alternate periods of national independence and of persian rule, until the conquest of alexander and the establishment of the dynasty of the ptolemies, which lasted until the reign of cleopatra, and ended finally by the annexation of egypt as a province of the roman empire. the history of this long period is extremely interesting, as showing what may be called the commencement of the modern era of great wars, and of the rise and fall of civilized empires; but for the present purpose i only refer to it as helping to establish the chronological standard which i am in search of as a measuring-rod to gauge the duration of historical time. we may sum up the conclusions derived from manetho's lists and the monuments as follows:-- manetho's lists, as they have come down to us, show a date of years b.c. for the accession of menes. of this period, we may say that we know years for the new empire and the period of the persians and the ptolemies, from contemporary monuments and records, with such certainty that any possible error cannot exceed fifty or one hundred years. the hyksos period is less certain, but there is no sufficient reason for doubting that it may have lasted for about years. manetho could have had no object in overstating the duration of the rule of hated foreigners, and a long time must have elapsed before the rude invaders could have so completely adopted the civilization of the subject race. the dates of the middle empire, to which manetho assigns years, are more uncertain, and we can only check them by monuments for the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties. the length of the fourteenth xoite dynasty seems to be exaggerated, and the later obscure theban dynasties may have been contemporary with the rule of the hyksos in lower egypt. of the years assigned to the ancient empire, the first from menes to the end of the sixth dynasty are well authenticated by monuments and inscriptions, and the for the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth are obscure, though a considerable time must have elapsed for such a complete eclipse of the monuments and arts as appears to have occurred between the nourishing period of the sixth dynasty and the revival of the middle empire under the eleventh. we may say, therefore, that we have about years of undoubted history between the accession of menes and the christian era, and more years for which we have only the authority of manetho's lists, and the names of unknown kings in genealogical records, with a few scattered monuments, and to which it is difficult to assign specific dates. this may enable us to appreciate the nature of the evidence upon which mariette and so many of the best and oldest authorities base their estimates in assigning a date of about b.c. for the accession of menes. the glimpses of light into the prehistoric stages of egyptian civilization prior to menes are few and far between. we are told that before the consolidation of the empire by menes, egypt was divided into a number of separate nomes or provinces, each gathered about its own independent city and temple, and ruled by the horsheshu or servants of horus, who were apparently the chief priests of the respective temples, combining with the character of priest that of king, or local ruler. parts of the todtenbuch or sacred book of the dead certainly date from this period, and the great temple of the sun at heliopolis had been founded, for we are told that certain prehistoric heliopolitan hymns formed the basis of the sacred books of a later age. at edfu the later temple occupies the site of a very ancient structure, traditionally said to date back to the mythic reign of the gods, and to have been built according to a plan designed by nuhotef the son of pthah. at denderah an inscription found by mariette in one of the crypts of the great temple, expressly identifies the earliest sanctuary built upon the spot with the time of the horsheshu. it reads, "there was found the great fundamental ordinance of denderah, written upon goatskin in ancient writing of the time of the horsheshu. it was found in the inside of a brick wall during the reign of king pepi" (_i.e._ pepi-merira of the sixth dynasty). the name of chufu, the king of the fourth dynasty, who built the great pyramid, was found by naville in a restoration of part of the famous temple of bubastis, and its foundation doubtless dates back to the same prehistoric period. but the most important prehistoric monuments are those connected with the great sphynx. an inscription of chufu (cheops) preserved in the museum of boulak, says that a temple adjoining the sphynx was discovered by chance in his reign, which had been buried under the sand of the desert, and forgotten for many generations. this temple was uncovered by mariette, and found to be constructed of enormous blocks of granite of syene and of alabaster, supported by square pillars, each of a single block of stone, without any mouldings or ornaments, and no trace of hieroglyphics. it is, in fact, a sort of transition from the rude dolmen to scientific architecture. but the masonry, and still more the transport of such enormous blocks from syene to the plateau of the desert at gizeh, show a great advance already attained in the resources of the country and the state of the industrial arts. the sphynx itself probably dates from the same period, for it is mentioned on the same inscription as being much older than the great pyramids, and requiring repairs in the time of chufu. it is a gigantic work consisting of a natural rock sculptured into the form of a lion's body, to which a human head has been added, built up of huge blocks of hewn stone. it is directed accurately towards the east so as to face the rising sun at the equinox, and was an image of hormachen, the sun of the lower world, which traverses the abode of the dead. in addition to the direct evidence for its prehistoric antiquity, it is certain that if such a monument had been erected by any of the historical kings, it would have been inscribed with hieroglyphics, and the fact recorded in manetho's lists and contemporary records, whereas all tradition of its origin seems to have been lost in the night of ages. although there are no monuments of the stone age in egypt like those of the swiss lake villages and danish kitchen-middens, to enable us to trace in detail the progress of arts and civilization from rude commencements through the neolithic and prehistoric ages, yet there is abundant evidence to show that the same stages had been traversed in the valley of the nile long prior to the time of menes. borings have been made on various occasions and at various localities through the alluvial deposits of the nile valley, from which fragments of pottery have been brought up from depths which show a high antiquity. horner sunk ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight miles, across the valley of the nile, at right angles to the river near memphis, and brought up pottery from various depths, which, at the known rate of deposit of the nile mud of about three inches per century, indicate an antiquity of at least , years. in another boring a copper knife was brought up from a depth of twenty-four feet, and pottery, from sixty feet below the surface. this is specially interesting, as making it probable that here, as in many other countries, an age of copper preceded that of bronze, while a depth of sixty feet at the normal rate of deposit would imply an antiquity of , years. borings, however, are not very conclusive, as it is always open to contend that they may have been made at spots where, owing to some local circumstances, the deposit was much more rapid than the average. these objections, however, cannot apply to the evidence which has been afforded by the discovery of flint implements, both of the neolithic and palæolithic type, in many localities and by various skilled observers. professor haynes found, a few miles east of cairo, not only a number of flint implements of the types usual in europe, but an actual workshop or manufactory where they had been made, showing that they had not been imported, but produced in the country in the course of its native development. he also found multitudes of worked flints of the ordinary neolithic and palæolithic types scattered on the hills near thebes. lenormant and hamy saw the same workshop and remains of the stone period, and various other finds have been reported by other observers. finally, general pitt-rivers and professor haynes found well-developed palæolithic implements of the st. acheul type, not only on the surface and in superficial deposits, but from six and a half to ten feet deep in hard stratified gravel at djebel-assas, near thebes, in a terrace on the side of one of the ravines falling from the libyan desert into the nile valley, which was certainly deposited in early quaternary ages by a torrent pouring down from a plateau where, under existing geographical and climatic conditions, rain seldom or never falls. these relics, as mr. campbell says, who was associated with general pitt-rivers in the discovery, are "beyond calculation older than the oldest egyptian temples and tombs," and they certainly go far to prove that the high civilization of egypt at the earliest dawn of history or tradition had been a plant of extremely slow growth from a state of provincial savagery. [illustration: statue of prince rahotep's wife. (refined type.) (gizeh museum.--discovered in in a tomb near meydoon.--according to the chronological table of mariette, it is years old.--from a photograph by sebah, cairo.)] it is remarkable that all the traditions of the egyptians represent them as being autochthonous. there is no legend of any immigration, no oannes who comes out of the sea and teaches the arts of civilization. on the contrary, thoth and osiris are native egyptian gods or kings, who reigned long ago in egyptian cities. there are no legends of an inferior race who were exterminated or driven up the nile; though it would seem from the portraits on early monuments that there were two types in the very early ages one coarse and approximating to the african, the other a refined and aristocratic type, more resembling that of the highest asiatic or arabian races. [illustration: khufu-ankh and his servants--early egyptians. (coarse type.)] it has been conjectured that this latter race may have come from punt, that is, from southern arabia, and the opposite african coast of soumali land, where there are races of a high, civilization at a very early period. this conjecture is based on the fact that punt is constantly referred to in the egyptian monuments as a divine or sacred land, while other surrounding nations are loaded with opprobrious epithets. also the earliest traditions refer the origin of egyptian civilization not to lower egypt, where the isthmus of suez affords a land route from asia, nor to upper egypt, as if it had descended the nile from africa, but to abydos and this in middle egypt, where the gods were feigned to have reigned, which are comparatively close to coptos, the port on the red sea by which intercourse was most easily kept up between the valley of the nile and the land of punt. this conjecture, however, is very vague, and when we come to positive facts we find that the language and system of writing, when we first meet with them, are fully formed and apparently of native growth, not derived from any semitic, aryan, or turanian speech of any historical nation. it is certainly an agglutinative language originally, but far advanced beyond the simpler forms of that mode of speech as spoken by mongolians. it shows some distant affinities with semitic, or rather with what may have been a proto-semitic, before it had been fully formed, and is perhaps nearer to what may have been the primitive language of the libyans of north africa. but there is nothing in the language from which we can infer origin, and the pictures from which hieroglyphics are derived are those of animals and objects proper to the nile valley, and not like those of the accadians and chinese, such as point to a prehistoric nomad existence on elevated plains. the only positive fact tending to confirm the existence of two races in egypt, one rude and aboriginal, the other of high type, is the difference of type shown by the early portraits and the discovery by mr. flinders petrie, in the very old cemetery of meydoon, of two distinct modes of interment, one of the ordinary mummy extended at full length, the other in a crouching attitude as is common in neolithic graves. for any further inquiries as to the origin and antiquity of egyptian civilization, we have to fall back on the state of religion, science, literature, and art, which we find prevailing in the earliest records which have come down to us, and which i will proceed to examine in subsequent chapters. but before doing so, i will endeavour to exhaust the field of positive history, and inquire how far the annals of other ancient nations contradict or confirm the date of about years b.c., which has been shown to be approximately that of the accession of menes. chapter ii. chaldÆa. chronology--berosus--his dates mythical--dates in genesis--synchronisms with egypt and assyria--monuments--cuneiform inscriptions--how deciphered--behistan inscription--grotefend and rawlinson--layard--library of koyunjik--how preserved--accadian translations and grammars--historical dates--elamite conquest--commencement of modern history--ur-ea and dungi--nabonidus--sargon i., b.c.--ur of the chaldees--sharrukin's cylinder--his library--his son naram-sin--semites and accadians--accadians and chinese--period before sargon i.--patesi--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--gud-ea, to b.c.--advance of delta--astronomical records--chaldæa and egypt give similar results--historic period or years--and no trace of a beginning. chaldæan chronology has within the last few years been brought into the domain of history, and carried back to a date almost, if not quite, as remote as that of egypt. and this has been effected by a process identical in the two cases, the decipherment of an unknown language in inscriptions on ancient monuments. until this discovery the little that was known of the early history of chaldæa was derived almost entirely from two sources: the bible, and the fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of berosus. berosus was a learned priest of babylon, who lived about b.c., shortly after the conquest of alexander, and wrote in greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples, and from the oldest traditions. he began with a cosmogony, fragments of which only are preserved, from which little could be inferred, except that it bore some general resemblance to that of genesis, until the complete chaldæan cosmogony was deciphered by mr. george smith from tablets in the british museum. then followed a mythical period of the reigns of ten gods or demi-gods, reigning for , years, in the middle of which period the divine fish-man, ea-han or oannes, was said to have come up out of the persian gulf, and taught mankind letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of civilization; , years after oannes, under xisuthros (the greek translation of hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a deluge is said to have occurred; which is described in terms so similar to the narrative of noah's deluge in genesis, as to leave no doubt that they are different versions of the same legend. prior to the appearance of oannes, berosus relates, "that chaldæa had been colonized by a mixed multitude of men of foreign race, who lived without order like animals," thus carrying back the existence of mankind in large numbers, to some date anterior to , years before the deluge. there is also a legend resembling that of the tower of babel and the confusion of languages, recorded in another fragment of berosus. these accounts are all so obviously mythical that no historical value can be attached to them, and they have only been preserved because early christian writers saw in them some sort of distorted confirmation of the corresponding narratives in the old testament. for anything like historical dates therefore the bible remained the principal authority, until the recent discoveries made from the monuments of chaldæa and assyria. this authority does not carry us very far back. the first event which can advance any claim to be considered as historical, is that of the migration of terah from ur of the chaldees to haran, and the further migration of his son abraham from haran to palestine. this is said to have taken place in the ninth generation after noah, about years after the deluge, and it presupposes the existence of a dense population and a number of large cities both in upper and lower mesopotamia. it mentions also an event, apparently historical, as occurring in abraham's time, viz. a campaign by chedorlaomer, king of elam, with four allies, one of whom is a king of shinar, against five petty kings in southern syria. chedorlaomer has been identified from inscriptions with khuder-lagomer, one of the kings of the elamite dynasty, who conquered chaldæa about b.c., and were expelled before b.c. a long interval then occurs during which the scattered notices in the bible relate mainly to the intercourse of the hebrews with egypt, with the races of canaan, with the philistines, with the phoenicians of tyre, and with the syrians of damascus. mesopotamia first appears after the rise of the assyrian empire had united nearly the whole of western asia under the warlike kings who reigned at nineveh, and when palestine had become the battle-field between them and the declining power of egypt, which under the eighteenth and nineteenth egyptian dynasties had extended to the euphrates. the capture of jerusalem in the reign of rehoboam by shishak, the first king of the twenty-second egyptian dynasty, affords the first certain synchronism between sacred and profane history. the date may be fixed within a few years at b.c. assyria first appears on the scene two hundred years later in the reign of menahem king of israel, when pul, better known as tiglath-pileser ii., came against the land, and exacted a large ransom from menahem, whom he confirmed as a tributary vassal. from this time forward the succession of assyrian kings is recorded more or less accurately in the bible. tiglath-pileser accepted vassalage and a large tribute from ahaz to come to his assistance against rezin king of syria, and pekah king of israel, who were besieging jerusalem, and tiglath-pileser came to his aid and captured and sacked damascus. shalmaneser came up against hoshea king of judah, who submitted, but was deposed for intriguing with egypt, and shalmaneser then took samaria and carried the ten tribes of israel away into assyria, placing them in the cities of the medes. sennacherib, in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, took all the fenced cities of judah, and his general, rab-shakeh, besieged jerusalem, which was saved by the repulse of the main army under the king when marching to invade egypt. the murder of sennacherib by his two sons and the succession of esarhaddon are next mentioned. nineveh then disappears from the scene, and the great babylonian conqueror, nebuchadnezzar, puts an end to the kingdom of judæa, by taking jerusalem and carrying the people captive to babylon. this historical retrospect carries us back a very short distance, and little can be gathered in the way of accurate chronology from the few vague references prior to this date. so stood the question until the date of chaldæan history and civilization was unexpectedly carried back at least years by the discovery of its monuments. when the first assyrian sculptures were found by botta and layard not fifty years ago in the mounds of rubbish which covered the ruins of nineveh, and brought home to europe, it was seen that they were covered with inscriptions in an unknown character. it was called the cuneiform, because it was made up of combinations of a single sign, resembling a thin wedge or arrow-head. this sign was made in three fundamental ways, _i.e._ either horizontal [symbol], vertical [symbol], or angular [symbol], and all the characters were made up of combinations of these primary forms, which were obviously produced by impressing a style with a triangular head on moist clay. they resembled, in fact, very much the strokes and dashes used in spelling out the words conveyed by the electric telegraph, in which letters are formed by oscillations of the needle. [illustration} this mode of writing had apparently been developed from picture-writing, for several, of the groups of characters bore an unmistakable resemblance to natural objects. in the very oldest inscriptions which have been discovered the writing, is hardly yet cuneiform, and the primitive pictorial character of the signs is apparent. but the bulk of the cuneiform inscriptions not being pictorial, there could be little doubt that they were phonetic, or represented sounds. the question was, what sounds these characters signified, and when translated into sounds, what words and what language did the groups of signs represent? the first clue to these questions was, as in the parallel case of egypt, afforded by a trilingual inscription. the kings of the persian empire reigned over subjects of various races and languages. the three principal were the persians, an aryan race who spoke an inflectional language which has been preserved in old persian and zend; semites, who spoke aramaic, a language closely allied to hebrew; and descendants of the older accadian races, whose language was turanian, or agglutinative. it is almost the same at the present day in the same region, where edicts or inscriptions, to be readily intelligible to all classes of subjects, would require to be made in persian, arabic, and turkish. accordingly, the pompous inscriptions and royal edicts of these ancient monarchs were frequently made in the three languages, and specimens of these were brought to europe. the difficulty of deciphering them was, however, great, for the inscriptions were all written, though in different languages, in the same cuneiform characters, so that the aid afforded in the case of the rosetta stone by a greek translation of the hieroglyphic inscription was not forthcoming. the ingenuity of a german scholar, grotefend, furnished the first clue by discovering that certain groups of signs represented the names of known persian kings, and thus identifying the component signs in the persian inscription as letters of an alphabet. a few years later sir henry rawlinson copied, and succeeded in deciphering, a famous inscription engraved by the great persian monarch, darius the first, high up in the face of a precipice forming the wall of a narrow defile at behistan, and giving an historical record of the exploits of his reign. the clue thus afforded was rapidly followed up by a host of scholars, among whom the names of rawlinson, burnouf, lassen, and oppert were most conspicuous, and before long the text of inscriptions in persian and semitic could be read with great certainty. the task was one which required a vast amount of patience and ingenuity, for the cuneiform writing turned out to be one of great complexity, though phonetic in the main, the characters did not always represent the simple elements of sounds, or letters of an alphabet, but frequently syllables containing one or more consonants united by vowels, and a considerable number were ideographic or conventional representations of ideas, like our numerals , , , which have no relation to spoken sounds. thus the simple vertical wedge [symbol] represented "man," and was prefixed to proper names of kings so as to show that the signs which followed denoted the name of a man; the sign [symbol] denoted country, and so on. the difficulties were, however, surmounted, and inscriptions in the two known languages could be read with considerable certainty. [illustration] the third language, however, remained unknown until the finishing stroke to its decipherment was given by the discovery by layard under the great mound of koyunjik near mosul on the tigris, the site of the ancient nineveh, of the royal palace of asshurbanipal, or sardanapalus, the grandson of sennacherib, and one of the greatest assyrian monarchs, who lived about b.c. this palace contained a royal library like that of alexandria or the british museum, the contents of which had been carefully collected from the oldest records of previous libraries and temples, and almost miraculously preserved. the secret of the preservation of these assyrian and chaldæan remains, is that the district contains no stone, and all the great buildings were constructed mainly of sun-dried bricks, and built on mounds or platforms of the same material to raise them above the alluvial plain. these, when the cities were deserted, crumbled rapidly under the action of the air and rains, which are torrential at certain seasons, into shapeless rubbish heaps of fine dry dust and sand, under which everything of more durable material was securely buried. so rapid was the process, that when xenophon on the famous retreat of the ten thousand traversed the site of nineveh only two hundred years after its destruction, he found nothing but the ruins of a deserted city, the very name and memory of which had been lost. as regards the contents of the library the explanation of their perfect preservation is equally simple. the books were written, not on perishable paper or parchment, but on cylinders of clay. it is evident that the cuneiform characters were exceedingly well adapted for this description of writing, and probably originated from the nature of the material. a fine tenacious clay cost nothing, was readily moulded into cylinders, and when slightly moist was easily engraved by a tool or style stamping on it those wedge-like characters, so that when hardened by a slow fire the book was practically indestructible. so much so, indeed, that though the palace, including the library with its shelves and upper stories, had all fallen to the ground, and the book-cylinders lay scattered on the floor, they were mostly in a state of perfect preservation. other similar finds have been made since, notably one of another great library of the priestly college at erech, founded or enlarged as far back as b.c. by sargon ii. among the books thus preserved there are fortunately translations of old accadian works into the more modern aramaic or assyrian, either interlined or in parallel columns, and, also grammars and dictionaries of the old language to assist in its study. it appears that as far back as years b.c. this old language had already become obsolete, and was preserved as latin or vedic sanscrit are at the present day, as the venerable language for religious uses, in which the earliest sacred books, historical annals, and astrological and magical formulas had been written. with these aids this ancient accadian language can now be read with almost as much certainty as egyptian hieroglyphics, and the records written in it are accumulating rapidly with every fresh exploration. some idea of the wealth of the materials already found may be formed from the fact that the number of tablets in the different museums of europe from the nineveh library alone exceeds , . they present to us a most interesting picture of the religion, literature, laws, and social life of a period long antecedent to that commonly assigned for the destruction of the world by noah's deluge, or even to that of the creation of adam. to some of these we shall have occasion subsequently to refer, but for the present i confine myself to the immediate object in view, that of verifying the earliest historical dates. the first certain date is fixed by the annals of the assyrian king asshurbanipal, grandson of sennacherib, who conquered elam and destroyed its capital, susa, in the year b.c. the king says that he took away all the statues from the great temple of susa, and among others, one of the chaldæan goddess nana, which had been carried away from her own temple in the city of erech, by a king of elam who conquered the land of accad years before. this conquest, and the accession of an elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly years, is confirmed from a variety of other sources, and its date is thus fixed, beyond the possibility of a doubt, at _b.c._ a king of this dynasty, khudur-lagamar, synchronizes with abraham, assuming abraham and the narrative in the old testament respecting his defeat of that monarch to be historical. this elamite conquest of chaldæa is a memorable historical era, for it inaugurates the period of great wars and of the rise and fall of empires, which play such a conspicuous part in the subsequent annals of nations. elam was a small province between the kurdish mountains and the tigris, extending to the persian gulf, and its capital, susa, was an ancient and famous city; which afterwards became one of the principal seats of the persian monarchs. the elamites were originally a turanian race like the accads, and spoke a language which was a dialect of accadian, but, as in chaldæa and assyria, the kings and aristocracy appear to have been semites from an early period. it was apparently an organized and civilized state, and the conquest was not a passing irruption of barbarians, but the result of a campaign by regular troops, who founded a dynasty which lasted for more than years. it evidently disturbed the equilibrium of western asia, and led to a succession of wars. the invasion of egypt by the hyksos followed closely on it. then came the reaction which drove the elamites from chaldæa and the hyksos from egypt. then the great wars of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, which carried the arms of ahmes and thotmes to the euphrates and black sea, and established for a time the supremacy of egypt over western asia. then the rise of the hittite empire, which extended over asia minor, and contended on equal terms with ramses ii. in syria. then the rise of the assyrian empire, which crushed the hittites and all surrounding nations, and twice conquered and overran egypt. finally, the rise of the medes, the fall of nineveh, the short supremacy of babylon, and the establishment of the great persian empire. from the persian we pass to the greek, and then to the roman empire, and find ourselves in full modern history. it may be fairly said, therefore, that modern history, with its series of great wars and revolutions, commences with this record of the elamite conquest of chaldæa in b.c. the next tolerably certain date is that of ur-ea, and his son dungi, two kings of the old accadian race, who reigned at ur over the united kingdoms of sumir and accad. they were great builders and restorers of temples, and have left numerous traces of their existence in the monuments both at ur, and at larsam, sirgalla, erech, and other ancient cities. among other relics of these kings there is in the british museum the signet-cylinder of ur-ea himself, on which is engraved the moon-god, the patron deity of ur, with the king and priests worshipping him. the date of ur-ea is ascertained as follows--nabonidus, the last king of babylon, b.c., was a great restorer of the old temples, and, as professor sayce says, "a zealous antiquarian who busied himself much with the disinterment of the memorial cylinders which their founders and restorers had buried beneath their foundations." the results of his discoveries he recorded on special cylinders for the information of posterity, which have fortunately been preserved. among others he restored the sun-temple at larsam, in which he found intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, a cylinder of king hummurabi or khammuragas, stating that the temple was commenced by ur-ea and finished by his son dungi, years before his time. hummurabi was a well-known historical king who expelled the elamites, and made babylon for the first time the capital of chaldæa, about b.c. the date of ur-ea cannot therefore be far from b.c. the same fortunate circumstance of the habit, by kings who built or restored famous temples, of laying the foundation-stone, such as our royal personages often do at the present day, and depositing under it, in a secure chamber, a cylinder recording the fact, has given us a still more ancient date, that of sharrukin or sargon i. of agade. the same nabonidus repaired the great sun-temple of sippar, and he says "that having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, the sun-god suffered him to behold the foundation cylinder of naram-sin, son of sharrukin or (sargon i.), which for three thousand and two hundred years none of the kings who lived before him had seen." this gives b.c. as the date of naram-sin, or, allowing for the long reign of sargon i., about b.c. as the date of that monarch. this discovery revolutionized the accepted ideas of chaldæan chronology, and carried it back at one stroke years before the date of ur-ea, making it contemporary with the fourth egyptian dynasty who built the great pyramids. the evidence is not so conclusive as in the case of egypt, where the lists of manetho give us the whole series of successive kings and dynasties, a great majority of which are confirmed by contemporary records and monuments. the date of sargon i. rests mainly on the authority of nabonidus, who lived more than years later, and may have been mistaken, but he was in the best position to consult the oldest records, and had apparently no motive to make a wilful mis-statement. moreover, other documents have been found in different places confirming the statement on the cylinder of nabonidus, and the opinion of the best and latest authorities has come round to accept the date of about b.c. as authentic. professor sayce, in his hibbert lecture in , gives a detailed account of the evidence which had overcome his original scepticism, and forced him to admit the accuracy of this very distant date. since the discovery of the cylinder of nabonidus, several tablets have been found and deciphered, containing lists of kings and dynasties of the same character as the egyptian lists of manetho. one tablet of the kings who reigned at babylon takes us back, reign by reign, to about b.c. other tablets, though incomplete, give the names of at least sixty kings which are not found in this record of the babylonian era, and who presumedly reigned during the interval of about years between khammuragas and sargon i. the names are mostly accadian, and if they did not reign during this interval they must have preceded the foundation of a semite dynasty by sargon i., and thus extend the date of chaldæan history still further back. the probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in egypt as long ago as b.c., and there is no apparent reason why it should not have existed in the valleys of the tigris and euphrates as soon as in that of the nile. boscawen, in a paper read at the victoria institute in , says that inscriptions found at larsa, a neighbouring city to ur of the chaldees, show that from as early a period as _b.c._ a semitic population existed in the latter city, speaking a language akin to hebrew, carrying on trade and commerce, and with a religion which, although not monotheist, had at the head of its pantheon a supreme god, ilu or el, from whose name that of elohim and allah has been inherited as the name of god by the hebrews and arabs. the latest discoveries all point to the earliest dates, and some authorities think that genuine traces of the earliest accadian civilization can be found as far back as b.c. there can be no doubt, moreover, that this sharrukin or sargon i. is a perfect historical personage. a statue of him has been found at agade or accad, and also his cylinder with an inscription on it giving his name and exploits. it begins, "sharrukin the mighty king am i," and goes on to say, "that he knew not his father, but his mother was a royal princess, who to conceal his birth placed him in a basket of rushes closed with bitumen, and cast him into the river, from which he was saved by akki the water-carrier, who brought him up as his own child." it is singular how the same or a very similar story is told of moses, cyrus, and other heroes of antiquity. it is probable from this that he was a military adventurer who rose to the throne; but there can be no doubt that he was a great monarch, who united the two provinces of shumir and accad, or of lower and upper mesopotamia, into one kingdom, as menes did the upper and lower egypts, and extended his rule over some of the adjoining countries. he says "that he had reigned for forty-five years, and governed the black-headed (accadian) race. in multitudes of bronze chariots i rode over rugged lands. i governed the upper countries. three times to the coast of the sea i advanced." if there is any truth in this inscription it would be very interesting as showing the existence in western asia of nations to be conquered in great campaigns, with a force of horse-chariots, at this remote period, years earlier than the campaigns of ahmes and thotmes recorded in the egyptian monuments of the eighteenth dynasty. [illustration: cylinder seal of sargon i., from agade. (hommel, "gesch. babyloniens u. assyriens.")] the reality of these campaigns is moreover confirmed by inscriptions and images of this sargon having been found in cyprus and on the opposite coast of syria, and by a babylonian cylinder of his son naram-sin, found by cesnola in the cyprian temple of kurion. in another direction he and his son carried their arms into the peninsula of sinai, attracted doubtless by the copper and turquoise mines of wady maghera, which were worked by the egyptians under the third dynasty. sargon i. is also known to have been a great patron of literature, and to have founded the library of agade, which was long one of the most famous in babylonia. a work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, which was so well known in the time of berosus as to be translated by him into greek, was also compiled for him. another king of the same name, known as sargon ii., who reigned about b.c., either founded or enlarged the library of the priestly college at erech, which was one of the oldest and most famous cities of lower chaldæa, and known as the "city of books." it was also considered to be a sacred city, and its necropolis extends over a great part of the adjoining desert, and contains innumerable tombs and graves ranging over all periods of chaldæan and assyrian history, up to an unknown antiquity. the exact historical date of sargon i. may be a little uncertain; but whatever its antiquity may be, it is evident that it is already far removed from the beginnings of chaldæan civilization. sargon ii. is perfectly historical, and his library and the state of the arts and literature in his reign prove this conclusively. he states in his tablets that kings had reigned before him, and in such a literary age he could hardly have made such a statement without some foundation. if anything like this number of kings had reigned before b.c., the date of sargon ii.'s chaldæan chronology would have to be extended to a date preceding that of egypt. moreover, sargon was a semite, who founded a powerful monarchy over a mixed population, consisting mainly of a primitive accadian race, who had already built large cities and famous temples, written sacred books, and made considerable progress in literature, science, agriculture, and industrial arts. this primitive race was neither semitic nor aryan, but turanian. they spoke an agglutinative language, and resembled the chinese very much both in physical type and in character. they were a short, thick-set people, with yellow skins, coarse black hair, and, judging from the ancient statues recently discovered, of decidedly tartar or mongolian features. they were, like the chinese, a peaceable, patient, and industrious people, addicted to agriculture, and specially skilled in irrigation. they were educated and literary, but very superstitious in regard to ghosts, omens, and evil spirits. this resemblance to the chinese has been remarkably confirmed by the discovery made within the last few years, that the accadian and chinese languages are closely allied, and that a great many words are identical. the early prehistoric and astronomical legends were almost similar, and in some instances, as in the division of the year, the names and order of the planets, and the number and duration of the fabulous reigns of gods, so identical as to leave no doubt of their having had a common origin. but as the chinese annals do not extend farther back than about b.c., the priority of invention must be assigned to the accadians. this turanian population had been long settled in mesopotamia before the accession of sargon i., and before the supremacy of the semitic races began to assert itself. though called accadian, which is said to mean "highlanders," their principal seat was in shumir or lower mesopotamia, in the alluvial delta formed in the course of ages by the euphrates, tigris, and other rivers which flow into the persian gulf; and their traditions point to their civilization having come from the shores of this gulf, and having gradually spread northwards. their most ancient cities and temples were in the lower province of shumir, and the bulk of the population continued for ages to be turanian, while in accad or upper mesopotamia, where the land rises from the alluvial plain up to the mountains of kurdistan and armenia, the semitic element preponderated from an early period, though the civilization and religion long remained those of shumir or chaldæa proper. when the semite sargon i. founded the united monarchy, the capital of which was agade in the upper province, he made no change in the established state of things, maintained the old temples, and built new ones to the same gods. before his reign we have, as in the parallel case of egypt before menes, little definite information from monuments or historical records. we only know that the country was divided into a number of small states, each grouped about a city with a temple dedicated to some god; as eridhu, the sanctuary of ea, one of the trinity of supreme gods; larsam, with its temple of the sun; ur, the city of the moon-god; sirgalla, with another famous temple. these small states were ruled by _patesi_, or priest-kings, a term corresponding to the horsheshu of egypt; and a fortunate discovery by m. de sarzec in at tell-loh, the site of the ancient sirgalla, has given us valuable information respecting its _patesi_. to the surprise of the scientific world, with whom it had been a settled belief that no statues were ever found in assyrian art, m. de sarzec discovered and brought home nine large statues of diorite, a very hard black basalt of the same material as that of the statue of chephren, the builder of the second pyramid, and in the same sitting attitude. the heads had been broken off, but one head was discovered which was of unmistakably turanian type, beardless, shaved, and with a turban for head-dress. with these statues a number of small works of art were found, representing men and animals of a highly artistic design and exquisite finish, and also several cylinders. both these and the backs of the statues are covered with cuneiform inscriptions in the old accadian characters, which furnish valuable historical information. the name of one of the _patesi_ whose statues were found was gud-ea, and his date is computed by some of the best authorities at from to b.c., probably earlier, and certainly not later than b.c. this makes the _patesi_ of sirgalla contemporary with the earliest egyptian kings, or even earlier, and it shows a state of the arts and civilization then prevailing in chaldæa very similar to those of the fourth dynasty in egypt, and in both cases as advanced as those of or years later date. [illustration: head of ancient chaldÆan. from tell-loh (sirgalla). sarzec collection. (perrot and chipiez.)] before such a temple as that of sirgalla could have been built and such statues and works of art made, there must have been older and smaller temples and ruder works, just as in egypt the brick pyramids of sakkarah and the oldest temples of heliopolis and denderah preceded the great pyramids of gizeh, the temple of pthah at memphis, and the diorite statues, wooden statuettes, and other finished works of art of the fourth dynasty. [illustration: statue of gud-ea, with inscription; from tell-loh (sirburla or sirgalla) sarzec collection. (hommel.)] it is important to remark that in those earliest monuments both the language and art are primitive accadian, with no trace of semitic influences, which must have long prevailed before sargon i. could have established a semitic dynasty over an united population of accads and semites living together on friendly terms. the normal semites must have settled gradually in chaldæa, and adopted to a great extent the higher civilization of the accadians, much as the tartars in later times did that of the chinese. it is remarkable also that this pre-semitic accadian people must have had extensive intercourse with foreign regions, for the diorite of which the statues of sirgalla are formed is exactly similar to that of the statue of the egyptian chephren, and in both cases is only found in the peninsula of sinai. in fact, an inscription on one of the statues tells us that the stone was brought from the land of magan, which was the accadian name for that peninsula. this implies a trade by sea, between eridhu, the sea-port of chaldæa in early times, and the red sea, as such blocks of diorite could hardly have been transported such a distance over such mountains and deserts by land; and this is confirmed by references in old geographical tablets to magan as the land of bronze from the copper mines of wady-maghera, and to "ships of magan" trading from eridhu. in any case, it is certain that a very long period of purely accadian civilization must have existed prior to the introduction of semitic influences, and long before the foundation of a semitic dynasty by sargon i. with these facts it will no longer seem surprising that some high authorities assign as early a date as b.c. for the dawn of chaldæan civilization, and consider that it may be quite as old or even older than that of egypt. the great antiquity assigned to these dates from books and monuments is confirmed by other deductions. the city of eridhu, which was generally considered to be the oldest in chaldæa, and was the sanctuary of the principal god, eâ, appears to have been a sea-port in those early days, situated where the euphrates flowed into the persian gulf. the ruins now stand far inland, and sayce computes that about years must have elapsed since the sea reached up to them. astronomy affords a still more definite confirmation. the earliest records and traditions show that before the commencement of any historic period the year had been divided into twelve months, the course of the sun mapped out among the stars, and a zodiac established of the twelve constellations, which has continued in use to the present day. the year began with the vernal equinox, and the first month was named after the "propitious bull," whose figure constantly appears on the monuments as opening the year. the sun, therefore, was in taurus at the vernal equinox when this calendar was formed, which could only be after long centuries of astronomical observation; but it has been in aries since about b.c., and first entered in taurus about b.c. records of eclipses were also kept in the time of sargon i., which imply a long preceding period of accurate observation; and the ziggurat, or temple observatory, built up in successive stages above the alluvial plain, which gave rise to the legend of the tower of babel, is found in connection with the earliest temples. the diorite statues also and engraved gems found at sirgalla testify to a thorough knowledge of the arts of metallurgy at this remote period, and to a commercial intercourse with foreign countries from which the copper and tin must have been derived for making bronze tools capable of cutting such hard materials. the existence of such a commercial intercourse in remote times is confirmed by the example of egypt, where bronze implements must have been in use long before the date of menes; and although copper might have been obtained from sinai or cyprus, tin or bronze must have been imported from distant foreign countries alike in egypt and in chaldæa. chaldæan chronology therefore leads to almost exactly the same results as that of egypt. in each case we have a standard or measuring-rod of authentic historical record, of certainly not less than , and more probably years from the present time; and in each case we find ourselves at this remote date, in presence, not of rude beginnings, but of a civilization already ancient and far advanced. we have populous cities, celebrated temples, an organized priesthood, an advanced state of agriculture and of the industrial and fine arts; writing and books so long known that their origin is lost in myth; religions in which advanced philosophical and moral ideas are already developed; astronomical systems which imply a long course of accurate observations. how long this prehistoric age may have lasted, and how many centuries it may have taken to develop such a civilization, from the primitive beginnings of neolithic and palæolithic origins, is a matter of conjecture. bunsen thinks it may have taken , years, but there are no dates from which we can infer the time that may be required for civilization to grow up by spontaneous evolution, among nations where it is not aided by contact with more advanced civilizations from without. all we can infer is, that it must have required an immense time, probably much longer than that embraced by the subsequent period of historical record. and we can say with certainty that during the whole of this historical period of or years there has been no change in the established order of nature. the earth has revolved round its axis and round the sun, the moon and planets have pursued their courses, the duration of human life has not varied, and there have been no destructions and renovations of life or other traces of miraculous interference. and more than this, we can affirm with absolute certainty that years have not been enough to alter in any perceptible degree the existing physical types of the different races of men and animals, or the primary linguistic types of their forms of speech. the negro, the turanian, the semite, and the aryan, all stand out as clearly distinguished in the paintings on egyptian monuments as they do at the present day; and the agglutinative languages are as distinct from the inflectional, and the semite from the aryan forms of inflections, in the old chaldæan cylinders as they are in the nineteenth century. chapter iii. other historical records. _china_--oldest existing civilization--but records much later than those of egypt and chaldæa--language and traditions accadian--communication how effected. _elam_--very early civilization--susa, an old city in first chaldæan records--conquered chaldæa in b.c.--conquered by assyrians b.c.--statue of nana--cyrus an elamite king--his cylinder--teaches untrustworthiness of legendary history. _phoenicia_--great influence on western civilization--but date comparatively late--traditions of origin--first distinct mention in egyptian monuments b.c.--great movements of maritime nations--invasions of egypt by sea and land, under menepthah, b.c., and ramses iii., b.c.--lists of nations--show advanced civilization and intercourse--but nothing beyond or b.c. _hittites_--great empire in asia minor and syria--turanian race--origin cappadocia--great wars with egypt--battle of kadesh--treaty with ramses ii.--power rapidly declined--but only finally destroyed b.c. by sargon ii.--capital carchemish--great commercial emporium--hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and monuments--only recently and partially deciphered--results. _arabia_--recent discoveries--inscriptions--sabæa--minæans--thirty-two kings known--ancient commerce and trade-routes--incense and spices--literature--old traditions--oannes--punt--seat of semites--arabian alphabet--older than phoenician--- bearing on old testament histories. _troy and mycenæ_--dr. schliemann's excavations--hissarlik--buried fortifications, palaces, and treasures of ancient troy--mycenæ and tiryns--proof of civilization and commerce--tombs--absence of inscriptions and religious symbols--date of mycenæan civilization--school of art--pictures on vases--type of race. china. the first country to which we might naturally look for independent annals approaching in antiquity those of egypt and chaldæa is china. chinese civilization is in one respect the oldest in the world; that is, it is the one which has come down to the present day from a remote antiquity with the fewest changes. what china is to-day it was more than years ago; a populous empire with a peaceful and industrial population devoted to agriculture and skilled in the arts of irrigation; a literary people acquainted with reading and writing; orderly and obedient, organized under an emperor and official hierarchy; paying divine honours to ancestors, and a religious veneration to the moral and ceremonial precepts of sages and philosophers. addicted to childish superstitions, and yet eminently prosaic, practical, and utilitarian. unlike other nations they have no traditions attributing the origin of arts and sciences to foreign importation, as in the chaldæan legend of oannes, or, as in egypt, to native gods; that is, to development on the soil from an unknown antiquity. the chinese annals begin with human emperors, who are only divine in the sense of being wise and virtuous ancestors, and who are represented as uttering long discourses on the whole duty of man, in a high moral and philosophical tone. but these annals do not profess to go back further than to about b.c., or to a period at least and probably years later than the commencement of historical annals, confirmed by monuments in egypt and chaldæa, and any traditions prior to this period are of the vaguest and most shadowy descriptions. we only know with certainty that prior to chinese civilization there was an aboriginal, semi-savage race, the miou-tse, remnants of whom are still to be found in the mountainous western provinces; and it had been conjectured from the form of the hieroglyphics to which the chinese written characters can be traced back, that they were invented by a pastoral people who roamed with flocks and herds over the steppes of central asia. thus the sheep plays a very prominent part, the idea of "beauty" being conveyed by an ideogram meaning "a large sheep"; that of "right" or "property" by one which means "my sheep," and so on in many other instances. there is a tradition also of a clan of families who came down from the west and descended the valley of the yang-tse-kiang, expelling the aboriginal miou-tse. but for any real information as to chinese origins we are indebted to recent discoveries of accadian records. it has been proved by lacouperie, bell, and other experts in the oldest forms of the chinese and accadian languages, that they are not only closely allied, as both forming part of the ugrian or turkish branch of the turanian family, but almost identical. thus, by following the well-known philological law by which an initial 'g' is often softened in course of time into a 'y,' it was found that by writing 'g' for 'y' in many chinese words beginning with the latter letter, pure accadian words were obtained. thus "to speak" is in accadian _gu_, in the mandarin chinese _yu_, and in the old form of chinese spoken in japan _go_; night is _ye_ in chinese, _ge_ in accadian. the very close connection between accadian and chinese civilization is still more conclusively shown by the identity in many matters which could not have been invented independently. thus the prehistoric period of chaldæa before the deluge is divided, according to berosus and the tablets, into ten periods of ten kings, whose reigns lasted for sari or , years, a myth which is purely astronomical. the early chinese writers had a myth of precisely the same number of ten kings and the same period of , years for their united reigns. chinese astronomy also, said by their annals to have been invented by the emperor yao about b.c., was an almost exact counterpart of that of the earliest accadian records. they recognized the same planets, and gave them names with the same meanings; they divided the year into the chaldæan period of twelve months of thirty days each, making the new year begin, as in chaldæa, in the third month after the winter solstice; and counting the calendar for the surplus days by the same cycle of intercalary days. the oldest chinese dictionaries give names of the months, which had become obsolete, since the usage of mentioning the months by their numbers, as second, third, and fourth months, had become general, and the meaning of which had been lost. it turns out that several of these names correspond with those of the accadian calendar. such coincidences as these cannot be accidental, and it is obvious that one nation must have derived its civilization from the other, or both from a common source. there can be little doubt in this case that chaldæa taught china, for its astronomy, knowledge of the arts, and general culture are proved by its records to have existed at least , and probably years b.c., and then to be attributed to mythical gods and to a fabulous antiquity; while in china they are said to have been taught ready-made by human emperors, at a date from to years later. the inference is irresistible that somehow the elements of accadian civilization must have been imported into china from chaldæa, at what is a comparatively modern date in the history of the latter country. the only approach to a clue to this date is that the great chinese historian szema-tsien says that the first of their emperors was nai-kwangti, who built an observatory, and by the aid of astronomy "ruled the varied year." the name is singularly like that of kuder-na-hangti, who was the elamite king who conquered babylonia about b.c. it is difficult to see how such an intercourse between chaldæa and china could have been established across such an enormous intervening distance of mountains and deserts, or by such a long sea-voyage; but it is still more difficult to conceive how not only language, physical characteristics, and civilization should have been so similar, but myths and calendars should have been almost _verbatim_ the same in the two countries, unless a communication really existed between them. nor will the theory of a common origin apply, for it is impossible to suppose that any common ancestors of the chinese and accadians could have attained to such a knowledge of astronomy, and of the industrial arts and agriculture, while wandering as nomad shepherds over the steppes of central asia. we must remember also the fact that caravans actually do travel, and have travelled for time immemorial, over enormous distances, across the steppes of central and northern asia, and that within quite recent historical times, a whole nation of calmucks migrated under every conceivable difficulty from hostile tribes, pursuing armies, and the extremes of winter cold and summer heat, first from china to the volga, and then back again from the volga to china. nor must we overlook the fact that ur and eridhu were great sea-ports at a very remote period, and that the facilities for pushing their commerce far to the east were great, owing to the regular monsoons, and the configuration of the coast. we must be content, therefore, to take the facts as we find them, and admit that china gives us no aid in carrying back authentic history for anything like the time for which we have satisfactory evidence from the monuments and records of egypt and chaldæa. elam. as regards other nations of antiquity, their own historical records are either altogether wanting or comparatively recent, and our only authentic information respecting them in very early times is derived from egyptian or babylonian monuments. the most important of them is elam, which was evidently a civilized kingdom at a very remote period, contemporary probably with the earliest accadian civilization, and which continued to play a leading part in history down to the recent date of cyrus. elam was a small district between the zagros mountains and the tigris, extending to the south along the eastern shore of the persian gulf to the arabian sea. its capital was shushan or susa, an ancient and renowned city, the name of which survives in the persian province of shusistan, as that of persia proper does in the mountainous district next to the east of elam, known as farsistan. the original population was turanian, speaking an agglutinative language, akin to though not identical with accadian, and its religion and civilization were apparently the same, or closely similar. as in chaldæa and assyria, a semitic element seems to have intruded on the turanian at an early date, and to have become the ruling race, while much later the aryan persians to some extent superseded the semites. the name "elam" is said to have the same significance as "accad," both meaning "highland," and indicating that both races must have had a common origin in the mountains and steppes of central asia. the native name was anshad, and susa was "the city of anshad." elam was always considered an ancient land and susa an ancient city, by the accadians, and there is every reason to believe that elamite civilization must have been at least as old as accadian. this much is certain, that as far back as b.c., elam was a sufficiently organized and powerful state to conquer the larger and more populous country of mesopotamia, and found an elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly years, and carried on campaigns in districts as far distant as southern syria and the dead sea. the dynasty was subverted and the elamites driven back within their own frontiers, but there they retained their independence, and took a leading part in all the wars waged by chaldæa and other surrounding nations against the rising power of the warlike assyrian kings of nineveh. the statue of the goddess nana, which had been taken by the elamite conquerors from erech in b.c., remained in the temple at susa for years, until the city was at length taken by one of the latest assyrian kings, asshurbanipal, in the year b.c. we have already pointed out the great historical importance of the elamite conquest of mesopotamia in _b.c._ as inaugurating the era of great wars between civilized states, and probably giving the impulse to western asia, which hurled the hyksos on egypt, and by its reaction first brought the egyptians to nineveh, and then the assyrians to memphis. a still more important movement at the very close of what may be called ancient history, originated from elam. to the surprise of all students of history, it has been proved that the account we have received from herodotus and other greek sources, of the great cyrus, is to a great extent fabulous. a cylinder and tablet of cyrus himself were quite recently discovered by mr. rassam and brought to the british museum, in which he commemorates his conquest of babylon. he describes himself as "cyrus the great king, the king of babylon, the king of sumir and accad, the king of the four zones, the son of kambyses the great king, the king of elam; the grandson of cyrus the great king, the king of elam; the great-grandson of teispes the great king, the king of elam; of the ancient seed-royal, whose rule has been beloved by bel and nebo"; and he goes on to say how by the favour of "merodach the great lord, the god who raises the dead to life, who benefits all men in difficulty and prayer, he had conquered the men of kurdistan and all the barbarians, and also the black-headed race (the accadians), and finally entered babylon in peace and ruled there righteously, favoured by gods and men, and receiving homage and tribute from all the kings who dwelt in the high places of all regions from the upper to the lower sea, including phoenicia." and he concludes with an invocation to all the gods whom he had restored to their proper temples from which they had been taken by nabonidus, "to intercede before bel and nebo to grant me length of days; may they bless my projects with prosperity; and may they say to merodach my lord, that cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and kambyses his son deserve his favour." this is confirmed by a cylinder of a few years earlier date, of nabonidus the last king of babylon, who relates how "cyrus the king of elam, the young servant of merodach," overthrew the medes, there called "mandan" or barbarians, captured their king astyages, and carried the spoil of the royal city ecbatana to the land of elam. how many of our apparently most firmly established historical dates are annihilated by these little clay cylinders! it appears that cyrus was not a persian at all, or an adventurer who raised himself to power by a successful revolt, but the legitimate king of elam, descended from its ancient royal race through an unbroken succession of several generations. he was in fact a later and greater kudur-na-hangti, like the early conqueror of that name who founded the first elamite empire some years earlier. it may be doubtful whether he was even an aryan. at any rate this much is certain, that his religion was babylonian, and that we must dismiss all jewish myths of him as a zoroastrian monotheist, the servant of the most high god, who favoured the chosen race from sympathy with their religion. on his own showing he was as devoted a worshipper of merodach, bel, and nebo, and the whole pantheon of local gods, as nebuchadnezzar or tiglath-pileser.[ ] [ ] sayce, in his _fresh light from ancient monuments_, says, "both in his cylinder and in the annalistic tablet, cyrus, hitherto supposed to be a persian and zoroastrian monotheist, appears as an elamite and a polytheist." it is pretty certain, however, that although descended from elamite kings, these were kings of persian race, who, after the destruction of the old monarchy by asshurbanipal, had established a new dynasty at the city of anshad or susa. cyrus always traces his descent from achæmenes, the chief of the leading persian clan of pasargadæ, and he was buried there in a tomb visited by alexander. but as regards religion, it is clear that cyrus professed himself, and was taken by his contemporaries to be, a devoted servant of merodach, nebo, and the other babylonian deities, to whom he prays for protection and thanks for victories, without any mention of the zoroastrian supreme god, ahura-mazda. zoroastrian monotheism only came in with darius hystaspes, the founder of the purely persian second dynasty, after that of cyrus became extinct with his son cambyses. what a lesson does this teach us as to the untrustworthy nature of the scraps of ancient history which have come down to us from verbal traditions, and are not confirmed by contemporary monuments! herodotus wrote within a few generations of cyrus, and the relations of greece to the persian empire had been close and uninterrupted. his account of its founder cyrus is not in itself improbable, and is full of details which have every appearance of being historical. it is confirmed to a considerable extent by the old testament, and by the universal belief of early classical writers, and yet it is shown to be in essential respects legendary and fabulous, by the testimony of cyrus himself. phoenicia. phoenicia is another country which exercised a great influence on the civilization and commerce of the ancient world, though its history does not go back to the extreme antiquity of the early dynasties of egypt and of chaldæa. the phoenicians spoke a language which was almost identical with that of the hebrews and canaanites, and closely resembled that of assyria and babylonia, after the semite language had superseded that of the ancient accadians. according to their own tradition, they came from the persian gulf, and the island of tyros, now bahrein, in that gulf, is quoted as a proof that it was the original seat of the people who founded tyre. there is no certain date for the period when they migrated from the east, and settled in the narrow strip of land along the coast of the mediterranean between the mountain range of lebanon and the sea, stretching from the promontory of carmel on the south to the gulf of antioch on the north. this little strip of about miles in length, and ten to fifteen in breadth, afforded many advantages for a maritime people, owing to the number of islands close to the coast and small indented bays, which afforded excellent harbours and protection from enemies, which was further secured by the precipitous range of the lebanon sending down steep spurs into the mediterranean, and thus isolating phoenicia from the military route of the great valley of coelo-syria, between the parallel ranges of the lebanon and anti-lebanon, which was taken by armies in the wars between egypt and asia. here the phoenicians founded nine cities, of which byblos or gebal was reputed to be the most ancient, and first sidon and then tyre became the most important. they became fishermen, manufacturers of purple from the dye procured from the shell-fish on their shores, and above all mariners and merchants. before the growth of other naval powers in the mediterranean they had established factories along the coasts of asia minor, greece, and italy, and in all the islands of the egæan and the cyclades. they had founded colonies in cyprus, crete, sicily, and on the mainland of greece at boeotian thebes. they had mined extensively wherever metals were to be found, and, as herodotus states, had overturned a whole mountain at thasos by tunnelling it for gold. they had even extended their settlements into the black sea, along the northern coast of africa, and somewhat later to spain, passed the straits of gibraltar, and finally reached the british isles in pursuit of tin. there can be no question that this phoenician commerce was a principal element in introducing not only their alphabet, but many of the early arts of civilization, among the comparatively rude races of greece, italy, spain, and britain. the date however of this earliest phoenician commerce is very uncertain. all we can discern is that, after having enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the progress of civilization among the mediterranean races enabled them to develop a maritime power of their own, superior to that of phoenicia, and to drive the phoenicians from most of their settlements on the mainland and islands, confining them to a few trading posts and factories, and directing their more important enterprises towards the western mediterranean, where they encountered less formidable rivals. but although phoenicia contributed thus largely to the civilization of the ancient world, its antiquity cannot be compared to that of egypt and chaldæa. the first reference to the country is found in the cylinder of sargon i., b.c. , who marched to the coast of the mediterranean, and crossed over to cyprus, where a cylinder of his son dungi has been found, but there is nothing to show that the district was then occupied by the phoenicians of later times. kopt, or the land of palms, of which phoenicia is the greek translation, is first mentioned in the egyptian annals of the middle empire, and during the rule of the hyksos the mouth of the nile had become so thickly populated by phoenician emigrants as to be known as kopt-ur, caphtor, or greater phoenicia. the priests of the temple of baal melcart, the patron deity of tyre, told herodotus that it had been founded years before his time, or about b.c., and old tyre which stood on the mainland was reputed to be more ancient than the city of new tyre which stood on an island. but this date is negatived by the fact that in an egyptian papyrus in which an envoy from ramses ii. or menepthah to the court of babylon about b.c. records his journey, he mentions byblos, beryta, and sidon as important cities, while tyre is only an insignificant fishing town. the first distinct mention of phoenician cities in egyptian annals is in the enumeration of towns captured by thotmes iii., b.c. , in his victorious campaigns in syria, among which are to be found the names of beyrut and acco, and two centuries later seti i., the father of ramses ii., records the capture of zor or tyre, probably the old city on the mainland. the first authentic information, however, as to the movements of the mediterranean maritime races is afforded by the egyptian annals, which describe two formidable invasions by combined land armies and fleets, which were with difficulty repulsed. the first took place in the reign of menepthah, son of the great ramses ii. of the eighteenth dynasty, about b.c.; the second under ramses iii. of the nineteenth dynasty, about b.c. the first invasion came from the west, and was headed by the king of the lybians, a white race, who have been identified with the numidians and modern kabyles, but were reinforced to a confederacy of nearly all the mediterranean races who sent auxiliary contingents both of sea and land forces. among these appear, along with dardanians, teucri and lycians of asia minor, who were already known as allies of the hittites in their wars against ramses ii., a new class of auxiliaries from greece, italy, and the islands, whose names have been identified by some egyptologists as achæans, tuscans, sicilians, and sardinians. [illustration: sea-fight in the time of ramses iii. (from temple of ammon at medinet-abou.)] the second and more formidable attack came from the east, and was made by a combined fleet and land army, the latter composed of hittites and philistines, with the same auxiliaries from asia minor, and the fleet of the same confederation of maritime states as in the first invasion, except that the achæans have disappeared as leaders of the greek powers, and their place is taken by the danaoi, confirming the greek tradition of the substitution of the dynasty of danaus for that of inachus, on the throne of argos and mycenæ. the phoenicians alone of the maritime states do not seem to have taken any part in these invasions, and, on the contrary, to have lived on terms of friendly vassalage and close commercial relations with egypt ever since the expulsion of the hyksos, and the great conquests of ahmes and thotmes iii. in syria and asia. it is probably during this period that the early commerce and navigation of jebail and sidon took such a wide extension. the details of these two great invasions, which are fully given in the egyptian monuments, together with a picture of the naval combat, in which the invading fleet was finally defeated by ramses iii., after having forced an entrance into the eastern branch of the nile, are extremely interesting. they show an advanced state of civilization already prevailing among nations whose very names were unknown or legendary. more than years before the siege of troy it appears that asia minor and the greek mainland and islands were already inhabited by nations sufficiently advanced in civilization to fit out fleets which commanded the seas, and to form political confederations, to undertake distant expeditions, and to wage war on equal terms with the predominant powers of asia and of egypt. but though ancient as regards classical history, these beginnings of greek civilization are comparatively modern, and cannot be carried back further than about b.c., while there is no evidence to carry the preceding period of phoenician supremacy and commerce in the eastern mediterranean, with the existence of the great trading cities of its earliest period, byblos and sidon, beyond , or, at the very outside, b.c. hittites. the history of another great empire has been partially brought to light, which was destroyed in b.c. by the progress of assyrian conquest, after having lasted more than years, and long exercised a predominant influence over western asia, viz. that of the hittites. the first mention of them in the old testament appears in the time of abraham, when we find them in southern syria, mixed with tribes of the canaanites and amorites, and grouped principally about hebron. they are represented as on friendly terms with abraham, selling him a piece of land for a sepulchre, and intermarrying with his family--rebecca's soul being vexed by the contumacious behaviour of her daughters-in-law, "the daughters of heth." this, however, was only an outlying branch of the nation, whose capital cities, when they appear clearly in history, were further north at kadesh on the orontes, and carchemish on the upper euphrates, commanding the fords on that river on the great commercial route between babylonia and the mediterranean. they were a turanian race, whose original seat was in cappadocia, and the high plateaux and mountainous region extending from the taurus range to the black sea. they are easily recognized on the egyptian monuments by their yellow colour, peculiar features which are of ugro-turkish type, and their dress, which is that of highlanders inhabiting a snowy district, with close-fitting tunics, mittens, and boots resembling snowshoes with turned-up toes. they have also the mongolian characters of beardless faces, and coarse black hair, which is sometimes trained into a pigtail. [illustration: king of the hittites. (from photograph by flinders petrie, from egyptian temple at luxor.)] the earliest mention of them is found in the tablets which were compiled for the library of sargon i. of accad, in which reference is made to the khatti, which probably means hittites, showing that at this remote period, about b.c., they had already moved down from their northern home into the valley of the euphrates and upper syria. their affinity with the accadians of chaldæa is clearly proved by their language, which the recent discovery of papyri at tell-el-amara, containing despatches from the tributary king of the hittites to amenophus iv., written in cuneiform characters, has proved to be almost identical with accadian. it seems probable that part of the army which fought in defence of troy may have been hittite, and there are many indications that the etruscans, who were generally believed to have come from lydia, were of the same race and spoke the same language. it is in egyptian records, however, that we meet with the first definite historical data respecting this ancient hittite empire. in these they are referred to as "kheta," and probably formed part of the great hyksos invasion; but the first certain mention of them occurs in the reign of thotmes i., about b.c., and they appear as a leading nation in the time of thotmes iii., who defeated a combined army of canaanites and hittites under the hittite king of kadesh, at megiddo, and in fourteen victorious campaigns carried the egyptian arms to the euphrates and tigris. for several subsequent reigns we find the hittites enumerated as one of the nations paying tribute to egypt, whose extensive empire then reckoned mesopotamia, assyria, phoenicia, palestine, cyprus, and the soudan among its tributary states. gradually the power of egypt declined, and in the troubled times which followed the attempt of the heretic king ku-en-aten to supersede the old religion of egypt by the worship of the solar disc, the conquered nations threw off the yoke, and the frontiers of egypt receded to the old limits. as egypt declined, the power of the hittites evidently increased, for when we next meet with them it is contending on equal terms in palestine with the revival of the military power of egypt under ramses i., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and his son seti i. the contest continued for more than a century with occasional treaties of peace and various vicissitudes of fortune, and at last culminated in the great battle of kadesh, commemorated by the egyptian epic poem of pentaur, and followed by the celebrated treaty of peace between ramses ii. and kheta-sira, "the great king of the hittites," the hittite text of which was engraved on a silver tablet in the characters of carchemish, and the egyptian copy of it was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of the temples of ramses, of which we fortunately possess the entire text. the alliance was on equal terms, defining the frontier, and providing for the mutual extradition of refugees, and it was ratified by the marriage of ramses with the daughter of the hittite king. the peace lasted for some time; but in the reign of ramses iii. of the twentieth dynasty, we find the hittites again heading the great confederacy of the nations of asia minor and of the islands of the mediterranean, who attacked egypt by sea and land. the hittites formed the greater part of the land army, which was defeated with great slaughter after an obstinate battle at pelusium, about b.c. from this time forward the power both of the hittites and of egypt seems to have steadily declined. we hear no more of them as a leading power in palestine and syria, where the kingdoms of judah, israel, and damascus superseded them, until all were swallowed up by the assyrian conquests of the warrior-kings of nineveh, and finally the hittites disappear altogether from history with the capture of their capital carchemish by sargon ii. in b.c. the wide extent, however, of the hittite empire when at its height is proved by the fact that at the battle of kadesh the hittite army was reinforced by vassals or allies from nearly the whole of western asia. the dardanians from the troad, the mysians from their cities of ilion, the colchians from the caucasus, the syrians from the orontes, and the phoenicians from arvad are enumerated as sending contingents; and in the invasion of egypt in the reign of ramses iii., the hittites headed the great confederacy of hittites, teucrians, lycians, philistines, and other asiatic nations who attacked egypt by land, in concert with the great maritime confederacy of greeks, pelasgians, tuscans, sicilians, and sardinians who attacked it by sea. the mere fact of carrying on such campaigns and forming such political alliances is sufficient to show that the hittites must have attained to an advanced state of civilization. but there is abundant proof that this was the case from other sources. they were a commercial people, and their capital, carchemish, was for many centuries the great emporium of the caravan trade between the east and west. the products of the east, probably as far as bactria and india, reached it from babylon and nineveh, and were forwarded by two great commercial routes, one to the south-west to syria and phoenicia, the other to the north-west through the pass of karakol, to sardis and the mediterranean. the commercial importance of carchemish is attested by the fact that its silver mina became the standard of value at babylon, and throughout the whole of western asia. the hittites were also great miners, working the silver mines of the taurus on an extensive scale, and having a plentiful supply of bronze and other metals, as is shown by the large number of chariots attached to their armies from the earliest times. they were also a literary people, and had invented a system of hieroglyphic writing of their own, distinct alike from that of egypt and from the cuneiform characters of the accadians. inscriptions in these peculiar characters, associated with sculptures in a style of art different from that of either egypt or chaldæa, but representing figures identical in dress and features with those of hittites in the egyptian monuments, have been found over a wide extent of asia minor, at hamath and aleppo; boghaz-keni and eyuk in cappadocia; at the pass of karakol near sardis, and at various other places. several of those attributed by the greeks to sesostris or to fabulous passages of their own mythology, have been proved to be hittite, as, for instance, the figure carved on the rocks of mount sipylos, near ephesus, and said to be that of niobe, is proved to be a sitting figure of the great goddess of carchemish. for a long time these inscriptions were an enigma to philologists, but the researches of professor sayce and other scholars have quite recently thrown much light on the subject, and enabled us partially to decipher some of them, and the recent discovery of papyri at tel-el-amara written partly in the hittite language in cuneiform characters, removes all doubt as to its nature and affinities. it may be sufficient to state the result, that the hittite language was turanian or agglutinative, closely allied, and indeed almost identical, with accadian on the one hand, and on the other so similar to the ancient lydian and etruscan, as to leave it doubtful whether these nations were themselves hittites, or only very close cousins descended from a common stock. for instance, the well-known etruscan names of tarquin and lar occur as parts of many names of hittite kings, and in the same, or a slightly modified form, in accadian, and survive to the present day in various turkic and mongolian dialects. this much appears to be clear, that this hittite empire, which vanished so completely from history more than years ago, had for nearly years previously exercised a paramount influence in western asia, and was one of the principal channels through which asiatic mythology and art reached greece in early times, and through the etruscans formed an important element in the civilization of ancient rome. it was itself probably an offshoot from the still older civilization of accadia, though after a time semitic and egyptian influences were introduced, as appears from the fact that sutek, set or seth, was the supreme god of the hittites, as is shown by the text of the treaty of peace between their great king khota-sira and ramses ii. as regards chronology, therefore, hittite history only carries us back about half-way to the earliest dates of egypt and chaldæa, and only confirm these dates incidentally, by showing that other powerful and civilized states already existed in asia at a remote period. arabia. the best chance of finding records which may vie in antiquity with those of egypt and chaldæa, has come to us quite recently from an unexpected quarter. arabia has been from time immemorial one of the least known and least accessible regions of the earth. especially of recent years moslem fanaticism has made it a closed country to christian research, and it is only quite lately that a few scientific travellers, taking their lives in their hands, have succeeded in penetrating into the interior, discovering the sites of ruined cities, and copying numerous inscriptions. dr. glaser especially has three times explored southern arabia, and brought home no less than inscriptions, many of them of the highest historical interest. by the aid of these and other inscriptions we are able to reduce to some sort of certainty the vague traditions that had come down to us of ancient nations and an advanced state of civilization and commerce, existing in arabia in very ancient times. in the words of professor sayce, "the dark past of the arabian peninsula has been suddenly lighted up, and we find that long before the days of mohammed it was a land of culture and literature, a seat of powerful kingdoms and wealthy commerce, which cannot fail to have exercised an influence upon the general history of the world."[ ] [ ] the facts of this section are taken mainly from two articles by professor sayce in the _contemporary review_, entitled "ancient arabia" and "results of oriental archæology." the visit of the queen of sheba to solomon affords one of the first glimpses into this past history. it is evident that she either was, or was supposed to be by the compiler of the book of kings not many centuries later, the queen of a well-known, civilized, and powerful country, which, from the description of her offerings, could hardly be other than arabia felix, the spice country of southern arabia, the sabæa or saba of the ancient world, though her kingdom, or commercial relations, may have extended over the opposite coast of abyssinia and somali-land, and probably far down the east coast of africa. assyrian inscriptions show that saba was a great kingdom in the eighth century b.c., when its frontiers extended so far to the north as to bring it in contact with those of the empire of nineveh under tiglath-pileser and sargon ii. it was then an ancient kingdom, and, as the inscriptions show, had long since undergone the same transformation as egypt and chaldæa, from the rule of priest-kings of independent cities into an unified empire. these priest-kings were called "makârib," or high-priests of saba, showing that the original state must have been a theocracy, and the name saba like assur that of a god. but the inscriptions reveal this unexpected fact, that old as the kingdom of saba may be, it was not the oldest in this district, but rose to power on the decay of a still older nation, whose name of ma'in has come down to us in dim traditions under the classical form of minæans. we are already acquainted with the names of thirty-two minæan kings, and as comparatively few inscriptions have as yet been discovered, many more will doubtless be found. among those known, however, are some which show that the authority of the minæan kings was not confined to their original seat in the south, but extended over all arabia and up to the frontiers of syria and of egypt. three names of these kings have been found at teima, the tema of the old testament, on the road to damascus and sinai; and a votive tablet from southern arabia is inscribed by its authors, "in gratitude to athtar (istar or astarte), for their rescue in the war between the ruler of the south and the ruler of the north, and in the conflict between madhi and egypt, and for their safe return to their own city of quarnu." the authors of this inscription describe themselves as being under the minæan king "abi-yadá yathi," and being "governors of tsar and ashur and the further bank of the river." tsar is often mentioned in the egyptian monuments as a frontier fortress on the arabian side of what is now the suez canal, while another inscription mentions gaza, and shows that the authority of the minæan rulers extended to edom, and came into close contact with palestine and the surrounding tribes. doubtless the protection of trade-routes was a main cause of this extension of fortified posts and wealthy cities, over such a wide extent of territory. from the most ancient times there has always been a stream of traffic between east and west, flowing partly by the red sea and persian gulf, and from the ends of these eastern seas to the mediterranean, and partly by caravan routes across asia. the possession of one of these routes by solomon in alliance with tyre, led to the ephemeral prosperity of the jewish kingdom at a much later period; and the wars waged between egyptians, assyrians, and hittites were doubtless influenced to a considerable extent by the desire to command these great lines of commerce. arabia stood in a position of great advantage as regards this international commerce, being a half-way house between east and west, protected from enemies by impassable deserts, and with inland and sheltered seas in every direction. its southern provinces also had the advantage of being the great, and in some cases the sole, producers of commodities of great value and in constant request. frankincense and other spices were indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the religion. the atmosphere of solomon's temple must have been that of a sickening slaughterhouse, and the fumes of incense could alone enable the priests and worshippers to support it. this would apply to thousands of other temples through asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements, and required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable. the consumption of incense must therefore have been immense in the ancient world, and it is not easy to see where it could have been derived from except from the regions which exhaled. "sabæan odours from the shores of araby the blest." the next interesting result, however, of these arabian discoveries is, that they disclose not only a civilized and commercial kingdom at a remote antiquity, but that they show us a literary people, who had their own alphabet and system of writing at a date comparable to that of egyptian hieroglyphics and chaldæan cuneiforms, and long prior to the oldest known inscription in phoenician characters. the first arabian inscriptions were discovered and copied by seetzen in , and were classed together as himyaritic, from himyar, the country of the classical homerites. it was soon discovered that the language was semitic, and that the alphabet resembled that of the ethiopic or gheez, and was a modification of the phoenician written vertically instead of horizontally. further discoveries and researches have led to the result, which is principally due to dr. glaser, that the so-called himyaritic inscriptions fell into two groups, one of which is distinctly older than the other, containing fuller and more primitive grammatical forms. these are minæan, while the inscriptions in the later dialect are sabæan. it is apparent, therefore, that the minæan rule and literature must have preceded those of sabæa by a time sufficiently long to have allowed for considerable changes both in words and grammar to have grown up, not by foreign conquest, but by evolution among the tribes of the same race within arabia itself. now the sabæan kingdom can be traced back with considerable certainty to the time of solomon, years b.c., and had in all probability existed many centuries before; while we have already a list of thirty-three minæan kings, which number will doubtless be enlarged by further discoveries; and the oldest inscriptions point, as in egypt, to an antecedent state of commerce and civilization. it is evident therefore that arabia must be classed with egypt and chaldæa as one of the countries which point to the existence of highly civilized communities in an extreme antiquity; and that it is by no means impossible that the records of southern arabia may ultimately be carried back as far as those of sargon i., or even of menes. this is the more probable as several ancient traditions point to southern arabia, and possibly to the adjoining coast of north-eastern africa, as the source of the earliest civilizations. thus oannes is said to have come up from the persian gulf and taught the chaldæans the first arts of civilization. the phoenicians traced their origin to the bahrein islands in the same gulf. the egyptians looked with reverence and respect to punt, which is generally believed to have meant arabia felix and somali-land; and they placed the origin of their letters and civilization, not in upper or lower, but in middle egypt, at abydos where thoth and osiris were said to have reigned, where the nile is only separated from the red sea by a narrow land pass which was long one of the principal commercial routes between arabia and egypt. the close connection between egypt and punt in early times is confirmed by the terms of respect in which punt is spoken of in egyptian inscriptions, contrasting with the epithets of "barbarian" and "vile," which are applied to other surrounding nations such as the hittites, libyans, and negroes. and the celebrated equipment of a fleet by the great queen hatasu of the nineteenth dynasty, to make a commercial voyage to punt, and its return with a rich freight, and the king and queen of the country with offerings, on a visit to the pharaoh, reminding one of the visit of the queen of sheba to solomon, shows that the two nations were on friendly terms, and that the red sea and opposite coast of africa had been navigated from a very early period. the physical type also of the chiefs of punt as depicted on the egyptian monuments is very like that of the aristocratic type of the earliest known egyptian portraits. [illustration: chief of punt and two men.] one point seems sufficiently clear; that wherever may have been the original seat of the aryans, that of the semites must be placed in arabia. everywhere else we can trace them as an immigrating or invading people, who found prior populations of different race, but in arabia they seem to have been aboriginal. thus in chaldæa and assyria, the semites are represented in the earliest history and traditions as coming from the south, partly by the persian gulf and partly across the arabian and syrian deserts, and by degrees amalgamating with and superseding the previous accadian population. in egypt the semitic element was a late importation which never permanently affected the old egyptian civilization. in syria and palestine, the phoenicians, canaanites, and hebrews were all immigrants from the persian gulf or arabian frontier, either directly or through the medium of egypt and assyria, who did not even pretend to be the earliest inhabitants, but found other races, as the amorites and hittites, in possession, whose traditions again went back to barbarous aborigines of zammumim, who seemed to them to stammer their unintelligible language. the position of semites in the moslem world in asia and africa is distinctly due to the conquests of the arab mohammed and the spread of his religion. in arabia alone we find semites and semites only, from the very beginning, and the peculiar language and character of the race must have been first developed in the growing civilization which preceded the ancient minæan empire, probably as the later stone age was passing into that of metal, and the primitive state of hunters and fishers into the higher social level of agriculturists and traders. to return from these remote speculations to a subject of more immediate interest, the discovery of these minæan inscriptions shows the existence of an alphabet older than that of the earliest known inscriptions in phoenician letters. the alphabets of greece, rome, and all modern nations are beyond all doubt derived from that of phoenicia, and it has been generally supposed that this was formed from an abridgment of the hieroglyphics or hieratics of egypt. but the minæan inscriptions raise the question whether the phoenician alphabet itself and the kindred alphabets of palestine, syria, and other countries near the arabian frontier were not derived from arabia rather than from egypt. the minæan language and letters are certainly older forms of semitic speech and writing, and it seems more likely that they should have been adopted, with dialectic variations, by other semitic races, with whom arabia had a long coterminous position and constant intercourse by caravans, than that these races should have remained totally ignorant of letters, until phoenicia borrowed them from egypt. moreover, as professor sayce shows, this theory gives a better explanation of the names of the phoenician letters, which in many cases have no resemblance to the symbols which denote them. thus the first letter aleph, "an ox," really resembles the head of that animal in the minæan inscriptions, while no likeness can be traced to any egyptian hieroglyph used for 'a.' should these speculations be confirmed, they will considerably modify our conceptions as to the early history of the old testament. it would seem that canaan, before the israelite invasion, was already a settled and civilized country, with a distinct alphabet and literature of its own, older than those of phoenicia; and it may be hoped that further researches in arabia and palestine may disclose records, buried under the ruins of ancient cities, which may vie in antiquity with those of egypt and chaldæa. but in the meantime we must be content to rely on the records and monuments of these two countries, and especially those of egypt, as giving us the longest standard of genuine historical time, extending backwards about years from the present century. troy and mycenÆ. the existence of civilization and commerce among other ancient nations which have disappeared from history, have received a remarkable confirmation from the excavations of dr. schliemann at troy and mycenæ. the site of troy has been identified with the mound of hissarlik which formed its citadel, and the accuracy of the descriptions in homer's _iliad_ has been wonderfully verified. the ruins of seven successive towns, superimposed one on the other, have been found in excavating the mass of _débris_ down to the bed rock. the lowest of these was a settlement apparently of the later neolithic or earliest bronze ages, while the next, built on the ruins of the first at a level of eleven to twenty feet above it, was a strongly fortified city, which had been destroyed by fire, and which answers almost exactly to the description of homer's troy. the citadel hill had been inclosed by massive walls, and was surmounted by a stately palace and other buildings, the foundations of which still remain. it was protected on one side by the river scamander, and on the other the city extended over the plain at the foot of the citadel, and was itself also surrounded by a strong wall, of which a small fragment remains. the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth settlements consisted of mean huts or dwelling-houses built of quarry stones and clay, and the seventh, or uppermost, was the græco-roman ilion of classical writers. the main interest therefore centres in the second city, which, from the articles found in it and the many repairs and alterations of the walls and buildings, must have been for a long time the seat of a nourishing and powerful people, enriched by commerce, and far advanced in the industrial and fine arts. notwithstanding the destruction and probable plunder of the city, the quantity of gold and silver found was very considerable, chiefly in the vaults or casemates built into the foundations of the walls, which were covered up with _débris_ when the citadel was burnt, and the roofs and upper buildings fell in. in one place alone dr. schliemann found the celebrated treasure containing sixty articles of gold and silver, which had evidently been packed together in a square wooden box, which had disappeared with the intense heat. the nature of these citadels shows a high degree not only of civilization but of wealth and luxury, as proved by the skill and taste of jeweller's work displayed in the female ornaments, which comprise three sumptuous diadems, ear-rings, hairpins, and bracelets. there are also numerous vases and cups of terra-cotta, and a few of gold and silver, and bars of silver which have every appearance of being used for money, being of the same form and weight. the fragments of ordinary pottery are innumerable, the finer and more perfect vases are often of a graceful form, and moulded into shapes of animals or human heads, and decorated with spirals, rosettes, and other ornaments of the type which is more fully illustrated as that of the pre-hellenic civilization of mycenæ. for schliemann has not only restored the historic reality of priam and the city of troy, but also that of agamemnon "king of men," and his capital of mycenæ. the result of his explorations on this site has been to show that a still larger and more wealthy city existed here for a longer period than troy, and which affected a more extensive area, for its peculiar art and civilization were widely diffused over the whole of the eastern coast of greece and the adjoining islands, and specimens of it have been found on the opposite coasts of asia minor, as we have seen at troy, and as far off as cyprus and egypt, where they were doubtless carried by commerce. the existence of an extensive commerce is proved by the profusion of gold which has been found in the vaults and tombs buried under the _débris_ of the ruined city, for gold is not a native product, but must have been obtained from abroad, as also the bronze, copper, and tin required for the manufacture of weapons. the city also evidently owed its importance to its situation on the isthmus of corinth, commanding the trade route between the gulfs of argos and of corinth, and thus connecting the eastern mediterranean and asia with the western sea and europe. the still older city of tiryns, of which mycenæ was probably an offshoot, stood nearly on the shore of the eastern gulf, while mycenæ was in the middle of the isthmus about eight miles from either gulf. tiryns was also explored by schliemann, and showed the same plans of buildings and fortifications as troy and mycenæ, and the same class of relics, only less extensive and more archaic than those of mycenæ, which was evidently the more important city during the golden period of this great mycenæan civilization. those who wish to pursue this interesting subject further will find an admirable account of it in the english translation of schliemann's works and essays, with a full description of each exploration, and numerous illustrations of the buildings and articles found. for my present object i only refer to it as an illustration of the position that egypt and chaldæa do not stand alone in presenting proofs of high antiquity, but that other nations, such as the chinese, the hittites, the minæans of southern arabia, the mycenæans, trojans, lydians, phrygians, cretans, and doubtless many others, also existed as populous, powerful, and civilized states, at a time long antecedent to the dawn of classical history. if these ancient empires and civilization became so completely forgotten, or survived only in dim traditions of myths and poetical legends, the reason seems to be that they kept no written records, or at any rate none in the form of enduring inscriptions. we know ancient egypt from its hieroglyphics, and from manetho's history; chaldæa and assyria from the cuneiform writing on clay tablets; china, up to about b.c., from its written histories; but it is singular that the other ancient civilizations have left few or no inscriptions. this is the more remarkable in the case of the mycenæan cities explored by dr. schliemann, for their date is not so very remote, their jewellery, vases, and signet-rings are profusely decorated, their dead interred in stately tombs with large quantities of gold and silver, and yet not a single instance has been found of anything resembling alphabetical or symbolical writing, or of any form of inscription. atreus, agamemnon, and a long line of kings lie in their stately tombs, with their gold masks and breastplates, and their arms and treasures about them, without a word or sign to distinguish father from son, ancestor from successor. their queens are buried in their robes of cloth of gold, their tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, rings and jewels, equally without a word to say which was clytemnestra and which electra. how different is this from the egyptian royal tombs and palaces, where pompous inscriptions record the genealogies of kings for fifty or more generations, and the first care of every pharaoh is to carve the annals of his exploits on imperishable granite! another strange peculiarity of this mycenæan civilization is the absence of religious subjects. images and pictures of their gods abound on all the monuments of egypt and chaldæa. every frieze and tablet, every seal and scarabæus, is full of representations of osiris and isis, of thoth and ammon; or in chaldæa of bel, merodach, and istar, and their other pantheon of gods, each under its own symbolical form, and innumerable little idols or figurines attested their hold on the population. but at troy, tiryns, and mycenæ there is nothing of the sort. animals and mortal men are freely depicted on the vases, and moulded as ornaments for domestic utensils, but religious subjects are so scarce that it is even doubtful whether a few scanty specimens bear this character or not. there is a pit in the central court of the palace at mycenæ which has been thought to be a sacrificial pit under an altar, but this rather because such an altar is described in homer, than for any positive evidence. there are also a very few figurines of terra-cotta, which have been thought to be idols, because they are too clumsy to be taken for representations of the human figure by such skilled artists, and because they bear some sort of resemblance to the rude phoenician idols of the goddess astarte. but, with this exception, there is nothing at troy or mycenæ to indicate a belief in the homeric or any other mythology. as a question of dates, we know that the supremacy of mycenæ and its civilization came to an end with the invasion of the dorians, which is generally placed about b.c. we know also that it must have had a long existence, but for anything approaching to a date we must refer to the few traces which connect it with egypt. a scarabæus was found at mycenæ with the name of queen ti engraved on it who lived in the thirteenth century b.c. mycenæan vases have been found of the older type with lines and spirals, in egyptian tombs of about b.c., and of the later type with animals in tombs of about b.c., and mr. flinders petrie, by whom they were discovered, says that any error in these dates cannot exceed years. mycenæan pottery has also been found at thera under volcanic ashes which geologists say were thrown up about b.c. we are pretty safe, therefore, in supposing this mycenæan civilization to have flourished between the limits of and b.c. in this case it must have been contemporary with the great events of the new empire in egypt which followed on the expulsion of the hyksos; with the victorious campaigns of ahmes and thotmes which carried the egyptian arms to the euphrates and to the black sea; with the rise of the hittite power which extended far and wide over asia minor, and contended on equal terms in syria with ramses ii.; and with the coalition of naval powers which on two occasions, in the reigns of menepthah and ramses iii., commanded the sea and invaded egypt. the mention of achæans among the allies whose fleet was defeated in the sea-fight on the pelusian mouth of the nile, depicted on the triumphal tablet of ramses iii., becomes an historical reality, and some of the hostile galleys may well have been those of a predecessor of agamemnon. it is doubtful, however, whether these mycenæans or achæans can be properly called greek. both their civilization and art are asiatic rather than hellenic; they have left no clue to their language in any writing or inscription; and the type of the race, as far as we can judge of it from paintings on the vases, was totally unlike that of classical greece. [illustration: queen sending warrior to battle. (from "warrior vase," mycenæ. schliemann.)] in one instance alone the human form is represented on the vases found at mycenæ, viz. on that known as the great "warrior vase." this is a large amphora, with a broad band of figures round it, representing on one side attacking warriors hurling spears, and on the other a queen, or female figure, sending out warriors to repel them. the vase is broken, but there are in all eight figures with their heads nearly perfect, and all of the same type, which is such an extraordinary one, that i annex a copy of the woman and one of the warriors. one asks oneself in amazement, can this swine-snouted caricature of humanity be the divine helen, whose beauty set contending nations in arms, and even as a shade made faust immortal with a kiss; and this other, agamemnon, king of men, or the god-like achilles? and yet certainly they must be faces which the dwellers in mycenæ either copied from nature, or introduced as conventional ideals. they cannot be taken as first childish attempts at drawing the human face, like those of the palæolithic savages of the grottos of the vezere, for they are the work of advanced artists who, in other cases, drew beautiful decorations and life-like animals; and in these figures the attitudes, dress, and armour show that they could draw with spirit and accuracy, and give a faithful representation of details when they chose to do so. [illustration: adam, eve, and the serpent. (from a babylonian cylinder.)] the only approach to a clue i can find for an explanation of these extraordinary mycenæan faces is afforded by the picture of adam and eve, with the serpent and tree of life, on an old babylonian cylinder in the british museum. it will be seen at once that there is a considerable resemblance between the two types of countenance, and it strikes me as possible that, as mycenæan art was so largely derived from babylonian, this may have become a conventional type for the first human ancestors, in which it was thought by the mycenæan copyists that heroes and kings ought to be represented. this, however, is a mere conjecture, and all we can infer with any certainty from troy and mycenæ is, that a considerable civilization and commerce must have prevailed in the eastern mediterranean at a date long prior to the commencement of classical history, though much later than that of the older records of egypt and chaldæa. chapter iv. ancient religions. egypt--book of the dead--its morality--metaphysical character--origins of religions--ghosts--animism--astronomy and astrology--morality--pantheism and polytheism--egyptian ideas of future life and judgment--egyptian genesis--divine emanations--plurality of gods and animal worship--sun worship and solar myths--knowledge of astronomy--orientation of pyramids--theory of future life--the ka--the soul--confession of faith before osiris. chaldæan religion--oldest form accadian--shamanism--growth of philosophical religion--astronomy and astrology--accadian trinities--anu, mull-il, ea--twelve great gods--bel-ishtar--merodach--assur--pantheism--wordsworth--magic and omens--penitential psalms--conclusions from. the religious ideas of a nation afford a pretty good test of the antiquity of its civilization. thus, if years hence all traces of england being lost except a copy of the athanasian creed, it would be a legitimate inference that the race who retained such a creed as part of their ritual, had long passed the primitive period of fetichism or animism, had schools of priests and philosophers, and that their religion had developed into a stage of subtle and profound metaphysical speculations. if this would be true in the hypothetical case of england, it is equally true in the actual case of egypt. in its sacred book, the todtenbuch, or book of the dead, which we meet with at the earliest periods of egyptian history, we find conceptions of the great first cause of the universe, which are in many respects identical with those of athanasius. in fact, with some slight alterations of expression, his creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is clear that in his controversy with arius he got his inspiration from his native alexandria, and from the old egyptian religion stripped of its polytheistic and idolatrous elements, and adapted to the modern ideas of the neo-platonic philosophy and of christianity. the egyptian religion, as disclosed to us in the earliest records, is one which of itself proves its great antiquity. there is an extensive literature of a religious character; the book of the dead, which contains many of the principal prayers and hymns, and descriptions of the last judgment, is already a sacred book. portions of it are certainly older than the time of menes, and it had already acquired such an authority in the times of pepi, teta, and unas, of the sixth dynasty, about b.c., that the inner walls of their pyramids are covered with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from it. from this time forward, almost every tomb and mummy-case contains quotations from it, just as passages of the bible are quoted on our own gravestones. the book of isis, and hymns to various gods, are of the same nature and early date; and in addition to these, there are ethical treatises, ascribed to kings of the oldest dynasties, as well as works on medicine, geometry, mensuration, and arithmetic. education was very general, as is proved by the fact that the workmen at the mines of wady magarah could scrawl hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of their tunnels, and on their blocks of dressed stone. birch, in his _ancient history of egypt from_ _the monuments_, which i prefer to quote from as, being published by the society for promoting christian knowledge, it cannot be suspected of any bias to discredit orthodoxy, says that, "in their moral law the egyptians followed the same precepts as the decalogue (ascribed to moses years later), and enumerated treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of magic as crimes of the deepest dye." the position of women is one of the surest tests of an advanced civilization; for in rude times, and among savage races, force reigns supreme, and the weaker sex is always the slave or drudge of the stronger one. it is only when intellectual and moral considerations are firmly established that the claims of women to an equality begin to be recognized. now in the earliest records of domestic and political life in egypt, we find this equality more fully recognized than it is perhaps among ourselves in the nineteenth century. quoting again from birch, "the egyptian woman appears always as the equal and companion of her father, brethren, and husband. she was never secluded in a harem, sat at meals with them, had equal rights before the law, served in the priesthood, and even mounted the throne." in fact the state of civilization in egypt years ago appears to have been higher in all essential respects than it has ever been since, or is now, in any asiatic and in many european countries. and it has every appearance of being indigenous, and having grown up on the soil. there are no traces in the oldest traditions of any foreign importation, such as we find in the early traditions of other countries. there is no fish-man who comes up out of the persian gulf and teaches the chaldæans the first elements of civilization; no cadmus who teaches the greeks their first letters; no manco-capac who lands on the shore of peru. on the contrary, all the egyptian traditions are of egyptian gods, like osiris and thoth, who reigned in the valley of the nile, and invented hieroglyphics and other arts. these are lost in a fabulous antiquity, and the only trace of a link to connect the historical egyptians with the neolithic races whose remains are found in abundance in the form of flint knives and arrows, and are brought up by borings through thick deposits of nile mud, or the still older palæolithic savages, whose rude implements were found by general pitt-rivers and other explorers in quaternary gravels near thebes of geological antiquity, is furnished by the use of a stone knife to make the first incision on the corpse in turning it into a mummy, and by the animal worship, which may have been a relic of primitive fetichism and totemism. the highly metaphysical nature of the egyptian creed is another conclusive proof of the antiquity of the religion. among existing races we find similar religions corresponding to similar stages of civilization. with the very rudest races, religion consists mainly of ghost worship and animism. herbert spencer has shown how dreams lead to the belief that man consists of two elements, a body and a spirit, or shadowy self, which wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange adventures, and returns when the body awakes. in the longer sleep of death, this shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts its old abodes and former associates, mostly with an evil intent, and which has to be deceived or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mischief. hence the sacrifices and offerings, and the many devices for cheating the ghost by carrying the dead body by devious paths to some safe locality. hence also the superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the interment with the corpse of food and implements to induce the ghost to remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set out comfortably on its journey to another world. animism is another tap-root of savage superstition. as the child sees life in the doll, so the savage sees life in every object, animate or inanimate, which comes in contact with him, and affects his existence. animals, and even stocks and stones, are supposed to have souls, and who knows that these may not be the souls of departed ancestors, and have some mysterious power of helping or of hurting him? in any case the safer plan is to propitiate them by worship and sacrifice. from these rude beginnings we see nations as they advance in civilization rising to higher conceptions, developing their ghosts into gods, and confining their operations to the greater phenomena of nature, such as the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the stars, storms, seasons, thunder, and the like. and by degrees the unity of nature begins to be felt by the higher minds; priestly castes are established who have leisure for meditation; ideas are transmitted from generation to generation; and the vague and primitive nature worship passes into the phase of philosophical and scientific religion. the popular rites and superstitions linger on with the mass of the population, but an inner circle of hereditary priests refines and elevates them, and begins to ask for a solution of the great problems of the universe; what it means, and how it was created; the mystery of good and evil; man's origin, future life and destiny; and all the questions which, down to the present day, are asked though never answered by the higher minds of the higher races of civilized man. in this stage of religious development metaphysical speculations occupy a foremost place. priests of heliopolis, magi of eridhu and of ur, reasoned like christian fathers and milton's devils of "fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," and like them "found no end, in wandering mazes lost." theories of theism and pantheism, of creations and incarnations, of trinities and atonements, of polarities between good and evil, free-will and necessity, were argued and answered, now in one direction and now in another. science contributed its share, sometimes in the form of crude cosmogonies and first attempts at ethnology, but principally through the medium of astronomy. an important function of the priests was to form a calendar, predict the seasons, and regulate the holding of religious rites at the proper times. hence the course of the heavens was carefully watched, the stars were mapped out into constellations, through which the progress of the sun and planets was recorded; and myths sprang into existence based on the sun's daily rising and setting, and its annual journey through the seasons and the signs of the zodiac. mixed up with astronomy was astrology, which, watching the sun, moon, and five planets, inferred life from motion, and recognized gods exerting a divine influence on human events. the sacred character of the priests was confirmed by the popular conviction that they were at the same time prophets and magicians, and that they alone were able to interpret the will of personified powers of nature, and influence them for good or evil. the element of morality is one of the latest to appear. it is only after a long progress in civilization that ideas of personal sin and righteousness, of an overruling justice and goodness, of future rewards and punishments, are developed from the cruder conceptions and superstitious observances of earlier times. it was a long road from the jealous and savage local god of the hebrew tribes, who smelt the sweet savour of burnt sacrifices and was pleased, and who commanded the extermination of enemies, and the slaughter of women and children, to the supreme jehovah, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is one great merit of the bible, intelligently read, that it records so clearly the growth and evolution of moral ideas, from a plane almost identical with that of the red indians, to the supreme height of the sermon on the mount and st. paul's definition of charity. there is one phenomenon which appears very commonly in these ancient religions, that of degeneration. after having risen to a certain height of pure and lofty conception they cease to advance, branch out into fanciful fables accompanied by cruel and immoral rites, and finally decay and perish. this is an inevitable consequence of the law of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death, which underlies all existence. "the old order changes, giving place to new." environment changes, and religions, laws, and social institutions change with it. empires rise and fall, old civilizations disappear, old creeds become incredible, and often, for a time, the course of humanity seems to be retrograde. but as the flowing tide rises, though the successive waves on the shore advance and recede, evolution, or the law of progress, in the long run prevails, and amidst the many oscillations of temporary conditions, carries the human race ever upwards towards higher things. in the case of ancient religions it is easy to see how this process of degeneration is carried out. priests who were the pioneers of progress, and leaders of advanced thought, became first conservatives, and then obscurantists. pantheistic conceptions, and personifications of divine attributes, lead to polytheism. as religions become popular, and pass from the learned few to the ignorant many, they become vulgarized, and the real meaning of myths and symbols is either lost or confined to a select inner circle. but for my present purpose, which is mainly chronological, these vicissitudes in religious beliefs are not important. if, at the earliest date to which authentic history extends, we find a national religion which has already passed from the primitive into the metaphysical stage, and which embodies abstract ideas, astronomical observations, and a high and pure code of morals, it is a legitimate inference that it is the outcome of a long antecedent era of civilization. this is eminently the case with regard to the ancient religions of egypt and chaldæa. the ancient egyptians were the most religious people ever known. their thoughts were so fixed on a future life that, as herodotus says, they looked upon their houses as mere temporary inns, and their tombs as their true permanent homes. the idea of an immediate day of judgment for each individual soul after death was so fixed in their minds that it exercised a constant practical influence on their life and conduct. piety to the gods, loyalty to the throne, obedience to superiors, justice and mercy to inferiors, and observance of all the principal moral laws, and especially that of truthfulness, were enforced by the conviction that no sooner had the breath departed from the body, and it had been deposited as a mummy, with its ka or second shadowy self, in the tomb, than the soul would have to appear before the supreme judge osiris, and the forty-two heavenly jurors, where it would have to confess the naked truth, and be tried and rewarded or punished according to its merits. it is very interesting, therefore, to learn what the religion was which had taken such a firm hold of the minds of an entire nation, and which maintained that hold for the best part of years. [illustration: judgment of the soul by osiris.--weighing good and bad deeds. (from champollion's _egypt_.)] our authority for the nature of this religion is derived mainly from the todtenbuch or book of the dead, which was the egyptian bible. this sacred book was of immense antiquity, and much of it was certainly in existence before the time of menes. we know it from the multiplied copies which were frequently deposited in tombs, and from the innumerable extracts and quotations which appear on almost every mummy-case and sarcophagus, as well as from the many manuscripts of works on religious subjects which have been preserved in papyri. the fundamental idea was that of a primitive ocean, or, if you like to call it chaos, of nebulous matter without form and void, and of a one infinite and eternal god who evolved himself and the universe from his own essence. he is called in the todtenbuch "the one only being, the sole creator, unchangeable in his infinite perfection, present in all time, past and future, everywhere and yet nowhere." but although one in essence, god is not one in person. he exists as father, but reproduces himself under another aspect as mother, and under a third as son. this trinity is three and yet one, and has all the attributes of the one--infinity, eternity, and omnipotence. thus far the athanasian creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is very evident where the alexandrian saint got those subtle metaphysical ideas, which are so opposed to the rigid monotheistic creeds of judaism and mahometanism. but the egyptian religion was more logical, and carried these ideas much further than an original trinity. it is evident that if we admit the two fundamental ideas, st, that god is the only real existence, author of and identical with the universe; nd, that this incomprehensible essence or first cause can be made more comprehensible by personifying his various qualities and manifestations, there is no reason why we should stop at three. if we admit a trinity of father, mother, and son, why not admit a daughter and other descendants; or if you personify the power to make a universe, the knowledge how to make it, and the will to do it, as father, son, and holy ghost, why not the benevolence to do it well, the malevolence to do it badly, and a hundred other attributes which metaphysical ingenuity can devise to account for the complication of the known, and the mysteries of the unknown facts of existence? the egyptian priests accepted this view, and admitted a whole pantheon of secondary gods who were either personifications of different attributes of the supreme god, or separate portions of the one divine essence. thus ammon was god considered in his attribute of the first generative power; pthah the supreme artist who fashioned all things wisely; osiris the good and benevolent aspect of the deity; set or typhon his opposite or the author of evil, and so on. and once personified, these attributes soon came to be considered as separate beings; to have a female principle or wives added to them, and to be worshipped as the patron gods of separate temples and provinces. finally, the pantheistic idea became so prevalent, and that of separate personifications of the deity was carried so far, that portions of the divine essence were supposed to be incarnated in the sun and heavenly bodies, in the pharaoh and his family, and even in bulls, cats, and other sacred animals. in the latter case it may be a question whether we do not see a survival of the old superstitious fetiches and totems of semi-savage times, adopted by the priests into their theology, as so many pagan superstitions were by the early christian missionaries. at any rate such was the result, a mixture of the most childish and absurd forms of popular superstition, with a highly philosophical and moral creed, held by the educated classes and stamped upon the mass of the nation by the firmly established belief in a future life and day of judgment. among the more philosophical articles of this creed, astronomy assumed a prominent place from a very early date. the sun, it is true, was described in the original cosmogony as having been called into existence by the word of the supreme god, but it came to be taken as his visible representative, and finally worshipped as a god itself. its different phases were studied and received different names, as horus when on the horizon rising or setting, ra in its midday splendour, osiris during its journey in the night through the underground world of darkness. of these ra naturally had the pre-eminence; the title of pharaoh, or pi-ra, was that given to kings, who were assumed to be semi-divine beings descended from the sun. the osiris myth which was the basis of the national belief in a future life and day of judgment was clearly solar. egyptian astronomy, like that of the chaldees and all early nations, assumed that the sky was a crystal dome or firmament which separated the waters of the upper world from the earth and waters below, and corresponded with a similar nether world of darkness below the earth. the sun was born or rose into the upper world every morning, waxed in strength and glory as his bark navigated the upper waters until noon, then declined and finally sank into the nether world or died, slain by an envious typhon, but to be born again next morning after traversing the perils and encountering the demons of the realm of darkness. the same idea was repeated by the annual course of the sun through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and it translated itself as applied to man into the ideas of birth, growth, manhood, decline, and death, to be followed by a sojourn in hades, a day of judgment, and a resurrection. the egyptian religion, however, seems never to have been so largely astronomical as that of chaldæa, and to have concentrated itself mainly on the sun. the planets and signs of the zodiac did not, as with the chaldees, afford a principal element of their sacred books and mythologies. the egyptian priests had doubtless long studied astronomy; they had watched the stars, traced the annual course of the sun, divided the year into months and the circle into °, and constructed calendars for bringing the civil into correspondence with the sidereal year. they not only had intercalated the five supplemental days, bringing the duration of the year from to , but they had invented a sothic cycle for the odd quarter of a day, by which at the end of every years a year was added, and the sun brought back to rise on the first day of the first month of thoth in the same place in the heavens, determined by the heliacal risings of the brightest of the stars, sothis or sirius. but they applied this knowledge, which must have been gathered from long observations, mainly to practical purposes, such as the reform of the calendar and the orientation of the pyramids, temples, and tombs, rather than to mythology. the idea of a future life, which took such a firm hold of all classes of ancient egypt, is that to which we are indebted for the preservation of these wonderful records of the remote past. the theory was that man consisted of three parts; the body or ordinary living man; the ka or double, which was a sort of shadowy self which came out of the body and returned to it as in dreams; and the soul, a still more subtle essence, which at death went to the gods, was judged, and either rewarded for its merits by living with them in heaven, or punished for its sins by being sent to the nether world of torment. but this soul still retained such a connection with its former body as to come down from time to time to visit it; while the ka or double retained the old connection so closely as to live habitually in it, only coming out to eat, drink, and repeat the acts of its former life, but incapable of existing without a physical basis in the old body or some likeness of it. the same doctrine of the double was applied to all animated and even to inanimate objects, so that the shadowy man could come out of his mummy, live in his own shadowy house, feed on shadowy food, be surrounded by shadowy geese, oxen, and other objects of his former possessions. hence arose the extraordinary care in providing a fitting tomb and preserving the mummy, or, failing the mummy, which in course of time might decay, providing a portrait-statue or painted likeness, which might give a _point d'appui_ for the ka, and a receptacle for the occasional visits of the soul. while these were preserved, conscious personal life was continued beyond the grave, and the good man who went to heaven was immortal. but if these were destroyed and the physical basis perished, the ka and soul were left without a home, and either perished also, or were left to flit like gibbering ghosts through the world of shadows without a local habitation or a name. the origin of this theory as regards the ka is easily explained. it is, as herbert spencer has conclusively shown, a natural inference from dreams, and is found everywhere, from interments of the stone period down to the crude beliefs of existing savages. it even survives among many civilized races in the belief in ghosts, and the precautions taken to prevent the ka's of dead men from returning to haunt their former homes and annoy their posterity. the origin of the third element or soul is not so clear. it may either be a relic of the animism, which among savage races attributes life to every object in nature, or a philosophical deduction of more advanced periods, which sees an universal spirit underlying all creation, and recognizing in man a spark of this spirit which is indestructible, and either migrates into fresh forms, or into fresh spheres of celestial or infernal regions, and is finally absorbed in the great ocean from which it sprang. it is singular that we find almost the precise form of this egyptian belief among many existing savage or semi-civilized men separated by wide distances in different quarters of the world. the negroes of the gold coast believe in the same three entities, and they call the soul which exists independently of the man, before his birth and after his death, the kra, a name which is almost identical with the egyptian ka. the navajos and other tribes of red indians have precisely the same belief. it seems probable that as we find it in the earliest egyptian records, it was a development, evolved through ages of growing civilization by a succession of learned priests, from the primitive fetichism and fear of ghosts of rude ancestors; and in the animal worship and other superstitions of later times we find traces of these primitive beliefs still surviving among the mass of the population. be this as it may, this theory of a future life was firmly rooted at the dawn of egyptian history, and we are indebted to it, and to the dryness of the climate, for the marvellous preservation of records which give us such an intimate acquaintance with the history, the religion, the literature, and the details of a domestic and social life which is distant from our own by an interval of more than years. no other nation ever attained to such a vivid and practical belief in a future existence as these ancient egyptians. taking merely the material test of money, what an enormous capital must have been expended in pyramids, tombs, and mummies; what a large proportion of his income must every egyptian of the upper classes have spent in the preparations for a future life; how shadowy and dim does the idea of immortality appear in comparison among the foremost races of the present day! the elevated moral code of the todtenbuch is another proof of the great antiquity of egyptian civilization. morality is a plant of slow growth which has hardly an existence among rude and primitive tribes, and is only slowly evolved either by contact with superior races or by long ages of settled social order. how many centuries did it take before the crude and ferocious ideas of the hebrew tribes wandering in the desert or warring with the canaanites, were transformed into the lofty and humane conceptions of the later prophets, of hillel and of jesus! and yet we find all the best maxims of this later morality already existing years before the sermon on the mount, in the sacred book of ancient egypt. the prayer of the soul pleading in the day of judgment before osiris and the celestial jury, which embodies the idea of moral perfection entertained by the contemporaries of menes, contains the following articles-- "i have told no lies; committed no frauds; been good to widows; not overtasked servants; not lazy or negligent; done nothing hateful to the gods; been kind to slaves; promoted no strife; caused no one to weep; committed no murder; stolen no offerings to the dead; made no fraudulent gains; seized no lands wrongfully; not tampered with weights and measures; not taken the milk from sucklings; not molested sacred beasts or birds; not cut off or monopolized watercourses; have sown joy and not sorrow; have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothed the naked: "i am pure, i am pure." it is evident that such an ideal of life, not imported from foreign sources, but the growth of an internal civilization, must be removed by an enormous time from the cannibal feasts and human sacrifices of the first glimpses of ideas of a future life in the stone ages. it is to be observed also that the religion of ancient egypt seems to be of native growth. no trace is to be found, either in record or tradition, of any importation from a foreign source, such as may be seen in the chaldæan legend of oannes and other religions of antiquity. on the contrary, all the egyptian myths and traditions ascribe the invention of religion, arts, and literature, to thoth, osiris, horus, and other native egyptian gods. the invention of the art of writing by hieroglyphics affords strong confirmation of this view. it is evidently a development on egyptian soil, in prehistoric times, of the picture-writing of a primitive period. the symbols are taken from egypt and not from foreign objects, and are essentially different from those of the chaldæan cuneiform, which is the only other form of writing which might possibly compare in point of antiquity with the egyptian hieroglyphics and hieratic. these were certainly known prior to the time of menes, and they are the parents of the phoenician, hebrew, greek, and all more modern alphabets. in all other ancient systems of writing, such as chaldæan and chinese, we see the development from the original picture-writing into conventional signs, syllabaries, and finally into ideographs and phonetics; but in the case of egyptian, when we first get sight of it in the earliest dynasties, it is already fully formed, and undergoes no essential changes during the next years. even the hieratic, or cursive hieroglyphic for ordinary purposes, was current in the old empire, as is proved by the celebrated prisse papyrus. the chaldæan religion is not so easily described as that of egypt, for it started from a lower level, and went through more changes in the course of its evolution. in the case of egypt, the earliest records show us a highly intellectual and moral religion, with only a few traces remaining of primitive barbarism in the form of animal worship, and this religion remained substantially unchanged until the conversion of the country to christianity. the influences of semitic and other foreign conquests and intercourse left few traces, and the only serious attempt at a radical religious revolution by the heretic king who endeavoured to dethrone the old egyptian gods, and substitute a system more nearly monotheistic under the emblem of the winged solar-disc, produced no permanent effect, and disappeared in one or two generations. but in chaldæa, semitic influences prevailed from a very early period, and when we reach the historical periods of the great babylonian and assyrian empires, the kings, priests, and nobles were semite, and the accadian had become a dead language, which could only be read as we read latin or hebrew, by the aid of translations and of grammars and dictionaries. still its records remained, as the hebrew bible does to us, and the sacred books of the old religion and its fundamental ideas were only developed and not changed. in the background of this accadian religion we seem to see a much nearer approach than we do in that of egypt to the primitive superstitions peculiar to the turanian race. to this day the religion of the semi-barbarous races of that stock is essentially what is called "shamanism"; a fear of ghosts and goblins, a belief that the universe swarms with myriads of spirits, mostly evil, and that the only escape from them is by the aid of conjuror-priests, who know magical rites and formulas which can baffle their malevolent designs. these incantations, and the interpretation of omens and auguries, occupy a great part of the oldest sacred books, and more than tablets have been already recovered from the great work on astronomy and astrology, compiled from them by the priests of agade, for the royal library of sargon i. they are for the most part of the most absurd and puerile character; as, for instance, "if a sheep give birth to a lion there will be war "; "if a mare give birth to a dog there will be disaster and famine"; "if a white dog enter a temple its foundation will subsist; if a gray dog, the temple will lose its possessions," and so on. this character of magicians and soothsayers clung to the chaldæan priests even down to a later period, and under the roman empire chaldæan rites were identified with sorcery and divination. but out of this jungle of silly superstitions the elements of an enlightened and philosophical religion had evolved themselves in early accadian times, and were continually developed as semitic influences gradually fused themselves with accadian, and formed the composite races and religions which came to be known in later times as babylonian and assyrian. the fundamental principle of this religion was the same as that of egypt, and of most of the great religions of the east, viz. pantheism. the great underlying first cause, or spirit of the universe, was considered as identical with his manifestations. the subtle metaphysical conceptions which still survive in the creed of st. athanasius, were invoked to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, by emanations, incarnations, and personified attributes. these again were attached to the striking phenomena of the universe, the sun, moon, and planets, the earth and sky, the winds, rains, and thunder. and ever as more phenomena were observed more gods were invented, who were thought to be symbols, or partial personifications, of the one great spirit, and not more inconsistent with his unity than the "and yet there are not three gods, but one god" of athanasius. but the chaldæan, like the egyptian priests, did not stop at one trinity, but invented a whole hierarchy of trinities, rising one above the other to form the twelve great gods, while below them were an indefinite number of minor gods and goddesses personifying different aspects of natural phenomena, and taken for the most part from astronomical myths of the sun, moon, planets, and seasons. for the religion of the chaldees was, even more than that of the egyptians, based on astronomy and astrology, as may be seen in their national epic of izdubar, which is simply a solar myth of the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, the last chapter but one being a representation of the passage through the sign of aquarius, in the fable of a universal deluge. the first accadian triad was composed of anu, mull-il, and ea. anu, or ana, is the word for heaven, and the god is described as the "lord of the starry heavens," and "the first-born, the oldest, the father of the gods." it is the same idea in fact as that expressed by the sanscrit varuna, the greek ouranus. mull-il, the next member of this triad, is the god of the abyss and nether world, while ea is the god of the earth, seas, and rivers, "the lord of the deep," and personifies the wise and beneficent side of the divine intelligence, the maintainer of order and harmony, the friend of man. very early with the introduction of semitic influences mull-il dropped out of his place in the trinity, and was superseded by bel, who was conceived as being the son of ea, the personification of the active and combative energy which carries out the wise designs of ea by reducing the chaos to order, creating the sun and heavenly bodies, and directing them in their courses, subduing evil spirits and slaying monsters. his name simply signifies "the lord," and is applied to other inferior deities as a title of honour, as bel-marduk, the lord marduk or merodach, the patron god of babylon. in this capacity bel is clearly associated with the midday sun, as the emblem of a terrible yet beneficent power, the enemy of evil spirits and dragons of darkness. the next triad is more distinctly astronomical. it consists of uruk the moon, ud the sun, and mermer the god of the air, of rain and tempest. these are the old accadian names, but they are better known by the semitic translations of sin, shamash, and raman. the next group of gods is purely astronomical, consisting of the five planets, mars, mercury, jupiter, venus, and saturn, personified as nergal, nebo, marduk, ishtar, and nindar. the number of gods was further increased by introducing the primary polarity of sex, and assigning a wife to each male deity. thus belit, or "the lady," was the wife of bel, he representing the masculine element of nature, strength and courage; she the feminine principle of tenderness and maternity. so also nana the earth was the wife of anu, the god of the strong heavens; annunit the moon the wife of shamash the sun; and ishtar (astarte, astoreth, or aphrodite), the planet venus, the goddess of love and beauty, though a great goddess in her own right, was fabled to have had tammuz or thammuz, one of the names of the sun, as a husband, whence in later times came the myth of nature mourning for the sun-god, slain by the envious boar, winter. but of these only belit and istar were admitted into the circle of the twelve great gods, consisting of the two triads and the planets, who held the foremost place in the chaldæan and assyrian mythology. of the minor gods, meri-dug or marduk, the merodach of the bible, is the most remarkable, for he represents the idea which, some years later, became the fundamental one of the christian religion; that of a son of god, "being of one substance with the father," who acts the part of mediator and friend of man. he is the son of ea and damkina, _i.e._ of heaven and earth, and an emanation from the supreme spirit considered in its attribute of benevolence. the tablets are full of inscriptions on which he is represented as applying to his father ea for aid and advice to assist suffering humanity, most commonly by teaching the spells which will drive away the demons who are supposed to be the cause of all misfortunes and illness. it is not surprising, therefore, to find that he and istar, the lovely goddess, were the favourite deities, and occupied much the same position as jesus and the virgin mary do in the catholic religion of the present day, while the other deities were local gods attached to separate cities where their temples stood, and where they occupied a position not unlike that of the patron saints and holy relics of which almost every considerable town and cathedral boasted in mediæval christianity. thus they rose and fell in rank with the ascendancy or decline of their respective cities, just as pthah and ammon did in egypt according as the seat of empire was at memphis or thebes. in one instance only in later times, in assyria, which had become exclusively semitic, do we find the idea of one supreme god, who was national and not local, and who overshadowed all other gods, as jahve in the later days of the jewish monarchy, and in the conception of the hebrew prophets, did the gods of the surrounding nations. assur, the local god of the city of assur, the first capital of assyria, became, with the growth of the assyrian empire, the one supreme god, in whose name wars were undertaken, cities destroyed, and captives massacred or mutilated. in fact the resemblance is very close between assur and the ferocious and vindictive jahve of the israelites during the rude times of the judges. they are both jealous gods, delighting in the massacre and torture of prisoners, women and children, and enjoining the extermination of nations who insult their dignity by worshipping other gods. we almost seem to see, when we read the records of tiglath-pileser and sennacherib and the books of judges and of samuel, the origin of religious wars, and the spirit of cold-blooded cruelty inspired by a gloomy fanaticism, which is so characteristic of the semitic nature, and which in later times led to the propagation of mahometanism by the sword. with the hebrews this conception of a cruel and vindictive jahve was beaten out of them by persecutions and sufferings, and that of a one merciful god evolved from it, but assyria went through no such schooling and retained its arrogant prosperity down to the era of its disappearance from history with the fall of nineveh; but it is easy to see that the course of events might have been different, and monotheism might have been evolved from the conception of assur. these, however, are speculations relating to a much later period than the primitive religion with which we are principally concerned. it is remarkable how many of our modern religious conceptions find an almost exact counterpart in those of this immensely remote period. incarnations, emanations, atonements, personifications of divine attributes, are all there, and also the subtle metaphysical theories by which the human intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries of the unknowable, endeavours to account for the existence of good and evil, and to reconcile multiplicity of manifestation with unity of essence. if wordsworth sings of a "sense sublime of something far more deeply interposed, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things," he conveys the fundamental idea which was at the bottom of these earliest religions, and which has been perpetuated in the east through their successors, brahmanism and buddhism--the idea of pantheism, or of an universe which is one with its first cause, and not a mechanical work called into existence from without by a personal creator. an ancient priest of egypt or chaldæa might have written these verses of the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, only he would have written horus or bel for the "setting sun"; ea for the "round ocean"; anur for the "sky," and so on. side by side with these intellectual and philosophical conceptions of these ancient religions, we find the element of personal piety occupying a place which contrasts wonderfully with the childish and superstitious idea of evil spirits, magical spells, and omens. we read in the same collections of tablets, of mares bringing forth dogs and women lions; and psalms, which in their elevation of moral tone and intensity of personal devotion might readily be mistaken for the hebrew psalms attributed to david. there is a large collection of what are known as "the penitential psalms," in which the chaldæan penitent confesses his sins, pleads ignorance, and sues for mercy, almost in the identical words of the sweet singer of israel. in one of these, headed "the complaints of the repentant heart," we find such verses as these-- "i eat the food of wrath, and drink the waters of anguish." * * * * * "oh, my god, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins. "the lord in his wrath has overwhelmed me with confusion." * * * * * "i lie on the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. i am silent and in tears, and none takes me by the hand. i cry out, and there is none who hears me." * * * * * "my god, who knowest the unknown,[ ] be merciful to me. my goddess, who knowest the unknown, be merciful." [ ] or, as some translators read, "who knowest that i knew not," _i.e._ that i sinned in ignorance. * * * * * "god, who knowest the unknown, in the midst of the stormy waters take me by the hand; my sins are seven times seven, forgive my sins!" another hymn is remarkable for its artistic construction. it is in regular strophes, the penitent speaking in each five double lines, to which the priest adds two, supporting his prayer. the whole is in precisely the same style as the similar penitential psalms of the hebrew bible, as will appear from the following quotation of one of the strophes from the translation of zimmern. _penitent._ "i, thy servant, full of sighs call to thee. whoso is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. if thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. ruler of all, mistress of mankind, merciful one to whom it is good to turn, who dost receive sighs." _priest._ "while his god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. thy countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand." these hymns are remarkable, both as showing that the sentiments of personal piety and contrition for sin as a thing hateful to the supreme being, might be as intense in a polytheistic as in a monotheistic religion; and as illustrating the immense interval of time which must have elapsed before such sentiments could have grown up from the rude beginnings of savage or semi-civilized superstitions. the two oldest religions of the world, those of egypt and chaldæa, tell the same story; that of the immense interval which must have elapsed prior to the historical date of b.c. when written records begin, to allow of such ideas and such a civilization having grown up from such a state of things as we find prevailing during the neolithic period, and still prevailing among the inferior races of the world, who have remained isolated and unchanged in the hunting or nomad condition. i have dwelt at some length on the ancient religions, for nothing tends more to open the mind, and break down the narrow barriers of sectarian prejudice, than to see how the ideas which we have believed to be the peculiar possession of our own religion, are in fact the inevitable products of the evolution of the human race from barbarism to civilization, and have appeared in substantially the same forms in so many ages and countries. and surely, in these days, when faith in direct inspiration has been so rudely shaken, it must be consoling to many enlightened christians to find that the fundamental articles of their creed, trinities, emanations, incarnations, atonements, a future life and day of judgment, are not the isolated conceptions of a minority of the human race in recent times, but have been held from a remote antiquity by all the nations which have taken a leading part in civilization. to all enlightened minds also, whatever may be their theological creeds, it must be a cheering reflection that the fundamental axioms of morality do not depend on the evidence that the decalogue was written on a stone by god's own finger, or that the sermon on the mount is correctly reported, but on the evolution of the natural instincts of the human mind. all advanced and civilized communities have had their decalogues and sermons on the mount, and it is impossible for any dispassionate observer to read them without feeling that in substance they are all identical, whether contained in the egyptian todtenbuch, the babylonian hymns, the zoroastrian zendavesta, the sacred books of brahmanism and buddhism, the maxims of confucius, the doctrines of plato and the stoics, or the christian bible. none are absolutely perfect and complete, and of some it may be said that they contain precepts of the highest practical importance which are either omitted or contradicted in the christian formulas. for instance, the virtue of diligence, and the injunction not to be idle, in the egyptian and zoroastrian creeds contrast favourably with the "take no thought for the morrow," and "trust to be fed like the sparrows," of the sermon on the mount. but in this, and in all these summaries of moral axioms, apparent differences arise not from fundamental oppositions, but from truth having two sides, and passing over readily into "the falsehood of extremes." even the injunction to "take no thought for the morrow," is only an extreme way of stating that the active side of human life, strenuous effort, self-denial, and foresight, must not be pushed so far as to stifle all higher aspirations. probably if the same concrete case of conduct had been submitted to an egyptian, a babylonian or zoroastrian priest, and to the late bishop of peterborough, their verdicts would not have been different. such a wide extension does the maxim take, "one touch of nature makes the world akin," when we educate ourselves up to the culture which gives some general idea of how civilized man has everywhere felt and believed since the dawn of history very much as we ourselves do at the close of the nineteenth century. chapter v. ancient science and art. evidence of antiquity--pyramids and temples--arithmetic--decimal and duodecimal scales--astronomy--geometry reached in egypt at earliest dates--great pyramid--piazzi smyth and pyramid-religion--pyramids formerly royal tombs, but built on scientific plans--exact orientation on meridian--centre in ° n. latitude--tunnel points to pole--possible use as an observatory--procter--probably astrological--planetary influences--signs of the zodiac--mathematical coincidences of great pyramid--chaldæan astronomy--ziggurats--tower of babel--different orientation from egyptian pyramids--astronomical treatise from library of sargon i., b.c.--eclipses and phases of venus--measures of time from old chaldæan--moon and sun--found among so many distant races--implies commerce and intercourse--art and industry--embankment of menes--sphynx--industrial arts--fine arts--sculpture and painting--the oldest art the best--chaldæan art--de sarzec's find at sirgalla--statues and works of art--imply long use of bronze--whence came the copper and tin--phoenician and etruscan commerce--bronze known years earlier--same alloy everywhere--possible sources of supply--age of copper--names of copper and tin--domestic animals--horse--ox and ass--agriculture--all proves extreme antiquity. the conclusion drawn from the religions of egypt and chaldæa, as to the existence of a very long period of advanced civilization prior to the historical era, is fully confirmed by the state of the arts and sciences at the commencement of the earliest records. a knowledge of astronomy implies a long series of observations and a certain amount of mathematical calculation. the construction of great works of hydraulic engineering, and of such buildings as temples and pyramids, also proves an advanced state of scientific knowledge. such a building, for instance, as the great pyramid must have required a considerable acquaintance with geometry, and with the effects of strains and pressures; and the same is true of the early temples and ziggurats, or temple observatories of chaldæa. there must have been regular schools of astronomers and architects, and books treating on scientific subjects, before such structures could have been possible. the knowledge of science possessed by a nation affords a more definite test of its antecedent civilization than its religion. it is always possible to say that advanced religious ideas may have been derived from some supernatural revelation, but in the case of the exact sciences, such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, this is no longer possible, and their progress can be traced step by step by the development of human reason. thus there are savage races, like the australians at the present day, who cannot count beyond "one, two, and a great number"; and some philologists tell us that traces of this state can be discovered in the origin of civilized languages, from the prevalence of dual forms which seem to have preceded those of the plural. the next stage is that of counting by the fingers, which gives rise to a natural system of decimal notation, as shown by such words as ten, which invariably means two hands; twenty, which is twice ten, and so on. many existing races, who are a little more advanced than the australians, use their fingers for counting, and can count up to five or ten, and even the chimpanzee sally could count to five. but when we come to a duodecimal system we may feel certain that a considerable advance has been made, and arithmetic has come into existence as a science; for the number has no natural basis of support like , and can only have been adopted because it was exactly divisible into whole numbers by , , , . the mere fact therefore of the existence of a duodecimal system shows that the nation which adopts it must have progressed a long way from the primitive "one, two, a great many," and acquired ideas both as to the relation of numbers, and a multitude of other things, such as the division of the circle, of days, months, and years, of weights and measures, and other matters, in which ready division into whole parts without fractions had become desirable. and at the very first in egypt, chaldæa, and among the turanian races generally, we find this duodecimal system firmly established. the circle has degrees, the year days, the day single or double hours, and so on. but from this point the journey is a long one to calculations which imply a knowledge of geometry and mathematics, and observations of celestial bodies which imply a long antecedent science of astronomy, and accurate records of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets, and of eclipses and other memorable events. the earliest records, both of egypt and chaldæa, show that such an advanced state of science had been reached at the first dawn of the historical period, and we read of works on astronomy, geometry, medicine, and other sciences, written, or compiled from older treatises, by egyptian kings of the old empire, and by sargon i. of accade from older accadian works. but the monuments prove still more conclusively that such sciences must have been long known. especially the great pyramid of cheops affords a very definite proof of the progress which must have been made in geometrical, mechanical, and astronomical science at the time of its erection. if we were to believe professor piazzi smyth, and the little knot of his followers who have founded what may be called a pyramid-religion, this remarkable structure contains a revelation in stone for future ages, of almost all the material scientific facts which have been discovered since by years of painful research by the unaided human intellect. its designers must have known and recorded, with an accuracy surpassing that of modern observation, such facts as the dimensions of the earth, the distance of the sun, the ratio of the area of a circle to its diameter, the precise determination of latitude and of a true meridian line, and the establishment of standards of measure taken, like the metre, from a definite division of the earth's circumference. it is argued that such facts as these could not have been discovered so accurately in the infancy of science, and without the aid of the telescope, and therefore that they must have been made known by revelation, and the great pyramid is looked upon therefore as a sort of bible in stone, which is, in some not very intelligible way, to be taken as a confirmation of the inspiration of the hebrew bible, and read as a sort of supplement to it. this is of course absurd. a supernatural revelation to teach a chosen people the worship of the one true god, is at any rate an intelligible proposition, but scarcely that of such a revelation to an idolatrous monarch and people, to teach details of abstruse sciences, which in point of fact were not taught, for the monument on which they were recorded was sealed up by a casing of polished stone almost directly after it was built, and its contents were only discovered by accident, long after the facts and figures which it is supposed to teach had been discovered elsewhere by human reason. the only thing approaching to a revelation of religious import which piazzi smyth professed to have discovered in the pyramid was a prediction, which is now more than ten years overdue, of the advent of the millennium in . but these extravagances have had the good effect of giving us accurate measurements of nearly all the dimensions of the great pyramid, and raising a great deal of discussion as to its aim and origin. in the first place it is quite clear that its primary object was to provide a royal tomb. a tomb of solid masonry with a base larger than lincoln's inn fields, and feet higher than st. paul's, seems very incomprehensible to modern ideas, but there can be no doubt as to the fact. when the interior is explored both of this and other pyramids, nothing is found but one or two small sepulchral chambers containing the stone coffins of a king or queen. the great pyramid is not an exceptional monument, but one of a series of some seventy pyramid-tombs of kings, beginning with earlier and continued by later dynasties of the old empire. the reason of their construction is obvious. it originates from the peculiar ideas, which have been already pointed out, of the existence of a ka or shadowy double, and a still more ethereal soul or spirit, whose immortality depended on the preservation of a material basis in the form of a mummy or likeness of the deceased person, preferably no doubt by the preservation of the mummy. this led to the enormous outlay, not by kings only, but by private persons, on costly tombs, which, as herodotus says, were considered to be their permanent habitations. with an absolute monarchy in which the divine right of kings was strained so far that the monarch was considered as an actual god, it was only natural that their tombs should far exceed those of their richest subjects, and that unusual care should be taken to prevent them from being desecrated in future ages by new and foreign dynasties. suppose a great and powerful monarch to have an unusually long and prosperous reign, it is quite conceivable that he should wish to have a tomb which should not only surpass those of his predecessors, but any probable effort of his successors, and be an unique monument defying the attacks not only of future generations, but of time itself. this seems, without doubt, to have been the primary motive of the great pyramid, and in a lesser degree of all pyramids, sepulchral mounds, and costly tombs. but the pyramids, and especially the great pyramid, are not mere piles of masonry heaped together without plan or design. on the contrary, they are all built on a settled plan, which implies an acquaintance with the sciences of geometry and astronomy, and which, in the case of the great pyramid, is carried to an extent which shows a very advanced knowledge of those sciences, and goes far to prove that it must have been used, during part of the period of its construction, as a national observatory. the full details of this plan are given by procter in his work on the great pyramid, and although the want of a more accurate knowledge of egyptology has led him into some erroneous speculations as to the age and object of this pyramid, his authority is undoubted as to the scientific facts and the astronomical and geometrical conclusions which are to be drawn from them. it appears that the first object of all pyramid builders was to secure a correct orientation; that is, that the four sides should face truly to the north, south, east, and west, or in other words that a line drawn through the centre of the base parallel to the sides should stand on a true meridian line. this would be a comparatively easy task with modern instruments, but before the invention of the telescope it must have required great nicety of observation to obtain such extremely accurate results in all the sides and successive layers of such an enormous building. there are only two ways in which it could be attempted--one by observing the shadow cast by a vertical gnomon when the sun was on the meridian, the other by keeping a standard line constantly directed to the true north pole of the heavens. in the case of the great pyramid another object seems to have been in view which required the same class of observations, viz. to place the centre of the base on the thirtieth degree of north latitude, being the latitude in which the pole of the heavens is exactly one-third of the way from the horizon to the zenith. both these objects have been attained with wonderful accuracy. the orientation of the great pyramid is correct, and the centre of its base corresponds with the thirtieth degree of north latitude within a slight error which was inevitable, if, as is probable, the egyptian astronomers were unacquainted with the effect of atmospheric refraction in raising the apparent above the true place of celestial bodies, or had formed an insufficient estimate of its amount. the centre of the base is yards south of the real thirtieth parallel of latitude, which is yards north of the position which would have been deduced from the pole-star method, and yards south of that from the shadow method, by astronomers ignorant of the effect of refraction. the shadow method could never have been so reliable as the polar method, and it is certain therefore _à priori_ that the latter must have been adopted either wholly or principally, and this conclusion is confirmed by the internal construction of the pyramid itself, which is shown by the subjoined vertical section. [illustration: pyramid] the tunnel a b c is bored for a distance of feet underground through the solid rock, and is inclined at an angle pointing directly to what was then the pole-star, alpha draconis, at its lower culmination. as there is no bright star at the true pole, its position is ascertained by taking the point half-way between the highest and lowest positions of the conspicuous star nearest to it, and which therefore revolves in the smallest circle about it. this star is not always the same on account of the precession of the equinoxes, and alpha draconis supplied the place of the present pole-star about b.c., and practically for several centuries before and after that date. now the underground tunnel is bored exactly at the angle of ° ´ to the horizon, at which alpha draconis would shine down it at its lower culmination when ° ´ from the pole; and the ascending passage and grand gallery are inclined at the same angle in an opposite direction, so that the image of the star reflected from a plane mirror or from water at b, would be seen on the southern meridian line by an observer in the grand gallery, while another very conspicuous star in the southern hemisphere, alpha centauri, would at that period shine directly down it. the passages therefore would have the double effect, st, of enabling the builders to orient the base and lower layers of the pyramid up to the king's chamber in a perfectly true north and south line; nd, of making the grand gallery the equivalent of an equatorially-mounted telescope of a modern observatory, by which the transit of heavenly bodies in a considerable section of the sky comprising the equatorial and zodiacal regions, across the meridian, and therefore at their highest elevations, could be observed by the naked eye with great accuracy. those who wish to study the evidence in detail should read procter's work on the _problems of the pyramids_, but for the present purpose it may be sufficient to sum up the conclusions of that accomplished astronomer. he says, "the sun's annual course round the celestial sphere could be determined much more exactly than by any gnomon by observations made from the great gallery. the moon's monthly path and its changes could have been dealt with in the same effective way. the geometric paths, and thence the true paths of the planets, could be determined very accurately. the place of any visible star along the zodiac could be most accurately determined." if therefore the pyramid had only been completed up to the fiftieth layer, which would leave the southern opening of the great gallery uncovered, the object might have been safely assumed to be the erection of a great national observatory. but this supposition is negatived by the fact that the grand gallery must have been shut up, and the building rendered useless for astronomical purposes in a very short time, by the completion of the pyramid, which was then covered over by a casing of polished stone, evidently with a view of concealing all traces of the passages which led to the tomb. the only possible solution seems to be that suggested by procter, that the object was astrological rather than astronomical, and that all those minute precautions were taken in order to provide not only a secure tomb but an accurate horoscope for the reigning monarch. astrology and astronomy were in fact closely identified in the ancient world, and relics of the superstition still linger in the form of zadkiel almanacs. when the sun, moon, and five planets had been identified as the celestial bodies possessing motion, and therefore, as it was inferred, life, and had been converted into gods, nothing was more natural than to suppose that they exercised an influence on human affairs, and that their configuration affected the destinies both of individuals and of nations. a superstitious people who saw auguries in the flight of birds, the movements of animals, the rustling of leaves, and in almost every natural occurrence, could not fail to be impressed by the higher influences and omens of those majestic orbs, which revolved in such mysterious courses through the stationary stars of the host of heaven. accordingly in the very earliest traditions of the accadians and egyptians we find an astrological significance attached to the first astronomical facts which were observed and recorded. the week of seven days, which was doubtless founded on the first attempts to measure time by the four phases of the lunar month, became associated with the seven planets in the remotest antiquity, and the names of their seven presiding gods, in the same order and with the same meaning, have descended unchanged to our own times, as will be shown more fully in a subsequent chapter. observations on the sun's annual course led to the fixing of it along a zodiac of twelve signs, corresponding roughly to twelve lunar months, and defined by constellations, or groups of stars, having a fanciful resemblance to animals or deified heroes. those zodiacal signs are of immense antiquity and world-wide universality. we find them in the earliest mythology of chaldæa and egypt, in the labours of hercules, in the traditions of a deluge associated with the sign of aquarius, and even, though in a somewhat altered form, in such distant countries as china and mexico. probably they originated in chaldæa, where the oldest records and universal tradition show the primitive accadians to have been astronomers, who from time immemorial had made observations on the heavenly bodies, and who remained down to the roman empire the most celebrated astrologers, though it is not quite clear whether egyptian astronomy and astrology were imported from chaldæa or invented independently at an equally remote period. even if we admit, however, procter's suggestion that the pyramids had an astrological origin in addition to their primary object as tombs, it is difficult to understand how such enormous structures could have been built. the great pyramid must have been built on a plan designed from the first, and not by any haphazard process of adding a layer each year according to the number of years the monarch happened to reign. how could he foresee the exact number of years of an unusually long life and reign, or what security could he have that, if he died early, his successor would complete his pyramid in addition to erecting one of almost equal magnitude for himself? how could three successive kings have devoted such an amount of the nation's capital and resources to the building of three such pyramids as those of cheops, chephren, and mycerinus, without provoking insurrections? herodotus has a piece of gossip, probably picked up from some ignorant guides, which represents cheops and chephren as detested tyrants, who shut up the temples of the gods, and confounds the national hatred of the shepherd kings, who conquered egypt some years later, with that of these pyramid-builders; but this is confuted by the monuments, which show them as pious builders or restorers of temples of the national gods in other localities, as for instance at bubastis, where the cartouche of chephren was lately found by m. naville on an addition to the temple of isis. all the records also of the fourth or pyramid-building dynasty, and of the two next dynasties, show it to have been a period of peace and prosperity. the pyramids therefore must still remain a subject enveloped in mystery, but enough is certain from the undoubted astronomical facts disclosed in their construction to show the advanced state of this science at this remote period. nor is this all, for the dimensions of the great pyramid, when stripped of the fanciful coincidences and mystical theories of piazzi smyth, still show enough to prove a wonderful knowledge of mathematics and geometry. the following may be taken as undoubted facts from the most accurate measurements of their dimensions. st. the triangular area of each of the four sloping sides equals the square of the vertical height. this was mentioned by herodotus, and there can be no doubt that it was a real relation intended by the builders. nd. the united length of the four sides of the square base bears to the vertical height the same proportion as that of the circumference of a circle to its radius. in other words it gives the ratio, which under the symbol [greek: pi] plays such an important part in all the higher mathematics. there are other remarkable coincidences which seem to show a still more wonderful advance in science, though they are not quite so certain, as they depend on the assumption that the builders took as their unit of measurement, a pyramid inch and sacred cubit different from those in ordinary use, the former being equal to the , , th part of the earth's diameter, and the latter containing twenty-five of those inches, or about the , , th part of that diameter. to arrive at such standards it is evident that the priestly astronomers must have measured very accurately an arc of the meridian or length of the line on the earth's surface which just raised or lowered the pole of the heavens by °; and inferred from it that the earth was a spherical body of given dimensions. those dimensions would not be quite accurate, for they must have been ignorant of the compression of the earth at its poles and protuberance at the equator, but the measurement of such an arc at or near ° of north latitude would give a close approximation to the mean value of the earth's diameter. procter thinks that from the scientific knowledge which must have been possessed by the builders of the pyramid, it is quite possible that they may have measured an arc of the meridian with considerable accuracy, and calculated from it the length of the earth's diameter, assuming it to be a perfect sphere. and if so they may have intended to make the side of the square base of the pyramid of a length which would bear in inches some relation to the length of this diameter; for it is probable that at this stage of the world's science, the mysterious or rather magical value which was attached to certain words would attach equally to the fundamental facts, figures, and important discoveries of the growing sciences. it is quite probable, therefore, that the sacred inch and cubit may have been invented, like the _metre_, from an aliquot part of the earth's supposed diameter, so as to afford an invariable standard. but there is no positive proof of this from the pyramid itself, the dimensions of which may be expressed just as well in the ordinary working cubit, and it must remain open to doubt whether the coincidences prove the pyramid inch, or the inch was invented to prove the coincidences. assuming, however, for the moment that these measures were really used, some of the coincidences are very remarkable. the length of each side of the square base is - / of these sacred cubits, or equal to the length of the year in days. the height is inches, and the sun's distance from the earth, taken at , , miles, which is very nearly correct, is just thousand millions of such inches. it has been thought, therefore, that this height was intended to symbolize the sun's distance. but independently of the fact that this distance could not have been known with any approach to accuracy before the invention of the telescope, it is forgotten that this height had been already determined by a totally unconnected consideration, viz. the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. the coincidence, therefore, of the sun's distance must be purely accidental. a still more startling coincidence has been found in the fact that the two diagonals of the base contain , pyramid inches, or almost exactly the number of years in the precessional period. this also must be accidental, for the number of inches in the diagonals follows as a matter of course from the sides being taken at - / cubits, corresponding to the length of the year; and there can be no connection between this and the precession of the equinoxes, which, moreover, was unknown in the astronomy of the ancient world until it was discovered in the time of the ptolemies by hipparchus. but with all these doubtful coincidences, and the many others which have been discovered by devotees of the pyramid religion, quite enough remains to justify the conclusion that between and years ago there were astronomers, mathematicians, and architects in egypt, who had carried their respective sciences to a high degree of perfection corresponding to that shown by their engineers and artists. when we turn to chaldæa we find similar evidence as to the advance of science, and especially of astronomical science, in the earliest historical times. every important city had its temple, and attached to its temple its ziggurat, which was a temple-observatory. the ziggurat is in some respects the counterpart of the pyramid, being a pyramidal structure built up in successive stages or platforms superimposed on one another and narrowing as they rose, so as to leave a small platform on the top, on which was a small shrine or temple, and from which observations could be made. these ziggurats being built entirely of bricks, mostly sun-burnt, have crumbled into shapeless mounds of rubbish, but a fair idea of their size and construction may be obtained from the descriptions and pictures of them preserved in contemporary tablets and slabs, especially from those of the great ziggurat of the seven spheres or planets at borsippa, a suburb of babylon, which was rebuilt by nebuchadnezzar about b.c., on the site of a much more ancient ruined construction. this, which was the largest and most famous of the ziggurats, became identified in after times with the tower of babel and the legend of the confusion of tongues, but it was in fact an astronomical building in seven stages dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, taken in the order of magnitude of their respective orbits, and each distinguished by their respective colours. thus the lowest or largest platform was dedicated to saturn, and coloured black; the second to jupiter was orange; the third to mars red; the fourth to the sun golden; the fifth to venus pale yellow; the sixth to mercury an azure blue, obtained by vitrifying the facing bricks; and the seventh to the moon was probably coated with plates of silver. the height of this ziggurat was feet, and standing as it did on a level alluvial plain, it must have been a very imposing object. [illustration: ziggurat restored (perrot and chipiez), the tower of babel.] it may be affirmed of all these ziggurats that they were not tombs like the egyptian pyramids, but were erected exclusively for astronomical and astrological purposes. the number of stages had always reference to some religious or astronomical fact, as three to symbolize the great triad; five for the five planets; or seven for these and the sun and moon; the number of seven being never exceeded, and the order the same as that adopted for the days of the week, viz. according to the magnitudes of their respective orbits. they were oriented with as much care as the pyramids, which is of itself a proof that they were used as observatories, but with this difference, that their angles instead of their faces were directed towards the true north and south. to this rule there are only two exceptions, probably of late date after egyptian influences had been introduced, but the original and national ziggurats invariably observe the rule of pointing angles and not sides to the four cardinal points. this is a remarkable fact as showing that the astronomies of egypt and chaldæa were not borrowed one from the other, but evolved independently in prehistoric times. an explanation of it has been found in the fact recorded on a geographical tablet, that the accadians were accustomed to use the terms north, south, east, and west to denote, not the real cardinal points, but countries which lay to the n.w., s.e., and s.w. of them. it is inconceivable, however, that such skilful astronomers should have supposed that the north pole was in the north-west, and a more probable explanation is to be found in the meaning of the word ziggurat, which is holy mountain. it was a cardinal point in their cosmogony that the heavens formed a crystal vault, which revolved round an exceedingly high mountain as an axis, and the ziggurats were miniature representations of this sacred mountain of the gods. the early astronomers must have known that this mountain could be nowhere but in the true north, as the daily revolutions of the heavenly bodies took place round the north pole. it was natural, therefore, that they should direct the apex or angle of a model of this mountain rather than its side to the position in the true north occupied by the peak of the world's pivot. be this as it may, the fact that the ziggurats were carefully oriented, and certainly used as observatories at the earliest dates of chaldæan history, is sufficient to prove that the priestly astronomers must have already attained an advanced knowledge of science, and kept an accurate record of long-continued observations. this is fully confirmed by the astronomical and astrological treatise compiled for the royal library of sargon i., date b.c., which treats of eclipses, the phases of venus, and other matters implying a long previous series of accurate and refined astronomical observations. the most conclusive proof, however, of the antiquity of chaldæan science is afforded by the measures of time which were established prior to the commencement of history, and have come down to the present era in the days of the week and the signs of the zodiac. there can be no doubt that the first attempts to measure time beyond the single day and night, were lunar, and not solar. the phases of the moon occur at short intervals, and are more easily discerned and measured than those of the sun in its annual revolution. the beginning and end of a solar year, and the solstices and equinoxes are not marked by any decided natural phenomena, and it is only by long-continued observations of the sun's path among the fixed stars that any tolerably accurate number of days can be assigned to the duration of the year and seasons. but the recurrence of new and full moon, and more especially of the half-moons when dusk and light are divided by a straight line, must have been noted by the first shepherds who watched the sky at night, and have given rise to the idea of the month, and its first approximate division into four weeks of seven days each. accordingly we find that in all primitive languages and cosmogonies the moon takes its name from a root which signifies "the measurer," while the sun is the bright or shining one. a relic of this superior importance of the moon as the measurer of time is found in the old accadian mythology, in which the moon-god is masculine and the sun-god feminine, while with the semites and other nations of a later and more advanced civilization, the sun is the husband, and the moon his wife. for as observations multiplied and science advanced, it would be found that the lunar month of twenty-eight days was only an approximation, and that the solar year and months defined by the sun's progress through the fixed stars afforded a much more accurate chronometer. thus we find the importance of the moon and of lunar myths gradually superseded by the sun, whose daily risings and settings, death in winter and resurrection in spring, and other myths connected with its passage through the signs of the solar zodiac, assume a preponderating part in ancient religions. traces, however, of the older period of lunar science and lunar mythology still survived, especially in the week of seven days, and the mysterious importance attached to the number . this was doubtless aided by the discovery which could not fail to be made with the earliest accurate observations of the heavens, that there were seven moving bodies, the sun, moon, and five planets, which revolved in settled courses, while all the other stars remained fixed. scientific astrology, as distinguished from a mere superstitious regard of the flight of birds and other omens, had its origin in this discovery. the first philosophers who pondered on these celestial phenomena were certain to infer that motion implied life, and in the case of such brilliant and remote bodies divine life; and that as the sun and moon exerted such an obvious influence on the seasons and other human affairs, so probably did the other planets or the gods who presided over them. the names and order of the days of the week, which have remained so similar among such a number of ancient and modern nations, show how far these astrological notions must have progressed when they assumed their present form, for the order is a highly artificial one. why do we divide time into weeks of seven days, and call the days sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and saturday, and why are these names of special planets, or of the special gods associated with them, identical, and occur in the same order among so many different nations? for whether we say thor's-day or jove's-day, and call it "thursday" or "jeudi," the same god is meant, who is identified with the same planet, and so for the others. it is quite clear that the names of the seven days of the week were originally taken from the seven planets--i.e. from the seven celestial bodies which were observed by ancient astronomers to move, and, therefore, be presumably endowed with life, while the rest of the host of heaven remained stationary. these bodies are in order of apparent magnitude:-- . the sun. . the moon. . jupiter. . venus. . mars. . saturn. . mercury and this is the natural order in which we might have expected to find them appropriated to the days of the week. but, obviously, this is not the principle on which the days have been named; for, to give a single instance, the nimble mercury, the smallest of the visible planets, comes next before the majestic jupiter, the ruler of the heavens and wielder of the thunderbolt. let us try another principle, that of classifying the planets in importance, not by their size and splendour, but by the magnitude of their orbits and length of their revolutions. this will give the following order:-- . saturn. . jupiter. . mars. . the sun (_i.e._ really the earth). . venus. . mercury. . the moon. we are now on the track of the right solution, though there is still apparently hopeless discord between this order and that of the days of the week. the true solution is such an artificial one, that we should never have discovered it if it had not been disclosed to us by the clay tablets exhumed from ancient royal libraries in the temples and palaces of chaldæa. these tablets are extremely ancient, going back in many cases to the times of the old accadians who inhabited chaldæa prior to the advent of the semites. some of them, in fact, are from the royal library of sargon i., of accade, whose date is fixed by the best authorities at about b.c. these accadians were a civilized and literary people, well versed in astronomy, but extremely superstitious, and addicted beyond measure to astrology. every city had its ziggurat, or observatory-tower, attached to its temple, from which priests watched the heavens and calculated times and seasons. to some of those ancient priests it occurred that the planets must be gods watching over and influencing human events, and that, as mars was ruddy, he was probably the god of war; venus, the lovely evening star, the goddess of love; jupiter, powerful; saturn, slow and malignant; and mercury, quick and nimble. by degrees the idea expanded, and it was thought that each planet exerted its peculiar influence, not only on the days of the week, but on the hours of the day; and the planet which presided over the first hour of the day was thought to preside over the whole of that day. but the day had been already divided into twenty-four hours, because the earliest chaldæans had adopted the duodecimal scale, and counted by sixes, twelves, and sixties. now, twenty-four is not divisible by seven, and, therefore, the same planets do not recur in the same order, to preside over the same hours of successive days. if saturn ruled the first hour, he would rule the twenty-second hour; and, if we refer to the above list of the planets, ranged according to the magnitude of their orbits, we shall find that the sun would rule the first hour of the succeeding day, and then in succession the moon, mars, mercury, jupiter, and venus, round to saturn again, in the precise order of our days of the week. this order is so artificial that it cannot have been invented separately, and wherever we find it we may feel certain that it has descended from the astrological fancies of accadian priestly astronomers at least years ago. now for the sabbath. the same clay tablets, older by some years than the accepted biblical date for the creation of the world, mention both the name and the institution. the "sabbath" was the day ruled over by the gloomy and malignant saturn, the oldest of the planetary gods, as shown by his wider orbit, but dimmed with age, and morose at having been dethroned by his brilliant son, jupiter. it was unlucky in the extreme, therefore, to do any work, or begin any undertaking, on the "sabbath," or saturday. hence, long centuries before jewish pharisees or english puritans, rules of sabbatarian strictness were enforced at babylon and nineveh, which remind one of the knight who "hanged his cat on monday for killing of a mouse on sunday." the king was not allowed to ride or walk on the sabbath; and, even if taken ill, had to wait till the following day before taking medicine. this superstition as to the unluckiness of saturn's day was common to all ancient nations, including the jews; but when the idea of a local deity, one among many others, expanded, under the influence of the later prophets and the exile, unto that of one universal god, the ruler of the universe and special patron of his chosen people, the compilers of the old testament dealt with the sabbath as they did with the deluge, the creation, and other myths borrowed from the chaldæans. that is to say, they revised them in a monotheistic sense, wrote "god" for "gods," and gave them a religious, rather than an astronomical or astrological, meaning. thus the origin of the sabbath, as a day when no work was to be done, was transferred from saturn to jehovah, and the reason assigned was that "in six days the lord created the heaven and the earth, and all that therein is, and rested on the seventh day." one more step only remains to bring us to our modern sunday, and this also, like the last, is to be attributed to a religious motive. the early christian church wished to wean the masses from paganism, and very wisely, instead of attacking old-established usages in front, turned their flank by assigning them to different days. thus the day of rest was shifted from saturday to sunday, which was made the christian sabbath, and the name changed by the latin races from the day of the sun to the lord's day, "dominica dies," or "dimanche." it has remained saturday, however, with the jews, and it is quite clear that it was on a saturday, and not a sunday, that jesus walked through the fields with his disciples, plucking ears of corn, and saying, "the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." it is equally clear that our modern sabbatarians are much nearer in spirit to the pharisees whom jesus rebuked, and to the old accadian astrologers, than to the founder of christianity. it is encouraging, however, to those who believe in progress, to observe how in this, as in many other cases, the course of evolution makes for good. the absurd superstitions of accadian astrologers led to the establishment of one day of rest out of every seven days--an institution which is in harmony with the requirements of human nature, and which has been attended by most beneficial results. the religious sanctions which attached themselves to this institution, first, as the hebrew sabbath, and, secondly, as transformed into the christian sunday, have been a powerful means of preserving this day of rest through so many social and political revolutions. let us, therefore, not be too hasty in condemning everything which, on the face of it, appears to be antiquated and absurd. millions will enjoy a holiday, get a breath of fresh air and glimpse of nature, or go to church or chapel cleanly and respectable in behaviour and attire, because there were accadian zadkiels years ago, who believed in the maleficent influence of the planet saturn. when we find that these highly intricate and artificial calculations of advanced astrological and astronomical lore existed at the dawn of chaldæan history, and are found in so many and such widely separated races and regions, it is impossible to avoid two conclusions. st. that an immense time must have elapsed since the rude accadian highlanders first settled in and reclaimed the alluvial valleys and marshy deltas of the tigris and euphrates. nd. that the intercourse between remote regions, whether by land or sea, and by commerce or otherwise, must have been much closer in prehistoric times than has been generally supposed. as in the days of the week, so in the festivals of the year, we trace their first origin to astronomical observations. when nations passed from the condition of savages, hunters, or nomads, into the agricultural stage, and developed dense populations, cities, temples, priests, and an organized society, we find the oldest traces of it everywhere in the science of astronomy. they watched the phases of the moon, counted the planets, followed the sun in its annual course, marking it first by seasons, and, as science advanced, by its progress through groups of fixed stars fancifully defined as constellations. everywhere the moon seems to have been taken as the first standard for measuring time beyond the primary unit of day and night. its name very generally denotes the "measurer" in primitive languages, and it appears as the male, and the sun as female, in the oldest mythologies--a distinction of sex which is still maintained in modern german. this is natural, for the monthly changes of the moon come much more frequently, and are more easily measured from day to day, than the annual courses of the sun. but, as observations accumulate and become more accurate, it is found that the sun, and not the moon, regulates the seasons, and that the year repeats on a larger scale the phenomenon presented by the day and night, of a birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death of the sun, followed by a resurrection or new birth, when the same cycle begins anew. hence the oldest civilized nations have taken from the two phenomena of the day and year the same fundamental ideas and festivals. the ideas are those of a miraculous birth, death, and resurrection, and of an upper and lower world, the one of light and life, the other of darkness and death, through which the sun-god and human souls have to pass to emerge again into life. the festivals are those of the four great divisions of the year: the winter solstice, when the aged sun sinks into the tomb and rises again with a new birth; the spring equinox, when he passes definitively out of the domain of winter into that of summer; the summer solstice, when he is in full manhood, "rejoicing like a giant to run his course," and withering up vegetation as with the hot breath of a raging lion; and, finally, the autumnal equinox, when he sinks once more into the wintry half of the year and fades daily amidst storms and deluges to the tomb from which he started. of these festivals christmas and easter have survived to the present day, and the last traces of the feast of the summer solstice are still lingering in the remote parts of scotland and ireland in the bel fires, which, when i was young, were lighted on midsummer night on the highest hills of orkney and shetland. as a boy, i have rushed, with my playmates, through the smoke of those bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to baal in the valley of hinnom. when we turn from science to art and industry, the same conclusion of immense antiquity is forcibly impressed on us. in egypt the reign of menes, b.c., was signalized by a great engineering work, which would have been a considerable achievement at the present day. he built a great embankment, which still remains, by which the old course of the nile close to the libyan hills was diverted, and a site obtained for the new capital of memphis on the west side of the river, placing it between the city and any enemy from the east. at the same time this dyke assisted in regulating the flow of the inundation, and it may be compared for magnitude and utility to the modern _barrage_ attempted by linant bey and carried out by sir colin moncrieff. evidently such a work implies great engineering skill, and great resources, and it prepares us for what we have seen a few centuries later in the construction of the great pyramids. many of the most famous cities and temples also of egypt date back for their original foundation to a period prior to that of menes. there is indeed every reason to suppose that one of the most colossal and remarkable monuments, the sphynx, with the little temple of granite and alabaster between its paws, is older than the accession of menes. a tablet discovered by mariette informs us that khufu, the builder of the great pyramid, discovered this temple, which had been buried in the sand, and restored it. if a building of such simplicity and solidity of structure required repairs, it must have existed for a long time and been lost sight of. it is almost certain also that if such a colossal and celebrated monument as the sphynx had been constructed by any of the historical kings, it would have been mentioned by manetho, as for instance is that of the step-pyramid of sakkarah by the fourth king of the first dynasty, and of a temple of pthah at memphis, and a treatise on medicine, by the king who succeeded menes. the name of the sphynx also, "the great hor," points to the period of the horsheshu, or ruler priests of horus, prior to the foundation of the empire by menes, and to the time before osiris superseded horus, as the favourite personification of the solar god. be this as it may, there is abundant proof that at the dawn of egyptian history, some years ago, the arts of architecture, engineering, irrigation, and agriculture had reached a high level corresponding to that shown by the state of religion, science, and letters. a little later the paintings on the tombs of the old empire show that all the industrial arts, such as spinning, weaving, working in wood and metals, rearing cattle, and a thousand others, which are the furniture of an old civilized country, were just as well understood and practised in egypt or years ago as they are at the present day. this being the case, i must refer those who wish to pursue this branch of the subject to professed works on egyptology. for my present purpose, if the oldest records of monuments prove the existence of a long antecedent civilization, it is superfluous to trace the proofs in detail through the course of later ages. when we turn to the fine arts we find the same evidence. the difficulty is not to trace a golden age up to rude beginnings, but to explain the seeming paradox that the oldest art is the best. a visit to the museum of boulak, where mariette's collection of works of the first six dynasties is deposited, will convince any one that the statues, statuettes, wall-pictures, and other works of art of the ancient empire from memphis and its cemetery of sakkarah, are in point of conception and execution superior to those of a later period. none of the later statues equal the tour _de force_ by which the majestic portrait statue of chephren, the builder of the second great pyramid, has been chiselled out from a block of diorite, one of the hardest stones known, and hardly assailable by the best modern tools. nor has portraiture in wood or stone ever surpassed the ease, grace, and life-like expression of such statues as that known as the village sheik, from its resemblance to the functionary who filled that office years later in the village where the statue was discovered; or those of the kneeling scribes, one handing in his accounts, the other writing from dictation. and the pictures on the walls of tombs, of houses, gardens, fishing and musical parties, and animals and birds of all kinds, tame and wild, are equally remarkable for their colouring and drawing, and for the vivacity and accuracy with which attitudes and expressions are rendered. in short egypt begins where most modern countries seem to be ending, with a very perfect school of realistic art. [illustration: the village sheik, a wooden statuette. boulak museum, from gizeh.--according to the chronological table of mariette, this statue is over years old. from a photograph by brugsch bey.] for it is remarkable that this first school of art of the old empire is thoroughly naturalistic, and knows very little of the ideal or supernatural. and the tombs tell the same story. the statues and paintings represent natural objects and not theological conventions; the tombs are fac-simile representations of the house in which the deceased lived, with his mummy and those of his family, and pictures of his oxen, geese, and other belongings, but no gods, and few of those quotations from the todtenbuch which are so universal in later ages. it would seem that at this early period of egyptian history life was simple and cheerful, and both art and religion less fettered by superstitions and conventions than they were when despotism and priestcraft had been for centuries stereotyped institutions, and originality of any sort was little better than heresy. war also and warlike arms hardly appear on these earliest representations of egyptian life, and wars were probably confined to frontier skirmishes with bedouins and libyans, such as we see commemorated on the tablet of snefura at wady magerah. in chaldæa the evidence for great antiquity is derived less from architectural monuments and arts, and more from books, than in egypt, for the obvious reason that stone was wanting and clay abundant in mesopotamia. where temples and palaces were built of sun-dried bricks, they rapidly crumbled into mounds of rubbish, and nothing was preserved but the baked clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions. in like manner sculpture and wall-painting never flourished in a country devoid of stone, and the religious ideas of chaldæa never took the egyptian form of the continuance of ordinary life after death by the ka or ghost requiring a house, a mummy, and representations of belongings. the bas-relief and fringes sculptured on slabs of alabaster brought home by layard and others, belong mostly to the later period of the assyrian empire. accordingly, the oldest works of art from chaldæa consist mainly of books and documents in the form of clay cylinders, and of gems, amulets, and other small articles of precious stones or metals. but the recent discovery of de sarzec at sirgalla shows that in the very earliest period of chaldæan history the arts stood at a level which is fairly comparable to that of the old empire in egypt. he found in the ruins of the very ancient temple of the sun nine statues of patesi or priest-kings of accadian race, who had ruled there prior to the consolidation of sumir and accad into one empire by sargon i., somewhere about b.c. the remarkable thing about these statues is that they are of diorite, similar to that of the statue of chephren, which is believed to be only found in the peninsula of sinai, and is so hard that it must have taken excellent tools and great technical skill to carve it. the statues are much of the same size and in the same seated attitude as that of chephren, and have the appearance of belonging to the same epoch and school of art. this is confirmed by the discovery along with the statues of a number of statuettes and small objects of art which are also in an excellent style, very similar to that of the old egyptian dynasty, and show great proficiency both in taste and in technical execution. the discovery of these diorite statues at such a very early date both in egypt and chaldæa, raises a very interesting question as to the tools by which such an intractable material could be so finely wrought. evidently these tools must have been of the very hardest bronze, and the construction of such works as the dyke of menes and the pyramids, shows that the art of masonry must have been long known and extensively practised. but this again implies a large stock of metals and long acquaintance with them since the close of the latest stone period. perhaps there is no test which is more conclusive of the state of prehistoric civilization and commerce than that which is afforded by the general knowledge and use of metals. it is true that a knowledge of some of the metals which are found in a native state, or in easily fusible ores, may coexist with very primitive barbarism. some even of the cannibal tribes of africa are well acquainted with iron, and know how to smelt its ores and manufacture tools and weapons. gold also, which is so extensively found in the native state, could not fail to be known from the earliest times; and in certain districts pure copper presents itself as only a peculiar and malleable sort of stone. but when we come to metals which require great knowledge of mining to detect them in their ores, and to produce them in large quantities; and to alloys, which require a long practice of metallurgy to discover, and to mix in the proper proportions, the case is different, and the stone period must be already far behind. still more is this the case when tools and weapons of such artificial alloys are found in universal use in countries where nature has provided no metals, and where their presence can only be accounted for by the existence of an international commerce with distant metal-producing countries. iron was no doubt known at a very early period, but it was extremely scarce, and even as late as homer's time was so valuable that a lump of it constituted one of the principal prizes at the funeral games of patroclus. nor is there any reason to suppose that the art of making from it the best steel, which alone could have competed with bronze in cutting granite and diorite, had been discovered. it may be assumed, therefore, that bronze was the material universally used for the finer tools and weapons by the great civilized empires of egypt and chaldæa during the long interval between the neolithic stone age and the later adoption of iron. evidently then, both the egyptians and the chaldæans must have been well provided with bronze tools capable of hewing and polishing the hardest rocks. now bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. copper is a common metal, easily reduced from its ores, and not infrequently occurring in a metallic state, as in the mines of lake superior, where the north american indians hammered out blocks of it from the native metal. and we have proofs that the ancient egyptians obtained copper at a very early date from the mines of wady magerah in the peninsula of sinai, and probably also from cyprus. but where did they get their tin, without which there is no bronze? tin is a metal which is only found in a few localities, and in the form of a black oxide which requires a considerable knowledge of metallurgy to detect and to reduce. the only considerable sources of tin now known are those of cornwall, malacca, banca, and australia. of these, the last was of course unknown to the ancient world, and it is hardly probable that its supplies were obtained from such remote sources as those of the extreme east. not that it is at all impossible that it might have been brought from malacca by prehistoric sea-routes to india, and thence to egypt by the red sea and to chaldæa by the persian gulf, and this is the conjecture of one of the latest authorities in a very interesting work just published on the _dawn of ancient art_. but it seems highly improbable that, if such routes had been established, they should have been so completely abandoned as they certainly were when the supply of tin for the eastern world was brought from the west. in fact, when we get the first authoritative information as to the commerce in tin, about b.c., we find that it was supplied mainly by tyre, and came from the west beyond the straits of gibraltar; and in the greek periplus, written in the first century, it is distinctly stated that india was supplied with tin from britain by way of alexandria and the red sea, which is hardly consistent with the supposition that the tin of malacca had been long known and worked. in the celebrated th chapter of ezekiel, which describes the commerce of tyre when in the height of its glory, tin is only mentioned once as being imported along with silver, iron, and lead from tarshish, _i.e._ from the emporium of gades or cadiz, to which it had doubtless been brought from cornwall. the only other reference to tin is, that javan, tubal, and meshech, _i.e._ the ionians, and tribes of asia minor in the mountainous districts to the south of the black sea, traded with slaves and vessels of brass, and if brass meant bronze, this would imply a knowledge of tin. the only other considerable supply of tin which is certainly known came from the etruscans, who worked extensive tin mines in northern italy. but the evidence of these does not go back farther than from to b.c., and it leaves untouched the question how egypt and chaldæa had obtained large stocks of bronze, certainly long before b.c.; and how they kept up these stocks for certainly more than years before the phoenicians appeared on the scene to supply tin by maritime commerce. it is in some other direction that we must look, for it is certain that neither egypt nor chaldæa had any native sources of this metal. they must have imported, and that from a distance, either the manufactured bronze, or the tin with which to manufacture it themselves by alloying copper. the latter seems most probable, for the egyptians worked the copper mines of sinai from a very early date, and drew supplies of copper from cyprus, which could only have been made useful by alloying it with tin, while if they imported all the immense quantity of bronze which they must have used, in the manufactured state, the pure copper would have been useless to them. a remarkable fact is that the bronze found from the earliest monuments downwards, throughout most of the ancient world, including the dolmens, lake villages, and other prehistoric monuments in which metal begins to appear, is almost entirely of uniform composition, consisting of an alloy of to per cent. of tin to or per cent. of copper. that is for tools and weapons where great hardness was required, for objects of art and statuettes were often made of pure copper, or with a smaller alloy of tin, showing that the latter metal was too scarce and valuable to be wasted.[ ] evidently this alloy must have been discovered in some locality where tin and copper were both found, and trials could be made of the proportions which gave the best result, and the secret must have been communicated to other nations along with the tin which was necessary for the manufacture. where could the sources have been which supplied this tin and this knowledge how to use it, to the two great civilized nations of egypt and chaldæa, where we can say with certainty that bronze was in common use prior to b.c.? if we exclude britain and the extreme east, there are only two localities in which extensive remains of ancient workings for tin have been discovered; one in georgia on the slopes of the caucasus, and the other on the northern slope of the hindoo-kush in the neighbourhood of bamian. and the knowledge both of bronze and of other metals, such as iron and gold, seems to have been universally diffused among the turanian races who were the primitive inhabitants of northern asia. how could egypt have got its tin even from the nearest known source? consider the length of the caravan route; the number of beasts of burden required; the necessity for roads, depôts, and stations; the mountain ranges, rivers, and deserts to be traversed; such a journey is scarcely conceivable either through districts sparsely peopled and without resources, or infested by savage tribes and robbers. and yet if the tin did not come by land, it must have come for the greater part of the way by water, floating down the euphrates or tigris, and being shipped from ur or eridhu by way of the persian gulf and red sea. [ ] this normal alloy does not seem to have been in general use in egypt before the eighteenth dynasty, and the bronze of earlier periods contains less tin. but evidently a very hard alloy of copper must have been used from the earliest times, to chisel out statues of granite and diorite, and although tin was too scarce for common use, the tools for such purposes must have contained a considerable percentage of it. it is difficult to conceive that such an international commerce can have existed at such a remote period, and the difficulty is increased by the fact that in europe, where we can pretty well trace the passage from the neolithic into the bronze period, bronze does not seem to have been known until some or years later, when the phoenicians had migrated to the eastern shore of the mediterranean, and extended their commerce and navigation far and wide over its northern coasts and islands; and at a still later period, when the etruscans had established themselves in italy and exported the products of the tuscan tin mines by trade routes over the rhætian alps. it is even doubtful whether there was any knowledge of metals in europe prior to the phoenician period, as the aryan names for gold, silver, copper, tin, and iron are borrowed from foreign sources; and have no common origin in any ancestral language of the aryan races before they were differentiated into greek, latin, teutonic, celtic, and slavic. copper seems to have been the first metal known, and there are traces of a copper age prior to that of bronze in some of the older neolithic lake villages of switzerland and italy, and in very old tombs and dolmens in hungary, france, and the south-west of spain. but these copper implements are very few and far between, they are evidently modelled in the prior forms of polished stone, and must have been superseded after a very short time by the invention or importation of bronze, which, as already stated, implies a supply of tin, and a common knowledge of the art of alloying copper with it in the same uniform proportion which gives the best result. but in the historic records and remains of egypt and chaldæa, which go so much further back, bronze had evidently been long known when history commences. the accadian name for tin, _id-kasdaru_, is the oldest known, and reappears in the sanscrit _kastira_, the assyrian _kasugeteira_, and the greek _kassiteros_. the oldest known name for copper is the accadian _urud_ or _urudu_, which singularly enough is preserved in the basque _urraida_, while _as rauta_ it reappears as the name for iron in finnish, and as _ruda_ for metal generally in old slavonic. in semitic babylonian, copper is _eru_, which confirms the induction that the metal was unknown to the primitive semites, and adopted by them from the previously existing accadian civilization. we are thus driven back by every line of evidence to the conclusion that egypt and chaldæa were in the full, bronze age, and had left the stone period far behind them, long before the primitive stocks of the more modern aryan and semitic populations of europe and western asia had emerged from the neolithic stage, and for an unknown period before the definite date when their history commences, certainly not less than years ago. we are also driven to the conclusion that other nations, capable of conducting extensive mining operations, must have been in existence in the caucasus, the hindoo-kush, the altai, or other remote regions; and that routes of international commerce must have been established by which the scarce but indispensable tin could be transported from these regions to the dense and civilized communities which had grown up in the alluvial valleys and deltas of the nile and the euphrates. it is very singular, however, that if such an intercourse existed, the knowledge of other objects of what may be called the first necessity, should have been so long limited to certain areas and races. for instance, in the case of the domestic animals, the horse was unknown in egypt and arabia till after the hyksos conquest, when in a short time it became common, and these countries supplied the finest breeds and the greatest number of horses for exportation. on the other hand, the horse must have been known at a very early period in chaldæa, for the tablet of sargon i., b.c. , talks of riding in brazen chariots over rugged mountains. this makes it the more singular that the horse should have remained so long unknown in egypt and arabia, for it is such an eminently useful animal, both for peace and war, that one would think it must have been introduced almost from the very first moment when trading caravans arrived. and yet tin must have arrived from regions where in all probability the horse had been long domesticated before the time of menes. the only explanation i can see is, that the tin must have come by sea, but by what maritime route could it have come prior to the rise of phoenician commerce, which was certainly not earlier than about b.c., or some years after the date of menes? could it have come down the euphrates or tigris and been exported from the great sea-ports of eridhu or ur by way of the persian gulf and red sea? this seems the more probable, as eridhu was certainly an important maritime port at the early period of chaldæan civilization. the diorite statues found at tell-loh by m. de sarzec are stated by an inscription on them to have come from sinai, and indeed they could have come from no other locality, as this is the only known site of the peculiar greenish-black basalt or diorite of which those statues and the similar one of the egyptian chephren of the second pyramid are made. and in this case the transport of such heavy blocks for such a distance could only have been effected by sea. there are traces also of the maritime commerce of eridhu having extended as far as india. teak wood, which could only have come from the malabar coast, has been found in the ruins of ur; and "sindhu," which is indian cloth or muslin, was known from the earliest times. it seems not improbable, therefore, that eridhu and ur may have played the part which was subsequently taken by sidon and tyre, in the prehistoric stages of the civilizations both of egypt and of chaldæa, and this is confirmed by the earliest traditions of the primitive accadians, which represent these cities on the persian gulf as maritime ports, whose people were well acquainted with ships, as we see in their version of the deluge, which, instead of the hebrew ark of noah, has a well-equipped ship with sails and a pilot, in the legend of xisuthros. the instance of the horse is the more remarkable, as throughout a great part of the stone period the wild horse was the commonest of animals, and afforded the staple food of the savages whose remains are found in all parts of europe. at one station alone, at solutre in burgundy, it is computed that the remains of more than , horses are found in the vast heap of _débris_ of a village of the stone period. what became of these innumerable horses, and how is it that the existence of the animal seems to have been so long unknown to the great civilized races? it is singular that a similar problem presents itself in america, where the ancestral tree of the horse is most clearly traced through the eocene and miocene periods, and where the animal existed in vast numbers both in the northern and southern continent, under conditions eminently favourable for its existence, and yet it became so completely extinct that there was not even a tradition of it remaining at the time of the spanish conquest. on the other hand, the ass seems to have been known from the earliest times, both to the egyptians and the semites of arabia and syria, and unknown to the aryans, whose names for it are all borrowed from the semitic. large herds of asses are enumerated among the possessions of great egyptian landowners as far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties, and no doubt it had been the beast of burden in egypt for time immemorial. it is in this respect only, viz. the introduction of the horse, that we can discern any foreign importation calculated to materially affect the native civilization of egypt, during the immensely long period of its existence. it had no doubt a great deal to do with launching egypt on a career of foreign wars and conquests under the eighteenth dynasty, and so bringing it into closer contact with other nations, and subjecting it to the vicissitudes of alternate triumphs and disasters, now carrying the egyptian arms to the euphrates and tigris, and now bringing assyrian and persian conquerors to thebes and memphis. but in the older ages of the first and middle empire, the ox, the ass, the sheep, ducks and geese, and the dog, seem to have been the principal domestic animals. gazelles also were tamed and fed in herds during the old empire, and the cat was domesticated from an african species during the middle empire. agriculture was conducted both in egypt and chaldæa much as it is in china at the present day, by a very perfect system of irrigation depending on embankments and canals, and by a sort of garden cultivation enabling a large population to live in a limited area. the people also, both in egypt and chaldæa, seem to have been singularly like the modern chinese, patient industrious, submissive to authority, unwarlike, practical, and prosaic. everything, therefore, conspires to prove that an enormous time must have elapsed before the dawn of history years ago, to convert the aborigines who left their rude stone implements in the sands and gravels of these localities, into the civilized and populous communities which we find existing there long before the reigns of menes and of sargon. chapter vi. prehistoric traditions. short duration of tradition--no recollection of stone age--celts taken for thunderbolts--stone age in egypt--palæolithic implements--earliest egyptian traditions--extinct animals forgotten--their bones attributed to giants--chinese and american traditions--traditions of origin of man--philosophical myths--cruder myths from stones, trees, and animals--totems--recent events soon forgotten--autochthonous nations--wide diffusion of prehistoric myths--the deluge--importance of, as test of inspiration--more definite than legend of creation--what the account of the deluge in genesis really says--date--extent--duration--all life destroyed except pairs preserved in the ark--such a deluge impossible--contradicted by physical science--by geology--by zoology--by ethnology--by history--how deluge myths arise--local floods--sea shells on mountains--solar myths--deluge of hasisadra--noah's deluge copied from it--revised in a monotheistic sense at a comparatively late period--conclusion--national view of inspiration. in passing from the historical period, in which we can appeal to written records and monuments, into that of palæontology and geology, where we have to rely on scientific facts and reasons, we have to traverse an intermediate stage in which legends and traditions still cast a dim and glimmering twilight. the first point to notice is that this, like the twilight of tropical evenings, is extremely brief, and fades almost at once into the darkness of night. it is singular in how short a time all memory is lost of events which are not recorded in some form of writing or inscription, and depend solely on oral tradition. thus it may be safely affirmed that no nation which has passed into the metal age retains any distinct recollection of that of polished stone, and _à fortiori_ none of the palæolithic period, or of the origins of their own race or of mankind. the proof of this is found in the fact that the stone axes and arrow-heads which are found so abundantly in many countries are everywhere taken for thunderbolts or fairy arrows shot down from the skies. this belief was well-nigh universal throughout the world; we find it in all the classical nations, in modern europe, in china, japan, and india. its antiquity is attested by the fact that neolithic arrow-heads have been found attached as amulets in necklaces from egyptian and etruscan tombs, and palæolithic celts in the foundations of chaldæan temples. in india many of the best specimens of palæolithic implements were obtained from the gardens of ryots, where they had been placed on posts, and offerings of ghee duly made to them. like so many old superstitions, this still lingers in popular belief, and the common name for the finely-chipped arrow-heads which are so plentifully scattered over the soil from scotland to japan, is that of elf-bolts, supposed to have been shot down from the skies by fairies or spirits. until the discoveries of boucher-de-perthes were confirmed only half a century ago, this belief was not only that of simple peasants, but of the learned men of all countries, and the volumes are innumerable that have been written to explain how the "cerauni," or stone-celts, taken to be thunderbolts, were formed in the air during storms. they are already described by pliny, and a chinese encyclopædia says that "some of these lightning stones have the shape of a hatchet, others of a knife, some are made like mallets. they are metals, stones, and pebbles, which the fire of the thunder has metamorphosed by splitting them suddenly and uniting inseparably different substances. on some of them a kind of vitrification is distinctly to be observed." the chinese philosopher was evidently acquainted with real meteorites and with the stone implements which were mistaken for them, and his account is comparatively sober and rational. but the explanations of the christian fathers and mediæval philosophers, and even of scientific writers down to a very recent period, are vastly more mystical. a single specimen may suffice which is quoted by tylor in his _early history of mankind_. tollius in figures some ordinary palæolithic stone axes and hammers, and tells us that "the naturalists say they are generated in the sky by a fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humour, and are as it were baked hard by intense heat, and the weapon becomes pointed by the damp mixed with it flying from the dry part, and leaving the other end denser, but the exhalations press it so hard that it breaks out through the cloud and makes thunder and lightning." but these attempts at scientific explanations were looked upon with disfavour by theologians, the orthodox belief being that the "cerauni" were the bolts by which satan and his angels had been driven from heaven into the fiery abyss. these speculations, however, of later ages are of less importance for our present purpose than the fact that in no single instance can anything like a real historical tradition be found connecting the stone age with that of metals, and giving a true account of even the latest forms of neolithic implements. this is the more remarkable in the case of egypt, where historical records go back so very far, for here, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the relics of a stone age exist in considerable numbers. there is every probability, therefore, that egyptian civilization had been developed, mainly on the spot, from the rude beginnings of a palæolithic age, through the incipient civilization of the neolithic, into the age of metals, and the advanced civilization which preceded the consolidation of the empire under menes and the commencement of history.[ ] and yet no tradition, with a pretence to be historical, goes back farther than with a very dim and nickering light for a few centuries before menes, when the horsheshu, or priests of horus, ruled independent cities, and small districts attached to the temples. there are accounts of some passages of the todtenbuch being taken from old hymns written on goatskin in the time of these horsheshu, and of historical temples built on plans taken from older temples and attributed to thoth; and it seems probable also that the sphynx and its temple may date from the same period. but beyond these few and vague instances, there is nothing to confirm the statement attributed to manetho, that, prior to menes, historical kings had reigned in thebes for years, in memphis for years, and in this for years; before whom came heroes and kings for years, heroes for years, and gods for , years. [ ] stone implements were used for common purposes, especially for sickles to cut heads of corn, down to a comparatively late period, but as spurrell observes in petrie's, _illahun kahun and gurob_, "these implements do not represent work of the stone age properly considered." they are not so much survivals of neolithic forms, as imitations, in the cheaper material of flint, of metallic forms for rough work and common use. the use of a flint knife for making the first incision on the corpse in preparing it for a mummy, is the only fact which looks like a survival from neolithic into historical times. the disappearance of all historical recollections of a stone age is paralleled by the oblivion of the origin of the remains of the great extinct quaternary animals which were contemporary with man. everywhere we find the fossil bones of the elephant and rhinoceros attributed to monsters and giants, both in the ancient and modern worlds. st. augustine denounces infidels who do not believe that "men's bodies were formerly much greater than now," and quotes, in proof of the assertion, that he had seen himself "so huge a molar tooth of a man, that it would cut up into a hundred teeth of ordinary men,"--doubtless the molar of a fossil elephant. marcus scaurus brought to rome from joppa the bones of the monster who was to have devoured andromeda. the chinese encyclopædia, already referred to, describes the "fon-shu, an animal which dwells in the extreme cold on the coast of the northern sea, which resembles a rat in shape, but is as big as an elephant, and lives in dark caverns, ever shunning the light. there is got from it an ivory as white as that of an elephant;" evidently referring to the frozen mammoths found in siberia. similar circumstances gave rise to the same myth in south america, and the natives told darwin that the skeletons of the mastodon on the banks of the parana were those of a huge burrowing animal, like the bizchaca or prairie-rat. numerous similar instances are given by tyler in his _early history of mankind_, and among the whole multitude of this class of myths, there is only one which has the least semblance of being derived from actual tradition, viz. the bas-relief of the sacrifice of a human victim by a mexican priest, who wears a mask of an animal with a trunk resembling an elephant or mastodon; and certain vague traditions among some of the red indian tribes speak of an animal with an arm protruding from its shoulder. it is more probable, however, that these may have been derived from traditions brought over from asia like the mexican calendar, or be creations of the fancy, like dragons and griffins, inspired by some idea of an exaggerated tapir, than that, in this solitary instance, a mexican priest should have been actually a contemporary of the mammoth or mastodon. if fossil animals have thus given rise everywhere to legends of giants, fossil shells have played the same part as regards legends of a deluge. these are in many cases so abundant at high levels that they could not fail to be observed, and, if observed, to be attributed to the sea having once covered these levels, and inundated all the earth except the highest peaks. the tradition of an universal deluge is however so important that i reserve it for separate consideration at the end of the present chapter. if then all memory of a period so comparatively recent as that of the neolithic stone age and of the latest extinct animals was completely lost when the first dawn of history commences, it follows as a matter of course that nothing like an historical tradition survives anywhere of the immensely longer palæolithic period and of the origin of man. man in all ages has asked himself how he came here, and has indulged in speculations as to his origin. these speculations have taken a form corresponding very much to the stage of culture and civilization to which he had attained. they are of almost infinite variety, but may be classed generally under three heads. those nations which had attained a sufficient degree of culture to personify first causes and the phenomena of nature as gods, attribute the creation of the world and of man to some one or more of these gods; and as they advance further in philosophical reasonings, embellish the myth with allegories embodying the problems of human existence. thus if bel makes man out of clay, and moulds him with his own blood; or jehovah fashions him from dust, and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life; in each case it is an obvious allegory to explain the fact that man has a dual nature, animal and spiritual. so the myth of the garden of eden, the temptation by the serpent, the trees of knowledge and of life, and the fall of adam, which we see represented on a babylonian cylinder as well as in the second chapter of genesis, is obviously an allegorical attempt to explain what remains to this day the perplexing problem of the origin of evil. these philosophical myths are, however, very various among different nations. thus the orthodox belief of , , of hindoos is that mankind were created in castes, the brahmins by an emanation from brahma's head, the warriors from his chest, the traders and artisans from his legs, and the sudras or lowest caste from his feet; obviously an _ex post facto_ myth to account for the institution of castes, and to stamp it with divine authority. but before reflection had risen to this level, and among the savage and semi-barbarous people of the present day, we find much more crude speculations, which, in the main, correspond with the kindred creeds of animism and totemism. when life and magical powers were attributed to inanimate objects, nothing was more natural than to suppose that stones and trees might be converted into men and women, and conversely men and women into trees and stones. thus we find the stone theory very widely diffused. even with a people so far advanced as the early greeks, it meets us in the celebrated fable of deucalion and pyrrha peopling the earth by throwing stones behind them, which turned into men and women; and the same myth, of stones turning into the first men, meets us at the present day in almost every reliable myth of creation, brought home by missionaries and anthropologists from africa, america, and polynesia. in some cases trees take the place of stones, and transformations of men into both are among the commonest occurrences. from daphne into a laurel, and lot's wife into a pillar of salt, down to the cornish maidens transformed into a circle of stones for dancing on sunday, we find everywhere that wherever natural objects present any resemblance to the human figure, such myths sprung up spontaneously in all ages and countries. another great school of creation-myths originates in the widespread institution of the totem. it is a step in advance of the pure fetich-worship of stocks and stones, to conceive of animals as having thought and language, and being in fact men under a different form. from this it is a short step to endowing them with magical attributes and supernatural powers, adopting them as patrons of tribes and families, and finally considering them as ancestors. myths of this kind are common among the lower races, especially in america, where many of the tribes considered themselves as descendants of some great bear or elk, or of some extremely wise fox or beaver, and held this belief so firmly, that intermarriage among members of the same totem was considered to be incestuous. the same system prevails among most races at an equally low or lower stage of civilization, as in australia; and there are traces of its having existed among old civilized nations at remote periods. thus the animal-worship of egypt was probably a survival of the old faith in totems, differing among different clans, which was so firmly rooted in the popular traditions, that the priests had to accommodate their religious conceptions to it, as the christian fathers did with so many pagan superstitions. the division of the twelve tribes of israel seems also to have been originally totemic, judging from the old saga in which jacob gives them his blessing, identifying judah with a lion, dan with an adder, and so on. and even at the present day, the crest of the duke of sutherland carries us back to the time when the wild-cat was the badge, and very probably some great and fierce wild-cat the ancestor, in popular belief, of the fighting clan chattan. but in all these various and discordant myths of the creation of man, it is evident there is nothing which comes within a hundred miles of being a possible historical reminiscence of anything that actually occurred; and they must be relegated to the same place as the corresponding myths of the creation of the animal world and of the universe. they are neither more or less credible than the theories that the earth is a great tortoise floating on the water, or the sky a crystal dome with windows in it to let down the rain, and stars hung from it like lamps to illuminate a tea-garden. even when we come to comparatively recent periods, and have to deal with traditions, not of how races originated, but how they came into the abodes where we find them, it is astonishing how little we can depend on anything prior to written records. most ancient nations fancied themselves autochthonous, and took a pride in believing that they sprang from the soil on which they lived. and this is also the case with ruder races, unless where the migrations and conquests recorded are of very recent date. thus ancient egypt believed itself to be autochthonous, and traced the origin of arts and sciences to native gods. chaldæa, according to berosus, was inhabited from time immemorial by a mixed multitude, and though oannes brought letters and arts from the shores of the persian gulf, he taught them to a previously existing population. this is the more remarkable as the name of accad and the form of the oldest accadian hieroglyphics make it almost certain that they had migrated into mesopotamia from the highlands of kurdistan or of central asia. the athenians also and other greek tribes all claimed to be autochthonous, and their legends of men springing from the stones of deucalion, and from the dragon's teeth of cadmus, all point in the same direction. the great aryan races also have no trustworthy traditions of any ancient migrations from asia into europe, or _vice versâ_, and their languages seem to denote a common residence during the formation of the different dialects in those regions of northern europe and southern russia in which we find them living when we first catch sight of them. the only exception to this is in the record in the zendavesta of successive migrations from the pamer or altai, down the oxus and jaxartes into bactria, and from thence into persia. but this is not found in the original portion of the zendavesta, and only in later commentaries on it, and is very probably a legend introduced to exemplify the constant warfare between ormuzd and ahriman. the hindoo vedas contain no history, and the inference that the aryans lived in the punjaub when the rig-veda was composed, and conquered hindostan later, is derived from the references contained in the oldest hymns which point to that conclusion, rather than from any definite historical record. rome again had no tradition of umbrian pile-dwellers descending from neolithic switzerland, expelling iberians, and being themselves expelled by etruscans. it is singular, considering the almost total absence of genuine historical traditions, how certain myths and usages have been universally diffused, and come down to the present day from a very remote antiquity. the identity of the days of the week, based on a highly artificial and complicated calculation of chaldæan astrology, has been already referred to as a striking instance of the wide diffusion of astronomical myths in very early times. many of the most popular nursery tales also, such as jack the giant-killer, jack and the beanstalk, and cinderella, are found almost in the same form in the most remote regions and among the most various races, both civilized and uncivilized, and many of them are obviously derived from the oldest and simplest forms of solar myths. i come now to the tradition of a deluge, which is most important both on account of its prevalence among a number of different races and nations, often remote from one another, and because it affords the most immediate and crucial test of the claim of the bible to be taken as a literally true and inspired account, not only of matters of moral and religious import, but of all the historical and scientific facts recorded in its pages. the confession of faith of an able and excellent man, the late mr. spurgeon, and adopted by fifteen or twenty other nonconformist ministers, says-- "we avow our firmest belief in the verbal inspiration of all holy scripture as originally given. to us the bible does not merely _contain_ the word of god, but _is_ the word of god." following this example, thirty-eight clergymen of the church of england have put forward a similar declaration. they say-- "we solemnly profess and declare our unfeigned belief in all the canonical scriptures of the old and new testaments, as handed down to us by the undivided church in the original languages. we believe that they are inspired by the holy ghost; that they are what they profess to be; that they mean what they say; and that they declare incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled." it is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these confessions of faith, not only the so-called "higher biblical criticism," but all the discoveries of modern science, from galileo and newton down to lyall and darwin, are simple delusions. there can be no question that if the words of the old testament are "literally inspired," and "mean what they say," they oppose an inflexible _non possumus_ to all the most certain discoveries of astronomy, geology, zoology, biology, egyptology, assyriology, and other modern sciences. now the account of the deluge in genesis affords the readiest means of bringing this theory to the test, and proving or disproving it, by the process which euclid calls the _reductio ad absurdum_. not that other narratives, such as those of the creation in genesis, do not contain as startling contradictions, if we keep in mind the assertion of the orthodox thirty-eight, that the inspired words of the old testament "mean what they say," _i.e._ that they mean what they were necessarily taken to mean by contemporaries and long subsequent generations; for instance, that if the inspired writer says days defined by a morning and an evening, he means natural days, and not indefinitely long periods. but this is just what the defenders of orthodoxy always ignore, and all the attempts at reconciling the accounts of creation in genesis with the conclusions of science turn on the assumption that the inspired writers do _not_ "mean what they say," but something entirely different. if they say "days," they mean geological periods of which no reader had the remotest conception until the present century. if they say that light was made before the sun, and the earth before the sun, moon, and stars, they really mean, in some unexplained way, to indicate newton's law of gravity, laplace's nebular theory, and the discoveries of the spectroscope. by using words therefore in a non-natural sense, and surrounding them with a halo of mystical and misty eloquence, they evade bringing the pleadings to a distinct and definite issue such as the popular mind can at once understand. but in the case of the deluge no such evasion is possible. the narrative is a specific statement of facts alleged to have occurred at a comparatively recent date, not nearly so remote as the historical records of egypt and chaldæa, and which beyond all question must be either true or false. but if false, there is an end of any attempt to consider the whole scientific and historical portions of the bible as written by divine inspiration; for the narrative is not one of trivial importance, but of what is really a second creation of all life, including man, from a single or very few pairs miraculously preserved and radiating from a single centre.[ ] [ ] the following arguments so closely resemble those of professor huxley in a recent article in the _nineteenth century_, that it may be well to state that they were written before i had seen that article. i insert them not as attempting to vie with the greatest living master of english prose, but as showing that the same conclusions inevitably force themselves on all who understand the first rudiments of modern science. consider then what the narrative of the deluge really tells us. first, as to date. the hebrew bible, from which our own is translated, gives the names of the ten generations from noah to abraham, with the precise dates of each birth and death, making the total number of years from the flood to abraham. for abraham, assuming him to be historical, we have a synchronism which fixes the date within narrow limits. he was a contemporary of chedorlaomer, or khuder-lagomar, known to us from chaldæan inscriptions as one of the last of the elamite dynasty, who subverted the old dynasty in the year b.c., and who reigned for years. abraham's date is, therefore, approximately about b.c., and that of the deluge about b.c. the septuagint version assigns years more than that of the hebrew bible for the interval between abraham and noah; but this is only done by increasing the already fabulous age of the patriarchs. accepting, however, this septuagint version, though it has been constantly repudiated by the jews themselves, and by nearly all christian authorities from st. jerome down to archbishop usher, the date of the deluge cannot be carried further back than to about b.c., a date at least , and more probably , years later than that shown by the records and monuments of egypt and chaldæa, when great empires, populous cities, and a high degree of civilization already existed in those countries. the statement of the bible, therefore, is that, at a date not earlier than b.c., or at the very earliest b.c., a deluge occurred which "covered all the high hills that were under the whole heaven," and prevailed upon the earth for days before it began to subside; that seven months and sixteen days elapsed before the tops of the mountains were first seen; and that only after twelve months and ten days from the commencement of the flood was the earth sufficiently dried to allow noah and the inmates of the ark to leave it. naturally all life was destroyed, with the exception of noah and those who were with him in the ark, consisting of his wife, his three sons and their wives, and pairs, male and female, of all beasts, fowls, and creeping things; or, as another account has it, seven pairs of clean beasts and of birds, and single pairs of unclean beasts and creeping things. the statement is absolutely specific: "all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon earth, and every man." and again: "every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both men and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven, and they were destroyed from the earth; and noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." and finally, when the ark was opened, "god spake unto noah and said, go forth of the ark, thou and thy wife, and thy sons and sons' wives with thee. bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth." it is evident that such a narrative cannot be tortured into any reminiscence of a partial and local inundation. it might possibly be taken for a poetical exaggeration of some vague myth or tradition of a local flood, if it were found in the legends of some early races, or semi-civilized tribes. but such an interpretation is impossible when the narrative is taken, as orthodox believers take it, as a divinely-inspired and literally true account contained in one of the most important chapters in the history of the relations of man to god. in this view it is a still more signal instance than the fall of adam, of god's displeasure with sin and its disastrous consequences, of his justice and mercy in sparing the innocent and rewarding righteousness; it establishes a new departure for the human race, a new distinction between the chosen people of israel and the accursed canaanites, based not on cain's murder of abel, but on ham's irreverence towards his father; and it introduces a covenant between god and noah, which continued through abraham and david, and became the basis of jewish nationality and of the christian dispensation. if in such a narrative there are manifest errors, the theory of divine inspiration obviously breaks down, and the book which contains it must be amenable to the ordinary rules of historical criticism. now, that no such deluge as that described in genesis ever took place is as certain as that the earth moves about the sun. physical science tells us that it never _could_ have occurred; geology, zoology, ethnology, and history all tell us alike that it never _did_ occur. physical science tells us two things about water: that it cannot be made out of nothing, and that it always finds its level. in order to cover the highest mountains on the earth and remain stationary at that level for months, we must suppose an uniform shell of water of six miles in depth to be added to the existing water of the earth. even if we take ararat as the highest mountain covered, the shell must have been three miles in thickness over the whole globe. where did this water come from, and where did it go to? rain is simply water raised from the seas by evaporation, and is returned to them by rivers. it does not add a single drop of water to that already existing on the earth and in its atmosphere. the heaviest rains do nothing but swell rivers and inundate the adjacent flat lands to a depth of a few feet, which rapidly subsides. the only escape from this law of nature is to suppose some sudden convulsion, such as a change in the position of the earth's axis of rotation, by which the existing waters of the earth were drained in some latitudes and heaped up in others. but any such local accumulation of water implies a sudden and violent rush to heap it up in forty days, and an equally violent rush to run it down to its old level when the disturbing cause ceased, as it must have done in days. such a disturbance in recent times is not only inconsistent with all known facts, but with the positive statement of the narrative that the whole earth was covered, and that the ark floated quietly on the waters, drifting slowly northwards, until it grounded on ararat. the only other alternative is to suppose a subsidence of the land below the level of the sea. but a subsidence which carried a whole continent , , or even feet down, followed by an elevation which brought it back to the old level, both accomplished within the space of twelve months, is even more impossible than a cataclysmal deluge of water. such movements are now, and have been throughout all the geological periods, excessively slow, and certainly not exceeding, at the very outside, a few feet in a century. and, if physical science shows that no such deluge as that described in genesis could have occurred, geology is equally positive that it never did occur. the drift and boulders which cover a great part of europe and north america are beyond all doubt glacial, and not diluvial. they are strictly limited by the extension of glaciers and ice-sheets, and of the streams flowing from them. the high-level gravels in which human remains are found in conjunction with those of extinct animals, are the result of the erosion of valleys by rivers. they are not marine, they are interstratified with beds of sand and silt, containing often delicate fluviatile shells, which were deposited when the stream ran tranquilly, as the coarser gravels were when it ran with a stronger torrent. and the gravels of adjacent valleys, even when separated by a low water-shed, are not intermixed, but each composed of the _débris_ of its own system of drainage, by which small rivers like the somme and the avon have, in the course of ages, scooped out their present valleys to an extent of more than feet in depth and two miles in width. masses of loose sand, volcanic ashes, and other incoherent materials of tertiary formation remain on the surface, which must have been swept away by anything resembling a diluvial wave. and, above all, egypt and other flat countries adjoining the sea, such as the deltas of the euphrates, the ganges, and the mississippi, which must have been submerged by a slight elevation of the sea or subsidence of the land, show by borings, carried in some cases to the depth of feet and upwards, nothing but an accumulation of such tranquil deposits as are now going on, continued for hundreds of centuries, and uninterrupted by anything like a marine or diluvial deposit. zoology is even more emphatic than geology in showing the impossibility of accepting the narrative of the deluge as a true representation of actual events. whoever wrote it must have had ideas of science as infantile as those of the children who are amused by a toy ark in the nursery. his range of vision could hardly have extended beyond the confines of his own country. and, if a _reductio ad absurdum_ were needed of the fallacies to which reconcilers are driven, it would be afforded by sir j. dawson's comparison of the ark to an american cattle-steamer. recollect that the date assigned to the deluge affords no time for the development of new species and races, since every "living substance was destroyed that was upon the face of the ground," except the pairs preserved in the ark. it is a question, therefore, not of one pair of bears, but of many--polar, grizzly, brown, and all the varieties, down to the pigmy bear of sumatra. so of cattle: there must have been not only pairs of the wild and domestic species of europe, but of the gaur of india, the brahmin bull, the yak, the musk-ox, and of all the many species of buffaloes and bisons. if we take the larger animals only, there must have been several pairs of elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, oxen, buffaloes, elk, deer and antelopes, apes, zebras, and innumerable others of the herbivora, to say nothing of lions, tigers, and other carnivora. let any one calculate the cubic space which such a collection would require for a year's voyage under hatches, and he will see at once the absurdity of supposing that they could have been stowed away in the ark. and this is only the beginning of the difficulty, for all the smaller animals, all birds, and all creeping things have also to be accommodated, and to live together for a year under conditions of temperature and otherwise which, if suited for some, must inevitably have been fatal for others. how did polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls live in a temperature suited for monkeys and humming-birds? then there is the crowning difficulty of the food. go to the zoological gardens, and inquire as to the quantity and bulk of a year's rations for elephants, giraffes, and lions, or multiply by the daily allowance of hay and oats for horses, and of grass of green food for bullocks, and he will soon find that the bulk required for food is far greater than that of the animals. and what did the birds and creeping things feed upon? were there rats and mice for the owls, gnats for the swallows, worms and butterflies for the thrushes, and generally a supply of insects for the lizards, toads, and other insectivora, whether birds, reptiles, or mammals? and of the humbler forms which live on microscopic animals and on each other, were they also included in the destruction of "every living substance," and was the earth repeopled with them from the single centre of ararat? here also zoology has a decisive word to say. the earth could not have been repeopled, within any recent geological time, from any single centre, for in point of fact it is divided into distinct zoological provinces. the fauna of australia, for instance, is totally different from that of europe, asia, and america. how did the kangaroo get there, if he is descended from a pair preserved in the ark? did he perchance jump at one bound from ararat to the antipodes? ethnology again takes up a limited branch of the same subject, but one which is more immediately interesting to us--that of the variety of human races. the narrative of genesis states positively that "every man in whose nostrils was the breath of life" was destroyed by the flood, except those who were saved in the ark, and that "the whole earth was overspread" of the three sons of noah--shem, ham, and japheth. that is, it asserts distinctly that all the varieties of the human race have descended from one common ancestor, noah, who lived not more than years ago. consider the vast variety and diversity of human races existing now, and in some of the most typical instances shown by egyptian and chaldæan monuments to have existed before noah was born--the black and woolly-haired negroes, the yellow mongolians, the australians, the negritos, the hottentots, the pygmies of stanley's african forest, the esquimaux, the american red indians, and an immense number of others, differing fundamentally from one another in colour, stature, language, and almost every trait, physical and moral. to suppose these to have all descended from a single pair, noah and his wife, and to have "spread over the whole earth" from ararat, since years b.c., is simply absurd. no man of good faith can honestly say that he believes it to be true; and, if not true, what becomes of inspiration? if anything were wanting to complete the demonstration, it would be furnished by history. we have perfectly authentic historical records, confirmed by monuments, extending in egypt to a date certainly years older than that assigned for noah's deluge; and similar records in chaldæa probably going back as far. in none of these is there any mention of an universal deluge as an historical event actually occurring within the period of time embraced by those records. the only reference to such a deluge is contained in one chapter of a chaldæan epic poem based on a solar myth, and placed in an immense and fabulous antiquity. in egypt the case is, if possible, even stronger, for here the configuration of the nile valley is such that anything approaching an universal deluge must have destroyed all traces of civilization, and buried the country thousands of feet under a deep ocean. even a very great local inundation must have spread devastation far and wide and been a memorable event in all subsequent annals. when remarkable natural events, such as earthquakes, did occur, they are mentioned in the annals of the reigning king, but no mention is made of any deluge. on the contrary, all the records and monuments confirm the statement made by the priests of heliopolis to herodotus when they showed him the statues of the successive high priests who had all been "mortal men, sons of mortal men," that during this long period there had been no change in the average duration of human life, and no departure from the ordinary course of nature. when this historical evidence is added to that of geology, which shows that nothing resembling a deluge could have occurred in the valleys of the nile or euphrates without leaving unmistakable traces of its passage which are totally absent, the demonstration seems as conclusive as that of any of the propositions of euclid. it remains to consider how so many traditions of a deluge should be found among so many different races often so widely separated. there are three ways in which deluge-myths must have been inevitably originated. . from tradition of destructive local floods. . from the presence of marine shells on what is now dry land. . from the diffusion of solar myths like that of izdubar. there can be no doubt that destructive local floods must have frequently occurred in ancient and prehistoric times as they do at the present day. such an inundation as that of the yang-tse-kiang, which only the other year was said to have destroyed half a million of people, or the hurricane wave which swept over the sunderbunds, must have left an impression which, among isolated and illiterate people, might readily take the form of an universal deluge. and such catastrophes must have been specially frequent in the early post-glacial period, when the ice-dams, which converted many valleys into lakes, were melting. but i am inclined to doubt whether the tradition of such local floods was ever preserved long enough to account for deluge-myths. all experience shows that the memory of historical events fades away with surprising rapidity when it is not preserved by written records. if, as xenophon records, all memory of the great city of nineveh had disappeared in years after its destruction, how can it be expected that oral tradition shall preserve a recollection of prehistoric local floods magnified into universal deluges? and when the deluge-myths of different nations are examined closely, it generally appears that they have had an origin rather in solar myths or cosmogonical speculations, than in actual facts. for instance, the tradition of a deluge in mexico has often been referred to as a confirmation of the noachian flood. but when looked into, it appears that this mexican deluge was only a part of their mythical cosmogony which told of four successive destructions and renovations of the world by the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. the first period being closed by earthquakes, the second by hurricanes, the third by volcanoes, it did not require any local tradition to ensure the fourth being closed by a flood. again, deluge-myths must have inevitably arisen from the presence of marine shells, fossil and recent, in many localities where they were too numerous to escape notice. if palæolithic stone implements and bones of fossil elephants gave rise to myths of thunderbolts and giants, sea-shells on mountain-tops must have given rise to speculations as to deluges. at the very beginning of history, egyptian and chaldæan astronomers were sufficiently advanced in science to wish to account for such phenomena, and to argue that where sea-shells were found the sea must once have been. many of the deluge-myths of antiquity, such as that of deucalion and pyrrha, look very much as if this had been their origin. they are too different from the chaldæan and biblical deluge, as for instance in repeopling the world by stones, to have been copied from the same original, and they fit in with the very general belief of ancient nations that they were autochthonous. in a majority of cases, however, i believe it will be found that deluge-myths have originated from some transmission, more or less distorted, of the very ancient chaldæan astronomical myths of the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac. this is clearly the case in the hindoo mythology, where the fish-god ea-han, or oannes, is introduced as a divine fish who swims up to the ark and guides it to a place of refuge. the legend in genesis is much closer to the original myth, and in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of hasisadra in the chaldæan epic, discovered by mr. george smith among the clay tablets in the british museum. this poem was obviously based on an astronomical myth. it was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. the adventures of izdubar, like those of heracles, have obvious reference to these signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the incensed nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from the nether world. the deluge is introduced as an episode told to izdubar during his descent to the lower regions by his ancestor hasisadra, one of the god-kings, who are said to have reigned for periods of tens of thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. it has every appearance of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy sign of aquarius, just as the contests of izdubar and heracles with leo, taurus, draco, sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through other zodiacal constellations. it forms the eleventh chapter of the epic of izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the chaldæan year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods. now, this deluge of hasisadra, as related by berosus, and still more distinctly by smith's izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely with that of noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from the other. all the principal incidents and the order of events are the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that they must have been taken from the same written record. even the name noah is that of nouah, the semitic translation of the accadian god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in the west to its rising in the east. the chief difference is the same as in the chaldæan and biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the universe--viz. that the former is polytheistic, and the latter monotheistic. where the former talks of bel, ea, and istar, the latter attributes everything to jehovah or elohim. thus the warning to hasisadra is given in a dream sent by ea, who is a sort of chaldæan prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, bel; while in genesis it is "elohim said unto noah." in genesis the altar is built to the lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice, while in the chaldæan legend the altar is built to the seven gods, who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about it." the chaldæan narrative is more prolix, more realistic, and, on the whole, more scientific. that is, it mitigates some of the more obvious impossibilities of the noachian narrative. instead of an ark, there is a ship with a steersman, which was certainly more likely to survive the perils of a long voyage on the stormy waters of an universal ocean. the duration of the deluge and of the voyage is shortened from a year to a little more than a month; more human beings are saved, as hasisadra takes on board not his own family only, but several of his friends and relations; and the difficulty of repeopling the earth from a single centre is diminished by throwing the date of the deluge back to an immense and mythical antiquity. on the other hand, the moral and religious significance of the legend is accentuated in the hebrew narrative. it is no longer the capricious anger of an offended bel which decrees the destruction of mankind, but the righteous indignation of the one supreme god against sin, tempered by justice and mercy towards the upright man who was "perfect in his generations." if we had to decide on internal evidence only, there could be little doubt that the hebrew narrative is of much later date than the chaldæan. it is, in fact, very much what might be expected from a revised edition of it, made at the date which is assigned by all competent critics for the first collection of the legends and traditions of the hebrew people into a sacred book--viz. at or about the date when the first mention is made of such a book as being discovered in the temple in the reign of josiah. kuenen, wellhausen, and other leading authorities place the date of the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which include the creation and deluge, even later; and, if not compiled during or after the babylonian captivity, they were certainly revised, and have come down to us in their present form after that event. even the most orthodox critics, such as dillman and canon driver, admit that they were written in the golden age of hebrew literature, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah and jeremiah, and do not think it possible to assign to them an earlier date than or b.c., while many parts may be much later. but the question is not one of internal evidence only, but of the positive fact that, even if these chapters of genesis were written by moses, or about b.c., and even accepting the septuagint addition of years to the already mythical duration of the lives of the patriarchs, the date of the biblical deluge cannot be carried back beyond or b.c., while a practically identical account of the same event is given, as a legendary episode of fabulous antiquity, in an epic poem, based on a solar myth, which was certainly reduced to writing many centuries before the earliest possible date of the scriptural deluge. it is absolutely certain also that the egyptian records and traditions, which extend in an uninterrupted succession of dynasties and kings for at least years before this alleged universal deluge, know nothing whatever of such an event; and, on the contrary, assume an unvarying continuance of the ordinary laws of nature. i have dwelt at such length on the deluge because it affords a crucial test of the dogma of divine inspiration for the whole of the bible. the account of the creation may be obscured by forced interpretations and misty eloquence; but there can be no mistake as to the specific and precise statements respecting the second creation of man and of animal life. either they are true or untrue; and the issue is one upon which any unprejudiced mind of ordinary intelligence and information can arrive at a conclusive verdict. if there never was an universal deluge within historical times; if the highest mountains were never covered; if all life was never destroyed, except the contents of the ark; if the whole animal creation, including beasts, birds, and creeping things, never lived together for twelve months cooped up in it; and if the earth was not repeopled with all the varieties of the human race, and all the orders, genera, and species of animal life, from a single centre at ararat, then the bible is not inspired as regards its scientific and historical statements. this, however, in no way affects the question of the inspiration of the religious and moral portions of the bible. i have sometimes thought how, if i were an advocate stating the case for the inspiration of the bible, i should be inclined to put it. i should start with bishop temple's definition of the first cause, a personal god, with faculties like ours, but so transcendentally greater that he had no occasion to be perpetually patching and mending his work, but did everything by an original impress, which included all subsequent evolution, as the nucleolus in the primitive ovum includes the whole evolution and subsequent life of the chicken, mammal, or man. i should go on to say that the bible has clearly been an important factor in this evolution of the human race; that it consists of two portions--one of moral and religious import, the other of scientific statements and theories, relating to such matters of purely human reason as astronomy, geology, literary criticism, and ancient history; and that these two parts are essentially different. it is quite conceivable that, on the hypothesis of a divine creator, one step in the majestic evolution from the original impress should have been that men of genius and devout nature should write books containing juster notions of man's relations to his maker than prevailed in the polytheisms of early civilizations, and thus gradually educating a peculiar people who accepted these writings as sacred, and preparing the ground for a still higher and purer religion. but it is not conceivable that this, which may be called inspiration, of the religious and moral teaching, should have been extended to closing the record of all human discovery and progress, by teaching, as it were by rote, all that subsequent generations have, after long and painful effort, found out for themselves. in point of fact, the bible does not teach such truths, for in the domain of science it is full of the most obvious errors, and teaches nothing but what were the primitive myths, legends, and traditions of the early races. it is to be observed also that, on the theory of "original impress," those errors are just as much a part of the evolution of the divine idea as the moral and religious truths. those who insist that all of the bible must be inspired or none, remind me of the king who said that, if god had only consulted him in his scheme of creation, he could have saved him from a good many mistakes. it is not difficult to understand how, even if we assume the theory of inspiration, or of original impress, for the religious portion of the bible, the other or scientific portion should have been purposely left open to all the errors and contradictions of the human intellect in its early strivings to arrive at some sort of conception of the origin of things, and of the laws of the universe. and also that a collection of narratives of different dates and doubtful authorship should bear on the face of them evidence of the writers sharing in the errors and prejudices, and generally adopting points of view of successive generations of contemporaries. assuming this theory, i can only say for myself that the removal of the wet blanket of literal inspiration makes me turn to the bible with increased interest. it is a most valuable record of the ways of thinking, and of the early conceptions of religion and science in the ancient world, and a most instructive chapter in the history of the evolution of the human mind from lower to higher things. above all, it is a record of the preparation of the soil, in a peculiar race, for christianity, which has been and is such an important factor in the history of the foremost races and highest civilizations. with all the errors and absurdities, all the crimes and cruelties which have attached themselves to it, but which in the light of science and free thought are rapidly being sloughed off, it cannot be denied that the european, and especially our english-speaking races, stand on a higher platform than if gibbon's suggestion had been realized, the arabs had been victorious at tours, and moslem ulemas had been expounding the koran at the university of oxford. chapter vii. the historical element in the old testament. moral and religious distinct from historical inspiration--myth and allegory--the higher criticism--all ancient history unconfirmed by monuments untrustworthy--cyrus--old testament and monuments--jerusalem--tablet of tell-el-amarna--flinders petrie's exploration of pre-hebrew cities--ramses and pi-thom--first certain synchronism rehoboam--composite structure of old testament--elohist and jehovist--priests' code--canon driver--results--book of chronicles--methods of jewish historians--post-exilic references--tradition of esdras--nehemiah and ezra--foundation of modern judaism--different from pre-exilic--discovery of book of the law under josiah--deuteronomy--earliest sacred writings--conclusions--aristocratic and prophetic schools--triumph of pietism with exile--both compiled partly from old materials--crudeness and barbarism of parts--pre-abrahamic period clearly mythical--derived from chaldæa--abraham--unhistoric character--his age--lot's wife--his double adventure with sarah--abraham to moses--sojourn in egypt--discordant chronology--josephus' quotation from manetho--small traces of egyptian influence--future life--legend of joseph--moses--osarsiph--life of moses full of fabulous legends--his birth--plagues of egypt--the exodus--colenso--contradictions and impossibilities--immoralities--massacres--joshua and the judges--barbarisms and absurdities--only safe conclusion no history before the monarchy--david and solomon--comparatively modern date. in dealing with the historical portion of the old testament, it is important to keep clearly in view the distinction between the historical and the religious and moral elements which are contained in the collection of works comprised in it. it is quite open to any one to hold that a certain moral and religious idea runs through the whole of these writings, which is gradually developed from rude beginnings into pure and lofty views of an almighty god who created all things, and who loves justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is open to him to call this inspiration, and to see it also in the series of influences and events by which the jews were moulded into a peculiar people, through whose instrumentality the three great monotheistic religions of the world, judaism, christianity, and mahometanism, superseded the older forms of polytheism. with inspiration in this sense i have no quarrel, any more than i have with bishop temple's definition of "original impress," though possibly i might think "evolution" a more modest term to apply, with our limited faculties and knowledge, to that "unceasing purpose" which the poet tells us "through the ages runs, and the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." but admitting this, i do not see how any candid man, who is at all acquainted with the results of modern science and of historical criticism, can doubt that the materials with which this edifice was gradually built up, consist, to a great extent, of myths, legends, and traditions of rude and unscientific ages which have no pretension to be true statements, or real history. after all this is only applying to the old, the same principles of interpretation as are applied to the new testament. if the theory of literal inspiration requires us to accept the manifest impossibilities of noah's deluge, why does it not equally compel us to believe that there really was a certain rich man who fared sumptuously every day, a beggar named lazarus, and definite localities of a heaven and hell within speaking distance of one another, though separated by an impassable gulf. the assertion is made positively and without any reservation. there _was_ a rich man; lazarus _died, and was carried to abraham's bosom_; and dives _cried_ to abraham, who _answered him in a detailed colloquy_. but common sense steps in and says, all this never actually occurred, but was invented to illustrate by a parable the moral truth that it is wrong for the selfish rich to neglect the suffering poor. why should not common sense equally step in, and say of the narrative of the garden of eden with its trees of knowledge and of life, that here is an obvious allegory, stating the problem which has perplexed so many generations of men, of the origin of evil, man's dual nature, and how to reconcile the _fact_ of the existence of sin and suffering with the _theory_ of a benevolent and omnipotent creator? or again, why hesitate to admit that the story of the deluge is not literal history, but a version of a chapter of an old chaldæan solar epic, revised in a monotheistic sense, and used for the purpose of impressing the lesson that the ways of sin are ways of destruction, and that righteousness is the true path of safety? this is in effect what continental critics have long recognized, and what the most liberal and learned anglican divines of the present day are beginning to recognize; and we find men like canon driver, professor of hebrew at oxford, and canon cheyne, insisting on "the fundamental importance of disengaging the religious from the critical and historical problems of the old testament." we hear a great deal about the "higher criticism," and those who dislike its conclusions try to represent it as something very obscure and unintelligible, spun from the inner consciousness of german pedants. but really there is nothing obscure about it. it is simply the criticism of common sense applied from a higher point of view, which embraces, not the immediate subject only, but all branches of human knowledge which are related to it. this new criticism bears the same relation to the old, as mommsen's _history of rome_ does to the school-boy manuals which used to assume romulus and remus, numa and tarquin, as real men who lived and reigned just as certainly as julius cæsar and augustus, and who found nothing to stagger them in livy's speaking oxen. this criticism has now been carried so far by the labours of a number of earnest and learned men in all the principal countries of europe for the last century, that it has become to a great extent one of the modern sciences, and although there are still differences as to details, the leading outlines are no more in dispute than those of geology or biology. the conclusions of enlightened english divines like canons driver and cheyne are practically very nearly the same as those of foreign professors, like kuenen, welhausen, dillman, and renan, and any one who wishes to have any intelligent understanding of the hebrew bible must take them into consideration. although the old testament does not carry history back nearly as far as the records of egypt and chaldæa, still, when freed from the incubus of literal inspiration, it affords a very interesting picture of the ways of thinking of ancient races, of their manners and customs, their first attempts to solve problems of science and philosophy, and of their popular legends and traditions. it is with these historical results only that i propose to deal, and this not in the way of minute criticism, but of the broad, common-sense aspects of the question, and in view of the salient facts which rise up like guiding pillars in the vast mass of literature on the subject, of which it may be said, in the words of st. john's gospel, that if all that has been written were collected, "i suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books." i may begin by referring to the extreme uncertainty that attaches to all ancient history unless it is confirmed by monuments, or by comparison with annals of other nations which have been so confirmed. the instance of cyrus is a most instructive one. here is one of the greatest conquerors the world has seen, and the founder of a mighty empire; who flourished at a comparatively recent period, and whose life and exploits are related by well-known historians, such as herodotus, who wrote within a few generations after his death; confirmed also to a great extent by almost contemporary records of hebrew writers who were in close relations with him. the picture given of him is that of the son of a median princess by an obscure persian; in common with so many of the gods and heroes of antiquity, he is said to have been exposed in infancy and saved miraculously or marvellously; he incites the poor and hardy people of persia to revolt; defeats the medes, consolidates media and persia, conquers lydia and all asia minor; and finally, as the "servant of the most high god," and instrument of his vengeance on babylon, takes and destroys the cruel city of nebuchadnezzar, and allows the jews to return from exile out of sympathy with their religion. unexpectedly a tablet of cyrus himself turns up, and plays havoc alike with prophets and historians instead of being the son of an obscure persian father, he proves to be the legitimate descendant of a long line of elamite kings; instead of being a servant of the most high god, or even a zoroastrian, he appears as a devoted worshipper of the chaldæan gods, assur, merodach, and nebo; so far from being an instrument of divine vengeance for the destruction of babylon, he enters it without a battle, and is welcomed by its priests and people as an orthodox deliverer from the heretical tendencies of the last native king nabonidus. it is apparent from this and other records, that darius and not cyrus was the real founder of the persian empire. cyrus indeed founded a great empire, but it fell to pieces after the death of his son cambyses and the usurpation of the magi, and it was darius who, after years of hard fighting, suppressed revolts, really besieged and took babylon, and reconstituted the empire, which now for the first time became persian and zoroastrian. such an example teaches us to regard with considerable doubt all history prior to the fifth or sixth century b.c. which is not confirmed by contemporary monuments. of such nations, egypt and chaldæa (including in the latter term assyria) alone give us a series of annals, proved by monuments confirming native historians, which extend for some years back, from the commencement of what may be called the modern and scientific history of the greek period. the historical portion of the old testament is singularly deficient in this essential point of confirmation by monumental evidence. of hebrew inscriptions there are none except that of the time of hezekiah in the tunnel which brought water from the pool of siloam into the city; and the moabite stone, which confirms the narrative in kings of the siege of rabbah by jehoshaphat and jehoram, and their repulse after the sacrifice of his eldest son in sight of the armies by the king of moab. both of these inscriptions are of comparatively modern date, and close to or within the period when contact with the assyrian empire removes all uncertainty as to the history of judæa and israel under their later kings. the capture of jerusalem by david and the building of the temple there by solomon are doubtless historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional confirmation from monuments. there have been so many destructions and rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to what era the lower strata belong. it is apparent, moreover, from the egyptian tablets of tel-el-amarna, the city founded by the heretic king, amenophis iv., about b.c., that jerusalem was a well-known city and sacred shrine prior to the hebrew conquest, and even to the date of the exodus. professor sayce tells us that on one of these tablets is written, "the city of the mountain of jerusalem (or urasalim), the city of the temple of the god uras, whose name there is marra, the city of the king, which adjoins the locality of the men of keilah." uras was a babylonian deity, and marra is probably the aramaic mare, "lord," from which it may be conjectured that mount moriah received its name from the temple of uras which stood there. some of the other tablets show that in the century before the exodus, jerusalem was occupied by a semi-independent king, who claimed to have derived his authority from "the oracle of the mighty king," which is explained to mean a deity, though he acknowledged the superiority of egypt, which still retained the conquests of the eighteenth dynasty in palestine. this, however, relates not to the hebrews, but to the state of things prior to their invasion, when palestine was occupied by comparatively civilized races of amorites and canaanites, and studded with numerous fenced cities. a glimpse at the later state of things, when those earlier nations and cities were overwhelmed by an invasion of a rude nomad race, as described in the books of joshua and judges, has been afforded quite recently by the exploration by mr. flinders petrie of a mound on the plain of southern judæa, which he is disposed to identify with the ancient lachish. a section of this mound has been exposed by the action of a brook, and it shows, as in dr. schliemann's excavations on the supposed site of troy at hissarlik, several successive occupations. the lowest and earliest city was fortified by a wall of sun-burnt bricks, feet inches thick, and which still stands to a height of feet. it shows signs of great antiquity, having been twice repaired, and a large accumulation of broken pottery was found both outside and within it. this city, which petrie identifies with one of those amorite cities which were "walled up to heaven," had been taken and destroyed, and the wall had fallen into ruins. then, to use professor sayce's words, "came a period when the site was occupied by rude herdsmen, unskilled in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. their huts were built of mud and rolled stones from the wady below, and resembled the wretched shanties of the half-savage bedouins, which we may still see on the outskirts of the holy land. they must have been inhabited by the invading israelitish tribes, who had overthrown the civilization which had long existed in the cities of canaan, and were still in a state of nomadic barbarism." above this come newer walls, which had been built and repaired three or four times over by the jewish kings, one of the later rebuildings being a massive brick wall feet thick, with a glacis of large blocks of polished stone traced to a height of feet, which petrie refers to the reign of manasseh. then comes a destruction, probably by the assyrians under sennacherib, and then other buildings of minor importance, the latest being those of a colony of greeks, who were swept away before the age of alexander the great. this discovery is of first-rate importance as regards the early history of the hebrews, and especially as to their relations with egypt, their sojourn there, and the exodus. if abraham really came from ur of chaldæa, the seat of a very old civilization; and if his descendants really lived for years or longer in egypt, mixed up a good deal with the native population, and for a great part of the time treated with favour, and occupying, if the legend of joseph be true, the highest posts in the land; and if they really left egypt, as described in the exodus, laden with the spoils of the egyptians, and led by moses, a priest of heliopolis skilled in all the lore of that ancient temple, it is inconceivable that in a single generation they should have sunk to such a level as that of the half-savage bedouins, as indicated by petrie's researches. and yet who else could have been the barbarians whose inroad destroyed the walled city of the amorites; and how well does this condition of rude savagery correspond with the bloodthirsty massacres, and the crude superstitions, which meet us at every turn in the traditions of the period between the departure from egypt and the establishment of a monarchy, which have been used by the compilers of the books of exodus, joshua, and judges? if we are ever to know anything beyond legend and conjecture as to this obscure period, it is to the pick and the spade that we must look for certain information, and the exploration of mounds of ruined cities must either confirm or modify petrie's inference as to the extreme rudeness of the nomad tribes who broke in upon the civilized inhabitants of older races. another exploration by mr. flinders petrie, that of the ruins of pi-thom and ramses, gives a certain amount of monumental confirmation to the statement in exodus i. , that during the captivity of the israelites in egypt they were employed as slaves by ramses ii. in building two treasure cities, ramses and pi-thom. some wall-paintings show slaves or forced labourers, of a jewish cast of countenance, working at the brick walls under the sticks of taskmasters. the first certain synchronism, however, between the egyptian monuments and jewish history is afforded by the capture of jerusalem by shishak in the reign of rehoboam in the year b.c. among the wall-paintings in the temple at thebes commemorating the triumphs of this campaign of shishak, is a portrait of a captive with jewish features, inscribed yuten-malek. this has been read "king of the jews," and taken to be a portrait of rehoboam, but it is more probable that it means "kingdom of the jews," and that the portrait is one representative of the country conquered. in any case this gives us the first absolutely certain date in old testament history. from this time downwards there is no reason to doubt that annals substantially correct, of successive kings of judah and israel, were kept, and after the reign of ahaz, when the great assyrian empire appeared on the scene, we have a full confirmation, from the assyrian monuments, of the principal events recorded in the book of kings. in fact, we may say that from the foundation of the jewish monarchy by saul and david, we are fairly in the stream of history, but that for everything prior to about b.c. we have to grope our way almost entirely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the old testament itself. the first point evidently is to have some clear idea of what this old testament really consists of. until the recent era of scientific criticism, it was assumed to constitute, in effect, one volume, the earlier chapters of which were written by moses, and the later ones by a continuance of the same divine inspiration, which made the bible from genesis to chronicles one consistent and infallible whole, in which it was impossible that there should be any error or contradiction. such a theory could not stand a moment's investigation in the free light of reason. it is only necessary to read the two first chapters of genesis to see that the book is of a composite structure, made up of different and inconsistent elements. we have only to include in the first chapter the two first verses printed in the second chapter, and to write the original hebrew word "elohim" for "god," and "yahve" or jehovah for "lord god," to see this at a glance. the two accounts of the creation of the heaven and earth, of animal and vegetable life, and of man, are quite different. in the first man is created last, male and female, in the image of god, with dominion over all the previous forms of matter and of life, which have been created for his benefit. in the second man is formed from the dust of the earth immediately after the creation of the heavens and earth and of the vegetable world, and subsequently all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air are formed out of the ground, and brought to adam to name, while, last of all, woman is made from a rib taken from adam to be an helpmeet for him. the two narratives, elohistic and jehovistic, distinguished both by the different names of god, and by a number of other peculiarities, run almost side by side through a great part of the earlier portion of the old testament, presenting often flagrant contradictions. thus lamech, the father of noah, is represented in one as a descendant of cain, in the other of seth. canaan is in one the grandson of adam, in the other the grandson of noah. the elohist says that noah took two of each sort of living things, a male and a female, into the ark; the jehovist that he took seven pairs of clean, and single pairs of unclean animals. the difference between these narratives, the elohistic and jehovistic, is, however, only the first and most obvious instance of the composite character of the pentateuch. these narratives are distinguished from one another by a number of minute peculiarities of language and expressions, and they are both embedded in a much larger mass of matter which relates mainly to the sacrificial and ceremonial system of the israelites, and to the position, privileges, and functions of the priests and priestly caste of levites. this is commonly known as the "priests' code," and a great deal of it is obviously of late date, having relation to practices and ceremonies which had gradually grown up after the foundation of the temple at jerusalem. a vast amount of erudition has been expended in the minute analysis of these different documents by learned scholars who have devoted their lives to the subject. i shall not attempt to enter upon it, but content myself with taking the main results from canon driver, both because he is thoroughly competent from his knowledge of the latest foreign criticism and from his position as professor of hebrew, and because he cannot be suspected of any adverse leaning to the old orthodox views. in fact he is a strenuous advocate of the inspiration of the bible, taken in the larger sense of a religious and moral purpose underlying the often mistaken and conflicting statements of fallible writers. the conclusions at which he arrives, in common with a great majority of competent critics in all countries, are-- . that the old orthodox belief that the pentateuch is one work written by moses is quite untenable. . that the pentateuch and book of joshua have been formed by the combination of different _layers_ of narrative, each marked by characteristic features of its own. . that the elohistic and jehovistic narratives, which are the oldest portion of the collection, have nothing archaic in their style, but belong to the golden period of hebrew literature, the date assigned to them by most critics being not earlier than the eighth or ninth century b.c., though of course they may be founded partly on older legends and traditions; and, on the other hand, they contain many passages which could only have been introduced by some post-exilic editor. . that deuteronomy, which is placed almost unanimously by critics in the reign of either josiah or manasseh, is absolutely inconsistent in many respects with the priests' code, and apparently of earlier date, before the priestly system had crystallized into such a definite code of minute regulations, as we find it in the later days of jewish history after the exile. . there is a difference of opinion, however, in respect to the date of the priests' code, kuenen, wellhausen, and graf holding it to be post-deuteronomic, and probably committed to writing during the period from the beginning of the exile to the time of nehemiah, while dillman assigns the main body to about b.c., though admitting that additions may have been made as late as the time of ezra. being concerned mainly with the historical question, i shall not attempt to pursue this higher criticism further, but content myself with referring to the principal points which, judged by the broad conclusions of common-sense, stand out as guiding pillars in the mass of details. taking these in ascending order of time, they seem to me to be-- . the book of chronicles. . the foundation of modern judaism as described in the books of ezra and nehemiah. . the discovery of the book of the law or deuteronomy in the reign of josiah. the book of chronicles is important because we know its date, viz. about b.c., and to a great extent the materials from which it was compiled, viz. the books of samuel and kings. we have thus an object-lesson as to the way in which a hebrew writer, as late as b.c., or nearly years after the exile, composed history and treated the earlier records. it is totally different from the method of a classical or modern historian, and may be aptly described as a "scissors and paste" method. that is to say, he makes excerpts from the sources at his disposal; sometimes inserts them consecutively and without alteration; at other times makes additions and changes of his own; and, in canon driver's words, "does not scruple to omit what is not required for his purpose, and in fact treats his authorities with considerable freedom." he also does not scruple to put in the mouth of david and other historical characters of the olden time, speeches which, from their spirit, grammar, and vocabulary, are evidently of his own age and composition. if this was the method of a writer as late as b.c., whose work was afterwards received as canonical, two things are evident. first, that the canon of the earlier books of the old testament could not have been then fixed and invested with the same sacred authority as we find to be the case two or three centuries later, when the thora, or book of moses and the prophets, was regarded very much as the moslems regard the koran, as an inspired volume which it was impious to alter by a single jot or tittle. this late date for fixing the canon of the books of the old testament is confirmed by canon cheyne's learned and exhaustive work on the psalter, in which he shows that a great majority of the psalms, attributed to david, were written in the time of the maccabees, and that there are only one or two doubtful cases in which it can be plausibly contended that any of the psalms are pre-exilic. secondly, that if a writer, as late as b.c., could employ this method, and get his work accepted as a part of the sacred canon, a writer who lived earlier, say any time between the chronicler and the foundation of the jewish monarchy, might probably adopt the same methods. if the chronicler put a speech of his own composition into the mouth of david, the deuteronomist might well do so in the case of moses. according to the ideas of the age and country, this would not be considered to be what we moderns would call literary forgery, but rather a legitimate and praiseworthy means of giving authority to good precepts and sentiments. a perfect illustration of this which i have called the "scissors and paste" method, is afforded by the first two chapters of genesis, and the way in which the elohistic and jehovistic narratives are so strangely interblended throughout the pentateuch. no attempt is made to blend the two narratives into one harmonious and consistent whole, but excerpts, sometimes from one and sometimes from the other, are placed together without any attempt to explain away the evident contradictions. clearly the same hand could not have written both narratives, and the compilation must have been made by some subsequent editor, or editors, for there is conclusive proof that the final edition, as it has come down to us, could not have been made until after the exile. thus in leviticus xxvi. we find, "i will scatter you among the heathen, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste," and "they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' land." and in deuteronomy xxix., "and the lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is to this day." even in genesis, which professes to be the earliest book, we find (xii. ), "and the canaanite was then in the land." this could not have been written until the memory of the canaanite had become a tradition of a remote past, and this could not have been until after the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity, for we find from the books of ezra and nehemiah that the canaanites were then still in the land, and the jewish leaders, and even priests and levites, were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives. the apocryphal book of esdras contains a legend that the sacred books of the law having been lost or destroyed when jerusalem was taken by nebuchadnezzar, they were re-written miraculously by ezra dictating to five ready writers at once in a wonderfully short time. this is a counterpart of the legend of the septuagint being a translation of the hebrew text into greek, made by seventy different translators, whose separate versions agreed down to the minutest particular. this legend, in the case of the septuagint, is based on an historical fact that there really was a greek translation of the hebrew sacred books made by order of ptolemy _philadelphus_; and it may well be that the legend of esdras contains some reminiscence of an actual fact, that a new and complete edition of the old writings was made and stamped with a sacred character among the other reforms introduced by ezra. these reforms, and the condition of the jewish people after the return from the captivity, as disclosed by the books of nehemiah and ezra, afford what i call the second guiding pillar, in our attempt to trace backwards the course of jewish history. these books were indeed not written in their present form until a later period, and, as most critics think, by the same hand as chronicles; but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the historical facts recorded, which relate, not to a remote antiquity, but to a comparatively recent period after the use of writing had become general. they constitute in fact the dividing line between ancient and modern judaism, and show us the origin of the latter. modern judaism, that is, the religious and social life of the jewish people, since they fairly entered into the current of modern history, has been marked by many strong and characteristic peculiarities. they have been zealously and almost fanatically attached to the idea of one supreme god, jehovah, with whom they had a special covenant inherited from abraham, and whose will, in regard to all religious rites and ceremonies and social usages, was conveyed to them in a sacred book containing the inspired writings of moses and the prophets. this led them to consider themselves a peculiar people, and to regard all other nations with aversion, as being idolaters and unclean, feelings which were returned by the rest of the world, so that they stood alone, hating and being hated. no force or persuasion were required in order to prevent them from lapsing into idolatry or intermarrying with heathen women. on the contrary, they were inspired to the most heroic efforts, and ready to endure the severest sufferings and martyrdom for the pure faith. the belief in the sacred character of their ancient writings gradually crystallized into a faith as absolute as that of the moslems in the koran; a canon was formed, and although, as we have seen in the case of the chronicles and psalms, some time must have elapsed before this sacred character was fully recognized, it ended in a theory of the literal inspiration of every word of the old testament down even to the commas and vowel points, and the establishment of learned schools of scribes and pharisees, whose literary labours were concentrated on expounding the text in synagogues, and writing volumes of talmudic commentaries. now during the period preceding the exile all this was very different. so far from being zealous for one supreme god, jehovah was long recognized only as a tribal or national god, one among the many gods of surrounding nations. when the idea of a supreme deity, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bullocks and rams, was at length elaborated by the later prophets, it received but scant acceptance. the great majority of the kings and people, both of judah and israel, were always ready to lapse into idolatry, worship strange gods, golden calves, and brazen serpents, and flock to the alluring rites of baal and astarte, in groves and high places. they were also always ready to intermarry freely with heathen wives, and to form political alliances with heathen nations. there is no trace of the religious and social repulsion towards other races which forms such a marked trait in modern judaism. nor, as we shall see presently, is there any evidence, prior to the reign of josiah, of anything like a sacred book or code of divine laws, universally known and accepted. the books of nehemiah and ezra afford invaluable evidence of the time and manner in which this modern judaism was stamped upon the character of the people after the return from exile. we are told that when ezra came to jerusalem from babylon, armed with a decree of artaxerxes, he was scandalized at finding that nearly all the jews, including the principal nobles and many priests and levites, had intermarried with the daughters of the people of the land, "of the canaanites, hittites, perizzites, jebusites, ammonites, moabites, egyptians, and amorites." backed by nehemiah, the cup-bearer and favourite of artaxerxes, who had been appointed governor of jerusalem, he persuaded or compelled the jews to put away these wives and their children, and to separate themselves as a peculiar and exclusive people from other nations. it was a cruel act, characteristic of the fanatical spirit of priestly domination, which never hesitates to trample on the natural affections and the laws of charity and mercy, but it was the means of crystallizing the jewish race into a mould so rigid, that it defied wars, persecutions, and all dissolving influences, and preserved the idea of monotheism to grow up into the world-wide religions of christianity and mahometanism, so true is it that evolution works out its results by unexpected means often opposed to what seem like the best instincts of human nature. what is important, however, for the present object is, to observe that clearly at this date the population of the holy land must have consisted mainly of the descendants of the old races, who had been conquered but not exterminated by the israelites. such a sentence as, "for the canaanites were then in the land," could not have been written till long after the time when the jews were intermarrying freely with canaanite wives. nor does it seem possible that codes, such as those of leviticus, numbers, and the priests' code, could have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by moses under divine inspiration, when the rulers, nobles, and even priests and levites acted in such apparent ignorance of them. in fact we are told in nehemiah that ezra read and explained the book of the law, whatever that may have included, to the people, who apparently had no previous knowledge of it. by far the most important landmark, however, in the history of the old testament, is afforded by the account in kings xxii. and xxiii. of the discovery of the book of the law in the temple in the eighteenth year of the reign of josiah. it says that shaphan the scribe, having been sent by the king to hilkiah the high priest, to obtain an account of the silver collected from the people for the repairs of the temple, hilkiah told him that he had "found the book of the law in the house of the lord." shaphan brought it to the king and read it to him; whereupon josiah, in great consternation at finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being confirmed in his fears by huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account given in kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. we read of vessels consecrated to baal and to the host of heaven in the temple itself, and of horses and chariots of the sun at its entrance; of idolatrous priests who had been ordained by the kings of judah to burn incense "unto baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven"; and of high places close to jerusalem, with groves, images, and altars, which had been built by solomon to ashtaroth, the goddess of the sidonians, chemosh the god of the moabites, and milcom the god of the ammonites, and had apparently remained undisturbed and places of popular worship ever since the time of solomon. on any ordinary principles of criticism it is impossible to doubt that, if this narrative is correct, there could have been no previous book of the law in existence, and generally recognized as a sacred volume written by divine inspiration. when even such a great and wise king as solomon could establish such a system of idolatry, and pious kings like hezekiah, and josiah during the first eighteen years of his reign, could allow it to continue, there could have been no knowledge that it was in direct contravention of the most essential precepts of a sacred law dictated by jehovah to moses. it is generally admitted by critics that the book of the law discovered by hilkiah was deuteronomy, or rather perhaps an earlier or shorter original of the deuteronomy which has come down to us, and which had already been re-edited with additions after the exile. the title "deuteronomy," which might seem to imply that it was a supplement to an earlier law, is taken, like the other headings of the books of the old testament in our bible, from the septuagint version, and in the original hebrew the heading is "the book of the law." the internal evidence points also to deuteronomy, as placing the threats of punishment and promises of reward mainly on moral grounds, and in the spirit of the later prophets, such as isaiah, who lived shortly before the discovery of the book by hilkiah. and it is apparent that when deuteronomy was written, the priests' code, which forms such an important part of the other books of the pentateuch, could not have been known, as so many of the ceremonial rites and usages are clearly inconsistent with it. it is not to be inferred that there were no writings in existence before the reign of josiah. doubtless annals had been kept of the principal events of each reign from the foundation of the monarchy, and many of the old legends and traditions of the race had been collected and reduced to writing during the period from solomon to the later kings. the priests' code also, though of later date in its complete form, was doubtless not an invention of any single priest, but a compilation of usages, some of which had long existed, while others had grown up in connection with the second temple after the return from exile. so also the civil and social legislation was not a code promulgated, like the code napoleon, by any one monarch or high priest, but a compilation from usages and precedents which had come to be received as having an established authority. but what is plainly inconsistent with the account of the discovery of the book of the law in the reign of josiah, is the supposition that there had been, in long previous existence, a collection of sacred books, recognized as a bible or work of divine inspiration, as the old testament came to be among the jews of the first or second century b.c. it is to be observed that among early nations, such historical annals and legislative enactments never form the first stratum of a sacred literature, which consists invariably of hymns, prayers, ceremonial rites, and astronomical or astrological myths. thus the rig veda of the hindoos, the early portions of the vendedad of the iranians, the book of the dead of the egyptians, and the penitential psalms and invocations of the chaldæans formed the oldest sacred books, about which codes and commentaries, and in some cases historical allusions and biographies, gradually accumulated, though never attaining to quite an equal authority. there is abundant internal evidence in the books of the old testament which profess to be older than the reign of josiah, to show that they are in great part, at any rate, of later compilation, and could not have been recognized as the sacred thora or bible of the nation. to take a single instance, that of solomon. is it conceivable that this greatest and wisest of kings, who had held personal commune with jehovah, and who knew everything down to the hyssop on the wall, could have been ignorant of such a sacred book if it had been in existence? and if he had known it, or even the decalogue, is it conceivable that he should have totally ignored its first and fundamental precepts, "thou shalt have no other gods but me," and "thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image"? could uxoriousness, divided among wives, have turned the heart of such a monarch so completely as to make him worship ashtaroth and milcom, and build high places for chemosh and moloch? and could he have done this without the opposition, and apparently with the approval, of the priests and the people? and again, could these high places and altars and vessels dedicated to baal and the host of heaven have been allowed to remain in the temple, down to the eighteenth year of josiah, under a succession of kings several of whom were reputed to be pious servants of jehovah? and the idolatrous tendencies of the ten tribes of israel, who formed the majority of the hebrew race, and had a common history and traditions, are even more apparent. in the speeches put into the mouth of solomon in kings, in which reference is made to "statutes and commandments spoken by jehovah by the hand of moses," there is abundant evidence that their composition must be assigned to a much later date. they are full of references to the captivity in a foreign land and return from exile ( kings viii. -- , and ix. -- ). similar references to the exile are found throughout the book of kings, and even in books of the pentateuch which profess to be written by moses. if such a code of sacred writings had been in existence in the time of josiah, instead of rending his clothes in dismay when shaphan brought him the book of the law found by hilkiah, he would have said, "why this is only a different version of what we know already." on the whole the evidence points to this conclusion. the idea of a one supreme god who was a spirit, while all other gods were mere idols made by men's hands; who created and ruled all things in heaven and earth; and who loved justice and mercy rather than the blood of rams and bullocks, was slowly evolved from the crude conceptions of a jealous, vindictive, and cruel anthropomorphic local god, by the prophets and best minds of israel after it had settled down under the monarchy into a civilized and cultured state. it appears for the first time distinctly in isaiah and amos, and was never popular with the majority of the kings and upper classes, or with the mass of the nation until the exile, but it gradually gained ground during the calamities of the later days, when assyrian armies were threatening destruction. a strong opposition arose in the later reigns between the aristocracy, who looked on the situation from a political point of view and trusted to armies and alliances, and what may be called the pietist or evangelical party of the prophets, who took a purely religious view of matters, and considered the misfortunes of the country as a consequence of its sins, to be averted only by repentance and divine interposition. it was a natural, and under the circumstances of the age and country quite a justifiable proceeding on the part of the prophetic school to endeavour to stamp their views with divine authority, and recommend them for acceptance as coming from moses, the traditional deliverer of israel from egypt. for this purpose no doubt numerous materials existed in the form of legends, traditions, customs, and old records, and very probably some of those had been collected and reduced to writing, like the sagas of the old norsemen, though without any idea of collecting them into a sacred volume. the first attempt in this direction was made in the reign of josiah, and it had only a partial success, as we find the nation "doing evil in the sight of the lord," that is, relapsing into the old idolatrous practices, in the reigns of his three next successors, jehoiachin, jehoiachim, and zedechiah. but the crowning calamity of the capture of jerusalem by nebuchadnezzar, and the seventy years' exile, seems to have crushed out the old aristocratic and national party, and converted all the leading minds among the jews of the captivity, including the priests, to the prophetical view that the essence of the question was the religious one, and that the only hope for the future lay in repentance for sins and drawing closer to the worship of jehovah and the covenant between him and his chosen people. prophets disappear from this period because priests, scribes, and rulers had adopted their views, and there was no longer room for itinerant and unofficial missionaries. under such circumstances the religion, after the return from the exile, crystallized rapidly into definite forms. creeds, rituals, and sacred books were multiplied down to the third century b.c. or later, when the canon was closed with the books of chronicles and daniel and the later psalms, and the era began of commentaries on the text of a koran or bible, every word of which was held to be infallibly inspired. the different crystals in solution have now united into one large crystal of fixed form, and henceforward we are in the full age of talmudism and pharisaism. it is not to be supposed, however, that the books which thus came to be considered sacred were the inventions of priests and scribes of this later age. doubtless they were based to a great extent on old traditions, legends, and written annals and records, compiled perhaps in the reigns of solomon and his successors, but based themselves on still older materials. the very crudeness of many of the representations, and the barbarism of manners, point to an early origin. it is impossible to conceive any contemporary of isaiah, or of the cultured court of solomon, describing the almighty ruler of the universe as showing his hinder part to moses, or sewing skins to clothe adam and eve; and the conception of a jealous and vindictive jehovah who commanded the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners of war, women and children, must be far removed from that of a god who loved justice and mercy. these crude, impossible, and immoral representations must have existed in the form of sagas during the early and semi-barbarous stage of the people of israel, and become so rooted in the popular mind that they could not be neglected when authors of later ages came to fix the old traditions in writing, and religious reformers to use them in endeavouring to enforce higher views and a purer morality. it is from this jungle of old legends and traditions, written and re-written, edited and re-edited, many times over, to suit the ideas of various stages of advancing civilization, that we have to pick out as we best can what is really historical, prior to the foundation of the monarchy, from which time downwards we doubtless have more or less authentic annals, and meet with confirmations from egyptian and assyrian history. the first figure which arrests our attention in the old testament as possibly historical, is that of abraham. prior to him everything is plainly myth and legend. we have two accounts of the creation of the universe and of man in genesis, contradictory with one another, and each hopelessly inconsistent with the best established conclusions of astronomy, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. then follow ten antediluvian patriarchs, who live on the average years each, and correspond manifestly with the ten reigns of gods or demi-gods in the chaldæan mythology; while side by side with this genealogy is a fragment of one which is entirely different, mentioning seven only of the ten patriarchs, and tracing the descent of enoch and noah from adam through cain instead of through seth. then comes the deluge with all the flagrant impossibilities which have been pointed out in a preceding chapter; the building of the tower of babel, with the dispersion of mankind and confusion of languages, equally opposed to the most certain conclusions of history, ethnology, and philology. the descent from noah to abraham is then traced through ten other patriarchs, whose ages average years each, and similar genealogies are given for the descendants of the other two sons of noah, ham and japheth. it is evident that these genealogies are not history but ethnology, and that of a very rude and primitive description, by a writer with imperfect knowledge and a limited range of vision. a great majority of the primitive races of the world, such as the negroes and the mongolians, are omitted altogether, and semitic canaan is coupled with turanian hittite as a descendant not of shem but of ham. it is unnecessary to go into details, for when we find such an instance as that canaan begat sidon his first-born, it is evident that this does not mean that two such men really lived, but is an oriental way of stating that the phoenicians were of the same race as the canaanites, and that sidon was their earliest sea-port on the shore of the mediterranean. the whole of this biblical literature prior to abraham is clearly myth and legend, and not history; and whoever will compare it dispassionately with the much older chaldæan myths and legends known to us from berosus and the tablets, can hardly doubt that it is taken mainly from this source, revised at a later date, in a monotheistic sense. whole passages are simply altered by writing "god" for "gods," and pruning off or toning down grotesque and revolting incidents. to give a single instance, where the chaldæan solar epic of izdubar, in the chapter on the passage of the sun through the rainy sign of aquarius, which describes the deluge, says that "the gods smelt the sweet savour of the sacrifice offered by hasisadra on emerging from the ark, and flocked like flies about the altar," genesis says simply that "the lord smelled a sweet savour"; and where the mixture of a divine and animal nature in man is symbolized in the chaldæan legend by bel cutting off his own head and kneading the clay with the blood into the first man, the jehovist narrative in genesis ii. says, that "the lord god formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." but when we arrive at abraham we feel as if we might be treading on really historical ground. there is the universal tradition of the hebrew race that he was their ancestor, and his figure is very like what in the unchanging east may be met with to the present day. we seem to see the dignified sheik sitting at the door of his tent dispensing hospitality, raiding with his retainers on the rear of a retreating army and capturing booty, and much exercised by domestic difficulties between the women of his household. surely this is an historical figure. but when we look closer, doubts and difficulties appear. in the first place the name "abram" suggests that of an eponymous ancestor, like shem for the semites, or canaan for the canaanites. abram, sayce tells us, is the babylonian abu-ramer or "exalted father," a name much more likely to be given to a mythical ancestor than to an actual man. this is rendered more probable by the fact that, as we have already seen, the genealogy of abraham traced upwards consists mainly of eponyms: while those which radiate from him downwards are of the same character. thus two of his sons by keturah are jokshan and midian; and sheba, dedan, and assurim are among his descendants. again, abraham is said to have lived for years, and to have had a son by sarah when she was ninety-nine and he one hundred; and a large family by keturah, whom he married after sarah's death. figures such as these are a sure test that legend has taken the place of authentic history. another circumstance which tells strongly against the historical character of abraham is his connection with lot, and the legend of lot's wife. the history of this legend is a curious one. for many centuries, in fact down to quite modern times, the volcanic phenomena of the dead sea were appealed to as convincing confirmations of the account in genesis of the destruction of sodom and gomorrha, and hundreds of pious pilgrims saw, touched, and tasted the identical pillar of salt into which lot's wife was changed. it is now certain that the volcanic eruptions were of an earlier geological age, and that the story of lot's wife is owing to the disintegration of a stratum of salt marl, which weathers away under the action of wind and rain into columnar masses, like those described by lyell in a similar formation in catalonia. innumerable travellers and pilgrims from early christian times down to the seventeenth century returned from palestine testifying that they had seen lot's wife, and this was appealed to by theologians as a convincing proof of the truth of the scripture narrative. some saw her big, some little, some upright, and some prostrate, according to the state of disintegration of the pillars pointed out by the guides, which change their form rapidly under the influence of the weather, but no doubt was entertained as to the attestation of the miracle. it turns out, however, to be one of those geological myths of precisely the same nature as that which attributed the devil's dyke near brighton to an arrested attempt of the evil one to cut a trench through the south downs, so as to let in the sea and drown the weald. the episode of lot and his daughters is also clearly a myth to account for the aversion of the hebrews to races so closely akin to them as the moabites and ammonites, and it could hardly have originated until after the date of the book of ruth, which shows no trace of such a racial aversion. many of the events recorded of abraham's life, though not so wildly extravagant as those attributed to noah, are still clearly unhistorical. that a woman getting on towards one hundred years old should be so beautiful that her husband passes her off for his sister, fearing that, if known to be his wife, the king would kill him in order to take her into his harem, does not seem to be very probable. but when precisely the same thing is said to have occurred twice over to the same man, once at the court of pharaoh and again at that of abimelech; and a third time to his son isaac, at the same place, gerar, and to the same king abimelech, the improbability becomes impossibility, and the legend is obviously mythical. nor is it very consistent with the character of the pious patriarch, the father of the chosen people, to have told such lies, and apparently connived at his wife's prostitution, so that he could save his own skin, and grow rich on the "sheep and oxen, asses, manservants, maidservants, and camels" given him by the king on the supposition that he was sarah's brother. nor can we take as authentic history, abraham talking with the lord, and holding a sort of dutch auction with him, in which he beats down from fifty to ten the number of righteous men who, if found in sodom, are to save it from destruction. on the whole, i do not see that there is anything in the account of abraham and his times which we can safely assume to be historical, except the general fact that the hebrews were descended from a semitic family or clan, who migrated from the district of ur in lower chaldæa probably about the time, and possibly in consequence, of the elamite conquest, about b.c., which set in motion so many wars, revolutions, and migrations in western asia. the chronology from abraham to moses is hopelessly confused. if abraham is really an historical character, his synchronism with chedorlaomer or kudur-lagomer, the elamite king of chaldæa, must be admitted, which fixes his date at about b.c. again, if the narrative of the exodus is historical, it is generally agreed that it took place in the reign of menepthah, or about b.c. the interval between abraham and moses therefore must have been about years. but if we take the genealogies as authentic history, jacob, in whose time the hebrews went into egypt, was abraham's grandson, and moses, under whom they left it, was the son of jochebed, who was the granddaughter of levi, the son of jacob, who was a man advanced in life when he came to egypt. the genealogies therefore do not allow of more than five generations, or, at a high average for each, about years for this interval between abraham and moses. the tradition respecting this seems to have been already very confused when genesis was compiled, for we find in chap. xv. vers. , , the lord saying to abraham, that his descendants shall come back to palestine and possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates, "in the fourth generation" after abraham had "gone to his fathers in peace, and been buried in a good old age"; while only one verse before it is said, "thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for four hundred years." even if years were allowed for the sojourn of the hebrews in egypt, it would not extend the interval between moses and abraham to more than years, or years less than is required by the synchronism with chedorlaomer. it is needless to say that neither in the fourth or in any other generation did the descendants of abraham "possess the whole country from the river of egypt to the river euphrates." there is no period of jewish history so obscure as that of the sojourn in egypt. the long date is based entirely on the distinct statement in genesis xii., that the sojourning of the children of israel was years, and other statements that it was years, both of which are hopelessly inconsistent with the genealogies. genealogies are perhaps more likely to be preserved accurately by oral tradition than dates and figures, which oriental races generally deal with in a very arbitrary way. but there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting either date as historical. there is no mention of any specific event during the sojourn of the israelites in egypt between their advent in the time of joseph and the exodus, except their oppression by a new king who knew not joseph, and the building of the treasure cities, pi-thom and ramses, by their forced labour. the latter fact may be taken as probably true from the monuments discovered by mr. flinders petrie; and if so, it occurred in the reign of ramses ii. but there is no other confirmation, from egyptian records or monuments, of any of the events related in the pentateuch, until we come to the passage quoted from manetho by josephus, which describes how the unclean people and lepers were oppressed; how they revolted under the leadership of a priest of hieropolis, who changed his name from osarphis to moyses; how they fortified avaris and called in help from the expelled hyksos settled at jerusalem; how the egyptian king and his army retreated before them into ethiopia without striking a blow; and the revolters ruled egypt for thirteen years, killing the sacred animals and desecrating the temples; and how, at the end of this period, the king and his son returned with a great army, defeated the rebels and shepherds with great slaughter, and pursued them to the bounds of syria. this account is evidently very different from that of exodus, and does not itself read very like real history, nor is there anything in the egyptian monuments to confirm it, but rather the reverse. menepthah certainly reigned many years after he was said to have been drowned in the red sea, and his power and that of his immediate successors, though greatly diminished, still extended with a sort of suzerainty over palestine and southern syria. it is said that the egyptians purposely omitted all mention of disasters and defeats, but this is distinctly untrue, for manetho records events such as the conquest of egypt by the hyksos without a battle, and the retreat of menepthah into ethiopia for thirteen years before the impure rebels, which were much more disgraceful than would have been the destruction of a pursuing force of chariots by the returning tide of the red sea. the question therefore of the sojourn of the israelites in egypt and the exodus has to be considered solely by the light of the internal evidence afforded by the books of the old testament. the long period of years is open to grave objections. it is inconceivable that a people who had lived for four centuries in an old and highly-civilized empire, for part of the time at any rate on equal or superior terms under the king who "knew joseph"; and who appear to have been so much intermixed with the native egyptians as to have been borrowing from them as neighbours before their flight, should have carried away with them so little of egyptian manners and relics. beyond a few rites and ceremonies, and a certain tendency to revert to the animal worship of the golden calf, there is nothing to show that the hebrews had ever been in contact with egyptian civilization. this is most remarkable in the absence of all belief in a resurrection of the body, future life, and day of judgment, which were the cardinal axioms of the practical daily life of the egyptian people. temporal rewards and punishments to the individual and his posterity in the present life, are the sole inducements held out to practise virtue and abstain from vice, from the decalogue down to the comparatively late period of ecclesiastes, where solomon the wise king is represented as saying, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in the grave whither thou goest." even down to the christian era the sadducees, who were the conservative aristocracy who stood on the old ways and on the law of moses, and from whose ranks most of the high priests were taken, were opposed to the newfangled pharisaic doctrine of a resurrection. how completely foreign the idea was to the jewish mind is apparent from the writings of the prophets and the book of job, where the obvious solution of the problem why goodness was not always rewarded and wickedness punished, afforded by the theory of a judgment after death and future life, was never even hinted at by job or his friends, however hardly they might be pressed in argument. if the sojourn in egypt really lasted for years, it must have embraced many of the greatest events in egyptian history. the descendants of jacob must have witnessed a long period of the rule of the hyksos, and lived through the desolating thirty years' war by which these foreign conquerors were gradually driven back by the native armies of upper egypt. they must have been close to the scene of the final campaigns, the siege of avaris, and the expulsion of the hyksos. they must have been subjects of ahmes, thotmes, and the conquering kings of the eighteenth dynasty, who followed up the fugitive hyksos, and carried the conquering arms of egypt not only over palestine and syria, but up to the euphrates and tigris, and over nearly the whole of western asia. they must have witnessed the decline of this empire, the growth of the hittites, and the half-century of wars waged between them and the egyptians in palestine and syria. the victory of ramses ii. at kadesh and the epic poem of pentaur must have been known to the generation before the exodus as signal events. and if there is any truth in the account quoted by josephus, they must have been aware that they did not fly from egypt as a body of fugitive slaves, but as retreating warriors who for thirteen years had held egypt up to ethiopia in subjection. and yet of all these memorable events there is not the slightest trace in the hebrew annals which have come down to us. an even greater difficulty is to understand how, if the children of israel had lived for anything like years in such a civilized empire as egypt, they could have emerged from it in such a plane of low civilization, or rather of ferocious savagery and crude superstitions as are shown by the books of the old testament, where they burst like a host of red indians on the settlements and cities of the amorites, and other more advanced nations of palestine. the discoveries at lachish already referred to show that their civilization could not have exceeded that of the rudest bedouins, and their myths and legends are so similar to those of the north american indians as to show that they must have originated in a very similar stage of mental development. if we adopt the short date of the genealogies we are equally confronted by difficulties. if the exodus occurred in the reign of menepthah, years back from that date would take us, not to the hyksos dynasty where alone it would have been possible for joseph to be a vizier, and for a semitic tribe of shepherds to be welcomed in egypt, but into the midst of the great and glorious eighteenth dynasty who had expelled the hyksos, and carried the dominion of egypt to the euphrates. nor would there have been time for the seventy souls, who we are told were all of the family of jacob who migrated into egypt, to have increased in three generations into a nation numerous enough to alarm the egyptians, and conquer the canaanites. the legend of joseph is very touching and beautiful, but it may just as well be a novel as history, and this suspicion is strengthened by the fact that the episode of potiphar's wife is almost verbatim the same as one of the chapters of the egyptian novel of the _two brothers_. nor does it seem likely that such a seven years' famine and such a momentous change as the conversion of all the land of egypt from freehold into a tenure held from the king subject to payment of a rent of one-fifth of the gross produce, should have left no trace in the records. again, the age of years assigned to joseph, and to his father, are a sufficient proof that we are not upon strictly historical ground; and on the whole this narrative does not go far, in the absence of any confirmation from monuments, to assist us in fixing dates, or enabling us to form any consistent idea of the real conditions of the sojourn of the people of israel in egypt. it places them on far too high a level of civilization at first, to have fallen to such a low one as we find depicted in the books of exodus, joshua, and judges. further excavations in the mounds of ruined cities in judæa and palestine, like those of schliemann on the sites of troy and mycenæ, can alone give us anything like certain facts as to the real condition of the hebrew tribes who destroyed the older walled cities of the comparatively civilized amorites and canaanites. if the conclusion of mr. flinders petrie from the section of the mound of lachish, as to the extremely rude condition of the tribes who built the second town of mud-huts on the ruins of the amorite city, should be confirmed, it would go far to negative the idea that the accounts of their having been trained in an advanced code of mosaic legislation, can have any historical foundation. we come next to moses. it is difficult to refuse an historical character to a personage who has been accepted by uniform tradition as the chief who led the israelites out of egypt, and as the great legislator who laid the foundations of the religious and civil institutions of the peculiar people. and if the passage from manetho is correctly quoted by josephus, and was really taken from contemporary egyptian annals, and is not a later version of the account in the pentateuch modified to suit egyptian prejudices, moses is clearly identified with osarsiph the priest of hieropolis, who abandoned the worship of the old gods, and headed the revolt of the unclean people, which probably meant the heretics. it may be conjectured that this may have had some connection with the great religious revolution of the heretic king of tel-el-amarna, which for a time displaced the national gods, worshipped in the form of sacred animals and symbolic statues, by an approach to monotheism under the image of the winged solar disc. such a reform must have had many adherents to have survived as the state religion for two or three reigns, and must have left a large number of so-called heretics when the nation returned to its ancient faith; and it is quite intelligible that some of the more enlightened priests should have assimilated to it the doctrine of one supreme god, which was always at the bottom of the religious metaphysics of the earliest ages in egypt, and was probably preserved as an esoteric doctrine in the priestly colleges. this, however, must remain purely a conjecture, and we must look for anything specific in regard to moses exclusively to the old testament. and here we are at once assailed by formidable difficulties. as long as we confine ourselves to general views it may be accepted as historical that the israelites really came out of egypt under a great leader and legislator; but when we come to details, and to the events connected with moses, and to a great extent supposed to have been written by him or taken from his journals, they are for the most part more wildly and hopelessly impossible than anything related of the earlier patriarchs, abraham and joseph. the story of his preservation in infancy is a variation of the myth common to so many nations, of an infant hero or god, whose life is sought by a wicked king, and who is miraculously saved. we find it in the myths of khrishna, buddha, cyrus, romulus, and others, and in the inscription by sargon i. of accade on his own tablet; he states himself to have been saved in an ark floated on the river euphrates, just as moses was on the nile. when grown up he is represented first as the adopted son of pharaoh's daughter, and then as a shepherd in the wilderness of midian talking with the lord in a fiery bush, who for the first time communicates his real name of jehovah, which he says was not known to abraham, isaac, or jacob, although constantly used by them, and although men began to call him by that name in the time of enos, adam's grandson. at jehovah's command moses throws his rod on the ground, when it becomes a serpent from which he flies, and when he takes it up by the tail it becomes a rod again; and as a farther sign his hand is changed from sound to leprous as white as snow, and back again to sound, in a minute or two of time. on returning to egypt moses is represented as going ten times into the presence of pharaoh demanding of him to let the hebrews depart, and inflicting on egypt a succession of plagues, each one more than sufficient to have convinced the king of the futility of opposing such supernatural powers, and to have made him only too anxious to get rid of the hebrews from the land at any price. what could have been the condition of egypt, if for seven days "the streams, the rivers, the ponds and pools, and even the water in the vessels of wood and of stone, through all the land of egypt," had been really turned into blood? and what sort of magicians must they have been who could do the same with their enchantments? the whole account of these plagues has distinctly the air of being an historical romance rather than real history. those repeated interviews accompanied by taunts and reproaches of moses, the representative of an oppressed race of slaves, in the august presence of a pharaoh who, like the inca of peru or the mikado of japan, was half monarch and half deity, are totally inconsistent with all we know of egyptian usage. the son and successor of the splendid ramses ii., who has been called the louis xiv. of egyptian history, would certainly, after the first interview and miracle, either have recognized the supernatural power which it was useless to resist, or ordered moses to instant execution. it is remarkable also how the series of plagues reproduce the natural features of the egyptian seasons. recent travellers tell us how at the end of the dry season when the nile is at its lowest, and the adjacent plains are arid and lifeless, suddenly one morning at sunrise they see the river apparently turned into blood. it is the phenomenon of the red nile, which is caused by the first flush of the abyssinian flood, coming from banks of red marl. after a few days the real rise commences, the nile resumes its usual colour, percolates through its banks, fills the tanks and ponds, and finally overflows and saturates the dusty plains. the first signal of the renewal of life is the croaking of innumerable frogs, and soon the plains are alive with flies, gnats, and all manner of creeping and hopping insects, as if the dust had been turned into lice. then after the inundation subsides come the other plagues which in the summer and autumn seasons frequently afflict the young crops and the inhabitants--local hail-storms, locusts, murrain among the cattle, boils and other sicknesses while the stagnant waters are drying up. it reads like what some rider haggard of the court of solomon might have written in working up the tales of travellers and old popular traditions into an historical romance of the deliverance of israel from egypt. when we come to the exodus the impossibilities of the narrative are even more obvious. the robust common-sense of bishop colenso, sharpened by a mathematical education, has reduced many of these to the convincing test of arithmetic. the host of israelites who left egypt is said to have comprised , fighting men above the age of twenty; exclusive of the levites and of a mixed multitude who followed. this implies a total population of at least , , , who are said to have wandered about for forty years in the desert of sinai, one of the most arid wildernesses in the world, destitute alike of water, arable soil, and pasture, and where a bedouin tribe of even souls would find it difficult to exist. they are said to have been miraculously fed during these forty years on manna, a sweetish, gummy exudation from the scanty foliage of certain prickly desert plants, which is described as being "as small as the hoar frost," and as being so imbued with sabbatarian principles, as to keep fresh only for the day it is gathered during the week, but for two days if gathered on a friday, so as to prevent the necessity of doing any work on the sabbath. bishop colenso points out with irresistible force the obvious impossibilities in regard to food, water, fuel, sanitation, transport, and other matters, which was involved in the supposition that a population, half as large as that of london, wandered about under tents from camp to camp for forty years in a desert. no attempt has ever been made to refute him, except by vague suppositions that the deserts of sinai and arabia may then have been in a very different condition, and capable of supporting a large population. but this is impossible in the present geological age and under existing geographical conditions. these deserts form part of the great rainless zone of the earth between the north tropical and south temperate zones, where cultivation is only possible when the means of irrigation are afforded by lakes, rivers, or melting snow. but there are none of these in the deserts of sinai and northern arabia, and therefore no water and no vegetation sufficient to support any population. no army has ever invaded egypt from asia, or asia from egypt, except by the short route adjoining the mediterranean between pelusium and jaffa, and with the command of the sea and assistance of trains to carry supplies and water. and the account in exodus itself confirms this, for both food and water are stated to have been supplied miraculously, and there is no mention made of anything but the present arid and uninhabited desert in the various encampments and marches. in fact, the bible constantly dwells on the inhospitable character of the "howling wilderness," where there was neither grass nor water. accordingly reconcilers have been reduced to the supposition that ciphers may have been added by copyists, and that the real number may have been , or even, as some writers think, . but this is inconsistent with the detailed numeration by twelve separate tribes, which works out to the same figure of , fighting men for the total number. nor is it consistent with the undoubted fact that the hebrews did evacuate egypt in sufficient numbers and sufficiently armed to burst through the frontiers, and capture the walled cities of considerable nations like the amorites and canaanites, who had been long settled in the country. the narrative of manetho, quoted by josephus, seems much more like real history; that the hebrews formed part of an army, which, after having held lower egypt for thirteen years, was finally defeated, and retreated by the usual military route across the short part of the desert from pelusium to palestine, the hebrews, for some reason, branching off, and taking to a bedouin life on the outskirts of the desert and cultivated land, just as many bedouin tribes live a semi-nomad life in the same regions at the present day. apart from statistics, however, the books of the pentateuch ascribed to moses are full of the most flagrant contradictions and absurdities. it is evident that, instead of being the production of some one contemporary writer, they have been compiled and edited, probably many times over, by what i have called the "scissors and paste method," of clipping out extracts from old documents and traditions, and piecing them together in juxtaposition or succession, without regard to their being contradictory or repetitions. thus in exodus xxxiii. , god says to moses: "thou canst not see my face and live; for there shall no man see me and live"; and accordingly he shows moses only his "back parts"; while in ver. in the very same chapter we read, "and the lord spoke unto moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." again in exodus xxiv. the lord says to moses, "that he alone shall come near the lord" (ver. ), while in vers. -- of the same chapter, we are told that "moses, aaron, nadab, and abihu, and seventy of the elders of israel went up; and they saw the god of israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone," and although they saw god, were none the worse for it, but survived and "did eat and drink." is it possible to believe that these excessively crude representations of the deity, and these flagrant inconsistencies, were all written at the same time, by the same hand, and that the hand of a man who, if not a holy inspired prophet, was at any rate an educated and learned ex-priest of hieropolis, skilled in all the knowledge of the egyptians? the contradictions in the ideas and precepts of morality and religion are even more startling. these oscillate between the two extremes of the conception of the later prophets of a one supreme god, who loves justice and mercy better than sacrifice, and that of a ferocious and vindictive tribal god, whose appetite for human blood is as insatiable as that of the war-god of the mexicans. thus we have, on the one hand, the commandment, "thou shalt do no murder," and on the other, the injunction to commit indiscriminate massacres. a single instance may suffice. the "book of the law of moses" is quoted in kings xiv. as saying, "the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin." in numbers xxxi., moses, the "meekest of mankind," is represented as extremely wroth with the captains who, having warred against midian at the lord's command, had only slaughtered the males, and taken the women of midian and their little ones captives; and he commands them to "kill every male among the little ones, and every woman that hath known man by lying with him; but all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." these midianites, be it remembered, being the people whose high priest jethro had hospitably received moses when he fled for his life from egypt, and gave him his daughter as a wife, by whom he had children who were half midianites, so that if the zealous phinehas was right in slaying the hebrew who had married a midianite woman, moses himself deserved the same fate. the same injunction of indiscriminate massacre in order to escape the jealous wrath of an offended jehovah is repeated, over and over again, in joshua and judges, and even as late as after the foundation of the monarchy, we find samuel telling saul in the name of the lord of hosts, to "go and smite amalek, and utterly destroy them, slaying both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," and denouncing saul, and hewing agag in pieces before the lord, because this savage injunction had not been literally obeyed. even under david, the man after the lord's own heart, we find him torturing to death the prisoners taken at the fall of rabbah, and giving up seven of the sons of saul to the gibeonites to be sacrificed before the lord as human victims. it is one of the strangest contradictions of human nature that such atrocious violations of the moral sense should have been received for so many centuries as a divine revelation, rather than as instances of what may be more appropriately called "devil worship." nor is it a less singular proof of the power of cherished prepossessions that such a medley of the sublime religious ideas and lofty poetry of the prophetic ages, with such a mass of puerile and absurd legends, such obvious contradictions, and such a number of passages obviously dating from a later period, should be received by many men of intelligence, even to the present day, as the work of a single contemporary writer, the inspired prophet moses. when we pass from the pentateuch to the succeeding books of joshua and of judges the same remarks apply. the falling of the walls of jericho at the sound of the trumpet, and the defeat of an army of , men of midian and amalek with a slaughter of , , by men under gideon, armed with pitchers and trumpets, are on a par with the wandering of , , israelites in the desert for forty years, fed with manna of the size of hoar-frost. the moral atmosphere also continues to be that of red indians down to the time of david, for we read of nothing but murders and massacres, sometimes of other races, sometimes of one tribe by another; while the actions selected for special commendation are like those of jael, who drove a nail into the head of the sleeping fugitive whom she had invited into her tent; or of jephthah, who sacrificed his daughter as an offering to the lord in obedience to a vow. this barbarous state of manners is confirmed by flinders petrie's discoveries at the supposed site of lachish, which show the ruins of a walled city of the amorites, built upon by the mud hovels of a race as rude as the rudest bedouins who now wander on the edge of the arabian desert. the only safe conclusion seems to be that authentic annals of jewish history only begin with the monarchy, and that everything prior to david and solomon, or possibly saul and samuel, consists of myth, legend, and oral tradition, so inextricably blended, and so mixed up with successive later additions, as to give no certain information as to events or dates. all that it is safe to assume is, that in a general way the hebrews were originally a semitic tribe who migrated from chaldæa into palestine and thence into egypt, where they remained for an uncertain time and were oppressed by the national dynasty which expelled the hyksos; that they left egypt probably in the reign of menepthah, and as a consequence of the rebellion recorded by manetho; that they then lived for an unknown time as wandering bedouins on the frontier of palestine in a state of very rude barbarism; and finally burst in like a horde of aztecs on the older and more civilized toltecs of mexico. for a long period after this, perhaps for or years, they lived in a state of chronic warfare with one another, and with their neighbours, massacring and being massacred with the alternate vicissitudes of war, but with the same rudeness and ferocity of superstitions and manners. gradually, however, they advanced in civilization, and something of a national feeling arose, which led to a partial consolidation under priests, and a more complete one under kings. the first king, saul, was opposed by priestly influence and defeated and slain in battle, but a captain of condottieri, david, arose, a man of great energy and military genius, who gradually formed a standing army and conquered province after province, until at his death he left to his successor, solomon, an empire extending from the frontier of egypt to damascus, and from the red sea almost to the mediterranean. this kingdom commanded two of the great commercial routes between the east and west, the caravan route between tyre and babylon, _viâ_ damascus and tadmor, and the route from tyre to the terminus at ezion-gebir, of the sea-routes to arabia, africa, and india. solomon entered into close commercial relations with tyre, and during his long and splendid reign, jerusalem blossomed rapidly into a wealthy and a cultured city, and the surrounding cities and districts shared in the general prosperity. the greatness of the kingdom did not last long, for the revolt of the ten tribes and the growth of other powers soon reduced judæa and samaria to political insignificance; but jerusalem, down to the time of its final destruction by nebuchadnezzar, _i.e._ for a period of some years after solomon, never seems to have lost its character of a considerable and civilized city. it is evident from the later prophets that it was the seat of a good deal of wealth and luxury, for their invectives are, to a great extent, what we should call at the present day, socialist denunciations of the oppression of the poor by the rich, land-grabbing by the powerful, and extravagance of dress by the ladies of fashion. there were hereditary nobles, organized colleges of priests and scribes, and no doubt there was a certain amount of intellectual life and literary activity. but of a sacred book there is no trace until the discovery of one in the temple in the reign of josiah; and the peculiar tenets of modern judaism had no real hold on the mass of the people until after the return from exile and the reforms of ezra and nehemiah. the history, therefore, contained in the old testament is comparatively modern. there is nothing which can be relied on as authentic in regard to events and dates prior to the establishment of the monarchy, and even the wildest myths and the most impossible legends do not carry us back within years of the time when we have genuine historical annals attested by monuments both in egypt and chaldæa. part ii. evidence from science. chapter viii. geology and palÆontology. proved by contemporary monuments--as in history--summary of historical evidence--geological evidence of human periods--neolithic period--palæolithic or quaternary--tertiary--secondary and older periods--the recent or post-glacial period--lake-villages--bronze age--kitchen-middens--scandinavian peat-mosses--neolithic remains comparatively modern--definition of post-glacial period--its duration--mellard read's estimate--submerged forests--changes in physical geography--huxley--objections from america--niagara--quaternary period--immense antiquity--presence of man throughout--first glacial period--scandinavian and laurentian ice-caps--immense extent--mass of _débris_--elevation and depression--in britain--inter-glacial and second glacial periods--antiquity measured by changes of land--lyell's estimate--glacial _débris_ and loess--recent erosion--bournemouth--evans--prestwich--wealden ridge and southern drift--contain human implements--evidence from new world--california. we have now to take leave of historical records and fall back on the exact sciences for further traces of human origins. our guides are still contemporary records, but these are no longer stately tombs and temples, massive pyramids and written inscriptions. instead of these we have flint implements, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered by skilled experts in their respective departments of science. still these records tell their tale as conclusively as any hieroglyphic or cuneiform writings in egyptian manuscripts or on babylonian cylinders. the celt, the knife, the lance and arrow-heads, and other weapons and implements, can be traced in an uninterrupted progressive series from the oldest and rudest palæolithic specimens, up to the highly-finished ones of polished stone, and through these into the age of metals, and into historic times and the actual implements of existing savage races. it is impossible to doubt that one of the palæolithic celts from st. acheul or st. prest is as truly a work of the human hand, guided by human intelligence, as a modern axe; and that an arrow-head from moustier or kent's cavern is no more an elf-bolt, or a _lusus naturæ_, than is a winchester rifle. before entering on this new line of investigation, it may be well to sum up briefly the evidence as to the starting-point from history and tradition. the commencement of the strictly historical period takes us back certainly for and in all probability for years in egypt, and certainly for and probably for or years in chaldæa. in each case we find populous cities, important temples and public works, writing and other advanced arts and industries, and all the signs of an old civilization already existing. other nations also evidently then existed with whom these ancient empires had relations of war and of commerce, though the annals of even the oldest of them, such as china, do not carry us back further than from to years. traditions do not add much to our information from monuments, and fade rapidly away into myths and legends. the oldest and most authentic, those of egypt, simply confirm the inference of great antiquity for its civilization prior to menes, but give no clue as to its origin. they neither trace it up to the stone age, which we know existed in the valley of the nile, nor refer it to any foreign source. the egyptian people thought themselves autochthonous, and attributed their arts, industries, and sciences to the inventions of native gods, or demi-gods, who reigned like mortal kings, in a remote and fabulous antiquity. we can gather nothing therefore from tradition that would enable us to add even years with certainty to the date of menes; while from the high state of civilization which had been evolved prior to his accession, from the primitive conditions of the stone period whose remains are found at cairo and thebes, we might fairly add , or , years to his date of years _b.c._, as a matter of probable conjecture for the first dawn of historical civilization. in any case we shall be well within the mark if we take , years as our first unit, or standard of chronological measurement, with which to start in our further researches, as we do with terrestrial standards in gauging the distances of suns and stars. it may be well also to supplement this statement of the historical standard by a brief review of the previous geological periods through which evidences of man's existence can be traced. immediately behind the historic age lies the recent period during which the existing fauna and flora, climate and configuration of seas and lands, have undergone no material change. it is characterized generally as the neolithic period, in which we find polished stone superseding the older and ruder forms of chipped stone, and passing itself into the copper, bronze, and iron ages of early history. it may also be called the recent or post-glacial period, for it coincides with the final disappearance of the last great glaciation, and the establishment of conditions of climate resembling those of the present day. behind this again comes the quaternary or pleistocene period, so called from its fauna, which, although containing extinct species, shows along with them many existing forms, some of which have migrated and some remain. this also may be called the glacial period, for although the commencement, termination, and different phases of the two great glaciations and intermediate inter-glacial periods cannot be exactly defined, and hard-and-fast lines drawn between the later pliocene at one end and the post-glacial at the other, there is no doubt that in a general way the quaternary and glacial periods coincide, and that the changes of climate were to a considerable extent the cause of the changes of flora and fauna. behind the quaternary comes in the tertiary, with its three great divisions of pliocene, miocene, and eocene, each containing numerous subdivisions, and all showing a progressive advance in forms of life, from older and more generalized types towards newer and more specialized ones, and a constant approach towards genera and species now existing. behind the tertiary comes the secondary period, into which it is unnecessary to enter for the present purpose, for all is different, and even mammalian life is only known to be present in a few forms of small and feeble marsupials. nor is it necessary to enter on any detailed consideration of the eocene or earlier tertiary, for the types of mammalian life are so different from those of later periods, that it cannot be supposed that any animal so highly organized as man had then come into existence. the utmost we can suppose is that, as in the case of the horse, some ancestral form from which the quadrumana and man may possibly have been developed may be found. but up to the present time nothing has been found in the eocene more nearly approaching such a missing link than an ancient form of lemur; and it is not until we get into the miocene that any evidence presents itself that man, or some near ancestor of man, may possibly have existed.[ ] [ ] since this was written the scientific world has been startled by the discovery announced by professor ameghino in the lower tertiary, supposed to be eocene, of patagonia, of numerous small monkeys of the american type of cebidæ, affording evidence of the existence of anthropoid primates at this extremely early date.--lydekker in _natural science_ for april . he adds, "perhaps still more noteworthy are the signs of affinity exhibited by these early primates to the extinct south american protopytheridæ. the latter are clearly related to the aberrant ungulate typotherium of the south american tertiaries, which appears to be allied on the one hand to the extinct toxodon, and on the other to the rodents. if substantiated, such an unexpected relationship as that of the american primates to the toxodonts will materially modify some of our present views as to the mutual relationships of mammals." and i may add, throw a flood of light on the question of the "missing link," and the development of man and the quadrumana from a common ancestral type. my present object being not to write a book on geology, but on human origins, i shall not attempt to trace back the geological evidence beyond the miocene, or to enter on any details of the later periods, except so far as they bear on what may be called geological chronology, _i.e._ on the probable dates which may be assigned to the first appearance and subsequent evolution of the human race going back from historical times. beginning with the recent or post-glacial period, the swiss and italian lake-villages supply clear evidence of the progress of man in western europe through the neolithic into the historical period. they afford us an unbroken series of substantially the same state of society, existing down to the time of the romans, for a great many centuries back of communities living in lake-villages built upon piles, like the villages in thrace described by herodotus, or those of the present day in new guinea. some of these have been occupied continuously, so that the _débris_ of different ages are stored in consecutive order like geological strata, and afford an unerring test of their relative antiquity. it is clear that many of those lake-villages were founded in the age of stone, and passed through that of bronze into the age of iron. the oldest settlements belong to the neolithic age, and contain polished stone implements and pottery, but they show a state of civilization not yet very far advanced. the inhabitants were only just emerging from the hunting into the pastoral stage. they lived principally on the produce of the chase, the bones of the stag and wild boar being very plentiful, while those of ox and sheep are rare. agriculture and the cereals seem to have been unknown, though stores of acorns and hazel nuts were found which had been roasted for food. by degrees the bones of wild animals become scarce, and those of ox and sheep common, showing that the pastoral stage had been reached; and the goat, pig, and horse were added to the list of domestic animals--the dog being included from the first, and the horse only at a later period. agriculture follows next in order, and considerable proficiency was attained, barley and wheat being staple articles of food, and apples, pears, and other fruit being stored for winter consumption. flax also was grown, and the arts of spinning and weaving were introduced, so that clothing, instead of being confined to skins, was made of coarse linen and woollen stuffs. the most important advance, however, in the arts of civilization is afforded by the introduction of metals. these begin to appear about the middle of the neolithic period, at first very sparingly, and in a few districts such as spain, upper italy, and hungary, where native copper was found and was hammered into shapes modelled on the old stone implements; but as a general rule, and in all the later settlements, bronze, in new and improved shapes, supersedes stone and copper. for the most part these bronze implements seem to have been obtained by foreign commerce from the phoenicians, etruscans, and other nations bordering on the mediterranean, though in some cases they were cast on the spot from native or imported ores. the existence of bronze, however, must go back to a far greater antiquity than the time when the neolithic people of europe obtained their first supplies from phoenician traders. bronze, as we have seen in a former chapter, is an alloy of two metals, copper and tin, and the hardest and most serviceable alloy is only to be obtained by mixing the two in a certain definite proportion. now it is to be noted, that nearly all the prehistoric bronze found in europe is an alloy in this definite proportion. clearly all this bronze, or the art of making it, must have originated from some common centre. all this, however, is very conjectural, and all that can be concluded from it is, that any indications as to the antiquity of man derived from the bronze age as known to us in europe, hardly carry us back to dates as remote as those furnished by the monuments of egypt and chaldæa. indeed, there are no facts certainly known to us from remains of the bronze age in europe that imply a greater antiquity than or possibly years b.c., a date at which bronze had undoubtedly been already known in egypt and the east for many centuries. the neolithic period which preceded that of metals is of longer duration, but still comparatively recent. attempts have been made to measure it by a sort of natural chronometer in the case of the lake-villages, by comparing the amount of silting up since the villages were built with the known rate of silting up since roman times. the calculations vary very much, and can only be taken as approximative; but the oldest dates assigned do not exceed b.c., and most of them are not more than or b.c. it must be remembered however that the foundation of a lake-village on piles implies a long antecedent neolithic period, to have arrived at a stage of civilization which made the construction of such villages possible. this civilization coincides wonderfully with that of the primitive aryans as shown by linguistic palæontology. the discussion as to the origin of the aryans has thrown a great deal of light on this question, and has gone far to dispel the old notion that they radiated from some centre in asia, and overran europe in successive waves. on the contrary, all the evidence and all the best authorities point to their having occupied, when we first get traces of them, pretty much the same districts of the great plain of northern europe and southern russia as we now find them in, and developed there their distinct dialects and nationalities; while the words common to all or nearly all the aryan families point to their having been pastoral nomads, in a state of civilization very like that of the earlier lake-villagers, before this separation took place. the scandinavian kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, carry us further back into this early neolithic period. the shell-mounds which are found in great numbers along the baltic shore of denmark are often of great size. they are formed of an accumulation of shells of oysters, mussels, and other shell-fish, bones of wild animals, birds, and fish, all of existing species, with numerous implements of flint or bone, and occasional fragments of coarse pottery. they are decidedly more archaic than the lake-dwellings, showing a much ruder civilization of savages living like the fuegians of the present day, in scanty tribes on the sea-shore, supported mainly by shell-fish, supplemented by the chase of wild animals. the dog was their only domestic animal, and their only arts the fabrication of rude pottery and implements of stone and bone, unless it can be inferred from the occasional presence of bones of cod and other deep-sea fish, that they possessed some form of boat or canoe, and had hooks and lines or nets. these mounds must have taken an enormous time to accumulate, for they are very numerous, and often of great bulk, some of them being feet long, feet wide, and ten feet thick. how long such masses must have taken to accumulate must be apparent when we consider that the state of civilization implies a very scanty population. it has been calculated that if the neolithic population of denmark required as many square miles for its support as the similar existing populations of greenland and patagonia, their total number could not have exceeded , and each mound must have been the accumulation of perhaps two or three families. ancient, however, as these mounds must be, they are clearly neolithic. they are sharply distinguished from the far older remains of the palæolithic period by the knowledge, however rude, of pottery and polished stone, and still more by the fauna, which is entirely recent, and from which the extinct animals of the quaternary period have disappeared; while the position of the mounds shows that only slight geological changes, such as are now going on, have occurred since they were accumulated. similar mounds, on even a larger scale, occur on the sea-coasts of various districts in europe and america, but they afford no indication of their date beyond that of great antiquity. the peat-mosses of denmark have been appealed to as affording something like a conjectural date for the early neolithic period in that country. these are formed in hollows of the glacial drift, which have been small lakes or ponds in the midst of forests, into which trees have fallen, and which have become gradually converted into peat by the growth of marsh plants. it is clearly established that there have been three successive ages of forest growth, the upper one of beech, below it one of oak, and lowest of all one of fir. the implements and relics found in the beech stratum are all modern, those in the oak stratum are of the later neolithic and bronze ages, and those in the lowest, or fir-horizon, are earlier and ruder neolithic, resembling those found in the older lake-villages and shell-mounds. now beech has been the characteristic forest tree of denmark certainly since the roman period, or for years, and no one can say for how much longer. if the speculations as to the origin of the aryan race in northern europe are correct, it must have been for very much longer, as the word for beech is common to so many of the dialects into which the primitive aryan language became divided. the stages of oaks and firs must equally have been of long duration, and the different stages could only have been brought about by slow secular variations of climate during the post-glacial period. still this affords no reliable information as to specific dates, and we can only take steenstrup's calculation of from to , years for the formation of some of these peat-bogs as a very vague estimate, and this only carries us back to a time when egypt and chaldæa must have been already densely peopled, and far advanced in civilization. on the whole, it seems that the neolithic arrow-heads found in egypt, and the fragments of pottery brought up by borings through the deposits of the nile, are the oldest certain human relics of the neolithic age which have yet been discovered, and these do not carry us back further than a possible date of , or , years b.c. nor is there any certainty that any of the neolithic remains found in the newer deposits of rivers and the upper strata of caves go further, or even so far back as these relics of an egyptian stone period. all that the evidence really shows is, that while the neolithic period must have lasted for a long time as compared with historical standards, its duration is almost infinitesimally small as compared with that of the preceding palæolithic period. thus in kent's cavern neolithic remains are only found in a small surface layer of black earth from three to twelve inches thick; while below this, palæolithic implements and a quaternary fauna occur in an upper stalagmite one to three feet thick, below it in red cave earth five to six feet thick; then in a lower stalagmite in places ten or twelve feet thick, and below it again in a breccia three or four feet thick. this is confirmed by the evidence of all the caves explored in all parts of the world, which uniformly show any neolithic remains confined to a superficial layer of a few inches with many feet of palæolithic strata below them. and river-drifts in the same manner show neolithic remains confined to the alluvia and peat-beds of existing streams, while palæolithic remains occur during the whole series of deposits while these rivers were excavating their present valleys. if we say feet for inches, or twelve for one, we shall be well within the mark in estimating the comparative duration of the palæolithic and neolithic periods, as measured by the thickness of their deposits in caves and river-drifts; and as we shall see hereafter, other geological evidence from elevations and depressions, denudations and depositions, point to even a higher figure. in going back from the neolithic into the palæolithic period, we are confronted by the difficulty to which i have already referred, of there being no hard-and-fast lines by which geological eras are clearly separated from one another. zoologically there seems to be a very decided break between the recent and the quaternary. the instances are rare and doubtful in which we can see any trace of the remains of palæolithic man, and of the fauna of extinct animals, passing gradually into those of neolithic and recent times. but geologically there is no such abrupt break. we cannot draw a line at the culmination of the last great glaciation and say, here the glacial period ends and the post-glacial begins. nor can we say of any definite period or horizon, this is glacial and this recent. a great number of palæolithic remains and of quaternary fossils are undoubtedly post-glacial in the sense of being found in deposits which have accumulated since the last great glaciers and ice-caps began to retreat. existing valleys have been excavated to a great extent since the present rivers, swollen by the melting snows and torrential rains of this period of the latest glacial retreat, superseded old lines of drainage, and began to wear down the surface of the earth into its present aspect. this phase is more properly included in the term glacial, for both the coming on and the disappearance of the periods of intense cold are as much part of the phenomenon as their _maximum_ culmination, and very probably occupied much longer intervals of time. in like manner, we cannot positively say when this post-glacial period ended and the recent began. not, i should say, until the exceptional effects of the last great glacial period had finally disappeared, and the climate, geographical conditions, and fauna had assumed nearly or entirely the modern conditions in which we find them at the commencement of history. and this may have been different in different countries, for local conditions might make the glacial period commence sooner and continue later in some districts than in others. thus in north america, where the glaciation was more intense, and the ice-cap extended some ten degrees further south than in europe, it might well be that it was later in retreating and disappearing. the elevation of the laurentian highlands into the region of perpetual snow was evidently one main factor of the american ice-cap, just as that of scandinavia was of that of europe, and it by no means follows that their depression was simultaneous. it would be unwise, for instance, to take the time occupied in cutting back the niagara gorge by a river which only began to run at some stage of the post-glacial period, as an absolute test of the duration of that period all over the world. indeed, the glacial period cannot be said to have ended and the post-glacial begun at the present day in greenland, if the disappearance of the ice-cap over very extensive regions is to be taken as the test. any approximation to the duration of the post-glacial period in any given locality can only be obtained by defining its commencement with the first deposits which lie above the latest glacial drift, and measuring the amount of work done since. this has been done very carefully by the officers of the geological survey and other eminent authorities in england and scotland, and the result clearly shows that since the last glaciation left the country buried in a thick mantle of boulder-clay and drift, such an amount of denudation, and such movements of elevation and depression have taken place, as must have required a great lapse of time. the most complete attempt at an estimate of this time is that made by mr. mellard read of the geological survey, from the changes proved to have occurred in the mersey valley. in this case it is shown that the valley, almost in its present dimensions, must have been first carved out of an uniform plain of glacial drift and upper boulder-clay by sub-aërial denudation; then that a depression let the sea into the valley and accumulated a series of estuarine clays and silts; then an elevation raised the whole into a plain on which grew an extensive forest of oak rooted in the clays; this again must have subsided and let in the sea for a second time, which must have remained long enough to leave a large estuarine deposit, and finally the whole must have been raised to the present level before historical times. the phenomenon of the submerged forest is a very general one, being traced along almost all the sea-coasts of western europe, where shelving shores and sheltered bays favour the preservation of patches of this primæval forest. it testifies to a considerable amount of elevation and subsequent depression, for its remains can be traced below low-water mark, and are occasionally dredged up far out to sea, and stately oaks could not have flourished unless more or less continental conditions had prevailed. it is evident that in this age of forests the german ocean must have been dry land, and the continent of europe must have extended beyond the orkneys and hebrides, probably to the hundred fathom line. such movements of elevation and depression, so far as we know anything of them, are extremely slow. there has been no change in the fords of rivers in britain since roman times, and the spit connecting st. michael's mount with cornwall was dry at ebb and covered at flood as at the present day, when the british carted their tin across it to trade with the phoenicians years ago. mr. read goes into elaborate calculations based on the time required for these geological changes, and arrives at the conclusion that they point to a date of not less than , or , years ago for the commencement of the post-glacial period. these calculations are disputed, but it seems certain that several multiples of the historical standard of say , years, must be required to measure the period since the glacial age finally disappeared, and the earth, with its existing fauna, climate, and geographical conditions, came fairly into view. this is confirmed by the great changes which have taken place in the distribution of land and water since the quaternary period. huxley, in an article on the aryan question, points out that in recent times four great separate bodies of water--the black sea, the caspian, the sea of aral, and lake balkash--occupied the southern end of the vast plains which extend from the arctic sea to the highlands of the balkan peninsula, of asia minor, of persia and afghanistan, and of the high plateaux of central asia, as far as the altai. but he says, "this state of things is comparatively modern. at no very distant period the land of asia minor was continuous with that of europe, across the present site of the bosphorus, forming a barrier several hundred feet high, which dammed up the waters of the black sea. a vast extent of eastern europe and of west-central asia thus became one vast ponto-aralian mediterranean, into which the largest rivers of europe and asia, the danube, volga, oxus, and jaxartes, discharged their waters, and which sent its overflow northwards through the present basin of the obi." the time necessary for such changes goes far to confirm mellard read's estimate for the long duration of the recent or post-glacial period. in fact, all the evidence from the old world goes to confirm the long duration of the post-glacial period, and the immensely greater antiquity of the glacial period taken as a whole. it is only from the new world that any serious arguments are forthcoming to abridge those periods, or rather the post-glacial period, for that alone is affected by the facts adduced. it is said that recent measurements of the recession of the falls of niagara show, that instead of requiring , years, as estimated by lyell, to cut back the gorge of seven miles from kingston to the falls, , years at the outside would have been amply sufficient; and that this is confirmed by the gorges of other rivers, such as that of the mississippi at st. paul's. the evidence is not conclusive, for it depends on the rate of erosion going on for the last twenty or thirty years, which may obviously give a different result from the true average, and in fact older estimates, based on longer periods, gave the rate adopted by lyell. but if we admit the accuracy of the modern estimates, it does not affect the total duration of the glacial period, but simply that of a late phase of the post-glacial, when the ice-cap which covered north america to a depth often of or feet, had melted away and shrunk back miles from its original southern boundary, so as to admit of the waters of the great lakes finding an outlet to the north-east instead of by the old drainage to the south. nothing is more likely than that, as the great laurentian ice-cap of america was deeper and extended further than the scandinavian ice-cap of europe, it may have taken longer to melt the larger accumulation of ice, and thus postponed the establishment of post-glacial conditions and river-drainage to a later period than in the warmer and more insular climate of europe. it is a matter of everyday observation, that the larger a snowball is the longer it takes to melt, and that when the mass is large it requires a long time to make it disappear even after mild weather has set in. the only other argument for a short glacial period is drawn from the rate of advance of the glaciers in greenland, which is shown to be much more rapid than that of the glaciers of switzerland, from which former calculations had been made. but obviously the rate at which the fronts of glaciers advance when forced by a mass of continental ice down fiords on a steep descending gradient, into a deep sea, where the front is floated off in icebergs, affords no clue as to that of an ice-cap spread, with a front of miles, over half a continent, retarded by friction, and surmounting mountain chains feet high. nor does the rate of advance afford the slightest clue to the time during which the ice-cap may have remained stationary, alternately advanced and retreated, and finally disappeared.[ ] [ ] the following is the latest pronouncement on the subject from a well-known american geologist:-- "students of the ice age will read with interest a paper by mr. n. s. shaler on the antiquity of the last glacial period, submitted to the boston society of natural history, and printed in the latest instalment of the society's proceedings. mr. shaler differs decidedly from those geologists who suppose that the end of the glacial period is probably not very remote from our own day. one of the strongest of his arguments is derived from the distribution of the vegetation, which in america has regained possession, by migration, of the glaciated district. we must conceive, he points out, that as the ice retreated and gradually disappeared from the surface, a considerable time elapsed before existing forests attained their organization. he assumes as certain that the black walnut and the pignut hickory, between western minnesota and the atlantic coast, have advanced, on the average, a distance of miles north of the ancient ice front to which their ancestors were driven by the presence of the glacial sheet. for several reasons he believes that the northward progress of these forms must have been due mainly, not to the action of streams or tornadoes, but to the natural spread of the seed from the extremities of boughs, and to the carriage of the seed by rodents. but allowing for every conceivable method of transportation, he argues that a period of ten or even twenty thousand years is wholly inadequate to account for the present distribution of these large-seeded trees. if they occurred only sporadically in the northernmost part of the field they occupy, their implantation might be regarded as due to chance action. the fact, however, that they extend from the atlantic to minnesota indicates that the advance was accomplished by causes of a general and continuous nature." we have now to adjust our time-telescope to a wider range, and see what the quaternary or glacial period teaches us as to the antiquity of man. the first remark is, that if the post-glacial period is much longer than that for which we have historical records, the glacial exceeds the post-glacial in a far higher proportion. the second, that throughout the whole of this glacial period, from its commencement to its close, we have conclusive evidence of the existence of man, and that not only in a few limited localities, but widely spread over nearly all the habitable regions of the earth. the first point has been so conclusively established by all geologists of all countries, from the time of lyell down to the present day, that it is unnecessary to enter on any detailed arguments, and the leading facts may be taken as established. it may be sufficient, therefore, if i give a short summary of those facts, and quote a few of the instances which show the enormous lapse of time which must have elapsed between the close of the tertiary and the commencement of the modern epoch. the glacial period was not one and simple, but comprised several phases. during the pliocene the climate was gradually becoming colder, and either towards its close or at the commencement of the quaternary, this culminated in a first and most intense glaciation. ice-caps radiating from scandinavia crept outwards, filling up the north sea, crossing valleys and mountains, and covering with their boulders and moraines a wide circle, embracing britain down to the thames valley, germany to the hartz mountains, and russia almost as far east as the urals. in north america a still more massive ice-cap overflowed mountain ranges feet high, and covered the whole eastern half of the continent with an unbroken mantle of ice as far south as new york and washington. at the same time every great mountain chain and high plateau sent out enormous glaciers, which, in the case of the alps, filled up the valley of the rhone and the lake of geneva, buried the whole of the lower country of switzerland under feet of ice, and left the boulders of its terminal moraine, carried from the mont blanc range, at that height on the opposite range of the jura. nor is this a solitary instance. we find everywhere traces of enormous glaciers in the pyrenees and carpathians, the atlas and lebanon, the taurus and caucasus, the highlands of scotland, ireland, and wales; in the rocky mountains and sierra nevada; the andes and cordilleras of south america; in south africa and in new zealand. these may not have all been simultaneous, but they certainly all belong to the same period of the great glaciation, and show that it must have been affected by some general cause, and not been entirely due to mere local accidents. how this first great glacial period came on, or how long it lasted, we do not know, unless croll's astronomical theory, which will be considered later, affords a clue. but we know generally that it must have lasted for an immense time from the amount of work done and the changes which took place. the ice, which covered so great a portion of the northern hemisphere, was not a polar ice-cap, but spread outwards in all directions from great masses of elevated land, as is proved conclusively from the direction of the striæ which were engraved by it on the subjacent rocks. this land must have been more elevated than at present, so as to rise, like greenland, far into the region of perpetual snow, where all rain falls and accumulates in the solid form; and also to supply the enormous mass of _débris_ which the ice-caps and glaciers left behind them. it is not too much to say that a million of square miles in europe, and more in north america, were covered by the _débris_ of rocks ground down by these glaciers, and often to great depths. most of the _débris_ of the first glaciation have been removed by denudation, or ploughed out by the second great advance of the ice, leaving only the larger and harder boulders to testify to their extent; but enough remains to show that the first series of boulder-clays and drifts must have been on a scale larger than those of the second and subsequent glaciations, which now form the superficial stratum of so much of the earth's surface, and often attain a depth of several hundred feet. wright, in his _ice age in north america_, estimates that "not less than , , square miles of territory in north america is still covered with an average depth of fifty feet of glacial _débris_." however, this first period of elevation and of intense glaciation passed away, and was succeeded by one of depression and of milder climate. whether or no the depression was due, as some think, to the weight of the enormous mass of ice weighing down the yielding crust of the earth, and whether or no the milder climate was partly occasioned by this depression letting in the sea, the fact is certain that the two coincided, and were general and not merely local phenomena. marine shells at the top of what are now high hills, and which during the preceding glaciation were probably higher, attest the fact that a large amount of land must have sunk below the sea towards the close of this first glacial period. it is equally clear that a long inter-glacial period ensued, during which many changes took place in the geographical conditions and in the fauna and flora, requiring a very long time. thus britain, which had been reduced to an arctic archipelago, in which only a few of the highest mountain peaks emerged as frozen islands, became united to the continent, and the abode of a fauna consisting in great part of african animals. at one time boreal shells were deposited, at the bottom of an arctic ocean, on what is now the top of moel-tryfen in wales, a hill feet above the present sea-level; while at another the hippopotamus found its way, in some great river flowing from the south, as far north as yorkshire, and the remains of african animals such as the hyena accumulated in our caves. in southern france we had at one time a vegetation of the arctic willow and reindeer moss, at another that of the fig-tree and canary-laurel. when we consider that little if any change has occurred either in geographical conditions or in fauna or flora, within the historical period of some , years, it is difficult to assign the time which would be sufficient to bring about such changes by any known natural causes. and yet it comprises only a portion of the glacial period, for after this inter-glacial period had lasted for an indefinite time the climate again became cold, and culminated in a second glaciation, which, if not equal to the first, was still of extreme severity, and brought back ice-caps and glaciers almost to their former limits, passing away slowly and with several vicissitudes and alternate retreats and advances. it is not always easy to determine the position of each individual phase of the two glacial and the inter-glacial periods, for they must often be intermixed, and the results of the last glaciation and of subsequent denudation have to a great extent obscured those of the earlier periods. but taking a general view of the glacial period as a whole, there are a few leading facts which testify conclusively to its immense antiquity. first, there is the amount of elevation and depression. we have seen that marine arctic shells have been found on the top of moel-tryfen, feet above the present sea-level. nor is this an isolated instance, for marine drifts apparently of the same character have been traced on the mountains of scotland, wales, and ireland to a height of between and feet. in norway, also, old sea beaches are found up to a height of feet. nor are these great movements confined to the old world or to limited localities. according to professor le conte, at the last meeting of the geological congress at washington, a great continental movement, commencing in the later tertiary and terminating in the beginning of the quaternary, caused changes of level amounting to or feet on both sides of the continent of north america. now elevation and depression of large masses of land are, as far as we know anything certain about them, very slow processes, especially in countries unaffected by recent volcanic action, which is the case with nearly all the regions in north america and europe which were covered by the great ice-sheets. there has been little or no perceptible change anywhere since the commencement of history, and the only accurate measurements of changes now going on are those made in sweden, where it appears that in some cases elevation, and in others depression, is taking place at the rate of about two and a half feet in a century. in volcanic regions earthquakes have occasionally caused movements of greater amount in limited areas, but there is no trace of anything of the sort in these movements of the glacial period which have apparently gone on by slight secular changes in the earth's crust as they are now doing in scandinavia. but in this case a depression of feet, followed by an elevation of equal amount, at lyell's rate of two and a half feet per century, would require , years, without allowing for any pauses during the process. and this only embraces part of the whole glacial period, for the depression did not begin until after the climax of the first great glaciation, when the land probably stood higher than at present. of course the actual movements may have been more rapid, but unless we resort to the exploded theories of cataclysms and catastrophes, the time for such movements must have been very great. an equally conclusive proof of the immense antiquity of the glacial period is afforded by the formation known as the loess, which fills up so many of the valley systems of europe, asia, and america to great depths, and spreads over the adjacent table-lands. it is a tranquil land deposit of fine glacial mud, from sheets of water which inundated the country when great rivers from glaciated districts ran at higher levels, and began to excavate their present valleys. lyell estimates the thickness of this deposit in the rhine valley at feet, and it is found at much higher levels on upland plains. now this loess is not a marine or lacustrine deposit, as is proved by the shells it contains, which are all of land species; nor is it a deposit of running water, for there are no sands or gravels, but distinctly such a deposit from tranquil sheets of muddy water as is now accumulated in egypt by the inundations of the nile. when the rhine brought down such volumes of muddy water from the glaciers of the alps as to overflow the upland plains, it must have flowed at a level many hundred feet higher than its present valley, which must have been since scooped out by sub-aërial denudation. the rate of deposition of the nile mud is about three inches per century, and there seems no reason why that of the fine glacial mud should have been more rapid, charged as the nile is every year with mud from the torrential rains of the abyssinian highlands. at this rate it would have required , years to accumulate the feet of loess of the rhine valley. here again the rate may have been faster, but it is sufficient to show that an immense time must have elapsed, and the loess is a distinctly glacial deposit, containing palæolithic human remains and a pleistocene fauna, and embracing only a portion of the quaternary period. nor is it an isolated phenomenon confined to europe, but is found over the whole world wherever rivers have flowed from regions which were formerly buried under ice and snow. it is found in great force in the valleys of the yang-tse-kang and the mississippi, and sir charles lyell, referring to the fossil human bone found in it at natchez, says--"my reluctance in to regard the fossil human bone as of post-pliocene date arose, in part, from the reflection that the ancient loess of natchez is anterior in time to the whole modern delta of the mississippi. the table-land was, i believe, once a part of the original alluvial plain or delta of the great river before it was upraised. it has now risen more than feet above its pristine level. after the upheaval, or during it, the mississippi cut through the whole fluviatile formation, of which its bluffs are now formed, just as the rhine has in many parts of its valley excavated a passage through its ancient loess. if i was right in calculating that the present delta of the mississippi has acquired, as a minimum of time, more than , years for its growth, it would follow, if the claims of the natchez man to have coexisted with the mastodon are admitted, that north america was peopled more than a thousand centuries ago by the human race. but, even were that true, we could not presume, reasoning from ascertained geological data, the natchez bone was anterior in date to the antique flint _haches_ of st. acheul." human remains have since been found in the united states, both in the loess and in drifts, which are presumably older; but even if this were doubtful, the evidence would remain the same for the immense time required for such a deposit, and there is abundant proof in europe, that human implements, and even skulls and skeletons, have been found at considerable depths in the loess, along with remains of the mammoth and other extinct animals. it must be remembered also, that the loess is only one part of the work due to glacial erosion. it is, in fact, only the deposit of the fine mud ground from the rocks by glaciers, and carried down further by rivers issuing from them than the coarser _débris_, which, as we have seen, cover , , square miles to an average depth of fifty feet in north america alone. the volumes, therefore, of the loess and of the _débris_ correspond, and tell the same story of enormous erosion requiring immense periods of time. even in comparatively recent times striking proofs of immense antiquity are afforded by the amounts of denudation and erosion which have taken place since the ice disappeared and the lands and seas assumed substantially their present contours and levels. i will give one instance which, although comparatively modern, will come home readily to most british readers. dr. evans in his _ancient stone implements_, referring to those found at bournemouth feet above the present sea-level in the gravels of the old solent river, which then ran at that height, says-- "who, standing on the edge of the lofty cliff at bournemouth, and gazing over the wide expanse of waters between the present shore and a line connecting the needles on the one hand and the ballard-down foreland on the other, can fully comprehend how immensely remote was the epoch when what is now that vast bay was high and dry land, and a long range of chalk downs, feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on the south? and yet this must have been the sight that met the eyes of those primæval men who frequented that ancient river, which buried their handiworks in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and of the course of which so strange but indubitable a memorial subsists, in what has now become the solent sea." and the same may be said of the still wider strait which separates england from france. no geologist could look either at the needles and ballard foreland, or at shakespeare's cliff and cape grisnez, without a conviction that the chalk ridge was once continuous, and has been worn away, inch by inch, by the very same process as is now going on. nor can the action of ice or river floods be evoked to accelerate the process, for evidently it has throughout been a case of marine erosion. the only question is whether this dates back even into the later phases of the glacial period, for the opposite cliffs show no sign of having been either depressed beneath the sea or elevated above it, but rather appear to have stood at their present level since the erosion began. in any case it can only have occupied a comparatively short and recent phase of the glacial period, for there is abundant evidence that the british islands have been connected with the continent in comparatively recent times. great, however, as is the antiquity shown by these comparatively modern instances, they sink into insignificance compared with that shown by a recent discovery, which i quote the more readily because it rests on the high authority of professor prestwich, who has been foremost among modern geologists in reducing the time required for the glacial period and for the existence of man. this is afforded by the upland gravels in kent and surrey, which are scattered over wide areas of the chalk downs and green-sand, at elevations far above existing valleys and watersheds, and which could only have been deposited before the present rivers began to run, and when the configuration of the country was altogether different. quite recently mr. harrison, a shopkeeper at ightham in kent, who is an ardent field-geologist, discovered palæolithic implements, in considerable numbers and in various localities, up to an elevation of feet above the sea level, in these gravels of the great southern drift. these discoveries, which have since been repeated by other observers, led professor prestwich to institute an exhaustive inquiry as to these upland drifts; and the startling conclusion he arrives at is, that the oldest of them, or great southern drift, in which the implements are found, could only have come from a mountain range to feet high, which formerly ran from east to west in the line of the anticlinal axis which runs down the centre of the present weald of kent, between the north and south chalk-downs, and which has been since worn down to the present low forest-ridge by sub-aërial denudation. the reasoning by which this inference is supported seems irresistible. the drift could not have been deposited by the present rivers or with the present configuration of the country, for it is found at levels or feet higher than the highest watersheds between the existing valleys. it consists not only of chalk flints, but to a great extent of cherts and sandstones, such as are found at present in the forest-ridge of the wealden and nowhere else. it must have been brought by water, for the gravels are to a considerable extent rounded and water-worn. this water must have run down-hill and with considerable velocity during floods, from the size of the rolled stones, and it must have come from the south, because the cherts and grits are only found there, and because the levels at which the gravels are found rise in that direction. by following these levels as far as the present surface extends, which is to the southern edge of the green-sand, it is easy to plot out what must have been the continuation of this rising gradient to the south, and what the elevation of the southern range in which these northward-flowing streams took their origin. prestwich has gone into the question in full detail, and his conclusion is, that the height of this wealden ridge must have been at least feet, or in other words, that about feet must have disappeared by denudation. this is the more conclusive as prestwich is the highest authority, and he approached the subject with a bias for shortening rather than lengthening the periods commonly assigned for the glacial epoch and the antiquity of man. the present average rate of denudation of continents has been approximately measured by calculating the amount of solid matter brought down by rivers. it varies a good deal according to the nature of the area drained, but the average is about one foot in years. at this rate the time required for the removal of feet of the wealden ridge would be no less than , , years; but of course this would be no fair test, as denudation would be vastly more rapid than the present average rate, on hilly ranges and under glacial conditions of climate. it is enough to say that the time required must have been extremely great, and quite ample to fit in with the most extended time required by croll's theory of the varying eccentricity of the earth's orbit. it is to be noted also, that prestwich pronounces part of this high level or southern drift to be older than the westleton pebble drift which forms part of the upper pliocene series in suffolk and norfolk, and which the professor has traced over many of our southern counties. if this conclusion is correct, it solves the problem of tertiary man by showing numerous palæolithic implements in a stage older than an undoubted pliocene bed. the implements found in these high-level southern drifts are all of a very rude type, and the discovery is confirmed by similar implements having been found at corresponding elevations on the chalk downs of hertfordshire and on the south downs.[ ] [ ] in a recent paper read to the anthropological society by professor prestwich, in feb. , he confirms the above statement, and says that specimens have now been found at heights of from to feet, and extending over an area of twenty miles in length; while similar implements have been found on the south downs near eastbourne feet above the sea level; and at heights of and feet on the hills near dunstable. he says, "looking at the very distinctive features of those plateau implements, such as their rudeness of make, choice of material, depth of wear and staining, peculiarity of form--taken in conjunction with the extreme rarity of valley forms--they constitute characters so essentially different from those of the latter implements, that by these characters alone they might be attributed to a more primitive race of men; and as this view accords with the geological evidence, which shows that the drift-beds on the chalk plateau with implements are older than the valley drifts, i do not see how we are to avoid the conclusion, that not only was the plateau race not contemporary with the valley men, but also that the former belonged to a period considerably anterior to the latter--either an early glacial or a pre-glacial period." i will mention only one other instance, which shows that the new world confirms the conclusion as to the antiquity of the quaternary age. the auriferous gravels of california consist of an enormous mass of _débris_ washed down by pre-glacial or early glacial rivers from the western slopes of the great coast range. during their deposition they became interstratified with lavas and tuffs from eruptions of volcanoes long since extinct, and finally covered by an immense flow of basalts, which formed a gently inclined plane from the sierra nevada to the pacific. this plane was attacked by the denudations of the existing river-courses, and cut down into a series of flat-topped hills, divided by steep cañons and by the valleys of the present great rivers. in one case, that of the colombia river, this denudation has been carried down to a depth of over feet, and the river flows between precipitous cliffs of this height. the present gold-mining is carried on mainly by shafts and tunnels driven through superficial gravels and sheets of basalts and tuffs, to the gravels of the pre-glacial rivers, which are brought down in great masses by hydraulic jets. in a great number of these cases stone implements of undoubted human origin have been found at great depths under several successive sheets of basalts, tuffs, and gravels. mr. skertchly, an eminent english geologist, who recently visited the district, says of these gravels, "whatever may be their absolute age from a geological standpoint, their immense antiquity historically is beyond question. the present great river system of the sacramento, joaquin, and other rivers has been established; cañons feet deep have been carried through lava, gravels, and into the bed rock; and the gravels, once the bed of large rivers, now cap hills feet high. there is ample ground for the belief that these gravels are of pliocene age, but the presence of objects of human formation invests them with a higher interest to the anthropologist than even to the geologist." i will return to this subject more fully in a later chapter, when dealing with the question of the human remains found in these californian gravels. those who wish to pursue the subject further will find abundant evidence in the works of lyell, geikie, evans, boyd dawkins, and other modern geologists, and a popular summary of it in my _modern science and modern thought_. it is sufficient for my present purpose to have shown that even taking the quaternary period alone, geology shows that there is an abundant balance in the bank of time to meet any demands that may be made upon it by any of the kindred sciences. but it is to those we must look for any chance of even an approximate measurement in years or centuries, for geology and palæontology only show immense periods, but give no certain information as to definite durations. the clue, if any, must be sought in croll's astronomical theory of the glacial period, which i now proceed to consider. chapter ix. the glacial period and croll's theory. causes of glacial periods--actual conditions of existing glacial regions--high land in high latitudes--cold alone insufficient--large evaporation required--formation of glaciers--they flow like rivers--icebergs--greenland and antarctic circle--geographical and cosmic causes--cooling of earth and sun, cold spaces in space, and change in earth's axis, reviewed and rejected--precession alone insufficient--unless with high eccentricity--geographical causes, elevation of land--aerial and oceanic currents--gulf stream and trade winds--evidence for greater elevation of land in america, europe, and asia--depression--warmer tertiary climates--alps and himalayas--wallace's _island life_--lyell--croll's theory--sir r. ball--former glacial periods--correspondence with croll's theory--length of the different phases--summary--croll's theory a secondary cause--conclusions as to man's antiquity. i turn from the effects to the causes of that great glacial period which has been described in the last chapter. this line of investigation is peculiarly interesting in the search after human origins, for it affords the only chance of reducing the vague periods of immense duration shown by geology, to something like a definite chronology of years and centuries. if astronomical causes, the dates of which admit of mathematical calculation, can be shown to have been, if not the sole or principal, yet one of the causes which must have influenced the phenomena of the glacial epoch, we may assume these dates for the occurrence of the human remains which accompany these phenomena. otherwise we must fall back on immense antiquity, which may mean anything from , or , , to , or , , years, since the first authentic evidence for palæolithic man. the first step towards an investigation of the cause of glacial periods, is to consider what are the conditions of the actual ones which are now prevailing. we have one such period in greenland, another in the antarctic region, a third in high mountain chains like those of alaska, and of the swiss and new zealand alps. in all these cases we find certain common conditions. high land in high latitudes, rising in great masses above the snow-line or temperature which condenses water in the solid form; and winds which are charged with great quantities of watery vapour raised by evaporation, to be so condensed. cold alone is insufficient to produce glaciers and ice-caps, as may be seen by the example of the coldest regions in the world, siberia and the tundras of northern asia and of north america, where the earth is permanently frozen to a depth of many feet; but there are no glaciers, the reason obviously is, that there is no sufficient supply of moist air from warm oceans to furnish more snow in winter than is melted in summer. heat is in a certain sense as necessary as cold to account for glacial periods, for snow and ice can no more than other things be made out of nothing, and every snowflake implies an equal amount of aqueous vapour raised somewhere else by evaporation. but if an abundant supply of liquid or gaseous water is combined with cold sufficient to condense it into the solid form, it becomes fixed, and if the summer heat is insufficient to melt the excess of snow, it necessarily accumulates. the growth of glaciers, follows as an inevitable consequence. the snow is converted into ice by pressure and by alternate freezing and melting, and this grows year by year, until an equilibrium is established by the ice pushing down glaciers into lower levels, where the melting is more rapid, or into the sea, where the front is floated off in icebergs, and drifts into lower latitudes. the process is the same as that by which the rainfall on high levels is drained off by rivers into the sea, so that an equilibrium is established between waste and supply. and it is to be remarked that the glacier, though composed of solid ice, behaves exactly like a river, or rather like a river of some viscous fluid like pitch or treacle. its size depends on the magnitude of the reservoir or area drained by it; it conforms to the configuration of the valley by which it descends and the obstacles which it encounters; it flows rapidly, and with a broken current, through narrow gorges and down steep inclines; slowly and tranquilly over wide and level areas; its velocity is greatest at the surface and in the middle where friction is least, slowest at the bottom and sides where it is greatest. in short a glacier is simply a solid and slowly-flowing river, discharging an excess of solid ice to the lower level from which it came, just as a liquid river does with the rainfall of warmer regions. the cause of this tendency of solid and brittle ice to flow like a viscous fluid is not quite understood, though recent researches, especially those of tyndall, have thrown a good deal of light upon it; but all glacialists are agreed on the _fact_ that it does so, and we can argue from it with great confidence as to the conditions under which glaciation has acted in the past and is now acting. thus even if namsen had never crossed greenland, or ross had never discovered mounts erebus and terror, we might have inferred with certainty the existence of enormous ice-caps, implying continental masses of elevated land, in both the arctic and antarctic circles, from the number and size of the icebergs floated off into the northern atlantic and southern pacific oceans. icebergs are frequently met with in the latter down to ° south latitude, or even lower, of a mile in length and feet high above the sea; and in some instances icebergs three miles long and feet high have been recorded. as upwards of eight feet of ice must be under water for every foot that floats above it, some of these icebergs must be considerably over a mile in thickness, which implies that there must be land ice towards the south pole so thick that it is, in places, over feet in thickness at its outer margin. it has been estimated from the great size and abundance of these icebergs, that in the interior of the great antarctic continent the ice may be twenty miles or more thick, and in greenland the great interior ice-cap rises in a dome to at least or , feet above the sea-level, a great part of which is solid ice, while during the great glacial period it was certainly very much thicker. as a first step therefore towards a solution of the problem of the glacial period we may start with the axiom that it requires abundant evaporation, combined with a temperature low enough to precipitate an excess of that evaporation in the solid form. this does not necessarily imply any great and permanent refrigeration of the whole earth, for although this would give the cold it would not give the evaporation, and would tend rather to extend the conditions of siberia than those of greenland. longer and colder winters with shorter and hotter summers would seem more adapted to the growth of glaciers. but for a more exact investigation our next step must be to inquire what are the causes which may have produced these postulates of a glacial period, lower temperature with larger evaporation. they may be classed under two heads. st. geographical causes, arising from latitude, aërial and oceanic currents, and a different distribution of sea and land. nd. cosmic causes, such as variations of solar and terrestrial heat, passage through colder regions of space, the position of the poles, precession, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. all these have had supporters in their time, but the result of the latest science has been to leave only two seriously in the field--lyell's theory of a different distribution and elevation of sea and land, carrying with it changes in aërial and oceanic currents; and croll's theory of the effects of precession combined with high eccentricity of the earth's orbit. thus, of the geographical causes, latitude is no doubt an important factor in determining temperature, but it cannot of itself be the cause of the glacial periods, for it has remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of heat and cold in geological times. the latitude of greenland and spitzbergen is presumably the same now as it was in the miocene period, when they were the seat of a luxuriant temperate vegetation; and at the present day we have only to follow the isothermal lines to see to what a great extent climate in the same latitudes is modified by other influences, such as the gulf stream. of cosmic causes, the progressive cooling of the earth naturally presents itself, at the first blush, as sufficient to account for the glacial period. but although this has doubtless been an all-important factor in pregeological times, in fashioning our planet from glowing vapour into a habitable earth, it is no longer operative as an immediate cause of vicissitudes of temperature. it is enough to say that if it were, the cooling ought to be progressive, and having once got into a glacial period we never ought to have got out of it. but we clearly have recovered from the paroxysms of cold, both of the first and second great glaciations of the recent period; and according to most geologists, from the immensely earlier ones of the permian and carboniferous, and perhaps of the cambrian ages. as far as it acts at all on surface temperature, the secular cooling of the earth only acts indirectly by causing elevations and depressions of the outer crust, and crumpling it into wrinkles, which originate mountain chains, as the nucleus contracts, and thus affecting geographical conditions. the same objection applies with equal force to the theory that the glacial period was caused by the sun giving out less heat owing to its cooling by radiation. here also it is obvious that if a glacial period were once established from such a cause it ought never to recover, but progress from bad to worse. we ought also, in this case, to have had a uniform progressive refrigeration from the beginning of geological time down to the present day, which has certainly not been the case. on the contrary, geologists are generally agreed that there are unmistakable traces of at least two glacial periods in the carboniferous and permian ages, and the earliest eocene was certainly cooler than its later stages, as shown by their flora. the conjecture that the sun is a variable star is also negatived by the consideration that in this case there ought to have been periodical variations in the earth's temperature, and hot and cold climates recurring at regular intervals throughout geological time, which has certainly not been the case. again, the passage of the solar system through cold regions of space has been suggested, but it is a mere conjecture, unsupported by a particle of evidence, and opposed to all we know of the laws of heat, and of the constitution of the universe. it is hard to conceive how hot regions can exist surrounded by cold ones, or _vice versâ_, without walls of a non-conducting medium to separate them, or that the faint heat from the fixed stars can ever have perceptibly affected the temperature of space. and such a theory, if it were possible, would fail to account for the frequent vicissitudes of hot and cold at short intervals within the glacial period, and for the great differences of temperature prevailing in the same latitudes. an alteration in the position, of the poles has also been suggested, but this also is clearly inadmissible. there is no evidence that the present position has ever materially varied, and there is no known law that could cause such a variation. on the contrary, all the elaborate mathematical calculations by which the motions of the sun, moon, and planets are deduced from newton's law of gravity, tend to negative such a supposition. and what is perhaps even more convincing to a nonmathematical mind, the position of the poles implies the position of the equator, and cannot change without a corresponding change in the earth's shape. now the earth is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, of almost the exact shape which a fluid mass would take revolving about the present axis. the centrifugal force arising from the greater velocity of rotation in going from the poles to the equator would pile up a protuberant belt where the velocity was greatest, and in point of fact the earth's equatorial diameter is longer than the polar diameter by about twenty-eight miles. any displacement therefore of the poles, which carried them away from their present position, must displace the present equator to a corresponding extent. this mass of twenty-eight miles in thickness of earth and ocean must be thrown out of the old position, and driven to establish a new equilibrium in a position many degrees north or south of it in order to affect climates materially, submerging all existing lands, and leaving, until removed by denudation, miles upon miles of solid earth in unsymmetrical belts, like the moraines of retreating glaciers, as the equator shifted into new positions. and all this must have occurred, not once, but twice at least, and that with many minor vicissitudes, within the narrow limit of the quaternary period. it is unnecessary to say that nothing of the sort could by any possibility have occurred. some evidence has recently been adduced that some very slight changes in latitude are going on at the observatories of dorpat and greenwich, but if confirmed these can only be of very minute amount, arising from slight changes in the position of the earth's centre of gravity owing to partial elevations and depressions, and could never have been sufficient to account for great variations of climate.[ ] [ ] the latest researches seem to show that these slight variations in latitude do not exceed " or ", and are periodical, with a period of no longer than to days. neither could the precession of the equinoxes have been of itself a principal cause, for here also the limit of time negatives the supposition. this precessional circle carries the perihelion and aphelion, and with it the seasons, completely round, and brings them back to the old position, in about , years, and therefore if glacial periods were occasioned by them, there ought to be alternations from _maximum_ of cold to _maximum_ of warmth in each hemisphere every , years. but this has certainly not been the case even in recent times, and still less if we go back to the quaternary, tertiary, and earlier geological periods. in fact it is only when combined with periods of high eccentricity of the earth's orbit, according to croll's theory, that precession can pretend to have any claim to be an important factor in the production of glacial periods. and even then the question is not of its being the sole or principal cause, but only whether it has had such a perceptible auxiliary effect on other more powerful causes, as may enable us to use it as a chronometer in assigning approximate dates for some of the more important phenomena of the long and varied period between the close of the tertiary and the establishment of the recent period. as man certainly existed throughout the whole of this period, the possibility of finding such a chronometer becomes intensely interesting, and i proceed to discuss the latest state of scientific opinion respecting it. but as croll's theory if a real is clearly only an auxiliary cause, i will, in the first instance, point out what are the certain and admitted causes which account for variations of temperature irrespective of latitude. they may be summed up, in lyell's words, as different combinations of sea and land, for on these depend the secondary conditions which affect temperature. thus elevation of land is as certain a cause of cold as high latitude, and even kilimanjaro, under the equator, retains patches of unmelted snow throughout the year. it is estimated that a rise of feet in height is about equivalent to a fall of ° f. in mean annual temperature, and that the line of perpetual snow is, on the average, a little higher than the line where this mean annual temperature is at ° f., or freezing-point. if there is any mass of land so high as to be below this temperature, snow accumulates and forms glaciers, which descend some feet below the snow-line before the excess of ice pushing down is melted off by the summer heat unless it has been previously floated off in icebergs at a higher level. now the mean temperature of the north of scotland at sea-level is about ° f., so that an elevation of or , feet would bring a great part of it well above the snow-line, and vast glaciers would inevitably accumulate, which would push down through the principal valleys almost to the sea-level; a state of things which actually exists in new zealand, where glaciers from the southern alps at about this elevation descend, in some instances to within feet of the sea-level, in the latitude of devonshire. but a still more important factor of temperature is found in aërial and oceanic currents, which again, to a great extent, are a product of the configuration of sea and land. the most familiar instance is that of the gulf stream, which raises the temperature of western europe some °, and in norway as much as ° f., above that due to latitude, and which prevails on the other side of the atlantic. the northern extremity of the british islands in shetland is on the same parallel of latitude as the southern extremity of greenland, cape farewell. one is buried under perpetual ice, in the other there is so little frost in winter that skating is an unknown art. what is the reason of this? we must go to the tropics to find it. a vast mass of vapour is raised by the sun's heat from the oceans near the equator, which being lighter rises and overflows, the trade winds rushing in from the north to supply its place, and being deflected to the west by the earth's rotation. this prevalence of easterly surface winds sweeps the waters of the atlantic to the west, where they are intercepted by south america, turned northwards into the gulf of mexico, where they circle round under a tropical sun and become greatly heated, and finally run out through the straits of florida with a rapid current, and spread a surface return current eastwards over the northern atlantic. the shores of north-west europe are thus in the position of a house warmed by hot-water pipes, while their neighbours over the way in north-eastern america have no such apparatus. this oceanic circuit of warm water has a counterpart in the aërial circuit of heated air. the vapour which rose in the tropics overflows, and as it cools and gets beyond the region of the trade winds, descends mainly over the northern atlantic, carrying with it its greater velocity of rotation, and so causing westerly winds, which reach our shores after blowing over a wide expanse of ocean heated by the gulf stream, thus bringing us warmth and wet, while the corresponding counter-currents which blow over continental europe and asia from the north-east bring cold and drought. the extreme effects of this may be seen by comparing the black sea at odessa, where ice often stops navigation, with the north sea at the lafoden islands, where the cod-fishing is carried on in open boats in the middle of winter. we in england are in the happy position where on the whole the mild and genial west winds prevail, though not exclusively, so as to give us the drenching rains of western ireland and scotland, or to prevent spells of a continental climate which give us bracing frosts in winter, and alternations of cold and heat in summer. if we turn from these temperate regions to those in which exactly opposite conditions prevail, we find them still in the icy chains of a glacial period. greenland, for instance, which is a typical case, shows us what happens when a continental mass of land stands at a high elevation in high latitudes with no gulf stream, but instead of it cold currents from a polar ocean, and seas around it frozen or covered with icebergs for nine months out of the year. we have a dome of solid ice piled up to the height of feet or upwards, and sending millions upon millions of tons of glaciers down to the sea to be floated off as icebergs. the only trace we can see here of the old great glacial period is that these conditions were formerly more intense. thus the glaciation of some of the mountain sides and islands off the coast of greenland seem to show that the ice formerly stood or feet higher than at present, a result which would be attained if the whole continental mass, which is now slowly subsiding, had then been elevated to that extent. the southern hemisphere affords a still more striking example of this on a larger scale, for we have there, in all probability, higher land in higher latitudes, surrounded by frozen seas, and washed by cold currents. i pass from this however, as beyond these general facts the special conditions of the antarctic circle are not known to us like those of greenland. from the above facts we are very safe in drawing the conclusion that during the great quaternary glacial period the conditions which now cause glaciation must have existed in an aggravated degree, and those which now give us temperate climates in regions once glaciated must have disappeared or been reversed. on the other hand, the warm climates which prevailed during the tertiary and other geological epochs, and permitted a temperate flora to flourish as far north as grinnell land and spitzbergen, could only have occurred under conditions exactly the reverse of those which produced the cold. if high land in high latitudes is the principal cause of the present glaciation of greenland, still higher land must have been so in causing the still greater glaciation of the former period. scandinavia, laurentia, the british islands, the alps, apennines, rocky mountains, sierra nevada, and all great mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere must have stood at greater elevations. there must have been such an accumulation of ice and snow as to chill the air, cause fogs, and prevent the summer heat of the sun from melting off the water which fell in the solid form during winter; and on the other hand, there must have been hot summers and great expanses of ocean to the south to supply the abundant evaporation which became condensed by contact with the chilly mountains and uplands of the north. one supposition is that the isthmus of panama was then submerged, so that the gulf stream ran into the pacific. but this wants geological confirmation, as the isthmus shows no sign of such recent marine formations as must have been deposited if it had been submerged to a sufficient depth to let the gulf stream escape, and the extension of the ice-cap in north america to much lower latitudes than in europe, points rather to the conclusion that the gulf stream must have run very much in its present course. the only geological evidence bearing on this question is the recent discovery of deep oceanic deposits such as the globigerena ooze, above tertiary deposits in barbadoes and jamaica, leading to the inference that the whole west indian area was a deep sea in comparatively modern times. this no doubt might affect both the temperature and the velocity of the gulf stream to a considerable extent. but the geological evidence is much more conclusive for the greater elevation of the land during the periods of greater glaciation as well as for its depression during the inter-glacial period. american geologists estimate that a large part of eastern canada with adjacent regions must have been at least , and may have been as much as feet above its present level during the first great glaciation; while the champlain marine beds show that it was some hundreds of feet below the present, sea-level during part of the inter-glacial period. scandinavia stood at least feet higher than at present during the climax of the glacial period as proved by the depths of the fiords, and afterwards or lower as proved by the raised beaches. in great britain and ireland we have conclusive evidence both of higher elevation, and of depression of at least feet, and probably more than feet below the present sea-level, as proved by the marine shells on the top of moel-tryfen. but these elevations and depressions are small in amount compared with the mountain building which is known to have occurred in asia in comparatively recent geological times. here the himalayas, stretching for miles from east to west, and rising to heights of from , to , feet above the sea, have been formed in great part during this period. within the same period the great table-lands of thibet and central asia have been uplifted, and the asian mediterranean sea, of which the black sea, the caspian, the salt deserts and lake balkash are the remnants, has been converted into dry land. movements of this magnitude, of which there are many other examples, may well account for great changes in isothermal lines and climates. the complete removal of the conditions which produced the glacial period might go far to account for the preceding tertiary period. we have only to suppose a different configuration of sea and land; nothing but low lands and islands in high latitudes; free access for warm oceanic currents like the gulf stream into the limited area of the polar basin; no great continents or lofty mountain ranges to drain the return trade winds of their moisture; in short, all the conditions of a mild and moist insular climate, as opposed to those of a continental one, to understand how forests of temperate trees might flourish as far north as greenland and spitzbergen. and the geological evidence which, as we have seen, shows that great elevation of land in the northern hemisphere did in fact inaugurate the glacial period, favours the conclusion that the reverse conditions actually prevailed during the tertiary and preceding epochs. the presence of the nummulitic and other marine eocene and miocene formations over such extensive areas, and at such great elevations, is a conclusive proof that a great part of our existing continents were then at the bottom of deep oceans. the alps were certainly , feet lower than their present level, and the himalayas more so; and when this was the case a great part of europe and asia must have been sea, in which only a few of the highest peaks and elevated plateaux stood up as islands. the pacific and indian oceans as well as the atlantic might then have poured their gulf streams into the polar basin, and prevalent southerly and westerly winds, blowing over wide expanses of water, have deposited their vapour in genial showers instead of in solid snow. the effect of such geographical conditions in producing both heat and cold is admirably worked out by wallace in his _island life_, and few who read it can doubt that lyell was right in saying that they have been the principal causes of the vicissitudes of climate. and here i may say a word to express my admiration of the innate sagacity with which lyell, many years ago, and with comparatively few facts to work upon, sketched out the leading lines of geology, which have been confirmed by subsequent research. details may have been corrected or added, but his main theories have stood the fullest test of the survival of the fittest. his law of the uniformity of natural causes, continued for long intervals of time, holds the field unchallenged. these causes may have operated a little more quickly or slowly in former ages than at present, but they have been of the same order. the waste of continents, instead, of averaging one foot in years, may have averaged ten or twenty feet during certain periods, and certain portions of the earth's crust may have been elevated or depressed at a quicker rate than is now going on in scandinavia; but no one any longer believes in paroxysms throwing up mountain chains or sinking continents below the ocean at a single blow. in like manner later geologists have corrected details in the distribution of land and sea suggested by lyell to account for the glacial period, but his main law has only received confirmation--viz. that this distribution, and especially high land in high latitudes, has been the principal cause of such periods. at the same time there is a pretty general consensus of the best and latest geologists, that, as lyell himself suggested, elevation and depression and other geographical changes, though the principal, are not the sole causes of the glacial period. the main argument is, that the phases of this period, though not exactly simultaneous over the whole world, are too nearly so to be due to mere local movements, and require the intervention of some general cosmic cause. we have already seen that of such causes there is none which appears feasible except croll's theory of the effects of precession combined with high eccentricity. let us consider what this theory really asserts. if the earth were a perfect sphere, its orbit round the sun a perfect circle, and the equator coincided with the ecliptic, there would be no seasons. the four quarters of the year would each receive the same quantity of solar heat and light, and the days and nights would be always equal. but the inclination of the equator to the ecliptic, that is, of the earth's plane of daily rotation to that of its annual revolution, necessitates seasons. each pole must be alternately turned to and away from the sun every year. each hemisphere, therefore, must have alternately its spring, summer, autumn, and winter. but if the earth's orbit were exactly circular, these seasons would be of equal duration, and the distance from the sun no greater in one than in another. but the earth's orbit is not circular, but elliptic, and the eccentricity, or deviation of the oval from the circular form, varies considerably over very long periods, though always coming back to the amount from which it started. these variations are due to perturbations from the other bodies of the solar system acting according to the law of newton's gravitation, and therefore calculable. again, the earth is not a perfect sphere, but a spheroid, and there is a factor called precession, due to the attraction on the protuberant mass at and towards the equator. the effect of this is, that instead of the earth's axis pointing uniformly towards the same celestial pole, it describes a small circle round it. this circle is completed in about , years, so that if the earth is nearest to the sun when the north pole is turned away from it, and it is winter in the northern hemisphere, as is now the case, in , years the conditions will be reversed, and the southern hemisphere will be in perihelion, or nearest the sun, when its pole points away from it. and as the perihelion portion of the earth's orbit is, owing to its eccentricity, shorter and more quickly traversed than the aphelion portion, this means practically that winters will be shorter than summers in the hemisphere which precession favours, and longer in that to which it is adverse. as precession now favours the northern hemisphere, which is warmer than the southern in corresponding latitudes, it might be thought at first sight that this was the cause of the glacial period. but it is evident that this is not the case, for the precessional revolutions come round far too rapidly, and it is impossible to suppose that there have been glacial and genial periods alternating every , years, with all the inevitable changes of seas and lands, and of fauna and flora, accompanying each alternation throughout the whole of geological time. in fact, it is abundantly evident, on historical evidence alone, that there has been no approach to any such changes during the last , years, which carries us back to a period when our northern summers were short and our winters long. but croll's theory brings in the secular variation of the eccentricity, and contends that although precession may have little or no effect while the earth's orbit is nearly circular, as it is now, it must have a considerable effect when the orbit flattens out, so that the distances from the sun and the durations of summer and winter become exaggerated. croll calculated the periods when such _maxima_ and _minima_ of eccentricity occurred for several revolutions back from the formula of the great astronomer leverrier, and found that going back for the last , years there had been two _maxima_ of high eccentricity, one , years, and the other, and more intense, , years ago, with corresponding _minima_ of low eccentricity between, which corresponded remarkably well with the refrigeration commencing in the pliocene, culminating towards its close or in the early quaternary, subsiding into a long inter-glacial period, rising again in the later quaternary to a second glacial _maximum_ a little less intense than the first, and finally gradually subsiding into the low eccentricity and temperate climates of more recent times; especially as the geological evidence shows many minor oscillations of heat and cold and advances and retreats of glaciers during each phase of these periods, such as must have occurred from the shorter recurrent effects of precession according to croll's theory. croll's calculations show that, at the period of _maximum_ eccentricity , years ago, the earth would have been in mid-winter , , miles further from the sun than it is now, and the winter half of the year nearly twenty-eight days longer than the summer half, instead of being six days shorter as at present. it appears, moreover, from a volume just published, _on the astronomical causes of an ice age_, by sir r. ball, one of the highest authorities on mathematics and astronomy, that croll had understated his case. ball says that "croll, misled by a statement of herschell's, had assumed the number of units of heat received from the sun, in a hemisphere of the earth, as equal in summer and winter. but in reality, of such units, are received in summer and only in winter. as the maximum of eccentricity which is possible would produce an inequality between summer and winter of days, they had the following possible conditions in a hemisphere--summer days and winter days, or summer days and winter days. in each case it must be borne in mind that heat units arrived in summer and in winter. if the summer were a long one and the winter short, then the allotment of heat between the two seasons would be fairly adjusted. the units were distributed over days and the units over days, and a general inter-glacial state was the result on the hemisphere. if, however, a torrent of heat represented by units was poured in during a brief summer of days, whilst, the balance of units is made to stretch itself over days, a brief, intensely hot summer would be followed by a very long and cold winter, and as this condition lasted for many centuries, it seemed sufficient to produce a glacial epoch." it would be going, too far, however, to assume that these conditions necessarily produced glacial periods whenever they occurred, and ball himself points out that even on astronomical grounds, several conditions must concur before high eccentricity alone would affect climate. but even with this reservation the same objection applies to assigning, this as the sole or principal cause of ice ages, as to precession alone, viz. that periods of high eccentricity occur too frequently to allow us to suppose that every such period in the past has had its corresponding glacial period. there was a _maximum_ phase of eccentricity , years ago, even higher than that of , years, and there must have been at least two or three such _maxima_ within each of the twenty-eight geological ages. but there are only two or three traces of glacial periods in past epochs on which geologists can rely with confidence, as proving extensive ice-action--one in the permian, the other in the carboniferous age. there are a few other instances which look like glacial action, as the conglomerate of the superga at turin, the flysch of switzerland, the great conglomerate at the base of the devonian; and professor geikie thinks that the oldest cambrian rocks in the west highlands have been rounded and smoothed by ice before the silurian strata were deposited on them. but even if these were authenticated and proved to be due to general and not merely local causes, they would not supply anything like the number of glacial periods required by croll's theory. croll attempts to meet this by the extensive denudation which has repeatedly carried away such large portions of land surface; but this scarcely explains the absence of the boulders of hard rocks, which accompany every moraine and iceberg; and still less the continuance of the same fauna and flora throughout whole geological periods with little or no change. we have no such abrupt changes as during the last glacial period, when at one time the canary laurel flourished in central france, while at another the reindeer moss and arctic willow extended to the pyrenees, both occurring within what may be called a short time, geologically speaking. on the contrary, there seems to have been no material changes in the flora throughout very long geological periods such as that of the coal measures. the only real answer to this objection is that the question is, not whether croll's theory is the sole or even the principal cause of glacial periods, or able to influence them materially if the geographical conditions favour genial climates; but whether it has not a co-operating effect, when these conditions are such as to produce glaciation. it seems difficult to suppose that such contrasts of conditions as are pointed out by sir r. ball can have had no perceptible effect on climates; or that such close coincidences as are shown between the astronomical theory and geological facts, during the last glacial period, can be due to mere accident. geology shows six phases of this period:--( ) a refrigeration coming on in the pliocene; ( ) its culmination in a first and most intense _maximum_; ( ) a gradual return to a milder inter-glacial period; ( ) a second refrigeration; ( ) its culmination in a second _maximum_; ( ) a second return to genial conditions, such as still prevail. croll's theory shows six astronomical phases, corresponding to these six geological phases. geology shows that each of its six phases involves several minor alternations of hot and cold; croll shows that this must have been the case owing to the effects of the shorter cycles of precession, occurring during the long cycles of variations in eccentricity. geology tells us that cold alone would not account for a glacial period; we must have heat to supply the evaporation which is condensed by the cold; croll shows that with high eccentricity cold and long winters must have been accompanied by short and hot summers. and sir r. ball's recent calculations show that the argument is really very much stronger than croll puts it. the duration of each of the phases of croll's theory corresponds also, on the whole, remarkably well with that required for each phase of the geological record. they would average about , years each for croll's phases, and a less time can hardly be allowed for the immense amount of geological work in the way of denudation and deposition, elevation and depression, and changes of fauna and flora which have occurred since the commencement of the great refrigeration in the late pliocene. in fact the only reasonable doubt seems to be whether croll's times are sufficient, and whether, as lyell was inclined to think, the first and greatest glaciation must not be carried back to the extreme period of high eccentricity which occurred about , years ago. unless we are prepared to ignore all these considerations and deny that croll's theory, as amended by sir r. ball, has had any appreciable effect on the conditions of the glacial period, it follows with mathematical certainty, that this period, taking it from the commencement of the great refrigeration in the pliocene to its final disappearance in the recent, must have lasted for about , years. and as man clearly existed in the pre-glacial period, and was already widely spread and in considerable numbers in the early glacial, , years may be taken as an approximation to the _minimum_ duration of the existence of the human race on the earth. to this must be added an indefinitely long period beyond, unless we are prepared to disprove the apparently excessively strong evidence for its existence in the pliocene and even in the miocene periods; evidence which has been rapidly accumulating of late years; and to which, as far as i know, there has been no serious and unbiassed attempt at scientific refutation; and to which confirmation is given by the undoubted fact that the dryopithecus, the hylobates, and other quadrumana, closely resembling man in physical structure, already existed in the miocene, and, if professor ameghino's discoveries referred to at p. are confirmed, in the vastly more remote period of the early eocene. chapter x. quaternary man. no longer doubted--men not only existed, but in numbers and widely spread--palæolithic implements of similar type found everywhere--progress shown--tests of antiquity--position of strata--fauna--oldest types--mixed northern and southern species--reindeer period--correspondence of human remains with these three periods--advance of civilization--clothing and barbed arrows--drawing and sculpture--passage into neolithic and recent periods--corresponding progress of physical man--distinct races--how tested--tests applied to historical, neolithic, and palæolithic man--long heads and broad heads--aryan controversy--primitive european types--canon taylor--huxley--preservation of human remains depends mainly on burials--about forty skulls and skeletons known from quaternary times--summary of results--quatrefages and hamy--races of canstadt--cro-magnon--furfooz--truchere--skeletons of neanderthal and spy--canstadt type oldest--cro-magnon type next--skeleton of cro-magnon--broad-headed and short race resembling lapps--american type--no evidence from asia, africa, india, polynesia, and australia--negroes, negrillos, and negritos--summary of results. the time is past when it is necessary to go into any lengthened argument to prove that man has existed throughout the quaternary period. less than half a century has elapsed since the confirmation of boucher-de-perthes' discovery of palæolithic implements in the old gravels of the somme, and yet the proofs have multiplied to such an extent that they are now reckoned, not by scores or hundreds, but by tens of thousands. they have been found not in one locality or in one formation only, but in all the deposits of the quaternary age, from the earliest to the latest, and in association with all the phases of the quaternary period, from the extinct mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and cave-bear, to the reindeer, horse, ox, and other existing animals. no geologist or palæontologist, who approaches the subject with anything like competent knowledge, and without theological or other prepossessions, doubts that man is as much a characteristic member of the quaternary fauna as any of these extinct or existing animals, and that reasonable doubt only begins when we pass from the quaternary into the tertiary ages. i will content myself, therefore, instead of going over old ground and proving facts which are no longer disputed, with showing what bearing they have on the question of human origins. [illustration: palÆolithic celt (type of st. acheul). from quaternary deposits of the nerbudda, india.] [illustration: palÆolithic celt in argillite. from the delaware, united states (abbott).] the first remarkable fact to note is, that at this remote period man not only existed, but existed in considerable numbers, and already widely spread over nearly the whole surface of the habitable earth. implements and weapons of the palæolithic type, such as celts or hatchets, lance and arrow-heads, knives, borers and scrapers of flint, or if that be wanting of some hard stone of the district, fashioned entirely by chipping without any grinding or polishing, have been found in the sands and gravels of most of the rivers of southern england, france, belgium and germany, of the tagus and manzanares in spain, and the tiber in italy. still more numerously also in the caves and glacial drifts of these and other european countries. nor are they confined to europe. stone implements of the same type have been found in algeria, morocco, and egypt, and in natal and south africa. also in greece, syria, palestine, hindostan, and as far east as china and japan, while in the new world they have been found in maryland, ohio, california, and other states in north america, and in brazil, and the argentine pampas in the south. and this has been the result of the explorations of little more than thirty years, prior to which the coexistence of man with the extinct animals was almost universally denied; and of explorations which except in a few european countries have been very partial. [illustration: palÆolithic flint celt (type of st. acheul). from algeria (lubbock).] [illustration: palÆolithic celt of quartzite from natal, south africa. (_quatrefages._)] in fact the area over which these evidences of man's existence have been found may be best defined by the negative, where they have not been found, as there is every probability that it will eventually be proved that, with a few exceptions, wherever man could have existed during the quaternary period, there he did exist. the northern portions of europe which were buried under ice-caps are the only countries where considerable search has failed to discover palæolithic implements, while nearly all asia, africa, and america, and vast extents of desert and forests remain unexplored. the next point to observe is, that throughout the whole of the quaternary period there has been a constant progression of human intelligence upwards. any theory of human origins which says that man has fallen and not risen is demonstrably false. how do we know this? the time scale of the quaternary as of other geological periods is determined partly by the superposition of strata, and partly by the changes of fauna. in the case of existing rivers which have excavated their present valleys in the course of ages, it is evident that the highest deposits are the oldest. if the somme, seine, or thames left remains of their terraces and patches of their silts and gravels at heights feet or more above their present level, it is because they began to run at these higher levels, and gradually worked their way downwards, leaving traces of their floods ever lower and lower. in the case of deposits in caves or in still water, or where glacial moraines and _débris_ are superimposed on one another, the case is reversed, and the lowest are the oldest and the highest the most recent. in like manner if the fauna has changed, the remains found in the highest deposits of rivers and lowest, of caves will be the oldest, and will become more modern as we descend in the one case or ascend in the others. this is practically confirmed by the coincidence of innumerable observations. the oldest quaternary fauna is characterized by a preponderance of three species, the mammoth (elephas primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (rhinoceros tichorinus), and the cave-bear (ursus spelæus). there are a few survivals from the pliocene, as the gigantic elephant (elephas antiquus) and a few anticipations of later phases, as the reindeer, horse, and ox, but the three mentioned are, with palæolithic man, the most characteristic. then comes a long period when a strange mixture of northern and southern forms occurs. side by side with the remains of arctic animals such as the mammoth, the glutton, the musk ox, and the lemming, are found those of african species adapted only for a warm climate, the lion, panther, hyena, and above all the hippopotamus, not distinguishable from the existing species, which could certainly not have lived in rivers that were frozen in winter. the intermixture is most difficult to account for. no doubt africa and europe were then united, and the theory of migration is invoked. the arctic animals may, it is said, have moved south in winter and the african animals north in summer, and this was doubtless the case to some extent. but there are some facts which militate against this theory; for instance, the hyena caves, which seem to show a continuous occupation by the same african species for long periods. nor is it easy to conceive how the hippopotamus could have travelled every summer from africa to yorkshire, and retreated every autumn with the approach of frost. such instances point rather to long inter-glacial periods with vicissitudes of climate, enabling now a northern, and now a southern fauna to inhabit permanently the same region. be this as it may, the fact is certain that this strange intermixture of northern and southern species is found in almost all the european deposits of the quaternary age, until towards its close with the coming on of the second great glacial period, when the southern forms disappear, and the reindeer, with an arctic or boreal flora and fauna, become preponderant, and extend themselves over southern france and germany up to the alps and pyrenees. the quaternary period is therefore roughly divided by geologists into three stages: st, that of the mammoth and cave-bear, there being some difference of opinion as to which came first, though probably they were simultaneous; nd, the middle stage of the mixed fauna; rd, the latest stage, that of the reindeer. now to these stages there is an exact correspondence in the character of the human implements found in them. in the earliest, those of the oldest deposits and of the oldest animals, we find the rudest implements. they consist almost exclusively of native stones, chipped roughly into a few primitive shapes: celts, which are merely lumps of flint or other hard stone with a little chipping to supplement natural fractures in bringing them to a point or edge, while the butt-end is left rough to be grasped by the hand; scrapers with a little chipping to an edge on one side; very rude arrow-heads without the vestige of a barb or socket; and flakes struck off at a blow, which may have served for knives. as we ascend to later deposits we find these primitive types constantly improving. the celts are chipped all over and the butt-ends adapted for haftings, so also are the other implements and weapons, and the arrow-heads by degrees acquire barbs. but the great advance occurs with the use of bone, which seems to have been as important a civilizing agent for palæolithic as metals were for neolithic man. this again seems to have been due to the increasing preponderance of the reindeer, whose horns afforded an abundant and easily manipulated material for working into the desired forms by flint knives. at any rate the fact is, that as we trace palæolithic man upwards into the later half of the quaternary period when the reindeer became abundant, we find a notable advance of civilization. needles appear, showing that skins of animals were stitched together with sinews to provide clothing. barbed arrows and harpoons show that the arts of war and of the chase had made a great advance on the primitive unhafted celt. and finally we arrive at a time when certain tribes showed not only an advance in the industrial arts, but a really marvellous proficiency in the arts of sculpture and drawing. in the later reindeer period, when herds of that animal and of the wild horse and ox roamed over the plains of southern france and germany, and when the mammoth and cave-bear, though not extinct, were becoming scarce, tribes of palæolithic savages who lived in the caves and rock shelters of the valleys of southern france and germany, and of switzerland and belgium, drew pictures of their chases and of the animals with which they were surrounded, with the point of a flint on pieces of bone or of schist. they also carved bones into images of these animals, to adorn the handles of their weapons or as idols or amulets. both drawings and sculptures are in many cases admirably executed, so as to leave no doubt of the animal intended, especially in the case of the wild animals, for the rare portraits of the human figure are very inferior. most of them represent the reindeer in various attitudes, but the mammoth, the cave-bear, the wild horse, the bos primigenius, and others, are also represented with wonderful fidelity. with the close of the reindeer age we pass into the recent period and from palæolithic to neolithic man. physically there is no very decided break, and we cannot draw a hard-and-fast line where one ends and the other begins. all we can say is, that there is general evidence of constantly decreasing cold during the whole post-glacial period, from the climax of the second great glaciation until modern conditions of climate are fairly established, and the existing fauna has completely superseded that of the quaternary, the older characteristic forms of which having either become extinct or migrated. how does this affect the most characteristic of all quaternary forms, that of man? can we trace an uninterrupted succession from the earliest quaternary to the latest modern times, or is there a break between the quaternary and recent periods which with our present knowledge cannot be bridged over? and did the division of mankind into distinct and widely different races, which is such a prominent feature at the present day and ever since the commencement of history, exist in the case of the palæolithic man, whose remains are so widespread? these are questions which can only be answered by the evidence of actual remains of the human body. implements and weapons may have altered gradually with the lapse of ages, and new forms may have been introduced by commerce and conquest, without any fundamental change in the race using them. still less can language be appealed to as a test of race, for experience shows how easily the language of a superior race may be imposed on populations with which it has no affinity in blood. to establish distinction of races we consult the anthropologist rather than the geologist or philologist. [illustration: portrait of mammoth. drawn with a flint on a piece of mammoth's ivory; from cave of la madeleine, dordogne, france.] [illustration: earliest portrait of a man with serpents and horses' heads. from grotto of les eyzies. reindeer period.] [illustration: reindeer feeding. from grotto of thayngen, near schaffhausen, switzerland.] on what are the distinctions of the human race founded? mainly on colour, stature, hair, and on the anatomical character of skulls and skeletons. these are wonderfully persistent, and have been so since historical times, intermediate characters only appearing where there has been intercrossing between different races. but the primitive types have continued unchanged, and no one has ever seen a white race of negroes, or a black one of europeans. and this has certainly been the case during the historical period, or for at least years, for the paintings on old egyptian tombs show us the types of the negro, the libyan, the syrian, and the copt as distinct as at the present day, and the negroes especially, with their black colour, long heads, projecting muzzles, and woolly hair growing in separate tufts, might pass for typical photographs of the african negro of the nineteenth century. of these indications of race we cannot hope to meet with any of the former class in quaternary gravel or caves. we have to trust to the anatomical character to be drawn from skulls and skeletons, of which it may be inferred, as a matter of course, that they will be few and scanty, and will become constantly fewer and more imperfect as we ascend the stream of time to earlier periods. it must be remembered also that even these scanty specimens of early man are confined almost entirely to one comparatively small portion of the earth, that of europe, and that we have hardly a single palæolithic skull or skeleton of the black, the yellow, the olive, the copper-coloured, or other typical race into which the population of the earth is actually divided. we are confined therefore to europe for anything like positive evidence of these anatomical characters of prehistoric and primæval man, and can only draw inferences from implements as to those of other portions of the earth and other races. fortunately these racial characters are very persistent, especially those of the skull and stature, and they exist in ample abundance throughout the historic, prehistoric, and neolithic ages, to enable us to draw very certain conclusions. thus at present, and as far as we can see back with certainty, the races which have inhabited europe may be classified under the heads, tall and short, long-headed and broad-headed, and those of intermediate types, which latter may be dismissed for the present, though constituting a majority of most modern countries, as they are almost certainly not primitive, but the result of intercrossing. colour, complexion, and hair are also very persistent, though, as we have pointed out, we have no certain evidence by which to test them beyond the historical period. but the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton remain wonderfully constant in races where there has been little or no intermixture. the first great division is in the form of the skull. comparing the extreme breadth of the skull with its extreme length from front to back, if the breadth does not exceed three-fourths or per cent. of the length, the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or long-headed; if it equals or exceeds per cent. it is called brachycephalic, _i.e._ short or broad-headed. intermediate indices between and per cent. are called sub-dolicocephalic, or sub-brachycephalic, according as they approach one or the other of these extremes, but these are of less importance, as they probably are the result of intercrossing. the prognathism also of the jaws, the form of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, the superciliary ridges, the proportion of the frontal to the posterior regions of the skull, the stature and proportions of the limbs, are also both characteristic and persistent features, and correspond generally with the type of the skull. the controversy as to the origin of the aryans has led to a great deal of argument as to these ethnological traits in prehistoric and neolithic times, and the interesting volume of canon taylor's on the _origin of the aryans_, and professor huxley's article on the same subject in the _nineteenth century_ for november , give a summary of the latest researches on the subject. we shall have to refer to these more fully in discussing the question as to the place or places of human origins; but for the present it is sufficient to state the general result at which the latest science has arrived. the theory of a common asiatic centre from which all the races of mankind have migrated is given up as unsupported by the slightest vestige of evidence. when we first know anything of the aryan and other european races, we find them occupying substantially very much the same regions as at present. there are four distinct european types, two tall and two short, two long-headed and two broad-headed. of these two were fair, and two dark, and one, apparently the oldest in western europe and in the mediterranean region, and probably represented by the iberians, and now by the spanish basques, was short, dark, and long-headed; a second short, dark, and broad-headed, who are probably represented by the ancient ligurians, and survive now in the auvergnats and savoyards; a third, tall, fair, and long-headed, whose original seats were in the regions of the baltic and north sea, and who were always an energetic and conquering race; and the fourth, like the third, tall and fair, but with broad heads, and possibly not a primitive race, but the result of some very ancient intermixture of the third or northern type with some of the broad-headed races. now as far back as frequent human remains enable us to form some satisfactory conclusion, that is up to the early neolithic period, we find similar race-types already existing, and to a considerable extent in the same localities. in modern and historical times we find, according to canon taylor, "all the anthropological tests agreeing in exhibiting two extreme types--the african, with long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair; and the mongolian, with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. the european type is intermediate--the head, orbits, and sections of hair are oval. in the east of europe we find an approximation to the asiatic type; in the south of europe to the african." more specifically, we find in europe the four races mentioned above of tall and short long-heads, and tall and short broad-heads. the question is, how far back can any of these races be identified? the preservation of human remains depends mainly on the practice of burying the dead. until the corpse is placed in a tomb protected by a stone coffin or dolmen, or in a grave dug in a cave, or otherwise sheltered from rains, floods, and wild beasts, the chances of its preservation are few and far between. now it is not until the neolithic period that the custom of burying the dead became general, and even then it was not universal, and in many nations even in historical times corpses were burnt, not buried. it was connected doubtless with ideas of a future existence, which either required troublesome ghosts to be put securely out of the way, or to retain a shadowy existence by some mysterious connection with the body which had once served them for a habitation. such ideas, however, only come with some advance of civilization, and it is questionable whether in palæolithic times the human animal had any more notion of preserving the body after death than the other animals by which he was surrounded. this neolithic habit moreover of burying, though it preserves many relics of its own time, increases the difficulty when we come to deal with those of an earlier age. a great many caves which had been inhabited by palæolithic man were selected as fitting spots for the graves of their neolithic successors, and thus the remains of the two periods became intermixed. it is never safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and skeletons found in association with palæolithic implements and extinct animals, unless the exploration has been made with the greatest care by some well-known scientific observer, or the circumstances of the case are such as to preclude the possibility of later interments. thus in the famous cavern of aurignac there is no doubt that it had been long a palæolithic station, and that many of the human remains date back to this period; but whether the fourteen skeletons which were found in it, and lost owing to the pietistic zeal of the mayor who directed their burial, were really palæolithic, is a disputed point, or rather the better opinion is that they were part of a secondary neolithic interment. but to return to undoubted neolithic skulls, we have very clear evidence that the four distinct european races already existed. thus in britain we have two distinct forms of barrows or burial tombs, one long, the other round, and it has become proverbial that long skulls go with long barrows, and round skulls with round barrows. the long barrows are the oldest, and belong entirely to the stone age, no trace of metal, according to canon greenwell, having ever been found in them. the skulls and skeletons are those of a long-headed, short, and feeble race, who may be identified with the iberians; while the round barrows contain bronze and finally iron, and the people buried in them were the tall, fair, round-headed gauls or celts of early history, or intermediate types between these and the older race. later came in the tall, fair, and long-headed anglo-saxon and scandinavian races, so that we have three out of the four european types clearly defined in the british islands and traceable in their descendants of the present day. but when we attempt to go beyond the iberians of the neolithic age in britain, we are completely at fault. we have abundant remains of palæolithic implements, but scarcely a single undoubted specimen of a palæolithic skeleton, and it is impossible to say whether the men who feasted on the mammoth and rhinoceros in kent's cavern, or who left their rude implements in the high-level gravel of the chalk downs, were tall or short, long-headed or round-headed. on the contrary, there seems a great hiatus between the neolithic and the palæolithic periods, and, as geikie has shown, this appears to be the case not in england only but in a great part of europe. it would almost seem as if the old era had disappeared with the last glacial period, and a completely new one had been introduced. but although the skulls and bones of palæolithic races are wanting in britain and scarce everywhere, enough of them have been found in other european countries to enable anthropologists not merely to say that different races already existed at this immensely remote period, but to classify them by their types, and see how far these correspond with those of later times. this has been done especially in france and belgium, where the discoveries of palæolithic skeletons and skulls have been far more frequent than elsewhere. debierre in his _l'homme avant l'histoire_, published in the _bibliothèque scientifique_ of , enumerates upwards of forty instances of such undoubted quaternary human remains, of which at least twenty consisted of entire skulls, and others of jaws and other important bones connected with racial type. the best and latest conclusions of modern anthropology from these remains will be found in this work of debierre's, and in hamy's _palæontologie humaine_, quatrefages' _races humaines_, and topinard's _anthropologie_, and it will be sufficient to give a short summary of the results. the history of quaternary fossil man is divided, in the _crania ethnica_ of quatrefages and hamy, into four races: st, the canstadt race; nd, the cro-magnon race; rd, the races of grenelle and furfooz; th, the race of truchere. the canstadt race, so called from the first skull of this type, which was discovered in the loess of the valley of the rhone near wurtemburg, though it is better known from the celebrated neanderthal skull, which gave rise to so much discussion, and was pronounced by some that of an idiot, by others the most pithecoid specimen of a human skull yet known, in fact almost the long-sought-for missing link. a still later discovery, however, has set at rest all doubt as to the reality of this neanderthal type, and of its being the oldest quaternary human type known in western europe. in the year two belgian savants, messrs. fraissent and lohest, one an anatomist, the other a geologist, discovered in a cave at spy near namur two skeletons with the skulls complete, which presented the neanderthal type in an exaggerated form. they were found under circumstances which leave no doubt as to their belonging to the earliest quaternary deposit, being at the bottom of the cave, in the lowest of three distinct strata, the two uppermost of which were full of the usual palæolithic implements of stone and bone, while the few found in the lowest stratum with the skeletons were of the rudest description. huxley pronounces the evidence such as will bear the severest criticism, and he sums up the anatomical characters of the skeletons in the following terms-- "they were short of stature, but powerfully built, with strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees. their long depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges, their lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the teeth downwards and backwards, in consequence of the absence of that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man, the chin prominence." m. fraissent says, "we consider ourselves in a position to say that, having regard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of spy, he possessed a greater number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind." and again he says-- "the distance which separates the man of spy from the modern anthropoid ape is undoubtedly enormous; but we must be permitted to point out that if the man of the quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has travelled a very great way. from the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able to pursue the ancestral type of man and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps as far as the eocene and even beyond." this canstadt or neanderthal type was widely diffused early in the quaternary period, having been found in a skull from the breccia of gibraltar, in skulls from italy, spain, austria, sweden, and in france, belgium, and western germany; in fact almost everywhere where skulls and skeletons have been found in the oldest deposits of caves and river-beds, notably in the alluvia of the seine valley near paris, where three distinct superimposed strata are found, each with different human types, that of canstadt being the oldest. wherever explorations have been carefully made it seems to be certain that the oldest race of all in europe was dolicocephalic, and probable that it was of the canstadt type, the skulls of which are all low and long, the length being attained by a great development of the posterior part of the head, which compensates for a deficient forehead. this type is also interesting because, although the oldest, it shows occasional signs of survival through the later palæolithic and neolithic ages down to recent times. the skulls of st. manserg, a mediæval bishop of toul, and of lykke, a scientific dane of the last century, closely resemble the neanderthal skull in type, and can scarcely be accounted for except as instances of that atavism, or reversion to old ancestral forms, which occasionally crops up both in the human and in animal species. it is thought by many that these earliest palæolithic men may be the ancestors of the tall, fair, long-headed race of northern europe; and professor virchow states that in the frisian islands off the north german coast, where the original teutonic type has been least affected by intermixture, the frisian skull unmistakably approaches the neanderthal and spy type. but if this be so, the type must have persisted for an immense time, for, as huxley observes, "the difference is abysmal between these rude and brutal savages, and the comely, fair, tall, and long-headed races of historical times and of civilized nations." at the present day the closest resemblance to the neanderthal type is afforded by the skulls of certain tribes of native australians. next in antiquity to the canstadt type, though still in the early age when the mammoth and cave-bear were abundant, and the implements and weapons still very rude, a totally different type appears, that of cro-magnon. the name is taken from the skeleton of an old man, which was found entire in the rock shelter of cro-magnon in the valley of the vezere, near the station of moustier, which gave the type of some of the oldest and rudest stone implements of the age of the mammoth. the skeleton was found in the inner extremity of the shelter, buried under a mass of _débris_ and fallen blocks of limestone, and associated with bones of the mammoth and implements of the moustier type, so that there can be no doubt, of its extreme antiquity. the skull, like that of the canstadt type, is dolichocephalic, but in all other respects totally different. the brow-ridges and generally bestial characters have disappeared; the brain is of fair or even large capacity; the stature tall; the forehead fairly high and well-rounded; the face large; the nose straight, the jaws prognathous, and the chin prominent. this type is found in a number of localities, especially in the south-west of france, belgium, and italy, and it continued through the quaternary into the neolithic period, being found in the caves of the reindeer age, and in the dolmens. it is thought by some ethnologists to present analogies to the berber type of north africa, and to that of the extinct guanches of the canary islands. coexistent with or a little later than this type is one of a totally different character both from it and from that of canstadt, viz. that of a brachycephalic race of very short stature, closely resembling the modern lapps. this has been subdivided into the several races of furfooz, grenelle, and truchere, according to the degree of brachycephaly and other features; but practically we may look on these as the results of local variations or intercrossings, and consider all the short, brachycephalic races as forming a third type sharply opposed to those of canstadt and cro-magnon. we have thus distinct evidence that the quaternary fauna in europe comprised at least three distinct races of palæolithic men, and there is a good deal of evidence for the existence of a fourth distinct race in america with features differing from any of the european races, and resembling those of the native american men in recent times. but this affords absolutely no clue as to the existence of other palæolithic types in asia, africa, india, australia, and other countries, forming quite three-fourths of the inhabited world, in which totally different races now exist and have existed since the commencement of history, who cannot possibly have been derived from any of the european types within the lapse of time comprised within the quaternary period. the negro race is the most striking instance of this, for it differs essentially from any other in many particulars, which are all in the direction of an approximation towards the pithecoid type. the size of the brain is less, and a larger proportion of it is in the hinder half; the muzzle much more projecting, and the nose flatter; the fore-arm longer; and various other anatomical peculiarities all point in the same direction, though the type remains perfectly human in the main features. it diverges, however, from the known types of quaternary man in europe and from the american type, as completely as it does from those of modern man, and it is impossible to suppose that it can be derived from them, or they from it, in the way of direct descent. if there is any truth in evolution, the negro type must be one of the oldest, as nearest to the animal ancestor, and this ancestor must be placed very far back beyond the quaternary period, to allow sufficient time for the development of such entirely different and improved races. this will be the more evident if we consider the case of the pygmy negritos and negrillos, who are spread over a wide tropical belt of half the circumference of the earth, from new guinea to western africa. they seem originally to have occupied a large part of this belt, and to have been driven into dense forests, high mountains, and isolated islands, by taller and stronger races, such as the true negro, the melanesian, and the malay, and probably represent therefore a more primitive race. but they had already existed long enough to develop various sub-types among themselves, for although always approaching more to the negro type than any other, the asiatic negrito and the african negrillo and bushman differ in the length of skull, colour, hair, prognathism, and other particulars. but they all agree in the one respect which makes it impossible to associate them with any known quaternary type, either as ancestors or descendants, viz. that of dwarfish stature. as a rule the bushmen and negritos do not average above four feet six inches, and the females three inches less; while in some cases they are as low as four feet--_i.e._ they are quite a foot shorter than the average of the higher races, and nearly a foot and a half below that of the quaternary cro-magnon and mentone skeletons, and of the modern swedes and scotchmen. and they are small and slightly built in proportion, and by no means deformed specimens of humanity. professor flower suggests that they may be "the primitive type from which the african negroes on the one hand, and the melanesians on the other have sprung." in any case they must certainly have existed as a distinct type in the quaternary period, and probably much earlier. it is remarkable also that the very oldest human implements known get continually smaller as they get older, until those of the miocene, from thenay and puy courny, are almost too small for the hands even of stanley's pygmies. if mere guesses were worth anything, it would be rather a plausible one that the original adam and eve were something between a monkey and an andaman islander. in concluding this summary of the evidence as to quaternary man, i must remark on the analogy which it presents to that of the historical period dealt with in the earlier chapters. in each case we have distinct evidence carrying us a long way back; in that of the historical period for years; in that of the quaternary for a vastly longer time, which, if the effects of high eccentricity, postulated by croll's theory, had any influence on the two last glacial periods, cannot be less than , years, an estimate which is confirmed by the amount of geological work and changes of flora and fauna which have taken place. in each case also the positive evidence takes us back to a state of things which gives the most incontrovertible proof of long previous existence; in the historical case the evidence of a dense population and high civilization already long prevailing when written records began; in the case of palæolithic man, that of his existence in the same state of rude civilization in the most remote regions, and over the greater part of the habitable earth, his almost uniform progression upwards from a lower to a higher civilization, and his existing at the beginning of the quaternary period already differentiated into races as remote from one another as the typical races of the present day. these facts of themselves afford an irresistible presumption that the origin of the human race must be sought much further back, and it remains to consider what positive evidence has been adduced in support of this presumption. chapter xi. tertiary man. definition of periods--passage from pliocene to quaternary--scarcity of human remains in tertiary--denudation--evidence from caves wanting--tertiary man a necessary inference from widespread existence of quaternary man--both equally inconsistent with genesis--was the first great glaciation pliocene or quaternary?--section of perrier--confirms croll's theory--elephas meridionalis--mammoth--st. prest--cut bones--instances of tertiary man--halitherium--balæonotus--puy courny--thenay--evidence for--proofs of human agency--latest conclusions--gaudry's theory--dryopithecus--type of tertiary man--skeleton of castelnedolo--- shows no approach to the missing link--contrary to theory of evolution--- must be sought in the eocene--evidence from the new world--glacial period in america--palæolithic implements--quaternary man--similar to europe--california--conditions different--auriferous gravels--- volcanic eruptions--enormous denudation--great antiquity--flora and fauna--point to tertiary age--discovery of human remains--table mountain--latest finds--calaveras skull--summary of evidence--other evidence--tuolumne--brazil--buenos ayres--nampa images--take us farther from first origins and the missing link--if darwin's theory applies to man, must go back to the eocene. the first difficulty which meets us in this question is that of distinguishing clearly between the different geological periods. no hard-and-fast line separates the quaternary from the pliocene, the pliocene from the miocene, or the miocene from the eocene. they pass from one into the other by insensible gradations, and the names given to them merely imply that such considerable changes have taken place in the fauna as to enable us to distinguish one period from another. and even this only applies when we take the periods as a whole, and see what have been the predominant types, for single types often survive through successive periods. the course of evolution seems to be that types and species, like individuals, have their periods of birth, growth, maturity, decay, and death. thus fish of the ganoid type appear sparingly in the silurian, culminate in the devonian, and gradually die out in the later formations. so also saurian reptiles appear in the carboniferous, culminate in the lias, and die out with the secondary, or so nearly so that the crocodilia are their sole remaining representatives. and this applies when we attempt to take our first step backwards in tracing the origin of man, and follow him from the quaternary into the pliocene. when did the pliocene end and the quaternary begin? within which of the two did the first great glacial period fall? does pre-glacial mean pliocene, or is it included in the quaternary? and to which do the oldest human remains belong, such as the skeletons of spy? the difficulty of answering these questions is increased because, as we go back in time, the human remains which guide us in the quaternary age necessarily become scarcer. mankind must have been fewer in number, and their relics to a great extent removed by denudation. thus the evidence from caves, which affords by far the most information as to quaternary man, entirely fails us as to the pliocene and earlier periods. this may be readily accounted for when we consider the great amount of the earth's surface which has been removed by denudation. in fact we have seen that nearly feet of a mountain range must have disappeared from denudation in the weald of kent, since the streams from it rolled down the gravels with human implements, scattered over the north downs as described by professor prestwich. what chance would tertiary caves have of surviving such an extensive denudation? moreover, if any of the present caves existed before the glacial period, their original contents must have been swept out, perhaps more than once, before they became filled by the present deposits. there is evidence in many caves that this was the case, from small patches of the older deposit being found adhering to the roof, as at brixham and maccaguone in sicily, in which latter case flakes of chipped stone and pieces of carbon were found by dr. falconer in these patches of a hard breccia. there is another consideration also which must have greatly diminished the chance of finding human remains in tertiary deposits. why did men take to living in dark and damp caves? presumably for protection against cold. but in the miocene and the greater part of the pliocene there was no great cold. the climate, as shown by the vegetation, was mild, equable, and ranged from semi-tropical to south-temperate, and the earth was to a certain extent covered by forests sustaining many fruit-bearing trees. under such conditions men would have every inducement to live in the open air, and in or near forests where they could obtain food and shelter, rather than in caves. and a few scattered savages, thus living, would leave exceedingly few traces of their existence. if the pygmy races of central africa, or of the andaman islands, became extinct, the chances would be exceedingly small of a future geologist finding any of their stone implements, which alone would have a chance of surviving, dropped under secular accumulations of vegetable mould in a wide forest. it is the more important therefore where instances of human remains in tertiary strata, supported by strong _primâ facie_ evidence, and vouched for by competent authorities, do actually occur, to examine them dispassionately, and not, as a good many of our english geologists are disposed to do, dismiss them with a sort of scientific _non possumus_, like that which was so long opposed to the existence of quaternary man, and the discoveries of boucher-de-perthes. it is perfectly evident from the admitted existence of man throughout the quaternary period, already spread over a great part of the earth's surface, and divided into distinct types, that if there is any truth in evolution, mankind must have had a long previous existence. the only other possible alternative would be the special miraculous creations of men of several different types, and in many different centres, at the particular period of time when the tertiary was replaced by the quaternary. in other words that, while all the rest of the animal creation have come into existence by evolution from ancestral types, man alone, and that not merely as regards his spiritual qualities, but physical man, with every bone and muscle having its counterpart in the other quadrumana, was an exception to this universal law, and sprang into existence spontaneously or by repeated acts of supernatural interference. as long as the account of the creation in genesis was held to be a divinely-inspired narrative, and no facts contradicting it had been discovered, it is conceivable that such a theory might be held, but to admit evolution for quaternary, and refuse to admit it for tertiary man, is an extreme instance of "straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," for a duration of even , or , years is just as inconsistent with genesis as one of , or half a million. in attacking the question of tertiary man, the first point is to aim at some clear conception of where the pliocene ends and the quaternary begins. these are after all but terms applied to gradual changes through long intervals of time; still they require some definition, or otherwise we should be beating the air, and ticketing in some museums as tertiary the identical specimens which in others were labelled as quaternary. this turns very much on whether the first great glaciation was pliocene or quaternary, and must be decided partly by the order of superposition and partly by the fauna. if we can find a section where a thick morainic deposit is interposed between two stratified deposits, a lower one characterized by the usual fauna of the older pliocene, and an upper one by that of the newer pliocene, it is evident that the glacier or ice-cap which left this moraine must have existed in pliocene times. we know that the climate became colder in the pliocene, and rapidly colder towards its close, and that in the cliffs of cromer, the forest bed with a temperate climate had given place to arctic willows and mosses, before the first and lowest boulder-clay had brought blocks of scandinavian granite to england. we should be prepared, therefore, for evidence that this first period of greatest cold had occurred within the limits of the pliocene period. such evidence is afforded by the valleys which radiate from the great central boss of france in the auvergne. the hill of perrier had long been known as a rich site of the fossil remains of the extinct pliocene fauna, and its section has been carefully studied by some of the best french geologists, whose results are summed up as follows by hamy in his _palæontologie humaine_-- "the bed-rock is primitive protogine, which is covered by nearly horizontal lacustrine miocene, itself covered by some metres of fluviatile gravels. above comes a bed of fine sand, a mètre thick, which contains numerous specimens of the well-known mammalian fauna of the lower pliocene, characterized by two mastodons (_m. armenicus_ and _m. borsoni_). then comes a mass of conglomerates mètres thick, consisting of pebbles and boulders cemented by yellowish mud; and above this a distinct layer of upper pliocene characterized by the _elephas meridionalis_. "the boulders, some of which are of great size, are all angular, never rounded or stratified, often scratched, and mostly consisting of trachyte, which must have been transported twenty-five kilomètres from the puy de dôme. in short, the conglomerate is absolutely indistinguishable from any other glacial moraine, whether of the quaternary period or of the present day. it is divided into three sections by two layers of rolled pebbles and sands, which could only have been caused by running water, so that the glacier must have advanced and retreated three times, leaving each time a moraine fifty mètres thick, and the whole of this must have occurred before the deposit of the upper pliocene stratum with its _elephas meridionalis_ and other pliocene mammals." the importance of this will presently be seen, for the _elephas meridionalis_ is one of the extinct animals which is most directly connected with the proofs of man's existence before the quaternary period. it is also important as confirming the immense time which must have elapsed between the date of the first and second _maxima_ of glacial cold, and thus adding probability to the calculations derived from croll's periods of maximum and minimum eccentricity. the three advances and retreats of the great perrier glacier also fit in extremely well with the calculated effects of precession during high eccentricity, as about three of such periods must have occurred in the period of the coming on, culminating, and receding of each phase of maximum eccentricity. this evidence from perrier does not stand alone, for in the neighbouring valleys, and in many other localities, isolated boulders of foreign rocks which could only have been transported by ice, are found at heights considerably above those of the more recent moraines and boulders which had been supposed to mark the limit of the greatest glaciation. thus on the slopes of the jura and the vosges, boulders of alpine rocks, much worn by age, and whose accompanying drifts and moraines have disappeared by denudation, are found at heights or mètres above the more obvious moraines and boulders, which themselves rise to a height of nearly feet, and must have been the front of glaciers from the alps which buried the plain of switzerland under that thickness of solid ice. the only possible alternative to this evidence from perrier would be to throw back the duration of the quaternary and limit that of the pliocene enormously, by supposing that all the deposits above the great glacial conglomerate or old moraine, are inter-glacial and not tertiary. this is, as has been pointed out, very much a question of words, for the phenomena and the time required to account for them remain the same by whatever name we elect to call them. but it still has its importance, for it involves the fundamental principle of geology, that of classifying eras and formations by their fauna. if the _elephas meridionalis_ is a pliocene and not a quaternary species, we must admit, with the great majority of continental geologists, that the first and greatest glaciation fell within the pliocene period. if, on the other hand, this elephant is, like the mammoth, part of the quaternary fauna, we may believe, as many english geologists do, that the first glacial period coincided with and probably occasioned the change from pliocene to quaternary, and that everything above the oldest boulder-clays and moraines is not tertiary but inter-glacial. as bones of the _elephas meridionalis_ have been frequently found in connection with human implements, and with cuts on them which could only have been made by flint knives ground by the human hand, it will be seen at once what an interest attaches to this apparently dry geological question, of the age of the great southern elephant. the transition from the mastodon into the elephant took place in the old world (for in america the succession is different) in the pliocene period. in the older pliocene we have nothing but mastodons, in the newer nothing but elephants, and the transition from the older to the newer type is distinctly traced by intermediate forms in the fossil fauna of the sewalek hills. the _elephas meridionalis_ is the oldest known form of true elephant, and it is characteristic of all the different formations of the upper pliocene, while it is nowhere found in cave or river deposits which belong unmistakably to the quaternary. it was a gigantic animal, fully four feet higher than the tallest existing elephant, and bulky in proportion. it had a near relation in the _elephas antiquus_, which was of equal size, and different from it mainly in a more specialized structure of the molar teeth, and the remains of this elephant have been found in the lower strata of some of the oldest bone-caves and river-silts, as to which it is difficult to say whether they are older or younger than the first glacial period. the remains of a pygmy elephant, no bigger than an ass, have also been found in the upper pliocene, at malta and sicily, and those of the existing african elephant in sicily and spain. it would seem, therefore, that the upper pliocene was the golden age of the elephants where they were most widely diffused, and comprised most species and most varieties, both in the direction of gigantic and of diminutive size. but in passing from the pliocene into the quaternary period, they all, or almost all, disappeared, and were superseded by the _elephas primigenius_, or mammoth, which had put in a first appearance in the latest pliocene, and became the principal representative of the genus _elephas_ in europe and northern asia down to comparatively recent times. this succession is confirmed by that of the rhinoceros, of which several species were contemporary with the _elephas meridionalis_, while the _rhinoceros tichorinus_, or woolly rhinoceros, who is the inseparable companion of the mammoth, appeared and disappeared with him. in these matters, those who are not themselves specialists must rely on authority, and when we find lyell, geikie, and prestwich coinciding with all modern french, german, italian, and belgian geologists, in considering _elephas meridionalis_ as one of the characteristic upper pliocene fauna, we can have no hesitation in adopting their conclusion. in this case the section of st. prest, near chartres, affords a first absolutely secure foothold in tracing our way backwards towards human origins beyond the quaternary. the sands and gravels of a river which ran on the bed rock without any underlying glacial _débris_ are here exposed. it had no relation to the existing river eure, the bed of which it crosses at an angle, and it must have run before that river had begun to excavate its valley, and when the drainage of the country was quite different. the sands contain an extraordinary number of bones of the _elephas meridionalis_, associated with old species of rhinoceros, and other pliocene species. lyell, who visited the spot, had no hesitation in calling it a pliocene river. in fact it never would have been disputed if the question of man's antiquity had not been involved in it, for in these sands and gravels have been found numerous specimens of cut bones of the _elephas meridionalis_, together with the flint knives which made the cuts, and other stone implements, rude but still unmistakably of the usual palæolithic type. the subjoined plate will enable the reader to compare the arrow-head, which is the commonest type found at st. prest, with a comparatively recent arrow-head from the yorkshire wolds, and see how impossible it is to concede human agency to the post-glacial and deny it to the pliocene specimen. [illustration: pliocene. arrow-head--st. prest. (hamy, _palæontologie humaine_.) post-glacial. arrow-head--yorkshire wolds. (evans, _stone implements_.)] in this and other instances, cut bones afford one of the most certain tests of the presence of man. the bones tell their own tale, and their geological age can be certainly identified. sharp cuts could only be made on them while the bones were fresh, and the state of fossilization, and presence of dendrites or minute crystals alike on the side of the cuts and on the bone, negative any idea of forgery. the cuts can be compared with those on thousands of undoubted human cuts on bones from the reindeer and other later periods, and with cuts now made with old flint knives on fresh bones. all these tests have been applied by some of the best anthropologists of the day, who have made a special study of the subject, and who have shown their caution and good faith by rejecting numerous specimens which did not fully meet the most rigorous requirements, with the result that in several cases there could be no reasonable doubt that the cuts were really made by human implements guided by human hands. the only possible alternative suggested is, that they might have been made by gnawing animals or fishes. but as quatrefages observes, even an ordinary carpenter would have no difficulty in distinguishing between a clean cut made by a sharp knife, and a groove cut by repeated strokes of a narrow chisel; and how much more would it be impossible for a professor trained to scientific investigation, and armed with a microscope, to mistake a groove gnawed out by a shark or rodent for a cut made by a flint knife. no one who will refer to quatrefages' _hommes fossilés_, and look at the figures of cut bones given there from actual photographs, can feel any doubt that the cuts there delineated were made by flint knives held by the human hand. in addition to this instance of st. prest, quatrefages in his _histoire des races humaines_, published in , and containing the latest summary of the evidence generally accepted by french geologists as to tertiary man, says that, omitting doubtful cases, the presence of man has been signalized in deposits undoubtedly tertiary in five different localities, viz. in france by the abbé bourgeois, in the lower miocene of thenay near pontlevoy (loir-et-cher); by m. rames at puy courny near aurillac (cantal), in the upper miocene; in italy by m. capellini in the pliocene of monte aperto near sienna, and by m. ragazzoni in the lower pliocene of castelnedolo near brescia; in portugal by m. ribiero at otta, in the valley of the tagus, in the upper miocene. [illustration: cuts with flint knife on rib of balÆonotus--pliocene. from monte aperto, italy. (quatrefages, _histoire des races humaines_.)] [illustration: cut magnified by microscope.] to these may be added the cut bones of halitherium, a miocene species, from pouancé (maine et loire), by m. delaunay; and those on the tibia of a rhinoceros etruscus, and other fossil bones from the upper pliocene of the val d'arno. in addition to these are the numerous remains, certainly human and presumably tertiary, from north and south america, which will be referred to later, and a considerable number of cases where there is a good deal of _primâ facie_ evidence for tertiary human remains, but where doubts remain and their authenticity is still denied by competent authorities. among these ought to be placed the instance from portugal, for although a large celt very like those of the oldest palæolithic type was undoubtedly found in strata which had always been considered as miocene, the congress of palæontologists who assembled at lisbon were divided in opinion as to the conclusiveness of the evidence. but there remain six cases in the old world, ranging from st. prest in the upper pliocene to thenay in the lower miocene, in which the preponderance of evidence and authority in support of tertiary man seems so decisive, that nothing but a preconceived bias against the antiquity of the human race can refuse to accept it. i have already discussed this evidence so fully in a former work (_problems of the future_, ch. v. on tertiary man) that i do not propose to go over the ground again, but merely to refer briefly to some of the more important points which come out in the above six instances. in three of them, those of the halitherium of pouancé, the balæonotus of monte aperto, and the rhinoceros of the val d'arno, the evidence depends entirely on cut bones, and in the case of st. prest on that of cut bones of _elephas meridionalis_ combined with palæolithic implements. the evidence from cut bones is for the reasons already stated very conclusive, and when a jury of four or five of the leading authorities, such as quatrefages, hamy, mortillet, and delaunay, who have devoted themselves to this branch of inquiry, and have shown their great care and conscientiousness by rejecting numbers of cases which did not satisfy the most rigid tests, arrive unanimously at the conclusion that many of the cuts on the bones of tertiary animals are unmistakably of human origin, there seems no room left for any reasonable scepticism. i cannot doubt therefore that we have positive evidence to confirm the existence of man, at any rate from the pliocene period, through the long series of ages intervening between it and the quaternary. but the discovery of flint implements at puy courny in the upper miocene, and at thenay in the lower miocene, carry us back a long step further, and involves such important issues as to the origin of the human race, that it may be well to recapitulate the evidence upon which those discoveries rest. the first question is as to the geological age of the deposits in which these chipped implements have been found. in the case of puy courny this is beyond dispute. in the central region of the auvergne there have been two series of volcanic eruptions, the latest towards the close of the pliocene or commencement of the quaternary period, and an older one, which, from its position and fossils, is clearly of the upper miocene. the gravels in which the chipped flints were discovered by m. rames, a very competent geologist, were interstratified with tuffs and lavas of these older volcanoes, and no doubt as to their geological age was raised by the congress of french archæologists to whom they were submitted. the whole question turns therefore on the sufficiency of the proofs of human origin, as to which the same congress expressed themselves as fully satisfied. [illustration: flint scraper from high level drift, kent. (prestwich.)] the specimens consist of several well-known palæolithic types, celts, scrapers, arrow-heads and flakes, only ruder and smaller than those of later periods. they were found at three different localities in the same stratum of gravel, and comply with all the tests by which the genuineness of quaternary implements is ascertained, such as bulbs of percussion, conchoidal fractures, and above all, intentional chipping in a determinate direction. it is evident that a series of small parallel chips or trimmings, confined often to one side only of the flint, and which have the effect of bringing it into a shape which is known from quaternary and recent implements to be adapted for human use, imply intelligent design, and could not have been produced by the casual collisions of pebbles rolled down by an impetuous torrent. thus the annexed plate of an implement from the high level drift on the north downs, shown by professor prestwich to the anthropological society, is rude enough, but no one has ever expressed the least doubt of its human origin. the chipped flints from puy courny also afford another very conclusive proof of intelligent design. the gravelly deposit in which they are found contains five different varieties of flints, and of these all that look like human implements are confined to one particular variety, which from its nature is peculiarly adapted for human use. as quatrefages says, no torrents or other natural causes could have exercised such a discrimination, which could only have been made by an intelligent being, selecting the stones best adapted for his tools and weapons. [illustration: upper miocene implements. puy courny. scraper, or lance-head. puy courny. upper miocene (rames). (quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .) scraper. puy courny. upper miocene (rames) (quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .)] the general reader must be content to rely to a great extent on the verdict of _experts_, and in this instance of puy courny need not perhaps go further than the conclusion of the french congress of archæologists, who pronounced in favour both of their miocene and human origin. it may be well, however, to annex a plate showing in two instances how closely the specimens from puy courny resemble those of later periods, of the human origin of which no doubt has ever been entertained. it is certainly carrying scientific scepticism to an unreasonable pitch to doubt that whatever cause fashioned the two lower figures, the same cause must equally have fashioned the upper ones; and if that cause be human intelligence in the quaternary period it must have been human or human-like intelligence in the upper miocene. [illustration: copare quaternary implements. wokey hole--glacial. (evans, _stone implements_, p .) plateau drift. north downs, kent (prestwich).] the evidence for the still older implements of thenay is of the same nature as that for those of puy courny. first as regards the geological horizon. subjoined is the section at thenay as made by m. bourgeois, verified by mm. vibraye, delaunay, schmidt, belgrand, and others, from personal inspection, and given by m. hamy in his _palæontologie humaine_. it would seem that there could be little doubt as to the geological position of the strata from which the alleged chipped flints come. the faluns are a well-known marine deposit of a shallow sea spread over a great part of central and southern france, and identified, beyond a doubt, as upper miocene by its shells. the orleans sands are another miocene deposit perfectly characterized by its mammalian fauna, in which the _mastodon angustidens_ first appears, with other peculiar species. the calcaire de beauce is a solid freshwater limestone formed in the great lake which in the miocene age occupied the plain of the beauce and extended into touraine. it forms a clear horizon or dividing line between the upper miocene, characterized by the mastodon, and the lower miocene, of which the acrotherium, a four-toed and hornless rhinoceros, is the most characteristic fossil. [illustration: section at thenay.] the supposed chipped flints are said to appear sparingly in the upper deposits, disappear in the calcaire de beauce, and reappear, at first sparingly and then plentifully, in the lacustrian marls below the limestone. they are by far the most numerous in a thin layer of greenish-yellow clay, no. of section, below which they rapidly disappear. there can be no question therefore that if the flints really came from the alleged deposits, and really show the work of human hands, the savages by whom they were chipped must have lived on the shores or sand-banks of this miocene lake. as regards the geological question, it is right to observe that professor prestwich, who visited the section a good many years ago in company with the abbé bourgeois, and who is one of the highest authorities on this class of questions, remained unconvinced that the flints shown him really came from the alleged strata below the calcaire de beauce, and thought that the specimens which appeared to show human manufacture might have come from the surface, and become intermixed with the natural flints of the lower strata. the geological horizon, however, seems to have been generally accepted by french and continental geologists, especially by the latest authorities, and the doubts which have been expressed have turned mainly on the proof of human design shown by the implements. this is a question which must be decided by the authority of experts, for it requires special experience to be able to distinguish between accidental fractures and human design, in implements of the extremely rude type of the earlier formations. the test is mainly afforded by the nature of the chipping. if it consists of a number of small chips, all in the same direction, with the result of bringing one face or side into a definite form, adapted for some special use, the inference is strong that the chips were the work of design. the general form might be the result of accident, but fractures from frost or collisions simulating chipping could hardly be all in the same direction, and confined to one part of the stone. the inference is strengthened if the specimen shows bulbs of percussion, where the blows had been struck to fashion the implement, and if the microscope discloses parallel striæ and other signs of use on the chipped edge, such as would be made by scraping bones or skins, while nothing of the sort is seen on the other natural edges, though they may be sharper. but above all, the surest test is afforded by a comparison with other implements of later dates, or even of existing savages, which are beyond all doubts products of human manufacture. tried by these tests, the evidence stands as follows-- when specimens of the flints from thenay were first submitted to the anthropological congress at brussels, in , their human origin was admitted by mm. worsae, de vibraye, de mortillet, and schmidt, and rejected by mm. nilson, hebert, and others, while m. quatrefages reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being entirely satisfied. m. bourgeois himself was partly responsible for these doubts, for, like boucher-de-perthes, he had injured his case by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. but the whole collection having been transferred to the archæological museum at st. germain, its director, m. mortillet, selected those which appeared most demonstrative of human origin, and placed them in a glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted quaternary implements. this removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words of quatrefages, "dispelled his last doubts," while not a single instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of quatrefages, mortillet, and hamy, after an equally careful and minute investigation. [illustration: middle miocene implements. scraper from thenay. (hamy, _palæontologie humaine_, p. .) scraper, or borer. thenay. (showing bulb of percussion. quatrefages, _races humaines_, p. .)] in order to assist the reader in forming an opinion as to the claim of these flints from thenay, to show clear traces of human design, i subjoin some illustrations of photographs in which they are compared with specimens of later date, which are undoubtedly and by universal consent works of human hands, guided by human intelligence. these figures seem to leave no reasonable doubt that some at least of the flints from thenay show unmistakable signs of human handiwork, and i only hesitate to accept them as conclusive proofs of the existence of man in the middle miocene, because such an authority as prestwich retains doubts of their having come from the geological horizon accepted by the most eminent modern french geologists. [illustration: middle miocene implements. borer, or awl. thenay. miocene. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .) knife, or scraper. thenay. (gaudry. quatrefages, p. .)] the evidence of the authenticity of these implements from thenay is, moreover, greatly strengthened by the discovery of other miocene implements at puy courny, which have not been seriously impugned, and by the essay of professor prestwich, confirming the discovery of numerous flint implements in the upper level gravels of the north downs, which could only have been deposited by streams flowing from a mountain ridge along the anticlinal of the weald, of which feet must have disappeared by sub-aërial denudation since these rivers flowed northwards from its flanks. how far back such a denudation may carry us is a matter of speculation. certainly, as prestwich admits, into the pre-glacial or very early glacial ages, and possibly into the tertiaries, but at any rate for a time which, by whatever name we call it, must be enormous according to any standard of centuries or millenniums. and what is specially interesting in these extremely ancient implements is that, in prestwich's words, "these plateau implements exhibit distinct characters and types such as would denote them to be the work of a more primitive and ruder race than those fabricated by palæolithic men of the valley drift times." [illustration: compare quaternary implements. scraper. yorkshire wold. (evans, _stone implements_.) quaternary. mammoth period. river drift, mesvin. belgium. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .) quaternary. chaleux, belgium. reindeer period. (congrès préhistorique, bruxelles, .)] in fact we have only to look at the figures which accompany prestwich's essay,[ ] to see that their types resemble those of puy courny and thenay, rather than those of st. acheul and moustier. [ ] _journal of anthropological institute_, feb. , p. . the following remarks of the professor would apply almost as well to the miocene implements as to those of the plateau-- "unlike the valley implements, the plateau implements are, as a rule, made of the _fragments_ of natural drift flints, that are found scattered over the surface of the ground, or picked up in gravel-beds and merely roughly trimmed. sometimes the work is so slight as to be scarcely apparent; at others, it is sufficient to show a distinct design and object. it indicates the very infancy of the art, and probably the earliest efforts of man to fabricate his tools and weapons from other substances than wood or bone. that there was an object and design is manifest from the fact that they admit of being grouped according to certain patterns. these are very simple, but they answered to the wants of a primitive people. "with few exceptions, the implements are small, from to inches in length, and mostly such as could have been used in the hand, and in the hand only. there is, with the exceptions before named, an almost entire absence of the large massive spear-head forms of the valley drifts, and a large preponderance of forms adapted for chipping, hammering, and scraping. with these are some implements that could not have been used in the hand, but they are few and rude. the difference between the plateau and the valley implements is as great or greater than between the latter and the neolithic implements. though the work on the plateau implements is often so slight as scarcely to be recognizable, even modern savage work, such as exhibited for example by the stone implements of the australian natives, show, when divested of their mounting, an amount of work no greater or more distinct, than do these early palæolithic specimens. "some persons may be disposed to look upon the slight and rude work which these flints have received as the result only of the abrasion and knocking about caused by collision during the transport of the drift. this belief prevailed for a time even in the case of the comparatively well-fashioned valley implements. a little practice, and comparison with natural drift flints, will show the difference, notwithstanding the, at first, unpromising appearance of these early specimens of man's handicraft. it is as such, and from their being the earliest such work with which we are acquainted, that they are of so great interest, for they give us some slight insight into the occupation and surroundings of the race by whom they were used. a main object their owners would seem to have had in view, was the trimming of flints to supply them with implements adapted to the breaking of bones for the sake of the marrow, scraping skins, and round bodies such as bones or sticks, for use as simple tools or poles. from the scarcity of the large massive implements of the pointed and adze type, so common in the valley drifts, it would seem as though offensive and defensive weapons of this class had not been so much needed, whether from the rarity of the large mammalia, so common later on in the low-level valley drifts, or from the habits and character of those early people." the positive evidence is therefore extremely strong that men existed in the tertiaries, and if we add to it the irresistible inference that he must have done so to develop so many different races, and leave his rude implements in so many and such remote regions as we found early in the quaternary, i do not see how it is possible to avoid accepting it as an established fact. but in using the term tertiary man, i do not venture to define the exact meaning of "man," or the precise stage in his evolution which had been attained at this enormously remote period. m. gaudry, an excellent authority, while admitting that the flints from thenay showed evidence of intentional chipping, thought that they might have been the work of the dryopithecus, a fossil ape, supposed to be nearer man than any existing anthropoid, whose remains had been found at sausan in the middle miocene. but the dryopithecus has been deposed from his pride of place by the subsequent discovery of a more perfect jaw, and he is now considered, though undoubtedly an anthropoid ape, to be of a lower type than the chimpanzee or gorilla.[ ] the strongest argument however for the essentially human character of the artificers of the flints of thenay and puy courny is that their type continues, with no change except that of slight successive improvements, through the pliocene, quaternary, and even down to the present day. the scraper of the esquimaux and the andaman islanders is but an enlarged and improved edition of the miocene scraper, and in the latter case the stones seem to have been split by the same agency, viz. that of fire. the early knowledge of fire is also confirmed by the discovery, reported by m. bourgeois in the orleans sand at thenay, with bones of mastodon and dinotherium, of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in a sort of hardened paste, which, as we can hardly suppose pottery to have been known, must be the remnant of a hearth on which there had been a fire. [ ] having applied to professor flower, as the highest authority, to inform me of the actual position of the evidence as to the dryopithecus, he was good enough to reply to me as follows-- "dryopithecus (middle miocene of france) is an undoubted anthropoid, allied to gorilla and chimpanzee, but the recent discovery of a more complete jaw than that first found shows that it is rather a lower form than the two just mentioned, instead of higher as once thought. see gaudry, mem. soc. geol. france--_palæontologie_, . "the animal called _pliopithecus_, from the same formation, is now generally considered to be not distinguishable from the genus hylobates (gibbon). "so there is no doubt about the existence of anthropoid apes in the miocene of europe, but not of a higher type than the present african or asiatic species. yours truly, "w. flower." there must always, however, remain a doubt as to the nature of this ancestral tertiary man, until actual skulls and skeletons have been found, under circumstances which preclude doubt, and in sufficient numbers to enable anthropologists to speak with the same confidence as to types and races, as they can of his quaternary successors. this again is difficult from the rarity of such remains, and from the fact that after burial of the dead was introduced, graves must often have been dug down from the surface into older strata, with which in course of time their contents become intermixed. no case, therefore, can be safely admitted where the find was not made by well-known scientific authorities, under circumstances which preclude the possibility of subsequent interment, and vouch for the geological age of the undisturbed deposit. this test disposes of all the alleged discoveries of human remains in the tertiaries of the old world, except one, and although it is quite possible that some may be genuine among those rejected, it is safer not to rely on them. there is one, however, which is supported by extremely strong evidence, and the discussion of which i have reserved for the last, as if accepted it throws a new and unexpected light on the evolution of the human race. the following is the account of it, taken from quatrefages' _races humaines_-- "the bones of four individuals, a woman and two children, were found at castelnedolo, near brescia, in a bed identified by its fossils as lower pliocene. the excavations were made with the utmost care, in undisturbed strata, by m. ragazzoni, a well-known scientific man, assisted by m. germani, and the results confirmed by m. sergi, a well-known geologist, after a minute personal investigation. the deposit was removed in successive horizontal layers, and not the least trace was found of the beds having been mixed or disturbed. the human bones presented the same fossilized appearance as those of the extinct animals in the same deposit. the female skeleton was almost entire, and the fragments of the skull were sufficiently perfect to admit of their being pieced together so as to show almost its entire form." the first conjecture naturally was that it must have been a case of subsequent interment, a conjecture which was strengthened by the fact of the female skeleton being so entire; but this is negatived by the undisturbed nature of the beds, and by the fact that the other bones were found scattered at considerable distances throughout the stratum. m. quatrefages sums up the evidence by saying, "that there exists no serious reason for doubting the discovery, and that if made in a quaternary deposit, no one would have thought of contesting its accuracy. nothing can be opposed to it but theoretical _à priori_ objections similar to those which so long repelled the existence of quaternary man." but if we accept this discovery, it leads to the remarkable conclusion that tertiary man not only existed, but has undergone little change in the thousands of centuries which have since elapsed. the skull is of fair capacity, very much like what might be expected from a female of the canstadt type, and less rude and ape-like than the skulls of spy and neanderthal, or those of modern bushmen and australians. and the other bones of the skeleton show no marked peculiarities. this makes it difficult to accept the discovery unreservedly, notwithstanding the great weight of positive evidence in its favour. the great objection to tertiary man has been, that as all other species had changed, and many had become extinct two or three times over since the miocene, it was unlikely that an animal so highly specialized as man should alone have had a continuous existence. and this argument of course becomes stronger the more it can be shown that the oldest skeletons differed little if it at all from man of the quaternary and recent ages. moreover, the earlier specimens of quaternary man which are so numerous and authentic, show, if not anything that can be fairly called the "missing link," still a decided tendency, as they get older, towards the type of the rudest existing races, which again show a distinct though distant approximation towards the type of the higher apes. the oldest quaternary skulls are dolichocephalic, very thick with enormous frontal sinuses; low and receding foreheads; flattened vertices; prognathous jaws, and slight and receding' chins. the average cranial capacity is about cubic centimètres, or fully one-fourth less than that of modern european man, and of this smaller brain a larger proportion is in the posterior region. the other peculiarities of the skeletons all tend in the same direction, and, as we have seen in huxley's description of the men of spy, sometimes go a long way in the pithecoid direction, even to the extent of not being able to straighten the knee in walking. it would, therefore, be contrary to all our ideas of evolution to find that some , or , , or more probably , or , years prior to these men of spy and neanderthal, the human race had existed in higher physical perfection nearer to the existing type of modern man. quatrefages meets this by saying that tertiary men with a larger brain, and therefore more intelligence than the other tertiary mammals, might have survived, where these succumbed to changes and became extinct. this is doubtless true to some extent, but it hardly seems sufficient to account for the presence of a higher and more recent type, like that of castelnedolo in the lower pliocene, that is a whole geological period earlier than that of the lower quaternary. it is more to the purpose to say with gaudry that the changes on which the distinction of species are founded are often so slight that they might just as well be attributed to variations of races; and to appeal to instances like that of the hylobates of the miocene, one of the nearest congeners of man, in which no genuine difference can be detected from the hylobates or gibbon of the present day; and if the discovery referred to at p. , of anthropoid primates in the eocene of patagonia, should be confirmed, it would greatly strengthen the argument for the persistence of the order to which man belongs through several geological periods. in any case we require more than the evidence of this one discovery before we can assume the type of tertiary man as a proved fact with the same confidence as we can the existence of something like man in those remote ages, from the repeated evidence of chipped stones and cut bones, showing unmistakable signs of being the work of human intelligence. and in the meantime, the only safe conclusion seems to be that it is very probable that we may have to go back to the eocene to find the "missing link," or the ancestral animal which may have been the common progenitor of man and of the other quadrumana. i turn now to the evidence from the new world. i have kept this distinct, for there is no such proof of synchronism between the later geological phases of this and of the old world as would warrant us in assuming that what is true in one is necessarily true in the other. thus in europe the presence of the mastodon is a conclusive proof that the formation in which its remains are found is upper miocene or pliocene, and it has completely disappeared before the glacial period and the quaternary era. but in north america it has survived both these periods, and it is even a question whether it is not found in recent peat-mosses with arrow-heads of the historical indians. the glacial period also, which in the old world affords such a clear demarcation between tertiary and recent ages, and such manifest proofs of two great glaciations with a long inter-glacial period, presents different conditions in america, where the ice-caps radiated from different centres, and extended further south and over wider areas. there is no proof whether the great cold set in sooner or later, and whether the elevations and depressions of land synchronized with those of europe. the evidence for a long inter-glacial period is by no means so clear, and the best american geologists differ respecting it. and above all, the glacial period seems to have lasted longer, and the time required for post-glacial or recent denudation, and erosion of river-gorges, to be less than is required to account for post-glacial phenomena on this side of the atlantic. the evidence, therefore, from the new world, though conclusive as to the existence of man from an immense antiquity, can hardly be accepted as equally so in an attempt to prove that antiquity to be tertiary in the sense of identifying it with specific european formations. with this reservation i proceed to give a short account of this evidence as bearing on the question of the oldest proofs of man's existence. the first step or proof of the presence of man in the quaternary deposits which correspond with the oldest river-drifts of europe, has only been made quite recently. mr. abbott was the first to discover such implements of the usual palæolithic type in quaternary gravels of the river delaware, near trenton in new jersey, and since then they have been frequently found, as described by dr. wright in his recently-published _ice age in america_, in ohio, illinois, and other states, in the old gravels of rivers which carried the drainage of the great lake district to the hudson and the mississippi, before the present line of drainage was established by the falls of niagara and the st. lawrence. so far the evidence merely confirms that drawn from similar finds in the old world of the existence of man in the early glacial or quaternary times, already widely diffused, and everywhere in a similar condition of primitive savagery, and chipping his rude stone implements into the same forms. but if we cross the rocky mountains into california, we find evidence which apparently carries us further back and raises new questions. the whole region west of the rocky mountains is comparatively recent. the coast range which now fronts the pacific is composed entirely of marine tertiary strata, and when they were deposited, the waves of the pacific beat against the flanks of the sierra nevada. at length the coast range was upheaved and a wide valley left between it and the sierra of over miles in length, and with an average breadth of seventy-five miles. the sierra itself is old land, the lower hills consisting of triassic slates and the higher ranges of granite, and it has never been under water since the secondary age though doubtless it stood much higher before it was so greatly denuded. all along its western flank and far down into the great valley is an enormous bed of auriferous gravel, doubtless derived from the waste of the rocks of the sierra during an immense time by old rivers now buried under their own deposits. while these deposits were going on a great outburst of volcanoes occurred on the western slope of the sierra, and successive sheets of tuffs, ashes, and lavas are interstratified with the gravels, while finally an immense flow of basalt covered up everything. the country then presented the appearance of a great plain, sloping gradually downwards from the sierra according to the flow of the basalt and lavas. this plain was in its turn attacked by denudation and worn down by the existing main rivers into valleys and gorges, and by their tributary streams into a series of flat-topped hills, capped by basalt and divided from one another by deep and narrow cañons. the immense time required for this latest erosion may be inferred when it is stated that where the columbia river cuts through the axis of the cascade mountains, the precipitous rocks on either side, to a height of from to feet, consist of this late tertiary or post-tertiary basalt, and that the deschutes river has been cut into the great basaltic plain for miles to a depth of from to feet, without reaching the bottom of the lava. the american and yuba valleys have been lowered from to feet, and the gorge of the stanislas river has cut through one of these basalt-covered hills to the depth of feet. [illustration: section of great californian lava stream, cut through by rivers. _a_, _a_, basalt; _b_, _b_, volcanic ashes; _c_, _c_, tertiary; _d_, _d_, cretaceous rocks; _r_, _r_, direction of the old river-bed; _r´_, _r´_, sections of the present river-beds. (le conte, from whitney.)] the enormous gorge of the colorado has cut its cañons for hundreds of miles from to feet deep through all the orders of sedimentary rocks from the tertiaries down, and from to feet into the primordial granite below, thus draining the great lakes which in tertiary times occupied a vast space in the interior of america which is now an arid desert. evidently the gravels which lie below the basalt, and interstratified with the tuffs and lavas, or below them, and which belong to an older and still more extensive denudation, must be of immense antiquity, an antiquity which remains the same whether we call it quaternary or tertiary. it is in these gravels that gold is found, and in the search for it great masses have been removed in which numerous stone implements have been found. the great antiquity of those gravels and volcanic tuffs is further confirmed by the changes in the flora and fauna which are proved to have occurred. the animal remains found beneath the basaltic cap are very numerous, and all of extinct species. they belong to the genera rhinoceros, elatherium, felis, canis, bos, tapirus, hipparion, elephas (primigenius), mastodon, and auchenia, and form an assemblage entirely distinct from any now living in any part of north america. some of the genera survived into the quaternary age as in europe, but many, both of the genera and species, are among those most characteristic of the pliocene period. the flora also, which is well preserved in the white clays formed from the volcanic ash, comprises forty-nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs, all distinct from those now living, without a single trace of the pines, firs, and other conifera which are now the prevalent trees throughout california. tried by any test, therefore, of fauna, flora, and of immensely long deposit before the present drainage and configuration of the country had begun to be established, professor whitney's contention that the auriferous gravels are of tertiary origin seems to be fully established. it can only be met by obliterating all definite distinction between the quaternary and the pliocene, and adding to the former all the time subtracted from the latter. and even if we apply this to the physical changes, it would upset all our standards of geological formations characterized by fossils, to suppose that a fauna comprising the elatherium, hipparion, and auchenia could be properly transferred to the quaternary. in fact no one would have thought of doing so if human implements and remains had not been found in them. the discovery of such implements was first reported in , and since then a large number have been found, but their authenticity has been hotly contested. the most common were stone mortars very like those of the indians of the present day, only ruder, and it was objected, first, that they were ground and not chipped, and therefore belonged to the neolithic age; secondly, that they might have slipped down from the surface or been taken down by miners. the difficulty in meeting these objections was that the implements had been found not by scientific men _in situ_, but by ignorant miners, who were too keen in the pursuit of gold to notice the particulars of the find, and only knew that they had picked them out in sorting loads of the gravels, and generally thrown them aside. this, however, had occurred in such a number of instances, over such wide areas, and with such a total absence of any motive on the part of the miners to misrepresent or commit a fraud, that the cumulative evidence became almost irresistible; and we cannot sum it up better than in the words of the latest and best authority, professor wright, in an article in the _century_ of april , which is the more important because only two years previously, in his _ice age in north america_, he had still expressed himself as retaining doubts. he says, "but so many of such discoveries have been reported as to make it altogether improbable that the miners were in every case mistaken; and we must conclude that rude stone implements do actually occur in connection with the bones of various extinct animals in the undisturbed strata of the gold-bearing gravel." fortunately the most important human remains have been found in what may be considered as a test case, where it was physically impossible that they could have been introduced by accident, and where the evidence of a common workman as to the locality of the find is as good as that of a professed geologist. during the deposition of the auriferous gravel on the western flanks of the sierra there were great outbursts of volcanoes near the summits of that range. towards their close a vast stream of lava flowed down the shallow valley of the ancient stanislas river, filling up its channel for forty miles or more, and covering its extensive gravel deposits. the modern stanislas river has cut across its former bed, and now flows in a gorge from to feet deeper than the old valley which was filled up by the lava stream, the surface of which appears as a long flat-topped ridge, known as table mountain. in many places the sides of the valley which originally directed the course of the lava have been worn away, so that the walls on either side present a perpendicular face one hundred feet or more in height. the gravel of the ancient stanislas river being very auriferous, great efforts have been made to reach the portion of it which lies under table mountain. large sums have been spent in sinking shafts from the top through the lava cap, and tunnelling into it from the sides. great masses of gravel have been thus quarried and removed, and a considerable amount of gold obtained, though in most cases not enough to meet the expenses, and the workings have been mostly discontinued. [illustration: section across table mountain, tuolumne county, california. _b_, lava; _g_, gravel; _s_, slate; _r_, old river-bed; _r´_, present river-bed. (le conte.)] it is evident that objects brought from a great depth below this lava cap must have remained there undisturbed since they were deposited along with the gravels, and that the evidence of the simplest miner, who says he brought them with a truck-load of dirt from the bottoms of shafts, or ends of tunnels pierced for hundreds of feet through the solid lava, is, if he speaks the truth, as good as if a scientist had found them _in situ_. and this evidence, together with that of mining inspectors and respectable residents who took an interest in scientific subjects, has been forthcoming in such a large number of instances as to preclude any supposition of mistake or fraud. three of the latest of these discoveries were reported at the meeting of the geological society of america on the th december, , and they seem to be supported by very first-class evidence.[ ] mr. becker, one of the staff of the united states geological survey, to whom has been, committed the responsible work of reporting upon the gold-bearing gravels of california, exhibited to the society a stone mortar, and some arrow or spear-heads, with the sworn statement from mr. neale, a well-known mining superintendent, that he took them with his own hands from undisturbed gravel in a mine of which he had charge under the lava of table mountain. [ ] professor wright in _century_, april . a second object exhibited was a pestle found by mr. king, who was at one time general director of the united states geological survey, and is an expert whose judgment on such matters should be final, and who had no doubt that the gravel in which he found the object must have lain in place ever since the lava came down and covered it. the third object was a mortar taken from the old gravel at the end of a tunnel driven diagonally feet from the western edge of the basalt cliff, and feet or more below the surface of the flat top of table mountain, as supported by evidence entirely satisfactory to professor wright, who had just visited the locality and cross-examined the principal witnesses. this may prepare us to consider the case of the celebrated calaveras skull as by no means an isolated or exceptional one, but antecedently probable from the number of human implements found in the same gravels, under the same beds of basalt and lava, at table mountain and numerous other places. professor wright in the article already referred to, which is the latest on the subject, and made after his visit to california in , which he says enabled him to add some important evidence, sums up the facts as follows-- "in february , mr. mattenson, a blacksmith living near table mountain, in the county calaveras, employed his spare earnings in driving a tunnel under the portion of the sierra lava flow known as bald hill. at a depth of feet below the surface, of which feet consisted of solid lava, and the last fifty of interstratified beds of lava, gravel, and volcanic tuffs, he came upon petrified wood, and an object which he at first took for the root of a tree, thickly encased in cemented gravel. but seeing what he took for one of the roots was a lower jaw, he took the mass to the surface, and gave it to mr. scribner, the agent of an express company, and still living in the neighbourhood, and highly respected. mr. scribner, on perceiving what it was, sent it to dr. jones, a medical gentleman of the highest reputation, now living at san francisco, who gave it to professor whitney, who visited the spot, and after a careful inquiry was fully satisfied with the evidence. soon afterwards professor whitney took the skull home with him to cambridge, where, in conjunction with dr. wynam, he subjected it to a very careful investigation to see if the relic itself confirmed the story told by the discoverer, and this it did to such a degree that, to use professor wright's words, the circumstantial evidence alone places its genuineness beyond all reasonable question." this is not a solitary instance, for the professor reports as the result of his personal inquiries only a year ago in the district, that "the evidence that human implements and fragments of the human skeleton have been found in the stratum of gravel underneath the lava of table mountain seems to be abundantly sufficient;" among others a fragment of a skull which came up with a bucketful of dirt from feet below the surface of table mountain at tuolumne. dr. wallace, in an article on the "antiquity of man in north america," in the _nineteenth century_ of november , thus enumerates some of the principal instances-- "in tuolumne county from to stone mortars and platters were found in the auriferous gravel along with bones and teeth of mastodon feet below the surface, and a stone muller was obtained in a tunnel driven under table mountain. in a stone mortar was found at a depth of feet in gravel under clay and 'cement,' as the hard clay with vegetable remains (the old volcanic ash) is called by the miners. in calaveras county from to many mortars and other stone implements were found in the gravels under lava beds, and in other auriferous gravels and clays at a depth of feet. in amador county stone mortars have been found in similar gravel at a depth of feet. in placer county stone platters and dishes have been found in auriferous gravels from to feet below the surface. in nevada county stone mortars and ground discs have been found from to feet deep in the gravel. in butte county similar mortars and pestles have been found in the lower gravel beneath lava beds and auriferous gravel; and many other similar finds have been recorded.... "even these californian remains do not exhaust the proofs of man's great antiquity in america, since we have the record of another discovery which indicates that he may, possibly, have existed at an even more remote epoch. mr. e. l. berthoud has described the finding of stone implements of a rude type in the tertiary gravels of the crow creek, colorado. some shells were obtained from the same gravels, which were determined by mr. t. a. conrad to be species which are 'certainly not older than older pliocene, or possibly miocene.'" i do not dwell on the discoveries which have been made of human implements and skeletons in the cases of minas geraes in brazil, and in the drift or loess of the pampas of buenos ayres, for although associated with extinct animals usually considered as pliocene, there is a difference of opinion among competent geologists, whether the deposits are really tertiary or only early quaternary. there is, however, one discovery, made since the date of these above recorded, of human work below the great basalt cap of north-western america, brought up from a great depth of underlying gravels and sands of a silted-up lake, formerly forming part of the course of the snake river at nampa in idaho, which is as startling in its way as that of the calaveras skull. the following account of it is given on the authority of professor wright, who, having visited the locality in the summer of , states that he found "abundant confirmatory evidence"-- the nampa image was brought up in boring an artesian well, at nampa in ada county, idaho, through a lava-cap feet thick, and below it about feet of the quicksands and clays of a silted-up lake, formed in a basin of the snake river, which joins the columbia river, and flows into the pacific, forming part, therefore, of the same geographical and drainage system as the californian gravels. at this depth the borers came down to a stratum of coarse sand, mixed with clay balls at the top, and resting at the bottom on an ancient vegetable soil, and the image came up from the lower part of this coarse sand. the borer, or liner of the well, was a six-inch iron tube, and the drill was only used in piercing the lava, while the sands below it were all extracted by a sand pump. mr. king, a respectable citizen of nampa, who was boring the well, states that he had been for several days closely watching the progress of the well and passing through his hands the contents of the sand pump as they were brought up, so that he had hold of the image before he suspected what it was. mr. cumming, superintendent of that portion of the union pacific railway, a highly-trained graduate of harvard college, was on the ground next day and saw the image, and heard mr. king's account of the discovery, and mr. adams, the president of the railway, happening to pass that way about a month later, he brought it to the notice of some of the foremost geologists in the united states. the image was sent to boston by mr. king, who gave every information, and it was found to be modelled from stiff clay, like that of the clay balls found in the sand, slightly if at all touched by fire, and incrusted like those balls with grains of oxide of iron, which professor putnam considers to be a conclusive proof of its great antiquity. mr. emmons, of the state geological society, gives it as his opinion that the strata in which this image is said to have been found, is older by far than any others in which human remains have been discovered, unless it be those under table mountain, in california, from which came the celebrated calaveras skull. so much for the authenticity of the discovery, which seems unassailable, but now comes the remarkable feature of it, which to a great extent revolutionizes our conception of this early palæolithic age. the image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely an inch and a half long, is by no means a rude object, but on the contrary more artistic, and a better representation of the human form, than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people, such as the phoenicians. it is in fact very like the little statuettes so abundantly found in the neighbourhood of the old temple-pyramids of mexico, which are generally believed to be not much older than the date of the spanish conquest. [illustration: front view. back view. the nampa image--actual size. (drawn from the object by j. d. woodward.)] in the face of this mass of evidence, from both the old and new worlds, it seems more like obstinate incredulity than scientific caution to deny the existence of tertiary man. indeed the objections put forward by those who still cling to the notion that any proofs of greater antiquity of man take them further back from the orthodox standpoint of genesis, are sufficient of themselves to show the straits to which they are driven to explain the facts. a conspiracy has been imagined of many hundreds of ignorant miners, living hundreds of miles apart, to hoax scientists, or make a trade of forging implements, which is about as probable as the theory that the palæolithic remains of the old world were all forged by the devil, and buried in quaternary strata in order to discredit the mosaic account of creation. it is enough to say that the great majority of the implements had been thrown away as rubbish, and that not a single instance has ever been adduced in which money was asked or offered for any of them. another equally wild theory is that gold-mining tunnels had been driven by some race of prehistoric indians through hundreds of feet of solid basalt and quicksands, who left their implements in them; and this on the face of the fact that no such tunnels or evidences of ancient mining have ever been found in california, and that gold was unknown there until its recent discovery. in accepting, however, the evidence for tertiary man, we must accept with it conclusions which are much opposed to preconceived opinions. in the two best authenticated instances in which human skulls have been found in presumably tertiary strata, those of castelnedolo and calaveras, it is distinctly stated that they present no unusual appearance, and do not go nearly as far in a brutal or pithecoid direction as the quaternary skulls of neanderthal and spy, or as those of many existing savage races. the nampa image also appears to show the existence of considerable artistic skill at a period which, if not tertiary, must be of immense antiquity. how can this be reconciled with the theory of evolution and the descent of man from some animal ancestor common to him and the other quadrumana? up to a certain point, viz. the earliest quaternary period, the evidence of progression seems fairly satisfactory. if we take the general average of this class of skulls as compared with modern skulls, we find them of smaller brain-capacity, thicker and flatter, with prominent frontal sinuses, receding foreheads, projecting muzzles, and weaker chins. the brain is decidedly smaller, the average being cubic centimètres as compared with in australians and bushmen, and in well-developed europeans; and of this smaller capacity a larger proportion is contained in the posterior part.[ ] other parts of the skeleton will tell the same story, and in many of the earliest and most extreme instances, as those of neanderthal and spy, a very decided step is made in the direction of the "missing link." [ ] quatrefages and hamy, _crania ethnica_. but if we accept the only two specimens known of the type of tertiary man, the skulls of castelnedolo and calaveras, which are supported by such extremely strong evidence, it would seem that as we recede in time, instead of getting nearer to the "missing link," we get further from it. this, and this alone, throws doubt on evidence which would otherwise seem to be irresistible, and without a greater number of well-authenticated confirmations we must be content to hold our judgment to a certain extent in suspense. this, however, it must be remarked, extends only to the type of man as shown by these two skulls, and does not at all affect the fact that man, of some type or other, did exist in the pliocene and miocene periods, which is established beyond reasonable doubt by the numerous instances in which chipped implements and cut bones have been found by experienced observers, and pronounced genuine by the highest authorities. all we can say with any certainty is, that if the darwinian theory of evolution applies to man, as it does to all other animals, and specially to man's closest kindred, the other quadrumana, the common ancestor must be sought very much further back, in the eocene, which inaugurated the reign of placental mammalia, and in which the primitive types of so many of the later mammals have been found. nor will this appear incredible when we consider that man's cousins, the apes and monkeys, first appear in the miocene, or even earlier in the eocene, and become plentiful in the later pliocene, and that even anthropoid apes, and one of them, the hylobates, scarcely if at all distinguishable from the gibbon of the present day, have been found at sansan and other miocene deposits in the south of france, at oeningen in switzerland, and pikermi in greece; while if professor ameghino's discoveries are to be credited, anthropoids already existed in the eocene, and their development may be traced from the oldest eocene forms. chapter xii. races of mankind. monogeny or polygeny--darwin--existing races--colour--hair--skulls and brains--dolichocephali and brachycephali--jaws and teeth--stature--other tests--isaac taylor--prehistoric types in europe--huxley's classification--language no test of race--egyptian monuments--- human and animal races unchanged for years--neolithic races--palæolithic--different races of man as far back as we can trace--types of canstadt, cro-magnon, and furfooz--oldest races dolichocephalic--skulls of neanderthal and spy--simian characters--objections--evidence confined to europe--american man--calaveras skull--tertiary man--skull of castelnedolo--leaves monogeny or polygeny an open question--arguments on each side--old arguments from the bible and philology exploded--what darwinian theory requires--animal types traced up to the eocene--secondary origins--dog and horse--fertility of races--question of hybridity--application to man--difference of constitutions--negro and white--bearing on question of migration--apes and monkeys--question of original locality of man--asiatic theory--eur-african--american--arctic--none based on sufficient evidence--- mere speculations--conclusion--summary of evidence as to human origins. the immense antiquity of man upon earth having been established, other questions of great interest present themselves as to the origin of the race. these questions, however, no longer depend on positive facts of observation, like the discovery of palæolithic remains in definite geological deposits, but on inference and conjecture from these and other observed facts, most of which are of comparatively recent date and hardly extend beyond the historical period. thus if we start with the existing state of things, we find a great variety of human races actually prevailing, located in different parts of the world, and of fundamental types so dissimilar as to constitute what in animal zoology would often be called separate species,[ ] and yet fertile among themselves, and so similar in many physical and mental characters as to infer an origin from common ancestors. and we can infer from history that this was so to a great extent years ago, and that the length of time has been insufficient to produce any marked changes, either in physical or linguistic types of the different fundamental races. [ ] topinard, one of the latest and best authorities, says in his book on anthropology: "we have seen the marked difference between woolly and straight hair, between the prognathous and the orthognathous, the jet black of the yoloff and the pale complexion of the scandinavian, between the ultra-dolichocephalic esquimaux or new caledonian, and the ultra-brachycephalic mongolian. but the line of separation between the european and the bosjesman, as regards these two characters, is, in a morphological point of view, still wider, as much so as between each of the anthropoid apes, or between the dog and the wolf, the goat and the sheep." was this always so, and what inference can be drawn as to the much-disputed question between monogeny and polygeny, that is, between the theory of descent from a single pair in a single locality, and that of descent from several pairs, developed in different localities by parallel, but not strictly identical, lines of evolution? this is a question which cannot be decided off-hand by _à priori_ considerations. no doubt darwinism points to the evolution of all life from primitive forms, and ultimately, perhaps, from the single simplest form of life in the cell or protoplasm. but this does not necessarily imply that the more highly specialized, and what may be called the secondary forms of life, have all originated from single secondary centres, at one time and in one locality. on the contrary, we have the authority of darwin himself for saying that this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. in a letter to bentham he says--"i dispute whether a new race or species is necessarily or even generally descended from a single or pair of parents. the whole body of individuals, i believe, became altered together--like our race-horses, and like all domestic breeds which are changed through unconscious selection by man." the problem is, therefore, an open one, and can only be solved (or rather attacked, for in the present state of our knowledge a complete solution is probably impossible) by a careful induction from ascertained facts, ascending step by step from the present to the past, from the known to the unknown. the first step is to have a clear idea of what actually exists at the present moment. there are an almost endless number of minor varieties of the human race, but none of them of sufficient importance to imply diversity of origin, with the exception of four, or at the most five or six fundamental types, which stand so widely apart that it is difficult to imagine that they are all descended from a common pair of ancestors. these are the white, yellow, and black races of the old world, the copper-coloured of america, and perhaps the olive-coloured of malaysia and polynesia, and the pygmy races of africa and eastern asia. the difficulty of supposing these races to have all sprung from a single pair will at once be apparent if we personify this pair under the name of adam for the first man and eve for the first woman, and ask ourselves the question, what do we suppose to have been their colour? but colour alone, though the most obvious, is by no means the sole criterion of difference of race. the evidence is cumulative, and other equally marked and persistent characters, both of physical structure and of physiological and mental peculiarities, stand out as distinctly as differences of colour in the great typical races. for instance, the hair is a very persistent index of race. when the section of it is circular, the hair is straight and lank; when flattened, woolly; and when oval, curly or wavy. now these characters are so persistent that many of the best anthropologists have taken hair as the surest test of race. everywhere the lank and straight hair and circular section go with the yellow and copper-coloured races; the woolly hair and flat section with the black; and the wavy hair and oval section with the white races. the solid framework of the skeleton also affords very distinctive types of race, especially where it is looked at in a general way as applicable to great masses of pure races, and not to individuals of mixed race, like most europeans. the skull is most important, for it affords the measure of the size and shape of the brain, which is the highest organ, and that on which the differentiation of man from the lower animals mainly depends. the size of the brain alone does not always afford a conclusive proof of mental superiority, for it varies with sex, height, and other individual characters, and often seems to depend more on quality than on quantity. still, if we take general averages, we find that superior and civilized races have larger brains than inferior and savage ones. thus the average brain of the european is about cubic centimètres, while that of the australian and bushman does not exceed . the shape as well as the size of the skull affords another test of race which is often appealed to. the main distinction taken is between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, or long and broad skulls. here also we must look at general averages rather than at individuals, for there is often considerable variation within the same race, especially among the mesocephalic, or medium between the two extremes, which is generally the prevalent form where there has been much intermixture of races. but if we take widely different types there can be no doubt that the long or broad skull is a characteristic and persistent feature. the formation of the jaws and teeth affords another important test. some races are what is called prognathous, that is, the jaws project, and the teeth are set in sockets sloping outwards, so that the lower part of the face approximates to the form of a muzzle; others are orthognathous, or have the jaws and teeth vertical. and the form of the chin seems to be wonderfully correlated with the general character and energy of the race. it is hard to say why, but as a matter of fact a weak chin generally denotes a weak, and a strong chin a strong, race or individual. thus the chimpanzee and other apes have no chin, the negro and lower races generally have chins weak and receding. the races who, like the iberians, have been conquered or driven from plains to mountains, have had poor chins; while their successive conquerors, of aryan race,--celts, romans, teutons, and scandinavians,--might almost be classified by the prominence and solidity of this feature of the face. stature is another very persistent feature. the pygmy races of equatorial africa described by stanley have remained the same since the early records of egypt, while the pure aryan races of the north temperate zone, gauls, germans, and scandinavians, have from the first dawn of history amazed the shorter races of the south by their tall stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow hair. here and there isolated tall races may be found where the race has become thoroughly acclimatized to a suitable environment, as among some negro tribes, and the araucanian indians of patagonia; but as a rule the inferior races are short, the bulk of the civilized races of the world of intermediate stature, and the great conquering races of the north temperate zone decidedly tall. other tests are afforded by the shape of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, and other characters, all of which agree, in the words of isaac taylor in his _origin of the aryans_, in "exhibiting two extreme types--the african with long heads, long orbits, and flat hair; and the mongolian with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. the european type is intermediate, the head, the orbit, and the hair being oval. in the east of europe we find an approximation to the asiatic type; in the south of europe to the african." taking these prominent anthropological characters as tests, we find four distinct types among the earliest inhabitants of europe, which can be traced back from historic to neolithic times. they consist of two long-headed and two short-headed races, and in each case one is tall and the other short. the dolichocephalic are recognized everywhere throughout western europe and on the mediterranean basin, including north africa, as the oldest race, and they are thought still to survive in the original type in some of the people of wales and ireland and the spanish basques; while they doubtless form a large portion, intermixed with other races, of the blood of the existing populations of great britain and ireland, of western and southern france, of spain, portugal, sicily, sardinia, north africa, and other mediterranean districts. this is known as the iberian race, and it can be traced clearly beyond history and the knowledge of metals, into the neolithic stone age, and may possibly be descended from some of the vastly older palæolithic types such as that of cro-magnon. the type is everywhere a feeble one, of short stature, dolichocephalic skull, narrow oval face, orthognathic teeth, weak chin, and swarthy complexion. we have only to compare a skull of this type with one of ruder and stronger races, to understand how the latter must have survived as conquerors in the struggle for existence in the early ages of the world, before gunpowder and military discipline had placed civilization in a better position to contend with brute force and energy. huxley sums up the latest evidence as to the distinctive types of these historic and prehistoric races of europe as follows-- . blond long-heads of tall stature who appear with least admixture in scandinavia, north germany, and parts of the british islands. . brunette broad-heads of short stature in central france, the central european highlands, and piedmont. these are identified with the ligurian race, and their most typical modern representatives are the auvergnats and savoyards. . mongoloid brunette broad-heads of short stature in arctic and eastern europe, and central asia, represented by the lapps and other tribes of northern russia, passing into the mongols and chinese of eastern asia. . brunette long-heads of short stature--the iberian race. huxley adds, "the inhabitants of the regions which lie between these five present the intermediate gradations which might be expected to result from their intermixture. the evidence at present extant is consistent with the supposition that the blond long-heads, the brunette broad-heads, and the brunette long-heads--_i.e._ the scandinavian, ligurian, and iberian races--have existed in europe very nearly in their present localities throughout historic times and very far back into prehistoric times. there is no proof of any migration of asiatics into europe west of the basin of the dnieper down to the time of attila. on the contrary, the first great movements of the european population of which there is any conclusive evidence are that series of gaulish invasions of the east and south, which ultimately extended from north italy to galatia in asia minor." i may add, that in more recent times many of the principal movements have been from west to east, viz. of germans absorbing slavs, and slavs absorbing or expelling fins and tartars. the next question is, how far can we trace back the existence of the present widely different fundamental types of mankind by the light of ascertained and certain facts? the most important of these facts is, that egyptian monuments enable us to say, that the existing diversities of the typical races of mankind are not of recent origin, but have existed unchanged from the first dawn of history, say years ago. the egyptians themselves have come down from the old empire, through all the vicissitudes of conquests, mixtures of races, changes of religion and language, so little altered that the fellah of to-day is often the image of the egyptians who built the pyramids. the wooden statue of an officer of chephren who died some years ago, was such a striking portrait of the village magistrate of to-day, that the arab workmen christened it the "sheik-el-beled." and these old egyptians knew from the earliest times three at least of the fundamental types of mankind: the nahsu, or negroes to the south, who are represented on the monuments so faithfully that they might be taken as typical pictures of the modern negro; the lebu to the west, a fair-skinned and blue-eyed white race, whose descendants remain to this day as kabyles and berbers, in the same localities of north africa; and to the east various tribes of arabs, syrians, and other asiatics, who are always painted of a yellowish-brown colour, and whose features may often be traced in their modern descendants. the same may be said of the wild and domestic animals of the various countries, which are the same now, unless where subsequently imported, as when they were first known to the ancient egyptians. we start, therefore, with this undoubted fact, that a period of or years has been insufficient to make any perceptible change in the types of pure races, whether of the animal or of human species. and doubtless this period might be greatly extended if we had historical records of the growth of egyptian civilization in the times prior to menes, for in the earliest records we find accounts of wars both with the nahsu and the lebu, implying large populations of those races already existing both to the south and west of the valley of the nile. these positive dates carry us back so far that it is of little use to investigate minutely the differences of races shown by the remains of the neolithic period. they were very marked and numerous, but we have no evidence to show that they were different from those of more recent times, or that their date can be certainly said to be much older than the oldest egyptian records. all we can infer with certainty is, that whether the neolithic period be of longer or shorter duration, no changes have taken place in the animal fauna contemporary with man which cannot be traced to human agency or other known causes. no new species have appeared, or old ones disappeared, in the course of natural evolution, as was the case during the quaternary and preceding geological periods. the neolithic is, however, a mere drop in the ocean of time compared with the earlier periods in which the existence of palæolithic man can be traced by his remains; and as far back as we can go we find ourselves confronted by the same fact of a diversity of races. as we have seen in the chapter on quaternary man, europe, where alone skulls and skeletons of the palæolithic age have been discovered, affords at least three very distinct types--that of canstadt, of cro-magnon, and of furfooz. the canstadt type, which includes the men of neanderthal and spy, and which was widely diffused, having been found, as far south as gibraltar, is apparently the oldest, and certainly the rudest and most savage, being characterized by enormous brow-ridges, a low and receding forehead, projecting muzzle, and thick bones with powerful muscular attachments. it is very dolichocephalic, but the length is due mainly to the projection of the posterior part of the brain, the total size of which is below the average. the cro-magnon type, which is also very old, being contemporary with the cave-bear and mammoth, is the very opposite of that of canstadt in many respects. the superciliary ridges are scarcely marked, the forehead is elevated, the contour of the skull good, and the volume of the brain equal or superior to that of many modern civilized races. the stature was tall, the nose straight or projecting, and the chin prominent. the only resemblance to the canstadt type is, that they are both dolichocephalic chiefly on the posterior region, and both prognathous; but the differences are so many and profound that no anthropologist would say that one of these races could have been derived directly from the other. still less could he say that the small round-headed race of furfooz could have been a direct descendant of either of the two former. it is found in close vicinity with them over an extensive area, but generally in caves and deposits which, from their geological situation and associated fauna, point to a later origin. in fact, if we go by european evidence alone, we may consider it proved that the oldest known races were dolichocephalic, that the brachycephalic races came later, and that as long ago as in neolithic times, considerable intercrossing had taken place, which has gone on ever since, producing the great variety of intermediate types which now prevail over a great part of europe. this inference of the priority of the canstadt type is strengthened by its undoubted approximation to that of the most savage existing races and of the anthropoid apes. if we take the skulls and skeletons of neanderthal and spy, and compare them with those of modern civilized man, we find that while they are still perfectly human, they make a notable approximation towards a savage and simian type in all the peculiarities which have been described by anthropologists as tests. the most important of all, that of the capacity and form of the brain, is best illustrated by the subjoined diagram of the skulls of the european, the neanderthal, and the chimpanzee placed in superposition. [illustration: l'homme avant l'histoire. (from debierre.)] it will be seen at a glance that the neanderthal skull, especially in the frontal part, which is the chief seat of intelligence, is nearer to the chimpanzee than to modern man. and all the other characters correspond to this inferiority of brain. the enormous superciliary ridges; the greater length of the fore-arm; the prognathous jaws, larger canine teeth, and smaller chin; the thicker bones and stronger muscular attachments; the rounder ribs; the flatter tibia, and many other characters described by palæontologists, all point in the same direction, and take us some considerable way towards the missing link which is to connect the human race with animal ancestors. still there are other considerations which must make us pause before asserting too positively that in following quaternary man up to the canstadt type, we are on the track of original man, and can say with confidence that by following it up still further we shall arrive at the earlier form from which man was differentiated. in the first place, europe is the only part of the world where this canstadt type has hitherto been found. we have abundant evidence from palæolithic stone implements that man existed pretty well over the whole earth in early quaternary times, but have hitherto no evidence from human remains outside of europe from which we can draw any inference as to the type of man by whom these implements were made. it is clear that in europe the oldest races were dolichocephalic, but we have no certainty that this was the case in asia, in so many parts of which round-headed races exclusively prevail, and have done so from the earliest times. again, we have no evidence as to the origin of another of the most strongly marked types, that of the negro, or of the negrito, negrillo, bushmen, australian, or other existing races who approach most nearly to the simian type. the only evidence we have of the type of races who were certainly early quaternary, and may very possibly go back to an older geological age than that of the men of neanderthal and spy, comes from the new world, from california, brazil, and buenos ayres, and points to a type not so savage and simian as that of canstadt, but rather to that which characterizes all the different varieties of american man, though here also we find evidence of distinct dolichocephalic and brachycephalic races from the very earliest times. another difficulty in the way of considering the canstadt type as a real advance towards primitive man and the missing link, arises from the totally different and very superior type of cro-magnon being found so near it in time, as proved by the existence in both of the cave-bear, mammoth, and other extinct animals. we can hardly suppose the cro-magnon type to have sprung by slow evolution in the ordinary way of direct succession, from such a very different type as that of canstadt during such a short interval of time as a small portion of one geological period. again, it is very perplexing to find that the only tertiary skulls and skeletons for which we possess really strong evidence, those of castelnedolo, instead of showing, as might be expected, a still more rude and simian aspect than that of canstadt, show us the canstadt type indeed, but in a milder and more human form. all that can be said with certainty is, that as far as authentic evidence carries us back, the ancestral animal, or missing link, has not been discovered, but that man already existed from an enormous antiquity, extending certainly through the quaternary into the pliocene, and probably into the miocene period, and that at the earliest date at which his remains have been found the race was already divided, as at present, into several sharply distinguished types. this leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completely open to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists to contend for their respective views with plausible arguments, and without fear of being refuted by facts. polygeny, or plural origins, would at first sight seem to be the most plausible theory to account for the great diversities of human races actually existing, and which can be shown to have existed from such an immense antiquity. and this seems to have been the first guess of primitive nations, for most of them considered themselves as autochthonous, sprung from the soil, or created by their own native gods. but by degrees this theory gave place to that of monogeny, which has been for a long while almost universally accepted by the civilized world. the cause of this among christians, jews, and mahometans has been the acceptance of the narratives in genesis, first of adam and secondly of noah, as literally true accounts of events which actually occurred. this is an argument which has completely broken down, and no competent and dispassionate thinker any longer accepts the hebrew scriptures as a literal and conclusive authority, on facts of history and science which lie within the domain of human reason. the question, therefore, became once more an open one, but as the old orthodox argument for monogeny faded into oblivion, a new and more powerful one was furnished by the doctrine of evolution as expounded by darwin. the same argument applies to man as to the rest of the animal world, that if separate species imply separate creations, these supernatural creations must be multiplied to such an extent as to make them altogether incredible; as for instance separate creations for the land shells alone of one of the group of madeira islands; while on the other hand genera grade off into species, species into races, and races into varieties, by such insensible degrees, as to establish an irresistible inference that they have all been developed by evolution from common ancestors. no one, i suppose, seriously doubts that this is in the main the true theory of life, though there may still be some uncertainty as to the causes and mode of operation, and of the different steps and stages of this evolution. monogeny therefore in this general sense of evolution from some primitive mammalian type, may be accepted as the present conclusion of science for man as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and so many other animals which are his constant companions. their evolution can in many cases be traced up, through successive steps, to some more simple and generalized type in the eocene; and it may be permitted to believe that if the whole geological record could be traced as far back as that of the horse, in the case of man and the other quadrumana, their pedigree would be as clearly made out. this, however, does not conclude the question, for it is quite permissible to contend that in the case of man, as in that of the horse, though the primary ancestral type in the eocene may be one, the secondary types from which existing races are more immediately derived may be more than one, and may have been evolved in different localities. thus in the case of the dog, it is almost certain that some of the existing races have been derived from wolves, and others from jackals and foxes; but this is quite consistent with the belief that all the canine genus have been evolved from the marsupial carnivora of the eocene, through the arctocyon, who was a generalized type, half dog and half bear. in fact, we have the authority of darwin himself, as quoted in the beginning of this chapter, for saying that this would be quite consistent with his view of the origin of species. now the controversy between monogenists and polygenists has turned mainly on these comparatively recent developments of secondary types. it has been fought to a great extent before the immense antiquity of the human race had been established, and it had become almost certain that its original starting-point must be sought at least as far back as in the eocene period. the main argument for monogeny has been that the different races of mankind are fertile among themselves. this is doubtless true to a great extent, and shows that these races have not diverged very far from their ancestral type. but the researches of darwin and his successors have thrown a good deal of new light on the question of hybridity. species can no longer be looked upon as separated from one another and from races by hard-and-fast lines, on one side of which is absolute sterility and on the other absolute fertility; but rather as blending into one another by insensible gradations from free intercrossing to sterility, according as the differences from the original type became more pronounced and more fixed by heredity. to revert to the case of dogs, we find free interbreeding between races descended from different secondary ancestors, such as wolves, jackals, and foxes, though freer, i believe, and more permanent as the races are closer; but as the specific differences become more marked, the fertility does not abruptly cease, but rapidly diminishes. thus buffon's experiment shows that a hybrid cross between the dog and the wolf may be produced and perpetuated for at least three generations, and the leporine cross between the hare and rabbit is almost an established race. on the other hand, we see in the mule the last expiring trace of fertility in a cross between species which have diverged so far in different directions as the horse and the ass. the human race repeats this lesson of the animal world, and shows a graduated scale of fertility and permanence in crosses, between different types according as they are closely or distantly related. thus if we take the two extremes, the blond white of north temperate europe and the negro of equatorial africa, the disposition to union is almost replaced by repugnance which is only overcome under special circumstances, such as slavery, and an absence of women of their own race; while the offspring, the mulatto, is everywhere a feeble folk, with deficient vitality, diminished fertility, and prone to die out, or revert to one or other of the original types. but where the types are not so extremely divergent the fertility of the cross increases, as between the brunet white of southern europe and the arab or moor with the negro, and of the european with the native indian of america. perhaps the strongest argument for polgyeny is that derived from the different constitutions of different races as regards susceptibility to climatic and other influences. at present, and as far back as history or tradition enables us to trace, mankind has, as in the case of other animals, been very much restricted to definite geological provinces. thus in the extreme case of the fair white and the negro, the former cannot live and propagate its type south of the parallel of °, or the latter north of it. this argument was no doubt pushed too far by agassiz, who supposed the whole world to be divided into a number of limited districts, in each of which a separate creation both of men, animals, and plants had taken place suited to the environment. this is clearly inconsistent with facts, but there is still some force in it when stripped of exaggeration, and confined to the three or four leading types which are markedly different. especially it bears on the argument, on which monogenists mainly rely, of the peopling of the earth by migration from one common centre. no doubt migration has played a very great part in the diffusion of all animal and vegetable species, and their zoological provinces are determined very much by the existence of insurmountable barriers in early geological times. no doubt also man is better organized for migration than most other terrestrial animals, and history and tradition show that in comparatively recent times he has reached the remotest islands of the pacific by perfectly natural means. but this does not meet the difficulty of accounting, if we place the origin of man from a single pair anywhere in the northern hemisphere, for his presence in palæolithic times in south africa and south america. how did he get across the equatorial zone, in which only a tropical fauna, including the tropical negro, can now live and flourish? or _vice versâ_, if the original adam and eve were black, and the garden of eden situated in the tropics, how did their descendants migrate northwards, and live on the skirts of the ice-caps of the glacial period? or how did the yellow race, so tolerant of heat and cold, and of insanitary conditions, and so different in physical and moral characters from either the whites or the blacks, either originate from them, or give rise to them? the nearest congeners of man, the quadrumana, monkeys and apes, are all catarrhine in the old world, and all platyrhine in america. why, if all are descended from the same pair of ancestors, and have spread from the same spot by migration? we can only reconcile the fact that it is so with the facts of evolution, by throwing the common starting-point or points of the lines of development much further back into the eocene, or even further; and if this be true for monkeys, why not for man? one point seems quite clear, that monogeny is only possible by extending the date of human origins far back into the tertiaries. on any short-dated theories of man's appearance upon earth--as for instance that of prestwich, that palæolithic man probably only existed for some , or , years before the neolithic period--some theory like that of agassiz, of separate creations in separate zoological provinces, follows inevitably. if the immense time from the miocene to the recent period has been insufficient to differentiate the hylobates and dryopithecus very materially from the existing anthropoid apes, a period such as , or , years would have gone a very little way in deriving the negro from the white, or the white from the negro. to deny the extension of human origins into the tertiaries is practically to deny darwin's theory of evolution altogether, or to contend that man is an exception to the laws by which the rest of the animal creation have come into existence in the course of evolution. the question of the locality in which the human species first originated depends also very materially on the date assigned for human origins. the various speculations which have been hazarded on this subject are almost all based on the supposition that this origin took place in comparatively recent times when geographical and other causes were not materially different from those of the present day. it was for ages the accepted belief that all mankind were descended primarily from a single pair of ancestors, who were miraculously created in mesopotamia, and secondarily from three pairs who were miraculously preserved in the ark in armenia. this of course never had any other foundation than the belief in the inspired authority of the bible, and when it came to be established that this, as regards its scientific and prehistoric speculations, was irreconcilable with the most certain facts of science, the orthodox account of the creation fell with it. the theory of asiatic origin was, however, taken up on other grounds, and still lingers in some quarters, mainly among philologists, who, headed by max müller, thought they had discovered in sanscrit and zend the nearest approach to a common aryan language. tracing backwards the lines of migration of these people, the sanscrit-speaking hindoos and the zend-speaking iranians, they found them intersecting somewhere about the upper oxus, and jumped at the conclusion that the great elevated plateau of pamir, the "roof of the world," had been the birthplace of man, as it was of so many of the great rivers which flowed from it to the north, south, east, and west. this theory, however, has pretty well broken down, since it has been shown that other branches of the aryan languages, specially the lithuanian, contain more archaic elements than either sanscrit or zend; that language is often no conclusive test of race; that aryan migrations have quite as often or oftener been from west to east than from east to west; and that all history, prehistoric traditions, and linguistic palæontology point to the principal aryan races having been located in northern and central europe and in central and southern russia very much as we find them at the present day. the question of the locality of human origins is now being debated on very different grounds, and although it is not denied that max müller's "somewhere in asia" may turn out to be a correct guess, it is denied that there is at present a particle of evidence to support it. for really the whole question is very much one of guesswork. the immense antiquity which on the lowest possible estimate can be assigned for the proved existence of man, carries us back to a period when geological, geographical, and climatic conditions were so entirely different, that all inferences from those of the present period are useless. for instance, certainly half the himalayas, and probably the whole, were under the sea; the pamir and central asia, instead of being the roof of the world, may have been fathoms deep under a great ocean; greenland and spitzbergen were types of the north temperate climate best suited for the highest races of man. in like manner language ceases to be an available factor in any attempt to trace human origins to their source. it is doubtless true that at the present day different fundamental types of language distinguish the different typical races of the human family. thus the monosyllabic type, consisting of roots only without grammar, characterizes the chinese and its allied races of the extreme east of asia; the agglutinative, in which different shades of meaning were attached to roots, by definite particles glued on to them as it were by prefixes or suffixes, is the type adopted by most of the oldest and most numerous races of mankind in the old world as their means of conveying ideas by sound; while in the new world the common type of an immense variety of languages is polysynthetic, or an attempt to splutter out as it were a whole sentence in a single immensely long word made up of fragments of separate roots and particles, a type which in the old world is confined to the euskarian of the spanish basque. and at the head of all as refined instruments for the conveyance of thought, the two inflectional languages, the aryan and semitic, by which, though in each case by a totally different system, roots acquire their different shades of meaning by particles, no longer mechanically glued on to them, but melted down as it were with the roots, and incorporated into new words according to definite grammatical rules. but this carries us back a very little way. judging by philology alone, the chinese, whose annals go back only to about b.c., would be an older race than the egyptians or accadians, whose languages can be traced at least years further back. and if we go back into prehistoric and geological times we are absolutely ignorant whether the neolithic and palæolithic races spoke these languages, or indeed spoke at all. some palæontologists have fancied that there was evidence for some of the older palæolithic races being speechless, and christened them "homo alalus," but this is based on the solitary fact that a single human jaw, that of naulette, is wanting in the genial tubercle, absent also in anthropoid apes, to which one of the muscles of the tongue is attached. but apart from this being a single instance, some of the best anatomists deny that this genial tubercle is really essential to speech, which the latest physiological researches show to be dependent on the development of a small tract in the third frontal convolution of the right side of the brain, any injury to which causes aphasia, or loss of the power of speech, though its physical organs of the larynx remain unimpaired. it is probable, however, that from the very first man had a certain faculty, like other animals, of expressing meaning by sounds and gestures, and the researches of romanes, and quite recently those of professor garner on the language of monkeys and apes, make this almost certain. but at what particular moment in the course of the evolution of man this faculty ripened into what may be properly called language is a matter of the purest conjecture. it may have been in the tertiary, the quaternary, or not until the recent period. all we can say is, that when we first catch sight of languages, they are already developed into the present distinct types, arguing, as in the case of physical types, either for distinct miraculous creations, or for such an immensely remote ancestry as to give time for the fixation of separate secondary types before the formation of language. thus, if we confine ourselves to the most perfect and advanced, and apparently therefore most modern form of language of the foremost races of the world, the inflectional, we find two types, the semitic and aryan, constructed on such totally different principles that it is impossible for one to be derived from the other, or both to be descended from a common parent. the semitic device of expressing shades of meaning by internal flexion, that is, by ringing the changes of vowels between three consonants, making every word triliteral, is fundamentally different from the aryan device for attaining the same object by fusing roots and added particles into one new word in which equal value is attached to vowels and consonants. we can partly see how the latter may have been developed from the agglutinative, but not how the stiff and cramped semitic can have been derived either from that or from the far more perfect and flexible type of the aryan languages. it has far more the appearance of being an artificial invention implying a considerable advance of intellectual attainment, and therefore of comparatively recent date. in any case we may safely accept the conclusion that there is nothing in language which assists us in tracing back human origins into geological times, or indeed much further than the commencement of history. we are reduced, therefore, to geological evidence, and this gives us nothing better than mere probabilities, or rather guesses, as to the original centre or centres of human existence upon the earth. the inference most generally drawn is in favour of the locality where the earliest traces of human remains have been found, and where the existence of the nearest allied species, the apes and monkeys, can be carried back furthest. this locality is undoubtedly eur-africa, that is the continent which existed when europe and africa were united by one or more land connections. and in this locality the preference must be assigned to western europe and to africa north of the atlas; in fact to the portion of this ancient continent facing the atlantic, and western mediterranean, then an inland sea. thus far central and south-western france, spain, portugal, italy, and algeria have afforded the oldest unequivocal proofs of the existence of man, and of the coexistence of anthropoid apes. accordingly darwin inclined to the view that north africa was probably the scene of man's first appearance, and the latest authority on the subject, brinton, in his _races and peoples_, gives at length reasons for assigning this to somewhere in eur-africa. but it must be remembered that this inference rests entirely on the fact that the district in question has been more or less explored, while the rest of the earth can hardly be said to have been explored at all, for anything prior to those quaternary paleolithic implements which prove the existence of man already spread over nearly the whole of the habitable globe. nor would the origin of the white race in eur-africa, even if it were established, help us to account for the existence of the negro race on the other side of the atlas and the sahara, or of the yellow race in eastern asia, or of the american race. indeed america may fairly compete with eur-africa for the honour of being the original seat of the human race, for the geological conditions and the animal fauna of the auriferous gravels of california point to the calaveras skull and other numerous human remains and implements found in them being of tertiary age, and quite possibly as old or even older than anything which has been found in europe.[ ] the wide diffusion of the same peculiar racial type over the whole continent of america down to cape horn, and its capability of existing under such different conditions of climate and environment, also point to its being an extremely ancient and primitive race, and the generic distinction between the apes and monkeys of the old and new worlds is a remarkable circumstance which is not accounted for by any monogenist theory of the origin of the order of quadrumana. [ ] if ameghino's discoveries of an anthropoid type in the lower eocene of patagonia should be confirmed, it would incline the balance of evidence in favour of south america, or rather of the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, as the most probable scene of the evolution of the quadrumana, including the human variety, from ancestral forms allied to the marsupials of the secondary period. it is to be observed also, that although all american races have a certain peculiar type in common, still there are differences which show that secondary types must have existed from a very early period, intercrossing between which must have given rise to numerous varieties. thus, according to morton, dolichocephaly was most prevalent among the tribes who inhabited the eastern side of the continent facing the atlantic both in north and south america, while brachycephaly prevailed on the western, side facing the pacific. great differences of colour and stature are also found often among contiguous tribes, and irrespective of latitude. on the whole, however, the american type approximates in many important particulars, such as colour, hair, and anatomical structure, more nearly to the yellow races of eastern asia than to any other, though it is a fairly open question which of the two may have been the earliest to appear in the immensely remote ages of the tertiary period. another theory is that man probably originated in some continent of the arctic circle, where, as we know from fossil remains of the miocene and eocene periods, greenland and spitzbergen enjoyed a mild climate and forest vegetation, admirably adapted for the evolution of a temperate mammalian fauna, including the human species. this is a very plausible theory, but at present it is a mere theory, like that of a lost atlantis, or submerged continents in the pacific or indian oceans. the only thing approaching to evidence to support it is, as far as i am aware, that sir joseph hooker and other eminent botanists think that the diffusion of the forest trees and other flora of america can be traced along lines radiating from the extreme north, along the mountain chains and elevated plateaux which form the backbone of the continent from alaska to tierra del fuego. there seems a probability also that the evolution of the human race, which turns mainly on the development of the erect stature, which is the basis of the larger brain and other anatomical differences between man and the other quadrumana, must have taken place not in tropical regions of dense forests, where climbing would have had a decided advantage over walking in the struggle for life, but rather in some region of wide plains and open forests, where it would be an advantage to see enemies or prey at a distance, or over tall grass or ferns. it must be admitted, however, that in our present state of knowledge all these theories of the place, time, and manner of human origins are speculations rather than science. we have proof positive that man was already spread over most parts of the world in the quaternary period, and the irresistible inference that he must have existed long before, is confirmed by conclusive evidence as to the finding of his remains and implements in the earliest quaternary and latest pliocene periods, and very strong evidence for carrying them back into the miocene. anthropoid apes, which are so similar to man in physical structure, and in their ways are as highly specialized from any more general and primitive ancestral form as man himself, undoubtedly did exist in the miocene period, and have come down to us with comparatively little change. it puzzles the best anatomists to find any clear distinction between the present hylobates and the hylobates of the middle miocene, while that between the white man and the negro is clear and unmistakable. why then should "homo" not have existed as soon as "hylobates," and why should any prepossession in favour of man's recent creation, based mainly on exploded beliefs in the scientific value of the myths and guesses of the earliest civilized nations of asia, stand in the way of accepting the enormous and rapidly increasing accumulation of evidence, tracing back the evolution of the mammal man to the same course of development as other mammals? as regards the course of this evolution, all we know with any certainty is, that as far as we can trace it back, the human species was already differentiated into distinct races, and that in all probability the present fundamental types were already formed. when and where the primitive stock or stocks may have originated, and the secondary ancestral races may have branched off from it, is at present unknown. all we can say is, that the more we examine the evidence, the more it points to extreme antiquity even for these secondary stocks, and makes it probable that we must go, as in the case of the horse and other existing mammals, at least as far back as into the eocene to look for the primitive generalized type or types from which these secondary lines of quadrumanous and human evolution have taken their origin. as regards the secondary types themselves, there is no certainty as to the place or time of their origin, but the balance of evidence points rather in favour of polygeny, that is, of their having followed slightly different lines of evolution from the common starting-point, under different circumstances of environment and in different localities; so that when man, as we know him, first appeared, he was already differentiated into races distinct though not very far apart. in conclusion, i may remark that these hotly-contested questions as to monogeny or polygeny, and as to the place of man's first appearance on earth, lose most of their importance when it is realized that human origins must be pushed back at least as far as the miocene, and probably into the eocene period. as long as it was held that no traces of man's existence could be found, as cuvier held, until the recent period; or even as some english geologists still contend, until the post-glacial, or at any rate the glacial or quaternary periods, it was evident that the facts could only be explained by the theory of a series of supernatural interferences. agassiz's theory, or some modification of it, must be adopted, of numerous special creations of life at special centres, as of the esquimaux and polar bear in arctic regions, the negro and gorilla in the tropics, and so forth. this theory has been completely given up as regards animals, in favour of the darwinian theory of evolution by natural causes, and no one now believes in a multiplicity of miracles to account for the existence of animal species. is man alone an exception to this universal law, or is he like the rest of creation, a product of what darwinians call "evolution," and enlightened theologians "the original impress"? the existing species of anthropoid apes, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, do not differ more widely from one another than do many of the extreme types of the human species. in colour, hair, volume of brain, form of skull, stature, and a hundred other peculiarities, the negro and the european stand further apart than those anthropoids do from one another, and no naturalist from mars or saturn, investigating the human family for the first time, and free from prepossession, would hesitate to class the white, black, yellow, red, and perhaps five or six other varieties, as different species. in the case of these anthropoid apes no one supposes that they were miraculously created in recent times. on the contrary, we find their type already fully developed in the miocene, and we infer, that like the horse, camel, and so many other existing mammals, their origin may be traced step by step backwards to some lower and generalized type in the eocene. who can doubt that physical man, an animal constructed almost exactly on the same anatomical ground-plan as the anthropoids, came into existence by a similar process? the only answer would be, if it could be proved, that his existence on earth had been so short as to make it impossible that so many and so great specific variations as now exist, and some of which have been proved to have existed early in the quaternary period, could have been developed by natural means and by the slow processes of evolution. but this is just where the evidence fails, and is breaking down more and more every year and with every fresh discovery. recent man has given place to quaternary man; post-glacial to inter-glacial and pre-glacial; and now the evidence for the existence of man or of some ancestral form of man, in the tertiary period, has accumulated to such an extent that there are few competent anthropologists who any longer deny it. but with this extension of time the existence of man, instead of being an anomaly and a discord, falls in with the sublime harmony of the universe, of which it is the dominant note. the end. _richard clay & sons, limited, london & bungay._ transcriber's note: the spelling of words in languages other than english, have been left as they appear in the book. minor spelling inconsistencies, mainly hyphenated words, have been harmonized. obvious typos have been corrected. an "illustration" section has been added as an aid to the reader.